Tag Archives: Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Her Dreams Are Always So Darned Prophetic…

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Yes, I am going to tell you about the dream I had right before I awoke this morning, but first–

Sandra has now gone off to Stratford (Canada), where she begins rehearsals for the musical “Chicago”. And now, for almost the rest of the year, her life is going to be about flying back & forth and back & forth, to fit in the round tables and revisions and rehearsals in Toronto, as well as round tables and table reads and staged readings and rehearsals in NYC.

I’m only bringing this up because my schedule now has to piggy-back on her schedule for the rest of the year. Wherein, I will have to be flying back & forth and back & forth, to fit in the round tables and revisions and rehearsals in Toronto, as well as round tables and table reads and staged readings and rehearsals in NYC.

It’s going to be exceedingly interesting, gang. I’m going to try to stay flexible and not lose my mind or anything. But knowing Sandra as I do, I get the impression that, for instance, two and a half minutes before I have to be in Toronto for something, she’s going to text me to let me know that in two and a half minutes I have to be in Toronto — that kind of thing.

I used to travel a lot. Flying, I mean. I always had separate bags for flying that were always packed with whatever essentials I needed, so that I could just throw in some clothes and go. But this was when: a.) I lived in NYC and it was so much easier to get direct flights to places all over the country and in Europe; and b.) 9/11 hadn’t happened yet and airports and planes were still really fun things.

I was in an airplane, in fact, in the process of landing at LaGuardia in NYC, back in early 1981 — I was reaching up to get my overnight bag out of the overhead compartment thingy, when I decided to accept my first husband’s marriage proposal. Isn’t that funny that I remember that? I have no idea where I was flying back from, but I recall flying over the Statue of Liberty and getting up to get my bag ready, and thinking, “I’m gonna go ahead and marry him. I’ll call him when I get back to the apartment.” And I did.

He had proposed to me in the strangest way. I was actually living with another guy at that point. But Foun Kee considered the other guy to be completely inconsequential.  “He is just a boy, Marilyn. He has no ambition. He is not like you at all.” (Bold move. Yet he was correct.)

But you also have to factor in here that I was only 20 years old and that Foun Kee had the most amazing accent I had ever heard. He was Chinese, from Singapore, but he was from the aristocracy and spoke English with a pronounced British accent.  He was really conservatively educated and spoke precise and perfect English, which was daunting enough (i.e., he doesn’t use the ‘f’ word — ever). But that mixture of a Chinese/British accent was really just the coolest thing I had ever heard. And then, if for some reason, he was sort of angry about something, he launched into pure Mandarin, which I didn’t speak yet, so that was also just amazing to me. I was just a girl from Ohio, you know? Before there was even cable TV. Nothing at all was “global” yet.

ME: “Wow! You speak Chinese!”

HIM (not amused): “Yes, I do.”

ME (ever eager): “Will you teach it to me?!”

HIM: “No.”

Anyway, his accent was not why I married him. (And I should add that two years into the marriage, he began calling me “Marilyn dearest”, in that same accent of course, but I always felt it was sort of derivative of Mommie Dearest and so it always used to get under my skin.  And yes I have a temper, but I don’t consider myself quite as off-the-charts as Joan Crawford was so I didn’t think it was funny.) Anyway.  So he came over to our apartment in Hell’s Kitchen (back when it was Hell’s Kitchen and still really bleak and dangerous) one rainy Saturday afternoon while I was there alone. He was impeccably dressed. He even had his long, black umbrella and a slim briefcase (very British), and he sat down on the sofa, and took out a yellow legal pad that had several hand-written pages, detailing, in bullet points, all the reasons why I should marry him.

I am so serious.

I sat across from him in — yes, a desk chair!! And I was just astounded, you know? I was not interested in getting married. At all. To anyone. I was only focused on getting something happening with my singing and my songs. And he put his legal pad back in his briefcase and said, “Well, just please give it some thought.” And apparently, I did. (Because, you know, he also said things like, “You are so beautiful and I have dreamed all my life of having a woman like you for my wife.” I have a huge ego to go along with my lovely (Irish) temper.) (But I did absolutely adore him, gang, from the very moment we met. I have always loved an audacious man and he definitely was one.)

But anyway. I digress.

My point was that now I’m thinking that I should get that travel bag together again and just keep it ready, so that it’ll be easier to just go whenever I have to from now on.

Which reminds me that the phone call with Peitor yesterday in LA was several more hours of business stuff. And starting next week, we’ll have two meetings a week — one of which will always be devoted to working on whichever script, so that we can try to get everything moving forward at the same time. So life is definitely inching toward “crunch” time for me, as far as projects vs. time vs. travel.

Okay, so let me tell you about my dream! I realize that dreams are full of highly personal symbolism and might not easily resonate for anyone else. But this dream just astounded me — mostly because I don’t know why I dreamed it.

I had this sort of really large microwave oven that was also an incubator and a little bird was in there, in a sort of box, getting ready to hatch.

I was with a “guy” — I have no idea who, because he was just a form, a sort of energy. But definitely male.

