It’s has been a trying week.

Let’s start with last Saturday. I woke up and went to the hospital with my mom. The matriarch was unconsciously dying. Her name is Peggy Brew. The priest cried when he read her last rites. The family clustered around her for the final days. Normal death is so pedestrian – open mouths and quiet. When I leaned in her skin was sallow and had weird white dots on it. There was crust around her eyes. It looked to me like she was having a mild nightmare. She couldn’t have been more comfortable, but was trapped. Her flesh machine was shitty. She was swallowing her breaths, not breathing. Her body was feeding only on the repetitiveness of the action. The IV was long gone. Her lungs quit before her head. Her husband stroked her crinkled graphite hair. His ancient hand delicate and loving as he spoke through the baggy folds of his cheeks slowly. Two days earlier they had given her an antipsychotic. Two years earlier she had begun to fade. She asked for her mother.

Saturday night we rocked an allstar DC show in Brooklyn with these cats

mathpanda
Creole Chris
Project Lumens
Rosetta Stoned
Caverns
Enjay
Flex Mathews
Ardamus
Game Rebellion
Vernando
Statement of the Union

Sunday I worked all day at my other other job (having gotten no sleep), and moved FARC into the new office.

Monday morning I find out my friend Michelle is missing. I stumbled through work and talked to some of the people that I love who are affected. No sign.

Tuesday I slept.

No sign.

Wednesday I went to work.

No sign. She couldn’t have gotten lost – it’s an urban area.

At night I went to the viewing. Peggy looked different in the funeral parlor. Lipstick and canned music. Manicured peace for the dead; prayer for the living. I’m not very good at praying, but I sure am trying. We prayed for a long time, a trance wafted into our ears between the same words over and over. I drank beer with Peggy’s grandchildren and my dad. We talked not about the dead but the living. It’s always worse for those who are still alive.

No sign.

Today I woke up and looked like a CIA agent in my suit and trapezoid sunglasses. I was a pallbearer for Peggy. The casket was heavier that I thought. I almost tripped at the very end. The church service was ritual. The ritual was human, same as it ever was. I had the distinct desire to listen to Mozart’s requiem (here is a movement). There were lots of old people. Their eyebrows are bigger. I think there comes a point where that’s just what you do: go to funerals and hold your husband’s feeble arm if you can. Best damned baked beans ever. There was one pair of black boots whose heels could definitely have punctured any solid that could be described as semi-rigid (like a man’s heart and certainly house insulation).

We got booked for a big gig.

No sign. The president of Arlington walked around Burlington looking for any clues.

I went to another prayer session in another religion for Michelle. The prayers have some words different. I feel like a snake admitting it, but all week I have been trying to make myself feel something strongly about her disappearance. But I couldn’t bite. My stomach doesn’t even churn anymore when I think that I just want them to find her body. But it churns when I type it. It’s more final on the computer screen. Tonight when we got out of the car there was this horrible wrenching sound as a news van lowered its satellite broadcast dish. The church was filled and I saw some people that I haven’t seen in a long time. Teachers. Really good teachers. There were far more adults than kids which was a result of a combination of the fact that her friends are at school in other places and poor communication among the youth. No one wants to read a message about the gruesome fate of a friend on facebook. The kids take it the hardest. I bite and begin to cry, but before I can really let it out, the service is over (we did get there late). I feel jipped – no ritual. A girl gets interviewed for tv and I remember how a cameraman peeped me out and then get pissed and decide that he must be a robot. Later I feel sorry for him. Coffee.

Later tonight we recorded in the same room in which Michael Jackson made a gold record.

Tomorrow and Saturday I am working at my real job and then Sunday I am working at my Sunday job and then I am moving into my own place for the first time my life. What does that have to do with FARC you say? Nothing. I just want everyone to know that I’ve had an intense week. Her name is Michelle.