Come rain, come shine, I am yours, you are mine

To stay alive, I must give to myself the means for emotional and physical survival. I therefore declare to myself that I am alive, that I am here, that I do love myself.

From people like Walt Whitman and so many of my friends (you know who you are) I have learned not to deny any aspect of my interior world, not to draw lines between one part and another, and not to make rigid oppositions among these parts. In this way, by knowing myself as a more and more integrated person, I can better locate where I need to be in a universe I already acknowledge as beautiful and ever-changing.

Then I am able to find my own strength and individuality, and relate to others without apology or self-limitation.

I see this as a means to fulfilling my task to become an aware, effective and respectful person.

Now, those of you who know me are probably wondering, how on Earth can somebody so willing to mess her life up claim to practice these notions? She doesn't appear to know or to love herself much.

Au contraire, I say.

As one lost friend used to say, "the proof is in the pudding."

My ability to write is one proof, the first one, I suppose characteristically, to which I refer you.

Another, I must say, is the inner calmness which I have lately been able to often claim as my own. If those around you are losing their heads, and you're not, then you are a .... etc.

Yet another, which I have long sought for myself, and which I think even the most skeptical among you have seen the inklings of, is "vibrancy." My own peer counselor, -- yes, a crazy woman -- said this about me.

But the strongest proof is the fact that in the face of a lot of trouble I haven't lost myself. I feel strongly that I am the person I need to be, and that the choices I make don't depend on external or fleeting circumstances -- though I admit I am flighty -- but are ones that I make because of who I am, and further that only I can (and do) make them.

When all is said and done, I love life and life loves me.

I love that line from the movie, Scrooge.

Be a person who knows what life has to offer, and then give yourself what you need.

Enjoy.

No mail

To one reader
I care

To the other
I'm sorry


Esther, Ill

Honesty and Self-Honesty

Dear reader(s) --

Today I want to be happy.

I would like to give a Julia a rest.

I practiced a woman, a crazy woman.

I wish that I could lose.

Mom, I love you, but I can't stay unless I go crazy.


The above are lines that might constitute [Julia?]

Within the truth is
Girl, you want sex.

Outside, the restraints are: why is there a lover?

Gruesome (Shaida) Julia



ANd with a lot of precious plodding
I am fucked.




Strangers in the Night

Someone is shy.
Julia is me.




It's been a long time since I've been a --
Hole.

That's what I thought a vagina was, my friends:
sort of a Courtney Love if life was a crackhead.


I've been trying to write honestly.
It seems that I cannot do that without being honest with myself.

I am a hindsight.


Shame is cheating.
Anger is truth.


Maybe i'm not a hindsight.

Lavender
Home

I like the way that the Goddess has become a glossed mission.

I wonder if anyone will comprehend the above sentence.

Thanks for reading --

I'm a client

Priest, alive

Proust
Glue is not shit.

Me

presumption

very funny.

lots of changes.

there's a lot of anger.

i've made some very glaring mistakes.

also stupid, ridiculous and destructive.

i am a mess.

(and a pig)

still, the way i am is good.

and i hope that i can find rest.

be loving.

blessed be,

Julia

Freedom, Love, Devotion

A Virgin loves me

A strange craving for a rose
A belief that struggles for love
A tree that runs to life

Surroundings that give Mary

The tribe of a friend
Hoping for a woman





Troy Mother Give Change

A crow's bait likes dying
A mother's breasts create woman

Jamie love her presence

Still bearing one friend



Climbing to the Marina

Sneer at my tribe and
you are malevolent



Spain loves Julia

If I say it, then --
Jamie, thank you for your truth


Julia's homosexual home

I have been a kind and loving woman
I have been a bride
And now I know what to believe

The Goddess is alive



[In a nut shell, I Belayed hovering]

Yours as trill

framework of hate

Today I am royally pissed off.

I'd like to know why myself.

I've been ranting and raving nearly since I got up at 4:00 this morning -- it's now almost 7:00 a.m. and I'm still feeling rancor and anger.

The cradle(s) of civilization have been destroyed or are in danger.

So what? What does that have to do with me, or you?

Really, I should say that much of this anger is directed at

Myself -- trying to kill off Julia.

And why?

Why, I can't be happy, because no one likes a whore.

Rests a Moose.


Feelings are the way that one realizes strength?

Maybe a better way is to realize friendship.

I need to let myself be vulnerable.

A cross splits the world two ways -- up and down, and left and right.

Simply put, there is rain.

How can I be happy when my mother is not?

OR, what difference can anyone love?

LIVE.

My love misses women who love Julia.

I don't know why people need a Bruce.

I think it's so they can fuck their own mothers.

I'm really sorry if that disturbs you. It certainly disturbs me.

I'm hoping that when I'm writing, that you do believe that I need you.

Psychosis: money.

When all is malevolent, then all is political.

Good for malevolence.

I'm not the one who is so afraid.

Blame is freedom when life collides with malevolence.

