You Just Never Know What A Day Brings, Do You?

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I don’t know what it is about reality, gang, but just for no reason at all, I woke up battling those depression triggers this morning.

Those thoughts that I know are going to lead to nothing productive. You know — put your canoe in the stream here, where it’s all dark & negative, and let’s go. No, I refuse to put my canoe in there. Or over there, or over there, or over there.

I have so many streams of consciousness that are just useless to me. All these thoughts where I know I don’t want to go. Why do they keep wanting to pop up? I’m okay, as long as I stay on top of all these triggers and keep steering myself in another direction. But I don’t know why some mornings start out like this.

I’m actually really happy. I have only 2 things on my plate today, both of which I’m really excited about. During my meditation yesterday, I got clarity on Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. 

There is always a general underlying theme to each letter (each letter also being a memoir of sorts). For instance, Letter #2 was about intercourse: not knowing what it was, then knowing what it was; not liking it, liking it; the ecstasy of it versus rape.

Even though the titles for the letters always come first (Letter #5 is “Hymn to the Dark”), the titles usually don’t illuminate what the letter will actually be about. I get an overall feeling or color in my mind, but it takes a while for the true gist of it to actually come through. For awhile, all I could get was “the genesis of angels and what angels smell like” but what the heck does that actually mean?

So, even though I was beginning to make some headway, yesterday during meditation, I got that real clarity I needed. Letter #5 is primarily about the orgasm.  First, trying to figure out what they are — but can we ever truly figure out what they are?

I remember really clearly being 5 years old, and waking quite suddenly, very early on a summer morning. and my body, between my legs, needed to do something with great urgency. I could not figure out what. The only thing I could equate it with was peeing so I did that, right in my bed there, and immediately discovered that this was not what my body was wanting to feel.

Then when I was 6, the little stories in my head started. Erotic, you know. And I loved those little stories. I’d lie in my bed at night and the little stories would unfold, and I just loved that. And then when I was 7, for some unknown (but wonderful) reason, I figured out that if I touched myself at the same time, the stories got super interesting. The orgasm part stymied me, though, because I knew my body wanted to get to something urgent there but I was convinced that all I was going to do was pee. And I already knew for sure that I didn’t want to do that.

But one night, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I figured well, if I pee, I pee, but I just really need to feel this urgent thing — and that’s when I didn’t pee at all and had my first orgasm. Although it was literally years before I knew that it had a name and that it eventually happened to everybody. Because right away, at age 7, I tried to talk to all my little girlfriends about it– ME: “You know, those stories in your head at night and they feel really good?” —  and none of them had even the remotest clue what I was talking about, so I just thought it best to stop talking about it.

But even at age 59, I still remember so many of those little stories that were in my head. They were so captivating back then. And even without intercourse or any of that stuff yet, they were really filthy dirty little stories, even by my 59-year-old mind’s standards. But oddly enough, that one specific night at age 7 where I couldn’t hold back any longer — that story was just weird.  I was up on deck on a big boat, in the  middle of the night. It was storming really badly — pouring rain, lightning. And I’m on the sea in a huge boat, alone except for the man who was almost always in all my little stories. We didn’t do anything “sexual”; it was simply full of really intense erotic feelings. And it’s kind of amusing now that something so full of the symbols of Nature would be the time I finally couldn’t help but have an orgasm.  I am not someone who is ever prone to using erotic euphemisms, you know? And I guarantee you that if I were ever up on deck on some boat on the sea in a terrible storm, I would not find it erotic in the least. I’d be super pissed-off. With or without the man.

But, I digress. “Hymn to the Dark” just has elements of that stuff in it, and I’m excited that it’s finally really unfolding.

However, in another brief digression — I also remember that my parents used to close my bedroom door part-way at night, and that the hall light used to slice in and form a sort of crow shape on the ceiling above my bedroom door. And I decided that this crow of light was God, looking over me. Protecting me. Weird, isn’t it? Especially considering that, in my 20s, when I went to study with the Lakota Sioux medicine man, we discovered that my Power Animal was a white cockatoo. Another bird. (A “really intelligent and affectionate bird that needs to be taught a lot of boundaries,” according to Google just now. Sounds like someone I know!! Really well!!)

All right, so. The other thing that I’m happy about today is that the notes from the director came through, finally, last evening. And he was very, very happy with the revisions. I still need to work on one of the character arcs at the end there. But he’s ready to start Workshopping the play. Which is so exciting to me. But it does indeed mean another trip back to NYC and I’ll probably have to fly this time. You don’t want to risk getting stuck in the wilds of Pennsylvania in the winter. Plus I can’t just put a great big ton of mileage on my car, because it’s leased. But I’ll just deal with it when I deal with it. (Driving to the airport an hour from here; long-term parking; shuttles; then dealing with LaGuardia airport and all that madness on the other end. I just hate dealing with all that stuff anymore. But whatever.)

I’m happy.

Okay, I’m gonna close and get started here today! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music. I was back in Negative Capability mode this morning. Marianne Faithfull. I just find that album (well, except for “They Come By Night”) to be really soothing, even while the songs can sometimes be very emotional. But this morning it was “The Gypsy Faerie Queen,” over and over, as I tried to keep my humble canoe from heading out into any dreary, unproductive waters. I’m usually not into faeries or witches or any sort of mystical forest creature type things. But I find this song, especially the musical arrangement of it, to be just stunning. And the vocals are hypnotic.  So, enjoy. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a great Wednesday — watch where you’re putting your canoe! I love you guys. See ya!

“The Gypsy Faerie Queen”

I’m known by many different names
My good friend Will calls me Puck and Robin Goodfellow
I follow the gypsy faerie queen
I follow the gypsy faerie queen

She walks the length and breadth of England
Singing her song, using her wand
To help and heal the land and the creatures on it
She’s dressed in rags of moleskin
And wears a crown of Rowan berries on her brow

And I follow, follow, follow
The gypsy faerie queen
We exist, exist, exist
In the twilight in-between

She bears a blackthorn staff
To help her in her walking
I only listen to her sing
But I never hear her talking anymore
Though once she did
Though once she did

And I follow, follow, follow
My gypsy faerie queen
We exist, exist, exist
In the twilight in-between

And I follow, follow, follow
My gypsy faerie queen
We exist, exist, exist
In the country in-between

Me and my gypsy queen

c – 2018 Marianne Faithfull, Nick Cave

Finally! It’s Tuesday!!

