For these two, anyway! (Have you seen any of these XXX Bunny videos? They’re so funny. Well, it’s hard to laugh through some of it. Actually, it’s hard to know how to react since they’re pretty hardcore but the guy’s always got that ludicrous bunny head on the whole time.)

Yeah, well, okay. For some reason, I’m just feeling really silly about Easter this year. Not the part about Christ dying, or any of that stuff. But just my overall feelings this weekend are silly.

(And as an aside, if you are into the Secret Gospels – the Secret Gospel of Thomas or the Secret Gospel of Mark specifically – you have to wonder if maybe Jesus the man would have found XXX Bunny videos rather engaging. Honestly, the secret gospels are more interesting to me than 90% of the accepted Gospels. The kernels of truth within them, that seem to be hiding in plain site, I believe point closer to the direction of Jesus the man than anything else does. Except, perhaps, the Beatitudes. One point of interest, to me, anyway, is the role of Lazarus in the Secret Gospel of Mark. The concept that we achieve salvation through sin. I know that I’ve always kind of felt that to be true.  Anyway, check out the scholarly writings on the Secret Gospel of Mark, if you’re interested.)

I guess the nonstop stress I’ve been under with so many darn writing deadlines since September, is needing an escape valve, finally, so here it comes.

And perhaps it also has to do with that “Pink” Moon this weekend (a Blue Moon, but for some reason because it’s a double-full moon in April, it’s called a Pink Moon). I’m usually really sensitive to full moons, but with this one, I’m going from feeling intense to suddenly finding everything silly.

Oh, and I have to say that last evening, a total stranger – a woman in her 60s, I think – came up to me and gave me a big hug. She was so nice, so friendly. She was with her husband. She said, “Don’t worry. You’re going to make it! You just looked like you needed a hug.”

It was so nice, because I actually did need one at that moment. I was probably thinking something confounding about Nick Cave, but honestly, I don’t really remember. I just know I needed that fucking hug! And suddenly there it was!

That’s another nice thing about living out in the Hinterlands. A total stranger can hug you just because they think you need one and then you’ll never see that person again.

Another thing I love about the Hinterlands is how people, just in general, express how they feel. Especially on their bumper stickers. I tend to find that I don’t agree with anything written on bumper stickers. I’m not sure why that is, but I do find it interesting to read what people feel so passionate about that they feel they have to broadcast it across their bumpers. (Usually truck bumpers, or the back window of the cab of the truck since, out here, most people drive trucks. They also own a heck of a lot of guns.) Across the cab window of one truck I saw recently, there was a decal that said, in huge letters: Shoot Your Local Heroin Dealer. That was pretty passionate, I thought. And entirely unexpected.

We have a terrible opioid epidemic out here in Ohio. This past Christmas, I was driving along the highway on a very chilly, grey day. It looked like it would snow at any moment and I turned off down this short road that I drive down a lot, and suddenly there was this small truck, sort of like a box truck that you rent when you’re moving. And it was parked at the weirdest angle at the side of the road.  It just looked eerie. And when I drove past the driver’s side of the truck, the young woman was slumped down a little over the steering wheel and she looked dead.

I dialed 911 and they came right away. It was breathtaking how fast they came. And then I drove on. I don’t know if she was dead yet or not. And all through Christmas I wondered about her. Who she was. If they’d managed to save her or not – just in time for Christmas. And if they had saved her, I wondered if she was pissed off about that or not. Maybe she wanted to die. And I wondered if her family was happy she survived or if they’d kinda been wishing she’d die and be done with it. Opioids really destroy homes and families and lives. So who knows what was going on there.

I know from my own experience, that during my first suicide attempt, when I was 14, my life was just so awful.  Yet, underneath my unconsciousness (this was after about 16 hours already), I could hear a voice from God or the Universe or my Higher Self, telling me not to die. And I struggled so hard to regain consciousness. The nurse in the Emergency Room was the kindest person I had ever met in my whole life.  That’s the kind of angel who can really help you pull yourself back in from the abyss. I don’t recall too much of what happened, but I do remember her saying, “Come on, Marilyn, who’s the President of the United Sates?” and I kept replying “George Washington.”

But she did pull me through and obviously, I’m still alive. However, the truth is that my life got a whole lot worse for several years after that. And I often wondered what I was still alive for. And so maybe the woman in that truck at Christmas already knew there was nothing ahead of her but more bad stuff. I don’t know.

I do often think that, if I were capable of believing in vigilante justice, that awful year in my life of being 14 (after my boyfriend was killed), could have been salvaged somehow by simply shooting the guys that raped me; shooting my parents for being so disgustingly ugly in that courtroom during the custody fight; shooting my mother’s lawyer for being scum. You know, BAM. GAME OVER. Stuff like that. But we have these rules here that encourage us to rely on laws that let horrible lives and horrible people just drag on and on, forever, right? We’re not supposed to just shoot everybody, contrary to what life in America is like these days. But I feel sometimes that if some sort of concrete justice could have been done, then maybe – well, who knows.

All I  know is that once in awhile, an angel appears and is so kind that she can make you hang on, at least until the next moment of kindness finds you. (For me, that next moment came 6 years later, when I met my first husband in Brooklyn, before we were married, I mean.  Just meeting him. He was so incredibly kind to me.)

All righty! Wow. I do indeed digress! I wanted to post about something entirely different:

The feedback last evening from the editor regarding my new novel, Blessed By Light, really made my whole night.  She had a list of minor edits and then she said, “Marilyn, you’ve written a fascinating book.”

Yippee ki yi yay!! And so on me go!

Okay, I gotta get ready for my call with Peitor in Los Angeles because we are working on one of our scripts here this morning. I hope you have a terrific Holy Saturday, wherever you are in the world!!

I leave you with this, just because I’ve been listening to it a lot lately! Enjoy. I love you, guys. Thanks for visiting. See ya!