Usable Art

Though Phil passed away a long time ago, I have found it so difficult to purchase mugs that look like the ones he made I haven't bought any. I have looked at mugs, bowls, and plates, admired them, picked them up to rub my fingers on the cool glazes, and then put them down and walked away.


Phil specifically made this mug for me one night after we'd been in the original Starbucks in Pike Place during our sophomore year. This was before lidded mugs were ubiquitous, if even invented, and I had admired a mug with a wide bottom and a narrow mouth. I imagined that I would be able to walk to class with a full cup of tea (it was also before I started drinking coffee).


Phil didn't like the way this green-brown-blue mug had come out, but I asked if I could have it and he said yes. For a long time this was my go-to mug in the morning if I wasn't going anywhere, while the long-necked one was what I took to class. It was much easier to clean than the other one, too. Then lidded mugs appeared on the scene, I got out of school and was driving to work, and the long-necked mug lived at home.


Yesterday morning I went to the Farmers' Market and there was a new vendor. He apparently comes to the Hayward FM once a month to sell his ceramics. He comes with pieces, but he also takes orders for specific pieces and colors.


Maybe because Marko and his family are in town this weekend (and I saw them later yesterday) I really felt like I would jump in and buy something. The potter, Scott, was very talkative and he and I talked for awhile about firing, glazes, and selling his usable art. Some people arrived to pick up pieces they had ordered. While they were talking, as I have in the past, I looked at mugs, bowls, plates, and casserole dishes, and picked them up to rub my fingers on the cool glazes. I found myself having a strong emotional reaction to even considering buying something that looked similar to the things Phil used to make.


Eventually I did.

The Anchor of My Collection

As graduation from college approached, my housemates and I started going through our stuff, throwing things out, packing clothes, rolling up posters, deciding whether this paper or that was worthy of storing in our parents' homes as we started to live our lives away from the cocoon of undergrad. Our House was a mess as we pulled things from cupboards and drawers and threw them into boxes between studying for finals and attending end-of-year events.


One of those events was the Senior Art Show. Phil had majored in Art and he had three pieces in the show: A silkscreen of three cattle skulls; a painting of a general store somewhere in Colorado; and a ceramic curving sculpture with a face at the top. I had watched Phil experiment with the curve, seeing how sharp he could make a curve in flat clay without its breaking while being fired. We had spent late nights in the Ceramics Building, talking, while he threw pots and built sculptures and I reveled in the scent of clean mud. As a result, I felt a friendly possession toward this piece, and at the show jokingly asked Phil if I could have it. He said I could have it for $1500, and showed me the sticker on the description tag.


The deadline for moving out of Our House got closer and closer and each of us had to decide what we were going to keep and what we weren't. I saved most of my papers - I'd majored in writing, so the largest output of my undergraduate education was on typewritten and dot-matrixed sheets. Phil, however, had focused on ceramics and had a large number of fragile pieces that he did not wish to ship. He belatedly realized that he should have been taking pieces home with him at the end of each academic year. His cousin agreed to allow him to pack her station wagon with his art and take it back with her to Colorado. Phil shipped all of his clothes and some of the drawings and paintings, and planned the packing of his car with geometric precision. After several tries, Phil couldn't figure out how to fit the large and oddly-shaped black and silver sculpture into the car.


I wasn't moving back to San Francisco, so I offered to hold this piece for him. He didn't know if he would be staying in Colorado or moving to Seattle after his post-graduation European trip, but we both knew that if he decided on the former we could still get this piece to Colorado when we weren't so pressed for time. I took the sculpture to the place I would be staying until Shobi-wan and I got an apartment, and Phil continued to pack his car.


I have since carefully wrapped this sculpture in a quilt and moved it nine times, across a couple of state lines. About a year after Phil died and while his brother was in graduate school in New York, I realized that I had indeed taken possession of the sculpture without paying Phil a cent. A few years after that I sent a photo of the sculpture to Marko with a letter saying that I consider this piece a long-term loan from him, and as soon as he wants it, it will go back to him. Marko called me when he got the letter, exclaiming that he had wondered what had happened to this piece.


I have it, and every time I look at it, I think of those nights watching Phil build it, the smell of clean mud, and the $1500 I never paid him for the anchor of my art collection.

