One.6 - Saint Marks 1

Thursday is my day to visit Saint Mark’s—a home for aged Lutherans and so I always double my dose of Prozac. That and a triple espresso are the only things that keep me from the fetal position on Thursdays.

Saint Marks is a one story building that hides itself among houses of an older neighborhood. Twisted trees mark entrance, like petrified flames, yes, just like those flaming swords from Genesis but even God knows that this no Eden. My custom is to walk around the block three times before going inside. Everything in threes: the trinity, three strikes and you’re out, on the third day he rose again, Groucho, Harpo and Chico and Barbie’s measurements: 39-23-33.

Crows fly overhead like black angels hovering over an upside down graveyard and I’m suddenly overcome by my grandmother’s Catholicism and I stretch my arms out, open my palms in a likeness of Saint Francis of Assisi and for a moment I believe that birds will come down and land on my arms. Belief, like those arching and aching gray clouds is a moment that passes in silence.

Finally I’m able to drag myself toward the entrance of Saint Marks. The first smells are the most difficult to take. The suffering, smothering heat saturated with the smell of urine hangs in the air and is there is no escaping it. Dying smells and I start believing that it’s infectious, that with each breath I take I’m aging 10-years at a time, wasting and withering away with each step.

Like children, the elderly gaze curiously but cautiously toward any new visitor. Perhaps, they’re hoping that one day maybe Jesus will use this same door to come and get them, take them home. It’s like a waiting room for some kind of crazy death camp. Ah, how many more days of disappointment? It disturbs me to witness how the old cling so greedily to life as if one more day will do them any good. It’s simply stubbornness that keeps them alive now. Of course advertising has sold us so much on life that death seems like such a rude interruption; as if we should feel guilty for dying.

At church we sell death. However, heavens charms must be wearing thin, as it seems that life continues to find new ways to keep people from wanting to die—even after they’re dead. I would be the first to admit that the church has not been as aggressive as it could be as far as selling the benefits of death and the life thereafter. But it’s difficult, especially with the onslaught of medical devices to keep people alive beyond their capacity. We’ve entered the Frankenstein era of medicine and as long as there is one breath left they’ll keep you alive. What is the going rate for life these days? The tax advantages definitely belong to the dead.

Helen’s room is my first stop. She has Alzheimer’s, which must be the cruelest disease in the world and most recently she’s suffered from a stroke which has left her mute. When I step into her room it feels like a sauna and I know that I’m going to lose at least five pounds, which my small frame cannot afford. Helen has never acknowledged my presence, although I’ve tried desperately to connect with her. I sit down next to her, open my Bible and begin to read. As usual she doesn’t respond. It’s frustrating and I wonder what the goddamn point of it all is? She isn’t listening or interested and either am I. We’re dying of boredom. Until…I looked and I saw him, The Cat in the Hat and he said to me, “Why do you sit there like that?” It gives me an idea.

“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play.

So we sat in the ark all that cold, wet day.

I sat there with Noah, we sat there we two,

And I said, “How I wish there was something to do.”

Too wet to go out, too wet to play ball.

So we sat in the ark and did nothing at all.

And all we could do is to sit, sit, sit.

And we did not like it, not one little bit.

And then something went bump.

How that bump made us jump.

We looked and we saw him step in on the mat.

We looked and we saw him, it was God in a hat.

And He said to us, “Why do you sit there like that?”

I know it is wet and the sun in not sunny,

But we can have lots of good fun that is funny.”

She smiled. She actually smiled. I couldn’t believe it but Helen heard me and she smiled.

“What are you doing, Alexander,” a whispering voice asked.

I turned slowly and saw Nurse Judy looking at me with an expression of utter confusion and contempt. “I, I’m reading to Helen.” I paused to recover. “She smiled, Judy. Helen smiled.”

“Really? So does Pastor John know that you’re coming over here and reading people nursery rhymes rather than the Bible?”

Jesus. “Of course not but she smiled. She’s never even acknowledged me before this. Isn’t that worth something? That she can still smile?”

“It’s probably just gas.” Judy waddled over towards Helen and leaned over her fragile body, nearly suffocating her with her enormous breasts, and adjusted the covers that needed no adjusting. “I think you’ve read enough for today, Alexander,” she said, smiling quickly withdrawing the smile in one swift motion before she left the room.

I looked at Helen. My God, she’s been a little girl, a young woman, a wife, a mother and now what? This—this is the best we can do? I looked heavenward, as if God is simply floating above our heads waiting to be beckoned like some mindful parent. I looked up but heard nothing but the murmur of the heat register. It’s a halo and a hell no for your troubles in this world and God only knows about the next one. I leaned over and kissed Helen on the forehead and as I lifted my head up she smiled again; like some minor miracle and maybe God’s just teasing.

“Goodbye, Helen.” I couldn’t look back for fear of tears or turning into a pillar of salt.

One.5 - If a Body Catch a Body

My father is dying. He called from his home out west. That place he ran to after leaving our family; missing the Gold Rush by a mere 120-years. He said he’d had a cold that he couldn’t rid of. He couldn’t shake this cough. He smokes so what’s so impossible or crazy about a cough?

The doctor told him—Cancer. Lung cancer. Jesus, who in their lives has not heard that word and then felt like they’ve been hit in the gut by a goddamn gorilla or something? The word itself, “cancer” is a disease ridden word. Speaking it almost makes you ill, which is why we have the strange habit of whispering it.

“Did you hear?” And the whispering of, “cancer.” As if whispering it lessens our own chances of getting it. But that’s how powerful this one word is.

