Goodbye My Lady

The horrible day I have dreaded for more than a year since Bow's brain tumor was first discovered finally arrived today. I had to say goodbye to her after every effort to give her a reasonable life and exhausting her every last medical option.

Her specialist in Davis said in early December that she would probably not make it past Christmas. Her primary vet said a few weeks ago that the time had come. Today we were scheduled to see our neurologist who had treated her most recent seizures and to see if there were any last options.

The entire month of March got increasingly miserable. She came down with Giardia and bounced back a bit, but even after recovering, her days were worse. Most of her waking hours were spent spinning in circles, hanging her head down, standing in corners. She could not find her food. When I asked her to sit, she would spin in a circle and then finally sit, usually facing opposite me trying to find me but not able to. Walking was increasingly difficult. Being in the sun -- one of her favorite places -- was impossible on walks, and she would just drop her head in pain and could barely move forward.

Last night, she was restless in bed but finally found a position with her back against my stomach as was her normal place. She moved around the bed throughout the night. As the first glimpse of sunlight crept through, I realized that her head was facing mine on the pillow, something she had never done. Her good eye, the left, was looking at me intently and with a lucidity it had not done in over a month. (Most times she could not lift her head to look up at me when called.) Then she gently placed her paw on my cheek. It almost felt as if she might say words. In a second she moved, started spinning and was disoriented the rest of the day.

I really can't recall the rest of the day until our 4 p.m. appointment rolled around. She had to be carried most of the way. She wasn't agitated, just a bit disoriented and breathing heavily. The specialist said that she had reached the maximum dose of her medications before they would become increasingly toxic and would quickly compromise her liver, kidneys and other organs. There was one last drug that might reduce the swelling, but clearly the tumor was advancing more aggressively. The chances of a violent series of seizures taking her life in the middle of the night was very likely. He said that at best she might have two weeks left, and two very miserable weeks.

These were the words I needed to hear, and the procedure began. It was quick, she was calm and her body finally rested free of the pain against me. I held her just for a few more minutes, knowing that what I was holding was no longer Bow. She was with me, in my heart but no longer in that room.

There were no tears as I walked down Alabama Street, numb but well aware of every bird chirping, every tree blooming, every step along this familiar route that we had taken. The moment I arrived home I posted her passing on Facebook. Within seconds I heard my smart phone chirping with the arrival of condolences from friends all over the world. It took a while before I could look at them. For the moment I just needed to walk and be out of the house.

R.I.P. Jean Simmons

From one of my 20 "desert island" DVDs, Black Narcissus (1947), not exactly her film debut but very close.

The Feline Redemption of Louis Sullivan

Many a great artist has died in obscurity or, perhaps even worse, found a glorious peak early in life only to face horrific ruin in the final years of life.

Few have embodied this as dramatically and sadly as the great Louis Sullivan. In 1890 when, at the age of 34, he unveiled the Auditorium Building, he was introducing to the world the most tremendous man-made structure on earth up to that time. At 17-stories, it was the world's tallest building. At 110,000 tons, it was the heaviest building in the world and had over eight million cubic feet of space.

When Sullivan died on April 14, 1924, died penniless, his friends coming up with $600 for his funeral and the six months past rent due the Hotel Warner where he whiled away his final days in a small, pathetic room of no architectural distinction. Those who don't believe in a resurrection or an after life need only look at the sudden returning praise of his work after years of being out of fashion and his surviving buildings for which there is a tactile afterlife for his vision and imagination. There may not be a heaven where the dead may go, but Sullivan left behind bits of heaven for those living after he died.

The pathetic last days of his life belie the fact that he did not find ways out of the hell of his final quarter of a century. What is not widely known that cats watch over fallen artists and taken them out of their quandary both in life and afterward. Though suspicious of the international style, Sullivan was no fuddy duddy. He was particularly fond of the work of Jim Flora, who was ten years old when Sullivan died and did not come into his full stride until the 1940s. He had a reputation of drawing hepcats that were cute -- and deadly.

But some nights in the teens and twenties -- and even some nights today when the spirit of Sullivan is feeling blue and in search of inspiration -- the cats come to him and transport him into paintings and rooms filled with the work of Flora. This commercial modernist came to greatest note designing covers of RCA and Columbia record albums primarily after the Second World War, a conflict Sullivan did not have to live to endure.

