Our Elizabeth sent the following article to me, and I am sad to say that I could not agree more. All of this is true, undeniably so, but it is not too late to recover. It is not too late for us to show, if not through our Government and Administrators and Leaders, then through our nation of individuals, the people who REALLY matter, the people who REALLY make this country what it is, what it is SUPPOSED to be - that we can be better than those terrorists who - for whatever reason - committed the horrors of September 11. We can make a change, we can make a difference. We can do our damndest to heal the wounds of our own country and of the world. I know that 99% of the people I am close to (actually that number is false, I am close to only one person who defends this war) are sorry for what happened to us on that horrible early fall morning in 2001, and that we are sorry for all of the horrors committed since then - theirs and ours.
You may feel helpless and hopeless in the face of this huge mess, but the little candles that we each light in the darkness combine to make a light so bright that nothing can hide from it.
Love the whole world. It needs it, and it feels it.
I promise that this is true, because I experience this every day.
Sometimes standing up and speaking out are far more powerful than fighting.
Keep trying to make change, people. The future of the whole world depends on it.
-s
(I think that I may send a copy of this article to Mr. Bush as my letter for today, just in case he hasn't had a chance to read it yet.):

The War is Lost
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 10 May 2004

We have traveled a long, dark, strange road since the attacks of September 11. We have all suffered, we have all known fear and anger, and sometimes hatred. Many of us have felt - probably more than we are willing to admit it - at one time or another a desire for revenge, so deep was the wound inflicted upon us during that wretched, unforgettable Tuesday morning in September of 2001.

But we have come now to the end of a week so awful, so terrible, so wrenching that the most basic moral fabric of that which we believe is good and great - the basic moral fabric of the United States of America - has been torn bitterly asunder.

We are awash in photographs of Iraqi men - not terrorists, just people - lying in heaps on cold floors with leashes around their necks. We are awash in photographs of men chained so remorselessly that their backs are arched in agony, men forced to masturbate for cameras, men forced to pretend to have sex with one another for cameras, men forced to endure attacks from dogs, men with electrodes attached to them as they stand, hooded, in fear of their lives.

The worst, amazingly, is yet to come. A new battery of photographs and videotapes, as yet unreleased, awaits over the horizon of our abused understanding. These photos and videos, also from the Abu Ghraib prison, are reported to show U.S. soldiers gang raping an Iraqi woman, U.S. soldiers beating an Iraqi man nearly to death, U.S. troops posing, smirks affixed, with decomposing Iraqi bodies, and Iraqi troops under U.S. command raping young boys.

George W. Bush would have us believe these horrors were restricted to a sadistic few, and would have us believe these horrors happened only in Abu Ghraib. Yet reports are surfacing now of similar treatment at another U.S. detention center in Iraq called Camp Bucca. According to these reports, Iraqi prisoners in Camp Bucca were beaten, humiliated, hogtied, and had scorpions placed on their naked bodies.

In the eyes of the world, this is America today. It cannot be dismissed as an anomaly because it went on and on and on in the Abu Ghraib prison, and because now we hear of Camp Bucca. According to the British press, there are some 30 other cases of torture and humiliation under investigation. The Bush administration went out of its way to cover up this disgrace, declaring secret the Army report on these atrocities. That, pointedly, is against the rules and against the law. You can’t call something classified just because it is embarrassing and disgusting. It was secret, but now it is out, and the whole world has been shown the dark, scabrous underbelly of our definition of freedom.

The beginnings of actual political fallout began to find its way into the White House last week. Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the House Democrats’ most vocal defense hawk, joined Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to declare that the conflict is "unwinnable." Murtha, a Vietnam veteran, rocked the Democratic caucus when he said at a leader’s luncheon Tuesday that the United States cannot win the war in Iraq.

"Unwinnable." Well, it only took about 14 months.

Also last week, calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld became strident. Pelosi accused Rumsfeld of being "in denial about Iraq," and said U.S. soldiers "are suffering great casualties and injuries, and American taxpayers are paying an enormous price" because Rumsfeld "has done a poor job as secretary of defense." Representative Charlie Rangel, a leading critic of the Iraq invasion, has filed articles of impeachment against Rumsfeld.

So there’s the heat. But let us consider the broader picture here in the context of that one huge word: "Unwinnable." Why did we do this in the first place? There have been several reasons offered over the last 16 months for why we needed to do this thing.

It started, for real, in January 2003 when George W. Bush said in his State of the Union speech that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX, 30,000 munitions to deliver this stuff, and that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger to build nuclear bombs.

That reason has been scratched off the list because, as has been made painfully clear now, there are no such weapons in Iraq. The Niger claim, in particular, has caused massive embarrassment for America because it was so farcical, and has led to a federal investigation of this White House because two administration officials took revenge upon Joseph Wilson’s wife for Wilson’’s exposure of the lie.

Next on the list was September 11, and the oft-repeated accusation that Saddam Hussein must have been at least partially responsible. That one collapsed as well - Bush himself had to come out and say Saddam had nothing to do with it.

Two reasons down, so the third must be freedom and liberty for the Iraqi people. Once again, however, facts interfere. America does not want a democratic Iraq, because a democratic Iraq would quickly become a Shi’ite fundamentalist Iraq allied with the Shi’ite fundamentalist nation of Iran, a strategic situation nobody with a brain wants to see come to pass. It has been made clear by Paul Bremer, the American administrator of Iraq, that whatever the new Iraqi government comes to look like, it will have no power to make any laws of any kind, it will have no control over the security of Iraq, and it will have no power over the foreign troops which occupy its soil. This is, perhaps, some bizarre new definition of democracy not yet in the dictionary, but it is not democracy by any currently accepted definition I have ever heard of.

So...the reason to go to war because of weapons of mass destruction is destroyed. The reason to go to war because of connections to September 11 is destroyed. The reason to go to war in order to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq is destroyed.

What is left? The one reason left has been unfailingly flapped around by defenders of this administration and supporters of this war: Saddam Hussein was a terrible, terrible man. He killed his own people. He tortured his own people. The Iraqis are better off without him, and so the war is justified.

And here, now, is the final excuse destroyed. We have killed more than 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in this invasion, and maimed countless others. The photos from Abu Ghraib prison show that we, like Saddam Hussein, torture and humiliate the Iraqi people. Worst of all, we do this in the same prison Hussein used to do his torturing. The "rape rooms," often touted by Bush as justification for the invasion, are back. We are the killers now. We are the torturers now. We have achieved a moral equivalence with the Butcher of Baghdad.

This war is lost. I mean not just the Iraq war, but George W. Bush's ridiculous "War on Terror" as a whole.

I say ridiculous because this "War on Terror" was never, ever something we were going to win. What began on September 11 with the world wrapping us in its loving embrace has collapsed today in a literal orgy of shame and disgrace. This happened, simply, because of the complete failure of moral leadership at the highest levels.

We saw a prime example of this during Friday’s farce of a Senate hearing into the Abu Ghraib disaster which starred Don Rumsfeld. From his bully pulpit spoke Senator Joe Lieberman, who parrots the worst of Bush’s war propaganda with unfailingly dreary regularity. Responding to the issue of whether or not Bush and Rumsfeld should apologize for Abu Ghraib, Lieberman stated that none of the terrorists had apologized for September 11.

There it was, in a nutshell. There was the idea, oft promulgated by the administration, that September 11 made any barbarism, any extreme, any horror brought forth by the United States acceptable, and even desirable. There was the institutionalization of revenge as a basis for policy. Sure, Abu Ghraib was bad, Mr. Lieberman put forth. But September 11 happened, so all bets are off.

Thus fails the "War on Terror." September 11 did not demand of us the lowest common denominator, did not demand of us that we become that which we despise and denounce. September 11 demanded that we be better, greater, more righteous than those who brought death to us. September 11 demanded that we be better, and in doing so, we would show the world that those who attacked us are far, far less than us. That would have been victory, with nary a shot being fired.

Our leaders, however, took us in exactly the opposite direction.

Every reason to go to Iraq has failed to retain even a semblance of credibility. Every bit of propaganda Osama bin Laden served up to the Muslim world for why America should be attacked and destroyed has been given credibility by what has taken place in Iraq. Victory in this "War on Terror," a propaganda war from the beginning, has been given to the September 11 attackers by the hand of George W. Bush, and by the hand of those who enabled his incomprehensible blundering.

The war is lost.

in case any of you want to know how the letter writing is going, well, here is my third offering. i just want you all to know that i am not being ugly. i am trying to be both honest and kind.
if you want to know how the faire is going - it's wonderful. today was most excellent, and the wedding truly was lovely.

and now i am veryvery sleepy.
goodnight - and god(dess) bless us all.
-s

"Hello, Mr. Bush.

Sam Lovelace again.
I work for an organization that puts on a small festival every year, the proceeds from which go to help local charities. It's kind of a "historical faire" (medieval to Elizabethan times). This year, we also hosted the actual wedding of a young couple as a part of the festival. It was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny, even though it called for rain. The wedding was lovely and the festival went well.
I only thought of the horrors of this war a few times today. Unfortunately, I also spoke of them once, without thinking, though fortunately in a relatively appropriate place and time, and my graceful friends and coworkers seemed to understand, and forgive me. Being Southern sometimes seems like a grace itself, doesn't it?

I came home tonight, tired and sunburned a little, but I still had to prepare for tomorrow. There was some laundry and mending to do, dinner, and preparing tomorrow's things for the kids and pets - you know. It was a relatively peaceful day. I thought I might even skip writing to you, because I was tired, and my mind was not as troubled as it has been ( 'busy hands...' ). But I thought I might at least check my email, and when I opened my web-browser, this was the headline that greeted me.
"U.S. battles militia in Iraq; 5 GIs die"

Now I have to go to sleep, and then face tomorrow. And so do you, and so do the surviving soldiers, and the families of the dead, and all the people, all over the world, who are trying to face what's happening to all of us.
God(dess), bless us all.

