When it comes to high, unfenced places, I like to teeter on the edge, peeking over.
I have utmost confidence in my own sense of balance and feel for the ground beneath me. But deep down, I know I’m also responding to some primal urge to push the limits of life. I never quite know when the joke will slide from ruse to reckless.
And suddenly, I’ll step back of my own accord, sensing that something deeper within me than reason may suddenly leap off, my inner demons dragging me to my own unwitting death.
Writing and surfing, my two passions, are to me, overcoming that last-ditch inclination to self-preserve, and stepping off the cliff right as it drops on me. And then coming out the other side to find myself still alive.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Poem about my need to write
this is how it feels when i let energy vampires into my creative world. and dismiss of them accordingly.
Muse
It’s shredding my insides with banshee screams.
Claws pulling down, down, down.
Teeth pressing out, out, out.
I want to be good, so why does bad feel so damn good?
Let it out, let it out, let it out,
Don’t stop now, it’s too late, you’ve started now.
It creeps out, skin shriveled with disuse,
Glares balefully, its Gollum eyes glowing.
Rising, Rising, it stretches up and out
Up and out.
“it’s goddamn time!” it screams.
“I’ve been alone in there, alone, alone, alone, y’hear?”
Arching, pointing, writhing, shrieking.
But waves of peace and light billow over me,
Pulling me up above, coursing through, through, through,
A southern current pulling, pulling, pulling.
And I know. I. Am. Free.
“Hello my muse,” I kiss, I croon, pulling back its ghastly mask,
to cup, caress the pure fresh palette below the surface.
I dive down, down, down.
And in, in, in.
And looking up, ever up, up, up, I fly free.
Muse
It’s shredding my insides with banshee screams.
Claws pulling down, down, down.
Teeth pressing out, out, out.
I want to be good, so why does bad feel so damn good?
Let it out, let it out, let it out,
Don’t stop now, it’s too late, you’ve started now.
It creeps out, skin shriveled with disuse,
Glares balefully, its Gollum eyes glowing.
Rising, Rising, it stretches up and out
Up and out.
“it’s goddamn time!” it screams.
“I’ve been alone in there, alone, alone, alone, y’hear?”
Arching, pointing, writhing, shrieking.
But waves of peace and light billow over me,
Pulling me up above, coursing through, through, through,
A southern current pulling, pulling, pulling.
And I know. I. Am. Free.
“Hello my muse,” I kiss, I croon, pulling back its ghastly mask,
to cup, caress the pure fresh palette below the surface.
I dive down, down, down.
And in, in, in.
And looking up, ever up, up, up, I fly free.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Morning at the Beach
The dirty concrete is blurry beneath my wheels like so many mornings before. The ocean sparkles in the background, the bums are gathering up their bedrolls, and the vendors are laying out their mirrors and jewels and charms.
The Scissor Sisters are playing on my Ipod and I liftt my arms with the lyrics, dancing on my Rollerblades as I speed along:"If you stand up, reach your arms out wide, Close your eyes and try to fly… "
I look up and into the face of my roommate carrying his board back from an early surf. I circle him in a slow stop, smiling. A photographer in the background raises his black camera and starts shooting pictures of us.
I ask him who he is, where he’s from. Ed Richter, working for a woman’s fashion magazine in Germany. He gives me his contact information and says I can have the pictures, maybe write for his magazine?
I nod a goodbye and continue down the ocean boardwalk, zigzagging through a movie shoot – ducking under cranes, around security guards, stepping over extension cords. I squeeze between three girls on rollerskates in bikinis, and turn into the skateboard park.
I choose the side path so I don’t interfere with long-haired little boys flipping their skateboards over rails in the background. And finally, I’m at the breakwater. The place where the surfers gather to catch waves.
My own backyard of clear, blue-and-white, expansive meditation. The waves are perfect today. Black stick figures bob and swoop and fly on the powerful face of pure, churning water, their boards flying into the air and blending with the crashing froth as they land. This is what it’s all about. Riding on the edge of the unpredictable, trying to harness the energy of nature with bravery and without expectations. Pure living.
On the way home I see a familiar thick, blond bum. He has his own piano on the beach, and rolls it down to the boardwalk every morning. He’s playing and singing:
"You spend your life, waiting for this moment."
The Scissor Sisters are playing on my Ipod and I liftt my arms with the lyrics, dancing on my Rollerblades as I speed along:"If you stand up, reach your arms out wide, Close your eyes and try to fly… "
I look up and into the face of my roommate carrying his board back from an early surf. I circle him in a slow stop, smiling. A photographer in the background raises his black camera and starts shooting pictures of us.
I ask him who he is, where he’s from. Ed Richter, working for a woman’s fashion magazine in Germany. He gives me his contact information and says I can have the pictures, maybe write for his magazine?
I nod a goodbye and continue down the ocean boardwalk, zigzagging through a movie shoot – ducking under cranes, around security guards, stepping over extension cords. I squeeze between three girls on rollerskates in bikinis, and turn into the skateboard park.
I choose the side path so I don’t interfere with long-haired little boys flipping their skateboards over rails in the background. And finally, I’m at the breakwater. The place where the surfers gather to catch waves.
My own backyard of clear, blue-and-white, expansive meditation. The waves are perfect today. Black stick figures bob and swoop and fly on the powerful face of pure, churning water, their boards flying into the air and blending with the crashing froth as they land. This is what it’s all about. Riding on the edge of the unpredictable, trying to harness the energy of nature with bravery and without expectations. Pure living.
On the way home I see a familiar thick, blond bum. He has his own piano on the beach, and rolls it down to the boardwalk every morning. He’s playing and singing:
"You spend your life, waiting for this moment."
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
The Playa Provides
Ooh, there’s a good one. Yet another good one.
With newly expert fingers, I ease a long, sticky booger out of my left nostril in such a way as to keep the glue-like substance in one solid, removable mass. How many more could there possibly be up there? I’ve been cleaning my nose out on a regular basis since I left the Burning Man festival.
I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself.
The oven that is the Nevada desert has solidly baked every aspect of my groomed back-home self – twenty-five year old blue-eyed, shoulder-length brown-haired, 125 pound female. I’ve morphed into a crusty, blithering playa creature.
An alien creature that picks its sticky nose, rescues wandering wedgies liberally, has formerly healthy hair balled into grey clumps unrefined even by dreadlock standards, and has been covering its red, tearing corneas for the last week with goggles that insufficiently protect from the ever-raging dust storms.
This is just one of the many bodily-and-mentally devastating outcomes of the up-to-$280-a-ticket, week-off-from-work trip to a festival in the middle of nowhere.
And that socially unacceptable behavior all happens in public. In fact, preferably in public, since the primary thing the alien creatures that gather here once a year have in common is an exhibitionist streak that views self-_expression as art.
So, unless you have a fetish leaning towards public nose picking, why would you subject yourself to a nasty state of affairs that a bunch of scrubs call art?
But before I attempt to twist this on you, all free-love-New-age-hippie-style, and explain why getting down and dirty is so cleanly uplifting, let me continue with my honest streak. Burning Man – at 45,000 strong, 15 years long, the largest art festival/rave in the world - isn’t just a place for frequent hand-washers to avoid.
Be prepared to sleep an average of three to four hours a day-night. The music never stops. Using easily flattened, perpetually missing earplugs is like Thumbelina jousting Rambo. Oonst, oonst, oonst, will be the soundtrack to your dreams if you like oonst, oonst, oonst, or not.
But fukkit. If sleeping in spurtive off-hours amidst a twenty-four seven rager isn’t your idea of fun, it will become so, when you realize that the music has irrevocably entered your bloodstream and is forcing you to bob, weave, spin and slide, to every sound back in the real world from your neglected cat’s repeat meows for food, to the top 40 hits blasting from the SUV next to you at a red light. Although resisting the latter is suggested if you are, indeed driving at the time.
Another disturbing thing the absurd aliens camped out in the six-miles in diameter, prehistoric lake bed that they call the playa, do, is share everything. Which means lots of germs wandering from one set of cracked lips to another, to another, to another…
When the heat of the sun is at its highest- sometimes up to 120 degrees – they hole up naked in covered domes or quivering shade structures reminiscent of above-ground mole-holes, minus the security or privacy. And here is where they share things. Public hookahs, chipped plastic spoons, sloppy kisses, water bottles with mystery owners, tofu soaked through with melted cooler water, toilet paper rolls with edges browned hopefully by the sun…
But for some reason - perhaps from lightheadedness induced by sun and drugs, or maybe because of a positive energy that seems to quiver palpably over everything in your path – serendipitous things happen all too often to be random, in this sharing atmosphere.
‘The Playa Provides,’ was the repeat theme of everyone’s experience around me, and by Sunday, the truth in the statement became downright eerie in its consistency.
“Can I get anybody anything?” was the unrealistic offer of a particularly motherly member of our camp to a lounging group of late-afternoon burnouts.
“Sure, how about a burrito?” was an intentionally improbable response she got. In an environment where gifting is encouraged, but money is disallowed, a taco truck around the corner is as likely as George Bush rolling up on a tricycle to share a fatty over some liberal discourse. Well, maybe a little more likely, because two minutes later, Emma the motherly one returned, burrito in hand. Seems a passerby had seen her, and said, “Hey, I’ve got a burrito in here. Know anyone who might want it?”
And maybe a glowing art car rolling by and tossing me a lollipop right when my ecstasy roll kicked in and I was craving an oral fixation is a bit cliché, but things like this happened every five minutes on the playa.
And at night – sometimes down to 30 degrees – the aliens wrap themselves in furs – coats, blankets, leg warmers, even strips in their hair – and continue sharing. Drugs. Lots of them.
Ecstasy, MDA, 2CB, and 2CI for feel-good fur rubs and a loss of fear while balancing in the dark on the top of a geodesic dome. DMT and N2O (nitrous oxide) for lounging around camp giving and receiving massages. LSD and mushrooms for making the fact that it looks like you’re camped out on Mars that much more exciting. Xanax, Valium, Ambien for shutting out that music and enforcing much-needed sleep eventually. And of course marijuana, whose soothing, naturally enhancing effects will become as necessary as an oxygen tank to a scuba diver by the end of your trip. No pun intended.
Just make sure you divide those drugs up right. Everyone at camp found it funny when Jeff took his serotonin-enhancing vitamin pill H2CP at night, decided the E he thought he’d taken was bunk, but followed up next morning with his requisite vitamin only to find himself rolling mid-morning. Except for him. Usually mild-mannered and sage-like, he looked positively growly by the time he came down in time for sunset, a preferable drug-taking time.
So drug-induced mood swings are as frequent as the morally reprehensible things that happen on a regular basis. There are beaver-eating contests – and I’m not talking about the water-dwelling creature - the largest topless parade in the world, known as Critical Tits¸ and enough naked old dudes to make a horrified grape spontaneously shrink into a raisin.
