The Tale of Heinrich and Peggy*

*names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the awkward.

Heinrich and me

Heinrich was a friend of mine, in part because he was friendly to everyone, but mainly because we were weird. I don't mean the benign sort of weirdness that seems to be an esthetic choice, but the deep-down, painful sort of weird that necessitated many school lunch hours spent hiding in the library.

I guess there's a special bond that springs up between those who could never fake normal long enough to blend in.

As an adult, I tried - somewhat successfully - to channel my blatant strangeness into a more genteel eccentricity. Heinrich, on the other hand, had given up any charade of normalcy and just let his freak flag fly. The first time I saw him, he was wearing a headscarf, love beads and a Brooks Brothers suit, running furiously from something I couldn't see. "it's the Nagual!" he said, desperately. "it's after me! What should I do?"

Now, if Heinrich had said something like "how are you?" I might have been at a loss as for what to say, but being weird, I was perfectly equipped to handle this one. "Well, first you have to find your center." I told him. "Do you know any yoga?"

"Yoga! Perfect!" he shouted, catapulting himself into a complex ashtanga pose in the grass next to my front porch. "Why didn't I think of that?"

So began my friendship with Heinrich.

Peggy

On the other side of the courtyard, my neighbor Peggy watched all this with a disapproving eye. "You certainly have some strange friends" she said, meaningly. I shrugged. What could I say? Peggy was a very conventional girl. Not that there's anything wrong with being conventional. Conventional people tend to have an easier time in life; they face fewer struggles achieving their goals than those who are congenitally unable to fit with the crowd. But I can't pretend to truly comprehend them. Our values were very different, Peggy's and mine. I couldn't understand why she collected cow creamers. She couldn't understand why I worried about karma. But people are people, and they are what they are.

Heinrich and Peggy

As time progressed though, something strange happened...Peggy fell in love with Heinrich. The first sign of this was when she came down to the sidewalk where we were making chalk drawings and proceeded to put the moves on him. It was so very odd, Peggy twirling his hair and saying "why don't you come up and see me sometime" like a sort of ersatz Mae West that Heinrich at first couldn't figure out why she would want him to. "Er. Well, okay. Sometime." he said, nonplussed.

Peggy did not give up, however, and eventually Heinrich got the message. They went out on a few dates. That's when the war between the conventional and the unconventional began.

One of the reasons, I think, that Heinrich and I had such a fond friendship was because I understood that in his basic nature, he was a free spirit. He was a bit like a butterfly and about as harmless. He would flit around to other places and people, but sooner or later he'd flit back. When he did, one accepted him for what he was. There was no reason to expect different from him, really. To do so would invite disappointment.

"Disappointment" is a mild word for what soon began emanating in loud shrieks from Peggy's apartment whenever Heinrich was around. "Put on some proper shoes, you can't wear sandals in winter!" "No normal person drinks wheat grass juice!" "It's Saturday night, you're supposed to be here with me, not out playing guitar for hobos at the park!!" and so on and so forth. Finally, one night, there came the topper: "You must do as I say, Heinrich, because DAMMIT, I AM OLDER THAN YOU!!"

Heinrich, feeling the iron fist of authority bearing down on him, fled from Peggy even faster than he had from the Nagual. It was no surprise, really. As I said before, Peggy was a conventional girl, and while she may have fancied Heinrich in his natural state, no sooner had she got him than she tried to make him into a conventional boyfriend. It was doomed enterprise from the start

The story does not end there, however. Of course it doesn't, tales of lovers scorned rarely do. Besides, you're probably wondering how the shoe at the top of the page comes into this. Well, I will tell you.

In which the story becomes kind of embarrassing

Peggy was not pleased at Heinrich's having fled and was determined to get him back. No such luck. He was not interested. As he explained to me, he worried that spending time with Peggy was hindering his spiritual development. Well, he didn't use those words exactly. What he said was that he was worried her negative vibes were polluting his aura. Pretty much the same difference. We both agreed that there were better matches out there and that it was best to move on. He went on his way, seeking solace among a more accepting group of friends. That's when Peggy started stalking.

