Little Old LDY IN tENNIS sHOES

Published April 8, 2017 by Nan Mykel

Boy, I just thought I’d leave that heading just as I wrote it at 5 a.m., after waking early. There’s a story there. I’m not sure I’m a lady, but I know I’m little because I’ve lost 5 inches in my lifetime, though I guess overall I gained more–initially, of course. And the thing about tennis shoes may be cute, but they hurt my feet–come to think of it, almost any shoes hurt my feet after awhile. That’s why I have so many shoes–I wear one pair a few days til they hurt my feet, then buy another cheap pair that rubs a different place..

Just thought you’d like to know it looks like I’m making progress on cleaning out my junk. I can see my rug in the middle of the room now–of course I’ve also spread to a second room, which isn’t too good. After a low period with my pinched nerve I got from lifting a huge giraffe in my kitchen (I know it shouldn’t have been up on my kitchen counter–that’s why I had to lift it off), I’m getting ideas again. Now if this plateau just lasts awhile until I get my stroke from afib, I’ll be sitting pretty. After that, good luck with chortling from reading my blog. (I know you’re not chortling–just liked that word.)

I’d better go run now and try to find my middle daughter’s address, because I finally got a letter, an envelope, my return address sticker and stamp together (whew!); just needing a street address and zip code. I still know the city and her name. Talk to you later, the good lord willing, as Athur Godfrey used to say–oh yes, did you know, I have his autograph from back when I wrote something nice about him in my Miami Journal radio column.

Wise Words of Roland C. Summit

Published April 6, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From”Hidden Victims, Hidden Pain: Societal Avoidance of Child Sexual Abuse,” in Lasting Effects of Child Sexual Abuse,” p. 57, Gail Wyatt and Gloria Powell eds.

There is a sad, self-preserving irony about a world that cannot see its own cruelty filled with victims who can’t give voice to their pain. After 125 years of discarded enlightenment, we still act as if victims are freaks and as if it is a virtue to be ignorant of sexual victimization. We pretend nobody is involved, even though the veterans may outnumber the recruits. Projections of any of the prevalence surveys to include elective and dissociative denials would insist that childhood sexual abuse is a normative experience, yet we ignore the implications of a society populated with the walking wounded.

Any gathering of our associates and friends contains people who were molested as children. Every extended family, every neighborhood, every church congregation, every medical society, every class in law school, and most every football team, legislative caucus and jury, conceals people who are hiding unspeakable memories of “unusual” childhood sexual experiences. Those experiences may have been agonizing or ecstatic or a confusing mixture of both, but the fact that they can’t be shared says something about our collective fear of finding out.

PLEASE REMIND ME…

Published April 6, 2017 by Nan Mykel

They say, and I believe, that no one is all good or all bad. But I’ve forgotten what our president’s good points are.

On Forgiving (?)

Published April 6, 2017 by Nan Mykel

The Trouble with Blame — Sharon Lamb | Harvard University Press

Because of the scripted nature of apologies, they can also serve to manipulate the wounded to turn the tables. The scriptedness of the apology/forgiveness interaction is not only about social expectations but about power relations. When the victim is wounded (and her wounds are documented, believed, acknowledged, and validated) she is in a powerful position vis a vis the offender. Her wounds not only mark her as a victim but also give her a certain power because of the associations with the position of victimhood–in particular the innocence but also the protection one affords and special considerations.

Victimhood affords one a sort of instant purity and sympathy, if not martyrdom. And all too often the public has trouble with victims when they do not live up to this idealized standard. The victim-offender dyad is set as a dichotomy–that one is evil, the other pure in exaggerated form. So when a perpetrator apologizes and does an excellent sincere j0b at such, our natural expectations are to expect and require forgiveness from a victim. Apologies can thus be power plays used to pull at victims’ notions of themselves as good. To maintain their role in the dichotomy as the “good one” the victim will need to apologize, or to prove in some way that their wounds are just too immense and they have suffered too long. Rarely is anger considered an appropriate response to a sincere apology….

The power relations between the offended and the offender are always important to keep in mind, for an apology offered by an offender who ultimately has power over the injured party brings with it even more pressure for forgiveness.

The demands on individual victims to forgive are bound up with traditional notions of what it means to be a “good girl” or “good woman” it is entirely possible to have compassion for an offender, even your own offender if you have been abused, and not be willing to forgive. Whatever happened to the older psychoanalytic notions of ambivalence? While it may be difficult to live with ambivalent feelings, this is the human condition.

Quote from “Into the Silent Land” by Paul Broks

Published April 6, 2017 by Nan Mykel

“The brain thinks it’s a soul. There is real pathos in that.”

WHO HE? – A short story

Published April 6, 2017 by Nan Mykel

When Trish entered the Front Room, Cassie was already in the booth, waiting. Both smiled broadly, glad to see the other after being briefly separated on this, their first day of classes as freshmen roommates. Being from the same small town in Ohio, they felt a special comaraderie–or safety–in the others’ company. They had both wanted Journalism 101, but Cassie narrowly missed the registration deadline, so she settled for World Literature.