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Wow, I really slept in today, gang. It felt great but I kinda feel like half my day’s gone already.

I need to go into town and get groceries today because there is practically nothing left. Milk, V8 Juice, Almonds, and Cocoanut Water. That’s all there is in the house. And that’s about a 2-hour chunk of time, total, right there — driving into town & back to get groceries.

(My spellcheck is alerting me that my spelling of “cocoanut” hasn’t been in popular use for the last century. Yet this is how I was taught to spell it and I am not a century-years old yet…hmm.)

Anyway. I overslept. But only because, yet again, my bed and my room were so incredibly comfortable. I just slept so great. And the very moment I awoke, I checked my email because I’m still awaiting those comments from the director re: my revisions on the play. They have not yet arrived! But I did notice that the very moment I opened my eyes and checked my email, a Red Hand Files letter-thingy from Nick Cave arrived at that very moment. So I’m guessing this was why I bothered to wake up at all! Because, I tell you; man, I was really sleeping soundly there.

I am just so eager to get the director’s notes to see how close we are to signing off on the play and beginning the Christmas campaign for producers/backers. Even if the director wants me to do some additional work, I know he’s not going to ask me to undo anything that’s already there. I’m thinking that he’ll want something more done to the ending, though. We’ll see. But one thing I know without doubt is that his instincts for what’s needed are always just so on target. So his feedback is just really important to me.

(And someone else who is just so on target re: what a script needs is Peitor and I am really looking forward to being back on track with him with our script, for real, this Friday. I just love that project so much. And even though the finished film will only be about 8 minutes long, every single moment of screen time is considered, shot by shot, because there is almost no dialogue in the film. Honestly, maybe 6 or 7 sentences of dialogue, total. But the film is so absurd that every single viewable thing that an audience can process has to be accounted for. Even if they’re red herrings and sending the audience, subliminally, in an erroneous direction — every shot has to be seriously thought out. So that’s why this script is taking so long. (Plus, the film is funny — so we do spend a lot of time laughing our asses off.)

I want to give an early plug to a fellow blogger‘s book:

F*ck Sales Let's Talk: A Common Sense Approach to Sales by [Robert, Anthony]

I’m currently reading this in my “spare time.” The blog is called Tony’s Bologna, and Anthony Robert is the blogger.  So far, I am really enjoying the book because it is easy to grasp and very humorous.

The book is indeed about sales strategies and how to better approach selling; and while I am not only “an artist,” but also one who is very, very nearly close to being out of my mind most of the time — one thing I have always been really good at is that I give “good meetings.” I seriously do.I have my shark elements, for sure.

That comes from having grown up in an era where women were simply not taken seriously, ever. And if you were Attractive. Young. Loved sex. Then forget about it — no one was ever, ever, ever going to do anything more than be patronizing towards you. (Oh, and stare primarily at your tits and ask you if you wanted to have sex. Because men owned the world back then — and if we’re brutally honest about it, they still kinda do.)

Well, what I really wanted was to be taken seriously and have sex, but you really can’t do both. And since my career has always been the most important thing to me, 100% for always and forever, whether I was in the music business or in the publishing industry — well, hard as it is to imagine, my sexual availability actually has to completely disappear during meetings. (I know! Sometimes for as much as 60 minutes — or longer, if lunch is involved — I have to seem sexually unavailable! It’s exhausting.)

But seriously. Especially nowadays, artists do have to sell themselves, always. Just always. So even though you might not be in a corporate selling environment, or you might rather die than work in, like, a store; it still helps to understand how to sell something — meaning, your own work; your art. Because there is a lot of psychological stuff going on that’s super good to know about in a meeting (and “meetings” crop up in a lot of different ways if you’re an artist and you need to sell yourself). And this particular book, Fuck Sales, Let’s Talk…, is a really fun approach to all that stuff, if you’re interested.

Okay, well. Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files thingy today was very interesting. And amusing, but also, to me, very interesting. Because, of course, I ponder. Overall, it’s about Nick Cave’s version of the song “Stagger Lee.” A song that, especially if you’re an American (because we are Puritanical to our very cores, when you get right down to it), well, it makes your jaw drop the first time you hear it  — and it’s been around forever now, yet a huge portion, just a really huge portion of Americans are unfamiliar with Nick Cave’s version of “Stagger Lee.”

Not too long ago, for some reason that I can no longer remember, I was showing a young woman the original “Stagger Lee” video on YouTube. She lives in Kentucky. Sort of educated in certain specific areas, but all tatted up and pierced everywhere and a smoker, 420 friendly and all that, and for some reason, it just never occurred to me that  she wouldn’t connect with how amazing the song was.

Well, she didn’t. Oddly enough, the first thing that amazed her was that he was smoking a cigarette on the stage (in the video). Even though she smokes, she was taken aback by it: “Whoa, he’s smoking on stage.” (Which to me, shows just how culturally brain-washed younger people are nowadays about making choices — even their own choices, because she smokes.) Anyway. Once she said that, I thought: oh boy, smoking is so much the very least of it… And then he sings all the other stuff and she was just shocked by it. She said, “Wow, that’s harsh.”

And I said, “Don’t you think that’s amazing, though — where he took that song? How extreme it is?” But she couldn’t go there; I had seriously misjudged her mind’s ability to go out on a limb.

You know, as an aside — in the old days, the only people who were pierced and had copious amounts of tattoos, were the fetishists. The marginal people, well outside of mainstream thinking. Now it’s more a signal of mass-tribalism and fashion. It’s not necessarily an indicator anymore of where a person’s mind is capable of going.

