Remembering Josephine Miles, cont...

It wasn’t Josephine who told me to go for a long walk today while the sun was still shining, and to breathe deeply of the fresh winter air. But while I was out walking I could distinctly hear her voice. With unusual authority and without reprimanding she reminded me to be honest, to take one step at a time, and keep it simple.

You’re nowhere near the edges of the crater you were born into, she might say. You’ve made it past the half life of the radioactivity from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You’ve survived another death in the family. No teargas, no curfew. No need to run for your life, or to nurse a roommate who has flipped out on some psychedelic drug. No, you’re not in Berkeley in the sixties anymore and there are no more deserters to bring home from Vancouver. No one is accusing you for the war any longer. You can take down the "Do not disturb" sign and be their witness. No need to skirt the globe. Let the world spin of its own accord and help you to wind your wool into a manageable ball. She seems to be saying: Though you may be an unwanted witness, don’t worry, it will all pull together before it’s too late to make something of it.

Josephine Miles is one of those threads of my life that seems to surface whenever there’s a snag. Her words are often there, somewhere in the weave, like (if I recall correctly): “The most important decisions we make in our lives are those we make when the choices are limited.” What did she mean by that? I’ve been asking myself this question every other day for decades, at once thanking and cursing the God who gave me so many gifts and continues to present me with countless choices, so many detours off the main route in the short story of my life.

Some twenty years ago one of my old roommates at Berkeley, Toni, and I were talking about Josephine. Toni (then head of the technical publications department of a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area) told me that a young writer in her department had recently interviewed Josephine, just prior to her death. Our discussion reminded me of all the English majors in the United States who work in industry to support themselves. Perhaps I appreciate that reminder because Swedes who can write are as reluctant to consider the option as industrial employers are to understand the benefits. It’s a sort of Catch 22. Toni’s writers don’t regard their day job as prostitution, but as the well-paid and appreciated deference to reality it is.

Toni sent me a copy of the interview. A major reality of Josephine’s life was that she was disabled, and confined to a wheelchair most of her adult life. In the interview she said that this probably helped her to focus, to dedicate her life to language and to teaching. These were things she could do even when the elevator was on the blink, because her students were always prepared to carry her up the stairs.