Witching Hour

I am not a nice girl. I am not a sweet woman. The clock just struck truth and madness. I started this mermaid symbology to tap into my inner beauty but my inner beauty is dark and strange. On Saturday I was toted in a bicycle chariot up California Avenue by a potion brewing warrior. We kissed in the shadows and now I finally release my inner mother nature. This year, boys and girls, mother nature is tsunamis and tornados. She is moonstruck coyotes clamoring at the cataclysm. She laps up chaos and laughs at your dismantled structures. This siren sings sailors from their personal bondage and throws mona lisa smirks from her island.

Swim, bitches, swim.

(Credits to Dean and Diamanda Galas for inspiring this train of madness. Also to Tray Mead for the image.)

"Haunted...

...of your precious love. Of your precious love."


I noticed today that I posted on St. Patrick's Day in 2010, 2008, and 2007.
I don't have much to add today. The world has gone mad & will get worse with the current struggles in Japan, Libya, Wisconsin & Egypt. According to the end of the Mayan Calendar, we may be done in on December 21, 2012.

We all have the true Luck of the Irish. So "may the road rise to meet you and may the wind be always at your back."

"Don't ask, tell...

...I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell."
-- Charles Bukowski

I don't have the tolerance to swallow the bullshit anymore. I am terrified of the whole I have been breathing through for seven years. I am a pussy. But I endure. I get up and I go to work and I bust my brains and my boss says I am not up to this work anymore because my short term memory is scarred. I am a pussy. My exboyfriend called me a pussy once. I told him pussy was tougher than cock. He said yes. Pussy is like good tires. It stretches and flexibly spreads around the road's barriers. Pussy is the toughest mover and shaker. I am a pussy.

I am not me. I lost myself nine months? seven years ago? I am waiting for my map.

I probably drank too much tonight. Right now, I perceive a level of vision that lets me see through the trauma drama bullshit that I am supposed to live up to... that I could never live up to. Tomorrow I will face my come-uppance when I am pointed out as incapable of fulfilling my occupational requirements. I fulfilled them yesterday and I was still called a failure and they were never my calling or destiny in the first place.

I am going to hell. Thank god, I don't believe in it.

This is not where I belong. I haven't walked the road home in twenty years. Actually, I don't even remember what my house looks like. What home is. I do see my sisters of mercy on the road and I don't want to leave them. I don't want to disappoint them. And I can't find my way back home.

There's no place like home.

Suck it up, bitch. Quit being such a pussy. Go to hell. I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.

Muskrat Love

I have this gnawing suspicion that I am not living my own life. Like maybe I accidentally spliced the tape of my internal soundtrack to a copy of America's Greatest Hits and I'm walking around singing about a horse with no name and Ventura Hwy even though I hate those songs and they aren't even in my key but they stick in my head forever. In my dreams lately, I'm the only one who realizes those people gathering on the sidewalk are actually flesh-eating zombies and the Program Director insists that I bring them in for an appointment right away because they are just a little psychotic. Somehow he doesn't notice them spitting out fingernails and eyelashes. Meanwhile, my supervisor is giving away the last water in the county to these zombies who really are just waiting to snap her neck and chew on her brains and Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have and there isn't even a power button on the goddamned sound system. It just gets louder and I'm almost grateful when a crackhead knocks me down and starts repeatedly stomping on my face.

And I'm working on a graduate degree in this discipline and you really can't even think about a career shift during a recession with a kid about to go off to college. So just keep kicking me in the face, crackhead, just keep kicking. Sooner or later I'll either pass out or remember another melody and then I will sing all of the notes to some sick acid rock guitar solo in a perfectly pitched wail and it will drown out all of the Sister Golden Hairs who will hold their bleeding eardrums and slip on all of the shit leaking out of their state-of-the-art septic tanks and I will not document how many days the tank has been leaking and I will not pull the records of the purchase date and I will not write down that their eardrums are bleeding nor the causality and I will not fax a picture of the event to the FDA within 24 hours. I will just laugh and scratch out all of the band America's lyrics with a leaky, puddly pen and I will never, ever initial and date those blobs of ink. I will just laugh and sing all of the acid guitar solos that used to accompany my dreams and also all of the original Tom & Jerry soundtracks louder and louder and louder until we all finally admit that life is just one great, big fat Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- or maybe a Quantum theory of observation -- and if we don't wise up, it's going to seem like the flesh-eating zombies are eating our brains but we still have to get up at 5:55 a.m. and go to work and think about the best way to identify an error correct or how to keep that crackhead clean once he's kicked it.

