GRAND CANYON: THE SHADOW OF DEATH

It strikes like a bolt of lightning in a summer storm
Invades the solar plexus like an omen
Spreading like a cancer like a hellish nightmare
On a sleepless night

Wolves howl at a clouded blue moon
Owls take flight and the air stills
To a hollow silence


I don’t know what we did that day. I tried to piece it together after the fact. It evaded me like an intricate puzzle. I believe it began with something mundane like taking care of some car business, an oil change for Sally.

We then played the front nine at Dryden Park, an eighteen-hole course on the Tuolumne River. I played well, birdied the par-three fifth, scored par on the sixth, the toughest hole on the course. It is a long dogleg left and would be hard enough without a tall branching oak in the center of the fairway about two hundred yards down. I hit a solid drive to the left of the oak and stiff a five iron to the back of the green. I finished the nine two over par. I can’t recall how Wiz played except that our hotshot playing partner, who was dying to give us a few tips on the game, complimented him as the most relaxed player he had ever seen.

We have a couple of the famous Dryden cheeseburgers and kill some time driving around town. We read jazz poetry accompanied by flute at Mancini Bowl in Graceada Park. It is ironic that this prominent park in this conservative town is actually named after a couple reputed to be lesbian. The amphitheater is name after Henry Mancini of the famous marching bands, another local legend.

As I near the conclusion of the first chorus of Dark Underground a drunk Latino in ragged clothes rises from his park bench and grumbles his displeasure. He throws the word Satin at us like a dagger to the throat. It gains my attention and raises my ire. The piece is in fact the story of Joan of Arc. The charge of Satanism should not surprise me by now but it does. It startles me and settles in my gut. I will not to be censored in my own hometown. I finish the chorus and flip to the Demands of the Underground:

We demand food for hunger free of charge!
We demand jobs for all who call and ones that suit our make and model not our soles!
We demand the laser stun be drop and done or access free to all!
We demand the opening of the boundaries, free travel, an end to border stops and crossing!
We demand the closing of the righteous guard! Let them work to feed the poor!
We demand access to the stars! Let all behold the heavens and scope the upper maze!
We demand a home for all and not a hole to shovel dirt in!

We finish our performance to the silence of our former critic. It hits home. He doesn’t say a word but he knows he has judged us harshly. Maybe he will think twice before he accuses someone of Satanism again. We are in fact his advocates yet he would have cut our throats had he had the chance.

We drive over to Charlie’s place on Paradise Road for an early dinner. This is where the drag races were in the bee-bop early sixties when the Wolf Man was growling on the AM radio and crew cuts glistened with the glow of Dixie Peach. It was also where my second crush lived. We were at Mark Twain Junior High. She was a cheerleader and I was vice president of the student body. We were both thin but she was a good six inches taller and I thought she was a queen. We danced all night in the age of innocence to Johnny Mathis, the Four Seasons and the Supremes. The end of that sweet and tender romance at the beginning of our freshman year was the effect of miscommunication and my initiation to the mixed blessing of relationships. It was an experience I would always treasure.

My first crush was a pretty blonde in elementary school. It ended much the same way: an awkward miscommunication gone out of control, brought on by the betrayal of a jealous friend. Funny how it stays with you, shaping how you approach relationships for much of your life.

In contrast to Deva, Charlie is a basic meat and potatoes man. His dinners are down home affairs. There is always a parade of visitors and they are always good people. Wiz entertains the kids with improvisational flute and piano. They are inspired. There will be music in their lives. We move outside to the patio and Charlie puts on our recording of Dark Underground: A Jazz Poetry Play in Fifteen Choruses. I suggest turning it off after the first chorus but Charlie insists on playing it in its entirety. It runs two hours and draws both encouraging and insightful comments.

It is the first time anyone has listened to the work beside us and the response means a lot. It has been a long and winding road in the jazz poetry business and I for one am in need of some encouraging words. We are reluctant to leave this place of warmth but the obligations of time press on.

We return to Robert and Sue’s house where we find an old friend of Robert is entertaining them. He’s a good musician with the mind of a businessman and the ambition of Julius Caesar. He has found tough times. His band in the bay area, featuring an old Chicago blues man, recently broke up. He has been diagnosed with kidney failure and his health is faltering. Wiz joins him on flute but his guitar falls oddly silent when Wiz plays and he engages in distracting conversation.

