so small

There are more dead souls residing in this city than the living, and even among the living sometimes that seems a bit debatable.

This does mean there's quite a few old-school cemeteries with huge trees and statues of angels and ornate family vaults. When I was little before the presence of subculture in my consciousness, me and my friend up the street would have her dad take us to old graveyards half-hidden in the woods where we'd go through looking at the stones marveling at the oldness and the quiet. And now, I always stop to wander through the rows of stones whenever I go anywhere, because each place is different, and I try to conjure up the stories so cryptic in the semantics of epitaphs, the size and intricacy of the sculpture, the mementos left saying that they have not been forgotten.



There's a distance that is comfortable, as I have no family members there, and the history is often distant enough that it becomes like a park, a neutral space to linger and be introverted. I wonder if I've turned into a cliche this weekend, as I drove from one to the other on my day off, listening to of all people Nick Cave, snapped photos of stone angels under golden trees framed by the light of the late autumnal sunset.



I told a friend of mine this as we turned the corner to the one on Riverside because I'd seen a sign for a place called Babyland. It's an old place, with an imposing red stone gatehouse with gothic accents galore, so I assumed that Babyland would be similarly archaic.

I was not expecting what we found instead.



Rows of wooden crosses with names and Our Beloveds. Stillbirths and kids that died a day old, granite-etched faces of bright eyes and big smiles and lives cut short. And who decorates a cemetery for Halloween? I'm disoriented by the teddy bears encased in cellophane hanging from hooks. I walk through snapping pictures and trying to glean some meaning, but I just don't understand.



In the old cemeteries, it was common to see the names of children who lived a few weeks or a couple years, and that was the way it was, for every ten kids, maybe five made it. We don't think about it that way now. What also got me was that all of these names were clearly kids from the neighborhood, black and Puerto Rican and the occasional Greek or Romanian.



What were the stories here as fresh as the newly unearthed dirt and the ungrimed silk flowers? Is this another way of grieving that I don't understand? When my grandma would take me to the cemetery with her I would collect rose petals from her garden and scatter them on my youngest sister's grave. My parents never did get a headstone. It was too hard to think about, I guess.



How many of these kids would be in kindergarten right now if they had been born in a place with less pollution and more favorable circumstances? I don't know, and I feel like I'm treading in a place where the grief is still raw. I'm no longer a tourist. I'm an interloper, and I'm glad there's no one here besides us.

codas

The heat permeating, the inability to cool down, hair metal on the radio all weekend, no breeze to speak of and I end up spending the afternoon fleeing the heat and Getting Things Taken Care Of in strip malls and big box stores like a Real American because I need groceries and work clothes and art supplies. I've spent the night drinking tea and listening to 70's rock, swirling paint around to Skynyrd and Sabbath, relocating to the balcony because it finally feels good out here. I know it's the weekend of cookouts and revelry for the Peonage and their overlords, but I'm just not there right now.

We went to visit my great uncle this morning at the nursing home, and it's the first time I've seen him since he had a stroke a couple weeks ago. His words come slower, and he apologizes constantly for what he deems boring talk ("I just can't do the small talk anymore") but this is the best conversation I've ever had with him. Instead of sitting alone in his house listening to the radio where people keep talking about buying gold, he's found people there to talk to, a priest he likes (he's never liked organized religion because he thinks it's all about parting fools with their money, I understand this), a nice lady friend down the hall "Nothing romantic, we just talk about old times. I need an alliance now like I need a hole in my head..." He knows this will probably be where he spends his last days trying to learn how to walk again, how to speak the way he once did, but as strange as this is, it might be a good way to end, a place where there's people to talk to and take care of him so he won't die alone.

I hate nursing homes slightly less than funeral homes, but this place is beautiful and if I become unable to take care of myself I'd rather be there than a lot of places. Catholics do the nursing home thing well, that whole sanctity of life/having the funds to stay there I guess, and I'm relieved I no longer have to fear going to check on him at his house and hoping he's still alive because I don't know what I'd do otherwise.

The prayers I struggle most with are those involving the changing of souls, because it's just such an impossible thing for me to understand that divine calculus of how it all works, but between this time and the last time I saw him he's a different person or rather not different but alive in a way that he wasn't before even as he grows closer to shedding the mortal coil now after 90 years of life and disappointments, a childhood in poverty, the hell of the Pacific theater (which he still doesn't talk about), an unhappy marriage with a woman who couldn't see past her own issues("She wasn't all there, but I didn't treat her right. I supported her financially but not emotionally..."), a daughter in worse shape than he is, a house full of tchotchkes worth nothing, if this is the closest thing to heaven how tragic is that?

