Messing Up the Paintwork

My mind is officially blown; Mercury is in my 1st house, so I'm bombarded with extraordinary information and writing and new concepts. In the spirit of the first item, I hereby am not allowed to simply rant but must actually do something concrete as regards everything I note here.

Sorry to break the news, but you are not Neda: Study shows Facebook activism is for shit. A researcher created a fake activist page about an issue that didn't even exist, and had hundreds subscribe. They were so alienated from actually physically doing something that they didn't even realize the issue didn't exist.

People have long sought to accessorize their souls through loud public expressions of concern; Facebook and blogging and etc. are just new kinds of loudspeakers.

Don't get me wrong; I love, love hearing the thoughts, whereabouts, jokes, metas, madnesses, links, music, video clips, all of it from my tiny group of online friends. Some of my days would be killer-dull without your brilliance.

It's the random naive, simplistic political rants I could do without. I used to have to edit letters to the editor, so I developed this allergy to tortured metaphors and carelessly brandished outrage unaccompanied by any viable solutions or power or effort to execute the orders these writers issued to the world from their safe basements. Nausea, hives, worse.

From the Post:

What surprised Colding-Jorgensen about people's behavior on his site was that the group was "in no way useful for horizontal discussions." Users wanted not to educate themselves or figure out how to save the fountain, but to parade their own feelings of outrage around the cyber-public. "Just like we need stuff to furnish our homes to show who we are," says Colding-Jorgensen, "on Facebook we need cultural objects that put together a version of me that I would like to present to the public."

What I'll do? Keep on doing my volunteering and etc., and not bore you about a single bit of it, dear.


Haven't You Ever Listened to Country Music? When it comes to Mr. Sanford (not Fred, by the way), I'm practicing love the sinner, hate the sin. A man who writes, married or not, adoringly of a woman kneeling over him, holding her breasts, well, I just can't object to that in any way. But I hate the politician who voted against health care for children.

The latest outrage by women about his comment that he's "trying to learn to fall in love" with his wife is misdirected as well. It's common in women's magazines and therapy, as I understand from others, to be ordered to "work" to "fall in love again," plan "date nights," "light candles," "improve communication," blah, blah, a task that sounds far more arduous than sifting compost. As Sandra Tsing Lo explains in her bright and beleaguered Atlantic piece:

Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance... what with all the abject and swallowed misery: Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure, it made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grandparents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?

What I'll do: Same as ever, walk the earth like Krazy Kat and let the bricks of love hit me where they may. Often these are thrown, entirely metaphorically speaking, by the person I'm legally married to.

"Jealousy is considered precious, but it’s rarely described as an attribute of narcissism." That's from a great piece on "self-esteem," that much misunderstood term, contributed to by the always-insightful burner Maya. It goes into the mistaken conflation of self-esteem and narcissism, our culture of narcissism and competition, and our refusal to cultivate ourselves and create our own lives according to our true needs and desires.

Maybe reaching that point of positive self-esteem is the moment when we feel we are worth an investment in ourselves, despite the fact that time goes on without us. The death connection can be useful in that it’s a reminder that nobody is inherently better than anyone else, and that what we choose to do with our time is entirely up to us. As is (with the exception of our children) who we spend it with: people who care about themselves and act on it; people who care about us and act on it; or someone else entirely.

What I'll do: Not sure. Have to think about this one for a while.

The more you hate yourself, the more they love you: Really nice piece on a mini-genre in women's writing. Apparently, you'll have no trouble getting published if you choose to write about how much you hate your body or your emotional life. Women's plastic-surgery nightmares and that old reliable I'll Never Find A Husband rant really sell!

This genre has nothing to do with journalists opening a window into what life is like for women today. It does women no favours at all. It is entirely about perpetuating an editor's misogynistic image of what women are like (self-hating, self-obsessed) and making a semi-celebrity out of the writer in the belief that readers like to read journalists whose names and faces (and breasts) they recognize. I have no doubt that the women who write these articles truly feel the emotions they describe. But these women need help; they do not need to be made to feel that their professional USP is to play up their misery.

What I'll do: Shine up my womany-style personal essay, which deals with my romantic and sexual life but expresses no opinion at all about the size or shape of any of my body parts. I don't know how I managed to pull that off in this world. Anyway, finish it out and get it published some damn place.

PS: It was great to hear from wrekehavoc, the tireless, devoted, overqualified curator of Blatantly Bad 70s Music! I thought I was the only person on this planet who'd read the book by the Apple Records House Hippie. What I'll Do: Read more blogs and listen to more bad 70s music.

Wheat. Lots of Wheat. Fields of Wheat. A Tremendous Amount of Wheat.

Overlapping back into this space again. Resurfacing from a long migraine I finally managed to kill after a few hours of sweating pints in the community garden plot. It goes like this: pull weeds, screen compost, plant zinnias, pull weeds, screen compost, plant basil, gulp leaded dc water from garden hose, repeat. People with individual gardens and tidy individual compost bins don't get the whole compost-screening thing, I think. A compost heap in a community garden is more just a big invasive-vine-covered hill, a dumping ground for everyone's weeds and spent plants. So you have to go out there and dig in and dig under for a while to hit the weeds that have decomposed into dirt, then shovel some of it onto one of the wood-and-quarter-inch-screen contraptions that the wonderful guy who told me all about invasive earthworms, imagine!, made, which you put over a wheelbarrow, and then you sift and shake and rub the dirt through until you have about an inch of something really good, then you repeat. About a half-hour later you've filled the wheelbarrow, and if any of it spills, you cry.

Along with migraines come hallucinations for me, like someone chasing me with a hammer to hit me in the head was one from the other day, so I have a few go-to scenes to cheer myself up. These include:
1. Love and Death: "The wheat. The wheat."
2. Duck Soup: "To war, to war, to war we gotta go, with a hidey-hidey-hidey-hidey-hidey-hidey-ho!"
3. Laughing Wild (Christopher Durang): "I'm the Infant of Prague! Prague, Prague, Prague, Prague, Prague!"
4. Blazing Saddles: French Mistake musical number.
5. Boogie Nights: As the boys are in the studio, recording their inimitable number "Feel My Heat" and they decide: "I think we should do a few more "feels" in there."

Come Hear Poets, or I'm Not There

This season, I'm sharing my small community garden plot with another woman who has no time. She transplanted a long-established comfrey, which is out of control in a good way, and a peony, which neither of us expected to take well the first year. It not only settled in happily, but was covered with about-to-burst buds one day. A week later, the poor thing looked like it had been hacked to shreds. Someone had stolen the flowers, despite my fence and tall gate wired with unintentionally spiked spears of fencing. Now, we don't know if the peony plant will make it. Times are hard when people steal flowers to sell.

Untouched of course are the pungent sage, bursting with flowers the color of the heart of a flame, in fact, all the herbs--which are what are most valuable, of course. I eat weeds. I leave little bits of things drying around the kitchen and in glasses of water, which ticks my triple-Virgo husband off. I snip into a salad bowl violet leaves and flowers, the early fennel and mint that has to go, anyway, small dandelion leaves, and my favorite, the purslane.

This volunteer is frighteningly healthy, with tons of omega-3s, calcium, magnesium, vitamin A, lots more. I know people from the islands cook it like spinach, but that's not for me; it's too much like okra, that texture that is politely described as "mucilaginous." Raw, it's crisp and citrusy. You can feel it being good for you. The woman who taught me about Santeria and Candomble used to use it as a "bath," where you combine herbs, soak in water and pour over your body or head. It is an Eshu/Mercury herb, so it's one of mine. People used to soak it in water and then make a skin treatment, and it has enough acid to make it akin to an over-the-counter toner.

So. I love peonies, but I will be grateful for purslane.

I'm hiatus-izing this blog for a while and hiking my heinie over to my poetry-event-only one-time temporary-installation blog, Come Hear Poets, cause I can't keep track of that and the purslane and most of all the dear child, who will soon be out of school and mine to enjoy and hug and play with for more long, summer hours. I'll come back to this guy when Artomatic is over.

Image: Gorgeous, or what? By Thalia Took. You can get her a lot clearer and closer, on a tarot deck, poster or even t-shirt, here.

