Tag Archives: writing

Memory on top of a Memory

September 10, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I am working on Letter #3 in Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. The letter is titled, “Baltimore,” because, oddly enough, it’s about something (or someone) that happened to me in Baltimore.

Something I had actually forgotten about until the story started to come out of me.

The result of that tryst, in a round about way, led to me writing the short story, “The Insomniac’s Tale,” which was my version of what happened to Edgar Allan Poe — why he died so mysteriously in Baltimore, in a charity ward even though he was already famous.

So, in anticipation of the wildly different erotic piece, “Baltimore,” I give you “The Insomniac’s Tale.”

* * *

“The Insomniac’s Tale” originally appeared in 2001 on Mindcaviar.com; in 2002 on Eros-Noir.com; in 2004 in Lust: Bisexual Erotica by Marilyn Jaye Lewis, pub. Alyson Books; and in 2012 in The Muse Revisited, Vol. 3 by Marilyn Jaye Lewis, pub. by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

The following contains sexually graphic content, including depictions of necrophilia. Readers are strongly cautioned. (Approx. 7 pages)

The Insomniac’s Tale

Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence, whether much that is glorious, whether all that is profound, does not spring from disease of thought… Edgar Allan Poe

Curiously, as I lay here dying in the anonymity of a Baltimore charity ward, trapped in the watchful gaze of a stalwart nurse who seems, from time to time, to regard me as if I’m already dead, I find I have not a shred of remorse. In fact, if my vocal cords, if my entire larynx weren’t paralyzed by my rapidly deteriorating condition, I would even go so far as to confess to my warden-nurse what my true motivation had been. Why I’d departed—no, fled—the train when it reached Baltimore, never proceeding to Richmond where I was to wed Eloise Whitmore within the next fortnight. I’ve ceased to feel shame over any of it, yet I can’t recollect when the shame abandoned me. For the longest time, since the death of my first wife seven years ago, it seemed the shame was my sole companion. When did it leave? Why is it gone so suddenly?

I’ve no doubt now that somewhere during my debauched excursion along the wharves of Baltimore this very weekend, I ingested a large quantity of poison. Whether it was in the opium or the cocaine, who gave it to me, and whether or not any of the prostitutes I’d paid handsomely during the course of my debauch, who’d perhaps watched me consume my fatal indulgence, knew about the poison – well, these are the final mysteries I’ll be taking with me to the grave.

Funny how, normally, I’ll pounce on a good mystery, unable to leave it be until I’ve worried it like a bone, picked it clean and solved it. Now, as the end arrives, I find I’m oddly ambivalent. These last mysteries are too meager, too petty to trifle over when compared with the grander mystery that always fueled my life: my unconquerable and insufferable destiny.

Every muscle in my face has now grown rigid with paralysis. I can’t so much as blink an eye. I’m terrorized by thoughts that I will die with my eyes open. What horror will I see as one light dims and perhaps the fires of Hell emerge? Whose face will be my final vision as I pass over to the next realm? If God were merciful, it would not be this dour face of my warden-nurse, a memento only of this wretched charity ward. It would instead be the face of an angel, my child-wife, a reminder of the beauty that could have been Life had I been born to a more regal fate. I fear I’ll know the extent of God’s mercy soon enough. As it is surely imminent, my release from the fever of living.

I lay here unable to move as the paralysis creeps slowly through me. How many hours has it been? When did they bring me here? I no longer know. There’s a certain timeless euphoria brought on by abject misery. Meaning, time passes strangely, an hour becoming an unfathomable depth. In a way, life has always been a one-way tunnel. Still it never seemed quite as linear as this certain encroachment of death. Deeper into the tunnel I’m drawn, though, helpless to fight death’s pull. My mouth brimming with a bitter, corrosive taste. Not just from the hours spent vomiting up poison down by the docks, but the bitterness of a final acceptance, a reluctant understanding. A bleak awakening, if you will, to a truth too unnerving to allow me ever again to know the blessing of sleep.

Had I been courageous enough to carry through on my vow to marry Eloise Whitmore, had I proceeded on the train to Richmond, done the honorable thing, I wouldn’t be in this hideous predicament. I know that. I’m always well aware of my failings. However, the drive to satiate my deeper urges pushed me from that train.

The youngest, freshest girls one can hope for often begin their lives of ill repute along those dank, rotting wharves of Baltimore. Some girls so fresh, they still carry the scent of home in their undergarments. To me, it matters little—their inexperience in the varied tastes of carnal lust. I’ve long since tired of the meaningless couplings of body touching body. What I’ve come to seek is a peculiar sin, cultivated from the emptiness of too many years. A sin I can only re-enact with the youngest of women, for I was with a young woman when my need first began.

My now-dead wife, once the love of my life, was a child of thirteen when I married her, though her mother had given us her full consent to wed. Then, I was a man of twenty-four. Unlucky in my studies and my military career; unlucky in much of what had already passed as ‘my life.’ Yet my literary prowess had begun to emerge. From the meager earnings I secured with my writing, I supported my child-wife and her mother, and we persevered. Hiding—successfully, I should add—a certain secret from the world.

In Boston, where I was born, I had been orphaned at the age of two. Years later in New York, no one I knew had ever known my mother, or knew that my mother-in-law had been my mother’s sister. That she was indeed my aunt; and my child-wife, my cousin. But how I cherished the young girl I had taken for my bride. Not to marry would have been unthinkable. Never to join her, flesh pressed to flesh in the conjugal bed seemed a fate unendurable to us both. But my aunt had a romantic and sympathetic heart of the most charitable nature so she agreed to let us marry. In that, my bride and I were blessed. And in the facelessness of a bustling city such as New York, our sin – the incestuous nature of our marriage – was easily concealed. For a time, we even thrived.

In the beginning, yes, she was delicate, my wife. But she did not seem frail. Though her skin was so sheer, so translucent that its pallor was decidedly tinted by the underlying blueness of her veins. Everywhere I touched her, she seemed impossibly soft—an unimaginable velvet—and too yielding to the merest caress.

It was hard to keep my thoughts fully centered on my work. I developed literary theories, wrote moody, atmospheric poems, which helped me to secure a certain fame, if not fortune, along the eastern coast. But always, the larger portion of my thoughts were devoted to (should I say, tormented by) my enchanting wife.

Her modesty was such that throughout the course of our brief marriage, I never saw her by daylight entirely undressed. On occasion when we were alone, she might lift her skirt for me, or lower her blouse to bare her breasts. When under cover of darkness, or with luck, if a slash of moonlight would cut through the grimy windowpane at night and reveal her youthful wantonness sans nightclothes beside me in the bed, my eyes would desperately drink in the dim vision of her beauty. My other senses were then driven to overcompensate for the sight of heaven of which my eyes were so deprived. The feel of her in my arms, her downy skin; her soft, tumbling tresses spilling across my chest; the flit of her feathery lashes against my cheek. Or the scent of her, her taste on my lips, the sounds of her awakening desire while we kissed—this was how my heart created its intimate portrait of her. How it aroused me. It was unspeakable. For there was yet another sweet agony I endured: my wife was still a child. Her womb had not yet reached womanhood. It lagged behind our eager needs. Our conjugal bliss was to be left unconsummated for two seemingly endless years. Until she reached the age of fifteen, when quite early on a stifling summer morning, the blood finally came.

It’s hard to believe, as I lay here, the paralysis approaching my lungs, my chest tightening; my heart, a thin, miserable throb; that I could have once known such unbridled joy as the night my beloved wife and I endeavored to explore at last the full sanctity of our union. She was sweet, but not coy. Determined to let me enter her as many times, and in as many positions, as I desired.

