Another student suicide.

Really, it is simply unbelievable.

Does it seem I must be making all this death up? I keep thinking I'll awaken from a nightmare.

+ + + + + + +

I've continued to keep riding the wave of an artistic high. I'm back to drawing, after taking a couple of nights off around last week's performance. Now I'm back to it. I think there are three or four more drawings left, and then this series is finished.

And I've archived about thirty pieces on Somnambulit, my new writing archive, some dating back to 1972. I need to prowl through my archives again, but I think nearly everything I wanted to share is now posted.

I haven't been sleeping much. It must be the above hundred degree temperatures. But I have been in a kind of artistic tizzy since Bob's death. And my own health issues have definitely added a sense of urgency to the mix. Pina Bausch's death can't help but have the same effect on me. I probably won't sleep much for the next couple of months. If the work is going well, of course I want to keep working. The artistic blocks, the silences, always arrive on their own, and with them, a period of sleep and restfulness.

PINA BAUSCH IS DEAD.

I am beyond words.

She was my art god.

Feeling a little sad and vulnerable

I think it's because June 7 last year was the first day of the real-life romance I wrote about in Les Très Riches Heures. And part of it is Bob's death.

And maybe it's because coming to the end of a huge artistic project always triggers a kind of post-natal depression in me. I had been writing since January, then editing feverishly during the past month, and now it's all done and out there and I wait. It's a new experience for me, putting what I've made out there. Usually I just make things and never show them to anyone. Since I put this work out there, I feel a little on pins and needles waiting to get some feedback from someone. Ali was, of course, right there, reading in the first few days and she's already given me notes. I do have to examine how I feel about making and showing vs. just making and never showing. Part of me feels that maybe it's time I do put my work out there. I think maybe some lessons I learned from Bob are talking to me these days...

I do know what I'm doing next, though, and started working on the first color plate for that series Sunday night. And I have too many conceptual ideas to even count. But it seems fairly obvious I am going to have to learn some HTML to pull off most of what I can imagine doing in the future.

Dear Bob, We celebrated your life tonight...

as an artist, a dear friend, an old love, a magnificent teacher, a family member. Did you see us at Okay Mountain? We all expected to see your white pickup parked in the neighborhood, and all evening we spoke of how eerie it was that we all pictured you in the same spot in the yard in the same seat, with your long legs stretched out. Suze and I went together, fittingly, and brought a huge bottle of your beloved Bulleit bourbon with us for everyone to toast you, with a tag I made for its neck that read, "For Bob, with love, from Hard Women." Your students from all the way back to the 80's (including Suze and me!) were there. Did you hear the stories we shared, and how I told the crowd how it was you who named us Hard Women in the first place, and how you never missed a single show? (Suze had said earlier, "Maybe we should have shared more men?" And I said, "No." You were enough, separated, even, as you were by fifteen or so years in our romantic histories. But that is a funny shared experience between best friends! We'll always have YOU in common. And she told me about how she left a wedding to go have hot sex with you, while the bride, Malka, went next door and visited your beloved friend, Steve Jones.)

And did you see that Suze and I embraced your beloved Peggy, and she clung to us all evening, sometimes with the three of us putting our heads together? We took care of her for you this evening, Bob. She loves you so much, and it was so wonderful to know that you died at the height of a great love. I am so genuinely happy for the two of you, and so sad for Peggy that she must find a way to live on without you.

Your exhibition was beautiful, and even more so because it was works you gave each of us, not work for sale. Everyone shared their stories of how you gave them the works, and there was a tack-up wall of the drawings you'd always made for each crop of your grad students. You were so generous to us!

And I finally met your sister. She said to Suze and me, "You knew him better than I did." She said, "Now I understand why he didn't want to come to our house for the holidays. He had all of you, and was part of this artistic community." Bob, she finally gets it. She sees what you meant to us, that you weren't some kind of crazy recluse. She finally gets it, by hearing our stories and seeing the crowd there to celebrate your life as an artist. Yours was the biggest opening of the year!

