Persephone Abbott

Lots of Fans in Roswell?

Posted on September 7, 2025

I was inspecting the google analytics page listing the cities where people are interacting with Routine Apparitions. Roswell. That must be the UFO connection. 

And how have I gotten to Roswell? Here’s the trail, interview style, for fun: 

What am I doing with my days?

I am looking for my father’s missing archival materials.

What did my mother do with them before she died? And who was involved in the disappearance of the materials? Why weren’t they sent to the archives in Bellingham? 

Fact: they are not there.

And how did this come to pass? 

Well, first I have to consider the stories my mother told about my father.  A load of bad ones, that’s for sure. In her narrative, I got flame torched too. Victims of her supreme victimhood.

So, who believed her smear campaign? 

Her cronies, her nutty (three cans short of a sixpack type people as my father would say) friends who were spiteful and ridiculous and thinking they were well-intentioned

What did the smear campaign accomplish?

No one would talk to me directly.

What did I do? 

I got a little difficult.

Was this a self fulfilling prophecy of the smear campaign?

Not really. Some prices were paid and not particularly by me. NB I only have three remaining items on my to-do list (one of which is the missing materials), but all in all these items are targeting minimally a half a dozen people who might know something.

What more can I do, concerning the missing materials, now that I have exhausted most viable legal avenues?

Well, what are my choices? Tell a mommy dearest craptastic narcissistic tale of all the shtick my mother pulled? Definitely not interested in that salacious and dead end. 

Other option: Go straight to fiction. 

Right then: enter “deranged daughter” project, a fictional novel in blog form on blogspot.

What should I call it?

Routine Apparitions, the title of a poetry compilation my father started

Also quasi Hamlet quote. Really only half a quote, but I imagine my father thought it a sufficient pairing of two words to seem like a quote from Shakespeare

What’s it about? 

The ghost of Keith Kumasen Abbott, in zen monk form, roams Longmont Colorado looking for his missing materials.

What is involved? 

Possible odds and ends of things that might have or could have actually taken place, only those who know will know…Scout’s honor…..but then it also uses my father’s surrealistic novel Rhino Ritz and as well as other ideas. 

Like? 

Keith often put his friends in his novels.

Anything else? 

Well….Keith’s friend Tim Hildebrand sent me photos of my father as well as other materials and he included his novel Rotwang which has a trio of aliens all called John in it. 

Why are aliens named John appealing for Routine Apparitions? 

Most likely the person(s) who have the missing materials believe(s) in all sorts of incredulous but potential and unfounded ideas based on mundane misunderstandings.

Hence Roswell. 

Yes, hence Roswell.

Am I ever going to finish this fictional novel in blog form?

Possibly. I am busy reading Gertrude Stein in my spare moments. 

Why Gertrude Stein? 

Just to understand what has to be explained.

Right. 

Yes, right.

When do I think this fictional novel in blog form will end?

Well, that’s the beauty of it – it doesn’t have to end. 

Anything can happen?

Anything can happen.

How will it end?

Anything can happen.

Okay, so on a serious note and despite this comedic interview of myself by myself, to be clear, I haven’t been alone. 

As I mentioned, Tim Hildebrand assisted with materials. 

I contacted one of my father’s former students. V.S. kindly sent me what she could find.

My father’s high school sweetheart C.A. also sent me materials.

P.S. sent me materials.

Most amazingly W.L. sent me Keith’s correspondence to Michael Sowl. 

A department head at Naropa investigated the archives. 

E.V. has checked with Keith’s various other friends about potential copies of his plays (no result) but has come up with a number of good ideas.

K.R. of Beat Scene Magazine has been supportive.

Other friends of my father have been supportive.

In short, people have been kind and understanding. 

Because they loved my father. 

So what else can I do (away from the blather of Routine Apparitions and chasing down my mother’s delusional deity crazed friends whom she herself abused and exploited)?

I’ve been working on a different project. I feel strongly that my father, while not ever seriously recognized as an author, had things to say as a man of his times. Using this concept, I am putting together an overview of his life, using his own materials published and unpublished that are available to me. I am not narrating this project, but constructing it. For instance, using his voice:

My main wish for my father was that his archival material would be kept in Bellingham WA. But since the unpublished works and materials are not there, I will attempt to reconstruct what I can, the witty, the exasperated, the hopeful Keith Kumasen Abbott.

Wishing you all the best.

Persephone

Categories: Announcements, Book, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

My Dearest Own Harald

Posted on August 17, 2025

Debunking my mother’s false identities since her death has taken years. Of course, she wove her disingenuous narratives for decades and targeted different communities with her various falsehoods. Every once in a while I come across an item and I think, “Let me address this, set the record straight.” It’s not only me, other family members have also been involved in this matter.

