Covered Mirrors

I’m at a complete loss. I have no sense of direction. I have very little will, and no resources to pull from, or so it feels. My very best friend has died. He is gone. Left yesterday. And I will never see him, in this life, again. I am stunned. I am broken. I feel a depth of pain and sorrow so deep it’s as if the pit in my belly goes to the bottom of all things. I am often distracted from the grief by the grief. I am amazed at how it can stop me dead in my tracks, knock me literally to my knees, and leave me face first in the carpet, clawing it with my hands and shouting his name into the coarseness of the floor. I have experienced death and loss before. On many levels. Friends, relatives, immediate family if Grandparents count. I had a very close friend get himself killed drinking and driving when I was about 24, and a few years later lost another very close friend to Leukemia. Both young, vibrant individuals who probly deserved a lot more, and a lot better than they got.
With that in mind, it might surprise some to find that I’m talking about my dog. His name is River, and what started as a moniker based on a band my son Nikolas and I loved (Riverdogs), has come to mean so much more. He has been the river of my life for the last 11 years. He arrived in this world on almost the exact same day I arrived in San Diego. I had spent my whole life in Los Angeles, with the exception of four years in the military. I was moving everything I had, which was actually not much, and was making a new life for myself in a new city. My son had moved to San Diego with his mother three years prior, and a job opportunity near him was all I needed to make the move to be closer to him and more active in his life. Up until now it was one or two weekends a month, summer vacation, and Christmas/Easter breaks. I had always wanted to get him a dog, but was waiting for the time to be right.
The pain and the grief pour out of me, a dark, black hemorrhage in my soul. It’s all I can do to keep myself on my feet. I understand why some cultures cover their mirrors during times of grief and loss. It’s so you can spare yourself the pain of your own reflection, because you don’t look too good. The whole experience kicks your ass. I look like shit right now. I haven’t seen my reflection, and I noticed I was avoiding doing so. But I don’t need to, I can feel it. I know I look like hell.
I thought for a moment I could just get through this quickly. Feel the pain and loss of River’s passing, and then move on. I’m sure that’s the end result. But the immediate reality is one of a very heavy, deeply entrenched grief and loss. One that is deep within me, and must be exorcised over time. It comes in waves, sneaks up behind me and then pulls me down. My best defense, I have found, is to succumb to it. To let it run thru me, wherever that may be. The physical manifestations can be powerful; flooding tears that fill my eyes, and blind me almost instantly, if I’m behind the wheel or on my motorcycle this can pose a problem. I feel these spasm like surges rush thru my body, finding their way out thru my face and mouth in sobs that literally rock my body, and force my head back, my neck clenched, my mouth agape. My breathing stops, and I gasp for air because my entire torso is compressing under it’s own uncontrolled will. It’s like I’m Fay Wray in the grip of Kong, except, in this case he’s squeezing a little too tight.
I can’t eat. My appetite lasts about as long as it takes me to open the refrigerator or cupboard and then expect him to come in to the sound of the opening door to beg…and he doesn’t. And knowing full well, he won’t, I no longer feel hungry. The hunger replaced by the vast emptiness.
