A message I sent to my kids:

Not wanting to mar the day, but I think you might want to know that Joe Mattingly and David Ashby have both died. Joe went to Louisville a few days ago to stay with his brother and I suppose he knew he was done and needed to die with his family. Like most friends, it was a complex relationship. I think it is safe to say that Joe was a piece of work. I do regret that in his final days he really wanted to take us to dinner in E-town for all the help we gave him of late, but we didn’t follow through.

As for David Ashby, well, we don’t know the exact circumstances but he fell off a ladder and died. Leave it to the man who had so many brushes with violent death including near electrocution at Dart. Enormously helpful and generous, a terrible bigot, but so aren’t we all… I can only think of the word ‘stupefying’ to describe Dave. Remembrances for both of these anchors to memory.

I don’t think we have many of these “characters” like Joe and Dave left. I hope I am wrong. Either way, I have a couple of castor beans with their names on them ready to plant. Like castor beans, they were useful, oddly beautiful, and a bit deadly.

 

I wrote this story about hearing of their death from our neighbor Ashley,

Depression and anger:  who’s gonna die next?

A truck approaches on an adjacent road and our neighbor (and my former student) Ashley waves me over. I walk to her and she gives me the bad news, our neighbors Joe and Dave, have both died.

Waves of incredulity crash over me.

We chat a bit and I thank her for the bad news and I walk over to my wife Elaine to tell her. Again with the waves.

I walk on to finish putting up the sheep fence in the field.

I am not concentrating and I get tangled in our electric netting (no charge on it yet, thank God)

Elaine sees me on the ground from where I fell in the field, tripped up by fence.  I didn’t have the strength to catch my fall properly so instead I fell on my arms and that bruised my ribs.  Not good. I look not good especially under the circumstances. And Elaine was very afraid.

Is everybody going to die? That must’ve been her thoughts because the answer is yes. That is the ultimate, not penultimate, and not the ante-penultimate answer. We all end. That is always the answer.

This next morning I work here like Abe Lincoln: taking time, lots of time to sharpen the axe.

I have decided that my “course” here ( the idea of futurity) is something I must do and share every day I can as I struggle to make my way, drawn toward an emergent signal, my futurity. Or as I put it in a message to my daughter:

Well,

this little art play

with the naming of the day

and the numbering of the date

is often the way

we begin the fray.

That’s the way

it always begins.