Miles to Go - UmbertoTosi

The closest I've come to kicking the bucket was when pertonitis put me in a coma for three days at age 5. (That was in 1942, when I was saved by new antibiotic wonder drugs), and late one night a month ago, at age 89, when my inamorata, artist Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, found me unconscious on the floor of my home office, where I had fallen due to low blood sugar - a hazard for type 2 diabetic octgenarians on insulin like myself. Lucky for me she called 911.

(I won't count the murder of a character that my friend and prolific  mystery writer Lewis Perdue named after me in his 1985 thriller, "The Linz Testament.") 

The nonfiction me woke up in St. Francis Hospital, in the pricey 'burb of Evanston, Illinois, not far from my home on Chicago's North Side. Not that I'm a believer, but St. Francis, as well as Eleanor, must have been watching over me because I remain whole, and in possession of my faculties. I was bruised from my fall, but no broken bones. 

Nevertheless, it has taken me a month of hospital, medical and rehab involving intensive physical therapy to regain my ability to walk and otherwise function. As a  result, I've more than recovered. I've shed 20 pounds of spare tire, with more pep than I've felt for a long time. 

Lulu by ESF and me.

I only recall flashes of how I fell. So, I have little to report from the other side. Something that I've thought more about in  my 80s, when every year becomes like a dog year 5-to-1.  

The last time I remember truly believing in a hereafter, was at age 13, riding my Schwinn bicycle up a hill in East Hollywood, California. I was coming home from parochial school, where I had received holy communion. If a car hits me and I die before having more of those nasty sex thoughts, I'll go straight to heaven, I thought. 

Unless this turns out to be an after-life, the best I can share is  metaphorical.  i.e. - I arrived at the pearly gates, and told St. Peter I wasn't inclined to go softly into that good night. I had too much remaining to do down on earth. 

Eleanor Spiess-Ferris' magpie gouache 

I have nearly completed writing my third Frank Ritz, Hollywood detective novel. The ending that I'd long sought for Death and the Droid had come to me in the ambulance. 

In additon I'm in the midst of writing a memoir, and editing a prequel to Ophelia Rising. I am also packaging a dozen of my short stories into a second collection (following Sometimes Ridiculous). I hope to publish this in the fall.

And I have five great-grandchildren in California and Montana whom I want to see in person before I shuffle off.

I explained all this to St. Peter. Perhaps regretting not allowing Franz Schubert to finish that symphony, St. Peter granted me an extension. on condition that I stay in line,

and keep on working. That's my intention, I told him as I stepped into the elevator. 

A MAGPIE JAMBOREE 

 Magpies at the Ritz,  

   White ties and tails, two-steppin' 

      To their secret jazz.

                      --U.T.

My haikus turned out to be more whimsy than art - influenced by my favorite satirical poet, the late Ogden Nash. Fashioning haikus - adhhering to traditional 5-7-5 syllables, in-three-lines, rules - preserved my sanity these long days and nights in the hospital. Glad to have my trusty laptop with me. 

That and, more, the loving support of my four daughters, Alicia, Kara, Cristina, and Zoe, who call daily and enrich my life with their encouragement, remembrances, and lively conversation.

Even so, I would not recommend a hospital room for heavy creative lifting. Given this, my inamorata and I made up an art game

that has proven unexpectedly engaging - an ekphrastic collaboration in which I match her signature bird images with haiku poems about species of bird, from sparrows to swans to magpies. 

Writing these compact and challenging Japanese nature verses turned out to be a perfect distraction during my month-long recovery and diet of institutional food. 

ESF Gouche - Birds on her mind

This isn't my first art/prose collaboration with Eleanor. Five years ago we combined our talents on a large gouache canvas that we entitled "Lulu". 

I wrote a reverse Ripper ditty -- to incorporate into the composition. I made the painting's mechanical ballerina into an AI femme fatale who lures men to their deaths. 

Our present bird-themed ekphastic work likewise has noir shadings. Some are dark, others are satirical. So far, I've written two dozen bird haikus to match ESF's prolific, haunting, bird-filled works. 

Now we're planning a showing and a picture book based on our joint effort. Show or no show, it's been well worth doing for therapy and perverse creative kicks. 

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Umberto Tosi's novels include his highly praised Frank Ritz, Hollywood noir detective mysteries The Phantom Eye, and Oddly Dead, his story collection, Sometimes Ridiculous, plus his historical fantasy Ophelia Rising.  He coauthored several nonfiction books, including the cold-war espionage epic High Treason, and  Sports Psyching, plus novellas, including Our Own Kind. 

His stories have been published in Catamaran Literary Reader and Chicago Quarterly Review, to which he is a contributing editor. His nonfiction essays and articles have been published widely in print and online. 

He started at the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer and an editor for its highly praised Sunday magazine, West. He went on to be editor of San Francisco Magazine and managing editor of Francis Coppola's City of San Francisco. He joined Authors Electric in May 2015 and contributed to its Another Flash in the Pen and One More Flash in the Pen. He has four adult daughters. He lives in Chicago. 

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Eleanor Spiess-Ferris

Inspired by Hispanic religious icons, folk art, and a wild orchard behind her Northern New Mexico childhood home, ELEANOR SPIESS-FERRIS is an internationally exhibited, surreal narrative, visual artist.  

She has won many prestigious awards and generous grants, including an Arts Midwest Fellowship grant and grants from the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, where she now resides. 

Her artwork is in the permanent collections of several museums: These include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Montana Museum of Arts and Culture in Missoula, the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin, the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Illinois, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota.

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