Anyway. I still think that what Nick Cave did with that song, even though I am the last person to celebrate murder in any way; I still think it was courageous and brilliant and true to the character he was creating at that specific moment; just so over-the-top in a gloriously horrific way. And the video still blows my mind — the pink tee shirt and the white pants, and all those cool men and the absolute noisy chaos of the ending — which I had always assumed was some orgy of sex and murder. But perhaps it’s just sex. Or just murder.

Nick Cave made a comment in his response today about how he sometimes wonders if anyone really listens seriously to his lyrics (I’m paraphrasing) and my initial reaction was, “What sort of weird Nick Cave planet are you on, dude?? Everyone listens to every single word of your lyrics!”

But then I was reminded of my recent brunch with Wayne and Sandra in NYC, wherein Sandra, an absolute woman of the world, had never heard of Nick Cave at all; but Wayne had and has at least known of him for a very long time because Wayne was married to me for 14 years, but he only owns the CD Murder Ballads; a thing he acquired only recently because a niece gave it to him as a gift.

So I made a remark about “Stagger Lee” because I know Wayne’s sensibilities and I know that would be the type of song Wayne would love. But he didn’t know the song. I said,”You’re sure the CD is Murder Ballads?”

HIM: “Yes, I’m sure.”

ME: ” And you don’t remember hearing that song?”

HIM: “I guess I have to listen to it again. Pay more attention to the lyrics…”

So, I guess Nick Cave is actually right. Who knew?

Okay, anyway. I gotta scoot and drive into town and get some food for this barren place! Then I have 7 trillion emails to wade through, then I’m gonna work some more on “Hymn to the Dark” from Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

Listening to “Stagger Lee” at an inappropriate age!! (Or perhaps just having some sort of weird sex thing in the afternoon.) (Actually, this is one of those kittens who lost his mittens and mom got pissed… I used to have this book when I was a little girl and this illustration always perturbed me.)

Okay, I’m outta here!!

It’s Been Kind of Just A Wonderful Day, All Things Considered Here

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I’m still here at my desk, but I’m taking a little break.

I updated the photo of my birth father down there in the “In the Shadow of Narcissa” photo gallery. This is the photo I added (replacing the photo of him on Midway Island from 1973). My dad’s about 17 years old here, brand new in the US Navy — which means I was about 2 years old.

My birth father in the US Navy, 1962

I love this photo of my dad. One of my aunt’s gave it to me after he died. She found a bunch of old photos of him and mailed them to me in NYC. She died herself, not too long after that.  She was so sweet to me — my Aunt Jo. All of his siblings were sweet to me, actually.  But I never got to meet my Aunt Jo or my Uncle Earl, but I met the others. My Uncle Ralph, who is still a musician and used to play professionally in Nashville for a really long time — he’s still alive. I believe he’s married to a woman in Norway now.

Really early this morning — even before all the other stuff I was thinking about that I blogged about earlier today — I was lamenting that blogging has shifted me away from keeping journals. I used to keep journals, like, religiously. To the point where people I did indiscreet things with would sometimes say, “Don’t put that in your journal!”  I usually did anyway. I wrote about everything.

It made me a little sad, though, that the man from 2 summers ago who changed my life and then died — he made me swear not to ever write about it in my journal. Obviously, I didn’t blog about it. But he didn’t want me even writing privately about him, because he was married and had children and grandkids, and just didn’t want to run any risk that any of it would get back to them after he died. Ever.

I asked him if I couldn’t even write in a secret, private journal and keep it locked away somewhere, super private — because I really just wanted a written record of all we were going through together and how much he was changing me and how much I loved him. But even that, he said no. And he was really, really serious about it, too, so I didn’t write about him.

And this morning, I was lamenting that time was passing now and I didn’t want to risk forgetting anything about him and us, and I realized that I probably already was forgetting stuff. And it made me sad.

It reminded me how I recently realized that all the details of that first time I saw Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in NYC in 1989 — even though the audience made me insane — I was bowled over by Nick Cave when he came onto the stage. I was just astounded by him, even though, by then I’d been buying his records for a few years already. I just wasn’t prepared for him, how he was “live.” And I started to realize recently that I was forgetting a lot about that concert — except for those stupid crazy audience people that I hated!! And I hadn’t been high or anything — I never took drugs when I went to concerts because I just loved music so much. I wanted to be really present, you know? Still, I was starting to forget.

So I decided to dig out the diary I would have been keeping back then, to see what I wrote about the show. I found the correct journal, as you can see here!! (FYI, I was not a big Guns & Roses fan, but I did have that album and it came with a decal that I put in the inside cover of my journal.)

The inside cover of my diary from 1989-1990

I’ve read all through that journal and found nothing whatsoever about that concert because it was the year I met my birth father, and almost that entire journal is about that whole thing. Me going to that little town to try to find him; them telling him about me; him calling me from Nevada; and everything else that happened.

And one true blessing that came from re-reading that specific diary is that some key things about what happened between me and my dad that night in his trailer — when we almost became incestuous. Well, all of those details were written down in my diary. And I discovered, these 20 years later, after so many years of feeling so incredibly guilty about what almost happened — it turns out I hadn’t remembered it exactly right. We did fall in love but there had been no valid reason at all for me to feel so guilty for so long.  We couldn’t help how we were feeling and the  bottom line is that we didn’t do anything. It’s all documented there in detail in my diary.

I was so angry at my dad for dying without telling me he was sick, that he had cancer. He simply stopped speaking to me and refused to return my calls. Then the next thing I knew, he was dead and cremated and gone, and I hadn’t even known he was sick. So I spent a lot of years (20, to be exact) being really mad at him for that and then just sort of hating myself for that night in the trailer, too.

Had I thought to read my diary 20 years ago, it could have helped me heal a lot sooner. But my point here is that my diaries are more accurate than my memories are, especially now that years and years are moving on at quite a clip. So now I’ve lost the details of that first Nick Cave show, and that sucks.

