Pig and farm report

Actual Island County Police Blotter:

Someone reported a large pet pig at his gate on Loganberry Lane.

Two different callers reported a possible cougar Monday night in Camaloch. One said it was walking down MacBrae Drive; the other saw it near the community pool.

A rooster was hanging out at the state park for a few days.

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I have so many questions about this police activity but especially the “possible cougar”

A love letter to Mary Moon on her birthday

Darling Mary,

Because your birthday will always be one day before and one year after mine because you know the secret of shade and dirt and breasts that have done the work of human female power because you are intimate with gorgeous golden spiders and kitchens and alters your feminine magik ability to live in the world without flinching you and I think we are old on days when dragons bite our tenders and our hips ache but we know we are not we will never be old you are a warrior you jangle silver and skybluesky dresses and red red fairytale lips you are not old because you taught me to mother you are fabulous in your adventures determined to just and right and nurture and rage and spill skyward you taught me to kind to carry even when I shut down there you are strong enough for the whole wolf world to rest its paws at your door you have opened Florida from myth to palm to infant curls to bedazzled roads to split oaks to bamboo kickery to tending prehistoric birds to river baptism to feckless cats to the kitchen as church to rare honesty to giving and giving and giving to hollowing out the gutted grounds of America to make soup to knead to nurse and heal to bake bread to Keith Richards to raising children and grandchildren and grand human beings you pour your heart all over the flat blue world with such precise measure without care with deep care and unfettered emotion that is wild and ancient and new and spangly with strength and love enough for us all I don’t know how you found me here how you floated your Mary being into my life but I am so thankful that you did I am so grateful to know your O spectacular human lovely friendship to see you take your place at the table as we wait for the banquet to open

Love

Rebecca

the cement of writing

Dear Darklings

I am here I am fully here I have been writing both poetry which is not autobiography and in this blog as my diary which is autobiography but I keep saving all the diary posts as drafts because of the difficulty of writing what I want and need to write so I will start at the middle and work my way in

I have surprised myself by doing some deep therapeutic "work" with new nurse which means exploring but not exploring but putting words to a piece of the trauma that created my PTSD I don't think I've ever written about it with any specificity I searched all my old blogs but couldn't find it anywhere I know I told my son about it once he was grown and I feel like I may have written it at some point or told someone but I told new nurse that I write everything down which is true because writing it not only gives me a map it helps me remember and it always feeds never starves me

this is about the abuser

my abuser

I know I've written that word I've written that I lived with a man who abused me but those memories have long been dormant though awake I remember everything but I have pushed it so far back that it only shimmers in the distance

I could describe it perfectly as happening to someone else

a couple weeks ago I was watching Bill Hader's brilliant hbo series Barry and in the show Barry is rehearsing a scene from a play and in the scene his girlfriend instructs him to put his hand on her throat to pretend choke her and as soon as he did it I had a momentous flashback something that has never before happened to me and I started crying and I couldn't stop I cried for two days straight and

now explosions are going off loud and guns all the white men with guns drunk out here on the island and I have been hiding from this travesty of a holiday for many years because

my abuser held a rifle to my head right to my head not near it with his finger on the trigger he was going to shoot me in the head

and I sat on my bed watching Barry and sobbing in terror two days later I was in new nurse's office telling her the story not as a memory of a memory of a memory but as though it had just happened I told her my abuser held a rifle to my head with his finger on the trigger he was going to shoot me in the head and as I told her it was as if it had just happened

I have watched all kinds of movies about war and terror and abusive men always remembering always remembering everything but at a remove as someone else's memory as chimera

I told new nurse I had never written it but I am not even sure of that

and now I have

I am taking Doxazosin for PTSD it has allowed me to sleep every night for three weeks in a row without nightmares without waking myself up screaming and my prostate feels shiny and brand new and I am seeing new nurse every two weeks and she moved my appointments to Saturday mornings early so I don't have to deal with traffic and on Saturday mornings she brings her dog to work an elderly dachshund that is so fat she is pretty much a square dog and new nurse carries square dog down the stairs when I leave so square dog can poo because the she is too fat to to make the trip on her own

the dog's name is Piper

my son is home today the first day he's had off in months and the first time he's spent this particular holiday with me since he was able to drive and he understands it he understands most of it especially the explosions

I have some photos of around the house to post but this was enough writing it here cementing it here as something that happened to me as living in it I don't want to pretty it up

love