the heather on the hill and the whistle in the wall

I walked by a house where a neighbor is growing heather, what a beautiful thing. I don't know about you, but I'm having quite a green and purple-pink experience lately.

Meanwhile, there's been a strange sound in the wall by my bed at night, it's been eerie. I came across this passage today regarding the spirits of the departed who take on worldly shapes. It has me thinking, snipe, maybe? "A wicked sea-captain stayed for years inside of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe, making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was broken down; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling." W.B. Yeats

The Phantom of Loch McKeyFood

hell divers

Last week my friend told me the first spooky Brooklyn story I've heard in a long time. A student of his who'd been watching a rehearsal of the play he is currently working on made a point of speaking to him before class because he was concerned that the playwright's attitude towards some supernatural themes he included his script lacked gravitas. "You know, all that stuff is real and not to be messed with." The student went on to tell of an experience he'd had; upon entering a Catholic church in Brooklyn he'd accidentally become a witness to a young woman's exorcism. As the man watched, a group of alarmed priest and family surrounded her as she had some kind of seizure. Eventually the overwhelmed priests and horrified crowd heard the flailing girl begin speaking in a demonic voice. The man in the back watched as one priest became exhausted and wandered away. Praying quietly in the back of the church, this man made a silent pledge to the demon, leave her alone right now and you can have me when I die. At that moment, the girl stood up, looked at the man sitting in back, said OK in the demon voice, and passed out.

While I listened to my friend tell the story my heart seemed to grow three sizes like the Grinch's...who would be brave enough to sacrifice his soul for the redemption of a child? What will happen to him? Is it at all possible that certain brave individuals can actually sweeten hell with the scale of their compassion alone? Could they turn hell into heaven?

Perhaps this explains the Delok phenomenon in Tibet, in which various yoginis lay as if dead for a number of days and return to consciousness telling tales of various hells and the world of the dead, sometimes returning with messages from the departed. Jesus too descended to hell after his crucifixion, it is said. I assume this was no exotic vacation. What business did he conduct there, I wonder? When he ascended to heaven on the third day, did he bring souls with him? Did he lessen the devil's load? I can't help but think of the reportedly high burnout rates among social workers for whom the Sisyphus myth must get really personal.

On a related theme, the Black Metal Symposium, Hideous Gnosis, takes place in Williamsburg this Saturday. Herein a sampling of titles: The Light that Illuminates Itself, the Dark that Soils itself: Blackened Notes from Schelling’s Underground • The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances • BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum • Transcendental Black Metal • Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya • Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration. More darkness here. I'm wondering if you dive deep enough into hell, do you wind up in heaven?

Apotomy?

I very much enjoyed reading Reverend Doctor Daniel Meeter's sermon for March 22, "Apotomy," but have to admit I just don't get the word apotomy. Yes, I looked it up and the definition left me even more confused. I'm hoping to bother Reverend Meeter for a resolution to this mystery at some point but I know he's a busy man.

My confusion didn't stop me from enjoying the sermon which taught me new things about the staff of Asclepius, and I heartily enjoyed all that talk of poisonous medicine, with which I've grown very familiar, as it seems to rise up to meet me like an old friend wherever I walk these days.

I'd noticed these snake-handled cauldrons for the first time on Saturday when I walked to Vajradhara for the Tara Puja. I'd also never participated in a Tara Puja before. The poetry in the prayers devoted to Green Tara, who is viewed as uniquely able to deliver humanity from the pain of samsara, was very beautiful, as was the wish behind the practice, that all humanity be liberated from sorrow caused by our fundamental ignorance about the nature of reality. As part of the discussion Matthew Reichers finessed the idea that Green Tara or any Buddha or Bhodisattva exist only as a represention of a person's highest potential for compassion, freedom and wisdom. But I still like to believe SHE'S REAL. Just as we finished we heard a car parked outside on St. Mark's begin to loudly broadcast Al Green singing "Help Me Mend My Broken Heart," and no one could keep from laughing. It seemed like someone had a sense of humor.

Brooklyn Under Siege

I spoke with Marney Fuller, the woman who helped the public school kids make the wire spider. She has a few battle scars on her arms from the wire wrangling, but mostly, it was very happy weaving. She now knows every child in the school. The fire department was instrumental in getting the hefty monster safely mounted to the wall.

