holiday hell

tuesday 28 december 2010
turners trash

It was three years ago today, our last Christmas together. I'd like to say that it was harassment-free, free of meanness from any quarter, but it wasn't. At least the beginning of it wasn't.

Many times in my blogs over more than two years I've mentioned the absolutely insane behavior I was subjected to by Judith the mafia-chick and Lolly the landlady, but I've written very few details about these behaviors. This is because it's so onerously difficult to write about what my animals and I had to go through. To dig all that human insanity and human ugliness out of my memory and write about it.

There was a tremendous variety of actions that Judith devised in order to torment me -- yes, torment -- over seventeen months. Most of them still await their posts in the future. It has always amazed me that someone who is so dull-witted that she can't think her way out of a paper bag, is nonetheless able to be endlessly inventive about cruelty.

By the time November of 2007 came around, she had already come up with a tremendous list of nasty things to practice on me. I guess in that November she decided that something new and fresh was in order. Certain things had already been settled, presumably, back in July: my animals and I had to leave the property by February 13, 08, while Judith and her boyfriend-on-leash would move out at the end of August 07, to their new establishment.

But Judith and leash-boy never left. The end of August came and went, and I was still being harassed. The end of September ALSO came and went, and the end of October, and the end of November, and she did not go. No matter how many times I called the landlady's lawyer and said: You told me in court she was going, and he said: I'll check into it (lawyer-speak for shove it, lady, I guess), she did not go.

About the 7th of November she came up with her fresh, new torture. Her apartment was very large, taking up most of the house. The entire time she'd lived there, 14 or 15 months, she had had her bedroom in the center of her pad, well away from my own bedroom. But now she moved it. Into the room right beside MY bedroom, with her bed on the other side of the wall from MY bed, which is to say about four inches away. Now I had to sleep beside her and her boyfriend.

I had hired a lawyer very short-term (which was all $500 of the landlady's pay-off money could buy me), and when I told him about this new development, he was very sympathetic and agreed that it was intrusive and nasty, but unfortunately the housing laws didn't allow for him to call the other lawyer and have him tell Judith to put her bed back where it had always been.

It was the last straw. I had been pushed around and lied to and stolen from and otherwise abused by these two psychotic women for a very long time. By putting her bed right next to mine, Judith had naturally found a new way to invade ME, but she'd also at last given me a way to invade her back.

And so I did. I stooped to her level because I had been mistreated too much, without any lawyer or social service agency or cop or anyone at all doing anything to help. I stooped to her level because there weren't many reasons NOT to. For six weeks, from the 8th of November to the 25th of December, I insulted her day and night. And I kept leash-boy from getting his sleep (psychotics don't NEED much sleep, so none of this bothered Judith much, but it FRIED the boy on the leash). I knew the boyfriend usually got up at 6:00 in the morning and went to bed 11:00 at night. Every morning at 5:00, I put my cordless telephone to my ear, sat in my bedroom chair, and talked at full volume. All about him, all about Judith, all about the landlady. I pretended I was yacking with a friend, and I'd do it for at least two hours, so that the boy couldn't go back to sleep before he went to work. Then I'd start again about 11 at night, when he wanted to go to sleep, and keep it up at least two hours more. I insulted them and mocked them sometimes with great big intellectual words that they couldn't even understand, and sometimes with plain old dirty words that they could understand very well. A couple of times I heard him say on the other side of the wall: Let's just move into the house and get out of here. I can only guess that Juidth's reply was No. She whispered her replies so I couldn't hear them, but they did not leave.I watched the boy go to work every morning, observing that his face grew more tired and drawn every day. And I rejoiced. Judith had interrupted my sleep almost every night for 15 months by banging on the walls or letting the dog out at 3 a.m. to bark outside my window. How did little boy like it, not being allowed by his neighbor to sleep?

On Christmas day, he must have put his dainty foot down, and apparently she could no longer wheedle him to her way. About 8 in the morning, he loaded a double bed, a big dresser, a night table with drawers, into his pick-up, drove off in the direction of the house someone (the landlady?) had helped them buy, and these two pieces of filth never again lived in our building. They left most of their stuff in the apartment, most of their stuff in the cellar, most of their stuff in the yard. They even left Judith's white chariot. Once in a while they would come over and take away a small load, but not much. Two and half months later, on the day the deputy came to throw me out, most of their things were still on the property. But they never LIVED there again after Christmas morning.

When they were gone, I eventually called my lawyer and told him what I had done. He laughed and laughed, and then said: Good for you. As an attorney, I could never have advised you to do such a thing, but I'm awfully glad you did it. What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

It was a tiny victory, as anyone with even half a heart will know. Yes, my animals and I had the rest of our last Christmas day in peace. Yes, we had our last two and half months to spend without the mafia-connected, alcoholic, drug-using, drug-dealing Judith and her boy-on-leash. But if I spent roughly 162 hours pretending phone conversations in a loud voice to get their bed away from MINE, that was 162 hours that were stolen from me and my animals. Stolen from our last holidays, from the last few months that we had to be together.

And in despair I bowed my head,
There is no peace on earth, I said.

(tradtional)

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read... Spite and malice... Kaikenlainen...

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chani and chailin

Monday 27 December 2010
Turners twits

In 2008 I was writing posts about the fourteen animals who had been taken. Writing poems for them too. I did get all the poems written, but not posted. And the notebook with those poems still sits rotting, I guess, in a person's barn, and will I ever get it back. Another project never finished back then was the prose writing. Twelve of the fourteen got done, but before I could finish, I lost my ability to write about these stolen friends. I can write about any other animal, but for more than two years, writing about those fourteen has been nearly always impossible. Far too much pain involved.

And yet there are two who have never been done, who've never had much of anything said about them in my blogs, and it gnaws at me that this job, this tribute, is incomplete. Especially now at the holidays.

So today I try to say whatever small things I can manage about Chani and Chailin.