It seemed we were finally ready to face life, to stake our claim in the future. We had spent two years always moving, moving. I chased after employment with first one magazine then another, achieving more fame but still struggling to keep my little family from the jaws of poverty and hunger. But soon enough, it was clear I would remain unlucky in this endeavor, as well. My dear little girl, my wife, suddenly fell ill. Before long, we knew it was consumption. That lingering, wretched disease for which there is no cure. Malnourishment—a result of the poverty I alone had placed her in—aggravated her suffering. Seven times, she slipped down to the worst depths of the disease. Only six times did she rally. With each of her slides down to the rim of death’s abyss, I railed at the night and lost myself in drink. Turning also to the comfort of opium or cocaine. Behaving disgracefully around my peers. My public drunkenness, severely damaging my hard-won reputation at banquets meant to honor me and my celebrated oeuvre.

Still, it was during these terrors, as I helplessly watched my poor wife wither, as I heard her cough and choke on her very blood, and knew without doubt that her release from suffering could come only with our final parting on this gruesome plane, that I wrote my finest tales of sheer horror – stories that sealed my fate in the pantheon of literature even while fortune continued to elude me.

It was upon my wife’s death that my taste for the peculiar sin I earlier mentioned, emerged. I was unable to escape its grasp. While it brought me a few moments of carnal pleasure, it brought me more an abundance of shame. A shame I could never retreat from, nor pacify once my sin had been unleashed.

My wife’s mother and I were both at her side when my wife finally expired. My mother-in-law tenderly wiped the traces of blood from my wife’s lips, and then attempted to remove the soiled dressing gown from my wife’s limp form.

“No,” I insisted. “I want to be alone with her. You’ve nursed her all these years. Let me tend to her now.”

When my mother-in-law left the room and I eased my wife’s thin, lifeless body from the nearly threadbare chemise, my eyes weren’t prepared to behold the heartbreaking beauty of her nakedness. A sight I had been deprived of throughout my marriage. How exquisite she was. Dear reader, I know you will be shocked by where my longings urged me! You, who have not known such bereaved misery as mine; you could not be expected to comprehend the brutal power of love’s erotic pull, even after death. I admit it plainly now. As I near death myself, I have no remorse. I hungered to know my wife’s body in intercourse one final time. But could I dare it?

At first, I thought no. I let my mind become submerged in the details of the task before me, attempting to let reason override the mounting pressure of my longing. I filled the wash basin and bathed the remnants of sweat from her once fevered brow. Faithfully, I combed my wife’s still silken tresses. I sponged the length of her young body clean. Then I anointed her breasts with lavender and rose water.

My wife was just shy of sixteen the afternoon she died. The spectre of her purity, even in death, proved to be my undoing. Though I’d gone so far as to wrap my wife in her funeral shroud, when her mother knocked gently at the bedroom door, I refused to let her re-enter.

“I need to pray,” I explained feebly. Then I turned the key in the lock, shutting out my last hope of sanity.

Had I known where it would lead me – the dark alleyways, the rotting wharves, the foul-smelling mattresses in vermin-infested rooms – had I known these curses would come closely on the heels of my indiscretion, would I have unwrapped my wife’s still supple body from the winding sheet? Would I have allowed my mouth to kiss hers as if she were still full of life and able to offer her lips to me? Would I have deliberately used that kiss as my invitation to cup the fullness of her breasts, then to enter her? And not just enter her, but part her legs garishly and watch my thick member violate her repeatedly as I pretended she willingly obliged me.

This is why the young whores of Baltimore are so well suited to my proclivity. I don’t need experienced, licentious advances. I don’t want vulgar women, whose very sexual openings are so well used as to seem lewd in how they gape. Though they needn’t be virgins, I need fresh girls with a willingness to say “yes.” To lay motionless and unstirred while I fondle and explore their secret places, first with my often trembling fingers, then with the more erotic caresses of my tongue.

Not that I had had nerve enough to know my wife’s lifeless body in that intimate a manner. No, in the moments of my disgraceful assault on her, my mind was clouded with fever. I was fearful of being discovered at any moment by my wife’s mother—my aunt, my own mother’s sister; a witness to my debasement of her only child! Even while I knew the door was locked, in my mind it did not seem secure enough. An iron key in a simple hole did not seem an impenetrable barrier to the towering grotesqueness of the deed I was perpetrating. I kissed my wife’s mouth, yes. And I squeezed her breasts which were hardly warm. Yet when my erect manhood, seemingly of its own volition, proceeded on its mission to penetrate her, it was a deed I undertook in haste.

The sweeter subtleties of lovemaking, the gentler acts of fondling and caressing were not part of my assault. Not until the black midnight after my wife’s burial, as I lay awake alone in bed, my thoughts tormented by the fresh memory of what I’d done to her, did my imagination give birth to its hideous cravings.

The sorrow of my loss was inexpressible. How I ached to have my wife alive again beside me. How I scourged myself for my financial impotence; my inability to lift her above the crush of poverty and the ravaging disease it delivered to her. It was in this swell of sadness that I began to regret not having lingered longer over her young healthy body when it had still been a living, breathing vessel next to me; a body full of warmth and eager curiosity. As in the first days of our marriage, when every nuance of physical love was new to her, and each intimate exploration, a delight. Those early days when she was still too young for intercourse, when our nights were spent in ecstasy just the same.

Before my marriage, I had known many women—mostly the sort of women one pays. And I wasn’t ashamed of this. In my years of approaching manhood, I learned what I would be expected to teach my wife about lovemaking, and I learned the more carnal aspects of it that I would be expected to shield her from. It was my duty to her and it was perhaps the only duty in which I served her well.

To ready a young woman’s body for what will be the more demanding encounter of sexual penetration requires patience. But more, it requires dedication. I dedicated myself to my wife, to awakening her to her own capacity for sexual desire so that she would one day be ready for her final step into womanhood.

Yet how do I describe it, the veritable anguish of my desire? The nearly unbearable restraint I managed, as I explored her youthful body in our bed, her nightclothes lifted for me, her legs eagerly raised and parted but her modesty prohibiting me from seeing her even in the glow of firelight. Her labial folds swelling under the touch of my fingers. My ears filling with the sounds of her passionate moans, her gentle cries, as my mouth between her spread legs urged her deeper and deeper into her own erotic abandon. Never to see her, to truly see her to my heart’s content, in the usual female postures of lascivious invitation. Think of it! It must have been what drove me to do the unthinkable when my eyes were finally granted the full sight of her nakedness so soon after she expired.

Yes, it was ghoulish, how the force of my thrusting member so disturbed and rattled her lifeless form. But my eyes shut it out. In the delirium of my sin, my eyes could only take in the beauty of her feminine secret; her vulva, at last exposed, revealed in the light of day.

After my wife was buried, the fevered thoughts that I’d assumed were satiated, regrettably returned. I pictured it over and over in the dark: my thick and aching manhood glistening with my own spit as it pummeled into my wife’s snug hole. My thoughts became diseased, replacing ideas of a more rational sexual fulfillment with notions of perverse lust. I berated myself for not having had the presence of mind to take more advantages with my wife’s dead body while I’d been alone with it. Time and again, I brought myself to ejaculation from the overwhelming erotic power of the vile urges that were in my head.

I became confused by the intimacy I’d experienced with my wife during our marriage and the foul deed I’d done to her after her death. I wanted to relive it all, but memory and fantasy became jumbled. I wanted my mouth again on her slick, swollen labia with her stiff clitoris, the tiny captive of my tongue. Or my fingers pushing deep into her secret holes. I even wanted the tighter posterior one, a thing I would never have asked from her in life. I wanted to “relive” things I’d never done with her! I wanted to experience that torrid liberation that I knew only briefly, the feeling that her body belonged solely to my lust, that I could do with it as I wished for she was dead and couldn’t deny me.

