Extreme Something

“In our family, when we don’t know what to do, we have a cup of coffee. When we don’t know what to think, we write.” Words I once wrote in Iguanas.

Well, I’m doing both.

The coffee is next to my computer. But where is Anders Behring Breivik, the source of my confusion and need to write?

In Oslo, awaiting sentencing.

You remember the guy—the extremist who blew up a government building in Oslo, drove to Utoya, crossed by boat to the island, and shot up and killed 60 students involved in a political youth camp. It happened on a Friday in July, 2011. I was at “work”—quotation marks because I was really just waiting to be laid off, and hence doing nothing. So I devoted the day to reading the news of the atrocities as it came in.

Madness or evil, I wondered at the time.

And it’s a case where knowing more means understanding less. Two court-ordered psychiatric evaluations have been done—they disagree. The first stated he was psychotic—both at the time of the killings and at the time of the evaluation. The second report claims he’s sane. The trial has just ended, and it riveted Norway. Sentencing will be on or before August 24.

The prosecution claims he’s crazy—and with good reason. Norway’s jails focus on rehabilitation—but they really mean it, unlike the US. (One-third of black American males between 20 and 50 are in prison? Ouch!)* Oh, and maximum sentence length in Norway is “only” 21 years. Breivik is 33—that means he’d be in his mid-fifties when he got out. Still time to do some real damage. Some more real damage, I mean….

The other problem is the other prisoners. The concern is that Breivik could start spouting off his militant anti-Islamic rhetoric, and form right-wing cells (sorry, couldn’t help it) in prison. So the Norwegians—bless them—are seriously considering putting him is isolation. But there’s a problem—it denies him his basic human rights. So, with paradoxically the same logical-to-the-edge-of-craziness that characterizes Breivik, the authorities are proposing to hire “friends” who will come in several times a day to…

…play chess with him.

(It’s a digression but I can’t help it. Does anyone remember Laura Hernández who got stuck in a Dominican jail for a couple of years? And the jail, with the dirt floors and no food—the family had to bring that in….)

OK—prosecution says he’s crazy. Defense says he’s sane. Anders argues—among other things (apparently he wrote a 1500 page manifesto—remember Mein Kampf?—that lays it all out)—that this violence was a necessary wake-up call to Norway. Their culture, their very identity is under attack! No, not openly—but slowly, insidiously by you-know-who, the folks in the burkas and the head shawls.

Hey, sorry, but someone had to do it.

Well—Norwegian thoroughness. I spent some time—though admittedly as a kid—in Norway. Norwegian women—charmers! Norwegian men?

Well, guys, just a little…

…dull.

But organized. And Breivik was that—renting the farm, buying the six tons of fertilizer needed for his bomb, laying the groundwork for what he hoped would be his message to the world. He may have had a thinking disorder, but clearly not a planning disorder.

But sane?

There was an accepted standard in 19^th century British law for determining legal sanity: would the prisoner have committed the same actions if he had had a policeman standing next to him? (Think it was Burke’s Rule—damn, wish I had Internet!)

Well, Breivik called the Norwegian police twice from Utoya, attempting to surrender. The police, for whatever reason, blew him off. So he kept wandering around the island, killing kids.

OK—so he’s sane. 21 years of playing chess with paid friends and he’s out. What happens if he’s declared insane? 

Paradoxically, because in Norway some psychiatric disorders are considered incurable, Breivik could be held for the rest of his life in a psychiatric unit. So it’s 21 years in prison if sane, potentially life in a madhouse if he’s nuts.

Well, in Puerto Rico we might see it in another way. I once, in an unthinking moment, confessed that I was suicidal to a student.

“Ah,” she said. “That just means you’re not listening to God. And do you know why! You have a demonio! I know, my sister-in-law had one!”

It was therapeutic, actually. Made me so mad I stopped being depressed….

OK—maybe extreme. But one does get the feeling—since psychiatry seems to tell us so little here—that we should turn elsewhere.

Like where Breivik turned? Because he’s an arch-Christian (my apologies to Christians, who could rightly argue that he’s anything but!). But no matter, it could indeed be that there is malevolence, as there is madness. Seventy dead kids is a pretty strong argument for evil.

As well, there’s the real question—does it matter? Sane / insane—who cares? What does it matter why he did it? Stick him somewhere—anywhere!—and forget about him! Sure, Norway is a rich country—but the rich don’t stay rich by spending foolishly. Like hiring chess players for killers….

No good answers, here. So then the question becomes…

…have we asked the right questions?

