"Be a Little Kinder"

When people asked how we were doing, Mom often said "we're laughing as much as we're crying." That's true, and feels like a worthy tribute to James. Our friend Gordon Thompson (who also suffered the loss of his youngest child, a woman I always thought of as my first 'little sister') knew James all his life, even having him in a class in college, and for several days running Gordon comforted us with memories on 3X5 cards. At one point he wrote "James talked like he was double-parked," and the sheer, concise, brilliance of this observation had us all laughing and crying at the same time. I'm not sure that's a sensation I've ever experienced before. It's weird. Not bad, necessarily, but weird.

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Before I had arrived in Indiana, Mom and Dad told Mary and Tony about a friend of theirs seeing James a few years back and saying, "well, he sure got all the looks."

Mary laughed and said, 'you poor guys, now all you've got is Horseface and Monkeyboy.'

Tony --the love of my sister's life-- said, 'Patrick doesn't look like a monkey!'

Mary responded, 'have you seen his feet?'

Let me hasten to add that once Tony got Mary alone, he told her gently but firmly that she most definitely was NOT a horseface, and he really hoped she'd stop saying things like that about herself. He's a good egg, that Tony.

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I learned another story about the plethora of heroclix (thank you, Marta, I thought hero-clicks looked wrong). James did love them, there's no doubt, and as with so many things, he happily collected and displayed them by the truckload. But there was another motivation involved. A few years back good friends of his opened a gaming store in Richmond. New businesses are always risky ventures, none more so than specialty stores, especially in economically fragile Midwestern towns. James and his friend Matt decided they would, between them, buy a case of heroclix each month, as a way of patronizing a business they liked, and supporting friends they cared about. I have no idea how much money that involved, nor how much help it was in the long run, but I'm coming to see that such concrete, practical expressions of support were typical of my younger brother. I want to be more like him. Gonna work on that.

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After the memorial, as Mary and I were winding down from the day, I said, "That was just lovely. So now we get James back, right?"

Without missing a beat, Mary said, "Right. That's the rule."

All righty then. Rules are rules.

Mary and David Garman were the sweet, valiant folks who stepped in to take on the burden of planning the memorial for us, allowing our addled brains to roam free. It's amazing how many little details a memorial can involve, and I think we would have anticipated few if any of them. Mary and David's work, not the least of which was rallying and organizing the help of many other wonderful folks, was invaluable. (They also officiated the happier occasion of Mary and Tony's wedding; we have much to thank them for.) After the service, even as they attended to god only knows how many tasks, Mom reported each of them found a moment to hug her and say "this really sucks."

Yes it does. It really, really does. We never lose sight of that fact.

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When James was little we used to joke privately that he would be president someday because eventually everyone would just get tired of him asking to be. His cheerful, sunny relentlessness could wear you down; as I've mentioned before he could also be overly sensitive and thin-skinned. Combine that with being small for his age, and you had the ideal victim, giving even the most casual of bullies satisfyingly explosive reactions. He struggled academically and socially more than either Mary or I did; it wasn't until junior high that his dyslexia was discovered. Things started to turn around his junior year of high school though; since Dad was on sabbatical, he, Mom and James went off to Southport Island, Maine for the year. James came into his own in many ways during that school year. For one thing he suddenly shot up to 6'1"; when I came to visit at Christmas, I could no longer deny he had passed me in height (it had probably actually happened the previous summer), but to his credit James limited his gloating to a half-smile as he leaned WAAAAAY over to hug me at the airport. I got over it, especially once I realized his height cut way down on the bullying. He also found himself on the honor roll for the first time in his life, and by the end of the year some of his classmates had begun coming over for study groups with him. Even after returning home, James was never again off the honor roll. Something had clicked.

Nonetheless he still often came across as young for his age, leading many to dismiss or under-estimate him. When James decided he wanted to go to Earlham for college for example, a few people confided to my parents that they didn't believe he'd be able to hack it, and he really ought to be encouraged to go somewhere else. More than one of them suggested James needed to have the apron strings cut, maybe by dropping him randomly by the side of the road somewhere like an unwanted pet. It will probably come as no surprise to other parents that the most confident, 'expert' advice tended to come from people who did not, in fact, have children of their own. Mom and Dad decided to let him make his own decision, in part because they realized that after they allowed Mary and me attend Earlham, refusing James the same option would have smacked loudly of rejection.

When he started college, Mom gave him a little card with this quotation from Calvin Coolidge on it.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

When I was cleaning out James' kitchen, I found this card, yellow with age, stuck to his refrigerator door. Mom has it hanging above the kitchen sink now. Dad remembered James saying more than once that his motto was "don't give up." There came a point where Mom and Dad routinely told him "continue confounding the experts," because he had already done so many times. Some people remained unsurprised and unimpressed by his efforts, but many others did have their low expectations refuted. Some were even big enough to admit it. James confounded many 'experts' when he graduated from college.

There was a certain amount of tut-tutting from some quarters when he moved back into the family home after school. Actually this put him firmly in the center of a national trend at the time (1991), with minimal job opportunities creating a country full of 'boomerang kids.' Nonetheless the (childless) experts once again furrowed their brows. James did eventually get his own place: immediately next door. A few years later he moved again, this time a block away. As he continued to expand his social circle and come into his own as an adult, family remained firmly at the center of his life and routine. James always knew there were people who thought less of him for staying close to home, but I think he came to see that wasn't his problem. He did maintain all his life certain child-like qualities, but they became tempered with an adult perspective. What had been immaturity transformed into a child-like openness that disarmed people and made him friends across all boundaries of sex, age, religion, orientation and race. His fondness for games and toys transformed into a contagious joy and a passion for gift-giving. Just as wonderful though, was his grace in receiving gifts. When a new friend offered James some extra tomato plants, he was surprised and touched at how excited James got at the thought of sharing fresh tomatoes with his family. I have many friends -and you know who you are- who hate receiving gifts of any kind. I'll admit I'm not always as good at it as I could be. The talent James had for it is rare. Gonna work on that too.

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Years ago, for reasons that are lost in the mists of time, whenever James and Mary were at dinner together, he would hand her the wine cork and say, "here, this is for thy collection."

Over the next several months and years, in tones of increasing exasperation, Mary explained that she didn't HAVE a cork collection, had NEVER HAD a cork collection, was not remotely interested in STARTING a cork collection, but none of that stopped him. As time went on, Tony began doing it too. Next James began sneaking corks into Mary's home, hiding them in random places. This last trip I found one inside the bottle of ibuprofen.

Somehow this then led to James creating sculptures out of corks to be left in her place when he could (she probably came to regret having him cat sit for her). Dinosaurs, spiders, cobras, entire villages of people were left conspicuously displayed throughout the house. Eventually she just gave in.

James' cork art was just the beginning though. While he was taking carpentry classes and learning to build furniture, he continued to make little trinkets, talismans, weapons and other gew-gaws out of sticks, bits of wood, duct tape, cardboard, toothpicks, wire and dental floss. Many of them may have been pressed into service as game pieces in one of his games, but I think he made them for their own sakes. They were fun little things to do with his hands, much in the same way friendship bracelets are for me.

We tried to give away his remaining creations, only to be told repeatedly, "I already have many things James made especially for me." I'm in the same boat. I have a panoply of weapons fit for a tiny Medieval warrior, a miniature staff topped with a horned cyclops head, and my favorite, a wooden key, with its own carrying pouch, that James said was my key to "life, happiness, or whatever thee wants it to be." The staff and weapons have hung on the wall beside my computer for years now. I had tucked the key away in a box full of trinkets. It's now sitting on top my monitor. (See photos above.)

