A Tribute to MCN

Monday, 17-Jul-2000 13:01:42 Random Notes By Jim Chandler I don’t know what I had planned to write about this Monday morning. Whatever that was has been slid far on the back burner by word this morning of the death of my friend Michael McNeilley in New Mexico. I was thinking this morning, when I read those words that I didn’t want to read, about the phone call I tried to make to him last week after I heard about his heart attack. He was in a hospital in Las Cruces, where he moved a few months ago from his home in Washington state. He had met Lainie on-line, a soul mate who, like him, wrote poetry and did art. They had moved to the desert of New Mexico, where they knew not a soul, to make a new beginning. And they were very happy there these past few months from what I gather. Last week I got the hospital desk and they put me through to the cardiac care unit. There I spoke with a doctor who told me that mcn--as he was called by those of us who knew him, and by himself--had just gone to sleep finally and couldn’t be disturbed. I figured I’d call again later, but you know how that goes. I kept up with notices Lainie posted on their message board and, while it seemed his condition wasn’t the best and he needed a bypass operation, death seemed to be the most remote possibility. There was mention at one point about transferring him to a hospital in Tucson where he might get better care, but that fell through for some reason. There was also a comment that he was dissatisfied with the hospital food and yearning for a ‘burger. Such things are not the kind of images that bring the spectre of death easily to mind. This morning I was thinking of the Kent reading in 1999, and my first--and now, only--meeting with mcn. I remember going down from the loft at Cat’s books into the alley and finding him sitting in his wheelchair; he lost his lower left leg in a youthful motorcycle accident and, being unable to afford a prosthesis in recent years, used the chair most of the time. But he could also hop on one leg when necessary. Sitting there in the dying sunlight, barrel-chested in a tie-dyed T-shirt, white beard and white hair flowing, bespectacled, McNeilley looked like some kind of saint on wheels. He was Buddha-like, he generated a feeling of great peace and deep wisdom. And when you read his words, or listened to him read them in that soft voice--shocking soft for a man that size--you realized that it was no illusion. As someone said this morning, he had a “beautiful soul.” The guy also had an abundance of what we loosely call “charisma,” but it wasn’t based solely on our perceptions. He was a poet and a thinker of the first order and it took very little contact with him to realize that. I recall that night that I went into my tote bag for a pack of cigarettes, having crumpled the pack after the last one. I found myself out, but he came to my rescue immediately with a pack of Benson-Hedges from his tote. Like me, he didn’t take too good care of himself, although in recent times he’d tried to kick the tobacco demon. Odd, but I noticed in my desk drawer at home yesterday that package of Benson and Hedges with a few smokes still in it. I had cigarettes back at my hotel room that night and so I didn’t smoke all the menthols, not being a large fan of that flavor. I didn’t think much about it when I saw that package while rummaging for something else, but it strikes me as peculiar now, for I recalled when I noticed them how I came by them. McNeilley was either 54 or 55 years old, much too young to die. I’ll be 59 in two days and I’ve seen a lot of folks younger go. Many of them took much better care of themselves than have I, or mcn for that matter. We all tempt fate a lot and much of the time we get away with it. Sometimes we don’t, but then sometimes those who tempt it not at all don’t either. None of us get away with it finally, even if it comes much too soon for some, as it did for him. It also dawned on me that he will never get to read the review I was doing of his last book, “Situational Realities.” It’s a good book, as were all the books he wrote. You would have had to put a large gun to his head to force him to write a bad line, and I’m not sure even that would have worked. He was more consistently good than anyone I know. I remember him calling me before he made his move from Washington to New Mexico. He was worried that his old vehicle might break down and leave him stranded. I told him not to worry about it, if it did I’d wire him enough money to get where he was going. But he made it fine. Besides being a fine writer, McNeilley was an enterprising dude as well. He’d search around for old items--old vases, tobacco tins, whatever might be collectible. He’d then auction them off on the Internet and make a few bucks that way. There’s one thing for sure. The Grim Reaper can take away the man, but he can’t touch all the thousands upon thousands of words he wrote. Millions probably. None of us are immortal, but those who create are more immortal than most. The creators leave behind their creations, things filled with their ideas and their history, whether those are books or paintings or poems. Those things live on with friends and with the public as well sometimes. Michael McNeilley left behind a legacy of such things, along with a lot of good friends. It’s not hard to envision him right now sided up next to Buk, drinking a beer and talking poetry; maybe smiling at Shakespeare pouting in the corner. He’ll be cool no matter what or where he is. About all that’s left to say is so long, old hoss. You didn’t get to ride too far, but you rode well. And that’s the real measure of a man when all is said and done.

[Onward]