July 26, 2002

• Now I think I understand what compassion was asking about my state of mind while I was with the bikers.  Although my self-esteem was in very bad shape, I didn’t know it at the time.  I thought I was okay.  I was really good at rationalizing things, at denying the stuff that would have made me feel bad.  I had a very strong ego.  I was quick to learn and adapt to new situations.  I got plenty of attention and emotional payoffs because I excelled at the biker game.

  
  

  I lived with simmering resentments against VW for the way he brutalized me, and I fantasized about getting back at him when I wasn’t ignoring all that and being stupidly ”in love”.  That’s how it is for someone with Stockholm Syndrome.  I had a few lucid moments, but most of the time I was just a biker chick with a vivid imagination, playing the game by the bikers’ rules.  Throughout my life, wherever I have been, learning and expanding my mind have been my major kicks.  This was no different.  There was a lot to learn.

  
  

  I spent a few hours last night on the laptop, writing down the absolutely WORST event of my time with the bikers, getting it out of the way.  Having that hanging over me was keeping me from getting on with the story.  Now it is in the can, but since it is out of chronological order, I’m going to wait to post it until I catch up with the rest of the story.  The episode I’m currently working on is one of the most fun times I had.  It should go down easily, and then I’ll just have to tie up a few loose ends, but it does appear that it will be more than just a couple of more episodes before I get out of the biker phase and move on into the speedfreak story.  Later, anyway, for all of that.

  
  

  Right now, it’s something different.  This is another rainy day, and I got to ease in here at the computer with the modem because Doug went into Willow (23 miles away) with Greyfox, to the post office to pick up a new shipment of knives for his stand.  The kid goes along because the old fart’s hernia won’t let him do any heavy lifting, and they will also be stopping at the spring on the way home to fill a few water jugs.  More than you wanted to know?  Ain’t that the way I am?

  
  

  I don’t know how long it will take to get another biker episode into final shape.  You’ll know when I do.  The piece that follows was sitting on the laptop for a few days.  I suppose it is self-explanatory.

  
  

  WAR

  
  

  Family history: I now have three separate sources for stories about Grandpa Cyrus’s experiences. I have the booklet created by my cousin Karen who recorded her father’s remembrances of the stories his grandfather told. I have my cousin Adele’s stories. She’s eleven years older than I am, and has lived there not far from the land Cyrus homesteaded. I also have the stories my father told me. All I have to do is recall them to memory.

  
  

  I know he told stories. I know he told more than two or three stories. He had a million of ‘em. He told stories as he drove, as he worked with wrench, hammer, plane, lathe, calipers or shovel. He told stories as he played the fiddle. I remember hearing him tell the story of the song as he played Orange Blossom Special. Never heard him sing, as far as I can recall. He probably had the same affliction Doug and I have. In fact, now that I think of it, I recall him saying he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

  
  

  I only remember him telling the story, not the words of the story. I’m going to have to do a lot of altered-state work to recover Daddy’s stories. I’ve not gone deeply down that rabbit hole for several years now. I’m taking a deep breath here, getting my ducks in a row and issuing the proper warnings. I’ll be around, but it’s hard telling what shape I’ll be in. Recovering my adolescence was a challenge, and going back over the ground I’ve covered over the last few weeks has been a trial. When I relive my early childhood it might get interesting. My childhood was like a wild rollercoaster ride.

  
  

  That’s for another day. I’m not blogging about my childhood today. I’m blogging about Cyrus and the Civil war. More accurately, about my thoughts as I reflected on the stories from Adele and Karen about Cyrus’s experiences in the Civil War. He was wounded at the Battle of Wilson Creek, in Missouri. His wounds were severe and he was left for dead.

  
  

  In the aftermath of battle, townspeople cleaned up the battlefield and buried the dead. The person who found Cyrus alive on the field took him home and this black family in their little cabin cared for him, saved his life and assured his posterity: Adele, Karen, my father, and me. What they did, that family for whom the War Between the States was so personal and vital an issue, really grabbed my attention.

  
  

  What those villagers did, cleaning up that battlefield, hit me, right in the gut. Soldiers had been firing rifles and pistols and artillery on their roads and in their fields. Then one side yielded and the other side advanced, or both withdrew to regroup. The battle grew still or moved on, and they went out in the dusk of the evening to clean up the battlefield.

  
  

  War sucks. Soldiers who’ve done battle know that war sucks. Most people believe that war sucks because that’s what they’ve been told. Maybe the ones who know better than anyone else just how thoroughly war sucks are the civilians who have had a war breeze through their town or camp on their doorstep.

  
  

  Those Missouri farmers and laborers who were picking up dismembered limbs along with the bodies and booty on Wilson Creek got no pay but whatever they found on the field, no glory, nothing but trouble and nightmares when the war came through.

  
  

  That’s all I have to say right now. It was just a thought, a reflection on how it is in war that, when all is said and done, some poor civilian sucker who has just managed to survive the mayhem then ends up getting stuck cleaning up the mess.

  
  

   

  • 2:58 pm
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