Hopeless

"Cause suicide is painless it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please."

Real Too Real

It's just like when you're watching a movie...the very beginning, I can feel how it'll end and I know that it's going to be unbearably painful but I can't stop watching I have to know for sure that what I know is going to happen, happens... hoping...hoping...that it won't be like that...like real life. No please. No please. Let it be different...but it's life, it's my life and it's just like watching a movie...the very beginning. I can feel how it'll end it was always there, that ending. stamped on my birth certificate…I never had control over it…the beginning or the end of my life...the middle is filled up with all of my memories and I can't take these with me when it ends… I have to leave my memories behind.




Wait, let me finish. I understand how it is, how you have to distance yourself because it's the same way for you. It's just like you're watching a movie but you see that it's real it's my life it's not a movie, you know how it'll end for me. You have no control either but it hurts anyway...you decide to buy some buttered popcorn and a coke... but you have to sit way up there in the balcony, get as far away from me as possible while you're watching me end...I know that you hope it'll end differently...but I know that you feel it too...it's just like when you're watching a movie...the very beginning, you can feel how it'll end and you know that it's going to be unbearably painful but you can't stop watching, you have to know for sure that what you know is going to happen, happens...hoping...hoping...that it won't be like that...like real life.

You feel cheated because the popcorn is lousy, the coke's watered down and the asshole sitting behind you is constantly making remarks telling me to end it already. It cost him twelve bucks to watch my miserable life...I’m not worth the time and now he wants his money back.

You stand up, look for the nearest exit...your life, it'll have a happy ending because you're not like me...you're not anything like me.


January 7, 2008

This is me

Artist unknown

My Darling Zoot

June 28, 2004 ~ September 20, 2017

Heart & Twang my Darling Zoot

Despair

Don't think I can go on, not sure I want to live. Can't live like this.

The Original Mr. Sandman

Drifting along sleepy clouds of sadness that dies
with the homeless heart the conductor of dreams
sets him on track.
The train is rolling down the rails passing the
children waving with excitement.
He had a few more dreams to write, some called
him The Original Mr. Sandman.
He had dreams,  he just wanted to be a man who
could make you smile wide.
His mama told him "son you have to take care of
that itch or it'll scratch you straight into
darkness"  and his daddy spit in his face red with
shame.
He could never find a place to rest his sorrow,
just kept on going not knowing where or what he
left behind.
The train's picking up speed, passing the back
yards of America the beautiful:
Fences whiz by, skeletons of cars, a pile of
tires. Scrub oak, sumac, a scrappy dog howling,
grapevines tangled up with barbwire, a lonesome
brown shoe...
He's huddled, hugging into himself, his own
comfort and  if you're paying attention you'll
hear a familiar sound: a little boy with a stick in
his hand scraping it along a picket fence...
clickity-click clickity-clack clickity-click
He takes in a deep breath but he won't let it out.
No he's going to keep his last piece of air, hold it
until that ancient clock ticks off its last damn
mean hearted mile down the tracks into that
long and narrow black tunnel.


Carol Brown ©

This poem is about my brother Kenny.

Update: Last night October 6, 2015 at 9:30 PM -- Kenny's lifelong anguish has ended.



When Kenny was a little boy our grandpa Glaser's nickname for Kenny was Sunny.But his abusive dad beat the sun out of Kenny, replaced his shine with clouds of fear, of despair, of self hatred... Kenny ran almost his entire life but he couldn't out run his shadows of despair. Kenny I hope you've found peace...

Photograph of Kenny sitting by a lake.

It's All In The Cards

♥ That Crazy Queen Of Hearts ♥


(In reverse)

3. Hearts

2. Gin Rummy

1. Crazy Eights


Hearts


Crazy had several hearts tucked inside her own heart. She had a heart for breaking, a heart for mending, a heart open and a heart for aching. "All hearts are necessary" was Crazy's motto. Crazy gravitated towards just about anything with a heart; she loved artichoke hearts & those sweet little candy hearts with messages: Be Myne, Kiss Me I'm Yours... Crazy's favorite tree was a giant blue Ash tree- its bark was carved with hundreds of initials & hearts. Crazy wanted to carve in her own heart and initials just as many others had but there was no room left on the tree for her initials and heart. This inspired Crazy to create a heart for aching. Crazy even brought her new boyfriend Dancing bear to her tree of hearts and he cried when she told him that there wasn't room left on the tree for her heart so Crazy created a mending heart for Dancing bear's sadness.

