"I would prefer not to."

Oh my god. It's happened. I've actually turned into Bartleby the Scrivener!

When I first read this Melville story back in college in the '80s, the professor asked for a show of hands from the class to see who approved of Bartleby's attitude. About 1/4 agreed with his behavior; 3/4, including myself, did not. I disliked Bartleby because I thought he was lazy as hell! And he wasn't being treated unkindly by his employer; in fact, the lawyer went waaaaay out of his way to try to accommodate Bartleby's failure to get motivated. Interestingly to me, the professor then told us that when he taught the story in the '70s, most students saw Bartleby as an anti-hero of sorts, protesting society and "The Man" by refusing to work for "him"!

What I once disliked, I have become! I simply cannot get motivated to look for work! Not protesting society or anything, but I just don't feel like it. And it's a curious sensation to observe my "not feeling like it" and to wonder when exactly I will "feel like it." I used to "feel like it." I'm certainly not happy lying around the apt. either watching TV or sleeping all day and night. It's a very curious sensation. I keep waiting to "feel like" snapping out of it! What if I don't ever?? My apologies to Bartleby for my quick dismissal of him in the '80s! :)




Bartleby the Scrivener

"...The narrator, an elderly Manhattan lawyer with a very comfortable business helping wealthy men deal with mortgages, deeds, and bonds, relates the story of the strangest man he has ever known.

At the start of the story, the narrator already employs two scriveners, nicknamed Nippers and Turkey, to copy legal documents by hand. Nippers (the younger of the two) suffers from chronic indigestion, and Turkey is an alcoholic, but the office survives because in the mornings Turkey is sober and Nippers is irritable, while in the afternoons Nippers has calmed down and Turkey is drunk. Ginger Nut, the office boy, gets his name from the little cakes he brings the two scriveners. An increase in business leads the narrator to advertise for a third scrivener, and he hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in hopes that his calmness will soothe the temperaments of Nippers and Turkey.

At first, Bartleby appears to be a boon to the practice, as he produces a large volume of high-quality work. One day, though, when asked by the narrator to help proofread a copied document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his stock response: "I would prefer not to." To the dismay of the narrator and to the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks around the office. The narrator makes several attempts to reason with him and to learn something about him, but Bartleby offers nothing but his signature "I would prefer not to." One weekend the narrator stops by the office unexpectedly and discovers that Bartleby has started living there. The loneliness of Bartleby's life impresses him: at night and on Sundays, Wall Street is as desolate as a ghost town, and the window in Bartleby's corner allows him no view except that of a blank wall three feet away. The narrator's feelings for Bartleby alternate between pity and revulsion.

For a while Bartleby remains willing to do his main work of copying, but eventually he ceases this activity as well, so that finally he is doing nothing. And yet the narrator finds himself unable to make Bartleby leave; his unwillingness or inability to move against Bartleby mirrors Bartleby's own strange inaction. Tension gradually builds as the narrator's business associates wonder why the strange and idle Bartleby is ever-present in the office.

Sensing the threat of a ruined reputation, but emotionally unable to throw Bartleby out, the exasperated narrator finally decides to move out himself, relocating his entire business and leaving Bartleby behind. But soon the new tenants of the old space come to ask for his help: Bartleby still will not leave. Although they have thrown him out of the rooms, he now sits on the stairs all day and sleeps in the building's front doorway. The narrator visits Bartleby and attempts to reason with him. Feeling desperate, the narrator now surprises even himself by inviting Bartleby to come and live with him at his own home. But Bartleby, alas, 'prefer[s] not to.'

Deciding to stay away from work for the next few days for fear he will become embroiled in the new tenants' campaign to evict Bartleby, the narrator returns to find that Bartleby has been forcibly removed and imprisoned at The Tombs. The narrator visits him, finding him even glummer than usual. As ever, Bartleby rebuffs the narrator's friendliness. Nevertheless, the narrator bribes a turnkey to make sure Bartleby gets good and plentiful food. But when the narrator visits again a few days later, he discovers that Bartleby has died of starvation, having apparently chosen not to eat.

Some time afterward, the narrator hears of a rumor to the effect that Bartleby had worked in a dead letter office, but had lost his job there. The narrator reflects that the dead letters would have made anyone of Bartleby's temperament sink into an even darker gloom. Dead letters are emblems of man's mortality and of the failures of his best intentions. Through Bartleby, the narrator has glimpsed the world as the miserable scrivener must have seen it. The closing words of the story are the narrator's resigned and pained sigh: 'Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!'"

How to tell the neighbors to shut up

OK, once I moved into this $545-a-month place, I understood that, though I was 44 and long past my own loud college years, I was, nonetheless, also geographically going back in time, to a place where people, in 2010, did indeed live in $545-a-month apartments -- college kids and really poor people, i.e., people who tend to be loud.

I had a house that I rented in Austin from 2000 to 2007. From 2008 to 2010, in NJ, I lived in a duplex above a 70-year-old couple. There were rarely any noise problems. (In Austin, I bitched about a neighbor's band once, and about a DJ living next door who came home from clubs and played loud music after 4am several times. The guy moved after a couple of months. In NJ, sometimes groups of teenagers would sit on the wall outside the duplex in the summer. When that happened, I'd go outside and smoke a cigarette on the porch. Nothing chases away teens like an adult just... sitting there.)

Since I moved into this apartment in late June 2010, it's been pretty quiet, considering the environment. The neighbors below and to the right are completely silent. (Does anyone even live there?) The neighbor to the left... I heard him having loud sex with his girlfriend once. And in the 5 weeks that I've lived here, he's cranked up his music to annoying levels maybe twice a week. But always during reasonable hours: In the afternoon, or in the morning after 11am, or at night around 9pm. Those hours seemed reasonable to me. No reason to complain.

Tonight (Sunday night), though, the guy came home after 1:30am and turned the stereo up... I sat here, while on my computer, listening to his bass pounding through my walls and wondering what to do... After all of my years of living around others, here's what I've learned: Usually, when you knock on a neighbor's door to complain, they're hostile. However politely you state your case. They're hostile. 80% of the time. (God bless the 20% who say they're sorry for disturbing you!)

After living with my extremely anal mother for over two months, and after acknowledging internally that I was now living in a cheap apartment and not in a house and so I shouldn't expect any quiet, I'd told myself that I was NOT going to complain about any neighbors... I did good about this guy's stereo up until tonight at 2am...

Finally, I broke my non-complaining vow and went and knocked on the neighbor's door. I was apologetic -- "Hi. Sorry for bothering you" -- and then: "I live next door. Can I ask you a favor?" He immediately said: "Turn it down?" I gratefully nodded: "Yes. Thank you." He smiled, shut the door, turned down his stereo. No bad vibes.

Whew.

p.s. At 3:30am, the bass through the walls started up again; I had to go back over to the neighbors' at 4am, this time banging on their door a little louder and being a little less polite. I'm trying in my life to be a little more Buddha-like, but... and here's the sad thing: Sometimes Buddha doesn't work and you've got to fucking hit people over the head with an old-school/Old Testament Christian verbal crowbar -- IT'S 4AM! SHUT THE FUCK UP!

