September 18, 2017

St. Helena, CA

As daylight breaks I wake up to the sounds of the harvest morning.

“Hurry, hurry, rapidamente ahora, move, now.” Yells the stranger’s voice. Visible through my bedroom drapes a row of men hunch over the vines, hoodies hide their faces.

I quickly dress to the beat of the annual pick: fruit into bins; thump goes to bump: thump to bump, bump bumping of bins push pushing against each other: “Hurry, cut, bump-thunk, thunk-cut,” wanes the refrain.

Like a sleek black shadow our three -year old “wine dog” scurries the dirt paths and skirts the workers. Her male human, my husband, hovers over the vines with the rest: hook knife in one hand he slices a grape bunch off its stem, and with the other he catches the turgid fruit before releasing it into a bin. Since yesterday the valley air has hung heavy with the must of grapes. Today the perfumed residue mingles with dirt and dust. Above, pink, silver and opal clouds wisp like shredded silk.

I snap this celebration with my iPhone and send the images to something called the iCloud, as if I even know where that is. No matter: in my excitement to share this vivid I tap into my text “A-list”.

There they are, my sisters’ names.

Wait, is this really happening? I panic, erase, and enter only baby sister’s name. Click, and send. Click and send.

Up valley later in the day I am in sivassana after a strenuous yoga class. The favorite teacher of mine possesses a unique ability to softly push the practice so our muscles open softly. So might my heart, I hope, which, like my neck and sacrum is tight, gripping like some kind of a vice.

On my back I gaze thru massive sliding doors that open onto an outdoor garden of succulents. Overhead capacious, shape shifting clouds play like a carousel of forms against the French Blue sky. First an elephant, trunk and all, then a doublet of girls in skirts, then a lighthouse. A lighthouse? Closing my eyes I use its beam to peer into my heart that might open just a crack more than usual. Crying would be easy, but the saudade gets in the way.

Saudade is a word Brazilian people use to express the feeling of longing for something that is missing. Perfect, since Victoria loved everything from that country. A tidal wave of longing drowns me. I am lost in saudade. I desperately want to tell her it is she I miss. I miss you. I miss you.

As soon as I figured things out, about the time I was three years old, Vicki was my most favorite person. Two years younger I followed her around like a pet ferret. I was in love with her. She was my bigger sister who knew so much, everything. She knew when our parents would come to tuck us into bed, and how long we had to lie awake before being allowed to rise after daybreak. She understood what it meant to pet the dogs gently; she knew how to tear the paper sleeve off the Good Humor Bar.

In many ways (certainly later with little sister) we raised each other: bathing each other, massaging Lubriderm onto each other’s backs, standing round the big pink sink waiting for the other to finish brushing her teeth, or waiting for the other to finish peeing in the corner toilet before it was one’s own turn.

In bed at night we listened to the vinyls, memorizing every part. Before little sister was born, we performed the songs, or made up our own bebop sounds on the steps that became a stage to the breakfast room where the adults gathered and clapped.

She was a good big sister. When I was eleven and she was thirteen I begged to be included in her posse; one day she let me tag along (always a few steps behind!) to Morley Drugstore for chewing gum and a coke. She loaned me her Monkees album, and she patiently (and repeatedly because I was not very good at this) taught me complex dance shuffles. Later, we swapped gossip. Always, we swept each other’s paths. Rarely, we fought. When we did, it was usually due to my shameful temper. When we fought we repaired quickly.

Victoria made me laugh harder than anyone. Often, she made me crumple to the floor or jump up and down lest I wet unwillingly. Except for that time in the wilds of Tanzania, when driving on a crude, red clay road, we both had to go. We asked Joshua our driver to stop and told our husbands to go to the front of the open jeep so that we could hide and do our leaky business behind the cab. Where else? There was no place to go and no place to hide. What we didn’t know was that the Go Pro-mini cam was nearby, and caught us crouching and giggling while the dung beetles teased us from their mounds.

We had the rights to finish each other’s sentences, and we possessed the secret language of sister-ship. The Star Sister Ship. We were also members of the Secret (Sister) Society of Pinkies along with Dad. We over tipped at Christmas and loathed snobbery. We pssst at the phonies, and admired the reals. We pretended to be happy when we knew we really weren’t. Keenly, she nodded to the worthiest of causes; repeatedly (and my guess is with much frustration) she reminded me not to judge others, but to put myself in their shoes.

Victoria Leslie did I ever tell you all these things, and more? How much you inspired me?

I am not sure I truly told you how much I loved that last time we were in Hawaii, when for my birthday out of a riot of tropical flowers you made a Heronymous Bosch-like-female that I thought it was the prettiest thing ever? (You even got the crossed eye right!) We couldn’t take your brilliant art piece with us, but then, what can we? Hawaii is there, but will never be the same.

Big sister, you are the first member of the Star Sister Ship who too early, but with dignity and valiant bravery, left this lifetime to go way beyond the clouds, a place, a something, a form we earthlings cannot fathom. And I miss you.

Will you read this post? Hopefully: as soon as I press send.

Yesterday I went to the vet to pick up Lolly Brown our Labrador. I said, “Hello, Loll,” the way I have always greeted her and then sang a little ditty I made up years ago. You can hum it however you like, but my tune is somewhere between “Paris in Springtime” and “Happy Birthday.”

Lolly Brown came to town wearing a crown, upside down.

Then I put her on the passenger seat of my car peacefully tucked away in her 9 by 5 inch red cedar box.

She was our Lolly Brown, the Lolly Ba-Ba, the Lolly Dalai Lama, Lollylicious, and many more. She came to us as a puppy when Dad won her at an auction for the Boys and Girls Club and promptly passed her on to us. Her puppy breath smelled sticky sweet and sometimes of roe. Most of her life she, her breath, her corporeality smelled of truffle mousse, mushrooms and steamed baby zucchinis.

