Howard is a doctor, marathon runner and author. He has written two non-fiction books, My Father’s Compass (2007) and Raft (2009). Carrots and Jaffas (2014) is his first novel. His latest novel is A Threefold Cord (Hybrid, 2107)
A gentle lady visited me in a bush hamlet. She was fifty and fair, softly spoken, with an air of sweet naivete.
Sighting my kippah she became excited. She asked, Do you have dreams, visions and prophecy? Almost apologetically, I said no, I didn’t.
In the days and weeks that followed I did have a dream. My Dad was suddenly, quietly present. In the dream I was aware Dad was dead. But here he was, standing at my shoulder, smiling. No words were spoken, none expected. This was a dream; in my dreams nothing is expected. Dad was just there. His gentle smile was a smile of sadness. I knew, as I always have known, that Dad loved me. His smile said that and more. The more was Dad’s sorrow for the world. He smiled in the understanding we shared, that I would have to live in this world of pain, that he had left, and had left to me.
Last night a vision came to me. Or perhaps the vision came as I sat in the early morning sunshine, looking out over the sea. It was a vision composed of words and phrases.
Joy to the world
The Lord is come.
Woe to the world
The Lord is hid.Joy to the world
A child is born.
Woe to the world
A child has died.
****
Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings…
In that vision I was aware that words of hope should follow: and learn to fly…but hope eluded me.
*** I spoke to the rabbi and he said.
There is always hope.
The rabbi is not filled with a sweet naivete. He carries the burden of family, every one of his father’s kin, slaughtered in the Shoah. Yet the rabbi counselled hope. He argued for it. He commanded it.
The hand of the Lord was upon me…
And He set me in the midst of a valley;
It was full of bones:
Son of man, can these bones live? O Lord, Thou alone knowest.
***
The soft lady in the bush said: We believe in dreams and visions and prophecy. She spoke the words with the fluency of mantra, with the ordinarinessof a shopping list.
I wish I had the gift of prophecy. The Prophets always spoke of the worst:
I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley.
And they spoke always of hope:
Prophesy, son of man, and say, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.
June 4, the sun shines on Traralgon and it shines on me. At 6.30m when I head out, the temperature is 4 degrees C (“feels like 2 degrees C”). A heavy fog lies upon the earth.
A mystic silence reigns as I set out on the 42.195 kilometres of the Traralgon Marathon. Although I’m starting my run one hour before the remaining 61 runners, I am not alone; my eldest grandchild drives his electric skateboard at my side.
The sun comes up at 7.30, warming my body and my spirit. The track, a rail trail, gleams as we move along towards that rising sun. Cobwebs, suspended from grasses and bushes, each of them a so-delicate necklace, that sparkles with sunkissed dew.Cows graze nearby, leaving generous splats for us to dodge. (I succeed, my grandson not quite.)
On his back the grandson wears a pack, ferrying supplies to replenish my body: planets*, reptiles** and salt tablets, and a flagon of water, as urged by Emily, the endurance sports dietitian and triathlete. My own project looks modest in comparison to Emily’s. As the weeks before Traralgon shrank to days, I rationalised: It’s not that far. I’ll run as far as I can, perhaps halfway, and when I can’t run anymore, I’ll walk… I’ll discover whether my legs remain capable of 42,000 steps.
As often as I daydreamed thus in hope, came that voice of dull prudence, Don’t be silly. You’ve never been so undertrained,you’ve never been so old…
Where lies wisdom? Where hubris, where cowardice? Thoughts alternate. Yes I am old, yes, I’ve had a stroke and, yes, the end approaches. I could sit and wait, retire from life and all risk and hope; and wait gracefully to die. An aged man is but a paltry thing/A tattered coat upon a stick/Unless…Unless soul clap its hands and sing. A decision makes itself. I’ll run!
This lovely marathon course winds and bends its ways between tall trees and low bushes and no trees at all. In nearby fields of pasture, tall grey gumtrees stand, gaunt, without foliage. What killed these survivors of fire and flood? They stand, each alone, each a memorial statue of its own demise.
At 8.00 o’clock, we pause for salts and serpents*, of which Emily commanded me to consume three every hour. This pause refreshes legs and lungs. Plenished now, those organs respond eagerly to the delights and sights on all sides. We cross little bridges over small waters and large, each bridge individual, this one of wood, this of metal, this one grassed, the next gravelled, the next paved of wood.
