Subject to Change

By Timothy Leonard

Once upon a time there was a blind Touareg writer called Omar. He lived in the Sahara. The Sahara is a big place.

One day a Vietnam Veteran showed up. Then 9/11 happened.
It was chance, aptitude and timing.

"Whoops!" said, Omar, "looks like a heavy, deep real shift in global perspectives."

"Yes," said Mr. Point. "Let's travel together with world tribes and collect stories. Let's weave history, legend and myth into an epic."

"Ok," said Omar. After living in Morocco for six weeks they moved to Cadiz, Spain and found a writing room for a month. They moved to Grazalema, a remote mountain village. They wove tribal tales into a fabric filled with laughter, curiosity, and spiritual awareness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timothy Leonard
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988180130

Timothy Leonard

Vietnam veteran.University of Oregon graduate.Author and photojournalist.International TEFL teacher.Designer of mysterious projects.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Gazebo Group

My life and writing were shit. In 1997 finally tired of being tired, one wet winter Pacific Coast morning, I drove to a Tacoma hospital and checked into the chemical dependency unit for three days of alcohol detox.

After admission forms I took an elevator to the third floor. Workmen striped, sanded and plastered waiting area walls.

Nurse Rose explained basic health issues. Room #310. A bed near the window, old metal locker, sink, mirror, ancient radiator, and TV. A window overlooked a grassy area with a wooden gazebo, flowers and plastic basketball court. Mike was next door and Tom was across the hall. Tom resembled a skeleton with skin. He stayed in bed until he died.

The hospital was originally used for railroad workers and was a TB unit at one time which is why there is no pediatric unit, said Rose. One wing of the third floor was for Mica patients. Bipolar, multiple dependencies and mental illness. Highly disturbed cases were on the fifth floor.

She took a urine sample. She gave me Adavan medication for withdrawals. Pills replaced lost chemicals.

By dinner my journal writing evolved from expansive large loopy letters into tight microscopic form. Form the formless. I wandered down to the gazebo to smoke. Mindless in cold night air.

My new drug was water. I took more meds in the night and slept well. In the morning I realized meds were erasing alcohol and winding down my system. In the garden I scribbled in my black journal.

My legs feel like rubber. My mind is a monkey. I sit in the garden and write. Forms of substance abuse work through my system. Elements dissolve their old dominion on body mass. Meds and multivitamins with breakfast. In late afternoon I sat in the gazebo feeling drained, suffering extreme headaches. Filtered light danced through clouds.

I pass through dragon firewalls. I can’t spell. A crow called. Healer. Breath. I am calm with no monkey mind. Just sitting. My body adjusts with clear thinking, less agitation, less mental and emotional anxiety. I began accepting my new reality.

On the third day a doctor reviewed my chart. The next step is Phase II outpatient group therapy.

Addicts smoked in the gazebo. Fifteen plastic chairs circled stone block ashtrays. Addicts surrounded me in withdrawal stages from heroin, crack, speed, depressives and alcohol. Gazebo people tried to sort out their lives. They talked about insurance scam payment problems, families, nurses, lack of doctors, cement walls and institutional care histories. I sat among lost lives and despair.

Moist air held illness, surrounded by recovery. Dead eyes, laughter, faint hope, repressed angry regrets. Addicts huddled against slashing rain. Smokers coughed collective misery. Addicts bummed quarters for a pay phone to call friends and family.

A film explained how endorphins helped us feel good. Alcohol creates a false reality by blocking transmitters known as TIQ.

Mike remembered relapsing after 25 years of sobriety. I just stopped. I was driving down the street one night and plain stopped when I saw a neon liquor sign flashing. Vodka calling. He started all over again.

Above us 5th floor screaming potential suicide patients smashed heads against walls.

Addicts were trying to regain self-esteem. It was about surrendering personal control and accepting trust. We turned our lives over to someone who knew what they were doing.

Phase II outpatient therapy met four times a week for eight weeks. Patients were expected to sign an agreement to attend AA meetings twice a week.

Blake, a recovering alcoholic, chaired the outpatient group of eight.

I am your father, he said.

I didn’t like him. I had trust and abandonment issues. It was his authority trip, his attitude, and my fear of trusting authority figures, definitely an uncomfortable situation. I had a hard, painful time dealing with it. My fear was revealing repressed fear, anger and resentment.

