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Charleston, West Virginia Hurricane, West Virginia My Life Story Uncategorized Writings

Slippers

We met Slippers when we were living in a holler. It’s hard to describe how a place can be so dull and so colorful at the same time. Sort of like lifting a rock. First you only see brown then you realize there is life swirling everywhere. Strange creatures and you have no idea what they are doing.

In the world I grew up in, the meaning of life was clear- to be rich and important. But these aren’t the aims of life in a holler. I’m not sure I ever figured out what the aims were. But certainly not to climb a social ladder because such a ladder didn’t exist.

For starters, the majority of people were animals. And even the animals seemed rather stuffy and affected compared to the principle actor- Nature. Nature was top dog. He controlled plants, mountains, creeks and weather. Humans and animals were both second fiddle to him.

Perhaps this gave humans and animals more in common than they have in cities. At any rate, it didn’t feel much different walking down the street with a goat or a random child. Even the conversations were similar. All beings ran the gamut from deadly (copperheads & criminals) to unbearably cute. There were many involved in crime and many who appeared to have stepped right out of a story book. Sometimes they were the same people.

So on any day’s walk you would encounter chickens, goats, a sheep, children, at least one pedophile, horses, a pony and many many dogs. It was the dogs though who would accompany me up and down the road.

When I first met Slippers, her name was Nasty. She lived on the mountain’s side with a teeny dog named Banjo who was mean as anything. Even when Slippers reached 70 pounds, if 5 pound Banjo came after her she would lie on her back screaming while he tried to bite her and I ran around her immobilized body trying to kick him. Banjo’s owner was a 10 year old boy. He would try to kick Banjo as well but we never succeeded. He kept a long hunting knife in his top overall pocket with no sheath. It would keep falling out over and over again and he’d just pick it up and stick it back in.

I’m sorry I was trying to kick a dog but that’s just the way it was there. Little kids carried guns and shot birds. Pedophiles sat on their porch flirting with kids. Dogs raced cars in the street and sometimes lost in a big way. Kids tried to rob you and so did the adults. I was just one more animal trying to protect my own.

Dog ownership in the holler was not the same as suburban dog ownership. Dogs were considered more or less their own people and it was frequently ambiguous who they belonged to. Multiple houses might claim the same dog. They mostly lived outside and roamed freely. No fence, no leash. They ran the holler together in packs. One or more pack would accompany me on my walks. At first I was scared shitless of them. But soon they became the best friends I had. The only friends really.

There were the Peanuts, Bear, Jax, Jack, Lily, Toby, Nasty, Brownie and Dingleberry who would escort me through the holler. And then a few other dogs- like Banjo and Xena- who would just run down from their houses to attack. It was a world where you needed friends.

Eventually Nasty’s ownership transferred to another family though not much changed since she still ran with the pack. They renamed her Pretty Girl. I continued calling her Slippers which was the name I gave her when we first met because she seemed so refined to me.

Pretty Girl’s new family lived down by the creek which during floods would turn into a crazy river. A bridge crossed the creek leading to their house and when floods came the kids- about 3 and 6 years old- would be tied to the bridge so they could enjoy being tossed in the racing flood waters. Until one day the flood pulled the bridge away. After that it was just a couple of planks over a 12 foot drop. People in hollers are not very safety conscious. Pretty Girl’s new dad would stick his hand down a copperhead nest to show us the eggs and pull up poison ivy with bare hands.

So Pretty Girl played in the road like all the dogs did and one day she got hit by a car and couldn’t walk anymore. This was not an uncommon fate. Few dogs there were more than a couple years old. One day James was driving down a major road in the city and found traffic had been stopped because the dog pack had managed to leave the holler and was standing there in the middle of the road. Luckily they knew James and all hopped into his car and he drove them back home.

After getting injured Pretty Girl just rode around on the back of her owner’s tractor. One day James got a really bad feeling that her owner might decide to ‘put her down.’ Pretty Girl’s family foraged in the dumpster for their own food so they didn’t really have the resources for a dog, much less an injured one. He went to their house one night to ask if we could have her but the owner said she had just been picked up by a rescue group. She was given surgery and renamed Bailey. Eventually she went up for adoption so we adopted her and moved her back into the holler.

