AUGUST 4th (FEBRUARY 28th)
When I first came here, I was scared, but exited. I think this is what accounted for most of my nausea on the ship. I did not want to leave the known, but I understand that I had the potential to create something new entirely. What I found has now begun to define my existence rather than me of it. Oliver, borrowing some slaves to complete some garden work, has instructed me to begin design plans for the garden some spring. I do not know why he has released me. He had tightened the noose on my life so quickly that I barely left my quarters. I cannot assume it was my ambivalent attitude that has made him notice. He actually tried to visit me in the night not long ago, but I asked Cover to turn him away, too many memories of those early times. Even more since he has forced me back into undignified society, Clover has been running errands between us. Our communication directly is forced and edited, especially since he has relinquished the forced means and we no longer eat together. Clover says he spends most of his time in either his study or out on his mare.
I am still made to attend Wednesday, Friday and Saturday social events, as well as other miscellaneous social events throughout each month. On those days, I give Coquen the lessons. Oliver allows him an hour to attend me in my quarters. Coquen’s eyes are startling; they are silver lined glistening coal colour. His skin the colour of unrefined honey, a deep Caramel colour. It is always glowing by the time I get to see him, having worked the morning in the fields. Although Oliver wanted one of the workers to be a supervisor, he passed over Coquen for Ammie. For the education program, this was good, but Coquen was disappointed. He works so hard, knowing that he missed an opportunity to be better in a world where nothing could be his. Because of my negligence, he was punished. He said to me last week, God bless him, that he didn’t mind Ammie taking the supervisors position, because her simply being a supervisor “proves that we are capable to supervise, even though the lord could have hired a Master as a supervisor, but he didn’t.” He always calls me Lady Biaah, although I have told him many times to call me Hallie. He told me not much later that the education program allows him to feel important. This is not a consolation, but it fills me with warmth anyway. I enjoy his company, he is a perfect gentleman, there is a beauty in his personality where Oliver has only hate and prejudice. Coquen sees the beauty within everything, and he notices everything in minute detail. Nothing passes him by, like he remembers my favourite flower to bring it to me (poppies so red that they bleed into the black centre is intoxicating) even if I only mention these details once.
March 10
Oliver is on the war path. All of the wives have been commenting to Oliver the spectacular recipes I supplied. Ever since the Boxing Day party, Delilah, April, Carla and the recently returned Sarah asked me for the recipes. I asked Clover if it was ok. She asked the others. From what she told me, it was a cornfield labourer, Senanoa. Clover said house politics were fragile and structure like a card building: a small gust and it falls. Coquen, Ammie, Kary (the wheat field supervisor) and Sascha (the sugar field supervisor) are regarded with mistrust and supervision. Although, according to Clover, they all know that these four would not betray them, they all knew what torture, sleep and sleep depravation could cause. I am not sure I understood, because all that Clover said further was that Coquen, Ammie, Kary and Sascha were considered effectively as closer pawns to the lord. I asked about Senanoa. Clover said that they had assumed that his last place was horrific, as he had never spoken previously. Apparently he never communicated anything. I asked if Oliver had ever noticed. Clover’s smile tightened as she answered, “Of course not, he barely knows we are breathing, let alone anything else.” Senanoa had stood up and had said, Clover relayed that “they judge us without seeing us, they are blinded by what they fear and cannot accept anything outside of their locked souls and minds. Well, this is a key. There may be a thousand doors to them, and this is one of them.”
Clover said that Mischa had argued: “Why must they have all the doors and we have none.” Senanoa replied “Because life is a barter, we must find our own term through theirs. We have found something that we can use, our food. They cannot see all the way through us like air anymore. They have to find blinkers to us in another way, but this is still giving us an advantage, a small one, admittedly, but what is more intimate than eating?” I asked Clover how he spoke if he had never before. Clover said “He speaks softly, but rigidly; He said that, before he was sold here, he worked for a professor. Actually, he was the product of the professor and an upstairs maid. He was educated by the professor. Once the wife, and then the professor died, their legitimate son sold both Senanoa and his mother, separately. He hated the status they suggested, the family abomination.”
I did not know what to say, how to react. But this news also came with the gifts from Grace. Only 20 of the forty eight recipes were allowed, but there they were in Graces jaggared, messy script, bound by cinnamon scented cloth. With Senanoa still guilted in my head, I will preserve these in here and pass only my own copy’s on. These are to be kept. The tea ladies love this, and have been asking me for these recipes, Caitlyn Mue (wife of one of Oliver’s horrendous friends, Jack) and Millicent Cyme, (Another of Oliver’s Fiends, Ralph) came to me asking for these. Both of them suggested that they were not the only ones wanting these, but we would all be attending Aleesha and Syrone Muae’s Party the next week, these recipes to be shared then. I have heard of this couple, but until this proposed patry, have not met them. They are the type of people whose status a socialite would only dare to dream of. They have power and influence, and the ability to sabotage any one of us by implication and innuendo rather than by rumer and suspicion. They rarely attend parties but once a month, host one. Oliver met Syrone at a market a few months ago and this is the first invitation that we have received. Clover, whose dry sense of humour never fails to amuse me, commented that they must need new blood upon which to feed. Attendinng this party, the recipies were asked for. Given out, they have spread out from here, this sole party opening the darkness to just that sliver of light. Aleesha asked why I was so compliant with the other women, thinking that there recipies were old family ones, rather than hijacked from people my husband purchased. I responded by telling her that food just doesn’t nourish us, but can make us feel so many things, sensual and evocative. Aleesha invited me for tea the following Tuesday, and although Oliver was no where near me, I understand that had I rejected this offer and Oliver found out, the consequences would be miserable for me.
There are lives that are wrapped around and between each other, there is little separation anymore from the powerful from the powerless, that thin blood line that is drawn within the mud, ignored but yet still awake like a serpent beast between us. This is not yet one nation when all we do in our paths is lay hatred down and support basic instincts. Of all the places that are the embodiment of the Devils playground, this is the one, this is the place, where blood is as thin as daybreak ice, all watered down from the glaze of untropical wasteland. That blood can define us as much as our skin, that ownership is based on blood within the law, that all of this is destruction and hatred and waste. What fundamentally went wrong here to have now become this quagmire of desperation, mistrust and hatred. There is not hope here, there is no light at the end of this long and dark tunnel, there is only darkness that is consuming us all.
