Plenty of Chocolate Around Here, So Life is Good!

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Yesterday wound up being pretty okay. Even though, by the time I actually was able to sit at my desk and really focus on the play for a few uninterrupted hours in the evening, it turned out that my extensive notes on the new dialogue were better than the actual new dialogue, so I closed the computer and just decided to wait until today.

Two things happened yesterday that were interesting.

My phone chat with my ex-husband in Seattle revealed that he was in some sort of depression — something having to do with the state of the whole world and its economy. A view I don’t share because I don’t stare at the stock market all day — or ever.

But it was weird — he’s not someone who has ever been prone to actual depression. He has certainly had his struggles in life and had things that have really challenged him. But depression was not something he ever succumbed to.

I just let him talk, you know. Express whatever he needed to express, without trying to change his point of view on anything. But I didn’t share any of his views and that felt so weird, because we usually have similar views on life, in general (which was why we got married, a million years ago). The stuff he was focused on yesterday — well, I couldn’t have felt more different about that stuff.

And then I had an email exchange with a friend in Europe who was talking to me about my new novel, Blessed By Light. He likes the concept a lot (in an extreme nutshell, the novel documents a love affair that takes place in the final year of life of a fictional American rock & roll legend — and it’s told in Second Person, throughout). But he didn’t like the title at all.

And I found that both interesting and sort of amusing, since “Blessed By Light” refers to God, and somewhat to Jesus, and to that light we go toward when we die (or so people in near death experiences attest to), and then the actual spotlight of fame — and all of it relating to the character in the novel, who strongly believes in God. And since it’s totally uncool to believe in God anymore, I thought to myself, that’s interesting that the title is bothering him so much and he doesn’t even know yet that it refers to God.

People seem to like that my characters have a lot of sex and take drugs and are challenged by moral dilemmas, but you know — God. Not sure we appreciate going there.

It’s definitely an American novel, though, that’s for sure.

But aside from those two strange things, yesterday was actually really nice. Nowhere near as annoying as I thought it would be.

As soon as I left to go vote, the sun came out big time; the sky cleared up and it was a gorgeous day to drive around in. I voted, and everyone at the voting place was in good spirits. I went to the Honda dealership and everyone there was in good spirits. I went to get my groceries and the check-out girl said, “wow, I love what’s in your cart– you buy all the things I like.” Then I came home and vacuumed the house, etc., etc. It was just a really nice, easy day. Not annoying at all.

I also changed the furnace filter — I knew it had to be getting bad because my breathing issues were getting more pronounced. I usually have to give myself a little pep talk before I go down into my basement, though. It’s not the creepiest basement I’ve ever had but it is second in line. Once I’m down there, though, I’m actually okay. Much like this entire house, even the creepy 119-year-old unfinished basement has good vibes to it. (Assuming you don’t mind spiders, which I don’t.)

In fact, while I was down there changing the filter, I took a couple of photos for you!! One is of what’s left of the 119-year-old coal bin under the stairs, and the other is the coal shoot, which has been sealed up, but it’s still technically there. I just love old stuff like this — you know, actual remnants from the man who built this house. His water well is still outside my back door and is only nominally covered over, and the barn of course is still there, with all its original insides, including the hand built cupboards, and the old hand-built pass-throughs for feeding the horse. People just layered the new stuff around the old stuff over the years. And I just really love that.

The remains of the 119-year-old coal bin under the basement stairs.
The sealed-up coal shoot at the top of the stairs. Don’t want to wear your fetish high-heels on these old stairs, that’s for certain!

Well, after I had that full day, and got no productive writing done on the play, I just did yoga and then listened to Ghosteen on my phone while I played solitaire on my iPad, and wondered how musicians feel about people listening to all their hard work on a phone. But still, it just seemed like a good day.

Oh, yesterday, Nick Cave sent out another Red Hand Files letter. You can read it here. It’s about the benefits of Transcendental Meditation, and how it transformed him from the horribly wonderful man he used to be into the wonderfully wonderful man he is today! (I’m paraphrasing, of course, because I am incapable of thinking so much as a disparaging thought about Nick Cave.) However, he was eloquent and interesting, as always.

