CHOKING BACK

IT WAS ALWAYS THE LAST PLACE THAT WOULD EVER TAKE HOLD, and so I ran. I ran after first running the opposite direction. I ran toward what seemed like a justly resolve that could somehow bring back what was lost. I ran across town, through darkening streets and past the multi-housing community that lay between my apartment and the "resolve." They could pay my way, cover the transportation to the death site. I ran as far as the desk that held the last, late to leave employee still sipping her coffee cup of browned liquid that spilled from the corner of her mouth as she spoke to me, "We don't do that." She caught the dribble with one finger knuckle then spoke again, "We do not provide travel to an anticipated wreckage site. If your family member is in the wreck of anything, we don't cover a travel trip until they are announced dead and ready for burial," I stared at the SALVATION ARMY representative long and hard before saying anything. Then I spoke, "Then why am I donating my money to your company? You don't really have the purpose you claimed, do you. You don't do anything." I glanced around the room used as an office for the facility, noticing the posterboards and knick knacks on shelves... the videos that were attestation to the "good deeds done" which sat beneath a stand and television. That view and a thought about the fancy late model car in the parking lot I had just run through, bought my repeated comment, "You don't do anything." I turned to leave, not looking back to see nor hear the mumbled line of jargon cast at me from behind my back. It was something to the effect of "good night... good... something " but I did not hear the full intention of her words. I was already gone.

It was dark by the time I noticed it was late into the evening. Darkness had fallen and locked in tightly around vision and conscious focus as for what to do next. Cats howled from any and every corner, other scurrying pets or alley life ran past or behind my quick paced feet as I made my way back across the ten blocks to my apartment. It had not yet begun, but the next few days would being a hail of assaults and break-ins against "people like me." The small food shop between the ten block trail and my address was broken into and the owner assaulted until he left his shop in the abandoned mess of glass and spilled food. Weeks pured into a month or more of drive-by shootings, brick throwing and other undefined acts of hatred. That day and night scene turned into a long trail that eventually led to the need for me to escape the human population. I ran, heading for what could be solace if it could ever be attained. The distance was much greater, but it was out there and already mine. They would be coming after me... because their's was the last place on earth that would ever take hold and be allowed to develop into anything resembling space for a sound mind and safe body. They would be blaming me for what happened. I would need to escape their revenge. I would need to camoflage my existence among the population I had grown up into, and I would need to trust some one. There was no one to WATCH MY BACK... I would be alone now.

A HERMIT spends its days and nights alone. There may be deep reflection into what caused the need for separation from life in their lifetime, or just an endless blank of mentality and basal living. Wake when awake and asleep when sleeping. Eating if the chance presented itself and drinking what came to waiting lips. Whether pure or as residue from some previous participant to its whetted appearance, fresh because of it. The inner city hermits learn to mingle when required, lessening the tendency to be dejected from humanity; but placing them in the throes of vengeance for whatever strikes the mind of an onlooker. I would become an independent hermit stressed for companionship but wary of the threat accompanying the advent of trust once again. Trust is something a hermit could not afford. I would have to be alone.

The plane was reported to have been shot down, by accident at the hand of an over zealous and confused fighter pilot fleeing the "no fly zone" that extended out and over Israel from Kuwait. Of the 231 passengers on the plane when it was downed by that military missle, none had survived and the plane was said to have descentegrated. It was literally dissolved for the most part with only a few fragments of metal remaining... all flesh inside burned or melted. Resolution would be provided after an investigation and family members of those lost to the incident would need to address the airline entity for follow-up onpersonal belongings and other business matters. The military would deal with the airline on justification of legal status surrounding the scheduling of a flight under direct notice on military NO FLIGHT ZONE placed to the area. A no-fly zone is a restricted area of airspace over a landmark, event or geographic region in which aircraft are forbidden to fly, unless they have special authorization. No-fly zones are often associated with military actions. The first military no-fly zones were established in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War. The United States, France, Britain and Turkey implemented no-fly zones over Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein's regime from attacking Kurdish and Shiite populations. I had run to the nearest source recommended for providing funds and or travel to or from the side of a deceased family member, natural crisis or environmental devastation. Salvation Army was that entity said for that purpose similar to Red Cross. They could pay my way, cover the transportation to the death site... when and if a specific site was announced. I needed to know... to plan in advance. Now I knew there would be none and that his family would be like the so many strangers encountered since the start of the war that caused the plane to be stricken from the sky. They would be resentful of my "making" him board a plane to come to my side in any event. I had not. They would not hear that I hadn't. I was going to need a safe place to avoid their resentment and that of others like them in the near future... perhaps into my distant future. I made a plan. A plan began to come together during my ousting from the black community for being seen with "that white man," the man who was my husband.. until the plane was downed. The investigation was declared investigation under military justice and put on a backlist while the war went on and no flight order continued. It was back listed, but hatred and resentment were not. I would have to doge it and the slanderous behaviors coming my way. I would have to outrun my attackers... the haters.

