Bugge missing Bowie

Bugge.  Still missing his dead brother as far as we can tell he likes to smell and play with the tracker that Bowie used to wear around his neck.

 This last weekend we spent time at my family property near Salt Point State Park.  We have owned the land since 1962 and I have spent much time there off and on since then.  The community is a wonderful one in that despite the physical distance between land/houses and people, there is a lot of networking and support.  The Timbercove Volunteer Fire Department is exactly that - all volunteer and is closely supported by the community. 

No one ever instructs us that fairness does not exist.  Instead, we have our heads filled with the IDEA of fairness, equality and democracy.  The Americans idealize and trumpet their so called Democracy.  These ideals are only that . . . to be striven for and aspired to but in the end . . . they are only ideals.  There is nothing fair about death and how it comes to us most of the time.

It has been a week exactly since our Bowie Cat died.  Reflecting on the capriciousness of life and death, fairness and equality.  There are many that live that deserve death and vice versa.   

Blood in the Street - Bowie Cat, Killed by a hit and run Truck.

 On June 14, 2023 our cat, Bowie Cat was killed by a hit and run truck.  We had gone to work a half hour earlier, kissed our Bowie Cat and his brother Bugge goodbye and always said to them, Be careful, don't die today.

One does not live in this world without inherent risk. We planned, executed the safety plan as best we could.  In the larger scheme of world crises we remain aware of the tentativeness of all things and the scale.  Yet, sadness persist.

    I got the call @ 0800 from our friend and neighbor John.  I walked over to tell Vic in the PT department.  We got home around 0815 and John had put Bowie in a box with a towel and washed the blood off the street.  I looked at Bowie enough to know it was instant and instantly horrible.  For Bowie Cat was a beauty.  A seal tan and black long drink of beauty with shimmering blue eyes that made him more human than cat, more of a wonderful mysterious alien than something of this world.

The boys . . . shot through a screen door.  Bowie Cat on the left and Bugge Cat on the right.  Three years old, they were brothers, litter-mates from the beginning of time, attached with an almost visible line of love and an unknowing of what it ever could mean to be without, without the other, without a brother.  They often moved as one organism.    

It has always amazed me with extreme wonderment at how animals, cats in this instance, can leave their mark upon our hearts, heads, emotions and most of all in our ability to love.  They can, if allowed, teach us to be more human and as complicated as it can be, as hard as it can be, to let love in the gate and become more open to the world.  All by loving these small simple furry creatures.  

I do not know much about cat grief for the loss of a brother.  I only know mine which is deeper and more bountiful than I ever could have known.  In a sense, they were there at the beginning of our life in the house we live in now.  We, in conjunction with the Cat Boys, made a home.  And now, with much sadness and grief we are bereft and mourning the loss of our friend and buddy, Bowie.

Bugge shows his grief by climbing into the box holding the body of his dead brother. That is my interpretation but when he meows over and over, pawing at Bowie to get up to wrestle, to play, to fight and roll in the dirt . . . that is the love and grief of a missing half.  This I choose to believe.  If nothing else he knows the smell of death, the stillness that it brings.

It is an honor to love.  A chore, a delight, a cosmic mishmash of what it means to be human or an animal in this universe.  We choose to love most of the time or at least to let love in the gate, to attach itself to our hearts and psyche.  At other times love comes to us from nowhere, knocking at those damn gates, intent to be let in, not to be forgotten, insistent on its acceptance into our innermost sanctums.  I will not disregard such a gift.

 

Bowie Blue Eyes . . . they get you every time. 

He could be Buddha like.  Or maybe he was Buddah.  Whatever he was and is now,  He is loved.  He was the type of cat who would run out to the sidewalk and greet people walking by.  Neighborhood walkers would stop and wait for him.  The local children knew him.  Our very young neighbor next door would come over and call him, Bowieeee, Bowieeee. Bowieee, Bowieee.  Over and over again in her small sweet voice.  And out of the woodwork would come Bowie and then they would stop, stock still and just stare at each other before finally the petting and loving began.

