The Last of the Seersucker

Season Finale
It’s time to find out what happened to your favorites.
Under a sliver of that song you couldn’t get out of your head
All last year, their futures unfold in artful montage.
All over the world, people are watching. They’ve set
Their clocks and arranged their schedules for its sake.
Some, and their number might include me, took time
To compose responses previous to this episode.
Don’t let them fool you. Most of them don’t know
Any more than you do what will happen.
It’s just an old habit of those perpetually
On deadline: Be prepared. A few lines,
A frame, even a full scaffold on which to hang
What you’ll have only minutes to get out there
Once it’s done, can serve you, they say.
But here’s a funny thing: I’ve always trashed
Anything I’ve written in advance. It doesn’t
Measure up to the moment. I demand
Fresh language and images from myself
Even as I’m secretly amazed to see just
What I’ve anticipated unfold. See? I knew it!
With everyone else, I watch the fragments:
The ship tilting, the muzzle flash, the crash,
The embrace, the solution, the hospital bed,
Hoping we will learn everything we want to know
About what happens next. Like you, I will not accept
With much grace a finale that offers us less than this.

Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid

Don't think it didn't cross my mind that the bill may not ever come due as I tried to bury myself in consumerism to offset anxiety about the end of the world and not think about death. But it's kind of hard to rack up much of a bill when your shopping places are a yard sale and the closing 30 percent off Borders books. The vastly reduced discount haul:

--yoga mat for my daughter, turquoise with a planet inside a peace sign, her choice

--a plastic facsimile of a movie popcorn box for my daughter, her choice again, to keep important papers in, plus a koosh ball and a pair of dangly earrings that look like orbit patterns

--a travel book on Tennessee (hoping to do Memphis this summer, waiting til it gets real hot; won't take long)

--the Vision tarot deck

--an astrology book called "Cosmic Couplings: The Sextrology of Relationships," from which I learned that Virgo men stay hardest longest, Capricorn men have the biggest peens, Gemini women are "typically bootylicious" and Aquarians are most likely to be genderqueer. The relationships I've had that have mattered have all fallen into the Virgo, Capricorn, Gemini, and Aquarius decants, and I'm starting to think there might be something to this here star sign stuff after all. Oh, I forgot the Libra. He's still charming as hell. Hey there Tennessee!

--the Sonic Youth bio, "Goodbye to the 20th Century," which I'm looking forward to diving into sometime before 2012

--an Emily Dickinson collection

--the best of it: a stone chip impregnated with pyrite...a friend's mother was a spiritual practitioner, and after her death he invited others who shared similar practices to take a spiritually charged item from her things. I was moved to take the pyrite...fool's gold, the courage to be a fool. It is sitting near me with an orange candle burning right now.

Because it is foolish to write poetry as a nuclear reactor is melting down. Go Coyote Go!

Breath

Taking my last breath alone, I could survive
Knowing that's coming. It's having just one I love
And not the rest that would kill me, relative
And irrelevant as that would be at that point.
Hands on the wheel and 24-hour news on the radio,
I wonder if the flash will find me in the dentist's chair.
Will my face be broken out when the world ends?
It would be nice to be pretty on my last day
On earth, or at least attractively disheveled,
Like a heroine in a movie, inches away from
The crashed asteroid. Whew! That was close!
I idly assemble a cast for my Decameron--
A medieval frame, like that carved and gilded
Around a triptych on deadly sins, both boundary
And elevation for the realities enclosed within.
You need a little distance, like that. Because this,
This is Scheherazade flipped on her stomach,
This is telling stories not to live another night
But to distract from the night closing in.

[And furthermore!]
Windfall

You might as well yell to the wind to slow
And stop nudging my car into the next lane
Of the elevated highway that affords a view
Of the Pentagon's rooftops, the top
Of the treeline, the hawk, the jet trails.
Engineering has put us all on the same level.
Tomorrow, we have contrived to gain more daylight.
You might as well tell the sea to stop
Rolling in, the rocks to stop rolling
Into the sea, the sea to stop knocking
Over the trees, the jet trails to stop
Flowing into the air, the hawk to drop.