Happy New Year!

How perfect to end this dastardly decade with a blue moon! Goodbye to the aughts and Happy New Year, everybody. Let's make the world a sweeter place in the teens.

Love to you all from the bottom of my emotional ocean.

-- La Sirena

Harvest

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

-- Willie

"I didn't come here and I ain't leaving."

-- Willie

Oooopps!

I fell face first into the sauce this weekend. Oh, beautiful booze, that numbs all anxiety and hyper-extrapolation. Forgot I love vodka, too. Good thing mermaids can breathe underwater and drink like fish! Sweet dreams...

(Go to the website listed below for the credits for this image.)

"There is no Sanctuary!"

Last night I dreamt that I was given access to view an archeolgical site in order to further my studies. I was permitted to fly -- without a machine -- over a kind of stone shelf with intricate carvings and pools. No one exaclty understood what they signified or who made them, but they were vast -- something like a Mayan city stretched flat, but Celtic in it's symbolism (and also somewhat influenced by the aesthetics of Logan's Run which I watched last night). I had to record everything mentally and take my findings to class...

...which was taught by the Franciscan Brother who was my extremely gifted high school philosophy/ theology teacher who was probably one of the most talented educators ever and whose lessons are still "exploding like a time bomb" in my mind twenty years later. He passed away in January. Brother Mc debriefed me before class and it was agreed that what I learned from the stone site was part of the lesson plan. But I was just a tool -- he knew the over-arching theme of the lesson and me and my stones were a mere instrument to be used to advance the lesson as he conceived it. I was to learn the lesson, too. It was like I was a secret weapon against ignorance, but my utility didn't lessen my own lack of awareness. Class was held. I came to realize that the point of this lesson would not be made clear in one class but would unfold slowly over the course of a year. My stones were not mentioned. I was confused.

Then the brother was informed by the mean, ignorant Department Chair (nun) that he would be required to use the syllabus she was handing out as a template. He had to turn it in for approval. He and I understood that the goal now was to continue the class as he designed it but to somehow disguise the plan to fit into the very rigid and useless construct being handed down so he could teach us undisturbed. I was scanning the sheets and helping him edit parts to look like a rubber-stamp approvable plan ... my shoulders ached and my vision blurred and then grew black...

...I was driving a pickup truck through the country. I pulled into a gravel drive between a trailer with an intricate walkway/ deck and a shelf of ancient stone carvings now covered with grass and weeds. About a dozen of my classmates were there playing ball and my task was to get instructions from inside of the trailer that would explain what formation and steps we should take to clear the stones and open them to their ancient, intended purpose. I had to do this before Brother Mc came and none of my peers could know that I knew this. I had to make it seem to happen organically. I climbed out of the truck and up the intricate walkway but every door and window was locked. Then Joey (a weird dream amalgamation character) came over to see what I was doing and I had to pretend nonchalant mischief. I had just figured out (mentally) the way into the trailer and felt urgency because Brother Mc would soon be coming. I heard and felt a rumbling and looked up over the trailer to see the Brother was a 25 foot giant dressed like Paul Bunyan -- he was both Paul Bunyan and Brother Mc. He flashed me the briefest sideways glance of acknowledgement while bellowing about those of us who were content to watch the shadows on the wall. Joey dashed over the walkway and into the field. I used this momentary distraction to enter the trailer from a back window but before I got in I noticed Brother Mc was carrying a hairless, purple rodent -- it looked like kangaroo babies (joeys) when they exit the birth canal and have to crawl unassisted into their mothers' pouches. I did not understand but I was unafraid and glad and then I woke up.

Last night I dreamt I walked into a storefront and ordered some sushi from the beautiful darkhaired woman behind the glass counter.

While she was fixing my meal, she nodded to the purple fliers on the countertop. They were advertising a special political fundraiser -- a chocolate making, bake sale, love fest being thrown by all of the witches in Chicago. She said we were going to infiltrate the party with decadent deliciousness. She asked me if I could make frosting from scratch. I told her I could; my grandma taught me.

Phew!

