I Am Nowhere
A bomb went off inside me when you left. Everything blew out. I’ve forgotten anything I ever knew about myself. I have no idea what I want now, except to look for you. I said I would live in a tent with you. Remember? I said wherever we are going, we are going together. I was so sure. I never once thought you wouldn’t survive the trip to the other side, or that you wouldn’t be able to reach back and see me or touch me. Frankly you have sent many more messages than I expected. But I think I might be mistaken about who I am. All these fucking words. Even these blank pages are pathetic, without possibility for me.
What if I am mistaken about the sense and meaning that we made together? Did you and I not have an agreement that life meant something when we lived it? If I am mistaken about you and I being explorers, adventurers, and co-travelers, that’s real death. Should I keep looking in all the corners where you might be hidden, or should I weep it out now and move on?
New York State is down to forty-two Covid deaths a day, and it’s day twelve of the BLM protests for George Floyd. East Hamptonites march as if their black lives are on the line, as the church bell recordings play. Everyone desperate to say we were there. Well, I am nowhere. But I will put on the mask and go out to the windmill and stand with everyone else. We will all know we’re on the right side, and our white male presidential pick is the better one, even though he too appears to be a chief architect of the bill that aimed to lock up as many brown people for profit as possible. But, oh yeah, people change.
Who did I think I was before all this went down - virtuous outsider, rare bird, special white lady who owed nothing to anyone? We are all killers. We eat our young. We sacrifice everyone else for our greed, for the black ooze that gushes out of the ground. All around me I see pathetic souls, and the only ones I can admire are those setting fire to old things. Burn it all to the ground. It might not have been such a good idea to do Kundalini yoga when I feel like killing myself. If we’re all one, then it doesn’t really matter what I do, does it? Should I take someone with me on the way out - an orange person? Obviously I’ve gone mad since you left.
At fifty-eight I am trying to plant myself into your soil. To hold onto the old place here on Earth, like I said I would. The shed is listing more every year. The window now perpetually cracked open. Its footprint is precious in East Hampton Village. As long as we keep one original wall we can build a new shed. That’s such gold. It was to be your tea shed. Your great uncle I believe was put out back in the one-room shack with the earth floor because he was a drunk. A terminal diagnosis in those days. A single electric bulb was hooked up to the ceiling. He lived out his days growing tomatoes and cucumbers and melons, sharing his rich patch of outhouse-enriched soil with the lady across the fence. There might not even have been a fence then.
I need you to tell me whether to stay in this quiet garden and save it against all odds, or let it be razed by The Hamptons. Can you tell me? I can sell the house, take the money and move out into the wider world to set more small fires. Is it more important to tell our story, or to save tigers and elephants? Is it more important to stop those who are evil, or should I sit in the back garden and write our book?
Today I went to the bank next door with the framed survey of number ten Pleasant Lane from 1926. The People’s United bank that you call “Pee Ewww.” The survey shows the lot lines that your Great grandfather Grimshaw laid when he and Filer cut Pleasant lane out of raw ground for housing plots. The bank building that used to be your great grandmother Susie Filer’s. How did you stand to see Gram Grimshaw’s garden paved over for a parking lot? I also brought the large black and white photograph of the new house from 1902. The old shingled two-story with a farm door that your great grandfather built for himself and his wife at 103 Newtown Lane at the corner of Pleasant the ground on which P.U. now stands, with Susie Filer standing in front of the rather new looking farmhouse.
I walked into the bank with my blue paper mask and my show-and-tell items to ask them, seeing as the bank now occupied Gram Grimshaw’s house, if they wouldn’t help me find a loan to save your house next door. That’s called holding down the fort I believe. Or going to any lengths necessary. Or magical thinking.
At the other extreme from the mundane financial one I still need a fast vehicle to take me to other worlds. That’s not too much to ask is it? I may need to travel on sound and vision, or just the arc of white light in the jet of the hose nozzle. I swung it up yesterday over the cement birdbath until it was circles of silver flying straight to you. I sent it out to you with my spirit eyes, hoping it landed. Even on a strong and fast horse I will need to fly, so I had better make sure to brush his wings, to bed him down in the tall grass, to feed and pet him, no matter the weather. Is the ending too trite?
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Episode #12: A Suitable Vessel For Magic