Matthew 8:32

All good children gather around, come join your hands and sing along.

Numbers Keep Falling off the Calendar’s Floor

Days:

What are days for?

Days are where we live.   

They come, they wake us   

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:   

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor   

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin.

On the path of life, I wish you well

Divergent journeys, but we will meet again in hell.

Time is a kind friend

Let It Be Forgotten:

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long forgotten snow.

Sara Teasdale.

If Only

52 years ago tonight, August 8th 1974

President Nixon shocks the country & the world in a lengthy address at 9pm est when he announces his resignation, effective the next day.

This comes after his own Republican party puts country above party and almost completely abandons… pic.twitter.com/T0S1A8nCtF

— Spiro’s Ghost (@AntiToxicPeople) August 8, 2026

My first political memory.

Dude resigned because the GOP still had a sense of morality and dignity, and a collective spine.  Yesterday, the Senate approved a pedophile protector to be the Attorney General.

RIP, Richard Milhous Nixon, you would've loved this age of corruption.

Up, up, up against the wall, motherfuckers!

Man, social media would've been lit back during the SLA days.

Efter någons död

After Someone’s Death:

Once there was a shock

that left behind a long, pale, shimmering comet’s tail.

It shelters us. It makes the TV images fuzzy.

It settles in cold droplets on the power lines.

You can still shuffle along on skis in the winter sun

through groves where last year’s leaves hang on.

Like pages torn from old telephone books—

all of the names swallowed up by the cold.

It’s still pleasant to feel the heart beating.

But the shadow often seems more real than the body.

The samurai looks insignificant

beside his armor of black dragon scales.

Tomas Tranströmer.

Well, the Weeks Went by and Spring Turned to Summer

RMJ on Max Miller, who reportedly engaged in psychological abuse, including withholding his daughter's favorite toy:

I know I’m only reading headlines, but according to them, this reprehensible representative has kept the favorite doll of his daughter away from her on multiple occasions. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

Why this man is not restricted to severely limited, supervised visitations, is beyond me. 34 years ago when I was practicing family law, I could have gotten those limitations on a father like this just on the headline record I’ve read.

I am baffled by the lack of concern for the best interests of this poor child.

Abuse is about control, leveraging any and all levers to exert it, which includes fucking with personal belongings.  Ericka destroyed a lot of our things; especially, but not exclusively, my family heirlooms (she also forced me to get rid of so much stuff).  I made the King County Superior Court Clerk smile and say, "oh, that's so sweet, I've never seen that before," when I'd indicated explicitly that I wanted possession of my 50yo teddy bear on my DVPO application¹.  I wasn't about to let my abuser take away one of the very last things I've had since childhood.

I was granted a temporary order on January 17, 2020.  The most dangerous point in a relationship with abusers is when you are leaving, particularly when you get a court order².  Fortunately, I guess, Ericka did not engage in lethal violence, but filed for her own order on January 23 (literally the day after I quit drinking).  That's when I took my teddy bear to an undisclosed location, where I lived until our permanent order was granted on April 9.

After the ex parte phase of our saga ended, and we entered the adversarial process, we were given joint custody of the kids with weekly swaps.  Our initial exchanges were set up to be "touchless": Ericka would drop them at school, and I'd pick them up (that lasted just a couple weeks before COVID shutdown school, so we switched to the fire station where there were cameras and people who could intervene in a crisis).

First time, though, I went to get the kids and discovered that she had not sent them with any clothes or items of comfort.  Good thing at the time there was a second-hand clothing store on island where I was able to acquire some items to stretch until their mother finally deigned to leave some suitcases at the school for them a couple days later.

Ericka was, like most abusers, constitutionally unable give up the manipulation (not to mention avoid behavior in violation of court orders), even when Family Court Services and Child Protective Services were investigating both of us as our case proceeded.  Just a small part of the extensive, disturbing pattern that thankfully became crystal clear to all observers, which is why I'm here with the kids more than six years later, and she is not.

I hope Emily Moreno and her daughter stay safe.  I also hope more people learn about the fucked up dynamics of domestic violence, and why survivors often can't imagine leaving.

Selah.

1 - I also specifically granted her use of my Land Rover, just so she'd leave the island.  When we lived in Vermont, Ericka went out and bought two cars without my input, and without my name on the titles.  She would threaten to call the cops on me if I drove them without her permission.  When I bought my car, I was the only title holder, but it still was essentially her car.  Such is the nature of abuse.

2 - But Earl walked right through that restraining order...a song that Ericka would ironically sing.  Always off key, which was actually one of the most endearing things about her, and I miss it unironically.

Noone ever knows or loves another

I want Olivia and Robert to do this one together someday.

Try to Feel the Splendor of It All

Siren Song:

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it

is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here

squatting on this island

looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,

I don't enjoy singing

this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,

to you, only to you.

Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!

Only you, only you can,

you are unique

at last. Alas

it is a boring song

but it works every time.

Margaret Atwood.

Look How They Massacred My Boy

My beloved 171st Street stop last week.

That's...not a local scene.

This is nice, I guess.

Whew, the Little Free Li(ghter)brary is still there.

Anyway, guess some drunk crashed through our lovely shelter.  Kudos to King County Metro for getting things cleaned up pretty quickly.  Disappointing that we've lost the unique character of that custom tile work depicting scenes from Vashon.

All y'all be safe out there...

#throwbackthursday

The most feared biker gang in Fletcher, VT.  (2011)

Well, good for you

Can't help it, I really love this song.

when you are no longer surprised by the quiet or fury of daybreak

When You Are Not Surprised:

when you are not surprised

by death and death and death

death of the bee in the daffodil

death of color in the child’s cheek

on the young mother’s breast

death of sense of touch of sight

death of delight

and the inward death the inward turning night

when the heart hardens itself with hate and indifference   

for hated self and beloved not-self

when you are not surprised

by wheel’s turn or turn of season

the winged and orbed chariot tilt of time   

the halcyon pause, the blue caesura of spring   

and solar rhyme

woven into the divinely remembered nest   

by the dark-eyed love in the oriole’s breast   

and the tides of space that ring the heart

while still, while still, the wave of the invisible world   

breaks into consciousness in the mind of god

then welcome death and be by death benignly welcomed   

and join again in the ceaseless know-nothing   

from which you awoke to the first surprise.

Conrad Aiken.