Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yes! Coffee’s Ready!!!

Leave a comment

Yes, I confess!! I am blogging from bed again. My cup of coffee on the night table beside me once more.

A different cup, though. Still autumnal, but this one is really huge.  Requires fewer trips downstairs:

Enormous autumnal coffee cup requires that I leave the bed less!

 

I’m also  blogging in the dark (I only turned on the lamp to better regale you with the photo), plus I’m blogging without my glasses on and hoping for the best!

As much as I love summer and truly hate to see it end (grieve when it ends, is more accurate), I sure do get used to the quiet coziness of fall mornings in a hurry. I cannot emphasize enough how cozy my bed is in the dark, when there’s a little chill in the air.

Kevin is supposed to come by sometime today with his dad to come get his VW camper van from out of my barn.  It’s always so great to see him, if only for a few minutes! He is definitely a wonderfully quirky guy.  Just a delight to know. About 20 years younger than me. Born and raised out here in the Hinterlands.

The first thing he said to me yesterday was, “Are you still giving that guy piano lessons?”

Funny how, when someone is gone for a few months, their perceptions of you remain back in time. Alas, no; I’m not still giving that guy piano lessons. He did finally move to the new house and took his piano out of storage, but he also got a new girlfriend and she moved in with him and he wasn’t making any dedicated time to practice.  So sadly, it was really just wasting my time.

Regardless, though, it was enough time to help me reconnect with myself musically, so that was perhaps the hidden blessing within that whole experience.

But between all the writing projects and trying to learn Italian every day, my intellectual plate is kind of full. If I still had my own piano in the house and could teach here, without having to do all that driving, I would probably be able to be a little more tolerant of people not practicing enough between lessons. Otherwise, to me,  it just feels like a hobby for them, not something serious, and I end up thinking, “Jesus Christ, do you have any clue how busy I am?”

That said… this morning, as I was lying here, doing absolutely nothing besides drinking my coffee, I was reflecting on how incredibly great it feels to do absolutely nothing.  Just lie here. Even while I’m getting excited about Letter #5 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse forming on my inner horizon. I’m not sure yet what it’s going to be about; I can only feel a darkness to it and a depth. No words are forming yet. So I’m excited about all these things I’m writing, but it sure feels good to lie in bed for an extra hour or two in the dark and do nothing!!!

There has also been some interesting stuff going on regarding both of my adoptive parents. It has given me food for thought. I don’t actually know if my adoptive mother is still alive; I’m guessing she is.  But I’m also guessing that if she is dying, no one is going to rush to alert me because they wouldn’t want me to pop up and contest her Will. (Yes, I think that highly of all of them…)

Anyway, my adoptive dad has nothing to do with any of them, But I was lamenting this morning that my relationship with him has really begun to deteriorate again. Part of it is me just becoming this total emotional minefield now.  It doesn’t matter if he tries to be nice (in his own nearly unidentifiable way of being “nice”), I make sure to keep moving all the active mines so that he’s gonna step on one of them, no matter what.

I’m just awful. Like I’m not going to give an inch anymore. I’m just one big minefield, loaded with active mines that are constantly shifting around so that he can’t possibly make any headway with me at all right now.  Pretty much everything he tries to say to me is WRONG. I don’t know if I’ll stay like this forever, but it’s definitely who I am with him right now.

Okay, well. On that cheery note!!! Have a great Sunday, wherever you are in the world. It is of course Tom  Petty‘s birthday today.  Have some cake or something, okay?

(From before he even moved to LA — a really long time ago!)

Okay, I love you guys! See ya.

It Seems That Things Are Getting Better!

Leave a comment

It is a really glorious October day here today.  I’m feeling a little more centered than I’ve felt in well over a week. Balanced, I guess.