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I don't mean to suggest there was no heartbreak for James. I know he suffered great disappointment in his work life for one. After years during and after college volunteering at his dream job, he was finally offered a part-time paid position. It seemed like the years of sacrifice had paid off. I don't pretend to know the whole story, nor will I claim to be objective, but it appears to me James was taught a vicious lesson in office politics. First his immediate superiors were fired, but the people doing the firing encouraged James to stay, saying he was their 'ace in the hole.' Then when it became convenient, they canned him too, telling him he had been mishandling his principle task for the previous two years. Sadly it was done in such a way as to plant a canker of doubt that ate at his morale for years afterwards, leading him to wonder if maybe, just maybe he hadn't been as good at his job as he had thought. I think maybe for the first time in his life James may have lost his persistence at that point.

I won't say more about that right now, okay? I can feel the blind rage building. I'm incoherent when I'm raging.

Eventually he returned to the handyman jobs he had held before, cobbling together a modest income and honing a variety of skills. One friend told us that James planted all the perennials in her yard, and she will think of him every spring when they come back. Another friend told us about a small rock retaining wall James had helped her family build in their front yard. Her teenage daughter remembered James teaching her eight year old self how to lift with her legs, simultaneously making her feel her involvement was valued and appreciated. I can't think of better monuments to his work life. Mary and I tried to find the retaining wall (apparently the new owners kept it), but our faulty memories didn't lead us to the right address. We'll visit it when I'm next in town.

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"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.'"

-- Aldous Huxley

I came across this quotation about a year ago, and it immediately made me think of my younger brother. He was a kind man. I don't mean nice. Nice is what you write in a person's yearbook when you have nothing else to say. It's what you tell someone who has just expressed amorous feelings you don't return. "You're such a nice guy (but...)" James was kind, in an outgoing, dynamic way. I learned at the memorial that he saw his game nights, for example, as a recovery group for computer-game addicts; you were still playing a game, but you were also seeing other people. He helped more than one friend through a painful divorce, both in practical ways like helping them move, and more intangible ways like phoning them, dropping in to visit, inviting them to tea, and yes, to come play games. He knew that often when people demanded solitude, what they most needed was human contact, and he was braver than I am about drawing them out. As Dad said, he was very funny, but he was never intentionally mean. He was ahead of me on that front, BIG time. I am not above indulging in a bit of humor at the expense of others, as most of you know. I doubt I'll ever really give that up, but thinking about Huxley's words and my brother's example, may make me pause and, when in doubt, 'try to be a little kinder.'

The Memorial: Mom and Dad's Thoughts

So I'm back in New York a day later than expected, storms having prevented travel on Tuesday, and seriously complicating it on Wednesday. Nothing like bad weather to turn a two hour plane-ride into an epic battle with the elements. Okay, so by 'battle' I mean a direct flight getting turned into a layover in DC, where the connecting flight to LaGuardia was delayed for two hours, with another two and half spent sitting on the tarmac. Not exactly the Odyssey, is it. Still, I was a tired wayfarer when I got home. It felt like I'd spent the day wrestling with the yard arm or the topsail or the bo'sun (mmm, wrestling with the bo'sun...) or whatever, to reach port. I slept like the dead, and today my body is killing me.

What is the deal with airplane seats, anyway?

We had the memorial for James on Sunday, and as you can imagine, I have many thoughts to share regarding it. First though, I want to honor a request from my parents. My family and I have been touched by the outpouring of love and support, and frankly we were unprepared for how much this blog was a venue of connection with so many of you. Dad asked if he and Mom might share some thoughts here, to make sure that expressions of their gratitude was spread as far as possible.

"HELL No!" I said, in response. "What are you thinking? Get your own damn blogs! This one is all about me. ME!"

Of course, I kid. I was thrilled to have them as guest writers here, and told them (and Mary) that I hoped they'd let me know any time they wanted to guest post. I will admit I was a bit bemused to realize that they didn't really read the blog much previously. Here I've been deliberately omitting detailed, X-rated accounts of all my sexual exploits, not wanting to scandalize my beloved parents, only to learn I could have been sharing every salacious detail with you, without concern for their tender sensibilities.

Again, I kid. There have been no sexual exploits. There have been no salacious details. Seriously. Virtually every exciting event in my life in the past three years has been recorded here. Said events have just mostly involved trips to the park. Clearly I do not live a life of epic proportions. I'm okay with that.

Babble, babble, babble. Here's what each of my folks said at the memorial.

Mom spoke first.

"A number of you in this room are James's friend because he wouldn't let you not be. After he'd shown up a dozen times, beaming, to ask if you'd changed your minds, you gave in. It was either play games with James or join the witness protection program. We'll take you on any terms. Welcome to the circle of James Lacey's friends.

"I've played Othello with him. It's a strategy game in which you have to look -- and think -- ahead. He was quite young when he began to beat me. About a third of the way through he'd get a half-smile on his face which told me as well as words that it was all over. He began to beat me at Scrabble so often that I had to pretend I'd gotten bored, when in reality I was just humiliated.

"He met his match, though, in Scrabble games with Susan Castator, the longtime Earlham photographer. It is our impression that he didn't really mind losing Scrabble games to Susan, who routinely racked up scores of over 300. He recognized a master.

"They found each other when she was 86, and he began driving her to the grocery store once a week. I hope there are several among you who remember them: both wearing flat Irish caps, the driver a foot taller than his passenger, riding in her Tweety-bird-yellow 1964 Mustang convertible, which he adored.

"He and I shared a love of carpentry which had descended from my grandfather through my mother. Our end products tended to be massive and rough-hewn. He's lately been learning new refinements from his landlords, Dan and Jan Sims. There is a half-finished labyrinth in their garden in which he had a part. He was learning how to make a ceiling smooth before he was done with it, because Dan rightly wouldn't let him get away with "that's good enough." Dan, I very much fear that James learned "that's good enough" at his mother's knee.

"He had some specific ideas about heaven; he hoped to find his grandparents there, as well as all of our pets who have gone before.

"Present with us today are two of his dearest friends, with whom we have formed new ties. James Gill is here with his parents, Martha and Jim. He was James's passenger on Saturday the 6th; he held him as his life ebbed away. And Matt Dilworth, who had arrived for their usual Saturday afternoon of gaming, put his arms around Paul and me when the terrible news began to come. From now on, James and Matt, your parents will simply have to share you with us."

--Margaret Lacey.

Then Dad spoke.

"Thank you for being with us today. We, James’s parents and
siblings have been wonderfully sustained by the phone calls, e-mails,
letters and cards we have received from so many people, from so many places
around the world, telling us that we have been in their prayers and–in the
phrase Quakers so treasure–that we are being held in the Light. Many of
the most tender messages begin by saying that they have no words, that
words are inadequate to give comfort. That is the simple human truth, but
we want you to know that your very wordlessness helps us in our
grieving. It is honest and genuine and comes from the deep places in your
own lives, and nothing can be more loving or wise than that. Clumsiness,
being afraid to say something that might increase the pain–we have all
experienced that wordlessness when we have tried to express our
fellow-feeling with someone who is grieving. So we say we are sorry and
wish there were more to say–and some day there may well be–but right now
the genuineness of the sorrow is the true foundation to build on. Some who
have written tell us of losing a son or daughter, a brother or sister, and
say that they are feeling the sorrow with us. Parents who have lost a
child tell us that they never get over the loss, but they learn how to knit
a life together, incorporating the loved child into the changed fabric of
life. We do not want to get over losing James in this life. We will
always speak of him in the present tense.

"Many who have called or written to us did not know James
particularly well, and you were writing out of love for us. Thank you for
your caring. Others know James in ways that the rest of his family had no
idea of, and hearing about him from you is an especially wonderful
gift. We have met people we only knew by name, who have told us James was
a best friend. We have heard stories of his kindness, his goodness and
steadfast friendship that confirm, “yes, that is our James; the person you
know and love is the man, the son and brother that we also know and love
and will cherish for as long as our lives continue.”

"Our family wants to celebrate what we do know and cherish about
James. He is the youngest of our three children. Perhaps it just has to
happen to the youngest that they are over-awed by how much wiser, quicker,
funnier their older siblings and parents are, even after they have caught
up and made their own place as adults among adults. James loved us all,
but when he was young he must have found it hard to believe he was keeping
up with this very verbal family. Those who know him best will recognize
that when he was excited, he would speak very rapidly. We would tell him
to slow down, and he would, but then the words would quickly reach gale
force again. Maybe the youngest can’t help thinking, “I have to hurry or
my turn will be lost.”