-Sam Lovelace"

Hey, all.
First I want to give y'all this year's goose update.
For those of you who don't know, there is a little pond just down the road from my house, I pass it every day, at least twice a day. For the first couple of years here, the pond was unoccupied. Then one day I noticed a Canadian goose there. Soon, that goose had a friend, and for the next couple of years, it was just them. Before too long, one of the geese disappeared, and I feared the worst - until one spring day, I saw three little grey balls of fluff waddling around them and realized that they'd had goslings. I watched those goslings grow, though they soon lost one of the three. The other two spent the summer eating bugs and before fall, they looked just like their parents. The next spring, only two geese came back, and I worried, but then soon there were two more, and by the height of summer, they had a family reunion of SEVENTEEN geese! The next summer - last summer - there were lots of grown geese, but no babies. Then this year, as soon as spring began, I started looking for geese, but sadly, only one came. That one goose floated around alone for a couple of weeks, and then suddenly, one day, there was another. Then, the very next day, I looked for them and there were SIX teeny tiny, just hatched yellow goslings huddling near the parents! I've now watched those six grow for the last couple of weeks - and they are growing fast (they are all now the size of the first three I saw year before last, just before they lost #3). I check every day to make sure there are still six (holding my breath as I count) and there are. (I keep thinking that maybe, if all six get big enough, they'll all make it.) And this week, they had eight other big geese grandparents and aunts and uncles visiting them and their goose-parents.
In other - yesterday's rant-related - news, I had a really bad, sad night last night. I thought a lot about all of this that is bothering me, and before I settled down to paint (sleeping is pretty much out of the question unless I'm just too exhausted to move) I talked to Chris. I told him what was happening to me, and he suggested that I write a letter to George Bush every day. So, I am.
For those of you (silly people) who feel compelled to warn me not to say "certain things" (*sheesh*, HELLO. This is Sam, remember? I may be crazy, but I am not STUPID.) I have decided to print a copy of my first letter here. I also encourage you to write to him yourself. You may not want or need or be able to write every day, but even one letter may help.
His e-mail address is: president@whitehouse.gov, his mailing address is:
George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
and his phone numbers are:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
all of this information - as well as a lot of really stilted news - is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/
and here is my first letter:

"Hello, Mr. Bush.
My name is Sam (Samantha) Lovelace. I am a public librarian in a small town in the not-so-rural South.
I don't watch the t.v. news - I gave up t.v. eight years ago, because of my strong empathic response to the suffering of others. Since the Gulf War, the insurgence of "reality t.v." and shows about people being arrested and suffering natural disasters, as well as the graphic media coverage of my own cousin's violent death at the hands of serial killers [nine years ago tomorrow], I cannot help but imagine everything I see and hear and read in the news very viscerally. I imagine the faces, their fear before they died, I feel the grief of the families, I can smell the blood.
In my job, however, I do have to see all of the major newspapers each day as part of my job, and I read the news on the internet and listen to public radio. Needless to say, the things that I am now seeing and hearing every day (for a few years, now) have led to a lot of physical and emotional problems for me. Especially the way in which things in the Middle East and here have accelerated in the last few weeks. I have lost the ability to sleep at night, I can not eat meat anymore because the smell of it reminds me of death and blood, it has become difficult for me to drive because when I am alone anywhere I am overcome by grief and cannot see the road for crying. I have fibromyalgia, a condition which causes intense muscle pain throughout my body. This condition is worsened by stress and sleeplessness, so I am also living in constant pain. This is affecting my job, and needless to say, any kind of real social life is simply not possible. I want to try to make the most of each moment, enjoy the spring and the sun, but I can't do that any more either, because I feel so guilty that so many people are suffering. I hold my friends' children and I think: Will they have a world to grow up in? Will it all be destroyed by then? Will they even be free by the time they are grown?
I try to enjoy my food, and then I think of the father of Nicholas Berg, lying crumpled on the ground, held in the arms of his surviving son. I smell the odor of fresh blood, and I collapse, too.
So why am I writing to you about all of this? Well, for several reasons. First, I hope that I can convince you that I am not some 'over-sensitive liberal'. I grew up in a Republican household, Trent Lott visited us often when I was small, and when my grandfather was dying of cancer, he came to see him often, despite the fact that he was very busy in Washington. He is a kind man, who helped me as a grown woman, too. I am not a "party" person, I believe in voting for whoever has the good of the people - all the people that they affect - in mind and heart.
As for being sensitive, I feel as though what I am feeling is the correct thing. How anyone can shut out the pain of the world right now is beyond me. I wonder how anyone can sleep at night now. I am finding that my friends agree with me. They are waking up to the pain and misery that the world is feeling and they are all trying desperately to find some way to make a change. I myself, wish that I could put my arms around Michael Berg and tell him that I understand the way he feels. And then go to the homes of every grieving mother, father, wife, child, and do the same. I have family there, too, and every day, I fear that they will be shot, beheaded, tortured, and that my dear cousin and her children will be grieving this decision for the rest of their lives, too. I was part of the local "Veterans for Peace" vigil, where we all got together to read the names of all our deceased soldiers on the steps of our local t.v. station that had the gag order put on them by Sinclair. The station let us come and pray and read the names by candlelight. That list was so long, and I could imagine the former lives and families of each of those men and women.
Still none of this has been enough. My conscience is heavy, my heart is heavy, and I fear that we are reaching a point which, if we cross it, we can never go back. The world and the future of all my friends' children and the children I work with every day, and all the children of the world seems in terrible jeopardy. Instead of feeling that freedom is being defended, and that terrorism is being stomped out, we feel that an ancient vendetta (going on since before the Crusades) is continuing and that our friends and families and freedom are just the latest batch of casualties.
If this "eye for an eye" mentality continues, then soon the whole world will be blind.

The main reason that I am writing to you is that I need to feel that I am doing something - anything - to try to make a difference. My impotence over the situation and my own fears is too much for me. I cried to my boyfriend on the phone last night about my desperation, depression and exhaustion, and he suggested that I write to you, every day, if i needed to, until I felt better. You are the 'Big Dad' of this country, you are the man with the power over all of this, and you are the only one who can really make a change. It is not too late for you to still be a REAL hero, and try to make a sort of peace out of this horrible wreckage, it is not too late to save lives, and make amends to the families of the dead and injured. It is not too late to excise the cruel and blind from your cabinet and perhaps confer with some others on the matter. Maybe Mr. Lott would be a good man to talk to. I don't know. I am just a citizen, worried over the division of our nation and our world, worried over the loss of military and civilian lives, worried over the apparent downhill slide to a world war, one that we cannot recover from. I thought it would make me feel better if I talk to you about my concerns. My own father is dead, nine years now, or I might have talked to him about my fears, but you are the Father of this great Nation, and we have lost our trust in you. You can give that back.
It's not too late to try to make this right, or at least better. Please.
My Aunt Sue gave me this line from one of her favorite gospel songs, and I have decided to make it my mantra in all that I do toward this cause:
"Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."
Perhaps you will consider the same.
Sincerely,
-Sam Lovelace
samarei7@gmail.com"

God(dess) bless us, every one.
-sam

Hello, boys and girls.
Well, I was doing pretty good there for a while, but the news just keeps getting worse and worse, and so do I. I feel like my heart is just a dead lump of meat in my chest, my mind keeps trying to run from the thoughts and images, but there’s nowhere to go – and the hardcore realist in me* knows that you shouldn’t even TRY to hide from these things.
I keep trying to tell myself that there are still beautiful things in the world – and there are, and that things will change – and they will, but the hope of their really being anything left worth changing and being beautiful for seems slimmer every day.
My girlfriends and I recently played a game where you have to “therapize” your friends. One of my “therapy” questions involved everyone in the group trying to assess, on a scale of 1-10, how ‘hopeful’ I am. I had to write down my answer and then they had to all discuss their opinions among themselves, decide on an answer, and then see if it matched mine. The highest they were able to give me was a ‘4’ (they wavered between ‘2’ and ‘4’ for a while). When they asked what my answer was and I said a ‘10’, they were all surprised, but then when I explained that if it were anything LESS than a ‘10’, I’d be dead by now.
Well, Mr. Bush and his gory campaign are causing my outlook to dim considerably. It seems now that investigations into the current administrations’ 9/11 dealings have uncovered one of our most intensely feared suspicions – that our national leader, the Father of our country – and his cabinet knew about the attacks before they happened and did nothing to stop them**. And here we are now in the midst of something that can never be taken back, that can only escalate into the kind of grisly world-wound that will inevitably destroy us all. Our country is torn apart, divided between the “conservative” folks who are supporting this insanity, and by the “liberal” folks who are feeling the way that I am. People say to me again and again that “War is necessary.” and though I will NEVER agree with that, not in this enlightened age, I can see how, in the past, we did have to fight for our freedom and the freedom of others. I do not believe that this is the case now, and many Americans feel this way. There is no excusing the senseless, thoughtless brutality and greed of this current administration
- WE are supposed to be the GOOD guys. I believe that there are a lot of soldiers over there trying their best to help the wounded and weary of those torn countries, some who really believe that this is the reason they were sent there, and hopefully are fulfilling their purpose. How terrible is it that their attempts at good works can be overshadowed by this latest round of horrors, that we have given the evil and greedy people of their country one more “excuse” to commit more horrors in the name of greed and power – just like our own greedy and evil leaders.

And when will it ever end? Who will make the first move toward peace. Neither of us.
That’s just not the way that leaders like ours do things. We will keep torturing and beheading and retaliating and striking until everyone is dead.
People are saying that this could go on indefinitely. That means that all our new babies could grow up in a world where this is in the news every day, or even worse, in a world where it is in the streets here, like it is over there.
How does one find hope in the face of that?

I know some of you will have some angry things to say to me over this, and that’s bad, but those of you who will write with sweet words of hope for a brighter tomorrow, well, those are the replies that I really dread, because at least when I get angry replies, I can say “You are deluded! Not me! This is destroying the world, and you are still trying to defend these bad people!” But when the kind and hopeful words come my way, my conscience won’t allow me to say the truth – what I believe to be the truth – to you, because someone needs to have hope, and some of you – most of you – have very good reasons to keep hoping. Like children.
Those children – your children (even those of you that I don’t know personally) are fast becoming my only reason for hanging on. Not out of hope for their future (I’m afraid that’s going to have to be your job, parents), but because I know that if this keeps up, they are going to need me.
Blue skies and warm water and good food and loving hands are wonderful, and are still available, at this point. But every day it gets harder for me to enjoy them knowing what’s happening to our soldiers and their people, to our country and our rights. I honestly hope that none of the rest of you feel this way. One of the things that I’ve discovered about fibromyalgics is that we are hypersensitive sensorially as well as emotionally. Hopefully, all of you are just tougher than I am. Part of me thinks that people (in general) shouldn’t be able to block any of this out, because maybe that’s part of the reason why it’s been allowed to go so far, and to continue; but part of me is glad that people (my specific people, beloved folks, mums and dads of all of our babies) are able to tune it out – to some degree – and carry on in the midst of all this horror.

