"bad words"

I have a preteen daughter, and our philosophy on “bad words" has always been that the only “bad words" are those intended to hurt someone. It feels to me like the only logical position. She knows that this is not the societal norm. She knows that she will get in trouble if she swears at school, and that if friends’ parents hear her swearing, they might not want her to spend time with their children. Her friends are fascinated that I let her swear. I’ve watched their eyes get big and round when I didn’t scold her for a little curse word she let slip. Usually I explain the reasoning for our rule.

Occasionally my girl has pushed the boundary by swearing excessively. The last time this happened, I felt annoyed and told her so, while requesting that she please cut back on the swearing. She asked me why I would be annoyed, when swearing had never been off-limits.

I thought for a minute, and then explained that the way we generally use swear words is to draw heightened attention (I’m making a very important point, I feel very strongly about this topic, I hurt myself, I’m frustrated and need help or encouragement, etc.), and when she is constantly drawing my attention by using swear words in every sentence, I get annoyed. It draws my full attention away from whatever I’m doing and to her. These words have been given that power by our culture.

I get it. I’ve been there, as a slightly narcissistic teenager, when I wanted to be provocative, but also to place emphasis on everything I was saying because all of it was so important. But it’s like the boy who cried wolf. When teenagers or adults curse excessively, they often remind me of toddlers saying “look at me, look at me!”

Often, I think that’s exactly what it is. A bid for attention. She’s just a kid. She looks so much like a little woman now. Sometimes I have to remind myself that she isn’t. As she moves closer and closer to her teen years, these bids for attention are lessening. Now, more than ever, it feels important to me to turn towards every one of them.

And there it is. For those of you who don’t allow your kids to swear, when they do let one slip, perhaps you could consider turning towards them, towards this bid for attention, rather than punishing them for non-adherence to a rule.

Swearing is, perhaps, unique in socially transgressive behavior, in that this "misbehavior" is used as a verbal bid for attention by both children and adults.


2016-11-04

White Privilege

I've lived most of my life in a bubble. As a privileged white girl in Santa Barbara, it was easy to believe that at least in the states, society was almost completely post-racial. I honestly thought of racism as something that only happened somewhere else, and mostly in the past. I figured those little wannabe skinheads were just pretending to be racist so they would seem more scary and tough, because no one with even a modicum of intelligence could actually be a racist.

I was raised with the world events of the 1930s and 40s at the forefront of my consciousness. I had a dear old friend with a tattoo from a Nazi concentration camp. I grew up in a state where Japanese Americans had been sent to internment camps during WWII. How could anyone be racist with those potential consequences in our collective memory? The two most revered heroes of people in my generation were Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. At least that's what I thought. But maybe that was just me and my friends.

And yet I've hesitated to repost any Black Lives Matter posts, because my late husband was a cop, and I've so many friends in law enforcement. But I keep seeing these All Lives Matter posts from LEO wives, officers and other friends, and I've got to think that these friends just aren't seeing it from the other perspective. Maybe they're living in a bubble like I was.

Racism is a real problem in the world, even today. Just because you or your LEO husband isn't racist, that doesn't mean we don't have institutional and societal racism. For the proof of this, you need to look no further than the demographic makeup of our prisons. Even here in liberal, enlightened California. When I think of what racism looks like today, right here in my home state of California, prison demographics are the first thing that comes to mind.

I get that you fear for your life, or for your husband's life. We know that all lives matter. We know that blue lives, cop lives matter. That was never in question. Just take a look at the sentencing guidelines for someone who kills a cop versus someone who kills any other citizen for the proof of this.

The BLM movement and the treatment of the water protectors at Standing Rock are bringing our attention to what has been our reality in this country for a long time. It's just that now we've got our cell phone cameras and media attention on the problem.

2016-10-03

Trauma

I keep reflecting on my blog post about water trauma. It tells a story: a story of trauma and its aftermath. It’s a story I tell myself and others. This story is useful, up to a point. I believe that I needed to understand the cause of my panic around water in order to work with it.

But even animals suffer in the aftermath of trauma. I’ve recognized what looks like PTSD in them. When we look at this from the evolutionary perspective, we see that it is valuable for an animal to remember past danger and injuries, in order to protect oneself and one’s offspring (and one’s ability to reproduce) in the future. When one finds oneself into a situation that has been dangerous enough to cause trauma in the past, one should react with hypervigilance. But when that hypervigilance and even panic is triggered by a similar situation in which that original danger is not present, the reaction no longer serves. 