On Freaks

On Freaks, both physical and psychological:

"Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." -- photographer Diane Arbus

"Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." -- writer Josephine Hart

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What a difference a day makes

Wow, did I just say "fuck you" to God?

Mighty bold. I guess I meant it at the time, but I guess I don't REALLY mean it. Sorry, God.

I have been moping around the apt. for over 3 weeks now, doing little but watching continual TV and getting on the Internet every other day or so. My mom has a pool in her subdivision and I love to swim and sun, but my attitude has been that I'll be damned if I call her for anything. I am still SOOOOO angry at her for the way she treated me when I lived with her. I still feel poisoned by it.

But I guess that, too, shall pass. Like today, my anger at my brother/sis-in-law passed when they called to invite me over for dinner. How nice it is to be invited somewhere! And to just hang out for several hours and eat, drink, and chat. To feel like a normal person instead of like a fucking pariah. (AMC has been running "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "The Shining" all weekend, which I've been watching multiple times. Not good for the mood!) :)

As I mentioned below, I'd had one beef with the bro's family for not inviting me over to watch the World Cup games at several parties that they hosted. When I went over tonight, they still had their World Cup country flags hanging around the house. Which gave me a non-argumentative opening: "Oh, I wish you had invited me over to watch with you! That would have been fun!" Their mutual, honest response: "Were you interested in watching? Oh my gosh! We didn't know you even liked soccer! We would have called you!" Me: "[sigh] Yeah, I watched the games by myself." More sincere apologies. Whew. The air is now cleared on that one. And I was also able to admit to them that I'd been totally isolated since I'd been back in Austin, that it was so great to be invited to dinner, to be around people again... It felt good to be emotionally honest and to just come out and say, "Hey, I'm extremely lonely. Invite me over more often, wouldja??"

So, one emotional weight has been lifted. My birthday's in a couple of weeks, so I'm guessing that I'll see my mom then and a bit of the poison will have dissipated by then, then more still as more time goes by. It is emotionally draining and harmful to your self to keep dwelling on hatred and hurt and anger, even if the cause for hate and the hurt and anger are real.

(And let me reiterate: Do NOT watch "The Shining" and/or "Cuckoo's Nest" if you're trying to get yourself out of a funk! Though 1956's "Miracle in the Rain" was one good one that I saw today! It was so corny, but I nonetheless cried and cried...the redemptive power of love! I kept hoping that Van Johnson would come home after the war, after all!) :)

LMBWISB (Fuck you, God.)

When I was up in New York/Joisey, I kept praying: "limby-wisby" -- "let me be where I should be."

And even if that meant that I should come home to Austin... still, "let me be where I should be."

Now that I'm back in Austin, though, LMBWISB is a joke. There's no way in hell that I should be here. Any more than I should be back in Azle, Texas. There are no people here who love me, no reason at all for me to be here. I love New York and Weehawken. I miss being there with all my heart.

Fuck you, God. Fuck you for sticking me here where I know I don't belong any more.

The One-Room Blues

You think the world is wide.

There is nothing here for me.

I worked at K-Mart when I was 16 because I lived in Azle, Texas, and that was all that was available to me.

Since then, I've lived in Austin, San Francisco, New York City. I've gotten a Master's degree in literature, gotten world/life experience, worked for national/international companies.

And now that I'm unemployed you expect me to go back to the K-Mart to earn $7 or $8 to pay my new $545-per-month rent...

I'm interested enough in daily things to not kill myself. I like TV, reality shows. I like working on my Joan Crawford website.

But if I weren't interested in these things, I'd shoot myself in the head. There's something not right here. I've earned my keep. I've been working since I was 16. I worked 20 hours a week when I was in high school, and 30 hours a week when I was an undergrad, and when I was in grad school. I earned $20 an hour before I left Austin and $28 an hour when I first moved to New York. I could survive when I was being paid survival wages.

Fuck these non-survival wages. Fuck this whole situation: A 44-year-old with a Master's degree and over 10 years of publishing experience forced to seek $10-an-hour jobs, like a fucking sweat-shop worker.

There is something extremely wrong here.

Crappy Family

After 5 weeks of no grocery shopping, I finally ran out of everything except spaghetti and finally caught a bus to the supermarket today.

When I first moved into my new apartment in June, with no car, my mom took me to the grocery store at the time.

I thought that after that, I'd get a call from either my mom or my brother/wife (all of whom live under a mile away): "Hey, I'm going to the store. Need a ride there?"

I wasn't just stubbornly waiting for them to act nice. I've been pretty independent all of my life, not asking anyone for anything unless I was desperate.

Wouldn't you think, though, that living within a mile of me, they'd think of me and at some point wonder if I, having no car, needed to go to the grocery store?

Nah.

My first grocery trek after 5 weeks was fine. A half-mile walk to and from my bus-stop, sweating like a pig each way. I made some friends at the bus-stops. On the way there, I sat next to "Simon." We talked about not having a job. After he determined that I had a "good personality," he suggested I apply to the State Hospital, which is hiring at $8 an hour. We also talked politics: Who am I for, Bill White or Rick Perry? "God, not Perry. I can't vote for a former male cheerleader." On the way home, grocery bags in tow, got asked if there was an ice-skating rink at Highland Mall. And how nice was the mall. I only wish I knew.

I actually don't extremely mind making conversation with these random guys. I don't mind taking a bus anywhere (except for the uber-sweating in these temperatures). When I was in NYC, I, like everyone else, took the subways, talked to others in whatever park. (I can't count how many times I was sitting on a random bench and making random conversation with a person next to me.)

Up north, though, I was alone. I was trying to make it on my own. Down here, I've got my own mother and brother living under one mile away. All know my situation. That I've taken an apartment for $545, that I have no car, no job. (Despite my past history of nice apartments, cars, and jobs.) I gambled when I gave up everything to go to NYC and I lost. Now that I'm back home in Austin... An example: During the World Cup, my brother, whom I've always gotten along with, held soccer-viewing parties at his home. My nephews later told me about them. And I wasn't invited.

My family sucks.

Horses sense fear.

I've never liked horses much. Growing up in the country, I grew up with a few of them. I rode them bareback, et al. But I never really liked them. They were always doing mean shit. I've been thrown a couple of times, just for their hell of it. I've been sitting on one, perfectly calmly, and had her run off with me. I've had horses purposely step on my foot and then not get off, despite much pushing and prodding.

I don't like them.

And then there's the trope that I was just thinking about, that "people, like horses, sense fear." True enough. The purpose of that "self-help" trope was to get people to "act" so that others could not sense their fear. You know what? That's bullshit. People, if you sense fear in others, then... DON'T run off with them. DON'T throw them. DON'T intentionally step on their feet and hurt them.

Horses suck. I'll be goddamned if I "act" in any way to get those shits under control. I've never ridden with a saddle, never ridden with a bit. Just a bridle. And the horses took full advantage.

