I’m having trouble thinking anything coherent about this tragedy.
But, I suppose since we both loved surrealism in quite different ways, so free association is fair...
Women he loved: Pj Harvey, Tilda Swinton, Susan and I’m sure many ‘30’s film stars (…but, Susan will know which ones…) and numerous dear female friends.....there was something special about him, well, so many special things, but he had a quality that made him a very good friend to women....
Things he really liked: Brownies, smelling my single malt whisky glass, Paris, conversation, Indian food, old films, Egyptian surrealism, many different types of music, kitch but in a specific way, not like many people, Anarchism, the idea of various pagan rituals...
Images of him:
He was lying on a manicured lawn in the sunshine, at Vassar, I think, early 1990s, the Berkshires Women’s History Conference, …my first meeting of him, possibly or one of the first….he was charismatic, clearly quick as a whip, dry and very, very funny. I think he expressed appreciation of how hot my (female/adrogenous) ex was, who I was there with just to break my heart some more, I seem to recall. He would have got that whole scenario right away….in a way that almost no one else could ever comprehend.
Him in red and blue and sometimes stripy long sleeve tee shirts worn over each other in layers in Ann Arbor winter, because his skin was too sensitive for wool.
Dancing very happily at the party that Adam and I threw ourselves in Cambridge UK in July, 1996 for getting hitched.
Other vague Don memories:
We both had an appreciation for the Middle East restaurant and that arts cinema near Harvard, even though we never lived there at the same time….
He somehow always remembered that I once told him that my mother used to let me get out of school slightly early the two weeks a year when the local Dallas/Ft Worth channel had 'Doris Day' week or 'Shirley Temple' week...I have a series of emails in my inbox from him subject line: 'A Touch of Mink'...I never admitted to him that that's one I've not seen and my personal favorite is the damn unimpressive 'Glass Bottom Boat'!
He told me in another email in August 2008 in relation to our imminent move to his hometown that he had been called the Lion at some bar in New Haven in his youth because he had a line about needing ‘Courage’ --the beer, when he ordered.....I can just picture a 21 year old Don, imitating the Cowardly Lion repeatedly on a dive bar stool, can't you?!
He told me a story in person about how very worried he was at age 5 when he lost his family’s only umbrella…He told me this story, I think because it was presumably about class…(and my class background is pretty indeterminate, but middle and upper don’t really play a part straightforwardly, let’s say…) and perhaps also a bit about guilt. But, when I think about this story now, I think about what it really said, which was how incredibly sensitive he was to all sorts of things..in a way that often clearly left him too raw, too exposed, too sad, sometimes enraged. This, of course, extended to all levels of injustice and informed his politics and his Politics and the way he lived always.
He told me he used to get in trouble for reading at home, under the covers with a flashlight. He was clearly fiercely bright and continuously curious from a very young age.
He swore he had an uncle who pulled his own teeth, with the help of pliers and a bottle of cheap whiskey.
And, although I never really got to see him in action in this major, starring role, Don was clearly an extraordinary Dad. He wrote me this in December, 2009:
“[Benjamin’s] school had this odd, vaguely pagan & germanic "winter garden"
assembly yesterday for the kids involving lighting candles in a
darkened room to celebrate the season. benjamin was totally into it.
he's also fascinated with santa claus & the elves... it's hard for me
to participate in the Big Lie & all the gross materialist
merchandising that comes along with it, but i like how -- in some
small way -- it re-enchants the world... makes it more magical on
some level. benjamin has all these questions about santa & the elves
& the flying reindeer, but i keep shrugging and saying things like:
"i don't know, benjamin... it's all very mysterious to me. how do you
think it works?" it's marvelous in that original, surrealist sense of
the word: "full of marvels."”
Both Marvelous and a Marvel, that sums up the man, we all loved and will miss so very much!
–Becky Conekin
OF COURse I meant, brownies, not Brownies, but this would tickle Don, so ...
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