It seems to me that the stories of my trauma are somehow stored in my body. After the worst incident with W, and up until I reported him to the police and shared the story of his abuse with my family, I carried pain and tension in my hips. I carried anger. Justifiable anger, the most dangerous kind.

I wonder, how will I know when it is time to let go of this story? By letting go, I do not mean forgetting. There will always be value in sharing our own tragedies and traumas so that others will feel empowered to share and work with their own stories. So that perhaps future harm will be prevented. Perhaps so that others can see that I did not arrive here by way of an easy road, and realize that they can find peace whatever their past or current struggles.


2016-09-12

Soberanes Fire

2016-08-12

I’ve had an intense several weeks. The Soberanes Fire has ravaged the Palo Colorado community, which was my home for several years and continues to be a second home for me and especially for my daughter. So many friends and neighbors have lost their homes. Most of T’s acreage has burned. His home, along with a few neighbors’, is now an unburned island in the midst of a desolate charred wasteland.

I was so afraid for his safety, for his home, and for the others in the community.  I was sick with worry about those I knew were on their properties, defending their homes, especially T, who I knew to be impaired by a terrible flu and high fever. Each new report of a home burned was like a knife in my gut. A bulldozer operator died fighting the fire. Another knife to the gut.  

I know what it is like to feel like your life has been destroyed, the past obliterated, your future a yawning chasm of uncertainty, all your illusions of safety and security destroyed at a stroke. Perhaps losing your home, your possessions is not the same as losing your spouse, but in some ways it gives me that same feeling. Like a partner, your home is your sanctuary, your anchor and refuge in a world of chaos and transience.

2016-07-25 Facebook posts: a snapshot of what a day of this fire was like.

1 p.m. I just talked to T and he is at home, still safe. He was actively fighting the fire last night, along with a 50-member crew from CalFire. All the deadwood, tree and brush clearing that he has done over the years is now paying off in a big way. They’ve been using all the fire roads he’s worked to keep clear as well. Because of his level of preparedness, CalFire has been motivated to (and able to) make a stand all along his property at Long Ridge Rd, which you can clearly see on the maps. They have been making heavy use of his water tanks (all that storage is paying off). He’s now 7k gallons low on his needs for the coming year, but that’s why I bought that water trailer a few years ago. That thing has really come in handy as well. It has a powered sprayer and he’s been using it to put out spot fires.

He said he could watch the fire slow down significantly when it reached areas where he has done clearing.

Tr’s place burned (empty for years), and they were going to let O's burn (Because it is a wood structure? Because it isn’t a primary residence?), but T convinced the captain to save it (with water from his lower tanks) because from there the fire could easily come back up the brush hillside towards P’s and his place [O's later burned]. Much of the woods on T’s lower property to the north have burned (CalFire did a backburn down there), but R’s house is safe. W’s burned. F's is safe [F’s later burned]. J's is safe.

They now have a pretty good firebreak where the fire has already come through and burned all the fuel to the north and west, but they are not completely out of danger yet. It could still wrap around from the south or east. We are all hoping that will not happen.

T is still sick and completely exhausted, but has kept going, because what else can he do? Some neighbors are going to try to come back up today, so he won’t be the only resident up there any more.

This has been an intense roller coaster of emotions for me, and I am safe in my home in Santa Barbara. My heart goes out to all those whose homes are endangered or burned. Because I'm secure and have internet and phone I'm doing my best to keep everyone updated with whatever info I can find. I've got Google earth and the latest MODIS data.

I had an intense moment yesterday afternoon when I saw the latest data, showing T's home safe, and my spirit soared. Then I saw that a neighbor's home had burned, the swath of red across all of upper Green Ridge and so much more of the Palo community, and just like that I came crashing down again. Burst into tears. This isn't just points and lines and polygons on a map, these are people's homes. Their histories. Their lives. I know what it is like to feel like you've completely lost the life you had, to have no idea what the future will be.