I cried.

See you soon.

Love, Julia

Plain and Simple

Was that song, Church of the Poison Mind, by Boy George?

I need to be strong
A forge that is Rusty's nature is love.

The guise of life is beauty.

All who love are Mary and dark.

The quiet of reaching for hope is shared.

I am a lover of friends who know that the place of life is beauty.

The answers that I have found are alive and hopeful.

Strong knowledge of the fruit of life's happiness is powerful and loving.

This freedom of reason is a woman.

I have seen very many crimes that no law ever gave hope for restitution.

Such crimes are often committed by those the law protects.

I do not know how or where the reasons that many find to justify unconscionable acts have their source.

I know that I have gone very close to some of the framework of hatred in my life and in myself.

I have studied much "political theory" as my readers either know or hear learn.

The facts are that there is no correct truth that can encompass the universe of life and within it, humanity. Love of freedom does not suffice without the recognition in practice of the desires, needs, and expectations of all of the human species and now, we are learning,other species and the very Earth as well.

Love is crazy.

I am happy to be able to feel a part of the hope that dreams bring.

Goddess is the amazing fact that any lover of peace with justice can give love to themselves.

And thereby give beauty to a world that needs it.

I am happy that you who have decided to read this incoherent set of sentences might begin to feel the friendship that I wish to believe in.

Scary are many strikes that have made love and made life better.

I hope to continue writing, but for now I will let these words be how and what they are so that I can be myself.

I am very afraid of Julia.

She wants love, and I want happiness. I need to give her what she desires.

See, I told you I'm schizo.

Love, Estoril Brigid Cumaea

Next: Framework of Hate

You rip, a tease

I don't know.

Comedy is such a difficult vein of literature.

Only the greats can come up with lines like,

"I don't get any respect."

Or,

"But, Ollie!"

So, I'm not going to try.

Instead, I'm not going to make it all so difficult for myself. I'm just going to write, which since I really really enjoy it at all times will make the reading of this just so much easier for you, my dear audience.

Speaking of audiences, I used to have this theory. Oh, never mind. Suffice it to say, the practice of it has obviously culminated with me staring at this nearly blank screen, alone in this room, in the early morning hours, with only the most fragile thread attaching me to reality or even what i'm writing.

How can that be, you may ask?

Go ahead, ask!

It seems that because communication of ideas is at least as important as having them, that as is so often the case I have simply replicated the isolation that I was in to begin with.

Sierra Vista. Antarctica. President Bush -- isolated places.

Me.

See, I get a line to myself.

Where is this going? At the moment, look at the first line of the blog.

"I don't know."

This, of course, was a line that the great Steve Martin used in that era long ago when I was about 12 or 13, and he was in the midst of selling out big venues as a stand up comedian with his big "Excuse Me!" routine. I believe the sequence when standing in front of the judge, was "I don't know." Then, "I forgot," Then, "Well, excuse me!"

This is important. How? Give me a chance, will you? (A locution of another comedy great my regular readership may recognize.)

My very good friend Frank Leslie (when I was 12 and 13) was a big-time comedy fan who introduced me and my little circle of 2 or 3 other ahem, boys*, to for instance Steve Martin and Monty Python. This was in the mid 70s, and these acts had been around for years already but we didn't know that. All I knew was that Frank was hilarious telling jokes, especially including while we were riding on the Church bus. He was also quite skilled at playing "dots" and "tic-tac-toe" with me during services as well as making out with one of his girl friends during the midst of the (Southern Baptist) rigmarole. That's another story.

What else was in Frank's life besides comedy was his father, with whom he lived in a mobile home in a trailer park, of which there were many in my home town (where I'm at now). I only went to visit Frank (to my memory) once at his house. His father was incredibly abusive to the point where I was scared, and my father was no slouch when it came to yelling and making you feel that you wanted to leave his overbearing presence. I think he may have drank.

Anyway, there are three facts about Frank which I wish to relate in this here writing, and then I will be finished (hopefully).

First, was his burglary career. Frank when he and I were about 14 or 15 turned to breaking and entering, which he loved to tell me about. It was the first time I was near anyone who practiced criminal activity at that level. He would tell me about the tools used to scratch the glass of windows and screen doors, the pushing-in, and the fun of wrecking the furniture/appurtenances of those places he let himself into. I was fascinated, and typically for me, scared. How could anyone do that, I thought. I never practiced it myself. What does it matter? To me it shows how normal and commonplace it was at that time to do things which were against authority and not only not worry that it was somehow wrong, but actually brag about it. It seems to me somehow very different now. You're supposed to feel guilty about everything even potentially out of line. The public has been changed either into law-fearing, criminal-hating, passive victims in the making, or scary, violent, raging criminals. Who's done this? The authorities, the cops and of course behind them big business. Why? The only reason I can think of is to protect their precious money. Because I remember those times, I have little respect for law or its imperatives.