And now I am going to get back to work on the ending of this play!!! See if I can come up with some actual dialogue that is as good as my notes are.

Still doing the Angel Clare thing at breakfast around here, so I leave you with a truly gorgeous piece of production work today, “Old Man”. A song written by Randy Newman, about a mean old man, a father, dying alone — almost. If you’ve never heard it before, you should listen to it (turn it up). It’s the kind of soaring, devastating singing that Art Garfunkel is famous for. Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang!! I love you guys. See ya.

“Old Man”

Everyone has gone away, can you hear me? Can you hear me?
No one cared enough to stay, can you hear me?

You must remember me, old man, I know that you can if you try.
So just open up your eyes, old man, look who’s come to say, “Goodbye.”

The sun has left the sky, old man, the birds have flown away
and no one came to cry old man, goodbye, old man, goodbye.

You want to stay, I know you do, but it ain’t no use to try,
because I’ll be here, and I’m just like you, goodbye, old man, goodbye.

Won’t be no God to comfort you, you taught me not to believe that lie.
You don’t need anybody, nobody needs you, don’t cry, old man, don’t cry.

Everybody dies.

c – 1973 Randy Newman

Yeah, I Know. I’m Immature…

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Sometimes I just can’t resist, gang.

“Playtime in Pussyland!!” I just wish. But no, this pussy always has to work.

Okay.

Today has all the earmarks of being annoying. I’m already doing the laundry. I have to wash my hideous hair, then shave my legs, all that. Be indescribably presentable, even though I am always here by myself. Then I have to VOTE because it’s election day here in these fine United States. Then I have to drive 25 miles to the Honda Dealership to get my permanent plates, because my temporary tags expired two weeks ago and they neglected to tell me.  After that, I have to drive another 10 miles in a different direction and buy groceries because I’m down to one tomato, some arugula, a protein bar, and a bunch of dark chocolate-covered espresso beans. I have to do yoga, of course. And I have to vacuum — in the colder months, I have to vacuum all the time because the windows are no longer open and the accumulation of cat hair gets unbearable and I am actually allergic to cats (hence my dependency on Flonase for all my breathing needs).

And already, I can feel a new segment for In the Shadow of Narcissa creeping in at the edges of my brain, and daily, I get more and more intimations for Letter #5 (“Hymn to the Dark”) for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse (the section I began writing last week or something like that and then deleted because it felt too plebeian.) Neither of these can I pay attention to right now because I must complete the revised ending for Tell My Bones.

I hate when I have all these niggly little things to do in one day because it keeps me from being able to sit at my desk and focus for uninterrupted chunks of time. The actual “writing” might take only 2 or 3 hours, but there’s tons of hours before that where the words are trying to fall into place. So when I’m running hither & yon, my brain gets jumbled and time gets wasted.

Oh, and here at 9:30am, one of my ex-husbands is calling to chat. He lives in Seattle now and always gets up in time for the stock market to open on the East Coast. Today, he’s calling for our annual “Thanksgiving” chat. (We always chat around every imaginable holiday — yes, even the Chinese New Year because he happens to be Chinese. From Singapore, originally.) Well, I love chatting with him, so that’s not annoying or anything. He always makes me laugh. And we never chat for long because I guess the stock market needs a constant sort of “looking at”. But it’s just, you know. Another thing going on today.

Well, on another note.

Apparently Helen LaFrance’s 100th birthday was a huge & happy success. Wanda is going to be sending me photos from the celebration, which I will then have posted to the Tell My Bones web site. Plus, there are also some large Helen LaFrance murals in several of the churches in Mayfield, Kentucky, that people there are restoring. So donations can be made to that (in the event you would want to contribute) and I will try to have some sort of link for that on the TMB web site, too. Although, for tax reasons, I’m not entirely sure how to do that. But anyway. It’s a project that is underway. I believe the murals are 40 or 50 years old now.