And now I know that I’ll eventually forget so many details about that man who changed my life forever over a handful of months one summer, before he died. I have written a few little things about him now, but nothing at all like what I would have written had I been putting it into a daily journal, and that makes me sad.

And then I think of all the years that I’ve spent primarily blogging now, instead of journaling, and how regrettable that probably will seem down the road. But you know, I can only write just so much. I already write more than I can sometimes manage. Blogging and journaling and the plays and the fiction and the memoirs… I’d go insane.

Oh well. I guess that’s just how things are for now.

Well, I did hear from the legal department at Little Brown & Co in the UK today, regarding this problem I’m having online with so many people offering illegal downloads of Neptune & Surf.  The main culprit (the gaming site) that I found last week has now disappeared. But others have sprung up. So they are going to go after them, which means a lot to me because it is, after all, a 20-year-old book. Still, the book matters a lot to me. I really hope, gang, that if you haven’t read that book and would like to, you’ll just pay for it the right way. It hardly costs anything. (And some of those sites are scams — they just want to grab your private information and run.)

And I did notice two other novels of mine being offered for free online now, too (in addition to some of my stuff being printed on demand illegally and sold to unsuspecting customers as legally published books). But these involve titles that I own and I don’t have access to those kinds of lawyers on my own. It’s depressing to see this stuff keep popping up, and it’s exhausting and it makes my head want to explode. It can just feel overwhelming, gang. You have no idea.

So please. You know, just think about it.

Okay. I’m gonna go eat something and then get back to work here. I hope you’ve had a really good day, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

Lucie and Doris as kittens at the old house…

Such Interesting Times

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I hate to get too tedious about the cats, since I am not normally a “cat blogger.” However…

I was lying in bed this morning, remembering how, when Daddycakes was still alive, a lot of the cats would jump up on my bed with him in the morning and walk all over me — as long as I was under the blankets, I mean. They wouldn’t come near me if I wasn’t. But I was thinking this morning how much I really missed that. Just even that small physical contact with the cats.

Not that I don’t appreciate this new development with Huckleberry and Doris in the bathroom in the mornings now — and this morning, they even came in after the sun had actually come up. This is a huge change — allowing me to pet them in the daylight.

But, anyway. Yesterday, a man I know just really casually — we had had lunch together a couple of times a couple of years ago. The only thing we really had in common is that we grew up in Cleveland in the same era. But he was a heavy drinker, smoker, and a meat eater. And even though I never, ever push my eating/smoking/drinking preferences on anyone else — honestly, you can do whatever you want to do, even in my house. But it probably means we won’t really spend a whole lot of time together. So that’s what happened there. I think he found me a little intimidating, actually. But I saw him yesterday — really briefly. It was so nice. And my main point is that he very lightly touched my back, just this friendly sort of gesture of “hello, I remember you” and it felt so incredible and I realized that it’s getting to be a really long time since anybody touched me — including the cats.

So this morning, I was thinking about how the cats never jump up on my bed anymore and how much I miss that — little cat feet walking all over me in the morning. And then absolutely that quickly, suddenly Huckleberry and Doris jumped up on the bed with me. And they did that thing where they knead you with their paws — Doris always loved kneading my thigh and she immediately started doing that again! They were on the bed with me for several minutes. And then Francis — the meanest cat in the world — came into the room and was staring up at us. She never comes into the bedroom while I’m in the room, ever. And yet she stood there and watched us for a little while.

I could not believe any of this. It’s been 7 months since Daddycakes died. It feels like forever. Needless to say, it made me feel really happy to finally have this cat-interaction again.

And, oddly, the guy I had last gotten seriously involved with, about 3 years ago — when I was planning to move back to New York and buy a house in Rhinebeck (where he lives — oddly, he lives about 5 minutes from Sandra but I knew him from NYC), but I ended up in the wilds of Muskingum County instead, bought a strange old house and became indescribably happy. Anyway, that guy emailed me over the weekend. That felt very strange. Not bad, but more like — wait; what?

I guess it’s just one of those junctures. Everyone’s sort of revisiting their old energy — including the cats.

Then, as the sun came up this morning — after I was done meditating and doing my Inner Being journal-thing — I was looking at the grey sky and an old Paul Simon song came suddenly to my mind: “I Do It For Your Love,” from his 1975 album, Still Crazy After All These Years. And the song brought to mind both of my wedding days and how odd it was that on both of those days, the weather simply could not have been more beautiful. (April 9, 1981, and then May 1, 1993.) And then it brought to mind how the weather is no real indicator of how a marriage is going to go. And I thought about all the various men who have wanted to marry me in my lifetime, starting from when I was 17, and how I was just the kind of girl who never wanted to get married. And yet when I did — both times, well, they were just so odd.

Both wedding nights, for various reasons, go down as two of the worst nights of my life. That feeling of lying there and staring up at the ceiling in the dark and thinking: Jesus, it’s legal now; what was I thinking? Then feeling resigned to making the best of it. And both of those particular marriage proposals couldn’t have been more strange. And yet they were the ones I accepted. (The other guys were so much more passionate — “come on, I love you, I want to have a kid with you” and that kind of beautiful thing. But I always saw ownership in that arrangement and that’s one way to make me bolt the stall in a huge hurry.) Plus, I also wound up marrying two Geminis (Geminis have that “twin” thing going on.). And for me, both times, I didn’t find the twin until after the wedding.

Just so strange that all I had to do was look out the window at the grey sky, then be reminded of an old Paul Simon song, and my mind was just off and running like that. I’m not anti-marriage at all, I just don’t really understand the point of it if real estate and children aren’t involved. It’s just such an intensely binding legal arrangement.

Anyway, I thought this would be of interest! Marriage-related photos!! The first is actually a photo of the playwright Christopher Demos Brown, but in the background — the sort of striped brick high-rise: that’s the Camelot Building, on the corner of 8th Avenue and W.45th Street. And that’s where I lived with my first husband when we were married.

The Camelot building in Midtown — so aptly named!

