Losing that hour yesterday by turning the clocks ahead, and then the super full moon during the night??!!
First, I fell dead asleep for 2 hours — couldn’t keep my eyes open. Then tossed and turned forever — mostly tossed. Then laid awake from about 2:11am until 4:17am, before falling dead asleep again until seven-fucking-thirty. What the fuck is that? And then I had to absolutely drag myself out of the bed — I was completely exhausted.
(Of course, it was International Women’s Day yesterday, so I guess I was just embodying the pure wonderment of being an international woman, which is primarily: Exhaustion.)
And all my usual morning stuff just took forever today because I felt like I was trudging through Jello, and so now I am sitting down at my desk 2 hours later than I normally do. And I hate that.
And I have a lot to do today!! Wash hair, do yoga, make a phone call, sit and ponder the intensely curious nature of Instagram for a very long time — you name it, and I’ve got to do it!
And all I really want to do today is work on Thug because I made some very interesting progress with him yesterday. (New novel-in-progress, Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town)
That part is actually serious — I am really on a journey with Thug now and I just love when a novel unfolds and takes me places I’m not expecting to go.
I’m still in chapter one, where he’s talking about his owner, Mavis, who has already died. And of course, chapter one is about finding his true voice in my head and figuring out what he knows and doesn’t know, since he’s an AI sexbot. And just how far along has he gotten in his experiences in P-Town before we join him in the beginning of the novel. Stuff like that has to come into my consciousness as it hits the page. So it takes a little while.
But it is such a cool feeling when the words come, and Thug’s personality comes, and Mavis herself becomes a personality posthumously. It just fascinates me. The words come, they’re on the page. I stop and re-read what I’ve written, and I’m sort of amazed that these are characters with emotional depth and a presence. Where does that come from?
Well, because of this extreme lack of time here this morning, I can’t tarry here. I’ve gotta scoot. But I hope you have just a really great Monday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting, gang. I’m leaving you with a song I hadn’t thought of in a really long time — until last evening, when I was suddenly unable to not think about it. It was a hit for Gene Pitney a million years ago, but Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds did a cover of the song on their 1986 album, Kicking Against the Pricks. All righty! Enjoy. I love you guys. See ya!!
“Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart”
Something’s gotten hold of my heart
Keeping my soul and my senses apart
Something’s gotten into my life
Cutting its way through my dreams like a knife
Turning me up and turning me down
Making me smile and making me frown
In a world that was small
I once lived in a time there was peace with no trouble at all
But then you came my way
And a feeling unknown shook my heart, made me want you to stay
All of my nights and all of my days
I gotta tell you now
Something’s gotten hold of my hand
Dragging my soul to a beautiful land
Something has invaded my nights
Painting my sleep with a colour so bright
Changing the grey and changing the blue
Scarlet for me and scarlet for you
I’ve got to know if this is the real thing
I’ve got to know what’s making my heart sing
You smile and I am lost for a lifetime
Each minute spent with you is the right time
Every hour, every day
You touch me and my mind goes astray
I gotta tell you now
Something’s gotten hold of my hand
Dragging my soul to a beautiful land
Something has invaded my nights
Painting my sleep with a colour so bright
Changing the grey and changing the blue
Scarlet for me and scarlet for you
Today is just a really fresh and new day and I woke up feeling like I could think clearly again. I was getting a little bit fuzzy yesterday — and not in a good way. (Although I’m not sure if “fuzzy” has qualities of goodness and badness…)
That said, though, work with Peitor went great yesterday. We are almost done with the script for “Lita måste gå!” (aka “Lita’s Got to Go!”). Which is kind of astounding, all things considered, right?
We’ve only been working on this script (for an 8-minute film) for 15 months now. Yeah, I know — we each traveled a bit — one of us traveled a lot (I won’t name names but it wasn’t me). Plus we each had deaths in our families, etc., etc. So it’s not like we worked for a solid 15 months, but still. Way, way too long. But now we are really closing in on the finish line.
And what’s very interesting about all of this is that, this morning, I looked at the calendar and saw that the deadline I had randomly assigned for completion of the script is March 13th. Next Friday. Interesting, right? How making schedules can really have a positive influence on the momentum of things?
We also spent a lot of time going over organizational type stuff about how to best package the script for potential investors, because it’s a shooting script — all angles and blocking, sound cues and lenses, etc., and only 4 lines of dialogue. Although, at one point, a woman says, “Zuzu!” and at another point, a different woman says, “Oh!” But beyond that, only 4 lines of dialogue, total.)
At that point in our discussions, I mentioned to him that I got the official request to do the audition for that Literary Arts Fair — I’m reading a family-friendly version of “The Guitar Hero Goes Home,” which is an excerpt from my novel Blessed By Light.
And I said to him, “You know, it’s completely acceptable nowadays to submit the audition on video. You know, just do it on your phone and email it in. Everyone does that now.”
HIM: “You’re not everyone.”
ME: “I know, but it’s 2 hours of driving to read a ten-minute piece.”
HIM: “Are you whining?”
ME: “No. I’m just saying it’s a lot of driving.”
HIM: “But you miss the chance to actually meet the people — and to make that first impression. You know how important that is — you’ve been to finishing school.”
Jesus Christ. grumble grumble grumble. Don’t you just hate when people are right?
So I’m going to drive 2 hours for a ten-minute audition. Next weekend. And the festival itself is like a nanosecond after I will be with my new Swiss friends, seeing Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in Zurich. So I’m guessing that the minute the Arts Festival thingy is done (and I’m having jet lag or something), Sandra will tell me I need to be in Toronto to start the table reads for The Guide to Being Fabulous (our other play, which is being produced later this year).
I am, of course, exaggerating. Still. The reason God gave us 365 days in a year is apparently so that we can take 3 of those days and cram our whole entire lives into them. And then spend the rest of the summer just listening to crickets and watching the fireflies as the sun goes down because you have absolutely nothing left to do.
Anyway. I’m guessing it’ll all work itself out splendidly.
I’ve been wanting to mention that the gas prices around here have dropped to $1.95 a gallon!! I have not seen that kind of gasoline price in over 20 years. Seriously. I’m not exaggerating now. And also, when I did see those kinds of prices 20 years ago, it was when the cost of gas was starting to skyrocket and we considered $1.95 expensive. Weird, though, right? Now I stop and get gas even if I only need a quarter of tank or something, because I just can’t get over how cheap it is! Wow. (And this is on the heels of the cost of everything else in my life inching its way into the stratosphere. So it’s doubly nice.)
All righty. I’m gonna scoot. Get the day underway over here. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a really great Saturday, wherever you are in the world! And wash your hands and don’t touch your face, and all that. (Oddly enough, the friends I am closest to — meaning relationships, not distance — are each living in cities that are now in an official State of Emergency because of the coronavirus: Seattle, LA, and NYC.)
