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A Shadowed Existence Is How I Must Live Afraid and thin, spread out on the land Buttery yellow film on browned toast Can't admit to the burnt parts Don't want to talk about them Eventually the black edges will wear off Feelings won't come back full force Great expectations do go flat Half measures have to do If I want to live Just that simple Karen Learn to live with a size three life Manage a thin cloth instead of corduroy Notice the fine lines Open for the moment, near the seam Put what's left there - shore it up Quiet thoughts - Quit running Requires a lot of training Straining To lie in the flat Unable to be Very much you Worried always 'Xpecting the worse, settle for less You may be thin the rest of your life Zero is last, plenty of time then for that 9/6/01 Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

I Am Echo a presence not there a sound alone inside a head - a has been said or done, here no more except for the vibration, hollow sound ringing, repeating; chambered by surrounding walls which funnels it around to meet ears coming and going. Stick tights burrs of the bush that cling close, adhered by a touch to burrow inside cloth as to become one with it. I am inside your head unable to be apart from you. Ripples in the water, spreading in larger circles - uneven dips of nothing lick water, a momentum of gentle bobbing crests to grow faint but still be there, heard fainter as I'm always silent. Erupted, an existence by a knock or a rock thrown in the monkey works. I am dither of constant sounds you can not see and others can not hear. We are alone in this, just you and me, an Echo and your hearing of me sound out the previous. You shake your head as if a bee like me - can be dislodged by movement. I foist the reality of "the too bad to think of" on you who deny hurts existence, and whisper of the thing you must finger this side of feeling, I am only the sound of it. Know me my cords prick your skin, like a breath on the hairs backing up your neck, soft breathing, a lone sound in the middle of the night that comes out of nowhere specific in the message repeated. Loud nothing. I am an "ing" sound, like quiet rings inside the ears. A constant re-experiencing of something, but absent in everything. Just quiet remains, tight fisted sounds of something. I won't leave you alone. You can't share me except by telling of my sound and presence and they tell you just forget about it as if you can decide not to hear me. Your steady need to go to great lengths to stop me from be...ing, stop the ing, chop it off after the r' no more ing' running doesn't help. Distilled sound I can outdistance any pace. 8/29/01 Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

It Must Be Spoken Of Reading Chamberet, Recollections From An Ordinary Childhood, by Claude Morhange-Begue captures my pristine eye through which I see myself. Those first lines: "When I was not quite eight years old they came and took my mother from me. There were three German officers..." Her story, so different from mine and yet so much the same. Whatever the reason, our life is shattered. Too many delicate interwoven pieces scattered a thousand different ways prevent us from resuming the existence as it was before the evil came. It is succinct, this lopping off of "what was", to become a "learning to live" after evil. Survival after violence takes the rest of our lifetime, striving to understand and ultimately to speak, one way or another. Her captured mother, a country doctor served up to the Das Reich by an ignorant, self serving, "egged on by fear" persona, Claude paints her "a little old woman in black, a wizened old Correze countrywoman whom I didn't know." How can she not hate? I don't see it in her story. My story brims over with palpable ill will toward the perpetuators of my saga, not over yet, and never approaching the magnitude of Chamberet. I marvel at her acceptance. Will I ever get to this place? The little girl goes to school as usual after her mother is arrested. It is what she is to do next. Her words, "And when I had walked into my school classroom, just as I did every morning, a great silence had overspread everything... all the eyes looking at me... That silence: I write it and write it again, wanting the words to recreate it in its reality..." With her words the little girl puts me at my place doing the usual next thing. With this thought, these words spring from me... I feel eye's upon my skin and face from those brave enough to glance at one who's lost the world's embrace. Stone eye's look back, not registering exactly lids descend to mostly cover eyes, obstructing what the head and heart can't interplay correctly. The silence in the school as her mother is held captive a classroom over or the silence that greeted me, it means the same. We meet the same people, their eyes wide with terror that testify to fear, for it could happen to them. Then gratefulness floods their eyes. It is not them, but me whom they stare at with terrible things happening. Relief surrounds them after realizing their eluded grief. As guilt steps in they look away, lest you see it in their face. Finding herself saved with her aunt and grandmother, hiding from the German's, she tells me: "The scene is dimly lit, in shadow; above all, it is mute. I no longer know what was said to me, ...how it was said. And the unshaped phrases that rise in me: But she is going to return, have to wait for her, be patient." The little girl is cut off already, the severing begun. She is shut away into a large bed, a clock ticking...she hears "will come back, won't come back..." The enormous bed swallows her up and the ticking rings out its message. "I have no idea when or how I got out of that bed." Oh, this makes me cry. My lack of memory tugs at my mind and I do let it rest with a simple "I can't remember how I got out of that hallway or what I did next." Why can't I? Is it from that part of me that is "me", always holding on doggedly determined not to let it go? Or is it the disease of inhumanity enveloping me away from something as simple as "a let it be lost" memory? Her mother returns a shadow of the loving woman arrested away from the child of eight and the recapturing of living begins. The child listens as the stories come out, slowly, often only to her. No writing of them, not even retelling to the world at large, just repeating in the quiet and selected times the memories could be borne out to the child, seed of the woman, oh too little, yet the only one able to be eyes and ears for this story. The need of voice, the burden of it once cast to a survivor, can't be ignored indefinitely. We, who have walked in shoes sprayed by violence, misdeeds, must lift the echo of its voice and carry it to someplace else. We do not choose, it pushes us. There is no say, no election to speak of the evil... Trauma must come to voice either through me or someone else like me but to live again it must be spoken of. Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