Anyway, to keep going. Frank was the first person who sussed out my little difference from the other males in my circle. He said the word "transvestite" to me, openly, I believe asking me if I was one. I, totally shocked and embarrassed, said, of course, No. I believe that if the time and place were different or if maybe I was different, we would have ended up lovers at some level. Oh, yeah, I forgot to say that he was rather attractive, with dark hair and eyes, slender and a little forward sexually. This is important to me, because it brought home the possible consequences for me of being who I was. I knew that if he knew, others might know. And I knew that I stood an extremely good chance of being ostracized, probably physically attacked and disgraced within my family. From my perspective today, this is funny. To think no one would know when I was going to school with traces of pink fingernail polish left over from the previous day's dressing up episode. Amusing.

Lastly, from comedy to tragedy. I'm pretty sure that Frank died many years ago. He became, I believe, an alcoholic or drug addict of some sort, and ended up in Colorado. Just thinking about it makes me angry. Here was someone who probably had his own complete insecurities with respect to his father, the fact that he was half Mexican, the fact that he was hanging out with incipient perverts like myself who were on the social oddball list, and a beautiful vulnerability and anger that he could only express through comedy and burglary. And then nothing but a short time on the planet to follow. I wish to this day that I could see him again and let him know what a good friend I thought of him as for a while (I was already becoming an intellectual snob I should say) and what better things I think he deserved.

So, to conclude, this blog is for you, Frank.

Did I make this interesting?

Even if not buoyant.

I would like to go on, but it's been nearly an hour in the writing, and I'm tired. So I'll make this THE conclusion of this post.

Adios,

J. Be-atch ("Tears")

Steamopoeia

I'd like to switch out of the realm of the more or less abstract, resentful and gloomy to writing about the outer world, as I attempted yesterday, only a little more in the way of concrete reality.

F'rinstance, Germanic ethnicity. Why? How? What? Where? When? If?

My mother came out the other day (yesterday?) with the comment that official documents which here routinely are in Spanish and English are not also in German. Now this form of ethnocentricity in the Eastern parts would be so out of date as to be laughable or frighteningly retrograde. But in my mother's case, she simply has never had to work out her feelings regarding people who are basically not WASPs. In fact, she had to ask me the other day what WASP meant, just going to show how WASP, (literally, English and German and Protestant) she is. I cannot simply put her down for this, because I'm sort of Celto-WASP myself, with Irish and Scottish from my father's side. It just makes me wonder at the repetitious nature of change when taken from different geographic regions. A 150 years ago, were German people in New York saying exactly the same about the Irish? And isn't that a fantastic tribute to this country's culture that it keeps change repetitious rather than transformational at that level. Some people are very very smart to have educated people who have grown up in one circumstance not to know about others in other circumstances who they may have much in common with or at least have the ability/choice to make something else than what was made previously. I think that the unitary nature of the class dictatorship shows itself in that kind of ignorance as much as in anything else I can think of. Everybody talks, but the adjustments that the elite makes are quick, subtle and very effective at keeping people from learning about each other.

Now, it is true that my mother is not the sociable kind of person, at least not in terms of going to parties, or hanging out. She has very few friends. She is, however, quite sensitive as a person and has a gentleness and sweetness within her wary, pragmatic exterior. I think she fears being hurt by people she perceives as less proper than she can be, because perhaps "rough" people as she calls them, (and she does not exclusively apply the term to Mexican-AMericans or anyone else) have in fact overlooked her for being unassuming, just as people more polished than her have. So out of inexperience and distrust, ignorance builds and assumes the nature of a larger and larger rift among people, for apparently no reason at all. I honestly don't think she has the slightest idea of the stereotypes that German people have fulfilled. She simply dissociates from them because she is an American also, grew up in the Depression and World War II, and thinks that the fight against Hitler has nothing to do with a fight against some sort of German character, at the same time as she says things like there is no difference among the various Asian nationalities (her brother fought in the Pacific during that War.) So she has simply not lived down some of the things "our" people have done in rising from poverty or near-poverty since the 1930s. And so many people in the West are like that. Now, one defense, or positive statement I can make about my mother is that she has not turned toward right-wing Christianity like so many of the people who are her relatives. Neither does she think that people are unequal, merely that some people are bad who hurt others, and those people deserve punishment, particularly those she calls crooks, without seeing anything of them in herself. It's a way of thinking I grew up with, and when I say it's paradoxical, I know it from my own life.

Now, according to indications from a few tarot readings I did of myself on this computer, I am in the process of returning to my spiritual roots. The fact is, they do exist, and they are a sustenance, but they are not subject to one kind of religion or another, pagan, Christian or otherwise. As far as I can tell, and this comes from an episode in October when I almost died, my spirituality as I grew up in it is and was a spirituality of beauty as lived. God may be a part of the world, but the world is a place where life is important, where the knowledge supporting life is important, where gnosis is a practical way of keeping polarities of fear or hate at bay.

