Mort on a visit to Cape Cod in 1994. The child is a neighbor.
Received a stack of photos from Judy Platz the other day. Photos Mort had taken on Cape Cod and in Kent. The backs were all neatly labeled by his brother Bill. Many I had seen before, some were new, especially the Kent photos. Mort must have made lots of copies. He went wild when I gave him the camera for Christmas one year.Judy hopes to have the Mss of his poems edited by March. It will be reduced to 60 pages. I don't know if my essay or parts of it re: Mort will be included.
This make me very glad. That his family cared so much as to continue with this project for almost 9 years. Gathering, editing. Mort died in 1998. Bill died a year ago. But seeing these photos Mort took with Bill's notations also makes me sad at the ephemeral nature of all things. I have the photos now, but where will they go when I die? Will everything I did, everything I've saved: the memory books and scrap books and photo albums, and everything I've made, including writings and craftworks, all just dissolve into nothing? Disappear, as I will disappear?
Mort couldn't know that his brother would try to put together a book of his poems, or that the work would be passed on to Judy Platz. He died not knowing what would happen to his poems on scraps of paper. That seems sad to me. He so wanted acknowledgement.
Best to acknowledge people when they are alive, eh? Best to tell people how much they and their work mean to us when they can hear it.
