Chameleon: An Interactive Exploration

Part VI -- Reminiscing Anecdotally

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."
-- Clarence Shepard Day, Jr., once-reknowned author, poet, artist, and outspoken supporter of women's rights

"My love for you is like the ocean: vast, volatile, and potentially deadly."
-- male cartoon character to his woman friend on a valentine card he's made for her

"The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator who presented what were then considered radical views on religion, slavery and women's suffrage

"For you shall go out in joy/ and be led back in peace./ the mountains and hills before you/ shall burst into song./ and all the trees of the field shall/ clap their hands."
-- Isaiah 55:12

"In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you."
-- Deepak Chopra, medical doctor, author and speaker, pioneer in the field of mind-body medicine and named by Time magazine among the "Top 100 Icons and Heroes of the Century" in 1999, "the poet prophet of alternative medicine"

---

I, A Woman

Prelude (Abbreviated Synopsis of the Synopsis of Technology and Me) -- Strophe -- Growing Up Rich (To The Manner/Manor Born) -- Manhattan! -- Music and Hippiedom -- Settling Down and Yuppiedom -- Technology and Careerism -- Wilderness Basics -- Art and the Internet -- Epic Coitus Interruptus -- Town/Community Life -- Frivolities -- Beasts and Heathens -- Recoveries -- Reprise -- Joie Plaisir Eibr -- NOW (New Original Word)

A Place Called Eternity

"She's a big teaser/ She took me half the way there/ ...She was a day tripper/ One way ticket, yeah/ It took me so long to find out/ and I found out/ ...Tried to please her/ ...She only played one night stands/ She was a day tripper/ One way ticket, yeah...."
-- Day Tripper by Lennon/McCartney

"And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise."
-- Luke 23:43

"I work hard every day of my life/ I work till I ache my bones/ At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own -/ I get down on my knees/ And I start to pray/ Till the tears run down from my eyes/ Lord - somebody - somebody/ Can anybody find me - somebody to love?"
-- Somebody To Love (Un Uomo Per Me) by Freddie Mercury, performed by English rock band Queen and featured on their 1976 album A Day at the Races

"It was just one of those things/ Just one of those crazy flings/ One of those bells that now and then rings/ It was one of those things/ It was just one of those nights/ Just one of those fabulous flights/ A trip to the moon on gossamer wings/ It was one of those things..."
-- Just One Of Those Things by Cole Porter

"I've been there/ With my heart out in my hand/ But what you must understand/ You can't let the chance/ To love him pass you by/ Tell him/ Tell him that the sun and moon/ Rise in his eyes/ Reach out to him/ And whisper/ Tender words so soft and sweet/ Hold him close to feel his heart beat/ Love will be the gift you give yourself/ Never let him go/ Touch him/ With the gentleness you feel inside/ Your love can't be denied/ The truth will set you free/ You'll have what's meant to be/ All in time you'll see...."
-- Tell Him by Thompson, Afanasteff & Foster sung by Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand on the album Let's Talk About Love

"This is a man who thinks with his heart,/ His heart is not always wise./ This is a man who stumbles and falls,/ But this is a man who tries./ This is a man you'll forgive and forgive,/ And help protect, as long as you live.../ He will not always say/ What you would have him say,/ But now and then he'll do/ Something/ Wonderful./ He has a thousand dreams/ That won't come true,/ You know that he believes in them/ And that's enough for you./ You'll always go along,/ Defend him where he's wrong/ And tell him, when he's strong/ He is/ Wonderful/ He'll always/ Need your love/ And so he'll get your love./ A man who needs your love/ Can be/ Wonderful."
-- Something Wonderful, from the musical The King And I, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

I have dreamed that your arms are lovely,/ I have dreamed what a joy you'll be./ I have dreamed every word you whisper./ When you're close,/ Close to me./ How you look in the glow of evening/ I have dreamed and enjoyed the view./ In these dreams I've loved you so/ That by now I think I know/ What it's like to be loved by you,/ I will love being loved by you."
-- I Have Dreamed, from the musical The King And I, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

Summary: Fort Valley VA resident homeowner and businessman Hank Zimmerman and I started an animated and energizing personal/professional correspondence in the spring of 1996, which evolved into a lovingly passionate relationship over the years of sharing with mind, heart, body, spirit, soul and imagination, but involving very minimal contact on the physical plane, never even a kiss or holding of hands. As we were both married to others initially, that situation interrupted, interfered with and distorted our communications off and on over the ensuing years, worsened to near-extinction by a series of misdemeanors and felonies (physical and verbal threats, defamation, trespassing, perjury, enslavement, libel, forgery, slander, rape, property and identity theft, vandalism, stalking, and harassment sexual, personal and professional) directed against me and what belonged to me physically and spiritually, my external possessions and personhood/personality, most particularly as a result of calling Page County VA EMERGENCY 911 in October 1997.

