The Gruesome Disfigurement of the Incidental Hind

well...I hear myself say the word...it's a comment, I pause to open the door for my Maltese, Gracie...whom...if truth be known is an irritant to me...rather than the doting upon little pet dog whom I adore (I do...but it seems as though we must vehemently disparage that which we love...in these times)
Gracie has had a bath and yet she'll be dirty quite soon...but, that isn't what I want to talk about...my prone to filthy dog that has no elegant bearing when she is...and quite much when she's had a wash...like
The KiteRunner..I read the book a few years ago...was quite put out by it...ready to go back to DC and raise some more hell like I used to do with Dana and Tommy and Pilco and Alice...well...Alice I guess I didn't because she was a pill...Pilco was a skateboarder...went all over the place on his board...like a hand of the clock he held it in his arms when we'd meet up with him downtown...anyway...see that's like the 'well'...
I am well
I am not well knowing about the troubles of being a border country such as Afghanistan...I don't think anywhere along that line, Germany, the Checks...sorry don't spell out the name of Cheklosovokia because I can't...I won't...Afghanistan...now that really, really troubles me...I'm bothered and angry and my brother who was in the Air Force was there...he sent a family snap of a ruined palace-type place...well, that's my own home from what it once was and I'm restoring it bit by low budget bit (I'm about penniless so what the f does it matter if I talk about a mideast country with indignity?  not that I'm a stickler for proper English although it was a major in college, such as THAT was...you'd think, I do...that we're singled out...those of us who give positive input towards world peace...to be subjected to the most begning beeNINE..see spelling is giving out on me and the thesaurus..eh...
no I don't know that it's tripped...but anyway
the KiteRunner...I've been on the verge of tears since I woke up this morning...well maybe it's after thirty or forty years of political activism  I can let down a hem or two and be real instead of beading around George Bush?  the indians are great beaders here, they make barretts, key holders...clothing, it's great...but that kind of beading...eh...as it seems there is a great deal of it in Kabul and so on...you'd tell me, I suppose, oh, that's done now and I'd say I hear it on the news..I can't listen to the news, what would the news say of some tragedy in flesh like the KiteRunner's Assif...hmmm?
hmmm...he was a butt?  nah...won't say the author's name...the dude who wrote the KiteRunner...he's all about learn to fly the kite boy...focus elsewhere but he don't give a rat's ass about his best buddy Hassan...as he watches him be raped by Assif...why is that?  is the culture inherent?  is this what we do with those who look a little different than we do?  we're not homogenized...a direct operating system approach to being in the wild...car named Cougar crashes up car named Coyote?   I know that's reaching..I'm indignant, man and the words come fast...been telling people I'm joining the peace corps and asking to be sent to AFGHAN
is STAN...
Stan died a few years ago...his last name was HULL and he had pretty darn bad diabetes
his mother and I became better friends after that, because Stan was gone...she is old and doesn't get around so good...ok, cracking heart, really thumping heart and watery eyes
read first about little orphans from Asia...good book Ann Tyler, Digging to America...and then I watched the Kite Runner...
are we different in this time?  the things aren't about classicism...class is schizm...schism...I don't know...I am sad that there are people like ASSIF
he's an ASS if...he behaves badly toward such a noble creature as Hassan...
I sob...I really do sob..we did this to Jesus didn't we?  don't we ever learn by our christianity...this guy was down here with the rest of us doing amazing things..like Hassan and the sling shot, blopping up the Assif's...what a name, what a perfect name...am I a hater?  nope...I just want to know how those kinds of people get into the real world and aren't one of the missing tree frogs we used to have by the boatloads here in the Pacific Northwest Rainforest...I'm really sad there are victims of people like Assif...and it's supposed to be a story...it's a fiction
but I know there is strife in Afghan is STAN..now...I know this.....I don't know the particularly gory details of the STAN macro...I call it that because our STAN HULL is gone...but a macro to my way of thinking is not unlike a maggot in the way it parsecs information in computer engineering...so the AFGHAN...well
that's the other part of it...to play the dummy
hehe...I could do something about this situation? and how..be a martyr..well, yep...
I hear the very voice on the radio...SPRUNNNNGGGGspringggggSPREECH...like it isn't  hovering beside me in so many what do you say the timber of a person's voice becomes
I think of hot chocolate and how I have to wrap myself in blankets to stay warm in my house in winter...I could be home with my mother and brother and not freezing and being broke in my own house...I could, but I'd never think in that place because when I tried it my brother told me to 'turn off the tv'...because it was 8 am...and I guess at 8 am he thought he became in charge of things in that house...well
not unlike Assif...and it's not no dog we're talking about here...we're talking about the theft of the German's biological engineering discoveries by the Russkaya...I guess I call them that...I felt quite the student of Tolstoy back in the day when I was getting my English degree, which I didn't get...no doubt because I DID read Tolstoy...oh yeah, my name
hehe...oh, what's his face LaRoche?  who
who's the one that's the conservative of the day...the finger pointer?  wouldn't he be telling the truth...no, this goes much deeper than that...this is about a discovery in the Urals in 1900..nuff said...it's the ASSIF's we're (I'm) discussing here...how such a monster is craven into an image guaranteed to evoke despair...I don't seem to be able to spell...I feel that angry...I feel that characters in the manner of ASSIF...sounds like 'a thief'...we have a few of those...walk into your house..take your things...oh
and never speak of it...then and again..and you help them, try to understand the motivation...because
it's just like all those AK47's, with voices in the same mode...the very voice
same thing I guess I can't really describe it so much as I see that while some of us are elsewhere in terms of 'where we are'...some others of us are 'that person' for us and that guy is a variation of ASSIF in creating his own brand of monster...something like that
and the kid hates HASSAN when he sees what ASSIF has done to him...he does go the mile for it in the end...gets his face rearranged to rescue the nephew...that sort of thing, but he's never the guy his dad was...maybe that's it...maybe I don't understand that part of the struggle...but I sure did get it in Jane Austen's books...they were polite and slightly prejudiced about the bounty of wealth, well, you know...you are content with what you have...like my house was mine and then the bank had it and now the asking price is HALF what what it was worth and my truck has been REPOSSESSED...that sort of thing...can you blame that all on AK47's? 
