Part I. Gratitude

People may wonder what life is like after
tragedy. Thanks for asking. Does it ever
get back to normal? Normal? I’m not sure
what normal was let alone what normal

is. I would say muted. Life is muted —
never quite as high; never quite as low.
When the colors came back they weren’t
quite as vivid. You just go. I was never

one to go with the flow, so, I don’t mean
that. I mean you go through life with ap-
preciation but with a bit of apprehension —
Gun shy? Maybe. I guess it has to do with

the loss of innocence — innocence even if
you are not young but have never previously
experienced anything tragic. Dulling the
senses a bit, perhaps. Yes, sanding down

the rough edges. Being prepared. Not ex-
pecting the heights; Not expecting ecstasy;
not expecting Nirvana, Valhalla in this life.
Something like that. I always cried easily

Part II. Grace

just ask my kids about how I would cry
during a sad or tender movie scene but now
more than ever. (Establishing credentials
of sensitivity) You’d think it would be

just the opposite given numbing. Yes, I
cry more easily, but I don’t laugh quite
as spontaneously. Really, that’s about all
I can say. Thank you for asking, though.

Really. Oh, in all honesty (watch out for
that phrase. It could be a set-up), I still
get pretty angry. I’m working on that. Do
you know what I would really like? (No, of

course not; that is just a set up question
so I can tell you what I really would like
to convince you of.) I would like to get
out of myself (that certain amount of self-

indulgence, egotism that keeps my focus
inward) and actually turn it outward in
selfless anger for others. That’s a worthy
goal (and aren’t I noble in mentioning

Part III. Guilt

it?). Goals can keep you alive. Sometimes
the goal is just staying alive. But it has
to go beyond that — eventually. And to be
perfectly honest (which probably isn’t

perfectly honest but is a phrase of self-
justification or self-deception for what
is to come), focusing outside of one’s
self isn’t at all easy for me. This ac-

count is it’s own proof. Look how many
of my sentences are spent on me. (Enter
respected core value of humility.) Just
count the “I”s. The “I”s have it. In some

religious circles, that’s called naming
reality — every word, every posture, every
action, each and every one is tainted with
sin, or self-interest, self-absorption

(and see how humble and sincerely honest
I am about admitting that?). But getting
back to the topic at hand — that being
tragedy….

Our new Lab dances with happiness
months after we adopted her.
First came clumps of thick brown fur,
because she experienced panic and distress.

She was a breeder dog with one purpose.
She was to produce litter after litter
making her owners’ coffers that much bigger
with prize puppies selling for more not less.

They tossed her away one cold spring day.
Her tenure done, the girl away they did send.
Her very last litter was soon taken away
and she hadn’t even had time to mend.
Rescued from her captors and then spayed,
she came to us for a beginning not a sad end.

He had echolalia
of the ukulele-ah
or was it the harmonica
or simply the guitar-uh, huh.
that he played
three chords far, far, far
and long, long, long?
Everyone said,
“Come on, let’s move
it along.
We have better things
to do
than to sit here
listening to you
play three boring chords
over and over
and over again.
Your musical echolalia
might be hell —
it certainly isn’t heaven.”

In sacred halls of spirituality
the brain trust competed.
Who would get top honors?
The academic faculty smiled
upon them, nodding approval.
One, with hubris and a
certain meanness, went
off to graduate work and
dropped out, never to return.
One, feigning humility
but perhaps the most
competitive of all, went
off to graduate work but
never got the job he
wanted.
One, with an edgy,
sarcastic wit, went
into the parish and
when his wife died
went into hiding
from which he has
yet to emerge.
One, socially un-
comfortable, went
to graduate school
never to emerge.
They knew the texts;
they knew the history;
they knew the ancient
languages;
they knew the systematics;
they knew it all.
Did they know the unknowable?
Did any of us?
Do we, even now?
Do we dare?
It seemed so safe —
elsewhere,
like in academia’s embrace —
not entering the cloud
of unknowability
the great mystery. .

Have you ever read
a poem by Gertrude Stein?
I think she
lost her mind.
It is said
never say anything negative
about the dead.
Just read someone else’s
poetry instead.
Or perhaps,
Stein’s mind
was fine
and she just
played with her
literary and artistic
friends’ minds.

