So Many Little Notebooks, So Little Time!!

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I now have a third little journal with a pen clipped to it that I carry around with me, and in that one, I try to figure out why I have so many fucking little journals around here! And with pens clipped to them!

I am, of course, just kidding. I still just have the two. But it is sort of insane — what it takes to keep me sane. Jesus. Just trying to keep all my many thoughts in a nice little row. And I’m so not kidding about that, gang. When I start to feel my thoughts skittering off around the edges, going to those bleak and unnecessary places — I have to do something to pull everything back to center.

For me, putting things in writing is the only process that reins things in.  But sometimes it just seems overwhelming — the amount of writing I’m doing right now.

Yesterday, I happened upon a really nice, regular-sized journal that I bought up at that Mormon Temple in Kirtland a couple summers ago. I haven’t put one word in it yet. And I was thinking that I should really start keeping a regular journal again because there’s a lot of amazing stuff going on in my life these days that I might want to process as its happening…

And then I thought — really? And at what point do you think you’re going to fit that in? And then, oddly enough, one of those “Litany” things for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse came out of me! Absolutely unexpectedly, there it was — complete and on the page. It’s titled, “Litany [Two]: The Girl in Love, Holy Spirit, Giver of Life.”

But it seems to want to come directly after Letter #6 which hasn’t fully come to me yet (the title has, of course, arrived: “Captivity”), still, I can feel it on the outskirts of my brain and I have a feeling it’s going to begin arriving today.  And that’s really exciting to me, but I’ve also been battling a huge amount of depression. Like the kind that you can actually feel the weight of, you know? Like I’m physically dragging around 20 pounds of depression. I can barely move.

Hence, all the little notebooks around here to try to stave that off.

At the breakfast table this morning, I saw the school bus drive past outside and it occurred to me that today is the last day of school before Christmas vacation starts. And then I suddenly remembered that it was that first Friday night of Christmas vacation, back in December 1974, that I got raped by those 2 guys from the high school. I had been invited to a Christmas party by a guy I knew in that insane apartment complex we lived in. He was a nice guy, about a year older than me, but there were a lot of older guys at that party that I didn’t know at all. Two of them followed me home and the rest is of course history.

I never think about that night. At least not in any detail. So it was a really unpleasant thing to suddenly encounter it in the forefront of my brain at the breakfast table. And I was really fervently hoping that there weren’t any girls on that schoolbus going past who were going to have truly horrible Christmas vacations.

I was really, really hoping that.

Then I washed the many little cat food bowls and dragged myself back upstairs. I couldn’t meditate. Couldn’t write in any of my millions of little journals. I got back in bed, in the dark, and felt like my depression weighed a million pounds.

You know, I’m a woman of a certain lofty age, so I have about 3 hormones left. I like to preserve them for, you know, fun stuff.  Which means that I almost never cry anymore. Back when I had hormones, I used to cry a lot.  But nowadays, I don’t want to waste what few hormones I have on tears! But this morning, man, for about 63 seconds — a tidal wave of tears.

Then, afterwards — I felt a whole lot better.

I don’t really know what “crying” is — you know, if you think about it, totally deconstruct it, what is it? Why is your body doing that? I don’t know. But it’s sort of miraculous how it felt like the proverbial damn bursting and then, after all the stuff has washed over and through it, I felt so much better. Really just full of hope and I could actually smile.

So I’m feeling optimistic that I’ll get some really interesting writing done today. (And I’m gonna try to force myself to do yoga — I haven’t done any since before my birth mom came to visit. And without yoga, it gets harder to convince my body that  it’s still 12…)

All righty.

Well, Paul Weller has some interesting new videos that have been going up on YouTube, called Paul Weller Presents the Black Barn Sessions.  A new one is up today. If you want to go directly to his segment, it’s at about the 5 minute mark. It’s really rockin’.

Other than that, I’ve been listening to Johnny Mathis Christmas music, as well as  Ghosteen again and again– trying to, you know, consider that it could be “uplifting.” Or whatever it was Nick Cave said in his Red Hand Files thingy a few weeks ago.

I can’t really remember his exact words. And it’s not that I find the album depressing — it’s that I find the imagery too enigmatic and  just too beautiful, and sometimes it’s so beautiful that I can’t bare it, you know? It’s just too beautiful. I’m guessing that at some point I’ll get used to the words and perhaps they’ll slip into the background and my heart won’t short-circuit every time I hear it, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Okay-dokey. I’m gonna scoot and get to work on “Captivity” — see what that yields! Have a great Friday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

Image result for vintage illustration of kids on Christmas vacation

Poetry, Sex, and Death

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I did re-watch Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire last night. It had been, literally, decades since I’d seen that movie. The only thing I really remembered about it is that I had really loved it when I saw it. (Enough to have bought the video of it and kept it all these years.) I knew it had something to do with an angel and a girl in a circus, and that’s kind of all I remembered about it.  (Well, the only other thing I  remembered was that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were in it, sort of toward the end.)

Which is another way of saying I had forgotten practically all of it.

Wow, what a great movie. All that constant murmuring.  The sound in that movie is just incredible. And the beauty of the whole concept. Of course, then I instantly remembered why I had loved that movie so much. Just a poetic work of art, on all levels. Every nuance; every murmur.

After I was done watching it, though, I was wondering why, all of the sudden, I was sort of steeped in old foreign things about death and poetry and sexuality and love between the dead and the living, and Nazis in Germany and the war…

Cocteau’s Orpheus came out in 1950 so there were still remnants of the war visible in its scenery and in the behavior of certain characters. (And I loved how Cocteau’s version of the bacchantes was to make them a women’s poetry society– nasty female critics who turned on Orpheus, who is a celebrated poet in Paris in Cocteau’s version. Too funny. Anyway.)

