The American Promise

For some reason, whenever I think of the economic recession I think of this part of the Wizard of Oz:



That is the extent of my commentary on the American economy.

And, I want to share a flashback with you: by naive coincidence (naive because I knew nothing of the economic implications of the story), my very first checkbook was Wizard of Oz-themed. Yeah, not so thrilling a story, but I am running out of things I want to share on the blogsphere.

See you next month.

Artemis

Goddess of the moon, and the hunt, protector of women and children

"women are connected to the moon by our blood"

Yesterday was a full moon, coupled with menstruation, I experienced emotional distress. It's not just the hormones, or the biology of having a ova slipping out of your body unfertilized; it is a matter of life or death, a rather spiritual and symbolic experience that occurs with psychic and emotional distress for many women, especially if it coincides with the full moon.
In my personal experience it felt like things I allowed to build in my subconscious began to rise to the surface yesterday. I began to re-experience the pains and fears of things long gone, and I gained a very sensitive understanding of the things that weren't working in my life. The full moon also pulled things out of my subconscious, as it pulls at waves in the ocean. This morning I began to bleed like a tidal wave, I awoke and cried and felt the urge to wash my life of old relationships that burdened me, old feelings and ideas that no longer contribute to my life.

When trying to explain this to the men close to my life, they have perceived me as crazy and overbearing. It is an extremely lonely feeling for most women that to go through this cycle misunderstood. Many men feel no such connection to natural cycles of the earth, as their biology is not attuned to these things. Menstruation, as a result, is stigmatized, and made the butt of jokes. But it is no joke, as any woman who listens closely to her body will know, menstruation is not just a biological cycle, but a deeply spiritual and psychic one too.

In an effort to connect my personal experience with other women I found articles that relate to this. Here are some bits:

"Most of us have been taught to believe that being a cyclical creature is a primitive or inferior affair. We believe that we will be less productive, less useful or just plain stupid if we allow ourselves to follow the rhythm of our cycles.
However, there is much grace, flow and harmony to be achieved through living in a cyclic manner. Being able to recognize and use the most appropriate energy that is available to you at any given moment is in fact a far more efficient use of time and energy.

Just like the Moon's journey through the phases, a woman's menstrual cycle can also be divided up into easily understood and clearly experienced phases. Each month a woman will experience changes in the way she perceives herself and her world in accordance to where she is in her menstrual cycle.

The moon's cycle also adds another subtle tone to her monthly experience, increasing or decreasing the intensity of the energies depending upon where the two cycles overlap.
For example if a woman is ovulating with the Full Moon, this mode of cycling gives a woman the best chance of physical fertility, great for trying to conceive children, as the full moon accentuates the time of Ovulation.
When a woman bleeds with the full moon, this mode of cycling enhances inner expression, intuition and the development of the inner, spiritual life.

As women become more aware of the different phases and how they experience them, they find it much easier to recognize and use the phase they are at and will also experience a far greater acceptance of their bodies, their menstrual cycle and their feminine nature."

Menstruation is about recognizing, and letting go of the things that don't have a place your life, it is a cleansing on all levels.

Little Joy

A little rough sounding and just how I like it.

I remember

A comfy old memory in my head this morning. It involved a bunch of us in the basement of Castle Greyskull, a fat blunt, and our well spoken and mild tempered Republican friend busting out into an exact and sincere Snoop Dogg rap. Our perception was twisted and things were never the same.

Listened to Coltrane's meditation and boy did he have to sort out through a lot of noise to get to some sorta flow. I enjoyed the sweet and brief flow bits. The grinding trumpet and erratic non-rhythms, not so much. I could listen to my own head for that. Gimme flow!

Also, the Radio Tokyo Tapes is like little gold nuggets in shit. By 'shit' I mean the common music that is always there...the catchy, overdone shit, that warrants the same emotional response from a person be it the 80's, 90's or 2000's. Anyway, the album is a compilation of influential indie bands from LA in the early 80's. Little gold nuggets of sound, still new and enticing 20 yrs later. Some of the bands on this album went on to become famous, like the Bangles and the Minutemen, some of them retreated into obscurity; Beef Sisters anyone? they were published by Moo Music.

