uTopianTurtleTop

update below, 9:20 pm

i read the news today oh boy


mass shooting the other morning just up the road from our house. late night party early Saturday morning, a guy leaves the party, comes back with guns, kills six people and wounds some more then kills himself. no reason.

i bring it up because, well, for no reason. i was just doing a little singing before bedtime (way past my bedtime), singing Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is the Ocean" at the piano and I couldn't get through it, too many unexpected tears.

last summer i had gotten word: a former co-worker lost his 2-year-old son. i had worked with him in Chicago and a mutual friend still does. coincidentally my beloved spouse knew him in college in California. he wasn't a friend though i liked & respected him; we didn't work together long. when i heard the news i played "How Deep Is the Ocean" and started crying. my own then-2-year-old said, "stop Daddoo I don't like that song." i had to laugh at his rudeness, and the astonishing wonder of his aliveness. horribly cruel that anybody would ever have to lose a child. now 6 young people dead in my neighborhood, teen-agers to early 30s. unfathomable. can't measure the ocean floor of that grief.

how much do i love you?
i'll tell you no lie.
how deep is the ocean?
how high is the sky?

how many times a day
do i think of you?
how many roses
are sprinkled are sprinkled with dew?

how far would i travel
to be where you are?
how long is the journey
from here to a star?

and if i ever lost you
how much would i cry?
how deep is the ocean?
how high is the sky?

* * *

my family comes back in about 10 hours after a week visiting my spouse's sister & family in California. the cupboard is bare, because the neighborhood co-op has been closing early, in mourning. one of the store managers, a real nice woman, was a friend of one of the victims; there's no doubt that others who work there -- the sweetest bunch of hippie-punks you ever met -- know people who got killed too.

we seem so durable, but we're really such fragile weak creatures, so vulnerable. and you'd hope that a recognition of our mutual vulnerabilities would bring out some tenderness, but a lot of people don't see it that way and never have. i don't know why this is, and the only things i can think to say on the matter i'd rather not say right now.

pity the mourners.


Update, 9:20 pm: I didn't read the news very much. Two of the murder victims worked at my neighborhood food co-op. I recognized one of them. I didn't know his name, but I knew him enough to say hello. He was a sweet, quiet guy.