A River to Skate Away On

When you wake up to 5 degrees that feels like -1, your thoughts naturally turn to being outdoors. OK, I love cold a lot more than your average bear. After  I considered skiing down the road in front of my house, as so many do, I opted instead for going to my happy place in the Cascade Lakes and hiking along the riverbanks. Walking in snow is one of my favorite things, and we've had a fair bit of  it this weekend, especially in the mountains. While Mt. Bachelor has had 218 inches worth since October, the city has seen very little on the ground until this weekend.

Pines look better in Oregon than anywhere else. And I'm always impressed that so much wildlife is always an arm's length away, no matter what the weather. As I meandered, I watched a falcon, ducks, geese, baby ducks, baby geese, several ravens, and a dog who was absolutely THRILLED to see a nice, probably 33-degree river to pounce into.

We've got snow in the forecast every day for the next week. Yay!

(I didn't have my camera with me, so forgive the iPhone shots.)

Requiem 1 - Cheryl

This is the first in what may become a series of posts called Requiems, about people I have lost.

Cheryl

It was winter 1985, and my mom was dying. At the beginning of the year, I had landed a job at one of the top pr firms in the world, based in NYC. I was an account executive with an office in a skyscraper on Madison Avenue. Not bad for a 22-year-old kid. When my mom’s health took a very sudden turn shortly afterward, it became clear that she was more seriously ill than she’d been in 6 years of fighting the breast cancer she’d been diagnosed with at age 46.

As she was hospitalized over and over again, I soon realized that I would not be able to hold down a full-time job with a 3-hour daily commute, however much I wanted a career in the city. When my dad offered me part-time work at his company on the Jersey side, I hoped that having completely flexible hours might make up for working in a gritty factory I had no desire to even visit.

While my mom’s needs claimed most of my hours, I set about crafting an abbreviated  PR program for my dad, editing technical journal articles he wrote, and frequently sitting in the office we shared staring into space with the disorientation that comes of having someone you deeply love being sick, anxious, and in pain. I was terrified of what was going to happen to her--and me.

Several weeks later, he hired a new bookkeeper, the only other woman who wasn’t a secretary in our building of 75 people. Cheryl was in her late 30s, born and raised in Jersey City, a rough neighborhood with a rough accent. She’d studied accounting and worked herself into a white collar position after years spent as a maid cleaning motel rooms when her 3 kids were small. Half Irish, half Italian, all Jersey, with the gift of gab that each brought, she immediately captured my attention and we hit it off instantly. Granted, everyone in the company was on their best behavior toward the boss’s daughter. But Cheryl and I struck a genuine friendship right from the start, and truly seemed to get each other in a way that was rare in our factory full of men wrapped up in producing a product used to make early circuit boards.

She enlisted my help in generating accounting reports and completing the mundane bookkeeping tasks that kept the business flowing. In between, we laughed and gossiped and smoked and drank coffee, no matter how grey and gritty it was from sitting in an open pot on the factory floor, and no matter how much chemical creamer we had to dowse it in to make it slightly palatable. To this day, I can’t walk past a giant red can of Folger’s in the supermarket without thinking of Che--and that coffeepot streaked in obscene layers of brown sludge and hard water stains.

These short workdays offered one of my few respites. And being brought quickly into the fold of Cheryl’s family seemed  like a welcome relief from my own homelife, which felt so sad and dark that it was difficult to remain present. My mom was my best friend and deepest love, and our closeness and intense bond with one another was beyond description. To watch someone you love this deeply suffer so greatly has to be one of life’s fiercest hells. I’m sure that Cheryl knew this. I’m sure she could see the magnitude of my suffering, and feel it as we talked. She was far more sensitive and kind to me than any other coworker I can think of. When she was being paid to balance the books, she listened to me. When she was making not great money and supporting 3 kids, she bought me lunch. No matter how big a deadline, she never once didn’t have time for me if I needed something, anything. And I'm sure in those days I needed a lot.

