"Look at the people. Watch them pass but don't follow them..."

I hate myself right now. I feel like Bukowski only I can't drink, so I'm unable to write poetry or get seduced by multiple women in their twenties even though I am bulging and aging, too.

Why can't I write poetry because I'm not drinking? My friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a performance poet. He told me he quit drinking for six months once and he couldn't write even one poem. Then he said, Screw sobriety. This is pointless! And I think I agree with him.

What is the point of following all of the ragged rules of boredom and convention? I quit bartending and now I file endless reams of paperwork. Also, I have all of these stupid health problems, I weigh oodles more, I'm constantly fighting with my natural sleep cycle and I'm not getting lotsa loving. Everyone wants to fool around with the bartender/poet but nobody wants to bother with the fucking Program Coordinator. Another friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a farmer and says this is Mother Nature messing with me so either I learn precise organization (whether or not I value it) or else I'll drown in the next flood or get strangled by red tape.

When I used to be a young hippie punk mama only using herbal remedies, I was raising my son on bar tips and spending our free time mountain climbing or soaking in the springs. Now I'm a paper file organizer, an excel budget designer, a weight gainer, decreasing in health and memory but caring for people with severe anal missle retentions and more importantly, those suffering from hearing the voices and oddly linked thoughts which doctors try to treat with pharmaceuticals. And our studies are being funded by the pharma companies, of course.

Way back in the day (1000 years ago) people like our patients might have been respected as the shaman of the tribe and although they might live in solitude a mile away from the rest of their people and although their predictions may or may not have been true, at least they valued and trusted themselves and were respected by the tribe.

The prediction of a very cold winter or the tribe needing to do battle with another living down the river may have been heard from the schizophrenic shaman's internal voices or sensed by her paranoia or perhaps even connected with her delusion. Maybe it wasn't a truly divine enlightened prediction as much as a statement of the perpetually obvious in a tone that was cryptic. Or maybe this type of future descriptive insight and understanding is brought on by a perfectly proportional brain?

Maybe enlightenment and psychosis are relational. The words psychotic and psychic are separated with nothing more than an O and T. Separated by nothing more than respecting the differences as opposed to prosecuting them or infiltrating them with chemicals (like when I drink after a bad day at work or an old man swallows viagra or those few people who are still employed take Ritalin or Concerta each morning to make it through the day).

Or maybe I just don't know what to do with myself.

(P.S., I found the picture in this post at a site called My Health Guardian.)

(P.P.S. The title is part of a line from a poem written by a lady I used to work with & for.)

Life Imitates Art

Once upon a time, I met a man at Scenes. Scenes was a coffee house/ dramatist bookshop/ zine headquarters on Clark Street where you could smoke, drink a bottomless cup of strong brew all day for about $1.35 and tip and talk to strangers about interesting things. Their zine was called Strong Coffee. My friend Sergio had a regular editorial which seemed to focus on wandering around the city in altered states of mind. There was a naughty horoscope column called Madame Zosostris' Wicked Pack of Cards. Once, they were slapped with a cease-and-desist order for their parody of the glurgey comic Love Is... Once I met a guy who had spent a year in Germany and helped tear the Berlin Wall down. He coached me on Bertoldt Brecht which I believe led to me getting cast in Three Penny Opera. He was also a good kisser. But he isn't the man from the first part of this paragraph.

Once I met a man at Scenes. He and I were both in the midst of bad break-ups, as well as aspiring playwrites. We decided to co-author a piece illustrating the arc of the relationship. (This idea was every bit as bad as it sounds.) So when we wrote the meet & courtship scenes he invited me over for dinner. We had a lovely fortnight stand while we tried to outline the plot and when it came time to write the scenes for the break up we had a giant, public fight and didn't talk for a year and so we never finished the play.

I re-read it several months later. It really, really sucked so I tossed it in the recycling bin.

Mi amor, mi chingador ... te conoceré en el infierno

Four hundred eighty-eight years ago today Cuitláhuac led the Aztecs against Hernán Cortés and his Spanish merceneries, driving them out of Tenochtítlan.

Cuitláhuac was dead of small pox within a few months. (Bioterrorism was created by the Western man.)

Cortés had been greeted by the Aztecs as a god. They believed him to be an incarnation of Huitzilopochtli, god of war and patron of Mexico. This was because Cortés' lover la Malinche told him how to act in order to best the Aztecs. and so Cortés ended up lucky in love and money.
According to legend, Malinche was sold into slavery by her Aztec mother after her mom remarried and wished to leave her land to children by her 2nd marriage. (Aztec inheritance was matrilineal). Malinche was in the way and so she was placed on the auction block.

She passed through many tribes and ended up translating for Cortés because she knew so many languages. He was a conquistador thousands of miles from his wife, so he lived up to his name and conquered Malinche and with her help (the Spanish never would have succeeded without her) he conquered the Aztecs.

According to other legends, Malinche had several children by Cortés and when he left Malinche in order to return to Spain and his European family, she was so heartbroken that she drowned her children and herself.

