August 13, 2020

Years of material backs up in my computer files. I could mine the quarries, I think, for the rest of my life, depending on how long my life is. Surprising how nearly complete, nearly accomplished a piece could be and yet I would abandon it. Maybe my subconscious was waiting for now.

Trump admits that he’s destroying the USPS in order to suppress voting in November. Yet he is free. He is not in irons. He will be on TV tonight as though he were legitimately a president.

Revising Heroes All in Cloth of Rose I come across references to my house before I lived in it:  

Went into the bathroom last night at about 11:30 and heard a strange sound. It was a sharp report followed by a human cry, like a child being struck with a paddle, except that the voice that cried out was adult. I thought at first that the Andricks next door were beating their children, an event so unlikely as to be unimaginable. A few moments later the sirens began, and I knew that what I had heard were gunshots. When I went out Lakeshore Drive spilled over with ambulances and police cruiser, even a firetruck. The story gradually emerged. The man in the charming white house on the spit of land where Lakeshore bends had shot his son in the chest-- four times if my ears were right. I'd heard from the rescue team's radio the words, "We have full cardiac arrest here." Nothing in the paper, which certainly everyone who stood in the flashing lights pored over this morning, like vultures, hungry for every detail. 

Then again: Passing the murderer's house across the street I shudder with the ordinariness of it all. The night of the murder the garbage was already put out, and picked up the next morning without incident. The murderer's lilies bloom. His walnuts hold their lancets to the sun. The grass is not yet shaggy. The back porch light burns as though waiting for someone to come home.

The day of the murder was August 27, 1990. The father/murderer was Dick Turpin, a retired postal worker; the son/victim was Rick Turpin. I wish I’d kept better track of the house– such as, when did it become yellow?–but I didn’t know I was going to own it.