Emergence, El Rito, 2001
I began writing a letter to a friend who has been gone for a while. It grows as memories return and new thoughts arise, and as I see him in the context of current events. Strings of words, little notes quickly jotted on paper, snaking trails of thoughts, slippery things like water that I follow, which open up new areas of reflection. Perhaps I thought I could share a remembrance on a particular day. What I hoped was that I could share it on Instagram. But I am really not nimble enough to use Instagram properly, something meant for the instant. And lately my inconsistencies and disorganization keep me from utilizing it in one of its best forms, as haiku, to share these brief moments as they are experienced in the season, or a season of my life. My letter-notes have got trails going off all over now, perhaps because my friend was connected to so many things. I wanted to write some of them down here, because it’s important to keep his memory alive, for me, but also fresh. I’d like you to know a little about him, too, even if it is simply through me, in this public realm, through writing to him— Walter Chappell. It was his birthday on the 8th of June, and his favorite holiday yesterday, the Summer Solstice. It’s still so near, even though it’s been twenty years.
I didn’t miss your birthday. It’s just that I hadn’t publicly acknowledged it. Within, I remembered you and reflected on what my life’s become since you left. It’s you who were missed.
You would have been 95. We celebrated your last birthday twenty years ago, with your family and so many of your friends who made the journey to El Rito. We had salmon and lamb, and cake. I made lemon ice cream, to recreate the one your mother used to make, which your sons took, in the hand cranked maker along with the ice and salt, in the wheelbarrow, down the narrow trail and churned by the river. You licked the dasher, as you had as a child. We were all like children again, elevated in this atmosphere of your birthday. It was such a happy day. You were loved very much.
It was a drought that Summer (a word which you pronounced drowth), as it is here this one. The yellow iris were blooming, the ones which you used to say “smell like ancient Persia”. They were blooming here, too, in Lunenburg, Vermont, at the same time, yet the scent was not quite the same this year. Things change, and perhaps next year they will carry this perfume again. I wonder at times how you would feel in this world, as it is now. You might surprise me by embracing the internet, though probably not social media. I remember you used a word— twittering— to convey the superficial, self-centered and useless expressions of people— substitutions for real observations. It would amuse you that there is now a platform named Twitter for many to do exactly this. I imagine that you would be deeply pleased hearing of the movements to defund the police. You had experienced police brutality in the 1965 protests at UC Berkeley, taking a blow from a cop swinging a pipe at anyone in the area. You lost your front teeth, but escaped with your life. Again. You were cat-like in many ways, and even perhaps with nine lives; your life was a series of resurrections and remakings. So much energy you had, a restlessness, an urgency for truth. You were an advocate for something beyond justice— liberation. From likes and dislikes, falsity, attachments, and anything that might obstruct access to knowing the truth. You showed me the ultimate liberation— from the body itself. And I called you Walter Triumphant. The image of you then is of the greatest victory— of Life over death. Perhaps because I believe that there is a life after this one, and a soul to carry you there. Though I know not how. The whole matter of the soul, aka “A normal being wishes to live forever”, left so much room for questions and efforts. You were a Gurdjieffian, more so than I could ever be, and I wonder if you knew that you had truly developed one— a soul. I know, at least, that you did. Into the past and back to future, and into the fifth dimension, you travel through time, Walter. Still. Always.