*No, dammit, I haven’t checked this fact—no Internet. But it’s something outrageous….

The Climate Inside and Out

Rain, today, and at last. It’s been the second driest June in history—day after day of unrelenting heat, and milky blue clouds (the result of Saharan dust in the upper atmosphere.)

It’s a relief. After cold and rain in both Wisconsin and London, I was ready for hot and dry. Well, it’s the old story: the gods punish us by giving us what we want….

The inner climate has turned as well. I revisited the piece of music—and the writing that went with it—that haunted me in the first week of March.

The d minorPiano Concerto of Brahms. 

It was—like Winterreise and the late quartets of Beethoven—music that I’d been waiting to get into. And like the other works, it’s not conventionally pretty music. 

Nor was my experience with it pretty. I willed myself to go back to that moment of madness—my first panic attack in December of 2011.

Why? Is it rational to revisit the irrational? Wouldn’t a sane person do anything to avoid a return to the world of utter insanity?

Can’t say. I could tell you that I had to go back to see it from the other side—the other side being sanity. Or I could say I had to master my fear that the madness would return by tempting the gods, daring them to fling me into the whirlpool again. I could say I had no choice.

Possibly true, all of the above. None of them feels right.

I only knew, that first week of March (also the first week of Lent) that I was operating on blind faith—and the love and faith of a sister in Tobago. And Raf, who worried silently all throughout the period.

OK—site and setting. El Morro, the oldest of the four remaining fortifications the Spaniards built. It’s built—as is its sister in Havana—at the mouth of the harbor. It’s huge. It is not—by design—inviting. It was early morning—seven, perhaps—and raining / overcast.

And yes, for the fifty minutes that Brahms takes to finish his struggle I took to finish mine. I went back—I was on the same road (though technically not) as I had been. True, there were no cars speeding past me.

There were lashes.

I was being scourged, whipped…and purified.

I came home and wrote the experience as I’ve not written anything in my life. Actually, I didn’t write. I took dictation.

A week of exhausting struggle followed. I relearned everything. How to do the dishes. How to do a copy and paste. How to book a reservation on Expedia.

I practiced a mindfulness in that week that was excruciating.

“And how are you doing,” said my doctor, a week or two later.

“How many movements of the fingers does it take for you to log in and see your email?” I asked.

She was baffled.

“It takes me three. I type a ‘g’ in the address bar and the computer suggests ‘gmail.’ I click on that, and it takes me to the gmail page. As it’s loading, I move the cursor to the area where ‘sign in’ will appear. I type ‘m’ into the username and the computer remembers marcnewhouse333. The cursor is in place—I click on that. The computer remembers my password. I press ‘enter.’ That’s how I get my email….”

It was like being a stroke victim—relearning the things we do automatically every day. And it took an immense will.

I failed, mostly. That’s fine—that’s what Buddhists do. 

I learned some things.

There is no time. Someone always pulls me back—away from the speeding cars or the abyss of pure insanity. That I’m here to serve. That my talents have value.

I’ve lost most of that, now. (If you could see my apartment, you’d know….) But enough remains.

The Glorious Whatever

Is it a symbol or a symptom?

Everybody else has uncomplicated relationships with everything—or at least so I imagine. How would I know?

They live in normal houses and have normal wives and sure, the kids are probably smoking dope, but kids do, don’t they? I did. Still would if I could.

Auden wrote about it: “When there was peace, he was for peace. When there was war, he went.” That’s a rough quote—the damn Internet is still down. Can’t google it.

They drive their lives by me, standing at the bus stop, waiting for the achingly late yellow bus from Caguas. That’s fine. I’ve nothing else to do, and it gives me time to think. Anyway, I don’t have enough money for a car (not true, I have the money—I’d rather go to London….)

So I don’t have a normal relationship with anything. But today’s the Fourth of July—Independence Day! Should be able to get this right, right? 

Well, I could do a rough approximation. There’s a Walgreens up the street—they’d probably have the sparklers. Supermax certainly sells wieners. But Mr. Fernandez—would he eat them?

Yeah, with hollandaise sauce.

Well, I’d scarf them down, of course. But that’s only because of the drug I’m taking—Remeron. Two hours after I take it, I descend to the level of a seven year old demanding his Lucky Charms. There’s nothing I don’t eat—or crave.

But it does seem that the day warrants a serious piece. Think of it—a gringo living in OurIslands and Their People. Yup, I’m serious. That’s the name of the book—actually, it’s two books—that came out in the first decade of the 20^th century. (Hey, the 20^th century—remember that!  Sorry, digressive here….). Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands—all those lovely little gems that were gonna get stuck on the crown of American imperialism. It was meant to be instructive about their islands and our people, although that doesn’t seem quite right. 