I keep hearing River; his cough behind me, his nails clicking on the tile. I keep seeing him out of the corner of my eye. I keep expecting to have to step over him when I round the corner in the hallway.
I’ve never felt this kind of sorrow. I ache in my core. I feel lessened. If I close my eyes I see this massive valley, seemingly endless. Crossing seems pointless. I’ll have just as much of nothing as I have now. I want my dog back. I want to change the principals of life to suit me. I want the rules that govern the Universe to make exception for River. I hurt that bad. I have no use for rational, or reality. Reality is too painful right now.
I don’t sleep, or I don’t fall off to sleep. I crash. I know that if I lay down before I am ready to pass out from exhaustion, then I will lie there and run the loss of River around in my head until the pain paints itself into a massive lead blanket that wraps itself around me and smothers me with the aguish. But if I hold off, keep myself up watching mindless movies, and then cap the day off with a couple Excedrine PM’s and a beer, I go off to dreamland rather easily, where I still can find my big dog, and get some time with him. Unfortunately, I wake up. Wake to the cold realization that he’s still not here, and he’s not coming back, and that I must endeavor without him.
The hole in my in my life is eclipsed only by the one in my soul. River was my purpose these last few months. Everyday began, and ended with him. The hours in between were comprised mainly of me worrying about him, making sure his needs were met, and that he was attended to in any way he might need me to. Now, without that, the emptiness in my world seems as vast as that valley I see when I close my eyes. Idle time is painful, but finding the motivation to occupy that time constructively is an endeavor within itself. Because, honestly, I don’t care much about anything right now.
The grief has become the newest “demon in the corner”; another nasty little bastard who is just waiting for me to turn my back long enough for him to jump on and try to ride me into the ground. Right now he’s winning. I spend all of my time hunched over in pain, leaving my back constantly exposed and vulnerable.
I can’t even think about another Dog. No way. It’s hard enough to pay attention to the other two here. Both suffering thru the loss in their own ways, on their own terms. Yet, I have to fight off disdain and resentment whenever I look at them right now. Guilty by association. Innocent victims of species and proximity.
I don’t want to move past too fast. I feel a sense of duty to River to not move on with my life too quickly. I owe him more than that. I like that in some cultures there is a set time of grieving, like the Jewish tradition of sitting Shiva for a week. I feel a need to feel his loss until it feels okay not to. I know I will miss him until the day I die, but I’m not ready to put his life, or the part of mine he shared, behind me anytime soon. He has been as constant a part of my existence as the beat of my own heart.
I find myself pacing the house. Wandering slowly through it, hands in my pockets, eyes on the floor. Aimless meandering, as if I’m going to enter a room, and there he’ll be. Looking up at me, panting expectantly. This is brutal. Every landscape a minefield. It seems like the most random and mundane things will remind me, and I fall forward into the pain.
I took two days off of work; Thursday and Friday, to spend with River, followed by Saturday and Sunday to deal with it. I go back to work tomorrow and wonder how it is that I go back to normal. There’s no going back to normal. Things were normal when River was here. So I have to do something new. Some how find a new normal, one that is based in this reality. At least I know River was a huge part of the new one too. W. H. Auden said it well in 1936, and is often quoted:


