Sunday, June 22, 2003

The other day there was a performance here in our house, with music and poetry. Tommy, the master sound and recording engineer, got it all on CD. We had the Yayli Tambour with some of my poetry, French poetry read by Simone, and then some violin and viola music.

The week before we had another recording session with Tommy and Beth. That time we recorded the set of poems and music which we had performed previously at the fundraiser down in Falmouth for Ron Hoffman. As you may have noticed, we are creating a few CDs of my poetry, and music and poetry. These are the projects that I am most involved with right now, as well as getting some of my poetry on to the Turtle Journal web site. Also, I believe that the CD from the Benefit Concert in November is complete and ready to distribute. It was very nicely produced by Dan De Hainaut. (If you are interested to have a copy of this Benefit Concert CD, let me know by e-mailing me at: Mendenhall02130@yahoo.com - any money that is donated for any of the CDs will be given to the Waldorf School in Lexington to begin a Music Scholarship for students to study private lessons on their musical instrument... -- watch for notices about the CDs in the Turtle Journal)

Today we will have another little concert for Simone, who is visiting, Ginny and a few others, and me - of viola and cello -- Jennifer Stirling and Lynne Nowels. It has been much harder for me to go out lately, I need to use the breathing machine more often during the day -- often I get easily winded, easily tired and am often very weak during part of the day anyway. So, my friends and I have decided to help me by bringing concerts to me, since I cannot always go out to concerts.

It has taken me much longer to write this much -- because I have to keep making corrections with this voice software, the Dragon is working but not perfectly. Part of the reason is because my voice is so much weaker and it has not always recognize the words that I say. So this has taken me three times as long as I expected.

Instead of writing further now, I give you a poem and that I wrote yesterday or the day before.

My legs do not walk me, my arms and hands do not write me, my voice is
scratchy and won't get better, my breathing very shallow, -- almost everything is
difficult to do, especially to talk -- yesterday I tried singing and there was nothing
there.

Yet the touch of my wife’s soft hand caressing mine, which cannot move, is
Heaven surfacing me.

The leaves on the trees outside in June grow so fast with all the rain that we've
had -- that is Heaven to my eyes.

And I close my eyes and I see bright blue sky and billowy white clouds all around
streaks of yellow

As I Count the UN -- ending stream of friends -- in form and in spirit -- that have
helped Ginny and me this year, every month, every week, And Every Day

I know that I am in Heaven.