March 14th
Aleesha is fabulous. I have me someone so. I don’t know how to describe how she is. Aleesha and Syrone supply a small wage to all staff, irrelevant os colour. I asked her how she handles this abhorrent situation. She told me one of the best things that I have ever heard from one of the society crowd: “Hallie, equality starts within your own home. You have the ultimate control within your own home, so control that. You can only hope to influence others outside your control, but by being an inspiration, you become a leader. And you have to be willing to concede defeat with some people, especially ones whose minds are already lost into darkness. God will judge those for himself, it is not for us too do, but be wary of those who do the right thing in fear and believe in another. Syrone and I pay our employees because that is exactly what they are. I will not have anything indentured to me because it is socially acceptable rather than morally acceptable. Slavery is not morally acceptable. Everyone here is free.”
I, still naive beyond measure, asked why they don’t leave. Her laughter tore at me like shards of glass, but she offered me an explanation. “All of there lives are one juxtaposition against our bipolar belief structure. Freedom papers apparently can be forged. Don’t be mistaken child, Oliver has blinded you to the reality of the world here, while at the same time, showing you the abject cruelty of it. Freedom only means something here, on this farm. As soon as they leave, they will no longer be free as we are, as they are here.” It was here that I realised that Aleesha recognised the recipes for what they were and knew that I could be trusted with her beliefs.
I felt violated and hurt. Yet, still, truth is truth. It cannot be enclosed in sweetness. Slaves in society means just that, irrelevant of how myself or Aleesha is within our own gates. Our employee’s inside out homes will still be slaves outside our estates. They can still be stolen, taken, sold and beaten again, in spite of papers that give them the right to be. In spite of having to have papers to let them be. I am still blinded and Oliver took advantage of my compassion and youth, and has destroyed even more of what makes me what I used to be. I can believe he is crueller than I initially thought. Aleesha has made these Tuesday afternoons a permanent appointment. I must end this now; Coquen is due to attending me.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Loved By Another Chapter Five
JULY 25th (November 10th)
The dressmaker was appalling in his treatment of me. Why a man is a dressmaker for a woman rather than a tailor is beyond me. He does not even measure us up, so it cannot be that. He is a very disturbing man. And my awful husband! He had already chosen the designs! It has become just how it was on the ship, the decisions bypassing me to defer to him. And he has taken the domestic accounts and reduced the amount of food automatically. He has become even more intolerable, an ogre of rituals and rules. He still has not visited me at night; he keeps to himself and leaves me to ponder his refusal to come to me. There are undercurrents, whispers of my youth and lack of pregnancy, whispers of barrenness.
Clover, in private, now mocks him with her soft Lilly-of-the-valley voice, unsilently. But now I am dependant on Clover for all of the information regarding everything. Oliver is determined to enclose me in a replica of society that was archaic even to the culture we left it with. I do not understand why we left if he just wants to create a society with the same problems, which had lead him to leave in the first place. I think he just feels insecure, as if to prove to others that he deserves respect. But this, still, gives him no right to take away all the freedom that I have gained through his neglect of me since we arrived. I am not happy here, not happy with him, but I was finally finding a niche within which I could survive, a boundary with which to define at least something of myself.
I am worried that he will take Clover from me. This, what I have now, has become less of a life than what I have ever had before him, it is less than life, it is barely existence. If he takes away Clover or the education program, I will be even less than nothing and no better than anything. Oliver talks as if he owns us all, but this journal is the only entity preventing him from tearing me apart. This journal means that he can never take what remains defiant within us.
When I cannot sleep, in the night when the daemons don’t come but haunt me deeply, Clover tells me these amazing stories. He can never take that away, those vivid memories that I keep. He cannot steal the lucid way she conveys worlds in her words, and the way she animates all things that she touches. I am afraid of transcribing them hear, as it would feel as if a betrayal of my heart. Oliver never has understood passion, like my passion for teaching the written word, or the passion from listening to the stories, the songs, music and dances of places that they allow me to feel. He could never see this as a style of enlightenment; never expand his repertoire of life. His world is enclosed by his mind, not by his eduction. I think that he has just been cruel from birth.
July 27th (December 20th)
He has begun to send me to functions every Saturday afternoon and this in addition to those society gatherings on Wednesday and Fridays. I am sure that they accept me as one of them; I have been acting in this play for my entire life, even though the script has changed. Clover now attends me everywhere that I am forced to attend. On Fridays at the end of each month, I attend a market, one of those previously mentioned by one of those insipid women. Here I collect many things to fill my time between Oliver enforced mealtimes. Instead of forcing himself upon me, he now forces me to eat with him, a reversal of our positions since we arrived. The only slaves in attendance at the markets are forced to wait outside the stalls, as to not contaminate the products for sale. I commented on this to Mrs Amy Cole, the host of the Friday social event, and she, quite blasé, stated that they would make everything soiled, unclean, and thus, must be kept at a safe distance. Interesting, as if they soiled everything, why does she have them carrying the products home? Or preparing her food? Or use them as a wet nurse for her children? Must all of these women be stupid? It is as if they cannot make basic correlations. It is both infuriating and disappointing.
I think that, although they are accepting me, they are becoming annoyed, and slightly suspicious of my comments and questions, but I was just devastated that Clover had to be left outside as if a contagious pet that I am enforced to endure. Each moment that I become more enclosed within this society, the more I notice the severe lack of value in any of it. Each breath I take, I exhale all of the repugnant inequalities that I still, unwittingly and unwillingly enforce. All I have attempted to achieve since we have been here has been gradually usurped by Oliver. Soon, all I will be is an errant butterfly trapped within a deathly glass chamber.
JULY 30th (December 30th)
The parties here are worse than back at home, because now I know better. I know who the party was created by and exactly who was actually taking the credit. Saturday’s party was the christening party of Sarah Kale Nesam and her husbands, Jonathon’s child, who is fourteen days old. I had not met Sarah Kale, as she has been in confinement since I started socialising; being that it has been a difficult pregnancy, and I was not an acquaintance of her to visit her personally. Her baby is fed by a slave wet nurse, whose child had recently died due to fever.
By the time I joined the party (Oliver decided on being fashionably late), Sarah Kale was passionately explaining the depravity of their slaves, their “ignorant” chanting and songs and their “primitive” worship of pagan devils posing as God. I felt like telling them that their belief systems are complex and beautiful, the structure amazing, the chanting and songs no different that the choirs we have. They sing of their devotion, we of his glory. Either way, this party of ignorance astounds me. No matter how much I prepare myself with this, it destroys me still.
