1:30 am July 6 (is it too soon to feel relief?)

As usual, for many years now, I've always been very tense around July 4 and New Year's Eve, knowing that fireworks will be going off in my neighborhood for hours and hours----not just putting me on edge and disrupting whatever I'm doing, but also scaring my pets.

This year, July 4th was on a Thursday. In the days and hours up 'til nighfall on July 4, I'd mentally prepared as much as I could: "OK, you know it's going to go on from about 9pm to 3am... Don't get mad or upset... etc." Surprisingly, there were only a few explosions; maybe 3 or 4 up until 1 am or so. Not, like in my earlier years at this apartment complex (starting in 2017), directly WITHIN the complex or anything! When the bursts started around 9, my cats disappeared, then slowly came out again after 1:30am... I initially felt bad for them, thinking that the booms would surely start again, but they didn't...

Today, Friday the 5th, I was again paranoid: "The 4th was on a Thursday; they're all going to be saving up their fireworks for the weekend, Friday and Saturday nights..." Well, as of now, 1:30 am Friday night, I've heard nothing all night (though I had again steeled myself for it). I hesitate to even write this, for fear that I'll curse my fragile peace! :)

Just wondering: What in the hell happened to make this year's July 4th much more peaceful than in years past? I doubt that there was a crackdown on fireworks sellers outside city limits. (Fireworks have usually been banned in Austin itself, but that has never stopped any teens/20-somethings/Mexicans celebrating Christmas from being obnoxious until 3 am.) 

Addendum: As of 5:10 am: Still no explosions! I'm so lucky!

The Dems' Post-Biden Plan

"I think it's very important...for us at every moment in time...

to see the moment in time in which we exist in our present..."

After this gibberish, who ya got?
Buttigieg and Klobuchar, with their publicly posted pronouns? 

(showing their inability to think for themselves and dismiss their party's idiocy)
Greasy Newsom?

Donald Trump: American Bad Ass (2016, Kid Rock)

I'm not quite as male-aggressive as this, but...
Given what this country has been through with its Marxism and
lack of merit in the past few years...

I'm all about retribution and hard-core course correction.

While I'm putting out candles...

While I was in NYC from 2007 thru 2010, and then when I came home to Austin and still did not have a steady job: Once I re-met Sandra in 2008, and found out that she had just lost her alimony court case and would not have any more money... Every job that I looked for for myself, I prefaced with a job that I looked for for her. Obviously, she could/would not do office work or some-such. So I tried to find her undemanding, quirky jobs in Houston, where she was: One was a woman who needed someone to help her shop for home furnishings, a job that would last only 1 or 2 days. Another was a job selling Christmas trees. And then a part-time job at a university art gallery. I tried to find things suited to her.

Years later, Sandra told me that she never followed up on ANY of the job openings that I'd sent her.

I wish she'd told me this. I could have saved myself some time and effort.

But she had already told me that she needed money, and didn't have any. So in my plebeian way, I was trying to help in the only way that I knew how. I had no money to GIVE her, so the only thing I had to offer was job leads. Not what she wanted. She did briefly work as a real-estate agent; I saw her card (but how? she had absolutely no head for business or organization). After that, her addresses changed and then finally dropped off the face of the earth altogether. She was sleeping on the couches of male friends (or was it their couches?), and they were lending her their cars, etc. I'd offered her a place to stay, a spare room, in Austin, but she didn't want that.

What ever I had to offer wasn't enough.

The Platters: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (1958)

 

 

They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
I of course replied
Something here inside
Cannot be denied

They said some day you'll find
All who love are blind
When your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes

So I chaffed them, and I gaily laughed
To think they could doubt my love
And yet today, my love has flown away
I am without my love

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes

Smoke gets in your eyes

Lover of Unreason

In order to get over something: Perhaps read about similar feelings from others again and again and again, until you finally recognize that it's universal and not just your own private hell. The below books helped me, over the past few weeks, to get over Sandra's memory---although I think that I'd already done much of the emotional, psychological work post-2018, after multiple rejections. Although, after that, she still kept coming back---up through her stroke in May of 2020, and her subsequent few e-mails to me after that point, up until early 2021. And then nothing, until her death in 2024.

Not that Sandra had anything specifically to do with the Sylvia Plath/Ted Hughes/Assia Wevill triage. ALTHOUGH: Sandra and I did take two poetry classes in the mid-1980s with Assia Wevill's 1960s husband David Wevill. And at a Christmas party at his house, we minions all left at the end of the night while Sandra stayed behind (I was in love with her then, AND SHE WAS MY RIDE! So I was doubly pissed! I caught a ride home with a couple of other boys from the class---we later sat around watching and commenting on something on TV... I know I didn't have sex with either of them; how in the world did I actually get home?).

Sandra was as beautiful, and as obsessively messed up, as Assia. Sandra told me later (and I believe her) that she and Wevill had only lain briefly together on his couch and talked. (30 years later, when I was mad at her, I'd go on to accuse: "I KNOW you slept with Wevill! That's why you got an A++ on your poetry project! Who gets a "PLUS PLUS"?!)

 

I have now officially survived the past 6 weeks!

There's still more to come in the series of medical crap, but at least I'm now basically over the hump and basically know what to expect in the next few weeks of crap.

I'd been living pretty much stress-free since July a year ago, after my work group's contract was not renewed but was ultimately, luckily, picked up by another company. So there were those 3 months (April thru July 2023) wondering what would happen. Scary, because I'd gotten quite used to the cushy salary and was psychologically terrified at the idea of being thrown back into temp work and again just scraping by after a few years of financial security.

After the good job news in July 2023, I've been basically puttering along stupidly for the past year. Until I decided that I needed to get serious about my health-care---as in, making regular checkups and such, which I hadn't been doing for the past 15 years or so. From 2007 thru 2014---my temping years in NYC and afterward after my return to Austin---I didn't have health care, and nothing was wrong with me physically, so I didn't worry about it. Then when I had my editing job at the local University, I had full health/dental/vision care until I quit in 2019, but I never once went to a doctor or dentist. Then when I got my new editing job in early 2020, I also had full health care, but still never went. Same when we switched over to the new company last summer.

Why the change this May? Eh, I was feeling older (50s) and I'd been in my current apartment for 7 years (longer than I'd lived anywhere in my entire life), and I thought it was about time to "settle down" and start "doing the responsible thing"---like seeing doctors! So May saw a first-time doctor's visit with blood tests and recommended shots (took the Shingles shot but turned down another Covid shot, a Tetanus shot, a Pneumonia shot----please! Blatantly Big Pharma-inspired, which led to less trust for my new doctor). Then a bunch of test results e-mailed to me. (How personal and caring!) Then one phone-call about high cholesterol and needing to get on statins... Again, no. The doctor didn't even bother talking to me about diet/exercise, just wanted to immediately get me on statins; again, blatantly Big Pharma-inspired. And then there was the ColoGuard thing I had to do (written about earlier). And then I had a skin biopsy for several moles scheduled for July 1, which was just re-scheduled because of the doc's vacation; so obviously I don't have life-threatening skin cancer, but the doctor is performing it just to perform it, etc. Still haven't gotten the mammogram that every woman my age should have. Why? Because the "diagnostic clinic" recommended by my doc sent me a TEXT about scheduling it---I'm not a fucking teenager! Don't TEXT me about setting up a medical appointment!

Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. All of the above has the potential to go on and on and on and on for the rest of my days on this earth! There's no clarity about what's serious and what is not; it's all seemingly "Get her to go for multiple tests because I get her insurance money out of it." And then, like the Tree of Death branching out, one test leads to another and then to another, etc. NEVER-ENDING. As far as I know, there's nothing actually wrong with me, but I could conceivably spend the rest of my days getting tested for something or other every month forEVER! No thank you.

And all of the above did not address what I'd initially specifically wanted to find out about: My right ear hearing seems foggy, my left knee sometimes locks up on me, and I keep feeling pin-pricks all over my body ever since my 2020 Covid shot! Where is the medical professional's concern for THOSE very basic things?

Dentist-wise, and probably why I'm feeling most lighthearted and "over the hump" right now: Had my first dental checkup in a decade in May. Just went in for a basic cleaning, but noooooooooooo.... After X-rays, had to make appointments for a "tooth scaling and planing" on each side of my mouth. Again, I was very skeptical---was this all actually necessary, or just a bid for more insurance money?! And the weirdo receptionist, upon my first visit, gave me a printout showing that I would be paying $500 out of my own pocket for each subsequent scaling/planing! Which led to more stress of me contacting my company and its insurance company, etc., wondering why they weren't paying for what was supposedly a routine procedure, etc., while they said they DID cover it... I debated up until 48 hours (deadline to cancel) before the first appointment, then sucked it up and went in as scheduled... Yesterday. It was uncomfortable for over an hour, but not utterly unbearable. And the young woman who performed the task was very nice and patient (as in when I kept gagging when tartar/water were spewed down my throat, and when the dentist's numbing shots hadn't quite taken effect). And when I went to check out, turned out it was only $96 instead of the $500; so that was nice. And afterwards, I only had a weirdly numb mouth for 3 hours, and slept most of it off, and then took 3 ibuprofens for the aftermath headache and ate mashed potatoes when I was hungry. In short: I survived what I was most scared about!

And now that I've done this first half of my mouth, I now know what to expect with the second half, two weeks from now, so it won't be a horrible surprise. (Though, in insurance news: I'll now be expected to come in every 3 months to "maintain" the deep-cleaning that's just been done... Look, I will do this for about 1 year. Then, after that, I'm going to go back to the good-old-fashioned "twice a year" dental checkups! Which seems quite reasonable compared to both the decade of doing nothing and this new-fangled concept of "every 3 months"!)

So, yeah, there's the raw animal feeling of "Phew! I survived the first round of stupid tests and scrapings and ridiculous fears that I, according to my doctor, might be about to keel over at any second if I don't immediately get on statins, et al."

Combined with the completely emotionally shocking news in May that Sandra had died, after years of complications from a stroke that she'd had in 2020, and the past 4 years of assisted living that I was, for the most part, not aware of.... (I'd been so angry at her for years, and we hadn't been in regular contact since 2018, though she did call me in 2020 to tell me, haltingly, of her stroke. She then e-mailed me maybe three times more before early 2021. Equally haltingly. But she'd often communicated the exact same sporadic way before. Honestly, to me, her post-stroke communication was a bit similar to some of her other communications in the past. I thought that she was just being difficult, as usual. I did not recognize that she was actually in trouble this time, that she actually needed a friend.)

I'd made my first round of doctor appointments before I heard the news about Sandra, but once I found out about her death, it all became intertwined: I really COULD have a stroke or heart attack at any minute, just like she did (just like, I suppose, anyone could). I could also be forced into a horrible Medicaid situation, like she was. She had her two daughters, and I know that one of them married into money, but nonetheless, Sandra was basically dumped into a tiny one-room Medicaid-sponsored assisted-living situation for the last 4 years of her life on this earth. And that could very well be me at any time. With my grief at her passing, and my grief and guilt at our never being able to come to some sort of peaceful friendship after all of our emotional turmoil for over 16 years, her ultimate fate still looms quite large in my psyche: I mourn for us, and I mourn for her personally tragic life, but I also, quite shallowly, hope to avoid a similar physical---and mental---fate for myself.

'I Am Ready To Fight!': AOC and Loser Jamaal Bowman

There is a reason why we don't want your ridiculous illogic to run ANY aspect of our country.
I'm a bi woman, but I'll be damned if I let non-thinking, Marxist-ideology-spouting idiots like AOC or Bowman represent me in any way.
If given the stark choice between conservative old white men (raised on old-school intellectualism and scholarship) and these hysterical pseudo-"street" Marxists (AOC had a conventional middle-class, college-educated background---she's posing as an "ethnic outsider") who have no idea of either who they are or what they're raving about... 

I'll take the basic old white men. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

'Ceasefire Now, Let's Get It Poppin'!': Bowman, AOC

This friggin' racist Marxist just got defeated in the Dem primary. THANK GOD.
Hopefully, AOC is next to go down.

Jamaal Bowman: First "Squad" member to go down.

This utter idiot---the only male member of the insane "Squad"--- just lost his Democrat primary on June 25.
Bowman appeared to be clueless that his district was 40% Jewish---while he was supporting Hamas terrorists. THANK GOD, a sane, albeit milquetoast, Democrat got rid of this radical trash:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/25/jamaal-bowman-loses-george-latimer-00164997
 

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (from "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant")

The "Petra" character is only in her late 30s in this film, but this scene reminds me of something that might have happened in Joan Crawford's apartment in the '70s. Much of this film reminds me of something about Joan Crawford in her later years.

A mediocre screenplay that I wrote 20 years ago, had it been much better, 

should have had something like this very scene... And then the most astute critics (non-existent for the past 10 utterly dumbed-down and censorious Marxist/Racial-theory years) might have said, proud of themselves: "Ah, echoes of Fassbinder!"

The Great Pretender (from The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant)

The very brilliant ending of "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (Fassbinder, 1972)
Petra (in bed here) has just, for the first time, asked her long-time masochistic faithful servant
Marlene to "Tell me about yourself." This is Marlene's reaction. (Note the pistol.)

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Fassbinder, 1972)

Friday night (yesterday), I settled in for a long night of gay films on TCM. First came the comfortable (sometimes very cloyingly so; I always hate the latter part with the adopted "troubled teen" that opens with the funny slippers) "Torch Song Trilogy," which I'd seen many times before; then the 1968 doc about a drag pageant "The Queen" (which I'd never seen before; not that interestingly or psychologically well-done, like "Paris Is Burning"; and I kept thinking re the slightly older/fatter guy who didn't want to appear in a swimsuit like the rest: Make a fucking joke of it and appear in a 1920s full-bodied swimsuit or something!). 

I thought I'd go to sleep after that, but then came "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972 by Fassbinder). I'd seen nothing at all of Fassbinder. And thought, based on the streaming film description and most films by Germans, that this was going to be a boring talk-fest among lesbians...

Well, it was somewhat "about lesbians," but... Oh My God! :)  I was viewing drowsily/politely and disliking star Margit Cartensen's face until...

"Date Night"---Those outfits! :) 
And then the funny "Lie to me..." scene: "OK---I was walking around all night thinking of you." "Really?!"
And then the "Drunken Petra Goes Wild" scene near the end.
And the final "Great Pretender" scene...