Very soon after creating OSCR in 1996, I met the man who became the love of my life, Hank -- a Navy veteran six years younger than me and a supportive, caring father of now-grown children, a daughter and two sons, who has an honors bachelor's degree in Communications/Journalism from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, a professional background in radio technology and broadcasting, music (piano and fiddle), management, writing and computer hardware and software, recreational interests in biking and sailing, and a long history of professional and personal volunteer activities for neighbors, church, hospice, politics, education, and the arts, including now serving as a Trustee for the latter two, and business ownerships -- by e-mail, and his wife and mother of his three offspring, Laura, with whom I tried to be friendly and complimentary. In the process of attempting to understand her home life perspective on people and world, I created the site's "Homespun Humor" section, now partially in ACR's archives and replaced recently by one called "Jubilation." I found a wonderful California writer named Debbie Farmer to fill the original section's pages with funny articles about housekeeping and raising children, as well as working remuneratively. Hank also contributed an early essay depicting insightfully and poetically country living and people.

We met originally because, in the process of requesting and receiving links to OSCR from other regional sites, I contacted the webmaster of the one for the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce, who wrote back to say he already had one on its first page because, in particular, he had so like the "ode to spring" that introduced OSCR at its incipience, and seasonally thereafter: "Here in the Shenandoah Valley, spring creeps up from muddy high rivers and across boggy bottoms. Onto stone-strewn hills tendrils of green and pastel reach up in delerious disorder to assault the strict grey-browns of winter. The river turns green as the grass. Catfish bite. Virginia peepers sing through the night. The moon is full. Anything is possible now."

To myself, I used to refer to Hank's wife as his pit bull because, nearly right from the beginning, she kept attacking me verbally -- and probably anyone else that got anywhere near him in any way really. He was naturally gregarious, friendly, talkative, sharing, funny, enlightening and inspiring, as well as intelligent, well-educated and multi-talented, but he did seem lonely and isolated in some ways. One time he wrote, under unpleasant pressures from his contract job, saying, "Will somebody just talk to me PULEEEEEZE????" I don't think he and his wife had a lot of interests and knowledge in common. For instance, when I mentioned the four of us going canoing together, Hank said I wouldn't be able to get his wife into a boat in any way, and I don't believe she knew much about music or programming and computers, either.

He said something about opposites attracting once, and no two people, perhaps, seemed more opposite in every way than they. He and I, on the other hand, had a lot of interests, beliefs, education and personality traits in common, so I almost felt he was the mirror image of me in the other gender. We shared an interest in writing and history, additionally, and are both hard workers at what we choose to do and accomplish productively. He said, also, that she was his "ground," although I can't honestly imagine one muddier or more murky, since she continually misrepresented him to me, me to him, and herself to everybody, apparently.

His wife called and wrote me several times with aggressive hostility and misinterpretations of e-mails I wrote to him, not her, all of which she read and some of which he may never have received via her interceptions and interruptions of natural flow and congruence. She meant to thoroughly derail any relationship, however healthy and positive, we might have, including caring friendship and thoughtful help. Her directions were hateful and sick, psychologically and socio-economically. My third husband described her, after meeting, as "ugly," meaning disagreeable and unpleasant. (He also described my mother as "evil," and Hank as "a nice feller, but awfully nervous," and once as "an asshole" for something unfortunate that he did.) As things developed, I was afraid my third husband, with a sudden, violent, vicious and ruleless temper, would find out about my evolving relationship with Hank and hurt him out of jealousy, so kept it very much to myself as well as I could. I consigned any obvious errant behavioral aspects of being in love to "symptoms of menopause," obfuscating the situation and confusing even myself sometimes.

Shortly thereafter and during one of several one-hundred-year floods, the electricity and telephone service to the A-frame was cut off for at least three days, so I couldn't of course use the internet. I could sense Hank's rising concern and finally communicated with him metaphysically that everything was fine. When service was restored and I read his e-mails over that period, they reflected all of that, including a calm at just the right time. So that method of relaying information worked, as it has many times since, at least off and on. A few times we've also gotten our wires very thoroughly crossed, too, due to interference of extraordinarily unfortunate kinds, effects and durations. He took an interest in OSCR right from the start with enthusiasm and made many suggestions as well as providing emotional/cognitive support and encouragement along the way during my up-and-down interactions with people and things, including most amusingly Nancy Sottosanti's new riding mower which I accidentally backed into and dented one day. My insurance covered it and Nancy was a little distressed briefly but okay. The most important suggestion Hank made was that I concentrate on content and securing the best, that that would be the biggest problem requiring the most attention in creating a worthwhile and successful site enterprise. It was also his opinion that I had "beat the Big Boys" in timing and might very well be carrying OSCR to great financial, as well as popular heights, if I did it all right. Unforeseen, however, criminalities deflected that accurate insight.