Mike: I don’t drink for the taste, I drink for the effect.

Bob: I am scared to be alone.

A cold gazebo wind howled. Sunset slanted across smashed grass. The cigarette ashtray overflowed. Someone screamed on the 5th floor. The group talked.

Susan: I tried to commit suicide. The 5th floor is a scary place. Everyone is screaming and a naked man wearing only a hat keeps running around.

Tim: I drank because I had emotional avoidance and relationship addiction fears. Emotional vulnerability. Fears of being rejected and abandoned by women. My mother abandoned me to polio. I learned how to always leave them first. I became the great manipulator. I bailed out of relationships when it came time to trust my heart and vulnerable. I associated women with pain. Alcohol was my escape in a trusting relationship. My secret was fear and anger.

Queen: I was married once. My cousin got me using. Pills. Now I’m going to church twice on Sundays.

In Phase II addicts learned how painful and hard it was to ask for help, accept or trust. Addicts thought they had to do it all by themselves. Blake drew diagrams on the chalkboard.

I was the only addict taking notes on a yellow legal pad. I needed the personal evidence and truth. I was addicted to gathering material for stories.

Addicts were crying howling caged wolves in their self-imposed wilderness of fear, internal anger, pain, hatred, and agony. They craved finding self-love in detox, trying to get it all together. Some lived as if they were already dead.

I worked on my personal puzzle.

"Before I checked I grew tired of it all. I lived with a younger woman in a disastrous, self-destructive relationship. She was bi-polar. I didn’t know this unpleasant fact. I played the rescuer and father figure. Her parents were divorced in Denver. That’s where we met. My victim turned on me. They always do. My writing was empty. I drank to escape my shadows and the truth. Before coming here I submitted to therapy. With Cathy I learned I needed, if I was going to survive and be healthy, to acknowledge the fact, the hard cold realistic truth that I wasn’t responsible for my mother’s death. My subconscious played the guilt trip.

She died at 42 from cancer. She had polio when I was five. I felt abandoned. I was a confused angry child. Guilt. She spent her last twelve years in a wheelchair. I confronted this at the heart level, not the head level.

What happened? asked Mike.

In therapy I broke down. I cried, talking out old fears, self-destructive behaviors, old angers and resentments. Therapy allowed me to realize my integrity and self-reliance. I started taking more responsibility for my life. I went home and threw out all the gin bottles.

Heavy, said Queen.

I saw how my sickness with Susan had affected our personalities during the last five months. How anger, sarcasm (hostility disguised as humor) and negative emotions were replaced by caring and love with open trusting communication. We let each other go. We moved on with our lives for the sake of sanity, structure and stability.

Good, said Blake. Addicts searched and discovered triggers: a room, a memory, a face, place or situation setting them off on individual wild journeys of addiction. Addicts accepted states of medicated bliss, looking for endorphins. Some realized self-responsibility to stay clean and sober.

I’m sick, said an addict wrapped in blankets, so I drink to make myself feel better.

They were all agitated, nervous and apprehensive. I was curious about it all. I knew it was ok. In room #310, wandering halls or sitting in the gazebo I remembered Avondale in Denver. I worked there for two years as a technician with the mentally challenged. Drab institutional halls, sterility, hopelessness, love and kindness permeated abandoned children and adults trying to figure out their lives. I taught blind Chris how to make change. We fingered pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters singing coins on tables. He graduated to taking a city bus to work assembling airline cutlery in plastic bags. A beautiful singer, his voice belonged in a choir of angels.

One day Donny, a smart institutionalized resident said, You know if it ain’t one thing it’s something else. He was a lucky one. His father took him out often for food and movies. Forgotten, neglected others were left rocking in catatonic chairs staring out dirty windows watching them drive away.

In group I visualized people coming out of their inpatient and outpatient comas. Recovering self-esteem. They relinquished control by asking and receiving help in therapy. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Laughter visions opened my addict heart-mind. Visions of gazebo gatherings became ancient sacrifice rituals evolving to clarity, insight and wisdom. I visualized being in a sweat lodge ceremony. Walking through fire I burned fear and anger. I sat like a stone in a Tibetan meditation cave releasing toxins. I cultivated a Zen beginner’s mind, "No ego, no problem."