A few months ago I wrote, again, to an American professor of Scandinavian studies. He had written a review of the book that my mother participated in — and in which she provided a story about her grandfather having been raised in a Sami family with Sami traditions. It’s all quite sensitive on a cultural plain, but I feel communication is key when correcting my mother’s deliberately false narrative.

Unlike the first American professor I had written to about this exact same matter last year, the second American professor wrote a very considerate reply to my request that my mother’s interview should be disregarded for academic use. I nearly felt compelled to write this man back and, in gratitude, send him a photocopy of a letter. Then I decided that there was no reason to reveal the detailed contents of that private family letter in conjection to my mother’s lies. I haven’t gotten back to him. I am not sure any further interaction is necessary. 

The letter is remarkable. My great-great grandmother wrote to her son sometime between the years 1917 and 1919. She was feeling poorly and was worried about his inheritance. Did he plan on returning to Hillesøy? Juliana suggested that Harald come back home and bring his new wife. 

The family still has Juliana’s letter and it is equally remarkable that it survived.

Harald did return to Northern Norway, once only and long after his mother’s death. He kept the letter and his wife kept the letter after his own death and my grandparents kept the letter and then it was given to my aunt who in turn gave it to me. It is a special letter of love and concern from a mother to a son who lived far away. A son who would not return to live on the Artic island where he was born. A son who expressed regret about immigrating to the United States and missed his family. 

Navigating between my mother’s pathological lying and the repercussions thereof has been challenging,  But, despite the obstacles, I am happy to report that there has been contact (with varying degrees of success) between people, institutions and cultures when it comes to my family’s Nordic roots and Harald’s own heritage. In a manner, this matter has come to, shall we say, a “full circle”. Unlike my mother’s claim of being Jewish and the failure of the Jewish community  that she joined to actually show any courage whatsoever to face family members and have a discussion face to face, my mother’s assertion that Harald was raised within a Sami family and Sami community has been “fairly” addressed with dialogue, including encounters in person in Norway and the United States.

My Dearest Own Harald
My Dearest Own Harald, Juliana’s letter along with other mementos and correspondence from Harald and Tressa Hansen’s lifetime.
Categories: Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: , , , ,

Prague To Budapest

Posted on June 27, 2025

I have to admit that I am becoming a bit of a fan of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And I am not talking politics. Having paid much less attention to this particular historical region of Europe than others, I realized the inevitable fairly early on while in Prague. I’d have to review history to understand the buildings and their historical context for this trip. 

***

During one of my last days in Prague I had a mind to visit the Museum of Decorative Arts. The main displays weren’t quite what I was hoping to see. The interior of the building, though, looked like a mix between a festive birthday cake and a fantasy set for a First Communion celebration and it was around then that I started really warming to my subject of late 19th century Austro-Hungarian Empire buildings. You might as well go with the flow. 

I had already attended a concert across the street at the Rudolfinum. It had been a spectacular experience. The acoustics were some of the best I have ever heard in my life.  Kudos to the architect on that one. My advice would be that if you are ever in Prague, buy a ticket to hear a concert at the Rudolfinum which is, you guessed it, a highly exuberant building. I had to admire all the marble. The pillars are actual marble and not the wooden trompe d’oeil pillars of Northern Europe.

As I made my way down the “secession style” (again, quasi gothic and quasi Roman antiquity themes) staircase at the Decorative Arts Museum, I ducked into the last exhibition room where a selection of works by the Czech photographer Fred Kramer was displayed. Kramer had been a young man when WWII broke out. He was deported from his home in 1942 to what would become a sequence of stays in different concentration camps. He returned to Prague, weighing thirty eight kilos, and started working in commercial art. 

The jump in material from the four small black and white photographs of men working in construction, taken in the mid 1930’s, and the presentation of drinking “goblets” from the late 1940’s was stark. The drinking glasses were the type and quality that would have been priced as a post war luxury that most “everyone” could afford. The photo was shot in black and white. The photo only presented the set of drinking glasses. I felt tears spring to my eyes.

Allow me to stop here and make it clear that I fully comprehend that a person who witnessed the murders of innocent people, been a target himself and returned “home” to a location lacking many family members, friends and neighbours is largely beyond my scope of experience. This unfortunate experience is, unhappily, still happening to many people world wide.