When I moved the site to a new server, Geocities, he never updated OSCR's address, despite my occasional reminders, although all the other websites linked to it at the time did. Rejecting the idea of an introductory get-together lunch in a restaurant somewhere, he insisted upon visiting my home, and I finally agreed. As we got to know each other through e-mail and our relationship progressed more intimately in natural but surprising to me action and reaction, he sent at one point a message saying, "I have a programmer's mind. If, then, else." It was meant to explore consent and I responded affirmatively, feeling somewhat hypnotized and ravished at the time, a very positive and welcome new experience. Despite my inviting his whole family, he arrived alone at the A-frame fairly late one evening with a technical book to loan and talked mostly with my now ex-husband, mentioning a conversational chat area called The Park, whose introductory theme song was the rock band Queen's rousing "We Are The Champions," that he frequented during a discussion we three had about the new phenomenon of internet sex, and assuring me privately that "what we do in our heads doesn't hurt anyone." Apologizing for not hearing a comment I made, Hank gestured to his ears once and said, "Too many guns going off," referring to his service on aircraft carriers during the Vietnam War -- a pretty amazing diminishment for an excellent musician. Of course, Ludwig von Beethoven was completely deaf toward the end of his memorable career as a composer of some of the greatest sonatas and orchestrations ever known, another example of powers and abilities frequently untapped unless called upon by love and exigency. Perhaps we never know what we can really do until pushed to limits, or limitlessness, the true marvel of being fully human still undefined and unbounded. Walking with Hank toward the A-frame's front door as he was leaving, I wanted to hug him but couldn't, so we just said our goodbyes as he bowed slightly, either because he's very tall or in courtesy, and returned the next day to our e-mail interactions.

Hank's wife was the most outrageously disagreeable person that perhaps I had ever met. To myself, I called her "the pit bull," because she was always attacking where there was no reason to do so, and I thought of her as diseased, rabid. My ex-husband, after a one and only meeting in person, pronounced her "ugly," which in country parlance means unpleasant and/or hate-full, although she wasn't physically attractive either. Our first conversation happened by telephone because Hank asked me to talk with her helpfully about their son -- since I have a clinical background in child disability, trauma and therapy and he was concerned about the situation -- who had received a head injury in a car accident and was having a few problems recovering. I called and the gist of it all was that she had all the help that she and her son needed. She always referred to the two sons and a daughter as "her" children. Once I suggested that we communicate weekly or so informally by e-mail and she demurred, saying "Oh no. I'm a very private person." Despite that, she read all of my messages to Hank and frequently misinterpreted what I said, partly because it wasn't addressed to a person with no technical or educational or business background to speak of and she seemed pretty incapable of civility or intelligent discernment. Once she told me, "Hank likes to make women fall in love with him and then he drops them." I didn't give that any weight because it didn't sound like the person I knew who was very interested in becoming involved in the internet and at one point wanted us to be partners in consulting and web design, by his suggestion and before we'd ever met in person. In a later instance she commented," He's such a child," and I thought, but didn't say out loud, in response, "Seems like a man to me." On another occasion, he referred me to his neighbor Elizabeth Cotrell to begin work in his stead initially on a website for her fledgling business, a hardcopy publication entitled Shenandoah Seasons. I made an appointment to visit her, drove across the Massnutten to her home in the countryside near Woodstock, discussed the web possibilities, and left some literature for her. She subsequently returned it all by mail with a brief note stating that Hank had informed her he hadn't authorized the contact with me and she didn't want to do anything behind his back. That all turned out to be a fabrication on her part as she had a personal and intimate interest in him, of which completing the website for her business was a lure into closer proximity. I didn't, of course, know that at the time and simply answered an apology that there had been a misunderstanding and miscommunication, obviously, between Hank and myself in regard to all that. She was unaware that we'd become fairly close friends and that did disrupt the relationship for awhile, as I wrote him that we apparently needed to go our separate ways -- and later reneged on that in inviting him to visit the a-frame as he'd requested several times.

Invited to their home subsequently, my third husband and I visited in Fort Valley with him, his wife and two sons, sitting on chairs set outside on the lawn drinking wine and nibbling on hors d'oerves she'd fixed, as I talked mostly with her. Their daughter, Lisa, was working that evening at her job as a clerk in a local store. At Hank's suggestion, his son Eddy, who'd been somewhat brain-damaged from a very bad automobile accident in which his brother, Ben, had been the driver, brought out a few of his fascinating but repetitive in concept drawings to show me. I admired them and Hank later expressed his concern by saying, "There must be something for a boy to do who draws the same thing over and over and over again." Although I have a degree and clinical experience in Psychology, I'd never encountered by experience or study the symptoms Eddy presented in his artwork, so had no viable suggestion or avenue for restructuring a behavior that was similar to early cartoonists making detailed sketches, each with a slight variation on the previous and which, when put together and automated to film, created and told a story, a skill since replaced by computer graphics software and technically-astute artists.