This being a rail trail, we reach the former rail station at Glengarry. Here, Jesse the skateboarding grandson, helps me to flout fairness in sport. He procures my performance enhancing substance, astrong latte, please Jesse, with sugar! This encourages lungs and legs already high on endorphin.
Everything smiles as we plod without pain towards Toongabbie Siding, where we sight a dark figure that moves ahead of us across the landscape. We close on this shifting shape and recognise Nick, close friend and ever-generous chauffeur. He and Jesse leave now, for their return to commitments in Melbourne.
I come to the turn, which is the half-way mark, all smiles. Ah, happy runner, happy, happy foolish, self-fooled runner, strong in the legs but too weak in the head to read a map properly. Utterly unaware that this out-and-back marathon course is not symmetrical, I discover the Toongabbie Loop, which now adds five kilometres of running. Why do I smile? What cheers me in my benighted state? It is my own laughable absurdity that cheers me so.
Forty minutes pass in happy solitude. More cows of course, more trees, more sun, and, the occasional fast marathoner, who now overtakes me, overcoming my one-hour start. Back at Toongabbie siding I’m overtaken by Kirsty, my marathon friend from Boston and the South Australian bush. Where is Sally, the third of our Boston threesome? She follows, in better time than mine. We swap stories of our morning so far, we sip salted drinks, then ahead sweepsKirsty, a real runner, on her way to finish in four- and a-half hours.
Alone again in the sunshine, recalling my first Traralgon Marathon, the first of fifty-seven. Another sunny day in winter.
Traralgon is Victoria’s Country Marathon Championship and Victoria’s first. All in all a pretty lustrous affair. Running under his nomme de jamb of Pheidipides, Howard Goldenberg completed his maiden marathon at Traralgon thirty-nine years ago. That year 181 runners started and 141 finished. I still have the official printout of the results. At the foot of the second of two roneoed sheets of paper (this report antedated the internet), you’d read: In 141st place, PheidipidesGoldenberg; time: 4 hours, 31 minutes, 31 seconds.
Every time I run a marathon I write one. That simple passage through time and space, so simple, so elemental, you mightn’t credit it worthy of remark. But every running feels remarkable to the runner. In the marathon the runner encounters his sole self, discovering some things about herself she’d prefer not to know and others that make him feel a little proud. In a marathon, as Zatopek remarked, we all die a little. The event is charged with significance for this runner because an often-solitary passage through time and space always involves encounters with others. It is the comradeship, the fellow feeling, the respect that elevate our experience. In that sense the marathon is a metaphor for our lives.
A watcher of the Barcelona Olympic Marathon might have caught images of the leading bunch of five as they passed their drink stop with seven kilometres to go. They had, running in intense humidity and heat, slowly outpaced a score of household names from Kenya and Tanzania and Korea and Japan and Australia. These five were the bravest of the brave on that particular day. One of these five, one only, would go on to become immortal. Four of the five grabbed their special drinks at the 35 KM mark. The fifth grabbed and missed. And ran on. Turning back was out of the question. The four drank and ran and drank again. One of the four passed his unfinished drink to the fifth. I do not recall whether the drink-giver won the event – I fancy he did not – but in that moment he joined the Immortals. Such small moments are the glory of the marathon.
All this reads a bit portentously. Most running – and all of mine – is more comedic or shambolic than deep. In the field of my third Traralgon I sighted at the Start the famed and cherished Cliff Young, Australia’s most famous potato farmer, a previous winner of the Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon. Cliffy used to train in his hobnail work boots. If he needed a haircut he’d trot the thirty kilometres from his farm to Colac, then run back home again. That day in Traralgon I wondered if I’d get close to him. Around the three Kilometre mark my legs became over-excited and accelerated and I hauled him in. Running a couple of paces behind Cliff I admired the light lacework of his tracksuit material. I drew closer. The lacework was in fact the work of a legion of hungry moths. Through the moth holes I could see and admire the pale skin of those spindly old legs…
A cry in the wilderness brings me back to now. Another cry, shrill and repeated. A flash of impossibly curly fair hair, and a form on the track ahead. The hair and the form,and now the face, I recognise as belonging to Rachel, my firstborn. A long embrace and on we race, one full kilometre, after which Rachel gasps, I’ve just done a full marathon, and retires to her car to drive to Glengarry for a stop, a planet or two and more coffee.
