Smiling at the Wind

2011-03-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
-Ursula Le Guin

Things to Break a Heart.

2010-12-02T19:14:00.002-07:00

I work in a domestic violence shelter here for women. There is one young girl staying who has been here about seven months now. She is fourteen and she came pregnant and with only one eye. Last month she gave birth to a little preemie girl, Mindy Jimena. I bought Mindy Jimena a little red woolen traje, with the cutest little cap the day after she was born. I walked in La Democracia and haggled and haggled and told the baby clothes booth all about little Mindy Jimena and the baby clothes lady cried a little, and added red booties for free. I thought, Mindy Jimena, there are people who love you.

Today Mindy Jimena died, and I want to throw red, rotten tomatoes at the whole ugly world.

Her little hands. I loved her little hands. I let them curl around my big fingers and kissed the little tips. I´m so angry and sad.

It is soon Mindy Jimena´s mother´s quinceanaro. What do you do for a quinceanaro when everything is so ugly? Does a cake with chocolate curls and cherries mean one damn thing?

E & J.B. Young Co.

2010-02-20T03:03:00.005-07:00

I've only found one picture of a similar book. Here: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/lucile/publishers/young/YOUNG.HTM

2010-02-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Here's your evidence. Now you can pretend that I never existed.

2010-02-19T12:51:00.002-07:00

My philosophy teacher is a moron.

So I'm hashing out what I need from him. I need the credits. I'm not learning anything from him. I'm paying for the credits. I don't care about the grades, I hypothetically have enough high-profile recommendations to scooch myself into a mediocre graduate school position.

So let's face it. I'm going to spend as little time interacting with my teacher as possible. I am not going to ream him out for philosophizing about whether or not women are lying when they say they've been raped. I'm going to take my Xanax, read the material with my middle finger perpetually wagging, and write unflinchingly boring papers while soundly cussing him out the entire time.

My hope is that I'll spend less than ten hours to finish the course. That should get me a C.

2010-02-16T17:52:00.002-07:00

I've had a very frustrating last few days. What I do when I'm frustrated is zone out. Right now it is my video game which allows me to do that.

But then I ignore everything else, which is problematic. Especially when I'm in school. I was a week and a half ahead so I could concentrate on Guatemala when I got there, so I'm still going strong. I'll be okay. But I'm back on the hamster track.

I've done alot of thinking about where I want to go with my writing. Watching friends of mine go through hard times when their works become famous, and knowing how personal and psychological my writing is, I don't really want to put it out there anymore. At least not in my name.

I don't want people to know who I am. I want to hide. I guess some creative work which plushes out my resume in applying for work or graduate school would be nice, but the stuff that really belongs to me, I want it to stay that way.

You may also have noticed that I've stopped writing so much about sex abuse in the SDA church. Aside from wanting to blow my brains out every time I think about it or talk about it, I want to be known as me. Just me. Or even not known. Anonymity is precious. I could certainly handle pulling my blinds and becoming a hermit in Montana. Like the una-bomber, eh? (except, without the killing/hurting people part.)

Regardless, I'll keep talking about it. The church won't get to put me under the carpet. I'm still here. I'll be here for as long as there is an issue of church irresponsibility, cover ups and treating victims badly.

2010-02-13T21:38:00.001-07:00

“Humiliate people for long enough and a wilderness bursts out of them.”

-Salman Rushdie

Drunk.

2010-02-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

So yes, I'm drunk. Thus, the posts.

2010-02-11T17:35:00.002-07:00

Dekalog gives me hope in mankind. I love Zbigniew Preisner, I think his muzyka in Dekalog V is the best of any of his works. I know I'll be angry at myself if I don't take some of my money and move to Poland to become fluent in the language.

The bit where Jaceck is executed is pretty self-explanatory, and so is the bit with Piotr, the lawyer. Piotr is who I was looking for when I went lawyer-hunting. I think I found him.

"Life is complicated." Kieslowski said his moral from the ten is to live carefully, with your eyes open. Nothing more.

This one is the first part of the first dekalog.

The Anti-humanist

2010-02-11T17:10:00.002-07:00

The more I live, the more I agree with Jeffers.

Not Man Apart
Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

-- Robinson Jeffers

More and more I agree with Spinoza, whom I really understand only with a Giles Deluezian dummy-translation. That God is whatever is unchangeable, and what is really unchangeable?

(Does that mean that the closed-minded stubborn jerks of the world are indeed God, or do they just think they're God?)

Ugh. I know nothing. But Jeffers gives me comfort.

Haiti.

2010-01-26T19:27:00.002-07:00

I'm heartbroken about Haiti.

For me, this is what I'm going to do:

-Take a deep breath, and keep doing what I am doing to help people. I can't help everyone, and I do have to take care of myself. I'm committed to Eduardo and Manuel. Right now, that's what I need to stick to.

-Give tiny bits here and there. Buy cheaper food and give the extra money set aside for food to the funds set up at the grocery store. Instead of playing the lottery: give. $7.00 may not be much, but if every single person in the US gave that we would raise 2,128,418,068. That is ALOT. If every household gave that much, we'd raise 721 million dollars. If every household that is making above 24,000 a year gave that much we would raise more like 427 million dollars.

Daisy the Cat

2010-01-17T11:03:00.001-07:00

Isn't my baby soooooo darling?

Dollhouse

2010-01-17T06:58:00.002-07:00

Apart from being sad that Dollhouse is only one episode away from ending, I'm really curious about how Whedon will end perhaps his last television show. For those who don't watch the show, you'll be bored and confused. For those who do, read on.

There are two loose ends I see: Alpha and Clyde.

Clyde might be a red herring, but I can't see Alpha given the boot without a final goodbye. The old, gun must go off Chekhovian theory, you know? I think he took over Rossum through his genius multiples. Remember how he is the one who first invented the remote wipe and used it on Echo?

I really think he took over Rossum and instigated the apocalypse through killer technology. It has to be.

More Fundraising

2010-01-15T06:57:00.002-07:00

I was also considering working with some of the jewelers in the area, taking pictures of all their jewelry on some of my friends, and posting it here.

I made friends with one Mexican guy who had a great stockpile and a good grasp on English. He's a street seller. It would be easy to get him to bring his stuff to an internet cafe nearby and put it all online. I was thinking...ebay? It would be a risk though. Anything extra from his asking price I could give to Nuevos Horizontes. He'd make out, and hopefully, so would the kids.

There are alot of antiques (i.e. artifacts like arrowheads) in them that ARE legal to sell, and they'd go for alot in the US.

Raising Money for Kids

2010-01-15T06:23:00.003-07:00

I have been sitting around thinking what to do to raise money for the kids I love in Guatemala. I refuse to ask for donations. I've got some ideas, and I have to make sure it's all legal, but here they are, and if you're interested in any of the products, please say so, and I'll try to get all the stuff you ask for. My hope is to send $500.00 back to Nuevos Horizontes from "giving" away products from Guatemala and Honduras in exchange for pledges for donations to Horizontes.

I can bring back 3 boxes of NICE Honduran cigars. I'm hoping to receive pledges of at least $300.00 on these boxes.

2 bottles of aged rum. I'm hoping to receive pledges of $120.00 for this.

Te de Jamaica or Hibiscus tea. This is excellent for blood pressure and is really expensive in the states. I can bring back a pound of dried petals, which is ALOT. I can probably give for a promise of $25.00 to Horizontes per quarter pound. It really needs agave to taste good, and I like it weak and cool. It's bitter otherwise. I can bring back some sweet concentrate, but it definitely isn't as healthy. For concentrate I'd need $20.00 per bottle. The bottle is really big.

Coffee, of course. I'll buy straight from the workers, so I won't be giving to the companies that feed Guatemalan workers horse adrenaline calling it "vitamins." It'll be from Justicia Solidaria, an excellent co-op formed in the face of the 80's genocide. I'm not expecting to make much money from that, so I just require shipping costs and money ahead of time, because they do sell at carro prices. Pretty much, that's just to support the co-op, not the kids.

I'd be losing money on this, so please don't worry on where the money is being allocated. My donation is the wholesale price of the products. If you're interested about any of these, please write me at durhamm@eou.edu

Thanks for looking!

The New White House

2010-01-12T23:07:00.002-07:00

It is gratifying to feel listened to by the people I pay taxes to. I disagree with Obama on many things (I'd actually define myself, if anything, as a log cabin liberal Republican) but I do feel that he is more fair about this war than Bush was. I feel that he does not scoff at my non-violent beliefs, and is listening to what the extraordinary cost of war really is.

If a war is justified anywhere, it is justified in Afghanistan. He has a battleplan. He doesn't have cotton in his ears. I morally disagree with it, I do not logically disagree with it.

I disagree with him on government spending. If anything, the government needs to be tightening her belt in preparation of a very long recession. (Listen to Alan Greenspan already!) But at least the money is going in-house, not to large companies like Black Water and Halliburton. I feel better having more government oversight. It makes me sick to think how many random killings by my government has been done overseas in the last eight years. Now there is at least a pittance of justice, as opposed to none.

2010-01-10T02:33:00.002-07:00

Here is a picture of some of what I've bought for the kids at the daycare on my return trip.

Note all the shoes. I have sort of a half-plan to set up a zapato de finco (i.e. shoe farm). When the kids' shoes don't fit anymore they can return with their old shoes and trade them in for a pair that fit! I'm thinking sixty shoes would get my plan off the ground. My heart melted when I saw their dear little feet blistered and smashed in shoes two sizes too small, or some of them without shoes at all. It's such a basic little thing. I've got about 30 thus far, not all of them shown here.

What you don't see here is test tube make up I bought for wholesale. I also worked at a domestic violence shelter. Alot of the 'women' there are only 14, often raped by dads or beaten by husands. Some of the dearest to me all hung out in the bathroom, giggling for almost an hour one day. They tripped out all smiley and happy, with moviestar makeup. They were glowing. They deserve so much more than just silly things, but I've been picking test tubes up wherever I find them, and I try to get the right color.

Hey, does anyone know where to find brown baby dolls? I'm trying to find bi-racial dolls. REALLY difficult. You'd be surprised. I'm going to tour ebay to try and find brown baby dolls.

Eduardo and Manuel.

2010-01-10T02:24:00.002-07:00

Some huge news this early morning. I'll cut and paste to tell it to you. I took some parts out about personal stuff.

Hello Michelle,

Happy new year! Sorry I have not written you until now. So, After we went to have lunch with Eduardo and Manuel do you remember?. I went on a vacation trip for a couple weeks then I got back to Xela and had to hurry up to buy christmas gifts for my family. then, this week I have been dealing with fixing some electrical problems at the school so just today I finally have some time to write you.
Anyhow, I saw the teacher from the day care (seño Lety) in the street the other day and she told me that during the two weeks I was on vacation the social worker in charge of the kids asked Doña Roberta to bring the kids to Sololá because someone from their family (an uncle and his wife) who have a job will be the ones taking care of the kids. She said that Doña Roberta was really sad of leaving them and the kids were also really sad but they know it had to happen at some point.
Anyhow so maybe next week I will go visit the day care and find out more details about the kiddies, and also see if Doña Roberta can give me some information about the location where the kids are...