And below — you kind of have to look closely here — this is West End Avenue, on New York City’s Upper West Side. If you look in the center of the photo and see a dark red chimney-type thing on top of one of those tall buildings — the apartment building directly next to it, the much smaller one with a white roof (it’s only 12 stories), that’s where I lived when I was married to Wayne, on the 10th floor. He still lives there. You can’t tell from this photo, but outside of our bedroom window and our bathroom window, we had a clear view of the Hudson River and Riverside Park.

Life in the married days…

And of course, this is what it looks like where I am now — not married at all. This was the full moon this past September, over my barn.

The full moon over my barn in Muskingum County

Well, I’m just in a really strange headspace today, huh? Not a bad one; just sort of contemplative.

And I thought about that Paul Simon song, and just how long it’s been since I even thought about it. I loved that album, but the song wasn’t especially a favorite or anything. I do recall listening to it at age 15, and thinking that I didn’t really ever want to get married. And then I thought about who I am now, today, and I thought of that girl I was then. I was fresh from the mental hospital, for one thing. I was in such a bad way. I basically lived alone with my adoptive mother — my brother was almost never home back then and then he moved out for good less than 2 years afterward. But I lived in terror of that woman. Just day in, day out, anxiety, fear, suicidal depression and awfulness. I never ever knew what horrible shit she was going to throw my way next. I tried so hard to make myself just disappear back then.

This morning, remembering all that, I just wanted to let go of the past — forget it completely. But then I didn’t want to just abandon that girl who was still back there, listening to her records in her room, you know? I knew she had a whole lot of really bad shit still up ahead of her, and I didn’t want to just leave her stranded in it.

I’m just not sure how reality works in that regard. If you let go of the past, are you letting go of something deep inside yourself that still needs you, or is that just an illusion of some kind? I don’t really have a clue.

Well, okay. The director’s comments will not arrive until tonight. So today I’m going to work some more on “Hymn to the Dark.” (Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.) I hope you have a really good, thought-filled Monday, wherever you are in the world.

I’m guessing you know what I’m leaving you with today! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“I Do It For Your Love”

We were married on a rainy day
The sky was yellow
And the grass was gray
We signed the papers
And we drove away
I do it for your love

The rooms were musty
And the pipes were old
All that winter we shared a cold
Drank all the orange juice
That we could hold
I do it for your love

Found a rug
In an old junk shop
And brought it home to you
Along the way the colors ran
The orange bled the blue

The sting of reason
The splash of tears
The northern and the southern
Hemispheres
Love emerges
And it disappears
I do it for your love
I do it for your love

c – 1975 Paul Simon

Don’t I Look Industrious?!

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I’m actually still in bed!

You know, some days I just look at my desk and feel the effort it will take to move  everything that’s on top of the desk — a ton of manuscripts in various stages of completion and piles of photos of Nick Cave that I’m always printing off from the Internet and then have nowhere to pin them up because my wall is already covered with stuff. I guess I just want to use up as much printer ink as I can because I enjoy spending a god-awful ton of money on ink…

Anyway.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I have the tiniest desk known to man. I always assumed that I would one day have a very grown up desk like other serious writers do! However, my desk was a wedding gift to me from my first husband. It meant so much to me, gang. It turned out, I was never able to part with it.  That was nearly 40 years ago.  I’ve written 6 novels at that desk, and God knows how many short stories, memoirs, essays, novellas. It went from having a typewriter sitting on it, to every stage of computer, and now the laptop. So I’m guessing it is officially My Desk.

That said, though, every morning, I have to unbury the top of the desk to find the laptop, and then put piles of stuff on the floor. Some mornings— such as this one here today— I look at all that stuff on top of the desk and just feel like blogging from bed…

Well, okay!

It is supposed to get up into the 50s Fahrenheit today. Kind of hard to believe because it is only 27 degrees out there right now. But it should be another beautiful day.  I heard from the director that tonight he will have his comments for me re: revisions on the play. So I am very eager to hear just how close to completion we might be! I don’t know, I’m just feeling like a lot of weight is off of me and I’m going to have more time now, in general, to focus on other things.  Regardless, it just feels good.

Yesterday, when I was looking for that photo of Fluffy helping me put up the Christmas tree, I found a couple other photos that I really loved. Another one from the old house:

A bunch of the cats looking out the screen door at the old house.

And several of the cats on my bed at the rental house:

Most of the feral cat colony, minus 2 of them

I love looking at old photos of the cats. Especially the really old photos of the ones who are gone now. I honestly just can’t believe how quickly the time passes and things change.

Okay, well. I guess I’m gonna get going here. Because I need more coffee and so I must get out of bed!! I leave you with another really old song that’s kind of haunting in a way, but made for nice breakfast music today. Have a great Sunday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

A Super Saturday in the Hinterlands!!

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Well, for some weird reason, the blog decided to update all on its own after I had typed only a single letter!

(The letter was “A”.) I hope it wasn’t too riveting for you…

Anyway! I woke up really daydreamy this morning and had nothing really coherent to blog about. And as the day has progressed, I find that I’m still super daydreamy. I’m in a great mood. I feel just so extremely happy today. For no specific reason, I just am. And because of that, my mind just keeps wandering.

I’m still not getting a ton of new writing done, although I am focusing on Letter #5 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. At least I did get that far.

I’m also really kind of waiting to hear back from the director to see if he has any additional notes on the play, because Sandra will be back in NY from LA on Monday, and she’s waiting to get a copy of the revised play, too. So lots of waiting going on here. (I’m also still waiting to hear back from various small presses re: my queries about my new novel, Blessed By Light. Small presses take forever to reply to you. It’s been 5 months. One of the small presses I queried takes a year (!!) to respond.) So anyway, lots of waiting.

If you haven’t already noticed, I started a little photo gallery for In the Shadow of Narcissa. If you’re reading this on your phone, you can’t see the gallery. It’s only visible as a web page — down on the lower left. The web site where I actually post the segments of that memoir is not very photo friendly, so I’m posting them here instead. The photo of my birth father I will probably switch out for a younger photo. I have to dig something out of storage. But the photo I have posted of him currently is probably my favorite photo of him, just generally. He was in the Navy, on Midway Island, 1973. Still about 16 years before I would meet him.