He used to always talk about money and a good job and being a decent person being the ultimate most important thing and for the first time in 92 years, he's finally started talking to God after being so bitter and so stubborn for so long. I've never heard him apologize for anything before. I've never heard him say that what you have doesn't matter. I've never seen him so peaceful, so ready to face a pending mortality, ready to let go of all the other things he clung to so desperately. I'm glad he can't see me crying because I just couldn't stop.

city of the dead...

I drove out last night to meet up with a friend of mine at my favorite coffeeshop to finish out the weekend, making a detour to Edgewater to take photos of the sunset as my low battery light began to flash.



The barista was listening to Blonde Redhead, Kim graded papers, I studied for a test and got mad at the glaring historical inaccuracies in my textbook (such as that Zimbabwe was way better off under Mugabe, and that Southern Sudan is overreacting because they were Christianized rather than Islamized, genocide be damned), and drank green tea. The atmosphere in there is perfect for writing, so I gave up on my stupid book and now have a real beginning for the Chinese Democracy of an epic Cleveland novel.

There was a couple at the table next to us that were talking kind of ridiculously the whole night. It seemed like they were both really trying to impress each other with how ironic and artsy they were and it just got too boring to even eavesdrop on after awhile. She figured out that they had met over the Internet and this was the first time they saw each other in person. I get the feeling it's not going to work out. But maybe that's just my inherent cynicism about anything involving mere mortals.

I hung out with the family this weekend, and my sister asked me to be her doula when she gives birth three months from now, which I guess means something along the lines of moral support and "being there" and such. I'm honestly honored, excited and nervous to be there with her through the whole birthing process, whatever this whole thing involves.

I've been getting some cabin fever pretty bad so I went down to the Valley to walk around in the woods. I don't know if it counts as real Darkthroning in the woods as I didn't venture too far off the beaten track given the foot of snow still on the ground that kept me on the little paths off the main paved one since I'm alone and don't want to have my body fished out of Rocky River months from now whether from my own well-documented clumsiness or foul play.



Everyone else either had a dog or two or was wearing spandex from head to toe and running seemingly oblivious through the beautiful winter scenes, while I walked with no real hurry, taking pictures of random pine trees and the sun coming through bare branches by the frozen river, finding that my pair of combat boots from my punk rock days were actually something almost practical.



The thaw in temperature and the great feeling of being out and moving sent me out after church to Lakeview for more solo wandering with camera. I covered a lot of ground, climbing up snow covered hills, trying to distinguish the indentations denoted by smaller gravestones covered by the snow, and took loads of pictures of angels and monuments that looked like mini Egyptian temples, the final resting places of robber barons and people that streets were named after.







I never realized there was a whole back part until I got back to where my car was and ran into a professor that my sister had who told me that Eliot Ness's grave was over by the pond. He said he jogs here on a regular basis and recommended the chapel to me.

I said I take out of town visitors to see the gorgeous little building with the Tiffany window and glass mosaics and he said "you take people to the CEMETERY?" but considering he's into Romantic poets and whatnot, it shouldn't be that shocking.





The gates were going to close in half an hour so I drove the rest of it, stopping to take photos, but newer markers aren't nearly so interesting as the old ones. I finally found the Haserot Angel, in repose next to a steep cliff.



I got lost in the back part that's newer and where the names on the tombstones are slightly less WASPy but the combination of morbid ostentation and affectations of piety are just as much omnipresent, like this stone, that has a big cross but then has the social standing quite prominent below. These people aren't even dead yet.



One woman was sitting on a chair next to her husband's grave in the middle of a field and sometimes I forget that there really are dead bodies here underneath the ground and the layers of ice and snow. It's easy to forget that when all you see is monuments and angels.

sangre

Spent the last few days drinking lemonade, taking care of cats, city wanderings, hitting up the Puerto Rican festival for carnival rides and people-watching, late night coffee, getting frustrated with the male species, Indian food with my sister, meeting my probation officer, walks to Edgewater, wondering why I can hear the Paramore concert from a back porch that is 2 miles away, and worrying about my dad. He's not getting any worse, but he's not getting better. They've given him 7 pints of blood already and are running test after test.

