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Gosh, I Feel So Bad For Me!!!

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Yes, gang! I know!! My life SUCKS!!

I have to spend the whole darn day working on that new web site for Abstract Absurdity Productions or it is NEVER gonna launch!!! Fuck.

I hope that by now you had a chance to see our wonderful new logo!! I just love it. Peitor did such a great job. He had been trying to explain his idea to someone there in LA who actually designs logos, but then realized he was just going to have to do it himself if it was going to be anywhere close to what he was envisioning.

He’s been a record producer for decades and, as the Internet took over the music industry, he became really good at designing album cover art JPEGS, too, so he decided yesterday to just do our logo himself.

I am so happy with it!! It fills me with glee whenever I look at it. I’ll post it again here, in case you didn’t see it. This is just the rough image that he texted me last night:

Abstract Absurdity Productions new logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s an urgent update, on another, very different note!

The starlings are right at this very moment building a nest in my gutter but, for now, choosing a whole new area of the gutter to destroy!! This one is outside my upstairs bathroom window.  Isn’t that just fantastic news??!! After I so patiently didn’t fix the part of the gutter they destroyed last Spring so that it would be all move-in ready for them this Spring??!!

Okay. Back to what I was saying.

Our meeting yesterday was not about script work at all, even though we are so close to finishing the script. Instead, we wound up working on business stuff and discussing what I needed to do to get the website launched (re-direct the domain, etc.); then get the YouTube and Vimeo channels set up; and the social media accounts set up, and we discussed the (absurd & abstract) game plan for social media once we launch.

It became quite a tidy little To-Do list for me, gang. I tacked it to the wall in front of my desk and my heart sort of sank. I cannot keep avoiding this stuff. It is absolutely never going to get done if I don’t just fucking do it.

So. I’m doing it.

Yesterday, I finally decided on 2 templates for the web site. I know the one I prefer so I hope it’s the one that will work for us. We’ll barely have any content when the site launches, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to set up. I just need it to be a template that will easily help us grow. (This template I use here for Marilyn’s Room is so freakin’ easy to use, it’s ridiculous. It is so user-friendly. I think I’ve been using it for about 5 years already. But it’s a magazine template.)

Anyway. It also became incredibly clear that I needed a better movie editing software thing on my desk top. So I had to research that. I settled on Lightworks, because it will be easy to upgrade to Pro if I ever need to. I’m not planning on becoming a film editor or anything  (she says now — but the day’s young!). But I do need to be able to edit our video clips and upload them to the web site.

So guess what I get to do today (besides take 2 more webinars — another one on movie financing for short subject films and one on negotiating perks and credit placements, and back-end point deals, etc., etc.)? Yes, that’s right!! I get to learn how to actually use Lightworks now that it’s on my desk top!! Because apparently it’s not 100% user-friendly. And let’s face it — I am not (yet) a film editor, by any stretch.

Although I do have an Associate’s Degree in audio engineering. Yes! I’m technically a Sound Engineer. However, I have no desire whatsoever to be a Sound Engineer and so my skills are extremely outdated (analogue!!). But my point is, I can grasp this sort of stuff when I focus and pay attention. (I think that’s redundant, but it gives you an idea of how my mind can wander if I’d rather be doing something more important  — i.e., looking at all things Nick Cave-related on Instagram).

But anyway. I’m guessing I can learn the basic Lightworks interface pretty quickly. But I have to do that pesky thing called: watch the videos and actually learn it. And I have to take those 2 web seminars. And I have to learn the new web site template and actually upload stuff to it and launch it.

I know! I’ve tried to tell you! Even though I do Booty Core now and look indescribably fantastic for someone who’s going to turn 60 at any moment;  and even though the hair stuff really is working and my hair is really starting to look like I actually have some and it’s not falling out everywhere!! Even though all of that stuff is so blindingly  difficult to ignore — Please don’t envy me for my truly glamorous life! A lot of fucking web seminars and other frustrating stuff go into making the magic happen.

All righty. Oh, in case you want to know. Now that I know for sure this stuff works, gang, here it is. (But if you buy it on Amazon, be forewarned that the company will strongly urge/bribe you to give them a 5- star review, which kind of irked me. But it does indeed work.)

