#1. Preface to a murder memoir by Isabel Scheherazade, story catcher and orphan.
by storytellerisabel
A week before he was murdered, Dad was learning Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” on his guitar. First he listened to the song a lot. Then he learned the guitar part. Then he played it while he deliberately talked to me or Mom. Then he listened again. Then he copied the lyrics and read them over and over while he brushed his teeth. Then he sang along with Bob Dylan on his iPod figuring out which words and syllables had chord changes. Then he sang and strummed and finally said, Listen up, Izzy.
One of the lyrics went like this:
“…something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is…”
That is exactly what it’s like for me now. Something is happening, and I don’t know what it is.
And, Dad? Are you nearby, somehow? How else to explain why I’m hearing “Thin Man” in my mind’s ear? And Listen up, Izzy? in your exact tone of voice?
Is there magic going on?
—Isabel Scheherazade (who’s trying to keep it all together by writing it down in this blog)
I Am Isabel the Storyteller 
Isabel,
This is Pop, one of your readers. I’m glad you and I (and Mimi) agreed that we could read each other’s writing. I have your Dad’s guitar under our bed, by the way (BTW, as I’ve heard you say). I haven’t been able to get down on my hands and knees to pull it out. I mean, I could physically get down and pull, but I can’t gather my courage to do it. Yet.
Love you, dear girl.
Pop
This is a hook! Throw in a little quantum physics, two realities like that crazy Jodi picoult in Book of Two Ways.
The idea of two realities is hitting me like a slap upside my head! Mom talked about it! Maybe, just maybe, there are multiple versions of her, she’d say to Dad while I loitered in the periphery, doing 5-year old stuff. “Maybe I exist in worlds too many to count. Like subatomic particles…” One of her science classes in grad school was quantum physics and I was old enough to listen to her and Dad talk about the many worlds interpretation. Now that I’ve had 6th grade science, I get part of what she was saying: every event has—or could have—multiple possible outcomes. If subatomic particles can split maybe she’s split and is existing in an alternate place? So I know she’s not here in this room with me now because she was murdered. But this quantum physics thing says maybe she is a smudge of possibility and will snap into focus if I look closely? Is this what is happening when it seems that some barrier shrouding Dad or Mom lifts? Hmmmm. This is too much on my plate for right now. But I lovelovelove it when one or the other of them shows up in that way back seat of my memory and seems to talk with me about what’s going
on.
Isabel