Yesterday was sort of a good day, by the end of it.
The Ab Ab Pro phone call was frustrating, just because there is such an enormous amount of work to do. And both of us are more than a little frustrated with the entire world still moving at a snail’s pace because of COVID. And everything always needing more and more money to move to the next step. (I was not looking forward to telling Peitor the financial details of what the accountant had told me, but obviously, I had to.)
So far, in the 35+ years that Peitor and I have known each other, we don’t argue. Which doesn’t mean that most of the time we see eye to eye on things, because we absolutely do not. But we don’t argue about it.
But yesterday we were at this sort of point — after 2 hours of going over the financial figures for various parts of our production company — where we were talking to each other in this really measured, careful way — each word under a microscope — like we were in marriage counseling or something and trying not to explode at each other. It was sort of bizarre and definitely exhausting, emotionally. For both of us.
When we finally hung up, I really wasn’t able to get too much done on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town, because I was so drained. I’m hoping, though, that today will be really creative for me regarding Thug.
But then, last evening, Kevin, the director of my play Tell My Bones, called with some incredible news regarding another potential zoom broadcast of a staged reading of the play — and this one is really, really exciting, gang.
I can’t go into the details on the blog yet, but, man — it was really great news. And I could start to feel again what life had felt like before the virus hit the world and brought every single one of my projects to a crashing halt.
So, that is making me happy. And I have two days ahead of me, free and clear, to work on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town. So, I’m feeling like maybe I can take some time now, block out the stuff that sort of stresses me out, and just focus on the manuscript that’s in front of me and just feel really happy about it.
Plus, that little cat that I call Henrietta — actually I just call her “little sweetheart” — stopped by to visit us around 6am, so I hung out on my kitchen porch with her for a few minutes. She makes me so happy because, unlike any of my 7 feral cats, she lets me cuddle her!! She hasn’t come around in a couple weeks, so it was such a nice surprise to see her cute little face suddenly pop up at the kitchen window. (Now, if only a little alpaca would come visit!!)
Okay, well, I hope you have a similar day ahead of you — stress-free and really creative! And maybe even an unexpected visit on your kitchen porch from one of God’s delightful little creatures. I have nothing to leave you with today because last night and this morning, I was still listening to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” endlessly on repeat (see yesterday’s post for that link). Well, actually I did also listen to Blixa Bargeld singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (1995), because William at the a1000mistakes blog over in Australia sent me a link to it during the night. So I’ll leave you with that! Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a great Saturday. I love you guys. See ya.
Another dream coming true here in Crazeysburg, gang!
Wow, last evening was just the most amazing summer evening in a small town. Okay, I realize that, technically, it’s not going to be summer for about another week. But still. It’s June. It glorious weather. It’s summer.
The weather was so perfect last evening, that everyone was out and about — either riding bikes or riding motorcycles, or sitting out on their lawn chairs around the fire pit, and/or playing music, etc. Up until about 9:30 at night, when the sun finally disappeared from the sky.
On evenings like that, a lot of the neighbors are usually smoking weed, too, and the smell of it wafts into all my open windows from all directions, but now that lockdown for most public places ended this past Wednesday, I guess the weed-smokers were out at the lake…
Local Crazeysburg pot-smokers at the lake…
I know that you’re probably thinking, from the way I get so upset here on my blog about the state of America in general, that I must be in the thick of it — but none of those things are actually going on in Muskingum, County. Like most of rural America, the virus put in a negligible appearance here; social distancing is practiced, but masks are not worn out here, etc. And the riots/protests didn’t happen out here, either — and, practicalist that I am, I’m guessing it’s because way too many people in rural America, including Muskingum County, own plenty of guns and aren’t at all squeamish about using them.
But that’s just a wild thought off the top of my cynical head…
It’s funny how people in rural areas tend to know the Constitution, though, especially that part where it was determined that the 2nd Amendment gave individuals the right to bear arms to protect themselves (and their property)…
Well, even so. And even while the tiny village I live in is remote, I do still get upset about the shape of the rest of the country because I’m not able to separate myself from the rest of the country, or even the world, really, for that matter.
But that said — last night was just like some sort of dream. It really was. I felt just so grateful that some higher power found this house for me in the middle of beautiful Nowhere, Ohio. (Even if it means I have to breakdown and buy a male AI sex robot in order to have someone to enjoy it all with!!)