I have to go now Michelle but I will let you know whatever I find out about the kiddies and also let me know what do you want me to do with the rest of your money otherwise I will keep it until you come back to Guatemala.

Wish you the best to you and your husband this 2010, I send you a very biiiigggg huggg.

Sary

Dear Sary,

I got your newsy letter with a mixture of feelings. Of course I am so happy that Eduardo y Manuel are neither in an orphanage or back with their mama, but I also don't know how this will turn out...you know? I hope it all turns out well, but I'm making plans for both.

First, I would love when I return to head to the location of this uncle with you and speak with him and the kids, find out what his and their circumstances are. I know he is in charge and we have little say. If he doesn't want to see or speak to us, we can do little about it. I've sort of planned for both. I am in this for the long term for both of them, regardless.

I am very busy with school and work lately. I am also sorry to hear about the electrical problems at school. I hope it hasn't lost you too much money. I look forward to seeing you soon. Take good care of yourself, Sary, you are such a sweetheart. I will see you in a month, hopefully!

Love,
Michelle

Happy, happy home.

2010-01-09T06:25:00.003-07:00

Oh god. I'm salivating. My dream since...well, forever, has been to have an orphanage.

There's enough room there (3 houses!) to have my mama and papa come to visit, and my little nephew (who is a quarter Venezuelan, after all, and ought to learn Spanish) to have his own bunk with all the other babies.

*sigh* I want it so bad.

This is all the information: http://www.xelapages.com/sunsethostel/mainhouse.htm

Okay, I'm off to watch a different sort of house...the Dollhouse.

An Unheard Letter.

2010-01-06T06:08:00.003-07:00

While cleaning out my "sent" box in my email, I came across this letter, whose recipient I am blacking out in respect and hope. This was a situation that I came from feeling like I had done something wrong, and I second-guessed my words and actions. In reading this now, I see I was not in the wrong. Six months to figure that out.

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you for discussing the problem of sexual abuse in the SDA church with me during a very busy time in your day. I felt, however, that we were talking about two different things.

To summarize what I saw you talking about:

You were trying to help me as an individual, obviously within a short span of time, and giving me advice on what I should do on a personal level.

What I was trying to talk about:

Institutional inertia within the Adventist church and lifting some of the burden I have had to tell my story and live my abuse over and over. I am not looking for help in my personal life. Although it is obvious I need that, I have it from my husband, counselor, and various mentors. I'm looking for a meeting of individuals within the church for nonviolent, extreme change in the beauracracy to help those who have already been victimized and those who will be if we remain silent. I have found myself with the burden of speaking out alone, and going this awful path alone. I am looking at being sued for a simple phrase and because I'm speaking out. I face this alone, without help from old friends from the church.

In the Catholic church, the Voice of the Faithful was formed to create action among the true church, the parishioners. I hope for something like that to rise up amongst Adventist laypeople, so the burden does not rest entirely upon abuse victims who already find each and every day a struggle and find it difficult in the extreme to be sued and made pariah.

I'm begging for help in creating a group of faithful Adventists (which I am not) who will lobby tirelessly for those who have been raped, sodomized, and otherwise painfully hurt within the SDA church. I no longer have the ties to create this, nor do I have the energy. On top of that I'm not a leader, I'm a writer. I'm asking for you to use your admirable ties to help find that leader of lobbyists. I don't think you're the leader, and I understand if you don't feel a "calling" to throw yourself into this but I'm asking that you send out antennaes to inform and discover within your sphere of influence and friends, or at least find the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a future leader, someone who is able and willing to give their life in organizing and prodding this cause to fruition.

All of this is extremely difficult to talk about, but I wanted to affirm you and thank you for reaching out to me within the frame of time given. I'm sorry you've been hurt as badly as you've been and thankful that you've found hope where you have. I truly am happy for you though your path will likely not be my path and I hope you can respect that.

Yours,
Michelle Durham

Unsurprisingly, I never got an answer.

Nothing. Nada.

2010-01-03T06:10:00.002-07:00

I'm so embarrassed about how much weight I've gained.

I've had issues with food my whole life. I was stick-skinny as a baby--up to second grade when I was 9 and when I think the whole thing happened. (The actual timeline eludes me.)

I was chubby for the next 6 years when I went on a diet, and was a normal weight up till I went to Milo, where I became bulimic. I've struggled with that and gone up and down like crazy.

My smallest was when a guy I loved very much broke up with me and my biggest when I was with an abusive boyfriend.

Now I'm pushing "heaviest." I gained about 20 pounds while in the lawsuit, and then gained even more in 2009. I feel so badly about myself, and I don't even know where to start to make myself healthy again. At least I'm no longer bulimic.

As Potok writes,

start at the beginning.

A New Year.

2010-01-03T06:05:00.002-07:00

Now that it's the new year I've been doing alot of changing and vowing and oh-mying at the last year.

Pretty much, last year I closed the curtains, curled up, and slept. And cried. That's it.

But I'm so sick of crying and not being okay. I want to LIVE, goddammit!

I'm going for a walk. The world is so white outside. I'm bringing my blue plastic sled with me.

Nebraska Book Company

2009-12-28T09:31:00.002-07:00

The world of internet scams has hit home for me...again.

This time it's the Nebraska Book Company/Tyson Motsinger scam. It goes like this:

NBC buys a book off a third-party seller--mostly textbooks--and sometimes as soon as three days later demands a refund. The way amazon is set up, the seller is responsible for all books and if they do not give a refund they are kicked off of amazon. NBC does not return books unless the seller sends NBC a certain amount by paypal, and often still does not return the book.

There is no proof of what they do with these supposedly damaged or missing books, but they own 27 textbook bookstores in the US so I presume they resell them and make mucho bucks.

Amazon doesn't ONLY sit back and do nothing, it bans sellers from the website who refuse to refund these scammers.

***growl***

I finally caught them after they ordered two books in a row to the same address but with different names and suite numbers. I checked it out and realized I've been 'refunding' a huge company over $300.00.

To Nebraska Book Company:

You directly stole from CSA survivors when you scammed me. Everything I have extra goes to Guatemala or friends of mine who were raped. You also largely steal from college kids. Hey, at least my pocket book, flush with fuck money, can handle your thieving. These are college kids you're scamming, they don't have much of anything. Who steals from kids anyway?

To Amazon.com

Shame on you!

To Other Victims of this Scam:

I refunded NBC and cancelled all the books I was able to stop en route and refunded them with a letter telling them to never buy from me again. In the long run, it's best for me. I work with amazon, the shittiest book company around, because it is the largest. You might not want to sell off amazon anymore, and I'm looking at my options to quit amazon altogether. Right now I'm not rich enough or powerful enough to do something about it, but when I find some options, I'll opt out of amazon forever and wag my judgmental finger in their scheming, book blaspheming faces.

Videogame Land

2009-12-24T01:11:00.002-07:00

For the past three weeks I've been playing a video game--Oblivion by Bethesda Works--pretty much 20/7. I've barely been up off my computer to go to the bathroom and get water. I just wiggle and swallow alot.

There is a storyline within the game that allows me to become an assassin. I decided to "try it" became so upset at the seceding storyline that I burst into tears and restarted the game altogether with a completely new character, killing the head of the Dark Brotherhood the moment I got a chance. I feel Ender-ized. What would the academy make of how I play my game?

I am SUCH a geek. And OCD. And other things, too.

Grace.

2009-11-20T14:17:00.003-07:00

I was reading of an SBC pastor who said he "erred on the side of grace" and kept quiet about babies being molested by a church deacon. It makes me so frustrated, a beautiful spiritual language being used in defense of simply not caring about one of the greatest gifts we have: children. That response, that right there, that's what makes religion anathema to abuse survivors.

Doesn't this guy have any idea what grace is? Isn't he a pastor? Hasn't he studied the great minds AND the great hearts that the human race has put out?

It's the line and metaphor between the crucified God and the resurrected God. They are both God, you can no more separate both aspects than you can separate a knotted rope and still call it a knot. To get us to grace, biblically, God died. There's no getting past that. Grace is not cheap, and the pastor was not the one paying, so it was not his grace to give.

I don't think you can borrow this type of grace from a child, or ask for it. It can only be stolen, and when it is stolen, it is no longer grace.

That pastor, he is a thief.

Books and Babies

2009-11-20T07:06:00.003-07:00

I've been collecting Spanish books and activity books for the kids in Xela so when I go back I'll bring full suitcases. Alot of them are great but some of these books I find just won't cut it. Case in point: Heritage Studies for Christian Schools--with activities including coloring Queen Anne's crown and making a paper Liberty Bell. It's great with homeschooled or private schooled American kids, but with sexually abused K'iche babies...sorry, I think I'll pass. Regardless, I'm interested in going through it and getting ideas. These activities are so clever. I WISH they'd work.

Another good book found: no death, no fear by Thich Nhat Hanh. I know what I'll be doing tonight!

2009-11-18T18:55:00.002-07:00

The last apple cider pressing day of the season and Robert has 13 gallons in the truck. Yum! It's as good as my mama's applesauce.

Obama's Kids

2009-11-18T02:27:00.002-07:00

It irks me that people complain about Obama's little girls getting the H1N1 flu vaccine. Can you imagine the widespread panic of Sasha and Malia came down with the swine flu?

If they can't be protected, who can? The fear would multiply like crazy.

I'm pretty sure I came down with it a few weeks ago. My next-door neighbor had it, and I brought him some stuff from the store. Then I got the symptoms and was out of it for two weeks. If what I had really was H1N1, it's just a pumped up version of the flu, after all. Babies and old people are at risk, it is pretty nasty, but I'm not exactly perfectly healthy and I survived it just fine, without any doctor visits or antibiotics.

Everyone is so scared, and it seems a bit out of proportion.

Heathcliff

2009-11-16T22:46:00.002-07:00

H-----the Story of Heathcliff's Journey Back to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire-Sargeant.

Worth diddly, but for a Bronte fan like me, I'm in fan-fiction heaven. Some writers question why anyone would want to write the continuation of their books, but honestly, when you fall into a world so utterly, how can you bear the silences? It's a great mystery that must be answered, even if by my own imagination.

I'm sure Haire-Sargeant is no Bronte family heir, but I'll tell you how it goes. I always dreamt of Heathcliff's time before Cathy, and after leaving Cathy to seek his wealth. He makes the book nearly horror with his brass cruelty. How did he become that way? His heart is so full of Cathy, and devoid of anything else. It's one of those loves, like Antony and Cleopatra, that drives the giver and receiver absolutely crazy. The old stories with such plotline as premise has been one of my favorite script.

One of the best things about London--the library. It was the first place I visited when I lived there. I spent my day off gawking in a darkened room at original writings by the Bronte's. I love them, I want what they're having!

2009-11-09T01:20:00.002-07:00

When I was with an ex-boyfriend in Southern California I bought and sold books--and I did very well. Then I ran for it, and ended up in Scotland. I left everything. My (nice) car, my dresses, my computers. I just got out of there. Most of it I never got back, and under the circumstances it really wasn't worth it to try and get it back. I just tucked, rolled, and started again.

