Driving back from visiting with my family in Orange County the other night I was listening to the music that has orchestrated my life, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Carole King. As I drove I started thinking of friends, family, loved ones no longer here and how much they still exist in my world on a daily basis. As I wandered through my thoughts Joni sang, "you're in my blood you're like holy wine, so bitter and so sweet," and I started to think how life and our experiences within it are similar to inoculations, little doses of all that life has to offer from love to loss and everything in between, toughening us in some ways, softening us in others and turning us into the humans we choose to be. I started thinking about how, when we are with a group of friends, family, loved one's on a regular basis we are literally breathing them in, becoming them as we breath the same air, share the same space, feel the same emotions. We breath them in, we commune with them, and we are left with a warmth that is singular and incredibly special. No wonder so many people inhabit my thoughts and my heart, I have been so blessed with friends, with men whom I have loved and who have loved me, with experiences so vast and varied. Life doesn't come to us, we have to reach out to it. We have to be brave and expose ourselves to all of the things life is, happiness, sadness, heartbreak, love, loss, joy, beauty, ugliness, all of it. . . it won't knock on our door, we have to be infected by life
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
A Post From Facebook That I'll Call, "RICH"
I don't say much on here, I post a song that brings a tear or a smile, I mention my friends now and then but overall, I don't say much. I felt I had to say something tonight because I haven't been able to shake this feeling I've had all evening. You see, I came home from the pharmacy this afternoon with a big bag full of prescriptions and I felt rich. I felt rich because I had a three month supply of one drug that pretty much keeps this illness of my heart at bay. I felt rich because I knew that for this three months I didn't have to worry about physically falling behind, getting worse. Rich used to be a Bentley, a Rolls, maybe a Ferrari but now it's different. Rich is Love, Rich is friends, Rich is that special look that my kitten Jesse gives me once or twice a day for no reason at all telling me that I'm a pretty special human to her. Rich is Marques giving me that silly look of his, the one with the googley eyes and Rich is more. Rich is a pantry full of food, good friends to help us eat it and Rich is laughter, laughter late into the night around a table with people I love. And yes, Rich is a big white bag full of pills from the drug store telling me that everything is going to be alright. . . for now.
OUR TOWN
Slogging across the city yesterday to the tune of sirens, horn honks and screeching tires, it's hard to believe this city has a soul, a heart. But then I pull up to my job site and see neighbors out talking and laughing, all unified looking for a necklace dropped by a young woman in the group. Later on, sitting in front of my own home, miles away, talking to a dear friend on the phone before going in the house, I watch our own little neighborhood tableau. Children running up and down our stairs looking for Marques and Gabby, parents catching up after a long hot week, laughing and commiserating with one another about this trial and that, everyone slowly but surely weaving that tapestry that we call home. And I hear it, quietly at first but then it's all I can hear as I sit in my truck . . . It's the heartbeat, the rhythm of our collective soul and it defines the beauty that can be L.A. —
The Many Faces of Love
There came a time in my relationship with my father, sometime in my very early teens, when he proclaimed that I could no longer hug him or kiss him good night. I always wondered if he had some subterranean inkling that his youngest son was gay and that, by hugging him or kissing him goodnight he was somehow reinforcing the idea that it was OK to hug or kiss another man. I’ll never know but a few years later, during the height of the Vietnam war, I went to the airport to pick him up from one of his trips to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he taught combat strategy (or something like that). He was a Full Colonel by that time and I was an avid war protester showing up at the terminal with my very long hair, a pair of his army issue khaki’s and one of his WWII wife beater tee shirts dyed camo green. I waited with anticipation as my dad and his buddies walked up the ramp and into the terminal. It was the usual crew, a few Colonels like my dad and a couple of Generals, men that my father had known for years. As I stood there watching he turned to each of these men and hugged them, not the shoulder bumping, homophobic hugs that straight guys are so fond of giving these days, no, these were long, loving hugs shared by men who had survived battle together, men who had seen too much at a time when they shouldn’t have. And I was jealous, I was very jealous and I was angry.
