THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

July 9, 2020

love is a place

& through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live

(skilfully curled)

all worlds

—e.e. cummings

*

Can I see another’s woe,

And not be in sorrow too?

Can I see another’s grief,

And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,

And not feel my sorrow’s share?

Can a father see his child

Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear

An infant groan, an infant fear?

No, no! never can it be!

Never, never can it be!…

—from “On Another’s Sorrow” by William Blake

*

Lonnie Glinksi, who was in our dialogue and theater groups at Two Rivers prison—(he played Ophelia in our 2015 production of “Hamlet”)—sent me a letter on June 4th. With his permission, I’m sharing a slightly edited version:

Dear Johnny

In recent days I have suffered a loss of a dear man who has moved on. He turned 91 last month. With a few adaptations he loved to play ping pong, though spending most of the day in a wheelchair.

He is an artist that draws wonderful pictures. He spent much energy writing poems, telling stories of his life, and trying to write songs, but he never quite got the hang of that.

We would argue over topics, would fight over the songs. We would laugh at each other for no reason at all. And while he was here, he was the person I could talk to about topics and feelings of which I now write.

With the recent Supreme Court decision regarding unanimous verdicts, it appears he will be going home or for re-trial. No one will tell me where he moved on to; I only know he is not here.

While that spark of joy for him remains alive in my heart, the waves of grief that wash through my body repeatedly attempt to drown out that joy. The experience of having the spark and the grief of his leaving at the same time is new for me.

I had a pen-pal through the U.U. outreach by that I could write to about such things, but he came down with cancer. He promised to write if he could, but has not written. The grief of that loss is different than the current one.

Although uncomfortable, I am not attempting to make it go away. Instead I just watch it, feel it, know it is there. Repeatedly, it washes through me like a wave when I look at the place where he used to sit.

Lee was hard of hearing and had to see your lips for conversations. Since he couldn’t hear himself he spoke really loudly, irritating those without that challenge. Now I expect to hear that voice while I’m in my cell, through the multiple voices and dayroom noises, and it isn’t there. Another wave.

Then I feel the spark, the joy for his experience and what he has to look forward to. So I watch this spark, feel this spark, and like the wave, I leave it be.

—Lonnie Glinski

*

I was Zooming with some friends this morning (7/3), and the subject came up of “All the Problems in the World”—a familiar theme in our conversations. All of us were feeling that the problems are so many and so old and so big that, for each of us, our efforts to make the world a better place were puny and woefully inadequate. One friend said: “Homelessness. I have a spare bedroom: I should be letting a homeless person sleep here.” And I remembered my friend Nick. Lonnie’s letter makes me think that I should do the laptop equivalent of putting pen to paper and say a few things about Nick. I’m terrible at remembering dates. How long ago was it that he died? I pulled up his obituary:

Consoletti, Nick, May 10, 1947 to May 31, 2012. Nick Consoletti, Ph.D., passed away at home in Hillsboro on May 31, 2012, at the age of 65. Nick was a philosopher, scholar, musician, brilliant conversationalist and poet, dedicated traveler and a tremendously kind, loving and loyal friend. Our authentic and gentle friend is greatly loved and missed.

I met Nick in the late Seventies. In a coffee shop, of course. Most of the people who knew him probably met him in a coffee shop. This one was in the basement of an old brick building on the Portland State University campus. In addition to coffee shops, Nick liked college campuses and libraries—places you could meet people who liked to talk about “All the Problems in the World,” and how they could be solved. His two favorite authors were Buckminster Fuller—a man who had practical solutions for All the Problems in the World—and J. Krishnamurti, who also had ideas about how the world could be transformed. According to him, we just needed to be free of fear, free of ideas of past and future, free from authorities (inner and outer), free from ambition and ideologies and nationalism, free from our opinions, from “the known,” from our carefully constructed autobiographies. Here’s a Krishnamurti quote: “Thought is always old; thought is never new; thought can never be free.”

But back to Nick. He had a heavy backpack, which included a sleeping bag, books, and maybe a tent. In coffee shops and on college campuses, Nick would meet people who might offer him a couch to crash on. Over a period of 30 years or so, Nick probably stayed with me, on average, one or two nights a month. He hitchhiked from one end of the country to the other, but mostly up and down the West Coast, from the Bay Area to Seattle, with stops in Eugene and Portland. Once a year, he would go all the way down to Ojai, in Southern California for Krishnamurti’s annual talks. 

Nick didn’t smoke, drink, take drugs or eat meat. He never asked for money, but if given five or ten bucks, he would quietly put it in his pocket. He played the dulcimer in coffee shops with a nearby hat for possible donations. He was a walking encyclopedia. He attended LOTS of conferences that featured cutting-edge thinkers. He wanted to hear them in person: Gregory Bateson, David Bohm, Erich Jantsch—it was a very long list! Whatever topic you might mention, Nick would instantly tell you the name of an article or book that would educate you further on the subject. 

His main interest was in “appropriate technology,” or how we humans can live in a sustainable way on this planet, without relentlessly destroying the health of the ecosphere. He was baffled by the fact that so much was known about how we could live more sustainably, and yet we persist in living in ways which indicate a lack of concern for future generations. Nick would have loved Greta Thunberg!

In the brief obituary, you might notice that he had a Ph.D. degree and that he died at home. Nick didn’t have a “home”—his own apartment—until the last year of his life: after his kidneys failed and he had to stay in one place for his twice-weekly dialysis treatments. 

Inspired by David Bohm’s ideas about dialogue, Nick—without money and without a home—earned his doctorate by facilitating a dialogue group and writing a dissertation about it. After he got his degree, he applied to some colleges, but was never offered a job. He continued to be an exemplary Coffee Shop Philosopher right up until the end. When I decided to “do something” at Two Rivers prison in 2006, maybe it was Nick’s example that inspired me to start a dialogue group, rather than “teach a class.” I learned a lot from Nick. I miss him.

—Johnny Stallings