Also, coupla weeks ago, heard the Lost Charms from Nevada City out here in a dark little bar in Woodland. They brought along their very drunk gay artist friend who took his shirt off, hit on my boyfriend then threatened him, modern danced himself wet, and then had to lay on the dance floor. Awesome people, great sounds. Also that night, The Yes Go from San Francisco. Their lead singer looked like a middle aged punk, but when she took the stage and started to sing she looked 20 years younger--and what spunk! They covered White Light White Heat, and I nearly peed myself. Recorded it on the Iphone, might post it up here.

I will make an effort to blog more frequently in attempts of finding balance between my private journal and this public one. Must reach out to other human life.

Bye

Because woman cannot live on Joni Mitchell alone

Sunday record spree!
Please excuse the toes:

In no order: Duke Ellington, Neil Young, Scorpions, Oscar Peterson & Dizzy Gillespie, Coltrane, Esther Phillips, Yoko Ono, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Radio Tokyo Tapes.

Plastic Ono band:

I was making noise since before you were born, bitches.

Sigh...Le cozy

And current media occupying my brainspace:

out and about on the EC

Looking out

Got a new job, new apartment, new relationship, new outlook on life. Sitting on my fluffy white couch looking out my sunny balcony framed by the silky three toned drapes. I can still smell my man's armpit deodorant on my couch cushions from where he draped his work weary arms last night. Disgusting or romantic, not really sure. Listening to new/old records like Emmylou Harris and a John Lennon/Harry Nilsson mess. Pictures soon, my promise.

Stayed up until three am reading a thirteen year-old's blog, start to end. She is a genius of sorts and drops cultural and high fashion references like she owns this shit. Seriously, look Tavi Williams' blog:
In which she dissects Blanche Dubois and represents the character through fashion design. (She wrote this when she was 12).

DH Lawrence Painting

DH Lawrence Poetry

Intimates

Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly.

I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all request to head-quarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct!--
So I handed her the mirror.

And she would have broken it over my head,
but she caught sight of her own refection
and that held her spellbound for two seconds
while I fled.

Maya Angelou

"The Lesson"
I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,
Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.
They dull my eyes, yet
I keep on dying,
Because I love to live.

love is patient

"When we're unhappy, it seems natural for us to blame a partner--a spouse, a friend, a child, even a relative stranger--for our feelings, mainly because that's what everyone else does. All our lives we've heard variations of statements like "You make me so mad," or "He makes me so angry," until we've come to believe that other people have the power to determine how we feel. Because other people have often pointed out how their anger was caused by our mistakes, we have learned to justify our anger by pointing out the mistakes of others. And because people are always making mistakes, it's easy to find justification for our blaming and anger.

Sadly, it's a common pattern: If we become unhappy in our relationships, we turn our partners into scapegoats for everything we don't like, and we blame them for all the unhappiness in our lives, including the unhappiness we carried with us for the many years before we even met them. But we are mistaken to blame our partners for our negative feelings. It's just the excuse we use because we feel bad, we don't know why, and we need someone other than ourselves to blame. Until we understand that, we cannot learn to have truly loving and lasting relationships."

complete thought

cities drawn in a frenzy
lines of concrete jutting into the space of yielding nature
people and noise slicing
cars ripping the air

but me, in a different place
drawing drunk winding paths under the curved shadows of trees
that are cast by the full moon and the round sun
watching the wheels of my bike turn
this feels whole

soft colors meld by the paintbrush of the unknown
tall grass fields and sky
as if stroked by the same brush

i think of fire welding steel
hard creation by human hand,
growing fast and strong,
nourished by the sweat of a brow

but this place is at ease.
it needs no fire from a torch
for the sun burns it together
i think i will stay here forever

wayward sisters, soiled doves

Occasionally, I will have a dream in which I am given a message that contains new information that I have no previous knowledge about. Yesterday, I dreamt a woman was telling me a story. When I woke up I recorded the story in my journal as best as I could:

"It occurs to me that you don't begin to live when you are born, you begin to live when you chose to live.
During the war I worked in a despicable place, the (blank) River Hotel. Mothers, sisters, daughters, and aunts, left behind by their soldier men fighting their own battle out on the bare red fields, found their living in this wretched hotel.