I’ve lived almost more time in Puerto Rico than in gringolandia. Shouldn’t it be Their Islands and Us?

Well, well—it makes for jarring reading. Puerto Ricans are a friendly people, we are told.

True.

We / they are also…um….

Lazy.

Well, it doesn’t quite get put like that. I mean, post-Victorian manners dictate a gentler approach. But read between the lines. It’s right there.

I thought about this this morning, as I was annoyed by the construction / reconstruction / demolition / remodeling of the building across the street—nobody quite knows what’s going on there….

Point is—something was going on. And it wasn’t Puerto Ricans, but Dominicans. Working on…

…yup, the Fourth of July.

Not surprising—a decade ago, we had Dominicans working in the apartment above us on Christmas Day.

And the Dominicans lack the post-Victorian genteel manners of Our Islands / our islands. They have a word for us boricuas. Los mantenidos.

Literally, the kept. As in a kept woman. 

Well, why not?

It was a frequent theme in classes—those days gone by when I had a job. What in god’s name were we doing to ourselves? Getting up at five in the morning and taking the sleeping baby to mamita’s and coping with the corporate craziness and going home and studying with the oldest kid while cooking dinner—ok, cancel, we stopped at KFC or ate at mamita’s house—and putting our tired carcasses in bed at midnight and God it’s only Tuesday and…

…driving twice a day past the caserío. 

…which had cars newer than mine in the parking and satellite dishes and they only pay 5 dollars for electricity and do you know what my last light bill was?

Right. Once you got on this bus, you stayed until the school bell rang.

Many times, past….

Sin vergüenza, raved the students—no shame. 

Well, we were paying a high price for our vergüenza—that was for sure. Because however much the Puerto Ricans—those people in our islands—didn’t work in the first decade of the 20^th century, we were busting ass in in the first decade of the 21^st.

Well, a third of us.

Other third works—here a good Puerto Rican throws up his hands and paints invisible quotation marks—for the government.

Hah!

And the other third lives in those caseríos….

Being kept.

And quite well.

It was a paradox as curious as a gringo living in their island.

Grosse Fuge

When Beethoven Goes Bad

It’s not music you choose to listen to. It’s also music you can’t stop listening to.

At least I couldn’t. I woke groggy and hung-over, after being awakened by a craving for potato chips at 11 PM. It’s the effect of a drug—Remeron—that's meant to jolt even catatonically-depressed people into paroxysms of hilarity and gaiety.

Works, too. But it does have this little side-effect—fierce cravings for certain foods.

Most of the time, it’s coffee ice cream. Last night it was potato chips. Followed—not wisely—by rum.

OK—the world of the hangover. Know that territory. It stays for a couple of hours, makes you miserable, goes away. Fluids and sweat help. Also getting out of the house. So I took my walk, and listened to the final quartet of Beethoven.

Or so I thought. It turns out that the Emerson String Quartet, for no reason that I can figure out, plays Quartet number 13 after Quartet number 16.

OK, whatever….

What I should have anticipated was that the Emerson would finish the quartets with…

…the GrosseFuge.

Let’s get this out of the way. It’s not music. It is Beethoven applying every last bit of reason against every last ounce of anguish. The effect—especially when listening with headphones—is of being locked in a cell with four howling and violent jackals.

“Repellent” is the word most people used about it in the 19^th century. Beethoven himself wrote—if the blogger can be trusted—“when the instruments have to struggle with monstrous difficulties…when each has different figures to cut across each other…amid a host of dissonances…when the Babylonian confusion is complete, the result is a concert only the Moroccans can enjoy.” (talkclassical.com) It was so disagreeable that Beethoven’s publisher begged him not to use it—as he wanted—as the last movement of the Quartet number 13. And Beethoven—not famous for tractability—actually acceded. And then published the Gosse Fuge as a stand-alone piece.

Well, I’ve heard it, of course. Turning on the radio, it will crop up from time to time. String quartet concerts…obviously. And there are arrangements for string orchestra and double piano as well.

It’s as ruthlessly logical as a psychopath. It’s also as fiendishly desperate as a junkie seeking his fix. It’s wildly unpleasant music.