"James also liked to tell long, detailed stories of what interested
him or had just happened. These could turn into epics. When he was
younger, he would sometimes realize he was losing his audience and then
rush even faster to get the story out. Once, when he was perhaps 8, he was
telling us one of those jokes that third graders think they just invented
today, but the rest of us know have been told since cave-boys reached third
grade. We all knew the joke, so we also knew James was going to get the
punch line wrong. But he was happily at full gallop and unstoppable. We
began to laugh, and he thought he had us in the palm of his hand, so he
went on, and we laughed harder, until he produced his punch line, then
realized it must have wandered in from some other joke.

"You know how it is in families–the joke that didn’t work becomes
an even greater success, because it recalls a time of great joy
together. This is a rule in comedy and in life, I think: The worst jokes
become the best if you tell them often enough. They accumulate all that
love and happy memory.

"James was a collector, and a museum curator at heart. From
childhood, he loved to browse in antique shops and find some small thing
that pleased him. Sometimes the object would be the start of a gathering
of similar things--cameras, books, dishes and pots. As an adult, he also
amassed a whole lot of game-associated paraphernalia and a lot of just odd
gizmos which he always organized attractively for his personal museum. I
think what one of the things James liked about collecting things he found
interesting, is that they gave him a sense of fullness and intrinsic
value. He was not an obsessive collector; he didn’t have to have one of
everything, certainly not the most expensive things; but I think he liked a
sense of abundance in life.

"I want to speak about one such enthusiasm, James’s collection of
prisms, for I think a prism is an almost perfect symbol of that pleasure in
unearned plenitude. Prisms are wonderful, miraculous things. Hang them
where the sun hits just right and you get a rainbow; set the prism to
shaking and perhaps you get several rainbows dancing across the room. A
prism never wears out. As long as there is sunlight, there is the
possibility of rainbows. James loved to place prisms in every well-placed
window, so at the best moments his rooms would be a-dazzle in
rainbows. Some of his finds are displayed in the Wyndohmn Room, and we
invite anyone who shares James’s love of prisms to take one.
Think of how powerful to the imagination it is to see a real
rainbow in the sky. I think of William Wordsworth’s poem “My heart leaps
up when I behold/ A rainbow in the sky....” That’s the poem that ends “The
child is father of the man/ And I could wish my days to be/Bound each to
each by natural piety.” The rainbow in Wordsworth’s poem links adulthood
to the perpetually enriching springs of childhood, days bound together by
natural piety, the gift of always being capable of an openhearted, joyful,
affirming, childlike embrace of the world. That is our James.

"Remember the story of God’s sending the rainbow as a sign to Noah
that humanity would be spared another flood. There the rainbow is a symbol
of grace. If we see it arching across the sky when sunlight follows a rain,
we receive it as a promise, a wonderful fleeting gift of beauty, a
miracle. A room filled with rainbow after rainbow dancing around the walls
is an understandable miracle–oh, those are the prisms–but it is a miracle
nonetheless, a miracle of light and beauty. Mary says James loved
refracted light. When the living light of the sun hits the prism glass at
an angle, it bends or refracts the white light into the spectrum, the
invariable sequence of colors that lies within the white light.
Why does James’s collection of prisms so comfort me? Well, it
links me to the Gospel of John, the affirmation that the Divine Light
enlightens everyone who comes into the world. It gives me hope that our
souls are immortal and may one day be reunited. The Ocean of Light is
greater than and flows over the ocean of darkness and death. That is the
Light, I believe, we mean when we say we hold one another in the
Light. When I do that, I consciously try to imagine someone bathed in
sunlight, radiant in the daily light and in the Light that can infuse,
warm and transform the human spirit. To say we hold someone in the Light
is such a promise of loving human fellowship, of active goodwill toward others.
Our experience of James is of a man of strong principle, a
courageous commitment to love and justice; an honest and generous person,
a peacemaker, above all a loving caretaker of other people. He never lost
his essential innocence, but he was no pushover. We hear from so many
people confirmation of what we know of him ourselves: he knew how to be a
friend, he knew how to love others wholeheartedly; he knew how to forgive
the meanness, slights and hurts he experienced. He had his sorrows,
especially the disappointments of his hoped-for profession in museum
work. We have seen him in tears and have wept with and for him. But he
also knew how to weep for other people’s suffering, and to help dry their
tears.

"James was and is a child of Light. Above all, I think he had a
great gift for happiness and was a source of happiness for others. He was
fortunate in his friendships, and he knew how to be a steadfast and
dependable friend. Some of you are among his precious and sustaining
friends, and his family is very grateful for your part in his life.
One more comment on James’s collection of prisms. The everyday
miracle of the prism enlarges that favorite Quaker image of seeking the
Light. It is another gift our dear James gives me. We can hold one another,
the living and the dead, in the Light. The Light can shine through us; we
can reflect it and even refract or bend the Light to one another, and in
God’s transforming love we can receive the gift of the rainbow."

--Paul Lacey

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Those of you unfamiliar with Quaker (silent/unprogrammed tradition) services may not know that the meeting was then opened up for anyone in the room who was moved to speak. Many did, and their (your) words resonated deeply. I won't try to recount every message; doing so would be impossible, I'd be sure to leave out some of the most moving thoughts inadvertently. But as Dad said in reference to the cards and letters, the memorial messages rang true with our feelings about James. The man you all knew and loved was the same one we did.

It feels like another blog post or two about James is still percolating up from the depths. This past month has been full of lessons and reasons for gratitude. I'll share those thoughts when they come. Thanks again to all of you for your love, prayers and support. It helps.

Snippets

So, it turns out people want last year's hero clicks as much as they want last year's cell phone. Just in case, Dad is carefully cataloguing them, and storing each collection in its own separate baggie. During his work, he discovered some interesting (though probably not surprising) facts:

All female hero clicks have big gazangas.

The heroines, while well-endowed, are fully covered. The villainesses all have low-cut dresses.

In amongst the collection there are some surprising figures. Dad is particularly taken by the penguin hero clicks. Dad loves penguins. He wishes he could have one as a pet. He'd take it for walks, holding it by the flipper. He'll be saving out at least one of those pieces.

There are also rabbit hero clicks. We really don't understand this game.

None of us were quite ready to part with James' big yellow crocs, the ones that earned him the name Big Bird from his (our) friend Jenny. They're in pretty good shape still, but they were too big for me, Mom and Mary. They fit Dad nicely though. He's not likely to wear them out in public as James did, but even that is possible. His red high-topped Converse are already something of a legend on campus. I hadn't put it together until now: that's where James came by his Converse fascination.

Mom and I took what we hope will be the penultimate load of stuff to Goodwill today, but of course gauging that sort of thing is always risky. We think there will be only one more load.

A close friend of ours, Tom Mullen, died on saturday, at the age of 74, from a stroke. His family and ours were entwined in several ways. His older daughters were close friends of Mary's (I thought of them as additional older sisters). His son Brett and daughter Ruth were both friends of mine and James'. His late wife Nancy was a loving presence in our lives, taking as much interest and joy in our doings as she did in those of her own children's.

Tom was an accomplished man, graduating from Earlham in '56 (several of his student pranks still live in the Earlham oral tradition), then Yale Divinity School, then back to Earlham where he was dean of students, then professor of applied theology, then Dean of the Earlham School of Religion. He wrote books on faith and religion that were known for their humor. He was a smart, loving, principled man who made Earlham, and Richmond, better places. But those aren't the things that immediately spring to my mind with Tom. My first thought is, he was a hoot. Tom was a funny guy. Like many dads, he was particularly fond of tormenting his children, embarrassing them in public whenever he could. Sarah and Martha remember leaving for summer camp, and having their father chase the bus, screaming "they're taking my babies, they're taking my babies!" On another occasion, a close relative asked him please to wear a tie when she introduced him to her fiance. On the day, Tom dutifully showed up wearing a tie over his t-shirt and shorts.

