MadameBastet-firing-neurons
It dawned on me that I never listed my 1o Favourite Things About Life, and I need to balance out the negativity with some positive vibes here. So here are....
10 Things I Love About Life (in no particular order really)
10) Animals. Especially, as everyone knows, cats, and little dogs. I must've been an Egyptian in a past life; my love of cats borders on wackiness. And yes, I'm coming out of the closet as a small dog lover. What I *really* adore are Jack Russell Terriers. I guess those would come under the heading of "Little Crazy-Ass Hyper Dogs." I know I probably could never handle one, but I see them, and I melt. I'm a pile of goo. I just adore wittle bitty dogs. I do like Labs too. I think animals are one of God's greatest gifts to us. It does bother me that I am not a vegetarian. I don't like to think of any animal suffering. But I can't seem to subsist on a purely vegetarian diet. Anyway, I think a lot of times I love animals more than people. Someday I hope to have a house with a big yard so I can get a dog. I won't trap a dog in my little apartment; plus Zoe and Fletcher would probably attack the poor thing. Especially Zoe. She knows she's momma's girl; she's sleeping on my spot in bed now. I gaze at animals the way other people gaze at babies. Screwy.
9) Music. Where would I be without music? Some of the great moments of my life have been listening to music at concerts. I'll never forget my first real rock concert. 1986 at the Hollywood Palladium. It was like a drug; I was hooked. Music has saved me, it has been with me as I've grown up from a really scary kid to an even scarier teenager to a fairly decent functioning adult. Music has given me, what I like to call, "Top of the Triangle" moments. In college, we learned over and over about Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs." At the top of the triangle, was self-actualization. I feel like it is nirvana, bliss, almost leaving your body and going into another state of being. Some concerts have done that for me. And yeah, love 'em or hate 'em, The Church are always, always going to be The Band for me. Not The Band with Robbie Robertson, haha. But The Band apart from all other bands; the music apart from all other music. Stupid bastards. I've loved 'em, I've hated them. I've even pseudo-fought with Marty and turned my back on them. But if anything has been the soundtrack to my entire life for the last 22 years, it's the music of The Church. Their music has found a place in my soul where nothing else has ever been. There are holes in my soul, and that music filled one of them, and for that, I guess I should be grateful, no matter how irritated I get with them sometimes.
8) Men. Oh god, this is a complex one. Because ya know, naturally I love 'em and hate 'em sometimes. But biology will out I suppose. So many things to love about men. When you're in love, it's everything they do that you love. Of course there are the obvious things; the sex, the kissing, the intimacy, the meeting of minds. Sometimes I like to think of men as great works of art; if I find a man attractive, I just like to look him. It doesn't even have to be in a sexual way. I just like appreciating their beauty. But they still need to learn to ask directions, put the seat down, and why do I meet so many men allergic to cats? Damn. I can't be throwin' the furry babies out. I like the fact that I want a man, but I never feel I need to have a man validate me. Also, I need a MAN man. I'm not quite sure what that means. Not in a John Wayne sort of way - let's put it this way - my last serious relationship - this guy wanted to move in here, and get married. It wasn't going to work for various reasons, but the worst one was that I was more of man than he was about too many things. Is that sexist? Oh well. So be it.
7) Laughter. This may seem odd, coming from someone whose blogs often read like Sylvia Plath's diary. But I love to laugh. I have an entire collection of comedy DVD's I watch constantly because hey, Reader's Digest said it best, laughter IS the best medicine. Laughing with your friends over stupid stuff is great. Laughing so hard you can't breathe, your stomach hurts and you get that fabulous endorphin rush - beautiful. I don't think scientists know why we laugh. WHO CARES? It feels good.
6) Philanthropy of mind and body and spirit. Sure, I admire Bill and Melinda Gates for the money they give to make the world better. But it's people like Medecins san Frontiers - people who put their own lives and health at risk to help others I admire. They are my heroes. It's easy to give money away. It's harder to dedicate your life to people living in war, poverty, disease. I admire anyone who sincerely tries to make this crazy world a better place, no matter how small. Whether it's by helping sick people, writing a beautiful piece of music, holding a dying person's hand, taking in a stray animal, teaching a difficult child...sure, there's something in it for everyone, there always is...but as Martha Stewart says, it's a good thing.
5) Art - Naturally this would have to be here. Why would I bust my butt to get an M.A. in art history if I didn't adore art? Especially paintings. Especially the art of the Baroque period, the Renaissance and the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Caracci, Vermeer. I almost wept when I saw The Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio in the Louvre. Manet's Absinthe Drinker. Renoir's beautiful young girls. Raphael's sweet Madonnas. The Dadaists, the Surrealists, those crazy Futurists. Frida Kahlo. Ernst, Dali, Marc. David Hockney's swimming pools. Degas' dancers. And naturally, the greatest sculptor who ever lived...Michelangelo. The Pieta. To see that in St. Peter's is to see the face of God. Such brilliance is almost incomprehensible. My art. How I miss it sometimes.
4)Family and friends. Oh sure, half of them are nuts and those half you're usually related to. Half the time they drive you crazy, and you probably drive them crazy. But as independent and anti-social as I can be, where would I be without my family and friends? My parents, who sacrificed so much for me so I could have so much opportunity. My brother, who despite ignoring my emails for weeks on end, is the only other person in the world, who knows me so well, who remembers my dad like I do. My mom, who is my hero, despite some wretched fights we've had. And my friends, present, future and past. They put up with me. They love me. The infuriate me. I infuriate them. We laugh, we cry, we shop, we eat, we trade war stories and we help each other through life. I'm starting to sound like a fuckin' Hallmark card here.
3) Traveling. It's tough, traveling. Especially as you get older, you get more settled in your ways, you get extremely attached to your own, perfect bed. (That would be my perfect bed). If you hate to fly, like I do, it makes it even harder. Also, with the unpredictability of my fibro, traveling can be rough on me. But I wouldn't trade my travels for anything. Traveling is the best education a person can have. God, just open your eyes, your mind, take in other cultures, be open, talk to other people, see the great art of the world, the great buildings, the history, the magic, the wonder of it all. I've traveled extensively through America, which I think more Americans should do. Geographically, this is a magnificent country, with some fantastic people. I hope someday to return to Europe, and to go to South America, Africa and Australia. I don't care how tired I get, how badly I hurt, I'll never stop traveling as long as I'm able to.
2)Books. Well if you know me, you know I love reading. And books. And bookstores. I'm like a junkie with a book habit. I used to read mostly fiction. Then suddenly I became a non-fiction person. So now I mostly read true crime, history, biographies, current affairs, etc. I cannot imagine not reading. I love the look of books, the feel of books, the weight of books. I can't throw any book out. Moving is a total bitch because of my books. I've left most of them in the huge library wall in my mom's living room. And still I have a ton of books all over the apartment. I've been in loving with reading ever since I learned to read. Books ARE your friends. I actually KNOW people who don't like to read. They don't read. I don't know how they live. Are they aliens? Maybe I read too much. But it soothes my soul. It is travel by thought. By the way, I HATE that song. HATE. It is not only the Church's worst song, it is one of the worst songs of all time.
1) Life itself. Well, I guess it sounds stupid, but again, given the sorry nature of so many of my blogs, and my tendency towards low-grade depression, you'd think I'd be kinda down on life. Yeah, I find it hard sometimes. I don't like chronic pain. I've had a few seriously tragic moments in my life. But despite it all, the good, the bad, the ugly, I can still say, it's fucking worth it. It's a grab bag - we don't know the cards we're dealt and sometimes I want to pound the earth with frustration and sadness...but I wouldn't opt out for anything. What's the alternative? As much as I long to believe in an afterlife, and sometimes do...I can't imagine it at all. So I get scared. Because who knows? This life is all we do know, and all we have. And for better or worse, this may be it. I hope not. I do long for something after this; I've always felt this was just part of the deal; that this is leading up to something else. But even if it isn't, this is it. I'm glad I'm along for the ride.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Monday, June 05, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Sweet Mary mother of Jesus! Ok, Steve Kilbey's not the only one having blogger problems today. Something's up with E-blogger. It's taking eternities to load. I've tried to load the page about 10 times. It's moving at a snail's pace. What, is everyone pissing and moaning on their blogs at once?
Monday. What a crap day. Woke up late, had an fight with a FAX machine and lost, gave and arm and leg for a tank of gas, was late to work/school and the kids were grating on my last nerve. Poor things. It wasn't their fault Ms. D was in a shitty mood. I had ZERO patience. My behaviour management techniques ranged from yelling "STOP IT!" to "SIT DOWN." I'm surprised I didn't tell them to grow up and shut up. LOL! I did say, "In 9 days you will be 1st graders. And 1st graders don't act like this." That excites them. The prospect of being in 1st grade is so thrilling! Ah, my little ducklings, how I hate to see you scatter and move on, but such is life, and we must. Sometimes I think, "I'll probably be teaching children that aren't even born yet." Maybe their parents haven't even met yet.
Maybe I'll go insane by then. I have The Offical Headache From Hell. I've taken some aspirin but so far, no luck.
I've decided I may have some extra testosterone in me. Not really actually, because I had my hormones tested and they're fine...but last night I was watching my new favourite show, "Entourage." God I love that show! It just struck me, is it a 'guy' show? Maybe. I seem to like a lot of 'guy' shows and movies. Take "Swingers." Brilliant. Genius. So money.
If you looked at my DVD collection, it's seriously testosterone-heavy. We've got:
The Deer Hunter
Serpico
Dog Day Afternoon
Taxi Driver
Mean Streets
Good Fellas
Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now
Cool Hand Luke
Heat
Marathon Man
Dirty Harry (and the next two or three Dirty Harry installments)
Paths of Glory
The Warriors
The French Connection
Blazing Saddles
Dr. Strangelove...
The Taking of Pelham 123
Resevoir Dogs
Dogs of War
Pulp Fiction
Deliverance
Catch-22
Oh and a slew of horror movies. So I like war movies, horror movies and murder mystery movies. And everyone who knows me knows my love of all things mafia-related. Why? I am not a violent person. I don't advocate violence. I'm not for war. But I am fascinated with the concepts, perhaps. The cosa nostra has always fascinated me. It's dying out in many ways. It ain't like it used to be that's for sure. I am fascinated by the idea of these guys who live in a world with their own rules, their own morality, their own code of conduct.
Naturally I go see movies like this alone, unless I've met a guy who'll see them with me. My girlfriends think I'm nuts. It is strange, as I really, really am very 'female' - I enjoy being a woman ( that sounds so old!) and enjoy dressing up and being sexy and I thoroughly enjoy men - except when they're irritating the shit out of me, haha. These movies are like the opposite of the chick flicks. I'm into some of those too. But what *is* it with me and war? Of course, many of these movies are actually anti-war which is so great. Catch-22 shows the absurdity of it all, as does Dr. Strangelove, and of course Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket show how war makes men into monsters. For some reason that reminds me of Francisco Goya's painting "The Third of May, 1808."
The painting shows a line of faceless Frenchmen cold-bloodly gunning down innocent Spaniards; Napoleon's brother was in charge of Spain then, and he feared an uprising by the Spaniards. These men were being shot and killed and they were falling in blood-soaked heaps on the ground. Goya, who despised war, said he painted it to show the true horrors of war, so that men would learn these horrors, and that there would never be another war again.
If only. Men do not learn. And I doubt they ever will. How cynical I am. I believe someday, thanks to the stupid fucks who created the A and H bombs, that we'll destroy ourselves, and the planet. If global warming doesn't do it first. It's a race to see which method works fastest. What a sorry lot we are.
Man have I just been all over the place with this blog today or what?
Sweet Mary mother of Jesus! Ok, Steve Kilbey's not the only one having blogger problems today. Something's up with E-blogger. It's taking eternities to load. I've tried to load the page about 10 times. It's moving at a snail's pace. What, is everyone pissing and moaning on their blogs at once?
Monday. What a crap day. Woke up late, had an fight with a FAX machine and lost, gave and arm and leg for a tank of gas, was late to work/school and the kids were grating on my last nerve. Poor things. It wasn't their fault Ms. D was in a shitty mood. I had ZERO patience. My behaviour management techniques ranged from yelling "STOP IT!" to "SIT DOWN." I'm surprised I didn't tell them to grow up and shut up. LOL! I did say, "In 9 days you will be 1st graders. And 1st graders don't act like this." That excites them. The prospect of being in 1st grade is so thrilling! Ah, my little ducklings, how I hate to see you scatter and move on, but such is life, and we must. Sometimes I think, "I'll probably be teaching children that aren't even born yet." Maybe their parents haven't even met yet.
Maybe I'll go insane by then. I have The Offical Headache From Hell. I've taken some aspirin but so far, no luck.
I've decided I may have some extra testosterone in me. Not really actually, because I had my hormones tested and they're fine...but last night I was watching my new favourite show, "Entourage." God I love that show! It just struck me, is it a 'guy' show? Maybe. I seem to like a lot of 'guy' shows and movies. Take "Swingers." Brilliant. Genius. So money.
If you looked at my DVD collection, it's seriously testosterone-heavy. We've got:
The Deer Hunter
Serpico
Dog Day Afternoon
Taxi Driver
Mean Streets
Good Fellas
Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now
Cool Hand Luke
Heat
Marathon Man
Dirty Harry (and the next two or three Dirty Harry installments)
Paths of Glory
The Warriors
The French Connection
Blazing Saddles
Dr. Strangelove...
The Taking of Pelham 123
Resevoir Dogs
Dogs of War
Pulp Fiction
Deliverance
Catch-22
Oh and a slew of horror movies. So I like war movies, horror movies and murder mystery movies. And everyone who knows me knows my love of all things mafia-related. Why? I am not a violent person. I don't advocate violence. I'm not for war. But I am fascinated with the concepts, perhaps. The cosa nostra has always fascinated me. It's dying out in many ways. It ain't like it used to be that's for sure. I am fascinated by the idea of these guys who live in a world with their own rules, their own morality, their own code of conduct.
Naturally I go see movies like this alone, unless I've met a guy who'll see them with me. My girlfriends think I'm nuts. It is strange, as I really, really am very 'female' - I enjoy being a woman ( that sounds so old!) and enjoy dressing up and being sexy and I thoroughly enjoy men - except when they're irritating the shit out of me, haha. These movies are like the opposite of the chick flicks. I'm into some of those too. But what *is* it with me and war? Of course, many of these movies are actually anti-war which is so great. Catch-22 shows the absurdity of it all, as does Dr. Strangelove, and of course Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket show how war makes men into monsters. For some reason that reminds me of Francisco Goya's painting "The Third of May, 1808."
The painting shows a line of faceless Frenchmen cold-bloodly gunning down innocent Spaniards; Napoleon's brother was in charge of Spain then, and he feared an uprising by the Spaniards. These men were being shot and killed and they were falling in blood-soaked heaps on the ground. Goya, who despised war, said he painted it to show the true horrors of war, so that men would learn these horrors, and that there would never be another war again.
If only. Men do not learn. And I doubt they ever will. How cynical I am. I believe someday, thanks to the stupid fucks who created the A and H bombs, that we'll destroy ourselves, and the planet. If global warming doesn't do it first. It's a race to see which method works fastest. What a sorry lot we are.
Man have I just been all over the place with this blog today or what?
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
In The Valley of The Kings
Venice coffee shops and used record stores
Greasy spoons and the blue man on the moon
down on Broadway by the glittering sea
it was all like pharaoh's gold
in the Valley of the Kings.
There were vinyl dreams so melodic and sweet
and we were never too young, never too naive
to become enslaved by the strange geography
of the streets.
Remember when! Remember when!
You could feel! Angry happy sad raging insane crazy mad
as fucking hell about life, death, taxes, injustice, parking tickets
health insurance, AIDS, Rwanda
stolen elections and immoral wars!
Remember when you could feel....and now....
In your bedroom, bare walls and all
is the death bed and there lies quietly, so still
the American Dream, the death rattle echoing off the walls
Yes, the American Dream
flatlining finally after years and years behind the brittle
cries, the unheard screams
a custom-made cliche
but dying, leaving, going, gone just the same.
Hell, it wasn't as if you didn't help it along
I mean come on - remember standing in smoky rooms
of carefully measured discontent?
Wondering how to fuck without dying;
wondering how to pay the rent.
There were songs you loved and words you knew;
once you sang along and now you don't even want the radio on
anymore.
You gave years and years away like worthless currency
not knowing that nostalgia is simply brain chemistry
and love just a strange attractor; and memory itself
some kind of sad self-pity.
Now all the record stores have closed up and have gone away
disappeared into the future tense of technology
and Broadway by the sea is just another street
It's a game you play and you're getting so good at it now
just think dear lady once upon a time you didn't even know how.
Yeah, rock and roll could've saved your soul
but that was yesterday
And rooms hold ghosts
but they will never haunt you
like the words you gave away.
Now the music's just too damn loud
though the words sound strangely familiar;
the meaning is unclear and the sad semiotics
of despair is the only melody you can hear.
You're a stranger in strange places now
You're a ghost, an apparition, a pathetic dream
Die die die you long to scream!
in cheap cerveza bars and cigarettes
fall limply from your lips and glow in the gleam
looking for a light is a bitch in these haunted spaces
there's no smoke no fire and you wonder
was it you that died first
or was it desire?
So you stalk the velvet crush, the glittering comedown,
remembering decaying downtown faces in crimson mirrors
and you fall like Alice but the story is much more grim
You tumble through time back to the event horizon.
And you still haven't figured out
how to black out
before the band leaves the stage;
and it's on someone's else face
that you watch yourself age.
Hollywood calls your name and laughs while you weep
Phantom fucks and full blood-burst harvest moons
universes that go bang! or collapse in the street
and you suck on nicotine for hours and dream of long-ago rooms
now long torn down and gone.
