To think of my task is chilling.
To know I was carefully building the mask
I was wearing for two years,
swearing I'd tear it off.
I've sat in the dark explaining to myself
that I'm straining too hard for feelings
I ought to find easily.
Called myself Jezebel. I don't believe.
Before I say that the vows we made
weigh like a stone in my heart.
Family is family,
don't let this tear us apart.
You lie there, an innocent baby.
I feel like the thief
who is raiding your home,
entering and breaking
and taking in every room.
I know your feelings are tender
and that inside you the embers still glow.
But I'm a shadow,
I'm only a bed of blackened coal.
Call myself Jezebel for wanting to leave.
I'm not saying I'm replacing love
for some other word to describe the sacred tie
that bound me to you.
I'm just saying we've mistaken one
for thousands of words.
And for that mistake,
I've caused you such pain
that I damn that word.
I've no more ways to hide
that I'm a desolate and empty,
hollow place inside.
I'm not saying I'm replacing love
for some other word to describe
the sacred tie that bound me to you.
I'm not saying love's a plaything.
No, it's a powerful word,
inspired by strong desire
to bind myself to you.
How I wish that we never had tried
to be man and his wife,
to weave our lives into a blindfold
over both our eyes.
[ Spoken intro from: Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (byLillian Schlissel) ]
"While the young folks were having their good times
some of the mothers were giving birth to their babies.
Three babies were born in our company that summer.
My cousin, Emily, gave birth to a son in Utah,
forty miles north of the Great Salt Lake one morning.
But the next morning she traveled on
'til noon when a stop was made and another child was born,
this time Susan Mollmeyer.
And gave the baby the name Alice Nevada."
Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines, down prairieroads.
Pass the lone church spire.
Pass the talking wire from where to who knows?
There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wildwestern plains.
Where a man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming overspaces.
The land was free and the price was right.
Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly.
Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon man's family.
I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls ourhistory.
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?
Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages theywrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives.
In miner's lust for gold, a family's house was bought and sold,piece by piece.
A widow staked her claim on a dollar and his name, sopainfully.
In letters mailed back home her Eastern sisters
they would moan as they would read accounts of
madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.