After the first few minutes, I don't think that my jaw literally dropped, but I certainly woke-the-fuck up, and my eyes certainly widened, and I was certainly laughing out loud several times. My god, how original and weird and funny! One thing that immediately came to mind: Several scenes from David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" were obviously heavily inspired by this movie.

YouTube clips to follow! See above.

The Beatles: Paperback Writer (1966)

Paul McCartney: Summer’s Day Song (1980)

Someone's sleeping
Through a bad dream
Tomorrow it will be over
For the world will soon be waking
To a summer's day

Julie London (1961): There'll Be Some Changes Made

Back in 2000, online, I fell in love via e-mail texts and posts on a Joan Crawford message board. This person (going by the name of "Julie") posed as a British woman who'd had an abortion, whose mother had killed herself, who was now living in the UK with a sugar daddy.
As it turned out, this "woman" was a gay male Norwegian tranny who, in his 40s, still lived with his parents (both still alive) in Norway. His personal-history claims were all quite false, but he also introduced me to this great singer, Julie London. 

 

He also claimed this song as inspirational---I'm sure that was true, given his dramatic identity changes!
 

But a tranny's latter-day claiming of this song should not ever take away from its original meaning: An inspirational, sassy song for any actual woman seeking a way out of a personal rut. 

 

"Julie"/"Geir" and her/his creepy role-playing kind of ruined my appreciation for Julie London for a few years. But this is really a great song, with great phrasing!

There'll be a change in the weather
And a change in the sea
From now on, there'll be a change in me
My walk will be different, my talk and my name --
Nothin' about me's gonna be the same

I'm gonna change my way of livin'
And if that ain't enough
I'm gonna change the way I strut my stuff
Nobody wants you when you're old and gray --
There'll be some changes made today
There'll be some changes made

My air will be different, my hair and my face
You'll be surprised at all the things I replace
I'm gonna change my whole psychology
And Daddy, that ain't all
I'll even find new ways to have myself a ball
You'll find your baby's always fit for play
There'll be some changes made today
There'll be some changes made...

One Reason for Living: Irritation at Utter Stupidity

Your friend's dead after a stroke; you argued constantly and hadn't spoken for the past 3 years; you feel like shit and feel utter guilt for not helping make her life a little better in her last years; and like shit because you're in Austin and no one in Houston knew you and you didn't hear about the death and memorial service in February until you found it after a random online search in May... You realize nearly the exact same thing happened back in the '80s (no Internet search, but a phone-call to the parents of Ginny in November 1988, asking for her... Whoops---She had died the previous March! "We thought we told all the Azle people..." I wasn't just an "Azle person"! I went on your family vacation with you in the Summer of '83, for pete's sake! And she'd just called me in late '87 and asked me to come out to Georgia...) UGH. A bunch of very complicated, awful feelings. That I can't do anything about.

Thankfully, there are everyday shallow, minor occurrences that allow you to feel a bit of your "old, obnoxious, ALIVE self" again (instead of the utterly emotionally destitute self---and how long will this go on, and please make it stop, God, crystals, TV, books, music, anything).

In today's case: My apartment complex cheaply hires a group of very unskilled, illegal laborers to mutilate trees, put up fencing, etc. There have been constant projects for the past 3 months or so all around my apartment. I work from home, so I've gotten to see them taking breaks every hour, sitting on their asses whooping it up in my backyard and on the sidewalk in front of my apartment (and every other apartment they've been working around). Today, they were working in front of my apt. And they had the fucking nerve to put their mini-music-speakers ON MY WINDOW LEDGE and start blasting their music! LIKE FUCKING HELL! I went out and was polite as I gestured toward the speakers and shook my head "no." (They speak no English.) They very nicely took the speakers down. Only to move them to the window ledge of the maintenance room right next door and continue to play their music! Now, truth is, with my AC on, the music didn't sound super-loud once they'd moved the speakers. So I did not call the apt management office or go out again... So I consider that a "win" over my own utterly impatient nature. For the time being. They didn't finish the fencing they were working on today; they'll be back tomorrow AM. Will I be so patient tomorrow? I have no idea. JUST TRY ME.

All I know is that this bit of straightforward confrontation of overt idiocy was a rather nice break from feeling like absolute murky emotional shit for the past few weeks. It felt semi-satisfactory to have such a stupid minor problem and to confront it in a polite way. I'm not dead yet.

Maren Morris: Rich (2018)

Shit, I'd be rich!

Maren Morris: My Church (2016)

I've cussed on a Sunday
I've cheated and I've lied
I've fallen down from grace
A few too many times
But I find holy redemption
When I put this car in drive
Roll the windows down and turn up the dial

Can I get a hallelujah
Can I get an amen
Feels like the Holy Ghost running through ya
When I play the highway FM
I find my soul revival
Singing every single verse
Yeah I guess that's my church

When Hank brings the sermon
And Cash leads the choir
It gets my cold cold heart burning
Hotter than a ring of fire
When this wonderful world gets heavy
And I need to find my escape
I just keep the wheels rolling, radio scrolling
Until my sins wash away

Can I get a hallelujah
Can I get an amen
Feels like the Holy Ghost running through ya
When I play the highway FM
I find my soul revival
Singing every single verse
Yeah I guess that's my church

Biden's America

NO THANK YOU.
An insane world where we must all pretend that the Emperor has his wits about him,
that First Man Doug Emhoff is cool and funky, 

that non-religious San Franciscan Kamala Harris is really "black" and into this black gospel song,
that the dude at the left end of the front row in the glittery dress is really a diva, 

that the low-life George Floyd's brother "Philonise" is a wonderful example of black achievement.

A myriad of friggin' lies and freak shows going on all at once.

Everything is so sad right now.

I think if I didn't have my 5 cats, I'd kill myself. But they look at me with trust and love, and I'd never leave them to the "authorities" of a cat shelter. (I can't picture them in a tiny cage---my babies.) 

One thing I have thought of: If I go out via Seconal, or some other drug prescribed by my newfound "health-care system," I'll leave a ton of food and gallons of water, and the back sliding-glass door open about 6 inches (with the blinds in front of it, so no one really notices that the door is open). And kill myself on the 2nd of the month---that way, my rent has been paid, and no one will notice anything for the next 4 weeks!

I think Mama Hennessy and latter-day adoptee Cinco Beasley would be OK: Both were strays to begin with, both born in this neighborhood, both knowing how to hunt for themselves. The "kittens," though, born nearly in my backyard and never knowing any other life than in the safety of my apartment---Pete, and Sasha Su, and especially my Mini... Pete and Sasha are big hungry hippos! I think they would be OK. (Pete is a big gorgeous cat with beautiful eyes, and anyone seeing him in a shelter cage would immediately want him. Sasha is physically hearty and silvery and pretty, but also more stand-offish and shy, a lady---who might pick her right offhand? And my little black Mini ("Solomon Grundy")... She nearly died a few months after she was born... If I killed myself and left her by herself, I don't think she'd know what to do or how to act. When the authorities finally came weeks later, she'd probably still be sitting there, half-starved... My Familiar.

I've totally now crossed over into "old": Here's a post about Cologuard.