When the bird came out of the incubator, it was going to be sort of like a  movie — but like a hologram, in that it would be completely 3-dimensional. And I sat down on the couch, really close to the guy because we were clearly “a couple”, and I told him what would happen — like giving him a synopsis of the movie — saying that the bird would come out and then get really, really large and sort of take over and become part of everything, and be really powerful. (Like a “super hero” type movie.)

And the guy said, “I don’t really want to see that.” And I really wanted to please the guy, so I said, “Okay, well, I’ll just try to get the bird to go back into the incubator.” (The bird had already come out of it.)

I got up off of the couch, went over to the incubator, and my right hand sort of went out in front of me, and suddenly the bird flew right over to me and perched right on my finger. It really gripped me but it didn’t hurt at all. And I was astounded by the power in the bird, and that — even while it wasn’t tame — it still knew how to perch right on my hand.

And I sort of shook it off, and then put out my hand again, and it flew right back and perched on me again and gripped me really tight. And I couldn’t believe how incredible that power felt.  And I instinctively knew that the bird symbolized freedom to me. So I decided to keep the bird. And then the whole apartment thing was gone, and the guy. And I was in a sort of professional building where a really big conference was going on — men & women, both. I didn’t go into the auditorium, even though they were waiting for me, specifically. But I did open the door just a little and let the bird fly in there and teach them.

Isn’t that an amazing dream?

I have to say, I pondered that dream all through breakfast. I don’t  think that men don’t equal “freedom,” but it was so interesting that my first mindset was that I really just wanted to please the guy (which is actually what I’m really like), but then once I felt the power of real freedom, I couldn’t go back. Plus, I really wanted to share it with people who wanted it. (And the “freedom” thing could also mean that I’m more committed to being a writer than to being in a traditional relationship, and that I can share my writing, my freedom, with all sorts of people without even being in the same room with any of them.)

I guess that was the dream that just explained my whole life to me and that later today, I’ll probably die!

Just kidding. (I hope!!) I’m thinking it’s more this Super Moon thing — a revelatory dream brought on by the moon.

Okay. I’m gonna scoot.  Enjoy your Saturday!! Wherever it finds you. (It’s snowing here again! Yay.) I think I’m going to work on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse today because Wayne still has not gotten back to me with his comments about Tell My Bones so I give up; I’m done waiting — onward!

Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya.

 

 

 

Everything Went Its Own Way!

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You know, yesterday, I took a look at what I had already written in Letter #6, “Captivity,” (Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse), and I actually liked it more than I thought I did. But I still think it needs to be completely re-written. Well, it’s only 2 pages. What I mean is that the voice needs to change — the rhythm of it. It’s too linear the way it is right now. I feel like this is one of those chapters that needs to be more stream-of-consciousness.

So, as I sat and thought about it, more images or thoughts or vague perceptions — I don’t know what to really call them — for Thug Luckless continued to creep in around the edges of my brain. A sort of brain-landscape getting underway there. And it couldn’t be more different from what I’m trying to capture in Letter #6 for the other book. So there was a lot of maneuvering for brain space going on there, but Thug won out, for a little while.

Thug just gets more interesting to me every day.  The strangest things inspire me:

Those (in my opinion) hideously huge monogrammed, square-toed  Balenciaga boots for men. (They look huger on the models than it looks here.)

Image result for balenciaga logo monogram boots for men 2020

The old Rudy Vallee smash, sort of haunting, hit song, “Just An Echo in the Valley” from 1933.

And of course, the tone and overall temperament of Jean Genet’s ode to death & rape in Occupied Paris in the summer of 1944, Funeral Rites.

Image result for funeral rites jean genet

And then add the post-Apocalyptic urban backdrop of P-Town where most of the men were killed in the Apocalypse and there is no longer any working indoor plumbing so all the women are pissing in the streets, and then the pornographic premise of the AI sex robot, endlessly wandering around because the woman who bought & programmed him, died, and none of the other women know how to un-program him, so he’s fucking everyone, and gradually morphing from artificial intelligence into sentient intelligence strictly through sexuality. But nobody knows this is happening to him, or ever knows, and it’s sort of a tragedy. But beautiful.

It’s just an amazing hodge-podge of stuff swirling around my brain regarding Thug –and creating yet another one of those universes that sort of isolates me from everything and everyone around me… but I still love it. It just excites me to no end.

And yet, I awoke at 5:30 this morning,  suddenly feeling like: Okay, gotta get In the Shadow of Narcissa into some kind of manuscript shape today.

WTF??!! Where did that come from? That memoir could not be more different from the other two projects. And I really thought that the other two were on the front burners for now. But apparently they aren’t, because I was lying there in the dark, completely focused on Narcissa.

So there you go. All these projects that sort of lurch forward at the same time around here. And tomorrow I need to focus on Tell My Bones because I’m meeting with the director. And I’m thinking that I’m supposed to be planning on being in NYC next month to begin the table-read process so that I can rewrite the final act of the play and fix one of the main character arcs. Time is flying. And then at some point I have to be in Toronto with Sandra for the round table with the producers and the director for The Guide to Being Fabulous.

