stolen animals, fourteen

Page Five, website outline

Some people reading this page in the past have made the erroneous and mean-spirited assumption that these animals were taken from me because I abused them in some way, or because I didn’t take care of them.  That’s doesn’t happen to be true. They were taken because I was illegally evicted, couldn’t afford a lawyer, had no place to go with the animals, and the indolent dull-wits at the DMH didn’t bother to find us such a place. 

 

                                 Like the dew on the mountain,
                                 Like the foam on the river,
                                 Like the bubble on the fountain,
                                 Thou art gone, and forever. 
                                          ~~~ walter scot  
 

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Tuuschi is the one up on the perch. He and Tammi, his sister and mate for life, were bothborn crippled in October of 1994. And yet they were as happy and loving and resourceful as all the lovebirds in their family. here to read more about Tuuschi, and here to read his poem. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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After the death of Tammi, Tuuschi the lovebird bonded beautifully with Canajoharie  the parakeet, and vice versa. They became great friends, but couldn’t share a cage because lovebirds love to bite the feet of other species of birds.

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Manchmal wünschte ich, meine Zeit wäre wie Eis,

dann hätt’ ich so viel Zeit gewonnen.

Doch während ich darüber nachdenk’ ist ganz leis’

ein Stück von unsrer Zeit zeronnen. 

~~  reinhard mey 

Lizzie was born in 1988, and lived with someone else until I got her at age 3 in 1991. She was funny, and feisty, and very much set in her ways as she got older. Like all parrots, she could give you a bite once in a while if you transgressed her rules.

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Brainse's name is pronounced Bransha. She was 8 and a half when taken.

Brainse’s the one sitting up gazing out the window, looking for things to bark at. The dogs lying with her are her father (Mishi) and her sister (Braon). Braon died several hours after this photo was taken, euthanized, as the euphemism would have it, on the operating table because of a raging, bleeding cancer on her pancreas. Mishi was also one of the 14 taken from me on 12 March 2008. (here to Brainse’s poem).

Some of the cats taking their nap. All taken from me, hidden in various places, and presumed euthanized. Back corner of bed: 

Chani

(7 and a half when taken) and 

Mandy

(14 when taken). Front of bed: Chani’s two brothers 

Aram

(orange) and 

Abel     (tan)

here to Aram’s poem, or Abel’s

Judah and her son, Chan

Judah was 13 and a half, and Chan had recently turned 12 when they were both taken from me. Shiloh was first cousin to Chan, and also, of course, to Judah’s other two children, Chailin and Ziidjian. Judah’s the Siamese, and the black and white one gazing sadly out the window is Chan. I say sadly because it was hard for my cats at our last address on Millers Falls Road in Turners Falls. It’s a very busy street and I was too afraid of them being hit to let them out. Some of my cats had always gone outside when they wanted to, but Chan was one who’d pretty much always been an inside cat. And yet he would sometimes look out the window sadly like that.  ~~(Judah  ~~  Chan, and  his poem).

 

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                    Manchmal wünschte ich, meine Liebe wär’ ein Haus,
                                  mit Giebeln die zum Himmel ragen.
                   Mal’ ich (euch) meine Liebe schon vergebens aus,
                                 will ich sie (euch) wenigstens sagen.
                                   
                   
                                       ~~   reinhard mey  (with license)
 
 

 Shiloh, who was 15 and a half when she was taken, and two weeks later killed by the so-called animal “shelter.”   (here to see another shot of Chan; here to Shiloh’s Poem).

 
 
Here’s my male dog, Mishi, eating his supper. He was 10 and a half when they took him. He wasn’t adoptible, presumably, because of his age and his epilepsy, so I’m assuming that whoever fostered him did so only briefly and then had him killed. But I’ve not been able to find out for sure because the people who know won’t talk. Two years have passed, and they still won’t tell me any truth. Mishi was Brainse’s father.  ~~  This black cat is Ziidjian, when he was 11 months old, with our rabbit family (the albino rabbit, Frosty, was the father of all those babies). Ziidjian, along with his brother Chan and his cousin Shiloh, were killed at the local animal “shelter” on Monday 24 March 2008, just two weeks after our eviction. Of my 14 stolen animals, these are the only 3 for whom I know when and where and how they died  (here to read Ziidjian’s poem). Next week will come the two-year anniversary of what was done to us. I’d wanted to have at least one photo, even if the shots weren’t great, of each of the 14 on this website by that time. But most of my pictures are either in a storage unit or the barn of a friend, and I can’t get at them right now. So I’m one animal short for the anniversary: Chailin, the sister of Chan and Ziidjian, cousin of Shiloh, and daughter of Judah. She looked a lot like Chan, with less white on her face. And she was huge — the largest female cat I’ve ever had. Sorry, Chaili-beri. 
 
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Chani, Abel and Aram… were siblings. Once they were past their kittenhood, they would rarely lie all three together anymore. They’d make some kind of a pair, and the odd one out would either lie down somewhere alone or with another cat who wasn’t a blood relative. And below, at long last, Chailin. It’s a picture in which you can’t even see her face, but it’s the only one in my possession at the moment. Now you’re here with your family, Chaili. 
 

read…   Stolen stars…     Sehnen

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                                                                                                                          tá mé cailte gan thú

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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2010-2012 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

animals

 Page Four, website outline

As far back as I can remember (age three), there have been animals. At that time my parents had two or three dogs, some chickens, two cats and a parakeet.         

So, for all my days I lived with multiple animals. I consider my first continuous animal family to be the one I had in eastern Mass, from birth to age 32. And then at 32, I came to western Mass and started a second continuous animal family, from age 32 to age 55. It was the 14 remaining members of that second  family that were taken from me on 12 March 2008, as the result of the illegal eviction, and the complete failure of service from the Department of Mental Health and their contract agency, Community Support Services.

