Death blurred life.
And brought it into sharp relief.
A void opened.
So I spent five and a half hours on the phone. The call was comfort. Don’t remember a long call like that before. And all that talk with someone I really didn’t know was disorienting.
The void was momentarily not the center of my mind … but still the center of my cells, so I remained on the phone.
We talked about our friend who’d passed. But mostly we discussed our experiences with poetry, class oppression, f to m transitions, good places to live in the U.S., mutual friends, publishing, overlooked nuances of various topics, and the first time we met. Now, I know a lot about this fellow from their words and the energy that wrapped the words.
He remembered me from the ‘70s. I don’t recall that meeting. He reported the bizarre haircut I had then. So, yes, we spoke back then.
I remember him from the ‘80s but not talking then either.
Then pain gave us a marathon phone call.
I was able to get a good sleep afterwards.
I fell asleep listening to TJ Klune’s We Burned So Bright. It is about an elderly gay couple during the apocalypse. I am grateful to Klune. A brilliant, loving story from which I received comfort instead of staring into the void that my friend’s passing left behind.
In the morning, I wasn’t sure if a conversation on conversion therapy had been in the book or the phone call.
Death deconstructed my mind, my life, the world.
Death made my life surrealism. I am used to altered states. But life altered. The world that had my old friend was deconstructed with his death. The new world is sharp and blurred and empty,
Nothingness invades when I’m not working, serving others, cooking a meal, beading, planning the ritual to help my deceased beloved on his new journey. I bead and bead.
Klune’s book about the end of the world and—to a much greater degree—the phone call were respites from staring at the end of my world and the emptiness that isn’t replaced by a new cosmos yet.
A new universe will evolve. But, for now, I bead.
Later: I started to feel excitement about a new world. Was looking forward to it. The good feelings were short-lived, but they were lived. I keep on. And hope for a new friendship from the phone call.
Francesca De Grandis authored the best-selling classic, Be a Goddess!. Now she publishes less, to focus on oral tradition: Long-distance Shamanic classes and other services. Shamanism is the opposite of colonizer culture. Joy is political resistance. Choose joy. Express yourself. Serve community. Nickname: Outlaw Bunny.