Our House Is A Very, Very Fine House

The parenting blog on sfgate.com has a feature titled "Off Topic Tuesday," which allows the bloggers and commenters to talk about non-parenting topics. I think this is mostly because Peter Hartlaub, the lead blogger, likes to talk about growing up in the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s. I can get behind that. Like him, I also grew up in the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s. In fact I mostly read the blog because of "Top of the Hill, Daly City!" and the old Nut Tree.


This past Tuesday the discussion was "The Best Place You've Ever Lived." I noticed that the definition of the "the best place" had a lot to do with how close the house/apartment was or is to whatever the resident thought were good things to be near - the beach or ocean, restaurants, schools, etc. I was thinking about this, and the place I've lived the closest to all those kinds of things was the house in which I grew up: My elementary and high schools were within walking distance, as were the Junior Museum; the California Academy of Science; the Japanese Tea Garden; UCSF with its community pool and fun summer classes like Circus Skills; the Children's Playground, the Panhandle, and not too far from Sharon Meadow, Marx Meadow, and Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park; Rocky Road Mountain; and Haight Street with its roller skate rental shops and cafes (this last when I was in junior and high school, as I wasn't allowed on Haight until I was a teenager). We spent a lot of time at Baker Beach and at the Exploratorium. The corner grocery allowed us kids to sign for candy on our parents' accounts.


As I write all this down, I realize how lucky I was to live in such a place. I haven't lived in a place so close to everything as I did then. While I was thinking about the post on the other blog, though, I was thinking about my favorite place I'd lived as being the house I shared with Jujubi, Phil, and 17 other people across the three years I was a sophomore, junior, and senior in college. One block from campus, it was university owned, and had one bedroom for a triple, one for a single, and one double. There was a fireplace, a kitchen with yellow tile counters and a breakfast nook, one and a half bathrooms (including a tub), a livingroom with a plate glass window, a separet dining room, a huge basement, a backyard. On clear days we had a view of Mount Rainier from the window on the stairs. This house was known as Our House, after the song, and the Dance In The Living Room House, or DILR House. More formally (well, hardly "formally"), it was called Eleven Twenty Three, after the address.


The university thought it was a six-person house. Most of the time, only five of us were officially living there: soph year, Jujubi, Phil, Mrs. P (before she was Mrs. P), Bink, and I lived there. Junior year, Mrs. P and Bink had moved out and a friend moved in, along with two freshmen, one of whom left college after a couple weeks and the other of whom moved into a dorm at the semester break. Senior year Jujubi, Phil, and I were joined by two others of our friends. In the meantime, though, we had one friend or another sleeping on the couch for a semester or boyfriends sharing sleeping space. Since all the keys had "Do Not Duplicate" printed on them we left the door unlocked.


At that time, Tacoma wasn't much of a place to hang out in. The only place to hang out close to the university was a bar, so if you were under 21, which I was most of my college days, and you wanted to go out you went to Denny's or Dunkin' Donuts on 6th Avenue or up to Seattle to the Last Exit. There was a grocery store and a 7-11 within walking distance, and a public library and park a long walk away. Bus service was marginal so without a car it was hard to go to the mall, a movie, or Point Defiance Park.


But I didn't want to go those places most of the time. I was really happy to be at home. Because we were on the main approach to the campus, everyone came to the house all the time. On snow days, I would get up in the morning to one or several friends drinking coffee on the couch - people whose classes started earlier than mine and learned classes had been cancelled once they got to campus. When we had cast parties, from down the street you could hear people singing with Steve Miller, "I've been to Phoenix, Arizona, all the way to TACOMA!" If it was a warm fall or spring day, Phil would grill chicken or hamburgers, sometimes on the front lawn, and people would stop by on their way home. On the colder evenings, they would come by for some of Jujubi's great bean soup and beer bread.


At the time I credited Jujubi with the power of making that house feel like home. Maybe it was because she had such a nurturing vibe and I felt like a kid most of the time (I was, but I didn't think so then). She and Phil were the love in that house, and I just kept the door open. Our friends brought in a lot of love of their own, and that's what made our house so very, very fine.

My Young Friend

Phil's birthday was today. He would have been 41.


My closest college friend, the person I thought of as the other side of my coin, is still 24.


I think of how I now feel about 24 year olds, now that I'm 40, and I wonder at how I know I would feel that way about Phil, too. He's still 24. He's always going to be 24. I can't even imagine what he would be doing now, what he would be like now, because with two exceptions none of my college buds is now doing what each of us thought we would be doing sixteen years from 1992.


