Friends, it’s the Third of September, and a long time since my last post. Before the end of the month I hope to get back up to daily posts. Meanwhile, must start somewhere, so here’s an ink sketch, just a little inspired by local hero Alice Cooper.
My brother Brian Clemens Bowers, seen here with his dog Fluster, died peacefully of natural causes last Monday. Here is the obituary I wrote for him, with help from my family:
Brian Bowers, 61, crossed the finish line of his life’s journey peacefully in his home in Phoenix, Arizona on August 6, 2018.
Brian gave of himself generously, with no thought of reward, throughout his life. Street people were his sisters and brothers. And he was a vagabond Santa Claus to his many nieces and nephews, despite being dirt-poor, because he tirelessly searched in thrift stores, swap meets and yard sales for the perfect gift for each individual.
He was also an outstanding caregiver, first for his grandfather “Papa” during the last four months of Papa’s life in 1987, and more recently for his mother Jane Bowers Stoneman, from the time of her husband Marty’s death in 2014 up to the very week that Brian died. He performed numberless household and yard chores, and 24/7 caregiving, for Jane, despite his own medical issues, which included severe back trouble, liver problems, and two major cancer surgeries.
Brian loved music, and in his handwritten Last Will and Testament directed his mother to take her pick of his many CDs and concert DVDs and then offer them to his nieces and nephews. He also expressed hope that none of his other possessions, including the food on his shelves and in his refrigerator, would go to waste.
Brian’s life’s journey led him to a stint at UPS; a glorious championship season as a Little League coach; an all-too-brief yet joyous marriage to Lira, the love of his life, who died tragically young; at least two years of homelessness due to hard drug use; a stay at Joe Arpaio’s Tent City; and then the triumph of becoming clean and sober with the great and gracious help of faith-based Streets of Joy and Victory Outreach. In Brian’s final years he became a committed member of Faith Assembly of God. Christianity became his salvation.
Brian met the enormous challenges of his circumstances with great courage, immense love in his heart, and an unquenchable sense of fun. Those who survive him include his mother, Jane Bowers Stoneman; brothers Harold and Gary; stepbrothers Cary, Dan, Tod, and Glenn Stoneman; his beloved Aunt Diane; and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. He leaves these loved ones with a fine set of remembrances of his love.
Here is Brian’s handwritten Last Will and Testament:
Here is the transcript, mildly edited by his loving and grieving brother:
Last Will and Testament, November 24, 2012
I, Brian Bowers, being of sound mind, body, and spirit, do hereby appoint my mother Jane Bowers Stoneman to receive everything I own. One 1979 Datsun 260Z; one 1987 Nissan Pulsar NX SE; everything in the back house at [address] as well as everything I may own in the storage sheds and cabinets.
My wish is that she would direct the distribution of my assets; allow each of my nieces and nephew, one at a time, to choose any of my CDs and concert DVDs that they may want (of course, that’s after Mom takes what she wants); then allow blood kin to choose anything as remembrance or enjoyment. My Mother is in charge of any distribution of anything. I would hope that any of my food not go to waste.
My computer and TVs may be given or kept by my mother.
I would hope my brothers would get something as well.
Thanks
signed Brian C. Bowers
November 24, 2012
Here is an array of medications Brian kept at his bedside:
Finally, here is a poem I wrote this morning, meant to go with the above image:
no refills
1
let’s check you out
your lumbar grinds
you tend to seize
your bp is up there
you had this operation
so you need this this and this
and that procedure
so here is that and that
and now you have side effects
so here’s this for logy
that for grouchy
and the other just because you hurt
take them once and twice and thrice a day
with and without food
diet? exercise?
not our department
2
let’s check you out
you are calm–good
zero chance of seizure–excellent
no pain whatsoever–truly fine
and non-instruments detect
waves and waves of love
washing over you and through you
your reward awaits
you won’t be needing these any more
This post comes to you from the Greyhound bus station in Flagstaff, Arizona. The index card in the image above includes a quick sketch of my phone being charged, my backpack, the man sleeping on the floor next to the chair the backpack is on, and his walker. It’s not a good sketch but I am beat. Tomorrow is another day.
I am on vacation. Three weeks off. Tomorrow through Sunday I’ll visit my friends Steve and Chris Boyle in Henderson, Nevada. During those days I’ll figure out where to go next, hoping eventually to end up in Richland, Washington state, visiting my friend Tom Byrne.
