Basically this is the audio to the video I just uploaded because I’m too lazy to do another recording. Well not too lazy exactly. Can I just rant for one minute?
Imagine you are a straight male musician & you love writing songs. But every time you write a song you are required to get fucked up the ass, beat up by three muscle men & left on the side of the highway to walk home.
That is how I feel because every time I write a song- which I like- I then have to record it which I hate. I hate wires and machines and weird pieces of black plastic. I hate computer interfaces filled with random squiggles. I have no idea what anything means. And just the mechanical nature of sound itself. Why is this staticy? Why do I sound a million miles away? I don’t know!! It all feels….. beyond what humans are meant to know. It makes me want to cry.
But now I must stop complaining. And remember the words of my friends.
Thorney: Inch by inch, it becomes a cinch.
Moxy: To every problem, there is a practical solution.
Dad/Nietzche: That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Dad/Schwarzennegger: No pain no gain.
Dad: Bend over and grab your ankles.
Cold tea, dance with me Give me something more to eat Hold my head & help me find the sun.
Red fire, warm & bright Stay with me for one more night Tomorrow we go pay for what we’ve done.
You are my red eye by & by You are my fire come from the sky Now take my head & tell me what I need to know this time.
Like a slave I was placed on earth to follow. Like a dog, put down when I’m wrong. But I won’t break at a jagged fate to swallow You just play; I sing along.
Words spin round and round Only sky where was the ground? Leave my house you dirty cunt I’m done.
Fist eye, hot head fly Falling down the stairs was I Hold my head & tell me I was fun.
You are my best friend by & by You are my fire come from the sky Now take my head and tell me what I need to know this time.
Like a slave I was placed on earth to follow. Like a dog, put down when I’m wrong. But I won’t break at a jagged fate to swallow You just play; I sing along.
Come to me love like a bone The only love I’ve ever known A spark of light then miles and miles of dark.
Burning hands and sparkly eyes And miles and miles away the skies To settle down around around us in the park.
Like a slave I was placed on earth to follow. Like a dog, put down when I’m wrong. But I won’t break at a jagged fate to swallow You just play; I sing along.
Since I am currently having a Saturn transit I am torn between my desire to crawl under a rock and that voice which tells you you must always press forward so I’m just going to publish this then go hide.
Cold tea, dance with me Give me something more to eat Hold my head & help me find the sun.
Red fire, warm & bright Stay with me for one more night Tomorrow we go pay for what we’ve done.
You are my red eye by & by You are my fire come from the sky Now take my head & tell me what I need to know this time.
Like a slave I was placed on earth to follow. Like a dog, put down when I’m wrong. But I won’t break at a jagged fate to swallow You just play; I sing along.
Words spin round and round Only sky where was the ground? Leave my house you dirty cunt I’m done.
Fist eye, hot head fly Falling down the stairs was I Hold my head & tell me I was fun.
You are my best friend by & by You are my fire come from the sky Now take my head and tell me what I need to know this time.
Like a slave I was placed on earth to follow. Like a dog, put down when I’m wrong. But I won’t break at a jagged fate to swallow You just play; I sing along.
Come to me love like a bone The only love I’ve ever known A spark of light then miles and miles of dark.
Burning hands and sparkly eyes And miles and miles away the skies To settle down around around us in the park.
Like a slave I was placed on earth to follow. Like a dog, put down when I’m wrong. But I won’t break at a jagged fate to swallow You just play; I sing along.
Well, it has happened. My worst nightmare has come true. James is gone. I don’t know if he’s coming back but it’s not likely to be soon.
Let’s start with the practical. I’ll break it down for you.
No money. No access to his money. No knowledge of money. Never paid a bill. Don’t even know what bills exist. No phone. No car. No family. No friends.* Two big dogs both stronger than me.
Water gets turned off. I panic and start opening all mail. James didn’t let me open mail before. Realize internet and electricity are about to go. Facebook friends come to the rescue. They send me money. I get water back on and pay just enough of the other bills to prevent disaster. I’ve never dealt with these things before. Had facebook friends not shared money (and knowledge), I would be doomed. Who gives people money? They did.
Had no food but a facebook friend drove over with 5,000 pounds of raisins, pistachios, canned salmon, canned pears, macaroni & cheese and applesauce. She just dropped it off and vanished. Crates of food so heavy I couldn’t lift them. I won’t starve.
Another friend brought me elderberry juice, the only thing that relieves the weakness in my kidneys that can make it hard to move. I didn’t know how I was going to get by without it. So my body will survive for the next few weeks.
But house is in foreclosure. In two days, someone comes to appraise it. But how can they appraise it when Patton will try to bite them? I couldn’t lock him in a room even if I wanted to. If he hears a bunch of freaks roaming around he will bust a door to get at them. I used to feel ashamed of having the meanest dog in Charleston, but now he makes me feel safe. He is the reason I sleep at night.
And if the house does get foreclosed, what do I do? Move all my possessions onto the sidewalk and sit next to them?
