Rat Talladega

Rat Sebring. Rat Daytona. Not a moment of my own. Got to go to Ratsbucks just to keep myself awake.

And Radiohead for the NBA playoffs!?! Ha ha ha ha ha.

Julie Christie, You Make Me Go Misty

She laughs, she cries, she feels angry, she feels lonely, she feels guilty, she makes breakfast, she makes love, she makes do, she is strong, she is weak, she is brave, she is scared, she is... an unmarried woman.

Word. But she's a married woman, too. And probably a drag queen or two.

During my recent adventures with legitimately prescribed pharmaceuticals, I was taking a course of steroids, which kept me up all night. That's how I ended up rerunning the 70s greatest hits on cable. One memorable night, I caught both The Eyes of Laura Mars and An Unmarried Woman. The lines above are the marketing tagline from the latter.

Lot to love about both, from the sculpted cheekbones in the former to the unairbrushed sexiness in the latter. Damn, what happened to Jill Clayburgh? I used to dismiss Paul Mazursky, claiming all he did was rip off European films--Willie and Phil, Jules and Jim; Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Boudu Saved From Drowning; and An Unmarried Woman reproduced chunks of Volker Schlondorff's much less sanguine A Free Woman. But now I'm not so callow. Love the scene where Alan Bates (looking like the Hairy Guy from the original Joy of Sex, also a hit around that time) gives the soliloquy on dog poop.

Coincidentally, my husband is distantly related to Mazursky. Apparently they share a Tante, of blessed memory, who was famous for the size of her bust and the exquisite silky thinness of her pastry dough. My husband's grandmother, GiGi, of blessed memory, used to do a priceless imitation of Tante rolling out the rugelah, chest heaving.

I cut my teeth on those women's movies of the 70s, sneaking into the multiplex at Landover Mall. But the greatest of all was Shampoo. Jeez, Shirley MacLaine, Lee Grant, and ahhhhh Julie Christie. And little Carrie Fisher. My best friend and I used to practice her notorious line, eating carrot sticks and hoping Warren Beatty might wander into our backyards. But not in our neighborhood.

UPDATE: Sigh. Drugs haven't worn off. Remove Shirley MacLaine, add Goldie Hawn. Forgive typos and spelling. Namaste.
UP SOMETHING: Forgot Mazursky also co-created The Monkees, Goddess bless him.

Waiting for the Sky to Open Up

Thunderstorms wake me in the morning. Hello, there, Thor. Found an old CD case full of buried treasure, including David Sylvian’s Secrets of the Beehive. Might be getting better, but don’t want to jinx it.

Standing firm on the stony ground
The wind blows hot, blows these clothes around
I harbor all the same worries as most,
Temptations to leave or to give up the ghost.
I wrestle with an outlook on life
That shifts between darkness and shadowy light.
I struggle with words, for fear that they’ll hear,
While Orpheus sleeps on his back, still dead to the world.

Sunlight falls, my wings open wide,
There’s a beauty here I cannot deny,
And bottles that tumble and crash on the stairs
Are just so many people I know never cared.
Down below on the wreck of a ship
Is a stronghold of pleasures I couldn’t regret.
But the baggage is swallowed up by the tide,
As Orpheus sticks by his promise and stays by my side.
Tell me
I’ve still a lot to learn
To understand
These fires never stop
Please believe me,
When this joke is tired of laughing, I will sing
The promise that Orpheus brings.

Sleepers, sleepers, we row the boat,
Just you, the weather and I gave up hope,
And all of the hurdles that fell in our laps
Were just fuel for the fire and straw for our backs.
Still the talk and the stories to tell
About all our visions of heaven or hell--
When we feel secure again, such mighty dreams,
And Orpheus sings of the promise tomorrow may bring.

UPDATE: Someone said he liked "my poem." uh-oh. It's David Sylvian's song, Orpheus. You can hear and see it here.

The Advent of the Unreliable Narrator

In her consideration of the occasional flicker from the traffic without that came to enliven the dark square of the study window, reflecting on the papers strewn over the sill, she felt each episode of brightness as an almost physical remanifestation of the obscure hurt that had darkened such a portion of her life early on, leaving a meagre exercise of force and will dampened as by the stirring of the spring breeze. But even as yet there could be no resurrection of certain winter-damaged limbs, could there not be a new birth nonetheless, she thought, as her eyes fell upon a date in the open book before her and she murmured: "Happy birthday, Henry James."

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia.

My daughter got a Chia Pet for solstice and we finally got around to breaking the sucker out during her spring break (and my extended sick leave). I've never known anyone to get one to grow, but I'm here to shout, my girl's Chia Pet KICKS ASS. It will KICK YOUR CHIA PET'S ASS ANYTIME. Mean, green, and making the scene.

In other news, astrologer Eileen Nauman's notes on the transneptunian Hades sum it up pretty well. "Symbol: Half Moon in the waning form, with the "cross of matter" contained within it. The Moon in another form reminding us that our emotions can ultimately dis-ease us and kill us if we don't work constructively with them. "Breakdown to make a breakthrough".... It is also the Persephone/Hades myth being lived out by the individual--one must go into the depths of their own, unique "Hell", be destroyed by it, resurrected and rebirth and finally, emerge from Hell into the outer world of fruitfulness, fertility and higher spiritual evolution...Toxic shame...Diseases with a root cause of humiliation, shame, loss of self-esteem, loss of a parent/job/family/country of origin--"shocks" to the vital force that are held deep within the person and manifest later as dis-ease. Eating one's self up alive."

No foolin'.