And I’m still re-reading Jean Genet’s Funeral Rites. It is nothing but poetry sex death Nazis… And in a wholly different way it deals with all the same stuff.

And then I realized, sort of with a shock, that Tell My Bones is all about poetry, sex and death — and love between the spirits of the dead and the living. And even Thug Luckless is about that. And certainly Blessed By Light is all about poetry sex and death.

I wonder what is going on with me? Seems like something profound is trying to get my attention.

And all this Nazi Germany stuff. Early this morning, I was lying in bed, thinking about just how saturated my childhood was with Nazi Germany. To be honest, even though I never talk about it because I just love that freight train that barrels past my door, but every time it does, I always think of the train that’s going to Auschwitz. I can’t help it. I have to remind myself that it’s just a freight train. These are not cattle cars, herding people to death camps.

But my childhood was filled with those images. Cleveland was full of immigrant Jews and so a lot of concentration camp survivors came to live in Cleveland. I was surrounded by them in my childhood. My Hebrew school teacher was a survivor of Auschwitz — her number was tattooed in blue on her forearm.  It was always there, always visible to us, because she wore dresses with short sleeves. She was from Hungary. Her twin sister had died at Auschwitz and she told me that her sister’s name would have roughly translated to “Marilyn” in English. Because of that, she seemed to be very attached to me. I mean, in a nice way. I was only about 8 years old.

I hated Hebrew school. I had to go 3 times a week for several years. That particular teacher thought I was really gifted in languages and she got me a scholarship to attend an accelerated Hebrew school sleep-away camp sort of thing for the summer and I was secretly just horrified by this. I did not want to spend my summer in Hebrew school! Even though I was supposed to be really appreciative of all of it because usually girls didn’t get that kind of education — only boys did.

Well, I really wanted dancing lessons. I really wanted to study ballet and tap because I loved musicals.  And I went home and begged my parents not to send me to Hebrew school all summer.

Plus I never felt Jewish at all. Even though I could read and speak Hebrew really well, and was steeped in Judaism through my adoptive family, none of that stuff resonated with me. By the time I was 5 years old, I had secretly fallen in love with Jesus Christ, because of all the paintings I had seen of him at the Cleveland Art Museum. I would stare at those paintings and I knew I remembered him from somewhere. It was a visceral response.  And I was captivated by nuns, too — back then, they still wore those old-style, flowing black habits and those white wimples.

As I got a little older, I collected crosses and crucifixes and little illustrations of Jesus that I had to hide under my mattress. It’s interesting to think that I also eventually acquired a lot of  sex books, like Story of O, and I was allowed to just have those things out in plain site. But the Jesus stuff — I would have gotten in so much trouble for having that!

And I also remembered, this morning, a time when I was about 7 or 8, and a little Jewish girlfriend of mine, named Edie — she and I were taking a shortcut through a field one cold autumn afternoon and suddenly found ourselves stuck in some serious mud. That thick sucking wet kind of mud that pulls your shoes right off. When we got to the other side of it, we were outside a convent.  We really needed to clean off our shoes so we went up and asked if we could come in and clean our shoes, even though we were Jews. (We actually said that.)

The nuns were so nice to us. And this convent wasn’t anything like the old Carmelite stone convent I go to an hour from here when I’m having one of my suicidal breakdowns. This other convent in Cleveland was vast and spacious and majestic and filled with light and air and high ceilings. And all these truly friendly nuns, in those flowing black habits, all over the place.

By this time, my adoptive mother had survived cancer and had begun her descent into becoming the meanest, cruelest person I knew on planet Earth. And my adoptive dad was away from home more and more. My home life was becoming a terrifying place. So the warmth and the kindness and friendliness of those nuns — it was so foreign to me. I really wanted to stay there and never leave.

I’d forgotten all about that until this morning.

Well, I now have yet another little notebook with a pen clipped to it. I’m still keeping my daily Inner Being dialogue journal every morning after meditation. I haven’t missed a day of writing in it since I started it in early June. (And I tell you, it is an awesome thing. I recommend keeping one because your inner being probably has all sorts of meaningful information to relate to you.) Well, in addition to that little hard-bound journal, I now have a smaller one, cloth-bound, to have with me all day. And it’s for pre-paving every moment of the day. Making sure I’m consciously choosing how I want to respond to every single thing; how I want to experience it. Because every single thing is, once again, starting to get to me and I just don’t have the time to go nuts right now.

I am still feeling a little disconcerted that Peitor took off for London so suddenly — he texted yesterday that they indeed went there for the holidays and will be back in LA for New Year’s Eve. That’s 3 sessions of script-writing that we’re going to miss because he doesn’t want to work while they’re there. I don’t blame him. He can do whatever he wants to do, but the fact that he never actually said anything to me at all about it and just went. It sort of — well, I don’t know what. He had wanted to start working on the new TV series in January but now he’s going to have to finish mixing and mastering a few songs for his new record, then I have to be in NYC in February to start the table reads for Tell My Bones and will have re-writes to do on that.

You know — time gallops away. And I guess I would have appreciated being in the overall mix somewhere. Other than, you know, a quick text that he’s on a plane heading to London…

And then my friend in Houston who has cancer — my one-text-a-week approach is working nicely. I text once and he now replies within a day. He texted me late last night, in detail about the radiation treatments, which are making him feel even sicker, of course. But since he’s a scientist, he is fascinated by the radiation treatments. He explained to me what goes on, scientifically. And it was like he was exulting in this bombardment of science — which is perfectly okay, because it’s his experience and his world. But again, I found it disconcerting. The intense, scientific description, along with the details of just how bad the cancer is. And I was already in bed, with the lights out, when I got the text.

