Today’s blessed relief comes from Hecate, whose “Discussing the Undiscussible” post goes directly to my own concerns of late:

Mystical experience, the experience of the mystic, what it is that mystics experience — that stuff is, almost by definition, idiomatic. It cannot be translated into any standard language, although it is possible that the language of exceptional music, exceptional art, exceptional poetry (over prose), may come close.

My deepest mystical experience — and this is odd for a mammal, living in the flesh — is observing bright, late-afternoon sunshine on leaves, grocking photosynthesis and the symphony inherent therein, being in a forest or a garden. Yesterday, I walked through the Brookside Gardens and sucked, as a hungry child suckles a breast, upon the amazing sight of sunlight filtered though deep forest shade. I see Fairies there, but I mean the word “fairie” in a scary and Earth-centered sense. I reminded myself that I can go on living.

When I wrote,

Because I DO have a mother, and I finally know I have a soul.

After growing slowly in my awareness all along, it’s here now in the nick of time. I’m talking about the Big Momma, chilluns, the all-enfolding love of all Creation. MOTHER NATURE, Mother Earth, the stuff my body’s made of, the thing we can’t define or do without, the ultimate redemption: Goddess loves me, this I know, for my tears, they tell me so. (Put it any way you want.)

what Hecate writes is what I meant. Late afternoon sunlight on leaves is something I understand, too. But I’m 200 pounds of do-the-dishes-when-the-spoons-are-gone, I can’t write about breasts and sucking. Er, suckling. That’s it, though: nourishment from “our Mother,” as a commenter expressed. And note how the author is replenished by the experience. (“I can go on living,” etc.) The line about the fairies is important, too, for conveying a sense of the quality of the energy involved. This is precisely what I’ve found to be true in really wild places, where I’ve felt it. A lot of you must know what I’m talking about.

It’s so important.

It was a beautiful day today, so I made a short video with my MacBook. It’s called “Adobe Shadows,” and you can also find it at Taos Video Circus (my YouTube channel).

What was the last thing that scared me with Helen? That she would disinherit me. No, really. I can hardly believe that actually bothered me, but of course it did. What the hell is THAT all about, and where did it come from?

It’s a very real possibility, although she’d have to stay sane enough to see her attorney, who would try to talk her out of it. But my automatic reaction, coming at the tail end of this last episode in Tucson, was the catalyst for what could modestly be called a thundering herd-of-elephants epiphany. Much too simply put (considering the ramifications) — and as I’ve mentioned before — if you take away the money, what is there?

[...crickets...]

Without the eventual reward of divvying up a couple hundred grand (the Dow Jones and nursing home accounting offices willing), why would I or any of us have kept calling or visiting over the last 30 years? Heck, the last 40 years.

To get a taste of those great Xmas cookies?
To reminisce about fun family times in days gone by?
To help with chores around the homestead?
To share good news and unload burdens?
To bask in the comfort of home?
To share each other’s love and affection?

Help me out here, I’m trying as hard as I can. But I swear to God, none of those apply. Maybe a little bit, here and there — nothing is ever all bad — but mostly not. She didn’t bake, either. Or even celebrate Christmas, except back in the early years. Or want to go anywhere, or even want to listen.

For as long as I can remember, even going back to puberty, coming face-to-face with Helen was a tense drill of raising inner shields, especially in the last 20 years. Share my innermost thoughts? (NOT ON YOUR LIFE!) Reveal my hopes and dreams? (ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???) The same thing applied to dealing with the old man, of course, who had his emotional marching orders.