During that one visitation, Hank's wife behaved as many country women there do, in public anyway. She said practically nothing, despite my repeated attempts at conversation, but simply smiled and nodded her head over and over again. That is considered generally acceptable behavior in the company of men who take precedence in everything including locution. Since I believe in healthy public education with helpfully involved parents, students and teachers, I asked if she didn't think her sons were missing out on some of the non-academic social benefits of interaction and even extra-curricular activities. Her response was an immediate and adamant negative that I didn't pursue. At that time in particular there was a major problem with bullying in the classrooms and on buses for transportation. They were hardly the only parents who chose home schooling for a variety of reasons including safety and/or more devoted and attentive instruction. Hank and Elizabeth had both served once on the School Board together and there had been some dissension between them at the time, whether related to policy or personality. His comment about that had been merely that she was like a sister with whom he he was not always in agreement. At one point she suddenly asked if I wanted some chickens. The question was so disorienting in the context of what I'd been saying, and to which she'd obviously not been listening or comprehending of, that at first I thought she was offering me cooked chicken, to eat at moment. After some verbal fumbling during which I believe Hank jumped in to clarify the communication, it turned out there were fowl belonging to her son that she wanted to get rid of, and I accepted at the time although later backed out because I really didn't need or want anymore to care of and they're difficult sometimes to integrate into an extant flock, in addition to advice from Elizabeth Cottrell that I might be overextending myself in terms of obligations and tasks, to which I agreed but expect in retrospect she had other ulterior motivations for that suggestion also.

Elizabeth's husband was a local doctor who provided her with a good-sized home and extensive rose gardens around it. She commented once that Shenandoah Seasons was putting him in the hole financially, in other words it and she were not self-supporting which was more the rule than the exception in a place where women tended to gauge their worth by their husband's income and social status rather than their own accomplishments and financial/professional independence. Doctors and lawyers, however disreputable and corrupt,and their spouses were at the top of that rigidly maintained social strata along with what was left of the jaded "southern gentry" in land and financial assets, which placed no particular value on education and none at all on morality, but had a veneer of social graces that wore off quickly to reveal the unrestrained and unconscionable beasts inside. Several physicians were cited, fined and restricted repeatedly for Medicare and Medicaid fraud as well as malpractice. They and the attorneys had perfected over decades methods of relieving without payment older residents of their property and many were owners of vast tracts of land there and elsewhere. A few younger and dedicated physicians served out their obligation to work in rural areas there but few if any stayed beyond their allotted time in an atmosphere that can only be described as generally and determinedly "sleazy," if not "filthy," as well as xenophobic in the interests of maintaining its corruption and misrepresentation of itself publically. A network of "under the table" and questionnable if not criminal "favors" linked residents and families to each other in a grid of falsehood and superficial representation that bore little or no resemblance to their real identities, relationships, motivations or abilities and talents, supporting an unegalitarian economy based most profoundly on unethical and illegal activities supporting those who controlled most of the material assets and therefore the power political, economic and otherwise in that process. That it was unabashedly sexist and racist in the "breadbasket of the (neo-)Confederacy" was a given accepted by nearly everyone there and reinforced violently if necessary by those who benefitted materially from those attitudes and behaviors, however discordant they might be with facts and realities.

Once Hank described playing with his band, Fifth Avenue, at a gig that wasn't very well attended. After the performance they apologized, he said, to the owners for its scant audience and offered to play for them for free as a bonus. With that accepted, the couple danced together delightedly alone to the live music for awhile, leaving I'm sure a very beautiful and unique memory.

As a reward for his efforts toward wellness, Hank took Eddy flying in a private airplane over the central Valley and still later treated the whole family to a Florida Disneyland vacation, leaving at my suggestion his laptop computer at home so they could all concentrate on enjoying their time together, which they did according to his first e-mail upon returning to the Valley. Hank was working on a programming and support contract with Northern Virginia Daily newspapers in Front Royal, creating some other websites for hire, and playing piano professionally with "Fifth Avenue," an all-male Southern rock band with drums, bass, guitar, and an excellent African-American singer, on weekends, practicing every Tuesday evening together and promoting it through a website he created. He also performed as a volunteer for some old folk in a home and took his boys canoeing.

