Tom and Leela and Rosalie, 1 month later

My dearest friends,

I want to thank everyone for your love and generous generous words and support. We're in a new country, Leela and I. A new state of being that frankly isn't welcome but we understand we have no choice but to enter it and to stay. It's the country without Rosalie running around our house, wanting to blow bubbles and to do watercolor to visit the big turtle and to watch Ponyo, all while asking "Dop?" - ("what's that?") and also "where'd the big moon go?"

Which of course is our question too: Where'd the light in the sky go? Where'd the big moon go? Where did Rodzy go? Leela and I spent a week having some sort of weird mythic time in New Mexico, which we are both writing about in our own way, and will discuss later.

We've been haunting Gainesville for a week and are heading away for another week to spread our daughter's ashes into the ocean. I can't tell you how incredibly weird this all is. It has gone from shock and horror to grief and sorrow to grief and sorrow and weird. I wake in the morning not knowing how my life switched from one track to another so quickly and effortlessly. Didn't I have a daughter? Didn't I adore her? Wasn't that just 5 weeks ago? Where am I?

 For a short while after, Rosalie's picture was a thing we kept hidden, it was too powerful and destructive to our sad mortal selves- it hurt us to look at it. But we've taken it out and now we see it when we go to bed and when we wake and she's slowly becoming a spirit embedded in an image. A story, a saint or an icon. Something we are glad to have a connection to, something to remind us of our human story and of cosmic joy and laughter, but no longer a part of our flesh and blood family. It's harrowing, incredibly sad, and well... weird.

For lack of a better idea, I'm writing a lot about it, composing a comic book (a terrible term, still, if you ask me) about it, and will be happy if you read it someday. (This is NOT "Daddy Lightning" which I have to finish and will still ship from Retrofit in the spring.)

Leela will be picking her radio show up again this Monday December the 19th, two hours devoted to songs we were listening to in our deepest grieving. I'll be there in the studio. It will probably be a sad couple of hours but I bet you're strong enough. Find the link here, look for Ecstasy to Frenzy: http://growradio.org/ You can listen live or look for the podcast later. (Two weeks later we'll have guest DJ Brendan Burford there with us...)

A potential student gave me a set of hand-thrown cups today. I'm drinking coffee from one, warming my hands. Another student wrote "I don't pray so I drew 100 roses", and she sent them to us. Ignatz threw a brick at Krazy.

It's a new country, a world whose meaning we create.

TH@SAW