Top tens.

Sam lets me drink coffee all damn day and play the music as loud as I want to in the sanctuary.

(Same as Jake always did.)

I will be here if anyone needs me. Playing secretary for ten bucks an hour, only the phone never rings and Sam has already done everything else.

Update: Awesome news. If you've never been, you should go. It's second to none, and certainly shouldn't be seventh, but I might be more than a little biased.

Amyrn (on the right) 12/20/2007-11/14/2011

I was writing some stupid entry about nothing in particular when I stopped and looked at the news for a few minutes.

Oh, sadness.

I took this picture of Amyrn and his mother, Eleah in July and wrote about it here. Amyrn came right over to the fence when I stuck my head over the top of it. He stayed there staring at me forever and I stared right back. The first giraffe I ever saw with my own eyes and he was very gracious and patient while I took pictures and talked to him as if any second he might pick up the conversation and run with it.

I hope he had a good life, and I hope he didn't suffer.

I'm not going to debate anyone on the merits of animals living in relative captivity so stuff that for now and just enjoy the photo. There are more on the original post linked above.

Stay where you're to.

(Wait here for me, princess.)

I found him sitting on the bench on the darker side, just out of reach of the single fixture of light that swayed gently in the wind. The snow was falling steadily and still he seemed unprepared in jeans and his green corduroy jacket with the pale blue flannel shirt, white undershirt visible under his open collar, workboots unlaced and wide open. His hair is so long he's getting the seventies rockstar jokes and the admiration alike. He is beautiful inside and out, snow or sunshine, night or day.

He looks up when I walk over, snow falling against his eyelashes but he doesn't blink or shake his head. I wonder if it's actually snowing where he is or if the weather is a controlled non-issue, a parallel universe of seasonless, weatherless banality disguised as a mirror image when it is nothing of the kind. Imagine never being too warm or too cold. Imagine never seeing the leaves turn from a lush green to a crackly, frozen red overnight. Imagine a world where snow doesn't dictate how far you run and doesn't risk you running off the road for your foolishness besides.

Just imagine. That is heaven. Sometimes you are given a special pass to visit with someone on earth but not for long because then you are tethered and you are supposed to be free. Snow is a fond memory instead of a present curse and you can wear your favorite outfit every single day. It never gets dirty and the elbows and collar never wear out.

I sit down beside him and he smiles and stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets, hunching his shoulders with glee. He loved the snow. He thought it was hilarious. I always wanted to throttle him. I find it inconveniencing and dangerous and cold. Sinister snow, I called it and he would say, No, pig-a-let, it's silly snow. Just like string except you can't spray it from a-oh, wait yes you can, nevermind. And he would laugh and laugh and I got so frustrated.

It'll stop soon, princess. And it'll be gone by tomorrow.

Will you be?

Naw, I'm always around when you need me.

Tethered, I whisper under my breath.

Yes, for now, Bridget. But it's okay. When you stop needing me, I'll be gone. I'll watch you walk away down that road and never look back.

I made a sound halfway between an incredulous snort and a sob. What road?

That road, they say. I guess we'll know it when the time comes.

Am I on a time limit again?

No, no. Nothing of the sort. Just making conversation while it snows. I know you don't like to listen to it fall.

I smiled in the dark. He's right. I don't want to hear it, I just want to hear it stop.

Tonight.

Tonight when the clouds came down to touch the earth, I was there.

The bondage opera gloves.

(For the record, they were too large and therefore never used.)

He's standing on the patio having another cigar. Slay me with a feather, for I still love the smell so much it hurts. But I can feel the spectre of Cole eroding a little more each day and I have to work so hard to remember dumb things. His voice. The mannerisms I only witness now through Caleb, and the memories I fight my way out of without the need for padlocks and straps, though he'll use them anyway. A figurative landscape of denial is painted and framed and people will file past it, quiet murmurs of appreciation filling the airwaves and still we deny that the only way I will go to him now is under duress.

Duress, well it weighs a ton but I skid into the room and stand accounted for, all the same. Bad habits don't die. Not like people do. It should be the other way around but it isn't.

And forced compliance is sometimes good for everyone. It teaches us our limitations and it teaches us our thresholds for danger and for pain. It teaches us how to be humble and how to endure. We learn the true meaning of love and gratitude.

We learn all kinds of things.

Right now I am teaching THEM something, and they are very good students. The first thing is you don't need to lock Bridget into your fantasies, she'll just show up anyway, and the second thing is that forgiveness goes a really really really really long way.