She pretended she wasn't, mind you, and was just happening to turn up wherever Heinrich went, but because we lived just across the way from each other, I knew she spent hours tracking his location by phone and planning her next move. It was in this way that she scored an invitation to a party given by a friend of Heinrich's friends - and Heinrich was going to be there. I wasn't going to the party, myself, but that evening still managed to produce one of the stranger images that has ever jammed itself into my memory.

The evening of the party, about 6 PM, Peggy sailed out onto her balcony. I knew she'd been in her apartment getting ready, since music was drifting from her windows and the front door was propped open with her cow-shaped doorstop, but this was the first time I'd seen her. She'd traded in her usual pantsuit and SAS shoes for a flowing patchwork dress and a pair of lace-up witch boots. Well, this was unusual. It really wasn't Peggy's style. Something about it bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps the outfit was meant to impress Heinrich, I thought. If so, it was a miscalculation, since Heinrich was more likely to be impressed if she'd woven a dress out of cornshucks than any store-bought clothes. No, something was really off here. I didn't realize what it was until she began to dance.

A Maroon 5 song had come on the radio and this must have inspired Peggy, because she began to whirl and sway with a dreamy look on her face. As she added more dramatic movements to her dance and began to pirouette across the balcony, I realized - oh, holy hell, she was imitating me!

I mean, not that I'd ever dance around in public to Maroon 5, good god, no, but I could recognize my own peculiarities of style and gesture recycled by someone else. Actually, recycled is the wrong word. It was more like a fashion designer finding a strange, random dress at a charity shop and recreating it for Bloomingdale's or something. Peggy, who had the gift of being normal, was attempting to co-opt my own weirdness in order to fit in. Well, it was certainly interesting. But it didn't work. Not even close. It was pure fakery through and through, and it irritated me.

For years now, I've pondered why I found Peggy's imitation that night so unsettling and distasteful. What was it to me, really, how Peggy chose to act? It's not as if I'm in love with my spacey demeanor or my rummage sale clothes, or any of the other things that make people look at me as if I'm an alien. It's not as if I feel any proprietorship over such things. Some of my qualities, I would have traded many times over just to not have the stigma of being different. But that's the answer, isn't it? What Peggy didn't understand is that for Heinrich and me and many of the other misfits who clung together like survivors on a raft, being weird wasn't a costume we could put on and take off when it was convenient. For people like us, being unconventional was never a choice.

Perhaps Peggy found out the hard way. Certainly she came home from the party in a foul mood sans boyfriend, and I never saw the patchwork dress or witch boots again. And Heinrich, he again went on his way, eventually flitting off to a far country where he finally felt at home. That was the end of Heinrich and Peggy, and I guess if there is any moral to this story, it's that one should accept people for who they are, and to thine own self be true. Peggy was a conventional girl with conventional ways, and it would have been better had she embraced that than pretended to be what she wasn't.

Then again, a few months later, Peggy married a burglar she caught breaking into her apartment, which is far weirder than anything I've ever dreamed of doing, so really...what do I know? :p

To Nicholas, In Gratitude

For his kindness and compassion toward a woebegone stranger. Thank you.

(If you find this, Nicholas, you know who you are. :) )

Magical Touch

A child playing with a light in the darkness. 

The Disappearing Witch

One  evening, just after moonrise, the neighbors lit a bonfire.

Shadow Play

Shadows on the wall in the house of my parents; The 1960's iron trellis was always strangely disappointing to climb. 

Those Who Take Their Presence With Them, Those Who Leave It Behind

photo by Francesca Woodman

My friend and I were talking the other day about a girl we'd once known and loved. As a child, she'd seemed touched by magic, everyone around her felt touched by magic. I'd feel so bereft when she'd go away. Since we didn't see each other very often, it was my fate to be left behind.

The essence of this is distilled in dreams about her: we talk frenetically, tell half-understood stories, play confusing, yet fascinating games. The clock ticks in the background. There are months of things we want to tell, but there is never enough time. Her mother's voice calls from the distance, saying they have to go. Her real life is somewhere else, far away from mine. As always, I'm left with a vague notion of color and shadow, a memory where her presence once was. Nothing even as substantial as a ghost. Only an undefined longing fills the vacuum.