But anyway. Take care everyone. I’m on a Paul Simon kick here, still. So I leave you with the breakfast-listening music from this morning. An intensely upbeat and joyous tribute to love and those unexpected encounters that change your life forever!! Yay!! “Gone at Last,” his duet with Phoebe Snow from his truly timeless and amazing album, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975).
So turn it up and enjoy. (And remember, gang: all is fair in love, so keep those proverbial muskets of love primed & ready!) Okay. I love you guys. See ya.
“Gone At Last”
The night was black, the roads were icy
Snow was fallin’, drifts were high
I was weary, from my driving
So I stopped to rest for awhile
I sat down at a truck stop
I was thinking about my past
I’ve had a long streak of that bad luck
But I’m praying it’s gone at last
[CHORUS:]
Gone at last, gone at last
Gone at last, gone at last
I had a long streak of bad luck
But I pray it’s gone at last
Oo,oo,oo…
I ain’t dumb
I kicked around some
I don’t fall too easily
But that boy looked so dejected
He just grabbed my sympathy
Sweet little soul now, what’s your problem?
Tell me why you’re so downcast
I’ve had a long streak of bad luck
But I pray it’s gone at last
[CHORUS]
Once in a while from out of nowhere
When you don’t expect it, and you’re unprepared
Somebody will come and lift you higher
And your burdens will be shared
Yes I do believe, if I hadn’t met you
I might still be sinking fast
I’ve had a long streak of that bad luck
But I pray it’s gone at last
Yes, it is a really sunny morning out there today. Here’s what it looks like outside one of my bedroom windows right now:
The intersection of Basin and First Streets at 8am.
Just a really pretty morning here, even though it snowed a little during the night. (And the birds are still singing, despite the snow!)
You want to know something else that’s really charming that my neighbors know about me? I never shovel the fucking snow!! Yay!! Because I have the longest sidewalk in the entire town. And I am not making that up! I actually have the longest fucking sidewalk in the entire town — the one that runs from the front corner of my house all the way to the back edge of my barn. So it’s not fair to ask me to shovel that, when everyone else in town only has to shovel, like, a 3-foot long thing. Plus, God does this thing called “melting it eventually” so I choose to rely on that. (It’s similar to that thing God does wherein He provides wind to blow all my un-raked leaves away — or into neighboring yards.)
But, of course, there are those smarty-pants people who like to point out that if someone falls and breaks their back on my snowy sidewalk, I could get sued! But if it ever really gets that bad out there, I will put out my sign that says: CAUTION: ICY!! WALK AT YOUR OWN RISK BECAUSE I AIN’T F*CKING SHOVELING THIS STUFF! And under that, the handy NRA-member logo:
Don’t Shovel!! Make America Great Again!!
I am, of course, just kidding. I am not a member of the NRA. I don’t own any guns at all. (If you aren’t an American — the NRA is a very powerful political gun lobby here in the USA, and membership in the NRA implies that you own many licensed guns and are more than happy to use them and that your aim is probably spot-on.)
Still, I’m not kidding about not shoveling…
Anyway!!
Life’s good here in Crazeysburg. I hope it’s good where you’re at, too.
This morning is another one of those Abstract Absurdity Productions script-writing days. We are headlong into Scene 5 now. I don’t expect us to finish writing Scene 5 today because that would be really out of character for us — the scene is a good 60 seconds long. But I do expect it to be really fun because it is just a very, very weird scene. It’s the scene that the whole movie leads up to and then gently falls away from as it trickles to its lofty end. (Or “fin” — as they say in so many film-languages.)
In case you’re interested, gang, yesterday was my first day back doing yoga after 3 weeks of doing Booty Core. I could not believe the difference in the strength in my body.
I don’t do any complicated yoga poses, because mostly I just want to maintain flexibility. But I do headstands, and I couldn’t believe the difference in my arms. And also — as I mentioned a couple weeks ago — in my neck. And I love to do elbow planks and I am suddenly really good at that. (Not that planks are part of yoga, I’m just saying that I like doing those.)
So even though Booty Core got really challenging for me, it made a huge difference. So I will keep doing it.
However, I did have a weird pain issue in my legs again last night. And I’m thinking it’s probably psychosomatic. Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt are aware that I am the kind of person who is always always trying to stay alive. I’ve been plagued by a lifetime of suicidal tendencies — that I don’t believe adequately define who I really am. It’s just that my brain was taught, when I was really little, that I didn’t deserve to exist — that my existence was merely being tolerated, for now — and that it would be preferable if I didn’t exist.
So my brain’s fallback position, when I’m feeling stressed about something, is to try to negate my existence. I honestly think my brain thinks it’s doing me a favor — or at least, it’s doing what it was taught it was supposed to do. (And I’m making a huge differentiation here between my brain and my mind. My brain is this sort of machine set on automatic, whereas my mind is this amazing, wide-ranging, free-spirited energetic-essence type thing. So it’s a case of my Mind vs. my Brain.)
But I really have been plagued by this brain of mine for decades. And one of my life-long triggers — something I constantly have to deal with in my personality, which involves believing in a lack of love — is hovering out there on my horizon and I just simply refuse to deal with it anymore, you know? I’m just done. I am so fucking done dealing with this shit.
But it means that every single time my brain tells me that “I don’t deserve love, I deserve to die” I have to get in there and replace it with a better thought. It’s a type of addiction — you have to reprogram your brain to respond to something else. And it is fucking exhausting.
I don’t want to spend any additional time thinking about my adoptive parents and how damaging they wound up being to me. I only want my brain to stop doing this. Like, now. I’m so over it. Every single damn day I deal with it, but it only gets really bad when a trigger thing starts happening. And a trigger thing is hovering, so now I’m not only trying to reprogram my brain, but totally eradicate the trigger, too. So that the triggers don’t exist anymore, either.
Anyway, I did really really good yesterday. But by mid-evening, I was just exhausted from it. That feeling, like, why doesn’t somebody just shoot this girl, and put her out of her misery once and for all? Which, of course, goes against everything I was working so hard on during the day!!
And then I noticed the extreme pain in my legs attempting to return — maybe a way for my body to say: we’re going to pull the whole world out from under you, starting with your legs. So, at that point, the only really productive thing I can do is go to bed and start again in the morning. (Meaning, here we are again.)
It’s just so frustrating. When it comes to everyone else on Earth — for instance, YOU, whoever you are, reading this right now — I completely believe that you deserve to be loved, that you are loved and that you deserve to live. It’s just a given inside me. I believe that about you without even knowing who you are, how you’ve lived, what you do or think about.
But to believe it about me, is extremely difficult. It is a 24/7 job. Or maybe an 18/7 job, because when I’m sleeping, I’m just fine. And most of the time, nowadays, I am sort of fine. I’ve made so much progress out here alone in the Hinterlands. But when I’m facing a trigger point, if it gets out of control, I do actually get suicidal and I absolutely refuse to go there. So then it becomes like a job. And I just feel, like, oh fuck, here we go again.
