Henrietta

Henrietta spends a lot of time at the ReUse Center at the dump—or transfer station, as the county prefers to call it. While she’s not one of the official volunteers who oversee the donations and try to keep things tidy, she acts as if she is. When I’m there she lets me go through the bags and boxes that people bring in as donations but then goes around rearranging all the shelves of jeans, kids’ toys, shoes, household goods, and blouses. Which is fine with me except that she talks incessantly while she does it: “What do you think this thing is?” she asks about the ab trainer (it took me a while to figure out what it was), or “This is a really nice blouse but I don’t have any place to wear it,” and “This book looks really interesting but I can’t really see well enough anymore to read books.”

Up until last week she was still driving her car even though she can’t see well enough to pass the driver’s test (she has macular degeneration in one eye). Then another driver smashed into her car when she was turning into her driveway and dented the side and wrecked the alignment and she’s waiting to get enough money to fix it. He didn’t have insurance and she didn’t have a license. Now she gets dropped off at the ReUse Center by her caregiver or a friend and gets someone to pick her up or waits for Tommy, who runs the transfer station, to take her home at closing time. It’s a long day for someone who can’t sit down because she’s not strong enough to push herself up out of the chair. So she wanders around the center examining everything and telling whoever’s there what she’s observed.

She also tells us that she was born in Wyoming where her dad worked for the railroad but then he died and the kids scattered across the county and Henrietta ended up in New Mexico. She never married and never had kids and lives alone in a trailer in Peñasco where she brings all the stuff she takes home from the ReUse Center even though she tells me constantly that we all have too much stuff: “I have 25 pairs of jeans in my closet and even if I bring 15 of those pairs here for other folks to have I still have more jeans than I’m ever going to need.”

I’ve never seen her in a pair of jeans, just loose fitting pants that cling to her very skinny legs. Her hair is long and gray and she’s missing a bunch of teeth but her eyes are big and round and compelling. She gets shots in the one with macular degeneration (her caregiver takes her to Santa Fe to the eye doctor) and hopes that it will get good enough for her to get a driver’s license.

I’m afraid that Henrietta is hanging out with a tough crowd, though. She told me last week that the young man who was just arrested for running over another man with a truck and leaving the scene sometimes comes to her house and asks for rides or money or food. He’s known for wandering the streets even though he has a home in one of the villages. When Henrietta tells me that she doesn’t understand what happened, that he’s basically a “good boy,” she points at her head with a finger and says, “but there’s something not right up here.” The police came to her house looking for him after the murder.

Henrietta is 76 years old so she’s had a lot of time to learn to work the system. Life’s going to be even harder, though, without a car and probably push her further into the crowd of other lost souls. Henrietta believes that with God’s help she and the others will be taken care of no matter how difficult things get. In the meantime, at her home away from home, she sorts and rearranges and talks and talks and talks and the volunteer souls who aren’t really lost ones, just kind of annoyed ones, listen and glean what they can from “life’s other side.”

It Takes a Village . . . or It Should Take a Village

It’s been eight months now that the hounds across the road have been howling and barking and crying day and night, first in the horse trailer where they were born, then in the kennels where they’ve grown into full sized dogs. They’re owned by a thirty-something born and bred in the village who played with my son Max when he was three years old. A week ago, I confronted him, for the second time, that these hounds that he will sell to bear hunters in the fall were driving me and everyone else in the village crazy and we couldn’t take it anymore. About 30 minutes later he said, “OK, I’m taking them to Córdova. This conversation is over.”

How we got to this victorious moment reveals much about village life that dispels any romantic notion one might have of solidarity and community spirit—on both sides of the disagreement. The young man, whose grandfather was once the unofficial mayordomo of the village, able to navigate disputes and render solutions based on what was most beneficial to the community, thought he could do whatever he wanted to do in his own best interest despite its terrible impact on his neighbors. In turn, his neighbors let him get away with it for eight months because they were too wimpy for any kind of confrontation or too afraid of retribution. Yes, retribution. What form that retribution might take I don’t know, but the fact that they feared it is completely demoralizing.