Men from all the South came. It was our job to keep them coming. Affluent men, we made them happy, then we took their money. Even the black slave boys smiled, and they didn't even get tips.

I got there with my sister and mother not knowing what to expect except making a living. Sitting naked in the dark musky changing room I watched an acquaintance from my hometown walk in. She didn't look surprised to see me as she slowly made her bare body to her bench; blood trickling down her nose. No words were spoken; the shame she felt was palpable."

From what I understand this story takes place during the civil war, it was unclear where but I recall seeing the letters NC and DC. I knew nothing about prostitution during the civil war before this dream, so I researched it afterwards and it turns out that it has been a much neglected topic, considering that "at no other time in the 19th century had prostitution increased as much or as rapidly as during the civil war."
I also learned that many brothels were built with army supplies; prostitutes were mostly young white women; DC had 450 registered brothels; there were a reported 7,500 prostitutes in DC and the surrounding areas. Also, venereal disease was rampant. In 1963, in an effort to curb the spread of venereal disease, officials in Nashville TN tried to ship out 150 prostitutes on "The Idahoe." The ship docked in Ohio and two other towns in Kentucky, and at each place the officials refused the female cargo. Eventually the women were sent back to Nashville.

This dream made me aware of the relationship between prostitution and war. War increases prostitution, this is a relevant issue that should be given more attention.

War Sucks.

at night

growth in sunlight

It hasn't rained at all in the past coupla months and somehow everything stays green. Meanwhile I fill up on water, beer, kombucha, and more water, and I'm still dry as a tumbleweed. I feel like a tumbleweed too. Rolling along at the whim of some mindless cosmic wind, clinging to people with roots deep enough that they won't fly away too.

In this place, every attempt I make at thinking, drawing, or writing is made superfluous and unimportant by the bright heat of the sun. Days are spent riding a bike slowly through the hot-dry-white sunlight, lolling by the pool, faded and overexposed, waiting for my unemployment check to cash in, applying for jobs. These are my days, running together to form one long scroll on a white screen like the Craigslist's classifieds.

Sometimes I go out night, and I purge thoughts and emotions that are suppressed under the sun during the day. I make new friends and we stay out all night biking from party to party, drunk and dancing in someone's living room, while Johnny plays the guitar outside and Sally sings along. I let it out, protected by the cool face of the moon, away from that forceful sun that keeps me slow and intoxicated.

I'm changing, and I can barely articulate it. I'm learning to choose consciously and learning to let go of things that don't feel true to me. Occasionally, like when I have to glue my shoes back together or when I spend half my day watching TV, I begin to feel like a self-deprecating, unemployed loser. But then I remember the simplicity of being alive, of sharing with others. I put myself out there, make friends, receive and give, and all is well again...It seems like the less I use the currency of money, the more I use the exchange of kindness and acceptance.

(And a good thing about this California sun is that it can wipe a mind slate clean)

full moons and a dawn

feeling sorry for myself

I open to a random page of Octavio Paz "Early Poems" and it reads:
"Now dare:
freedom is willingness toward necessity.
Be the arrow, the bow, the chord and the cry.
Dream is explosive. It bursts. Become again the sun."

why?

Twenty-something years old and the day will come when you can speak like you got nothin' to loose. But for now you stick to censoring the things that don't represent what others like. Gotta fit, gotta fit, like a fuckin' round peg in a square hole. And you jam yourself in there and smile around you and say "hey, I'm here to stay." And you stay and forget you ever had something else to say. You fit in the hole and that's all.

Growing into adulthood is fucking awkward. A kid, wide-eyed and big dreams, messy hair and torn shoes, looking for work. Hire me! Hire me! I will represent your ideology for money. Pay me, want me, I will fit into nice clothes, I will wash my hair, I will wear the right shoes. But deep inside still a fucking kid. Rebellious, no care, curiosity and chaos in the eyes. Finds 'freedom' in drugs, art, music, literature, whatever it takes. Finds freedom and devours it like the last morsel of the best cake.