It is interesting going Greyhound again after more than 30 years. In the past there was a sign by the driver endorsing him (it was always a “him” then) as SAFE●RELIABLE●COURTEOUS. Now there’s a sign saying WATCH YOUR STEP and, judging from the discourtesy our driver handed the passenger behind her, who was arguing that we should take a break in Camp Verde, it is meant figuratively as well as literally. (In the driver’s defense, the passenger was even ruder than she was.)
I like being on the road, but the miles wear harder on me than they did last century. That’s Life!
(First published in slightly altered form in the Poets All Call group on Facebook)
this place is like a room
this place is like a room in which to place furniture of notions, fixtures of beliefs, knickknacks of fantasies, urns of old griefs.
there is the centerpiece of your remembered face. in the corner window, shifting with its lace, the curtain-shadow stripes and dazzles the porcelain of the sink
where the grime of old grudges and antique embarrassments may be thrillingly, refreshingly washed away and dried with a towel of quintessential fluffiness while a breeze riffles pages of a small sacred yet secular
belovéd book.
America’s President and Commander In Chief of its armed forces is now in Helsinki, misrepresenting his country with abandon. My deeply spiritual friend Suzy Jacobson Cherry is viewing this latest development with such alarm that she posted on Facebook this message: “Everybody. Start writing down your memories of the America that has been. Just in case it isn’t again.”
Suzy’s message reminds me of the end of the play CAMELOT, and Arthur’s admonitory instruction to a stripling in hopes of somehow keeping the memory of Camelot alive.
I love Suzy, and though I think our beloved country will be reunited and healed, I thought it would be valuable to do as she says, as thoroughly as I could.
And here is the transcript:
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America: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. The Melting Pot. “I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.” Leader-by- example via the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine. “One giant leap for mankind.” Civil Rights Act. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.” The Miracle On Ice of the 1980 Winter Olympics. Rosie the Riveter. Norman Rockwell. The Summer of Love. Ray Charles singing “O Beautiful For heroes proved…” at the 2001 World Series. The freedom that allows Billie Joe Armstrong to sing “American Idiot.” The Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson–Johnny’s guest host George Carlin. Eleanor Roosevelt. Harper Lee. Spike Lee and his magnificent collaborator Denzel Washington. Angels In America on Broadway, featuring Tony-Award-winning Stephen Spinella.
And George Washington, who refused to be King. And my family and friends.
****
America has survived many crises. We can survive this one as well, if we get back on the track of E Pluribus Unum, and Liberty and Justice for All.
The Valley of the Sun, where I live, is in Monsoon mode now. There was an intense dust storm about a week ago, and high humidity alternating and sometimes coinciding with high heat. The air quality is not good, especially for allergy sufferers. That’s my problem now. I’ve been to Urgent Care and am taking their prescribed medicine, but nothing is working well.
In the movie MONA LISA SMILE, Julia Roberts teaches Art History at the women’s college Wellesley during the 1953-1954 academic year. She struggles with the school administration, her students, a man who wants to marry her, and a man who seems to love her but is untrustworthy.
I did this portrait of Ms. Roberts at the tail-end of a breakup scene with her would-be fiancé. She is plain and unsmiling, which is uncharacteristic. I had a crusher of a headache as I drew her, which seemed to fit.
How this blog post came to be may be summed up, though it is one LONG summation, by this Facebook post I wrote on the 28th of June, between the sets of asterisks:
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Spooky coincidences…I just found out via a post by my friend Anthony Ortega, son of my fellow GHS grad and good friend Joy Riner Taylor, that Harlan Ellison has died. Tony said that it was ironic because he’s just been going over Ellison’s work.
Oddly enough, I’d been thinking about Harlan Ellison too. About a week or two ago I looked him up on Wikipedia to see if he were still alive (he was born in 1934).
Spookier still is the last 24 hours. I was thinking with sadness about the suicides of two good friends of mine, one in 1986 and one just this year. And there had been something in the news about suicide being a trending thing. And then the thought popped into my head: “We have got to watch ourselves.” Then the acrostic poet in me realized that the words WATCHING and YOURSELF both have eight letters in it, and I could do a double-acrostic poem about self-preservation using those words. And probably should: it could be much more meaningful than the hooey I usually crank out. (Just kidding, Folks.) (With a little grain of truth.)
