Robert and I were remembering Yellowstone today. It already seems a lifetime ago. The butt-end sharpness of that horrible lawsuit stands between this time and that time. I could hardly remember anything, and the things I did remember had to do with us and our togetherness. (To be honest, we did spend most of our time together.)
I think when we're both graduated we're going to spend a summer there again. I never thought I'd say that--the company that we worked for was quite awful. But Yellowstone was beyond words. It'll pull us back. You just wait and see.
Both of us want to settle down in Montana someday. It's such a beautiful country.
I remember the day Scott Harrison (the pedophile who raped me in the church) was deposed for that lawsuit Robert rolled his windows down on his Grand Marquis, stuffed another three friends in the backseat, force-fed me xanax, and took us all on a dirt-road to Bozeman. I even remember what I was wearing: Robert's long johns, a high-slit black slinky skirt, and some Romanian top, my head crowned with daisies that made me sneeze. We stopped off at a house where one of our friends lived. They moved a bunch of stuff around while I entertained a little blonde-haired boy with daisy chains and play tractors and reminded myself why I was going through with everything. When I left this little boy clung to my skirt and wept. I wanted to do the same, pick the little guy up and squeeze him, protect him, make sure Scott never got to this precious sweetheart.
Our goal was to get to Bozeman and watch the Dark Knight. When we got to Bozeman the whole sky exploded in hail, lightning, water. I've never seen a storm quite like this one--so bad that it made the front page the next day. Bozeman lost power, all the theatres closed down. Robert and everyone else stood in the theatre overhang and pouted, while I ran into the middle of the parking lot, mud-slush to my knees, and twirled, twirled, twirled. I just stood in the middle of this rain river, tears running down my cheeks, laughing at the same time, shaking in fear at what Scott might do to me now that he knew who was naming him, shaking with sheer exhaustion, but also shaking with love and hope and that cleansing rain.
If ever there were a rain just for one person, that storm was for me.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Kanal by Wajda
Okay. Not quite as tragic as Kanal (an excellent historical dramatization by Anrzej Wajda in which the entire Freedom Army in Warsaw is routed in the sewer tunnels).
But still.
I wake up. I throw a towel around me for a nice hot morning shower. I stretch and yawn, then sit on the pot for a nice morning pee. I flush the toilet aaaannnnddd...
It's a geyser, even smellier than the Yellowstone type. I start plunging like a banshee, screams included, and several cuss words. (Who needs coffee? I've got a malfunctioning toilet.)
I scream, "Robert, help me!"
He cries out, "Michelle, I'm coming!"
Whew. Thank God. I plunge with less vigor.
Robert shows up in his plaid pj bottoms, carrying my glasses. "Here you go honey. I love you." And he goes back to bed.
Now that I've yelled at him for the past five minutes and recorded the incident in my largely depressing blog I feel tons better. I love married life. I love Robert. I only want to smack him half the time. The rest of the time I just want to be his snuggle-bug.
But still.
I wake up. I throw a towel around me for a nice hot morning shower. I stretch and yawn, then sit on the pot for a nice morning pee. I flush the toilet aaaannnnddd...
It's a geyser, even smellier than the Yellowstone type. I start plunging like a banshee, screams included, and several cuss words. (Who needs coffee? I've got a malfunctioning toilet.)
I scream, "Robert, help me!"
He cries out, "Michelle, I'm coming!"
Whew. Thank God. I plunge with less vigor.
Robert shows up in his plaid pj bottoms, carrying my glasses. "Here you go honey. I love you." And he goes back to bed.
Now that I've yelled at him for the past five minutes and recorded the incident in my largely depressing blog I feel tons better. I love married life. I love Robert. I only want to smack him half the time. The rest of the time I just want to be his snuggle-bug.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Pedo Priest Video Game
The pedo priest game. I found it on SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) and it has done it's job making me laugh 'till i cry ever since. Play it!
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/games/play/359216/#
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/games/play/359216/#
To Jeffers, who lets me weep freely.
I woke up with Robert, and we cuddled in front of the morning news like a couple of yawning kitty-cats, all wrapped up in a snuggle hug. It is the first day of spring. The sunrise shot up like a vivacious, red finger grasping at sky. Yum.