At his enthusiastic invitation, my now-ex and I drove to The Grapevine in Front Royal one Friday evening to watch and listen to "Fifth Avenue" perform to a very good-sized and energetically dancing crowd. They were great. At one point, Hank stood and played a fairly long and expert solo. I always think it's brave when any performer gets out there alone and admire that courage always and everywhere. Laura and Lisa were also there for awhile and I went over to their back table briefly to speak with them. For the rest of the time, we sat up front very close to the stage and enjoyed the antics of two overly-excited women sitting next to us, along with behaviors of the rest of the audience. Once during a break, Hank and I went out to my car in the parking lot to retrieve the book I'd borrowed. I was hoping he'd kiss me but, being nervous, I couldn't stop talking, so he probably couldn't have even if he'd wanted to. It's hard to hit a moving target, as they say. After the last set, I walked over to the dance floor where he was knelt down pulling up electric cords and told him how much I'd enjoyed the performance. He was somewhat uncommunicative verbally, so I soon said goodbye and walked back toward our table to get ready to leave for home as the establishment was closing. On my way there, a male patron sitting on a bar stool by a small table stopped me with some greeting. As we were talking, Hank walked up behind, spun me around quickly and hugged me very passionately and desirously. Right as my hands slid up his arms in reaction, he let me go abruptly and strode back toward the dance area. Reorienting somewhat dazedly, I too turned and walked back toward my husband-at-the-time and we left very shortly thereafter.

Hank expressed sadness about the breakup of his software and hardware enterprise with a local partner and pride in their partial performance sponsorship of the reknowned annual Music Festival at Orkney Springs one year. He'd been able to pay off his home with the proceeds from that business dissolution and procure private contracting employment as a result also, asserting his determination verbally in the process to "remain independent" in work when that was completed. A twenty-year veteran of the infamous and mainstay area employer Avtex -- a production and assembly plant near the top of the EPA's national Super Fund list of extreme polluters for a long time until it was forced to close, having exuded toxic chemicals contaminating private wells and causing massive fish kills and disfiguring disease -- in Front Royal, he valued the freedom of self-employment despite its requisite hard work and long hours.

Under a lot of stress from personal and employment realities and responsibilities, Hank mentioned once that he was going for an appointment to have a colonoscopy because his father had died of colon cancer, so that possibility was in his genes. He said that physicians "put you under" for the procedure and commented, "Amnesia. Sounds good to me." Earlier, he'd commented that he was "dragging himself around," and once that he "didn't even like his music anymore" in reaction to exhaustion, pressures and problems on the ground. He also stated his desire and determination to remain independant as a private tech contractor and business owner rather than the constrictions of being an employee.

At least one time subsequently, I tried to find him at The Park and on another chat website he used, but failed, the first time because it turned out he was performing somewhere and the second due to technical problems with hardware. An evilly distorting conversational interference by Laura, who had also called me several times with some misinformation, abuse and criticism personally, later ended our internet relationship while dislocating criminalities by the Page County Sheriff's Department and legal professionals soon precluded further earthly encounters I envisioned which might have cleared up the confusion in his mind over what had really been happening. Because he was under so much personal and professional stress, I hadn't wanted to do anything that would add to that and never told him until this past year what had really occurred so many years ago, to his anguish and distress now because he had been so badly misled by lies and prevarications in going toward totally the wrong directions. Real natural attraction, love and honesty are fragile, especially in an increasingly determined evil world. It's a very sad story in all of its consequences for good people, good work, and good things everywhere, all around the world really if you stop to consider that OSCR and ACR were, and will be again, an international presence in acclaim, excellently talented and supportive, actually grateful contributors and devoted readership reach.

It's worth noting, perhaps, that premeditated murder for money and/or hire is a capital offense in the U.S. of A. and punished, after usually many years of imprisonment, with execution by the gas chamber, electric chair, lethal injection, or even hanging still in a few states. Of course, no one really involved expected me to survive what I lived through and/or be sane and rational enough to remember clearly and cogently in the process of testifying to what really happened, and who said and did what where. But God, obvious on-the-ground history, founders of this country, all of my ancestors and good, supportive friends everywhere, most particularly in the Mountain Empire, were and are not on their side. In the end, it's a losing game and one that should never have been played anywhere.

All of ACR/OSCR's writers worldwide from as far away as Australia, and now China, from the oldest -- Bunny Stein, an early contributor from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, who e-mailed me around 2005 expressing support for my keeping ACR/OSCR on-line and offering more of her funny articles for publication -- to Debbie, the youngest, were and are talented and hard-working people who shared that freely and joyously because, of course, artists want to be known and appreciated, just like other people. I'm awed and humbled by them frequently and feel very blessed to have and have had the opportunity to publish and present them as lovingly, gracefully and encouragingly as possible, as well as knowing many personally and, in some cases, as close and equally supportive friends.

