Carmen is a Cat

Assemblage of Resignation in Memoriam

Dear Ms.So and So,

I have finally decided to keep my word to you.  I want you to know that I spoke to Mr. Anderson last night and passed along your message.  Yes dear old girl, he is as you said, genuine.  You didn't actually say so however I did grasp that when you mentioned him every time I ever saw you, asking whether or not I knew him and that you hoped to call him and that meant he was not only genuine but you cared very deeply for him.  That in itself indicates he must have (in your book) good character.  I do wish I could have one more visit with you in order to explain what I have discovered about honey*.  I do want to witness to you that when I told him you had passed, Mr. Anderson bowed his head and made the sign of the cross.  I hope you received this response and it provides you with extended amounts of comfort.

Peace to you,

M





Honey has a memory.  These Fibonacci factories, the stars all the way down to the astrophysics labs of the Clovis, the neural networks of our minds, the pathways of the ants back home, the ants who have no horizons, Interstate 10 are all the same but if you peer at a few drops of honey in the bottom of a bowl filled with water, the map becomes quite clear.

I should start with the sound of a motorcycle that blasted through the Warren District at 2:30 am.  It was just me and him, even the dogs kept asleep.  There was no choice but to remain awake and continue down the road for a while with him until the apparition of his sound dissipated into the dark, to continue as it were, down the rabbit hole that ends with eternity.  The true anomaly of time that can only be described in parts, little bits and pieces, kite strings, ancient bone needles and projectiles by using pitiful metaphors and cliche or even lower than that.

Margueritte and I spoke of so many things yesterday.  We had not seen each other in several years but it was as if not a day had passed and if we'd had several days or even weeks, we'd not have any problem filling up our time with talk. Not just talk but ideas, as random as honey.  She called and needed a ride to the dentist in Naco, Son.  She was feeling dizzy and although it appeared to me that she could have made it there just fine without me, I jumped at the chance to enter her home and find what I was looking for.  I knew she had it before I got there although I didn't know what it was, let alone where it might be. I picked up this and that and examined several items closely, she offered to give me a few things, she offered to pay me for my trouble and I gave her my standard pay scale, "It's zero or a thousand dollars, take your pick."  Thus far, no one has paid me the thousand dollars for the small miracles they give me. She'd probably include me in her will if I asked her to because at 87 years old, people do some very strange things.  They realize perhaps that none of us are really strangers, no strings attached.  We communicate as well as the ants if not better.

As we sat in the waiting room she reminded me that her father was a psychopath and that she suffered greatly from his abuses.  She reminded me that she is a genius. Yes she fully admits to that without any indication that we aren't allowed to do that with each other, perhaps she doesn't know.  When we returned to her home I made sure she wrote down the schedule for her antibiotic.  I should have spoken with the Dentist to change it to clindamycin instead of ciprofloxacin so I did have to warn her to watch out.  Nurse to nurse, "I must warn you, " I said, even though it did frighten her a bit.  It helps to know that as well as a genius, she is also a nurse and a poet.  She is also a psychic or at least, between the two things called nursing and poetry, she can read minds or at least believes she can.  Well of course we can and that is why they pay us so poorly.  We all used to be nuns and some of us still are.