Yesterday’s work with Peitor, over the phone, was really just great. Not only productive, but also it was really so much fun going over the script and all our notes for the script and both of us being kind of amazed by it. Some of it is intense, but on varying levels, all of it is funny.  We hadn’t worked on the script since July, so it was just fun to realize just how much work we had already gotten done on it before life went off in various intense directions.

It was also just great to be working with Peitor again and not feeling so isolated. I love writing, and I usually don’t mind that I have to be alone while doing that. But sometimes I really do feel intensely isolated. So it was great to be creative but have someone to laugh with, too.

And the movie is going to be so fucking cool even though it will only be about 8 minutes long.

Okay.

Well, tomorrow would have been Tom Petty’s 69th birthday so there are memorial concerts all over the country for him this weekend and the proceeds go to his 2 favorite charities in LA — mission charities that help the homeless and homeless children, and maybe homeless addicts, or something like that. I don’t really remember the exact charities. But a lot is going on.

I am doing incredibly good about all this. Only an occasional twinge of sorrow and then only when I think of him from the late 70s & early 80s — sometimes that whole Tom Petty era really still gets to me. The loss of that. His incredibly intense and wonderful youth. But overall, I’m good.

Both of his daughters are in my Instagram feed but I don’t usually pay too much attention to either of their feeds because they are both very intense, outspoken women — both artists and extremely political.  I usually find both of them a little disarming. But for some reason, it feels rude to just unfollow them. But this weekend, one of them posted just some horrific stuff involving animals in peril, it was just awful, so disturbing. So I’m guessing she’s still having some really deep issues about her father’s birthday & his death. (Last year, she was intense, as well, but not in this horrific way.) So very public. All of it. I’m sure that has got to make everything so much harder to process.

But right at this very point in time, I’m coping with all my own issues of loss. I really am. I’m feeling that sense of perspective that’s calmer or perhaps more accepting of things? And not just various deaths, but other issues of loss that I’ve had to confront over the last few (extremely difficult) years, especially revolving around my adoptive mother. All of it is easing up now. It really is.

All right. Well I’m gonna scoot. Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with two things. A photo of Tom Petty with his granddaughter shortly before he died:

Tom Petty In LA with his granddaughter, Everly.

And a great song of his off of Damn the Torpedoes, their breakout album from 1978.  This is a live  version from that time period, in London, but Tom sings  his original lyrics to the song. On the album, Jimmy Iovine, the producer, made him get rid of the drug references.

All righty! Enjoy what’s left of Saturday, wherever you are in the world, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

 

Just One of Those Days

Leave a comment

(MINI UPDATE:  I forgot to mention that Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds will be going on tour in support of their new album, Ghosteen, beginning in April 2020 !! One thing that fills me with an inordinate amount of relief is that I don’t have to try to buy a ticket to any of that madness… However. Tickets begin going on sale next Friday.)

Okay. Back to the original post…

I have to say that, as much as I love and utilize Amazon when buying so many things, when it comes to people making money off of my allegedly out of print books, it makes me want to tear my hair out.

Well, my hair is perhaps one of my more outstanding features, so it makes me want to do something else equally frustrating. Not sure what.

And I’m not talking about anyone selling those used “collectors” copies of my old paperback books that frequently fetch hundreds of dollars (as opposed to the $7.95 – $12.95 it originally cost when the publisher published it.) I’m talking about people who are selling brand new copies of books of mine that are out of print, that allegedly sold out of their print runs a long, long time ago. Sometimes, as in the instance I mentioned here before, early in the summer, someone is selling hardcover editions of When the Night Stood Still — one of my out of print books that never came out in hardcover. Ever.

And the way that particular title is distributed is stupidly complex so it becomes impossible to figure out who is actually selling it. And I’m guessing it’s being published by print on demand.

Two things really confound me. One is: Why that particular title? It wasn’t my worst book, but it’s not like it’s a book that flew off the shelves (in 2004, no less). So that confounds me. Why only that particular title? A real mystery to me.