Fuck off, stupid, sadistic horses. Fuck off, stupid, sadistic people.

The Most Interesting Man in the World

"People hang on his every word -- even the prepositions."
"He lives vicariously... through himself."
"His mom has a tattoo that reads 'SON.'"

:) :)

Hope springs eternal

Thank you to Astrocenter.com for this tiny ray of hope! :)

Your horoscope for July 21, 2010
You tend to be rather sensual, STEPHANIE, but today you could surpass even your own expectations. You may have been feeling stressed and exhausted, yet at the same time restless, and an intense romantic encounter may be just what you need. There could be pressures around you, however, that demand too much of your time. Do what's most urgent, then make the time to be alone with your mate. At this time especially, it can be very healing.

Gee, maybe the guy at my beer store will be available Wednesday when he gets off work! ;p

Stressed, exhausted (from nothingness), restless... You betcha. I feel like I've been completely without any MOJO whatsoever for the past YEAR! It's deadening just "existing" instead of "living." All of the recent "Sandra stuff" was especially draining emotionally. But upon thinking about it: It was usually, not just recently, more of a one-way energy exchange -- me giving, not getting much back, then getting mad about the lack (the anger also draining me). Not very healthy a'tall.

One thing to look forward to: In a couple of weeks, I should be venturing up to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area to spend a weekend with an old junior high/high school friend. She and a group of other of my old friends get together for a "girls' night" once a month -- this time, I'll be her "surprise guest"! :) I'm REALLY looking forward to it! I've been so isolated for so long. While in NYC, the beauty and novelty of my surroundings helped to assuage my loneliness. Since I've been home in Austin, I've been almost completely by myself, with nothing external to help counter my inner isolation. It's been hard. What I REALLY need now is a weekend of reconnection/staying up 'til all hours with old friends talking and laughing. Sad, but right now I can't even imagine ever feeling GOOD again. Everything's been so desolate lately.

"Day By Night" -- 2 songs

How nice is this?!

I have a Joan Crawford website, and just got the below message from a new reader. Things have been so shitty for me psychologically recently... Good wishes like this, about my work, give me the heart and courage to go on whenever I feel utterly despondent: "Something I do is good and worthwhile and helpful to people!" Thank you, C.!


Isn't the internet a trip? Your Joan site is surreal. I just discovered it a few moments ago! Last night I watched Mommie Dearest for the first time in almost 30 years. I know it's unflattering to Joan's memory and a lot of her fans probably resent Christina for writing the book, but by god is it ever camp! I laughed my butt off, it was SO over the top.

So this morning, with the images of Joan's twisted cross eyed face still fresh in my mind, I thought I'd look up Christina on the net. I was curious to find out how/where she is today and if life has been kinder to her in the past years, and that's how I found your site! And what a gem! I can't believe how comprehensive it is.

It's people like you that make the internet a fabulous place to explore. I tried to fight the computer age for as long and as hard as I could, but alas it was stronger than me, I had no choice, I had to give in. So here I am today, looking through your fabulous work and feeling grateful that the machine won out! :o)

Another aspect to your site that I especially love are the great friendships that have no doubt been found among the fans who all have their love for Joan in common. It's a really beautiful thing don't you think?! No matter where we look, we're confronted by so much that is wrong in the world today. Having a place to go where the common thread is the shared love of a movie star from the Golden Age of Hollywood has created the perfect refuge for so many of us "out here" who are fed up with so much of what's wrong "out there"!

An interview given by Christina to Redbook Magazine in 1960? Are you kidding me? I thought for sure it would be nothing more than a few lines or even just a few photographs that accompanied the original story when it was published. So I gave it a look and it was THE WHOLE interview! From 40 years ago?!! Unreal.

I'm sure your work has produced so many wonderful things beyond just being a site devoted to Joan's life and career.

I can't wait to sink my teeth into it today!

Love C., a fan in Toronto!

Oh Kathy! I feel your pain! :)

"Every woman has been where I am today. Raw, emotional and in full hair and makeup. For you broken-hearted people across the world and in parts of lower Wasilla, this one's for you! Keep the faith, keep your swagga. Kathy Griffin"

We Used to Fuss

Two Hoots and a Holler at the Continental Club in Austin, 2009. Singer Rick was banned from this club 'til just recently. I know the song from the early days of the Black Cat club in '90/'91.

Good Used Heart

A couple of weeks ago, I begged someone to go see my favorite band with me at Ruta Maya. She wouldn't. Here's my band -- Two Hoots and a Holler -- singing "Good Used Heart" at Ruta Maya.

Reminds me of when I was madly in love with someone in the early '90s, begged her to go see my favorite band with me -- Two Hoots and a Holler. She never would.

I pick mean people to like! But good bands to like! :)

Role Model

I was feeling the lowest of the low over the past week following July 4th, hooking into the bad vibes of a woman that I loved who didn't want me, then lying around reading Plath, Sexton, plus "The Executioner's Song" (about killer Gary Gilmore, by Norman Mailer), and then an account of Gary Gilmore's awful childhood by his brother, Mikal.

Plath, Sexton, Mikal Gilmore's accounts are all profound and legitimate. I do feel their pain, too much.

It's just that I am not ready to die just yet. I'm curious about other things, still. I WANT other things, still.

Plath was hooked into the very cosmos, yet she killed herself over a man. Sexton killed herself because she was middle-aged and she'd divorced her husband of 20 years and didn't have a man who was in tune with her. Gary Gilmore shot two men because his 20-year-old girlfriend had dumped him. While I've been mightily upset over lovers in the past, I've never been THAT distraught over a lover...distraught enough to be depressed, but never distraught enough to die.

I was reading and reading all of that misery while lying in bed moping and identifying. A little light finally went off: What the fuck is your website all about? WHO is your website all about? And WHY is it about her?

Ultimately, Joan Crawford is like a clear drink of water.

She struggled up through the darkness and darkest, even when she was a kid and had to sleep with assholes and fight against her mother's hatred to make it through. (By age 24, though, she was making her own money, and would do so throughout the rest of her life.) Even after she'd made it, she was counted out time and time again, and had to keep fighting and fighting and fighting, up until the very end.

When I was lying around moping this past week, I eventually started to think of Joan, and the website I'd devoted to her. Why the fuck did I ever work on a website about her if I didn't believe in what she stood for?

In the past 23 years that I've been interested in her, I've NEVER been depressed when I've thought about Joan Crawford or looked to her for inspiration. NEVER. I'm amazed when I think about that. NEVER has she failed me. She's goddamn amazing.

Nine out of ten

I see you, my funny friend
and my heart laughs, glad to be close again.

A soul mate comes once in a lifetime
so I'll run with the chance
to laugh and dance and sing
and let you know
that nine out of ten are always there for the breaking!