As de facto daughter, Mary came in for some ribbing early on, and when Tom learned she gave as good as she got, he was thrilled. They lovingly sparred for the next forty-odd years. I'm sad to say I hadn't seen him in years, but the rest of the family got to see him one last time, when he came to give his condolences two weeks ago. Like many folks, he had a wealth of James stories (which, as you can imagine, are especially appreciated right now), and he told several of them, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying. He mentioned that James and his first wife Nancy became fond of doing jigsaw puzzles together. Mom and Mary opined that James must have bored her at times, but Tom said "Nancy Mullen didn't bore. And she certainly wasn't bored by James." Brief pause. "He bored me sometimes."

That epitomizes Tom beautifully for me, him coming to offer tears, humor and comfort in equal measure to his friends. We say good bye to him on Saturday, then to James on Sunday. We're all grateful to have a chance to offer what comfort we can to a family who has been so quick to help us in similar circumstances. I'm feeling the ties of this community very deeply right now.

Random Thoughts

From Mary:

"I'm sadder than I knew I could be."

"The only way out is through."

From Mom:

"There are no arrears of love."

From Dad:

"This isn't a tragedy. It's an absurdity."

"The circle is unbroken. We're still six."

This latter I find especially comforting; though I initially felt his lack during family grace, that experience seems to have changed. I don't think Dad is just whistling in the dark. You know that feeling when you lose a tooth, and keep feeling the gap with your tongue to see if it's still there? ("Yup, tooth is still gone.") I was doing the emotional equivalent a lot last weekend; that sensation is starting to fade.

We've been clearing out James' place, Mom generally working in the morning, Mary and I working together in the afternoon. Mary said at some point that she'd never seen a space that more spoke of its inhabitant than this one. Very true. Maybe one always feels that way, but James was a collector of various things (his museum training perhaps, though it's probably a chicken-or-egg situation) so everywhere one looked there were coins, polished stones, prisms, antique cameras, swords and keys, posters of Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Tweety-bird, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models. And the hero-clicks. Holy sweet mother of god, the hero-clicks. They're key elements of one of his more byzantine games and he has them by the cartload, lovingly displayed on bakers racks and bookcases. We're bringing in a friend of his who understands such things (she used to own a store) to recommend actions to take with them. They're starting to oppress me a tad, have to say, but they'll be gone soon. Damn but there are a lot of them. Mary also said "it's weird how much stuff just becomes garbage after a loved one dies." I still find myself reluctant to throw things out that are of no use to anyone, since it still feels like James will object. He loved this stuff, won't he be annoyed if we throw it away? Oh, right.

A sweet, though occasional wrenching discovery, was the number of cards he had saved, most of them from other Laceys. It's been comforting to see words of love to him, in my handwriting. I'm grateful for the evidence that I told him how much he meant to me WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE. Yes, of course I knew I had, but it still helped to see them there, tucked into various drawers, shelves and boxes (did I mention the gazillion boxes?) throughout his place. One card that Dad had written him some years back said (I'm paraphrasing) "This is NOT a birthday card, this is just a card to remind thee how much we love thee, and how lucky we feel to have thee in the family." If I hadn't found it, I would have thought it was something Dad had written in the last week, as an attempt to make sense (hah!) of his death. It wrecks me to think of it now (and I'm not sure I did Dad a favor by showing it to him, given how it tore him up), but oh, I am glad he wrote it, and that James saved it.

As I mentioned earlier, James had a gift for connecting with older folks, especially older shy folks. I learned yesterday that when one of his ladies needed cataract surgery, James a) overcame her resistance by reminding her that her precious and hard-won independence would require the surgery, b) accompanied her to all the doctor's appointments, c) learned how to give her eye-drops, since she couldn't do them herself and d) along with Mary, housed and fed her during the necessary recuperation time such surgery required back then. This isn't the only new-to-me story I've heard recently, but knowing this woman, how shy and wary she was of adults, I know that James' sweet, relentless persistance -a quality that could drive you crazy at times - was exactly what the situation called for.

It wasn't just older folks who warmed to James so quickly; like his dad, he was a great favorite with babies and kids. Dozens of times when we were eating in a restaurant, a baby at a nearby table would take a shine to him, and spend the entirety of his/her meal smiling and gurgling at him. One of our friends remembers how sweet he was to her three little girls, saying "how many teenagers would listen so patiently to the goings on of five-, seven- and ten-year-old girls?" More than one person has mentioned James' gift for listening. To be honest, I would not have previously listed that as one of his gifts, but given the deluge of people mentioning it, it's clear it was. What do older brothers know, anyway?

I realized today that most of the people speaking about James spent more time with him as an adult than I did. As is probably clear from my memories thus far, the sweet kid (up through first year of college) is the one I knew best. In some ways that gave me a useful perspective. I would see him once or twice a year, and be able to note the ways he had come into his own just a bit more since the last time. The rest of the family, seeing him every day, couldn't always see the changes as much as I did. It's humbling and touching to realize that his friends probably knew him better than I did, or at least knew him in ways I never did. That's probably the norm more often than not, of course. I'm sure friends of my sister and parents also have insights and stories that would surprise me, but I think James probably came with more of them. Frankly that's good.

We're learning too, or relearning rather, how many people we love are part of this sad fellowship, the families who lost adult children. Mom and Dad have very close friends who are proving to be enormous help in all this, even as they both insist they don't have any answers. Mary has learned that one of her friends AND her mother-in-law each have brothers who were killed by cars on June 6th. There's a weird connection to share. I too have been buoyed up by all of you, in particular the ones who have lost loved ones. It's a club we all join eventually, I know, and everyone agrees that doesn't make it any easier.

Even as we're occasionally ambushed by strong emotions (a Joan Osborne song caught Mary and me VERY off-guard on Saturday), we are, of course, grateful for the love that is making this grief so powerful. We know things will get easier to some extent, in time. A new 'normal' will take shape eventually. We don't ever expect to stop grieving though. Nor do we want to.

First Day, Richmond

I feared it would hurt being in the place where I expect to see James around every corner. There is some of that. I already thought I saw him once, coming up the sidewalk to my sister's place, where I am staying. I keep forgetting he's dead, and making plans to do various things with him. Things pop up that trigger the thought "must tell that to James." Holding hands for grace the first time at dinner last night, when it was just four of us, was a punch to the gut I hadn't predicted. The circle was just different. I could feel it. Apparently Saturday night, both Cleo the cat and Fang the dog sensed something was amiss too. Quite uncharacteristically they followed Mom and Dad up to bed that night. Neither of them stayed for long, but they seemed to need to tuck the folks in. For Fang in particular, going upstairs (where baths happen!) is VERY unusual.

Being surrounded by people who knew and loved James, though, makes a big difference. Brian came to be with me on Saturday, and it wasn't until he was there that I realized how helpful it was to have someone to talk to who actually knew and liked James. Here of course, there are hordes of them. It just so happens quite a few of them had seen James in the last week. More than one person has identified James as his/her best friend. College professors, retirees, gaming pals, former co-workers, men, women of all ages have described him as their 'buddy' a lot. His contagious happiness, kindness and forgiving spirit has been mentioned several times, independent of the obituary Dad wrote (see below).

There have been funny stories too, as there should be. Mom says her most vivid memory of him presently is his face turning bright red from laughter, sometimes having to run into the kitchen to spit when he'd been caught unprepared by a comment. Another friend, one who keeps a curse jar (ten cents a letter, apparently), told about a time when she was recounting to James some mistreatment she'd suffered at the hands of a former spouse. Suddenly James began rooting around in his pants pocket, pulled out a handful of change, threw it in the jar and yelled "asshole!"