Somehow, though, this practice takes cues from the dominant culture. What is correct, what is legal, what is permissible, is not a choice one can make entirely as a ubermensch or an ecstatic creatrix. There are limits, which limits however are diminished in effect by the intimate nature of family relations and the definiteness and stability of the means by which one keeps in touch with one's own abilities and worth. I'm talking very plain means. Things like knowing the spelling of words, like simple recitations of facts they teach in school, like confidence that you have and can keep a certain level of independence and that your intellectual property is a family enterprise, and that it can guard against danger, and add to the enjoyment of life as well as to self-worth.

So, with this culture in my background as well as in my present surroundings, it is tempting and common to see that other cultures do what they do and attempt to alter this culture in order to get what "we" have. Paranoia and xenophobia boil down to the desire to maintain, not superiority, but inviolability, not merely or mostly of personal possession but freedom to choose and act as one will. There is the accessory presumption that everybody has that power if they want to. I have no idea whether that is true. I am still working out that for myself, since I am in the midst of making the decisions that will let me know that.

Insularity has its pleasures. Perhaps in this Steamopoeic era, some change or renewal will take effect to lessen its ill effects.

More on this subject later.

Salute,

Tears of E.

I Kore (The Apple) - dimensionless

Knowledge of self can lead to equanimity, strength and inner focus; and it also can mire in obsession, solipsistic twisted journeys to nowhere, and circling emotional landscapes from Hell.

The universe is a much larger place than that: there are others for whom one can let down the barriers to contact with other galaxies of need, of will, of luxuriantly grown/(or decayed) life. One does not always sit in the gorgeous parks of the City or beside the ocean or in the mountains with a blindfold on, hands and feet bound, and raise the remaining sensations -- tauntings of one's demons, blind disembodied thinking, and whispered hints of the outer world to the level of poetry that fully conveys the sacred sweep and flow of Nature and her Creatures.

I say these things in order to remind myself that not only can I, I must believe in something other than myself, and that in writing the object is not only to communicate my own feelings but the tribulations and joys involved in living within a world that is home to countless others as well as myself.

Let's start with why, to me, people are still suffering needlessly around the world, and with the way things are going, why those sufferings, though useless to cling to, are becoming more varied, more intense, and more intractable.

The fact is, as I have observed it, is that most of the socially privileged, think of and act as though
others are cattle in so many pens, and treat us as such.

Now I would never say that there are no instances of compassion or even commitment to a level of well-being of, for lack of a better word, the people. But the social structure -- which in the U.S. at least is one that is supposed to promote freedom and to exist with the consent of the governed, is composed of and designed for a continual reflection back to the cattle of their aspirations, so that these aspirations are destroyed. If you want change, the answer is you change. If you want love, the answer is, you give love. If you want a different kind of society, the answer is, well, you don't possess the "background," (pedigree), or "skills", (ability to deceive/manipulate and suppress) to make the kinds of changes you want, and anyway, you're cattle, and each individual cow wants something different, don't they, so what is it you want? So, despite the fact that you may have less opportunity, less wealth and less scope in life, your desires are illegitimate because, the answers are -- there's only so much to go around (again, why you), (on the other hand we deserve compensation for keeping society "functioning"), You're a malcontent or crazy (you're cattle), the other cattle might not like it (they are cattle) or what you want is a threat (you're violent).

The idea is that you cannot make people (of pedigree and skill) do anything they don't want to do, as long as you are unwilling to do what you don't want to do. That's the social contract. You claim you're as good as us, so prove it, or don't deny our primacy. And proving it means showing you have something that others don't. Partly because all your individuality and aspirations can be and have been absorbed processed and presented back to you as something other than who you know yourself to be, or because you are loyal to where you come from, you refuse to compete in such a world, so you are deemed worthless (at best, an observer). The you that you are has been checked by the you your social superior is, because as an individual he/she has all the same characteristics you do, minus the imperfection of being powerless: pedigreeless -- you've not won in the past, or skillless -- you can't win in the present. This is what counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists are for, to keep pushing you back in the pen while bringing out in you the beauty and potential of your cowness, while neither associating with you or living with the same material chances as you do. Don't put a wrench in the machine -- it's our machine, and so are the cops, and so are the politicians, and so are you.


So, as one or two of my dear friends have said, "Let's Dance!"


Dear readers, thank you.

I have been most lacking in consideration. I am liked.

Be happy , and should you find any other originality in any other writing of mine, let me know, and I will be most pleased, gratified and will have grounds for thereby finding my life acceptable.

Please don't work like a horror -- or better, Make horror, not war.
I never used to like horror movies.
Bye for now --

S. Trill Bridge Id

Here Comes the Polis -- A Pastoral Reflection

In this time of change, I believe it is incumbent upon me, me, me, to declare where I stand, since perhaps what I've thought and done with respect to the new ground upon which we stand is possibly a window not only on me and my thinking but a spur (worn on thigh-high black vinyl boots) to others to reflect on their needs, expectations and hopes of today.

