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

C’è una festa qui!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB9YIsKIEbA

“I’m A Believer”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

c – 1967 Neil Diamond

Yeah, I Know. I’m Immature…

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Sometimes I just can’t resist, gang.

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

Okay.

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

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

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

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

Well, on another note.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mary Jane’s Last Dance”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

c – 1993 Tom Petty

For Fuck’s Sake, Why Can’t Life Ever Just Stay Awesome?

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It’s just been one of those days.

First. Work on the micro-short with Peitor went extremely well. We got great work done. We finished the 2nd segment of the script. 4 more segments to go.  The 2nd segment is approx. 90 seconds long. Still not a word of dialogue.

And the 2nd segment relies heavily on the filmmaking style Antonioni used in his movie from 1962, L’eclisse. Did you happen to see it? I thought you had! I know how much you enjoy black & white Italian movies from 1962. (You know, the reason Peitor and I have been friends for something like 35 fucking years is because when he said he wanted the segment to have the look of Antonioni’s L’eclisse, I knew exactly what he was talking about.) (Except for the part when she’s walking down the hall, I want the shots to have more of a feel of Polanski’s Repulsion but without all the arms molesting her. And I know you saw that!!)

Image result for polanski's repulsion
Catherine Deneuve in Polasnki’s Repulsion, 1965

By the way, our film is not in black & white. It’s just designed to feel like it is. And it’s not set in the 1960s, although our main character kind of is. (And as an aside, it’s kind of interesting that I didn’t end up like Deneuve’s character in Repulsion, all things considered. And even though today sort of sucks — overall, I think I’m doing pretty darned all right. However. If I end up wanting to eat an uncooked rabbit head that I’m carrying around in my purse, we can assume that things are at long last going seriously awry…)

Anyway. That was the highlight of the day — working with Peitor for a few hours.

My work on Letter #5 for Girl in the Night is frustrating me so I deleted all of it. I’m still going to keep the same premise for it (“Hymn to the Dark”) but it just kept feeling too plebeian. Sometimes plebeian is wanted. But not in this particular section of the book.  In this section, I want it to feel like, I don’t know — the genesis of angels or something. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. I don’t even know what I fucking mean, at this point. I only know I haven’t captured it yet. So I will spend tonight trying again.

I did manage to wash my hair and shave my legs and even pay some attention to my (hideously chipped) toenails for the first time since before I went to New York — over a month ago already! (Can you believe that it was one month ago tonight that I saw Nick Cave at Town Hall? Man. In some ways it feels like a year.) (I wish I could just persuade somebody to live my life for me while I just stayed in bed and reaped the rewards of dreaming.) (Except for the times when I go see Nick Cave.) But anyway, when the weather gets colder and I wear actual shoes most of the time, instead of flip-flops everywhere, I tend to forget to look and see if my toenails need re-polishing. And I also tend to not wear my glasses most of the time, so I don’t usually see much of anything.  But today I got out of the shower and suddenly it was, like — holy moly. So I dealt with the toes.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my sweet cat, Bunny, dying of a heart attack. She was the last of my house cats. I cannot tell you how much I miss having cats that actually interact with me. You know — the kind that let me cuddle with them and that purr and that like to sleep on the bed with me all night. Who look at me like they understand me when I chatter at them. Who act as if they actually love me. I just miss it so much. Even though Daddycakes was feral, he would purr and get on the bed with me a lot of the time, but he didn’t want to be cuddled or petted — he did allow me to do it, begrudgingly, so I tried not to overdo it. But, man. Feral cats are rough on the heartstrings.

Although, for the past several mornings, when it’s still dark out and I go into the dark bathroom to pee first thing, Huckleberry and Doris will come into the bathroom and lick my toes! This is a totally new thing. They will let me sort of reach down and pet them, but only once. If I try for twice, then they nip at me. So, you know, I’m trying to make the most out of peeing in the dark while they lick my toes… with those sandpaper-y little tongues.

This business of allowing life to be however it’s going to be without me orchestrating it to suit my needs… I’m not a big fan of it.

It sort of reminds me that I feel kind of at odds with what I posted this morning about Ghosteen. I even thought about deleting it. I wish I didn’t feel so deeply about things. I decided to keep it posted, just because I guess it’s better not to censor myself. To just “express.” I just think it’s such a beautiful album and I still don’t know how to process how it makes me feel.

