The Furious Spinner

Tuesday, April 13, 2004: I got up at 6:30 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. I did the dishes and the laundry, vacuumed, and made breakfast. I turned on the 9/11 commission hearings to have on as background “music.” I couldn’t get any of the people involved in organizing the women’s rights march on Sunday, April 25, to acknowledge my email and attachment with the flyer on it. I made the “executive” decision that the flyer was great. I made copies, bundled up a bunch to be mailed out to various people, and gave them to Mario on his way out the door to work. It was 9:00 a.m., and I was exhausted and feeling very stressed.

How to explain what I mean by stress? It’s like a low grade anxiety. It feels as though something is going to give at any moment. Twenty years ago when I felt this way, something did give. I had an anxiety attack. I had never heard of anything called an anxiety attack before then. What it felt like was that I was going insane. I hallucinated, thought I was dying or Mario was dying. I couldn’t read or write. It was awful, unremitting. It lasted an entire year, then retreated to a kind of low grade anxiety for many years, then went away for the most part. But I was never the same. Once you know what it feels like to be crazy, you don’t ever want to go back there.

I don’t separate the mind and body when talking about illness. I believe so-called emotional illnesses can be triggered by environmental stresses just as cancer and diabetes can be triggered by environmental stresses; I see them all as illnesses of the body. Anxiety, depression, and other emotional or mental illnesses can all be triggered by a combination of stress and hormonal and chemical imbalance. If you have stress but don’t have the chemical imbalance, you probably won’t get the illness.

Emotional illness is not a weakness any more than getting diabetes or cancer is a weakness; I don’t know when or where shame became attached to these types of illnesses, but I certainly don’t carry it. My family is genetically inclined toward cancer, allergies, and mental illnesses like depression, compulsive obsessive disorder, and anxiety. That’s just the way it is. Suicide has been the cause of death of many of my family members. To pretend mental illness does not occur in my family would be stupid—like someone pretending there wasn’t a history of diabetes in their family and not making certain life style changes in an effort to prevent the disease.

Anyway, I had been feeling this low grade anxiety for a while, this overwhelming tension, and I knew I had to do something to stop it. But with what Bush and his administration were doing to our country, I felt as though I could not slow down. I had to do something, something, something. And with the way the economy was, Mario and I were having difficulties making ends meet (I wonder where that expression comes from?), so I felt like I had to either be writing or getting extra hours at the library so we wouldn’t end up as a bag couple. I don’t normally write every day, but I had been writing nearly every day for months.

So today with the housework out of the way, I wrote on the Writing of Lady Liberty for four hours. At the end of it, I was exhausted. I was going to have to do something different. I was just too exhausted and stressed. My allergies were worse than they had been for a long while. My nose and eyes ran constantly. I didn’t know what to do about that, but obviously it was contributing to my exhaustion.

Bush had a press conference at 5:00 p.m. to talk about the war. As usual, when reading from a prepared text, he said all the “right” things. He was like a deer in headlights during the questions. He kept repeating certain phrases that you know Karl Rove fed to him ahead of time. It was so depressing. I couldn’t root for his failure because he had already failed and thousands of people had died. I didn’t understand why the American public didn’t see through him.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004: It was raining when I got up. I sat down at the computer and started writing before I did anything. Took a break to eat. I had the hearings on again. I wrote all day, but I kept having to stop to do research. I was having difficulty finding definitive answers to certain questions: did they have a sink in the kitchen; did they have privies in the house or outside.

I was now in the mind of Oney Judge, the 21 year old slave of Martha Washington. I felt more comfortable walking around as Oney than I did as Martha Washington. I’m sure my ancestors were slaves at one time or another or, at the very least, indentured servants. I could relate to that life. Owning a person seems so outrageous to me that it is difficult to put myself in that mind set.

I wrote: Now that Oney had the room to herself, she cherished any time she got to spend in it. Like now. She breathed deeply. Heard only her own breath. For a moment, her ears throbbed with the silence. It was music, this quiet. This black, dark, quiet. Beautiful music.

Oney got up and reached for her brown shift, on a hook next to her bed, and pulled it over her head. Gray light made it only as far as the bottom of the closed door. Once she opened the door, the darkness would disappear, her shelter vanquished, and daylight would proclaim its dominance. She could see in the darkness. Couldn’t everyone? No. Not white people. They carried light with them wherever they went because they could not see. All of them had bad eyes, Oney decided. Her mother Betty said in Africa everyone knew night was better; it was only then one could see the ashy skin of night. Oney pushed her feet into her shoes. She reached out for the door handle, hesitated, then opened the door....

I liked Oney. When I wrote from Martha’s point of view, I liked her, I supposed. But I did not understand her.

My guest column about the pesticide spraying at the school got into the paper.

I wrote until it was time to eat before going to the peace meeting. My friend Evine had called to ask me to make certain she got a chance to talk at the meeting. She wanted me to start organizing and facilitating the group again, but I resisted. Although I was good at facilitating, it took an enormous amount of energy, and I did not want to be seen as the leader of the group. If I organized and facilitated the meetings, I became the de facto leader; I did that for a year and finally said, “Basta!” But I said I would come to the beginning of the meeting and make sure she got to talk.