when they're being manufactured next door, I think so, mmhmmm, yep
well I knew this when I went back to work up the hill...I knew the autoexecutor state because I knew the transits and so on...(how it is done)
I know because hesheit showed me a coat...I won't say beautiful because it was cheaply made but it was shaken in my face  MY BOYFRIEND GAVE ME THIS...HE GAVE ME TWO OF THEM...you see...it was a Kabul special, that coat
that was the smug weasly little child molester pushing it up my nose so hard it smelled like somebody pooped in there (sorry little Maia...grandma borrows your expression..well not sorry, it is funny how the baby girl said it).  But it's true...indignancy..I am indignant that such farces of human flesh still modem into operation and flush us out of our humbly held perches when all we wanted was to be left alone...really...but they have us now...they are ensconced N sconced
skonz..the candle thing...they get the new cars..the trips...the what? heat in the HOUSE?  mmhmmm...totally
oh yeah, the great tvs..the full subscription DISH...well, granted they HACKED that
mostly
but, the Afghan Is STAN thing...now that truly and utterly takes the cake...and I know...I don't have to be told...well, the big building in new york, the three hundred and twenty storyer...the one I stood in with Scott Jordan and looked over the Atlantic, well it was a day like today...geez I get all teary eyed again...like I was sent here by the CIA or something to do just what I have done...STATE FARM IT...
bee a gut neighbor...and my house was repossessed...they finally got over the smell of gore I guess, well they didn't know they were nothing but...and walked inside it.
I Remember the day Diana Townsend died...was it Spender Townsend...something like that, Prince Charles' wife, the accident
and guess who told me?  you know, they say if you expound on these topics they'll 'getcha' I guess that was Jesus' big routine, don't be a purist man...(see Tommy Chong in the old days...hear him say this...don't be a purist man..)  You know, you can't be anything BUT a purist...really...you can't...not if you're dedicated to the process of art and use it solely for the purpose of making life a better world for the rest of your fellow men (oh GOD and I ain't say the wimmin folks too because you know darn well I mean ALL of us...)
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
I think about what's his face..the protagonist in the KITE RUNNER...the fact that an inmate correspondence to a counselor in the prison where I worked was called a KITE...who knows what that stood for...once I read a KITE from an inmate and it said "I sent you THREE KIKES already)...and that's going to make me double over with laughter even now when I want to cry because I feel so helpless about the ASSIFs of this world, having lived next door to one who made it possible for my house to be repossessed...well, it's not like I was raped, but certainly I have never known the sensation of that which it is that is the part that is RAPED so I might as well have been although I'm told this is merely a hmmm, matter of loving the right person or as Freud would advise, get your fingers out of there...hehe, I like the KIKE joke but I also like the
hot chocolate I just made and am sipping and the fact that when it becomes cool enough to need a fire...the big rocks I keep on top of it are hot enough to ease the kinks in my back when I feel stiff, which I do now, though I haven't been up to much in terms of this that and the other physical energy wise working on the house and so forth ( I haven't skill I haven't SKILL..such a stupid mantra...)well...
and I'm not rereading this...I've stopped for a moment and had my tears, they were threatening since the book reading...the Kite Runner...how dare they, nothing has affected me as much, in contemporary literature...I must say...except that perhaps we created the solution here, even if it meant I lost the Michelina Haus...now I've got Mermaid's Reef and it's my big chance to sit down and talk about this book and all the other stuff it took to create the solution to the ASSIFs of this world...just give them their own roomfull of children and let them take their pick...oh yeah, that's the foster kid routine...and the last big one I had here...he was a real dough head...slow, ummm
the phone rings...it's the lady I gave the rainbow earrings to
we talk for several hours...I make dinner, beet tops, hamburger gravy with mushrooms and yellow peppers biscuits that don't rise that I pour the gravy over, a salad it's hot and I burn my tongue
today I helped paint the Lions Den a sage green...I am so thirsty with my dinner, what shall I have to drink...I am sleepy as well...it was a long night
I realize I have an entourage even if I don't want one...the husband I imagine for myself has provided it..along with my living status and so on...in a way to keep me happy and not apart from the things I love...this is kind of him...and in return for this...he is not here and I do not know him...but I do know the maker of the AK47s and I do not joke about this...it is not about the misuse of the word KIKE...or perhaps it is

Sereneness...