It's totally weird.

You say it's your birthday? It's my birthday too, yeah!

Bink, Jujubi, and I are planning a joint birthday party for ourselves in August. Their birthdays are the same week as mine, and as we spent our 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st birthdays together, it seemed appropriate to me that we spend our 40th birthdays together as well. We've been talking about this since April, and have finally sent out the invitation this week. It is beyond peculiar to me that I'm about to be 40, as I have felt 27 for years - thirteen! - now. At least I have a couple of friends who are doing it too.


When we were in college, Phil's birthday was also in that week. He was a year older, but his birthday was the day before mine. Only about a week ago it occurred to me that Phil would be 41 this year, and I realized that I've always thought of him as being 24, as if he were still around he wouldn't have been aging right along with us. And of course he still is 24, because that's how old he was when my most recent interactions with him happened.


Last night The Killer Lady and I met at a taqueria for dinner. For the ten years we've both lived in the Bay Area, we've always had dinner together on July 14 in Phil's memory, and it's become traditional for us to go out for Mexican food. There were several places to choose from, but we chose La Calaca Loca, because the name "The Crazy Skeleton" is a name that Phil would have liked. It's odd how you still know those things about someone years after they've passed out of your life. Plus, the Day of the Dead decorative theme seemed especially right.

When I Knew I Had To Face Another Day

I snapped on the radio as I left the gym this morning and found myself listening to Prairie Home Companion today (it was yesterday's broadcast). A woman was singing with Garrison, and the woman turned out to be Carole King. When they finished singing that song, Garrison offered to sing the next one with her, but, she said that as it was "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" that it would be better if Jerlyn Steele sang it with her.


Whenever I hear this song I think of Phil's best friend growing up. During our freshman year in Tacoma, A was attending a boarding school in New Jersey, and my relationship with A started as little notes on the bottom of Phil's letters , such as "PS: Samatakah says to say 'hi.'" Eventually I was writing my own "clever" notes under Phil's signature, and as the year went on we started mailing all kinds of stuff to A, like bottle labels and flyers for campus events.


(Toward the end of the academic year, Phil sent him an unhusked coconut by writing his address right on the coconut. A husked it and sent it back the same way).


As fall term went on A and I wrote longer messages to each other in Phil's letters. Over winter break A sent a Christmas card with a letter directly to me at home and we exchanged a lot of letters in January and February. In future years, I understood that February was my winter doldrums period, but during my first winter in the northwest I didn't know that, and just felt lousy, irritated and isolated. One night, I sat on my bunk bed and wrote the lyrics to "A Natural Woman" down so I could send them to A. I kept hitting "stop" on my cassette player between lines to make sure I had them all down correctly. I'm sure I felt like he was the only one I could "really talk to" because he wasn't in the midst of my college life, and that made me feel like I could be my "real self" with him. Writing him that letter did make me feel better.


I met A only one time, when he came to the Bay Area to scout colleges in the early summer. That was twenty years ago... I just realized that.

A Birthday Story

I come out looking bad in this. The only defense I have is that I was raised that birthdays are a big deal. When we were kids, there would be streamers hanging from the pot-hanger over the table, and all the cereals on the table. Often at school there were cupcakes. On your birthday you chose where the family went out to dinner that evening.


Phil turned 21 the day before I turned 20. At 1130 the night before (on the 13th), people arrived to take him on his "twenty-one run," so he could order his first legal beer at midnight on the 14th. Jujubi, whose 20th birthday had been a few days before, and I stayed home. The next day was my birthday. Phil insisted that we go to wash our cars that afternoon, which I thought a really strange thing to do, though it turned out the purpose was to get me out of the house so Jujubi could hang up a sign.


We often ate together, which is how I got through college without learning to cook. I had a padded envelope from my mom; Phil's gift from his mother had arrived a day late and was a 3'x2' box. As we finished dinner Phil put his box on the table and said something like, "Time to open presents." Jujubi reminded Phil that they had to sing "Happy Birthday" to me first, and as it was actually my birthday I should open my present first. They did, and I did, receiving two books by Rita Dove, with whom I had taken two writing workshops, books I still have. Mom had included a happy birthday note on a "While You Were Out" memo. Phil brought this big box onto the table and after opening it pulled out clothes, coffee, a new coffeemaker carafe, some art supplies, and several other things, plus a birthday card with "To My Son On His Birthday" written on the front in a cheesy font.


