Beginning the first week of June 2004, someone began “trenching” my front yard. The "Trencher" pulls into my yard in what is probably a four-wheel drive truck, flooring the gas pedal and spinning the tires, stripping the grass and topsoil away. Through the summer, Trenching occurred about once a week. Trenching occurred different times of the day and night, different days of the week.
One summer afternoon standing in my garage, I looked up to see a metallic/tan truck with the big red letters spelling out “Z 71” on the left rear side of the bed, driving out of my yard across the lower part of my driveway and into the street. When I gave the truck description to the police officer, he said, “There are a lot of those in town.”
After the first time or two, I began to report every event to the police department. In November, after one more daytime trenching, I talked with a police officer at the station about these incidents and discovered that not all of my reports to individual officers had been entered into the main computer at the police department.
Trenchings
1. Week of June 5-11, 2004. Discovered on my return from vacation.
2. June 16, 2004, between 9:00 and 10:30 p.m. I heard a loud engine revving, and as soon as I got to the front yard, I found the grass stripped, the yard trenched.
3. June 21, 2004, at 4:45pm a late model pick-up truck, a Chevrolet with a large red Z 71 on the left rear side of the box. It was driving west, maybe followed by a white older Suburban.
4. June 22 or 23, 2004, between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Trenched.
5. June 25, 2004, 12:15 to 12:45 a.m. Heard engine roaring and tires squealing. From the skid marks, it appeared to be heading east. I reported it to the police on 6/25/04.
6. June 27—July 3, 2004, yard was trenched. I gave my only copy of the details to the police. This was a bad idea because:
7. July 4—July 10, 2004, yard was trenched. Details lost to police.
8. July 11—July 17, 2004, yard was trenched. Details lost to police.
9. July 18—July 24, 2004, yard was trenched. Details lost to police.
10. July 25/26, 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Trenched. Left my written report of everything to this date with the officer.
11. Two Trenchings in August, reported to police, but did not make a personal copy.
12. 2nd August Trenching.
13. Two Trenchings in September, reported to police, but again did not make a personal copy.
14. 2nd September Trenching. Looking at my yard after one of these events, I suggested to the policeman that I was going to have to catch the Trencher or grant him an easement.
15. Two trenchings in October, reported to police, but did not make a personal copy of the details.
16. 2nd October Trenching.
17. Nov. 2nd Election Day trenched between 8:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. reported to the police. During conversation with police officer at the station, I found out not all of my reports had been entered in the computer.
18. Dec 9, 2004, Between 8:00 p.m. & 6:30 a.m. Trenched. My neighbor thinks she heard a car at 9:00 p.m. Reported to PD at 6:30 a.m. Another neighbor, sweet, demure, proper, and quite elderly is incredibly angry. She talked of wanting to wait for the Trencher with a gun.
The cowardly Trencher is angry. He is, I think, angry at many more things/people than me. For some reason, I have become the focus of his anger. Possibly the one bright moment in his life, when he feels (as it turns out totally in error) he can "get back" at all the "thems" that hamper and hold him down, is when he drives into my yard, cranks up the engine of his big truck, pops it into gear and strips the grass and an inch or so of topsoil off two narrow strips of my lawn with his spinning tires. When he goes out and about in his life and encounters what must be inevitable discouragement, disappointment, failure, he feels badly and it occurs to him to go drive through my yard again. For a brief adrenalin-filled moment, he feels in control of something again. Actually, it is a good sign that he now only comes through about once a month. It means, hopefully, his life isn't quite so miserable and pathetic as it was when he felt a need to come tearing through every week.
I've felt all along his problem is he is full of anger that he can't face directly for some reason. Of course, I don’t even know if it is a “he.” I think he/she/it just doesn't have the courage to come up to a cripple guy and tell him off, or punch him in the face or . . . something.
Of what could he/she/it be afraid? I try to imagine what he fears. Possibly, that I will lift a hand off a crutch handle and punch her, or that I might hit it with a crutch? Perhaps he is afraid I will kick her with my good leg. Maybe it plans an assault and/or insult followed by a run away taunting and he is fearful that I will chase her down, catch it and insult him back, or maybe beat her to a pulp. If it is so angry at me that lawbreaking is his choice outlet, then surely she could explain the reasons for its anger to others well enough for them to all join him in prosecuting me. Surely, she is not so angry over something so small that others cannot see the wrong in what I have done. Surely, I have broken some law, or boundary of propriety and it can call in others to help him make me pay, for my wrong.
