Thursday, February 28, 2002
stevenm brought me white tulips last night. they were sealed shut. it's finally cold outside. within half an hour most were sprawled open. i was timelapse. white messy petals. green elegant leaves. 6 pale yellow fuzzy rays strong in the center, weighlifting air. degas' ballerinas. i was happy. it doesn't take much. just 10 miracles in a vase. this morning they are closed again. have i been a tulip all along?
11:22 AM
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
the full moon is heavy this month. it decided to move in my head. turn in my tummy. break into thousands of little pieces. it wouldn't be hard at all to walk on eggshells. it would feel good. i should take a milk bath. i haven't started my to-do list. not one item. a girlfriend wrote me today that she finds strength from the entries about my father. i had not thought of that. i had not thought people who are brave enough to "see" can appreciate their parents as they are still with them by knowing of my loss. it was so very good to get her message. it helped me move 180 degrees for a moment and feel... good. -- last night close to astor place we found a mural by nyc city arts. it showed the manhattan skyline at night with the shape of the twin towers in beautiful colorful Rousseau like flowers. i found it lovely and odd at the same time. i want to vacuum today away.
2:15 PM
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
i'm looking at an indigo vase full of brilliant yellow. i love daffodills. also had a lovely dinner with c.g. it had been a while since we talked. tomorrow to do list: email sarah. email roberta. email chris and john. find and possibly make doctor's appt. call kathy and hopefully try out new yoga class (: wake up early.
11:32 PM
"outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend, and inside of a dog it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
5:03 PM
Monday, February 25, 2002
... i'm not sure what to write ... i knit a hat today. i took yoga. i don't like the teacher anymore. the place is horrible. Sal Anthony's Movement Salon. it is dirty. it is loud. there's a Capoeira (sp) class overlapping our yoga and i do Not like hearing the people sing. beat their drums. stomp about. the energy they give off is aggressive. it stresses me out. it doesn't feel "real". mom and i continue our search. you'd think in manhattan we could find One good yoga class. it seems better teachers are in Brooklyn. -- these past two years i've been a lot more angry. is this part of being an adult? having responsabilities? being taken advantage of by people? living in manhattan? i'm starting to realize when various creatures are trying to manipulate me. sometimes it takes me a day to figure it out. i still say ignorance is bliss. one good thing this weekend: steven and i found a great Indian food restaurant. i've been craving it for the past 48 hours. maybe they put drugs in their food. something about certain tastes is addictive. like the sweet taste of victory. i need a big portion.
12:02 AM
Friday, February 22, 2002
no lunch today = big dinner
7:21 PM
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
"As the clock ticks over from 8:01PM today, Wednesday, February 20th, 2002, time will (for sixty seconds only) read in perfect symmetry. To be more precise: 20:02, 20/02, 2002. It is an event which has only ever happened once before, and is something which will never be repeated. The last occasion that time read in such a symmetrical pattern was long before the days of the digital watch (or the 24-hour clock): 10:01AM, on January 10, 1001. Because the clock only goes up to 23.59, it is something that will never happen again."
1:34 PM
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Scores of Bodies Strewn at Site of Crematory
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN - The New York Times
NOBLE, Ga., Feb. 16 ó Every funeral director for 100 miles did business with the Tri-State Crematory on the assumption that the owners were doing their job of transforming dead bodies into ashes. But today, horrified authorities discovered decomposing evidence that the furnace at the crematory had not worked for years. After a dog walker stumbled over a skull on Friday, law enforcement officers discovered at least 120 rotting corpses in sheds and on the ground near the crematory, and state officials said that that figure could double by the time the area is fully examined. Some of the bodies had been there for years and were nearly skeletal, while others, fresh from the funeral home, still bore toe tags.
Human bones, weathered white, were scattered through the woods like leaves, skulls mixed with leg bones in a ghoulish jumble that one state trooper compared to a scene from a Stephen King novel. An infant's body was found in a box in the back of a rusting hearse. Some bodies had become mummified and may have been at the site more than 20 years, said Dr. Kris Sperry, Georgia's chief medical examiner. Nearly two dozen coffins that had once been buried were also found on the ground, Dr. Sperry said, and in some cases their embalmed contents had been dragged out and left exposed to the elements for years. It was unclear why those bodies were at the site.
Officials said there was apparently no foul play involved with any of the bodies. But even hardened law enforcement officers were left shaken and nauseated by what they saw in the sheds.