They weren't related to each other. Chailin, when she finally finished growing, turned out to be the largest female cat I've ever had. She must have weighed near twenty pounds. Not just fat, either, but a big frame as well. Like her mother and brothers, she was very shy, and a one-person cat. I was the human in her life, and she wasn't in the least interested in any others. She remained close to her mother till the day the deputy came to evict us, at which time she was twelve years old. When I went out for evening dog walks, she would very often sit in a certain windowsill and watch for us to return, and sometimes I'd stand outside with the dogs, tapping on the glass and thanking her for watching out for us. Sometmes she would answer me.

For a while in 1998 we lived with someone who did not want my cats inside, so they had to be outdoors all the time. This wasn't a terrible ordeal, as there were lots of trees and lots of land and a barn, and the street was very small with little traffic. It was just that my cats had never been denied access to me and to the inside before, and that part was hard on them emotionally.

Chailin and her two brothers all developed the habit of hiding somewhere on this property for several days at a time. They never vanished all at once, all three of them, but one at a time. One would be unseen for two or three days, reappear, and then a different sibling would go missing. When the BOYS showed up again, they would walk right up to me, say a few words, let me know they were back. But Chailin had a different approach. I'd be out on the property calling her, she would answer me. I always knew it was her: her voice was very much her own. She would answer and answer, but she would not show herself. There was a lot of woods on this property, and even though I could hear her, I was determined each time to see her with my eyes and assure myself that she was okay. So I'd have to go hunting. Following the sound of her voice as she spoke to me, until I finally located her. Sitting up straight and tall in some patch of woods, and looking up at me as if to say: Hey, ma. Where've you been for three days?"

Chani was another extremely shy cat, though she had completely separate parents. And in contrast to Chailin, Chani was very small-framed, less than standard for a cat. She was so shy that sometimes I felt as though I hardly knew her, since she was much more a cat-cat than a people-cat. About once a week she would have a great desire for me, come to me and walk all over my chest, rubbing and purring and being petted by me, but otherwise she kept her bonds to her two brothers as the primary ones in her life. On the day she was stolen she hadn't yet had her eighth birthday.

While her mother was still alive, Chani also maintained a very close relationship with mom. In fact, I'd say that her bond with her mother was the deepest one Chani ever had.

I was never one to try to change too much about my animals' behavior (unless it was dangerous), especially with cats. Since a little girl I had respected the independence of the feline nature, and had pretty much let them be who they were. Cats who were aloof were allowed to find their own spot to curl up in all by themselves. Cats who were people-mushers were allowed to crawl on me and sleep on me and lick me and so on. And cats like Chani, who were cat-cats, were allowed to form their deepest ties with other cats. It cost me something, of oourse. Now that Chani has been stolen and killed somewhere, I wish I had had affection with her more than once every week or two. At least about half of me wishes I'd sought her out and made her tolerate my attention for a few minutes every day. But the other half of me is still glad that I accepted her as she was, and that I let her be herself.

On eviction night, it was decided by a certain Turners lunatic and her smarmy, lying, sneaking priest that my animals should be kept overnight in one of the smarm's two garages, till the animal officer could come for them in the morning. It was also decided by them where I myself should be kept overnight: in a hotel in Greenfield, far from my animals. Though I asked permission to feed my animals their supper, I was not allowed. The lunatic and her equally mental son would do that.
Because they were both loons, and because they had no experience with animals, the feeding took from eight o'clock till midnight (I was told the next day), and five of my animals were allowed to escape. One dog off running loose in Turners all night and all the next day, and maybe more. Chailin and Chani and her two brothers escaped into the other garage, which was packed to the rafters with crap for a yard sale. The four cats were uncatchable in all that junk. Our eviction was in mid-March. A full two months later, I was told that the cats were still in that garage. No heat, no love (was there even a litter box?), nothing at all that was known and comforable and normal. I can still hardly withstand thinking about it.

There are people in this poisonous town who finally got those cats out and took them somewhere and had them euthanized. They will not tell me. My need to know where my loved friends were taken, and where and when and how they died, is absolutely irrelevant to these sick-minded christians. They keep their secrets locked up tight from me as effectively as any mafioso keeps his secrets. I wish them misery every single day that I breathe. No, I ain't one of them airhead forgiveness dudes. Those who do evil, to me or to someone else, are held accountable in my heart and in my mind.

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gloria in excelsis... the heights of your wazoo

wednesday 22 december 2010
turners tyrants

Today Cathy, or Kathy (I really don't give a fig) gave me a Christmas card. I've known Cathy for a lot of years, though only fairly casually. But she HAS known for quite some time that I'm an atheist. I have said it to her myself, on more than one occasion.

Now, handy little Cathy makes her cards herself. This year she did it with rubber stamps. The stamp she used for the FRONT of the card was all right. A manger scene, true, and just slightly insulting to an atheist, but not too bad. No magi or anything, just little kids kneeling at a manger, a few animals. Nothing I would have made any issue of. No, it was the INSIDE of the card that lit the fuse (as it was intended to do). The rubber stamp used inside was something to the effect that I would have the love of christ at this time. I said a very insincere thank you and went on about my computer business. But the more I thought about that message over the next two hours, the more insulted I became, and the more I realized what a deliberate little jab of the knife of ignorance and meanness that message was.

The card was given about 10:00. Two hours later, Cathy was gone, and I had a moment with another woman. I showed her the card and told her how insulting it was, and that Cathy has known for a long time that I'm an atheist. I told her: this is what I mean when I talk about how I've been treated here for 25 years. Outright meanness and attacks, and nasty little passive-aggressive things like this Cathy stunt. And she says to me: Just stand tall and defend yourself. I told her that I HAD been defending myself in 2007, against two profoundly disturbed and ruthless women, and that's how my life got destroyed. I told her I was going to Cathy's house to leave the card in front of her door. I wrote a note on it: No thanks, Cathy. You already know I'm an atheist. This I did just before 12:30.