So many years later, I realized that I would need a secluded space that no one else really cared to know existed. A wooded spot or perhaps a cave... an abandoned mine. Men coming out from their military defense against human existence did it alll the time. They "hid" in the backwoods; lived "off gtid." There had been many perfect spots strung along the traveled way on the every drive south to family reunions over my youth. At 32, I was going to need to take full advantage of recall on those and put one to use. I offered to purchase a piece of family land that had been neglected by my generation of family members after working so meticulously alongside and under orderof parents and grandparents to put it together on paper and for liveable cabinsite. I bought it from my elders and made a plan to survive there if the need be. I made a plan and researched survivalists tactics, rocket stoves and small home styling. This would be the biggest run since having chosen SECRETARIAT on a day out with my mom and her man friend... chosen it and their play on him won big. I was seventeen then, they played at WASHINGTON PARK RACE TRACK and gave me earnings on the longshot... that type of chance was what I would need to accomplish this run to survive life on the "stick end" of a shit deal in life. At the accomplished age of thirty two, I was outrunning sex manipulation on my job withich included threats to "take my job" if I did not comply. I was running from lesbianism being pushed upon me, and nightly rape by a husband who ran the streets sexualizing other women during the day to return home in the early morning hours sloppy drunk and plunging into me as I slept. I had awakened so many times to hard sex going on... not a nightmare nor dream... but very real. Six years later I was divorced, relocated and running for a new reason. Remarriage had concluded in my becoming a widow at a very young age. A widow resented for uncontrollable causes. After so many instances of "put up and shut up," sex was becoming the least of my worries. My children were yet to graduate from high school... one last year before my youngest would walk the stage to his diploma. When he did, one last burst of mothering saw me running up and down the street to assure he could make it into college without pressurd from the black community around us. Taunting for his "not being black enough" to be given a $1000 scholarship toward college by the black parents association at his school threatened to pick his pocket of that amount and redirect it to a more worthy black student. "You're not black enough... Mestizo!" was the cat calling thrown at him on graduation day. In spite of that he did make it out and away to college leaving me to muddle through my situation alone. His departure was a positive mode... or so I thought at the time. He returned a few months later with a broken arm... the arm he needed for use of his computer drafting equipment mandatory for his college major... injury sustained while playing a friendly game of basketball on campus, and some of the guys were just "horsing around." He was on a $10,000 track and field scholarship... a track star referred by his high school track coach back in Ann Arbor. With my last gone off to college, no mate to account for and my daughter starting her own family, I could have just requested to return to the position I'd left months ago. I was away on leave despite having been in a devastating accident, despite having gone through so many personal traumas and despite the langoring situation with finishing my degree. I was released from the military because of the accident. I could have gone back and just endured the pain from inside the institution as a continuing employee... caring for persons with mind problems. Instead, I opted to run away from the problems of pain, a dallying response to "going back to state work" and dodging the game of men interestingly disinterested in anything other than a game of egos. When I left the state job, we were in a full force plan of wetting those addressed as patients out of the state authority and into their family for continued care, beginning with those considered to have been "high level" functioning meaning they attended workshops, had minimal education and personal hygeine skills. It was termed "normalization" the ultimate goal for those who were physically and those who were mentally handicapped. To be returned to their original family, most at their late adult ages well past nineteen and twenty-one. We had done our jobs as paraprofessionals, helping them get that far. It was time for their families to regain their role in the loved ones lives. The facilities were going to be replinished with those from facilities for younger persons and those too, would be funneled out to their families. That was the government plan, most employees focused upon that as their own personal goal as well. Stress from our own family members... children illnesses or injuries, aging parents, upheavals with personal housing or health, pregnancies, injuries on the job, and military obligations justifiably juggled attentions and time away from accomplishing that goal. the day I'd left was the day the first of patients with whom I had worked on an all male house, was discharged to his family of attorneys and elderly parents. It was a glorious day for him and those who watched him leave with his packed belongings. Others were in line to go home permanently during that week. I signed the forms to take a leave of abscence and left the person assigned to work the next shift doing her best at toilet training and checking the back halls as the supervisor sat chatting with the other employees. I could return to work, but had reservations due to the wait on the state need for that specific job title or options for a move up into titles related to my late university studies. I had applied for positions in both... Mental Health and Environmental Planning. While I waited, I was running. Running to close open ends, loose ends, and any ends that coud set to swallow me whole... while I waited to restart life. The last marriage had ended abruptly and disappointingly.More disappointimg were the responses from his family members and others around me. The black community resented what they must have imagined to be a swaray with a white man. A white Muslim salesman associated with family members in the local Islamic Community. It became a virtual "black kettle" where every resentment was thrown my way in the nastiest of deeds. Those deeds were set to pursue me until I could no longer be seen. And so I ran out of their midst. To remain near those inlaws would have directed heat at them in addition to that already set by the simple effect of who they were in a racist world. I kept a distance away from his family and the community. I stayed as far from the black community and the balance of populations within my reach were already seperatist from people like me. I phoned my broker to let him know I woud not be back to his office.