Which is what Beethoven wanted. Or so I think, at least. Because I have been locked into the last quartets for the last month now, and, my take? Well, I just listened to it again. It’s aural rape. Beethoven replaces the string instruments with razors. And it’s structurally a hurricane—starting with gentle winds, then picking up in ferocity, raging, howling, battering. The eye descends, and a stupidly classical theme is produced. Then the virazón— the eye wall cracks and you’re into the fiercest part of the storm.

And Beethoven doesn’t spare anyone. He takes this snuff film of music through every last gash, every scream, every jolt of terror. The look of terror in the victim’s eyes? He shrieks with laughter.

And he wills it on himself. He puts himself on the rack and begs himself—torturer and victim both—to flail harder, remorselessly, unrelentingly. He glories in the blood spewing from his wounds; he kisses the whip that lashes his exposed viscera—all skin and muscle shredded now.

And this from a student of Haydn?

“This work is drenched with sex,” said a conductor years ago, referring to Debussy. The Grosse Fuge? Make no mistake—nothing de Sade wrote is as violent as this music.

That said…

…why is it healthy?

There’s nowhere he won’t go. He never backs down. He willingly dons the executioner’s hood and wills him to work. He faces every fear.

“Do you like the Grosse Fuge?” asks the blog talkclassical.com.

The question is stupid. Do you like brutality, ferocity, pummeling rage?

No.

But it’s there. And when, like the hurricane, it descends on you, you can only batten down, listen in terror as the winds shriek, the door rattles, the flower pots sail through the air and hurtle against your windows. It’s not music to be liked. It’s music to be experienced.

Lexapro 20mg PO qd

If I had Internet, I could tell you.

Some guy—Robert Whitaker, I think, and how did we live without Google?—wrote a book about the drug industry and the explosion of mental diseases. His thesis went something like this—for most diseases, the incidence rate drops as new drugs are developed, patients are treated, and presumably cured. But ever since Prozac, we’ve had a spate of new antidepressants, and the rate of depression has…

…skyrocketed.

So what’s going on?

I know all about this because Eric is writing a blog for Psychology Today. He sent me a link for the book, as well as a quote from a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan, who says that exercise is at least as good as antidepressants in the treatment of major depression.

Oh yeah?

I did my three-mile walk today at 8 AM—I’m rigorous about doing it. I listened to the first two string quartets of Brahms—my walk time is also music time. I came home, tried to get down to work, and couldn’t.

I hadn’t taken my Lexapro.

Little things began to annoy me. The damn Internet connection is down again. I tried to write a post. My mood is apparent in the first line—“It’s 2500 bucks of sheer fucking frustration.” (I was writing about my Zen MacBook Pro….) I wasted time rereading some old posts. I began to wonder whether it was worth it all.

Cousin Brian popped into my mind. His words: I said to myself over and over as I read, "he's so brave." You hold nothing back: Franny's character, her love, her pepper, John's stoicism, the terrible tensions between you and Eric, your own utter devotion to Fran, your struggles with depression before, during, and after...it's remarkable.

Yeah? Well, this morning I wasn’t feeling so brave. I was feeling pissed. And sorry for myself. Why has my life been such a fucking struggle? Why have I had to fight all my goddam life? The titanic struggle with the cello, the battle with depression, coming out, moving to a land where I’ll always be a stranger / visitor. What the fuck have I NOT had to do?

Shit!

Right. So then I got mad at Eric. Fuck you, you mental health experts, I raged! Have you ever been so far gone that you felt your thoughts turn to voices? Have you ever been, as I once was, in a bus sitting in front of a deranged street person. The guy was furiously snarling obscenities at me—“you mother-fucking asshole. You fucking think you’re so great… Pussy! Cock-sucker!”

And I didn’t move away.

Why?

Because I wasn’t entirely sure that it was the guy behind me.

It might have been me, pouring out that venom.

So it’s easy for you guys, the experts, to talk clinically and analytically about antidepressants and the rates of major depression. Sit in a dark room at 3 AM and struggle, as I once did, through a ravishingly beautiful amen of Monteverdi.

And have that be the one thin thread that ties you still to life.

At some point in the morning, it became clear.

ONE day without my Lexapro is enough to start me off on the slide to despair, darkness, death.

Well, I am rigorous, too, about going to the shrink. And I had gone last week, and gotten the prescription.

So I went to CVS.

I took the Lexapro one hour ago.

I can now write. I am no longer angry at Eric. I know what I will do today. I have a to-do list, and will work my way through most of it. What I don’t do today, I will do tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow I will walk and listen to music and contemplate the sea. That will make me feel better.

I will also reach for the one thing that apparently means life or death. 

Lexapro, 20 mg. PO QD. 