So yesterday culminated in a whole big bunch of images and sounds and thoughts, heaping up on me while I was in bed in the dark, drifting to sleep. Then I woke up, immediately thinking about  Auschwitz and Nazis  — and how, you know, actually it wasn’t really that far removed from me. And then the beauty of the nuns.

So I’m keeping this other little journal as a way to sort of not only ground myself into staying on course with the images I would rather claim, but also to help draw my preferred experiences to me– every hour, every moment, of every day.

Everybody gets to be whoever they are in this life, but I cannot let myself get derailed by any of it. I just have too much work to do, you know?

And on that note, I will get started here. Thanks for visiting, gang.  I hope Thursday is good to you, wherever you are in the world, I love you guys. See ya.

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Wings of Desire, 1987

Weirdest Dream, Ever!

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I overslept just hugely this morning. I didn’t wake up until almost 8 o’clock. I had been having a seemingly endless and very weird dream.

I dreamed that the Chinese government had somehow made my blog radioactive to children and it was up to me to somehow warn children who might be visiting my blog to not touch any links, otherwise the children would become radioactive.

It was an extremely difficult thing to try to figure out how to do — protect all these unseen children from all over the world who might accidentally visit my blog and click on something. But it was of dire importance. And I took it really seriously. I was working with some scientists in a brightly lit white laboratory, who were trying to come up with some type of implantable code that could undo the radioactivity within my blog, but also try to save children in the meantime.

Oh god, right? Really relaxing, peaceful sleep going on there…

Some of you readers who are new to the blog perhaps don’t know that about 15 years ago, I was looking at 5-15 years in a federal prison and something like $35,000 in fines because I had founded an  erotic authors association and had then begun an online publishing company specifically to publish hardcore erotic books from our members that no other traditional publishers would touch; and there was a new federal law, under George Bush, Jr., that made it an imprisoning offense  to publish any of this kind of stuff online without creating hugely expensive barriers to keep children off the site. (Anyone under the age of 18.)

I did not think it was constitutional to keep anyone away from reading those books if they wanted to. I didn’t think it was my job to determine what young people could or couldn’t read. (It’s so weird to think this actually happened back then, when you see all the things kids can easily access online nowadays — but of course, this is just what the Government was hoping to avoid and people like ME(!!), along with a bunch of my colleagues across the States, fought the law and eventually made pure unadulterated porn widely available to children everywhere!!)

Anyway. It wasn’t funny back then because I seriously did not want to go to prison, and I had already worked with & for other publishers and producers who had gone to federal prison on obscenity charges and had been wiped out financially.

I’m guessing that maybe somewhere in my subconscious, something connected to that was happening in my dreams last night. I don’t really know. But it was just one of those relentless, godawful dreams where it was up to me to try to do something completely impossible. (I still don’t care what children read, but I don’t want children to become radioactive for any reason whatsoever.)

You know, back in the late 1990s, when a production company hired me to write for a really cool adult multimedia project they were producing (DADAhouse), it was illegal to ship porn movies that had explicit anal sex in them to various cities in the Deep South. If you had produced a movie with anal sex in it and it got shipped to any one of those cities, you could go to prison — and some video producers up north actually did serve time for that.

Also, back then, it was illegal to produce movies or make photographs of anyone involved in a BDSM practice that showed any type of sexual intercourse or sexual gratification being derived from the BDSM thing. So you could show people suffering or being tortured in some way, as long as they weren’t depicted as getting off on it sexually. You could go to prison for that, too, back then. Which was why stories about that stuff — BDSM & actual sex — were always wildly popular, because that law didn’t apply to the written word — only to images.

Only 20 years ago — and so much has changed, hasn’t it? And everybody I’m sure knows by now, that a story I wrote in 1988, based on my own self as an 11-year-old girl who had been totally in love with an older neighbor-girl who had been my babysitter (and I cannot help that I was just this wildly imaginative, oversexed little girl), anyway, a story based on me and my own mind got me into very deep water with the FBI. I eventually rewrote the story as “Daddy’s Girl” — same story, really, in a way — I just made all the girls in it of legal age. (I won’t say what the title of the other story was, but I will say that if you see a story for sale online that alleges to have been written by me and there is a little drawing next to it of a young girl holding a flower — don’t click that link!! If you do, the FBI is going to pay you a very nasty little visit…)

Okay! Well! It seems like my morning here isn’t going much better than my dreams went…

On a cheerier note — there was a really cool photo all over Instagram this morning  of Nick Cave backstage with Elton John in Melbourne last night (or some night really close to last night — I still can’t figure out the time zone stuff and what day it might be over there).

Oh, and I’d like to thank one of my fellow bloggers in England for pointing out that I might not like having spiders in my bedroom if I lived in Australia… Point taken!! (I remember truly icky stories my first husband used to tell me about growing up in Singapore and the types of enormous insects that would get into his room at night and scurry across the ceiling over his bed…)

But this is Ohio!! Our insects here are of humble size and weight…

Another happy thing — it is snowing here right now! And it’s cold enough that it isn’t going to melt any time today. (And right this minute, a freight train is barreling past so I’m not sure if I could be happier than I am right at this moment…)

And that company in France which sells me all that stuff that keeps me looking light-years younger than I actually am — sent me more new products to try! One, a sort of mask that, if used twice a week for 5 minutes, will make me look “radiant.” We’ll see. I don’t actually ever have anyone telling me that my skin needs to look more radiant than it already looks…

But they also sent me this “nutri-plumping lip balm.” Not crazy about that name. I’m guessing it sounds better in French. However, it’s made for ladies of a certain age (of which I am one), who have thinning lips (I have always had thin lips so I’m not sure they can get thinner); anyway, it’s supposed to plump up your lips.

