pjthompson | Entries tagged with remembrance

Some of ya’ll have seen these before, but today is the day for it.

Pixilated

Round and round like a crystal spinning,
my father’s stories stirred
the magic behind my eyes.
Pixilated—fairy-led—that’s what I was,
entranced by his wit,
a slave to my ears, learning
the proper way to tell a proper story.

Dad told many stories.
Some of them were even true.

At seventeen, he lied about his age,
enlisted in the Army to fight the Kaiser:
World War I, the Big Show, the adventure,
to show the Evil Hun
Yankee what-for over there.

“Saw action at Saint Mihel
and at the Ardogne Forest.”

That’s the only story I have
of the charnel house he fought through—
from his discharge papers of 1919,
fresh from the convalescent hospital,
recovering from the poison gas he’d tasted.

If I can hardly comprehend
that flesh of my flesh lived through
that ancient, distant conflict,
looking at me, I imagine,
he couldn’t quite fathom himself
that more than forty years on from that time,
he’d been given new life.

Dad told many stories.
Some of them were even true.

But he never spoke of that horror,
and when I queried of glorious battles,
as children like so much to do,
loquacious Dad broke into silence.
Shifting his eyes to the floor,
he’d mutter, “Enough, now.
You don’t want to hear about that.”

He’d turn the stories neatly
to French m’amselles, especially one
whose father had a cafe in Paris;
to the time he was a cook
on a fishing boat out of Juneau
and the walls of water inside a gale
nearly sent them to the bottom;
or to the lightning strike which took out the boy
sitting next to him on a fence watching baseball . . .

Years after he died I learned the truth
of 1918, that horrible year of mud and carnage
I’ll never truly understand,
though I’ve heard other men’s stories
of sacrificed youth at a bloody altar,
seen grainy black and white photos and films,
peering anxiously at each young Yank,
hoping to see, hoping not to see
the child who would become my father.

Round and round swirled liquid in amber,
the whisky spinning in my father’s bottle,
hot on his lips, straight, no glass, burning
through to that space of not remembering.
Pixilated—demon-led—that’s what he was,
wandering a dark and lonely forest, mute,
trapped by his Celtic blood and all the blood
he’d seen, slave to memories which had no story.

PJ Thompson

And happy birthday, Auntie Maxine.

Maxine

Spring went screaming through the hills—
orange yellow green white purple—
dying to be noticed, all along the road
as we drove away from your sickbed.

“Life gives us clichés,” I said.
But the harsh comfort of spring remained.

The dark sky broke apart, the sun
muscled through, burning on the hills,
forcing on us the heartbreak of blue sky.

I want to believe you are in that sky.
I do believe you are in that sky,
or laughing in the hills you loved,
bare toes trailing clouds of wildflowers.

PJ Thompson

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Some of ya’ll have seen these before, but today is the day for it.

Pixilated

Dad told many stories.
Some of them were even true.

At seventeen, he lied about his age,
enlisted in the Army to fight the Kaiser:
World War I, the Big Show, the adventure,
to show the Evil Hun
Yankee what-for over there.

“Saw action at Saint Mihel
and at the Ardogne Forest.”

That’s the only story I have
of the charnel house he fought through—
from his discharge papers of 1919,
fresh from the convalescent hospital,
recovering from the poison gas he’d tasted.

Dad told many stories.
Some of them were even true.

PJ Thompson

And happy birthday, Auntie Maxine.

Maxine

Spring went screaming through the hills—
orange yellow green white purple—
dying to be noticed, all along the road
as we drove away from your sickbed.

“Life gives us clichés,” I said.
But the harsh comfort of spring remained.

The dark sky broke apart, the sun
muscled through, burning on the hills,
forcing on us the heartbreak of blue sky.

I want to believe you are in that sky.
I do believe you are in that sky,
or laughing in the hills you loved,
bare toes trailing clouds of wildflowers.

PJ Thompson

Random quote of the day:

“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”

—Antonio Porchia, Voices (tr. W. S. Merwin)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I love the flowers of afterthought.”

