MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons
Fairytales for the Damned
Here is where I am now
Here is who I am now
listen up
because this is the siren call
for all those who care to judge, discern
change, dissect me or care at all
The curtain is rising on my little show
all myths and lies cast aside off the stage
Be careful what you wish for
Be careful of all that you long to know
You long for enlightement
the laughter of the fool, the tears of the clown
the wisdom of the sage.
Here is where I am now
I am 39 years old
I am I am I am
an ethinic mutt
I am an American
for better or for worse
tis the land I love
the government I curse
Where did I come from all those lives ago?
I am Welsh
I am English
I am Irish
I am French
I am German
I am Cherokee
it's all true
I am pale as an Enlish lass
I have brown hair and blue eyes
I will not get a tan
or bleach my hair Marilyn Monroe blonde
(but I'll hide the gray and highlight it away)
or starve myself into Nicole Richie oblivion
I will not fit in I will not fit in I will never fit in
Who are the people that fit in? And where in the hell
is in? I've never had the pleasure, no I've never been.
I am a Taurus
I don't believe in astrology
but the things I read about this Taurus sign
Hmmm...they kinda fit me.
Go on, ask my mother.
I am stubborn (as a bull?)
I am stubborn she would say, because she thinks
Germans are stubborn
as if I have come straight from Berlin, a pure-bred;
as if you can generalise this about all Germans.
Yeah that was Hitler's big problem. He was just too
damn stubborn!
Ok, I am stubborn, I'll admit to this.
I am opinionated and less and less afraid to share
my opinions. When I was 20 years old I sat mute
in classes and cars, restaurants and bars
because I had not enough courage, self-esteem
whatever you want to call it
to speak my mind on anything.
Terrified to raise my hand in class, though I knew the answer.
Self-conscious to an almost pathological degree.
Now I stand in front of auditoriums and classrooms
and love the Socratic dialogue....it's showtime baby!
I am the daughter of an alcoholic.
I am a suicide survivor.
I have survived being held at gunpoint,
raging fires, an airplane engine explosion,
the deaths of many friends far too young,
growing up in Los Angeles, and most of all I have survived
myself.
I am an educator. I am a woman in what is still
wholly and utterly a completely damaged man's
world. I am not a feminist. I am a humanist.
I am a lover of men, and children and animals.
My heroes are many, and most are dead. Viktor Frankel,
Rosa Parks, Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi,
Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Wiesel,
Hellen Keller. Anyone who stands up for the rights of
the oppressed, women, men, children, animals. Anyone
who tries to make this crazy a world a better place.
I despise anything organised. Especially religion.
Political parties, unions, corporations, the whole bloody
System. Democracy. Have we come so far from ancient
Greece? A plutocracy is more like it.
Religion has fucked us all the most. I fear we are going to
die, maybe not today, maybe not us, or our children, or theirs,
but eventually, we will all die in the name of God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha,
Vishnu, fucking Ronald McDonald. Jesus died for
somebody's sins, but not for mine.
Buddha got enlightened but his trip is a bitch.
Allah's rules are tight and few; what's a neo-pagan doubting,
hopeful, sad and sorry bitch like me to do?
I suffer from chronic depression. I like to think of it more
as chronic melancholy. Let the shrinks wrap it in their own
label. I know what it feels like and not one single solitary
motherfucking soul in 6 billion can tell me what I feel.
This is my emotional DNA.
I've had too many people for too many years
with and without degrees
telling me how I feel.
Oh magic! All of you put Houdini to shame
How'd you'd do it?
How'd you read the neurons firing
in MadameBastet's mind?
I was a good girl. I never drank, or did drugs or slept around. Hey!
Once upon a time, I didn't even swear. I swore I'd never swear.
That's gotta be good for a laugh. I mortify and shame my mother
with my sailor's mouth. I am far too educated and well-read and classy
and have far too vast a vocabulary at my disposal to swear. Alas,
but I do. Especially on freeways. So chalk this up as a venal sin.
Father it has been forever since my last confession...
Okay I lied; I did drink. At 14 my best friend
and I snuck a beer out of her parents' fridge.
We hated it. I never drank again until college. I rarely
drink today. An apple martini here. A beer there.
Not my poison. I have smoked pot three
whole times in my life. I hate the smell. I did
something stupid - I smoked cigarettes on occasion in my youth.
Because like every other 20 year old, I thought I was immortal. What were a few cigarettes gonna do to my beautiful,
healthy pink lungs? I could've gotten into maryjane...
but the scent just makes me sick. Still... I believe it should be legalised. Check the stats on drunk-driving deaths.
And that shit's legal. I think the drug war is a fucking joke.
I believe prostitution should be legalised.
Why not? They've legalised the whores in
every other business in this country.
