fifty

(Andrée here.)
That's Sean and Erik as tykes up there, Erik being the blond on the right.  Did you know his hair had ever been that color?  As he grew up it settled more toward the darker color most of you knew best.
He would have been fifty today.  There would have been some grey in there.  Runs in the family.

I wish E had had the time to come up with a few more grey hairs, but often I wonder if perhaps there was something so big waiting for him that he couldn't stay.  I found this in "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount.

***

Happy birthday, brother.

Someday I'll get past the first stair.

new terrain

Mogfest 2004

Hi everyone.  Andrée here.

Seven years ago today E took off for that far shore, where in my mind's eye I see him blazing across shining country in a sky-blue Pinz, new friends bouncing out the windows howling with laughter like we all used to do.

    

Dear E - 

Though it truly seems like just yesterday you went away, it's long enough now that your kids are as tall as I am, and Jemma goes away this weekend to be a junior at WSU.  It's a new world for her too, starting her grownup life where the hills roll far golden to the eye, her own shining country.  My auntie pride in her is about the only thing that makes missing you today bearable.  As you fly across the hills over there, do you look out to the horizons and understand everything?  I hope I will, too, someday.  Save me a seat and a brew, brother.  

Love, A

new year 2015: reach out

Andree here.  Many of you have seen the photo above already, most likely on my Facebook profile this past couple of days.  I can't recall what Erik was doing, precisely, but I love how evocative his hand is of his whole being: big, encompassing, nimble, hardworking, tender.
His kids are up visiting their grandparents as I write this; they head back to SoCal tomorrow.  They are so tall!  You know time has gone by in an academic way, and then you come up against a couple of beings who are suddenly lofty rangy teenpeople, and there you are whapped upside the head with the big wet fish of Time.
Which is a perfect example of why we need to . . .

Look as long as you can
at the friend you love
No matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.--Rumi

express it

Some of you probably saw this on Facebook, but I stumbled upon it again this morning.  Even if this wasn't my loved, lost brother this shot would still grab me by the heart; it captures just what it's like to think, believe, envision the things that could be, that you could create, if you just reached out with all that you have.
Who knows what he was doing; probably expounding upon something, could be anything, you'd never come up with it in a million years.
And he'd come up with something every damn day.
Was the world spinning fast enough to hold him?

new year's eve, 2013

Andree here.  Happy New Year's Eve, everybody.  I hope wherever you are it is warm and dry and you're with people who make you smile.  Maybe you're thinking of E and your memories are making you smile (Dean did that for me on Facebook today when he posted a funny Xerox of Erik's face that he found).
About the picture:  long story short, I took a leap of faith in the fall by leaving a job which, though destructive and humiliating, was utterly stable. I haven't found its replacement yet.  But a few weeks back, when I was deep in angst over my future or rather my perceived lack thereof, I woke up to find two things:  one, somebody had grabbed my special pink pumpkin I'd bought at my favorite farm stand, and smashed it on the sidewalk;  two, someone else had left this Buddha yard statue front and center on the porch to greet me when I opened the front door.  They did this deep in the night, as I'd been up till ten and was up before six.  I have still not got any clue of his source.
Clearly, I thought, it was time to have a little more faith in the random possibilities of the universe now.

So that happened.  

But I miss Erik still, in ways I don't understand until they have manifested (and then I have to explain).

And then I found this year's Rumi poem, which I keep hearing in E's voice:

The Body is Too Slow for Me

Toward the gardens,
Toward the orchards,
I am going.
If you want to stay here,
Stay here -
I am going!
My day is dark without His Face,
Toward that bright flame
I am going.

My soul is racing ahead of me.
It says, The body is too slow for me -
I am going.

The smell of apples arises
from the orchard of my soul.
One whiff and I am gone -
Toward a feast of apples
I am going.

A sudden wind won't blow me over.
Toward Him, like a mountain of iron,
I am going.

My shirt is ripped open
with the pain of loss.
Searching for a new life,
with my head held high,
I am going.

I am fire, though I seem like oil -
Seeking to be the fuel of His fire,
I am going.

I appear as a steady mountain
Yet bit by bit,
Toward that tiny opening
I am going.

From: A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi
Ode 1668 Version by Jonathan Star
from a translation by Shahram Shiva
- See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumi2.html#sthash.UyUP63Zx.dpuf

five

Is five years enough to make any sense out of losing E?  I want to feel that he walked away into something finer where all the answers are found and then don't matter any more.  As it happens someone far more gifted than me already told us that was true, years ago.

Figures it would be George Harrison and "All Things Must Pass."  But why did it take me till early this year to stop and listen to this song for the first time?
* * *
Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away

Sunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up and must be leaving
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass

None of life's strings can last
So, I must be on my way
And face another day

Now the darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.
* * *

Why must they pass?  Because something new must evolve in turn.  As Erik has.  As we must hope and strive to do.  Close your eyes for a moment, feel joy and generosity and freedom - you are reaching for the door of Erik's new house.