As he parted from his buddies my dad turned around and saw me, his flesh and blood, his youngest son. . . and he stuck out his hand. Now I know this is my “family and friends” Facebook page and I hesitate to write what I actually said but for the sake of authenticity and power I’m going to say it anyway.
I looked at my father’s hand and looked up at his face, his smile, and I said “Fuck you.” “Fuck you if I, your son, get a handshake and those guys, those army buddies of yours get a hug goodbye.” I remember my father’s face turning red as he looked at me incredulously. Within one heartbeat his arms were around me and the year’s long boycott on hugging and kissing his youngest son was over. It’s funny, I don’t remember there being any words spoken about the whole thing as we drove home, I just remember helping him up the walk with his bags and him hugging me once more before we said goodbye. He was a wonderful man and I miss him every day.
There’s another point to this story though, one that I hesitate to mention for fear of ruining the continuity of the already told tale but in fact, it’s the most important part. You see, my dad wasn’t a particularly huggy, kissy kind of guy anyway, not until his older years that is. But did I know that he loved me? I did. I knew that he loved me because every day, no matter how tired he was, no matter how disillusioned by his life he became, that man got out of bed and drove to a job he hated. That man worked with a broken back, a failing heart and a marriage that lay tattered at his feet for one reason and one reason alone, to care for his kids. He put food on our table, clothes on our backs and even laughter in our hearts and he didn’t complain, he just did it.
The moral of the story, if you want to call it a moral, is that Love has many faces. The easy love that falls off our lips when describing our feelings for our new Iphones, our new cars, our morning waffle is not the same love as that shown by a man through his daily actions. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here and now, I’d give all the “I love you’s” I’ve ever heard for one, “I’m here.”
As he parted from his buddies my dad turned around and saw me, his flesh and blood, his youngest son. . . and he stuck out his hand. Now I know this is my “family and friends” Facebook page and I hesitate to write what I actually said but for the sake of authenticity and power I’m going to say it anyway.
I looked at my father’s hand and looked up at his face, his smile, and I said “Fuck you.” “Fuck you if I, your son, get a handshake and those guys, those army buddies of yours get a hug goodbye.” I remember my father’s face turning red as he looked at me incredulously. Within one heartbeat his arms were around me and the year’s long boycott on hugging and kissing his youngest son was over. It’s funny, I don’t remember there being any words spoken about the whole thing as we drove home, I just remember helping him up the walk with his bags and him hugging me once more before we said goodbye. He was a wonderful man and I miss him every day.
There’s another point to this story though, one that I hesitate to mention for fear of ruining the continuity of the already told tale but in fact, it’s the most important part. You see, my dad wasn’t a particularly huggy, kissy kind of guy anyway, not until his older years that is. But did I know that he loved me? I did. I knew that he loved me because every day, no matter how tired he was, no matter how disillusioned by his life he became, that man got out of bed and drove to a job he hated. That man worked with a broken back, a failing heart and a marriage that lay tattered at his feet for one reason and one reason alone, to care for his kids. He put food on our table, clothes on our backs and even laughter in our hearts and he didn’t complain, he just did it.
The moral of the story, if you want to call it a moral, is that Love has many faces. The easy love that falls off our lips when describing our feelings for our new Iphones, our new cars, our morning waffle is not the same love as that shown by a man through his daily actions. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here and now, I’d give all the “I love you’s” I’ve ever heard for one, “I’m here.”
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The Last of Everything
The Last of Everything
I've been thinking about this title and what it really means to me for quite a while now, years really, but an event that took place this weekend made it's meaning clear to me and why I had to write about it. I've often thought about "the last time," the last time we make love with a partner, the last time we eat with a friend, the last time we say, "I love you," the last time we say, "good bye." I've thought about these things for many years but it is the last man I dated who brought the questions to the forefront once again and until this weekend, it was remembering the last time we made love that occupied my thoughts and the context of the title. Where we were, what was said, the feelings, the emotions, the intensity. I really didn't think it was going to be the last time and I guess that's my point, we often times don't have a clue that it is the "last of everything."