It actually does work — kind of. I can feel a difference but I don’t think it’s actually noticeable. But it doesn’t sting and burn like the old lip-plumper glosses used to. Those old lip-plumping glosses had one of the same ingredients in it that Viagra used to give guys erections. So me and my girlfriend (who shall remain nameless but who currently lives in Brooklyn…) would put that gloss on certain little places on our female bodies to see if they, too, would plump up and get more erect!! It worked!! But it also stung and burned like crazy and you couldn’t just wipe it off…

I guess the only thing that was better than being a weirdly oversexed young female creature was having a girlfriend who was as weirdly oversexed as I was. We were really blessed in that regard, I think — to have found each other at all. We were mostly out of our minds but we had a lot of fun.

Okay. Off I go. I need to get some actual work done here today since yesterday was a complete bust in that department. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I’ll leave you with a song that was hugely popular when me and the Brooklyn gal first started hooking up.  Play it LOUD, gang! Otherwise it won’t work correctly. All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

“Modern Love”

I know when to go out
And when to stay in
Get things done

I catch a paper boy
But things don’t really change
I’m standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

There’s no sign of life
It’s just the power to charm
I’m lying in the rain
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

Never gonna fall for
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love gets me to the church on time

Church on time terrifies me
Church on time makes me party
Church on time puts my trust in God and man

God and man no confessions
God and man no religion
God and man don’t believe in modern love

It’s not really work
It’s just the power to charm
Still standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

Never gonna fall for
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love gets me to the church on time

Church on time terrifies me
Church on time makes me party
Church on time puts my trust in God and man

God and man no confessions
God and man no religion
God and man don’t believe in modern love

Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love gets me to the church on time

Church on time terrifies me
Church on time makes me party
Church on time puts my trust in God and man

God and man no confessions
God and man no religion
God and man don’t believe in modern love

Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Never gonna fall for
Modern love
Modern love

 c – 1983 David Bowie

Winter Visitors!

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The day has been a bit of a bust, writing-wise. I didn’t really regain the use of my brain until the day was pretty much gone, and then I decided to watch Cocteau’s film, Orphée. (Which was just so good — I had forgotten most of it. Tomorrow, I’m thinking I’m going to watch Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire — another video that I forgot I owned!!)

Anyway, the day is basically over. I think I’m going to watch a rerun of Perry Mason now and do yoga. (I know — all these old things, and I said I was going to watch new stuff!!)

I have several interesting winter visitors right now. Two of whom — a ladybug who’s living around the window frame at the top of the stairs, and a beetle living down in the kitchen — are currently hiding. That, or they’re camera shy because I can’t find them in their usual spots right now. Anyway, here are two brand new visitors: A new spider in my bedroom, and a shield bug living behind one of the pictures in the hall at the top of the stairs:

This is another spider living in my bedroom — along with his shadow — but he’s not new. He’s been living on my ceiling since the summertime.

As you can see, I don’t kill bugs, so that could temper any desire you might have to come visit. If it’s nice weather, I escort the various bugs to the great outdoors. But in winter, well, we’re all inside for the duration…

Okay, well, I leave you with a song I was thinking about earlier for the first time in quite a number of years, and so I played it while making my dinner! (“So Alive” by Love & Rockets.) It sounded amazing, streaming on the iPad with the new speakers!! (I don’t know if it will sound equally amazing for you here because I don’t know what kind of speakers you have; I only know that it seriously pales in comparison on my laptop, plus this is just YouTube. I actually own the MP3 and it sounds lots better.)

All righty. Thanks for visiting, gang. I’m hoping that I’ll awaken tomorrow with a fully functioning brain!! Have a great night, wherever you are in the world. I love you guys. See ya.

“So Alive”

I don’t know what color your eyes are, baby
But your hair is long and brown
Your legs are strong, and you’re so, so long
And you don’t come from this town

My head is full of magic, baby
And I can’t share this with you
Feel I’m on a cross again, lately
But there’s nothing to do with you

I’m alive, so alive
I’m alive, so alive

Your strut makes me crazy
Makes me see you more clearly
Oh, baby, now I can see you
Wish I could stop
Switch off the clock
Make it all happen for you

I’m alive, so alive
I’m alive, so alive

I don’t know what color your eyes are, baby
But your hair is long and brown
Your legs are strong, and you’re so, so long
And you don’t come from this town

My head is full of magic, baby
And I gotta share this with you
I feel I’m on top again, baby
That’s got everything to do with you

I’m alive, so alive
I’m alive, so alive

c – 1989 Daniel Ash

Just A Truly Weird Morning So Far…

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Well, I’ve been physically awake since 4:30am, and I’m feeling good, you know — happy, whatever. But my brain has decided to go in slow motion, or something. I’m not sure what’s going on with me.

All morning, I have tried to post to this blog and complete sentences have been very slow in arriving. So this will probably be a short post. And maybe if the brain returns, I will post more later on this evening.

Late last night, I got a sudden text from Peitor. He was in an airplane at LAX, getting ready to take off for London. He even sent a photo from inside the plane (it actually looked pretty cool — sort of purplish lighting.) Anyway. Loyal readers of this lofty blog perhaps recall that Peitor has a habit of suddenly taking off for Europe. Usually London. And usually it means he’s in some sort of a frame of mind. That’s all I can really say about it on the blog, though, because it’s personal to him. But I was thinking, well, okay — will we be working on the script while you’re gone? I mean, this darn script is already taking us forever as it is, and we were supposed to work on it again tomorrow…

Well, I guess we’ll just see. He hasn’t texted again, so I still have no idea why he suddenly took off for London.

I know he was waiting to hear about scoring a film by a director that I absolutely love, who’s based in England. So maybe it was that. I just don’t know yet. But it threw me that not only was he suddenly leaving, but he was already on the plane.

