You Never Know
I take a walk almost every day, usually early, before the day gets hot and busy.
It has its own hashtag in my IM window with Wing, where we tell each other about completed tasks and essential pictures of little hedgehogs: #oldladywalk. “Moved TGW to 10 ET. … FO pics in DB gen pop. … #oldladywalk, back in 40.” The window is always open, and except for that dark side of the time-difference moon when neither of us is awake, one of us is always in it, pinning virtual notecards to the bulletin board for the other to find when she wakes up.
The #oldladywalk has a variety of routes. On weekends, I like to wander around Green-Wood Cemetery and get lost for an hour. One of the footpaths leads under a weeping beech whose branches touch the ground to create a cool, dappled cave. There is one family beneath it, interred a hundred years ago in the tree’s youth; it’s also where cemetery staff hides inelegant whatnots like carts and tarps, and where teenagers hide themselves, and carve their initials and private jokes into the trunk.
Weekdays, I walk a park route, down along the border of Kensington and then up through Prospect Park along the southwestern edge. It’s a nice, hilly bit with a mildly aerobic flight of stone steps in the middle, and often I have it to myself, but the night shift leaves its own notecards — like the microwaves and toaster ovens you can regularly find smashed and strewn across the landing. I don’t know what ritual purpose the destruction of reheating devices might serve; I just know that, every couple of weeks, I’ll see an orphaned cord at the base of the steps. Once in a while, I spot a couple sleeping in one of the path turnouts, spooned together next to a fallen log. And the note rock, of course. It’s naked today (well, save the Sharpie graffiti), because it rained all day yesterday, but for weeks it said something to the effect of “waited for you bozo” in yellow chalk, with an arrow pointing to the hint of a path into the underbrush.
I love the note rock. I love thinking about it: who is the bozo; is it “Bozo” (who wrote the note? are they friends from clown school?); what did the author wait for, and for how long; does s/he keep the chalk in the crook of a tree or carry it with him/her, or what (tree-crook storage is maybe a thing in the park; I saw a huge pair of blue sneakers off the Bartel-Pritchard entrance the other day). What other notes have appeared there? What scavenger hunts or LARPs have used it as a guide? In the room of my heart that loves codes and dead drops and the potential, no matter how remote, that any count number jotted on a sawbuck or misdelivered postcard could turn into an exciting and vaguely dangerous puzzle requiring Morse code (which I know) and an eyeglasses attachment with a lighted magnifier (which I own two of) (#oldladycrafts), I have happily cleared a space for the note rock. That room is right next door to the room where I keep unsolved mysteries: what really happened on the Lindbergh estate that night, who really killed those women in the Whitechapel district, what Lee Harvey Oswald might have said at trial, JonBenet, Bambi Bembenek, and Roanoke. My god, Roanoke. We have, like, two clues. Neither of them is helpful. We will never, ever know what became of the settlers. We know — but we don’t know.
Wing left me a notecard idea on the overnight, weeks back — that I should put Mystery Show on the Don case. Don did seem to qualify, because Lord knows Googling hadn’t turned him up, and neither had Craigslisting, TWoP advertising, Ancestry.comming, or paid searching. But I didn’t do it. Partly I didn’t think it’s the kind of mystery Starlee Kine likes, a little kooky, seemingly trivial. Partly I believe that Don may want to stay unfound, a desire I can’t confirm but should try to respect, in case. I don’t know.
Partly I don’t want to know. An unsolved mystery is annoying, it sticks and nags, but it’s appealing in spite of that and because of that. I want the answer…but also I don’t, because then the story is over, and the pleasure of the present tense, the cracking and solving and realizing, is gone. Replaced by accomplishment and closure, whatever that is, sure. But an unsolved mystery is as much “you just never know” as it is “we can’t ever know.” Possibility. Hopes.
We should call them “unsolvable,” I guess, things like Roanoke. They are, now. “Croatoan” carved in a tree, grey-eyed children in the Native American villages a generation later…somewhere in our educated guesses and the careful sifting of Carolina soil is the answer. If an announcement came across the wire that historians unearthed conclusive proof as to the colony’s fate, I would rush to read it. And then I would feel a little sad, as though I’d lost something. One day Don may walk out of a virtual woods and find me. We may end up elbow-to-elbow on a ferry. We probably won’t — but you just never know. And I know what I really need to about Don already.
I left a chunk of blue chalk on the note rock today, a little mitzvah for Bozo’s friend. If you see it, leave me a puzzle or a Tic-Tac-Toe board, and blow my mind. Or “happy birthday, Don” in bubble letters is nice, too.
Tags: September 11th
Happy birthday, Don. Can’t believe it’s been so many years.
Everyone else has said what I was going to. Yours is the only site I read today, and every year I share For Thou Art With Us. Happy birthday, Don.
I’m another annual pilgrim. Sharing your blog of that day is the only ritual I have for this. It’s still one of the few pieces of writing that actually describes the feeling I had that day. I still remember, for days afterwards, having to pull to the side of the road crying as I kept hearing news reports. I don’t share where I was or what I was doing. I just share your blog. It’s all the ritual I need. Thank you, Sarah. And happy birthday, Don. I still hope you find him someday.