This weekend my closest friend, a woman I have know since I was 20 and she was 18 lost her lover of 5 years. It was unexpected, incredibly brutal and possessed of a finality that made any question of his return impossible to contemplate. He was riding his bike with his cycling club when an eighteen wheeler semi-truck filled with dirt drifted into the bike lane and clipped his left arm. He was knocked off his bike and thrown into the path of the truck which hit him, ran over him and killed him instantly.
Susan, my friend, was inconsolable. Saturday night she got the news that he was dead. After she went through the first bout of hysteria she called me and I rushed down to be with her. I spent the night holding her and talking to her about her years with Sandy. She kept saying, "thank God we made love last night, thank God it was so wonderful, thank God, thank God."
And so it is with me, I think of my friend Doug, how we had a stupid fight after over thirty years of friendship and how we didn't speak for two years before finally being brought back together by Susan. Once we were speaking again we couldn't believe we had wasted so much time. We started back with our weekly lunches at a favorite restaurant and our daily phone conversations (he lived in Santa Barbara and I in L.A.) that sometimes lasted minutes, sometimes lasted hours but always included us laughing, God did we laugh!
And then one day I dropped him off at his car after lunch. I told him how great he looked, lean and fit in a new pair of pants and shirt given to him by his mother. As I drove to the gym I got a call from his assistant telling me that Doug had had a massive coronary in the elevator at the design center not ten minutes after we had said good bye. They brought him back to life but his brain was gone and as I waited in the emergency room with his family they brought out those same clothes that I had just complimented him on, they were shredded now by the paramedics as they fought to get to his chest, his heart, and they handed them to me. And all I could think was, thank God we had the time we had, thank God my last words to him were, "I love you Doug" and thank God it was a smile on his face that I saw as he said, "I love you too Rolfie."
And that's how it is I guess, we think we will always have a next time. I can cite so many other examples, my sister kissing her husband goodbye and getting a call twenty minutes later saying he was dead, his car smashed into a phone pole at the far end of a curve in the road that he just couldn't negotiate. My mother saying, "I love you sweetheart" and dropping dead hours later of a heart attack; my friend Michael saying, "let's go for it" as he turned the crank on the morphine drip that would forever ease his pain from the ravages of AIDS in a time when there was no hope. Always a next time.
I don't mean to be maudlin, I really don't but it's the truth I'm talking about here and each of us will be touched by it at some time, in some way for one reason and one reason alone. . . we are all human. So often I close my letters to friends and family with the words,"take none of it for granted, not even the bad stuff" and this is why. We never know when it is the last of everything.
This weekend my closest friend, a woman I have know since I was 20 and she was 18 lost her lover of 5 years. It was unexpected, incredibly brutal and possessed of a finality that made any question of his return impossible to contemplate. He was riding his bike with his cycling club when an eighteen wheeler semi-truck filled with dirt drifted into the bike lane and clipped his left arm. He was knocked off his bike and thrown into the path of the truck which hit him, ran over him and killed him instantly.
Susan, my friend, was inconsolable. Saturday night she got the news that he was dead. After she went through the first bout of hysteria she called me and I rushed down to be with her. I spent the night holding her and talking to her about her years with Sandy. She kept saying, "thank God we made love last night, thank God it was so wonderful, thank God, thank God."
And so it is with me, I think of my friend Doug, how we had a stupid fight after over thirty years of friendship and how we didn't speak for two years before finally being brought back together by Susan. Once we were speaking again we couldn't believe we had wasted so much time. We started back with our weekly lunches at a favorite restaurant and our daily phone conversations (he lived in Santa Barbara and I in L.A.) that sometimes lasted minutes, sometimes lasted hours but always included us laughing, God did we laugh!
And then one day I dropped him off at his car after lunch. I told him how great he looked, lean and fit in a new pair of pants and shirt given to him by his mother. As I drove to the gym I got a call from his assistant telling me that Doug had had a massive coronary in the elevator at the design center not ten minutes after we had said good bye. They brought him back to life but his brain was gone and as I waited in the emergency room with his family they brought out those same clothes that I had just complimented him on, they were shredded now by the paramedics as they fought to get to his chest, his heart, and they handed them to me. And all I could think was, thank God we had the time we had, thank God my last words to him were, "I love you Doug" and thank God it was a smile on his face that I saw as he said, "I love you too Rolfie."