But there were a few things I was able to get from that time period--the main thing was an investment that I have thought for a couple years was a complete mistake. There were four books that I spent about $3000.000 on and had sent to my sister in Angwin instead of to me in Southern Cal. I was hoping to turn around in a year and sell them for a different amount. My plan was to go to counseling on the earnings, or maybe a down payment on a house.

It just figures that now that I don't need the money, they're worth what I guesstimated they would be worth in a year.

Robert and I had a deal that if I saved that much we'd head abroad for a year to learn languages together.

......YIPEE!!!!!!!!! To Guatemala and Egypt/Morocco and Poland and India we go!

More on this when I actually sell the book. I don't want to sell the books for less than they're worth due to excitement. It won't be for another year, but I'm sooooo excited, still.

2009-11-07T11:56:00.003-07:00

Today I feel such a fraud. Everything in the news is about death and hunger and children dying.

Yet I...I slept till noon, and my hair is a rat's nest. I dined on rich coffee and milk and fresh squeezed orange juice. I lounged, and then slowly began my business routine of packing orders, for which I make too much money for the work I put in.

I've never gotten it, why some people work their hands to bone and never earn enough, and then people like me, right now, lounge, sell a few books, and are staunchly middle class with little to no effort--or those who are rich, even.

Why did my lawsuit win money when I can name at least one more seriously deserving woman, whose statutes have run? She was abused so terribly, her pain is so great, and her need is just as much or greater than mine. Why did I get money for my woes, and she gets nothing? It's just not fair.

And then, just within the group of people who were hurt by Scott, the youth who wreaked havoc in my church; I feel a fraud in this, as well. So many families were irrevocably devastated by his actions and the church's action (deny it if you will, you self-righteous hypocrites). Why am I the one who is finding healing? How did I get so lucky? Why was I born girl and only semi-disabled, so abused less horribly than those severely disabled boys? It makes me so confused. There is no symmetry.

I've always had an obsession with Robin Hood, ever since I played the computer game as a child. I want to take from the rich, and give to the poor, give the world some sense.

I've never taken a vow of poverty, but I have come to a tacit agreement with whatever love and fairness is out there that I'll do my little best, and with small steps and millions of networks, maybe together some of us can right some wrongs?

I don't know. I don't know at all.

2009-11-04T09:48:00.002-07:00

I'm back from Guatemala.

I had such a good time. I want to go back and live, I've got it all arranged, a wonderful Spanish teacher set up for Robert and I, a house reserved, everything. I just need to convince Robert.

While there I volunteered at a daycare and domestic violence shelter. I met two little brothers who--hey, assholes who are reading this to surveil me or pedophiles who are hunting for pictures--you don't get to know anything about my beautiful babies. They are too precious to waste on the likes of you motherfuckers, who are likely to hurt and ruin them. They've enough problems without adding you to the list.

But I love them. I want to adopt them, and will if in five years, after I get my masters, they're still available for adoption. I adore them, they are so beautiful, and wonderful. I miss them terribly. My language teacher is sending me updates on them. I love them as if they were my own, and the only thing keeping me from starting the adoption process now, is the knowledge that with my problems I'd probably hurt them more than I'd help for now. I need some counseling in my belt before I adopt.

At night I dream of all of us in Guatemala, them safe in their little room I found for them, dining and playing and learning on my fuck money. I keep wandering to the kid section of stores and dumping baby clothes in my basket, before regretfully returning them to the rack.

Now this...this is living.

Old Books

2009-11-04T09:35:00.002-07:00

I bought 50,000 books and am going through them.

I love them. I love touching them, the aged wrinkles, stains of coffee, sun-yellowed, sun-bleached, mouse-bitten, musty, beautiful old pages.

This one that I'm holding, Miss Nan (detours)--absolutely worthless online, but it has attitude. Scuffed jacket and on the first page in sloppy old-person Victorian cursive, "With Love, Nannie Eidon." Below that in graceful writing that looks like my mother's cursive, "Gratefully, Charles W. Horner."

The Serf by Guy Thorne. Musty as an attic, its contents as haphazard and old. In the front, a note to the skeptic reader, picking this old tome up for the first time.

this book is surprisingly GOOD! especially if you are interested in 11th century France, termanology, way of life, etc. Well written reminding me of Chelsea Quinn Yarbo's St. Germain books, especially "Better in the Dark" DRB 1995

Move over internet reviews! Nothing can contest a hand written note, secreted away into musty pages. I'm putting aside Flowers for Algernon for now, and snuggling with this crispy old book for the night.

Yum!

Guatemala for the Soul.

2009-08-30T12:18:00.001-06:00

¨Staying overnight inside of the ruins of Tikal is not allowed but a night of playing hide and seek with the guards can be quite an adventure and fun! ( Don`t stay at the most logical places, stay at one place, don`t make fire or use flashlights and have Q 100 on you to bribe the guards if they catch you)¨

Yup, this is actually a recommendation from the inglorious hostel ¨Los Amigos.¨ I couldn´t stop laughing.

http://www.amigoshostel.com/travelinfo/tikal.htm

Happy Birthday

2009-08-02T09:30:00.002-06:00

Happy birthday, Micah! I love you so much. You're getting to be so old! Six years old! Wow!

Your Auntie Meesha LOVES you. I'm so happy for you.

May you have a hundred more August 2's in your life.

(I got him a gift certificate so he could pick out a lightsaber at Toys R Us! My sister promised to send me pictures of him playing Yoda and Darth Vader. It makes me deliriously happy to see him happy. My little nephew, HOW I love him.)

Poetry.

2009-07-28T12:07:00.003-06:00

I'm post-happy today, sitting, playing about on my computer, thinking, and reading poetry.

When one of my friends died, I went back to my childhood church for the funeral. I couldn't put my grief into anything--it was a big, black sky in my belly, all thundery and rumbly. Add to that nausea my post-traumatic reactions that I had from being so close to where I was raped and nearby a pastor who hurt me by belittling myself and my experiences when I went to him for help...I was a mess.

I tried so hard that day to go out of myself and to not be so self-centered when I was in the church for my childhood friend and his family. I'm not sure I succeeded. I spent half the time in my basement hidey-hole, clutching my old cove of stale candy for comfort, my red top stuffed in my mouth to cork the screaming. Whatever sanity I exhibited that day was divine, not handmade.

And the poetry I was reading: Jan Kochanowski, a Polish renaissance man, who wrote "Treny" or Laments in a keen for his dead daughter. I placed my forehead on the hard wood of the pew in front of me, back arched forward as if in kneeling, but still sitting, refusing to kneel in protest to the horrid spot to the right of the coffin, in protest to the closed coffin. All respect, but I wanted to scream that sermon out of my head (which, truly, was beautifully and with heart given, it was just where I was and am).

There is an incredible translation of Laments by Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney, but that has piles of copyrights on it by the two inimitable translators, so we internet English-readers are left with the coded Polish verse, centuries old, to hack at with our Polish-English dictionaries.

Wszytki płacze, wszytki łzy Heraklitowe
I lamenty, i skargi Symonidowe,
Wszytki troski na świecie, wszytki wzdychania
I żale, i frasunki, i rąk łamania,
Wszytki a wszytki za raz w dom się mój noście,
A mnie płakać mej wdzięcznej dziewki pomożcie,
Z którą mię niebożna śmierć rozdzieliła
I wszytkich moich pociech nagle zbawiła.
Tak więc smok, upatrzywszy gniazdko kryjome,
Słowiczki liche zbiera, a swe łakome
Gardło pasie; tymczasem matka szczebiece
Uboga, a na zbójcę coraz się miece,
Próżno! bo i na samę okrutnik zmierza,
A ta nieboga ledwe umyka pierza.
Prózno płakać" - podobno drudzy rzeczecie.
Cóż, prze Bóg żywy, nie jest prózno na świecie ?
Wszytko prózno! Macamy gdzie miękcej w rzeczy,
A ono wszędy ciśnie ! Błąd - wiek człowieczy !
Nie wiem, co lżej: czy w smutku jawnie żałować,
Czyli się z przyrodzeniem gwałtem mocować?

It gives comfort, it does.

2009-07-28T10:18:00.002-06:00

This is my favorite clip from Dead Like Me.

When I Was Six: A Sestina or Falling Down

2009-07-28T09:40:00.002-06:00

Thrice, when I was small I tripped and fell to the floor.
First it was an ouch, a burn, a bleed; a hole
in the knee of my oldest pants.
They were the never the same again, even with patches
ironed on with my mother pressing hard, steam
dripping to the corners of the board until the patch was glued.

After, they wore funny on the crotch and legs as I glued
Valentine's Day cards (the shaking glitter fluttering to the floor).
It was winter with the outside cold and the inside hot, the confused glass between filmed in steam,
and watching that I'd rip, rip, rip wide in the paper card, a paper hole
which I'd stab my finger through and wiggle, then with glitter I'd patch
it up. Then I'd wiggle my bored bum--I wore funny, uncomfortable hanging pants.

I'd walk bow-legged when I wore them: my funny hanging pants.
I'd walk as if the inside of my knees were glued,
or hurt. I'd wobble and pither and patch
until I'd fall again, thudding and punting to the floor.
Sometimes my mother wouldn't be there to iron the hole,
she wouldn't be there to straighten and seam and steam.

In the summer season, when the cement steamed
I'd wear my knobby-knees bare and open with no funny hanging pants
and I'd run, run, run twist and this time I'd sink from a hole,
watch my blood melt, drip from my hands, so sticky, like glue,
spread out on the grassy, suburban sunshine floor,
I'd lay there twisted and watching myself spill into a pretty plotted patch.

It was that fall that I watched the weird off-colour patch
on the wall in my bedroom as if it were sick, and ignored the psychotic steam
rising, the feel of rug burn with my face to the flabbergasted floor
and the wishing for and then the washing of my funny-hanging pants.
I'd heard Johnny Jewkes say that you could get high from glue,
maybe because it had dead horse bits (but he ate worms, and) all the glue just fell right through the hole.

Nothing filled that gawping, yawning, stretching, awful hole.
My mother didn't know what to do and applied her useless patches
she glittered, she glued
she stewed and steamed
to no avail but a silent girl with listless red-stained pants
sitting a cross-legged anticipating silent on the floor.

On and on the years went, my face to the floor, and my heart a gaping hole
'Till one day I outgrew those pants and the awkward butterfly patch.
I traded in for a new pair: starched and steamed. I learned to skip and not trip and I wrapped my heart in rubber glue

Note: This poem takes license and veers from what really happened. I was never raped in my bedroom. I did have a pair of jeans with a butterfly patch but that was in junior high and meant to be "cool". I did, as all kids with cerebral palsy, trip an awful lot. All the limping from getting raped was attributed to the already present limp from my cerebral palsy.

Funny Thing About Banks

2009-07-14T10:10:00.003-06:00

In the past few months I've recieved at least five offers from various banks that say "Open an account with us and we'll give you $100.00."