We've also, in the most affectionate manner, been able to do a bit of laughing AT James too. We've all acknowledged how he could sometimes just BORE YOUR FACE OFF, when he got going on the minutiae of some new game, or documentary he'd seen (one involving sea turtles was particularly memorable), a favorite TV show or god only knows what. The man remembered detail. Dear GOD he remembered detail. It was heartbreaking to see when he knew he was losing his audience, clearly not know what to do -- so he'd talk faster. James had something called pressed speech, which meant he was prone to speaking so quickly he was indecipherable. At its most extreme he would simply leave syllables out, in his need for speed. He was always quick to offer assistance in any way he could, sometimes offering it two, three, or EIGHT MILLION TIMES. He never took offense at the refusals though.

Hearing about the joy he brought other people though, at the lift they always felt when they ran into him, while not surprising, is balm to my vague fears about whether he was truly happy. Being in his environment, around people who knew him in different ways than me, I'm remembering that yes, he really was that happy, straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy. And on the subject of the kissing: I've learned that James began the habit back in 2005 when Dad suffered his second, more frightening heart attack. There is even more comfort in that habit now; James had breakfast with Mom and Dad on Saturday, then he took some stuff to the dump for them, as a favor. Before he left, as always, he hugged and kissed them both. That expression of love is their last contact with him. I guess I can say the same thing, even if my hug and kiss was back in December. And yes Jeaux, we are maintaining that tradition.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, we had some of the birthday cake last night. We all agreed it was one of the best ones Mom ever made. I'm glad we didn't stomp on it.

Tomorrow the four of us will tackle his apartment.

Below is an exerpt of the obituary Dad wrote for the local paper.

"Our beloved and loving son and brother, he was a man of principle, a gentle, generous man, and a staunch dependable friend to many, always ready to help others in the most practical ways. He knew how to care for others. he had a great capacity for happiness and brought happiness to others, and he knew how to forgive hurts. His wit was quick and always kind. We cherished his company and will cherish his memory all our lives."

James

My brother James officially turned 41 on Thursday, but we were going to celebrate on Sunday (I was going to attend by phone). Saturday morning he was killed in a collision. Mom had just taken his birthday cake out of the oven when she got the news.

I don't know what happened to the cake. I'm a bit afraid to ask. I just know that if my sister got her way, they threw it in the backyard that evening, then she and Dad took turns stomping on it. Mom might have joined in. Not sure what Tony would do.

(Christmas, 2002?)

My baby brother (which is the only was I am able to think of him presently) never knew a stranger. As a more reserved person who has spent the last twenty years living in cities, it sometimes made me nervous to witness him strike up conversations with anybody, anywhere, at any time. Sometimes people were put off by it; even with familiar folks, James didn't always read his audience well. But he was just as likely to end up having a warm lively chat with a new friend. Frankly, given how sensitive, even thin-skinned James could be, I have to assume he got this response far more often than not. Perhaps he tapped into the ethos of our hometown more effectively than the rest of us. Even with a population of 40,000, Richmond can still feel like a small town, and James was very much at home in it. He knew how to talk to people. He bantered cheerfully with middle-aged guys at the gym. At one point one of his bowling buddies was a woman in her sixties. (Mary and James in the kitchen at Ragoora, Co. Sligo)

Actually he had a special rapport with little old ladies. More than one lady living alone came to depend on him for weekly drives to the grocery store. James loved to drive. From day one, we all knew he would be behind the wheel as soon as it was legal. Mom joked that he came out of the womb clutching a matchbox car in each hand (I don't want to imagine what that would feel like). I still see him, as a four year old, using a Frisbee, paper plate or any flat round thing he found as a steering wheel. Had he actually been behind a wheel back then he would have been only turning donuts, since 'steering' at the time seemed to mean constantly turning corners. At a very early age he could identify makes and models of cars. I still can't do that. Even back then poor James would start to tell me the finer qualities of a vehicle and it was as if he was blowing a dog whistle for all the sense I got out of it.

I suppose it's possible he was making shit up though. Around that same time, if any plane passed overhead, he'd look up and exclaim, "hey, private jet!" He wasn't trying to fool anyone; he honestly believed every single freakin' plane he saw was owned by some tycoon. It used to drive me apeshit.

(Atop Knocknarea (noc na RAY), Co. Sligo 2002)

(James and Mary, Knocknarea, 1993)

James loved board and role-playing games of all kinds. Sadly for him, he was born into a family of people who hated such things. As a teen and adult he managed to find a large circle of friends who shared his passion, but he'd still try at regular intervals to rope one or more of us in. By funny coincidence, I've found myself playing games with friends more in the last couple of years, especially the last six months, and enjoying myself quite a bit. I was a little wary of opening the floodgates, but had planned on accepting James' offer at least a few times, when I went to visit in August.

I can't think of anything I'd like to do more right now, than play a game of Scrabble with my baby brother.

(Myrtle Beach, 1998)

In the summer of 1993, we decided to take a family vacation for the first time in at least five years. The three children were all adults, I was living in Seattle, but Mom and Dad had spent most of the previous Spring in a farmhouse in County Sligo, Eire,they had become chummy with many of the local farmers, as well as their landlord and his wife and they just had to show us. So off we went. While there was a glitch or two in housing five strong-willed adults in one small Irish farmhouse, the magic of the place touched us all, and we had a fantastic time. We ended up taking family vacations a few more times to other locations after that, heading back to Ragoora (as the farmhouse is known) together in the Fall of 2002. For reasons that presently escape me, Mary, James and I got in the habit of buying the same (or similar) article of clothing before each trip. One year it was green shorts. Another it was hats that made us all look like Chico Marx. I still have mine. Another year it was straw hats. And one year (see above) it was Hawaiian shirts. I still have that too. Funnily enough, once you have a Hawaiian shirt, opportunities to wear it start to pop up. The Chico Marx hat, not so much.

James was a big fan of hats. Most of them were rather dashing, but as he got older he got more willing to court the ridiculous. He had one fur-lined job that (especially if it wore it with his greatcoat) made him look like he was off to patrol the Swiss border. He was also fond of brightly colored converse sneakers. Mary once pointed out that when James went off to the gym, he usually looked like Neapolitan gelato; a bright orange t-shirt might top red shorts, and be finished off with purple sneakers. He also liked bow ties, and would wear one that had belonged to our maternal grandfather to special occasions. Like most kids, James preferred to blend in as much as possible; for that reason I liked watching his rather eccentric style form over the last twenty years. It seemed to me he was carving space out for himself in ways I would have never predicted.

(Mary and Tony's Wedding, 2006)

("Shake the Bunny!" Laceyland 199?)

(Christmas 2002. We all got PJ's)

James also had an abiding love for Tweety-bird. I don't really get that one either. If you look at pictures of him as a little kid, he looks a bit like Tweety-bird, frankly. Some might even see a resemblance now. Whatever the cause, he loved that bird, and managed to find some weird memorabilia related to it. I was particularly impressed by him finding -and using, like, in public- a Tweety-bird bowling ball. In the last year he was part of a team where he was the only non-Jehovah's Witness. They would have lively discussions about evolution and such things while bowling. For some reason the image of James getting up from a debate about a literal interpretation of the Bible, say, to throw his Tweety-bird at some pins makes me really, really happy. I think those guys were devoted to James, even while they despaired of his everlasting soul.

(Christmas 1989. Sybil always knew which was her best side.)

(With Lilly 1985)

(With Fang, 2002)
James inherited the Lacey love for animals, with a special mention for dogs. Like me, he spent some time earning money as a dog walker and pet sitter, expanding his network of canine and feline friends outside the family circle. When we wandered about town, he was just as likely to be warmly greeted by a four-legged friend as by a human one.

Fang seemed to have a special fondness for smooching James on the face. We theorized that the bristly texture of his beard reminded her of her mother. Dad's curly, full beard doesn't have the same dog-muzzle quality. I speak from experience, having been regularly kissed by them both.

