The Correspondent
Gilbert’s dying. It became the whole thing. You, Bruce and Fiona, my brother, our friends, my work, the house, our life, all of that was sitting on the sidelines, but I was in the ring wrestling, bloody, half-dead, with Gill’s death. Parenting the other two, trying to help them with their own grief, was like acting. I could say what needed to be said, but I was only thinking of myself in the ring with Gill’s death. I have asked Bruce and Fiona about that period of time. I was surprised to learn they’re both in therapy. I think neither of us was able to shepherd them in those first crucial months, submerged, completely, in the swamp water of despair. We were needing the same thing, you and I, a temple in which to tuck away and disappear from the earth, to mourn at the altar of our desolation, but we had the children, so we could not. Could we have held onto each other? I’ve wondered. We did the best we could and it was not enough. The four of us came away injured, but is there any other way for a person to come through? Oh, Gilbert. I do hope there is an afterlife as I have always believed, a heaven. I hope I will see him and know him there. I believe I’ve been looking forward to death on one hand.
From the archives
·
2019
Lanny
At that time I was into finding and cleaning the skeletons of dead things. Mostly birds. I would pull them apart, coat them in gold leaf, reassemble them wrongly and suspend them from wire frames. Little mobiles of badly made birds. I’d done a dozen or so. The gallery wanted something to show. To sell.
I was also taking casts of different barks. I was setting them in boxes with scraps of text.
Some drawings. Some half-decent prints. Sets. Quiet stuff.
She came down to the studio one morning and brought me a branch with two perfect arms. She’d seen a carved man I’d done.
We’d gone from chatting in the street now and then to her popping in for a tea once or twice a week. Sometimes with Lanny, sometimes alone. They’d only lived in the village a year or two.
She’d seen a rough-cut man I’d done, a Christ without a cross, and she’d seen the possibility of another in this fallen branch.
You are most kind, I said.
Pleasure, Pete, she said.
Read more of this excerpt...
Lanny
At that time I was into finding and cleaning the skeletons of dead things. Mostly birds. I would pull them apart, coat them in gold leaf, reassemble them wrongly and suspend them from wire frames. Little mobiles of badly made birds. I’d done a dozen or so. The gallery wanted something to show. To sell.
I was also taking casts of different barks. I was setting them in boxes with scraps of text.
Some drawings. Some half-decent prints. Sets. Quiet stuff.
She came down to the studio one morning and brought me a branch with two perfect arms. She’d seen a carved man I’d done.
We’d gone from chatting in the street now and then to her popping in for a tea once or twice a week. Sometimes with Lanny, sometimes alone. They’d only lived in the village a year or two.
She’d seen a rough-cut man I’d done, a Christ without a cross, and she’d seen the possibility of another in this fallen branch.
You are most kind, I said.
Pleasure, Pete, she said.
Read more of this excerpt...
WORDS TO LIVE BY
2010 ·
NON-FICTION
NEW MUSIC