It’s been six months; and I’m still stuck in the Fire Bad, Mountain Pretty stage of existence. It’s all I can handle. I look out the window at my beloved San Francisco Peaks and I see the World Trade Center towers sticking out of them at odd angles.

I used to stand at the end of my driveway and listen to the Kachinas sing. They like the Words, so sometimes, they allowed me to hear them – usually on pristine Flagstaff days when the sky was deep azure blue and the air smelled of cedar smoke. Not anymore. The Kachinas stopped singing on September 11^th, 2001, and now large, huge white, peopled towers are superimposed where the Music is supposed to be.

Yesterday, I stood at the end of my driveway, and I asked the Kachinas why winter never came. (I know why they stopped singing to me. I stopped writing to them. Fair is fair.) At six o’clock, it started to snow. I guess I got my answer. It’s not that winter never came, it’s just that I can’t perceive it in the same way anymore.

I got into my metallic grey Ford Taurus and drove to Barnes and Noble. I figured maybe if I bought the Words a peace offering, they’d come back and I’d be able to write again. Lately, they only want to talk to Phil. When I call him, the Words flow unfettered. He buys them Music. He sends them Muddy Waters Fathers & Sons all remastered and nice like. I haven’t given them anything but books about Aktion T-4 and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. No wonder they went to Baja.

Okay, so I went to Barnes and Noble. It was snowing really hard. I went in and bought the Words the Centennial Edition of John Steinbeck’s America and Americans and selected Nonfiction. I bought them Burleigh’s new history of the Third Reich. (They found it shallow and annoying and I had to take it back and get Travels with Charley. Poodle dogs we can handle.) There was a table full of books about 9/11. I didn’t stop and look at them.

Phil sends me Music in lieu of sending me himself. It’s just about the same thing. I know this and he knows this. And the Words know it, too. They tell him long, loony stories late at night when no one else will listen. Sometimes, they talk and play the piano at the same time. Even with Neurontin, I can’t hear the piano. I feel the keys beneath my fingers and wonder if what I’m playing makes sense. It must because Phil doesn’t complain. He likes You Don’t Know Me.

I love Phil. He thinks I can sing.

One night he asked me to sing, and the Words replied before I could: "I’m tone deaf, Phil. Please don’t ask me to do that."

He didn’t recognize the Words, because they showed great clarity and spoke in my voice.

" I don’t believe you," he said.

So the Words sang a chorus of Bie Mir Bist Du Shoen. They must have been on key; anyway, Phil seemed satisfied. I couldn’t hear them. I can’t hear my own voice.

I have a memory of the way my voice sounds, the same as I have a memory of the Twin Towers. It superimposes itself on top of life at weird times. Once, I was watching Lathe of Heaven on DVD, and I heard myself singing Roy Orbison’s In Dreams. And another time, I was hiking alone in Walnut Canyon when By The Rivers of Babylon came on the radio – only it wasn’t the radio and it wasn’t the Mighty Melodians. It was the sound of a memory riding inside the voice of the Kachinas. I hightailed it back to my car, terrified. When the Kachinas sing reggae, run. Run as fast as you can.

Phil thinks I live in Paradise. He says so all the time. He fell in love with the rhythms of Flagstaff. The Kachinas lured him with promises of the perfect lick. They never offer anything they don’t mean. Phil doesn’t understand that paradise has a price.

On September 11^th, God blinked. The world as I knew it was lost forever. The one that appeared in its place has no room for Kachinas that sing to me in my driveway. It’s unfathomable. It has rules that it refuses to explain. Everybody has to have a cell phone on their persons 24/7. And there must be guys with guns in all airports at all times. What the hell is wrong with this picture?

Ever since that day, I’ve been in real physical pain. I developed a compressed disk; and it juts out against the nerve bundle at the base of my spine. The Words, in a rare moment of talking to me, suggested that just maybe my disk got compressed from carrying the full weight of my grief. Grief is heavy. It is made of stone.

I went out and got myself an AllTel cell phone with 3000 night and weekend minutes. No frigging terrorist is gonna keep me from telling everybody and their dog I love them before I die. In fact, I call everybody I know and tell them I love them on a daily basis. Hell, I even call people I don’t know. I call people I met in Beauty and the Beast fandom and tell them long, dippy stories about my family just in case I should have a plane dropped on me. Somebody should know how delightfully weird the Rigneys are. Somebody besides the Rigneys, I mean…

Today, as I drove towards the intersection of Butler and Milton Avenues, I thought I heard a familiar voice. It was very faint; and it seemed to drift in and out like a badly tuned radio. I looked over at the sacred Peaks, which were covered with a light dusting of snow. The World Trade Center looked quite fetching. The voice seemed to be emanating from somewhere over there, somewhere outside of time, somewhere where winter came. I turned off the radio so I could listen.

The voice was indistinct at first, but it grew stronger and louder the closer I got to the mountains. I noticed several cars pulled off in the First Baptist Church parking lot. Folks were just standing there, looking. Black folks, white folks, Native American folks. They heard it, too.

I caught a glimpse of the Peaks. The twin towers were gone; in their place was Music. Muddy Waters. I swear to God. The Kachinas were singing:

I see you watching me like I’m a hawk

And I wasn’t alone anymore.

I know what you’re thinking. Did we all hear the same song? Of course, we didn’t. Every single person standing in that parking lot and driving in their cars heard their own song – the song they needed to hear. The Kachinas know.

The Words heard the Music and they came flying back from Baja. The danced in my head and sang along with the Kachinas. I wish you could hear their Voice. It is so unlike mine. It’s unwavering; and the Words sing dead-on key.

The Twin Towers took in one chorus and went Home. And I went Home; and I picked up the Word’s Steinbeck collection from where I’d thrown it on the couch. For the first time, in six months, I read something that comforted me.

My Grandma Katie loved Steinbeck. She especially loved Travels with Charley. I never got the chance to know her, but the Words did. I don’t know how or when; but they did. And when I turned to the virgin pages of America and Americans, the book fell open to an essay entitled "Terrorism." I’m proud to say that I read it without tears – and prouder still to say that Steinbeck just didn’t Get It. My world is safe within his pages. It exists. It is. And I am. And I belong in this strange, new world. I’m here. Kicking and screaming, maybe, but I’m here.

It’s been six months; and I’m still stuck at the mental level of Fire Bad, Mountain Pretty. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Please forgive me, if you will

1 I Love the Life I Live Words a& Music by Willie Dixon