I used to donate blood when I was in high school even though I'm deathly terrified of needles and the last few times I've been anemic and such low blood pressure (because I don't stress myself much) I haven't been able to do it. I think I might try to do it again.

a father to the fatherless

This weekend started out quiet... catching up on my sleep, bike riding at sunset, house party on the east side, dancing at Native Tongues Night at the b-side with some good people (I don't tend to do the clubby scene but I love me some early 90's hip-hop goodness) and staying out way too late.

And then I get a phone call Sunday morning while I'm at church.

The father of one of the families of refugees I worked with beat up his wife horribly and then committed suicide. Children's Services took the kids and now they'll be in the foster care system, which scares me to think of them being separated and having do deal with a whole new level of stress.

It's been about six months since I quit volunteering and working with the kids on Saturdays and tutoring them three nights a week during the school year. It was an incredible year of my life that opened up a world to me and I learned a lot about a culture very different from my own and hopefully did some good.

But being immersed in their lives and culture also meant that I had gotten in way over my head, found that in typical Western world fashion I'd become someone that enables rather than someone that empowers and life got crazy for me personally and I got burned out.

This news didn't come as a surprise to me because this was one of the families that was struggling the most in so many ways. The kids were having a hard time in school and last summer I had to get a social worker involved last summer because of a slumlord they were renting from. 9 people in the top of a single turned into a double, with a foot of water in the basement that smelled horrible.

I think about this woman with a broken body who's been to hell and back countless times and wondering what will happen to these kids and wishing I could do something that would make everything ok but all I think I'll be able to do is go and visit her at the hospital tonight, try to stumble through my Swahili and just be there. I've been able to find out that she'll survive this, though she isn't speaking at all right now, and that the kids are in Columbus. I hope they're not separated from each other, there's 7 of them aged 3 to about 15.




It seems like we have this skewed way of looking at those who live among us as strangers and refugees, speaking different languages and doing things differently than how we do. Either it's a fear or a distance because they are "other" or some of the more socially conscious can sometimes be guilty of looking on with pity or elevating them to some level of sainthood for being born in the wrong place or the wrong time.

Or we think that the struggle ends when they get here, but here also means unemployment, discrimination, cultural clashes, isolation, and often heavy alcoholism in a profoundly economically depressed city in dangerous neighborhoods where they're especially vulnerable. It's hard to learn a new language when you've never been in school and can't read in your own language.

I was reading through the Psalms last night and marveling at how God cares about those who are strangers, those who are fatherless, those who have lost. I hope that Mari and the kids get a sense of that.

"You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,

defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more."

piecing it together.

I wasn't expecting so many cars when I got down to Ohio City for the memorial service last night. I was expecting the news crews circling like vultures when they smell death.

I could see the windows lit up at St. Patrick's and I got inside just before the service started, trying to pray and contemplate and collect my thoughts which is sometimes so hard to do when everyone around you is devastated. Besides Jody & Ernie, I really didn't know anyone else there, recognized some people from the drop-in center and the Catholic Worker house, wandering souls that I've seen walking down Lorain Avenue.

Seeing Ray's picture by the prayer cards make me choke up and I wonder what he would have thought of the first minister there invoking a "holy one called by many names yet nameless" when he most definitely was whispering "Emmanuel" as he died after helping the others escape.

There was a lot of talk about coming together as a community and being united and getting in touch with our "better selves," but the longer I exist on this earth, I am less and less convinced that it is true. Not that we don't do what we can, but honestly the only real change I see is what God does in us and how that affects the way in which we live and view others.

Sure, you can move back into the neighborhood and fix up an old house and bring up the property values and keep your money in the city by going out to the theater and the nice restaurants, but do you care about your neighbor? Do you think about the struggles that you see around you? Do you consider them a nuisance that you hope goes away when more people like you move in? Or do you get involved and engaged? Your idea of a quality of life is not the same as another's.

Loving this city is not just about the cultural amenities, the sports teams, the funky neighborhoods, and the happening arts scene. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is cool and I enjoy it too. Still, you can find that kind of thing almost anywhere. I could have moved somewhere else and found more lucrative employment, but I stayed here because of the people.

I love this city because even though it's profoundly corrupt and falling apart, the people here are amazing. If you don't care about your neighbors and look out for them, it doesn't matter how you live or what you do on the weekends, you don't care about your city.

they remained, others fled

This is the inscription on the Carter family tombstone, a family with 9 kids who stayed when the plague hit and everyone else left town. I wonder if this will be my epitaph someday too.

On Tuesdays, since I have my car, me and Lindsay have been taking mini Cleveland adventures on common hour/lunch break. Today's involved fresh-baked naan bread from Aladdin's bakery and then hanging out at the Erie Street Cemetery.