Dear friends, there will be no more poetry or posts about Romantic yearnings and songs reminding me of loves won and lost. From this point forward, there will only be... HEALTH REPORTS!

Ha! OK, NOT. But, dear god, I've been in the maw of the US health-care system for the past few weeks, and it's awful and creepy. Since I hadn't been to a doctor in over 15 years, I've got a lot of tests to catch up on, according to the health-care profession. One thing, when I went to my new doctor for the first time weeks ago: To test for colon cancer, do I want a colonoscopy in the doctor's office or a Cologuard poop kit sent to my home? Hoping to avoid any more invasive probing, I chose the home kit... But then it arrived... And there it sat... I read the instrux, which seemed a bit complicated and finicky about the consistency of the stool. Not to be gross, but how am I supposed to know what the consistency will be that day? Or if I will poop too much for their included liquid solution that MUST cover the sample?

Geez. 

I kept putting it off, and putting it off. And finally just got bored with being worried about it and just woke up today "with purpose" and set up the collection kit and pooped and packed it up and was done with it. Here ya go, UPS---enjoy!

Gawd, is this the future of my life?? I remember a Bette Davis quote: "Growing old ain't for sissies." I thought that meant getting used to creaky joints and failing eyesight and worse hair and such. I didn't stop to think that it meant being subjected to a constant barrage of "testing." I mean, I'll do it up to a point, but after only a couple of weeks, I'm already completely fed up with the medical-system "processes." And I'm not even sick! Imagine if it turns out I actually have something!

Phew. The past 6 weeks have been a phase of checkups: For me, my car, my home. And Sandra dying. (Sorry, Sandra, to lump you in with all of this, but it's obviously a turning point in my life of some sort. I've been noodling along for years sans any changes---now, here are the changes all at once: psychological, as well as physical and technological. And both of my 80-something-year-old parents, I expect to die any day, without me having any reconciliation with them, which is also going to be a massive psychological blow when it happens.)

Obviously, it's time I get my life in order for the final phase. I'm now "old." One personal hope remains: I'll meet a self-assured, mentally stable (but interestingly quirky) man---not a neurotic female or tranny---around my age with an RV and we go traveling across the US. And he's also interested in traveling in Europe---I STILL want to see the UK and Germany and Russia! Ah, but most men of my age still want someone who can cook and clean---not someone to offer insightful commentary!)

Never Give Up - TRUMP 2024 (Gangsta's Paradise )

KEEPIN IT MAGA FT MICHAEL THE BLACK MAN

Benefits of being OLD

For one thing, when in my local car shop in the past week: The 30-something clerk said to me re his recommendation that I replace my old tires: "If you were MY mother, I would not want you to be driving on these tires."

(OK, could be, probably was, just a sales pitch, but... Thanks for the filial concern!)

In my grocery store today: The cheap tuna cans that I usually buy for my cats weren't at the front of the shelf. When I peered down on the bottom shelf, there were a few cans set way back. I couldn't reach them without lying down on the supermarket floor (which I wasn't about to do)! So I got to find a young clerk and say to her: "I'm too old and creaky to get those cans---can you reach them for me?"

So, yeah, post-50, there ARE some benefits! :)

I'm now officially (emotionally) OLD

The knowledge of Sandra's passing from this earth has made me feel "old" for the very first time. (Before, in my 50s, I'd only been thinking I was "middle aged.") 

For one thing, I knew the whole history of this woman's life, which she was very free in sharing. I don't think I've ever known more about any person on this earth. She was utterly raw emotionally, and didn't hide any of her struggles---every childhood trauma, every adult obsession, every poem, every insane thought about helicopters following her and tracking devices planted in her home.

I first fell in love with her in person in a poetry class in 1985 at UT Austin; aside from seeing her twice a week in class, hung around her only a few times for 2 years, then lost track of her completely, until she out-of-the-blue contacted me in 2008 when I was living in NYC and she'd come upon an online blog post I'd written about her and our poetry classes.

Right at that time (2008), her youngest daughter had just turned 18, and so Sandra's child support was ending. (She'd been married to a rich Houston lawyer from around 1987 to 1992; upon the divorce, she had child support that allowed her a nice apartment until the 2nd/last daughter turned 18.)

From 2008 on was a series of constant wanderings and address changes. 

A man that Sandra considered to be the Love of Her Life died in 2010. He'd had a sexual relationship with her mother back in the '70s before the mother's death, and then a 3-month sexual relationship with Sandra in the early 2000s. Sandra had constantly counted on her psychological connection with him to see her through, although he actually took out a restraining order against her.

After her unsuccessful legal battles with her first husband for alimony, she then relied on another rich Houston lawyer for her upkeep; he paid for another nice apartment for a few years, until he---in his late '70s---was too sick with cancer, and his family then put him in hospice care and cut off Sandra from contact with him. (Before he was sick, he offered to marry her, but she didn't love him and so she didn't... She was true to herself, I told her... But she and I both wondered later if she shouldn't have just married him for financial security...)

After this older man died, and she had absolutely no source of income (other than maybe $200 a month from her father's ongoing oil income continuing from the 1970s), Sandra basically couch-surfed at the homes of multiple friends in Houston. At one point, the local church once associated with her family paid for an apartment for a month or two (not a long-term lease). The last actual address I had for her was in 2014. After that, no real address. The last time I saw her in person was in 2015, when I spent the night with her at a relative's nice house in West Austin. (She was driving a car lent to her by a male friend in Houston.) We didn't get along on this weekend, but continued to keep in touch (and argue) constantly until about 2018. 

I then didn't hear much from her until May 2020, when she called and told me she'd had a stroke. We had sporadic contact from then until January 2021, when I got my last e-mail from her. She died February 21, 2024; I didn't find out until I did an Internet search in May 2024 and came across the death notice from the Houston paper (when her last addresses were given as Aaryn Hospice and Braeswood Estates assisted living).

All of this misery I relate here because it's utterly tragic and horrible. An example of how, despite our innermost dreams, it's quite possible that nothing at all will work out as we'd hoped and dreamed. When I first "re-met" Sandra in 2008, I'd thought she needed some actual concrete help re finances and a job. While I was looking for work myself (both in NYC and then later in Austin), I'd always do a simultaneous job-search in Houston for things that she might possibly be willing/able to do: A part-time job in an art gallery, a week-long gig as a personal shopper... When she was afraid that she'd have nowhere to stay, I told her that she, if desperate, could always stay with me. Which was a bit ridiculous when I had only my one-room apartment from 2010 to 2014. And slightly more plausible with my small 2-bed apartment from 2014 to 2017. My new (and current) apartment after 2017 was truly big and roomy, with a potential separate bed and bath for her, but by this time, we were barely in touch---at one point in 2018, she said she was coming to Austin and needed my place to stay, but she never showed up.

And then she died.

So, yeah, I feel old. After a lot of wasted energy. Emotional energy listening to her anger and impossible efforts at either winning over or defeating various men in her life. Emotional energy trying to navigate around how "helicoptors" and "random devices" were following her. And then energy trying to actually fix some concrete problems like where she might stay and where she might work to get money to support herself. About 10 years of this. (I consider my latter-day "relationship" with her as lasting from 2008 to 2018. After 2018, I'd kind of given up. Though my empathetic sorrow was renewed upon learning of her stroke in 2020, and then her death in 2024.)