I watched a four-some – three girls and a guy – take place seventy feet in the air at the top caged section of a steel beam swaying back and forth from a weighted pendulum at the base. This did not look safe, although they certainly appeared to be enjoying it.
Speaking of safety, the extent of disclaimers on the back of the Burning Man tickets are downright laughable. Basically, live at your own risk, be quite prepared for death, and don’t ask us to do anything about it.
I watched the metal basket of a seesaw the size of two telephone poles slam into the ground next to a girl’s head who’d slipped in the sand while pulling it back and forth with a rope. She jumped up and high-fived the equally shaken basket-rider before the ride resumed.
I bobbed along with trepidation on top of the double-decker ride my camp called The Squid – an uncertain conglomerate of pink, buoyant cloth tentacles encasing the hood and reaching onto the truck bed that, with sequined CDs and my lovably geeky friends’ leftover mechanical pieces was supposed to be a computer. The thing is, I never trusted the Black Rock Corporation’s – the organizing committee at Burning Man – DMV licensure of our art car to actually ensure that the top half wouldn’t break off when twenty-five people bounced on top of it to the sounds of reggaeton.
For one thing, I never even saw a black rock while I was there. How could I trust an organizing committee that named itself after something seemingly invisible?
But potential irresponsibility is on one hand of the safety spectrum. On the other is a deliberate, edgy, bold recklessness that borders on heightened awareness. See, Burning Man was founded as a party place to challenge your senses and test your abilities, all in the name of art.
And art, at its best, is the product of visionary minds that are willing to step outside the comfort zone of ordinary experience and raise the bar, ask questions, and alter traditional perspectives. The artist asks who, what, why, when, where, and comes out with an answer – or its deliberate antithesis - in the shape of something that can resonate with and speak to the common experience of other humanoids.
That is the ego-baring, soul-crushing, elevated responsibility of a true artist. And part of that challenge is at least broached at Burning Man by living outside your comfort zone, facing your fears, keeping your wits about you, even while potentially losing them, and coming out the other side alive.
Such a setting induces the self-introspection, norm-release and catharsis of a drug, even without any added chemicals. Being in desert conditions with no real rules, minimal protective measures, and a lack of modern-day conveniences is a trip in and of itself.
This is an ideal place to measure and determine your genetic propensity towards survival. As the sign near my camp proclaimed, ‘Vanilla types will be broken.’
The theme of Burning Man 2006 was The Future: Hope and Fear. The dominating question of this year was if there was more of the former or latter in the spirit of the 45,000 person assembly.
The answer, at the end, was unclear according to voting booths. Seemed there was a healthy dose of hope, alongside a formidable feeling of fear. So my own conclusion is, if you left Burning Man in more or less one piece, you will be all set if and when an apocalyptic ending to what’s left of our world occurs.
Nuclear holocaust? Bah! After thriving in that dust storm at forty degrees Farenheit while on three separate chemical combinations your psycho-pharmacologist PhD friend made you promise not to tell anyone government-related about? I think you’re gonna be fine.
Bird-flu outbreak? Bring it on! I gave mouthfuls of chocolate frosting as encouragement to thirty of my closest friends on camp break-down day, using, yes, of course, one chipped plastic spoon, before finishing off the bottle with my unwashed index finger. And I feel great, despite the fact that this admission has effectively isolated me from making out with, or indeed being touched with a ten-foot pole ever again by anyone I know who reads this. Point is, the immune system is pretty solid if you make it through that in one happy, healthy piece.
Big-brother government monitoring your every action? After one paranoid acid trip, you now know how to read and react to suspicious types. Sure, curling up in the corner of the art car hiding from federal agents only emerging to dispose of the rest of your acid in the two-inch deep evaporation pond behind your solar showers might not be the best way to deal, but now you know what not to do when faced with a real surveillance team in the future, right?
Sharing lots and lots of germs with strangers, plus surviving in extreme conditions, plus lots and lots of drugs, equals: enhanced Darwinian superiority. If you can get through that kind of setting, I think you have earned the right to be extremely optimistic about the future. Because bottom line is, no matter what happens, you know you’re going to make it!
Sure, I feel a little beat up. Even a daily diet of those H2CP vitamin pills isn’t stopping me from coming down a little, decompressing, in playa language, if you will.
My black furry top hat was gifted mysteriously to the playa. I lost my fur vest atop a three-bus art car designed to look like a cruise ship. I only have one of my thigh-high Dr. Seuss-striped purple and green socks. I’m missing a handful of hair after unraveling the colorful yarn woven into it. But I came home with a CD from my stilt-walking new playa best-friend – Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae remake of Pink Floyd -, lip gloss complete with Burning Man logo, Polaroids of the vast blue sky, a fur coat someone didn’t need, and enough magic memories to keep me happy in my old-age rocking chair onto infinity.
I’ve been putting Neosporin on my sensitive and irritated inner thighs, twice a day since I got home. But dutifully applying some cream is fully worth the experience of having climbed and slid back down a two-hundred foot tall bamboo structure reminiscent of a giant pine-cone, while high and barefoot, in a tutu.
And even if the newly weathered face looking back at me in the mirror is not up to Hollywood beauty standards, I think I’ll take these new smile lines around my eyes any day over protected skin that fails to relay beautiful life experiences.
I even like the glue-like substance persistently coming out of my nose a full week later, because it brings me back to the dust that brought us all together. Well that, and the fact that I’ve kind of secretly always liked picking my nose. Ah, the sense of accomplishment when you come back with a little buried treasure!
As those absurd aliens would say, ‘The Playa Provides.’
Thursday, August 17, 2006
HOLY SHIT, agents want my ass
Heidi:
It was a pleasure speaking with you this afternoon (my time, anyway) and, as discussed, I have attached my agency agreement for your review. Obviously you have a lot to think about and, as I said, you owe it to yourself to wait and see what other feedback you get. However, that said, I would be delighted to take you on as a client and work with you to get your proposal ready for submission by mid-September.
Remember: Endorsements!
Please contact me with any questions, concerns, etc.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
-Tris
Tristram C. Coburn Literary Management
*************
Dear Carole: I really like BRIDE OF CHRIST and would like to talk about representing it. Is it still available? Do I deal with you or with Heidi? Nancy (212) 980-3499
**********************
Got voice mail and left Nancy Love at the Love Agency a message to call me.
Told her you had not signed a contract yet but that I knew that you had already been sent a contract by another agent.
A bidding war, Yea!!!
Warm regards,
Carole Bartholomeaux
Bartholomeaux Public Relations
Tele: (602) 404-8018
http://www.b-pr.com
It was a pleasure speaking with you this afternoon (my time, anyway) and, as discussed, I have attached my agency agreement for your review. Obviously you have a lot to think about and, as I said, you owe it to yourself to wait and see what other feedback you get. However, that said, I would be delighted to take you on as a client and work with you to get your proposal ready for submission by mid-September.
Remember: Endorsements!
Please contact me with any questions, concerns, etc.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
-Tris
Tristram C. Coburn Literary Management
*************
Dear Carole: I really like BRIDE OF CHRIST and would like to talk about representing it. Is it still available? Do I deal with you or with Heidi? Nancy (212) 980-3499
**********************
Got voice mail and left Nancy Love at the Love Agency a message to call me.
Told her you had not signed a contract yet but that I knew that you had already been sent a contract by another agent.
A bidding war, Yea!!!
Warm regards,
Carole Bartholomeaux
Bartholomeaux Public Relations
Tele: (602) 404-8018
http://www.b-pr.com
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
ahahahahahahahahaha
Former Culture Club singer Boy George began his community service sentence in Manhattan on Monday - the result of an arrest for cocaine - and all did not go well for the portly Brit. "You think you're better than me?" he yelled to the members of the media who came to snap pics and try to interview him. "Go home. Let me do my community service. This is supposed to be making me humble. Let me do this. I just want to do my job." Poor George. Next time you're doing drugs in your apartment, don't call the police. Idiot!
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
My Goal in Writing
Ephron pointed to her own novel "Heartburn" as an example of how a writer always holds back some part of a personal story, noting that it was "so not the whole truth about the end of that marriage, just a comic monologue about it." And while that may be, its acidly funny retailing of the breakup showed her gift for leavening the most maudlin and maddening of situations without abandoning the truth or tacking on a mushy resolution.
Great Article
What's so damn great about aging? Crackling good writer and "Sleepless in Seattle" director Nora Ephron gets serious about sagging necks and wrinkles, transforming her family life into fiction, and why her movies aren't as stupid or schmaltzy as people say...
Ephron describes Al Gore as "the ex-boyfriend who's starting to look good after forty bad dates with other guys. He's gained a little weight, but who hasn't? He's still unexciting, but excitement turns out to be overrated. He's not great in bed, but the last guy you slept with who was great in bed never called. What's more, he's on the board of Google, he was in on the IPO, so now he even has a little money. He's starting to look like the man of your dreams ... There's a little voice telling you that once he has something to lose, he'll go back to his old habits and blow it all over again, but you're not listening because you're desperate: you need to find a guy to marry. After all, time is running out."
Ephron describes Al Gore as "the ex-boyfriend who's starting to look good after forty bad dates with other guys. He's gained a little weight, but who hasn't? He's still unexciting, but excitement turns out to be overrated. He's not great in bed, but the last guy you slept with who was great in bed never called. What's more, he's on the board of Google, he was in on the IPO, so now he even has a little money. He's starting to look like the man of your dreams ... There's a little voice telling you that once he has something to lose, he'll go back to his old habits and blow it all over again, but you're not listening because you're desperate: you need to find a guy to marry. After all, time is running out."
To Fuck or not to Fuck
Must. Make. Decision.
Am running out of time.
Cannot breathe quite right. Stomach has been hurting for three weeks. Now feels like ulcer.
Cannot look A in the eyes.
Cannot stop thinking about Z.
Know that I am too old to only indulge.
Know that Z is nothing, and A is real and true.
But. Cannot. Act mature and wise. Or even in my own self-interest, it seems.
Must have Z and cocaine. Cannot stop even though have tried. More times than can count.
Screw. This. Bullshit.
Blame the past? Blame my age?
Blame myself? Yes. But who is myself? Can someone tell me how to get myself to sit down and take the time to have a talk with me?
We need to figure some things out.
No time, no time. Rules and time and death say so.
Come on now, come on, let’s go.
Make a decision. One, two. Marching forward.
One, two.
No.
Just one.
Do it!
Now!
And so I run. And skip.
And joke.
And avoid. And snort. And fuck. And laugh until pretend feels real.
Am running out of time.
Cannot breathe quite right. Stomach has been hurting for three weeks. Now feels like ulcer.
Cannot look A in the eyes.
Cannot stop thinking about Z.
Know that I am too old to only indulge.
Know that Z is nothing, and A is real and true.
