New Year, Road Ahead

I hope the road ahead is all sunshine, moonshine, perfect combination shots, ice cold free beer, scalding hot deep fried chicken, a bucket of only blueberry flavored Life-Savor suckers, Atomic Fireballs, twenty minutes in complete darkness in a tree swing swinging and watching bats, a sincere compliment, a real hug, a critical truth, a cheap chunky plastic ring, pink and green, the adrenaline high of racing, a neon sign for hot krispy kreme, loud music in a fast car on a day off with no particular place to go and cool thing or two in the mail. I hope there is a pit stop now and then with momentary distractions of roadside attractions with cheap tee-shirts and neat bumper stickers. I hope there is a gas station and it is a dirty place with boiled peanuts and gas station hot dogs, especially the kind that smell like rotten arm pits but taste like heaven wrapped in orange grease stained wax paper. I hope the road ahead is littered with an occasional pickled dinner consisting of pickled eggs, sausages, beef jerky, slim jims and I hope before I kick the illusional bucket I will man up just enough to try a pickled pigs foot. I hope the road ahead has a left with u-turn so I can hit some of the spots I have seen before but I am letting go of going back. I am also quickly letting go wondering where I am actually going. I do hope the road for all of you is littered with all of the above because they are my very favorite tangible things and I would give them to you if I could.

Christmas In Costa Rica - No Santa, Kick ASS!

I am so excited to have found this description of Christmas in Costa Rica:


Ticos have their own special way of celebrating Christmas or “Navidad”. Most of the traditions are based on popular religious beliefs, and many are similar to those of other Latin American countries. Of course, Costa Ricans always like to do things their way….the Tico way. December is probably the most festive month of the year, as the Ticos look forward to vacation from work or school, eating traditional foods, meeting up with friends and family and, of course, “mucha fiesta”! Costa Ricans get together with their families to prepare for the birth of Baby Jesus and the New Year to come. Along with intense religious celebration in this predominantly Catholic country, there is another reason for an exciting atmosphere – money! Every working Tico is required by law to receive an “aguinaldo” from their employer, a Christmas bonus established by the government equal to one month’s salary. The streets become full of people spending their aguinaldo at the “chinamos”, small seasonal street vendors only around during the holiday season. Items for sale range from manger scenes called “Pasitos”, to decorations like lights and ornaments, to cheap toys for children. Also for sale in markets and street stalls are piles of gleaming apples and grapes. Visitors may wonder where all this fruit grows in Costa Rica during December. While many tropical fruits grow all year round, these are actually imported for the holiday season, as apples and grapes are a considered a special Christmas treat for Ticos. December is also special in Costa Rica because the season changes from rainy to dry, and the days are cool and sunny. You can hear the Ticos say that it feels like Christmas or “pura Navidad” when the cool wind comes. The nights are clear and starry, and the air is crisp compared to the muggier months of the rainy season. Ticos celebrate Christmas by decorating a tree, usually a cypress, with a gold star on top and bright lights and ornaments, much like the U.S. Ticos generally prefer “louder” light decorations with plenty of odd flashing patterns. Every house in Costa Rica has a Christmas tree, specially cut to be big and round, and presents are placed underneath for adults to give to each other near midnight on “Noche Buena”, Christmas Eve. The gifts for children come on Christmas day. Instead of Santa coming to bring presents, Baby Jesus is credited with the wonderful gifts. However, as more and more foreigners influence Costa Rica, Santa is starting to make stops there! That being said, in Costa Rica you still ask the niños “What did the Baby bring you?” Another very important tradition is “el portal”, the portrayal of the manger scene with Mary, Joseph, animals, the three Magic Kings, and all the shepherds and their sheep. Construction of each family’s portal is a well-planned event, usually culminating with inviting friends and family over to show off the decorations. Portals are filled with crafted wood, decorative papers of different colors, plant mosses, ramps to create different levels, multi-colored sawdust, glitter, and lighting. On December 24th at midnight, not before, Baby Jesus is born and is placed in the portal where he stays until the three Magic Kings come to see him on January 6th. Ticos have a late night Christmas Eve dinner with a pork leg and tamales. Costa Rican tamales are made from corn flour and can contain potato puree, chorizo (a spicy pork sausage), a special achiote rice, shredded pork or chicken, and other vegetables wrapped in banana leaves and boiled. For a really fancy tamal, expect olives and capers in the mix. Eggnog, heavy with rum, is drunk, while people visit friends and family to give presents before midnight. Then, the midnight mass or “Misa del Gallo” is attended. It’s a long service, and often Ticos are too tired to make it all the way through the two hour mass! With the Tico traditions of food, fun and family, Christmas is definitely the happiest time of the year.