Addict visions burned through awareness levels. I visualized intuitive healing. Being fire I danced through fire. I am a fire eater. I am in a clear center. Wholeness, trust, love, sharing and balance. Some addicts remained powerless. Addicted to programs. Others realized they wanted to grow and get a life.

In group therapy we learned about splits, passive-aggressive behavior, co-dependencies, orbits, behaviors and recovery.

I don’t want to talk about it, I said in one meeting. I felt trapped, sullen, angry and rebellious. I resented the dependence, the need. The heavy weight of addict pain and suffering suffocated me. I wanted to do it by myself.

I remembered a 3-year old student in my tennis class saying, I need help. I was grateful. Her courage and voice helped me discover a healing path.

Three important little English words.

I need help.

I stared at the blackboard where Blake, a control freak scribbled words.

Denial? — Not me!

Anger? — Why me?

Therapy was stabilization and structure. I remained defiant against authority and trust. I knew people in authority could hurt me. I released this demon. Blake explained how it worked, We need to set boundaries and limitations for loss, grief and anxieties. Everyone in the group completing detox is required to attend AA meetings. Here’s a list of places. If you don’t go to meetings then you can’t come to group.

I attended a required in-house AA session. It was about affirmations, confronting substance abuse and addictions. My underlying reasons and old excuses were:

1. fears of abandonment

2. anger and resentment

3. blocked emotional feelings

4. manipulative control behaviors

5. hiding inside booze

A split between enmeshment and engulfment.

I’d seen enough after one meeting. It came down to discovering courage. I wrote.

I used to keep a journal, Jill said staring at me scribbling in a meeting. Writing was a way to hide my true feelings. Ignoring her humorous sarcasm I filled up evidence pages.

Addicts worked on discovering healthy personal and interpersonal relationships, healthy behaviors, values and attitudes. Blake told someone in group their feet were talking. Moving feet meant inner turmoil. I wanted to know what was the emotion behind the fear, or was it the fear behind the emotion? Someone said, the bigger the fear the bigger the defense.

I practiced detached awareness.

I lived with silence, exile and cunning. In the dark gazebo someone said, Susan was readmitted to the 5th floor on a suicide watch.

Anger is expensive. Denial will kill you.

I checked out of group. It was time to remember the future. I acknowledged my genuine real authentic self.

The map is not the territory.

Chapter 2

Letter to Susan

I trust this finds you well and healthy in body, mind and spirit. I chose a heart healing wisdom path after walking through two painful relationships with you in Tacoma. Booze and you. Ain’t nothing but the blues.

Now I write with a new sense of freedom, risk, and clear calm heart-mind detachment. I remember and I am liberated.

This is from my heart, not my head.

You were clear calling from Denver saying we are through. It’s a relief. I accept responsibility for my actions. I unloaded my pain and loss and fear in our relationship. It was not fair for both of us. We shared pain and pleasure. You’ve been patient waiting for me to understand and acknowledge the reality we are finished. Thank you. I remember the first night we spent together in the cockroach infected Capital Hill apartment in Denver and you said, I feel like a whore. I manipulated your weakness for love. Our intimacy was contrived. We were wild animals. We were lost and weak.

We drifted into co-dependence. As you said, I was just along for the ride.

Our fear and weakness for love and approval allowed this. You were looking for a father figure. I was looking for someone to rescue. Hello martyr. I bought into your poor little old me attitude which suited you fine, providing financial and emotional support. As we learned the hard way doing hard time in a relationship prison, we have fewer expectations.

People get older sooner and smarter later.

I am calm. Our separation taught me boundaries and limitations. Your bi-polar disease was a challenge for me. How could I help you when I couldn’t help myself? I felt the bone dry reality. I created a fantasy fabric, living my insecurities. We manipulated our weaknesses rather than mature using our strengths.

In my intuitive way I discovered truth, light, hope, joy and peace. New direction. The Tao. I know freedom from anger, desire and attachment.

In white light clarity I remember the night I came home from the massage you gifted me in Tacoma. How your wild illness, jealousy and lack of self esteem created crazy suicidal threats. How you escalated from threatening yourself with a carving knife to overdosing with toxic red pills. Our relationship was toxic.

I knew it would be her, you screamed.

It’s nothing. I had a massage, that’s all.

No! you screamed feeling fear, loss and frustration. I knew you’d find someone else.