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
--President Obama

Tightly Clichéd

I haven't been reporting because I don't feel like being anything but me and lately I don't make for very good copy. Here are some infinitive forms which currently describe my life: to work, to mother, to granddaughter, to daughter, to sister, to aunt, to behave, to economize, to dodge bill collectors, to heal, to be healed, to sleep, to dream, to plan, to laugh, to master, to rest, to renew, to recalim, to befriend, to enjoy the occasional solitude, to not take things very seriously.

As I said, it doesn't make for interesting reading but it makes for good living.

The biggest news is that I'm trying very, very hard (and not so very perfectly) to kick that devil nicotine once and for all. Please, no comments about how the only way to quit smoking is cold turkey. It isn't and all cold turkey does is make me a homicidal maniac. Nobody wants to see that. Nations will declare jihad on the US because of the large, foul cloud of bad vibes and violence emanating from my aura. It would be very, very bad -- as in hell on earth, armageddon, etc.

The other biggest news is that I'm working on an application for a Master's in Science program offered at the university/hospital where I work.

And in other news...

My son now drives and we just spent the holiday at my mom's eating cold turkey and watching a brazillion bootleg movies.

Also, I wish Blog Ho would post because he's practically my last enjoyable vice in this life since I cut back on the booze and the loose men. Practically, not totally or definitely, so please, still no comments about cold turkey. I don't want to hear it.

Have you noticed that many "loose" men aren't "loose" at all, but rather uptight when you get down to it? So the term "loose" is not a very good one when applied to men of leisure and easy pleasure. Let's change it to "tight" since "tight" is the second syllable in "uptight" and "tight" can also slangily mean drunk and/or a really good mesh of skilled and talented musicians during an improv jam session or (mistakenly used in reference to) a recorded song which sounds very good only after about 10,000 takes.

I have some new girlfriends and some blast-from-the-past girlfriends popping out of the woodwork and I've been having lots of fun hanging out with the girls and doing cool things at cool places and not really caring if you think I'm cute while doing it.

Mostly, I hang out with cool chicks, but I do still know some "tight" guys, in case you were concerned about my ability to be heterosocial. In fact, it was a couple of "tight" guys who helped me relocate my super powers a couple of weeks ago at an improv show during which 2 troupes performed; one female troupe of improvisers called Children of a Lesser God and one male troop of improvisers called Uncle's Brother. The male troop contained some famousish people. The female troop was "tight".

Yeah, during the show the one "tight" guy friend started asking me for a bunch stuff because he is not a boy scout, but rather a journalist. Meanwhile the other tight guy friend was suffering from the adverse effects of a reiki sneak attack coupled with acupuncture, allergy season and a musty rug at the IO, which may cause runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes, ague and overall fatigue. Yet somehow all of the symptoms, wacky energy, extemporanea and general hilarity were strangely regenerative, kind of like an eclipse on Heroes or possibly more like the way the destruction of Alderaan and the death of Obi-Wan brought the gang closer together and led to the eventual triumph of rebel forces against the Empire.

So once again, I have the magical ability to pull any necessary item out of my purse at any given time, for which my superheroic alter ego, Single Mom, is rightfully renowned, and if you ever run into me while drowning in a river I promise to dig you out a straw or a self-help manual on survival or somesuch -- or maybe I'll just dig you out of the current so you don't die.

Not on my watch, pal.

There are witches in the hills calling my name

saying come join us sister, come kiss the flame

Come dance in the moonbeams, ride the night wind

make love to the darkness and laugh at man's sins.

I shiver with delight, I shiver with fear

my heart wants to go but my soul's filled with fear

So I turn to my lover and ask what do I do

do I answer their call or stay here with you?

But under spell of deep sleep he moans and turns away

taking his protection and my desire to stay

So I rise to the hill tops, I ride the night winds

I make love to the darkness and laugh at man's sins.

-- Cowboy Junkies (from The Caution Horses)

(This Queen of Wands is from the Tarot of Dreams by Ciro Marchetti.)

spring and sprung

sylph-like sisters sequestered starvation's scions in subterranean schematics

now they don't remember their dreams

now they don't recognize their own screams

better to curl up in a ball in the sunshine

pelting through the windowpane

St. Patrick and a Triple Brigid, Brought To You By the Banshee

Patrick, is of course, Patron St. of Ireland and Ireland has produced hundreds of saints, so that's quite an accomplishment. Patrick did bring Catholicism to Ireland and is credited with ending slavery there about 500 years before it was abolished anywhere else.

