It’s a gray day here.
Spitting rain, on and off.
It feels tremendously refreshing.
I spent part of the morning in my handsome claw foot tub,
soaking with salts,
sipping green tea
Of all the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not murder” always seemed to me the one I would have to worry least about, until I got old enough to see that there are many different kinds of death, not all of them physical. There are murders as subtle as a turned eye. Dante was inspired to install Satan in ice, cold indifference being so common a form of evil.
[Anne Truitt:::Daybook]
I sat and soaked and remembered:
When I was in kindergarten or first grade, living in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, Canada, I had a long bus ride to and from school every day. One day, Curtis S. was burning the back of a bus seat with a lighter. I had never witnessed vandalism before and couldn’t help but stare. He looked up, caught me watching him and said,
“If you tell Russel [the bus driver], I will set your hair on fire.“
Because I was practically an infant at the time, I believed him.
I remember knowing that there was no one around to protect me.
From that day forth, each time I stepped onto the school bus, I felt a degree of fear.
It was my first memorable taste of human cruelty
and certainly not my last.
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I sometimes wonder what part of me died that day.
I sometimes wonder what parts of me have been murdered, over the years, and is there a chance of regeneration?
As a fallible human, I wonder what parts of others I have killed,
knowingly and unknowingly.
Will there ever be a chance for atonement
and if there were,
could we ever grant each other that chance?
Recently, I repeat myself:
The light and the dark.
The sum of living.
The nature of humans.
The hope of redemption.
The goodness of mercy.
It’s all beautiful.
I had to call the police yesterday
because of a dash of domestic dispute on our street.
I wasn’t in a panic.
I was relatively calm, at least on the outside.
I quietly asked to remain anonymous with my report
and then stepped back outside to finish hanging the wet laundry on the line.
Farley, sensing something amiss, stayed at my hip whining quietly,
pushing his wet nose into the palm of my hand.
That mother
screaming at her daughter.
Her daughter screaming back.
The swearing.
The threats.
How many little pieces of person
died there yesterday,
fell to the asphalt,
puddled there, still and wispy as a dream?
Will there ever be a chance for atonement?
I’m in the white room this afternoon (which is such a symbolic space for me),
working on thresholds,
building my idea of the liminal.
The work is good.
The tea is hot.
All is as whole as whole can be.