Well, the remaining leaves on my maple tree are turning that golden-yellow color. It’s usually December before the leaves really fall off the tree — in one big sort of swoop, down they all go.  Some day, I’ll have to remember to take a photo of how huge this tree is. It is easily twice as tall as my house. It’s just huge and has, as you can imagine, tons of leaves.

I just love this tree, though. It means so much to me. And early this morning, as I sat on the side of the bed, with my cup of coffee, looking out the window, I noticed the leaves were truly changing now and it made me wistful. (All the other trees in town change their leaves long before my silver maple does.) But it also made me excited for spring to come again. And for the leaves to return.

I will only say, briefly — because I do not like to dwell — but when “the man” was still alive and we would lie on my bed in the dark. Well. It was the height of summer and so all the windows and the blinds were open. And the tree shielded us from everything. It was just beautiful. We could do whatever we wanted and it wasn’t as if anyone could see in. The tree is just massive. All those leaves made everything so private. That summer was just so lovely.

One night, in particular, will stay with me forever — and I try not to cry when I think about it, yet I do think about it because it was so monumental to me. It was like one of those moments in time that you feel  as if it’s all you will ever really need — you know? You can die after you have that moment. But of course, you don’t die. Life goes on, which is why you remember it and try not to cry.  But we were lying across my bed, naked, staring out the window at the night. He was lying on top of me, we weren’t doing anything, just sort of lying there, looking out. The night was so still & beautiful & quiet. The streetlight was coming in the through the leaves on the tree. It was dark in my room. We were listening to the live version of “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers — the best summer song they ever did, ever. And suddenly here comes the freight train. Just barreling through.

It was the most amazing moment. I begged him at that moment to never, ever leave me. And I meant it with all my heart, even though we already knew he was going to die. (Plus, he was married, for god’s sake. Happily married. If he weren’t dying, he wouldn’t have even been there to begin with.)

However. It was too poignant for words. And he did die. At home with his wife — in their bed, whatever that looked like. And a whole other summer came and went since then.

But my tree — you know, it shares my memories. It truly does.

And for some reason, I’ve stopped wearing my summer PJs, and instead of moving on to my winter PJs, I’ve gone in the other direction and started wearing a little black chemise to bed. I’m not sure what’s come over me. It means I have to crank up the heat! Because it really is getting cold at night out there — down into the 30s and even into the 20s Fahrenheit.  A chemise is not the thing to be wearing right now. Apparently, on some level, I still cannot let the summer go.

So, sitting there early this morning, on the side of the bed, with my cup of coffee, looking out the window and wearing a little black chemise… I did indeed see that the leaves were truly changing and that winter is going to be right around the corner here, any day. And I’m gonna have to get into those winter PJs or my heating bill will be a fortune!

I’m hoping my birth mom will come back in early December and help me decorate the house for Christmas. Last year was supposed to be my first “happy Christmas” in my new house, but I was grieving. This year, should be lots better.

Okay!! Gotta go. Phone will be ringing here soon. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Tuesday wherever you are in the world. I leave you with the obvious, even though I haven’t played it in a while. (This is the best version of the song, ever. And now has more memories than my heart can contain.) I love you guys. See ya!

“Mary Jane’s Last Dance”

She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin’ mama who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights

Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
She said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on
Keep movin’ on”

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwin’ up, tired of going down
Tired of myself, tired of this town

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes
Honey, put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song
Take me as I come ’cause I can’t stay long

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

There’s pigeons down on Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear
Lookin’ down from a hotel room
Nightfall will be comin’ soon

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes.
You got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit my last number and walked to the road

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

c – 1993 Tom Petty

“best friends, collaborators, and business partners”

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This morning, I was thinking about the concept of “best friend.”