I felt hopeless trying to calm you down. I drank gin and tonic to escape my fear and obliterate your anger. I applauded your neurosis through my veil of self-pity. I misjudged your anger and fear. I thought it would pass. I failed to recognize your impending psychotic breakdown. Your anger balled into a fetal position on faded plush carpet. You yanked your long red hair out in clumps. Screaming at me. Screaming at yourself. Found a knife. Spilled a bottle of pills. I was afraid for you. Dialed 911. You slammed the phone out of my hand. Cops handcuffed you and took you away. They said someone had to go.

I fell apart that night. The next morning was sad and scrambling around to raise bail money. Got you out of jail. We got you packed and out of my life. In Denver you have medical help and emotional support with family and friends.

I needed to get clean, sober and writing. Nothing but the blues. Have mercy. I have no more wild imaginary illusions about us. I walk through fire. Some are transformed. Some get burned. I’m happy you are with people who love you. You found a doctor to help you. Therapy is going well. I share my awareness with you. I confronted my deep shadows. My lack of emotional growth and alcohol addiction is the root of my problem. I anticipate a detox center this weekend. I will get this old monkey off my back. I will begin writing this story. Love.

Chapter 3

Affirmations

It’s about trust, love and acceptance.

A year disappeared since Santa Fe. We enjoyed good times, bad times, laughed, cried, loved and lived. Figuring our lives out. Zonal travels, food, tender wild spontaneous sex, excellent road trips. Together or apart we understood the how and why, signs, metaphors, words, feelings, anfd truthful emotions revealing hidden fears that manifested inside, between ourselves.

I survived a brief hospitalization. Two weeks and one day after detoxification I write this.

Positive sense of self. Peaceful mind with positive growth. Living clean now. A renewal of self. Teaching, sleeping, eating well and writing. I maintain a sense of subtle intuitive power.

I am free from addictions.

addictions to unhealthy relationships

addictions to hide inside, beside alcohol

addictions to old fears of abandonment

addictions to anger and resentments

addictions to manipulation & control behaviors

addictions to violence

addictions to blocked emotional feelings

addictions to weaknesses

addictions from the fear to say:

I love you.

I am afraid.

I want to trust you.

I have a comfortable calm balanced reality in my life.

I need help.

I remain open, honest, and vulnerable to pain, loss, grief, love, trust, intimate connections, forgiveness, compassion, heart-mind intuition, silence, meditation’s insight, heart diamond wisdom, renewal of self-esteem & self-worth without loss of self.

You know this truth. Thank you for sharing your existence. All blessings for your happiness and peaceful way in the world. Follow your bliss.

"Give the beautiful ones mirrors,

and let them fall in love with themselves.

That way they polish their souls

and kindle remembering in others." - Rumi

Chapter 4

Treehouse

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon tree house. Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter. Covered in construction dust and needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine. It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist. I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly. Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything. I’m confidant and self- reliant. I explore the human condition. Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes. I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, passion and suffering. Hurl your thunderbolt unto death. Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

I accept universal illusions. Wishes, values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams project perceptions in my mirror. My mirror is free of dust. I evolve discovering emotional strength, trust, wisdom, peace and love. I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty. I am tired of beating myself up. I know the words limitations, boundaries, vulnerability and creativity in multiple languages. These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering. Keep a diamond in your mind.

Chapter 5

Thorn Responsibility

I’m filled with wild passion. A mind-expanding drug of curiosity, delight and freedom increases my awareness. The eternal present is a long now. My power is big medicine. It’s a sacred connection to Gaia after 60,000 years of paying attention to details.

I observe a spider meticulously wrapping a captured insect with thin microfilaments. Spider recycles her old web on the periphery. They haul it to a diamond center. It vibrates in a soft breeze. Does the spider have any intention when building the web of catching the insect? Does the flying insect have the intention of finding the web? Where does instinct end and intention begin? One instinct is to sit in patience. Another instinct is to take risks. JUMP over the abyss.

My serenity is not purchased over the counter with pharmaceutical coupons. No dust collects on my mirror reflecting an elegant universe in my heart. In my expanded state I am a breath of fire, a lightning bolt sacrificing fear, doubt and uncertainty. I shatter myth. Lightning bleeds off my charge creating transformation.

I am an unemployed fortuneteller. I am ahead of the future. The day after tomorrow belongs to me.