GAITS gaits stride hung stately at futures door swing either way toward next year nebulous gray cast overshadowed blue sky away from pasts iron clasp sin cemented pastures guard indecision squeaks impinge the future's ear if left to blowing winds or swung too many times a misdirection lacking oil or latches firm long suffering weak wills on a bar overhead a sign hangs procrastination futures always require passing from then through now sometimes we back in through the gait sometimes we just swing on it Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

HOW DOES THE FUTURE BEGIN Is it created? A symphony notes cast in approximation timed tempo to be stepped up slowed down according to how much wind blows reality's predilection. Can the tone be orchestrated managed by energy invested instrument selected harmony predisposed as mystic musicians sit in destiny's first chair overseeing our direction. I want to clash the cymbals over and over and over then once more. Not just once. Why only one time? Who decided that? Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

FUTURES THRESHOLD Bricks of Past clay covered hurt corroded stuffed down long stretches of same "ol "would -have -but" stripped bare denials yesterdays wanna be sand paper's sweep leaves collected left at futures door 10/25/00 Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

The... The Already Terrified suffer differently than everyone else. They close themselves in - instead of reaching out secreting their pain, alone. There is a single handed fall back into old emptiness, unlike our worlds reaching out to ease the globes community of pain. The result is an inability to be intimate with those we love and/or everyone else. There is no way to smile or feel, that comes from what terror has already taken away. There is an overwhelming need to run. There is nowhere to process new pain, which feels ever so much more so than the old. The exaggerated feelings of helplessness envelops. There immobilized - those ?already done in by terror? can?t think of what to do next. The question - Why can?t they accept love the way everyone else does? The answer - A measure of survivor?s guilt, mixed in with a peculiar sense: They should have done something to prevent. There is no rational thinking in these primitive parts. The well known reaction, to roll up like a snail into a shell of feigned safety, interiors screaming like the sea. The roar reported is heard by others, our bombshell puts to the ear echoes of old and new terror. This is how the Already Terrified are affected by twin towers. 9/21/01 Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Thirteen Stabs at the thing 1. It's hard to remember it's not real the pain circles in your chest clutching at everything, crushing in its weight unrelenting nothing: a figment, a fear 2. nothing comes out. the sphinx sits at the end of your tail, closed mouth- its smile. after hours of sitting a rabbits "tinkered toy" drops small and solitary distended abdomen rebound tenderness endless cramps all the while 3. sudden rush sweat collects on wrinkled brow goose bumps while stuck in traffic nowhere to go you can't hold it there's a towel in your car better to go in something than nothing at all 4. fighting the need the compulsion to be alone is a separate thing 5. think hard is every thought their journey into understanding is delayed through convoluted passage pretend a lot. keep it to yourself 6. the breath you can not find is there all the time you can't catch it under all that fear 7. they laugh when you jump there's nothing but a small sound or image, a feeling cataclysmal strangling ever present need to get out of the way 8. out of the routine of a day doing just fine - the sight or sound of the thing brings memory - then projectile removing of its pain 9. feeling even the smallest thing in exaggerated proportions makes a tiredness that comes from nothing as far as anyone else can see 10. crying comes easily once you get to the point you can cry over the thing 11. removed from yourself by the fact can't be helped you always have to live with it 12. when it doesn't matter so much survivor replaces victim status 13. getting over the thing never happens getting past it is the next best hope for living 7/19/01 Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Out of a questioning generation offspring lost to patriotism A leveling of misbegotten horror raises a hair our aspiring to do more Seeing colors livid sift through clouds remembers the dead lifts our sorrows flying over us a newfound hope America looks to live better spares us not caring so much all because the robes of terror attacked us 10/11/01 karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

