Tag Archives: re-writing

I Live Vicariously Through These Two!!

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I’m referring to those two in that vintage advertisement above.  I so fucking love that picture. (If you can’t read it, it says, “Coffee’s ready!”)

I would just love to have my coffee announced in that way, and the robe matters a lot, too, gang! I love that robe he’s wearing.

Anyway. I need to discuss that photo I posted late last evening. If you didn’t see it, scroll down to yesterday.

I didn’t do a single thing to the color in that photograph.  I was at the kitchen table, watching an episode of Z: The Beginning of Everything. The rain stopped, and I happened to glance out the kitchen windows at the backyard and I couldn’t believe the light. I never saw it look like that before.  I went and opened the backdoor and just sort of stood there in awe and stared at it. It was like stepping into a movie  from 1939 that was in Technicolor or something. Nothing looked real.

Within a few moments, literally, everything was back to normal and the sun began to set.  Like it had never happened.

Well, gang. More good news happened yesterday. And, no, I still can’t blog about it. This makes 3 really amazing things — related to both plays with Sandra — that I can’t tell you about yet but it’s all just so incredibly good!

Both of these projects have been “in process” for me, in various versions, since 2012. It’s one of those things that, if I’d known when I undertook each of them, that it would take this long for things to finally come to fruition — or that they’d come to fruition at the very same time — I’m not sure I would have been able to stand it.

It’s not as though I didn’t do a ton of other projects since 2012. Still. We all sort of aim for fruition when we undertake anything creative, right?

Anyway. It’s still just a ton of writing that needs to be ton. Much switching of mental gears all the time, but I don’t mind. At all.

One thing about this summer so far that’s kind of sad — it looks like the band that lived next door broke up. They don’t rehearse in the garage anymore, and a few of them moved out. Only the drummer and his wife and their 2 little daughters are there now.

Even though they played that intense Death Metal sort of music, which doesn’t really rank up there among anything I listen to, I loved hearing them rehearse out in their garage (which pretty much took over my whole house so it was a good thing to enjoy it) . And I loved the fact they sat out on their kitchen porch until late into the night, smoking cigarettes and weed and drinking beers and talking and laughing. I couldn’t hear anything they said too clearly, plus I usually stream music at night. But the houses are close enough, and all my windows are always open — it was just that sense of life always drifting in at night that I loved. And they were so young and so full of energy.

They’d go on the road for a few days at a time — I could see all the luggage and the drum kit packed up and sitting on the front porch. Then they’d be gone and the house would be dark. And then they’d be back and all the life returned.

Anyway, all of that stopped. It makes me a little sad. Now the drummer and his wife are sort of living like quiet married people (sort of). I guess it’s better for the 2 little girls, but really boring for me…

Okay, I have a ton of stuff to attend to here because I have an early phone call with Sandra this morning to do some work on the script for The Guide to Being Fabulous. I haven’t even glanced at that script since I was in New York City to work with her back in October. So I gotta scoot.

I hope Thursday is a terrific day for you, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting.  There was no actual breakfast-listening music this morning, because my heart was kinda wobbly and I knew that anything I really wanted to listen to was just going to break it, so I listened to the birds instead.  However, I leave you with one of the songs I wanted to hear –sort of the anthem for my entire life, gang.  Okay. I love you guys! See ya.

“Even The Losers”

Well it was nearly summer, we sat on your roof
Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And I showed you stars you never could see
No, it couldn’t’ve been that easy to forget about me

Baby, time meant nothin’, anything seemed real
Yeah, you could kiss like fire and you made me feel
Like every word you said was meant to be
No, it couldn’t’ve been that easy to forget about me

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
They get lucky sometimes

Two cars parked on the overpass
Rocks hit the water like broken glass
I shoulda known right then it was too good to last
God, it’s such a drag when you’re livin’ in the past

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
They get lucky sometimes

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
Yeah, they get lucky sometimes
Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers get lucky sometimes

Even the losers
Get lucky sometimes…

c – 1979 Tom Petty

Is that opportunity knocking??

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That’s my bedroom door, btw. I love that door. Both the door and the iron doorknob are original to the house, so they are 118 years old.

Luckily, I’m not OCD in any way, and absolutely love to wonder about all the various people who have touched that doorknob in the last 118 years.

And I like to wonder about all the people who have slept in my bedroom in the past 118 years because, I tell you, this bedroom  has the very best vibes I’ve ever felt in a bedroom in my whole life.

Anyway, the never-ending parade of Marilyn’s Rooms… I’m guessing this will be the final one, but you never really know, do you?

Okay, let me just say this: What the fuck is up with Twilight of the Immortal, gang??!! That novel is probably my masterpiece, as far as my fiction writing goes. And it almost never sells. And I mean, even in the bi-annual free downloads over at Smashwords, it barely gets noticed, ever. People flock to my erotic fiction instead. Which is fine.

However, in the last several weeks, people started buying this eBook on Amazon, and now, suddenly, everyone and their grandmother is downloading it for free over at Smashwords. I mean, what’s going on with that? Why, all of the sudden? The book’s been out for something like 7 years.

I’m happy and all that, but it’s just weird. I can’t help but wonder what’s up. It makes me suspicious…

And a word of caution: Do not purchase trade paper print editions of this book if you see it for sale online (and you will). Those are uncorrected proof copies from when it was briefly published by Anaphora Literary Press. They are loaded with errors and typos. Unless you’re a collector of errors & typos, it’s best to get the eBook, which is the final edition.

Anyway, thank you. I do appreciate it. But I still think it’s weird.

All righty!

I have so much to do around here. Yesterday, I revised what, for now, is the final staged reading version of Tell My Bones. At least until rehearsals begin.

Today, I’ve begun the revisions on the entire play.

Thursday, I have to start focusing again on the other play with Sandra — The Guide to Being Fabulous. This is the one-woman musical about Sandra’s own life that we will be doing in Toronto, Canada next year.

