Together, they are blind with terror. They don’t wonder what is right or wrong, to keep from sinning. You might think the problem is they have too much, but you don’t know them. You don’t want these people without religion.

A man walks with a suitcase, left alone, a passing swing for the curbside, for the light. One drags it by. One stop to look up with a big eye and say, all day? It ain’t no other way. I just think it’s funny how people don’t know what they did, what they want, what they mean, what they say. I don’t like to say it in a way that makes sense; if they can do anything at all with it, they’ll miss. Sometimes I wonder if I’m talking to myself. It used to be the sound of the crows was not quite right. And songbirds, names unknown, would throw a wrench into the field of mind. It was hard to forget. You would try for a while and then just close your eyes. Imagine an itch starts to the right of the spine about halfway down, and you know its face and its name and the horse it rode in on. Imagine you wonder what is right. Imagine you try to explain. My love for you allows me to leverage some kind of wait, some kind of second that doesn’t break the clock. Turning by the church, I decide life has been enough.

It’s isn’t Kansas City. It isn’t the Mississippi. It’s something to do with looking from the midwest toward the plains. It starts at evening, when anxiety is high. It starts with knowing everything will be fine by morning, it can’t wait. One of these days, no one knows why, but people are grown. Sometimes when I spoke to her, she could tell from the sadness in my voice that she wasn’t going to live forever. And then the other cats passed one by one. I think she knew what it was. You know that thing in the bible where it says you won’t be given greater burdens than the strength you can muster? Sometimes it weighs out very close though.

There could lie outside a neighborhood remote from the bulk of brick and mortar commerce. It will have a garage, a store, a coffee shop that serves breakfast and lunch and closes at six, a hair salon, a barber shop, and a saloon. A lot here would hang upon the store, for instance, does it have a rack of magazines. The people walking down my street on a Monday morning with their backpacks on are as silent as commuters in a subway car. They don’t know one another, but they must know what the others are in for. Now we interact more, dance more, tap more keys. I’ve collected the following further thoughts about some things I’ve seen on TV.

By the time they reached the motel a short distance away from Hill House on the night they fled, the father had that little boy singing the song that one day would curdle in his throat: That wasn’t mommy. Even the parents of the slain child forgave her before it happened, saying we understand, it wasn’t her, it was just these circumstances. That wasn’t you, that wasn’t us, that wasn’t her, that wasn’t mommy, that wasn’t Olivia, that wasn’t us. They say there’s no crime to solve, but if that’s the case, then what is Annabeth doing here ages hence, without her cigarette, without her secret smile, without her faith — she would follow you anywhere. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time in the comment sections on true crime, but if mommy’s fingerprints were on the rat poison bottle and big sis saw mommy in the kitchen acting funny right before the incident, then I would say that was mommy. Now be a good child and die as you’re told. And that’s what they did. In the red room at the end, it was just the kids. Nell makes her speech to only the siblings. The couple is in the hallway changing their story. The Dudleys are burying the scraps of their babies. Nelly’s in the red room playing ring around the rosie and nobody else can come in. It’s no grown ups allowed, but you can’t blame them. Justice for Abigail though.

Back in my day, it wouldn’t play out this way. We watched nicer things. Some worried what had happened to Laura Palmer, but other than her name, I knew nothing of her. In my house, we would never. They say art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. We weren’t in it for murder, we just wanted a friend. These were some of my favorites, in no particular order, and for some of the reasons mentioned.

Shelly and Ed. The kids, both just eighteen in season one. Later huddled in the basement in the single lamplight, their eyes innocent and wide, thinking this could be the devil. Or fallen to their knees in the snowbank trying to out-scream the train. Or sitting by the lake in a panoramic picnic of pink and green, trying to find their calling, standing on nothing, waiting on faith.

Maurice and Maggie. I kept thinking, have we ever even seen them in one place? And then they bump into each other in Ruth-Anne’s store above the town archives. The center of commerce. The after-shave, the pickled things, the VHS culture and magazines. “That girl’s got moxie to burn,” he muses, trying to cook up an opportunity, turning the puzzle pieces over like a toothpick between the teeth. Nothing quite matches when you try to strike it up, but surely this thing’s got wings.

Maggie and Chris. My little Northern Exposure pals on the internet have a lot to say about how ill-advised their pairing was, in the end of season six. That’s fine, I never watched that far, they might be right. But from the beginning, I could see it. “There was just no chemistry between Chris and Maggie.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but for me, the best romantic couplings tend to lack what you are calling chemistry. Chris was the only man Maggie liked. They were always in harmony.