Midway Down the Midway

I should be writing my own poems tonight. Should be writing a lot of things. Something about coming home felt like autumn. Maybe it was the clouds.

I'll let Joni tell it.

I met you on a midway at a fair last year
And you stood out like a ruby in a black man's ear
You were playing on the horses, you were playing on the guitar strings
You were playing like a devil wearing wings, wearing wings
You looked so grand wearing wings
Do you tape them to your shoulders just to sing?
Can you fly--
I heard you can! Can you fly?
Like an eagle doing your hunting from the sky.

I followed with the sideshows to another town
And I found you in a trailer on the camping grounds
You were betting on some lover, you were shaking up the dice
And I thought I saw you cheating once or twice, once or twice.

Photo: Creative Commons 2.5; by Michael Maggs

Le 'Stache, C'est Moi

I bought a fake mustache today with the idea of going full drag king during my Special Camping Trip this weekend. The fake mustache store is right around the corner from my work, so it was easy.

The guy there showed me how to put it on, and urged me to buy two, because, he said "you'll be dag, I didn't do this right, and then you'll be stuck without a mustache." I said that's OK, I'll take that chance.

He himself had a thin, handsome mustache. Why do black guys with mustaches not look porny, like so many white guys with mustaches do? He bade me goodbye with the words: "Have fun with your mustache!"

See, I saw this photo of Brad Pitt out of Cannes from the Inglourious Basterds premiere, and I thought--I wonder if I could do that. Favorite Cousin, whom I most resemble, looks like Brad Pitt with a sharper nose. But my nose is sharper and bigger still, so it just doesn't work. I still think I make a better-looking man, and anyone who sees me next to Favorite Cousin might agree. I really liked Brad Pitt's boots and costume, though. I would like to call myself Oscar Wilder or Titus Entry. I would like to be a dashing drag king, but instead I just look...confused.

The Magical Elixir That Is Red Box Wine

I don't know what it is, but every time I spend an evening rehearsing dirty songs and having choreographed simulated butt sex, I get a poem out of it.

Miscarriages

The angels instruct:
Attend to what remains.

A woman of courage and stamina
Would at least lift her head
And wash out those empty cups
And put them away properly.

A woman of strength would
Not collapse into herself
At a word at the door,
At an innocent question.

The angels offer no comfort;
Silence, the two full cups,
The stream that's not much more
Than a trickle now.

A woman of assurance would stand up,
Raise a toast, and at least attempt
To trace that flow to its source.

Comic Book Heroines

Wretchedly busy, but have been thinking about these things for days--
My daughter grabs the paper every morning now to read the comics. I took her to free comic book day a few weekends ago, and they gave her a whole stack of comics, and the end was served--she's hooked. Mama got a special Swamp Thing reissue. Here are my other favorites:

I don't always agree with this young lady, especially what she did to her boyfriend's guitar, but that's easy for a person who doesn't get jealous to say. But here, Judge Judy meets Courtney Love and Margaret Choand I concede her brilliance.

Alison Bechdel got me through some tough days back in the '80s. This handsome reissue of Dykes to Watch Out For plays like a box set.

Carol Lay's graphic novel memoir has gotten some controversy because it's a weight-loss book. I peeked through it because I couldn't figure out how she'd managed to gain weight at Burning Man. I've only ever been to my little local regional, and I always lose about five pounds, cause I'm so busy stumbling around and I'm so paranoid about food poisoning. It's not as anti-fat evil size-ist bad as people say--gets into a lot of issues of women's body images, food habits, some Omnivore's Dilemma-esque musings, etc. You know, if it's OK to be any size, why is it evil to choose to be smaller? (And it was cause she ate the s'mores. Didn't she realize you can get listeriosis from those things???)

UPDATE: I am so fucking embarrassed--I typed Sandra Oh instead of Margaret Cho above, fixed now. Does this mean I'm an anti-Asian racist deep inside? I'm going to be all freaking about this for weeks. I don't even watch Gray's Anatomy! (But somebody posted about the show on Facebook and all the sudden I had this rush of remembering a mistake, damn!) I know the difference between the two Tony Leungs, damnit! (Big Tony is handsomer and gets the straight sex scenes, and Little Tony is a better actor. And gay.) Does any of that make a difference? No. Lack of sleep? No. It's indefensible. And I'm sorry.

A Bit of Vertigo

Torn from the Lonely Planet

San Francisco was the site
Of the coldest summer solstice I've experienced.
We'd been running the roads at Big Sur,
Jade pebbles, seal barks, rogue waves;
Then the winding drive up the coast;
A ball game, the Portuguese water dogs
Plunging into the Bay with all the abandon
Of Kim Novak in one of her trances
(They were never phony to me, Scottie);
The filtered light behind the screens
At a Japanese noodle house; the movie
Where the singer's space helmet filled with water
As the last words of his song bubbled out,
Take after take, he endured; a reading
At the famous occult store, the counsel:
Cultivate the quality of discrimination,
The need to balance these ambiguities persists,
You'll have to shoulder those swords
A little bit longer, dear.

And then the ceremony, just south
Of the Sutro baths. The witches came
Carrying wood, built a bonfire,
And one set a chair in the sand, in the west.
The priestess sat with her back to the ocean
And hoisted the swords into position, and nodded
When she was ready for the blindfold.
I had a few pages I was finished with;
I fed them to the fire.

Tomorrow Leaf

The Batman alerted me to the story of poet Craig Arnold, who went missing on a simple hike while in Japan and is now presumed dead.

His last blog post is a beautiful page on the plant angelica, and the LA times blog above has some links to poems online.

Healing and Stealing

I keep forgetting and can't afford/get childcare, but you could go! Eternal Return, a collaborative performance piece at the Source, Friday and Saturday eves and Sunday 3 p.m. Hey, actually maybe I could go Sunday. That would mean not pulling invasive plants that day as I had planned. What is the right thing to do? The critical choices one is faced with. Why is life So Hard.

Involving my favorite local living artist: Rosemary Feit Covey, BosmaDance and the Smith Farm Cancer Center for Healing and the Arts. She has an exhibit at Torpedo Factory in cahoots with it as well. She did a whole series on emerging diseases, how can you not love that.

We just had an ethical issue in the Cougar household cause DD thought up a scheme whereby she could get more than her two allotted library books through a convenient evasion of the truth. My daughter lied so she could get more library books. And my heart is torn. I mean, means and ends? We have been discussing it and acting to correct it for two days now. She is now afraid to tell the librarian (the next step in trying to make it right), but I told her that her librarian looks to me like a person who has seen it all and will understand. Which is true. She's kind of Goth, in a good way, and I like her very much.

Photo: Stolen from BosmaDance website, and created by Enoch Chan--more of his photos are here.

Renaissance Men vs. Medieval Haters

Wow. Cool wild lightning flashes and big Thor thunder outside.

The once admirable civil rights fighter Marion Barry has folded, refusing to support equal rights and standing on the side of ignorance, along with a gang of "ministers" just about holding pitchforks outside the DC council meeting.

And just a few days ago, there I was calling out to DH over breakfast, reading aloud chunks of Colbert King's column and banging the table in astounded approval. He reports on Morehouse College president Robert M. Franklin's recent address, in which he calls Morehouse students "Renaissance men with social conscience and global perspective."

The column goes on to quote the speech:

"As an all-male institution with the explicit mission of educating men with disciplined minds," said Franklin, "the great challenge of this moment in history is our diversity of sexual orientation."

"Why don't we," he asked the students, "use this opportunity to model something our community needs?"

"Straight men," Franklin said, "should learn more about the outlooks and contributions of gay men. Read a book by a gay author. Have an intelligent conversation with a gay neighbor." Franklin reminded the Morehouse students: "At a time when it was truly scandalous to have homosexual friends or associates, Dr. King looked to Bayard Rustin, a black gay man, as a trusted adviser. And, Malcolm X regarded James Baldwin, a black gay man, as a brilliant chronicler of the black experience."

"To my straight brothers," he said, "diversity at Morehouse is an opportunity that can enrich your education if you are courageous enough to seize the opportunity. We cannot force you, but we invite you to learn from your environment."

