After posting an entry on this topic, I thought I should mark the same event in my personal "log," and doing so, noticed a big drop in the altitude of the tone. No audience. So I killed off the elegiac prose and copied the notes to myself (slightly redacted) here.
***
Saturday December 17 2011 224 pm
How could you do that? You beat me to it.
Mary Ann’s dead. Died June 24, 2010 - 17 months ago. Died “unexpectedly” in her home. Bottle and pills is my guess.
I woke last night thinking about her, ran long fantasies about meeting her on the street, BART, wherever - then about exchanges on the blog - later, in the morning, I had to admit that I miss her and that she probably had the power to bring me back in just as before - put a lot of the morning into her, actually; so it’s no big coincidence that I googled her. Always before I turn up nothing, but today I got her obit.
Bet she couldn’t stand losing her beauty, her (pretty powerful) allure. Bet she saw herself alone. Bet she had the guts. Can’t guess what other factors were involved. I should have been there; I should have had my eye on her pulse. Glad I didn’t contact her before that, though, because then I’d think it was all about me. It was all about her. Or somebody else.
White wine, or had she switched to mixed drinks, vodka or gin? What tunes was she playing? Was she still in the Parker street place? What tunes.
I cried off and on for an hour or so, re-reading her songs to go on the blog. All Those Midnights got to me first. I put that and the “they” one online. She’s the first close friend who has died since the fallout from the sixties, Gene and Vernon. And she’s probably suicide too.
I don’t know that. But it makes the most sense. She didn’t slip in the shower.
Just Like a Woman? For You? Something from high school? Something from after, the 90’s? She had a lot of songs. But something was playing. She would tune out laying stretched on her living room floor with the music on then get up in the dark of the morn and climb into bed. That’s it; but this time she didn’t get up.
Once she sang to me:
They
Asked how I knew
Turtle shit is blue...
I
Looked at him and said
Sir you are misled
Turtle shit is red...
Adios.
That was her parting salute on that last phone call...I’ve been using it ever since.
Although there was that time a couple years later I called her (and everyone else) trying to offload those tickets to the Bammies; then I think all she said was “no fucking way.”
And there you go.
Like my dad’s last words to me were “That’s your tough luck.”
I doubt she stayed mad at me though. Just half-mad. Like me. God I wish I could hold her as she lay there fading out.
Well, I wrote to Eve that there’s nothing in all this we don’t already know. But maybe that’s not so. This isn’t something I’m used to. In fact, it’s a new world. Subtracted. How could she do this? I know how she could. I just don’t know how she did.
Now that I'm saying this it occurs to me to revise my scenario - she might have taken up pills and not have organized a suicide; exactly. She might have just gone a little too far. But knowing that one night she would.
Dead
All right. That’s it.
Fucking cunt
What’s the point in looking cool if Mary Ann is dead?
***
***
Saturday December 17 2011 224 pm
How could you do that? You beat me to it.
Mary Ann’s dead. Died June 24, 2010 - 17 months ago. Died “unexpectedly” in her home. Bottle and pills is my guess.
I woke last night thinking about her, ran long fantasies about meeting her on the street, BART, wherever - then about exchanges on the blog - later, in the morning, I had to admit that I miss her and that she probably had the power to bring me back in just as before - put a lot of the morning into her, actually; so it’s no big coincidence that I googled her. Always before I turn up nothing, but today I got her obit.
Bet she couldn’t stand losing her beauty, her (pretty powerful) allure. Bet she saw herself alone. Bet she had the guts. Can’t guess what other factors were involved. I should have been there; I should have had my eye on her pulse. Glad I didn’t contact her before that, though, because then I’d think it was all about me. It was all about her. Or somebody else.
White wine, or had she switched to mixed drinks, vodka or gin? What tunes was she playing? Was she still in the Parker street place? What tunes.
I cried off and on for an hour or so, re-reading her songs to go on the blog. All Those Midnights got to me first. I put that and the “they” one online. She’s the first close friend who has died since the fallout from the sixties, Gene and Vernon. And she’s probably suicide too.
I don’t know that. But it makes the most sense. She didn’t slip in the shower.
Just Like a Woman? For You? Something from high school? Something from after, the 90’s? She had a lot of songs. But something was playing. She would tune out laying stretched on her living room floor with the music on then get up in the dark of the morn and climb into bed. That’s it; but this time she didn’t get up.
Once she sang to me:
They
Asked how I knew
Turtle shit is blue...
I
Looked at him and said
Sir you are misled
Turtle shit is red...
Adios.
That was her parting salute on that last phone call...I’ve been using it ever since.
Although there was that time a couple years later I called her (and everyone else) trying to offload those tickets to the Bammies; then I think all she said was “no fucking way.”
And there you go.
Like my dad’s last words to me were “That’s your tough luck.”
I doubt she stayed mad at me though. Just half-mad. Like me. God I wish I could hold her as she lay there fading out.
Well, I wrote to Eve that there’s nothing in all this we don’t already know. But maybe that’s not so. This isn’t something I’m used to. In fact, it’s a new world. Subtracted. How could she do this? I know how she could. I just don’t know how she did.
Now that I'm saying this it occurs to me to revise my scenario - she might have taken up pills and not have organized a suicide; exactly. She might have just gone a little too far. But knowing that one night she would.
Dead
All right. That’s it.
Fucking cunt
What’s the point in looking cool if Mary Ann is dead?
***