But. Cannot. Act mature and wise. Or even in my own self-interest, it seems.
Must have Z and cocaine. Cannot stop even though have tried. More times than can count.
Screw. This. Bullshit.
Blame the past? Blame my age?
Blame myself? Yes. But who is myself? Can someone tell me how to get myself to sit down and take the time to have a talk with me?
We need to figure some things out.
No time, no time. Rules and time and death say so.
Come on now, come on, let’s go.
Make a decision. One, two. Marching forward.
One, two.
No.
Just one.
Do it!
Now!
And so I run. And skip.
And joke.
And avoid. And snort. And fuck. And laugh until pretend feels real.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Friday, August 04, 2006
Huh?
Money Quote:Stephen Hawking, answering a question about the global threats facing humanity: "The likelihood that we will need the services of Bruce Willis in the next 100 years is very small."
Friday, July 21, 2006
doggies on druggies
Tonight I was walking home from a jog and ran into the lady who sold me all the plants I put out front.
“Sadie and Tom, meet Heidi,” she cooed to her miniature poodle and shitsu. Sadie – a ball of fluff with large bright eyes and skinny legs - looked in the other direction. “He’s confused,” she explained. “I usually only introduce him to other dogs. Over here, sweetie. I’m talking about her,” she pointed at me, then scooped up Sadie, who perched, legs hooked in front, looking blankly past me. “It’s all that damn dexedrin he’s on,” she sighed. “he’s so much more lively when he’s not drugged up. But I just can’t let him be all imbalanced. He freaks out.” She poked him in the head and laughed when he jumped. ‘Ha ha, see that? He has a slower reaction time. Haha.’
“Sadie and Tom, meet Heidi,” she cooed to her miniature poodle and shitsu. Sadie – a ball of fluff with large bright eyes and skinny legs - looked in the other direction. “He’s confused,” she explained. “I usually only introduce him to other dogs. Over here, sweetie. I’m talking about her,” she pointed at me, then scooped up Sadie, who perched, legs hooked in front, looking blankly past me. “It’s all that damn dexedrin he’s on,” she sighed. “he’s so much more lively when he’s not drugged up. But I just can’t let him be all imbalanced. He freaks out.” She poked him in the head and laughed when he jumped. ‘Ha ha, see that? He has a slower reaction time. Haha.’
Monday, July 03, 2006
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Anniversary
I've had this blog for a year. Cool. Thanks Matthew, for introducing me to the world of public self-absorbtion.
It's fun to share our hopes and fears in one giant web of neuroses.
It's fun to share our hopes and fears in one giant web of neuroses.
Drunk on Friday
Wearing a lavender wife-beater and white tight-but-loose pants makes me feel like a girl. When I look in the mirror at the hot body that just grows naturally, no matter what I feel inside, I feel a combination of admiration and horror. I feel angry and overwhelmed by the beauty that is mine, that I cannot control. It stands out, asks to be touched and grabbed. It is independent. It is something separate and fleeting and sad.
It is not me.
And yet, for a moment, it was. When I knew love and passion again with a physically beautiful person who owned their own attractiveness as little as I own mine. And now they’re gone, and I’m a girl dressed in lavender pastel, alone again.
Why bother? Why be amiable and attractive, lean and lithe? It has gotten me nowhere other than a computer-full of stories. It is empty and shallow, just like the city I’ve made my life in.
I love it and hate it. loathe it and fear it. need it and feed off it.
Life is but an ongoing addiction of one fix after another, all in a pursuit of an ultimate high that can only be resolved, in one fleeting moment, at death. When one realizes that it was all pointless, and it would have been more fulfilling to believe in a heaven and hell anyway. That’s where religion originated. Out of a need to learn the definition to an unknown word.
There is nothing to live for but the moment, and an ever-elusive future that promises a better something.
I will get there someday. In my dreams, if nowhere else.
It is not me.
And yet, for a moment, it was. When I knew love and passion again with a physically beautiful person who owned their own attractiveness as little as I own mine. And now they’re gone, and I’m a girl dressed in lavender pastel, alone again.
Why bother? Why be amiable and attractive, lean and lithe? It has gotten me nowhere other than a computer-full of stories. It is empty and shallow, just like the city I’ve made my life in.
I love it and hate it. loathe it and fear it. need it and feed off it.
Life is but an ongoing addiction of one fix after another, all in a pursuit of an ultimate high that can only be resolved, in one fleeting moment, at death. When one realizes that it was all pointless, and it would have been more fulfilling to believe in a heaven and hell anyway. That’s where religion originated. Out of a need to learn the definition to an unknown word.
There is nothing to live for but the moment, and an ever-elusive future that promises a better something.
I will get there someday. In my dreams, if nowhere else.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
This was my nickname when i was little
and according to slang dictionaries, its new meaning is:
pixie - v. to practice sabotage as an expression of environmental politics.
[The article cited in the Oct. 2004 citation says, "The Earth
Liberation Front initial ELF led to the use of the term 'elf' and
then to 'pixie-ing.'"] Pixieing can range from mischievous to
criminal acts, including occupying a site, crippling machinery, or
removing survey markers.
Categories: English. United Kingdom. Environment. Slang.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Do Loose Chicks Sink Dicks?
We're looking at the loss of manhood in its purest form. Guys who can't get woodies for any old girl on the block are a poignant representation of the crumbling power of the erect phallus, which is, after all, as Stepp writes, "in the minds of many males, the sign of authority and dominance, perhaps the last such symbol in a society slogging its way toward gender equality."
I Quit
my latest bad-boy addiction. it's like i've been under an evil spell, and it took a near kiss of death to wake me up.
i'm walking away, while i still can.
i needed to post this here to make it official enough that i actually adhere.
i've also made promises to my sister and best friends.
i won't see him. no matter what. and i'll hang up if he calls.
period.
i'm walking away, while i still can.
i needed to post this here to make it official enough that i actually adhere.
i've also made promises to my sister and best friends.
i won't see him. no matter what. and i'll hang up if he calls.
period.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Random Factoid of the Day
If you attach a long piece of masking tape along the spine of a short-haired cat, from the base of his tail to the crown of his head, he will slink along close to the floor, believing he is crawling under something.
thanks, jean. if we'd all tortured our pets as youngsters, we'd know these things too. although she attests that it actually made the kitty love her more.
sounds like that cat and me would have the same taste in fuck-buddies.
thanks, jean. if we'd all tortured our pets as youngsters, we'd know these things too. although she attests that it actually made the kitty love her more.
sounds like that cat and me would have the same taste in fuck-buddies.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
IN YOUR FACE MOTHERFUCKER!
Even here in far-left Los Angeles, my roommates, Jean and Kelly, and myself sat with our hands over our mouths in a combination of terror and glee as we watched Colbert make fun of Bush to his face. I realized how far the facist-leanings of this dictatorship have swung when I found myself repeatedly picturing a bullet flying in one side and out the other of Colbert's head. I still wonder if they'll knock him off somehow after the straight-up truths he had the balls to holler from the podium.
"The real sign of Stephen Colbert's success at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner wasn't his jokes -- which, from beginning to end, were spot-on, from Bush's handling of the war ("I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq") and his low-30s approval rating ("I ask you this, does that not also logically mean that 68 percent approve of the job he's not doing?") to sidelong whacks at John McCain, Fox News and Donald Rumsfeld, among others. And no, it wasn't the grim-looking handshake he received from the president or the icy glare he received from Laura Bush that let us know that Colbert hit his targets. The proof of his accuracy lies in how badly the Tracy Flicks of the Washington press corps reacted. After all, this wasn't the baby-soft slapstick they usually get at the correspondents' dinner. (Anyone else remember when Darrell Hammond got all gushy from meeting Bush in person in 2001? Yeesh.) Sure, C-SPAN's cameras captured a few journalists tittering at each other like naughty schoolgirls, but for the most part journalists sat on their hands –- while just moments before, they were laughing uproariously at President Bush's incredibly lame skit with a Bush impressionist. That was Colbert's real feat: Showing us the real Washington media world, where everyone worries so much about offending someone, anyone, that the least bit of frank talk turns them into obedient little church mice. (Below is his opening monologue. To see his skit -- and icy exchange with the Bushes -- go to the post below.)"
"The real sign of Stephen Colbert's success at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner wasn't his jokes -- which, from beginning to end, were spot-on, from Bush's handling of the war ("I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq") and his low-30s approval rating ("I ask you this, does that not also logically mean that 68 percent approve of the job he's not doing?") to sidelong whacks at John McCain, Fox News and Donald Rumsfeld, among others. And no, it wasn't the grim-looking handshake he received from the president or the icy glare he received from Laura Bush that let us know that Colbert hit his targets. The proof of his accuracy lies in how badly the Tracy Flicks of the Washington press corps reacted. After all, this wasn't the baby-soft slapstick they usually get at the correspondents' dinner. (Anyone else remember when Darrell Hammond got all gushy from meeting Bush in person in 2001? Yeesh.) Sure, C-SPAN's cameras captured a few journalists tittering at each other like naughty schoolgirls, but for the most part journalists sat on their hands –- while just moments before, they were laughing uproariously at President Bush's incredibly lame skit with a Bush impressionist. That was Colbert's real feat: Showing us the real Washington media world, where everyone worries so much about offending someone, anyone, that the least bit of frank talk turns them into obedient little church mice. (Below is his opening monologue. To see his skit -- and icy exchange with the Bushes -- go to the post below.)"
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Blame it on the Ovaries
My ovaries have been sabotaging my otherwise healthy sense of self-preservation since the first alpha-male caught their attention. Seems they're obsessed with creating a SuperBaby.
They've caused me to go for all kinds of unworthies, based solely on my womb’s draw towards these guys' perceived genetic superiority.
This desire to create a being capable of taking over the world in its free time has gone largely unnoticed by me. I realize, in retrospect, that my conscious self has just been more or less a vessel for very horny ovaries.
I should give them a talking to. I’ve dated way too many hot motherfuckers who couldn’t tie their own shoelaces. After teaching them such helpful tips as, ‘pretend this is a rabbit ear, now make the other one,’ they’ve left me, spermless and back at square one. Without a superbaby.
Bad ovaries. Bad, bad ovaries.
But, like petulant children, my ovaries block my lecturing out. They may even already be aware that I don’t plan on letting them take a nine month break anytime soon, if ever. But I can’t know for sure what they think. We’re not speaking these days, after my last bad-boy encounter.
I bet you can guess the ending to that fling. Here’s a clue. Nothing good comes of volatile unreliability. No matter how many hot times you call each other bitch and exchange smacks.
But goddamn did it keep me, my suitcase labeled ‘Past’ and those naughty ovaries coming back for more, more, more.
They've caused me to go for all kinds of unworthies, based solely on my womb’s draw towards these guys' perceived genetic superiority.