I got dressed for the open house we were attending afterward. My boss was retiring, and her party was at the White Salmon library. I drove to the Stevenson library for the peace meeting since it was raining so hard. No one had gotten out the chairs or turned off the alarm on the back door. I was irritated. I didn’t understand it when people didn’t take the initiative--or let others do the work all the time. I kept pointing out to the small group where the chairs were, but no one went to get any. Finally Evine started to go get the chairs, and someone went and got the chairs instead. It was a small group. Evine got to talk. Mario came, and we headed off to White Salmon.

I was nervous at the open house. I saw people I knew I should know but I couldn’t remember everyone’s name. It had been nearly ten years since I worked there; still, I thought I should remember. I was most comfortable when my boss and Mario and I were alone, talking about John Ashcroft. My boss said she believed it would all turn around soon. People like Ashcroft and the Bush Administration always went too far, and the American people would see them for what they were.

Thursday, April 15, 2004: I got a packet in the mail from the National Park Service in Philadelphia. They had copied an article about the house in Philadelphia where I was setting my novel, plus a house the Washington’s had stayed in during the yellow fever. The article, “The President's’ House in Philadelphia” by Edward Lawler, jr. was very helpful. He had a “conjectural floor plan” of the President’s House. I googled him on the internet and found his email and wrote to him. Meanwhile, I spent the day rewriting what I had already written to “go” with Lawler’s “conjectural floor plan.” It was exhausting to go back and put in details and take out others; however, I was glad to have a better idea of what the house was like. I reread his article again and again, trying to memorize as many of the details as I could. I was so tired at the end of the day that I wondered if I could keep doing this.

I made a big pot of yellow split pea soup.

After Mario got out of work, we drove to Portland and got movies. It costs $20 to fill up our little car now. We cannot afford to drive to Portland any more.

Friday, April 16, 2004: Mario and I got up early and drove out to Falling Creek. We were going to count deer’s head orchids again. We got about halfway up trail, and it started raining. We decided it was raining too hard and it was too cold to keep going, so we turned back. At home again, I got an email from Edward Lawler with all kinds of good detail about the Philadelphia house. Unfortunately, he also told me he had been wrong about Christopher Sheels being in the house in 1796. That meant I was going to have to get rid of Christopher. I was not sure what to do. For now, I decided to forget that and continue the narrative.

I wrote: When Oney and Molly or she and James were out running errands, Oney pretended she was free. Mostly, she loved buying things. Like going to Zinnie and Nash’s and getting a juicy apple tart. Then buying another. And another. Until the sugar made her head spin. That had been the first time. The very first time she had spent her own money....

Mario and I made an apple pie and drove to Hood River looking for soy ice cream and brown bananas. We found the ice cream. Belinda and Evine came over to watch a movie with us. We decided to watch “thirteen” which was apparently written by a 13-year-old girl. (Note to myself: perhaps I should pretend to be 13 and I’ll have an easier time getting things published.) Probably if Mario and I had been alone we wouldn’t have watched it all the way through. I’ve become one of “those” people who wants to be entertained when I watched movies. Real life was difficult enough; while watching a movie, I wanted to pretend things turned out. It was nice having friends over, though.

Saturday, April 17, 2004: I measured myself today to see if I had gained back the weight since I was so sick this winter. (I don’t have scales.) I had gained inches all around. I sat on the couch feeling pleased, thinking about the day Mario and I had planned tomorrow, and I heard a voice in my head say, “You’ll be dead tomorrow.” I thought, shit, is this some kind of premonition? My low grade anxiety shifted into high grade anxiety. I did not want to die. If I called Mario he’d say, “It doesn’t mean literal death. Remember the Death card in tarot.” I thought, OK. Literal death in the tarot is often the Tower card. I’ll shuffle the tarot cards; if I got the Tower card, all was lost. So I went to my tarot box and pulled out a tarot deck. (I collected tarot decks. I don’t think the cards tell the future. I see them more as an artful way of tickling my subconscious into thinking about things. But since I’m not sure I believe in the subconscious or even psychology any more, I rarely use the cards.) I shuffled the deck, split them into three piles, then picked up the first pile and began laying down cards.

The very first card was the Tower card.

Now I was freaked. I walked to the library and got Mario to come home early for lunch. I told him what was going on. We sat on the couch, and he hugged me. When people or books told me I needed to sit and listen to my inner voice, I always said “No way. My inner voice is nasty.” Here I had been relaxing, feeling positive for the first time in a long while, and my inner voice told me I was going to die the next day.

My mother always says never to say you’re happy or healthy because the evil eye will hear you and come and get you. That’s a screwed up philosophy. But if you grow up with that mantra how do you undo it? Or is that too psychological?