However, it was really good to notice what my legs did when my thoughts changed last night. So I’m going to keep that in mind.
And I also woke up feeling like I really did make progress yesterday. Because, you know, my life doesn’t have to be some huge tidal wave of joy washing over me for me to feel like living. Just tiny baby steps in the direction of joy is enough. It really is. Because it builds from there.
So waking up to a couple of texts from Peitor on my phone. And opening the blinds and seeing more snow. And going down to the kitchen to be greeted by 7 crazy happy healthy cats. And turning on the CD player — the Dave Brubeck Quartet greeting me again with “Take Five.” A couple of my favorite little pictures of Nick Cave scattered there on my kitchen table. And then plugging in the coffee pot.
Little joys.
That makes for a really good morning. Because then my thoughts can move from there to the larger joys — the plays going into production now, the production company with Peitor, the books I’m still writing, the words going out there into the world, and the best Muse I’ve ever had in my life. And new people I’m meeting. And traveling this year — it starts to turn into a really good day.
So I gotta scoot!! I have stuff to get organized here at my desk before Peitor calls. I leave you with my listening-music from last evening, before the legs went. I’ve posted this song here before, but I just love it. The imagery. The melody. How it goes to such enigmatic places. “Babe, You Turn me On,” from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre of Orpheus, 2004. Enjoy!! I love you guys. See ya!
“Babe, You Turn Me On”
Stay by me, stay by me
You are the one, my only true love
The butcher bird makes it’s noise
And asks you to agree
With it’s brutal nesting habits
And it’s pointless savagery
Now, the nightingale sings to you
And raises up the ante
I put one hand on your round ripe heart
And the other down your panties
Everything is falling, dear
Everything is wrong
It’s just history repeating itself
And babe, you turn me on
Like a light bulb
Like a song
You race naked through the wilderness
You torment the birds and the bees
You leapt into the abyss, but find
It only goes up to your knees
I move stealthily from tree to tree
I shadow you for hours
I make like I’m a little deer
Grazing on the flowers
Everything is collapsing, dear
All moral sense has gone
It’s just history repeating itself
And babe, you turn me on
Like an idea
Like an Atom bomb
We stand awed inside a clearing
We do not make a sound
The crimson snow falls all about
Carpeting the ground
Everything is falling, dear
All rhyme and reason gone
It’s just history repeating itself
And, babe, you turn me on
I’ve been up for hours already, and I actually got a lot done. Even shaved my legs, which was sort of a monumental undertaking this time. (I’d been putting it off for days.) (And days.) (Maybe even as much as a week.) (Or two.)
Anyway. Got it done.
It’s a strange , intensely foggy morning here in Crazeysburg, but the birds were singing so rambunctiously while I was meditating this morning, that I finally had to stop and simply lie on my bed and listen to them. So beautiful. So joyous. And this was with all the windows closed, on a sort of chilly, foggy morning.
It brought to mind just how loud it gets when the warmer spring weather finally comes and the windows are open. It’s like you can hear every single bird in Muskingum County, by 4:45am.
And then I thought, So. What am I gonna write today? And I realized I was sort of a great big blank.
Work with Peitor went great yesterday. Even though I have a lot of work to do on the Abstract Absurdity Productions website and the whole production company thing has turned into a massive undertaking, I am feeling really good about all of it.
And yesterday, I toyed some more with the idea of somehow taking my TV pilot project for Cleveland’s Burning and turning it into more of a theatrical adaptation for the stage. (Loyal readers of this lofty blog perhaps recall that the one veteran African-American actor who was interested in attaching to the pilot, died suddenly this past summer, so I am sort of still at square one with that.) (And even while the executive in charge of programming at a mega-TV-streaming company out in LA wants to hear my pitch, she has already assured me that she doesn’t care what kind of a great writer I am, she won’t hear the pitch if no one significant is attached yet.)
So anyway, I’ve been sort of turning that project over in my mind (in all my free time) — wondering if maybe it might be better served, for now, on the stage. And I know for sure that there’s a theatrical producer in LA right now looking for this exact kind of project. And even though I have absolutely no clue at this point how I would adapt it, it did seem like a really great idea to take on a new project!! I’m only juggling about seventeen hundred right now.
Then, of course, I thought, Perhaps I should back off of that idea and look at all this other stuff that’s on my plate.
So I’ve been doing that here this morning. Looking at all the projects that are on my plate, I mean. Trying to figure out which direction I want to go in here.
Oh, on another topic altogether — Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds announced yesterday that a show in Milwaukee has been added to the North American tour this fall. Tickets go on sale today, I think. You can see the details here.
Meanwhile, I guess it’s just one of those weird days. I slept great. I feel great. All is right with my world. I have no chores that need doing. I have the entire day & evening ahead of me, within which to create some sort of masterpiece, and now I just have to figure out what that will be. I have no clue. Nothing is calling out to me — except a theatrical adaptation of Cleveland’s Burning. How wonderful.
Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary is at last winding down. Last evening, I watched the episode that sort of focused on the devastation that heroin wreaked on jazz musicians in the late 1940s into the 1950s. That was really gut-wrenching. The show maintains that a lot of jazz musicians (both black and white) wanted to be like Charlie Parker so they started taking heroin in hopes that they would become more like him. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but that’s what the documentary puts forth.
(Charlie Parker became an addict back in the 1930s, when he was in a terrible car accident in Kansas City at age 17. In the hospital, they kept him on a massive dose of morphine and, apparently, he had some sort of epiphany there about music and his saxophone. He came out of the hospital a completely & utterly changed musician with a changed personality, and also with a drug habit that lasted a lifetime.)
Anyway. It was not a cheery episode. Plus it also began looking at the extreme racial problems in America after WWII and how the militant attitudes of the young black Americans made them turn on the older black jazz musicians, seeing them as Uncle Toms since white people liked their music.
Just a big sad mess.
Not too different from today, of course. America can be just so damn rigid. So racist on all sides, against all races, while there are always people trying, often with equal inflexibility, to fight it. It feels like that’s just a part of America that never goes away.
Still, it’s been a really great documentary. Each episode always gives me so much to think about. As if I need more to think about… For me, just the past decade has been an interesting journey, being a white woman, a writer, undertaking a number of African- American projects. I’ve got three projects right now that are essentially comprised of entirely African-American casts; 2 of them I wrote myself and one of them, I’m a co-writer on. So far, I haven’t had to deal with too many objections about my race — sometimes a raised eyebrow, but that’s it. Still, it’s there — an undercurrent of “but you’re white.”