Image result for essy hair growth oil

Before I forget, if you saw my post about Weenie yesterday and how he is showing signs of potential kidney problems — he’s on his homeopathic drops now, maybe forever. And no more treats for any of them, ever. The salt content in those treats is through the roof. And I know this. But gosh they love them. And the worse the ingredients, the better they love their treats. But it’s got to stop.

Last night, they all wandered into the kitchen and stared at me, quite perplexed; their little expressions saying, “Have you forgotten something? Isn’t it treat time?” And I tried to explain to them that Weenie was sick and that I didn’t want him to die that horrible death that Daddycakes went through.

They acted like they didn’t understand a word I said. But today, they’re spellbound — glued to the windows and watching the starlings flit and flutter and build their nests hither and yon. So hopefully we can forget that treats ever even existed! And have 7 healthy, happy cats for a very long time.

Okay. I’m gonna scoot and start working on all that exciting stuff mentioned above!! Thanks for visiting, gang!! I hope you have a really great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, with the appropriately titled Moanin’ from1958. Another true classic of jazz. If you don’t know it, give it a listen, you’ll probably love it (and want a martini or something!). (Even at breakfast!) All righty! I love you guys. See ya!

Luckily, I’m Not Going Anywhere!

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Man, it’s been another one of those mornings. I cannot seem to focus for more than a nano second on any one thing.

I had already made up my mind last night that I wasn’t going to really do anything today. I was going to just sort of relax (or, at the very least, work on understanding my definition of the word “relax”) and just wait for the guys to come over and fix that upstairs toilet.

I did actually vacuum the whole house yesterday, and that pebble problem thingy had — miraculously — fixed itself.

I am so serious — this is one amazing house, gang. It sort of pitches in and helps you work miracles.

When they enshrine my house after I’m dead, they will rope off that hall closet so that no one can touch it anymore, and the eager docent will explain to the many visitors how it was a magic closet that worked miracles. “She would put her vacuum cleaner in here for many weeks at a time and it would fix itself.”

Then the inevitable questions of visitors to the shrine:

  • “That writer who lived here was crazy, though, right?”
  • “How come they don’t make magic closets anymore?”
  • And one lone woman with tell-tale cat hairs all over her clothes will pipe up: “I knew closets could do that!”

Okay. Anyway.

I woke up in such a sad little place this morning.  I was having another one of those dreadful dreams where my adoptive mother was abusing one of my beloved cats. This time, it was Daddycakes, my little rescued boy cat who died last spring from kidney failure.

Even though he was feral, he would let me pick him up and cuddle him, but he didn’t really like it too much so I tried not to do that to him too often. He did like to sleep on top of me and walk on me in bed and stuff. And he loved to be brushed. But once in  a while, I would scoop him up and force him to endure great big hugs and kisses! And he would look at me with a sort of tolerant dignity and an expression that said: “Please stop. They’re all looking at me.”

I miss him so much. And it broke my heart to watch my mother (in my dream) abusing him. I was finally able to get over to him and pick him up and he felt so real. You know, his body was warm and alive and all furry and wonderful.

So I woke up crying a little bit, I still feel like I failed him by not getting him to a doctor sooner. It just didn’t seem right to try to trap him here in the house, where he felt so safe, and put him through all that terror when he was so sick. And by the time he was docile enough to get him into the car without a trap, and drive him to a vet 30 miles from here, the only one I could find who agreed to treat a feral cat — it was too late to save him. It was just heartbreaking.

But when you’re dealing with wild animals, you have to try to let them live & die by their own rules. As much as possible. But it’s hard not to want to layer your own human perceptions on to who they are. You know, to me, it felt like he was my little baby boy cat. To him, it was probably more like: “No, I was a cat who came to live in your house for awhile and it was time to go.”

Anyway, I realized that probably I was actually thinking about my older brother in that dream (see yesterday’s post) and everything our adoptive mother did to him when we were little that I couldn’t save him from. (My memoir-in-progress, In The Shadow of Narcissa.)

And at the breakfast table today, I realized that she was all about dividing & conquering. My brother and I weren’t allowed to help each other or even to care about each other, because she was the center of the whole universe — we weren’t allowed to focus on anyone else, not even each other. And still, she wouldn’t allow you to openly care about her, either, because there was no way you could ever love her enough. She would scream at us in this truly god-awful way. Just so frightening. I mean, the physical stuff was awful, too, but that screaming was not to be believed. And there was always that undertone that she intended to kill you – literally. She wanted you not to exist. (She had an extreme Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and was likely psychotic, as well. Her mother — my adoptive grandmother — also dealt with various personality disorders and mental illness. Electroshock treatments, dark bedrooms, drugged to the gills kind of thing.)