Um, amen?

Photo: More info on the film.

Singing on a Kia

It's not all bad.

And I've got such a crush on Margaret Chan.

What we are now hearing is calls for a fundamental re-engineering of the international systems. We are hearing clear calls, from leaders around the world, to give these systems a moral dimension and to invest them with social values – like equity, sustainability, community, and social justice.

Personally, when I hear these calls, I cannot help but think of primary health care and the value system articulated in the Declaration of Alma-Ata 30 years ago.

Even before the financial crisis, many public health leaders saw great merit in returning to the values, principles, and approaches of public health.

In my view, values like equity and social justice are more important now, in this out-of-balance world, than ever before.

Human society has always been characterized by inequities. History has long had its robber-barons, and its Robin Hoods. The difference today is that these inequities, especially in access to health care, have become so deadly.

Technical tools for saving and prolonging lives keep getting better, yet more and more people are left behind, excluded from the benefits of even the older tools.

Not Much More to Say

Than this.

Jesus on a Cheez-It

When I did a search for an image of wisteria, all this TV stuff came up, and I couldn't resist the pun. I've only seen it once, the pilot--but I do love me some Felicity Huffman.

But seriously folks: Fuck newspaper corporations, fuck you, fuck you. That will be all.

The Alley Fence

I can't see a wisteria without
Remembering him telling me
About the snake that surmounted
The thick brown vine that twined
Along the alley fence,
Stretched itself, sunning.

His intention was to prune.
He'd heard snakes liked the plant.
He'd already cleared out "that, and that,"
He gestured with the long tongs,
Pointing to the corners of the backyard,
South and east, then paused to turn the meat.

I think it's a convenience
To attribute to them the motives
Of a human: The snake, we would say,
Is patient, is sly, even feels
A sense of ownership. He (the snake
Will be he; again, convenience) was there
Before they bought the place, after all.
But with summer slowing my breath,
I was moved to speculate:
Does that tightly focused bud
Of the reptile brain contain layers
Of elaborate perception I would never know?
What is it like to smell with the tongue,
To swallow it whole? The screen door slams,
And I jump, a skinny stray,
As his wife hands me a glass.

"You'll Be Surprised You're Doin' the French Mistake"

Even after 13 years of marriage (a lucky anniversary for a Dan Marino fan), there are always, always surprises! Like the other night, when I came home from rehearsal for a fabulous new production and flopped down in absolute exhaustion next to my husband on the king-size bed, as he attempted to watch some kind of game.

Me: I had choreographed simulated butt sex. Again.
DH (eyes not leaving screen): Oh God I hope I get it.
Me: (laughs)
Me (sitting up): Wait a minute. What did you just say?
DH watches game.
Me: Did you just quote from a musical?
DH (watching game): Yeah, just, you know.
Me: How do you know a line from a musical?
DH: I know things.
Me: But a musical? You've seen a musical?
DH: There's just six minutes left.
Me: That's until the year 2525 in non-game time. When did you see a musical?
DH: We lived in New Jersey. My parents took us to see Broadway musicals. A lot.
Me: (who would have given anything to have done that) No way! You've never told me that.
DH: I tried to forget.
Me: What did you see?
DH: The usual stuff. Annie. Jesus Christ Superstar. Godspell. You know.
Me: Jesus. You were getting more christian stuff than I was. (Pause.) Though that makes sense, I bet your mom went for that subversive take on God. It really was considered pretty subversive then. As musicals go. (His parents are Jewish atheists; mine, Catholic.) Did you like them?
DH: I was a kid, what did I know. I had to go.
Me: What was that line you said from?
DH: You know.
Me: I'm testing you.
DH: "One...singular sensation..."
Me: Oh my god. I never knew.
(Pause)
Me (laughing): That was pretty funny.
DH: What.
Me: That line.
DH: You should lie down. I want to see the end of this game.

Photo: The beautiful Uma, in one of the greatest musicals ever made. Used without permission because I can't help myself. And the headline is a Mel Brooks production, too.

The View from the Tube

A day of jury duty has left me staggered. I am happy I wasn't called to help decide anyone's fate.

Yesterday I rebuilt my garden fence, all by myself. Happy Earth Day!

Three good reads:

--Wells Tower attempts to recreate a sort of redneck version of Cheever's The Swimmer in a pimped out inner-tube on the rivers of North Florida. It had me on the floor laughing, it was so true of North Florida (and hoping I can get my daughter onto the Ichetucknee before you can't see clear through to the bottom anymore). And it reminded me how much I liked an older story about him traveling with his father after his father beat cancer and decided he had to see the world.

--John Goodman takes on Godot and his demons.

--And a horror story. There isn't enough money in the world to pay your debt if you have a catastrophic health crisis, by the way. You will never, never, pay it off, no matter how rich you are. You will sink completely if you have a catastrophic illness or accident:

"If there is an upside to the country's healthcare crisis, it is that the problem is hurtling toward a point at which it absolutely cannot be ignored without immediate and disastrous consequences. If there is an upside for me, it is this: returning to those difficult days of poverty and fear in 1969 also means returning to a place where anger inspires activism. I was a young woman then, of course, with a lifetime of battles ahead. I am not so young now. But I have enough years left to have one more fight in me. Healthcare is it."

Then go back and start over again with Wells Tower. Fear about health insurance is still not a good enough reason not to seize the opportunity to sit in a pimped-out inner tube in alligator-filled waters. Sometimes you have to put your butt into a slightly dangerous situation in order to feel alive. Just ask the guy with the whip.

Photo: Burt Lancaster is The Swimmer.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

On a friend's Facebook recommendation, I think I might break the no-buying policy and get a copy of Brad Gooch's Flannery O'Connor bio. (Certainly solely on his recommendation and not on the wretched review in the NYT a couple weeks back--the way it was written was wretched, I mean, not that it was a bad review. And thus is introduced our theme of precision of language.)

When the book came out, there was some controversy about new revelations, chief being that O'Connor used to seemingly revel in telling racist jokes to a particularly sensitive, liberal friend. I dip into The Habit of Being, Sally Fitzgerald's collection of O'Connor letters, which had expurgated the most obvious offenses, but not all, as you'll see. But the last time I read it through was about 20 years ago. O'Connor's formidable skills as an apologist almost had me getting unlapsed from being a Catlick, as she liked to write it, but I managed to hold onto my Old Time Religion (paganism), thank goddess.

Anyway, the reactions to the racist joke revelations tended to fall into two paths:

1) Oh, dear, I so loved Flannery O'Connor and those quirky Southern "characters" of hers! She was such an eccentric! So weird! So Outsider! Where did she get those names? But now I can't like her anymore, because she's a racist! I will never read her again. Why do all my idols have to fall?

2) She was a woman of her time, and she just couldn't HELP it if she thought like that. Everyone thought like that back then. Look at Fitzgerald and Wharton--they were anti-semites!

Both arguments are wrong in too many ways to know where to begin, and I think, just from my reading, that they're both wrong about O'Connor, too. Her other published letters, while not as explicit as perhaps the material in Gooch's book, make it clear that she just really, really liked fucking with people, especially Northern liberals. Check this little parody piece out from a letter to a friend and see if it isn't kin to Randy Newman's "Rednecks":

"What you ought to do is get you a Fullbright to Georgia and quit messing around with all those backward places you been at. Anyway, don't pay a bit of attention to the Eyetalian papers. It's just like Cuddin Rose says all us niggers and white folks over here are just getting along grand--at least in Georgia and Mississippi. I hear things are not so good in Chicago and Brooklyn but you wouldn't expect them to know what to do with theirself there."

She thought James Baldwin was a blowhard and got ticked when people kept telling her she had to meet him. But she also got ticked when her Catholic friends tried to make her go to Lourdes (and she made fun of the place, even as she caved and went on a pilgrimage). She was terribly impatient with the veneration of the Virgin, and she said just looking at the book The Nun's Story made her want to throw up. And all this from one of the most devout, thoughtful, committed Catholics anywhere. She mocked hypocrisy wherever she found it, flicked her own forehead for her petty sins of pride and vanity (without making a big, breast-beating deal out of it--because that's about the most vain, prideful thing to do of all). I recognize in the letters the character in the stories who is the modern thinker, the enlightened progressive, and usually grotesquely evil (she preferred, by the way, word grotesque to the word gothic). I speculate that in those characters she saw herself as she sometimes was, might have been, might be, but, quite literally, for the grace of God.