I still have no idea when that’s supposed to get underway. I only know the show is slated for the upcoming season, beginning in November, and I have a ton of re-writes still to do on it. But I won’t have any idea what those specific re-writes will be until we do the round table. And Sandra has to be in Stratford (Canada) beginning in April to be in the musical Chicago all spring/summer. So, um, hmmm….

Here’s a handy definition to have:

flex·i·bleˈ fleksəb(ə)l

adjective: flexible
capable of bending easily without breaking.

All right, well.  We’re certainly going to find out about that.

Here, the laundry is just about done. I’m thinking that later today, I’m going to drag the boxes out of the storage closet and take them downstairs and pack up all the Christmas stuff, while streaming more episodes of Black Books. (The dining room currently looks like some sort of Christmas thrift store, everything’s piled everywhere.)

But meanwhile, I have the segments from In the Shadow of Narcissa open on my desktop and I’m going to go over those now and format them into one manuscript and get a feel for how that reads (currently 9 pages).  And then maybe even write a new piece for it (and post it to the site). I’m not sure. Overall, since I want it to be chap-book length, I don’t see it being longer than 40 or 50 pages. I guess we’ll see.

So have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world and with whatever you’re working on while you’re there! Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with yet another cool Tropical Fuck Storm song, “Aspirin.” (William over at a1000mistakes blog in Australia had it as one of his top songs for 2019.) It’s off the TFS album Braindrops, released this past August. Okay. I love you guys. See ya!

“Aspirin”

[Verse 1]
The last summer that I saw you
At the BP with no cash
You were burnt out like an aspirin
And I was melting on your dash
And this was years ago when Richmond
Was way out on the astral plane
But it was fine ’cause I could see there was a light up in the tunnel
It’s okay, you know I remember how you used to say

[Chorus 1]
When you finally go
You’re gonna find out who you’ll miss the most
Well, I guarantee you’ll find it is not me
It won’t be any of the usual suspects, but whatever, man
Soon enough you’re gonna find out who I mean
When you go, you get to finally meet the one who tortured you
The one who hurt you worse than anyone, even me
And I’m just sorry that I won’t be there to tell you that I told you so
But soon enough you’ll leave, and then you’ll see

[Verse 2]
You’re the old sneakers on the floor, the coat by the front door
The ashtray by the milk crate in the yard
And you’re the dead fern in the hall, all the blanks in my recall
The old Toyota van I sold for parts
You were the house that they tore down
It’s now a vacant block of land
The ache I try to shake when I drive by
And you’re the dog ear in the book
I didn’t even know you looked at
And then other times, you’re furthest from my mind

[Verse 3]
Then I got something in the post, and there it is, your legal ghost
And just goes to show, you know
You’re kinda hard to leave behind
I don’t wanna go out no more, just the thought makes me recoil
It’s like that feeling when unwanted guests
Come banging on your door
They’re either too smart or too dumb
Or they’re too weak or they’re too strong
You said I’d be okay without you, yeah, you’ve been here all along
You were the best time I remember, and I do ’cause life is dull
It’s like you’re half the fucking neurons in my skull

[Chorus 2]
When you finally go, you’re gonna find the only thing you needed
Did exactly as it should and got you through
You did not need nobody’s help, just the idea of being helped
Though at the time it wouldn’t have felt like that was true
And when you go you’ll get to finally meet
The one who tortured you
The one that hurt you worse than everyone, even me

[Outro]
But you’ll be fine
‘Cause you could always see a light up in the tunnel
I got a feeling it’ll happen soon for me
But you’ll be fine
‘Cause you could always see a light up in the tunnel
I got a feeling it’ll happen soon
But you’ll be fine
‘Cause you could always see a light up in the tunnel
I got a feeling it’ll happen soon to me
But you’ll be fine
‘Cause you could always see a light up in the tunnel
I got a feeling it’ll happen soon

c – 2019 Gareth Liddiard

Why Doesn’t She Just Stop Scrolling?

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I am so bored with Instagram, you have no idea.

And if I’m following you on Instagram – don’t take that personally.

It’s just that my account is now not only so overloaded with ads for cute cat-related things and clothing I would never wear if my life depended on it (and I mean that — I’ve had a long and somewhat arduous while certainly interesting life, and now I’m at that lofty age wherein I’m either going to wear exactly what I want to wear or just opt-out of life entirely). Anyway.

In addition to unwanted ads, my Instagram feed has also gotten so long now that I can never even imagine getting to the bottom of the scroll anymore. And the non-advertising stuff that makes it into my feed is just a whole bunch of stuff from people that, you know, I don’t even know who they are. But this is only in the unlikely event that these complete strangers managed to get in a post amid the truly UNENDING number of Keanu Reeves photos that glut my feed.

But I don’t want to unfollow the Keanu Reeves hashtag because it is the sole hashtag on Earth (and likely its surrounding celestial environs) that does not provoke, disturb, perplex, confound, unnerve, or confuse me in any way whatsoever. So the hashtag is staying. But, you know? Jesus. How many fucking photos of Keanu are actually out there? It is mindboggling. And even while I literally sweep past these photos, I find that I’m still able to form opinions in a nanosecond: Ooh, he looked so cute back then. Oops, a little too young there. Oh man, that was a nice one. Gosh, he looks really good these days.