Anyway. On that note, I need to think about what I’m going to work on today. I hope Wednesday is full of all sorts of interesting ideas for you, gang, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I’m leaving you with this stunning, timeless song. I used to sing this song to Mikey Rivera, back in the days when we were in love, lying together in bed, he in my arms, both of us worn out from life, wondering how the hell we were going to survive in New York City after 9/11.
And talk about racist — man, NYC was brutal to us; me being so white and him being so Puerto Rican. And that was already in the 21st Century. Eventually, of course, we left the city behind.
Anyway, here you go. A truly lovely version of “Somewhere,” from West Side Story (yeah, written by a white guy) (heavy sigh). All righty. I love you guys. See ya.
“Somewhere”
There’s a place for us
Somewhere a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere
There’s a time for us
Someday a time for us
Time together with time to spare
Time to look, time to care
Someday!
Somewhere
We’ll find a new way of living
We’ll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere
There’s a place for us
A time, a place for us
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there
Somehow
Someday
Somewhere!
Before I go off on a tangent about how magical and wonder-filled my world is here in the wilds of Muskingum County…
Nick Cave sent out another Red Hand Files thing this morning that was very interesting. It was about his song “Girl in Amber” from the Skeleton Tree album. Plus it includes a photo of his original scribbly lyrics to the song and I always love looking at stuff like that.
“Girl in Amber” is one of the few songs of his that I actually sort of relate to personally. Even though I love all of his songs (as you have most likely surmised by now), there are only a handful that I feel like I actually relate to personally — that makes me think of things I feel about my actual life, I mean. (“Hallelujah,” of course, is another one.) (And “O’Malley’s Bar.”) (Just kidding about that last one.) (Well, at least right now, I’m kidding — but the day’s still young!)
Anyway. What he wrote about the song was illuminating and beautiful. It is such a haunting song, You can read his post here if you so choose!
Okay, so today is all about work. (And by way of my new friend in Switzerland, I am now painfully aware that I work way too much!!) (Oh!! And my ticket to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in Zurich arrived there today!! And even though the concert is 4 months away, unlike Nick Cave’s In Conversation tour, I won’t have to worry about accidentally leaving my ticket here in my room in Crazeysburg because the ticket is already there in Switzerland! Um. How cool is that??) (Very, very cool.)
I digressed. But it was a wonderful digression!!
So, yes. Today is all about work. The laundry is almost done. After I post this to the blog, I’m finally going to force myself to finish those 2 contracts that I had to re-write for Life Story Rights for my play, Tell My Bones. (Yes, indeedy! When I want to avoid something, I can really, really drag it out for days…) But I seriously gotta finish it because people are waiting.
And then I have a few hours on the phone with Peitor this afternoon to work on Scene 5 of Lita’s Got To Go! And this is my very favorite scene. It was actually the whole reason why we decided to write this short film in the first place — this specific scene was the thing that came to us first, while we were sitting at the counter of that French pastry place in one of those farmer’s markets in LA, and we were laughing so hard we almost fell off our counter stools.
(I just want to reiterate that most people won’t find this film so funny that they’ll fall off their counter stools. We are the ones who find it this funny. I’m guessing that most of the people who watch this movie will sit silently for 8 minutes and wonder: What the fuck? But that’s a good thing, too.)
Then after I’m done working with Peitor, I have yet another online seminar, this one about movie financing for short films. (Yes, I try to only take the most uplifting, life-affirming seminars! Because I like to come away from them thinking: Yeah! This is so fun! I love my life!)
So that’s my day — oh, and Booty Core. Can’t forget that.
Well, yesterday, I had to venture into my barn (shown above there) for the first time since the summer ended and it was immediately apparent that the raccoons have definitely been having a nice time in there this winter, including creating their own little front door to get into it (ripping aside some planks at the bottom of one of the side walls of the barn). I really seriously gotta do something about fixing that barn. But I really seriously need someone to haul away that enormous dead oak tree that collapsed beside the barn before I can really work on the barn. And all the many people who have claimed they were coming to remove the tree over these past 2 years that I’ve lived here, have never shown up to remove the tree.
Perhaps this year will be the lucky year!! We shall see. At this point, I am willing to buy the damn chainsaw myself and give it, as a happy parting gift, to whoever actually shows up to do the darn job.
And on my journey back from the barn, I also noticed that the soffit over the eave next to my back door — the one the starlings insist on fucking with in order to build their nests under it every spring — is now completely twisted and destroyed. It is a colossal mess now because I didn’t take care of it when I could have — last spring, when the baby starlings flew away. I’m guessing that the starlings will be thrilled to death that it is move-in ready for them this year and they won’t have to fuck with it at all this time.
It’s just amazing — what a great homeowner I am. The many birds and animals appreciate me, anyway. My neighbors – not so much.
Oh, anyway. I’m happy. And eventually, it all gets done.
Okay, well, I think I’d better get this day underway here. I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang! I leave you with my listening-music from last evening. I’ve posted it here on the blog before: “Time to Move On,” from Tom Petty’s solo album, Wildflowers, 1994. The lyrics by themselves make it seem like a sad song, but I actually find it sort of empowering and uplifting. You can, of course, decide for yourselves! All righty. I might be back to the blog later. We’ll see. Meanwhile. I love you guys. See ya!
“Time To Move On”
It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going
Broken skyline, movin’ through the airport
She’s an honest defector
Conscientious objector
Now her own protector
Broken skyline, which way to love land
Which way to something better
Which way to forgiveness
Which way do I go
Time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going
Sometime later, getting the words wrong
Wasting the meaning and losing the rhyme
Nauseous adrenaline
Like breakin’ up a dogfight
Like a deer in the headlights
Frozen in real time
I’m losing my mind
It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going
And, no — by “miracles” I don’t mean that my cats are finally cleaning!
What I do mean, is that I have to clean — well, that’s not the miracle, either. I do try to keep my humble, cat-infested abode clean. But I haven’t actually vacuumed in weeks.
The last time I vacuumed, some sort of pebble-thing got sucked up into the vacuum and kept rattling around in there and freaking me out. So I figured that if I just let it sit quietly in the dark hall closet for many weeks, it would fix itself.
I feel pretty confident that it did.
But that’s not the miracle, either.
The miracle is that I happened to see a mortgage-banker that I know casually and as I was saying hi, I suddenly asked him if he knew a reputable & affordable plumber who could fix my upstairs toilet, since he deals with home mortgages and all that. And he said, “I’ll do it. Just take some photos of the parts you need, text them to me and I’ll swing by on Sunday and fix it for you.”
Whoa. (That’s the miracle part there, in case you didn’t recognize it. He’s saving me a fortune!)
He’s friends with my friend Kevin — not the director of the play, but the other Kevin, who stores his vintage 1965 VW camper van in my barn all summer. So he’s bringing Kevin along with him. And since this constitutes “people in the house,” I decided that I’d better fucking vacuum today.
I figure the pebble-thing has certainly had plenty of time to de-manifest from the vacuum cleaner by now. I guess we’ll see.