Childhood friendships can be mysterious, and I've long wondered about this ancient grief of mine. To this day, I'm not certain what I expected. I'm quite sure I was more attached to her than she ever was to me. Perhaps this was the source of the longing - underneath our apparent closeness in those days, I really knew who was loved the least. 

My friend considered this view, but ultimately disagreed.

He said, "It's just that she takes her presence with her when she goes. When she's gone, she's gone. Those kinds of people, there is an emptiness where they used to be.

'You, on the other hand, leave your presence behind."

It was immediately clear what he meant, though I'd never heard it put into words before. It was an intriguing idea. We thought through all the people we've known, whether their presence went with them or lingered. Despite the intangibility of a quality such as "presence", we were able to agree in every case as to who was which. We wondered at first if it was the type or strength of personality that made the difference, but no...there were similar types who fell into different categories, and exceedingly different ones who were the same. Nor did spirituality matter much - one very spiritual roommate left nary a trace of his living there, another had such a strong presence, even the years couldn't diminish it.

It's a nebulous, but distinctive phenomenon. Your beloved is not with you, you are totally alone.

Your beloved is not with you, yet some sense of  them remains. 

I wondered if missing someone more acutely contributed to the perception of absence. Again, my friend disagreed. To him, feeling the absent person's presence made missing them more difficult, a constant reminder that they really were gone. Plus, he pointed out, there are some people who drastically improve the mood in a room just by leaving it. Well, I certainly can't disagree with that.

To me, though, the absolute feeling of absence seems utterly lonely, haunted by longing. As if I might recapture something important if only I could find a trace of that person, somewhere, around some far corner. A sign or signal drifting on the breeze.

This last is how it seemed to me with the girl we'd once known and loved. Years later, when we were grown and living in the same town, I would catch hints of her presence. On the sidewalk, through a shop window, in the echoes of a stairway where she had just been and gone. Not much had changed, really...the ticking clock had been set in motion long ago. The mysteries of our friendship were never to be solved; ultimately, there is little point in loving someone who must always leave you. Instead, I learned to love the traces of her presence for the brief moments they remained, like little whirlwinds, so many vaporous wisps, so many childhood  ghosts. 

Eumorpha Vitis Vitis

A Vine Sphinx moth takes shelter beneath the light. 

A sign of things hidden, keeping secrets.. 

Rising Storm

It's bloody hard, being depressed. It's work. You push through each day, you slog, you muddle, you barely remember a thing, except that it was hard.

I feel like a drunk, promising to be sober tomorrow. Except it's happiness. Tomorrow, I promise, I'll be happy tomorrow. But it doesn't happen, and another tomorrow comes and goes, with no change.

Depression steals your life. It drains it away, You keep hoping for your life to start again, but you can't see how because of the fog in your head, the fatigue, the vague but unnerving certainty that something somewhere is terribly wrong.

Depression is like sodden gray clouds in the mind, broken wires, communication lines lost in the rising wind.
Storms, at least, will pass, but depression feels like an eternal forecast:
forever and ever, nothing but rain..

Shadows In The Sky

Shadows In the Dust

I remember reading, how a tracker can see shadows in  the dust.

If one knows how to look, there is information in everything..

August Moon

Late, on the night of the full moon.

August

Late Summer. The sound of the breeze in dry grass.

Juniper

Juniper berries in a Paleo-Indian bowl.

The Legend Of Creepy Hollow

The Salem Road Bridge

It was a long time ago now that I first encountered Creepy Hollow, though I didn't know what it was called then. My cousin and I were out for a drive that day. Nancy could drive for hours and she was always looking for a place to go. She'd overheard some of the profs at the university talking about Salem Road and how long it was. "Pack a lunch", they said. That's how we ended up heading out to the country one afternoon, singing along with The Beatles, laughing, smoking cigarettes, back when they were still cheap enough to smoke. It was sometime in the summer, 1995.