Phil Kayumba, Rachel’s partner, now materialises, tall, lean, young, the swift spirit of hope. Phil sings but one song:
Howard goldenberg/looking good/running well
Howard goldenberg/looking good/running strong…
and today he’ll sing it often as he pumps me full of sunshine, breathing it into my ear as he spirits me to the Finish.
A long pause at Glengarry, more coffee, more chocolate planets, more gummy serpents. After a12-minute pause, we are off and ‘running’, really just plodding. Somehow nothing hurts. The sun smiles on me, Traralgon Harriers smile on me as thy run past. They cry, Go, Mister Goldberg!
Keep going Mister Goldberg!
Who are these strangers? Whomever they be, they are in league with the elements, with my kin, with my friends, with the volunteers who bless my path.
Phil is in my ear: Only 13 kilometres to go, you can do this Howie.
No Phil, it’s eighteen.
No Howie, just thirteen.
Phil is correct. In my masterful map-reading failure, I’ve undercounted the kilometres run. Phil’s news comes as a gift. Phil’s simple song sings itself to the rhythm of our falling feet:
Howard goldenberg/looking good/running well
Howard goldenberg/looking good/running strong…
One foot strikes the grassy path, the opposite foot follows. A stranger to volition, to strain, to suffering, I float above, with love at my side, love all around, love and joy awaiting and greeting me as I puff and plod absurdly the final thirty, hilly metres to the Finish. Cheers, a medal, drinks for the hero.
In all my scores of years’ ruminating about the meaning of a marathon, time and again recurs this deep and bright truth: my life is like the marathon, an effortful passage through space and time, made rich by love and companionship. Meaning congeals within me. As Malamud wrote, I am a man, which is not very much. But it is a great deal more than nothing.
He called it Outback Dreaming. The poet recalled a visit he made to the remote outback community of Wadeye, where I was working. The visit happened in 2012.
The poet is an escaped rabbi (escaped in the sense that he has escaped the bullpit of the pulpit and now works in community welfare). His name is Ralph Genende.
Every year Glen Eira libraries conduct the My Brother Jack awards. My friend’s poem won First Prize in poetry. Rabbi Ralph previously won this prize ten years ago, the year of his visit to Wadeye. He says ‘this poem…born in the harshness…of an Aboriginal community is about the despair and the consolation of hope.’
Moving into the interior the tall grasses
wave me to a river
and there suddenly silently I awaken to a waterfall
small and gentle it hovers in the drifting sunlight there are moments
when peace petals into our troubled lives
leaving little blossoms
in our slumbering selves tiny messengers
from the outback
memories of a distant star reminders of a faraway birth.
Ralph writes, ‘I believe in the power of poetry to refine our lives, to bring a different lens to our wounded world.’
This blog has spent the winter in a lazy silence. No-one complained. In breaking my silence I’m mindful of the judgement of Tim Minchin, who spoke (on ‘Australian Story’) of the morbid addictiveness of seeking affirmation. This blog was created precisely with that intention: I would write and you would like.
I’ve been thinking about this unattractive reality. I can’t see any way of sharing my writing without courting some sort of warm response. I could simply write and show no-one. Emily Dickenson wrote many, many poems and showed very few. Emily was shy; I am the opposite. So here we are, about to estivate.
Allow me to plead a single, small justification for posting my writing in public. Some years ago a nurse I used work with in an extremely remote community, contacted me after I had posted some piece of writing. She told me she looked forward to my posts. She said, Óut here you can feel forgotten by the world you knew. There are no papers here. You look forward to contact. After I’ve read whatever you post, you come back here and we talk all day in my head. I missed your posts when they stopped coming.
One of the reasons I write is a simple delight in words. When I suffered a (very) minor stroke a year or so ago, it struck my words. A little blood vessel in my brain aged, shriveled and died. As a result a bit of braindied. That bit (called the pons) is responsible for speech. The stroke was slight, just a caress really. For a short while I slurred sibilants at the end of words. ‘S’ words came out in an unshapely rattle.