SOCIAL SECURITY BLUES Tuttle speaks to my ear on the phone, his message certainly misled me. Told me long and cryptically how far he'd gone, no longer could he stand to be. His money, maleness sense of worth, all ceased by SOCIAL SECURITY ...that's me! No longer able to provide- "What's left for me to survive with pride?" he asks so calm, yet desperately. Family falling trampled prey by dribble down economy. I cited all the platitudes sent down from higher authority. Securely ensconsed they were, insulated quite nicely away from society. It only made my client retch then upchuck disgustedly. "Fruitless solace your remedies so lacking." "Can't you offer something better?" In resignation he chimes in: "I've gone as far as I'm going on this claim." In the end he meant to communicate. He simply sent a message with resounding resonate. Next day he poses disconsolate, in front of a window he thinks I'm at, then blows his head off finality, with one clean shot. How's this sound for an epitaph? Tuttle speaks to me from afar, head is ever so slightly ajar. Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Breaking From Reality Breaking from reality, how does it sound? Intact integrity, to mentally unsound. Toneless entry, to worlds unknown. It makes no noise at all. Silently it separates, preparing to face the terror, lurking all around. April 2000 Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Breaking From Reality Portrait Of A Break Breaking from reality doesn't make a sound. Snaking along the gnarled paths of life, intact integrity gives way to mentally unsound. Convoluted and short, this trip within state government. Huge granite buildings with walkways winding this way and that, turn at odd angles without purpose or plan. It's like a secret corridor to your lifeline hidden beyond view in the palm of your hand, all connected, leading in circles, going no where then everywhere at once. Unsightly images complicate, always at odd times and seemingly unrelated to the work life. Cindy Dittz-Harmony ran District C with an iron will, expecting to rise as high as the top job on the backs of weary examiners. Deciding disability claims for Social Security is a roller coaster of political upheaval. Right decisions come about from exceptional work, requiring great efforts and depending entirely too much on the administrative eye for them to materialize and not enough on the laws that constitute disability. Rewards fall immediately to swift unfeeling executions with a denial 's orientation. Right or wrong case actions are of no consequence in Michigan, as long as the numbers are there. Make Cindy look good whatever you do in District C. Full time work weighed heavily on me. Twelve years ago I began job sharing, working forty per cent of a full time schedule, rejoicing in the freedom it gave me to work and play. Now it has been taken away. How could it have slipped away so easily? The last thing I did as Chief Spokesperson for the union was to negotiate the job share program. The new program allowed two people to share one full time job and was granted according to seniority principals. I am the most senior person left job sharing and the only woman. How could the union have fallen so far in twelve short years? What happened to seniority and fair or equal treatment? How am I going to get through this and work every day? Why am I so tired? The electrician is coming to my house tomorrow at 8 a.m. to design the electrical outlets for my new kitchen. It sure was easier getting sixteen hours worked a week. If Cindy had left the overtime slip for me today I could have told her in person I might be late. Instead, I will have to leave a note. She doesn't talk to me since I filed the grievance. Just as well not to feel her eyes upon my face, one glance makes me shiver. Shaking the feeling isn't worth conversation's effort. Hurrying in the next day around 9:30, I passed people on their early break as I got on the elevator. Not bad arriving this early, I expected it to take longer. At my desk was a note from Cindy. "See me right away! This has to stop immediately." I stood there for the longest time, finally remembering to breathe, acutely reminded to inhale by the pain in my chest. A quiet buzz surrounded my head, enveloping it with an eerie numbness. I wrote my time of arrival on the leave slip and left a note for Cindy in her office, "I am at my desk, when you return from your break." I sank into my polyp of a cubicle, concentrating intently on each and every breath. I heard feet trouncing the floor well before their carrier arrived. All efforts to breathe receded up to a sliver thin wainscot ledge, edging the far reaches of where ever it was that I went. "Come to my office this instant." Her voice careened through a misted fog, now completely surrounding me. I felt disoriented in the echo of her footsteps. My vision blurred. The ability to move had suddenly escaped me. A fuzzy scene appears, high up in my mind. A woman with knees wobbling was trying to walk. She might have been doing a "slap-stick" country dance with crossed arms and knees slapping in rhythm to cymbals clashing. But there was no sound of music behind all the movement, just a separation of mind and body everywhere, all at once. Silence screamed no sanctions as a shift off to the sliver thin perch beckoned me. A magician's hand couldn't produce a rabbit with more stealth. The need to laugh rises, is trapped somewhere between my mind and throat as I look down on all the commotion. I began to make my way down the mazes toward her aisle, my steps tracing an L in the sand swallowing up my feet. Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Putting The Woman In Her Place The sunlight glared off the glass panels, stealing what little vision was left. Jerky eye movements besieged my face as I turned to enter Cindy's effulgent office. Seated at her desk, back ramrod straight with fingers steeple woven in front of her, she poised ready to inflict her message so nefariously urgent. I was not there. An alternate visage met her eyes, felt the sting of her words with every muscle frozen in fear and ready to flee. I watched. Some files lay under her thin tapered fingers. Each nail precisely manicured to a delicate oval shape and muted color, protecting the contents of what surely must be the ruse bringing an encounter such as this. I waited. My name dripped off her lips and suddenly, I despised it. "You certainly know the time and attendance procedures." Time sauntered on as these words infiltrated openings unexpectedly left exposed in the witless woman. As the sounds floated up, pieces of words in no order rested on my ears and confusion flooded the hallways of my thoughts. As Chief Spokesperson, in my union days, I helped write the original Primary's. What was Cindy talking about? I am late today but only a half hour and I left a Writ-o-gram in case I was late. "If an employee does not arrive as scheduled to work, the employee is to notify their supervisor in advance of the absence and receive permission to be absent. You certainly know this." I have been putting everything I do in writing ever since I was Chief Spokesperson, an unshakable habit born in the heat of unionization. What is she saying to that woman? Written notification of possible absence or tardiness is wrong? Is she doing Informal Counseling? Is that a request for improvement in the stepped formula of Progressive Discipline? "Lower your voice right now." Cindy spewed her demand at the woman. I fell back when she stumbled, her hair flailing in the sudden movement as arms and legs splayed out in directions not usually intended for limbs to go. Stifling a laugh the enormities of which defy description, I listened to the woman's reply. "I can't take this anymore. You can approve my leave or not, I don't care. I'm leaving." The woman backed away from Cindy, into walls bumping papers off their piles. The fall did not faze her. Cindy reddened, crimson splotches climbing up her neck spreading to her hair. The paper scatter marred the woman's path, icing her retreat precariously. Still she managed to spin back from where she came. Inside her cubicle there began a strange dance. As a dog chases their tail, the woman spun around looking for keys and purse, unable to find either. People appeared out of nowhere blocking her attempted escape with lips moving speaking words she did not hear and could not understand. What a spectacle I viewed air born serenely above this theater in the round. Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Getting Back To Work Driving to work after so many days isolated at home felt strange, as if someone else was driving and it wasn't me going to the job I'd done since 1977. Squirreled up in my bedroom as workmen tore my house apart these past few days was a relief from the fiasco of work I'd run away from last week. Still in the driveway and I miss the alone and protected sensations emanating from my bedroom walls. Piles of old tiles and a mass of broken splintered wood lay outside my house as if thrown up by the picture window to the cement below. The construction crew became my centurions, protecting any value inherent in me, or my house. I felt the heap each day as it grew in proportion to the skeleton kitchen core developing beneath the ditched old kitchen, now paralleling my other life misplaced silently in me. Every ounce of reserve met the challenge of preparing for work. A long bubble bath began the day. After hands and toes were wrinkled clean from too much soaking, a dripping relapse to the bed for air drying became the only action available as I contemplated returning to the floor of Disability Determination Service. Thoughts of pleasant things were used to fool the fractured woman now barricaded haphazardly inside of me. She floated in and I got dressed. The hysterical woman and I went out the door with just enough time to make the nine a.m. arrival deadline. My work was gone. The office was stripped of my new cases, intake assigned under the new examiner number. Their disappearance was not explained with a note. There wasn't even a case card left, telling of next actions. Nothing stared at me. My desk was bare, as if a magic wand waved off all traces of me here. Maybe I never was, so slick the attempt to make me disappear. My job share partner had taken our caseload with her when she returned to full time work in December of last year. We had shared the job of adjudicating claimants applications for Social Security disability since 1985. Building my backlog of cases was deferred to the time I began working full time, last week to be exact. I called the union rep to tell her my work was gone. What should I do? Glenda said I should go ask Cindy for my work. I shuddered my reply, "I can't do that. It's too much for me." Glenda had taken me to my husband last week when I broke down at the office, she did not push me on this point. As we spoke, our phone call was interrupted by the Area Administrator's secretary. Laurel wanted to see me in her office right then. I told Glenda I had to go and why. We hung up and I followed the secretary obediently. I was not upset. Laurel is a genteel leader fashionably dressed, always rushing to a meeting or out the door to represent Disability Determination Service at some government function or other. I was curious. I admired her black stately beauty. She did not always appear totally organized in her work, but who was when there is an abundance of needy work to do. Sympathetic in nature, Laurel could possibly explain where my work had gone. A welcome alternative, going to Cindy and asking for my work brings a vile substance into my throat, choking me as it passes the windpipe. Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

