Mother and The Lama: Part III

On July sixteenths, Mary and I drive Sonny to the cemetery and leave flowers for his wife and beside her, for his mother. I am embarrassed that Drummer is gone, it makes me too much older than Sonny. Yet it is inevitable. I will no longer go with them to

see George, the realities are too naked. George understands this I am sure. Mary and Sonny do not. They call me selfish. I allow it, I accept it, I know the truth. Protestation is irrelevant, lessons are only learned through death. But with Mary away, with Jason away, I remember loneliness, for even on the top rung, there is loneliness. 

I have a boil on my chin which I refuse to have removed. It could be easily done, but secretly I want Mary to touch it first. She pretends she does not care about it, yet, even in intimacy, she subtly, delicately, beautifully, avoids it––moving fingers, lips, arms, gently around it, tracing my face with fingertips of purity. She climbs trees and avoids the poison oak, she picks wild roses without danger, she dances around cobras leaving them senseless and alone, this, she has learned.

George has several growths on his body. A goiter I call the Buddha belly falls over his collar, its manifestation is undisguisable. Before I stopped visiting, I stroked the flesh of the belly to drive away the loneliness it caused. I know George appreciated the gesture, yet Mary tells me he has yet to opt to have it removed. This I do not understand, but I am not George yet: I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Mary and I often go to the theater and listen to the symphony. This habit we developed after Jason left. It fills the spaces, somewhat. Once we attended a 

performance of Mahler’s 8th,The Symphony of a Thousand. Mary was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the production, by the brass behind us, by the four woodwinds far to our left, by the violins in the balcony, by the children’s voices. I was caught in the Faust, in the end of knowledge, the end of music. Leonard Bernstein said that Mahler’s symphonies lose popularity not because of their difficult scores, nor their lengths, but because, their agonizing message is simply too true, telling something too dreadful to hear. Watching the conductor turn to us, the audience, for the purpose of cuing the various musicians spread among us, I understood the loneliness of community, I understood what music could not do.

Mother and The Lama: Part II

Hopelessness arises from the soul like the balloon slipped from the child’s hand. Only a second, less than a second, and it floats away, beyond potential retrieval, for to be hopeless

is to be without even the hope of recovering it. The lonely are this way. Beth and Drummer were this way at the end, I see that know. 

Loneliness is for the albino squirrel and the seagull, but for each it is different, opposite. The squirrel loses hope of acceptance, of ever being enough, but the seagull loses hope of accepting, of others ever being worthy. Both the same, yet one producing the fertilizer of the earth and the other, the Buddha. Beth and Drummer are fertilizer. I, I do not yet know, yet I suspect I am both.

Without parents one moves up the ladder, becomes one generation older. Eventually we all know this too, excepting the tragic, they morn their children, they are the loneliest of all. Drummer mourned his father in fifty-eight, and lost Sayer, my brother, in sixty-four. Drummer was a strong climber, but when he had to look down from his great height and see Sayer no longer ascending, he froze. The secret is to not look down, do not allow yourself to know how much you stand to lose. I was not on Sayer’s rung; I was not high enough to be hurt in the fall.. 

I can remember all those dates, the years I moved on the ladder, but now, on the top rung, it is all irrelevant. The view from here is beyond comprehension. From here, I can see even why I could not see then, why they still can not see. 

The Buddha taught compassion in the world yet knew its worthlessness in the invisible realm. I can see that too from where I stand. The tallest buildings truly own the city. The mightiest trees own the forest. The highest mountains own the Earth. Tibet, the Himalayas, Mount Everest, they are supreme. I know this, yet I have not been there, and now I know I will never go.

Beth left me antiques and heirlooms that I mostly sold at auction. The money surprised me. Chairs that I used to climb to the upper cabinets when I was a boy were gobbled up by collectors. Books that propped open doors and leveled tables were deemed important for other uses. I was glad to see this re-creation, to learn that everything changes, that everything, even the lonely, has value.

Marriage is lonely. Mary does not stand on the ladder with me. George is one-hundred-six. Sonny is eighty-one. Beth and Drummer would still be here in their objects, is the view from the lower rung. Only George understands me, but he is too high to communicate. He only looks. I envy George, yet I am half his age. I could never tell Mary this, she would laugh and call me silly.

George reminds me of Jason’s infancy, cooing, looking, unaware of self. Mary enjoyed playing with the toddler, I loved the infant. Now, though, Jason is away, George has never known him, Sonny used to buy him toy cars for his birthdays.

Mary does not miss Jason. She is happy he is happy. I have surpassed happiness. I miss Jason.