This has already made me feel very spring-cleany-ish, though. I put the Easter wreath up on the kitchen door this morning (yes, while it was still dark out — God knows, you gotta put your Easter wreath up at 5am on a freezing cold February morning…) and I put out all the little spring/Easter things in the kitchen. Not sure what the hurry is, it’s not even Mardis Gras yet. I think it has something to do with all the birds returning.
So.
Today is my older brother’s 61st birthday. (Yes, there is a mere 49-year age difference between him & me.) (And what’s even odder — when I was first adopted, there was only a 17 month difference in our ages!) (And what’s even more weirder – I will still be 12 on my next birthday!) (I know — like, how weird is that? Just one of those mysteries of life that’s best left un-pondered.)
Anyway. My indescribable immaturity aside. I haven’t seen my older brother in 26 years. I know he’s still alive. And he’s happily married — and has been for 26 years. (Yes, I haven’t seen him since his wedding, however, I was actually invited to that wedding.)
(That was his second wedding — I wasn’t invited to the first one because our adoptive dad paid for that wedding and it was one of those years where being really mean to Marilyn was seriously in vogue with my adoptive dad.)
(Honestly, I have no idea why I wasn’t invited to my brother’s first wedding. I wasn’t invited to my dad’s 3rd wedding, either. I can understand not being invited to my dad’s first wedding, because I wasn’t born yet. And I can understand not being invited to his second wedding, because it happened hurriedly, the night before I moved in with him, briefly, when I was 14, and he decided that to remain shacked up with his 27-year-old cocktail waitress girlfriend while I was living there with them would set a bad moral example for me. (I know — don’t laugh. To see those words “moral” and “me” in the same sentence, but he tried.) (And I have to say that after I did move in and my new 27-year-old stepmom and I were hanging out together in the living room, smoking cigarettes while my dad was out on the road, and she was having a cocktail and sort of sharing it with 14-year-old me, she said, “Thank you so much for moving in, Marilyn. I didn’t think your dad would ever marry me.”) Anyway, there are just a whole bunch of family-related weddings that I wasn’t invited to, even though I behave really well in public. I do. I’ve got that whole “how to attend a wedding” thing down. I know how to dress, what to say, I’ve got table manners and stuff. And I bring gifts. So who knows.)
Well, so, I digress.
My older brother is 61 today and I haven’t seen him in 26 years.
He used to look like this, though (and I used to look like that):
And of course, all of this makes me wistful — I really don’t know my brother as a grown man; I know him more as a little boy — and it makes me want to spend some time working on In the Shadow of Narcissa. But I’ve still got to finish up the new Life Story Rights documents for Tell My Bones and get those off in the mail. And the longer the files stay open on my desk top, the more I seem to resist them. So I really have to just force myself to get those finished and back into the mail.
After I vacuum, though.
And do Booty Core.
My Booty Core program is almost over, by the way. 4 more days. Then I will just do it maybe 3 times a week and do yoga the rest of the time. And then just sail off into old age as a sort of splendid swan.
Oh, and I finally broke down and bought glucosamine chondroitin supplements, too. So I guess we’ll see how that goes. I’m really not trying to stop myself from aging. I’m just trying to, I don’t know, keep walking? Stay on good terms with my lovely legs? When I bought this house, one of the reasons I bought it was because the dining room can easily be turned into a first-floor bedroom (and I think it was one in the past) and there’s a full bathroom on the first floor, too, so in case my now elderly adoptive dad wanted to live with me as he got elderly-er, he could have these things. I didn’t get that stuff so that I could be elderly here, you know? It was for him. But, for some hard to discern reason, he doesn’t want to be elderly here in the wilds of distant Crazeysburg where there is absolutely nothing at all…
Well, the script work with Peitor went very well yesterday. We got a lot done. On Tuesday we will finally begin working on my very favorite scene in the whole 8-minute film! The only scene in it where there is a person who actually has lines of (erotic) dialogue!! I cannot wait!! (Honestly, it is going to be so fucked up and so cool!!) This is one of the reasons why I love not living in the regular world. You can just open up your mind and the most entertaining stuff comes out. Seriously.
I haven’t lived in the regular world in such a long time. Actually, I don’t think I ever did. But for a lot of those years, people thought of me as mentally ill. But I’m not ill. I’m just not able to live in a half-sort of world, where you have to squish yourself down and worry all the time about what other people might be thinking of you. Of course, when people think you’re mentally ill, they can just say, “Oh, she’s like that because she’s crazy,” and give you all sorts of leeway and social dispensations and still invite you to parties and stuff. But when you’re not crazy, people don’t know what the fuck to make of you so they just give you a wide berth and leave you mostly alone.
But I don’t really like parties anyway.
However, one part of the regular world that I do live in involves having to deal with that pesky film budgeting stuff. Peitor and I discussed that yesterday, too. And it seems that MovieMagic budgeting & scheduling software is the industry standard and people will be expecting us to work with that, so we will breakdown and buy it (it’s really expensive) and then I will break down (hopefully not in tears) and learn how to use it.
And we shall sally forth into the great creative unknown!!
Well, on Instagram yesterday — quite a bevy of happy folks buying tickets to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on their North American tour! Tickets went on sale yesterday. That was so cool to see, even though when I saw someone post a receipt for their ticket to see them at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, my heart kind of, you know, winced a little. However, I am extremely happy with how things are turning out for me, regardless. But what’s weird, though, is that I know for a fact that the guy who bought that ticket for the Nashville show lives in fucking Australia. Isn’t that funny? People going all over the world to see stuff? (You can buy tickets at that link there, btw.)
Meanwhile, I must get going here!! Jesus. I’ve been working on this post for 3 hours already. I’ve got to get this house clean!! Okay!! Have a great Saturday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!!!
The above is one of the opening lines from the musical, Cabaret:
M.C. (with great irony and a heavy German accent): “In here, life iz beautiful! Za gurls are beautiful! Even za orchestra iz beautiful!”
And that’s sort of how I feel about today! Only without the irony (I still keep the heavy German accent though — in my head, anyway).
Gus Van Sant Sr has a birthday in a few days, so I went outside first thing this morning and walked across the road to stick his birthday card in the mailbox, and even though it was quite cold out and frost was everywhere, guess what?! The birds are back! They were out there singing!
I would not have known this had I not ventured forth into the frozen dawn, still in my jammies & flip-flops!
What a blessing, right? To be rewarded with that reminder that Spring is on its way. And those happy words came to me (without the irony but with the German accent): Even za orchestra iz beautiful!!
So.
Yesterday was a little intense. I did not get to work on Thug Luckless much at all, because more legal stuff came up re: Tell My Bones and I had to deal with that, and with trying to re-write even more legal documents without losing my fucking mind.
