Sunday morning

 Sunday morning  

Sunday morning. Some weeks ago but not that many. Still in bed. Listening to the air-conditioning cough, wake up.
     “What time is it?” Roz said.
     “Where’s your phone?”
     “Downstairs. Charging.”
     “I don’t know,” I said. “Still early.”

“Are you and Albert going to church?” She rolled over and punched me in the shoulder. “Do you go to church any more?”
     “Good question. Not often, do we?”
     “Doesn’t seem like it. Why not?” Her eyes look out of focus without her glasses as if they weren’t to help her see but to help you to see her. Her voice is always clear, though, from waking to sleeping and waking — even in sleep, clear.
     “It’s a lot of work for one thing, especially for him. But for both of us. Getting ready, getting out the door, getting in the doors, getting home again. . . . Then, what do we find when we get there? It’s like we’re still in the time of cholera. Masks. The wine in paper cups. The homilies a desperate attempt at good cheer. ‘God is working his purposes out.’”
     “It’s one thing when he depends on the rich to succor the widows and orphans and the sojourners in the land. It’s another when he allows the comfortable to get such bad colds they sometimes die,” Roz said.
     “Yes,” I said. “I guess,” I said. “Something like that.”

the bathroom clock

“But it’s over, isn’t it? Didn’t I read that we’re back to no excess of deaths?”
     “Whatever that means. Are we?” I got up, went to the bathroom. I came back. “So are we back to an excess of life?” I said at the same time Roz was saying, “What time is it, then?”
     “Six-thirty on the clock in the bathroom.”
     “Not at church, apparently,” she said.
     “What?”
     “Are you back to an excess of life? Or an abundance? At church?”
     “No,” I said. “No,” thinking we sang like we were already dead and time meant nothing at all so why count?
                                                                         07.19.23

 In the beginning 
The apocalypse, part one.

 

 

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Eventually, the word got a capital letter – because it was God.
     Later, God’s capital letter was taken away, and given to others. Indeed, many took it upon themselves.

07.13.23

 

A 3rd letter

 A 3rd letter, and a 3rd person coda  

Moira, before she died
(though not long)

Dear Ted,    
     Who told me you were reading Freud? What in God’s name for? I am about to ask, when I think, “He is amusing, isn’t he, dear old Sigmund?” — always abuilding, a house of straw and sticks, altering the plans as he goes, changing the purpose of the rooms he's built already, tearing down walls between them at the same time he is building new walls within them. Adding rooms, adding stories. And now his disciples are coming around him with mud, glues, and cements, trying to keep the structure from collapsing. A philosophy like rock ‘n’ roll. I make fun, but only because he thought of himself as a scientist, not as the fabulist he is, and one constantly changing his mind about where his story was going.
     Speaking of stories, where is yours going? Are you only going to rip off my letters? They may fill space, but it won’t move matters forward, will it? Aren’t you only building rooms that will turn into storage closets?
     But enough about you. What about me?  I keep to my pattern, which is nevertheless porous enough that all kinds of things, new and old, exciting and indifferent, can seep in; some can even widen a weak space and rush in. Yet the house built on rock will not fall.
     Today, for example. I woke up as usual. I ate breakfast as usual while Potato, the cat, wandered in and out of the window over the kitchen table. I put on my coral-red dress with its million white buttons down the front and walked barefoot to the park, where I sat with a sobbing Max. Then, I started to Alma’s to write you
     when it began to rain. So, I ducked into a magic store I had never noticed before, run, it turned out, by Søren of Søren, Kris (for Kristian), and Hamlet, who also have an interest in the store but are never there. “It’s pretty much all me,” Søren said, “here 24/7.”
     “So, you’re pretty easy to find,” I said. He said, “Yes, why?” I shook my head. [But see here.] “Show me something I might be interested in,” I said.
     “Are you easily fooled?”
     “Probably so.”
     And he showed me some tricks with spongy balls that appeared and disappeared, multiplied and hung in the air. And I laughed, and he laughed at my laughing.
     “Do I know you?” he asked after the gravity-defying climax.
     “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a friend of Alma. In fact, we went to high school together, Alma and I. I know Kris when I see him.”
     “But not Hamlet,” he said, more as a statement of fact than a question.
     “No,” I said. “At least not so far.” And I looked out the window, and the rain had stopped. “Gotta go,” I said though I didn’t “gotta go.” But I did go — on to Alma’s for pen and paper to write to you. Which she brought to my booth with my coffee.
     “I didn’t know Søren had a magic store,” I said. “Does he?” She didn’t sound interested.
     And that is my day so far. I am back “in pattern.” I’ll walk this to campus mail, hoping for a letter from you that won’t be there. But there will be one soon after you get this, I hope.
                                                                                                                                     Love, Moira
                                                        _______________________________

“This is the third-in-row letter from your dead sister,” Axel said. “Have you lost interest in the living?”
     “No, of course not,” Ted replied.
     “But?” he asked.
     “I don’t know what to write about them. There is very little movement these days, and I don’t know what they are thinking.”
     “Do you never speculate?” Axel said and looked at Ted, who looked at him, puzzled as if he didn’t understand the question. So, he (Axel) interrupted his (Ted’s) silence. “No, I don’t think you do.”

                                                                    07.04.23