KAZ & MDF FB correspondence excerpt

The following is an excerpt from my Facebook messages with Kathy Zorko in 2018. I feel it explains why we broke up in 1971 (or was it  in '72?)  I was oddly relieved that it was not because of anything I did or who I was.  It was, rather,  guilt on her part. I feel for her, for that, but it took a load off of my heart, given that I never knew why she had so blatantly sabotaged our relationship, and now the decades-long mystery was solved.

June 12, 2018

6/12/18, 2:26 AM

You sent

Kathy,

Do you remember Chris Stasheff, the graduate student working on his PhD in Theatre (Play-writing), in 1970 & 71, whom I and several others would sit with at IHOP until closing?

He died Sunday from Carbon Monoxide induced Parkinsonism. A lot of sad folk around here—and around the nation. And our male cat . . . “my” male cat . . . Hurshay died a week ago Sunday. This is getting tiresome.

And I am feeling just a bit paranoid. Why do creatures I care about keep dying? Do you want me to care less about you, for safety's sake?

Any way, sorry to take so long getting back to you. I was organizing my reply into a poem, such as it is. It is not necessarily finished, but it is probably mostly revising more than rewriting at this point. I will attach it.

I might include another poem written for someone else, who was out camping in southern Colorado the weekend when Hurshay died. I was not sure but I feared that she was camping at a campground (Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park) that has had campers attacked by bears and where there are mountain lions around. If so the animals would have been driven north by fire and smoke. So I was worried. The (short) poem starts with that. (Facebook: keep your hands off my poems!)

I hope things are going a little better for you. At least better than they are for me with people and other critters seemingly dying right and left. How is a guy to tone down the grieving!

Keep in touch.

Love you,

Mark Fairchild

6/13/18, 9:47 PM

Kat

I'm so sorry to hear about your dear cat. My sister's cat and a friend's cat also passed this month. I have one on the cusp. They are such family.

Your quip about caring less about me for safety's sake shows hopeful signs of dark humor. I always feel much sorrier for the bears 2 - they'll be hunted and killed just for being bears. Sigh.

I don't remember Chris Stasheff. I'm sorry you've had so many deaths. Sorry is such a paltry response. I'm stuck for words.

Don't try to tone down grieving. Grieve. If you must tone it down, set an alarm. Give yourself an hour to fully engage it. Then mold the grief into a crystal ball and set it lovingly back on it's pedestal. Then live. Moment to moment. Chop wood, carry water....

The other poem. I'm hedging. Not sure why. Probably because I feel so little, emotionally, for anyone. My fires have gone out. Got doused. Too many losses. No one's fault but my own. Not to be taken as coldness! I have affections. It's hard to explain. It has something to do with my lack of memories.

I remember almost nothing of Lincoln. Maybe two dozen 'images, snapshots. Most of my life is that way. 27 1/2 years on the police dept 3 and I can barely recall any of it. That's a looong porch to come to the door. I love the poem "Beyond the Tenses" I've read it more than a dozen times. Something stirs each time.

I DO remember making 4 casts in your apartment (Where was that?) - of my breast, as I recall - and a fried egg which I kept for years. Long gone now. Perhaps I'm fearful of that attachment, Of remembering. I betrayed a friend to bed you. 5    Judy Fink  6   never forgave me - and I felt such guilt I never did it again.

Those were SAD years, the beginning of my many years of poverty and deep loneliness. I'll shy away from it now. I remember searching for you across campus late at night thinking you were suicidal and finding you by a huge fountain1. Was that real? I don't know. No, I can't go there. Your love and affection now - and mine for you - has nothing to do with that. I think of you with telescopes and stars.

Struggling, yes, as I, too, am filled with pain and fears of aging. Do I thank you? I don't know.

There are bonds between us for which I AM grateful. You remind me also of better times, times of hope and feeling and immense future. I am exceedingly relieved you are alive!

I'm off to gather thoughts before bed. I spent a great deal of time this evening wowing myself over Slavic mythic art.

https://vk.com/albums-64552503Художник Максим Сухарев's photos – 9 albums | VK

Notes:

1 I think she is referring to the old Broyhill Fountain behind the Student Union. This incident might be true, but as I recall there was, perhaps in another incident, when she had missed a period and went off wandering about campus, during which I felt she may have been suicidal, and I searched for her.

2 She  is referring here to my poem She Was Not Devoured.

3 She  was a "beat cop" in Chicago's downtown Loop District until she retired.

4 I do remember making, with her help, those plaster casts in my efficiency apartment at 1325 R Street, which we dubbed Glynis Brythe.  Thankfully, hard to forget!

5 This is, in retrospect, why she left me. At the time, she used a subterfuge of trying to get me to sleep with her and a homosexual friend of her's, who I know she loved and was frustrated by the barrier that the differences in sexual preference frustrated. But now I think she expected me to refuse, and by making it a deal breaker, she was able to extract herself from our relationship. We broke up under a tree in the Sculpture Gardens, and I left in tears -- the first an only time I openly and uncontrollably bawled in public ... as I walked home to my apartment on R Street.

 6 Judy Fink was my girlfriend when I first met Kathy. They were both from Omaha where they went to high school together. I knew her by the name of Christine Frinke. Her father ran a computer programing school in Omaha, with a branch in Lincoln near 13th & N streets, where Metro Art Gallery began, decades later.