Making New Colors

When I was seventeen I wanted to invent a new color. The closest I have ever gotten to that goal was having sex with virgins or feeling the blinding excessive pain just before un-conscieousness. Figuring out how to put that color on paper eludes me still.

Lenny Bruce

A lot of people say to me, 'Why did you kill Christ?' I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know. Lenny Bruce

Communism is like one big phone company. Lenny Bruce

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God. Lenny Bruce

I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do. Lenny Bruce

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up. Lenny Bruce

I'll die young, but it's like kissing God. Lenny Bruce

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses. Lenny Bruce

If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone. Lenny Bruce

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. Lenny Bruce

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die. Lenny Bruce

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it. Lenny Bruce

The "what should be" never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no "what should be," there is only what is. Lenny Bruce

The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them. Lenny Bruce

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't. Lenny Bruce

The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter. Lenny Bruce

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds. Lenny Bruce

There are never enough I Love You's. Lenny Bruce

When you're eight years old nothing is your business. Lenny Bruce

Gift of the Bullpen

The best gift of all was seeing my friends. An odd thing occurred that made me feel completely contented – far more maybe than the Bright Goodson day even. I stood in that building a few stores down from where my great grandfather’s cleaver hammered down in the Finley’ Meat Market looking around and I smelled dip of all things. Somebody was dipping and nothing bad ever happens when any of my friends could chill out and dip, which was gross, but I loved that smell. Nobody dips anymore. So that smell was comforting and then Jeff, Lance and Jamey walked in and Jamey looked exactly the same and there is something to be said for one thing that is constant. My husband rocked the hat all night long and I was never more in love with him. I rediscovered just exactly how incredibly smart and funny Eric is. Jon Bennett and Autumn came from Gaffney and though they missed Aaron because he was late they had a good time. For a while though Autumn wanted to know if she should tell Jamey that she was Jon’s date. [He was so excited to see Jon he was kind of in Jon’s lap momentarily]. Jon didn’t mind. John and Lance disappeared briefly to GBOH to inspect the local culture – they reported that the view was both young and very appealing. A good time had by us. Fabulous.

Christmas Gifts

This might have been the best Christmas ever. My girls did not receive a gross amount of STUFF from grandparents piling crap onto crap in a race to see who could give more gifts. We only bought the Wii and four dress up dresses for Riley. For a few moments I was a tad nervous and worried about the Spartan nature of things then I realized that the squealing was a delightful thankful squealing and not a groaning. The girls were Happy. Happy with very little? Finley said she was thankful not to have so much little weird “crappy” stuff to unpack, unwrap put away. It has also been our policy for years that what comes in goes out, so the girls would get two bags of stuff they would have to find two bags of stuff to donate, so they are pleased to skip it. My mother and father generally spent a grand on my kids. Mom is dead. Dad gave Finley two DS games and Riley got a Barbie and a DVD, which rocks by the way.

The opening sentence to this had the word might in it for a reason. It would have been perfect if my dad weren’t an emotional retard. He can’t help it. I think he means well but he came over with a box and told John not to give it to me right then because it would make me cry. Something that is going to make you cry is not a gift. He gave me a bunch of old photo albums, none with much to do about me. But with photos of mom and my other two step dads. Not what I want to see on Christmas morning. My mom died on Dec 2. He keeps giving me very emotional stuff like that for Christmas and some stuff that my mother left me in her will that I sort of already feel like is mine. So it is weird. I am not mad – it is just exhausting. I’d rather he bring everything he is ever going to give me of my mother’s at once and just let me grieve already. I feel like I have to constantly brace myself for what’s coming. I can’t relax. It makes everything hard.

