Love

Bearing Witness

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One afternoon, my friend and I were waiting for her car to be serviced, so we sat in the waiting room to discuss the things good friends discuss in waiting rooms when coffee is being given away.

An elderly woman, still wearing her winter coat indoors, was sitting alone across from us, barking inarticulate sounds to herself. Sometimes, when she would hear laughter, she would rock forward, and, with a smile on her face, direct some louder sounds in the direction of the others, as if she was participating in the joking and merriment. Then she would slump back and the stream of non-language would continue, sometimes in a sing-song, sometimes with a note of fear and anger. Was she alone here? Had she wandered in off the street? That was not possible, as the street was Route 9.
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Love vs. Terror

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

After years of domestic abuse, a lovely young woman (a friend of my girlfriend’s, but I met her several times) took her own life today. She leaves behind children. Her husband, the person from whom she was trying to escape for years, is today posting sympathy-begging messages on Facebook, the likes of which are stunning. At least, I am stunned.

Perhaps I should not be, as I have been writing columns for years about human rights violations in nations controlled by repressive regimes around the world. Repression and torture do not need a national policy to make them real. Repression happens on a sliding scale, from the size of a nation to the size of the back of a man’s hand. And no one can measure the cruelty of words.

I am angry, I suppose on her behalf, little good it does now. Angry that there are individuals who treat their world and their “loved ones” like a repressive nation treats its dissident citizens: he threatened her with overwhelmingly expensive legal battles to extricate herself from the pain he was inflicting on her, and she felt driven to make attempts (plural) on her own life. And then, his hands clean because he did not end her life (he also did not save it) he began to fill the airwaves with messages posted “more in sorrow than in anger” about how his wife abandoned him today. (I have this fantasy that my friends in Anonymous will launch an “Ops” attack against him. Pah. To what end?)

Maybe someone who feels the need or desire to hurt themselves today—perhaps to strike out against someone who is hurting them or perhaps because they may not want to die but they can not imagine continuing to live—may read what follows.

Perhaps publishing this phone number right here, today—1-800-273-TALK (8255)—is the only reason for this website’s existence. It is the national suicide prevention hotline number.
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A Sunny Day

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My current crush and I will visiting the same local pond I wrote about a year ago in “Forever Snug.” It is Memorial Day weekend in the United States, and summer appeared here last week in the Mid-Hudson Valley with a surprising suddenness. Or that was just me not noticing things, a terrible habit for someone who types as much as I do. The column, edited to reflect 2016:

It was one of those days in which the lifeguards outnumbered the swimmers. We were at a local park that features a small lake and beach: on holiday weekends families travel to more prominent parks that feature rides as an added distraction. So the crowds were elsewhere even on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and we were one couple out of maybe ten groups. Two families, each with three water-loving toddlers, splashed about, and none of the children were yet old enough to test their limits against the flimsy, algae-covered nylon rope demarcating the “deep end” of the pond on three sides. The lifeguards chatted with the families, flirted with each other, bought each other ice cream, and burned off the ice cream calories breaking each others’ speed records chasing after the tuneful ice cream truck.
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