Though he died at the dawn of the Jazz Age, Sullivan was no square to swing and cool, and many nights he can be found swinging with the cats in some room designed by Flora. The creative spirit may come to mold a tower or sculpture or play or "So What", but more often it is still swinging out there beyond the lifetime of the creator, sometimes capturing the imagination of someone today who has no idea of its source.

Just before he died, Sullivan felt compelled to write a third book, The Autobiography of an Idea in which Louis Sullivan writes of Louis Sullivan in the third person while the idea tells his story in the first person:

"That IDEA which had its mystical beginning in so small a thing as a child's heart, grew and nurtured itself upon that child's varied consistently continuing and metamorphosing experiences in time and place, as has been most solicitously laid bare to view in detail, in the course of this recital. For it needs a long, long time, and a rich soil of life-experience to enable a simple, single idea to grow to maturity and solid strength. A French prover has it that 'Time will not consecrate that in which it has been ignored,' while the deep insight of Whitman is set forth in the line, 'Nature neither hastens nor delays.'

Taylor Mead Spreads New Year's Cheer with a Lot of Death

Who Was the Greatest Girl Group of Ancient Egypt?

With Tut-mania sweeping San Francisco as the boy king comes to the DeYoung, I recall seeing those relics in Chicago 30 years ago and wonder if the boy king has aged well.

What I don't recall from the previous show is so much discussion of the coffinettes. What exactly is a coffinette? Okay, thanks. I prefer my image of a quartet of dowopping ghouls with beehives.

Thank you Peter Stuyvesant. Thank you Boss Tweed. Thank you Robert Moses.

Recently, I've been catching up on past podcasts and blogs by the ever endearing Bowery Boys. Turns out their most recent discovery was the final resting place of Montgomery Clift near my old stomping ground of Park Slope.

The image of Nancy Walker planting 2,000 crocuses around the headstone is a great way to start my week.

If you don't already subscribe to their podcast on iTunes, go there now!

Missed

Adrift at Home, Comforted by Chaos

The death of Empire of the Sun author J.G. Ballard on Sunday reminded me of how deeply I related to his semi-autobiographical book that was turned into a not completely bad film. The airing of an old interview with Ballard on Fresh Air today hit on many of the aspects of why that book felt like my own biography. Torn from a life of privilege, he found an odd freedom and respect for his captors in a Japanese prison camp and never felt able to be at home in England or with his family afterward. I've enjoyed several of his other books, but none struck the chord this one did. Just as I was excited when Christian Bale emerged as an adult actor but has never come close to equaling his debut.

Growing up in Oklahoma and Missouri, I always felt alien and found the locals to be far more surreal and incomprehensible than Martians. What interested them made no sense to me, and I've yet to find a place where I've felt completely at home. Okay, maybe Barcelona and Buenos Aires and parts of Shanghai. But the Shanghai of young Ballard is the one I want to live in.

Turn Left for Eternity

Who knew that hanging out with a few thousand dead people could be so much fun? Today I spent the morning and early afternoon with fellow blogger Jim of The Blue Elephant in Oakland. He's encouraged me for some time to join him for a tour of the Mountain View Cemetery. Like Manhattan and Boston, San Francisco has little room for the dead, so many are buried in Colma to our south, but many of the grander names such as Crocker, Bechtel, Fillmore, Merritt can be found at Mountain View.

With pitch perfect weather heralding the first day of spring, death was the last thing on my mind, but it was a reminder of how the dead are with us on days like today. The memories of lives once lived are filled not with sadness but a wonderful sense of providence.

Keeping on our theme, we took a tour of The Chapel of the Chimes next door, with a few rooms designed by Julia Morgan of Hearst Castle Fame. Thanks, Jim, for making an introduction to such a great local treasure. It will be on my itinerary when out-of-towners come to see me.

January's Circle

A good friend of mine, who I only see every three or four years because she lives in Cairo, is in town to see her mother through the final stages of terminal cancer. The last time I saw her and her mother was Thanksgiving two years ago when I'd recently lost my father. Over the past six weeks, I've had close to casual acquaintances and relatives lose spouses, parents and children. That, of course, becomes a reality at a certain age. It reminds me to take stock of likely losses and blessings in my own life. I know there will be more, but not in the immediate future I hope, seeming to have lost all that could be lost in the past five years. Sometimes it feels like a clean slate, and for the first time in years I feel that I can be of support and instead of the one needing support but retreating from it.