The next thing I remember Jujubi and Phil were heading off to the library to study (I always studied at home). I don't remember what specific thing triggered it but I remember standing on the walkway leading to the front door yelling at them for not celebrating my birthday with me. I remember very clearly that I was furious, even knowing that it wasn't their fault that his package arrived late, even knowing that Mom's gift was perfect and probably mailed on the fly while she was at work so it would arrive on time. After they left, I carefully chose books I didn't care about from the shelf and threw them at the wall. I yelled and cried.


I don't know why I threw such a temper tantrum that night. I was really embarrassed about it afterwards and apologized to Phil and Jujubi. I even apologized in my heart to Phil's mom for thinking that she had sabotaged my birthday.


The next year everyone and their brother came out for my "twenty-one run" (also, the next year, many more people were 21; only Bink had to wait for another week). The September Birthdays Party we had that year seemed like it had an especially large turnout and I received birthday cards from all kinds of people. I ruefully enjoyed all the birthday greetings, as I suspected that a lot of my friends had heard about the tantrum the year before.

Almost Heaven

Friday, July 20

The Killer Lady and I drove straight through and arrived about 23 hours after we left - including stops for dinner in Placerville yesterday, breakfast this morning in Grand Junction, and driving around in circles in Aspen to get to the grocery store.


Being on a road trip reminds me so much of all the other road trips I've been on. I've never done this route before, through Nevada. The Killer Lady (who has incredible endurance and drove the entire way with only a 40-minute nap at a rest stop around 730 this morning) and I got a big kick out of the signs for Wendover, that told us how far away it was every seven to ten miles. Wendover straddles the NV/UT border, and boy was that obvious: We went through after midnight and half the town was bright with Las Vegas neon and the other half was black.


Our favorite sign was the one that warned us, "Stay Alert! Lane Shifts Ahead" - only because we'd been on the road for hours and were not being warned to stay alert because we were in a car. Heading out of Aspen and over Independence Pass the signs told us to "Avoid Broken Windshields. Obey Speed Speed Limits." I guess punishment is terrible and swift in the Rockies.



Saturday, July 21

I don't know if it is exhaustion or just "is" but it's been tough so far, being here, thinking about Phil. Both The Killer Lady and I pretty much arrived in tears with the pain of wishing Phil would just walk in the door and say, as he used to, "How's it hanging?" The fifteenth anniversary is bothering The KL as much as it is bothering me. We keep looking at each other and asking, "How is that possible?" In 1992 I knew that someday this day would come. I'm still so sad about his being gone, and I'm surprised in a way that I still miss him so much.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

~ Richard Bach, Illusions.

Mrs. P wrote in an email that Cabinstock is a great legacy Phil left us. It's started me thinking that maybe his mission on earth was to organize this annual event that has created sort of a community. We wouldn't have met each other any other way, let alone remained friends for so many years, without Cabinstock.


Sunday, July 22

I suggested that we rewrite "When I'm Sixty-Four" so it's about doing Cabinstock in the future (I'll be 64 in September of 2032!). The Killer Lady and I helped, but Spudwhip really ran with it. I have the chord notations but I'm not going to include them because I know they won't format correctly. Y'all know the tune, anyway.

Note: There are a few inside stories, but the only one I'm going to comment on is the dry compost toilet, which requires some good use of the Kegel and suchlike muscles.

"When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now

Will you still invite me to the Cabinstock?

Tunes and hooch still served on the rock?

If we play on till quarter of three, will you scream for more?

Will you play for free here, still be a tree here, when we're 64?


You'll be older too

And if you say the word, I could tent with you.


I could be handy, mending a tube

When your amp is gone

You could drink tequila by the fireside

Monday morning, whimper and hide.

Doing a keg lap, smoking some weed, who could ask for more?

Split pee and poop here, fall off the stoop here, when we're 64.

Every summer we will storm the Cabin by the river with a keg of beer

Three vacation days...

Guitar on your knee

Singin' through the haze

Send me a flyer, drop me a line, at least by May or June

Indicate precisely when the dates will be

Yours sincerely, Mister Bony.

Scrape up the money, scrape up the time, scrape me off the floor

Huevos and beans here, measure your penes here, when we're 64.

