The Blackstar Turns Blue - Always Monsters and You

I know it's not about me.

It's not.

David Bowie's death is profound, in general. Man Who Sold the World is one of my favorite songs of all time.

Several weeks ago, I dragged myself from another disappointing surgery consult to the couch of one of the most beloved owners of my heart, a friend who feels like home-the kind of home you'd like to be in when you die. 

The baby doesn't sleep well when we travel, so I hadn't gotten much more than 3 hours a night, for several nights. Finding the time and energy to feed myself had been proving too much that day, and possibly the day before. 

Nevertheless, if there's anything I've learned this year, it is that my time is far more precious than I ever imagined, and should be filled with the ones I have sometimes taken for granted, because they have always loved me, always just been there. They need me, and I have never needed them more.

I tell people things, but not always the truth. "I'm okay" I say. "Things are much better!" I say. "I'm in remission, so that's good." I say. But I don't lie to him. I don't say anything. I didn't have to tell him how tired I was, or how ravaged my spirit feels. That I am lost, and scared, and running on the fumes of a lifelong vitality that always seemed bottomless. 

But it isn't, it isn't. 

He knows me too well, and was gentle, didn't scold or ask too much. Let me ramble, bought me tacos, let the baby tug his beard. I knew he was sad, I felt his concern, he doesn't have to tell me things either. There's nothing I can do. I care in a far-away fashion, like loving through fog. There is just me, and my children. There is my loyal love struggling to cope-I am stronger than him, on the surface, and I am drowning. If I'm no longer the anchor...

But I used to be, I used to be. 

My heart-holder left the house to pick up tacos, and before he left he handed me a tablet, and told me to "watch this" while he was gone. It was a music video. I smiled, trying to remember the last time I focused on an entire video, a complete song, a single sentence uttered by someone else. He left, and I pushed play in surrender because no one has ever gotten me to sit still for this sort of thing.

But him, only him.

Blackstar began to buzz, and Lynchian music poured into the room, and I fell into a trance in the rare quiet moment to myself. I closed my eyes, felt like I was drifting too far away, then opened them and blinked. Bowie's were bandaged, he was dying. I felt that. I knew it. 

Not in real life, in the song. I felt him dying. 

I was sleep deprived, too comfortable, unable to stop my emotional switch from flipping, and I cried softly. Because he was dying. Because I am dying. Because it's all so beautiful and sad. I needed sleep and food, I was sinking into a surreal place....

and then UPS knocked, and the spell was broken.

And not everything is about me.

And my heart-holder came in with tacos, and we chatted, and sipped bourbon, and played with the baby until in my exhausted stupor, I lost my grip while dipping him to the floor, and while he wasn't hurt, he was scared, and cried. I was shocked, so was my companion. Our horrified eyes met and I remember, just for a moment, I remember what almost was.

But it wasn't. It isn't. 

When Bowie died, I felt more than I have in a very long time. More than I did for a friend who tried to leave this world and landed in an eternal sleep instead. More than I felt for Paris, or Sandy Hook, or Amy or Lemmy. I felt sorrow like I had felt from his requiem. I felt the sorrow of my heart-holder from hours away. When he heard the news about Bowie. When he heard the news about me. I knew at that moment, long before it hit the newsfeeds, that I had witnessed Bowie's own, personal farewell to us, that I was put under a spell by a dying man. I knew it was a beautiful thing to do. I want to do it too, for the heart-holders I cherish, all of them.

And I was mournful, sunk. 

David Bowie died of cancer. Not me. 

I lived. I survived. 

But I'm running. My mind is running, I work until I collapse, I talk so I can't listen, I create so I don't stop to observe. I'm running for my life. I'm running because if I stop I have to feel what happened to me, and what happened to my loved ones, and what could happen to my children if it catches me again. I'm running from the look on the face of my troubled partner, my gentle son, and my ever-faithful heart-holder when I woke up in the hospital and they were all around me. Their faces when it catches me again. 

I didn't cry for Bowie because The Man Who Sold the World fills me with longing, or because of the gifts he bestowed. 

It's not about me. 

I lived, I lived. 

But don't forget. 

It caught a god. It can catch me. 

So I run. 

The 4th of July if You Like Cemetery Hilltops by Arthur Kay

It is a well-known secret that, although the cemetery near my home closes at sunset, they don’t enforce that rule very strictly on the 4th of July. From the hillsides up there you can see for miles and take in pretty much all of the fireworks you can handle, albeit at some distance and in a cemetery, if that’s your thing, which it is totally my thing.

There are already fireworks going on by the time I get to the gate, and a bunch of empty cars parked nearby. I figure those people are probably inside, so in I go too, taking a route that will give me at least a little cover if the security folks are around and feeling feisty.

Going up the first hill, and there’s a group of loud drunks by the Cogswell spire. I go wide and keep trees or monuments between me and them most of the time. If anybody is going to attract security’s attention it’s these people, and I’d rather just steer clear of them.

Up past the dead millionaires, there’s a couple of short staircases that lead up further, and past those I’m climbing to the very top. Again I hear voices, but they’re quieter than the ones below. I find a pair of couples pleasantly sharing a big log near the summit. There’s also three boys standing in a tight little cluster just a ways off, taking in the view.

Creepy mulch piles by Arthur Kay

Last time I was here I was distracted, though not unpleasantly so. This time I am all here. I look around and find a spot. If this were a nightmare, that’s the spot where something ghastly would emerge. I go stand there and feel sort of sinister.

Then, looking out over the bay, I let my senses open up.

It’s dazzling. I can see displays at least down to Fremont, up to what looks like Richmond, and all across the water. The sound is like listening to a distant war zone. There are so many fireworks going off in my field of vision that it is impossible to track them all.

A squirrel, with no reason to expect a human to be in the precise spot that I am in, jumps up right next to me. It sees me, makes a strangled yap of alarm, and leaps away. I have managed to terrify a squirrel.

From the direction of Tiburon comes a series of huge crimson blooms, the bottoms of which appear clipped by the horizon, which is strange. I wonder if they are going off on the other side of the Marin hills. Either that, or I am seeing fireworks that are literally being set off over the ocean.

The three boys lean in together and one of them is nervously flicking a lighter. They are about to smoke something that they probably didn’t pay taxes on.

From south and across the bay comes a series of lights so high and so bright it looks like strobe lightning. A good five seconds after the last one goes out, the sound reaches me in a series of booms that make the dogs in the houses below me freak out in response. I am at least ten miles from where those things went off; I cannot imagine how loud it would be if you were a couple of blocks away.

Some fireworks barely clear the tops of houses down in a part of Oakland where friends of mine live, the low altitude stuff people set off in their backyards. I resolve to head down from the hill soon. I have other business in the cemetery, and have been up here for about long enough.

One of the boys loudly whispers “oh shit oh shit!” and another boy crouches way down, giggling and rummaging frantically through the tall grass. The boys have dropped their joint.

I leave them, silently wishing them luck. I go down to the other places in the cemetery, where I expect I will be the one who is scared, and which I would rather not write about.

This story by Arthur Kay was originally published on his Facebook page, and then featured on Loren Rhoads' cemeterytravel.com on July 6th, 2015. It is posted here with permission.