Local Action Against the Coal Industry

On Saturday, Nov. 17th, activists in Athens protested outside the CitiFinancial office on East State Street. (I've lived here for years and never noticed it, but it is there next to the Napa Auto Parts Store with which it shares a parking lot.) The story in the Monday's A-News (Nov. 19) got many of the details wrong.

The protest was part of a national day of action against CitiGroup and Bank of America, which are both complicit in the ongoing devastation of mountaintops in Appalachia through their funding of the coal industry. The protest included folks from Athens, other parts of Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Protesters arrived around 11:45 a.m., after spending the morning handing out flyers at the Athens Farmers Market. Some flyers were accompanied by lumps of coal, gathered from an unknown location. Activists asked people to stop by the Citi office, leaving their lumps of coal with the message that Citi should stop funding the coal industry. It is unclear how many people actually took coal to the Citi office before the protesters arrived there, though at least 10 people said they would.

Upon arriving at the Citi office, protesters unloaded their signs with messages such as "Coal Kills" and "CitiGroup: Funding Climate Change" and moved to the sidewalk in front of the office. Two protesters stayed in the parking lot, one held a sign against the window so employees could read it (the staff locked the door within minutes of our arrival) and the other attempted to write "No New Coal" on the sidewalk with a piece of coal. Soon after, the police arrived, questioning the two protesters who were still in the parking lot. One protester was eventually arrested for Criminal Mischief for her act of writing "No Ne . . ." on the sidewalk and presumably for dumping a bucket of coal in front of the door to the locked office -- though it is unclear who actually did that.

All in all, it was a positive action with many honks of support for the 20 or so protesters who lined both sides of E. State Street for an hour on a busy Saturday morning.

Letter to the A-News Editor, 11-14-07

I am really angry. I’ve been watching for the past several months, with a sort of passive indifference, the often ridiculous front-page stories featured in the Athens News:

Beer pong, hay shortages, a mellow Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I see that all these stories have relevance to the loyal readers of Athens’ only locally owned newspaper. My problem is this: while Athens whiles away the days here in relative bubbleicious bliss, the world around us is in turmoil. Specifically, I am appalled that I learned about the case of Megan Williams on Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/14/1438201) rather than in my much-loved Athens News.

Megan Williams is a 20 year old African-American woman who was kidnapped and tortured in West Virginia earlier this year by 6 white men and women. She was held captive for one week, forced to eat human, dog and rat feces, stabbed repeatedly, threatened with death, raped repeatedly and assaulted with racial slurs. Her captors were charged with kidnapping, among other things, but have not yet been charged with a hate crime.

This is important regional news, especially considering the current climate of racial tension in our quiet little Athens community. Monday’s A-News highlighted this tension. (The story, however, was put in a small caption on the front-page under the story about hay. While this is a rural community and the hay shortage will impact many people and the local economy, I question whether it is as relevant as the story of Mahoney’s assault on two women of color on OU’s campus and the subsequent outcome of his trial. Especially since the majority of A-News readers presumably live in the city of Athens and not in the rural areas surrounding.)

The story of Mahoney’s assault and the hung jury at his trial (Monday, Nov. 12) very much relates to the story of Megan Williams in West Virginia, less than 100 miles away – which is certainly close enough to warrant attention from the Athens community. It is clear here that the justice system is a failure. Jurors were asked to convict in Mahoney’s case on some technical definition of the term “menacing” rather than on the real, pervasive impacts of a racist, sexist culture which continually and institutionally protect aggressors due to the color of their skin, their mental imbalances, their “unintentional” racist attitudes, whatever.

Mahoney should be tried for a hate crime, regardless of his mental health. People with mental illness should not be exempt from the consequences of their actions simply because they are ill. The illness can be an explanation for the crime, but not an exemption from the consequences of it. Has he expressed any remorse, has he apologized to the women, saying that he could not control himself due to his disease? Was he undergoing treatment for Tourette’s at the time? Has there been any indication that he feels badly about his actions or the repercussions in the lives of these women or in the community at large? Has he volunteered to enter into treatment or as a result of his actions? These are important, yet unanswered questions in the article. We as a community and the justice system at large continue to avoid the real issues of institutionalized racism and the hate crimes it ignores, or worse, protects through misidentification.