Her friends were glad she was back. Lily would come over and rap the door with her paw each afternoon wanting to play with her. They’d go out on the back porch and wrestle together. Until one day Lily got kidnapped. She had ‘prestige’ looks so she’d probably been sold for money. I knew who did it too, but didn’t say anything cause Lily probably wouldn’t have lived much longer if she stayed. Her owner went through one dog a year. His last pony had starved to death. People in the holler love getting new puppies and baby animals but once they become adults their incentive to keep them alive isn’t as great.

So now I’d walk Slippers on a leash while her old gang ran wild around her. Generally she didn’t mind except for when they’d spot a deer and then BAM the dogs would fly up that mountain wall and she’d scream to go with them. They didn’t have long to live but it wasn’t a bad life either.

In the holler the people are more like animals and animals are more like people.
Slippers greeting Jake. Just like Lily, he would sometimes knock on our door to say hi.
Jax following me through snow.
I miss him. It hurts to think about him actually.
The creek as it was receding from a flood. During rain storms it could get several feet deep above the road and you couldn’t get in or out of the holler.
The same creek not after a flood.
Nature was #1. Then Animals. Then Humans.
Two second class citizens hanging out in Plant World.
Goats say hi in the road. They ruled this part of the holler then further down the dogs’ turf began.

Some dog pack members. (Bear & Two Peanuts)
Dingleberry says hi.
Slipper’s home when she was Pretty Girl. Before the bridge got washed away. To the right, you see one of the Peanuts getting ready to race a car. Her passion. She died this way a few months later.

Saying hi to Peanut the pony.
Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Earth, Pink, Mothers, Love Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire Sky Blue, Ether, Flags, and Fairies

The Pink Horizon

Well then after the fire
Came the pink horizon
And they would gaze as though
It surprised them they way it would glow.

Lasted day after day
While the sun set and rised
And there it’d stay as people
Remained all bewildered and so.

Oh, my God! Was there something I missed?
Oh did I live my whole life in a mist but I just didn’t know?

Oh, my God! Was there something I failed to see?
For I thought I knew this old world, now it’s dazing me so.

So they picked up their tools
And they went back to work again
Even fools could see this world
Would win even so.

Sweating under the sun
As the pink light impaled them
With it’s light and they inhaled
A new sense of right and wrong.

Oh, my God! Was there something I missed?
Oh did I live my whole life in a mist but I just didn’t know?

Oh, my God! Was there something I failed to see?
For I thought I knew this old world, now it’s dazing me so.

Many days come and gone
The pink light would remain
As though the world was exactly
The same though it wasn’t at all.

People scratching their heads…
Could it be maybe we are dead?
We’ve arrived and this is the time
That we’ve waited to come?

Oh, my God! Was there something I missed?
Oh did I live my whole life in a mist but I just didn’t know?

Oh, my God! Was there something I failed to see?
For I thought I knew this old world, now it’s dazing me so.

Would you care to donate a dime or a dollar? Mini contributions make a huge difference. Thank you!

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

A Little Red

This picture was supposed to look more happy than how it turned out.

Gonna break out of this rut
Trade a drop of blood for a little cut
Gonna break out of this little world of blue.

Gonna get me what I like
A big cup of tears, a handful of lies so I
Come crawling on my knees again to you.

Baby no- you don’t need to change
You were born to play and life’s a game
You can be yourself & only us will know.

Hush baby, close your eyes
You were born to kill, I was born to sacrifice-
Wanna cut a little red & watch it flow?

Sometimes though it hurts so red
It’s like a knife that pins me down to the bed so I
Close my eyes to find another place and time.

Suddenly then you grow so cold
All the blood recedes into a world of stone and I
Wonder what I did again to make you fly.

Baby no- you don’t need to change
When men say love they mean a different thing and
They can only find their strength in being alone.

They gotta kill, just to stay alive
And the voice they hear tells them to survive and so they
Wanna cut a little red and watch it flow.

But in this world, love’s a flame; my
Hands are cold I need something so
Can you tell me that you only just love me alone?

Cause the voice I hear tells me to survive
I give you my life, to keep me alive
And now I wanna cut a little bit of red to watch it glow.