I know I’ve told this before, but the time in ‘76 or ‘77 when my sister T. and I showed up in Tucson was a horrible experience. I had a really nice Martin 12-string guitar with me that I’d bought from a new friend in Maryland and was sitting in the kitchen tuning up when my father ambled in. I’d already played a solo gig back home, singing all my own material, and I proudly piped up and told him that I’d decided to make it as a songwriter. He stopped dead in his tracks, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, and looked at me as if I’d just said I was going to suck dicks in a carnival sideshow. It was that bad, and it hit my 31-year-old heart like a skidding semi. I must have said something appropriate, and he left the room. A few minutes later he came back, his head hung low with guilt, to tell me that “Your mother and I just don’t want you to be disappointed…”

That was over 30 years ago, and I kept coming back. What did I know? I had a mother and a father. That’s what people do, right? That’s how parents talk to their kids, yes?? The terrible thing is that this incident is only one of hundreds. I can’t think of a single instance where I was encouraged to do something I loved. And when I succeeded on my own, regardless, it never did pass muster. They thought I “wasn’t right” because I was good at art and did so well in school but wouldn’t try out for Little League. I remember once in summer camp I made a wallet and produced a couple of not-bad paintings, winning first-place prizes and two engraved silver-plated cups. The upshot of that was that I came away feeling I’d done something unclean. They never knew what to do with me, I guess, and as a boy, I never understood why everyone but my parents thought I was hot shit. I know my siblings had to push against similar headwinds: we’re all alive, and each of us has in our own way accomplished quite a lot, done remarkable things, etc. — in one brother’s case, just surviving rates a ton of kudos — but no one is a CEO or has a PhD, and while nobody’s starving, not one of us is what you’d call well off.

I honestly wonder if I would have come back this last time, with Helen supposedly on her deathbed (again!), if I would have subjected myself to all the anticipatory stress (never mind the actual psycho-drama) without the underlying motive of wanting to keep enough of a lid on things to make sure the eventual transfer of the damn “estate” proceeded smoothly? The goddamn money, the constant reminders about it, the insidious little monologue inside my head that told me how much I needed it because I wasn’t any goddamn good and couldn’t earn it on my own…

Of course I wasn’t any goddamn good. How would I ever have learned otherwise?!?

Ironically, adjusting to the possibility of being disinherited helped tip the boulder over the edge. Now everything is different. I mean utterly different. I can’t emphasize that enough. Here’s just one example: over the last 72 hours, there’s been this strange thing happening inside me. Whenever something happens or I have a thought that makes me feel bad (dirty, uncomfortable, anxious, sad, or wronged), this automatic self-diagnostic program pops up in my head and asks me if the feeling came from Helen! So far, every single instance has, and then I sit back, letting go of the emotion, and the program checks my own resources: is there a reason for this state of mind? And so far, no! NO! No reason at all. And then I keep going, a little disoriented but not half bad at all.

I’m saying this as plainly and ineloquently as I can to make it stick. The guilt is gone. The thing that carved the ruts into my psyche just isn’t present any more. For someone who’s had a lifelong guilty conscience, this is monumental. I have 63 years worth of training to let go of. Everything in my life is directly affected, especially my relationship to my wife (and everyone else).

I stood by the kitchen window yesterday as I was getting ready to cook supper. The wind was blowing through the leaves of the big elm tree, causing thousands of vibrating shadows in the evening light. The air and everything in it shimmered: the outdoors was alive. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with emotion, because I finally knew that I was all right. My God, THERE’S NOTHING “WRONG” WITH ME AT ALL!

(No guilt.)

Who knew?

No, nobody died, at least not in the way you think, but the current focus of the chronicles are over with this installment. What a ride.

Most of the posts in this series are extremely emotional, somewhat overblown, and very dark. They’re also at least five times too long: if I could edit it down to 20% of what’s there now, we’d all be better off. But the literary flaws mirror the stress of these last few weeks quite clearly, reminding me of the whirlpool that sucked me under and still grabs me in the heart. (Biology is compelling, even in a lie.) There haven’t been many comments, though, probably most people have an intuitive appreciation of sorts, and whether from embarrassment or respect, one feels reluctant to speak up. That’s fine. What would I have to say to a friend who’d just lost an arm in a car crash, for example? The difference, however, is that the Helen Chronicles are revelatory for me, not crippling . The disability comes before, not after.

Without more exposition, one might make the mistake of thinking that the recent period represents a sudden personality change, the kind so many face when aging parents disintegrate before their eyes. There’s that, all right (the decline into an unsustainable state), but this wasn’t really sudden. Helen was always fragile, irrational, and deadly mean when hurting. In between, when growing up, I thought I had a mother and that everyone’s was like her: love ‘em when they’re good and leave ‘em when they’re bad. Affection that had to be earned, in other words. Think about that. What would be left of the emotion by the time it turned up as a temporary ration? Love reduced to doggie biscuits. And if that’s what you have, as lacking as they are, you still learn what to do to get the next one, because you’re always hungry.