I was thinking of it because Keanu Reeves has a “best friend” — the coolest woman, ever.  She’s an artist. I can’t remember her name now, but she’s absolutely totally interesting. There is an amazingly powerful PR campaign out there in the world, strongly discouraging us from thinking that the two are dating. Instead, they are “best friends, collaborators, and business partners.” (They were all over Instagram yesterday, too, because of that art museum gala fashion fundraiser thing in Los Angeles on Saturday.)

And they always look indescribably happy when they are out & about together, which seems to be all the time. And they are always holding hands and stuff.

They do look extremely happy and they are just intensely interesting looking people. And I was thinking this morning how it is infinitely more appealing to be best friends, collaborators and business partners with someone, than to be “dating.”

(I hate dating. I am not a “dater.” I am not someone who has ever gone out on “dates.” If I’m out to dinner with you, you’re either my best friend, collaborator and/or business partner, or we’re planning on having sex after we eat, or you’ve called me on the phone and I got the distinct impression we were going to move in together and get married, so I agreed to meet you for dinner first.) (That is my way of explaining that when Wayne and I were introduced by mutual friends at a Christmas party in Brooklyn Heights in 1991, I had the distinct impression he and I were going to get married. I came to this impression not because I felt like he and I would fall in love, but because of the fact that, in those first few moments that we were speaking to each other, he mentioned Emmylou Harris and Patti Smith in the same sentence — two of the most profound female influences on my life as a songwriter to that point (and he didn’t know that yet). So when he took down my phone number, and then called me extremely late one night and asked me out on a date, non-dater that I was, I still said okay. By summer, we were living together; by the following spring, we were married.) (Perhaps you can see why I avoid dating; the commitment is just huge.)

Anyway, I digress!! I was lying in bed in the dark this morning, thinking about the concept of “best friend,” and then it occurred to me that I had missed the 20th anniversary of the death of my best friend in the world, Paul — back on October 22nd.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. I never, ever forget his birthday, which means more to me than the day he died. But back on October 22nd, a couple of weeks ago, I kept wondering why the date meant something to me; why was it sticking out in my mind all day? October 20th was Tom Petty’s birthday.  October 23rd was the anniversary of Bunny’s death (one of my sweet cats). But why would October 22nd mean anything?

But this morning in the dark, I finally remembered.  And it was hard to believe that it had really been 20 years.  The day he died was a gorgeous fall day in Manhattan. I had been working all day in my business partner’s apartment — she lived 20 blocks from me, a straight shot down Riverside Drive, so I always walked to her apartment and back. And that day was so beautiful that, after work, I decided to walk home through Riverside Park, along the Hudson River.

At one point, I stopped and just looked out at the river and I couldn’t believe how much profound joy I felt, a sense of peace I had never felt before. Life seemed unspeakably beautiful; New York City  itself filled me with so much joy, especially on that gorgeous October day.

And then, a couple of hours later, Paul’s mom called me from the nursing  home and told me that Paul had died.

I know the news pierced me and I cried, but mostly I recalled the feeling I’d had walking along the river in Riverside Park, and I knew then that had been Paul saying goodbye to me. He always loved visiting me in NYC; equally in my days of poverty and in my days of success.

So when I think of Paul’s actual death, I think of that gorgeous day and that profound sense of peace and joy. However, the 7 years it took him to die (from AIDS), were a whole other story. I nearly lost my mind with grief over what he was going through and what was going to lie ahead for me — the rest of my life without a best friend. I drank and smoked really heavily that whole time, hardly ate,  lost a ton of weight. Stopped the songwriting totally, abruptly broke up the band. Went into my room and started writing intense erotic fiction.

By the time he died, he and I had already worked it through as best we could: he was leaving and I was going to be left behind and I was going to survive somehow.

I did, of course. And even though Peitor comes close to being that type of best friend for me over the course of all these years, it is not the same. Peitor and I met as adults in NYC; we were both already in the music business, dealing with the stress of daily “life in NYC” in a huge way. Whereas Paul and I had met at 17, in high school in Ohio — doing high school plays (he designed and built all the sets and then went on to do that as a career in professional theater and in the movies); all of our dreams were still ahead of us. Everything was brand new. That part of life doesn’t come again. (Not that it should — a lot of what was brand new at age 17 truly sucked.)

