As they say in Ireland...are they fecking with me?!!
Brown Eggs and Jam Jars
10 years ago
Thursday, March 18, 2010
the pleasures of travel planning
I am stuck in a cloud of indecision in the process of buying my tickets for my trip to Egypt/Paris etc--my adventure to visit Hannah in Alexandria and then get my puppy from Julia Grant's Canouan kennel http://www.canouan.co.uk/ in Segolas (Lot et Garonne, east of Bordeaux). Turns out the fast train BACK from Bordeaux to Paris Charles DeGaulle airport will not get there with enough time for me to safely check in the 9 week old puppy for the American Airlines nonstop flight to Chicago, so I will have to stay in a hotel near Charles DeGaulle Airport overnight and then fly the next day. And I find that all the hotels near the airport accept pets! even the fancy ones! I am gobsmacked.
As they say in Ireland...are they fecking with me?!!
As they say in Ireland...are they fecking with me?!!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
lost times
Lately I have been snagged by memories, some sad, some exciting and scary, as if I am in a geological outcropping of intense recollection. They interrupt my days, they sideswipe my tracking of current events. Some of them I have not thought of in years, and now they come in flocks.
It is hard not to look at a memory when it surfaces, not to give it the respect it seems due. I work at it, trying to be sure all the moments are clear, like I could solve some puzzle, change some sad conclusion. Visual memories, sounds, scents and physical sensations, memories of thoughts at the end of events undergone. I ask myself "so then, was that how it happened? is this true?" I turn each one over in my mind's eye, trying to see an alternate point of view.
I have a memory of a terrible incident when I must have been maybe 11 or 12 years old. It starts with me sitting on a railing or maybe a cement bridge. I had been coming through the woods along a creek path that climbed up to a road leading out of my hometown. I had climbed up, I was resting, turned sideways with one leg half bent, looking down the road at whoever might be driving by. There was a motorcycle, with two guys on it. As it approached they suddenly began slowing down rapidly, and I jumped up and ran down the slope back along the path, with the creek to my left. I remember a squeak of a wordless thought when I realized the motorcycle engine had stopped. I ran and ran. I heard feet running behind me. I felt pursued, like an animal. The path followed the bends of the creek; I remember feeling hope they couldn't see me through the thick undergrowth, that it was screening me down the twisty path, but I could hear them coming behind me.
I know now that the road I ran from was 3/4 of a mile from where the path spilled out into the subdivision where I lived. That day I just knew it seemed like I would never make it. That day, when I was running, my breathing and my heart so loud in my ears, I didn't think I would make it before they caught up with me. I felt like I was running for my life, but I remember thinking maybe I was only imagining that they would hurt me. I remember the path going through an area of denser shrubbery and making a big curve to the right; I saw thick tall brambles and I made this decision to leave the path, so fast with such a burst of speed. Feeling desperate and like I was flying, the pickers pulling and tearing at my legs, and just as suddenly I plunged down into the brambles and tried to make my breathing and my heart be quiet, be quiet. I had no thoughts, except maybe a denial of the reality I was in--"they aren't chasing me." As I hid there, staring through the air filled with sunshine and insects, one man ran past along the path, maybe 30 feet away from me. He did not see me. I saw a shining thing in his hand as he ran; in my mind I remember it as a knife, but I don't really remember a shape, just a shine.
I don't remember any exact thing after. I maybe pushed on through the brambles later, avoiding the path. I climbed a fence into someone's yard and made my way home. I think I was crying as I climbed over. I didn't tell anyone.
I look at that memory and I have so many questions. I see it as something that happened to ME, and it seemed like it was all in my head, I was so silent as I ran. But who were those guys? So many things, I am aware, could have been different, for them and for me. What was I feeling, beyond a dreadful sharp sense of terror, & of disbelief, like I had crossed into some Twilight Zone. eh? I kept it secret, and when I thought of it, there was a strange feeling of shame.
I am so glad I ran, glad I was fast, glad for my instincts, like a deer.
It is hard not to look at a memory when it surfaces, not to give it the respect it seems due. I work at it, trying to be sure all the moments are clear, like I could solve some puzzle, change some sad conclusion. Visual memories, sounds, scents and physical sensations, memories of thoughts at the end of events undergone. I ask myself "so then, was that how it happened? is this true?" I turn each one over in my mind's eye, trying to see an alternate point of view.
I have a memory of a terrible incident when I must have been maybe 11 or 12 years old. It starts with me sitting on a railing or maybe a cement bridge. I had been coming through the woods along a creek path that climbed up to a road leading out of my hometown. I had climbed up, I was resting, turned sideways with one leg half bent, looking down the road at whoever might be driving by. There was a motorcycle, with two guys on it. As it approached they suddenly began slowing down rapidly, and I jumped up and ran down the slope back along the path, with the creek to my left. I remember a squeak of a wordless thought when I realized the motorcycle engine had stopped. I ran and ran. I heard feet running behind me. I felt pursued, like an animal. The path followed the bends of the creek; I remember feeling hope they couldn't see me through the thick undergrowth, that it was screening me down the twisty path, but I could hear them coming behind me.
I know now that the road I ran from was 3/4 of a mile from where the path spilled out into the subdivision where I lived. That day I just knew it seemed like I would never make it. That day, when I was running, my breathing and my heart so loud in my ears, I didn't think I would make it before they caught up with me. I felt like I was running for my life, but I remember thinking maybe I was only imagining that they would hurt me. I remember the path going through an area of denser shrubbery and making a big curve to the right; I saw thick tall brambles and I made this decision to leave the path, so fast with such a burst of speed. Feeling desperate and like I was flying, the pickers pulling and tearing at my legs, and just as suddenly I plunged down into the brambles and tried to make my breathing and my heart be quiet, be quiet. I had no thoughts, except maybe a denial of the reality I was in--"they aren't chasing me." As I hid there, staring through the air filled with sunshine and insects, one man ran past along the path, maybe 30 feet away from me. He did not see me. I saw a shining thing in his hand as he ran; in my mind I remember it as a knife, but I don't really remember a shape, just a shine.
I don't remember any exact thing after. I maybe pushed on through the brambles later, avoiding the path. I climbed a fence into someone's yard and made my way home. I think I was crying as I climbed over. I didn't tell anyone.
I look at that memory and I have so many questions. I see it as something that happened to ME, and it seemed like it was all in my head, I was so silent as I ran. But who were those guys? So many things, I am aware, could have been different, for them and for me. What was I feeling, beyond a dreadful sharp sense of terror, & of disbelief, like I had crossed into some Twilight Zone. eh? I kept it secret, and when I thought of it, there was a strange feeling of shame.
I am so glad I ran, glad I was fast, glad for my instincts, like a deer.
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