I am a gravedigger/archaeologist. Soil is my groundwork. Look at my hands. See good dirt under fingernails. I am the soft sand of sleep calming tortured hearts.

Abracadabra! My feminine nature hurls her lightning bolt even unto death. She is a death deferred. She is on death row with a short reprieve. My tranquility is a lethal injection of travel.

It’s 100 degrees in blistering sun. I work hard and fast pounding typewriter keys, digging graves, discovering artifacts.

I hammer keys in a new form of construction business. Before bits, bytes and gadgets.

Shovels plow archaeological deserts reflecting passion and curiosity. An archaeologist inside a tomb waving Diogenes’s lamp yells, Every bit we dig out tells a little more about the story. They unearth a story revealing communities, customs and cultures.

A digger explains how it works. This stuff we roughly estimate is between 1,800 to 1,990 years old. We use a method called carbon dating. It measures the amount of carbon-14 remaining in ancient material.

What is it?

Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon found in all organic matter. Scientists determine the age of fossils and artifacts by comparing test results to an international standard. We’ll send it to a lab for analysis.

Beautiful. Let me know what you discover.

Tourists find. Travelers discover.

Explorers sift discoveries through mesh screens. A delicate camel hairbrush caresses historical fragments. They dig toward 8,000 well-rested Chinese terra-cotta warriors in battle formation standing ready for excavation. Chariots, horses and supplies with trapped Mandarin survivor voices echo toward the surface causing vibrational shifts. Confucian scholars join them. Buried since 210 B.C., guarding Qin Shi-huang-di, the first Emperor of China, their collective consciousness breath creates tremor waves near Xian, the capital of Imperial China. Warriors stand silent on the edge of the Gobi desert along the Silk Road. Voices sing swirling word storms. They hear brushes, shovels, earth moving equipment and hammering keys approach their hidden truth.

They are coming for us, said a warrior.

In my inner garden of crimson stimulus I tend wild roses. Nostrils scent sense. I have a responsibility to the thorns.

Chapter 6

Mother’s Polio

In 1955, in another incarnation, my mother developed polio before Inactivated Polio Vaccines (IPV) and Mr. Jonas Salk came along.

An epidemic of polio in 1916 killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 more. In the early 1950’s there were more than 58,000 cases of polio each year. In 1954 Salk’s determination to conduct field trials resulted in 1.3 million children receiving the polio vaccine. He never patented the polio vaccine. By 1979 the number of cases had dropped to 10.

In 1955 my mother was flat on her back in an iron lung. Her beautiful curly red hair dressed a white pillow. She looked into a small horizontal mirror, preparing to give birth to her second son.

Doctors proclaimed him a miracle baby. They thought she was going to die. Controlling the process, she kept breathing. He was small and sick. My brother survived strong and loving in his own unique calibrated dysfunctional way.

After the iron lung she lived 12 years in a wheelchair. She absorbed pain, fear, life and death connecting and nourishing her soul through the Bardo. She accepted her intermediate state between death and rebirth. Her body was her vehicle. Her transition time and space contained no edges.

She volunteered with the dying. Her fortitude enabled them to resolve their anger, resentment, suffering and impending freedom. They accepted their inner wisdom releasing their mortality with a free spirit. She absorbed their spirits. She knew life gave you the test first and the lessons later. One of the dying women said, Honey, it’s not that I have a hearing problem, I have a listening problem.

Yes, she said comforting one, "we are not here for a long time, we are here for a good time.

For all her love, she had a violent Irish temper. She was not content spending the remainder of her short life pushing and pulling her thin black tires through a maze. She wasn’t happy being lifted in and out of a car by her sad stoic husband. She left skid marks on life’s road full of hairpin corners, dead ends, soft shoulders, yielding at intersections. She was a rolling thunder tour.

One hot July day she rolled her living prose poem of anguish, vision, truth and beauty through Denver.

Its all a myth, a way of remembering the past, she screamed rolling out of shadows into blazing Denver fried egg sunlight on Broadway Street past Hispanic families sitting on broken suitcases in grim shade passing thousands of devout Tibetan pilgrims singing, praying, and laughing on dusty roads toward Lhasa.

They threw rocks at karmic ravens, at sky crystals, making their offerings, their prostrations. She rolled her chair past itinerant, landlocked terra cotta warriors crashed on bags at Beijing and Shanghai train station crossroads. Invisible unknown terminal destinations.