The small spot of land purchased from my family should have been built up decades ago. It would have been a strain and a miracle to have gotten that far on the effort made by a Christian clergyman and a CNA. It was going to be my turn to make it be the something they had imagined... reworked to my own imagination. First intuition found me searching for a builder, paying for soil borings digging up prior land survey and mortgage survey documents and running documents back and forth to delineate situs for any building set upon the land. Ideas ran through my mind of the many escaped military men who had run north or south of a border sworn to hold them in. I reimagined a way out... just in case... the hills and foothills of Tucson where no one looked for anyone under the blazing sun. I looked into building a rocket stove heater and bought a generator then took a scouting trip out to that wooded landsite previously in the names of parents and grandparents. Karma. I picked up a chainsaw and headed out through the field to cut down the trees... fruit trees I had planted as a elementary school kid. I had held on to a marriage to a man lost in thin air. If he hadn't fallen to earth back then, looking up to find him twenty or so years later would not find him falling now. I swung on the first of my trees. I stopped holding on to thin air. Nothing I could do anymore, could bring him back. As suddenly as he had appeared to my life... unexpected, unsought after and unrequested, the man I had married was set in his own mind to be that leader he assumed I needed to get through a life so necessary to a bond betwen "helpmates." He wanted to be that. He wanted to be that for me, the person he thought I was... and I accepted. I was to him "the Nasserine." A child of Nasser... lost and stolen awy. He had, "found me" and married me to take me as proof to the end of a legacy. Now, out here in the wilderness of Indiana set far distant from the "tried for acreage of Tucson's northwest" or the visual cue prompted on a drive to Nogales, Sonora... a building with basement set in a wedged roadway in the heart of that downtown; I was here instead. Here at the base of Culver to make a homestead... homestead to hold me and myself.

Culver boasts a reputation of breeding nostalgia via it's famous educational stature stemming from the private military school, CULVER ACADEMY where successful graduation tends to carry over into NOTRE' DAME UNIVERSITY as it's basic referral. They've invited me into their folds. It looks like a good place to hide out for a while, as soon as I can buy into a good cover... maybe a tinyhome, recreational vehicle or... garage convert. At any rate, falling into open armed invitation again, it can't be all bad. What's better than a clean slate and a new start? After all, as Bruce Willis always says... NO DAY is a GOOD DAY to DIE off... in so many words.