Now there are restrictions to that offer, for instance I usually have to make a purchase every now and then and have to keep the account open for 6 months. But I could do that. I have 600 to put in limbo for 6 months.

I think I'm going to do it. That's a month's rent, after all! A doubling of profit is NOT a bad return.

This reminds me when I was incredibly poor in Portland, Oregon. US Bank had an offer that if a customer waited in line for longer than 5 minutes they would be given $5.00 if they asked. The MLK branch, nearest my old home, ALWAYS had a wait period of at least ten minutes at lunch time. So I'd race down there when I was hungry for some lunch and wait in line, add a few dollars to my account or take a few dollars out, and get the $5.00. I did it so many times I think the branch stoppped doing it. Maybe there were some others doing it, but they must have lost nearly $200.00 on me in the space of six months. I did it about once or twice a week.

Sometimes I don't know how banks turn a profit, and then I remember that too many people use credit like alcoholics use the drink. And then it all makes a terrific amount of sense.

PS This also reminds me of my friend who'd sell blood every week for $20.00 per draw. I tried to do it but I had anemia so that didn't work.

Two things to Add:

2009-07-06T08:29:00.002-06:00

One, I’ve not knowingly told a single lie here. The Adventist church needs to look deeply at itself and put the protection of children first and foremost. They need to start reaching out to rape victims within their own communities, not just the victims in Africa.

Two, in my concrete opinion, the Adventist church is absolutely 100% NOT an evil entity. They do not deserve to be treated like a cult. When anyone encourages cruelty towards Adventist people, they’re encouraging cruelty towards people. People I love and am fighting for. It’s not right to be mean to them, and it isn’t what the majority of us victims want. Many victims are STILL Adventist. To prey on specifically eschatological Adventist fears would not be something I condone in any way, shape, or form. This is not a fear fest or witch hunt. My ends do not morally support all means. I’ll follow that old canon-thumper Paul here, when he said, “Be angry, but do not sin.” I want closure, I want these things to stop. I don’t want to destroy the Adventist church. I’m VERY angry and prejudiced, I’ve made that extremely clear. Now I’d like to make more clear the dichotomy of belief and emotion within myself.

Finally, I want to reiterate to the Adventist church, its lawyers, and insurers, that however much I may or may want to get fear in my heart and shut up, clearly, constitutionally, that’s not going to work. I don’t even think I’m capable of shutting up unless I think everyone is safe. I’m autistic like that. It’d work for maybe a year, and then I’d start jabbering truth again.

It isn’t very good or kind to threaten young raped autistic women with libel lawsuits. Bear with me, talk with me, or at least talk through letters screened through yours and my lawyer, help me to understand your side in ethical kind ways and I will listen.

To my Adventist friends and relatives who may have stumbled onto this in horror: It’s a lot to digest. I love you, and I’m pretty darn confused, too. There are no easy answers.

Finally: I’m in a tremendous amount of pain. I’m working on a book right now and throwing myself into it body and soul. It’s fantasy, silly, really, along the lines of the books I used to clutch as a little girl when Scott raped me. I’d dive into them as escape. That’s me. I’m an escape artist, but maybe out where I am, I’ll find a bridge back to all of you whom I love, I’ll find a bridge to my voice. I’ll escape out of wherever I am and back to you.

A change in Blogging.

2009-06-25T00:03:00.004-06:00

It has come to my attention that the church's lawyers are watching my blog as well as watching me in every other way that they can. Apparently they are upset that I'm speaking out, along with some other things which they aren't at fault for but has to do with misunderstandings on my part.

It has also become glaringly evident that love is simply not in the picture where they are concerned, or if it is, it's buried under layers and layers of beauracracy. My hope is that they change. But that hope is rooted in between two rocks I hope it will one day spurt free of: knowledge that "I" can't change anyone, and that attempts to live my life based on what others "should" do is simply not smart. I need to live my life right now based on what "I" can do and should do.

This blog was never meant as a medium to argue with the church or point out their wrongs, and I'm not in any way ready to become a public face for sexual abuse in the SDA church. However, this is a role both my blog and I have fallen into. I'm still grappling with that. I don't expect to morph like worm to butterfly, and suddenly be wise and smart, and as a struggling young woman, know exactly what to say and when to say it, so I'll continue, in perfect NLD/autistic comportment, to put my foot in my mouth and piss powerful, well-paid people off. I'm afraid that's constitutional, guys.

My genuine way of life, whether naivete or stupidity or whatever is non-violent. I believe in conflict-resolution as a spiritual, non-violent path. Gandhi is my hero, although I disagree with him on a multitude of issues. I have struggled in many ways with how to apply non-violent (does that mean no lawsuits, no bouts of anger, no yelling? Is it silence or is speech? If I hurt the "other side" have I transgressed or simply done what is necessary?) belief in this situation, and still struggle with it. I am young, still forming in many ways, and don't know much of anything.

But I still think love is possible here, I think it can win out. But one of the things I've been taught (by an incredible and giving mentor who spent so much time writing me and reassuring and encouraging me and telling me I was a talented writer while I was going through the lawsuit) is that different people do different things in the name of love, just as they do with the Bible and the Qu'uran and various ideas of God.

I have no idea what to do next, but I know I can't remain silent. So I'm slowly coming out again after being threatened, etc. This hurts beyond words, but I HAVE to give it words, if only out of love, because it is truly my one guiding light here. I am here to stay.

Some of my best friends were also raped by Scott. You CANNOT shut me up, I would rather die.

A warning to those who have friended me: The SDA church is extremely unhappy with me and have a history of picking on my friends when I turn the heat up. If you are on my list there is a chance that you will be harangued and subpoenaed. They are watching this blog, and anyone connected to it. I won't be insulted if you ask that I stay away from you in this medium. Essentially, if you comment here, you're putting a bullseye on your forehead.

I have alot of things to change in myself and on this blog to prepare for the difficulties inherent in speaking out. I feel unprepared for this. I landed here in a way that pisses me off. But I'm here, I won't be quiet. I can't live with myself if I don't do the right thing here, and I'll do the right thing as best as I know how. I'll make mistakes, surely, but I'll keep on plugging along.

In my wedding vows I promised Robert to always try, to not go the suicide route, as I also promised my lawyers, Kelly Clark, Steve Crew, and Kristian Roggendorf. Further, I promise here to keep talking, to not just "survive" but survive and live life to the best of my ability. I'm also promising that to the SDA church and those that represent the church. I won't lay in front of the East Salem church, feet from where I was sodomized, dead in a red and gold coffin with a bullet in my head like some beautiful souls have. I promise you.

To God

2009-05-01T09:10:00.003-06:00

I lied, I'll write here before going to Guatemala.

This is a poem I wrote when I was at my worst. I am generally against sharing my personal belief system, but find it tolerable when in poetic form. As that great poet Sherman Alexie says, Iambic pentameter, the sound of a heartbeat.

To God
How you lighted faces then and when you
smiled half the world, she swooned heavy-
hard. You fell them, bruising at the jointed
knobs of flesh till stiff-treed all axe entrance
to the mold--you then from dead drag wonder.

2009-04-29T20:43:00.002-06:00

It took me a little while to get it through my thick skull that I needed to leave ASAP but it's through now.

I leave on Sunday. I don't come back until the end of June.

I'm tentatively excited. My next post will greet you from Central America.

Yellowstone Pics.

2009-04-27T10:40:00.001-06:00

Finally. Pictures from Yellowstone.

I married this guy. Did you know that cigar smoke makes great bug repellent? It’s better than OFF.

Yah. It’s me, hiding behind the mongo smile and even mongo-er nose.

Coyote Creek. It was murder trying to wash in it, the rate it was flowing, and the temperature!

My honeybun husband, on his way to a morning poo. Doesn’t he look like a puppy dog? He’s great cuddling material, I just want to nuzzle up onto his chest and purr when I see this picture.

Our first home. Cozy, huh?

And warm. It took us forever to get out of bed that day. We didn’t start out until about 2 in the afternoon, then got caught in a hailstorm. We were cranky when we got back to the bunkhouse--and HUNGRY! It was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and it was pretty darn steep on the way back. Altogether we went about 8 miles straight up with 50 pounds on our backs, mosquitoes eating at us, etc, etc.

Guatemala

2009-04-25T12:13:00.003-06:00

I need a break, it's true. I've been planning a vacation to Guatemala for several years. It's finally time to head out. I need some time to "get away." Brunswick is getting on my nerves. It is small suburbia, with all the middle-class woes suburbia comes with. I guess that's a pretentious dislike. Less pretentious is the fact that I'm going crazy, I end the day by snuggling with Robert and crying. That's not good.

I haven't left for Guatemala yet because Robert is determined to stay in one place and grow deep roots in community. That's a good thing, but someone with my travel-lust, I just need to get out of the US every now and then or at least hop my way to the nearest adventure. Robert and I talked a long time last night and we decided it would be good for me to go alone, to get out of the house and do what I want. I'm only going for a month, and I'll hole up in Xela, with a few side-trips to Tikal. I want to do some heavy writing and learning of Spanish. I also want to work at an orphanage in Xela--do some true good with this blood-money I have. I want to learn. Immerse myself not solely in the knowlege of books, but also in the wisdom of living.

I need, for my own well-being, to back away from my pain about the church, and come back to it, ready to work towards love with new tools and rejuvenation. I don't think Guatemala will give me all these things, but I think it'll help. I've also started back up in counseling and medication.

I leave mid-May and I'm going to try to be several weeks ahead in school (I've ended up taking/working on 29 credits this term, which was stupid) before I buy the tickets. I'll come back around the end of June.

Also, I'm enabling comments. I had them disabled before because my blogs had been subpoenaed during discovery and anyone who commented in the blog was subject to being subpoenaed as well. Now it's no longer a problem.

Naive

2009-04-23T02:46:00.004-06:00

When I first went to my lawyer, Kelly Clark, we sat in a large room with windows. I shimmied past describing what had happened to me, and he said I had plenty of proof for him to take the case.

And then he said he expected me to go to counseling and that if I didn't, he'd hand me a big check a few years down the road and I'd be the same girl, except rich. I'd have the same problems and it would be just as bad.

When I got the money he sat me down in a much smaller room and instructed me on how to spend it. He said that one of his first cases won several hundred thousand dollars and in the space of 14 months he was back to Kelly, asking for money. Both Kelly and the client went away from that with bad feelings.

Money doesn't change much in my heart, just in the physical trappings. I can afford counseling now, I can afford rent and food. I have the means to stay home and cry and shake and fall to pieces (whereas before, I was doing that at work). It IS better.

I just don't understand the church. Robert and I were snuggling last night and I asked him, "Am I just so stupid for my naivete?"

He said no. No, you just live as if the world were the way it ought to be.

"Do you think they love me?"
"You're probably not on their Christmas list."
"I sued them."
"Yeah."
"I can't believe I sued them."
"I know."

I wish I were smarter at things like this. I'm so fucking autistic and truthful, at the wrong times. But maybe there is some goodness in someone like me coming along and telling it, not just the way it is in my heart, where the damage is, but how it ought to be.