I thought of five years ago, the last time I saw my mother before she was gone a few weeks later. As I heard about others losses, that so typically come at the very end and beginning of the year, I didn't feel contentment in knowing that it was not my own loss but a certain relief in knowing you can lose a parent only once but sustain the loss forever.

On a day like today -- when the weather was gloriously perfect -- it was hard to think that anyone was in pain or experiencing loss, but a quick scan of headlines or e-mail quickly shatter that reality. Having a couple of walks with Bow in the sun, neither of us needing a jacket, it was a pleasure to be removed from that reality, even knowing that a glorious day like today is an omen of drought, heat and water rationing in the months ahead. But it was pleasant for that moment.

Dancing with the Dead in the Mission

Back in the days of my youth, I thought the Day of the Dead was a spooky, freaky event for (ahem) goth freaks and the morbid. After losing my mother in 2004 and my dad and aunt and first cat in 2006, I started finding comfort in the event. But I sort of saw it as an event to get the death behind me. Only during the past couple of years have I seen it for what it is, a day to dance with the dead and celebrate how they are there at every point. And every year, no matter how young we are, we dance one year closer to our own death.

This year I dealt with the deaths of a few people close but not that close to me, most of them quite elderly and having completed full, rich lives that ended suddenly and painlessly. I lost my dear cat Bunter who shared 20 years with me. On Friday I lost Guru, whose two rich months with me were as valuable as a life time.

The ceremonies tonight held great meaning to me. I shot a lot of video, but since I'm fading (no, not that kind of fading just yet, I'll share this piece from the end of the parade. If you look closely, you'll see wonderfully wacko Frank Chu of the 12 Galaxies fame, a recently married male couple and a Cindy Sheehan supporter saying it's time to raise democracy from the dead.

Tonight's ceremony had a deeper poignancy. During the opening speeches there were some profound comments about how this grassroots, non-corporate sponsored event represents the real America that we rarely see -- one that is culturally and economically diverse, one that doesn't always follow all the rules yet respects so many converging stories, including those who no longer have an heartbeat. And we were reminded that we may very well be on the verge of an enormous cultural change. Many of us lost people who mean a great deal to us this year, yet we have also witnessed the death of some things that are truly horrid such as some of the corporations that fell, and the carcass of the Bush Administration that will creak wearily into the abyss in a matter of weeks.

It's one of my favorite San Francisco events since it has a quiet power that builds as the night goes on. You never completely know what's lurking out there in the dark, and there are a lot fewer drunks and druggies than a most events. But, as my video shows, there is a spooky number of cops on the route, a sign of the number of shootings in the Mission this year and souls that have crossed the rainbow bridge.

Tonight I put down favorite toys of Guru and Bunter on one of the communal shrines. It felt good to honor these glorious four-legged companions who never met yet blessed my life this year.

The Gift of Guru

Sigh.

Okay, my last post about Guru wasn't completely dishonest, but I do feel compelled after coming to grips with the full brunt of my agony of the past week by filling in some details. Much as I appreciate the many condolences about his departure, I fear some people think he has gone to a new home where he is getting the care and training he needed to succeed. I'm sad to report that's not the case, and I've gone through the roller coaster of emotions with rescue dogs that can range from joy to heartache. In this case it was the latter, mainly due to human stupidity.

Let me start at the beginning.

Two months ago when I got the unexpected call about a basenji being placed with me, I didn't fully understand that I was even being considered as a foster dad then. The rescue group needed a place for this very troubled pooch to be calm since previous assignments had not worked out. After three failed placements where he had attacked other dogs, people and finally trashed the house of a dogless house, there was no other option. What was not expected was that after showing agitation and panting when he arrived, within five minutes he was calm. After 15 minutes he was snuggled up next to me, and I agreed to give him a last chance.

Our time together alone was perfect. He responded to every command. In the rare case where he tried to chew something or jump where he wasn't supposed to, he obeyed on the first command. We had some good initial walks. Adoption seemed imminent.