I am suddenly aware that Wiz is despondent, struggling and weak. It is a state I have not seen in him. I am only vaguely aware of the cause but a sense of discomfort settles in my soul. We are due to visit some close friends twenty miles down the road in Turlock. They are rehearsing for a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which has prevented me from seeing them until now. I suggest it is time to go and the Wiz is more than ready. In the car he informs me he is having trouble breathing. Some strange spell has taken hold of him and he feels threatened. I wait to allow him to catch his breath before telling him what he cannot know: That old friend and jealous musician is a dying man.

It is the shadow of death that follows us even now.

Adding to my own discomfort is a growing sense of anxiety. I feel vulnerable. There is a hole in my aura and I feel it. My vision is discolored, shrouded and awry. Something is happening and something must happen to relieve us of this cloud that hovers above us like the pall of a funeral procession. Wiz begins to chant in the tongue of another world. It has a calming effect like the ocean at twilight. I join in the chant but the ghost is still with us.

As we approach Turlock, Sally checks and sputters. We glide to a stop out of gas. After 2,500 miles of journey, traversing land of every description from Nevada’s desolation row to the tower peaks of Donner Summit, here by the familiar Turlock off ramp, we run out of gas. Something has happened. It could have been so much worse. I take it as a strange blessing and a warning of renewed caution.

Wiz stays with Sally as I walk the short distance to a nearby gas station. It is a time for reflection. There has been too much recklessness, too much late night partying, too much blowing with the wind, too much trust where it does not belong, too little grounding and self-control. A man must learn to play the safe shot when the safe shot is appropriate. Grip it and rip it may work for John Daly but its bound to lead you astray.

We struggle into town and the company of friends, the darkness subsiding but still hovering over us, the weight still bearing down on our shoulders. At last we arrive and the spell is broken. We have found sanctuary. The shadow has vanished. We could not outrun it but we could banish by entering a sacred circle of unconditional trust. Wiz will refer to the Jere and Patty O’Donnell as saints. They serve on this night as our guardian angels like the crow of Grand Canyon.


Heart and soul, angels above
Circle in unconditional love
Diffuse the darkness
Dry the fear from wetted brow
Smooth the furrowed woe

Blessed friendship, sacred light
Like the first beacon on a jagged shore
Like the first breath of spring


If an individual is born as I was into a warm and loving family, it is a blessing of chance or fate beyond our control or comprehension. The friends we find thereafter, those with whom we choose to share our lives with mutual respect and understanding is a blessing of choice. It is something we all search for and when we find it we instinctively embrace it. We value it highly. We must take care not to abuse it by holding too tightly or leaning on it too heavily. When I moved to Nashville it was more than difficult to leave behind this family of friends, just as it was to leave my bloodline.

Liberated from the shadow of death, we are welcomed by a warm embrace. Wiz plays more freely than he has since our journey began. Patty is entranced. She has become a politician of sorts, having been appointed to the chair of the local arts council. After years of raising a child (now eight) she is asserting herself as a major force of the local theater. It is her calling and her eyes, already brilliant, shine with enthusiasm and purpose.

Jere has become the first tenured acting instructor in the history of the local university. He speaks of playing a part in Uncle Vanya that is the kind of part he always avoided. He is playing a romantic idealist. I consider it a positive development. He has long fought that side of himself that is as natural as honey to a bee. What he perceived as a weakness has opened a door. He will become the stronger for it.

Our old friend Gary is also here. He has a calm about him that is rare. Having quit a job as a cook due to a back condition that will not allow him to stand for long periods of time, he is jobless. His situation is little changed but he is being paid for the part he is acting in Vanya and he treasures working with the O’Donnell’s.

Gary should be an acting instructor in a high school or college. He has the talent, the experience and the acquired wisdom of a natural teacher but he is haunted by a mistake he made in the distant past. While working as an elementary school teacher he was busted for importing hashish. It was decades ago at a time when it was far less shocking than it would be today and it should be expunged from his record. But in the small town mentality of the central valley, records are never expunged. Still he is well. He offers Wiz and I a reading from the I Ching and a quote that came to him from some external voice:

At last the wanderer understood
It was the cup, not the water
It was the journey, not the spring
It was the search, not the drinking

There is a feeling of peace, contentment, a mood of calm reflection and joy. It is unusual in the days preceding opening night. It is late and time to move on. We will see them again and thank them for an inspired performance on the opening of Uncle Vanya. We make a golf date with Jere and Patty though it will keep us here longer than we originally intended.

It is difficult to let go.