About the black widow on Sherman I know nothing, but can picture the moment when it was secured to its moorings and dropped out the window. Now that the moment's past, I wonder where the spider will hibernate until next year?

Rueful

I had a dream in late July that I see as a direct result of blogging, but I haven't blogged the dream because I expected to earn some chagrin about it from certain people. But this morning it seems like the time has come, in light of what's going on in the economy and the absurd ways so many are dancing now as they face the music of the deregulated financial markets. Oh, some financiers didn't live up to our expectations I guess. Some of us underestimate human weakness, or would rather ignore it. How many good men are there, really?

In July there was a glorious vision on the parsley plant that grows in a crack in our driveway, a plant we really can't weed out because of the way it's worked its taproot down deep into a crack in the cement. For 3 days a Parsley Worm devoured umbel after umbel. When I posted about it a commentor brought up the Rue plant in a context that seemed to mandate that I eat some to find out how bitter it was. I had already been thinking a lot about Rue because my friend, a Queens medicine woman Irma Caceres discussed it frequently as something Mexicans who practice plant medicine use for everything.

I ate a single leaf, and it didn't taste as bad as I expected it too. Just bitter and overpowering. After I ate it I read somewhere that it's poisonous, although other sources discuss its use as a culinary herb since time immemorial, so maybe it's poisonous in the way some say potatoes are poisonous. I fell asleep early because I felt weird. A few hours later I had a dream in which the sun kept waking me up, which was cause for concern. In dialogue format, the dream would go something like this:

Me: Sun, why are you up at midnight, shining like that. Go to sleep. You are waking me up.

Sun: I'm stuck in this position. Can't move.

Me: Sun, I'm very worried. You were supposed to have gone to bed hours ago. How is it that you shine as brightly at midnight as you did at noon? This is too much shining! Look, there you are again, still shining.

Sun: I'm stuck here. Can't move.

At that point in the dream the sun suddenly went out, and as it did, all the other stars in the sky appeared, and the sun became a dark circle in which a small pink ember glowed (sort of caterpillar shaped.) Very strange for such an apocalyptic tableau to take the form of a beautiful, peaceful event. I suppose it was eclipse like.

The Rock star Dave Grohl was in my dream. Of course my dream Grohl may bear little resemblance to the actual Dave Grohl, Foo Fighter and former Nirvana drummer. In my dream, he was a drug addict, and as the sun went out, Dave Grohl was going cold turkey, and my only wish was to help him through his withdrawal, his nausea, shivers, the whole assortment of extremely unpleasant sensations that seem associated with correcting an imbalance. So when the sun went dark, this seemed to be the work there was to do, to help an addict cope with the trauma of withdrawal.

Today I realized how my subsconcious must view Dave Grohl. He's someone I knew in my youth and he has extreme energy, which you well know if you've heard him drum. And there's basically no way you've been able to avoid that. The way he beats the drums reminds me of the way the sun seems to sometimes beat down relentlessly. Sometimes that's what you want, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's the dark we need.

As the clouds in front of the world's financial markets thicken, many will go into withdrawal. Some have been taking too much for themselves, cheating, lying, evading the truth. Righting such an imbalance is deeply painful, is what many medicine people of old would have called a "little death," a death akin to the one Ebenezer Scrooge endured when he took a clue from the ghost of Christmas future. You don't always reap what you sow actually, because in many cases, we sow lies, and we reap truth.

It's so hard for mankind to face our vulnerability and tenderness so we build our lives around rituals that serve to create the fallacy of impermeability. We take vitamins, get plastic surgery, lunge after sweet deals, etc. This is the masculine side of a person or society in the throws of mania wherein we convince ourselves that if we only had a little more money, a new kind of pharmaceutical, the better home or car, higher ratings, etc., things will finally be OK. It's not easy to face the truth that there's no escaping ourselves in all of our imperfections and vulnerabilities. How do we get strong enough to face the truth of frailty, mortality and imperfection with a loving, generous heart? A heart that buddhist teacher Pema Chodron would call bodhichitta, a sense of compassion that's large and generous enough to hold all the horrors of ourselves and our society without needing to hide anything.

And then there's me, with my own brand of skittish desperation. I'm sure I've got my work cut out for me.

