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writegirl@altavista.com
Michael!
I am still digging everything we did in San Diego. How far freaking out was that hotel? The cadaver elevator man closing the scissor gate, then the huge nicotine-stained door!!! “ Floor please.” Everynight in the big white footed bathtub with you! Neato! Watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks so glam shooting brilliant colors all over the sky to their final descent over the ships in the harbor. FanTasTic!
Who ever thought a real ship could be so huge-o-riffic yet have the tiniest stairways. So compact, a place for everything. How unlike my apartment!! You know you didn’t have to get mad about the sailors staring at my legs. 1. You bought me the miniskirts! and 2. I was with YOU!
What about that far out day we spent in Mexico? The children wanting us to buy Chiclets..Chicklets, Chicklets...please senor!, the hawkers trying to pull us into every strip joint in Tijuana, and the cripples begging us for money as they sat on the sidewalk. A world so different from ours. Thanks for buying me that guitar. I will learn to play a few Peter, Paul and Mary songs. I will. I will.
Oh, and I told my sister about the steak we had served on raw slabs of wood. She said it was beef, and not cat or dog as you thought! I think all of the meat hanging in the open air market freaked you out. Just swat the flies and eat it!
I heard that Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago 7 will be speaking in your town next month. I may be able to fly in on United’s 12/21 standby plan. Half price. I really want to be at the rally.
I received a letter from Tom, Keith and Tim. They are still up in Canada. I hope someday they can get a pardon so they can come home. I almost went with them. Somedays I am funked out and wish I had taken up with them. To believe in something, ANY thing would be good right now. I am so freaked out by Robin. he returned from Nam last month. He has a huge tapestry of Nam on his living room wall with all of his medals attached. I guess he really did marry a Vietnamese woman but the CID won’t let her come over. And Bill, oh he is a sad case. Sometimes he just starts crying. He actually enlisted! Military family, you know. Anyway I guess they told him 2 and out plus he would be stationed here, but the ship he was on did a few forays. He won’t tell me exactly where. I tried to contact him a bunch of times yet whenever I called the USN they would say they couldn’t tell me where the ship was located during wartime. Bill may be lost. Ronnie said he told him that he wants to go live in the woods like the Nearings. We are all so fucked up since the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King Jr. went down.
I still wander around with my box of beads. Everyone needs a peace choker! Oh, and I have some really good shit from Hawaii..Maui Wowie. Wish I could share it with you and make love all day long.
Write when you get back from Washington.
Mara Shiva
P.S. You were so cool to marry me in Mexico. Sorry I couldn’t send in the papers when we returned. Baby, marriage just isn’t for me. Sorry about all of my tears. I just can’t do it. It’s not you, it’s me. I do have the paper flowers you bought me for a wedding bouquet in a vase by my bed. Cerveza and disco ball night clubs. You flashing all night long. I will never forget it!