"There were bodies stacked like cordwood, just discarded and thrown in a pile," said Vernon Keenan, assistant director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. "After 30 years in law enforcement, you think you've seen everything. And then you see something you can't even imagine." Dr. Sperry, who deals with corpses every day, said nothing had prepared him for what he saw today. "I have to say, the utter lack of respect in which they were piled on top of one another was very disturbing," he said.
State officials declared Walker County a disaster area to enable state funds to be spent on the cleanup. They said that apparently the furnace had broken down several years ago and the owners could not afford repairs. The crematory's manager, Ray Brent Marsh, 28, was charged with five counts of theft by deception and was in the county jail tonight. His parents, Ray and Clara Marsh, who own the business, were not charged.
Mr. Keenan said the fraud charges were brought in the absence of any state laws barring inappropriate treatment of corpses. "We have laws against desecrating graves, but we can't find one against desecration of bodies," he said. "I guess nobody in the Legislature ever thought something like this could happen." In many cases, families who thought their relatives had been cremated received urns containing what they believed were ashes, but were in fact a mixture of burned wood chips and dirt, officials said. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation urged any families who had received urns through Tri-State to bring them in for examination. By nightfall, officials had tagged and numbered 80 bodies; they planned to continue their task throughout the week. Earth-moving equipment was ordered, and there was talk of draining a lake on the crematory's property to see what might be on the bottom. Thirteen bodies were fresh enough to be identified, and some of the families who were notified gathered at a nearby church to exchange tales of shock.
Neva and Tim Mason, accountants who live in nearby La Fayette, were told on Friday night that the body of Mr. Mason's father, Luther P. Mason, had been found. Luther Mason died on Dec. 19, Neva Mason said, and the family believed he had been cremated and his ashes buried at La Fayette Memory Gardens, just down Highway 27 from Noble. They had had a ceremony at the cemetery, she said, and were shocked to hear that his body had been found at the crematory. "He was stacked in a barn," Mrs. Mason said. "We don't know if he was stacked on top of people or with people stacked on top of him. We don't know if he was wearing clothes.
"I don't know what's worse, him dying, or this." The Masons, like almost everyone else in this small town in northwest Georgia, 17 miles south of Chattanooga, knew the Marsh family and never had reason to suspect that anything was awry at the crematory. "I've known the Marshes all my life," Mrs. Mason said. "My brother graduated college with Brent. They're wonderful people. Mrs. Marsh helped hundreds of kids in this area." Clara Marsh, a schoolteacher, was president of the Walker County Association of Educators and chairwoman of the Walker County Democratic Committee. Ray Brent Marsh was active in civic affairs, and Sheriff Steve Wilson said he served with Mr. Marsh on several boards and commissions. The authorities set up a makeshift morgue on the site today, and began moving the newer bodies to a nearby site where families could come and identify them. At least 20 funeral homes that may have sent bodies to the Tri-State Crematory over the last six years were contacted and asked to review their records in hopes of identifying many of the corpses, but Mr. Keenan said he believed many of the remains would never be identified.
Although all crematories and funeral homes are supposed to be inspected regularly, state officials said Georgia has only two inspectors, and could not provide records today of the last inspection of Tri-State. W. E. McGill, who was the elected Walker County coroner for 23 years, until his retirement in 2000, said that Tri-State Crematory had operated illegally for a decade by not having a licensed funeral director on its premises during business hours, as required by a state law passed in 1992. He said the crematory also failed to meet state sanitation requirements. "I filed complaints, but nothing was ever done about it," Mr. McGill said. Mr. McGill said that Mr. and Mrs. Marsh had started out in the businesses of grave digging and burial vault supply, and that Tri-State had been the only crematory in the county when they founded it three decades ago. (The family lives next to the crematorium.) In those days, he said, a decision to cremate was rare. "This is the Bible Belt South, and everybody had their own community or church cemetery," he said. In recent years, however, cremation has become more common, and several more crematories have begun operating in the area, he said. "Cremation was not popular down here until six or seven years ago," Mr. McGill said, adding that the change " has to do with the economy ó it's so much cheaper."
Sheila Horton, the niece of the elder Ray Marsh, said greed was to blame for the ghoulish scene. "His wife and son just didn't want to spend the money to fix it up," said Mrs. Horton, who grew up in Noble and now lives in Atlanta. "Lord Jesus, I don't know how they could go to bed at night with all that outside their window."
