Restless farewell to a fallen friend

By FRANK MIELE

Everybody going and I want to go too Don't wanna take a chance with somebody new I did all I could, I did it right there and then I've already confessed - no need to confess again. - Bob Dylan, Thunder on the Mountain

I like to think there was some Bob Dylan music playing when my friend Jim Bense died last month, especially the jaunty melancholic music of Dylan's latest album "Modern Times," which so matched Jim's paradoxical nature.

Dylan's complex poetry and vision was in some considerable degree the palimpsest on which Jim wrote the days of his own life. "Tangled up in blue," "Like a rolling stone," "It ain't me babe, no no no, it ain't me babe." I can still hear Jim singing all of those songs, with his plaintive, soulful, self-deprecating lilt of a voice.

And I can't quite get it though my head that he is gone.

I met Jim in the summer of 1977 when I arrived in Missoula, Montana, with dreams of becoming a big-time writer and with an ego the size of my Oldsmobile Delta 88. Jim had a "Roommate wanted" sign up on his door on South Fourth Street West, but the sign might just as well have said "Friendship required" because that was the way it was with Jim - if you got to know him, you got to like him.

Turned out we had a lot in common. He was a friend of Bill Kittredge, the writer I had come to study with at the University of Montana; he loved literature; and he loved to drink. As he was "interviewing" me for the job of roommate, he broke out a bottle of Jim Beam, poured us both a stiff drink, picked up his beloved Gibson guitar, and proceeded to amaze me with the dexterity of his fingerpicking and the range of his knowledge. By the end of the day he would also astound me with his capacity to imbibe alcohol while maintaining general decorum.

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, which like all great friendships didn't need to be nurtured, but grew out of the common soil of our experience and passions and had the weedy tenacity to survive long periods of drought, shadow and silence.

That year in Missoula, Jim was 29 and I was 22. He was teaching English at Hellgate High School, and I was trying to get my MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana. He was from California, I was from New York, but somehow we had both been captivated by Montana and the diverse cultural experience of Missoula. Jim taught me guitar, and tutored me on the subtleties of Dylan's music and lyrics, and we spent endless hours at the Eastgate Liquor Store and Lounge expounding on the subtleties of women and never quite getting it right.

Jim had a great laugh and an appetite for life, which he shared insistently. He was one of the most unreserved people I knew, willing to unveil the most intimate details of his experience, almost daring people to figure out what it all meant. But I also learned that Jim was touched by a sadness so profound that it crackled. He had the eyes of an old soul, deep beyond comprehension, as if he had seen too much, knew too much, and could barely stand it.

Yet that sorrow never received full voice unless he had a guitar in his hands. Then he would assume the pose of an old bluesman, old beyond his years, and would howl on the strings, trying somehow to sculpt out of sound all the beauty and loss that life entails.

But so far as I know, neither Jim nor anyone else could ever get to the bottom of that sadness, to uncover what was the cause of it. It was as though he were born with a burden, and he went to his death with it.

The sufferin' is unending

Every nook and cranny has its tears

I'm not playing, I'm not pretending

I'm not nursin' any superfluous fears.

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Walkin' ever since the other night.

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

Walkin' 'til I'm clean out of sight.

- Bob Dylan, Ain't Talkin

None of us really understand each other's suffering, perhaps, but just to acknowledge it, to see that we are not alone, is a good start. Jim understood suffering, and that understanding made him a better friend.

Sadly, at the end of the school year in the spring of 1978, Jim and I parted ways. His wanderlust led him to take a job in Germany teaching English on U.S. Army bases, and I went to Tucson to begin a teaching assistantship at the University of Arizona.

Neither of us returned to Missoula for long again, though we both cherished that year and the many long nights of drinking, guitar-playing, singing and philosophizing. Jim eventually returned to the States to pursue his doctorate at the University of California-Davis, and I discovered my love of journalism that eventually led me to my career at the Inter Lake in Kalispell.

We went down separate paths, and might never have met again, except for Jim's persistence, which led him to track me down and call me many years later with his characteristically lazy drawl, "Frrraaaank! It's me … Bense!"

And so we began a very enjoyable long-distance relationship that lasted for several years before his early death at the age of 58 on June 14. I could count on a call from him every few weeks, and would put everything aside to talk with him about our favorite philosopher - Ralph Waldo Emerson - or our favorite person (Dylan of course). Jim had hit his stride as a literary critic and was gaining respect and recognition for his many essays on Emerson, Hawthorne and others. He loved to try out his new ideas on me, and I always felt deeply appreciative to be able to witness his nimble juggling of philosophy, scholarship, wit and humility. He was anything but a stuffed-shirt academic, and loved the rough and tumble of the classroom experience, teaching not just 19th century Transcendentalism, but also classes on Kerouac and the Beat Generation, Dylan and, I believe, even modern film.

He was also remarkably generous of spirit and mentored not just me but hundreds of his students by taking the time to look for the best of our work and always encouraging us to "go for it."

I only saw him once again after 1978, in the spring of 2003, when I was driving my mother's car cross-country from Michigan to Kalispell after her death a few months before. Jim and his wife, Caroline, invited me to stop at their home in Moorhead, Minn., where he had taught at the university for many years. It was like no time had passed at all. Jim pulled out the Gibson, the Dylan and the bourbon, and though I no longer drank, I could still enjoy the companionship of years gone by. We stayed up too late, talked about where we had been and where we were going, and mused once again on the meaning of it all, this great life we have been given.

I rest assured, that if anyone can figure it out, it is Jim.

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think

Far down the street we stray

I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by

Things I never meant nor wished to say

The midnight rain follows the train

We all wear the same thorny crown

Soul to soul, our shadows roll

And I'll be with you when the deal goes down.

- Bob Dylan, When the Deal Goes Down