House of Life and Promise

[Steven Hunley]

House of Life and Promise

From the kitchen window the view was magnificent. Ragged green tree-lines like the ones I described in Grass Valley but more tropical. Eucalyptus and Maples, Palms and Coral Trees abounded above the chaparral in an eclectic mix. Life here was a more eclectic mix of humanity. I thrive on different flavors of men and women, and even steak and lobster get old if you eat them every day and become less exotic, more provincial fare. I remember my mom getting Kellogg’s Variety Packs and giving me the choice of any of the little boxes. Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies with their Snap Crackle and Pop, Cheerios, and Raisin Bran. I only had to name it and it was mine.

I was spoiled. I’ve got plenty of nothing, according to Gershwin, and I’m still spoiled. Indulged too, ask Barbara. Go figure how the grown-up self-serving bastard became so self-centered, and while you’re at it, blame it on his loving mother. Keep the Devil out of this.

From where I was standing you couldn’t see any houses, just dry green hills rolling off into the distance. The back yard proper was landscaped to the max by the same guy who did the Bazaar del Mundo in Old Town. Sure, it had grass, but not like a miniature golf course, flat and tidy, but rolling all over the place like dunes in Lawrence of Arabia colored green. There was a bird-bath tipped at an impossible angle no self-respecting Robin would dare bathe in, near a stream that wouldn’t stream, where frogs chirped every night with great gobs of green gusto. Across from there sat an orange tree with three whole oranges on its pathetic skinny limbs. I have skinny limbs too, but still bear fruit, so I had great sympathy for this particular tree, figured it only needed a shovel full of fertilizer and it would blossom and bloom. Knew I would be the one to do it, straighten out the bent fountain and make every blade of grass fresh and new. Figured Barbara would do the same thing for me. Knew in my heart I’d figured right for once in my life.

The living room was elegant but comfortable, a hard act to pull off unless you’re Barbara. The space was but a reflection of its designer. A black-lacquered Howard baby grand dominated the entrance to the stairway that zig-zagged its way to the second floor, and where sheet music was usually propped sat two books. Art and Love, An Illustrated Anthology of Love Poetry selected by Kate Farrell, illustrated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vanity Fair, Photographs of an Age, 1914-1936, with a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on the cover. You may not be able to judge a person by their looks, but you can by their books.

Another thing you notice is the number of photographs. There are over thirty of family members but of these only four predominate, standing like ghosts in the flesh, phantoms clothed in black and white and Technicolor. They are of Edythe, huge copies of the woman who was larger than life to all she met. They were on easels in the chapel, and displayed Edythe, Young Edythe at eighteen, then Edythe in her thirties with Howard, who either is drunk on her love or on the Martini we can see sitting empty on their table in the Copacabana, then Edythe in her sixties standing by the gold-framed mirror that is now hung at my back, or Edythe, still Torchy-headed in her later years due to age-old Egyptian Henna and modern science, smiling ear-to-ear on Allison's wedding day. She's sixty-nine and wearing a purple velvet dress with the aplomb of an eighteen year-old.

I’m going to suggest that Barbara put one away, one each week on a day of her choosing. It’s not like I want her to forget her mom and all. Nothing of the sort, in fact my perspective on the matter is all screwed up, as I lost my mother when I was twenty-two. I have a suspicion that knowing your parents longer makes giving them up, even to their eventual death, more difficult. How curled are the fingers, how grasping the hand, when the grip has been held for sixty-seven years? How unchanged and everlasting is the formula of love? It still takes the same ingredients, and we mix it to suit our own tastes. I should keep my mouth shut and instead I suggest a ceremonial letting go, just like the red balloon over Scripps Ranch marked Torchy with a black felt marker that flew up, up, and away, like the Beautiful Balloon in the hit song by the Fifth Dimension, until it exploded and scattered to the four winds.

©Steven Hunley 2014


http://youtu.be/BwmyJAEnz4s I got Plenty of Nothin'
To be continued…

[Steven Hunley]

House of Life


There are times when a dude looks down at his feet and wonders,
“How exactly did I get here?”

And he gazes down accusingly at his two feet as if they are to blame, as if their locomotion alone put him there. How much of where we are is of our doing, and how much is up to Fate? What would Tom Hardy have to say about this? Or Joe Conrad? Was the direction I took evil, full of shadows and deception? Was it Heart of darkness material, and only a reflection of the Poe side of my soul? Or was it a course to salvation steered by divine intervention and crafted by a protective angel? Oh, without a doubt.

How exactly was I led to the House of Life?

I can honestly say the only sign I had was that this journey was peculiar, and like Marvin Gay, I sing the song in earnest. Ain’t it peculiar that a dude can actually meet a woman on the internet, bumping randomly like a pin-ball across life’s hard chrome bumpers, fall into a tender life-long connection, hitting the jackpot of love?