Maybe they’re thinking of the mom of the hound owner and the daughter of the benevolent mayordomo. She hasn’t spoken to me since her dad died 12 years ago, until she came out and yelled at me while I was in conversation with her son that this was my entire fault because I’m the one complaining. Of course, she hasn’t spoken to just about everyone else in the village for almost that long. Who knows why, other than the just plain fact that she doesn’t like any body.

As for solidarity in the community, after my first request of the young man to move the dogs failed, several of us decided to start a petition, or “formal letter,” asking the hound owner to move the dogs up behind his house, off the road, where any activity set them off on an hour’s long howl. We already knew, after consulting county officials, that the owner was in violation of the dog control ordinance against incessant barking, and that he’d neglected to get the required permit to commercially raise hounds. We didn’t mention that in the letter, we just asked him to be a good neighbor and move the dogs. Contacting the county would be the fall back.

Then the village’s spinelessness emerged. After passing the letter around, some started questioning the efficacy of a petition, others said they wouldn’t sign, and others hemmed and hawed about not wanting to make an enemy of the young man. When the petition author (I edited it) wrote me to say she was reconsidering our action, I’d had enough. The next morning I found my neighbor out on his tractor and convened our meeting.

This isn’t the first time people in the village have demonstrated their deep-seated fear of confrontation. After the unofficial mayordomo of the village died, the dark side took control of the acequias and most everyone quit going to the meetings rather than challenge their governance. We muddle along, whining and moaning over decisions made without our input and without our endorsement. So the whining and moaning over the hounds shouldn’t have surprised me. I had my minor victory, so far without retribution, but it’s not much consolation for the lack of the proverbial “it takes a village.”

Burials, not Funerals

Yesterday, Jakob and I buried our 14-year old dog Benny—Jakob had him for four years, I had him for six—below the garden, under the willows. It was the fitting end to a gentle death at the vet’s: a sedative to go to sleep, then a lethal injection. I’m glad we physically dug the hole, laid him in it, gently covered his face with a sheet, and filled the hole. I’ve buried some of my animal friends before, and cremated others, but this felt especially right. Today, I went to the Catholic mass for a sweet neighbor named Teresita Montoya. Her death at 66 could have been avoided. She didn’t know how to take care of herself or how to navigate the medical industrial complex, and she died of a heart attack from an avoidable infection. But it’s her funeral I want to talk about. Over the course of my 30 years in El Valle I’ve been to many masses at the local church: funerals, christenings, confirmations, feast days, Christmas posadas. The latter are the only ones I enjoy, a festive recreation of the birth of Christ with carols and good cheer. But frankly, if I never have to attend another mass I’ll be happy.

This one, for Teresita, at the church in Peñasco, was especially depressing. I doubt the priest had a personal relationship with her. No one from the family spoke, no one delivered a eulogy (I did find out her daughter spoke at the rosary). It could have been a mass for anyone.

Twelve years ago I delivered the eulogy for my buen vecino, Tomás. He’d been the mayordomo of the El Valle church many times over the years, the priest was his longtime friend, and I got to tell stories about this wonderful but complicated man who accepted my family as the good neighbors we wanted to be when we moved here, only the second fulltime Anglo family in El Valle. Then we went to the camposanto and more people told stories and we laughed and cried and laid him to rest.

After Teresita’s mass, we went to the El Valle camposanto—at least they buried her here—where again, no one other than the priest and the funeral director spoke. They lowered her into the ground while the rest of us milled around whispering with friends and acquaintances we often see only at funerals. Teresita’s husband, my friend Nelson (they were still married but lived in separate houses and got along great) told me that the funeral cost him over $8,000: travel from the Burque hospital to the funeral home in Taos, care of her body, conferences with the staff, a fancy casket, printed handout cards, etc., etc. It made me think about Mark, whose care by the same funeral parlor cost around $2,000 because we cremated him and had a wake, not a funeral, where we talked about him—a lot.