Thank you, Sarah. This is the only place I ever read anything on the anniversary, always at the end of the day, always knowing that whatever I’ve bumped up against during the day will be set back in place. I first came here as a single cat-loving 20-something and now we’re all growing up with marriage(s…), houses, kids…crazy. I guess I feel like I’ve grown up here and I never feel that more strongly than I do every year when I come back here just to touch base with the people I’ve never met that I went with through that day. Thank you again and thank you too, Nation.
I always think of you and your wonderful 9/1 posts every year. Thank you for writing. Happy birthday,Don.
Dearest Sars,
I really hope you don’t mind, but I posted this on my FB today. As I say in my post, your words help me, and so many others, every year and if they can help any of my friends, I want them to know about it. My mom used to say “You never hear of the good things, only the bad”, so I like to lay praise when I can. Thanks again… for everything.
“While, of course, I will never forget the horror of that day or how God-damn scared I was, I try not to relive it by watching the retrospectives and torturing myself by the scene of that destruction. I do, however, go to one special place on the web that, to me and many others, helps me get through the day, remember and pray for those lost and send thanks to those that shined during that terrible tragedy. It is an account of the day from Sarah Bunting at http://www.tomatonation.com. She was in New York for a conference and she describes witnessing the death of the Towers and how she got out of NYC and returned home, etc. It is beautifully and powerfully written. She writes again every year on this day and it is at times humorous, sad, introspective, and a million other things. If anyone feels up to it… fair warning, you WILL cry, sob uncontrollably,… head over to her webpage, http://www.tomatonation.com, read For Thou Art With Us to start. This is not any kind of plug for Ms. Bunting or Tomato Nation. Her stories help me through this day and I like to share good things like this. God bless you all.”
Happy birthday, Don, wherever you are.
[…] Towards the end of the day, Sars posted her fourteenth anniversary essay on the events. And the fact that she never found Don. And that she even considered, yes, contacting Mystery Show […]
Happy belated, Don. I come here every year, Sars; this year is the first I missed reading day-of, because my younger cat is going through liver failure. But I’m sure she is sending good wishes to you, too, just like I am.
Your piece on 9/11 always moves me. I have read it again, periodically when the day comes around. I worked in Manhattan, lived in NJ along the Hudson, lost people I knew that day. I was not downtown on 9/11, but your essay is the only one I felt that captured that strange mental numbness, that kind of looping “this did happen this didn’t happen” that I felt on 9/11 and in the days immediately following.
Since reading your 9/11 piece when I stumbled across it, having found it via Mighty Big TV and TWoP, I have always, oddly, thought of Don and periodically check your site around this time of year to see if there is an update.
Happy Birthday Don. And thank you Sarah.
Belated happy birthday Don. I hadn’t realised you’d done so much searching for him – like others I still kind of hope you’ll crash into each other randomly in a street/cafe/opening/something one day, and there’ll be another part to the story.
Or maybe your mom’s right and he was in fact an angel incarnate, born on 9/11 for one single day. (I tend to think not, being overly practical and all, but at this point – why not?)
I hope Bozo found the person who waited for them.
Dearest Sars,
I tried to write a longer post – tried to tell you how your writing wrenches at my heart every year, but I couldn’t make it work.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thank you, Sars. God bless you. God loves you.
I was offline for a few days, but thought of you on Friday and sent a Happy Birthday out to Don on the warm breeze. I read For Thou Art With Us every year without fail just like many others here. I can’t believe it’s been 14 years. Thank you, Sars.
I was away from the computer Friday-weekend, but I knew something beautiful would be waiting when I got here today. Happy belated birthday, Don. Thank you, Sarah.
Someone used the chalk over the weekend: “Chelsea was here.” I added my own note and replaced the chalk.
Happy birthday, Don — belatedly. Thank you, Sars, still.
Sars…now you must update us with the “writing on the rock”, please.
Yesterday’s missive was “estube [sic] aqui” — I was here. Don’t know who “I” is; no sign of the chalk.
A bit late, but that’s just how life is these days. Where I live in Germany, the sky on the 11th was exactly the same deep azure blue we all remember from that day.
I share your story every year, calling it the best September 11th blog, because it is. I hate that one would even say that. I hope Don is found, and that you haven’t given up on doing it makes me love you even more <3
Late to this. Well, I found the post last weekend, but didn’t finish reading, until tonight. Something in me, this year wanted the day to be any other day, to not remember the horrific things that happened, to pretend. And then I wanted to read without the distractions and hubbub of the house. And it was worth the wait.
Thanks again Sars, for putting some great thoughts down in pixels.
Happy Birthday to Don, and a toast to mysteries unsolved but at peace.
I was out of the country for 9/11 this year, so my annual pilgrimage to your site was delayed until my return, but worth the wait. Thank you Sars. And Happy Birthday Don.