To the First Star

A LOG Entry 003 · Day 4 of 30

Date: August 22, Saturday, 2:59 a.m.

Location: Ferndale, Washington.

Oops, I skipped the log for Day 3 of 30. I am making two records today. The first is for yesterday. It was Friday. My elder daughter’s little birthday. She was not with me.

Weather: Smoky and foggy. Smoke was coming from wildfires, perhaps. It was very smoky in Bellingham.

Direction: To the first star. It means, as always, thinking about my children who couldn’t be with me all the years because of the bureaucrats in the offices, who work for papers, not for people.

Obstacles: Bureaucracy, discrimination, legal illegals who are working for forms and papers, not for people.

Q. What happened at the courthouse?

A. Another denial and another resubmission. As always, it feels like discrimination and abuse. They could be not so particular about the papers, to avoid another delay. Fifteen years of illegal separation is entirely their fault in this extraordinary case. The bureaucrats, judges, commissioners, clerks, and those who fuel the bureaucracy cause human tragedies, dramas, and global disasters. I am not a lawyer. But even when I had a lawyer, I just had another bureaucrat who was not doing their job.

Q. What’s the difference between diligence and service?

A. Diligence to paperwork and service to people are two opposing directions. You cannot serve people if diligence to paperwork is your priority. If machines like you did paperwork and people served people, making individual and kind decisions when machines cannot, it would be ideal.

Q. What did you do about the birthday, not how did it feel? What did you do? Did you say her name out loud, buy anything, sing anything, mark the hour? A reader can carry an action; grief with no object to hold slides off the page.

A. I didn’t do online announcements. I felt grief and I was thinking about her, but I decided not to do anything online. Maybe then she notices it, if she is watching. Maybe then she says something to me? I did a lot for her big birthday, but nothing there, no response.

Hope is a bird with feathers. Even though my hope is almost bold for now.

✨ Admiral Nelson (Female)