And I’m literally making these assessments in anti-time — it is that fleeting — because I am trying to get past all the fucking Keanu photos. And the whole scrolling process clogs up my brain and I wonder, what the fuck am I doing this for, there’s nothing interesting here…

Although David Byrne’s web magazine Reasons to Be Cheerful  (yes, he of Talking Heads fame) had a really extraordinary post over the weekend. If you want renewed hope in everything imaginable about planet Earth, check out his stats for the decade, which include:

“Homicides fell, green space grew and your weather forecast got a lot more precise. The last 10 years were filled with positive change—really! Read our list…”

And loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that while I am slavishly devoted to Nick Cave, I refuse to follow the Nick Cave hashtag because people who use the Nick Cave hashtag are seriously intense and my brain is intense enough, thank you, I don’t want their intensities getting mixed up with my own often unmanageable intensity. And Nick Cave himself only posts maybe twice a year to Instagram. (Meaning non-promotional-related Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds type posts.) (But, still — he will do it sometimes. You just gotta wait for it…)

Related image
Me, waiting for Nick Cave to actually post something on Instagram (all year)…

I also follow Iggy Pop, of course, and he posts a lot of opinion polls. I’m never really sure what these accumulative opinions are leading to, but I have discovered that I fit the exact  profile of the Iggy Pop fan, since I am always in among the largest group of people who click “yes.” What this means, I have no clue. Why he wants to know, I have no clue.

I will tell you, though, that even while I was never a Stooges fan, I have loved Iggy Pop since 1977, when his Bowie-produced albums, The Idiot and Lust For Life, were released. I had the German imports, too, which, back then, for a 16 year-old unemployed girl in Ohio, was quite an investment. And I also bought a fake ID in order to get into the Agora to see him and Bowie live during the Lust for Life tour. However, my point is, that I went on to buy every album Iggy Pop made after that (including his very interesting newest one, Free), and I wanted to point out that Soldier, from 1980, is a really good album.

I often sing the song “Dog Food” for no real reason, even all these decades later. It was just an insanely ridiculous and somewhat angry song that I find myself still needing to sing sometimes (and it’s super short– you can listen to it below. It lasts one minute and 50 seconds and you might find that you need to sing it sometimes, too, so it’s a good song to know.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNSs_f-y7Y

I also loved the song “Loco Mosquito” a lot.  (You’ll need to invest 4 minutes in this one, but it’s worth it. Especially if you, too, are “sick of hanging out with old transvestites.”)

(I remember that when his album Zombie Birdhouse came out, I didn’t have a whole lot of money, as usual. And one of my best friends had the album (this was back in NYC – 1982). I asked her, point blank, if I could have hers. I convinced her that I would appreciate the album a lot more than she did and that she should just give it to me. And even though she rolled her eyes and got pissed off, she actually gave it to me… I took it gladly and had absolutely no shame.)

Anyway. Not to confuse my initial point: Soldier was a really good album.

Okay. Well. I am on two completely different yet equally compelling wavelengths around here: Working on notes for a possible stand-alone story excerpt for the new novel Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town. As well as getting those persistent incoming images for Letter #6 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse — titled “Captivity.” (Novel vs. memoir; fiction vs. nonfiction; all of it erotic.)

So it’s a little confusing, which direction I’m really going to go in, but we’ll see how the day unfolds. My meeting with the director of Tell My Bones has now been moved to Wednesday, so tomorrow will likely just be a spillover from whatever I end up working on today. Plus, it gives me an additional day to contemplate the idea of washing my hair.

In general, I can’t complain. Life’s good.  But time’s a-wasting here, so I’m gonna scoot and get at it. Thanks for visiting. I leave you with “I Need More,” possibly my favorite Iggy Pop song of all time — certainly the one I relate to most personally.  Also off of the Soldier album. All righty. Have a really great Monday, wherever it leads you, gang. I love you guys, See ya!

“I Need More”

I walk around
I flop around
I need something that will be found
More venom, more dynamite, more disaster
I need more than I ever did before

But everything is going up in price
My life is going all right up ’til now
Even so there’s something missing
More truth
More intelligence
Ha ha
More future
More laugh
More culture
Don’t forget adrenaline
More freedom

I need more than an ordinary grind
And the more I think the more I need
More cars
I’ll take more money
More champagne
I can’t forget my brain
More floors
More doors
More mustard
Pickle and relish

I need more than an ordinary grind
Everybody ought to love his job
And live his life and keep his pride
Imperturbably happy with the one you love
With an exciting future
On the fat of the land

I need more than an ordinary grind
And the more I think the more I need
My life is going all right up ’til now
Even so it’s not enough for me and

I need more
I need more
I need more
Oo oo oo oo
Oo oo oo oo
Than I ever did before

I need to lead a disciplined existence
And play scratchy records
And enjoy my decline
With more divorce, more distance,
More future, more culture

More

c – 1980 Iggy Pop, Glen Matlock

Well, All Righty, Then!!

