Awesome

This is fantastic!

Stupid Facebook groups

Come on...

So I started this group on Facebook in an effort to spread the word that Emillie is missing. My hope was that more people would see the picture and info and we might find out some new info.

It has worked actually really well. Some really great things have come out of it. That being said, I am going to bitch for a moment:

If I invite you to a group in an effort to find my missing sister, and you do not accept the invitation do not then continually send me updates on your group whose purpose is to track your weight loss. Somehow this seems assey to me. I really do not care how fat or thin you are, I joined your group because I wanted to show some support. Whatever...

I know, I am crazy. You don't have to tell me. CRAZY!

Why Ira Glass? Why?

I listen to This American Life while working. Yesterday, this episode got me.

Joseph Mary Plunkett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Plunkett


I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

Emillie Hoyt

As most of you know, my sister is missing. Of course, this is a constant theme in my blogging, you know, work it out on paper etc.

The process of looking for her has not been easy, which I guess is to be expected. It took me quite a while to make it public knowledge. Early on we had a very bad experience with the Florida State Police that left us without a resource and that experience caused us to work independently. This was the case from Dec. 2005 until Aug 2007, when through a bizarre set of circumstances Emillie's case became the business of a detective in Del Ray Beach, FL. He passed the case on to a fantastic detective in Highland Beach, which is the last place that she was seen.

Leads have been very few, the community is a very affluent neighborhood that doesn't really speak to their neighbors. There was a rumor that she was in Ft. Lauderdale, no luck... Then Boca Raton, no luck. A lie, about her going to Colorado, no luck. A wide-spread identity search that listed no activity on her passport, her driver's license, SS#, Credit Cards etc.

We have checked the hospitals, morgues, rehab centers, nothing.

Having exhausted these outlets, I posted a profile on Myspace that holds info about her. I got some truly insensitive e-mails from her "friends", when I began to ask questions of them, they refused to talk to me.

I sent e-mails to Oprah, Court TV, etc, nothing...

I started a group on Facebook, trying the viral marketing approach. I mean if people can take the time to send me a bunch of mother fucking "flare" and post the same video to my funwall then surely they can spread the word. That assumption has proved shall we say, less than fruitful.

In this last act, I kind of put myself out there. I mean, the people that are my Facebook friends are people that I see or am in contact with often. Most of them had no idea. I kept this to myself because I don't really have a place to put it. The fewer people that knew, the easier it was for me to control the emotion that I have about the situation. I could be active, look, and not have to be vulnerable. Let's just say that Facebook has opened this subject up, and that has been hard for me.

To all of you, thank you for your prayers and concern. I am so thankful. I am sorry that I have not been forthcoming in all of this, it is something that I can;t even talk about without having some sort of terribly inappropriate emotion blurt out.


At any rate, here we are. My mom found a the draft of a letter from Emillie to me and brought it out last week. I didn't read it right away, just couldn't. It took me three days to sit down and look at it. First, let me say, waiting three days was not my best idea. In that short time, the letter became some sort of key to Emillie, a clue to her. When I read it, I was left less enlightened and more sad. It was written about 4 years ago, when she was home with mom. Things had not been going well for her. She was fighting drug addiction, a bad relationship, and a great many health problems.

Our relationship had suffered from my sickness of her attitude and our proximity to each other. We had fought a lot as teens, I was a big mess and she was a big mess, and whenever we converged upon each other bad things happened.

This letter was an apology, a hopeless, self-deprecating apology. The words of a person with Bipolar disorder coming to terms with her actions that, to be honest, I don't think she really had control over in the first place. She wanted love and approval like all of us. Unfortunately, she had actions that she felt that she needed to live down.

Father Brendan had tried to get me to realize this need in Emillie. I think that I tried to reach out, I know that Mom and Aaron did, but it wasn't enough. This letter was so self-hating. I just wish that I would have known at the time. It reminded me of Jason Ogan funeral a few weeks ago (I am referring to Emillie's letter) Jason wrote a similar letter to his father. He said near the end that he wanted to get better, he was trying to get better. Emillie says the same thing.

In the end, I am left wishing that I had a connection to her. We were apart for so long. It is like the feeling that I have for my Dad, a sort on unfamiliar love. A conditional connection of genetics, vague memories and a need to be loved and accepted by that person that is no longer with you.

So, of course, we all have tragedy. It is a motivator for good I guess. A way of connecting our experience to those of other people. A means for social conscience spurring us on to quell the tide of evil, I know. "That which does not kill us" and all... But, does it have to keep on killing others? Why is it that some of us are left and others are taken? How does it all fit? (these are rhetorical questions, I am not trying to be on the pity pot.)

I am in Cleveland, working a National Pastoral Musicians Conference. Our first day, we checked into a rather lovely hotel in downtown. The convention just before ours was a gay, lesbian and bisexual square dancing competition. I have to tell you that I never thought of square dancing as a GLTB sort of "sport", apparently it has a rather large following. VERY, VERY ODD...

Today I attended a cantor workshop, if you don't know what a cantor is, well, in the Catholic Church, they are the person that leads the songs because no other Catholics want to sing. All I can say is WOW, there shall be no complaining about the singing at my Cathedral. Wow, wow, wow. (True thoughts withheld to protect the innocent.)

Cleveland is an interesting city, right on the great lakes, close enough to the south to have a bit of southern etc. Being here has TRULY underscored how UN-diverse Portland really is. Portland must be the whitest city in the world. At any rate, our Hotel is lovely, connected to the old train station, right in downtown. I spent a couple hours walking around on Monday, hoping to find a store to buy the girls a surprise, not a damn thing. NOTHING. The whole downtown, like many urban centers, is devoid of almost any shopping. The train station has been converted into a "mall" there are really only three stores, Brooks Brothers, MAC and the Dollar Store. Very odd combination. Oh, wait, I almost forgot! There are a series of fountains that "dance" to the fast movement of Aaron Copland's ballet suite Rodeo (better known as the "Beef" song.)

Tomorrow I have to work our booth, proctor a couple of events and then fill in as the missing tenor in a Spanish/Gospel concert. Perfect...

Missing the family horribly...

ts elliot

Ash Wednesday

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.



III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Whe walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Thomas Stearns Eliot