In short--equal opportunity hater, a woman with little time or patience for anyone. "My question is usually, would this person be endurable if white?" she wrote in another letter. And she found very few whites endurable. I don't think anything really mattered to her but the truth of the incarnation, the mystery of flawed people making up the perfect Church, and the mortal modern error of denying the existence of the Devil. Her God stops at nothing, including allowing the death of his son and self, asking simply if he deigns to speak at all: Where were you when I made the world?

None of which I believe, and none of which robs her writing of a bit of power for me.

It's not about people with funny names and odd habits and colorful diction. It's not about color much at all, but about our reaction to it, and our desperate need to believe we are good, decent people, when by most lights, we are pretty shaky, maybe mostly monstrous, and by the lights of a Catholic like her, without grace we are all condemned, and all the rearranging of bus seats in the world (Everything that Rises) won't change that.

I think if O'Connor were alive today, she might well be like Colbert or Sarah Silverman--or at least writing sketches making fun of movies with a Magic Negro, maybe, or the Crying Indian. Colbert popped into my head because he is also a Southern Catholic, and because of his still untopped and wildly, widely misunderstood jerimiad at the Correspondent's Dinner. But I'm glad she lived and wrote when she did.

And Fitzgerald and Wharton? Fitzgerald was a basket case who was so insecure he'd put anyone down that he could get away with. He wasn't so much a racist or anti-semite as a narcissist (those are related a lot, I think). But don't forget the venal Tom quoting Henry Ford in Gatsby. Balance goes to Fitzgerald. As for House of Mirth, Rosedale and Lily are two of a kind, the only ones who see the whole game and realize they have to play it carefully, and see each other playing it. He always respects her skills, but it isn't until the end that she sees past her prejudice and respects his. The snap judgments are in the mouths of the characters, not the author, in that case, I believe.

Photo: Once I went to Macon and everyone there kept telling me about Flannery O'Connor and Duane Allman. I don't know as how they had read or listened to much of either, respectively. It got annoying, because I am extremely fond of both. I have a story based on it maybe I'll polish up.

Keeping Up Appearances

"Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances. There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example."
The Talented Voice and Impeccable British Phrasing of Miss Susan Boyle, 47.

I confess to sinning in this regard myself, because I watched five minutes of The Cougar and judged it entirely on appearances. The interior design of that house they were in made me cringe. Jesus, the leather, the iron, gaaaghh. It was like the house James M. Cain describes in the opening of Double Indemnity, on steroids.

I watched long enough to see the young men toasting on a party bus, then sliding slickly into the manse on a hair gel disaster of Valdez proportions. But even the vision of Vivica A. Fox poured into that ruched emerald charmeuse number couldn't distract me from that awful faux primitive tile.

So I switched over to In Treatment. That Gabriel Byrne, he's OLD, man. But he looks like he's really keeping himself up. Good for him! Stayin in shape! Good on you, dude!

Oh, he can really act, too. Almost forgot about that part.

The TV watching came just because I was looking for something to do while I enjoyed my two-three times weekly cigarette. I love to smoke, but I don't have time to do it very often. So yesterday I got home from work, got my kid, went to my friend's house for the kiddie Seder (9 kids under age 9), helped with that, came home, helped get my kid to bed, helped her past a meltdown inspired by my not letting her stay up all night and read, finished up some work, poured a glass of wine and sat down on the couch with the windows open and the fan on, and what should be just starting but...So I tried, and failed, to watch a full episode of a reality show, again.

But I was inspired to write a poem while running this morning.

To A Cougar
Dear lady, cease your striving, for they have not what you seek--
The breath of promotional vodka and Axe cologne from these Young Masters reeks,
And tomorrow's nachos soon lay waste to this night's taut physique
I tell you truly, best succumb to charms of the regal Vivic(a).

(For it is no secret that the fairest of the Deadly Vipers has my heart entombed
Ever since I saw her fire a gun through the bottom of a box of Kaboom.
But forgive me, lady, as I get distracted
From this TVland reality you have enacted.)

Your pride, your hopes, the fierce strength of your dream
Will come to naught, for I suspect most of these guys play for the other team.
While naught is wrong with that, no naughty nights ensue
For tis not their inclination to be that into you.

Bright golden Cougar, do not be trapped by time
You could still turn this bus around while in your prime:
Make a startling publicity-engineered revelation that it is really older men you prefer,
Marry a rich retired commercial real estate broker, settle in, and lick your fur.

The Lady or The Tiger, The Cougar, or The Fox?

Because of my nom de blog, people sometimes send me cougar-related news. That and the ads everywhere you look made me aware that there's a "reality" dating show featuring an "older" (40, jesus on a ritz, she's only fucking 40!) woman and younger "men."

I named myself "cougar" out of irony, because I'm often surrounded by women with the dry-cleaned jeans and the manicures and the big, ugly, overpriced handbags, expensive jewelry, and I'm kind of in awe of them. I feel like I'll never measure up to what a woman of my age (47) is supposed to look and act like. I don't do manicures or makeup most of the time, I don't wear much jewelry, I can never seem to care about designers or men with money, I'm always doing foolish things--I'm just out of place, as always. So the name is a joke.

But back to the show. For once I'll be like my mother and just believe and quote unquestioningly what I read in the New York Times: Their reviewer said the young gentlemen were indistinguishable save for their haircuts, and wondered how anyone could keep their attention on a 40-year-old anonymous blonde when Vivica A. Fox, the host of the show, was in the house.

The really weird part is it's on TVland, the home of Brady Bunch reruns. Well, OK, Florence Henderson, someone had to say it. She had some Wessonality allright.

I was hoping to dig up some blogger rage about all this, but all I found even remotely readable was a a woman on Huffington Post who's all ticked about the show and says she's "the real cougar woman." That's kind of funny. She doesn't look like a cougar, either. She looks like a nice midwestern lady, and she's writing about things like her "journey into menopause." Come back, Shane! Guess you never can tell who's a cougar on the inside.

I've never seen a reality show episode all the way through, but I loved a "reality" movie--Series 7, The Contenders, where lottery winners have to shoot each other down to get the money. I was hugely pregnant (just like the star, played by the brilliant Brooke Smith) and laughing my head off in the theater, sitting between BA and my husband, and I think I scared some folks. But that "Love Will Tear Us Apart" video was priceless, wasn't it?

If there were real equality, there'd be a "rock of love" type show where the competing young men would wear silly clothes and get very drunk and stumble around and pee themselves and tongue-kiss for the cameras. Oh, forgot, that's Smith Point!

If there were real equality, there'd be a show called The Old Lech or The Roue or some damn thing with an old guy who likes young girls. Oh, forgot, that's...pretty much everywhere.

If there were real equality, there'd be a show where I could get a date with Vivica A. Fox! Oh, forgot, that's...only in my dreams.

"Guess I'm a Fool; At Least I'm Not Innocent"

Did 10 miles on the towpath today; had been heading for the Crescent Trail, but took a turn at the last minute. Surprised to find easy parking at Old Angler, surprised to find the path deserted north of Great Falls, surprised at my respectable time. Bluebells all the way out and the wind behind me all the way back.

I'm in an odd dull place between any hurts, passions or obsessions. Paying work is only too happy to fill my every moment, and some of this packed-in-cotton feeling is the result of tamping myself down to meet the onslaught of relatives that has come my way in the past few weeks. If this keeps up, I'll have no choice but to become obscenely healthy and work on the novel. I'm tempted to do magic, just to see what spirit or spark or wave manifests, but with all the prosaic plodding, I don't have the time or the head space.

