Eight

This morning I heard Callie died. Stefanie seemed to tell me, “Now you can die”. I loved Callie and at the moment cannot say more……I give these words to Callie, and write them so that people know Callie was loved. She always told me she liked my writing. What to say….

Callie, I could tell you that although I do not remember the exact moment we met, that I remember something of it. I liked you from the first word you spoke to me, you had that very special thing that cannot be named. It is in you and around you, and this that was yours exists after you. It was night when we met and this magic fell from you.

Dead branches in the tree.

It was always on very special terms we spoke in an elevator, on the sidewalk, inside or outside a lobby. In a “professional” context we spoke of animals, of eyes, of color, of history. I am so grateful for the day we last spent in New York in that cold, bright day. At last we had lunch, walked all day, sat in your home, shopped for food. Shopping cart I parked between vegetables and wondered how you reached the items on the top shelf before me. Thank you.

Loneliness when there is none

Purposeless when there is one

Poverty, no trust in even the smallest of thing

Death, absence and loss

Abandonment

Another pathetic list

Manufacture Reason, or?

Callie, I do not believe in reasons for such things as death, but I do believe that by some strange gravity we find each other in life. We are lead, or we lead from person to person, from city to city, and from oceans and skies to be with whom we need to be. You are me, I am you. I died with you. I never get used to dying. I have done it a few times and always is it fresh, startling and devastating.

But now you move into me like one of your cats. I have room for you and would like it if you slept here.

The Virgin Mary is here. She smokes hand rolled cigarettes, has the figure of a fertility goddess and is heavily drugged, like God who also is here, but in a different ward, also heavily sedated. They do not speak when smoking at the Border.

I barely remember how long I have been here, almost a month now and mentally I am more there than here.

I met with Dr. Otto today and it was really nice to speak with him. Careful and precise we grapple with things. After the hospital I hope to get into the day clinic. It will be eight hours a day, five days a week of therapy and endless art supplies. I have not much work this summer and it would be perfect.

Do you know what it is like to open your door and find near the coat rack a former lover’s belongings? One with whom you were in love and spent every day with? The heart races, and the ears focus for a familiar sound from the past that signify happiness; fingers tapping on a keyboard, a small laugh to oneself, a sneeze. Everything in the body becomes tight with awareness, as you think that maybe none of this sadness has happened. But he was not there and the happiness with which I focused like an animal is a memory.

Bot has a job cleaning after the men who do renovations on the hospital grounds. Most of these men are specialists who repair cobblestone or plat trees, and Bot carries for them the heavy objects and cleans up after them. From my very first day here he was friendly and warm. He speaks to the patients while waiting for his next task as a human machine. Always he called me Boss with a smile. Several weeks now in the ward and he not only greeted me but walked over to speak. He told me that whatever happens to stay strong, that it is not enough to live life but that I must love it. One must never kill oneself because it is to be the inventor of tragedy, he said. He told me he is from Ghana, and I wonder how he arrived here at the Border. I suspect he is some sort of angel.