(My first poem for Ginny, written in the spring of 1983, when I was 17; we'd been talking about which of the Commandments we'd either already broken or would probably eventually break; both of us said no killing. To this day, I still haven't killed or committed adultery or borne false witness, so...I'm currently at "seven out of ten.")

http://www.the-ten-commandments.org/the-ten-commandments.html

Another brick in The Wall

Speaking of "The Wall" and Loss...

I was just thinking of something that happened between me and a girl I was in love with when I was 19 or so, the summer after my freshman year in college.

Ginny was a year younger than me, so I "left" her when I went off to college in '83. That fall, she ran away from our small town to be with me in Austin. After a weekend, she realized that I was stuck in my dorm-room contract, and so couldn't get an apartment with her. So she called her Daddy to come fetch her back home. A month later, she had a new "best friend" and stopped writing and calling. I saw her at Christmas that year -- an awkward meeting, with her parents and her BFF present.

Anyway, when I came home from school the next summer, I tried to reconnect. Very annoyingly, she refused to do anything with me unless her new BFF was present. (All of us were still completely in the closet. But isn't this all so very annoyingly lesbian-girlfriend-ish and ex-girlfriend-ish behavior!) So, OK, I asked them BOTH if they wanted to go see "The Wall" with me at a midnight show. (I'd been turned on to the movie in college, that fall or spring. Was deeply impressed and moved and eager to share the what-was-for-me profound experience. Share it with Ginny, that is, but if her BFF wanted to come, then fine. Grrr.)

Ginny made it nearly through the whole thing without incident. With about 10 minutes left in the movie, though, all of the scenes of violence finally got to her and she bolted out of her seat. As I looked after her in amazement, her BFF followed her. I was puzzled, but also slightly irritated, and finished watching the movie alone. Afterward, the two were waiting for me in the theater lobby. When I asked Ginny what was wrong (had she gotten sick?), she explained about the scenes disturbing her both mentally and physically, and I drove us all home (those two to Ginny's parents' house, me to my mom's house) in relative silence.

A couple of years later, when Ginny was still waffling between me and the other BFF (Ginny was soon to die of then-unknown-to-me heart complications, but still not sure which of us she wanted with her at the end), she revealed to me that the "other" BFF going after her when she left the theater during "The Wall" while I remained to see the end of the movie helped make up her mind.

For me, there had been mitigating circumstances: For one, I was pissed off to begin with that Ginny had insisted that her other friend come along. Had Ginny and I been alone, it's a 50-50 thing -- if she'd been by herself, I might have gone after her. Seeing the friend jump up, though, froze my blood: "I'll be damned if I get in a Sympathy War." But, like I said, it was 50-50: Even if we'd been by ourselves, chances are that I would have thought she was being silly and stayed right where I was. I loved that movie, and was vaguely personally insulted that someone would jump up and leave something I admired so before it was over.

As I write this, some quarter of a century later, would I do any differently? Even knowing how Ginny regarded that moment, even if it might have turned the tide in my favor, loving her as I did? Probably not, given that she had dragged another girl along with us to the movie. I wasn't feeling that loyal toward her, or that caring, at the moment, and I still am irritated today when I think about it. But a second question: What would I do today? With a woman that I was ALONE on a date with? Say I took her to see "Gone With the Wind" -- my absolute favorite movie -- and she became irritated, just for an example, by the way blacks were portrayed in the movie and got up and left? Would I go after her?

I still don't think so. I think I would think she was being silly, and would stay right where I was until the movie was over. I think I am more loyal to art that I love than to irrational tests of loyalty by people that I love. (Though... are "irrational tests of loyalty" actually tests of real love? I suspect that they might be. I suspect that they might be an indication of one's ability to give up one's self... = real love.)

Gary Gilmore's Eyes (Adverts, 1977)

Killer Gary Gilmore donated his eyes upon his killing by the state. And his pituitary gland to his niece. (Where's the "pituitary gland" song??)

I am not alone.

No, I don't have a "Death Wish," as the Newsweek cover proclaims. Nor, though, do I at the moment have a particular "Life Wish." When you're as saddened as I am, perhaps best not to read, as I have, over a 3-day period of time with no other stimuli, Anne Sexton's poems, a biography of Sexton, "The Executioner's Song" (about killer Gary Gilmore), and "Shot in the Heart" (Mikal Gilmore's history of his broken, literally haunted family).

In my state of mind, to be simultaneously horrified, yet enlightened, in such a profound way...like I felt when listening to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and seeing the movie when I was 18, when I was desperately wondering if anyone else in the Universe had ever felt as utterly sad and hopeless as I did.

All of what I've been reading continually over the past several days answered both of the questions that I'd been asking: (1) "Yes, life can indeed be this bad." but also (2) "Yes, there is other sadness out there as great, or much greater, than yours. You are not alone."

Here is the last paragraph of Mikal Gilmore's book (after he wakes up crying from a family nightmare):

I get up and look at the clock. It is four-thirty in the morning. I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of whiskey. I go back and sit up in bed in the darkness. I sit there a long time. I finish my whiskey, slip under the covers, pull a pillow over my head to keep out the horrible morning light I hate so much. I curl up and I tell myself: "It will never be all right. Never. It will never be all right." I say this to myself over and over, until I find enough comfort in the words that I am able to fall asleep again.

---------------

Wow. The realization that, despite what I write or what videos I post, it really will never be all right. It will never be all right. I'm stunned. Always thought I was so honest and tough. Always thought there was the possibility of healing. Nah. Here's real honesty staring me in the face. In the face of "it will never be all right," can I truly carry on?

Mikal Gilmore breaks my heart. Gary Gilmore breaks my heart. Anne Sexton breaks my heart. Sylvia Plath breaks my heart. "The Wall" breaks my heart. Sandra breaks my heart. My parents broke, and break, my heart. My heart is broken. I am broken.

But I am not alone.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

One of my absolutely happy childhood memories was watching this show with my mother. (And the opening taught me how to STRIDE!)

Goal

We'll see how this goes...

My Austin apartment lease runs through March 31, 2011. Between now and then...god help me get a job appropriate to my Master's degree and subsequently get enough money to go back to New York/New Jersey.

I can't stand the heat down here. I can't stand the Ugly. I can't stand the Nothingness.

Truthfully, I gave up on my 3rd job search in 3 years up North because I was bored and disgusted with trying to sell myself 3 times. But also because I wanted to come back home and see what might have been between me and Sandra. Just learned this past July 4th weekend that there was nothing there. That given... Sans any human connection, I'd like to go back to the geographical place that I discovered I love.

The glamorous fall trees in New York and New Jersey call my name! :) As do the New York City subways and buildings. I'll make do with where I am, but... I hate where I am. And I want to go back to where I was for 3 years.

We'll see what happens.

Walls and Bridges

Listening now to John Lennon's "Walls and Bridges," from 1974.

Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
Going Down on Love
Old Dirt Road
Bless You
Scared
#9 Dream
Surprise Surprise
Steel and Glass
Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out

I first discovered this album, when I was 15 years old, in the summer of '80, along with all of John's other solo albums, months before he was shot in December.