If my fate had been to destroy the pons entirely I might have lost all speech, a stroke of good luck for some, perhaps, but unbearably sad for me. So here I am, bursting into words as my world bursts into spring. I’ll try to bloom and I hope you’ll like. Just don’t tell me.
Once upon a time, an old man travelled by train from the goldfields to the great city. The old man took his seat and looked around. Seated at a remove in a row parallel to his sat a younger man with a bony face, his features stony and set hard. His limbs were a living art gallery of tattoos; unlike all others aboard the train he wore no mask and, when asked to show his rail pass to the conductor, he did not speak, did not move, but showed no ticket. The old man felt a sense of implicit menace, not only on account of the younger man’s scowl, but in his very silence, and somehow in his unseasonable short pants and t-shirt, as if he declared he was tougher than others, rugged up against the cold of the day.
Nobody challenged the Man of Silent Menace.
About twenty minutes into the journey the old man smelled smoke. It wafted his way from the parallel seats. He stood and looked for signs of fire. He found none. No-one else seemed perturbed. The old man hoisted his backpack and walked out of that carriage and into the next. He left behind him the smell of smoke and the Man of Menace, and we too leave them now, as they play no further part in our story. The old man walked out and into a different story.
In the next carriage the old man found an empty corner where he sat down and started to read. He heard a voice and, wondering, he looked up. He didn’t catch the words for he was an old man, but he thought he heard ‘looking stylish’.
He turned in the direction of the voice, which was feminine in register, and he found himself facing a young woman who had, indeed, addressed him. The young woman was slightly built, her hair was red and she had freckles dotting her face and arms. Her face was covered, as the man’s was, by a mask. An open laptop computer sat on her knees.
The old man, surprised, because few over his long lifetime had remarked favourably on his ‘style’, asked the woman: Did you speak to me? I’m afraid I didn’t hear clearly.
I said you look stylish.
Golly, thought the man.
Thank you, said the man.
Yes, the cool jacket, the beret. Especially the beret.
The man thanked her again, and asked, (because he was interested in such things), What are you writing?
A story, she replied. I hope it will become a novel. Would you like me to read you some?
The old man said yes, I would. Thank you.
The old man thought, What a fearless young person!
The young woman now picked up her computer, her pink tote bag, her backpack and a fluffy jacket and removed from her corner diagonally opposite the man’s, and sitting herself down opposite him, almost knee to knee, started to read.
The young woman read musically and expressively. Her story told of a father and his young daughter. The father, a magician, delighted his daughter with the magic he practised. He created a world where her mind dwelled in fantasy. The father commanded his daughter never, never to open the trunk which contained his magician’s materials. His tone was tender but firm. The man departed, leaving the trunk in the care of his daughter.
The daughter felt tempted. She too wished to work magic, for she knew that despite the doubts of many, magic was real, its actions were everywhere to be seen, if only one had eyes to see.
The temptation was stronger than the daughter’s resistance. In truth she did not try to resist; she wanted to do what her father did, she wanted to know what he knew.
The girl opened the trunk.
At this point the storyteller closed her laptop and looked up at the old man with a question in her gaze. For his part, the old man had fully entered the world of the story and was sorry that it had stopped. He felt surprised at himself for, being a prosaic old man, he held no belief or interest in the world of magic. He said, I like your story. I liked the atmosphere you created and I’m interested in your characters and in how their relationship will play out. If I had been reading this story I would want to read on. I’d want to learn what happened next. There will be consequences of the child’s action, and I imagine, of the father’s trust or his trial of the child.
The young woman smiled with pleasure.
The old man ventured: I’ve published a few books. Wow! Where can I find them?
You can check out my blog.
Your blog! Wow!
The old man asked if she was a student. She said I’m doing a degree in Creative Writing and Film, at uni. The man asked the author where she had boarded the train. She named an exquisite mountain village in the vicinity. She went on to describe the farmlet where she and her fearless brother were raised and still live. She spoke of the animals, all of which bore names, she spoke of her creative parents – musicians – who passed on the gifts of music to their children. She said, Dad mowed a maze into the acres and acres of grass behind the house. We grew up in enchantment and imagination. As she spoke she glowed with recall of a childhood of wonder.
The old man thought the woman’s lived idyll somehow echoed the idyll she created in her story. He asked, do you make music too? Oh yes, we all do, we play and sing. I’m in a band. We’re going to cut an album. I write my own songs. Would you like to hear one?
