Do you Remember?

 

Do you remember?

The games we used to play.  Dirt clod wars, Attack the forts,

Hide and seek.

 

Now we play that same game, but it is memories that hide

And we seek.

We seek them out with haste and pressure,

Afraid to be gentle with ourselves lest we slide unabated,

Into the mist of that abyss.

 

I remember watermelon pickles our Grandmother made,

Coming home from Fiddler on the Roof . . .

Our father home from Vietnam

Already wrenching on our beloved Volvo.

 

Just as he had been wrenched from us

We had wrenched him out of Vietnam

Before the goodbye bullet could take him

To an earlier grave then when he died at 66.

 

I remember my brother vanishing in an instant in a scree of gravel and stone

Whirling around to hear that lonely sound of nothing

Nothing to be seen or heard

Rushing, rushing, rushing to the edge of the railroad trestle

And there, down, down, down . . .  he was in such deep soft lovely mud.

It was then I knew that I loved him so fiercely but could not name it

Would not name it because we had not been taught the deeper words.

 

 

I know and love the memory of my grandparents’ house

So quiet and creak, creak, creak went the sound of old steps and older bones

And there hidden in the dim and dusky dusty mist of time and memory,

Lay hanging a dead grandfather’s fishing hat I never knew

No smell of the dead and the hair crème he must have worn.

Its rusted steel and brass hooks still waiting for the bait and bite.

 

The rack upon the wall below the grimy glass held the gas mask and even at the age of 10,

I knew that it reeked of death and misery in its inherent purpose of war.

Could I hear the tortured breath and lungs wracked with mustard gas?

 

Sundays the breakfast day we loved. We loved our mother, our father

The unabashed love of children who love unreservedly until they know.

The memory of waiting for our fathers love put into the pancakes he made . . .

The ‘test’ pancakes, so small and tiny in their perfection.

Better then the real ones we devoured later.

 

Do you remember all this and more?

In the end we have this and nothing more.

Except the love we had, the hands that hold us

The love given, shared and nurtured.

I remember.

 

    David McCullough

    July 22, 2022

Garden

        In Our Garden

I want to come home to our garden

Our garden of earthly delights.

After days over bodies probing their pain 

The depth of their hurt and sorrow.

I’d rather come home to our garden.

Our garden of earthly delights

Feeding and nurturing both in the planting, the growing,

The harvest.

I had not thought of it till now

With my hands deep in earth.

This garden, this life.

So much the same the other begets the other

A universal dance of earth, water and blood.

Oh yes I say to the fecund madness

That we nurture and grow. 

Soon unable to live apart

Without the Other 

There is no me or I or you or them or they

Nothing betwixt and between.

So plant my body here and now,

Make it bloom and grow

Lay me to rest amongst the roots and thorns

My lettuce, peppers, tomatoes and melons.

While I dream of you

And what we have created

Each having the other.

Let the compost and our love

Drench my bones in power and glory

I, one with you

You, one with me

I have come home to our garden.

And let the endless circling Earth

With time and tide

Renew us again, again and yet again

in the timelessness of love and space

Unremembered yet known.

Oh my love, my garden.

Oh my love, my love, my love.

    David McCullough

    July 13, 2022

June - July 2022 holiday.

 A few weeks ago we had our two weeks off.  Welcomed my 'father in-law' who is now 90 years of age.

It was a difficult visit, a trip to the ER, father daughter conflict the stuff the life and families are made of.

Reminds me of a story recently told to me.  A man lay dying with his wife holding him in her arms.  It is expected, a long life lived.  He said to her suddenly, 'Dying is very hard work, I love you' and died.

 So while visits with relatives may be so very very hard for different reasons, sometimes they are the last visit you will ever have with them.  Be it your death or theirs.  