On the other hand which is worse, this frustrated pathetic being who destroys my lawn, or my ex. A wife I loved, respected, and trusted, spending two years of our marriage involved with another man. Finally leaving our family and home, divorcing me, she marries him, and has a second church wedding a block south and twenty-eight years later than her first church wedding. I wonder if it was complete with showers, receptions, gifts, and thank-you cards.
Now enthroned in an impressive house, well-entrenched in the community as the wife of wealth, fulfilling sham propriety, propping a façade of respectability, she never speaks publicly to me, neither her or her, now often absent, husband. They simply do not "see" me in public places. She funnels public gifts to our children, while, to me, she refuses child support and college money for them.
I think, as a victim, I prefer trenching to rape.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Monday, December 06, 2004
Bastory
bastory
\Bas' to ry\, 1. Begotten and brought into the world in an unnatural and secret way; a perversion of nature, legitimate in appearance, but fundamentally illegitimate. Alien and against all nature, but with the outward appearance of humanity. See Angel of Light, n, note.
2. Fundamentally lacking in genuineness; spurious; false; adulterate; -- applied to things which resemble those which are genuine, but are, in fact, antithetical to all that is true, legitimate, honest, and pure. See Father of Lies, n, note; and also Satanic, adj., note.
3. Of an innocuous make or proportion but deadly in effect; as, a Bastory mushroom (poison), a bastory bomber (a young mother who quietly and secretly straps explosives to her cuddled child for detonation mid-flight while nursing).
4. A medical book, detailing antidotes to poison with deadly poison embedded in the pages, killing all who touch it.
Bastory friend insinuating into a spouses affections, seducing, and manipulating the spouse into shattering the hearts of children, family, and friends by breaking from and abandoning, them all.
Bastory step a person appearing to be a model, if innocuous, step-parent, but who is possessed by such a fundamental disinterest in children that the emotional chill is palpable.
Bastory confidant who poses as a spiritual, moral, person, but counsels sin and betrayal by characterizing them as Godly, the true will of God: "God wants you to be happy; he wants you to divorce your spouse and marry me."
Sunday, December 05, 2004
A Trust Betrayed A
When absolute trust is betrayed absolutely,
when a twenty-five year history, a pledged lifetime, and a warm place in the family heart are abandoned tearlessly
with a slow shrug and flat toneless words, drifting without articulation from between tight lips,
"I don't love you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did."
Maybe you drop into a block of granite,
crack hard immobility and black rock blindness?
After eternity,
granite fades to fog,
a chunky igneous fog.
You emerge,
incrementally,
from the gelatinous haze,
imbedded crystals scraping you clean but raw.
The fog clings, cuts, and scrapes, resisting your coming out,
a sloth slowly slipping into lighter black, darkest grey,
thinking every day, “Things are really starting to clear up."
Looking back from weeks later and clearer still, the former fog--thick, heavy, and lowering--no longer passes for the clarity it seemed. Trying to see further back is impossible, impenetrable.
Further back in the black granite fog, cold and inorganic, the scrapings of your skin, blood, heart, and hopes are drying on the lightless crystalline flecks, petrifying in the frigid, igneous, heart of absolute betrayal.
You cannot see the way clearly, how you emerged, how you even knew the way.
What odds a miracle?
What’s the proportionate expression?
What’s the chance you emerged self-powered?
A fractional ratio: zip over none.
when a twenty-five year history, a pledged lifetime, and a warm place in the family heart are abandoned tearlessly
with a slow shrug and flat toneless words, drifting without articulation from between tight lips,
"I don't love you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did."
Maybe you drop into a block of granite,
crack hard immobility and black rock blindness?
After eternity,
granite fades to fog,
a chunky igneous fog.
You emerge,
incrementally,
from the gelatinous haze,
imbedded crystals scraping you clean but raw.
The fog clings, cuts, and scrapes, resisting your coming out,
a sloth slowly slipping into lighter black, darkest grey,
thinking every day, “Things are really starting to clear up."
Looking back from weeks later and clearer still, the former fog--thick, heavy, and lowering--no longer passes for the clarity it seemed. Trying to see further back is impossible, impenetrable.
Further back in the black granite fog, cold and inorganic, the scrapings of your skin, blood, heart, and hopes are drying on the lightless crystalline flecks, petrifying in the frigid, igneous, heart of absolute betrayal.
You cannot see the way clearly, how you emerged, how you even knew the way.
What odds a miracle?
What’s the proportionate expression?
What’s the chance you emerged self-powered?
A fractional ratio: zip over none.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Planning Lessons
Do you mean why are the plans hard or why are the assistant principals so hard-nosed about making us turn them in?