Yes. Choose a sad one.
In asking her to sing to an audience of only one, the man was testing the limits of the young person’s boldness. But she gave voice, sweetly, to the story of an intimate friendship which ebbed and flowed in pain and closeness and ended in estrangement. I hate you/ I love you – she sang. The old man found the song and the singing unexpectedly pleasant. He anticipated the usual tuneless jingle and the usual trite lyrics, but this was bright and sweet and heartfelt, without becoming mawkish. He said as much.
The young woman was greatly pleased. She confided in him about her current girlfriend, throwing in, as if to assure the old man or herself – but I’ve had a boyfriend before her. We were together for four years. I realised I’m not binary.
The old man asked, Would you like to hear a poem? It’s a poem about a weeping man, he said. Probably a sad man, like the person in your song. Yes, please, she replied.
The old man read to her Les Murray’s poem, An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow. The young woman listened without moving, stunned by the music of the lines and the breadth of the poet’s understanding.
Wintry sunshine lit up the little freckles on the woman’s arm. The old man recalled with love his freckled sister as a little girl and the lines their mother used to quote: Glory be to God for dappled things…
The train pulled into the platform. The passengers disembarked. The old man said, Make sure you tell me when your book is published, then he turned left. Taking up her pink carry bag, flinging her pack onto her back and draping herself in her fluffy jacket, the young woman turned right.
In the half-light of dusk in the cavernous space of the railhead the old man set out for the long escalator which rose up and up and brought him to an elevated level. He exited the building, looked about him, realised he was lost and returned to the roofed space. Here he took a downbound escalator (this is really a ‘descalator’, he thought to himself) and rode to the platform level. Still lost, he looked about him, wondering.
Before him stood a young woman. The woman was slightly built with fine freckles and reddish hair. The two exchanged surprised smiles.
The old man thought, this is twice upon a time. The man asked, Which way is Spencer Street?
That way, she said, extending an arm.
Thanking her, he turned to go.
Behind him a voice asked: Would you hug?
Would I hug, he wondered.
She opened her arms wide. The man felt diffident, unusually awkward. Uncertain of today’s etiquette, too-conscious of how others might see him, he held her by her bony shoulder blades while she held him firmly for a time.
dear all this coming sunday evening i’ll be participating in a virtual book launch i’m writing to inform you of the event and to invite you to attend my invitation comes without a hint of obligation or expectation but with my commendation of a really worthy book that tells a remarkable story i read it and i was moved it speaks to us in times that challenge human decency and threaten our liberty it’s story to remember i found it inspiring come along
The date comes up on his screen, September five. Instantly he sees a round face, lightly freckled. Her wavy hair is light brown.
He’s known her two brothers for years and her two elder sisters, both of them young ladies in their late teens. But this is the first summer he and she have noticed each other: she’s 11 years old and he’s fourteen. While the slow afternoons make everyone else drowsy, the two go for walks to nowhere in particular. They talk comfortably about their mums and dads and their brothers and sisters. They both come from large families and there’s lots to tell. Last week it was his birthday. Hers is in spring. One afternoon they find themselves at the far end of the island. There in the long grass they sit. Something tells him to move closer. He kisses her. Soon after they walk back to their families on their neighbouring boats.
The next afternoon he looks for her, but she and her mum have gone shopping in town on the further shore.
He doesn’t find her the next day either.
On the third day her elder sister says she went back to Geelong with Dad to buy her schoolbooks. He confesses to the elder sister he’s missing her. Her response surprises him: Sometimes a young girl can feel confused if she has feelings she’s never felt before. It can scare her.
Summer ends and they don’t meet again. Most years he thinks of her on September five.
He’s about sixty when he buys a book by John Marsden. Its title is ‘This I Believe’. In it he reads the credos of one hundred eminent Australians. One essay is written by a woman shortly before she dies, too young, of breast cancer. A companion essay is written by her eminent daughter. He doesn’t recognise the surnames of the two women. The essays move him. He notes the dates of birth and death of the mother. She has been dead now for some years.
