Beer with Havel, Part Four

Rachel’s Havel caper made perfect sense and was right in line with her uncanny ability to cut through the crap and make meaningful connections, occasionally changing the order of things as she went. Her effect on people was instantaneous, not always for the good, but when it succeeded good outcomes did ensue. I was in the midst of a life change when we met and needed to find full time work to proceed though I was not entirely conscious of this fact. She insisted early on in our friendship that I apply for a job at the school where she taught, which I did and which freed me to move on. While we were still working together she went through a stage one spring semester where she gave herself over almost entirely to the art of knitting, in just about every spare moment and somewhat furiously- skeins of colorful yarn trailing everywhere in the vicinity of her chair amid the sound of fast clicking needles during the lunch hour and free periods. As the usual knot of teachers sat around schmoozing over thin, bitter coffee, sugary donuts, bad students, good students and the lousy administration, naturally people became curious and questioned her about this newly acquired somewhat unlikely activity to which she had so zealously cleaved. She quickly filled everyone in. It seemed that one of her own kids- there were three from two different marriages and this was the one who did not bathe in the ambient glow of Rachel’s forceful personality- had joined an ashram somewhere in the wilds of the Catskills; and this same daughter, who had always maintained a difficult relationship with both her mother and the world, was now giving even more cause for concern. So through a few well-timed weekend visits to Rip Van Winkle’s latter day Shangri La for new devotees of eastern philosophy, Rachel slowly insinuated herself into the recesses of the organization and all its colorful chakras by turning out a series of orange and red sweaters- in what she deemed “Buddhist colors”- for the leader and some of his acolytes. Was she stealing the guy’s thunder by crocheting the gild off the guru’s lily so to speak? Or did she just assert herself through small, relentless acts of perseverance disguised as kindness? Maybe a bit of both, but the errant kid about whom she so worried eventually did  rejoin the ordinary stream of things and marry-  with another member of the coven as it happened- and they both left the meditative tranquility of 24/7 spirituality to settle into the predictable safety of a sort of anti-bourgeoisie, radical bourgeois existence, continuing to satisfy any counter culture leanings through an avid interest in the environment and a strict diet of mainly vegetables and rice, with only a hint of an eating disorder.  

I could only knit stories, and who would have ever read them, much less worn them? My own children were still too young to imagine ever losing them, but if they did happen to stray into some Netherland of the soul I learned that perhaps it was best to stray with them, at least part of the way. The last time I saw her she was charming the apron off a spiffy young waiter on whom she had at least three score or possibly more, at a neat little neighborhood bistro in Chelsea- one of those places with the original tin ceiling and the old, miniscule, white hexagon shaped floor tiles that were always chipped- and where at her suggestion we had agreed to meet. She was on one of her solo whirling dervish visits to the city- over the protests  of her older, responsible daughter who worried about her traveling alone-  and was planning to mix with the rabble, check out the latest museum exhibits, catch a movie and inhale some street theater; idyllic college towns apparently had their limitations.

You could not talk about death with Rachel because she was too busy living and making things happen, and sometimes it seems as if I have spent most of my own life waiting. Of course she did not endure, nor did I not become her. And like everyone else, she had her dark side and her “moments” too. But her friendship changed me, change being the one thing you can count on in a world that seems both finite and unending yet never stays the same.