But signs of aggression started emerging. I started investing in trainers, the first one bailed, the second said it would take months, maybe years and thousands of dollars and still might not work. I kept paying and moved forward. When I was in New York, he attacked the sitters who refused to return. I tried a supplemental trainer.

There seemed to be signs of improvement, with him even looking back at me for guidance on our walks. And then we'd pass another dog or jogger and he'd growl, lunge and sometimes grab a person's jacket as I became the target or increasingly hostile scorn and cursing in the neighborhood. I opted out from walks and let him keep in the house and yard, only to have to deal with him wanting to tear down the fence when he heard the dog next door.

My pleas of placing him with a more experienced foster through the rescue group got a response that the only option was that he'd have to be put down since he was, in a word, unadoptable.

Details of his troubled past started emerging. He was probably the product of a puppy mill. He was placed in a pet store where he left unattended much of the time and in a pen where he lay in a bed of his own feces. No one seemed interested in buying him, and he was marked down to half price and finally adopted by a woman in suburban Sacramento, an Iraq war veteran with severe physical and mental scars from the war.

She projected her many issues on to him and put him on anti-depressants. She made him her protector and baby, pitting him against various significant others and family members who moved in and out of the house. Only this week did the rescue group learn that there had been previous attempts to have Guru turned over to them because of his aggressiveness.

Had I known all of this, I probably never would have brought him in. But I only saw the full potential of his aggressiveness over the past two weeks during several close calls and a blood dripping biting incident last Saturday. At the same time, he became ever more affectionate with me. But the question remained if he might one day turn on me remained.

The only option offered to me by L__________ with the rescue group was having him put down, something I refused to consider until I was away this week and could gain some objectivity. I ached when I made the decision but knew it was right.

The second I walked in the door, he greeted me with an ecstatic whimper that seemed to say he loved me more than life itself. The last 18 hours with him were excruciating and glorious as he showed me so much love and appreciation. I longed for him to show a dark side so I would be further convinced that I was making the right decision.

I had come to perceive L_________ with the rescue group as heartless, even though she kept emphasizing that she was dealing with 200 adoptable dogs in desperate need of homes and this was a dog that no one would take or that it would be a great risk to put him in another home. I opted out not going with her to the vet, knowing I would likely collapse. I just asked that she make his departure as quick and unemotional as possible. Then I thought she was awful when she greeted us cheerfully and petted Guru as if nothing was wrong. She smiled and said that it would be a quick procedure and that she would be back in 45 minutes. How could she be so emotional? At least Guru seemed calm and confident as he walked away with her, and he disappeared from my sight forever.

Nearly two hours passed before she returned. I was sure that my wonderful, kindly vet had intervened and was going to take Guru into her own home. My heart sank when the doorbell rang and there stood L____ with the empty collar and leash. She had an ironic smile and shook her head silently as she walked in, hanging her head as she settled in my leather wingback chair. Finally she broke down in tears and said, "This was one of the hardest endings I've ever been through." Guru required several injections of sedatives before he was finally out, and L________ had bandages on her arms from where he attacked her.

She remained for more than an hour as we bonded over stories of wonderful pets in our past and I moved from seeing her as someone with a heart of stone to a saint who drives easily 2500 miles a week rescuing basenjis from wacko owners, shelters and danger. And, of course, she does it all as a volunteer out of the love of the basenjis. Most of the stories have happy endings, but sometimes there are cases like Guru -- wonderful, loving, gorgeous basenjis who have been so damaged by ignorant humans that think they are their babies and not canines needing protection, boundaries, rules and affection. Humans and animals operate in radically different worlds and too many people fail to see that place where we do connect is precious and should not be misconstrued as a place to fulfill our own dashed dreams.

By the time L________ had left, I'd agreed to become a volunteer with the rescue group, one possible assignment being helping a 28-year-old man who this week learned he is HIV-positive and may have a support basenji.

When I made the arrangements for Guru's procedure, I decided to have a private cremation afterwards so I could scatter his ashes in my back yard with my cats and give him a memorial stone. The thought that he was no more than another discarded and unwanted animal was more than I could deal with. In his two months with me, he earned his right to be honored next to my two wonderful cats who shared my life for 20 years.

My intent was that I was going to adopt him Tuesday night, a bit of news I could add to the jubilation of knowing we will soon be saying President Obama. As I heard about the continued news about the polls, it made me cry knowing that this won't happen.