Yellowjacket

Yellowjacket

A yellowjacket caught up
Trapped in an open cell
Of a window with blinds

Screams to be liberated
Never turning to see release
In anger pounding the glass

Trapped to dance and buzz
Spinning so that she can not see
Clearly the exit of salvation

She will wither and dry
The sun baking her clean
To rest upon my sill

In the sunlight she is stilled
Quieted until the cracking body
Is lifted with tissue and broken

Thrown away for her inability
Knowing not when and where
To be quiet and calm

I am a yellowjacket
Learning to be still.


Kimberly L. Stansfield

It has to go, well most of it.

For the first time in my adult life I don’t want anything for Christmas and more seriously I don’t want to buy anything for my children. Anything big that is. John and I have decided we are moving to Costa Rica and all but our absolute cherished possessions are going. We walked around the house and though we have collected some awesome things. We have resigned ourselves to the face that they are that; just things. We had an awful lot of conversations that started with, “well what if the house was on fire” or “what if the house burned to the ground”. After so many of those conversations your really become attuned to what your partner and what your older child really values. The list would surprise you I think. We challenged each other to pick only three items. Of course we will take more than that but thinking always of a top three really helped us focus our attentions. Most men might be surprised that on my husband’s top three is a pair of non-valuable flower patterned transferware dinner plates. They have cracks and water stains and have for years rested over our stove but move importantly belonged to a set owned by his grandmother. He remembers eating food from them in her house. You might see plates like these at Goodwill but to him they are priceless. We have in fact, a very substantial amount of Noritake China in the cabinet as well as Mikasa crystal but neither of these made anyone’s list. On John’s list were a pair of Herand figurines no larger than a half dollar each. They are very valuable, but this was not why they were chosen. He said he picked these because he bought them from the factory in Europe and wrapped them very carefully and brought them on the submarine back to me. They were on my list too but not top three. Also on John’s list an embroidery his other grandmother did with pictures of all animals you can eat cow chicken lamb etc and then around it all the herbs with a little color code for what herb goes with which animal. It was a gift to his parents on their anniversary. Finley’s list her fire proof box, contents secret. The first thing on my list is wooden mechanic’s toolbox that is a zillion years old. It is painted green and beaten and if you saw it in a store you would think it had been distressed but the distress is authentic. It was used for an entire career from floor sweeping to white collar by John’s Grandfather and for the last seventeen years it has been in my house as a piece of high art, a stoop, and for the last ten years perched atop my bedside table. Crooked there with pictures the box has been looking down on us while we slept or shinning light on us. The green box filled with as much as I could stuff it. We haven’t asked Riley because we know she only ever wants one thing and that is the foot square remnant she calls her blankie. It is so important actually that it was on Finley’s list. We are going to do away with the rest of the stuff. Use the money to get us to where we want to go. When we get where we are going we are going light and staying light. I haven’t felt this excited or this calm in a very long time. The future seems pregnant with possibilities. Kim