We were also able to  get away after his departure.  A few days and nights at Ashland, Oregon to see some plays and slow down.  We met up with my distant cousin, David Bones who at 80 is full of life and vigor despite whatever health challenges confront him.  I mark this visit as it had been so many years and I loved spending time with him and learning more about my mum's side of the family.  Those links with the past?  The links with what once was . . . are disappearing.  There soon will be no one to remember or care and such is life.  Still, we have these moments and they are dear to the memories of the living.

 After Ashland we decamped to the Family Ridge Ranch on the East side of Salt Point State Park. We return there this coming weekend.

    Globally, warming climates are accelerating.  Humanity will not reach target goals of lessening warming.  We are a failure to the world, to ourselves. 

    Fascism is on the march.  Many are predicting a Civil War in the United States with widespread looting, killing and god knows what the hell else. I fear this will be the case.  Trump may or may not return to power but DeSantis may be a more clear and present danger in the long run.  With the Supreme court packed with conservative 'Originalist' we are facing a tyranny of the minority.  The sweep of history is upon us and interesting times prevail. 

As for Vic and I we consider our own future, how long to continue working, what country to live in, how to maximize our health and safety.  In an uncertain and increasingly dangerous world it pays to have a plan and backup plans.

 

June 2022

 My words seem to become less important the older I get. Despite decades of hoping for wisdom and that I will learn to write better … I fear this may never be the case. 

These are dark days indeed. Global warming, pandemic, war in Europe that has begun with Russia invading the Ukraine.  Putin is a coward hiding with his money and lies letting the kulaks die for his pride.  

Like the millions that have come before us the sweep of time and history does not give us a warning of what will happen. But many of us are filled with a great sense of foreboding and anguish.  I cannot help but think there is great suffering to come by the many billions across the world and it is all we can do to simply survive and try and prepare.  

For now I can only try to be content in my words and actions.  It is for me alone to review in the years ahead if I am lucky enough to survive. I know I want my words and life meant something and working as a nurse I used to think that I was contributing something… But now I am even in doubt of this seemingly humble goal. 

In the end, at least for me, I believe that the right and only course of action is to do the right thing. At this moment in time it is to live with the woman of my dreams and to lessen the impact that we have upon the planet, to try and do some good to help others survive. For anything I say right now is lost to history. 

There will be no one to read these words out of the multitudes of words written every day.  Who is to say that what I write has any dept or meaning now or in the future.  It is for me I write . . . hoping, hoping, hoping for lasting meaning.

Upon the occasion of the death of my friend, Jim Costa.

I do not want to say the long goodbye.

To have it short and sweet is my wish when I die.

I say no to COVID but yes to all of you

No to lymphoma, glioblastoma.

But yes to your eyes and heart and your goodbyes.

We will not get what we want,

our desires wishes thwarted inopportunely.

To meet our end with peace can be a most difficult thing

but love and morphine can ease the path.

I'll take a modicum of gracefulness and ease

surrounded I hope by love,

support, cradling arms . . . .

as we bid the other the long goodbye.

and ease, ever so gently . . .

into that long good and graceful night.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/eagles-hotel-california-tour-review/619973/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

 

Hotel California

This music, this song is inevitably tied to my friend Jim Walsh who died in an overloaded light plane crash in Sacramento around 1982. One of the last and best memories of being with Jim was a warm Sacramento summer night out for a drive to who knows where (and that was the very point). The drive took us into the foothills up near Sierra College. Back then, 'in the olden days' it was not as built up as it is now - of course of course.

We were in our young 20's, our very young 20's and the night, like our lives, was ours with nothing between us and a bright long future. We drove his silver shining Honda into that night with all the windows and sunroof open to the stars and moon. We talked of nothing but everything that lay between us and the universe racing by. Hotel California played on the radio and we sang with it a bit, lifting our voices in sync but little knowing of life's travails then or what was to come. Not many of us do I guess . . . but even at a young age I had seen some amazing things and Jim . . . he had some stories to tell too, some much darker, some much brighter.