Dad has always been an affectionate guy, and though we had to weather some shoals during my adolescence, we came out the other side still able to hug and kiss one another. There was a period where I wondered if James indulged us, the kissing in particular, because he knew it was important to us, but given his preference, we might have been a bit more mainstream manly in our expressions of affection. If that were ever the case, though, it clearly stopped being true a few years back. At that point James made a point of kissing and hugging every single one of us after every meal we shared together (he'd thoughtfully save the dog and cat for after the humans). I don't know what prompted him to start and maintain that ritual. I wonder if he adopted it as a reminder to savor every moment, to cherish the time he had with each of us. It came to mean a lot to me (though I never said anything to him about it) since I'm the only Lacey who lives far away, making family time a rare and special thing.

( Christmas, year ??)

(By Yeats' grave, Co. Sligo, 2002)
So far my three days of grieving seem each to have had a theme. Saturday I was an incoherent, watery mess, pacing about trying to find something to do, by which I mean, make James not be dead. Yesterday I refused to believe it was true, and dove into a staged reading, grateful for an involved task and some human contact. Today, have to say, the regrets, even guilt, are starting to make an appearance. I'm brooding on missed opportunities. I'm wondering if James knew, REALLY knew I loved him. I wondered often over the years if James was happy. He was the family member I was least able to read, and I think the rest of the family felt the same way. Sometimes I thought he was just a straightforward kind of guy; other times I thought he played things close to the vest, keeping sorrows and fears deeply buried.

There were also ways in which he, poor guy, could never escape being the youngest, I think. It was always easy to dismiss, even snap at him, in a way that the four of us would never dream of doing to one another. I keep replaying the tentative expression on his face and tone of his voice when he would invite me to play risk or go bowling, already half-steeled for the 'no' he knew he was likely to hear, wanting me to know he wasn't hurt or disappointed by my refusal.

No, don't worry, I'm not going to wallow in this. Regrets and guilt are useless emotions, and most of the time they're self-indulgent. I know this is one of those times. There is nothing to be gained from self-flagellation, so I won't. I'm just accepting that this is part of the process. This is today's theme.

To be honest, I'm not sure I believe in an after-life, but like my sister, I am deriving great comfort from the fact that James did. He firmly believed that after death you were reunited with all your loved ones, including the dogs. I picture James driving in the mustang he coveted, or maybe flying his private jet, carting his beloved little old ladies and dogs all over creation, stopping off for treats and a game of scrabble whenever they want.

Oh, James. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit. I miss thee. I hope thee's happy, but I wish thee was here.

(Ox Mountain, Co. Sligo, 1993)

James Andrew Lacey

June 4th, 1968 to June 6th, 2009

Pedestrian Broadway

This last weekend, two stretches of Broadway in midtown were closed to traffic. The situation will be reexamined at a later date, but at this point the goal is for this to be a permanent change. Stop by Father Tony's blog, if you haven't already, for his thoughts and video footage.

This news makes me very happy for a number of reasons. For one thing, you know what this means? Mayor Michael Bloomberg reads my blog! I suggested something along these lines a couple of years ago, and look at that, it happened! I'm just tickled. Okay, maybe the Mayor doesn't read me, but obviously someone on his staff must, and saw to it that my idea got presented to the movers and shakers. I could claim that I deserve some sort of remuneration, some sort of intellectual property fee, but you know what, I'm just so happy to have the policy in place, I don't care about money. Let this just my contribution to the city, a small way I fulfill my duties as a citizen. No, I don't need payment, but maybe a small plaque prominently displayed somewhere, and perhaps a small tax write-off? Doesn't that seem fair?

Okay, kidding aside, I really am thrilled with this new step, in part because it's actually much more ambitious than the idea I floated two years ago. I was sure that the cult of the automobile was far too strong to allow something like a promenade in midtown to be anything but a temporary, holiday arrangement, AND I assumed that if it happened at all, it would be someplace a little less central, like 9th or 10th avenues. It's not just cynicism that led me to that mindset. When I lived in Seattle, a walking street (the Westlake Mall) covering ONE CITY BLOCK was the cause of a great deal of protest, mostly from the businesses affected, who were sure they would lose customers if people could no longer park right outside the store doors. For all I know, the businesses might even have been right. Seattle, at least back then (early to mid '90s), was rather weird on the subject of transportation. All these people who spent their free time hiking, camping, skiing and biking(the place is just crawling with gorgeous calf muscles) nonetheless resisted most things that would get them out of their cars. Light rail proposals continually got voted down, even campaigns to get people to CARPOOL were resisted. For all its (somewhat deserved) stance as a green city, maintaining the right to drive around in one's car was fiercely protected. I don't remember how long Westlake stayed closed to traffic (and did I mention it was ONE BLOCK OF ONE STREET?), but eventually a big chain store made its purchase of a local space contingent on having the block re-opened, and re-opened it was. (I will say that when I visited Seattle back in 2007, for the first time in twelve years, I was pleased to find that a light rail system had been constructed, and was being expanded. Times have changed for all of us, I guess.)

The town I grew up in, Richmond, Indiana, also had a promenade, one with an interesting history I won't go into here, built in 1968. It was the 'downtown' of my childhood (as opposed to 'across town' or 'the east side' where all the strip malls were). A few years back a campaign to re-open this stretch to traffic was finally successful. The argument, as I understand it, was that the economy of the city was tanking, so a way to kick start things again was, yes, to make it possible for people to drive right up to the front doors of the stores down there. What ended up happening is kind of a worst-of-both-worlds, with the walking street not removed, but narrowed, and a two lane road opened to cars. Funnily enough this didn't have the magical effect of rejuvenating the area. The town contined to tank; stores continued to go out of business. The area is mostly a ghost town now, but at least you can drive - very, very slowly - through it.

So, this knowledge, combined with an awareness that previous attempts to tax or limit traffic in midtown had been shot down, led me to assume that something like this could never happen in New York. Obviously it's early days yet. There may be a successful resistance to the idea. But having experienced some beautiful walking streets elsewhere in the world (most notably Copenhagen, Boulder, CO and Ithaca, NY) I am now cautiously hopeful that a majority of folks here will find the change a distinct improvement. Certainly our national attitude towards fuel, transportation, and ecology is undergoing a change. I'm encouraged by the study that suggests traffic in Midtown might be quicker and more efficient as a result of closing Broadway. It makes some sense; Broadway cuts across the grid at an angle, so it's usually turning simple intersections into three-way nightmares. With cars taken off it, there is reason to believe the grid will be more efficient.

Obviously I understand people with physical challenges will need to be accomodated, but I can't imagine the previous situation had been all the convenient for them either. Driving on Broadway has always been problematic. All the cross streets remain open to cars still, so getting dropped off close to one's destination should still be available to those who need it. The pedi-cabs also seem to have multiplied in the area. No idea if that is a good thing or not, just yet. We'll see. Over all though, I'm really pleased by this change, and pleased to have my pessimism refuted for once.

iPhone Artwork

Okay, so maybe I still can't stand the word 'ap', but I did have a chance last night to see a cool one in action. Marc, the artist/illustrator I met at the Draw-a-thon invited me to pose for his drawing group last night. Everyone who attended is a working illustrator or illustration student, and the level of skill and talent was impressive. It was an inspiring environment too; it looked like one of those Italian villas people are always renting in Henry James novels (okay, so it was a former schoolhouse, with fourteen foot pressed-tin ceilings in Williamsburg, but I still felt like I was in Wings of the Dove). For the final hour long pose, Marc switched from colored pencil and paper (old school) to his phone (cutting edge, baby!). If you go here you can see not only the image, but you can also see a short video of the process. Scroll down for more artwork, including another iPhone sketch and video. I'm particularly fond of the pencil sketch of his sleeping wife a bit further down.


I have to say, just in the last year the art modeling has gotten me into some of the coolest spaces in the five boroughs: rescued mansions, 19th century renovated school rooms, the occasional church; oh wait, the churches were usually for rehearsals, not art modeling. So I wasn't always naked in those settings. Not always.


ANYway, go see Marc's iPhone sketches; apparently David Hockney has taken Marc's lead.


I'm still not gonna say 'ap'.