Arming Our Children, Not Ourselves

As I sat in the auditorium of my daughter’s elementary school listening to the representative of our local hospital system as the guest speaker on Internet Safety I learned many things. None of the things that I learned however made me feel better able to keep my daughter any better protected or safer than her father and me. I learned that if shoes were thrown over a power line it meant you could buy drugs in that area. What I didn’t hear was growing problem of the youngest addicts taking the painkillers in their parent’s bathrooms. I learned that there were national affiliated gangs in our schools but I didn’t learn what we as parents could do to better prepare our children for gang recruitment, or what we could do in the opinion of this representative as parents to thwart further gang growth in our schools. I heard a gruesome story about a young girl who was dropped off at the mall by her mother to meet an online “friend” and avoided being the victim of a forty-four year old internet predator. This young girl was smarter than the predator and got away but her mother was too embarrassed to report this incident, fearing her poor judgment about leaving her daughter at the mall to meet a stranger would result in scandal. Her poor judgment and embarrassment ultimately resulted in the predator switching targets and assaulting the girl’s cousin in a nearby city. This predator was working both targets at once through the girls shared myspace site. This was a disgusting and very believable scenario. The key in the scenario that struck me more than the terrible crime of the abuse was the tragedy of a parent’s poor judgment that led to her daughter’s near miss and her niece’s sexual assault. I was disturbed by this but shockingly before I left the safety of my child’s elementary school I was more disturbed by the advice of the learned guest and the attitude of the parents around me. I did not hear concrete ways how to teach my child to use the internet safely. Our host instead, shuffled a well put together slideshow that we didn’t see much of because our host shuffled back and forth too fast backward and forward more concerned with telling scary stories. I was surprised to hear scare tactics and advice about how best to spy on our children. Somehow these adults believed that one of the most important ways to protect their children was to constantly and vigilantly snoop on them What I learned was just how duped the room had been into believing what I am saddened to believe now is the standard system of beliefs for mother’s of elementary school moms all over town, maybe even all over America. Somewhere the majority of these parents seemed to me to want to feel safe hearing that the school, the city, the internet watchdogs were keeping predators from swooping in from other cities and stealing our innocent children away, luring them with clever internet ploys. But then our speaker had a different message about exactly how deviant our children were and about how they lie to us all about the things they do online. Communities are outraged when something children are abused and citizens tend point fingers in every direction, demanding more educational programs to prepare our children, we demand more protection from the police, often saying more should be done to prevent internet predation. We sit stunned and wonder what should we do? I offer humbly now only what I beg you all not to do. I sat listening as this speaker described how to spy on our children. How to buy computer programs to ensure you could log on to your child’s computer and see every keystroke they make. Snoop on their email. Snoop on their friends. Listen to their phone conversations. Go through their personal things. As if somehow knowing what was in their text messages, emails and instant messages could give you all the secret information needed to keep them protected, innocent and somehow within your complete power to control. When I suggested I had a great relationship with my eleven year old daughter and that we discussed everything about our lives openly the speaker and the crowd not only laughed at me, but some across the room chastised me. One saying, “She needs to watch her girl!” A friend and neighbor happened to be near this woman and defended me and my daughter. A good girl so far and so far tells me most everything about her young life, talking to me quite frankly about her budding social life, sex, politics, science, drugs, death and many topics I think that the parent’s in that auditorium would never imagine talking to their children about. What made me so sad and so sorry for some of these parents is this – if you can’t trust your children enough to tell them the honest, if sometimes harder truths about life, their life, their town, their circumstances whatever that may be, a recent death, a family member’s addiction, a divorce, a family member’s sexual orientation and what your exact and honest opinion on each of these matters is. If you are not grossly honest with your children who will be? Who will they trust? The very people that may be trying to lure them away could be who your children turn to about matters they find you to fraudulent about. Older friends who don’t share your family values. Older internet friends or gangs who love to provide their versions of family. If or when the sad day comes that your child realizes he can’t trust you, what will be left of your family, of all of our families and consequently our community. When your child realizes you don’t trust them to tell them truth about the world around them, they will do they best they can with what you’ve left them. Trust is earned and if I taught my daughter to lie to me by not being forthright with her I guess I would expect her to lie to me. At our house the truth no matter how inconvenient, rules. There are parts of every harsh or explicit or adult portion of this world that can be shared in some way that can be toned down and shared with each child according to that child’s age and maturity. I am not advocating making miniature adults out of our community’s children. On the contrary, I believe that if you are candid and cautious with your delivery you can explain to your children in a way that empowers them that predators are not always lurking over the state line but may be in their church, in the extended family, across the street, or at the elementary school. We cringe to consider this but to fail to teach it is far more disgusting. Our girls and boys need to know that possibility exists because it does. That way our daughters get to remain innocent; yes I mean innocent because better to be prepared for the worst and then able relax and enjoy childhood and virginity rather than abused and childhood taken. You will not want to hear this and I hope it makes you angry enough to talk about this to someone, I hope everyone talks about this, but we need to arm our children with enough information to be a part of their own protection. We can not continue to “Protect Our Children, Overprotecting them into a false sense of security that leaves them, ignorant easy targets unable to defend themselves or susceptible to repeat attacks. And if you think your child will turn to you in a crisis if you begin their adolescent years shopping for software to spy on them I am saddened for you and for your children. You may know every single thing your child types on his or her computer at home in your so-called Safe Haven. However you will never know if your child has made alternate plans or how vulnerable you have made your child in mistrusting the basic concept of open communication and loving discipline with honesty. My being hopeful that my daughters will be honest with me as we both grow older is not naive it is based firmly in the knowledge that if we love and trust each other I can arm them with the best protection I can give them, the armourment love and the weapon of razor sharp knowledge. I’d rather have a smart child than a well intentioned police force, school district and the whole lot of parents that were with me in that auditorium.