I wish we could deal with our human deaths like we did with Benny: humanely, simply, personally. This blog will probably seem sacrilegious to many of those who were at the mass today, who are comforted by the ritual of the Catholic Church. For me, I found comfort in the gentle treatment of the vet, the ride home with the body, the quiet scene under the willows, and the time spent with my son. Hey guys, that’s what I want when the time comes.

Ya Basta!

I slept from 8:30 to 10:30 am, after getting up at 6, my usual time. Then later in the afternoon, I slept from 3:00 to 4:30 pm. I never sleep during the day unless I’ve got the flu or am felled by vertigo, which I’ve suffered for 40 years. I have to draw the conclusion that I am a wreck.

Why am I a wreck? Let me count the ways.

Number one: Things started off with a late night conversation with my friend whose son has been a meth and heroin addict for 20 years. Several months ago he fell off a ladder and ended up in the hospital in Burque with a severe infection from the injury that threated to turn to sepsis. I suppose his addiction was sustained by all the pain medication they gave him, but he developed other complications and several days ago escaped the hospital and ended up in the driveway of my friend, incoherent and suffering. Nobody knows how he got there. My friend’s ex-wife drove up from Burque to try to get him back to the hospital but he eluded them both for several days until they managed to get him back down to her house. What happens next is anyone’s guess. My friend, who is 80 years old, cannot do this anymore.

Number two: Later that night my 14-year old (that’s a guess) dog Benny was in crisis. He’s been in slow decline for many months now, losing control of his rear legs, becoming confused and disoriented as he stands stranded in a corner, unable to find his way out. So my son Jakob—who asked me to take Benny on six years ago because the demands of his job and young daughter denied Benny his full attention—finally told me on a disastrous camping trip when Benny fell in the river and wandered aimlessly around camp, that it was time to let him go, via the vet. I reluctantly agreed and made an appointment, although doubt still lingered until last night at 2 am when I woke up to Benny’s cries and came downstairs to find him unable to get up as poop landed on the floor (he’s been pooping on the floor for weeks). I got him up, let him outside, and hurriedly put on shoes and coat and headlamp to follow him around so he didn’t get lost. Getting him back in the house seemed to thwart his desire for free range, but I’d already been through that scenario with another demented dog who disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. So yes, we’re going to the vet.

Number three: When I finally made it back to bed I took a pill to alleviate my anxiety not only about Benny but about the fact that I had an appointment with a dentist the next day to have a tooth pulled. This was because many months before I’d had a permanent bridge fall out and couldn’t get my dentist, or the specialist he referred me to, to re-adhere the bridge because one of the anchor teeth was deteriorating. Then my beloved dentist quit, due to a disastrous year of Covid-19, and I was on my own. I ended up in one of those huge dental practices with multiple receptionists, dental assistants, dental hygienists, regular dentists, dental specialist, etc., etc. The dentist I saw told me I had to get the deteriorating tooth pulled, might have to get a root canal and crown on the other anchor tooth, then get implants, or just make due with a partial denture. All of this would cost anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000. But their dentist who pulled teeth only came to the practice once a month so they referred me to another dentist, who I was supposed to see the morning after Benny’s breakdown. I was terrified. So I cancelled.

Number four: After I cancelled the dentist appointment, went back to bed, and got up at 10:30, I called my friend who was in the hospital with an infection in a toe that has previously been amputated. She suffers from neuropathy, which causes a lack of blood flow to her feet, and had lost a previous toe as well. When I reached her on her cell phone, she was in intense pain waiting for a vascular treatment to help the blood flow to heal her latest amputation. The doctors insisted on giving her a pain med that she couldn’t tolerate and refused to give her what she wanted. I called her partner, who intervened, and got her what she needed.