I couldn't live in a more beautiful place..I'm thinking.  I sit here in the volunteer-staffed Visitors' Center in my little town and there it is.  Perfection.  Summer's warm glow sun still shining today.  A blessing as good as attending church.  New asphalt on the highway.  Dogs at home asleep for a little while yet, the smelly one bathed. 
Of course, I haven't had breakfast yet..but I've well-fed myself here and there.  There's a basket of fruit along with me should I choose to sample it.  There's coffee.  But it's morning and the air is so clear and sweet that it itself is enough to sustain my appetite. 
I should like to go to town on the bus.  Visit the city and perhaps shop for a transmission...if Fred's Wrecking is near enough to where they let me off.  I could travel around a bit. 
Well, there does come some of the apprehension of waking up in the morning...the nahnah yadadadas..about which there are always consideration.  You hear the chipmunk or the squirrel chatter in the forest, but you're at a terminal in a city library, or a laptop in the park where there aren't any squirrels..no squirrels...really? and so it goes...burrowing at your brain about the chattering of the considerations, like the transmission guy...so...outside again...look at the weather, how glorious is that?  of course the dogs should be here playing chicken in the middle of the road..but they won't come just yet...I must build them a fence...it obviously distresses me that they aren't to be trusted in this building.
Well there was rats along this waterside all along, naturally.  It was a movie theater, a dry goods..gas station..by parts..like the home up the street I used to own..there could be a squirrel in the woodwork on that account.  But it's more than that of course..the emminent psychologist/behavioralist...the Chilean actor in the role..depends on rebounds from the community to unloosen a dreadful spawn (or so we thought) for what developed out of it was more to the romancing end.  I know, I know, difficult to follow, what that particular house is, but it's my product, the ingress, the egress, the motorized garage doors, the dogless (now) door.  Confuscious would say about that house: plum tree move fast with fruits that are green.  Poor little apricot in the backyard, always struggling for a perch.  The callas, bloom and grow.  Someone else must have bundles of them, I could think.  The glorious square in the pavement.
I almost bought into that negative viewpoint.  With inference and some little goryness, I shied away, however.  Over a nice bottle of Spanish wine, a Madeira of quality, I consumed the lectern and bid it off.  It wasn't all that terribly expensive.  The outcome remained to be seen always, though it is annoying to quantify the ignoble reality of it.  I see ingress and egress in the camilia, the apple, the ever choking juniper, the wonderful noble pine, no longer mine. 
There's a heartfelt wonderness at the idea of leveling and paving the place, redoing the upstairs inside and out..of course there is, but this one now is the lovely fishing cottage that I would not despair in.   I do think there are memories in the Michelina Haus, of course I do...but I don't live there...just as I write this in a stream of conciousness, so I begin to remember that there must be consistency in thought and action...a motor drive on a country road with the music billowing from the radio in a great chorus of what I started this peace with, the idea of immediate joy...it's hard to arrive there, like a sonnet...what's the hell a sonnet? just a little trill of words, like the female canary, you will give me seed, song..so I did but not the water, I could have, it would have been other steps...don't go down the wasteful wanton road of regret..
so hard tha is as my head aches to turn it..  hard beasts of finances and circumstances roar at me while my belly looks at the table and sees the roast beef
In Hawaii I wonder about the 'Spam'
the computer grinds away and I wonder at the moment, if I shouldn't now write my daughter as the piece grows on and the idea of another coffee (third? fourth?) keeps me from hesitating about sweeping up the leaves outside...an appointed job, a task, like not being paid for typing any more, when I could write my thesis..jumping from one thought to another because one doesn't know so much about writing as one reads it...thereby striking a rather Canadian vote since it's just across the wide harbor (some say seventeen miles).
I could talk about the waterside, where I go and sense the damp salty sand without the sensation of murky kinetic justice that the river's mouth has detoured from its erosive course..previously our park benches and tables and playfort sites are all now squandered in the winter surf where we did not find so much as a table or two but were ripped from our midst like unwelcome visitors..like the latest Benjali pirates, we fluffed them out as a community when we let them go...I guess and behind it now, the PostMan's daughter comes home with her hair near torn out from illness, walking in a walking frame, eyes as alert as they ever were.  My disease...erosion, of time, money, family, the seasons..
A van arrives, tourists with a mission, close hearted, they wanted the bathroom, a time to visit? not hardly..but there it is..he grabs a candy on his way...lean, hulky, father of teenage daughters..also on a mission, looking over at me with the eyes of mischievious  youth...I wonder
then in the door comes a father, no..his little daughter, white-haired blonde child of four or five years of age..or maybe seven, she is curiously alert and in a few moments I see her for the abandoned child she is not..her parent comes behind her, the father, alert and chomping an apple, as I now chomp a pear..and he and his family are from Czechlosovokia, whatever, the spelling of it..he seems very German, not at all the overly sweaty fat type with pudgy skin and deserted reflexes I have come to know them as, but the German aesthete of athleticism, wife comes in moments later.  She is, as well, the slim alert type with sensible hair, very young, model in her deportment.  He converses with me, eating an apple, as I then finish a pear.  For sustenance. 