But I was basically a good kid. A borderline geek.
I got good grades.
I followed the rules.
I coloured inside the lines.
I painted by
the numbers.
I bought into the dogma and the lies of Madison Avenue.
I read fashion magazines and learned to properly hate myself
and how I looked.
It all worked exactly like it should. I wanted to be a model.
I wasn't pretty enough.
I wanted to be an actress, like my next-door neighbour.
My parents convinced me otherwise.
Like teaching has been a really stable career.
I did the tricks of the trade. I jumped when
they said jump and I went to churches and kneeled down
and I prayed to Gods who never heard my prayers or laughed
or ignored them. I was played for the fool.
I loved pop stars and had a huge poster of Bowie on my
closet door for years. I listened to "Heroes" over and over until I
broke the needle on my record player. I wished I was rich and famous.
I thought musicians had it all. I never knew the glamour was really
under Marty Willson-Piper's shoe. I never knew. Until I was 39.
I believed in the magic of our Scream nights. Chasing dreams down
Hollywood Boulevard, screaming about meeting Sex Pistols and
clubbing the summer of our discontent away. It was some kind of drug
and there's nothing that can convince me that those nights weren't
magical. It was the days that were rudely interrupted by reality.
The smell of smoke in your hair in the morning. Some strange musician you're dating. And you realise in class, at college, you've left this virtual stranger, in your apartment, alone. With everything you own. Caution thrown to the wind. Because don't you know, time was on our side, and the Gods were smiling on us in the end. I wanted out of school into college. I wanted out of college into work. I wanted out of work into grad school. I wanted out of grad school back into work. I wished half my life away.
I grew up with a very sick father. I grew up in and out
of hospitals and doctor's offices. This surgery will work. That
procedure will do it. This time he will get well. This time,
this time, this time. A 15 year mantra.
This time the pain will go away. Daddy will not become
the monster anymore. I stayed positive until I opened the door
and saw death in lieu of my dad. The form was there, the energy gone.
I stayed positive until I signed the very
last paper the coroner gave to me. I wept and said to my mom
"It's over." I was wrong. It's never really over.
There's a morbid joke in grief; something known
as closure. Only those who've never lost anyone believe the punchline
on that one.
I wasn't picked on, or bullied. I wasn't the prom queen
or a cheerleader or a stoner or a rich kid. I was about average.
I was friendly with everyone. I had some best friends.
I grew up a big house with every material possession
I could've wanted. I had a nice car. I longed for nothing.
I knew I was loved, despite the chaos of diseases surrounding
me. I believed in the American dream.
I believed in happily ever after.
I had a nice sense of entitlement.
I believed nothing really bad would
ever happen to me.
I went to an expensive private university.
I got good grades. I did a few
crazy things. We went to parties.
We hid our liquor, as the campus was dry.
I stayed over in my boyfriend's apartment when
it wasn't allowed.
I drew graffitti on the wall of the library when
I was bored. I lay down in the middle
of PCH one night, screaming with laughter.
The Gods were watching over me you see.
I was immortal. We jumped out the windows
if the RA came while we were drinking.
We ran across the campus laughing like
insane asylum escapees. We slept outside on
the deck at night and watched the stars,
listened to the ocean waves.
We got so drunk one night we locked ourselves
out of our dorm room and had to
cut the screen off the window and climb back in.
Heather and I discovered music and clubs
and Hollywood and I lived for every night
spent in those smoky rooms of mystery and magic.
Almost every one of those places are gone now.
Heather is gone now.
In my last year of college I developed an
anxiety disorder which almost
destroyed me. I worked with counselors and
took meds and worked and
talked and I freed myself from the clutches of
that beast, or most of its clutches anyway. I stood up
to the fear. I said Fuck you, you cannot have my life.
I always made a joke, "Hey I was the only agoraphobic
who couldn't stand to be in the house!" I was the actress,
the clown, the one who couldn't let the world know
I was afraid. I didn't have it all together. It was all falling
apart inside of me. I was ashamed. I was nuts! No.
I was just reaching out for my own acceptance.
A different kind of sanity.
God it took so long. It took so long.
I am a sinner, but certainly not a saint. Who is?
I am a human being who'd like to give God some advice.
I'd like to tell the Pope to **** off.
I'm the doubting Thomas who longs to believe
even if God is just some cold, mathematical formula.
I have broken a few of those Ten Commandments. I have not
always honoured my father and mother. They have not always
honoured me. I've lied. I haven't committed adultery. I've coveted.
What I can't even recall.
I will walk a million miles so as not to purposely hurt someone.
When I say something, listen. I mean what I say.
If I tell you something, it's true.
I believe in the Golden Rule.