Well, even though it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, I am starting to feel excited about decorating the house for Christmas. This will be my 2nd Christmas in the house but my first year decorating. I was indescribably depressed last Christmas and didn’t actually think I would live through it.  I think I have a photo of my tree from last year. A fake tree with built-in lights. But I only had one ornament on it because my birth mother had been here and gave it to me.

The sole decoration on last year’s tree.

And as far as past Christmases go, here’s Fluffy, helping me put up a tree several years ago!! Gosh, I miss that cat. She died just a couple weeks before Bunny did. Those were very sad times for me. Selling the house. Moving away. My little cats dying.

Fluffy helping me put up the tree!

Okay. I also saw this photo from my old house. Summertime a few years ago:

Summers at the old house

If I spend too much more time scrolling through pictures this post will get unwieldy!!

All righty, on that lofty note, gang. I leave you with the breakfast-listening music from this morning, “Jesus of the Moon,” from Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.  I’ve posted it here before, but it was several months ago.  Okay. I hope you’re having a super Saturday wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting! I love you guys! See ya!!

I Guess That’s Just the Kind of Mood I’m in Today!

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Some days you just wake up like this, right? Wondering about all that Action for Men!

(And I sure as heck want to know the “10 Ways to Spot a No Limit Girl,” don’t you?) (I’m guessing, the first way to spot her is that she has to live in Crazeysburg; as for the 9 other ways, I just can’t even imagine…)

I am, of course, just kidding. I have limits. (I have two, actually.)

Okay, truth be told — I did absolutely no writing yesterday!! I just didn’t feel like it. For most of the day, my laptop was actually even closed. And I spent a great big bunch of time getting back into bed. It was really fun. I was reading and stuff.  Things I haven’t had the brain-space to do in a couple months.

Today, though, I woke up back in writing mode. Still not sure if it will be the new segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa, or Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. (Titled “Hymn to the Dark” — I get the impression, that one’s going to be sort of intense and take a lot out of me. Not sure yet why.) And I also still have Thug Luckless hanging out, waiting for more adventures. But that also takes a lot out of me, even though it’s pure porn. For those of you who think (or perhaps know first hand) that writing pure porn is easy — I beg to differ! Writing bad porn is easy; writing porn that people are willing to pay money for in this day & age of nonstop free porn, is a whole other story (pun intended, I guess). It’s just as time-consuming as writing anything else.

Well, my stupid bathroom scale claims I put on 2 more pounds during the night. Apparently, lying around and reading is really fattening. I seriously have to break down and buy another new scale — one that actually works this time. I would hate to develop some sort of weird eating disorder, all because of a diabolically Sadistic bathroom scale… (It is starting to fuck with my head a little bit. I got out of the shower and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror: have I actually put on 9.3 pounds in the past 3 days? It doesn’t look like it, and yet, my scale says otherwise. I guess those 7 almonds have to go. And the 4 ounces of organic cranberry juice; I don’t suppose I really need that…) It’s just ridiculous.

I actually do need the almonds and the cranberry juice! I am a woman of a certain age!!! Every single thing I fucking eat every single day is expertly calculated for aging as seamlessly as possible around here. You would be bored to tears (yes, you would literally cry) if I told you the really boring — and pathetically short — list of indescribably healthy things I eat around here every single day.  I really need to get rid of the stupid scale.

Okay, then. Onward!!

My progress with the cats has been sort of a little miracle around here. After 7 years. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it makes me really happy. Now, when I first sit up in bed in the morning (in the dark — it always has to still be dark out), Huckleberry and Doris now come scampering into the bedroom and then follow me into the bathroom to be petted! I can pet them kind of a lot now, and Huckleberry always purrs. And now 2 other cats are starting to join us in there — Lucie and Weenie. Although, they stay out of petting reach, but they are definitely in there now, too. They are trying to figure out what’s going on, because Huckleberry and Doris do seem to be really, really happy while they’re getting petted. (Weenie lets me pet him once a day,  as I put his bowl of food in front of him down in the kitchen, so he might actually get brave. Lucie used to let me pet her like crazy when Daddycakes was still alive, but only if I was petting him at the same time. Since he died, she has steered clear of letting me touch her.)

Huckleberry, Weenie and Lucie, back when we lived briefly at the rental house and I used to force them to work really, really hard!

I try to just be so patient with them, and go at whatever pace they’re comfortable with, because, sweet as they look, they are still wild animals and the bottom line is that they will attack — become all claws and teeth and draw blood and break skin and such.  But I can’t tell you how badly I want to just scoop them up and hug them and cuddle them, tote them with me in my arms from room to room and happily babble at them… I think they’d rather die than endure that, at this point, anyway. And perhaps even forever. We’ll see.

Okay, well. I’m gonna  get started here.  Figure out what I’m going to work on today. (Next week, I’m back on schedule with Peitor again with the micro-short script, too, so I do have to get back on track here today.)

I’m still in Ghosteen mode around here, and still listening to “Night Raid” over and over, trying to figure it out. Although, at the In Conversation at Town Hall in NYC, someone asked Nick Cave what the song “Girl in Amber” was about and he said that he didn’t know. So, you know, I could be on a fool’s errand here. Who knows. And I do know there is a fine line between pondering and fixating — it’s actually a fine line that I’m quite familiar with! In fact, I guess you could say I call that space between pondering and fixating my home away from home!

But anyway, since I am still focused on “Night Raid,” I will instead leave you with the song that was not only in my head when I awoke this morning at 5:30am, but I actually found myself singing it — which is sort of a tall order at 5:30 in the morning because it’s super passionate. It’s another song from my wee bonny girlhood. It was a hit the year I was born (1960), but I had the record as a little girl, and passionate little girl that I was, I used to love this song.  (And I think, now more than ever, for various reasons that I’m not going to blog about, it resonates with me.)

