poster by Rick Bartow

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

February 2, 2023

 

I invited some friends to…

…send me a short work in prose or poetry about an experience, a person, a conversation, a book, or an inspiration that changed the way you see, experience or understand yourself and/or the world. Here’s what people sent:

 

 

In Memory of

My Literary Godmother

 

Her name was

 Miriam Soomil

 Of Russian-Jewish descent

And the editor of

The Belmont Courier-Bulletin

A small-town

Weekly newspaper

Where I interned

One summer.

 

She smoked

Pall Malls

Drank black coffee

Devoured the

San Francisco Chronicle

Loved politics

Had opinions

Quoted Keats

Knew history

Adored anything

Well-written.

 

I’d never

Met anyone

Like her.

She was 

Gritty, smart

Funny, flawed

Big-hearted

And tough

Like a

Thick slice

Of dark rye   

In my

White bread

Ozzie and Harriet

World.

 

We shared

An office

Pounded out

News stories

On massive

Underwood typewriters

Edited copy

 With pencils

Cut and pasted

With scissors

And glue pots

Beat deadlines

Logged

Late nights

At the printer.  

 

She didn’t

So much

Teach me

As infect me

With language

The names

Of poets

Writers, books

Ideas

And

A care

Uncompromising

For words.

 

We became friends

And remained so

For years after.

I visited her

In the cabin

Where she lived

In a grove

Of Oak trees

Behind Stanford University

(Erased by bulldozers

Decades ago.)

Her walls

Lined with books

Her home patrolled

By an enormous

Siamese cat

Her garden

Thick with basil

Tomatoes, rosemary.

When I became

A working reporter

I sent her clippings.

 

Sometimes

I drink

Red jug wine

Like I used to

With Miriam

And raise

A toast

To her

A Mensch

Of this world

Generous

Beyond measure

Indelibly imprinted

Upon

My own

Soul’s page.

 

In whatever

Language you

Now speak

Dear friend

May you know

The eloquence

And intelligence

You bestowed

Upon us all.

 

—Will Hornyak   January 2023

*

 

                   Coincidence

 

For years I tried right place, wrong time,

then right time, but I was somewhere else

plodding a dark street wondering where

my luck had gone. What are the odds

for happiness? Could I help chance,

assist coincidence, gamble with verve?

 

The first bird of dawn began to sing

and I woke to see life on Earth as one

big coincidence, this swirl of stone, water,

cell, sun, and in good time all the rest—

and suddenly, there you were

telling me your name.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

A long time ago when I was visiting Johnny in Portland, he got a phone call from our friend Sam.

He was dying of cancer—finally—after ten years or more of fighting it, and he invited us down to Houston to attend his passing.

In those days it was easy to travel by air. We just went to the airport, bought tickets, and flew down to Houston.

In his last years, after an adventurous checkered business career, Sam had reinvented himself as an academic.

After a few years, he left Berkeley and got a job in a Texas border town, teaching social science in a small community college. The students were all Latin American—second generation children of Mexican immigrants—newly citizened Americans hoping to realize the American Dream.

Sam was a man of the world. He gave his students, not the usual politically correct canned curriculum, but his best practical wisdom—like an uncle—speaking what usually remains unsaid about what it takes to get by, to get ahead, to simply survive, in racist America.

His students adored him.

Sam met Johnny and me in the waiting room of the cancer ward, and made us feel at home.

It was a Friday evening. The head hospice nurse was a friend of Sam’s. 

She said she was taking the weekend off to deal with family.

“This is goodbye, Sam. We won’t be seeing each other again.”

So they parted.

Sam said goodbye to Johnny and me.

The nurses took him away.

Visitors were not allowed, usually.

But they allowed one of his students, a young woman with whom he was deeply bonded, to be with him.

She cradled his head and gazed into his eyes as he died.

Johnny and I were reading in the waiting room. The attendants pushed the remains of Sam on a gurney past us through the waiting room and out into the corridor, heading for parts unknown.

We could see that Sam wasn’t there anymore.

 

—Charles Erickson

*

 

Looking back on my life, the text that changed, and continues to change, the way I see, experience and understand myself in the world and as the world is Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.” Among many other things, he says: “All truths wait in all things.” And: “a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.” And:

 

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass…

 

—Johnny Stallings

*

 

I have had many dark spots in my life & have always pulled through. There are 3 people in my life that have been my guiding lights for many years. Due to my incarceration I can not do the things for them like I want to or that they deserve. Things like paint the house or fix their car or be there when they need me. To cook them dinner to just show them how much I love them, with a hug and a smile. Or to bring them my appreciation, my love, my joy. The joy they showed me that lives in me.