I'm sure Cathy-defenders, and people who don't believe in passive-aggressive acts, will whimper: but maybe those were the only stamps she had. If so, then she should have hand-written the message. Seasons greetings, or some other neutral, non-religious thing. She's perfectly capable of writing. Save your whimpering. I'm not interested.

This is the kind of garbage I've taken from the uneducated, unevolved, uncaring baboons of turners falls for twenty-five years. they just won't let Nakis be. they have to jab, from the kinds of moves like the one Cathy made today (she could have skipped giving me a card at all, rather than give an insult), all the way up to the life-destroying actions of the mafia-chick and the mental landlady. I wish them misery on christmas and every other day. I wish them suffering. I wish them hurt. I wish them all the things that most of them have always given me in such abundance: ignorance and meanness.

shove your message to the heights of your wazoo, Cathy. gloria in excelsis.

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read... Poison and snowflake trees...

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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis. all rights reserved.

this sunset

friday 17 december 2010
turners trogs

this afternoon I went again to one of my old haunts, one of the places I used to go to in my own life. deliberately I went there at the time for watching sunset over the water, a thing I used to do frequently, but now, since the ravaging of what was my life, most often find too painful to do. it was a december sunset I was after, in memory of the many sunsets in december that I saw when we lived right there, when we, my animals and I, were a daily part of the life of that water and that piece of sky.

I sat there on a railroad tie, wondering for at least the thousandth time, exactly why my body hasn't simply shut down all systems and died in the nearly three years since the most devastating loss of my life, and the most unscrupulous cruelty. when carrying so very much pain of the heart, why don't the cells themselves become totally infected by the brain chemicals of sorrow and rage, and just erode the functioning of every system and organ? why does my body, or anyone's, keep functioning under such an onslaught of damaging chemicals? why am I still alive in the absence of every single thing that mattered to me in life?

and also I wondered for the umpteenth time, why I couldn't bring on that ending myself, and make december 17, 2010 my LAST sunset? why in the nearly three years since the end of what was my world, have I not been able to say: This is enough and I'm not doing anymore. why can I not kill the only person I have a moral right to kill -- myself? There I was in my full-length wool and cashmere coat, my velour clothes that can soak up a lot of water, rocks all around me with which to fill the pockets; my inability to swim. it would have been so easy, so do-able, to emulate Virginia Wolfe, fill the pockets with the rocks, step into the water and let the fabrics drink it in, weigh me down, and make an end of misery. so easy, if I were made differently. if I didn't have this maddeningly tenacious inability to kill.

seeing that once again I couldn't do it, I got up and went gathering solstice berry plants. if they were living in a woods, they would have their bright red berries now, but the condtions on the banks of the canal are not optimal for these little shade plants. I gathered them and wrapped them in pine needles, to bring them back to the ponystall and try again to raise them indoors. yet again I have made my own name for nature, not having any idea what these lovely plants are really called.

I watched the sun get lower, and then gone. watched the speaking geese fly over, watched the speaking ducks swim towards me, watched clouds turn orange and coral and pink, and watched to see these colors repeated on the face of the water.
then the time for me to go; reluctantly, with a heavy heart, wanting to stay into dusk and into the blue point, to the richest indigo of that blue phase of dusk, listening to the bedtime chatters of the ducks and geese gathered together on the water. but there were things to do, and I couldn't emulate Virginia, and so I had to go.

maybe I won't see even one more canal sunset in december this year, or ever again. it's rare that conditions in my body and conditions in the weather dovetail benevolently enough for me to accomplish such an outing. whether I see another one or not, I came away, as always from a memory walk, with that taunting, constant wish that I could end the thing.

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read... Being toward death... Lifelines...

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the last christmas

saturday 25 december 2010
turners tears apart

It was 2007. The last Christmas that bore any resemblance at all to all the Christmases before it. The last Christmas that mattered. For which I still had my own way of life, and the ones who mattered to me, to whom I mattered. There was still all of our December music, and our walks, and all the pleasantness involved in the giving of gifts to each other in our home. Snow and full moons and meteors and deer were still adventures. It was a Tuesday. Christmas ended for me, in almost every way that holds significance and value, in December of 2007.

In that final December, I spent more money on us than I ever had. I did it because I could, because out of the $7000 my landlady owed me for infractions of my tenants' rights, I was given less than half. But that money made a more beneficent last Christmas for us. I also did it because of intense fear: the Department of Mental Health had for nine months done just about nothing to find a place for us, or for some of us at least, and the middle of February was our eviction date. I did it in case it was good-bye. And as it turned out, it was.

I made us more feasts that last holiday season, from November 1 to the middle of January, than I'd ever done before. Lamb and beef and turkey and pork and custards and noodle puddings and bacon and eggs, and more. And all of it was shared with the dogs and cats. The birds got vegetable feasts, and their very favorite treat, cooked pasta.

There was more music than in any holiday season ever. The CD's and homemade tapes played more often, radio shows heard and taped and heard again. And I had bought the instruments right before the holidays: the lapharp, the tin whistle, the chime rack, and the handbells. I wanted to play music for the animals myself before we ended, however poorly I might do it. I already had the keyboard and had played that off and on for years, but for our last time I wanted more.

Every snowfall those last months was precious, every candle-flame I lit a plea for this devastation not to happen. But it did.

I've said before in my blogs that I've experienced more than my share of bad luck in my life and more than my share of cruelty from other people. I've known a small number of others over the years who had had more than their share of the crap,
too, and far less than their share of the good things. What is the insulation against some of the sting of these things, what is the consolation and the comfort? Garrison Keillor provides an answer in his book Wobegon Boy:

The stream of insults that life directs at you
cannot be vanquished by skill or cunning. You
can't fight your way clear, you can't outsmart
life. The only answer is to be loved, so that
nothing else matters so much.

And even that, human beings had to take from me. The ones I loved, the ones who loved me. I wish those people nothing but an equal share of misery to the one they gave me. On Christmas, and every day.