If I could tell Sarah Kale that she is being hypocritical, if they are so dirty and evil, how can one allow them to feed one’s own child? I do not understand this behaviour. The whole five hours of this garden party, all of them complained. Not one of them saw the beauty of the last of the fall butterflies before winter. They missed the simple beauty of the blue light sky, and the powder-puff clouds, lazy hanging by the wire from hidden stars. They did not see the splendid platters of food, the angelic arrangement of colours and the way each piece was delicate and intricate, placed with delicate care, destroyed by their malicious natures. Their ugliness are pillars of Clack salt among gardens of ripe trees and rusty colours scattered as if painted with love.
AUGUST 2nd (FEBRUARY 8th)
It has been so long since we left home. I have not yet heard word form my family. I guess that this is half my responsibility. I should write to my mother, she must think that I am dead. Oliver is still keeping me confined from his sight as if in the final months of pregnancy. Although, this is impossible. All the sordid details my sisters used to fill me with had crept back from the cobwebish shadows of my mind, creeping quietly, disturbingly, persistently into my sleep, disillusioning my day and blocking the sum, only to brighten to the moon, no matter how heavy the curtains.
I am afraid that Oliver may hear my restlessness, and take me away to Atienne. This is a sanatorium. It is not called that, it is known as a Health retreat. This does not mistake the intent of this place, nor mistake the reason someone is sent there. I would die within the month if ensnared like a fly caught in a spider’s web. This is bad enough, this meagre existence of the pink and lilac walls, which once calmed and warmed me, now they shock my eyes and reverberates through my skull, causing me great pain. The food Clover brings to me no longer sustains me, and my ribs are slight in there angles under skin, and indicator of my rapid weight loss. I was not that big in the first place, but even the corsets are dimly aware that something is wrong.
The dressmaker was appalling in his treatment of me. Why a man is a dressmaker for a woman rather than a tailor is beyond me. He does not even measure us up, so it cannot be that. He is a very disturbing man. And my awful husband! He had already chosen the designs! It has become just how it was on the ship, the decisions bypassing me to defer to him. And he has taken the domestic accounts and reduced the amount of food automatically. He has become even more intolerable, an ogre of rituals and rules. He still has not visited me at night; he keeps to himself and leaves me to ponder his refusal to come to me. There are undercurrents, whispers of my youth and lack of pregnancy, whispers of barrenness.
Clover, in private, now mocks him with her soft Lilly-of-the-valley voice, unsilently. But now I am dependant on Clover for all of the information regarding everything. Oliver is determined to enclose me in a replica of society that was archaic even to the culture we left it with. I do not understand why we left if he just wants to create a society with the same problems, which had lead him to leave in the first place. I think he just feels insecure, as if to prove to others that he deserves respect. But this, still, gives him no right to take away all the freedom that I have gained through his neglect of me since we arrived. I am not happy here, not happy with him, but I was finally finding a niche within which I could survive, a boundary with which to define at least something of myself.
I am worried that he will take Clover from me. This, what I have now, has become less of a life than what I have ever had before him, it is less than life, it is barely existence. If he takes away Clover or the education program, I will be even less than nothing and no better than anything. Oliver talks as if he owns us all, but this journal is the only entity preventing him from tearing me apart. This journal means that he can never take what remains defiant within us.
When I cannot sleep, in the night when the daemons don’t come but haunt me deeply, Clover tells me these amazing stories. He can never take that away, those vivid memories that I keep. He cannot steal the lucid way she conveys worlds in her words, and the way she animates all things that she touches. I am afraid of transcribing them hear, as it would feel as if a betrayal of my heart. Oliver never has understood passion, like my passion for teaching the written word, or the passion from listening to the stories, the songs, music and dances of places that they allow me to feel. He could never see this as a style of enlightenment; never expand his repertoire of life. His world is enclosed by his mind, not by his eduction. I think that he has just been cruel from birth.
July 27th (December 20th)
He has begun to send me to functions every Saturday afternoon and this in addition to those society gatherings on Wednesday and Fridays. I am sure that they accept me as one of them; I have been acting in this play for my entire life, even though the script has changed. Clover now attends me everywhere that I am forced to attend. On Fridays at the end of each month, I attend a market, one of those previously mentioned by one of those insipid women. Here I collect many things to fill my time between Oliver enforced mealtimes. Instead of forcing himself upon me, he now forces me to eat with him, a reversal of our positions since we arrived. The only slaves in attendance at the markets are forced to wait outside the stalls, as to not contaminate the products for sale. I commented on this to Mrs Amy Cole, the host of the Friday social event, and she, quite blasé, stated that they would make everything soiled, unclean, and thus, must be kept at a safe distance. Interesting, as if they soiled everything, why does she have them carrying the products home? Or preparing her food? Or use them as a wet nurse for her children? Must all of these women be stupid? It is as if they cannot make basic correlations. It is both infuriating and disappointing.
I think that, although they are accepting me, they are becoming annoyed, and slightly suspicious of my comments and questions, but I was just devastated that Clover had to be left outside as if a contagious pet that I am enforced to endure. Each moment that I become more enclosed within this society, the more I notice the severe lack of value in any of it. Each breath I take, I exhale all of the repugnant inequalities that I still, unwittingly and unwillingly enforce. All I have attempted to achieve since we have been here has been gradually usurped by Oliver. Soon, all I will be is an errant butterfly trapped within a deathly glass chamber.
JULY 30th (December 30th)
The parties here are worse than back at home, because now I know better. I know who the party was created by and exactly who was actually taking the credit. Saturday’s party was the christening party of Sarah Kale Nesam and her husbands, Jonathon’s child, who is fourteen days old. I had not met Sarah Kale, as she has been in confinement since I started socialising; being that it has been a difficult pregnancy, and I was not an acquaintance of her to visit her personally. Her baby is fed by a slave wet nurse, whose child had recently died due to fever.
By the time I joined the party (Oliver decided on being fashionably late), Sarah Kale was passionately explaining the depravity of their slaves, their “ignorant” chanting and songs and their “primitive” worship of pagan devils posing as God. I felt like telling them that their belief systems are complex and beautiful, the structure amazing, the chanting and songs no different that the choirs we have. They sing of their devotion, we of his glory. Either way, this party of ignorance astounds me. No matter how much I prepare myself with this, it destroys me still.