It is naive. But it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Tough Days.

2009-04-21T23:22:00.002-06:00

The pain of betrayal never quite fades. In my type of situation something always rips the wound open.

I wonder how "people in power" decide to turn from me. Do they think about it before they do it, or do they purse their lips and flippantly toss me to the garbage?

They aren't cowards, at least I don't think so. Maybe they're just people that love an idea more than they love people. In many cases their own ideas of powerlessness makes them powerless.

Actually I haven't a clue. It all makes me very sad and very tired.

People are sheep. Fucking sheep. They bleet and cower, haven't the sense to be afraid of the things they ought to be frightened of. Their own idiocies make them mutton. How I despise what they do! How I love them!

How I wish I could be saved from my own feelings. I could purge myself and make myself stone, pull a Jeffers. It's rock and Hawk, not a soft mop. But there I am, whispering to the floor where quiet feet patter. I'm soft like butter, rushing to mop up messes. It makes me very, very tired. Damn this situation.

I feel defeated, sick at heart. I do. Why are people so awful? So apathetic, bleary eyed? Oh. Just fuck them. I want to turn from it all.

This is why love is the ultimate killer. It is love, not hate, that has the power to rip a heart out.

If some dude with horns and fireballs erupting from his eyeballs hurt me, I'd laugh and fight back. But how do you begin to fight someone you love? HOW?!?!

Somebody please tell me. I'm open to suggestions.

Open Letter to the East Salem SDA Church

2009-04-18T11:22:00.003-06:00

With names of the victims and perpetrator x'ed out in respect and deference.

To: Pastors at East Salem SDA Church,

My suggestion is that you not allow sadistic child-rapists free rein in your church, and to kindly, efficiently, and as Christians, deal with those who come to clergy and leaders with worries and experience with having been raped in the church. I certainly hope you will take my suggestion into consideration. Perhaps you'll consider it before you call Richard Whittemore and forward this email? It's nice to know you find safety and comfort in the combination of Jesus Christ and a really, really expensive lawyer who promises to "aggressively investigate and try in court" cases with confirmed victims like *********** and perpetrators like *************. You guys need a lesson in compassion. I am thoroughly disgusted by your actions thus far. And to say you are doing it in forgiveness! You seem to have a much easier time forgiving the perpetrators for hurting people, than the victims who bear the sin of hurting. I'm so sorry I couldn't be perfect for you and forget that I was sodomized in your holy sanctuary.

Please respond, Or is it legally a bad idea? By the way, Hi Mr. Whittemore.

And Parks, I believe your words to my uncle were "I'm sorry if I hurt her." Let me clear that if up for you right now. You hurt me. Lots. Looks like somebody else is complaining to you now! Maybe they'll take your advice to talk in front of the board meeting?

- Michelle Stevenson-Durham

Note: Clearly the SDA church's lawyers need a new hobby-looking at a 25-year old woman's whimsical stream of thought blog looking for ways to sue said woman is all they can think to do in their work-a-day.

Ideas: Golf, maybe? A Caribbean cruise? How about some opera?

The Blindness of Love.

2009-04-17T07:35:00.003-06:00

Well. It is another day. It's beautiful outside, it makes my heart ache.

I subscribe to the belief that humans are not physiologically capable of taking in as much beauty and love as is given us. It seems to me less likely to die of pain than to die of love. We don't know how to direct that yearning in our gaping hearts. We will make a shamble of our lives with that very gift that will kill us eventually. I know I have.

I've been working on a story about that, humans feeling so much that we die.

Two of my classes this term are about drugs and alcohol, the prevention of and the problems of. It strikes me that love is alot like a drug. It changes our every perspective, the way we see everything.

It would be interesting to try and write a parable about love as a physical matter, that we could imbibe upon wish.

On cultural, familial Adventism.

2009-04-13T22:44:00.002-06:00

I could never leave the church completely. That's obvious. While I'll never go back, they'll always have a piece of me. I'm sure they're celebrating when I say that, though they needn't. It's only been a source of pain for me, much the same way it is painful how I love those who raped me. Love is rarely, if ever, comfortable. And some ties just bind, they don't love.

Every night I sit down with my laptop and literally go to every Adventist site I can think of that might have changed their hearts in regards to child rape (and rape in general!). None of them. None of them. It's always the same. Each night I grieve anew. Each night Robert pulls me away, swearing, saying "fuck that, you're hurting yourself, just like you do when you use a razor blade except it's in your head."

Last night we argued over it. "You don't understand!" I screamed. "You've never been raped, you've never had a family like I did!" And last night he got drunk, some very interesting interaction/continued argument followed, and he ended up frolicking naked in the kitchen while eating huge hunks of pork, trying to make me smile.

There are new families, even new cultures. It's a process to look forward, but little by little I'm putting my head in the right direction.

2009-04-08T14:54:00.004-06:00

So my husband is writing a book. All in a plastic notebook. While I work hard on procrastinating on the latest school paper he pesters me with ideas on his book.

The premise is sort of like "Planet of the Apes" except with male and female roles reversed. In the final battle he has the hero (Dick Manly) screaming out like in Braveheart: "They can take our lives....but they can never take....OUR PENISES!!!"

He is threatening to become famous enough to have an interview with Oprah. He promises to tell everyone I desperately wanted to come, but had to stay home to bake a pie and have babies.

I LOVE my husband. Unfortunately, I now must plan ways to sufficiently emasculate him so that he knows his place. (Hey, it's HIS dream world, not mine.)

Mediation.

2009-04-06T07:06:00.002-06:00

In all the ruckus and finger-pointing of the lawsuit there were some funny moments. Going through my old emails I found a series of emails from a gentle, good friend that we wrote to each other while I was in mediation for a settlement. Unfortunately on that fine, sunny day, the Adventist church and its insurer had their heads up their respective asses.

I remember a few days before mediation, in a tizzy at the museum, scribbling unsent notes to the church about how much I loved them, how I'd be happy to drop the lawsuit if they'd just apologize, pay for my counseling, and, yeah, at that point pay my lawyer. I wanted an apology! God, I still want one.

I didn't get one. A measly "I'm sorry." They will never give it. They're only sorry they got sued, they're not sorry I got raped. And they certainly don't take the responsibility that is theirs.

So while the lawyers were talking, I wrote letters to a good, kind editor who reads bad poetry from the latest 24-year old whippersnapper who takes it in her mind she'll be published or else! And then befriends that same whippersnapper when she half-way accuses him of witholding key pieces of survivor literature from the Catholic public. I'd take my hat off to this gentleman, if I were wearing one.

Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 7:29 am
Subject:
To: michelle.stevenson1@pcc.edu

> Ah, now, prayers on you. And what I mean by prayers had nothing
> to do
> with religion and everything to do with the honey and salt of human
> beans. Brian

Brian,

My stomach is churning. I'm sitting in the middle of a lawfirm, twiddling my thumbs, listening to lawyers talk.

Argh. This is hard. Five more hours. Settle or no, I get out of here in five more hours. And 19 minutes.

-Michelle

Do not grind your teeth. Think about honey, sparrows, swallows, toothpaste, lilies, and why crawdads have one clipper bigger than the other. Steroids?

Small Beauties.

2009-04-05T11:50:00.002-06:00

I woke up this morning to the daily news on www.msn.com. Specifically this article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30046195 about mass shootings, crisis, the downturn of the economy, and American response to said crises. The name of the article is: Are Americans becoming numb to tragedy?

Of course we are! The more tragedy one endures, the more likelihood we will "get used to it" as if it were the norm. Sadly, tragedy is the norm.

But I take issue with such pessimism. No, you don't have to look far to find evil. Before the terrorism crisis and recession and Iraq war there were the silent battles, perhaps all the more insiduous for the way good people turned from these situations, ignoring cries of help. (This is not to poo-poo the very real, very undeniable crises facing our nation and our world. I always hated the argument "But evil is always around" as if its very normalcy creates a morality--a "but she's doing it" toddler-esque argument to make evil seem benign. Anything that puts to question the inherent value and preciousness of human beings is serious. Anything that causes somebody to be hurt, stumble, limp, that's serious.)

So all of this...information...creates a mountain of dump, and I just want to scream out and say, hello! People! Turn around! Behind the dump is a candyland. Go indulge yourselves.

Today I indulged myself. The softness of Iyla, a little 4-month old girl as she suckled at her formula, snug in grandma's arms. It brought me to tears! Such beauty!
Birds singing outside my apartment. The swoosh and bite of wind against my feet as I walked onto the balcony to watch children play on the grass hill outside. The hilarious, pretentious world of literary criticism and intellectually preening for my professor, so that he thinks I'm passing intelligent.

This is as much our lives as the dump. To deny one is to be lost.

Yellowstone Memories

2009-03-29T20:22:00.002-06:00

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.

Kanal by Wajda

2009-03-29T07:44:00.002-06:00

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.

It's Business Time

2009-03-25T11:46:00.001-06:00

Ahhhhh. Yeah. It's business time.

Albi, the Racist Dragon. I love this one!

Pedo Priest Video Game

2009-03-20T07:16:00.002-06:00

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/#

To Jeffers, who lets me weep freely.

2009-03-20T06:25:00.004-06:00

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

NoPo NoMo

2009-03-19T19:20:00.002-06:00

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.

In the Beginning.

2009-03-14T07:43:00.003-06:00

More Argh-Worthiness

2009-03-12T15:19:00.003-06:00

Yes, I'm 25 and still don't know my days of the week.

Argh-worthy

2009-03-04T16:47:00.005-07:00

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!

A new year.

2009-01-09T12:35:00.003-07:00

I am sitting at the kitchen table with wild-woman hair, pajama clad, drinking a lemon-lime slushie and having a late lunch of potato pierogi (that I made myself!!! Mrs. Hudak gave me the recipe).

It is blizzarding outside. Robert is playing computer games. I am ready to poke my head out of my funk, get back to work.

First, a shower. Then...applications.

I start school towards the end of March. I'm hoping to have a job, be completely moved to Ohio, and have a support system set up here by that time. It's a little worrying, I don't want to be so financially secure that I become a lazy body. NEVER!!! I'll definitely keep working, and working as hard as before.

Overs.

2009-01-07T22:47:00.004-07:00

There is so much that has happened in my life during the past six months. I know some relatives read this blog so I'll be blunt here about what my life has been.

Everyone in my old life knows I sued the Seventh-day Adventist church thanks to some heavyhanded investigators that called up nearly all my old friends and informed them. (And in some cases proceeded to harass and otherwise make miserable other individuals hurt by this subject matter.) Well, it's over. I'm saying that with a sigh of relief. It is. It's over.

My lawyer recommended I keep the amount and terms I settled for private, as I tend to be quite naive and hand out money left and right to whoever asks for it.

I won't ever go back to the East Salem SDA church. I was hurt there, badly. This part of my life is over and it needs to be.

Alot of my life is toppled, but from this lawsuit my parents and I are friends again. The things that were firm, those stood. Not to say the wobbly, toppled parts are all bad, but irrefutably they are toppled and out of my life for good reason: they hurt me.