And nostalgia is just a dream, a memory
you once believed it was all real, it would last forever
the smell of cheap leather and sweat and smoke and tears
the spilled emotions on the table mixed with the leftover stale beers
It was beautiful here, once upon a time
We skipped down Broadway by the azure sea
We sang the songs and knew all the words
and we loved the pure and sweet sound of a 12 string
playing gently across the city at night
and it was like pharaoh's gold in the
Valley of the Kings.
In The Valley of The Kings
Venice coffee shops and used record stores
Greasy spoons and the blue man on the moon
down on Broadway by the glittering sea
it was all like pharaoh's gold
in the Valley of the Kings.
There were vinyl dreams so melodic and sweet
and we were never too young, never too naive
to become enslaved by the strange geography
of the streets.
Remember when! Remember when!
You could feel! Angry happy sad raging insane crazy mad
as fucking hell about life, death, taxes, injustice, parking tickets
health insurance, AIDS, Rwanda
stolen elections and immoral wars!
Remember when you could feel....and now....
In your bedroom, bare walls and all
is the death bed and there lies quietly, so still
the American Dream, the death rattle echoing off the walls
Yes, the American Dream
flatlining finally after years and years behind the brittle
cries, the unheard screams
a custom-made cliche
but dying, leaving, going, gone just the same.
Hell, it wasn't as if you didn't help it along
I mean come on - remember standing in smoky rooms
of carefully measured discontent?
Wondering how to fuck without dying;
wondering how to pay the rent.
There were songs you loved and words you knew;
once you sang along and now you don't even want the radio on
anymore.
You gave years and years away like worthless currency
not knowing that nostalgia is simply brain chemistry
and love just a strange attractor; and memory itself
some kind of sad self-pity.
Now all the record stores have closed up and have gone away
disappeared into the future tense of technology
and Broadway by the sea is just another street
It's a game you play and you're getting so good at it now
just think dear lady once upon a time you didn't even know how.
Yeah, rock and roll could've saved your soul
but that was yesterday
And rooms hold ghosts
but they will never haunt you
like the words you gave away.
Now the music's just too damn loud
though the words sound strangely familiar;
the meaning is unclear and the sad semiotics
of despair is the only melody you can hear.
You're a stranger in strange places now
You're a ghost, an apparition, a pathetic dream
Die die die you long to scream!
in cheap cerveza bars and cigarettes
fall limply from your lips and glow in the gleam
looking for a light is a bitch in these haunted spaces
there's no smoke no fire and you wonder
was it you that died first
or was it desire?
So you stalk the velvet crush, the glittering comedown,
remembering decaying downtown faces in crimson mirrors
and you fall like Alice but the story is much more grim
You tumble through time back to the event horizon.
And you still haven't figured out
how to black out
before the band leaves the stage;
and it's on someone's else face
that you watch yourself age.
Hollywood calls your name and laughs while you weep
Phantom fucks and full blood-burst harvest moons
universes that go bang! or collapse in the street
and you suck on nicotine for hours and dream of long-ago rooms
now long torn down and gone.
And nostalgia is just a dream, a memory
you once believed it was all real, it would last forever
the smell of cheap leather and sweat and smoke and tears
the spilled emotions on the table mixed with the leftover stale beers
It was beautiful here, once upon a time
We skipped down Broadway by the azure sea
We sang the songs and knew all the words
and we loved the pure and sweet sound of a 12 string
playing gently across the city at night
and it was like pharaoh's gold in the
Valley of the Kings.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Disenchanted
Everyone knows
that Sunday kind of sadness;
the pale decline of universal despair
that hangs delicately around the edges
of the dinner table, the laundry basket, the empty chairs...
as the pink-orange crush of dusk
drops slowly down
the velvet blanket of jasmine and musk
far away voices and far away sounds
And you knew
this
was
the
end.
The promise
was forgotten.
And the small, sad, empty feeling
you felt
watching The Wonderful World of Disney
staring through the windows at the falling darkness
and Tinkerbell in stardust flying away
comes back to you now...
...in cars and bars and steel gray cubicles
at high noon and in the shrill tinny banter
of silver spoons and conversations in conference rooms.
Everyone knows
that Sunday kind of sadness
sitting alone on the front porch steps
the sky bleeding pink into gunmetal grey
and you
listening to the distant hum of the dishwasher
the faraway rushing of the bathwater upstairs
and the television in the den ticking away
"60 Minutes"
(sometimes, you watched The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew)
while Mom ironed your little shirts
and you knew
that it was over
again...
....like you do now
and you think how
you would've made Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus
oh so proud.
Disenchanted
Everyone knows
that Sunday kind of sadness;
the pale decline of universal despair
that hangs delicately around the edges
of the dinner table, the laundry basket, the empty chairs...
as the pink-orange crush of dusk
drops slowly down
the velvet blanket of jasmine and musk
far away voices and far away sounds
And you knew
this
was
the
end.
The promise
was forgotten.
And the small, sad, empty feeling
you felt
watching The Wonderful World of Disney
staring through the windows at the falling darkness
and Tinkerbell in stardust flying away
comes back to you now...
...in cars and bars and steel gray cubicles
at high noon and in the shrill tinny banter
of silver spoons and conversations in conference rooms.
Everyone knows
that Sunday kind of sadness
sitting alone on the front porch steps
the sky bleeding pink into gunmetal grey
and you
listening to the distant hum of the dishwasher
the faraway rushing of the bathwater upstairs
and the television in the den ticking away
"60 Minutes"
(sometimes, you watched The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew)
while Mom ironed your little shirts
and you knew
that it was over
again...
....like you do now
and you think how
you would've made Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus
oh so proud.
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Earlier this evening, while ignoring the Evil Math Books
on the table, I was lying on the couch, channel-surfing.
I caught the last half-hour of the final Star Wars trilogy.
Which trilogy you ask? Oh hell, the most recent trilogy.
I purposely never saw any of those films; George Lucas
really frosted my cake with these 'prequels' and I had NO
interest in seeing what led up to one of the great films of
my youth, Star Wars. I preferred to pretend there were
no prequels, ha. But out of sheer boredom and a sudden need
to see how Darth Vader became Darth Vader - or shall I say,
how Anakin became Darth, I watched. I really only got to see him
have that neat CGI laser battle with Obi-Wan. Good casting there!
And then, and then...ewwwwwwwwww...so that's what happened to him!
He kind of caught on fire and was incinerated and his face kind of...
melted off.
However, I am now confused. Was he a machine? It looked like
his limbs, what was left of them, were robot-like or something.
Oh crap, that'll teach ME to come in on the last half hour of a movie
trilogy! Anyway, poor Padme, or whatever her name is. Pops out the twins,
Luke and Leia and then she's off, with funeral flowers in her hair.
And Luke goes to live with his aunt and uncle and
we end with those two glorious suns in the distance...
the same suns Luke looks at when he grows up and becomes
the hottie that all 10 year olds will swoon over.
Seriously. Someone answer my question. What was up
with Anakin? Did he have a metallic body? He was like this
pile o' goo, and then they gave him the DARTH VADER outfit
and voila!
I can't believe Jimmy Smits was in this movie. That was just wrong. In
so many ways.
Earlier this evening, while ignoring the Evil Math Books
on the table, I was lying on the couch, channel-surfing.
I caught the last half-hour of the final Star Wars trilogy.
Which trilogy you ask? Oh hell, the most recent trilogy.
I purposely never saw any of those films; George Lucas
really frosted my cake with these 'prequels' and I had NO
interest in seeing what led up to one of the great films of
my youth, Star Wars. I preferred to pretend there were
no prequels, ha. But out of sheer boredom and a sudden need
to see how Darth Vader became Darth Vader - or shall I say,
how Anakin became Darth, I watched. I really only got to see him
have that neat CGI laser battle with Obi-Wan. Good casting there!
And then, and then...ewwwwwwwwww...so that's what happened to him!
He kind of caught on fire and was incinerated and his face kind of...
melted off.
However, I am now confused. Was he a machine? It looked like
his limbs, what was left of them, were robot-like or something.
Oh crap, that'll teach ME to come in on the last half hour of a movie
trilogy! Anyway, poor Padme, or whatever her name is. Pops out the twins,
Luke and Leia and then she's off, with funeral flowers in her hair.
And Luke goes to live with his aunt and uncle and
we end with those two glorious suns in the distance...
the same suns Luke looks at when he grows up and becomes
the hottie that all 10 year olds will swoon over.
Seriously. Someone answer my question. What was up
with Anakin? Did he have a metallic body? He was like this
pile o' goo, and then they gave him the DARTH VADER outfit
and voila!
I can't believe Jimmy Smits was in this movie. That was just wrong. In
so many ways.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Oh my GOD I'm having the worst math anxiety attack I've ever had. Honestly, I feel like I'm going to throw up. This is insane. FUCKING MATH! I hate it. HATE IT! I have to take my final CSET test - math and science - my two worst subjects. At least I LIKE science somewhat, even if I wasn't good at it in school. Try as I might, I cannot ever learn to love algebra or geometry. No, I'm sorry, I don't see the beauty in a math equation. I'm an art history teacher! I see beauty at the Louvre - not in a quadratic equation.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pardon my French but this is my blog and if you don't like it, go away.
I haven't had any serious math since 1984. I'm trying to study for this beast and I'm getting stuck on fucking fractions! All those horrible terms are coming back to haunt me - numerators, denominators, flip this, turn this inside out. If there are two negatives then it's a positive! WHY GOD WHY!
And I remember myself, walking around during those halcyon days of grad school, in existential despair, saying God was probably a mathematical equation. Very mechanistic of me, nice and reductionistic. Reading "The Three Pound Universe" convinced me for a while there was no soul, there was no ME! I was just a head injury away from losing myself. Where do people who get Alzheimer's go??? Who ARE we? Are we ego? Are we spirit? If we are something like x-m = z +y then screw it. If that is God, I am not taking His class!
I'm visual, visual! There's been very little logic to me. I can't do it. How can one tiny test stand in the way of me getting a teaching credential? I KNOW I am a good teacher already - I love my kids - I want to open their minds, help them experience the wonder of the world, teach them creativity, thinking for yourself - I cannot be trapped by numbers forever!
Seriously. This is one of those times where I feel like falling on my knees and praying. Over a stinkin' test! That is how panicked I am. Ah, but I'm good at panic! I may suck at math, but I've got panic down pat! And I try to clear my mind, just breathe, relax, pray...and then as usual, I'm stuck. What do I pray for? Who do I pray to?
Dear God,
Please help me love math. No, scratch that. Please help me pass this horrible test.
And then My Little Problem begins. Voice in the back of my head says "Do you really think God/Universe/He/She/It/Energy/Vishnu/Krishna/Jesus/Buddha/Muhammad CARES ABOUT YOU AND YOUR STUPID MATH TEST! Do you think that God even KNOWS you are alive!
Yes, the deist in me is alive and well. Me: Well, really, doesn't God have more important things to think about? What about those poor children dying of starvation, cancer, bombs, etc.? What about the Congo? Iraq? Darfur? Do you think one person and her stupid math test amounts to a hill of beans in this crazy world?
Ok, then. God, please just give me strength to do what I need to do. To keep going. Give me courage and confidence, if you can't magically give me all the answers to the test on test day.
This is insane. I am NOT going to the gas chamber, but it feels like it.
911 what's your emergency?
Yes, I'm in my house, I can't breath, my heart is racing, it's the linear equations! Dear Sweet God, I can't stand it anymore!
My cats are sleeping like little lumps of cuteness. I am so jealous of them right now. I've lost my mind.
I think I was supposed to write 10 Things I Love About Life yesterday. But yesterday was Bubbles Day at school and I came home so soapy and sticky and hot and tired I forgot what I love about life. Bubbles Day was good.
Math will never be on that list. A Caravaggio, yes. A Renoir, for certain. Algorithms, never.
Oh my GOD I'm having the worst math anxiety attack I've ever had. Honestly, I feel like I'm going to throw up. This is insane. FUCKING MATH! I hate it. HATE IT! I have to take my final CSET test - math and science - my two worst subjects. At least I LIKE science somewhat, even if I wasn't good at it in school. Try as I might, I cannot ever learn to love algebra or geometry. No, I'm sorry, I don't see the beauty in a math equation. I'm an art history teacher! I see beauty at the Louvre - not in a quadratic equation.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pardon my French but this is my blog and if you don't like it, go away.
I haven't had any serious math since 1984. I'm trying to study for this beast and I'm getting stuck on fucking fractions! All those horrible terms are coming back to haunt me - numerators, denominators, flip this, turn this inside out. If there are two negatives then it's a positive! WHY GOD WHY!
And I remember myself, walking around during those halcyon days of grad school, in existential despair, saying God was probably a mathematical equation. Very mechanistic of me, nice and reductionistic. Reading "The Three Pound Universe" convinced me for a while there was no soul, there was no ME! I was just a head injury away from losing myself. Where do people who get Alzheimer's go??? Who ARE we? Are we ego? Are we spirit? If we are something like x-m = z +y then screw it. If that is God, I am not taking His class!
I'm visual, visual! There's been very little logic to me. I can't do it. How can one tiny test stand in the way of me getting a teaching credential? I KNOW I am a good teacher already - I love my kids - I want to open their minds, help them experience the wonder of the world, teach them creativity, thinking for yourself - I cannot be trapped by numbers forever!
Seriously. This is one of those times where I feel like falling on my knees and praying. Over a stinkin' test! That is how panicked I am. Ah, but I'm good at panic! I may suck at math, but I've got panic down pat! And I try to clear my mind, just breathe, relax, pray...and then as usual, I'm stuck. What do I pray for? Who do I pray to?
Dear God,
Please help me love math. No, scratch that. Please help me pass this horrible test.
And then My Little Problem begins. Voice in the back of my head says "Do you really think God/Universe/He/She/It/Energy/Vishnu/Krishna/Jesus/Buddha/Muhammad CARES ABOUT YOU AND YOUR STUPID MATH TEST! Do you think that God even KNOWS you are alive!
Yes, the deist in me is alive and well. Me: Well, really, doesn't God have more important things to think about? What about those poor children dying of starvation, cancer, bombs, etc.? What about the Congo? Iraq? Darfur? Do you think one person and her stupid math test amounts to a hill of beans in this crazy world?
Ok, then. God, please just give me strength to do what I need to do. To keep going. Give me courage and confidence, if you can't magically give me all the answers to the test on test day.
This is insane. I am NOT going to the gas chamber, but it feels like it.
911 what's your emergency?
Yes, I'm in my house, I can't breath, my heart is racing, it's the linear equations! Dear Sweet God, I can't stand it anymore!
My cats are sleeping like little lumps of cuteness. I am so jealous of them right now. I've lost my mind.
I think I was supposed to write 10 Things I Love About Life yesterday. But yesterday was Bubbles Day at school and I came home so soapy and sticky and hot and tired I forgot what I love about life. Bubbles Day was good.
Math will never be on that list. A Caravaggio, yes. A Renoir, for certain. Algorithms, never.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Dispatches from the Comfort Zone and Why I Love Anderson Cooper
Last week I received Anderson Cooper's book "Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival" in the mail from Amazon.com. I read it in two hours. In his beautiful book interweaving his own life with the wars and disasters he's covered over the years, Anderson put into words what I have been feeling about my life for the last decade. Odd, because we have led completely different lives. He was born to American royalty; an iconic mother....a glittering life of famous names and places in New York. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb of Los Angeles; the only connections we have is that we were both born in 1967, we both went to private, expensive universities, we both have a brother, and we've both experienced the suicide of a close family member. We both lost our fathers suddenly; Anderson at the terribly early age of 10; I at the more reasonable, but still somehow almost unbearable age of 28. Now Anderson is famous, and talented, and probably the only journalist and news anchor I trust anymore. I am a teacher, unknown but not dissatisfied with that - I think fame would drive me insane. He's adored by thousands - I'm adored by two cats. Actually, I had to make up that last line. I think the cats just tolerate me.
On page 15, Anderson writes: "Sometimes I wonder if I'm the person I was born to be, if the life I've lived really is the one I was meant to, or if it is some half life, a mutation engineered by loss, cobbled together by the will to survive."
No human being on earth has ever spoken the words my soul has been trying to find for years and years. Therapy, pills, ghosts, tears, my own writing - nothing worked to articulate the sense that perhaps my life would've been different had I not fallen so ill in 1994, and lost so many years to illness. What of my father's cruel and untimely death? What would things be like now? Who would I be if I did not fight pain and fatigue daily? Would I have done more? Less? Does it really matter? No. Because I'll never know. I don't really torture myself too much with the questions anymore; it's pointless. I have made more peace with my dad than with my body; my body reminds me everyday that it will battle me day after day. That's a tough war to walk away from. So although I'm sure Anderson Cooper wrote that for far different reasons, perhaps they are not so different in the end; perhaps they are all about loss, and just for those few sentences I am eternally grateful.
Anderson Cooper and I have had a long and strange relationship, although of course, he doesn't know it. Hee. And he doesn't have to worry, I am not, as he called them so politely on Larry King tonight, one of those 'highly motivated people' (aka stalkers) that thinks I know him, or have a personal relationship with him, or will, and I'm not planning on taking long walks past his apartment in New York. I'm not going to sit outside CNN waiting for him to walk out. That's just craziness; although poor guy, apparently he's been dealing with it more and more, and with the publication of this book, I fear he is going to simply become more and more trapped by his success. Sad.
I remember first seeing Anderson many years ago - maybe a decade or so, thanks to my ever-present insomnia. I believe it was just before my dad died; I'd wake up at odd hours of the night and turn on the TV. I'd watch ABC News at like 3am and 4am and there was Anderson, so amazingly young! I guess I was young too, as we are the same age. But I remember with such clarity that he seemed older than his years; I don't even recall if his hair had gone completely gray yet. He just posessed a certain intellectual and emotional weight - I knew absolutely nothing about him, his family, his past. I didn't even think he was particularly handsome or anything, and yet something inexplicable drew me to him during those wee morning hours. Perhaps I wondered, "Wow, who's the poor guy who got stuck with this gig?"