And I wasn’t being mean about his wife’s dress. I mean, she does sort of describe it like that in that movie, not those 2 exact words, but they amount to the same thing — she had a sort of mission to have every woman wearing the same dress, and looking like some sort of prim cult from 40 years ago. I don’t remember exactly. But if you didn’t see One More Time With Feeling, then maybe I sounded really mean.

But that was not my intention.

Well, I guess I should either get back to work here, or do some yoga now. I’ll make up my mind momentarily. I just hope something wonderful comes out of this brain of mine tonight to salvage this frustrating day.

Oh you know, I saw something online today that the late painter Basquiat said about what the Lower East Side of NYC was like back in the late 70s & early 80s (that bombed-out, war-zone look), and there were some photos from back then included. This was when I lived down there, in Alphabet City. I just sort of take it as a given that people remember what it was like back then, but a lot of people who read my blog weren’t even born yet back then. So here is a really good photo of what it looked like on E. 12th Street back when I lived there (for 9 years). I don’t know this particular building’s exact location, but so much of the LES looked exactly like this back then. This could have easily been the “apartment” next door to me:

Somewhere below E. 14th Street, NYC, early 1980s.

It is so weird to think I simply lived like this. For so many years. I didn’t even think about it. It’s just how it was.

Honestly, a lot of the times I miss it. I don’t really enjoy what NYC has become.

All righty! I’m off to do something. I don’t know what yet. But here’s hoping that before the night ends, I will have written something worth keeping. I love you guys. See ya.

Don’t You Worry ‘Bout Me

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Well, from the sublime to the ridiculous — after all those mornings of not wanting to budge from bed until long after the sun was up, this morning, I was up and out of bed by 4:30. What the hell, right?

I guess just go with it.

I have a lot to work on today. Not only Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, but also Peitor and I are supposed to work on our script for a few hours this morning over the phone. (For our micro-short known variously as “Lita’s Gotta Go” or “Lita’s Got to Go” or “Leta’s Got to Go”, or the Swedish subtitle, “Lita maste ga.”)

Anyway.

Wow, Instagram sure was pink last night.

I didn’t stop working until about 10PM last night, and that was the first time I’d gotten on Instagram all day, and quickly discovered an ad campaign or Vogue layout or both for the Vampire’s Wife’s pink dress.

Then I awoke around 3am, thinking about that pink dress campaign and how it sort of has the feel of a visual offshoot of the Ghosteen album cover — soft, pink, harmless. Not that the album cover is pink but it does have pink in it and it does feel intensely harmless. Like it could be a mural on the wall of a child’s nursery. And it struck me that the two projects combined — the new album and its subsequent merchandising and upcoming tour, and the pink dress merchandising campaign — is not just the processing of grief, but inadvertently the merchandising of grief, on a huge scale.

You know how I ponder things, and sometimes I ponder things past the point of no return, because I certainly don’t want to see Ghosteen that way. But it is part of the job: you make the record, you have to tour, sell tickets, sell the merchandise, hopefully sell the record itself; earn your living (even a guy’s “gotta make ends meet/on Jubilee Street” right?).

The dress doesn’t really weigh on me as much. Although, I don’t support women’s fashion overall, whether it’s the puritanical conformity of the Vampire’s Wife dress, or the sort of horrific complicated torture chambers of Alexander McQueen’s fashions, and everything in between. I realize, at the bottom line, women’s fashion is really just about the mind of the designer, but the overriding consequence of “women’s fashion” still bespeaks of the trivialization (and sometimes the attempted annihilation) of the minds, unique identities, and bodies of women. You know, there’s just no way around the decades, and decades, and decades of that symbolism. I’ve always been attracted to style icons — Bianca Jagger in the 1970s rushes to mind — but an overall blanket of “women’s fashion” has always sort of repelled me (the primary reason I didn’t last long as a professional fashion model when I was in my late teens — my own agent, the man responsible for getting me employed, yelling at me in front of the entire office that if I didn’t like being treated like a piece of meat, I was in the wrong business. And he was right.). (And then my adoptive dad coming to town and taking me out to dinner and finding out that I was working as a professional fashion model: “If you want men to think you’re stupid, Marilyn, then being a model is the best thing to be.” Thanks, Dad.)