Besides, after a tarot reading I got recently at a witch event, I'm experimenting with not doing much intentional magic. It was a very intense reading with many scary cards (ever get the 9 of swords, the tower, the 5 of wands, the 7 of swords...I mean it was almost a parody!) but the reader couldn't have been kinder or more thoughtful about how he framed things. Nevertheless, what I was seeing--essentially, you will have no place to hide and every compromise and duct-tape solution you thought would hold is no longer viable--came through his words, and halfway through the reading I burst into tears, and kept on that track through the end.

But before that, there was the Fool. And here's how he described that card to me: You're used to thinking: There's something you want, so you choose the time and the accessories and the words carefully, and you create a ritual, and that's magic for you, right? Well, you're not going to need to do that anymore. See, the Fool is walking down the street, and he realizes he's hungry. And right up ahead, there's a hot dog vendor, and the Fool reaches into his pocket, and there's the money, just enough to get a hot dog. But it's only there when he needs it. If he's walking down the street and he's not hungry?--no hot dog, no money. That's the new way magic is going to work for you.

I've been testing the theory.

Right after the reading, I went into the ladies room and was wiping my eyes, and who should appear at the sink next to me but a woman, a writer and teacher who is pretty famous in witch world both for her work and because she is strikingly beautiful and charismatic. The last time I had seen her was 10 years ago in one of her classes, when I had burst into uncontrollable tears halfway through.

It made me laugh (not out loud). I said hi, and that I was looking forward to going to her class later. Then I wondered to myself if I sounded like some weird crying stalker. Then I blew my nose and went out and got some coffee. That's a fool for you.

I don't eat hot dogs, but I have a feeling a symbolic kind of hot dog might be just ahead.

"Symbolic kind of hot dog." That would be a good title.

Photo: Today's headline was written by Mr. Cole, the original big dark brooder.

"It Is Certain," As the Magic 8-Ball Would Put It

Man I'm so tired of working and not sleeping and not running enough and sitting in restaurants and working and sitting in restaurants and working and working all night long. I feel like...hey, here he comes now! All the way from the Seventh Seal, ladies and gentlemen, it's--

(XIII)
Wait, Rider

I chose
My battles
He -- their end
His flag
A rose
The field commands
His crown
The sky
The reins -- clutched
In his hands

Before him
Rises majesty
Beneath -- the bones
Abound -- above
Wait, Rider --
Comes the cry
The hooves
Crush out

The First Occasional Kiss My Happy Heinie Foundation Awards

Because I might spend time in another life under another identity encountering occasional clueless nonprofits that are really good at bumbling away money on "initiatives" that no ordinary human actually putting up some cash money will ever understand or see any results from...I started thinking a few years back that if I had a foundation, I could do better.

It gave me something to think about on long runs--If I won the lottery and started my foundation, how would I do it? I actually get paid to think of names and taglines for nonprofits, and that process can take weeks. But my name and tagline took less than a quarter-mile: The Kiss My Happy Heinie Foundation: Giving Money to Folks Maria Thinks Are Cool. Can't you just hear that on NPR?

Once on a women's weekend, a friend suggested I should soften the name to the Ki-My-Ha-He Foundation, to make it a little more accessible and give it some of that NA cachet, but that would be so damn wrong.

Obviously, this fantasy is well-formed. But you have to have something to think about to make you forget how much your knees hurt.

The "business model" is like the MacArthur: Surprise! Have some cash, you cool person, you! Sometimes I run into people or read about folks I wish I could give a Kiss My Happy Heinie Award to, but alas, I have no money. But this evening I thought, screw it, neither does anyone else, so I'm just going to give away imaginary money.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first occasional KMHH award ceremony. It's all on a blog, so it's virtually free! Which means more imaginary money for you someday, when you win one, too!

From a Washington Post story on Chitown and other web-based micro news services trying to fill the gaps in Chicago, here's the first honoree:

"Megan Cottrell, 26, a former dancer who started last year as a volunteer, is now a full-time staffer assigned to the Chicago Housing Authority. "They despise me," she says. But spokesman Matthew Aguilar says Cottrell has mostly been fair -- and that the Tribune and Sun-Times no longer cover the authority regularly."

Honey, if they hate you, you're doing it right. They can Kiss Your Happy Heinie!

The site is funded by a foundation, which I'm not so sure about. There are Conrad Black types in foundations, too. And Rupert Murdoch types. And unfortunately, this graf is also true: "WMAQ-TV's Carol Marin, a Sun-Times columnist, says sites such as Chitown do "a good job" but don't have the resources to "push back against the powerful." The Sun-Times is helping her fight a subpoena to testify at mob-related trial. "One of the things lost in the stripped-down blogosphere is the ability to fight for your stories," Marin says."

Second, tho MacArthur might get to him first: Ari Roth of Theatre J for staging the readings and discussions of Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children. Some people can open the mind and the mouth and give people a safe place to work out these complex issues, without denying any of their complexity. Heart, balls and everything in between--and people who blast off protests and view any "side" as absolutely faultless can Kiss His Happy Heinie!

The third, in the science category, goes to my Hot Friend E, so she can develop her health-promoting-cum-conceptual-art project, the Hydration Bra. It's a combination pushup bra and Camelback water jugs. You fill the cups with water in the morning, and sip through the tube throughout the day. People could tell by your boob size whether you have been drinking enough water that day, and call your attention to it, so you'll stay hydrated. And everyone would want to attend the morning meetings, right?

By the way, feel free to send a virtual donation. It's tax deductible in my dreams.

Say My Name, Um, I Mean, Say Your Name

Got another one last night.

Writing Erotica

A tongue otherwise occupied can't tell tales.
Twin hungers: To touch or to hover,
Framing the picture. I'm not above
Taking notes. Sometimes the inclinations tangle:
Which do I obey? To the two sides of
Every story, the moment or the memory,
It's not just a time-honored device but inevitable
To add a third. Always a welcome arrival.
Could I give her your name?
The reader, the witness, flows into her own
Pleasure and writes herself
Out of that moment. So it sways,
What is, what is told, cup to cup,
And not a drop is lost but to the air,
And that becomes the rain
And fills the cup again.

Don't imagine there's no technique involved.
The honest construction of momentum,
Obstacle, delay, completion, enlivened
By the immediacy of remembered detail.
But you have to start somewhere. Like they say,
Write what you know.

Jacob, a man of experience, wrestled
The Angel of creative power, on and on,
For hours and hours. A man I know of painted
The scene of that struggle, and ran away--
On another island, he lived to fight another day.

In Like a Lion

I guess eventually I'll write one to go with all of them, major and minor arcana.

The Judgment Card

Why, you! And here I thought you
were dead. Across a crowded room,
What's new, probably she was bored,
All that. There's nothing like a glimpse
Between the gilded pillars, between the stems
Of those huge exotic blooms, the pricey trumpet
Lilies of the kind I didn't think we'd see again.
Nor those rich robes, so fresh. I see them
Swirl around her ankles as the chains fall away.
Oh roar away, and clash a cymbal or so.
What I'm listening for is her breath,
Filtered through nicotine, drawing down,
(She breathes his need, you know. No blood
For that vamp. All it takes is a whisper
Of despair, and she's there!) Oh blow;
The lion, the lamb, the lily, the rose,
The stage, all set; the revelation, yes,
And the wings, poised to lift
Those who lie to new life.

Pardon Me, Boy

I hate the Connecticut coach. He ought to go work for AIG. Go Chattanooga.

Wash, FSU, Gonzaga with a z, Louisville.

UPDATE: Christopher Walken's Twitter!

Your Weekly World News

This is a partial list of the people on this earth who, I believe, were/are actually space aliens or beings from some alternate universe. Feel free to add your votes.

Oscar Wilde
Harriet Tubman
George Washington
Sappho
Isadora Duncan

I got to thinking about Wilde because of St. Patrick's Day. As my one allowable prejudice, I have taught my daughter this nationalistic, jingoistic, party line: The Irish are the greatest writers in the whole world.

The Miley Cyrus/Radiohead "feud" may make my daughter's head explode. She likes both. So do I. I listened to "Pyramid Song" in labor.