And that's how it is I guess, we think we will always have a next time. I can cite so many other examples, my sister kissing her husband goodbye and getting a call twenty minutes later saying he was dead, his car smashed into a phone pole at the far end of a curve in the road that he just couldn't negotiate. My mother saying, "I love you sweetheart" and dropping dead hours later of a heart attack; my friend Michael saying, "let's go for it" as he turned the crank on the morphine drip that would forever ease his pain from the ravages of AIDS in a time when there was no hope. Always a next time.
I don't mean to be maudlin, I really don't but it's the truth I'm talking about here and each of us will be touched by it at some time, in some way for one reason and one reason alone. . . we are all human. So often I close my letters to friends and family with the words,"take none of it for granted, not even the bad stuff" and this is why. We never know when it is the last of everything.
AS I WORK THIS LIFE
I know that what I do is design and build gardens for people. On the face of it that sounds like a pretty cut and dried sort of thing to do, not a particularly emotional or spiritual thing. In truth though, it is often so much more than walls and arbors and gates and water features and whatever else might be involved on a particular site. Many times, not always, but many times I will walk into someone's garden and the first thing that comes to mind is to ask, "when did it happen, when was the break up, the death, the divorce, the job loss, the illness, when was the survived event." But I never ask, I wait, I listen and most of the time it comes out, the moment when on some level the decision to save the heart was made. What I see is the aftermath and it's familiar to me, I've been there. I believe that when we go through a terrible emotional or physical experience like what I've described we pull in, we hunker down. I've read and heard that when a person falls through ice into a cold river or is left outside in freezing weather the body automatically pulls blood out of the extremities and into the area of the heart, releasing what isn't essential for survival to save that which is. So the garden falls into disarray, or the car goes to pot, or the daily trips to the gym dwindle down to none, all of those things that don't seem essential disappear until the heart is healed. . . and it will heal. It will be forever changed, altered by life itself but it will heal. I think that's what I witness, the thawing, the rebirth, the aftermath, the realization that the storm has passed, emotional survival is assured and life can go on. The neglected garden becomes a statement that a new beginning is at hand and while the eyes that see it, the heart that feels it will be different, they WILL see it, they WILL feel it. In realizing that I am being asked to be a part of that rebirth, that regeneration, I am humbled. I am honored and I am humbled and I am completely awed at the strength of the human spirit and how it can survive.
I know that what I do is design and build gardens for people. On the face of it that sounds like a pretty cut and dried sort of thing to do, not a particularly emotional or spiritual thing. In truth though, it is often so much more than walls and arbors and gates and water features and whatever else might be involved on a particular site. Many times, not always, but many times I will walk into someone's garden and the first thing that comes to mind is to ask, "when did it happen, when was the break up, the death, the divorce, the job loss, the illness, when was the survived event." But I never ask, I wait, I listen and most of the time it comes out, the moment when on some level the decision to save the heart was made. What I see is the aftermath and it's familiar to me, I've been there. I believe that when we go through a terrible emotional or physical experience like what I've described we pull in, we hunker down. I've read and heard that when a person falls through ice into a cold river or is left outside in freezing weather the body automatically pulls blood out of the extremities and into the area of the heart, releasing what isn't essential for survival to save that which is. So the garden falls into disarray, or the car goes to pot, or the daily trips to the gym dwindle down to none, all of those things that don't seem essential disappear until the heart is healed. . . and it will heal. It will be forever changed, altered by life itself but it will heal. I think that's what I witness, the thawing, the rebirth, the aftermath, the realization that the storm has passed, emotional survival is assured and life can go on. The neglected garden becomes a statement that a new beginning is at hand and while the eyes that see it, the heart that feels it will be different, they WILL see it, they WILL feel it. In realizing that I am being asked to be a part of that rebirth, that regeneration, I am humbled. I am honored and I am humbled and I am completely awed at the strength of the human spirit and how it can survive.
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