Finally, Hank wrote of feeling ill and attributing that to the stress, particularly, of dealing with the aftermath of his sons' very serious and nearly fatal automobile accident. I wrote back suggesting he might want to "talk" by e-mail about that, a commonly accepted therapeutic method of dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Laura read my message and responded to me by e-mail, "DON'T EVER bring my children into your game." I tried to explain, also by e-mail, calmly, logically and coherently that I wasn't playing a game, nor bringing anyone's children into one, but attempting to provide a sympathetic ear, an avenue of healthy release and healing. It is the field of my college degree (with high honors) and some intensive professional expertise, as well as personal caring. She never responded, but apparently misinformed Hank of my intent, resulting in a cryptic and distancing e-mail from him which said: "I don't quite understand what went on between you and Laura, but it doesn't sound good. I can't allow anything to interfere with the peaceful domain of my home and family. I was hoping we could all be friends. I wish that that situation were different." Not wanting to be a party adding to the stress he was under, I didn't write him again. Instead, I kind of went into shock and some mental, emotional and physical disarray. And cried a lot. Once much earlier, when Laura called me at home and was fussing about things, I'd offered, somewhat depressedly, to stop writing to Hank and she responded at the time, "No. You're friends." He had been, among other things, my best friend and supporter in cyberspace. After reclaiming my criminally plundered home the following January, I began writing him again, without necessarily expecting a reply and just telling him facts of what had been and was going on with myself and other friends.

Particularly irked later on that a commercial Valley website, shenadoah.com, owned by Shentel -- one of whose co-owners was, and maybe still is, an attorney apparently ignorant of the Constitution and laws governing fair commercial competition between businesses in the same markets, and put on-line in late 1997, a year-and-a-half after mine, claimed to be "the original Valley's home page," although they later retracted that, something in me finally snapped near the fall of 2002 for wanting truth, law, love, and a better ending to prevail for everything. So, I "threw myself on the Grail," as I described it at the time to Gwen Fortune, knowing I was fighting a losing battle of protest against many, many things that were wrong and sick. And I remember thinking to myself at the time, "Who do I give myself up to?" It turned out to be, on Earth, authorities from the state that had instigated an unconscionably illegal and impossible, improbable, disgusting mess to begin with, compounding their abusiveness to a fatal climax in the end. It had been, of course, a particularly disorienting and nauseating shock, especially since I'd continued writing friendly and informative e-mails to him off and on, to discover earlier Hank's name listed as the Internet Project Manager of that site, a position he held for around ten years. I had noticed that his resume on-line omitted his 20 years of factory work for Avtex and intuited that he wished to make a break from that part of his life for something more in line with advanced education and his interests in technology, management and writing. At that time, I'd sent a cryptic e-mail to him saying simply, "Nice site," and Elizabeth sent back a few days later a chain "friendship" e-mail with some personal details of her life including that her son had been removed from a sports team for having tested positive for marijuana use. Still later, I found her name listed amongst those on Shentel's Board of Directors, complained that she was obviously well-aware that site was not "the original Valley's home page," as advertised, since material from Shenandoah Seasons had been part of OSCR, and noticed at a later date that name removed for whatever reasons.

"He looked down into her brown eyes,/ Said, 'Say a prayer for me.'/ She threw her arms around him,/ Whispered, 'God will keep us free.'/ And they could hear the riders comin,/ He said, 'This is my last fight./ If they take me back to Texas,/ They won't take me back alive.'/ She reached down and picked the gun up,/ That lay smokin in his hand./ Said, 'Father please forgive me,/ I can't make it without my man.'/ And she knew the gun was empty,/ And she knew she couldn't win./ But her final prayer was answered,/ When the rifles fired again./ And there were seven Spanish Angels,/ At the altar of the Sun./ They were prayin' for the lovers,/ In the valley of the gun./ And when the battle stopped,/ And the smoke cleared./ There was thunder from the throne./ And seven Spanish angels,/ Took another angel home."
-- Seven Spanish Angels by Eddie F. Setser and Troy Harold Seals, performed by Willie Nelson and Ray Charles