Soon enough, the intensity of my passion increased. I started to seek the company of young whores in an effort to find release. “Just lay there, you understand?” I would say. “Don’t move. Remain motionless while I undress you. Make as if you’re dead. Then I want to do things to your body but you mustn’t make a sound.” At first, each woman would balk at my unexpected request.

I knew I must have sounded mad, as if I meant to jeopardize their bodily safety. I learned to pay the women their money in advance, while making it clear there was more money to be made if they could follow my instructions to the letter.

“You mean you expect me to lay here and let you have your way with me?” each young woman I propositioned would scoff while always, without fail, eyeing the additional money.

“Yes,” I would insist. “Don’t move and don’t make a sound.”

In the ensuing silence of the girl’s dank, putrid room, I would block out all things of the more rational world and allow my dark imagination free rein.

My literary pursuits, at long last, started to amass me a modest fortune. It was during a particularly bright period in my career that I met Eloise Whitmore. She was a decent, loving woman who was more my age, a woman who’d been tragically widowed in Richmond, and the younger sister of a writer I greatly admired. During a weekend visit to the writer’s family estate, he introduced me to Eloise.

It wasn’t long before a mutual spark of love ignited between Eloise and myself. For a time, her gentle dignity brought out the best in me. I proposed marriage. On the weekend that she accepted my hand, I fooled myself into believing I was a changed man. I was now engaged in more noble endeavors. I was through with my sickening preoccupations. No more time would I waste propositioning whores.

Though Eloise was an upstanding lady, the fact remained she was also a widow—a grown woman, well acquainted with the delights of the marriage bed. In what seemed at the time a harmless tryst—for it was understood we were soon to be married—Eloise and I decided to make love. I stole into her room late one night, where she eagerly awaited me in her bed. The rest of the household had long said goodnight. The entire house was in darkness.

In Eloise’s room, the lamp was still lit. She lay naked in among the sheets and the eiderdown. She had a robust, womanly figure that surprised and excited me. Full breasts, a voluptuous ass – so different from the young bodies to which I had become addicted. I slid into the bed beside her, kissing her ardently, entranced by her naked splendor.

She put a delicate finger to my lips to hush me. “Remember, we mustn’t lose ourselves tonight,” she whispered. “We have to be very careful. My brother’s room is right next door. We don’t want him to hear us.” Then she proceeded to accept my unbridled sexual advances. Allowing me to know her in every position, including her mouth, but keeping silent the entire time.

It was her silence that unnerved me. It was her silence that baited me, even while I understood its necessity. It triggered the dark passion in me and provoked me to challenge her. I began to put her through her paces roughly, to see if I might elicit so much as a moan from her lips. She endured all my brutish passion with a compliance that bordered on subservience. Relentlessly, I drove the thick power of my manhood into her. She accepted its full force without a whimper. I even put her through the unthinkable—introducing my member to her anally. She struggled only briefly, then acquiesced.

It soon became apparent to me that even without the formality of the marriage vows Eloise regarded me already as her lord and master. It was a heady feeling; one I hadn’t known since my first wife had died. It made Eloise Whitmore more enticing than ever. At the end of that weekend, I couldn’t wait for Eloise to be my bride.

Why then, you must be asking, did it come to this, my imminent death by poison in a charity ward when I should be enjoying my most celebrated period of literary fame? And why my inability to resist the drink, the opiates, and the lurid pull of the young whores of Baltimore, when a woman of substance, of good breeding and a respected family, was waiting in Richmond to be my devoted wife?

The paralysis now squeezes hard about my lungs, shredding my final breaths. My warden-nurse has taken my right hand in hers, her fingers pressing firmly against the faint pulse in my wrist. As my eyes remain frozen garishly open, surely lending a mask of obscene horror to my face, I know now that God will have little mercy on me after all as I depart this miserable plane.

“It was to save her, you see!” I try vainly to scream at my nurse. But no sounds come. My mouth won’t move and my tongue seems gone. My thoughts are wedged tight against the thin ledge at the back of my barely sighted eyes.

It was to save Eloise Whitmore, who was so full of life, from ever discovering what I knew I would always hunger for.

Who is it who comes now? A sudden face when all around has drifted into darkness. Listen to my tale, whoever you are. It was the body of a dead girl I cherished! It was the world between her legs! Not to marry would have been unthinkable and so I took my cousin to be my child-bride.

Jubilation, Baby!! It’s Done!

September 10, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes, I finished the rewrites of Tell My Bones last night, and I spent today, tweaking things here & there and searching for the elusive typos…

And I just now sent copies off to the director, and to Sandra, and to Gus Van Sant, Sr. And now I want to simply collapse.

No, actually what I want to do is have a cigarette and a beer or something, but that’s not what’s going to happen. I don’t think…

No, I’m certain that’s not going to happen because I gave all the beer to the lawn care guys this morning and I’m too fucking tired to even think about leaving the house.

So. Collapse beer-less and cigarette-less is how it’s gonna play out tonight!

Nick Cave sent out not one but two Red Hand Files newsletters today!! So that was pretty darned exciting. For me, anyway, since I would appreciate it if he could send out one or two every day. They were quite interesting. You can read them there at the link.

Anyway.

My big adventure today was that when I drove my brand new Honda Civic to town to go grocery shopping very early this morning, I discovered one of those green garden spiders clinging to the trunk of my car! So, rather than let him get crushed on the highway or in the parking lot, I put him in my trunk and drove him home. And then took him out of the trunk and put him on one of my many, many morning glory vines. And he seemed extremely happy. He was quite the adventurer. I found him so interesting — you know, do spiders create their own realities? Did he want to go for a ride on the outside of a new car? Did I disappoint him by putting him in the trunk? Was he relieved? Grateful? Just disoriented and confused by me??

I don’t know what it is about me and spiders, but I do have quite a number of them — all different kinds. As long as they aren’t big enough for me to see, like, every single one of their eyes, I’m cool with it.

Okay, gang. I am absolutely beat. I can barely even spell now so I’m gonna close! I hope you had a terrific Tuesday, wherever you were and whatever you did!! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

Me vs. Everything in the World!

September 9, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I saw this illustration and it just felt like me as a reasonably happy little girl, and then, behind me in the bed, was everything else imaginable in the world that was waiting for me.

When I actually was a young girl, I never really related to the Little Red Riding Hood story. All the virginal symbolism of it and the whole “girl meets wolf” thing. It held no appeal to me.

The only fairy tales that I actually related to were Beauty and the Beast (the old, non-Disney version) because Love & Kindness trump everything else in the world always; and Rumpelstiltskin because the helpless girl was forced into that horrible situation, then became queen, and then, as queen, tricked that mean little guy and got to keep her baby. I liked that story a lot.

And I also loved the story Peter Pan. And I mean, I really loved that story — I loved Peter and totally related to him. (Perhaps that says a lot about the way I still live, I’m not sure. I sure as hell didn’t grow up — didn’t do the “Wendy” thing. So who knows.)

Well, anyway. I loved that photo of the moon last night, up over my barn (see post below). I just find this village so mysterious and magical. I really do. Loyal readers of this lofty blog perhaps recall that after my 4th weird near-death experience, which came just prior to meeting that older man who died (that I wrote about a couple days ago), my life seemed to change so dramatically that I began to wonder if I had actually died in the near-death experience and just hadn’t figured that out yet.

The man was still alive when I moved here, but not for long afterward. And I wondered if maybe he had only been sent into my life to help me cross over in some way. I often felt, when I first moved here, that the transition to this actual house, to this intensely spirit-filled town, was me moving into some sort of “between world” — no longer alive but not accepting death yet, but not knowing it. And readers perhaps recall that right after I moved here, the Latter Day Saints came into my world in the most amazingly joyful way. It only added to the intensity of me not feeling like I was alive anymore. (It is so hard to explain this if you don’t live in Muskingum County because it involves all these ancient burial mounds around here that are 2000 years old; they are considered sacred ground to the Mormons.)