Malinche was doomed by all of the gods in all of the heavens of all of the religions to search the earth for the souls of her children and not to return to the gates of heaven until she finds them. Her dead children of course, are hiding from her, seeing as she drowned them. So she tears at her hair and she keens and moans in her grief and that cry will turn your blood to ice in your veins and because of that cry, the ghost of Malinche is called La Llorona.

And to this day La Llorona snatches little children from the shore and drowns them. Perhaps she mistakes them for her own, she has been searching so long. Perhaps, she hopes to trick the gatekeepers and sneak into heaven with someone else's child.

Today, in Mexican spanish, a malinche is an unforgivable traitor. and La Llorona is a folk song and a cautionary tale used by parents to warn children away from the water.

Today, Tenochtitlan is el D.F. (Distrito Federal) or Mexico City as we call it in english-speaking countries. The city's residents speak spanish, not nuahtl.

The wheel turns.

This Song is for the Rats

This song is for the rats

Who hurled themselves into the ocean

When they saw that the explosives in the cargo hold

Were just about to blow

This song is for the soil

That's toxic clear down to the bedrock

Where nothing of consequence can grow

Drop your seeds there

Let them go

"Cotton" by the Mountain Goats

Happy Lunar New Year!!!

Stop Yelling At Me

To the bleached-blonde kept woman driving the brand-spanking-new Lexus in her just-so pink sweats on the way home from her mani and pedi who is fond of catastrophising in that very special super-nasal, suburban C- average of the MRS major who has blessed the city with her presence and is running up the cost of living faster than her credit cards:

Stop yelling at me. I only let you go on that way because I was fantasizing about punching you repeatedly in any one of your surgically-enhanced body parts. That's wrong, so I didn't move a muscle, nor talk, nor breathe too much. Beware the silent flaring nostrils.

To the arrogant youth from a culture that doesn't necessarily appreciate brassy dames asserting anything, much less daring to remind men of the accepted standard of line-standing etiquette:

Stop yelling at me! Don't assume a wounded look or point your finger too close to my nose or call me a liar. The whole chicken-shit line backed me up and thanked me for stopping you from taking orders from every girl in your class who happened to walk past.

All ex-boyfriends and bossy types should also stop yelling at me. I'm feeling raw. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep my temper. I am a Taurus, I have been on simmer for days and days and I am deeply concerned for all of our well-being. Please, stop now.

Thank you.

Mercury Retrograde Is Kicking My Ass

Ahhh... Mercury. You magnetic, relative planet moving as quickly and erratically as the messenger god you were named for.

Mercury is the god of communication, travel, merchants, thieves, gamblers, ambassadors and alchemy. He was originally god of the trade in corn. He is said to be the father of Pan. His mother is Maia. His festival is the Mercuralia on 15 May. He was very popular with the Celts, who equated him with a number of their deities. Mercury carries the Caduceus, the symbol of immortality and the art of healing. (Text from The Yew Tree, a site by Yvonne Aburrow.)

What the planet rules (astrologically speaking) is very similiar to the qualities of the god. And when a planet is retrograde, all that it rules gets a bit skewed. So during Mercury Retrograde you'll see more car accidents (transportation), there are often problems with telephones and computers (communication), and we all seem to be wandering around mucking things up and acting generally as if all of our synapses are not firing properly (wit).

You generally do not want to sign a contract during a Mercury Retrograde. Often something will go wrong. It's also a bad idea to start a relationship during MR, as it will most likely crumble quickly. Conversely, break-ups initiated during MR rarely stick -- which is fortunate, since at this time many couples have bitter disagreements due to miscommunication.

Good luck, gentle readers. This will be over on November 1st (All Saints Day).

"I'm In Tune, Right In Tune..."

Here's my Free Will Astrology for the week, from Rob Brezny. He must have read my post yesterday. (Maybe you would like to read yours?)

"The secret to success is to always be in love," said educator and ex-army officer John H. Stanford. "Staying in love gives you the fire to ignite other people, to see inside other people, to have a greater desire to get things done than other people." Did Stanford mean that you should be forever infatuated with some irresistible human being? Or was he referring to a more all-purpose phenomenon, like being in love with life? I urge you to meditate with great diligence and exuberance on this matter, Taurus, because you are, in my astrological opinion, going through a phase when love is EVERYTHING. It's the question and the answer, the hammer and the nail, the dreamy necessity and the pragmatic mystery.

If You Want Me To Stay

If You Want Me To Stay on Rhapsody

I've been running with a couple of "gentlemen" for awhile and I've just decided that I'm done with them.

I want someone who will say to me, "If you want me to stay..." And frankly I'm sick and tired of the same-old-bland-emotionally-stunted-stagnant-sterile-and-vacant deals I've settled for. Who wants a lifetime of cold oatmeal?

Also, it isn't just about my want. I would really like to meet up with someone who has wants regarding me. I wouldn't mind fulfilling some of them.