Once I pondered that topic, sustenance, when I was yearning over the weakness in my heart for a certain gentleman, who shall now remain nameless but was along the lines of the actor Kevin Kline.  I want to say 'character' actor Kevin Kline but there it is and cannot be disputed: that was the hour that I was madly in love with the gentleman...in that moment...I ponder back to it quickly and go back to recording the actual moment...wherein the German family departed in a cloud of inspiration of their own making, and I converse with the Canadian couple who follows on their heels.  My coffee finishing in the microwave, I rise.
Outside the weather is for basking, the sun is full and warm on my cheeks. I drink the coffee and watch cars pass, the tree limbs heavy over my head where the blackberry vines meet them.  There are dry leaves scattered everywhere as the season slowly changes to fall, which it is now.  The Indian summer we have here among the most what? heavenly, divine, truly it does feel like going to Sunday mass to sit and enjoy it.  I keep the door open, the fridge for the cold drinks making a noise, but it's not the heat, which is temperature-controlled.  Certainly it is warm enough to circulate the healing air within the confines of the building.
So I think I have read enouh now to attempt this writing thing.  I've read another missal of the Hemingway era, his finca in Cuba has come to light in a Vanity Fair article.  It's about the Cuban government's conversion of the Hemingway finca into a museum about Ernest.  He was last seen in Idaha but like me and my son in Maui, he had a winter place.  Of course, I have a daughter in Phoenix, to whom I must write as I've written my sons.  Phoenix tends to become cool in the winter months.  Maui is continually a place of ocean breezes and fair suns.  If anything, the air of Maui becomes like our air here today, balmy, basking warmth and sunlight.  I do not remember my wet feet today.
That's all so confusing, what I write, I consider.  But I don't really care, it's how I choose to say it, what I think.  The last visitors, the Canadian couple, are from across the way and they are traveling to Neah Bay.  They want to see 'what's on the other side'.  They have been all over the Peninsula.  The woman tells me they're from 'up Cowichan', or something of that nature.  Her accent so heavily Canadian it passes in a blur after the 'eh'..she comes up with midsentence about the time of day.  She signs the guest book for her and her husband, encouraging him to get a move on as she is ravenous.  I've told them of the good food they will find in our restaurants.  There are two, one in Sekiu, one at the midpoint in the road on the way there from here, Clallam Bay.  That second one, the midpoint, is at a point we call the 'Coho' as it was site of a fishing resort by that name that has been subdivided into recreational lots with trailer hookup.  Rumor has it these lots go for forty g's apiece.  I'm thinking what I could do with forty g's.  Like learning of the recently published new author whose book rights were sold by bid for sixhundred thou...just like that, and the author was able to pay off his college loan (after thirty years, ten of which he used to write the book)
apparently he's talented..how nice for him, I always say, though when I think of other people's good fortune, I find myself distanced by the adorable shoes in the window in Seattle, or the plane ticket to Maui...where I haven't been for several years now.  I feel so silly when I go there, unprepared and wonderous, scrounging into the depths of the little community of Lahaina to make my way to Sunday mass in a church with no walls, only the ocean in the distance.  I close myself off from the wishful thinking of my own good fortunes anticipated and look into the day as I see it today.  Those are things I would like to do, certainly, but I am here and this work, this self-absorbing, writing work, contains me like nothing else can.  I am locked into it and surely I did some of my best introspection in the confines of the Intensive Management Unit where I used to work.
There was a long industrial-sized hallway outside my office.  Across this hall were three great windows, with courtyards outside them, opened by lock and key through a windowed door.  This was where the inmates that were in the unit, the classified behavioral issue inmates, took their yard time  They were in their cells the rest of the 24 hours in that day.  It was an interesting place to study isolation although truly these individuals did not suffer isolation in any way but were truly confined within the walls of that institution.  They went no where without lock and key.  I came and went on a weekly, daily basis for years and years, teaching myself to program a computer.  My first observations of the Windows '95 unit I was given was ''the random access memory isn't there!" which greatly amused my colleagues: that I instantly knew the technical terms of which I spoke and had observed.  It was always great fun thereby, and though the employee demographic spoke mainly of the men assigned there, there was me, the female clerk, always with papers and forms to complete in a day...typing away, looking out the window of my office into the white rectangular courtyard where first one and then the other of these incarcerated men would have their recreation.  This did not go on all day, every day, but was structured and regulated to promote a certain sense of containment. 
Everyso often there would be a session of enforcement where a particular inmate would be extracted from his cell, sprayed with oleoresin capsiicum and reclothed in new underwear, a jumpsuit, thongs.  He would be disassociated from his previous habit of existence within the unit for a few days, meant to be introspective and aware that his behavior had necessitated a certain set of tactics by which to contain his actions as they were overtly destructive to all concerned.  Especially to himself, as one would say...'did you see the like of that?' as when I first delivered a set of hearings paperwork about one such occasion and wherein the 'dangerous convicted felon' as one of my supervisors liked to refer to his charges and responsibility for them, was shouting across the table at one very livid vituperatively hostile man about to burst a major vessel in his neck with outrage and verbal aggression towards the unit supervisor.  I walked into the middle of this exchange innocently and was forever thereafter advised that this was the place of rages and what was done about them.  One had only to gaze out the window at the forests beyond, the place was set in the middle of it, trees everywhere and deer in season.  Then you'd know where sense and sensability came from.  You had only to look out upon it.  Only if the inmate were yelling about not seeing that, could I forgive him his outrageous violence toward our fearless leader.  He reminded me of Chiasson, the Tinglit from up coast, more a myth than a reality, a character for a story being built about fishing the waters here.  He was amused by it all..the violence of the destructed soul...the incarcerated man that sat before him that day.  He found it silly that there would be such vehemence in another human being, and what for?  He wasn't there for outcomes but for management of projected delivery of sentence serving.  He had no use for any other argument other than the man 'doing his time',  which in every case, was certainly done.