To be honest, I still often feel that way — that I am not really alive anymore but haven’t figured out yet that I’m dead. Mostly because there is no way to prove that it’s not true. You know, there is no concrete way to prove I’m still alive and not actually dead, because everything could just be a sort of fake reality that I only think I’m perceiving.

When I saw that moon last night, and how amazing it looked over my barn, and how amazing this town feels at night — wondering why on Earth a woman like me, a woman who was always so intensely urban, who always wore a little black dress & black high heels everywhere she went, why she even has a barn; well, once again, it made me feel like I’m not really alive anymore. That I’m in some strange in-between place and I only think I’m still alive. Because I was just never, ever like this before.

Wherever this is, it’s really beautiful and I really love it here. But, wow, gang; I am really getting tired. I know it’s because I am doing so much writing; just nonstop — bringing everything from inside to the outside, nonstop for the last 12 months. Including the TV pilot (Cleveland’s Burning) that I went to LA about, which is still sitting in need of certain key people and very soon, I have to pitch that whole project to the Head of Programming of a huge streaming platform and I don’t have those key people in place that they asked for because I immediately wrote a novel, launched into that micro-video production company with Peitor, finished writing a play with Sandra, then wrote 2 entirely different versions of another play, became overwhelmed by the Girl in the Night stories, and on and on…

Everything coming out of me and nothing has landed anywhere yet. And now the trip back to NYC is looming next week. It’s exhausting. So much “outgoing” and absolutely no incoming. Well, certain indications of it, but nothing concrete yet. Just constant “outgo.”

Yesterday afternoon, the horrifically loud carbon monoxide alarm went off in my basement. Not a thing any homeowner wants to hear. I was working on Tell My Bones up in my room and suddenly it started shrieking. I went down to the scary 118-year-old basement, and down there, the alarm was just deafening. I couldn’t get the alarm to shut off, and for a few minutes, I stood there and stared at it, knowing I should call the fire department. But wondering if this might not just be the best thing in the long run.

I eventually did go get my phone and was about to dial 911 when the alarm shut off. And none of the other alarms in the house ever came on, and God knows, the house is well ventilated with 21 wide open windows. But, Jesus, I am just so tired.

St. Christopher actually was a saint, don’t let them persuade you otherwise. He did exist; he’s not some myth, although his actual name was slightly different. And if you talk to St. Christopher, he listens. You can actually feel him listening to you. You know, I am still doing that segment-intending stuff, trying to survive my life in 5-hour chunks right now, but still not knowing how I am going to survive that trip back to NYC. All the driving and then dealing with everything I have to deal with there. But then I heard St. Christopher in my head, saying that he was going to take care of the whole trip, and not to worry. That I was going to have a great time.

I believe him. He is the patron saint of travelers, after all. Especially of 12-year-old girls who are suddenly driving grown-up cars…

Well, anyway. That’s where I am today. Not really the best head space, but I’m trying. I must get back to the play. It is almost done. So I will close this. I’ll leave you with the 3 songs I was listening to on my phone this morning, around 4am, when I was wondering if I’d ever finish this play and/or even bother to get out of bed again. Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

Just Weird Awakenings All Over the Place

September 8, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Should I just list them all, or what? Is that easier?

I saw this older woman last night who was having trouble lifting some bags. I could see that her back was really bothering her so I offered to help her. She declined, and then briefly went into this little sort of speech of empowerment about how she still wants to do things for herself, etc. And how she’s determined not to get old, and that if she didn’t keep doing things for herself, what would happen to her? And all that. And then at the end, she mentions that she had a birthday back in June and had turned — 59 (!!).

I swear to God, she looked closer to 80. I’m serious. She was only one month older than me. I got back into my car thinking, holy crap, what was that?! I did not know how to process it. I realize that I’m sort of immature and childlike and always truly feeling 12 years old (albeit, an extremely worldly, non-virginal sort of 12), but was she what I was supposed to be like? It was kind of horrifying. (I’m not meaning to imply that 80 is horrifying, or anything. I’m just saying.)

And I’ll also mention here, only because I’m just now reminded of it — back around the 4th of July, loyal readers of this lofty blog might perhaps recall that I tried to join a new dating sight for bisexuals. (Not a dating site at all, really, but more of a “have sex with total strangers” type of site.) But I gave up on it almost immediately because I couldn’t get the profile thing to work and then, of course, I realized that I didn’t have any free time whatsoever to try to meet and have sex with strange girls that I knew didn’t exist anywhere within 500 miles of me anyway.

Apparently, though, my half-finished profile is still just sort of hanging out on that site because I get emails alerting me that women are emailing me, wanting to connect. But I can’t access what they say because I haven’t completed my profile, I can only see who they are. However, not only do the women come from places like Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina — you know, places that are so not right around the corner from me; but also they have all been close to 70 years old.

Not that women close to 70 shouldn’t want sex or something, but my knee-jerk reaction is always: why would someone that old be thinking about having sex with me? I’m, you know, twelve.

But then of course, I realize, no, they’re really only about 10 years older than me. And then I sort of freak the fuck out. When did I become a viable sex-partner option for 70 year-old women??!!

Then I sort of realize that some of the gals from my past would themselves be pushing 70 now and I’m like…well. How can that possibly be? (And apparently, I’m really sexist because it doesn’t bother me a bit to contemplate sex with older men because then I still get to be 12 and have my “daddy thing”. But then women of a similar age to the men become “old women” in my mind and it freaks me out.)

So that’s a sort of ongoing weird awakening around here. (Apparently, I dip deeper into that “Mick-Jagger-I-Refuse-to-Have-Sex-With-Girls-Even-Close-To-My-Own-Age” syndrome every day! Who knew??!!)

Another weird awakening that actually occurred when I awoke this morning — apparently, yesterday I was so preoccupied with the constant cavalcade of insanity that I lovingly refer to as “my thoughts”, that when I set up the coffee pot for this morning’s coffee, I only put water in the percolator and no actual coffee. So I perked a whole pot of hot water. And I was having sort of a difficult morning, emotionally — from the moment my eyes opened. And going for that much needed first cup of coffee, only to discover that yesterday, I had apparently been out of my mind and so now only had a piping hot cup of water in front of me… grumble grumble

It’s just that I hate losing it, you know? My hold on sanity is usually tenuous, at best, so I really need to know that I still know how to make a pot of coffee.

My new car, though, was sort of a little miracle last night.

I decided that I really needed to get a grip on those automatic headlights and how they really worked, you know? I am just not comfortable with this car yet, at all. I really want my little Honda Fit back. But I am not getting my little Honda Fit back. Because the entire Universe — in the cunning guise of the Honda dealership — has decreed that I drive this really nice grown-up car, instead. And learn to like it.

So I thought, I am going to cause an accident if I don’t figure out how to use these headlights because it is super dark out here on these highways at night. So I set the lights to automatic and I drove out into the wilderness well after dark. And it turns out that the headlights are actually fucking amazing. They go from regular to bright to regular in a heartbeat. They just sense everything, every degree of light and non-light, and adjust accordingly. It was really cool. And then that “lane departure” thing, that alerts you when you’re inching out of your lane — it actually pulls the car back into the lane.

My first taste of maybe one day having one of those cars that drives itself.

And while I was out driving, I was thinking about my beloved Hellcat and what it actually means to go from 0 to 126 mph in 10 seconds. (It literally does this.) How does that feel? And why is drag racing so exciting to me, but no other kind of racing is exciting to me? What is this idea of just going really, really fast in a straight line for a very brief amount of time anyway?