Drown in the creek here, still be a freak here, when we're 64.

Soak up the scene here, play key of Gene here, when we're 64!"

Monday, July 23

The music starts one piece at a time and adds up. We have lots of guitars this year, a washtub bass, an electric bass, harmonicas in the major keys, a fiddle, and a drum kit. Lots of voices, of course, including mine.
















The music is hella loud in the Cabin. We've been in and out because of rain. I asked SRV Rick if the music is louder than in years past, but he said no. Guess it's my old ears!

This photo is from the first night when most people - and the PA system - hadn't arrived yet. Kid Paully and SRV Rick are picking up where they left off last time.




Tuesday, July 24

I am really in touch with the fear-is-part-of-anger thing today. Spudwhip and The Killer Lady crossed the river and on the way back, The KL lost her nerve and was pulled downstream by the current. Spudwhip grabbed her, but then he started down the river too, and Shawnee, who'd gone with them into the water (but not across the stream), lost his balance when he grabbed Spudwhip and the three of them headed downstream.


The KL went down the river once before, in 1995, when she lost her balance, and I was just filled with dread about their crossing back. I have this sense of everyone else positioning themselves along the rocks in various places, as if we all expected someone to head downstream. It was like we were Team River and were taking our places. Johnny Half-Song and I stood near the confluence of the river and the creek, and when I saw them coming toward me reached out for the three of them. For less than a second all five of us thought they were going to make it, but they didn't. Johnny and I didn't want to pull too hard because we didn't want to go in the river also. Shawnee said he saw how quickly I was moving; I don't remember moving at all. I didn't realize I was wet up the chest until I dashed in the Cabin to get towels and heard my sandals squelching on the carpet.


Shawnee and The KL came up against the first big rock and were able to climb out; Spudwhip went around to the next one and was also safe. All's well that ends well but I was furious. I had to hide on the next-door property to sob for two minutes to get it out of my system. The KL was abashed, and quietly took the lecture the OG gave her. Shawnee was pretty calm, smoking a cigarette afterwards - he said he figured that they would get out. Spudwhip was jacked up on adrenaline and I just wanted to smack him. I felt like he didn't really understand that the OG and I were angry that he put himself and The KL in danger, even though he apologized for scaring me.


Spudwhip brings the mama out in me.


Wednesday, July 25

Yesterday was a long day. It felt like several days in one, in fact. The morning was full of people packing up their vehicles and leaving, and there was music. Johnny Half-Song, Marko, and Spudwhip played some of Johnny's original tunes until some kayakers appeared. All the times I've been to the Cabin, this is the first time I've seen kayakers. Marko says this stretch of the river is famous for kayaking and the Cabin is called "the crooked cabin" in kayaking guidebooks.


We had the swimming in the river incident, and more music. The OG and Shawnee played some CSN, and the OG taught me the secret parts of "Teach Your Children."
After dinner those of us who hadn't left had a long talk and Marko played his fiddle in accompaniment to the OG's guitar and voice. When I went back to my tent, I was exhausted.


Today has been very low key, as Marko, the OG, Shawnee, and BJ were gone by early afternoon. The KL and I took down our tents very quickly, thinking it was going to rain, but so far it hasn't. Looks grey and gloomy, but we're still at the Cabin and The KL has built a nice fire.


Thursday, July 26

I'm reading Three Cups of Tea. It's about a former ER nurse/mountain climber who builds schools all the non-controlled, high-altitude parts of Pakistan. Each chapter has an epigraph, and I adapted this one from "The Warrior Song of King Gesar":

This beautiful and splendid land
With snow-covered rock mountains, cold-crystal streams,
Deep forests of aspen, pine, and spruce,
Is as much my body as what you see before you here.
I cannot be separated from this or from you.
Our many hearts have only a single beat.

One More Phil Story

In the spring of 1989, Denver D, myself, and Ghank (a friend of Phil's who lives in Colorado) were riding with Phil up to The Cabin. Phil at that time drove a 1975 or '76 light yellow Volvo 240 that ran better going over 55 mph. Denver D was furtively drinking a beer in the back seat and Ghank had just held up a clear baggie while looking for papers to roll. Just after we made the big left at Balltown, consisting of a cabin motel and no people I ever saw, we were pulled over by the highway patrol. Denver D dropped the can into his empty boot and put his foot over it - I'm not sure what Ghank did with the tobacco pouch, but it disappeared.