Image: Pasolini cast himself as Giotto in Decameron.

How To Drain Your Dragon

Faced with contemplating a "terrifying and exciting" experience, I drew a card and determined to go with exciting.

King of Wands
Salamanders' Song

Like you, from fire, we crawled, you rose!
Our King, spring from your wand
Life, our bliss surges in our tongues,
Our bodies once more starred
To herald your return, your right,
Your seat once more yours, so yes, we sing.

One, inquisitive, approaches your throne
With longing, our tiny tongues long
To lick you like flames, our King.
Your wand commands us, ours!
Ascending this day you take your
Right place, sun, we dance in circles,
Present our skins to nourish your visions,
Taste our own tails as sacrifice
To secure your standard's infinity.

Kill the Fat-Free Tofu

I put the Stones' version of Prodigal Son on a mix tape for a loved one the other day, and it reminded me how much I wanted to kick that parable's ass. When you're pretty much born humiliated and humbled and told you're worthless, it's odd hearing that God wants you to be put down even lower, that trying to escape is futile, and that the more you crawl, the more he'll love you.

Luckily, I also understand that there's more to Jesus, that he kicked corporate ass and defended prostitutes. He's not my god, but he's just all right with me, as another song says.

Prodigal

I sleep with swine, I won't deny it even once--
They're smart, they share their food freely,
Like me, true to my true name as I flung
The last bits of my inheritance away from me,
Scattered it all to the sinners and winds.
I couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

I still pray; I pray each night
Not to feel the pull of the road
To the place called home, to the house
Where my father waits with a knife
To draw against the plump throat
Of an innocent and call it celebration,
That place where a family mutters
Under the music of the feast, husbanding their hate
Until after the sun goes down.
You may see my shape against the light
Getting smaller as I move down the road.

Image: The club can't even handle Rembrandt and Saskia right now.

The Cartographer, Far From The Truth

Freud put love and work at the top of the list of indicators of mental health. I have overwhelming amounts of both. Truly, I could do without the work, though, or at least do without the kind of work that comes in my door. I neglect my duties. I'll get in trouble.

This is about a copyist in Battista Agnese's shop in Venice while they were working on the map book for Charles V. It's the little things that get you.

Here Be Lions
We don't allude to unknowns at the borders in these days.
We fill that space with cherubim, puffing away
From the twelve directions. These are in my hand,
Not in my name. Nothing of me will live. In the world
We map, that breath fills sails, never sinks a ship.
In the world I walk at night, I never fear
The hot breath of beasts at my back,
But the sweet breath of my angel beneath
The Rialto has the flavor of my death.

Few fear the winds here; as few as fear
The Pope, or the Emperor; a shrug and a smile
And they're banished. We have turned our lions to stone.
We copy the copies of copies of maps
Of lands left to others to chance, and in this repetition
Press out the mysteries and bind them
Flat into a gift for a royal son.
What I fear is each long day's squint at the page.

One thin thread of real silver runs across the map,
Tracing the route the silver in the hold travels, wrested from
What was another world. Now it is our world, all of it.
That gleaming vein, now that, it could resolve into a garrote;
One bead of blood from a scratch with the tip of a knife,
Or a rat-fed flea in my bed--any of these
Will kill me, will have me long
For the past's mercy of fangs and claws.

Image: Library of Congress.

Half-Marathon

Not really the poem I wanted, but it'll do. I was ready to do a marathon in February, but the flesh was weak and the cough was strong. More chances ahead.