Still, the immediate crisis has been cleared. That itself is a miracle. The amount of skills gained has been insane. I found a phone in the house and managed to activate it. I went to court. I learned about apps. I discovered porn of myself online. I picked up dog turds with a bag. I made decisions on my own without considering what James would do. I’ve even made a few decisions he would disapprove of. Because I thought they were the right thing. I wish I’d done that sooner.
But the future remains foggy. I can’t remain a charity case much longer. I’ve been listing everything I own on ebay, hoping to make money while reducing the number of items I’ll need to place on the sidewalk. I’ve ordered business cards for astrology readings and plan to start promoting myself.
People are cheering me on. Others are critical, as though I’m getting my just desserts. Was I a slacker before? I cooked, I cleaned, I tried to fulfill my purpose. Yeah I got screwed but so did Jesus. Is that always a sign you made the wrong choice?
And why do I sound so crisp and glib while facing utter ruin? I don’t know. I keep switching into practimode where I feel nothing at all. Then I can’t stop crying. An ambulance came cause I couldn’t breathe. Losing James is not something I can wrap my mind around.
But I don’t even know if I’ve lost him. I’m not allowed to talk with him for six weeks.
We met Slippers when we were living in a holler. It’s hard to describe how a place can be so dull and so colorful at the same time. Sort of like lifting a rock. First you only see brown then you realize there is life swirling everywhere. Strange creatures and you have no idea what they are doing.
In the world I grew up in, the meaning of life was clear- to be rich and important. But these aren’t the aims of life in a holler. I’m not sure I ever figured out what the aims were. But certainly not to climb a social ladder because such a ladder didn’t exist.
For starters, the majority of people were animals. And even the animals seemed rather stuffy and affected compared to the principle actor- Nature. Nature was top dog. He controlled plants, mountains, creeks and weather. Humans and animals were both second fiddle to him.
Perhaps this gave humans and animals more in common than they have in cities. At any rate, it didn’t feel much different walking down the street with a goat or a random child. Even the conversations were similar. All beings ran the gamut from deadly (copperheads & criminals) to unbearably cute. There were many involved in crime and many who appeared to have stepped right out of a story book. Sometimes they were the same people.
So on any day’s walk you would encounter chickens, goats, a sheep, children, at least one pedophile, horses, a pony and many many dogs. It was the dogs though who would accompany me up and down the road.
When I first met Slippers, her name was Nasty. She lived on the mountain’s side with a teeny dog named Banjo who was mean as anything. Even when Slippers reached 70 pounds, if 5 pound Banjo came after her she would lie on her back screaming while he tried to bite her and I ran around her immobilized body trying to kick him. Banjo’s owner was a 10 year old boy. He would try to kick Banjo as well but we never succeeded. He kept a long hunting knife in his top overall pocket with no sheath. It would keep falling out over and over again and he’d just pick it up and stick it back in.
I’m sorry I was trying to kick a dog but that’s just the way it was there. Little kids carried guns and shot birds. Pedophiles sat on their porch flirting with kids. Dogs raced cars in the street and sometimes lost in a big way. Kids tried to rob you and so did the adults. I was just one more animal trying to protect my own.
Dog ownership in the holler was not the same as suburban dog ownership. Dogs were considered more or less their own people and it was frequently ambiguous who they belonged to. Multiple houses might claim the same dog. They mostly lived outside and roamed freely. No fence, no leash. They ran the holler together in packs. One or more pack would accompany me on my walks. At first I was scared shitless of them. But soon they became the best friends I had. The only friends really.
There were the Peanuts, Bear, Jax, Jack, Lily, Toby, Nasty, Brownie and Dingleberry who would escort me through the holler. And then a few other dogs- like Banjo and Xena- who would just run down from their houses to attack. It was a world where you needed friends.
Eventually Nasty’s ownership transferred to another family though not much changed since she still ran with the pack. They renamed her Pretty Girl. I continued calling her Slippers which was the name I gave her when we first met because she seemed so refined to me.
Pretty Girl’s new family lived down by the creek which during floods would turn into a crazy river. A bridge crossed the creek leading to their house and when floods came the kids- about 3 and 6 years old- would be tied to the bridge so they could enjoy being tossed in the racing flood waters. Until one day the flood pulled the bridge away. After that it was just a couple of planks over a 12 foot drop. People in hollers are not very safety conscious. Pretty Girl’s new dad would stick his hand down a copperhead nest to show us the eggs and pull up poison ivy with bare hands.
So Pretty Girl played in the road like all the dogs did and one day she got hit by a car and couldn’t walk anymore. This was not an uncommon fate. Few dogs there were more than a couple years old. One day James was driving down a major road in the city and found traffic had been stopped because the dog pack had managed to leave the holler and was standing there in the middle of the road. Luckily they knew James and all hopped into his car and he drove them back home.
After getting injured Pretty Girl just rode around on the back of her owner’s tractor. One day James got a really bad feeling that her owner might decide to ‘put her down.’ Pretty Girl’s family foraged in the dumpster for their own food so they didn’t really have the resources for a dog, much less an injured one. He went to their house one night to ask if we could have her but the owner said she had just been picked up by a rescue group. She was given surgery and renamed Bailey. Eventually she went up for adoption so we adopted her and moved her back into the holler.