The very first real drag race I went to was when I was 12. It was so exciting. And I remember that the extremely loud PA system played the AM hit radio station in between the races –you know, during the setups for each new race. And I remember that “Run to Me” by the Bee Gees came on. I really, really loved that song and it was playing so loud. It was incredible. (It’s still a really incredible song, especially if you play it really loud and you drive really fast and, I guess, if you are still 12.)

Then I was also thinking, while I was out in my grown-up car, driving in the constantly fluctuating non-darkness, about those really expensive anatomically-correct robots people buy so that they can have sex with them. I find those things really interesting and even though I would like to try that, I don’t think it’s a really good idea for someone like me — since I am always living way up in my own head anyway, and have very minimal contact with other human beings as it is — just going that extra step into intimacy with non-humanness seems like a dicey idea at this point. (Although I loved that movie, Marjorie Prime. It was based on a play that I didn’t see, so maybe the play was even better, I don’t know. But I loved the movie.)

Anyway, I digress. What I was really thinking about was that it might be a good idea to make a bunch of those robot things to resemble children and make them super affordable so that pedophiles can just sort of, you know, go off to their rooms with them and just do whatever it is they need to do. And make society a safer place for human children everywhere.

I guess, though, that the benevolent Government would just end up taxing us non-pedophiles in order to create some sort of fund to enable low-income pedophiles to have free sex-robots for life. Something like that.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have to: a.) wash my hair because it is beyond disgusting; b.) finish the rewrites on this play already because it is filling me with all-out despair around here; tears & the whole 9 yards — all this time rushing past me and the NY trip approaching rapidly; and c.) figure out how to just be joyful because my life is going to be over in a nanosecond, when we get right down to it, and there is so much I still want to do.

So there we have it! Me, my mind, and a Sunday morning in September!!

And I leave you with the indescribably amazing song I was streaming in my non-CD-playing new car last night! “Babe, You Turn Me On” from the (equally amazing) 2004 double-album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Have a good Sunday, wherever it takes you. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Babe, You Turn Me On”

Stay by me, stay by me
You are the one, my only true loveThe 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

Like an idea
Like an Atom bomb

c – 2004 Nick Cave

Me, A Grown Up!

September 7, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

All right, well. I got the new car.

No CD player. It’s all about streaming.

What the fuck? Do they not know how many CDs I still own? And even though I do stream a ton of music, there are hundreds of CDs that I don’t have in any sort of streaming version, including some Nick Cave stuff and several early Tom Petty CDs. I’m not sure how they think I’m going to be able to pull out of my driveway without certain songs on certain days.

I don’t actually have a driveway, but still. The thought of ripping CDs onto my laptop then transferring them to my phone– I am not a Geek. I am a crazed, lunatic writer. I do not have time to do stuff like that anymore.

That pissed me off so much that I almost got right back out of the car and said, “Take this back, please, and give me the old Honda Fit.” This grown-up business really sucks.

But here is the car I got. This is not the actual car. I don’t have a showroom to park it in. But I am too lazy to go downstairs right now and photograph the actual car. But it looks just like this, so don’t worry.

It does weird things like drives for you automatically for 10 seconds. It has a radar up front that automatically applies your brakes if someone ahead of you puts on their brakes. It keeps pace with the car in front you: if that car speeds up or slows down, you do, too. It has automatic lights so that you can blind people with your brights at night without meaning to — or you can drive in complete darkness, if you prefer to not blind people. (That seems to be my option: blind others or drive in total darkness.)

The other thing it does, which totally cracks me up because I love language: if you inch outside of your lane at either side, an orange warning comes on in front of you that reads: Lane Departure.

That word “departure” is what cracks me up. Who thought of that? They probably thought “watch what you’re doing, asshole” was too offensive to the driver, or that “put your fucking phone down & pay attention, you’re driving!” was too long to cram into that little orange space.

But the thing that disappoints me the most about the Civic is that it does indeed go really fast, but it is a more solid vehicle than the Fit so you do not feel like you’re going really fast. There is no soaring sort of thrill. So what is the point of going really fast? I might as well just go the fucking speed limit, you know? And save on gas and stuff like that.

They are forcing me to grow up. And I do not appreciate it. However, it is mine for the next 3 years.

As I was leaving the Honda dealership in the new car yesterday, across the street was a used car lot and right out there in front was a used Hellcat. It was in a bright metallic lime green color, not my favorite. But still. I looked at that car as I drove away and my heart sank… (Those Hellcats go from 0 to 210 mph in about 3 seconds. I realize there’s no earthly reason to do that if you’re not drag racing, but still. It just made me feel so sad.)

Anyway. So now I look like a grown up when I’m in my perfectly grown up car. (I’m not one, but no one will know that.)

Okay, well. Sandra and I actually spoke on the phone for 4 seconds yesterday. I was in the Honda dealership when she finally called me and I couldn’t talk. So now we are playing phone tag. A step up from texting…

The play rewrites are, of course, not finished. I’m getting stressed and depressed and all that stuff that I do so well. But I decided late last night to do some radical segment-intending, 24/7, for the next several days and pull myself past this. I usually only do segment-intending when I’m getting ready to get into the car. I have two profound needs whenever I’m driving. The main one is to not kill any animals out here in the middle of nowhere where there are so many scurrying about, and the other is to not wreck the car, since I am only borrowing it for 3 years and then giving it back.

For me, my segment-intending always includes giving appreciation to St. Francis (animals) and St. Christopher (the car). And then of course to Christ because he’s that thing in my life that tries to keep me from generally going insane. But segment-intending doesn’t really involve saints unless you’re me and your mind chooses to do weird shit like that.

But segment-intending works extremely well. So I decided to break the day/night into 5-hour segments, so every 5 hours, I visualize the next 5 hours going really smoothly and me not stressing out — staying calm, happy, even.

So far, it is working great. It really is. I’m in my second segment right now and not freaking out about anything at all, and only thinking of death as a viable solution in the most meager, fleeting sort of way. (Just kidding about that.)

And I slept like a rock for 5 hours last night, woke up and wasn’t worried about anything at all. I feel like I have this sort of mental protective force-field all around me, keeping out the garbage thoughts, and helping me just stay calm. It really is interesting, how my mind can actually feel it — feel protected, I mean. From my own thoughts.

However, on that note, my mind will feel even better when I finish the rewrites on the play so I better get started here. (Oh, I’ll mention here that it looks like all those additional Conversations with Nick Cave for January 2020 that went on sale yesterday sold out in, like, 4 minutes. I think this means that he is never going to stop conversing. This is not a judgement at all, but an observation.)

Okay!! I leave you with this song I used to really just love. It was breakfast-listening music today and I hadn’t heard it in years. I still loved it. It is such a soaring song. “The Whole of the Moon,” from The Waterboys album, This is the Sea (1985). Enjoy. Have a super Saturday, wherever you are in the world, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“The Whole Of The Moon”

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moonYou were there at the turnstiles
With the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars
And you know how it feels
To reach too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truths
You cut through lies
I saw the rain-dirty valley
You saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
But you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

With a torch in your pocket
And the wind at your heels
You climbed on the ladder
And you know how it feels
To get too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferry boats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars

Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

c – 1985 Mike Scott

Everything Old is New Again

September 6, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I know, I should be excited this morning because in a couple of hours, I’ll have a brand new car. However, I woke up battling a huge bunch of sadness today, instead.

Part of it is because I’m still not quite believing that I’m the kind of girl who will be driving a Honda Civic. I know it’s a great car. But I would be more excited if I were driving a Hellcat. My dream car.

The other part of my sadness stems from this business of it being September. The cooler weather; this closing-of-the-windows business. The birds leaving for warmer climes.