Then my father died; death by severe lead poisoning. Ba- dum dum. Thank you, I'll be here all week. And at some point in the insane numbness of grief, when I was reaching out to anyone and anything for comfort, for survival, like a drowning woman clutching at a life raft, I came across a book written by Gloria Vanderbilt called "A Mother's Story" which was about the suicide of her young son Carter, 23, in the summer of 1988. I'd read every book I could find on grief and especially suicide, so naturally I read this one too. Despite the difference in our circumstances; she had lost a child who'd leapt from a building right in front of her and I'd lost a parent who'd I'd found dead in his apartment, her book was one of the most comforting I'd read. I loved reading about Carter; I ached for him, and for Gloria. All I ever knew about Gloria was the 'poor little rich girl' story, that she was a socialite, and had designed some jeans in the late 1970's that were extremely popular when I was in middle school. I never bought a pair.
I remember the cover of that book so clearly - it was a picture of Carter - a full-faced but very handsome young man, and I was so sad for her. I'd worked in the suicide survivors group with so many parents who'd lost children to suicide and I always found them the hardest to work with. Perhaps because I did not have children of my own; perhaps because I felt my grief could never measure the anguish of losing a child, especially in such a horrible manner as suicide. We were not supposed to 'compare' grief; but when you see a parent mourn a child, it is as if everything in the universe has gone topsy-turvy, upside down, inside out. It is beyond wrong. Parents, as it is said, are not supposed to outlive their own children. Parents are not supposed to watch their children leap off balconies 14 floors up; parents are not supposed to watch their 13 year old child immoliate himself in the backyard. So many people asked me, "How can you do that group every week? Doesn't it depress you?" On the contrary.
After Carter committed suicide, Anderson graduated college, and said he felt the need to go where people were experiencing loss; to see how they survived. He needed to be around loss; he was still reeling from his own loss. That is exactly how I felt. How could I /not/ be around other survivors? They were my people, my brothers and sisters. Only /they/ could truly understand what I was feeling. I now belonged to a special group; obviously a group I never would've willingly joined - but I'd crossed the Rubicon, so to speak. I could not go back. My life was forever divided. I needed to tell my story, over and over and over. And I needed to hear others' stories and I needed to tell them in any way I could, Byou will surviveB! I threw myself in the trenches for four years.
What I find odd now about Gloria's book is that perhaps she mentioned Anderson; I honestly don't recall connecting them though. And yet somehow, some years down the line, I finally understood that Anderson Cooper was the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and her last husband, Wyatt Cooper. I found it mildly interesting but not overwhelmingly so.
Now with the publication of Anderson's book (which is currently at the #1 spot on Amazon) everyone who's interested will know. Gloria is 82 years old, and has led an amazingly fascinating life - not the least that she had Anderson at 43 and she's still going strong! And yet I'm more interested in Anderson's passion with keeping the dead alive, with exposing the horrors that most of us turn away from, telling the stories of those who cannot speak for themselves anymore - Rwanda, Serbia, Haiti, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo - talking openly about his brother's suicide, and daring to show compassion, and emotion - even on air.
I will never forget his coverage of Katrina, when he was talking to some moronic Senator who was rambling on and on, thanking politician after politician, and Anderson interrupted her and basically said 'do you realize while politicians are thanking each other, bodies are decomposing in the streets...I saw a woman who's been lying out in the sun for two days being eat by rats and people are angry...do you get that people are angry about this???'
It was a high point in journalism if you ask me. I don't give a shit if he wasn't retaining his 'objectivity' - someone had to finally call those monstrous politicians on their B.S. and glad-handling. People were rotting in the streets, and they were thanking each other for a job well done. Were they blind? Are they sociopaths? Where were their consciences? Well, we now know how Katrina and the aftermath turned out. A horror show. It can't happen here. Oh yes it can. A national tragedy. Anderson's voice cracked during his confrontation of this woman, and I thought, Jesus, finally! Finally, someone who is NOT afraid to tell the truth! To say what we all want to say! To speak truth to power. To cut through the bullshit. He was, and is my hero, just for that one moment. If he never did another thing in his life, that would be enough.
From watching Anderson on about a billion interviews this week, reading his work in Details magazine, reading his book, his blog and watching his show on CNN, I see a lot of myself in him. Perhaps I am projecting. I'm sure a million others feel some mystical connection to him and just know he's their soul mate. I don't feel that way; I don't know him, I don't feel mystically connected to him. I just listen to him speak, and I hear my thoughts about suicide and loss said aloud, and it feels so good to have someone talk about it, without fear, without shame. I am not really allowed to talk about my Dad anymore in my family. I can't talk about his death - which is fine, because I'm all talked out on that subject. I lost the need for answers to my questions years ago. However, even when I talk about my dad's life - the good person he was, the great dad he was, the good things he did I manage to upset my mother and brother. This infuriates me as I feel I worked so fucking hard for so many years to deal with my grief and loss in as healthy a way as possible, and to integrate my dad's death into my life, and to learn to focus more ON HIS LIFE than on how he died. That is no easy task with suicide. I feel sorry for my mom and my brother. I think they are emotionally stunted and choose to live in denial. They have chosen to bury my father, literally and figuratively, forever. They have lied to people about how he died; I refuse to do that. I find that reprehensible. What does that say about my dad, about suicide, about mental illness, depression - what does that say about my brother? Is he ashamed? Of what? He did nothing wrong. If people don't like the truth, they can move on. I am different than my mom and brother. I have always been accused of being too sensitive. Overly sensitive. I cry too easily. I see the cover of Time magazine in the market with victims of Darfur on the cover and my eyes well up. I plead guilty. I am highly sensitive. Sometimes I have to purposely back off and become cynical, use black humour - whatever - to keep me from falling totally apart. I always said I'd rather be too sensitive than not sensitive enough.
It helps to hear someone my age say that we don't talk about loss in America. Someone people look up to and respect. Because we don't talk about loss; we don't want to read about anything but Paris Hilton and the latest plastic surgery innovations. We are more afraid of death and dying than any culture I've ever seen. We're a spoiled, insulated culture. How lucky we are.
We still stigmatize people who take their lives. Sometimes I think we are downright medieval. When my brother's best childhood friend shot and killed himself in his house several years ago, some fucking idiot asked his sister if he was going to be allowed to be buried in a Catholic cemetery. Good God, what century is this? Even the Church, which I detest, finally came around at Vatican II and stated that suicide is a result of mental illness - it's not some sin where the person's going to Hell to burn for all eternity.
Anyway, I'm glad there's an Anderson Cooper out there. I'm grateful. I've gotten so cynical I don't trust anyone anymore. The government, the media - fuck 'em all. However, when I finished his book, I had a little hope. Hope that there is someone out there who truly cares. Anderson goes back to a time when journalists had integrity and honor. He has class, and compassion. He cares. I believe that.
The inevitable backlash will begin, I know. Hell, the poor guy has been raked over the coals for years over his sexual orientation. Straight? Gay? Why won't he just admit he's gay? He has a responsibility to come out for the gay community! Uh, no he doesn't actually. What the hell does it matter what his sexual orientation is? How does this affect his work? How does this impact our lives? Our sexually/celebrity obsessed pathetic lives. It makes no difference to me. I don't see a straight man, a gay man, a handsome man, an ugly man. I see a man who has suffered deeply in his life, despite all the trappings of money, fame, success. I see a man who has made a difference in the lives of thousands. I see a peer I can be proud of. I see a man who is not living a half life - but the fullest life possible. I see an inspiration, a hero. And I don't believe there are very many heroes left anymore.
Dispatches from the Comfort Zone and Why I Love Anderson Cooper
Last week I received Anderson Cooper's book "Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival" in the mail from Amazon.com. I read it in two hours. In his beautiful book interweaving his own life with the wars and disasters he's covered over the years, Anderson put into words what I have been feeling about my life for the last decade. Odd, because we have led completely different lives. He was born to American royalty; an iconic mother....a glittering life of famous names and places in New York. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb of Los Angeles; the only connections we have is that we were both born in 1967, we both went to private, expensive universities, we both have a brother, and we've both experienced the suicide of a close family member. We both lost our fathers suddenly; Anderson at the terribly early age of 10; I at the more reasonable, but still somehow almost unbearable age of 28. Now Anderson is famous, and talented, and probably the only journalist and news anchor I trust anymore. I am a teacher, unknown but not dissatisfied with that - I think fame would drive me insane. He's adored by thousands - I'm adored by two cats. Actually, I had to make up that last line. I think the cats just tolerate me.
On page 15, Anderson writes: "Sometimes I wonder if I'm the person I was born to be, if the life I've lived really is the one I was meant to, or if it is some half life, a mutation engineered by loss, cobbled together by the will to survive."
No human being on earth has ever spoken the words my soul has been trying to find for years and years. Therapy, pills, ghosts, tears, my own writing - nothing worked to articulate the sense that perhaps my life would've been different had I not fallen so ill in 1994, and lost so many years to illness. What of my father's cruel and untimely death? What would things be like now? Who would I be if I did not fight pain and fatigue daily? Would I have done more? Less? Does it really matter? No. Because I'll never know. I don't really torture myself too much with the questions anymore; it's pointless. I have made more peace with my dad than with my body; my body reminds me everyday that it will battle me day after day. That's a tough war to walk away from. So although I'm sure Anderson Cooper wrote that for far different reasons, perhaps they are not so different in the end; perhaps they are all about loss, and just for those few sentences I am eternally grateful.
Anderson Cooper and I have had a long and strange relationship, although of course, he doesn't know it. Hee. And he doesn't have to worry, I am not, as he called them so politely on Larry King tonight, one of those 'highly motivated people' (aka stalkers) that thinks I know him, or have a personal relationship with him, or will, and I'm not planning on taking long walks past his apartment in New York. I'm not going to sit outside CNN waiting for him to walk out. That's just craziness; although poor guy, apparently he's been dealing with it more and more, and with the publication of this book, I fear he is going to simply become more and more trapped by his success. Sad.
I remember first seeing Anderson many years ago - maybe a decade or so, thanks to my ever-present insomnia. I believe it was just before my dad died; I'd wake up at odd hours of the night and turn on the TV. I'd watch ABC News at like 3am and 4am and there was Anderson, so amazingly young! I guess I was young too, as we are the same age. But I remember with such clarity that he seemed older than his years; I don't even recall if his hair had gone completely gray yet. He just posessed a certain intellectual and emotional weight - I knew absolutely nothing about him, his family, his past. I didn't even think he was particularly handsome or anything, and yet something inexplicable drew me to him during those wee morning hours. Perhaps I wondered, "Wow, who's the poor guy who got stuck with this gig?"
Then my father died; death by severe lead poisoning. Ba- dum dum. Thank you, I'll be here all week. And at some point in the insane numbness of grief, when I was reaching out to anyone and anything for comfort, for survival, like a drowning woman clutching at a life raft, I came across a book written by Gloria Vanderbilt called "A Mother's Story" which was about the suicide of her young son Carter, 23, in the summer of 1988. I'd read every book I could find on grief and especially suicide, so naturally I read this one too. Despite the difference in our circumstances; she had lost a child who'd leapt from a building right in front of her and I'd lost a parent who'd I'd found dead in his apartment, her book was one of the most comforting I'd read. I loved reading about Carter; I ached for him, and for Gloria. All I ever knew about Gloria was the 'poor little rich girl' story, that she was a socialite, and had designed some jeans in the late 1970's that were extremely popular when I was in middle school. I never bought a pair.
I remember the cover of that book so clearly - it was a picture of Carter - a full-faced but very handsome young man, and I was so sad for her. I'd worked in the suicide survivors group with so many parents who'd lost children to suicide and I always found them the hardest to work with. Perhaps because I did not have children of my own; perhaps because I felt my grief could never measure the anguish of losing a child, especially in such a horrible manner as suicide. We were not supposed to 'compare' grief; but when you see a parent mourn a child, it is as if everything in the universe has gone topsy-turvy, upside down, inside out. It is beyond wrong. Parents, as it is said, are not supposed to outlive their own children. Parents are not supposed to watch their children leap off balconies 14 floors up; parents are not supposed to watch their 13 year old child immoliate himself in the backyard. So many people asked me, "How can you do that group every week? Doesn't it depress you?" On the contrary.
After Carter committed suicide, Anderson graduated college, and said he felt the need to go where people were experiencing loss; to see how they survived. He needed to be around loss; he was still reeling from his own loss. That is exactly how I felt. How could I /not/ be around other survivors? They were my people, my brothers and sisters. Only /they/ could truly understand what I was feeling. I now belonged to a special group; obviously a group I never would've willingly joined - but I'd crossed the Rubicon, so to speak. I could not go back. My life was forever divided. I needed to tell my story, over and over and over. And I needed to hear others' stories and I needed to tell them in any way I could, Byou will surviveB! I threw myself in the trenches for four years.
What I find odd now about Gloria's book is that perhaps she mentioned Anderson; I honestly don't recall connecting them though. And yet somehow, some years down the line, I finally understood that Anderson Cooper was the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and her last husband, Wyatt Cooper. I found it mildly interesting but not overwhelmingly so.
Now with the publication of Anderson's book (which is currently at the #1 spot on Amazon) everyone who's interested will know. Gloria is 82 years old, and has led an amazingly fascinating life - not the least that she had Anderson at 43 and she's still going strong! And yet I'm more interested in Anderson's passion with keeping the dead alive, with exposing the horrors that most of us turn away from, telling the stories of those who cannot speak for themselves anymore - Rwanda, Serbia, Haiti, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo - talking openly about his brother's suicide, and daring to show compassion, and emotion - even on air.
I will never forget his coverage of Katrina, when he was talking to some moronic Senator who was rambling on and on, thanking politician after politician, and Anderson interrupted her and basically said 'do you realize while politicians are thanking each other, bodies are decomposing in the streets...I saw a woman who's been lying out in the sun for two days being eat by rats and people are angry...do you get that people are angry about this???'
It was a high point in journalism if you ask me. I don't give a shit if he wasn't retaining his 'objectivity' - someone had to finally call those monstrous politicians on their B.S. and glad-handling. People were rotting in the streets, and they were thanking each other for a job well done. Were they blind? Are they sociopaths? Where were their consciences? Well, we now know how Katrina and the aftermath turned out. A horror show. It can't happen here. Oh yes it can. A national tragedy. Anderson's voice cracked during his confrontation of this woman, and I thought, Jesus, finally! Finally, someone who is NOT afraid to tell the truth! To say what we all want to say! To speak truth to power. To cut through the bullshit. He was, and is my hero, just for that one moment. If he never did another thing in his life, that would be enough.
From watching Anderson on about a billion interviews this week, reading his work in Details magazine, reading his book, his blog and watching his show on CNN, I see a lot of myself in him. Perhaps I am projecting. I'm sure a million others feel some mystical connection to him and just know he's their soul mate. I don't feel that way; I don't know him, I don't feel mystically connected to him. I just listen to him speak, and I hear my thoughts about suicide and loss said aloud, and it feels so good to have someone talk about it, without fear, without shame. I am not really allowed to talk about my Dad anymore in my family. I can't talk about his death - which is fine, because I'm all talked out on that subject. I lost the need for answers to my questions years ago. However, even when I talk about my dad's life - the good person he was, the great dad he was, the good things he did I manage to upset my mother and brother. This infuriates me as I feel I worked so fucking hard for so many years to deal with my grief and loss in as healthy a way as possible, and to integrate my dad's death into my life, and to learn to focus more ON HIS LIFE than on how he died. That is no easy task with suicide. I feel sorry for my mom and my brother. I think they are emotionally stunted and choose to live in denial. They have chosen to bury my father, literally and figuratively, forever. They have lied to people about how he died; I refuse to do that. I find that reprehensible. What does that say about my dad, about suicide, about mental illness, depression - what does that say about my brother? Is he ashamed? Of what? He did nothing wrong. If people don't like the truth, they can move on. I am different than my mom and brother. I have always been accused of being too sensitive. Overly sensitive. I cry too easily. I see the cover of Time magazine in the market with victims of Darfur on the cover and my eyes well up. I plead guilty. I am highly sensitive. Sometimes I have to purposely back off and become cynical, use black humour - whatever - to keep me from falling totally apart. I always said I'd rather be too sensitive than not sensitive enough.
It helps to hear someone my age say that we don't talk about loss in America. Someone people look up to and respect. Because we don't talk about loss; we don't want to read about anything but Paris Hilton and the latest plastic surgery innovations. We are more afraid of death and dying than any culture I've ever seen. We're a spoiled, insulated culture. How lucky we are.
We still stigmatize people who take their lives. Sometimes I think we are downright medieval. When my brother's best childhood friend shot and killed himself in his house several years ago, some fucking idiot asked his sister if he was going to be allowed to be buried in a Catholic cemetery. Good God, what century is this? Even the Church, which I detest, finally came around at Vatican II and stated that suicide is a result of mental illness - it's not some sin where the person's going to Hell to burn for all eternity.
Anyway, I'm glad there's an Anderson Cooper out there. I'm grateful. I've gotten so cynical I don't trust anyone anymore. The government, the media - fuck 'em all. However, when I finished his book, I had a little hope. Hope that there is someone out there who truly cares. Anderson goes back to a time when journalists had integrity and honor. He has class, and compassion. He cares. I believe that.