The Angel of the Odd.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
~Edgar Allan Poe

These random late-night vodka-fueled discourses usually put me in hot water anyway, what difference does it make?

Every afternoon I see Caleb and automatically invite him to the main house for dinner. Desperate for a normal family existence (HAR), he accepts. Every evening Lochlan appears to count the places set at the table, mentally assigning each one until he sees the leftover one. He swears under his breath and tells me he'll eat in his (former? present?) wing, maybe while he works. Every night I steadfastly refuse to allow him to take his plate anywhere but straight to the table and Ben cracks a joke about oil and water, without fail.

I wonder if Caleb is the oil or the water? I wonder if they''ll ever get along? I wonder when Ben's going to stop baiting the pair of them because he is thrilled not to be the one on the outside. He wasn't there through the worst of it. He has no concept of the degree to which we discovered hell. He's the odd man out and he doesn't like that any more than Lochlan likes eating his dinner with the devil. Still we shield Ben because he would break for the weight of our memories, combined.

I hope he never does. Sometimes he asks about them. Lochlan defers and I refuse. What a pair indeed. We sit and draw in the evenings sometimes while Ben and Henry and Andrew and PJ shoot things and we talk in staccato bursts, making sure in our shorthand, telepathic way that we are still centered, still moving forward, a slow pilgrimage to reality in which sometimes you're carrying on a conversation and you stop and wonder abruptly why you haven't had a reply and you look back and see your companion face-down on the dirt road.

Yes, it's like that. (Maybe next time don't ask.)

I draw figures. He draws mountains and the faces of people we met on the road, people with fistfuls of money and the love of temporary, artificial danger.

We trade and critique. I protest, he defuses, in favor of making me better at what I want to do. And I will forever be eight years old under his critical thirteen-year-old know-it-all eye. And Ben will forever watch these exchanges from the safety of his peripheral vision and wonder how to wedge himself more effectively between us.

But if he asked Lochlan, Lochlan could assure him he already has, and that the only one face down in the dust these days from a lack of information or acceptance is Satan himself, hellbent for redemption even if it means trading it for his own worth readily, pretension gone, humility raw and new.

It's a strange place to be, alright.

Firewall.

I'll keep it short and mean. (Typically, you say). There never was anything sweet about our mutual blame game.

Note to self: Never piss off the one who controls the internet.

Because he can see that it's down and 'not have time' to fix it until he gets home, long after supper, long after Bridget's spent her online time sporadically squinting at the four-inch display on her phone, which retreated into an Edge connection in fright and really, that was the state of things for most of the day, sadly. I briefly, sweetly hijacked Duncan's iphone and then was discovered and suitably turned out for the sneak that I am. But when Lochlan returned he gave me back my wi-fi connection anyway, mostly because everyone sort of needed it.

In his defense, we switched plans at the house a month ago and it hasn't worked right since, so today's abrupt removal was to fix something major. It works now. So far so good anyway.

We are speaking again too. That's always nice. He got a little crazy when I finally pointed out his inability to comfort or console me VANISHED exactly at the same time that we had our world blown apart. So I had four years to soak up and fall in love with this guy who could soothe away the worst nightmares and fears, and make me feel safe always. After the explosions died down it was as if a door closed, and the subsequent twenty-eight years have been a sort of semi-hurtful, confused void where he does not seem to possess the capability for any comfort whatsoever.

I made a mistake and said it out loud, though. That was the problem.

He looked at me as if I couldn't possibly understand that bad things change people.

I don't know who understands that better of the two of us, or who had it harder, the one who endured such horror or the one who had to stand by and watch, and know he wasn't there when he promised he would be.

If we're still throwing poison-tipped arrows, that is. If not, then disregard all of the above. Water under the bridge and I'm still drowning in history to this day.

The girl at the edge of heaven.

This morning I was again outside in the rain, this time restricted to the patio, for PJ was busy and couldn't come out. I always listen when he tells me I'm not allowed to set foot on the grass. I'm considering having a trapeze erected so that I can make my way to the cliff and still heed his instructions. Each time I threaten that he counters with the suggestion of charging people money to come and see the little freak again.

I point out money was easy to extract in exchange for my attention. He replies harshly that this house is not going to be my circus.

Oh, baby, it already is. Don't you see it?

This morning I slid down into the Adirondack chair, my legs dangling over the hump and I poured myself five fingers of the best Irish whiskey Caleb can import.