1:42 PM
Friday, February 15, 2002
there isn't enough time
4:43 PM
Thursday, February 14, 2002
this is perfect for valentine's day
5:28 PM
maybe i'll make another quilt
2:36 PM
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
happy chinese new year - help us horsey horsey horsey
7:30 PM
Sunday, February 10, 2002
the &*$#@!) who are storing my bed and boxes just raised my monthly bill to $145. they raised it just 3 months ago to $138. i feel a little rage i must say. i feel a lot of rage for the big picture. "life" is not fair. that's all there is to it. -- had a lovely intense yoga class today. our teacher rocks! sadie. she's the closest we've found to kate. i'll have to tell carolyn in case she's looking for a great teacher. i am convinced that if i could take one yoga class a day i would be happy. -- so yesterday jae did a beautiful painting of me. it took less than an hour. it was unexpected. i didn't think we'd work. -- the weekend went by too quickly. i'm not ready for another week. week. weak. beak. meek. seek. freak. -- i need to change this site. i'm tired of the design. the colors. the layout. portfolio comes first though. every five years it's nice to archive and organize. i need to set dealines for myself.
9:39 PM
Saturday, February 09, 2002
"Das Reich der Zwei, the nation of two my Helga and I had - its territory, the territory we defended so jealously, didn't go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. Flat, tufted, springy little country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing in my life making sense but love, what a student of geography I was! What a map I could draw for a tourist a micron high, a submicroscopic Wandervogel bicycling between a mole and a curly golden hair on either side of my Helga's belly button. If this image is in bad taste, God help me. Everybody is supposed to play games for mental health. I have simply described the game, an adult interpretation of "This-Little_Piggy," that was ours. Oh, how we clung, my Helga and I - how mindlessly we clung! We didn't listen to each other's words. We heard only the melodies in our voices. The things we listened for carried no more intelligence than the purrs and growls of big cats. If we had listened for more, had thought about what we heard, what a nauseated couple we would have been!" -- Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
11:52 PM
Friday, February 08, 2002
what if suicide was "legal"? what if assisted suicide was commonplace? what if once people grew old and sad and sick it was "ok" for them to die. the idea of gathering a retirement fund makes me paranoid. i can't enjoy the present because i'm worried if i'll be secure when i'm old. by the time i'm old.old i won't be able to enjoy myself like i would now. the tax accountant we've been using for years made a huge mistake when he executed dad's will. his office "took care" of it. big mistake. we'll probably choose not to sue since he can drag it out for years. i'm so angry i could explode/implode. i'm getting very impatient and tired of the "love everyone" line. maybe this is why blind religion is so useful. if i was in a cult i wouldn't care. maybe i am living in a cult. i am part of the "spend more want more" generation. the ones who can't afford to spend say that money is not important. but it is. in this society money is the means to everything. i'm leaving "love" out of it because i'm not an expert on love. i do feel bitter today. i wonder if i wanted to be born. there are so many theories on birth and death, i wonder if i said "yup, i want to go back". i've been told i'm an old spirit who wanted one more challenge. i've also been told many many times by astrologers and fortune tellers that i should go back to school. i need to help people too. when i'm helping i feel satisfied. which is true. but there are still many holes to fill.
2:49 PM
Wednesday, February 06, 2002
yes... i do agree that finding cards and photos as well as notations in Used books is a wonderful experience. maybe we should start a movement. communicate with little notes and images. make One difference. make One person stop and think and maybe smile. one or a thousand. -- can everything be reduced to 1's and 0's? -- last night was good. found a fantastic vegetarian place. Kate's Joint. the only thing i would change is the unmatching, sad, faded wallpaper. the food, service, and music is exceptional. and two people can get full on less than $30. le yum. -- there are still some things i want to talk about with stevenm. i do have some debris left from his ex.girlfriend slumber party week. maybe we'll never have a resolution. maybe the lesson is that we are different people with different thresholds. can anyone truly understand another? is it simply trying? or do you need more esoteric ingredients like karma, chemisty, and background. i don't know. to know vs. feel.
9:41 PM
Monday, February 04, 2002
february. so far the word of the month is "New"
2:44 PM
Friday, February 01, 2002
we're moved in. having a water view is Amazing. i can sit and watch the boats for hours. hopefully we'll have the TV turned off more now. except the cable guy today gave us ALL the movie channels although we didn't ask for them. we'll see how much they charge us next month. either he made a mistake or this is how they get you to sign up. it's night #2. i like going home now. i do still feel trapped living with mom in a small one bedroom. i have less and less space for my own thoughts. -- i have to start reading again. maybe i can finally finish Les Miserables so i can give the book away. or leave it in a public space for someone else to find. i wonder if they'd pick it up. i don't trust "donation" centers. maybe the library will treat books better than the salvation army seems to. of course i would not take a book that was just lying around. i'd be too grossed out from the possible previous owner. i wonder how long of a lifespan germs have within the pages of a book?
7:56 PM