The inevitable backlash will begin, I know. Hell, the poor guy has been raked over the coals for years over his sexual orientation. Straight? Gay? Why won't he just admit he's gay? He has a responsibility to come out for the gay community! Uh, no he doesn't actually. What the hell does it matter what his sexual orientation is? How does this affect his work? How does this impact our lives? Our sexually/celebrity obsessed pathetic lives. It makes no difference to me. I don't see a straight man, a gay man, a handsome man, an ugly man. I see a man who has suffered deeply in his life, despite all the trappings of money, fame, success. I see a man who has made a difference in the lives of thousands. I see a peer I can be proud of. I see a man who is not living a half life - but the fullest life possible. I see an inspiration, a hero. And I don't believe there are very many heroes left anymore.
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
10 Things I Hate About Life:
1) Perfectly-abled people who take handicapped parking spaces.
I hope Karma gets their license plate numbers.
2)Rudeness. There are very few reasons we should be rude to each other on this planet.
3) People who hurt/kill/harm in any way small, defenseless animals. My blood boils. My eyes tear up. I become enraged. I saw a story about some boys who beat some ducklings to death with a stick, all the while, laughing. I hope there is a special place in Hell for sick bastards like this.
4)People who speed and tailgate on the freeway, then dart in and out of traffic at 120 mph and never get caught. They are the ones who will cause someone else to get killed. If I ever see one of these idiots wrapped around a pole, don't expect me to call 911.
5)Naturally, the Evil Triumvirate, with which I have become oddly obsessed lately, seeing as how I was never very political. However, when I heard the Constitution being put through the shredder, I woke up.
6)America's total disregard for education in any form. I live in a country that embraces, and celebrates, mediocrity and stupidity. As an educator, this saddens me beyond words.
7)Laziness. Slothfulness? Sloth-like behaviour. People who will circle a parking lot 100 times to get a spot close to the doors of the Wal-Mart. You know, a little walking won't kill you America!
8)Extremism and fundamentalism in any way, shape or form. And it comes it all sizes, shapes and colours too. European arrogance and anti-Western hatred falls under this umbrella of generalism. Not all Americans are lazy, stupid, Bush-loving racist pigs who have no respect for human life and dignity. I'm talking to you Frenchies.
9)Brangelina and their supid Shiloh-Messiah baby. Ok, so the baby can't help being born. But for the love of Christ on the Cross, will someone please STOP THE MEDIA FROM REPORTING ON THESE PEOPLE!
10) Sports obsession. Actually, all sports. I admit it. I pretty much hate all sports. Except a really, really good hockey game. And by that I mean, lots of fights! LOL! Seriously, what is it with the sports??
Tomorrow, 10 Things I Love About Life.
I'm sure you can hardly wait.
10 Things I Hate About Life:
1) Perfectly-abled people who take handicapped parking spaces.
I hope Karma gets their license plate numbers.
2)Rudeness. There are very few reasons we should be rude to each other on this planet.
3) People who hurt/kill/harm in any way small, defenseless animals. My blood boils. My eyes tear up. I become enraged. I saw a story about some boys who beat some ducklings to death with a stick, all the while, laughing. I hope there is a special place in Hell for sick bastards like this.
4)People who speed and tailgate on the freeway, then dart in and out of traffic at 120 mph and never get caught. They are the ones who will cause someone else to get killed. If I ever see one of these idiots wrapped around a pole, don't expect me to call 911.
5)Naturally, the Evil Triumvirate, with which I have become oddly obsessed lately, seeing as how I was never very political. However, when I heard the Constitution being put through the shredder, I woke up.
6)America's total disregard for education in any form. I live in a country that embraces, and celebrates, mediocrity and stupidity. As an educator, this saddens me beyond words.
7)Laziness. Slothfulness? Sloth-like behaviour. People who will circle a parking lot 100 times to get a spot close to the doors of the Wal-Mart. You know, a little walking won't kill you America!
8)Extremism and fundamentalism in any way, shape or form. And it comes it all sizes, shapes and colours too. European arrogance and anti-Western hatred falls under this umbrella of generalism. Not all Americans are lazy, stupid, Bush-loving racist pigs who have no respect for human life and dignity. I'm talking to you Frenchies.
9)Brangelina and their supid Shiloh-Messiah baby. Ok, so the baby can't help being born. But for the love of Christ on the Cross, will someone please STOP THE MEDIA FROM REPORTING ON THESE PEOPLE!
10) Sports obsession. Actually, all sports. I admit it. I pretty much hate all sports. Except a really, really good hockey game. And by that I mean, lots of fights! LOL! Seriously, what is it with the sports??
Tomorrow, 10 Things I Love About Life.
I'm sure you can hardly wait.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Summer is coming
not on little cat feet though!
Almighty Ra has shown us a glimpse
of what is to come with a blast of furnace heat;
and a bright and shiny day.
The skies are cornflower blue
and the mountains are losing much of the spring greenery
the rains from past years brought.
The kids know it too; only 12 school days left
When told this, 16 eardrum-piercing screams -
didn't you hear them? I thought the entire
coastal valley would've rejoiced with their excitement.
Ah, summer! Oh, parents.
Good luck!
Today was Dylan's birthday.
He wore the king's crown and announced
"Six! Six! Finally I am six!"
as if he'd waited decades for it to happen.
In his world, it no doubt seemed like decades.
He was so excited. Six! If six is this good, then surely seven will be better!
And eight and nine and ten so fine...
at what age do we start to NOT rejoice the day of our birth?
When do we STOP looking forward to it, and START dreading it?
The proverbial 30?
I think for me, it was 25. After that baby,
well you know, it was all down hill. Never mind
getting my health screwed over at 26 -
it just seemed for me, the magic marker that I was leaving true youth
behind.
Suddenly the strangest thing started to happen.
People all around me were getting younger and younger.
Thirty wasn't too bad. And now I wait for 40 - with glee!
Why not? Why keep dreading the celebration that you are still here,
still breathing, still privy to all the madness, the good, the bad, the ugly,
even the desperate hours when all seems lost.
I am tired of dreading.
I am utterly positive that some strange creature
gathered all my little chicklets together before class this morning
and gave them immense amounts of sugar.
They all seemed like they were high as kites; bouncing off the walls
unable to sit, be quiet or even impersonate a well-behaved child.
They took their first and last writing test for their report card.
Griffin misunderstood and only wrote one sentence. He cried.
Jamie started to give him grief and I sent him away to let Griffin know
it was OK; he could have another chance. His little tears crush my heart.
I know he is having a hard time with the divorce and I wonder,
what will this do to his life? You can see so clearly how it affects a child so deeply, so utterly profoundly at this age.
We played with coins today; the goal was to teach the value of money.
Ha! Children, we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Please go home and look up Oscar Wilde.
They took magnifying glasses to look at all the States' quarters.
Glee!
Dylan said, "Metal on metal makes me nervous. So does metal on concrete."
I guess the sound of change in his pocket makes him nervous. Haha! For some reason, the way he said it, cracked me up.
Someday he'll come to love that ka-ching noise!
I asked, "Who is on the quarter?"
George Washington they all cried!
And "Why is George Washington important to us?"
Because he flew jet planes really fast, said Tyler.
I wonder what program Tyler was watching in his head.
Who is on the nickel I asked?
No one knew this.
I had two students answer,
"George Bush?"
I laughed, and said "No, Thomas Jefferson."
Inside I screamed and thought, "DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN NO! THANK GO NO!"
So Dylan blew out his candle as birthday king, Natalie cut her finger, Dominique went home with an earache, Griffin cried, Tanner and Jamie got in a shoving match over a chair, Brooke was Superstar, and two students thought the Devil was on our money.
All in all, a pretty normal day.
Summer is coming
not on little cat feet though!
Almighty Ra has shown us a glimpse
of what is to come with a blast of furnace heat;
and a bright and shiny day.
The skies are cornflower blue
and the mountains are losing much of the spring greenery
the rains from past years brought.
The kids know it too; only 12 school days left
When told this, 16 eardrum-piercing screams -
didn't you hear them? I thought the entire
coastal valley would've rejoiced with their excitement.
Ah, summer! Oh, parents.
Good luck!
Today was Dylan's birthday.
He wore the king's crown and announced
"Six! Six! Finally I am six!"
as if he'd waited decades for it to happen.
In his world, it no doubt seemed like decades.
He was so excited. Six! If six is this good, then surely seven will be better!
And eight and nine and ten so fine...
at what age do we start to NOT rejoice the day of our birth?
When do we STOP looking forward to it, and START dreading it?
The proverbial 30?
I think for me, it was 25. After that baby,
well you know, it was all down hill. Never mind
getting my health screwed over at 26 -
it just seemed for me, the magic marker that I was leaving true youth
behind.
Suddenly the strangest thing started to happen.
People all around me were getting younger and younger.
Thirty wasn't too bad. And now I wait for 40 - with glee!
Why not? Why keep dreading the celebration that you are still here,
still breathing, still privy to all the madness, the good, the bad, the ugly,
even the desperate hours when all seems lost.
I am tired of dreading.
I am utterly positive that some strange creature
gathered all my little chicklets together before class this morning
and gave them immense amounts of sugar.
They all seemed like they were high as kites; bouncing off the walls
unable to sit, be quiet or even impersonate a well-behaved child.
They took their first and last writing test for their report card.
Griffin misunderstood and only wrote one sentence. He cried.
Jamie started to give him grief and I sent him away to let Griffin know
it was OK; he could have another chance. His little tears crush my heart.
I know he is having a hard time with the divorce and I wonder,
what will this do to his life? You can see so clearly how it affects a child so deeply, so utterly profoundly at this age.
We played with coins today; the goal was to teach the value of money.
Ha! Children, we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Please go home and look up Oscar Wilde.
They took magnifying glasses to look at all the States' quarters.
Glee!
Dylan said, "Metal on metal makes me nervous. So does metal on concrete."
I guess the sound of change in his pocket makes him nervous. Haha! For some reason, the way he said it, cracked me up.
Someday he'll come to love that ka-ching noise!
I asked, "Who is on the quarter?"
George Washington they all cried!
And "Why is George Washington important to us?"
Because he flew jet planes really fast, said Tyler.
I wonder what program Tyler was watching in his head.
Who is on the nickel I asked?
No one knew this.
I had two students answer,
"George Bush?"
I laughed, and said "No, Thomas Jefferson."
Inside I screamed and thought, "DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN NO! THANK GO NO!"
So Dylan blew out his candle as birthday king, Natalie cut her finger, Dominique went home with an earache, Griffin cried, Tanner and Jamie got in a shoving match over a chair, Brooke was Superstar, and two students thought the Devil was on our money.
All in all, a pretty normal day.
Monday, May 29, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Monday morning, six a.m.
Been up since 4 - can't sleep again.
Memorial Day today.
Seem to be having some hormone -induced crisis
Where am I, where am I going, where have I been
what am I doing?
I'm in some self-imposed purgatory now...
I'll be leaving my kids in less than two weeks
School's out...for summer
I'll have other classes but these chicka dees and chicka doos
were my first and I won't ever forget them
(Oh yeah you will, you say)
No I won't...I got a loooooooooooooooong memory. Too long.
My little pumpkins are 'graduating' on the 14th - being promoted to 1st grade
Dominique told me she's scared to go to first grade...
I felt like Dr. Seuss - oh oh but the places you'll go!
You have so much ahead of you!
I know it all won't be a bed of roses;
But my little darling buds, I'll miss you more than you know.
So no school, no classes this summer;
another bitch of a test - math and science, my two worst subjects.
I'm neither here nor there; still waiting to see about my credential status.
I feel like I have no identity when I'm not working.
I am what I do?
How American is that.
I hate that about this country.
What do you do? Fuckin' stupid question.
It's hard to just be.
The Eastern world has it all over us with that...just be, not do.
Easier said than done.
It's hard to shut out the voices saying
you should be more
you should weigh less
you should have more
do more
see more
you should not be in pain
you should not get depressed
you should have this and have that
you should should should
what did we tell people in the grief groups?
Oh yeah, don't should all over yerselves...haha.
I ain't go no...satisfaction
and I tried and I tried and I tried...
Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?
Sometimes it's so good I can't stand it (my kids, music, art, laughter, books, movies, yummy food, family, friends, the warmth of Zoe sleeping next to me)
Sometimes it's so bad I don't want to stand it anymore.
Yesterday I listened to After Everything, Now This
which I think is the greatest title ever and one of my all-time favourite CD's.
Reminds me of Cathy and Alex and other times and places long gone
and that makes me kind of sad. I never thought Cathy and I would not be friends. What happened? Four years in and sometimes I think, what a waste. It should never have happened this way.
Sometimes I just want to say:
Shut the hell up
spoiled girl!!
I have the luxury of paralysis through analysis as my pop used to say
I know this.
I can sit here with my 1000 thread count sheets in my over-priced but tiny apartment...
Still, with all the food I want, all the things I need, kitties sleeping at my feet
Creature comforts abound.
Indonesia hit with another mind-numbing disaster
Why is it the places that are so fragile, still recovering from major disasters
keep getting hit again and again?
They don't have time to sit around and say "Oh what shall I do today?"
As Eliot said, "Should I eat a peach? Dare to wear my trousers rolled..."
No they must search through the wreckage of their lives
bury the dead
try to stay alive
No luxurious existential moments for them.
I wish I was there....moving concrete...giving food, holding a hand
because I need to get out of myself and into the rest of the world
to shake off this narcisstic indulgence;
the what ifs the what fors the poor me's.
As St. Oprah says (oh and maybe that thing called the Bible? )
This too shall pass.
Monday morning, six a.m.
Been up since 4 - can't sleep again.
Memorial Day today.
Seem to be having some hormone -induced crisis
Where am I, where am I going, where have I been
what am I doing?
I'm in some self-imposed purgatory now...
I'll be leaving my kids in less than two weeks
School's out...for summer
I'll have other classes but these chicka dees and chicka doos
were my first and I won't ever forget them
(Oh yeah you will, you say)
No I won't...I got a loooooooooooooooong memory. Too long.
My little pumpkins are 'graduating' on the 14th - being promoted to 1st grade
Dominique told me she's scared to go to first grade...
I felt like Dr. Seuss - oh oh but the places you'll go!
You have so much ahead of you!
I know it all won't be a bed of roses;
But my little darling buds, I'll miss you more than you know.
So no school, no classes this summer;
another bitch of a test - math and science, my two worst subjects.
I'm neither here nor there; still waiting to see about my credential status.
I feel like I have no identity when I'm not working.
I am what I do?
How American is that.
I hate that about this country.
What do you do? Fuckin' stupid question.
It's hard to just be.
The Eastern world has it all over us with that...just be, not do.
Easier said than done.
It's hard to shut out the voices saying
you should be more
you should weigh less
you should have more
do more
see more
you should not be in pain
you should not get depressed
you should have this and have that
you should should should
what did we tell people in the grief groups?
Oh yeah, don't should all over yerselves...haha.
I ain't go no...satisfaction
and I tried and I tried and I tried...
Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?
Sometimes it's so good I can't stand it (my kids, music, art, laughter, books, movies, yummy food, family, friends, the warmth of Zoe sleeping next to me)
Sometimes it's so bad I don't want to stand it anymore.
Yesterday I listened to After Everything, Now This
which I think is the greatest title ever and one of my all-time favourite CD's.
Reminds me of Cathy and Alex and other times and places long gone
and that makes me kind of sad. I never thought Cathy and I would not be friends. What happened? Four years in and sometimes I think, what a waste. It should never have happened this way.
Sometimes I just want to say:
Shut the hell up
spoiled girl!!
I have the luxury of paralysis through analysis as my pop used to say
I know this.
I can sit here with my 1000 thread count sheets in my over-priced but tiny apartment...
Still, with all the food I want, all the things I need, kitties sleeping at my feet
Creature comforts abound.
Indonesia hit with another mind-numbing disaster
Why is it the places that are so fragile, still recovering from major disasters
keep getting hit again and again?
They don't have time to sit around and say "Oh what shall I do today?"
As Eliot said, "Should I eat a peach? Dare to wear my trousers rolled..."
No they must search through the wreckage of their lives
bury the dead
try to stay alive
No luxurious existential moments for them.
I wish I was there....moving concrete...giving food, holding a hand
because I need to get out of myself and into the rest of the world
to shake off this narcisstic indulgence;
the what ifs the what fors the poor me's.
As St. Oprah says (oh and maybe that thing called the Bible? )
This too shall pass.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
It's almost 1am on Sunday morning
and I'm sitting here so pissed off I can barely type.
I have just one question, one tiny question:
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH AMERICA???????
I mean, besides the triumvirate of Pure Evil that currently
works out of 1600...perhaps I should rephrase the question:
Why can't *anyone* in this fucking country do their job correctly?
Now before I go off on a rant sounding supercilious, smug and self-righteous,
let me be the first to state I am human, and of course I too make mistakes.
But I do my job, I go to school, I do my work, I do what's asked of me. I try very, very hard to do whatever job I have correctly.
Is it me? Am I crazy? I swear to whatever exists in this ass-backward universe that I spend at least 1/3 of my time rectifying other people's mistakes.
Cases in point:
1) I have recevied one letter from the IRS telling me I owe them $700.
I have now also received one letter from the Social Security Administration telling me my last name does not match up with my social security number.
HOW IN THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN? The IRS told me their 'system' (is this a machine system, or a human system?) has somehow split my last time into two parts. One part of me owes them nothing. The other part of me owes them $700 and is now in trouble with the Social Security Administration. I'll probably be put on some freakin' list now at the airport.
I have had the SAME mother****** last name for 39 years and 31 days! I have not married! I have not changed it! I have been filing tax returns for 20 years with the same last name! ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING CRACK????? Put the PIPES DOWN and DO YOUR JOBS!
2)Mail delivery. Oh this is a favourite of mine. Yes, the question here is not why postal workers go 'postal' - but why more people don't go postal on their mail carriers. Today I opened my door to find a bag of mail hanging from it. Why? Where did it come from? Did someone leave it there? Was an entire day's worth of my mail stuck in someone else's box? Because I got my mail in my box today! I have lost more mail, and have had more mail NOT GET TO ME because of the major incompetence of postal carriers. I wish I had a killer dog.