So it was in the beginning and then got worse. Progressively, over time, a way of “dealing with it” grew alongside the rising emotional violence. This could be described as learning to expect the worst on any given visit, for example — only, why then go at all? Consciously, because that’s what good sons do, look after their dear old mothers, unconsciously, because I had to be good to get my biscuit, get that mother-love stamped in little Johnny’s passport. You can’t say that I was in control at all, really, continually revisiting the scene of the crime. We’re biologically hard-wired to love our mothers anyway: whatever the dance was, it seemed to fit the bill.

And then there was the money, I realize. Ultimately, always, the money, the great big bag of doggie biscuits in the sky. If she mentioned it once, she brought it up a thousand times: what would happen when she died, who would get what, who wouldn’t. On every single visit, every phone call. If I wouldn’t discuss it and pledge allegiance to the creed, there’d be an ugly, crazy-making breakdown in the next ten minutes. On every single visit for over 30 years, at least, though it wasn’t always due to my heartless reluctance to wallow in the “family” muck of greed and fear and counting pennies. A minor therapeutic sarcasm could grow in Helen’s mind into a slight, a slur, a vicious ingratitude for all she’d ever done. Soon I’d be “just like your father” and there’d be nowhere to escape: she’d follow me or my wife from room to room, spewing toxins. You had to take part in the combat or become a mortal enemy. It was for her or against her, or else you ran away and stayed away until the guilt built up enough to make you go back and renew your membership.

Madness upon madness, cranking, grinding, tearing, mindless pain and horror, always though within the “family,” because we were one, sort of, and this was just what “families” did, except they didn’t. Not all of them. And you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to accept this larger, non-approved, alternative truth. (Just ask my wife.) I know now that a mother’s unconditional love reflects a child’s soul back to him or her, and that is how we know we have one. Absent that, it takes whatever passes for divine intervention. Grace, luck, mystery… I don’t know how my siblings and I are still alive, considering.

But the nightmare I found in Tucson finally blew the doors off: that buggy is dead in the middle of the road. I know this, but I still can’t adequately put my reaction into words. This is monumental. Everything I’ve ever done, or dreamed, or tried to do, was corrupted by the greatest lie that ever was. Fundamentally, I never really had a mother. I never got my ticket punched, not for over 60 years! My God, chilluns. My God, my God.

This realization is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m still substantially in shock, but I also feel a kind of liberation, like I’ve been rescued after having been raised by aliens on another planet. So I’m a human being, after all — who knew?! — and I can do what humans do and follow my heart. I CAN DO WHAT I WANT! How can this be? Because I DO have a mother, and I finally know I have a soul.

After growing slowly in my awareness all along, it’s here now in the nick of time. I’m talking about the Big Momma, chilluns, the all-enfolding love of all Creation. MOTHER NATURE, Mother Earth, the stuff my body’s made of, the thing we can’t define or do without, the ultimate redemption: Goddess loves me, this I know, for my tears, they tell me so. (Put it any way you want.) I have the rest of my life, be it long or short, to do things differently and start again. Stunning and disorienting. Life-altering. Absolutely, totally, completely, mind-numbingly huge.

I feel like I need to go climb a mountain, curl up under a ponderosa pine, cry for a week, then sleep for a thousand years…

It happens fast at 7,000 feet.

This morning the clouds are hanging low over the mountains. There’s actually an overcast. It rained last night, and the temperature outside is barely 60 degrees. There’s fire-building in my future, though it seems we’ve hardly had a summer. I see a flurry of activity as migrating hummingbirds crowd the feeders. The chamisa is blooming, bright sweet yellow flowers everywhere, with lots of bees. Roadside vendors have sweet peas for sale.

Tomorrow I’ll look up and see the aspen on the mountains turning yellow too. Noooo, not yet! I’ve hardly even sweated, only one day I remember when I had to change my shirt. “At least” it’s beautiful. Stunning, really, as always.

