The Earthquake Rests

I couldn't let the death of Paul "Earthquake" Pena go by unnoticed here.

His movie, Genghis Blues, was the last movie I watched with my partner Kris, on our last night together, about 30 hours before she overdosed on heroin to end her life after a long struggle with breast/ bone cancer and lymphoma. His struggle in the movie to maintain, just maintain, despite the strange circumstances, and the sudden loss of his anti-depression meds, and his despair at his disabilities and lack of language, and how it turned into beautiful music really moved us both. But it particularly moved Kris, an artist herself who had struggled to keep perspective about her growing frailty by writing about her journey and drawing cartoons (she was a somewhat famous cartoonist in her day). She was also a musician- a guitarist- who had once been in a folk/ old time band called the Tampon String Band.

She was not a big one for crying at sentimental movies, but she cried when he sang "Center of Asia". Paul sings solo, in English, accompanying himself on a lonely slide guitar.

Here I sit in the middle of Asia, I can't find the way- to tell them what I need, why I just can't stay...

It's a hard life when you're stupid, a hard life when you're blind... I ain't robbed nobody, but it feels like doin' time...

But, you see, he was a wounded warrior figure, but he was also a garden-variety widower. What the obituaries leave out that -- and how I think about Paul-- is that he wanted to end his life after his wife died. But then he got a shortwave radio, and discovered Tuvan throat singing, learned it by ear, and proceeded into history.

Sometime after Kris died I found in one of my journals a note to myself:

Start.
Stop.
Do something else.

Paul decided to die, to stop. And then he did something else. And the world was a better place for it.

I wonder what you can see now, Earthquake. You were born a year before my Kris, died four years after her. Maybe you two are hanging out over there, on that side, passing the time a little playing guitar together. Whatever you're doing, there's no more sickness and dying for you to worry about. Rest easy.