Plans are hard for me to write. I am never at a loss for something to do with students. I have the curriculum pretty much committed to memory. I attempt to teach my students so much more that what it requires, yet to sit down and put it all on paper in advance and then follow it with any kind of precision is almost an alien activity for me, as if I were suddenly required to describe everything I did yesterday in a language I do not know. I can fill in the blanks, give them some kind of written lesson, but as I write, I know it won't shake out that way. The meaninglessness of the whole thing makes it even harder for me to finish them.
I don't know why plans are so hard to write. I have come to believe they simply are not hard at all for some people. Some both write and follow the same plans for decades. I had one law professor who told us he taught Property Law from notes--the core of which--he took three decades earlier during his student days. The mental processes of those who can do that are incomprehensible to me. While plans are not the total bane of my existence I have struggled with meeting requirements for written plans my whole career, nearly thirty years.
I wonder what Jesus' lesson plans looked like? Were they better or worse than Socrates'? Maybe that's the real reason Jesus and Socrates were killed, no documented delivered instruction to students, no paper trail proving apropriately modified instruction for at-risk students. Who would have been at-risk, Peter, Judas?
Plans are hard for me to write. I am never at a loss for something to do with students. I have the curriculum pretty much committed to memory. I attempt to teach my students so much more that what it requires, yet to sit down and put it all on paper in advance and then follow it with any kind of precision is almost an alien activity for me, as if I were suddenly required to describe everything I did yesterday in a language I do not know. I can fill in the blanks, give them some kind of written lesson, but as I write, I know it won't shake out that way. The meaninglessness of the whole thing makes it even harder for me to finish them.
I don't know why plans are so hard to write. I have come to believe they simply are not hard at all for some people. Some both write and follow the same plans for decades. I had one law professor who told us he taught Property Law from notes--the core of which--he took three decades earlier during his student days. The mental processes of those who can do that are incomprehensible to me. While plans are not the total bane of my existence I have struggled with meeting requirements for written plans my whole career, nearly thirty years.
I wonder what Jesus' lesson plans looked like? Were they better or worse than Socrates'? Maybe that's the real reason Jesus and Socrates were killed, no documented delivered instruction to students, no paper trail proving apropriately modified instruction for at-risk students. Who would have been at-risk, Peter, Judas?
Absolute Trust Betrayal
Absolute Trust Betrayed Absolutely
Chronology
May, 1998, Veronica graduates from high school.
June, 1998, Connie decides she does not love me.
August, 1999, Phillip enters sixth grade.
September, 1999, Connie stops saying she loves me.
December, 1999, I discover Connie has been in a relationship with Bruce Story for several months. When I confront her about it, Connie tells me: “I don't love you any more. I’m not sure I ever did. I love Bruce.”
January 4, 2000, 25th Wedding Anniversary.
January, 2000, I ask Bruce to stop seeing Connie for six months to give us time to work on our marriage with a counselor. He says, "I don’t think I can do that."
January, 2000, I ask Connie to stop seeing Bruce for six months to give us time to work on our marriage. She says, “I don’t think I can do that.”
January, 2000 to October, 2001, Connie and Bruce continue their relationship while Connie remains married to me and living in our home.
August, 2001, Chris and Veronica marry.
September, 2001, Connie tells Chris, Veronica, and Phillip she is leaving me.
October, 2001, Connie moves into an apartment and files for divorce.
June, 2002, Divorce final.
August, 2002, Phillip enters high School.
March, 2003, Connie marries Bruce Story
October, 2004, I begin blogging on e-verities.
Chronology
May, 1998, Veronica graduates from high school.
June, 1998, Connie decides she does not love me.
August, 1999, Phillip enters sixth grade.
September, 1999, Connie stops saying she loves me.
December, 1999, I discover Connie has been in a relationship with Bruce Story for several months. When I confront her about it, Connie tells me: “I don't love you any more. I’m not sure I ever did. I love Bruce.”
January 4, 2000, 25th Wedding Anniversary.
January, 2000, I ask Bruce to stop seeing Connie for six months to give us time to work on our marriage with a counselor. He says, "I don’t think I can do that."
January, 2000, I ask Connie to stop seeing Bruce for six months to give us time to work on our marriage. She says, “I don’t think I can do that.”
January, 2000 to October, 2001, Connie and Bruce continue their relationship while Connie remains married to me and living in our home.
August, 2001, Chris and Veronica marry.
September, 2001, Connie tells Chris, Veronica, and Phillip she is leaving me.
October, 2001, Connie moves into an apartment and files for divorce.