I feel old because I now recognize that it's an utter myth that one's hopes and dreams will come true. Sandra is the perfect example of this. Utterly beautiful, utterly talented, utterly sexually attractive. Utterly unsatisfactory love life. Dismissed those who truly loved her, and drove herself mad over Jim (literally, she was institutionalized because of this obsession), who did not.

Even so, she had the support of various art/poetry mentors. When on the outs, she had the constant support of various friends/lovers to get back on her feet. She completely disregarded all of the help she was offered. Once she had her stroke in 2020, it was too late for her to ask for help, because all of her rich former lovers were dead, and she was physically incapable of asking for help. Her two last truncated messages to me in early 2021: "I had to" and "OK."  I tried to contact her a few times after this, but the messages were returned as undeliverable. I guess that in her hospital settings, her old phone had been taken away from her... A true nightmare---to be completely incommunicado.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation because one did not do it right the first multiple times: Sandra will definitely be reincarnated to a much LESSER state. She spent most of her time complaining about those who did her wrong and yearning for those who had rejected her. I had always hoped for, and expected a better end for, her: At least a small apartment, with a space where she could paint. And ultimate recognition for her actually brilliant work. The Fates proved otherwise, at least for the time being.

As for me: I've done pretty well with my lower-middle-class upbringing. As for Joan Crawford, while I'm thinking about it: The Ultimate in overcoming past psychological traumas.

Hold On, I'm Comin'

A week of a bunch of crap

Doctor test results showing up in my e-mail box sans any meaning or follow-up.
Oh, except my cholesterol is blatantly sky-high. So, I took a 10-minute walk, and, in an effort to forego meat, I've now been eating beans and fruit for days. In the words of my Pa-paw:
Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat 'em, the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel
So why not eat beans every meal!

(Funnily, at the time, my Ma-maw did not like us little cousins to be reciting this Pa-Paw ditty---much giggling among our pre-teen selves!)

Other crap:
Cable dude showing up 2 hours late.
Returning old cable boxes to the utterly obnoxious "Domain" part of Austin; trying to navigate around this idiotic fake creation of a "neighborhood."
Getting a meager car dashboard light repaired for $600 (after weeks of taking my car in and out of the shop).
And my annual raise is only 2% (which just about covers my new cable costs).

I FUCKING DESPISE THIS PAST WEEK. A complete lesson in standing still and/or moving backward (since the current actual inflation rate is 20%). I'm antsy by nature. I can't stand this stagnation.

And here's what I hate about this particular month of May, 2024:

I can't just go in and get my car fixed. No, it's $600 for "diagnostics" for a random dashboard light that might or might not be draining the battery that this shop first sold me.

I can't just go in and get a regular teeth-cleaning like people always used to get once or twice a year. No, I must have "planing" of each side of my mouth: $500 that I have to pay for each side because my insurance won't cover this.

I can't just go in and get a regular physical check-up (like I assume most people used to get). A simple check-up branches out to multiple check-ups for multiple random things, which means I'll be feeling like physical crap for days after each of these "check-ups." Gawd.

I'm still in my "well, get these things done" mode because I haven't bothered for so long. But... Jesus Christ. You go about your daily business just fine until you stop and see some "experts" about what's wrong with you...

I still have a personal theory: Go about our own life until what you like to do kills you. Better that than being personally dumbed-down by the Medical/Pharmaceutical complex.

I fucking hate the month of May.

Hate it. Nothing good has ever happened to me in May. The month (in Texas) is shittily humid pre-hard-core (but much-more-tolerable) dry heat and, for me, has always been the crossroads from bad to much worse.

Was just looking through my old poetry books, from May of 1985 (when I was only 19 years old). Home for the summer after my sophomore year at the University of Texas. Emotionally abandoned by Ginny and desperately needing her psychologically, while stuck at home with my mother, who would barely acknowledge my presence. I was utterly trapped, and I was going mad.

Four poems written on the same day/night---May 21, 1985---that make me nauseous to read today psychologically, but... DAMN! "My Danger" is a GREAT poem! (I think, with "My Danger," I recognized that I wasn't like everyone else, that I was capable of brilliance.)

And "Lost" and "Awake" are also pretty good for a 19-year-old kid. It's only the hideous, phony "Safe" that I really despise today.

LOST (5/21/85)

Lemon drops clash
and the sound could be Sunday
one day is next
and the midnight my noon
a bullfrog tune
moves closer each night
and the season fails to inspire...
I will die before she sees me
my shame at incontinence
in gaping waves across my face...
the dedication hand stutters---
I miss her.


MY DANGER (5/21/85)

What could I do?
There is no one to dress for
and I am saving water for the cause---
practice for the staunch defender that I may well be...
And pride plays no part of your features, I fear
the neighbors near
on gauzy tiptoe, tripping when I stir
This caution---for what?
Will I kill, with no gun?
Condemn, with no words to speak of?
What is my danger, cried the Innocent
and what pity can collect
on shadowed doorstep, the shuttered window
so free of doubt?
Casual ties and the whimsy of faith---
A Sunday when you feel like
and conscience settles in fine easy slots
the finger faith we so often dream
in return for surrender, the oft-mentioned
difference in fortune.


AWAKE (5/21/85)

minstrel voices at three a.m.
pond fodder
and the slither of steps
quite slow beneath the sill
whisper streets
the cars the same as
trees in passing
silence
waits for me to sleep
the walls, as their duty,
stand still


SAFE (5/21/85) ----And this is an utter LIE of a poem. I remember writing it, trying to wish something into being that was absolutely NOT true in any way re the current shitty May I was experiencing.

Hypnotic May
with her lull of warmth---
there is safety here, she smiles,
with summer soon to follow.
It is easy to trust her---
the lush open ways,
the honest green of the land
she has touched.
She is freedom and peace of mind,
a month of rebirth.
May is good.

This past weekend...

...was spent mainly sleeping off the crappy effects of all the shots and proddings I received on Friday! 

Oh, and re-watching Bergman's "Cries and Whispers" on TCM---I was hoping it would elucidate the circumstances around Sandra's death that I had no part of, but it did not. It was harrowing, but it didn't trigger anything for me. (The film is about the youngest of three sisters who is dying of cancer; the other two sisters come home to visit her in her final days---it's about their relations, via flashbacks, as both children and adults, as well as the relations between the dying sister and the longtime family maid, and between the older sisters and their husbands. 

Unlike "feel-good" deathbed films today, "Cries and Whispers" realistically reveals how much the family members actually despise each other. Although the maid's post-death private reading of the dying woman's diary reveals how she found true happiness around her sisters.

Sandra was one of three sisters (the middle girl). My mother is one of three sisters (the youngest). My sister-in-law is one of three sisters (the oldest).

As Sandra says in her painting above: "Bury us all in the same grave."

Triple Goddess

The Future of America (Scripps Spelling Bee finalists, 2024)

Question for the parents of this highly NON-diverse group of kids: What's so terrible about your own home country of India that makes you leave it? Doesn't India have national Spelling Bees with TV cameras?

And is this really the future of America? (Not "racist" because Indians are Aryans, as are Europeans.) But imagine this: Hundreds of thousands of Americans started emigrating to India and taking over their doctoral and academic positions and training their kids for national scholarly awards... How would THAT go over in India? I highly doubt that India would allow, first, such mass immigration and, second, such mass control of any important positions by non-Indians.