Number five: I have to go to the funeral of my friend who died of a heart attack in the hospital after everyone thought she was getting better. It was a bizarre, quick illness in which an infection caused her heart to stop once, but she rallied, the infection was treated, and then one morning, she died. Married but living separately from one of my good neighbors, they cared for each other as friends rather than husband and wife, and also cared for their grandson, whose mother essentially gave him up. She brought me warm, homemade tortillas, gave me extra food from the food pantry, invited me to her grandson’s birthday parties, and was always kind and gentle. My neighbor grieves her loss and the loss of his grandson, who was returned to his mother by the “state.”

The background to all of this is the pack of hounds that live across the road from me, which I will expand upon in a subsequent blog post. Suffice it to say, for seven months now they have been barking and howling their heads off anytime anyone travels down the road by foot or vehicle, or just out of frustration at being confined in kennels with no room for exercise for what they’re going to be trained to do: tree bears. Everyone in the village complains about the noise but don’t say anything to the young man who’s raising them. Everyone, that is, except me, who finally called him out for a face to face about us and those poor dogs. I’ll fill in the details of that conversation and what, if anything, resulted. Stay tuned.

Knowing when to give up on a book

In 2018 I wrote a blog called “Thank God for Novels” about rereading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and loving it: “. . . that book blew me away: love, loyalty, the longing for freedom and liberty, betrayal, courage, friendship, women, politics, Communism, socialism, fascism, anarchism, terrorism, idealism, suicide, and death.”

Yesterday, in 2021, I quit rereading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms about a third of the way through. The only reason I was rereading this book, which as I recall I didn’t like in the first place, is because I recently watched the Ken Burns Hemingway documentary and got really angry at one of the talking heads in the film, Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist and essayist. In the film Llosa talks about how much he loved A Farewell to Arms—Hemingway’s “best novel”—and how much he hated For Whom the Bell Tolls—sentimental crap. I knew the real reason he didn’t like For Whom the Bell Tolls, but it still made me furious that he got to spew his prejudice out on camera. Llosa, who was once a “liberal” but became a “neoliberal,” didn’t like For Whom the Bell Tolls because he didn’t like its politics, not because of its love scenes.

So I decided to reread A Farewell to Arms to prove my case. It started out all right, with a beautiful description of the Italian/Austrian border town where the American protagonist is stationed as an ambulance driver in World War I for the Italian Army (based on Hemingway’s own experience). It quickly descended into Hemingwayesque: “I went down to the mess to eat. Then I went outside to see what was happening with the cars. The mechanics were working on them to get ready for the next attack.” These are my words, not Hemingway’s, but they could be his. Next the protagonist meets Catherine, the English nurse who turns the novel into a love story. Their conversation consists of nothing beyond themselves: getting to know each other (if you can call it that: there’s no background information about where they’re from, what they’ve done, except for her former boyfriend, who died in the war); falling in love (within a couple of days); getting pregnant; deserting from the army (Catherine does have a great line about that: “Darling (she always calls him “Darling”), please be sensible. It’s not deserting from the army. It’s only the Italian Army.”); dying in childbirth. Is this the precursor of autofiction?

I’d already set the book aside for a few days without a definitive decision about whether to continue. Then last night I was talking with John Nichols on the phone, whom I’d already talked with about the Hemingway documentary and Vargas Llosa, and told him I was reading A Farwell to Arms but was thinking of giving it up. He told me the only two pages he’d read were the first and last and then quoted from each: the dust on the tree trunks and leaves from the marching troops, on page one, and on the last page, “It was like saying goodby to a statue.” He gave me his blessing to quit.

John Wesley Harding

There was a post on Facebook the other day asking people to name the album that they listen to in its entirety, never skipping a track. What immediately popped into my head, but that I didn’t get around to posting (way too many Facebook group games) was Dylan’s John Wesley Harding. I’m sure there are plenty of other albums that I listen to—or used to listen to, including other Dylan albums—in their entirety, but that’s what came to mind.

Then, a few days later, I was going through Mark’s notebooks as part of my project to set aside a repository of his things for Jakob and Max and found a short entry talking about the first time he heard John Wesley Harding.