Okey-dokey! Have a wonderful Friday! Wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“Where The Boys Are”

Where the boys are, someone waits for me
A smilin’ face, a warm embrace, two arms to hold me tenderly

Where the boys are, my true love will be
He’s walkin’ down some street in town and I know he’s lookin’ there for me

In the crowd of a million people I’ll find my valentine
And then I’ll climb to the highest steeple and tell the world he’s mine

‘Til he holds me I’ll wait impatiently
Where the boys are, where the boys are
Where the boys are, someone waits for me

‘Til he holds me I’ll wait impatiently
Where the boys are, where the boys are
Where the boys are, someone waits for me

c – 1960 Greenfield Howard, Sedaka Neil

C’è una festa qui!

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Yes! There’s a party going on here today, gang! Finally – a day wherein my mind doesn’t have to do anything!

I’m still going to do something — not sure what. Either work on the new segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa, or Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Both of them have already begun inching into my brain. But knowing that I don’t actually have to work on that play today is like having a mini brain-vacation.

I honestly don’t know if the director will sign off on those revisions. But at least I got to the point where I felt that I had done what I was trying to do, and I liked it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I nailed it theatrically. We’ll see.

But meanwhile, it feels good. And I’m taking a break from working on the micro-short script with Peitor until next week. I just need to feel, you know — “not blocked in,” time-wise.

I’m no longer on speaking terms with my insane bathroom scale. For the last few days, it has been assuring me that I’ve gained between 5 to 8 pounds. Even though my measurements are exactly the same and my clothes fit the way they should and I eat the same damn thing every single darn day — and, on Monday, I was at my goal weight and had been for a couple of weeks.

I know the scale is fucked up and has been since I bought it. I should just stop this masochistic torture and go buy another fucking scale. The Dollar Store has the old-fashioned kind for $9. I should just go get it. But for some reason, my mind is kind of fascinated by this scale — its unpredictability.  It’s sadistic approach to punishment & reward — you know, in the true BDSM sense of that concept; where the Top makes sure that the rules remain in flux, constantly changing, so that the bottom never knows whether s/he will be rewarded or punished.  It’s fun if you’re having sex, but not so fun if you’re intensely vain, like me, and want to begin each morning knowing that absolutely everything is perfect with your meticulously tended to body.

But the new scale is so sleek and modern looking! The old-fashioned scales are not… Clearly I’m putting too much emphasis on appearances here, all the way around.

Okay! That’s my worst problem of the day, so you can see that things are pretty good here. And I found the best birthday present for Kara, so I’m super excited about that. She’s not easy to shop for because she will never ever tell you what she wants or needs, or even likes. Last year, I bought her candy — in a plastic champagne bottle. At least it was celebratory-looking. But I gave it to her, feeling like: well, here, at least I’m giving you something. But then it turned out that she actually really liked it. She texted me at 3 in the morning; she was outside on her back steps in the freezing cold, drinking an espresso, looking at the moon, eating her chocolates alone and smoking a cigarette — and was apparently in heaven.

So you never know what makes someone happy. But I did indeed find something this year that I know she will like — because it will remind her, in a comforting way, of her mom who passed away unexpectedly last fall.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that Kara is my only real friend out here in the Hinterlands, although I do have acquaintances. But Kara is so good at buying gifts! And she’ll just suddenly turn up with, like, a pair of earrings and say, “I saw these and they really looked like something you’d like so I bought them.” And then it will turn out that I love them. She’s done that a couple of times — bought me these amazing earrings that really bring out the hippy-chick in me, and then also bought me these really pretty fake pearls that are just so elegant, even though they’re fake. (I still remember how to look elegant, even though I don’t do it very often anymore.) They actually look more elegant than the real pearls I own. It’s funny.

Anyway. It’s been frustrating to not be able to do the same for her — except by accident.

All righty! I’m gonna get more coffee and think about the freedom of this day, and decide what it is that’s calling to me loudest and work on that for awhile. I hope you have a splendid little day, wherever you are in the world.

I’m still in Ghosteen mode around here in the mornings; still listening to “Night Raid” on repeat, trying to figure out that song. That line “annexed your insides in a late night raid” and then they go get something to eat. What the heck does that mean? Has she gotten pregnant or something? What is it? It seems so specific.

Anyway, I’m still pondering over that song, so I’ll leave you with a song that sprang into my head the moment I awoke at 5:30am this morning.  A super-fun song from my wee bonny girlhood! (It’s a song written by Neil Diamond, but this is the version I grew up with.) All righty! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

“I’m A Believer”

I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me.
Love was out to get me
That’s the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer!
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

I thought love was more or less a givin’ thing,
Seems the more I gave the less I got.
What’s the use in tryin’?
All you get is pain.
When I needed sunshine I got rain.

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer!
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

Love was out to get me
Now, that’s the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all my dreams

Oh, then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer!
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

Yes, I saw her face, now I’m a believer
And not a trace of doubt in my mind.
Said I’m a believer
I’m a believer
I’m a believer
Said I’m a believer
I’m a believer
I said I’m a believer
I’m a believer

c – 1967 Neil Diamond

Okay. The Play’s done. Again.

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That’s a shot of part of my family room — I might sit in that chair again some day. I remember I used to do that. Watch movies and stream all those cool British DCI shows from the BBC.

We’ll see.

As indicated above, I finished the revisions on the play and just sent them off to the director in NYC. I did what I was hoping to do, to capture, but I’m not 100% sure it’s having enough of an impact as the ending (before the final song). We’ll see what the director thinks.

I have Helen ending on a partial quote from Psalm 22. She’s on an elevated platform thing, sort of like heaven, but it’s a mental landscape that doesn’t include her wheelchair, and she’s wondering what her story is now — now that she’s paralyzed and can no longer paint –after having waited 50 years before she could afford the time to paint and had enough money to buy paints and canvases, and so many paintings are still inside her.

Wanda is down below her, talking mostly to the audience, but all these other voices from Helen’s past are also speaking, overlapping. Wanda is marveling at the story that became her own life because she met Helen, and she ends with: “I’ll ease her way. I’m strong.”

