A weather report predicts rain, so she and I stay home. We await confirmation of a debilitating infirmity which will eventually, a long haul over rough road, take me on my personal ever-journey back to the stars. We light a fire and talk, we are quiet, we contemplate a time without us. We digest the implications inch by inch, sharing a glass of wine, attempting to right the capsizing boat.

A friend has sent a Brahms Intermezzo that we play. I drift. First we listened to Glenn Gould’s version. Then again to a recording of the same piece played by Anna Dmytrenko, noting her slightly more relaxed approach, allowing nuance and depth of the piece to surface. Her face reflects Brahms’ singular magic, and angels hover. She doesn’t hide behind bombast or dazzle, but allows the music to pass through.*

My father loved music. A sensitive young man, he played the trumpet in an orchestra, found nurture in harmony. Living in his father’s looming shadow, he had gone to war in Germany to prove his adequacy to himself. The Bulge artillery drove him to block sound, protecting his heart. Upon return it was years before he could hear without weeping. Finally back to school, he sought refuge in distanced reflection.

Death with Dignity sounds bold, a triumph over the fate of aging. My mother reported how she and her philosopher husband attended meetings, prepared papers, to save each other pain. Later, though, wracked by the tremors of Parkinson’s Disease tormenting arthritis, bedsheets soaked with pain’s sweat before noon, he refused drugged comfort in trade for full awareness of each day with her, and they held hands the whole way home.

As Dmytrenko brings the Brahms to completion, the quiet seems entire. I think of my father finally finding his home, and his music of holding on. I think of how, through the sorry mess of the world, my parents held to what they felt dear. We feel the predicted cold front setting in outside, and the warmth of our promised bed. Our intermezzo finished, we settle into the arms of night.

*Brahms: Intermezzo in A major, Opus 118, No. 2; as performed by Anna Dmytrenko in recital for Steinway Society:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doSSutlNfXI

Kendall Johnson

grew up in the lemon groves in Southern California, raised by assorted coyotes and bobcats. A former firefighter with military experience, he served as traumatic stress therapist and crisis consultant—often in the field. A nationally certified teacher, he taught art and writing, served as a gallery director, and still serves on the board of the Sasse Museum of Art, for whom he authored the museum books Fragments: An Archeology of Memory (2017), an attempt to use art and writing to retrieve lost memories of combat, and Dear Vincent: A Psychologist Turned Artist Writes Back to Van Gogh (2020). He holds national board certification as an art teacher for adolescents to young adults.

A year ago, Dr. Johnson retired from teaching and clinical work to pursue painting, photography, and writing full time. In that capacity he has written five literary books of artwork and poetry, and one in art history. His memoir collection, Chaos & Ash, was released from Pelekinesis in 2020, his Black Box Poetics from Bamboo Dart Press in 2021, and his The Stardust Mirage from Cholla Needles Press in 2022. His Fireflies series is published by Arroyo Seco Press: Fireflies Against Darkness (2021), More Fireflies (2022), and The Fireflies Around Us (2023).

His shorter work has appeared in Chiron Review, Cultural Weekly, Literary Hub, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Quarks Ediciones Digitales, and Shark Reef; and was translated into Chinese by Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bi-Lingual Journal. He serves as contributing editor for the Journal of Radical Wonder.

Author’s website: www.layeredmeaning.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Kendall Johnson’s Black Box Poetics is out today on Bamboo Dart Press, an interview by Dennis Callaci in Shrimper Records blog (10 June 2021)

⚡ Self Portraits: A Review of Kendall Johnson’s Dear Vincent, by Trevor Losh-Johnson in The Ekphrastic Review (6 March 2020)

⚡ On the Ground Fighting a New American Wildfire by Kendall Johnson at Literary Hub (12 August 2020), a selection from his memoir collection Chaos & Ash (Pelekinesis, 2020)

⚡ A review of Chaos & Ash by John Brantingham in Tears in the Fence (2 January 2021)