Thank you Bowie. Thank you for hanging with us as long as you did.  Rescued with your brother from a field of dreams only to die on the street of despair.  You had three incredible great years on this planet. You brought such laughter and joy to the lives we created with you and Bugge.

From such a small creature came an outsized capacity to effect others and bring a deeply satisfying peace and stillness of mind . . . then to shrieking laughter in an instant. These are the gifts of Bowie Cat.  I am sad but grateful.  I am grateful and honored.  My tears flow composed of all things great and small, love and fear, sadness and joy, knowledge of death and life. The unsparing nature of the universe and the endless wash of wave and tide from whence all things are borne.   Grief and sadness lies upon our hearts but over all that is the triumph of joy, love and happiness. 

Thank you Bowie Cat for all these things and more.

 

It Is Enough to Love

 

You

You make me cackle with wild laughter.

It is not why I love you. 

 

You drive me mad with desire,

But again, it is not why I love you.

 

You amaze me with your intellect,

But once again it is not why I love you.

 

You delight me in the breadth of your interest.

But again and again, this is not why I love you.

 

You make me crazy with passion and weak in my knees,

Still, this is not why I love you.

 

You take my breath away with your beauty,

Yes, yes, yes, it is still not why I love you.

 

Your knowledge of this expansive world cultures and languages amazes me,

But in no way is this why I love you.

 

You hold my love in your heart

For this and all these things . . . 

are not why I love you.

Just to love . . .

That is enough.

Easy is Too Long

I’ve been having it so easy,

For a long time now . . . .

and now, 

I’m just little bit tired and sick

of being on the wrong side of easy. 

With hard times coming,

Taking it easy is not so easy any more.

Living or dying,

Caring or not,

Some choices, tough or not, have gotta be made.

We think we’ve come so far yet nothing kills like the deception we live 

In our hearts and minds we yearn for peace  

then we cry out in pain and rage sweeps our hearts and minds

And blood and butchery runs in the gutters of our hearts.

We’ve been taking easy for too long nowl

And if ever had any faith it is long since lost. 

Till I met you and yes, I’ve met you.  

In the alley's of my mind and byways of my heart. 

It’s easy loving you.

A cushion of love and then the fear of losing you. 

But hard choices remain,

And the easiest of all was loving you.  

 

David McCullough

September 16, 2022

Bounty

Our garden bounty 

Bike vs Auto

 

POEM - My Grief for You

 

 

My grief for you

the eventual loss of the Us we have become

is boundless and deep.

 

The  images of a barren home

lived in by one of the Us.

populates and haunts prememory.

 

Dwell not in the past.

But better there then some imagined future

bereft and betwixt without and within

our love.

 

I struggle to pare

to sliver and trim and whack and cut

these blocks of words and letters

free of superfluousness 

down and down to essential meanings

but not shorn of elegance and beauty.

To be here now

and not in the future.

To not live in the past 

but to be here because of it.

Jazz Morning

 Sunday morning the end of July 2022. Sitting outside warming, cool breeze.  Sipping coffee, Sun is out, listening to Art Pepper.  In a thoughtful lovely reflective mindset. Loving Vic. Planning the last years of our lives now with slow deliberateness. One always hopes for longer but sooner than we want it is our time to die. It is just there. That is all. What a day. Slow meditative clarity. Sorely needed. I must remember. 

I am a lucky man. 

 I would rather spend a day

I would rather spend a day with you.

Then wait a day till eternities end.

A day in the garden of our own delights and choosing

Then to be lost on the eve of Armageddon. 

Shall we count down the time till our own demise?

Or revel in the now and here you are,

The delight of the hollow of your neck, 

The slim softness of muscles nape

Pulls my lips in.

I would rather spend a day with you

then lose an hour to salubrious thought

And engage in salacious delicious delights.

I long for you.

Oh.  How I long for you.

Whether here or there,

My desire is infinite.

I would rather

Spend a day and night, a day and night

All our days and nights

With you.

So still here with all my longing and want

Desire raging and coursing

For your strength, your intellectual, your politics,

Your smoldering sensuality that you so blithely 

Know nothing of or cannot acknowledge.  

Still here orbiting the planet of love and desire.

I would, really, rather spend,

A day with you.

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