ME (on the phone, not really saying this, only thinking it): “Just give me the rights to my fucking play! Fuck all this other shit! That’s all I fucking care about right now, you fucking assholes! We’re going into table-reads in New York in a few fucking weeks here and you’ve had years to object to this other shit! I’ve already gone above the industry standards on these fucking options and these percentages and at this rate, I’m not going to see any fucking money from this thing until I’m 72 and half years old! For Christ’s fucking sake! Fuck!!”
ME (what I really said, in my nice-Ohio-girl voice, wherein I actually do sound 12): ” Oh I see. Sure. I understand. Let me just make a phone call, okay? And see if I can work on maybe just re-wording this document a little bit because, you know, I’ve given you all of my babysitting money already. So, um. Would that be all right?”
Jesus.
That aside, though. I slept great last night because I had been reading an email from someone that I don’t even know, and I believe that people really are beautiful. They just fucking are. You know, we all have our little roadmaps that we follow in life, trying our best to find our way through whatever is thrown at us. And I think it’s so beautiful how most people just keep trying and keep tweaking that map, maybe, but they find their way. (Me included, of course. God knows.)
And I did oversleep a little bit this morning because, deep down in my subconscious, I knew my script work with Peitor today wasn’t going to begin until this afternoon because he has to go to the eye doctor. And I also knew that I didn’t want to do Booty Core this morning, either — I wanted to take a break. And my bed felt so cozy and I was breathing great because I’d finally changed the furnace filter and everything just felt so perfect in my little world, that I decided to oversleep! And so I did! And then I was still up early enough to hear the birds singing. In February.
Sort of a joyful start to a morning, right? And I’m going to try really hard to make today’s script session better than it was on Tuesday.
I’m still not sure if the tension was coming from me, or not, but I do know that I was upset about that whole Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds North American tour thing that day but I wasn’t talking about it with Peitor because he gets really tired of hearing about Nick Cave. (I know — how weird, right?! He even says stuff, like, “Marilyn, could you please focus? We’re trying to work here.”)
(Although, to be fair, it’s probably not easy having a business partner who’s only 12 — ME: “I found another ladybug today! Oh, and I saw a hoverfly on my kitchen window! And I rescued him in a Kleenex and I put him outside and he just flew away, he really soared. He seemed so happy!” PEITOR: “I’m sure he was. Can we look at scene 5?”)
However!! Now, because of the overwhelming kindness of complete strangers, that whole issue regarding Nick Cave has not only evaporated, it has become this truly amazing thing! This gift in my life.
So. I’m just feeling really good about today. And I probably can’t work on Thug Luckless today, either, because I still have to work on rewriting the legal stuff for the play. But I did realize yesterday, that the atmosphere I’m visualizing for P-Town feels a lot like that comic book, Fell, written by (the other) Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith. It began in late 2005. I’m not a comic book fan, but I always really loved that one — that series. I actually have never met anybody who was familiar with that comic book, but I just loved it.
And so I got out all those FELL comic books and sort of flipped through them again. And still just loved it.
(Which, in a round about way, reminds me that the guy who turned 18 the other day, and I bought him a lighter? He’s becoming a Navy SEAL. Which is sort of jaw-dropping to me, because — I’ve never told him this, or anything — but he really reminds me of my father, my birth dad. For one thing, he’s always singing these songs that were huge hits back during the Vietnam War, and yet this kid is only 18. But it’s one of the reasons I feel so drawn to the guy’s personality — he seems so much like my dad. And, of course, my birth dad was a Navy SEAL, in Vietnam. It was another one of those things that stopped me dead in my tracks and made me wonder: who are we, really? You know? What are human beings beyond this constant transference of energy, of beingness?? That just keeps recycling and expanding and never ending. Wow.)
So on that note!! I better get going here. Have a great Friday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with the opening song from the movie version of Cabaret, “Willkommen”. (It includes the quote from up above — and if you’ve never been exposed to this film, this opening song here will give you an excellent idea of what you’re getting into when watching it. I was actually 12 when I saw this movie and was blown away by it. My adoptive mother was with me, though, and her being Jewish, well, she was very disturbed by the whole movie, and understandably so. But anyway. It is now a classic.)
First of all, Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files thing today was really cute. You should go check it out. One of the people who wrote to him today was really funny! I laughed out loud. (He has now had 20,000 letters written to him by way of The Red Hand Files!) (And, no, I did not write 19,993 of them…)
Okay. Yesterday saw a brand new Page One come into existence for Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town.
I was very, very happy with it because it feels to me like Thug has really found his voice. I’m re-writing the whole thing from scratch, by the way. So, a new “page one” appearing is a really exciting thing. I call it “finding my way in.” Once that voice comes, I know that a book is as good as written. Now all I have to do is actually physically get it down onto the page. But the excitement factor for me in creating something new in the world has certainly arrived and I just love that feeling.
(If you’re new to the blog: Thug Luckless is my new novel-in-progress. He is an AI male sex robot who is abandoned in a post-apocalyptic town after his female owner dies suddenly. And no one in the town knows how to turn him off so he just goes around, fucking all those jaded and lonely women that you so often find in a post-apocalyptic town. He becomes a sort of misused fixture in the town (called P-Town — and not because it’s Provincetown). But it’s actually a story about coming into a gradual awareness of Self. Self-awareness, self-discovery, the Higher Self, through the intimacy of sex, whether it’s sort of forced or otherwise. ) (I guess it’s “spiritual pornography” — that always-easy-to-market book publishing category…)
Anyway. I’m excited about it. I really am. I love Thug Luckless. And as God is my witness, someone will publish it!
All righty!
Some other really, really exciting things happened yesterday! In addition to discovering more auspicious ladybugs in the house (!!), and a plethora of hoverflies (what’s up with that?? I found three in my house just yesterday afternoon — those are the flies that look like bees but aren’t), I also went down into my creepy basement and finally changed out the filter in the furnace. It was several weeks overdue and my sinuses were acting up again.
I can’t emphasize enough how much I really don’t enjoy going down into that 119-year-old unfinished basement, replete with a bonanza of spiders, passing the cold winter months near the toasty furnace, and just a bunch of other stuff that you glance at and think: “what the hell is that?” And then you just quickly change the filter and get the heck out of there…
So that’s done for the next 3 months. I’m already breathing better. It’s practically instantaneous. (Not only is this a really old house that’s just naturally full of dust and I’m allergic to dust; but it is also a house filled with 7 cats and I’m allergic to cats.) Anyway. I’m breathing better.
The other thing that happened yesterday is not quite as exciting as finding a bunch of insects and going down into my creepy basement, however — I was very kindly and generously invited to go to Switzerland in June and see the lovely country and meet its lovely people (and hopefully get some more cool coasters in the airport) and also see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at the Hallenstadion!! Yay. And the ticket has now officially been purchased!!
