Tribute

Dear Krenek--

I’m sorry I missed the concert. Martine, who also loves Feldman, said the performance (at the New School, not the one at Roulette, which we all missed) was “magical.” I admit Feldman puts me to sleep but I don’t count that as a strike against him and, anyway, wasn’t the reason I wasn’t able to make it. I had to have unplanned dental surgery -- they pulled my wisdom teeth. Nothing really interesting to report about it other than the sudden pain that drove me to the dentist was electric and excruciating, like none other I’ve experienced but which also was intermittent and seemed to settle down, thankfully, with some ibuprofen. It made me contemplate my mother’s chronic pain, and also how such chronic pain in general can poison a life. It’s her birthday tomorrow -- she turns eighty. It’s also, by the way, our friend, Lin Huiyin’s. Huiyin is very fit and plays pickleball on the regular (or so it’s reported; I’ve no idea what pickleball even is), but recently she has been feeling quite badly, having pinched a nerve in her back. We should take her out for a birthday dinner, don’t you think? To cheer her up. Well, I see this first paragraph is a report of various intimations of mortality, unfortunately, which leads me (sadly, a little too apropos) to why I’m writing.

I had sent Jane a photograph of a tree near my home. One that I loved. It was in fact leafing rather beautifully this spring. Every morning, on my way to work, I would say good morning to this tree. I’ve even taken to photographing it through the seasons. But last night, coming home from another sweet evening -- we’ve been lucking out on the weather, don’t you think? -- I returned to my neighborhood and...

To tell you the truth it’s hard to even write it. But anyway, I came home and was horrified and not a little heartbroken to discover a crew of workmen cutting down the tree.

I asked the butchers I mean workmen: For god’s sake why were they doing this. And they said the tree was sick and pointed to rot at its center. I stole a bit of bark from the remnants and went home, the sound of their saws chasing me and which I could still hear through the apartment window. Home, I promptly poured myself a too large glass of scotch and wept.

Let’s not talk about Shel Silverstein or Zhuangzi at this moment.

I’m sure no one will shed many tears for my late beautiful neighbor but I wanted, at the very least, a place to pay tribute. I guess that will be this letter to you, Ernst.

Before I came home and made this devastating discovery, I’d actually had a very fine dinner with an old college buddy. He’s now a journalist covering technology -- but I still get along with him. We had congee for dinner, which is about all my poor teeth can handle right now.

Over beer, some tender greens nicely sauteed with garlic, and our congee, he told me about how he’d been thinking about the lifecycle of monarch butterflies and how, in their long migration from Canada to Mexico, they will go through several generations.

So it is grandchildren, or even great-great-grandchildren, who complete the journey begun by an ancestor. My friend related this migration to the cognitive revolution we are going through, now, with respect to artificial intelligence. We won’t see the other side of the singularity -- should there even be an other side. His point being we think that there should be some End Point we can imagine, but that the churning river of time has no particular place we will see or land upon, that we for the foreseeable future will be churning along, or migrating through miles and miles, on a journey some ancient one began for us and which will be finished by a distant heir.

Well, Ernst, my dear friend. Heraclitus and Lao Tzu agreed that all is change. It’s too pat a way to end this letter and cold consolation - but I can’t think of what to do with such grief for a tree. The other lesson from sudden loss also appears : love fully while you have them.

À bientôt,
Frank