Okay, well. I have officially un-joined yet another extreme dating site. I had truly an endless number of men writing to me, even though my profile clearly stated that I was looking for a female and the only female who did write to me lived about 800 miles to the south of here and could not spell!!!
You know, if you don’t know how to spell, there is this thing called spellcheck. If you use it, I will never know if you can spell or not; I will just assume that you know how. I don’t ever give any sort of surprise spelling tests or anything. Once I assume that you can spell, then we’re usually good to go and your ability or inability to spell will likely never cross my mind.
But, man. This female simply could not spell and that was just the final straw. And the specific words that she couldn’t spell were just ludicrously simple. So I got fed up and I quit the site.
Oddly enough, I got invited to a sort of party last night. Just a sort of “come over and drink with me because my daughter has a sleepover at a friend’s house ” type thing.
I thought it was so cool that I was invited. Most people— pretty much everyone except my friend Kara — do not ever invite me anywhere, least of all into their homes. But the woman is way too pretty and her boyfriend was out of town. And mere moments before she asked me if I wanted to come over and drink with her because she had the house to herself, I was thinking that she was very sexy in an over-the-top kind of way and that it would probably be really fun to have sex with her. I was even going to ask her if there was any chance she might be bi. She does not seem like someone who can spell very well, but I’m thinking there’s probably never going to be a reason why she would ever need to write to me. And obviously she drinks and I don’t anymore. Plus she smokes and she eats meat. But I was still thinking, man, sheisfuckingsexy. And, honestly, I don’t usually find myself thinking that these days. Plus she was really nice. She just really appealed to me. However, as soon as she said that her boyfriend was out of town… oh well. Best to leave it alone.
But Jesus Christ, right? The entire universe seems to be wanting me to just mind my own business right now. So I will. I guess, put it all into my work instead.
Okay.
It is a gorgeous day here today. I am in this really good headspace. Sort of daydreamy. Not too intensely focused on any of my usual stuff, for a change. Nick Cave has a Conversation in San Francisco tonight, then one last one in LA and the US tour will be over. So fucking weird how fast that went. I can’t get over it.
Oh that reminds me, I came across this photo from forever ago that I just love!! Long time ago now, right? Jeez. (And let me just say here that boys like these never lived next door to me! If they had, I would never have moved all those many, many times!!!)
Ah, well.
This idea that life goes on is something I have yet to fully grasp. The older I get, the harder it gets to understand— where time goes. And how it manages to go there so quickly. Wherever it goes.
Okay, I’m gonna scoot now. Thanks for visiting. You know what? I know I did this just the other day, but I’m gonna leave you again with “Shivers” by the Boys Next Door. Okay!! I love you guys. Have a great Sunday. See ya!
That’s a photo of my front door from last fall, but it looks exactly the same this year, so I’ll be lazy and not photograph it again!
(This is the same front door that hasn’t been opened in about 40 years or more. I’m not exaggerating, either. I’m thinking that maybe next time my sister comes to visit, I’ll ask her to pry it open. It might be fun to have a front door that works. Right now, it’s just a haven for spiders.)
It is so like fall today here in Crazeysburg, gang. Rain. Wet, dead leaves all over the sidewalks and in the street. Temperatures in the low 40s Fahrenheit. In short, it’s kind of a beautiful morning.
Wow, well it looks like Nick Cave’s Conversation in Seattle was a really good one! Not only were there a number of photos uploaded to Instagram last night, but they uploaded the photos, like, moments after the show ended and all the comments were intense and sort of sublime. Only 2 more shows and the US part of the Conversations will be over. I just can’t believe how fast that went. It makes me more than a little sad.
All right, well. Yesterday was interesting. I did manage to join that other extreme dating site but had problems again with my profile loading correctly. I do think this is because the Universe, in general, wants me to stop going on these dating sites that yield, you know, basically nothing. So I’m not sure why I keep doing it, and I’m not sure why I never seem able to get my profile stuff to upload correctly.
But anyway, I clearly stated that I was looking to meet sub women and got an unending amount of emails from men, long into the night. Which, I guess, is actually kind of nice but I’m not looking for that. So I’m guessing I’ve wasted my time yet again, but whatever. We’ll just see.
It’s too bad so many people got murdered by meeting on Craigslist because I had the best luck with Craigslist, for years. Back then, I was primarily dating couples, and there were just tons of couples on Craigslist who always actually lived nearby. But then couples became complicated. And I don’t want to sound too disparaging about my own fair sex, but it was always the women-half of the couples that got complicated. It really was. They got needy, emotional, manipulative; no longer trusting what my motives were. My god, it was like walking on eggs all the time. You know, if I was looking to fall in love with a man and ride off into the sunset with him, I don’t think that dating married couples would be my chosen strategy. Unless, of course, I was seeking an indescribably complicated life.
Anyway. I digress.
So. Yesterday. I began writing about Thug Luckless!! (See yesterday’s post about the Wu Tang Clan name generator.) Oh my god, it was so much fun!! I’m writing under a pen name, because I’m just going to sell it as porn, but he is just a really, really fun character. He’s an AI sex robot in a post-Apocalyptic town, whose owner died so he’s now just this lone sex robot, walking the streets, programmed to fuck women sort of eternally because now he has no owner and so there is no one left who knows how to turn him off.
The town is called P-Town because all the indoor plumbing has failed and so anyone left in the town just pisses in the gutters out in the street. And the sun never shines there because an eternal thick smog hangs over everything. Your basic post-Apocalypse kind of thing.
But Thug is sort of a sad, thoughtful kind of loner sex bot — who smokes, but his cigarette is never lit because he doesn’t know how to do that part. Most of the men in the town died in the factory meltdown thingie that caused the Apocalypse, and so the forgotten women who are left in P-Town are just these grey, jaded, attention-starved women. They prefer actual men when they can get one, but they still go with Thug because he’s always out there, wandering the streets, programmed for sex and to always be agreeable to everything.
It’s really fun. Oh my gosh. And it’s just a vehicle for porn — it won’t hold up to the scrutiny of any sort of time-honored storytelling principles, or anything. So I can just sort of sail through it without having to think too much or craft the story arc or anything.
Even though my story is really trashy, my inspiration for it was Marjorie Prime. I really found that movie so captivating — the ideas underlying it, and then how, at the end, the AI robotic characters outlast their humans and so stay eternally young, just reminiscing amongst themselves in the empty house, with their programmed thoughts & programmed memories because there is no one left alive to turn them off. Their owners all died of old age.
Anyway, that was my impetus for Thug Luckless. And that’s what I spent most of yesterday writing about. (And, of course, that only magnifies the problem with me and dating sites — or dating, in general. The places my mind goes to, whether or not it’s pornographic — most of the rest of the nearby world sort of pales in comparison to that. It can get hard for me to maintain even simple conversations.)