A lot of little tweaks and changes need to be made to that script, before pre-production can begin on that, too.

And I have to renew my passport!!! I’ve only had it sitting out on my dresser for about 4 months, now. Hoping to avoid this very thing: waiting until the last minute and then I suddenly need to use my passport and it then expires.

I’m trying to stay focused.  You know. One thing at a time.

I had a wonderful evening last night. I’m still watching Z: The Beginning of Everything.  Almost done with that. It was a truly humid evening, so I stayed down in the kitchen for awhile. It’s a lot cooler down there than up here in my room. And for the first time in probably two years, I played solitaire on my iPad!

Christ, that is so addicting. I only lost one game, too.  I played until the sky was almost dark and the humidity got to be too much. I needed to take a shower.

But it was fun to just be alone in my house, at my kitchen table, playing solitaire. RELAXING!  I hadn’t played it since I was back at that house I rented and was looking for a new house to buy somewhere and was having such a frustrating time of it. I used to play solitaire to distract myself.

It felt lovely to finally fully realize that all that was behind me, and to be in my house now, in this amazing town that I had never heard of before I moved here. It just felt so peaceful. And of course all the windows were open and so I could see all the fireflies blinking outside, and the train came by (not so peaceful but I still love it).

Earlier in the evening, I had talked on the phone with Valerie for awhile — to officially wish her a happy 60th birthday. And she even mentioned how much happier I sound nowadays, now that I’m in this house, this town.

It’s just so true. I still stress out a little because I have so many projects that I’m juggling, but it’s a whole different type of stress. I’m  totally okay with it.

Okay, well, I have to get back at it now. The clock is sort of ticking. I hope Wednesday finds you enjoying yourself, wherever you are in the world and with whatever you’re doing. Thanks for visiting.

I’m gonna leave you with a very brief excerpt from Twilight of the Immortal.

In it, Rudolph Valentino has just been released from a Los Angeles jail, after having been arrested for illegally marrying Natacha Rambova in Mexico.

Okay. I love you guys. See ya!

********************************

(Excerpt from the novel, Twilight of the Immortal)

It was nearly noon when Rudy walked in the door, alone. My belly was full; Han had come and gone, I was tidying up the kitchen when I heard the front door opening and then five dogs going happily mad.

I ran to the front door landing. “You’re all right?” I said.

He looked dazed. “I’m all right. Just very tired. I have to be back in court in two weeks. Until then, all I want to do is sleep. Did Natacha call?”

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

I walked him upstairs to his own room; he wanted the big bed, the one he shared with Natacha, not the one that made him feel like a guest in his own home. “Forgive me,” he said. “I think I need a bath, but I’m too tired.” He sat down on the bed and took off his shoes. He removed his tie and took off his jacket. When he began removing his suspenders, I started to leave the room. “Don’t go,” he said wearily. “I don’t want to be alone. Stay.”

I stayed. “I have to say, Rudy; you look terrible. I’m really sorry you had to go through this. Joseph Schenck called this morning. He was ready to pay your bail – every cent of it and then some.”

The news seemed to perk up his spirits, but only a smidgen. “Schenck can come up with the money but Lasky couldn’t? Schenck, a man I barely know, who heads the newest company in town, instead of the man who heads the most powerful studio in Hollywood, whose company I’ve just made millions of dollars for?”

“It would seem so,” I said quietly.

He tossed his expensive shirt to the floor. I retrieved it and set it carefully over the butler chair. “I’m so deeply in debt now,” he lamented. “Do you even realize? I owe Lasky for this house, and the twelve thousand he gave me to pay off Jean, and now I owe my friends another ten thousand dollars…”

“Don’t torture yourself. Just get some sleep. Were you able to sleep at all in that awful jail?”

He looked at me. It was the look of someone trying hard to focus; he was thoroughly exhausted. “They drugged me in there,” he said.

“What?”

“They drugged me,” he repeated; “The man in charge of the cell – the man with the keys?  He gave me a cup of coffee that had something in it. I don’t remember everything he did to me last night, but I remember enough. And everybody watched. It was the Devil’s circus – behind bars.” Rudy laid down on the bed in his undershirt and his trousers; his head sinking into the pillow that was now stained with my dried tears. “Don’t ever let them take you to jail in this town, Rosemary; fight them with all you’ve got. I thought New York was bad – they call it ‘The Tombs’ for a reason – but it was civilized compared to what I’ve just been through.”

“Good God,” I said quietly. “Are you hurt?”

“Just stay,” was all he said. “Keep your eye on the door. Keep them all away from me. I just need some quiet. I need to be alone now.”

© 2012 Marilyn Jaye Lewis

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Valentino as ‘The Sheik”, 1921

Don’t just sit there reading this, dust something!!

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Yes! So far, it’s a terrific Tuesday! I’m teaching the cats how to use a vacuum cleaner!  (It seems fair, since they shed more than I do and I have way too much to do and they’re always just sitting there, staring at stuff.) (At dust, most likely.)

Oh, before I forget, I uploaded another old song. (If you’re on your phone, you have to turn it sideways to see it.) This is a really terrible demo, which is unfortunate because I love this song. But it’s the only version of it that was ever transferred to MP3.  The demo was made back in 1985 on the 4 track in my bedroom, and then we took it to my boyfriend’s bedroom (a drummer), to his 4 track at his place, and he added some drum & synth stuff.

We had a really fun time making it, but it was only ever intended to be a reference demo to take to the studio. And, alas, it shows! But if you listen to it, try to hear the fun & not the horrible quality of sound!

Anyway! Yes, it’s Tuesday!! And I approach this day knowing full well I have too much to do!

In another brief conversation I had with Gus Van Sant Sr. the other day:

HIM: “Well, who’s your agent now? Who’s managing you?”

ME: “Nobody. I suppose I’d better do something about that, but I just, you know – me and agents….”

