Friday, March 20, 2015

A snippet from the new novel….



Christine Macabee, mother of four and lover of all poems good and bad, is a bona fide John Denver. groupie.  I'll let her tell you something about that herself.
John Denver died in a holy mess of splat when the plane he was flying crashed to smithereens into Monteray Bay. He had just bought the two-seated fiberglass plane that the orignal owner built from a kit and it was his for just one day.  It was a Sunday afternoon and he wanted to take it on a test spin down the coast. I read all about it: he had practiced three touch and go landings -he’d head up, swoop down to the runway and then pull back up. I’ve never been to California but I imagine at 5:28 in the afternoon the sun must have still been a ball of yellow gold and he must have loved seeing the white glitter balls bouncing off the ocean and onto the windows of the houses that dotted the Bay. In the days that followed I read everything I could get my hands on: he was about a hundred and fifty feet from shore, and five hundred feet above the ocean--that’s not very high, five hundred feet.  Witnesses said his plane just plunged straight down into the water and broke apart on impact. He was so badly mutilated that all they could tell was that he was a male. His brain, teeth, eyes, one arm, and seventy-five percent of his head was missing, You can imagine how I reccoiled reading that--my wholesome sunshine man picked up like rubbish.
I don’t know if his wicked second wife Cansandra arranged to cremate what was left of him, but thank God a representative of Parker Funeral Home took his ashes personally to Colorado. The funeral service was held on Friday, October 17th, 1997 at the Faith Presbyterian Church in Aspen, Colorado. Over two thousand people attended and of course, I was there too, sitting in my kitchen, holding my rosary beads.  I read that John’s horse Tonto was brought the church and six airplanes flew overhead, rocking their wings in a salute. I tried to send prayers and energy to Aspen but it didn’t seem like enough: I was obliged to arrange my own tribute. So a week later, on a rainy Sunday at 5:30 pm, just before our take out pizza arrived, I replaced the red and white checkered kitchen vinyl tablecloth with my grandmother’s white linen runner, I placed two tapered white candles on each end of the dining room table and put John Denver’s eight by ten inch gold framed photo in between them, and In front of his photo, in my best cursive handwriting, I placed the  ten dollar mass card I ordered from the Sacred Heart Church. I set the table and on each dinner plate I left a typed copy of “Perhaps Love,” my favorite John Denver song. 
There would be ten of us that evening: the kids, Louise, Jimmy’s brother Milton, and Jack and Ruby Nelson, our neighbor’s to the left. 
There is not much else that equals the fun I'm having getting to know Christine Macabee...
love kj

12 comments:

  1. Christine is an interesting woman to say the least:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. she's a strong hoot, deb. i love how unapologetic she is about who she is.

      love
      kj

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ERR she sounds somewhat obsessed in this bit, yet if it turns out she was a Denver groupie back in the day it would be OK.

      Not bad writing, though I saw 1 missing conjunction ans 1 misspelled word. Bwahahahaa--that's what you get when i have been doing more editing for others than writing lately.
      ReplyDelete

      Delete
    2. thanks, mark. i know i should proof better. i just finished a 125 page research project which i shouldn't have even tried to edit myself. it was coming out of my ears and i know i sent it on with errors.

      i don't know if 'not bad writing' is close enough to 'good writing' but i always appreciate anything you take the time to tell me.

      love
      kj

      Delete
    3. Not bad is better than "this is shit" eh? It's not bad writing, it holds the attention and forces the reader to project imagery and wonder where we go from here.

      Delete
  3. oohh...I like her. obsessive but cool about it. unashamed. the horse should be brought TO the church, tiny point.
    I love reading this, reminds me of meeting you thru the snippets of your first book.

    I'm back from Japan last night - can't imagine how exhausting it all is, but good in a way. xoxo mim

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. mim, even now i am still touched that you bought the very first copy of 'the light stays on.' i didn't even know you then xoxo

      i love hearing how christine comes across to others. yes, unashamed. i hadn't thought of it but that is her (healthy) defense against hard times

      thanks for reading. now go get some rest!
      love
      kj

      Delete
  4. Kj, I LOVE her and can't wait to read more, I relate to her right away, sucked me in from the first line, this is going to be your best. xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  5. "John Denver died in a holy mess of splat when the plane he was flying crashed to smithereens into Monteray Bay." Now that is a brilliant way to describe a death like that of JD.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Christine is a bit of a prat, is she? Very funny.
    I can understand her liking for John Denver though. She has also enlightened me about his demise, so tactfully described by her.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My favorite by him is “Sunshine on my Shoulder,” but his untimely death makes me too sad to listen to it much. I know that everything any of us have is eventually lost, but as Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote in “Dirge Without Music,” “I am not resigned.”

    I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
    So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
    Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
    With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

    Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
    Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
    A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
    A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

    The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
    They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
    Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
    More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

    Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
    Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
    Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
    I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

    ReplyDelete