This desire to create a being capable of taking over the world in its free time has gone largely unnoticed by me. I realize, in retrospect, that my conscious self has just been more or less a vessel for very horny ovaries.
I should give them a talking to. I’ve dated way too many hot motherfuckers who couldn’t tie their own shoelaces. After teaching them such helpful tips as, ‘pretend this is a rabbit ear, now make the other one,’ they’ve left me, spermless and back at square one. Without a superbaby.
Bad ovaries. Bad, bad ovaries.
But, like petulant children, my ovaries block my lecturing out. They may even already be aware that I don’t plan on letting them take a nine month break anytime soon, if ever. But I can’t know for sure what they think. We’re not speaking these days, after my last bad-boy encounter.
I bet you can guess the ending to that fling. Here’s a clue. Nothing good comes of volatile unreliability. No matter how many hot times you call each other bitch and exchange smacks.
But goddamn did it keep me, my suitcase labeled ‘Past’ and those naughty ovaries coming back for more, more, more.
Friday, April 21, 2006
The New 420
2006 seems to mark the definitive advent of texting as the dominate mode of communication.
'Puff puff pass: this is an electronic blunt, so take a hit in honor of today's holiday and pass it on! Happy 4:20.'
This text was sent to my cell a total of four separate times. And I felt as if I had celebrated the day even though I didn't actually get high or talk to anyone about it.
Virtual reality takes it one step further.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
"I'm the Decider" inspired one blogger to write in dr. seuss-style:
I'm the decider.
I pick and I choose.
I pick among whats.
And choose among whos.
And as I decide
Each particular day
The things I decide on
All turn out that way.
and check out the salon.com article: Clinging to Rumsfeld as generals lead an unprecedented revolt, Bush reveals his weakness and his disdain for the lessons of history.
Morning Snapshots
Touch: skin as creamy and smooth as chocolate fondue.
Taste: an 'organic smelt carob frosted' vegan donut. it was a gift. made me laugh out loud when i realized rich people actually buy these paste-like, sawdust-flavored things.
Sight: a hot, blonde woman in a red convertible, openly picking her nose.
Sound: Prince's 'I want You' followed by a classsical Debussy.
Smell: groves of lavender bobbing with bumble-bees at my work's front door.
Taste: an 'organic smelt carob frosted' vegan donut. it was a gift. made me laugh out loud when i realized rich people actually buy these paste-like, sawdust-flavored things.
Sight: a hot, blonde woman in a red convertible, openly picking her nose.
Sound: Prince's 'I want You' followed by a classsical Debussy.
Smell: groves of lavender bobbing with bumble-bees at my work's front door.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Dating 101
When I was 15, I came very close to kissing my first boyfriend.
Ben had told everyone how much he wanted me during the courtship phase. He pursued me with hand-written letters and word-of-mouth compliments. We shared lingering gazes and moonlit trysts (okay, only one). Once I gave in to his advances, however, the relationship skidded to a halt. After failing to solicit the attentions I required for commitment, I sent him a scathing note intended to spur him to action, which instead resulting in us breaking up. He told everyone I was a bitch, and we never spoke again.
In fact, except for eight words, we never spoke at all. The entire six-months or so interaction occurred with a single verbal and no physical interaction.
Such was dating in the controlled environment of the Christian fundamentalist Church I was raised in.
But despite my intimidated leanings towards good-girl conformity, hormones had other plans for me. They punched a hole, one, two, in a bible-box I had hitherto supposed impenetrable. But they didn’t stop at just flailing outside of the box. They thought outside it, too, looking over their collective shoulder as guilty and flushed as could be, even as they marched over and demanded that Ben and I get together. I just held on for dear life as they dashed over to my best friend Ruth, told her to tell Ben’s sister where we’d meet, set up a nod, nod, wink, wink code-system, and shuttled my helpless feet over moonlit potholes and into a crouching position behind a tent.
He actually showed up. We looked quakingly at each other for a moment.
I rose out of my crouch and leaned, as coyly as one can, into the wall of the tent. This didn’t work at all, so I stood up straight. I looked up at him and let the moonlight play with my eyelashes.
"You like me?” I said.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, looking away.
It occured to me that the full moon was actually creating a glare off of my bottle eyeglasses. I subtly shifted position.
“I like you too,” I said.
We stared at each other for a moment, our hearts pounding, lips (well I know mine were), throbbing. And then fear overcame desire, and we split in opposite directions, without another word.
After that, I resigned myself to holding Ben’s gaze over the hundred-foot gap separating the young sister’s section from the young brother’s section, and pressing retrieved butterscotch candy wrappers he’d dropped, between the pages of my Bible.
Three months after the moonlit tryst whose mental replay button still kept me up at nights, I went on a youth trip to the Ottowa fellowship in Canada where Ben lived. He slipped me a note on Sunday afternoon, an hour before my return trip home.
It said, ‘I love you.’
I almost lost my mind on the car-ride home. The sunlight through the car window felt like my lover’s touch. Passing license plates held coded promises of future conjoined initials. The throb of my heart threw me into such dizziness that the Sister driving asked repeatedly if I was OK. No drug since then, not even the most potent, pure aemphetamines available on the west coast, has ever come close to that first burst of pure ecstasy.
And when, two months later, I’d failed to receive another message from him, despite three letters of my own, I sealed my fate with a spicy little ‘how dare you diss me’ page of notebook paper folded in the origami-reminiscent tidiness perfected by adolescent girls and delivered crisply on a designated rock by the west dorm at Victory.
The news came, via the sibling-express, forty-five minutes later.
“He’s mad. He said you’re a bitch.”
And thus concluded my first lesson in the dynamics of male-female companionship. In fact, despite (or perhaps because of) the general absence of interaction, I see now that I had learned everything I’d ever need to know about dating.
I would be happily doing my own thing, when along would come the unexpected and disruptive attentions of a random male.
I would then be, in this order, distracted from my own happy tasks, flattered by the attention, and then, rabidly desirous of more, more, more.
The male would withdraw instinctively, as I would instinctively find a way to get closer.
When I got closer, conducting 7/8’s of all verbal discourse, he’d be induced by my natural charms to give me what I wanted, in this case, an affirmation of undying affection.
Content that he’d pleased me, the male would then withdraw and find other things to do.
I would then flail frantically to regain his attention, it would be too slow in coming, I’d sabatoge it all by freaking out, he’d run in the opposite direction after insulting me for making him feel small.
It would all conclude by both parties feeling slightly stunned, a bit bewildered, and definitely hurt, which would induce us to find an immediate aphrodisiac in the form of a new drama-partner.
Repeat unto death do us part.
In my case, the replacement came in the form of my actual First Kiss, one pot-smoking, beret-wearing, chain-dangling, nunchucks-swinging member of the Portuguese mafia...
Monday, April 10, 2006
nice.
first email on this monday morning was the word of the day.
skeet - v. to ejaculate. Also n., semen, male ejaculate. Also used as a
reduplicated interjection: "skeet skeet!" Categories: English. Sex &
Sexuality. Slang.
LA Fable
Once there was a land where pretty, happy creatures with smiles on their faces lived. They played together all day, and had a dreadfully good time.
The sun was always shining, the air was always warm, and in the distance tall mountains shone green and the blue ocean sparkled.
The creatures were of the fortunate variety that does not have to work very hard. Delicious food grew everywhere, and other creatures to prepare it, were plentiful. The other creatures also built beautiful, spacious dwellings for them. The pretty, happy creatures were free to sit around and have good ideas, and sometimes, even make them happen.
But despite appearancs, the creatures carried with them a tragic deformity of which they themselves were unaware. You see, the creatures were each enclosed in a two-foot wide, clear, protective plastic-like covering.
Each creature was very like one of those self-sustaining universes, if you've ever seen one. If you haven't, you should sometime. They are little round balls sealed off, where miniature shrimp live out their whole lives without ever knowing about the big world we live in.
It was very nearly the same for these unfortunate, fortunate creatures. When they shook hands, or so they thought, they bumped into each other, shoulder to shoulder. The firm, clear bubble around them bounced them back, several feet away from each other even as they greeted one another.
But the worst was when the creatures tried to kiss. They bumped and bounced awkwardly. Then each waddled off in their separate directions, going back to their happy, fabulous lives, feeling as if something special had happened. And no, there was nothing necessarily not-special about bumping and bouncing, but the tragedy was that the creatures did not know that that was what had taken place.
They did not know they were enclosed in a thick layer of protective air, so they did not know what it really was to touch or feel.
They even went so far as to sometimes share air. They'd pop a little hole in each other's protective layering and suck air out of each other to refill their own layer. And still, the creatures found this normal, even fun, because it was all they knew.
And when they happily waddled off in their separate directions, going back to their fabulous, insulated lives, they didn't notice that the holes leaked a little, leaving them each a bit deflated. And so, the happy, warm creatures lived, content to be safe and warm, never knowing and therefore not caring that they did not, in actuality, know what it was to touch, and therefore know, another creature.
Until one day.
A small, exposed creature, shorter, thinner and yet with a certain, shall we say, thickness to her, at least in comparison to the clear bulbousness of the more-fortunate creature, pointed this difference out one day.
She stopped tending the plants that made the hills so green, put away her tools that made so many houses so easily, and she stood beneath a beautiful, deflating creature and looked up at him or her, she couldn't be sure, with all that bubble-wrap.
"Hey, come on out!" she said.
"What do you mean? I am out," said the creature. And indeed, in this land where 'being out' meant knowing and saying which version of creature you preferred to bump and exchange air with, the creature was correct.
"No, not out like that, I mean out here, with the green hills and the blue water, and the warm sun."
"But what on earth do you mean?" said the creature, because he was standing outside, with the smaller, skinnier yet thicker creature at that very moment.
"This is what I mean," she said, and without warning, she did the unthinkable, the unimaginable! She picked up her housing tool, and pop, pop, she punctured the protective covering and off it fell.
The creature stood in alarm. "What is that feeling?" he asked, as the sun touched his bare skin. "It's warmth," said she. And she dropped her tool to the ground, and stood on her tippy-toes and reached, reached, until she could place her lips on his. And when the creature felt what he had been missing, he forgot his so-called happy, safe life and remembered only the knowledge of touch.
And the creature knew what it was to love.
The sun was always shining, the air was always warm, and in the distance tall mountains shone green and the blue ocean sparkled.
The creatures were of the fortunate variety that does not have to work very hard. Delicious food grew everywhere, and other creatures to prepare it, were plentiful. The other creatures also built beautiful, spacious dwellings for them. The pretty, happy creatures were free to sit around and have good ideas, and sometimes, even make them happen.
But despite appearancs, the creatures carried with them a tragic deformity of which they themselves were unaware. You see, the creatures were each enclosed in a two-foot wide, clear, protective plastic-like covering.