And the idea that these women did not feel threatened by this incident is utterly ridiculous when they (and we) are enmeshed in a culture that includes Megan Williams, the Jena 6, the continued shootings by police of unarmed black men throughout this country, the incarceration of black men and women at a rate that is far higher than that for whites, and so many more incidents of institutional and personal racism.

I love Athens. I love the Athens News. I know the A-News tends to focus on very local news and I appreciate that. But I would love to see more substantive stories on the front pages. I would love to see local stories in their non-local context. It seems significant to me that there have been 45 noose hanging incidents in public places across the country since the Jena 6 AND that Athens is currently experiencing a spate of racially charged incidents.

Making the connection is the media’s job. In this age of corporate media, only locally owned, independent media outlets are capable of making these connections. No matter what we might want to believe, Athens does not exist in a vacuum. Our issues, ie, the bulldozing of hillsides, the explosion of big-box stores, the gnawing hunger of poverty, the smart-growth/corporate growth debate, the economic and environmental effects of farm subsidies, the impacts of institutional and personal racism – these are part of a much larger national/international trend of the consolidation of power and are symptoms of the final destructive throes of a collapsing economic system.

The disconnection of local issues from their global context drives home the feeling of isolation that is killing public dissent and effective political action in this country. We are a part of the world. The world is reflected in us. Make the A-News relevant to our underlying knowledge of ourselves as global citizens who live in a great little community in southern Ohio. And get Democracy Now! on WOUB as soon as possible.

Sara DeAloia is a white woman who strives to be an ally to oppressed people. She believes anti-oppression work is one of the most important things white people can do to change the world.

A Neverending Moment of Grief (a poem)

my jaw stiff and swollen
healer cups my face
"imagine yourself screaming"
i go deep into head space
screaming, screaming, screaming
mouth opens wide, breath goes ragged

then i am back
silent
"what were you screaming at?"
she asks.

hands move away from my face
"the whole world
the whole fucking world
everything"
i can't pinpoint one crisis
or distinguish between
multiple unending
tragedies

it is only this
a neverending moment of grief
the scream lodged in the
bones of my jaw
the feeling of floating
of all sound sucked
into white noise
of mental pollution
the feeling of hitting a brick wall

diamonds covered in blood
oil is blood
children seeking refuge
in snorts of cocaine,
needles
anything but the world we're leaving them
child killing machines
politicians knowing nothing
but dollar signs and fear
an infinitely connected world
that is still disconnected
the agony of voting
the man who can say
"i don't see the spotted owl's name
on the deed
and until i do, property owner takes precedence over"
life of a river
fragile desert ecosystem
everything but the deed
the paper, the idea
the only real products of
sucking draining city scape
sucking draining city men

the scream breaks
a bubble of self reverie
and i am once again inhabiting
suicidal world
industrial pollution overdose
razorblades drawn across wrists in the mountains of west virginia
a shotgun blow to the face in the middle east

this is not a feel good poem
remember:
this is a neverending moment of grief
an open wound
a psyche in shock
a territory of disbelief
this is a body
drowning in sorrow
a heart ruptured in anger

then again
it is only a silent scream
a whisp of air
caught behind teeth
manifested in
physical pain
and anger buried
deep in the muscle of my heart
the bones of my jaw

To go or to stay . . .

How can I possibly want two things with the same intensity that are exactly the opposite of each other? How can I want so badly to travel and at the same time want so badly a home? Is it possible to have both? Is it possible to live somewhere and travel freely? Can I really have everything I want?

Every time I read my friend Wade's stories of traveling the world (see the link in upper left corner), I get this uncomfortable sensation that I know all too well. Restlessness. The need to move and see the world. Yet, I keep delaying this movement. Keep feeling pulled back by my desire to set some roots and follow a dream. To know a place as well as I know my own rough, wrinkly and calloused hands. I am both happy and restless. I do not have the boldness of my younger years and yet I do truly believe that I can have both: a home and a wanderlust.