Now, some of what I'm going to talk about disturbs even me, and does not reflect well on me, but it is the fact, and hopefully will, as I said serve to clarify and expand the possibilities that are present in this moment.

FIRST, an excuse which is probably not an excuse. Most of you know me to be mentally ill. Part of that illness is obsessive-compulsive thinking. SECOND, is that I've been pushing myself on my own racism for years. Just ask Nathan. I wish all the time to release myself from hate and hate from myself, and I'm pretty aware when it's there and when it's not. So, to get to the terrible response I had to Obama when he declared himself the winner of the Democratic nomination -- The N word came to mind. I was in the hospital (Bellevue) at that time. I was rather dismayed, but not as surprised as would be true if I had never thought that before. I never thought it before several years ago, then in the face of a lot of survival pressure combined with a lot of anger, anxiety and fear, ultimately I suppose because of some aspect of myself I'm afraid to face, and some subliminal messaging from my good old military background, I thought it quite often, especially when obsessing about it.

When Obama won Pennsylvania on November 4, I said, unexpectedly to myself, "too bad." Then a few minutes later when he won Ohio and clinched the election, I pumped my fist in half-jubilation. Over the next few days my mood careened around the emotional block, with trepidation, anxiety, elation and hope being the major alternating responses. Now I am encouraged that he does have the ability to inspire, and I hope that he will have the strength to make the changes that must happen in this country.

Now I think I can go two ways here. I can give the autobiography of my perceptions and development in relation to people of color, and bore you that way, or give my evaluation of the present time, and make you laugh at its shallow, ignorant, and deluded nature. Hmm, which should I choose? Both, of course: In the moment of Now.

Okay, what's my problem with black people. My response is "I'm afraid to die!" What does one have to do with the other? Another response is, "It hurts to be a girl without love!" Ditto. Why did I feel free to talk down to and otherwise belittle people -- and not just people of color, but many others for years? A good question.

At this point, you're probably asking yourself if you're a person of color or a strong ally/friend/supporter, why should I even read further? I'm not sure. I would like to learn something about myself, and "maybe" that will help others arrive at the conclusions they need to reach.

Of course, I'm going to try to reach inside first for the toughest answer, the deepest source of hate and fear I can reach, so that whatever love is there can emerge. So while you may be reading this in seconds, probably a little while longer is taking place as I write this, and I hope you will bear with me in any case.

As Nathan liked to tell me, you are what you fear/hate. So possibly I am aware of my own limitations when face to face with others of another skin color.

I know I have associations with this fear that must go back to a time when I was young, because I feel weak, powerless and scared when focusing on its source. Of course I'm not so weak, powerless and scared now, so maybe I can let it go. I was afraid. I was sad. I was stupid. I was a card -- a place on someone else's journey. I was Bruce. I wanted to believe in life, but no one knew I was drowning in love that didn't give me what I wanted.

I wanted friendship and caring. I wanted a way to give. I wanted to feel, and I wanted to love a woman, me, without the socially-supported visual evidence of being one -- my body was not beautiful to me. I wanted to see myself as a mother. I was afraid of the facts of being a drone.

I wanted a Goddess who would give me a friend.

She (the Goddess) was the one that would be my lover. And I was thought of as a girl. But that didn't make me the person that could see my desires and my life as I wanted.

My fear was that I would never be able to touch a "rose" and that I would never be able to release the truth of my being: Homeliness. My love was for a place that could give me a way to be. And that was Julia's mystery. (Also known as my anus.)

With all this said, I can say that kindness is the strength that can attain motherhood.

To all my sisters, and that means friends, Give, and embrace, all of those you are alive to shepherd and be shepherded by, and love your hopes and love your world for the joy there is in it. Be a person! And me is good to guide.

Just read this over. Though these may read like psychotic ruminations, I feel I've gained some understanding of myself. I do know that feelings can be hurt, and that it is for me to stop hurting them in others. Part of that is not putting others in place due to anger.

I want to express that there's a lot of change that is coming and that I am happy that it is loving.

If you want to respond to this post, I am eagerly looking forward to your comments. Thanks, and Love,

Ms. Tress of Freedom -- not feeling bad, that's the idea
(bye)

Twixt Nyx and ?Day

Twisted Nixon, Eh?

You see, much of the time I rely on resonances and connotations to communicate themselves to the reader without my having to analyze, explain them or spell them out. Here, it just seems amusing that one set of phonemes having to do with the time of day this is, so immediately may have, I don't know the technical term, parallel/potential/similar/related sounds which though having to do with what seems an entirely different entity still to me reveal possibly hitherto unnoticed commonalities between both entities. In other words, start with one,end with the other, there must be something that both share. Is this analysis tiresome? Going at it another way, the Richard Nixon may easily and has often been known as "twisted," but does anyone notice that another attribute of the hated president, his being caught between light and dark, may be brought into being/force/effect through a simple recitation of a homophone of his second name: Nix goes to Nyx -- Nothingness becomes Night. A common interjection combined with but one additional sound/letter "d" completes the opposition/combination "Nyx and Day" from "Nixon, eh?" The attributes of Nixon's name are in this case not so very distant either from who he was, or what I am attempting to write about him.