HIM: (laughter — too much, in fact)

I won’t repeat the rest of the conversation!! It is sufficient to say, I need to bite the bullet and stop doing everything myself because my life is getting a wee bit unwieldy over here.

Yes! I will indeed be contributing a brief segment of my new memoir-in-progress, In the Shadow of Narcissa, to Edge of Humanity Magazine once a week or so. This will be a condensed version of what will appear on my own site.

Yes! This means I have to be sure to write something new (& publishable) at least once a week, and I am now up to my eyeballs with revisions of Tell My Bones because Sandra will be arriving pretty much any moment now to begin rehearsals.

If you don’t follow EdgeofHumanity.com, they feature a lot of really cool photo journalists from all over the world. I really love the photographs on that site. Plus, there’s poetry, people’s music playlists, and occasional nonfiction stuff.  Which is where my pieces from In the Shadow of Narcissa come in: occasional nonfiction stuff.

I’m excited.  I’ve been following them for a while and it’s a whole worldful of other readers.

I’m not really sure why I suddenly found this memoir of my childhood springing out of me, or why I felt I needed to lock myself into a weekly publication schedule for it. I’m still doing my Inner Being journaling every morning, and re: the new memoir, it said: “To a point, it serves you to examine these things because it is assisting your journey out of the DARKNESS.” (That word actually came out capitalized.)

(You should keep one of these journals, gang. They are  incredible and surprising and illuminating.)

I don’t consider myself someone who is still in darkness. However, by writing this memoir, and facing things about my adoptive mother — I have always tried to focus on the good side of her and block out the bad, but that was part of her narcissism: training me to do that — more and more I see that it is in fact a miracle that I survived my childhood. I did attempt suicide twice, but my will to live, which was always bubbling underneath the nightmare, was just ridiculously strong. It’s sort of startling to recognize that now; to marvel at the odds that I am even still here. So I guess that’s the purpose the memoir is serving for now.

Obviously, I’m hoping that the memoir will be helpful to someone else out there who will read it. Assuming I manage to drag something uplifting and helpful out of that whole mess.

Yesterday, Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter brought up some really difficult memories for me re: my mother and the death of my boyfriend back in the summer of 1974. (The newsletter was about the death of his own son and the death of someone else’s son.) And I just could not shake the memories for the whole day.

Still, it was good to sort of see it. Not to dwell on it, but to acknowledge it and try to process it somehow.

Yesterday was actually the “anniversary” of me being committed to a mental hospital after my first suicide attempt in 1975. I was put in there right before my 15th birthday. They actually gave me a birthday cake in there. However, I was on “suicide precaution,” which meant that for the first several weeks of my incarceration (I was literally incarcerated – I was there against my will and in a building where we were literally locked in and the windows were covered in this heavy mesh stuff that you couldn’t break out of.  And everything inside the place was locked. Everything.  Every drawer, every cabinet, every door, every window. And any room where you could possibly be alone in it — that was also locked. In that building, we were treated like criminals but it was only because we were all suicidal.)

Anyway! That’s cheery, right? But I digress.

On my 15th birthday, they gave me a piece of birthday cake (the rest of my cake, they gave to everybody else), but I was confined to my room because I was brand new there and on “suicide precaution.” And I was only allowed to use a spoon. For several weeks, I was only allowed to use a spoon because forks & knives were elements of destruction.

Those first few weeks in there were so frightening to me, because I was always confined alone in my room. And of course, everyone outside of my room was “crazy.”  And if I needed to use the bathroom, Security would accompany me. It was a communal bathroom, which in and of itself I hated. Just no privacy at all. Ever. And the Security person (a man) would follow me right in to the bathroom and just stand there while I tried helplessly to just do what I needed to do in there. He was protecting me from myself, I guess. But it was awful because I was only 15, and really shy, and of course my period had come because it always managed to come when it was least wanted.

It was just awful, those first few weeks.

But what eventually sank in was that my mother was not able to get at me in that place — they wouldn’t let her visit me for a long time– and for the first time in my 15 years of life, I had a sense of peace. It didn’t last long, but it did come.

Anyway, I have to scoot. I have been alerted via a text from Sandra that we are having a phone chat in 5 minutes…

Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world, gang! Thanks for visiting. I’m going to leave you with this unlikely song. I actually listened to it last night for the first time in over 40 years. It was the song that was playing on the AM radio when they were telling me to get into the car because I was being taken to a mental hospital, for my own protection or something insane like that. It was a song I associated closely with Greg, my boyfriend who had died. By then he had almost been dead one year. And the song was unbearable for me to hear, even on days when I wasn’t being scurried off to a loony bin .

But I played the song last night, and I lived through it. I’m hoping you will, too. I love you guys. See ya!

“Please Mr. Please”

In the corner of the bar there stands a jukebox
With the best of country music, old and new
You can hear your five selections for a quarter
And somebody else’s songs when yours are throughI got good Kentucky whiskey on the counter
And my friends around to help me ease the pain
‘Til some button-pushing cowboy plays that love song
And here I am just missing you again

Please, Mr., please, don’t play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it’s over
Please, Mr., please, if you know what I mean
I don’t ever wanna hear that song again

If I had a dime for every time I held you
Though you’re far away, you’ve been so close to me
I could swear I’d be the richest girl in Nashville
Maybe even in the state of Tennessee

But I guess I’d better get myself together
‘Cause when you left, you didn’t leave too much behind
Just a note that said “I’m sorry” by your picture
And a song that’s weighing heavy on my mind

Please, Mr., please, don’t play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it’s over
Please, Mr., please, if you know what I mean
I don’t ever wanna hear that song again

c – 1975 WELCH BRUCE, ROSTILL JOHN HENRY

Gimme A Pill — Please!

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Or as Huey Lewis & the News so succinctly put it a million light years ago:  “I need a new drug!”

Something/Anything.  [Todd Rundgren said that in 1972.]