Each creature was very like one of those self-sustaining universes, if you've ever seen one. If you haven't, you should sometime. They are little round balls sealed off, where miniature shrimp live out their whole lives without ever knowing about the big world we live in.
It was very nearly the same for these unfortunate, fortunate creatures. When they shook hands, or so they thought, they bumped into each other, shoulder to shoulder. The firm, clear bubble around them bounced them back, several feet away from each other even as they greeted one another.
But the worst was when the creatures tried to kiss. They bumped and bounced awkwardly. Then each waddled off in their separate directions, going back to their happy, fabulous lives, feeling as if something special had happened. And no, there was nothing necessarily not-special about bumping and bouncing, but the tragedy was that the creatures did not know that that was what had taken place.
They did not know they were enclosed in a thick layer of protective air, so they did not know what it really was to touch or feel.
They even went so far as to sometimes share air. They'd pop a little hole in each other's protective layering and suck air out of each other to refill their own layer. And still, the creatures found this normal, even fun, because it was all they knew.
And when they happily waddled off in their separate directions, going back to their fabulous, insulated lives, they didn't notice that the holes leaked a little, leaving them each a bit deflated. And so, the happy, warm creatures lived, content to be safe and warm, never knowing and therefore not caring that they did not, in actuality, know what it was to touch, and therefore know, another creature.
Until one day.
A small, exposed creature, shorter, thinner and yet with a certain, shall we say, thickness to her, at least in comparison to the clear bulbousness of the more-fortunate creature, pointed this difference out one day.
She stopped tending the plants that made the hills so green, put away her tools that made so many houses so easily, and she stood beneath a beautiful, deflating creature and looked up at him or her, she couldn't be sure, with all that bubble-wrap.
"Hey, come on out!" she said.
"What do you mean? I am out," said the creature. And indeed, in this land where 'being out' meant knowing and saying which version of creature you preferred to bump and exchange air with, the creature was correct.
"No, not out like that, I mean out here, with the green hills and the blue water, and the warm sun."
"But what on earth do you mean?" said the creature, because he was standing outside, with the smaller, skinnier yet thicker creature at that very moment.
"This is what I mean," she said, and without warning, she did the unthinkable, the unimaginable! She picked up her housing tool, and pop, pop, she punctured the protective covering and off it fell.
The creature stood in alarm. "What is that feeling?" he asked, as the sun touched his bare skin. "It's warmth," said she. And she dropped her tool to the ground, and stood on her tippy-toes and reached, reached, until she could place her lips on his. And when the creature felt what he had been missing, he forgot his so-called happy, safe life and remembered only the knowledge of touch.
And the creature knew what it was to love.
Friday, April 07, 2006
It's the Journey, not the Destination
I can see myself very clearly in this moment. I get myself all kinds of worked up when something minorly good happens to me. My imagination goes into overdrive, I work my expectations into a lather, and then I self-sabotage by trying to shape everything into that vision.
I truly need to stay focused in the moment. Meditate, find a zen place, control my need to over-think, and stay content with what is in front of me. Be thankful for what is on my plate in the moment, and just let it shape it’s own course.
There’s no reason to get obsessed with achieving something that will never make me happy if I haven’t learned to be thankful for what’s right in front of me.
I just wrote one good chapter in my memoir, and my hands are practically shaking with the thrill of ‘what’s going to happen’ when I finish. My mind is in over-drive about when and where I can start publishing chapters – should I call the editor I know at the LA Times? -, how I’ll handle the fame, what I’ll say to the guys who dissed me that now think I rule, and what my next five books will be about to help me stay in the limelight.
That is pathetic. And inevitably disappointing. And unnecessary.
This guy I like is calling me again. I am imagining what will happen when he realizes in full what he’s been missing all along, meets my friends and family, falls in love with me...
Which means next time I see him I will be so off-course as to what’s actually going on, that I won’t even notice him, other than how or what he’s going to do to make what I think should happen, NOW. Whereupon, he will, naturally, go careening off into the sunset without me.
I need to chill!
ADD will be the ruin of me if I can’t learn to just focus, stay in the moment, and be thankful for what I have.
I am coming to hate this driven, dizzy feeling. It’s unnecessary, and actually creates the very opposite of what I am hoping for.
Which is fulfillment, peace, success, recognition, and love.
I have that already, in so many, many, many ways. I have arrived. Now I am going to enjoy the process of the next step, without concern for what it will look like around the bend in the road.
Surprises are fun. Life is long. This moment is beautiful. I am thankful for the friends and family I have.
I will enjoy the process.
I truly need to stay focused in the moment. Meditate, find a zen place, control my need to over-think, and stay content with what is in front of me. Be thankful for what is on my plate in the moment, and just let it shape it’s own course.
There’s no reason to get obsessed with achieving something that will never make me happy if I haven’t learned to be thankful for what’s right in front of me.
I just wrote one good chapter in my memoir, and my hands are practically shaking with the thrill of ‘what’s going to happen’ when I finish. My mind is in over-drive about when and where I can start publishing chapters – should I call the editor I know at the LA Times? -, how I’ll handle the fame, what I’ll say to the guys who dissed me that now think I rule, and what my next five books will be about to help me stay in the limelight.
That is pathetic. And inevitably disappointing. And unnecessary.
This guy I like is calling me again. I am imagining what will happen when he realizes in full what he’s been missing all along, meets my friends and family, falls in love with me...
Which means next time I see him I will be so off-course as to what’s actually going on, that I won’t even notice him, other than how or what he’s going to do to make what I think should happen, NOW. Whereupon, he will, naturally, go careening off into the sunset without me.
I need to chill!
ADD will be the ruin of me if I can’t learn to just focus, stay in the moment, and be thankful for what I have.
I am coming to hate this driven, dizzy feeling. It’s unnecessary, and actually creates the very opposite of what I am hoping for.
Which is fulfillment, peace, success, recognition, and love.
I have that already, in so many, many, many ways. I have arrived. Now I am going to enjoy the process of the next step, without concern for what it will look like around the bend in the road.
Surprises are fun. Life is long. This moment is beautiful. I am thankful for the friends and family I have.
I will enjoy the process.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
New Views
Reminder. Every man is different. I cannot hold them to the actions of their fellow selfish creatures. I have to give them a new chance each and every time.
I need to take it easier on men. They're these rather linear creatures who have to move in specified blocks of behavior. They want someone to show them something outside of this.
I'm a girl. I have a lot more freedom, at least when it comes to self-expression. I just need to remember that these guys around me, devoid of their big cars, and jobs, and muscles, and plans, are just souls passing through that would like to be listened to, really listened to, for a minute or two.
They need compassion, and sympathy, and loyalty, and the intuitiveness that a woman is capable of.
This isn't about some contest or challenge where someone comes out on top and gets a prize.
This is about not being afraid to put yourself on hold and pay attention to someone else.
When it comes to being coddled or pampered, I have everything I need already. I live well and am happy.
So I'm just going to start enjoying giving, and listening, and relaxing and caring. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I need to take it easier on men. They're these rather linear creatures who have to move in specified blocks of behavior. They want someone to show them something outside of this.
I'm a girl. I have a lot more freedom, at least when it comes to self-expression. I just need to remember that these guys around me, devoid of their big cars, and jobs, and muscles, and plans, are just souls passing through that would like to be listened to, really listened to, for a minute or two.
They need compassion, and sympathy, and loyalty, and the intuitiveness that a woman is capable of.
This isn't about some contest or challenge where someone comes out on top and gets a prize.
This is about not being afraid to put yourself on hold and pay attention to someone else.
When it comes to being coddled or pampered, I have everything I need already. I live well and am happy.
So I'm just going to start enjoying giving, and listening, and relaxing and caring. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
I haven't cried in a long time.
But this morning the rain on my windshield got to me.
It felt good to let the tears out.
My truest friends have come. gone. again.
Life would have been so different if I'd stayed.
But here I am, in la-la land.
The same version as before.
But, they say, better, happier, stronger.
So why the tears?
Because it could have been easier.
If I didn't make it (still) hard.
Pick it up, pack it in, let me begin...
again. and again. and again.
emptying the space behind its eyes, the body begs,
put it on pause.
But this morning the rain on my windshield got to me.
It felt good to let the tears out.
My truest friends have come. gone. again.
Life would have been so different if I'd stayed.
But here I am, in la-la land.
The same version as before.
But, they say, better, happier, stronger.
So why the tears?
Because it could have been easier.
If I didn't make it (still) hard.
Pick it up, pack it in, let me begin...
again. and again. and again.
emptying the space behind its eyes, the body begs,
put it on pause.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The Only Good LA Traffic Story You'll Ever Read
"How do you plead?"
"Guilty, with explanation, Your Honor."
"OK, proceed."
"Your Honor, I believe that stop-signs are an established way in our traffic system to regulate traffic, avoid accidents, and give everyone a fair turn. Do you agree?"
"Um, yes."
"Well, the charge I've received of failure to stop at a stop sign is something that would not happen based on my belief in this effective system. See, what happened was I was driving down a hill in slow traffic and arrived at a 3-way stop-sign. I completed my turn, and about 200 meters down the street was pulled over by an officer. I was unaware of my violation, as were the 10 year old twins in the backseat that I was bringing home from school. In fact, we all attested to my having completely stopped, but the officer ignored my assertion and gave me this ticket anyway. That's why I'm here today. Because I know that he was wrong."
"I just have one question," says the judge. "Why did you use the metric system in your description?"
"I'm a track and field athlete, sir."
"OK, then. Charge dismissed, traffic school granted."
The whole thing ended up costing me $40 instead of upwards of $200.
"Guilty, with explanation, Your Honor."
"OK, proceed."
"Your Honor, I believe that stop-signs are an established way in our traffic system to regulate traffic, avoid accidents, and give everyone a fair turn. Do you agree?"
"Um, yes."
"Well, the charge I've received of failure to stop at a stop sign is something that would not happen based on my belief in this effective system. See, what happened was I was driving down a hill in slow traffic and arrived at a 3-way stop-sign. I completed my turn, and about 200 meters down the street was pulled over by an officer. I was unaware of my violation, as were the 10 year old twins in the backseat that I was bringing home from school. In fact, we all attested to my having completely stopped, but the officer ignored my assertion and gave me this ticket anyway. That's why I'm here today. Because I know that he was wrong."
"I just have one question," says the judge. "Why did you use the metric system in your description?"
"I'm a track and field athlete, sir."
"OK, then. Charge dismissed, traffic school granted."