Salem road runs though town like any other street - straight and boring - then crosses the highway where it becomes a twisting country lane. Not too many people live on the other side of the highway. There were fields, the occasional farmhouse and some scrubby trees..At first, it seemed fine. There was nothing unusual about the place, and I'm sure I didn't notice anything awry until it was impossible not to notice. Nancy was unperturbed as well. Mostly our minds were occupied with romance and boys and whatever love triangle was happening that week. That's the way it often is when you are young. 

We didn't see the bridge until we were very close to it. A sudden dip in the road and there it was. Nancy slowed the car. Somehow, we hadn't been expecting this. The bridge was very narrow and she hesitated. Her hands were tense on the steering wheel. She said nothing, but I could tell she was thinking hard about whether to cross. I noticed this, despite the vague horror that was creeping through my bones. Knowledge was gathering into an absolute certainty that whatever was on the other side of this bridge was like death, or worse. Indescribably worse. I felt cold all over and wanted to scream at her not to cross, we had to get out of here now but I did not - there was no obvious reason, you know? It was just a low bridge on a country lane and there was nothing visible to be afraid of.  

Nancy drove slowly onto the bridge, then stopped the car. We seemed to stay there for hours though it would have been no time at all. "Hey" she said in a high, artificial voice, "you know what? I think we'd better turn around now."  I agreed, we backed up, turned around and drove back the way we came. Nancy's face was as white as a sheet. 

It's funny, when I remember this incident, I could swear it took place at twilight, with a chilly wind and a violet tinge in the air. That's not possible of course, it couldn't have been later than four in the afternoon. But the memory is so hazy now. That's another funny thing - despite being scared out of our wits, as soon as we got home we promptly forgot the incident. That sounds silly, like something out of a bad novel, but it's true. For years, it was never mentioned again.

underneath the bridge

It was not until 2002 that a talk with a neighbor jogged my memory. She mentioned that she and her brother liked to go fishing at the creek at Salem Road, they would fish from the bridge early in the morning. The bridge? A fuzzy memory took shape in my mind. She began to describe the location, but she'd hardly said a word before the memory hit me. That place! How could I forget it? But not quite forgotten, not really. As soon as I remembered, I realized I'd been dreaming about it for years, dark and eerie dreams about loss.

I mentioned this to my boyfriend at the time. Oh, yes, he said, that bridge! It had taken 5 tries before he managed to cross it, he lost his nerve every time. It's hard to explain, he said,.there's just something wrong with that place.

It was after that that I began to ask questions of the people I knew. What was the strangest thing that ever happened to them? Was there anything about the town that made them uneasy? Had they ever been really scared? While the answers were always interesting, the name "Creepy Hollow" turned up unusually often. It didn't take long to figure out that this was the local name for the Salem Road bridge. The stories were all over the place, but very strange indeed. There were tales of witches and devil-worshipers. Ghosts. Black magic. The fishing neighbor wasn't bothered, but her girlfriend wouldn't go near the place. My friend Lawrence had seen piles of bones on the bridge. Heather had heard tales of a hundred black cats materializing out of thin air. Angela's story was most impressive - she'd been invited to a Halloween party at the far end of Salem Road, but after seeing flickering candle flames and hearing voices in the woods, she turned tail and fled. There was no way she would cross the bridge on Halloween night.

Always present in the stories was a common theme, that they simply could not cross the bridge at first. The fear wouldn't allow it. Tallying up all the stories I'd heard, from more than 20 people, the average number of tries was 5.  If you look carefully at the top photo, you'll see that the grass is worn through on the right side by cars turning around to leave.

I made it in four, though it was Angela who drove me across. She was veteran of the bridge by then. She still wouldn't go near it on Halloween night, though.

The other side

Eventually, I knew that the only way to find out what was happening at Creepy Hollow was to have a look at it myself. Already I'd met several self-proclaimed Satanists who said they had gone down there to perform rituals because the place was a "vortex of negative energy", Well, hearsay was all very nice but after so many tales, it was simply not enough. I went down on a very bright day in the summer of 2005, when these pictures were taken. I'd been across the bridge enough times by then to be prepared. I walked up, looked around briefly then crawled underneath. I saw a snake, but no signs of witchcraft or devil worship, nor anything else that oughtn't be under a bridge. On top of the structure thought, things were a little different. 