I’m free and healthy and 63. Stand by, as always, for new developments. The Taos Podcast is coming soon.

I’ve been back from Arizona for a week now, still exhausted, sometimes reeling from the backwash.

What’s happened is a terribly difficult thing to accept, because we’re biologically hard-wired to love our mothers. Few can probably even conceive of a situation where the reverse isn’t automatically true, but it happens. With Helen, I realize, the contract has always been broken: she doesn’t love her children… That’s the chilling thing, the part that terrifies a child and stops a grownup in his tracks. It isn’t natural. It’s a denial of who we are. It really isn’t completely human.

With relish and conviction, she tells my brother in Tucson: “Johnny will be investigated, you’ll be investigated, you’ll ALL be investigated!” Us? We who by all rights should never had made it this far? What for?

For looking in on her virtually every day for years? For coming from the grocery store with fruit and frozen Chinese dinners so she’ll have something in the house to eat? For walking her calmly out of the bank with a shit stain spreading on her skirt? For driving 600 miles to pick up the pieces and getting chased out of town?

It’s like looking at a huge crippled insect, pincers waving in the air.

So don’t mutter platitudes at me or judge. I’ve been there and I know different. I AM there, and now I understand my father better: what do you do, when you find out, when you’re an Air Force officer in the ’50s and you feel the fear? What does it take to hold it all together? What kind of life do you retreat to? He took the coward’s way out, with booze and womanizing in his own little world where kids were a distraction. But at least I understand, a little.

The mystery is that I am whole — the question, then, is why?

I forgot to get this posted a couple of weeks ago — gee, I wonder why? — but here it is.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize elements of previous blog posts assembled into a new whole. Not quite like building Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, although related, and with much better results. This was just published in the August edition of Horse Fly. What’s more, the publisher thought it was so good, he paid me extra, a thing possibly unprecedented in the history of writing. At any rate, you can read it now without coming here to buy a paper:

JOHNNY & THE HORNED TOADS

Years ago in Texas (sorry), we called them “horny toads.”

I’d just turned 13 and didn’t know what “horny” meant, outside of the context of the critters — adolescent urges notwithstanding — but you could find the lizards everywhere, even in town. Back in junior high school in Abilene, in those glorious pre-air-conditioned days when just surviving until the final bell was an accomplishment, the reptiles were a God-given source of distraction from the heat of study hall.

We sat at actual wooden desks with inkwells and lids that opened up. Nobody used fountain pens or had any ink, so dipping pigtails wasn’t an option. But you could grab a “horny toad” at recess, lightly scratch its scaly belly to put it to sleep, and set it gently on its back inside the desk where Peggy Sue would sit. After everyone had taken their seats and study hall had settled into a sodden stupor broken only occasionally by yawns and sounds of shuffling papers, the animal would wake up and start skittering around. The victim usually opened her desk to see what was the matter, and you can guess the rest. This trick only worked with girls, of course, because they screamed so well. The perpetrator generally came to the rescue while his comrades smirked, scooping the lizard up and dropping it out the window. (Why this reminds me now of Homeland Security, I’m not sure, but see what you can do with it.)

Three years ago in Llano Quemado, I missed the photo of a lifetime. I’d taken a walk without my camera — guaranteeing at least a miracle — and sure enough there was one. About halfway up the dirt track on the mesa, something wriggled in the road 20 feet ahead and then sat still. As I approached, I saw it move again: a horned toad trying to get traction in the fine brown sand. But what was that on its right hind leg? Good Lord, a baby horned toad riding on its mother’s back! I honestly couldn’t believe it. The lizards froze when I squatted down beside them, and then I saw a second baby in the dust a couple of inches to the rear. The baby on its mothers back was spotted just like she was, while this one matched the color and texture of the ground it sat on. The mimicry was perfect. The late afternoon sun illuminated the camouflaged tableau with golden yellow light. My camera, if I’d had it, would have been 18 inches from the horned toad family, who held their position until I stood.