Yes, I know you had to put up with the Brits for a century until 1947---but is that America's fault? I thought post-1947 you were supposed to be rebuilding your OWN country... Why aren't you?

I Just Don't Give A Damn: George Jones (1975)

Oh, one other thing about a doctor's warning...

...about drinking and smoking:
George Jones lived to be 81, after decades of abusing booze and coke.
Tammy Wynette died at age 55, after addiction to many prescription pain-killers.

RE prescription drugs: One thing I learned about Sandra only after reading about Stevie Nicks in recent months: Nicks said that she'd lost an entire decade of her life to Klonopin (Clonazepam). Years ago, I'd asked Sandra what exactly she was taking, since she seemed to be so scattered: Clonazepam.

Before I found out Sandra died, I was thinking about this---thinking about saying I was sorry for getting so mad when she claimed to be too "dizzy" to drive me to work the day after we'd spent a weekend together... I'd thought she was just being contrary and mean, but I suppose it was just the pharmaceuticals. She never told me what all she was taking, except when I later had some clue and asked outright.

She was often foggy, often losing my phone number, for example, despite my having the same number from 2007 to the present. I took that to be disrespect and lack of caring about me, and perhaps it was, partially. But I now realize it was also part of her own innate scattered-ness that the pharmaceuticals (designed to alleviate depression and anxiety) amplified to something I could not tolerate.

Actors' and Athletes' Sell-By Date

Just received the below article from People magazine in my Google "Joan Crawford" feed.

I call bullshit, Jessica Lange! Once-young and once-beautiful women complaining that they don't get acting roles when they've aged is exactly the same fallacy as once-powerful and once-superbly physically fit male athletes complaining that they're no longer called up for the Big Game.

The mediocre (un-beautiful and un-fit) audience wants symbolism and representation both on the screen and on the field. A mythology to represent inner desires: to be beautiful, to physically conquer.

It's not "sexism" or "ageism" (although, there ARE quite a few more male-fantasy movies about young women unnaturally falling in love with old, decrepit men)---it's just the nature of your entertainment role: Both actors and athletes are highly paid to represent what we all want to be. Which isn't "old."

Jessica Lange Says Hollywood’s Treatment of Actresses ‘at a Certain Age’ Hasn’t Changed Much (Exclusive)

People Magazine
Jack Smart, Dave Quinn

Fri, 31 May 2024 at 9:35 am

Sexism and ageism in Hollywood may have been “more extreme back then,” says Jessica Lange, but it endures today.

Jessica Lange has been a consistently working star for long enough to judge whether actresses these days are getting the respect they deserve.

The currently Tony-nominated star of Mother Play, now playing on Broadway, tells PEOPLE the “idea of what happens to an actress in Hollywood at a certain age” has been a through-line in her career.

“Maybe it was more extreme back then in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s,” she says of sexism and ageism in the industry, "but it certainly hasn't changed that much.”

At 75, Lange is now older than Joan Crawford, who died in 1977, ever was. Playing the late Mildred Pierce star in 2017’s miniseries Feud: Bette and Joan gave Lange an “extremely poignant” perspective, she says, on how roles for women in Hollywood tend to become scarce — from the time Crawford was filming Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to today. 

“Once I started really looking into Joan Crawford's history, where she came from and her experience in childhood and growing up, it was nightmarish,” recalls Lange. “So the fact that she actually did what she was able to do in life, I found her incredibly admirable.”

Back when the Ryan Murphy-produced series was airing, costar Susan Sarandon, who played Bette Davis, told PEOPLE that Golden Age of Hollywood starlets “who had these amazing parts found themselves high and dry later when they were older… There are so many tragic stories of women who were so beautiful and couldn’t figure out a way to age within the system.”

Some are dead, some are alive...

 ...and those of us alive who have health-care must try to visit doctors for the first time in 15 or 20 years to find out what's wrong with us before it's too late---unlike that unfortunate friend who just died of a stroke! (How quickly my beloved Sandra turns into an anecdote.)

BTW: I'd made this doctor's appointment over a month ago, before I found out Sandra died (2 weeks ago).

And so I got undressed and poked and prodded and lectured about drinking and smoking, and blood was drawn and I peed in cup, etc. At least THIS doctor knew how to do a pap smear.

(Unlike the doctor I went to 18 months ago who tried 3 times and couldn't ever do it right without me actually SCREAMING with pain from whatever very sharp instrument was poking me---and I'm not THAT wimpy! This last doctor in the other office---clearly a young DEI hire---then gave up and sent me out to the lobby to sign up for my blood tests, where I was informed that I'd have to wait there for 2 or 3 hours...And no, I couldn't make an actual appointment to come back---you were just supposed to show up for blood tests whenever, first come, first served, and wait however long they had you wait. Bullshit. I immediately went home. I don't count this whole horrible experience as a doctor's visit. p.s. It's not because of my "menopausal, thinning vaginal walls" that the attempted pap smear hurt so much! You just didn't know how to do it properly!)

The place I went to today was fine. I'd written down a list of things I was worried about, and they (assistant and doctor) did listen, and the doctor did her stuff and signed me up for other places to go later where I'd never been (like for a mammogram, etc). And I got all bloodwork done without waiting, and got the first of two Shingles shots. (Other shots strongly suggested: Tetanus and for Pneumonia and another Covid shot---Why? I declined all three of these, and was kind of bothered by why they were even touted.)

In my future lies a mail-in home colo-rectal sample kit, a visit to have 2 irregular moles removed, my second Shingles shot, and whatever else goes on at the Mammogram place. And can't wait to see what my bloodwork tests result in!

Sigh. And Yuck. I hate all of this because I'm somewhat suspicious of messing with a natural physiological system (my own body, which is naturally getting slightly more run down in my 50s) in favor of constant prodding and poking and testing---perhaps only because the doctor's office gets a lot of money from my insurance company! I honestly don't know that all of the intrusions (either with instruments or potential prescriptions) are necessarily a helpful thing for my body. 

I dunno---I'll go along with all of this initial testing because, honestly, I've been trained mentally by the media (and their medical and pharmaceutical sponsors) that you're "supposed to" have all of this done. A mammogram every 2 years after age 40. A pap smear every 3 years after age 21. I could be an anomaly, in my 50s, that I haven't had any physical tests done for nearly 20 years and nothing has been seriously wrong with me so far. Or is it just that most people's bodies work the same way and that we all don't need constant medical exams---all the proposed scraping and blood tests and vaccines, which are all very invasive to our bodies? (Given the current highly entwined monetary relationship with doctors and insurance companies, I honestly can't tell if any doctor is making an honest assessment. I mean, telling me to get a Tetanus shot was pretty blatantly a bid for insurance money...)

Anyway, I came away from today's doctor visit somewhat assuaged that I was getting some checkups that I supposedly "officially" needed to get. After all, it had been about 20 years, and I'd been feeling a bit decrepit. So we'll see what the blood tests say. Or else I'll decide to go on my "natural" way as I have been doing for the past 20 years... Heaven forbid I actually get cancer and have to spend the last 10 years of my life in doctor's offices and hospital rooms being injected with things.