June, 2002, Divorce final.
August, 2002, Phillip enters high School.
March, 2003, Connie marries Bruce Story
October, 2004, I begin blogging on e-verities.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Several-Second Delay
During Thursday’s Presidential debate, walking room to room, from a radio broadcast to a television broadcast, a several-second delay became obvious. The radio played the debate before the television. Live television delays its’ broadcasts several seconds so they may be cut off to protect viewers from seeing, for example, a pierced and bejeweled body part, impetuously exposed by a live performer.
Why did television time-delay the debate? Possibly to protect viewers from seeing one candidate run across the stage to drag down the other’s pants. Would Bush or Kerry be most likely to pants the other? Would the panted candidate attempt a counter-pant?
Would the Secret Service agents assigned to each candidate hurl their pant-clad legs in hand’s way? Would the agents join in the counter-panting and defensively wrestle each other’s pants to the ground? Would President Bush’s agents out-rank Kerry’s and order them to back off and . . . uh, pull up their pants?
It didn’t happen . . . probably. There were no detectable gaps in the broadcast. However, the President and his advisors may be in a war room right now, planning a preemptive panting to safeguard the security of the Presidential privates.
Why did television time-delay the debate? Possibly to protect viewers from seeing one candidate run across the stage to drag down the other’s pants. Would Bush or Kerry be most likely to pants the other? Would the panted candidate attempt a counter-pant?
Would the Secret Service agents assigned to each candidate hurl their pant-clad legs in hand’s way? Would the agents join in the counter-panting and defensively wrestle each other’s pants to the ground? Would President Bush’s agents out-rank Kerry’s and order them to back off and . . . uh, pull up their pants?
It didn’t happen . . . probably. There were no detectable gaps in the broadcast. However, the President and his advisors may be in a war room right now, planning a preemptive panting to safeguard the security of the Presidential privates.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Watch the Tower
Young woman rings my doorbell. Juggling a red leather Bible and an overstuffed planner she introduces herself and the boy wandering around her. Says she is reading encouragement from scripture to those who wish to listen.
“May I read for you?”
I say, “Yes.”
Deftly juggling planner and Bible, she reads from Ecclesiastes. Her voice is serene and assured as she reads God created man to live forever, but he is trapped in a world of decay and death.
“Not very encouraging,” I think.
She levels her brown eyes at me and asks, “Do you believe we were made to live forever?” The boy’s eyes wander everywhere; he shifts and shuffles around the doorway.
Glancing at him, I say, “Yes.”
She shuffles the planner above the Bible, opens it, and angles a copy of The Watchtower slightly towards me. “Would you like to read more about God’s plan for us to live forever?”
I say, “No. I’ve read The Watchtower before and I don’t think I want to look at it again right now.” I’m lost in her brown eyes, wondering if the boy is her son, hoping he is her little brother.
Concern creases her brow, “Do you have a problem with The Watchtower, because . . .”
“Not really, and it would take time to talk about right now, but thank you for the encouragement.”
Pausing mid-sentence, her eyes glance down to the wandering boy, “Thank you for letting me read.” She takes the boy’s hand, turns, and walks down the sidewalk toward the driveway. Her walk is serene and assured.
The boy twists to look back as they go; his brown eyes settle on me, searching.
Glancing at her walk, I think, “Yes.”
“May I read for you?”
I say, “Yes.”
Deftly juggling planner and Bible, she reads from Ecclesiastes. Her voice is serene and assured as she reads God created man to live forever, but he is trapped in a world of decay and death.
“Not very encouraging,” I think.
She levels her brown eyes at me and asks, “Do you believe we were made to live forever?” The boy’s eyes wander everywhere; he shifts and shuffles around the doorway.
Glancing at him, I say, “Yes.”
She shuffles the planner above the Bible, opens it, and angles a copy of The Watchtower slightly towards me. “Would you like to read more about God’s plan for us to live forever?”
I say, “No. I’ve read The Watchtower before and I don’t think I want to look at it again right now.” I’m lost in her brown eyes, wondering if the boy is her son, hoping he is her little brother.
Concern creases her brow, “Do you have a problem with The Watchtower, because . . .”
“Not really, and it would take time to talk about right now, but thank you for the encouragement.”
Pausing mid-sentence, her eyes glance down to the wandering boy, “Thank you for letting me read.” She takes the boy’s hand, turns, and walks down the sidewalk toward the driveway. Her walk is serene and assured.
The boy twists to look back as they go; his brown eyes settle on me, searching.
Glancing at her walk, I think, “Yes.”
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