When I was 26 I got really sick. No one but a few believed me for years.
Doctors either called me crazy, told me nothing was wrong or that they
couldn't help me. Anyway you wrote it, I was screwed.
I was dying. It was an unimaginable horror. I dropped
out of graduate school for a year. I was
trying to save my father and myself at the same time.
Now I'm better but the game isn't over by far.
If you want me, you get the whole package.
And you'd better believe what's written on the package.
Those who couldn't deal fell by the wayside long ago.
I will not hide anything anymore. If you cannot cope,
don't bother me. You aren't worth the powder.
I believe you stay by those you love, no matter what happens.
As long as they are not abusive. People get sick. People die. People have
problems. You don't go into relationships with conditions. If you do,
get out now. Stay away from me. It ain't all flowers and candy.
I am funny and smart, sarcastic and snide.
I worked in the music industry and hated it. I love music;
it's my lifeblood. But I was destined to do more than coddle
newspaper critics and fucked-up rock stars.
I am a teacher, a writer, an insatiable reader.
I am a lover of art, of poetry, of words, of music, of cats.
I love my two cats more than I ever thought I'd
love any animals in my life. The things I love the most in the
world are a strange and motley lot.
My crazy family.
My beautiful, sweet feline children.
My friends who truly have stood by me, through the best and the worst.
My students.
Teaching.
Reading.
Movies.
Music.
Steve Kilbey's voice, which has often been the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in the universe. Sometimes I weep, because I believe if beauty itself had a voice, it would be his.
So I am a good teacher and student; a good listener. I am extremely sensitive. Sensitive in every way. To a fault. Blame my DNA.
A mutation on the gene? I cry easily and often. I am moved
equally by some idiotic commercial and the homeless man asking
me for change in the parking lot of the grocery store.
I become enraged beyond description at child abuse, or animal abuse.
I would probably try to kill anyone I ever saw hurting a child or an
animal in front of me.
I support many charities.
I spend too much money on frivolities.
I've wasted money trying to fill the hole in my soul.
I've given money
to hurricanes and famines and fires and floods
and earthquakes and I know
it's a drop in the bucket and I don't know
what else to do. I want to save the world;
I know I can't. I'm still working on my saviour complex.
I read the headlines daily. Sometimes I cry. Most days I don't.
I know people who think I'm a sadist for reading the news.
I don't call them ignorant self-centered, insensitive jackasses
who'd rather live with their heads in the sand because they choose
NOT to avail themselves of any news outside their own tiny world.
So don't give me grief for being interested in the world around me.
It's not a crime to want to be informed.
Yeah, it's pretty bad out there.
But if you think about it, you can say to yourself, it's all
fucked up and I don't want to know. Or you can say,
it's all fucked up, what can I do to
make something, anything even a tiny bit better?
I spent years only giving to myself. I now believe you get what you give.
Call it Karma. Call it insanity. The calling card of the
foolish, the hopeful, the naive, the suckers. Count me in,
P.T. Barnum and Mr. Bailey.
my only prayer, my only mantra, my only surviving hope when
I read the daily death report.
I have been accused far too often of being too sensitive,
too emotional. Guilty. As. Fucking. Charged. I am sensitive.
To drugs, to lights, to crowds, to noise, to the circus around me.
Sue me. Leave me. Walk away. Because at this stage of the game
I ain't gonna change. I'd rather be too sensitive than too insensitive.
I despise insensitivity. I despise the compassionless. They have no
place in my world. Walk past the man in the streets, there by the grace
of God go I....
For Christmas, buy me something from the Oxfam catalogue. Buy a
village a well, a donkey, a classroom. You're the jackass for thinking
that's stupid. Laugh at me. I am kind and generous to a fault. I will give you the shirt off my back. I don't need anymore STUFF. Peace of mind would do nicely. If you find a little, I'd love a hit off that drug;
I could get hooked easily baby. I will help you and love you.
I will even probably inadvertantly hurt you.
I have judged and been judged.
I have walked away from friendships
and never looked back.
I have said horrible, mean things to people
I love. I have lost friends because of
my own stupidity. I took people for granted. I tossed away
relationships like wilting flowers so sure there were others, better and
brighter just outside my door. I was stupid. I was young.
I have regrets. I have wishes. I have dreams. I have fears.
If you ever give me an ultimatum, be prepared to watch me disppear.
I don't like ultimatums.
I don't like to be forced to make choices.
Between people. Between men. Between friends.
Utilmatums are always the beginning of the end.
If you tell me not to do something, it brings out the five year-old in me.
I'm not proud of this; it's just a fact and I thought you should know.
Go on, tell me not to do it. Go on. I dare ya. Ha!
