Private journal entry: June 18, 2005
It is just so weird how time can seem to stretch itself out some times and at other times condense itself very tightly. It seemed like a flash-moments inspiration during a manic spending spree that pressured me, no actually insisted that I buy that Ouija board on eBay. There were flash visions of myself sitting alone in the cemetery next to favorite graves in the dark, Ouija on my lap – asking specific questions of the interred about their lives and their unfortunate demises. It still doesn’t sound like all that bizarre of an endeavor to explore the possibilities of; not really, does it?
But I have not touched the Ouija board since it arrived, other than excitedly taking it out of its makeshift mailing package and slipping it out of its browned, aged box to verify that it was real, undamaged and well, whether I got any energy from it or not. Yes, yes, and pretty much no. That must have been two months ago. Since the night of my initiation into The Order of the Sentinels I have not been able to go into the cemetery. Sometimes I can just overdo a thing and I need to stay away from it for awhile. This used to happen to me when I would over-attend at the ashram on a regular basis. I have been back though, just this week in fact.
It was Friday night one week ago. A justified need that required use of my credit card arose. Remember? I buried my credit card at young Jenny Hall’s grave and asked her to help me resist using it unless it were a dire situation? Without going into detail now, a worthy reason (or need) appeared before me so I returned to Jenny’s grave around 10:30pm to obtain the object. Again, this was the first time I had entered the cemetery in what was easily four weeks time. If I didn’t have this pressing reason to come here for it, four more weeks or more could have passed before I would come back on my own volition to retrieve it.
When I entered the grounds I felt an immediate sense of welcome and comfort. A revived feeling that made me smile and whisper, “Oh my friends, I’m sorry for being afraid. I’m sorry for letting it seem like I was ignoring you; but you know I wasn’t, don’t you? Thank you for making me feel so welcome now.” And I knelt on one knee, touched fingertips to the ground and then brushed the dust humbly to my forehead. I was beaming. I saw a light flash over on Petunia Lane, near where Tara’s gravesite is. “That’s a flashlight!” I thought. And then I saw in the streetlight the outlines of two people in dark clothing, a man and a woman. They were actually walking towards the main gate along the circular, outer road. I stood still to wait for them to leave. Not so much out of fear of them seeing me because I figured that they probably had noticed that my car had driven up and that I parked outside the fence. It seemed that they were checking it out from the gate. “That’s weird.” the man could have said to the woman. “Don’t they know the cemetery is closed after sunset?”
Then I watched them walk off around the corner on the main road towards the new subdivisions. Locals who finally became brave enough to “do the big scary”. Or who knows, maybe they do this every Friday night. What I noticed while I stood still for what must have been at least 5 minutes watching them was that it was very bright out tonight. I craned my neck upwards and saw that the sky was starlit and a gibbous moon was beaming. The temperature was moderate; I certainly wasn’t wearing a sweater; oh I don’t know what I was wearing – black, that is all I can assure you of.
When they left my sight I looked up the hill and thought for about six seconds; take a path? Or cut a trail. Being as light as it was and now being soo familiar with the positioning of the majority of markers and stones on the northwest quadrant of the cemetery I made a beeline. I surprised myself at how gingerly yet speedily I was able to maneuver, not only between markers and stones, but along the actual imaginary borders that outline coffin spaces. I moved like a sprite. First stop was at my baptism/initiation location; the broken tombstone. Here is the thing though; as well as I was able to navigate the general geography of the hill amongst anonymous skeletons I couldn’t intuitively find my way to this most centrally significant landmark. Well, neither intuitively nor by eyesight. I circled it blindly nearly two times before I stupidly said, “Oh, THERE it is.” I approached it slowly, as usual from what by site seems to be the front side but by logic is the back side because of the medium sized bush that grows on the other side that obscures the faintly visible, weather and age worn inscription. I kneel before it silently out of respect for a moment. And to listen. In fact I silently propose the question, “Is everything good between us?”, meaning, “Do you want me to bring back the other half of your gravestone (now or yet)?” The answer I have heard each time so far is silence. Oh, and believe me – I will hear something when she does want it back.
Then to Jenny’s grave for the retrieval. Despite the benefit of the moonlight I have been bragging about I was not able to walk directly to her grave either. Oh, and tonight I had brought items with me. The one I will mention now is a large bladed pocket knife. I found her grave without too much more difficulty; kneel before her gravestone in silence, smile to her and reach my fingertips out to gently brush the letters of her names etching. Then I slowly reach down to the patch of ground right before her marker. First thing I try to notice is the long, thin twig that fell from the oak that stretches overhead. This twig, the night I buried the credit card, I laid it across the top of the disturbed soil after I patted it down and put a layer of dead leaves down. On at least one return visit during daylight weeks later I saw that the twig was still in place, unmoved.