Crazy wouldn't let anyone into her own heart to love her because her heart had been wounded too many times. Some folks have another name for wounded hearts...they say that it's just a case of I got the down & out blues syndrome. But Crazy believed that she had an obligation to protect her heart. This is why Dancing bear thought that Crazy needed a kitten, a safe ball of fur which would gently and slowly melt Crazy's heart. Dancing Bear took Crazy to the animal shelter and a black kitten called to Crazy's new open heart. She pulled the black kitten to her and Crazy took him straight to her home and she named the little kitten Love.

Love needed Crazy and Crazy needed Love. The kitten grew into a healthy cat and he did manage to melt the ice in Crazy's heart just as Dancing bear had hoped. Then, one morning Dancing bear and Crazy went to the little grocery store to buy a couple bottles of pop and when walking back to their apartment Crazy saw something which looked like a black backpack leaning against the light post. Wondering what it was Crazy walked closer to the light post and that's when she saw that it was her cat Love- saw that he was dead. Crazy dropped her bottle of pop and she screamed. She stood there on the sidewalk screaming and crying while holding her hands tight against her newly created heart for breaking. Crazy looked into Dancing bears sad brown eyes and she said-- Love is dead...


Gin Rummy


Tommy left a tooth mark scar on Crazy's left ring finger. Following the playground mishap, Crazy hung out at the corner drug store- spent her nights leaning against the brick wall practicing for her future. Crazy had fantasies of being a life long beach bum where she could drop acid, body surf and blow bubbles just like the gigantic whales. Crazy loved 52 card pick-up and she collected old marbles. Crazy threw away all of her stupid childhood dolls, she never did get the electric train set which she begged for every damn xmas and this was yet more proof to her that santa was nothin' but a gin drinkin' asshole. Or was it scotch? Don't matter, Crazy's santa was an asshole period.

Crazy found herself underwhelmed with living her life in a suburban bedroom community where rules were the tools to keep the young from straying an inch away from the great_american_dream. Crazy looked inside her mind and said to self- "I'm done here I'm gonna' ride the dawg to Southern California." When Crazy arrived in California she checked out Hollywood, met up with Diggy at the Blue Grotto where she dropped her first dose of acid. After leaving the Blue Grotto Diggy & Crazy hopped the jitter-bug express, downed a package of fig newtons with a six pack of grape sodapop.

Crazy kept the queen of hearts in her back pocket. The card gave her a sense of calmness which Crazy desperately needed because she constantly heard background noise. But it wasn't white noise. It wasn't a color one would find in a box of crayons. Crazy said that it was a colorless steady hum of light.

These days Crazy leans against anything or anyone because she doesn't have the gravity problem. Heh. Crazy always wanted to float. Now she depends on non-floaters to keep her from floating straight out into infinity.


Crazy Eights


Nutball. Loony tunes. Psycho child. Eyes were shiny blue steelies.

Recess was the time for the strong vs. the weak-- which usually took place on the school playground. Behind that old red brick school house the dirty secrets are buried where the flag pole used to stand before they tore it all down. But you can still hear the rope pinging 'n the ghost voices of the screeeching children franticly dodging the ball. A bouncing happy face ball 'cept the smile was upside down.

Limping inside the rat maze, her pants wet- Crazys fingers were clutching at the nauseating smell of her eight accumulated years of cruelty- when that red-headed booger face Tommy (his dad was a cop) -sunk his teeth deep into Crazys finger. Careful not to break her mama's back Crazy stepped over every single crack as she bit out at the grinning shadowy faces.

Swish swish swish...the ball slipped through the net.

Swish swish swish...Crazy slipped through the cracks.

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Photo Synthesis

Mother I am your blueprint bleeding purple
irises into an spirit bowl of moss.
Your lined face melding defining mine.
As we look into the camera our eyes frame
a portrait of our ancestors looking back in
time.
The shutter clicks flashing us blind and I
see my ancestors holding mirrors before my
face, offering me no wisdom.

We are a race, a line of voids coming to be
out of a thousand fragments of mirrors.
Cracks and missing parts, warps and chips,
reflections only partial, reflect us.
A thousand pieces wavering spaces in
between; inner flaws, shards, splinters
grinding the edges of our souls defined by gash.

We are synthesized.