I moved to Yellowstone in March to get away from the situation. I met a boy. His name is Robert. He has crooked teeth, a moustache, curly reddish, blonde hair and the nicest smile in the whole wide wild world. Robert and I had a whirlwind romance. I settled the case on December 5th, ten days before the trial was scheduled. Robert and I were married on the 19th. I wore my dream dress by Lena Medoyeff. It is embroidered and has a cowl neck. I wore daisies in my hair. I didn't cry. My mother and father were there and they cried. My little nephew gave Robert and I the rings. I kept hugging everyone. I smiled lots.

I bought my white dress with settlement money. It's my one splurge, and hugely ironic. I get the giggles every time I wear it, twirl, and kiss my husband while I'm in it. It makes me feel very clean and pretty.

Now I am in Ohio. I'll live here while going to Eastern Oregon University online. I also have a few wonderful friends who will look at my manuscripts and give me good advice on writing. I feel really blessed. I don't know where I'm going from here. I don't know. But I am financially secure and am married to the love of my life.

I know many in my religious family (and old group of friends) are concerned that I am no longer "with Jesus." I haven't left the church to prove anything or because of God or whatever. I left because I could no longer stay. As I said in my deposition, "You don't stay with an abuser, Mr. Whittemore."

Because I have been so badly hurt by religion I ask my deeply religious, amazing, loving, sweet family and incredible friends to understand that this is something private. It's something in my life that's been fucked with, and I ask that those who love me keep their distance regarding my religion or lack of it.

I don't know how much I'll write in this, but I wanted to wave hello.

Hello, hello to those I love.

Rosy

2008-06-28T08:00:00.001-06:00

I had never been to Roosevelt before, only read about it in a crinkly mothball book by the area’s namesake: Theodore Roosevelt. I remember the book because it was the finest: first edition, first printing, gold rimmed, bound in leather, etchings of the brawn, hilly bear country faded yellow from years of sun. I bought the book at an auction, read it, then sold it for profit. I don’t regret selling it—now that I have seen the real Roosevelt I don’t need the sun-stained, gold-painted pictures, the real thing is too green-grassed, blue-skied, brown-barked, white-clouded to compare to any one copy, even the finest.

I stumbled into Rosy after a backcountry backpacking trip, shoulder-sore, sunburned, feet blister weary, and an hour too late for lunch. We were invited back for dinner in exchange for food coupons and were advised to take a hike in the meantime. Jim, the smiling chef, pointed us to Lost Lake trail.

We hiked from the cluster of employee housing down a rough road and past a bridge to a patchwork of switchbacks scaling the hillside. The trees burgeoned ragged; rustic like Roosevelt, trees hanging slack from the bone of earth like an old man’s dentures creaking and clacking. I could smell earth and green things sprouting up from the mold. Streams of sun escaped into the shade of trees creating ringlets of light in the shadow-path. This part of the trail was aesthetic the way an antique store is aesthetic.

Someone had hacked a second trail straight up from each switchback, this one was rough and strewn in sticks, all a-jumble. My friend Robert went straight up as I wobbled along the longer trail, tiptoe careful about my blisters gained from the backpacking trip. I stopped and leaned against tree, breathing hard. He waited for me at each turn, grinning, waiting in patches of sunlight.

After topping the hill and turning a few bends we hit Lost Lake, lily pads buried in blue sparkle, the trail alongside sprinkled heavily in mosquitoes and horse droppings. It had only taken us about 20 minutes to walk the .8 mile and so we went on, very slowly, waiting for the time to go and our meal to be ready.

There were rolling meadows liberally spotted in sunflowers, a snow run-off scar trickling down to the lake from the upper hills which encased our peaceful meadow. Though it’s been years since I have read or heard it, it brought to mind the 23rd Psalm, something Bible bound soft, not hard like Jeffers’ crags, cliffs, stones and hawks.

You lead me beside still waters, you nourish my soul. The classic love poem culled from nature, with all its woolly religious metaphors.

On the way back it was all downhill, a stern breeze snuffing at my hair. I ran the switchbacks, Robert slid down straight, on the heels of his boots.

Backpacking Trip

2008-06-28T07:51:00.002-06:00

My internet hasn't been working for awhile, which is why I haven't updated this as much as I want to. I write about my experiences in Word and then wait for a good internet day to email it to myself so I can run to the coffee house and post it online. I have pictures, and I can't wait to show them but that'll be awhile.

I.

Robert and I pack. I laugh at him when he packs his sewing kit. You never know, he tells me, with creased forehead. He places his Stetson sideways on his head, and binds his bags together onto his back. I tell him his back will hurt, and he disagrees. I’ve carried stuff before, he says importantly.

II.

The first mile on the Hellroaring Trail and a gray fox stands with pointed tail, looking at me as if I am about as interesting as a tree; as if he owns this forest, and I am nothing to him. He sniffs a prairie dog hole, puts a dainty fist out, and begins to dig. He sniffs some more. He has walked leisurely within touching distance of me. My camera is at the bottom of my bag, so I just grin at him like a big galoof.

III.

Robert’s back begins to ache and he concedes my baggage point. Next time, he says, I won’t bring the kitchen sink.

IV.

There is a plunking noise as we walk the trail, and I startle, back away. It’s a woodpecker. I see his tail wagging with each pound of beak against bark. I’m happy it’s not a bear.

V.

It is 4.2 miles to 2H8, these numbers are important. We count them, measure them on the map, circle in seconds the river with our swift fingers. Our backs and legs toddle after our fingers and minds, our lungs breathe hard, we sweat. We pause and use iodine with river water and a hot pink nalgene. I drink deep— my stomach gurgles and cramps. Walking and water doesn’t mix in large portions.

VI.

There are sunflowers everywhere and forget-me-nots hidden in the eddies of meadow soil. I remember bringing forget-me-nots to my dead grandmother and I think to myself that my grandmother’s blue eyes are sprouting from the ground, that she is watching me. I bend and touch the green leaves tenderly, swaying from weight of the pack and melancholy.

VII.

There are blood bones, stripped of skin, knobby on the jointed ends, just seconds from our camp site. I turn my head. I hate this part of nature. I prefer the pretty things. Robert digs in my bag and takes a picture of the skeleton. I look again, not able to close my eyes forever, drawn to the blood bones which sink to bleach and rock before me.

VIII.

Coyote Creek is glacier cold and fast like a buffalo on charge. I pour nalgenes of Coyote Creek over my head and scream so loudly from the cold I wake Robert who comes running. I stand barefooted in the dirt and rock with river in my hair, laughing my heart out. I scrub myself raw, then wrap myself into a sleeping bag, shivering.

IX.

In the morning I walk outdoors, still in my flower pajamas, and run right into two deer eating breakfast underneath my suspended backpack. I walk the stretch of the quiet meadow, enjoying the peace before I break camp and head back to civilization. I eat cranberries and listen to the birds. I wait for the sunrise.

God, or someone else.

2008-06-14T08:12:00.000-06:00

There is a boy outside my window who says he is Jesus. I am bigger than this, he proclaims, and knocks on the wooden stairs of the bunkhouse. I create. I am Jesus. I died on the cross.

He seemed so normal at first, your average run of the mill hippie from Nevada who had overdone on the acid hits. Now he is God, and he knocks on wood.

He sits in his bed and reads the Bible. He rocks back and forth. Sweet, he says, sweet. He goes out on the stairs to smoke his Marlboro Reds and talk about what he’s learned. The birds sing around him. There are jackrabbits.

If you do not have a body, Alan counters, you are dead.

I am alive, the boy says, always alive. It’s spirit.

It disturbs me, Robert says. He said: I am a judge. A judge of what? Robert asks. All mankind, the boy says.

How will you judge them?

By their hearts.

What if we are lacking?

Destroy them.

Vignettes

2008-06-14T08:04:00.000-06:00

I.

There is only now so I see everything in present tense. (Had is such a sad word; will have is greedy.)

Stacy, who is my housemate, drives to Old Faithful with Robert and I. I cram my bunny in the trunk of her car, and when we get there she kisses her boyfriend hard and sends us away. She is wearing a cowboy hat the last I see her, and smiling.

Robert and I rent a heritage cabin—the cheapest with discount. We laugh at the linens. I say I will dip them in mud and then send them to ourselves to receive and count with all the hundreds of other linens.

We plod in the snow, sinking to the waist, laughing. There is a phone booth in the middle of the snow and we sink down to it, to see if there is a dial tone. There is. I call my bank, I talk to the operator, I think of all the 1-800 numbers I could call on a whim.

II.

It is shadow dark and a coyote slinks past Old Faithful’s cone moments before she blows. I take ten pictures. They all come out black, like someone ran over it with a charcoal paintbrush shaped like a Rent an RV.

III.

The cabin is warm. We eat pop tarts and write. He sleeps in his sleeping bag, I take the bed and sleep medication.

IV.

We talk about Joseph Heller and bears in the morning. We see bear tracks and 3 geysers erupt. At Daisy we scream at tourists to walk on the board walk. I’m terrified I will see boiled tourist, camera melded to their blistered fists. “Natural selection,” Robert mumbles and grins at the ground.

On the way an old man with a polished cane nods his head at us. He flings his cane around like it’s an accessory, not a tool. I think about Thornstein Veblen and laugh, I wonder what Veblen would say about geysers and National Parks and tourists.

V.

Stacy gets glared at by tourists as she gases around a bison. “It’s a bison, idiots, you’re in Yellowstone, move along.” Stacy used to be a taxi cab driver from Brooklyn. She tells about it. “You’d have to be dead, not to have stories as a cab driver.” She thinks a little to herself and laughs.
I tell my hitching stories. Stacy tells her story about the drunk guy who jacked off in her car. “I stabbed him in the stomach with a carpenter’s hole punch, shoved him out, and laughed as he stood there, holding his stomach in one hand, dick in the other. Now every time he tries to take care of himself he’ll get a pain in his belly and he’ll remember me. That’s right, remember me.”

VI.

I walk with a friend up a hill and roll down. We stand at the bottom, heaving for breath and smiling.

VII.

I wear my ski mask out hitching, to see how long it will take someone to pick me up. It takes two SUV’s, two minutes.

“Now young lady, try that in summer,” someone dares me.

VIII.

I walk to a graveyard with Robert, and he steals a flower for me. I won’t take it.

It’s his, I say, and point at the slab of granite.

He’s giving it to you, Robert says. It came up out of the rocks. It wasn’t planted there on purpose. You’re not stealing.

I melt, put the flower in my hair.

IX.

At four in the morning the birds are singing and flapping their wings against the trailer full of laundry. Robert and I sit on the steps for break, breathing in sunrise. All we do, we tell each other bitterly, is work, work, work.

We want to go explore, we hate the laundry.

Robert puts in 82.55 hours. I do his time sheet and stare, and call his supervisor up to verify. Yeah, yeah. 82.55 hours. He hardly slept.

X.