A wise theologian with a
knack for mixing metaphors
wrote that finding God within
is like diving into a well
with debris all around
and casting the debris
out-of-the-way and pealing
the layers of the onion
back. The man got the gist.
Yesterday, the man cleaned
the skimmer and pump of the
pond and waterfall, he
rinsed the net and washed
the brushes. He dug deeply
at the bottom of the housing
finding all kinds of debris.
He scooped out the debris
and tossed it to the side of
the pond. Finally, he reached
the pump — the god of the
pond — at the center of every-
thing and pulled debris stuck
to the pump’s intake area so
the water would flow more
freely up to the waterfall
creating a beautiful cascade
of clear water down to the
pond and around and around
and up and down revealing
more clearly the beautiful
goldfish in the pond. But
he didn’t find any peeled
back layers of onion stuck
to the pump.

The well worn, wooden floors creaked;
the worn, wooden stairway steps creaked;
those were the only sounds allowed
in the library of my youth. I loved

those sounds; I hear them now when I
walk across floors at my local library
where sounds are of feet slapping hard,
cold linoleum and people chitchatting

except in the reading room where only
coughing and throat clearing are allowed.
I loved fingering and flipping the cards
in the Dewey Decimal System card catalogue,

writing down the number of where to find
the book and then embarking on the hunt.
I’m glad for my local library, but I loved
the library of my youth built in the 19th

century, a red brick building down the hill
from Michigan Avenue and 111th Street
turning left at a street the name of which
I can’t remember (maybe Edbrooke Ave.)

and north toward 109th part of the Pullman
neighborhood. I would run up the cement
stairway to the front door and pull with
all my strength the heavy, wooden door

that creaked as it opened. As I entered
the librarian would frown and put her
finger to her lips in the anticipation
that I would start talking to my buddies,

who entered with me, which, of course,
I would have but didn’t dare. Come to
think of it, she never looked at Russ,
Terry or Dennis. She knew the loudmouth.

She walks through the big city
staring upward, walking a few
paces and stopping, looking

at the faces of the people
not looking back but looking
down not at what is around.

She can’t believe it. Look
around at it all — the mag-
nificent architecture. How do

they build buildings that tall
especially on pilings under
water? Last night she stayed

out after dark to walk through
the park and she looked back
at the skyline and everything

was lit like a Christmas tree,
white lights twinkling in all the
buildings. Who is in charge of

all that electricity? She stood
by the big fountain and watched
the geysers rhythmically shooting

to the sky and falling back to
earth. She heard the water
slapping the shore and wondered

how they grew the land into the
lake for the planetarium and
aquarium. She just couldn’t

believe how it all worked. And
then she wondered, how does it
all work? Who is in charge? Is

anyone in charge? It can’t just
happen. She felt a chill and
went back to her hotel,

her head spinning. She isn’t
the only one to have wondered
that.

she wished time
would slide and elide
down and bounce
back up just like
at a playground
trampoline and slide.

draw it all together
put it on a tether
and spin it around
the maypole —

except it is october
and for a few days
everyone is beyond sober
at the state
of affairs
of the state
of late.

she’s trying
not to hate

but innocence to retrieve
and once again believe.

maybe next may.

He has been depressed with the news — Supreme Court,
scientific shout-out about the environmental
burgeoning catastrophe, Congress, especially Devon
“Bad News” Nunes (See, now even he is assigning
negative nicknames.), Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham,
Jeff Flake and Susan Collins and the (p)-resident
(as always).

He’s been desultory about ubiquitous rudeness —
drivers running up on his car’s rear end, people
butting into lines, people two, three, four abreast
on sidewalks unwilling to move over for him and
his wife walking single file.

As if that’s not enough, he’s so dejected,
disconsolate, downhearted, downcast, despondent,
dispirited, dismal, desolate and just plain
down about everything that he decided not
to pay any attention to the news on TV
or on-line.

He came across a sponsored site showing photos
of famous grandparents and grandchildren.
The photo shown was of Sean Connery. Being a
Connery fan, he wanted to see what his grandchild
looked like. At first it was fun, the most fun
he has had in weeks, but 450 photos later,
still no Sean Connery and it was three in the
morning after starting the photos at eight p.m.
He gave up and went to bed.

But he couldn’t sleep. He’s so despondent
about not being able to see Sean Connery’s
grandchild.

The good news in his life these days is
the ad blocker he downloaded onto his computer.
Wow, he thought, it takes an ad blocker to give
meaning to his life.

It’s that bad.