Bloody newspapers! Having settled into my summer of crime I had little patience for newspapers or the news. The Weekend ‘Australian’ felled a forest in my palm. I looked sourly at the ‘paper’s unrelenting jaundice, directed uniformly in denunciation of the new mob who will steal government from the present mob. In this mood the ‘Australian’ deplores democracy. Deploring busily myself, I turned to the non-news. This is to be found in ‘Review’, the newspaper’s excellent weekly look at books and pictures and movies and dance and music and television shows. In short, the arts.
Looking cursorily I leafed through the pages. As I did so I felt cursory; the accursed ‘Review’ was full of attractive material. I came to poems. Poems are hard, like algebra. Unlike algebra the trick is not to try to solve a poem, first listen to the music. Here (‘Review’, page 22) was Barry Hill, himself guilty of poetry, reviewing a book by another poet, Paul Kane. No, I hadn’t heard of him either. Kane’s book, ‘A Passing Bell: Ghazals for Tina’, is a lament for the poet’s wife, Tina, who died a few years ago. Barry Hill likes the book; I loved Hill’s review. I want to give you a taste of Hill on Kane on Tina, but what to choose? Better, what to omit? Not a word is dispensible. Here, at random:
It comes in the form of ghazals, the ancient lyric common to the Sufi poets writing in classic Persian (or Arabic, Turkish or Urdu), whose lines fell down the page in couplets that came to rest with a fresh mention of the beloved or the Beloved (sometimes called Master).
In any case, the Sufi exalted the visible as a song to the invisible.
Hill’s language is pregnant, heavy with knowledge and understandings, gravid with a scholarship I can only envy. Hill chooses the following lines by Kane:
“He never meant to write this, it simply took shape and wouldn’t let him go until it was over. But it will never be over for him, his heart inscribed with the name of the beloved, Tina”
and:
“At night I lie awake and call to you,
but you don’t reply, except in silence.
The night bird is not silent but sings
A simple single note. His mate does not sing back.
I do not understand this silence, as if God
Has departed and taken you with Him.
I have no words to form a prayer
That could reach you or Him.
Two wine glasses sit on the counter top –
One is full then only half full.
Without emptiness the glass could not exist.
If you should speak, Tina, the glass would shatter.
And back to Hill:
…Meanwhile, the ghazals, their pace and suspension, create a sense of time stretched to some mysterious limit, or of language floating on the waters of emptiness. “What words are these that well up like tears not shed?”
It took me quite some time before I could go back to Peter Temple’s ‘Dead Point”, my first Jack Irish novel. My first, definitely not my last. And now I’m on to Jane Harper’s ‘The Dry.’ Bloody crime writers writing literature. It’s enough to drive a man to Algebra.
An attentive reader of this blog will recognise the name Paul Jarrett. Paul was my friend. He died last week aged ninety-nine years and eleven months. We had known each other by email for ten years. By the time we met in the flesh Paul was ninety-four. We were together in the flesh but thrice, and spent but five days in each other’s company. Yet his friendship enriched me. So long as my mind knows the truth Paul Jarrett will be with me.
Every day Paul sent out numerous emails to his friends and family, who numbered about eighty souls. I became one of those fourscore followers. By the time we became
e-friends Paul had retired from Surgery, he’d ceased piloting aircraft, he was living alone with his memories and his collection of ragged stray cats. The TV news fed his active mind, which would turn often to past world events. He’d recall those as well as people from his private life, teachers, relatives, colleagues, friends, and most keenly of all, his deceased wife Beverley. Paul would send emails, four or five or six in number. I read them all.
I came to know a man who believed in God, who attended his Methodist church every Sunday, who voted Republican, who supported gun ownership, who disliked Obama and who loathed Hilary Clinton and who loved cats. Paul described himself as a conservative. He said, I’m to the right of Barry Goldwater and he showed me a photograph of the two, taken around the time of Goldwater’s run for the Presidency. Goldwater was far to the right of any US president of my lifetime (with the exception of the present incumbent, whose position can only be the fruit of daily conjecture and of analysis of the tea leaves of his Twitter account). Characteristically Paul never mentioned to me that Goldwater intended to appoint him to his Cabinet as national chief of Health.
I was none of those things that Paul was, yet a friendship grew. Paul and I both entertained a veneration of our late fathers and mothers that bordered on ancestor worship, we both loved Medicine, we cherished old friendships, we preferred the burnished past to the distasteful present, and we could smile at human error and laugh at ourselves. I’d read Paul’s emails and I’d enter a different world; I learned about earlier eras, I met remarkable people, I was challenged with novel viewpoints (frequently opposed to my own), I relearned Medicine I’d long forgotten. I knew I stood in Paul’s shadow but he saw me in my own light. I’m sure I felt flattered that such a man would treat me as his equal.