"Do you know how fast you were going through there?" the CHP officer asked. Classic CHP: Brown uniform, wide brimmed hat, reflective sunglasses. We were very very nervous.

"No, sir," replied Phil.

"The speed limit is 55. You were going 62."

"I didn't see a sign. I'm sorry."

"May I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance?"


Phil gave him his license and started digging through the glove box. He found the registration and POI card and gave those to the officer.

"This insurance card expired a year ago. Do you have a more recent one?"


Ghank folded up his long legs so Phil could more easily access the glove box, and Phil dug through glove box detritus to pull out POI card after POI card. He gave each one to the CHP, who each time told Phil, "This one is expired too." I couldn't see well from the back seat but I think Phil gave him six POI cards. The officer told Phil he could stop looking; it was clear that Phil carried insurance but he should throw these old cards away and only keep the current card in the car.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to let you off with a warning, but remember to drive more slowly through here. It's dangerous, a small town, deer, that big jog in the highway. You know."

Phil agreed and thanked him, and the man walked back to his car. Ghank, Denver D, and I were holding our breaths and all four of us sighed loudly as soon as the officer was out of earshot. Then of course we started laughing.

We crept away from the Balltown Left at a mere 54 mph and absolutely pussy footed through the next hamlet, about 15 miles away.

When It Happens To Someone Else

I went to a funeral service last September for the 24 year old son of dance studio friends. He had died in a motorcycle accident. I didn't know the son, but I thought it was important to go, because the dance studio is part of my community and that's how I know them. So the dance studio is part of their community too, and I wanted them to know that they have friends everywhere who care about them.


I wrote the following in the days shortly afterwards, but I've edited it a little here. What impact did Phil's death have on me, in terms of action or attitude? I tell people I love them when I do. I tell Zirpu every time one of us leaves the house, and when I drop him off at BART in the morning.

9/25/06

I went to a memorial service today for the ---s' son, who was killed in a motorcycle accident last Saturday. I feel so bad for his friends, of whom there were a lot at the church (and probably 200+ people altogether), the way I felt bad for the friends of those students who died at SMC in 2001 and 2002. It doesn't seem fair to me for them to have to experience that, to have a friend die and the grief and shock and unrealness of it. It doesn't seem fair to me that we had to go through that when Phil died.

I still wish that we had talked more about him than we did. Maybe because two of us were in Portland, five were in Seattle, one was in Victoria, one was in Tacoma, and one was in Colorado Springs, so we weren't physically close to each other the way the ---s' friends and family seemed to be since they are still local.

Phil was really important to each of us, each of us had our relationship to Phil. No one felt exactly like anyone else, I think, when he died because we all had our own relationship with him. I still think I learned about myself through my relationship with him... I know I learned about generosity and started to learn about appreciating fine things from him.


9/27/06

I found my journal that includes that period of Phil's death. It turns out that I DID spend a lot of time talking with people about Phil and his death. I didn't remember, but Ms. S. was in PDX shortly after for a family thing, and Jujubi came back home for a few days at the end of August, and Dr. BFS was in town for a conference right after, and Shobi-wan and I went up to Tacoma for a BBQ at Mrs. and Mr. P's in honor of another friend at the end of July. I went to Seattle for a few days when Shobi-wan went to Wyoming. Two couples were down for my birthday and Bink and her friend came down the following week. Denver D and his friend came in October. And of course Shobi-wan and I talked a lot about him and it.

I have been remembering HOW I FELT as opposed to WHAT HAPPENED – and how I felt was that I would not, could not, get my fill of talking about Phil.

So one thing reading over that journal is making me think that I have not been very generous in my memories toward my friends. I've been feeling like I wanted to talk but I was the only one who did, but in fact, I saw a lot of my dear friends in that period, despite our living far apart, and we did talk about Phil when we saw each other – and not just about Phil himself but how we felt and were impacted when he died.

On 8/19/92 I wrote, “I'm afraid that a time will come when I'll still want to talk about Phil and no one else will need to anymore. Or worse, that I will want to and the other person(s) will want to, but neither of us will know it, or we'll both be too shy to start.” On the 27th I quoted a letter to BFS saying “It's been really good to be spending as much time with people who I love, who loved Phil, who love me. We can all talk about Phil as much as we want and not feel embarrassed...”

Getting Ready!