Joel and Ed. Who is this bemusing young man who keeps turning up already in the room? A helpful lad who leaves you stranded in the passenger seat to welcome yourself to town, who nails the front door of your cabin shut with a frustrating absence of malice, who lives in fantasy-land with no shame? I think Ed grew on him the way our habits grow, one day without choosing them, we realize who we are. “I wonder if you’ll ever come back, Dr. Fleischman.” A question with a period at the end.

Maggie and Joel. I wasn’t a shipper this time around, but as a foil, all’s fair in love and war, and as a friendship, absolutely. My favorite scene is when she borrows his glasses from the next table to read the dinner menu. The itinerant eye doctor has said her failing vision is normal. Maggie would rather have been going blind from something rare and fatal than going far-sighted from something common and inevitable. She had thought it wasn’t over and then it came to this. Always a struggle. You want to think she says thank you for the constructive feedback, but you suspect it’s just because she’s blushing.

Shelly and Maggie. Maggie never wanted to be a mom, but when Shelly came to stay with her after Holling hurt her feelings, Maggie seemed let down again when babygirl solved her problem and went back home. And when Maggie was lost and lamenting in a booth alone, Shelly understood the assignment, as they say today, or as we would say she read the room and did her best to get a word of encouragement in edgewise, and when it didn’t take, settled for “Can I get you anything?” tightening her apron strings.

Chris and Maurice. Maurice thought he was in charge of this relationship. And Chris knew he wasn’t. And Maurice knew that Chris knew he wasn’t. And Chris knew that he mustn’t let on that he knew that Maurice knew he wasn’t in charge of this relationship. It was gold. Maurice was into worldly riches and power and leverage, but there was a part of him that knew there was a higher power than those with which he was familiar. He didn’t get it, but he knew he didn’t. He stuck to what he understood but didn’t bar the door against what he hadn’t. Friends close, enemies closer, mysteries closer still.

And finally, first and foremost, Adam and Joel. It must be nice. To know someone where, you don’t have to worry about hurting their feelings. It must be nice to know someone who takes your violent impulses in stride and asks about the cumin. It must be nice in the middle of the wilderness to see someone. Rifling through your belongings like they own the place, when you’ve just awakened, away from your bed and stranded in the vastness, but still, they are someone, they are there. At the same moment that I would have feigned or fainted dead asleep and waited for the scary person to go away, why do you get out of the truck and call out, “Hey! Hey, you can rip me off, just don’t leave me here.” No, never mind, I get it. And now that’s what I would do too. When was the last time you saw somebody do something that changed your mind. If you do not go a-hunting, you will not. It must be nice for someone to be curious enough. It must be nice to wrap the debut season up. When you have tried to be a good sport, come to town and find they’ve laid for you a dilapidated story full of spooks and spiderwebs and threats both loud and whispered, it must be nice to find a silver garlic press upon the ground, in the weeds, at the end of a mission to prove something, and to turn around and you are not alone. Back at the lakeside, everyone mingles at an art exhibit; the first afterparty you throw and two people come to it. It’s not bad, just like you said in the pilot. There it is — that’s when we know the show can go on — when we go in search of something and don’t find it.

Today is a day entirely at home, trying to find the basement to do my studies in the town records hall. Smooth sailing isn’t always an option, but nonetheless, we get across the water. They recertify this year in June, and time is getting shorter. Something about backwards, something about double, going the wrong direction to start over, and soon our birthday falls four time zones and eight friendships from Cicely. Taxes are done, but the maps are lacking, and the calendar is off again. One day you circle and immediately everything is dusty. Anything to do with math, everything to do with money, anything you’ve done, do you brag or stash it? Is there some way to turn it, is it flat, is it a globe, can you spin it? I didn’t mean it. I’m so very sorry. Why do you say that? Say what, exactly? Taking a moment to address it. They say go with your gut, but listen, don’t. White knuckle it, it’s worth it. If you find yourself in the same boat, I wish you successful sailing.

(But not in a creepy way.)

The robot summary of this post (also not in a creepy way): The text explores the complexities of human relationships, identity, and the search for meaning in life. It juxtaposes personal reflections, memories, and societal observations, revealing the humor and sadness present in interactions. Through vivid imagery and narrative, the piece contemplates love, loss, and the nature of understanding oneself and others.