I've always wanted to check it out but usually remembered this whenever I was at an Indians game and it was already dark. I've been a geek for old cemeteries since I was 9 or something and this one was old and I finally got to see the grave of Joc-o-sot, vaudeville performer, sports team haunter, and chief who got stuck dying in Cleveland instead of his native Wisconsin.



Evidently, some of these bodies were "reburied" here in 1939 which is kind of creepy. Maybe that's what early settler associations did back then.

Is it indicative of living in a dying city when your favorite destinations are forgotten streets, abandoned buildings, and graveyards? Does it just cement the fact that I'm still alive and enjoying it so much?

Also, today is Jeff Buckley's birthday. I played a half hour worth of him on the show today, but didn't feel like playing "Hallelujah" because everyone does.

11/11

When I heard about that house fire down in Ohio City, I hoped he wasn't living there anymore. Like most people who are in a constant state of transition and had their struggles with substance abuse, it wasn't uncommon to lose touch with him for months.

He slept on our balcony the summer before last for a few weeks and did our dishes every night. I knew it was hard on him because he hated feeling like a freeloader. He moved around all over the west side, picked up welding and machine shop jobs. Sometimes he'd show up at church or I'd see him around the neighborhood.

I emailed my old roommate to see if she knew anything and he's gone. I know that his struggles are finished now, that he's with God and not dealing with all the struggles of this world anymore.

Veteran's Day was always one of those holidays that I never really think about but this year it has more of a face for me besides my grandparents' generation. I think of all the people like him that came home to a hostile country and a lack of a support network who ended up on the streets.

I'm realizing more and more how many people fall through the cracks.

funereal

If you're Catholic, you can't get buried during Holy Week, we had the funeral yesterday and the wake the night before. I'm more morbid than some, but I can't stand funeral homes. I thought it'd be hard to see her in a casket but it looked so much unlike her, it didn't even seem real. I didn't tell too many people initially because I hate going to those places and I'd hate to drag other people to them.

Even though I haven't been Catholic for about 15 years, I still know all the words to the mass. It's strange how that sticks, even if I no longer remember when I'm supposed to kneel.

I was glad I got to see the extended family. When I get old I want to be like them, still able to get around and laugh. I look around at all of us and I see what I'll look like when I'm older. We all have the same eyes and the same weird sense of humor. My great uncles (her brothers) are joking about growing their cash crop marijuana in the vegetable garden back home and asking us how we can stand living in Cleveland with all these people around. I forget that for many of them, Canton's a thriving metropolis.

We all went out for Polish comfort food (stuffed cabbage, kielbasa, noodles,passed on the czernina (duck-blood soup) that was on special). I was tired and it was rainy so I was glad to get home.

ginka

For some reason I've been incredibly peaceful about losing someone close to me. I think a part of it is some kind of denial, like "she's not really gone," and then you go to the funeral home and you see this stiff body there with all the life gone from it, and it just hits so hard. I can't bring myself to delete her number out of my phone even though I know no one will pick up if I call. I haven't been able to bring myself to write about it even until now.

I wish I had some pictures to post here because she was beautiful and spunky and the two of us would giggle like we were the same age when I'd go over there and hang out with her. She had a hard life and didn't have the opportunities that her kids and grandkids did, but she and her brothers and sisters were some of the happiest people I've ever met.

When we'd drive back down to deep southeast Ohio, to the small town where she grew up, it was always the best family reunions, with lots of amazing food, people playing accordions, homemade wine, and my dad's cousins blowing off illegal fireworks on the back fields as the siblings would trade Polish jokes and tell us we were pronouncing my last name wrong, and tell stories about bailing their youngest brother out of jail in Wheeling for fighting, and my dad would talk about how he and his cousins used to play this game called "Vietnam War" where they'd go out in the cornfields and lob missiles of dirt at each other over the tops of the rows.

She loved to dance, and that's how she and my grandpa met, when she moved up to Cleveland to work at a factory and they would go dancing every weekend, taking the streetcars all over the city to dance halls from Detroit Road to Collinwood. They taught me how to polka in the basement, and unsuccessfully tried to show me how to golf. She and her sisters would watch golf the way most people watch football, and it was amazing. I had offered to move in with her to help her out, but she lived on her own until the end, still driving and getting around and sending me letters with beautiful handwriting.

I know she's in a better place, but I'm going to miss her like crazy. I'm going to miss her jokes and her phone calls and watching Wheel of Fortune with her and hanging out in the kitchen cooking Polish food on Christmas Eve.