One thing I noticed in the office that was a bit odd to me: In the room where I got my blood tests were a multitude of rainbows and "love = love" banners. I mean, all over the place, 20 or more. The whole small room was a Pride-fest. I'm bisexual (primarily gay) myself. But... What in the world does a doctor's office have to do with your sexual orientation or any opinion of gayness? The human body is a physiological thing when it needs blood tests or a pap smear, or whatever: A lesbian female vagina is the same as a heterosexual female vagina. (Transsexuals who have "built vaginas" are special cases---but surely they have "special doctors" who know their intricate cases. And surely they care more about professional medical skills rather than childish "virtue signalling" rainbows scattered about the room.)

George Jones: Take Me

George Jones: He Stopped Loving Her Today

Memento Mori / Memento Vivere

It's easy in moments of peace and calm to spout/think "philosophies."
But to actually LIVE BY said philosophies when you are at one of life's nadirs...
THAT is the challenge of the coin!

Also in current question: I've always thought about the (obviously) temporal nature of earthly living beings vs. the possibility of a later spiritual relationship.

Just because you're very upset about a passing, does it mean you'll have a relationship with them in the afterlife? Of course not.

 

For instance: When I was 15 and John Lennon was shot in 1980:
I had a complete mental breakdown (barely acknowledged and untreated by anyone, even after I sat at my breakfast table weeping and ran out of several sophomore high-school classes crying; though one teacher joked that she was worried about me) out of grief for an artist I'd only been discovering via radio and albums for the prior 8 months or so.

I'll never forget my father's inane reaction: My parents were relatively freshly divorced (1978), and Dad still called the house. When he found out I was upset about Lennon's death, he said to me on the phone: "You wouldn't be so sad if I were dead." I don't know what platitude I muttered at age 15, but today: Ha! Of course not, you self-pitying asshole. Lennon was never mean to me.

Discovering the Beatles (which the Dallas/Ft. Worth radio stations were playing tons of in the summer of 1980) made me extremely happy; and then the process of "picking a favorite Beatle"; and the subsequent discovery of Lennon's solo work, which thrilled me with its raw emotional honesty---probably the first emotionally adult and complicated music and thoughts that I'd ever listened to. I felt that I KNEW him...

But I didn't. All of my 15-year-old "strong feelings" didn't mean that I would contact or meet the man in the afterlife. (Despite my fervent participation in the "moment of silence" that local radio stations held for him during the Yoko memorial.)

When it comes to both Ginny and Sandra in my own personal life:
Ginny died at age 21 in 1988. I first met her in January of 1983; she was a new student at our high school from Georgia. In the spring of that year, she alternated between being MY "best friend" and another girl's "best friend." When she invited me on her family trip to Georgia with her that summer, she asked me to not say anything to the "other girl." At the time, I was a bit flattered; she likes me best, and we have a secret! (I later deduced that she'd asked the "other girl" first and she couldn't go---and that if I found out I was second choice, I wouldn't have gone either.)

Ginny and I became very close that summer (or so I thought). But when I went off to college in the fall of 1983, she basically dumped me a mere 2 months later for a different girl (Cindy) she happened to be in a tennis class with. Ginny had sneaked off to Austin by bus to be with me for one weekend in October, but then realized I had to stay in my paid-for dorm room and she had no place to stay or means of survival---so she called her dad to come get her.

The "tennis girl" would end up being serious, there with her at her death in March '88. Although: Ginny did call me up in the spring of '87---She was sick at that point, and she and her family had since moved back to Georgia; and since it had been 4 years since I'd entered college, she thought that I'd now be graduating and thus free... and could I come visit her? (Where was Cindy? I asked; she was visiting her own mother dying of cancer in Texas.) So Ginny's true love was visiting her own dying mother and couldn't, at that moment, be with Ginny in Georgia for companionship...so she called me. Kind of like a darker version of the summer-trip situation in 1983, where I was second choice.

Now, had I been a better, saintlier person, I would have made the trip to Georgia, just to see my friend that I supposedly loved so much and still bemoan the loss of to this day. But, #1, I didn't know that she was THAT sick and in actual danger of dying. And, #2, I was feeling pissy that she just wanted me to come because Cindy couldn't be there. #3, she'd just spent the past 4 years with Cindy (including a trip that both of them made to Austin to sell stolen CDs from the record store Ginny worked at back in Ft. Worth---they got busted when the Austin record store called the police, and Ginny's parents blamed ME for it, though I had nothing to do with their idiotic plan). And so I did not feel any particular TRUST for this woman! Ha! I LOVED her. And in our brief periods of alone-time, I felt soulfully close to her, probably moreso than I've ever felt for anyone else in my life. I craved being around her and talking to her and interacting with her (and I do still miss her to this day). But... she was a fucking non-trustworthy mess of a person, despite her benign and pleasant exterior!

So, am I going to meet this person in the afterlife, and all things will be wonderful?!
HA! I highly doubt it! :)  Just because there was a physical serotonin-reaction of well-being on the planet Earth doesn't mean that we had a real soul-connection.

I won't even go into Sandra at this point (who was my 2nd love, after Ginny). That would take a million more words. And the connection wasn't primarily physical. Although I thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen when I first saw her in Wevill's poetry class in 1986, her actual poetry was the most beautiful and mystical thing. But when I got to know her much better over 20 years later (a primarily phone/e-mail relationship from 2008 until her stroke in 2020), her inner torment was something I absolutely could not handle. Contrary to popular literary/artistic belief, trying to deal with the emotions and thought patterns of someone who's mentally ill is nearly impossible; there is NOTHING you can do for them, despite all of your efforts. They ask for help, you try to give it, they don't want it. Etc.

Memento Vivere.

Poem I wrote for Sandra (8/02/13)

Currents

the you that I miss was never there
we met in air, and dispersed with as little mass

which came first
my wish, or the way you were

I was never sure
which way the wind blew
without clouds occasionally kind enough
to leave clues in a wide, vacant sky

Poem I wrote for Sandra (9/15/11)

Entrails

What the sky spelled out that day
was no accident; she'd paid
for the words the planes so casually spat in clouds

like the small hearts of birds a cat not yet mine
once left on my ledge

I hadn't her heart; I never had. It was his.

The tired pilots wanted only lunch.
The rest of us aground gaping
at the condensation of what we'd only wished.

The entrails lasted while they did and then
I drove on, swerving back to look
and trace words of love and hurt dispersed faster
than any engine could spurt them.

Poem I wrote for Sandra (2/25/11)

On the SS Mercy

You found the fetid waters warm, and so churned, charmed
Content to sink more than swim.

"Me, too," you murmured as you were spewed out.

The luminous waves turn gray, toss the bottled message
back toward the waiting rocks

Glass cracks, words soaked into
what you heard as only the sound
of the wake, mercy blurring

Drowned and drowned out

Your seashells appear on the edge
of the frame that your daughter wished unadorned

Shhhhhh. Too much, too much to be borne.
While you lose yourself, save her.

Getting over someone THREE times!

Usually, "getting over someone," if you really loved them, is a very painful psychological and physiological process (it really does hurt your stomach and heart and every part of your body as much as it hurts your thought processes) that only happens ONCE!