Lolly Brown’s namesake was a Louisiana woman with creole roots who raised my older sister and me. Lolly Brown, the human, taught us to sing and dance and be happy little girls. Lolly Brown, the dog, looked over me as well, but for much longer. About fourteen years, to be exact. That was her job, to corral, to herd, to command our other canines, to remind her humans of their tasks. By licking my wrists she would wake me in the morning, and by pacing bedside at night she told me to check the lights and locks before falling asleep. Lolly Brown paced the vineyard multiple times a day with Bob making sure he got his exercise; she leaped through the waves and protectively swam by my side until her hips no longer allowed her, at which time she stood at the breakwater absorbing the cold minerality of the Pacific. She roused me from my books and writing to begin dinner, she greeted guests with gusto and, appropriately, lollygagged around our ankles while we gossiped into the night. If you were a favorite, she would rest her head on your ankles. You know who you are. If you were to come between the two of us, literally, around dinnertime, you could turn into mincemeat. You also know who you are.

While Loll wasn’t one for playing ball, one of her favorite past times as a youngster was to watch the World Series with Bob, he on the sofa, she on top of the back sofa cushions tucked behind his head. A home-run always got her very excited regardless of who hit it. Her favorite television shows were Scandal and Homeland, though typically demonstrated a grave dislike for violence.

Lolly was a keen traveler who, (and I would bet on this) advised her humans on key pilotage choices. She generously assisted the gentlemen who care for the garden by relieving herself on their fine handiwork. Reliably, she served as a noble escort to their lunch boxes. She taught our youngster Ella the Schmella what, where, when, how and sometimes, who. She stayed with us until she knew Ella could take over. She continued checking on all of us whenever she was able to open her eyes and move her tail to let us know all was well.

In the end, from her cushy Costco throne, her breath belied a hunger born of wacky blood sugar swings and departing vapors from an empty tummy.  She just wouldn’t eat. Not even for me.

 

MY BUCKET LIST & LEONARD COHEN

Several weeks ago I told my sisters that foremost on my bucket list would be to hang with Leonard Cohen; writing poetry, waxing life, and looking out at the sand meeting the sea, just as he might have been doing on the island of Hydra in the 1960s. In this scenario I would be the one walking with him, happy, like other lovers “before us in cities and in forests.” How romantic and sentimental am I. But who can blame me. He was handsome, elegant, funny, dark, kind, charming and brilliant.

Not long after I conjured that fantasy Leonard died. I knew he was ill, but I was deeply saddened. The results of our nation’s elections compounded my dysthymia, and compounding that were the horror stories coming out of Syria and the Middle East, white nationalism worldwide, and shifty hackers in Russia. On top of that, illness has permeated my closest and dearest. At Thanksgiving, six out of 18, a full one-third of the combined friends and family has had, or is currently being treated for, cancer.

Of late, I have found myself blundering in and out of rooms, conversations, and dreams.

Seeking asylum from my fears, I wanted to escape to a far away place. But that wouldn’t help. Being away from the quotidian of my life (dogs, house, mother, sisters, writing) would only enhance the blues. Putting aside distractions of daily life does not erase one’s own fears of loss and mortality, or a case of World War III heebie jeebies.

But Leonard knew all this, and he told us about it so well. You Want It Darker, his final album released concurrent to his passing, addresses his and our own mortality. Equally poignant and with typical Cohen wisdom this writer/poet/musician/Buddhist monk also points to another favorite theme of his– the paradox of humanity. Despite the perfection that which a higher power has in store for us, humankind will continue to viciously act out towards itself, murderously and without pause finding empty reasons to kill one another.

Leonard Cohen’s music took hold of my soul about twenty years ago. I first knew his songs because other people sang them, like Judy Collins who introduced Suzanne to me in the 1970’s. For many years Cohen’s voice, and often times the deliberate crawling pace with which he chose to sing some of his songs, got in the way of his music for me. In truth it was my immaturity getting in the way of my hearing. But when I was ready, I went deeper. By then I had acquired a taste for Cohen’s philosophical lyrics, for his dark satire, for the simple melodies sometimes reminiscent of Jewish music, for his unaffected delivery.

I was in an art class struggling with the imperfections of my own simple line drawings. While trying to master the ellipse, but merely producing one wobbly oval overlapping another, I tasked away at the exercise shading each in charcoal tones ranging from pale grey to deep black. Even though I threw my body into the ovals as instructed by my teacher, I couldn’t get them just right, and I judged them hating the amateurness of my work. We were listening to Cohen’s “Anthem” and all at once I got it: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard’s musical gestalt spoke to me, anointing my heart with inner and outer forgiveness. There it was, the revelation that perfection is not attainable, not to expect it, and that which really matters is to be true to myself, especially my imperfect self wherein true possibilities reside. (NOTE: In my imperfection I do not remember to do this all the time).

I am grateful for the one time I saw Cohen in concert. He sang alongside his perfectly balanced choir of female angels, their graceful harmony contrasting with his ever more gravelly, aging voice. He was respectful of the gift the ladies brought to his cannon and bowed to them in response to the reassurances of their chorus. His public self appeared peaceful and patient, and despite the slackening posture, thinning lips and the appearance of arthritis in his hands, Cohen’s inner demeanor pulsed with the thrill of living, and the sacred knowledge of a very wise man.

A bucket list is supposed to encompass experiences or achievements one hopes to meet. I am ready to leave my romantic fantasy of Cohen for my muse, and get serious for the real bucket list.

LEXIE’S BUCKET LIST: 

       1.) World Peace

       2.) A Cure for Cancer

       3.) A Female to lead the Free-World

       4.) To age gracefully and with wisdom,

             a la Leonard Cohen.