Can I stop now?

I was just going to say, on another note, that the much harped upon "opposition" of Night and Day, where each is hated by adherents of the other or even by the other, is not only unnecessary, but untrue. Night does not hate day, and day does not hate Night. It's a fact. Somebody else brought that to me through the culture in which I was embedded; it is neither within me or within reality. Why should you care? Because so much conflict, death, injury, misunderstanding, miscommunication, and just plain unpleasantness is either based upon or actively uses this misconception to make all our lives less than they could be. That's why I care, anyway. Change one aspect of the whole, and the rest must change as well.

See, it's better to read my poetry.

Is Twisted Nixon the name of a band yet?

It's about 6:00 and the sun is not yet up. It's in the 40s outside (and in my life, too, sorry to say). Today the temperature is supposed to rise to around 70 degrees (a peak which lasts about three seconds in the winter) and then fall tonight to ? probably around 40.

Most of my readership is probably far past the conflict of light and dark, anyway, so i'll drop the commentary on that part.

Here at my mother's the natural environment, in all its desert-mountain-shapelybulkofwintercloud glory, is at a very effective remove from my perception of it. Why? Because my mother prefers the blinds closed for the reason she doesn't want anyone to see inside the place to see what she has. Not that she's wealthy, but she has accumulated some presentable and even valuable decorations, furniture, etc. and she doesn't trust the people who have moved in in the last umpteen years, or it seems, many people around the globe. It's probably true that I can be altogether too trusting, but she is just downright paranoid, it seems to me. I have to scratch my name and address off my used pill bottles, e.g. They have ads about that here on TV, scaring people about identity theft. Speaking of the media, one particularly outrageous example of the "conservatism" here was that they had the picture on the front page of a local free paper of a MARIJUANA smoker who was wanted for a parole violation under the story of a local child pornographer whose picture they did not publish. Guess what, the MARIJUANA smoker was a young black man. I'm going to write a letter to the editor of that paper. I guess throwing rocks at its offices might also be good, but Id want to be with someone else. Is that cowardice/being a reactionary bourgeois? I don't know. No perspective here, this is JM/Tears of Estoril.

I'm getting really tired of saying little or nothing. I had nothing in mind when I sat down to write this, and so that's what came out. Just to repeat, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a MOose.

Adios, amiga(o)s.

With love,

An occasional wearer of suggestive clothing for practical purposes,
Esther Ill.

Nausicaa's Natural Nuggets

Hi, I"d thought I'd do a little experimentation with color and font. Interesting, ain't it?

I think that, in the moment, I shall brainstorm, as is my wont, and let my loyal readers in on my creative process.

First, What the hell is going on and why is it I am (oh, here I'm stuck, so I'll just keep typing whatever comes to mind. Now, here goes the spellling. Oops, nothing happened. Okay, whatever work, oh, look, I sessaidikldfkjsldsjf work not word.

Isn't that excieting?

Excruciatingly so, I imagine would be some persons' response. There is some truth to the notion that the mind can only produce so much interesting material before it devolves into an empty, let us say, barren and dried out vessel, such as the one that bore ? certainly bored somebody.

So AS I WAS SAYING, I was in one of the three local bookstores the other day, this is Sierra Vista Airizona, A small town of the military-industrial economy deposited within a few miles of the Mexican border and some prime drug-smuggling routes, and I was wandinering arouind looking as usual at all the books I wanted to buy and couldn't. First there's the category of religious studies, All of JOSEPHUS, TLHe Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels or was it the Gnostic Bible themselves, a twenty-year-old edition of the Nag Hammadi texts, etc. Now these fall under the category of possibly interesting, probably too expensive, don't know enough about each exidtitoijadlkjad;lsfjl;kjedalkjs lad;kjf Sorry, editiohn to be able to choose which to buy, and lastly and most unfortunate, A certain JKH and/or CEG have read them or would like to read them or have inspired me in the direciton of reading them. Back to that at some point.

Then there's the poetry of Blake, very much abridged versus the whole of Robert Creeley's poetry. Now, if I'm going to have Blake, I'm going to HAVE blake -- and after looking at Creeley's poetry, it looks a lot like mine, only maybe not as good, so why bother?

Then there's the question of steampunk -- what kind of science fiction section, what kind of novel sectioin does not have William Gibson's work?

To cut short this matter of what and how did I choose, it came down to my reading something into what my mother said, or perhaps one of the gentlemen's expressions who was sitting opposite me as i was drinking my coffee, or maybe it was just that i didn't want to pay so much money for Josephus. SO I did make the natural, psychotic selectioin, which was to go for the light reading, as suggested by one of my loyal readers, and get some books I mentioned in another post - ha ha, didn't repeat myself!. ....

