The Jinn Never Leave

When I was a child, many years before being converted by Lubavitch, I had visions, saw ghosts. Dead people came to the end of my bed, and stood there. It happened so often, outside as well as in the dark of my bedroom. I saw ghosts or jinn irridescent and laughing, you couldnt call them transparent because they were like a thousand colored lights in the shape of a human figure and no one saw it, only me. Isaac Singer's writing was never blasphemous for me, it was real. It was not sarcastic or a spoof on chassidus, it was a world of demons and jinn that probably Singer sensed throughout his life. This is not the same as being insane, it is being in touch with a different level, even while functioning in the mundane level we exist in daily. While I lived in Brooklyn, after gettin rid of the human detritus and living alone, I found the mattress moved during the night. At first I thought something alive was caught inside, maybe a mouse. But the mattress was sealed as it was the day it was bought, no holes. And yet something would roll across from right to left, then stop. In that apartment I often woke to the sounds of screams. The cat would be sleeping soundly, so I knew it was something only I heard...or thought I heard. Since the house belonged to a goy and only goyim had lived in it, I placed a mezuzah inside the lintel archway between the living room and my bedroom. It was an ashkenazi scroll of unknown origin bought at Eichlers, put up with a bracha. The bed continued it inconsistent movement an unexpected times. I thought the were footsteps on the stairs when no one was coming up or going out. 19 years of this and I finally moved. For this similarly small apartment of two room I bought 2 Arizal mezuzot which were made to order and twice the price of non orgin known Ashkenazic-but who knew what I would find here and if the bed would continue its dance. Instead I find a neighbor. A man who is unmarried and came on my porch last night at 9pm. Our only prior exchange was hello after a wild rain and thunder storm had left broken branches all over the back yard where the cars park. I haven't seen him since and he appeared and was chatty, so I was patient. Since my tendency is to paranoia and distrust I hoped being in a new place that part of me would have been left in Brooklyn. He spent two hours talking about his life, his alcoholic father, his own battle with drinking, being sober, never marrying, living life to the fullest (these are his words) traveling to many countries, the 12 step program...two endless hours. he seemed to want to be friends. I told him I dont take easily to strangers and would trust him as far as I could throw him--and that it had nothing to do with him, that was my way. This evening, while recuperating from pnuemonia, short of patience, off pain meds becuase of surgery which is now postponed and trhying to find a new stable of doctors, I turned in early to read. Cats were fed, had some playtime and catnip to keep them busy. I'm wearing something barely there because I cant stand the feel of anything on me during the night, it wakes me, gets twisted as I toss ad turn. I'm reading, the AC is on, the cats have perched themselves in their corners and all is quiet. Banging on the door that is less than 6 ft from my bed. "Who is it?" I scream, cats jump down terrified at the banging, dont know what to do where to turn, "Its me, Scott, I wanted to give you something..." I dont know if he has peeked through the window, if he knows i'm in bed reading. I turn the light off, wrap the blanket around me and drag me into the bathroom to put on a housecoat. I open the door a crack and he apologize for scarying me, not for coming and banging on the door at 11:30 at night. He hands me a folded newpaper and says "I found this article today and thought you might be interested." Its a study looking for subjects who want to lose weight. I thanked him and closed the door. What I plan to do in the morning is to secure the view on every bedroom window because I think he can see from some windows. He told me last night he had waved and I never responded. He's lived here 5 years, it would not surprise me if there have been complaints from other tenants, because this is bizaare. I frighten too easily, maybe he was expeting me to say, Oh Hi, common in, lets have a chat in my bedroom at the stroke of mid night ? Me, with no cartilage, middle aged, bones like ashes, looking and feeling like a shrunken wine skin as written in tehillim, this jinn comes to bother me. I have nothing to offer him in any sense of the human condition. Being polite on a back porch in daylight does not mean you are welcome at midnight to bang on someone's door. I can't sleep and am going to make some tea or cocoa.