Okay. I gotta get going here today. I have to work on the PLAY!!!! Gotta give Thug some time to cool down… Have a super Saturday wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with a sort of theme song for Thug Luckless, as he endlessly walks the streets of P-Town. Thanks for visiting, gang!! I love you guys. See ya.
I don’t know about you, but whenever I need a new pen name, I go to the Wu Tang Clan name generator. I love that fucking thing. Usually I find it sort of cosmically brilliant — the names it comes up with for me. They’re usually oddly spiritual and intense (just like me!!).
Today, though, it christened me Thug Luckless. It’s a funny name but I don’t think I can really write under the umbrella of that. I mean, I could, but what sort of stories does Thug Luckless tell? Probably stories that would sell millions of copies, especially if he’s an X-rated ghetto cat and it’s a graphic novel… Perhaps I’ll give Thug Luckless some deeper consideration.
Meanwhile, I’ll try my luck, spin the proverbial wheel again, and hopefully land on a pen name that’s a little easier for a gal like me to wear.
It’s another beautiful morning here in Crazeysburg! I once again slept great. Today, though, I forced myself to get out of bed at 5:30 a.m., and not revel in all that soft cozy snuggly-ness of the flannel sheets, letting another whole morning drift away… Okay, well, perhaps it wasn’t the whole morning that drifted away yesterday; it was an hour and a half. Perhaps I need to re-examine the extreme writing regimen I keep. I don’t know. I’ve been like this since 1994, so I’m guessing I’m probably just going to be like this. (Or maybe get even worse!)
This morning,in those 2 seconds before I forced myself to get out of bed, I was thinking about a new series of stories that I wanted to write. But I wanted to write them from the POV of one of those expensive sex robots — sort of like a “Marjorie Prime” thing, but with a sex robot that’s perhaps somehow AI, as well. (Hence, wanting a specific sort of pen name.) (Thug Luckless just doesn’t seem like a sex robot/AI kind of persona. Although, if I were to somehow acquire — through some indescribable blessing from Heaven — an expensive sex robot and his name was Thug Luckless — I don’t know. I might actually like him a whole big bunch. You know what? I think I really need to ponder Thug Luckless some more! Not be so hasty to cast him aside.) (You know, I was getting ready to join yet another extreme dating site, under the grand delusion that somehow I would find a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-weed-smoking, super kinky vegetarian, male or female, within 10 miles from me who only wanted to get together once every 3 weeks… I mean, if you focus only on the super kinky part, they are all over Muskingum County. There is kink everywhere. It’s the other stuff that’s so difficult to find. Anyway. Rather than go through all the trouble of once again setting up my complicated profile, I should just spend time writing about Thug Luckless instead.)
(You know, nothing makes me happier than sitting at my desk, writing weird shit. And I’m now feeling like I’m gonna have a really good time with Thug Luckless. But I also like to have actual dates that involve really weird shit sometimes, too. With, you know, people who aren’t young enough to be my children — that part of “weird shit” is not what I’m aiming for. I just sometimes feel like I’m destined to write my whole fucking life away at this point. Pun intended, I guess.)
But onward….
Almost nothing out of Nick Cave’s Conversation last night. At least, not yet. I think maybe 2 photos, in neither of which was he actually on the stage. Apparently, in British Columbia, they also follow rules. It’s kind of interesting to see in which areas of the world people tend to follow rules, and in which areas of the world people are generally mavericks with little to no regard for anyone else besides themselves. It’s just interesting. And you know, I don’t actually need Instagram to tell me that he showed up, everyone loved it, and he wore a suit…
I was thinking this morning how it would be so cool if he released a video of one of these Conversations. Although, I don’t know how he could do that without violating the privacy of the question-askers, unless they agreed to it beforehand (not agreed to be violated, just to be videotaped). I just love listening to Nick Cave talk. I love to listen to him sing, too, but I love to listen to him talk. There are about a bazillion interviews with him on YouTube that I watch over and over just because I love listening to him talk, even though I already know now what he’s going to say because I’ve watched them so many times. And the interviews range from the 1980s up until about 2016. So, you know — quite the Nick Cave panoply there on YouTube.
All righty. I actually have to get started here today. I have a scheduled phone chat with the director on Monday, so I want to have some considerable stuff mapped out before then. Have a really nice Friday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I sat at the kitchen table in utter silence this morning, so I’m gonna leave you with nothing!! But I love you guys. See ya!
Last night was the first night of the season that I slept with the flannel sheets on the bed.
I always have this dim remembrance somewhere in the back of my overworked brain that the flannel sheets are always indescribably cozier than I remember them being, after spending about 6 or 7 months with really crisp cotton sheets on the bed.
Well, last night was no different. I simply could not believe how indescribably cozy my fucking bed was and I did not want to get out of it this morning. Seriously, I laid awake for an hour and half, just so cozy that I just kept snuggling deeper into it. I literally had to force myself to get my behind out of bed and go downstairs and feed the cats, myself, etc.
Plus, all through the spring and summer, when the windows are open, I also have all the Venetian blinds open in my bedroom. So even when I’m awake at 5 a.m. in the warmer months, I can immediately see the world outside my window, including the streetlight and any headlights of cars going off to work. (Well, the drivers of the cars are going off to work.)
But last night, I had the windows closed, the heat on, and so all the Venetian blinds were down and closed. So I was seriously in a dark little snuggly place this morning. Man. I simply did not want to get out of bed.
So, of course, now, half my morning feels like it’s gone. And I hate that. It deprives me of precious, valuable minutes within which I can sit at my desk and work!! Grumble, grumble…
Anyway. It is sufficient to say, I slept great.
I didn’t get any more writing done yesterday once I finished that new segment for In the Shadow of Narcissa. It actually took a lot out of me to write that one. Partly because, aside from just the difficult subject itself, there were specific things between my adoptive mom and my brother that I chose to leave out. It was just too disturbing to commit it to print.
You know, if it was about something that happened to me, it’s easier for me to write about it. But it’s not as if my brother gave me any sort of permission to write about him. I haven’t actually seen him in decades. I know he’s still alive but, understandably, he doesn’t want any connections to his adoptive family. I’m trying to select occurrences that best illustrate how I was learning to respond to my mother and not just specifically “what she did.”
In my opinion, she was inexcusably cruel to my brother when he was a defenseless little boy and it tore my fucking heart out to watch all that shit happen to him. (And to be honest, there’s a whole chunk of stuff I don’t actually know about because I didn’t see it; I only heard it and all I heard was heart-wrenching screaming. And what the heck do you do when the only person on Earth who can make everything all right — Mommy — is the one causing the Hell? How do you process it?) Shit.