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Okay, I have to say that for whatever inexplicable reason, some of the Alexander McQueen women’s wear Spring/Summer 2020 Pre– Collection (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean) made it into my field of vision  and I actually loved it. (Except for the shoes and the tapered waist — I hate a tapered waist.)

Still. How fucking weird is that? The designer with whom I have the least patience… It was in the vein of a man’s suit, which is what I was just talking about the other day.

I guess it just goes to show you that, not only do Chesterfield cigarettes come back around — meaning that what you’ve lost can return to you. But also, something you are used to disparaging can suddenly surprise you.

Indeed, life is interesting when you remember to release things, to let things go. It makes room for other things to come into your awareness, right?

Okay, yesterday, the work with Peitor was so fun.  We got some good work done on the script — still in the process of going shot by shot through Scene 3, sort of a key and quite dynamic 90-second scene in our 8 minute film! A lot hinges on it being believable, even while its premise remains absurd.

At one point, I said: “Oh, I found all those notes we were looking for a few months ago! It turns out, I saved  them to a really weird file. I have no idea why I put them there. But I was searching for something else at the time, so I just left them there and now I can’t remember where I saw them!” Meaning that the notes we need on a second project are still irretrievable. “Why the heck did I do that?”

And he replied, “Just common idiocy.” And I laughed so hard, that then we were off and running with ideas for another project, of course titled, Common Idiocy. And we ended up laughing so hard over it, that we were both crying again. And then that underscored the rest of our work for that session. It was just so fun. I really needed to laugh like that.

I just love “Lita’s Got To Go.” (The current micro-short project.) It is so darn serious and even a bit disturbing. The shots and mood in the first couple scenes are heavily informed by Polanski’s Repulsion, which of course is not funny at all. And each shot is so precise and  full of uneasiness (Bauhaus), and yet the whole thing is basically arbitrary and leads nowhere. It’s just so funny.

Well, to us, anyway.

It does seem like it was a good thing for him to go off to London (and Paris) for the holidays, because Peitor just seemed a million times lighter yesterday. I didn’t bring up the new TV series because, frankly, I’m so fucking busy right now. I’ll just wait until it comes up again and then make room for it in my brain at that point.

Today, I want to work on crafting a sort of “stand alone” section for Thug Luckless. Something that would be part of the novel overall, but that would be suitable for publishing  as an excerpt on its own. I don’t ever write that way — I either write a short story or a novel. I don’t try to craft both at the same time. But this morning it occurred to me that I’d like to try doing that with Thug. It could open up how I’m looking at him, because I just have so many ideas circling who I think he is and what goes on in his world (even though all he actually is is an AI sex robot). So bringing part of it into tight focus could prove really informative for me.

“Captivity,” Letter #6 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, is still gestating. I wrote 2 pages and then had to pull back from it. The energy was going nowhere. I don’t want it to be too much of a narrative. So I need it to kind of re-assemble itself in my brain.

Life is so strange, isn’t it? It’s just moment upon moment upon moment, and it always feels like it’s got a forward momentum of some kind, yet it doesn’t actually go anywhere. Everything sort of seems the same every time you wake up. And then eventually, everything’s just different.  I was thinking about that when I came out of meditation this morning.

I want so many things to change in 2020. I guess “come to fruition” is more like it, but I do want this sense that my life is lived in captivity to just leave me. By captivity, I think I mean fear and habit and that drifting thing my mind always does.

I can be in the middle of working on something, then I’ll get up from my desk, an unlit cigarette stuck in my mouth, I’ll sit down on the side of my bed and stare out the window and just drift for a while, you know? Wonder why I’m alive. What life actually is. What does it mean to be physical rather than nonphysical. I’m really just a focusing mechanism; a tuning mechanism; a mass of electro-magnetic-chemicals — this idea that I’m more important than that is sort of an illusion. My body is astounding but what I believe its purpose is, is just an illusion…

This kind of stuff takes up a lot of my brain space. And then when  I stop doing that, I’m writing highly erotic weird stuff that people seem to enjoy reading. You know, words get onto the page. I read it over and then  wonder: How’d that get there? Meaning, where does it come from? I’m tuning into something; focusing on something. God only knows what. But it does sort of define who I am — the words I choose to put onto a page. Whatever that means, right?

And the days fly by… and then suddenly, everything’s different.

And on that note, gang! I’m gonna take a look at Thug Luckless. See what sort of artificial life I can bestow upon him. I hope you’re having a nice Saturday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

It’s So Good to be Me!!

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You know, it turns out that “Captivity” is not so easy to write.  (Letter #6 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.)

It’s all kind of “right there” in my brain — I can access it easily. But dealing with those memories of the mental hospital (when I was 15) is rough.  I’ve been at it for a few hours here this morning, and for every paragraph that makes it onto the page, I sit and stare off into space for many unbroken minutes, remembering it all and feeling my skin sort of crawl.

So it’s taking kind of forever. And do I really want to relive all this stuff by including it in this book? For some reason, though, it has been laid in front of me — of my brain — calling me down the path, and so I’m following. But, jeez.