Twenty-something years old and stuck. As if you're a peg jammed into the wrong-shaped hole. As if your only freedom comes from whatever you can devour through the senses. Slave to your desire for freedom. Slave to your senses.

I don't know how to fucking express myself through words anymore and so what... I give a fuck! Here I am, taking a big ol' messy dump on your fucking sphere, internet. And fuck you, language. Nobody reads this shitblog anymore. Fuckall. What is this shit good for anyways. No one talks, no one cares, they read other's words, either scoff or make them their own. And what the fuck is up with facebook? Marriages, wealth, jobs, kids, shiny rings, white smiles, vacations to exotic lands, more education, more degrees, more money, fulfillment! Picture after picture of happy snug pegs in perfect holes? And all those stupid quizzes? and causes? and 'congrats' and birthday wishes? People try so fucking hard. I'm on facebook for a handful of friends, and I gotta put up with 300 other 'friends' I give a shit about. Goddamn it...all this yoga and meditation and I'm still irate as hell and fed up with this planet, humans, and communication. I'm so fucking ready to leave this shit-hole I'm jammed in. It's uncomfortable as hell. See you elsewhere.

these are dreams

independence

The other day, while on the phone with my eight year old brother, I ask him: "do you know what independence means?"
He thinks a while and thoughtfully says, "in the pen, dance. Like an animal pen. Like an animal dancing in a pen."

my song-writing friend

Inspired and nostalgic for the times I could listen to music with fervor, being able to get wrapped up in every chord and lyric so that I wore my music like I wore a well fitting dress.

Thinking of the times when music took center stage and led my mind to wander in dreams and to the dissolution of all things concrete. The musicians and muses that took my hand and belligerently, assertively, gracefully, softly guided me forward into unknown territory of colors and sounds.

Recently I re-lived a moment in the past and caught a glimpse of that music feeling once again. Briefly like a deep flash of emotional memory. Let me explain.

Went to see a friend's band from DC touring here in California. Their show was brief, all business, and keeping with my current detached state, instead of dancing I took pictures. Went to a bar where I stood around sober, tranquil, in awe of my musical friend's mouth running madness. Strings of careless words spilling out of his mouth forming quasi sentence after sentence that became entangled around us. He stops talking, and acknowledges that he is driving himself mad.

Driving to a hotel lost on a dark unknown highway my friend lets the words run again. This time I begin to scream at him, "HELP ME FIND THE DIRECTIONS!" while I juggle a gps and ipod. He is unnerved by my frustration and continues his own frustrating confusing conversation. I am convinced he could care less if I hear him or not, he just wants to get whatever it is he is trying to say OUT at this most inconvenient time. So his words are now filling up the car shoving all my own thoughts and words out the crack in the window, with the cigarrette smoke.

I give in. Zen. I listen to him, I get the car back on track, I heed his requests to play Sebadoh's "Ocean", again, and again, and again, starting the song over every time it gets to the halfway mark. He is singing the lyrics with full lungs. I let myself smile, finally.

At the hotel we eat cold pizza and watch adult swim. My friends' band mates have a friend over who they haven't seen in six years. They are catching up, resolute in finishing a 24-pack of Natty light in the process. My friend and I talk. More crazy convoluted stories and intimate confessions. I listen to him with the drone of the television and the conversation in the background, and I fall asleep.

It is dark and I am awoken by drunk puking in the bathroom. On the bed beside me I hear finger-pulling farting followed by uncontrollable giggling. This is a slumber party with 28 year-old punks. We sing a song about pizza, laugh contagiously, and I fall back to sleep. I wake up 7 am, snoring in my ear and a cigarette headache. I stretch my goodbye to my friend with a drowsy hug and the promise of another pizza night when I visit DC.