I will want to do it. I don't know when that started. Life kicked me
a bit and I kicked it back. I'm a rebel without a cause and it started late in the game for me. Not a good role model I admit it.
I have taught adults and children alike,
and by far my greatest teachers
have been under the age of 6.
I have trouble living in the moment.
My children reminded me of this.
I'm in the past, I'm in the future. They brought me the present.
I worry too much. I admit it. I feel sorry for myself sometimes.
But usually, more sorry for the world and the awfulness around me.
I don't make my bed. I have too many books.
My mother calls it clutter. Too much information.
I want to know everything. I want to know nothing.
I feel everything at once. I long for numbness.
There has got to be some great escape.
There's nothing permanent except impermanence
and that's a deal we all get to make.
Oh I am moody without a doubt. This I've been
accused of too. What's a moody chick to do?
I suffer from insomnia. I dread my own bed.
I sleep during the day and walk the pathways of
my mind at night, alone, the dendrites and cables
bring me a lousy, lonely cache of images, all that
I could've been, all I could've known.
I long for the dead. I miss ghosts. I know I've
had it good. I am more often than not,
a worst-case scenario person when it comes
to certain things. Still, hope dies last!
I don't like to fly, but despite that,
I usually think the plane will make it.
I don't like heights, but I will climb to the top anyway
just to say I did it.
I will walk up to my fear and I will kick it
in the balls. In pain, in fatigue, I've done more than a lot
of people I know, who have perfect health.
I don't want a medal, or even a standing ovation.
But I've got a message for those who are quick to
condemn me for some instrinsic pessismism
wrapped tightly in the folds of my cerebrum.
My beloved Zoe possibly has a serious health problem.
Of course, she possibly doesn't. Intellectually I know that.
But I admit, when it comes to my animals, I go for worst case right away.
Last Christmas, I found a lump in Zoe's back. One vet told
me it was cancer. One vet said, probably just a fatty tumour.
Let's take it out and see. My Christmas was miserable. December
29th the best day of my life. Zoe was OK. I just paid for the most
expensive feline liposuction ever.
Everyone yells at me. Be positive!
Stop borrowing trouble! Everyone who's never lived my life.
You're so right I say. Because look how great
things turned out for my dad. And you should all know too.
And how wonderful for me to be struck
down by the Great Mystery Illness
at 26. How fun it was to walk into my
house one night and find my kitten
hanging from a chair, her spine broken.
Oh woe is me, I am such a tragedy stricken heroine!
But not pretty or thin enough they say.
It's OK, I think I've got Camille down anyway.
You can't live in the past! They scream.
You've got to let it go! I agree. Shit happens. I've moved on.
But my mind, my emotions,
my heart, the seat of my fragile soul
is bruised and battered.
And no matter how much therapy I get,
no matter how many books I've read,
no matter how many Pollyanna
friends I have (who still have their health, their parents and
wouldn't know true loss if it kicked 'em in the ass)
I just can't stop being afraid sometimes.
There's a little girl inside me who is scarred.
I have to live with her.
You might have to as well.
She isn't going away.
I must be gentle with her.
She needs to be reassured that
no matter what happens, she will be OK.
She will survive.
So here's the moral of the story
the denouement; so hurry back to your seat,
the curtain's coming down, the last act is about to end.
Despite all of this, I love life.
I love to laugh, long and hard, until it hurts.
I love listening to All I Know over and over and over.
I love going to watch The Church and
weeping in the corner, in the dark,
where no one can see me, because
I am so moved, so happy.
I love watching movies that take me to places
I would never be able to go...
I love the poetry of Eliot and Yeats,
Plath and Keats - the words of men and
women who assure me I am not alone
in my desires, my wants, my fears.
I love reading and writing and swimming at night.
I love the desert. I love Paris at night
and London at dawn. I love Rome
and all its ruins. I love Caravaggio's
realistic religious masterpieces and
Vermeer's quietly sacred domestic interiors.
I love sleeping with my furry babies.
I love men who kiss the inside of my hands.
I love dusk and the sweet scent of jasmine.
I love Brunellechi's dome and the
Ponte Vecchio in Florence. I love the Spanish Steps
in the rain. I love the laughter of a class of 5 year olds.
I do believe things often
have a way of working out for the best.
I love to laugh, to see the humour in it all
to be the actress, the master of masks, the clown.
But sometimes things don't work out
no matter what you do.
And if I'm afraid, if I worry too much for you, if I am too
pessimistic and you don't like it
Let me kindly show you the door
Because this is who I am now
This is where I am now
I am the sum of all my experiences in life
for better or worse
for richer or poorer
in sickness and in health
til I shuffle off this mortal coil
and take my final bow...
This is who I am now.
Photo: Masks. Sometimes taking them off is easier than leaving them on.
