Facing Death (Written 1992)

Denial

There's a scene that plays out in my head every time I hear a certain part of Richard Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration." The music slowly but dramatically builds, crashes with the pounding of a kettle drum, then thundering brasses and weariless strings take over; suddenly the sound is like a soaring jet coming in on a strafing run. A gash opens up in the sky as the plane passes overhead and a flood of emotion sweeps me away, as my flesh rises and my breath feels pulled from my lungs.

In my dreamlike state the music levels off to cruising speed and everything is taken with it. Floating souls of all earthly beings head toward the horizon which has become an amorphous pink depth. All creatures that crawl, walk, fly, or swim swirl into this pink entrancing foam. A vortex sucks up from the sky and I can almost feel the rush of air as the brasses plummet beneath the strings, and I am loosened from myself for that brief instance when it feels like I've taken flight. The whole universe seems to be engaged. It's on a grand scale and it's a gigantic palette. Something is waiting, somewhere above and beyond and all the last images that were cherished diminish in a movie fade out. There is no longer pain, grief, remorse. I am transfigured.

Such is idealized death, idealized as to bode promise not fear, idealized because it is my imagination prompted by Richard Strauss, my Catholic background and nearly 60 years of watching movies. However, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross might, if she were here, call it "denial." The terminally ill as we have learned through her writing first deny when they have been told they are going to die. Art, being emblematic, sometimes seems to me a way to ward off evil, a sort of totemism. Even though I am not ill terminally or otherwise, Kubler-Ross has already uttered it. I am going to die someday. I am terminal. That is why for me creating art is denial.

Anger

I am on a small boat, running on a vein of royal blue, twisting deep into the dense green jungle towards its heart. The destination is a rendezvous point, a small dock on a tiny river village outside of Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It's the middle of April, 1965, three days before the U.S. invades, and this can only be a movie that I am in and am about to replay for you.

This morning after the secure from general quarters, the Officer of the Deck instructs me to get ready to put my boat, the PL, in the water. The PL has a super charged, bored

and stroked six cylinder, gray marine, that accelerates so smoothly a nickel can stand on its end on the head cover as the throttle is pulled full open. It's my job to take care of that engine. It's now my luck to go where it goes. My job notwithstanding, I still have to put on full dress whites, wrap my bell bottoms in canvas puttees, and spit shine my shoes. They change their minds about the shoes in the last minute, telling me to put on my tennis shoes.

After the boat is launched, the coxswain pilots it along-side a Jacob's ladder hanging from my ship, The USS Fort Snelling (LSD-30). Two marines climb down with M-16’s and both the Gunnery officer and the XO follow with forty-fives strapped to their sides. They’re in battle fatigues, and without rank identified, they huddle in the cabin with the coxswain who steadies the boat with short revs of the engine. Suddenly we pull away with a jolt.

At about two miles to go to the island the boatswain’s mate (known as the bow hook) and I are made to stand at parade rest in the well of the boat behind the engine compartment. The boat is about twenty-five feet long and six feet wide. It's all battle ship gray, made of wood, but molded and streamlined for speed, looking like a small PT boat. The bow has a six inch high chrome railing, the cabin follows with hand grips on the overhead; behind the cabin in the well the engine roars inside a raised wooden compartment. We stand just behind the engine, grateful we're not made to stand on the space above the rudder assembly, the tail of the boat where an American flag flaps wildly.

We enter the mouth of the river and as the coxswain de-throttles, the supercharger screams then lowers its tune from a shrill whistle to a faint sigh. The Gunnery officer peers out from under the cabin and orders the bow hook to stand on the bow. I can see the shadow of the officer's beard even though it is only about eight A.M.

I stay put and watch the bow hook shimmy his way forward along the cabin, gripping the hand grips then leaping agilely onto the bow. He gets down on his hands and knees, pulls a line pole from its holder, and begins to knock away at the hanging brush as we pass through. The gunnery officer, a little dramatically, I think, loads his forty-five. The XO hunkers himself down behind the coxswain his gun unholstered and the two marine guards each lean their weapons out of both sides of the cabin, the muzzles pointing toward opposite shores. Finally the gunnery officer orders me to jump up on the boat's stern and stand at parade rest. I was scared shit before, now I may have to ask someone to pass me the toilet paper.

Up on the stern I think of this, this preparation done as though I am the sacrifice. I assume the parade rest position, but then look around trying to hide the look of stark terror I know is on my face. I see blue water, the green jungle, my boat and the automatic weapons. I wonder almost out loud why I don't have one, and grow so angry that I wish I could snatch a weapon and do away with these officers and marines. My God, I am going to die, you mother fuckers. Suddenly, the flag whips between my legs and flaps ominously, wrapping itself around my legs and swathing my genitals, a death shroud.