Still, I’m glad I ended up in that place than as a suicide. You know. So let’s just use the experience as a jumping off point for something creative.

Anyway. I slept great last night. Had strange and vivid dreams with a lot of wonderful dogs in them. Lately, I have really been wanting another dog (I haven’t had a dog in over 40 years). I want one so badly. Not just to have something that would love me unconditionally — it’s more that I want something happy and frisky to give love to. However, my life is just not structured for a dog. Mostly, and most obviously, because I have a colony of feral cats here that would freak the fuck out if I brought a dog into their lives at this point. Plus, I just can’t take on that kind of responsibility. It’s nice enough that my birth mom is willing to take care of my cats now when I have to travel. Adding a dog to that heady mix is pushing it.

I’ve also been suffering from “baby lust” — that feeling that, every baby I see, I want to just take them in my arms and hug them and cuddle them and take them home with me!

It’s weird how many people now tell me that I should adopt a baby. A lot of people ask me if I have kids, and I, of course, say no. They say did you ever want any? ME: “Oh god, yes. But it’s a long story.” Then they always say: “It’s never too late.”

I look at them like they’re nuts — I’m almost 60 years old. And single. Wanting a baby and actually doing something about it are two entirely different universes now. And back when I was 40, married and looking to adopt, I was already pushing the age limit that agencies would allow for legal adoptions.

But people around here are quick to point out that age doesn’t really matter anymore. “So many girls are addicted to meth and opioids around here and they’re always in and out of jail and giving up their kids.  There are so many unwanted babies in the system around here that need homes — you could easily get one.”

Wow.

Jesus, talk about heartbreaking. But there’s just no way. A friend of mine who lives out here, my age, did adopt one of those infants. But he has a wife who’s 25 years younger than he is. Plus, he’s retired now. He has plenty of time.

So many people my age are already retiring. I just don’t understand that concept. And now retiring and adopting infants. It’s just foreign to me. (It was hard enough wrapping my mind around friends getting spouses who were 25-30 years younger than they were — what the heck is that?)

Both of my younger sisters are grandmothers now and my mom is a great-grandmother. And I should be, like, a grandmother now. Not marrying people who weren’t even close to being alive when I was born and then adopting infants. But I can’t imagine myself as a grandmother. I’m still, like, a child, you know?

I often wish that a little hungry non-feral kitten would wonder up onto my porch and not leave (like Fluffy did back in 2006), or that a puppy needing a home would be somehow foisted upon me, or that a baby in a basket (preferably not the Antichrist) would be left anonymously on my front step. You know, like the Universe would be thrusting something upon me that I wouldn’t be able to refuse.

However, reality has so far prevailed. And that’s probably a really good thing. And meanwhile, I had lots of interesting dreams about dogs last night. So I guess I’m letting it all happen in my dreams.

I am so fucking tired today. Because I was lazy yesterday and, rather than make time to do yoga, I took 2 Ibuprofen because I was feeling really stiff. And that was such a stupid thing to do because Ibuprofen just wipes me out. I really didn’t think it through.

This is one of those key times when I need a keeper:

ME (getting up from my desk): “Wow, I feel really stiff today.”

KEEPER: “Do yoga. You haven’t done yoga all week.”

ME: “I could just take a couple of Ibuprofen and go right back to my desk. That’ll take care of it.”

KEEPER: “Do yoga — Ibuprofen makes you super tired and then you feel miserable and get depressed because you’re too tired to do yoga. So do yoga.”

And then if I still resist common sense, the Keeper could just take the Ibuprofen bottle away from me, roll out my yoga mat, point to the floor and say, “Do yoga.”

I would just love that, gang. I really would! You have no idea how much I would  love to have a Keeper. Then days like today — when I absolutely have to make myself do yoga and I’m still so fucking tired from pills I took last evening — would not exist.

Plus, I’m trying to take a break from Flonase. Because it’s a steroid and it’s not good to just take it indefinitely. But I’m allergic to dust — and I live in a house that is 118 years old, so dust is pretty much part of its very foundation. And I’m allergic to cats, of which I have seven. And I can’t breathe without Flonase. So I’m exhausted and I can’t breathe.

I’m having the best day!!

But underneath all that, I am actually having a good day. I’m super excited about 2020 arriving here within a handful of days. 2019 was actually pretty darn good. But I’m thinking 2020 is going to be amazing. So I can’t complain. (Plus, I only gained 3 pounds during this Christmas constant-nibbling-of-chocolate-and-eating-amazing-amounts-of-cheese season! I can lose that by Monday! So I’m good!!)

And right now, I’m super hungry again so I’m gonna scoot and grab my lunch and then get back to “Captivity.” (Do yoga somewhere in there, too.) I hope you guys are having a really nice Friday, wherever you are in the world — the final Friday of 2019. Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

Sort of A Complete Success!

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Yes, except for the times I was blogging, I actually stayed away from my desk throughout Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

A true Christmas miracle.

And I made every effort to watch new things, at least on Christmas Day. I did watch one old re-run of Perry Mason, which I loved. Even though I’d seen it a million times. But then I switched to my watchlist to find only new stuff.