There was a lot of that hostility on and off but things ran as smoothly as glass, as clockwork and the days rolled into one another in such a blur that I soon found ten years had passed and there I still was.  Still sitting in front of a monitor learning the stories of the men who passed in front of me up and down the hall.  They came in white jumpsuits, orange jumpsuits, chains, escorted by uniformed officers both male and female.  Who plodded along the cement floors with a dedication to duty that was all about the paycheck, not the psychology of their actions.  They were directed, these officers.  We never have called them 'guards' although certainly that was part of their assigned duties.  They were, in fact, more than that, and every one of them learned to program computers, to attend training for on the job incidents that could and did occur.   They took classes in what is called 'defensive tactics'.  They learned to thrust and to roll and to grab hair and to put down with a knee or an elbow.  Sometimes they were bruised up.  Sometimes they werent' careful enough.  There were always stories of derring do, and the inmate population was looked upon as the 'measly bunch'...who were helpless behind the gates of their cells, each an individual prison of containment.  This more than anything affected the worker population of that place.  They went away confident in the afternoons, to their homes, their big trucks, their own private plans for fishing and hunting.  Often in the beginning there was talk of skin diving.  Then it was quads.  I learned of a lake not far from the institution, a place I never knew existed.  I'd lived there since I was a child and this was a lake I didn't know.  I've thought to walk there ever since but never felt quite courageous enough to attempt it without some form of protection, perhaps a large dog since I think that the grounds where lies the lake is perhaps one that is forbidden from carrying a weapon through, since it borders the prison.  I haven't been to the lake, but it's like the inmates who haven't been into the forest.  My time to do this lake walk is not yet upon me.  It could perhaps been done by horseback but I don't think I have the skill of that enough to attempt it as yet.  I have begun to ride again, it's a pleasure never to have visited me until recently.  I befriended a fellow fire department volunteer and she has horses.
I've been outside to sweep off the front of the building where the sidewalk and the parking lot are synonymous, divided only by a set of parking barriers, low stone logs to deter vehicular traffic.  It is warm out there and I remove my jacket.   I sweep away all the dry leaves from the bordering alders.  These trees make a heavy debris of leaf crumbles once they dry thoroughly.  They make a good garden mulch as they break down.
So I've liked talking about working with inmates but I haven't said exactly what it is I did there with them.  I never had direct contact with any of them other than the janitors, who were all incarcerated men.  It wasn't like Nazii Germany, which relied on slave Jewish labor in the camps, although I did equate the presence of this institution in our community to something like a Nazii labor camp for it seemed to have the same purpose: to deprive human beings of their freedom of access.  It was much differently structured however.  There was essentially, at the heart of the function of the corrections center, to deprive a dangerous, convicted felon of the opportunity to further perpetrate the blight of his behavior on the rest of us.  I found that a very good thing.  I found working in the 'hole' as it was known, to be at the core of this deprivation and while I was employed by the State of Washington, made it one of the purposes of my employment to understand all I could how this deprivation could successfully incarcerate and eliminate the destructive behavior that had brought the individual into the system.  What I saw taking place in the Intensive Management Unit was a directed, consistent if not therapeutic management of certain peoples found to be antisocial to the point of needing to be institutionalized.  That is, to be housed so as they are not in contact directly with the rest of us.  To that point, I never had direct contact with an inmate.  One of the few times I did I developed a severe case of hives that brought me to the emergency room at the community hospital.  All I'd done was take a photograph from the person, to place it in his file.
