Litio

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

Of all the poems I have read about loss, this one, to me, is the most subtle, the most striking, and the closest thing to describing grief I have come across. I got these lines done to commemorate both her memorial, as well as for the open ended nature of the quote itself. I figure the tigers can mean any sort of adversity, and to not care can be either a submission, or a lack of fear. Because of this, the quote reminds me that it’s ok to feel pain, as well as that it can be met with resilience, and even a sense of detachment, which is essential for forward momentum in life.

2 from the vaults Oh baby!

Polly was written about a girl 14 years old coming out of a gig, kidnapped by gerald friend. He tied her up in his mobile home [upside down] and raped / tortured her with a leather whip, razor, blow torch and hot wax, she gained his trust by saying the torture was boring her and such lies and while he stopped for gas she got out of the vehicle and made a scene attracting attention from surrounding people.

GUILTY VERDICT IN RAPE CASE
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
August 19, 1987
Author: The Associated Press
Estimated printed pages: 1

Gerald Arthur Friend was convicted yesterday in Pierce County Superior Court of the kidnapping and torture-rape of a 14-year-old girl.

Prosecutor Tom Stratton said he would recommend an exceptionally long sentence for Friend, 49 (age), who was convicted in a similar attack 27 years ago. In the latest case, Friend was charged with first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape in the attack that occurred over several hours late June 5 and early June 6.

Officials said the victim was a runaway who accepted a ride from Friend near the Tacoma Dome after she attended a rock concert in the area. When the girl tried to get out of the car, authorities said, she was handcuffed and abducted at knife-point to Friend's mobile home.

The victim testified last week that Friend tortured and repeatedly raped her with several objects in his mobile home. She said he blindfolded her and ran a propane torch close to her skin. She eventually escaped.
Memo: Update
Edition: FINAL
Section: News
Page: D1

Index Terms: ASSAULT SEX CRIME AGE COURT VERDICT
Dateline: TACOMA
Copyright (c) 1987, 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer (http://seattlep-i.com). All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Record Number: 8701220169

3 from the vaults Oh baby!

P.S. -- Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

- Jourdon Anderson, un esclavo negro liberado, a su antiguo "amo", respondiendo en una carta a la propuesta de este último de que volviera a trabajar con él -

3 from the vaults Oh baby!

the fourth and a day

Four years ago this holiday, in fact the entire month of July, changed for me. I used to really like July a lot. It always seemed to me the sweet belly of summer, the hottest, clearest weather, the tender bit most free from the school year that punctuated it, the time when the best fruits and vegetables were abundant, ripe, precious and luscious as edible jewels.

I always liked the Fourth of July too. I liked the family barbecue; I liked the strange picnic foods like the weird seven-layer sandwich on the Portuguese sweet bread and the oddly pointed lemon cake that my grandmother made only for the Fourth. I liked the ritual of trooping down to the lake to watch the fireworks. I liked their acrid smell and their excessive noise and the way that the smoke hung in the air. I liked how everyone would exclaim “Oooh!” and “Aahh!” on cue and without irony. I liked it all, even into adulthood, even when the month was no longer defined by the school year, even when my family dispersed like dandelion seeds, even when my grandmother died and the strange foods died with her, even when the ritual was just a memory.

Four years ago, my relationship with July changed. No longer was it a time of unhampered pleasure, a time imbued with the gold-rosy glow of nostalgia from even before I was old enough to be nostalgic. No longer was it a month of joy. It became, instead, a time of unutterable loss, for four years ago, as I’ve written about before, I euthanized my dog, the Legendary Spencer.

Even as I write that last sentence I feel ridiculous about it. He was, after all, just a dog. I feel shame that I experienced such an avalanche of pain over losing him. I feel pitiable that his death reduced me to a shuddering, heaving pile of emotional rubble, and it did. I feel pathetic that it took me over three years to talk about him or his death without weeping, that even now, should I let myself loll in the vestiges of my grief, I get teary. I feel completely lame about how much I loved and how deeply I miss this dog.

 

I have thought about my love for my dog enough to intellectualize a great fat lot of it. I know that he represents a twelve-year swath of my life and his death caused me to realize that that swath was now nothing but history. I know that when I took him into my life I was alone and that he assuaged my loneliness, and I know that I am inarticulately grateful to him for this gift. I know that he freely gave me furry unconditional doggy love, and I know that I had a very special relationship with him. I know too that Spencer was an extraordinarily beautiful dog that caused strangers to stop me on the street, that his looks shone on me a brighter glory, and I know that his death has made me feel more like a mere mortal than the shining star I was when I walked him. I know he fed my ego, my heart and my spirit. I know all these points, but they don’t explain my grief.

I’ve experienced my own fair share of loss. I’ve got a dead ex-boyfriend, a bunch of dead grandparents, including one who killed himself. I’ve had plenty of pets before Spencer who died or whom I had to put down. I’ve lost friends to entropy. I’ve loved and lost and rinsed and repeated. I am no stranger to loss.

The death of my dog, though, was a loss both new and incomprehensible. When I recollect that month of July in 2003, I see myself curved as a coma and heaving deep soul-rattling sobs in my bed. I remember reading Harry Potter #5, the one where Sirius dies, and it morphing, melding and swirling into my loss of Spencer. I was immersed in an abject state of deep grey grief. All I wanted was to die too so that I could be with my dog; I worried that he was alone and scared, and I worried that he was looking for me everywhere, as I was looking for him. It was—and in many ways still is—a pain unlike any other: intense, keening, inarticulate and consuming.

Time has passed, as time does, and I find my grief and I have changed. I found that yesterday, the anniversary of the day that I took that long, last walk with my dog, I didn’t cry. Maybe I postponed the pain because I was busy, or maybe it is lessening. (And maybe I feel guilty about both the postponement and the abatement of my pain.) I find that the details I can recollect about Spencer have faded, as has, apparently, my pain over my loss. I feel badly about that too—confused, and somehow untrue to his memory. I still miss him, but I don’t miss him as much as I did.

Which I suppose is normal. Healthy, even. I do, after all, have a new dog. I love him. I no longer compare him in all respects to the Legendary Spencer (and this new dog no longer comes up wanting). Last night, my dog slept with me, wedged between my legs, as he most often does. Spencer never slept with me. My current dog always does, and I like it. I like the heavy weight of his small sausage-shaped furry body against my knees.

This fourth of July I find that I’m freer. Freer from grief, freer from pain, freer to enjoy myself, maybe even a bit freer from feeling shame over the lavishness of my Spencer-related emotions. I may still feel ambivalent about that freedom, but I can let it ring, however softly.

Current Mood: jo

9 from the vaults Oh baby!