Ain’t it peculiar that a dude who’s the most guarded in the New World would want to hook up with an educated articulate woman so versed in psychology she’s got a bloomin’ doctoral degree? Is it because he’s so fascinated with her he ignores the danger of being found-out?

Mr. Opaque attempting to become Mister Transparent, oh come now, get serious.

How about they meet up just when her mother is dying, for God’s sake. What’s up with that? By the Immaculate heavens I say, what’s up with that?
Does that sound romantic enough for you? Is that enough dramatic waters to float your boat?

It’s enough foaming dramatic waves to float the Queen Mary, and I ought to know. Barbara and I spent Saturday night there and were the only natural force to ever make the old queen rock back and forth while still in port. It’s Gilgamesh. It’s Noah. It makes primetime and the internet look weak and shoddy in comparison.

It’s a deluge I tell you, hooked up to a humongous typhoon, in the center of a seismic cataclysm.

And it’s more than that….it’s love.

What’s Howard going to think about this? Do I have to answer when I get to heaven and see the Good Fella Scrap Metal Man, and explain that here on earth I couldn’t see him man to man or face to face, to ask for her hand in marriage? Explain how I got along with Edythe famously even though she was dying? Oh, that’s right, she’ll be there, right beside him, put in a good word for me and add that they both want Barbara to be happy. For all I know it was Howard “Scrap Metal” Mark that directed my feet here in the first place and put me in charge as a test of my own particular mettle, see what I was made of, knew that if anyone could get anything of value out of me it was his precious probing daughter. Senior Hurricane Hunley in charge of pirate-girl Barbara, skin pale as rice-powder Kabuki-girl make-up, sporting coal-black hair, wearing a Japanese-inspired Chrysanthemum Kimono from Chanel, but only to bed mind you, only to bed.

Well I am, and that’s that. Barbara is my charge now, every lovely bloomin’ inch of her.

©Steven Hunley 2014

http://youtu.be/gFER9-JvKdg Pharrell Williams “Happy” vs. Marvin Gaye “Ain ‘t that Peculiar”

http://youtu.be/UFrDpx7zLtA Pin Ball Wizard The Who

note to readers: If you're just getting into this piece and it doesn't make sense, read The House of Death. I'm just getting into it too, and have no idea how it's going to end up, as I don't write 'em, I just record them. It doesn't make sense to me either. Like writing, living is a process of discovery.

[MANICHAEAN]

Interesting change in your style of writing. Keep living to the full, committing the oldest sins in the newest kind of ways and keep your quill sharpened. Have a good Easter.
Best regards
M.

[108 fountains]

Very nice. The writing is good. "...great gobs of green gusto." I like that a lot. You also really are able to make the main character come alive and come across as sincere with his bits of self-deprecation. It can stand alone, but works better as a companion piece to House of Death. And yet taken together, they leave me wanting more. It's like you have done great job of introducing on these characters, and now I'm ready for the narrative to follow. I hope it does.

[AuntShecky]

Don't let anyone ever tell you that you're not expressive. Indeed, your writing is as expansive as Whitman's. Your soul must be huge, "containing multitudes."

Auntie

[Steven Hunley]

I ask myself constantly, what led to this instant bonding between us? What engendered immediate rapport? Was it conscious effort or unconscious yearning that prompted it? I thought of the couple that preceded us. Howard met Edythe, and they married just before he shipped out to Europe in World War Two, to take part in the invasion of Normandy, and there was the chance of his immediate loss. Their marriage lasted over fifty-seven years.

I’m reminded of Blanche’s lines in Streetcar named Desire.

Blanche: Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.

Mitch: It sure brings it out in people.

Blanche: The little there is belongs to people who have experienced some sorrow.

Mitch: I believe you are right about that.

Blanche: I’m positive that I am. Show me a person who hasn’t known any sorrow and I’ll show you a shuperficial….”

Blanche’s tongue was thick, she’d been drinking. Well, neither Barbara nor I had been drinking, but the observation remains keen. He mother’s death was imminent, and my mother’s death was a tragedy long gone and past but not forgotten. Pirate Girl and I bonded together like Gorilla Glue. Saw each other every day, traded off supporting positions, took turns with teardrops, white cotton handkerchiefs and Navy blue bandanas, offered and wetted each other’s shoulders in sorrow.

Hope we last over thirty years, when I’ll be the oldest fart on the North American continent and she’ll be the oldest woman to waft away my fumes waving an American flag. That’s what bonded couples do; put up with each-other’s sh*t. At first you think you love somebody because, in your eyes, they seem perfect. After you’ve matured you realize it’s their imperfections and frailties that make them lovable and more human, for without frailties we’d all be gods. Time has knocked your perfect woman off her marble pedestal and you love her even more for the fall she’s taken so gracefully.