Kim

Snake Learning

My daughter had an interest in snakes. I had a natural aversion to snakes. When she was nine she asked if she could have one. I said I would think about it. About four hours later my cousin Amanda shows up at door with a beautiful corn snake and all it’s accutrements. I was impressed by the narrow margin by which my nine year old had cut her timing. This snake opened up many doors in my life. I didn’t want to look at her but there she was as it turned out in my dining room due to some logistical and electrical issues with her habitat. So there she was moving around. I had to go see what she was doing. Not green, not brown, not grey she was that very weird color of those eyes of that person you know you knew that time but can’t remember. She looked wet but I knew she was dry and she was blind in one eye having been the resident snake of kindergarten class for three years she was somehow wounded in service. No matter though she was well handled in that time and although my intellect told me and my daughter agreed that reptiles do not regard their owners with anything other than interest in terms of food and shelter I sensed no menace from her. I watched for days in a fascinated way as she constantly searched her space for why I could not imagine. Putting the first mouse in her cage made me fell better about the world. Sad for the mouse? Not if you consider the filthy conditions I’d just rescued the little guy from. He’d been bred for this. The snake did what they do. I watched and was almost as satisfied. I wanted to touch her then. I could not. My daughter informed me, by popping my hand I might add, that I was not allowed to pick the snake up for at least twenty-four hours. She taught me something new, again. It is not uncommon. Later my daughter got the snake out and handed her to me and the cold chills that were all over my body rippled out several times before the finally melted away. Trying to hold a snake for the first time is like trying to hold a rope of water. It instinctively knows you are not appropriate for it’s safety and so it moves and moves and moves and as it does at first you are more and more uncomfortable. It is chaotic. As you become comfortable the snake accepts you are safe, it is safe, it will rest. It may put it’s small head on your hand, in your pocket, on your collar bone. You may feel the briefest moment when that rest happens. That moment could not be described as trust in you, not completely but it is a trust. It is much more a trust on the animal’s part to rest; that trust. Than the trust it takes to merely pick a snake up and move it around.
My daughter eventually had a collection of four corn snakes. A Ghost Snow Corn, which means really white laid a clutch of eggs. The ghost snow was named Coco, our girl got it in her mind she was going to sell snakes but it didn’t come to pass. We took our snakes to a Girl Scout event where young girls could handle a snake. The thinking was if you could concur your big fear in the fourth grade, think of what bigger things you can do? Because of those snakes I made myself hold a giant spider, yikes. I learned to throw a bottle of liquor in air and pour the contents when it came down and not care if it hit the floor. I learned to be still. I learned to be quiet. I got shot out of the space simulator at Space Camp. I tried the Gforce machine, too. Yes my daughter was there for all of these things. I could have said no. Now if I could just learn to like falling, so I could make myself like rollercoaster’s. Can you take a snake on a rollercoaster? What scares me? It is a short but silly list. What wouldn’t I do? What wouldn’t you do? I want to go to Ethiopia and feed one of the cities forty-three hyenas by mouth via a stick. If Andrew Zimmerman can do it, I can. Maybe the old time bible thumping snake handlers had it right in part, they just went too far or picked the wrong species. You can’t take a snake on a dance anymore than you take one on a roller coaster. I wouldn’t.

What is so right about the snake is this: Search Search Search Find restrestrestrestrest rest.

Getting to watch that, putting it on a scale you can observe, but in a naturalized way. Very cool. In our case the mouse often got away several times before the blind one got fed. Nature is not as fair as a nine year old with a heavy mallet.

KLS

The Chaos Of A Good Death, Players Listed

The Players:

· Chaos – The Arena That Eats Itself, Throws Up, Wipes Mouth, Winks At God & Karma.
· Adrenaline – To Each Their Own, The Seventh Sense The Best One.
· Hindsight – The Bully, Bitter Twin
· Foresight – The Illusive One, Free Twin, The One Hindsight Could Never Beat In A Race
· God – The Bartender [Or Kindergarten Teacher]
· Karma – The Bouncer/Owner [The Principal]
(These Two Are Always Dating But Never Really Talk About It)
· Humans – Debris, Minuscule, Meaningless Until They Mean It.
· Death – the front door to the arena, sometimes revolving, sometimes mirrored, sometimes locked. Big ugly key has one word scrawled on it in crayon hieroglyphs we don’t remember how to read. Pass.