The Killer Lady and I are leaving for Cabinstock on Thursday. I've had food bank stuff on my mind recently and had sort of pushed the plans to the back of my mind, and then Marko called yesterday to discuss some details. I'm all excited now. Besides, today turned out to be the best chance to get everything organized to go, and staging the gear increased my excitement.


The first thing I did was go to various grocery stores to get the food. I wouldn't have gone to more than one, but I was looking for Tasty Bite Indian food packets, handy because they don't require refrigeration. Next Thursday morning I'll get some apples and bread for the trip. I've pulled old water from our earthquake kit and replaced it with new water. I have quite a bit of booze in the cupboard, most of which I will bring along, and while I don't expect the level of drinking I've seen in the past, one wants a complete bar, doesn't one? Especially when the nearest liquor store is 30 minutes away.


Zirpu and I recently purchased a tent, which I put up today for a test run. It's a much bigger tent than the one I used to have, which actually self-destructed during Cabinstock in 2002. The tent will be very cozy; I asked Zirpu to take the rain fly off because it was getting too warm for comfort in there with the tent in the ballroom. All the parts were there, including the cupholder, hanging above Mom's head in this picture. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to take Zirpu's sleeping bag, which goes to 20*F but has a narrow foot, or if I'm going to take my sleeping bag arrangement, which is more comfortable but much much larger to roll (it's a sleeping bag inside another sleeping bag).


I can't believe that I'm old enough for something to be happening for the twentieth time in my adulthood. The first Cabinstock was a weekend of Phil and friends playing music and drinking heavily, and then it happened again the next summer, and the next. The first time I went, a couple months after graduation, 65 people attended at least one night of the four during Cabinstock.


I'm excited, and I'm almost ready to leave.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

The weekend before classes started in earnest my first year at college, I went to Bumbershoot. All I knew about it was that it was a music and arts festival, and that some group on campus was providing school buses to take students up to Seattle. I went with a couple of my new friends, Phil and Denver D, to whom I'd been introduced by Mrs. P (she was Ms. P in those days).


I remember thinking, as I walked across campus to meet them at the bus pick-up that when I was in high school, I never would have been allowed to travel to another city with two guys I barely knew. Well, that's one of the joys of going away to college, making decisions that might run counter to ones of your parents would approve.


We wandered around the festival and looked at crafts that we couldn't afford to buy (or fit in our dorm rooms) and listened to music. Bumbershoot was enormous, and in one of the halls we found a photo vendor who offered to take your photo dressed in costume. We signed in, and dressed in the Wild West clothes. He's not pictured here (which I regret; I don't have the original version of this photo on my hard drive), but Denver D's wearing a cowboy costume and holding the Bible that went with Phil's costume. Phil had switched with him so Phil could hold the moonshine jug.


This photo marks the beginning of a great friendship that I thought would last forever. Well, talk about "unforeseen events." Phil and I were very very similar; I thought that we were two sides of the same coin, but sometimes I wondered if there even were two sides to that coin. We kissed one time, later that fall, I think because we thought we should, being of the opposite sex and as close as we were. It was gross, for both of us. Bleagh!


I recognized his faults (because a lot of them were mine). He was a good friend to me.

An apology and a recommendation

I think yesterday's post is pretty terrible. It does forward my goal of telling people they should be prepared, but... ugh. I wrote it when I was tired and uninspired and really just wanted to go to bed, still recovering from the trip last week I think. But you deserve better.

Further ugh, I opened up sfgate.com this morning and saw that there was a tornado in Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri that killed 20 people yesterday, including a bunch of students when parts of their high school collapsed.

I will need to plan ahead and think about my best writing time of the day. I suspect it is in the morning or early afternoon (I am writing this just before noon). Having an idea to write about is another challenge: How to build something around a single idea that is long and interesting enough to read. Herb Caen got around this by using his "three dots" in his column, but I am not in his class to do it on a regular basis.

Tea has written a beautiful post about growing up and a person who showed her the way. I encourage you to read it. The part that most resonates with me is toward the end, where she describes Amanda's gingersnaps. If you read, or have already read, about Aunt Syl's enchilada sauce, you'll know why. Because I can replace the words "Amanda's gingersnaps" with "Aunt Syl's enchilada sauce" and "creaming butter" with "chopping peppers," I know she feels about those gingersnaps the way I feel about Phil's enchilada sauce.

