Beast

Calling someone a beast might feel good in a cheap way, but it’s really imprisoning. Maybe one of the bloggers said that anger was like bondage.  It is.  I’ve been lashing out when I need to be paying more attention to why and what’s going on exactly with me.  I do know what’s going on to an extent but I have to be careful not to look for targets, people who may be obnoxious or intrusive who can conveniently be used as a focus for anger that I have about my own situation.

Yes I called a woman a beast today, and a few days ago I called another woman a fucking asshole.  I don’t yell or scream.  I just say these things matter-of-factly.  And I’m embarrassed to say there have been a couple of other things.  My friend and mentor today told me that I have a controlling personality and that this is why I lashed out and called this woman a beast.  I didn’t approve of her behavior and felt that I had to let her know exactly this.

But I suffer from the who-little-‘ol-me syndrome, maybe.  I never thought I was controlling or even bitchy.  So I never set out to change behavior that might contribute to this because honestly I didn’t know.  I’m trying.  I don’t want to behave this way.  I want to change.

I need to find a new job.  I don’t have medical insurance anymore.  I want to sell more books.  I ain’t getting any younger and I never found a soul mate.  I’m afraid I’ll be homeless and I’m afraid I’ll get sick and have no money.  My job ends in December so the fears ebb and flow.

Forget about today – there’s tomorrow.  I’m grateful I’m not depressed and that I can enjoy my life.  But I’d better be careful.  I live in New York City and I’m not a large person.  My friend reminds me that lashing out at people here can be Russian Roulette.

‘Never to return’

I had a great birthday.  I always do.  I look forward to getting older and older, moving forward, upward then out of here, ‘never to return’, to quote that uni-browed wonder Frieda Kahlo.

This attitude helps me to treat every birthday like a holiday.  I took the day off and went to the NY Botanical Garden.  I walked through the forest to the waterfall.  The sound of the rushing water had a tranquil effect on me, so I stayed there for a long time.  I used a twig to etch my name and birthday, 11/17/62, in the dirt with a circle around it.  One of my best friends called.  We had an enlightened conversation for a while with the sound of the waterfall rushing in the background then mom called and that was a nice conversation too.

I hung out a bit in the forest then went to see the Japanese kiku chrysanthemums.  I had a hard time finding the greenhouse and had to pee and couldn’t find a bathroom.  I found some stupid porta pottys and unfortunately had to use one of them.

I walked and walked and walked and felt it in my ass and legs because I haven’t slept enough and had some pre-menopausal weirdness going on —  or — maybe it’s just because I’m half of a hundred years old!  But the landscape is so lovely there, though Sandy wreaked havoc on a hundred of their trees and a lot of the pretty leaves had blown off of them.  The walk to the chrysanthemums was worth it however – what a fascinating display.  I have wack pictures taken with my cheap phone camera which doesn’t do them justice:

That last picture is a group of chrysanthemums that had been grown from a single stem — too bad it’s all fuzzy right?  And who the hell is that nice lady?

I came home — ate what I wanted to eat — a hamburger medium rare and huge onion rings from the Piper’s Kilt.  Being a cake enthusiast, of course I had cake and cake!  Since Halloween was somewhat intercepted because of my namesake hurricane, it’s still going on in my apartment, which is decorated thusly.  Usually Halloween’s officially over for me after my birthday anyway.  I watched the movie Vault of Horror with the last of my Halloween candles lit and said ‘This is the life’!

And thank you all for wishing me a Happy Birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ooooh look a black cake

 

Image courtesy of Pam’s clip art

Some people assume I’m angry because I listen to death metal.  The intense, primal expression of death metal helps me experience my feelings cathartically and I am released from the bondage of anger.  I like it for dinner music or during ‘romantic’ interludes.  While the music allows me to feel peace, it is music that I use to release anger.  So that means that I do have anger issues.  But I’m also known as laid back, gentle, kind, sexy — what?!  Also someone told me that listening to this music causes negative vibrations.  Bah.