—Bernard Malamud, The Paris Review, Spring 1975, No. 61

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I wish I had something fresh to add on this Remembrance Day, but I haven’t the heart for it at the moment. So this will have to do.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Remembrance

Every new thing she see reminds her of the past,
or loved ones long gone, she the last of her line:
the way things used to be, how we did things then,
the funny thing her brother did, the tricks they played.

How much has changed.

A different world, consumed by history, lost
except in a few pale memories locked in spirits
headed away from Now and into the past tense.
The days wind down, grow fewer—whether
short or long we cannot say—
but not miles, not miles left to travel.

I listen for as long as I can,
stories told again and again,
trying to bear witness,
trying to let her know
someone still cares.

I try, but memories don’t get the laundry done,
the dishes put away, the dinner cooked.
The Now is relentless, unsentimental, unforgiving.

Someday you will regret not having these conversations.

Yes. Someday, someday, someday.

But for Now
I have many duties in my way
and steps or miles before that day.
Steps or miles before that day.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/rip-kage-baker-1952-2010/

http://martyhalpern.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-company-of-kage-baker.html

"They number in the millions, those mortals, but they don’t make it into the history books much. They don’t do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually. But they make a difference for the good that no true believer ever can."

—Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

She made a difference to me and those of us who read her work. True peace, Ms. Baker, true peace. Sincere condolences to her family and friends.

One for my Aunt Maxine, who was born this day; one for my biological father, a child in arms. Dear Tom, the father of my heart, your poem will get here someday.

Maxine

Spring went screaming through the hills—
orange yellow green white purple
dying to be noticed, all along the road
as we drove away from your sickbed.

“Life gives us clichés,” I said.
But the harsh comfort of spring remained.

The dark sky broke apart, the sun
muscled through, burning on the hills,
forcing on us the heartbreak of blue sky.

I want to believe you are in that sky.
I do believe you are in that sky,
or laughing in the hills you loved,
bare toes trailing clouds of wildflowers.

Pixilated

Round and round like a crystal spinning,
my father's stories stirred
the magic behind my eyes.
Pixilated—fairy-led—that's what I was,
entranced by his wit,
a slave to my ears, learning
the proper way to tell a proper story.

Dad told many stories.
Some of them were even true.

At seventeen, he lied about his age,
enlisted in the Army to fight the Kaiser:
World War I, the Big Show, the adventure,
to show the Evil Hun
Yankee what-for over there.

“Saw action at Saint Mihel
and at the Ardogne Forest.”

That's the only story I have
of the charnel house he fought through—
from his discharge papers of 1919,
fresh from the convalescent hospital,
recovering from the poison gas he'd tasted.

If I can hardly comprehend
that flesh of my flesh lived through
that ancient, distant conflict,
looking at me, I imagine,
he couldn't quite fathom himself
that more than forty years on from that time,
he'd been given new life.

Dad told many stories.
Some of them were even true.

But he never spoke of that horror,
and when I queried of glorious battles,
as children like so much to do,
loquacious Dad broke into silence.
Shifting his eyes to the floor,
Dad would say, “Enough, now.
You don't want to hear about that.”

He’d turn the stories neatly
to French m'amselles, especially one
whose father had a cafe in Paris;
to the time he was a cook
on a fishing boat out of Juneau
and the walls of water inside a gale
nearly sent them to the bottom;
or to the lightning strike which took out the boy
sitting next to him on a fence watching baseball . . .

Years after he died I learned the truth
of 1918, that horrible year of mud and carnage
I’ll never really understand,
though I’ve heard other men's stories
of sacrificed youth at a bloody altar,
seen grainy black and white photos and films,
peering anxiously at each young Yank,
hoping to see, hoping not to see
the child who would become my father.

Round and round swirled liquid in amber,
the whisky spinning in my father's bottle,
hot on his lips, straight, no glass, burning
through to that space of not remembering.
Pixilated—demon-led—that's what he was,
wandering a dark and lonely forest, mute,
trapped by his Celtic blood and all the blood
he'd seen, slave to memories which had no story.

From the notebooks, January 14, 1992.

I wrote the original version of this (which I haven't unearthed yet) right after the events talked about in this post.

Before I Knew You Were Dead

Life pulsed that morning,
a precious rhythm
thrumming in my brain:
live this moment
and this moment
and this moment
and this . . .