2000 Bucks to Get Screwed?

Must be common for some guys, but it was new to me: paying two thousand bucks to get screwed….

Actually, let’s put the record straight—I’ve never paid anyone anything to get screwed.

OK—drop the cheap humor. The work of today is recovering from the surgery of yesterday. I now have two screws—titanium, they are, and the surgeon said, “bones just love the stuff…”—in my left mandible.

Compare and contrast—started every exam question I ever took as a child. “Compare and contrast ancient Greek attitudes towards democracy with our own.” Why? What was the point?

But it stuck. And there I was, absorbing the fact that my bones love titanium (yeah, but what about the airport metal detectors?) when the surgeon began a somewhat lengthy and more-technical-than-I-wanted description of the procedure.

I noted one of the many plaques on the wall—the surgeon, I am happy to say, is a fellow of the American Academy of Osseointegration. (Just added that to the computer’s vocabulary!)

And it was new for me, too. ‘What would that be like,’ I woundered. (Wanted to write ‘wondered’ but going back to retype, I turned up again with ‘woundered’. Seems appropriate, somehow….) It’s wounderful—sorry, did it again—to think of all these oddball academies. Remember the German ornithologists with their passionate debate about the ‘near passerine’ status of the Motmot? Interesting to know how that would compare—and contrast—with the American Academy of Osseointegration.

Also interesting to compare and contrast—look, can we just call it ‘cc’ from now on? I’m still groggy from the anesthesia—the historical role of the surgeon / barber with our current tooth guys. “Do you like your smile?” the questionnaire asked.

No—why should I?

Two hundred years ago, the question would have been ridiculous. And maybe still is.

It was also interesting to cc Franny’s story with my own. As usual, we’re going parallel, here. She lost her mind, I lost mine. She battled for death, I battled for life. Six months before her death, she had a root canal. And there I was, yesterday, holding the same drug—Vicodin—that I had held so many times in Wisconsin. The pain wasn’t bad, but hell, I’m a druggy. Why wait? I chugged it down, and felt like a zombie. 

Right——no drugs for the non-suicidal brother, either….

Mostly, though, I am comparing and contrasting my own life, as it has changed in the last years. And speaking of zombies, is it too much a cliché to point out the effect of corporations and corporate life on the human psyche?

Right—I was never too into it. They used to give us stress balls——the little rubber spheres emblazoned with the corporate logo–Wal-Mart!—and its happy yellow face. This struck me as odd—the very thing causing you the stress is giving you a stress ball AND putting their name on it. The idea was to do to the company through the stress ball what you couldn’t in any other actual way.

Wanna smack that secretary? Have a stress ball, honey.

Well, everyone ignored them, of course. But Marc? No, he just couldn’t take it seriously. And when they presented everyone with a new and improvered  (woundering about that word?) version—a stress ball with a little elastic band—I was delighted. 

So there I was, doing my TBWA (should have been “coaching by walking around"—CBWA—but mine was “teaching by walking around”), and fiddling with my stress ball. “What are you doing with that thing,” the electronics buyer would say. He’s gotta sell sixty million dollars of gadgets a year. And was he roaming the aisles with a stress ball?

Hell no. He was glued to his computer screen, trying to figure out what happened to the thirty iPads that disappeared from the Guayama store.

“I’m relieving my stress,” I’d say.  

“Hunh?”

“I have a good deal of stress….”

This was not often taken seriously.

OK—it was NEVER taken seriously.

Marc—with stress? He sits in his office—far far away from anyone, especially his boss, and throws pencils at the students! What’s he got to be stressed about?

Good point, actually. There was only one of me—unlike the buyers, of whom there were many. My boss was a sweetheart. The students—most of them—loved me. What did I have to be stressed about?

I considered this this morning, as I walked past the bust stop where I used to sit…

At 5:30 in the morning.

Oh, and coming home at 6 PM, and racing for the toilet in the hotel next to the bus station. It could take 40 minutes for the yellow bus from Caguas to arrive. Then, it would take another hour to get home.

And of course I’d been drinking coffee all day….

Having talked all day, I would ache for silence. Raf could throw me into fits of irritation by asking perfectly bland questions.

“When do you want dinner?”

Answer in my mind—I WANT FUCKING DINNER WHEN IT GETS ON THE FUCKING TABLE, ASSHOLE!

Answer through my lips—“half an hour.”

Or, “Do you want Hollandaise sauce on the asparagus?”