Prisma Dreams filter processing of a shot of fog in the valley I took from T's property a few years ago

dystopian dream

I dreamt last night that downtown Santa Barbara was flooded completely, permanently. The streets had become canals and the flooded lower levels of buildings were all abandoned. The water rose and fell with the tides, and the water left its mark on the walls of the buildings that were still standing. Most buildings were rotting away in the water, windows broken by the pressure of the water, paper, gypsum, wood, and asphalt shingles floating in mildewed and moldy chunks, but there were a few buildings that seemed likely to continue to survive. Stone and concrete were faring well. Adobe was melting, reverting back to mud, red tile roofs collapsing into the water. Steel was rusting, huge orange scales marking the high tide line.

I rode down State Street in a dinghy with a little outboard motor, the sound echoing off the buildings and through the paseos.

We turned right on Ortega and there were three men with a filthy old rust-bucket of a boat scavenging in the abandoned buildings. They were ripping wires and copper pipes from the walls of what had been the Volkswagen dealership. There was a foul oil slick around the whole area. I guessed that it was the oil from the hydraulic lifts as well as fluids from thousands of leaks and spills over the years. Volkswagen was polluting the world even more, this time as a result of the climate change that they helped to cause. Those guys had sludge all over their bodies, and they were cursing because the oil on their hands was making their job more difficult.

Even my beautiful hometown, in its bubble of wealth and privilege, it still wasn't safe from the rising seas, and here it was, abandoned buildings being stripped for scrap metal like a city in the rust belt.

Part of the inspiration for this dream came from something I saw on a walk in my neighborhood yesterday. Someone had attached the middle and lower sections-including the propeller-of an outboard motor to their mailbox. It made me remember some of the times I rode in a boat with an outboard motor. Part of it came from the prominence of water in my consciousness these past few days, and part of it came from my concern over what changes in sea level will do to coastal cities and especially my hometown. Also playing a part was my sense of guilt from driving my Volkswagen, which pollutes a lot more than I thought it did when I bought it.

water trauma and fear

I went to a concert at the Granada the day before yesterday. The Granada has 1,553 seats, and out of all those seats, the ones I bought were right next to W and his sister. I hadn’t seen W since the day he was informed by another family member that I had reported his sexual abuse of me to the police. I had sold the two seats in between us to the couple who was sitting there, and if I had not I would have been seated next to his sister, just one seat over from W. If all had gone according to my plan, my daughter and niece would have been there, too.

I leaned over and touched his sister’s arm and greeted her warmly. W looked over at me and I gave him a little half smile. I wanted to say “I forgive you,” that was in fact the exact phrase that came to mind when our eyes met, but it wasn’t an appropriate time or place for it to be spoken. There were three people seated in between us, two of whom were strangers. I hope my look conveyed at least a little of my forgiveness. I have worked hard to let go of my anger towards him and to forgive him. I didn’t do it for him, but I was glad to find that no anger came up when I was actually face-to-face with him again. I don’t know what that would have been like if the two young girls I love most in the world had been there as well. My mama bear protective instincts might have changed that. Anger is a powerful guardian.

Aside from my feelings toward W himself, I have done so much work to process my trauma from his his sexual abuse, and I think I’m in a very healthy place with regard to all that. However, I have not fully worked through my trauma and fear of water as a result of his actions in both ocean and swimming pool.

What happened was this: I was very young. I did not know how to swim and didn’t feel very comfortable in the water, so I’d hold on to the edge of the pool, or stay on the sand with the water no higher than my knees. W would grab me and throw me into the water unexpectedly, repeatedly. I felt like I was going to drown. I’d get my feet back on the sand or thrash my way back to the side of the pool, and just as I was catching my breath, he’d throw me back in again. I remember him and my cousin laughing and seeming oblivious to my struggles as I gasped, coughed, choked, sobbed and begged him to stop. I was utterly terrified, and it seemed that nobody noticed or cared. Even at his parents’ senior community pool, no one ever spoke up on my behalf. As an adult, I can’t imagine that W didn’t notice my distress and fear.

There were a few more incidents in the water that were traumatizing, but really only because I had such a fear of water going into them. Because of this early trauma, I never felt safe enough to put my face in the water without holding my nose, and so I’ve never really learned to swim, other than such strokes as can be done without putting one’s face in the water. I’ve never dived into a pool. I’ve never learned to boogie board, surf or scuba dive. For most of my life, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do those things.

