Pascal’s Last Batch

A Love Letter

Friday May 30, 2025

My Sweet Sweet Pascal, Dearest Friend,

Alina just texted to thank me for the pastries I left for you on the doorstep today and to gently tell me it won’t be long now. I am deeply sorry I will not get to hug you again, or hold your hand, or plot to have a wild, crone lesbian affair with you before you go. I am so sorry you have to go so soon.

I wanted to tell you about today’s baking session, and also all the other baking sessions over these past few months. I wanted to tell you how these sessions have changed me. I wanted to thank you for asking me to bake for you when you could no longer bake for yourself. I wonder if you knew what a gift you were giving me. I really hope you did.

So, today’s baking session. I didn’t know for sure if it would be my last chance to bake for you, but with each extra week we have had the glory of having you remain, months now since they only gave you weeks to live, well with each week I made myself move closer to the truth. These sessions would have an end date. Which is why, instead of taking a chance and trying to remind myself how to make kolaches this morning, I stuck with cinnamon rolls. Because I know you love cinnamon rolls. (And I figured the chocolate chip cookies and scones would be a nice treat for your family that flew so far to be here.)

While I was baking, I was trying to examine my mind, the way you and I studied so hard to learn how to do— in all those books and at those retreats.

Equanimous. Equanimous. Equanimous.

Oh, Pascal, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t recognize true equanimity if it came up and bit me in the ass. But I try. And I know you tried. So I think you will appreciate where my mind went as I worked the dough today. First though, I have to tell you something. And I have to give you a trigger warning. A literal trigger warning:

The next paragraph is going to have a gun in it, and the gun is going to be pointed at me.

The craziest fucking thing happened yesterday. Some kid, a twentysomething, pulled a gun on me. Equally crazy, I didn’t feel particularly scared. Which actually probably was my brain going into dissociation mode. Like probably I was super scared but it came out as looking like not scared at all! That was so weird.

What happened was, I was driving home, east on 71, and, as happens pretty much every time I am on this road, I was being very closely tailgated. It took a moment before we reached a place in time/space where he could pass me, and that seemed to be that. But then, despite the fact he’d gotten far ahead of me, the shifting traffic patterns landed us on my street at the same time, me behind him. And yes, I admit it Pascal, I was driving a bit too close to him, which is very much against who I am/wish to be/my best self. As you know, Pema Chödrön would call my reaction shenpa. I was hooked in by this guy having been an asshole, which my ego decided I could remedy by being an asshole to him! Well, he noticed and promptly slammed on his brakes, forcing me to do the same.

I think now, had I hit him, I might not be alive to write this note. Let me explain. I continued driving behind him, now at the proper distance. I decided not to turn into my own driveway because I did not wish for him to see where I lived. I continued driving at a safe distance behind him. (I admit I was also curious to see where he was going—my best guess was one of the meth labs down the road.) Then he suddenly turned into a driveway, requiring me to slow down. He rolled down his window and whipped out a huge handgun, which he started waving at me.

This is when my fake equanimity kicked in. I felt very calm. I did not yell. I did not show any reaction. I just kept driving at the posted speed. I called 911. I had a calm discussion with the dispatcher. I declined to meet with a deputy to file a report. I have no interest in ever seeing that kid and his gun again and I have no desire for him to learn my name and address. And while I’m not ready to extend him lovingkindness, the whole event reminded me of something that happened ten years ago.

Henry was attacked walking home late one night from his bar job in Brooklyn. He suffered a head injury. I did not find out until the next day. Once I did find out, once I knew he would fully recover, I got off the phone and I immediately sat on my meditation cushion. I wanted to give thanks that Henry was alive. I also wanted to open my heart and have compassion for his attackers, because anyone who grows up to be someone who thinks it is perfectly fine to punch people in the head and steal their phone surely has an awful lot of fucked up baggage dragging them down.

Don’t get me wrong, Pascal. I don’t know if I could have done that meditation to extend his attackers compassion if Henry had died or suffered permanent brain damage. But that’s not what happened. So I sat. And I thought about it. And I tried to open my heart.

I was thinking about all that while I baked for you. I wondered what kind of young man drives around with a handgun that he’s perfectly comfortable aiming at an old lady (or anyone for that matter). I wondered if my fear of getting further involved, my refusal to file a report, is related to what’s going on with the fascist government takeover. Everything is so scary and fucked these days. And when I stopped to consider all that, I was reminded, yet again, that everyone is so crazy right now. I do feel a little bad—like borderline complacent—for wanting to keep my head down now. That’s not like me. What is happening? What is happening to us?

I admit that when I woke up today, I really didn’t feel like baking. I’m pretty sure you know not to take that admission personally. But to explain— the reason I didn’t feel like baking had absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with a mental movie of the guy with the gun pointed at me, looping in my head. I fucking hate having PTSD and how it leads to this tortuous looping.

***

I remember the first week I baked for you and how excited I was and how proud I felt, like the teacher’s pet, getting to bake for the baker!! And most weeks it was a joy. But some weeks, when I was lost in my own emotional bullshit, it took more effort. Still, every time, usually before the oven finished preheating, I would stop, stand still, and think about what a privilege it was, to get to do this for you, which of course was at least as much for me. It was impossible to just idly wait for you to go. Thank you for the busy work. I always felt much, much better for the work.

Chop wood, carry water, bake croissants. Etc.

It has been fun or humbling or informative or something to catch myself, to observe the arc of my feelings as the beloved baking task stretched out over time. Not the first time I’ve seen this in myself, swinging from one extreme to the other, perpetually missing the equanimity boat floating evenly down the middle.