And I’ll tell you, it’s just weird. You know, I often see trailers of new shows that look just so cool. And then the shows go on to be mega-hits and win awards and stuff, but when I try actually watching them, often I can’t even get halfway through the first episode.

It happens more often than not. Something that should be really fun and yet I can’t connect somehow and my mind drifts away. Not all the time — I remember I loved The Detectorists. And some other British TV shows. But I thought I was going to love Fleabag and I didn’t. I thought I was going to love Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I didn’t.

And yesterday, I thought I was going to really seriously love Good Omens, but I only got halfway through the first episode before my mind started to wander again.

I keep thinking that maybe I should try again, but jump in somewhere mid-season in all these popular shows. Maybe they’ll resonate better for me, farther along in the series. But then I run into that problem I have with not wanting to spend time away from my desk, so it never happens.

I was so disappointed with Good Omens. I really thought I was going to love that. So maybe I will try again some other time. However, last night, I switched back to my watchlist, and found a movie that had been in my queue for a couple years already (yes, this is how little I watch — or stream — TV). It was loosely adapted from a novel I loved, that came out in 2005 or so. I was sort of stunned to see that the movie is already old — 2007! But it counts as new because I had never seen it before.

Image result for what we do is secret movie

What We Do Is Secret — the story of Darby Crash and the Germs, an LA punk band from back in the mid-70s. He committed suicide (an intentional heroin overdose) in LA — ironically enough, on December 8, 1980, the same day John Lennon was killed in NYC.

I thought the movie was great, you know? Not necessarily great cinema, but just so well acted and so good at capturing the era and the feel of the story it was trying to tell. It’s a small movie, but I never lost interest in it for even a moment.

It’s not really anything like the novel, though — they are two distinct entities, but both are good and stand strong, each by themselves.

So I don’t know. I tried. I tried to plant myself in front of something brand new. But what wound up grabbing me was something already 12 years old that reminded me of my late teen years and the first year in NYC, and the music scene back then, and all the intense musicians that I knew (including myself, I guess).

I never really liked punk rock too much, although a couple of the bands I really loved (Patti Smith Group, primarily) were put under the punk rock banner but, in my opinion, were actually something so much more. But then, at the tail end of punk, came the New Wave banner and a whole lot of bands that fell under that banner were just really cool. To me, anyway.

At the end of the movie, a whole bunch of notes started coming to me for “Captivity” — Letter 6 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I was scribbling notes at the kitchen table, but I still was not at my desk!

And then I found it so intensely cool and interesting that the movie ends with Bowie’s song from 1972, “Rock N Roll Suicide,” which was the very first song in my own life that helped keep me from trying to kill myself. It was a very important song to me. And it worked for awhile. Eventually, though, in the summer of 1975, my adoptive dad told me that I should just go ahead and kill myself because no one wanted to deal with me anymore. So I went inside and tried to kill myself and then wound up in the mental hospital — which is what the chapter “Captivity” is all about. (Well, it’s about sex in the mental hospital.)

You know, I realize that we can’t make people behave in a way that isn’t natural for them, and I know it sounds trite to say this, but it really just seems to me that if people could just communicate so much pain in the world would go away. I include myself in that, too. By the time I was 14, 15, I could not talk to my parents about anything. Certainly by the time I was 15, I was so fucked up on drugs most of the time, that trying to communicate was pointless. Still, the fact was that I was unable to talk about anything. My dad was pretty heartless, but he didn’t know that I was being sexually assaulted and raped by all those guys — he had no clue. I don’t think he even knew that Greg had been killed or who Greg had been to me, to my life. My dad lived in another city, had re-married and was in a whole other world. By then, I couldn’t talk to him about anything.

And my adoptive mom was just so abusive. She wasn’t physically abusive anymore, but she had the emotional and mental abuse thing down like a science. She terrified me. I was in constant anxiety mode whenever she was around me. I totally lost my ability to communicate. So when my dad told me it would make everyone’s lives easier if I killed myself, he overrode anything David Bowie was trying to convey.

And then, even in the mental hospital — man, excuse the pun, but that place was crazy. What I learned in that place was how to fly under the radar, you know? To not get caught at anything, and to finally tell the doctors what they wanted to here so that I could get the fuck out of there. I wasn’t any better when I got out; I was worse. Because no one in that place had been able to find out what was really wrong with me — what had happened to me. Because I wouldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t figure out how to tell anyone. I could not communicate — it felt life-threatening to me.

But it was just ludicrous — what was going on in my life that my parents knew nothing about. I remember one Friday night in the early summer of 1975 (this was already several months after I was actually raped), I was home alone and talking to a girlfriend on the phone in my room, and I heard someone down at the front door. So I said, “Hold on a minute, there’s someone at the door.”

But when I went down to see who it was, these 3 guys from school jumped me and dragged me off to the woods, and had me stripped out of my clothes in a heartbeat, and I was fighting them the whole time and yelling at them to stop. And then one of the guys said, “If you don’t quit fighting us, Marilyn, this isn’t going to be any fun.”