Mostly, I’m just exhausted, gang. Spiritually. Psychologically. The constant dialogue that goes on in my brain.

ME (to my brain, while I’m washing the breakfast dishes): “You know, I could adapt that Cleveland project for the stage. I’d have to re-think the story arc, but I can already see the sets.”

MY BRAIN:”Knock it off already. We’ve got too many ideas in here.”

ME (to my brain this morning, while I’m going over the new memoir): “You know, I could re-write this as a micro -memoir. Or even a  long prose poem.”

MY BRAIN:”Knock it off already. We’ve got too many ideas in here. You should not have even started this one in the first place.”

ME (to my brain, while I’m listening to White Lunar during lunch): “This music is giving me some great ideas for Tell My Bones. I could see re-writing it as a screenplay.”

MY BRAIN: “You idiot!! It started out as a screenplay! Knock it off already!”

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I’m just exhausted.  Happy, but exhausted.

And then yet another Australian musician started following me on Instagram today. And he texts me something about a photo I posted of Patti Smith’s Horses album cover (the album that I’ve had since 1975). And he says that Horses inspired him to become a songwriter.

So then I’m scrolling through his photos and I see a lot of old Bowie stuff, and I’m thinking we have very similar musical tastes and inspirations.

Then I click on one of his old Bowie photos — Bowie being a man who hugely & continuously inspired me since 1973 — and I discover that the guy in Australia is about 17 years old or something insane like that – still in school – and only found out about Bowie long after Bowie died.

And then that exhausts me, too. WTF?  Just how old am I? And how long has Bowie been dead – wasn’t that just last week?! And how come I have similar tastes and inspirations to teenage boys on the other side of the globe?

That shit just makes me collapse.

I was 14 years old when I saw Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour back in Cleveland. That was over 40 years ago.

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Honestly, I don’t give a hoot how old I am, but I just don’t comprehend how old I am. I can’t get an accurate grip on it.

I recently met this 17 year-old boy here in the Hinterlands and he just makes me laugh. I adore him. He’s really delightful. And so unusual and I love his energy. And I love when he comes around. And he knows so many old rock & roll songs that I wouldn’t expect him to know — knows all the words.  And he’ll blurt out the most wildly inappropriate and hysterical things.

And I am like – what? Old enough to be his grandmother maybe?! Why the heck do I get along so well with him?

And yet most people my own age… I’m going to be 59 a week from tomorrow. Unless they’re old rockers or old hippies — and that’s the men; the women I have, like, nothing in common with because they are grandmothers.

It’s just weird. I feel like I’m floating off in some strange orbit, all by myself most of the time. (And while I’m off in that strange orbit, more & more & more ideas keep coming to me for projects that require months of getting written down…) (I’m exhausted.)

Anyway. All sorts of amazing good news came in this morning’s email but I can’t discuss that on the blog yet, either. It’s sufficient to say that I am just so blessed, gang. And I was planning to take it a little easy today, but when the email came, I was springing out of my skin. All excited and happy and ready to get back to work on something/anything.

One of these days, though, I’m gonna stay in bed late. And just lie there and stare out the window at my beautiful maple tree and the sky beyond. Just hug my soft fluffy pillows and snuggle there and relax. Really relax. Do nothing. Type nothing, Think nothing new.

Just lie there and smile and imagine what it might feel like if I could train the cats to bring me a cup of coffee…

Yes. Well.

In the meantime, I hope your Sunday is going swimmingly, wherever you are in the world! I leave you with this. It was an amazing album, gang. Some of it was depressing, but all of it was thrilling, regardless, when I was 14.

All right. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya!

“Rock ‘N Roll With Me”

You always were the one that knew
They sold us for the likes of you
I always wanted new surroundings
A room to rent while the lizards lay crying in the heat
Trying to remember who to meet

I would take a foxy kind of stand
While tens of thousands found me in demand

[CHORUS]
When you rock ‘n’ roll with me
No one else I’d rather be
Nobody here can do it for me
I’m in tears again
When you rock ‘n’ roll with me

Gentle hearts are counted down
The queue is out of sight and out of sounds
Me, I’m out of breath, but not quite doubting
I’ve found a door which lets me out!

[CHORUS (x3)]

c – 1974 David Bowie

Good Thing Summer Days Last Longer!

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Happy Saturday, gang!

Peitor has familial obligations in – yes!! – Iowa this weekend. So we are not working on any scripts this morning.  (It seems weird, doesn’t it – that he spent his childhood in both Florence, Italy and Iowa??!!) (It’s because both of his parents were tenured University Professors. In Literature. Both of them. Talk about intense. Both of his parents were always extremely friendly and all. But they’re both ridiculously intelligent. You always wanted to be wearing your best vocabulary whenever they came to visit in NYC.)

Anyway. So I have a little bit of a reprieve from “projects” today, which is good because now I have way too many that I’m trying to focus on every day. I know it’s because I started that memoir website thing from out of nowhere, and then setting up the page became stupidly time-consuming. I wasn’t expecting that.

But Sandra is in fact flying in here in a couple weeks to begin the initial rehearsals of the play (staying with the director because she’s allergic to cats!!), so I have to redirect my focus away from In the Shadow of Narcissa for a moment and get back to Tell My Bones.

I’m in a good place about that, though. And I’ve been kind of waiting for that feeling: that the play was getting queued up inside me.

If I’m not feeling aligned energetically with a project, it’s useless to kill time sitting and waiting on it. I go in the emotional direction of whatever calls me on any given day. It works out better for me that way. But sometimes, deadlines sort of force you to focus on something, regardless. So I’m gad that I can feel the play bubbling up inside me again because that’s what needs my attention most right now.

Plus, the Internet has been super wonky around here the past few days.  It will suddenly go out, for hours, in the whole area. It’s frustrating but it is also a forced “vacation.” I can’t do anything online. I can’t work on the new memoir. I can’t stream any new music. I can’t watch anything on Youtube or Amazon Prime. I can’t work on my Italian lessons, either. Or even tune my guitar!