She rolled past Elmore James, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Sonny Boy, Howling Wolf, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters standing down at the crossroads treated like slaves sliding their callused fingers on metal frets in selfless agony trading their souls to the devil. Nothing but the blues.

The blues are the roots. Everything else is the fruit.

She flew past Balinese wood carvers in cotton sarongs carving delicate faces for shadow plays, jungle painters creating butterfly corporate murals, villagers harvesting rice in layered green highlands and amputees plowing behind oxen, hearing outlawed Irish tinkers wandering village to village pounding pans, as she rolled past homeless people sleeping on soiled mattresses in the united states of advertising facing meditation walls where shadows played.

She rolled past a naked evangelist on a downtown street corner at his wailing wall forecasting human greed and lust, past myth propagandizing nature's unrestrained power as unconscious forces internalized, externalized and projected shadow fear on others. A snake phallus symbol delighted the envy of quicksilver messenger service cycles wheeling past tanned cellular idiots waiting for an express bus to financial heaven.

Shifting gears she burned past her husband’s white haired aunt in a nursing home painting her final autumn leafed watercolor vision.

She sheared past Ashiakawa weavers threading seasons in Hokkaido, Japan and Sherpa’s brewing tea at 17,000 feet for expeditions paying hard currency to totalitarian emperors collecting trophy mountains for the pleasure of suffering altitude sickness and death with high blood pressure.

Rolling past 31 flavors, dining out, making quick money honey living on plastic, riding scarred ranges in 4x4 drives seeing cockroaches ride roller blades devouring natural resources as land grab development mutant bankers heard mutants scream, Where is the water for God’s sake? We paid for our thirst.

Yes, sailing past her eldest son, a naive soldier, waiting for his NAM dust off toward San Francisco, Colorado, Europe and his future big time state side rejection, with no sympathy for the devil, accused of being a baby killer, an undesirable outcast. A literary outlaw. A ghost in exile.

She read his final letters home about abbreviated napalm fire fight survival instincts remembering the horror etched on a screaming eagle black wall all 58,000+ names as reverberating chopper blades cut down stiff stale tropical air as bloodstream vanities dived into jungle memories lifting veils off his surrender to life.

Like an old river she careened past Arabic nomads exchanging goats and camels for pearls as oil deserted sand slowly enveloped silk encrusted carpets and refugees on floating Asian marriage seas discovering family geological strata amid broken Chinese shipwrecks shifted their divorce paradigms; seeing itinerant independent traveling hermits freezing eye, brain & muscles inside parabola boundaries extending imagination’s independent practice freeing unknown potentials by breathing, squeezing, blinking mind’s eye behind blinded shutters for B&W art documentation realizing illusions of suffering transmuting, transforming Bengali women in whirling third world poverty wearing exploitation’s cloth wrapped in solitude as their economic fate breaks malnourished rocks along everlasting lonesome Bhutanese roads with demolition teams building capitalistic roads while living in river reed hovels.

Gathering speed now.

Rolling her Greater Wheel past university perspiration business mergers she evaporated celestial horizontal geographical zonal degrees as a hemispheric tropic of cancer ate bran along fasting rivers inside flowing animist native tribal dialogues heard tongues speak sky earth water fire languages sung by crow raven coyote wolves on turtle islands receiving the mark of the king tattoo surrounded and confounded by blue eyed Europeans full of commercial disease inventing, discovering cultural annihilation, assimilation and accommodation regaining their indigenous cost and competition’s profit.

She rolled into patience, solitude, nature and serenity in her silence just sitting being her doing nothing poem her life forming a ruptured aorta in Earth, sky, water, air pulse platelets with red lava flowing among Bhutanese Dzongs, prayer chants and Lung-Tao prayer flags welcoming her sacrifice, liberation and freedom on hard black wheels completing Tao perfection propelling her past Maya into wisdom free from Bardo.

Chapter 7

Abuse and Freedom

My first five years were in a white clapboard farmhouse. Escaping crib confines in Aurora I explored fields and streams with a neighbor’s red setter. I roamed free and easy.

Mother loved fresh tomatoes from the garden.

I tended life’s tenuous rose thorns.

