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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons
I fell in love with you
in a dark room.
I never expected it
to happen this way.

You must know
and cannot claim to be the unknowing or unwilling victim
of this surreptitious observation;
this scopophilic gaze.

I've never seen crooked beauty like yours
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.

I've never seen the sun
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.

I will always be suspended in the imagined look;
And you, always caught in the reluctant stare.

I've never seen beauty borne of nature and mere DNA
so magnificently before;
Michelangelo himself would have stared in revelatory disbelief
Smashing David hopelessly to the workshop floor.

With a hint of your beguiling smile
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.

I ache to run my finger gently down its winding path
and wonder of the accident that dared mark forever
such elegance and exquisiteness, such mortal grace.

I've fallen for you
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.

You cannot claim to be
the unknowing or unwilling victim
because I know you have sacrificed yourself to these strange desires
and must expect these bizarre fetishes;
surely they must find you on occasion
when you are alone?

Do you ever feel them
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.

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons
"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.

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.

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.

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons
There will come a time
when you will find
yourself alone
in fading room of despair
the stale aroma of some unresolved grief
heavy in the air.

And you will be playing mental solitaire
and smoking cigarettes
trying desperately to remember
how simply to forget
crazy things like the strange feel of December
in the dead center of July
the long, deep, bitter want
and someone that you loved once
a long, long time ago.

There will come a time
when you will find yourself
long since past the age
when it is acceptable to rage
against the dying of the light
and you will blow out candles in the night
and wonder when you lost the fight.

And you will learn, you will learn
to carry your grief with an elegant grace
You will learn
that in this world integrity will find no easy place
You will learn
to master the fine art of goodbye
You will learn
that often silence is your best defence
and that sadness does not guarantee
anymore tears left to cry.

There will come a time
when you will stop searching for some great cosmic sign
and you will gradually let go of the concept of fair
and you will live in a house of mirrors
to prove once and for all
that you're really there.

There will come a time
when you will spend your nights
dealing kings and queens
playing Jesus Christ to the demons dancing in your head
and raising Lazarus dreams
from the dead.

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Peyton Place
has nothing on these kids.
Jamie, the perfectionist, crying again.
Cut his own beach boy toes off.
Brings the tears to my table
Sulks and won't do the octopus math
I don't care I tell him.
Tanner in some new drama and trauma
I'll never understand.

Dominique upset
because she wants to spend time apart from Claire
Claire's feelings hurt
Now Dominique hurt too
Maia and Natalie at each other's throats
as usual.
Flattery gets poor Natalie nowhere

I've never seen such moody little creatures
How can you only be on the planet 5 years
and be so moody?

It ain't all lollipops and balloons.
Reality has set in.
Time for a commercial break
from our sponsor.

God I love my cats.

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

madameBastet-firing-neurons
Up at the ungodly hour of 6am
No rhyme or reason
So I'm sitting at the computer
which is not cooperating
when I realized

The filthiest things
come out of my mouth
either in front of the computer
or sitting in L.A. traffic.
Seriously.
Sailors, truck drivers
dock workers have NOTHING on me.

Guns come to mind as well.

And they let her around kids!
Oh the humanity.

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Like the proverbial Phoenix
Risen from the dead
Back amongst the germ-mongers I adore so much
CSET - the ugly beast - I beat it.
A miracle?
No.
Hard fucking work.
Beats miracles every time.

I am again in love with a ghost
a phantom
a vision of beauty so compelling
it would be obscene to try and descibe it
and yet here I am, master of words and all that is visual
and I cannot describe the soft, pale beauty
before me.
He was pretty once upon a time. Beautiful in fact. Oh
not in a conventional way - but he's never been conventional
in anything he does. Except in reality of course.
Convention is a cage for fear-filled lemmings.
His beauty was missed. How can that be? A thousand eyes
could not miss the subtle golden glow of a Rembrandt
the lush richness of a Watteau
and yet he was cast aside as strange looking.
Perhaps more Caravaggio that Caracci
It was in the eyes - look behind the darkness to see the smile winking
back at you.
He knows it's a game. He's played his hand extraordinarily well.
So his secret is mine.
The beauty is gone now. Time is a bastard thief. But the mischief remains.
I am breathless with awe
something I have for very, very few people.
I hope never to see him except perhaps
where he belongs
on a stage, as if in a gallery
the Baroque brilliance of his face
a joy all my own.