So there I was on about the beautiful morning and I go to talking about working in the hole at the local prison.  I never wore a uniform, I never trained for the SWAT team which included volunteers from all margins of the employee pool.  I asked to join it since I'd been Safety committee secretary for ten years and after all, worked in the hole, but I was never accepted to active duty there and never did become a uniformed officer, although I did apply for it when I returned from my stint at Monroe.  At Monroe the most secure facility ever designed for a 'dangerous convicted felon' was created to house notorious convicted felons like Gary Ridgway, who didn't really merit being locked up and forgotten about and was ultimately allowed free range of the facility although it was pretty certain he wasn't going to walk out the front door of that place any time soon, or even in his lifetime.  The aspect of working in the subterranean unit of the Special Offender Center at Monroe tantalized me for a time but I saw it as the nightmare of Deer Park, Wyoming and the trailing disembowled intestine of the government gut, as a misturn in the direction of supervised containment where the housed felons were given free reign to assasinate one another in front of the surveillance cameras in the lockdown unit.  It went on for a month and the sprinkler system ran three inches of red water for a while and they were not fed so much as allowed to consume one another.  It is a particular conscious nightmare of mine that this could happen at Monroe's Special Offender Unit, although I'm not aware it ever has.  That was a great rambling place, with additions upon additions, ancient, venerable Superintendent's offices, libraries, Personnel quarters, visiting rooms, individual cells bordering on dungeon-like in their cramped, inefficient layout.  You wouldn't want to be introspective in such a place, you'd remember the trip from Taiwan you paid thirty hundred bucks for in order to get a better job in America, and there you were on the slow boat to Kowloon, howling as your cellmate takes off with your extra Top Ramen and doesn't give you a smoke or some gum as payment for services rendered.  I always got into the segregation end of things working for DOC.  Always had to help put it to the guy who beat his head into his cell door for whatever reason.  Usually we found it had something to do with the guy's childhood and that was the best of the work, transcribing the physicians' notes and observations, learning that point B had been gotten to by totally transversing Point A to the nth degree without ever getting there in a straight line or having a peanut butter sandwich along the way.  One particular physician was almost a saint to me in his deportment, how he handled his caseload, what wisdom he imparted to his patients.  He was a tranquil man and had absolutely no investment in outside chatter but was purely scientific in his delivery and approach to his practice.  It was wonderful to see the healing work he did with those battered minds.  We couldn't ask for better.  I did love working for him particularly although the senior physician was quite the old hand at politicking to get his unit covered financially and otherwise.  He had me work occasionally for him but preferred the slightly flustered senior secretary he was comfortable with and used me to rack up the numbers when the time was ripe to encourage the elected officials he needed to cultivate to get his agenda accomplished.  He did well with the subterranean wing of the grounds he oversaw.  I can say that much for him.   The break room was always warm and wonderful with toast and jelly and freshly brewed coffees, scattered with the daily paper, the group terminal, the windows and the view of the town of Monroe, straight off to the river, which couldn't be seen from there, though a great slough of it was directly across the road.  Monroe was farmland, broad and flat and reputedly Kurt Russell lived up the hill from time to time with his wife, Goldy Hawn.  Why he'd ever want a house across the low valley from that place, the Reformatory, as the older of the buildings was known, I wouldn't know.  Seems as though Hollywood had better places to escape from than there. 
There was a great railroad that ran the breadth of Monroe, a thing that could be relied upon to keep you held up in traffic so that you'd wonder about the sorts of cows you'd seen somewhere in a field, waiting for the flags to go up, for traffic to pass.  If you weren't directly on time for work, running a tad late, you'd sit even longer as the train seemed to know you were derelict in your duty to get there on time, that you'd taken the risk of flying down the road on  State route 2 where the hot air balloons were always floating way up in the sky in summer.  A windbreak had been cultivated along 2.  Once as I was heading home, I saw a spotted owl in the fields of cottonwood planted to keep the strong winds down.    Often I made good time on 2 only to be stuck on 9 on the way to Sisco Heights, up near Arlington, where I had home. 
It's closing in on noon, lunchtime, as I nibble another peach while I sit here.  A fellow Lions' member has been in.  Grouchy from too long on the road, he got in at 1 am last night, he tells me where he's been lately, Iowa.  Roads are fine interstate, he says.  Going again, I ask?  Don't know, they have to accept my bid he says.  The day is like that, accepting my bid to be a part of it, as I languidly sit here watching it unfold, determining  plan for the remainder of it, when I relinquish my place here to Brian, who sometimes comes on a Saturday to fill in for his wife, whose regular day it is.  Not for sure that Brian will be here but he may, or I may go home and get my animals, they've been indoors since I've been here, bring back a pie if my blackberry picking friend shows up for a piece, continue to survey the contents of my immediate consciousness for observations that I have accumulated, allowing the wonderful climate of my home to sustain and inspire me.  I could cook.  There are squashes and peppers and mushrooms all bursting with health and vitality, translateable into omelettes casseroles side dishes...I need to uncover a turkey in the deep freeze, resort it to make room for all the blackberries we've been picking.  There's a pile of those in the kitchen sink at this very moment, and blackberry pie enthroned in the glass cake stand like a revered icon of abundance.  Do hope Brian or his wife show up...the morning is becoming the afternoon.  There's more to be done than sit here at the keyboard writing about it...one would think

Jumping Jehosephat...

yesterday was one of those days at the end of summer where it's cool enough in the morning you wear your jacket and warm enough in the afternoon, you take it off.  I was on my way home from Bellingham.  I wore my fall jacket, a wool flannel 3/4 length tailored coat.  My first husband's second wife, an x to both of us, was picking me up in her Volvo.  She drove me to Keystone, where I would travel across the bay to Port Townsend.  Ostensibly, in Port Townsend I would pick up the Jefferson County Transit bus and head to Sequim, where I would connect with the clallam county transit and get home to Clallam Bay.  It worked out that way but there were a few little out of the ordinary events that made a day I would blog... I wouldn't blog usually, too much going on to sit down and read it back to myself for one, but since I've written three long emails to my three kids already today, I'm going to blog out the rest of yesterday's traveling.  I'll hope for the best.