The word chaos is one of my favorite words in whole world. Somehow in my nonlinear minuscule brain I jumped from Chaos to Adrenaline and a Good Death.
We’ve all heard the phrase “there are no atheists in foxholes.” It’s not a particular accurate phrase, I suspect, but it came to mind while reading this review of Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. The book is not specifically about religion on the frontlines, but it does raise some interesting points about the effect of the Civil War on the American understanding of the afterlife. From the review:
[Before the Civil War,] the faithful looked forward to what was called a Good Death, with time to see the end approaching, accept it and declare to friends and family members their belief in God and his promise of salvation. The battlefield brutally truncated that serene process, and soldiers and their families alike worried about what that might mean for their chances in the afterlife. Survivors tried to provide reassurance. When one Union soldier was killed during the siege of Richmond, a comrade told his mother that while her boy had died instantly and without the opportunity to declare his faith, he had told his fellow soldiers the previous summer that he “felt his sins were forgiven & that he was ready and resigned to the Lord’s will & while talking he was so much overjoyed that he could hardly suppress his feelings of delight.” But sometimes candor trumped comfort: one Georgia soldier worried in a letter home that while his dying brother had “said that he hoped he was prepared to meet his God in a better world than this,” he was also aware “he had been a bad, bad, very bad boy.”

What is a Good Death? I ask that now only because the notion of a good life has been drawn so sharply into focus in the last several weeks and more seriously so in the last few days. I live my life in a very contrary way to that of most of my peers. If you spend any time with us you will see how. Eventually I ask everyone close to me this question. What would be a Good Death for you? How would you like to die? If the answer is an instant “at home quietly in my sleep” I push a bit and narrow the parameters by asking what would a Good Death be if you had to pick a violent death. My sister-in-law believes that there are only so many types of particular deaths so she wanted to, if she had to be, she wanted to be burned alive. When I asked her why she said it was simple. She would suffer so that someone she loved would not. My daughter’s answer at the ripened age of eleven was both profound to me and elegant beyond her years. She said see would drown. She said it would for her be the least frightening, most appropriate since her father and I want to be returned to the sea and she had a long list of reasons but it seemed she had it worked out. This was coincidental to me, though I did not tell her, for all my young life I was certain I would accidentally drown. I lived at lake house most of my life and swam and water-skied almost every warm day. Taking risks like swimming at night and alone I was not afraid but certain. So her choice had a familiar sound but happily a smarter vocabulary.

If I love Chaos and my friends love Chaos then Chaos loves Adrenaline. Sometimes I cannot remember if I am married to Chaos and Adrenaline is my mistress or if I am married to Adrenaline and Chaos is my mistress. Of course my heart and body and on paper I am married for seventeen years in March to John. Either way in my Good Death I get to go to bed with both. If John could pick I would get to drift off into a dream but Karma is a bitch and I am probably over due so this is my Good Death. I would be driving as fast as whatever car I had could drive. Thunderstruck would be getting just three-quarters there because I would be redlining ever single gear, my mission would be racing my husband to get to my children who needed my. I would max out just before top speed, noticing some innocent person making a bad driving decision. I would change lanes from left to right never having had time to gear down into an intersection hitting the backend fully loaded concrete pump truck or 150 ton crane. I love concrete and I love cranes. Both would take a hit to the back without killing the drivers. I would be so jacked up by adrenaline and ACDC the plow of the crash would not even hurt. I would bump and swallow. Done. High on adrenaline. Metal, flesh, and if Chaos had a sense of humor the repeat button would on and the CD player would be the only thing left. Rubber, gas, piss, oil. Done. My girls would know I spent the last of myself trying as hard as could as fast as I could and the bonus point, swerving to miss.

My birthday is coming up in January. I could look back and pick many points that would have been fine to douse the light. So too on some of my friends at times when they were down in a hole. A foxhole of morality, depressions, demons all manner of war; personal and otherwise but what qualifies me other than Hindsight? Hindsight by the way is a cruel, narrow minded bitch with selective memory, her sister Foresight however whoa nelly. The notion that a Good Death died for America in the Civil War is bullshit. I think the birth of personal choice, of dignity may have been redefined. A young boy may have seen for the first time that he didn’t have to, was not required to make any declarations about his death, his faith beforehand. He may have spoken about this upon return and the sheer despair may have sparked the notion of choosing to be alone at the moment of death. Choosing to die a man apart as some veterans do, rather than burden their families or in their minds; shame themselves in their injured states as they pass, veterans have gone homeless sick and dying rather than be with loving families at their time of hospice. Why do they do it? I do not know.