NO YOU ARE NOT FUCKING MAKING HOLLANDAISE SAUCE BECAUSE YOU ALWAYS SPILL THE FUCKING FLOUR ON THE STOVE AND I AM TOO TIRED TO CLEAN THAT UP AND WASH THE FUCKING SAUCE BOAT.

“Great!”

So justified or not, it seems I did have stress—unrelieved by balls. Somehow it crept into us, despite all the motivational talks we got in the monthly meetings. Because yes, the company paid SERIOUS money to motivate us.

“Mejor, mejor, mejor” sang the ancient lady who had battled cancer and won and gone on to a wonderful (no wounderful for her!) new career of telling everyone how she had done it and how we could too! And how did she do it? Here she prompted the associates (read workers) to sing the answer—‘mejor, mejor, mejor!” We sang. Better, better, better! 

You can imagine the fun I had with THAT!

There was the guy you whirled around for no reason, put his finger on a button, and started to sing! (Odd, are all motivational speaker closet singers?) Oh yeah, and he ended up giving me a dollar bill. 

Why? 

There were thirty of us in the room, and he had finished telling the story about someone who had given HIM a dollar bill and told him he could do whatever he wanted in his life and now he was here in this room living his dream and it was time to pay it forward and so even though there were times when he really could have used that dollar bill he NEVER NEVER spent that dollar because the message was so important and life changing that…

“So why did you give it to me?” Of course I had to ask….

“There’s just something about you. You have the makings of a leader….”

The guy with the stress ball?

Well, the dollar got put under the laughing Buddha that sat on my desk and that in fact now sits on my desk. The Buddha and the dollar bill got packed away, as I got packed away, and delivered. As I have been delivered. For every day and in every way, I am getting…

mejor, mejor, mejor! 

Different Realities

The nice thing about having a shrink is that not only can you talk about yourself, you’re actually supposed to.

Which may be why I was freely kvetching, yesterday, as I sat (not lay) on the couch.

“I want my life now to go back to normal,” I said, or something of the sort.

Silence—all these guys know how to use silence. And a very effective technique it is, too. You find yourself blurting ANYTHING just to relieve the silence.

So I went on.

“First I went to Wisconsin for ten days in early May and that was nice…though not without challenges. Then I went to London for ten days and that was nice though cold. Then we came back and Taí was here and that was wonderful but…”

More silence. A Harvard degree he has, but he can’t talk?

“Things are subtly different when she’s here. Usually for the better. The house gets cleaner. Glasses left in the sink turn up washed in the drainer. I can crash early to bed and that’s perfectly fine—Raf will have someone to talk to. It’s better, but it’s not normal.”

I was pondering all this after my walk this morning, as I was reading the local rag—El Nuevo Día. Lead story—our local legislature is considering a ban on the cuidadores callejeros. Caretakers of the street, loosely….

…not that that helps.

OK—let me explain. For years, guys have worked the public streets, offering help in parallel parking and assurances that nothing will happen to their car. A minor protection scheme, and a good idea, really. You don’t want your car stolen, do you? Naturally, grateful citizens think to give a little something—a pesito or two—from time to time. And of course it’s logical that over the years these guys have staked out their territory—and fight fiercely anyone moving in on them. As well, with such a service, naturally a warm relationship develops between the street guys and the drivers (and / or parkers).

Churlish people allege that this has converted public parking into private parking for regulars. Oh, and also that anyone NOT offering that little pesito is gonna find his car badly scratched on return. Well, they were warned, right?

After all, their car wasn’t stolen….

This now makes perfect sense to me, though there was a time it didn’t. I had questions—silly questions—like “why can the governor call me up and invite me to the Three King’s Day party, but he can’t call to say the tsunami is coming?”

I learned, and explained it later to a friend.

“Webster,” I said, “there are when where what and how questions. But there are NO why questions….”

See?

But this didn’t come easily, this let’s-call-it relaxed way of thinking. Especially since by all appearances, the laws are greatly respected in Puerto Rico. No Estacione, Ley 40. No Fumar, Ley 160. I used to find it curious—were all the Puerto Ricans running around with law books, checking out and citing all these laws? Why didn’t I see people with them?

And why is the car right in front of the No Parking sign, or the guy smoking in front of the No Smoking sign?

I checked my words, not wanting to be the ugly American. But I did mention it to a friend, a Puerto Rican with the flag of the island tattooed on his neck….

“Puerto Ricans are the most LAWLESS people on earth,” he roared. “They will do anything—ANYTHING—for mamita. They will move heaven and earth for their friends. But they are completely clueless when acting toward a stranger!”