Anyway. I realized that she instilled in us — and it’s still in my brother, at least — this wall of emotional resistance. As soon as it looks like you’re doing something that’s going to bother my brother, the wall comes down and you’re out.

Up until his second marriage, he used to keep in touch with me pretty regularly over the phone. However, his second marriage coincided with my becoming ” a pornographer” and he had less and less tolerance for me from then on. This sort of, “why are you doing this, Marilyn? Your music was so good.”

I got that from so many of the people I was close to; my writing made so many people feel really uncomfortable; they didn’t know how to process it. I barely know how.  But, you know, I was just lying around in bed one morning, like, 50 years ago, wondering: “Hmmm. How I can upset everybody today? Oh I know; I’ll become a pornographer…”

Jesus. Whatever. It makes me sad that my older brother doesn’t want anything to do with me. But I still feel our parents instilled that in him. It didn’t “take” with me because I am relentlessly empathetic and fear is not going to stop me from caring about people (or animals or insects or spirits in the night).

The last time my brother had anything to do with me, was when our adoptive dad turned 70 and there was a big party for him in a fancy hotel in the city where our dad lives. And my dad was doing another one of his “let’s be inexplicably cruel to Marilyn” things (I know I sound like Jane Eyre, but this is all true), so he had his big fancy hotel birthday party the night before his 70th birthday  — which was my 40th birthday — and then told me I was not invited to the party, even though I had flown in from NYC for it.

Even though I wasn’t allowed to go to the party, I still showed up at my dad’s house the following day to wish him a happy 70th birthday. Because I was always determined to ignore his cruelty.  And that’s when my brother called me, really angry at me, saying, “How could you snub dad like that, in front of everybody, on his big birthday?”

He refused to believe that I was not invited to the party and wasn’t allowed to come.  (And he neglected to wish me a happy 40th birthday, too!) And that sort of convoluted, parental manipulative shit, caused my older brother to not speak to me again.

Oh well. All this divide & conquer stuff — it also has a lot to do with wills & estates & inheritances. And I have no time for it.  Seriously. But it doesn’t mean that sometimes I don’t get sad.

And this morning, as I was having trouble facing the idea of getting out of bed, and I was curling into a tighter fetal ball around my pillow, I heard a bird singing outside my window.

And I opened my eyes a little and saw that the sun was coming up in that way that looked like spring. And I remembered that I had put all my spring & Easter stuff out in the kitchen, and hung my Easter wreath on the kitchen door already, so I sort of suddenly felt: Wow, my kitchen looks really pretty. I’m gonna go down there right now and feed the cats and have breakfast!

And so I did. And here we are! The sun is indeed shining, the birds are indeed singing. Spring is sort of right around the corner. And two really nice guys from here in the Hinterlands are coming over to fix my toilet for me!! Without charging me a dime. I asked Kevin last night if he wanted me to buy them beer or something, but he said, “No, it’ll be too early in the day for that. All I want is to finally see one of those crazy cats of yours!”

Well, it isn’t gonna happen, because they always hide whenever he comes over — or anyone comes over, except for my birth mom now. But I went to the gas station last night and bought them beer anyway.

All righty. Have a great Sunday, wherever you are in the world, gang. Thanks for visiting. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning! (Anne Murray is my fall-back gal when my heart is a little bit broken but I don’t want it to remain that way!) Okay. I love you guys. See ya!

“Snowbird”

Beneath this snowy mantle cold and clean
The unborn grass lies waiting
For its coat to turn to green
The snowbird sings the song he always sings
And speaks to me of flowers
That will bloom again in spring

When I was young
My heart was young then, too
Anything that it would tell me
That’s the thing that I would do
But now I feel such emptiness within
For the thing that I want most in life’s
The thing that I can’t win

Spread your tiny wings and fly away
And take the snow back with you
Where it came from on that day
The one I love forever is untrue
And if I could you know that I would
Fly away with you

The breeze along the river seems to say
That he’ll only break my heart again
Should I decide to stay
So, little snowbird
Take me with you when you go
To that land of gentle breezes
Where the peaceful waters flow