A guy I know reported that Miley was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt during a show setup, and people threw down all over his Facebook comments, disrespecting her, saying how dare she, she couldn't really like Sonic Youth! My take: If Thurston Moore can like Karen Carpenter, why can't Miley Cyrus like Thurston Moore? I'm gonna get even more Camille Paglia here and start going into how Miley Cyrus plays adolescent female identity politics--Hannah can be sharp and sexy and mysterious, while Miley must be goofy and gangly; Hannah can drive, Miley must walk; Hannah is independent and talented, Miley gets a family and friends...it's a training ground for how a woman must segment herself according to assigned roles, right?

Look. Miley Cyrus is not allowed to fail, to be a loser, to recognize ambiguity or subtlety in any form; she is forbidden to deal with anger, loss or pain in her music; she cannot rail, she cannot scream, she cannot be a feminist, she cannot have a sexual identity of any kind or she will risk her own and her family's livelihood, she will disappoint everyone. She is a factory, a CEO, a religious devotee in her terribly, frighteningly restricted life and stunted art.

Thom Yorke, please, she has so very little in her life. You could be kind.

UPDATE: There are all sorts of flashing police lights outside my window as I write this. DH gets home with the news: Someone has left an "unidentified case" outside of Fannie Mae. Somebody's scared somebody's letting that Populist Outrage get the better of them, hmm?

Photo: Poets' Graves.

Madoff Trial Over; The Trial of Maria P. Continues

A gaggle of some thousands of MBAs R Us trip in, steps ahead of the peasants with the torches.

"Can you tell us what to say so they'll give us the rest of their money?"

"They don't have any money."

"They can borrow it, and then give it to us. Write something we can tell them to make them do it."

"I don't know if I can."

"If you don't, I'll tell my daddy to tell your boss to fire you, bitch," hisses one.

They chain me to the computer with the straps of their big ugly handbags, worth more than I have made in months, and tape a health insurance card to the screen, for motivation. Because they understand employee compensation. They know what motivates and sustains employee efforts.

"What do you do for people?" I ask. A young master pauses in his labors of mixing a pitcher of sweet, fruit-flavored cocktails long enough to suck in his gut and snort in my direction.

"What do you mean?" another asks.

"People won't give you money unless you can show you can do something for them," I gasp, trying to sit up. "I don't know what to write. I need something to go on."

"We don't have to DO anything," one says.

"We analyze the environment and shape action-oriented strategies that get results!" one crows.

"We deliver solutions! We're comprehensively solutions-focused!" roars another.

"But what do you do?" I ask. "What do you do for the money?"

"We deserve it!" another snips. "We're smarter than you! We're smarter than anyone! We're the smartest ones in the room!"

"What do you make, what do you give, what do you do--" One shoves his tie into my mouth to silence me. I notice it's a knockoff.

A woman begins, with the tip of her perfectly manicured index fingernail, to carve into my skin my health insurance group number. A man joins her, carving with a sharpened key to his Lexus. They etch the number, over and over, deeper and deeper, into my flesh. They get results.

Photo: From Greenaway's Pillow Book; a more pleasant prospect.

Mix Tape

I can't stop listening to the radio, even on days like this, when I hit the buttons and get Kansas, Eagles, T-Pain, Rascal Flats, NPR Airbag. Mrat. The best station in the city is WHUR, but as much as I like Michael Baisden, I wish they had more locals on, and sometimes I'm just not up for all that Quiet Storming. Internet radio is a touch better. DH usually has KCRW all around the house, but when I get up early to make the pancakes, I turn to the Technicolor Web of Sound psychedelia, which even replays ads from the old days (Cream doing a beer ad, speed kills, etc.). And of course I enjoy DJ Booger X, Tuesday nights 7-10--who doesn't?

But when you go back, way back, back to the time of Bertha Butt and the Butt Sisters...there was Radio Mitch, which was actually a series of cassette tapes, mix tapes, that he made just for a small army of acquaintances. I don't even remember how many there were, but BA found an old one and put it on a CD for me and I've been listening to the first two songs on it ever since. That's because it comes out as all one track, so I have to keep going back to the beginning, because I don't even want to go past the second song, because it is ELEKTRA by THE REIVERS, and I really, really, really used to love that song.

Except I can't remember where or when.

I know it. I know the words, I know the bassline--maybe I learned it once? But I don't remember where or how or when I heard it, when I must have heard it over and over. The years from 1976 to 1990 have two things in common--I own blurred memories and I didn't own a television. At some points I didn't have a stereo or even a radio, sometimes just an AM one in the car (used to love WOL), sometimes just a little portable picnic player, as Alex would call it, to play cassettes. A lot of people (save for BA, who bailed me out a couple times; I ever win Powerball, she gets half) don't get how poor I was then and how crazy the work was. The work + school together later was tough, but the starting out work the first time I left school was the worst. Whenever I think about getting laid off I get flashbacks to the employment office woman telling me I had to wear more makeup and cut my hair and dress more professionally, and there I was sitting in the new black suit, $40 from Dress Barn, $40 of rent money, and that sweet, sweet saleswoman who said so reassuringly that "black worsted goes with everything, it's so versatile." Shoulder pads. Me wearing it with the thrift store blouses. Trying to stretch out birth control pills over a day and a half because I couldn't afford them, and getting pregnant, and the car breaking down, and hitching to work, and the miscarriage, the bad one that landed me in the hospital, and my parents coldly and angrily bailing me out, and, as I recovered, my mother taking me for a haircut.

One's tempted to despise the 80s, but they gave us Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted, which I dipped into the other night to find a description of the Omni Mall in Miami, which I used to live next door to, in the late 90s when it was long past its glory, and got stuck in--the book, I mean, not the mall, but sometimes in that haunted castle built on powder, too. Check this out: "It is hard now to call up the particular luridity of 1984." And: "I see now that there will be no Resolution Trust to do the workout on this particular default, but I did not see it then. Not that I shouldn't have. There were hints all along, clues we should have processed, sifted for their application to the general condition. Try the day we noticed that the banks had called in the paper on all the malls, try the day we noticed that somebody had called in the paper on all the banks..."

It's scary. It's about reconstructing a version of events. Out of the odd details you can remember clearly.

But goddamn, what a great song. "From sober....to sultry....I got you on my mind, in all soft-talking time..." Why do I know it? Did I use that phrase in a headline? "Sober, to sultry." Did someone make me a mix tape called that? Did I make someone a mix tape and call it that? Will I regret asking these questions? But I like the song. When I heard it, my heart lifted. Did I lose a good memory?

Image: I used to love that comic, too.

Big Hard Green Globes

With the Miami Herald on the shelf at the Dollar Store and the Sun-Sentinel limboing lower now, it is up to Gourmet magazine to do (excellent) investigative reporting on slavery in Florida's agricultural business. You might avoid certain strawberries as well; the people who pick them are prone to having children with tragic birth defects.

I don't buy out of season, and I try to stick to local. But there are folks, some related to me, who live not far from Immolakee who say that by doing so I am harming farmworkers more, that these people want these jobs, that they're grateful for them. (They say worse things, but I'm not quoting those.) I say, I don't want to enslave and poison people and I'm not grateful to be able to play a part in it, so what about MY needs?

Again the fallacy that the only solutions are those we've experienced, that we can't envision anything new.

It was about this time last year that I forced DH to leave the relations during our vacation and go with me to Lake Okeechobee, because I wanted to see where Zora Neale Hurston had written about and I wanted to hike part of the levee around the lake. Despite some health problems at the time, I found some beauty there: strange birds, long flat stretches of swamp, dragonflies mating in mid-air. But the lake bottom is riddled with arsenic; in drought, it catches on fire; in floods, it fills with farm runoff and massive fish kills follow.

ON ANOTHER topic...

This is in honor of Nathaniel Mayweather's impending nuptials. Yay, Fancy Lad! We like seeing you so happy. (You HAVE TO watch at least until the "grab the butt" part.)

I didn't write for a while because I was in a killer depression. Then I heard yesterday a "this day in rock history" item about Janis Joplin being fined for obscene language onstage in Tampa, and I thought, bitch, the least you can do in her honor is get out of bed and go use some obscene language. On whatever stage you can find.