As long as we are remembered, we live.

Aunt Syl's Enchilada Sauce

When we were in college, Phil made this sauce several times. It was quite the production, involving all of us who lived at Our House. The recipe itself is simple and no trouble, but it does need to simmer for a long time, and as with most simmering of tomato sauces, the longer the better. However, Phil always arranged his classes and his days so that he would leave around 9am and not return until late in the afternoon. He always wanted to make sure the sauce would get stirred, so questioned everyone about our plans for the day and instructed us to stir the sauce. It got to the point where we would joke behind his back that the sauce had to be stirred every 37.5 minutes or it would be ruined.

There were times when we left our 50 year old house empty with the electric burner on low under the pot. Even with eight people living at the house, sometimes we would all have to be gone at one time, especially in the mornings. I like to think that at least in the morning the sauce would still be pretty watery from the tomato juice. I often came home midday, and after calling "hello" and not receiving a response, I would immediately dash to the kitchen and stir the pot.

It should be noted that we never, never burned the sauce.

Tea came over today to learn how to make Aunt Syl's Enchilada Sauce. She went to a tamalada a few weeks ago so I wonder if she was expecting a big production. The sauce went together in half an hour, and we sipped margaritas while it simmered. Even the enchilada caseroles themselves came together very quickly, though we made two batches - both with chicken and one with cheese as well.

I kept my talk about Phil to just a couple stories. He died almost fifteen (!!) years ago, well predating my friendship with Tea, and some stories are hard to tell because someone who didn't know Phil probably wouldn't understand why it is funny that I got the steel pedal guitar when he died, or that I have one of his major sculptures. I always think about Phil when I make this sauce, and about everyone else who loved Phil as I did, and I put all that love into the sauce too.

Phil's 21st birthday, September 1988

I gave the recipe to Tea, but while typing, I realized that really, I don't follow it at all. I'm not the most faithful to recipes, but I'm not just sleeping around on Aunt Syl's Enchilada Sauce, I'm shacked up with its brother. I'm feeling a little sad about giving the recipe to someone I think is a better cook than I am because I wasn't very happy with the sauce we made today, and I know that I have made it better in the past. Maybe today I didn't think about Phil and the Our House folks as much as I usually do.

In general I think sharing is good, and I believe that as long as Phil is remembered he is not totally gone, even if he is remembered by someone who never met him (I imagine Tea saying, "This recipe came from the friend of my friend..."). Share the love, and the enchilada sauce.

We are advertis'd by our loving friends

- King Henry the Sixth, V.iii

Art Buchwald passed away yesterday. Looks like his last column was published just two weeks ago. I saw an interview with him from a few months ago on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" (again anchored by Ray Suarez - since I always listen to it on KQED Radio, I had no idea he has a beard!) and in it he says that he and his children have planned the memorial service, and that it should be a "pretty hot ticket."

Phil laid out instructions for a memorial service for himself, after his father died. I think he was unsatisfied with whatever had happened at his father's memorial. Phil wanted a wake at the house in Seattle, with a keg of Red Hook ale. When he did die, unexpectedly, the following summer, there were instructions to follow. Thank goodness, because none of us would have known what do otherwise - we were all 24-25 years old, and I'm thankful that nobody had to put on a tie or nylons and sit on benches in a funeral home chapel. Not to mention that that would have irritated Phil to no end. Quite the opposite happened: I understand that the police were called to the wake in Colorado Springs, investigating noise complaints.

On the other hand, Shmeen's father, and my friend, Dick would have been irritated, because when he passed away, there was a traditional memorial service at Temple Emanu-El. B said several times, "Dick would have hated this." She said that he would instruct her to put him in a shoebox and leave it on some hiking trail. In that case, it seemed right to have a more traditional event - Dick's being older, there were a lot of older people at the service who would not have appreciated a backyard kegger or a hilly hike. Even the rabbi commented on Dick's disinterest in a formal ceremony, saying during the eulogy, "Richard never cared too much for religious rigmarole."

How we say goodbye, be it a wake, funeral, memorial service, or celebration of life, is about who is left after someone has passed away. Phil's keg was appropriate for us... Dick's shoebox wasn't. I'm glad we had the wake Phil wanted, because it would have made him happy, and I'm glad we had the memorial service Dick wouldn't have wanted, because he was so funny when he was pretending to be annoyed.