So I stood on the curb of my son's house, waiting for my ride, my two bags, one color coordinated to my fall jacket, the other in black, that held the items of groceries I'd gotten while I was visiting.  both bags were heavy.  I hoisted them into the volvo and off we went.  we didn't stop for coffee, she had hers, I had orange juice on ice.  as we went down the road we talked about stream reclamation, addiction to oxycodone, not about our mutual exhusband who is one of those people that the less is said about, the better.  we both know better than to bring HIM up...that's what really we have in common, in fact. 
so we rolled along, crossing the bridge over the Suquamish and cruising by the gas pumps at the Indian casino where gas was always very reasonable.  Three ninety four today, I noticed.  Not so reasonable.  We came into Oak Harbor, made the turn at the bottom of the street up the hill past the entrance to Walmart, a nice espresso stand no, it was yogurt, with a play on words to come up with something about WHIDGURT or something, reminds me of my belly and how slack my stomach muscles are...mmhmm
We made the ferry no problem and I walked on, saying goodbye we'll have to do this again when I come to Bellingham and I'll take you to lunch..I tell her and she's like 'oh no...you don't have to do that, but I know I must, at some point...'
The ferry across is the last of my pleasant journey although I'm across to the Peninsula, I'm waiting on JeffTransit to get me as far as Sequim.  I'm sure there's a problem when the shuttle stop hasn't shuttled and there's plain white military buses in place of the several stops the shuttle would be making.  I wait over an hour for the 'convenient' shuttle at the stop by the ferry booths.  As I climb into the shuttle, I tell the driver I'm headed to Sequim on the number eight, my destination is Port Angeles.  When I get over to the transit center, which by now I could have walked to several times, although my bags are more than too heavy to haul that far, I wish I'dbrought along the little wheeled stand that allows for bag stacking and transport.  I'd gone off without it.  It would certainly have come in handyand gotten me a great deal further than I was able to manage without it.  The shuttle pulls into the transit center and the driver goes "look, there's number eight...there he goes.."  and off went number eight and shuttle bus B driver, this fine sunny friday before Labor Day,is shaking his head, 'gee that's a shame...you missed it' which I think is kind of mean of him to just let it drive off without me when it was practically side by side of his bus when we pulled in there
as I read the schedule when Shuttle Bus B pulls out, I find that this was the last Number Eight until 3:15 that afternoon...it wasn't even noon yet, it was about quarter of.  I had no idea there wasn't a number eight until late afternoon, I had to catch a 5 o'clock in PA to get out to clallam bay..how was I going to make that?  Anxiety began to build.  
I wandered around the transit center, talking on the phone, shedding my winter coat to sit in the warm sun, hauling bags and jacket to the nearby Safeway where I used the lavatory, hauling all that back to the transit center where I talked to the shuttle driver again, why didn't you tell that Number Eight to hang on? I ask him...he looks at me like the actor William Macy? kind of had that face...and he doesn't give me the finger but his face is really saying something like too bad lady...just too bad...and I  know I told him when I got on his bus that I needed to get to PA...so he sees the bus go off without me but he's not about people making their connections...and all afternoon he's rolling by and I'm seeing him for three hours and I'm thinking he's mean...so then I ask another bus driver, t his one looks like Fidel, the guy I bought my other house from, a Basque is Fidel...red in the face, corny haircut, runs a Shingle mill in Amanda Park, all about the dollars, is fidel..but he's successful and here's his lookalike driving a transit bus and I ask this guy, well, I guess he looks rather like an Older Treat Williams too, I say is there any way to make some sort of connection to get on the number eight to Sequim so I don't have to sit here all afternoon waiting for another one? and this guy goes...no, there isn't...and I go...well darn it all anyway...and so I go back to sitting there which is all I can do because I've read my book for the trip...my things are too cumbersome to walk around port townsend with and that's all there is to it...I'll have to wait for three hours...because the bus I wanted to get on pulled out right in front of me and my bus driver let it go...I didn't know it was a number eight or I would have ran screaming after it, which I kind of did but he was too close to MacDonald's to hear me...and I didn't go Macdonalds because I didn't have any spare money for any burgers or anything.  I did have some lunch along, I ate an apple, I drank my lemon water, I finished my other burrito...I hadn't packed any dessert other than the apple but I wasn't really hungry.  I was trying really  hard not to be angry with the William Macy dude...but I wasn't having too much luck with that.
Ok, then things got more strange.  Three o'clock came.  Number Eight to Sequim finally showed up.  Well, lookit who's driving number eight.  It's the Fidel wannabe...he's been on another route, oh no, there was no number eight showing up at the transit center for three hours but then here's the Fidel character and HE's driving it.  Or is it the older Treat Williams wannabe?  One of the two or both, or maybe just a legman from the local mob...I dunno...maybe they keep the teamsters in line like this...who knows...  This guy, what does he tell me when I get on his bus?  Oh you know what he says...and real friendly and warm while he's doing it...'sorry you had to wait all afternoon for your bus'...and I can't help myself that I'm sarcastic with him, "sure you are'I tell him...but he's stepping on the gas and we're pulling out of the transit center finally, oh finally, leaving Port Townsend, so I don't think he hears me and that's just as well becaue it never pays to be rude to people who are driving you anywhere, they tend to get a little bombastic with the steering...
ahemmm....
