Two ears, one mouth, and ten fingers to cover it with. So many things I "could have" written of, these past three months, in an effort to make connections. But oftener and often, I feel that all my connections are ships in the night, that personal communication is merely a proxy for or distraction from what's really going on, that "what's really going on" transcends space and time, and death. 

I found out last night that my Hanai uncle Ole' left this embodiment two days ago. He was in his 70s--younger than my dad, older than my mom. As far as I understand, for the type of cancer with which he was fairly recently diagnosed, the demise was mercifully rapid. We were ships in the night; we were also deeply connected. In a post-Ole' world, will I still be so sure that deep connections transcend depth?

As a person who talks to dead people and who has tended toward disembodiment herself, I have some different words to add to the celebration and mourning pouring out for Judith Kitchen --

• Wife, mother, grandmother.
• Cofounder, with her husband, poet Stan Sanvel Rubin, of the Rainier Writing Workshop (the MFA program from which I graduated).
• Writer in every genre, with a style both limpidly readable and fiercely intelligent.
• Superbly influential critic, mentor, editor
• Supernaturally gifted "matchmaker" of mentors and students, and so inaugurator of many valuable and productive literary relationships
• Founder of Ovenbird Press; champion of fine writing in a changing literary culture
• Someone who never suffered folly gladly, but who never made a fool out of anyone