Always Another Windmill

We lived in Carrboro, N.C. for a couple years, from 2002-2005. They were good years. We were just back from Uganda, Weirdbird was finishing her dissertation, I was realizing that I didn’t want to finish mine. We got a dog, set up our cheap little apartment in the center of Carrboro, built a loose circle of friends–neighbors, other grad students, people in Weirdbird’s knitting group, friends of friends, a mixed bunch with criss crossing interconnections. Among them were Steffi and Jamie. Steffi was finishing a PhD in the German department. Weirdbird met her through their knitting group and our friend bugheart. She walked our dog for us occasionally when we both had to be out for a long day. We saw Jamie mostly at evening gatherings, “game nights.” I remember him being tall, kind, gentle. Ponytail like me. He was working at UNC doing some kind of tech stuff in the Language Lab, but seemed like someone who hadn’t quite found his niche yet. Clearly very talented, smart. Loved photography. I think he was there taking pictures at the dog park when another of our friends held a birthday party for their dog. I didn’t know him very well, but I would have liked to. He was part of Kitsch-N-Bitch, founded to give the non-knitting partners of stitch-n-bitch members something social to do on meeting nights–watching bad movies. Clearly devoted to Steffi. Steffi graduated in 2005, and they moved to Blacksburg, VA, where Steffi got a job in the German department. We didn’t really know them well enough to keep in touch.

. . .

This afternoon, I heard that one of the people who was killed yesterday was a German professor. I was relieved it when I heard the name, and it wasn’t Steffi.

I didn’t know Jamie wasn’t his first name, and I didn’t remember his last name, and I didn’t know he was also teaching there, so it wasn’t until I got home and heard from Weirdbird that I realized that Christopher J. Bishop was Jamie.

It wasn’t Steffi; it was Jamie who was teaching introductory German at Virginia yesterday morning when someone walked into his classroom, aimed a gun at his head, and pulled the trigger.

. . .

I wanted a picture of him to help remember, so I searched, and found his old website/online portfolio. It has a sense of being incomplete, not updated since they moved to Virginia. There’s a sampling of his photography, very personal, very intimate. He had the photographer’s gift of capturing moments of people. There are some very tender pictures of Steffi. There are also some pictures of a dresser they bought at a flea market that he planned to refinish. There’s no indication if he ever did.

. . .

While working in Dar Es Salaam last fall, I ran out of reading material part way through a two week stay. I picked up a couple of books from one of the many people who sell all kinds of random used books on the sidewalks–used textbooks of all kinds, trashy paperbacks, ancient nonfiction, old magazines, everything, all jumbled up. One of the books was Ancient of Days by Michael Bishop, an author I’d never heard of, but the book looked interesting, and there wasn’t much selection. I was too tired on the flight home to read very much of it, and haven’t finished it.

But now I know who Michael Bishop is. I’m sure he is grieving, because Jamie was his son.

. . .

It’s only a tenuous connection. I might have thought it would make the horribleness somehow seem more real, and maybe it does that too, but right now it just seems unreal and incomprehensible in a more concrete way. I didn’t know Jamie well, but I know that the world is less without him. I’m sure the world is less without all the others, too, but it’s for Steffi, and for Michael, and for everyone who knew Jamie that I grieve for now.

. . .

I wish I could say more; I find I can’t.

. . .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.