A Thank You to My Computer Geek

Last week, my computer went out, and I had to call a "Computer Geek" in. (No offense -- the company is called that: "Computer Geeks"!)

I give thanks not only 'cause the man was able to fix the minor problem for only an hour's charge, but also 'cause... While he was sitting there fiddling with my computer, he also asked, "Are you a writer?"

When he asked that, I was surprised and a bit flustered: "Well, I used to write, I got my Master's in a creative writing program...What makes you ask that?!"

He'd been looking around at all of my poetry books that were shelved, and all of my other books still stacked on the floor, waiting to be shelved... He'd guessed that I was a writer...

I guess in soul and heart and past I am. I guess today "officially" I'm not, other than Joan films that I review and publish for my website.

While he worked on my computer, he and I then started talking about writing, about the newspapers we'd briefly worked at (he, for a Chicago weekly; me, for the New York Sun); about the writing classes we'd taken in school; about how we were struggling now... Him doing freelance computer repairs; me, doing freelance educational publishing copyediting... Both of us trying to furnish our apartments via cheap or free Craig's Listings! He was about 10 years younger than me, with a wife and 3 kids already... But we connected. It felt so good to me, after 2 months of living with my mother, whom I couldn't talk to about anything; after years of my and Sandra's cross-purposes.

Just to talk to someone like a normal human being, about something interesting! Wow! Thank you! :)

Wherever you are, you are here

If I could see you now...

...I'd try to make you sad somehow...

This John Lennon song is the only where I've heard the guilt of being such a shit...

The Poor Girl's Entertainment Center

Dig this shot from my new apartment! State of the Art, circa 1999! :)

I've been doing the best I can to set up my new $545-a-month apartment with no steady job and little money: In this picture: The 2 shelves were $12 apiece from the closest "Family Dollar" store. The TV ('99 Samsung) was $20 from a woman on Craig's List. The TV table is a cast-off from my mom. The DVD player/boom-box (do they still call them that??) I bought when I was in NY and had them shipped back.

According to my mom, this Friday I was "spending like a sailor on shore leave." I need stuff for my apartment, have a little bit of money coming in from my freelance work... What the fuck is extravagant about the below?

I just checked all of my receipts: $261.10. And here's what I got for my $261.10 this past Friday:

A printer/fax/scanner from Best Buy (with cable, ink cartridge)
A pillow, dish rack, 2 bookcases, Comet, Raid, hooks, Post-its, toilet paper from Family Dollar
A basket and bathroom rug from Marshall's
A comforter, set of sheets, bath mat, beach towel, towel set from Ross.

How fucking extravagant and "sailor-like" of me! I'm just so darn wild-n-crazy when it comes to buying dish-racks, et al! :0

"I'm 93, you're 16..."

This KISS album has a lot of connotations for me. It came out in '74, but I didn't discover it until '77 or so, after the success of "Double Platinum" sent me on a KISS album-buying binge.

My parents had just divorced. Dad was living in a cheap Fort Worth apartment, and we kids were visiting him on weekends, when he'd take us to the closest mall and buy us a present, just for something to do.

While with him at the mall, I begged for this KISS album... When I took it home (to Mom) with me, she was quick to notice the naked ladies on the back cover and gripe at my dad for that. Then there was the lecture about "not having to buy our love," as well! ;p (Jesus. A $7.99 album is just a NICE, not a "love-purchasing," thing! And the naked floozies on the back cover were just interesting things to see for the first time! Give us all a break, Ma!) :)

This whole album turned out to be good -- dark and murky and interesting to listen to over and over again. I was especially fascinated by this song here, "Goin' Blind" -- Gene's 93-year-old persona singing of his love for a 16-year-old... At the time, at age 12, I still considered KISS to be the most decadent of bands, sure that if I listened carefully, I'd find out about some of life's forbidden mysteries...

On a BCR kick!

They get a bad rap for being "merely" a "teeny-bopper" band. But...they were something weird and interesting unto themselves! (The lead singer, Les, was my second-favorite -- guitarist Eric was my love; but... Now that I'm watching this at age 44, not 14... Les is the hottest, despite his bad teeth!)

Bay City Rollers (1975)

The first band that I ever loved. And their first big European hit.

New Place News

Only 2 more nights of sleeping on that crappy green fold-out chair (pictured)! I will celebrate the one-week anniversary of my new one-room apartment by having a bed delivered, finally. (I waited this long because I dreaded having to take a bus to some damn out-of-the-way mattress place... Then I figgered out: There's such a thing as THE INTERNET, dummy! Where one can... ORDER THINGS ONLINE! Doh.)

My mattress set-to-be goes by the whimsical moniker of "Kids Delux." (No, it doesn't have pictures of airplanes or Holly Hobby on it. And it is a full, not a twin or bunk-bed!) And total price, including metal frame and delivery, will be around $250 -- a bargain!

After the bed, my immediate needs include only one chair (maybe with ottoman) for under $100 -- I'll check Craig's List for something cheap-but-interesting/vintage. And check Craig's List also for a cheap delivery guy. Aside from the chair, I need a printer/fax machine -- I think the Best Buy near my mom's house has these for under $150.(Thank goodness for all of the freelance work I've been getting over the past few weeks! Mainly from a publishing co. I used to work for back East -- the irony. When all my paychecks come in, I'll have rent paid up through October, plus plenty left over for bills and cheap furniture.)


After that, I'm pretty much situated. Things will only need tweaking then: one more chair, or possibly a love-seat. An entertainment center/hutch for the TV/DVD player. A small bookshelf for my DVDs/CDs. A coffee table or 2 end tables. Two cheap/cool vintage lamps from eBay, Craig's List, and/or local yard sales. Oh, and a HUGE framed photograph of the NYC skyline that I saw on an online art print shop. (Just to torture myself! Ah, the days when I could step out of my apartment and walk 3 minutes to the Hudson and gaze upon that gorgeousness in person! I do indeed miss that $1500 apartment's grand location! Not so much the size -- I'm actually relatively content in a one-room apartment -- but that location... the beauty of not just the NYC view but also the turn-of-the-century quaint apartment buildings and the Northeastern flora... I miss Weehawken!) :)

Speaking of walking (I sold my car when I moved to NY and, being jobless, can't afford a new one): Texas ain't set up for it. It's deathly hot. There aren't shops on every block. (In my neighborhood -- touted as an up-and-coming "hipster" area, and where I lived for 6 years before moving to NY -- a couple of small theaters, several restaurants, and a beer-store or two.) Buses come infrequently and not always according to schedule. People look at you, the sad, wilted walker, with pity. Up north I used to walk several miles a day with no problem. Here, I tried waiting at a bus stop to go to the supermarket 2 miles away... within minutes, my makeup was melted and my hair was nearly sopping wet. After 20 minutes, I just gave up waiting and schlepped myself back home. (Luckily, my mother took me grocery shopping when I moved to my new place, so I wasn't desperate for anything... But still. It's going to be a pain in the ass just to go to my bank or to the drug-store for work-supplies, or to get a few grocery items. Sigh. Did I say already that I miss Weehawken?! Big grocery store, post office, bank -- all a 5-minute walk. Drug store -- 10 minutes. Bus stop into NYC -- across the street. Time into NYC -- 15 minutes. OK, OK... No use torturing myself! But... dammit. And in a few months it's going to be fall there without me...)