After examining a few things, I realized there was nothing in particular that I wanted or needed.  As a burglar in plain sight, someone who can gain the trust of others with unbelievable ease, I know what immense liability that puts on me. Most people have no idea, no concept of the anguish involved in a common cold when it kills a newborn infant.  It was hot in her home, the old evaporative air conditioner reminded me of those visits to Ms. So and So but only in retrospect as my mind dictates to my hand three hours after the motorcycle roared through town. Indeed, I needed to hurry home and get dinner prepared or at least thought of, the idea "conjured up" but Margueritte stopped me as I tried to leave telling her I had chorizo con res hidden in a paper bag in the back seat of my car, hidden from the immigration officer who might have been a little snoopy as we crossed back into "this country", the country where chorizo con res might not be allowed.  All the while the bees pour back and forth across the line spreading pollen hither, thither and yon.  She pointed to the strange wooden box hanging on her wall which I had noticed but not paid much attention to.  It was highly peculiar, no one would probably look at it the first time and say "Oh is that where you keep yours?"  She was right, there it was and that was what I was looking for.  Birds are expert musicians but some people do not realize that they also excel in the art of assemblage.  Like the secret of honey, most people do not have the time to observe up close the variety of styles in the installations the birds create that probably out-number us humans 10 to 1, each person entitled to ten of their masterpieces.  I have three including one pigeon (almost to frail to hold one let alone a brood), one hummingbird (packed as tight as diamonds) and another that someone told me was created by a common grackle.  Oh Margueritte was delighted as I told her of that one I found in which the bird, perhaps a grackle which would make sense because his nest was a collection of trash woven with what appeared to be great haste but in reality probably took the two birds days if not weeks to construct.  Just the name grackle indicates it might be some type of outsider artist, the type that tag the train cars in post modern (whatever that means) hieroglyphics.  Paper towels and pieces of string.  Found and precious objects of no particular use or significance to anyone save the resident artist.

So she assigned me the nest in her will, satisfied that she'd paid for our trip and correct in her assumption.  Of course, I'd already inherited that part of her estate although until then, like all prophetic moments, neither of us was aware of the transaction until after the exchange of heirlooms.  And just as I had wished for Ms. So and So's aluminum tumblers, the kind you would drink Kool Aid from as a kid in the hot summer.  Purple, pink, yellow and red metal as cold as the liquid within them.  Mr. Anderson, I have her tumblers in my mind and here, take them.  I'm sure she'd want you to have them.  Perhaps you used them yourself at one of your many visits that you must have made when she was a charity case, a young woman with a brain tumor. Like Margueritte announced her genius, Ms. So and So fully admitted to driving herself to chemo in Tucson several times a week back in the seventies, I think she said she drove a Firebird.  All alone, afraid but courageous, hoping not to die.  Five Nine Ninety Thirty Something is code for the moment in time that belongs to her and her alone.  Margueritte would appreciate all the numerology we are responsible for as servants in the industry.  I find I must resign from that responsibility now.  After all, we have artificial intelligence to take care of the honey comb of our professional problems and the portability and accountability act is just an act, a ruse that keeps us grounded in what is called 'reality'.  Truly we are all blessed and as if I wasn't impressed by the letters of St. Paul to the Corinthians, I say to the Catholics peace, we are all in the same boat from the earliest of peoples in the substrata at the Gault site in Austin to the final embryo that is yet to be conceived, we all are waiting to take that last breath and if there is one thing that matters, it is this:  artifact.  Not artifice and certainly not a man made mnemonic.  The thunder did not say: HIPAA, nor EOE nor even BCE.

We arrived very late to the final screening of Bisbee '17 as it opens nationwide in a theater near you, in Bisbee, AZ and in fact we didn't mean to go.  I'd spent the morning in the garden removing the Lavender Pit mine detritus, mucking out a hole in order to place a young peach tree although I might change my mind because they like corners or at least, I believe so.  I hope that clears up the mystery of where they put all that earth, all those beautifully colored rocks that symbolize PD, symbolize the dynamite, the technology of removal that now is hidden under the paths where train tracks up by the ballpark used to be.  La Traviesa told me that she was one of nine children and her father used to work on the railroads that carried raw material to the enormous smelters. Traviesa grew up in that little shack on the hill, perhaps you remember it Mr. Anderson. I've no doubt he helped with the deportation or at least, witnessed it, hid from it, escaped it. That track and that train is gone as is Traviesa, as is the world's greatest herbalist who finally succumbed to the indignity of dialysis, of technology, of having every blood cell counted and documented monthly in order to receive the pricey erythropoiesis stimulating agents.  As is Traviesa's nephew gone, he passed a few years ago. Our paths crossed when his body finally gave in to the disease of drug addiction, pertinent history includes failed maternal bonding and he was raised by a vast network of relatives.  He kept saying he felt as if bugs were invading his skin until at last we discovered the larvae under the cushions, the parasitic creatures anxious for the recovery of his body.  Blessings to him and blessings to his auntie who wandered in and out of my sight over the years, first at the side of La Traviesa and then at the mercy of her drug addled foster brother.  I drive by Traviesa's house sometimes and say Fatiha for her nephew, the Our Father, the For Thine Is The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.  If only people knew, if only people understood the little bowls of ablution on either side of the aisle up at Saint Patrick's.  If only people knew the spells that we cast on the ones we hope to absolve, if only witchcraft were better understood and discarded as mimicry.