(I've come to understand that the side of a person that acts can be viewed as the masculine, and the side that contemplates is the feminine. So if the feminine side is damaged, as it often is, the masculine side acts without crucial information. Balancing the two parts of the individual so that there's harmony between them is the work of a lifetime. I just say all this because I don't want anyone to think I'm against men. Not at all. There's nothing more thrilling than a contemplative man, that is, a man who handles truth, a man whose feminine side has managed to survive all the threats to it that persist in a society in which the masculine is overvalued, and not seen as dependent on the feminine for its wisdom. By the way, women are just as likely to have a feminine side that's not fully functioning. I'm speaking from experience, ya know.)

Strength In Number

This is the view of the base of the Culver Viaduct at 3rd Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets, a block South (more or less) of what's recently been identified as the Revolutionary War era burial grounds of the 256 Maryland men killed as they fought to allow the rest of the colonial army to cross the Gowanus and escape from British troops.



From what I've read, the dead lie somewhere near that sunlit walkup a block into the picture. I believe there's a massive construction site on that block, right across from Carousel Beverages and Power Play. You have to wonder what they might dig up in there.

Courage of Convictions

Li'l Lamb's Quarters

I came across this sympathetic plant, lamb's quarters, last week when I needed comfort. I noticed it in weedy tree pits, sidewalk cracks, my backyard overgrown now with spiderwort, and among my adorable nasturtiums that survived the early summer onslaught of aphids. It was strange how it manifested in the window of the magic 8 ball of the world, as until then I'd pulled it up a million times with only the slightest awareness of its presence, which is a very sweet one. It's got slightly blueish leaves, powdery white on the underside, with soft flowing serration that creates an outline looking remotely like the head of a sheep, to me anyway. A relative of Quinoa, the leaves can be eaten cooked or raw, dried and ground into flour, and the black seeds it produces by the thousands can be eaten as a grain.

I'm not sure why it's called lamb's quarters, and like most plants it has many many names. Last week, when I felt the world was falling apart, it became the Jesus plant because of the profound comfort it was somehow able to give me. I even noticed one growing on 17th St. that appeared to be spattered with blood on Thursday morning, the day Kimberly, my coworker, died. But then again, I also noticed the fallen limb of a plane tree lying on the 8th Ave sidewalk North of Beth Elohim that morning, and was surprised and a little befuddled to see that the inner wood was red bleeding to pink.

Wow, funny thing, I just googled lamb's quarters and found this article from the New York Times, published, um, TODAY. Scary! Apparently Lamb's quarters "are the cook-friendly version of spinach: the flavor is more delicate, the stems are less tough and the leaves retain less grit, so cleaning them is quicker and easier."

I'm glad you're coming across some well deserved celebrity, you sweet little lamb. Somehow, seeing you in the sidewalk cracks gives me hope, and I can't say why.

Here's more on lamb's quarters

Brutal Week

Warning: Very Sad Post

The week culminating in the thunder moon was like a nightmare. I felt anxiety all week to the point of having stomach aches many mornings. It's easy enough to explain it by noting that I had returned from vacation and had to adjust to new coordinates; the kids with new caretakers at their camps, a tide of details to manage including applying sunscreen to all the children in the morning, accounting for bathing suits, towels, underwear, googles, and swimming caps, and that never easily solved solution of bringing water. I'm trying to go the high road of avoiding bottled water, which led me to search target for some reusable container. If they were little pirates, they'd just have their bottle of whiskey with them, you know water gets very rank after months at sea, but hooch doesn't.

I could've used some hooch last week, if only I could drink it without feeling worse. That's why I have to meditate. Or pray, which I did plenty of days last week. There were some periods where I carried my rosary beads around with me like a security blanket, pressed into some anxiety center between my heart and my navel. What in the heck all was going down?

Bad things came in threes. The first bitterness was the story of the child named Chase, newly adopted from China, who died because his father completely forgot about him, leaving the child in the car when he went to work instead of taking the boy to daycare. Poor poor forgotten Chase, so far from home.

Poor Pluto, our Chinchilla, who started having seizures Sunday, while I was shopping for water vessels at Target, and who died the next day. He was the greatest pet ever, so gentle and soft and amazing. I'm picturing him scurrying around on the craggy peaks of ethereal Andes in Chinchilla heaven, taking abundant luxurious dirt baths in volcanic ash.