I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping.
-s

*yes, believe it or not, Mike, there is one.
**and everyone said that we were just being paranoid. hm.

Today is a badbadbad pain day, which is sad on such a pretty day. Yesterday was bad, too.
However, I shall decrease your pain (hopefully) considerably by announcing that this will be the last of my original poetry for a while. However, so that my last one will be special, I wrote it this week, just for this post.
I would like to dedicate this poem to JGTH, my birthday boy and best imaginary friend. There is also an illustration to go with this, maybe when we finally get a chance to update the site (one week left to go 'til faire, thankthegdlordjesus!) i will remember to put the illustration up.
This poem, written on 05/08/04, is called

I Am a Queen

I realized last night
that my house
is my throne,
front steps facing
the audience chamber
which is all the world
that knows me.

I am Every Girl -
I don't know how not to be.
I try to be soft and
curve into
each space
but sometimes i am
50 feet tall
and I attack.

And I love,
so big,
all the world,
and it hurts me.
But it fills my heart
with warm strength
and raw power
and hope.
And so,
in this way,
I rule.

* * *

gingerly yours,
-s

I don’t talk about my dad too much here. Maybe it’s because he’s gone, and so is beyond much pointed, active conversation? Or maybe it’s because it still hurts so much.
My dad was far from perfect. As far from perfect as my mother, just in another direction.
Let me just say that it’s a lucky thing that I have some of both of my parent’s good qualities and not too many of their bad ones. Without my mother’s strength and stubborn sense of purpose and independence, my inheritance of my father’s love of pleasure and comfort and ease would be detrimental. My mother is clever and psychological; my father was gentle and funny. My mother is a swimmer; my father was more of a drifter.
My mother is good at taking charge; my father radiated peace, and so on.
It was hard to face dad’s death. When I was little, and needed to remember gentle hands and a kind face, I always called my father to mind. Oh, he committed his crimes too. In my opinion, looking the other way out of laziness or plain irresponsibility or fear is just as bad as doing the harm. He didn’t support us, and ultimately, he barely supported himself. My father always needed a strong woman to help with us, whether it be an aunt, a grandmother, or a new wife, and thank god that he had a soul that made those ladies want to help. He was a charmer and a sweet person to the core, despite his apathy.

I loved my father with all my heart, and even in the midst of anger at his lack of concern for himself and lack of responsibility for us, my love for him never wavered. I thought that my heart would stop or burst when he died, and I was surprised to find that I kept living after he was gone. I guess that was 9 years ago today. I still miss him, I miss his big hugs and his great voice. I miss his good bad cooking (biscuits, grits, gravy, sausage, pancakes, scrambled eggs, or lima beans and ham hocks and collards and cornbread… mmm…). I miss his teasing me about whatever new hair adventure or boyfriend I was enduring, I miss the way his eyes looked when he told us that he loved us, and that he’d wished he’d done better by us, or that he was proud.

Today’s poem is one that I wrote a while before dad died, maybe even a few years, so he read it. And then I read it again at his “official” funeral*. It’s veryvery cheesy and mooshy (you have been warned) but I don’t care, because it is how I feel.

for daddy

Sunday mornings claim love as their own,
sleepy and blurring quiet words from the t.v.
and remote beneath my brothers’ clicking fingers.

You still call me baby,
and my Saturday night-late Scrabble mind
forgets that I am twenty-three,
and pulls me out of bed
to rest my head in the warm spot at the top of your arm
in your hug.

I will be Baby
as long as there is you to call me
to a table set with mismatched dishes,
waiting under your obligatory prayer
to fill me up
with precious waffles, sausage, eggs and biscuits
that have always meant daddy-love to me.

We eat and argue
about things that could never have a meaning
on a Sunday-breakfast morning,
half-hearted squabbles over t.v. channels
and who was where at two a.m.

I watch your brown eyes shine over the rim
of black-cup coffee
and see your pride of fatherhood
as someone reaches for another perfect biscuit.

When nothing’s left but crumbs and dishes,
I stand to wash, remembering my age
and duty.
All I say is “Thank you, daddy.”
but you know exactly what I mean.

* * *
1993

-Sam

Those of you who know how I feel about winter will get a little more out of this poem. It is one of my favorites partially because of the sentiment, and it's mythical root, but I was also proud of the form of it, the count down. I think I wrote this one in '97.

Persephone?

6 Pomegranate seeds,
6 dark months.
I sleep and draw and rehearse my lines,
and wait,
like children in the sno-kone line,
for spring.

The sheets stay still -
I like them that way - and clean.
They smell like the sun and rain
and I dream these things,
lost, happy on the sea of sleep.

Some days I wake
wanting stillness
and breakfast.
This winter diet works.

I want sun,
warm water,
and good sense...

Wisdom,
heaven,

barbecue.

My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
-Richard Adams, Watership Down


Yesterday was a sad day. My beloved Bruffy family (Brett, Buffy, Skye and Arianna) lost one of their furry babies. Inky was truly the best cat I have ever known, and I don’t know anyone who has met “Inky-Do” who doesn’t agree. I loved my own dear Cat heart and soul. I honestly believe that she was the first creature, furry or non, that I truly loved, all the way, without any reservation, ‘til death did we part. She was a good kitty, and loved me, but I have to honestly say that she could be a bitch from hell when she wanted to. Not Inky. That cat was, as his daddy put it very plainly, a HO. He was a beautiful, long-haired, smoke-colored Himalayan. He loved to be loved, and tolerated every kind of extreme affection that humans, when faced with such a rare cat, could devise. His favorite trick with Brian was to get on the office chair and have Brian spin him around until he was drunk and then when Bri stopped the chair Inky would sort of fall of and stagger away. He loved for Brett to hold him upside down by his hind legs and rub that belly, and Ink would just hang there and purr like a small lawnmower. Buffy loved the way he sat in the high chair, upright, slumped to the side like a little middle-aged man, paws hanging down over his fluffy smoke-colored belly, nodding off while their busy life revolved around him. I loved to pick him up, belly-up and let him stretch out over my arms, he would curve all the way back and let me rub my face on his belly as much as I wanted. Mmmm, kitty belly love… He let me rub his little smushed-in nose* as much as I wanted, and he loved for me to chase him around the house. He would run by me and then wait at the foot of the stairs, or in a doorway for me to catch on or catch up… he played this game with me the last time I saw him.
That kitty is going to be missed by all of us, but I know that Brett is hurting worse than anybody. Inky was his spirit animal, mascot and homeboy**. I think the reason that Inky was such a wonderful cat is because he took after his PersonDad, and I know that Brett is probably feeling like he’s lost a part of himself. I lost Cat to the same illness that took Inky, kidney failure, and it is a hard thing. Buffy called me last night and my heart broke to hear her in her pain. Some people say that they are just animals, what’s the big deal, but those of us who love them and live with them in our homes and hearts know that they are just less troublesome children (except for all that hair). We celebrate their birthdays, give them Christmas presents and Sunday breakfast treats (Lu gets scrambled eggs) we put them in our art and consider them in all of our decisions. They are our best friends and they love us in a way that no human ever could. When we are sad, they give us a warmth and comfort that can’t be replicated in any other way, and when they leave us, they leave an empty space in us for the rest of our lives.

Inky, may the grass be long, the couches be cushy and the mice be slow, my friend. And may you find suitable laps to hold you and crazy people to chase you until we meet again.
- sam

Jubilate Agno

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry....
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

- Christopher Smart
(this is an edited excerpt of a poem written by a man who lived from 1722-1771)

*I LOVE to rub animal noses. BIGtime.
**These are photos of kitties that look a lot like Inky.

I've been thinking about my mother, Josephine, a lot lately. Partly because I have heard news of her, partly because Mother's Day is coming up, partly because it was around this time of the year when I made the decision to have no contact with her until she agreed to talk to me about the past, and partly because Uma Thurman has been really visible lately** and Josie bears more than a passing resemblance to her - especially when she's kicking ass and taking names. I have a photo of her, she's about 30, as tiny as a child, sitting on a pew in my dad's apartment. She is wearing a beautiful sky-blue and white-trimmed v-neck ball jersey that is STILL not as blue as her eyes. Her skin is very tanned, her hair is cut short, and pale blonde, and she is smiling a little. It's my favorite picture of her, and the one I showed to Stewart and Chris to say "See? She looks just like her." They agreed. U.T. has always been my favorite actress, too, and I never considered that this might be one of the reasons...
I think about her a lot, anyway. Probably every day, almost every time I look in the mirror, or every time I do something especially hard without anyone's help. It's hard to separate he good from the bad sometimes, especially lately, since I realize that I have ceased to exist in her mind, but the fact of the matter is that she is stamped on every cell of me. (One of my closest high school friends said that I resembled Uma a little (ha!), and I said "No, I just look a little like my mother, who looks a LOT like her...")
I am proud of who I am, and so many of my best qualities, and definitely most practical, survivor qualities come from her. She is tough and clever, smart and strong, stubborn and likeable, beautiful and powerful - she is an amazing person. In fact, there have only been two things that I have ever seen or known her to be unable to do, and unfortunately they were both very important things. In my opinion, they were the most important things, but the reality of those things disappeared along with the reality of me.
I will never stop hoping that change will come, but the person closest to me in the world assured me that this was a hollow hope, and that maybe I was the wrong kind of optimist. Oh well, I could be - and have been - worse things. And maybe he'll be wrong. Wouldn't that be nice?

Today's poem is about my mother.
I wrote this in 1992.

Diving from the Leaf River train trestle

When mama told the story,
I could feel my toes
hooking around the warm edge
of the outside rail of the trestle.
The breeze from the river
must have curled up against the small of her back
and pushed a little --
I could feel the sway.