Another friend was acting extremely strange yesterday, too. And since I have so few friends left (btw, I noticed that a ton of you didn’t show up the other day when I was holding open interviews here in Crazeysburg for new friends…). But seriously, I have so few people in my life right now, that when even two of them start acting unpredictably on the same day, it means that 75% of my friends are acting strange at the same time.

Well, anyway. Laundry here is almost done and then I’m heading into town to get the food. My birth mom actually left some deliciously tasty looking yummies in my freezer! Vegetarian lasagna and some sort of spinach phyllo something or other and pumpkin-sage ravioli.  But I’m out of things like fruit and vegetables and my coveted organic Greek yogurt, so I still have to drive into town today.

Here’s hoping that my inability to form coherent sentences has little impact on my ability to drive.

And then I’m going to either work on Thug Luckless or work on notes for the new “letter” for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Perhaps even a little of both, if the brain begins working by then. (I honestly don’t know what’s the matter with me. If you could see the amount of typos I keep having to fix just in this short post, you’d be aghast!)

I have to mention here (again) just how much I love the new speakers I bought for the iPad. They are hard wired speakers — you know, that you plug into the wall. My last speakers lasted 10 years and decided to bite the dust while my mom was here and we were watching The Polar Express. I had to switch them out for the bluetooth speaker, which is cheap and has a short battery life. But these new speakers — wow. I was listening to Ghosteen this morning and just could not believe the sound quality. Jaw-dropping. And I only spent 20 bucks on them! (Plus, they’re made by the same company that made the old — more expensive — speakers. Incredible what 10 years can achieve.)

Oh, and right after I posted to the blog yesterday, Nick Cave sent out another Red Hand Files reply letter thing.  You can read it here. It was mostly about that song “Deanna.” I thought it was very, very interesting. I read it several times, actually. (But, of course that’s me and I’m a bit obsessive…)

So, okay. I’m gonna scoot and get the laundry done and get to town and back so that I can sit right back down here at my desk and hopefully begin thinking straight. I have high hopes, but we’ll see!!

Thanks for visiting. I’m sure I will return! I love you guys. See ya!

(Me, in relation to my head right now…)

More Merriment Has Indeed Arrived!!

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I just couldn’t be happier, gang.

Partly because it started snowing last evening and then snowed all through the night, so it actually built up a bit out there and is still all over everything this morning!

It makes me doubly glad that my birth mom came last week and helped me decorate for Christmas, because if she hadn’t been here, I definitely would not have followed through on it — I would have put everything immediately back into storage because I was too overwhelmed by the past once I’d opened all those boxes.  However, now — here in the present — the tree is up and decorations are scattered about and there’s snow outside! Yay.

I recently discovered that I own the video of Cocteau’s 1950 film Orphée. I knew I had seen the film on video, but for some reason, I thought I had rented it.  Long ago. Apparently, though, I had bought it, long ago.

How fortuitous!  Since I had really enjoyed re-watching Cocteau’s other Orpheus-related film a couple weeks ago (see some other post below) and it, of course, made me think of his first one. So now I’m excited to watch Orphée  again!

I found the video when I was going through all my old movies, looking for the Christmas ones so that my mom and I could watch Christmas movies — we wound up watching Kubrick’s The Shining. Not really a Christmas movie (to put it mildly), but it does have a heck of a lot of snow!

And while going through all the old movies, I was kind of astounded by the number of movies I’d forgotten I owned. The Shining being a case in point. In fact, I discovered that I own a boxed set (DVDs) of Kubrick’s “greatest hits,” as it were: Lolita, Full Metal Jacket, 2001, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. Honestly, I had no idea I had all that. All quite excellent movies for watching with Mom (!!), however, the only one we watched was The Shining. Which was excellent enough, thank you.

It’s still such an intense movie, even all these years later. Also intensely long. Probably the only movie in that collection that I actually love, though, is 2001.

Anyway. I’m also happy because my new speakers for the iPad arrived!! They are just what I wanted. (And as an added bonus, I was able to give the empty shipping carton to the cats as an early Christmas present!) (I try not to let the cost of something deter me from giving generously.) (But they do love that empty box. They are already taking turns hiding in it and they are so freakin’ cute.)

So I’m really eager to start streaming a bunch of new stuff over the holidays. My watchlist is really, really long. You have no idea. I’m going to make a serious effort to watch this stuff and not keep circling back to the old reruns of Perry Mason and everything imaginable re: Nick Cave that I’ve seen ten million times. I know for sure, though, that I’m going to watch Charlie Brown and Rudolph over the next couple of days (on DVD) because I just love those movies. In fact, I might even be motivated enough to buy a new flat screen TV just because I love those two movies so much…

Okay, well, we’ll see. I do have to keep reminding myself that I have to go to NYC, Toronto, and LA in 2020 and that will cost me a fortune, when it’s all said and done. A new TV can wait…

So. Yesterday, late afternoon, guess what came to me? Letter #6 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse! I was actually pretty surprised by this. I wasn’t expecting it at all because I’m still just working away on the story notes for Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town. Plus, since my birth mom left, I’ve just been feeling sort of frustrated, angry, depressed. Wanting things to change in my life. Trying to just be patient; knowing that things are coming. Then. Suddenly, the new “letter” dropped into the forefront of my brain and I was incredibly lighthearted and happy. So that’ll be interesting.

All righty! I’m gonna scoot. I slept in really late this morning — 7am!! So I’m behind here. Thanks for visiting, though. I leave you with the breakfast-listening music from this snow-covered morning!! And if these don’t make you stupidly joyful then nothing will!! Okay! I love you guys. See ya!