Here is who I am now
listen up
because this is the siren call
for all those who care to judge, discern
change, dissect me or care at all
The curtain is rising on my little show
all myths and lies cast aside off the stage
Be careful what you wish for
Be careful of all that you long to know
You long for enlightement
the laughter of the fool, the tears of the clown
the wisdom of the sage.
Here is where I am now
I am 39 years old
I am I am I am
an ethinic mutt
I am an American
for better or for worse
tis the land I love
the government I curse
Where did I come from all those lives ago?
I am Welsh
I am English
I am Irish
I am French
I am German
I am Cherokee
it's all true
I am pale as an Enlish lass
I have brown hair and blue eyes
I will not get a tan
or bleach my hair Marilyn Monroe blonde
(but I'll hide the gray and highlight it away)
or starve myself into Nicole Richie oblivion
I will not fit in I will not fit in I will never fit in
Who are the people that fit in? And where in the hell
is in? I've never had the pleasure, no I've never been.
I am a Taurus
I don't believe in astrology
but the things I read about this Taurus sign
Hmmm...they kinda fit me.
Go on, ask my mother.
I am stubborn (as a bull?)
I am stubborn she would say, because she thinks
Germans are stubborn
as if I have come straight from Berlin, a pure-bred;
as if you can generalise this about all Germans.
Yeah that was Hitler's big problem. He was just too
damn stubborn!
Ok, I am stubborn, I'll admit to this.
I am opinionated and less and less afraid to share
my opinions. When I was 20 years old I sat mute
in classes and cars, restaurants and bars
because I had not enough courage, self-esteem
whatever you want to call it
to speak my mind on anything.
Terrified to raise my hand in class, though I knew the answer.
Self-conscious to an almost pathological degree.
Now I stand in front of auditoriums and classrooms
and love the Socratic dialogue....it's showtime baby!
I am the daughter of an alcoholic.
I am a suicide survivor.
I have survived being held at gunpoint,
raging fires, an airplane engine explosion,
the deaths of many friends far too young,
growing up in Los Angeles, and most of all I have survived
myself.
I am an educator. I am a woman in what is still
wholly and utterly a completely damaged man's
world. I am not a feminist. I am a humanist.
I am a lover of men, and children and animals.
My heroes are many, and most are dead. Viktor Frankel,
Rosa Parks, Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi,
Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Wiesel,
Hellen Keller. Anyone who stands up for the rights of
the oppressed, women, men, children, animals. Anyone
who tries to make this crazy a world a better place.
I despise anything organised. Especially religion.
Political parties, unions, corporations, the whole bloody
System. Democracy. Have we come so far from ancient
Greece? A plutocracy is more like it.
Religion has fucked us all the most. I fear we are going to
die, maybe not today, maybe not us, or our children, or theirs,
but eventually, we will all die in the name of God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha,
Vishnu, fucking Ronald McDonald. Jesus died for
somebody's sins, but not for mine.
Buddha got enlightened but his trip is a bitch.
Allah's rules are tight and few; what's a neo-pagan doubting,
hopeful, sad and sorry bitch like me to do?
I suffer from chronic depression. I like to think of it more
as chronic melancholy. Let the shrinks wrap it in their own
label. I know what it feels like and not one single solitary
motherfucking soul in 6 billion can tell me what I feel.
This is my emotional DNA.
I've had too many people for too many years
with and without degrees
telling me how I feel.
Oh magic! All of you put Houdini to shame
How'd you'd do it?
How'd you read the neurons firing
in MadameBastet's mind?
I was a good girl. I never drank, or did drugs or slept around. Hey!
Once upon a time, I didn't even swear. I swore I'd never swear.
That's gotta be good for a laugh. I mortify and shame my mother
with my sailor's mouth. I am far too educated and well-read and classy
and have far too vast a vocabulary at my disposal to swear. Alas,
but I do. Especially on freeways. So chalk this up as a venal sin.
Father it has been forever since my last confession...
Okay I lied; I did drink. At 14 my best friend
and I snuck a beer out of her parents' fridge.
We hated it. I never drank again until college. I rarely
drink today. An apple martini here. A beer there.
Not my poison. I have smoked pot three
whole times in my life. I hate the smell. I did
something stupid - I smoked cigarettes on occasion in my youth.
Because like every other 20 year old, I thought I was immortal. What were a few cigarettes gonna do to my beautiful,
healthy pink lungs? I could've gotten into maryjane...
but the scent just makes me sick. Still... I believe it should be legalised. Check the stats on drunk-driving deaths.
And that shit's legal. I think the drug war is a fucking joke.
I believe prostitution should be legalised.
Why not? They've legalised the whores in
every other business in this country.
But I was basically a good kid. A borderline geek.
I got good grades.