I know my spitfire mother
never jumped feet first,
tucking up like a roly-poly,
cannon-balling into the muddy water.
I think she must have spread her arms
and flexed like a baby bird,
filling her bony ribcage
with green summer air.

(Here, I held my breath
and shivered a little,
knowing she wouldn't
change her mind...)

Springing up
on the balls of her feet,
trigger release,
arcing into the open space
like a short, white rainbow -
did she even have time to squint
at the sun on the surface
before her thin body wedged
into the water?

Cold,
then nothing more
than a second
before she curved along
the slick river bottom
and, flexing again,
arced back toward the sky.

***

Happy mother's day to all of you. Hug your mothers if you can, and if you see mine, hug her big, and twice, but don't tell her the second one's from me, her non-existent kid.
-Sam


* when Brian met Autumn (my cousin, Josie's niece), the VERY first thing he asked her about was the story of her pulling the gun on the sheriff when she was only 17 and veryvery pregnant with me...
**MAN, is 'Kill Bill' a good movie, too.

Hi peeps.
Y’all have no idea how sweet it is when I tell someone that I have done something, or thought about something and have him or her say “I know, I read your rant.”
I’ve written here before about the apparent weight and value of my words when I was growing up. It’s funny. A lot of what I said was discounted, either out of lack of concern, or simply to discredit my veracity in order to cover their own @$$e$, but then if I told any one of my adult-folks that they should be extra careful on the river or road or in the woods that day, they would take great precautions because of their belief in my ‘insight’.*
Maybe that’s why I write and talk and draw/paint about how I feel so much. Because I want to be heard, and because I’ve never really been sure that I actually have anything to say. I was shut up and discounted for so long that now I want to just pour out my heart, whatever the consequences to me, and it really is the sweetest thing when someone comments on what I’ve written here, or something I’ve said to them. Even if they disagree, I know they’ve listened, and so many times people say that I have touched them or made them think, and that means all the world to me. It makes me seriously consider the value of my words, and try to make them count.

Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments (yes, Mike, even you…), thank you for believing that I have something worth saying.

Here’s another poem (don’t worry, I’m running out fast. : ) This is dedicated to Nina Simone** who is my favorite blues singer. She was born and raised here, about 1/16 of a mile from my house, or less, if you cut through the woods. When the local Community Foundation built a new park in Tryon, they asked me to come and read this poem at the dedication ceremony. Considering what this poem is really saying, that was pretty brave and bold of them.
I think this is the best poem I have ever written.

Nina

You sing to me
when the hurt is so deep
that nothing else can touch it.
Your voice is rough and strong,
like my fathers hand resting on my back,
weighted heavy with long years
of understanding ache.

You know the burdens
of love and salvation,
the sound of grief
at the bottom of a glass,
and you talk to me, soul sister,
any time I need to hear.

Sundays,
I walk past the place
where you slept and dreamed
of other lives, of freedom.
I imagine that you came this way,
swinging your arms,
singing softly to the graveyard.

Did you sit here
on your steps and cry so loud
that all the Mill Village
dogs would howl,
but not another human could hear you?
I hear it, and I howl too.

Now, all the wealthy white men –
actors, poets and politicians –
have their names plastered
on every other building.
Not one of them knows me,
or you, or cares.
Civic pride has a limit, I suppose.

I know you won’t come home –
I can’t blame you.
I came here to get away from home.
But your voice still rings down Markham,
across Scriven creek valley,
and gives me courage to face another day here.

My civic pride says:
“She got out.
Will I ever?”
It also says:
”Of all the things I’ve found here,
I am most proud of you and I.”


* * *
Big love,
-Sam


*Hm. Maybe I should’ve tried telling someone that I’d had a psychic vision that my stepfather was gonna’ beat my ass and lock me in a shed with nothing to eat or drink.
‘Sorry. I guess some things you STAY a little mad about, always.

**btw, Nin(k)a, she’s who was playing as I was placing the incense around yours and Jerels wedding pavilion. :)

here is another one of my very old poems (written in 1990). it has its badsmoosh moments, but i am still very fond of it, it's one of my 'baby' poems. i feel as if it is a very good portrait of who i really am. i think it shows a side of me that i don't normally display to the world, a side that i smokescreen with the loud or mad or bouncy bits o' sam.

Twelve Easy Steps

I passed a window on an open room,
filled with ballroom dancers.
Men who must really love their wives
grinned like teenaged boys
and stared heavily at their feet.
Even from my hidden place
I could see them counting time
to women that I wanted to be.

I stood and watched
unlikely couples
swing and turn
past sidewise blinds
with grace they never guessed at,
then stop to steal a kiss
and laugh at how old
and clumsy they are.

I watched
and bit my bottom lip,
pretending that I could hear them,
closed my eyes
to fabricate the smell of Old Spice
and the feel of a heavy arm
around my waist.

I wanted to leave
the square of soft light,
and let go...
But I am like a moth,
and I wanted at least a smile.

The cold dark settled on me
like dew on a nettle,
and I realized I would be late.

I just stood for another long minute,
holding my arms,
swaying in the wind with the bushes.

* * *

take a moment to look and listen and feel, folks.
-sam

Hello, lovelies.

Your Sam is having a sad day. Lots of physical pain. There is a cold front coming in, and I am feeling some stress, too, and that adds insult to the injury, for sure.
Tonight Chris and I are going to WLOS in Asheville to a candlelight vigil and listen to someone read the names of all of the American soldiers who have died in the middle east since Mr. Bush declared payback - I mean, war. This will be happening on Nightline, too. They will be reading the names and showing a picture of each soldier, but our local CBS affiliate is one of the stations under gag order, and so will not be showing the special report.
These stations can not even read off the names and show a family photo of these soldiers, but I don't think any of them hesitated to show the broken bodies in the ruins of the Trade Center, or to repeatedly show the faces and names of the people killed at the orders of the evil Osama Bin Laden. They only seem to be prohibited to show the names and faces of the American citizens killed at the orders of George Bush. So I will go and pay my respect for the hundreds of dead men and women with other people who realize just exactly what is happening to this country right now. Hopefully the 'Patriot' Act won't suddenly include gatherings like this as an un-American act as well.
I'm sorry, I'm very very sad and worried about what's happening to all of us, and I am just doing whatever I can.

Here is a poem just right for today.
I wrote this in 1999.

Stand Up

Here it is now,
my chance to stand up and ask
out loud,
"Do you wake up feeling ugly?
Or like something is just wrong?"
We live and dream in a world
where a woman,
Mother, sister, daughter, friend,
will stand in a coffee shop doorway -
this door -
and say
"Do you serve my kind here?"
Her kind is just like me and you.
Working lungs and beating heart,
clicking mind and money struggle,
sadness,
anger,
love for little things...
desire for a cup of coffee.
Shame on us. Me and you.
Don't let this be!
Don't ask "But what can I do?"
Here it is now,
your chance to stand up
and ask out loud:
"Do you wake up feeling ugly?"

Metaphorically and literarily speaking, you have all seen me "naked", so I don't feel too bad about this next little bit of poetic nudity. It may be trite, but it's also veryvery true, and unfortunately some true things, and some things that are beautiful, or that hurt, are trite. No apologies, not for writing this, or for sharing it, or for feeling this way.

(And speaking of poetic nudity, where are you, Seamus? I miss you and those green hills and fields and hedgerows... I know we'll always have TdC, but I could stand a little bit of Wains Cotting or Lower Tadfield or Knob End* too, y'know... I'm here, and I'm with you, too. xo-s)

I wrote this one in 1999
's called:

Night Blind

Riding high,
questioning my Dianic depth,
my heart is full and heavy.
The steering wheel seems to be
the only substantial thing in the world.
Crickets scream, guitars scream,
and the road unfurls fast in this small spray of light.
Curves rise, treetops break,
and the full summer moon
hammers fall into me like a nail.
I am 31 now, afraid of winter,
and somehow sure that reality is crashing
around me like burning dominoes.

Beyond headlights beam,
the world is as dark a place as there is.
Straight bone arrow to the heart dark.
Humans have a weakness - compassion,
and yet it is our only real strength.
What do we cleave to -
worship of body or mind?
"Both" seems impossible for the urban, uptown ape.
Speeding through this void, I see that light
is two-faced.
We burn candles and say our prayers,
but those tiny motes
seem to illuminate nothing.
We light fires as a beacon - or warning -
and set explosive raging blaze to innocence.

I love the moon**
I think of it as the face of god.
The same face that follows me
no matter where I point my car,
laughs, reminds me that time is
pouring out of the world,
and disappears when I need it most...

The sun is constant,
and as dangerous as good,
but I soak in its light and warmth,
trying to store it, like a battery, for the long night.
It will make me ugly,
and I wonder if anything is more than skin deep.
When the shine is gone, what will be left?
There are memories -
of fires tearing down childhood;
candles flickering inside glaciers of loneliness;
the moon, laughing at what the sun
has done to my face;
the blue nightlight that seemed at times
the only comfort of my youth
turned off with the smallest click;
and at the end of the road
my yellow porch light
fading into the wash of another breaking day.

. . . . . . . . .

love,
me.

*hur hur hur...
**WE LIKE THE MOON!!!! heheh... hey. do you think this means that i am a spongmonkey?!?!

Well folks, I’m afraid that I am going to have to temporarily stray from the relatively light-hearted tone of the last few days’ rants to bring you a Real-Deal-Holyfield-Angry-American Rant (with a capital ‘R’).
(MIKE H. – YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ ANY FURTHER. I love you – and you know this – but even if the following rant doesn't tick you off, I feel pretty sure that your reply to me re: what I’m about to say will tick me off. We just have to agree to disagree on this one. I know how you feel, and I honestly wish that you were right.)

For the rest of you, I am including a poem at the end of today’s rant (so, even if you don’t want to read the rant, skip down to the poem). It’s one of my originals, and my first published. It is extremely pertinent, given the subject of today’s rant, and I feel that it is one of the most powerful things I have ever written, and I think that’s due to the fact that my feelings on the subject are so strong.

