*
Today was my little niece’s Bat Mitzvah.
Yesterday my daughter turned 21.
Today I found a note hidden under a metal grate on my front porch that told me that there was a witness to a local murder, and gave all the details.
Last week this guy came to the house with a little bottle and some sand and note. He said he found it on the beach when he was vacationing in Hawaii. The note was from a ten year old girl and said that she would probably be dead by the time anyone found it.
He figured maybe I could find out who she was. If she was okay. Probably I couldn’t, he knew that.
But maybe I could.
*
I never been to a bat mitzvah before. Never set foot in a synagogue until today.
I was telling The Woman on The Verge today I feel like my life got replaced with an exact duplicate life, only they didn’t get everything right.
Or almost anything.
Everything that was there is still there, only….it’s odder.
It was nice at the ceremony, all our family was there. My sister-in-law’s family, too. Surreal and beautiful.
Touching.
*
Those notes, the people who come to our door infrequently, but often bloody or distressed, they greatly disturb my wife.
To me they are dispatches from an absurdist universe, addressed to “current resident.”
The world is profoundly odd.
*
Why should we expect anything different from it?
*
It distresses me to feel at one remove from life, as if there is a semi-permeable membrane between me and everything that isn’t me, and it can be violated only with a great deal of effort.
As I was sitting in the pew listening to my niece read from the Torah, I watched a red-tailed hawk swoop down from the perfect blue heavens and take a small rabbit or squirrel, I couldn’t be sure of what.
The cantor played a blue guitar throughout the ceremony. It made me wish he’d just intone with a sonorous voice, devoid of strings.
It seems frivolous somehow. Joan Baez. Not that she’s frivolous, but, you know….
*
Last week this woman I work with came into my office. Her son died a few months ago at 21, the same age my daughter is today. She sat down and talked and I listened to her. We hadn’t spoken since his death, so it was our first foray into that subject together.
She cried a lot.
So did I.
She stayed there in my office for more than an hour, all broken hearted and snot-nosed and brave and smart and funny and decimated by it.
I felt like there wasn’t anything more important in the world than just letting her talk and letting her feel that I was right there with her.
*
I’m still deeply saddened by Ryan’s murder. This other murder, the one that someone left a note on my porch about, also has a deep and personal connection, astounding and terrible.
I feel as though I’m getting peeled. Peeled and scalded. Peeled and scaled and run over.
It’s leaving me all tender.
*
I got so much selfishness in me. So much anxiety and fearfulness and small-heartedness. It gets so I can hardly stand my own self. Like I’d like to smash myself to bits over it.
Lucky for me I am getting peeled and scalded and run over without me having to do a damn thing.
Ain’t that some shit?
*
Namaste.
***
Those women and The Undertoad. Heart smashing. I am so glad it is September which means Autumn and Autumn is always better than Summer and that fucking moon is on the wane now. I love you and I love knowing you are in my world. You are extraordinary.
Yours,
Rebecca
Autumn is best of all.
I’m glad you came by, as always.
yrs-
Scott
Hey you,
I love the dancing girls. They are adorable. I sometimes miss the finer details in your work because my eyes are bad, so I’ll have to enlarge it to be sure neither one has a pencil sticking out of an eye socket or something! (I mean before I go calling it adorable and all) But with my eyes as they are, the girls appear sweet and carefree.
The codependent in me wishes you could take a chunk of time off or just find some different kind of work with the city or state so you can keep retirement benies and get the hell out of the murdering business.. well, the murdering solving business. That’s what I wish for you. Maybe hawk does too. She/he keeps showing up. Interesting the juxtapositions of the two sightings. One was trapped and trying to get out, flustered, the other powerful, striking prey and living fully. Wow. You do have some intense juju, And I am convinced hawk is screaming to you. (In a good way) But that’s my sort of crazy religion coming out.
I can understand why TWOTV would be disturbed by such visitors. How do they find you? I would find that scary. Anyway, I’m rambling. I hope you find some peace within the jaggedness you have to manage.
Sending soothing wishes,
pf
Yeah, something is going on with the hawks. I’m listening and watching.
The visitors come because we live in a small town where everyone knows what I do for a living, and it’s easier than dealing with the ‘real’ cops. It doesn’t happen often, really.
But it can be unsettling.
anyway, thanks as always for your wonderful comments.
yrs-
Scott
It all bleeds together. That membrane of yours, it’s useful. Seems everyone wants a piece of you right now, but you’ve got to also tend you. Sending love, the kind that can enfold you and I wish protect you I wish. I wish.
Angella-
Love and peace received, thank you!