When someone tries to kill you, your psyche changes. It’s unavoidable. Looking at Fred Kramer’s photos I felt the penny drop. The abstraction of the object that was being promoted was remarkable. In most photos the object was not being actively used. It was presented because it existed and the presence of a person (usually a woman) was “almost” there. In most cases no background context to the person or the object in the photo was given.

 

These past four years I have struggled to accept that I will never be the same person. I often wondered if I would feel okay again, whether that hollow feeling of shock and horror would recede. Around May this year, I finally felt my energy return, that drive and stamina that I have depended on all my life to survive. The energy came back, but I don’t feel the same. And I have started to assess this turn of events and, in my case, it could be taken as a positive. 

Looking back, there were many activities going on in my childhood home that were definitely not okay and I navigated them as best as possible throughout my life. Moving to Europe is the only reason why I am still alive. The signs that evil was always present, manipulating to be near to me or to “get a handle” on me,  and this toxic energy was unceasingly active are obvious to me now. I can’t be that person that I used to be anymore because in retrospect I didn’t fully grasp the patterns of deceptive and insidious toxicity I was living with until, well, until when? 

I thought four years ago when the abuser died that it was over. It wasn’t. The abuser continued to abuse by proxy, enlisting complete strangers to do her bidding and to make sure that I, as the daughter, would feel one hundred percent worthless.  If she had to die because she was suffering terminal cancer, then everyone else also had to die. And she initiated this plan in 2015 with the recurrence of her cancer diagnosis. My father, entering a slow and steady decline in health, died suddenly in 2019. The abuser spent time and money to carefully carry her plans out. She was charming and clever. And very dangerous.

However, in my case, the suicide bomber plan of my abuser did not succeed. I was too far removed and, additionally, I vigorously fought these strangers back. I reached out, requested contact through mediators and then, having gotten no reply, I attacked and counter attacked and attacked again. These people (some would label them “flying monkeys”) thought that there would be no repercussions to actions that they most probably would never have applied to their own family members because at my mother’s death there was not a single family member present. They were very wrong. 

“Why are you doing this?” my therapist asked me.

“Because otherwise I will pay the price later on. It could take ten years off my life.”

Or more. 

With perplexity, I sense my brain has now shifted or “rotated” in a way that I can finally freely enjoy concepts that I earlier found challenging. Quite simply: because there are very few reasons left why not to enjoy them. What I used to be wary of because any known attachment and interest made me vulnerable, is no longer problematic. Even the safety labels, what is allowed and not allowed, that I often linked to material objects are gone. 

Objects are just objects, and can be valuable or totally insignificant. They might serve a purpose. They can exist independent of humans. In many cases, these objects “out live” humans. Aside from material objects, humans can engage in all sorts of activities that rejoice and truly celebrate other humans. Or not. At the same time that the dissolving of past anxieties is taking place within me, I am aware that somewhere in that collection of listeners in the audience in the Rudolfinum, is a person who may be possibly engaging in murder. And I might even pass them in the foyer, I might even smile vaguely at them, I might exchange words with them, unaware of their dark thoughts. It’s not a pleasant realization and it’s reality. Whatever innocence floated me through all those past years is one hundred percent gone.

***

Standing in the National Gallery in Budapest, I examined the posters hanging on the walls in the temporary exhibition. The posters were Art Nouveau or Art Deco and designed to advertise products. I noted that for many of the posters, the faces were more of an impression than a detailed composition. I discovered that I very much enjoyed that aspect. 

After the rise of social media platforms, back in the early 2000’s, I decided to try to find an image of an old flame. I didn’t possess a photo of him. I searched his name, a fairly common name, and examined the photos I found. For the life of me, I couldn’t recognize him in any of the people in the photos. It was quite confusing. I would stare at someone’s photo and try to see if I could discern any features that I might recall. I finally gave up.

Diagnosed with autism, I was later educated to understand that I don’t recall faces well. At times when I meet with friends or family, I am rather astonished when seeing their faces. I think, “I don’t remember her nose being like that, was it always like that?” I now understand that I will never recall the face of my old flame. It’s a bit bittersweet. 

***

I noted a few tourists dodging around the floor plan at the National Gallery, trying to find the Monet. The Monet was not entirely superb, what was incredible was the collection of the 20th century Hungarian artists. But those visitors would not appreciate what they did not recognize. 

Recently a friend of mine, who is a therapist, deliberately mentioned to me that survivors of narcissists typically believe that they might be autistic. It was a gentle challenge at the end of an evening. Inwardly I sighed. Yes, trauma and autism are very intertwined. However, the experts at the Dutch center for autism evaluation were pretty thorough with their assessment of me.  I can confirm that I hit the jackpot. 