The other thing that confounds me — and I’m not going to say which title it is because I don’t want anyone else to go flocking to it and buy it — but the title is ranking decently in sales in a couple of different Women’s Books categories on Amazon. (Another book of mine that was published in 2004.) That one really irks me because, if it’s showing up in sales rankings, someone is actually making money there.

In both of these instances, the true publishers have been out of business for years. And nowadays, it is so easy to scan and then “publish” a book by printing it on demand.

In other instances — involving eBooks of mine that are published by huge publishing houses — I see now that they’ve dropped their prices drastically on certain eBook titles of mine and that is of course cutting into sales of similar eBook titles that I publish myself. (in other words, they’re drastically underselling me.)

It is just so fucking frustrating. I try not to focus on it, you know. Just keep moving forward and put my energy in that forward direction and not look at life through the rearview mirror — and I guess just be appreciative that people still want to read these really old books… grumble grumble grumble

All righty. That’s my rant for today. My phone chat with Peitor is happening here momentarily, so I’ve got to get into the headspace of script-writing and out of the headspace of frustration. I was glancing over the script thus far and realized that I recall next to none of the details, so I need to really go over my notes before the phone chat.

I want to mention quickly, though, that none of the cats have gotten to the palm tree!! I did see that a copy of Walt Whitman’s Civil War poems was lying on the floor this morning, so obviously one of the cats attempted to get near the tree and gave up when a book fell down on them. So, it’s working!! Yay!!

Okay. I’m gonna scoot. And try to reclaim this frustrating morning. I hope you have a happy Friday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

New Coffee! New Morning!

2 Comments

Yes, it’s another one of those slow-starting mornings. I’m still in bed, a cup of coffee next to me on the night table. I’m just lying here, staring out the window at the intensity of another lovely October morning.

Cloudy. The wind blowing the autumn leaves into a swirl.

I’m blogging from bed so I’ll be brief. Got my plate super full again so I’m trying to conserve my brain power. Working on both Thug Luckless and Tell My Bones pretty much at the same time. And one project is pure porn, the other is pure poetry. And then on my inner horizon last evening, I saw that Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse was  taking shape!! And tomorrow morning, bright & early, Peitor and I get back to work on our micro script for Leta’s Got To Go, the first micro short that we’ll be producing for Abstract Absurdity Productions.

Yeah, so. Getting out of bed this morning was a little delayed.

Oh! I had a dream about Nick Cave last night. You know how, whenever I dream about him something about it comes in duplicate, plus the dreams are always utterly indecipherable?  Plus I always wake up immediately after the dream so it’s always really pronounced in my mind, which makes their indecipherability all the more frustrating.

This time I dreamed that there were 37 things he was willing to do on the train, but 37,000 things he was willing to do in the other place.

And there you have it. The dream in its entirety. I woke up at around 4:30 with that hovering in my brain and thought, oh my god, what the heck does that mean??!! It was sort of anxiety-inducing, my inability to make sense of it, least of all, at that early hour.

It might have something to do with Ghosteen, I don’t know. But yesterday I couldn’t let go of that song “Hollywood.” It is just so haunting. (I still think I shouldn’t link it here but it is on YouTube.)

All right. I’m gonna close and try to figure out how best to focus this day — in which direction: porn or poetry?  Have a wonderful Thursday wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

The corner where I live, this time last October.

 

It Was A Miracle!!

Leave a comment

JESUS (speaking quietly to Simon-Peter): “Though I had nothing to do with it, it was an actual miracle — her cats did not go near that fucking tree.”

SIMON-PETER (quietly): “I cannot fucking believe it. Jesus. That’s awesome.”

Yes!! From Christ’s mouth to your ears! My cats did not go anywhere near that tree.

You know how cats are so good at math?  How you can actually see them calculating the distance of something they wish to jump up on to?