Bargaining

I am on one of my many early morning walks. It's Sunday. Winter floods all the senses. I walk as usual across Smith Street, down Butler, across Court, along Kane and finally cross over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and onto Columbia Street. I walk south. The neighborhood changes from Carroll Gardens to Red Hook. Buildings are in deserted and collapsed states. Lumber, bricks, garbage are scattered amid oil splotches and dog shit. Abandoned shopping carts look as though they were tossed by a tornado against a rusting chain link fence, and curbs sinking into the gutter blur the distinction between sidewalk and street. It's Beirut, Baghdad, Brooklyn. It's not a movie, but as usual I think I am in one.

It is frigid, but a man, a Rambo styled bandana tied around his head, naked to the waist, sleek and muscular, emerges from under a broken stairway. He stops to watch me. I remind myself, since there isn't another soul on the block in either direction, that I have two six pound weights in my hands. If he takes steps in my direction, it's either him or me. During this rush of terror I have no other thought and just pump my arms like a prize fighter and continue moving. The feeling is the same as taking off in airplane. You can't back up. Mercifully he disappears beneath his stairway like a troll.

By the time I reach Carroll Street to traverse the footbridge back over the BQE to civilization, back through Carroll Gardens, I've convinced myself that I'm just a paranoid. But as I climb the steps of the bridge the incident becomes a message. St. Stephen's church on the other side of the bridge tolls its bell heavily. Blung. Blung. Blung. It repeats for several minutes. Beneath the walkway, the cars and trucks roll thickly and noisily even at this hour, most heading up and out of the blackened pit of the BQE toward the open air Gowanus Expressway. Two large green signs with white lettering point the ways. I'm humbled by the bells and overwhelmed by the traffic noise. I turn around to see the sun's winter brightness, low on the horizon blotting out the distance that the east bound traffic is heading into. I'm praying for forgiveness and salvation, suddenly and I see it as a long take with deep focus.

Depression

I'm in Seward Park High School. This is a famous old school on the lower east side just south of Delancey Street on Essex. I'm there for a civil service exam. All test takers are hustled into an auditorium, a high-ceilinged, arching structure. Sunlight streams in through the sandy colored windows. We're made to sit on peeling laminated seats for nearly an hour, and then given instructions by a bald man who reminds me of Ed Koch. The first question he fields is about toilet availability. He pauses and looks around, beckoning laughter with his wry look. I'm unwilling even to smile as I'm overtaken with my thoughts. I look around; nearly everyone looks between 40 and 50. About forty years ago we would have been in a similar auditorium, acting out our thoughts instead of thinking them.

We're dismissed to our testing rooms, row by row, and in silence, and I'm reminded of church services that I attended when we would get up row by row to receive communion. We follow one another through the hallways, which deepen the mystery for me, up winding dirty gray stairways, worn with a century of foot falls, past the wire meshed windows, up to our rooms on the fourth floor. So this is what it's like, our final hour already passed, I think to myself, as I slide into a seat joined to a desk and feel a millennium's worth of frozen hard gum stuck to the underside. Fade to black.

Acceptance

I am at Shea stadium. What can be here to disturb my imagination? Then it happens, something I have witnessed at least a million times. For both teams it's a meaningless game, both being out of the pennant race and it's the end of September. The game is tied in the bottom of the ninth. There are two out. Runners are on second and third. The batter, not a bad hitter, has a three and two count. The pitcher puts his foot on the rubber, leans forward and looks into the catcher for the sign. All in attendance, about three thousand of us are on our feet. We all should have left a long time ago but they’ll be no more baseball for us until next year. The pitcher takes the sign, and then takes a deep breath. He looks over to the runner at third. Will he forget him and just pitch to the hitter? Anyone who would try to steal home in this game would have to just be crazy. It's not worth it. Or is it?

The pitcher works from the set position anyway then releases the pitch. It's an outside fastball, but too close to the hitter’s zone to let it blow by. He swings. The ball is fouled up to his right into an empty upper deck. The ball bounces among the empty seats, rolls down the stairs and disappears. I stare after it lost in thought. No one goes chasing the ball. I turn back to the game but too late to see the batter strike out. The game goes into extra innings, but I've suddenly lost interest. Where has the ball disappeared to? No one has pursued it. Clearly it was only a foul in an unimportant game. Even the baseball maniacs who would show up for a game like this don't want it. For that minute I see it as the long and final take before the end.

But it’s not a satisfactory end. What is wrong with that foul ball that it should be ignored and shunned as it was except for my eyes that followed it? As a ball it started out pretty much the same as all the others. It had a cork center, surrounded by two layers of rubber. It was wrapped in gray and black twine and dipped in a gluey substance. The two halves of horsehide, looking like figure eights, had been hand-sewn with ninety-six stitches. And at its beginning it was a brand new spanking baseball, snowy white, with raised red stitches and a black logo, weighing in at 5 1/4 ounces and nine and a quarter inches of spherical circumference. An auspicious beginning, its chance come round, a misguided then forgotten hit.

Unfortunately after writing this, I'm facing death left with one nagging almost childish question: What is the relationship of one ordinary baseball, that goes foul, to that of the entire universe? So I am brought back to Strauss, to art. Deny. Deny. There's no money in accepting the inevitable.