Messenger
You cannot shape but fly
Cannot spin but bear
Your weight on one foot, air,
For an instant, and then the other.
And the message, of course, you know that too.
Three words to the king, no more.
No honing, no embellishment, no scrollwork on the shield.
Nothing that screams or dances
With each strike of your foot to the road
Need be told. Not the
Clash of iron and bronze or
Bronze fallen on the field, not
Iron on bone, no picture
Of blood-washed rocks, no words
Of the bronze smell of blood.
Nothing about the secret signal
From one royal family to another:
Retreat now, and your safety is assured.
Nothing about the goats: Their bleats deafening,
And still not enough to keep the pledge
Of sacrifice made to Artemis. Too many dead men,
Not enough live goats.

You are the messenger, and it is
Only later, over wine, that poets
Will invent you, give you a vision
Of Pan on your path, and your last words.
Now, on the road, you smile:
Getting to Athens, after all, isn't as
Arduous as getting to Babylon.
Your feet drum out the child's rhyme as you run.
Three score and ten, yes, and back again.

Update: Had to fix the ending and add a photo. Was working via the phone last night.
Image: Pan on a mixing bowl, photographed by Sebastia Giralt, creative commons share.

Eleven Observations On This Binary Occasion

1. I am a trashy woman who has not yet dismantled her xmas display.

2. I have bronchitis and was up all night the other night coughing and scanning the cable channels when I ran into "She's Gotta Have It." The women in this movie were so cool. Artsy and bohemian and un-really real. With all the humor and subject matter in your face, it's easy to overlook what a beautiful eye Lee shows for composition. Still exciting seeing it. [well, you won't see it here, cause I can't get the embed code right.]

3. Like Nola, I would prefer not to have to choose, but if I had to? Mars Blackmon.

4. I'm not going to compromise anyone's free speech, no matter how violent the rhetoric. Karma is stronger than democracy, however, and it will make you responsible for all your outputs, eventually.

5. Just read a report that Gulf bacteria is doing a great job of eating up the spilled oil. Trouble is, the bacteria also shits, what it shits after eating oil is endocrine disruptors. If you're a man who likes big boobs a lot, well, your future's bright, because pretty soon, you'll have your very own pair!

6. The evil of perfectionism seems to be limiting a lot of women in their 30s and 40s nowadays.

7. I really took Robert Plant for granted as a vocalist for a long time.

8. 127 Hours vs. Black Swan: Both Boyle and Aronofsky deal with people pitting themselves against extraordinary physical and mental challenges. Boyle celebrates the push, for all its hubris and cost, and Aronofsky tells the world, one slip and you're charred toast, see? 127 Hours FTW.

9. Driving home from the grocery store, Joan Jett's I Hate Myself for Loving You on the radio. DD: "She should do yoga." Me: "Why?" DD: "Because yoga teaches you not to be so hard on yourself."

10. I'm hoping dreaming will be easier when Neptune moves into Pisces in April.

11. I wish I could find a kind of bacteria that would do my pay work.

Transformed at the Withers

I'm looking at my Chiron return in March, which is sort of the last stand at the OK Corral to have any hope of budging that kundalini upstream. I'm working hard, truly. Chiron is an area of life where you will be made aware, like it or not; other interpretations say it is where you are wounded and where you have the most to teach.

I have Chiron in Pisces in the 9th, which explains my hopeless inability to get published or educated, and also my lucky ability to learn by osmosis. It is supposed to mean that I am a natural teacher. No one wants to learn anything from me, except about what not to do. I am also supposed to be able to teach psychically and must serve in this manner. Yeah, right. If you would like to know about your Chiron, put your date and TIME and place of birth in the comments or email it, and I'll send you an interpretation.

The Chiron return comes around ages 49 to 51; I'm on the younger side of this one for once. But its looming also signifies that I'm old, and has me reading about things like post-menopausal vaginal atrophy. Which scares the fuck out of me, literally, and has me diving for the Chinese herbs. A cool woman I'd met said she was taking testosterone, and that made me wonder, so I was doing some research. OK, so I don't have to worry about it, technically, for 10 years or more, and OK, it doesn't happen to everyone, but atrophy. Freak. Me. Out. And I'm thinking if it were penis atrophy, we'd have a 24/7/365 Jerry Lewis telethon about it to address this problem RIGHT NOW.