On Thursday I learned that someone at work died, not someone I knew but someone who people loved, a young woman with a year old baby. She died from blood clots in both her lungs. Her husband found her collapsed and took her to the hospital, where they resucitated her three times before she passed away. Rest in Peace, Kimberly.

Then on Friday, the thunder moon was full and glowing through the night's humidity, as if the air itself were full of tears. I came across this tale of the Buddha when I was looking into the meaning of mustard seeds as a symbol of faith. It seems they are also a symbol of grief, and nothing tests faith like grief. The story begins when a woman visits the Buddha seeking a cure for her child:

"Lord and Master, give me the medicine that will cure my boy." The Buddha answered: "I want a handful of mustard-seed." And when the girl in her joy promised to procure it, the Buddha added: "The mustard-seed must be taken from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent, or friend." Poor Kisa Gotami now went from house to house, and the people pitied her and said: "Here is mustard-seed; take it!" But when she asked Did a son or daughter, a father or mother, die in your family?" They answered her: "Alas the living are few, but the dead are many. Do not remind us of our deepest grief." And there was no house but some beloved one had died in it.

You know how people make a gesture of playing a tiny violin with their fingers to mock someone's melodrama? I'd like to play an actual song on an actual violin this time, something for the dead, and for us living struggling with our losses and failures. What would you like me to play? Just let me warn you, I don't play well.

Washington Cemetery

I read that if you try to visit a grave at this cemetery you may have to climb over others to get to it. I have no issue with that, do people need a lot of space when they're dead? What kind of floor plan do the dead require? Is a floor-through OK?

Maybe I should have been holding my breath or saying a rosary when I passed by here on the F train, but I just wanted to take pictures.

Some people these days complain about people who are "transplants" to Brooklyn. Of course, if you've lived here all your life, when you see new people coming and things changing in ways you don't like, you just add it up. But unless you are a Lenape somewhere along the line your people came here. It is very likely that most all the people buried in Washington cemetery were born in Europe or Russia or another far away place, especially the ones buried under the amazing old stones that have character and drama. Notice the newer ones on the left that make a blacker line, they have too much polish and too little artistry. That's how they make them these days. I guess the dead don't care.

Sid Luckman Ballfield

If you're in luck, you're playing ball on the Sid Luckman field, and if you are really lucky, you play like he did. Not so lucky, well, just behind it lies the Washington Cemetery, the part of it that lies North of the F line. I shot this from the train, you can kind of see the impressions of the dirty glass of the car windows which bear scratch marks and some stuff that looks like dried snot, like the marks a dog's nose make on a car window.

I can't tell if those beige areas are sand on the astro turf or places where the players have worn through it. They look like small islands in a blazing green lake. So much color next to so much grey.

17th Street Ghost

17th street is one of my favorites for some reason. When I went to the Brooklyn Ghost Society meet up group at the Connecticut Muffin, a woman told a story about a house she briefly lived in on that street. She and her husband moved into her husband's family's house. One day she was napping (always a good idea) and heard what sounded like someone rummaging through drawers on the floor above her. She assumed it was her husband, but when she looked for him, she found him in the backyard. They got the feeling that the noises were the spirit of her father-in-law, who was always tinkering around, fixing things up, digging through drawers to find a needed part.

That sounds so much like some of the people I know around here, especially first generation Italians like the ones that used to own our house: they knew how to fix things, and everything was immaculate. I am one hopeless clueless slob in comparison. When we moved into our house, there were 4 fruit trees, all bearing fruit, somehow wedged into a plot of soil roughly 12 feet square. How is that done? Those are the kind of things Maria's family could do. She was so funny and charming, but she would roll over in her grave if she saw the amount of dust accumulating behind our refrigerator and who knows where else.

Back to the ghost story: I hear stories like that, about spirits that think they need things, who continue to look for material things even after they die. One story involved a spirit who loved pepsi so much it possessed a college student who all the sudden started drinking uncharacteristic volumes of pepsi and watching TV non-stop. He eventually got shipped off for psychiatric help. I wonder if he recovered.

Sometimes spirits stick around to look after people. In the spring I was driving around Bartel Pritchard Square (circle) and the car in front of me had plates that read AUNTDODO. My own Aunt Dodo had died recently, so of course I paid attention in complete astonishment. How many Aunt Dodo's are there, and even if there's one, someone makes it their license plate? (Dodo is a nickname for Dolores) At the time, I brushed it off. But now I have even more questions about reality, and have been revisiting that moment with more of an open mind.

