Help, help, I'm being repressed!
She left a nice comment on Bekah's picture so i'm blogging her. i think she's a her, i know she's pro-choice, but have not figgered out her name or how to say thank you.
- posted by barbara @ 1/31/2003 07:14:00 AM  0 comments

 
DOGMA
Main Entry: dog·ma
Pronunciation: 'dog-m&, 'däg-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural dogmas also dog·ma·ta /-m&-t&/
Etymology: Latin dogmat-, dogma, from Greek, from dokein to seem —more at DECENT
Date: 1638
1 a : something held as an established opinion; especially : a definite authoritative tenet b : a code of such tenets c : a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds
2 : a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church


ANTI-DOGMA FROM THE BEKAH CHURCH OF WONDER
or
sort of a poem about eternity


Excerpts from an anthology
Catechisms at the house next door
Semester long dowsing into the ancients of the earth
Clicking to beyond, clicking back to reality
television – its content
the president – a world’s folly
Sages and experts, healers and mediums,
pious proselytizers,
clueless grievers,

They all know the answer, they say,
They all offer it up to me
Freely
The way strained squash is spoon-flown into the mouth of an infant.
It’s good for me, and when I finish
Eating the shit they keep feeding me,
Oh we will all feel so much better you see.
Twenty or thirty or a million or three
Each alone holds the answer you see.
When I am all filled up, I will feel as serene

As the celibate nuns and priests
Who were miraculously called by god to forego their humanity,
surrender their sexuality
for a mass a wafer a rosary,
All good work all god’s work you see.
Until society evolved beyond the repression and denial of
Puritanical teachings, and the Fathers’ babies learned
of their true identities, and the Fathers so pure, pious, and holy –
Holy shit. I hear they’re starting to prosecute secularly.

Another sage holds the answer for me. She is soon to be
a Master in the ancient healing art of Reiki, she is psychic, empathic,
she feels for me, feels she can help me. Her father is dead;
this proves that she knows grief as well as me.
She practices mediumship and shares with me that my daughter,
The one who was killed violently, abruptly, and recently, is in the room.
“Bekah is suffering physically,” because of me. The psychic says compassionately,
“Bekah cannot move on until you’re done grieving.”
This is supposed to comfort me, or at least stop my weeping.
Would either result be satisfactory?

The next answer comes to me in an letter sent by a kind
and kindred spirit, kindred except that
unlike me, he is finished seeking,
having received enlightenment, wisdom, and especially,
relief [from doubt, fear of death, all spiritual pain].
I am writing to share what I have learned, he tells me. Reading your poems
I could not help but see a soul in pain and I thought, shouldn’t I really
Reach out to this person spiritually so that she can see that she need not grieve?
It pleases me especially to assure you
Bekah and you will certainly be together again,
right here on earth, although you may be related differently.
For example, look at me. I once was mother of the woman I now plan to marry,
whereas my own mother was [I swear] the dog who faithfully
padded and panted everywhere the son,
who is now my fiancée, wandered in that life. So you see although you cannot be
and cannot have it all the same, you can relax
knowing you will never lose it too. Know this is true; you heard it from me.

Don’t fret revenge or worry justice, a wannabe wise woman says to me,
“Absolutely nothing happens that was not meant to be.”
Believe it or don’t, but you should, she says, because this pain and this grief I see in you,
it’s wearing on me. That means it’s got to be wearing too much on you.
Smile, now, be happy. Bekah is, as are we all, precisely where she is supposed to be.
Indeed she is exactly where she chose to be, back before her life,
When she was writing down her destiny. Why cry, she counsels me,
“You decided to mother a martyr and that turned out to be the martyr Bekah chose to be.”
Now swallow your squash, so we can proceed
to eternity confident and serene,
now you know, thanks to me, that you only “think” you are bereaved, that you
only “think” that Bekah’s murder means that her death was not “meant to be.”
There are no victims she declares decisively; we plan our own destinies, create our realities.
When she finally leaves, she says, “No need to thank me,” modestly,
“My thanks is in knowing that you know what I know,
since I know what I know is the truth.”

The messages boil down over time, so that eventually every
Messenger tells me essentially the same thing: “Let it go.” Shamans and laymen alike –
Hell, everyone knows. Let it go. You gotta let it go.
Even those who never venture a guess about
That inscrutable excruciating mystery that is death –
Even those who have made their leap, to the school of extinction, even those
Whose doctrines are dogma slimed and twisted until their jesus is an asshole called
Kip McKean and they really really know that Bekah is, unfortunately,
burning infinitely as we speak, even they eventually agree that
when it comes to this grief I must let it go.

