Death and life, Inc.

 

Lilith steered me to the door of the guard shack at the cemetery (she knows where to find her people). S came out and pointed past the display of flowers for sale, meaning he wanted to talk beyond the Cyclopsian eye of the new camera. The big bosses are around, and not just a couple of them, along with a large group of competitors. Twenty-two of them! Think of the airfare and hotel for all those people. Must be 100K. Something's up. S thinks the place is going to be sold, but even his source inside the company hadn't heard anything about the visit. M told him they'd been looking to see how big around the trees are at the bottom. How many plots could be put into that space. He thinks it's M but can't be sure. Oh, they want to put in a feature like the one here, he was told by one boss. But you know, you'd send two people for that work. Plus, the two businesses hate each other. In one year, S said, we'll all be gone. They bring in their own.

 

I told S I met a writer who wondered what people who work in a cemetery talk about. Oh, life and death, I'd said. "And everything else," he added.

Things mothers say

When you're grieving (as he had been for his wife) and people try to give you advice, S told me, "It's like you're in Missouri telling me what it's like for me in Yugoslavia." He'd had a girlfriend in Florida whose mother had them over for dinner each week. They brought a friend who was very short, and sensitive about it. "Don't say anything about her height," the girlfriend had told her mother. Just as soon as the door opened, of course, the mother let out a southern "why you so short, girl?" I told him that the second time my mother met my college roommate's parents, who had moved from Japan decades earlier, she told them how much their English had improved. S and I groaned. 

 

"I'm old and wise," said the man up the hill, walking with his wife. "No, you aren't," I replied, "you're a Cubs fan."

 

The former snail hunter of Kahalu`u feeds her chicken

Her cigarette smoke preceded her; as we turned the corner, she muttered something about "our nation." A hen paced beside the fence, demanding to be fed. The woman's brother-in-law had died this morning. He'd had Alzheimer's, as had his parents; his wife has Parkinson's. "She's mean," the woman's sister. "Complain about something new! Like Trump. I know she's worried about finances, but at that point in our lives, don't we need to find something that brings us joy?" Her own worry lines showed through the cigarette haze. "Trump's completely ruined us." The hen yelled; we walked home, though Lilith would have preferred to continue staring the chicken down.

 

from Startles

Startles

I’m shocked but not surprised, startled but unmoved. We'd been the American empire, but suddenly—how suddenly?--we are Romans. Afraid that he won’t be remembered, the president promises to erect an arch for a triumph to be announced later (TBA). Why can’t blasphemy be more fun? You cross over a hill and there it is, the Colosseum!

Festivals of blood replaced by rivers of tourists. We only see what others built, saw diminished, shored up, sold tickets to. To see is a neutral verb. But to see so many seeing so much; I had not imagined so many! I told a boy in Temple valley he was taking photos of a Brazilian cardinal; he didn’t look up. We confine seeing to our own devices, bearing witness in so many private rooms.

“The public” used to park for free. Now, instead of flowering bushes, we get poles with signs on them, telling you how to pay. With your entry to the Temple, you can get a faux Japanese shirt for $58. Tourists mimic pilgrims at the mock temple; to see is to take a pilgrimage, if you follow your maps closely enough. The Holy Sea it ain’t.

The feeling is heavy on us here, where a graveyard mimics Trump’s America. The boss insults his staff, tells them to “get over” their grief if they’re suffering, to “stop eating so much” if they’re heavy. Cameras on poles have replaced the security staff, like some nightmare out of Jeremy Bentham. Tree stumps accumulate, some red setter orange with red setter eyes staring up. Warehouse the dead in these plots or behind black walls.

Nature is our refuge, is it not? The sharply angled mountains, green, promising waterfalls when it rains. The earth, rich and dark, piled beside the road. A man with cut grass fur on his boots, green on brown leather. Another with dirt under his nails pets my dog.

To arrive at refuge, we crop our images ever more narrowly, leave off the absences of bushes and trees, the accumulations of signs. The space of the image grows small as a die, nearly as prone to chance. “It’s my opinion, and I have the right to have it,” a neighbor says, after telling me he “hates poetry.” Who’s to grieve if consolation’s odious? Who’s to praise the ruins?

 

Lilith marche en francais

"Ah, vous etes francaises," j'ai dit aux jeunes femmes au cimetiere. They stood at attention and smiled. "Je parle un peu," j'ai dit. Elles etaient de Bretagne and je leur ai dit que j'y suis restee pour une nuit a Quimper avec des spirituelles. J'ai entendu une petite fille appellant le Temple un chateau, et apres une femme qui criait, Guillaume! a son mari. "Il y a beaucoup de francais ici aujourd'hui," je lui ai dit. "Tu as entendu! Nous sommes avec des amis." 

 

The tourists arrive in clumps: German, French, Indian. Yesterday, I met a family from the Big Island who'd never been to the cemetery/Temple. Kona side. "What happened to the old guy who walked a dog in here for a long time?" asked Dennis the other day. "He died," I said, "and I found out that his son had been one of my students."

Chapgpt edited my French:

« Ah, vous êtes françaises », ai-je dit aux jeunes femmes au cimetière.
Elles se sont arrêtées et ont souri.
« Je parle un peu », ai-je ajouté.
Elles étaient de Bretagne, et je leur ai dit que j’y étais restée une nuit à Quimper avec des sœurs.
J’ai entendu une petite fille appeler le temple « un château », puis une femme crier « Guillaume ! » à son mari.
« Il y a beaucoup de Français ici aujourd’hui », lui ai-je dit.
« Tu as entendu ! Nous sommes avec des amis. » 

Valley of the bad air (after Gary Pak)

"Do you know R's mom? Nicest lady there is. She's large. Someone offered her a chair at a meeting and she said no, she wanted to stand. "You sure you can stand that long?" asked the boss, who chides her on what she eats. Chides everyone. "You see those trees over there?" S asked. He meant the ones on the hill between Kahekili Hwy and the mountains, lovely trees. "They're going to cut those, because they take up space where plots could be put." "Doesn't the cemetery have a certificate for being an arboretum?" I asked. S snorted. Said uncle's having a really hard time, yes; family problems, job. "He's in a bad way," Ola says up the hill, "but he's doing nothing to make it better. Quit his other job." He's depressed. I asked after the woman who worked in front of the temple; she quit the company, I was told. "At least we got Jesus in the White house," I said to S. "Oh, that's not Trump. He's been dead at least nine months. Notice how much shorter he is now. Down from 6' 2" to 5' 10. And there was the 6' 7" Biden, too. Someone's pulling the strings."

 

These days, I take pictures of stumps of bushes, the beautiful retriever orange/red of tree stumps. The final part of a quest narrative, I read, is lamentation.

A gray day in the cemetery

Uncle J has lost his bluster. Lilith and I stopped to say hello, get our trilled "Lilith Walks!" out of him, a handshake, a pet, something. Perhaps I shouldn't have opened with, "I'm sorry to hear the security guys got laid off." "All of them." Uncle is working some night shifts to cover, but at least there's peace and quiet then. But I don't think it's my comment that dampens the mood. His face has thinned over the last few months; even his beard has lost its attitude. "My cousin had one stroke, and then another, and another," he told me. Lilith and I hope his cousin gets better, and walk off in the thin rain.