This is a slide show with me reading a poem.

https://kithewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/klamath-slide-show-with-voice.ppsx

Associations from the poem, ‘Theology’ by Ocean Vuong in the recent New Yorker

(note: I did not know that the poet was a man when I wrote this)

“The man lowered a box into the slot he had dug.

As if pushing a coin into a giant machine.

That must be how they pay to be here.

It is as if the poet had about 14 poems inside and they all ended up on the same page. So many different journeys. My mind wanders like that sometimes. I have given into it sometimes and the results are just as mixed and oddly coherent. I wonder what it is like for those people who cannot stop doing that. Who can’s get up from the chair and go outside and feel the wind as meaningless and yet gentle, the smell of flowers as sweet – not sinister.
I always wonder why crazy people are angry and aggressive. Are there people who are crazy that are genuinely happy about it? Why is it so frightening to them. That inability to understand what is happening around them.
My mother was crazy. What made my mother crazy was that she didn’t know how to verify things. She came up with an interpretation of an action and the true meaning of the facts didn’t get in the way of her interpretation. A hard way to love.
So we interpret things. We assign meaning to them. The bigger and more encompassing questions become theology. The smaller things are just getting along with your neighbors.
When I was working on my novel I was able to visit my imagination regularly, but it took a kind of discipline that was hard to sustain. It was fun, but I didn’t think I could keep it up.
I keep going back to Hemingway. He was a drunk and saturated with testosterone. As he aged, he got more and more depressed. He got electro-shock-therapy. One of the things about EST is that it messes with memory. Hemingway couldn’t remember things. He couldn’t write novels because he couldn’t keep them in his head. That is why he killed himself.
It is a cautionary tale. #1 is do not get EST. #2 is memory is who you are – you lose your memory, you lose yourself. That is why it is so hard to forget your keys. No – let me rephrase it- it is easy to lose your keys but it hurts. It is scary because it feels like you are losing your mind – you feel like you are in the early stages of forgetting who you are.
Perhaps crazy people are angry and aggressive because they are so scared. They don’t know the rules. Gravity is something you can break. The trip to the top of the tree is not metaphorical, it is real. It is as real as the stupid bowl of oatmeal on the table. The squirrel tail that she lost was made of real fur and bone and the boy on the bridge took it from her. I wonder if that is a way she has of thinking about being raped by him. His lips are red as a scab, not a rose or a plum, so she sees something wrong about him, then he pulls a rifle on her. How close can she get to writing about that without going through it again. The image is there but she doesn’t finish it.
A friend of mine worked in Social Services. Her job was to advise and help protect abused women and children. Get them shelter and help them get away from the abusers. She also had a private practice and saw a lot of “psychotic” women in her practice. She said that 9 out of 10 of her disturbed patients had been sexually abused as children. The more pervasive the abuse the crazier the patient. You can look at that and see that crazy is a response to something.
Is optimism a form of crazy? Is not-crazy sane?
Is the pressure of staying “normal” so intense that it is a necessary relief to scream and rant and break things?
And the price the poet pays is to know that death is the coin we pay to be here in this life.

Had a bad night last night. Couldn’t get to sleep.
What are sleepless nights for, anyway?
I use my eyes a lot.
Sometimes I wonder (with horror) what it would be like if I lost my eyesight (more than usual – starting to have trouble with subtitles on the TV which is only about 6 feet away).
I know I could stumble around the house and figure out systems of comfort around blindness
but there are so many things to see even on a rainy day like today.
The rings that the drops leave in puddles on my black deck.
Sleeping cats (black on black)
favorite colorful blankets
The way the lamplight warms the desk
the calla lilies glazed on to the side of the lamp.
Anything on a computer, phone, screen, book.
Photographs
Utah
Yosemite
Stinson Beach
the massing of clouds over Mt Tam from the dog park.
Dogs at the dog park
sailboards
the bridges
the sky
the faces of people I love

This hole gets deeper and deeper
doesn’t it?
Being me though, I am simultaneously thinking of things I either won’t miss
like traffic and dark smudges around door knobs
and homeless encampment’s mountains of trash (guess when you have nothing
anything looks like an opportunity)

I am also
dreaming up adaptations that might be interesting
I could probably learn to throw pots blind
trimming them might be hazardous
glazing pointless

I could still smell the ocean and feel the sand on my feet
and get splashed by waves and
hear children and gulls shrieking over the thumping of the waves
The beach, being flat and somewhat featureless
would be safer than a hike in the mountains
Also handicap paths would become more than nice friends
they would become intimates for my feet.

