Cordelia Brown

Cordelia Brown

Feb. 27, 1980 - May 1, 2009

On May 1, 2009 our lovely and brilliant daughter, Cordelia Biddle Brown, died in her sleep of an epileptic seizure. She seemed to be almost expecting it and had told all of us that she didn’t think she would get to live much longer, but she was loving her life every day and excited about her newest writing. Her last words on Facebook, “starting over - sinking into the night - my slate is clean.”

She was a world traveler, a linguistics teacher and student, and a great poet. Her published writing left all of us a gift for a lifetime and she was producing more when she died that she was proud of, that will be published in the future. She was our only daughter growing up among four wild brothers, Jack, Earl, Ben and Moses, on a frontier homestead and a fishing boat in Alaska and a ranch in the California coast range.

Ever since she was a little girl she was always direct and incisive with her words and with her head injury and 15 years subsequently of living every day with the presence of death looming over her, she never lost her vast curiosity and love for life. Always questing for further borders and new learning, from the high Andes to the Amazon frontier and then finally to the great Himalayas of India with three of her brothers, she pursued the great adventure, and loved people and all the exotic sides of their existence everywhere.

For her father John, she always had a close and special love seeing in him a fellow author and student. Like him she had seen too often the presence of death. Her loving mother Josie, mother of the thousand children of Lost Coast Camp, started her off on a life of great adventures. Cordelia was never afraid of anything and enriched our lives with her art and with her wonderful lovers from different parts of the world.

Our hearts feel so heavy, but we know Cordelia wouldn’t want it that way and that she is striding confidently forward now in a new world that none of us know anything about. She is both excited and at peace. So we have to gradually get over our grieving and resolve to live part of lives every day for her, -in the way she would have wanted us to live, and hope we get to be with her again in the hear after.

A Memorial and Celebration of Cordelia’s Life at the Brown Family Ranch was held Saturday, May 9.

Cordelia, Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.

Please sign the guestbook at www.times-standard.com, click on obituaries.

Here are two of the many poems that Cordelia leaves for us all.

MAN AND WOMAN

He wanted

four square walls,

a heavy roof,

and I

an open round space

earth under my feet

And windows to the sky.

He wanted

a porcelain rose

crossed and lukewarm legs

soft, serene eyes.

And I, wild irises,

briars on the open road;

I, the monsoon,

the hurricane

the wildfire

in the plains.

Cordelia Brown, Asylum, 2008, Outskirts Press

A RECIPE

When you find

Your life

Is robed in layers

Of lies

Undress it slowly

Under the sun

Let the wind

carry away

all of its harnesses

and all its ornaments

let the rain

flood it and flush it

until all that’s left

is a concentration of light

a smooth knot of intent

and draw - paint -sculpt

a landscape

inside of you

one with no fog

no hazes

no questions

one that is

open and obvious

like a city made of glass

like a scraggy peak

against an orange sky

harden your consciousness

like an iron bar

and break the arid earth

sharpen yourself

like a knife

and plunge into the sky

Cordelia Brown, Asylum, 2008, Outskirts Press