It’s like I’ve always said: re-frame any story with its end in mind, as a faît accompli, and it all suddenly becomes very logical indeed. Besides which, what did anyone really have for evidence to the contrary? The testimony of a two-time seizure survivor who says a ghost told her in a dream a dead goddess did it? No, that was obviously my own subconscious playing games, solving a crime before it even happened; that’s what I wrote, and that’s what I’m more than happy to keep signing off on, so long as it keeps bringing in the bucks.
I have a son with special needs, after all, and 25 percent of everything I make goes into a fund for him, to keep him well looked after, once Simon and I are gone. Which I guess makes being legally blind for the rest of my life look like a pretty good trade-off, inconvenient though it may be in daily practice.
As things stand now, I’ve got my career back, and better than ever. I can kind of write my own ticket, in a way; I’m programming for festivals here, interviewing and being interviewed there, hosting special screenings. I’ll never be able to learn to drive now, not even if I wanted to, but my eyesight does keep on improving steadily; the other day I woke up and realized I was looking at the ceiling, actually able to see all the cracks, the stippling, the stucco-shadows . . . Christ, that was amazing. I didn’t stop crying for the next half hour.
“The great part,” I told Simon, just the other week, when he, Safie, and I got together for dinner, like we do almost every other month, “is that most of the stuff we found out about Mrs. Whitcomb I can still talk about in public without looking insane, ’cause it’s just true: her dad killed her family, she grew up obsessed with fairy tales, made art, lost her son, talked to ghosts. She made films.”
He frowned. “All that information about Lady Midday, though—it’s still in there. Somebody could go look it up, pursue it, if they wanted to.”
“Yep,” Safie agreed, poring some more wine. “But why would they? Factor Wrob’s actions in on top, it all just becomes a bunch of crazy shit Mrs. Whitcomb happened to believe in, stuff she thought was true, because of all the bad things that happened to her. Sad, for sure. Totally. But nobody’s gonna be burying anybody in fields over it anytime soon.”
I nodded. “‘Just because you think something’s real, doesn’t make it so’—they say that about all sorts of religions, all the time. And a religion without miracles doesn’t tend to leave much of a footprint, does it?”
“Hmmm.” Simon lifted a finger, the old aha-gotcha twinkle back in his eyes. “What about Scientology?”
“Scientology doesn’t count,” I replied. “Not when it comes to old dead religions requiring human sacrifice. That’s common knowledge, man.” And I kissed him.
Later, Safie told me the producers she’d been working with had finally managed to net a bit of Telefilm funding, though not for her long-deferred Yezidi film. “They want to do the book, adapt it,” she admitted, reluctantly. “Like, semi-fictionalized—sort of a braided narrative, back and forth through history. Mrs. Whitcomb juxtaposed with Wrob. Like The Hours, but with setting yourself on fire.”
“Aaron Ashmore in a fake nose?” I suggested, laughing when she shuddered.
For myself, I know I see things differently, literally, since that night at the Ursulines, that day in the Vinegar House. That on the one hand, I no longer reckon my own worth—or lack thereof—by the same standards; while on the other, I know beyond a doubt that the world is full of holes behind which numinous presences lurk—secrets no one should ever have to see, or want to. And those who do will never be the same.
Maybe the iconoclasts were right—any image is an anchor, a trap, an open invitation. When you see the god, a god, you either forget or you go mad, trying to forget—ekstasis, the Greeks called it, “to stand outside oneself.” A removal to elsewhere.
But there’s a third choice, or at least I’ve found so: remember, no matter how it hurts to, and deal with the consequences of remembering. Submit, and bear your scars proudly.
I work on doing just that, every day, give or take. I work hard. And what will it get me, in the end? Will I be allowed to escape or be pulled back in, falling between the cracks? Into the places no one wants to think exist, to face what I know lives there?
I don’t know yet. I can’t.
I may never know.
What I didn’t tell Simon, though, in our conversation—what I’ll tell you, now—is how you’d be infinitely surprised what people will accept as a miracle, so long as it gives them something they really want: forgiveness of sin, unconditional love, the idea that your wounds make you special. That doing your art—your work—can help you save your own life.
Miracles, black, white, and grey all over. Like light on a wall, telling a story; like magic. Like cinema itself.
But, and still, and even so: it’s the things you don’t see, in this world or any other—the hidden things, unseen, lost between frames—
—that will always make all the difference.
Sting
Soraya Mousch sent me this last part. It’s something written at the Freihoeven Institute, during a “free imaging” session, a sort of channelling course for mediums. This chick Carraclough Devize teaches it, apparently—so maybe she wrote this on someone else’s behalf, or maybe it was one of her pupils, at the behest of similarly unseen powers.
One way or the other, I’m pretty sure I recognize the style.
It is so hard from where I am, it begins, & so difficult to reach you, so near & yet so far—
—but then again, I do not even know where I am. So I try to warn you & you do not hear, you never hear, not any of you.
See
ing is more important than hearing, though. & that is why I made it, made them, though I knew that I should not. Because. Because.
So hard, but I keep trying.
I did not look up, you see, not even when She touched me, & yet I know, now, what I would have seen. I have always known.