If I could tell Sarah Kale that she is being hypocritical, if they are so dirty and evil, how can one allow them to feed one’s own child? I do not understand this behaviour. The whole five hours of this garden party, all of them complained. Not one of them saw the beauty of the last of the fall butterflies before winter. They missed the simple beauty of the blue light sky, and the powder-puff clouds, lazy hanging by the wire from hidden stars. They did not see the splendid platters of food, the angelic arrangement of colours and the way each piece was delicate and intricate, placed with delicate care, destroyed by their malicious natures. Their ugliness are pillars of Clack salt among gardens of ripe trees and rusty colours scattered as if painted with love.
AUGUST 2nd (FEBRUARY 8th)
It has been so long since we left home. I have not yet heard word form my family. I guess that this is half my responsibility. I should write to my mother, she must think that I am dead. Oliver is still keeping me confined from his sight as if in the final months of pregnancy. Although, this is impossible. All the sordid details my sisters used to fill me with had crept back from the cobwebish shadows of my mind, creeping quietly, disturbingly, persistently into my sleep, disillusioning my day and blocking the sum, only to brighten to the moon, no matter how heavy the curtains.
I am afraid that Oliver may hear my restlessness, and take me away to Atienne. This is a sanatorium. It is not called that, it is known as a Health retreat. This does not mistake the intent of this place, nor mistake the reason someone is sent there. I would die within the month if ensnared like a fly caught in a spider’s web. This is bad enough, this meagre existence of the pink and lilac walls, which once calmed and warmed me, now they shock my eyes and reverberates through my skull, causing me great pain. The food Clover brings to me no longer sustains me, and my ribs are slight in there angles under skin, and indicator of my rapid weight loss. I was not that big in the first place, but even the corsets are dimly aware that something is wrong.
Loved By Another Chapter Four
JULY SIX
A startling thing has happened with Oliver. Two days ago, he commented that he had noticed that my sleeping habits were disturbed, and suggested (or rather told me) that one of the staff was to attend me, kind of handmaidenesque. He has given me Clover to attend me at night. Clover was one of the field staff, but has been ill enough not to actually work. If he had attempted to sell Clover, after such a short time, it would appear as if something is wrong and this would loose him money and social propriety to have a damaged slave. He said that since arriving here, I have had no attendant, and as I was used to this, it may calm me. Clover has been terribly ill lately, a rash swelling her body and making her skin all mumps like. When she was moved around in-between crops, the rash cleared up, but then she started suffering for breath, and her face remained swollen as if beaten. Oliver, angered, left her in the quarters, and she was fine within two days. He told me this now; a day after her recovery, as she has improved and he did not want to waste her just yet. Selling her this early would reduce her value, apparently, as it is too soon after purchase, and he is not going to another market.
It actually has been, and is wonderful to have a handmaiden. Clover is a beautiful girl who speaks eloquently about life, whose spirit is so overabundant that she inspires me. It is also lovely to have someone who is with me and speaks to me as if I were her equal. I do not ever feel that I am worthy. The other domestic staff will not even look at me, nor ever meet my eye, but Clover always raises me above. She tells me all that Oliver will not, all of the farming particulars, of the treatment that they receive. He has not done anything to them physically. Yet. He did, though, place a sheet of rules up with the slave quarter walls. I don’t think Oliver would even have thought to ask them if they could read. His oblivious, ambivalent feelings towards these people is phenomenal, I cannot even recognise any sense of human in him at all. It is depressing.
JULY 15th
I have been giving all of the staff basic lessons in reading and writing. One of the field workers broke one of the sacred roles that Oliver had written. For the wheat crops, there are distinct piles, for selling, for feed to the farm animals, for stock, the damaged and the inedible. The worker, Coquen, took some of the damaged wheat for the group’s consumption. After whipping Coquen so badly that he has not been able to walk, Oliver went to town and ordered chains for them. Clover told me all of this three hours after Oliver had left, and after I had returned to the estate from a social visit. She told me that, as none of them had (or could) read the rules, none of them knew that they couldn’t take the damaged stock. She said that they had used this type of stock before, and in fact Oliver had told them to do so, and this had never posed a problem before. They were all waiting, eager, for the new crop of corn to be ready.
Oliver returned as dinner was being served, I asked him about the disturbance of earlier in the day, not to suggest I knew anything that would disagree with him. He went into a tirade about the immorality of them, and how they were the Devils spawn, and how any diminutive body of darkened skin were beyond any form of redemption. Through Clover, I have never met such devout people. I found the right moment to suggest that the slaves could not read, so couldn’t have known about the rules. He seemed aghast, as if this very concept was beyond his increasingly limited grasp. Which, upon reflection, it probably was.
I also made the mistake (again, upon reflection) that the horses and stock seemed rather lacklustre lately, as I already have foreknowledge that they have been fed the damaged stock, that which is inappropriate for sale. I must have come across as more that I intended, as innocent and naive. From then on, the first grade was sale, the second grade was stock feed, the third grade, the most damaged and diseased, was slave allocation.
Oliver thought it unacceptable for anyone, or anything who was capable of reading not too, although he maintains that they do not have the intellectual capacity to learn, an oxymoron in a world of complexity. I guess it will be easy to prove him wrong; it is just convincing him of it. Due to their reverence for the lord, and for its odd, and admittedly intriguing mixture with tribal faiths, spell working faiths wrought by fire and earth, power that is challenged and channelled. It is a complex mix of belief and ritual, and the hint of a force collectively, yet the influence of God here also represents the fractured temptation of how members of family’s and tribes and faiths are separated, moved, sold, and therefore something essential is lost. What Clover has told me, it is as if they have drawn together what they can with what they have access too. This is an opportunity to learn, to exchange our belief, our faith.
Oliver is always gone at dusk, in a façade of friendship with other members of the estate landowners; he joins their games and drinking. They are never here. I do not know why. But this gives me the opportunity to teach the skill of reading. We alternate nights, for they tell me stories in songs and dance, in beauty and grace. It is fascinating, complex and absorbing. In return, I relay myths of my own, mostly from my home land, and translations from the bible. I have this desire to understand, this pain when I miss the swell of kisses within the soft beauty of the language they whisper in. I do not understand this culture that has become ever more foreign to myself. It has become a curse of my husbands, this social bareness that I am drifting in, let alone the cruelty that we insist on surrounding ourselves with to make ourselves feel important or exalted. This nightly journey has been the only thing that I have received enjoyment from.