Chapter XXIII: In Which I Join a Badass Gang

I am wearing a bandana for the next few days. DD saw me in it and said: "It looks like you've been working very hard, mama." I have this genetic thing where I grow lumps on my head, and every 10 years or so I have to get them cut off. Ewwwwww I know, it's totally Alien. Or the karmic retribution for working in advertising. So the removal process today was a little complicated, and now I have a small bald spot and blue stitches and just yuckkiness on the top of my head. And the only thing I can think to do is wear a cotton bandana, because at least that's clean and breathable. Luckily, I have plenty, from running. I have purple, teal, turquoise and pirate. What does that say about my sexual preferences, I wonder?

On another note. Sad news. Much like what happened to my brother-in-law, about 8 years ago now.

"In An Interstellar Burst I Am Back to Save the Universe"

I was Jonesing furiously to hear "Airbag" and couldn't find OK Computer anywhere, so DH downloaded it for me, kind man, and I over-and-overed it all the way to Annapolis and back, and between that and the trees and being reminded of Vanity Fair, and also that movie The Object of Beauty, when Malkovich was sexy, I came up with this.

And I certainly have been something of an airbag lately.

A Sharp Retort
I agree it's a cheap way to pass the time,
But how can I feel sexy when I'm not liquid?
Maybe if we were living like outlaws again--
Now that's a life to get you pumping,
Go in and out the windows, that keeps you young.
But not these dull duns on the front stoop, please;
Not living like palace fleas, feeding on the fringes
There's got to be someone out there for whom
A glance is as good as a promise--
Oh debt, where is my stain?

Jai Homo-Loving Son of a Gun

Was it the long run, or the salmon with rice noodles I made? We dozed through yet another awards show, on a pile of newspapers.

DH: Penelope Cruz should get it because she's so hot.
Me: Daniel Craig keeps getting all mixed up.
DH: Natalie Portman. Smokin hot.
Me: Yeah, but they're going to feel bad about this whole Joaquin Phoenix thing when it turns out he's suffering from undiagnosed mercury poisoning.
DH: Tina Fey. Preeeetttttyy!
Me: Yeah, but she's anti-stripper, so I'm not so crazy about that.
DH: I love Melissa Leo.
Me: (As Joel Gray addresses Sean Penn): Great, have the gay guy talk to the gay guy.
Me: (As Christopher Walken addresses the guy from Revolutionary Road): Great, have the crazy guy talk to the crazy guy.
Me: (As Cuba Gooding Jr talks to Robert Downey Jr): Great, have the Junior talk to the Junior. Or maybe, um, oh.

UPDATE, really important update: How could I forget, John Legend. Nutmeg. Nutmeg. Mmmm, nutmeg.

"Doesn't Anybody Notice That Our Knuckles Are Turning Blue?"

Even though it was my business to do so for some years, I never gave a shit about the Oscars or any of those other awards shows. Tonight, I'm looking forward to the Oscars. Why? Seeking cheap escape, that's why. I'm like one of those Depression-era women clutching her nickels to buy a ticket to go see that "My Forgotten Man" number one more time.

The New Yorker rundown is the only one telling the truth about the sorry nominees this year.

Speaking of telling the truth, YOU HAVE TO read this. That's a joke around the Cougar household, because certain relatives are a little on the controlling side, constantly telling me I HAVE TO go to an expensive restaurant or resort or watch this year's pretentious hit show or similar thing I don't want to do and can't afford. (All I ever want to do is groove, lie in bed, and write poetry, fuckers.)

Unfortunately, the full essay is available only by subscription. The free bloggers on this guy's site are tearing it up, on topics ranging from the dangers of space junk to investigative reporting on Navy testing off the Oregon coast, and you can read them for free, but there's a big chunk of prose you get only through subscription. I can't believe I'm shilling for this dude, AGAIN, since I've got my differences with him on several levels, but this taste will maybe show why reading this just made me jump up and walk around the room. Yeah, it's ironic, the not-buying-it woman saying pay for this, but I do buy art, books (carefully), I do still buy the privilege of seeing performance.

It's been years since I got screamingly sick of being told I was supposed to help the world by spending money I don't have on crap I don't need; similar time frame for being disgusted at myself for working in advertising (even for nonprofits). But I'm also very trapped; there are certain things I've signed up for and can't creep out of now. I've been clearing little honest and adventurous and true spaces for myself around the corners, just through being crafty and creative, but it takes such an enormous amount of energy. It's like I've been staying up late and using odd hours when no one is watching to dig an escape tunnel out of a prison, and now I wonder how many people are going to show up wanting to use it, and they're all welcome, but here I am not even knowing if it goes anywhere.

And I'm claustrophobic. But all I can do is keep digging.

Anyway, here's the Eric Francis that you HAVE TO read:

"Yet what is really driving all this consumer debt? Is it the need to conform? Are we covering some deep insecurity? Are we consuming because we have issues about our ability to create? A consumer-based economy is clearly the result of the feeling that we're not creative people. Compared to vacations in the Bahamas, art supplies and musical instruments are cheap. Most of what we consume either has nothing to do with creating; or it could, if we applied the imagination to make it so. But that takes, well, imagination, and the boldness to use it. Learning to play the guitar takes practice.

Yet as most creative people will tell you, it's difficult to make a living based on what you make. Most of us don't actually purchase the work of craftspeople, artisans or artists; we purchase manufactured items -- and all artists know it because most of us have to do something else to put food on the table. And often when art is purchased, it is done as an investment by the purchaser rather than for its own sake. The value goes up when the artist dies. I jokingly tell talented young artists not to accept payment in heroin. I learned this from an art dealer.

"...Besides showing up as sex-phobia, our emotional problems are congealing around money and specifically debt. Americans consume mindlessly, and it long ago turned into a full-blown habit. Admittedly, we are pushed to consume on a nonstop basis by the most expensive educational campaign in history -- advertising.

Addiction is an inappropriate response to an emotional issue, and it is often hidden from view (veiled, like the 8th house). We have accessed debt at unimaginable amounts to finance this addiction. As a culture, we utilize our brainpower to rationalize our behavior rather than use it to recognize and define the problems underlying our addiction; or to turn our energy toward creation. The act of thinking has been co-opted in the service of our addictions. We feed our imagination titillation and fantasy to the point of total distraction. We shun the use of our creativity for problem solving, for pleasure, for beauty.

Why do we do this? Here are some questions we might ponder, provided this week by my friend Kelly after she looked at the chart:

-- What are the emotional issues that are underlying our addiction? What are we avoiding? Why is any loss so difficult to deal with?

-- What price are we willing to pay before we recognize that emotional processing should be part of our daily rituals, just like brushing our teeth, or eating? It is part of the maintenance of living.

-- Why are we holding onto our paradigm of reality even when it is clear to any rational being that it is self-destructing? Doesn't anybody notice that our knuckles are turning blue?"

Photo: Despair.com, telling the truth about business and getting ripped off for a decade.

Falling Rock

My hearing is getting so bad that the only time I can listen to music is when I'm alone in the car. I can't really hear it unless it's at high volume. (It's not from listening to too much loud music, by the way. It's called Meniere's disease. Probably didn't spell it right.)

At home, my daughter or the neighbors complain. So last weekend I'm driving DH and DD up around mountain roads because my Hot Friend E offered us a couple beds in a ski place she rented for her family. And DH has got the weird iPod thing working where he plugs it into a cassette tape and then it plays through the speakers. He usually plays random stuff and most of the time I'm all, ohhhh, please can we turn it off and put on an Elvis Mitchell podcast. And he's playing random stuff and we have this conversation.