Someone concerned about me sent me an article from Skeptic Magazine today, debunking things like superstition and hauntings. I'm sure he's been reading this blog. It is terrible to be a slave to superstition and fear of spirits and things like that. I know. It would be nice to be a skeptic. But once you've seen a ghost, or a ghost dog, that's pretty hard to pull off.

Sign Troubles at Royal Supermaket

I noticed the new electronic sign installed in the window with dismay because it hits the quiet corner of 8th Avenue and 15th Street in South Slope like a swatch of Times Square. It's small, but it moves light and pattern with a degree of intensity you don't want to go near if you're an epileptic. It lets you know without a doubt, if you had any, that you can in fact buy BEER and LOTTO tickets in that store. The words turn cartwheels, dissolve into animated patterns and reappear as another choice vice designed to jackhammer it's presence into your brain.

The other day I was in there and asked if they thought the sign was helping business. They said yes. Then I asked them if they were sure. This is a new skill I've developed, planting seeds of doubt in unsuspecting store owners. Wouldn't it be great to know for sure? If they could only turn it off for a week and see if it changes anything.

But they won't have to do that because it looks like the sign's been going on the fritz. Last week I noticed that the circus of light seemed to have unwanted streaks going through it. According to the shop owner, the lines had appeared, and when they went to take the sign in to be fixed, they disappeared. Later, they were back. Haunted sign, cool.

Today the only thing happening with the sign was a small vertical line on the right side and one little dot in the middle flashing red and green. I kept looking at it to see if I could figure out what it was advertising. Not lotto, not beer, not today. Looks like something fairly nonconceptual. Did God take over the sign to advertise spaciousness? Did Buddha take over the sign to advertise the emptiness and bliss at the root of all things? Maybe Kali, in her impassioned mission to kill every demon in existence, hacked at its wiring with her blood-drenched sabre. Who is controlling that sign now? I don't know but looking at the disabled thing is a huge relief.

So run, run in people, go see the miracle sign. And be sure to tell the cashier that the reason you decided to shop in their store today is because that damn sign is broken. Unless you loved it, in which case, I'm sorry.

UPDATE: Yesterday morning, the sign was unplugged. Nevermind...

Kush

Last night I was sitting at the kitchen table taking notes on things that have been on my mind, or just below the surface of my mind. I was going by theme.

The main theme was Afghanistan, because a few nights ago I had a dream in which I saw death to the left of me in the form of pieces of bodies in the sand and a man sitting in a chair looking like he had burned to death. Some measure of lucidity allowed me to remember that I had heard the word Afghanistan in the dream.

As I sat last night, I was feeling haunted by this dream and wondering why these images had appeared on my left.

It seemed I kept hearing about Afghanistan for the last week or so, but all I could identify was an article that I had seen in the NYT Sunday about the struggles of the inadequately outfitted Afghan police force, and another piece I found looking through an old National Geographic while I held my sick child, an article from 1972 called Winter Caravan to the Roof of the World by a french husband and wife team, Sabrina and Roland Michaud. There is a picture of the grizzled couple wearing enormous fur hats. In another image, a bundled infant sucks a porridge mixture out of a lambskin sack. I've been finding phrases in the article like "Hindu Kush," a phrase I can't really get over for some reason. I've been wandering around the house amidst children sick with this stomach virus we are weathering muttering "Hindu Kush, Hindu Kush." I asked my son what he thought of the word kush. He didn't like it much, it reminds him of stepping in dog poop.

Another phrase from the 1972 article which stood out was "heart-stopping immensity." How often can I imagine how truly big the world is? And how amazing would it be if some random person like me would have a premonition of trouble far away on the globe, and for what reason would that happen? Doesn't it sometimes seem like the code of the entire world is in us, but for the most part, only a tiny fragment of it is being read at any one time.

But then again, if I'm going to have a premonition, why not a close range one, perhaps that a construction worker from Brooklyn is going to fall to his death? I wonder if anyone saw that coming.