Oliver has been trying to increase my contact with the other estate wives. I have managed to convince him otherwise, telling him that my supervision of the domestic staff cannot be interrupted by extensive social engagements. He is fearful of people attending our estate, as he fears that it is not presenting its primary face, that it is not finished yet. I think he is only trying to distract me, to keep me occupied, so that I will not notice that he has ceased visiting me at night, after the difficult violence of the first month, let alone touch me, or show me any thing other that distant curtesy. It is as if something about me repels him. But that is not my issue. In fact, it may be that everything about him repels me and he can feel my apathy. Maybe it is these feelings towards him as this abhorrent creature that he has noticed. I doubt he has that level of sensitivity, though. His personality is as immobile as wood and for him to recognise anything it must be presented to him directly. Actually, I think petrified wood is more mutable and pliable than Oliver could ever achieve to be.
July 17th (AUGUST 12th)
He sent me to a neighbouring estate on the eighth for morning tea despite my requests. At least he allowed Clover to attend me. I depend on her more and more each day for comfort and understanding. It is amazing to me that the awful and evil predicaments that beset us both are separated by the very world that is drawing us together in the darkness within which both of us exist.
The tea was splendid in its abnormality. Everything is the same as it is back home, yet so horribly different as it has become a hybrid with the languishing of estate life coupled with the memory of a life that was intentionally left. At least back home, the staff are not slaves expected to exist on oxygen alone. The slave trade here is more than just accepted, it is integral in the consciousness of these women as a natural occurrence, not as the scar that is fracturing my soul. The longer that I witness the squalor and debasement of society in which I have lived my whole life, but never had the displeasure of understanding, I loose more of who I fundamentally am. I loose a bit extra of myself every day.
It has taken a lifetime to build up prejudice and misconceptions, but in the last couple of months, I see that the broken pieces of myself repairing itself in a totally new fashion, one where the tapestry in interwoven and thick rather than thread bare and stark grey. It feels like I have died and am now rebuilding my spirit again, yet with my eyes wide open.
JULY 21st (OCTOBER 11th)
Oliver is still forcing me to attend once numerous society events. He has also added arithmetic to my teaching sessions, and have given the labours more responsibility. There reading and writing phenomenally. Nearly all of them can read well now, and are actually teaching me their stories. They are teaching me comparative religions. Tarquin, though, Oliver had removed from classes, stating that “He already knows how to read and write reasonably well, Hallie, that’s all I need.” Obviously he wants everyone else to understand numbers, Why not Tarquin?
The society ladies are appalling in behaviour and manners to their staff, often punishing without warrant. I thought Oliver was disturbed, but these women are shocking in there depravity. And their husbands! You question God’s divine plan when the pure existence of these men ignore his every degree. I am not surprised at Oliver’s affinity to them, though. They make his behaviour and attitude look positively upstanding. I know he tries hard to display as much base personality as they do, but I do not think he has quite reached their level yet. But I know he is studying them hard and with become as hateful as they are soon enough.
I am content with maintaining the best possible standard of living for the workers. He had never checked the domestic accounts to my knowledge and has never questioned the amount of dress fabric I buy, nor why the spare fabric is given to the staff (the domestic staff in particular, who receive the dresses I no longer choose to utilise.) This seems as if I am making a perfect contribution, giving away used and unuseful goods, but it id only in this way I can circumnavigate Oliver and provide at lease something.
Although, I think that the main reason for Oliver’s distraction is that after much deliberation, has chosen a name for the estate. All of this time, it has just read “Lord and Lady Oliver Tobie Biaah” and like my existence here is an afterthought of his. This has been replaced by a sign, large and obnoxious, reading now “Heaven Scent Estate.” Which is ironic, as what he thinks is heaven sent is blatantly demonic, and what he assumes is the work of the devil is actually Heaven sent. His rules of ethics and morality have very little to do with actual ethics and morality, as he is disillusioned by the power he once had, and desires to have again. Although, he has never been disillusioned much by the segregation of society because his heart remains frozen in anarchic models of society, whereby everything is stagnant against what position you are born too. He will never see the beauty of a place where hate and unwarranted violence are unacceptable to anyone.
JULY 23rd (OCTOBER 12th)
These society teas are growing ever more tedious. The women talk of markets to which I have never been, and have no interest in going to. They gossip about people I have not yet met, and parties of which I do not attend. Oliver has ordered me through Clover to aquire some dresses through a dressmaker in town. I must go. It is demoralising that he is forcing me back into this false social existence. It is hard to disagree with him, because if I make him angry, he may disallow the education program, or even not allow me to supply the workers with anything unnecessary to their existence. I have no doubt he would do something that callus to punish me.
The classes are excelling well; they are working their way through the texts that I have provided. It is difficult, as we only have classic texts in this house, as Oliver thinks this is the appropriate books to have on display. It is unfortunate that we have no modern texts for them. Their writing is becoming more solid, even though they are having slight spelling difficulties. Although, most of them can spell their own names. Coquen is turning out particularly fast learner.
Oliver has been mentioning, or rather mumbling through mouthfuls of food, as meal times are the only time I see him, that he is considering purchasing more “slaves.” Although the estate has settled, the maintenance is gruelling. He has also stated that the domestic staff are allowing the house to fall into disrepair, and that he is required to hire more to if we are to start hosting social gatherings. At least he isn’t thinking of hosting for at least 6 months, and by then, the social calendar will have moved to fast for either of us to catch up. Never having established or organised a social calendar, or seasonal events, and having been in India most of the time rather than at home, Oliver does not have any concept of how quickly these social functions shift and leave one behind without a place within. He will, by then I am sure, have deemed my education program a success and cancelled it. But, I think Coquen with may learn enough in this time to be truly brilliant. I may still be able to teach him to teach and pass him the lessons.