I couldn't sustain it,
that ephemeral life.
Conscious and truly alive
for only moments,
I slipped again into
future and past tense,
lost in the white noise
of existence.

For Lloyd Ellsworth Thompson, US Army, World War I

and

Thomas Parker McDonough, US Marines, World War II and Korea

Thank you. This Bud's for you.

I have a two drawer filing cabinet full of nothing but old journals. I've been keeping them regularly since I was twelve or thirteen and although I don't have each and every one, there's enough there and scattered in other places to take up considerable bulk in my life. The last time I had to pack them and move them I vowed to do something about it. I chose to go through them from time to time when I had the stomach for it and decide what to keep by scanning and pdf-ing and what to consign to the shredder.

Going through these journals is sometimes an exercise in extreme masochism (hurt-feeling outpourings and such), which is why I'm doing it slowly and hit and miss. But there are gems in there, too, or I wouldn't continue doing this. Sometimes I find the earliest genesis of some of my novels; fountains of ideas I'd completely forgotten (and may use some day); poetry (some of it painful, some of it not bad); philosophical and analytical screeds; observations on life events; items taped in the pages, mementos of the times I lived through, etc. The notebooks are jumbled in the filing cabinet so as I pull them out to work I leaping back and forth in time.

Late last week I pulled out the one I was keeping at the time of my beloved stepdad's death. The thing is, I didn't realize it: the year didn't register on my mind as I paged through. The first half of the notebook is full of the usual stuff, but then on October 16, 1993: "My father was struck down with an aneurysm in the aorta. He died around 3 a.m. October 14." Nothing more for about a week, and then, amazingly, an incredible burst of creativity. In the weeks following Tom's death I found the earliest genesis of three of my novels (Blood Geek, Night Warrior, and Charged with Folly), material I'd completely forgotten about. And poetry, lots of poetry--but not the kind I would imagine. It's all very controlled. Yes, there are sad entries, but mostly what I find astonishing is the spareness of most of what I've written and the incredible outpouring of fantasy and fiction.

Part of this, of course, was that I was very controlled at that time. Not that I didn't grieve. I was grieving very deeply. But my mother was completely coming apart at the seams and for that first year after Dad's death, I couldn't afford to let my own grief out. Mom would go completely off the deep end whenever I showed my own pain. If I cried, it had to be on the drive to and from work, or late at night when I was in bed. It was an awful time--and I seem to have poured it all into the work, writing about hidden agendas and living a double life and vampires trying to keep a tight rein on their urges and being caretakers for sick parents, etc.

The next year, I imagine, I'll find a different narrative. After that first year of anniversaries, my mom had managed to pull it together and I was able to better address my own grief. Counseling helped, too. I was stronger, thereafter, in the broken places, to paraphrase Papa Hemingway.

I don't think I'll get rid of this journal. I may still scan and pdf it, but the urge to hold onto this one is strong, to preserve it as a document of a dark, dark time that completely changed my life and helped define who I am.

The angels are mute
when I ask them why.
They cannot speak,
or will not speak,
for theirs is not the realm of answers.
Theirs is the realm of dumb love
and I must be content
with their silence--or go mad.
I have fallen from grace,
if I ever had it at all.
I am listening too hard.
I will never hear.

-November 19, 1993

Current Music: Monster Quest - The History Channel

Who died today at age 80. I didn't follow his columns, really. I'm chiefly familiar with his writing on the experience of the U.S. Marines in Korea. The Coldest War, his memoir of the freezing hardship they endured in the Incheon Basin, was the last book I gave to my father, a thirty year Leatherneck and also one of those freezing young Marines of the 1st Division. Dad read the book in the last year of his life and couldn't put it down. "It's so real, like being there again," he said. Which is maybe the finest tribute any writer can have, I think.

The Associated Press obituary said, "The Times praised his 1990 memoir on Korea, 'The Coldest War,' as 'a superb personal memoir of the way it was. ... What distinguishes Mr. Brady's book is its clarity and modesty; there is no heroic flag-waving here.'"

My dad said so, too, only not in such fancy words.

Not to give him a number and take away his name, R. I. P. Patrick McGoohan, who died Tuesday at the age of 80 here in Los Angeles. He'd lived in Santa Monica for many years. He's survived by his wife of 57 years, children, and grandchildren.