When everything else is fluid and flexible I cling to the sturdy books, I can always rely on books. I get a job at the video store to get away from my head, and the things I can’t face. I don’t want to think, I tell a friend. Leave me alone.

I work from 4 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon at the laundry as a secretary. Then I work at the video store until 9. I read about wolves at the video store and wait for something to grab me up, and drag me into what passes for heaven.

I read. I keep waiting. Sometimes I think I’m not being dragged to paradise, but out of my own skin.

In the Arctic Eskimos will kill a wolf by hiding a knife under snow with a dab of seal or elk blood. The wolf, frenzied, will lick himself to shreds. In books about the Wolf Project the writers ponder why wolves are so hated. Maybe because they’re so much like humans, they theorize.

The scientists reintroducing wolves name with numbers, all the wolves are consecutive to each other, one and two and three and four, captured in Canada, let loose in Yellowstone. The higher numbers are more recent. They’re Yellowstone born.

A man with a red beard comes into the video store and says he’s with the Wolf Project. He rubs his hands together. I can’t wait to get back to work, he tells me. He rents the First season of Alias for his wife. I get back to my reading, the reading howls.

2008-05-08T15:22:00.001-06:00

This bit of a poem makes my heart ache...

O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.

Self Portrait--not quite DaVinci

2008-04-29T22:16:00.003-06:00

My housemate nearly died laughing when she saw me taking pictures of myself. (That is so myspace. What, are you too dumb to use the camera timer?)

I guess the timer does work.

Hitching around in Yellowstone.

2008-04-29T18:09:00.002-06:00

Okay so I don't know WHAT this waterfall is called, but it's so pretty.
Again. Wow.
Sky, sky, sky.
And sky.
Newborn calf outside my window. He was looking right at me with his beautiful eyes and golden fur. Look at those spindly legs!

Free Box Cont.

2008-04-29T17:56:00.003-06:00

I'm a tootsie roll!
This shirt I'm planning on keeping.
Without the ski mask/with a double chin. And I technically did take one without the layers of pants, but you don't get to see those.

So you don't think I look like an ogre alllllllll the time, just 99.9% of the time.

Free Box.

2008-04-29T17:46:00.004-06:00

I raided the free box in the dorm lobby. The goal was to put all the free stuff on and then head over to the Blue Goose to see how many toothless, gross men would STILL give me money to gamble and buy me drinks.
Off with the XL.
Yes, I know I look like an overweight elk-hunter here.
These long johns belonged to somebody's husband.
This shirt belonged to my housemate.

2008-04-27T19:47:00.003-06:00

Stupid Questions Tourists Have Asked At Yellowstone National Park

At what elevation do the deer become elk?

When do they turn Old Faithful on?

Are they going to cart all the snow out?

Actual complaint filed against Xanterra, whom I work for: They aren't grooming and caring for the animals well enough.

How do you get the bells on the bears? (Asked at the tourist shop about the bear bells used to keep bears away from tourists.)

Is Yellowstone closed because of the volcano?

Is there a volcano in Yellowstone?

Where do they keep all the animals?

What time does the park close?

2008-04-25T17:14:00.003-06:00

Housemates to Make Me Laugh.

2008-04-24T19:39:00.003-06:00

I had had a terrible day. Then I came home and my eternally sarcastic housemate, Stacy, insisted I be happy. She took me to the Food Farm where I bought DiGornio's frozen pizza, and asparagus. I made us all a meal, but forgot to take the cardboard off the frozen pizza. I will never live this down. I'll just continue to remind her of the time she put chili powder on her oatmeal instead of cinammon.

The pizza was great, everyone liked it, and they threw mushrooms and doughy centers onto my plate (dude, guys, my plate is not a basketball hoop).
And here's Leona, laughing.

The Boiling River Part Two.

2008-04-21T21:41:00.002-06:00

I finally have my pictures uploaded. I've decided it's mandatory to post bad swimsuit pictures in truthful blogs about adventures in Yellowstone. I chose the one where it looks like I'm falling over.
And the sweetest boy in the world, who I spent a lovely day sitting in pond scum and boiling in blizzards with. Hurray for hitching in a blizzard!
And this is my very own bed, where I curl up when the going gets sour.

The Boiling River.

2008-04-20T18:30:00.002-06:00

Yes. This post is titled The Boiling River.

The earth was dusted in a film of snow when I got up. Leona looked out the window, looked at me, and said, "My goodness girl, you aren't going out, are you?" When I answered in the affirmative she shook her head and tut-tutted.

It was blizzarding when I entered the park, and I had no problem getting rides. I'm a girl, I look cold, people will stop. I went up to Mammoth for my friend Billy (who is an absolute sweetie, I met him in The Blue Goose a couple weeks ago, while he was coordinating an AA meeting). He was still a lump in his bed, and I could hear him groaning as his (very Mormon) roommate looked at me as if I was crazy.

But we went anyway! I have to run, I have the pictures on my computer and they aren't downloading, I think something is wrong with my snapfish account. Be back. Writing group. Bye.

Nothing to do with Yellowstone.

2008-04-19T11:03:00.002-06:00

I am an Oregonian and will always be an Oregonian. I have fled to Montana for personal reasons but keep an obsessional eye on certain Oregon news, knowing that one day I will return to the greener, wetter land of my childhood. Of particular note lately is the archdiocese of Portland's proclaimed "transparency"; Archbishop Vlazny's words and silences and his legal counsel's spin on the rather strange release of 20,000 new, largely irrelevant, documents of confidential personnel files after a year of balking.

There is so much to say about this, and so much is being said about this that for me, circling the outskirts of this circus on a blog about my happy adventures in Yellowstone seems out of context. But you see, I'm obsessional and I'm pissed off at Archbishop Vlazny. So I'll talk about what I darn well please, and it would be an outrage for me, who loves the Catholic church and at one time considered converting, to remain silent when I'm as righteously angry as I am right now.

This is my turf, my blog, and I'll say here with a nod and love to those who may or may not read this blog who are Catholic and trust Vlazny, that Vlazny is a coward and liar, a brilliant and "baffling" liar, who, through a revered, religious medium, has revictimized those who were raped, sodomized, and disgustingly fondled in the Catholic church by priests and others.

In his most recent statement on www.archdiocesedocuments.org he calls into doubt that many of those who brought claim were telling the truth. "...many claimants received payment even though their claim could not be verified...the release of personnel files in such uncertain circumstances would serve no proper goal."

As far as Vlazny's statement that "other documents are not being released because living priests (or former priests) object to further disclosure" and that he respects that right, he fails to mention that the priest Laughlin, an admitted abuser with a bad habit of lying, is currently in a "multi-million" dollar lawsuit for molestation and that is why he doesn't want anything released. Another point of note-the archdiocese is also named in those multi-million dollar lawsuits, the archdiocese's legal counsel has attempted to force the claimants to reveal their identity and that this hardball legal action is what prompted the plaintiff's attorneys to "accuse" and walk out of negotiation on the release of documents.

Dulcich, a shareholder with Schwabe, Williamson, and Wyatt, seems, along with Bud Bunce, to be the main spokesperson in a recent article by Ashbel S. Green in the Oregonian. Quote: "You wonder if there is some other agenda on the part of the people who continue to complain about the archdiocese as it continues to release thousands of documents."

Knowing very little about Dulcich as a human being I'll refrain from commenting on that, but I will comment on Schwabe, Williamson, and Wyatt's legal tactics, utilizing their own words in response to a therapist's letter to the archdiocese regarding symptoms of anxiety a gentleman endured resulting from his abuse at the hands of a Father Goodrich (part of the first batch of released documentation in 2007):

"Please be advised that my client considers it extremely inappropriate that you have mentioned Father Goodrich by name in the letter. Neither the alleged abuser's occupation, nor certainly his name are relevant to the issues addressed in your letter." http://www.archdiocesedocuments.org/uploads/PD_0027-0030.pdf

Well, Mr. Dulcich, and "Most Revered" Archbishop Vlazny you and I both know that this is legal maneuvering and hardball tactics against both attorneys and the victims of clergy sexual abuse they represent. Cut the bullshit. I believe the victims, and I stand with them and will no matter the cost. There are those of us who will never give up on this fight, no matter the false aspersions and shadows you cast.

The Life of Yellowstone Lodge bedding.

2008-04-17T21:46:00.004-06:00

I had a horrific day, and by lunch was stomping around the apartment and crying in the bathroom, trying to call friends back home. That having failed I melodramatically threw open the window and shoved my phone out the window, then sat down and had seven bean soup I'd had boiling in the crockpot. My housemates both peered out at the backyard, where I was told a jackrabbit was sniffing my phone with curiosity.

Back in the office I had the opportunity to enter one of the washing machines on the floor: the tunnel, which is the size of a semi (something only managers are allowed). Bob, the maintenance supervisor, lowered me in by cable and harness. There is a huge chute and, being the girl I am, I decided to slide down head first, and cracked my head on a steel rib in the machine. I started laughing hysterically while Daniel, the guy guiding me through advised feet first might be best.

It was like spelunking in a metal cave, shimmying up the ribs and tunnels--all eight of them. The head engineer could hear me laughing from the outside as I slipped and tripped my way through to the basin.

Later I was sexually harassed by a 60-some year old maintenance man (which two other coworkers witnessed and were fuming about). (Sure would like a hardworking, ballsy girl like you. I'm a man with a capital M. You can't expect me to be faithful. I'm a pervert--this accompanied by a lascivious smile, eyes glued to my Xanterra-badged breasts.) I HATE men like that. Anxious, at the end of the day I crawled under my covers with my stuffed bunny and Szymborska and went to sleep until a friend rousted me for another writing meeting/pity party.

The following is what I wrote:

I can’t write because the sun is shining or the snow is blowing or my head is hurting or the cat is hungry. I can’t write because my big toe hurts when I stubbed it pulling out my laptop. I can’t write because I don’t have my laptop. I can’t write because the smell of smoke and the loud noise in the bar. I can’t write because I am tired and there are things to do. I can’t write because the plant needs watering, the dishes need scrubbed, my head won’t slow down.

I can’t write because there is something inside me that shrinks, that goes to sleep when I pull out the computer. I can’t write because it isn’t perfect, it isn’t right, because I’m not Hemingway or Goethe or Stafford or Szymborska. Because I’m not David Duncan, because I can’t make my words sing, or laugh. I can’t write because if I do, if I do write, my insides would be on the outside, my heart would beat to the wind and air, it would throb and cling, because, let me say this, my words would be bathed in blood.

Slowa we krwi, the Polish say. Words immersed in blood. I keep words on the inside, until a pen stabs it out and my hands are fingerpainting my heart, my life, my soul.

And why do I write? Because I have to, because my soul would die without breath, without beat. I write because the cat is hungry, my friend is sad, my head is hurting, because the sun is shining, because I can draw that sun shinier with my typing, I can Xerox my backside with my bloody words and can post it anonymously to the bulletin board and make my friend smile.

I write because my heart would explode with the backlog of blood, it would be too full if I didn’t leak myself out on paper, and bathe my words in breath and heart, with blood.