Note the pronoun “they” from the Puerto Rican tattooed gentleman….

“Now, AMERICANS—that’s different. Not one—ONE—American would park their car in a handicapped parking spot. But Puerto Ricans! Hah, they’ll run the lady down in her wheel chair, just to get her spot!”

He raged on. I feared his words might be incendiary.

“Absolutely,” a woman shouted from across the street—why risk life and limb when you can just raise your voice? “Beasts, absolute beasts—all of them!”

This no longer strikes me as strange.

Nor does it seem strange that the public streets have become private parking. After all, as one of the caretakers said, the government doesn’t give him food or a job. So he’s gotta do something, right?

Nor does it seem odd that one day the ACLU is terming our local police force as abusive and running amok (well, so did the US Department of Justice four years back) and the next day we’re worrying about the caretakers of the streets.

Nor is it terribly curious that anyone would be interested in what laws are being passed since…

…nobody enforces the laws anyway….

See?

Beethoven Quartet no. 15, 3d movement

It’s a curious thing how no one—at least I think—can write sensibly about the effect of hearing music psychologically and emotionally.

Think of it—we sit in a crowded concert hall, as the crashing last chords of Beethoven’s Fifth blast off into infinity (until the next time around). How to describe that elation?

Or we sit—as I once did—in a dark room in a large empty apartment and hear the slow “Amen” of one of the Monteverdi Vespers for theBlessed Virgin of 1610. I was suspended between faith and despair, and knew that somehow a question of life and going on was occurring. The tears flowed down my cheeks, I fought to stop the sound and the pain, and could not.

But who can write about it?

OK, I’m not all that well read. I should probably do some research. Tolstoy, I know, wrote a long short story based one theKreutzer Sonata—right, know the sonata, don’t know the short story. And others have tried, some of which I have read. And it always comes across flat, or forced, or sometimes just artificial.

Or worse, inflated.

And the better the music, the worse the writing tends to be….

So I should back away from making a larger fool of myself than I normally do. Because the piece that has haunted me, this last 6 weeks, has been one of the greatest of them all: Beethoven’s quartet number 15, third movement.

In German, it’s known as Heiliger Dankgesang, the words Beethoven inscribed on the manuscript. A holy hymn of thanksgiving, that would be, and Beethoven had every reason to be giving thanks—he had been severely ill, and feared that he was dying.

He recovered, and wrote perhaps the most haunting composition of his life.

It starts agonizingly slow—moving as if under water. Or perhaps floating—there’s an ethereal quality of suspension and immersion in some other dimension. And it’s modal—which means that it uses the one of the scales of Gregorian chant. And then, it breaks into a joyful, almost manic second section. Here it’s classical, ordered, as ornamented as a Versailles drawing room. “Strength regained,” writes Beethoven at this point in the manuscript, and indeed, there is all of the joy that attends recovery from a near fatal illness.

And then the slow section returns, though slightly altered.

The light breaks through again, as the second joyful section is repeated. 

And then comes the final—fifth—section, again slow as the first and third had been, again very similar thematically and harmonically. But now Beethoven introduces the theme that has been hiding in the prior two slow sections. And it’s here that words fail.

Not just for me. Apparently T. S. Eliot was obsessed as well. Some think that the Heiliger Dankgesang may have been the inspiration for the Four Quartets. At any rate, he wrote to Stephen Spender, “I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.” (Thanks, Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._15_(Beethoven)

Well, not having read the Four Quartets, I’ve no idea whether Eliot did. I can only tell you my own experience, as real as Winterreise was for me. A party had been announced on the third of May—the second anniversary of Franny’s death. Being a guest myself, I was spared the problem of who should be invited or not. It was a Morning Glory affair—put together by the people who had cared so lovingly for Franny for the two years or so when we could not.

So—back to the Acres, to the house that had seen her last days, as well as so many others. Eric kindly put off planting a garden and joined me there—the two of us, greatly more united than before, would face this together.

It takes some fortification, of course, to go into any house in which a parent has died—somehow, the Acres presented even more of a challenge. This was also the house where so many parties had been given, so many friends joyfully received and talked to, so many stories had been told. And Franny had been something of a party animal herself—unlike Jack, who liked smaller affair.

So Eric hit on the possibly questionable idea of buying the largest vat of bourbon ever to hit the market—it would easily have filled a Victorian hipbath….

Well, we were equal to that task….

And it may have been a good thing. For as always, Franny hit us, first thing on entering the house.

Silence—as prevailing and lingering as the wood smoke from the Norwegian smoke had been.