I t turns out that my FATHER, that person who I found out today was more of an average man than I realized in a way that caused me much pain to find out -- I'm not specifying because I don't want my mother to feel bad, had a very nice copy of a much better novel by J.Verne, The Mysterious Island.

Oh yes, I wsas going to go on and on about all the books that I have been reading, but that's at least 15 partially-finioshed books, none of which I really want to give up on, but none of which I can really concentrate on.

This is all Karma, I know it, because I was very much against mental patients having to embrace the values of their "betters" the mental health professioinals and be set to reading and writing as a way to become more sane. I didn't see the relationship and thought the proposition was an insulting one. So naturally I CAN NOT READ as well as I used to be able to.

Okay, comments: The Odyssey -- good, but not great (repetitious, boring and violent) like so much of WEstern culture.

Only one fourth done.

(tr. Fagels)

Native Son, violent, -- he just wanted to kill her

Have to eventually finish this one.

Claudius novels by Graves -- incredible writing, story, lots of violence kudos to the Pagan Classical scholar

The Golden Bough -- Oh my God is this guy elitist and anti-human sacrifice?

(75 pages more to go)

The City of God (Augustine) boring, intense, informative, and Oh my God is this guy elitist and anti-sex?

(1000 pages more to go.)

Don't forget the Confessioins of the same

Don't forget Kant's Critique of Pure (had to be Pure, not Practical) Reason -- I'll get around to it in some far-off time

Pope's Complete Works

Absolutely phenomenal poet, too bad I'm not an 18th C. Scholar -- fouind out about him throuigh my ill-fated first heterosexual relationship.

God, I'm forgetting. Books? Books? Books? What have I to do with you. A Joke, MarA.

Sherlock Holmes, ahh, there's some entertainment to go for without making your brain rattle around your skull into you're making so much nosie that the riot police show up. Yes, I'm somewhere nearly halfway finished with that.

I refuse to go to the other room to see what else there is (Besides Ginsberg: the man's poetry could have been better if he had not used a creative process like mine: drugs and run-on thoughts.) Kaddish and Howl and some others are extremely good, however. Still one more elitist at some level (as if i'm not).

I really just want to say thsi: God is a woman that likes it.

Now you know how sick I still am.

Every day I get better and better, right?

I will pester myself overnight, and come up better than you. Oh, I mean with something better FOR you.

Damn Freud, well, he just identified the phenomenon, didn't cause it, or did he? Heisenberg principle. God, I'm looking forward to having to quote that to keep out of the Hospital.

I've gotta stop.

Love,

ME

Estradiol Valerie ate

Long-haired Achaeans

The title is a Homeric epithet.

I'm just in a jolly jolly mood, and i thought i would share it with my favorite people -- bloggers and bloggees of blogland.

Had to leave my mental illness group today, which was happily watching Dark Knight, the Batman movie with Heath Ledger. I managed to weasel my way out by telling the truth, which was that I wasn't sure that I was doing what I needed to do to get better, plus saying that the movie was pushing my violence-non-violence, good-non-good buttons, not knowing where to place myself with regard to that, etc. It worked, but I made my Mom worried because I wasn't there when she came to pick me up. Don't tell her but I sneaked half a cigarette.

Anywho I really am trying really hard to be kind, normal, happy, caring and all that, and sometimes it seems not to be worth the rather great amount of effort it takes. Why is that? Does anybody have an opinion/clue?

News Flash: I've finally decided after 17.444 years that someone I once knew as Lynda/Barry's Barry personality was a "crock" and that I had idealized that state of being to the point of self-destruction: I finally know it isn't for me. Besides admitting that I am a woman to myself (admittedly, "again") I was crying about my father's death. He really was a very influential figure in my life, and I'll never be able to convey to him that, though I don't think he liked himself and took that out on others, he was important to me, especially in encouraging me to read, especially such steampunk authors as Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. That reminds me I bought a copy of Around the World in Eighty Days, which I read about age 10-12, and Dracula, which I have never read.

Thinking about it, maybe it would be a good idea to get together a club in which people assume various Homeric personae along with the corresponding epithets. We could share seas of dark wine as the main ritual, and sacrifice pounds of roasted meats to ourselves. Sorry to disgust those veggies among the readership.

I'm hoping that with all the changes we are seeing on this planet that people will have the good sense to give themselves time to reflect, to share, to practice hospitality even with those with whom they disagree, and perhaps add to community life by digging a figurative or literal well, volunteering at a hospital or homeless shelter, and generally making life better for all of one's neighbors directly as well as in taking stands, etc. Possibly I need to learn from these words more than many or most.

I'm just going to go for broke -- it's been a long, arduous journey and I'm hoping that those of you who know me will also know that this time of rest is really necessary for me and also know that what I know as the Goddess is present also in places of repose, rest and recuperation as much as in places of struggle and stress. In other words, thank you for understanding that I am not made of invulnerable metal/titanium/uranium or other form of material nor do I possess endless reserves of energy. I'm going to do my best to treat others with the same consideration that I am learning that I NEED. "Age 45."