Books, the Motherfuckers

Books are a pain in the ass to haul around, that's for sure. And they're also a pain in the ass when you have billions of 'em to try to fit in to a one-room apartment. They're also definitive, though. When I moved to NYC in 2007, I asked my mom to mail me what I thought were the "essentials": all of my Joan stuff, all of my reference books (for work purposes), the books that had something to do with NYC (Lennon, Salinger, Frank O'Hara). (Only a couple of shelves' worth. And then I bought more while I was there, 11 or 12 books just about NYC, mainly purchased from the Strand bookstore. All of which I had to ship back home at the end of March.) I missed the rest of them a lot. I didn't feel like myself without ALL of my books around me.

Now that I'm back in Austin, out of my Mom's place, and into my own place... it's nice to be reunited with all the "other" books that have been in storage in my mom's garage for the past 3 years. Luckily this one-room apartment has some built-in shelves (one of the things that made me like it). I bought a cheap Target fake-wood bookcase to house some of the books, too. Between the built-in shelves and the cheapo shelf, all of the books are nearly situated...

A home's a home when you have: a cat, plants, candles, your books/music... So far, I've got all of my books and music, plus candles, at least!

The view from my window

What's Important

Who gives a shit what woman likes you or doesn't like you at the moment.

Ted Hughes liked my poetry.

blank, blank verse

On my mother's porch
the neighbor's chimes
sound like my own phone ringing

Some days we just feel like this.

(Joan Crawford, 1968, filling in for her daughter Christina on CBS's soap "The Secret Storm." Christina's character was 28.)

Round here...

...we talk like lions
but we sacrifice like lambs.

Round here
she's always on my mind.

Round here
we stay up very, very, very, very late.........! :) :)

My wish

I want to stop saying things on the Internet. I want to say things just to her.

Apologies for my dissing "Blue" in 1993

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108394/

Krzysztof Kieslowski's film "Blue" is sad and thoughtful and gorgeous. When I first saw it at the theater in 1993, I dismissed it as "boring." Specifically, I remember telling friends afterwards: "It was so dull, when I reached down for my popcorn at the end of the film, and then looked up, the film was over, and I hadn't realized it..."

What was I thinking in 1993? I was 28 then. I thought I'd suffered plenty. Perhaps I hadn't yet suffered enough at the time to enable me to fully appreciate the film.

I just watched it last night for the second time, and found it sad and beautiful and very far from boring...

Joan Crawford: 1932

Kick Ass

There are two things I really kick ass at: my Joan Crawford website and my copy editing skills. (Ha! If I were such a kick-ass copy editor, I would've written: "There are two things at which I really kick ass"!) :)

I'm serious, though. There is not a better celebrity website than mine. And, after 3 years in NYC, I never came across anyone who was a better copy editor, or anyone who was even as good. (Mind you, I -- obviously -- never worked for The New Yorker! I guess those folks are the cream of the copy editing crop. But... after 3 months at The New Yorker, I would've definitely been up to speed with the best in-house copy editors there. The temp places where I did work: a major financial company, major educational publisher, major newspaper, major law firms -- my work was better than anyone else's that I saw.)

What brings on this gust of gumption after months of feeling like shit all the way around? Just took an electronic copy editing test. And was catching tricky thing after tricky thing until I started feeling cocky: "Bring it on! You can't hide that! Come on. Is that all you got?" I really knew my stuff. It felt so goddamn good to just ACE something after months and months of floundering around on all fronts.

Late-night radio

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/affiliates

Desperate for any sort of media stimulation since my mom won't allow TV-watching in her home after 10pm... I discovered the above syndicated "Coast to Coast" radio program, which airs from midnight to 4am. Really interesting to me...I can lie there for hours in the dark and just contemplate what they're talking about: UFOs, Mayan calendar 2012, radio signals from other galaxies, synchronicity, communications from the dead... It's really the perfect thing from midnight to 4am...

Six Months in a Leaky Boat

"There's a wind in my sails, will protect and prevail
I just spent six months in a leaky boat..."


Let the spirits of my German great-grandfather (August Hoche -- the Communist who left Germany and worked in the coal mines of America) and my East Texas grandfather (the traveling salesman) guide me and protect me. Please, please, please be with me now and protect me. No one else will. I've got no one else. I beg both of you to help me.


When I was a young boy I wanted to sail 'round the world
That's the life for me, living on the sea
Spirit of a sailor circumnavigates the globe
The lust of a pioneer will acknowledge no frontier

I remember you by thunderclap in the sky
Lightning flash, tempers flare, 'round the Horn if you dare
I just spent six months in a leaky boat
Lucky just to keep afloat

Aotearoa, rugged individual glisten like a pearl
At the bottom of the world
The tyranny of distance didn't stop the cavalier
So why should it stop me? I'll conquer and stay free

Ah come on all you lads, let's forget and forgive
There's a world to explore
Tales to tell back on shore
I just spent six months in a leaky boat
Six months in a leaky boat

Shipwrecked love can be cruel
Don't be fooled by her kind
There's a wind in my sails, will protect and prevail
I just spent six months in a leaky boat
Nothing to a leaky boat...

House of Hate

The House of Hate =

Ugly scowl when you click your spoonful of sour cream too loudly onto your plate.
Loud sighs and "What now?"'s when you ask for a paper clip or a tie for the garbage bag.
Offering to drive you to the bank (1.5 miles away) then: "Where are we? Don't you have a closer bank? I'm retired, I shouldn't have to do this."
No TV or eating after 10pm.
Upon moving in, after you've spent 7 hours carrying heavy boxes from the garage into the kitchen and unpacking them: "What did you do all day? You didn't look for bus-stops?"
After you've done 100 hours of freelance work at home for 3 weeks: "That [getting the freelance work] was just luck. When are you going to get a real job?"

Let's see... What else have I done wrong around my mom's house in the past month while she's let me live here out of charity?

Oh, I try not to watch TV too often, but when I do (volume turned to the lowest possible): Watching "Cops" really "says something about me." Watching any of the "Real Housewives" programs: "I can't stand that screeching. How can you listen to that? Do you like those kinds of women?" At a second past 10pm [time to turn off the TV]: "Is this show over?"

When I go to the store for a six-pack every 2 or so days: "You're REALLY going to buy beer again?"

When, once a week or so, I express a desire to buy some fast food: "You really like junk food, don't you? Why is that?"

House of Hate ends June 18, thank god. (For real: THANK YOU, GOD.)

Joan Crawford, 1927.