A few months after moving back full-time to Jonesborough, Tennessee in late August 2007, and incorporating ACR, and in the process of curiously investigating what he was doing now, I stumbled across Hank's photo by accident on-line, looked into his eyes in it, to see if he was still there, I guess, and realized in surprise, "I'm still in love with him." Still later on, I thought, "I have no brains at all. How am I going to live without intelligence? This is a hopeless situation." On reflection, I realized again that I'd never really been in love before, that it was still and always a totally new, unexplored and occasionally terrifying territory for me. "What's gonna happen next?" I wondered, "and will I survive it? No one ever told me about this before." All being a reiteration of comments to myself twelve years earlier as, in a sort of astonished daze, I walked into walls and experienced various other errant expressions and behaviors, causing some people to believe I needed psychiatric intervention. But I knew that wouldn't help. So, despite Biblical and worldly injunctions and determined notes to myself that I was not going to write or talk to him again, in December 2007 I e-mailed one day a no-pressure and open-ended, very clear and precise, well-thought-out and detailed invitation to resume communication and personal contact, if he wanted to, which, answered affirmatively, helped greatly in alleviating and curing my psychiatric and physical disabilities, enabling me to write poetry and prose again fluently, fluidly, insightfully, as well as engage in other skills, and to participate in day-to-day activities and events on the ground with joy and delight. I attribute all of this to male magnetism, which has influenced me previously but never to the same, sort of universal and totally mystifying extent.

I have, however, in the process of these experiences, and complicated by natural symptoms of aging, been a little disoriented and forgetful off and on. Driving away one evening last winter from Virginia's Emory and Henry College, after a performance there by the Harlem Choir, on a narrow two lane road leading toward Route 81, my little Grand Am suddenly lost power nearly completely and the battery and oil lights came on. I pulled over as best I could onto the grass and turned the engine off. Then I stopped the first car that came by. It had a youngish country boy and woman in it. They didn't know anyone I could call from the cell, sort of grudgingly said they would get help for me and drove off. Another car stopped in a few minutes, and I told that man that help was supposedly on the way. Quite a few minutes later, yet another nice-looking, middle-aged man stopped, with a woman in his car. He insisted on pushing my vehicle completely out of the road with me steering, somewhat confusedly. When it finally got completely onto the grass, I told him that had been "exciting." He wanted me to get in their car to warm up, but I told him I was fine. He said it was only 15 degrees, and I couldn't stay there like that, brought me a blanket from his car. He looked at the engine lights, said maybe it was the alternator, which would be trouble since it was Sunday and tomorrow would be a holiday, Martin Luther King Jr Day, and he didn't have his tools with him.

He looked at the gas gauge, which was nearly empty, on one-eighth, and said he'd be back in five minutes with a can of gasoline. While he was gone, I contemplated freezing to death, saw my life flash before my eyes and decided that I was content and satisfied with what I knew, that I was tired, and that it was okay if I died at that time. But I knew that man wasn't going to let me get away with it. He was too concerned with saving me. I wondered if the $14 cash I had with me would be enough to pay him. He returned with two gallons of gas from his house, because the station didn't have a carrying can, and put that in. My car purred and started up like a happy kitten. He wouldn't let me give him any money for the gas or his time, so I asked his name. He said it was Tony. I thanked him and said I'd pray for him. He looked very serious and said, "Thanks. I'd appreciate that." He told me to stop in Abingdon for more gasoline because I wouldn't make it to Jonesborough on what I had. As I was driving down Route 81, I noticed that his blanket was still in the car.

A few days later, I had dinner with friends at an Indian restaurant in Johnson City. I told them all about Tony, his generosity of time, labor, and materials, and all of us prayed gratefully for him. Some weeks later, walking toward an art show downtown, I passed a street person with long white flowing hair and a mustache. He called out, "Hey, darlin'! Can you spare any change?" I always fall for being called "darlin'," anyway, and always think that maybe the men are old vets, so I gave him all the coins I found in my coat pocket. As I walked back later from the gallery, he called out with surprise in his voice, "Did you know you gave me almost a dollar?" It didn't seem like much to me and I laughed, said "You asked for my spare change," and went on toward my car and home to Jonesborough again. When I was a child, I wasn't allowed to give money to beggars on the sidewalks, or even look at them, so it gives me great joy and contentment to do that as I've grown up and become independent.

Another evening, having driven back from Johnson City, I stopped by the neighborhood grocery store nearest my apartment to pick up some necessary things. As I was throwing ice cream into the cart, a sweet little, slightly distressed-looking girl came up to me and said, "I think you have my grandmother's grocery cart." I looked at her blankly and she added, helpfully, "See, her pocketbook is black, just like yours." So, I looked down and there surely was an unfamiliar pocketbook in a cart that definitely wasn't mine. I followed her back to the pork chops where her wide-eyed grandmother and my cart stood. We apololgized dazedly to each other and wandered off in separate directions. I laughed so hard in the parking lot, and back at home, that tears streamed down my face and my stomach hurt. The next time I went grocery shopping, I barely made it down the aisles with a straight face, remembering what had happened on my last visit.