 

One of them was with me full when I was in a very dark place in life. Yes, darker than prison. A prison within a prison. I was forced to face my demons, there would be no running this time and I had never felt so close to death. I was able to completely divulge my life and all its damage. Not judged, not disciplined, just accepted and loved and made to feel like all should feel. HUMAN. We are all so beautiful and amazing and shattered and broken just right.

 

We are the beautifully broken. In my life I have people that mean more to me than life itself. And lately being away from them is suffering in itself. They are my family, family I choose to be family. I wish to be able to show you all how much I love you by Being there in life with you. Like a son should be.

 

Johnny, Nancy, Howard! You always and forever will be not in my heart but a big piece of my heart, mind and soul. Love Rocky.

 

—Rocky Hutchinson

*

 

Five Tanka Written Upon Spending the Night in a New Apartment

 

1.

I mop the floor with

apple cider vinegar,

note the orange leaves

that are somehow still hanging

in January.

 

2.

Can you hear me up

here? Sorry I’m so noisy!

My boots, my loud soul…

I’m setting up my new bed.

I’ve slept on too many floors.

 

3.

O lovely cooking

aromas wafting through wood!

My unpacked dishes…

A sharp red curry down there

calls to my empty white bowl.

 

4.

Around ten p.m.

I begin to unravel

my crisp new mattress.

Alone, I read directions:

This requires two people.

 

5.

It is a good thing

that I moved in yesterday.

Very cold today,

and brother turned his ankle.

On my own again.

 

—Alex Tretbar

*

 

Leftover Rainwater

 

Over the years I have been having a series of surgeries to correct a not ideal situation I was born with in my mouth. I found a good surgeon, a practicing Sikh, who periodically fixes something and the other day I was getting some stitches out and his assistant said, “Oh yeah, the doctor is a leftie”. And I had this little shock.

 

All these years and I never noticed he was working on me primarily with his left hand.

 

Not that it matters.

 

Except that I never noticed. I was a rebellious kid and my father used to regularly admonish me to pay attention.

 

Off in my own world I would think, fine, sure, I’ll get right on that. Not. My own world was much more interesting, intoxicating even, the collage I was making taking up the whole bedroom wall, the easy chairs with a tail and wings I was drawing everywhere, all the stories I was reading. I was busy.

 

Later as a teenager out in the world with only loose tethers to authority, I had to learn to pay attention. At least in a certain, hyper-vigilant, oh man this place is dangerous way. Is that car following me, are those gunshots, might there be drugs in that drink you just offered to share with me.

 

And then in my work life. Numbers. Nice safe numbers that need to be in certain places at certain times.  Very important to pay attention then.

 

Then one day a girlfriend of a work colleague asked me to go to a yoga class with her. It was at a gym. The teacher was an older man, I had heard somewhere, I think he told us, he had been teaching Kung Fu and then there was an accident and he had to figure out how to make his body functional again.

 

Why him? Why then?  He was weird. I often have an affinity for weird people, at least his kind. One class we would focus on our feet, one on our necks, and the girlfriend never came back but I did. He taught us this one posture that made us look like turtles that I still practice today. He only taught for 4 months or so, but somewhere in there I learned how to truly pay attention.

 

Then one day he was gone, retired they said.

 

Another teacher took his place, and she became my teacher. I followed her around from gym to studio to rented spaces to finally her own studio. By then I was paying a lot of attention to a wide range of things. And learned to teach the practices to others.  

 

Always though with a memory of the slightly amused look my original teacher would get on his face…this how did I find myself here with the weights clanging and the grunting in the background with all these relatively normal people?

 

The other day, working with my own students and encouraging them to notice this or be aware of that or to bring their attention somewhere or to let it go, I could hear my father’s voice.

 

The irony of me now gently admonishing others to be in the moment, feel what they are feeling and notice things…

 

And the work I still have left to do. Every day there are so many new things to notice.

 

Perhaps a wild chickadee is taking a bath in leftover rainwater out back.

 

—Elizabeth Domike

*

 

Dear Reader

 

For the March issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding (3/2/23) you are invited to send me a short writing in prose or poetry about something or someone you love.

 

—Johnny