Water danger even haunts me in my dreams. Since I was a teenager, I have often dreamed of huge tsunamis washing over Santa Barbara. I’m standing on the cliffs at Shoreline Park watching the tsunami come in. Near the house where most of my sexual trauma occurred, over Ledbetter, the beach where the worst of the water trauma occurred. I don’t particularly like that beach, and I rarely go there.

For years, starting soon after my daughter was born in 2005, I have had occasional dreams about sneaker waves sweeping children (especially my daughter) into the ocean. The sneaker wave comes, and we are trapped against the cliffs (often under Shoreline Park). Or children are playing, closer to the water than their parents and are swept out before we can get to them.

I also had recurring dreams where we were on one of the docks in the Santa Barbara Harbor (right next to Ledbetter), and she was dropped or fell off a dock into black inky water and disappeared beneath the surface. For some reason I and the other people on the dock couldn’t jump in after her. We were all paralyzed. She was in a realm where I could not protect her. What W did to me—my greatest fear, the closest I’d ever felt to death—was happening to her, and there was nothing I could do to save her. (As an aside, I think these dreams went even beyond my fear of water to one of the essential realities of being a parent. We can't protect our children from everything. We can’t protect them from so many things in life or, in the end, from death. We give them life, and to be alive means to die one day. That is a difficult thing to accept, but of course we must.)

For as long as I could remember, my dreams were almost exclusively lucid. Drowning dreams were my only nightmares, my only dreams in which I did not control the dream. They were the only dreams in which I couldn’t change the scene if I didn’t like what was happening. There was no pursuing enemy to embrace with love, nothing I could do to change the situation. From the dreams of my daughter drowning, I invariably woke with a gasp, trembling, my heart racing and my body drenched with sweat.

After my husband died in 2009, when I completely stopped lucid dreaming and let my subconscious guide my dreams, rather than my conscious mind, I started having terrifying nightmares about drowning, myself. At some point in one of these dreams, I couldn’t hold my breath any more and accepted that I was going to drown. I breathed in the ocean water, in full expectation of stabbing pain in my sinuses, throat and lungs and then death. But, to my surprise, it felt like any other breath. I was breathing normally underwater. And then I noticed that my entire body felt warm, relaxed and comfortable (I was feeling my body, asleep in my soft, warm bed). In my dreams I can now swim and dive deep into the ocean without fear. I can breathe in the water of the ocean and I feel safe there.

I listened to a podcast on animal spirit guides in late 2010, and as a result I bought a recording of guided meditation to encounter one’s own animal spirit guides. The first time I did the meditation, it was intensely hallucinatory, and I met a fish, a young female California sheephead. I asked her for a message, and all she would say was “swim.” Again and again I asked for something else, and again and again “swim” was the monosyllabic answer. This was, of course, the absolute last thing I wanted to do and the last thing I would ever have wanted to hear anyone advise me to do. The species of the fish was also very curious. A few weeks after that dream I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium and saw a big male sheephead in the kelp forest tank. I was so excited to see it, and then I read the informational card about it on the railing. I was amazed to discover that California sheephead are all born female. Depending on their environment (and if they live long enough) at some point in their life cycles they will all morph into males. Like the dragonfly, they are, to me, symbolic of complete transformation.

As a result of this vision, I realized that I needed to do some work to overcome my trauma around water. I had come so far in my dreams, but clearly, I still had so much more work to do. I found that it wasn’t nearly as easy in waking life.

Step one was starting to wash my face in a full basin of water and splashing water on my face rather than using a wet washcloth. Some water inevitably would go up my nose. At first, this induced full-on panic.

When I started spending time on the ranch in Big Sur, where there was no shower, I had to wash my face in the bathtub in the same way. I also started taking baths and washing my face in the huge bathtub in my home in the Santa Ynez Valley. With water up to two feet deep, it was even more scary. It was very, very hard to get to a point of being okay with that. I started resting with my face forward in the water for as long as I could hold my breath. Then I moved on to submerging my head totally, with and then without holding my nose. The first time I sank my head backwards into the water and water went up my nose I lost it completely. I didn’t feel safe again until I was not only out of the bath and mostly dry, but had the bathtub drained as well. That was a huge setback. But I continued to make progress, to have fewer and fewer episodes of panic.

