Garden on fence, Macon Street Brooklyn
The virtual wake for Anthony Bourdain continues even as I write. His loss hits so many different kinds of people–am convinced he had no idea of the good he was doing, of the lives he made more interesting. Plus, like many a woman poet of the hetero variety, I was like totally smitten. He was that handsome, smart, vibrant, testosterone charged male of my dreams. It is good to have standards. And alas, the standards have been mighty low given the ongoing dispatches from #MeToo. I sort of understand the old dogs and their tricks, but it is these new ones–who raised them is what I keep asking myself since wolves are better behaved.
We live in such harrowing times, we really have to learn more than “self-care”. We must truly care for each other as family as friends and in our community. Just because we are governed by corrupt and mendacious people does not mean that we have to be corrupt and mendacious and unkind and crude (unless crude is the only way seen or heard) with each other. Mother Shelley, our rector a few Sundays ago talked about what it meant to be “Beloved” and to be part of a “Beloved Community”. You do not have to be a Christian or any religious person to be beloved. You just have to be. We are responsible as humans for planetary health. We are really doing a terrible job and Pele in Hawaii is letting us know that.
But often love is not enough. And while there is much said about celebrity and the challenges faced by them, the CDC has pointed out in a recent student that suicide has increased ACROSS ALL SECTORS. I have friends who have committed suicide. I have friends who told me they were seriously thinking about it. I’ve not gone that far, but any person can be a point where the challenges, anxieties, terriblenesses of the day, the week, the month, the year can overwhelm. To deny that is to not deal with our capacity as humans to take lives, starting with our own.
But death in its physical finality has overwhelmed our poetry and literary community over the past few months–am still so very sad about Barbara Barg, Jewish, punkrocker, Southern–we grew up in the same hometown–she was an activist, fearless, a total radical. She is no longer in pain, but had her medical team been more vigilant, she might still be alive. Damn the anti-ACA people. Paul Ryan, et al there are so many curses on your persons and homes and the deaths of friends like Barbara adds to them.
For all this sad talk, there is always (so far, for me) light. Teaching workshops for Rutgers University Summer program; performing with Jason Hwang for the Vision Festival at Roulette, prepping for works at Fine Arts Work Center. But first, the mourning of good people both known to me and known world wide must take place.
Sunrise, Captiva Island, FL Feb. 2018