And then Helen says some stuff about Jesus going to Jerusalem even though he knew his days were numbered there. And then she ends with impassioned dialogue based on Psalm 22, ending with,  “Tell my bones, tell all my bones, people — what you think it looks like to be me!” And then everything goes to black and her best paintings are projected everywhere — lots of motion and images, and then a very young Helen is heard saying, “I am Helen LaFrance Orr, I was born in a log cabin that my daddy built on our farm in Graves County, Kentucky, on November 2, 1919…” And then the entire cast breaks into a real rafter-hitting arrangement of “I Want to be Ready to Walk in Jerusalem Just like John.”

So we’ll see.

Anyway, I can turn my attention to other projects in the meantime. And dream of that day when, you know — everything’s gonna be done! (Is there actually a day like that?)

I had a good day, though. And now I’m gonna do yoga. Think about life.

I hope things are good wherever you are! See ya in the morning, gang. Thanks for visiting.

All Righty, Gang! Here We Go!!

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Well, it doesn’t look exactly like this here in Crazeysburg today — all of the snow is mostly gone now. But it is a brisk and invigorating 13 degrees Fahrenheit around here!

But I don’t have to go anywhere, except perhaps across the road to my mailbox. So I don’t mind. I am kind of wishing that the main door to my barn was fixed, though, because I’d like to put my brand new grown-up car — with its awesome sparkly paint job — in there on icy days like this.

I would really like my sister to come out here and do that for me. I don’t like to play the “Damsel in Distress” card too often, but sometimes I simply am a damsel in distress. I can’t fucking fix anything. Whereas my sister, a hardcore daddy-dyke who wouldn’t be caught dead being a damsel in distress, can fix everything. But it’s a 2-hour drive from her to me. And she has, like, a life of her own and stuff like that. And if I texted her and said: can u pls come out here & fix my barn door, she would do it in a heartbeat, so I hate to take advantage. I’ll just keep dealing with it until, for whatever reason, some day she is back out here.

(The door opens, but it’s off its roller thingy and so it has become a 2-person job to open & close the main barn door.)

Anyway, there my brand new car sits, outside my kitchen door, with ice all over it.

Well, okay. I got some very interesting progress made on the final page of the play yesterday. It sort of veered into a direction I wasn’t expecting, but I like where it went. It sort of showed me that I had a plot-line & a character arc that wasn’t getting sewn-up there at the end, so that was a good thing. However, it kind of stopped me in my tracks and I had to re-think some things.

I think I’ll get it done today, but I was at it until pretty late last night, thinking I almost had it. Then for some reason, with the script open in front of me on the laptop, I suddenly decided that if I got on pornhub on my phone for a moment, it would help me think more clearly. What it did do was help me find some girl’s “channel” or account, or whatever you call it — this young brunette who uploads her own videos, where she does this one specific thing that sort of made my jaw drop a little. So I became a little bit fixated on her (and her partner, but way less on him than on her, because, truly, it was all about her). Anyway, she was awesome. And it was late. And I’d been at my desk for over 12 hours already, so I closed the laptop and gave her my undivided attention until bedtime.

I’m not going to say what she sort of specializes in, but she has an amazing eye for color. She uses primary colors in a very startling and enhancing way. And what she does is in extreme close-up so the specific choice of color is actually part of what she’s doing, and I think that’s just amazing — that she has such an eye for how color is going to enhance what she’s filming because, you know, she can’t readily see what’s going on when it’s going on. So I think she’s brilliant.  And in a couple of the videos, you can see her face for a moment and I thought it was really interesting that she hardly wears any make-up but she does wear false eyelashes — so why that specific choice? False eyelashes when she wears so little make-up? False eyelashes are usually the coup de grâce when you’re wearing just a truckload of make-up — male or female. And she has a very unusual manicure — it’s startling. So you know she’s doing all this on purpose. I just thought she was the coolest thing (plus, she was doing something I actually really like — nothing to get squeamish over or anything — so I was very appreciative of her willingness to be such a total exhibitionist — with an unexpected eye for primary colors.)

So that was yesterday! I actually had a really cool day. And today is all about nailing that final chunk of dialogue. And I am getting the feeling I am just going to be really happy, gang.

So I’m gonna get started here.  I stayed in bed a little late this morning — it was just too snuggly for words around here! My flannel sheets were fresh from the dryer last night, and flannel sheets are always so unbelievably soft when they’re right out of the dryer.  So between that, the cold outside and the heat inside, and my cute cats frolicking hither & yon in my bedroom, attempting to get me to wake the fuck up — well, it was just a wonderful morning for laying there and feeling snuggly.

But now art awaits, and things like Pulitzer prizes and such are on the horizon, so I must get down to work. Thanks for visiting, gang!! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music — I love this song, gang, even though I have no clue what it’s about. I think it could be my favorite on the album, but that sort of shifts around. Anyway. Have a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya!

“Night Raid”

There’s a picture of Jesus lying in his mother’s arms
Shuttered windows, cars humming on the street below
The fountain throbbed in the lobby of the Grand Hotel
We checked into room thirty-three, well well, well well
You were a runaway flake of snow
You were skinny and white as a wafer, yeah I know
Sitting on the edge of the bed clicking your shoes
I slid my little songs out from under you

And we all rose from our wonder
We would never admit defeat
And we leaned out of the window
As the rain fell on the street, on the street

They were just a sigh released from a dying star
They were runaway flakes of snow, yeah I know
They annexed your insides in a late night raid
We sent down for drinks and something to eat
The cars humming in the rain on the street below
A fountain throbs in the lobby of the Grand Hotel
A spurting font of creativity, yeah I know
Your head in a pool of your own streaming hair
And Jesus lying in his mother’s arms
Just so, up on the wall, just so

And we all rose up from our wonder
We would never admit defeat
And we leaned out of the window
And watched the horses in the street, in the street

In room thirty-three, yeah
Yeah, I know

c – 2019 Nick Cave

The world of author Marilyn Jaye Lewis