Spread your tiny wings and fly away
And take the snow back with you
Where it came from on that day
The one I love forever is untrue
And if I could you know that I would
Fly away with you

Yeah, if I could you know that I would
Fl-y-y-y-y away with you

c – 1969 Gene MacLellan

Life Resumes

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Well, through some quirk or miracle, all the snow has bypassed us. So, even though I love snow, I guess that’s a good thing today. I have to head back home as soon as the sun comes up. I have 7 cats who have been on their own for a couple of days now. (They have plenty of food and water, I’m just worried about the litter boxes…)

It did get really cold here, though. My dad being just shy of 90,  turned the heat way up. Luckily my bedroom is in the sunroom — walls of windows. So it’s a lot colder in here than in the rest of the apartment, which feels almost unbearably hot to me! Anyway. It is cold outside today and very windy.

So now we officially embark on a new era. My dad as a widower. And a widower who will have way too much time on his hands, so he’s already worrying about that. I am, too.  I asked him if he wanted to come live with me, but he declined. Not just because of the 7 cats, but mostly because he can’t imagine living in the middle of nowhere.

Here, he lives in an Independent Living complex — which means that as soon as anything goes wrong with him physically, the nursing home guarantees him a room. This whole area where he lives is just a massive compound dedicated to old age and dying. (It’s also really nice and really expensive.) But I guess it’s best for him to just stay put here, even though he’s by himself now. Obviously, though, I’m going to have to make a lot more trips back here from now on.

Which is good, because I only have to go to NYC, Toronto, and LA a lot this year… Anyway.

My first husband,  being Chinese, alerted me yesterday in an email that the Chinese New Year is almost upon us and it is once more time for it to be the Year of the Rat!!! Which is my year!! He is currently trying to locate my forecast for the year.  He said that, in general, though, it’s going to be a good year for all the signs.

I can already feel that this is a transformative year for me — work, money, emotional well-being. Those things are already changing in a pronounced way and it’s only mid-January. I guess maybe I need to figure out what to do about my “love” situation. I don’t know.  The man I love couldn’t be more married and unavailable if he tried. I think priests who are married to God are technically more available than he is, so my love is absolutely just thrown into my work. I try to at least put my love into the world, in that way, because that’s sort of the only real place it can go.

Sometimes it makes me feel indescribably insane, though, so maybe this will be the year that I deal with that, too. I honestly don’t know. But everything else in my life is truly transforming. And for now I’m okay with love being an intensely private thing that only goes out into the world. It certainly helps my writing. So we will see.

Okay. Well.

Its been an intense trip. A lot of old painful family issues hovered close to the surface for me this whole time, but I was able to not be held prisoner by them, and to let the past be what it was and just move on. The one glaring constant reminder of old history was that my older brother isn’t here. And even though I haven’t seen him in many years, not a soul even asked about him or mentioned him.

Maybe I will go into more detail about all that some other time, I don’t know.  I did find it disconcerting that everyone kept thanking me for coming to the funeral to support my dad or to support them in the loss of their mother. No one seemed to notice at all that she had been my stepmom for over 30 years. Stepmothers are big deals, you know?  Think of it — Cinderella  had quite a monumental stepmother; so did Snow White!! My stepmother happened to be incredibly kind and loving to me— and considerate and compassionate. For some reason, that doesn’t seem to have made an impression on anyone else.

Anyway, I think that metaphysical pondering is best left for another blog post. I need to get moving here. Have a good Sunday, wherever you are in the world! Nick Cave resumes his Conversations in Europe tomorrow, so that will give me something wonderful to ponder again for a couple weeks! Meanwhile, thanks for visiting!! I love you guys. See ya.

 

Truly Beautiful

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My stepmom’s funeral was truly beautiful.

She was Italian, intensely Catholic — did the rosary ever day. The church was breathtaking, really. Modern. Spacious. Filled with natural light, even though it poured rain outside the entire time.

The priest did a really moving ceremony— he knew my stepmom really well and so was able to really give of himself in a personal way. And he was extremely considerate of my dad’s being Jewish among all those Christians.

At the last moment, I took the priest’s blessing rather than take the Holy Eucharist. I don’t believe in transubstantiation. I was going to just consider it “Communion”  but then changed my mind right when the priest was handing me the blessed wafer — I knew he considered it Christ’s body and I didn’t. I didn’t want to be disrespectful. But being around all the icons of Christ today and knowing His presence was there for my stepmom made me feel just really, really blessed and at peace.