So I’ve been using it as a signal to just STOP, you know? Because I never just stop until it’s time to collapse in bed at night. And even then, I usually spend an hour or two doing other weird stuff that I won’t go into right now.

Anyway. It does feel good to sort of just stop.  To be peaceful. To just listen to the earth. To take in, sort of from a distance, all the things that are going on right now.

Okay. This will be brief because the Internet has gone in & out about 5 times since I started writing this!! Hopefully, Spectrum will have it all figured out by tomorrow.

Have a wonderful Saturday, gang, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

The internet NEVER used to go out on my typewriter!!

Best Morning Ever!

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And by that of course I mean that the raccoons have returned to my maple tree! A mom and 2 cubs. They’re chattering away as I type.  (If you scroll down to my Instagram feed, you can see a photo of them. Click on it and it gets larger but it takes you to my Instagram page. For some reason, the photo has disappeared from my phone.)

Anyway. I love them. The hole in the center of the tree is parallel to the window I can see out of from my bed. I don’t even have to lift my wee bonny head from my pillow to see them. I can just lie there and watch them and they are so cute.

Okay. Well! Thank you to all of you who are visiting my “In the Shadow of Narcissa” site even though I already told you there is nothing there yet but a photo!! You are making me feel guilty!

ME (stumbling upon my stats page this morning because I still can’t figure my way around the back end of that new site): “Oh my goodness! Visitors! And I have nothing to give them!”

It’s sort of like having house guests and no food in the house…

I am going to try, once again, to work on that today and post something there. Although I wasn’t expecting it to take this long and need to focus more on the play. But we’ll see how it goes.

My solution to the problem of not being able to get the new site to do what I want it to do, is that I’ve made it just one single page. That’s it. You can follow it. You can contact me. But that is the only bell and the only whistle.  I am just going to post there on that one single page and that’s it.

So frustrating! (grumble grumble) And I’ve been building web sites since 1997, when you basically had to build the whole darn thing from HTML.

Why do they have to “make things better” only to then make them impossible to figure out?

A dear friend of mine, who is almost 80, asked me to look at her brand new dishwasher for her on Monday because it wasn’t washing the dishes. She would load up the soap, press “start,” but the soap would never be used, just be spilled all over, dry,  when she opened it, hours later. And her husband, who has dementia, kept putting dirty dishes away in the cupboards. She was going nuts.

HER (heavy sigh): “I should have gotten another Kitchenaide instead of this one.”

ME: “No, this is an LG. It’s much better than a Kitchenaide. Something’s just weird here. Let me look at it.”

And it turned out that the dishwasher had a “Delay” button connected to wi-fi, which had somehow been turned  to “on”, so that you can start your dishwasher later on, from your cell phone! She had no clue!  It was perpetually set to “delay.”

For Christ’s sake. Who fucking really needs that?! I can understand wanting your home security system connected to your cell phone. I can almost even understand wanting your thermostat connected to your cell phone. But your dishwasher?

My poor friend was going insane because her brand new, really expensive dishwasher wasn’t doing a darn thing and she was ready to have them come take the really nice brand new dishwasher away. (And she has her hands full enough, trying to look after a husband who has dementia.)

So. Anyway. My solution to my growing annoyance over the back end of the new web site was to simply make it one page. That’s all I really need anyway.  And, hopefully, on we go.

Nick Cave‘s Red Hand Files newsletter came out again this morning. I already read it, sort of by accident. I usually read it after I “get everything done.” It came earlier than it usually arrives, though, and I was just rapidly scrolling through my inbox on my phone, cleaning everything out of there (meaning “delete, delete, delete”) and then suddenly there it was, right in front of me, so I read it.

It seemed sort of sad to me. Of course, I always read everything from my own perspective, so I could be wildly wrong about that.  I will have to read it again, but it sort of seemed sad. God knows, I now have something else to ponder. And no answers will ever be forthcoming, so it will likely be one of those things I ponder until the cows come home.

Although, that said – around these parts, the cows actually do come home…

And raccoons, too! I’m thinking that the mommy racoon is probably one of the cubs that was born in the tree last spring. I have missed them so much!

Which in a roundabout and very convoluted way, brings me back to my thoughts about my niece (see yesterday’s post). And I feel like I can’t figure out what I should really do there.

My one sister and I are very close. She raised 2 girls, and she did an incredible job at it. (When she and her partner got together a million years ago, her partner had 2 very young daughters from a previous marriage and my sister helped raise them until they went off to college.)

And she loved those girls, and did everything she was supposed to do and all that. But they did make her crazy because they did stuff that all young people do. And I recall one time, a guy my sister knew was really, really wanting to have kids but his wife didn’t want them.  And my sister took the guy out to her truck, opened the side door and told him, “Here, dude. Slam your dick in this door a few times until the feeling goes away.”

She’s not a real fan of raising children anymore.

And she definitely has a really low tolerance for bullshit from young people now. And her opinion yesterday re: my concerns over my niece was drastically different from mine. And I know she knows what she’s talking about and so I think, what do I do here? Just let everyone live their own lives and look the other way?

Well, yes, let everyone live their own lives. But the other part – not even trying? Just walk away? Mind my own business?

It’s mostly my niece’s dad that I want to talk to my niece about. My brother. Because I saw and I knew a side of my brother that nobody else ever saw. Ever. I was really close to my younger brother for a long time, until he pushed me too far, too, and I finally had to walk away.  Like everybody else had.

But I know there was another path he had tried to go down; there was another kind of man he had tried to be. I remember that man he was so well, and I’m certain my niece has no clue that man ever existed. She just sees the man as he is now (indescribable alcoholic). I hate to think that’s all she’s destined to see.

My younger brother is on the left; my second husband is on the right. In Jackson, Ohio, Spring 1993.