I used to love September. I used to love fall. I guess since I wrote about this in Letter #2 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, I can just go ahead and write about it here.

(And as an aside, Letter #3 began coming out yesterday, entirely unexpectedly and all of its own accord. It appears to be titled, “Baltimore.”)

Anyway, in Letter #2, “A Beach to His Waves,” I wrote about an older man who died, but who managed to thoroughly change my life before he left.

I knew him for less than 4 months, but they were the most intense, amazing, beautiful, magical 4 months I ever lived. He was terminal, with cancer, but wound up dying very suddenly from a heart attack instead.

He was in his early 70s, extremely happily married — kids, grandchildren. He’d had a really successful career. But his wife and his kids were absolutely devastated by the fact that he was dying, incurable, and we met honestly by sheer accident, but it then did seem like it was no accident — it was some miraculous type of fate, or destiny, or something. But we did indeed meet, we were pulled together. And he just wanted to be with someone who didn’t treat him like he was fragile, and who didn’t treat him with kid gloves, and who wasn’t crying all the time. Even though he really did love those people, his wife and family, without doubt.

It just happened, we became lovers, and then it took over my life for just under 4 months. Not only was it the most amazing sex, he also taught me, for the first time in my life, how to accept being loved. As far as I knew (or even know still today), I was never really loved when I was growing up. My (adoptive) mother told me point blank that I was not loved. My (adoptive) father told me the same thing, in different ways.

At best, I was tolerated, and usually just barely, since throughout my years of growing up, I was relentlessly abused. A large part of it was the fact that I was adopted so I had nothing whatsoever in common with the people who adopted me. Nothing. I couldn’t have been more different if I were trying. And on top of it, I was very smart, very sexual, very psychic, very creative. Just this weird little kid from Jupiter and they really, really didn’t want to deal with me. Both parents eventually told me that they regretted adopting me and wanted me to just go away.

Anyway, I don’t want to drag all that up now, it is sufficient to say that I have never felt loved and never took it as a given that I ever would be loved, even though I am intensely loving on the giving side of that one-sided equation. (And of course went into the Ministry because of my relationship with Christ and his love, and my understanding that I was capable of being an endless supply of giving love to others.)

But this man, he changed all of that for me. He had been raised by a mother who had truly loved him. His whole life had been surrounded by love, so he could not even believe that anyone (me) could be coming from a place of never having been loved. Felt loved, Even felt deserving of love. Any of it. And that put us in the curious position of him having fallen in love with me, and needing me to accept that love because he knew he was dying and didn’t want to leave life feeling like I was refusing to accept his love.

He managed to get through to me, you know. It wasn’t easy. But it did happen. And it changed my whole life. Everything about how I saw life, and felt life, and all of that. And what I allowed myself to feel, for the first time ever, was pretty staggering. I mean, I was already well into my 50s.

So, of course, he died. And it was quite sudden when he did. And I couldn’t go to the funeral or anything like that, because I didn’t officially exist. He was married and all that. So my grief was very private, and very intense. But what got me through it was knowing that he didn’t want me to be sad. And I also immediately felt his true presence visiting me from the other side. And he helped me find my way through my grief.

He doesn’t visit me every day anymore, but for awhile he did. He was with me constantly in spirit. I couldn’t see him or hear him, but inside my head, I heard him perfectly. He was there.

Well, my main point is that he died in early September. So there you have it. My inability to let summer go anymore. (And then Tom Petty also dying suddenly of a heart attack, and dying at the begininng of October — that stuff didn’t help me deal with my private loss.)

And until the Muse came into my life last fall, I really thought I was done with living. I didn’t want to kill myself or anything, but I really, really wanted to cross over that great divide and go be with that guy again, for eternity, even though I knew he had felt that his wife was his soul mate. So I wasn’t (am still not) really sure where that leaves me for eternity. But, the Muse came and suddenly all this writing came out of me. Just pouring out. Planting me really solidly within Life again. In a really joyful way. Still, when I wake up in the morning and realize it’s September now, that fall is coming, it is a battle not to get sad.

This morning I just felt overwhelmed by it. Just too many question marks right now in my life — about both plays, about my novel, other projects that are still un-anchored anywhere, needing a firm home. You know. Just too many projects I’m generating that are not anchored anywhere yet. And still more projects on the back burner, waiting for my complete attention.

It was all I could do this morning to get through my meditation, then my Inner Being journaling thing, anything to just hold on and not feel so incredibly sad.

So. I’ll head out and get my new Honda Civic and not think about the Hellcat that perhaps deep in my heart, I would rather have. And you know, in terms of signs — how when someone you love dies, you long for signs that they are still with you? With him, early on, I once asked him to please show me a sign, and then he unleashed just a barrage of signs, until I was finally shouting out loud, “Okay STOP!!” because it was freaking me out. All the sudden signs that he was with me in spirit.

But a few months ago, out of the blue, I had to drive into the city and deal with all that horrible ugly traffic that I hate, in a city that I also hate, and suddenly, there on the freeway, moving into my lane, was a purple Hellcat. My dream car. I never actually see Hellcats on the road, only Dodge Challengers. Hellcats are pretty expensive. And this one was purple — the exact car I wanted. And the license plate is what told me it was his sign of signs for me. When he was a little boy, he had loved Elvis. Just worshiped him. And the license plate on the Hellcat read: ELV1S. So not just “Elvis” but that Elvis was #1. And then there was also a picture of a rocket blasting off on the license plate, too, which to me was symbolic of what he had done for a living (aeronautics).

A true SIgn of Signs, in my opinion. I followed that car for quite a while that day, until it sped off onto another highway.

Well, I got out of bed this morning crying, but determined to somehow save this day from the oblivion of my sorrow, you know? I’ll go get my new car. I’m sure I’ll be really happy once I’m driving it way too fast in Muskingum County.

It looks like it’s going to be another stunning day. I have to say, I don’t understand any of it. Life, death, grief, joy, love, sex. None of it. I don’t understand it. But I still choose to feel all of it.

Okay, so, have a great Friday, wherever you are and wherever it takes you. Thanks for visiting. Oh, and Iggy Pop’s new album Free, is very interesting. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but it does fill me with a lot to ponder — this aging thing. Iggy Pop is managing to grow older quite gracefully. It is so interesting to me. Okay. I leave you with the song that came into my head the moment I came out of meditation and saw that dawn was approaching, and I was determined to stop crying and somehow face this too beautiful September day. I love you guys. See ya.

“Here Comes The Sun”

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right
It’s all right

c – 1969 George Harrison

And Away We Go!!

September 5, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

[First, here’s a quick update. I just saw some of the morning glories blooming outside my backdoor and could not resist posting them here!]

{Okay, back to the original post!!}

Yes, tomorrow morning, I’m trading in my beloved Honda Fit for a Honda Civic, and so I will drive to NY again and not fly.

As much as I don’t really feel like driving for 10 hours there and 10 hours back right now, I can’t grasp giving up 25,000 frequent flyer miles just to fly 500 miles and spend a minimum of 6 hours doing that. So I’ll just drive.

And don’t even speak to me about just buying a plane ticket. Those flights from here to that little airport in NY, 500 miles away, cost a fortune. I can of course fly direct to JFK or LaGuardia, and it’s faster and cheaper, but then I have to deal with getting to the train and taking that up to Rhinebeck. So, you know, it’s like, Jesus Christ, I’ll just get in my car and drive.

I was planning on leasing another Honda Fit because I really love that little car and it goes really fast. It just zips along. And you can park it anywhere because it’s really small. Plus it’s a hatchback that has back seats that fold down, so you can transport anything.