I peruse the ‘net headlines everyday, world news, the gamut, and try to make a little sense of it all. I also try not to let it make me too scared, too sad, too angry. Today though, I ran across the glut of headlines regarding the photos of the coffins of the US soldiers.
Those of you who know me, or even those who read my rants regularly, know how I feel about the news and it’s portrayal of death and misery. One of the main things that made me give up tv was the media’s sick exposure of the details of my cousins gruesome, sad and untimely death. Luckily, there were no photos, but they reported a lot of un-necessary details – details that my family was trying hard to keep from me – that caused me a great deal of pain. They still do.
I agree with the Bush administration’s opinion that photos of the bodies in the field are un-necessary. That would cause the families more pain than people should have to bear. But the photos of the coffins are anonymous, and powerful, and make it all very real, which is precisely what the families of these dead people - as well as all Americans – need to see. That this war is REAL. That our people are DYING. And in greater numbers every day –despite the fact that “Victory is Ours” and “the war is over”. I wish that George Bush’s purpose was really to protect the families of these soldiers, but it is not. His purpose is to protect his chances of being able to cheat his way into office for one more term, to protect his reputation, to protect his family’s oil money and holdings, to protect Haliburton’s* contract to rebuild the country that we – he – destroyed, and to keep Americans – and the rest of the world – complacent while he does whatever he wants to with this country’s resources. Including the men and women who are now nothing more than weight in flag-bedecked boxes and memories.
I applaud the sites brave enough to show these pictures. I am in vehement opposition of media sources that needlessly and shamelessly exploit human misery in order to get ratings, but at the same time, I want to get a view of what’s happening in the world that is as humanely realistic as possible. I think that the vision of wrecked bodies is as real as it gets, but the average human mind and heart are incapable of dealing with that well. I think we just shut down and our minds refuse to process it. I think that seeing a number - for example the current {Iraq Coalition casualty count}** of US war dead is 713 -
and what does a string of numbers mean? Even if there were a site that showed a counter counting up the number of American war casualties to the same number of deaths related to the Twin Tower bombings***, we would still not be able to comprehend it. It would still be anonymous numbers. So where is the balance? How can we get an idea of what this war really means without increasing the suffering of the ever-growing numbers of grieving Americans? By showing the photos of those rows of coffins, covered with the flags that (we hope) they believed that they died for.
The Bush administration is relying on this country’s ability to mentally sweep unpleasant things under the carpet of denial. Unfortunately, they have a reason to feel that this might work, and to a great extent, it has. They believe that if we don’t see these coffins, these large numbers of soldiers coming home in boxes, that we will forget and somehow re-elect him – or not RIOT when he re-elects himself.
I celebrate these sites and reporters who fight so hard and take such risks and brave chances in order to see that we know what is happening in our country, past our local papers and local news and stilted, partisan, paid-off national papers and channels.
This rant was inspired by the yesterdays’ BBC and API news items:
‘US concern over war dead photos’; ‘No cameras for US war dead’s return’; ‘Photos of GI’s caskets cost worker her job’; and ‘Widely published photos of US coffins anger Pentagon’.
Apparently:
“A total of 360 photos taken by the Air Force were released to the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org by the Pentagon after the site requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.(AFP/HO-USAF)”
This obviously displeased the Powers that Be, and for obvious reasons, I think.
My best friend is the child of a retired Military Officer, he admired his father and his military career immensely. He is also a history buff, and a realistic man who believes that these things – war and related incidents - HAVE to happen sometimes. He is not a liberal, nor is he a neo-fascist. He is an intelligent, educated, mature man who sees all the main sides of the issue. Nonetheless, his opinion on the matter (and he has respectfully played Devil’s Advocate for the current administration and its choices in this conflict in the midst of a number of my extended rants) was this: “It is not disrespectful to show these coffins to the world. It is disrespectful NOT to.”

Support these sites and these fearless fact-finders, folks. They are fighting in their own way to keep this country free. Those soldiers are doing the hardest job, fighting a mindless cause in a very hostile place, and for the same reasons. But there are also ‘small soldiers’ in this country, and they are fighting another enemy of freedom, another greedy, ruthless, careless regime.
I found some amazing things while trying to track down the facts about this latest wave of manipulative attempts at censorship.
Here is the link for “The Memory Hole – Rescuing Knowledge, Freeing Information” site. These are the folks responsible for getting the Air Force to release these photos under the American Freedom of Information Act. I also found this excellent article by Columbia Professor and Journalist Sree Sreenivasan on The Memory Hole site.
Here is another site, which seems a lot more whimsical and esoteric, but is definitely trying to achieve the same purpose within a different demographic.
On the subject of memory holes, another site that feels compelled to expose the “glossed over” and “swept under” news is Loompanics.com,
and the ‘What Really Happened’ site is particularly vociferous pursuant of the truth in media.
I found this article about some of the ways that the current administration is able to manipulate and limit the kinds and amount of information that is available to people:
"Jesse Berney at Kicking Ass explains why the White House has prevented Google and other search engines from indexing the files on its public website that mention Iraq: if it's not indexed, it's not archived, making it harder to prove later that some inconvenient fact has disappeared down the Memory Hole.”

I mourn at the sight of these coffins, the reading of these names and hometowns and the way these soldiers died. I mourn for the loss of our country’s rights, and our planets’ safety. I mourn for the cold, brutal knowledge that the wealthy really don’t care what happens to everyone else as long as their money and land is safe and there is at least someone left to work for them.
I know that I can be perceived as a bleeding-heart liberal, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, or any other clichéd tag that the people who’s wealth, certainty of position and ability to just be RIGHT need to put on me and people like me. But even the ultra-conservative people who know me well know that I have no hidden agenda other than fear of loss of freedom and a deep abiding concern for all people. Even the ones who scare me. Maybe ESPECIALLY the ones who scare me.
Keep fighting, keep questioning, keep supporting our soldiers who have to be there, but most of all, keep trying to get them home, and not in boxes.

Giant

Mother holds the tricolor triangle,
Her knuckles wound as white
As her face
And the flowers wilting
On the lid of the big wooden box.

Empty as promises,
Dry as Texas,
I watch the thin, gritty breeze
Blow across the graveyard,
Looking for something to feel.
I am not like the soldiers,
Who fear for their own lives,
Or the friends of the family,
Who knew this would happen,
Or my father, who thinks
“My son died for his country”,
Or my mother,
Who thinks that nothing is left
But this sandy bolt of cloth
That rests on her lap…

Twenty-one shots
Echo into hot, Texas-forever,
None of the bullets stopped
By the soft bodies of men.
Tears fall into empty spaces,
And are sucked up by the dirt.
***
(I wrote this in 1991 while my brother was facing some of the most dangerous time of his own military career. It was also inspired by a very poignant scene in the James Dean film ‘Giant’)

Peace,
-Sam

*FYI, Haliburton is the company of which George Bush Sr. was once on the stockholders board, Colin Powell was hired to give speeches at their dinners and paid in stock, of which Dick Cheney was once the chief executive. Totally by coincidence, of course.

**this part of the site lists their ID, name, rank, branch of service, and tells where they were assigned to, where they were based, the date they were killed, the fatality cause and location. I warn you, there are 41 pages, starting with US Marine 2nd lieutenant Therrel Childers, who was killed on March 21, 2003. He was 30, he was from Harrison County, Mississippi, and he was killed in Southern Iraq by hostile fire.
I also discovered that there are 873 wounded, and here is a sick p.s. regarding some of the wounded and the possibility of miscount.

***and if you recall correctly, the Bush administration did not put any “bans” on the media exposure of the photos of the 911 dead.

hello, peeps. i have been doing SO good with the daily blogs that i didn't want to leave today without posting something. i began writing a rant that i will finish and post tomorrow - it's been a very busy day, sorry. i will warn you in advance that tomorrow's rant is tangentially opposed to the personal and relatively peaceful poetry rants i've had for y'all for the last few days, although it will still contain one of my poems. tomorrow's rant is a big one, and a political one, and y'all know how i can get...*
but for today, despite my disturbed heart and mind - or maybe BECAUSE of them, i will leave you with some sweetness, something much smaller and yet much bigger than this mess that mr. !@#$ bush, and all the other careless and greedy world "leaders" have put us all into.
this is a re-print of part of my april 4 rant from last year - my experimental 'southern haiku' about the seasons of my childhood.

These four are called ‘Bulletin Board’

Dusk light, dogwood glow,
silk of shift from fourth to third,
tar to dirt, river road.


Beloved Gramaw
puts sliced ripe homegrown
tomatoes on the table.


Still dark – wake to coffee smell.
Men in kitchen laugh.
Soon, white-tail will fall.


Scent of wintergreen,
pine, Vap-o-rub, I sleep well.
I will wake to warmth.


much love, and as many as the endless universe full of stars' prayers for peace,
-sayuri


*mike, that's a warning for you, honey.

Sometimes it seems that my poeems are better read out loud than in print. I get really powerful reactions from folks* when I read them. I haven’t managed to school myself in that freaky stilted sort of ‘slam poetry’ style** that ‘professional poets’ seem to favor, so when I read, I just read from my heart as if I actually MEAN what I am saying, and not just trying to impress people with how cool I sound. I like to read other poets’ work out loud, to myself, so please, if you feel like it, read mine to yourself. Maybe it’s that I try to write things that it feels good to say out loud, I dunno.
Here’s a fun one for you to read out. (I wrote this not too long after I moved here.)

Amputee

This planet was a garden once. That may be the only thing that we can all agree on.
(Except that guy on 7th Street, the one with the tin-foil hat, who thinks
that we are just a cosmic Jr. Food Mart for some higher intelligence.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we – the Egyptians, or the Masons, or somebody’s rich great-grandpa – sold the rights, or wrote up a 20 million year lease:
“Dino’s Exterminated Free!!! Withsalepurchaseofplanet, taxableinMilkyWayGalaxyat
nominalfeeof42% - Non-negotiable.)

However you look at it, we – biggest brain on the planet
(weeding out the competition daily)
- have turned it into a machine.
One big Willy Wonka factory of delights,
Well designed to … … … what?
Bring us pleasure? Yes, that’s it.

And so we crank up the machine, wind up the toy, streamline our costs, power up,
downscale, become more efficient, micromanage, multi-task, and increase our maximum potential. For … … … what?

To eat, drink, sleep, run, watch tv, immerse ourselves in sound, food, dreams, sex, love, art, babies, sunshine, cats, laundry, death, Oprah, clothes, advice, fear, words, work, skin, pain, exercise, gossip, church, drugs, books, tears, thought, paint, obsession, care, M.A.S.H., serial killing and other natural disasters, meditation, war, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, music, each other, and god, to … … … what?