Paul and I shared a real friendship. I’d challenge him when his politics got up my nose and, unoffended, he’d defend his position. Paul’s penultimate year was spent grieving for the America he loved. He detested the Democrat candidate and felt offended by the Republican. He knew duty would call him to cast his vote. In his distress Paul’s agony was spiritual in its intensity. He would not shirk his duty. He must serve his country. Patriotism, that quality that cynics dismiss as the refuge of the scoundrel, burned brightly in my friend and he suffered for it.
Let me share with you some of Paul’s very many letters.
August 2, 2015
My mind returns to the days when I would, by my mood and demeanor, sour a bowl of honey.
Beverley, who was acutely attuned to my moods would pinch my cheek, give me a pixyish
smile and say, “Be Happy”!
At first this would annoy me, then I realized that she never acted like I did, so there must be some choice in presenting a foul mood.
Some of us pull an ill disposition around us like a protective blanket.
Not Bev. She was as careful about her demeanor as she was about her appearance.
August 11, 2015
I am not sure where the admonition to, “Feed My Sheep” ends and Backshish begins.
Never have I seen such a drive and competition for charitable funds nor such a constant demand for our attention so that we can be hit-up. By phone, by mail, by door to door solicitation, through the Media and other advertising. The sheer volume makes one suspicious that such an army of petitioners can not contain only those with charity in their hearts.
And all of this attention is not devoted toward appeal for charitable donations. The phone just rang. It was a canned message. It said, “How are you? Good. Can you hear me all right? Good. (I had not said a word.) Congratulations are in order, you have just won a vacation trip with two guests, all expenses paid, all you can eat—“ At this point I hung up. That automatic dialer will call me back tomorrow. Hopefully my automatic answering machine will converse with their automatic dialing machine and transcription.
Saturday I received 5 pieces of regular mail, 4 of which were appeals for money and one an advertisement for a Mexican Restaurant.
I will admit that I could be a more cheerful giver, but in addition to wanting to hang on to my money, I am beginning to question whether or not I am getting my money’s worth?
We are living in times that can only be described as “Devious”.
“Now the Day is over, Night is drawing nigh. Shadows of the Evening steal across the sky”.
And what a day it was. The temperature hit 117 in the shade, and to add to the disasters brought in by August, Beverley’s Grandmother clock jammed the chain on the weight that powers the clock itself when it ran down. My vision is not sufficient to fix it any more. It has happened before and I have been able to get it going again, but my vision is no longer capable of accomplishing this. Her clock was amazingly accurate, and I enjoyed hearing it chime the hours and quarter hours, during the day and through the night.
I have eaten a frozen dinner prepared for me by Ann, and am about to settle down in front of the television and nap before time to go to bed. This is the daily routine.
A gracious good evening to all of you.
G’nite!
August 16, 2015
It promises to hit 117 again this afternoon.
The poor cats do not have refrigeration, but they have cool spots under the shacks
and have thrived in this heat for many years. Sylvester as spokesman for the Etudiants,
scolds me for not permitting them to come inside where it is cool, but this falls on deaf ears when I consider the life of Riley they lead, and the amount of fur they leave behind.
I try and keep the bed outside the Breakfast Nook moist when it comes into the shade in the afternoon, which is the only air conditioning they are going to get.
When you stop and think about it, it takes some temerity to lecture me about the weather, and Sylvester may be spending some time in attitude modification in the near future. He has lost a lower right canine tooth (if cats can have canine teeth), but I have observed no loss of appetite. They are eating me out of house and home.
I worry about them though when I am called to my reward (whatever that may be).
August 29, 2015
I was thinking about some unusual surgical cases I found myself involved with without adequate training or experience. A surprise after opening the patient.
Having no other source of help in the urgency of the moment I prayed urgently and silently.
That ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things with God’s help, I can affirm.
October 11, 2015
I received a call from Bob and Dianne at the Cabin with Nikki this week-end.
Bob has the knowledge and ability to provide Satellite telephone service up there, and it works well.