Circling The Wounded The atmospheric change took my breath away. An elbow conference table sat at a perpendicular juncture with Laurel's desk creating a meeting room and desk area all in one. Cindy sat at the end of the Administrator's conference table, in much the same manner as I recalled last seeing her. The woman took a swivel seat across from Laurel, selecting her back to face Cindy. I gazed into Laurel's eyes, seeing nothing of the person I was expecting to meet with. The woman sank down into her seat, buttocks pushing hard to steel herself, as if her backside was vulnerable somehow. Concentration misplaced, the woman heard Laurel's voice. "Last week it was reported to me that you have been acting like a claimant, creating a disturbance in the workplace. We cannot tolerate this kind of behavior. Your actions have reduced morale to an all time low. We cannot have it. We need some assurances from you that this kind of thing will never happen again." Silence filled the room. Unbelieving her ears transmission, the woman stared at Laurel. Minutes dragged on, how many strung together in the silence I do not know. Cindy may have said something, my back unable to read her lips and my mind not receiving input amid the Laurel words spreading its fire red message along the swollen passages in my thoughts. I began to cry. I tried not to. Tears streamed down my face. Soon my nose began to run. The inside of my mouth was dry somehow. An enigma amid all those fluids flowing out the front of my face. The distraught woman wiped the snot away with the sleeve of her shirt as absentmindedly as a child of three not knowing any better. There was an instinctual need to get it off her face and away from her mouth, a necessary preparation for speech if it were to ever come. I was dumb founded in my elevator heading for a far away corner, a vast room with a view nowhere near Laurel's office. The woman responded, "I don't know what you're asking of me." Laurel rephrased her words, saying the same things. She blamed me for everyone's condition. The managers had enough to do without me reducing morale this low. "What did I have to say for myself?" the woman heard Laurel ask. They wanted her to say something. She had better answer, but what? She didn't understand so she told them that. "I don't know what you want from me," the woman sighed. This went on for hours, a circle of sorts revealing no way out. At one point Cindy demanded, "Look at me. I am your friend. We visit about our children and gambling in Las Vegas, remember." The woman was growing weary. Red faced from crying, often unable to speak crying had become sobs. I asked if Dr. Anderson could join us. He is a psychiatrist on staff assisting in adjudicating psychiatric claims and a physician I trust. He advised me to see a Social Worker in his private practice and he prescribed antidepressants for me a few weeks ago. He told me I could not fix this problem alone. It was bigger than my union background prepared me for, and much more involved. I needed him to get me out of Laurel's den this day, and he did. Dr. Anderson didn't know what was happening exactly. He could see my distress and many people had spoken to him about my breakdown last week. He saw the questionable inquisition tactics, two against one and began to speak. He applied to the management team an antidote. He spoke laughingly about his supervisor barging into his office while he was speaking on the phone, and lectured to him like he was a child, about a case. This anecdote of mistreatment and lack of respect for a physician by management did the trick. The woman got permission to take sick time for what's left of my first day back. As I walked out, no one saw me leave hollowed to the core, ungrounded in every aspect of living. Empty and alone, a dry parched reed, lacking stem connected to intact integrity blew out the door. So much less of life reached up to touch me from that day ever after. Karen SSICONSULTANTS@AOL.COM

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