Me: I kind of like that song. Who is it?
DH: It's called LCD Soundsystem.
Me: It sounds old. I like it.
DH: I think it's a Joy Division cover.
Me: That doesn't sound like Joy Division. I don't know that one. But maybe my hearing's just so bad I don't recognize it. It sounds too happy.
DH: Happy? He's saying everything falls apart and you think that's happy?
Me: I thought he was saying "It's going to start." Can I turn it up?
DD: (from carseat in back): Will you please turn down the music? I can't sing when it's too loud.
Me: It could be falling apart in a happy way.
(Same song starts playing again, but it sounds a little different.)
Me: What, does this band just do one song over and over?
DH: No, I think this is John Cale singing it.
Me: But it's the same band? Who is this band this time?
DH: They. Are. Called. L. C. D. Sound. System.
Me: So they're the same and they're doing one song. Why do they do the same song?
[pause]
Me: Don't make fun of me for going deaf. Is it like a tribute?
DH: I think there is a Joy Division tribute album, but it's not this one.
Me: I know there is a Joy Division tribute album. It sucks. I mean, are they like a Joy Division tribute band, like Lez Zepplin? Wow, that would be cool, a lesbian Joy Division tribute band. What would they call it?
DH: It's the same band.
Me: (Thinking: Ha ha! Black Lab! They could call it Black Lab!) This is cool, because the first time I heard Joy Division it was on this cassette tape? And I was listening to it going to the prison up by Antietam to visit this guy. And it was weather like this, all gloomy.
DH: Who were you visiting in prison?
Me: He was a friend of my friend MR, you remember her? I knew him from being around, you know, but she wanted to visit and bring him some stuff, like sweats and stuff, a bible, you know. He got all born again in there. He wasn't violent or anything, just (mouths, because of daughter) *drugs*. But she was out west, so she couldn't go see him, so I went instead.
[Pause]
Me: This is a different song now. What is he singing? "Going around the bend--in Africa?"
DH: "If you do it again, I'm gonna freak out."
[Pause]
DH: "So do it again."

So, did you guess the song? It's "All My Friends," and it's NOT a Joy Division cover. LCD Soundsystem does, however, cover No Love Lost, an obscurity from the days when Joy Division was called Warsaw. So maybe my hearing's not so terrible after all.

Repurposed

Some co-conspirators on That Wretched Facebook thing are doing lists of favorite covers. Here, with just a few recycled bits, is my list of favorite covers that will never happen.

Barry White, "Theme from The Beverly Hillbillies"
Cass Elliot, "Hate On Me"
Marc Bolan, "Baby I'm-a Want You"
Freddie Mercury, "Evenflo"
Jim Morrison, "Ride Like the Wind"
Bob Marley, "Renegade"
Kurt Cobain, "Hit Me Baby One More Time"
Robert Palmer, "Think Before He Cheats"

Please add as inspiration strikes.

Layoffs have gotten closer. It's not right to say anything more specific, even here; I'm safe for now, but infuriated. Trying to detach. I mean, when you come down to it, what did you expect? Why does it come to such a surprise to us that we're worthless and disposable in this system?

But that's only in this system. In what realm are we precious and prized, and why can't we arrange for that one to be our consensual reality?

The door is always open wide...

Get Ready for the Judgment Day

"If you don't feel looming dread, you're not very bright." That's what Edward Albee is quoted as saying in the Post, and it's good enough for me. However, I woke up this morning inexplicably happy. Here are some happy things for you.

--The movie's horrifying, I understand, but I like this trailer because it kills on cliches, and plus, the dancing kilt guy. Some people say it's a feminist affront; I disagree--well, maybe the movie is, but the trailer, no, because a dumbass cliche is a dumbass cliche, whether it's girly or not.

--Not since encountering the incisive work of rock critic Ronald Thomas Clontle have I been so impressed by such an omnibus, a panorama, of rock history. This cavalcade rules.

--One of my friends has threatened to act this out at the next PTA meeting.

--How could I have forgotten this???

UPDATE: My bad, my bad: Bad link on Tres Chicas the other day. Good link on Tres Chicas.

The Grammies Wuz Trippin

And I was falling into a dream
Over the New York Times magazine...
Little Nick Jonas gets shook up by Wonder
and misses his cue--but his brother knows what to do...
Don't sleep in the subway, Kanye...
Tired eyes and a tight tank top for Kate Winslet,
Looking well in the Chelsea Hotel.
MIA bounces like the bee girl reincarnate
Proud mother of a brood of boasts.
Robert Downey Jr. puts his kadas through the difference engine
and finds the solution. Then Thom leads the samba drums
and shining brass into a Trouble Man for our time--
Et cetera, et cetera, et tu...

You Can't Shoot the Fiddler in the Middle of the Show

Finally got around to opening, reading, and, thanks to a longish drive to and from a witch convention, listening to the two CDs of the Oxford American music issue. You get a lot for your money with that thing, all kinds of short essays of all types, at least one on each tune, plus usually a story, some poems, and a couple of features. The piece on Elton and Betty White, who I am so happy to now know about, had me shouting out bits aloud to DH. Photo of Arthur Lee looking like a bodhisattva (and sad story of his last days). Very very good piece on "Lawson and Four More" that explores the question of where you draw the line on what you call an authentic outsider--a topic this magazine should take on in every last issue, because it's sticky and endemic to southern culture nowadays and certainly to this magazine--through taking apart a piece of music by skilled players that was intentionally produced to "sound garage." It's got a knockout punchline, in that the band evolved into Big Star (and the ethereal "For You" is on the second disk, btw).

But then there are the blaps and tweets, like the dreadfully earnest Peter Guralnick recycling his stuff on Jerry Lee (just listen to the song) and a multi-page pant about Neko Case, in which the author works the conceit of spending a day with the band to the near death of all concerned, even the poor publicists'. It starts with some line about remembering watching a woman licking a strawberry ice-cream cone, and just gets worse; wank, wank, McSweeney-flavored wank for six freaking pages. I sure hope y'all didn't pay this guy by the word.

Too many of the women artists I hear now sound like they've been processed to fit in as the soundtrack to the obligatory emo montage at the end of a network drama--a little acoustic strum, a little trebly warble about staying strong when all feels bleak. Or maybe they're all the same person. And then I think of artists like Lynn Blakey and Lori Carson not getting their due and I'm all like, I'm just going to listen to the Stylistics again. I know it's not a bad thing to have your song on an emo montage, hell, it happened to Joni Mitchell and the cash is not unwelcome, but you know.

So I had little hope for the song itself, even though I'm sure my husband has played me the album it's off before, and plenty of New Pornographers as well. He's always waving the Latest Things under my nose, but my tastes are so particular and peculiar that I can't settle and listen for long; I have no patience unless it knocks me out and forces me into it. I'm sure like many others she's been part of all kinds of cool kids' bands that I haven't bothered checking out, so just STOP, OK? What I'm saying is I like this one song, if that's allowed? And that I had that wonderful experience of having my assumptions trashed?

In the first 30 seconds or so, I'm wondering, did Wanda Jackson ever record with Lee Hazelwood? Same rodeo-rope phrasing, just yelping it out. Showdown and tumbleweed guitar, her own, I hear, and those metaphysical lyrics, with just enough specificity thrown in to be mysterious:

Compared to some, I've been around
But I really tried so hard--
That echo chorus lied to me with its "hold on,
"Hold on hold on hold on..."
In the end I was the mean girl
Or somebody's in-between girl
Now it's the devil that I love.
And it's as funny as real love.
I leave the party at 3 a.m.,
Alone, thank god,
With a valium from the bride.
It's the devil that I love.

I played it over and over, missed my exit, dipped down to cross the Patuxent and looked out at the ice breaking, played it again, and played it again.

Once I got home, DH enthusiastically played me the rest of the album it's off, salivating about a new one she's got coming out, but nothing grabbed me the same way. I'll check out her second, which is supposed to be more country.

So there's MY wank. And they say women take longer. To its credit, OxAm also has a shorter piece on Case by Greil Marcus, call it a wan. The best of his take on "Hold On Hold On"--"driving fast around the turns." Maybe we all shoulda just left it at that.

And I'm rooting for Anthony Hamilton in the Grammies.

Photo: Was delighted to find one of her with guitar instead of just looking fetching, but lord, read that cover line, oh you poor thing to have to listen to that kind of drivel all the livelong day. Does put one in mind of Yates' "It's certain that fine women eat a crazy salad with their meat."

Headline: It's got a good Clarence Gatemouth Brown song on it, too. No fiddle players were harmed during this production.

PIA

My arm hurts too much to write (beyond 8 billable hours required to get paid). Resting for a couple more days. Scared cosmos is saying you must never write anything fun again.