How many of you have ever asked your children if they wanted to be buried or cremated or donated? Young children? Young children die. I don’t propose you scare them or give them nightmares. Would you feel guilty if they died and you didn’t know? I propose that most of grieving is unanswered questions. One unsaid thing; Chaos loves Adrenaline, they both have a crush on Coincidence. Until they all bump into to each other and I’m settled up, I intend to have a Good Life.

Kim

Why I Hate People; Slashed Mouthed Monster

She has white hot blond strands of knowledge streaming down her back. Each lace of golden fleece tells a different tale one more essentially older and knowing than the next. Her existence is only possible because of the rare mercy of Humor and her sister Coincidence. I am the child of the red haired Rage grown older into Crone, once mated with an equally icy blond, then a single Fall spent twined with the belly of the warm blooded Fawn.

I am the grandchild of the slash-mouthed white faced monster who kept the buzzing bees in the jars. I am the grandchild of the slash-mouthed white monster who ate bites of all of his children and burped up his grandchildren at Sunday dinner, and spit them out on the bows of the shiny new boats at the lake.

I am the grandchild of the housecoat wearing slippered imp that used Oreos like magic coins to make up the difference. I am the mother of the white hot blond with strands of knowledge older than the grains sand that etch her monogram on her glass mirrors. I am the mother that taught her how to smile and twist the knife blade. I am the mother that will never tense when she reaches. I am the mother that will never leave. I am the mother that will never fail. I am the mother that will never fail to teach. I am the mother of honesty. I am the mother of murder. I am the mother of revenge. I am the mother of my little girls. I am the mother of all little girls. I am the little girl.

I will eat the slash mouthed monster one bite at time with every new bit of knowledge I give every little girl. I will enjoy the rancid bite, every bubble of bitter cadaver caviar upon each Oreo as I illuminate the younglings, perpetuating their protection. Casting this spell and making them armored against the darkness, against the black bedrooms and the buzzing bees in their ears and tugging at their nightgowns. I will eat the slash-mouthed monster one bitter rotten bite at time as I teach them how to see, how to tell, how to kick, how to bite, how to run. I will swallow so they don’t have to. I will kill him. I will murder. I will teach them. I will teach them to. I am the mother.

My Orphan

My Orphan

An orphan and his sister came from Cincinnati
He was a mystery, a simple mystery from Ohio
In a simple blue and white sailor suit with one
White leg one white normal leg that came out
Of his little blue and white sailor suit and one
Blackish leg that came out of his sailor suit
My orphan had blood poisoning that turned
His whole leg blackish bluish reddish and in
The little blue and white sailor suit black and
White photo his leg was blackish it was simple
That is what was wrong with him.

Poisoned blood. It was not that he was abused
Or that he joined the United States Army when
After lying to join at sixteen he was shipped off
To Korea and killed and experienced horrors
It was not that my orphan was then brought
Stateside and put briefly into a veteran’s mental
Hospital or that perhaps my veteran married a
Women who had not yet gotten over the loss of

A child and the subsequent resulting divorce thereafter
My orphan had poisoned blood. He was not left
Not abandoned as some might imagine. His sister
Was not so unwell. She was not incapable
She was not infected with that which he clearly was

She clearly did not have eight children, six
Having lived and she, as he did not do things to them
My orphan prospered at his craft he was a skilled
Well loved well respected pipe fitter superintendent
his poisoning flared up almost always on Friday
evening and the spells seemed to last about three days

Modern medicine suggest perhaps alcohol but I am
Certain it was blood poisoning from his youth
My orphan would have fits of dementia and beat
His children, forget that they were children and
Sometimes force himself on them. Of course
His poor wife was just so overcome with caring for her
Other five children and worried about the nature of
Rumor, community, propriety, jobs and such that
She did the best she could with what she had
A no good father is better than no father at all
She was overheard telling the second oldest girl once.
She was after all protecting my orphan, from the world
He did after all have the blood poisoning.
I saw it that one time in the photograph