‘Easy listening’ music parading as jazz gets my goat and puts me in a very dangerous position.  It makes me want to stab myself in the ears with sharpened chop sticks.  So I say we should moondance because it’s my birthday.

Summoning happens to be black metal however…

Farts, Effluvium and More!

I learned a new word.  Ef-flu-vi-um:  an invisible emanation; especially: an offensive exhalation or smell.

I’m rather embarrassed the way I learned of it.  But I was told that you rid yourself of embarrassment by telling people about it in a public space.

I thought effluvious was a word, and that it meant something like a ‘miasma of putrid decay.’  I had planned to tell you that if I live until Saturday I will have had fifty glorious years on the effluvious planet called earth.  But I’m not so dumb.  I punched effluvious into Merriam Webster and discovered that I had made up a word.  The beauty is that the wonderful people at Merriam Webster thought I might be looking for another word close to that spelling.  So they found me a real word that looks like that one, effluvium.

I had been dying to use the sentence ‘a miasma of putrid decay’ ever since I heard it on Count Yorga the Vampire.  I made up two cool sentences with my new word that I learned, one even incorporates the Count Yorga phrase AND the word effluvium!

Check this sentence out: ‘The effluvium emanated from his rancid hole singed off the hair on my head.’

And check this out — instead of saying ‘Who farted?’ you can now say ‘Who emanated the effluvium into this miasma of putrid decay?’  The only thing, is you have to use a Shakespearean voice when you say ‘this miasma of putrid decay’.

It’s fun to use new words.  I think scientists or medical professionals use this word probably, but I’m afraid I’ll have no further use for it unless I want to sound like a pretentious ass.  But thank you for listening — okay just once more – Now I shall retreat into the effluvium of my decaying existence.

The Life

My father and I went to a funeral where the minister berated us.  He told us all that we only came to church for funerals and holidays.  He shouted bible passages at us and said little about the dearly departed.  My father sat two rows behind me.  I had floated around saying hello to people and was sitting next to a long-lost cousin when the service started.  Did the…minister just say that we were going to…hell?  I had to look back to see dad’s reaction.  He raised a brow in suppressed glee with a hint of a smile.  I looked back again and saw him gleaming.

I didn’t cry at my father’s funeral. At my father’s funeral there was just a headshot of him that my step mother blew up.  Dad had been cremated.  The life behind his eyes leapt out at us from the photo.

People got up to pay tribute to dad — one advertised his business between the tribute.  Why not pitch a sale to all of the grieving potential customers?  I looked at dad’s gleaming eyes in the photo and stifled laughter.  What would dad say to this?  Dad had a sly sense of humor but would also have compassion for the absurd need of this poor soul.

I also don’t know how he would have liked the song that a lady from the church had sung.  For my taste it was too sweet and generic.  But as you know I’m a weirdo.   I looked at dad’s picture during the song.  While he would have appreciated it, he gleamed impishly at me from the photo.   I would have chosen “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon and War.  The fantastical lyrics remind me of him.  The group also had a grimy sensibility like my dad.  My sister cried during this lady’s sentimental song.  My sister and I were the first ones out of the church after the funeral.  “I can’t be-lieve you cried during that song,” I said.  She looked at me with her tear-streaked face and we burst out laughing, standing at the top of the church steps.

While dad was in a coma I cried walking down the street – in the middle of talking to people.  I always thought that if my father died, I would just drop dead.  How would I live?  No one would ever love me like this again.  I used to hear him in my inner-ear while he was still alive, just calling “Sandee.  Sandee.”  There was a black hole now.

I had prayed while he was in a coma.  I guess it worked because after the initial mourning, I felt spiritually revitalized.  They say people born under the sign of Scorpio experience renewal upon death.  Interesting, because it happened to me.  Aside from that, one day the thought came to me, If dad died, it can’t be a bad thing.

Church

Maybe I’ll go to church.  I’ll have Sundays free again because my job ends in December. My family church is a Baptist church in Harlem.  We didn’t go often but when one of us died this is where the funeral would be.  My parents were married there.  It’s where I was christened and baptized.  I went once as a kid with my mom and a woman started hollering, “Yes Jee-susah!  Oh Jeeesus yessuh!”  She ran into the aisle, rolled on the floor and foamed at the mouth.  The church nurses grabbed her and calmed her down from the Holy Ghost.  This scared the shit out of me.  I started hyperventilating.  The service wasn’t full of people like this — thank God!