Yesterday though, I was exhausted from all the exhumation and my trip into Naco with Margueritte but since the director of the film came down and extended a personal invitation to my husband to attend the screening of Bisbee '17 in order to participate in the Q & A, we felt it was our duty and indeed, it was.  It turned out that it was my duty to reconnoiter with you Mr. Anderson.  I thought that you knew and thought I'd seen you beside her grave.  We were allowed to take a handful of dirt from a ceremonial vessel provided by the mortuary folk and layer it onto Ms. So and So's casket.  Her funeral was very well attended.  At the mass, the priest looked directly towards me and spoke to her sons who had surprised me with their profound level of grief as if they had lost a young child instead of an octogenarian. Even though he was speaking to her sons, what the priest said was directed specifically at me.  You see, I had made an agreement with Ms. So and So.  I am not sure if she was aware of it any more than if Margueritte was aware that I was there to commit a burglary yesterday and inherit her nest.  My agreement was to resign from nursing when Ms. So and So died, to leave the sullied convent that it has become.  She would be the last person I could ever care for professionally and mean it. I didn't know why I knew that but I knew it many years before she died and luckily told several people.  I'd already lost Shelly, the two Manuels, Ms. O moved to the city, all the old timers who might have been owed something by me had settled their debts and all that was left was Ms. So and So.  When she passed I didn't even need to remind anyone at all. They reminded me and said, "Remember what you said?" You see, I was having problems with my feelings about accountability, to be honest, my opinion about the accountability of others to the profession, the accountability of the profession to itself and the way the profession abandoned the church of nursing as it has.  I was working for an agency called Legacy.  I did not know that regardless of my self righteous feelings about my own dedication that my resignation had more to do with informing you of her death than it did with any so-called ethical disagreement with the proverbial health care system. The one that is so interested in protecting one's date of birth versus the one that actually only hopes to protect their own financial interests, as if this monolithic imposter is actually human. It is only coincidental that the agency is known as Legacy, as coincidental as being compelled to walk up to you Mr. Anderson last night with my message.  There are no accidents you know, none at all. Everything in time had to happen just as it did in order for me to tell you, Ms. So and So is gone. Everything without exception all the way down to the rocks that were removed from the mine, placed in my garden and created as if from nothing at the beginning of "time" for lack of a better word.

At the funeral mass in that little church back behind the main drag down there, the priest addressed Ms. So and So's sons and lauded them for calling him in time to give to her the last rites.  This was related to the same kind of surprise I had at the level of their grief which was incongruent with the facts because it was as if the priest needed to clear the air, perhaps over suspected non belief in her sons and I cannot say honestly that I would disagree on that point with the honorable representative of the Pope in Rome.  Ms. So and So had become quite burdensome in that last year, her dementia was so profound that her long term helper had to leave the room during her assignment and watch TV just to avoid the frustration and anger of dealing with a person whose memory appears to have been tampered with by time.  Ms. So and So began accusing all sorts of people of doing harmful things.  I believe that the priest was very much aware that her sons were hiding relief under the cloak of their genuine and profound shock at the feelings the death of their beloved mother evoked in them.  The priest looked at them and I observed the backs of their heads, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the family pew as the shaman explained to them the nature of last rites in terms of her legacy and their accountability to insure she received them, whatever they are.  The message was received loud and clear, the prophecy had reached the recipient through channels as complex as the comb that is remembered by the honey. The honey produced using pollen gathered by the specific bees from the random of flowers, the hither, thither and yon of the bounties we are about to receive, amen.  There are no accidents Mr. Anderson, none at all.  Those are just fractals and if you place a small spoon of honey in a bowl, add water and then swirl it for a few moments, you will see one of the great works right before your very eyes.