A startling thing has happened with Oliver. Two days ago, he commented that he had noticed that my sleeping habits were disturbed, and suggested (or rather told me) that one of the staff was to attend me, kind of handmaidenesque. He has given me Clover to attend me at night. Clover was one of the field staff, but has been ill enough not to actually work. If he had attempted to sell Clover, after such a short time, it would appear as if something is wrong and this would loose him money and social propriety to have a damaged slave. He said that since arriving here, I have had no attendant, and as I was used to this, it may calm me. Clover has been terribly ill lately, a rash swelling her body and making her skin all mumps like. When she was moved around in-between crops, the rash cleared up, but then she started suffering for breath, and her face remained swollen as if beaten. Oliver, angered, left her in the quarters, and she was fine within two days. He told me this now; a day after her recovery, as she has improved and he did not want to waste her just yet. Selling her this early would reduce her value, apparently, as it is too soon after purchase, and he is not going to another market.
It actually has been, and is wonderful to have a handmaiden. Clover is a beautiful girl who speaks eloquently about life, whose spirit is so overabundant that she inspires me. It is also lovely to have someone who is with me and speaks to me as if I were her equal. I do not ever feel that I am worthy. The other domestic staff will not even look at me, nor ever meet my eye, but Clover always raises me above. She tells me all that Oliver will not, all of the farming particulars, of the treatment that they receive. He has not done anything to them physically. Yet. He did, though, place a sheet of rules up with the slave quarter walls. I don’t think Oliver would even have thought to ask them if they could read. His oblivious, ambivalent feelings towards these people is phenomenal, I cannot even recognise any sense of human in him at all. It is depressing.
JULY 15th
I have been giving all of the staff basic lessons in reading and writing. One of the field workers broke one of the sacred roles that Oliver had written. For the wheat crops, there are distinct piles, for selling, for feed to the farm animals, for stock, the damaged and the inedible. The worker, Coquen, took some of the damaged wheat for the group’s consumption. After whipping Coquen so badly that he has not been able to walk, Oliver went to town and ordered chains for them. Clover told me all of this three hours after Oliver had left, and after I had returned to the estate from a social visit. She told me that, as none of them had (or could) read the rules, none of them knew that they couldn’t take the damaged stock. She said that they had used this type of stock before, and in fact Oliver had told them to do so, and this had never posed a problem before. They were all waiting, eager, for the new crop of corn to be ready.
Oliver returned as dinner was being served, I asked him about the disturbance of earlier in the day, not to suggest I knew anything that would disagree with him. He went into a tirade about the immorality of them, and how they were the Devils spawn, and how any diminutive body of darkened skin were beyond any form of redemption. Through Clover, I have never met such devout people. I found the right moment to suggest that the slaves could not read, so couldn’t have known about the rules. He seemed aghast, as if this very concept was beyond his increasingly limited grasp. Which, upon reflection, it probably was.
I also made the mistake (again, upon reflection) that the horses and stock seemed rather lacklustre lately, as I already have foreknowledge that they have been fed the damaged stock, that which is inappropriate for sale. I must have come across as more that I intended, as innocent and naive. From then on, the first grade was sale, the second grade was stock feed, the third grade, the most damaged and diseased, was slave allocation.
Oliver thought it unacceptable for anyone, or anything who was capable of reading not too, although he maintains that they do not have the intellectual capacity to learn, an oxymoron in a world of complexity. I guess it will be easy to prove him wrong; it is just convincing him of it. Due to their reverence for the lord, and for its odd, and admittedly intriguing mixture with tribal faiths, spell working faiths wrought by fire and earth, power that is challenged and channelled. It is a complex mix of belief and ritual, and the hint of a force collectively, yet the influence of God here also represents the fractured temptation of how members of family’s and tribes and faiths are separated, moved, sold, and therefore something essential is lost. What Clover has told me, it is as if they have drawn together what they can with what they have access too. This is an opportunity to learn, to exchange our belief, our faith.
Oliver is always gone at dusk, in a façade of friendship with other members of the estate landowners; he joins their games and drinking. They are never here. I do not know why. But this gives me the opportunity to teach the skill of reading. We alternate nights, for they tell me stories in songs and dance, in beauty and grace. It is fascinating, complex and absorbing. In return, I relay myths of my own, mostly from my home land, and translations from the bible. I have this desire to understand, this pain when I miss the swell of kisses within the soft beauty of the language they whisper in. I do not understand this culture that has become ever more foreign to myself. It has become a curse of my husbands, this social bareness that I am drifting in, let alone the cruelty that we insist on surrounding ourselves with to make ourselves feel important or exalted. This nightly journey has been the only thing that I have received enjoyment from.
Oliver has been trying to increase my contact with the other estate wives. I have managed to convince him otherwise, telling him that my supervision of the domestic staff cannot be interrupted by extensive social engagements. He is fearful of people attending our estate, as he fears that it is not presenting its primary face, that it is not finished yet. I think he is only trying to distract me, to keep me occupied, so that I will not notice that he has ceased visiting me at night, after the difficult violence of the first month, let alone touch me, or show me any thing other that distant curtesy. It is as if something about me repels him. But that is not my issue. In fact, it may be that everything about him repels me and he can feel my apathy. Maybe it is these feelings towards him as this abhorrent creature that he has noticed. I doubt he has that level of sensitivity, though. His personality is as immobile as wood and for him to recognise anything it must be presented to him directly. Actually, I think petrified wood is more mutable and pliable than Oliver could ever achieve to be.
July 17th (AUGUST 12th)
He sent me to a neighbouring estate on the eighth for morning tea despite my requests. At least he allowed Clover to attend me. I depend on her more and more each day for comfort and understanding. It is amazing to me that the awful and evil predicaments that beset us both are separated by the very world that is drawing us together in the darkness within which both of us exist.
The tea was splendid in its abnormality. Everything is the same as it is back home, yet so horribly different as it has become a hybrid with the languishing of estate life coupled with the memory of a life that was intentionally left. At least back home, the staff are not slaves expected to exist on oxygen alone. The slave trade here is more than just accepted, it is integral in the consciousness of these women as a natural occurrence, not as the scar that is fracturing my soul. The longer that I witness the squalor and debasement of society in which I have lived my whole life, but never had the displeasure of understanding, I loose more of who I fundamentally am. I loose a bit extra of myself every day.
It has taken a lifetime to build up prejudice and misconceptions, but in the last couple of months, I see that the broken pieces of myself repairing itself in a totally new fashion, one where the tapestry in interwoven and thick rather than thread bare and stark grey. It feels like I have died and am now rebuilding my spirit again, yet with my eyes wide open.
