The horror of not being horrified

I'm wondering about my lack of aghast-ness upon finding out about the suicide of an acquaintance, a woman in her forties who was part of my "ladies who lunch" group. I was not close to her; she was not part of my daily life. I liked her. She seemed very cheerful, almost too cheerful. She loved dogs and children. She was unmarried; had never found "the one," and may have been "gay," but never made an admission of such (to me, anyway). Other friends from the group are quite distraught. I am more worried about them at this time than I am horrified by this person shooting herself through the heart with a 22. Is it possible it has not fully penetrated me, this news? It has been three days. Am I really so unenlightened as to care only about family, spouse, and very close friends? Or is the emotion I feel I'm lacking simply an unproductive panic that I've blessedly lost the capacity for? Even still, I asked the Wednesday-night Buddhist group to meditate on/around/about her for a few minutes. Like our now-deceased cat, Shadow, I must need an example of normal behavior to imitate, because tears came to my eyes only when I heard the sorrow in someone else's voice over the phone. Either Shadow was (in retrospect) guru-calm and free of kitty "samsara," or I am psychologically damaged, as we thought Shadow was. Or, none of the above.

Does "the way" get in the way?

Caught between the personal and objective reality. No longer interested in my "self," but in something larger. What vanity, though, to think I've finally come around to something "spiritual." Came to the conclusion at Sunday's Buddhist gathering that the "spiritual" and "imagination" are the same thing, or rather, the "spiritual" is a powerful subset of "imagination." But that's OK, you see, because our shared imaginations create our shared realities in the sense that what's in people's minds governs their view of anything that's actually "out there," beyond the eyes, the breath, the touch. In pure moments when the imagination, including the spiritual imagination, is absent-- moments of shock and awe, for instance-- that is when we're really in touch with something greater, and sometimes it's not so pretty.

Disclaimer

This blog is the place for what I'm missing in myself; it's an invitation. Build it and I will come? I will say nothing objectively new here, show no photograph that doesn't resemble one someone's already taken. The medium is (a big part of) the message. Presence on the internet may create an apparition within the soul, whose eyes are made new by the world each day. (I don't even believe in a "soul," really, so there ya go; problematic enterprise from the start.)