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Unfortunately, for now, that’s how I feel. It’s going to be a long time before I’m happy again. They say time heals all, but I’m in no rush to heal.

For the Love of the Pain

Freshy!

I am tattooed. Quite heavily, actually. Or, at least, heavier than most. I have a complete “sleeve” on each arm, a large piece on my outer left calf, an interesting piece between my shoulder blades, script around my collar line, and, most recently, a large Monarch butterfly on my left pectoral. I never intended to be the “tattooed guy”. As a kid, while I did like to write on myself (my mom used to tell me if I was supposed to do that my skin would be made of paper. I love “momisms”), I never envisioned myself as a guy with lots of tattoos. When I first moved to San Diego in 1996, I answered an ad for a blues band looking for a singer. I have been singing my whole life, and was itching to get back into a band, and learn the city by playing around in it. I had, at the time, two “quarter-sleeves”, basically a couple of good sized tattoos from the shoulder to the elbow on each arm. By chance, the guitar player for the band was a tattoo artist. Not only was he a tattoo artist, come to find out, he’s THE tattoo artist in San Diego. The rest as they say is history. We played music together for a few years, built a friendship forged by common values, common interest, and the bond of mutual creativity. It took about eight years to finish the arms.

I can’t speak for others, but I’m pretty sure anybody with a lot of tattoos will tell you that the more you get tattooed, the less it becomes about the tattoo. I firmly believe that everybody knows what their tattoo looks like. Anybody who doesn’t have a tattoo, has, in their minds eye, in their creative conscious, their first tattoo. Someone might comment on my ink, and I’ll ask if they have any. They’ll say “No.” but that is almost invariably followed by, “But I know what I’d get if I had one…” There's something about the first tattoo. It's alluring. It's dangerous, it's renegade...it's one of those things you wish you could do, but up to now, you haven't. The thing is, as you accumulate the work, it becomes much more about the experience of tattooing. It's about the idea, the creative process, the ritual of preparation, and then, ultimately, the needle. When I say the "Ritual of Preparation", I'm talking about the half hour or so leading up the actual tattooing. The artist prepares his work area; he’ll lay out his hermetically sealed needles, pick out a gun or two (this is the actual machine that drives the needle), He loads the chosen needle assemblies into the guns, securing them in place with the snap of a rubber band. He puts on his surgical gloves, and then sets up his little ink tubs. Small thimble sized plastic cups that the colored inks are put into to be used for the tat. As the individual getting tattooed, there is a sense of anticipation and heightened awareness. Yer adrenaline starts moving, you start to get a little “pre-game” pump going. In fact I get the same feeling I used to get right before a football game. This is intensified by the sound of the tattoo machine buzzing in short staccato bursts as the artist gets the needle set up. You settle into the chair, get comfortable, maybe a glass of water, and you set your mind to 'Endure'.

There is no way that anyone who has a tattoo can adequately explain what the pain sensation of a tattoo needle is really like. Fucking impossible. The sting of the needle is not like, I dunno, regular pain. It’s different. I can’t tell you how, but make no mistake, it is a different pain experience. Don’t get me wrong, it hurts. Some spots hurt more than others, and some spots hurt like a mutherfucker!

I am not sure how many times I’ve been “under the needle”, somewhere between 30-40 times is a fair estimate. More often than not I find myself asking myself what it is that keeps bringing me back…to the pain. This is something that happens over time, not a sudden realization. You keep going back. You love the sound of the gun. The smell of the anticeptic, the medieval look of the hand made needle assemblies. There is something very raw and primal about it. You anticipate the burn of the needle, you wait for any sudden change in sensation, and you most certainly know what it's like to feel and hear the motor slow down as the needle digs in. There’s nothing like the feeling of one long solid well burned-in line.

I love those. I call them "Hot Ones". A single strong stoke of the needle that covers seven or eight inches of flesh in the process. Your nostril’s flair, yer jaw sets, you smell the adrenaline in yer sinus, and you breathe deep and feel the endorphin rush kick in. This is reason number one for the purist. Endorphin means "endogenous morphine". They are, in chemical terms, polypeptides that are able to bind onto the neurotransmitters in the brain and provide relief from pain. They are one of several “morphine-like” chemicals that were discovered in the brain about thirty or so years ago. There are actually about twenty different endorphins that are released within the brain, all having different applications and uses, most of which are, as yet, undiscovered. The strongest of these, or at least the one that seems to have the greatest impact on the brain and the body, is Tyrosine. Its molecular structure is very close to that of morphine itself, hence the related effect and comparison. Let me tell you, in the midst of a serious tattoo session, those babies start firing in bunches. The sensation can be intense, pleasing, and downright sedating. The effect, unfortunately, is short lived, and after about twenty minutes it starts to recede, and yer left with a lot of inflamed, exposed, and hyper–sensitive nerve endings in the skin, that are still being subjected to the sting of the needle. This is where it gets serious, this is the part that separates the herd. As hard to believe as this might be, this is the other reason, I believe, that people come back. From this point on, it becomes a mindset. You focus yourself. You gut it out and endure on sheer will, fortitude, and strength of character. You would love to get up from the chair, but will not until the artist says it’s time. Until it is done. It requires putting yerself, mentally, on a whole different plain. And when it’s finished, there seems to be another rush. This one is a rush of relief, confidence, empowerment and satisfaction, and sometimes it's so intense that's it's down right enlightening, fucking life affirming...you know yer awake and alive!. And that is why you do it. That’s what you’re paying for. That's what you come back for. The actual tattoo, after a while, is just a by-product.

Serious