When Jason died, I volunteered to air traffic control the emptying and cleaning of his house. How reverent I was that first time in, as if visiting a shrine, Oh Holy Jason Temple. How I wept on Day One, when I saw the spot on the wall over his bed, where hung the painting I had commissioned as a gift for him. And how, by my fifth trip to move stuff, I was tired and hot and irritated. The mindfulness I had called upon on earlier trips was nowhere to be found as I, unthinking, set a piece of furniture upright and wheels down in my truck bed. I still remember how the back window shattered at the first stop sign, when that thing rolled right into it. I might’ve shaken my fist at Jason that day.

Reverence. Resentment. How easily and quietly one sometimes gives way to the other over time.

To be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR my Sweet Sweet Pascal, I never once resented baking for you. I did get a little worried last week when Alina requested Tres Leches Cake, which I had never made, because somewhere, long ago, I made a mental note that this was an impossible delicacy beyond my skill set, “The stakes are high!” she wrote. “We need tres leches!” And so, I did it. Cupcakes no less—easier for you to hold. And they turned out great. So thanks for that, too, for inspiring me to try new things.

I was so extra grateful for today’s baking session. I needed the time to think, in silence. To forgive myself for having gotten hooked into ego and anger yesterday. To focus on gratitude, on being alive. To remember to not take being alive for granted. A lesson that you have taught me more powerfully than anyone else. I really hate this part of your teaching, if you don’t mind me saying. But I think about it every day.

And I think about how alive you always were, alive and funny and defiant and creative and beautiful. I see you on my Hyde Park porch in the 90s, us sitting on that old blue thrift store couch, drinking endless beers and smoking cigarettes and wasting hours discussing men. (WHY? WHY?) I remember you pregnant and pregnant again right after that, and your beautiful baby boys now beautiful young men. I remember us knitting at your Cherrywood house, just down the street from my Cherrywood house, when I still lived in the city and we were neighbors for ten years. I remember us going to Barton Springs at night, the summer before COVID changed everything. And I remember your life celebration here at the ranch, and how we all laughed and cried until it hurt, and, on your insistence, wrote down the things we need to rid ourselves of, notes to be burned upon your death. Oh what a fire that will be.

Pascal: Patron Saint of Let That Shit Go.

When I was leaving your house today, after the drop-off, I resumed the audiobook I’ve been engrossed in for days. It’s called Faith, Hope and Carnage, and it’s billed as a book, but essentially it’s nine hours worth of conversations between Nick Cave and the Irish journalist Sean O’Hagan. I’ll be honest—I was a bit worried it would be a long, mansplaining slog, a manly ego-fest. I know that maybe sounds shitty but my caution fell under the heading Never Meet Your Heroes. Hero isn’t precisely how I categorize Mr. Cave, but I certainly admire him, a lot.

Well, as it turns out, my concern was unwarranted. I have been beside myself with joy at what I’m hearing—really deep, thoughtful, provocative conversations about god and grief and death—particularly untimely death—and how suffering is what unites us all. Driving home from your house for the last time, I landed on the part where he’s addressing the grief he feels over the sudden loss of one of his first girlfriends, Anita Lane—he was 19 and she 17 when they started going out. They were also collaborators. They stayed friends their whole lives. He clearly loved and admired her very deeply. He was talking about how she could really sparkle, but how she could also get bogged down in her resentments.

The magnificent timing of that passage felt like a beautiful bookend to these months of baking for you my dear, today having been the last time I’ll ever have that privilege. The passage so suited the day that landing upon it felt (secularly) preordained.

I wept. I want to remember to sparkle, Pascal. I don’t want to get bogged down in my resentments. And this, too, is a conversation we’ve had before, you and I—so many times, one of us reminding the other, taking turns being weak, taking turns being strong: Try not to get bogged down in your resentments.

A much needed reminder. I will let the crazy drivers do their thing, let the other crazy people do their crazy things. I will not take it personally anymore. I will not react. I will not add to the crazy. I will stay in the middle, the middle, the middle. I will observe my thoughts and feelings. I will let them go. Just like we always studied how to do. (And, of course, I will COMPLETELY FAIL SOMETIMES. Okay—A LOT OF THE TIME.)

Thank you, Beloved Pascal, for all of your gifts. First and foremost, thank you for the gift of your friendship. Thank you for the gift of your art. Thank you for your gift working with children. Thank you for your gift of baking. Thank you for your gift of compassion. Thank you for making Thich Nhat Hanh into a mosaic. Thank you for letting me become the steward of that mosaic. Thank you for being so Utterly Pascal.

When I strive to sparkle, I will think of you, and how you have sparkled, in your life, and, too, how you have sparkled in your dying, making space for so many of us to be with you, to witness, to learn.

To bake.

I’ll say it again. What a sneaky, wonderful gift that was from you to me.

Those sessions have been so good for me, perhaps today most of all. Every turn of the dough, every cupcake, every sticky cinnamon roll, all of it. The kitchen is my mediation hall. It is where I work out the hard shit. I know it was yours, too. I will keep you here beside me in my kitchen.

Oh my sweet, beautiful friend, I love you so much.

Safe travels. Tell Thay I said hi.

Your humble, forever grateful friend,

Spike

NOTES:

My next free writing workshop at Hampton Branch Library in South Austin is Tuesday, June 3, 5:30-7:30 pm. It always fills up so please register for a spot.

The next Ranch Writing Day is this coming Saturday, June 7, 10 am - 1 pm. I’ll be baking fresh pastries. We’ll write for 90 minutes and share for 90 minutes. It’s donation based. Suggested donation is $20 but if things are tight, don’t let that stop you from joining us. Space is limited. It’s free to register. You can REGISTER HERE.