Scary Dreams

Last week as I was walking down 14th St the intensity of the morning sun reminded me of some things that happened last year. My son had a dream that terrified him, he woke up telling me he had a "lightmare." In his dream, a cabinet in our house was emitting rainbow light and for some reason this really scared him.

I brought this up while talking to some friends of mine at lunch and my friend told me that she had dreams of light that terrified her. In them she'd find herself overwhelmed by bright light that filled her field of vision. It reminds me of how eventually we will all have to face the overwhelming experience of facing justice and truth, which reminds me of the judgement I brought on my self for writing the post called Made Mommies. I really thought it was clear that I was seeing this other random mommy as a mirror for myself. Then I went on to talk about some people whose attitudes of superiority bother me, and I said that. But that little word seemed overlooked by most everyone who responded to the story. some. some. not all. not at all all.

It's for good reason though that people have attitudes about parents who are unwise. It reminds me of the feeling of seeing a little kid at the mercy of an adult who is making terrible decisions. That's terrifying. It's like watching an animal being abused. Alas, we have high expectations for parents, but nature doesn't.

Labels I accumulated as people reacted to the post on the curbed comment thread included lame, lame-o, illiterate, random, cliched, mediocre, bearer of inferiority complex, victim. There were others. Personally, I would add schizophrenic to that list but I am not a psychologist so who am I to make that diagnosis. For some reason, I am delighted by the word random.

I'm random.
Are you?

The word reminds me of how many people there are in the world. I am one of how many billions of random people like dust motes flying around in the air. Cool. I feel so free!

Someone used the word crotchfruit, that's always amusing. The last person to post on that thread said something like "What's all the hating about? I think Park Slope mothers are kind of hot." (yes, I was reading closely...) I was glad it ended that way, with some words that ran as sweet as milk.

Weird to read Gowanus Lounge last week and see the story Blinded By the Light, about people on 16th St. who've been kept awake at night by high intensity lights put up by the builders of the VUE building. Are the developers sadists? This will be a happier hood when people get their nightly melatonin. Please Sara Gonzalez? Please Bill Deblasio? Can you rev up like a deuce (?) and end their lightmare? I want happy neighbors!

Update: Thanks Daniel. Now I know what a deuce is. Or is it know i now? Whatever... time to ride!

Channukah Medicine Miracle

I just remembered that this happened. Intended to write about it long before now but there's been a lot going on.

I always wonder what I'm going to come across when I go to spend a day with my friend and teacher Irma, a medicine woman who lives in Queens. I've written about these things here before. Once it was an entire bucket of free quartz crystals courtesy of a woman named Emily on Windsor Place. Another time it was a series of strikingly similar images of scary snake woman baring fangs, yikes.

It was a little less dramatic last time. I felt bad going that Saturday because my son in particular didn't want me to leave, but he relented and I had my big day out. On the way to the train I found a box of books and stuff on Windsor Place. In it someone had tossed a brand new Ben 10 Omnitrix toy, something my son had asked for but I had completely forgotten about.

I should have left it there for someone else, but I snatched it up for him. It was Channukah. I also grabbed a bunch of very good books, one was historical fiction for children based on lives in a medieval village. When I gave the watch to my son at the end of the day, I told him it was a gift from God. If he thought it were from me, then I'd meet with more and more requests. But this gift came through grace, not any effort of mine. So I'm off the hook, yay!

Not long ago I wasn't much of a believer, but I've experienced enough magic in the last 3 years to change my mind. Wow, I always feel so unchic writing things like that. You should just see how my friends' eyes glaze over when I get rolling with one of my stories. Oh well. If I ever get an award for being Brooklyn's flakiest blogger, it will amuse me.

Tail Light Jesus

Viewed through windshield with raindrops. 16th St., South Slope

Parking on 13th Street

It must be pre-halloween hijynx, because I'm out on the roads making the rounds in the minivan frequently without encountering the dischord I ran into today.

I have to get all the little pale orange cupcakes to the nursery school by 2:15 for my daughter's birthday circle, as they call it, and because it's so hard to park near there, I leave extra early. When I get to 13th street, I see that its 1:39 and you can park after 2. I don't dare to park there yet, even though its clear the street sweeper's been by already. For one thing, a line of cars are double parked on the right so I know if I park it's a sure thing I'll wind up blocking some big truck. So I drive down to 5th and park at a meter, unsure of this choice. At this point, I'm kind of glad I'm alone, even if I could have used some help, because if another person were with me there would be the stress of trying to make the right choice and appear smart. But alone, I relax more, because I know it's just that kind of day.

