Memoir, from just outside the box

Sean Penn / Rocky Raccoon / Alexa

JUNE 22, 2024

He said…

If you are curious about Sean Penn, read today's New York Times column by Maureen Dowd. Let yourself sink into her firsthand description of this renegade and his milieu.

"...a weathered tattooed rebel with many causes..."

"...the rebel shaking the rafters on behalf of the underdog..."

There is a Charles Bukowski quote in Penn's bathroom: "Find what you love and let it kill you."

At the online New York Times, I added my reader comment…

The interview with Sean Penn felt like immersion therapy, a cleansing, a rejuvenation, a superb public service, washing away all of the spineless creeps who have been clogging the news for the last decade. Maureen Dowd has anointed us with the essence of a fighter who is singular, honest and worthy.

She said…

I always read Maureen Dowd. I read the Penn piece. I think I might like him, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he turned out to be completely obnoxious and insufferable, like my first husband. I do appreciate Bukowski’s raw take on life. Sean and I have that in common.

Last night, I received a disturbing email from Mike Daniels. Maybe you knew him. He told me he’d been in a homeless camp, wondering whether he was good or evil, whether the good he’s done in his life outweighed the bad. He said he had been holding a gun to his head, but he had promised himself and the ghost of his mother that he would not pull the trigger, so he didn’t. He said he didn’t know what brought on this crisis, even though he’s been high on pot every night of his adult life. I wonder if, between the weed and the bourbon, he has fried his brain.

We’d lost touch until his email seven years ago. That’s when I learned he still had the break-up letter I wrote in our junior year in high school. He sent me a screenshot of my letter. I broke up with him because he drank too much. He said he went home that night and for hours he listened to Mel Tormé, the Velvet Fog. Mike told me there are six people he’d take a bullet for, and I’m one of them. He is 75 now. He said he has always loved me. Before he was twenty years old, the Sean Penn hero in Mike went off the rails.

OCTOBER 16, 2024

He said...

West of Seattle, across Puget Sound, is Whidbey Island and the small town of Poulsbo. A few years ago, a lady with some rural acreage began feeding two raccoons that visited her yard at night. Now, there are 100 raccoons outside her house nibbling on her truck tires and demanding to be fed. The authorities at animal control are pissed.

She said...

I saw the militant raccoon article. I can relate. I’d never seen a raccoon around here until I began feeding a feral cat who had kittens under the shed at the rear of the property. The cats and the raccoons, who showed up from out of nowhere, ate together peacefully, but each week the raccoon population grew, babies arrived, and then there were sixteen. They began hanging around all day and coming up to the back screened porch looking for me. One day, I shooed them away from the pans where I was putting out dry food. The biggest raccoon, Rocky, leapt forward and bit my leg. Nine rabies shots later, I decided it was time for the cats to either come onto the screened porch to eat or go hungry. With a trap I was able to relocate Rocky. I no longer left food out all day, and gradually the other raccoons disappeared. Would this relocation strategy work with Trump?

I voted last week. I am trying to avoid all news between now and election day. God help us.

NOVEMBER 2, 2024

He said...

I figure that right about now you might be driving your husband to Columbus and spending a few days in a hospital waiting room, a few evenings drinking alone in a fern bar and a few nights at the Ramada Inn falling asleep to the yammering TV.

She said...

In October, during an overnight jaunt with two girlfriends, my friend Meredith met a man in Pittsburgh. The man joined the three women at the bar in the restaurant where they awaited a table. He’s 77, drives a Mercedes and he owns two gas stations at prime exits on the interstate. Meredith and her new love interest have talked and texted every day since. They never discussed politics, but last week he sent her a photo of the 80 foot flag pole in his front yard, with an enormous American flag waving against the bright blue autumn sky and an equally enormous “Take America Back” flag flying proudly beneath it. Earlier, she had expressed hope that he wasn’t a Trumper, but now she says, “I’ll see what he has to say.” Meredith is at his house in Pittsburgh right now.

Tomorrow I'll be dropping my third husband off at the hospital in Columbus. He'll be admitted, tested and prepped for the heart surgery on Tuesday, election day. I will stay at the Marriott because Meredith is in Pittsburgh. I don't want to stay in her house by myself because every time I'm there, something breaks or bursts or floods, or won't turn on and off, or comes on by itself because Alexa is out of control. The last time I stayed with Meredith, all night I thought I was hearing distant fireworks. It was her refrigerator intermittently shooting ice cubes onto the kitchen tile floor. Meredith eats extra gummies at night so the distant fireworks don't wake her up.

My husband comes home in one week. I am picturing his long, needy recovery. The movie “Misery” comes to mind.