***

Only a few more days in Budapest. I better get cracking and see the train stations, visit that wonder of an Art Deco church on Sunday (never mind that I won’t understand the Hungarian service), attend Un Ballo in Maschera at the opera (not so much interested in hearing another production of Un Ballo in Maschera but I defintely do want to see the theater and who knows? I might be pleasantly surprised like I was at La Traviata in Prague in the State Theater), and did I really want to visit the Gellert Spa? Yes and no, I want to see the building and the only way to do this is to literally take the plunge. I might enjoy the spa. It depends. Will it be noisy like the one in Aachen? I hope not.  One thing is for certain, I am meeting up with my American cousins who are on a Rick Steves trip to take a guided tour of the Liszt Academy and share dinner together. It’s my social event of the week and I am looking forward to reconnecting with them.

On a final note, of the two cities, Prague and Budapest, I must admit I have been more impressed with Budapest. It has that urban grit going on that appeals to me. I would gladly spend another week here.

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness, Tourism

Tagged: , ,

Beat Scene 112

Posted on June 9, 2025

My piece on my father’s missing manuscripts and notebooks was published in Beat Scene. Thank you Kevin Ring for highlighting this matter and supporting Mordecai of Monterey! Maybe some of Mordecai’s melanoia (the feeling that good things are going to happen) will grace us all!

#keithabbott #keithkumasenabbott #beatscene #beatpoets #mordecai #monterey #longmontcolorado #naropa #persephoneabbott #watergate #zen #buddhism #bouldermennonitechurch #rhinoritz

Categories: Book, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Reflections in Aachen 2025

Posted on May 3, 2025

In 1984 I visited Germany for the first time.

Although I didn’t get to visit Aachen in 1984, I definitely wanted to see Aachen. Having read up on Charlemagne during my high school’s medieval history class I well understood the core concepts: throne, crowning, important location.  

Instead of Aachen in 1984, I was placed as a summer exchange student in a small town in Westfalia. It was a beautiful town with gabled houses and a medieval ruin. I took walks, but as I was socially not very outgoing, you might say I didn’t “react” well to being in a small town. I started to watch Herz zu Herz (Hart to Hart dubbed in German which is the only way to watch Hart to Hart and in addition I recommend a minimal grasp of German to make the experience much more interesting and, indeed, almost fascinating). Thus, I sat mesmerized in front of the white television set in my host family’s living room.

Reviewing this time in my life, I get that this was probably very strange behaviour for a teenager and, from the looks of it, I was certainly not “actively integrating”. So I learned to knit and inevitably I began to enjoy Herz zu Herz while knitting. I was and am not talented at handcrafts but, in my mind, I was now “integrating” and had solved the “active integration” issues. My host mother taught me to knit. 

She was a kind woman. In fact, the whole family was kind. The problem was that I came from a dysfunctional family and I was, in a very non savvy way, looking for a new family. Of course, now I understand that I am autistic (late diagnosis) and I can see where my habitual manner and way of viewing issues was compounding the problems. In short, I was harmless but odd, sitting on the couch knitting and watching American shows on German television. Just like the other people living under the same roof. But somehow, the plan was not working and I felt that I still wasn’t “fitting in”.

Researching for my trip to Aachen I read online that “Aachen is best for one day”. This was utter rubbish advice. Aachen can be done in one day, if you don’t know much about history and don’t care to learn more. I booked four nights in the city center. I started out by rising at 6 am on the first morning and attending the 7 am mass at the cathedral. First impression: a handful of nuns and not the hoards of tourists talking loudly and trying to burn the place down by lighting too many candles. By the end of the first day, I felt that I had scratched the surface and, seeing the door to St. Foillan standing open, I stepped inside. I had read online that the church was not of great interest.

Yet it was of great interest. When I first came to Germany, the country I visited was West Germany and the Second World War had ended less than forty years previously. The transition from a vanquished nation into a successful and booming economy was at its apex. Although I am astounded at the city center of Aachen and how much of the city has either survived or been reconstructed, I am also well aware that most of the destruction and damage by the bombings is permanent. Only half of St. Foillan’s pillars survived the war. The other row of pillars was replaced. 

Sitting in the church, it smelled to me of 1984. To be sure, the church was rebuilt and modernized in the late fifties. But in 1984 the aura of the renewing, revamping, and forging an alternate world identity was very palpable. I sense that this post war concept is now fading. It’s a pity that the tourist industry dismisses St. Foillan as “not interesting”.  

