Perverse Pleasure

"How long will the pain last?" a broken hearted mourner asked me.

"All the rest of your Life." I have to answer truthfully.

We never quite forget.

No matter how many years pass, we remember.

The loss of a loved one is like a major operation.

Part of us is removed, and we have a scar for the rest of our lives.

As years go by, we manage.

There are things to do, people to care for,

tasks that call for full attention. 

But the pain is still there,

not far below the surface.

We see a face that looks familiar, 

hear a voice that echoes,

see a photograph in someone's album,

see a landscape that once we saw together,

and it seems as though a knife were in the wound again.

But not so painfully.. And mixed with joy, too.

Because remembering a happy time is not all sorrow,

it brings back happiness with it.

How long will the pain last?

All the rest of your life.

But the things to remember is that not only the pain will last, but the blessed memories as well.

Tears are proof of life. The more love, the more tears.

If this be true, Then how could we ever ask that the pain cease altogether.

For then the memory of love would go with it.

The pain of grief is the price we pay for love.

– Martha White

Perverse Pleasure

Cruising 99

BY GARRETT HONGO

for Lawson Fusao Inada and Alan Chong La

A Porphyry of Elements

Starting in a long swale between the Sierras

   and the Coast Range,

Starting from ancient tidepools of a Pleistocene sea,

Starting from exposed granite bedrock,

From sandstone and shale, glaciated, river-worn,

   and scuffed by wind,

Tired of the extremes of temperature,

   the weather's wantonness,

Starting from the survey of a condor's eye

Cutting circles in the sky over Tehachapi and Tejon,

Starting from lava flow and snow on Shasta,

   a head of white hair,

   a garland of tongue-shaped obsidian,

Starting from the death of the last grizzly,

The final conversion of Tulare County

   to the internal-combustion engine,

Staring from California oak and acorn,

   scrubgrass, rivermist,

   and lupine in the foothills,

From days driving through the outfield clover

   of Modesto in a borrowed Buick,

From nights drinking pitchers of dark

   in the Neon Moon Bar & Grill,

From mornings grabbing a lunchpail, work gloves,

   and a pisspot hat,

From Digger pine and Douglas fir and aspen around Placerville,

From snowmelt streams slithering into the San Joaquin,

From the deltas and levees and floods of the Sacramento,

From fall runs of shad, steelhead, and salmon,

From a gathering of sand, rock, gypsum, clay,

   limestone, water, and tar,

From a need or desire to throw your money away

   in The Big City,

From a melting of history and space in the crucible

   of an oil-stained hand—

Starting from all these, this porphyry of elements,

   this aggregate of experiences

Fused like feldspar and quartz to the azure stone

   of memory and vision,

Starting from all of these and an affectionate eye

   for straight, unending lines,

We hit this old road of Highway Ninety-Nine!