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read... Stolen stars... www.experienceproject.com (sehnen)

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jingles and joy, just memories

wednesday 15 december 2010
turners tesseracts

I've been informed by someone that this year's Solstice will be a whiz-bang event. Not only the second yearly standstill of the sun, but also a full moon and a total eclipse of same. It was a truth that in my own life, which no longer exists, I would have had a great holiday for such an event. There would have been music and cooking and photographs out in the cold. And dog walks under the eclipse. And happiness, at least for a day. It's not true now......

There were two possibilities for visits from people this Yuletide, at least in theory. One person from one place, one person from another. I wasn't, of course, forward enough to ask for such visits. It was something I hoped would be offered. But neither theoretical possibility panned out, and so, at this first Solstice/Christmas/Yule that I live in Turners Falls again, but this time without my animals, there will be no one. No one to eat with, no one to talk to, no one to understand the devastation of this particular Yule: the first in Turners with the animals all gone and killed.....

I was fond, for all my life, of this time of year. I loved to give gifts, and wrap them, and receive them too. I loved the music and the lights. I loved the celebration in the early winter. Something to lighten things once the leaves had gone and the sunlight had started making only short appearances. I loved the trees: decorating them, and sitting before them in evening, looking at the twinkle lights. I was fond of bells and songs.....

But mentalhell is a very different place in which to live. And emotional hell. And a blackworld of aloneness. Can you know this? Can you imagine yourself into this blackworld if you've never lost everyone you love all in a moment?
In this kind of world the bells have all gone tinny, and the songs only sing of those who were stolen, and there is no more tree, because there is no more family to love it with you. And the crystalline, fascinating magic of snow is now a haunted white emptiness that will never again be punctured by the ones who walked the snow with you...

And no one will come to offer a little company, a little comfort, in all of this grief that goes on. No one says: what if that were me.

Yuletide Yups
Christmas Carol~~~~~~~~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

juergen

wednesday 8 december 2010, turners tesseracts

Juergen Jergen Oppenheimer was his full name. I was eighteen when I got him. And if you find his full name a tad too much, think on the fact that the one before him was, in full, Jeffrey Jeremy Hilary Boob Jason Julian Chaucer. I was a teenager, for heaven's sake, and a teenager with Asperger's at that. Take a gander at some of the names Opal Whiteley gave her animals: Peter Paul Reubens, Lars Porsena of Clusium, and Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus. And she was just a little KID with Asperger's. By comparison, I wasn't that bad. And by comparison to Jeffrey, Juergen got off easy.

He was a gift, of sorts, from a sibling. One summer day, 1971, I'm there in the livingroom, and sibling squeaks open the heavy front door, tosses something onto the rug, and says "Here's an orange cat for you." Orange was my favorite color for male cats in those days, and the previous one, the aforementioned Jeffrey, had died earlier in the year. Then sibling shut the door again.

Juergen was probably less than six weeks old at that point, very puzzled to have landed in this strange place. He would prove to be calm and quirky, and almost all the time an introvert.

So who's the kid in the photo with the interesting face treatment? I'll call him Joey. He lived nextdoor and was great pals with Juergen, the only one of my cats who was laid back enough to be friends with a four-year-old. As I myself had been, Joey was not what you'd call a mainstream sort of a four-year-old, but he and I were different from the norm in mostly different ways. Joey was often very serious, even moreso than I was at seven, but once in a while he would come out with something that was a howl.

One spring someone buys Joey a plastic fishing pole, with a plastic and magnetized worm on the end, and a separate, magnetized plastic fish. Joey was bored with the plastic, lifeless fish, and seemed to find it much more fun that Juergen came along one day and went after the bait. After that, it was THEIR game. One day my father saw them at it and said "Catfishin' Joey?" And with a completely straight face, staring down at Juergen in the puddle, Joey says "Yup." And the cat, despite his general dislike of water, never hesitated to roil around in the puddles to catch that damned plastic bait.

Another of Juergen's much-loved games was to sit in my lap while I ate and be passed goodies from my plate. His favorite hand-outs were plain donuts. The old-fashioned kind, made in an old-fashioned donut shop.

Joey's about 42 now, with kids of his own. I don't keep in touch with him and couldn't ask permission to use his picture, so I've concealed his face. I'm 57. Juergen, of course, is gone a very, very long time, having died on 8 December 1984 at the age of thirteen.
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(photo by l. billard)

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read... All my stars... Braon...
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

the unfinished noho threnody

Wednesday 24 November 2010.... Turners tongues


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read... Lucked out... Cutting the pie...

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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

chloe

Page Seventy-five

No picture of Chloe today, though there may be one or two in my storage unit. Many times I wonder, really wonder, if I will ever indeed SEE my own belongings again. See them, touch them, and live in all the memories that they will waken, both in my mind and in my heart.

Chloe was born on 7 August 1992, along with her five brothers and sisters. Like almost everyone in the litter, she was grey and white, built small and compact. She lived with us until the first week in January 1993, when she and her brother Brucie went off east to live with my parents. Like Mugsy and some other animals, Chloe would become a victim of my mother's extreme psychological changes in the year 2000, and there would be a sad ending to a life that began so happily.

Before that time, though, Chloe had a good life. She was adored and pampered by me and my daughter, and by her feline mother and grandmother. She was the most shy and reticent member of the Maman family, and always had to be treated with a bit more delicacy than the other cats. As for the outdoors, in those first five months of her life that she was here in the Turners miasma, she didn't care much for the outside. A little time outdoors was fine for her, and after that she liked her creature comforts. She was especially close to her sister Zoe, who also didn't need much of the outside world until she got older, so they chummed around together a lot in the apartment.

I loved Chloe and Brucie in the same way that I loved all of my other animals, and the only reason I could let them go at all was because they were still going to be part of my family, though at a distance. I would never have given them to anyone but a relative, and I knew they would have a great life with my parents. Whatever else my mother was before her terrible crash in 1997, she was almost always excellent to her animals, and I had no worries for my two kids on the day they drove off with her (though I still cried for days for missing them).