Carol Brown ©

Rain

When the rain falls it falls hard, falls
slow, falls softly.
When the rain comes it pushes me to
regret, pushes me behind and it
washes me blind.
When the sun shines it shines bright,
shines the darkness harsh and all
there is here isn't all light.
When the sun comes it causes all to
shadow, takes the moon captive
breaks open and cries.
When nothing comes around, it
pushes me down, the earth spins me
'round, the sand smothers sound.
The rain and sun chains a necklace
across the sky and I'm breathing just
to die.
When the rain falls... I won't be found.

-Carol Brown

Bad Egg Day

Dear Carol,

 

"Eggsactly as I feared – this is no yolk!  Those bystanders are all good eggs, but after a trauma like this, they could end up either scrambled or hard boiled – either way, a shell of their former selves.  The victim was luckier; for her, it was over easy."

 

-Pamela Mausner

Wall Of Sorrow

G. Matheson (Brownie)

Roy Catlett

Jim Anderson

Marian C. Johnson

Lou Christensen

Jacqueline Anderson

Phyllis Learned

Marian E. Catlett

Robert Anderson

Kenny J. (Sunny)

Too late...

"[I]t was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is." -Elizabeth Strout

Mute

I want to blog, to talk again, but the words are stuck in my throat. Choking me...

Four more years

Barack Obama!

...

"There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery."

–Dante Alighieri

Loved Her Madly...

[loved her to death]



She told herself that she wasn't his prisoner while offering him her hands so that he could cuff her. He made all the rules and to keep her confused he would change them frequently. She told herself that she wasn't his doormat but she lay down in front of the door and he wiped his shoes on her; Her self-image sticking to the bottom of the soles.

She offered him her heart, placed it on a fragile china plate. He took the plate and he let it drop from his hands. When the plate hit the floor her heart crashed and pieces of her scattered across the floor. He pointed his finger at the broom and dustpan - ordered her to clean up her mess. She obeyed because when she didn't, he kicked her, punched her face, tore her clothes off and then he threw her naked battered body out into the snow. She gave him her thoughts and feelings, handed these precious gifts to him and he took her gifts walked over to the kitchen sink, tossed them into the garbage disposal. Then he flipped the switch and the core of her being grinded down the drain.

He wasn't finished with her. He used his own deceptions, secrets and lies, projected them onto her, accused her of the very acts he committed against her - his distorted and twisted lies became her truth.

But she loved him... it was about love, wasn't it? About giving her heart and body to a man she believed was kind and worthy. It was about giving her trust and her most inner self to a man who saw women as enemies, sluts, things to be controlled. He loves them to death.

Epilogue: He's got himself a new victim, and he talks to her about the 'bitch' he was married to, the hell she put him through. And looking at her he tells her that she'll be next if she steps out of line...





Carol Brown ©


-For my mother and all victims of abuse.



If you're a victim of domestic violence, link to this helpful website.The Hotline

Jacqueline

You and I sipped life through the crazy straw...

We never knew what waited for us around the corner and I'm grateful for that, because had we known we never would have had so much fun. Or experienced the many youthful life mishaps. We sure got ourselves into some messes, but  we couldn't have known because we hadn't lived long enough to gain wisdom, and we lacked common sense.  

Jackie, my life long friend...I wasn't always there for you but I loved you with all my heart. I will always remember the fun we had, the summer nights driving 'round Minneapolis in that magical red convertible, rock & roll music blasting through the veins of our adolescent hopes.

♥ Rest In Peace ♥

Splendour In The Grass

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind...

-William Wordsworth


Credit photograph to Fish and Wildlife

Artist Debbie Edgers Sturges

Recently discovered an extraordinary, gifted artist.

Debbie's work is realistic in style. Yet her work looks more Fauvist with the use of bright splashy colors.

Below is one of Debbie's paintings of a black bear named June.




And below is the photograph Debbie referred to when painting June.






To see more of Debbie's beautiful art link directly to her Website

The Library of Dust

Recently heard about David Maisel's project on Studio 360

Library of Dust is a project that David Maisel completed in 2008 with the publication of the photographs as a book. The series had begun three years earlier on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital where he had learned there was a storeroom lined with shelves that held thousands of copper canisters. These contained, he knew, the unclaimed ashes of people who had died at this “insane asylum,” as it had once been called. Corroded along the lead side seam by chemical interaction between the metal and the ashes, many of the cans had a livid fur of blue-green on their exterior. Placing these on a black felt background and photographing them at close range, Maisel created a kind of civilian counterpart to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier—each canister a mini-Monument to the Abandoned and the Forgotten.