Her friends were glad she was back. Lily would come over and rap the door with her paw each afternoon wanting to play with her. They’d go out on the back porch and wrestle together. Until one day Lily got kidnapped. She had ‘prestige’ looks so she’d probably been sold for money. I knew who did it too, but didn’t say anything cause Lily probably wouldn’t have lived much longer if she stayed. Her owner went through one dog a year. His last pony had starved to death. People in the holler love getting new puppies and baby animals but once they become adults their incentive to keep them alive isn’t as great.
So now I’d walk Slippers on a leash while her old gang ran wild around her. Generally she didn’t mind except for when they’d spot a deer and then BAM the dogs would fly up that mountain wall and she’d scream to go with them. They didn’t have long to live but it wasn’t a bad life either.
In the holler the people are more like animals and animals are more like people.Slippers greeting Jake. Just like Lily, he would sometimes knock on our door to say hi.Jax following me through snow. I miss him. It hurts to think about him actually.The creek as it was receding from a flood. During rain storms it could get several feet deep above the road and you couldn’t get in or out of the holler.The same creek not after a flood.Nature was #1. Then Animals. Then Humans.Two second class citizens hanging out in Plant World.Goats say hi in the road. They ruled this part of the holler then further down the dogs’ turf began.Some dog pack members. (Bear & Two Peanuts)Dingleberry says hi.Slipper’s home when she was Pretty Girl. Before the bridge got washed away. To the right, you see one of the Peanuts getting ready to race a car. Her passion. She died this way a few months later.
I am posting this here, because it is my resolution & I need to remember it at all costs:
I must never be nice to any men or give them complements.
Not that I am going to be mean to them either. The goal is to be neutral and if I need a subject to talk about, I will talk about how awesome I am.
Because men are computers and kind words are milk that gum them up. Because men are dogs and complements register as signs of submission and inferiority.
Good men don’t want to be coddled anyway. Men don’t take bubble baths to relax. Generally, they can only relax through murdering something, in one form or another. Why waste precious milk on beings who don’t need it?
Not only will niceness corrode the character of good men, it also signals to bad men that you are available for mistreatment.
But this will be hard. Not being nice is probably the hardest thing for females to do. It may be physically impossible.
I am going to try, though, as an experiment. I can only pray Heaven will loan me the balls to follow through. If it works, and I have finally discovered the secret to men, I will let you know.
But let’s face it, I will never be able to follow through. I can already feel complements welling up in my mind. Women are programmed to sacrifice self for others and there is nothing we can do about it.
And, fwiw, when I compared men to dogs, I didn’t mean it as an insult. I really like dogs. Just like men. They are amazing.
Moving into a new home last year was an adjustment for me. For starters, all new places feel unbearably cootie filled to me, especially if they have been previously inhabited, and since this house is 111 years old, it is has been inhabited many times. (Including JFK, at least for a day. And considering that he was a sex addict said to have sex multiple times a day, I like to think he may have done so in our house as well. Probably the guest bathroom, as was his custom when visiting a new place.)
Also, as much as I admire the down to earthiness of West Virginia culture, it can make me feel claustrophobic at times. Truthfully, the culture of every place I have lived eventually makes me feel the need to escape. The sun shiny cultures make you stupid, the icy ones freeze your heart, the airiness of the West Coast leads you to make bad choices, the human density of cities makes your head go up your ass, etc. I can’t help wanting to be the opposite of the world around me, no matter what that world is like. Otherwise it can feel hard to breathe. Although I like like people a lot as individuals, I have a hard time dealing with them once they have turned into giant globs sharing the same thoughts and perspectives.
At any rate, the point is that when I first moved here the home and world around me felt foreign and oppressive, so I compensated by making my home a symbol of airiness and flight. Painting the walls sky blue and covering them with airplanes and butterflies, clouds, stars, and lightening bolts.
But now it has gotten to be too much and my whole world feels as though it is empty and blowing around in the air. It is time to redecorate my home to make it feel like the heaviest, stuffiest place in the world. Every symbol of air must be replaced with a pumpkin or a bear. Everything white must be painted brown. Everything high must be placed on the ground.
Of course, last time I made my home as earthy as I could it made me feel stuck, depressed and flat, as though I was being pressed beneath a heavy book. However, it turns out that was also the time Saturn was passing over my horizon, which makes everyone feel as though their life is a dry and burdensome drudge. Maybe this time the impact of earth will be quite excellent. I will let you know. 🙂
I painted this bookcase with some leftover ocher paint to be earthier. I think ocher and brown are the essence of earth. As are dogs. If you look carefully, you can also see some of my favorite collectibles in this photo, such as blenko water bottles and fiesta ware. The books in the bookcase are ones I would be embarrassed to be associated with (and the ones I read the most) which is why they must be kept upstairs. I would like eventually to have a case of books downstairs which have been purely selected for their pomposity.