One day, when my relationship with my longtime girlfriend was not going well, she hatched a plan to fix me up with her son. He of the major mojo. He of the black-and-gold Camaro. And he with the driver’s license that said he was 17. Though it never materialized, just the gesture  made me smile and flattered me--and took my mind off my troubles in the pleasantest of ways. She later laughed along with me as one of the young factory guys--the rebel with Metallica hair and a Ratt jacket--got up the nerve to ask out the boss’s daughter. Damn, he was cute. And that, too, kept me from collapsing into a moment when my mom had just been hospitalized for the fifth time that year--and it was only summer.

The ability to distract someone from their misery is a highly underrated quality in a friendship. And so is the ability to give practical advice in a way that someone can hear it. Cheryl was pragmatic, wise in the ways you get when you're on the front lines a lot. In those days, I craved a direct sort of street-wisdom that people from Jersey City were famous for. It’s funny because today I live in the West, where people are much more polite, reserved, nervous to offend. Most would never think to tell you to go fuck yourself, even if that was unquestionably what you needed to do. But in that time and place, people were real, and real meant they sometimes knew better than you what your next move should be.

And Cheryl knew that I needed to take care of my mom. That that was my top priority. A duty I would always remain grateful I heard the call of and honored till the end. But as any caretaker of a cancer patient can understand, the moments spent there wiped the floor with me. In retrospect, I’m glad I was young, because in middle age I never could have withstood the demands--a physical, emotional, and psychological tsunami that seemed to have no end. My friend was there every step of the way, supporting me and listening to me cry and closing her door so I could melt down whenever I needed to. It was always OK with her, whatever I was feeling. And though she had plenty going on with her own family, I could cry on her shoulder any day of the week.

By mid-November 1986, my mom had very little left. The cancer hit her brain, and for several weeks she went into a state of advanced dementia where she was clearly in another world--of constant agitation and fright. She was sent to a room in NY’s Sloan-Kettering, the best cancer hospital in the country. Three weeks later,  I had been sitting in that tight space for 72 hours without a break. Finally a nurse told me I should take a walk. As I paced through the dusk of autumn in the city, watching the leaves as they blew in torrents off the trees, my mom began her ascent.

When I returned, she was no longer in the room.

I held onto her body for as long as they allowed me. It was before the days of texting or emailing or letting anyone know what had happened. It was just her and me, in the city she hated. And then got to transcend. “And my soul rose unexpectedly…”

I felt numb. I suppose I experienced a sense of relief, that it hadn’t gone on longer, for her sake. At the telescoping of 9 long years into, finally, this.

She’d waited for me to leave until she died. A nurse confirmed this with me later. “They often wait until they’re alone to die... It’s easier, I guess.” I didn’t know what to say or do. I was just 24, for fuck's sake. Someone came and took her body--the crematory or whoever in New York has to sign off on the dead. I watched them wheel her away on the gurney, then stood in the empty room in the clothes I’d been wearing for 3 days and didn’t know what to do with myself. I vaguely remember someone gently pointing me out. They needed the room. I had to find my car...in a garage...somewhere...I had to drive. West, I guess. I didn’t know where my home was anymore.

It’s all a blur after that moment. 

Eventually I showed up back to work. Cheryl was so kind to me. I recall very little work happening. Just the comfort of her gaze, the sweetness of her embrace. Meals out. Hugs and long gazes. Everyone seemed to know I was on tenterhooks. There is a reverent holy space devoted to those who lose their mothers. And everyone pads around lightly on these sort of slippers through clouds. I’m afraid I can’t remember what happened next...but I know how it felt. Che’s love for me. And Michele’s. And Tori’s. And all of those people who showed up to celebrate my Lois at her memorial service. And even my dad’s, in his own way. For one glistening moment, he was present. And sad. And somehow able to understand a piece of my grief. Almost as if he had grief himself.

