When death finds you, may it find you alive.
African Proverb
Texas Hill Country. Enchanted Rock. A huge grayish granite dome rising from the limestone. The climb up is gradual with occasional trills of the canyon wren. People going up and down like columns of ants.
On a steeper stretch my frontal vision is limited – a false horizon of rock; and a vulture flies out almost at eye level before veering upward. A sudden reminder that death waits just beyond our vision. My mind skips to a steaming day in Bombay almost 50 years ago when I had a partial day’s reprieve from my job on a passenger liner. My guide had taken me to the Tower of Silence, an open valley on the far reaches of town where the Parsis took their dead to be laid out to be consumed by the vultures. It seemed quite exotic to that 20 year old boy who had seen little death in his life. But once the initial shock wore off, there was a feeling of what I can only call now, rightness. Flesh literally returning to the natural world, its elements again being recycled into life.
Five days ago my adopted brother, Greg Kimura, died after a prolonged decline caused by a brain stem tumor. It was not diagnosed for almost two years, and Greg gradually went from an athletic and physically vital man to a husk of his former self. Although puzzled by what was happening and losing strength, he continued to play tennis, hike and kayak. We did two strenuous trips together in the southwest canyon country. Greg was a little slower and tired more easily, but was holding his own no matter what we did.
When I saw him last August he has lost more than fifty pounds and needed hiking poles to walk. We had talked and I knew he was losing weight, but it took me aback to see how much he had declined. His diagnosis came a few days later and we knew that death was imminent.
2001 Mendocino Woodlands Camp. Dusty sunbeams making their way through redwood cover. A cool breeze with the slightest tinge of salt. One hundred men are arriving for a weeklong conference and milling about. Some greet friends from past years. Others introduce themselves to strangers. One man sits at a picnic table, alone, totally focused on maniacally writing. Strange, but “Oh, well.”
Six days later, our paths still not having crossed, he stands up during a session and reads a poem he has written, It is called Cargo and it changes my life.
I had just retired from thirty years of teaching sixth graders and had used the ideas found in Greg’s poem to change my role from an instructor focused on getting students to spew out facts to an educator that wanted to expand their world by leading them out (the literal meaning of education) of their world view and into one that stretched beyond anything they could imagine.
I had been inspired by Malidoma Some’, an African teacher from Burkina Faso. Cargo was dedicated to Malidoma. I approached Greg to thank him for his words and share a bit of how I too had benefitted from Malidoma’s teachings. We both continued to attend the annual event and over the next couple of years formed a strong bond. I invited him to Power of Poetry, a local festival I had begun in 2002. He came, read and conquered, totally captivating the audience and making many new friends. He returned to the festival two more times as a presenter, and almost every year to just be there to support the event.
On one of these occasions he helped me do the final edit on a poem I was presenting. I sit here today receiving consolation from its message – that the antidote for tragedy is putting beauty into the world, a basic part of what was Greg Kimura:
The Cellist of Sarajevo
Tomazo Albinoni could never have imagined Sarajevo
as he crafted the notes of his Adagio.
The son of a wealthy man, he had no cares,
and devoted himself to music.
A self proclaimed dilettante,
indulging himself in beauty.
The Adagio enfolds the listener,
seven minutes of deliberate playing,
slowing the breath as the bow strokes the strings,
the cello’s voice, so human,
words murmured behind a secret door.
In the Hell of Sarajevo rumors of fresh bread,
a connection to a normal world, now so far away.
They stood in anticipation, the smell so tantalizing,
as the bakery disappeared in the blast of mortar shell.
For twenty two days, one for each of these neighbors,
he carried his cello to the crater,
clad in black and white, music on the stand.
Amidst the snipers and the rubble,
playing Albinoni’s Adagio for them, and for himself.
Like Orpheus, ascending on the music
from the underworld of despair.
Tomazo wrote music for the pure simple joy of it,
but Vedran descending the Adagio’s minor chords,
to find the steady pulse
A precise and stately dance on
the path leading out of Hell.
Dipping into the wells of practice.
The waters of beauty seeping into his, and our, being.
Every stroke a conscious vote to return.
Each note a step on the shattered path to life.
April 2005
Over the years our friendship continued to deepen, although sometimes I wondered how well he really knew me. He once called me for sartorial advice about what to wear for a wedding. Wrong number!
Or when we had this conversation:
G: I have a problem.
A: (concerned voice) What is it?
G: I just met a really amazing woman named Sharol.
A: So? Why is this a problem?
G: Because I have to tell all the other women I can’t see them any more.
A: Fuck you.
And so it went – trading poems, having adventures, laughing, philosophizing, learning more and more about each other. He called me his ‘sixth grade teacher’, and many a time I had to threaten him with missing recess to get him to turn his work in on time. We began the Cargo Project, providing free posters of the Cargo poem with Evie’s illustration to anyone wishing to have it, especially schools. We were close as brothers and sometimes to me it felt like more, as we had chosen to do this. I could count on Greg for support and honest criticism when needed. And his quiet wisdom continued to amaze me.
On one of the occasions he presented at Power of Poetry a phone rang during one of his poems. I was pissed, as were many audience members. How could someone be so inconsiderate? The guilty woman slunk out of the presentation space. A few minutes later she returned and during a lull stood to explain herself. She was awaiting word about a sick relative and received a message that her mother had just died. Greg immediately read his poem of tears creating the river needed to send a deceased friend on his way. The tears that filled the room validated the truth of the poem.
As Greg’s body faded, he stayed present, receiving and generating love. I never heard a complaint. Only gratitude and appreciation for every moment. Long term memories were evanescent wisps of smoke, and then even short term ones became wobbly. But he reveled to be here and now, time a string of forever moments to be savored then gracefully released.
When we stop to think how much we have taken from the world during our life, we see what an immense gift we have received. The only way to even slightly repay our debt is to give ourselves as fully as we are able, sharing the cargo we carry with those who need it. If echoes of our deeds and ideas resound outward, they can reach those whose lives will be enriched from them, and it can be said that we walked well on this earth.
Greg, my brother, your gifts are now part of me. I will do my best to perpetuate them, share them, and in doing so, keep your spirit alive.