I have to constantly remind myself that the romantic notion and reality of travel that Wade lives by never really worked for me, though he does it brilliantly. I know my self. I get restless for home when I'm on the road and I get restless for the road when I'm at home. I could never travel the world for eight years or even 3 years. I love my nest as much as I love the next bend around the corner. And one without the other makes me feel like I'm constantly falling over. My Gemini rising keeps me moving, my Taurus moon keeps me grounded and my Libra sun strives to find just the right balance between the two.

If you ever dreamed of traveling the world and didn't do it, then read Wade's blog. It will make you want to crawl out of your skin, or just put on your boots and start walking. Or if you just want to read the stories of a vagabond traveler, follow the link in the upper left corner. You never know where you'll end up.

the hardest thing [a poem]

someone asked me once
"what was the hardest thing about helping your brother and sister detox from years of sticking needles full of oxycontin into their veins?"

many months after the fact
i ponder this question
"i don't know."
"everything."
"nothing."

the hardest thing
was definitely not
the moaning, groaning, aching, writhing
shivering, shouting
bodies of my brother and sister

it was not the twisted hateful
words, the begging
pleading shameless words

it was not the sound of
vomiting
the twitching of limbs
the bruised and lumpy
track marks on arms

it was not the syringes,
burnt spoons, the blood
spatters on walls
the empty pill capsules
filling darkened, dank rooms
reeking of indifference

it was not even the starving dogs
once loved as deeply
as members of the family

it was not the knowledge
that both of them coming out
alive
was statistically improbable
or the admission of my
father
into out-patient detox,
further upping the statistical
improbability

it was not the waiting
for HIV test results
or hearing stories
of bleached but shared
needles

it was not the holding of
keys, bank cards, check books
or the $1000 of my own money
shelled out to bridge the gap

it was not
seeing
my sister on her knees , sobbing
scraping a just-in-case percocet
from the bottom
of the bathroom sink

it was not flushing the percocet
down the toilet
amidst echoes of hateful screams

it was not the fear
or loneliness
the sadness
or anger
the shame

it was not the empty eyes
of strangers who shared
my blood

it was certainly not
missing 4th of july fireworks
because brother and sister
were physically incapable
of walking
2 blocks
to see them

it was really none of these things
rolling this question around the inside
of my brain and heart
i realize

the hardest thing was not even
the turning off of all emotions
absolutely necessary to make this
crazy endeavor
work

the hardest thing was
(and still is)
learning to turn the emotion
back on
learning to feel again
safely

it was the setting aside of my own life
fulfilling my destiny as the hollow hero child,
learning how to not develop a complex about it
it was learning to release the weight of a childhood
of responsibility and quiet attentiveness
it was (and still is)
learning how to ask for things for myself
how to stop fixing everyone else
how to laugh and play and be in the world
without carrying the weight of it
it was learning how to trust
my story

tough & pretty: Introduction

once upon a time, i started to write a book about my travels in south america in 2002. this is the introduction i wrote to that book over the subsequent years. a link to the entire manuscript i created is in the upper left hand corner of this page and is titled "A Journey Through South America".

The Return

(and other difficulties)

15 June 2002

Sometimes dryness reveals cracks in the deepest parts of ourselves and reserves of water seek home like magnets calling each other. Each part taking care of itself as the whole is dusted clean -- sand and water achieve the same ends as they move across the earth, shaping and reshaping the physical and mental landscape to fit patterns of action. Each contained in perfection. Dry and wet are opposite ends of the same circle. And we are always caught in the middle somewhere in our pitifully human attempts to seek the balance we come from. In coastal Chile, where the driest desert in the world meets the Pacific, it is clear the two are the perfect symbol of harmony and conflict. This desert is so dry that the only cactus in it grows no higher than a few inches off the ground. Their scarcity a lesson in minimalistic and monumental beauty. I've been paralyzed of late, cracking into a million tiny pieces. Amazed at my ability to push my experience of South America into such non-space. I think about it only in these quiet moments when no one in my house is awake and I am alone. It is then that tears surprise me on the edge of my eyes and only then that I can even begin to glue the pieces back together. But these moments are so rare in my american daydream full of working importance and the need to find companionship of any kind which finds me drinking in bars more often than not – a bitter salve for those deepest wounds. Alternately I desire more alone time and then when alone I find myself staring into the chasm of my loneliness. Still adjusting I guess as I tread new ground with baby feet.