Well, silence is something we don’t do well—either in Puerto Rico or in the Newhouse family. We cast around for rescue.

Fortunately, the Zanas—as ever—proposed coming out a few days before the party and bringing us food and diversion. This was quickly agreed to.

And they brought the stories—of Jack sitting down to eat his Chinese food, closing his eyes, savoring, and saying, “hmmmmm….” The talk turned a bit metaphysical.

“You know,” said Bess, “it’s a curious thing—I always associate my mother with deer. And once, when my sister and I had been talking about her, after she died, I went to the window and told my sister ‘wouldn’t it be wild if I opened the curtain and there was a deer?’”

Don’t have to tell you, do I?

There wasn’t one deer…

Just fourteen or so. All grazing gently, moving without care or concern.

You can imagine Bess and her sister….

“Might not have worked in New York City,” I was about to say, when…

…we were jolted out of our seats by the smoke alarm. I tell you the explicable because it leads so well to the inexplicable. No one was smoking—of course!—no one was cooking. There was no fire of any kind, and no smoke in the house.

And those babies are LOUD! So I grabbed the thing from atop the beam supporting the roof—Norwegian American height does come in handy, despite banging my head on every Frank Lloyd Wright entrance I’ve visited (he made all his entrances just an inch of two above his own head, the arrogant bastard)—and took it outside, where a strong breeze was blowing.

Clearly, someone had her finger (note possessive adjective) on the “test” button. The alarm wouldn’t stop.

Not at all sure that it would work, I removed the battery. And you-know-who took her finger off the button….

A silence even greater than the night of our arrival fell.

So she was there, all right. Well, why not? It is her house.

Though about to be sold.

But it may be that she was ready, at last, to go on. When the night of the party arrived, the weather finally turned warm—it had been a week of cold, sullen, spiteful rain. But at last it was warm—warm enough for the shorts I had blithely packed.  Relief!

At 1:40 in the afternoon—two years to the minute from her death, Eric and I listened by ourselves to the Beethoven.

This is called emotional preparation.

Within seconds, each one of us was weeping silently, shaking or rocking in our individual chairs. At the end—after 17 minutes of the most wrenching music Beethoven could produce—we stood and hugged.

Yes, a bear hug.

One of Eric’s specials—now gratefully received.

And then the hosts arrived, all 16 of them. Their party was to start.  We two guests welcomed them at the door, and let them go to it.

Of course they brought the food—and what food it was! They brought poetry as well, and what poetry it was! And the evening grew dim—the classic Wisconsin sunset that I had known, two years ago, had been revived.

It seems that no Newhouse can NOT have the last word, the last story.

I moved to the speakers I had bought. And played the Heiliger Dankgesang. If she had spent eleven days fasting to her death, some of her dearest friends could spend 17 minutes reliving it.

And we did. The light fell—softly, gently—and at last the violist announced her noble theme. The others joined. It became unbearable, as Beethoven took the theme, expanded it, came to a climax, retreated, rethought, reworked, reconciled, and then….

…rejoiced.

“That was amazing,” said Eric, after the last guest had left.  “Wonder what an outsider would have thought of this event….”

And then, the porch light went out.

Why Go Back

I said I was done with the place—why go back?

Shouldn’t I be moving on? Getting to the next project? Why return?

The people. Who knows when I’ll see them again? If ever?

And they’re getting together, on May 3d, to celebrate (in both senses) Franny’s death. So shouldn’t I be there?

The place—there’s still something calling me. The wailing rock.  The cracks in the floor. The quality of green and light in a northern woods.

Or maybe it’s the stillness of a room still questioning—will she return? Is she truly gone for good?

Nah—think the room knows.

Maybe it’s me. For yes, the mourning seems about over. She has faded—despite my pulling her back as hard as I could (a book being a pretty hard tug)—and I felt her slip away a night or two ago. It was a sound—a grace note, actually—and there she was, released into the beyond. A tiny ping into eternity….

And I sort of want to see and talk about Iguanas…. What did they think? How did they feel about it? 

Writing it was weird. No, it didn’t feel lonely—but then again, there were some 200 people (all wearing ID badges) in my life at the time (or most of the time). But also, Franny was there, in a certain way—if only seeing her words on a computer screen. Or her memory (and mine) on a coffee cup.

But now is the time I feel alone. There’s nothing to do. The permissions have been submitted or granted. Like the house, I am empty—waiting for the next owner, the next occupant who will come, clean, rearrange…

…and settle into the orange chair next to the wood-burning stove.