Sometimes I think that we don’t need protecting, that protecting ourselves from the universe that is assaulting us only make the universe try all the harder to crack us open.
But sometimes you feel like you need to catch your breath. Just have a moment of peace and quiet to regroup.
Say, a moment that lasts five or six years.
ha.
Right now we’re all in the deep waters and we’ve got to swim. Shore is a long ways off.
Thanks, as always, for your warm and generous and loving thoughts.
love-
Scott
PS I’m sorry about your friend’s son. That is sad.
Yeah, her kid was a real sweet guy. His death blew a big hole into their lives.
Something deep and wild comes with that kind of grief, but you’d never ask for it.
Unfortunately, you don’t have to.
yrs-
Scott
i went to see ‘the possession’ tonight, hoping to get scared, but it didn’t work. there was a cop there, though, in uniform, being present and watching the crowd.
that scared me.
i’m glad i don’t know the things you’re forced to know.
but i’m glad i know you.
that movie looks scary as shit.
i’m glad you don’t know the things you don’t want to know. I do want to know them. I sought them out. I shouldn’t bitch about the cost, and I’m not, not really.
Well, okay, I am.
ha.
i’m glad I know you, too.
yrs-
tearful
Hi there. We haven’t talked before, but I’ve been a lurker ever since Ms. Moon first linked to your blog. I love your writing and your spirit, and I never miss a post.
I had to comment today, because the way you described the semi-permeable membrane that’s keeping you at some remove from the world – that’s a classic descriptor of clinical depression. (I’ve been there myself, and I described it the something like that – like there was a bubble or pane of glass that separated me from everyone else.) And I wonder if you could use some support of the medical kind. Not that I want to be in your personal business or tell you what to do. But what you said about this rang like a bell to me, and I wanted to say this in case it resonates with where you are right now.
Amna-
thank you for your kind comment. and your good thoughts.
yeah, depression. I’ve never been medicated or hospitalized by it or for it, but I am pretty well acquainted with it. Well enough to know that I’m stuck and bothered and overwhelmed and thin-skinned and anxious and flinty and all manner of other things right now, but not depressed. Not really.
I was reading on Louisey’s blog, letting go- it’s over there on the blog list, you should check her out, she’s astounding- anyway, she describes Mitchiko Kakutani’s take on DFW’s take on depression:
In “Infinite Jest” David Foster Wallace described clinical depression as “the Great White Shark of pain,” “a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it,” a “nausea of the cells and soul,” a sort of “double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible,” a radical loneliness in which “everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution.”
*
Yeah, I’m wrapped up in a lot of crap right now, but I’m miles from feeling that level of pain.
There’s always someone suffering more than you, somewhere. Probably not very far away.
Anyway, thank you so much. Really glad you shared your thoughts.
yrs-
tearful
isn’t there a membrane close to Halloween or All Souls Day? Something about what separates this world from the other. Or is it The Other. This post is nearly Blakean but entirely Dishwasherian.
I’m glad to read it.
I have heard this too. There are times when the veil between worlds is thinner. I think the solstices and or equinoxes may be involved. I forget!
Elizabeth-
Always glad to have your input. It does feel like the membrane gets thinner. Like in Castaneda’s description of passing into the spirit world.
Solstices and equinoxes are involved. Also, a lot of datura and peyote!
yrs-
Scott
So haunting. I can’t stop thinking about the dead and all the young girls…teetering.
I hope your life meshes back together. Much love.
Jewelmoon-
I hope that I can get what I’m supposed to get out of this “unmeshing” of my life.
And then, yes, I hope I find my way back.
yrs-
Scott
Your girldance makes me smile. Brings to mind a Leonard Cohen song, “Dance me to the end of love.”
Your membrane comment brings to mind an interview of an author I heard on NPR last week. The author’s name is David Eagleman, and the book he was discussing was “Inconito: What’s Hiding in the Unconscious Mind.” It was some pretty heavy, pretty deep, pretty revelatory stuff he was talking about with Terry Gross who is maybe the best interviewer on the planet.
Listening to the interview, I thought of my father, and my older brother, and you. I said out loud, to the car, to myself: Damn, these guys would love this book.
Brother, if you have a moment in your chaotic life, you might wanna listen to the interview and definitely read that book.
The brain is its own universe. Vast and mostly unknown and unknowable.
Autumn IS the best of all.
Here. Come drink from my cup.
Still overflowing with happiness….
I love Eagleman! That guy is doing some amazing work. I’ll take a look at the interview and the book, both, thank you!
I’m glad beyond glad that you are still overflowing with happiness!
yrs-
Scott
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