My father called me. He’s sounded distant as if we were talking into tin cans with a string between them. It’s a dead echo. His voice sounds contaminated by a lifetime of Almosts that can’t bear to be repeated. He says “cancer,” and my mind wanders off into some mental wilderness where, without a compass or any Boy Scout badges, I’m quickly lost. Moss grows on the north side of a tree—what the hell does that mean? And moss makes me think of cancer; some green, spongy crap that grows on things until it takes over completely. Finally, as I stumble out from my mental wilderness, I hear my dad say something about one lung. That a person can live with one lung. Take out the bad one and leave in the good one. One lung? I can’t even imagine that. Your breathing would be all lopsided. It’s too strange to think about. Can you limp with one lung?

We talk about some other things that we really have no business talking about. He’s got cancer and we’re chit-chatting about The Catcher in the Rye. Really, this is what people do? And I think, ‘Yeah, it’s exactly what we do because we’re all crazy as hell and we’re all afraid of this word and what it means.’ I could call my mother and tell her that I’m seriously considering suicide and before I know what the hell is going on she’d be asking me if I’ve tried those glazed donuts from Kwik Trip. We’re all crazy that way. Especially when it comes to dying. We have funerals and as soon as they’re over we descend to the basement of churches and eat ham sandwiches and Jell-O.

My father and I finally say an awkward goodbye. From his tin can he promises to call as soon as finds out more information. The string gets cut and it’s a slow dying silence that fills me from the inside out and falls heavily over my apartment. I wander aimlessly, picking things up, putting them back down someplace else as if I’m unconsciously redecorating. Finally, I walk over the bookshelf and scan the tattered titles before I find it. The Catcher in the Rye. I sit down in my favorite chair and start reading. It’s my favorite because it’s so wide that I can get in the fetal position. I’m reading, I’m hoping, I’m wishing and I’m thinking that I’m on the edge of some crazy cliff in this giant field of rye but knowing the whole damn time that I’ll never be able to catch and rescue that dying man on the other end of that tin can.

One.4 - Angels and Bombs

The air is cool, fragrant with the smell of wet leaves. I walk slowly toward the church, although by nature I’m more inclined to running or fleeing depending on who’s chasing me.

I walk slowly but still find myself gaining ground on my destination and as the church tower clock winds on before my eyes I think of how my life is passing before me and that it’s going so slow. At this rate I’ll live forever. Once again I find myself on the edge of that life-questioning cliff—a lamenters paradise really, where you can walk along the edge and gaze deep into the abyss but you never have to jump. Yes, always stepping out onto the ledge and then, as if someone is really holding me back, I decry the fact that I cannot jump. Yes, that my fate is to live and only the lucky ones get to leap.

I attempt to rein in my feelings, to pull myself together but all I can think of is this feeling of impending doom or worse—an impending sense of nothing.

The church itself is a beautiful building made of pale stone and it looks more Catholic than Protestant in design. To me, most Protestant churches resemble barns or some kind of out buildings scattered about the farmyard. Something of a “sheep to the slaughter” kind of thing that makes me nauseous with all the blood and guts. I would have never made it as a doctor. My high school biology teacher exempted me from dissecting a frog after I passed out from the smell of formaldehyde.

However, Saint Olaf rises boldly toward the shadowy sky like a fortress with its peaks and arched windows. It amazes me when I see a church that seems to contain all of the spirituality of its congregation within its walls and how it can articulate that reverence to the masses that pass by it each day. Even when you walk in the nave of Saint Olaf it has that heavy Catholic silence—the kind that hangs over the pews from the high, arched ceiling and almost breathes. My grandmother was Catholic and I can remember that brooding stillness whenever she brought me to Mass with her; it felt as if God Himself was floating above you and breathing heavily; or perhaps it was a bored sigh.

When I do finally make it inside of the church, the receptionist and niece of Pastor John, one Sarah Beckett, greets me coldly. She’s a lovely little number who’s either an angel or a bomb depending on how you interpret the ticking noise you hear when you walk past her desk. She disregards me in a way that at first I mistook it for attraction. Ah, yes one of those relationship fantasies that drifts in and out of my cruel brain like the tide, yet only threaten to drown me. However, I have since learned through various forms of non-verbal communication that it is simply disregard. Not only does she not like me, she avoids me whenever she can. She is an attractive young woman with her high cheekbones and blonde hair that creeps about her neckline. She has a classic look. I imagine her coming straight from a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. I also imagine her being shot from a cannon—ah, to see her flaming figure fly. She puts the boot into beauty and the cut into cutey and her perfume lingers just long enough for wanting, although I do temper my desire for her with a song as I approach her desk:

“He’s feeling naughty in his patent leather boots

He’s a playboy with a handgun that never shoots

She’s an eastern European with a figure that could kill

And he’s hoping she’ll molest him but he knows she never will…”

Ah, yes I forgot to mention that I’m currently at work on a songbook as well: Songs for Dictators and Lovers. Indeed, I keep plenty of irons on the fire—now if I could only find a match. The songbook is inspired by the war in Iraq but will also draw from other world conflicts and be spiced up with a heavy dose of the many flavors of love. It’s difficult not to get caught up in the spirit of our country’s newfound spirit of colonialism, although I’m somewhat uncomfortable about the armbands for our Muslim citizens. It’s like the crusades all over again and I wonder each time I pass by a Muslim woman if she’s wearing that veil to hide her laughter or contempt. In the end it’s up to God I suppose to decide who gets in and who stays out so I should remember that I’m in the business of religion and not politics.