This morning, while it struck me as sort of profound that I had missed the 20th anniversary of my best friend’s death, it nevertheless seemed extremely cool to me that Keanu has such an interesting “best friend, collaborator and business partner.” If you have to be famous and wear labels, those labels are so much more life-affirming than the label of “dating.” True best friends are more valuable than anything else in the whole world.

Okay. So here we are. Monday. I seriously need to tackle this ending of Tell My Bones. A lot of intense plot points have to entwine, explode and yet, ultimately, be joyful. So I’m gonna get back at it. (And likely eat a lot of dark chocolate — I do that when the mind gets too intense even for coffee!)

I hope you have a really wonderful day out there, wherever you are in the world. And if your best friend is still here with you in the physical, well, I don’t know — just enjoy the heck out of yourselves!

I’m still in Art Garfunkel’s Angel Clare mode around here. I leave you with another truly lovely song, but it’s one that used to just break my heart when I was a young girl. I identified with it way too much. But it is still beautiful. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

“Mary Was An Only Child”

Mary was an only child,
Nobody held her, nobody smiled.
She was born in a trailer, wretched and poor,
And she shone like a gem in a five and dime store.

Mary had no friends at all,
Just famous faces pinned to the wall.
All of them watched her, none of them saw
That she shone like a gem in a five and dime store.

And if you watch the stars at night,
And find them shining equally bright,
You might have seen Jesus and not have known what you saw.
Who would notice a gem in a five and dime store?

c – 1973 Albert Hammond, Mike Hazlewood

A Most Perfect Morning!

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Man, it felt great.

As always, I awoke several times during the night, but this time I kept waking up, knowing there was something I was excited about, and then I’d remember: Oh yeah! I get an extra hour in the dark!!

It just felt so wonderful — like it was an hour that belonged to me and to no one else in the world. And my bed was so snuggly. And it’s not as if I did a single other thing differently this morning then I ever do: I got out of bed at 5am, fed the cats, ate my breakfast while listening to music. Then watched as Huckleberry promptly threw up her entire breakfast all over the kitchen floor…

Huckleberry sitting outside my bedroom door, earlier in the summer. She throws up a lot. But when a cat is as sweet as she is, you just deal with it…

So my morning is pretty much just like any other morning,  but that extra hour we got still felt like it belonged just to me.

And now I’m at my desk and life resumes!!

Before I forget, a friend of mine, Roger Gaess, a long-time  journalist and photographer who lives in Brussels, Belgium now, just wrote a new book. Whatever Comes My Way: Travels in the Netherlands. It’s on his own imprint — Aurora Editions. It’s about, oddly enough, his travels in the Netherlands.

Roger Gaess, Whatever Comes My Way: Travels in the Netherlands

I have not had time to read past the preface yet, but part of his opening paragraph, where he explains why he left New York, I couldn’t have agreed with more:

Gentrification had hit New York like a cancer, eating relentlessly away at its diversity and culture, leaving large parts of the city habitable for only the moneyed and dull…

Roger and I were colleagues back in New York, and like so many of us from those days, we wound up leaving it after the true backlash of 9/11 sank in — meaning the rapidly downward-spiraling economy there, and then the only thing people felt safe in investing in anymore after the devastation of 9/11 was real estate and so the cost of everything in NYC just skyrocketed and everything that had any character was torn down to make room for Disney-esque type monoliths, making New York safe for stupefyingly wealthy families everywhere.

Anyway, Roger got married and moved to Europe. I got divorced and moved to Easton, Pennsylvania and rented some rooms in an old Victorian house on the Delaware River (where I wrote Freak Parade and three other novels, some memoirs and probably about 20 short stories, before moving back to Ohio because my adoptive mother got very sick, and for some ill-informed reason I thought she needed me but I was terrifically misinformed about that and then my whole entire life unraveled into a great big bunch of awful Hell that I am only now recovering from…) But Roger and I have kept in touch! For one thing, he travels constantly and even dropped in to visit me a few times, even once at the house I had before this one. However, Roger is primarily a photo-journalist and travels into war zones and equally threatening, non touristy places, so his travels in the Netherlands is not a basic “tourist guide.” I am very eager to read it.