3) Bills - specifically, medical. Ok. I have been billed $84.32 TWICE in a week from the SAME hospital - even AFTER they received my check for said amount and cashed it. I've also just received a bill for $12.00 for a chest x-ray from another hospital and I have NO IDEA WHY. Check your records you morons - the CHECK CASHED! STOP SENDING ME THE SAME BILL EVERY 30 SECONDS!!!!
4) Banks. Oh god. Where do I begin? Once I ordered checks from the bank and they sent box after box after box after box with the wrong design. Why did I keep insisting they send me the right box - I mean, who cares about a stupid design right? I really didn't but it became very quickly a matter of principle I guess. And I am a Taurus. I can outwait anyone. I wanted them to pay and pay and pay and pay for the wasted checks until they got it right. It wasn't freakin' brain surgery.
5)Florists. I must have the worst luck in the world with these people. Whether I use florists in town, or online, they NEVER get the order right. The flowers look like crap, or it's the wrong arrangement, or they're sent on the wrong DAY, too late, too early - I have given up on flowers. Or they arrive half dead. Just pick a weed and know I love you.
6) The cable company. Every.Single.Month. My.Bill.Is.Different. I mean, apparently I don't have any set rate for my cable. Every time I call and try to get them to explain to me what the hell they're doing, they start speaking Greek. We finally settle on a number, and then the next month I'm paying $120, the month after that, $65, the month after that $95. What? Do they just pick a number out of their asses and give it to me? ALL for the same cable every month.
7) Academia. Oh my sweet Lord, where do I begin on this one. I've spent the majority of my life either as a student or a teacher in schools. I've been on both sides of the podium. And both sides pretty much suck, but I gotta say, no one entity could be more screwed up and bitter than the administration at colleges. They hate the faculty. I mean, HATE. They hate the students. They probably hate their miserable little lives. When I worked at two colleges as an instructor, I spent more time correcting the mistakes that the administrators made than I EVER DID CORRECTING MY STUDENTS. These people are one step away from monkeys. Or how about being a student? Just last week, I call the school, they tell me my class is in one building. I get there, and by the grace of God, run into other lost people, because, as it turns out, the class was moved to an entirely different building in a different classroom. So I spent 20 minutes in one building, looking for a room that didn't exist. NO ONE BOTHERED TO TELL US THE CLASS HAD BEEN MOVED. It was a miracle we found it.
8) Pharmacies: Inevitably, I also have bad luck with pharmacies. As I have fibromyalgia, I'm on a few medicines, so I have to interact with these people on a monthly basis. I can't count the times I've been given the WRONG pills. Hello! This could kill someone! Like me! Or how about they don't even HAVE the medication in stock? Or they give you a few pills until they get the medication in, and you run out because it's been a week, but they still don't have the medication, and they REFUSE TO TRANSFER YOUR PRESCRIPTION so you can get your medicine!
9) Mechanics: Well, right off the bat I'm screwed here because I'm a woman. So I try really hard to know what's wrong with my car, and to find out how much it SHOULD cost. And yet, how many times have I picked up my car, driven 25 feet and found THE VERY PROBLEM I TOOK IT IN FOR WAS STILL THERE!
10) Dry cleaners. Again, this problem really seems to follow me more than others. AM I CURSED? I took a beautiful green silk skirt to the dry cleaners last year, and someone stole it. At the dry cleaners. Naturally, the owners would not admit this. They wouldn't admit they lost it. They tried to insinuate that I never brought it in. I am not insane. I wanted that skirt dry-cleaned for my brother's wedding. I BROUGHT IT IN. I tossed my house upside down and inside out three times looking for it and even looked IN THE OVEN for the skirt. It was gone. Somehow, my clothes disappear, buttons break, and things generally look worse when I get them back from the drycleaners. I have tried different ones, believe me. THIEVING BASTARDS! I'll never get over that skirt. I LOVED THAT SKIRT! It was a thing of beauty.
11)Doctors. After 12 1/2 years of being in the medical mill, I have nothing kind to say about doctors except that yes, they are a necessary evil. I have met doctors who are so stunningly arrogant, smug, nasty, mean, dismissive and downright fuckin' nuts that the only thing I can wish for them is Karma. I wish they could experience the pain of the patients they so easily dismiss. Doctors are treated like Gods here. They make you wait obscene amounts of time, shove you in a cold examining room, make you wear a napkin and sit there like an idiot for an even more obscene amount of time, before they come in, don't listen to you, and then leave.
I could go ON and ON and ON and ON...as I said, of course I make mistakes, but it seems to people like this country is truly falling apart. Why? No one seems to take pride in their work. No one can communicate, especially in California, and if you think that's racist, it's REALISTIC. Come live in Los Angeles for a while. Why is it racist to want everyone to speak ONE common language so we can all communicate for business purposes? No one seems to care. Corporations are so huge now that customer service is a quaint thing of the past. Go on, complain. Call the manager, write a letter. No one gives a shit. They don't care if they lose you as a customer because there are 10 more schmucks behind you ready to take your place.
How do you fight the post office? Oh I can't wait to call Social Security on Tuesday. They sent me a form. They want me to prove I'm me. It's genius. I guess I have to send them, what? A copy of my social security card? Shouldn't they have that on file? Should I just explain, look, I've been me since 1967. These are my numbers, this is my name. It hasn't changed. I'm not two people. I'm one person, the same person, I'm me. And me doesn't owe the IRS shit.
I have just one thing to say to them: You turn me back into ONE person, with ONE name or the Evil Half of Me is going to make your lives a living hell.
Now that's something I promise I'll make good on.
And these are just tiny, fairly inconsequential mistakes, I realize that. What about hurricane Katrina? My God in Heaven, was that the biggest disaster ever? Or people who are 'accidentally' killed in hospitals...given the wrong drugs, wrong limbs being cut off...or, how about, oops, we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction, but hey, the war's on now, so we can't stop...I could go on and on. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.
Or maybe this country has gotten worse. Sadly, I honestly think it's the latter.
It's almost 1am on Sunday morning
and I'm sitting here so pissed off I can barely type.
I have just one question, one tiny question:
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH AMERICA???????
I mean, besides the triumvirate of Pure Evil that currently
works out of 1600...perhaps I should rephrase the question:
Why can't *anyone* in this fucking country do their job correctly?
Now before I go off on a rant sounding supercilious, smug and self-righteous,
let me be the first to state I am human, and of course I too make mistakes.
But I do my job, I go to school, I do my work, I do what's asked of me. I try very, very hard to do whatever job I have correctly.
Is it me? Am I crazy? I swear to whatever exists in this ass-backward universe that I spend at least 1/3 of my time rectifying other people's mistakes.
Cases in point:
1) I have recevied one letter from the IRS telling me I owe them $700.
I have now also received one letter from the Social Security Administration telling me my last name does not match up with my social security number.
HOW IN THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN? The IRS told me their 'system' (is this a machine system, or a human system?) has somehow split my last time into two parts. One part of me owes them nothing. The other part of me owes them $700 and is now in trouble with the Social Security Administration. I'll probably be put on some freakin' list now at the airport.
I have had the SAME mother****** last name for 39 years and 31 days! I have not married! I have not changed it! I have been filing tax returns for 20 years with the same last name! ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING CRACK????? Put the PIPES DOWN and DO YOUR JOBS!
2)Mail delivery. Oh this is a favourite of mine. Yes, the question here is not why postal workers go 'postal' - but why more people don't go postal on their mail carriers. Today I opened my door to find a bag of mail hanging from it. Why? Where did it come from? Did someone leave it there? Was an entire day's worth of my mail stuck in someone else's box? Because I got my mail in my box today! I have lost more mail, and have had more mail NOT GET TO ME because of the major incompetence of postal carriers. I wish I had a killer dog.
3) Bills - specifically, medical. Ok. I have been billed $84.32 TWICE in a week from the SAME hospital - even AFTER they received my check for said amount and cashed it. I've also just received a bill for $12.00 for a chest x-ray from another hospital and I have NO IDEA WHY. Check your records you morons - the CHECK CASHED! STOP SENDING ME THE SAME BILL EVERY 30 SECONDS!!!!
4) Banks. Oh god. Where do I begin? Once I ordered checks from the bank and they sent box after box after box after box with the wrong design. Why did I keep insisting they send me the right box - I mean, who cares about a stupid design right? I really didn't but it became very quickly a matter of principle I guess. And I am a Taurus. I can outwait anyone. I wanted them to pay and pay and pay and pay for the wasted checks until they got it right. It wasn't freakin' brain surgery.
5)Florists. I must have the worst luck in the world with these people. Whether I use florists in town, or online, they NEVER get the order right. The flowers look like crap, or it's the wrong arrangement, or they're sent on the wrong DAY, too late, too early - I have given up on flowers. Or they arrive half dead. Just pick a weed and know I love you.
6) The cable company. Every.Single.Month. My.Bill.Is.Different. I mean, apparently I don't have any set rate for my cable. Every time I call and try to get them to explain to me what the hell they're doing, they start speaking Greek. We finally settle on a number, and then the next month I'm paying $120, the month after that, $65, the month after that $95. What? Do they just pick a number out of their asses and give it to me? ALL for the same cable every month.
7) Academia. Oh my sweet Lord, where do I begin on this one. I've spent the majority of my life either as a student or a teacher in schools. I've been on both sides of the podium. And both sides pretty much suck, but I gotta say, no one entity could be more screwed up and bitter than the administration at colleges. They hate the faculty. I mean, HATE. They hate the students. They probably hate their miserable little lives. When I worked at two colleges as an instructor, I spent more time correcting the mistakes that the administrators made than I EVER DID CORRECTING MY STUDENTS. These people are one step away from monkeys. Or how about being a student? Just last week, I call the school, they tell me my class is in one building. I get there, and by the grace of God, run into other lost people, because, as it turns out, the class was moved to an entirely different building in a different classroom. So I spent 20 minutes in one building, looking for a room that didn't exist. NO ONE BOTHERED TO TELL US THE CLASS HAD BEEN MOVED. It was a miracle we found it.
8) Pharmacies: Inevitably, I also have bad luck with pharmacies. As I have fibromyalgia, I'm on a few medicines, so I have to interact with these people on a monthly basis. I can't count the times I've been given the WRONG pills. Hello! This could kill someone! Like me! Or how about they don't even HAVE the medication in stock? Or they give you a few pills until they get the medication in, and you run out because it's been a week, but they still don't have the medication, and they REFUSE TO TRANSFER YOUR PRESCRIPTION so you can get your medicine!
9) Mechanics: Well, right off the bat I'm screwed here because I'm a woman. So I try really hard to know what's wrong with my car, and to find out how much it SHOULD cost. And yet, how many times have I picked up my car, driven 25 feet and found THE VERY PROBLEM I TOOK IT IN FOR WAS STILL THERE!
10) Dry cleaners. Again, this problem really seems to follow me more than others. AM I CURSED? I took a beautiful green silk skirt to the dry cleaners last year, and someone stole it. At the dry cleaners. Naturally, the owners would not admit this. They wouldn't admit they lost it. They tried to insinuate that I never brought it in. I am not insane. I wanted that skirt dry-cleaned for my brother's wedding. I BROUGHT IT IN. I tossed my house upside down and inside out three times looking for it and even looked IN THE OVEN for the skirt. It was gone. Somehow, my clothes disappear, buttons break, and things generally look worse when I get them back from the drycleaners. I have tried different ones, believe me. THIEVING BASTARDS! I'll never get over that skirt. I LOVED THAT SKIRT! It was a thing of beauty.
11)Doctors. After 12 1/2 years of being in the medical mill, I have nothing kind to say about doctors except that yes, they are a necessary evil. I have met doctors who are so stunningly arrogant, smug, nasty, mean, dismissive and downright fuckin' nuts that the only thing I can wish for them is Karma. I wish they could experience the pain of the patients they so easily dismiss. Doctors are treated like Gods here. They make you wait obscene amounts of time, shove you in a cold examining room, make you wear a napkin and sit there like an idiot for an even more obscene amount of time, before they come in, don't listen to you, and then leave.
I could go ON and ON and ON and ON...as I said, of course I make mistakes, but it seems to people like this country is truly falling apart. Why? No one seems to take pride in their work. No one can communicate, especially in California, and if you think that's racist, it's REALISTIC. Come live in Los Angeles for a while. Why is it racist to want everyone to speak ONE common language so we can all communicate for business purposes? No one seems to care. Corporations are so huge now that customer service is a quaint thing of the past. Go on, complain. Call the manager, write a letter. No one gives a shit. They don't care if they lose you as a customer because there are 10 more schmucks behind you ready to take your place.
How do you fight the post office? Oh I can't wait to call Social Security on Tuesday. They sent me a form. They want me to prove I'm me. It's genius. I guess I have to send them, what? A copy of my social security card? Shouldn't they have that on file? Should I just explain, look, I've been me since 1967. These are my numbers, this is my name. It hasn't changed. I'm not two people. I'm one person, the same person, I'm me. And me doesn't owe the IRS shit.
I have just one thing to say to them: You turn me back into ONE person, with ONE name or the Evil Half of Me is going to make your lives a living hell.
Now that's something I promise I'll make good on.
And these are just tiny, fairly inconsequential mistakes, I realize that. What about hurricane Katrina? My God in Heaven, was that the biggest disaster ever? Or people who are 'accidentally' killed in hospitals...given the wrong drugs, wrong limbs being cut off...or, how about, oops, we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction, but hey, the war's on now, so we can't stop...I could go on and on. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.
Or maybe this country has gotten worse. Sadly, I honestly think it's the latter.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Today is a good day so far.
Lay and Skilling are guilty;
the greedy stinking pigs!!!
Finally! Someone will pay for the
nightmare of Enron -
all those poor people losing their jobs and pensions
and sanity and health
These coporate whores are gonna have a new home
come September 11, 2006
I pray it's not some white collar country club
I want these pathetic excuses for human beings to live like the greedy pigs they are
It's rare that any justice is meted out fairly (See O.J. Simpson trial);
this time it happened.
And if it were up to me
these guys would both get boyfriends named Butch
or Bruno
and have to take it up the ***
for the rest of their lives
for smugly, self-righteously sticking it
to the working man and woman
whose lives
were torn asunder by the astounding, stunning
greed and cajones of
two little pigs.
Today is a good day so far.
Lay and Skilling are guilty;
the greedy stinking pigs!!!
Finally! Someone will pay for the
nightmare of Enron -
all those poor people losing their jobs and pensions
and sanity and health
These coporate whores are gonna have a new home
come September 11, 2006
I pray it's not some white collar country club
I want these pathetic excuses for human beings to live like the greedy pigs they are
It's rare that any justice is meted out fairly (See O.J. Simpson trial);
this time it happened.
And if it were up to me
these guys would both get boyfriends named Butch
or Bruno
and have to take it up the ***
for the rest of their lives
for smugly, self-righteously sticking it
to the working man and woman
whose lives
were torn asunder by the astounding, stunning
greed and cajones of
two little pigs.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
It has happened.
Armaggedon is here.
The Last Days.
I'm just waiting for the fire and brimstone.
Tonight, while painting my fingernails
I started watching "American Idol."
The Devil has me.
Three years I resisted.
Three long years I knew nothing of this madness
and the crazy- ass people who are obsessed with this show.
Yet somehow, someway, this time I actually know who the finalists are.
I'm going to Hell.
I'm weaving my handbasket right now.
I read something that just made me want to throw up
and broke my heart and blew my mind all at the same time.
More people voted last night for their favourite 'idol' than have ever voted
for the presidency.
Panem et circenses indeed.
We crave our mindless entertainment
Nero fiddles
Iraq burns.
War, what war? This Taylor Hicks guy is amazing! A young Joe Cocker.
Look! Paula Abdul is crying! Simon is smirking! Ryan Seacrest is trying really really hard to look straight.
I don't know who that black guy is.
I.E.D.'s rip apart lives
thousands of miles away
but what do we care!
Even I have fallen under the evil spell of this freak show
that I've hated with a passion.
I need a deprogrammer or something.
This can never happen again.
I never want to see how fucking stupid this entire country is
two nights a week
on a little box
that glows
in my living room.
It has happened.
Armaggedon is here.
The Last Days.
I'm just waiting for the fire and brimstone.
Tonight, while painting my fingernails
I started watching "American Idol."
The Devil has me.
Three years I resisted.
Three long years I knew nothing of this madness
and the crazy- ass people who are obsessed with this show.
Yet somehow, someway, this time I actually know who the finalists are.
I'm going to Hell.
I'm weaving my handbasket right now.
I read something that just made me want to throw up
and broke my heart and blew my mind all at the same time.
More people voted last night for their favourite 'idol' than have ever voted
for the presidency.
Panem et circenses indeed.
We crave our mindless entertainment
Nero fiddles
Iraq burns.
War, what war? This Taylor Hicks guy is amazing! A young Joe Cocker.
Look! Paula Abdul is crying! Simon is smirking! Ryan Seacrest is trying really really hard to look straight.
I don't know who that black guy is.
I.E.D.'s rip apart lives
thousands of miles away
but what do we care!
Even I have fallen under the evil spell of this freak show
that I've hated with a passion.
I need a deprogrammer or something.
This can never happen again.
I never want to see how fucking stupid this entire country is
two nights a week
on a little box
that glows
in my living room.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Yesterday a mobile marine 'lab' came to school so the kids could experience a little ocean life first-hand. It was amazing. First of all, I've never seen anything quite like it - a mobile tide pool! Ah but it wasn't the sea urchins, or hermit crabs or even the baby octopus that so lightened my mood on a rainy Monday. It was the screams and peals of joy eminating from my kids....they were soooooooooooooooooooo excited....just following them outside they could not contain themselves and bounced off the sidewalk like little rubber balls. They crowded around the 'lab' and their awe, their innocent wonder of it all was magically contagious. They were fearless! Whereas I shrunk back from the sliminess of a sea slug, they took their little fingers and brushed them across its gooey back...they gently put their hands in the water and let families of tiny hermit crabs tickle the insides of their palms. We made a boat out of a seashell for one crab and sent it on its way down the ocean....they gently fed purple sea urchins seaweed and oooohed and aaaaaahhed at the bigger crabs in the containers. Oh their joy was something to behold, something I hope I never forget.