Well, anyway.

I do love where men’s fashions have gone in this current century, though. Men’s fashions used to be just as annihilating of a man’s psychological freedom, his spirit. And now, with magazine’s like Another Man especially, men’s bodies, their personae within the fashions, within the mise en scene, seem to have become liquid art. Just something so invigorating and uplifting to look at there. To my mind, at least.

But I’m digressing. I was just lying there at 3am today, thinking about Ghosteen and the necessary fact of having to merchandise it, and then wondering what on Earth that would really mean. Are you ultimately merchandising the death of a child? My mind can’t really even begin to go there. It was so disturbing. I’m hoping, of course, that the experience is something that helps audiences transcend some specific grief; find release, maybe? Not just be swept into some sort of oceanic abyss of emotion, being that it will be on that frenzied scale of a live concert. That ultimately uncontrollable emotional scale. (I’m guessing you can tell that I don’t go to concerts, either. They just have become this huge, unwieldy “thing”. A veritable sea of “too much.”)

Skeleton Tree felt so different to me, as a record. There was still a lot of grief there, but it did feel like individual songs. And even while they were equally abstract, there were songs that I could viscerally connect with in terms of my own life — “Girl in Amber,” “Distant Sky,” “Jesus Alone,” and “I Need You.”

Ghosteen just seems so sweeping and not as if it contains separate, individual songs that you can just sort of toss out there in a song lineup. And it’s just a devastating album — in its grief, its beauty, its overwhelming, abstract imagery.  It might be easier if it wasn’t a sort of “concept” album; if it wasn’t a sort of microscopic focus on the byproduct of emotional chaos brought on by a child’s death. But I guess that’s sort of obvious, isn’t it — it would all be so much easier if it wasn’t that. Jesus. I just can’t process what it means to create a (hopefully) cathartic work of art about grief, about life, love, death; and then have to, you know, “take it on the road!” and wear a pink dress.

Just forever and ever, right? The death of a child has been unbearable. Psalm 137 (KJV) springs horribly to mind — and that’s from twenty-five hundred years ago.

Oh god. Some mornings,you know,  life is just a wee bit stultifying.

But then I started thinking about David Byrne and how he has this really popular show on Broadway right now — American Utopia. I hope I get to see it. The Broadway cast album is out already, and it made me think of that Talking Heads song that I used to just love – “Don’t Worry About the Government”. Such simple times, you know? Early days in NYC. Life, even in its turmoil and awfulness, its drugs and booze and poverty and violence, was still new and still full of kinetic excitement for me and my friends. Daily.

But being in my early 20s, and being age 59 now — you can’t compare the two. You just can’t. There’s that pesky thing of experience fucking that comparison all up.

Still, it did make me go on YouTube at around 4am and play that song and realize that I still know every glorious word to it. And I remembered just how much that chorus meant to me, spoke to me, in those days.

Anyway. I gotta get started here. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Don’t Worry About The Government”

I see the clouds that move across the sky
I see the wind that moves the clouds away
It moves the clouds over by the building
I pick the building that I want to live in

I smell the pine trees and the peaches in the woods
I see the pine cones that fall by the highway
That’s the highway that goes to the building
I pick the building that I want to live in

It’s over there, it’s over there
My building has every convenience
It’s gonna make life easy for me
It’s gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

CHORUS
Loved ones, loved ones visit the building,
take the highway, park and come up and see me
I’ll be working, working but if you come visit
I’ll put down what I’m doing, my friends are important

Don’t you worry ’bout me
I wouldn’t worry about me
Don’t you worry ’bout me
Don’t you worry ’bout me

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I’m a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

It’s over there, it’s over there
My building has every convenience
It’s gonna make life easy for me
It’s gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

CHORUS
Loved ones, loved ones visit the building
Take the highway, park and come up and see me
I’ll be working, working but if you come visit
I’ll put down what I’m doing, my friends are important

I wouldn’t worry ’bout me
I wouldn’t worry about me
Don’t you worry ’bout me
Don’t you worry ’bout ME…

c – 1977 David Byrne

Well! Now We Know Just How I Feel About That!!

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Yesterday was sort of magnificent.

Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse began its transmigration from the ether to the page!! I was not really expecting it, so I was really excited.

