Author: Stacy Horn

It’s Wednesday morning. I’m sitting here at my computer with a cup of coffee, Finney is curled up on my lap and purring, and today the window is closed because it’s chilly.

I start every morning this way and it’s quite pleasant and serene.  I ease into the day slowly.  So!  What is up for today?

– Call Bell Labs.

– Call Bomb Squad.

– Write ghost pitch (for a local magazine).

– Go to the gym.

Is that a perfect day or what?? I cannot believe I get to live a life which calls for getting in touch with people at Bell Labs and the Bomb Squad. (Apparently I like calling places that begin with the letter “b”.) I love my life.  Mostly. Okay, one part I’ve been a miserable failure at (relationships!) but what the hell.  A lot of people suck at that.

I’m also going to try to get to the movie Stranded: I’ve Come From A Plane That Crashed on the Mountains.  It’s a documentary based on the rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1974.  I’ve read the book Alive close to a billion times. I can’t get enough of this story.

The picture is another from my Vermont fog series.  I was up and out before the inn I was staying in started serving coffee and breakfast so I took pictures while I waited.

Seriously.  Watch them for just a minute and you will see.  They started crying this morning, something outside of camera range got their attention and I had to turn it off. I got too upset that they couldn’t get at whatever it was they wanted to get at.  This is why I can’t have puppies.  I would let them destroy everything I own, just to stop their little puppy cries.

6:15 Breaking news!  Mom is here!  Puppy feeding frenzy.

We’re starting to ease up on the anxiety over here on Perry Street and allowing ourselves a moment of relaxation.  One of many good parts from the Anchorage Daily News endorsement for Obama:

“Sen. McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn’t show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.

It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Sen. McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans — not Iraqi oil — have had to pay for it. It was Sen. Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.”

(I actually took this picture because Finney and Buddy are fighting these days, I don’t know why, and this was a relatively rare moment of detente.)

I couldn’t post about it beforehand because it was a surprise party, but I went up to Vermont on Saturday for an 80th birthday party for my father. His birthday isn’t until Christmas Eve, but having it now guaranteed it would be a surprise.  We had it in a firehouse in … oh God, I forget the name of the town. Rupert!  (I think.)

I was walking back from Aly’s memorial, when Tom Waits came up on my ipod singing Waltzing Matilda. Not only is this a particularly mournful version of an already sad song, for me Waltzing Matilda will forever be tied to the movie On The Beach, and the end, when you see, shot by shot, the end of everything, all our loves, all our joys, everything we know, over.  It’s hard to watch without sobbing. Hard the first time, at least.  

So I was on 8th Avenue and 14th Street and all of a sudden shot after shot of Aly went through my head, the end of Aly laughing, the end of Aly playing with Sophie, the end of Aly being Kim’s and so many other people’s best friend, no more Elephant & Castle, no more music, I could see the look in his face, a thousand looks really, I could hear him saying my name, his manic energy, and then all the people I saw at the memorial just flashed in my head, and the things they told me about their experiences with Aly. Story after story.  I could see them easily even if I hadn’t been there.  Aly was so present it’s easy to see him in your head.  All of that is over now.  Aly is over now. Done. All of this with Tom Waits sing Waltzing Matilda in my head.  

So that’s it.  Aly’s light has gone out, his special, wonderful, insane light.  And we’ll all be right behind him.  Everything ends.  I’m sorry he is dead.  I will miss him.  Who else is there like Aly?? I’ll try to live better before I die. I don’t know what else to do with it.  Try to be as good with a few people as Aly was with many?  For some reason I found the story of Aly checking a friend’s new baby out of the hospital especially poignant.  I was actually distracted from asking questions to get the whole story, but sometimes he just knew the absolute right thing to do, and he was so good with kids.

I took the picture above at around 7am in Vermont this morning.  I’ll post about that tomorrow. It will be a happier post.