Image result for math equations for calculating distance
The actual formula that cats use to calculate the distance up to a tree that isn’t covered with books

Well, when they looked up at the tree, they saw this:

Image result for a stack of books falling down

Which led them to think THIS:

Related image

And the problem of my cats shredding the fronds off of my helpless palm tree,  eating the fronds and then vomiting them back up all over the carpeting has at last been solved!!

Isn’t math great??!!

Well, alas. The photos on Instagram of Nick Cave’s final Conversation of his US tour looked just great.  It was mostly photos from the very start of the show, and then two photos from the final song, where he had a guy from the audience come up and sit on the piano bench next to him while he sang “Stagger Lee.” (Nick Cave sang — not the guy from the audience.)

But it looked like a great show. And oddly, it seems like the folks in Los Angeles are more of the rule-following ilk than the folks in San Francisco were. I find that a little ironic. You’d think that in LA, people would be more likely to do whatever they want, but almost all of the photos from last night were from that brief period at the start of the show where they were allowed to take photos. Not so in SF, where you would think they might be more respectful of the other people in the audience…

Anyway, it’s over. I just can’t believe it. For four months, I had my tickets to see him in NYC, and now not only are the NYC shows long gone, but now the tour is completely over. In a heartbeat.

All righty. Well, it is just a really cool day here today, gang. Perfectly fall-like outside. Rainy, chilly, wet autumn leaves scattered everywhere. It just feels so cozy to be inside, looking out at the rain. Drinking my cup of coffee. I have to work on some technical stuff for Tell My Bones here today, then work some more on Thug Luckless. Then maybe go back and do some more work on Tell My Bones. I think it’s just going to be a nicely paced day.

Last night, I spent a lot of time working on Thug Luckless and so  it was kind of late when I got around to doing yoga. I had the lights down and I was listening to the 2nd half of Ghosteen. I don’t know if that was the very best idea. You know how, when you’re doing yoga, you’re so focused and anything you hear goes right into your consciousness. I know I keep saying this, but Ghosteen is truly an intensely beautiful album and just so incredibly sad — to me, anyway.

I was in the cool-down part of the yoga when the final song came on (called “Hollywood” but I keep thinking it’s called “Malibu”). The cool-down part of yoga is such a meditative mental place, and that song — the part where Kisa is unable to accept yet that her baby has died, she thinks it’s only sick. Oh my god, that just washed over me like a tidal wave — of love, of loss, of longing. That whole song is almost unbearably exquisite. You should go listen to it wherever you listen to your music.

Okay, I’m gonna scoot!! Have a beautiful, beautiful day, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

Image result for louis wain vintage illustrations of cats

Man, I Love That Barn

Leave a comment

I had to re-pot one of my plants this afternoon, so that meant I had to brave the truckloads of Virginia Creeper and go get some potting soil out of my barn.

And just opening the door and being inside of it, wow — one of these days, when I’m not writing 4 projects at once, I’m going to focus on fixing up that awesome barn. The energy inside of it is just too cool; it is so old.

The original owner of this house, built that barn himself, over 100 years ago and, structurally, it is still in amazing shape. It needs paint, the roof of course needs fixing, and there’s some old stuff that has accumulated inside there that some day I want to go through (old doors, window frames, old screens — cool stuff like that. Some of it clearly dating back to the 1940s.).

I just love walking inside it. It’s so peaceful in there. I still sense the horse that lived in there, you know. I really do.

Plus, Kevin’s 1965 VW camper van is still in there! Good thing. Because he should be coming back from Montana before the month is out and will probably want to come get it. It’s been parked in there since May and every once in a while, it dawns on me to go and at least look through the window and make sure it’s still in there…

The other day it occurred to me that I forgot to tell my mom that Kevin’s van was parked out there. I’m guessing that if she went exploring the barn (and who wouldn’t? it’s such a cool little barn) she probably wondered why the heck I had an enormous 1965 VW camper van in mint condition parked in there. But at this point, I’m guessing that she probably wonders a whole lot of things about me. (I miss her so much. I hope she comes back before Christmas.)

