The windchills were between -35 ad -40 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m pretty sure all the schools and colleges and universities in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were shut down. I took the day off work. (I planned this a while ago, independent of the weather forecasts.)
So, I sat on my couch most of today, watching dumb Hallmark Christmas movies, practicing being gone.
Marie Howe on being a ghost . . .
Practicing
by: Marie Howe
Today I’m going to practice being dead for a few hours.
No one can expect anything from me.
No emails. No groceries.
Our little dog Jack watches me walk
from room to room, but,
for a few hours, he is the only one who can,
and he returns contentedly to his bone.
I say bone—it’s what the pet store calls
a bully stick, which is in fact a bull’s penis—
dried out and hard.
That a small dog should chew on a bull’s penis!
Well, we eat swordfish, don’t we?
And the shy octopus whose brains
are in her arms?
The sunlight enters the small kitchen
spilling across the white enamel table
and the chipped blue wooden chair
whether anyone is there to see it, or not.
Meister Elkhart says, There never was a man who forsook himself so much
that he would not still fund more in himself to forsake.
Nevertheless, it’s good to have a dog with you when you are practicing
not being there: you don’t feel so all alone.
Especially nowadays, it’s pretty easy to feel all alone. I’ve written about this isolation in my previous two posts. With so much division and cruelty happening in the streets of the United States, it’s really easy to contemplate just not being here, as Howe says.
Today, I absented myself from almost everything that I normally do. I didn’t speak with anybody. Didn’t work at the library, Didn’t teach. I even managed to look at my cell phone only once or twice all day long.I guess you could say I was practicing being dead.
It’s not a bad thing contemplating your absence from this mortal coil. It’s a way to remind yourself of your place in the grand scheme of things. I often wonder if what I do for a living/as a person makes any difference, Poetry doesn’t put food in the mouths of starving kids. Teaching doesn’t assist a homeless person with finding a place to live. Blogging doesn’t stop a war. Yet, I’m always reminded what Clarence the angel says to George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life: “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives, When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
I like to think I’d leave an awful hole if I wasn’t here. Whenever I do something, my goal is always the same: leave the world a better place. I want to be remembered as someone who loved and cared deeply for everyone and everything. I’m sure I don’t always succeed. However, I try each and every day. That’s all any of us can do.
It’s getting late. I’m tired. Once I publish this post, I will more than likely go to sleep. That’s one thing Howe doesn’t say: being gone is exhausting. I’m not sure if that means being dead is exhausting, too. Hopefully, I won’t find out for a while.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about people being gone . . .
Exes
by: Martin Achatz
How do you become an ex-anything?
Am I an ex-student because I no longer
take classes? Am I an ex-son because
both my parents are in Holy Cross
Cemetery? If I don’t write a poem
for a year, am I then an ex-poet?
How about the best man at my wedding?
He lives in New Zealand, flies helicopters,
finds sheep in his yard every morning.
I haven’t spoken with him in two
years. Does that make him an ex-
friend? Ex-best man? Years from now,
will my daughter find an old wedding
picture, point at him standing next
to me, say, “Who’s this guy?” Will
I struggle to remember his name?
Bobby something or other? Maybe Brian?
I imagine he named one of those sheep
after me, calls to it as he sips his coffee
at sunrise: Good boy, Donald!