As I stood behind them, basking in their pure, unadulterated happiness, I wondered. When does this insane happiness and innocence leave us? Is it beaten out of us by the daily rigors of school and ultimately life? Is it natural to leave us? Certainly we could not exist in a state of heightened excitement over everything, always. We become numb, we become bored, we become used to things. It just seems to happen so fast.
They are truly at a magical age - the world and everything in it is new, fresh, exciting. We came back into the classroom and I stood there by the sink, making sure everyone washed his or her hands with soap....and because of the rain they ate lunch inside the classroom.
I watched as they ate their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and I opened their bags of chips, and helped them with their drinks. The mobile tide pool was off to the ocean again, where all creatures, great and small, would be let back into the sea, into their natural environment. How wonderful. The children were blessed and able to experience new and different creatures, and they were kind and gentle.
I marveled at the ingenuity of such an idea - a mobile sea lab - and thought we never had anything like that when I was in school! They are lucky to be at a school that can afford to show them things like that. They are so lucky, in so many ways...but I am the luckiest one of all. For as cliched as it may sound, they have given me far, far, far more than I could ever give them. At this point in my life, when cynicism and pain seem poised to take over for good, life gave me a gift in these little people. And they will grow up, and good and bad things will happen to them, and they will have families of their own and they will never know how they saved a lost soul and led her to her bliss, finally.
Yesterday a mobile marine 'lab' came to school so the kids could experience a little ocean life first-hand. It was amazing. First of all, I've never seen anything quite like it - a mobile tide pool! Ah but it wasn't the sea urchins, or hermit crabs or even the baby octopus that so lightened my mood on a rainy Monday. It was the screams and peals of joy eminating from my kids....they were soooooooooooooooooooo excited....just following them outside they could not contain themselves and bounced off the sidewalk like little rubber balls. They crowded around the 'lab' and their awe, their innocent wonder of it all was magically contagious. They were fearless! Whereas I shrunk back from the sliminess of a sea slug, they took their little fingers and brushed them across its gooey back...they gently put their hands in the water and let families of tiny hermit crabs tickle the insides of their palms. We made a boat out of a seashell for one crab and sent it on its way down the ocean....they gently fed purple sea urchins seaweed and oooohed and aaaaaahhed at the bigger crabs in the containers. Oh their joy was something to behold, something I hope I never forget.
As I stood behind them, basking in their pure, unadulterated happiness, I wondered. When does this insane happiness and innocence leave us? Is it beaten out of us by the daily rigors of school and ultimately life? Is it natural to leave us? Certainly we could not exist in a state of heightened excitement over everything, always. We become numb, we become bored, we become used to things. It just seems to happen so fast.
They are truly at a magical age - the world and everything in it is new, fresh, exciting. We came back into the classroom and I stood there by the sink, making sure everyone washed his or her hands with soap....and because of the rain they ate lunch inside the classroom.
I watched as they ate their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and I opened their bags of chips, and helped them with their drinks. The mobile tide pool was off to the ocean again, where all creatures, great and small, would be let back into the sea, into their natural environment. How wonderful. The children were blessed and able to experience new and different creatures, and they were kind and gentle.
I marveled at the ingenuity of such an idea - a mobile sea lab - and thought we never had anything like that when I was in school! They are lucky to be at a school that can afford to show them things like that. They are so lucky, in so many ways...but I am the luckiest one of all. For as cliched as it may sound, they have given me far, far, far more than I could ever give them. At this point in my life, when cynicism and pain seem poised to take over for good, life gave me a gift in these little people. And they will grow up, and good and bad things will happen to them, and they will have families of their own and they will never know how they saved a lost soul and led her to her bliss, finally.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Late Sunday afternoon in May
the sky is as dark as my mood is becoming
Got home from the desert on Friday.
Almighty Ra
Beautiful glorious Ra
Say goodbye to the sun!
Sunday they said it's going to rain
and sure enough, I'm here
waiting for the black dog, the deluge.
Five days in the mystical desert
lost all my worries, all my bad dreams
Floating through the midday heat
swimming and baking w/50 SPF of course
Because Almighty Ra can be a nasty mofo too.
But I'm back to reality
Yesterday, a day long class on the U.S. Constitution
which was heartbreaking really
when I realized we Americans have completely abandoned
all of our Constitutional rights in favor of creature comforts
and consumer bliss.
I've got my401K and my BMW and my two kids and my McMansion
so what the hell do I care if GW is listening to my phone calls
aiming satellites at me house
taking away all my civil liberties one by stinking one
I've gone my hair to do and my nails to get done
A man without a country? A woman without a country and I've got little hope left that what could've been will ever, ever be.
Poor James Madison is spinning is his grave no doubt
One of the greatest thinkers of all time
How to create fair and stable government
Checks and balances
the Scientific method
Sorry poor chap
That worked well for you 18th century folk
But see, you didn't have PC's and iPODS and Hollywood
You didn't have teeth whitening and silicone tits
You didn't have to upgrade yer spouse every few years
it's a whole different rat race now Jimmy
and we ain't got time for yer quaint Constitution!
Let them Bushies do what they want
Start an illegal, immoral, horrific war
Kill thousands of people, lie cheat, steal
Tax the poor
Feed the rich
Corporate whores
We just ain't got time to bitch
The intricate web and delightful fragmentation of power
Found in your Federalist theory
doesn't interest us
Federalism?
Democracy?
Separation of Powers?
It's not on HBO is it?
We have sold our souls
and our country.
They have not taken away States' rights -
We have given them away;
Congressmen and women have sold off their Constitutional rights
to the highest bidder that will get them re-elected
No one is going to save us
No one is going to stop us
from ourselves.
Fuck it. I hang my head in sorrow and shame.
I hang my flag upside down in anger and fear
and watch the dreams men died for go down the drain.
Fletcher is getting sick all over the apartment
I am chasing her around with a towel
Good luck
Trying to coax a cat to throw up exactly where you want them to.
I feel heavy,
defeated.
tired,
dead.
I have so much to do this week
and so little to do it with.
I feel too sluggish for yoga
too tired for sleep
too worn down for thought
yet the little synapses keep firing away
I hate this fucking weather
it is sucking the life out of me.
Ra come back, all is forgiven.
I wish I was back in the desert
where time stops and I can suspend all reality
again.
Late Sunday afternoon in May
the sky is as dark as my mood is becoming
Got home from the desert on Friday.
Almighty Ra
Beautiful glorious Ra
Say goodbye to the sun!
Sunday they said it's going to rain
and sure enough, I'm here
waiting for the black dog, the deluge.
Five days in the mystical desert
lost all my worries, all my bad dreams
Floating through the midday heat
swimming and baking w/50 SPF of course
Because Almighty Ra can be a nasty mofo too.
But I'm back to reality
Yesterday, a day long class on the U.S. Constitution
which was heartbreaking really
when I realized we Americans have completely abandoned
all of our Constitutional rights in favor of creature comforts
and consumer bliss.
I've got my401K and my BMW and my two kids and my McMansion
so what the hell do I care if GW is listening to my phone calls
aiming satellites at me house
taking away all my civil liberties one by stinking one
I've gone my hair to do and my nails to get done
A man without a country? A woman without a country and I've got little hope left that what could've been will ever, ever be.
Poor James Madison is spinning is his grave no doubt
One of the greatest thinkers of all time
How to create fair and stable government
Checks and balances
the Scientific method
Sorry poor chap
That worked well for you 18th century folk
But see, you didn't have PC's and iPODS and Hollywood
You didn't have teeth whitening and silicone tits
You didn't have to upgrade yer spouse every few years
it's a whole different rat race now Jimmy
and we ain't got time for yer quaint Constitution!
Let them Bushies do what they want
Start an illegal, immoral, horrific war
Kill thousands of people, lie cheat, steal
Tax the poor
Feed the rich
Corporate whores
We just ain't got time to bitch
The intricate web and delightful fragmentation of power
Found in your Federalist theory
doesn't interest us
Federalism?
Democracy?
Separation of Powers?
It's not on HBO is it?
We have sold our souls
and our country.
They have not taken away States' rights -
We have given them away;
Congressmen and women have sold off their Constitutional rights
to the highest bidder that will get them re-elected
No one is going to save us
No one is going to stop us
from ourselves.
Fuck it. I hang my head in sorrow and shame.
I hang my flag upside down in anger and fear
and watch the dreams men died for go down the drain.
Fletcher is getting sick all over the apartment
I am chasing her around with a towel
Good luck
Trying to coax a cat to throw up exactly where you want them to.
I feel heavy,
defeated.
tired,
dead.
I have so much to do this week
and so little to do it with.
I feel too sluggish for yoga
too tired for sleep
too worn down for thought
yet the little synapses keep firing away
I hate this fucking weather
it is sucking the life out of me.
Ra come back, all is forgiven.
I wish I was back in the desert
where time stops and I can suspend all reality
again.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Yesterday was Career Day
Or really "Dress- up Day"
Dress up like what you want to be
when you grow up
Sydney breezes by me "I'm a movie star!"
I will have to get your autograph I say
Dress-up day!
No one told me; I didn't get the memo
Dress up like what you want to be when you grow up
I would've come as a child again.
Another round of Super Star letters.
Dominique says "I have a stuffy nose."
I said, "I do too sweetie."
A moment later, she comes over and hands me
a Kleenex.
I am
truly
touched.
The simplest, tiniest act of giving from a sweet 5 year old
and it is like the sun shining after 1000 days of rain.
Natalie and Maia's ongoing feud erupts into new battles.
Each comes to me, each on a different side.
Maia: Natalie is always copying me!!
Natalie: Maia she is so mean to me! She made me cry three times yesterday!
Oh I have been down this dangerous road before;
it is a mine-field.
To Maia I say: "When Natalie copies you, do you know that means she likes you! She wants to be like you!"
To Natalie, who is much more fragile, sensitive, I draw her in, and she runs for
a hug.
"Natalie, Maia doesn't mean to make you cry. You girls can be friends right?"
Two little heads bobbing up and down.
Two minutes later at lunch, I'm certain the feud has begun anew.
Later, after lunch, more word bombs are launched across the table.
We are drawing beach scenes.
Jamie to Tanner, "Why are you wearing long pants and a long-sleeved shirt at the beach?"
Tanner's face falls. He snarls, "I'm not! You're just - just trying to be mean."
They start to gang up on Tanner. The words start to fly.
I can see the explosion coming. The tears start to form.
I stave it off. Tanner fumes, "It's a wetsuit."
"That's right! It's a green and black wetsuit!" I affirm this.
Now they've moved on to Griffin.
He's about to crumple his paper; he's been destroying his work a lot lately.
He doesn't like it. I feel the impending implosion.
"Griffin! No! Please, if you don't want it, can I have it? Can I take it home and put it on my fridge? I love it. It's fantastic. Really, I want it."
And suddenly, it has worth.
Tanner does not cry.
Griffin doesn't throw his work out.
I feel like
I've saved the free world.
And if you want to know why we go to war with one another
go to a school and spend a day or two
with a class of 5 year-olds
and human nature
and there is
your
answer.
Yesterday was Career Day
Or really "Dress- up Day"
Dress up like what you want to be
when you grow up
Sydney breezes by me "I'm a movie star!"
I will have to get your autograph I say
Dress-up day!
No one told me; I didn't get the memo
Dress up like what you want to be when you grow up
I would've come as a child again.
Another round of Super Star letters.
Dominique says "I have a stuffy nose."
I said, "I do too sweetie."
A moment later, she comes over and hands me
a Kleenex.
I am
truly
touched.
The simplest, tiniest act of giving from a sweet 5 year old
and it is like the sun shining after 1000 days of rain.
Natalie and Maia's ongoing feud erupts into new battles.
Each comes to me, each on a different side.
Maia: Natalie is always copying me!!
Natalie: Maia she is so mean to me! She made me cry three times yesterday!
Oh I have been down this dangerous road before;
it is a mine-field.
To Maia I say: "When Natalie copies you, do you know that means she likes you! She wants to be like you!"
To Natalie, who is much more fragile, sensitive, I draw her in, and she runs for
a hug.
"Natalie, Maia doesn't mean to make you cry. You girls can be friends right?"
Two little heads bobbing up and down.
Two minutes later at lunch, I'm certain the feud has begun anew.
Later, after lunch, more word bombs are launched across the table.
We are drawing beach scenes.
Jamie to Tanner, "Why are you wearing long pants and a long-sleeved shirt at the beach?"
Tanner's face falls. He snarls, "I'm not! You're just - just trying to be mean."
They start to gang up on Tanner. The words start to fly.
I can see the explosion coming. The tears start to form.
I stave it off. Tanner fumes, "It's a wetsuit."
"That's right! It's a green and black wetsuit!" I affirm this.
Now they've moved on to Griffin.
He's about to crumple his paper; he's been destroying his work a lot lately.
He doesn't like it. I feel the impending implosion.
"Griffin! No! Please, if you don't want it, can I have it? Can I take it home and put it on my fridge? I love it. It's fantastic. Really, I want it."
And suddenly, it has worth.
Tanner does not cry.
Griffin doesn't throw his work out.
I feel like
I've saved the free world.
And if you want to know why we go to war with one another
go to a school and spend a day or two
with a class of 5 year-olds
and human nature
and there is
your
answer.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
The city is a dead paradise now.
All of the glamour once so prevalent here,
born of necessary illusions beneath golden poppy skies
and picture-perfect palms has turned to gore.
It is a place for the macabre now; a living, breathing horror show
of the dead, the dying and the desperate.
And yet, and yet...we are still fascinated by this concrete metropolis...
in the same way we are mesmerized by the slow-motion appeal
of a bloody traffic accident.
We observe the city in the same horrified yet detached manner we would
a mangled steel wreck - with a sense of shock and fear, disgust and terror.
We don't want anything at all to do with it and yet we feel compelled by some
great mysterious force to look at it, to live it, revel in it, worship it; indeed
we sacrifice ourselves to it...we sacrifice ourselves to the city's false Gods unwittingly on a daily basis
without ever realizing it.
We worship words, signs, figures, images, visions, illusions, ghosts, fairytales and unrealities. We worship and we believe.
We have become a city of seekers and searchers forever needing to fulfill the empty, vacant, black hole that is us.
We do not discriminate. We will fill these voids with whatever we find, with
whatever this neon nightmare has to offer us.
We hide in our stucco houses in the hills and cross empty streets in the valleys,
our eyes to the ground, raw and aching, leaving a trail of pathetic need and desire wherever we go.
Once upon a time, this city promised us something.
We can't quite remember what now, but we know that it promised us
something wild and wonderful, big and bright...something that would be all ours...something that would make us SOMEBODY in a wasteland full of nobodies.
It was the promise whispered in the palms in the warm dusk of the Santa Anas;
in the promise found in the glinting white-capped lapis lazuli seas,
It was the promise of cocktail party voices and laughter echoing down the canyons...the promise of happily ever after, of incandescent swimming pools and glittering valley nights.
These were the promises that brought us here, away from nowhere...the no man's land we existed in before...away from the dull greenish glow of cheap TV's glowing through screen doors....away from tin box heavens we wasted away in for so long.
And yet, and yet.
We are beginning to suspect. We are beginning to suspect that the city lied to us; played with our oh-so-delicate senses and sensibilities as it so loves to do.
We're beginning to walk the star-crossed streets less, and huddle in our beds more, listening to the pre-dawn traffic, and wondering.
We're beginning to wonder if somehow, somewhere, we took the wrong path down the infamous yellow brick road, despite the directions being so very, very clear...despite the golden stars leading the way...despite the signs, the lights in the hills, the whispers in the winds.
Our senses have been slowly and silently crushed into a pulp of complete senselessness; indeed, sensory overload is simply a way of life in this hole - everyone knows that. Didn't we get the memo?
Come on...you used to bleed with the stiffs on the eleven o'clock news -
now you wait impatiently for hockey scores and Lotto numbers and joke about the Death and Dying report.
Everything screams and begs for your attention here and you are forced to give it away.
Blaring neon and fluorescent lights bore down on our skulls, blinding UV rays burn the vision straight from our corneas. Grinding metal on metal causes the blood to run ice cold from our ears.
The roar of engines, the screams for help, the wolves howling in the glittering hills at night; all the sounds have become the same...all the sounds have become The Noise, the collective drone of Hell.
Hypnotized...and yet we are still hypnotized by the great, grand illusion, by all that glimmers and glitters and glows silver and gold in the darkest, most depraved recesses of our minds.
We hope. We forever hope that what we are living is not a lie...THE lie.
But somewhere, where truth lives, if indeed it lives and breathes at all, we know it is all a lie.
We know we've been fooled; tricked again by our own sad, wanton desires, our basest, most pathetic needs.
We know that what we live for does not exist; it never has.
And yet we live for it anyway; because without the illusion we will have to come face to face with the reality: who we are, what we really do with our lives, what we cannot and will not ever do.
So we live out our days in silent, desperate hope and spent our nights in quiet fury...a rampant rage that threatens to break out of us like a grotesque alien and consume us whole.
And we have, in some small place inside of us, given up on the idea that the city is our friend. Our futile attempts to bargain with it, to appease its obscene appetites, to make a deal with it...have failed miserably and we know there is no future here but we have no where else to go. And it knows this.
We are as dead as this paradise.