Nowadays the church discourages this.  Although at one recent service a woman got ‘happy’ and ran laps around the pews.  I laughed my ass off as did others.  But generally the services are more subdued.  The people wear jeans and the minister is intellectual and has a Ph.D.

My dad’s funeral was there and the minister back then appealed to reason.  He spoke in a conversational voice then built up slowly to a fervor.  This minister was why I wanted go again.  But then he died.

I volunteered there feeding the homeless for Thanksgiving once and had heard that the next minister was just as good.  I checked out a service and it was true so I started going regularly.  I was still drinking so a couple of times I was drunk from the night before, crying with my mascara all smeared.  Then I stopped drinking.

Sometimes I felt that the spiritual energy there could levitate the building.  Although ministers are human, I believe that some are vehicles for God and that it’s their job to transmit messages, even while they are flawed the way everyone else is.

At first I thought I’d use church as a placebo.  But basically, I felt that the collective energy all directed likewise would be an effective healing mechanism.  For me having a spiritual advisor works, otherwise I might hear God tell me to do things the way that a cult leader does because I’m demented.

While I appreciate that there are different ways people get in touch with their spirituality, this worked for me.  And I know organized religion has its ‘issues’.  Recently I talked to a man who had a personal spiritual advisor.

Church and praying doesn’t always have the immediate effect on me the way that liquor did.  It seeps slowly into my consciousness and informs some of my actions without me thinking about it.  I’ve even left church feeling fear and negativity. Sometimes having a spiritual session or praying just unearths some of the ugliness, which is later dispersed.  But it comes back.  I’m just glad to have a spiritual advisor as a counter-balance.  I may not go to church every Sunday, but it will be nice to be able to go back now and then when I want to.

So alone, so lone-lyyyyyyyyy…

He’s not Blacula, but he’s black and he’s a vampire

Blacula is so alone, so lonely.  He doesn’t have friends of equal status who drink blood and kill people, only minions.  I don’t have minions and I don’t drink blood – well once – but I don’t kill people because it’s against the law – I mean because it’s wrong.  Poor Blacula – Dracula gave him this uninspired name — he wants this voodoo priestess to turn him back into a human.  But she won’t because he killed people in front of her.  So she drives a stake into his voodoo doll likeness, stopping him.  He holds one arm in the air and clutches his chest.  A song called Torment comes on and the credits roll.  The music sounds like a television score from the early seventies — weird for this type of movie.  I love that Blacula’s face is frozen on the screen while the song plays.  Graphics turn Blacula’s tormented, screaming face red and his vampire teeth show.  I like the way the singer says freeeeee-dooooom, freeeeeeeeeedoooooooom….

The Torment song was my theme for the day.  We’re tormented for different reasons but today I was Blacula, so alone, so tooor-mented.

Mama why am I different?  Dr. Frankenstein, why did you make me to suffer like a dog in Germany?

Some of you know I wouldn’t be on Facebook if not for Mean-Spirited Tales.  While Facebook is a great distraction when you need it, all the common opinions about the election made me feel isolated.  So today I rolled the film of my life to the tune of Blacula’s lonely lament.  I didn’t get enough sleep last night so I had no resistance against the lament.  It was an absurd lament.

I was feeling alone and isolated today then I got this painting that Carrie named after me. Not only is Carrie a gifted writer — even in her pain there’s subtle irreverence and humor which is goddamned refreshing. It’s truth! See boys and girls, you never know what joys are hidden in the minute of the day. Just stick around… Thank you Carrie. This really means a lot to me and I can’t wait to frame it. xoxo

Vote for the crack of my ass

Dizzy yet?  Because we’re going in circles.  One party gets ahead so the other constructs stories against them and feeds the media so that they can make leads in the next election.  It’s a game.  In this game, politicians throw a few of us bones for the illusion of progress, as they’ve been instructed to do by the wealthy people controlling them.