However, there is a sale right now on Honda Civics, and a Civic is cheaper than a Fit right now, so I guess I’ll upgrade and become more like a respectable person. (For some reason, I feel like only grown-ups drive Honda Civics.) I guess we’ll see how it goes because that’s the car I’m getting. I realize that I do have to grow up at some point, but I wasn’t planning on doing that this year.

Well.

Another beautiful, beautiful morning here. I woke up and everything actually felt sacred. The peace and quiet of everything. Only one bird singing, and even the cicadas are dying off now. It was mostly just crickets. And it was really cool out — back down into the 50s again, which I wasn’t expecting, so when I went downstairs, all the windows were of course wide open, and the ceiling fans were whirring merrily away. It was fucking freezing! Those poor cats.

But, you know — they do have those handy fur coats…

However. The world felt sacred to me this morning, and I felt a little vulnerable within it. Like, I don’t really understand who I am anymore. I just don’t.

Yesterday was interesting. Wayne was back in NYC from his trip to Nepal, so we chatted on the phone for a while. His trip sounds like it was amazing, frankly. He was just tramping around — in the towns and in the foothills of the Himalayas, mounting 200-year-old staircases to get blessed by tiny living goddesses (meaning little 4-year-old girls); just doing whatever presented itself.

The thing with my song “Breaking Glass,” was an interesting story. He did actually access the song through my Wikipedia page, and from there, through the Smithsonian website. He was specifically talking about me to some Nepali guy that he was tramping around with, and that sort of baffled me. But what baffled me more was when Wayne said, “I always really loved that song, ‘Breaking Glass’. It was one of my favorites of yours.”

I honestly did not know he even knew that song, let alone knew it well enough for him to have an opinion about it. Or to even talk about me to some stranger in Nepal. I don’t recall Wayne going to more than one of my gigs, even though we were married. I had the impression he didn’t care much about my music. So really, it was just baffling to me.

And then I mentioned to him that I would be in an airbnb for 3 nights in Manhattan because I was going to see Nick Cave. And then Wayne says, “I remember you telling me about that first time you saw him, when all those people in the audience were only into murder.”

I was absolutely astounded by this. When would I have told him that? Not only was that show over 30 years ago, but it had happened several years before Wayne & I even met. Why did he even remember me saying something like that? (I mean, I was really upset by that first concert back then — 1988, I think. Because I thought Nick Cave was a genius; a really brilliant songwriter, even though his songs were really dark. But he wasn’t an actual murderer, he was a songwriter. And the audience behaved more like they found him to be a really gifted murderer. The whole fucking show truly upset me. Obviously enough to tell Wayne about it at some point, several years after it had happened, even though I have no memory of doing that.)

Still.

I honestly don’t think of Wayne as someone who even likes me very much, let alone as someone who ever listened to anything I ever said. And I feel like, you know, he stays in touch because he feels sorry for me, and doesn’t want me to accidentally set myself on fire or something. So the whole thing just threw me.

I’m so serious, people. Being married to me is the furthest thing from a picnic that you can possibly imagine. Basically, I want to have sex 15 times a day and then the moment that’s done, I need you to stop talking to me because I need to write. And then I have this really unattractive place where my voice goes if you’re really trying my patience.

That’s about it; the entirety of ‘me’. Oh, and then the ‘f’ word nonstop.

I have two ex-husbands who are really kind to me. And I don’t understand why. I accept it because I love kindness. I try to be kind in return, because there’s a whole lot of stuff I do remember and I know darn well my marriages go so much better for the husband when I’m not actually in them. So yesterday just threw me. I was trying to remember who I really was.

I did a lot of work on those final pages of the play yesterday, but mostly what I came to was an understanding that a whole lot had to happen in a short space and it all had to be really moving; be tragic and then truly uplifting. So I’ve got my work cut out for me, but on we go.

And as soon as these pages are done, I will have some breathing room, finally. I can get back to In the Shadow of Narcissa, and Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I’m super excited. (Here’s something funny: I misspelled “erotic” there and so spell-check suggested “aortic.” I think that in this instance, considering my sense of Eros, my Muse, my mind — the words erotic and aortic are actually kind of interchangeable.)

Okay, gang! Have a thoroughly happy Thursday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I leave you with what was in my Instagram feed this morning. I’m guessing you can see why I prefer this to having to think about my actual life. Okay! I love you guys. See ya.

È meravigliosa!

September 4, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes!!! It’s wonderful!!!

I finally made it to the end of the most important segment of the play last night. And I could not be more delighted — even though it’s a death scene, it goes to a tragic place. But it is relived within a dream, so it doesn’t have the same kind of sadness to it that it would have had in “real-time.”

And there is a sense of jubilation woven all around the tragedy, creating absolute (controlled) chaos. Helen is in agonizing despair, crying out Psalm 22, while the choir is in this jubilant refrain of Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?, as Helen’s grandson, who has waited all his life to get a job on the railroad, finally gets that job up in Louisville, and then gets crushed by a train — but he goes gloriously to the sweet hereafter in all that joyous singing, while Helen’s heart breaks into a million pieces.

And all of it takes place within Helen’s dream where she is inside one of her paintings and the ghosts of her family come “alive” again.

I have been struggling with that whole section — 16 pages — for a couple of weeks now. It felt so amazing to finally finish it last night.

As usual, the Muse was working overtime and I could not have felt more appreciative.

Well, I did indeed make the 100 mile trek to get the less-than-10 minute interview for the TSA Precheck yesterday. And yes, I did manage to get a wee bit lost and my iPhone maps decided to stop speaking to me, only wanting to show me images while I was trying to drive, lost, on a strange freeway. Through some miracle of divine guidance, I finally found the darn place and made it right on time for my interview. But, man, what a lot of driving, a lot of gasoline, and then the “check oil” light came on halfway home… all that for a 10-minute interview.

So I called my sales rep at Honda when I got home, and I will leave it to him to let me know if I should come in and trade in the car for a new lease right now. I am so close to being at my maximum allowed mileage on the current lease, and now I need an oil change…

Plus, yesterday, I was trying to book my flight to NY — I want to fly into Stewart International because I’ll primarily be staying in Rhinebeck with Sandra, and as you can guess, there are no flights that come anywhere close to being a direct flight between here and a small airport like that one.

I have a variety of layover choices in Philadelphia, that range from 2 hours to about 8 hours. I’m not exaggerating. I could make about 7 commuter train trips between Philadelphia and NYC in that 8-hour layover. A direct flight between here and Stewart International would be 1 hour. But since there is no such thing as a direct flight between here and there, the minimum travel time is 6 hours, including me having to leave by 4:15am to make the one-hour drive to the airport to catch the first flight out at 6am.

And all of that would cost me 25,000 frequent flyer miles!!!!! (Round trip). I’m, like, you’re kidding, right? I can go to fucking Alaska for that. So now, if I do lease a new car right away, I think I’m gonna go ahead and drive again. It’s a 10-hour drive. And I can leave at whatever time in the morning I want to. But I can’t do it if I don’t have the new car yet, because I’m too close to going over my max miles.

So we’ll see what the rep says when he calls me back today.

Meanwhile, I am at last nearing the end of the play. I have one final section to revise. Between 15-20 more pages, tops. And I don’t have the luxury of it taking me an additional 2 weeks, so I’m hoping to have the rewrites finished here momentarily!! (Or, you know, maybe a week. That still gets the play to NYC a week before I get there.)

A quick update re: the sudden hashtag keanu situation in my Instagram feed — I’m actually finding it kind of soothing. Having my Instagram feed positively inundated with harmless photos of Keanu, night & day. It helps neutralize the somewhat emotional knee-jerk responses that I have to a lot of the other things/people I’m following. So I think I’m gonna keep it. A sort of social-media therapy: hashtag keanu; a new route to bliss.