* * *

This summer, for whatever reasons, I see horned toad hatchlings all the time, and I’m amazed. There’s just a twitch, a thing that might be real or not, like a floater in your eye, and there they are, fully formed and no bigger than a thumbnail! Yesterday I took my camera on a hike and finally got a close-up shot: the piñon needles on the ground are longer than the tiny beast… They must be like Fritos for the magpies. How ever do they make it?

Try to find out anything about horned toads, and you’ll encounter contradictions. They’re disappearing, or they’re not, for one thing. The young receive no parental care, supposedly, although I saw differently here in Llano. New Mexico writer S. Omar Baker, who died at the age of 90 in 1953, once wrote,

“The horny toad, ill-graced but harmless
Is thought by some to be quite charmless
At least he helps eat garden ants up
And does not try to crawl your pants up.”

The easy familiarity with something few see or take notice of today disturbs me, even as I smile. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving down a twisty, rocky lane. The air was sharply cool and damp from the previous night’s rain, the warm sunlight welcome by comparison. Halfway down the hill I stopped, incredulous: sitting in the road looking up at me below the open driver’s window was a HUGE GREEN BULLFROG the size of a cantaloupe! We stared at each other for a long moment, and then I drove off, checking in my rearview mirror that I hadn’t seen a mirage.

Sometimes I feel I’ve won the lotto on another planet, and then I wake up, remembering I’ve always been right here. What happens in the in-between, though, and where did everybody go?

Helen was always good at nest-building, as I recall.

This came in handy, because as I once figured out, we went through over 40 moves before I graduated from high school. Many of those were within the same community, of course. Arriving in Abilene, Texas for instance, we lived for a time in a motel with a kitchenette, then a rental house in the middle of town. I went to Lincoln Junior High School and had the requisite school jacket. After a while, we moved onto the air base for a while. When Helen decided the house was too small, my parents bought a brick rancher in a new subdivision on the edge of town. (I then attended Jefferson Jr. High and couldn’t wear my jacket.) That was where we stayed the longest — with me now at Cooper Jr./Sr. High School — until at last they sold it just before our move to Massapequa, New York (!). What with one delay after another, we then had to make another rented house our home for almost six months before finally leaving town. If you haven’t been keeping count, that adds up to five moves in less than four years!

Helen’s residence until a long month ago was the place I knew as the “family home” in Tucson. She’d lived there for over twenty years alone and outfitted it very nicely for a desert double-wide. It’s where I stayed this time and will likely stay again, when I come back to sign papers and dispose of everything. (IF I come back, I should say. More on that later.) The place has got to be one of the best-landscaped and situated properties in Tucson Estates, the so-called mobile home community for residents over 55 on the southwest edge of town. It’s adjacent to an arroyo where coyotes and javelinas go. There are mature trees and garden areas with a large paved patio. You can sit in a big screened porch and watch the doves and hummingbirds. Inside, it’s filled with Helen’s paintings and many beautiful keepsakes. The carpeting is plush and soft. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. There’s also a big carport and a separate art studio.

A recurring theme in Helen’s last few years, however, was how she hated the responsibility of maintaining the place and yearned for a smaller, simpler home. On the face of it, this sounded sane to me. It was easy to imagine being 86 years old and not wanting to worry about the plumbing. The trouble was, practical concerns like that weren’t on her mind. She either couldn’t stand to simply let things be or couldn’t face the crisis of making choices and wanted somebody else to “take care of things.” This would invariably be one of us five siblings, and earlier this year she’d again floated the absurdist fantasy that my wife and I should take over the old place and be neighbors with her in Tucson Estates. In typical fashion, however, the thrust of this offer was that I would never be able to obtain a nicer home for us, being an artistic ne’er-do-well, and that my wife deserved far better than my forcing her to live in Taos. (Always the carrot and the baseball bat, together.)

In any case, I never figured she would do it. How can an 86-year-old woman take that kind of disruption in her life? But if she did, I knew or hoped that I could count on her to buy something decent. She’d actually pulled this stunt once before, a few years back, and eventually been convinced by sister M____ and others to move back to the double-wide. What I mean is, I just assumed she’d learned her lesson. Extremely naive on my part, for sure. I also think one sometimes manufactures hope to cover up the pain.