Then again, I'm doing some pay work on prostate cancer, and it's also freaking me out how little is done about this relative to breast cancer, and how often surgery is the first go-to when maybe it's not needed. Who would have thought I'd live to see a time when men go to doctors and don't hear about their choices? Progress?

So here is an old poem that has been aging in the little red notebook since this summer.

Aging Marionettes
What he called us--
The mahogany knob of his--
Wait for it--elbow
Crooked around the cords
Of my neck, hand dangling
At the sanded-smooth
Mound of my breast, pink tip
Only slightly nicked.
Cable-muscled arms and lank of legs
Worn thin by always moving, moving
Both of us still swaying slowly, facing ourselves
In the full-length mirror
In the Holiday Inn.

Misrule

Hoping a little I'd get snowed in so I could indulge my latest passion, a "translation" of some of the works of Maria Rubedo of Tarn, Mistress or Abbess of the Ladies of St. Sernin, a millenariast cult in the Midi-Pyrennes often seen as a repository for remnants of Mithraism. Her community was tolerated for its lip-service Catholicism and ability to create healing liquors, medical service to the rich (who were charged) and poor (for free), and its ability to send money when and where it counted to ensure its Sisters' peace and survival.

However, her extensive alchemical experimentations would have placed her beyond even the protection afforded by her ability to brew the 16th-century equivalents of Viagra and birth control pills. To avoid detection and subsequent immolation, she couched her researches in the writing of "holy verse" in Slavonic, a language approved by the Pope and which she purported to use in order to spread The Word to northern lands. These verses became "The Rubedium," a volume gifted to Sir Christopher of Morova, in the hope, as the inscription reads, that he "might fill others with the Spirit as he has filled me." In a world where Hildegard of Bingen lights up the boards on Amazon, it's hard to understand how The Rubedium remains ignored, but perhaps her chosen subject matter provides a clue.

The verses are loosely arranged around a depiction of the Season of Misrule, a winter festival with roots in the Saturnalia, where traditional roles were reversed, practical jokes abounded, and licentiousness reigned. She used the familiar formula of describing such behavior in great detail, followed by a quick tailspin spin of sudden enlightenment and reformation to the greater glory, etc. Odd bits of such festivals can be seen even today, in modern celebrations of the season. Teasing out her teachings on introvert alchemy and from among the longer passages of overwrought erotic and grotesque description and pious tracts is the interesting challenge in her work (as it may often be in The Work as well).

Two of Three
That my bliss should be divided thus,
And thus multiplied, may remain mystery.
Wood split flares bright, but such kindling
Is ash an hour of this season's long night.
But these logs appear to strengthen in our sleep
Nothing gray at morning but the light--indeed,
They have the power to warm me through the day.

So much could be divined at this year's center,
When in the name of our patron, we celebrate
A Saturnalia, where rules and roles. like night,
Turn on that point and tumble, end upended.
My maid is my mistress; the hands that dig
In cold earth now might root more dexterously
Among my silks; the groom suffered the right to ride.

And I presume an usurpation bold
That in other days may have me made
Myself fuel, kindling a mob's ire, rapt
To a stake like any other, hungry to know flesh.
But beg this season's privilege, blasphemy.
It is just this: My eternal desire
To act in imitation of the One
Brings me to to this unity with two,
For what was He, when once himself made Three,
But made greater in love, and more praiseworthy?
Let us follow this example, and be blessed
At least until the days the Light returns
And such freedom will be crowned, or snatched from us.

Careful What You Wish For

I asked Santa for "a shit-ton of money so I can stay home and write poetry," and he said: "Santa does not understand this 'shit-ton.' Santa does not get the concept."

So I explained that it means "a whole whole lot." Just a reminder that in all requests, whether they be of the universe or an individual, specificity is paramount.