It’s titled “Hymn to the Dark” and it begins with the idea that angels can be pretty dark, that they aren’t always about “hallelujah,” but that my Muse has shown me that the dark can sometimes be glorious.

So it goes to some beautiful  (& erotic) places.

The title came as a sort of play on Novalis’ famous Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night; Germany, 1800).

Novalis’ real name was Georg Friedrich Philipp, Freiherr von Hardenberg. He lived only from 1772-1801. And Hymns of the Night is an often heart-rending poem of grief that he wrote after his beloved Sophie died (very young) and then he died shortly after her, at age 29. They both had consumption.

The poem was a sensation when it was published in Germany in a literary magazine,  Athenaeum 3 (in 1800), and the poem heralded the birth of German Romanticism.

The book (it’s a long poem mixed with prose), is a staple of Divinity studies and so I’d read it when I was studying for the ministry.  But I think that Christian theologians only look at one specific segment of the poem and don’t really consider the entirety of what Novalis wrote. Even while he does do an uncanny job of capturing what the idea of Christ brought to masses of people who moved out of paganism and into monotheism and then needed to re-frame their idea of Death.

I’m making the poem sound scholarly, but it’s not; it’s really fluid and deep and beautiful. Still, Novalis has a really succinct grasp on how three different eras of Western humanity dealt with the loss & grief of death, and since it was still only 1800 A.D., he ends with the Christian era, nailing it precisely:

“No longer was the Light the seat of the gods or their heavenly sign — over themselves they drew the veil of Night. Night became the mighty womb of revelations — the gods drew back into it — and fell asleep, only to go out in new and more splendid forms over the changed world.”

But in the beginning of the poem, where he’s talking only about his own deep grief and deep loss, he is surprisingly modern and doesn’t represent traditional Christian thinking at all, so why Christians sort of seem to ignore that part is a bit of a question mark for me. But it’s that early, non-Christian, part of the poem that moves me most. Lines about how the secret heart remains true to the Night, where creative Love comes alive, and how we owe everything to that Love (and you can easily read several passages of it as implications of erotic love):

“Won’t Love’s secret offering ever burn forever? …Only fools misrecognize you… They don’t feel you in the grapes’ golden flood — in almond trees’ wonder oil — in poppies’ brown juice. They don’t know that it’s you hovering around a tender girl’s breasts making her womb heaven — and don’t suspect that, out of old stories, you, opening heaven up, come and carry the key to the Dwellings of the Blessed, quiet messenger of infinite mysteries.”

“Doesn’t all that inspires us bear the color of the Night? It bears you mother-like, and you owe all your magnificence to her. You’d evaporate inside yourself — you’d crumble away in endless space if she didn’t hold you, tie you, so that you became warm and, flaming, sired the world.”

His beginning premise seems to be that the Night saved him from his grief and returned his passion, as well as his lover, to him; that in the Night, he engages in some sort of erotic  coupling with her soul once more. And at the very end of the poem, he seems to be plainly speaking about it:

You come, beloved —
The Night is here —
My soul’s enraptured —
The earthly day’s past
And you’re mine again.
I look into your deep dark eyes,
See nothing but love and bliss
We sink onto the altar of night
Onto the soft bed —
The veil is gone
And, lit by the warm pressure,
There glow the pure embers
Of the sweet offering.

None of those sentiments are encouraged in true Christian theological mindsets. Unless, of course, you’re subversively dressing it up in the guise of how you feel about Christ. But Novalis isn’t talking there about Christ at all; he is plainly talking about Sophie’s soul coming to him at Night after her death.

Well. All right. I have truly digressed there. I only meant to say that Letter #5 of Girl in the Night is underway… And won’t it be fun!

Anyway, yesterday was wonderful and I’m thinking today might hold more of the same wonder. I will indeed make time to drive into town and buy groceries!! Yay! That’s always fun — having food in the house.

(And I did go to the gas station yesterday and I begrudgingly bought the smallest bottle of milk available. And then, while making my way to the counter to pay for it, I passed through the candy aisle.  I am not a big candy-eating person, at all. However. What to my wondering eyes should appear but a Kit-Kat bar in dark chocolate!! I did not know they made such a thing! I do love dark chocolate. So I bought the darn thing, and four-hundred-and-ten calories later!!!!!! I had eaten it in its entirety and it was incredibly good.)

