My Culturally Rooted Tangent

I sang at choir in the church basement tonight. Please, laugh away.

Yes, I'm a good Irish Catholic lady who practiced with fellow choir members for two and a half hours -- less a twenty minute break in which we drank wine or beer and ate hors d'ourves. (You can refill your glass at the end of break so you have sustenance for the second half of practice!)

Since I am grooving on my catholicism tonight, I shall make confession. I love singing! It's challenging fighting all of the complications of harmony (so appropros on so many levels), it is so challenging fighting all of the bullshit of organized religion -- but somehow set it to music and I feel it. So many conflicts, but goddammit -- I'm still a fucking catholic!

Excuse me, Irish Catholic.

See, that differential is significant. I don't buy into that political pope crap. I also grew up with several guys who killed themselves because they were destroyed by the tragedy of being raped by priests. I imagine one of them as a significant image in the Jungian Archetypical Heaven now. He was golden and beautiful and Michelangelo would have painted him as the Archangel Michael. And I was taught to practice catholicism by 13 years of catholic school and my Irish catholic grandma and Jesuits and a book of the saints. So really and obviously, I'm an overanalyzing, superstitious woman. But aren't those the qualities that keep religion solid, stable and historical?

The point I was trying to make a minute ago is I don't pray to Jesus or God. I think pure, unsinful beings are unapproachable (and a load of misogynistic, hallucinogenic bullshit). I am the product of faith passed on from the oppressed -- pray to your mother and your friends and family, the Blessed Mother and the saints.

And the name is also significant. I was not taught to pray to the Virgin Mary; I was taught to pray to the Blessed Mother. Recite both of those names to yourself and see who you want to call on to assist you in your petitions. Tonight I stood on a bridge that rocked over the Chicago River while singing "Gentle Woman" to a a gift of urban nature which always blesses me. Blessed Mother, thank you for your children.

And tonight I also sang with the church choir -- even "Danny Boy" (yuck) which according to the music notes was published in "Londonderry" rather than Derry. I hate "Danny Boy". Over-played and praising saccharine martyrdom to The Man.

We should sing "The Wind That Shakes the Barley". It's a more valuable theme and it relates better to the times.

"Twas hard the woeful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us.

But harder still to bare the shame

Of foreign chains around us."

Today, the foreign chains are made of different steels. In this millennium, foreign does not refer to other nations and cultures, but rather, multinational corporate persecutors. We are cuffed by different oppressors but we are all still trapped.

And now to quote a catholic from a different culture: "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

So let us pray.

Evil Diva, Banshee Bitch

Evil Diva

This is me

When I flash my tongue, silver

Razor, sing my blood

My gunfire cracks

Through the canyon

Yes, my throat

I am that bitch in sequins and

I am the naked warrior

I lead the battle with my shrill

Sing death home

Home and howl, keen

Through the night

Through the canteen

And whiskey spews through my nose

And love from my lungs and

Wicked, wicked lies

The green in my eyes

The gold and brown

The earth in the shadows

My hips in the sway

In the mist, my lips

Sing you home

Sing you home

Sing you

Fin Agains Wake

One semester I studied James Joyce. We read Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. I mamad with my sister and those bright boys and nights poured jack and bud over class notes singing Patsy Cline and Lynard Skynard. Thus:

That was a tuning fork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, soft and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call.

Long death's call? Oh, singing through all logic lures the sailors to the rocks but the rocks remain. Sailors swim and bleed and minds drown in the song but these scars tissue silver and the siren sings songs not sirens and science. Silence.

river run, past Eve's and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,bring us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

(ps. Image by Velikov.)

"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.

"If I Only Had a Brain."

In April, an infection was planted in the memory storage space of my brain and by June it exploded into seizures and I forgot how to laugh or cry or even engage in small talk. Now my strength is gathering again and the people who love me seem relieved to recognize me, myself back in town.

On the other side, I can't remember many "professional" terms and phrases we use at the hospital although I am still mostly able to successfully do my work again. I just require a proof reader.