I had no crystal ball. I couldn't see the big black wall of shit that was to come. Many times since 1997 I've attacked myself, wondering, SHOULD I have known that such a thing might come? I'd surely seen certain traits in my mother all my life that hinted at danger. SHOULD I have figured out that such a day could come?

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read... Sehnen... Lifelines...

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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

robin

Page Seventy-four

saturday 20 november 2010
turners unfeels

Do I have to say what kind of animal Robin was? Born in spring 1990 and died in November 1994. Brought to me as a nestling by my loving cat Melinda. I do indeed have a photo, but it will have to wait. Haven't been able to use the scanner for three days.

Nestling means that Robin was all feathered in when Mindy brought her, ready to learn to fly but not there yet. Unable to get her own food. Still pulling the head back, opening wide, and cheeping when she was hungry. Like all young members of the thrush family of birds, she had a white a breast with black spots. As far as I know, robins are the only thrushes that lose these spots with the first molt.

We had gone on a trip down to Disney World in 1990, returned around the tenth of June, and only a few days later, no more than a week, Mindy brought this young bird to the bottom of the stairs. I was already in possession of a female sparrow that Mindy had brought as a nestling the year before. Mindy seemed very eager to help me increase my number and knowledge of birds.

I fed the little bird myself, on wet bread and baby food, and she survived. Most often they don't, but she did. There was one little glitch that I hadn't encountered with birdlings before, and that glitch was lice. An unbelievable number of the tiny little buggers. In the nest, the mother bird takes care of de-lousing, and since I was now the mother bird, I had to think of something. I didn't want to use chemical, store-bought preparations, either on the bird or in the room where I was keeping her. I had read more than once that many bugs don't like garlic (right along with vampires), and so I made garlic water by soaking diced garlic in jars of water for a day or two. Then I washed the bird, her box, her bedding, and wiped down all the furniture in the room with garlic water. It worked, folks. Only had to do it twice, and all the little lice was gone.

Unlike all of my other birds, who lived on seeds of various sorts, Robin consumed mynah bird pellets, which had been doing well for my mother's blue jay for ten years. But the blue jay would eat them dry, whereas the Robin would eat very few of them in the hard, dry state. Not surprising, I guess, since robins seem to live on moist foods most of the time. I had to soak the pellets in water until they were soft, and then all was well. This was the mainstay of her diet, with occasional pieces of wet bread, which she liked, or blueberries, or hamburger.

Robin's is a death I feel at least partly responsible for, and therefore it's hard to write about. Not because I don't want to admit my mistake, but because a dark ball of self-disgust rises up, and extra pain on top of the normal load that I live with every day.

She shines, like all the others, as one of the bright stars on the map of the years I've lived, and I miss her, like all the others, still today.
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read... All my stars... Stolen stars...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated.

spotty

Page Seventy-three

wednesday 10 november 2010 .... turners festers

~~} Bold yellow sun lights the land where you run,
~~} burns so bright all its shadows are black.
~~} You rest in the shade where the danger lies wait:
~~} how long will it let you come back?

He was yet another grandchild of Maman, that mother extraordinaire. I have no picture to show you, but he was a small cat, white with grey patches. Hence the name. And I must have named him in a period of great fatigue, because I usually came up with names slightly more original than Spot. That's as bad as Fido or Rover. But most of my animals had multiple nicknames, and for him these were: Spotty, Mr. Spock, Spocky boy.

Like everyone in his family, Spotty was a home boy. Even when free outdoors, these cats never strayed very far from home, unless something really out of the ordinary happened. And the family also tended toward smallnes, which in the case of Spotty's litter was smaller still. None of the six ever got to what you'd call a normal size for an adult cat, and I think this might have been because their parents were half-siblings.

Sixteen years after his death, I still sadden to say that his life was a short one. In the debate between indoor-cat and outdoor-cat, there are good points on both sides. And I have argued the question within myself thousands of times over the years. In most times and places, I opted for outdoor cats. And the indoor people can rant and say that I'm wrong, that I shortened my cats' lives by letting them go outdoors, and in the latter point they are correct. But I had reasons, reasons which I consider just as valid and well-considered as anything they can say, for deciding on outdoors. Not going to elucidate them here, as this is supposed to be Spotty's post, but maybe I'll go into them somewhere on my website, at some future time.

Two years and three months was the amount of time he lived. A short time, but a happy one. He was happy. The dark cloud in his life was the cat next door, a particularly aggressive tom called Skip, who would come to our porch and beat on Spotty, who was only half his size. I tried not to get TOO furious with Skip, because he belonged to people who didn't take very good care of him, and I think this contributed to his generally unhappy nature (he belonged to the same crowd that Rabbit did, and they didn't take much care of HER either). But I did get SOMEWHAT furious when I would hear snarls and shrieks from Skip and Spotty's very unique, loud hum of terror coming from the porch. We all know the expression "scared shitless." This is what happened to poor, timid Spot every time Skip came to the porch to assert dominance. I'd rescue him, of course. And as I've said, this was the only dark cloud in Spotty's otherwise happy life.