Okay.
Well, my dad has indeed decided to move! At age 90. Not to Florida, thankfully, but at least to a less restrictive senior retirement type place. He’s currently in Independent Living, on a nursing home compound, which will remain under lockdown probably until January, and he’s losing his mind. He’s in very good health — except for that recent stress-related thing a few days ago, which was also related to the lockdown. He’s only at a nursing home place because my stepmom needed to be there, but she has since passed away. So he’s moving to where things are no longer in lockdown. And now he has to seriously down-size his possessions. In 2 months…
This means that all those art work thingies of his that I have absolutely no room for but really, really want, are soon going to be mine. So that will be interesting, gang. I am so serious when I say that I have absolutely no room for any of it!! But I’m not going to let it get given away.
So, yesterday, I got great work done on Letter #8 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I am really happy about that. I’ll probably be working on that exclusively today.
And then, during the night, William, over at a1000mistakes blog in Australia — who is always making lists related to music, bands, books about bands, live concerts — posted his Top 100 favorite Nick Cave songs.
I was astounded by this! Not just the fact that he took the time to do that, but that he was able to categorize all those great songs into some sort of preferred order.
I cannot even imagine being able to do that. I’m only able to pick, like, my top five if I’m forced to do it. To think about it, I mean. And even then it gets hard to put even 5 great songs into some sort of preferential order. So, to me, his list was just fascinating.
Plus, growing up in Australia, he has had ready access to lots more Boys Next Door records and Birthday Party records, too. I have very little of that stuff and have had to sort of poke around on YouTube to even find it. So that was cool, too! You can check it out at this link if you’re so inclined.
Okay. I guess I’m going to get started around here! When you next hear from me, I should have a brand new barn door!! Finally!! I hope your Saturday is just as magical, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting, gang.
I’ve been in a Bee Gees mood around here lately — the love songs this time, and not the heartbreaking songs, for which they are so renown! So I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning: “Too Much Heaven.” It was off their Spirits Having Flown album from 1979, which has a couple other mega-platinum hits on it, as well. So, listen and rejoice. And enjoy your beautiful day. I love you guys. See ya!
“Too Much Heaven”
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb
Oh you and me girl
Got a lot of love in store
And it flows through you
And it flows through me
And I love you so much more
Than my life.
I can see beyond forever
Everything we are will never die
Loving’s such a beautiful thing
Oh you make my world… a summer day
Are you just a dream to fade away
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb
You and me girl got a highway to the sky
We can turn away from the night and day
And the tears we had to cry
You’re my life…
I can see a new tomorrow
Everything we are will never die
Loving’s such a beautiful thing
When you are to me, the light above
Made for all to see our precious love
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb
Love is such a beautiful thing
You make my world a summer day
Are you just a dream to fade away
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as wide as a river and harder to cross
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
It’s much harder to come by
I’m waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
It’s as high as a mountain
And harder to climb
Assuming, of course, that you’re not living somewhere that’s paralyzed by both the virus lockdown and now the riots.
What a mess.
Here, it is another cool and gorgeous day. However, by “cool” I mean that tonight it’s supposed to go way down to 42 degrees Fahrenheit — not enough to kill my flowers, but still pretty cold. So we’ll see how they manage.
Currently, if you’re into space travel stuff, the historic NASA SpaceX launch and DRAGON hookup is streaming live. You can watch ithere.
And aside from all the riots right now reminding me of Cleveland, all this NASA stuff reminds me of my childhood in Cleveland, too. We always watched all those Apollo launches on TV, and if the launches took place during a school day, we dropped everything and watched it on a TV in the classroom. Black & white, of course. (Back then, all of our classrooms had television sets, but it was primarily to watch PBS educational broadcasting. I’m guessing they don’t do that anymore…)
This is how our classrooms actually looked in Cleveland in the late 1960s. And notice the Girl Scout over on the right!! I’d forgotten that we always had to wear out Girl Scout uniforms on days when our troop had its meetings after school. Ah well. Yesteryear.
Oh! And in case you’re interested! Here is my actual Girl Scout sash from those long ago days. Considering I will be 60 in about 6 weeks, and that I was a Girl Scout when I was 9… this sash is pretty old. (And I sewed on each of those little merit badges myself.)
My Girl Scout sash, from Troop 1334. Circa 1969
Okay! So.
