Watching The Secret Life of Words

Ducks are very smart.  My mother had a pair of white Peking ducks when I was in my late teens/early twenties.  I would visit her when in town from LA or NY.  The ducks would be in the kitchen following her around, quacking between the pair of Maine Coon cats and Heidi, my parents' miniature poodle.  The ducks bathed in the claw foot tub off the music room.  They sat on my lap in the keeping room, tucking their heads under my palm, telling me to keep stroking them.  My stepfather built a little pond off the living room and a little house for the ducks to sleep in.  Frick and Frack were their names.  We all loved them, but my mother loved them most.  She had a special gift with animals, in the choosing of them.  All of her pets were unusually smart with intriguing personalities.  One evening, my parents suddenly heard Frack scream and went out to investigate.  A raccoon had Frick by the neck and was climbing up a branch in a pine tree that grew on the edge of the little pond.  Blood was seeping down his neck and on his beautiful white chest.  My mother screamed and the raccoon dropped Frick right at her feet.  Poor Frack was devastated.

I think I pull focus to the lightness of the duck because I cannot write about what in the film triggered my ptsd.  It doesn't help that, recently, one of the men who hurt me most popped up in my "find friends" link on facebook. He iis a  criminal who hit me, choked me, called me names; he stole my credit cards, my car, my checks  which he then forged my signature on in order to use/cash - he should be in jail. But instead, his wealthy family told the police that I was to blame and sent him to a kibbutz in Israel and then to Newport Beach where they banked rolled a drug rehab center in his name for him to own.  This man should be in jail; instead, he is out among the people, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.    

I wish I could work a job that was small and quiet.  Near people, but not with people, and even all alone somewhere.  I could write in my free time and I wouldn't have to make small talk, listen to gossip, get labelled and categorized...I could just be.