About halfway across, I noticed what appeared to be a skein of sheep's wool wrapped around the railing, splotched with red. There was a bloody rag, and a trail of bloodstains on the concrete. There were three cigarette butts lying near the biggest stains, as if someone had leaned against the railing, casually smoking while they bled profusely onto the ground. It was...odd. I didn't take a picture of this, for a now out-dated reason. These photos were taken with an analogue camera, with film that was sent to be processed. I didn't want the person who developed the photos to think I was psycho.

I crossed the bridge, went to the other side and stood there, trying to get a grasp on what it was about this place. After coming here a few times, the fear was no longer intense, but...the place felt dead. Lifeless. No birdsong, no insect buzz, the clouds didn't move in the sky. There was no happiness or sadness, just...nothing. Later, I drove a friend, a practicing witch, out to the place to see what she thought. She also noticed the lack of birdsong, and the second hand on her watch failed to work on the other side of the bridge. She said it felt like time had stopped. I had to agree. After the fear subsided, it felt like time had gone dead.

It wasn't until a couple of years after that that I saw Nancy again. I asked her if she remembered our drive on Salem Road. "oh, gods," she said with widening eyes, "That evil place, I was so scared. Why did you have to remind me?" But she was relieved to know that we hadn't been the only ones. 

...

Searching the internet one day, I came across this short piece of video, made at the same bridge:

It tantalizingly promises "more to come" but of course, it never came. It's the way of things here, I suppose. Even paranormal investigators get stymied, get bored. Despite the rumors of tragic accidents and suicides and other horrible happenings at the bridge, not a one can be proven. There is no dramatic solution. At the end of the day, all that can be said is that a lot of people have been afraid of this place.

Mystery In The Grove - updated

Not long ago, we spent an afternoon at a nearby park. The area was a farmer's pecan grove once, but is  now public land. It's a peaceful friendly-feeling place, green and leafy with walking paths winding through. There are a few benches where a person can rest, listen to the wind rustling in the leaves and forget  about the outside world for a moment.

It's also a fun place for children to play tag or hide and seek, investigate tree hollows and chase the occasional squirrel.

There's nothing gloomy or melancholy about the place at all, or so it would seem. There's a freshness to the air in a pecan grove that makes even a depressive like me feel better. So I was merely being curious, not melancholy, when I noticed that part of the Southwest edge of the park seemed a little darker than the rest.

I walked the fence line with my camera, wondering why the park felt so different here. Perhaps it was just that the undergrowth on the other side made it more humid and consequently more oppressive. Nothing unusual about that. Then, suddenly, the feeling was far more than oppressive. It was outright grim.

 As I stood in the spot pictured above, a despair came over me. It chilled me to the bones, too, because it wasn't a general feeling of despair, but very specific to my memory. It felt as if I were back in time, during what was perhaps the worst depressive episode of my life. The kind of despair that does not come in a lifeless gray haze but in the searing colors of a nightmare.

I'd lived in dread of ever feeling that way again, and here it was. But it was alien. It didn't seem to belong to me this time - it seemed to be in the location itself. This is why I snapped the photo, not so much an attempt to capture a feeling-state on camera but as a way to mark the place.

The one unusual thing I noticed at the time was the tree above me - the one closest in the photo - is one of the very few on the property that is not a pecan tree, but a hackberry instead. I'm no fan of hackberries, they are a nuisance, but that's not much reason for the sheer negative energy I felt in that place.

Experimentally, I decided to move on, wondering if the sensations would fade or intensify as I continued down the fence line. The underbrush and overhanging trees were thicker down the way, so it seemed if it was darkness and humidity (or just simple creepiness) affecting me, the feeling would have become stronger as I went along.

It didn't. The photo above was also taken to mark the place. It's far darker and more overgrown (and a tad creepy too) but this spot felt much more pleasant than the area of the hackberry tree, and there was no feeling of despair here, nor was there the further away I walked.      

I slowly made my way back toward the hackberry tree, paying close attention to the landscape, amount of light, scent or anything that might be be affecting my mood. Still, nothing seemed awry until I came near the vicinity of the hackberry again. When the despair began to creep up on me, I noted a fallen tree on the other side of the fence.