A basenji will, indeed come into my life. Every time I cherish my time with him, I will thank Guru for teaching me that every moment of frustration is worth it, that nothing can equal the joy of seeing that little curled tail relax and wag. I don't think I will ever be at peace with the decision I made. Many times I have regretted it and wonder if there might have been one more resource out of there that might have helped Guru succeed. He reminded me that I still have the capacity to love and endure trying circumstances. I picked one of the most difficult breeds to foster and one of the breeds' most challenging members. But I don't regret a minute of it.

Thanks for enduring this long post, if you've made it this far, and I will try not to obsess on this sad chapter again soon.

UPDATE: Thank you to the many old friends and new ones who have expressed such compassion. If you would like to honor the memory of Guru by making a contribution to help more basenjis find wonderful homes, you can visit this page on the Basenji Rescue and Transport (BRAT) site.

Bunter - August 9, 1989 - August 15, 2008

Hell Week

Is it too late to send a message of apology to John Hagee? Apparently not, since just as he maneuvered Katrina as punishment to cancel a sinful event in New Orleans, he has arranged for a heat wave coming to San Francisco. One of the few reasons I stay in San Francisco is the weather. It never gets cold here, and the hot days are mercifully few.

For those who don't know the Junk Thief temperature definitions, here they are:
Cold - 12 Fahrenheit and below
Cool - 13 - 28 Fahrenheit
Pleasant - 29 - 42 Fahrenheit
Perfect - 43 - 58 Fahrenheit
Warm - 59 - 61 Fahrenheit
Hot - 62 - 72 Fahrenheit
Hell on earth - 73 - 81 Fahrenheit
Death - 82 Fahrenheit and above

I thought I'd post this early, because I know that in 48 hours, I will not be able to touch the keyboard. You can see the horrible news here.

Death and Coffee in Oakland

Yesterday evening while Friendatella and I were killing a little time before the movies at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, we were struck by the Day of the Dead Coffee shop which was dead itself with the doors locked. The blue bonneted vision of loveliness a few doors down reminded us of Bryce Digdug who wore a similar bonnet to the Hunky Jesus pageant a few weeks back. (I've been very proud that this video of mine has received many hits after being linked from several right wingnut sites.)

Like many naive San Franciscans, we ventured into this somewhat upscale Oakland neighborhood where there have been several armed robberies at pricey restaurants. The police described the suspects as "teenage boys in hoodies". That really narrows the field, doesn't it?

Four Years, Fading to Darkness

It was four years ago tonight that my mother died, followed a year and a half later by my father after dealing with Alzheimer's. There were a few other losses in the middle of all this and shortly after, a whirlwind that was oddly wedged by two movies that seemed emblematic -- Trouble in Paradise when I got the news about my mother, Tokyo Story when I found out about my father.
I came away with definite insights, but I don't find myself at that different point than where I was four years ago. But now, as I reflect on the cycle of loss, I no longer feel sadness, only memories that haven't dimmed but no longer sting.

Where Death Had Bloomed

It took a while for me to fully grasp why the past weekend felt so weird to me, but then it dawned on me yesterday that it was a year ago that my father died after a fairly brief journey with Alzheimer's. The past year has been an odd journey, and with both parents gone, I still anticipate another call with bad news, of someone who has gone into the ICU, the term "critical condition" being bandied about, relatives I've not talked to in years needing to be called and informed.

One of my co-workers has reminded me repeatedly that joy will return to my life, and I've felt glimpses of it now and again. And after a year of sorting out my parents estate, I keep toying with how many things I want to hold on to, to pass on to extended relations or put into storage.

As I hear about horrific weather in many parts of the country and the globe, I can see glimmers of the supposed joy likely to return to life in a couple of items brought across the country back in June during my famed U-Haul trek. These two flower pots belonged to my maternal grandparents, and I have seen them in photos from the house in Kansas City at least as far back as the 1940s, possibly even the 1930s. I don't know the story behind them, but for the past 20 to 25 years, they were fixtures at my parents' house but always empty. When I emptied them to bring across the country, the dirt was as hard as concrete, having not been worked for decades. Seeing them filled with life again is encouraging on a sometimes disconcerting Tuesday. August, always a month of preparation for some (me) rest and retreat for others (not me), leaves me in that mode of frustrated anticipation for the show about to open. I am trying my best to take a moment now and again to focus on the coleus in the pot, appreciating that they are here now and will likely be gone in a few months. In the meantime I am reminded to seek more life.