I loved Mr. McGoohan's signature show, The Prisoner, an all-time culty classic. So sixties, yet unique even in that strange time. Although he always played such very serious characters, he had a terrific sense of humor.

I once, many years after The Prisoner had gone off the air, ran into him coming out of an upscale bar/restaurant in Santa Monica. The place no longer exists, but was modeled after an English eating establishment and many British ex-pats went there. I think there's a Houston's on that corner now, and maybe a California Pizza Kitchen next door. Alas.

Although it was around 12:30-1:00 in the afternoon, it was clear from he way he moved as he made his way onto the sidewalk that Mr. McGoohan had imbibed a considerable part of his lunch. He must have caught my look of wide-eyed recognition when he glanced up at me because he giggled before dropping his eyes again and poddling off down the street.

I resisted the urge to tag along after him gushing, "Mithter McGoohan, the Prithoner wath the betht thow ever!"

It may not have been the best show ever, but it was right up there. A strange and surreal piece of TV-making. As the NPR reporter mentioned this morning, a TV Guide poll once voted it No. 7 on the All-Time Cult Classics. "Too bad," said the reporter, "it didn't make it to No. 6."

For Lloyd, US Army, World War I,

and for Tom, US Marines, 1st Division, World War II and Korea

—Bud men—have one on me...

And for Maxie, happy birthday, Coors Woman...

Whereso'er you be...

Whereso'er you be...I hope you've finally found an Armistice for that warring soul of yours...

Love you.

Solider's Dream

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, nor even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.

—Wilfred Owen, July-August 1918

This one's for you, Dad:

Sargeant Major Thomas P. McDonough, USMC, 1941-1971

Here's a toast for my dads and all the vets out there.

Thank you.

And here's one for you, too, Maxie.

This holiday is always a triple-bang for me.

First, because my biological father fought in World War I. He lied about his age to get into the big fight, and I was born when he was retirement age. What a chasm of time existed there. Yet I still think of the doughboys on this day with a personal reverberation of sadness that most folks under the age of seventy don't have. Dad returned, and was mustered out as an old man of nineteen from an Army hospital because he'd inhaled some gas on the battlefield. His lungs betrayed him eventually.

Second, my step-dad, my true father in many ways, was a baby blue Marine during World War II, First Marine Division. He made five landings in the Pacific campaign, was first wave on Palau, known in those days as Peleliu, one of the fiercest landings of the campaign. No sand on the beach, you see. They had to chip their foxholes out of the coral reef while the Japanese rained hellfire on them. He made it home again, also at the ripe old age of nineteen, without a scratch—physically, that is. Later, he fought in Korea, Inchon basin, where many combatants froze to death. The circulation in his feet was never quite the same after that, and though he grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, he left the East Coast for good after that war. He just couldn't stand snow anymore.

Third, and far from least important, my aunt who died of breast cancer a few years ago, was born on November 11. Her dad insisted on naming her Armista in honor of the day, but nobody else in the family liked it, so they called her Maxine. She had it legally changed when she was old enough. Hard to say what caused Maxie's cancer, but she had a hard, hard life, plagued by "war memories" of her own.

I wrote a poem for Maxine when she died, but the hope in it applies to all three of my "missing in action"—and to all the others, really, who have fought the good fight and paid the price.

Maxine

Spring went screaming through the hills—
orange yellow green white purple
dying to be noticed, all along the road
as we drove away from your sickbed.

“Life gives us clichés,” I said.
But the harsh comfort of spring remained.

The dark sky broke apart, the sun
muscled through, burning on the hills,
forcing on us the heartbreak of blue sky.

I want to believe you are in that sky.
I do believe you are in that sky,
or laughing in the hills you loved,
bare toes trailing clouds of wildflowers.

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Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with remembrance

Armistice

Armistice

Remember me

Not to mention…

11/11

Works in progress

RIP Kage Baker

Two poems for Veteran's Day

Before I knew you were dead

In Memoriam: to the Bud men

A journey through a dark time

R. I. P. James Brady

R. I. P. No. 6

Hoisting brews in Heaven

Happy birthday, Dad

Happy birthday, Maxie

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

Happy birthday, USMC

In remembrance

Armistice Day

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