Well, that was an unhappy sight. Death and decay. It looks forlorn even if there is more light. Maybe that's what was triggering my ill feelings. I moved away, slightly to the left, and the despair hit me full force.  I was under the hackberry tree again.

I looked close and studied it for a while. I didn't like the tree overmuch, but there was nothing very unusual about it.as trees go. One fairly thick branch jutted out toward the park, and I followed it with my eyes. I followed it upwards, directly over my head, That's when I saw something unexpected.

There was something hanging from the branch. I used a stick to reach it and pull it close enough to see. I didn't want to remove it from the branch, even if I could. The object gave me a strong feeling of repulsion, I didn't want to risk touching it at all. It was a navy blue elastic cord,  knotted, like the kind of cheap necklaces that local teenagers wear. There was some sort of object strung on it as well, but it was broken, too difficult to tell what it ever was. The elastic cord was tied to a long piece of wire, quite strong, looped around the tree branch right over head. 

I tried to photograph it as clearly as possible, but it was high up and hard to see in any case. The cord is visible close up, though the wire is nearly impossible to make out.     

A cord, perhaps a necklace, tied to a wire in a tree branch. What did it mean? Maybe nothing, maybe someone disposing of an object in an offbeat way or idling by tying knots in things.  Maybe the wire was left by some city workers for some project. Maybe it had some kind of practical reason for being there. I looked around for other wires, other blue cords, but there was nothing.

It might have seemed a strange thing to find, even without the overwhelming feeling of despair in that place. Given this, though, and where it was, and the length and how high, it immediately struck me that the wire was meant to be a makeshift noose. Maybe someone had stood there once, exactly there, leaching despair into the landscape where it still remains. Maybe the necklace was what they sacrificed instead.

I don't know. I probably never will.

Update, June 7 -

Last week I went back to the park, wondering again about the object in the tree. Maybe I could get a better look this time.The park was just the same as always, light and breezy. I walked toward the hackberry tree, waiting for the onset of despair that I'd felt before. Instead, I felt nothing. I walked along the fence line, just to be sure. No, there was no difference anywhere. The feeling of despair was gone. Back at the hackberry, I went to look for the object, the wire and necklace, or whatever it was. It was nowhere to be found.

I searched the tree as much as possible, I searched the ground, even where wind or flood waters might have pushed it. There was nothing at all. Not even a bad vibe left reverberating in the air.

It's for the best, I think.

A Dark Road

It's been a year since I came back to my hometown. It's been a hard road. Desolate.There are few ghosts here, on the rim of the desert. Mostly they are ghosts of the mind. 

In a strictly practical way, things are better here than the dead end of the gulf coast.You can see it in the people, with their yoga bodies and shiny hair, no look of desperation to distort their features. No one is selling crack in the 'hood - there is no 'hood, and no need to worry about your children's education. It's all so very positive, so...upwardly mobile. The dark side of this coin is that failure is spurned equally as hard. 

On the gulf coast, failure - if not a way of life -  is something one co-exists with, a condition you are simply too hot and too tired to rise above. Oh, maybe not in the cities so much, but in these little port towns where even the most successful are at the last bus stop on their career path - it only takes one blow to send people toppling like a row of dominoes. And the air is so heavy, it's hard to get up again. 

So, in a very practical sense, it's better. But who wants to go back to a place that has cruelty in its bones? I spent the worst years of my life in this place and frankly, it hasn't changed. Old traumas lurk at every corner. Memories break through the surface like tree roots through concrete. I'd never had the faintest desire to come home, for good reasons. I can't wait for the day I'll be able to leave it again. 

One evening this past Winter, I walked to the end of the road and looked down the hill. Everything was dark but for pools of light beneath distant streetlamps. Music drifted in from the dance hall above the town, an exacting cover of  Mary Jane's Last Dance. I studied the pools of light. Somehow, the sight of them made me feel less lonely.

Fire and Hemlock

No, no hemlock involved, really. Only the burning of an ancient tree in the garden.