The 16th of May, 2011...

you don't hear much about her, but she's an important day last year too.  Don't discredit her.  So, at 4:14pm, May 16, 2011 I recorded this voice memo at the Fairview Cemetery on Maiden Lane:

Be thy silent slumber as peaceful
 as day dreams of youth.

I was on my lunch break from work.  It was a Monday.  This was recorded on my 3GS and it's terrible sound quality, but the part you may be interested in, because I was, is minute 2 to minute 3ish.  If you listen really close, you can hear a faraway buzzing that gets louder and louder and then fades away again.  This is the sound of thousands (yes, THOUSANDS....maybe millions?) of bees flying past my head as I lay on my rainbow blanket I always keep in my car.  The sky was black with bees.  I was pretty scared and I kept looking at the tombstone next to me, trying to stay as quiet as possible so as not to be noticed by the bees.  Stiff as a board, still like a corpse, I thought to myself as I meditated upon the tombstone pictured at right.  I was so glad I was laying down and not sitting up!  A full minute these bees fled past a girl on her lunch break peacefully digesting and recording nature from what would, in 6 days,  be a scarred town.  The 16th was only a day after the storm system that would become that wretched tornado began.

So, today I did a very superstitious thing.  I went back to the exact same spot at the exact same time with the exact same blanket (I rescued it from Sushilla [the dearly departed 2008 Yaris] after the tornado and still keep it in my new trunk, of course.  My new car's name is Agador Spartacus.) and recorded for the exact same duration on the voice memo app of my 4S (her name is Daughter of Avalanche, if you like to know names of my electronics as well as my vehicles, and I know you do).  No bees this time, but the sound quality is much better (there is still annoying wind, because I don't have fancy recording equipment or anything, just my phone), if you want to listen to that.  I've put it here for posterity and ritual-ness.  I tried to meditate as I was recording and I sat up so the bees would have to confront me directly if they showed their buzzy little selves again.  I am convinced that last year they knew it was time to go and that danger was afoot.  They were swarming northeast, is that a migratory thing or just a weird anomaly?  In my warped mind, the fact that millions of bees didn't swarm past me this 16th of May, proves that I am ok.  So, if this weird superstition makes you feel more ok, press play on the below sound file and meditate on the absence of bees.  Mmmmm....no bees.