It is good, this memory. I hold and cherish, nurture it close to my heart. I shared it over the years with Jim's brother, Mo Walsh. He is one of the finest men I know on this planet. We carry this mutual sorrow, he for the brother lost and I for one of my best friends. In his dying, Jim gave us the gift of our friendship. From death comes many gifts even if I could not see that in the making. This song is many things to all of us who heard it back in the day. But to me I will always remember that night speeding along in the darkness of a full moon with a best friend, in a silver Honda, on a warm summer night, long long ago.

My day thus far . . . .

I am outside COVID testing people in a line of cars.  Older patient drives up.  Says she is worried that something that happened today may affect her ability to take the test.  I can see the emotion building in her face.  I tell her that we have time, no one is behind her, is she ok?  Does she want to talk?

Then the tears begin to flow at last and she can unburden her sadness and grief for these all too brief moments  Her 5 month old granddaughter just died who had been born with a terminal medical condition.  This woman had just picked up the death certificate that is lying in the front right seat.

What can one do?  Except to hold her hand, hold it with silence and acceptance, with empathy and love.  Sometimes our greatest gift is to help in the relief of great suffering.  Thank god I had the time, that I was able to make the time.

Our own suffering comes back to us in these moments.  I was able to use that to understand her suffering.  Although the two are so different the human experience remains.  The shared suffering so to speak.

There are no heroes in this story - except perhaps for this person in front of me and the parents of a dead baby.  Just people, all these people surrounding me, holding me up making it possible for me not only to do my job . . . . but to hold the hand of a grieving woman.  I am grateful and humbled.

 I had wine and conversation with a good friend last night.  He is older, served in Vietnam as a combat photographer.  

The taliban, a world and decades away from Vietnam over ran Kabul two days ago.  So our conversation may have have been prompted by this because the parallels are all too familiar.

Our conversation did not devolve into drunken reminiscing of war stories, his war stories (for I have none to share nor wish to).  But it did touch upon the endless repetition of wars this country has seen, initiated and those brought upon it.

To this day the memories of combat are crystal clear.  Sometimes, when you are a good friend, you learn to just shut the fuck up and listen.  That is what I did.  Took me long enough I guess. 

I have memories like this.  Crystal clear.  From fire fighting days, medical calls in the field. Horrific scenes etched into times frozen memory that clutches and claws at you at the most inopportune times! How inconvenient suffering can be at times.  

Yet again and again, I also have these moments but of my lovers touch and kiss,  Haleys comet in the Fijian South Pacific skies in 1986 as I lay on the deck of a boat crossing the midnight sea.  I watched Haley's Comet all night . . . and I wondered who will be watching it when it circles back to us again in 2061?  I may be alive against the odds.  If I am alive I will gaze toward the heavens in wonderment, awe but most of all gratefulness.

Grateful for being alive every day, to have had the love of my life with Victoria Wright and the peace and deep intense satisfaction she brings to living, for the friendship of my friend and his wine and all the friends I have scattered around this lovely warming planet.

A bit North of the Lost Coast

 

We are seldom given such opportunity . . . .

Engaged.  January 2020. The Love of my Life.  Right there in front of me and I had no idea.  Someone that is love personified, smart, giving, caring,  beautiful, crazy, funny and thinks of me in her actions and I think of her in mine.  I have never been so honored to be loved and to love.  We are so seldom given these opportunities.

Coming inside after COVID-19 testing August 2020 at the Santa Rosa VA Clinic in California.  You can see my Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) that I am holding (I had just removed it).  In 100 F heat it gets very warm and humid quickly.  The air coming in is also quite hot.  We are now at the end of August and it is much cooler but also much smokier due to the many fires that we continue to endure.

To The Sea I Went

To the sea I went
To touch my face and toes and hands
In the cold upwelling pacific ocean
So far. So very far. 