But she did it, and she did it badly. Very badly indeed. For one thing, she paid way too much and wasted precious cash for something she didn’t need. (My gently pointing this out resulted in my being attacked for never supporting her decisions.) For another, well, let’s start with a look at the old residence:

Old house: large screened porch

This is where you want to be except when it’s god-awful hot. From here you can watch the birds and look at your gardens. There’s tons of room and comfortable chaise lounges that are easy to nap on. I love it out there. The evening sun sets on the other side of the house, too, so it’s cooler here. Now contrast this with the screened porch on the “new” trailer Helen moved into a few weeks ago:

New house: narrow, hot, and ugly

Yes, that’s an apartment-sized washer & dryer in the background — Helen wets the bed every now and then, and that machine is too small to wash her blankets. (There are big, matched Maytag machines back at the old place.) This porch is much narrower and looks out on the side of the single-wide next door. What’s more, it’s on the sunny side of the house! In Arizona, that can be a death sentence. No one will ever want to sit out here.

Old house: just part of the landscaping

The shot above shows a little of the outdoor space beside the screened porch at the previous residence. Why give up what had always been a source of comfort and joy? The plantings and nearby wildlife almost made staying at Helen’s bearable, in fact.

Old house: carport, arroyo to the right

Helen’s studio is at the back. The steps to the house are specially-built, wide and shallow, easy for old legs to manage. The trees are full of birds all day. But take a look at this shot of where she lives now:

New house: rear of carport

That’s it, that’s all there is. The view isn’t a fair comparison, but you get the idea. This carport isn’t wide enough for the Chevy Cobalt I rented, and the steps to the kitchen door [not shown] are narrow and steep.

The sink in the tiny kitchen of the new place isn’t big enough to hold a frying pan, and there isn’t any dishwasher like Helen had before. The “bottom shelf” in the lower cabinets is the floor itself, and the counters all have very sharp edges. Dark brown fake wood paneling is everywhere. The previous owner’s dishes are still in the cupboards, and she uses them. I could go on and on and on: the bathroom in her old place was custom-designed with a soaking tub for old folks, special handholds and all. There’s even a walk-in closet. In the new place, the bathroom is so small that if someone were on the toilet when you opened the door, you’d hit them on the knee. The bathtub is horrible and slippery — Helen can only sit in a chair and take a sponge bath. There’s hardly any storage space at all.

This, however, is perhaps most telling of all:

New house: view across the road

Okay, ready now? The following is what it looks like across the street from the OLD house!

A little light in hell

My photos don’t necessarily convey the real differences, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The thing is, it’s just not like her, not like the woman who decorated the old place. No gardens to enjoy, no views, no birds or animals to watch, no porch to sit on. No beauty whatsoever, and someone else’s pictures are still on the walls. The new trailer is narrow, leaky, damp, and dark. My God, I realized: just like a grave!

It makes a kind of sense, this living death, but it’s very hard to take and very stupid. Helen needs live-in care, at least, and in the old home there were extra bedrooms where someone could easily have lived with her. Not so here! What’s more, the old woman paid cash for this, at least $50,000, money she could have used to pay for care. That would make it a tragedy, except that this is Helen’s chronicle. As we shall see, the last move of her life is actually her chosen way to die, as if she had no one to care for her and there were no other choice.

So be it, then, and on with the show.

The old lady [see previous post] was admitted to the hospital yesterday, and yes, she has pneumonia. She’s also tried twice to “escape” and almost succeeded last night in ripping the IV out of her arm and making it to the hallway. Urk.

So it’s come to this.

The next step is “chemical restraint,” i.e. sedation, and I think I know what comes next: she either eats or doesn’t, and then they ask us if we want to keep her going. She’s going to “escape,” all right, one way or the other, but I don’t think she’ll be coming home again.

Full circle in Tucson, AZ coming up, maybe. My oh my.

A slightly different version of this and one other at FotoFeed. That’s from early yesterday afternoon, taken five minutes south of town looking roughly north.

Rio Grand Gorge w/ storm over Lobo Peak