I followed the rules.
I coloured inside the lines.
I painted by
the numbers.
I bought into the dogma and the lies of Madison Avenue.
I read fashion magazines and learned to properly hate myself
and how I looked.
It all worked exactly like it should. I wanted to be a model.
I wasn't pretty enough.
I wanted to be an actress, like my next-door neighbour.
My parents convinced me otherwise.
Like teaching has been a really stable career.
I did the tricks of the trade. I jumped when
they said jump and I went to churches and kneeled down
and I prayed to Gods who never heard my prayers or laughed
or ignored them. I was played for the fool.
I loved pop stars and had a huge poster of Bowie on my
closet door for years. I listened to "Heroes" over and over until I
broke the needle on my record player. I wished I was rich and famous.
I thought musicians had it all. I never knew the glamour was really
under Marty Willson-Piper's shoe. I never knew. Until I was 39.
I believed in the magic of our Scream nights. Chasing dreams down
Hollywood Boulevard, screaming about meeting Sex Pistols and
clubbing the summer of our discontent away. It was some kind of drug
and there's nothing that can convince me that those nights weren't
magical. It was the days that were rudely interrupted by reality.
The smell of smoke in your hair in the morning. Some strange musician you're dating. And you realise in class, at college, you've left this virtual stranger, in your apartment, alone. With everything you own. Caution thrown to the wind. Because don't you know, time was on our side, and the Gods were smiling on us in the end. I wanted out of school into college. I wanted out of college into work. I wanted out of work into grad school. I wanted out of grad school back into work. I wished half my life away.
I grew up with a very sick father. I grew up in and out
of hospitals and doctor's offices. This surgery will work. That
procedure will do it. This time he will get well. This time,
this time, this time. A 15 year mantra.
This time the pain will go away. Daddy will not become
the monster anymore. I stayed positive until I opened the door
and saw death in lieu of my dad. The form was there, the energy gone.
I stayed positive until I signed the very
last paper the coroner gave to me. I wept and said to my mom
"It's over." I was wrong. It's never really over.
There's a morbid joke in grief; something known
as closure. Only those who've never lost anyone believe the punchline
on that one.
I wasn't picked on, or bullied. I wasn't the prom queen
or a cheerleader or a stoner or a rich kid. I was about average.
I was friendly with everyone. I had some best friends.
I grew up a big house with every material possession
I could've wanted. I had a nice car. I longed for nothing.
I knew I was loved, despite the chaos of diseases surrounding
me. I believed in the American dream.
I believed in happily ever after.
I had a nice sense of entitlement.
I believed nothing really bad would
ever happen to me.
I went to an expensive private university.
I got good grades. I did a few
crazy things. We went to parties.
We hid our liquor, as the campus was dry.
I stayed over in my boyfriend's apartment when
it wasn't allowed.
I drew graffitti on the wall of the library when
I was bored. I lay down in the middle
of PCH one night, screaming with laughter.
The Gods were watching over me you see.
I was immortal. We jumped out the windows
if the RA came while we were drinking.
We ran across the campus laughing like
insane asylum escapees. We slept outside on
the deck at night and watched the stars,
listened to the ocean waves.
We got so drunk one night we locked ourselves
out of our dorm room and had to
cut the screen off the window and climb back in.
Heather and I discovered music and clubs
and Hollywood and I lived for every night
spent in those smoky rooms of mystery and magic.
Almost every one of those places are gone now.
Heather is gone now.
In my last year of college I developed an
anxiety disorder which almost
destroyed me. I worked with counselors and
took meds and worked and
talked and I freed myself from the clutches of
that beast, or most of its clutches anyway. I stood up
to the fear. I said Fuck you, you cannot have my life.
I always made a joke, "Hey I was the only agoraphobic
who couldn't stand to be in the house!" I was the actress,
the clown, the one who couldn't let the world know
I was afraid. I didn't have it all together. It was all falling
apart inside of me. I was ashamed. I was nuts! No.
I was just reaching out for my own acceptance.
A different kind of sanity.
God it took so long. It took so long.
I am a sinner, but certainly not a saint. Who is?
I am a human being who'd like to give God some advice.
I'd like to tell the Pope to **** off.
I'm the doubting Thomas who longs to believe
even if God is just some cold, mathematical formula.
I have broken a few of those Ten Commandments. I have not
always honoured my father and mother. They have not always
honoured me. I've lied. I haven't committed adultery. I've coveted.
What I can't even recall.
I will walk a million miles so as not to purposely hurt someone.
When I say something, listen. I mean what I say.
If I tell you something, it's true.
I believe in the Golden Rule.
When I was 26 I got really sick. No one but a few believed me for years.