There would have to be someone I love hovering nearby
I would be a pain in the ass sometimes
because I would be irritable
Writing would probably drop away quickly
as would cooking anything that doesn’t require a microwave

how hard is it to learn braille?
do people even use it these days with audiobooks
and lingering doubts about the safety of touching
any public surface

Women used to wear white gloves when they went to the City
Nice kid ones if they had the money
but often cheaper, lightweight cotton ones (cheaper than our bright blue latex disposable ones?)
My grandmother always wore them
but my mother kept her pair in a drawer
each finger had four seams so that each finger was neatly encased in softness
and might not be able to function practically because
all four seams came to a point at the tips of the fingers.
I’ve never liked gloves -my fingers are too long for most of them
and for some reason they make my hands ache
mittens are best for warmth anyway
each finger comforting the rest.

Oliver Sacks wrote about a man,
blind from birth, who had a surgery to allow him to see.
he didn’t know that talking and mouths were related
he didn’t know who was speaking unless he closed his eyes
and he didn’t like the distortions facial expressions caused
since they made people unrecognizable.
He got very depressed.
Luckily the man developed a rare disease that returned him to blindness
and he felt restored to normalcy.

That’s really the problem isn’t it?
What is normal for you isn’t necessarily normal for anyone else.
I am not talking about things like gravity or hunger
We are all subject to those rules
but all the things a blind person doesn’t see, drop out of
normal and freefall into strange and scary.

I think this is true for most things.
Most of us are blind to the nuances of cat fur
and waterfalls (I could bore you with infinite details about the flowing of rivers).

Normal depends on what you can pay attention to
if you have the time
and interest to skip over the physical
mess of the normal world.
Everything outside of your attention is invisible,
unscented, flavorless, silent.
so it is probably a good idea to keep your options open.
Adapt.
keep adapting
learn to see for the first time
accept that you will not understand most of it
don’t panic
adapt

Prompted by this poem: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/item/poetry-180-005/thanks/

Gratitude comes in many forms, doesn’t it? I haven’t been to war but I have had moments that are like memory tattoos. They color my skin in such a way that I don’t notice them all the time, like looking in the mirror and not seeing the dent in the tip of my nose. It has always been there, I got it from my father and when I do see it, I think of his nose and the dent in the tip of it.
Moments like having a friend, who was shoveling leaf litter off a roof, finding an almost perfect apple buried in the litter. I was below, aiming his shovel-fulls of debris into a green bin. When he found the apple, he commented on it and tossed it off the roof towards me. I could have let it fall but I reached out with my left hand and caught it and in the same movement tossed it, dead center, into the green bin. It all felt very choreographed, balletic, perfect. I was impressed with myself. But there is something otherworldly about things like that, where some mystery takes over your life and saves you, over and over. Catching the apple and tossing it into the bin didn’t save my life in the same sense that seeing the sun glinting off a sniper’s bayonet saves the life of a soldier, but the instinct is the same. As animals we are bred to survive and ‘think fast’ is one of the best tools we have.
And yet. And yet. This young man was finding this beauty in war. The glint, the glitter, the flicker of light caught his attention and he ducked or shot first or somehow, he was saved and saved again, by this unknowable insight we all have to a greater or lesser degree.
I am not a war monger. War is unbelievably horrific.

I was looking through a notepad I keep next to my desk for odd notes. Today I saw a note: 6 million missing in WWI. Not just dead but missing.

The first note on the note pad is: Drill Powered boat.
It is apparently possible to use a battery powered drill to turn a propeller fast enough to drive a small boat quickly across a lake. The charge on the battery doesn’t last very long, but I am sure there will be a $40 version of it on sale online soon. Just take a 6 pack of batteries along.