The whole thing ended up costing me $40 instead of upwards of $200.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
religion (or not)
so i went down to the beach this morning with my yoga mat to sit and meditate for 15 minutes or so.
when i cleared my mind of thoughts, i had the familiar sensation of being a peon, a tiny, insignificant orb floating in a world of many, many more.
and i realized, when i speak of fear, that's where my own fear lies...in seeing and knowing that my existence is entirely meaningless.
ever since i was a little girl, i've been bothered by the bible verse, 'for your life is but a vapor.' i'd watch the vapor come our of my parents' humidifier, and think about how fleeting and scary the concept was. at the same time, the concept of 'forever' and 'eternity' frightened me equally. it just went on, always, without end, your heaven or hell outcome dependent on actions made in that momentary 'vapor' existence that started it all.
this time, while meditating, i began to picture my little orb-self as an energetic atom, radiating red-hot, the more that i loved and gave of that energy. the brighter it burned, the more i was able to distribute, share, send out tendrils of strength, and therefore connect with the orbs around me.
this time, while meditating, i began to picture my little orb-self as an energetic atom, radiating red-hot, the more that i loved and gave of that energy. the brighter it burned, the more i was able to distribute, share, send out tendrils of strength, and therefore connect with the orbs around me.
and i realized, therein lies one answer to my need for meaning. in this floating vapor of a moment, i can affect the universe around me by burning bright enough for my energy to touch, shape, a
nd alter the preexisting energy around me.
nd alter the preexisting energy around me. i stood up, smiled at the world and tossed my yoga mat over my shoulder. i was holding an apple core and thirty feet away was a garbage can in the sand. i felt this oneness, a confident connectedness flow through me. when i threw it the apple landed in the can as if i had been standing next to it.
it just makes the quantum mechanics i'm reading about right now seem all the more applicable on a day-to-day level: 'Normally, spatial separation implies physical independence. Quantum mechanics challenges this view by revealing, at least in certain circumstances, a capacity to transcend space. Two objects can be far apart in space, but it's as if they're a single entity. Moreover, because of the tight link between space and time found by Einstein, the quantum connections also have temporal tentacles."
***
***
the book goes on to say, to my excitement...'Despite these many impressive insights, there remains one very basic feature of time - that it seems to have a direction pointing from past to future - for which neither relativity nor quantum mechanics has provided an explanation.'
that's the main reason i'm reading this book. i want to know what the forefront theories and ideas are about the concept of time. neat, neat, neat.
Friday, March 17, 2006
hunting tips
details from the hunter-tracking research i'm doing for my boss's Western screenplay:
-Hunting
an opossum involves finding him on a low branch or in a bush; it's easy to shake him out or climb up and throw him down. When an opossum plays dead it is a function of this stupid animal's low-geared nervous system - the possum is overwhelmed by excitement and faints. Then he's usually dispatched by the dogs or the hunter wielding a club. Its a leisurely sport, but in the rural South, many men enjoy an evening out with a dog or two.
-Hunters sometimes used female deer scent made from the glands to attract buck deer, and concentrated deer scent is available in bottled form today.
-Trail-watchers sometimes call deer by rubbing and rattling two old antlers together. Often, a buck will rush up to get in on the battle, perhaps hoping that there is a ready doe nearby. In some states, this form of calling is forbidden by law because it is too effective when the bucks are in a rutting frenzy.
-Let out a series of yells that sound like a cross between an eagle's screaming and the weird yowls of a bobcat. This will terrify a hare so much that it simply cannot run away. It can then be killed easily, with a stick or a blow from the edge of the hand on the back of the neck.
-Gently touch the captured animal's eye with the muzzle of your gun. Even an unconscious animal will blink if it is still alive. If the animal does blink, put another bullet into it or use another broadhead.
Wisconsin childhood memories of friendly men clad all in orange, and the familiar sight of gutted deer carcasses hanging from every barn corner have suddenly lost their cozy, sepia-toned tinge.
eewie, icky, sad.
-Hunting
an opossum involves finding him on a low branch or in a bush; it's easy to shake him out or climb up and throw him down. When an opossum plays dead it is a function of this stupid animal's low-geared nervous system - the possum is overwhelmed by excitement and faints. Then he's usually dispatched by the dogs or the hunter wielding a club. Its a leisurely sport, but in the rural South, many men enjoy an evening out with a dog or two.-Hunters sometimes used female deer scent made from the glands to attract buck deer, and concentrated deer scent is available in bottled form today.
-Trail-watchers sometimes call deer by rubbing and rattling two old antlers together. Often, a buck will rush up to get in on the battle, perhaps hoping that there is a ready doe nearby. In some states, this form of calling is forbidden by law because it is too effective when the bucks are in a rutting frenzy.
-Let out a series of yells that sound like a cross between an eagle's screaming and the weird yowls of a bobcat. This will terrify a hare so much that it simply cannot run away. It can then be killed easily, with a stick or a blow from the edge of the hand on the back of the neck.
-Gently touch the captured animal's eye with the muzzle of your gun. Even an unconscious animal will blink if it is still alive. If the animal does blink, put another bullet into it or use another broadhead.
Wisconsin childhood memories of friendly men clad all in orange, and the familiar sight of gutted deer carcasses hanging from every barn corner have suddenly lost their cozy, sepia-toned tinge.
eewie, icky, sad.
life these days
Friday: get to work. have 2 green-clad 10 year olds meet me at the front door where merciless, lephrecaun-esque pinching - although not altogether painful, due to small digits - ensues immediately due to my having unobserved st. patty's green-garb demand.
my boss, irrate and insane due to wandering through an alternate universe of her own creation for hours on end, as writers tend to do, demands that i understand, share, and resolve her pain, without articulating the problem.
then she needs immediate research, such as yesterday...'HEIDI! I need a funky quote about making your fortune in the gold rush said by an eccentric 1850's character.' the considerably adept google meets his match in her, on a regular basis.
and i get stuck in the middle.
then she gets all cute and sweet, and we laugh alot and go hiking or eat some gourmet spread her italian husband stirs up, and i'm like, 'i have the best job ever.'
Weekend: meet my latest hottie-hot-hotboy at 5pm...drive 4 hours to big bear, stay in a hot-tub/fireplace cabin, wake up early, go snowboarding all day, drive back down to go to a rave that starts at midnight (actually a very radio-station official kind of thing, with the best electronic musicians around - like, 10 peeps are coming down from SF for it), stay till 6am (maybe), go sleep in echo park house 5 mins. away, in my room under the stairs, wake up to celebrate abigail's 21st, then meet this producer that night, to get the tapes of a beastie boy interview whose memoir i am writing the first 2 chapters of.
go to sleep.
Monday: wake up, go to work, and feel inexplicably lonely, cracked out, and sorry for himself. drink lots of coffee. smoke cigarettes.
guilt-trip myself at night for not writing and skipping spanish class, while i drink wine, watch american idol on TiVo, and take up perfunctory home improvement projects right when i'm actually about to sit down and write.
repeat until friday.
get older.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
at least we were together, holding hands
Man, moby is really representing on today's blog's entries!
I saw a guy crash his motorcycle on the highway today, and i almost threw up. I never saw aaron walk again after i dug my hands daily through his bloody compound fracture and did everything i could to take care of him for almost a year. he cut me off to latch on to someone else.
I found things he wrote me last night. I was looking through my memory folder. Still hurts. I sent him an email a few weeks back, just venting my frustration at his lack of care for a friendship or contact. He never answered. The postcard he wrote me five or six years ago said ‘you are permanantely in my heart and nothing can change that. I will always be your friend.’ How could I be so stupid? How could he? How could we think it was all so real? My heart still hurts.
Maybe it will stop someday, and I’ll truly be healed, so I can start something new and healthy. Maybe I’ll tell myself that this time, it won’t end.
The last guy i dated thought it was cool to be jaded. I don’t.
I pretend to be tough, when in actuality, all I want is to be loved enough to find it within myself to open up again.
this fucking moby record. 'oh my baby, don't cry. oh my baby at least we tried.'
which reminds me. this is aaron's CD.
I saw a guy crash his motorcycle on the highway today, and i almost threw up. I never saw aaron walk again after i dug my hands daily through his bloody compound fracture and did everything i could to take care of him for almost a year. he cut me off to latch on to someone else.
I found things he wrote me last night. I was looking through my memory folder. Still hurts. I sent him an email a few weeks back, just venting my frustration at his lack of care for a friendship or contact. He never answered. The postcard he wrote me five or six years ago said ‘you are permanantely in my heart and nothing can change that. I will always be your friend.’ How could I be so stupid? How could he? How could we think it was all so real? My heart still hurts.
Maybe it will stop someday, and I’ll truly be healed, so I can start something new and healthy. Maybe I’ll tell myself that this time, it won’t end.
The last guy i dated thought it was cool to be jaded. I don’t.
I pretend to be tough, when in actuality, all I want is to be loved enough to find it within myself to open up again.
this fucking moby record. 'oh my baby, don't cry. oh my baby at least we tried.'
which reminds me. this is aaron's CD.
we are all made of stars
this writing thing i'm doing. rob said to me, 'wow, that's a really big gamble, huh. like, in 10 years, if your novel does well, it will validate the entire last decade of your life. everything you did will suddenly be viewed differently, like, 'oh, that's when she was writing her novel.' "
what will happen if i don't kick ass as a published writer was left unsaid.
the desire to be known and respected...validated...has suddenly been kicked into even higher gear.
'i fly so high, and fall so low.'
moby's 'we are all made of stars' is playing in the background.
the CD was a welcome surprise the other day in the mail, the return of a loan i made to a member of my fishing crew in alaska, over 2 years ago. it came along with a magazine-size photo of me kneeling in sunny grass in a full patchwork dress with a hard-core homesteader look on my face.
it's pretty cool, except for the fact that actually displaying it would be weirdly narcissistic.
according to society. but as far as i'm concerned it IS all about me. i mean, who else is there? no one right now, anyway.
except for that unbearably predictable and therefore exploitable family-thing called 'unconditional love.'
what will happen if i don't kick ass as a published writer was left unsaid.
the desire to be known and respected...validated...has suddenly been kicked into even higher gear.
'i fly so high, and fall so low.'
moby's 'we are all made of stars' is playing in the background.
the CD was a welcome surprise the other day in the mail, the return of a loan i made to a member of my fishing crew in alaska, over 2 years ago. it came along with a magazine-size photo of me kneeling in sunny grass in a full patchwork dress with a hard-core homesteader look on my face.
it's pretty cool, except for the fact that actually displaying it would be weirdly narcissistic.
according to society. but as far as i'm concerned it IS all about me. i mean, who else is there? no one right now, anyway.
except for that unbearably predictable and therefore exploitable family-thing called 'unconditional love.'
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Divers Discover Furry Blond Crustacean
PARIS (March 8) - A team of American-led divers has discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blond fur, French researchers said Tuesday.
Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it.
then again
i've never been happier than i am right now. things keep getting better, the more i learn.
and being single, with all the things i have to keep me busy, is exactly what i need. and even want, most of the time.
so there, overly-analytical self!
and being single, with all the things i have to keep me busy, is exactly what i need. and even want, most of the time.
so there, overly-analytical self!
so it goes?