Tonight though, in my anxiousness I failed to remind myself to make a detailed enough inspection of the placement of the twig. With the brightness of the moon came stronger shadows that distorted my usual pinpointing eye for detail. I saw “something” and just went ahead and “dug in”. Now, one of the other items I brought with myself that previous night was a hammer. As weird as this may sound, the night I buried the credit card the only implement I had brought to dig with was “the hammer”. I know, I know, you can’t dig a hole with a hammer. My logic that night goes back to a fantasy image I created in a journal entry months ago when I first mentioned the idea of “digging into the fertile soil with my fingers, clawing through, reaching deeply enough to actually touch the wood of a buried coffin.’ A romantic image, granted, but a not unrealistic one, not really as I had remarked earlier, the soil in this cemetery is unusually fertile and loose for untilled dirt normally found in northern California. Again, I attribute this to the profundity of dead leaves that are found in these grounds year round. There is a continual composting of the soil occurring here.
So the image I had in mind that night was that with the hammer (ok, yeah I had brought the hammer to do something else with that night – I’ll tell you in a minute!) to maybe get the hole started I would then reach my hands in and continue to claw away handfuls of dirt until, well, I got deep enough. I brushed away the layer of rotting leaves and then took the claw of the hammer and gently pressed it down through the crust, one hand on the handle the other hand on the peen, and pulled. Once the crust of soil was broken I saw what I had envisioned; soft fertile soil that I could work my fingers into. I pulled up maybe ten inches deep by six inches long by four inches wide worth of soil with my hands and made a small pile. Then I took the “case” I had put the credit card into and placed it gingerly into the hole with great respect, honoring it – no anger or guilt on the lips of my conscience. “I hope to never need to see you again old friend” I whispered as I pushed the pile of warm soil back into the hole, hiding my sin from being able to be committed ever again. Well, at least temporarily I felt sure.
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June 20, 2005
I take the pocket knife from my pocket and extend the blade. After brushing away the leaves (and I’m really uncertain now whether the twig was there or not) I stick the blade into the soil and dig up the soil. I dig the entire hole up this way, actually stabbing the blade deeper into the hole to hit the case. To identify it’s exact location. The hole is now 4” deep; at least 1” deeper than the depth of the original hole. And the knife blade, which is 6” long is reaching deeper below into the ground below. And do you know what I find? I find that there is NOTHING there. Well, you know what I mean, what I was expecting to find was not there.
I don’t panic very easily any more. The drugs work very effectively in preventing that, thank you very much SQUIBB. But at this moment many thoughts did start to entertain/exercise themselves in my mind. I paused digging and looked around. Was someone playing a joke on me? Was a cohort of, or a Ashton Kutcher wannabe hiding behind a gravestone with a video camera punking me? That thought made me smile. That would be so cool! But then two serious thoughts settled in for deeper consideration; neither scenario being very likely possible at all, at least not in a normal persons life. Nor all that possible to occur in a normal bipolar person’s life either. How many people do you know of (or have ever heard of) that go around digging in cemeteries at night, other than fictional, gothic grave robbers?
Scenario one: Somehow, someone by whatever bizarre series of circumstances became knowledgeable of what I had done, and well, decided to undo my deed by digging up whatever the hell it was that I had buried. This would mean that one of three things had happened? Maybe four? 1. Someone was in the cemetery that original night and watched me. 2. Or the police had a video camera permanently focused on the cemetery grounds and ALWAYS know what is going on there. (Ohmygod, I have never thought of this before. If this is true I am in soo much trouble!!) With the technological abilities available to a city as wealthy as this one is I would not doubt the possibility of this at all. Although I doubt they would go to trouble of installing a camera unless there had been a rash of reports of vandalism already reported. There are no signs of nefarious activity (other than my own) that goes on in the cemetery so I do not fear this being the case.
3. My fear that the CIA’s use of satellite camera’s for spying purposes caught my act and recorded it, thus enabling the FBI to investigate further exactly what it is that I am doing. 4. Finally, that the original event actually never occurred. That I dreamt of doing it, and actually didn’t? Or maybe it was at a different gravesite that I buried it at? I was in some drug induced state that created a hallucinogenic fantasy… God, I don’t know. This last scenario seems to be the most likely, doesn’t it?
If any official law organization were spying on me would they not have made themselves and their concerns known to me by now? Anyway, I filled in the hole, patted it down and brushed the dead leaves back over it. I resolved to believe that I could not explain what happened, and well, that that was that. I got up and proceeded to the next task I wanted to complete that night. Merricat Blackwood has become a dark inspiration to me. Well, she has been for years. I have kept some of her methods of reasoning active in my mind ever since the first time I met her when I read “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” when I was 14. Now at 46 her spirit has been reawakened within me, and well, this night I was to perform a very Merricat deed. Before I left the house I opened the trunk of my car to get four nails and my hammer out. I needed them to nail the very old and worn copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstien I had found to a tree.
I have to admit that when I come up with inspiration to do these strange things in the cemetery I want to do them for their novelty. It is afterwards that I find that there is a deeper purpose behind the act which is available to me to tap into, if I will my consciousness grasp the opportunity. Merricat nailed books to trees as talismans for protection from outsiders for her and her sister Constance. I just wanted to do this because it seemed like a really cool thing to do, and as of the time of this writing I still have not become aware of the deeper power this talisman can serve my lover and myself with. I do need to make a sunset visit to the cemetery very soon so that I can survey the scenes of my acts.
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