On day two in Aachen I decided to walk further out of the center and found myself on the main (post WWII)  shopping street. The kind of shopping street I enjoyed in 1984 and its type is still present despite the post pandemic woes. In 1984 I could buy cheap leather shoes that came from Hungary. I still look for them even though there’s not a leather shoe to be found in the discount stores. Only plastic sneakers. So I walked down Aachen’s high street thinking about buying pink and white leather kitten heels, like I once did in 1984 for less than twenty D-Mark. Humoring myself and tapping into a little whimsical daydreaming, I nearly transported myself back in time.

Returning to 2025 and having bought a “six for fourteen” museum card, I naturally decided to attempt to see at least half of the six of the museums for my fourteen euros within a few hours of purchase. And planned the remaining half for the next day. After the Charlemagne Center and the Couven Museum, I entered the Suermondt-Ludwig museum. I had zero expectations. The place was huge, full of actual works of art and greatly devoid of visitors which astonished me. After the past years battling my way through any museum now overrun by well intentioned and bored tourists, the experience was, once again, like stepping back into 1984. 

Side note: Even the drunks, falling into the bushes, are “merely” tanked up on alcohol in Aachen. How old fashioned is that?

Somewhere while on the regional train from Cologne to Aachen, I began to get the feeling of commuting to a lost empire or trespassing into an armpit-like corner of the world. Either. Or. But no matter what, Aachen is a fascinating place to spend a few days in, on and off the beaten track. Will I make it to the Lindt factory? Probably not.  But I did see Margaret of York’s coronet at the Treasury and admired a 1950’s cocktail pricker set at the Oxfam store.

Categories: Autism, History, Memory, Tourism

Tagged: , ,

Reflections in Germany 2025

Posted on May 2, 2025

I recall the coolness the moment I stepped into the hall, and I remember the odor of wood polish. It was July and I was seventeen. 

I might have looked like I had a lot going on, but I didn’t. Coming from the north by car, I was deposited into the care of my father’s German translator by my American Field Service host and hostess who didn’t quite know what to do with me. 

Tecklenburg had been a strain. It was a small and cosy town on a hill with a medieval ruin in Westfalia. A theater had been set up between the walls of the former castle. Along with the members of my host family, I stood on stage in the rain dressed in a Hungarian costume and sang the choir’s soprano line in the summer season’s production. A syrupy operetta entitled “Der Zigeunerbaron” topped the bill.

In Munich, I discovered that my father’s German translator and his wife were people I could easily relate to and they didn’t expect me to act like a teenager. I wasn’t interested in teenager things. I wanted to pound city pavement and stare at the kind of architectural wonders that are not found in California.

So instead of watching episodes of Hertz zu Hertz in German on a hill in Westfalia, I stood observing the shadows falling around the beam of light that hazily pieced through the windows of the old apartment building on Daiserstrasse. The lightness and darkness and browns and greys shifting softly and silently over the staircase at the back of the wide hallway. It was summer and it was hot and the staircase was polished and cool. 

Just once I would love to stand there again.

“I’ve got an appointment,” Ilse said to me. She doesn’t live in Munich anymore. They moved to a university town outside the city and their building’s hallway smells satisfactorily of wood polish. Whenever I enter, I always take a moment to inhale deeply and relax.

Ilse explained she had decided to get her teeth straightened. I got her point, but I thought with regret that had she had her teeth straightened when I first met her, I would never have thought of her as uniquely European. Then again, she’s nearly eighty and she wants her teeth to look better assembled. She feels it’s about time. It’s quite understandable.

Spring is advancing and summer is coming, and the landlord’s tidy garden surrounding my father’s translator’s flat has turned a hearty and lush green. And I love the summer time in southern Germany. I love it when it gets warm, the birds sing and I listen to Bavarians speak about bike tours and the weather. It’s always a vacation, a real vacation.

*

Dreaming of an Impossible Strawberry in Germany

Ruminating that
I’ll have to fix that
when I woke up that
small unripe strawberry
its twisted white-ish 
bottom quite incorrect
that
that
then
whoosh
out of 
my reach

*


I Thought of An Ex-Friend While in Freising DE

a bloody pinkish red
concentrated vitamin juice
travel sized bottles in bottom bin
- nearly lying on the floor -
the overflowing drugstore has everything

last time, that was the last time
I was collecting unique items
as advent calendar gifts 
like, much appreciated,
my friend in America
had previously sent me

then, well back then you know
it was the time of corona so when
the empty plane landed in Seattle 
I proudly presented
- all wrapped up - 
the vitamin concentrate, and of course
twenty-two other small Bavarian treasures plus
a first edition 1930-something novel
a female French author to be sure
hardbound and last minute addition to be sure

my friend tucked the Advent bag away, turning to
the closet nearest her, saving it for the coming yuletide
 - her dog nipped at me - 