In circles and churches on billboards through schools
at shrine wall or mosque with or without music, idols, statues, robes, postures, prayers, supplications, candles incense holding books
some call sacred, some find enlightening, others see as boring, peering
through sensory perception to find faith in eternity. Whether it be
karma and reincarnation or her very own seat next to god’s knee, whether in
the ether beyond earth’s atmosphere three miles of stairs from the Pacific,
or no “where” specifically, whether shopping and dancing and laughing
the way I maintain she should still be, or plucking at an ethereal harp, her face
the epitome of beatific piety, or assured that she will reincarnate to a
different time, face, name, same soul, same planet, same family,

There must be at least one million or three bona fide genuine documented dogmatted
Pre-traveled routes to the place I seek,
that place where I will know peace, the place
Beyond bereavement past grief, and at least as many people it seems,
who know the only route to that only place.
They stand with their spoons full of squash in hand, I swear they are dying
for the chance to force feed their beliefs into me. Equivocality? Not that I can see.
Respect for the prospective validity of any one or perhaps each one
of those personal “realities” that in reality
cannot be fairly described as anything but theory? No.

Buddhas, ministers, proselytizers, gurus,
All believers who “know” what you truly can no more than believe,
Disattach from your dogmas release your ologies, and

Now, Listen to Me

Pause, think. Regardless of the road you are on, speaking metaphysically,
if there is a name for your “religion,” it is rooted in mythology;
in the annals of our human race, many, many different myths have been recorded.

Can I get a witness please?

Follow me.
No? okay, not today … but if one day you find yourself
Traveling in this neck of hell, do look to me. I’ll hold you up, carry you,
even while reading and writing maniacally, questioning, always,
a bereft mother learns that she is bereft of answers permanently.
Learns to build faith within from beyond herself or any logical understanding,
the foundation soul deep,
Love,
the only enduring belief, the only higher power that yet speaks to me.

I won’t suggest that you let it go. I realize, profoundly, that answer
Won’t be rushed, I am intimate with the grief that will not eat squash, and now,
It is my turn to say, here is what I have learned about eternity:

Let it go is not an answer for me … it is an action that is only
necessary when the bereft is fully prepared to court and receive
happiness,
and to let it go is not possible for far longer than the non-bereaved are able to believe.

Whether eternity is. That is the question to me.

The answer will always be a choice that is made by
Individual souls individually.

If there is eternity, and its inhabitants perceive it consistently,
Who do you perceive yourself to be if you really think
You can describe it to me?
Who has delusions; who sees, who does not see? when I can in a heartbeat
Introduce you to another person, or a million others, or three,
Who will say you are pushing a fucked up concept of eternity?

Please have enough respect to agree, among the living
We cannot ALL be right, when our versions of all non-life-on-earth
Are as varied as we, all humanity as we know it, here,
This planet, this galaxy, and virtually any one or one million theories
Could be, or could not be.

In our reality, truthfully, eternity
may be, or may not be.

Beyond that any answer demands a leap.
not to read a certain book hear some asshole preach
not to genuflect on our knees
not to fervently repeat hail marys
not to speak in tongues or swear we “see” jesus
not to “testify” in front of an audience to squash their disbelief

A soul alone makes a decision, one that cannot be made by anyone else.
Right, wrong, who knows what else in between, to believe anything
Even to refuse to believe requires that a person choose
to believe or not to believe.
Beyond that reality, the only offer of proof
I have ever heard, felt, seen, other than the phenomena Bekah shares with me,
Is the Love that obviously,
Permanently, fervently, ever so faithfully,

Believes in me.

amen
- posted by barbara @ 1/31/2003 03:10:00 AM

 
Bekah, Someday written on 10-26-01, just over three months after she was murdered.


Bekah, Someday

Someday I will fill the silence
Your absent voice inhabits
Someday I will share your lost laugh
And fly with you upon it.

Thrust early and unwillingly toward
Every true issue, forcing my way
To nether worlds away

From the terrible quiet
Where your noises used to be.
Cleaving to remembered sneezes,
Filling up on your choice of words,

I am an engine breaking down
At too many corners.

Knowing too well
The emptiness in the street,
Your even breathing during sleep
A vacuum now, an avenue.

Must I apologize when I admit
I crave your white light Bekah?