(Please note- this song is not to be confused with Little Red.)

Also, if you would care to donate a dime or dollar for a song it would be most welcome- thank you.

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia men Politics Videos Writings

A Drop of Gizz

(Saturn is squaring my Mercury causing me to hate everything that comes out of my mouth. If I sound like I’m eating a robot, that’s why.)

I’ve been in that phase again where I write a million blog posts then delete them cause I can’t stop imagining all the reasons people will hate me for anything I say.

Personally I love to read people writing about their own experiences. Whether it is trudging across Antarctica or making their husband a sandwich, I don’t care. But when writing about myself, the voices in my head start calling me a self-absorbed, navel gazing narcissist. Sometimes real people do too.

So then I become an intellectual. A defensive posture. It makes men think you are smart and respect you more. Sometimes it feels like men are highly cue based when evaluating intelligence. A woman in spectacles discussing science is intelligent. A woman gluing cotton bears onto a wreath is not. But I can’t maintain being intellectual. It feels like walking on my hands.

And the Heard-Depp trial is ‘triggering’ me. But I’m afraid to say this. If you want your biscuits, this is the time to say you believe men can be abused just as easily as women. You are supposed to say it is just as bad for a woman to push a man- even if he doesn’t move- as it is for a man to push a woman- even if she falls into a bathtub and hits her head. They are equally bad. It’s violence either way!

You are supposed to say that domestic abuse is a genderless crime. And male victims are too shy to come forward. Depp is helping to change this.

But it’s hard for me to imagine a female using physical force to dominate a man. Even moreso in a case like this where Depp is surrounded by body guards. Not to mention endless money, friends, family, staff, homes, vehicles, planes, yachts, guns, knives etc.

It wouldn’t be impossible. But the only way I could see it happening is if Heard managed to establish a guru-like grip over Depp’s mind. But it is clear from the trial that she was not holding his brain in thrall. Drugs and his demons did that.

Perhaps many do not understand the difference between physical aggression and abuse. Lobbing a ball of socks at someone is not abuse. Punching a man, grabbing a woman’s arm & leaving a bruise, screaming, calling someone a bad name… you can only determine the significance of these events by looking at the larger pattern. If Monica slapped Clinton for gizzing on her dress would that make him a battered husband? Not from my perspective. If she stabbed him through the eye with a pen then we are entering new territory.

Because women can commit acts of violence towards men. They could marry an old man for money then slip poison in his food.

But domestic abuse, imo, is when a person uses intimidation, manipulation, violence & control of resources to establish dominance over their partner, making them unable or unwilling to leave despite bad treatment.

How many men exist who are physically afraid of their wives but too scared to leave? How commonly do women cut off men’s access to money, social contacts and transportation while dominating their bodies and threatening to kill them if they escape?

I’m wincing because the next statement will probably shower hate on me, but it seems possible that trace elements of domination are present in many if not most heterosexual relationships. It’s more than men being stronger, it is also how they are built for war and competition while women obsess over connection, frequently placing them in the role of trying to please.

We try to make things gooey and soft. We want to wear matching pajamas. We glue cotton bears onto a wreath. Men don’t do this. I don’t know why. I’m not judging them for this. I’m just trying to state the obvious in a culture which punishes us for doing so.

Muffin papers. I had planned to start making Business Woman Muffins each morning to sustain me through the day. For a Woman On the Go. That hasn’t happened.
My opponent’s sign encountered while door knocking. Politics is another factor making me feel suppressed. One wrong word could cost me votes.

Especially in a Republican primary. Some conservatives judge you for bad language, sexual language, violent language etc. As though God fast tracks all Scorpios to hell.
A red picture of me to showcase my political dominance and power. I admire red, but also feel it is everything I will never be. Which is why I like to stay near it. Kiss the hand that feeds you.
A picture of stones resting on cotton.

Would you like to watch a two minute video of a dog’s face accompanied by a song about a frog?



Slipper’s name is substituted for Mr. Froggy’s though cause she loves the sound of it. I also like to read her Bible verses where it’s God talking directly to Slippers. “I shall cover Slippers with my feathers, and under my wings Slippers will rest.”