read... Shadowpoems... Extemporaneana...

~~~~~~~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~

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(all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved)
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acorn time

Page Seventy-two

wednesday 29 sept 2010 turners turning fall

for several weeks now, acorn time has been in full swing here in new england. the acorns look a lot smaller than they have in past years, and a great many more of them than usual are falling without their caps.


(avanti greeting card)

and who needs the acorns? the squirrels, of course. and the squirrels lose all their normal sense of caution regarding traffic when acorn time comes. it's programmed into them to store as much of this food as possible for the coming winter, and to do it as fast as they can. they are running and racing across streets willy-nilly to take the food back to the nests, and this is the time of year when more squirrels are run over by drivers than at any other time. that's not a scientific study; it's just what I've seen all my life. the hurry is another genetic thing: you are NOT the only squirrel gathering acorns. many others are doing so too. the faster you go, the more you are likely to get before they are gone.

one acorn-hunter, at least, has already been killed by some buffoon here on Avenue A in the poisonous land of turners fails. the speed limit on said Avenue is fairly low, as it's the main street of the burg, and there are traffic lights on it. in theory, no one should EVER be driving so fast on that street that they aren't able to stop. but what the hell, a squirrel is only a lousy squirrel. plenty more where the dead one came from.

to which I could respond: What the hell. a moron is just a moron. plenty more where YOU came from if I should decide to run over YOU.

give them a chance at acorn time. they're only trying to survive. a human goes to work and busts its butt for money, because money is survival. well, when winter's coming, acorns are dollars to a squirrel, and the difference between living and not living to see another spring.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

read... All my stars... Stolen stars...

all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

nxonfu III

Page Seventy-one

wednesday 8 september 2010
turners thugs


Oh, why not another Nxonfu post. I'm pretty sure that Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of these words, but I'm not at all sure that I've spelled his last name correctly. I've changed his pronouns to suit my meeds: I've taken license.

Ur inavfurq va gur fbhaqvat gbja.
Jvyy ur eerzrzore gbb?
Jvyy ur erpnyy gur rlrf bs oebja,
Nf V erpnyy gur oyhr?

Nxonfu I and II
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read... Scealta liatha...

(clip art photo)
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(all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved)
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once, in a greener day

Page Seventy

website


ANIRON


So why is this tree here. It's here for the same reason that every single image on my very large website is here: it has something to do with the life that was stolen from me in 2008.

another season

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on twitter @annegrace2
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read... Lifelines... Extemporaneana...
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

cormorants et alia

wednesday 25 August 2010 turners loons


Well, yesterday I noticed that the cable strung across the river, held on either side by two utility poles, is suddenly gone. It was still there Saturday. For more years than I know of (at least since 2000), the cormorants have been using that cable to perch on, as it gives them a wide vista of sky and river and aids in their fishing. Well yesterday it was gone, and the cormorants were all perched much lower down on the string of ugly buoys that keeps the drunken boat operators from sailing over the dam. Really a terrible fishing position for them. So I wonder if the flaming, empty-headed yuppies have decided that they not only don't like Canadian geese getting on the land and walking about, but they don't like cormorants sitting on cables, either. And there must be a hell of lot more flaming yuppies working for the electric company than there used to be, because they didn't USED to do the kinds of things they're doing to animals THIS year... Don't know whether we have any varieties of AVIAN loons in this burg, but we certainly have a huge selection of the human type.




(this ain't a cormorant, it's a crow. but cormorants are black here, and this is what was handy. in slightly different tones, it was done by susan dorf. you can see it at www.gaelsong.com)

And today? Today is the 25th anniversary of the very first time I moved to this town called Turners Falls. I thought a lot about that day last night, when I was trying to fall asleep. It seemed so innocent. Moving into an apartment in a town I'd never heard of, living there for a few years to do grad school, then going back east where I came from. How bad could it be? How much damage could a few years do? What were these people like? I thought they'd be more or less like the people I grew up around, people who were also citizens of a small town in Massachusetts. Innocent idiot, I was totally ignorant that day of the huge chasm between the western mass small-town psyche and that of the east. Night and day. A descent into palpable ignorance, jovially practiced meanness, and generationally entrenched pride in their backwardness.

How can you know on a certain day that seems to have minimal, manageable consequences embedded within it, that that day is actually the day that will lead to the destruction of your life and of everyone you love? That that day will sink you into an ever-thickening miasma of human meanness and aggression and stupidity? I've said elsewhere on this blog: I despise these twisted people.
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read... All my stars... Mishibone... Soulcast...

on twitter @annegrace2

website
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

lovetaste

(the crow is by susan dorf and available from www.gaelsong.com)

Page Sixty-eight

tuesday 17 august 2010
turners molders

I love blueberries, their taste, texture, even the way they look. But this morning I got blueberry blood on my nearly pristine white hand towel (can a thing be nearly pristine?). It annoyed me. My Asperger's klutziness annoys me.

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The continuing micro-saga of bill:


bill was the grampire vampire

more bill

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I started a blog on a different site back in October 2008, while I was living outdoors in this poison-haven called Turners Falls. Let's call it the J.blog. I considered it to be different than the others I had at the time because I didn't have any plan. It was just a place where I could sit at the keyboard, let my mind wander a few minutes, and see what came out. A sort of vacation from the ugly stories of the Department of Mental Hell, and Matthew and his "protectors," and my disappeared animals. All the things I was discussing in some detail in my other blogs. Not that these subjects didn't also come up in the "vacation" blog (they did), but I approached them there in a much more extemporaneous way. So here's what came out on the very first post, and the blurted-out poem is indeed for Matthew, and for all who talk a good game about love...

14 Oct 2008

Go tell Aunt Rhodie
the old grey goose is dead

I fear she is dead, the old grey goose who lived in the river these past years along with all of the wild water birds. She moved in from somewhere and became the boss of the ducks. I think she died around two days ago. I saw the beginning of her death, attacks by a Canadian goose trying to usurp Goosie's position. They do this when they sense the leader is dying. She cried out to us, her human and duck friends, on Friday the 10th, but there was nothing any of us could do. She's been my friend since 2002. I didn't want her to die before me. I wanted to go first, and go knowing that she was still there in the river, a domestic barnyard goose, bossing all the ducks around.

Kimmy, another lost friend, today's your date, but not your day. You were real and true and completely yourself. When comes a new October/and I walk the wild inferno of the trees....

There is no collapse in a closed system, says Goldstein, says Bohm, but I can't keep my systems closed. They are open every minute to attack, and to entropy, and thence to collapse.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

put your love on this plate
and I will eat of it
if the taste is too sour
I have to get the sour gone
before I choke and blue and die
put your love on the sand
and let the broken waves lay over it
will it disappear beneath their weight,
or is it deep, deep enough
to be there when the water inches back
put your love in this candle-flame
and let it slow-burn loyally,
and if you never blow it out,
and if you hold truth to the flame,
and if the flame is warm,
then maybe
maybe
maybe....

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read... Extemporaneana... Mishibone... Soulcast...


Poetry
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.
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cloudminders

Page Sixty-seven

wednesday 21 July 2010 turners faltering

I've said in other places on my online journals, which are still all being inter-linked to form one website, that since my animals were taken in an illegal eviction more than two years ago, I can no longer pursue many of the interests that were an ongoing part of my life as I previously knew it.

One of those interests was photography. But now, aside from pictures of my guinea pig or animals outdoors, I no longer take pictures, and certainly not what I used to refer to as my "artsy" ones.

The two things I was most driven to photograph -- and I mean driven -- were water, and the sky (which is just more water). Water as liquid, as ice, as snow, as mist. Nothing but animals fascinates me more than the way different qualities of light act on water in all its forms. So...

In 1998 I became friendly with a woman who owned a bookstore and had me as a part-timer there. We didn't know each other terribly well yet, but were spending a lot of time together. One evening in summer we went to supper at a place that had outside picnic tables (I had my dog and one of my rabbits with me), and when our order was called, I went to get it. I'm returning to the table and I see Elizabeth pointing a camera up towards the sky. Do you take pictures of clouds?, I ask her, and she looks immediately both embarrassed and guilty. Well, sometimes,, she says in a meek little voice. And I tell her no, no embarrassment, that I take pictures of clouds too, but I've never seen anyone else do it, and I'm really pleased that she does too. It was, at the time, just another odd thing that made me believe that Elizabeth and I should be friends for life.

I'm sad that in the end, we did not stay friends for life, but it wasn't for lack of me wanting it. I still miss her. And of the many things we had in common, cloudminding was the one that surprised me the most.

I can't put one of my cloud pictures here, as they are all locked up in storage waiting for the day (if such a day ever comes) that I live again in a real apartment, rather than a ponystall.

read... Braonwandering... Being toward death...

~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~

meandering among friends

kimmy


chan


tuuschi










lizzie

mandy

judah

to a search

mugsy

frosty
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romance undercover

friday 2 july 2010, turners falling


Yes, it's about 1:00 pm and I'm computering here in Turners. But earlier I was in good old Gruenefeld, computering away there. Had a surprise waiting for me on the sidewalk as I approached the library in that other town.

And the surprise led to panic, and sadness, and the old trying to write as much of it as I could out of my system on a blog post.

This Matthew Lacoy, who used to say he loved me (and maybe, in his own completely unacceptable way, he does) was the surprise on the sidewalk, there on the sidewalk doing parts of what is his job. I have seen these undercover antics so many times before, and when I saw him there with one of his colleagues, both waiting for me and doing the pacing-smoking dance, which Matthew alone must do wearing a heavy winter parka fit for a blizzard, there I saw that in this sick-club way, he was telling things to me, as well as to others around u. To me he was saying: it's a bad day, and I myself have come down here to this sidewalk to take charge, and to speak to you, and to impart to you with various elements of body language that you learned two years ago, that today is a bad day.

He spoke to me twice, and looked into my eyes, as is often his way, and waited for an answer. He didn't get one. There's no point saying things to him that I've already said, things he either refuses to understand or really doesn't understand because he doesn't have Asperger's, and I do; or because his way of being in the world is so ego-driven and mine is much more soul-driven.

So, here's the post I wrote there in Gruenefield to try organize the great caldron of feelings that arise in me every time I see Matthew Lacoy.

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read... Sehnen... Braon...