Anyhow, we all have things to be thankful for and that is the message here, so:

Thanks for all the things I did even though I was scared to do them.
No thanks for all the times I was scared for no reason.

Thanks for the imagination to see other worlds and to see the invisible in this one.
No thanks for imagining that the worst case was the only possible outcome.

Thanks for my eyes to see the splendor.
No thanks for the things I cannot unsee.

Thanks for the smell of summer evenings, heat scented trees, orange blossoms.
No thanks for the smell of a 3 day old suicide.

Thanks for the numbness to survive my childhood.
No Thanks for the numbness that has been a barrier to my life, all my life.

Thanks for the tea leaves brewing in my cup.
No thanks for the tea leaves that look like fruit flies.

Thanks for rivers and floods and deltas and rapids and just thanks for water in all its manifestations.
Thanks for deserts that are quiet.
Thanks for the sound of sand drifting down a sand dune.
Thanks for the wide silent river at flood when you can hear the pebbles and rocks of the bottom tripping downstream.

Thanks for the bones of this Earth
There is really nothing I can think of now to say No Thanks about.
Just
Thanks for it all.
Even the unreasonable
irritating
frightening
disgusting mess
of it all.
Well, there is a No Thanks lurking in the background.
No thanks for taking it all away.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

By Lewis Carroll
 
When I was a kid I didn’t get Lewis Carroll. Maybe it was the age that he came into my orbit but he seemed nonsensical to me. I know, that’s the point, but I was at the age where I was struggling to make sense of the world and his nonsense was scary and vaguely insulting of my efforts to understand. I was not included in the joke, I was the butt of it.
I was much more attracted to Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.
We had a set of 45’s and a book by Disney records, possibly the first records I ever listened to. Jimmy Stuart read the Pooh books and if I remember correctly, there were actors doing the characters voices.
“Rum tum tiddly um tum tum! Did you turn the page?” That was how you knew to turn the page of the accompanying book. Golly, I wish I could find that. It’s probably in some attic someplace waiting for… Waiting for the record player to be reinvented, probably.
The part I remember best is the story about Tigger. He appeared and no one knew what he was or where he came from. There was a guessing game about that. Then they tried to figure out what Tiggers eat for breakfast. At some point Tigger says, politely but in a muted and almost David Attenborough stalking a real tiger voice said, “Excuse me, there is something crawling on your table.” Whereupon Tigger leaps onto the tablecloth and after a furious fight wrestles it onto the floor. He pops up his head and says, “Have I won?”
That phrase became a family joke. Whenever we were struggling with something, Mom would perk up and say, “Have I won?” It would always break the tension of being frustrated by some task my brother or I were working through. She also started using it when things were going so wrong that there was no possibility of a solution. When she gave up, she would ask, “Have I won?” It became a funny way in my family of admitting defeat, once again, by the absurdities of life.
I can still hear Jimmy Stuart’s voice and Kanga’s ultra-motherly voice comforting Roo and adopting Tigger.
I’ll have to spend some time on youtube to see if there is a copy of it someplace. That would be fun.
When I became as adult as possible, Alice in Wonderland really caught my imagination. The strange world she was wandering in, sliding in and out of nightmare, actually seemed to explain life to me. Things happen. Pansies talk, grinning cats disappear, Caterpillars smoke opium and pontificate. It all made sense.
I know that’s ridiculous but I accepted Alice because I admired her willingness to keep going. She was tough and yet, she filled a corridor with her tears. Then she got interested and progressed through the story. It was a weird Pilgrim’s Progress for me.
These days, there is all this completely absurd stuff going on, the prime example being Trump, our Queen of Hearts, screaming, “Off with his head!” and making bizarre pronouncements, just because he can. And all his followers a pack of cards. At some point someone is going to say, “Who cares for you?” (Alice had grown to her full size by now) “You are nothing but a pack of cards!” and it will all be revealed to be a dream; we will wake up with our head in the lap of a beloved sister and Dinah, the cat, will be napping nearby.
Of course, that’s a children’s tale and not productive politically but I still can’t get over the feeling that we are wandering in Wonderland or have stepped through the Looking Glass and as soon as we find a way back to sensible reality, everything will be fine.
I do know better, but I can hope, can’t I?
Have I won?