Random Bits and Pieces

In no particular order:

I realize this ship has probably sailed, but do you think we could maybe, just maybe, reconsider the word 'ap'? Those who know me well know I have no problem with word abbreviations per se, or even with making up new words. Shakespeare made up plenty of them, and I figure if one catches on, it's because it fills a need. I'm just having a bit of a problem with this one. I know I shouldn't. I mean, if it doesn't bother any of you that you sound like a barking Pekinese when mentioning your iphones' features, it shouldn't bother me, right? I'll work on that. I will probably have to continue muting the iphone commercials, leaping with a yelp on the remote when I hear the first line ('don't say ap!') for a while though.

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My building super recently planted marigolds, impatiens and a new silver linden in one of the two plots in front of our building. Back on election day of 2006 the city planted trees all along this street. I didn't know what had prompted it, but I was pleased. The linden to the north has been there ever since, unscathed and seemingly healthy. For reasons I've never ascertained, however, the spot to the south has never fared as well. The tree that went in yesterday afternoon is the third one to occupy that spot. The other two were each cut down or vandalized.

As you can see, the super is taking no chances this time. Enlarge the image below if you want a closer look at the elaborate structure that has been put in place to protect the tree and flowers. There's a wooden pen enclosing the tree; serious mesh has been added to the short metal guards, and wire has been strung liberally over the top, all in an attempt not only to keep tree cutters at bay, but also to keep dogs out of the flowers. It's hideous, of course. But I totally see the need. I thanked him for doing all this extra work. Maybe once the tree has taken, and reached a certain size, it will no longer need the protective cage. I just hope its greater security doesn't wind up turning the attention of vandals to the other tree. It's been left alone this long, I hope it stays that way.

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Yesterday I had a free day, and the weather was about as close to perfect as I could get it. Sunny, breezy, cool enough to enjoy walking, warm enough to sit outside happily. I wanted to get some stuff from one of my favorite plant stores at 96th (on the Upper West Side), but stopped off first at one of my favorite bagel places. (I lived in this neighborhood for a while back in '97-'98, which is why I have so many favorites in the area.) I took my sandwich up to Riverside Park, to sit by a fountain I'm fond of. It's a pleasant space for a number of reasons. Everything is made from cool white marble, including the benches, and the large pool is equally enticing to children and dogs, though I've only seen the latter actually climb in. The trees around it, along with the mist and the marble, keep it cool even in hot weather.

But those aren't the only reasons I love it.

The fountain is part of a monument honoring fire fighters, and I'm all in favor of that. What caught my attention though was the fountain itself. Here, take a closer look.

Know who that is? That's one of the guises of Dionysus, and not just any old guise; that isn't the jolly drunk guy, it's not even the beautiful youth, that is him at his pre-Olympian, consort-of-the-great-goddess, let's-all-go-have-sex-outdoors, ecstatic best. He's got the face and teeth of a lion. He's got bull's horns. He's wearing grape leaves, just in case there were any question of who he was. He's roaring. There is nothing decorous, contained or civilized about this fellow. When I see this image, I think of the recurring description of Aslan throughout the Narnia books: "you know, he's not a tame lion." Neither is this guy; he is the life force at its randiest, and most joyful.

I can't for the life of me guess why the sculptor/architect chose this image on a fountain dedicated to fire fighters lost in the line of duty. Frankly I'd think fire fighters might have appreciated someone a little less, oh, I don't know, out there on their monument, but I'm probably making too much about it. I wonder if the sculptor simply saw this image on an older fountain, liked it, and decided to borrow it. For all I know this is a very traditional fountain image, like Poseidon and dolphins. Just because I've never seen this image out of context before doesn't mean it doesn't get used all the time, with all the ferocity removed, like fat cupids on St. Valentine's Day cards. I am not claiming any kind of subversive paganism was deliberately injected into the sculpture.

I just like that that was the result. Or it has been for me anyway. Whenever I stop by for a visit (occasionally throwing a penny into the water) I give the fire fighters their due, of course. But I'll say hello to Old Bromios too.

Meta Blog: Disappointing Expectations

I don't know about you other bloggers, but I've had almost as much fun with the blog counter as I have with the blog itself. I'm still learning how to analyze all the information it provides, mostly I just think it's cool to look at a world map with little markers of all the places people have stopped by for a visit. I can't claim they all stay to read the posts where they land though; it's often quite clear that what I've written was not actually what the google searchers (or 'googlers' if you will) were looking for. Usually I don't think I can be held accountable; it can be wild what gets some people to my site. Someone recently was looking for what Bruce Chatwin said about Donegal. I mention Chatwin in one entry, Donegal in another, so Bob's your uncle. The photos of my aloe plants are very popular, for some reason, and it's not just one person stopping by for multiple visits, not unless she's an international traveler. Right now it's a toss up which of two searches are my favorite for randomness. It's either 'cretan wildcat' or 'good gay, bad gay effeminate'. Actually, both of those searchers may have actually appreciated what I said on their respective subjects, now that I think of it. But many of these searches, whoo boy, I cannot be blamed if they bring people to my site.

Some of the misfires, I will take some blame for. I was unaware, for example, that dragonfly stories are some kind of genre; I don't what defines them exactly (gonna stop by wikipedia later, I guess), but it's clear from many of the searches that people have something specific in mind when they come looking. As it happens, I have two entries entitled Dragonfly Story (I and II, natch), and they both continue to get a steady stream of (I assume mildly disgruntled) visitors almost a year after they were posted. In my defense, dragonflies do figure in both stories, but I doubt I'm observing the rules of the genre. So my bad, but I'm not losing any sleep over this one, since I think it's safe to assume anyone who landed there turned up a whole lot of other hits that gave them what they wanted.

Some of the false expectations, however, are not of my construction. A few weeks back, for example, my steady trickle of visitors suddenly more than tripled in number. I was at a loss to explain why, until friends Java and the Midnight Gardener enlightened me. It turns out another friend had seen a portrait of me hanging in a local art gallery, and mentioned it on his very popular blog. Besides the portrait of me, the post also mentioned visiting a renovated sex club. Having the words 'sex club' in the title probably didn't hurt. Now maybe I am misunderstanding what brought my visitors from Tony's blog, but I strongly suspect they were hoping for something a bit more sexy or racy than, well, a chipper post about Patrick taking a happy jaunt, hippity-hop, to Fort Tryon Park. But that's what was waiting for them there. There were pictures too, but they were of flowers, in particular heather, because I do loves me some heather. The spike in readership lasted for about three days, before things dropped back down to my previous average, so I don't think I won over a whole lot of new people. Next time I'm showing skin on this blog though, I'll be sure to contact Tony.

That was maybe the most amusing example of disappointed expectations, but it was pretty quickly explained. There's another one that perplexed me much longer. Almost at the beginning of this blog (way back in April of ought 6, it was), I wrote a short, very silly little entry that for some reason regularly got hits, and recently has been growing in popularity. At the moment it is the fourth most popular post on my blog, actually. And it's just not that clever or interesting, so I really hadn't a clue what was going on there. It was the first time I specifically mentioned the blogging juggernaut that is Joe.My.God, so if I thought about it at all, I figured people who found themselves there had googled him, and for reasons of their own decided to go WAY down their list of hits. Not much of an explanation, really, but it was the best I could do.

Then I realized that the comments on posts show up in google searches. Ah, that made things much more clear. I had written this one back before blogger made it so ridiculously easy to create links in one's posts that even a computing knuckle-dragger such as myself could create them, and the subject of the post, while actually about how and why I love Joe.My.God, spent a certain amount of time bemoaning the fact that I was reduced to writing out the entire addresses, rather than creating elegant links that don't break the flow of the text. So Brian, ever helpful, particularly on subjects computer and internet, kindly wrote a detailed explanation of how one created links writing the html code. The oh so random example he chose, THAT was the magic phrase that was drawing random strangers to that entry. Since I'm trying NOT to torment these people further, I'm not going to write what the magic phrase was, but you can go see for yourself. Hell, if you know Brian, you can probably make an educated guess.