Okay-doke, gang. Oh — Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files newsletter today. (Linked there.) But only read it when you truly have the time to contemplate his always-eloquent reply. If you hurry through it, you will only do yourself a disservice.

I am, of course, joking, This time, his reply was only 2 words long. (If you’d like to know which words, they are linked above.)

Okay. I’m gonna scoot!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I’ll leave you with something somewhat appropriate, somewhat not, for today’s ramblings.

This is the song I personally played (over & over) when I graduated from Divinity School (Magna Cum Laude, but on my heady way to nowhere because I just see Christ so darn differently than everyone else does.) It was in December, so it was around Christmas and this song was appropriate to the season. While I do not believe in transubstantiation, I do believe this is a truly beautiful (and beautifully sung) hymn. (It’s actually about Easter, but we sing it at Christmas…) Okay, I love you guys. Have a splendid day!! See ya!

Panis angelicus
fit panis hominum;
Dat panis caelicus
figuris terminum:
O res mirabilis!
manducat Dominum
Pauper, servus, et humilis.
Te trina Deitas
unaque poscimus:
Sic nos tu visita,
sicut te colimus;
Per tuas semitas
duc nos quo tendimus,
Ad lucem quam inhabitas.
Amen.

Three! No, Four (!!) No, FIVE!!! No, SIX!!! Cars Coming Right At You!

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Yes, that is currently me, in the happy intersection of life.

I have three projects, front and center on my plate. All of which call out for my attention; all of which engage and delight me: Tell My Bones rewrites;  Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse (erotic memoir letters);  and In the Shadow of Narcissa (memoir of childhood).

Then I added Thug Luckless to the stack of projects — a porn thing I’m writing that I really, really love but I’m basically writing it just to sell it.

Then, of course, Peitor and I got back on our writing schedule for Abstract Absurdity Productions.

And then I heard from Sandra last night that our other theatrical project, The Guide to Being Fabulous, is once again moving to the forefront in Toronto. (Translation: TONS of rewrites needed there, plus a trip to Toronto for an initial roundtable with the director and the producers at the theater.)

It’s like standing in an intersection and having 6 projects coming right at you, all of which make you really happy, and all of which require 100% focus, attention, concentration. But if you don’t make a decision immediately about which one to focus on, they are all going to run you over.

I think this is why I’ve been staying in bed a little later every morning, even though I’m still awake every day at 5:30 am.  Still going down to feed the cats, eat breakfast, listen to music at the kitchen table — in short, enjoying my peaceful little early morning solitude time. I then go back upstairs to meditate and then center myself by writing in my Inner Being journal thingie. And THEN — I go right back to bed and stare out the window.

Because, by then, it’s still only about 6:30 in the morning; it’s still dark out. There’s no imperative reason to get dressed while it’s still dark out and sit down at the desk and try to tackle that now daily question: which project am I going to focus on first? That daily question that is starting to make me insane. (In a good way, but nevertheless, insane.)

And undeniable proof that I’m staying in bed too long in the mornings is that this morning, I ran out of milk for my coffee!!!! I cannot drink black coffee, and so I never run out of milk. To me, that ranks as a terrible (albeit, First World) catastrophe: Snuggly fall morning in October, still in my PJs, still in my quiet pre-dawn place and suddenly out of milk for my coffee.

Fuck.

I only drive into town once a week to buy groceries. It’s 25 miles each way, so that’s an hour of driving. I drink organic milk, too, so that’s why I buy my milk in town. There is of course milk readily available at the gas station. Two minutes from here.  And even though it’s actual milk, you know; it works. It makes my coffee not-black. But still. Come on. I’m surrounded by farms here for miles and miles and miles. I want my organic milk. But the gas station is not going to carry that and yet only the gas station is open at that lowly hour of the morning… (Which reminds me, yesterday, I was out on the main road that heads out of town, where all the farms begin, and I actually saw a bull trying really hard to mount a cow who kept  sort of scurrying away from him — if cows can be referred to as “scurrying.” It was funny.)

But I digress. My point is that I did indeed run out of milk, which never happens, which tells me that I’ve been hanging out in bed too long, drinking way too much coffee…

But how do you prioritize projects when every single project you’re working on is something that makes you really inspired? Or feel fulfilled, or what have you. My brain gets sort of jumbled. And when that happens, stress sets in.