And then there was a time when I was in my 30s, when my adoptive mother was in a really lucid and loving phase (she was on meds at that point), and she sat me down one afternoon, when I was visiting from NYC, and in a bewildered, heartfelt way, she wanted to know why my brother hadn’t spoken to her in (at that point) something like 15 years. She said, “What did I ever do to him that was so bad?” She had no true conscious awareness of herself or anything she’d done. I didn’t have the heart to shatter her, and it wouldn’t have helped, anyway. My brother wasn’t coming back and I knew it. All I could say to her was, “Mom, I just don’t know.”
Still, none of it means that it’s okay for me to write about my brother’s private life. It’s not as if I can undo it by telling a bunch of total strangers about what happened, anyway.
So, yesterday afternoon, once I’d signed off on the new segment and sent it off to the editor at Edge of Humanity Magazine, I tried to focus on the play, but I just couldn’t. I went outside and trimmed the hydrangea, finally. That took nearly an hour! It really had gotten so big this summer. What a glorious thriving thing that hydrangea is. Even while I was trimming all the dead blossoms off of it, I could still feel so much life just pulsing from that thing. (I call it a thing, because it’s hardly a bush, but it’s not a tree. Not sure what to call it, but it’s massive now and just full of palpable life.)
It was such a beautiful fall evening. Just perfect. I came back inside and, as I am wont to do pretty much 24/7, I sat back down at my desk. But I had not a thing to do at my desk so I got on pornhub!! Yay. I never have time to get on pornhub!! So! And then 3 hours later…
Jesus. You know? Where does the time go?
Oddly enough, me and porn don’t have the best relationship. Only because I find so much of it really predictable, unimaginative, overflowing with narcissism and tedium — and those are only the videos that last about maybe 6 minutes. To me, they feel unendurably endless after about 63 seconds. I love porn, and you’d think that in this modern world that is so saturated with porn now, that I would just be this happy camper in pornland. But, sadly, such is not the case. And that’s because, in my opinion, there is just such a plethora of bad porn out there.
Yet, once in a blue moon… even picky girls like moi hit pay dirt. It’s all about the key words, you know. I’m an extreme fetishist, to boot. Not necessarily in my private life anymore, but it’s still where my mind goes. I’m not sure why. It has a lot to do with human behavior and human thought processes — I find extreme fetishes so fucking interesting. Especially the people who dedicate their whole adult lives to one specific extreme fetish and turn an entire room in their homes over to doing this one specific thing. And it almost always involves owning expensive stuff that you can only find on Stockroom, or you have to make it yourself.
I just find that fascinating. But it doesn’t mean that just any extreme fetish will appeal to me. I have to hunt pretty diligently to find something that goes into that mind-bending realm that is not, you know, sort of just horrifically awful.
And then I have to find that perfect balance of energy between the male and the female. The guy has to be the perfect Dominant — balanced, not over the top and not cruel. And the female has to actually seem really super in to whatever’s going on and not just being tortured or something. And I also discovered that I like it a lot when I don’t understand the language they’re speaking. I like it when I have no clue what they’re saying. (Oh, and it has to be “amateur” — not amateur quality, but just not a professional porn company.)
And I usually don’t get into the same extreme fetish twice. It has to be something new and, preferably, something I’ve never heard of before. (And at my age, with about 35 years of extreme fetishist friends and colleagues and co-workers behind me, it’s not 100% easy to find something I’ve never heard of before.)
Well, so you can see that me and porn are usually better left un-coupled. But once in a blue moon — say, last night, for instance– holy moly! And it really comes down to key words. Find a topic that might hold a certain appeal; click on it, then scroll down and look at the key words other people entered. Then click on one, then scroll down again and look at more refining key words that other people entered, and then look for the one that has the keyword “extreme” in front of it; click on it and then either shriek in horror at what pops up in front of you, or go, Whoa….. and be a happy camper in pornland for 3 hours.
I’m not going to tell you what I got into. Just that it involved somewhat expensive stainless steel instruments that you can buy on Stockroom. And it was something that I never, in a million years, would have guessed would not make me want to squirm or even to perhaps puke.
It all comes down to the people, you know? When people are really in to something, just totally getting off on it — that alone can get very compelling.
There were men I knew, who were my colleagues — really wonderful, intelligent men, back in NYC in the ’90s and early 2000s — who were Doms, into very intense extreme fetishes, and the young submissive girls would literally line up for the chance of getting a playdate with them on a Saturday night. You know: Please, please torture me for a few hours because I know you’re so fucking good at it. It really does come down to the specific person, to the personality, the specific human mind involved.
And now that I no longer live in NYC, then they have to also want to make high quality digital videos of what they’re doing and upload them to pornhub…
Okay. New topic. It’s going to sound related to the above topic, but it’s not. It has to do with the spirits that I am certain are in this house. And I don’t mean the house is haunted. I think it’s some sort of portal for amazing spirits. This whole town is. I don’t know how to explain it. But they don’t frighten me at all.
On Tuesday, I took off a pair of stockings. The kind that need garters to keep them up. Just a pair of regular Hanes stockings. Not expensive at all. I was feeling lazy and decided that rather than hand-washing them, like you’re supposed to do, I would put them through the gentle cycle in the washing machine and then just hang them up to dry. I had three other things I also wanted to wash at the same time. So I bundled it all in a towel and took it straight down to the washing machine. Then, 20 minutes later, the wash cycle was done and when I went to get everything out of there, one of my stockings was gone.
100% completely, thoroughly gone. I looked everywhere for it. Even thinking it could have somehow fallen out of the bundled towel and a cat had absconded with it, but it was absolutely nowhere. Just gone. I found this really endearing, you know? Like, Okay, dude, whoever you are — you can have it. It’s not like it was Wolford or something stupidly expensive. It was just regular old Hanes.
Too awesome, right? It will be so cool if; a.) it never shows up again, ever; or b.) it shows up someplace where it could not have ever gotten to all on its own.
All righty! I’m gonna scoot and get more coffee and get the day going. Lots of work to do on the play, still.
Have a terrific Thursday, wherever you are in the world! I believe Nick Cave goes back to Canada tonight. The Conversations are indeed winding down. Where the heck does the time go? I simply cannot believe it. That frightens me more than some unseen spirit making off with one of my stockings, that’s for sure.
Thanks for visiting. I leave you with what was essentially the soundtrack for extreme fetish playdates everywhere in the early 90s!! Enjoy! love you guys. See ya!
Yeah, well, I guess it would have been nice to have been alerted that a little PR blast about “me, the playwright” was going out yesterday. I probably wouldn’t have chosen yesterday to blog about being suicidal and going off to a convent…
Crap. You know?
This is why blogging is always so dicey for me. I actually blog about not only my real life, but also the constant insanity that is really in my head. And as pretty as I am on the outside, well you know, the Portrait of Dorian Gray is often in full bloom on the inside.
So there we have it. My experience of yesterday. All kinds of new traffic coming in through my (outdated, inaccurate) Wikipedia page because of a new crop of strangers googling me; and then finding out about all the joys of being moi.