            If I were in charge of inventing Heaven, what would I do?

I will have dandelions blinking, out of the grass, bright yellow then impossibly fragile white balls, then the little inverted umbrellas floating away on the breeze, tiny Mary Poppins hanging from each seed.

            I will keep my friends but I wouldn’t force them to come to my heaven, besides they will be busy inventing their own. I’ll throw in a few suggestions if I may.

            I will keep this room as full of its spirit of kindness as possible. I will probably redesign this cement walled room to have wood floors and walls and a lower ceiling to trap the heat. The cathedral ceiling is lovely but not efficient. I will keep the windows and I will allow the view to change every day. Sometimes I will substitute views of Yosemite, the deserts of Nevada and Utah, sunrises anywhere, sunsets. Sometimes I will give the view a rest by filling the air with fog.

            I will keep chocolate. I will keep Ben and Jerry’s ‘Cherry Garcia’ ice cream and their ‘chocolate fudge core.’ I will keep potatoes in all their delicious forms and corn on the cob, sometimes with butter and sometimes just the sweet kernels, and smokehouse almonds, and salads on hot days and soup on cold ones.

            I will have sudden rain storms to clear the air and snow storms to shut us in and make a fire to keep cozy and warm. I will have lightning and thunder in the mountains and a dry tent by a river.

            I will keep my jobs because I like the variety of people and experiences they provide. I like solving the puzzles

            I will keep my cats and my daughter – but not in that order.

            In heaven I will be busy but with some empty time where I can stare and think.

            The Christmas decorations will spontaneously appear all over the house and on January 7^th they will begin to disappear, one at a time, just when I stop noticing their glitter and shine. None of the lightbulbs will burn out.

            The furniture will all weigh 10 pounds so I can move it around. It can weigh what it likes the rest of the time.

            I will wash my face in many rivers and not worry about giardia. There will be sleek and cheerful otters on the banks. My cats will be able to transform into otters when they feel like it. I won’t need a boat to swim in Class II rapids and the water will be warm and there will be a large quiet pool at the bottom with friends smiling at me on the bank, tossing me a rescue rope. I will be able to hike the whole Pacific Crest trail in one long summer without a backpack. I’ll make it hard, but not impossible. I will raft down the Grand Canyon every time I want to feel small. I will paddle the Smith in Montana when I want to laugh and take pictures of wildflowers and eat dinner with Alice, Don and Karen and Jan and Ruth and Tallulah. We will sit by the river and watch Mergansers and Falcons and Night Hawks and Golden Eagles. There will be the damp smell of distant rapids on sunny days. There will be a piece of down floating on dark, silent waters. There will be dark places in deep waters.

            I want to take pictures of everything so I can show my friends what my heaven looks like.

            People will be assigned death dates where they will blink out of time. Those who want to know when they are going to die can send an email to the powers that be. The others, because they aren’t afraid of the suffering that often accompanies death, will accept death as a partner to their life. They will be looking forward to reinventing heaven.

            David Burney wrote, “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.”

            That is not the heaven I would invent – things will happen —  I am going to invent a system that creates random events but I am not going to dread anything.

            Maybe that is the essential part of my heaven, the engine that runs it. No dread, no worry. I want to feel like I belong and that I will be able to face whatever comes next. Dread is the feeling I get when I am not sure about this.

            The thought that I am already in heaven keeps interrupting me. I know I am not there because I am always dragging that bag of anxiety and uncertainty behind me, but I am close sometimes. I can feel it.

            I can feel how close heaven is to me even when there is nothing I can do to change this world. Its like the beginning of a sneeze before you know its going to be a sneeze. There is something there but it hasn’t announced itself. There is already a heaven, I don’t have to invent one, and it’s very, very close.

            It would be a good idea to leave that nasty bag of woes someplace where it can’t do any harm. Maybe in Area 51. But it does provide a contrast, doesn’t it? And maybe that bag of anxiety is actually what is keeping me alive and when it is time to leave it somewhere, that will be when I get to invent heaven.

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