And what we see at the end of each day....the warm, orange glow of the setting sun...the ice blue sea...the winding highways...the lights flickering down the soft curves of Sunset...the palms waving slowly in the summer breeze...what we see we know does not really exist here...except inside of us.
For all we see is a mere projection of what we once hoped to be true;
that we could go somewhere in this beautiful place
that we could be someone here
in Los Angeles.
The city is a dead paradise now.
All of the glamour once so prevalent here,
born of necessary illusions beneath golden poppy skies
and picture-perfect palms has turned to gore.
It is a place for the macabre now; a living, breathing horror show
of the dead, the dying and the desperate.
And yet, and yet...we are still fascinated by this concrete metropolis...
in the same way we are mesmerized by the slow-motion appeal
of a bloody traffic accident.
We observe the city in the same horrified yet detached manner we would
a mangled steel wreck - with a sense of shock and fear, disgust and terror.
We don't want anything at all to do with it and yet we feel compelled by some
great mysterious force to look at it, to live it, revel in it, worship it; indeed
we sacrifice ourselves to it...we sacrifice ourselves to the city's false Gods unwittingly on a daily basis
without ever realizing it.
We worship words, signs, figures, images, visions, illusions, ghosts, fairytales and unrealities. We worship and we believe.
We have become a city of seekers and searchers forever needing to fulfill the empty, vacant, black hole that is us.
We do not discriminate. We will fill these voids with whatever we find, with
whatever this neon nightmare has to offer us.
We hide in our stucco houses in the hills and cross empty streets in the valleys,
our eyes to the ground, raw and aching, leaving a trail of pathetic need and desire wherever we go.
Once upon a time, this city promised us something.
We can't quite remember what now, but we know that it promised us
something wild and wonderful, big and bright...something that would be all ours...something that would make us SOMEBODY in a wasteland full of nobodies.
It was the promise whispered in the palms in the warm dusk of the Santa Anas;
in the promise found in the glinting white-capped lapis lazuli seas,
It was the promise of cocktail party voices and laughter echoing down the canyons...the promise of happily ever after, of incandescent swimming pools and glittering valley nights.
These were the promises that brought us here, away from nowhere...the no man's land we existed in before...away from the dull greenish glow of cheap TV's glowing through screen doors....away from tin box heavens we wasted away in for so long.
And yet, and yet.
We are beginning to suspect. We are beginning to suspect that the city lied to us; played with our oh-so-delicate senses and sensibilities as it so loves to do.
We're beginning to walk the star-crossed streets less, and huddle in our beds more, listening to the pre-dawn traffic, and wondering.
We're beginning to wonder if somehow, somewhere, we took the wrong path down the infamous yellow brick road, despite the directions being so very, very clear...despite the golden stars leading the way...despite the signs, the lights in the hills, the whispers in the winds.
Our senses have been slowly and silently crushed into a pulp of complete senselessness; indeed, sensory overload is simply a way of life in this hole - everyone knows that. Didn't we get the memo?
Come on...you used to bleed with the stiffs on the eleven o'clock news -
now you wait impatiently for hockey scores and Lotto numbers and joke about the Death and Dying report.
Everything screams and begs for your attention here and you are forced to give it away.
Blaring neon and fluorescent lights bore down on our skulls, blinding UV rays burn the vision straight from our corneas. Grinding metal on metal causes the blood to run ice cold from our ears.
The roar of engines, the screams for help, the wolves howling in the glittering hills at night; all the sounds have become the same...all the sounds have become The Noise, the collective drone of Hell.
Hypnotized...and yet we are still hypnotized by the great, grand illusion, by all that glimmers and glitters and glows silver and gold in the darkest, most depraved recesses of our minds.
We hope. We forever hope that what we are living is not a lie...THE lie.
But somewhere, where truth lives, if indeed it lives and breathes at all, we know it is all a lie.
We know we've been fooled; tricked again by our own sad, wanton desires, our basest, most pathetic needs.
We know that what we live for does not exist; it never has.
And yet we live for it anyway; because without the illusion we will have to come face to face with the reality: who we are, what we really do with our lives, what we cannot and will not ever do.
So we live out our days in silent, desperate hope and spent our nights in quiet fury...a rampant rage that threatens to break out of us like a grotesque alien and consume us whole.
And we have, in some small place inside of us, given up on the idea that the city is our friend. Our futile attempts to bargain with it, to appease its obscene appetites, to make a deal with it...have failed miserably and we know there is no future here but we have no where else to go. And it knows this.
We are as dead as this paradise.
And what we see at the end of each day....the warm, orange glow of the setting sun...the ice blue sea...the winding highways...the lights flickering down the soft curves of Sunset...the palms waving slowly in the summer breeze...what we see we know does not really exist here...except inside of us.
For all we see is a mere projection of what we once hoped to be true;
that we could go somewhere in this beautiful place
that we could be someone here
in Los Angeles.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Zoe sits atop her pillow
in her usual queenly pose
her furry head cocked to one side
as if to say
"Oh what a day it has been indeed!"
Today is Sunday
and the sun came out for the first time
in so so long
I can't even remember the last time I saw it
Which is good
because I was beginning to think
I might have to put my head
in the oven
and then I remembered
shit!
I have an electric oven
and a very, very small kitchen.
It was warm and sunny and I ate Swedish pancakes
for brunch
and wept for a man I did not know.
His name is Grant McLennan and all I ever knew was his music
and it is so heartbreakingly beautiful
it almost seems an insult to try and describe it.
He died in his sleep yesterday and of course I thought "Why?"
Because one doesn't normally die in one's sleep at 48.
And then I thought why does it matter why?
Why do I need to know why?
He is gone, gone, gone
Forever gone!
And all the answers in the bloody universe won't bring him back again.
I, of all people, should know that game by now.
Zoe ate baby food for dinner.
42 people died in Iraq today.
I could not buy any cough syrup at the market
because the market does not sell it anymore.
Why? Because the fucking meth addicts kept coming in
and buying it to cook it up in their labs.
They don't keep it behind the counter -
they just don't even order it anymore.
So I coughed and bitched and cursed those
with trashier demons than mine.
So I'll cough I'll cry I'll survive
and go watch The Sopranos.
I'll miss a man I never knew
while Christupha shoots the works
beneath a full moon.
Man do I hate Christupha.
What a mook.
Zoe sits atop her pillow
in her usual queenly pose
her furry head cocked to one side
as if to say
"Oh what a day it has been indeed!"
Today is Sunday
and the sun came out for the first time
in so so long
I can't even remember the last time I saw it
Which is good
because I was beginning to think
I might have to put my head
in the oven
and then I remembered
shit!
I have an electric oven
and a very, very small kitchen.
It was warm and sunny and I ate Swedish pancakes
for brunch
and wept for a man I did not know.
His name is Grant McLennan and all I ever knew was his music
and it is so heartbreakingly beautiful
it almost seems an insult to try and describe it.
He died in his sleep yesterday and of course I thought "Why?"
Because one doesn't normally die in one's sleep at 48.
And then I thought why does it matter why?
Why do I need to know why?
He is gone, gone, gone
Forever gone!
And all the answers in the bloody universe won't bring him back again.
I, of all people, should know that game by now.
Zoe ate baby food for dinner.
42 people died in Iraq today.
I could not buy any cough syrup at the market
because the market does not sell it anymore.
Why? Because the fucking meth addicts kept coming in
and buying it to cook it up in their labs.
They don't keep it behind the counter -
they just don't even order it anymore.
So I coughed and bitched and cursed those
with trashier demons than mine.
So I'll cough I'll cry I'll survive
and go watch The Sopranos.
I'll miss a man I never knew
while Christupha shoots the works
beneath a full moon.
Man do I hate Christupha.
What a mook.
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
There is a darkness
only I can see in
and all those who are lost to me
are not even gone.
There is not one still body
left without breath;
nor an absence of life
which I can truly call death.
But the losses are all the same
and a death is a death by any name.
There is a darkness
that reveals itself to me
not in seconds or minutes or hours
but in some strange eternity.
And voices I used to know and call friends
have faded far away into the event horizon;
And reasons for living and dying begin to blend
and there is no choice I can truly defend.
There is a darkness
only I can see in
and all those who are lost to me
are not even gone.
There is not one still body
left without breath;
nor the absence of life
I can truly call death.
But the losses are all the same
And a death is a death by any name.
There is a darkness
only I can see in
and all those who are lost to me
are not even gone.
There is not one still body
left without breath;
nor an absence of life
which I can truly call death.
But the losses are all the same
and a death is a death by any name.
There is a darkness
that reveals itself to me
not in seconds or minutes or hours
but in some strange eternity.
And voices I used to know and call friends
have faded far away into the event horizon;
And reasons for living and dying begin to blend
and there is no choice I can truly defend.
There is a darkness
only I can see in
and all those who are lost to me
are not even gone.
There is not one still body
left without breath;
nor the absence of life
I can truly call death.
But the losses are all the same
And a death is a death by any name.
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
What if they said this is all a dream
and you could not be labeled a failure or a success
a tragedy or a triumph
there would be no saviour nor salvation
and there would be no cross to bear?
What if this was just a fantasy
and all the nightmares were just that
and you could wake up any time you wanted
and have all you ever wanted
come back?
I do not think of you very often you see
in your home away from home
in that grave in the cemetary
in fact I rarely come to see you anymore
(Have you noticed?)
I'm too busy keeping my head above water
in this place above ground
I gave you my penance years ago
a half decade of obsessing
where did he go?
What's behind curtain #1, #2, #3
I did everything but call a Seance
to bring you back to me.
Now you have to understand
You chose to leave
Fact or fiction
Random chance or destiny tried and true
I cannot ever from this crazy place
get back to you.
So what if this were indeed a dream
and nothing really mattered
Like your decision one meaningless night
to pull rank
pull the trigger
leave body, blood, bone
and family
shattered?
What if they said this was all a dream
and there was no tragedy here?
Triumph was futile
and there was no cross to bear
and you never existed
and I never cared.
What if they said this is all a dream
and you could not be labeled a failure or a success
a tragedy or a triumph
there would be no saviour nor salvation
and there would be no cross to bear?
What if this was just a fantasy
and all the nightmares were just that
and you could wake up any time you wanted
and have all you ever wanted
come back?
I do not think of you very often you see
in your home away from home
in that grave in the cemetary
in fact I rarely come to see you anymore
(Have you noticed?)
I'm too busy keeping my head above water
in this place above ground
I gave you my penance years ago
a half decade of obsessing
where did he go?
What's behind curtain #1, #2, #3
I did everything but call a Seance
to bring you back to me.
Now you have to understand
You chose to leave
Fact or fiction
Random chance or destiny tried and true
I cannot ever from this crazy place
get back to you.
So what if this were indeed a dream
and nothing really mattered
Like your decision one meaningless night
to pull rank
pull the trigger
leave body, blood, bone
and family
shattered?
What if they said this was all a dream
and there was no tragedy here?
Triumph was futile
and there was no cross to bear
and you never existed
and I never cared.
Friday, May 05, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Hello goodnight I have just come to say goodbye
I saw your father...he waved to me;
he said he fought
the good fight... but the end was nigh.
We are not ghosts nor angels nor demons so awful and dread
We haunt not your thoughts
but your hearts and your souls
and your living dread.
We come not in peace
but we do not declare war
we sneak in all hours through cracks in your spirit
not panes of windows or screened-in doors.
We whisper the words from the script that you wrote
We strangle the language and murder the hope
We snuff out the light and tighten the rope
We pull the cold trigger and let the sharp blade slide in
And we laugh at your prayers for blind, numb redemption.
Hello goodbye the cool night has arrived
and in darkness or light the losses are tallied
We shall overcome is the cry!
but the tears have another destination
another protest another road, another march, another rally.
Markers of time lost and not ever to be found again
Soaking the night with the bitter salt of what might've been.
Hello goodnight I have just come to say goodbye
I saw your father...he waved to me;
he said he fought
the good fight... but the end was nigh.
We are not ghosts nor angels nor demons so awful and dread
We haunt not your thoughts
but your hearts and your souls
and your living dread.
We come not in peace
but we do not declare war
we sneak in all hours through cracks in your spirit
not panes of windows or screened-in doors.
We whisper the words from the script that you wrote
We strangle the language and murder the hope
We snuff out the light and tighten the rope
We pull the cold trigger and let the sharp blade slide in
And we laugh at your prayers for blind, numb redemption.
Hello goodbye the cool night has arrived
and in darkness or light the losses are tallied
We shall overcome is the cry!
but the tears have another destination
another protest another road, another march, another rally.
Markers of time lost and not ever to be found again
Soaking the night with the bitter salt of what might've been.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Do you want peace
or righteousness?
The young will always seek truth
While the aged know
it was there all the time.
Do you want war
whilst you wave the white flag
Only the naive believe
there's a line between love and hate
Do you want to be master and commander
or slave to every wayward neuron firing across
the landscape of your brain
Do you want to find solace in understanding
that the answers will not come
no matter how many time the questions are asked
screamed into the uncaring universe
again and again?
Do you want peace
or righteousness?
The young will always seek truth
While the aged know
it was there all the time.
Do you want war
whilst you wave the white flag
Only the naive believe
there's a line between love and hate
Do you want to be master and commander
or slave to every wayward neuron firing across
the landscape of your brain
Do you want to find solace in understanding
that the answers will not come
no matter how many time the questions are asked
screamed into the uncaring universe
again and again?
Saturday, April 29, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
I fell in love with you
in a dark room.
I never expected it
to happen this way.
I fell in love with you
in a dark room.
I never expected it
to happen this way.
and cannot claim to be the unknowing or unwilling victim
of this surreptitious observation;
this scopophilic gaze.
A visage chiseled by the gods' hands alone.
I dream of drowning inside your villainous stare;
Of caressing my tongue across finely chiseled bone
I can almost taste the burning smash of your skin
I wonder is looking really such a sin?
If so I confess
to this voyeuristic ecstasy once again.
Until it bleach-kissed your hair.
And yes, I want to disappear, die
when I look into your eyes
and know I'll never really see you in there.
And you, always caught in the reluctant stare.
so magnificently before;
Michelangelo himself would have stared in revelatory disbelief
Smashing David hopelessly to the workshop floor.
revealing slightly spaced-apart teeth
like an old picket fence bravely standing askew
I've falled in love with every imperfection with which the gods blessed you
and especially with
the crooked little scar curving delicately across your face.
and wonder of the accident that dared mark forever
such elegance and exquisiteness, such mortal grace.
in a dark room
Oh God I've done it so many times before
Lost in the flickering shadow and light of a celluloid paradox
A dream factory where I am ruined and yet burn for more.
the unknowing or unwilling victim
because I know you
and must expect these bizarre fetishes;
surely they must find you on occasion
when you are alone?
following you like phantoms
walking down the asphalt street on a white-hot Los Angeles afternoon
A sudden summer shiver; do you turn and feel someone staring right through you?
Know this to be true
It is someone... somewhere ...
falling in love with the mere sight of you
in a cool and lonely
dark room.
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
So what do you want to know?
How I blew it at the start
That I'm still waiting for the show?
Keeping fingers crossed and Hail Mary's at the ready
I wallowed a bit too much this birthday week
but I figure, hey I've earned it buddy.
Yesterday was Tanner's birthday
He turned 6 years old
And wore a king's crown all day
I said kid, you won't remember any of this
but this is the best time of your life, oh yeah, this is bliss
You're living in the most perfect moment
You've got no bitter gripe against the past
You're ignorant of the long tomorrows ahead
But kid, let me tell you, it goes so bloody fast.
So what do you want to know?
That I'd do it all over again
Yeah I'd get lost just to get found
That the story's ruined because I know the end?
Daddy I dreamt of you a few nights ago
You were pissed but I don't know why
You don't spend much time with me
For a ghost I guess that's just reality
What do you want to know?
That I'd give it all up for a pain-free day
Yeah you know I would
Cuz when the body's fucked up
Ain't none of it good.
So what do you want to know?
How I blew it at the start
That I'm still waiting for the show?
Keeping fingers crossed and Hail Mary's at the ready
I wallowed a bit too much this birthday week
but I figure, hey I've earned it buddy.
Yesterday was Tanner's birthday
He turned 6 years old
And wore a king's crown all day
I said kid, you won't remember any of this
but this is the best time of your life, oh yeah, this is bliss
You're living in the most perfect moment
You've got no bitter gripe against the past
You're ignorant of the long tomorrows ahead
But kid, let me tell you, it goes so bloody fast.
So what do you want to know?
That I'd do it all over again
Yeah I'd get lost just to get found
That the story's ruined because I know the end?
Daddy I dreamt of you a few nights ago
You were pissed but I don't know why
You don't spend much time with me
For a ghost I guess that's just reality
What do you want to know?
That I'd give it all up for a pain-free day
Yeah you know I would
Cuz when the body's fucked up
Ain't none of it good.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
"Symbiotic"
"Symbiotic"
I want to see you down
Ruined like some ancient metropolis
Crushed like dead and long forgotten cities in dust
I want to see you down
Behind closed doors
on cold, hardwood floors
or even the earthly ground
I want to see what the years will do to you
Beauty kissed you once but her love won't last forever
How can I love you and yet wish upon you this cruelty
Smiling for the cameras with yes men to keep you clever
I love you because in you there's no reality
All the dead trees in the world won't make it so
I think it's just your karma I want to steal
I want to watch all your loveliness go
Yes, Mother Nature's a bitch
(the mirror told me so)
I want to watch her dance with you too
The slow waltz of fleshy decay
These are pathetic mercies and sad triumphs
for all of us I'm afraid
We want to build you up like the finest Grecian temple
Then with bitter years pull you down
Slow cracks in your facade
Even the finest Italian marble won't outlast the applause
Even you will crumble down my friend, sad and flawed.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
I will be 39 years old tomorrow
April 27, 1967.
I suppose in many parts of the world,
I am already 39...in alternate realities.
