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Anagama Clay Artist

2002 - 2003 Recipient of the annual ARAC McKnight Artist Fellowship

Life & Death in December

An old man tells us of his life.

his only wife had died in December.

he worked for an air conditioning company,

sold a lot and made commission

lived in New York, told us Eau Claire

was the 3rd safest place to live in the U.S.

In other words he said

“a place to raise kids.”

He talked of progress and technology

what life would be simpler like without a T.V.

“politics are slimy and disgusting,” he said

he kept apologizing for taking our time

I felt I was taking his.

His food was getting cold, it looked cold, tasted

the butter, had become hard.

“I like bacon,” he said.

“this is good bacon”

He was eighty four

we said, later,

not many people live that long.

His wife died in December

someone who cleaned up for him,

“but she doesn’t have that problem anymore,”

“Your beautiful,” he said to her.

he remembered that beauty

when he was young, when it meant something.

It didn’t matter now.

He was a humble farm boy who

happened to just be there

from Demoine, Iowa, he laughed, he made

a single vacuum tube, Quaker Oats rapped

with copper wire radio he listened to

WCCO and his local station, the end

of the war was Minneapolis. and Chicago.

I asked him a question

he said he didn’t know if he answered it,

I said there was no answer, about the meaning

of life--he said he remembered ball rooms

and big bands, alone, watching

and spending all his coins

“to just be there, to just be there!”

Talking about the algae

that never dies unless something

else comes along and destroys it

about how we are all two dumb to change,

false pride, and how things

and opportunities dropped down onto him

from heaven, he was telling us about his life

his loneliness, that he was ready for death

that he had lived a good life

and that we should pay attention

look and listen

and that death was ok.

Gripping and shaking

syrup from cold French toast, I said

“it was a pleasure to listen and talk with you.”

I felt I had been given a life-time of advice.

during a normal restaurant visit.

We left both feeling his loneliness

and I wondered if I would be

the same man some day, recalling

my life and love, sharing the near

end with two young strangers

in a Perkins restaurant late on a Monday night

just beginning their lives.

©Tony Ferguson, 1992