Inevitably
Always. 
I look West and South again
Finding my way
Seeking my bearing. 
A compass needle ever moving

I look for Hawai'i nei,
For Levuka and Viti Levu
Always searching my minds eye
For what I cannot see yet have not, 
Cannot leave behind.  

These are the islands of my past and dreams they come to me and I to them
It is not perfections paradise
But a breathing living history
Walking forward in time
But always looking back. 

These are the islands of my dreams
Forged in fire
Not forgotten
People loved 
In the perfect village of my mind. 

I may never return to them
It is not known. 
Only a guest- taught so much and 
A life well spent 
Reckoning, searching, dwelling
For the islands in my dreams. 

David McCullough
June 20, 2020

Remembering Shelby my White Lab

You were the best dog a man could have had in life Shelby.  It is about a year now since you died and left this planet.  

But in my wanderings around this earth and specifically the Ridge there are not many places that do not remind me of you, my four-legged buddy and pal.

In so many ways it seems crazy to me to write a letter to you when you are dead . . . but I have done it with people.  And sometimes I think, you may deserve more than some people.

I think of you so often.  I am with a woman named Victoria now Shelby and you knew and met her.  She helped me with you so much and has held me in my grief at losing you.  What more can one ask of another being than that simple thing?  To be present and witness the grief and joy of losing a fellow being?

At long last I had to move on because as you know so well the suffering had become too much for me to bear.  You were witness to it and held my heart in your paws more than once and absorbed my tears into your beautiful soft furry head so many times.  That is what friends do.  

I hope I was there enough for you in life but especially in your final days.  I had to leave when I did or I was going to die.  So I left you in your final months with someone I trusted till someone returned home. I hope your suffering was as least as it could be.  Forgive me if that is needed.

So many times, humans let their own pain, suffering and drama become the sole focus and are unable to be fully present in the lives, suffering AND the joy of those closest to them.  I have been guilty of this.  It is my strongest hope that your suffering was attended to and alleviated as much as possible in those final days of your long doggy life.

Whenever I am at the spring I remember the fun we had there . . . barking at each other, wrestling in the leaves, running through the water and then you would break for Shelby’s Spa, the best watering hole for you to roll around in and get muddy.

I always remember that Shelby and let it comfort me in my times of sadness and joy.

I remember too the many hours of you and I riding in Red Rover our truck.  It seems to me that is the way it should be at times, a man and his dog, a dog and her man in a Red Truck, a white lab named Shelby with her human Man David . . . riding along through life, loving the doggieness, the humanness of our lives with your soft furry head on my lap and me rubbing your ears.  I miss you.  

Romp on Shelby . . . you made me a better human and a better man. Thank you for giving me the life we had together.

 

 

What Foto When I am Dead?

What Photo of me will they use?

When I am dead

To say goodbye. 

What picture of me will be found,

After I am gone

Smiling and eager to be so alive. 

If it's black and white 

Or technicolor 

I'll still be dead

And I'll miss your goodbyes. 

David McCullough

2019

Shiloh Park. Sunny day. Thinking a lot. 

Searching for Tomales Bay

                Searching for Tomales Bay

Having lost our way, we found ourselves searching for Tomales Bay . . .

With its whipping winds and calm inlets,

The blue of skies reflected green eyes. 

We took our refuge in each other’s safe harbors.

We journeyed there one day’s night,

you and I . . . together at last.

Love building and growing in each of us

In two years of laughing friendship.

I told you once I loved you as a friend (so long ago it seems!),

that attraction factored in . . . 

and I’d not transgress our friendships love.

Then love woke – it devoured us both!

One year on we moved on and in . . .

Moved into each other

On to, around and enveloped the other,

Hoping against hope we may last.

Tis an unknown course we chart - searching for Tomales Bay

The wind whipped waves of time and tide,

endlessly reverberate with you and I. 

In a sure and wondrous place to start

Where first we met to wed our hearts. 

                David McCullough

                Febrary 26, 2018

Unexpected Joy

Unexpected Joy

It lives in us you know.