I thought I was doing okay
definitely not well off  
 -  basically......you might say....comfortable -
I fancied maybe a handbag
such as my friend kept
on her kitchen counter 
only days later to learn 
a price tag for thousands of dollars
hung on it, even when second hand
and it was second hand

what was it again? 
her dog nipped at me
reminds me now:
the small candle both 
donation and token for a prayer 
sourced at a Baroque church in Passau
I thought my ex-friend would
particularly enjoy
being Catholic and all

Some days I imagine my ex-friend on a loop
chucking the whole bag of Advent items into a box of old clothes,
driving it out of her driveway in the trunk of her white BMW
and handing it over to the folks 
at the Salvation Army 
or the Goodwill
she didn’t need me 
like I needed her

we don’t talk anymore
from social media postings
I see she still has her dog
Categories: Memory, Poetry, Tourism

Tagged: , , , , ,

Artistic License

Posted on April 20, 2025

Cleaning up my social media this week, I came across the name of a French baritone in my list of friends.

Jacques Calatayud was a devoted friend to Suzanne Sarroca (and her former student) and he had died. And so had she. They died within a year of each other. I had no idea.

In 2015 I met up with both of them for dinner in Paris. Sarroca was already quite in advanced age, still living in her apartment on the rue Notre Dame de Lorette, and Jacques was attentive to her needs. He screened the diva’s socializing activities and facilitated the meeting with Sarroca. I remember him as a very gentle and kind person. 

“You are lucky,” Sarroca said to me over dinner, “you can do other things than just sing.” Her words were kind, but she knew me well and recognized that I did indeed have other occupations than singing that I genuinely liked. 

Jacques was her prize student. “Il tourne,” she said proudly. Meaning that he had solidified a career in the opera world. He routinely sang secondary roles on major European stages, and occasionally primary roles. 

I remembered the conversations that I took part in and witnessed while I studied in Paris with two celebrated sopranos, Suzanne Sarroca and Mady Mesplé. Years later I wrote the conversations down, verbatim. They are part of a bygone era, yet in a way the social mannerisms revealed in those conversations are still valid in the operatic world today.

Other than the diva’s names in Idle Opportunities, nothing else changed about the ladies. Not their words or their attitudes or their homes….but written from, of course, my then perspective as a twenty something year old.

Side note: Sarroca’s beloved dog Polka was renamed Mazurka.

Although I remember both Sarroca and Mesplé as fierce, loving and regal in their own ways, primarily I was Sarroca’s student. I am grateful to have experienced Paris with her as my main teacher and guide.

Suzanne Sarroca (left) as Octavian in RosenKavalier

Categories: Memory

Tagged: , , , ,

Some thoughts while transcribing my father’s memoir on his acceptance of Zen Buddhism and his relationship with Kobun Chino Roshi 

Posted on April 12, 2025

I was, by all means, skeptical. My father had never shown any interest in organized religion, but there he was in front of me in his study in Longmont, Colorado. He was talking to me about sewing up his little pouch and explaining how my mother had helped him. 

This was possibly a few years after his refuge vow ceremony which I missed. At the time I had been in the process of moving from Singapore back to the Netherlands. I don’t recall if I actually had been invited to witness his vows. It seems to me that I had been told about the occasion and was, in some way, expected to show up. Didn’t I understand the importance? 

In years prior to Keith’s refuge vows, I had reconnected with my maternal family and, right along with my mother, Keith had been adamant that this was something I should not be undertaking or do. Yet I did it. And in the midst of all the years of trauma that I had absorbed and time and energy spent to find resolution for my own mental health and interacting with the family members who loved me and then the endless attempts at conversation and acceptance with my parents about my decision as an adult, here Keith was looking at me right in the eyes and speaking about his Zen paraphernalia. To me, he was running away into Zen Buddhism and shutting the door. 

The whole scene was like a bad joke. My mother had already developed a fantasy about being Sami and was taking it as far as she could (later she wove another tale of being Jewish into the mix) and my father was going Zen. He even got a name, Bear Sage. I was appalled. After all the shit I had been through, here my father was now entitled with his sanctified name: Bear Sage. During that visit to Longmont, perhaps it was my last visit to their house, I laughingly let drop that my husband, who was a diagnostic specialist of rotating equipment and both considering and given that my father was now Bear Sage, should be called Gear Sage. As an engineer my husband travelled the world because there were not many who could do the type of work he was able to provide.  Keith was not amused at my own take on matters.