In any case, I don't really care if I meet someone else or not. I'm good at being single. I just know that the situation was completely aggravating and unfulfilling to me and I refuse to be locked into some ridiculous script in which I can either play the role of the doormat or the bitch. I'm not so good at those things. No, thank you. Time to make a new movie.

Okay, but here's the thing ... I really love to be in love. To rather radically paraphrase Rob Brezny when describing those born under my sign, we were made by love of love for love to love. So, I'm going to spend the entire month of September in love. I am going to romance literature, music, friendship -- you get the cheddary picture.

And today, I am in love with If You Want Me To Stay, written by Sylvester Stewart in 1973 and performed by Sly and the Family Stone. That bass line makes my heart leap and my ass move. Aaahhhh.... sweetness. You should do yourself a favor, click the rhapsody link at the top of this post and listen for yourself.

Crazy Love

I dread Valentine's Day. I begin developing pre- Valentine's anxiety a week in advance ... it's a big fat psychotic Hallmark slut of ridiculous expectation and for what? Why do you think they call it VD?

"Be Mine." What does that mean? Let me love you up and then take complete ownership of you? My love will enslave you??? I will own you. "You're mine."

Also, Mercury will be going retrograde on the 14th -- so beware of miscommunications -- especially with your lovers or partners or spouses or whatever. Also, any affairs or breakups initiated during a Mercury Retrograde will never stick.

I noticed in my time as a bartender that people get VERY drunk, VERY bitter and VERY mean on VD. I guess we all secretly hope for love and romance and all that jazz. And if you don't, the arrival of VD can create unnatural feelings of inadequacy, envy and vacancy within hearts that are normally way too full for such pathology. During the international outbreak of VD on February 14th, it's quite easy to see how drowning one's sorrows could be the best course to take. And that course easily escalates into a toxic waste spill requiring an expert hazmat team to clean up the wreckage caused by so many emotionally charged ions bonding with alcohol in a closed space.

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
Colette

Love,
(Cynical) Sirena

Sometimes I Am A Big Mushball

Outside the back door of the strange cinderblock building where I work is a "designated smoking area" where sometimes I like to huff a lung dart. The ashtrays are under a cement slab overhang and there are some benches nearby. I often find myself in the midst of strange conversations there -- mostly with greiving relatives (I work in a hospital) or lonely elderly folks.
Today there was a young woman sitting on the bench, anxiously clutching her purse. She had large black eyes and was quite lovely. I smiled at her, but she kept kneading her purse and kept peering over her right shoulder. I went back to smoking and trying to remember the exact wording of a quote I like.
Then a tall knight in scrubs and white shining lab coat stepped around the corner. The two raced together and tightly embraced, his chin on top of her head, her head against his chest. I stepped away to give them their privacy.

This is what I thought was the quote I was trying to remember:

We are "made of love, by love, for love to love."

Here is the actual quote:

The Goddess of Love, Aphrodite Herself, has asked me to remind you that you have always been in love. You will always be in love. In fact, it is impossible for you not to be in love. You'd be unable to get out of bed each morning unless there were someone or something that roused your heart and stirred your imagination. So please just admit that you are alive because of love; that you are made of love.

(I read it in my horoscope by Rob Brezny about 2 years ago.)

"This is very midsummer madness."

That quote is by Shakespeare from 12th Night. (In case I haven't mentioned it, he's a Taurus Rat like me.)

Welcome to the dog days of summer -- and I am unmotivated and emotional. According to the dictates of Nature, I think we're all supposed to be laying around reading and eating fruit. But we don't run this society according to the laws of Nature, which is why I spend alot of time feeling off-kilter. I feel like a dog, siriusly. I want to be pet and I want to sleep. No fetching today and for dog's sake, please don't wake me up....

Can't we all just go swimming and talk about nothing important?

(Good vibes and prayers to my pre and post surgical loved-ones.)

Crazy Bad: Tybalt (I)

"Why, what is Tybalt?"

"More than prince of cats, I can tell you. O, he is the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, andproportion;"

(I haven't posted in a while. I was in the midst of typical sirena reactionary weirdness -- and when I finally started creating a post, I realized I had 3 tricky topics in some convulted stew. So here they come -- comprehensible or not -- one at a time.)

But who wouldn't want Tybalt? Handsome, loyal, proud with those mad skills. Prince of cats? How did he get that nickname. Romeo may moon about and say pretty things -- but Tybalt! Aaahhh, now there's a practical woman's man. Not nice, not amorous -- but passionate, loyal and powerful...the caveat of triple earth signs like myself.

And notice, in every movie version of Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt is SEXY!!! John Leguizamo is absolutely in my top five of all-time sexiest men ever (1. Emiliano Zapata, 2. John Leguizamo,
3. Laurence Fishburne, 4. Che Guevara and 5. Clark Gable. And, YES, I am aware that I am really weird.)

And what about Michael York in Zeferelli's version? Ai papi!