Okay. We’re just going to move on. But I’m also going to bring this up again, as I so often do around here: When you’re a woman and you’re a writer, nothing will likely speak more to the heart of you than Virginia Woolfe’s A Room of One’s Own. If for some inexcusable reason, you don’t know the book; her overall premise:
“In referencing the tale of a woman who rejected motherhood and lived outside marriage, a woman about to be hanged, the narrator identifies women writers such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially dangerous space.”
And once having read it, nothing will feel so horrific as knowing that, even while Virginia Woolfe understood all of it, she ultimately walked off to the river with rocks in her pocket. She should not have ended that way. I am not going to end that way, I just refuse; even if sometimes the only thing that will help me is taking cover amid a bunch of Carmelite nuns — women who also reject motherhood and live outside marriage but inside the auspices of the Patriarchy. (Wouldn’t that be cool? To just go off and let some guy take care of you? Jesus Christ, right? And no pun intended there… But the minute you let some guy take care of you, he gets to tell you what to do. And loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I will always, without fail, say “NO!” even before I hear what the guy is even trying to say!!! AAAAAaaaarrrrgh!!!!)
But, Jesus. Come on. Even in a First World country, in the 21st Century, it is fucking hard to be a woman, be a writer, and live on a single, wildly fluctuating income — and afford a room of your own that’s quiet so that you can focus and write.
The pressure in my life sometimes feels insurmountable. I am someone who pulls miracle after miracle after miracle out of her hat. But it gets not only exhausting but also daunting: looking into that hat and wondering if another miracle is gonna manage to come out of there one more time.
And in this instance, unfortunately, I am talking about a situation involving other, private people that I cannot blog about. But it’s making me feel undermined and sniped at. And it hurts.
So — on to more beautiful things.
Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files newsletter yesterday that was just beautiful. You can read it here. You know, is it wrong & selfish to say that it’s too bad men like him (meaning, “rock stars”) weren’t around when I was growing up in the 1970s, or do you just feel appreciative that he’s alive right now?
Oh, and also, during one of Nick Cave’s Conversations in Austin the other night, a woman was sitting next to him on his piano bench while he sang “Shivers.” I ask you, just what kind of hat do you have to have in order to pull that kind of miracle out of it???!!! I thought my Miracle Hat was pretty cool but au contraire! It pales in comparison.
(The people in Austin eventually put a whole bunch of cool stuff on Instagram.) (I believe he’s going to be in Portland tonight. We’ll see what kinds of magical hats the people possess in Portland…)
Well, this week, when I’m not gently tearing my hair out over rewrites of Tell My Bones, I intend to write another short segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa. It’s a difficult one because it goes deeper into the abuse my brother suffered at the hands of our adoptive mother when he was just a little boy. And to write it from the perspective of a 4-year-old girl. And not through the lens of my own fear of our mother, but from that desperate feeling of wanting to help my brother but being given the constant mandate from her that I was not allowed to care about what happened to him.
Not being permitted to feel things was probably the hardest part of living with her.
The fucked-up-ness was simply manifold.
But I’m also going to take a look at the 4th segment of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. It’s going to be that “Litany” segment. It should just be very interesting. I’m very eager to write that because I can’t imagine how it’s going to hit the page.
Meanwhile, I’m going to get laundry started here. And at some point, I have to go back into town and buy groceries. I’m gonna wait until the fog lifts, though. We’ve had an amazingly dense fog here since late last evening.
The fog as seen from my kitchen window just now. The same Carl Sandburg fog that “crept in on little cat feet.” Oh no!! Not more cats!!
Okay, gang. I’m gonna scoot.
Have a terrific Tuesday wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I leave you with two options, both equally from my own perception of life. The first is one I really enjoy believing in. I really, honestly do. Someday, I’ll meet my soulmate and we’ll go off to the Chapel of Love.
The second is more like how I experience love, for real. You know, intensely deeply, but no chapel anywhere on the horizon. (This song was actually playing on the record player when I lost — or got rid of — my virginity. Go figure. The gods are funny, for sure.)
All righty. I love you guys. See ya.
“Piece of My Heart”
Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on!
Didn’t I make you feel like you were the only man -yeah!
Didn’t I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can?
Honey, you know I did!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I’ve had enough,
But I’m gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough.
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, oh, have a!
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it if it makes you feel good,
Oh, yes indeed.
You’re out on the streets looking good,
And baby deep down in your heart I guess you know that it ain’t right,
Never, never, never, never, never, never hear me when I cry at night,
Babe, I cry all the time!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I can’t stand the pain,
But when you hold me in your arms, I’ll sing it once again.
I’ll say come on, come on, come on, come on and take it!
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah,
Oh, oh, have a!
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
I need you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, c’mon now.
oh, oh, have a
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby.
You know you got it -whoahhhhh!!
Take it!
Take it! Take another little piece of my heart now, baby,
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Oh, oh, have a
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, hey,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
I’m still keeping this new bathroom scale. If only because I want to try to hack the code.
Apparently, I gained 5 pounds during the night. (After losing 9 pounds the previous day.)
At the very least, the scale reconnects me with everything I ate the day before. You know, it sort of acts as a grounding rod for my wildly dispersed reality. From moment to moment, I can no longer tell you what’s happening to my life. I am just so caught up in my head these days. Absolutely everything flies past me. So this new bathroom scale — its seeming slight relation to reality — sort of helps anchor me. I step on the scale. I look at that wildly unexpected number. And it makes me stop and think and remember yesterday: What was yesterday? What did I do? What did I think? What did I eat?
So the new bathroom scale is sort of an adventure in consciousness.
An alert just came through on my laptop that the drummer Ginger Baker died. This also serves as an anchor in reality: a.) I did not know he was even still alive; b.) I can’t believe he was 80; and c.) another part of my girlhood — gone.
When these things happen, I immediately feel that I either have to die right away. Like, I don’t know, tomorrow maybe. Or just live for some stupidly long time so that the main point to my whole existence becomes: Everything and everyone I ever knew is gone. This “in between” business — where you watch everything you ever knew disappear in bits and pieces; that part gets hard to process. So I’d rather just deal with one extreme or the other. Die now, or live so very long that nothing has relevance anymore and everyone assumes I simply am just never going to die.
On a sort of similar note… I’ve been thinking the last couple days that I’d really like to take a drive to the old Civil War battle ground in Cynthiana, Kentucky, and visit my great-great-grandfather’s grave. He’s buried there in a Confederacy War Memorial. For some bizarre reason, google maps assures me this is only 3 and a 1/2 hours from Crazeysburg. I’m not sure how that could possibly be. It feels like it should be much farther away. So I think I’m going to set aside a couple days here in the fall and do that. Find some sort of a strange motel there and stay over for one night. Maybe even drink bourbon for the first time in a couple of years. (I can’t imagine being in Kentucky again and not drinking bourbon.)
