I spent the first 30-something years of my life regretting my entrapment. Regretting my situation. Why do I have strange zealot parents? Why am I not drawn to this God? Why do I desire girls? Why do the moon and trees and animals feed my spirit instead of the spiritual path my family would choose for me? Regret Nothing. Life is short and time is precious. Regret nothing. Love is […]
Outside the gate runs the long stretch of asphalt leading to the main road. Inside the gate is cracked blacktop with weeds peeking out of these small bits of available dirt. A wide piece of chain-link forms a gate which bisects this meeting of driveway and road. Crows inhabit the trees around this property. Their voices omnipresent since the beginning of our residence here. I love crows, their associations with […]
(Continued from “If It Is the Truth, With a Capital ‘T’”) I am making a second pot of coffee at 10am when Worldly-Caregiver-Woman arrives. She is promptly on time. Nana and I have been awake for four hours. “Hey, how’s it going?” She greets me cheerfully. “It’s going.” I exhale a long heavy breath. I suspect I look a little grim. “Help yourself to some coffee.” She gives me piercing […]
<Continued from “You Remember I am an Apostate, Right?”> I hold her sudden quiet for a long heartbeat and then say, “If this is the Truth with a capital ‘T’ then it can stand up to any examination from any direction, at any time. Truth has nothing to fear from any sort of scrutiny of its evidence. That is the very definition of the word truth. Yet the Society’s rules […]
<Continued from “Throwing Down the Gauntlet“> “You know what Nana?” I say after I washed up our few dishes and made us an after-dinner cup of coffee. Hers decaf and black, mine regular with a good slug of cream. Wrapping my hands around the warmth of my cup I start talking about why I am here on this day. “I want to stay with you for a bit. I have […]
<Continued from “Nana is Dying and You Are Not Invited” post.> I walk through the familiar wide golden oak front door and set two bags just inside the door, stashing them behind her chair. “Hi darlin’, how are you feeling today?” Coming around her chair, hands free, I bend down to kiss her pale sunken cheek. She has been shrinking for years. Now she looks like a strong wind might […]
<This is a portion of a chapter set when I was in my 30’s.> I have been officially out of the Organization for 3 years. I am being shunned by my Faithful Witness family. When I first heard, really heard, how bad things are for Nana, she said, “Don’t you think the scariest thing would be to die in the bathtub?” The first time I heard her say it I […]
As the Ashes of California Ablaze float and settle around me …thoughts of Armageddon sift and flare in my mind like the last remnants of a forest fire’s dying gasps. Images of Fire raining from God on High to consume the running screaming mothers carrying babies in their arms filled my childhood. ARMAGEDDON IS COMING or They Have to Die…Really? “Armageddon is coming any minute and we need to be […]
9-9-17 I notice my journey into the wild is not very far from civilization. I drive ten minutes up the road from the (Madame’s) boyfriend’s house. I find a campground just off the highway. The ocean is a couple of sand dunes away. Cracked concrete forms a small firepit and next to it a pile of driftwood I dragged a long way down the beach. I wrap rough sticks and […]
9-2-18 Where the wave’s water sparkles with floating sun beams. Beams which glitter so fiercely I almost can’t look at them until they shatter in foam and sand. The day is a blue haze with drifts of sunlight playing with fog’s tendrils twining and climbing up the beach far into the afternoon. Lying in the warm sand, listening to the muted rush of the ocean’s breath, stills my mind’s darting […]