It's nice to get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee with the person I love most in the whole world. I feel very blessed.
Each day I learn to live again. It's like I forget how to live while I'm sleeping, and I've got to relearn all the basics, the toddler walk out of bed, blinking in the bathroom light, breathing the present into myself and the past out.
Each day I relearn my own limits, that I can't help my childhood friends anymore than I already have, at least not at the moment. I've given all I have. There's nothing more I can do. I have to live my life, bask in the love that's been given me, mourning quietly all that's been lost. Now I've got an arm around me. I often wake up nights, calling for Robert to hold me, in tears. Last night I woke up, taking swings at the air that in my dreams was the glass between the nursery and the sanctuary. All the children were crying and I kept screaming out that they oughtn't leave Scott with us, that he did bad things. Nobody listened until my swinging at sky and calling out to people who don't listen woke me up and Robert was there beside me, kissing my hair as I wept.
You know the bit in the Return of the King? When Frodo cries out to Sam Gamgee, "I am wounded, wounded. It will never really heal."
But then he got up, and the turn seemed to pass, and he was quite himself the next day. It was not until afterwards that Sam recalled that the date was October the sixth. Two years before on that day it was dark in the dell under Weathertop.
Ahhhh. The day goes on, and it's so beautiful.
Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.
Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;
Things are the God; you will love God and not in vain,
For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length
You will look back along the star's rays and see that even
The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.
Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength
And sickness; but now you are free, even to be human,
But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.
-Robinson Jeffers
It's nice to get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee with the person I love most in the whole world. I feel very blessed.
Each day I learn to live again. It's like I forget how to live while I'm sleeping, and I've got to relearn all the basics, the toddler walk out of bed, blinking in the bathroom light, breathing the present into myself and the past out.
Each day I relearn my own limits, that I can't help my childhood friends anymore than I already have, at least not at the moment. I've given all I have. There's nothing more I can do. I have to live my life, bask in the love that's been given me, mourning quietly all that's been lost. Now I've got an arm around me. I often wake up nights, calling for Robert to hold me, in tears. Last night I woke up, taking swings at the air that in my dreams was the glass between the nursery and the sanctuary. All the children were crying and I kept screaming out that they oughtn't leave Scott with us, that he did bad things. Nobody listened until my swinging at sky and calling out to people who don't listen woke me up and Robert was there beside me, kissing my hair as I wept.
You know the bit in the Return of the King? When Frodo cries out to Sam Gamgee, "I am wounded, wounded. It will never really heal."
But then he got up, and the turn seemed to pass, and he was quite himself the next day. It was not until afterwards that Sam recalled that the date was October the sixth. Two years before on that day it was dark in the dell under Weathertop.
Ahhhh. The day goes on, and it's so beautiful.
Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.
Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;
Things are the God; you will love God and not in vain,
For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length
You will look back along the star's rays and see that even
The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.
Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength
And sickness; but now you are free, even to be human,
But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.
-Robinson Jeffers
Thursday, March 19, 2009
NoPo NoMo
That's right. I live in suburbia now. Cleveland suburbia. And I have to sigh a HUGE sigh of relief. I love North Portland but it got hairy there for awhile.
-Like the time I came home, saw a man with a gun run across the street, opened the door to my house and saw my housemate cowering under the table from a gang shootout.
-Like the time my neighbor was shot to death on her porch.
-Like the time I rode the bus to teen rappers rapping how "I gonna rape the only white girl on the bus, uh huh, uh huh." Guess who was the only white girl on the bus?
-Like the time the homeless man stole my $25.00 pair of black, silky, new Victoria's Secret underwear I bought with my Chanukah money. And then proceeded to piss in the washers.
-Like the time a teen shook shocked in the middle of the street, his red blood decorating a Tri-Met bus. I was walking home from work, down Killingsworth. A woman screeched up, ran frantic to the boy, screaming that she was a nurse. I still wonder what happened to that guy. Dear God. I wept all the way home. There wasn't much I could do, standing around in tears, mouth wide.