Well, okay. Let me get going here. Spend some time on the other site and hopefully get something underway there, finally.  And spend a million hours pondering the Nick Cave thing. God knows, I can’t have a fulfilling life without stuffing my head full with a bunch of questions that have no answers whatsoever!

Have a great Thursday, wherever you are in the world! I leave you with this today. A song my brother and I used to play the fuck out of the summer after the album Centerfield by John Fogerty came out (1986). PLEASE please please play this one really loud, okay? In honor of the guy my brother used to be, such a long wonderful time ago. A summer I will never forget.

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

“Rock And Roll Girls”

Sometimes I think life is just a rodeo
The trick is to ride and make it to the bell
But there is a place, sweet as you will ever know
In music and love and things you never tell
You see it in their face, secrets on the telephone
A time out of time, for you and no one else

Hey, let’s go all over the world
Rock and roll girls, rock and roll girls

Yeah, yeah, yeah

If I had my way, I’d shuffle off to Buffalo
Sit by the lake and watch the world go by
Ladies in the sun, listenin’ to the radio
Like flowers on the sand, the rainbow in my mind

Hey, let’s go all over the world
Rock and roll girls, rock and roll girls

Hey, let’s go all over the world
Rock and roll girls, rock and roll girls

Hey, let’s go all over the world
Rock and roll girls, rock and roll girls, yeah, yeah, yeah

c – 1985 John Fogerty

Sei così vanitosa ragazza carina!

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Yes, indeedy! You are very vain, pretty girl!!

And, NO, they have not yet actually taught me how to say the above in Italian. I looked it up on google translator.

I thought my unending vanity sounded better in Italian.

(I considered quoting from Ecclesiastes, because it has much to say about vanity, but it wasn’t catching the overall verve I was going for.)

Anyway. Yes, I’m vain. And I might have to actually confess here that I am a “skin products” fanatic.  And I only buy my (indescribably huge amounts of) skin products from one specific company in France. They’ve been shipping them to me for 20 years now because they are the best products I have ever used, and I have used everything.

And I’m talking everything, because I’ve been a skin products fanatic since I was 13 years old. I used to have this metal lock box that I kept all my skin products in. I didn’t ever lock it, it was just the only thing I could find in the house that was big enough to hold all my many skincare products.

I have no clue why I’ve always been obsessed with skin care products, and the worst part is that, even at age 13, I was obsessed with high end skincare products. And I was not rich or anything like that. I had to do a lot of babysitting to afford all that stuff. And babysitting used to pay 50 cents an hour, so that was a lot of babysitting.

(Apparently, I had not yet realized that writing porn might pay better.)

(And NO, I don’t really think I write porn. It is everyone else in the world who thinks that.)

Anyway. I have always been completely okay with my unending need for skincare products. Because, even back then, I really believed that, when I got old, I wouldn’t look old if I was vigilant about using skincare products.

I didn’t realize that everybody else wasn’t like this until one day, when I was 14, a girlfriend was in the bathroom with me when I took out my metal lock box and she saw everything that was in it and could not get over it. And she was sort of horrified that even my elbows were smooth. And I was sort of horrified that she was horrified. Who wouldn’t want their elbows to be smooth at age 14??!!

She was one of those girls who had all sorts of other things to do with her life, even way back then. (And I recoil to think, if she’s even still alive, what her elbows might look like today!)

We did not stay friends, of course, because it’s hard for me to stay friends with girls who have non-smooth elbows. And she was unable to stay friends with me because I made out with her boyfriend behind her back. (See? She clearly had some weird sort of value system she was operating under in all areas of her life.)

But in my defense, the boy liked hanging out with me. And he gave me, literally gave me, a pristine, original copy of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, complete with its original photos & cutout things inside the album sleeve. He simply gave it to me because he didn’t want it.  And the only thing I had more of than skincare products were record albums. So how could I not make out with him?

Anyway. I’m bringing all this up because, no, I’m not really that vain.  I do still use a ton of skin products, but I also have wrinkles and stuff. I don’t actually mind having them.  However, most people who meet me for the first time think I’m about 10 years younger than I actually am… which then gives me about 10 seconds to feign modest humility when they learn that I’m actually way more incredibly-older than my decades-long-moisturized face leads you to assume.

I also have a ton of cellulite on my thighs – that I have always had. I’m not sure why. My legs are strong & stretchy & flexible! Because I have been working out steadily & continuously since I was — yes!! — 13 years old. Cellulite has never bothered me.  It’s just not on my radar of things I worry about. However, the company in France that I am addicted to, had this 2 for 1 sale on this new (ridiculously expensive) Mangosteen extract cellulite reducing cream.  And I mean it is stupidly expensive.

I have never really believed that cellulite reducing products could actually work, but since I never cared one way or the other about cellulite, I never tried any of them. But I have noticed that whenever this company comes out with a new product that I don’t think I could possibly need, I buy it, and try it, and the results blow my mind.

(They recently were giving away tubes of another new product they have – a detoxing flash mask. I accepted it graciously because it was free, and it normally costs something like $64.  But what the fuck is a detoxing flash mask for, exactly? Who knows? But I tried it anyway. I followed the directions. Put it on my face for 5 minutes.  Tissued it off. Went about my glorious day. And the next morning — holy shit.  My skin looked incredible. And I don’t wear makeup, gang. So I have to get an incredible amount of dazzling mileage out of just my skin. So now, I always have an expensive tube of imported-from-France detoxing flash mask in the medicine cabinet in each bathroom. Because now I never know when I’ll need to detox my face in a flash and won’t even have enough time to get to the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom! And I still don’t know what the fuck a detoxing flash mask is, I only know that it works!)

So I went for the 2 for 1 deal on the new cellulite cream and it arrived yesterday and now I’m very curious to see what the results of stupidly expensive Mangosteen extract cellulite reducing cream (that you must use twice a day in order for it to work) will be.