Pretty Pictures

2008-04-14T18:55:00.003-06:00

I am just learning blogger.com so I haven't figured out how to mix prose with pictures in an aesthetic way. I'm going to give you the pictures, then the prose. Alot of places are closed off right now in Mammoth because there was an avalanche over the winter, one that was pretty close to liberty cap. I finally made it to the Visitor Center when it was open this weekend and made sure I wouldn't be committing a federal crime to disregard Trail Closed signs. They said it wasn't, but to stay close to where the boardwalk usually is. I went ahead and hiked on up. I didn't go all the way because I'm not knowledgable about where the thermal ground is bound to break, but it was beautiful.
You can see here that the snow is higher than the railing.
The springs looked otherworldly.
My first words upon this sight were, "Oh wow. Wow!"

2008-04-14T18:08:00.002-06:00

This post is an ode to my old job, at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. The exhibition is "Touching Warms the Art" and when the going was slow I'd don the jewelry and take pictures of myself like a narcissist. It makes me laugh. These are a few.
My coworkers and I. Hello everyone! I miss you! I hope your new security guard works out.
I kind of like this one.
I was trying to primp myself since I was wearing curlers, after all. It doesn't quite work with the badge, though. A few of my coworkers tried to convince me to put my badge in the exhibition and see if people would try it on. I got bored enough to try and take it off. I tugged at it for a good hour and ripped a fingernail trying for this practical joke. Then, surrendered back to sudoku.
This is the sweetest picture in the world, taken on Valentines Day. The exhibition was boarded on hooks and four organic-looking, artsy cardboard tables, where the visitors could touch and feel and try on low-cost jewelry created by famous artists. They could take pictures of themselves with a Mac computer (which is what I did all the time).

A gentleman came in and asked if he could put an engagement ring in there for Valentines, and ask his girlfriend to marry him. The administrators said yes and he did it without a glitch. My coworkers watched the whole thing over the security cameras.

She said yes. Isn't this the sweetest proposal and cutest picture? I smile each time I look at it.

Writing Exercise.

2008-04-14T17:45:00.001-06:00

The following is from an exercise the writing group in Gardiner did: write as much as you can in ten minutes, stream of conciousness, about the word spring.

I am wearing white stockings in my dreams, with little pink hearts embroidered measured half inches from each other. They leave marks on my legs, like pillows do. I have hearts ironed onto my little girl legs in my dreams.

In my boots walking to Beaver Ponds I remember this dream, and where it came from, the delicacy of stained glass in church, the cathedral light, the upward swings of ceilings, the discomfort of pantyhose riding to my crotch. I compare it now to the dust, rock, silted snow, the old buffalo, laying his head to the pinched, hopeful grass, watching me beneath his helmet of horn and fur. When I walk the boot zipper makes a small imprint on my leg, progressing into a blister. I let it pop and ooze, wait for the callous, and it has come today, after a week of walking and waiting.

Further down the road there is a snow drift and I fall thigh-high, and do as Fireman Friendly advised to do in case of fire, stop, drop, roll, and doggie paddle my way to the spring grass. The snow is melting and mixing with dirt, a wonderland of desert. It cakes to the seam of my leg. I laugh. My hands are numb and when I pat a poodle named Oliver outside the Visitor Center, after I give up snow-swimming, I can’t feel his curls. I put on my mittens.

Plans for this next weekend

2008-04-07T20:32:00.002-06:00

I got alot closer to this guy than this picture shows, but this shot pictures Gardiner pretty darn perfectly. So it's this one I'm showing.
Welcome to Yellowstone!

I'm exhausted and ready to curl up with a good book. I've been through the dullest manager meetings ever today. I guess, by nature, these meetings are supposed to be boring. But usually they're in the middle of the city, not in the middle of Yellowstone National Park with the sky whining at the window, begging for me to come out and play.

I ended up hitching out to Mammoth again, even though I wasn't planning on it, it just sort of happened. I wasn't even thumbing it this time. I walked further out on the terrace and climbed on top of snow mountains.

My plan this weekend is to go skinny dipping in the boiling part of the river, and bundle up in my hat and scarf on the few miles back, clutching my flashlight in gloved hand. It will be dark, starry, perfect. It might even snow.

More Pictures

2008-04-07T20:20:00.002-06:00

This reminded me of a blood spatter.
This tree is hardened by the calcium from the springs, hardened into rock for eternity. I wonder if someday it might be sand on a beach, or if it's the tree-equivalent of a tree-mummy, if really trees had souls.
It was snowing today, and I got a few free spatter free moments.
The view made me gasp. My housemate (I have two, this one, her name is Stacy and she's from New York) was showing me her pictures and mine are nothing like hers, but it still made me gasp and I took a picture because it was all mine.
Bison and mountain. I kept trying to creep closer but was afraid of being gored to death. This was as close as I got. I have to figure out the zoom on my new camera.

Picture for my father.

2008-04-07T19:49:00.003-06:00

Okay Dad. I stole this one for you. Aren't you proud? (My housemate took it in October 2006.)

Here in Yellowstone

2008-04-06T21:39:00.002-06:00

Leona, my housemate.
Yellowstone River. I walk down in the dark and look at the black bowl of a sky, and smile at the jewels in the sky. Wow. I wish I could take a good picture of that.
The sky snagged me, reminded me of Szymborska's poem, I swear it looks like I imagine God to look from where I stand.

We should have started from this: the sky.
A window without a sill, frame, or pane.
An opening and nothing more,but open wide.

I need not wait for a clear night
nor crane my neck to examine the sky.
I have the sky at my back, at hand, and on my eyelids.
The sky wraps me snugly
and lifts me from below.

Even the highest mountains
are no nearer the sky than the deepest valleys.
There is no more sky in one place
than another.
A cloud is crushed by sky as ruthlessly as a grave.
A mole is as enraptured
as a wing-fluttering owl.
A object falling into a precipice
falls from the sky into sky.
Granular, liquid, craggy,fiery and volatile
expanses of sky, crumbs of sky,puffs and snatches of sky.
The sky is omnipresent even in darkness under the skin.

I eat sky, I excrete sky.
I am a trap inside a trap,
an inhabited inhabitant,
an embraced embrace,
a question in answer to a question.
To divide earth and sky
is not the correct way
to consider this whole.
It merely allows survival
under a more precise address,
quicker to be found
if I were to be looked up.
My call words are delight and despair.
Bison by my house, on the way home from the post office.

Liberty Cap
Hot Spring in the Snow.

Mammoth Hot Spring Chapel (what a pretty building!)

My housemate is a 70-year old woman from Sicily Island, Louisiana. She's the Distribution Manager at Gardiner Laundry. She talks in a twang like my grandmother did, and it makes me miss grandma. I cook Leona suppers of potatoes and onions and tomatoes to remember grandma. Leona puts ketchup on everything.

I go out hitching to Mammoth today, on Sunday. I walk from the arch to the check-in station before two men pick me up. They've been in Yellowstone since I was born.

"Forever, for me," I say to them.

"I guess," one laughs. "Makes me feel old.

The air is cold in Mammoth Hot Springs and my face goes numb. I walk out to the terrace. I smile so hard, so long, my face hurts.

On the way back I ride in a yellow jeep with a man from Bozeman. His name is Jeff and he's a land surveyor. Isn't this so pretty, I keep saying. Yep, yep, he always replies. Oh wow, I say. I feel so lucky.

The Trip

2008-04-06T19:59:00.003-06:00

Leg One of Trip

I leave. The Greyhound passes a Hooters as we leave Portland city limits. A thin yellow-haired man sitting next to a pregnant woman says he wants to stop, go in. The Canadian sitting in front of him laughs and makes a joke about owls. I stare out the window.

The world changes around me, up and down hills and mountains, flat along smooth ground like a snake, belly of the bus growling. In Olympia an old man with food in his beard sits next to me. You look like an ex-girlfriend, he says. And I need to drink because my medicine makes me a cottonmouth. You sure are good looking.

I hope you're not going to hit on me all the way to Seattle, I tell him. Because that would make me really uncomfortable.

He stops. Morose, he stares glumly at the aisle. I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable, he finally says, then he launches into stories of carnivals. I'm a carnival worker he says. Most of the time I make money. But once, oh man, oh man, these two girls, they looked so little and sweet, but they were the best pitchers in the state of You-Tah and they pitched a whirlwind. They pitched from far away and hit all the cans. Man oh man, my boss sure was mad. I'm s'posed to make twenty bucks a stuffed animal, see. Man oh man, I almost lost my job.

It is Seattle now and the whole world looks like a carnival, the electric gleaming like a foreign, comfortable moon stuffed into the crevice of the earth.

Leg Two of Trip

I swill sleeping pills and lean my head against the seat in front of me. When I wake we are in St. Regis and my hair looks like a bird's nest. It smells of dust and sweat, a white chalk covers the downtown boardwalk.

I buy two quarts of water and split blueberry pancakes at a cafe with a gentle red-haired woman wearing glasses and a blue fleece. She begins to weep when I ask her questions. I hold her hand over the butter and we exchange numbers, smiles, and I tell her I would love to, someday, take a two-month trip on the Greyhound and listen to people's stories.

"Oh, Michelle!" she says. "Take a tape recorder! Half of us belong in the insane asylum."

A grinning, long-haired man in a dress wins fifty gambling, he holds it up triumphant on the way back into the bus.

An older woman with freckles and skin colored like whole wheat flax bread sits next to me when I invite her. "I've slept now," I tell her, "Sit next to me." She was sitting next to a bald, large, red man with two black eyes, and she begins to tear up as she sits next to me.

"He looks like the man who killed my eighteen-year old girl," she tells me. "Thank you." The man, across from us, hears her, and jerks, frowns with sad eyes over at us then turns quickly back to the window. I touch the woman's hand. I give her my cabbage patch doll pillow, I pour her water.

It was a hate crime, she says. He just didn't like Indians.

I have family that was raised on the reservation, I tell her. I've heard about it, the sad things. I'm sorry. It was cruel and mean and pointless, I tell her, near to tears, I'm so sorry. (I don't know what to say.)

I tell her my story about the church, I tell her there are those of us who are fighting back for justice. She cries and hugs me, shows me pictures of her grandchildren, the gifts she bought for them in Spokane. The big bald red man reaches across the aisle and leans back her chair for her when she says her back hurts. She shivers a little and looks at him, vulnerable. He doesn't meet her eyes, keeps his gaze trained to the floor. His big hands are gentle and then he turns back to the window. It's a sweet, careful moment, and I savor it.

I always wanted to raise a bird, Diana tells me, and after my daughter was murdered a little bird came to me. She followed me around everywhere, she perched on my shoulder. And then she flew away, and I knew my daughter's spirit had flown away, too. My daughter knew I needed that, see.

She gets off in Missoula and I hug her long in the aisle, pray in my way for her as she leaves, hope safeness and blessings on her.

When I get off in Bozeman the red-haired girl runs after me as I drag my suitcase into a snow drift, across the road. She hugs me hard. "Don't forget me," she whispers in my ear.

I couldn't.

It's such a wild and sweet world, I don't know what to make of it.