19. 6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

We talk about her parents alot. She's angry that she hated them.

They died slowly the same year. Both of them cancer.

She'd visit the hospitals and come home devestated. At first I thought it was just the sickness, the death getting to her, but she came clean one night while we shared polenta with goat cheese and pesto. It was herself that she hated. That she couldn't put the past behind her. She tried, but it always ended up that she was just rearranging prejudices.º

"Williams was right," she says. "Life is a thief.º They've taken everything from me. Took. Took! All before I even knew what they were up to."

I try to comfort her with words. She wants to get it over with. She says she can't wait till they're dead, "burned and discarded." She says that she'll have the last laugh. Mix their ashes together, weld the urn closed, and bury it as deep as she can dig. She asks for my help with the shoveling.

I know a bit about her upbringing, but not much. I know that they're the reason she started testing Tolle. I know that it's not working for her even though she pretends it is. ("No! I have to be in the now!") I've heard her say it many times. But it's useless. I'd be more surprised if she could shake them than if a live Sybarite [mp3]º appeared in front of me.

I remember how she told me that she walked past their bedroom door once when she was eight. It was open and they were inside "doing bad things. Things I can't even say. The smell was disgusting." Apparently, it rushed out the room--she refuses to tell me what it was--and filled her nostrils. The stench, mixed with the visual, was traumatizing. "I haven't smelled anything since." I thought she was kidding. She wasn't. She challenged me to put smelling salts under her nose and see. No reaction; I was almost gagging.

"The burnt popcorn?" I ask.

She shakes her head and smiles for the first time since her parents were admitted.

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