Look Homeward, Angel

My Beautiful Author and Friend Has Gone Home ...

Paul and Joanne Zolbrod at the home of poet William Wordsworth in England about a decade ago.

Above, Paul in his favorite spot: next to his beautiful Joanne. He told me once that he loved her from the first moment he ever saw her.

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... As I sit here, there are pieces of this brilliant, beautiful man's final book scattered all over my desk ...

The notepad with “Ask Paul” scribbled across the top followed by tiny lines of hieroglyphic shorthand with page and paragraph numbers, the odd reference word, and a brief question.

There are the images I want revised to take a 5% dot-gain a little better.

There are the bio notes ... Fulbright scholar studying Moliere in France. A whole career, including a deanship, at Allegheny College.

Then there is our mutual love of Thomas Wolfe and the movie Genius — and the fact that, at nearly 77, I still want to grow up to be Max Perkins. He laughed but thought it the noblest of motives!

There are the 13 years this patient, meticulous, exacting man spent learning Navajo language and culture and then translating the creation story--Dine Bahane--into English.

There are the years he drove from Albuquerque to Crownpoint, taught classes, and slept on the library floor at night.

There are the years he taught Mythologies of the Native Americas at Pacifica, beginning with the spectacular Popul Vuh of his friend Dennis Tedlock and then exploring the archetypal depths of the story he had been taught by shamans and weavers, women and men, whose egalitarian culture gave them a concept of all of life called hozhoon: beauty, harmony, and balance. A copy of his Dine Bahane’, stuffed with Post-it notes and slivers of lavender paper — and handled to the point its binding is disintegrating — sits within easy reach.

And as strange as it will feel, the work on this book will continue through its last 65 pages and become beautiful and solid and real very soon. I had so hoped I wouldn't have to finish without him. ...

Paul Zolbrod was born on December 10th, 1932, and he died, age 92, yesterday morning. He had courageously seen through two years of sometimes very tough going with his health, but his mind was as clear as Bahamian waters, and the last two weeks of our work were the most joyous and most magical of them all. He was glorious fun to work with, and he was a PISTOL. We had so much fun, and I don't know what I'll do the first time I reach for him and he's not there. Except keep going. ...

For some reason, the Chingachgook's final speech from the script of Last of the Mohicans keeps cycling in my mind: ....

A warrior goes to you swift and straight as an arrow shot into the sun. Welcome him and let him take his place at the council fire of my people. ...

One might even better say, welcome him to the council fires of all the many tribes whose grateful friends and family and students and colleagues now rush, arms open wide and hearts full of love, to claim him. ...

Peace be the journey, Sage. Peace be the journey, my dear, dear friend. ... Thank you. Thank you.

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And thank you to those of you who’ve followed the snippets of this book over the last months. If you have not, you’ll find a little of its wonder here … I’ll be posting some excerpts soon …

www.PleiadesBooks.com

All love, all light,

Morgaan Rhys-Davies Sinclair, Ph.D. | Publisher | Pleiades Books