3 months later:

“Maybe I’m paranoid?” I ask myself this question as I sit in my room in Dayton, Ohio on this miserably hot August day. I have just picked up my reprints from my recent trip to South America. All the pictures I wanted (and had clearly marked) were there, except two. The two missing pictures were of graffiti in Lima, Peru and Cuenca, Ecuador. They said “Bush = Hambre y Terror” (Bush = Hunger and Terror) and “USA Terroristas”, respectively. In their place were reprints of the two nondescript photos that came before the desired photos on each roll. Included in the reprints were several other graffiti photos: “Yo Soy Libre” (I Am Free) and “GAP: Levantar . . . Grupos Acciones Populares” (GAP: Rise Up Popular Action Group).

I have been home now for four months, which is the same amount of time I spent traveling the Southern America. Being home has been a deadening and lonely experience of readjusting to my own culture which has become increasingly empty, unappealing and alienating to me. This is in large part due to the ultra conservative and overly aggressive political climate of G.W. Bush and friends that I was only vaguely aware of during my four months abroad.

I took Tom Robbins’ book, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates with me on this trip. Part of his book takes place in the Peruvian Amazon. The word he used throughout the book to describe South America was “vivid”. He is exactly right. I keep coming back to that word over and over again as I try to describe my experience. There is an energy there that is raw and mostly uncompromised. It comes from the people, from the mountains, from the buzz of economy, from the clash of governments and people, from the hurtling buses, from the tamed or untamed growth of plants.

In retrospect – and it must be noted that I contemplate this experience from a specific place which is a medium sized city in the mid-western United States almost 1 year to the day after September 11, 2001 – I believe the vividness of South America comes mostly from a lack of the security that has come to be associated with American style freedom. The security I speak of is not military security, but a sense of entitlement that comes from presenting ourselves as the sole beacon of freedom and democracy for the rest of the world, at least according to Bush and Co. It is the idea that not only is it our God-given right (literally) to have everything we want but it is also our right to not have to think about how those wants impact the rest of the world. In South America that sense of entitlement is lacking. There is no safety net, ideologically or otherwise. The people there are painfully aware of the tenuous nature of what small bit of security they do have.

While I was traveling I was constantly amazed at the sophistication with which people were able to distinguish between me as a United States citizen and the actions of the US government, which claims to represent me. (I have since come to hear this same sentiment echoed by many other American citizens who travel abroad). There was no wholesale blaming of the entire populace of my country despite the war Bush is waging against the entire populations of Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the US funded War on Drugs in Colombia. People were often simply curious about my opinions and openly expressive of their anger at the Bush government. After the rabid post-September 11th cry for revenge that came howling out of the US, this was an eye-opening experience.

I came back to the US feeling very vivid – more so than I ever have before. I felt alive with experience, open to emotion, and most of all aware, in a real visceral way of something bigger than my life. Another world is possible, I believed, as I stepped off that plane and onto North American soil for the first time in one third of a year. I still believe another world is possible despite the idiocy of my government and the ignorance, complacency and selfishness of so many of my fellow US citizens. I have tried to hang on to that vividness. I often use it as a shield to ward of cynicism.