(I think I will blame my Muse, for being too intensely and wonderfully muse-like. But I’m not gonna shut off that valve, no matter what.)

So, here I sit. At my desk. Dressed. Black coffee in my enormous autumnal coffee mug. I have no clue what I’m going to work on first today. And the morning is already half-gone. (And I need to get my ass to the gas station and buy some fucking milk. Because black coffee sucks!!)

But I’m happy! So that’s cool.

And while I try to figure out what the heck I’m doing today, I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning! I just love this song: “Crow Jane” from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads, from something like a million years ago (or 1996 — something like that).

Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope Monday is just a really great day for you, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya!!

“Crow Jane”

Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane
Horrors in her head
That her tongue dare not name
She lives alone by the river
The rolling rivers of pain
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
There is one shining eye on a hard-hat
The company closed down the mine
Winking on waters they came
Twenty hard-hats, twenty eyes
In her clapboard shack
Only six foot by five
They killed all her whiskey
And poured their pistols dry
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
Seems you’ve remembered
How to sleep, how to sleep
The house dogs are in your turnips
And your yard dogs are running all over the street
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
“O Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson
Why you close up shop so late?”
“Just fitted out a girl who looked like a bird
Measured .32, .44, .38
I asked that girl which road she was taking
Said she was walking the road of hate
But she stopped on a coal-trolley up to New Haven
Population: 48”
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
Your guns are drunk and smoking
They’ve followed you right back to your gate
Laughing all the way back from the new town
Population, now, 28
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh

c – 1996 Nick Cave, Martyn Casey

Yes! Coffee’s Ready!!!

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Yes, I confess!! I am blogging from bed again. My cup of coffee on the night table beside me once more.

A different cup, though. Still autumnal, but this one is really huge.  Requires fewer trips downstairs:

Enormous autumnal coffee cup requires that I leave the bed less!

 

I’m also  blogging in the dark (I only turned on the lamp to better regale you with the photo), plus I’m blogging without my glasses on and hoping for the best!

As much as I love summer and truly hate to see it end (grieve when it ends, is more accurate), I sure do get used to the quiet coziness of fall mornings in a hurry. I cannot emphasize enough how cozy my bed is in the dark, when there’s a little chill in the air.

Kevin is supposed to come by sometime today with his dad to come get his VW camper van from out of my barn.  It’s always so great to see him, if only for a few minutes! He is definitely a wonderfully quirky guy.  Just a delight to know. About 20 years younger than me. Born and raised out here in the Hinterlands.

The first thing he said to me yesterday was, “Are you still giving that guy piano lessons?”

Funny how, when someone is gone for a few months, their perceptions of you remain back in time. Alas, no; I’m not still giving that guy piano lessons. He did finally move to the new house and took his piano out of storage, but he also got a new girlfriend and she moved in with him and he wasn’t making any dedicated time to practice.  So sadly, it was really just wasting my time.

Regardless, though, it was enough time to help me reconnect with myself musically, so that was perhaps the hidden blessing within that whole experience.

But between all the writing projects and trying to learn Italian every day, my intellectual plate is kind of full. If I still had my own piano in the house and could teach here, without having to do all that driving, I would probably be able to be a little more tolerant of people not practicing enough between lessons. Otherwise, to me,  it just feels like a hobby for them, not something serious, and I end up thinking, “Jesus Christ, do you have any clue how busy I am?”

That said… this morning, as I was lying here, doing absolutely nothing besides drinking my coffee, I was reflecting on how incredibly great it feels to do absolutely nothing.  Just lie here. Even while I’m getting excited about Letter #5 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse forming on my inner horizon. I’m not sure yet what it’s going to be about; I can only feel a darkness to it and a depth. No words are forming yet. So I’m excited about all these things I’m writing, but it sure feels good to lie in bed for an extra hour or two in the dark and do nothing!!!

There has also been some interesting stuff going on regarding both of my adoptive parents. It has given me food for thought. I don’t actually know if my adoptive mother is still alive; I’m guessing she is.  But I’m also guessing that if she is dying, no one is going to rush to alert me because they wouldn’t want me to pop up and contest her Will. (Yes, I think that highly of all of them…)

Anyway, my adoptive dad has nothing to do with any of them, But I was lamenting this morning that my relationship with him has really begun to deteriorate again. Part of it is me just becoming this total emotional minefield now.  It doesn’t matter if he tries to be nice (in his own nearly unidentifiable way of being “nice”), I make sure to keep moving all the active mines so that he’s gonna step on one of them, no matter what.

