Crystal Liu, the fog, "huddling together, 2019

When I was in therapy,the most unnerving therapy appointments

were always the ones where I had no immediate hot problem to roll in with.

 Hot problem ones are great;You bang through the doors and grab the box of tissues and throw yourself onto the couch all alive with a fresh batch of indignation or sadness or whatever got cooked,   and you have so many words ready!

"In sooth, I know EXACTLY why I am so sad: I called my mom this morning, and she—" -William Shakespeare, A Merry Therapy Day

but if everything was, you know, doable —but I still had to go in there!—

   soft flat mute horror

    Me: hi Therapist: hi    silence  

what am I supposed to do, be myself? as I am now? actually today? reveal myself without a grievance?

  silence 

oh my god, we're waiting for me, it's me, it's my turn to go, I'm supposed to go, I'm the one who goes

I will tell you a secret: Sometimes it's this way with The Weekly Zephyr.

Most of the time a theme for the next issue will announce itself in a nice, clear way a couple of days before I sit here to write it, and that's a comfort and a blessing, peace be upon it. Other times, there's no theme but that's okay because I have a handful of fine things I'd like you to know about.   THIS IS THE OTHER KIND OF DAY TODAYA DAY WHERE THE IMPERATIVE SEEMS TO BE

SPEAK JUST SPEAK TRULY REVEAL YOURSELF

     Another secret: Once, twenty years or so ago, my dad picked me up from somewhere late at night and gave me a ride home. We were driving around a sharply-curving, one-way street that was an exit right off of a bridge, and we both saw — too late — an orange cat dash out in front of us. Then there was a thudding bump under the wheel. There were no houses nearby, no apartments. There was no way to back the car up without risk of (another) accident. We didn't speak. We grabbed hands. We drove on through the dark in silence, each of us discreetly weeping. I've never spoken about it until now.

I think that was the one thing I knew I wanted to do this week, tell you about that cat. So it's not true that there was nothing. I just didn't know how (or whether) I would do it.

But why?

Why would I only want to tell you a terrible story about a cat?It might be upsetting. You might be mad and think we should have stopped and done something, the right thing, something else.

 Well, let me think in this squirmy, bare silence and see what to say.

  I think first I had to tell it for the cat, who was real, and probably stopped living that night. Its only funeral, that I know of, was me and my dad holding hands and being silent for the rest of the ride.

Cat. I'm sorry.

  My dad is also dead, nearly fifteen years now, and I'm sure he's sorry, too. Maybe he can find you and tell you, or maybe he already has. It would be the coolest if you and he were friends now, somehow. He always loved cats and I saw how sad he was. If you and he were palling around intact somewhere, bright as spring sweaters, that would be my favorite outcome.      Oh. Maybe here's why.  

Might you also be carrying a dead cat?

You might have harmed or been privy to the harm of something or someone, in a way you’ve never talked about, and now you might think of yourself as a secret harmer of things, more than others are, and maybe more than other things you are. Maybe you wear it quietly written inside your coat, written in chalk in small handwriting in the same color as the inside of your coat, but still: written there, your coat

 And it could be something larger than a dead cat

or plural or less severeYou know the variations   but something that, in carrying it, makes you think secretly in a loop forever:

   I don't have the right    

to what? I don't know. There’s probably something, a basic human thing, something simple but to be desired, that you know other people have the right to but you don't because they're good and you're not as good.

Mercy

That's the thing.

 I think you can willfully pluck it out of the air. It's just there, if you’ll have it.  So many cats, so many coats with small mean writing, so much harm we've all done, some we've meant to, some we haven't, many dead cats, many sad coats, many cancelled wishes for simple things because of our badness.  

please have mercy on yourself  you can just do it

I thought that going back for this cat would be mostly awful but I feel better, like I have a window open. I have the strong wish that you also get to open at least one.

Crystal Liu, going places (weeping willows), "reunited" 2018