Kalle Lasn in the book Culture Jam defines postmodern cynicism as “rage that can no longer get it up. It is powerlessness, disconnection and shame. It’s the loneliest kind of rage there is, different from the kinds of rage we’ve known in the past, which were born of injustice and nurtured by a clearly identifiable enemy.” Cynicism is the hallmark of my generation. It is how we deal with the world we live in, the world we will soon inherit. We are coolly cynical, joking about the power of the media, violence on television, GI’s getting drunk in Afghanistan and the supreme fucked-upedness of it all. We acknowledge that the world is fucked up – even really fucked up and then we laugh about it, feeling justified and confident that our cool acknowledgment of a fucked up world is a sufficient replacement for action, politics, beliefs or lifestyle choices that would mean personal change.

Americans are so privileged, like the rich kid in high school who got everything she wanted. Like that rich kid, we take for granted the things we have, precisely because in our collective consciousness we believe we no longer really have to work for them. Women and blacks already gained the right to vote.

Feminism became a political issue and token women make it look good for the rest of us. “Racism” doesn’t affect us anymore because we have divided our cities strictly on racial lines. We can find any product or service we could possibly desire. We believe we have freedom of speech and freedom of press. We fight bloodless, distant wars that blend seamlessly with reality tv shows. We ignore our homeless, our poor, our battered women, our mentally ill veterans because they don’t jive with the image of the greatest democracy in the world. And to top it all off, we present ourselves to the rest of the world as the coolest kids on the global block. No matter what people in many other (especially developing) countries think of our government, they still want a piece of American pop culture.

As I revisit this story from 4 months’ distance, I realize how much of a journey it really was, both geographically and personally. It is a story of fulfillment or at least awakening. Before I went to South America, I was sleeping. I was aware of the world around me but I was busy – working, paying bills, hanging out with friends, cynical. I was disconnected, isolated, alone in my awareness and paralyzed into simply acknowledging the world around me and going on about my business. I felt totally uninspired and incapable of affecting change in the world. The attacks on September 11 validated some of my deepest beliefs about the unjust world I lived in, the problems I sensed below the surface, but they did nothing to make me feel less isolated. Instead, I clung with renewed energy to the idea of leaving the country – maybe I was feeling like I could run away for a while and not think about anything. Instead, my travels woke me up – the dots were suddenly connected and I not only learned how to articulate my rage at and love for the world, but I also found out I wasn’t alone. Together, these things have propelled me to act in the world in a way that finally, thankfully reflects my beliefs. This journey was like walking into my own skin, then finding myself there with eyes wide open, amazed at the complexity and beauty of the world I had been sleepwalking through for 26 years.

This story feels important because it occurred at a pivotal moment in American history – directly after the 9/11 attacks – and it documents an international adventure within the culture of fear that was created and that is continuing to be used so tortuously by GW in his attempt to fuel the economic fires of war. It is my hope that this story can subvert some of this bullshit while also just telling the story of a west coast boy and a mid-west girl who barely knew each other but decided to fly to the equator in search of something anyway. Despite the fact that this story is based on my experience, my friend and traveling companion Jacob’s presence was hugely important.

This story feels important for other reasons as well. I am a poor, white woman who spent most of my early twenties in a state of depression. I had made many atypical and interesting choices about my life and work, but I was often buried under the weight of loneliness and was unable to see a way out of this hole. As a woman, I had spent several years working in a field dominated by men. I felt I had made bad choices about the relationships I had pursued and was confused about my inability to maintain those relationships. I was at odds with my femininity. While this trip did not resolve those issues, they surface here in my words.

Later I began to realize that my loneliness and confusion were not my own unique experiences but were shared by many girls and women, though they’re not reflected in popular language and images used to describe “the female experience”. After reading a part of this manuscript, a friend and fellow writer told me that my perspective was both tough and pretty. He thought it was important for girls to hear female voices that could get beyond the candy-coated corporate version of what it means to be a woman today. He had a young sister and was frightened at the kinds of female role models presented to her by our culture of glossy magazine covers and ridiculous television shows in which women are simply trying to get a man. I didn’t get this right away. Later, as I began to look around for female images and stories that were both tough and pretty, I knew he was right. There were practically none.