To distract ourselves from the itch
or the pain
of the place
where our wings used to be.

***

This is another one that I love to read out loud. I seldom write rhyming poetry. I am not a Poet, and so I feel unqualified to dabble in such lofty pursuits as meter. But this little sonnet HAD to rhyme, as I also seldom write Lurve poeems, and the sentiment seemed to call for this form.
There’s also a funny and ironic story behind this piece.
My room mate during my last semester at USM and I were sitting on a bench outside the commons, watching folks come and go outside the cafeteria. We were discussing s-e-x – or actually the lack thereof, and we were using household terms as metaphors. In fact, it started off with Meg talking about the last time there’d been a “car parked in her garage”, and I said “Car, sheesh! I don’t even have a lawn mower in mine!” This of course degenerated into jokes about hiring lawn boys, etc.
While we were sitting there having this disgusting converse, we spotted our friend Joe Fujizo (who is a VERY nice and innocent, VERY Christian young man, as well as being a really buff and gorgeous Hawaiian/Asian bloke to boot) walking toward the cafeteria. Joe was never in a bad mood, always cheerful and positive and sweet, so I felt brave enough to stand up on the bench and yell across the way:
“JOE! WOULDST THOU MOW THE GRASS FOR ME?!?!”
(snicker, chortle, hee!)
without having any idea what I was talking about, Joe – in the first and last foul mood I ever saw him in replied:
“MOW YOUR OWN DAMN GRASS!!!” and walked on into the cafeteria.
Oh, the irony of it all. :)
In that moment, this poem was born, and though it began as a farce, and a play on dumb ole’ love poems, it ended as something entirely different. It is still one of my veryvery favorites (in the top five, prolly) and one of the most bittersweet and ‘tender’ things I have ever written.

Suburban Love Anthem

Would you mow the grass for me,
Or let the long leaves lie
Where heavy summer beetles breed
Beneath a green, candescent sky?

I’ve seen you carefully tend and tune
The mowers’ oily parts
As young lovers tune the emotional gears
Of one anothers’ tender hearts.

In waiting, on the patio,
I watch the mornig shadows pass
And hold my love, ‘guised lemonade,
In a cold, eternal drinking glass.

And as I stand and calmly watch
You part the green, unending sea,
I hope you’ll come, in your respite,
And drink, not from the glass, but me.

***

moo.
-sam


*with the exception of ‘professional poets’, it seems.
** X has written a HILARIOUS comedy act based on that very thing. It’s a little piece he calls “Blah.” When you meet him, or see him again, ask him to do it for you.

Ok, due to great demand and humongous public hue and cry …
(ok, really due to beloved Andi’s very sweet post to my guest book*)
… I will continue to, uh…’entertain’ you with some of my poems. I will probably post two or three a day until I’ve exhausted my rathah limited supply of printable ones, but fortunately none of my poems are very long (which I suspect is one of the reasons why I am so popular at poetry readings.**)

Alright, I’ll start with something lighter. This first poem was written not long after “Last Stand”. That very same teacher was a big fan of Jimmy Buffet, and similar “home-style” writing. After the ‘Last Stand’ debacle, I decided to try to beat him at his own game. I wrote advice, and he LOVED it. Hmph. How dare he? :) Well, I love it, too. It remains, to this day, one of my very favorites. I am proud of this piece, and always get a great response when I read it publicly.
This is called:

Advice

Here in a summer Delta,
where love wraps ‘round your heart
like a pickled watermelon rind,
a Lady is likely to find her prince –
charming or otherwise –
propped against the bumper
of a stepside GMC.
Life is a funny thing, you’ll find,
at least that’s what the local
Union of Baitshop Philosophers
tell me.
What else is there to believe
in a universe where the weather
is based on the color of the sunset,
and warts can be banished
with the rub of a chicken bone?
“Lookin’ for love
is like chasin’ a greased pig.
Leave it alone,
‘n when it gets hungry enough,
it’ll come lookin’ for you.”
Mamaws know more about love
than any Cosmopolitan magazine,
and in those kitchen-coffee whispers
they’ll be the first to tell you
the most important secret
about Southern love:
“Just like the dust here,
you might have to settle
on what you can find.”

***

And then, to continue the Southern writing theme (oh, Loki’s Little Acre ain’t ded yet!), here is another one that I wrote after I moved here. Of course there’s a story behind it, and it’s not as earth-shakingly tragic as it might have been. I actually wrote this after I thought I’d lost my camera (‘Antonia’)***, but I realized, even as the words started to form in my head, before I’d even found some paper, that it was about SO much more than that. It was about my whole life.

Front Step Psalm

Lord, learning to let go is hard.
To open my hands and release
what may be
the only thing holding me to the ground.

And Lord, why do I love the ground so?
It is as if
I wrap myself around this pain,
like it’s the only thing
keeping me warm at night.

My head is heavy Lord,
and if I let it hang,
then I can see the faces
of those around me,
and embrace the heat of their misery too.

I see that we are all heavy and tired, Lord,
And afraid to hold onto each other if we fall.
Let me be strong,
let me learn to open my hands.
Make me able to fall with grace,
catch me, if you can,
and if you can’t,
then let me learn from it all.

Amen.

***

Ok, there’s today’s Blue-Plate Special. : )
Thanks for reading, and for sending your love.
MUCH of mine,
-Sam

*well, as well as my own bloody-minded, stubborn-@$$ “this is dang well what I dang well wanna do so I’m gunna dang well DO it!” attitude. :D
**I mean, ANYthing sounds good after a 15 minute-long meandering hippie diatribe about ANYthing – ESPECIALLY with intermittent didgeridoo accompaniment. Welcome to The Mountains, folks.
***well, and also not long after I'd found out that nearly every single thing I had in storage had been lost somehow, too. Even my grandma's antique crackerjack toys.
Bastards.

Sweet Miss Delia, of the Long Shining Brown Hair*, backseat ZapMama tunes, “Scooping Ice Cream” Hippie-Pants Dance, and brave, empathic defender of my poems in Mr. B_____’s scary-berry Poetry Class, thank you for checking my page every day, and for saying such nice things in my guest book! (Delia isn’t the only one who checks my ‘page daily. Thank y’all for continuing to do so, despite the frequent long gaps between posts of late. Y’all make me want to TRY!)

So, for those of you who do not know:
Delia was a lady who went to school with me at Good Ole’ U.S. of M. Despite my desire to be mad at the world, sad as could be, scared of the new, and of my own big bad self, Delia made me smile and think, made me feel warm, even when I ‘believed’ that the world was just cold. She caused me to challenge my own beliefs and broaden my perspectives in ways that she doesn’t even know about. Delia was one of the people who seemed to really see and hear me, and I never forgot her.
At last year’s faire auditions, I met a young Asheville lady, a poet, and we began to chat. After she’d gotten to know me a bit, she asked if I was interested in contributing some of my poems – many of which (most of which) are about hard times, whether personally or globally, and trying to get through them – to a reading/slam to benefit an abuse awareness group. I told her that I’d written at least one possibly appropriate poem in particular that caused a very strong reaction in my second-year poetry class, and I told her this story:

I’d written this poem about my stepfather’s abuse and about forgiveness. I labored over it, because I knew it had a lot of dangerous (and dangerously trite) emotional content, but it was important to me (and still is). The day that I submitted it to the class for critique was a hard one, and a big step for me as a writer and as a human being.
After I read the poem out loud, the teacher and students were allowed to comment and ask questions. In the first verse are the lines:
“He used to call me “podna”,
when his hands were flat
on the kitchen table
or curled around a beer.
Before the cane poles,
coat hangers,
and axe handles –
and sometimes after.”

Our teacher said that he’d like to ask a question to clarify something before the discussion began. He said – this award-winning poet – said “Ok, I understand that the cane poles are for fishing and the coat hangers are for roasting marshmallows, but what are the axe handles for?”
There was a sickening pause, and then before I could collect myself enough to answer Delia yelled “He BEAT her with those things!”
Needless to say, there were tears and a very intense discussion followed, but after class, Mr. B. held me back and ACTUALLY SUGGESTED that I ‘write about less emotional subjects from now on’. (!!!)
I didn’t listen to him, because I realized that Delia – and some of the others – heard what I was saying and respected me for it. Mr. B. was distressed because I’d gotten his class riled up (and helped him make himself look like MORE than a bit of a Big Dumb Stupid Head**) and that’s what I assumed poetry was all about. Making people feel.

After I finished telling this story to the Asheville poet-friend, she said “Awesome! And by the way, do you remember this ‘Delia’s’ last name?” I said yes, and described her, and she said “Hmmm… I think I knew her in (Wisconsin? One of those cold places, anyway.).” And she went and got her address book and verified that the Universe is a very strange and small and wondrous place indeed! She gave me Delia’s e-mail addy, I wrote, and when Delia returned from her latest wanderlustful adventures, she wrote to me!

So, Miss Delia, for the next few days of posts, I have decided to ‘publish’ some of my poems from over the years, some that you may remember, and some that you’ve never heard. Some are terrible, and some I am really proud of, and some of them are the same poem.
So, y’all all have Delia to blame for The Attack of the Sam Poetry for a few days!***
Thank you, Delia. *kisses!*


I’ll start with the previously excerpted poem, written sometime around 1989.

Last Stand

I can’t watch those old westerns anymore –
“You shot my Pa!”
and stub cheroots.
He used to call me “podna”,
when his hands were flat
on the kitchen table
or curled around a beer.
Before the cane poles,
coat hangers,
and axe handles –
and sometimes after.

Every day,
Squared up at sunset,
twenty paces,
back to back.
Faced at high noon
To show me
With your red, rough hands
How to plant the seeds
That never got to grow.

Nights, lying still
and hiding out
while prayers
against the bruises
and the boogeymen
rose, then settled
in the corners with the dust,
and the teddy-bears,
and my brothers’ one-shot 22.

I rode out
on the last coach.
Back to a real father
and hands that touched faces
with nothing but ‘soft’.

Your last words still ring,
like shining silver spurs –
you never said
“Please forgive me.”
But I did.