Yesterday, Peitor and I got some great work done on Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff. It really felt like we were back on schedule now. And like the lockdown stuff was really coming to an end. We shall see.
(Of course, now the riots in LA are sort of screwing all that up — mandatory curfews there again, etc.)
Here, in Muskingum County, the lockdown is essentially over. We have had a grand total of 40 cases of the virus so far, with no deaths (about 86,000 people live in Muskingum County) .
To give you an idea of how unlike most of Ohio this is, where my dad lives, they still get dozens of new confirmed cases every day, and have over 1000 people with the virus right now — just in his county alone (about 383,000 people live in his county — huge difference).
However, here in Crazeysburg — which, more & more, feels to me like some sort of dreamland — the gasoline prices are on the rise again ($2.09 a gallon), no one has to wear masks anywhere (in the town), and you no longer have to stay 6 feet apart from anyone if you don’t want to. And the local factory is back in business, but at 50% staff.
I still have to leave the county once a week to get my groceries — and even though I’ve had the virus already, I still wear a mask when I go into the next county, because I’m hugely paranoid about catching it again. But other than that, it at least feels completely normal around Crazeysburg now.
Well, all righty. I still have some book editing to do for Peitor — I’m halfway done with that. And then I want to spend the rest of the day working on that new segment for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I’m gonna close this and get going.
Have a happy Sunday, wherever you are in the world. I forgot to mention a while back that the new Einstürzende Neubauten album did indeed come out (Alles In Allem). Over on the a1000mistakes blog out of Australia, he mentioned a song off the album today called “Wedding,” which I also like, so I’m leaving you with that today!
The song is in German. I have no idea what it’s about, except that I’m guessing a wedding factors into it somehow. (But with Einstürzende Neubauten, you don’t really know that for sure. You’d simply have to understand German to really know.) I just like how it sounds. I like the whole album, too. So listen and enjoy! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!
Remember yesterday? Remember how I almost died there in my kitchen, trying to breathe while my lungs exploded after I used the steroid-based allergy spray for the first time in a month?
It took awhile for the feeling to level off, but it does seem like the steroids actually helped. By the end of yesterday, I was breathing normally for the first time in a month. And so far today, I’m still breathing normally.
So I used the allergy spray again this morning, since I need it for my allergies…
I hate to speak too soon, because every time I post here that it seems like I’m nearly 100% fine — finally — I then get breathing issues again. However, I actually am feeling just about 100% totally fine. So we’ll just see.
Well, my dad is leaving the house today for the first time in 6 weeks because he has a doctor’s appointment. When he told me about this yesterday, I was totally speaking to him like he was a two-year-old: Wear your mask, don’t touch anything, don’t speak to anybody, wash your hands! I was so not happy that he was planning on leaving the assisted living “compound,” you know? He’s almost 90 and he’s made it for 6 weeks without getting the virus. And he lives in a county that has a high rate of not only the virus, but also deaths from the virus.
But off he goes to the doctor today, so we’ll just see about that, too.
All things considered, yesterday was a really good day around here. I discovered that the very old tree in my backyard is a dogwood tree! I noticed yesterday that it was in bloom, so I went out to look at its blossoms and, lo & behold — it’s a dogwood. All the other dogwoods in town have lost their blossoms already and are green now.
I love dogwoods so much that I was even thinking recently that I should plant a dogwood tree in my backyard. And in keeping with the absolute magical nature of this crazy town — voila! — I suddenly discover that I have one!
The tree is ancient. Last spring, I did notice that it had some sort of white blossoms on it but I never took the time to really investigate them. However, since this spring I am just indescribably here, 24/7, and always looking out the kitchen window at my backyard, I took the time to really look at it. Plus, this spring, it seems to have way more blossoms than it had last year. So, what a great discovery.
My dogwood, yesterday afternoon
Also, yesterday, the a1000mistakes blog out of Australia posted that Einstürzende Neubauten has a new album coming out on May 15th, Alles in Allem, and that they dropped an official video for a new song, “Ten Grand Goldie,” featuring Blixa Bargeld singing in a lovely surgical mask.
I watched that video many times yesterday — some of the lyrics are in English, but most of them are in German, so I have no idea what the song is about, but I still really liked watching it. (And it could very well be that even if I understood German, I still wouldn’t know what the song is about, because I don’t really understand what most Einstürzende Neubauten songs are about. ) Anyway. It’s posted below.