I’m smiling ruefully to myself right now. One more guy that I like, that doesn’t work out. I am a woefully atypical girl. Get fooled into thinking attention means someone wants me, give up ass, get into them, they disappear, I take 1-3 weeks to recover before heading out on a quest to do it all over again.
You think I’d learn.
I have to keep being strong. And brave enough to try again and again.
No, that sounds depressing, and desperate.
But is giving up winning?
You think I’d learn.
I have to keep being strong. And brave enough to try again and again.
No, that sounds depressing, and desperate.
But is giving up winning?
Monday, March 06, 2006
Cool Word
quintessence \kwin-TESS-unss\ noun
1 : the fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval
philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the
celestial bodies
*2 : the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated
form
Monday, February 20, 2006
Hot Chicks on Speed
orUnderground Fashion Victim-Sluts
hahaha, I just came across this thing i wrote about shady bitches awhile back.
I had this dude on ecstasy with leather pants following me around at the Shortstop bar on Sunset and Vine last weekend.
‘I feel like we’re like planets that have a gravitational pull. I can’t stop rotating around you. We have a connection, right? I thought we had a moment back there, right?”
It’s weird. Whenever I wear my pink booty skirt and throw back whiskey on the rocks until I’m raging drunk, dudes like this come out of nowhere. I think it’s like ecstasy-dude put it. I just have this magnetic energy.
Take last night for example. It was a total girl-power night, but the boys still couldn’t stay away. All us kickass chicks sat at a back table in the bar which clearly sent the message ‘leave us the hell alone. We’re bonding. Something you bumbling males can’t get. Feminity is natural and glamourous.’
That’s why I wore my purple pleather chaps with the rhinestone thong.
Purple is the color of royalty. And probably the gods, then, too. And we’re all goddess-mamas. Gotta represent the cosmotic karma aura. Cause we’re chill like that.
Some hipster-dorks were giving me bad vibes about my outfit. I feel sorry for them. It must suck to wear dirty Converse sneakers and have no fashion clue.
They probably just wanted me. Put your dicks back in your pants you testosterone freaks. Can’t you control yourselves at the sight of an ass? It’s just some jiggle and a crack. Well yeah, I guess mine is pretty hot. But you’re still pigs.
Speaking of crack, the shit I smoked later on that night got me wasted. When I woke up at Tom’s house – that’s what the bills on his bedroom floor said his name was anyway – his roommate was totally vibing me out. I wanted to call my best friend, but he’s like, a lawyer or some shit, and was having this long conversation on the phone about work. I’m never gonna do that capitalist 9-5 crap. I see right through it, and it’s stupid.
So I went home and called my roommate, but she started giving me some soccer-mom bullshit about dissing the girls and smoking crack and fucking strangers. I don’t need her sending that negative energy my way.
“You’re wack. Some people just don’t care about others the way I do, Carly, and you’re one of them. I say it as a friend, you should really look within yourself and explore what it is that’s causing you to project your insecurities onto me.”
You know what she told me? That she was sick of partying and was gonna take a marketing job.
Go suck a dick you mainstream slut. I always knew you were a sell-out.
It’s not like you ever had any original concepts. Like, did you create the word ‘cosmotic’ or think of chaps/thong ensembles before they’ve gotten hot? (they’re going to, and I said it first)’ I didn’t think so.
God it’s hard to find true friends around here, even when you’re totally artistic and living your life in balance and harmony. Maybe I’ll go to that trance party in the industrial section of town that ecstasy-dude told me about.
Maybe I’ll release my kundalini with him and we can exist together on the pure chakral plane. He gets it. It would be hot.
Most people just don’t get it, y’know man?
weird
rictus \RIK-tus\ noun 1 : the gape of a bird's mouth 2 a : the mouth orifice *b: a gaping grin or grimace
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Life is all about second chances. I'm 25, and I've lived several times over already.
Two years ago I had a devastating injury that took away the innate joy that I'd otherwise taken for granted. I made a conscious decision to stay with someone who gave me about 25% of what I needed, because I knew he was as good as I could do. He was an athlete, he was loyal, he was hot, he knew what it meant to be injured. And I'd moved here for him. The ignorance, the jealousy, the judgment, the control, that was just my lot in life.
I had friends who loved me and cared for me as best they knew, but still fell below the bar that I had the consciousness to recognize floating above my current lifestyle. The recklessness, the rumors, the drugs, the hypocrisy, the ignorant arrogance, again, that was the best I could hope for.
The only appearance my athletic ability and love of dance made was as a rumor that I spread around when extra-unhappy or drunk.
The cult I was raised in had swallowed up and spit out a family whose last semblance of reliability was the guaranteed weekly appearance in the newspaper police blotter.
So I ran away and poured it into a story. No wonder the main character lives in the land of the dead.
And now, two years of pain and necessary compromise later, I live like a rock star again.
I feel like I've lived, died, and reawoken excited to try it all over again.
Two years ago I had a devastating injury that took away the innate joy that I'd otherwise taken for granted. I made a conscious decision to stay with someone who gave me about 25% of what I needed, because I knew he was as good as I could do. He was an athlete, he was loyal, he was hot, he knew what it meant to be injured. And I'd moved here for him. The ignorance, the jealousy, the judgment, the control, that was just my lot in life.
I had friends who loved me and cared for me as best they knew, but still fell below the bar that I had the consciousness to recognize floating above my current lifestyle. The recklessness, the rumors, the drugs, the hypocrisy, the ignorant arrogance, again, that was the best I could hope for.
The only appearance my athletic ability and love of dance made was as a rumor that I spread around when extra-unhappy or drunk.
The cult I was raised in had swallowed up and spit out a family whose last semblance of reliability was the guaranteed weekly appearance in the newspaper police blotter.
So I ran away and poured it into a story. No wonder the main character lives in the land of the dead.
And now, two years of pain and necessary compromise later, I live like a rock star again.
I feel like I've lived, died, and reawoken excited to try it all over again.
I'm not sure where this blog is going.
I think my writing class may be making my writing worse.
I feel happier than I ever have, yet when I look back at my old entries there's a lot more passion.
Hmmm.
Maybe I'll just start posting wantonly personal details on here.
Like the five orgasms I had last night!!!! hmm, alright, OK, YEAH, YES!
whoo hoo, hell yeah, right on, hip hip hooray, do it again!
That's one direction to take it in...
I think my writing class may be making my writing worse.
I feel happier than I ever have, yet when I look back at my old entries there's a lot more passion.
Hmmm.
Maybe I'll just start posting wantonly personal details on here.
Like the five orgasms I had last night!!!! hmm, alright, OK, YEAH, YES!
whoo hoo, hell yeah, right on, hip hip hooray, do it again!
That's one direction to take it in...
Friday, February 17, 2006
i knew it!
I just found out that i have have some african-american genetics floating around in here!
my great-grandmother passed away at the ripe old age of 104 last week, and it instigated some digging in the roots of the family tree.
apparently, there were several marriages with black folk in south carolina in the last century on my dad's side of the family, all of whom hail from the deep south.
sweet-ass! i'm gonna turn this into a research project and really find out what's up for sure.
my great-grandmother passed away at the ripe old age of 104 last week, and it instigated some digging in the roots of the family tree.
apparently, there were several marriages with black folk in south carolina in the last century on my dad's side of the family, all of whom hail from the deep south.
sweet-ass! i'm gonna turn this into a research project and really find out what's up for sure.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Fabulous
My boss's latest insight: (taken purely out of context of course)
"Marriage is about fooling men. It’s about convincing them that they absolutely have to stick around in an environment where they get shit. "
"Marriage is about fooling men. It’s about convincing them that they absolutely have to stick around in an environment where they get shit. "
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Suckers
The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers say, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.
I cried, I laughed, I was proud
For once. Of my country.
Coretta Scott King's funeral was amazing.
Robert Kennedy's speech reminded me of a time when religion represented community, myth, ritual, solidarity...all the things that make being around other humans actually enjoyable. He quoted the Beatitudes in reference to Coretta's life, and it actually sounded like poetry.
Poet Maya Angelou sang her comments in a soul style of the Southern black church it was held in.
"We owe something from this minute on, so that this gathering is not just another footnote on the pages of history," she said, wagging her very formidable black-mama finger right at Bush sitting behind her.
The 'Rev' as Bill Clinton who free-styled his own hilariously cool speech, referred to him, boomed to a standing ovation, 'well, there sure weren't any weapons of mass destruction.'
Again, Bush was standing in the background and was forced to smile as 3 former presidents and thousands of black folk cheered for a straight minute. HA!
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin - whom I would walk barefoot all the way to Washington to see as our next president - injected politics into her remarks, describing how Coretta Scott King spoke out against "the senselessness of war" with a voice that was heard "from the tintop roofs of Soweto to the bomb shelters of Baghdad."
Jimmy Carter was the toughest of all. He brought up the government response to Katrina, saying, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi" to know that inequality exists." He also noted that the Kings once were "victims of secret government wiretapping" - echoing Bush's domestic spying program. And he gave credit for his presidency to Coretta, saying it was her and Martin Luther King's shaking his hand publicly across the southern states that got him elected.
I have hope for a brighter future again. So our current president looks like a 9 year old with ADD that has to pee whenever he's forced to show up for something meaningful.
This too, shall piss. I mean, pass.
Things are gonna get better. There's too much of a legacy of conviction and powerful partnerships like Coretta and Martin's behind this country for ignorance to completely take over.
Coretta Scott King's funeral was amazing.
Robert Kennedy's speech reminded me of a time when religion represented community, myth, ritual, solidarity...all the things that make being around other humans actually enjoyable. He quoted the Beatitudes in reference to Coretta's life, and it actually sounded like poetry.
Poet Maya Angelou sang her comments in a soul style of the Southern black church it was held in.
"We owe something from this minute on, so that this gathering is not just another footnote on the pages of history," she said, wagging her very formidable black-mama finger right at Bush sitting behind her.
The 'Rev' as Bill Clinton who free-styled his own hilariously cool speech, referred to him, boomed to a standing ovation, 'well, there sure weren't any weapons of mass destruction.'
Again, Bush was standing in the background and was forced to smile as 3 former presidents and thousands of black folk cheered for a straight minute. HA!
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin - whom I would walk barefoot all the way to Washington to see as our next president - injected politics into her remarks, describing how Coretta Scott King spoke out against "the senselessness of war" with a voice that was heard "from the tintop roofs of Soweto to the bomb shelters of Baghdad."
Jimmy Carter was the toughest of all. He brought up the government response to Katrina, saying, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi" to know that inequality exists." He also noted that the Kings once were "victims of secret government wiretapping" - echoing Bush's domestic spying program. And he gave credit for his presidency to Coretta, saying it was her and Martin Luther King's shaking his hand publicly across the southern states that got him elected.