As I began to look back on my trip to South America, I realized one of the biggest lessons I had taken away from the experience was this: alternative realities can be accessed by simply suggesting there are possibilities that differ from the way you normally do things. This seems deceptively simple. But in a world where media, images and words are being increasingly controlled by the same corporate giants and where people are increasingly isolated from each other, this simple possibility becomes a little more complicated. The assumptions that underlie our realities do more to constrain us than most governments. We self-censor and do not even consider certain possibilities simply out of habit rather than some inherent inability or lack of access. If we assume something is impossible, it is likely to become impossible.

I managed to escape the assumption that it was impossible (or at least highly improbable) that a poor, white, depressed American woman could simply quit her job and travel with a stranger to South America. Jacob opened the door for me by asking “Hey, what would you think about hitting South America this winter?” My greatest hope for sharing this story is that some young woman will read it and decide to follow her dream of traveling to China, against all odds. Or that this story will simply open some dusty, squeaky doors for someone who reads it.

I am no longer depressed. I am still poor. I am definitely still a white woman. I’m no longer at odds with my femininity. And most of all, I’m excited to share this story with you.

(By way of context: Jacob and I left Dayton, Ohio on January 1, 2002 to fly to Quito, Ecuador where I had been previously on a study abroad program a few years before.)

nuclear powers that be

I saw a film tonight called "For my working Life", a documentary made in 1980 by a British film maker with the last name of Grigsby. The film was about the impacts of the Piketon, Ohio uranium enrichment facility on the health of its workers. At the time the film was made, the plant was operated by Goodyear Atomic for the US DoE. In the 70's and 80's the plant (and town) also had its own unit of FBI agents who made sure workers didn't ask too many questions at work and in the bars, restaurants and other places around town.

The movie was well done -- the stories were told exclusively by the workers themselves and the film included many scenes of life in rural Appalachia. One of the main narrators in the film, the President of the Oil, Chemical and ? Workers Union, was there tonight to watch the film and answer questions. He presided over several fairly militant strikes which gained real benefits for workers at Goodyear and even chartered buses in the late 70's to go to DC and protest, among other things, the "enslavement" of the workers to Goodyear Corp. He declined to talk much about his personal health, stating that we didn't really want to know and that the telling would take much too long.

A few facts about the facility (which is 2 counties west of the town I grew up in and 3 counties west of where I now live -- directly downwind):

1. though the facility has been inoperable for 6 years, absolutely no clean up effort has been undertaken
2. estimated clean up costs range from 30-40 BILLION dollars
3. clean up will be paid for with taxpayer money, with no input from any of the corporations who have called it "home"
4. a nickel berillium (?) plant from West Virginia that was too polluted to stay where it was, was dismantled, brought piece by piece to Piketon and buried in the ground
5. the waste from the clean-up of another Ohio Superfund site (Frenald) was brought to Piketon and buried in the ground
6. the Piketon facility is the single largest facility under roof IN THE ENTIRE WORLD
7. the facility sits on top of the Teays Acquifer, the largest acquifer in the US
8. no studies have been released in the last 10 years indicating when or how the facility is deteriorating or what might happen if there was a leak
9. the people within a 5 mile radius of the facility are among the poorest in the state and are the poorest of all the neighbors of uranium enrichment facilities in the US
10. more recently, the Bush Administration proposed under a plan called GNEP, to begin using the facility to store spent nuclear fuel rods from around the country and the world which would eventually be "re-processed" into viable nuclear fuel. there is no successful model for doing this reprocessing anywhere in the world.

The local group organizing to get the site cleaned up, to keep further nuclear waste out is a group called Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. Their info is here:

www.OhioNeighbors.org
PO Box 161
Piketon, OH 45661
SHIPPSONG@aol.com

sign a petition at www.progressohio.org/page/petition/DOEpetition

An Overview: Great Life Journeys (mine)

So, after many months and years even of being stuck, world-shy, alone, I am finally ready to move out of my head. I suppose I should explain and any explanation has to begin with a journey.

There are great journeys in life and then there are times when you simply move across the earth and nothing really changes. There are also journeys inward (through consciousness) or outward (across the earth). Great journeys tend to combine elements of both inner and outer movements to completely restructure the psyche of the traveler and the world through which she travels.