Stand By Your Man

Cain't keep this Possum in a cage

Tammy vs. George: Apartment #9

Monster's Ball

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285742/

This was released in early 2002, and I'd heard all about Halle Berry in it, but I hadn't seen it until this past weekend, for free on HBO... Honestly, I didn't know anything about it, other than that Berry starred, and won an Oscar for playing what I thought, just from reading reviews, was a stereotypical "proud black woman." (Seriously, I'm bored to death with the "noble, proud black woman/man" bullshit. I want to see REAL.)

This movie was sad but very true: Heath Ledger and dad Billy Bob Thornton fucking the same whore, in exactly the same way... so brave of the film-maker, and, to me, the most telling moments of the whole movie. Peter Boyle's ugly, honest old-coot asshole-ism. Berry's ugly, honest emotional/physical slapping around of her fat pre-teen son, and her honest emotional/sexual need... Thornton's ugly, honest racism.

And in the end, it was a movie about transcendence and love. In the end, after all of the utterly horrible things that had happened, I felt utterly hopeful. Not in a fake way, but truly hopeful.

My Klimt-suit

For some good reason, over 5 years ago, I was able to find a swimsuit that looked just like a Klimt painting! I love this swimsuit! It's been in storage for the past 3 years, while I was in NY/NJ and unwilling to schlep all of my swim-gear on the subway to get to a local beach. ("Gear" = the necessities: chair, towel, sun-block, bottle of water, magazine. The chair was the hard part.) And then there was the matter of post-beach: Like hell I was going to come home on public transportation with my hair all raggedy and matted and my butt wet from the swimsuit! In short, for 3 long years up north, I didn't go swimming outside anywhere. And came home to Texas with the same yellowish-greenish pallor sported by so many Northeastern girls who weren't ever able to get out to the Hamptons! :)

Luckily, back home in Texas, my mom's subdivision in Austin has a pool. I've been out almost every day for the past 3 weeks since I've been here. Thank god. Since I was about 8, I've always felt better, and better-looking, with a tan. I like the healthy glow. My hair grows faster, gets sun-bleached. I get skinnier in summer from "exercising" -- aka "splashing around." And lying out by the pool, any pool, for an afternoon is almost always mentally relaxing (as is playing out there with the nephews, which I've also been doing).

OK, so three reasons for being glad to be back home in Texas: Better tan, better hair, and... I love wearing that cool Klimt-suit, even if it's getting a bit saggy after all these years! :)

Love (definition)

A guy-friend once told me a story. He'd been dating a girl, maybe for close to a year. They were monogamous, pretty serious, but there'd been no commitment talk yet.

One night, the girl my friend was dating (aka, GMFWD) got a call from her sister. Her sister had hit a pedestrian and killed him. It wasn't her fault at all. But it was extremely traumatic, nonetheless: The pedestrian's head went through the windshield of the sister's car; he was beheaded in the process, and his brains splattered throughout the car.

Once the police got through investigating, the car was released to the sister. It wasn't evidence or anything; she was free to keep the thing. Only, it had brains splattered all over it.

The sister was, obviously, freaked out. She called her sister, the GMFWD. The GMFWD, not knowing what the heck to do, called her boyfriend/my friend... My friend got in touch with the sisters' dad. (Both girls were close to the dad, but hadn't wanted to involve him in such a matter.) The dad and my friend then got together and spent a day cleaning the splattered brains out of the car to render it drivable again. (The family wasn't well off. They couldn't simply dump the cursed car and get a new one. THIS one had to continue to be used.)

That -- in its most elemental form -- is love. Having someone in your life who is willing to literally scrub the brains out of your sister's car.

While I am very grateful for not having ever been faced with such a horrid scenario as the above, I am also envious. What would experiencing such pure love and devotion feel like? In the face of the most extreme, to know that you are protected and loved...

In Austin: The path to the beer-store...

...is often fraught with wildflowers.

Lindsanity Has A New GF!

I'm sorry, but Lindsay's just hot.


Lindsanity Has A New GF!

Joan Crawford Marquee. 1930s. USA.

This strange, moony land...

E-mail from a girl in 2004

"...don't fret, baby. ;.) Let me believe in you at times when you don't do that yourself.

Mama,
xo"

If only she'd meant it...

Dreamy

A Guide for...

Such strange love, love
where is your hand, my heart

It's Only Love

I get high when I see you go by... (Haven't I the right to make it up, girl?)

Out of My Head

Sometimes I feel
Like I am drunk behind the wheel
The wheel of possibility
However it may roll
Give it a spin
See if you can somehow factor in
You know there's always more than one way
To say exactly what you mean to say

Was I out of my head? Was I out of my mind?
How could I have ever been so blind?
I was waiting for an indication
It was hard to find
Don't matter what I say only what I do
I never mean to do bad things to you
So quiet but I finally woke up
If you're sad then its time you spoke up too

"I knew you at once."

Love Letter
Sylvia Plath


Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chiseled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

Rain

Fragments

Nightlight at noon
where I'm quartered and drawn
to eye lashes of light minute
in their welting

-----------------------------------------

SoLo

What will Manhattan do
with only the moon to glow over it?

-----------------------------------------

Hurt

I tried to explain how hurt I was
How dislocated, the pain of popping myself back in...
And in the end, could say nothing.
I was out cold. Now, here I am. I'm here.

------------------------------------------

I imagined us dancing at the War Dead ball
your widow's weeds and all; the crowd aghast
and me laughing

-------------------------------------------

Ghost of a Suicide

Rust of a razor blade
Slip of a knot, or your tongue
A ham sandwich gag (oh, your throaty laugh)

They fished you out of an ocean once
rusted trident in your side
plastic rings embedded in your bloated wrists

The girl's stolen kiss was of salt, she said.
What things have slithered past you as you slept.

Garden F(r)iends

Report from the Land o' San Antonio:

Truth in advertising in my mother's garden that flies the "Garden Friends" banner?? :) Thus far, in the past 8 days, no sightings of: ladybugs, butterflies, dragonflies, or hearts. (Bumblebees and birds: yes.)

Now, on the other hand... On only the second night of my staying here, I, out on the back patio overlooking said "garden" at 1 a.m. smoking a cig, caught a big ol' RAT about to scamper down the rubber tree that stretched as high as the roof. (He was about to plop onto the patio, but he saw me and ran the heck back up to the roof.) The night before, I'd seen a tremendous cockroach scurrying around out there. And a couple of geckos. During the day, there are plenty of ants and doodlebugs.

Where are the banners celebrating the TRUE inhabitants of gardens?? :) If I were a seamstress and artist, it would be funny to slip a surreptitious "Garden FIENDS" banner over the "Friends" one... with "avatars" for rats, cockroaches, geckos, doodlebugs, and ants instead of the stereotypically cheery homespun thingies! :)

Tall Grass

This morning, the morning of my last full day here before I fly back to Texas, I woke up in the middle of a very vivid dream. I was lying on my back in a field of tall grass, wiggling my toes, just lying there enjoying listening and looking and feeling the grass swaying. (There was a girl in the distance, shooting at birds. She kept leaping at them and taking aim, but she always missed, as I knew she would. For some reason, this wasn't ominous in any way. I kind of enjoyed her activity in the background, while I just lay there enjoying myself.) Woke up with a start, feeling like I was still on my back in the grass. I felt happy for the first time in ages.