When I was living in Big Sur, I bought a membership to the Carmel Valley Athletic Club, with the express purpose of using their hot tubs and pool. I wanted my daughter to spend a lot of time in the water and become a strong swimmer, and I wanted to continue to move forward with my healing around water. It was huge. My daughter is a great swimmer now, with no fear of the water. In fact, she loves to swim. I even got to the point where I could swim underwater while wearing a swim mask-without holding my nose! But this was in their warm, clear pools. Even in the hot tub I had a hard time if the jets were on, moving the water and sending bubbles up my nose.

Natural (and colder) bodies of water are another thing entirely. I thought I was doing so well. I swam in the ocean once last summer, really swam way out past where I could touch the bottom, and it was fun. I felt safe. I swam out with my sister and our daughters. My brother-in-law and nephew were out there floating with big surfboards that I could grab on to for a minute when I got tired, and I discovered how easy it is to float in the ocean if you are calm. I was excited to continue to swim in the ocean, but I am not a strong enough swimmer to feel safe going out by myself, and there was just never another opportunity to go out with anyone who I felt safe swimming with before the water got cold again.

Yesterday I went into the ocean and had a completely different experience. While I was swimming past the waves, I got water up my nose and down the back of my throat, choked a bit, and I started to hyperventilate. It was not a scary situation. The waves were small. I was really close to shore, just barely past where I could touch the bottom. I thought I’d just get past where the waves were breaking and float on my back to calm down, but I discovered that I was hyperventilating and couldn’t hold enough air in my lungs to float. I started to feel concerned, like I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t head back to shore. Hyperventilating where I couldn’t touch the bottom just seemed like a really dangerous thing. I told my friend I was panicking and needed to get back to shore, and she held my hand for a minute and helped me calm down until we got back to where I could touch the bottom. She was very sweet. I went back up on the dry sand and laid on my towel in the sun. My legs were shaking and I was a bit dizzy. It was so strange because out in the water my rational mind had remained totally calm. My self-talk was like “Uh, body, you are in no danger here. The waves are small, and we are really close to the shore. The water is warm. Calm the fuck down and let’s float here and enjoy this beautiful scene.” But my body just couldn’t calm down. It was like some danger signal had been sent when that water made me choke. I guess I am still not to a point of being okay with water going up my nose like that. But I swear I had been. I’d been so much better. I think seeing W the other day that somehow stirred up old traumas.

It seems so strange to me that I have this fear, in a way, because in my conscious, rational mind, I am not afraid of death. Especially since my husband died. I had to face my own mortality, and discovered that I find the idea of non-existence to be a peaceful and totally acceptable thing. I’m not afraid of the water because I’m afraid of drowning, of death. At least, not consciously. It seems that I have a primal, instinctual, totally unconscious fear response to water that has to be unlearned, untrained.

A friend warned me that this might not be possible to totally heal, that in the attempt to work through this trauma, I need to guard against retraumatizing myself. I think that is true as well. It is something that must be done totally at my own pace, without any outside pressure or internal expectations.

2016-07-05

Note: This was a journal entry, and so is a little more raw and unedited than what I usually post.

me in the mid 1980s
I remember this day so clearly. My Dad had taken me camping at the Pinnacles, and my new friend had convinced me to get in the swimming pool with her. I remember being so delighted that I felt safe and was having fun in cool water. 

connection

A friend asked me a question today: What is connection? I would reply with another question. What is real? And the accompanying question: How do we know?

Most things, we know are real because we can sense and measure them. We can measure and quantify so much. 

Other things we know are real through a different kind of perception. I experience my “self” as the witness behind all my observations and experiences, rather than as my body and its biometrics. That is something that science cannot quantify. What else is there that is real and perceivable and yet cannot be objectively observed or measured? Connection, perhaps. 

Certainly, we can observe electrical activity in the brain and body that signify consciousness and life. We can measure activity in particular parts of the brain when we have the experience of empathy and connection, the hormonal surges when we experience attraction or repulsion, but the connection itself—which can range from the most fleeting moment of recognizing a fellow being to the deepest love—perhaps there is something there that can’t be measured by science. 