Well, my phone chat with Peitor was wonderful. Gosh it felt so good to talk to him again. We’re back on track with Abstract Absurdity Productions, starting this coming Friday morning. Mostly, we talked about personal stuff, but what little time we did talk about our script notes just brought back to mind all the insane work we’ve done on this stuff already. Just indescribably absurd stories. So wonderful. I can’t wait until we actually start filming them. And the jewel in the crown, as far as the importance of the scripts goes, is still 3 projects out. I cannot wait until we are ready to tackle that one. We were in Mel’s Diner on Sunset Blvd. on a Sunday evening when we were first fleshing that one out. Peitor had me laughing so hard, I literally almost fell out of the booth.

Outside of Mel’s, back in December

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though the scripts are meant to be funny, the humor is intensely dark and the stories have complex emotional undertones. And the character in that particular script is named Marilyn — she is absolutely nothing like me, and the story is historically based, and takes place in 1969, so it literally is not me. But every time Peitor would refer to Marilyn doing or saying something really absurd, it just, of course, made me laugh so hard.

Anyway. A really good day here today. The palm tree is inside and sitting in the front window and so far, nary a cat has ventured past the precarious pile of books surrounding it. Not yet, anyway. I’m really hoping that if they do try to get at the tree, a pile of books clattering down on to them will keep them scared away from it until Spring.

Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files newsletter today that was awesome. And I’m not just saying that because I love everything he does. It’s one of those ones when his ability to express himself just blows your hair back, you know? Jesus. It was just so well stated. You can read it at that link up there.

Okay. I’m going to let Thug Luckless out of the box for a few hours and see what kind of progress we can make with him tonight. Have a wonderful evening, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

Lo & Behold! Exciting Times!!

2 Comments

Yes, based on the above illustration, you can probably tell, it’s laundry day around here! But that’s not all the excitement.

No!! There’s more!

Late yesterday afternoon, I discovered a little baby mole on the floor of the downstairs bathroom. It seemed thoroughly exhausted from trying to maneuver itself on the linoleum floor. It was very much alive when I found it, but it just couldn’t get any traction and, I’m guessing, couldn’t really see.

I was able to scoop it up and get it back outside BEFORE  seven cats found it and tore it to pieces. I cannot emphasize enough just what a relief that was. That poor little thing. I have no clue how it got there, but that bathroom is close to the backdoor that leads directly to the backyard. I’m guessing it is connected to that somehow.

Either that, or one of these spirits here in the house decided that, rather than return my one stocking (see post below somewhere), it would give me a baby mole instead…

Today is the day that I’m bringing all the potted plants indoors for the season. Which means that I have to somehow barricade the palm tree from the cats. I’m going to try just loading piles of books around the tree, and not in neat piles, or anything, but in really precarious piles so that the cats will have nothing to actually grab on to. We’ll see if that works. It’s already gone down to 36 degrees Fahrenheit twice now, so I can’t risk keeping that tree outside any longer.

It’s definitely Nature vs. Nature around here, isn’t it? Either a killing frost or wild & untamed cats…

Big, BIG news from late yesterday evening! Nick Cave & Warren Ellis are doing that symphony thing again with their film scores — this time in Sydney, in early December. I realized this means that, ostensibly, they will have plenty of time between those 2 gigs and Christmas, to fly here to Crazeysburg from Australia and appear with our symphony orchestra, too!

We don’t actually have a symphony orchestra, but I have about 8 or 9 weeks to get the 14 townspeople together, teach them how to play various orchestral instruments and stuff, and then, I don’t know, either build a symphony hall, or use that really old town hall thingie that we already have here, and put on a show. I’m not planning to join the orchestra because I want to be able to actually attend. And since I have this amazing bathroom scale now, that helps me achieve my goal weight several times during the course of a single evening, I know I’ll be able to fit into some  sort of amazing couturier gown.