----------------

'There is no use trying,' said Alice, 'One can't believe impossible things.'
'I dare say you haven't had much practice,' said the queen, 'When I was your age, I always did it for a half hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

~Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

The real "Lady Lazarus" poem

After my below goofy "Moving is an art..." post, I went back and searched for the text of Sylvia Plath's original "Lady Lazarus," 1962. I first read this poem when I was maybe 15, sometime in the '80s. At the time, it gave me a thrill... no other word to describe it. To my young self, it was cool, decadent, goth, jazzy, rock-n-roll-y, non-PC (though no one used that term then)... And emotionally/mentally shocking because of, what I realized later after years of writing and studying poetry, its utter clarity/control of surface language and simultaneous harsh realism/spooky surrealism/clairvoyance -- everything that lies beneath what we actually say/live on the surface.

You can't read this like you read any other poem. It's like music. You don't read the thing, you FEEL it, KNOW it as truth in your bones. Right now, I can't get over how spectacular this is.


LADY LAZARUS

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Moving is an art...

...like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out...

[with decided apologies to Sylvia Plath!] :)

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I've been packing up boxes to mail home all week, which has been much more time-consuming and exhausting than I'd expected. I was supposed to, according to my self-imposed schedule, have been done with packing all but my computer by Sunday, then mailed all today (Monday), but... Nah. I'd left all of my paperwork and personal stuff for last, so I spent more than 6 hours today sorting everything out, tossing stuff, then boxing/taping/addressing. Interminable and grimy and potentially depressing work, except for the fact that there's also a sort of "cleansing" that takes place when you're forced to edit down to the essentials. ("What's really important to me?")

I still have 8 boxes to lug to the post office Tuesday. (No car, so I have to cart the suckers in separate trips to the PO, which is several blocks away. Will, via shopping cart, take 3 trips and about 2-1/2 hours.) Whew. I'm tuckered out.

All of this latest packing up made me think of all of the moving I've done in the past. A bunch. And how tired I am of it, both mentally and physically. (At least when I was a kid, I didn't have to do the physical work all by myself!)

'65 - '77 (baby to 6th grade): Lived in 6 different locales (3 in different Texas cities, 1 in Portugal, 1 in South Carolina, 1 in Georgia)
'77 - '83 (6th - 12th grade): Azle, Texas. 1 house.
'83 - '88: Austin, Texas. (5 different places)
'88: Fort Worth, Texas. (2 different places)
'89 - '94: Austin. (5 different places)
'94 - '95: San Francisco. (2 different places)
'95 - 2007: Austin. ('95 - '00, 3 places; '00 - '07, same place)
'07 - '10: New York City/Weehawken. (3 places in first year; same place for last 2 years)

Is there a lesson for me there? For instance, I've lived longest in one spot in my Azle house as a teen (6 years) and in my Austin rented house as an adult (6 years). Azle, I have no sense of security about, no desire AT ALL to ever go back there. Austin: Those 6 years were fine, but, again, it's not like they instilled a sense of "home" or "security" in me... I think the "lesson" might be: It's a real pain in the ass to move around all the time. Thinking that things might be magically better, when in fact they almost always turn out to be pretty much exactly the same (unless you're escaping from an incompatible roommate/lover -- in which case: Move, move! And learn a lesson about moving in with such in the first place!). So why not just stay somewhere -- sans roommate, of course -- and avoid all the moving crap? Hmmmm. May be.

Ironically, despite my newfound-mature wants and wishes, I'm still not going to be situated for months to come after leaving NYC/Weehawken. First: All my stuff, and me, is off to my mom's house in San Antonio. Then SHE, with me and my boxed-up stuff trailing along, moves to a new house in Austin a few weeks later. Where I sit with all of my boxed-up stuff (and no cable or car) until I can find some/any lowly job and finally get my own place again... which will most likely be a cheap, loud apartment amidst equally poor college kids that I can't wait to get away from once I get a better-paying job more suited to my "lofty" and "mature" standards.

Jesus, what a grind. If I were more pleasant and charming, I'd be out shopping for a Sugar Mama/Daddy/Anyone to ensconce me in a manse. Yes, that's right. After all of this dislocation, I've now been driven to wanting to be "ensconced" in a goddamn "manse."

I think I've just been Crank-Yanked... or somethin'!

There used to be an old show on MTV, I think it was, called "Crank Yankers," which featured Muppet-looking puppets acting out actual prank phone-calls. (You see the puppets as they make the calls, and hear real call recipients' voices on the other end of the line. Stuff like the old man puppet calling a cleaning service and asking if the lady will have sex with him after she cleans his house since his mean, crippled wife upstairs won't put out. Funnily, most of the real-life people are extremely patient under quite bizarre circumstances.)

Anyhow, this past weekend, I had furniture/appliances for sale online, including a phone number to call. Almost immediately after I posted my ad for my TV, what sounded like an old Chinese woman called. She raved on and on about what a great deal it was and said her son would come pick it up immediately. And since I sounded so nice on the phone, she was going to send me a special dish as a present. I told her "no, no, thank you, but you don't have to give me food." But she insisted, and said her son would be there with the food and cash for the TV in 15 minutes... OK, a little odd, but maybe she's just super-nice.

Well, 15 or so minutes later, the doorbell rings. I rush downstairs. And there's a Mexican or Central American delivery guy there with a food delivery from a Chinese place. I was puzzled. I'd thought the woman said she was sending over some HOME-MADE food with her son, along with cash for the TV... Hmmm. Maybe she owns a restaurant and sent me something from there... So I started to thank the guy and take the food; but then he gave me a total to pay! "It's not already paid for?" No, it was not! So there was the guy, waiting for his money. And there I was, trying to explain to him -- and him not understanding English very well -- that I hadn't ordered the food, that an old Chinese woman had just called me and said she was sending her son to buy a TV and bring me some food... He was utterly bewildered, as was I. I finally just had to apologize profusely and send him away with the food.

Well, a few minutes later, my phone rings again. It's the "old Chinese lady."
"So, you likee your food?" [Truly, she said "likee."]
"Um...There was a delivery guy just here, but he was from a restaurant. And he wanted me to pay for the food. Did you order that?"
"What?? That my son! I told you I was sending you food! You no likee my food?"
"Ma'am, I thought your son was coming here to buy my TV! This was a delivery guy from a restaurant! And he wanted to charge me for the food."
"That my son! That my son! He supposed to give you money and food, and you give him TV!"
"Ma'am, the guy at the door looked Mexican! He wasn't Asian! I don't think that was your son! And he didn't mention a TV..."
"What?! You can't tell difference between Asian and Mexican? What's wrong with you..."

At that point, I thought, "Oh my god, I'm going mad" and hung up...

Today, it's funny as hell, but at the very time, I was really kind of disturbed by how weird the situation was! Thus...what a good prank! :)