Patrick is reputed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. The snakes are considered to be a metaphor for paganism / druidism / nature religions. However, if you grew up Irish Catholic as I did, you understand that the savor of the old religion has never left us entirely. For example, I was told to dedicate myself and my son to the Blessed Mother (which is what I was taught to call her -- Mary, the Mother of God or the Blessed Mother and hardly ever did we call her the Virgin Mary).

We have a saint to act as patron and go-between of every possible human concern, so St. Dymphna (an Irish Princess) is patroness of mental illness because her father tried to seduce / marry her and cut off her head when she denied him.

St. Brigid is patroness of Ireland and also blacksmiths, chicken and dairy farmers, fugitives, midwives and children whose parents aren't married. You should also pray to St. Brigid to prevent house fires I and once heard that she is credited with inventing whistling -- but that might have been the pre-christian Goddess Brigid, who may be the mother of both the saint and the Lwa Maman Brigette which closes a major loophole for me as I have always figured Irish catholicism to be as much of a syncretic religion as Voudoun and Santería.

Maman Brigitte intrigues me. She is noted for her enjoyment of rum flavored with many hot peppers and her beautiful and sensuous dancing. She lives at the Cemetery Gates near her husband the Baron.

Together they bridge the crossroads between left and right, life and death, and this and that. Her rulership of death and sensual beauty puts me in mind of another Irish other -- the banshee.

The banshee is sidhe, a lovely youthful fairy woman who invented the fine art of keening (mournful screeching laments for the dead) and has attached herself to certain Irish clans. She appears to warn us of impending death within the family or clan and is reputed to sound that warning with her unearthly keening.

As one with whom the banshee visits, I can tell you that she doesn't necessarily screech, but rather lifts the veil between this side and the other. What that means is just as she shows me who is leaving us, I am also blessed to know who is coming to us. Unfortunately, having a veil lifted briefly often displays a scene without a context and I believe more strongly every day that our time of departure is pretty much chiseled in stone ahead of time. So for a variety of reasons, I am often aware of the pending death of a loved one but powerless to change things. Knowledge is a mixed blessing.

That said, the banshee hasn't recently been by to visit with any death reports -- however there seem to be a few healthy, happy babies on the way.

Love, La Weirdo Sirena

Abandoned Dogs & Fallen Women

I've come up with a skeleton of a plan for the Romance Challenge 2008. I'm going to write a modern American gothic novel tentatively titled Abandoned Dogs and Fallen Women. While clasped in the throes of an anxiety-fueled insomnia last night, I mentally sketched a very loose plotline about a woman and her loyal dog -- now that's a true romance -- a river and the grey midwestern countryside which will hopefully "...blend... cruelty, terror and erotocism..." (Norton).

Then about 3 in the morning I finally fell asleep and had a nightmare about sexual predators posing as Target employees, luring women out of their backdoors with roses, and then slaying them and meanwhile every son, nephew or boy cousin I have ever had was suddenly 2 years old, in my living room and had their shoes on the wrong feet and all of the pairs were mixed up and I had 5 minutes to correct the footwear situation, take a shower, not get raped or killed, get the kids safely to a babysitter, and get to work. That woke me up for about another hour.

Eeesh!

Lakota

A delegation from the Lakota Nation has brought all of their nation's broken treaties to Washington D.C. and announced their plans to secede from the U.S. of A. Anyone living in their land (parts of Nebraska, Minnesota, Wyoming, North Dakota and a whole lot of South Dakota) are welcome to join the Lakota Nation. You won't have to pay taxes. You will have to renounce your U.S. Citizenship.

Currently, the Lakota delegation seems intent on establishing some international diplomatic ties. Here is an article about the secession.

Gentle Readers, I must admit that I am quite tempted to join them. I've always wanted to live in a tipi. And frankly, I admire the Lakota worldview. In addition to their belief that they are part of Nature and Nature is a bountiful provider and teacher (as opposed to our view that we are Nature's Dominators and Nature is something to be feared and tamed) the Lakota approach music as a dynamic entity (the drum as an icon and teacher).