“He’d recently recovered from the motorcycle accident that almost killed him and hadn’t recorded anything for over a year after the incredible string of masterpieces: Bringing It All Back Home; Highway 61 Revisited; and Blonde on Blonde. There was an incredible amount of expectation after the long silence and the near death experience. A friend was living in a beautiful 19th century carriage house behind a stately mansion in downtown Buffalo. It was late November and chilly. The six of us huddled around the fireplace, which was the only light flickering on the dark wood paneled walls. We passed around a couple of potent joints and drank a bottle of wine. The album was a complete surprise coming after that succession of electrified dark nights of the soul. It was acoustic, folksy, countrified, mystical, and completely enigmatic. “Don’t go mistaking paradise for that home across the road.” “And if you don’t underestimate me I won’t underestimate you.” “Nothing is revealed.””

I Googled the release date of the album: December of 1967, so maybe he got the month wrong. This was a year before I graduated from high school. Mark, two years older, was already married and attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he grew up. Those years of hearing new releases from Dylan and all the 60s and 70s artists who defined our youth were themselves magical (especially when accompanied by drugs and alcohol). In a previous blog post called “Play That Rock Guitar” from 2014 I told of my “first” listens: “I was walking down the corridor to the common room in North Hall at Antioch College when I first heard the opening guitar strain of "Gimme Shelter" and I thought, “Oh my god, what is this music?” Years later, Mark and I were driving down the highway in northern California when “The Sultans of Swing” came on the radio and we said to each other, “Who is this, is this Dylan?” and then we heard Mark Knoefler’s guitar riff and we said, “This is not Dylan.”

Music was such a big part of our lives, and still is, although I’m in shock that I know so little about what is currently being produced. We inculcated the kids with our music and I get exposed to some of theirs—from Jakob, Leon Bridges and Black Pumas, from Max, Chris Stapleton—but my ignorance and lack of curiosity is astounding. That same blog post was essentially a rant about how once the years of rock and roll and R & B segued into pop, I gave up.

I found another entry in Mark’s journals about music that this time pertained to me. He said the fact that I worked as a fire lookout and brought the Mary Wells Sings My Girl album into the relationship sealed the deal for him. All the rest of it, from rock and roll and R & B and jazz and reggae kept us going for 36 years.

April, the cruelest month

This March, when the spring winds started to blow, I remember asking someone, “Is April really the cruelest month?” Then April arrived. And the wind continued to blow . . . and blow . . . and blow, without relent. Remember that other, more quotidian saying: “April showers bring May flowers?” We had no rain in April—though we had a day of snow. I’d get up every morning in my passive solar house where the sun quits shining through the windows around about April and argue with myself: Do I really need to build a fire this morning, or can I just put on another hoodie and another pair of wool socks and read my book while shivering?

At least in March there was still snow in the mountains and I went skiing, a denial of spring. I wasn’t out in the garden trying to spread manure while the wind whipped it from the bed of my pickup onto my hair and face. I wasn’t up at 6 am opening my compuerta while the wind froze my hands to the shovel. I wasn’t pruning my trees praying that the wind wouldn’t drop the temperature just enough to freeze the fruit blooms.

On the positive side, though, I’m really thankful I don’t live in Placitas anymore. There the wind was an assault on one’s equilibrium and sanity. In our tin roofed house the rattling drove us downstairs from our bedroom to the living room floor for sleep. Just last week one of my friends who still lives there told me she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown in her home on an exposed mesa top: rattled, both figuratively and literally, anxious, locked inside despite the beginning of our Covid freedom.

Next year I’m leaving New Mexico during April. I haven’t yet figured out where I’m going or who’s going to want to take care of my house while the wind blows. I’m willing to wait until May to plant a garden, I’ll prune the trees in the winter, and if it doesn’t rain I won’t have any hay or flowers. I don’t care. At the end of a long winter I want to be somewhere warm, somewhere calm, somewhere soothing. I’ve had 50 years of spring in New Mexico and I deserve a break. We all do. The thing is, though, we all know it’s only going to get worse. But if I can skip the month of April, maybe I’ll still survive the other eleven.