I can just tell it’s gonna be a terrific Christmas…

Anyway. In all seriousness. I’m guessing the Sydney event will be just stunning. I wish I could attend. I really do.

In other good news — yesterday afternoon, Peitor texted. He’s back in LA and we are planning to finally catch up over the phone later today. I’m really looking forward to that. It was the height of summer, the last time we actually talked.

Nick Cave is also having a Conversation in LA later today, as it turns out! But of a much different sort, and it’s the last Conversation of the US tour.  (Folks from San Francisco are still posting amazing stuff on Instagram from Sunday. It really looks like the SF show was so cool.) (And it’s a toss up between the theater in SF and that one in Montreal — which one was the most jaw-dropping; they were both just gorgeous venues.)

Okay, well. New topic. About 18 or 19 years ago, I won that award in London for my book, Neptune & Surf — Erotic Writer of the Year. And the organization is now 25 years old. They are having some sort of 25th Anniversary celebration at this year’s awards (in November, in London). They are now called the Sexual Freedom Awards, and they are asking previous winners to contribute a statement about what sexual freedom means in 2019. I get 140 characters (not words, mind you!) to express that. Can you imagine me distilling something like that down to 140 characters??!!

Well, I’m trying…

You know, I remember what I wore to those Awards. I had the prettiest little dress but I don’t recall where I got it from or whatever happened to it. It was black velvet, a real short, billowy skirt and a halter-style top that had criss-cross ties in back. So, clearly, I didn’t wear a bra that night, but back then, I didn’t actually need to.  I still had those “modest breasts” back then; I didn’t get the “twin Cadillacs” that I have now until after menopause.  (It’s really ironic, because back then, I used to wish for something that could at least fill a push-up bra because I used to spend a fortune on fetish lingerie, and now I wear minimizers because I really, really can’t stand having my tits enter a room before I do. It turns out, I really enjoyed having the figure of a boy but I didn’t know it until it was gone…) And I wore those gorgeous black 4-inch spiked-heel ankle strap open-toed shoes to the Awards. Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I bought those shoes in London in 1976, when I was all of 16 years old!! Yes, for some mysterious reason, my mother let me buy a pair of fetish high heels in London when I was only 16. And I still have them, and they are still gorgeous because I have taken really good care of them all these years, but back at those Awards, I was actually able to walk around in those shoes. Not anymore…

The other day, actually, I got out a pair of vintage Gucci high-heels that I’ve had since the 1990s and they still fit. They are gorgeous, too. Copper-colored patent leather pumps, with very pointy toes and a 3 or 4 inch spiked, gold heel. For some reason, I happened to notice the bottoms of the shoes and discovered not a single scuff mark, and that tells me that I never, ever, EVER wore those shoes outside. I find that so (gently) amusing — that I would pay a fortune for a pair of shoes back then, just to wear to bed.

At one point, while married to Wayne, I had something like 32 pairs of high-heeled shoes — most of which, I wore only to bed. (“Bed” being a time-honored euphemism for not actually sleeping.)

It’s just funny to remember all that. I was just insane. I had so many little (expensive) outfits back then. I would sometimes change outfits 2 or 3 times while “not sleeping.” Menopause was actually a blessing to me — to finally be able to calm down a little. It wasn’t exactly  100% fun being so over the top hormonal all the time. It got exhausting.

All righty!! I guess on that lofty note, I will get the day started here, gang. Finish that laundry and start writing so that I can spend time chatting with Peitor without feeling like I’m not getting any work done… I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. I was listening again to Ghosteen this morning so I won’t regale you with that — you need to go purchase it, instead. (And it really is just so beautiful, gang, you really should buy it.) But I love you guys! See ya.

Me doing laundry just now, here in Crazeysburg! Not quite as glamorous as my wee bonny hormonal-peak years in Manhattan!