***

Ok, and I’ll put a newer one, just so you can all decide if I’ve improved any at all or not… ;) This was written a few years ago for my beloved boys in The Geek Patrol (who all came to the coffee shop to hear me the night I debuted this - Moo!) , and all the Good Guys out there.


A Last Scrap of Faith is My Favor****

For the boys
who wave their flags
and stand for things
that no one else believes in,
who hold the doors,
drop their coats,
and neatly pin their hearts
to their shirts every day;
who know that good guys
never win,
but never waiver,
and look for the princess
sleeping inside every
wicked witch;
for those boys,
the pain of quest
and conviction,
battered armor,
and poisoned apples,
long campaigns,
and cruel magic mirrors.
Please,
fight on,
and know that,
in the darkness,
chained princesses dream of you.

***

'More (if you can stand it!) 'next post!
Much love,
-Sam


*well, it was in those days, though I hear it has changed… J
**Which he really wasn’t, but STILL!
***Don’t be TOO afraid. The Vogons said I SUCKED! ;)
****FYI, a ‘favor’ is an item, a ribbon, handkerchief, or similar, that ladies’ used to give to knights before they went out onto the tourney field, to show that they had faith in them, or ‘favored’ them.

Sweet Christopher and I hit the road about 9:30 on Thursday morning. We were both a little tired from going to Manor Daze - can’t miss a Manor Daze* - and then staying up late to do some second-to-last minute packing. Tired or not, we both had that “WHEE! ROAD TRIP!” frame of mind, and despite the bickering over packing and little dumb stuff (which didn’t last too long, once we’d got out of NC) we settled into that joy that only the prospect of long-distance adventure on a pretty day can bring.
Our first challenge came when we realized that we had an insufficient sound system. Esme only has a radio, so Chris got a pair of teeny speakers and an adapter to go with my old Discman. We couldn’t really hear it over the wind and road and Esme’s badly busted muffler, so we made the decision to find a place to buy a portable cd player and batteries. We talked and laughed and occupied ourselves until we came to a HUGE truck stop plaza extravaganza mall and we found a nice little boombox (it was covered in happy green rubber - ???) for a Walmart price and a bunch of bat’ries. Moo. Our first mutual appliance purchase.** The batteries cost ¼ as much as the damned ‘box, but they lasted all the way to Mississippi and back. Yay, us.
The rest of the trip went fine. Chris navigated us through the convolutions of Atlanta and kept us on the right track through Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, all the way to Jackson. We got to a Mickey D’s at an intersection just a few blocks from the Bachelorette party, and stopped to ‘freshen up, change clothes, and call to let them know we were almost there.
While I was in the potty, I heard a bunch of squeals (there were a lot of young downtown Jackson folk hanging in the McD’s, friends of the employees, mostly, it seemed), and I knew I was back home when a rubenesque and glamorously coiffed young McD’s employee burst into the bathroom, both laughing and mad, to reattach the wiglet that one of her friends had snatched off as a joke…
Ah, Mississippi.
We arrived at a beautiful house on an oak-shaded street, just across from an antebellum inn. The house was white, with a wide front porch and you could see from the street that each room was painted in brilliant colors. We opened the door and saw Nina, sitting in her chair like a queen, surrounded by a room full of princesses. We were greeted by fragrant hugs and soft kisses, made welcome, given drinks and drawn into the fun. Nina was introducing the guests, and saying lovely things about each one. I have learned a lot from her.
After the introductions, I sat my turn at the card-table where a lady was set up to do Mehndi for us. I chose a design of flowers and vines for the back of my left hand. I got out my glitter and each lady allowed me to sparkle them up, as our hostess handed out feather boas (I got pink, X got black) and then we began our instruction in exotic dancing. Chris decided to watch from a safe distance (the dining room, where there was also a long antique table covered in exotic finger food, mm!) and the poor baby had to watch as all these women (not a plain one in the bunch), Nina’s gorgeous Indian cousins from DC, willowy blondes, curvy redheads, beautiful brunettes - all butterflies and fairy moths – did “the sexy walk”, “the bump and grind”, “open and close the gate”, “pull up your stockings”, etc. The young lady who was our instructor was a dancer in a show (as in theatre) sort of like Moulin Rouge, and so we were able to benefit from her expertise. I think we laughed harder than we danced, though.
After the party, we all convoyed to a little nightspot called “Elixir”. We met up with some of the boys there, and caught up with old times and new names. Then we all trekked over to the bachelor’s soiree (cards and beer in a Man Kitchen) and I finally got to meet Jerel. I didn’t doubt it, but was pleased to find that he is as sweet and deep as he is beautiful and seeing him look at Nina told me all that I needed to know.
Chris and I stayed a civilized length of time, and then headed for our hotel. We were pulled over – for seeming to swerve - by two of Mississippi’s finest on the way, but I was in a good mood, and I felt confident that I’d done nothing wrong (except for the 17 drinks I’d had earlier – not really, but, you know how it feels when you’ve got the cop standing at your window. I told him I’d been driving all day (true), I had had a drink earlier (true), and that I wasn’t completely sure where I was going (VERY true). I was friendly, and compliant, and he turned out to be, too. He gave us directions, told us be careful and let us go. We got to our hotel room, unpacked, and – after some time - finally slept the sleep of the just, the adventurous, the satiated, and the veryveryvery TIRED.

Friday, we slept in late, late, late. We had a couple of hours to play around, so Herman came and took us to Salvation Army and gave us an EXCELLENT tour of Jackson. The highlight for me was the little café – ‘Peaches’- that we visited in the downtown section, where they are renovating the street that used to house a lot of the black clubs, cafes and shops. Farish St. There was a photo shoot happening outside, several tall, slender, heart-breakingly beautiful, dark young women in revealing and glamorous clothes posed for a photographer outside, while inside a small camera crew interviewed the nonagenarian proprietress Ms. Peaches in her best Sunday dress. The juxtaposition of these two generations framed by the media-hunger for them, then super-imposed over the renovation of the old street itself was a good metaphor for my home-state capitol, and my feelings about who I am and where I came from. The covered windows of the old buildings were painted with bright murals, all relevant to the communities’ feelings about the rise in the economy and the renewal of their local culture. I thought of how I’ve felt when bad times have hit me, maybe for a long time, but then one day I just finally felt like getting up, getting dressed, getting a cute haircut and going on with my life. It’s as if I’ve remembered that I am a woman, and that despite the blows to my surface, and the bruises to my soul, I still have them both, a surface and a soul, and they are stronger and more beautiful still. Maybe Farish St. has scars, but it is still beautiful, and it has survived a lot. It has more character, and therefore, more hope.

After our tour, Herman delivered us back to the hotel. We had to dress quickly for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Shower, iron, dress, skwooch, and we were out. We found the place easily, down a long dirt road in a community that reminded me a lot of my mother’s hometown. The lodge was set in the shade of pines across a bridge over a small bayou spiked with cypresses. Across the bridge, and nearer the entrance was a small chapel, and off to the right, beside the water, was the spot where the wedding would be held. There were folding chairs fanned out to fill the grove, and a few wedding pilgrims wandering, gossiping and waiting near the sweet bamboo pergola that had been built just for the ceremony. Nina arrived, dressed in a stunning ivory beaded wedding gown. She would wear a Sari for the wedding, and so to please her mother wore this gown for the rehearsal and dinner that night. We ran through the basics of the ceremony. Those of us who would be speaking did a perfunctory stand up-sit down, some people had to stand in for others who were there. My favorite moment from that time was getting to hear Lhay practice her lovely and powerful rendition of “At Last”, the song that would accompany Nina down the aisle.
After the rehearsal, we – more or less - followed Jerel and his get-away driver through Jackson to the Red Barn. There was lots of good food and wine, and before the band kicked up, there was a VERY sweet slide show of pictures of Nink and Jerel growing up and coming together ( - again, they were friends in high school…). We sat at a table with Monty and Amy (MOOO!!!), Caroline and Roberto (MmMmOOOoOoo!), Alem and Carla (MoOoOo!) Lhay and Tate (MuMu!) Cedric and Gina (MeOW!), and I think that Philip, Diego and Carolina drifted in and out a bit, and Jerel came and joined us for a while, too. When the music started to get loud, we all drifted down to stand with the smokers. Princess Caroline decreed that we should go Out, and so we rallied the troops and headed downtown to drinks and complete bombastic b.s. at Martin’s. I got to know Cedric (with whom, of course, I was completely smitten, along with his lovely Gina-friend. Gina is one of the most smittable girls I’ve ever seen. That pretty and still that real. Her smile has to be seen to be believed…) a little better. I think Cedric got to know me better than he wanted (he found out one of my only Secret Flaws – can you ever forgive me, Ced?), and Chris got to know everyone better (Monty, he said he liked you best, though I think Carolina made a big mark, too…) We laughed a lot and debated a little, and we drank somewhere in between that. We listened to Roberto’s tales of bigtime Hollywood production (I knew all ALONG that Billy Bob was a nice guy, thanks for backing me up, Roberto…) and to Caroline’s concerns about her interview with Rob Zombie on Monday. Someone – maybe Ced? Diego? – I can’t recall, asked which ONE album we’d want to be buried with. Mine was “Unforgettable Fire”, X’s was “Raw Power”. Ced’s was “Purple Rain”, so I don’t want to hear any more about MY taste in music, thankyouverymuch! :)
Finally we all wound down and headed back to our dens, preparing to face The Big Day.