What’s Another 18 Years, Right?

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I know it probably seems odd that I remember the anniversaries of the deaths of all my previous cats,  yet I do.

Yesterday marked the 18th anniversary of the death of Kitty, the stray kitten that had followed Valerie home one afternoon when Val lived out in Queens. Valerie had 7 cats and, at that point, I had none and so she brought the kitten over to my apartment in the East Village. Kitty lived to be 18 years old.

I thought it was kind of interesting that she lived 18 years and that, as of yesterday, she’d been dead for 18 years.

Gosh, I loved that cat. She was one of those cats that followed me from room to room, slept with me, was always with me. So unlike the feral cats I have now.

Anyway. Just more time, zipping past. I wanted to post a photo of her but the photos are all packed away. I couldn’t find them. But she was a sweet, tiny, mostly black cat with little patches of white. She was devoted to me. She truly was.

Okay.

Work with Peitor was intense again yesterday. We seem to have reverted back to the original storyline of the script — for the most part. It’s really just taking us forever to write an 8 minute movie. But I still think it’s such a great script!!! Just so unexpected in every way.

Eventually we’ll finish it. Peitor’s already sort of casting it and also meeting potential cinematographers. So we are sort of moving ahead while trying to script it.  But it is indeed taking forever.  We’re still going shot by shot, and the set up for some of these shots will be very complicated when the shot itself might last for about 2 seconds of screen time. The whole film is like this. It literally is going to take us forever.

The next film we want to do will also last about 8 minutes — and the premise for that one is also absolutely absurd.  I’m guessing it’ll take us a year to write that 8 minute film. And then the next one will be about 15 minutes, and that one requires several locations so I’m guessing that film will take us 10 years…

Meanwhile. It’s still really fun. And I imagine that next year, I’m just going to be really busy.

Since today is Saturday, there was another one of those things on Instagram where they post approximately one minute from one of the Conversations with Nick Cave. Again, this one was from one of the Conversations in NY.

I really miss it — those Conversations. I think about them a lot. He has some more coming up in Europe in early 2020.

I can’t imagine being back in NY next year and not seeing Nick Cave talking… Ah well. As usual these days, life goes on.

I don’t  know about you guys, but I get the feeling that next year will be sort of momentous. During my morning meditations this last week, I have felt it in a pronounced way.  So many projects underway over here. Most of them likely to come to some sort of fruition in 2020, or at least be getting underway. It’s going to be so interesting.

All right, well, it’s sort of that time of year: mid-December makes me get very contemplative about life — the path I’m on and where it will lead. My mom said that in the Old Farmers Almanac, they predict snow for this Christmas. I’m not planning on traveling at all, so it will be nice to just be cozy at home, alone in all that snow. Well, alone with 7 cats. Think about life. Watch some movies. We shall soon see what the next year brings!

Kara has been in California, visiting one of her sons. She got home last night and I’m going to see her here soon, so I’m looking forward to that. I missed her! She’s pretty much my only local friend, and even though she’s originally from NY, she’s never heard any of Nick Cave’s music but she lets me go on and on about it and always acts very, very interested!! So, obviously, I’ve missed her!!

All righty, I’m gonna scoot. Hope Saturday’s been good for you! Thanks for visiting. I was listening to those old Robert Johnson recordings at breakfast today.  I leave you with one of my favorites, “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom.” Okay. I love you guys! See ya!

 

Separation Anxiety!! Better Late Than Never!!

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Yes, the moment my birth mom left here yesterday afternoon, I realized I had separation anxiety! Even at my lofty age!!

And it was real. I felt really un-anchored, frightened, and sort of lost when she left. To the point where I almost slept in the guest room last night, instead of in my own bed, because, you know, that was where she slept for 3 nights. And even while it’s my house and I can sleep wherever I want within it, I convinced myself that I shouldn’t really do that, sleep in the guest room anymore. That it probably wasn’t going to be in my emotional best interests somehow.

But it’s so weird — you know, those are emotional reactions that toddlers have. I was wondering if maybe it was some sort of delayed reaction, since my birth mom didn’t raise me and I certainly didn’t know her when I was a toddler. I was probably just making up for lost time.

When I hugged her goodbye as she was getting into my sister’s car, I said, “Thanks for coming.” And she said, “I’ll be back soon.” It really meant the world to me that she said that, because I think that she saw a little tiny bit of my insanity while she was here, even though I tried really hard to keep it under wraps. However, my insanity is so voluminous that something around the edges is always bound to peek out.

But she did leave some of her stuff in the kitchen, so she really is planning to be back. And it means so much to me — to not be abandoned or discarded. Plus, she’s already planning to be here next year to take care of my cats for me when I have to go to NYC, to Toronto, to Los Angeles.

Something else she did that I just really appreciated — she asked me what I was working on right now, writing-wise, so I told her about Thug Luckless and that whole premise. And she just beamed; she really just smiled and even chuckled a little. And said, “That sounds really good.”

I got the sense, though, that she was trying to talk about Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse — because of the rape stuff. But I absolutely could not go there. I just glossed right over that, along with In the Shadow of Narcissa. I just called them “memoirs” and moved on.

I’m able to say that I was raped, and I’m able to even say that I was raped repeatedly, but I always add that it was a long time ago, and then I drop the subject. For many, many years, I wasn’t even able to say it, or to even think it. I had to keep that information extremely far away from me, and especially from my own ears. I wasn’t able to listen to myself saying it because then I had to claim it somehow.  But that was a long time ago now. I’ve processed all of it. Made art out of a lot of it. I’m okay with it. But I don’t like to “discuss” it because it doesn’t serve any purpose at all. It won’t fix anything or change anything.

Perhaps she wants to comfort me somehow and maybe I’m depriving her of the chance to do that. But  for now, you know, this is how I handle it.