I have hope for a brighter future again. So our current president looks like a 9 year old with ADD that has to pee whenever he's forced to show up for something meaningful.
This too, shall piss. I mean, pass.
Things are gonna get better. There's too much of a legacy of conviction and powerful partnerships like Coretta and Martin's behind this country for ignorance to completely take over.
Yes
by Catherine Doty
It's about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.
It's about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Sabbath Schedule
Yesterday I:
-ate a PBCJ (peanut butter chocolate jelly french toast sandwich), papaya mango smoothie, burrito (con todo), and chocolate cake. In that order.
-wore cowboy boots and a 'Word Up' tshirt (def: 'I concur that you are correct, my good brother').
-attempted to bail my DUI sibling out. Used a bondsman's business card that said 'god forbid but just in case,' and solemnly told a policeman the sibling's license plate number: 'ONO50'.
-had an impromptu shower scene with my girl friend. If there was a camera involved, we'd have a side business right now (but it was very, very clean).
-realized anew that men actually feel bigger the smaller they make the girl feel. (being a hetero and all, what the fuck am I going to do about this?)
-shared a proverbial mutual thumb-sucking session with the people who make it all OK in the end. (thanks matthew and jah)
-put out the xmas lights, turned on the fan, and curled up under the stairs for 7 hours of solid sleep.
The End. (I should write memoir screenplays, I know)
-ate a PBCJ (peanut butter chocolate jelly french toast sandwich), papaya mango smoothie, burrito (con todo), and chocolate cake. In that order.
-wore cowboy boots and a 'Word Up' tshirt (def: 'I concur that you are correct, my good brother').
-attempted to bail my DUI sibling out. Used a bondsman's business card that said 'god forbid but just in case,' and solemnly told a policeman the sibling's license plate number: 'ONO50'.
-had an impromptu shower scene with my girl friend. If there was a camera involved, we'd have a side business right now (but it was very, very clean).
-realized anew that men actually feel bigger the smaller they make the girl feel. (being a hetero and all, what the fuck am I going to do about this?)
-shared a proverbial mutual thumb-sucking session with the people who make it all OK in the end. (thanks matthew and jah)
-put out the xmas lights, turned on the fan, and curled up under the stairs for 7 hours of solid sleep.
The End. (I should write memoir screenplays, I know)
Friday, January 27, 2006
Size Matters
Scientists have found that in bat species with promiscuous females, male bats have larger testes and smaller brains, compared to in bat species with monogamous females, where male bats have smaller testes but larger brains, the AP reported earlier this week.
"The male who ejaculates the greatest number of sperm wins the game, and hence many bats have evolved outrageously big testes," says this biologist dude.
C'mon human males, get in the balls-game! I wanna play!
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Loneliness is necessary for greatness. Greatness is the realization of a human being's full potential. The realization of full potential is truly living. And to truly live is to commit to a heightened, uncompromising awareness. For life.
But, truly living or not, we can't have it all. For to defy conditioning, to avoid apathy, is to choose to not accept. To not accept is to miss out on giving unconditional love. But unconditional love is given without expectations. And to have no expectations is to invite abuse.
So. Loneliness. Is necessary. You can't find love - the love that's real and lasting and deserved and free - without it.
Or not. That's the beauty of it.
Nothing is set in stone. Except for change.
PS In retrospect, in pre-emption of possible charges, I plead wandering insanity with a smidgen of rationale.
But, truly living or not, we can't have it all. For to defy conditioning, to avoid apathy, is to choose to not accept. To not accept is to miss out on giving unconditional love. But unconditional love is given without expectations. And to have no expectations is to invite abuse.
So. Loneliness. Is necessary. You can't find love - the love that's real and lasting and deserved and free - without it.
Or not. That's the beauty of it.
Nothing is set in stone. Except for change.
PS In retrospect, in pre-emption of possible charges, I plead wandering insanity with a smidgen of rationale.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
YUM
Oh, and I have to admit, after seeing Mr. Eko's hot-ass drug dealer past, I considered switching my loyalties to him from Sawyer, the first dude (until Eko!) in entertainment I've ever obsessed over. Looove the corn-rows, Eko. Love the corn-rows.
Lost is Hot
I've never gotten into a TV show before, but 'Lost' has found me.
Last night's long-awaited episode? Oh my! I've never felt that look on my face before; one of thrilled, trembling incredulity. And the same expression was frozen on my 2 roommate's faces.
Here's a dope-ass speculation I found on what that dark cloud was all about:
"The "monster" is compressed dark matter, the "living" -- in so far as its sentient and has form -- product of a scientific experiment. It communicates through the computer and is embodied in the black cloud. Dark matter is supposed to effect gravity, so it would be able to suck people into the air just by coming into contact -- or near contact -- with them, as was the case with the pilot. It supposedly changes the rotational pattern of galaxies, so it would explain the unlikely isolation of the island, the fact that compasses don't work (or do, and the sun is rising and setting in the wrong place). Through the entering of the numerical sequence into the computer, the dark matter is kept compressed. If the numbers don't get entered, the dark matter expands into a black hole, and goodbye galaxy."
Last night's long-awaited episode? Oh my! I've never felt that look on my face before; one of thrilled, trembling incredulity. And the same expression was frozen on my 2 roommate's faces.
Here's a dope-ass speculation I found on what that dark cloud was all about:
"The "monster" is compressed dark matter, the "living" -- in so far as its sentient and has form -- product of a scientific experiment. It communicates through the computer and is embodied in the black cloud. Dark matter is supposed to effect gravity, so it would be able to suck people into the air just by coming into contact -- or near contact -- with them, as was the case with the pilot. It supposedly changes the rotational pattern of galaxies, so it would explain the unlikely isolation of the island, the fact that compasses don't work (or do, and the sun is rising and setting in the wrong place). Through the entering of the numerical sequence into the computer, the dark matter is kept compressed. If the numbers don't get entered, the dark matter expands into a black hole, and goodbye galaxy."
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Rambling Quotables
My boss is a former successful actress turned screenwriter. She has enough interesting opinions to keep me showing up as her assistant everyday. And her gung-ho survivor artist mentality certainly is encouraging. Here's a few from today; the first one really resonates:
"Quote for Life: they’ll always take from the one who’s already crying."
"To learn to survive on your own is to truly love life. because you can’t really live if you’re always under someone’s boot."
"I’ve always wanted to be a gypsy. I wanted to be the woman with the knife in my boot."
"I could see myself dressing up, doing every fucking thing I knew, to guarantee that I was not at the bottom of the pile."
"Almost all writing is pornography. jerk off, get you through it, haha, got your money. And they know damn well that’s what they’re doing."
"To truly write is to be insane. It's a crapshoot. A shot in the dark. And you have to go to bed every night with the world running through your head."
"Quote for Life: they’ll always take from the one who’s already crying."
"To learn to survive on your own is to truly love life. because you can’t really live if you’re always under someone’s boot."
"I’ve always wanted to be a gypsy. I wanted to be the woman with the knife in my boot."
"I could see myself dressing up, doing every fucking thing I knew, to guarantee that I was not at the bottom of the pile."
"Almost all writing is pornography. jerk off, get you through it, haha, got your money. And they know damn well that’s what they’re doing."
"To truly write is to be insane. It's a crapshoot. A shot in the dark. And you have to go to bed every night with the world running through your head."
Future
I think I'm going to apply to Berkeley and Stanford law school next fall. Ideally, Harvard if my novel does well.
Why do I feel like this move would be a weak-ass sell-out? Doing what everyone looks up to as a definitive form of accomplishment, instead of holding my head high and believing in an art, someday in a far future to be manifested, that currently only I can see.
For some reason, I love making things as hard as possible on myself. Being a struggling artist is so damn punishing.
At the same time, potential liberation from a world solely committed to solitude and hyper-contemplation (aka novel-writing) feels pretty damn good.
I think I'll just do both.
One step at a time.
Why do I feel like this move would be a weak-ass sell-out? Doing what everyone looks up to as a definitive form of accomplishment, instead of holding my head high and believing in an art, someday in a far future to be manifested, that currently only I can see.
For some reason, I love making things as hard as possible on myself. Being a struggling artist is so damn punishing.
At the same time, potential liberation from a world solely committed to solitude and hyper-contemplation (aka novel-writing) feels pretty damn good.
I think I'll just do both.
One step at a time.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Excerpt from review of a recently released memoir:
"My Fundamentalist Education" , a 'memoir of a divine girlhood' promises a glimpse into a world we soy latte addicts don't understand but can no longer dismiss. Controversy about evolution, Christian blockbusters in Hollywood, a president who speaks in biblical code: Christianity is hot, and Rosen's background is, suddenly, marketable. With her intelligence and tongue-in-cheek tone, she comes across as the ideal liaison: a former insider who will explain fundamentalism while allowing us to chuckle at it
Yay! My novel's topic is hot! (duh, look at the world around us right now)
I just need to finish the damn thing. Like, yesterday.
Title ideas, anybody? The more sensationalist the better.
hmm. How about 'My Sexual Fantasies about Jesus...'? I was in training to be 'the Bride of Christ,' after all...
"My Fundamentalist Education" , a 'memoir of a divine girlhood' promises a glimpse into a world we soy latte addicts don't understand but can no longer dismiss. Controversy about evolution, Christian blockbusters in Hollywood, a president who speaks in biblical code: Christianity is hot, and Rosen's background is, suddenly, marketable. With her intelligence and tongue-in-cheek tone, she comes across as the ideal liaison: a former insider who will explain fundamentalism while allowing us to chuckle at it
Yay! My novel's topic is hot! (duh, look at the world around us right now)
I just need to finish the damn thing. Like, yesterday.
Title ideas, anybody? The more sensationalist the better.
hmm. How about 'My Sexual Fantasies about Jesus...'? I was in training to be 'the Bride of Christ,' after all...
Driving home from San Francisco
I feel skittish and overwhelmed with emotion.
Scared of my future yet ecstatically hopeful.
Feels like colors, musical notes, cool and hot winds are running thru me.
My skin tingles. It feels alive, a separate entity, ready to leap ahead of me, into the dark road ahead.
There's light on the horizon and raindrops on the windshield. Promise hovering in the headlight beams.
The sky reaches down to whisper a secret:
Nothing matters in the end but human connection.
Love is forever.
It stands alone, the most solid thing in a fleeting vapor of material existence.
It's a New Year.
Scared of my future yet ecstatically hopeful.
Feels like colors, musical notes, cool and hot winds are running thru me.
My skin tingles. It feels alive, a separate entity, ready to leap ahead of me, into the dark road ahead.
There's light on the horizon and raindrops on the windshield. Promise hovering in the headlight beams.
The sky reaches down to whisper a secret:
Nothing matters in the end but human connection.
Love is forever.
It stands alone, the most solid thing in a fleeting vapor of material existence.
It's a New Year.
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