The gift that I have been given by the hijack attack of memory and the loss of professional buzz words is that dozens of smothered scenes from 38 years have burst onto an imaginary cinema screen inside of my skull.

At eighteen, I was enrolled at a commuter art college near Lake Michigan. My major was theater and our department chair was also one of the leaders at Second City Theater and directed many SCTV episodes. I was taking an improv class taught by Marty DeMatt , who literally grew up at Second City because his mother was one of the pioneering founders and directors. Marty was a sharing and saavy teacher and a compassionate, talented artist. Once, Marty stayed home sick and sent an improviser over to cover class for him.

I can't remember the guy's name. I do remember that he told us he had a degree in photography and even though he wasn't a professional photographer, he approached living his life with perspective, lighting and focus so whatever we did -- whatever we learned along the way in school and in life would form our viewpoints and approaches.

Then he split us up into groups and told us to take a few minutes to plan the bases of our improvs to perform for the class. I was leaning against the back wall with my friends Tom & Jerry (really) and he assigned us together. We spent about thirty seconds planning to be three scarecrows in a field and then talked about going to the nickel draft special at the bar across the street after class. We were the last group called up to do our improv for the class.

And I don't know how or why it happened but art possessed us and we suddenly became puppets of enchantment. We were three scarecrows who discovered how to free ourselves from the polls and we happily flopped and danced and learned to walk and Tom's scarecrow pointed to the highway and wanted to hitch a ride but Jerry's scarecrow and mine wanted to stay on the farm. And Tom's said he couldn't leave without us and he helped us back up on our polls because he was the tallest and just then a truck was coming and we said, "goodbye, we love you" and he ran toward the road with his thumb up and we said goodbye again and then the substitute teacher said "scene" and followed up with:

"Sometimes you get a few minutes of harmony and beauty and you can't predict when or how but you were lucky to feel it and we were lucky to witness it. Now goodbye, everybody. Thanks for letting me teach you today."

And the three of us stated briefly and once only over the nickel beers how fortunate we were to have those few minutes together.

I was eighteen years old that day. The same age my son is now.

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

Hallelujah!

well, maybe there's a god above
but all I've ever learned from love

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

it's not a cry that you hear at night

it's not somebody who's seen the light

it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

-- L. Cohen

(This link will take you to a nice live performance on youtube but you have to watch a tampax commercial first. Hallelujah!)

"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.

Naiad

Today is a breathtaking gift of Nature all rolling green with her azure cap and puffy cumulus feathers. Wandering away from my house, I encounter brick-painted, huddling homes from two centuries ago built by immigrant Irish who saved a few pennies and built a new community in a triangle a couple miles removed from the death-stench stockyards of their employment. Today there still exists a few Irish and Poles but now it is mostly comprised of upwardly-moblie Mexican nationals who have yard sales on Saturdays and fiestas on Sundays.

The triangle is bordered by Archer Avenue (formerly the Road to Widow Brown's) which reaches out from Chinatown into the wandering desires of Resurrection Mary. This is the southern border of Mount Pleasant, which settles along the river. The Chicago River is now the home of haunted steel mills and scarred ports. Most of it is vacant although the passing trains graon on their tracks day and night like a grandfather on the porch warning against the transcience of our values.

Here, the river itself is spanned by several suspension bridges still studied today by rapt mechanical engineers. The river, far below me, appears in the sunlight as a chunk of amber hiding in its depths some winged prehistoric creature. With its ornaments of railroad ties and ordered train cars and abandoned factories and graffittied granaries it stands in stark contrast to the lake it flows from -- divorced from natural union by dynamite. Once I visited her here among the broken factories and prarie flowers and I came back with a baby. Once I led a parade to meet her at her contrived lake source and dyed her the color of envy.

I am never far from her for long.

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.

Tuning in...

I need to tune into another psychic station for a few days, because the state of the world is so not good right now -- honestly, my state of mind isn't so good either. I haven't been feeling well. I am in the wrong line of work. And yet somehow, I feel like I'm on the cusp of figuring something important out -- if only I could break through that final layer of skin, rip off the scabs or something.

