Cranky, hot, hungry, headachey, and hormonal. God! The saving grace is that I am finally getting to the poems from Malawi and C and my other friends and family affirm that they're good. Like little snapshots--all the pictures I didn't take with a camera because I am a sucky photographer and there were many on the trip with better equipment and better shutter-clicking capabilities than I--every photo I took in my mind is swimming into focus as poetry.

I found out today that my friend Jasch Hamilton of Diamond Organics died last week. Jasch was endlessly curious, interested and interesting, energetic, delighted, intrigued, searching, questioning, but always in a positive way. I knew he had a brain tumor from the day I met him, in one of my writing workshops, but he was beating it back with green tea, T'ai Chi, meditation, chemo and radiation. He was even curious about his disease--marvelled at the new breakthroughs in medicine that allowed them to track and treat his illness, remained up-to-date, optimistic, and completely engaged.

I never thought he would die.

I did not get to take him to Esalen one more time as we had discussed and as I knew he wanted to.

I sent him my poems and plays, and he always was delighted in them, and often sent a box of food as if to say "Food for the mind, food for the body." It was always organic, exquisite, and fresh.

I will go to his memorial this Sunday. I will miss Scott's next Saturday, because of teaching at Esalen. I missed my friend Michael's in January because it was in Seattle.

Three vital, vibrant men, great guys all of them, all fathers of children who still need their presence, dead in their fifties. Of cancer.