My Inner Being journaling this morning was very interesting. I’ll quote it in part in case it also resonates for any of you. (And yes, my Inner Being uses italics a lot! Just like me!):

“Allow for freedom. Allow choices. You are entitled to choices. You are not a prisoner of a rigid reality. It flows. Allow BEING-NESS to answer your call, you request, your perceived need. Allow the energy of BEING-NESS to be there for you. Do not pinpoint how, where, or why. Simply request and allow it to flow. It will flow regardless. Allowing it to flow unhindered brings rapidly to you experiences you prefer. There is nothing to fear in simple allowing.”

I just thought that was so cool.

Okay! I leave you with this wonderful old gem I was listening to this morning. If you’re too young to know this album, it was a monster hit for Art Garfunkel back in the mid-1970s: Angel Clare. The production on this album was just exquisite. I was always more of a Paul Simon kind of gal, because  big bunches of words and constant anxiety are usually more my thing. However, Art Garfunkel does indeed have a really lush voice. (They were Simon & Garfunkel, in case you’re too young to even know that!)

(For a very brief time, when I was a singer-songwriter in NYC, I was managed by Art Garfunkel’s manager– through a VP at Columbia Records, who was trying very hard to get me signed at that label. But the manager would often say to me that I was “not Art Garfunkel” — meaning that I was indescribably unknown and therefore not entitled to anything!!)

Okay, anyway! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning, “Traveling Boy.” If you’ve never heard it, listen to it!! It is so beautiful. The whole album is like this.

All righty! Thanks for visiting, gang. Enjoy your beautiful Sunday, wherever you are in the world. I love you guys! See ya!

“Traveling Boy”

Wake up, my love, beneath the midday sun, alone, once more alone.
This traveling boy was only passing through, but he will always think of you.

One night of love beside a strange young smile, as warm as I have known.
A traveling boy and only passing through, but one who’ll always think of you.

Take my place out on the road again, I must do what I must do.
Yes, I know we were lovers but a drifter discovers…

A traveling boy and only passing through, but one who’ll always think of you.

Take my place out on the road again, I must do what I must do.
Yes, I know we were lovers but a drifter discovers
That a perfect love won’t always last forever.

I won’t say that I’ll be back again because time alone will tell,
so no goodbyes for one just passing through, but one who’ll always think of you.

No goodbyes…

c- 1973 Paul Williams, Roger Nichols

Everything is just so much better!

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I’m feeling lots better today. I’m not 100% yet, though. For some reason, any time I try to eat something, I feel like I’m going to throw it right back up. But then I don’t.

But I did get a lot of sleep, so that felt great.

I’ve also made incredible progress on the revisions of the play. Still have some really challenging segments left— but I am almost at the end of the play, and the stuff that I’ve done over the last couple days, I’m just really, really happy with. So it is almost done.

Speaking of the play and, therefore of Helen… I listened to Wanda’s radio interview that announced Helen’s 100th birthday celebration at the church in Mayfield— she talked a bit about the play and the DJ said that Kevin Connell has written it — which I found amusing because I think people still just naturally assume that when they see a man’s name, then the man did everything. And the DJ doesn’t seem to have seen my name at all. (Kevin is the director. We are both mentioned on the splash page of the website.)

In the old days, that would have made me nuts, but nowadays, it matters more to me that the play at least gets mentioned — and they got the name of the play correct! (Wanda got my name wrong — she’s known me 7 years already and still thinks my name is Mary Jane. You’d be surprised just how many people think my name is Mary Jane.)

Anyway. Helen had her birthday celebration today. I couldn’t attend — it’s a 12 hour drive from here. But we did send flowers. I hope it was an incredible time for everybody involved.