A long, long day though. My dad is exhausted. He assumed I was staying another night and leaving in the morning, so I guess that’s what I’m doing!

It’s been an extremely intense time for me, for reasons I don’t want to blog about, but I wouldn’t have missed the funeral for anything. She was a wonderful woman and always really good to me.

Here’s the Lord’s Prayer Mass card for her and one of the stone angels from the corner of my stepmom’s casket. There was an Angel on each corner of the casket. Each of the (adult) children got one.

Life Continues to Astound and Amaze

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Yesterday was an intense day. That spiritual midway point, where my stepmom has already died but the funeral hasn’t happened yet.  That process of closure hasn’t begun yet, and the huge change brought on by her sudden absence from the world is still raw.

But my dad is doing very well, all things considered. All of the families arrived yesterday — from California and Alabama, and of course me, too.  So that kind of commotion is very healing, I think. The only real rough patch for him was that we had to go out to the cemetery and choose the headstone.

It was a very curious sort of feeling for me, personally, because now I’ve seen where my dad is going to be buried. And now I know what the headstone looks like that will have his name on the other half of it.

And I was also thinking, wow — could you have found a more remote cemetery? How on Earth will I ever find this place ever again?

Its a really pretty place, though. Old. Very arts deco.

The dinner last night was magical. There was that sort of happy, blessed feeling. There were 14 of us. Ranging in ages from 4 to 90.  All of my stepmom’s children were there and her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren. And her husband and her stepdaughter. It was the only time, ever, that all of us were in the same room together, having dinner at the same table. I know for sure that the spirit of my stepmom was there with us,, feeling her own joy. The sense of bliss that was at that table last night was pronounced.

Today will be more difficult, since it’s the actual funeral.  But the main part that will be overwhelming for my dad is that 2 special buses of people are coming— the nursing home where she lived for the last 11 years had to rent a bus to accommodate the amount of staff and patients who want to attend my stepmom’s funeral. She was so loved there by everybody. And all her friends from high school (!!) also rented a special bus. And my stepmom would have been 80 in a couple weeks, and it still requires a bus to accommodate all her friends from her girlhood who want to come to her funeral to tell her goodbye.

She was just so loved. She really was just the most caring, happy, loving woman.

I don’t know yet if I’ll head home later today or wait until tomorrow morning. Still playing it all by ear.  Waiting to see if my dad will just want to be alone tonight or not want to be alone, you know?

Oh, and loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I’m not a big television watcher and so the TV set that I have in my family room is a 20-year old digital set, not a flat screen TV.  I’d been thinking lately that I need to get a modern TV but the very last thing I want to spend money on is a television… Yesterday, my dad gave me my stepmom’s flat screen TV. It’s a really large one. It takes up the whole trunk of my car!

Okay, I’m gonna scoot. I hear my dad puttering in the kitchen.  Have a good Saturday, gang. Thanks for visiting.

Mini Update

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Naturally I’ve already had to make a rest stop, since I managed to drink 3 cups of coffee before I left. But here in the public toilet stall in the middle of nowhere, I of course checked my email!!

An excerpt from my novel Blessed By Light has gone “live” at that new literary zine out of Wales— The Finest Example.com! It’s a slightly different version of Chapter 18, titled “The Guitar Hero Goes Home.” I see that it already has some “likes” and a nice comment! As soon as I’m not in a public toilet stall, I will post the link to it!!

And I see that Nick Cave has also posted a Red Hand Files thing!! It seems to be about music and Kanye…

Into the Newness of Life

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I woke up this morning and everything felt just a little bit better. I had a lot of complex dreams during the night, although I don’t remember any of them. But I just felt on firmer footing, emotionally, when I woke up.

It’s still dark out here, but I’m getting ready to go.  Remembered to pack my high heels and stockings at the last minute,  I won’t have to wear Skechers to the funeral, with my pearls and my black dress…

I leave you with the song that was in my head when I awoke at 4:30. I got the feeling the man was visiting me in spirit again. It wasn’t as pronounced as I felt it the other day, but I felt him and he made me smile. So I played this song at the breakfast table, and watched the cats eat happily, and I  thought about life.

Thanks for visiting. I love you guys.