Dear Sara

I still can't believe it.

That your Dad died the week before Thanksgiving, then your Mom died the week after New Year’s? I still can’t believe that happened. I mean, I can, my mind says it happened, my ears have heard you tell me it happened, I’ve seen pictures of captured moments of you and your dear family celebrating your precious parents’ lives. Yet in my guts, my splanchna, I can’t. The battlefield for belief is always my innards.

I’ve been practicing your suggestion: “My son is very sick. I can’t believe this happened. My son and his wife are expecting a baby this fall. I can’t believe this is happening.” That’s a lot to believe, my friend. A helluva lot.

Yeah, the my-pain-can-beat-up-your-pain game has always felt schoolyard to me (social media is quite the playground, huh?). It’s not a contest. Pain is pain. The ingrown toenail seems to pale in comparison to the fatal car wreck. But that word—seems—always gums up my works. I don’t know that everyone is fighting A GREAT BATTLE, but everybody’s tryin’ to get by. It sure seems so. I do believe that.

Life on Patmos

I haven’t read All Fours, probably won’t. Life here on Patmos (Hot Springs, AR) feels shorter, clock’s a’ticking, carpe the damn diem. I don’t say Patmos in a negative sense, it simply feels like an exile which may be just the thing your old pal John needs to get his writing ass in gear. Yes, John writes from Patmos—I could milk that, right? The cashier at The 19th Hole (wine & spirits) told me, “Hot Springs is a good place to hide.” She really said that. I could hardly believe it.

I have of late discovered a whole trove of Arkansas literary riches I was not familiar with. How can I have never (until recently) heard of the poet Frank Stanford? And get this, Stanford shared a season of life (and bed) with the poet C.D. Wright who hailed from Mountain Home, Arkansas! All this was going on up around Fayetteville (Seth Haines country). Anyway, I’m reading The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford, big whopper of a biography, and it’s fascinating, filled with all sorts of side trails I’m taking finding even more literary gems along the way. Stanford put three bullets in his heart at the age of 29yrs. I still can’t believe that.

I confess the thought of you and Drew on the top floor of City Lights Booksellers makes me happy. Isn’t City Lights just the best name for such a place? I feel it’s a good thing to go back and literally touch those places that meant something to us when we were young, remember who we were then and to some degree still are now.

I was a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (lord what a mouthful) in my 20s. In the vast library there was one shelf, down at the bottom way in the back that housed only a handful of books, seriously, like 10-12 by authors like St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Evelyn Underhill—those the cool kids today call “the mystics.” I want to say there was a Thomas Merton there, but I’m probably revising history. In addition to my graduate level assigned readings, I also read everything on that bottom shelf…the cookies were definitely down there.

Ropes and Losers

The CrossFit WOD (workout of the day) this morning included rope climbs. Climb up a rope to the 15ft mark, then make your way down (safely), then repeat nine more times. I don’t know how that skill might show up in my day today, probably won’t. But I suppose if I accompany you and Drew some day to City Lights and you’re both on the top floor and a fire breaks out, I could climb a rope up the side of the building and maybe help you get out. That sounds a bit heroic, but I’d try it for you and Drew.

I’m glad you’ve had opportunities to stump for Nervous Systems. It’s a good book, Sara. Really. And I agree: the longer we live the more we lose. You can read that in a book or even say that out loud and sorta believe it, but to really feel that you have to have lost a love— a parent, two parents, a spouse, a child, a grandparent, a friend, a dog, maybe a cat. After that you’re in the club, you’re a LOSER. And far from meaning you’re not “up to snuff,” being that kind of loser means you didn’t believe it could ever happen but it did by god and you’re still alive to tell about it and maybe just maybe you’re going to be okay or if you’re not okay-okay at least you’re okay on M/W/F and not okay on Sun/Tues/Thurs or whatever arrangement your body and mind seem to work out. Then again you might not be okay for a very long time, which is still okay when you’re that kind of loser.

As Sinatra sings: “Here’s to the losers/bless them all.”

Bless us all.

Your amigo,

John