I went with Mario to work where Belinda was sorting books for the book sale. She was having a ball looking in all the different boxes. I liked being around her. She was so positive, while allowing for dissent. Do you know what I mean? She wasn’t one of these pansy-ass New Agers (or any other kind of “religion”) who wanted to pretend everything was OK all the time. I told her what had happened.

“Do you think it’s a premonition?” I asked.

“No, I think it’s something within you that gets triggered whenever you start to feel better.”

“Well, how can I stop it? It’s really sick.”

“I don’t know. You are probably nutritionally deficient in something. B vitamins and vitamin E. You might be too acidic, too.”

She hugged me, and I felt better after saying it outloud to someone beside Mario. Maybe it was just stress.

I went home, my belly in a knot. On the road in front of my house, I saw a curved blue shape. I leaned over. It was a small blue new moon! I thought, “Well, this seems like a good sign.” I picked it up and put it on the porch. Then I went into the house and wrote.

Oney finds out Mrs. Washington is going to give her to her granddaughter. She is shocked because she thought she would be set free upon the deaths of the Washingtons.

I wrote: Oney quickly left the room, closing the door behind her. She ran through Wash’s room, her room, down the stairs, through the servants’ hall and outside into the garden. The night was black; the air cold and crisp. She looked up at the sky and opened her mouth to scream. Silently. Screaming.

I’ll never be free. I’ll never be free. I’ll never be free.

Where was the ashy skin of the sky? Only stars upon stars upon stars....

Mario took me to Thai Noon in Portland after work. One of the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen spread itself over Portland. It was glorious!

At the restaurant, I felt numb. Strange. The anxiety was steady now, like an extra heartbeat. Am I going to die tomorrow?

I told Mario what Belinda had told me about the vitamins. “She said I might be acidic and I told her I wasn’t even Jewish.”

Mario laughed and laughed. “Did you really say that?”

“No, but I knew it would make you laugh.”

I took out my yellow pad and wrote a page and a half on Lady Liberty. Oney and George-Washington Lafayette meet in the kitchen of the Philadelphia House, when everyone else is asleep.

The food came too quickly. I put away the yellow pad. Oney and Lafayette would have to wait.

We stopped at Powell’s Books, and I got a few books on slave narratives. I fell to sleep to the sound of coyotes yipping.

Mario whispered, “See, Kim, any day with a blue moon, a rainbow, and coyotes can’t be all bad.”

Sunday, April 18, 2004: Mario and I drove to Falling Creek early morning. No one was about. It was cold and wet. We counted deer’s head orchid. 150 compared with last week’s 80 something. When we got to the waterfall between the two big waterfalls, we discovered a railroad tie was still in the water. Someone had carried it from a pile a ways down the trail to use it to cross the watery path. But the creosote was contaminating the water. We had called the ranger’s station, but obviously they didn’t care.

I thought, screw this. I waded into the water and picked up the railroad tie. When I had it above my head and my chest hurt from the weight of it, I thought, “Hmmm. Is this how I die?” Together Mario and I moved the tie out of the water and threw it down the slope. Not a perfect solution but it got it away from the water. We continued our walk to the waterfalls.

Afterward we came home and relaxed, then drove to Portland to return the movies and some library books. We stopped at Wild Oats on Burnside to get some bananas. I was looking for the produce man who had set the bananas aside for me, so I asked a young woman who was wearing a Wild Oat cap and carrying a broom where I could find him. “I don’t work here,” she said in a voice so nasty I was startled. All I had done was ask a very polite question.

“Oh, I saw the cap.”

“I work at another store.” Oozing snottiness.

“I saw the cap and the broom and figured--”

“Look lady, leave me alone.” And she waved me off.

I said, “You don’t have to be such a bitch.”

She said, “Fuck you, bitch!”

I was so angry and upset, my hands were shaking. Granted, I participated in this nastiness by telling her she didn’t have to be so bitchy. I went to the manager and told him what had happened, but he said she didn’t work for him or any other Wild Oats store. Mario had disappeared, so I went outside with an armful of bananas and stood next to the homeless man selling newspapers. We talked. I told him what had just happened. The girl came out of the store, looked at me, and said, “I don’t want anything from you, lady. It’s all good.”

I didn’t say anything. I wanted to wring her neck. “It’s all good.” What the fuck did that mean? It was definitely not all good. Mario showed up soon after. I thanked the homeless man for his kindness. (Yes, I bought a newspaper and gave him a banana.)

As I got into the car, I thought, “I’ve got to learn a better way to communicate.” The thing was when I think I’ve been treated badly, I don’t keep my mouth shut. And I don’t intend to start keeping my mouth shut. However, when I had these kinds of encounters, I needed to learn methods to deescalate what was happening instead of escalating it. I was supposed to be a peace activist, god damn it.

Plus, this could have been my last day on the planet. What a lousy way to go out.

At 12:01 a.m. Mario and I embraced. I had made it! “I hope my voice didn’t get the date wrong,” I said.

Monday, April 19, 2004: New Moon. I decided I needed a few days off for rest and recreation.
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Sunday, April 18, 2004

A Sanctuary for Dissent