Also -- mermaids have very dramatic, passionate love lives but not such stable ones. This is mostly a result of personal choices with the occasional lifestyle consequence thrown in... some of us are not really cut out for domesticity. And don't ever let anyone shame you into being something you are not or wearing costumes that don't fit.

Pirates are sexy and roguish and best of all, impermanent. I am not stupid. I knew that ship would set sail eventually. In fact, I counted on it -- torn between the tight excited flush of eploration and the desire to return to the ocean floor to mull it all over.

Unraveleing a tangle of thoughts, sensations and emotions is a joy unto itself.

Vomit Out the Apple.

"Okay," Teddy said. He was sitting back in his chair, but his head was turned toward Nicholson. "You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?" he asked. "You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So--this is my point--what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are. I mean if you vomit it up, then you won't have any more trouble with blocks of wood and stuff. You won't see everything stopping off all the time. And you'll know what your arm really is, if you're interested. Do you know what I mean? Do you follow me?"

"I follow you," Nicholson said, rather shortly.

"The trouble is," Teddy said, "most people don't want to see things the way they are. They don't even want to stop getting born and dying all the time. They just want new bodies all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it's really nice." He reflected. "I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters," he said. He shook his head.

-- "Teddy" by J.D. Salinger

So there I was with a 5 GB chip on my shoulder. I was having headaches. My shoulder hurt as if someone were shoving the point of a dagger in my rotator cuff. I was snapping at everyone and generally being an ass and I couldn't even stand myself anymore, I was so internally whiny. So I decided to get over it. Only I didn't know what the hell I was trying to get over.

Then I got angry -- illogically, unreasonably, indiscriminately angry. Only I still couldn't figure out why -- I mean aside from the usual racist, imperialist, misogynist, idiotic, commercialized, consumerist, egoist, tasteless, bunch of bad drivers freak nation which we try to pass off as a culture. But so what? I mean that gets to me everyday but I'm used to it, so whatever.

But it was getting to me, my anger shooting off my fingertips and zapping everyone around me and making my hands telegraph-tingle.

And I got mad and madder and maddest and this lasted for a few weeks. So I vented, spit and spewed all over my blog yesterday and I felt like I was released from an enforced vow of silence, and exhaled in relief.

And last night I went and saw a stupid, sappy musical with a bunch of ladies and I wasn't cynical about it, nor did I feel the need to bore the shit out of everyone with some long-winded didactic about our heterocentric society and the cult of marriage. I drank vodka and laughed with my family and listened to the jukebox.

I woke up this morning and I feel 100 lbs. lighter and I don't have any shoulder pain. I'm feeling so over myself -- but only in the very best way.

And I'm not angry at the apple eaters anymore for imposing some sort of soulless shopping mall reality on me. I create my own reality. I vomit out my apple and try to see anew.

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.)

I Heart Heifer

Heifer International is an excellent organization that helps families around the world begin sustaining agricultural businesses that can permanantly improve the recipient's quality of life. They enact the principle of Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he'll eat forever.

Not that the people Heifer Int. helps need to be taught how to fish -- I despise that notion that because someone is poor or wasn't born in Europe or North America they don't know how to farm, fish or irriagte, etc. What Heifer does provide is a gift that grows and provides. You can buy a family in Africa a flock of chicks which will grow to lay eggs which provides extra money to send the kids to school and protein-rich eggs for their growing brains and so on...

You can buy a llama for an Andean family which provides clothing and income for a family. (I love llamas!)

You can buy a hive of honeybees for a South American family which may become their entire livelihood and saves our gringo butts at the same time, because all of these disappearing bees can not be good for any of us.

You can help supply seeds in the Hudson Valley or gardens in Dallas, Texas. You can provide much needed livestock to farm families in the Mississippi Delta.

Actually, Heifer's entire gift catalog is very cool and you should check it out. You'll note that even if you can't afford to buy an entire item, you can donate towards an item -- so you can still help, even if you aren't water buffalo rich.