Speeding through the brilliant morning, car windows open, the wind brushing away the dark remainders of the night in my hair. Music loud crossing a bridge over a green marsh blue open sky a good song comes on and RAAAHHH! There it came, THE FLASH: The moment of pure absolute musical emotion...and there it went, out the window into the sky.

the stripped guitar says it all

Davis parties

A house show:

Another party:

At 2am the bike lane took me home:

khalil gibran says

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

vegetarian dreams

I dreamt of this chick last night.

holier than thou

tearing and patching

My dear friend

I miss you

30 mile bike ride

We did it!

David Coats

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.

Oh Abe, I was bored.

Weekends now

Saturday: We took a hike to a lake where put a blanket down on the soft grass to lay on.



Sunday: A tasty day! For lunch, snacked on leftovers. Curried lentils and vegetables with rice, and Tom's shepherd's pie made special with mushrooms, celery, carrots, and plenty of peas.

After lunch I rode my bike to the campus for my first beehive inspection ever, and I didn't get stung. There were several frames of comb, thick with amber-colored honey, and lot's of larvae about to be born. Some of the boxes were about 40 lb. heavy. The bees looked healthy and productive. Unfortunately for me, it was about 90 degrees, hot and sunny, and I was sweating under a thick long-sleeved shirt, long pants, wool socks, hat and veil. The overall experience though, was tremendously impacting. Before going home, I picked lemon verbena from a huge plant by the beehive, which I used to make cold lemon verbena honey water.

In the late afternoon Tom and I took a walk to the co-op. We bought mozarella and fresh sourdough bread. I clipped some basil leaves from my plant, cut up tomatoes, and made caprese to eat with the sourdough.

In the evening, I made a banana-nut bread.
What more could I ask for?

How she loves

Love you, obsess you, enamor you. despicable you, drunk you, judgmental eyes for you. Yields to you. How she loves herself is the same. Push and pull, rip and sew, stitching different threads into old holes...colorful ones, dark ones, soft ones, harsh ones, she can thread and sew all day. But the best times, is when she stops sewing and wears the fabric like it is.

woke up feeling hateful and narcissitic

mememememememememememememememememe

and dramatically Russian

Tolstoy

Illustrates the limits of human knowledge:
Just as the sun and each atom of either is a sphere complete in itself, and at the same time is only a part of a whole inconceivable to man through its vastness, so ever individuality bears within it its own ends, and yet bears them so as to serve general ends unfathomable by man.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child dreads bees, and says the object of the bee is to sting people. A poet admires the bee, sipping honey from the cup of the flower, and says the object of the bee is to sip nectar of the flower. A beekeeper, noticing that the bee gathers pollen and brings it to the hive, says that the object of the bee is to gather honey. Another beekeeper, who has studied the life of the swarm more closely, says the bee gathers honey to feed the young ones, and to rear a queen, that the object of the bee is the perpetuation of its race. The botanist observes that the bee flying with the pollen fertilizes the pistil, and in this he sees the object of the bee. Another, watching the hybridization of plants, sees that the bee contributes to that end also, and he may say that the bee's object is that. But the final aim of the bee is not exhausted by one or another, or a third aim, which human intellect is capable of discovering. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of such aims, the more obvious it becomes that the final aim is beyond its reach.

All that is within the reach of man is the observation of the analogy of the life of the bee with other manifestations of life.

There was a time when I knew about shopping malls,
decadent, stupid, american capitalist crap
put some dirt on it now, you might as well turn it into
another landfill.
But still I went and shopped,
squinting eyes judgementaly at
every poor soul
that wore the wrong clothes,
talked loudly into their microwave box,
said the wrong words.
Their brains must be fried, those dumbfucks...
I thought,
and I kept my shoulders back.
MY brain,
works sooo much better.

But still I went and I shopped.
Hurriedly, bitterly, guiltily.
Sometimes, talking into my microwave box.
MY brain, might have been fried.

Sprawling suburban homes never-ending
targetwalmartcostcopanerabreadpartycitymarshallstjmaxxstarbucks,
It can make an uninspired person enraged,
so that she walks the shopping malls looking at everybody like they are products of
hollisterabercrombiebananarepublicexpressgaplevisamericaneaglecoachpacsun,
and not persons at all.