January 25, 2023. One month post transplant. Looking clean in Jacob Eye Home. Reciting poetry with Jack Haven. Weighing 160. Skin and bones and looking like I played with the Rolling Stones.
That morning Charlotta Janssen said, "You're not in the waiting room anymore. You're alive. Get a hair cut and start dressing good. "
When she is right she is very right.
Aran Isles sweater hanging off a scarecrow. Dancing dancing dancing, "I'm a dancing machine."
In June 2022 I traveled north by train to Dover Plains. It was my first trip out of New York since my Yulemas liver transplant. Almost everyone of the train was old. I was old too. Michael picked me up at the station. He lived on the eastern slope of the Taconic Mountains. We had arranged to meet Ro Lohan a mutual friend and her husband Kevin, who lived just over the border from Massachusetts. I was familiar with the the Connecticut side having lived in Kent back in 1986. The countryside was much the same, except the the mountains rose to the east.
The couple greeted us with warmth. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Their house was on a quiet lane and had been restored from absolute ruin to the simple elegance of country life. Each room highlighted by their paintings. I favored Ro’s more figurative works than her long skein through pointillist chaos. She showed me the new work painted during her recent Paris residence combining the two opposite paths to achieve something special. I was impressed and said so. Ro like most everyone couldn’t take a compliment, feeling like a traitor to the long time she spent on her former pieces.
Michael and Kevin joined us for a walk to the end of the lane, which t-boned onto a long cornfield slanting up to the Taconics. Michael said that he lived on the other side.
“There are no roads crossing these mountains. Paths, yes. Steep ones too.” Michael was as old as us. The sculptor loved hiking through the Berkshires. I wanted to attempt one this visit, but felt too weak to suggest a trek.
“And there had never has been,” explained Kevin. If you look at a map, the western end of Massachusetts it’s not a straight line.”
“It isn’t,” I asked in disbelief and swiftly checked his statement. It was true. A small line deviated from the border.
“This area was impossible to govern with the influx of criminals, runaway slaves, debt felons, and all kinds of outlaws fleeing the law. Three railroads ran through the town They even had a hotel and promoters staged an illegal bare-knuckle fight bringing in over three thousand spectators.” He pointed to the plaque on the opposite side of the road. “This had been the center of the universe on that day. At least in this neck of the woods. Massachusetts ceded over the land to Duchess County and law was distributed to the populace by New York.
There was no lawlessness in sight. Just four old people. Back at their house we went to the pool. No one had yet swam in it.
I stripped naked to show them the peace symbol scar from my operation. They were impressed and I dove headfirst in the water. Cold, but survivable. They all laughed as did I.
Painting by Ro Lohan
Last July my fellow Explorers Club members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet along with Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, were lost, when the Titan, a five-man pressurized submersible imploded on a dive to the RMS Titanic at the bottom of he North Atlantic. On the surface the support ship lost contact, a massive multi-national mission streamed to the rescue. All in vain, although the wreck was found without any of the crew. Death had to be instantaneous.
Yesterday evening the Explorers Club held a memorial for Hamish Harding, a deep sea and polar explorer. I was too sick from fish poisoning to attend. A bad piece of Hake, although it tasted good at the time of eating and I supposed going down the Titanic seemed a good idea in the height of summer. Seats for the three passengers cost $250,000. Stockon Rush had sworn the dive was safe without mentioning previous issues mainly that the carbon-titanium hull had been constructed from secondhand material from Boeing.
All that aside the sea is a cruel mistress.
The three passengers had sign waivers against any lawsuit in case of death.
They understood the risks, as anyone does who goes down the sea in ships.
Sadly a week earlier in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, Greece, a fishing boat sank while carrying an estimated 400 to 750 migrants off the coast of Pylos, Greece. Hundreds drowned as the Hellenic Coast Guard watched under orders to not interfere. The world press ignored the story, as they might have a almost sinking of a ferry off Sulawesi. I was so glad we didn't go under the waves,
I have also endangered my life diving off the Quincy Quarry cliffs, free-diving through underwater caves off Isla des Mujeres, surfing Bingin Beach In Bali, playing softball against the Hells Angels for CBGBs, and motorcycling through the mountains north of Chiang Mai. I have died several times without the time to think I'm going to die and hopefully the same went for the crew of the Titan and the drowned migrants. Rest eternally under the sea.