But alas, here in La La Land, I have one hour
and 50 minutes to enjoy the final minutes
of being 38
The irony of turning 39 does not escape me
I have fully shed the confines of youth
and now I succumb to the word, the world
of 'adult'
Is this middle age? I suppose if I live to be 78 it is
If I take after my grandmothers, 94 (RIP) and 92
I have a few more years to reach that beloved rite of passage
(she says sarcastically)
What were my grandmothers like at 39? My father's mother
was just getting married for the first time...a very strange thing for her day
My mother's mother had a 13 year old, my mother, and a six year old, my aunt
I have two beautiful, gorgeous, smary, funny, cats
I could not love them more if I tried.
So yes, I will be 39 in a few hours.
And yet, and yet.
In the dark corners of my mind
I am five years old asking my mum
"Am I going to die?"
What kind of five year-old asks that?
She said gently, "Yes, but not for a long, long, long time."
That seemed to comfort me, but she said I still seemed bothered.
Ah yes, the beginning of my odd? realistic? fatalistic? obsession with death.
Funny, I am 34 years closer to that reality
but I am not obsessed with it much anymore.
Too much has happened. I have buried too many people;
young friends at 19, dead in motorcycle accidents
My father, dead from a broken heart, a broken body;
a suicide they called it. But I know the truth.
Twelve years of chronic pain - no I don't fear the reaper
but I do fear suffering, for I know the price you pay
for that trade-off.
I am seven years old, outside our house
It is cold, a November eve, and I am playing with the neighborhood kids
My mother calls us in
There is a fire in the fireplace and the house smells like
spaghetti
It is warm and comforting. I am safe and always will be. Everything is O.K.
I am eight years old taking my first plane ride to Hawai'i
The first and last time I won't be scared on a plane
Thanks mom!
And we visit almost all the islands
I taste real sugar cane; it isn't sweet
I lie awake at night at listen to the cane bugs
We visit Pearl Harbor and I stare down at the oil slick
hovering like a ghostly apparition on the water above the U.S.S. Arizona
and I am silent.
I am nine years old
and my brother and I sit at the top of the stairs
on Christmas morning
it is barely 5a.m. but we are so excited
SO EXCITED! we can barely contain ourselves
as we slowly crawl down one stair at a time
and glimpse the brightly wrapped packages
I am simply going to BURST!!!!!!
spilling out over the carpet in the living room
Our parents begging off, "Five more minutes, five more minutes..."
Now it is my mother who has to drag us out of bed on Christmas morning.
I am 10 years old and my father, my crazy father
Has dragged us to some theater in Century City on a hot June day
to see some stupid movie called Star Wars
and two hours later I am in love
with a man named Luke Skywalker. Sigh.
My brother collects all the figures; he still has them
They must be worth something more than memories now.
I am twelve years old
and we are traveling across the country
in the middle of a gas crisis in a big, brown
Cadillac Seville - my crazy parents!
And I am introduced to America
the most beautiful, diverse country I've ever seen
it is raining in Tennessee
I fall in love with New England
I see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall
and lose my belt in the snow in Central Park.
I see my first Broadway show in Times Square
this was long before Giuliani and the 'family-ization'
of the place
New York was a gritty, seedy place then. Its reputation
well-deserved. Rough, rude, hard. I adored it from the start.
We stayed at the Park Lane; we walked by the Twin Towers and they were so tall I thought they reached all the way to Heaven
And I did not see them again until September 11th.
I am 14 years old and I am in junior high
It was called junior high back then, not middle school
I am in drama class; for our drama class auditions I did a scene from Anne Frank
and being on stage was and still is, one of the happiest places I've ever been.
I am 16 years old and I've just passed my driver's test
Freedom awaits! I am given the family Audi and I take off
like there is no looking back; I laugh now - how badly I wanted to learn to drive
and now, it is a dreadful chore.
I am dating but there is no one serious
I have immense crushes
And music has become the balm to soothe my crooked teenage soul
The Cure, Duran Duran, the advent of MTV a few years earlier
How lucky I was to grow up in the 80's with such fantastic music
The Brat Pack
The downside
Reaganomics and mutually assured destruction
though the latter doesn't seem so awful now that rogue maniacs
are bragging about enriching uranium and wiping countries off the map.
I am 19 and remember so clearly feeling that was an important birthday
The last year of my teens. Ha!
Nihilism
Existentialism
Sartre and Plath were my best friends.
I read the collected works of Oscar Wilde
Was suicide romantic then? I had all the time, the good health, the privilege
in the world to agonize about everything and nothing
Self-indulgence was my passion
and I believe the beginnings of depression came to visit me at 19.
Oh life! And Death! And the meaningless of it all! The agony! I roll my eyes.
What the hell did I know about any of it.
College years in Malibu
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I called my mother one night crying.
I'm so depressed. Oh wait! Mom, I've gotta go. The limo is here.
She's never let me forget that. We laugh about it now.
I do not deny the pain, the problems, the self-inflicted emotional hell
I put myself through
But there were so many good times.
Clubbing and music and bands and Hollywood
and staying out half the night
drunk on music and laughter
Cafe 50's in Venice, Cherry Cokes, Scream
English Acid, White Trash Au-Go Go
The Roxy, The Whiskey, Club With No Name
Madame Wong's, The Cathouse
The bands then! It was all about the bands.
Human Drama, Faster Pussycat, Kill for Thrills
Gilbey Clarke at the Coconut Teazer
"Are you a Catholic?"
Jane's Addiction - the house band at Scream
The Cult, The Nymphs, Electric Angels
Johnny Indovina singing like an angel at Club Lingerie
The Church at the Palladium - my very first Church concert
Bauhaus, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, Soundgarden
Guns 'n Roses as an opening band!
L.A. Guns and all the sleaze a nice private college girl could want
Almost all these clubs are gone now
but the memories live on, tucked away in my mind, the laughter that haunts
me time after time.
I have seen things I never dreamt I'd see
The end of a handgun pointed at my face
Mountains on fire all around me
Friendships I thought would last forever dissolve under the weight
of the tiniest of trespasses
Loves that came and went and seemed and so profound at the time
Earthquakes and riots
Plane engines on fire
near death experiences and the nearer I get
the less afraid I am.
Funny how that works.
So I have been student and then for years, teacher.
It was trial by fire; I became professor
And started saying scary phrases like
"Have you seen the way these kids dress today?
No respect I tell you. No respect. If I'd talked to my teacher like that...."
It's all a cycle.
What did I dream I would become when I was young? Mother?
Career woman? Surely at college I new I'd set the world on fire
and yet nary a match I've lit. You grow and you grow and good things and bad things happen and you learn you will survive
that which you were absolutely certain
you could never survive.
George Harrison, RIP, said it best. All things must pass.
And they do. And they will. And I will.
So I am 39 years old and I have learned to enjoy what I have;
to want what I have if I do not have what I want all the time
to love the kids even when I want to throw myself on the floor
and have a nice kindergarten-like tantrum
I am 39, but I am also 5 and 8 and 10
and I remember theaters that weren't multiplexes
and summer days that truly lasted forever
the taste of chlorine dreams
and autumn leaves
walking home from school
the smell of carbon paper
and Elmer's glue
I remember the vastness of Texas
and the magic of a Charlie Brown Christmas
the smell of roasting pumpkin seeds
and trick or treating without fear.
I am 39 but I am 15 and 16 and 18 and legal!
I am 21 and I can drink and gamble but don't do much of either
My biggest vice going to Bleecker Bob's and shelling out my allowance
on 12" singles
I am 21 and I have a royal blue velvet coat I bought at Retail Slut
and I haunt the ballrooms of the old Plaza Hotel downtown
I am 25 and a graduate student
I am 29 and I have buried my father, written my thesis and graduated all within six months
I am 34 and on a bright, clear, blue September day, I have felt my heart shatter
in places where it can never fully be put back together as I watch my fellow countrymen and women live and die a nightmare I cannot even fathom
I am 35 and a college teacher
I am 39 and I am blessed
for everything that has happened, good and bad
to bring me to where I am now,
where all things must pass.
I will be 39 years old tomorrow
April 27, 1967.
I suppose in many parts of the world,
I am already 39...in alternate realities.
But alas, here in La La Land, I have one hour
and 50 minutes to enjoy the final minutes
of being 38
The irony of turning 39 does not escape me
I have fully shed the confines of youth
and now I succumb to the word, the world
of 'adult'
Is this middle age? I suppose if I live to be 78 it is
If I take after my grandmothers, 94 (RIP) and 92
I have a few more years to reach that beloved rite of passage
(she says sarcastically)
What were my grandmothers like at 39? My father's mother
was just getting married for the first time...a very strange thing for her day
My mother's mother had a 13 year old, my mother, and a six year old, my aunt
I have two beautiful, gorgeous, smary, funny, cats
I could not love them more if I tried.
So yes, I will be 39 in a few hours.
And yet, and yet.
In the dark corners of my mind
I am five years old asking my mum
"Am I going to die?"
What kind of five year-old asks that?
She said gently, "Yes, but not for a long, long, long time."
That seemed to comfort me, but she said I still seemed bothered.
Ah yes, the beginning of my odd? realistic? fatalistic? obsession with death.
Funny, I am 34 years closer to that reality
but I am not obsessed with it much anymore.
Too much has happened. I have buried too many people;
young friends at 19, dead in motorcycle accidents
My father, dead from a broken heart, a broken body;
a suicide they called it. But I know the truth.
Twelve years of chronic pain - no I don't fear the reaper
but I do fear suffering, for I know the price you pay
for that trade-off.
I am seven years old, outside our house
It is cold, a November eve, and I am playing with the neighborhood kids
My mother calls us in
There is a fire in the fireplace and the house smells like
spaghetti
It is warm and comforting. I am safe and always will be. Everything is O.K.
I am eight years old taking my first plane ride to Hawai'i
The first and last time I won't be scared on a plane
Thanks mom!
And we visit almost all the islands
I taste real sugar cane; it isn't sweet
I lie awake at night at listen to the cane bugs
We visit Pearl Harbor and I stare down at the oil slick
hovering like a ghostly apparition on the water above the U.S.S. Arizona
and I am silent.
I am nine years old
and my brother and I sit at the top of the stairs
on Christmas morning
it is barely 5a.m. but we are so excited
SO EXCITED! we can barely contain ourselves
as we slowly crawl down one stair at a time
and glimpse the brightly wrapped packages
I am simply going to BURST!!!!!!
spilling out over the carpet in the living room
Our parents begging off, "Five more minutes, five more minutes..."
Now it is my mother who has to drag us out of bed on Christmas morning.
I am 10 years old and my father, my crazy father
Has dragged us to some theater in Century City on a hot June day
to see some stupid movie called Star Wars
and two hours later I am in love
with a man named Luke Skywalker. Sigh.
My brother collects all the figures; he still has them
They must be worth something more than memories now.
I am twelve years old
and we are traveling across the country
in the middle of a gas crisis in a big, brown
Cadillac Seville - my crazy parents!
And I am introduced to America
the most beautiful, diverse country I've ever seen
it is raining in Tennessee
I fall in love with New England
I see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall
and lose my belt in the snow in Central Park.
I see my first Broadway show in Times Square
this was long before Giuliani and the 'family-ization'
of the place
New York was a gritty, seedy place then. Its reputation
well-deserved. Rough, rude, hard. I adored it from the start.
We stayed at the Park Lane; we walked by the Twin Towers and they were so tall I thought they reached all the way to Heaven
And I did not see them again until September 11th.
I am 14 years old and I am in junior high
It was called junior high back then, not middle school
I am in drama class; for our drama class auditions I did a scene from Anne Frank
and being on stage was and still is, one of the happiest places I've ever been.
I am 16 years old and I've just passed my driver's test
Freedom awaits! I am given the family Audi and I take off
like there is no looking back; I laugh now - how badly I wanted to learn to drive
and now, it is a dreadful chore.
I am dating but there is no one serious
I have immense crushes
And music has become the balm to soothe my crooked teenage soul
The Cure, Duran Duran, the advent of MTV a few years earlier
How lucky I was to grow up in the 80's with such fantastic music
The Brat Pack
The downside
Reaganomics and mutually assured destruction
though the latter doesn't seem so awful now that rogue maniacs
are bragging about enriching uranium and wiping countries off the map.
I am 19 and remember so clearly feeling that was an important birthday
The last year of my teens. Ha!
Nihilism
Existentialism
Sartre and Plath were my best friends.
I read the collected works of Oscar Wilde
Was suicide romantic then? I had all the time, the good health, the privilege
in the world to agonize about everything and nothing
Self-indulgence was my passion
and I believe the beginnings of depression came to visit me at 19.
Oh life! And Death! And the meaningless of it all! The agony! I roll my eyes.
What the hell did I know about any of it.
College years in Malibu
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I called my mother one night crying.
I'm so depressed. Oh wait! Mom, I've gotta go. The limo is here.
She's never let me forget that. We laugh about it now.
I do not deny the pain, the problems, the self-inflicted emotional hell
I put myself through
But there were so many good times.
Clubbing and music and bands and Hollywood
and staying out half the night
drunk on music and laughter
Cafe 50's in Venice, Cherry Cokes, Scream
English Acid, White Trash Au-Go Go
The Roxy, The Whiskey, Club With No Name
Madame Wong's, The Cathouse
The bands then! It was all about the bands.
Human Drama, Faster Pussycat, Kill for Thrills
Gilbey Clarke at the Coconut Teazer
"Are you a Catholic?"
Jane's Addiction - the house band at Scream
The Cult, The Nymphs, Electric Angels
Johnny Indovina singing like an angel at Club Lingerie
The Church at the Palladium - my very first Church concert
Bauhaus, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, Soundgarden
Guns 'n Roses as an opening band!
L.A. Guns and all the sleaze a nice private college girl could want
Almost all these clubs are gone now
but the memories live on, tucked away in my mind, the laughter that haunts
me time after time.
I have seen things I never dreamt I'd see
The end of a handgun pointed at my face
Mountains on fire all around me
Friendships I thought would last forever dissolve under the weight
of the tiniest of trespasses
Loves that came and went and seemed and so profound at the time
Earthquakes and riots
Plane engines on fire
near death experiences and the nearer I get
the less afraid I am.
Funny how that works.
So I have been student and then for years, teacher.
It was trial by fire; I became professor
And started saying scary phrases like
"Have you seen the way these kids dress today?
No respect I tell you. No respect. If I'd talked to my teacher like that...."
It's all a cycle.
What did I dream I would become when I was young? Mother?
Career woman? Surely at college I new I'd set the world on fire
and yet nary a match I've lit. You grow and you grow and good things and bad things happen and you learn you will survive
that which you were absolutely certain
you could never survive.
George Harrison, RIP, said it best. All things must pass.
And they do. And they will. And I will.
So I am 39 years old and I have learned to enjoy what I have;
to want what I have if I do not have what I want all the time
to love the kids even when I want to throw myself on the floor
and have a nice kindergarten-like tantrum
I am 39, but I am also 5 and 8 and 10
and I remember theaters that weren't multiplexes
and summer days that truly lasted forever
the taste of chlorine dreams
and autumn leaves
walking home from school
the smell of carbon paper
and Elmer's glue
I remember the vastness of Texas
and the magic of a Charlie Brown Christmas
the smell of roasting pumpkin seeds
and trick or treating without fear.
I am 39 but I am 15 and 16 and 18 and legal!
I am 21 and I can drink and gamble but don't do much of either
My biggest vice going to Bleecker Bob's and shelling out my allowance
on 12" singles
I am 21 and I have a royal blue velvet coat I bought at Retail Slut
and I haunt the ballrooms of the old Plaza Hotel downtown
I am 25 and a graduate student
I am 29 and I have buried my father, written my thesis and graduated all within six months
I am 34 and on a bright, clear, blue September day, I have felt my heart shatter
in places where it can never fully be put back together as I watch my fellow countrymen and women live and die a nightmare I cannot even fathom
I am 35 and a college teacher
I am 39 and I am blessed
for everything that has happened, good and bad
to bring me to where I am now,
where all things must pass.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
MadameBastet-firing-neurons
You want the memory
not the reality.
You long for the ghost and
not for the person.
You want the geography
but not this city.
You want to sit in the dark
while all the world's a stage
and never never do you want
the house lights to come up.
You want the magic
but not the explanation.
You want the questions
but not really the answers.
You want to raise the dead
but leave their agonies behind.
You want one last chance
to make everything all right.
You want to live lives
in places unheard of
in times undreamt of.
You want the sleep of the dead
in the land of the living.
You want no memory
in a place where there is no forgetting.
You want hope as more than a fairytale;
You want in on the joke
You want to profit from the sale.
You want this to be real
You're scared if it is you'll bleed.
You want proof in a place
where all you have is need.
You want to believe
someone died for your sins
You want to believe
I believe! Help me in my unbelief!
You pray the prayer of the broken and lost
You sing the song of the sad man
You think about that long ago cross
You wonder if He was a madman.
You want the memory
not the reality.
You long for the ghost and
not for the person.
You want the geography
but not this city.
You want to sit in the dark
while all the world's a stage
and never never do you want
the house lights to come up.
You want the magic
but not the explanation.
You want the questions
but not really the answers.
You want to raise the dead
but leave their agonies behind.
You want one last chance
to make everything all right.
You want to live lives
in places unheard of
in times undreamt of.
You want the sleep of the dead
in the land of the living.
You want no memory
in a place where there is no forgetting.
You want hope as more than a fairytale;
You want in on the joke
You want to profit from the sale.
You want this to be real
You're scared if it is you'll bleed.
You want proof in a place
where all you have is need.
You want to believe
someone died for your sins
You want to believe
I believe! Help me in my unbelief!
You pray the prayer of the broken and lost
You sing the song of the sad man
You think about that long ago cross
You wonder if He was a madman.
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