Not writing, not running. The excuse for public consumption, and it's true, is the pay work problem. It is a vampire sucking me dry. It is condescending mansplaining tsking tut-tut-ing wretched day after stick a knife in me day. But there are other reasons, big big wild love dramas and more! Weird that it's not making me write more. My mind is not my own, it seems. It belongs to consultants and I must tear it loose somehow.

It being Mercury retrograde, I'll recycle. This was written on the beach on my birthday, while sitting between my Hot Friend E and her ex-husband.

Your Orders
Tell me. Give me
Directions. Sigh and say
You'll have to teach me. Make me
Banish my consciousness
Of every flaw, the flesh
Marked by seams, the scars.
Command all my awareness to fade.
Forbid guilt. Push me past shame.
Don't let me forgive myself too easily.

Six Percenter

Went on a charity run this morning (ostensibly a Thanksgiving run for a food bank, but it would really be charitable to describe it as a run on my part, as I sloshed and shuffled alongside 9yo DD for about an hour's worth of 5k) then heard Roseanne Cash on a radio interview on the way home, extending some advice a friend had given her: "Sing for the 6 percent who are poets. They will always hear you."

Well, this one among the 6 percent may not hear you, because her ears are fucked up from Meniere's, but I will ask what, what, what did you say over and over because I WANT to hear you.

I was up over and over all night with headache and anxiety. One of those 5 a.m. mindswirls was built around what you can and can't say to people, and how to handle these things with DD. She no longer believes in Santa Claus. But it's a good bet some of her friends do, and so how do you deal with that? It requires a certain amount of social finesse. To not be rude and mean, but to just be secure in one's own convictions, tolerate ambiguity, listen with an open mind, but never let those nutjobs gain an inch when it comes to policy.

It's like me trying to converse about (or to avoid conversing about) monogamy, or Creationism, or the impartiality of Fox News. At this season, with all the togetherness, these things just...come up.

I'm sorry, what was that you said about Don't Ask Don't Tell? My hearing is just terrible.

Bruuuuuuuuuce

Maybe this should stay an unreleased track. Quickie inspired by hangover caused by glass and a half of that box wine that's been in the fridge for almost two months now. I tried to use more of it up in the chicken cordon bleu with mushroom gravy last night, but there's still another glass or two. Maybe I'll reduce it late late tonight, with some rosemary, caraway, and aztec dream herb, and make of it a brew that creates a glamour. Like in The Craft. You think everything tastes great, and maybe it really does, but in the morning you're ready to bang your head into the wall.

Or maybe that's just because I have to go to work. Not again! Why does this keep happening, every fucking day???

Unreleased

No, The River was the one that came when I was locked up.
Nothing but bones, with a terribly scratched surface.
They didn't have eBay back then, but I wouldn't have gone for much.
So they stuffed me with filler until I could fit in my Calvins again
And be declared ready for release.
Darkness was years and so many battles before that.
Darkness came the summer the boy wrote over and over
All the words to Candy's Room, and changed the name
To mine, before I went away.

Photo: Frank Stefanko outtake from the photo session--probably decided he looked too good and consequently "inauthentic." I would have chosen this one, which is yet another reason I admire photographers. I go for the easy pretty and the good ones go for the heart. I took it off a tumblr website? called Byronic, which has so many little buttons and fussy stuff on it and so few words I can't figure out how the hell to give anyone any credit or even do them the courtesy of letting them know I took it. Sometimes things just get a little too complicated, especially for someone whose bones hurt.

It Makes a Great Lei

Boneflower

I plan the night garden, down to the last detail
A distraction from a leg cramp, or
The med tech bending, sterile paper rustling,
Cold metal or needles against skin, or the
Techno beat bashing as you lie so still
In the long white tube. You'll get out of here,
You remind yourself. Laboring over the imaginary garden
Is a way to not be here, now. My fear: I know
We won't have time to make the garden; we will never
Be granted that stretch of space to grow
Omixochitl, whose night scent young women
Are advised not to breathe. No such cautions
For old ones. Our gardens are choked
With weeds and frost-struck stems.
The table is a cold slab. I take my mind back
To details. Tuberose is a perennial in this climate
And will take a year. The roots are rhizomes.
I wonder: Can the bay overwinter?
Where will I get the seeds for the black poppies?
You would know, you would know. I dream myself away
To the place where I touch the boneflower
Blooming flesh-pale against the darkness,
In a few hours, coming. This could be
The only night garden we will know.
Only as big as this bed, in this room,
On the night ahead of us. This must be enough.