so, rolling down the road I don't see the hot air balloons over Sequim that I noticed leaving town, but they're still there I am told.  I don't talk much to the Treat Williams guy, he's bad karma in my book because I don't see how they'd give him the three o'clock run on number eight when he's been going everywhere else the earlier part of the afternoon.   We get into Sequim and there's a small layover for the commuter to Port Angeles.  I first use the restroom then I take my heavy bags and walk around the block with them.  I realize half way around that this is too heavy what I'm carrying and so I take a short cut through a vacant yard with a rickety wooden fence behind which there is a great big dog.  The great big dog is booming at me, barking with an ominous tone that spells doom if he happens to push over the fence and gnaw off one of my shins, which happens a lot anyways, my shins are pretty well scarred.  I get through the vacant lot, find a warm spot in the sunshine, set down my bags.  And then here comes the bus to town.  I pay my all day transfer fee and get my flourescent green numbered sheet of paper.  I don't need to use it for a bookmark today because my boook is finished, I've read it.  I clip it together with a bobby pin, put it in my pocket.  We leave the transit center and the ride to port angeles is begun.  I'm thinking every time the bell rings to allow a passenger to depart, the minutes are ticking away and my connection for the Clallam Bay bus is growing that much more slim in possibility.  Two unwed mothers and baby get on, hand each other cash, talk on their cell phones.  A guy with half blonde hair half black hair gets on and falls asleep immediately on his backpack in his lap.  I'm sitting in the front seat before the cargo bin where my bags are.  We roll into Port Angeles after macking serveral passenger stops and I'm ready to chew my nails with anxiety.  I see the bus marked "FORKS" and I think 'yeah!' it hasn't gone yet.  I quickly pick up my luggage and cross the street.  I climb onto the bus and sit down in the first available seat which when the bus driver comes on board he tells me 'here comes a passenger with a walker, you'll have to move'...and I think, hmmm...all day long lugging that luggage, I need a walker...but I move and lo and behold...here comes walker lady and I really doubt she needs that walker for herself because what she has done is load up that walker with a pet carrier, groceries, a cardboard box with more stuff in it...and the bus driver rolls out the red carpet for her because they have this thing like an escalator that unfolds onto the sidewalk and a thing like a walker can just roll right up it, which is what the entirely huge lady does with her belongings all perched and piled on the walker.  she gets the front seat I'd had and plops into with a huge 'flluuusssshhh' of air from the seat cushion and she nearly takes up two seats I don't recall that anyone sat with her although theymay have squeezed themselves in but they were doomed to fall into the aisle should we stop short because I don't think there was really any room for another passenger there..  Didn't look so to me anyway.
so this giant lady gets on board with all her stuff and some little kid saying goodbye to one of his split up parents is in front of her on the side sides and he asks about the creature in the pet carrier.  "that's Shadow Ann' says the lady.  I dn't know why I think that Shadow Ann is a cat,,I thought I heard someone say it WAS a cat but no matter...it's Shadow Ann, we all know that, because the giant lady has a gint voice.  You can hear her over the roar of the engine, the open windows, she opens some more when she gts on because she can do that easily enough, although she needs the walker for sure...for the pet carrer with Shadow Ann in it...the kid is looking at the pet carrier and the cat inside, like I say, I thought it was a cat...and then this other kid comes on and he's saying he's going to see his mom in FORKS where he hasn't been in a w hile and he's got new school shoes and he puts them on to show the other kid what he got from his dad...'my mom doesn't have a job right now' he says to the kid ...and then we're off and away and we get out of Port Angeles and we're hearing about shadow Ann and what she bought her son and her husband who is her husband again and somewhere past Lake Crescent the new shoes kid asks the other kid did he far?  and the kid looks at Shadow Ann's pet carrier and he goes shaking his head seriously back and forth 'that wasn't me'...that was HIM! and he points at the carrier and the bus driver looks up into his rear view and he goes 'DID THAT CAT poop on my BUS??' and the big lady goes 'yes in fact HE DID!' which is really confusing me because I'm thinking Shadow Ann is no doubt afemale cat...but then the lady says she needs some towels some lysol spray and somewhere in there Shadow Ann is allowed to roam free while she cleansup the foul smelling substance in the Pet Carrier and the bus driver has her open, or someone like another male passenger I forget who did this, the escape hatch at the ceiling at the front of the bus and windows are opened and the place smells bad until the lysol takes over a little and we're gtting back to normal I think and then all of a sudden there is a squirming at my shins...always getting a beating shins...something like a gigantic rat and I let out a loud 'ACKKKKKK!' like I've been goosed majorly...and here comes this little pint-sized chihuahua looking at me with his bald eyes and knowing he's startled me and I see him and I look at the back of the head of the giant lady and I start to laugh at the sound of my own goosing sqwawk...he's not a cat and he smelled up the bus and he's escaped and so I have to pick him up because he's crawled up my leg and I hand him off to the person in front of me which I guess was the other passenger in that seat because I know I didn't hand him to the giant lady...she was kind of on my  nerves from the time she rolled in with that walker all loaded with her stuff and not her using it to assist her walking and maneuvering. 
So I'm still laughing when I get off the bus at Sappho to transfer to the clallam bay bus.  I don't tell anyone about shadow ann...the thing that I laugh about is how I screamed when that dog came climbing up my leg...it was as though a giant rat had been set free on top of the bad smell and there's this giantlady sitting in front of me and she's been talking all the way there about a CAT named shadow ann and a chihuahua turns up instead.  I didn't know what became of the little dog...I got off the bus and hoped I wouldn't have to ride with that lady again...I knew the moment I saw her we were all in for it and we were...