Why is this SUCH a spooky coincidence? Well, Harlan Ellison was for the most part the opposite of a suicide–he once demanded open-heart surgery pronto, feeling time was of the essence. The phrase “DO ME” was in his demand to the doc, according to his own account. And they Did Him, and he lasted another 20 years. And in his career he wrote dozens of books. Two, during the Nixon era, were about television. They were THE GLASS TEAT and THE OTHER GLASS TEAT. And there were sequelae of those, of sorts, with a column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, later put into book form, and later yet extended with a series of YouTube videos. And here the spookiness hits home. My acrostic poem, conceived before I learned of Harlan’s death, will be WATCHING YOURSELF. Harlan’s series was called HARLAN ELLISON’S WATCHING.
****
Since the post I’ve attempted the acrostic three times. Here’s the first try:
We do not tend to put our dirty laundry on display
And when our feelings darken, they may travel incognito
The hope is that the mood will lift if it is left in situ
Concealment is unwise but it so hurts to peel a layer
How desperately vulnerable modern times have made us
In fact the woe and pain make ending it almost attractive
New hope arises when we offer gentle love for all
Gained wisdom comes when mindfulness puts guardrail by the cliff
That was a brainbuster. I almost went with it but felt it missed the mark. On to Try #2:
When purpose yields duality
And makes for an imbroglio
Then Life sneers, Yeah? The Same To You
Canasta, craps, chemin de fer
Hold Doom just like a blunderbuss
If action is evocative
Now we may wax Neandertal
Glyphs mark our bets, no call, no bluff
That try suffered from loss of comprehensibility, straitjacketed as it was by the acrostic. Good try though it was, it was necessary to try, try again.
That led to this final version:
Here are those final-draft words:
Well, I fear we’re going Ka-Blooey
And if you can argue, please do
This school is called Letspreserve U
Commitment & Shame make a pair
How fell is Depression, whose heirs
Inflict themselves Harm, unaware
Now, please–one more round for us all
Good mindfulness works–let’s be off
One last little spookiness. I went to Goodreads to look at the book jacket for HARLAN ELLISON’S WATCHING. The intro paragraph is Ellison’s style. If he didn’t write it, some damn good pasticher did. Whichever, the last two sentences address friendlessness (first sentence) and self-preservation, which is the theme of this page. Word for word, here they are: “As an essayist, he has no equal; as a film critic he has no friends. Take care.”
Tempting as it is to designate ER as “Emergency Room” and AI as “Artificial Intelligence,” for this acrostic they are the actual words “er” and “ai,” both interjectory “words to express.” “Er” expresses hesitation, and may be found in any number of the 60s-era DC Superman comics, when Clark Kent says something like, “Er, Lois, I think I left something at my desk. Go on without me.” “Ai” expresses sorrow or fear, and is used by Tolkien at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm when Legolas says, “Ai! a Balrog!”
I have a friend who had a breakup/make-up cycle so persistent he would say things like, “So anyway, after the final final FINAL breakup, there we were…” poor him and poor her.
This is a page about breaking up. Hesitation, then sorrow, then resolution: Never again. Here are its words:
Note the couple lost at sea
Even lost their Golly G
Venom laces all the tea
Ektachrome records ennui
Roaring surf could be so mean/Raging like the winds that keen
Here is something that may frustrate–a metaphorical bone with not much meat on it. It is a challenge to the viewer’s storytelling skill, done in the hope that intriguing stories may occur where none before existed.
I’ve finally punched through my creative block (it took weeks) and completed and signed the above page, “Left/Lest/Fest/Felt,” an illustrated acrostic poem inspired by Marta, my new friend from Catalonia. I dedicate it to her.
Marta, I wish it were better. I tried too hard; wanted it to be good too much. I tried and failed to make the illustrations obviously relate to their categories. Perhaps I will return to its complexities after I fully re-establish my momentum, but most likely not. I hope the hard work shows.
Here are the words:
Loneliness lets fall the Shadows, fading light to half
Lingers with its lassitude–of Energy a thief
Elements of zesty ZEAL decant with a carafe
Evanescent, maybe; still, in Georgia there’s O’Keeffe
Follow BLISS subjunctively, so hoping you’ll kvell
FATE may spin things SINISTER, as with a grassy knoll
Threat of predatory harm may taint a hand that’s dealt
Therapeutic caution says: obtain a lock & bolt
One with Clay, Image and Text 