I continued to work there for some months, sporadically. Cheryl and I got deeper and closer. For awhile she felt like someone I was attracted to. For another while, she felt like my mom. It was hard to tell. She was 15 years younger than my mom and 15 years older than me. Too old to be my love, too young to be my mother. It had always felt somewhere mysteriously in between. We didn’t talk about these things. Sometimes people are in categories all their own--or not in categories at all.

On Memorial Day weekend 1991, my love and I moved to the very different landscape of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and tried not to look back.

In May 2003, less than 2 years after 9-11, I visited Jersey, after living in New Mexico for 12 years. Cheryl, of course, was one of the people I wanted to see most. I drove down the highway, anxiously waiting for the exit. My dad had retired, but everyone else was still working at his company.  As I walked through the front door, the smell, sights and sounds all came rushing back in a heartbeat. Che’s office was down the hall, first door to the right. When she looked up to see me, she was on the phone with her husband. She told him who had arrived. “Well, happy Mother’s Day!” he said.

We laughed and smiled, and for a moment it was 1986 and I was 24. 

I’m eternally grateful for that glimpse of her, as I never expected what came next. The following summer, my dad called and told me she wasn’t well. “She has lung cancer,” he said, sounding exasperated. As I sat in stunned silence, with tears filling my eyes, he added, “Well, what do you want? She smoked.” I slammed down the phone, angry at his lack of compassion. Seventeen years of working with the woman, and it all ended in him blaming her for her own cancer. I wrote a letter to her but could not make it back to NJ in time. By the second day of 2005, she had succumbed. 

The love of her life, her husband, Tom, passed less than 3 years later. I’m sure he died of a broken heart.

Today is Cheryl’s birthday, January 31, 1947. Every year I think of her on this day. This afternoon I played Johnny Clegg’s song “The Crossing,” about his close friend who died. Over and over again.

“All the words in truth we have spoken

That the wind has blown away

It's only you that remains with me

Clear as the light of day…”

Cheryl and her daughter

Albuquerque, 2013

A window that no longer exists, in a shop that no longer exists, under clouds passed away, in a city I have left forever. Tell me...what is permanence?

Detroit, Eastern Market

Detroit, 2016

Eastern Market mural, created in 2015 by Fel3000ft. 

Abiquiu, NM, 2005

The original cross at the site of mission Santo Tomas, in Abiquiu.

Angels of Chimayo

Going back through my archives this week. I shot these in Chimayo, NM, in September 2005, and went back and worked with them tonight.

Daybreak, New Camaldoli

New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, CA

The Grotto, Portland

One of my very favorite places in Portland--and Catholic places anywhere. The Grotto is a sanctuary in a marginal neighborhood in north PDX. They have a cliffside meditation chapel that overlooks the Columbia River Valley, the Cascades, and Mt. St. Helen. It's where I shot this photo 7 years ago, which I just finished tonight.

Modness

I took this photo of my friend Marti in her dorm room back in college, way too many years ago. We lived together senior year, in a suite we called the Mod Quad. I entered it in my first photo show and it won an award. Marti and I are still friends, and she looks almost exactly the same today. God, I hope she still has that jacket.

Stockyard Cafe

I stumbled onto these grain silos on a backroad between Bozeman and Livingston on my first trip to Big Sky country in 2015.

Mirror

Spring, and its weathers, come to the Deschutes River.

Chapel Door, St. Gertrude's

I stayed at the Benedictine Monastery of St. Gertrude, in Cottonwood, Idaho, for a 2-week retreat. The monastery's remote setting, 200 miles from a major highway in any direction, provides a beautiful place to connect with self and spirit. This chapel was built from blue porphyry stone quarried from the hill behind it in the 1920s.

Deschutes, April Afternoon

These days, my health issues make walking any distance not my strong suit. So I've made a deal with myself that I'll be really present with 20 good minutes in nature, and try to find something beautiful. Yesterday it was the clouds and the water.