Working in window light, Maisel had to make exposures in slow time befitting these memorial objects that the hospital had accumulated between 1883 and the 1970s. The first day, as he was making his photographs, a work detail of prisoners arrived from a penitentiary to clean up the building. Sneaking a peek into the room, one prisoner whistled as he said to no one in particular “the library of dust.”

Link to the Slide Show

Sarah Bear is Dead

Why kill a yearling, why????

Radio-collar of Ely Research Bear turned in.

September 7, 2010: "Braveheart’s yearling daughter Sarah is dead. Her radio-collar was covered with bright ribbons (photo taken Aug 26) We thought she was safe."



"We picked up her blood-spotted radio-collar from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources this morning. It had been turned in anonymously."

"We are at a loss what to do to combat this kind of loss. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources posted a picture of a radio-collared bear with ribbons like on Sarah’s collar and asked hunters not to shoot these bears. The Minnesota Bear Guides Association asked their hunters to spare radio-collared bears. We contacted all the hunters we know in this area to introduce them to bears and answer their questions."

"We have gotten the word out every way we know, including signs throughout the study area. And thanks to Lily fans, a huge amount of media coverage told how the radio-collared bears are helping science, education, and the regional economy. Sarah was a gentle, trusting, and trustworthy bear with the calm personality that allows a person to accompany her and be ignored. Such a bear is a window into bear life for both us and the world."

"Ethical hunters are reacting with disgust, saying “that is not hunting!” We both felt the hopeless sense of somehow being violated. We hoped our shaking wasn’t noticeable as we spoke to cameras for the BBC documentary. We know you understand our feelings."

"We re-checked the other radio-collared bears. They seem to be safe. But we are still worried about the trail cam on a bear trail on the edge of the property here."

"Thank you for your support through the hard times as well as the joyous ones."

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center.

News Video

The sun is shining,

the sky is deep blue, there's a magnificent breeze, and I’m longing, really longing...

-Anne Frank



Leave your leaf in Anne Frank's Chestnut tree

Perseid meteor shower

August 13, 2010



Credit Photograph to AFP

Lucky the Black Bear

I think that Lucky's going to build a log cabin.



Photograph credit to the North American Bear Center

Synchronous Fireflies

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size...

-Robert Frost

Looking back...

I'll wait, what choice have I?

It's one of those days, slow motion like...I feel a bit high and somewhat low, the sun is shining bright reminding me...the night oh how I love the night, it makes me feel a little safer. The night has its own breath, breathing a sensual breeze which makes everything appear softer. I am not a soft person, I'm a bit rough 'round the edges. Yet I'm vulnerable, open like a wound, a flower, a casket, and then I'm shut. Shut sealed taped glued mute. I suppose I'm not easy to live with.



I love climbing trees and I love swinging. I kick my feet & legs hard, swing as high as I can and then I let go fly through the air, and almost always I land on my feet. This scares the hell out of my friends. I remember when we were all walking near a wooded area & I saw a tall tree (the tallest) which I just had to climb. I climbed the tree as high as was physically possible and when I looked down I could barely see their faces.

Trees are sensual, curved and textured. I like how trees hold their own weight and they always give more than they take.



I'll wait, what choice have I? I have more trees to climb...swings to swing.

....I still have the night

-Carol

Credit for black and white illustration goes to Naked Authors

Black Bear and Raven

Ted & Raven having a conversation.

Location: NABC



Photograph digitally altered by Pam Arbegast Yanick



After conversation, Ted kisses the Raven.





Digital altering of photo goes to to Pam Arbegast Yanick

Hope

Credit photograph to the North American Bear Center

And credit to Pam Arbegast Yanick for digitally altering photograph.

Neglected Blog

Because I spent most of the winter in the Den with Lily the black bear and her cub Hope.



Credit photograph to North American Bear Center

On September 16, 2011 just before the sunset - yearling Hope was shot & killed by a hunter.

Mean Time

It's like one of those missed journeys where you arrived too late, again you've been left behind and you find yourself holding your luggage ... your hands and arms numb from the weight of memories.

-Carol

Credit photograph to Historic Photos