The orphan beat one of his sons with an
Axe handle and kicked his girl down a flight
Of stairs he did so much damage to her kidneys
She missed most of her sophomore year at school
Here in your community my orphan lived, worked
His children were your friends, they are now, here

When I was a toddler I hadn’t seen that photo
Of the blackened legged boy in a little sailor suit
I had seen pictures of other little children in
Equally cute outfits in black and white photos
With bright shinning smiles, freckles and pressed
Clothes, usually matching three boys three girls
Gleaming out at me from Pine Street or Marion
Avenue in this town where you all should have
Known and some of you did, doctors, coaches

When I was a toddler I didn’t know about
Blood poisoning I knew about azaleas rotting
And screened windows and stenches in my nose
Thinking about anything I could think about
But what was happening to me, smelling things
Concentrating intently on patterns in fabric or
Trying to disappear, praying and not getting
Answered by a God you couldn’t understand
At six years old and being mad and scared

Personally I hated what was happening to me
I hated the monster that ruined me and infected
Me with the poison though then I did not have
The name for the disease I felt in myself
Mama called it Blackness and Hatred said
Forgiveness was the only was to rid myself of it
I had told on her father for continually molesting me
When at six I was caught stealing plastic blow up
Barbie doll furniture, the stress overtook me
He was banished to another state not to return
For ten years then forced on me again by his children’s
Want for their aging, ailing father I conceded and let
My orphan, long away back into our lives
Holding him in my mind at knifepoint arms length away

After that I saw the orphan photo and in my mind
My grandfather became clearer to me – all the horror stories
Made more sense because he made more sense in a catastrophic
Regularly scheduled catastrophe way he was by all accounts
A very wonderful father husband boss friend during the week
And almost most of the time in public on the weekends but
Add alcohol and or any amount of stress or disagreement or
Argument from the ranks instant sum bitch
My orphan could not tolerate stress,
being told he was wrong
Or any loss of face

I only wonder why he never killed himself.
I wonder too, why then some of his children
Didn’t do it either.



Kimberly Lenora Brown Stansfield

Running Guns & Throwing Bare Feet, Yes She Was Pregnant!

I spent a wonderful fun night recently with a friend who is a fan of gun ownership, gun use and of course gun safety. This made me think of a time when I was a bit in love with the notion of being careless with a gun for the heft and feel of it. Guns are an elixor to some and quick fix [or not] to others but on this night two years ago in bare feet I was in love for a moment. In the way that perhaps only I can be in love, in thirty second increments - living always from one moment to the very next moment.

AK-47 Last night I ran from a house atop Glassy Mountain in my flip flops with a twenty-eight dollar pedicure off a friend’s porch following a man who’d spilled beer down his shirt. He was saying over his shoulder “come on girl I need your help for a minute”. We blasted through his front door and I bumped the chair where his extremely pregnant and due this very night wife. She was up watching television said, “Hey Kim”. I said “Baby, let’s get this baby on the way!” ten seconds later I am in their bedroom and what he needs help with is really really not what I imagined. When I bounced through the door, beer in hand –fortunately for some odd and powerfully lucky reason in my left non catching hand he was throwing me an AK-47.

I had stopped in the living room just for the half-breath, long enough to say one sentence to his wife and only hiccupped in following him; I mean I was right on his heals but when I came through the door he was tossing it to me. As I was catching from four feet away I didn’t know if it was loaded or hot or ready or if I would drop it or fire it. I caught it well enough and the weight was right and steady and it felt good and appropriate. It took my breath and I liked the way it made me feel to hold it. Like holding a baby or holding the hand of a new boyfriend or driving your first brand new car. He was fast at the task of unloading another very expensive and equally impressive high powered rifle from a black case on the bed. This was so fluid and purposeful, he moved deliberately and easily and he said, “It suits you.” We walked back through the yards to our friends house where my husband, Bennett and Jeff were about to fire off some rounds with a 44 magnum. My husband chambered a round and handed it me. He made a point to tell me that it would kick more than the Glock I own and to not put my finger on the trigger until I had both hands fully controlling the weapon. As I gently squeezed the trigger the crack and kick were what I expected- instant- and a jolt and a bolt. My ears were ringing when I went in.

I have moments like that every now and then. Unexpected jolts. It is a joy when your ears ring for the right reasons.