~~~ website ~~~~

emily and I

This is an old post from the original Mentalhell blog, which is now just about defunct, so I've moved this here.


thurs 17 april 2008 greenfield

Emily Dickinson wrote a poem that begins something like: I'm nobody, who are you?/Are you nobody too? I am nobody now, even more so now than I was before the DMH got done with me. And like Emily, I'm a reclusive person who also writes poetry and wants to keep separate as much as possible from everyday human doings. It just isn't for me. Thus the animals, all of my life. But I guess Emily's family had some money and she could get away with being odd. When you're poor and you invite the DMH mind-police into your life, you can't get away with the great crime of being who you are. Of course I didn't KNOW they were the mind police and the self-appointed controllers of where and how I would live, and with whom, when I invited them into my life. No one had ever told me the REAL mission of these mini-dictators. I was told I would get ASSISTANCE.

So they did what they did, they destroyed my life and left me with nothing, homeless, 55 years old, physical illnesses, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and they helped me right out of my life. After all the trauma I'd already had in my life, they delivered me the worst one ever, the king of pain, the queen of grief.

Here's a poem I wrote years ago, but it now runs through my mind just about every day:

I have come where mountains cry,
where tales of failure wander by
and fill the sundown sky with streaks of grief.
I've sung a strangled, unloved song,
but I can still those notes before too long,
since everything was wrong, and strange, in me.

If you see me on the cliffs of stone,
remember that I've bled and screamed alone,
and earned the right alone, to jump and die.


The poem is only partly factual: I was alone in the realm of humans, but I always had the animals, and they did love my song, and they were a large part of what always stopped me from jumping. Now the DMH has robbed me of them. Some have been killed, though I'm not sure how many. The others have been adopted to other people, and I don't know who or where. This is one of the things I used to say to them:

I love you as big as the sky,
as big as the sea,
as bright as all the light that ever was.

It's still true.

Update 28 July 2009: I have come where mountains cry... I will never leave the place inside me where mountains cry, no matter where I go. It's very hard to produce actual tears on celexa, the antidepressant. I noticed that side effect when I took it back in 2003, and that's why I eventually stopped taking it: it felt too wrong not to be able to cry. But though my eyes produce few tears, there is a constant crying inside me, even screaming, and a dark emptiness. Will I jump? It's not too likely. I tried several times last year to end myself, to get out of the hell of having lost everything that mattered, and the hell of being in sneaky, undercover federal protection, and the hell of having people show up in Greenfield who wanted to kill me, and the hell of the ignorance of Greenfield and Turners Falls. I tried to jump. But something in me won't do it. Maybe I have too much of an aversion to killing, even when killing is the only thing that makes any sense.