How cool is that, gang? I mean, honestly? I’m really so excited and so grateful. What a great day yesterday was. People can be so wonderful.
And to be precise: this will be the first actual vacation I’ve had in years. Truly. I always travel for work-related things. They are never “vacations.” Ever. Ever. Ever. I don’t think I’ve been on a vacation since I went to Copenhagen with Wayne back in, like, 2001 (wherein, I also decided that I wanted a divorce so that was a super happy vacation). I’ve traveled a huge amount since then — London and Paris a few times; Bristol, NYC many times, and LA a few times, San Francisco — even to Cleveland, for god’s sake. But they were all work-related trips in one way or another. Doing readings, book-signings, taking endless meetings, setting up massively time-consuming new business endeavors with colleagues overseas, etc., etc., etc.
So, I am so excited. A vacation. Meeting new people. Going someplace that I’ve always wanted to go. I just can’t wait.
However, between now & then — man, I have a lot of work to do. And I guess, on that cheery note, I’m gonna get started here. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope Thursday is really just spectacular — full of unexpected delights and reasons to rejoice. (I know — I don’t ask too much from a mere Thursday, do I?) I love you guys. See ya.
Okay, gang. Today I’m going to try to move forward joyfully!!
None of this “shooting her” business! We will deal with fucking movie budgets if we have to deal with fucking movie budgets. God knows, I’ve dealt with worse things in my life. I’ll just buy MovieMagic budgeting software, like everybody else, and see if it will “magically” just do everything… (Loyal readers of this lofty blog perhaps recall that I am not super good at math. I am good at algebra. But, oddly, algebra does not feature hugely in movie budgeting.) (Not yet, anyway.)
Even though I really want to get back to some new chapters for In the Shadow of Narcissa, I’m thinking that some new pages for Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town will win out today. I’m sort of in a Thug Luckless kind of mood. (I always like to use the image below for quick reference — are we in a Thug mood today, or not?)
Yep, he’s resonating, gang…It’s officially a Thug Luckless kind of day
I’m not sure what happened yesterday — why it was that, midday, my energy completely turned around and became so stressed. It actually never got better.
(I think part of it is that I don’t see any reasonable way for me to attend any of the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds concerts this time. I have too much to do with my various far flung projects and I will have to travel for all of those already. So Nick Cave just doesn’t seem like a reasonable expectation. Yeah, I know — I’m the one who decided it was going to be great to live alone in the middle of fucking nowhere so that traveling becomes such a fucking ordeal. And I am not a person who accepts “having to be reasonable” with any sort of grace or anything like that. I get pouty and frustrated, because I feel like I should just be able to do anything I want, right? And not have to fuck around with intensely complicated movie production budgets and playwright contracts that look suspiciously like the playwright always gets screwed, etc., etc. I think my barely suppressed attitude was fucking up my whole day yesterday and on into the night.)
Well, I did do Booty Core after I posted so angst-ily to the blog last evening, but the final ten minutes were so intense on my knees, that I just gave up on that, too.
I did watch a really cool episode of Ken Burns’ Jazz, though. We are now in the post-WWII era. Dave Brubeck is putting in an appearance now, along with Miles Davis. So we are inching into contemporary jazz, which is not my favorite. But it is still just a really great documentary. I am almost done with all 10 episodes. How many months has it taken me to watch this thing? But I have just really, really loved it and I’ve learned a whole lot about various jazz musicians that I just grew up taking for granted.
Even though I’m not a Charlie Parker fan, or even much of a Miles Davis fan, either (although I did meet Cicely Tyson back in the mid-1980s and she was really, really cool and just so sweet), (Miles Davis and Cicely Tyson were married at that time, in case you’re wondering what the fuck I’m suddenly talking about). Anyway. In the documentary, they were saying that Charlie Parker’s impact on music fans was just as startling as Louis Armstrong’s had been on people in the 1920s.
I found that perspective really sort of jolting. It gave me something to think about, because of course I grew up in an era where Louis Armstrong was a household name, there was nothing at all startling or emotionally arresting about his sound. As far as I was concerned, he’d simply always been there. (I’ve learned a ton of cool stuff about him in this documentary, as well.) But it gave me a different perspective on Charlie Parker, too.
Anyway. I’m learning a lot. I still don’t understand what it means to actually be a human being — you know, why we exist and what we actually are (although I’m leaning toward believing that we are just vibrating energy that gets filtered through our senses, only appearing as something physical on the surface). But in the meantime, music is fucking cool.
In fact, on Instagram last evening, I was exposed to Miyavi for the first time. @alysoncamus, who writes for RockNYC, always posts really cool photos and videos of bands playing in smaller clubs (in LA, I’m pretty sure). It’s almost always bands I’ve never heard of before because it’s not usually the kind of music I listen to. Still, I always find it really interesting. So many, many talented musicians out there in the world, making so many different kinds of music, and it is just so hard to earn a living at it nowadays.
However, Miyavi (from Japan) has been around a long time now and seems to be doing just fine. Although I had never heard of him until last night. I’m going to quote what Alyson Camus wrote about him on RockNYC because it seems extremely accurate: “Miyavi is a born rock star, electrifying the air with his powerful stage presence and his incredible energy, he is a blue-haired silver bullet with a theatrical style and a guitar on fire.”
I always love that feeling when you encounter a musician for the first time and your jaw sort of drops and you feel that kinetic energy just rush through you. Even on a tiny little screen like Instagram. (And it’s exactly things like that, which make me wonder what exactly human beings are, you know? What are we, when I can feel something like that through a tiny little screen on my fucking phone? And it wasn’t even live — the show happened Monday night. But anyway.)
So that was cool. And I had a wonderful exchange with a reader last evening, too. About an older story of mine that appeared in Italian translation a long time ago.
It’s really nice to finally be getting such life-affirming feedback on my writing, as opposed to the amount of letters I’ve gotten over the years from men in prison. I don’t judge people in prison, even though the people who have written to me have tended to be convicted murderers and pedophiles. I honestly don’t judge that. I still believe that the human experience is really just a transference of energy — choices that are constantly being made. For whatever reasons. You know — if you choose to murder somebody, you’re making a choice about the energy you’re putting out and then you have to receive the energy that comes back from that.
So I don’t judge that. It comes down to choices. And I know the choices that I prefer to make in my own life; choices about who I want to be in the world. But it did feel incredibly great to hear from somebody who seems to have lived a really great life — free of prison and murder and pedophilia — and something I wrote got to be part of that. That really made me feel good.
So all is not lost!!
And who knows; maybe for some inexplicable reason, I’ll have to be in, like, Nashville on October 4th and, just like Charlie of “Chocolate Factory” fame, I’ll buy some sort of candy bar and inside of it will be a coveted golden ticket to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at the Grand Ole Opry! (I mean, how fucking mind-bending would that be? As much as I’d like to see, maybe, Ernest Tubb at the Grand Ole Opry (he’s quite dead, btw, in case you don’t know his music, plus, he would have played at the Ryman, not at the new one), still, it would just be too fucking amazing to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at a venue like that.)