JULY 21st (OCTOBER 11th)
Oliver is still forcing me to attend once numerous society events. He has also added arithmetic to my teaching sessions, and have given the labours more responsibility. There reading and writing phenomenally. Nearly all of them can read well now, and are actually teaching me their stories. They are teaching me comparative religions. Tarquin, though, Oliver had removed from classes, stating that “He already knows how to read and write reasonably well, Hallie, that’s all I need.” Obviously he wants everyone else to understand numbers, Why not Tarquin?
The society ladies are appalling in behaviour and manners to their staff, often punishing without warrant. I thought Oliver was disturbed, but these women are shocking in there depravity. And their husbands! You question God’s divine plan when the pure existence of these men ignore his every degree. I am not surprised at Oliver’s affinity to them, though. They make his behaviour and attitude look positively upstanding. I know he tries hard to display as much base personality as they do, but I do not think he has quite reached their level yet. But I know he is studying them hard and with become as hateful as they are soon enough.
I am content with maintaining the best possible standard of living for the workers. He had never checked the domestic accounts to my knowledge and has never questioned the amount of dress fabric I buy, nor why the spare fabric is given to the staff (the domestic staff in particular, who receive the dresses I no longer choose to utilise.) This seems as if I am making a perfect contribution, giving away used and unuseful goods, but it id only in this way I can circumnavigate Oliver and provide at lease something.
Although, I think that the main reason for Oliver’s distraction is that after much deliberation, has chosen a name for the estate. All of this time, it has just read “Lord and Lady Oliver Tobie Biaah” and like my existence here is an afterthought of his. This has been replaced by a sign, large and obnoxious, reading now “Heaven Scent Estate.” Which is ironic, as what he thinks is heaven sent is blatantly demonic, and what he assumes is the work of the devil is actually Heaven sent. His rules of ethics and morality have very little to do with actual ethics and morality, as he is disillusioned by the power he once had, and desires to have again. Although, he has never been disillusioned much by the segregation of society because his heart remains frozen in anarchic models of society, whereby everything is stagnant against what position you are born too. He will never see the beauty of a place where hate and unwarranted violence are unacceptable to anyone.
JULY 23rd (OCTOBER 12th)
These society teas are growing ever more tedious. The women talk of markets to which I have never been, and have no interest in going to. They gossip about people I have not yet met, and parties of which I do not attend. Oliver has ordered me through Clover to aquire some dresses through a dressmaker in town. I must go. It is demoralising that he is forcing me back into this false social existence. It is hard to disagree with him, because if I make him angry, he may disallow the education program, or even not allow me to supply the workers with anything unnecessary to their existence. I have no doubt he would do something that callus to punish me.
The classes are excelling well; they are working their way through the texts that I have provided. It is difficult, as we only have classic texts in this house, as Oliver thinks this is the appropriate books to have on display. It is unfortunate that we have no modern texts for them. Their writing is becoming more solid, even though they are having slight spelling difficulties. Although, most of them can spell their own names. Coquen is turning out particularly fast learner.
Oliver has been mentioning, or rather mumbling through mouthfuls of food, as meal times are the only time I see him, that he is considering purchasing more “slaves.” Although the estate has settled, the maintenance is gruelling. He has also stated that the domestic staff are allowing the house to fall into disrepair, and that he is required to hire more to if we are to start hosting social gatherings. At least he isn’t thinking of hosting for at least 6 months, and by then, the social calendar will have moved to fast for either of us to catch up. Never having established or organised a social calendar, or seasonal events, and having been in India most of the time rather than at home, Oliver does not have any concept of how quickly these social functions shift and leave one behind without a place within. He will, by then I am sure, have deemed my education program a success and cancelled it. But, I think Coquen with may learn enough in this time to be truly brilliant. I may still be able to teach him to teach and pass him the lessons.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Xeen
The pen is always mightier than the sword.
He who weeps in death paid the price of life unspoken for.
No words carry him on, nor any paper to recant the love he lost for spite.
It is not only the way of he who lacks faith,
But of he who sweeps into the nightfall of the journey that is non-refundable.
He has walked the last road his book will ever tell.
Once a clean slate, now etched with many highs and pitfalls
That life dirtied him with.
His plate has shown the lows, where he has sunken to his rightful place,
But also shows the forever greater, sky highs he has reached,
To soar like an eagle at dizzying altitudes.
But the knowledge that he gained throughout his life was not
From the voice of those who don’t know, but with those who have
Been kind to the unspoken sound and the unwritten law.
The knowledge he gained was powerful, as he had to
Face the last journey of his life.
The tunnel of what you know becomes vital,
And you’re experienced things have become important.
It’s the pen that conveys the unwritten sounds that tell of faraway places
And scary, but intriguing lights of those who live so far away
And on such different paths, such separate journeys.
Death is the untold journey, the only holiday unreturned
And the only place unknown in a age of super telecommunications.
The only place that is indestructibly safe from cataclysmic war and
The total self-destructiveness of the human race.
The pen tells no lies, but which of the owner.
The hand that holds the terribly destructible mode of hate and blame.
Destructive alone, but deathly together.
Cataclysmically damnation of a story untold, a journey unshared
And a voice shouting, but unheard.
The silence of those whose voice is silent in the wake
Of something they never know, not wanted to know,
But now can never convey.
It is only the known that is hated.
He who weeps in death paid the price of life unspoken for.
No words carry him on, nor any paper to recant the love he lost for spite.
It is not only the way of he who lacks faith,
But of he who sweeps into the nightfall of the journey that is non-refundable.
He has walked the last road his book will ever tell.
Once a clean slate, now etched with many highs and pitfalls
That life dirtied him with.
His plate has shown the lows, where he has sunken to his rightful place,
But also shows the forever greater, sky highs he has reached,
To soar like an eagle at dizzying altitudes.
But the knowledge that he gained throughout his life was not
From the voice of those who don’t know, but with those who have
Been kind to the unspoken sound and the unwritten law.
The knowledge he gained was powerful, as he had to
Face the last journey of his life.
The tunnel of what you know becomes vital,
And you’re experienced things have become important.
It’s the pen that conveys the unwritten sounds that tell of faraway places
And scary, but intriguing lights of those who live so far away
And on such different paths, such separate journeys.
Death is the untold journey, the only holiday unreturned
And the only place unknown in a age of super telecommunications.
The only place that is indestructibly safe from cataclysmic war and
The total self-destructiveness of the human race.