I’ve listened to Ghosteen a few more times. And that anchors me, too, actually. It has such a presence to it that I just hone right in and everything else in my mind and in my world simply stops. I’m just listening. Picturing all this stuff that I don’t understand at all — meaning, the images just come because the lyrics are so precise and so intense, yet I have no idea what any of that whole first part of the record means. (I don’t necessarily know what the second part means, but I feel like I intuitively grasp it. The first part — any hope of concrete meaning flies away from me in all directions but it sustains such an intense beauty, regardless.)
It is enigmatic, to be sure. I feel like there is absolutely no way in. By that, I think I mean that this is sort of an operatic painting about his life, his family, his marriage — and how can you ever truly understand how the inside of someone else’s perspective of life really feels? Well, anyway, I can’t. So I can’t find my way into it. Which doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful or that I don’t love it, or that it doesn’t cause me to feel a lot of things.
Nick Cave has said things before about how songs speak to you, personally; you know, you feel like a song was written just for you and it becomes yours, in a way. Actually, there is no Nick Cave song, ever, that I felt spoke to me, personally. I do feel that way about pretty much every single song Tom Petty ever wrote — starting with “American Girl.” I heard that song in my teens and immediately wondered, “How come that guy knows how it feels to be me?” But with Nick Cave — he’s on this whole other planet from me. It’s one that I absolutely love, with all my being and all my soul, but it could not be more different from my planet if it tried. Yet I still love, basically, everything he ever wrote. Or likely will write. Still, this new record goes even beyond that. Really, like discovering a whole new planet. Complete with a language that sounds remarkably similar to the one I know, and yet, eludes me. I think it’s just something I have to feel in my heart. And maybe meaning will come later. Or the “meaning” is simply that I feel it all very intensely. That is the meaning to it.
Okay. And on that note, the Conversations continue tonight in Austin. Maybe one lone photo appeared on Instagram from last night so, clearly this “put your phones away” idea is working. Eventually, I will no longer have any reason whatsoever to be on Instagram! But that’s okay.
All righty!! I’m gonna scoot and get Sunday underway here. Have a great day, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.
“American Girl”
Well, she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn’t help thinkin’
That there was a little more to life somewhere else
After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to
And if she had to die tryin’
She had one little promise she was gonna keep.
Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy, baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl
Well it was kind of cold that night,
She stood alone on her balcony
Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by,
Out on 441 like waves crashin’ on the beach
And for one desperate moment there
He crept back in her memory
God it’s so painful when something that’s so close
Is still so far out of reach
Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy, baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl
Now that I’m willing to allow myself to believe it’s really fall, it is just the most perfect day.
The sun is shining but there is a chill in the air, and the house is sort of freezing. Yay! I’m still wearing my favorite summer (cotton) jammies at night, and still have the summer (cotton) sheets on the bed because it is still getting into the 70s Fahrenheit during the daytime, but last night, I brought out the winter blanket and threw it on top of the summer stuff.
Me in my favorite summer PJs, but, oddly, I’m wearing them last December in Peitor’s bathroom in West Hollywood…
Last night, I slept the best sleep I’ve slept in a while. Only one window in my bedroom slightly open. Everything else in the house closed up. So, now, there are no sounds. no crickets, no cicadas, no birds. Just intense quiet.
I miss summer and the racket of all the earth, but the quiet is kind of nice.
I won’t turn the furnace on until it gets a lot colder. But I am looking forward to switching to the downstairs bathroom! I use that shower all during the winter months because the upstairs bathroom is really, really old. It was added onto the house back when it very first got indoor plumbing, back in the 1920s or 1930s, and there is no heating vent in there. The downstairs bathroom is much more modern and actually has heat…
Anyway. I like seasonal traditions, in general. And so now, here in the Hinterlands, in my 118-year-old house, that has become my autumnal tradition: switching bathrooms.
Pretty exciting!!
I had a really, really cool dream last night! One of those sex & love dreams! I was in love with some guy and we had sex, but I cannot for the life of me, remember who he was or what he even looked like. I can only remember the presence of him. A warmth. Like, a body warmth. There was also a woman in the dream who came on to me. For some unfortunate reason, I totally remember who she was. Not that she was unpleasant, but in the dream, I wasn’t in love with her, I was in love with the guy. But more importantly the guy was actually in love with me!
This is sort of unheard of in real life, so that’s why it’s doubly disappointing that I can’t really remember the dream…
But I do remember, vividly, that he made me really happy. So I guess recalling the feeling is good enough.
Here’s something extremely interesting!! The other day, I discovered (you are going to think I am so weird, but this only proves to you how extremely focused I am on work, and on writing, and on living at my desk), anyway, I discovered that all of my underarm hair has turned completely silver.
I was astonished by this. Not just because it’s gone silver, but you’d think I would have noticed it before it had all entirely changed to a new color. I mean, I do shave my underarms. But I guess I just don’t ever really look at it. I mean, it’s not something I even think about. It’s automatic. I’ve been shaving my underarms for, like, 50 years. Well, maybe I didn’t start shaving at age 9. But let’s just say something really close to 50 years.
Anyway. It was just weird. To say I am preoccupied with the world in my mind is now, I guess, officially an understatement.
Oh, and yesterday!! The best bathroom scale came into my world.
Back before I went to NY, my old bathroom scale finally broke. So I threw it out. At that point, I had put on 2 or 3 pounds, which I was making a mental note of getting rid of. But then I went to NYC and forgot about it. And then the other day, I noticed my pants felt a little tight, which usually means I’ve put on close to 5 pounds. So, posthaste, I bought another digital scale. Just to make sure that nothing got out of control.
The scale arrived and, lo & behold, it told me I had put on 8 pounds!! Whoa. I was not happy. I could not imagine what I might be eating that could make me gain 8 pounds. But I was at least glad I’d bought the scale when I did.
And then this morning, a mere 24 hours later, I got back on the scale and it told me I’d lost 9 pounds!!! Yay! Best scale ever. I reached my goal weight in 24 hours!!
Fuck, yes! I am keeping this scale!!
(I did actually get on it a couple more times, and it keeps hovering around that goal weight, so I’m guessing that the first time I used it, I probably had not actually gained 8 pounds…)
Still, what a great morning, right? A love & sex dream, followed by losing 9 pounds!! And beautiful weather, to boot.
Okay! Tonight & tomorrow night, Nick Cave is in Austin, TX doing his In Conversation on the Austin City Limits thing. (Does this mean that at some point we can watch it on TV?) (I don’t actually have TV so that doesn’t help. Of course, I’ve upgraded my iPhone, got a new laptop, got a new car, all within the last few months — I suppose I can just go out and get a new TV, too! Why the fuck not??) (Because I really, really need to fix my barn… I really do. I have the coolest 111- year-old barn. But it needs to be painted and it needs a new roof. And I never watch TV….)