It's, It's, A Barroom Blitz

You go out as a devil, with a woman dressed as half-devil, half angel and a man dressed as a priest, and it's going to do something to you, metaphysically speaking, especially if you made the mistake of trying to poke through Graham Greene's The End of the Affair just before going down for your disco nap earlier that evening.

And then there was the tequila and the cafe libido.

Plus I'd been looking at a friend's copy of the lovely annotated T.S. Eliot The Waste Land with the facsimiles of Pound's comments? He (the friend,not Eliot or Pound) was all, see, I thought the person who thinks she shouldn't have to revise anything should see this. A glance revealed at least one piece of good advice--he'd circled a "may" before the "put a record on the gramaphone" part and written: "Make up your mind!" Even a crazy-ass fascist stopped clock is right twice a day. I was getting all up in that argue-with-the-Christian-god space. Good thing I didn't touch the Antonia White, or you'd be hearing from me in the convent round about now.

So yeah, the gods will speak to you, too; just ask. Always pissed me off how he had to kill her off.

The Beginning of the Affair

Yes, the gods want to watch you
Press your mouth against
The brutally scarred cheek of the young atheist,
And they want you to eat the onions with your steak.
They want you to write the letter,
And send the letter, and to take
Lovers, and to make that abandoned
Sound you make. They want romance, wine,
Inconvenient conceptions, missed connections
At the station; they want theater, they want wit,
Wit, they never get enough of that.
They want explosions, and they want you
To dig yourself out of the rubble
Without any help from them at all.
They want you to walk in the rain,

True, but they also want you to come
Out of the cold, and believe me,
Even if you don't believe in them, believe me,
You can get very hot in here, we are waiting,
We will help you do what the gods want.
Because the gods want you alive. The gods
Want you steaming. Even the Christian god,
He'll spit you out if you're not hot enough,

He said so himself. The gods do not want you
To end anything. You're the one who wants that.
The gods, they desire everything
You can do. They want
What you want. They want you
To reach out right now and grab it,
Like a baby trying to pick up the water in the bath.

Photo: Who doesn't like some Julianne Moore?

Gift Economy

Back home, at the computer, searching images and writing poems and having a smoke. Comforts. Almost got sidetracked by the Vanity Fair with excerpts from Marilyn's diaries. I loved her poem about her then-husband Arthur Miller, watching him sleep and seeing his mouth return to the shape it must have had when he was a little boy.

Gotta admit, that's one nice mouth.

So here are a few poems from my special camping trip. I'll put some notes and backstory on my art project page when I get a chance.

The Goddess Pose
When you are the One
For so many
Your face becomes worn.

Lamplighters
You can rely only on yourself
For light. You must illuminate yourself
Not only for yourself, but for others' sake.
You know these are the rules in this place.
Yet in the evening, the lamplighters come slowly
Down the road. They carry a gentle fire,
Its swing and crackle subdued in their stately pace.
Have patience, and they will make your way simpler.
At home, where light is at your fingertips
Flicking a switch, my daughter sings in the bath:
This little light of mine,
Let it shine, let it shine.


Three Necklaces

I. Ceramic Bead Fair Trade
Those bold round jawbreakers
Cascading down her neck
To a dollar-size disc
Enlivened with painted runes,
Glowing between buds,
Gold skin, no cleavage--
Why should such a big piece suit
So well the delicate frame
Of the little massage therapist?