But anyway. Life goes on.
And on that note, I’m gonna get to work here on Thug Luckless! Pour a little bit of my frustrating angst into him!! Thanks for visiting, gang. You probably have a sneaking suspicion about what I’m leaving you with today — from the RockNYC YouTube channel! Miyavi. The full version of what I was watching on Instagram last night! Have a good Wednesday, wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. See ya.
(And as May West would have responded: “My goodness had nothin’ to do with it!”)
Anyway.
Wow, I’m in a mood today. I guess you know your morning is off to an interesting start when you’re still on your first cup of coffee and you’re already flipping through page after page after page of your many collections of Baudelaire’s wide and various writings, looking for a mere stanza about the girl who is like a pal and will have anal sex with you.
I don’t even remember what got me thinking in that direction in the first place, but since I couldn’t remember if it was in his journals, or in a poem, or in his other writings, it was seriously like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I knew I’d quoted it before — decades ago — in one of my own journals, but trying to find it in one of those, is like the other haystack that the needle is within. I have something like 42 journals.
But what I did re-discover, is a stanza from “A Madrigal of Sorrow” that I used to have taped to my wall for years. I’d forgotten all about it. I think it was sort of a combination of my mantra and my mission in life. I don’t remember when it came off of my wall. Probably when I left E.12th Street and moved in with Wayne. From an English translation of Flowers of Evil:
My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, When you awaken shuddering, Until that awful hour be here, You cannot say at midnight drear: “I am your equal, O my King!”
Interesting, isn’t it? My whole life, I have always flown under the radar; Topping from the bottom. (Meaning, I’m submissive in nature and always have been, but I am always taking mental notes; always. I’m watching you like a hawk. Because the day is going to come when I am going to reveal myself to be just like you.)
Well, another poem of his that I always loved and had forgotten about: “What A Pair of Eyes Can Promise.” Also from Flowers of Evil. Basically, a poem about having sex with a woman who has black pubic hair. (Oui, c’est moi!!! Yay!) (I know — if you’ve never read Baudelaire before, what the hell are you waiting for?)
Anyway. I’m just frisky today. I have no idea why. And I have quite a non-frisky day ahead of me: finish the laundry, then do Booty Core, followed by several hours of script work over the phone with Peitor, followed by a one-time online course in the proper formatting of professional film budgets. (I know — don’t envy me for my glamorous life!!)
I woke up at 5am, as usual, and today I was singing “Higgs Boson Blues.” Not my favorite Nick Cave song. I don’t dislike it, or anything, but it’s not like — for instance, last night, I was listening to Let Love In and could not get past the first two songs without having to constantly press repeat because I love both those songs (“Do You Love Me? Pt. 0ne” and “She’s Nobody’s Baby Now”) so fucking much that I can’t stop listening to them. I never got to the rest of the CD.
Anyway. Why “Higgs Boson Blues” today? Specifically the line, “I’m driving my car down to Geneva”? I played the song during breakfast and still could not figure out why I was thinking about Geneva. Much like yesterday, suddenly singing a Pink Floyd song. (Although, except in that instance, I don’t actually like Pink Floyd, so it was even weirder.)
Still, you know. At least my curiosity got me out of bed. And then I realized that I felt quite frisky. And that seems to bode well for whatever I have to do today. Because frisky is good!
In fact, here is the tee shirt I suddenly decided to wear this morning. I’ve owned it a couple of years now, so the booty core curvy-wurvy factor has nothing to do with this tee shirt. It has always fit me like this. And I only paid $3 for it at the dollar store (or the three-dollar store, in this case). But whoever designed this cheap tee shirt is a fucking genius because I guarantee you that no other shirt I own or have ever owned makes me look quite so BLESSED!!!
Me, right this minute, just SUPER blessed
I know! I look like I could be in Playboy or something. But trust me, I can’t. It’s the darn (or should I say lovely?) shirt… (And I’m not even wearing a b-r-a; nor have I ever had any sort of surgical enhancement that keeps me looking perky. This is all just God’s handiwork by way of a cheap tee shirt, blessing me like nobody’s business!!)
All righty!
So this morning, I jump-started Mardis Gras and the beginning of the Lenten season by switching to my pre-Easter breakfast dishes. The ones from Germany that I accidentally used a few weeks back when Nick Cave was having a Conversation in Germany and for some unknown reason I was inexplicably zoning out at the breakfast table: pink with a white skull & crossbones motif, and the little juice glass with the tiny polka dots of pastel green, yellow, pink, blue, and purple.
I have no clue why I decided it was suddenly time to move forward, but move forward, I did. By way of my dishes. And it felt quite cheery at the breakfast table — skull & crossbones notwithstanding. (And “Higgs Boson Blues” notwithstanding, either — it’s not really what you’d call a “cheery” song.) However, I felt quite cheerful. And quite frisky. And I’m not going to ponder everything to death today. I’m just gonna flow with it.
(Oh, and if you live somewhere in the United States that is not Crazeysburg (and that’s not a hard thing to achieve, trust me!!), you can get tickets to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on their North American tour, beginning at 10am, your time, this Friday, 2/21. Check the tour schedule here!! And Weyes Blood will be on the bill in some of the larger cities.)
Okay!! I gotta scoot. The morning is just about gone here. I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world and to wherever it takes you. Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with something you’re probably not expecting at all, but it’s a song I love that always enhances my friskiness factor! “Jockey Full of Bourbon”!! Off of Tom Waits’ truly awesome album Rain Dogs, from 1985. Okay! I love you guys!! See ya.
“Jockey Full Of Bourbon”
Edna Million in a drop dead suit
Dutch Pink on a downtown train
Two dollar pistol but the gun won’t shoot
I’m in the corner on the pouring rain
16 men on a deadman’s chest
And I’ve been drinking from a broken cup
2 pairs of pants and a mohair vest
I’m full of bourbon, I can’t stand up
Hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
Hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
Schiffer broke a bottle on Morgan’s head
And I’ve been stepping on the devil’s tail
Across the stripes of a full moon’s head
Through the bars of a Cuban jail
Bloody fingers on a purple knife
A flamingo drinking from a cocktail glass
I’m on the lawn with someone else’s wife
Come admire the view from up on top of the mast
Hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
Hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
I said, hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
Hey little bird, fly away home
House is on fire, your children are alone
Yellow sheets in a Hong Kong bed
Stazybo horn and a Slingerland ride
To the carnival is what she said
A hundred dollars makes it dark inside
Edna Million in a drop dead suit
Dutch Pink on a downtown train
Two dollar pistol but the gun won’t shoot
I’m in the corner on the pouring rain
Hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
Hey little bird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children are alone
Marilyn's Room 