But I do miss her already. Still, it’s back to work over here today.

Peitor is calling from West Hollywood in about an hour and we’ll be working on the micro-script. I also decided that, as part of my need to break out of any isolating routines — I have new hard-wired speakers for the iPad arriving on Monday and once those get here, I’m going to set aside time several nights a week to stream new TV shows and movies. I haven’t done that in over a year. And since I will be helping Peitor develop a new TV series starting in January 2020, I figure I ought to touch base with the current popular writing styles because they seem to change constantly.

This past year has been sort of relentlessly about the outgo of my own ideas, and now I need to make some time for the inflow of other ideas, even while I still have so much of my own writing to get down on paper. But it really did sort of freak me out a little these past few days, to see just how fidgety I got when I wasn’t at my desk, working.  So I want to sort of break up that habit because I don’t want to become completely anti-social, or even a sociopath, which I am fully capable of becoming if I’m not careful…

Okay!!On that chipper note!!

Well, as much as I love Christmas music — especially Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams — it was refreshing to get Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds back into the little tabletop jukebox in the kitchen last evening. However, this morning, I was back to Marianne Faithfull’s Negative Capability. Actually, it was Nick Cave and Marianne Faithfull, because I was listening to “Gypsy Faerie Queen” again, over & over at breakfast. I just love that song, even though it’s not a subject matter that I particularly relate to. I just really love the song. It calms me down. A lot.

So that was breakfast! And now we sally forth into the rest of the morning. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope this is a happy Friday for you, wherever you are in the world and with whatever you’re up to. I love you guys. See ya!

Always Learning Something Interesting Around Here…

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Well. This morning was the first morning in 7 years — when I haven’t been out of town, or out of the country entirely, that is — that I’ve woken before dawn, went down to the kitchen and the cats had already been fed!!

I woke up at 6am, and for some weird reason, Huckleberry was sort of dancing merrily in my bedroom. So I figured I’d better hurry up and get downstairs and feed them before my mom woke up, because the cats scurry and hide and then won’t eat if someone else gets anywhere near the kitchen at feeding time.

But when I got downstairs, my mom was already awake and in the kitchen washing the cats’ bowls because they’d already eaten. I was stunned by this.

I mean, I know she took care of them for that week that I was gone, but I just wasn’t expecting that she would do that. This trip, she’s just visiting, you know?

Well, I thanked her and then turned around and went immediately back to bed until the sun came up. I had no clue what to do with myself at that hour if the cats didn’t need me to feed them. And it occurred to me — well, it’s been occurring to me the whole time my mom’s been here — that I spend an enormous amount of time alone, and it’s starting to throw me when my routine changes. If I’m traveling and I’m staying with people, or interacting with them really early in the morning, I’m okay with that. Because I’m in a different environment. But it’s been nearly 2 years now that I’ve been here alone in this house, in a town where no one knows me at all…

I seriously don’t want to become one of those old ladies whose intensely isolated and set in her ways!! But it felt like it was happening to me.

My mom is really, really quiet. And so am I, normally. The first night that she was here, she had a few beers and that always makes her very chatty. But the last 2 nights, she hasn’t felt like having any beer, so she’s been just super quiet. And I find that 9.9 out of the 10 things that are always in my head only make me sound utterly insane if I try talking about them, so I get really quiet, too.

It added to my fear that I was just becoming really isolated and incapable of talking to people in a normal way and that I was just going to get old and be like that. The full moon isn’t helping. It feels like it’s one of those full moons that’s causing me a lot of free-floating anxiety. Because I’m not sure why I would have all this weird anxiety otherwise.

Part of it is that I really want Blessed by Light to get a book deal, and it’s been 6 months now that queries went out to various small presses. So that’s been on my mind. Other than that, I don’t have any real reason at all to feel anxious. But I feel it anyway.

My dad called & left a message on Tuesday evening and I didn’t have time to get back to him until early Wednesday morning. And when I called back, he answered immediately and wanted to know what had taken me so long to return his call. He was worried that maybe I’d fallen and since I’m alone, I couldn’t get to the phone…

Oh my god, you know? Have I become that little old lady who falls when she’s alone and then can’t get up?? Whoa. Like, what is happening here? It sort of freaked me out. I don’t feel old at all.

But when I told him that my birth mom was here, he was not at all aware of that, so you know, at least he’s not reading my blog…

Then last night, I got a strange email from my ex-husband in Seattle and he was talking about how difficult it will be to get to the grocery store when we get old and how it’s okay to get groceries delivered but that you don’t want other people picking out your produce for you, and public transportation doesn’t always take you where you prefer to shop, etc.

What the fuck??!! Jesus, it sounded so bleak. I wrote back , “You’re exhausting me.” You know, why is he bringing this up? Man. I’m just feeling so weird.

Anyway. I have decided to make an effort to not get too wrapped up in my daily routine and to try to not get too isolated. It was one of the reasons I threw out the old Christmas coffee mug instead of gluing it back together and keeping it as a “reminder.” There are indeed plenty of good things to remember about those early years — my first husband being one of them; my songwriting being another. But overall, I need brand new experiences now. I don’t need to remember 40 years ago in New York.

On a similar note, though, it has felt really weird to not be writing every day. Again, if I’m out of town or something, it’s not a big deal at all to not write. But being here in the house and not writing has felt very, very discombobulating. (Don’t you just love that word?) I noticed that I got really fidgety. I need to get a grip on so many things!