Doctors either called me crazy, told me nothing was wrong or that they
couldn't help me. Anyway you wrote it, I was screwed.
I was dying. It was an unimaginable horror. I dropped
out of graduate school for a year. I was
trying to save my father and myself at the same time.
Now I'm better but the game isn't over by far.
If you want me, you get the whole package.
And you'd better believe what's written on the package.
Those who couldn't deal fell by the wayside long ago.
I will not hide anything anymore. If you cannot cope,
don't bother me. You aren't worth the powder.
I believe you stay by those you love, no matter what happens.
As long as they are not abusive. People get sick. People die. People have
problems. You don't go into relationships with conditions. If you do,
get out now. Stay away from me. It ain't all flowers and candy.
I am funny and smart, sarcastic and snide.
I worked in the music industry and hated it. I love music;
it's my lifeblood. But I was destined to do more than coddle
newspaper critics and fucked-up rock stars.
I am a teacher, a writer, an insatiable reader.
I am a lover of art, of poetry, of words, of music, of cats.
I love my two cats more than I ever thought I'd
love any animals in my life. The things I love the most in the
world are a strange and motley lot.
My crazy family.
My beautiful, sweet feline children.
My friends who truly have stood by me, through the best and the worst.
My students.
Teaching.
Reading.
Movies.
Music.
Steve Kilbey's voice, which has often been the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in the universe. Sometimes I weep, because I believe if beauty itself had a voice, it would be his.
So I am a good teacher and student; a good listener. I am extremely sensitive. Sensitive in every way. To a fault. Blame my DNA.
A mutation on the gene? I cry easily and often. I am moved
equally by some idiotic commercial and the homeless man asking
me for change in the parking lot of the grocery store.
I become enraged beyond description at child abuse, or animal abuse.
I would probably try to kill anyone I ever saw hurting a child or an
animal in front of me.
I support many charities.
I spend too much money on frivolities.
I've wasted money trying to fill the hole in my soul.
I've given money
to hurricanes and famines and fires and floods
and earthquakes and I know
it's a drop in the bucket and I don't know
what else to do. I want to save the world;
I know I can't. I'm still working on my saviour complex.
I read the headlines daily. Sometimes I cry. Most days I don't.
I know people who think I'm a sadist for reading the news.
I don't call them ignorant self-centered, insensitive jackasses
who'd rather live with their heads in the sand because they choose
NOT to avail themselves of any news outside their own tiny world.
So don't give me grief for being interested in the world around me.
It's not a crime to want to be informed.
Yeah, it's pretty bad out there.
But if you think about it, you can say to yourself, it's all
fucked up and I don't want to know. Or you can say,
it's all fucked up, what can I do to
make something, anything even a tiny bit better?
I spent years only giving to myself. I now believe you get what you give.
Call it Karma. Call it insanity. The calling card of the
foolish, the hopeful, the naive, the suckers. Count me in,
P.T. Barnum and Mr. Bailey.
And they call this carnival progress....he sang.Be the change you wish to see in the world, said Gandhi. That is
my only prayer, my only mantra, my only surviving hope when
I read the daily death report.
I have been accused far too often of being too sensitive,
too emotional. Guilty. As. Fucking. Charged. I am sensitive.
To drugs, to lights, to crowds, to noise, to the circus around me.
Sue me. Leave me. Walk away. Because at this stage of the game
I ain't gonna change. I'd rather be too sensitive than too insensitive.
I despise insensitivity. I despise the compassionless. They have no
place in my world. Walk past the man in the streets, there by the grace
of God go I....
For Christmas, buy me something from the Oxfam catalogue. Buy a
village a well, a donkey, a classroom. You're the jackass for thinking
that's stupid. Laugh at me. I am kind and generous to a fault. I will give you the shirt off my back. I don't need anymore STUFF. Peace of mind would do nicely. If you find a little, I'd love a hit off that drug;
I could get hooked easily baby. I will help you and love you.
I will even probably inadvertantly hurt you.
I have judged and been judged.
I have walked away from friendships
and never looked back.
I have said horrible, mean things to people
I love. I have lost friends because of
my own stupidity. I took people for granted. I tossed away
relationships like wilting flowers so sure there were others, better and
brighter just outside my door. I was stupid. I was young.
I have regrets. I have wishes. I have dreams. I have fears.
If you ever give me an ultimatum, be prepared to watch me disppear.
I don't like ultimatums.
I don't like to be forced to make choices.
Between people. Between men. Between friends.
Utilmatums are always the beginning of the end.
If you tell me not to do something, it brings out the five year-old in me.
I'm not proud of this; it's just a fact and I thought you should know.
Go on, tell me not to do it. Go on. I dare ya. Ha!
