Thursday, November 6, 2008

The taste of a life

Instead of an animal totem, imagine a food associated with a person you love. With Doug, chocolate would be a logical association. The substantial depth of it. The complexity. With this news now, that he has left us, that his pain is over, the bittersweetness. A life melted upon the tongue, something that stays with you.

But I don’t think of chocolate. Instead I think of mushrooms when I think of Doug. He imprinted on me in the forest, when we walked through the Oregon woods looking for wild fungi. We were both enrolled in Joe’s mushroom identification class at LCC together. It was the fall of 1996. I was with Steve and Doug was with Sue, each of us paired up in something that felt eternal, and we were all young enough to still believe in eternity, to not consider the inevitability of death. Joe was our teacher, a man with so much energy that it rose him to his toes, where he bounced like a child eager for the next thing, letting us in on the mysteries of separating poison from pleasure. On field trips into the forest, Doug and I and the others fanned out through the trees, eyes focused, looking for chicken-of-the-woods growing from the remains of great snags, the wet shiny caps of russulas emerging from the leaf litter like little hulks, so many chanterelles that we learned to spot their distinct orange yellow from ten yards. Soon we ventured off together outside of class, letting the gravel logging roads lead us into new areas. Doug and Sue’s house became a refuge from the chaos at Aprovecho down the road, and soon their barn held more appeal than our cabin, and we joined them on the land. Chapters in a book of which we don’t know the ending.

But maybe even mushrooms are too decadent. Doug liked…there. the past tense for the first time. It is written….Doug liked simplicity. A mild lentil soup. A salad picked fresh from the garden. He didn’t need much to sustain his tall form, which seemed to survive on music and thought and stillness and ideas and heart. In Grenada, they likened him to Jesus. “Tin Tall Tess,” they said in the thick Caribbean accent, which maybe translated into Thin Tall Jesus, but now, thinking about it, I’m not really sure.

An accompanying beverage would be water. Pure. Lots of it, after we’d all sat together, our naked bodies burning from the heat, the air heavy with sweat and cedar, in the sauna he’d built over their creek. Near the cedar tree where he was married. Not far from where Yoka, or was in Nijou?, laid down to die in the blackberry bramble.

I appreciate that though I’ve moved far away from the forest where we once mushroom hunted, a self-imposed exile I don’t fully understand, that I was still able to see him often. Sometimes here in New York, where his Buddha-like ways heightened my self-awareness of my frenetic pace, of my inability to sit and be still. His metronome was set at a different cadence than mine. Twice I was able to visit him over the last year at Linda and Jim’s, a home by the sea, abundant with love and children and more music and him, still in his Buddha-state, his body refusing to cooperate with the plans he had for his life. Always, he was the opposite of a fighter. But in these short visits, I saw him fighting, quietly but hard, refusing to believe that this was it for him, remaining hopeful, maintaining peace, surprisingly – to me – free of anger.

Doug will stay with all of us, each of us holding a distinct set of memories that together form a tapestry of a life. I can see him still, leaning against the threshold of his house, watching Sue dance wildly at a party they were throwing, nodding with a smile and saying, “That’s my wife!” All of us around a bonfire, more times than I can count. Doug and Moth in the barn, conjuring up a chocolate factory. Sitting with a five-gallon bucket between us, processing cocoa beans before the thresher had been built. Doug returning from a long walk by the river in Grenada, sun hat upon his head. Doug in the coffee shop on Cottage Grove’s Main Street as I run in on my way somewhere, slapping up posters for some fundraiser on the bulletin board and about to run out again, when he says, “Sometimes I feel like I’m living on a movie set.” Doug and I in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden at the height of the lilac bloom, lying on our backs after a day of walking around the city, breathing in the intoxicating smell of purple. Doug looking out over the Pacific after walking the two long blocks from his sister’s house in Santa Cruz, his body betraying him.

I will miss his presence. The gentleness and calmness of his soul that is unparalleled. The way he connected with each landscape he was in. His love of Oregon. I am thankful to his family, their bottomless generosity and love that they have for him. I am thankful that my life got to overlap with his life, that the universe conspired in such a way to give me the memories that will remain even after his passing on to something unknown. I miss his presence.

1 comment:

  1. A beautifully written tribute for a beautiful spirit--thanks so much for your eloquent and succinct words.

    ReplyDelete