I’m hoping the results will be negligible because I really don’t need to get addicted to something else that’s really expensive.  In addition to the detoxing flash mask, I have other masks I’m addicted to; one that is used 3 times a week, one only once a week; one just at night, a couple only in the daytime. I have morning face creams, night time face creams, nightly foot creams, even, and daily intensive hand creams, twice-a-day eye creams, and then other intensive creams that keep all those other parts of my really old body looking a little less than “really old.”

So I’m really kinda hoping that stupidly expensive Mangosteen extract cellulite reducing cream does nothing for me.  But I will keep you posted!!

Meanwhile!!

I have a ton of writing to do here today. I am so excited about the stuff with Sandra that I can’t blog about yet. But in order to manage all of this, I really have to focus, gang. Plus I’m thinking of adding a twice-a-week memoir-type, nonfiction column to a blog that is not this one.  So, um. Yes. I gotta get going!

I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. Don’t worry if your elbows are rough, I still love you!! And I won’t make-out with your boyfriend behind your back ( or your wife, even) as long as s/he refrains from giving me vintage and quite valuable old Beatles’ record albums 100% for free! Thanks for visiting!! I love you guys! See ya!

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The Joy of Boys!!

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I saw the coolest guy today.

First, let me say that Ohio is one of those States where helmets are optional on motorcycles. If you want to take your fate into your own hands, and go helmet-less when you ride your motorcycle, you may.

And if you don’t want to ride with your girlfriend seated behind you, you can have your best friend — yes, your dog — strapped in behind you, instead.

No lie.

You’d think that Ohio had been one of the Rebel States, but in fact, it was not. It was so deeply entrenched on the Union side, that a  few famous Civil War Union Generals came from Ohio, including William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant.

Actually, it isn’t until you start getting deeper in the Hinterlands that you truly encounter this rebel attitude. And by rebel, I’m not talking about KKK-type, Confederate flag-type stuff; just the general attitude of “you can’t tell me what to do.” Whereas,  if you go deeper into the cities, you find that mentality where everyone basically tows the line and deeply wishes you to do the same thing and will look disapprovingly at you the minute that you don’t.

However. Out here, as I said, I saw the coolest guy!

He was riding his motorcycle, no helmet.  He had long, straight brown hair that wasn’t pulled back at all. No jacket, just a tee shirt. A pair of shades.  He did not look older than 30.

He was coming from the other side of Wakatamika Creek, out where Black Run Road is.

At first, I just thought he was cute. I was turning onto the highway, as he was going past me in the other direction. But then suddenly, he appeared on the Old Highway 16, which is a twisty-turny, winding and beautiful 2-lane highway and sometimes runs parallel to the new  highway, and man, was he going fast. I was already going 85 mph and he was easily a little ahead of me.

His hair was blowing back in the wind. His tee shirt was even blowing halfway up his back. He was very clearly looking around for the Highway Patrol, but you could just see that he was the freest human being on the entire planet. It was breathtaking to watch him. But then the Old Highway veered up into the hills and he disappeared.

Of course, I’m very maternal, and right away, I was hoping that his mom had no clue what he was out there doing — going at that speed on that winding road with no helmet on, because even without having any clue who she is, I know her heart would have dropped down to her feet to see him like that. But at the same time, maternal instincts aside, it was just incredible to watch him in all his fearless glory. It really was. He was just beautiful.

I hope he stays young (at heart) and fearless forever. Whoever he was.

Okay, gang! Good news arrived from Sandra today re: our other theater project that’s going on in Toronto, Canada. I cannot blog about it yet, but it is sufficient to say that if I thought I had a tad too much on my plate before I got out of bed this morning, I now have great big heaping piles of incredible awesomeness. And I have to somehow tackle it.

I know I will.  I just have to stay focused. But it seemed like I was getting to a place where I was going to have some breathing room, but such is not the case.

But, still, I couldn’t be happier, gang, even though now I am just stupidly busy.

Well, okay. I don’t usually post songs from Mojo, however, it is probably the best Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, ever. It was their 2nd to last record before he died, although the final album he did was a Mudcrutch album that had a few of the Heartbreakers on it, as well.

In terms of their musical prowess, their maturity, the songs on Mojo are really just off the charts good.  It is decidedly the “older/calmer” Tom Petty ( he was 60 years old when it came out). Not the scrappy, angry, skinny, attitude-filled and much younger Tom Petty that I usually listen to. This is the much more laid back one, but the album is just killer. If you like more blues-based rock & roll, that is.

I played this song about a zillion times this morning. “Running Man’s Bible.”  I get the feeling that he wrote it sort of as a tribute to himself and the Heartbreakers and their 40 years of being on the road together.  Of course, I could be wrong because I was never very good at guessing what Tom Petty was ever really writing about.

But, anyway, it’s a great song and it was great music to listen to while that cool motorcycle guy went flying past, in all his youth with all his fearlessness and all those unanswered questions still way out ahead of him on that highway somewhere. Okay! Have a great evening, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya!

“Running Man’s Bible”

You’re with me tonight on this dark highway
We’ve run it together
So many times
We’ve run it for money
We’ve run it for music
We’ve run it to pay for our innocent crimes

I took on my father and I’m still walkin’
Took on all comers in some shape or form
And I see with the eyes of somethin’ wounded
Somethin’ still standing after the storm

Here’s one to glory and survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the running man’s bible
I been next in line

I been next to nothin’
Been next to bystanders
Who shoulda said somethin’
It was not in my vision
It was not in my mind
To return from a mission
A man left behind

Here’s one to glory
And survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
I don’t speak of the times I’ve nearly died

I don’t speak of out lastin’ those who are gone
Or the things I’ve done
I care not to remember
Or the desperate measures
That might have been wrong

Honey here’s one to glory
Here’s to bad weather
And all the hard things
We’ve been through together

Here’s to the golden rule and survival
And to stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
Here’s one to glory and survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible

c- 2010 Tom Petty

All In A Day’s Work, Gang!

