Lilith blesses America (a story before the last one)

A week after the assassination attempt on Trump's life, Lilith and I ran into Uncle John in the cemetery. He asked how we were feeling. I reported that I felt sick to my stomach. Why? Because it looks like we're going to get Trump again.

He raised his hands up, gazed toward the sky, started to sing "God Bless America."  As Lilith and I trudged home, I thought I can't do this project any more, can't keep my equanimity, can only write evasions of the central subject. I'd intended to write a second volume to Lilith Walks, one that ended with the coming election. But now I just couldn't do it any more. 

We got home, dressed in our gloom, and I turned on my computer. "Biden steps down, endorses Harris," it told me. 

Political joy, you've been a long time gone.

Two faces in Waikiki (sans Lilith)

Walking down Kalakaua in Waikiki, watching tourists drift by and taking pictures of some of them, I saw a rumpled, gray haired, man approaching; he was staggering toward a curb. As he got there, he fell straight forward, off the curb onto the sidewalk, face first. Two security men appeared out of nowhere. A Japanese couple stopped, startled to see the man get up, his black-framed glasses thrown a couple feet ahead of him. Drops of blood spattered on the cement. His nose was bleeding, his right hand was covered with it. One security guard talked into his lapel.

 

A block or two farther toward the Diamond Head end of Waikiki, a young man called out, "Obama!" I told him he was the first person in Waikiki to notice my shirt, which is all I have before I find a Kamala Harris one. "Great president," he said. "My name is Barak, and I'm from the Holy Land." I asked if I could take his photo. After unsuccessfully suggesting that we take a photo together, he stepped back from shadows into the light, which didn't make for a good result. "Come into my store," he said, "I like you, and your shirt." After telling him that he could not sell me anything, I entered, sat in a black chair as he talked to me about the bags under my eyes. Did I want them gone? Did I want to look younger? I told him I had been younger, but feel ok with how I look at my age. He put a blob of skin color gunk on a big q-tip and started applying the goop under my right eye. I might need it on my eyelids, too, as gravity was operating there, too. He aimed a small fan at my face and started drying my under-eye. My skin would tighten, he said. No more bags.

He showed myself to me in a mirror, and to tell the truth, I didn't see much difference. Realizing that I could still offer him nothing, I said I would tell my friends about his shop. He thanked me; he's not paid on commission, but he could use customers. 

 

I never looked to see the name of the shop. But it's on Kalakaua, in case you want your bags removed. You might have to raise your windows, though (as he called my glasses).

 

Lilith and the hunters of Kahalu`u

 

The snail hunter of Kahalu`u doesn't hunt snails any more, but she still has opinions. "If this weren't happening, you couldn't make this shit up," I said, spotting her opening the back door to her car. "I knew if we ran into each other, we'd make faces," she said. "Was that guy paid off?" she asked about the shooter. (I didn't say it's hard to get paid when you're dead, but I took her point.) "He missed. He missed." What next? She looked at me hard and said, "Harris is Asian and Black; she can't win." I suggested an all-woman ticket, Harris and Whitmer, and she gave me intense side eye. Her tone, as she retreated to her gate, was sandpaper grim.

 

The deer hunter of Kahalu`u said as soon as he heard the assassination attempt, he knew it wasn't serious. He's a Democrat, but he knows all the rifles, all the rounds, and that wasn't going to do it. Michelle Obama would be his pick (I also heard this from another dog walking friend).

We all agreed we'd just have to wait and see. History is a bitch that way, when you're in it.

Time Stamps: Elegy 8

But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their courageous [sister].

--Carl Jung, The Red Book

Or, they kill the mirror

That reflects themselves

As if surface were allegory

For depth / and depth

Could speak in words

And words could kill

What they hate they

Cannot see in themselves

But saw in you / trans-

posed to light / radiant

In your little house

By the creek / frog-

infused / where you

Put your tent out

Back some nights

Cacophony the mirror

Of silence / frog song

Mantras chanted to

Mark a prelude

“Don’t expect thoughts

To stop,” they say

They never do

But you can drop

Them like towels

In a basket / snow

On city street / you

Offered us the silence

Of your frequent

Absences—off to do

This! Do that!--

Neighbor looked up

To see her missing

Dog at the edge

Of her lanai / only

Her time had passed

Not his / for he was

There / Is your death absence

Or return? Your photo

On my fridge place-holds

The question / time stamp

Reads 2001 / March / afternoon

Now 2024 / July / morning

Dog and I turned back

When it began to rain

Eucalyptus and I, from Lavender Ink Press.

https://www.lavenderink.org/site/shop/i-and-eucalyptus/?v=76cb0a18730b

 

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I and Eucalyptus is series of meditative poems, or poetic meditations, on the relationship between the writer and a tree, by way of Martin Buber’s I and Thou, including 21 full color photographs of the tree. Schultz’s obsession with a solitary eucalyptus in a neighborhood park opens up space for discussions of self and other (as well as dog), creation and decreation, accident and abstraction in art, politics and spirituality, and much else. Tree and writer exchange vows, but there’s no insurance to cover such a union, so writer and dog return home, “develop” photos, and muse about these encounters between human and tree beings. The eucalyptus, so often considered worthless and invasive, becomes a worthwhile guide to thought. Answers, of course, are all more questions, for the book is more quest than end-point. Each section is accompanied by a photograph of the tree’s drips and drabs; greens, reds and yellows; its peeling bark and black sap.

Elegy 7

 

It happens

The man who sits

In his cloth chair

In his garage,

Cigar in hand

Agreed the world

Is coming apart /

Said, “my older

Brother died today--

Cancer” / and I

Told him briefly

About your murder

Put hand to heart

Wished him well--

“Happens to us all”

He said / This time

I’d remembered

Water for Lilith /

Didn’t ask him

For a bottle / “That’s

What it’s for,” he’d

Said / when dog was

Hot and I had none.

Lilith, disrupted

 

Do you know Adrienne? She said her professor lived near here. . . I think the event was staged . . . We don't want him to be a martyr . . . Wish Biden would step down, Harris couldn't win either . . . My mother wishes he hadn't missed . . . He missed by just. this. much . . . Really? don't keep up with politics . . . [a brief wave to Uncle J, busy with busloads of tourists] . . . Oh, that was Paul; he used to do security for us in NY, was a paramedic, now mortician . . . Auntie P's neighbor yells at everyone, screams at people in our work lot the other day, everyone needs a psych test these days . . .