Anyway. I guess we’ll see. (And I am really, really loving that Ghosteen. Gosh, it’s beautiful. I wish I understood it. I just don’t. But the songs are so beautiful.)
Okay. I’m gonna go drink a cup of tea. And think about life. And get back to work!! Thanks for visiting, gang. Enjoy what’s left of your Saturday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with a really rockin’ song from my sweet bonny girlhood. I was 6 when I got this album!! I absolutely adored it. (And I was born on a Friday, so you have to listen to the end to find out what Friday’s child is like!!) All righty. I love you guys. See ya!
Yes, indeed! Why talk about Trump or the weather, when we can talk about love??!!
I’m not really sure what to do about me and my Italian lessons, gang. I do great on all my many quizzes. But the moment I’m not looking at the app, I pretty much forget every single Italian word I know.
Okay. The Fall Issue of The Exterminating Press Magazine, Heavens Revealed, is now online. So, at long last, here is the link to the excerpt they published from my new novel, Blessed By Light. It is Chapter 18: The Guitar Hero Goes Home.
Well, apparently every single solitary soul in Minneapolis follows rules to a “t”. Because not a single solitary post from inside Nick Cave’s Conversation last night has been posted to Instagram. Only photos from outside the venue have posted. These, of course, are meaningless to me!
However, people did indeed say that the show was incredible. So I’m going strictly on word-of-mouth for this one, gang. It’s really nice, though, that people are finally putting their phones away. (I’m guessing this means that we get to redo the Town Hall show in NYC, and this time have it be phone free!! Yay!! I’m so excited!!)
Okay, well. As I sit here waiting for pigs to fly… (Honestly, I wouldn’t trade the memory of Town Hall for anything, even with its annoyances. Of course, I had that amazing time at Lincoln Center, too, so it’s not like I’ve been deprived of anything.)
I’m doing really good here today, gang. I’m feeling really quiet at the soul level. I finally slept good. No coughing at all, so I think the cold is at long last gone.
At the breakfast table this morning, listening of course to Tom Petty and thinking about the nature of Life and how it not only ends and moves on but it also constantly circles back in these predictable seasons; I noticed that the sun is taking a while to come up now. At 7 a.m. the sky was just barely light, so it is clearly really fall. And I am doing okay with it. With the summer being gone, I mean.
I’m feeling like I can handle everything again. Or maybe even for the first time, ever. I think that it actually is for the first time ever. What I have normally done all my life is cope and survive. And now what I feel like I’m doing is actually living. So that’s pretty cool, right?
I spent several hours hanging out on my bed in the dark last night, being okay with saying goodbye to the wonderful “dead guy”. I didn’t even feel his spirit in my room, as I sometimes do. But I was okay with it. And I was remembering the most amazing summer of my life with him (spent entirely in my bedroom and in my kitchen). And I cannot tell you just how grateful I am that he even came into my world so unexpectedly and so briefly, because it truly changed me.
I was sitting on my bed in the dark, looking out my window at the night and thinking about just how different I actually am now. He taught me so many things about myself. Things I wasn’t happy with and so I changed. I actually changed.
One thing he did was taught me about boundaries, in this very interesting way. Very self-affirming. I had this way of making self-disparaging remarks and it really bothered him that I did that. And I had no clue just how often I did that — said negative things about myself. Early on, he said there were going to be boundaries — things I wasn’t allowed to say anymore. I simply couldn’t say them; he didn’t want to hear these things coming out of my mouth ever again.
So then, when I would even start to make a negative comment about myself, he would just say, “Boundaries…” and I’d have to shut up. Like, immediately. And that was when I realized just how negative I was about myself, you know? Because he was constantly saying, “Boundaries…” and I’d have to shut up.
And then when I would shut up – you know, sudden dead silence — then I’d be forced to think about what I’d been getting ready to say. And it totally trained me to stop talking that way about myself. And eventually, I stopped even thinking in that really negative way.
The hardest thing I ever had to do was this other thing he came up with. I had this deep-rooted understanding about my life, as I was growing up, that I was not loved. And from that, I determined that I was never going to be loved. Love just did not exist for me. I knew people felt grateful to me, appreciated me, and all that, and I had a huge capacity to give love, but being loved never entered into it. I could not even imagine being loved. 57 years of that.
My mind could go to some really dark places very quickly back then. My whole demeanor could turn on a dime. Stuff that really alarmed him because he was just not a negative person, at all. I really wanted to be loved. I really, really did. But I literally could not believe that I was. Long story short, whenever I would even begin to go someplace dark or say something that indicated I couldn’t accept that he loved me, I had to make direct eye contact with him and say to him, “Thank you for loving me” ten times!!
I actually really had to do this. He would count up to ten! And I can’t tell you how difficult it was for me to do that those first few times. It was nearly impossible. It was as if my brain was completely re-wiring itself. It was so hard. But as the process went on, it not only became easier, but I actually believed him. And things inside me permanently changed. I finally understood myself to be someone who was loved.
Anyway. That is only a drop in the bucket of things he helped me break free of. Helped me restore to myself. And I know that it’s important now for me to live my life — to actually live it and not go on to the next realm prematurely. But stay here and get the most joy out of being physical as I can until it’s really time to go.
So. Back to Tom Petty. Back to October — the month that he was born in and died in. I’ll close with the song that ended up really defining him — the song he wrote when he was finally able to process the death of his mom. He allegedly wrote the song in one fell swoop. He woke up at 3 in the morning, hearing it inside his head. Got out of bed, went to the piano, turned on the tape recorder and the entire song just came out; he never had to change a word. Then he went back to bed and woke up his wife, Jane, and said, “Listen to what just came out of me!” And so she listened to the tape and said, “That’s nice, dear,” and rolled over and went back to sleep.
And the rest is history. There isn’t a single Tom Petty fan anywhere who doesn’t know every single word to this song –we could sing it in our sleep. And we process his beautiful mom’s death right along with him, eternally. Forever and ever.
Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world. I love you guys! See ya.
“Southern Accents”
There’s a southern accent, where I come from
The young ‘uns call it country, the yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talking, but everything gets done
With a southern accent, where I come from
Now that drunk tank in Atlanta, is just a motel room to me
Think I might go work Orlando, if them orange groves don’t freeze
Got my own way of working, but everything is run
With a southern accent, where I come from
For just a minute there I was dreaming
For just a minute it was all so real
For just a minute she was standing there, with me
There’s a dream I keep having, where my mama comes to me
And kneels down over by the window, and says a prayer for me
Got my own way of praying, but every one’s begun
With a southern accent, where I come from
Got my own way of living, but everything gets done
With a southern accent, where I come from
Nothing quite like that gentle reminder from your Internet provider that your bill might be a little bit overdue… (i.e., they interrupt your service at 8 a.m. on the dot…)
You know, it isn’t actually my fault.