We were sitting out on the patio, and it was a starry night, one of those nights where they hung in the firmament like diamonds in black velvet Tiffany boxes, and gave our eyes great pleasure. The stars were more noticeable here in Scripps Ranch, than closer to the big city, where ambient light made them lose their luster in comparison.

As a photographer I’ve always been keenly aware of shadows, and as an English teacher, aware of the symbolism of light versus dark. Light is usually associated with knowledge and good, darkness with ignorance and evil. Here, in the chaparral and Eucalyptus, the heavens were more exposed, more celestial and accessible. It was easier to commune with nature. The surrounding moon-lit hills were more like Paradise Lost than Southern California. Maybe for once I was in the right place at the right time. It was virgin territory and wanted exploration. This was Barbara’s dominion, and I needed her particular sanctuary. I wanted illumination, yet craved the darkness.

Simply a paradox of my nature, or story of my life?

“What is dark within me, illumine.” ― John Milton, Paradise Lost

©Steven Hunley 2014

To be continued…

[MANICHAEAN]

The last paragraph was the lode stone. Captured superbly the sensitivity of this tale.
Well done bud
M.

[Steven Hunley]

Today was different. It’s been hot, hot…and it’s supposed to be spring. Sitting outside on the patio and listening to the kids on a playground far below. They’re screamin’, they’re laughin’, they’re cuttin’ up on the playground. They’re getting a charge from the wind, kinda like how Van Gogh got a charge from the Mistral.

Edythe’s last rose is bobbing its head listlessly on its stem. Like the green leaves hanging awkwardly from the branches, like the flowers with bowed limp heads, we’re all suffering from the heat.

We’re on the way to Mission Valley. Barbara imagines her mother in uncomfortably hot ground. I imagine she’s way beyond that now, beyond terra hotica, and sitting cool on a cloud looking down at the view.

The first red rose of the season was still wet with dew that cool morning of the funeral when I cut it off, wrapped it in a paper towel and placed it in Barbara’s hand. You know she wears her mother’s wedding ring? I remember the fresh sparkle of the antique ring, the red rose just bloomed, and Barbara’s fire-engine red nail polish. I remember how sad she looked while solemnly tossing the rose in her mother’s grave on the pile of clean earth that had just obscured the Star of David. The rose took its place and added another symbol. Then there was a symbol of faith and a symbol of love.

“Remember, Honey, that she’s nowhere near the surface and the earth is a good insulator. Like the pioneers who lived in sod houses out on the plains."

I say it in a manly sort of manner, kinda scientifically mechanical and all, and in the final analysis, kinda like a moron.

“Oh, she replies and looks out the car windshield absently at the traffic, lost in thought.

So I figure, while looking at that rose, that we’re the ones living in a world of wonders and a world of pain, and wherever Edythe is, she’s far beyond that corporeal stuff. And if she’s nowhere, and all of us end up nowhere, then that’s that, end of story.

They don’t call me Even Steven for nothin’. I like balance. It wouldn’t be an equitable world if there wasn’t balance.

When the house was first built Edythe found Barbara in the back yard. It was just a dirt lot then, not the lovely backyard it would become. Barbara had taken two lawn chairs and was sitting in one that was facing the canyon. Edythe took a mother’s place next to her daughter.

“Why are you out here?”

“I’m checking out how loud the kids are. They may get annoying.”

Edythe’s face assumed a look of righteous indignation, her red hair a fire, and as she pursed her crimson lips she pointed to the playground with nails lacquered to perfection and declared,

“That’s silly. Who ever heard of kids’ laughter being annoying? I like it here, Bar-ba-ra. There’s nothing more beautiful than the sound of little people having fun.”

Edythe gave out an incredulous sigh and shook her head in disbelief.

“And your dad is always saying how smart you are.”

©Steven Hunley 2014

To be continued…

[Steven Hunley]

And she is smart; a good therapist has to be smart. It’s one o’clock PM and we have time to eat a couple of fish tacos from Kiko’s Place Seafood before she starts work. They have a truck parked at the market on Texas Street, so we cop a couple of fish tacos and make for Morley Field. The fish tacos here are so humongous you can barely cram them into your mouth. We find a cement table and benches in the shade next to the tennis courts.

We’re eating, and she shows me pictures on something called Pinterest.

“Do you know about Pinterest?”

“I’ve heard of it. It’s a place to post pictures.”

“Yes, you can take them and post them on the internet straight from your phone. People do it all the time.”