II. Pearl
Well, there is some advantage to age,
To having had at least a few lovers
With a brain in their heads, readers--
What woman of my experience wouldn't know
The significance of "42"?
My prize for knowing the answer
Pulled from the salty neck
Of the young poet.

III. Sodalite
The smith in the desert
Hammered the silver into
A notched arrow and placed
The blue yoni-shape stone
Precisely in the center.
A gift, for now, for me alone.

Second Harvest
The second harvest comes at the end of this month.
The grass crackles under my feet. Grasshoppers,
Fat and heedless, spring up as I put down my book.
In every conversation, I seem to hear myself sigh:
"I don't know how I will get the time
To get everything done." Anything left in the field
After Samhain can be food only for spirits,
If you try to eat it, your mouth will close
Around ghosts' hands, harvesting.
I reach into the crate for an apple
And he stops my hand, puts into my palm
The last pear, saved aside for me.
Its skin astringent as persimmon,
Its flesh sweet, dripping juice.

The Poodle Bites, The Poodle Chooses

Took a break from packing up the lingerie and printing out poetry to look in the mirror and feel like crap.

Well, like Courtney says, "I'm pretty on the inside!"

This one's been kicking around for days and finally got the last of it.


Widdershins
Bless my oppressors, for teaching me
To choose my words so carefully.
And coyote, vain, striving and scorned,
For his bad example, every bristle in his tail,
His doggie cock and tongue. Bless him,
Every him, every humiliating him
Who ever had his way, for illuminating my way.
Bless the bear, every beast, every back
Turned against the sun and moon and me.
Bless the plague, even the plague of boils
That leaves scar after scar,
That made us who we are. That gave us what we know.
Where was I when the world was made?
I was a woman in the marketplace,
Walking among the crates of apples, pears,
Pomegranates, looking, choosing,
Choosing you, choosing you, choosing
My troubles, my loves, my ancestors, my fate.
Everything spread before me and I chose you,
I choose you and you bless me.

The Human Factor

I believe humans are causing climate change. In fact, I feel personally responsible for tipping the balance of the planet.

I stumbled into Spa World after three hours in traffic, using my Groupon before it expired. Scrubbed, rubbed, sluiced, pounded, jetted, steamed. Dozed. Surreal. Drove home at 1 a.m. in feet of rain sheeting and obscuring every line on the road on I-66.

Have a new computer. Catching up.

The last of my area family has moved to Maui. More than half of them are there now, including a cat and several dogs. I want to eat sushi and scrambled eggs in Paia.

While brushing teeth, before falling asleep, reading this. Had no idea so many giant freakin cargo ships simply vanish every year. I did know, however, that Laird Hamilton is a god among men.

My recurring nightmares are of waves eroding the beach where I'm trying to run.

Busy as fuck. Trying not to spill over.

Photo: Hot damn, on top of everything else, Susan Casey is gorgeous.

Witch, Please.

Here we've got a superpower Mabon moon and we're talking about this Christine O'Donnell trash? This pretty much says it all, but of course I've got a thing or two to add.

OK, dear, witches aren't Satanists, for the most part, and Satanists aren't nearly as common in real life as they are in right-wing delusions. They aren't trying to recruit you or get you to do anything on their altars, from have a picnic to give up your second--or is it third or fourth--virginity. As much as you might long and wish and desire it, no real witch is going to try to overcome your reason and send you into a swoon you can't resist until you are one of us, one of us, in some bizarrely half-assed sublimated fantasy. I'm not going to come twinkling through your window. I don't twinkle, don't give the hard sell, and barely even say hello to anyone without enthusiastic consent.

Real witches don't recruit, unlike those odd Gothy kids down the road by the meth trailer you probably "dabbled" with, if that's what the kids are calling it today. They aren't really witches. They're just disenfranchised alienated jobless people who, if you were a decent politician, you'd be trying to make a better world for. A real witch group is at least as hard to get into as it is to convert to Judaism or Catholicism. It takes some work.