Many spiritual teachers talk about the life or consciousness that is in everything, animating everything. Is that what this is, this witness of everything, and the connection between the witnesses? Are we really all one life, and the connection we feel just the recognition of that fact What then of plants, which science has shown can sense in ways that we cannot? I can attest to feeling a sense of connection to ancient trees, certainly. But I doubt the trees felt any particular connection with me. Is that connection I felt a thing of imagination or something real, something we cannot prove with science? How can we know? 

What about people who feel a connection to someone they've only read about, even an imaginary character? What about the love we might have for the dead? People can even feel a love connection to a celebrity who has never even heard their name. Is that love a delusion? But who can deny what another person feels? 

A partner recently described a feeling of being alone when he was with me. Feeling a lack of connection when I was quiet. I didn’t feel that. I felt him there with me, I felt the connection and enjoyed it in silence. If two beings can be together and have such opposing experiences of their connection, what then does that mean? 

Is connection real or imaginary? How can such a question be answered? The now proven theory of “spooky action at a distance” comes to mind, but can quantum entanglement even be applied to the relationship between beings? What about mirror neurons and their connection with theory of mind and empathy? 

Schrödinger said, of quantum entanglement: “When two systems enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before. ... By the interaction the two systems have become entangled.” 

If we apply this idea to relationships between beings (and it is not at all a given that it can be so applied), what then does that mean for all of our relationships? Are we not all then completely entangled, permanently, not just with those we love but with every being and every thing that we ever encounter? Is that then, what we call relationship? And connection? What then sets one connection apart from the rest? We are all made of the same star stuff. The same energy vibrates all of our constituent particles. If we are all just a part of the whole, then isn’t any lack of connection the true illusion? 

I ask myself these questions and can only answer them with more questions. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. 

2016-06-30

a moment of connection

the blink of an eye

The indifferent stars glitter overhead

as generations of men are born and die.

The rocks in my garden

collected over a lifetime

will outlive me

for certain.
The scattered bones
reminding me
that as I am
they once were
and as they are
I will be.

Crystals

bought and paid for

grown in the earth

over aeons

mined

cut

and sold for profit

decorate my home

with its walls of paper and dust.

When all this is gone

all memory of me forgotten

they will remain.

What can we do

in the short span of our lives?

The blink of an eye

less than a blink

in the lifetime of the universe

of this solar system

of this planet.

Our currency

which we work and die for

is little more than numbers on a screen

zeroes and ones

stored in servers

imagined and agreed upon

buying and selling pieces of this planet

thinking we own them

when they will outlive us

and all our descendents.

the day I learned what grief is

the day I learned what grief is

that bone-deep agony

every part of my body aching and throbbing with pain

my mind a keening wail of misery

that moment of remembering, upon waking

the incontrovertible fact

that I’ll never again

look into those eyes

hear that voice

feel those arms around me

hear those familiar steps

and just as I was emerging from

that dark pit

where no light could reach me

I was plunged in again

even deeper than before

for a while, all I could do

in my dreams

was to float in a place of gray mist

shrouded by fog

as if wrapped in cotton wool

neither thinking, hearing, seeing, nor feeling

I had to drag myself back

back into life

back into pain

written 2016-05-11

about April 17, 2009

the jacarandas

The jacarandas

when they flower

always remind me of my grandfather. 

That quiet man 

who sat in his chair

in the corner

watching the rest of us. 

So many times
he spoke of how the streets of his hometown 

were carpeted with purple

every spring 

when the jacarandas flowered.

That first spring 

after he died 

I cried when I realized

that he wouldn't see them bloom 

This year

Or ever again. 

2016-04-15

I know the price I am willing to pay

I dreamed last night that I was walking with a group of people down a path through the forest. Someone approached us and told me that my lover had died. My world went white for a moment with the shock of it, and then all the color drained out of everything, and all the joy. The trees grew together over my head, and the sky darkened even though it was the middle of the day. People reached for me, but I was alone. They couldn't touch me. I felt myself sinking underground, the dirt and rocks falling along with me. There I was again in that dark pit of grief, where no light and no laughter could reach me. I know that place well.

This dream reminded me of something I've never forgotten. All love ends in heartbreak for someone. By loving again, by loving so deeply, I’m accepting this. Pain is the price of love. I came into this relationship walking fully in that awareness. I could never be as open as I was, as I am, without that knowledge, without knowing what exactly it is that I am accepting. I know the price I am willing to pay.

2016-04-14