Illogical Evolving Equinox, Combat and the Saint Patrick's Day Blues

The equinox is almost here and my body is conspiring to get knocked up on me again, as it does every year when dark and day share nicely. Sharing perpetuates itself in its selfishness.

St. Patrick was a sharer in another way -- well, first he was a slave and then a priest and then an orator. He christianized the Irish (an act which may be blasphemous) but also convinced them to abolish slavery 1000 years before Columbus dug the Middle Passage. So that probably mitigates any personal gripes I might have with monotheism and organized religion. But still, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are such BDSM institutions like heroic (modern Western) medicine. This post pretty much seems to be about me opening the assault rifles on any institution I'm supposed to have surrendered to or am currently selfishly sharing with -- so you may want to look away quickly. And recently a friend of mine said it's always combat with me. That must suck, knowing me like that. My presence is never restful or soothing, unless you're an infant or going through a bout of psychosis. I can rock colicy babies to sleep on my knee and I can calm someone experiencing active psychosis. I could describe the steps I take in both of these cases, but it probably wouldn't make a logical pattern -- it's more like when your physics professor tries to teach you calculus or engaging your lover in combat. On second thought, it's nothing like that.

I don't like myself at all today and I'm also thinking one million pornographic thoughts. So maybe ego stroking and self-loathing are an expression of selfish sharing which is quite likely the driving procreational force in humanity.

During finger therapy all of the OTs cryptically discuss amongst themselves how snappy and cruel one surgeon can be. Personally, I find him to be very compassionate and kind of sexy. But I don't work for him, either. Of course today, a second-tier somebody else mentioned in a whisper that Dr. That Guy just really needs to get some. But once you start speculating about what someone else is getting, it might mean that you aren't getting enough either -- or maybe you just want to be the one to give it to them.

Doesn't everybody get turned on by cruelty at some really basic, reptile brain level? And truthfully, all of us guilt-ridden girls just get juiced-up love panties for doctors. We want to marry them and sue them and do what they tell us and then blow them in their exam rooms or maybe we just love surgeons in self-defense because there they are convincing us to let them pierce us to the bone even though it hurts and costs and scars. We let them tie us to the table and slice apart our skin and maybe knock us out and maybe keep us awake -- completely at their discretion and we never, ever question the choice, really. We just surrender.

But then we catholic girls are fed guilt and surrender on toast from baptism and we're told to die virgins like St. Maria Goretti or second best, surrender to the yoke of holy matrimony and pop out lotsa babies in 10 month intervals so there will be more catholics and consequently we have lots of weird sex & worthiness issues because the only ones really enjoying sex in our religion are the child-raping priests since only they can absolve sin which came to earth via Eve, etc.

Probably all of that crazy Catholic sex between Yahweh & Mary (not Joseph) and St. John Bosco & the oratory boys and even Adam & Eve actually happened on the Equinox which can never be a birthday but is often a conception date which is why the pope tells you life begins at conception but we girls know it doesn’t really count until it comes out like the sun, so really its solstice you’re waiting for, Holy Father, you just didn’t notice because of all of that blinding sunshine.

(The top image is a painting called Lady Doctor by John Woodwark. The Birth of the Sun King is by Hetty MacLise. I found it on her blog.)

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

Happy Solstice...

Image from Glennie Kindred

A Slogan I Can Get Behind

I just bought a box of these buttons from the Evil Slut Clique. I love it because it's funny, sarcastic and cheap. All of this while celebrating the holidays and making fun of the religious right. Merry, merry!!!
And then after I purchased them BlogHo suddenly posted again. And then an old Smiths' song I hadn't heard in years came on the music station I'm streaming (which doesn't really have anything to do with hoes, but it still pleased me). Oh, ho ho holy angels I have heard on high -- hooray!!!

La Colonia

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Today marks 517 years of paradigm shifts, slavery, genocide, discovery, la raza, lies, biological warfare, manifest destiny, the first baby steps toward a global economy, etc., -- in other words, the Americas. Good and bad, bad or good; "God is change."

Lady Day

Today is Lady Day whence back in the day this was the New Year Day by the reckoning of certain Western European cultures.
Lady Day celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation because it is exactly nine months before Christmas. Of course, this reckoning is wrought with all sorts of flaws -- like Jesus was born in July -- so maybe that's why the tradition changed. Of course, this day celebrated the Lady long before Jesus camped in the desert. (The Annunciation painted by Henry Tanner.)

Lady Day also refers to Billie Holiday. Possibly the name was given to her by Lester Young. Lady Day sounds like all the joys and sorrows and weariness and loneliness and bliss of all the women who ever heard they were with child.

Them that's got shall get

Them that's not shall lose

So the Bible said and it still is news

Mama may have, papa may have

But God bless the child that's got his own

That's got his own

Listen to God Bless the Child

Phew!

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

Beware! More Blood...

I must be a grownup now, because I'm always bitching about my taxes, but seriously, I don't want anymore of my hard-earned dough going to Israel so they can do this ...

I don't see how the Palestinians are supposed to be such big terrorists when they are the ones getting killed. I saw a Norwegian doctor (Mads Gilbert) on tv last night. He flew to Gaza as soon as Israel started bombing. He doesn't have enough equipment for anything -- not even enough I.V. carts and the Israelis won't call the massacre in Gaza a crisis because they "...suspect the hospital of harboring Hamas terrorists..." Here is a picture of a Palestinian family for the Israeli Government and Joe Biden and George Bush. I want my yearly 3+ billion dollar gift to Israel refunded so my fellow citizens can pay their heating bills and Palestinians don't ever have to take another family portrait like the one below.

Happy New Year!!!

mala sirena

I just received a fantastic Christmas present. Rhapsody now has 60 Liliana Felipe songs for my listening pleasure. (I posted about Liliana a couple of years ago.)