You know, for many years, I was very good friends with a journalist who wrote primarily for Rolling Stone, the New York Times, etc. — big media outlets. And he interviewed a ton of movie stars in his career (he’s now a talking-head on a sports show). And the only movie star that he had nice things to say about was Keanu. He genuinely liked him.

I met Keanu at a party once in NYC, a million years ago, and I won’t say I actually liked him. He did something that insulted me — he looked down the front of my little black dress. I know it was very funny when they did that to the stepmom in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but I had spent a fortune on that little black cocktail dress I was wearing, and I was in the process of being stood-up by my date because he was stuck in a midtown recording studio and was not going to make it to the party.

And it wasn’t just Keanu who was coming onto me that night while I wore that dress; a number of men were. And some were very nice & polite about it. But when the one guy you’ve gone to all that trouble for, doesn’t show up, then it doesn’t matter if you end up being the tallest, prettiest gal in the room; you just don’t give a fuck, you know?

I’m sure that on any other evening, any other night, any other year, Keanu is indeed very likable.

All righty!! I’m gonna get started here. I leave you with the song I was listening to this morning — another little love letter to the Muse!! I used to just love this song when I was 7 years old. Really, gang. I played this record all the time and sang along to it, too! I woke up at 4am today, thinking about this song for the first time in decades. And so of course I found it on Youtube. I sang along to it as the cats ate their breakfasts and they seemed to enjoy it. Purrrhaps you will, too! Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya!

“Call Me”

If you’re feeling sad and lonely
There’s a service I can render
Tell the one who loves you only
I can be so warm and tender
Call me
Don’t be afraid, you can call me
Maybe it’s late, but just call me
Tell me, and I’ll be around

When it seems your friends desert you
There’s somebody thinking of you
I’m the one who’ll never hurt you
Maybe that’s because I love you

Call me
Don’t be afraid, you can call me
Maybe it’s late, but just call me
Tell me, and I’ll be around

Now don’t forget me
‘Cause if you let me
I will always stay by you
You’ve got to trust me
That’s how it must be
There’s so much that I can do

If you call I’ll be right with you
You and I should be together
Take this love I long to give you
I’ll be at your side forever

Call me
Please, call me
Call me
Tell me, and I’ll be around

Call me
Don’t be afraid, you can call me
Maybe it’s late, but just call me

c – 1965 Tony Hatch

Dicey, Indeed!

September 3, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Let’s say that yesterday was Keanu Reeves’ 55th birthday. And that you saw some mention of it in your Instagram feed, so you rashly decided to start following #keanureeves.

Wow, you know what happens then? Your Instagram feed gets positively inundated with photos of Keanu, at every stage of his professional life, from every film, every magazine, every TV talk show appearance, every moment he was out on some street within the range of some photographer’s lens.

I’m now getting photo after photo after photo of Keanu. What’s nice about that, though, is that it doesn’t require me to think at all. I don’t even have to hit the “like” button either. I can just sort of scroll away, into oblivion, not thinking, not liking or unliking, just staring.

I enjoy not thinking. I so rarely get the chance.

I might actually unfollow everybody else in order to just have an endless stream of photos of Keanu that don’t require me to do any thinking at all.

We’ll see.

Here’s something that is getting to me, though. I think that the closer we get to the anniversary of Tom Petty’s death (which came really close to his birthday, too, regrettably), Dana is posting stuff that is really hard for me to take. Just personal, simple stuff. I’m never gonna unfollow her, that’s for certain. But last night, when I went to sleep, the final post I saw in my feed was of him in bed with his dog and his cat, talking to them, some movie playing in the background. You couldn’t see him — just the dog and the cat, but you could hear him. It made me sad because not only was it just so simple, but he apparently died in that bed. Even though the paramedics got his heart going again, his brain never came back and so he “technically” died at the hospital. Still, you know. He was in that bed.

Then first thing this morning at 5:30am, for some reason, the very moment my eyes opened, I checked my Instagram feed and I don’t usually do that first thing. I’m usually awake for hours before I do that. But right there in front of me, was another 40-second clip of him in bed with his dog, and he was playing a harmonica — the really high-pitched notes– to make his dog go a little nutty. It was cute, of course. But it broke my heart. Because I ponder all of it: the bedroom, the drapes, the choice of colors in there, the books on the shelves, the furnishings, the man alive in the bed loving his dog, the wife he loved right next to him, filming it with her phone, again the TV on in the background — everything.

I don’t really know what to do with that information, you know? Because he’s dead now, and when he was alive, I don’t think he wanted a bunch of strangers to see that private stuff. But now, I guess it doesn’t really matter what he would have wanted back then. And I can’t not ponder it. But there is no sort of answer to be gotten from it or anything.

All right.

Well, today is all about getting myself out the door soon because I have my interview for the TSA Precheck and I have to drive 100 miles. I’m not even exaggerating; such is the price one pays when one lives in the middle of nowhere. I’m hoping it gets processed before I have to go to New York City, which is right around the corner.

I finally heard from Sandra this morning! Meaning that she finally texted me, at dawn. We haven’t discussed anything yet re: Tell My Bones rewrites, or even the other play we’re working on re: Toronto. But at least I finally heard from her. I know the trip will go well. I just know it. There are nothing but loose ends, but it’ll all work out.

There’s a new Red Hand Files newsletter from Nick Cave today, really beautiful, about forgiveness. You can check it out at the link there, if you want to.

And now I gotta scoot. Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with a shot of my kitchen table from last night. As you can see, I’m a little behind on my MOJO Magazines. However, my table looks really good compared to how it looked before I actually cleared most of the junk off! (I know…)

And here’s what I was playing on the little jukebox. Enjoy! I love you guys. See ya.

“Hungry Heart”

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

[Chorus:]
Everybody’s got a hungry heart
Everybody’s got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody’s got a hungry heart

I met her in a Kingstown bar
We fell in love. I knew it had to end
We took what we had and we ripped it apart
Now here I am down in Kingstown again

[Chorus]

Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don’t make no difference what nobody says
Ain’t nobody like to be alone

[Chorus]

c – 1980 Bruce Springsteen

14 Free Seconds While I Drink My Final Coffee of Summer!!

September 2, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

All righty!! The Labor Day holiday is here! The last gasp of summer is upon us!

I noticed quite a few cars heading off to work this morning, around 5:30am. So I guess a number of my neighbors are working on this fine American holiday that’s supposed to celebrate not working!

Ah, well.

I’m working, too, of course! But yesterday, I finally finished that segment of the play that I’d been struggling with for over 2 weeks, sent it off to the director in NYC, and he really loved it. And I actually do, too.

I finally, finally nailed it. And it only amounts to a lowly 2 and a 1/2 pages (!!), but it’s a story arc that shifts us from joy into something dark and turbulent, and none of it takes place in real-time; it all takes place within a painting within a dream. So it just took me forever.

The next segment is tragic, but I have a grasp already on how I want it to play out. So I’m feeling really good. I don’t mind working my life away.

And speaking of working our lives away… this morning, Nick Cave announced a million more Conversations in Europe for January 2020 !!!

Or maybe just 8? Whatever the true number, more Conversations are coming in January. However, I’m still not seeing Crazeysburg on that list of upcoming shows, and we are only a hop, skip, and a jump (and a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump and a plane and a bus ride) from let’s say, Germany… and there are at least 14 people here who would likely be willing to brave the January weather and make that 3-block trek in the ice and snow to our humble Town Hall… I guess 14 people will simply have to wait for Providence to shine upon them some other time.

Okay, gang. If you’re Stateside and having a cookout today, or going to the lake, or any of those really fun & cool things that I will once again not be doing, have a really great time!! Thanks for visiting! I leave you with what I was listening to this final morning of summer… a true heartbreaker, as we say goodbye to what we long for. But so very lovely. I love you guys! See ya!!