So what was this Zen idea? Was it to gain clout at Naropa or….jurisdiction over me? Was it to find friendship and a buddy or buddies? Was it to tamp down his issues with drug addiction? Was it to escape the madness at home? Was it a protective layer that would give him some space since my mother had landed that disability check and sat at home all the time thinking up storms to unleash on humanity?

But in the end Zen Buddhism was my father’s chosen family and present for him as he lay dying. 

I freely admit that when I was sent the fifteen pages of the memoir that Keith had given Penny, I sighed in exasperation and cursorily read through the pages. But after noticing that there are several sites online that mention the link to Keith’s old website and the memoir, I thought I would add it to the website I manage for Keith’s works. If anyone was looking for it, it might as well be accessible. 

It’s not about me. I was never able to develop a relationship with my father as an adult. The joys I remember are from the times we shared back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. And reading Keith’s words, I am genuinely happy he got to engage and connect with Kobun. I find it ironic that Kobun lost his life trying to save his daughter and, after Keith’s death, I have been trying to save my father who certainly never tried to save me. For years I was angry at this, and then I came to realise that Keith could never have saved himself from his fate. But in the meantime he did seek out various manners to enjoy and make sense of his life. At least Keith can’t take me down with him.  That’s the Zen of the matter.

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Paradise

Posted on March 31, 2025

I had thought about it. The American Photography exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. Then my phone via Facebook or Instagram or Osmosis-Goo suggested that I seriously consider buying a ticket, like right now, click the link and chakka-gotcha! The Rijksmuseum sits just around the corner from my apartment, a five minute walk. Motivated, I took the bait.

Walking through the exhibit at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, I thought about my age. From my memory bank I can understand the subject matter in the photographs, either because I was already born or my grandparents were alive during the early to mid 20th century era or because the historical photographs of locations were still somewhat recognizable to what I recall seeing when I lived in the states.

I stood for a while in front of Schutmaat’s photograph of Tonopah, Nevada.  To my eyes, the photo of Tonopah Nevada was extraordinarily beautiful. Soothing in a way. I examined the old bed frame leaning against the back of a house. The bed frame dated from the early 20th century and it was ending its functional existence behind the house. The mining frenzy had enticed people seeking riches and good fortune and then left them, much like the bed frame, stranded in the high desert landscape. Dreams diminished, their momentum exhausted by dry winds and blue skies. Every object in the photo of Tonopah Nevada presented itself as a carefully chosen and strategically placed detail in a picturesque junkyard, even the houses loosely spread over the hills. Chakka-gotcha!

*

My father was a poet in residence in Nevada in the late 1970’s. He once took me with him on the road to keep him company. He drove the vinyl roofed Ford Maverick over the Donner Pass one spring day and we listened to Ry Cooder on an 8-track tape. I spent a week with him and I can’t remember which exact town he was teaching in or what school we visited that particular week, but his students were in middle school. I was eleven and still attending elementary school and I have no idea why I was not in school myself, but it was logical to me that spending time with Keith was more important than attending elementary school. That was the way things rolled back then, school break or no school break.

My father had a fascination with Nevada. Many of his stories touch on the subject matter. He didn’t want to end up in Nevada, though. I recall him nudging me away from a plate of saltines spread with honey and peanut butter, the local special treat whipped up as part of the going away party for the exotic poet-in-residence, and throwing his briefcase into the trunk. “Let’s go!” he said silently with a jerk of his head. Then he drove with determination, both meaty fists on the steering wheel of the Ford Maverick back over the Donner Pass. We listened to Ry Cooder on the 8-track tape deck, looping around and around, snaking down out of the Sierra Nevadas, shifting gears and gliding back into the foothills of California. 

*

Paradise, Nevada a short story by Keith Kumasen Abbott

__

Why, you come all the way out here to see me, Flipper Dipper? Well, I appreciate it, and it sure gives me a chance to thank you for something. Hey, you remember when I came by your shack in Monterey? When was that? About 1971? Flipper took your advice. Got myself an old Chevy truck. 

That’s what you said to do. You said that guy can always get parts for an old Chevy truck.You were right. Look over there. That’s the truck I got. 

You remember Shalon, that red headed girl? She was with me when I stopped by your shack and you told me to get a truck. She was something. Shalon was. See that plastic bubble on my camper? She stole that. Picked it up and walked right out of the junk yard with it. 

Shalon, she was something. 

I rebuilt this truck and that camper with her help. Stole everything I needed. She was eighteen. Eighteen! And brave? Once she picked up two truck tires that were on display at Sears and took a hike with them. There wasn’t nothing she wouldn’t do. 