Her music may not be for everyone, but if you're a dirty little secret lover of cabaret, then this will be just the thing por El Hábito.

Here is a link to listen to my theme song, Mala.

My Rhapsody Playlist

Here are the lyrics. If you want, you can click on them for my English translation.

Mala porque no me quieres
mala porque no me tocas
mala porque tienes boca
mala cuando te conviene

mala como la mentira el mal aliento y el estreñimiento mala
Mala como la censura
como rata pelona en la basura
mala como la miseria como foto de licencia
mala como firma de Santa Anna como pegarle a la nana
mala como la triquina mala
mala y asesina mala como las arañas
mala y con todas las mañas
mala como el orden la decencia
como la buena conciencia
mala por donde la miren
mala como una endodoncia
mala como clavo chato
mala como película checa
mala como caldo frío
mala como fin de siglo

mala por naturaleza de los pies a la cabeza
mala, mala, mala, mala
pero que bonita chingaos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

don't worry, it's all about you... yes, you

Your own arrogance desires
You in all its emotive excesses.
You have feelings, dammit!
You love to display them on formica countertops
Over vending machine cappuccinos and all of
Your friends must cater to
Your “openness,” which is really just
You rebrushing the worn fabric of

Your narcissism.

You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you…
We are always talking about
Your hurts
Your needs
Your worries
Your hungers and
Your feelings are the centerpiece of every holiday.

Your needs are the infrastructure of

Our every plan and if

We don’t stuff
You bursting with attention
You cry, loudly and incessantly. And when
We dare to start anew

You cry foul! Abuse!
You call
Us names.
You cry, cry, cry and

You cry and

You cry and
No one understands how sensitive
You are.
Everyone is mean to
You. Poor, poor pitiful
You.

Master of
Your
Youniverse.

Amen.

Monsoon

salt sun, dry eye

slips of paper, nylon straps

flapping from the clothesline

over the hill of red ants

mustard hills, cerulean sky

carresses the possessive

wind which laps

the last drop of water

from the breaking-down

bottle buried in

the sand to

the left of the shed

Three o'clock

swells bruised and violet

as lightening rises

from the aqueduct

to bloody the shining beam

of sunlight

water phantoms

chase around the yard

drowning the anthills

dousing the denim

on the line and

at 3:15

the sun splits the cloud

with a roundhouse

imprisming herself

my clothes dry quickly

in the spectrum

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

This audacity of theirs is not new.



Oh, Dick!!! I Want To Ream You!!!

Cheney, Cheney, Cheney

Mine own ravenous vampire

My Midas zombie king!!!

Go and run far away.

Just run and run and run

Take your lead heart

and your thirst and your hunger

To lie, to sneer, to kill

I caress your lily white hands

Soft as the Pillsbury Doughboy

You are soft as the Pillsbury Doughboy

Because you are old and impotent

And this is why you kill children

And this is why you kill mothers

And this is why you plunge drills

Deep into the earth's core

Because you are impotent

And so we all shall suffer

Your hanging flag

And your long shotgun

Your long, long shotgun

For you are not a man.

But you are from Wyoming

And know the glacier

Of inadequacy.

And so you kill babies

And so you kill Americans

And so you kill Iraqis

And so you kill everyone

You shoot your friends

You rape civilization

You rape the constitution

With your lily-white hands

And your limp Dick Cheney

In Hell you will be spread

Shot and speared and reamed,

Dick -- 9 times in 9 places

Forever and ever again and again...

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

Happy V.D.

Song

Allen Ginsberg

The weight of the world

is love.

Under the burden

of solitude,

under the burden

of dissatisfaction

the weight,

the weight we carry

is love.

Who can deny?

In dreams

it touches

the body,

in thought

constructs

a miracle,

in imagination

anguishes

till born

in human--

looks out of the heart

burning with purity--

for the burden of life

is love,

but we carry the weight

wearily,

and so must rest

in the arms of love

at last,

must rest in the arms

of love.

No rest

without love,

no sleep

without dreams

of love--

be mad or chill

obsessed with angels

or machines,

the final wish

is love

--cannot be bitter,

cannot deny,

cannot withhold

if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give

for no return

as thought

is given

in solitude

in all the excellence

of its excess.

The warm bodies

shine together

in the darkness,

the hand moves

to the center

of the flesh,

the skin trembles

in happiness

and the soul comes

joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,

that's what

I wanted,

I always wanted,

I always wanted,

to return

to the body

where I was born.

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!!!

Happy Super Mardi Tsunami Gras

It's Mardi Gras and Super Duper (or Tsunami) Tuesday, with dozens of states holding their Presidential Primaries today -- including mine.

Romance Challenge 2008 has come and gone. It went well -- four of us showed up with our pages. Mine sucked and was completely unromantic, although following the advice of Pavel Chekov (and Joe C) I opened with a dream and you can read it here. What came out of Romance Challenge 2008 was that we formed a writer's cabal and now we are going to focus on short stories for a few months and work our way up to a novel. The short stories are assigned by genre and our next assignment is historical fiction.

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

Enjoy your Tuesday and may it be fat!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!!! Party like a viking -- which should be easy since they tended to travel and spread the seed. I'm going out for Mexican & Margaritas with one of my favorite men and then I'll probably stop by the neighborhood pub. I'll give you all psychic kisses at midnight.

(And I intend to be back to my regular blogging within the week.)

Here Comes the Sun King!!!

Happy Solstice and Merry Christmas and FaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa!!!

Happy Birthday, Dexter!!!

One year ago today, this little guy entered our lives on Remembrance Day, which is rather fitting.

What can I say; he's gorgeous, gregarious, a good listener and he knows how to savor the finer things in life.

Love, Aunt Necklace