-- Andree

new year 2013

(Andree here) The photo above was taken on Vashon Island this past summer.  Why am I trotting it out now?  Because I love that almost every single smile is gone, except for one - nobody on the island wanted to take the last one, I guess, in case somebody really needed it.

When I run into generous-hearted stuff like this, that's when I find Erik.  He would have been 47 today.  He was grown up, successful, sophisticated, professional.  But unlike most such people he had a glowing core of sensibility that would have appreciated a Smile Dispenser with one smile left.  (I don't know, maybe he'd have made one and snuck it up on the post when no one was looking?)
So this smile goes out to E over there, and to everyone we love over there with him, and to every single one of you here with me today in this world.  There's one left.  Help yourself.  Happy birthday, E.

giving thanks: dean steps up

Happy late Thanksgiving weekend, everyone.  Andree here, but I'll pass it over to Dean, who was thinking of all the things Erik gave him . . .
* * *
On this Thanksgiving, I'd like to thank my good good friend Erik for some things I never got to thank him for in person. He ain't around here no more, but he's around. I sure do miss that funny f****r.
* * *
• Thanks for passing on your 7 paths of awesomeness. Everything i do now is filtered in one way or another by them.
• Thank you for going up and speaking first at my celebrity roast!
• Thanks for believing some of my impossible ideas and helping make them come true.
• Thanks for introducing me to The D!
• Thank you for farting directly into my ear. Thanks a lot. With no pants on.
• Thanks for valuing my opinion and making it easy to deal with difficult shit. That is something I miss a lot.
• Thanks for taking me to the nurse over your shoulder when I accidentally slit my throat in Print class.
• Thank you for letting me proofread your horrible f*cking handwriting.
• Thanks for trying to catch my car keys flying through the air behind me that were actually snot.
• Thanks for that crappy cassette tape drawer, the first thing you ever got me for Christmas. I still have it.
• I also now appreciate the value of Cumin more than ever, thanks!
• Thanks for not telling anyone about that one thing you pulled off my shoulder. Sheesh.
• Thanks to you, I knew about Krispy Kreme, Dr. Hoggly Woggly's, and Abe's… years before anyone up north.
• You were the first one to come visit me after I crashed into that horse, thanks man.
• Thanks for being the only one I'd trust to crack my thoraxicals. Hasn't been right since.
• One time, Erik helped me fake a stomach ailment to leave work early for a date, and even took pics of us after driving me to the ER. Thanks, Buddy!
• and Thanks for the Shoes! I'll be wearing them 100 yrs from now!

Listen to me.
Even if it has been decades since you talked to them, go out now, and thank the people you should, before you can't.

* * *

(Andree says) He's right, of course.  

2012..."only a curtain"

Hi, everyone.  Andree here.  This is a photo of Erik at Lyric's birthday party in 2008.
Four years have gone by.  They have brought sadness and consolation to each of us in whichever way we are built to bear and find them.  Some of us carried it with particular sweetness and beauty - I'm looking at you, my sister Brynn - and some of us carried it with white-hot rage and desolation (well, actually, that was just me).  Whomever we are, whatever we have felt and still feel, I found words this morning that I hope will lift your heart as they have lifted mine.  They are from the holy poet Rumi, who built an entire earth and heaven from the exchange of love.  Here is a selection from his "Ghazal #911," in which Rumi tells us that a grave is "only a curtain for the paradise behind," and continues,

. . . you'll only see me descending into a grave 

now watch me rise 

how can there be an end 

when the sun sets or the moon goes down. . . 

have you ever seen a seed fallen to earth 

not rise with a new life 

why should you doubt the rise 

of a seed named human 

have you ever seen a bucket lowered into a well 

coming back empty 

why lament for a soul when it can come back 

like Joseph from the well 

when for the last time you close your mouth 

your words and soul 

will belong to the world 

of no place no time

* * *

And in that world, as Rumi knew well, there is lots of room for all of us, and time for many talks, many dances, many parties.  I think of Erik charging around there, unstoppable.  And I hope, and I work, toward becoming worthy of joining in.  

This post is written with all the love at my command to all of you out there today.

in the woods

(Andree here) Dad's birthday was this past week, and he wanted a little quiet cookout up at Buncombe Hollow.  The weather was kind enough not to rain on us, so we grilled a pile of assorted meat and hung out in the woods.
The standing stones up in the circle have a bit of moss on them now, not much, but enough to make you realize that time has passed and living things grow.  Lyric and Jaeger are very tall these days - well, that's going to continue, of course - and there's a circle of ferns, getting ready to grow lush, surrounding the stones.  We say, "I wish Erik was here."  But stop and look around you at everything he made happen or that you remember, and there he is.