We moved to D.C. when my father accepted a civilian job at the Pentagon. Data processing and system analysis. We lived on the 5th floor of a red brick apartment building. My

Free Colorado memory shrank to small parks and streams.

One afternoon father came home, opened the car door and slid his arms under and around mom. He carried her into the apartment. I trailed behind.

Why isn’t mommy walking?

We climbed five flights. He laid her on their bed. I curled up with her.

I have polio, she said. She was paralyzed from the waist down. I hugged her. He brought in her wheelchair.

She lived for 12 years.

She birthed my miracle brother in 1955. A woman friend came to help. Father accepted a new job in Denver. He and I took the train West. I stayed with my childless aunt and uncle and attended school. He was a ham radio operator with a call sign. We turned dials and talked with mysterious people in distant countries. I developed a love for frequencies and strange foreign worlds.

The family arrived. We lived on Birch Street near City Park. The park meant freedom from home. The Natural Museum near the zoo had dinosaurs.

At home and school I felt misunderstanding, confusion and fear. Darkness manifested in anger and emotional distance. They put me in a Catholic school. I hated the nuns, restrictions and their beatings. Parental demands to accept more responsibility at home increased my sense of frustration and alienation. I felt trapped between school and home.

She birthed Martha Ann. I developed manipulation skills.

I learned how to treat the family with disrespect. I teased the young ones, taunting my mother knowing her wheelchair limited her mobility. I was frustrated and angry. I didn’t understand the dynamics. I felt she’d abandoned me to disease. I hated the madness. I abandoned them.

Disobedience was a form of freedom.

Father had a new home built on two acres of wild land in Lakewood. Doorways, kitchen counters, shelves and bathrooms were sized for her access.

He planted 20 trees. Leave something behind for future generations.

"I promise I won’t do it again," I screamed as the taped fishing pole flashed in kitchen light. Her wheelchair had me trapped in a small alcove next to a tall yellow cupboard. The pole whistled silent, fast and deadly. My thighs burned. I screamed as pain shot through my body. I promise, I promise, I won’t do it again.

She snapped it across my arms leaving long welts.

Just wait until your father gets home, hissing wild anger. She lashed out again and again whipping my legs.

There, she said, satisfied after beating me. She lowered the rod, rotating her chair away. Black skid marks waked her anger, fear and frustration.

The rod tip dragged across the linoleum floor. She placed it on a desk. Tip tape took on a dull yellow color. I huddled crying in the corner.

After the latest beating I’d be defiant, taunting, teasing, aloof, suspicious and totally uncooperative. I had silent ways to deal with my family. Coping mechanisms. I created my rebellious and defiant monster.

I was nine. Father told me to sweep the floor after school. He knew I only did a half-hearted job. He promised I’d eat any dirt when he inspected it after work. He came home, swept up lint, pebbles, and grit. Eat it.

I ate delicious dirt. It wouldn’t be the last time.

You have to love someone who keeps their word.

While beating me more than once with his leather belt, he said, This hurts me more than it hurts you.

Don’t use that tone of voice with me, young man.

Feeling responsible for all the tragedy I bailed out emotionally. Frustrated by guilt, denial, I needed a way out, any excuse, any reason. I shut down. I closed my door and wrote: Someday, not long from now you and I will travel together looking for something apparent. Sad and lonely. Childhood angst.

Is that why you always leave relationships? Cathy my therapist asked, Is that why you always take the easy way out?

Sure. Reaction and coping survival skills. New sources of stimulation and excitement provided an easy escape. I learned to project my inner hatred and confused painful childhood on future relationships. I stayed in my small room with the door closed writing poems about hope and love. Trying to make sense of it all. My alienation evolved into relationships without emotional commitment. Empty. No real heart, no trust or emotional risk. Love them and leave them. Kids in my generation had a hard time figuring out why parents were so abusive. I had a hard time trusting women. I left them first. I got bored, restless.

It was blatant child abuse. I was one pissed off kid. Mother tried to murder my attitude, my free spirit. She was trapped in her chair. I was trapped in the relationship. I learned how to be a pain giver, an efficient manipulator. I carried my bag of neglect, emotional loss, shadows and self-reliance in and out of relationships distributing my gift of emotional suspicion.

I practiced the ancient art of abandonment, loving and leaving. Abandoned ones become abandoners.

She finished doing her wheelchair time, posted bail and was released on her own recognizance. She