Humor as a Verb

Growing up, I always remembered the image at the top of this post as a familiar sight in the library of my mother’s sister’s home. It was a print about 11” x 14”, and I didn’t know the name of the original painting or the artist. Years later I would discover that was the work of John Koch whose 1964 painting “The Sculptor” would become a favorite in my high school years and a key to his world.

The painting above “The Cocktail Party” from 1956 features a number of famous heads that would eventually become familiar to me as I grew up, including Virgil Thompson and Koch himself attending bar. I came to love Koch’s work that often juxtaposed ornately appointed Upper East Side residences with frankly nude bodies or commissioned portraits of his wealthy clientele and peers.

How fitting, then, that over this long weekend I’ve been devouring The Grand Surprise, the journals, letters and random musings of Leo Lerman who is the bearded man crouching in the foreground. It’s filled with tons of dishy, bitchy gossip. A few excerpts:

“Andy Warhol more wraith than ever – the badly complected boy who never grew up, but became craftier and craftier, filling with a slow-seeming cunning and a positive-seeming cunning and a positive destruction – lighting up like a tallow candle whose flame burns dimly within the candle rather than atop it. He lights shallow, surface places hitherto hidden.”

“Faye Dunaway – very Okie – albino in atmosphere. She has determination. Her technique shows like some girls’ slips or brassiere straps.”

There are plenty of nasty accounts of sexual couplings and groupings of all combinations, but they don’t equal the pithy dissing such as these.

In many ways it’s like entering the cocktail party illustrated by Koch half a century ago, a world I longed to enter as a child with my aunt as a guide. She was fond of such gatherings, or – as she tended to put it -- “fancied putting on an affair.” She used quite a number of words as verbs in a way that most people in the heartland never would. She also would often tell me, “Might I be so bold as to suggest…” or “Oh, humor me, if you will.”

At the time I thought she meant that she wanted me to make her laugh. Of course the actual definition of that word as a verb is: To comply with the wishes or ideas of (another): cater, gratify, indulge. Reading the accounts of Lerman and his circle that included Capote, Vidal and other gay men of a particular era reminds me of the women from a certain class who needed a mascot or jester to humor them in that definition of the word. The lap dog homos were deluding into thinking they were expected to perform some giggle inducing stunt or utter a pithy witticism.

My aunt deluded herself into thinking that she was the caliber of swan that should attract a similar circle of younger men who would admire and exalt her with unfailing good humor.

Ever since her suicide this past Christmas, I’ve struggled with trying to write about her legacy intertwined with my own self-perception and our relationship which was simultaneously close and distant, cold but intense, filled with contempt and mutual admiration. She introduced me to Scott Walker, Poulenc, Proust and John Koch. She would excite and devastate me in the course of a weekend visit to her tastefully appointed home. She felt it her role to instruct and insult me, always with disquieting calmness. She embodied one of my favorite quotes from David Mamet: “The greatest test of superiority is to never be upset by impertinence.” Thus she never raised her voice or exhibited any emotion beneath her elegant mask, and she uttered the most devastating dismissals with an exquisitely graceful smile.

Reading Lerman’s book feels like a portal into the world she deluded herself and me into believing that we might someday be a part of. Much like Capote’s mother Nina, she longed to be a part of the Park Avenue registry, a goal she strove through upwardly mobile serial marriages. When, late in her career, she briefly put a ring on her finger that took her to that world – albeit a few doors down on Lexington Avenue – it ultimately proved to be a disappointment when she was not the focus of the spotlight. She was a nobody in the 10028 zip code. It was much easier to attract admirers as a swan in the shallow waters of Kansas City.

This Memorial Day, my thoughts go back to those years when I tried to humor her and the futility of indulging and attempting to gratify someone whose approval is ultimately the empty space at the end of a maze of ornately appointed rooms.

Seen on the Highway to Hell

This Just In

UPDATE: As always, who needs BBC, CNN and The New York Times when you have Joe.My.God who sums up a total waste of humanity with such a chilling list of quotes.