AND RIGHT NOW the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will match donations up to $42.8 million in Kenya and Rwanda. So if you think this sounds like a great cause, now would be the time to contribute -- more bang for your buck, etc.

Sorry for the commercial, but I think this is a worthwhile and well-established organization.

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

Romance Challenge 2008

A couple of weeks ago I told my friend Dennis I was tired of working in an office and I wanted to stay home and crank out several romance novels every year instead. I chose this particular genre because I find it formulaic, popular (read lucrative) and intellectually simple. I also imagined that by injecting the occasional period setting, I could happily spend hours and hours learning the details of certain historic and cultural eras.

Sometimes, I'm a snotty bitch.

Dennis is a good soul. He said I needed to set a deadline, show him my first five pages, and in the spirit of good sportspersonship he would play, too. And so was born Romance Challenge 2008. On Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at high noon we are meeting at Street Side in the back horseshoe booth with the first 5 pages of our original romance novels. The idea is catching on like wildfire among the drunky, boho neighborhoodies -- after all, we have to find something else to do with our hands and mouths now that we can no longer smoke anywhere -- and we're expecting a small crowd.

An unexpected treat is all of the fun we're having pointing out some of the flotsam and jetsam of random conversations that should be used as first lines or titles like, "Sweaty Breasts and Cigarettes" or "I felt like I was riding a very erotic horse" or "I realized she was probably a man, but we had a good time so I asked her out again." (By the way, those are all copyrighted snippets, so no plagery, please.)

But therein lies the crux of Romance Challenge 2008 for me. I want to write a pure, sweet -- hopefully highly readable and intellectually stimulating -- romance novel. I want to be pure to the genre. I realize I've spent this lifetime smothering nearly every romantic sentiment or impulse I've ever had and I think I would be cheating myself if I didn't give in to that strange, stereotypically soft and feminine and foreign mood, at least once. Even if I only do it on paper.

And it's difficult. Everything I've come up with so far smacks of cynical satire. But I will not give in to my monkey mind's desire to protect me from flowering into a silly, vulnerable fool. I will write a fucking love story even if it makes me weep.

Wanna play?

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

Fearless, Foolish Frivolity

I haven't completely lost consciousness. I am not sticking my head in the sand, but I have had to adjust perspective. You see, bad shit is happening because of my country and I am ashamed and sickened and saddened...and...and...

But what else can I say about that?

I still pay attention and contact my representatives and yell, scream, coerce and debate. But really, what else can I say about that. I feel like Cassandra screaming into a hurricane. Very, very bad shit is happening because of and within my country -- and I don't presume to compare the wussy miseries occurring within to the tragic blood-letting without, but the voodoo hoodoo hippie dilletante in me knows it's all connected like some global geopolitical version of reflexology. Just remember; we did not elect that sick, fascist fuck twice and that did not change any outcomes.

All of that being said anyway...frivolity...

I've decided to adopt the bullshit hoodoo voodoo hippie dilletante perspective of giving energy to that which is good and denying energy to that which really needed to disappear 8 years ago. I intend to project joy, gratitude, love and luck like some demented karmic Pollyanna in hopes that maybe THAT will work a little better than the bitching and testifying. That's probably a messed-up wrong-headed approach to generating joy, gratitude, love and luck, but I'm going to let form follow function in this case.

So:
Here's to all of the love we make, break and take. Here's to the attending pain it comes with which reminds you love is bigger than sweetness and more love and luck to those who are too chicken to love and too candy-assed to get hurt.

Here's to the woods and all of those who protect them, as well as those who enjoy them.

Here's to being one lucky woman because I have so many I love, not to mention the greatest kid in the world.

Here's to my fat ass which keeps me warm and is an excellent, portable, ergonomic cushion.

Here's to the whiskey which fertilized this bullshit post.

Here's to getting kissed so deep, sweet and well the arches of your feet break out in a sweat.

And here's to you. Thanks for stopping by.