Unexpected joy.

Waiting to be released into our hearts.

To be set free and roam among the sea of stars and spinning galaxies . . .

Then again live in and take residence in the start.

The start of love, of joy, of fulfillment and tender holding takes us by storm.  

We are tossed upon the sea of longing where danger lurks.

Yet we choose in this moment to sail on, full sheets to the wind.

To set a course with thee and thine heart to uncharted space . . . where dragons and love live.

This choice we make . . . not for the faint of heart or mind.

Yet tis a choice a choice when love speaks and bodies meld?

I think not,

I know not,

Care not . . .

when joy charts our voyages course . . .

Side by side . . . sailing our seas of loves tossed swells.

February 23, 2018

A Poem for Your Heart but Not for Mine.

Memories provoked by Over the Rainbow

I was just listening to a version of Over the Rainbow.  One of the greatest and most well known tunes of what is called the Great American Songbook and certainly iconic.  There are not many times I can hear this tune without my mother, Vesta Brownell coming to mind.  The movie that this tune first debuted was of course, The Wizard of Oz.  She grew up with that movie as did so many of her generation and the sense of sadness, danger and wistfulness engendered by the movie I think permeated her life.  When you are a child of the depression it is an experience that never leaves you but I think has an especially stronger impact than other childhood experiences from other generations. She was born in 1934, the movie came out in 1939 so she was only five years old.

One of my strongest memories is the excitement of seeing The Wizard of Oz with my mom every Fall when it appeared on television (it first showed on TV in 1959).  At times I think she enjoyed it more than we did.  What amazed me was her sense of childish delight that she took in so many different things in the world.  More importantly she was unafraid to show this sense of wonder and delight - not that she was without her faults that could drive a son crazy.  I miss being driven crazy by her - at least little bit!  Wwho among us would not give something to have one last long conversation with our mother and father? 

David McCullough

October 11, 2016

Pogo 1968

1968

Florsheim am Main

We took leave of Deutschland

But I left myself behind

Little boy that I was

And lying in the driveway lay

My red springy pogo stick

Why do I think of this now?

In brown hot California hills

Forty eight years later sometime ago when I was a boy not yet a man

It was my dreams of what it meant to be a boy. Then …to become used to what it means to leave things behind. 

To grow up and become a man …So it bounced … so I did … from country to country and state to state in ceaseless quest. 

So now I remember with some certainty,

A red pogo stick

And a childhood left behind. 

Roundstone, Ireland.

We are in Roundstone Village, North of Galway, Ireland. Super nice fishing village and damn small. Just a few B&B's and good pubs.  Not overrun with tourist like us …at least not now. In the distance, the Buren a gigantic outcropping of limestone, calcite and other minerals. Fantastic rock specimens abound and fossils. Last week we saw footprints over 385 millions years old in a ledge above the ocean. I'll want to come back here. You should too. 

Great coffee cafe in Lisconnor, Ireland

I'm in Liscannor, Ireland at a wonderful cafe. 

Go to it. Sit. Enjoy and let Irish envelop you. We've had an unheralded 24+ days of no rain or fog. A record from what the Irish are saying. Its a wise man that carries a coat in good weather as a farmers wife remarked to yesterday. 

Thoughts on Ireland

Tis a bit intimidating to write anything at all about Ireland after the like of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and others of course.  But if everyone let that stop them we would all be screwed out of much fine literature.  That being said . . . I'll move on.  We have been on our first and far too brief sojourn through this lovely and lively country and is is not enough to take even a month.  I think we shall have to live here for a few years at least to get a sense of the place, it's time and lovely people.  Others have said it far better than I but underneath all the laughter, jokes and limericking around there is, it seems to me, a deep vein of sadness and tragedy that permeates the land and people who have so tenaciously inhabited it so many thousands of years. Not that it curses them by any means but it makes them who they are of course . . . Just like the rest of us.

