You know, my coffee actually seems to taste better in my new coffee mug. It honestly does. (See last evening’s post for a full-color photo!!)

And I am not one to ever purchase black dishes of any sort. Not even a mere coffee mug.

I’m the kind of person who owns an unfathomable amount of fine porcelain china. Most of it imported from England. And if it isn’t white etched in 22k gold, then it is white and has delicate hand-painted flowers all over it.

I have porcelain dishes for every season and I never mix & match.

Example of ME in the old days, getting ready for a dinner party: “That’s not the bread plate that goes with those dishes – are you out of your fucking mind?! Yes, I know they look exactly the same!! But that one has two bands of gold and this one clearly has two bands of gold and a tiny band of laurel leaves between them!! Come on!!”

I’m exaggerating, but still. I am usually all about the dishes. It makes moving a colossal headache.  A couple years ago, when I was putting everything into storage, I went to the packing store to buy really sturdy packing boxes for good china, and the guy who was gathering all the boxes for me, really politely inquired: “How much good china do you have?”

I could see that he thought I was crazy so I lied and said I inherited it all.

And somewhere on Manhattan’s glorious Upper West Side was an ex-husband still reeling from the amount of dishes I was always carting into the house. “Marilyn, come on – there’s no more room; where are we going to put all this stuff?”

But the very polite guy at the packing store did give me pause: How much fine china do I have? Wow. Way too much.

And what was worse was that, while everything was in storage, I used one dinner plate, one bowl, one juice glass, one water glass and one coffee mug for nearly 2 years.

Uh-oh, I thought. This means I don’t actually need all that stuff. Could it possibly be that for once in his life, about this one specific thing having to do with me and my mental state, that my ex-husband was actually right?

I’m kidding. Of course he was constantly right about all my fucked-up weird shit. Both of my husbands were. It was a little uncanny how accurately they could pinpoint what was fucked-up and weird about me.

But the truth remains that I do have a lot of porcelain china and I love every single piece of it.  And yet, as a single woman who lives in the middle of nowhere and never leaves her desk that is tucked away in the far corner of an upstairs bedroom, I use none of it anymore.

And I have porcelain teacups galore, too. And porcelain teapots. And more types of tea than you can possibly imagine practically spilling from the cupboards above the stove.

I use none of that, either. Now, it’s all about the coffee. Just get it into me as quickly as possible because I have words to write and Pulitzer Prizes to win!

And up until yesterday, I was perfectly happy with my vintage Kellogg’s coffee mug depicting a smiling, carefree 5 year-old blue-eyed blonde girl swinging way high up on a swing, with a baby blue background and puffy white spring blossoms on it. I loved how you could readily see the happy little girl’s white underpants because she was wearing such a short little blue dress and swinging up so high and it always made me wonder: What pedophile designed this Kellogg’s packaging in 1952?

Back when all of America wasn’t trying to protect our children from everything on Earth that we can possibly imagine…

But for some reason, now I totally love my inexpensive black ceramic coffee mug that actually has the word FUCKING on it.

I’ll even go so far as to say it gives me a lot of joy.

And I don’t mean to disparage all those people (women, mostly) who take such issue with my using the “f” word all the time. And I don’t use it all the time.

If a cop stops me (which never happens), I’m not gonna say, “How the fuck are you, officer?”

Or if I’m helping a little old lady to cross the street (which I never do), I’m not gonna say, “How’s your fucking day going, ma’am?”

I am a little bit self-aware.

Back in the days before I was so self-aware, I was out walking in Stuyvesant Park with the writer Joe Queenan. His daughter (who has long-since graduated from Harvard) was 4 at the time  and skipping merrily out ahead of us. And I was saying something to Joe about “so & so being a fag,” and she came skipping merrily back to us and said, “Daddy, what’s a fag?”

It was astounding; the speed and the keenness of her sense of hearing.

He sighed and looked at me with disgust and said, “Thank you very much, Marilyn.”

I did find it extremely funny, but from that moment on, I have at least tried to be conscious of the words I’m using out loud.

But the “f” word clings to me, for some reason, and I just got tired of everybody getting so tired of hearing it, that, for the most part, I have given up censoring myself.

And so my new coffee mug absolutely delights me. And I hope that whoever designed it was a woman who uses the “f” word a lot.

On other topics of interest…

I am on that border of getting overwhelmed so I am just trying to stay focused on one little word at a time, you know? I am going to finish writing Blessed By Light before I so much as look at Tell My Bones again. But I will finish the revisions on the script before rehearsals begin in late July.  I’m just simply going to do it.

And I am still learning a little more Italian every day, and I am going to keep learning this new approach to teaching music so that I can teach this guy how to play the piano while relying on his inner sense of music and not on reading music at all.

And I also really, really do want to thank readers again for their really kind & continuing feedback on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, and I am going to finish writing that book, too, but not before Tell My Bones goes into rehearsals, that’s for sure. But it is next in line, after Blessed By Light.

All things above considered, I guess I just feel entitled to my “f” word these days. (Mostly in front of the cats, though. I stare at all the piles of manuscripts on my desk and spilling onto the floor and I see the calendar and I say: “FUCK!”)

Needless to say, I gotta get moving here today.

I leave you with this: my staring-out-the-open-window-listening music from last evening, as the sun was going down and I was thinking about Nick Cave, and love, and words, and my life. And about how words, really, have become all I have.

It’s another oldie from my bonny girlhood, but what a wonderful song!! I can’t even tell you how many times I listened to this record, all alone in my room, just wondering what it meant. The song – I mean. I had no clue yet what love was, or what relationships might even be, or how it was gonna feel to have to rely on words to stake my little claim in the world, you know? I think I was about 8 at the time…

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

“Words”

Smile an everlasting smile
A smile could bring you near to me
Don’t ever let me find you gone
‘Cause that would bring a tear to me

This world has lost it’s glory
Let’s start a brand new story
Now my love
Right now, there’ll be
No other time and I can show you
How my love

Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my life
I’m here if you should call to me

You think that I don’t even mean
A single word I say
It’s only words, and words are all
I have to take your heart away

You think that I don’t even mean
A single word I say

It’s only words, and words are all
I have to take your heart away
It’s only words, and words are all
I have to take your heart away

c-1967 BARRY GIBB, ROBIN GIBB, MAURICE GIBB