And now...I love suburbia! I love cookie cutter houses! I love normalcy!
This trip down memory lane was brought to you by a shooting just outside my old home...ahem...that I wasn't present for and wouldn't even know about if I hadn't checked my Portland Community College email.
-Like the time I came home, saw a man with a gun run across the street, opened the door to my house and saw my housemate cowering under the table from a gang shootout.
-Like the time my neighbor was shot to death on her porch.
-Like the time I rode the bus to teen rappers rapping how "I gonna rape the only white girl on the bus, uh huh, uh huh." Guess who was the only white girl on the bus?
-Like the time the homeless man stole my $25.00 pair of black, silky, new Victoria's Secret underwear I bought with my Chanukah money. And then proceeded to piss in the washers.
-Like the time a teen shook shocked in the middle of the street, his red blood decorating a Tri-Met bus. I was walking home from work, down Killingsworth. A woman screeched up, ran frantic to the boy, screaming that she was a nurse. I still wonder what happened to that guy. Dear God. I wept all the way home. There wasn't much I could do, standing around in tears, mouth wide.
And now...I love suburbia! I love cookie cutter houses! I love normalcy!
This trip down memory lane was brought to you by a shooting just outside my old home...ahem...that I wasn't present for and wouldn't even know about if I hadn't checked my Portland Community College email.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Argh-worthy
On Tuesday a tenant called the fire department. She mistook the smell of my Pine-Sol for a real emergency. Hmmmm. Is somebody cleaning the floor, or burning down the building?
On Wednesday: my birthday. I baked a cake for myself and made homemade pierogi for everyone. Robert bought me Barbarella (with Jane Fonda) and the book "Cunt." He said he was standing in the bookstore trying to decide if the book was too feminist for his feminist wife. I said yes, but I read it through a few years ago anyway. He laughed and we kissed. Tonight we watch Barbarella and eat leftover cake and pierogi.
Another birthday treat... I got to talk to Micah. He sounds so little over the phone, his voice so high. Such a good little guy. He starts school next year. He misses his St. Helena home. "It's hard to leave your home," he told me seriously. Awww. I want to hug him. I'm saving up for my parents and Micah to come for a couple weeks in November, when Robert and I move into our own apartment. It certainly isn't ideal to live with anyone in the first year of blissful marriage, but it saves us a good chunk of money and means I have more money when my family comes and money saved up for school/future house/vacations.
I have a job as a cleaning lady at my apartments. My hands are peeling and hardening into callouses. There is a blister where my wedding ring slides on. It's a good feeling.
I'm signed up for 15 credits at EOU. I'm trying to polish them off and get ahead in school now. Just as it's difficult to catch up once you've fallen behind it's easy to get ahead if you work at it. I'm really working at it. I'm terrified of getting horribly depressed and falling into academic disarray. Again.
Not again!
On Wednesday: my birthday. I baked a cake for myself and made homemade pierogi for everyone. Robert bought me Barbarella (with Jane Fonda) and the book "Cunt." He said he was standing in the bookstore trying to decide if the book was too feminist for his feminist wife. I said yes, but I read it through a few years ago anyway. He laughed and we kissed. Tonight we watch Barbarella and eat leftover cake and pierogi.
Another birthday treat... I got to talk to Micah. He sounds so little over the phone, his voice so high. Such a good little guy. He starts school next year. He misses his St. Helena home. "It's hard to leave your home," he told me seriously. Awww. I want to hug him. I'm saving up for my parents and Micah to come for a couple weeks in November, when Robert and I move into our own apartment. It certainly isn't ideal to live with anyone in the first year of blissful marriage, but it saves us a good chunk of money and means I have more money when my family comes and money saved up for school/future house/vacations.
I have a job as a cleaning lady at my apartments. My hands are peeling and hardening into callouses. There is a blister where my wedding ring slides on. It's a good feeling.
I'm signed up for 15 credits at EOU. I'm trying to polish them off and get ahead in school now. Just as it's difficult to catch up once you've fallen behind it's easy to get ahead if you work at it. I'm really working at it. I'm terrified of getting horribly depressed and falling into academic disarray. Again.
Not again!
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