We had a time. Drove up and down the coast. We didn’t miss much. Never had any trouble with food, not with Shalon along. Had a poncho with slits on the side, her hands could snake out of there and zap! Sirloin on the barbeque tonight! 

You know the NCOs used to talk about Korea, talking about some peasant walking off the Aray base with a jeep engine on his back. That was Shalon. She would have done it for me. Always had an eye out. Hardly a day went by when she didn’t come in with something.  

Right before she left me, she was getting so good at head that I gave up giving her any instructions, and just let her tend to her own inventions. Damn near drained the color out of my hair. 

You know……before we drove this truck to Nebraska in 1974 and harvested a whole load of marijuana. It was growing on the back acres of an uncle of hers. Couldn’t even sleep in the camper, had so much reefer in there. We bunked on the ground beside of the truck coming back to the coast. 

That truckload of boo floated us along there for over a year. Up and down the coast, rock festival to art festival to god knows what.  Man, those were the years!

Funny you showing up here. Gar gave you the Flipper’s PO Box? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Gar gave me some help with upping my vet disability. Shrapnel kept showing up. In my chest. I came out to the desert ‘cause it dries me up. My skin. And the stuff works out easier, somehow. Still picking metal out of my tits. 

I get along. Didn’t mean to end up here but the truck broke down and this was the end of the road anyway. Look down to the end of that street. Boom town. Old bakery, those brick walls the saloon, that’s the bank building and then nothing. Now that’s the real end of the road. Nothing but desert and jeep trails beyond that. That’s Paradise’s city limits, where the street just stops. 

Forestee service trails and that’s who I work for now and again. Forest-tee service, I can’t stop calling it that. No forests in this part of Nevada, dinky scrub trees, not real forests. Toy forests. Still have half my head on the coast, I guess. 

Paradise here has a post office, that’s all I need or want. Get my checks, stay put. You ever get back up to Washington, I heard Shalon is there now. Outside Seattle, Issaquah or Stillaguamish. You see her, tell her old Flipper Dipper’s here. I bet she’ll laugh when she hears that. 

Flipper’s between McDermitt and Winnemucca, that’s all you have to say.  Don’t say more than that. I don’t suppose she knows where Paradise is. Just say between McDermitt and Winnemucca – she if she don’t laugh. 

At the Rijksmusem exhibit American Photography, Tonopah Nevada by Schutmaat
Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: , , , , ,

Worms Riding the Air Waves

Posted on March 26, 2025

He opened up a ledger book. The ledger book looked familiar. Somewhere at my grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Tacoma back in the 1970’s I’d seen one that, it seemed to me, now appeared to have been transported to Amsterdam. I was standing in a narrow and crooked building that had been constructed in the 17th century. It was presently a tourist shop and a UPS pick up point. It was my third attempt at collecting my parcel.

“You must file a police report.” The instructions from the Amazon-Ready-Set-Answer department were clear. 

My question had been, “Where is my package?” By this point I had already been to a designated pick up point twice. 

After two attempts at the pick up point, I read that my package had somehow been “delivered” to my own address, I contacted Amazon who insinuated that I was engaging in fraud. A police report? It wasn’t as if my package could have been stolen from my front porch. Because, not being a 17th century house with a staircase and front porch, there is no front porch to my apartment building.

I imagined myself at the police station, insisting to a staunch Amsterdam police person that I must register a theft because UPS left a package on the street. Something told me that even if the side of me that is one heck of an ornery ex-opera singer got really riled up, I still wouldn’t walk away from the police station with a document that would suit the powers that be at Amazon and prompt a refund. 

Eventually I was told that the first pick up point, a 17th century house turned tourist shop and a UPS pick up point, was not THE exact 17th century house where my alternative electric toothbrush had been delivered.  I was told that I needed to go to a different 17th century house turned tourist shop and UPS pick up point.

The man leafed through his ledger. “Which date was it delivered?” he asked, after telling me that without the barcode I couldn’t pick up the package. UPS hadn’t sent me a barcode. I only had a tracking number. And as far as Amazon was concerned, I had already received my package.

But luckily for me, this grumpy businessman wrote all the packages he received down in a ledger book. Handwritten and old style and organized by last name. 

Later that day I was sitting at lunch with a married couple. Their family had endured the Holocaust.  

“Do you know someone who has been detained?” they asked.

I had just heard an acquaintance relate how her friend had been detained in the states, denied entry and then deported to France. 

We sat in silence for a moment. In my mind, the world before my eyes turned grey and fuzzy and the waves worming frantically in the air took me to a place I had never visited.

Categories: Amsterdam, Mindfulness

Tagged: ,