Kalashnikov In The Sun, my two-years-in-the-works project on Sierra Leonean poets, is sent to the publisher, one week following the death of Tom, one of the voices included in the anthology, a friend. I dedicate the book to him, I hear the cadence of his voice, still.
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It’s been my first week teaching at the university level. It’s been my first week of classes myself, graduate school at my age, I don’t know… but a teaching fellowship and tremendous grant covering full tuition, a chance at more stability as a writer, a chance that this two-decade long plan in the works to build the days writing, painting, singing, could actually work…so I jumped. I am tired. I have not stopped moving. Not so much because of school, but because of everything that kept cascading in the in between hours. I drove over the Morrison Bridge last week, about 9 pm, after the last class of the day, an early October moon, the kind that is buffered in part by night clouds, the sky a movie set, the sky not sky, but a mood instead. this whole week has been a mood.
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“Mom! Tom’s on the roof of our garage!” Clarke calls from the kitchen. I walk over and peer up through the window, and sure enough, there is an extension ladder propped up against my garage and Tom, my next door neighbor, is up there. I go upstairs and lean out my bedroom window. He has a shovel and is scraping the moss off, as well as throwing down the collection of missing balls batted up by the kids over the course of the summer.
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The sky is as big as memory. The light is open like hope. And the mountains surround thought so that all we are is right here, driving home. We are listening to Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette listen to each other and spill blessed unrest into song. My two are in the backseat, looking out their windows at the world we are passing.
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Next week a friend of mine heads to Mammoth Lakes for a memorial for one of his good friends, rock climbing master, John Bachar. An international rock star of the climbing world, Bachar was known for his soloing—unroped climbs—and his uncompromising self-reliant style. His poetic purity of vision—one body, one rock—inspired generations of climbers. He died, alone, doing what he loved.
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Tonight my son and I have the evening to ourselves. We walk down to the corner Mexican restaurant for burritos, take a long loop home through the neighborhood, bake a batch of peanut butter cookies, play two rounds of cards while they bake, and with an hour left before bedtime he says what he’d like most is to sit on the couch together and listen to his favorite record, the wide-sweeping full orchestral Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard instrumental soundtrack to the Dark Knight. He’s never seen the movie, of course, but he loves batman, and he loves scores, and this 74-minute cd addresses both.
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