- posted by barbara @ 1/29/2003 03:21:00 AM  0 comments

 
Real Joe Affirmation Bullshit Generator

today i will optimize my supreme wisdom

envision my magical mind

visualize my magical oneness

watch out, mars is retrograde, there's been an unhealthy energy shift, and i have been a slug, an absolute slug, for nigh on to a week.

it changes now

- posted by barbara @ 1/28/2003 03:12:00 PM

 
Student killed in frat brawl / 4 others seriously hurt in San Jose park

the one who died - it was his birthday.
it's stories like this that make me really wonder where we're at. well, i'm going to go meditate on peace and light and love now.
- posted by barbara @ 1/23/2003 09:41:00 AM  0 comments

 
~yndygo's blues~

HAPPY BIRTH DAY YNDY!
- posted by barbara @ 1/23/2003 08:13:00 AM  0 comments

 
am i going forward or am i stuck The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James:

disorder, consequently, that they eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time gathered them in, the explanations--he had stored them up; but it was at present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them--he couldn't

at counseling i was faced with the wall, and as it began to be perceptible to me all i could do was cry...everything i do, is it worth anything? when will i feel purposeful again, or will i ever fulfill any purpose? will the world know that this was no small loss? no it was a great, great loss.

so i have to wail and cry some more still. secondary victimization is ever present and will be for as long as it is. answers are hard. rarely clear. keep seeking. nurture whatever faith still, or again, glows within. etcetera

- posted by barbara @ 1/22/2003 01:07:00 PM  0 comments

 
You LIve Your Life As If It's Real
Ray has put a collection of his poems together and published them in PDF format...i've been reading it this morning.

i really like this man's writing - if you're not familiar yet, i recommend that you get on over there and pick up a copy of Rapture In The Mud while the price is right. :)


- posted by barbara @ 1/21/2003 08:56:00 AM

 
Petfinder pet list
if you're looking for a kitty in southern california, check out these ... this is the webpage of a former catlady's [mine] heroine, Leslie.

Thanks to Leslie, none of the kitties died. They all got homes. Koala Bob is kicking around still, though. gee.

Anyway, Leslie will shortly have two or three gorgeous siamese/tonkinese kittens to offer. Lola's last litter. Leslie gets pick of the litter and she offered to buy the remaining two just to be sure that they were fixed before they were placed.

Maybe someday i'll write in more detail about what it was like around here with as many as 14 cats...for now, lets just say it smelled around here.

I do have to make it clear that catladyhood has never been an ambition of mine. i blame the escalation of the mess on rambo. cats were having kittens and i was not attending, i was mourning. i put ads in the recycler but waited too long - the little kitties were always sold immediately - and sometimes i'd get calls and just would not feel up to showing the cats, it wasn't a good day...anyhow. i've had cats all my life but suddenly [of course it wasn't so sudden, but as time is passing i'm starting to realize that i apparently lost whole weeks, maybe months, in the first year after bekah was murdered] it seemed that cats were like rabbits. or mice even. and i had like 14 cats and it was either get some help or pack 'em off to the pound.

maybe some day i'll forgive myself...

that part of the nightmare is thankfully in the past. yeah, and the thanks go directly to Leslie.
- posted by barbara @ 1/20/2003 07:05:00 PM  0 comments

 
Thumbnail Photographs of Blue Whales Underwater by Amos Nachoum Photography Expedition

my son andy has a theory too. his theory is that blue whales don't exist, so i did a little google search for photographs of the world's largest aminal, and not only did i hit paydirt, but [no doubt for many thousands of dollars] i could actually go on a photo expedition specifically for blue whales this coming summer - right off this very coast where i live!

well, san diego actually. but still. not only extant, but in the neighborhood? that's kind of exciting.
- posted by barbara @ 1/18/2003 09:21:00 PM  0 comments

 
Judge upholds plea bargain
this guy writes bad checks and goes away for five years - presumably two and one-half if he goes on 50% time. rambo murders a 21-year-old innocently crossing the street and goes away for four years. out in two.

a travesty of justice.


bekah's shrine...days after her death
- posted by barbara @ 1/18/2003 08:13:00 PM  0 comments

 
World Sound Healing Day InformationPeace.

a demonstration we can join from our computers. now that's my kind of rally
- posted by barbara @ 1/15/2003 07:40:00 PM  0 comments