Going around the block to get a spot on 5th, I have to travel up 12th street. Going left on 6th, I see an enormous white van managed to stop well into the intersection when the light turned red. As I turn left, I look at the driver. Big mistake. It makes him feel embarassed and then he starts backing up, not noticing that a woman pushing a stroller is crossing in the pedestrian walk behind him. He sees her and stops but she retreats in terror. I pull onto 6th but can't continue, because a woman collecting recyclable things won't move her armadda of shopping carts out of the street. She just won't do it. I have to wait for the Fedex truck to move before I can continue down the street. Then as I finally get free someone's so annoyed in her car, she has completely misunderstood what happened at the intersection and she's telling me "the light was green, what the hell."

I park on 14th at a meter and buy a few party favors at the discount store. I have a feeling I was there too long, and sure enough, when I get back to 13th street where I was hoping to park, it's 2:01 and every single space is taken. I wish I had been there to watch it happen. It's no big deal, just weird to see how the margin for error is so narrow sometimes. I find a meter spot on 12th street and lug several heavy bags to the nursery school, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the woman with all her carts out in the middle of the street.

When I get into the school I wonder what kind of day they'd been having. The teacher who is fabulous has a bit more of an edge in her voice than I've ever heard before. The kids listen to a story, freeze dance, eat cupcakes, talk about Halloween. I happen to look at the clock, and notice it's showing the wrong time. It says 2:02 and 21 seconds. I find it an evocative coincidence because I happen to know exactly what I was feeling and thinking at the at moment: sorry for myself and stupid.

Later when I park yet again to get my son from his school, I return to the double parked car to see a Fedex truck and a line of cars stuck behind it. They're annoyed, no doubt. But it's very strange, because no one is honking.

Stowaway Ghost Boy

I've noticed that some people have visited here looking for Brooklyn ghost stories, here's another.

A few days after we returned from traveling in the Yucatan 2 years ago, I dreamt that I saw my son wrestling with a very cartoon like ghost, as if this casper figure wanted to dominate my son, who was fighting for his autonomy. It went on for a while, this wrestling and shape shifting between them. I noticed that the fight was taking place in the bottom floor of a strange narrow building with many steps and staircases, which reminded me in feel of a pyramid my son had climbed in Mexico, The Temple of the Bee in the ruins of Coba. On that pyramid I watched European tourists practically skipping from step to step hundreds of feet above the ground while I clung to each stone for my life.

A few nights later my son awoke during the night and asked to sleep in our bed because he was scared. He was curled up in it when I returned to the room after doing something, and I felt my hair stand on end. I felt afraid of my son, and thought of the dream I had had.

The next night I dreamt that I was in a one story house with a large glass sliding door. I could see there was a boy outside in a dark forest, and I felt that he wanted me to let him in. He was about 5 or 6, had straight blonde hair and a dignified sad face.

I'm not sure how the dream ended, if I let the boy in the house or not, but from what happened I think I must have opened the door. I had a dream utterly unlike any I've ever had. As I fell asleep between my son and daughter while putting them to bed I had the most vivid dream-like experience. All the sudden I was conscious and there were people standing around my bed in white robes. A woman on my right had her hand on my heart, and there were at least two women at the foot of my bed chanting in a language I didn't recognize. All the sudden my hands were together in a position as if to dive and they were lifted up about 2 feet over my chest. Then I felt this pressure, and if someone were trying to suck something out of my brain through my hands. The feeling was similar to that intensity you feel when a nurse tightens the blood pressure cuff, but strong enough to make me feel like I would pass out. This happened twice before the chanting started to sound like a baby crying, and then I started to wake up and realize that indeed my daughter was crying. This bizarre dream was one of the most sacred moments of my life, to be in the midst of what suggested angelic beings. But what were they doing?

I can't believe that this time I actually got an answer. By coincidence I was reading a book by Antonio Villoldo which described many shammanic practices. In one chapter he describes his technique for removing entities from people, and it explicitly states that they are removed through the hands. I read this in shock, naturally. But it all gave me hope, to see that help arrived for this lost boy, that the souls of children really are looked after and shepherded home. It did me lots of good.