Ashland Fall 2

More Deschutes River

Deschutes River Banks

February 14

A story

On the return road from Montana, I hung a far right into Astoria via a massive bridge i hope to never cross again. An event weekend left no rooms or campsites open on the northern Oregon coast. But a friend of a friend let me crash in an old Victorian her crew was rehabbing, a home a family had lived in for years, while their children, apparently, grew. Now a stripped-out construction site, with ocean brine in its boards. And a landing pad for me and my backpacks. 

I slept on the moldy as hell living room floor, rose at dawn shaky and bleary--too many hours drinking like a writer with my writer friend at this place:

walked to the water and discovered why everyone fawns over funky Astoria, with its odd tugboats breaking the horizon, trumpeting angels, and old salt bars. 

Back at the house, I found a balletic spider who humored me while I shot him from every angle. We became fast friends as I drank my 7-11 coffee and ran my lens over the porch's creaky old floorboards performing visual excavations of time and home. While wind smashed the waves and the tugboats bellowed, alert to something stirring nearby.

Salvation Mountain

Just after the Salton Sea, northeast of Niland, CA, we arrive at Salvation Mountain, a "visionary environment" including a mountain of adobe and straw painted with murals, Bible verses, and Christian-oriented inspiration by local resident Leonard Knight (d. 2014). Fifty feet high and 150 feet wide, this outsider art installation was made with lots of love--and colorful paint. In the desolate desert environment, where temperatures sometimes reach 120 degrees in summer, it's an acid-trip vision a couple miles from Slab City. 

During his lifetime, Vermont-born Knight resided on the property for 26 years, with a gaggle of cats in the back of an ornately decorated 1939 fire truck. He lived without electricity, gas, running water, phone, heating, air conditioning, or any other "modern conveniences." He played himself in the movie Into the Wild, which featured a scene set here.

The Salton Sea

Driving the 111 through far southeastern California near Mexico, you suddenly hit a point where you know you've entered another world. To one side is arid desert and the occasional long train, looking surreal with its brightly colored cars in the hot white light as it parallels your car. To your right emerges the Salton Sea, a freshwater lake azure blue against bright white sands. As the land grows increasingly arid and the sun increasingly intense, even the subtlest of color pops out in bold relief, and everything is delineated as if under spotlight. For 350 square miles, the play of water against sand brings a study in contrast and the entrance of greater perspective than you felt at the last-stop gas station miles back in Indio. 

When beauty stops you in your tracks and you cut the engine before the lake, you tread on "sands" of pulverized fish bones. Perhaps the first thing you grasp: lakes hold a delicate balance of salt in their waters. And when too much enters, the life of its inhabitants necessarily perishes. All life walks a line of delicate balance. Human error can transform a thriving resort like Bombay Beach into a piscean graveyard, where wind-battered trailers serve as aluminum reminders of impermanence. Along the shore you see embedded volcanic mud pots and smell the saltiest brine of oversalination and decaying fish.

The brine enters your pores as the hot wind whips your skin. You try to forget that even this degree of salt cannot sanitize the DDT and Agent Orange remnants flowing through the pretty blue waters. Tough birds cluster together on rocks, though rampant white feathers prove that environments like this take down even the most resilient.

223 feet below sea level, Bombay Beach shelters solely renegades, with a harsh, drying sun that desiccates clutches of '60s and '70s trailers from the heyday, 

when more than a million tourists annually thronged to the resort, escaping the city to the end of the Earth. 

Today the tiny town of 300 boasts little more than a market and 2 restaurants. It's difficult to tell if most of the trailers you stare into are occupied or not.

And of course in a place where the rent is free and the sleeps smash the bounds of funky, there are always going to be artists...

But most amazing of all is just how lost you can get in the colors of the panorama before you, and the peace of being alone, far from the properly salinated places drowning in population.

[click to enlarge photos]