I have been a journeyer for much of my life. Really, when I was 3 months old, my parents and their two best friends bundled me, themselves and some stuff into an orange VW rabbit with no reverse and plywood for the back seats and drove from downeast Maine to southwestern Ohio. My first road trip. Most of my childhood was spent back and forth between these places, following the seesawing ideals and hard realities of hippie parents -- the dreams for a better world, a life of redemption, a defining moment in the history of this country.

When we finally settled for longer than a few years, it was in southeastern Ohio, in a little podunk town with few redeeming qualities. I was 10. The journey became a journey into the land of this place and deep into the safest places in my soul. Kids at school did not make me feel welcome in my new home, but the land loved me unconditionally. I learned about growing food in this more hospitable Zone 5 climate, I learned that fruit grew on trees and not just on scrubby carpets of blueberry bushes, I learned how to milk a cow (and how to love fresh cream and milk) and I learned about the sometimes violent "circus tricks" that make new babies come into the world -- this from the horses in my life, not the people. I learned about clear-cutting forests as the forest behind our house disappeared in less than a week. I also learned that my family was poor and that we were different somehow than everyone else in our small little town.

I went inside my self and spent a long time there -- not trusting my self, my family or the world around me.

Later, at 16, I traveled to Idaho to live and work with my Aunt. A journey of epic proportions for my shy, distrustful, withdrawn self. I climbed Table Mountain, in the Teton Range and learned again to trust myself, the world and maybe even my family. The land once again drew me in, offered itself to me unconditionally and I was in love, alive, whatever. I do not think it a coincidence that I had this experience in a mountain range named for the most nurturing anatomical feature of the female of our species.

Later, I traveled to the west again, Idaho, Utah, Arizona (even a short foray into Mexico), California, Oregon and back to Ohio by car. This was not a great journey, but that is another story. New Orleans (pre-Katrina), Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee -- none of these were great journeys either, not even really worthy of other stories.

In 2000, I traveled during my last quarter of college to Ecuador. We arrived in early April but my journey did not begin until Easter Sunday, sitting in the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas in Cuenca. I don;t know why I went there. My catholic upbringing never stuck, but for some reason there I was, sitting in this gorgeous stone room with sweeping ceilings, huge stone columns with soft edges, light streaming through the high stained glass windows, waiting for mass to start. The organ began to play and the sound echoed around the gigantic room and resonated deep into my soul. I knew then that I had come there for this -- not for the words that would later fall, like rote, from the priest's dry uptight lips. It was for this sound that vibrated deeply into my bones and made me cry like a baby.

Later, I returned to Ecuador with an almost stranger who is now a best friend. That journey began with me quitting my job to travel aimlessly along the spine of the Andes with Jacob, the stranger turned friend. That's another story, too which goes from Ecuador to Peru to Chile to a complete awakening of my political self. More on that later.

The most recent journey has taken me inside again, to deep dark places where memory and pain live accompanied by a chorus of repressed emotions related to growing up the 'hero child' in a family of addicts. This is most definitely a long story and a tangent I will come back to again and again. As one of my writing teachers used it say, it is the navel of my dream. The thread that winds its way through my entire life, touching every part of the story that will unfold here.

After several years of alternately inhabiting those deep dark places and working so hard I never have to see them, I am finally ready to take that thread and begin to follow it back through the layers even as I also use it to weave a new life for myself.

the place i am

the absence is in the letting go
in the space between words
it is sinew connecting
tissue and bone
that slips
just slips away from itself
release
shoulders slacken
lower
space between shoulder blades
softens
it is a moment of bliss
it is a moment only
twisting muscles
snap back into place
tighten and curl
leaving fire
and a ball of flesh
leaving a memory
just below the surface
leaving sadness or
fear or
loneliness
leaving echo
of bliss

space

there are spaces
deep dark places storing up a lifetime
of moments filtered through
self hatred, pity, fear

inside out
these spaces and deep dark places
open passing through light
self love and forgiveness

smiling