"A World of Norman Bates"

The rains came hard, but Peekskill held. The City of New York drowned in puddles and headlines, but up here, the hills cradled us like mossy old friends who knew where not to be when the sky turned sour.

I slept through it—no sheet, no worries, just the cool hush of air that forgives. Best sleep I’ve had in ages. No thoughts. No interruptions. Just the kind of night where even the rain sounds gentle enough to trust.

But forgetting never lasts.

Norman Bates once said, “We all go a little mad sometimes.” These days, it feels less like fiction, more like a mirror. A madman in midtown. A teacher at Devil’s Den Trail who chose violence over reason. A mother who saved her daughters, then stepped back toward the danger to save her husband. And never walked out again.

Trauma doesn’t knock. It sleeps next door.

I think about those two girls. Their loss, their silence. Maybe they’ll never trust a blond man with soft eyes again. Maybe they’ll never trust a teacher.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature howls—flooding New York, rattling Russia with earthquakes, whispering tsunamis into every coastal dream from Japan to California.

And yet... last night in Peekskill, the breeze was tender. The rain was honest. The earth quieted enough to sleep without memory.
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Tonight, I’ll walk Devil’s Den Trail. Just a short walk. Just to see. If I don’t write tomorrow, you’ll know where to look.