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Wow, what a great day, gang!

Yesterday was so cool. Specifically, I am referring to my weekly Saturday morning phone conference with Peitor, re: Abstract Absurdity Productions.

We’re still working on one specific script. Shot by shot and moment by moment, even though (and especially because) it is only an 8 minute film.  Everything has to be so tight.

First off, Peitor weirdly overslept a huge amount and so we didn’t actually get started until after 12 noon, my time. I think that on some sort of subliminal level, those earthquakes they’re having out there in Los Angeles wore him out.

But eventually, we did indeed get started and it yielded another incredible session.

I know I bandy those words about: incredible, amazing, astounding, and the ever popular “so cool!”. But, I really, really mean it, gang! The psychological level we got to yesterday for the 3rd segment of the film really just astounded both of us.

(If you’re new to the blog — the plot premise of every film we’re developing is absolutely, completely, 100% absurd, otherwise we aren’t interested in making it. But from that starting point, we then want to make it a really watchable, engaging film/video experience that lasts 10 mins or less. )

When you’re scrutinizing something shot by shot, you readily find the holes in the script and while we’re brainstorming on how to fix a hole, that’s when the psychological level of the whole plot just goes off the charts for us. It’s so funny. Because the bottom line is that the entire premise is absolutely ridiculous.  Yet it is layered now with all this emotional/psychological stuff.

The creative process is so beautiful. How something evolves and really just takes on a tangible life, you know? Yesterday, Peitor was comparing the notes/script we now have against our original 3 lines of notes we made on this specific idea. Just the simple premise we had come up with originally that had made us laugh really hard.

We were sitting on stools at the counter in the French Market in Los Angeles, eating quiche and looking at  row upon row of intricately decorated chocolate and caramel pastries.  It was a sunny Friday in December; we were just hanging out, nothing to do. For a change, I wasn’t trying to dash off to too many meetings at once.  And suddenly we came up with this small, absurd idea and we were laughing so hard, we were nearly falling off the stools.  (And me being a genteel woman of a certain age – I totally pissed myself.)

However. That said.

If you’re a creative type, then you know how that small germ of an idea can really, really excite you. And yet once you start really developing it – whatever “it” is – and really opening to the creative life of it, it truly is astounding where it will take you and what actually – ultimately – gets created.

It is such a beautiful feeling, regardless of what it is you’re bringing to life.

And it’s so wonderful for me, personally, to be going through this process with someone I’ve known so well for so long. I’m an intense person and not everyone can work that well with me. I try not to be overwhelming or anything, but I also still cannot help being myself.  I’m driven by visions. And eventually my visions achieve a flow, you know? And if you’re clogging up the flow, well, “consternation” is a good word to describe my overall everything at that point. So trying to work with me is often not as easy as just being my friend.

And even just being friends with anybody, whether or not I’m involved, can get stressful, right?

Of course, years of experience of being someone’s friend (Peitor and I have been friends now for 35 years), teaches you how best to keep the flow open and to allow the other to just be who they are, because even while Peitor and I are very similar in so many ways, we are definitely not twins, or anything. Our minds work in very, very different ways.

And to be honest, at my age (I’ll be 59 in 17 days!!), I have already started to see so many people just drift off. To ill-health, to boredom – they’re not really interested in moving forward in any way; or their minds stay in some wonderful place in the past that they liked better. And of course, a number of my colleagues have died already.

I love younger  people, I really do. I love the energy and the thoughts and the approach to life that they bring to a conversation. To the planet. But it just feels so wonderful to be so creative with someone I’ve known so well for such a long time and to have it be a really positive (non-argumentative) experience.

And speaking of my birthday!!

And speaking of unending relationships, perhaps even of relationships that have come back from the dead!!

I have to scoot here because my first husband is calling me here momentarily. It is one of our annual phone chats. He likes to call me around my birthday.  And he has to be discreet – calling very early in the morning, his time zone. Because his life is on a whole different  path, in a whole different world; a whole different life! Which is a way of saying that he is not only in a relationship with someone who does not know that I exist, but it is a relationship that does not seem to even know that he was ever married. Ever. At all. Regardless of to whom ( for 9 years). And apparently he intends to keep it that way.

Okay-dokey! I sure don’t mind.  I love chatting with him. He always makes me laugh. And he cares about me and he knows me really well. I live in a world now where nobody knows me at all, so to be known is a beautiful feeling.  (Plus, you know how it is when you aren’t married to a person: what they do or don’t do is none of your business anymore at all.)

Have a super Sunday, wherever you are in the world, gang! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya!

 

Absolutely 100% For Real, Done!

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I finally finished the final edit, final re-write, final everything on Blessed By Light and it is done, gang.

I am just so pleased with it. I have the best Muse ever, and I just feel so blessed. What a strange little book it is but I really, really love it.

And continued thanks to all of you who keep downloading the eBooks at Smashwords. At this point, I know it’s people who probably aren’t even coming to this blog, unless of course, you all like to download the exact same books over & over & over.

But, still, thanks.

In fact, I remember the long ago days when each of those stories in those erotic “Muse” collections was brand new, and I would finish  writing one of them — it was always a great feeling. And a really great feeling when the story got sold.

The thrill of getting that letter from a publisher that said, “We are happy to inform you…” (Back then it was actual letters, not emails.)

In fact, I only wrote one short story – a really early one – that didn’t eventually get sold, gang. So if you are still new to your own writing career, just hang in there and keep believing in yourself. It all eventually comes to pass.

(And eventually the letters became, “Dear Ms. Lewis, We know how busy you are, but we are writing to ask you if you’d be willing to contribute” etc., etc.)

So, yeah, it’s a beautiful world!!

Okay, I’m gonna go collapse for a few minutes! Thanks for visiting!!

I leave you with my current favorite song for my Muse! (Honestly, I can’t stop playing this song, gang. I think this is gonna go down as the best year in my life.)