And the Place Thereof Shall Know It No More

“Well, of course, the shooter is gay,” I said when we heard about the Orlando shooting.

“What a thing to say!” said Robin. “You don’t know that!”

“Uh – yeah,” I said. “I do.”

And, of course, I was right.

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This changes the narrative in significant ways. Assuming one sees a difference between hate crimes and self-hate crimes – which I do.

I mean, no – it doesn’t change the facts: 50 beautiful people senselessly slaughtered, and though I would describe myself in general as a fangirl of the Second Amendment, I will note here for the record that I see considerable benefit in outlawing private ownership of automatic weapons and bringing gun show purchase regulations into line with other gun purchase regulations.

But it’s no longer a story about an attack on a community.

It’s a story instead about someone so filled with self-loathing and anger that he decided to commit suicide by cop. And 50 beautiful human beings got in the way.

It’s extremely unfortunate that the shooter was Islamic and a fan of superhero movies. He could just as easily have been a Christian fundamentalist.

Aside from that, all the sentimentality about the incident is the flipside to the brutality of the incident. Brutality and sentimentality are the same thing, you know – just with opposite valences.



Aside from being extremely bummed about Orlando – knowing Orlando is going to translate into more votes for Trump despite exhaustively researched revelations in both The New York Times and The Washington Post about Trump’s awful, awful financial maneuvers – I had a very good time in Ithaca.

Went to a tea ceremony at the new Tibetan monastery:



Went partly in hopes of seeing Lopsang. Did not see her, but did see her husband. Lobsang’s husband used to be a Buddhist monk. He was a close friend of Lobsang’s father who asked him to smuggle Lobsang out of Tibet and into India. He did, and shortly afterwards left the priesthood to marry Lobsang.

“Tell her she is always in my heart,” I said, beating approximate region of said organ with my fist.

He nodded and smiled. “The plant you gave us. It’s this high.” He held his hand two and a half feet above the ground. “It blooms every winter. And we think of you.”

An amaryllis! One of those blooms-in-a-box you buy on the cheap at the supermarket every December, designed to be thrown away after the holiday season. Trust Lobsang to keep it thriving.



Afterwards, I met up with RTT, and we had lunch at the Farmers Market. I hadn’t really talked to RTT one-on-one since the graduation debacle, and there were things I wanted to say, although I know I have a tendency to lecture and that all my pontifications would fall on deaf ears. Thus, I confined myself to two observations:

(1) Lying. Bad. “You put people in a very bad situation when they love you but they can’t trust you,” I said.

(2) Timing of graduation debacle. Suggestive. “I think you’re really, really scared of what comes next,” I said. “And with good reason.”

I can’t ever tell whether or not RTT ever listens to anything I say. I suspect not: He finds me extremely uninteresting. Every 30 seconds, he checks his phone. Every five minutes, he finds an excuse to wander away and meet up with me 15 minutes later. He also seems incapable of relating to any experience that’s described to him unless he can find an immediate hook that relates that experience directly to himself: “My friend Darryl – that happened to him…”

My mother did that. I interpreted it as part of her general narcissism and borderline personality disorder.

I mentioned these behaviors to Ben as possibly diagnostic of something – I wasn’t sure what.

Ben pooh-poohed me. “All kids check their phones every 30 seconds,” he said.

“I’m not articulating it clearly,” I said. “It’s like he’s incapable of listening or of having an authentically personal response. Do you get what I’m saying at all?“

“No,” Ben said flatly. “I don’t.”

Of course, Ben and RTT have slipped back most of the way into their old co-dependence. RTT still hasn’t found a summer job; Ben slips him bucks for bus fair and the occasional social outing. Ben cooks for him, does his laundry, and washes all the dishes. RTT’s main focus at present seems to be in doing whatever internal magicking is necessary to make the Golden State Warriors win the NBA championship. Ben finds this endearing and amusing.

RTT did say this was the last summer he’d be staying with his father, and I was glad to hear it.

“One weird thing,” he said just before I dropped him off at the county jail to visit his pal Cooper. Cooper, one of RTT’s closest pals, without being necessarily a bad kid, made some extraordinarily baaaaaaaad decisions. Thus he is spending his summer vacation in county lockdown.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Ever since Justin died, I don’t sleep right. I mean, people who sleep with me tell me I kick and scream a lot. And I have bad dreams.”

“Yah. Well. Survivor’s guilt,” I said. “It’s a form of post traumatic stress disorder. Soldiers coming back from war get it a lot. I don’t know that there’s ever anything you can do about the feeling that the loss was senseless. What you can do is dedicate the successes in your own life to the people who helped make them possible but who aren’t here anymore. As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.”

RTT was startled. “What’s that?” he asked.

“The 103rd Psalm,” I said.

And then I dropped him off at the jail.