Chris and I decided that we would do NOTHING the next day before the wedding. We’d considered the museum, but we had an early photo call, and so we lazed around all morning. Our two big treats were getting to see Herman’s handsome and clever son Loden for a little while, and getting to watch “Mississippi Burning” for the first time. The irony of that is that many of the people we were socializing with that weekend had worked on the film. They all hate it – and I understand why, from a socio-political perspective, but visually and technically it was a beautiful film, and I told them so.
We got dressed and arrived in plenty of time.
X and I got the job of lighting candles and I was asked to do the Nag Champa honors. I combined the lighting with a small prayer-ritual, taking the opportunity to ask for blessings for Jerel and Nina as I lit each stick. Before we knew it, the chairs were filled and the grove was humming with excitement. All of Nina’s beautiful cousins were in their Sari’s, and everyone else was in their spring best. I wore my blue silk mandarin “pajamas” that I got in China Town last July, and X had on his favorite suit, charcoal, burgundy and silver.
Jerel came down the aisle with both of his parents and stood, and then Lhay began to sing to the melodic beat of Tate’s bass. All heads turned as Nina strolled down the aisle with her parents. Her Sari was pale gold, saffron, champagne. Her black hair outshone the jewels set there, and her face outshone her hair. She looked just like a princess.
The first part of the ceremony was a complete Hindu ceremony. I’d never seen anything like it, and I was amazed. The symbolism and the chanted prayers created a feeling in that grove that was inexplicable. The next part of the ceremony was for the couple’s chosen speakers to stand up and talk about them, and about love and friendship, and no one had any troubles doing that. There were a few tears, but lots more smiles and laughs, and no doubt that this couple is blessed.
Before we knew it, Nina and Jerel were officially wed, and everyone was heading up to the lodge for a long, fine, festive night of eating, drinking, dancing, singing and remembering. We had such fun, being together, remembering our shared roots, telling tales and toasting the happy pair. Watching the older men in Nina’s father’s family dance to Indian disco was fantastic, seeing the sari’d women swirl and dip around them, singing karaoke with Chris was too much fun, dancing as if we were still 18 to all our favorite 80’s tunes, and enjoying the other people who were brave enough to karaoke. I hope I never forget this lovely, perfect day.
Nina and Jerel, thank you for the gift of yourselves, and for sharing your bright, broad world. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

We finished the night, oh where? Again at Hal and Mal’s then Martins.
Caroline, whom I would obviously follow anywhere– with a glazed look and happy smile - suggested that the night was still young (*sheesh* what about ME! ;) and so we all reconvened (somehow) in downtown Jackson after the fete. Basically the same crew as before were there, with the exception of Ced and Gina, and the addition of Fel and two of Nina’s other cousins, as well as some of the outlying film folks. We talked about food and film (big surprise) and family. Though we were all tired, no one seemed to want to go. We closed down both places, though, said our goodbyes and went to our rooms.
The next morning we had one more small visit with Caroline and Roberto (one more cool Caroline kiss on my cheek, yay me!) while we breakfasted continental-style, we got to say goodbye to Tate and Lhaye, and then we headed out for the country and for “home” – to see my family.
We rode through some beautiful countryside, lush trees, winding roads and small swamplands. We got to Charlyn’s around lunchtime – just in time to head over to Aunt Sissy, Jeff & Casey’s for a little Easter cookout. Charlyn’s younguns were glad to see us. Ryan is almost ten now (!) and our Mimi – Amelia – just turned six. They were happy to introduce us, in turn to their cousins Trinity, who is now two, and little teeny precious Zachary, who is just several weeks old. I didn’t even know that Zach was on the way, so I count that as one of my two best surprises of the trip. We had a nice lunch. (Mmm, fried crabclaws…) and a good visit. Casey looked good. Mom-hood seems to suit her. Jeff was looking good, too. A proud dad always looks good, in my opinion. Aunt Sissy was of course in full-bloom Mamaw state, she now lives within a very short distance of her four youngest grandbabies. Trinity is a special kid. She is mostly quiet, it seems – or at least a little shy around new people. She has soft brown hair and soft brown eyes (our Grandma Bertie’s legacy, dad, Jeff and Shawn all have those eyes. Brown eyes will always be my favorite…), a little pug nose, a fair rosy complexion, and a potty-mouth like a toddling sailor, apparently. Gotta’ love that! :D She is a bundle of energy, bouncing around on her tiptoes, flapping her little hands like a flustered penguin, bouncing on and off the furniture, and running away at every possible opportunity. The only thing I really heard her say the whole time was “Oh shoot, honey.”, which she said often, though Charlyn assured me that it probably wasn’t “shoot” that she was saying. Her dad and Aunt Sissy say that she reminds them of me. Hm. :D
Zachary is still so teeny, he looks like a little shell-less turtle. But he has big blue-grey eyes and a sweet little face, and a pretty good shot at a weird and wonderful life stretched out ahead of him.
After dinner X & I got out in the yard and showed Ryan and Mimi some stage combat basics, and then we headed back to Charlyns for some show-and-tell time (Charlyn is an artist and master Quilter, Ryan has an impressive collection of biological and geological wonders, and Mimi has lots of clothes and purses as well as Barbie that becomes pregnant (!!) and a hula-hooping style that is … unmatched in entertainment value. :)
We played the Universe’s longest game of ‘Life’ while Charlyn cooked up a batch of venison chili (MMMmm!!) and stayed up to watch the kids be silly until we all wound down. Before we went to bed, Mimi reminded us of the countdown of days until her daddy comes home for leave from !@#$ Kuwait***, they both skwooched up with X & I on the air mattress for a few minutes before we all went to sleep.

The next morning Charlyn treated us to huckleberry pancakes (from her grandma’s huckleberry bushes) and homemade venison sausage (my FAVORITE) before we went over to Casey’s to visit a little more and pick up some of my furniture. Charlyn helped us load up the truck, and then we said ‘goodbye for now’ and headed on to Hattiesburg.

We drove the back roads, checking our tarp often, as the rain was heading our way. We made it to Hattiesburg without any trouble, though, and still in good moods. Christopher is an ideal traveling companion, may I say. He is helpful and patientand a good dj and a really good kisser. (Not that the kissing part is NECESSARY, but it sure makes the trip nice. : ) When we got to the ‘Burg, I stopped on a whim and called an old friend, Mitch. Mitch is my ex-husband’s long-time best friend. They were in school together, started working in comics together, and Mitch was Steve’s best man in our wedding (Charlyn was my maid of honor). I wasn’t sure that he’d want to see me, but I wanted to see him, so it was worth a shot. When I called, the answering machine picked up, but as soon as I said who I was, someone answered. Richie Blackmon, one of the “kids” (he’s THIRTY now!!!) who looked up to Steve and Mitch and the other Ms. art-corp folks when they were still at JCJC (Richie was also friends with Robbie) picked up the phone and said “SAM! It’s Richie! Richie Blackmon!” Well, SOMEone was glad to hear from me at least – that was a good sign. Richie put Mitch on the phone, and Mitch said “Yeah, come on over.”
Mitch was my first crush among that studio full o’ artists. He was cute and sweet too, like Steve (though WAAAAAAAAYYY too shy for me) but it was his completely unique art-style that really impressed me as an artist. It was his kind treatment of me (despite a LOT of things) and his loyalty to Steve that impressed me as a human being though, and I was grateful to be welcomed into his space again.
We had a nice visit. We talked movies and art, of course. I told him and Richie that when I REALLY missed Steve was when some new nerd-movie came out – LotR, Hellboy, Spiderman, etc. - and I wanted to hear his opinion. They caught me up on the local gossip, mostly mild, thank god, and Mitch served us some of his DAMNED good iced tea. I left with a good feeling, like I’d been forgiven for a bit of my past transgression, and that maybe my old life wasn’t as tarnished as I’d thought.
After we left Mitch and Richie, I gave X the 30 minute tour of the ‘Burg. I took him around campus, down Hardy, past the zoo, ‘round downtown (and subsequently past about 10 different old houses of mine). He got to see The Cat Lady, we got free sno-cones at my favorite stand down by the old Bingo hall, I showed him some of my favorite old houses and haunts (mine and Steve’s old house has been bought and is being remodeled and looks great – they kept my bedroom and dining room blue, too!). When we stopped for a potty break, I called Rob’s house, and even though he wasn’t home, Brian**** was. He was about to head off for work, but he said Rob would be home soon, and we could surprise him. We found the neighborhood, but I drove by (like I’ve done a jillion times before) thinking I had the right place. When I knocked on the door and a guy who was OBVIOUSLY not Rob answered, I asked and the guy said “oh, I think he’s next door…” he let me leave the truck parked for a minute, and I walked over into Rob’s yard. He was standing at the door with his cute girl friend and I just walked right up and said “Excuse me, could I use your bathroom?” I thought he was gonna’ fall off the steps! He was DEFINITELY surprised to see me! We came in (he still had my art displayed on his wall! :), visited and gossiped for a while, and then they sat with us at the Waffle House (X’s favorite restaurant - ???) and helped us delay the trip for just a little while longer.
(Rob, it was SO good to see you, and 'review old times' and meet your lady. Thank you. You have always been a true friend. Even through the fake mice debacle.*****)
Finally, we took off. Pouring rain, 10 hours to go, and no sleep since 8:30 a.m., and still my mood was good. Chris kept me awake for as long as he could playing DJ, and when he nodded off, I would gently tug his hair and he would wake for a while. It wasn’t a bad trip back, despite the cold and rain. I had to stop for about 15 minutes somewhere in South Carolina or Georgia, I think, and rest for a few minutes. I couldn’t actually sleep, but the rest helped. We made it to Stewart’s and unloaded the truck without killing each other, though by then I was basically sleep-walking, got the Pup-pup in the truck and went home to a well-deserved and hard-earned sleep.
It was a good trip, and when the time came for X & I to go back to the real world, we found that we still didn’t want to leave each other’s company. That’s a good sign, if you ask me, especially considering that the return to cold weather brought on two bad days of serious pain before it warmed up again, and I wasn’t the best company.
Back to the “real world”, away from the dream of open water, big skies, old friends, good food, exotic faces and places, memories, forgiveness, family. Nonetheless, I also return to my good friends here, and some things and places that I love. Life is about change, forward and backward. I’m pretty (darned, in some cases) good at a lot of things, but at dealing with change, I’m an old pro. It’s just nice to know that some things never change, and that I am still welcome in places that I love, places where I thought I couldn’t return for burned bridges. I really do believe that a man can measure his value by the weight of his true friendships. If that is the case, I am a very valuable person, indeed.

Much love, and more adventure,
-Sam


*Manor Daze is the live-action sitcom that we go to in Asheville every Wednesday night.
Come see it, it’s great, funny, free, and the backdrop is fabulous… ;)
Sunshine’s my mom, bitch!
**I told X it’d just be something for us to fight over when we broke up… :D
*** “ANYBODY but Bush in 2004!” I wish that son-of-a-!@#$-politician could hear Mimi counting down those days…
**** HEY, BRIAN! SORRY WE MISSED YOU!!! MOO! THANKS FOR KEEPING THE SURPRISE!)
*****Don't ask.