Not likely, from me. No way I’m going to go world-wide with my pictures without cropping and all.”

It figures. You want to do revisions like in your writing.”

“Naturally.”

“Here you are, the most guarded guy in the Universe and you hook up with the best therapist in San Diego.”

She laughs, and when she laughs, I do too. That's me, Mister Fusion. At this point, Mister Differentiation is beyond me.

So what can I do? She’s right. Me, Mister Opaque, Mister Solid Stonewall, has met his match, and to Barbara he’s Mister Crystalline Transparency. There’s only one thing that makes the process bearable. Like Maugham, and unlike others I’ve known, Barbara doesn’t judge.

Oh, others have said, “I don’t judge.”

But when it came to the Nitty Gritty, they sat on the Supreme Court and found me lacking, in character, in money, in social position, in habits, you name it. I was dirty-dog judged and found guilty. Barbara, on the other hand, not only talked the talk, she could walk the walk, and in my size eleven and one-half Reeboks. When Barbara spoke she was serious as a heart attack. It was the hard truth tempered in kindness. Her eyes fell upon me tenderly.

“And with all your flaws… I still love you.”

You know, I heard some good things in my life, and this topped them all. So what should I do? Just then a blue bird flew down and sat on the table right next to her. She didn’t see it, but I did, and it was showing no fear. I told her to look, and she turned just in time to see him take off.

Funny how an animal can read clues from another species, figure them out in a millisecond and know in a flash if they’re safe to approach.

I wasn’t about to let a silly bird show me up, but it took me a second longer to react. I leaned nearer, pushed an errant lock of coal-dark hair from her coconut-brown eyes and gave her a hug and kiss. And for a second, for a celestial second, time stood still.

On Mother’s day I decide to call the kids, and leave messages all over Facebook. That evening Elle calls back.

“What’s happening, Pops?”

“This afternoon we visited Barbara’s mother’s grave and spread white flowers. She told Olivia before she died, while she could still talk, to bring her white flowers.”

There was a pause.

“I wish we could put flowers on Mom’s grave.”

I remember when Debbie had just died, we were so broke we had to choose cremation, it was the only choice. Even then Nichole and Sean and Elle had to pool their money with mine to come up with the seven-hundred and forty-five dollars.
What ashes were left of her bones and flesh were stuffed in a brown plastic box. What was left of my family motored down the coast to Ocean Beach. We took a portable CD player and played Van Morrison’s Dweller On the Threshold.

I had to wade into the water and took off my shoes and socks. The sand was hot on my bare feet.

I'm a dweller on the threshold
As I cross the burning ground
Let me go down to the water
Watch the great illusion drown

I tipped the box over and threw her in the Pacific. She’d always liked Ocean Beach, and wanted to go there the day of Elle’s birth. She felt restless, like a pregnant cat seeking a quiet closet. Melissa had been a C-section. When Elle started to give her birthing pains, kicking her insides with explosions of her baby feet, wanting out, Deb didn’t recognize her artillery.

And Deb was a mermaid in the water, always like the beach. I still don’t know how to swim.

This afternoon we’d motored to Edythe’s gravesite. I couldn’t believe the number of flowers spread all over the rolling cemetery lawns, they were so colorful.
I remember as we laid down the flowers, that the plot of grass next to Howard was a rectangle of yellow, its green carpet so freshly injured it hadn’t put new roots down, not yet. Allison took the plastic wrapper off the bouquet of white roses.

“It isn’t a dozen roses, it’s a nearer eighteen,” said Barbara.

There were eighteen white roses. They were good-looking, as perfect and pure and delicate as Edythe at eighteen.

I think Allison wanted to leave something more permanent, more solid and everlasting, something she picked out alone that couldn’t be bought. She asked for some time to commune with her grandmother.

We hiked back up the rise and sat in the car out of the wind. Allison left the plot and walked over nearer the trees and cast her eyes down. I couldn’t help but notice the trees were swaying almost violently, except for the wind in their branches it was deadly quiet.

She bent down and walked back and bent down again. There sat a smooth stone, laying on the black granite. By the time we drove away it was late. Spray hit the windshield like glitter and sunlight was back-lighting the sprinklers, turning their spray to drops of precious silver, or shimmering sheets that swayed and folded in never ending patterns.

They have to keep the lawns watered, for appearances sake, for God’s sake, don’t you know.

It’s good for business. As Bob Dylan once sang,

“That he not busy being born is busy dying.”

©Steven Hunley2014

http://youtu.be/-Ln-H2HV6o0 Dweller on the Threshold- Van Morrison

http://youtu.be/jHGrWTmXK6w It’s all right Ma, I’m only Bleeding- Bob Dylan
To be continued…