For no reason whatsoever, here’s a photo Peitor sent me of himself and his husband, Graham, playing Clue at their dining room table in West Hollywood on Halloween!! I wish I could have been there!! It’s been almost a year since I was with Peitor in LA.

Peitor is on our right and Graham, on the left!

I love playing Clue, by the way. It’s actually the only board game I like.  I’m not a big game player. (I guess you could take that a few ways! And they’d all be true…)

Okay, as much as I love summer and all that, tomorrow is my favorite day of the year — when we set our clocks back and get an extra hour of darkness in the morning!! I get up so early as it is that it’s kind of awesome to have yet another hour of darkness to lay in bed and drink coffee!!! And contemplate my Muse. Yay!!

Well I might be mistaken, but it did seem that by late yesterday, the free downloading of Ribbon of Darkness had ceased. I do appreciate that people wanted to read that. But still. And now it’s here on the site, so you can read it for free anyway.  I can’t believe it’s been 30 years since I met my real dad, and 20 years now since he died, at the age of 54. As difficult as all that stuff was back then, I’m glad I have that story to preserve my own memories, if nothing else.

All righty! I’m gonna study my Italian now. Enjoy what’s left of Saturday wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

Ciao!!!

My Morning Thus Far…

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If you can imagine this, I am just now getting out of bed. It’s almost 10am. Unheard of around here.

Obviously, I am not feeling well…

I’m hoping it’s just some bit of nothing that I can sleep off — especially if my cats (as pictured above) continue to bring me tea in bed! I should be right as rain in no time!

I’m going to say one more thing about yesterday, and then I’m going to drop it. Because there are too many ways to look at things nowadays and I don’t want to just be some bitch. But that thing yesterday with some gaming guy putting Ribbon of Darkness into a torrent. It’s one thing to want to share something you like with some friends, or whatever. But by yesterday afternoon, nearly 3000 people had downloaded Ribbon of Darkness (a copyrighted novella) for free.

It’s just irritating.

The fact that it got 4.8 out of 5 stars by 2700 people, of course, made it easier to digest…Still. It’s just a drop in the bucket of all these things I have to see happen on the Internet — all over the world — that I can’t do anything about.

On a very different note:

Yesterday, Wanda Stubblefield, out in Mayfield, Kentucky, did a radio interview regarding Helen LaFrance’s 100th birthday, which is tomorrow.  If you’re interested, you can listen to her interview online here. (Even though Helen is in a nursing home, Wanda is her caretaker and connection to the outside world. She’s a wonderful human being and also has a part in the PLAY, which I must try to work on here.)

Okay, I’m gonna scoot. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

Re-Evaluating, Re-Defining, and Life Goes On

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You know, it’s one thing when people illegally print & offer my books for sale and then pocket whatever profits they might make. But when they offer my stuff for free — meaning no one makes or spends any money at all, just: HERE, download it! It’s free!

It just blows my mind. Like, this concept that I might want to earn a living just eludes everyone? Or, since it has sex in it, I didn’t spend a long time sitting at my desk, writing it? Trying to make it the best story I could?

And people who do this are impossible to trace. So I don’t even try. And then I’m reduced to feeling like, well, it’s an old story and it’s nice that people still want to read it; guess I just have to write something new…

The Internet can be so frustrating. You know, they steal my entire website and mirror it somewhere in India — beam it out to the whole freaking world. And they upload all my stuff & make it available all over the place, too (if you’re diligent, you can find it, with or without a price tag). And yet the Internet is also amazing; it is my friend!! It brings the world to me!!

What I do try to do is at least keep up with it, you know? So now, as much as I would rather not do it, my erotic BDSM novella Ribbon of Darkness, from 2006, is now posted (for free) up there at the From the Vault link.

Ribbon of Darkness is a partially fictionalized account of what my life was like back when I first met my birth father, in 1989. I wrote it specifically for (the now deceased) Michael Hemmingson, who published it in 2006.