Dear god---I've had to get over Sandra twice before, and now again... At least she's dead now, and it won't happen a fourth time!

First time: She was my first crush after Ginny, in '86 and '87. Last time I saw her at that time was at Austin's Barton Springs pool, when she told me she was getting married ("He loves me..." That marriage lasted a mere 5 years, but bore two children...)

Second time: In 2008, when I'd written on this blog about my crush on her and about our poetry class at UT, and she contacted me while I was living in NYC... That led to over a decade of thousands of phone-calls and e-mails, and maybe four meetings. This second phase either ended in 2015, after we spent the night together and didn't get along, or it ended in 2018, when---after months of her complaining about nowhere to stay, I offered her a room in my apartment and she accepted...and then didn't show up when she said she was on her way. I realized then, in 2018, that she never meant anything that she said. I pretty much shut her off at that point.

After that, I only heard sporadically from her until she told me she'd had her stroke in 2020. I received a few e-mails and calls from her until early 2021. After 2021, there was no more contact between us, though I sent an occasionally e-mail that was returned as "undelivered." I'd assumed that she was just focused on healing from her stroke...

After 2018 'til the present, I'd come to terms with us: Incapable of communication. Was at peace with it, and going about my own business.

But when I just found out last week that she'd DIED...
My god, don't be DEAD, Sandra! You can't be DEAD! Be angry and not speaking to me, but don't be DEAD!

I am still in shock. I thought that when we argued, we were just arguing. I thought that when she had a stroke, she'd recuperate, not DIE...

5 Steps of Grief:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining---After I knew she was dead, I said to myself that I would trade all of my 5 cats' lives for hers.
Depression
Acceptance

LIVE: Donald Trump speaks at Libertarian convention (5/25)

Boos included at a forum not friendly to him. This man is a warrior.

What a living person does on a holiday weekend.

I woke up with a jolt: Sandra is dead, was my first thought, as it has been for the past week.

I went and got new windshield blades and new tires. While in the waiting room, I heard a man my own age humbly brag to a mechanic that he was once a member of a hugely popular funk (Prince-inspired) band in Austin in the '80s until a car crash that left him not-as-masculine as the guy he was talking to... Was his band "Extreme Heat"? According to his overheard conversation, he and his band were "big" in the '80s at the exact same time I was going out to see bands then (though I would never have gone out to see a "funk" band). The mechanic was a very polite, nice young person who nodded politely.

I went to "Recycled Reads" in Austin and almost volunteered for 4 hrs per week.

I went to "Nature's Treasures" in Austin and bought a $9 raw dragon's blood stone.

Previously advised by a mechanic for the health of my car battery, I made sure I drove over 1/2 hour this day.

I came home and watched "Below Deck" for hours, then the Celtics vs. Pacers game, then some more "Below Deck." Am now playing around online.

I felt sick to my stomach the whole time. Sandra is still dead.

What was supposed to happen with Sandra and me...

When I was about 60 and she was about 68, we'd laugh about how rootless we once were, and how obnoxious we were to each other at 42 and 50, how it took us years to get finally settled. She would have a small apartment in Houston and would come visit me in Austin once or twice a year, and tell me funny stories about her grandkids and about how annoying her daughters were...

She wasn't supposed to die suffering in a generic hospice room. This beautiful, grand woman, with her beautiful poems and paintings, wasn't supposed to die like this.

Songbird (Fleetwood Mac)

And the songbirds are singing
like they know the score...

The Afterlife

In real life, I would have liked to have been married to either Ginny or Bill.

In The Afterlife, I hope to see Ginny and Sandra again. But what's "funny": We could all be dead, and Ginny would be with Cindy, and Sandra would be with Jim----and there I'd still be, mooning around after both of them... 

I don't think "The Afterlife" is supposed to work like that! :)  Aren't you supposed to get exactly what you want?! Ha!

Sandra Laurel Skipwith: The Edge of Seventeen

 

Sandra Skipwith Bowen: Girl & Icebox

 

Sandra Skipwith Bowen: Girl in Garden

 

Sandra Skipwith Bowen: There was someone there looking out for you

 

Sandra 2009

 

I'll never have to worry about storms in Houston again.

I am nauseated. And I have not cried this much since she made me cry back in NYC 15 years ago. Thank god there's currently little work to do in my remote day-job, because it's all I can do to turn the computer on and sit there for 8 hours without either shrieking or throwing up.

I keep hearing her excited Thurston-Howell-accent voice on the phone: "Stephanie!" And her starting a story in the middle of a sentence, and me knowing exactly what she was talking about.

I know everything about her---more than I ever knew about anyone else on this earth. And I was so angry with her, so often.

From 2008 thru early 2021, we were in semi-constant online and phone contact, with some one- or two-month breaks when we were fighting. Sandra had her stroke in mid-2020. The last message I ever received from her was February 18, 2021: "OK."

The next-to-last message I ever sent to her was in May 2023: "How are you? Where are you?" No response. And in November 2023: "Are you still out there?" No response.

Given news of the severe storms in Houston last week, I did a search for her name while searching for "River Oaks" in Houston... And found out she'd died on February 21, 2024.

I guess I'll never have to search for storm news in Houston again.

the last pictures she ever sent to me

January 2021. Learning to write her name after her stroke.

Below: November 2020. Her pup "Sailor" and her self in therapy after stroke.

The Art of Sandra Skipwith

Sandra Skipwith Art:

Birthday Letters

I sent her the pictured vase of flowers on her birthday in 2009. She sent me the below photo as thanks.

Here's the art/poetry site that I once created for her (still up)

https://artofsandraskipwith.blogspot.com/p/about.html

And here's one of her great poems:

The Bus Long Snake

They found a fossil of a snake as long as a bus.
Don’t you wonder if Eve put her children on him,
to ride around on.
Or maybe she charmed him into her,
telling him it was just for fun,
just for the ride.
Just for the wisdom she gained of the knowledge
of how it could be used,
for the ride of good and evil,
like going to school,
having a teacher,
for the knowledge of good and evil,
for the knowledge that men are not Gods.
Since then she knew the power of love
to heal broken things
since then she knew the power of cutting off the devil’s head
since then she knew the strength of pain
when the bus long snake
came around to make love.

the first picture she ever sent to me

In 2008, while I was living in NYC.  Right before the Obama election. She loved Obama, I did not.
I was a bit shocked at this photo---to me, she looked so "old," and her skin looked so bad...
(When I'd last known/seen her, she was 28 and I was 19---in a mutual poetry class at UT Austin.)
The reason she contacted me in NYC to begin with: I'd written a latter-day blog post right here about how much I missed the intellectual/sexual excitement of that class. And how I was in love with her.

She'd done an online search for her name, and found my mention of her...

That led to a constant 13-year phone/online contact between us, from 2008 thru 2021. I was lonely in NYC, and she was lonely in Houston---we must have had more than 1000 phone and mail conversations during that time (during NYC and after)

 

After I returned to Austin in 2010, we met in person only four or so times. The last time was in 2015, at the home of her sister's husband's mother in West Austin, when I spent the night with her there. Nothing sexual, though when we walked her dog "Sailor" on the extremely dark streets, we did hold hands. (The morning after, she was supposed to drive me to work and either couldn't because of meds or didn't want to, so we had a big fight---the last time I ever saw her.)