 
Carl Jung (1875-1961), synchronicity, collective unconscious
on ray's suggestion i went surfing around looking for something by Jung - i had a working familiarity with the concept of the collective unconscious, and was acquainted with the personality types. of course i had heard the word synchronicity.
so now i have read a bit, but none of it was actually written by Jung. however i saved the search in ebay so it's just a matter of time. . .or so i was thinking, until the word "antisemite" popped up, several times.
how very regrettable if true. to be such a forward-looking and enlightening thinker whole philosophies are named after you, and yet be small enough to entertain hatred, contempt, or scorn toward people for no reason at all.
anyway i have not independently verified that it's true. taking one of those online personality tests a few months ago convinced me of Jung's brilliance, the result was so accurate, i thought. yesterday i shared my theory of rhyme and not reason and was led toward Jung as a direct result. so that is cool.
*******
so i've emptied out a couple more drawers and i did find something written on 07-19-95, BUT: i had to look for it a long time, and it's a list. so i'm not putting it here. but i did find something else i had forgotten writing, and something else i've recalled and wanted to find.


i transcribed the old old poem called "bekah" but then realized it just is not good enough to share. but i'll add it to my transcription along with the following, written on 02-05-99 after i mislaid one of my notebooks somewhere between doheny and the beverly sunset medical building:

Lost: Diary, with poetry. Sunset Boulevard,
beginning of February.
Have you seen this side of me?
Am I in a dumpster
or being recycled.
These documents seem so essentially me.
And if it matters so much, why then
was it loosed so carelessly?
Did I want to be so uneasy?
Was I enjoying that dream of
walking nakedly ?
Do I WISH to bare all, poetically
via my diary?
Which no one has asked to read! after all
It really means so much just to me.
So.
let it be. As the Beatles said so sagily. Let it be.


- posted by barbara @ 1/14/2003 03:38:00 AM  0 comments

 
News-Miner

A news article from way up north, Alaska, where my niece lives with her husband, the James McDonald mentioned in paragraph one.

brrrrrr
- posted by barbara @ 1/13/2003 10:56:00 PM  0 comments

 
Bekah Zask Memorial Pages


it happened again, second time in two days. don't ask me why.

i have this dumpster diver's dream of a desk in my living room, and i don't want it anymore. it's one of those big old L-shaped things, solid wood, too big for me to move it by myself.

but tonight i did finally get a small start by emptying out one of six drawers. this had scraps of old diaries, pieces of paper really, as old as thirty-one years...toward the end i found this bitter little blurb addressed to a nameless strange arrangement back in the days of living in a shoe and having given up hope that i would ever find love in my life again:

You were there. one little kiss, two little kiss. Let's not talk, shall we. Now I see what men are about - I find out they are righter than me. Ignore the unpleasant. You have no idea - the whole thing is not to be bummed. I find that's a possibility. And when I'm falling out alone it's the same man I think of all the time. Not you.

on this paper, obviously written at the desk of the glass shop where i worked for eighteen years while raising my children, i noted the date after the scribbling. and guess what? I wrote that on 07-19-88, precisely thirteen years before my daughter was killed. if i gasped when i found the poem from 07-19-99 yesterday, when i saw that date on this piece of paper i nearly screamed.

now i don't know what if anything this means. i have a theory though, about life, great nature, the way things sometimes just seem to happen. not reason, but rhyme. gawd i haven't ever been able to imagine a reason that sounded reasonable to me for so fucking much of what goes on on this planet...but i've been struck by the rhymes oh at least a million times.
maybe more...and lest you think that on 07-19-88 i was not concerned with the wellbeing of the little girl who would be murdered thirteen years later to the day,on the flip side i had written, "She's at Tiffany's," and the phone number for that friend of my daughter's.
- posted by barbara @ 1/13/2003 01:34:00 AM  0 comments

 
Mandarin Design. Web Site Design and Development
a cool site, so far. crazy tracy sent me to it, now i'll be browsing for a bit...:)
- posted by barbara @ 1/12/2003 05:14:00 AM  0 comments

 
Diary Links
i've been writing my diary for over 30 years...and transcribing it, little by little, for about five or so years. my diary is all over the house, in dozens of notebooks, on scraps of paper, in the drawers of desks, just everywhere. as i transcribe, i put the original into a file titled "transcribed [year]."

as of today the book of my diary is approximately 320 8 1/2 by 11 pages in 8 or 9 point font. at this rate IF [that's a big if] i ever complete the task, the finished document will certainly be well over one thousand pages.

so i've written quite a bit thus far.

while filing some pages i'd transcribed today i idly pulled out a couple of pages written in 1999 and transcribed in 2000...written, in fact, on 07-19-99, exactly two years before the date of bekah's murder, and transcribed on 07-07-00, twenty years and one day after her birth.

i don't recall writing any of it and will share today just the last of three pages; my guess is that bekah had been "snippy" to me, which sometimes she would, then she'd say, "sorry, i'm PMS'ing," when she caught the wounded look on my face. after she died i begged her to "PMS all over me, be a bitch and sting your crazy mother, move away and never again live next to me, but christ bekah! don't die...."