The pen tells no lies, but which of the owner.
The hand that holds the terribly destructible mode of hate and blame.
Destructive alone, but deathly together.
Cataclysmically damnation of a story untold, a journey unshared
And a voice shouting, but unheard.
The silence of those whose voice is silent in the wake
Of something they never know, not wanted to know,
But now can never convey.
It is only the known that is hated.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
RBMeter
Lips mover with grace,
Stride with unbetouched by old.
A gleam of hope and prettiness.
A shinning star within a universe in each breathtaking eye.
A smile that is, a always, touched by the very hand of the creator.
Mystical in ones beauty, beauty in one’s whole being.
True love has crept into my heart,
And I have rejoiced: I thought I’d die alone,
Until I saw you striding down the street,
Like a shy duckling who thought she owned the world.
Graceful, challenging, charismatic,
Dedicated to no one else but me,
And my heart beats stronger for you and you to return too
Catch my dying breath, my last whisper:
My first and last love was you.
Happiness may be a state of mind, but dying in your arms,
My mind was clear and focused on those lips that
I wish to kiss and those sweet, soft hands.
I wish to squeeze you with more strength,
And hang on to live just one more night.
I see those eyes, I fall so deeply in,
I see the body I crave, I see the tenderness in those
Soft hands and in my heart I know I am happy
And I know that, in all my life, no matter what I was chasing,
I know that my true love was you.
Stride with unbetouched by old.
A gleam of hope and prettiness.
A shinning star within a universe in each breathtaking eye.
A smile that is, a always, touched by the very hand of the creator.
Mystical in ones beauty, beauty in one’s whole being.
True love has crept into my heart,
And I have rejoiced: I thought I’d die alone,
Until I saw you striding down the street,
Like a shy duckling who thought she owned the world.
Graceful, challenging, charismatic,
Dedicated to no one else but me,
And my heart beats stronger for you and you to return too
Catch my dying breath, my last whisper:
My first and last love was you.
Happiness may be a state of mind, but dying in your arms,
My mind was clear and focused on those lips that
I wish to kiss and those sweet, soft hands.
I wish to squeeze you with more strength,
And hang on to live just one more night.
I see those eyes, I fall so deeply in,
I see the body I crave, I see the tenderness in those
Soft hands and in my heart I know I am happy
And I know that, in all my life, no matter what I was chasing,
I know that my true love was you.
Ashes and Dust
Within the dying embers of the sun we lay
in the blissful gold-dampened silence.
Our hearts, together, float with the shallowness
off of our breaths and the gentle whip of the wind.
The encompassing water falls among
the cascading swiftness of our feet as they push
our run towards the freedom the future holds
Or, at least once held for us.
The thunder claps and the torrents flow
with lightening force behind us,
our skirts billowing in the whistling gale
that forever shirts the boundaries of our consciousness.
The ground quakes with the laden
footsteps of those who run behind us,
those who make the fire burn upon our backs,
and the pain flows where they repeatedly abuse.
Their eyes are passionate with the hate
that they know lives twicefold in us,
the flow of "natural" reverses upon itself,
our subservience abandoned
As our laughter echoes through a place of
ashes and dust,
once of greener sweat and where our blood
flows past our scars to the cracked and thirsting ground.
But now we hide among lushness,
swaying beauty and cascading skies,
where strokes of the deep blue thunderous clouds
vacantly look for a way from their broken despair.
Like gunshots, they are loaded tempers,
waiting for the trigger to be ever so slightly touched,
pushed beyond the limits of the ashen sky
and the bloodied ground.
Deep wounds that lay,
festering and refusing to heal
upon our laden backs,
carrying too much pain, hate and sorrow.
in the blissful gold-dampened silence.
Our hearts, together, float with the shallowness
off of our breaths and the gentle whip of the wind.
The encompassing water falls among
the cascading swiftness of our feet as they push
our run towards the freedom the future holds
Or, at least once held for us.
The thunder claps and the torrents flow
with lightening force behind us,
our skirts billowing in the whistling gale
that forever shirts the boundaries of our consciousness.
The ground quakes with the laden
footsteps of those who run behind us,
those who make the fire burn upon our backs,
and the pain flows where they repeatedly abuse.
Their eyes are passionate with the hate
that they know lives twicefold in us,
the flow of "natural" reverses upon itself,
our subservience abandoned
As our laughter echoes through a place of
ashes and dust,
once of greener sweat and where our blood
flows past our scars to the cracked and thirsting ground.
But now we hide among lushness,
swaying beauty and cascading skies,
where strokes of the deep blue thunderous clouds
vacantly look for a way from their broken despair.
Like gunshots, they are loaded tempers,
waiting for the trigger to be ever so slightly touched,
pushed beyond the limits of the ashen sky
and the bloodied ground.
Deep wounds that lay,
festering and refusing to heal
upon our laden backs,
carrying too much pain, hate and sorrow.
My Soul to Keep
My soul to keep,
Locked inside a barren body,
Waiting for an escape not so patiently
Till its allowed to leave.
My soul to keep,
It speaks to me like no other
And whispers its council,
Not to be misunderstood.
My soul to keep,
Colours of beauty but also of darkness
Light of kindness, but also of hate
Duality of soul but in multitudes.
My soul to keep,
No one can appropriate it,
Its all I have to set me free
Away from humanity's plea.
My soul to keep,
Only mine for a while
Till it is not needed here
To nourish my body.
My soul to keep,
Not anyone else's
It is inside of me,
Wandering, free.
My soul to keep,
It is only a cushion
To fall upon when someone else's
Pushes you over to earth.
My soul to keep,
Until I have no need for it
My soul to keep,
Until…
Locked inside a barren body,
Waiting for an escape not so patiently
Till its allowed to leave.
My soul to keep,
It speaks to me like no other
And whispers its council,
Not to be misunderstood.
My soul to keep,
Colours of beauty but also of darkness
Light of kindness, but also of hate
Duality of soul but in multitudes.
My soul to keep,
No one can appropriate it,
Its all I have to set me free
Away from humanity's plea.
My soul to keep,
Only mine for a while
Till it is not needed here
To nourish my body.
My soul to keep,
Not anyone else's
It is inside of me,
Wandering, free.
My soul to keep,
It is only a cushion
To fall upon when someone else's
Pushes you over to earth.
My soul to keep,
Until I have no need for it
My soul to keep,
Until…
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