He actually said that. I was flabbergasted. I said, “Just give me my clothes back!” So they gave me my clothes back. I got dressed, went back home and my girlfriend was still hanging on the telephone. “Where did you go?” she said. “You took forever.”

That kind of shit would happen to me a lot after Greg died. It got so that I was afraid to leave the house. Afraid to go to school. Afraid to walk home from school because the path home was through those woods — which bordered an old abandoned rock quarry, where there was a cave that the guys from school had built a little fort in. That stupid fort was some scary shit. It seemed like there were always guys waiting for me around that fort.

Anyway. I digress rather regrettably. I really just wanted to say that it was so cool that at the end of What We Do Is Secret, Bowie’s song “Rock N Roll Suicide” played as the credits rolled, and I felt, you know, like I had survived my own life. So that was good.

And on that note, I’m gonna scoot and get started here! 2 days away from my desk felt like an eternity! I am eager to get back to work. Thanks for visiting. Enjoy Boxing Day, if you live someplace where that is celebrated. If not, enjoy the day after Christmas! I love you guys. See ya!

“Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide”

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette
The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget
Oh, you’re a rock ‘n’ roll suicide

You’re too old to lose it, too young to choose it

And the clock waits so patiently on your song
You walk past a cafe but you don’t eat when you’ve lived too long
Oh, no, no, no, you’re a rock ‘n’ roll suicide

Chev brakes are snarling as you stumble across the road

But the day breaks instead so you hurry home
Don’t let the sun blast your shadow
Don’t let the milk float ride your mind
You’re so natural – religiously unkind

Oh no love! You’re not alone
You’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair
You got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care
Oh no love! You’re not alone
No matter what or who you’ve been
No matter when or where you’ve seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain
You’re not alone

Just turn on with me and you’re not alone
Just turn on with me and you’re not alone
Let’s turn on and be not alone
Gimme your hands cause you’re wonderful [2x]
Oh gimme your hands.

c – 1972 David Bowie, Jorge Seu

A Cozy Little Saturday, Indeed!

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I’m having the best morning, gang.  I finally woke up feeling super happy and super frisky! I did make myself do yoga yesterday and it made a world of difference.  Although I am also putting on weight because it’s that time of year…. Since my mom’s visit, there is chocolate candy in bright shiny wrappers all over the house and eggnog in the fridge and all sorts of cheesy goodness in the freezer.

In other words, I’m eating all kinds of holiday stuff that tastes so good and is just not so good for me!! But next week, austere living returns so I’m gonna just enjoy it for now.

Oh! And the royalties for December are coming in — thanks, gang.  I really appreciate it. I made good money this month, and considering that so much of my potential sales were disappearing out from under me this past fall — with all those illegal downloads all over the Internet — I really do appreciate you spending actual money on the books, even though I know the books are really old!

However, I am working on getting new stuff out there.

Which reminds me — yesterday, for some reason that I don’t recall right this minute, I was looking over a chapter in Blessed By Light (my new novel) and I wound up re-reading a good chunk of that book. Gosh, I really love that book. I cannot wait for it to get published and put itself out there into the world.

It’s not as erotic as most of the stuff I write (the excerpt at the top of the page is a good indication of the level of explicitness in the book overall. It doesn’t ever get too hard core.) But it’s just a beautiful little book. It made me feel really happy to re-read it.

And I’m also really happy with where Letter #6 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse is going.  (“Captivity” is the title of it. It’s basically about sex in the mental hospital — it won’t be the cheeriest chapter ever written, but oh well!)

I’m also excited because the director of Tell My Bones and his husband arrive back in the Hinterlands today, to spend the holidays at their mansion on the hill — their house is in town, about 20 miles from me.  Not only will I finally have something festive to do for the holidays that involves other people besides just me (and the cats) (plus I’ll probably finally have a reason to wear high heels and a little black dress again), but I’m also eager to spend at least a little time going over the revisions of the play with the director.

Oh, you know, if you want to read a brief excerpt of Tell My Bones, you can do it HERE. (Click on the link that’s on that page.) And sign up for the newsletter there if you want to, too.

I’m just feeling really good about all the various projects today. Plus, I’m going to pay bills today and I have complete confidence that I’m not going to do that weird shit I did last month — wherein I paid a big chunk of bills that weren’t due yet and neglected to pay tiny things like my mortgage and my car payment! Aaach!! But it worked out at the final hour, thanks to having two ex-husbands who still really like me a lot….

Anyway. I just feel like I have a brain again — i.e: look at the bills that are actually due and pay those — and that’s always uplifting!!

Okay. Well! I’m gonna get started here. Have a super Saturday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music, even though there’s narry a hint of snow anywhere around, but the song just makes me happy! All righty! I love you guys. See ya!

So Many Little Notebooks, So Little Time!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was really, really hoping that.

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

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

Then, afterwards — I felt a whole lot better.

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

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

All righty.

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

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

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

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

Image result for vintage illustration of kids on Christmas vacation

Just A Truly Weird Morning So Far…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Merriment Has Indeed Arrived!!

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I just couldn’t be happier, gang.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6rDA2Czz0E