They have had a lot of rain, the Pack Rat problem appears to be under control and the weather is nice with Fall in the offing. Bob reports that the road up to the Cabin is in need of repair from rain damage, and he will be able to do that with his new tractor. I think they return tomorrow. There are some apples that are ripening and they will bring some for me.
Those Western Delicious yellow apples from Stark’s Nurseries are the best I have ever tasted, although late freezes make them available about once in ten years.
It is warm here, although comfortable. We have what my Mother would call a “Buttermilk Sky”. Little sun, a slight breeze and a great day to sit on the Patio and smoke a cigar.
It looks as if I may be around another Christmas, and I am making plans to prepare envelopes for my Family to insure their delivery.
The cats have made me a present of the head of a Roof Rat which they laid out on the Patio door mat. I discarded it because I have no recipe for Roof Rat heads, although I appreciate the gesture.
Paul Jarrett has died. America has lost one of its big men, a patriot, a man of substance and integrity. Medicine has seen the passing of the last of his kind.A congregation has lost a faithful worshipper. We who were Paul’s friends have lost a wise man, a sort of prophet. Phoenix has lost an ornament.But whatever his greatness in the wide world, it was in the little corners of life where I saw Paul Jarrett’s meaning writ clear. It might be seen in his solicitude for the unpromising cats he succoured, in the empathy and in the respect he extended to those battered living things. Born into an era where males were born to rule, Paul esteemed women higher.
Paul was the son who honoured his father and his mother; of two brothers Paul treasured and measured the greatness of the one, and cherished the second in his deformity. Paul was the husband who never ceased to love and to sing the praise of the wife he outlived for so many lonely years. Paul was the father proud of those stalwart sons, adoring of that dandled daughter; Paul was the grandfather who inspired grandson Benjamin to follow him into the guild and bond of medicine; Paul was the Methodist whose whole heart could celebrate his great-grandson’s bris. The measure of the man, Paul Jarrett, was the honour he paid to those he loved.
More than once Paul wrote, “Great was the celebration in Heaven when Beverley arrived.” Such was the simplicity of Paul’s faith. Mine differs. But it gives me pleasure to imagine how great might be the celebration for that good and faithful man.
Every so often I feel the urge to tell the world what I’m reading. I’ve thought, I’m going to write and tell the world about this essay, that novel, this poem, but I’ve almost never done so. The explanation is I’ve been too busy reading to jot down my reactions to the written material. And now that I’m actually beginning, it’s not because you need to know what I read and what I think, but because I need to nudge someone in the ribs and say, golly, wow, how beautiful, how sad, how simple and true, how complex and elusive! In short I enjoy a treasure most richly when I can share it. The loneliest person in the world must be he who looks up and regards El Capitan and has no companion to share the wow.
Let’s start:
I’ve found the most effective way to make someone yawn is to read a poem aloud. This doesn’t stop me from doing it; the power and beauty of a poem so often compels me.
My day starts with a package of poems. These are psalms, attributed to David, the poet-warrior king of ancient Israel. I read these religiously. Like all actions that are ritualised, the ritual intended to enhance meaning can bleach it out of sight. I regret how often I bleach out beauty through simple inattention. But when an accident of biorhythm or a pang of piety actually slows my recitation I can stumble across purple passages* like this:
Praise God from the heavens
Praise Him from the heights
Praise Him all His angels
Praise Him all His hosts
Praise Him sun and moon!
Praise Him all starry lights!
Praise Him the utmost heavens!
****
Leviathans and all deeps
Fire! Hail! Snow and Mist
Wind of storm
All work His word
The mountains and all Hills
Fruit tree and all cedars
Carnivore and Behemoth
Creeping thing and bird on the wing
Earthly kings and all nations
Potentates and all earthly judges
Youths and also young girls
Old men together with young lads
Let them praise the Name of the Lord…
While you yawn let me tell you how I love this tumbling catalogue of beings and phenomena, its plenitude, its richness, as the poet, God-drunk, calls the roll of the universe; how he brings into chorus every voice (Creeping things! Snow! Leviathan! – did David imagine what we now know and record – that the great whales sing?) – his imagination fires his love into hyperbolic song. After King David I had to wait for Gerard Manly Hopkins for such spiritually excited verse.
As I remarked above, golly.
*The translation is my own. Don’t blame King James.
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