I Have the Write

Lori’s Views on Politics

9-10-11

1)      Six months ago, I said Mitt will be your next President.  As of today, I’m stickin’ to that.

2)     Sara Palin is a complete moron.  I’ve yet to figure out whose pipe she smoked to get this kind of attention, and she must be super good at it.  Thinkin’ maybe it was the entire Skull and Bones Society. (See also #6.)

3)     Michelle Bachmann scares the crap out of me just by looking at her, and her husband/daddy is not to be ignored.

4)     Boehner is a bad man.

5)     Obama will be like Jimmy Carter.  He’ll go on to make his greatest contributions after his days in the White House when he’ll be cut from the puppet masters (see also #6) and allowed to be the man he is.

6)     We don’t elect the President, kiddies.  Repeat after me:  Skull and Bones.

A DAY AT THE BEACH

 9-17-11

How I ended up there, I cannot say.  It was a week day; I do recall that, so I had to have taken the day off work.  My first memory is of myself sitting in my parked car at the top of the cliffs and thinking that I had to get out.  I had to get down to the beach.  The thing I’d dreaded and feared for so long was happening; I was undone.  I could feel it coming on hard and fast like the black waves barreling toward the shore, rolling back and crashing violently against their own power.

I locked my purse in the car and, on the second attempt, managed to get my keys shoved deep into the pocket of my jeans.  My hands were shaking so badly, I kept dropping them.  Then I ran.  I’d been here so many times I didn’t have to think about where the steep path down to the beach began.  The incline was severe and packed with damp sand, and my legs slid out, but I was up again in moments, sprinting to the bottom.  If I could get to the log, my hiding place, I could get this played out and done.

The cliffs formed a great horseshoe, and inside was a large, soft area where people would set up their picnics against the cold June winds, though there were no people on this day.   I knew I had to run toward the water and then around one edge to where the hiding log lay.  I ran as fast as I could; the screams were coming.  I was desperate to get myself to a place where I couldn’t be seen or heard. Ahead the Pacific loomed before me, with her cold, dark waves imploding in plumes of spray.  I ran toward her, gasping for air.  And then I had a thought.

I could keep running straight into her bosom.  I didn’t swim, and the water was especially violent today.  It wouldn’t take long for her to pull me down.  But I slowed as I heard his voice from many years before. 

“It’s your duty as long as they are alive.”

“No, I won’t do it! I can’t do it anymore!”

“You will do it, and you won’t stop doing it, because you swore you would.  You looked me in the eye and swore you would do it!” 

The fucker was right.  I had sworn to take care of them.  I was just 14 when that promise was laid on me, and he knew he could reach back across death to make me keep it.  He knew how he’d trained me.  He knew that once I made a promise, I’d fulfill it no matter what the cost to me.  He’d have no compunction about using my honor against me.

With an exasperated growl, I turned from the water, stumbled and ran the last hundred yards toward the log.  I was running and chanting, “WhywhywhywhywhyWHY?”  The fire in my gut was growing unabated.  Grief-impaled, I fell to my knees and heard my own ghastly screams.  I flung myself down on the hard sand.  I kicked my legs like a tantrumming child as I drew in air and screamed as though I were being skinned.

“You BASTARD!  You dirty, sadistic, twisted MOTHERFUCKER!”  I howled at my maker in a tornadic frenzy, still kicking and flailing in the damp sand.  The more it went on, the more it grew.

“How much more will you take from me?” I screamed.  “How much more will you TAKE!!!!”  I writhed in a perverse agony from which there was no release.

I hate you, you son of a bitch!  I HATE you!”  Shrieking in hysteria, repeating it over and over, I continued to fight.  I fought my maker’s will; I fought the truth; I fought my own need as I clawed frenetically at the sand until my fingers bled.

I rose to my knees and screamed again until no sound remained above the waves.  I slumped into the sand once more to thrash and rail.  I could not cry the tears; I could only make the horrific sounds of a sundered heart.

I laid there for quite some time, crushed into the sand with the wind blowing cold spray over my head.  I’d like to have known its coolness just then, but had no strength to lift my face to it.  I could only lie there and moan in torture as waves of it I couldn’t fight continued to send jolting pulses through me. 

I don’t recall how long I was there before I realized I was thirsty.  Peeling myself up, I could see that I was covered in sand, blood and snot.  My hair dripped from the spray and was pasted to my head.  I sat for a few minutes to reanimate myself.  I was freezing now in my short sleeves and had brought no jacket.

Suddenly, I was next to the car, though I don’t recall the trek back up the rocky pathway.  I knew I was going to have to go into the store on the way out of town for some water.  I also knew I looked frightening, and I wasn’t interested in calling extra attention to it.  I put on a baseball cap and my Wayfarers, brushed off the sand and ick as best I could and drove to the sea-weathered general store for a gallon of water. 

Back at the car, I poured half the gallon over my head in an effort to snap myself out of it and drank a good bit of the rest.  I sat dripping next to the car in the parking lot with my back up against the wheel and smoked a cigarette.  I felt nothing.  I jumped over the edge of my life that day, only to be spit back into the horror.  I moved forward to stoically do the duty I was sworn to, and in doing it forever lost all hope of God’s mercy.