I will want to do it. I don't know when that started. Life kicked me
a bit and I kicked it back. I'm a rebel without a cause and it started late in the game for me. Not a good role model I admit it.
I have taught adults and children alike,
and by far my greatest teachers
have been under the age of 6.
I have trouble living in the moment.
My children reminded me of this.
I'm in the past, I'm in the future. They brought me the present.
I worry too much. I admit it. I feel sorry for myself sometimes.
But usually, more sorry for the world and the awfulness around me.
I don't make my bed. I have too many books.
My mother calls it clutter. Too much information.
I want to know everything. I want to know nothing.
I feel everything at once. I long for numbness.
There has got to be some great escape.
There's nothing permanent except impermanence
and that's a deal we all get to make.
Oh I am moody without a doubt. This I've been
accused of too. What's a moody chick to do?
I suffer from insomnia. I dread my own bed.
I sleep during the day and walk the pathways of
my mind at night, alone, the dendrites and cables
bring me a lousy, lonely cache of images, all that
I could've been, all I could've known.
I long for the dead. I miss ghosts. I know I've
had it good. I am more often than not,
a worst-case scenario person when it comes
to certain things. Still, hope dies last!
I don't like to fly, but despite that,
I usually think the plane will make it.
I don't like heights, but I will climb to the top anyway
just to say I did it.
I will walk up to my fear and I will kick it
in the balls. In pain, in fatigue, I've done more than a lot
of people I know, who have perfect health.
I don't want a medal, or even a standing ovation.
But I've got a message for those who are quick to
condemn me for some instrinsic pessismism
wrapped tightly in the folds of my cerebrum.
My beloved Zoe possibly has a serious health problem.
Of course, she possibly doesn't. Intellectually I know that.
But I admit, when it comes to my animals, I go for worst case right away.
Last Christmas, I found a lump in Zoe's back. One vet told
me it was cancer. One vet said, probably just a fatty tumour.
Let's take it out and see. My Christmas was miserable. December
29th the best day of my life. Zoe was OK. I just paid for the most
expensive feline liposuction ever.
Everyone yells at me. Be positive!
Stop borrowing trouble! Everyone who's never lived my life.
You're so right I say. Because look how great
things turned out for my dad. And you should all know too.
And how wonderful for me to be struck
down by the Great Mystery Illness
at 26. How fun it was to walk into my
house one night and find my kitten
hanging from a chair, her spine broken.
Oh woe is me, I am such a tragedy stricken heroine!
But not pretty or thin enough they say.
It's OK, I think I've got Camille down anyway.
You can't live in the past! They scream.
You've got to let it go! I agree. Shit happens. I've moved on.
But my mind, my emotions,
my heart, the seat of my fragile soul
is bruised and battered.
And no matter how much therapy I get,
no matter how many books I've read,
no matter how many Pollyanna
friends I have (who still have their health, their parents and
wouldn't know true loss if it kicked 'em in the ass)
I just can't stop being afraid sometimes.
There's a little girl inside me who is scarred.
I have to live with her.
You might have to as well.
She isn't going away.
I must be gentle with her.
She needs to be reassured that
no matter what happens, she will be OK.
She will survive.
So here's the moral of the story
the denouement; so hurry back to your seat,
the curtain's coming down, the last act is about to end.
Despite all of this, I love life.
I love to laugh, long and hard, until it hurts.
I love listening to All I Know over and over and over.
I love going to watch The Church and
weeping in the corner, in the dark,
where no one can see me, because
I am so moved, so happy.
I love watching movies that take me to places
I would never be able to go...
I love the poetry of Eliot and Yeats,
Plath and Keats - the words of men and
women who assure me I am not alone
in my desires, my wants, my fears.
I love reading and writing and swimming at night.
I love the desert. I love Paris at night
and London at dawn. I love Rome
and all its ruins. I love Caravaggio's
realistic religious masterpieces and
Vermeer's quietly sacred domestic interiors.
I love sleeping with my furry babies.
I love men who kiss the inside of my hands.
I love dusk and the sweet scent of jasmine.
I love Brunellechi's dome and the
Ponte Vecchio in Florence. I love the Spanish Steps
in the rain. I love the laughter of a class of 5 year olds.
I do believe things often
have a way of working out for the best.
I love to laugh, to see the humour in it all
to be the actress, the master of masks, the clown.
But sometimes things don't work out
no matter what you do.
And if I'm afraid, if I worry too much for you, if I am too
pessimistic and you don't like it
Let me kindly show you the door
Because this is who I am now
This is where I am now
I am the sum of all my experiences in life
for better or worse
for richer or poorer
in sickness and in health
til I shuffle off this mortal coil
and take my final bow...
This is who I am now.
Photo: Masks. Sometimes taking them off is easier than leaving them on.