This system needs demons.  For it to work, somebody has to get fucked, and not in a good way.  Jails, criminals, uneducated people, etc.  All necessary – no matter what utopian vision any politician professes, these things ain’t going away.  These elements must exist under the current economic model.  They’re built into it.  It cuts down on the competition for the wealthy.

The media prints lies to scare you into supporting their theories to help keep the few slathered in excess.  They give us buzz words and canned causes to get all excited about.  Distractions.  But it’s all about keeping that 1% furnished in cash. Warren Buffet even realized that he paid less taxes than the people who work for him. What the hell!?

An economist wrote an article in the New Yorker that said the same thing I’ve always said about somebody having to get fucked in this system in order for it to work.  I was thrilled – it wasn’t just some wacko theory I made up.  I watched a program with two men who wrote a book outlining how politicians – ALL of them — are more concerned with pandering to the rich people who pay them to do what they want them to do.  This program showed a clip from the movie Wall Street emphasizing that truth.  These men also discussed how Nordic and Northern European nations do better under this model, and wondered why the US still has great disparities under a similar model.  Even I know the answer to that.  Those countries are more homogeneous, there are more of the same race of people there.  In America there are too many different races of people who need to be cut from the equation so that the few can have the competitive edge.  All the different tribes scrambling for wealth — no can do — not under this economic model.  But these other tribes are the necessary demons or scapegoats that help the system work for the rich.

Politics are a sport.  It’s getting worse.  With the cyber element the rich can steal and fuck us up the ass at warp speed, which is why, as the men who wrote the book acknowledge, the disparities are sharper than ever before.

But there’s hope.  The United States can be a model for something better but I don’t know if you’re up to the task.  I love the people in America.  We have the opportunity for a new model infused with an ideology not imbedded with materialism, and consumerism.  But I’m afraid we’re all too hooked on this one to let go.  It’s too seductive and satisfies our need for instant gratification, which causes a gaping hole in our being that we fill up with Zoloft.

We don’t realize it but we’re participating in our own demise with this dependency on STUFF.  Even those of you who have ‘made it’ suffer in ways you haven’t immediately connected to the state of this system.  Why are most of you on anti-depressants?  Because all that negative energy created by the disparities is coming for you in one shape or another.  We are all connected.

I’m not speaking as a person who is disgruntled because of my inability to create wealth – I don’t give a shit about material wealth.  People who know me will tell you that.  I’m kind of disconnected from the idea of money.

It would take a higher state of consciousness to recreate that model.  But how do we get there when we’ve been poisoned with materialism and the mythology of the American Dream?  Doesn’t make any goddamned sense to me that there are more than enough resources to go around yet people don’t have access to healthcare, education, etc. etc., because it’s all being controlled by 1% of the population.  This machine wants you to believe that it’s because some people simply don’t have the same drive and motivation and that some people are genetically inferior.  It’s a lie.

What’s all this got to do with the election coming up – not a thing.  Oh right – there’s an election tomorrow – ha!

I miss Kathy’s posts. If I were a mom, I’d hope to be edgy like her. Her baby is really cute and he reviewed my book. I wonder if he takes bribes. Maybe a new squishy toy? I’d do anything for a higher rating. But Sausage has too much integrity to be bought off. Oh well…

Don't Forget to Feed the Baby

Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read! ~ Mitch Hedberg

I don’t have time to post today. Today I got a new book in the mail, which I’m very excited to read. Sausage has absconded with it, though, and he says I have to wait until he’s done with it before I can have it. He has to make sure that it’s appropriate, you know.

So here’s Sausage’s first book review. Let’s see what he thinks.

Sausage gives “Mean-Spirited Tales” by Sandee Harris a B-. It rebounded from its lack of pigs by having a pretty cover and generally being delicious. He recommends it only if you don’t much care for pigs (in which case he pities you) or if you can read words.

*Mommy’s Note: Sausage is a notoriously tough audience and can be quite unforgiving. Once I can pry the book out of his…

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