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read... Scealta liatha(poems in english)... website...
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another round of fire

wednesday 2 june 2010 turners turned stony


Well, as the result of recent things that have gone on behind the scenes of my various blogs, I feel it necessary yet again to address the subject of whether or not I am delusional... delusional vis a vis Matthew Lacoy and the things he told me about my life and my grandfather.

I have to say in complete truthfulness that I deeply resent having to continually go over this again, both verbally and in print, more than two years after this Lacoy person said the things that he said. I am furious and MYSTIFIED by the fact that supposed ADULTS can't seem to distinguish between delusions and believed statements.

So, an object lesson: If someone that you know only casually one day invites you to their home and gives you shocking news about your own life, what do you do? Let's say the person tells you that your mother and his father had a secret affair long ago, and the two of you are siblings. I use this example because I've actually known people to whom this has happened. What do you DO? What do we as sentient (supposedly) beings do when someone is talking to us? Ok, I'll tell you. We evaluate a variety of factors going on in that person: 1. the actual words they are saying, the particular words they choose 2. the tone of voice and inflection they are using 3. their body language: is there a tightening of the jaw, a hardening of the eyes? You evaluate these things every single time someone speaks to you, whether you are consciously aware of it or not. And this is what Anne Nakis did on the days Matthew Lacoy told her these things.

And having performed this evaluation that we all engage in AUTOMATICALLY, I decided that he was not lying, that he was telling me truth, and that is what I still believe. If anyone ever proves to my satisfaction that Matthew Lacoy was lying to me, then so be it. But no one has proven that thus far.

So, let's allow for the possbility that he WAS lying. What does that make ME? What does that make ANYONE who believes a lie someone told them? Gullible? Dumb? Too trusting? Mistaken in their judgment of this person's sincerity? YES, damn it; any or all of those things. But not DELUSIONAL, not IRRATIONAL, not INSANE. When did the DSM definition of delusional suddenly become: anyone who believes a lie someone told them?

And why do I continually try to stick up for myself, for two years continually try on the internet and in real life to expunge this notion of DELUSIONAL from people's minds and from the twisted little papers they fill out about me? Because the word is insulting to me, and because it's a lie. It's an insult to my integrity, my sanity and my intelligence, as I've said before and will no doubt say again. And because it's a lie. It isn't truth. NO ONE wants a lie circulated about them. NO ONE wants complete fabrications believed about them in this town and that town and this office and that office. You wouldn't want it either, if it were happening to YOU.

Am I angry about all this? Absolutely. With no apologies or excuses. Anger is not a mental illness, despite what the psychobabble boneheads would have you believe.
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read... Spite and malice... Braon...

~~~~~ website ~~~~~ on twitter @annegrace2
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(all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved)
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turners falls, tarting up

wednesday 19 may 2010

So, folks, google Turners Falls and see all the invented glory that comes up. They are trying so very hard to increase tourism and get "quality" (read: monied, shallow, hollow-brained yuppies) to move here, that the town is advertising itself in most mendacious manner on the internet, complete with black fishnet stockings, red lipstick, spike heels, and all the other tools of the hooking trade.

Don't be fooled!

You'll read nothing on the internet about the high rate of alcoholism and drug use in this pit, or the high rate of business failure. Nor will you read about teenagers beating other teenagers to death with baseball bats while still other teenagers look on. You won't read about the abysmal school system, the pregnant teens, and so much more fun.

A whore, after all, when you remove all the fake stuff, is pretty much like any other whore.
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read... Poison and snowflake trees... Braonwandering...

~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.
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into the valley of hell

wednesday 21 april 2010 turners flails

They call this area of Massachusetts the Pioneer Valley, the valley being that of the Connecticut River. It's that for me, of course, loving water as I do. But it's a valley of trauma too, a valley of dirty, ugly souls.

I live here in this town again, as of 31 March, and it's nothing but torture. I chose this town -- I wanted to be with my memories. But it's even more pain than I'd envisioned it would be. I despise these wretched people so much.

I've said before over my two years of journaling on the internet (and on more than one blog) that you won't get new-age, touchy-feely, forgive, forgive, stuff-your-dark-emotions-and-pretend-they-don't-exist prattle from me. You'll need to read other people's blogs to get that.
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read... Sehnen... Don't ask...

~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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from here on...

friday 5 march 2010 turners fails


Sitting here today, I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to go on with this blog. But that may change, and I may keep going. After all, I don't have a life. Someone stole that.

Next Tuesday is the second anniversary of being removed by a sheriff's deputy from my apartment. Do I need to say that this anniversary weighs on me as heavy as a sea, that grief is how I live, and bitterness? Those are among the emotions amerikans don't want to acknowledge feeling, or talk about, or hear about. But I'm an atypical amerikan in a whole variety of ways, and I started blogging to talk about my grief, and my outrage, and what corrupt, largely unregulated systems can do to one individual when they answer to just about no one. And I stay on the internet to keep writing about those very things, and about who I was before my life as I knew it was destroyed.

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read... Sehnen... Braon...

~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

emptiness

18 february 2010 turners falls

Is that too depressing a word for you, emptiness? Too corny? Sorry I can't find a more interesting word to describe for you what my daily existence is. Sorry the story I've had to tell on my blogs for the last twenty-three months is so sad, so depressing. But I didn't make the story; the people who took control of my life did. If it's sad and depressing to read, how terrible do you think it is to be living all this.

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read... Spite and malice... Braonwandering...
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~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

website link

thursday 21 january 2010, turners flails

Today someone helped me set up a blog-based website. Click here to go there.
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read... Mugsy's book... All my stars...

(tapestry available from www.gaelsong.com)
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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.
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