For years — literally — my bill was always due on the first of the month. And then, like, 2 months ago, I noticed that the due date had been randomly changed to the 23rd of the month — and they never officially told me this!! Or explained why!!
Of course, they might have told me this and explained why. I never actually read the bill. I just pay it on the first and throw the bill away.
When they changed my due date, I decided to ignore it and keep paying it on the first. This morning, they decided to stop ignoring the fact that I was ignoring them, and they introduced me to this concept of: pay your bill or we’re cutting you off.
So, anyway. They sort of put a crimp in the joy of my first cup of coffee of the morning while I skim over email — noticing there was a new Red Hand Files newsletter from Nick Cave in there!! Yay! And when I went to click on it and read it — Ooops! Right at that precise moment it became 8 a.m. and then no Internet connection.
Aaaaaach. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.
Of course, their “fuck you” to me carried more weight.
So I called them and conversed with the robot and paid my fucking bill.
And here I now am. Doing laundry. Drinking coffee. Once again, beginning my day.
My cough seemed to get worse during the night, not better. So I didn’t sleep too great. When I finally did get some decent sleep, I overslept and then slept in until 6:30 am. But here’s hoping I will finally kick this stupid cold today.
Okay.
Yesterday was very interesting indeed!
I went to a gas station about 15 miles from here because they had a really great price on gas yesterday. (No, I didn’t drive 15 miles out of my way and use all that gas just to save on gas; it was on the way into town where I buy my groceries.)
It was evening already — dark out. That time that I actually find a little magical at a gas station in the middle of nowhere — all those lights and very few people anywhere around. Well, this lady who’s putting gas in her own car, looks over at me. And then looks at me again. And finally calls out to me: “Do you live in Crazeysburg?”
Me, astounded that anyone on Earth is actually speaking to me, gets very excited and says, “Yes, I do!”
It turns out that she’s my neighbor — she lives one house away from me. And she loves my new car! So she didn’t really recognize me at all, she recognized the car. And so we talked at length about “the car.”
And actually, an elderly couple was coming out of the dollar store, back before I went to NY, and they stopped in the parking lot and stared sort of spellbound at my grown-up, molten lava-colored Honda Civic, and said, “That’s a beautiful car.”
And in Rhinebeck, Sandra’s husband also really loved my new car. In fact, so did my mom — that fateful day when I took that trip to the cornfields of Hell and back and then finally hooked up with her. In a gas station in a tiny town called Clarksburg, where the first words out of her mouth were, “You have a new car!! You didn’t tell me! I’ve been driving all over for a fucking hour, looking for a white Honda Fit!”
Yeah, well. Anyway.
It is so weird to me, that I could own a car that anyone would look at twice, let alone fall in love with at first sight. And to have it be a car that I don’t actually emotionally connect to. I’m gracious, and say “thank you”, and all that. But somewhere deep inside, I’m usually thinking: you should see the car I really wanna buy…
But onward! It was kind of cool speaking to an actual neighbor (whose name was Angie). And now I know that everyone is noticing my new car (all 14 of the people who live around here). (And they’re probably wondering: How come she has that spiffy new car and the roof of her barn is still a complete wreck?! Where is her sense of home-owning priorities?)
Well, you know what Shakespeare said. Some are born with great cars, some achieve great cars, and others have great cars thrust upon them by the Honda dealership even though they were happy with their little Honda Fits and the roofs of their barns are still a complete wreck.
Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter today was really beautiful. About saying goodbye. And oddly enough, while I was meditating this morning, the man I wrote about recently — the older married guy with cancer that I fell in love with who changed my life and then died — his essence came to me while I was meditating and he was saying something about me needing to let him go.
Naturally, I immediately blocked that. That’s my fallback position whenever anyone anywhere, living or dead, suggests something to me that would be in my best interests but that I have no desire whatsoever to accept, to acknowledge, or to even listen to. (I’m making a joke of it but it actually isn’t funny.)
Then I did that Inner Being journaling thing right after the meditation, and there he was again — it was all about me needing to let that guy go. But it supposedly wasn’t about “saying goodbye,” it was about me evolving and expanding past where I am now and who I am now and to be really joyful about it, because spirits are eternal and that guy’s spirit isn’t actually going anywhere; you know, he’ll be there forever, but that I need to sort of redefine myself now and move into my future, and not think so much about someone who has moved on to the next realm.
So I said: okay, I will — think about it really seriously.
And then I put on my less churlish, grown-up self and reluctantly said, “Okay, I will.” And that twinge, you know — of goodbye. That I actually really have to do this and how much it sucks, even though my future is evolving into something really wonderful. And then that Red Hand Files letter being all about goodbyes. It was really bittersweet. Very beautiful.
All right. Speaking of Instagram! Which I was! I was inwardly saying that while there are remarkably fewer photos getting posted to Instagram re: the Nick Cave Conversations now (and I mean from, like, 20 down to like maybe three), Chicago looked like another great show. And tonight is Minneapolis! A town I don’t think I’ve ever been to. I’m not 100% positive about that. I might have passed through it at some point in my distant past. But what matters is that I won’t be there tonight! (I don’t mean that to sound like I’m excited to not be seeing Nick Cave tonight. I mean that it doesn’t matter whether or not I’ve ever been to Minneapolis before. Being there tonight would be the importantthing, you know. Anyway.)
There is also a brand new Instagram account for my play Tell My Bones. I’m not a huge social media person. So I’m not really sure how you find it. I think maybe you just go to Instagram and look for tellmybones . And then, of course, follow it.
The website has still not launched but it will soon. (I’m guessing that you can guess what the URL will be…) I don’t handle any of that side of the marketing or publicity, etc., and it is so cool to just get alerts that all this stuff is happening! That all I’m in charge of is writing the play.
Okay, on that note — I gotta go write the play! (Well, that and finish doing the laundry.)
Thanks for visiting, guys. Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. All other things in my heart considered, I’m doing okay with tomorrow being the anniversary of Tom Petty’s death. I’m just moving on in all kinds of ways here, aren’t I? But I do leave you with this, “In the Dark of the Sun,” from their 1991 album Into the Great Wide Open. Okay. I love you guys. See ya.
“In the Dark of the Sun”
In the dark of the sun will you save me a place?
Give me hope, give me comfort, get me to
A better place?
I saw you sail across a river
Underneath Orion’s sword
In your eyes there was a freedom
I had never known before
Hey, yeah, yeah, in the dark of the sun
We will stand together
Yeah we will stand as one in the dark of the sun
Past my days of great confusion
Past my days of wondering why
Will I sail into the heavens
Constellations in my eyes?