There are so many people who will miss you here. We toasted the sky and talked to you -- could you hear us? Go in peace now, my old, gentle, mad sweetheart. Peggy is afraid you'll hover near her and she wants you to be released and find peace. Please hear her heart and do as she needs you to do now. We will take care of her, and her children are clinging close to her.

I regret I didn't have the opportunity to look into your watery blue eyes one more time and see your crooked grin. I regret what I didn't get the chance to say to you, so I'll say it now: Bob, thank you. Thank you for our brief time together, thank you for your art, and thank you for teaching me everything I know about artistic discipline. You were a great artist, a great teacher and a pure, perfect soul. You are loved, and you are missed. At every party we will miss you most of all because we know you would have loved to be with us; and you will be. Linda Montano sends her love, and as I told her just now on the phone, please go back to sleep now, and sweet dreams, my tall boy, my Ichabod.

Sending you my love tonight,
Rachel

And now David Carradine is dead!

This is eerie! Because David Carradine was the movie star doppelganger of my dead former sweetheart! If I had to cast Bob's life, Carradine always seemed to be the perfect choice to play him!

We have no idea how profoundly connected we are to our movie stars. They act out our issues for us. They are our surrogates. This is so strange, that Carradine had no reason to exist now, without Bob.

A dear, old friend of mine has died.

He was also once my love for a few fleeting months five years ago. I am so sad. He was a sweet, gentle, crazy soul, and one of the best and most productive artists I've ever known. He taught me so much about artistic discipline, just as he taught generations of students at school about what it meant to be an artist. I hadn't spent any time with him since October, but I know he had a wonderful girlfriend of a few months with whom he was very happy. It appears he had a peaceful passing in the night. So many more drawings he would have made, so much more fun he would have had.

He will be much missed by so many, including me. Rest in peace, Bob. I will remember you fondly.

I have been constantly surrounded by death since December. When will it let up?

I finished the first final draft of the book and put it out to those who had agreed to be first readers. Now I wait. I would have been high on finishing, but my sadness over Bob's passing has damped down my mood about the book. No one has time to read right now, it seems, so I must be patient. But I stayed on the schedule I established months ago, so I am proud of myself for that.

Death. DEATH.

Why can we not ever have a Commencement without death?

I am completely wiped out from the one that occurred this time. I am just going to crawl into a hole and ignore the world for at least the start of this blessed four day weekend.

Commencement went beautifully, but I cannot shake the dark cloud hanging over it because of another student suicide, this one of a young Korean woman who would have been granted her PhD with flying colors tomorrow.

It's beyond understanding, and my heart is so troubled.

The bustle in a house/the morning after death...

I keep thinking of that Emily Dickinson poem. Folding chairs to be delivered for the mourners to sit upon. Guest books to be signed. Contributions to appropriate charities to be made in lieu of flowers.

Yesterday was poor little Ann's husband's memorial service, the "celebration of his life." Thirty-four years old, dead of a brain tumor after three brief years of marriage and fathering a son just one year ago. And all of this tragedy unraveling since October 6.

Back in October, I tried to offer reassurance. I told poor Ann it would prove only to be migraines or back and neck troubles; something worse seemed improbable. But I was wrong, so wrong. When Ann learned the true diagnosis and shared it with us here at her work, I went outside and screamed at God, "What kind of fuckery is this?" And then I cried and cried and cried over Ann and her poor young husband. Three brief years. A baby who won't remember his father. A half orphan. All of it resonates with me and hits so close to home. I think of my poor, young mother widowed at about Ann's age, and of my baby sister who never knew our father.

The memorial service was touching and heart-rending. This whole tragedy has made me resolve to get my priorities in life in order. Our time here is so short and we can't afford to waste it on things that don't matter.

The weather was miserable yesterday, icy, wet and windy. I stopped at the convenience store next door to my place when I finally was able to go home at 7:00 p.m. and bought a cheap bottle of mediocre Italian red wine. I poured myself a big glass, made myself something to eat and ultimately crashed out on the couch while American Idol blared on the television. Anesthetized. All cried out.

By comparison to this true tragedy, nothing is wrong with me at all. The ending of my recent mostly long-distance romance is nothing at all compared to Ann's profound loss. She is my heroine. She's been the living personification of Grace.