Everyone knew Crysta. She was impossible to miss, sitting outside the building, rocking, saying hello and smoking. She counted her cigarettes faithfully, so proud of herself when she limited them to eleven a day. She watched the clock between each cigarette, saying "I can smoke again in thirty minutes." It is notoriously difficult for people with severe mental illness to quit smoking. She carried her butts in an Altoids tin, never leaving them on the ground for someone else to pick up.
She tried to be more active. As we skated around her block in Belltown, everyone on the street yelled "Hello Crysta!" She rode her bike wearing pink swimming goggles and bought a basket for it to carry her groceries.
Her battle with cancer was long. Eleven years. She was young when she died. 56 years old.
Crysta was diagnosed with schizophrenia while in the Marine Corp where she was another statistic of the rape culture so prevalent there. After attending a poetry workshop, she returned to her office, where she worked as a Marine journalist, and put a sign on her door that said, "Resident Poet". When she was threatened with the brig, she amended the sign to say "Resident Poet in The Brig." She received a medical discharge. This is the cover of Crysta's second book of poetry. The painting on the cover is a self-portrait.
She considered poetry her work, but painting was her fun. This is a portrait she painted of a friend while he was in the hospital, dying of mouth cancer.
This is a gallery of her paintings.
Crysta Casey Paintings
Crysta did not want to die yet. After a lifetime of being committed to institutions and serious illness, she had created a family of choice who cherished her and supported her poetry. She had been nominated for Seattle Poet Populist. It seemed so unfair to be taken away, just as things were getting good. She had been an integral part of the daily life of the Seattle VA and so, as she had wanted, the flag draped her casket. No one maintained their composure when the salute was fired.
Here are some of her colleagues reading her poetry posthumously.
Posthumous readings of Green Cammie
And here is a KUOW (Seattle's NPR) piece about Crysta which includes her reading her own poetry.
Crysta's Voice
Others have told her story far more eloquently than I can. Here is a free ebook at iTunes about Crysta Casey's life and work that is on the New and Noteworthy list. (Full disclosure, the author is a close friend of mine.)
Celebration, Crysta Casey, Resident Poet. A Life Celebration and Selection of her Poetry
The interrogators asked,
“Who are you?” In her
lamp lit room, she sat
on a chair, back to the window.
They could have shot her
from the street, twelve floors
below. “I am a poet,” she said.
“I absorb, filter, reflect
and reinvent the wind,
pot holes in the street,
the cigarette wrapping,
city buildings. I tell bits
and pieces to make one peace.
I am not a prophet.
To be the Second Coming
is too much
responsibility.”
www.crystacasey.com
Bio of Crysta by Mitchel Cohen