Stay Smart Luv

[smokingboot]

I don't know Joe that well, but he took to me a long time ago. Not in a fancying sort of way, or at least I don't think so, more avuncular than anything else. I never understood why. He thought I was a sweet girl. Joe was a friend of Steve A, and Steve A was a contrarian anarchist who loved to discuss things. Steve died in his bathroom, just standing up and falling over, never to get up again. It was a shock to our group of friends, cos he was young, in his 40s if that. I seem to recall something about him having a dicky heart.

Joe's a holocaust survivor, born in a concentration camp. I only know two people who made it out of those places. The other was an English lecturer, Mara, whose greatest favour to me was teaching me the secret of proper mulled wine. It took a lot of testing. OK, maybe that wasn't her greatest favour. One night, in my halls of residence, I woke, or maybe specifically didn't wake, to see a strange being beside my bed. It was about the height of a desk, and covered with spines, its small malign eyes blinking. I told Mara about it and she pulled out this book of plants.
'Did it look a bit like this?' She said, pointing at one.
'Yes,' I said, 'only much smaller and with eyes.' She nodded, and told me about her very earliest years, hiding out and picking berries in a Latvian forest.
'They were everywhere,' she said, 'they are drawn to vortices of negative energy. The slopes of Kilimanjaro are full of them.'*

Joe couldn't be less like Mara. Where she was crisp, cool, determinedly elegant, he couldn't be more flamboyantly 70s, a psychedelic pearly king with a penchant for caps and conspiracy theories.
He wrote me a poem a couple of days ago.

I CLUTCHED YOUR ARM TIGHT AS
STEVES BODY WENT INTO THE FURNACE,
THUS DID I ALWAYS KEEP AN EYE ON YOU EVER AFTER. HE SAID I COULD TAKE OVER THE ZIPPIES, I REALISED I WAS NOW BUT AN ELDER.STILL.WILL ENJOY WHEREVERICAN STAY SMART LUV

Joe, my dear, it wasn't my arm you clutched, I didn't go to Steve's funeral. I went to two celebrations of his life afterwards. But here's the thing, Joe's got Alzheimers, and we hold on to what we can. So, OK on the winding route that led from concentration camps to Latvian forests to a boarding house in Bath, to Kilimanjaro and from there to Carnaby Street and 1990s Zippy counter culture, we switch tracks, and I will have attended a funeral I don't recall, next to Joe watching that furnace, after which he kept a kindly eye on me for always.

We'll go with that story, it doesn't matter to anyone else. For sure Joe, it's been a long time and you're magnificent. Enjoy whatever you can. Stay smart luv.

*No, I don't know why.