I’m just awful. Like I’m not going to give an inch anymore. I’m just one big minefield, loaded with active mines that are constantly shifting around so that he can’t possibly make any headway with me at all right now.  Pretty much everything he tries to say to me is WRONG. I don’t know if I’ll stay like this forever, but it’s definitely who I am with him right now.

Okay, well. On that cheery note!!! Have a great Sunday, wherever you are in the world. It is of course Tom  Petty‘s birthday today.  Have some cake or something, okay?

(From before he even moved to LA — a really long time ago!)

Okay, I love you guys! See ya.

New Coffee! New Morning!

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Yes, it’s another one of those slow-starting mornings. I’m still in bed, a cup of coffee next to me on the night table. I’m just lying here, staring out the window at the intensity of another lovely October morning.

Cloudy. The wind blowing the autumn leaves into a swirl.

I’m blogging from bed so I’ll be brief. Got my plate super full again so I’m trying to conserve my brain power. Working on both Thug Luckless and Tell My Bones pretty much at the same time. And one project is pure porn, the other is pure poetry. And then on my inner horizon last evening, I saw that Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse was  taking shape!! And tomorrow morning, bright & early, Peitor and I get back to work on our micro script for Leta’s Got To Go, the first micro short that we’ll be producing for Abstract Absurdity Productions.

Yeah, so. Getting out of bed this morning was a little delayed.

Oh! I had a dream about Nick Cave last night. You know how, whenever I dream about him something about it comes in duplicate, plus the dreams are always utterly indecipherable?  Plus I always wake up immediately after the dream so it’s always really pronounced in my mind, which makes their indecipherability all the more frustrating.

This time I dreamed that there were 37 things he was willing to do on the train, but 37,000 things he was willing to do in the other place.

And there you have it. The dream in its entirety. I woke up at around 4:30 with that hovering in my brain and thought, oh my god, what the heck does that mean??!! It was sort of anxiety-inducing, my inability to make sense of it, least of all, at that early hour.

It might have something to do with Ghosteen, I don’t know. But yesterday I couldn’t let go of that song “Hollywood.” It is just so haunting. (I still think I shouldn’t link it here but it is on YouTube.)

All right. I’m gonna close and try to figure out how best to focus this day — in which direction: porn or poetry?  Have a wonderful Thursday wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

The corner where I live, this time last October.

 

Excerpt 4: Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse

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Excerpt 4 is sort of like an intermission, in the style of a Litany. It is still in progress, so excuse typos if there are any!!

Excerpt 4:  Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Contains sexually graphic material which will be inappropriate for some readers.  Please be forewarned. (Approx. 2 pages.)

Litany (One): The Girl Goes Down
For His Mercy Endures Forever

O give thanks    in those days, the land he came from was called Yugoslavia and he worked for the Soviets. In secret. In New York. Gathering, gathering. Information, all the time. From everywhere. From everyone. In my room at night, on my bed, he was the first man I knew who liked to be on top during 69. It was what I liked best about him. Flat on my back, my throat open – his cock went right down. And he never lost track of my clit. Even when he was coming. He made it easy for me to swallow it. I could come like crazy then. His cock down my throat. His mouth on my clit. I was 25, 26 – something like that. It was heaven, to come like that – with my legs wrapped tight around his back.

For his mercy endures forever.

O give thanks    two of them, now. Was I 46? We were all in our 40s. Single. We did it a lot. We liked one another. Well enough. In my house, my room. My bed. Flat on my back. My knees to my tits. The one between my legs is bitching about the condom. It doesn’t fit right. It’s annoying – to me, I mean. He won’t quit fussing with it and I’m so ready to fuck. The other one is backed up onto my face and I’m giving him a rim job. He loves rim jobs and so I love giving them to him. He’s holding my thighs apart to help the other one put his cock in my ass. I could be happy, if the other would quit bitching about the condom. The one with his ass in my face says, “just put it in.” “I can’t, this thing isn’t on right.” “Just put it in her ass. She wants it in her ass, come on.” “Just shut up.” “No, you shut up.” They’re arguing again. The mood is blown. “Will you both shut up? You’re arguing like little kids.” They were always arguing like children, like brothers.