I sipped two and poured the other three into the dirt. Jacob always had three, even though he couldn't hold his liquor any better than I ever could, and would begin to add words to his conversations to the point where I would wonder if I were drunker than I realized, when I could no longer understand a word he said.

And he would just keep on talking. It was priceless and it was cherished too and now I am reduced to swinging my legs from a wet lawn chair on a patio in Lotusland, not allowed to touch the sea today because I am not in charge of my own life anymore because I haven't treated it with the respect it deserves.

Nope.

But I am not cold! That's one good thing about the drink. Or it could be the fact that I am still in three of yesterday's four dresses, mascara smudged below my eyes, hair damp, wavy straw, mind cracked in half and heart not far behind.

Happy birthday, Jacob. I whisper it to no one in particular, and as expected, no one replies.

Four years of figuring out how I'm supposed to be doing this. Still no luck.

Aw, Jakey. Why did you do it?

I'll stand out on the cliff as long as they allow it. I have black four dresses on. Two cotton, two wool. Thick black wool tights wrinkle around my knees and ankles and I've chosen my doc boots simply because the tights don't work with much else. My black shawl rounds out this fantastic ensemble and I have pinned up my hair but the wind had other plans so I'll just pull the ends of the shawl tightly around my shoulders and allow the locks of palest blond to escape until it all falls out and the pins crash into the sea below. I will stand here until I am frozen solid and then I'll take a step back.

Ben stands five feet behind me, hands jammed in his pockets, a look of utter misery and borderline panic on his face. He hasn't taken his eyes off me, I know. I can feel them, they weigh a ton. But he is determined to allow me to do this however I need to and if I can't be in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia to be surrounded by memories then I will stand on the highest point and show myself to heaven. I may still wear my mourning clothes and surprise people with how damaging, how fierce my sadness can be but I am here trying. I close my eyes and lift my face up to the night. The wind caresses my face. Rain begins to lick at my hair.

PJ yells something from the doorway. The house is warm, I know. Inviting. Comfortable. Dry. Softly-lit and welcoming. He repeats himself and I turn my head to look at him, curious now. He abruptly goes back inside and closes the door and I look at Benjamin. He is still staring at me but his left arm is out straight to one side, index finger raised.

Wait, PJ, is what that means.

Wait for my Bridget to sort through her dark little brain and toss memories around and kick things, denting them in and when she's made enough of a fuss and a big enough mess inside her head I'll take over. No worries, brother. That's the expanded, translated version of that one finger. I know because he's put the words with the gesture before.

I wouldn't trade Ben for the world or for heaven. Think about that very hard. I know I have. It takes one hell of a man to stand up and allow for this. I have yet to meet anyone else who could pull it off and remain intact. Ben may have a few cracks of his own from the strain but he's holding.

He's holding me.

Saving daylight.

Our bed we live, our bed we sleep
Making love and I become you
Flesh is warm with naked feet
Stabbing thorns and you become me
Oh, I'd beg for you.
Oh, you know I'll beg for you.

I didn't run. Well, I tried but then Ben was there and he reverse-engineered my itinerary and paced with me at the airport until my knees gave out and my phone died and I asked him if we could just go home and for one of the first times home wasn't on the other coast.

Huh. What the fuck is THAT about?

We played Scrabble on his phone and watched bad conspiracy television and stayed up late and then slept late this morning.

This afternoon Ben took me to Jericho beach and we walked along the water's edge, freezing to bits and we talked and we compared panoramic photographs as we took them and we counted oil tankers in the bay and watched people have their wedding pictures taken. When we got too cold we ducked into a tiny ramen shop and I ate every last bite, something I can never manage. Gyoza too. We drove home in the pitch dark and proclaimed it a perfect day, which it was. In spades forever and ever and I want to do it next Saturday again except that I will return to my favorite beach of the city because none of the other ones we have explored have any glass at all and that just won't do.

I have already gone around to set the clocks back, and I'm soon to collect all of the whiskey and weapons and I'll retire to the library, where I will push the heavy table across the doors to keep the world away and then I will sprawl out on the couch and drink Jack Daniels and sing Stone Temple Pilots lyrics to myself while I load and reload, blowing daylight holes in the night, shooting dreams like skeet, busting caps into my nightmares, slurring out encouragement to myself while the boys crouch outside the door in defensive positions.

Ben will probably suggest Scrabble instead. I wonder if I can play with one hand while balancing the bottle in the other, guns cocked across my knees?

With any luck I will let you know tomorrow.