Hey, yeah, yeah, in the dark of the sun
We will stand together
Yeah we will stand as one in the dark of the sun
Still trying to kick this cold so I slept in a whole hour today. Doesn’t seem to have done much. I’m still coughing a little and really just tired.
I woke up with the song “Rebels” in my head, which is a really unheard of sort of thing. I never find myself singing that song. And now I can’t think of anything else. (It was a hit off of Tom Petty’s 1985 album, Southern Accents.)
So I wondered why I would be singing that song this morning — I really believe that when we wake up singing certain songs, our Inner Being is trying to communicate something to us — symbolically. Almost like how dreams communicate with us. Privately giving us information, I mean, even though half the time, we don’t understand it.
I played “Rebels” on the CD player during breakfast and thought about it. And for the first time, really, I realized that most of my ancestors are Southern — they’re from Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Virginia. (But shortly before coming from the South, they came from Ireland and Germany.)
I don’t know much about my birth mom’s ancestors, beyond her great-grandfather, who was a Baptist preacher. Although I know that they were farmers who settled into southern Ohio after coming up through West Virginia.
On my birth dad’s side, though, the written records go back to 1530, in Germany. And they seem to have been true rebels — you know, rebelling against the Church. They seem to have been on Martin Luther’s side from way, way back.
There is a church in Alsenz, Germany, that still has baptismal records from one set of my ancestors in the mid-1600s — from the branch that wound up going to America and becoming indescribably fertile pioneers in what became Kentucky. Here is a photo of that church in Germany as it looks today. It is still a practicing church:
Evangelische Kirche in Alsenz– some of my family’s baptismal records are still there from the mid-1600s.
I have always loved Kentucky, even before I knew that my ancestors not only came from there, but also helped settle the State — my grandfather (with about 5 “greats” hyphenated to it) worked alongside Daniel Boone, and then he wound up staying in Kentucky and settling a little area that came to be called Robinson Creek. It is still there — just a tiny area of Pike County, near — astonishingly enough — Robinson’s actual creek.
Anyway, those Mays were absolute rebels, you know. In terms of the “North” against the “South.” And also just in the way they rebelled against society pretty much at every turn. Just one particular strand of it, I mean — the one I came from, as luck would have it.
I have never considered myself a rebel — I just have always been an unshakeable believer in doing what I believe is right (even though “right” is 100% subjective), and not towing some party line because it’s expected of me.
I don’t wake up in the morning wondering what I can do to irk people or piss them off or disappoint them. I never do or say or believe something simply to be contrary or “rebellious”. Yet most people who have had to live with me treat me like I’m doing it all on purpose.
I’ve written here before about my great-great-great-grandfather — the one who was a Kentucky State Senator, and was kicked out of the Senate for being a staunch supporter of the Confederacy. Kentucky was a split State — half Union, half Confederate. And even within his own family there was a split — my grandfather’s brother fought on the side of the Union. My grandfather was killed in the Civil War — drowned during the Battle of Cynthiana.
My great-great-great-grandmother was either pregnant at the time of his death or had just given birth to another baby; I can’t remember now which. They had 7 children. In the family Bible that she kept, she wrote a detailed account about how my grandfather would break away from his regiment when he could, and he and my grandmother would meet secretly under a specific tree somewhere and make love! (They were in their 30s at the time. Married, of course.) She actually wrote about this in the Bible because she didn’t want any of us who came afterward to forget about him. She loved him so much. At least two of those secret rendez-vous’ led to pregnancies — children that my grandfather never got to meet because he was still fighting in the war and then was killed.
So my great-great-great-grandmother was left alone to raise all those children by herself. Luckily she had a lot of sons who took care of her and she lived to be pretty old.
While I love the ancestral women in my family, I really only relate to the men. Meaning that I identify with them, their spirits. And there at the breakfast table, for the first time ever — oddly enough, since all I ever do is think about stuff; you’d think this would have occurred to me before age 59 — I realized that my family were all rebels.
Actually, even my grandmother (my birth dad’s mom) was a rebel in her way. Although she wasn’t proud of it. I got to meet her before she died. She was 89 and we spent several days together at my uncle’s house after my dad had died. And for one afternoon, she and I were there in the house alone and she told me the story of her life. It was very sad but really just incredible. She’d been engaged to be married to this “nice boy” (this was in Kentucky) and then my grandfather got a job working for her father — and the moment the two met, they fell into lust. She disappeared with my grandfather for a whole weekend even though she was engaged to someone else, and by the time the weekend was over, they had to get married.
Her first 2 babies died as infants, and my grandfather turned out to be just an incurable alcoholic, and so my grandmother always believed that it was God’s way of punishing her for betraying the “nice boy” that she’d been engaged to.
There was other, really sad stuff that happened to her, too, but that sadness aside, this morning I realized that I was quite interconnected to all those rebels — even the ones in Germany who rebelled against the Church. All of it is just in my blood. My other grandmother, my birth mom’s mom, always used to tell me that “the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree ” in regards to me and the things I said and did — and she never meant that in a flattering way.
Oh well.
I don’t know. I’m just the way I am. I do what my heart calls me to do — even when it seems completely inappropriate, even to me, sometimes.
Okay. So Nick Cave’s Conversations resume Stateside — he’s in Chicago tonight! The Instagram photos have been awesome! I hope that’s a trend that will continue. (I never mentioned that he began wearing this really nice black suit.)
And I did discover what time that Youtube thing is on Thursday, when they are going to play Ghosteen for the first time. And, yes, as luck would have it, I already know I will be nowhere near Youtube when that fucking happens!! Damn it. But the following day, it will be in my Spotify thingie so all I will have to do is figure out how to make that thing work. I mean, it works, but it so seldom plays what I’m wanting it to play.
I did pre-oder the CD but it won’t be out until November and even then, it has to ship to me from the UK. They assured me it would arrive in a timely manner, but we’ll see.
Okay. You already know what I’m leaving you with, I’m sure. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a really, really good Monday, wherever you are in the world. I love you. XXX See ya.
Tom Petty 1978
“Rebels”
Honey don’t walk out I’m too drunk to follow
You know you won’t feel this way tomorrow
Well – maybe I’m a little rough around the edges
Inside a little hollow
I get faced with some things sometimes
That are so hard to swallow – Hey!
Hey, hey, hey
I was born a rebel
Down in Dixie on a Sunday morning
Yeah – with one foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel
Well she picked me up in the morning
And she paid all my tickets
Yeah she screamed in the car
And left me out in the thicket
Well – I never would’ve dreamed
That her heart was so wicked
Oh – but I keep coming back
‘Cause it’s so hard to kick it
Hey, hey, hey
[Chorus]
Even before my father’s fathers
They called us all rebels
Burned our cornfields
And left our cities leveled
I can still feel the eyes
Of those blue bellied devils
When I’m walking round tonight
Through the concrete and metal
Hey, hey, hey
Marilyn's Room 