For his mercy endures forever.

O give thanks     David Bowie’s Pinups is on the record player. I’m 13. The boy with me is the love of my life. A child, really. Like me. It’s a new skill I’ve learned – just two days prior. And I can’t wait to show him. It’s his first blowjob. We’re both very excited. We’re trying it. It’s working. But then, suddenly, he comes in my mouth. I wasn’t expecting that. He wasn’t expecting that. I’m stuck there – I don’t know what to do. Nobody had warned me about this part. I didn’t want to be rude. So I swallowed it. He looked at me. And I said, “Um. Excuse me.” And I left the room abruptly. Went into the bathroom and shut the door. Stood there. Looked down at the sink. Wondered if there was something I was supposed to do. But it didn’t come back up or anything.

For his mercy endures forever.

O give thanks     I’m 14. The man is fresh from prison. I like him. I’m giving him a blowjob on a Friday night. It’s summertime. He runs his fingers through my hair while his dick is in my mouth. He’s so gentle. He says, “Where on earth did you learn how to do this? You’re good at it, you know?” My heart was in it – kind of. For the moment.

For his mercy endures forever.

O give thanks      I’m 27. He’s 35. Working on a Dissertation at Columbia University. He’s a Physicist, from Cameroon.  He’s nice. Very gentle. We’ve had two dates. He wants to make love. I go to his room and we kiss. He has the biggest cock I’ve ever seen. I’m scared of it. I want to leave. “Don’t go,” he whispers. “Don’t leave. You’re so beautiful. Don’t go.” I stay. I undress again. I cannot even get my mouth around it. Eventually, we just lie down to go to sleep. He has a very narrow bed. We cuddle. He says, “It’s all right. You’ll get used to it. All the girls are like this, at first.” (He was right. I did get used to it. I loved his cock. I would somehow get it into my mouth; at least suck on the head of it. And he would lie back and whisper: Oh baby.)

For his mercy endures forever.

O give thanks      I’m 24. He’s 21. He’s my boyfriend. But we fight about everything – except sex. He has the perfect cock. He really does. And he worships my pussy, which is just so nice. I’m straddling him, for 69. I’m sucking his perfect cock, which I love to do. I never get tired of having his dick in my mouth. But right now, my soaking pussy is planted on his face and he’s got a firm grip on my hips – keeping me planted there on his mouth. His tongue is going for my clit and I can’t move. His grip on my hips is tight. I’m trying to be fair; trying to keep sucking his cock. I don’t want to be a glutton for all the delirium. But he’s holding my clit captive – it’s at the mercy of his tongue. His tongue is right up in the stiff little hood, wiggling it like crazy. He won’t stop, won’t let me go. I’m stuck there; my whole world becomes my clit and his tongue. I am finally forced to give up on his cock. I’m gasping out all sorts of inanities: oh god oh god fuck jesus god oh shit. And I come right in his face.

For his mercy endures forever.

O give thanks     I’m 20. He’s 40. Italian. He makes love to me. Like a grown man, who’s been around and knows what he doesn’t want. His wife is dead. She jumped from their window, timing it so that he would be coming around the corner shortly after she hit the pavement. His heart shattered when he saw her body on the sidewalk on E. 66th Street. It took him four years to kiss a woman again. That woman was me. He kissed my whole body, made love to it in every position. It was easy to suck his cock, to really suck it; his body was full of passion for me. I wanted him to come in my mouth but he wouldn’t. He wanted to lie down on me and come up inside me, instead. Fucking him was heaven. We made a baby.

For his mercy endures forever. He alone does great wonders.  He led his people through the wilderness. He parted the Red Sea.  O give thanks   Time is a mystery. Your cock in my mouth – it could define the future. He laid out the Earth above the waters. He made great lights. The sun to rule by day; the moon and stars to rule by night. Your cock could define the future – it could. Stars, sun, moon – all of it. For his mercy endures forever.    O give thanks.

© – 2019 Marilyn Jaye Lewis
Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse

Hmmm. What Fucking Planet is She On…

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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.
c –  1967 JERRY RAGOVOY / BERT BERNS