O Shenandoah! Country Rag has a beautiful atmosphere, country pure, pristine, innocent, loving and open, cheery, good-willed, creative, expansive, humane, "lyrical," poetic, sensual and sexual in a healthy way. Tyrants hate the latter, want cupie and Ken dolls, mechanical men and Stepford wives instead. I guess they never really loved a woman or a man, or had sex with a real one. Poor them. They'll never know what they're missing and go to their graves without ever experiencing that. If they weren't so awful, I'd feel sorry for them, but they deserve that deprivation. I wouldn't give it up, knowing or having known it, for all the money in the world. And totally recommend it to everybody: loving abandon and selflessness, adventure, sacrifice, trust, self and other exploration. It's like making love in the air off and on with no gravity at all.

I still can't believe sometimes I found the man of my dreams and that he loves me as much as I love him, sometimes more or visa versa. Dynamism. Dynamite. Occasionally, I've felt I wasn't good enough for him, and also visa versa: ego problems brought on by parentage, marital dysfunction, circumstance and atmosphere. But we're both pretty fabulous, really, in somewhat different ways: words and music. I never felt remotely toward or with anyone as I do with him, in a very, very good way. So, fall in love, brothers and sisters. It's good for you, and good for the nation and world, too. Give yourself up to someone you really love. Allow yourself to be imparadised. You'll be amazed what happens and what you learn. You'll never have felt so good, or so bad, and there's nothing I recommend more heartily. It doesn't matter whether it's with someone of your own gender, or the other one.

It's the experience itself that counts and is totally worth all the pains and delights, losses and gains, ecstacy and fright, ignorance and learning, passion and reserve, hallucination and reason, togetherness and separation, endlessness and finality, hurts and healings, creativity and crashing, laughter and tears, misunderstanding and clarity, affirmation and negation, organics and orgasms, identity and universality, sharing and claiming, argument and reconciliation, devotion and denial, anguish and tenderness, magic and materiality, savagery and serenity, symbiosis and obliteration, faith and shattering, emotion and numbness, growth and cramping, surety and surrealism, scathing and redemption, expressiveness and stricture, craziness and solemnity, mystery and magnetism, dizziness and grounding, experimentation and explication, timelessness and minutae, desire and satisfaction, death and rebirth, triviality and essence, mortality and eternity, everything and vacuity, divinity and humanity, heartaches and bliss.

So, be One with someone. Kiss a frog today! Get a princess or a prince, in someone else and in yourself. It's what life is really about, and more love than you've ever believed or known possible, without boundaries or measure. It's a surprise and blessing without end. I can't think of anything more profoundly meaningful and worthwhile that I could wish for you. Le monde sans la fin.

Amidst amnesia, as well as cognitive and physical illnesses brought on off and on by continuing shock and trauma reactant to lawless and loveless Valley attitudes and behaviors, I've failed until very recently to recognize that the people and place once extant there, and all still available for reminiscence in the archives of OSCR and ACR by a more-or-less miracle of God despite illegal dislocations and disorientations of me and most of my property, have been "paved and turned into a parking lot" for very blatant and obvious violent and vicious felons, their co-conspirators, and misled and misinformed idiots apparently unaware of regretful resultancies which are unavoidable and undeniable in their cause and exhibiting no real insight at all into who and what the region has really done and become for everyone. It doesn't take but an average intelligence to realize that what has happened there is wrong -- an insistence on falsity, phoniness, murderous and theiving criminality -- which has had unfortunate and deleterious consequences worldwide as well as regionally and in this nation. The collusion of oath-sworn Deputies and Sheriffs' Departments against provisions of the Constitution protecting and serving citizens and their property is the initiating, spreading harm and ludicrous arrogance of some people there with misplaced power assuming they are more intelligent and correctly directed than framers of our world-reknowned Independence and well-storied Republic with its very respected laws governing individual, property and market interactions between human beings.

While I couldn't possibly represent or promote the Valley as a place to live, work, visit or buy with any integrity at all, then or now, and that being my reasoned motivation for leaving in the first place in 1997-1998, I do wholeheartedly and enthusiastically support, share and disseminate the Constitutionally-inspired values, principles, ideals and inspirations of the Mountain Empire, East Tennessee, and Jonesborough, my favorite town for many, many years before ever settling here permanently to employ myself and others constructively and productively in worthwhile endeavors for community, country, continent, planet, universe and God.

It's a region that has fought very hard and valiantly for truth, reality and positive directions for everybody, earning in the process recognition and admiration from many, many people planet-wide. The new Horizon Project of the International Storytelling Center is an outstanding example of its commitment to healthy, healing and liveable connections between history, land and people. ISC is also working with the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress to develop a national and international program for collecting, preserving, and disseminating information and materials about the traditions, practice, and application of storytelling with a repository at the International Storytelling Collection located in Washington DC's Library of Congress, which will provide on-site and online access also to the collection in ISC's Jonesborough facilities. I'm so very, very proud and happy to be, and have been previously, a very tiny and involved part of Mountain Empire aptitudes and altitudes for mind, body, spirit and heart here and universally.

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