Bekah -
where does she go, she is
Shunning me as if
I'd wronged her and I
protest with a mirror, she is
My so very right
My so very best

Straighter and more certain
Than her mother ever was
my so very proof
that talent fortitude certainty
is gifted even

by those not so very gifted -
That love can be raised
by those not so simply loved
and it was not a game...

hm. go figger, because i don't remember writing it. but i did; i recognize my handwriting. the pages before this are about me, in the voice, probably of bekah herself, and maybe one day i will share them as well. but it was this page that got me today, made me gasp in fact. because two years later to the day bekah was dead, thirteen days after her 21st birthday.

bekah blowing out the candles on 4th of july, 2001, as we celebrated her 21st birthday. the day itself July 6 fell on a friday and she wasn't about to spend her 21st birthday, a FRIDAY NIGHT no less, at her mom's house...:)
- posted by barbara @ 1/11/2003 09:22:00 PM  0 comments

 
written two days ago in an attorney's office in long beach, ca
01-08-03

Dearest Bekah – nerves! Shot! Rambo’s husband’s depo. About to begin. Attorneys checking in. Butterflies in my stomach. You on my shoulder. Talked to your father. He’s being deposed himself today. My depo has been taken off calendar. I’m just as glad really.

Though I fantasize saying all the right things. Changing people right where they sit. I don’t have that kind of power especially when the resistance is as great as it is.

I imagine many of them never really enter into the question of right or wrong, just or unjust. They mainly prefer to make arguments based on law and measure their success in wins and losses.

I chose the attorney I chose because he was a pro football player. People who get to the pros have great, huge egos and they hate to lose. But he turned me right over to a different lawyer, one who is good, I’m sure, but for me too focused on the dollars.

most of the rest is notes on the argument that ensued. no meaningful testimony came about from the deposition. i've read rambo's depo now, and imagine it will be very meaningful come trial.

i'd love to think about something else. i have work to do...all i really seem able to do is worry this shit. worry and fret, fret and worry.

...Breathe! I want to JUMP up and HIT the bastard. Fuck with him! Cold motherfucker.
her lawyer wants to terminate this deposition right now. Will move for continuance, pending a court order....

Objection. Stipulation -

done.



- posted by barbara @ 1/10/2003 07:51:00 AM  0 comments

 
Bush Watch
News Being Replaced By Bush Ministry Of Propaganda "Without much notice, the federal government is moving toward the most sweeping change ever in the rules that govern ownership of the American news media. This shift could reduce the independence of the news media and the ability of Americans to take part in public debate. Yet because of meager press coverage and steps taken by the Federal Communications Commission in its policy-making process, most people probably have no idea that it is taking place. " 01.07.03 www.bushwatch.com

i knew it. just knew it. ya.
- posted by barbara @ 1/07/2003 09:04:00 AM  0 comments

 
great quote [i'm watching "who framed roger rabbit"]:
who needs a car in LA? we got the best public transportation in the world!

HA!
- posted by barbara @ 1/06/2003 08:44:00 AM  0 comments

 
About

i finally began an "about" page. guess it was time, i guess it was time.

it is almost 7 am on 01-03-03, and i've been up since way dark...just stepped onto the balcony to behold the most eyestopping sunrise i've seen in quite some time. red sky coming in the window made me go there.

i always do say, thank you, i love you, i miss you. because that is eternity over there, that sight! bekah's there. sometimes laying a "long low string of a cloud" across the sky, sometimes sculpting a turtle in the clouds, sometimes...just investing in her mother a drop of her serenity.

amen

happy new year. i believe it can be a good year, and plan to do my part to make that a reality. cross fingers, knock on wood, go on a diet and clean the fucking house! that's a start.

if you think those shoes are too big, just wear them anyway...:)
- posted by barbara @ 1/03/2003 07:03:00 AM  0 comments

 
Nickelodeon Online at Nick.com
the wild thornberrys, rory, and me...roaming the serengetti to save wild alMiNals
- posted by barbara @ 1/01/2003 04:12:00 AM  0 comments