It is graphic, eroticized BDSM sex, with scenes of questionable consent, and will not be suitable for most readers. However, if it’s suitable for you, please read it here and don’t patronize the thieves!!!

AAAArrrrgggghh!!!!!  grumble grumble grumble

You can read it here. Thanks, gang.

Saying Goodbye to October

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Well, not a whole lot has happened since I blogged here last night, so I will be brief here. (By the way, that photo of the barn up above is just off the main road here, where the farms begin. All summer long, it is hidden behind tons of leaves. In fall, it begins to re-emerge.)

Mostly, I wanted to post a photo of the last of my impatiens. The ones on the kitchen porch bloomed themselves out several weeks ago, but the ones on my front step are still in their glory. However, over the next several nights, the temperatures will dip into the 20s Fahrenheit, so the impatiens will be gone.

The last days of the impatiens on the front step.

And since I was out there photographing the flowers (in the rain), I thought you might like to see what my sidewalk looks like — a tad bit leaf-strewn! And this is only about 10% of the maple leaves. Most of them are still on the (enormous) tree!

Leaves covering my front sidewalk.

You can see here just how close the front walk is to the windows in my family room.  So when people walk by in summer and the windows are wide open, it really does feel like they are inside my house! (This is why previous owners of the house never opened the front door, and why it is now sealed shut with decades of paint. I, however, would like to get that front door opened, also maybe even put in a screen door for summer because I don’t really mind having occasional people, and various dogs on leashes, suddenly walking through my family room. We’ll see!)

I’m in my second autumn here in the house in Crazeysburg, so I’m guessing that my neighbors know now that I won’t be raking any of these many leaves. I sort of just rely on Nature to disperse them (into everyone else’s yards, I guess). And then I rake up what little is left in the Spring! (In my own yard!)

That’s just how we roll around here — since I must always be at my desk and I can’t bring my desk outside with me while I rake, God knows…

Okay! This is feeling like a really good morning over here, so I hope you have a terrific day, wherever you are in the world!! I’m gonna get back to work on the play now.  I leave you with a photo from Halloween last year — early morning.  (This is the side of my house, outside my kitchen porch.) All righty. Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya.

Last Halloween morning on Basin Street — it wasn’t raining!!

A Most Productive Day

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I am almost finished with the revisions to Tell My Bones. Unfortunately, the part I have left is the really hard part! But still, I’m really happy with how it’s gone.

I was thinking about those old stuffed animals on my bed from my post yesterday (by the way, I realized that I had 21 bedrooms in my lifetime, not 19. And then 22 if you count my dorm room at college, although i don’t really count that because I shared it with 3 other girls.)

Anyway, I was thinking about the stuffed animals and wondering how many of my original stuffed toys I might have left. I knew that, in the closet in my guest room, I have quite a few stuffed animals that were all bought when I was an adult. When I went to check, I found my old Raggedy Ann doll from when I was 7 years old. She’s the only one left that’s genuinely from my childhood. I keep her wrapped up because, as you can see below, her legs are badly deteriorating.

But she meant so much to me. My parents bought her for me as a gift and when I unwrapped her, I was so excited. Her face is all blurry like that because I cried on her so many times — whenever my heart was broken or I was lonely or being punished for God knows what. I cried all over her and hugged her to pieces. I remember that I took her to sleep-away camp with me, too. She was quite a comfort to me for a really long time.

I also took a photo up under her dress so that you can see her “heart” that says “I Love You.” Gosh, I really loved this doll. (She’ll be 52 years old at Christmas…)

Raggedy Ann from when I was 7 years old.
Raggedy Ann’s heart

Okay! I’m done working for tonight. I’m gonna do yoga and then call it a (good) day. I leave you with what I’m listening to right this red-hot minute! I think he’s in his early 30s here. It’s a great version of this song, too, even though it’s from television.

All righty. Thanks for visiting, gang. Enjoy your evening. I love you, guys. See ya!!

The world of author Marilyn Jaye Lewis