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There’s a new animal now, since 31 October 2009, and for a person who had families of animals all her life, one animal is not enough. Not by a long way. I need to receive more love than that, and to give more love than that. But the fact that she’s not enough and never can be isn’t the new guinea pig’s fault. (read a little about her here).

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read…   Ten little indians…   All my stars…   Mugsy’s book

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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2010-2012 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

a website, a scrapbook, an unamerikan story

 Page One, website outline

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turners falls, massachusetts

thursday 21 january 2010

why is my story unamerikan? the first answer is that  amerikans like to have stories about people who triumphed, despite having the deck stacked against them. the deck has been stacked against me since childhood in several very significant ways, and I have not triumphed. one of the things my story is is a story of failure, and amerikans don’t want that kind. everything must be horatio alger and bambi: the obligatory happy endings. nothing gets us amerikans down. we just keep truckin’ till that ole sun starts shinin’ again. to heck with all  that. didn’t I fall for that nonsense, and other nonsense like it, long enough? there are several other reasons as well that the true events of my life since 2006 are unamerikan , but I leave that to you. if you read enough pages, if you have a mind that can reason things out, then you’ll discover this other unamerikanism.

and the word story? there are stories that are fiction, and stories that are true. mine are true, with the exception of the single novel I’m putting on this website. you might choose to decide that some events I relate are not true, and that’s no doubt rooted in your own psychological longings for denial. but the set of your particular mind does not make a liar or a fantasist out of me. I’ve never in my life made up stories, except in the days when I was writing fiction. and I don’t imagine things. at times I misinterpret things, as everyone does, but I’ve never imagined events or people or space aliens or whatever. and if you find I misinterpret the words and actions of others more frequently than most people do, then the reason may lie in my autism, in asperger’s syndrome, and my great difficulty in grasping the indirect, tricky ways of other people’s minds.

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donna williams, an autistic woman who has written several books on living with autism, has these words about her view of the world as a child:

               the world seemed to be impatient, annoying, callous and unrelenting.

that’s how I also felt about the world as a child, and that is how I still feel.iIn fact, these feelings are stronger with every passing year. this quote is from her first book, Nobody Nowhere, and nobody nowhere is, vis á vis other people, what I’ve pretty much always been. I was someone to animals: someone lovable, someone of value (even if I am odd), someone they were always happy to see come into a room. it hasn’t been that way with human beings at all.

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and now March 2011, slightly more than a year since I started knitting all of my blogs together into a website. now things have changed yet again. I’ve changed my mind again about how I want to organize all this material. what can I tell you…. my life was destroyed, and that has changed me drastically, and for good. I’ve remained an internet writer much longer than I ever thought I would. I’ve remained this odd beast, an internet writer, whether I really want to be one or not. and I don’t, really. but I have no life — it was stolen. I have no animal family — they were hidden and killed. writing and organizing and doing images is a small anesthetic to the pain I live in daily. below is the most recent re-structuring.

the blogs that form the website:

 

                                       braonthree.wordpress.com  (you are here)
                                       braon
                                       braonwandering
                                       judah
                                       mishi  (asperger’s syndrome)
                                       sehnen
                                       mentalhell   (on blogspot)
                                       sehnen  (0n soulcast)
                                       small tales from rowley
 
two blogs of poetry only:
 
                                        shadowpoems
                                        scealta liatha   (fear not, poems are in english)
 
 
the books; ten little indians which may be turning into eleven:
 
 
                                        mugsy’s book  (a certain dog)
                                        lifelines       (autobio)
                                        don’t ask    (satire)
                                        spite and malice 
                                        all my stars   (animals)
                                        stolen stars   (stolen animals)
                                        neverending solitaire   (asperger’s)
                                        poison and snowflake trees  (turners falls)
                                        being toward death
                                        kaikenlainen    (a brother has died)
                                        lucked out     (a father dead a long time)
 
the eighteen-year-old novel:    the pygmies keep dancing
                               other novels:     dunvegan spell
                                                             she says
 
 
 
  
 
click here to new posts.
 

I belong to, and write in, a number of groups at experienceproject.com, under the name sehnen. follow on twitter: @ziidjian or @annegrace2.

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It’s going to take me approximately thirty-five years to write all the new pages that need doing for these books, and to move all of the existing pages from where they are now to their own new space. these projects are in part a way of living in the daily grief and loneliness and rage. and they are also, and this is the most important thing, a tribute to all the animals of my life, most especially the fourteen who were stolen, hidden, lied about, and killed.

I write bluntly and truthfully; sardonically and bitterly. the events since 2006 and the people who caused them are despicable to me. emotions are raw. I do not forgive these people, nor do I have any desires in that direction. if you seek positivity and airy new-age platitudes and happy endings — in other words, if you’re looking for the amerikan story —  then my website and my books are probably not where you should be. but if you love animals deeply; and if you believe that cruelty is not a fairy tale, but a true feature of some people’s personalities; and if you have any compassion for people whose lives have been laid waste by whatever forces, then maybe you can be a reader here. I appreciate sane, respectful comments. anyone is free to disagree with me on anything at all, in a civil and respectful way.

internet people seem to be hurry people. and information-hungry. and news-mad. none of that happens here, or will. this is slow here, this is about one person and many animals, none of whom are famous or important in the big, fast world. this is true life, true animals, true people, poems, pictures, satire, books. this is emotional. I haven’t yet found anything else like it on the internet, and I wish I could, because I would read it every day.

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The Scrapbook  Art I  ~~  Art II  ~~  Art III

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all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2010-2013 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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