I also watched a video for The Birthday Party’s song from 1983, “Fears of Gun” numerous times. Whoever put together the images for the video, I liked it a lot. It’s an intense song and I don’t think I ever really understood that song, either, even though it’s in English. It has something to do with not being super happy about love, though — and so on and so on…
I also streamed the movie The Vicious Circle, a British crime-thriller from 1957, starring John Mills (father of the indescribably adorable, Hayley). It was really good. I loved the cinematography — great black & white footage of London in the late 1950s. Plus, I never did figure out who the murderer was until the final 3 minutes of the film, so that was cool.
And I also did some thinking yesterday about how I’m feeling about my writing, even though I didn’t actually do any writing yet. When I spoke to the director of Tell My Bones on Wednesday, he mentioned again how “risky” the scene/song is that’s all about lynchings and slave auctions. And he kept saying that he loved it, and was standing by it, but that it was so risky. So I thought about that a lot yesterday, too — you know, like, why does he keep saying that it’s risky? Am I really setting myself up here? To me, it just feels powerful and completely unexpected. Which, to me, is art, you know? It won’t be included in the staged reading, because none of the actual musical numbers will be included. But I know that it will at least be “alluded” to and I’m really curious to see how they’re going to do that.
Also, yesterday night, Dana Petty uploaded a photo she took of Tom Petty and their dog, Ryder, on a deserted Malibu beach at sunset. (If you didn’t see yesterday’s post, their dog, Ryder, died the other night.) Wow, what a stunning photo. It was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes. I know there must be a way to copy photos from Instagram, because I see Instagram photos on Pinterest a lot, but I do not know how to do it. So you’ll either have to follow Dana Petty on Instagram, or simply take my word for it that it was a really touching photo, even though it’s mostly a photo of Tom Petty from behind, as the dog is running toward him, along the beach. (It did have the feeling like the two of them were already in heaven…)
Okay, well. Today is May 1st ! Which was Elvis & Priscilla’s wedding day. And also my own wedding day — back in 1993. I have no idea where the time went, so don’t even ask me!! But May 1st, nonetheless, is one of my favorite days of the year.
I believe in spring weddings — I really do. I’m totally into the whole “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time” idea. Both my weddings were in the spring. (And I actually left both marriages in the spring, although I didn’t plan it to be like that.) If I ever get married again, I think I’d like to choose a spring day that doesn’t actually exist — you know, make something up: like, Tuenesday May 34th. Something like that. And perhaps then the marriage will only exist in theory and thus be a spectacular success. We’ll see!!
Okay. I’ve just been notified on Instagram that Bad Seeds TeeVee has just had some new videos uploaded to it, so I will no doubt watch that again today! I am actually going to try to do some writing today, too. I am feeling that good, finally.
So I’m gonna get this day underway here. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a perfect Friday, all things considered, wherever you are in the world.
I leave you with all my listening music from yesterday: “Dead Radio,” by Rowland S. Howard, from his amazing Teenage Snuff Film album (1999). The aforementioned “Fears of Gun,” by The Birthday Party, which I believe is from their Mutiny EP (1983) but I’m not positive about that (lyrics are in the video). And Einstürzende Neubauten’s brand new song, “Ten Grand Goldie,” from the upcoming Alles in Allem (some lyrics, in both German and English are in the video).
All righty! Enjoy. I love you guys See ya.
“Dead Radio”
You’re bad for me like cigarettes
But I haven’t sucked enough of you yet
Nothing is sacred and nothing is true
I’m no-one that’s nowhere when I’m here with you
I’ve lost the power I had to distinguish
Between what to ignite and what to extinguish
I blew in last night, I’m the ghost from the coast
When the lighting is bad I’m the man with the most
You left me to choke on a heart up in smoke
Smiling through your tears and your tetracycline overdose
You’re good for me like Coca-Cola
I don’t get any younger, you don’t get any older
Everything’s sacred and everything’s true
All of this is possible when I’m here with you
I’ve got a lot to say but I keep my own counsel
I’d like to spit it out but I won’t speak with my mouth full
I blew in last night, I’m the ghost from the coast
When the lighting is bad I’m the man with the most
You left me to choke on a heart up in smoke
Smiling through your tears and your tetracycline overdose
Marilyn's Room 