In the past, that would be an ideal time to have a few drinks, smoke some cigarettes, forget about all my cares & woes and either watch movies, or listen to music, or — heaven forbid — hang out with my friends. (Of which I have about 3, at this point, who aren’t gravely ill or you know, already dead. And none of those 3 come anywhere near Crazeysburg.) (So I need new friends, too. I’m accepting applications today at 3 o’clock…) (Just kidding, You needn’t fill out an application. Just show up.) (Roses and chocolate are good things to bring along, though.)

That reminds me! I gave Kara her birthday gifts, which she seems to have loved, and they did indeed make her think of her mom, who passed away unexpectedly last year. But then she turned around and gave me gifts for giving her the birthday gifts! It was the most amazing thing — has anyone ever done that to you?

Anyway, it was what she gave me that was so touching. She gave me little pieces of costume jewelry that had belonged to her mom. She said, “I know how much you love roses, Marilyn, so I especially wanted you to have this.” It’s a tiny pin, that her mom had had since high school. It absolutely melted my heart.

Okay, well. On that note. I still have a house guest here so I gotta scoot!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a wonderful day, wherever you are in the world. Try not to get too isolated. Don’t live too far from your favorite grocery store. And don’t fall down without being able to get back up… I love you guys. See ya!

A Cold & Frosty Morning!

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It’s definitely feeling like the Christmas season around here, even though there isn’t any snow. It’s 21 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, so I’m happy! (I don’t necessarily need snow at Christmas, but it doesn’t feel like Christmas to me if it isn’t freezing cold out. So that problem’s solved!)

I’m absolutely indescribably exhausted today, gang. Honestly. I got up at 5am to go down and feed the many scampering cats — who are doing reasonably okay with my mom here in the house. They aren’t totally hiding. Just mostly. Last night, she and I were watching The Polar Express on the iPad in the kitchen, and for some reason, I needed to get something from the other room and I discovered a few of them playing together under the Christmas tree in the dining room. Usually, if another person is in the house, they won’t come out from under the bed.

So, they’re being cute. And I love having the tree up. And all the decorations out everywhere. I’ve even made my bed for 3 days in a row now — probably why I’m so exhausted! Before my mom came, I hadn’t actually made my bed in months.

The Christmas bed!

Actually, for most of this entire year, I haven’t made my bed. It seems like I’m always getting back into it several times a day, so I stopped making it. It’s not that I’m always that tired, but it seems like, in between staring at the laptop screen for hours on end, I always end up collapsing on the bed for awhile and staring at the maple tree outside my window.

Anyway, so I stopped making my bed for the first time in probably 40 years. And started making it again 3 days ago…

My mom had never seen the movie, The Polar Express, so it was fun watching it with her. I just love that movie. It’s better watching it on a bigger screen and not just on an iPad at the kitchen table, but it’s still fun, regardless.

Oh — I thought this was funny. Last September, when my mom was here to take care of my cats, I headed off to NY without showing her how to use the little tabletop jukebox I have in the kitchen.  I meant to do that before I left, so that she could play CDs because my mom loves music as much as I do.  The jukebox is not that easy to figure out, because it plays CDs, has a bluetooth thing, and also plays AM or FM radio — and there are no instructions.

She eventually figured out how to get it to play a CD but she couldn’t figure out how to open it and change the CD.

Yesterday, she told me that one night while I was in NY, she discovered one of my CD racks, that’s full of old Country & Western CDs. My mom loves old Country music, so she just became bound and determined to figure out how to open the thing and switch out the CD.  Once she did, she said she stayed up until 4am, drinking beers and listening to old Country & Western CDs.

I thought back to September,  and then said, “Oh man, does this mean you had to listen to Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits for 5 days?!”

She sort of sighed in resignation and quietly said, “Yep.”

I found that really amusing…

Anyway. We took our walk last evening and it felt really great to be out in the brisk air after dark. Walking around. We didn’t stay out too long, because it was actually quite freezing. But here are 2 photos of neighbors’ houses. Of course, I am a terrible photographer, so the houses actually looked way better than this in real life:

Neighbor #1 — I would need a panoramic shot to capture all the various lights they had. Plus, they have a fountain and a little tiny pond in front that was all lit up.
Neighbor #2 — this one looks so great in real life. Just the colors of the lights, mostly.

I guess you can at least tell from these two houses, that the architecture around here is really old. I just love the houses here. No two are alike.

Okay. I am trying to adjust to not writing every day. It does feel a little weird. But it’s probably good for me to be having this break from it. Oh, and also, as I was unpacking all the Christmas stuff from the many boxes, I was looking at the newspapers that I’d wrapped stuff in and it has actually been 4 years that all this stuff has been stored away — not 3 years.

Thinking it had been 3 years had felt bad enough, but once I realized it had been 4 years — it got kind of depressing. Not just the rapid way that time is disappearing, but it was sad how much has changed since that last Christmas, when I wrapped everything up and put it in storage. I had no idea it would be 4 years before anything in my life would get settled again. I need to focus on here & now, though, because I am really happy with how my life is turning out. But unwrapping all that stuff, and suddenly having vivid recall of how sad and awful my life had gotten in the old house — it really took a lot out of me, like, instantaneously. I sat on the floor in the dining room, in the middle of all those boxes and just felt like crying. If my birth mom hadn’t been here with me yesterday, I would have sealed the boxes right back up and put it all back into storage for the rest of my life. I really would have.

Oh, and I decided that the broken coffee mug from Christmas 1981 — my favorite one that I had bought at Macy’s back in NYC — I threw it away last night. I think it’s better than trying to repair it and looking at it that way for the rest of my life. Just keep moving forward. It’s time for everything to change.

Okay. I’m gonna go downstairs and get more coffee and sit at the kitchen table with my birth mom and close down this laptop for the 3rd day in a row! Thanks for visiting, gang!  Have a great day, wherever you are in the world. I love you guys! See ya!

The world of author Marilyn Jaye Lewis