The Lakota also believe that the place of dreaming is its own equally important reality and what we do during and how we and with whom we dream is as important as our waking lives. I feel that way about dreaming and often learn things and make connections in my dreams, but that is devalued in our culture. Someone actually once said to me, "If you don't stop paying so much attention to your dreams, they are going to turn into your nightmares." Of course, he was one of those people who can never recall dreaming. As far as I'm concerned, that's the equivalent of a double amputee telling me what to do with my legs.

I long to live in a cooperative collective versus a collage of isolative individuals -- out for "number one" -- who refer to both their most sacred of relational unions and their most destructive weapon as "nuclear".

I don't want to be nuclear or radioactive or isolated or destructive anymore.

headache

strobe light massacre spasms sparking metal friction fictions whine while bodies surge anonymous, unyielding and assaulting my perimeter

~~~

cats and cold, computers and christmas and wars

breakdowns, meltdowns, shakedowns and overdrawn again

some one's smearing bengay in my sinuses

some one's shish-kabobing my temples

sledgehammering railroad spikes through my scapula

~~~

i want it to stop

escape into the weeping november fields the abandoned woods where bodies wash up

or stick in clumps of river brush and maple babies

underneath the airtight bridge

build me a log cabin,

but no I couldn't bear the splintering thwack of the axe violating logs

lets' crawl into a tipi and make out

until the icy rain lets up

Notes from the weekend

I keep dreaming that I'm performing again.

*******

My son's dad moved thousands of miles away for the winter as if he doesn't have any responsibilities or obligations here.

*******

Yesterday, I had a few drinks with a vet to celebrate blood and occupation and explotation, corruption, death, history, murder, oil, billionaires, economics, rape, racism, dead children, amputees, blasé, blasé, blah... I also found out that the day before was the birthday of the Marine Corps. It was founded on November 10, 1775 in a tavern -- which maybe explains how I know so many Marines.


*******

You don't even want to know some of the scary conspiracy theories my mechanic laid on me when I brought in my car. Here's the scariest one: vocal imprints of every person who has ever talked on a cell phone will immediately pull up your photo and your file at the FBI if you place a call there.

*******

I went to the upscale organic grocery store hungry. Big mistake! However, I do have a giant box of organic chocolate truffles and a bottle of mead. You know you so want to come over for snacks and flicks.

I had a really cool dream yesterday in which I had to convince my younger sister – who was 5 in the dream even though I was my own age – to come inside and go to kindergarten. I eventually brought her into the classroom and then played with her while she got to know the teacher and she was giggling when the bell rang, but I realized I was late and had to be across the building. I was hauling this suitcase on wheels through my old elementary school and walked down the final hallway and found myself in this technicolor amusement park/ water park/ train station/ university. I was trying to walk up some planks to a ship to take a fabulous voyage, but I couldn't get my luggage up the walkways. People tried to help, but I realized I couldn't bring the baggage and anyway it wasn't time for me to leave it just yet. Then everyone broke out into a show-stopping full chorus rendition of "Karma Chameleon" which included their costumes and the trees turning from red to gold to green at the appropriate point in the song. Then I boarded a giant magical raft with a bunch of people. We were being shipped to an island to study Advanced Techniques, Concepts and Random Silliness. I strapped my bag behind me and leaned into the water which sprayed over me and everyone else in a very fun way. The guy next to me and I were laughing – but some of the people behind us were scared and thought we were crazy – and we felt so FREE and happy. When we disembarked we were led to a martial arts/ meditation field and were handed our scrolls to study and our school robes which looked like posh velour bathrobes. Then I woke up.

just one more?

he precedes himself in sleep pleads his case to my subconscious seduces me with my own id and then comes closer casually in reality as if he needn't try

no, that's a lie

the part about reality in reality he chases me for as long as it takes closing his ears to seven thousand "no"s which pass from my lips he has kissed seven thousand times and i hold him in contempt because he doesn't hold me but i always seem to weaken to collapse to fall into bed again accidentally at request number seven thousand and one

i like to piss him off i purposefully court his ire and always ask him how his girlfriend is but he comes again and again and there really are no girlfriends music is his mistress he is his own best friend which is good since he has neither money nor emotion and he rambles on about politics for hours watching cspan until my teeth chatter i will not take off my clothes until he turns off the television his secret fantasy is getting head on his mushy gold couch while watching cheney's impeachment hearings

i have asked him seven thousand times to leave me in peace and peacefully seven thousand times he has refused