Real witches can be kind of grumpy and solitary and enjoy their own company and a few friends. I know it's a little harsh, Christine, but we're just not that interested in you. Sorry.

We are interested in civil rights, however, so I guess that means we'll have to deal with your crap til someone gives you a Forever 21 gift card and you get distracted and lose interest in politics.

I was actually pissed that Bill Maher kept giving her airtime, but he's a sucker for attractive wackjobs, and I can't really blame him. It didn't surprise me that Sarah Palin got behind her, because she's such a spooky little narcissist that she'd have to fall in love with her clone. Cloned right down to spending the money misguided people donated to her campaign, trusting she'd use it to try to get things done that they wanted, on any shiny thing that she wants right now, right now, because she deserves it, gosh golly darnit!!!

Photo: Loved this, and Donovan, when I was little. Jimmy Page on Sunshine Superman guitar. Season of the Witch was closing credits on To Die For, about yet another evil pretty bubblehead.

"It Really Ties the Room Together."

I'm late to this, and really, haven't even had time to see the episode, but I read about it, if that counts.

13 Ways of Looking at Sasha Grey's Grooming

I. She says she chose her porn name after Picture of Dorian Gray. Any woman who loves Wilde can wear her hair any damn way she pleases.

II. Benjamin Franklin had wise words about loving older women, topped off with the statement "All cats are gray after dark."





III. In another life under another name in the '90s, someone like me might have spent an interview with filmmaker Vincent Gallo discussing "'70s bush" as well as his conceptual art project, leaving a plaster cast of his not inconsiderable penis in every state in our great nation. He was ahead of his time.

IV. The hair on my head went gray at around age 20, almost 29 years ago.

V. Those who object to utterly bare under the argument that it makes them feel like a they're with someone illegal don't really have much of an argument. I mean, they're welcome to their tastes, but isn't there any other way to gauge the maturity of the person you're close to? Conversation always works for me.

VI. Having said that, one of the funniest lines in The Sopranos was spoken by a guy released from prison, who grumbled that all the women now "look like Girl Scouts."

VII. Those who vehemently object to hair under the argument that it disgusts them aren't even worth writing about. Especially those who do it via Twitter. Good god.

VIII. A friend was over the other night after breaking up with someone. She found him entirely too judgmental and snobbish. (I agreed.) She said: "He's so ready to find fault with everyone else, but HE really needs to get his BACK WAXED!"

IX. I would never say that. I like hairy guys. Who are clean.

X. When it comes to women, I refer to the highly apocryphal parable of Lancelot.

XI. Oct. 16 is Oscar Wilde's birthday. I think he would have liked Sasha Grey.

XII. She sure is pretty.

XIII. Distance runners are well served by a landing strip.

Photo: Looks like Bacon! But it's NOT! The artist's name is Nick Harris.

Shamanic Shambolic Shamwow (Plus Poetry Challenge!)

I've been attending a shamanic group that I'm enjoying a lot. I went in because I was interested in adding more of a healing dimension to the kitchen witchery (eclectic solitary urban pagan) stuff I do all the time. Side effect has been getting several poems out of the gatherings. (The guy who leads it does pretty amazing healing massage as his "real work"--if you're someone who knows me and you want contact info, ask me via email.)

One thing one's encouraged to do in the dream journeying is to ask for a gift, something I find very difficult to do. The dream journey on Friday, I ended up in a big old farmhouse kitchen and I got a gift without even asking, something very simple. I gave myself 10 minutes to write a pseudo metaphysical riddle poem about it. If you guess what it is, you could write a pseudo metaphysical riddle poem about what you'd like for a reward.

Reward

The root that reaches to Pluto's realm
Pulls in his riches, gold, copper, and bone,
And presses to share in the properties of stone.
Seeking its sweetness, my hand probes,
Pulls, encloses it in warmth, cleans
Until it softens, shrinks away.
I have work to finish. Now it
Bobs before my obdurate plodding as
My promised reward. Hold me to it.