“But look, they’re both taught by a man named Johnson, so maybe that’s not so bad,” Cassie joked. Although Johnson is a common name, they wondered if they would have the same professor, but Cassie hadn’t thought there was much in common between the two academic subjects, and decided they would be experiencing two entirely different professors.

Trish had been feeling fortunate to have made the registration deadline for the journalism class until she discovered it was at 8 a.m. Today they grabbed a late lunch from the cafeteria line and got down to it. “Well,” Cassie asked, “are they the same? How old was your professor?”

Trish frowned and rubbed her brow, thinking. “It’s hard to say…35? 45? Maybe 50.”

Cassie sighed as though in disbelief. “Surely there’s a difference between a 50-year old man and one 35! In what way did he seem young and what made him seem old?”

“His dress, for one thing. He wore blue jeans and a collarless shirt, and loafers.”

Cassie paused to drink her tea, then nodded. “So did mine. Maybe there’s a kind of dress code the first day, to make the students feel more comfortable…”What about his hair? Does he still have it?”

Trish seemed to smile inwardly. “Does he ever! He has a full head of gorgeous dark hair with just a touch of silver in it you can see when he’s up close. Maybe that’s what made me think of him being older.”

Cassie stirred her tea and asked, “You were up close to him?”

Another secret smile. “Just when he walked back and forth among the students, and stopped to make a point….Was your professor easy to hear?”

“Oh yes” Cassie answered. “He would expound in a loud voice, often looking fervently at the ceiling like he was communing with God, or trying to. He really gets excited about the early civilizations, and knows Greek. Now that I think of it, maybe he was trying to communicate with the whole bunch of Greek gods.”

Trish laughed. “Sounds like a winner…How do you know he ‘knows Greek’?”

“He told us, and said a few words in what I guessed was Greek.”

“So it sounds like your Dr. Johnson is an enthusiastic hippie type too. He must love his subject. How old does he seem to you?”

“Well, older than 35, definitely.”

Trish was curious. “Based on what?”

“Maybe some of it’s the subject matter. He seems so entrenched in the ancient world, and so knowledgeable.”

Trish nodded vehemently. “You got it. Maybe it’s my Johnson’s enthusiasm for current events that’s rubbed off on him and makes him seem possibly 35.

Cassie closed her eyes in order to re-vision her literature professor. “He’s got all his hair all right, but I didn’t notice any silver streaks. By the way, mine is about six feet tall and wears blue jeans, but I didn’t notice his shirt. How about yours?”

Trish said, “He’s tall, too.

“Well, is he good-looking?”

Trish shrugged. “Yeah, if you like men who work out a lot. His muscles seem weird on a college professor.”

“Any tattoos?…Sorry, just joking. What color are his eyes?”

“Oh yes, I forgot. When he gets these ideas that make him stand up straight and begin to walk back and forth he opens his eyes real wide and you can see the white of his eyes. Kinda spooky. And he has very dark eyes that scan the class a lot, as though he’s counting the students or looking for one who didn’t show.” Cassie smiled at her own words, then asked, “Does he have a cough?”

“A cough?” Trish puzzled.

“Yeah, my Johnson does. Like he smoked.”

“I didn’t notice. There was too much discussion going on in class.”

Cassie perked up, curious. “Like what?”

“Oh, you know; liberal stuff. Like how corporations are strangling good journalism, and how something has happened to the milk of human kindness.” Trish paused. “I think we have to face it; they must be different Johnsons.”

That settled, the two friends were picking up their trays to leave when the sight of a professor entering the lunch line caught their attention. “That’s him,” they whispered to each other, as the tall African American faculty member pushed his tray down the line.

Health Nut – A Poem

Published April 4, 2017 by Nan Mykel

HEALTH NUT

First let me get this off my chest:

I’m part animal and old’s the rest.

A cow’s valve is pumping my breath;

while a pig’s valve’s staving off death.

And you’ll see why

I try

To take care of my self.

I was going to the boonies

That night to catch me some goonies

in the tunnel that’s haunted,

while feeling undaunted.

But a stitch in my chest said go,

check it out now, don’t delay.

So as a good health nut I drove

to Urgent Care, just over there,

where the doc

jumped up and down

in his trim green gown

and with a medical frown

called an ambulance

while I sat in a trance

thinking why can’t I drive

round the corner myself?

ER let me stay all day ,

Out of the way

While emergencies

came and went.

It was late and it was dark

When I asked on a lark

If I could now go

and surprised, they said “Sho.”

No wheelchair was needed,

I just walked the field

of gopher holes in the dark

to UC, where I had parked.

Why why why did this happen to me?

And then I thought of pay back.

While dizzy, on my last UC visit,

I’d had the bad manners to

barf in his trash.

Venom – A re-blog

Published April 3, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I’m re-blogging because this so well reflects what healing survivors experience.

The Darkest Fairytale

Poison under my skin
Drips to the fingertips,
Like acid to this paper
Writing my apocalypse.
It burns and scolds
With flames to ashes,
It’s a nuclear reaction
As light & dark clashes.
The world injected me
With all this venom,
Turning innocence
Into a deadly weapon.
A product of my past
The tortured castaway
Haunted by the images
Forced to live another day.
Tarnished with poison
Yet filled with gold.
They can’t inject my heart
As my soul won’t be sold.