Now, I didn't feel too badly about getting people's hopes up on this issue either, since again, I assumed their google searches too were turning up more satisfying hits. The thing is, not only is it getting hit more often of late, for some reason this baby has also gone international in a BIG way. More and more the visitors are coming from non-English speaking countries, many of which consider the search topic involved to be criminal behavior. It's even possible just doing the google search is illegal in some parts. So if people are taking that kind of risk, and hell, probably typing one-handed while they do it, I feel bad for misleading them, and boring them on top of it. One poor bastard even had the whole thing translated, just to make sure he wasn't missing anything good. And he really, really wasn't.

So, while I don't mean to suggest my blog has any great clout on the world stage, I think I will be taking that post. It just seems cruel.

Defining Terms

There were, and probably will continue to be, many undigested thoughts about homemaking after I posted the last entry. As I mentioned, both Joanna and Marta are doing the job, living the vocation, with people depending on them, whereas my thoughts are more theoretical still. (My roommate was VERY pleased with the clean kitchen yesterday though. And I can now see the surfaces of both my computer and work desks.) So these are just some disconnected, unformed thoughts I'm presently grappling with, and striving to make sense of. Normally I'd do more of this on my own, but for now I seem to need to bounce my thoughts off the larger blogosphere. You've been warned; proceed at your own discretion.

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An important thing I've learned living with roommates is, home is an archetypal concept. This means everyone has very strong, deep, personal definitions for the term, and -this is key, follow me closely here- we often mistakenly assume everyone else has the SAME DEFINITION. That's where the trouble often starts.

Let me give an example. After college my first living situation was with four friends in a big house. My friend B and I were in agreement that the dinner dishes were to be done after dinner. What it took us a while to discover was, we each had a different understanding of WHEN DINNER WAS OVER. B had grown up in a household where one snatched the dishes off the table the instant the last bite was taken, preferably while still chewing. I grew up in a household where finishing up dinner was a protracted affair of general family time; second cups of tea were drunk, stories and conversations were allowed to end naturally in a sedate manner. Do you see the conflict in the making? Neither did we. Back in the group house, when it was B's turn to wash the dishes, I assumed she was snatching the plates out from under our masticating jaws because she had other things she wanted to do when the dishes were done. Initially B thought I was dawdling over the end of the meal when it was my turn to do the dishes in a passive-aggressive attempt to get someone else to do them for me. B figured out the problem before she ever said anything to me about it; I suspect I wouldn't have had a clue anything was up if she hadn't told me what her thinking had been. She came to see that I did, in fact, get the dishes done, usually only about ten minutes later than she would have (but ten minutes is an eternity, when you think someone is waiting you out), and more importantly, she realized, and revealed to me, that there were unspoken assumptions we each had about how these things were to be done. We didn't merely have different approaches, we were previously unaware that there WERE OTHER APPROACHES.

Generally when we decide to live with another person or two, we have probably asked ourselves the big questions about group living (smoking or non, drinking or non, noise-levels, and yes, cleaning issues), but there are likely to be a host of unconscious assumptions that won't become conscious (assuming they ever do) until they've generated conflicts. Cleaning is perhaps the biggest arena for these conflicts, perhaps because clean is an equally archetypal (deeply personal) concept. On the Felix-to-Oscar Scale, I probably fall somewhere in the middle, closer to Felix on the dirt front, closer to Oscar on the clutter front, with fluctuations usually related to my mood and unorthodox schedule; one can often map the progress of a play or project in my life, for example, by looking at my residence; the deeper I am in the project, the worse the clutter is. Tech week, it will look like a paper and clothing bomb went off in the place. So in my position as a clean-continuum 3 (which I think is akin to a Kinsey 3) I have been the Oscar making some clean-freak unhappy, but I've also been the Felix wondering why it's so damn hard to hang your coat up in the closet once in a while. Initially I felt that the person with the most rigid views of cleanliness got to set the standards, because, well, clean is just more virtuous, right? Cleaner is always better, and it's unfair for slobs to make other people live amidst their messes, right? It's inconsiderate, disrespectful even, a way of dominating a space unfairly.

I think I'm still more of that mind than not, but over the years I've come to the conclusion that in every group living situation, an understanding of what 'clean' means has to be made explicit. It needs to be discussed, and yes, compromises have to be reached. Maybe the slobby shmoes need to do more of the adjusting, especially in shared spaces, but if a viable, working system is going to be created, the clean-freaks may have to shift some too.

There are nuances to this situation in a heterosexual arrangement that I have witnessed, but obviously haven't experienced (or again, I have played every role, with both male and female roommates). Women are more likely to fear being judged by others if the place is less than pristine, while men will fear ridicule if their places seems too clean or 'interior decorated'. Be honest, which one did you consider more manly, Oscar or Felix? Who got portrayed as ridiculous more often? Who was more likely to be the butt of the joke? Which one seemed fussy and effeminate, which are, of course, the worst things you can call a guy? A man is also likely to play the Ignorance Card, thus making it a struggle for the woman between teaching her caveman how to mope the floor correctly --perhaps having to stand over him the whole time-- or just doing it herself.

So experience has taught me that terms need to be defined, sometimes in detail that can seem ridiculous, in each new living arrangement if a truly equitable arrangement is going to be achieved. My recent living arrangements have often come with significantly lower expectations. More than one person has commented over the years that this apartment 'is surprisingly clean for two guys living together." Societal double standards still give us an A for effort; if we avoid living in a junk heap, with bacteria the size of beagles frisking about the place, we get the good housekeeping seal of approval (and yes, it's almost always been women making this observation). We benefit from lower expectations, but I can't help but wonder if that's not the way to go in most situations. Both Joanna and Marta point out that throughout history showcase homes -even middle class ones- often have involved paid servants to do much of the work. It's interesting to note that I am presently typing in what was almost certainly the maid's quarters in this apartment. I live in Harlem, in a building built in 1909. This apartment has five rooms, including this tiny space. In both Dickens and Austen one will find examples of families who are considered destitute, but still have a live-in servant. Our standards of what is possible may need some serious adjusting.

In this vein, just as it's better to commit to a three-times-a-week exercise regimen (that one actually keeps) as opposed to an every day arrangement (that will never, ever, ever happen), so it's better to have a standard of clean that everyone involved understands and will maintain. Discussions like this may also help unearth what just isn't negotiable. If you find you can't agree on a minimum, it's better to find out before the conflicts start, right? With roommates this sort of thing can be a make-or-break situation, while with lovers and partners, my limited experience tells me a much more complex arrangement gets created, with a delicate balance spanning across many levels of homemaking. Maybe he seems to be INCAPABLE OF PUTTING HIS DIRTY SOCKS IN THE HAMPER LIKE A GROWN-UP, but he always has dinner waiting for me when I get home, and listens when I talk about my day, so let's call it even. I guess this touches again on the distinction I draw between homemaking and housekeeping.

It's funny to realize that in all my babbling on, I'm still not getting at the question of homemaking as vocation, which is the issue at the center of all this for me, and I think my fellow bloggers. Over the years I've certainly written more than one entry about how quotidian tasks have taken on a deeper significance -and pleasure- for me, becoming paths to meditation. Cleaning, or preparing a meal can often be a way for me to immerse myself in real life, when my brain has gone into the stratosphere. All that seems very self-directed though, or at least highly internal. It's vocation as connection with self, or the divine. I guess what I'm starting to explore, ever so ineptly, is how my home can be an arena for relating to others. I've been better at that in the past, but I'm out of practice. I'll get back to you on that.


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My sister recounted a childhood experience to me not long ago; she was maybe six or seven years old, and was seeing a male playmate out the door one day, taking him past Mom reading in the living room. Before he left, the kid looked around the house and observed, "your mom doesn't clean much, does she?" After he left, Mom called Mary over to remind her that cleaning wasn't just the mom's job, that it was the responsibility of everyone who lived there. Even at that age, Mary felt Mom was preaching to the choir; she also remembers thinking her obnoxious friend should have noticed the smell of something delicious cooking for dinner. I haven't even begun to excavate all the reasons I love this story.