We visited a lot of places while here - must I even say that? I think not but it's done well there we are.  Among them, surprise surprise to those of you have been, was a circle of upright stones.  I forget where and I am not looking it up yet.  But over three thousand years ago people cremated and buried a female.  Around her, either before or after the burial they erected stones (think Stonehenge).  It quite touched me . . . Wondering who she was, was she loved, revered, hated or what was she?  I want to think it was love and respect but that's three thousand years of projection going into that.  Me, like many are prone to romanticizing the past thinking that people  were closer to the land or happier or somehow more in touch with something better than what we are or are Not in touch with.  I am guilty of this but I reject it's basic premise.  For what we know from all the evidence is that it was / could be a very difficult life under what we consider difficult and less than ideal living conditions.  All that and the complications of the threat and reality of conflict, disease, starvation and shall I go on?  None the less, three thousand years later I bear witness to what they left behind, stand where they stood, wonder at their lives and look at some of the same stars they wondered at (in far different positions though) I like to project and think.

In that same moment, selfishly I wonder who will build my stone circle and than realize I don't care and that in the end, three thousand years from now these binary digital bits of information will cease to have existed and it will not matter that they were written in the first place. It will not matter that I lived or died nor how many lives I saved or failed to save.  We are all dust comes to mind and the fleeting lives we live . . .it is good to be reminded of that, that our time is short and we better get on with it - whatever that means. I think what it means for me is that I want to cosmic good while I am rooted here and I think I have. . .for the most part!  I need to carpe diem baby and carpe diem fast now that I can see the end (I like to think) a bit more close than I have seen it in the past.  

Maybe the Irish and the land have a clearer sense of it than I or the Americans do because they are surrounded and permeated by it.  With the troubles not so far in the past and thousands of years of invasions by the Vikings and English they have known far worse than many of us.  It is reflected in their music, language (which I have come to love the sound of) and culture.

We have never felt more welcomed (except I have felt just at welcomed when I lived in Fiji from 1985-1987).  If you can - go to Ireland but go to just one to three places and linger in each as long at you can.  I respect and love this country and its people - they have taught me a thing or two and I am just learning what the hell that is and in a few years or so I just might know.  But go to Ireland, keep your mouth shut, your mind, eyes and heart open.  If your'e not careful - you'll turn into one of them, mind you . . . there are worse fates!

Outside of Dingle, Ireland

The view from my window …

Cashel Rock, County Tipperary, Ireland

Cashel Rock. Look it up. Been around for a long time. Damn the English for screwing the Irish but the Americans have done our bit too in many places. And so it goes far into the past and future. 

Ireland, Kilkenny, May 2016

For a city that has been here for over 600 years They sure as hell are doing something right! Would love to come back and spend a lot of time here thank you very much Ireland. Where observations to, as I've got quite a bit to say about our experience thus far but for now I'm too busy drinking to do any writing I'm glad of it if you asked me for I think that's what the Irish are mainly doing is drinking more than anything else. 

Poem: DO NOT FORGET

Do Not Forget

I have learned to love you more with each breaking day

and I tell you I love you more,

than I did the first year of our lives

we knew together.

now . . . . now that grief binds you tight

in remembrance of those who are dead or dying.

Try not let death seize you in it's embrace

to know that each moment you are alive to grieve

you are also alive to live

I am not here to bind you to me

but only to love you

and my loving embrace

in support of our lives

lived together (not alone).

Death reminds us . . .

make time for the living

let them love you

in the depths of your misery, love and pain

death reminds us that we are all suffering

in loss and love

in love and death,

in birth and living.

Do not forget me . . .

the dead whisper to us

do not forget

do not forget the warm lives and souls that populate your life

do not forget

I am here to support and love

we need each other

we need others

I have learned to love you more with each breaking day

I whisper to you do not forget me

do not forget them

do not forget

do Not forget

Shhh my love . . .

do not forget

to live.

David McCullough

November 21, 2015