Here's to the ancient practice of giving what you can and then being okay with the results.

Thank you for reading.

Love,

ME

sibylline cumaeantary #2

There was an error that I don't care to put in the work to correct, so I'm starting over.

The thought that I have is that starting to write isn't easy -- so I'll just do a little automatic typing. How have you been? Do you believe in dfjdlkjf;lakjdr?

For instance, there's an unfortunate amount of communication I feel I have to do.

I'll start with saying that I hope to use this blog as the main place for my writing, communicating, etc., thoughts that are not entirely personal, for instance, politics, religion, spirituality, sexuality, relationships, all kinds of poetry, ideas for projects, the projects themselves, etc., etc. I'm sorta kinda trying to prove to myself that there is something in my noggin to bring out.

First, to the bloggers at greenfrogcafe.blogspot.com:

I feel that among all the people I have encountered in my life, especially of the last 17.582 years, you are those upon whom I have placed the most demands, from whom I have insisted on the most attention and to whom I have possibly caused the most damage.

It is probably too late to do much about any of that if that is true. And I know that you're not going to admit that what I suspect happened actually happened: My behavior nearly completely disrupted your lives. I cannot apologize for everything I have done, because some of it was necessary for me to leave behind the past, to alter my relationship to the world, etc.

It is within my memory the high hopes we shared in Bellmore at Camp and Newbridge. It is within my memory many of the extraordinary moments we shared that we had the ambition to share with the rest of the world. It is within my memory your expectations that I fully was engaged in these projects to the extent that I would devote my energy to them together with you. To that end, you deferred to my judgment in the selection of the building that would later become Transie House, you allowed me to move in Kristianna, you brought me into a world of communication and liberation and unconditional love which reflected your strong spiritual and emotional commitments to the Goddess and her place in the world of transsexuality.

Naturally I disappointed you, not just through acting out and endangering myself and others, but by withdrawing my skills and abilities so that they would serve me, for I began to think I could be, would be, a shining star on my own. It was selfish of me, and I regret not contributing in the way I might have. I think much would have been different and better. Transie House could have been the center of education and culture for all in our communities that we, I believe, wanted to create.

It did indeed become a school of education in the culture of survival for me and many others, and a strong communal place for political change and for mutual support (within limits) but it never reflected the heights of creativity that it might have expressed. I think that, to put it plainly, I wanted to run the place, rather than work together with you, and being the first to drop out of the common endeavor, it may have been me who was the source of some of the disastrous instability and vile conflict and physical deterioration of the building that took place.

I know that in any case, from what I have learned in the midst of others of my kind, that some toll would have been exacted from especially Rusty due to the simultaneous demands for order, freedom and security that arose. But possibly Transy House might have been more peaceful and more in touch with reality if I had been.

So, the memories are fantastic, and I wouldn't be the person I am today without you, and I hope you do stay in touch. I want to assure you that I have worked out the bulk of the violent fantasies I have had, and I do not wish to endanger you or one (or two?) who are very dear to you, and also at some level, to me.

Rusty, you may now mention me in your Blog.

I don't know when or if I will see you soon, but please, the next time you are at Green Frog Cafe, say a blessing on the place for me.

My best to all.


EStoril Brigid Cumaea

Lethe-al Commentary

Today I refused to sign a petition calling for the U.S. to withdraw all military and labor aid from Israel. I did this not out of great love for Israel, but because some of the supporting information and the petition itself seemed to absolve Hamas of all "blame" for what has been happening there. Even being starved by an occupation/blockade is not cause for rocket attacks on civilians. I made the comment that instead both sides need to negotiate "unconditionally" and then asked for responses from anyone who thought that was unjust. I hope that anyone who cares about what I do or do not do will respect my decision as an honest one that recognizes that when people are neighbors that both need to talk to each other -- conversation must be a two way street.
That said, I desperately hope that Israel ceases its bloody aggression. And I hope that Arabs recognize that Jewish people do have a claim to reside in Palestine.

I also acknowledge that landownership in this country must ultimately become the decisionmaking province of the First Nations (Native Americans). In other words, I subscribe to the animist/pagan approach to the land, that it belongs to no one, and that everyone belongs to it/Her.



So, onward.

The Dawn of the Muse

Dear friends,

I am jumping into blogging on the occasion of reading a couple of entries in Greenfrogcafe.blogspot.com.

I am in a relatively settled frame of mind, which has been happening more and more over the last several months as I have worked through some of the tarpits and mines that constitute my psyche.

I hope you will not mind if I occasionally switch over to a stream-of-consciousness style of writing because unfortunately there are times when I can only get at what's there by spewing a jumbled mess beforehand.

For those of you who have been waiting on tenterhooks as to news about my condition(s), plans, thoughts, emotions, relationships, activities and such, welcome! For those of you who are merely curious, indifferent or skeptical, let me say, also, welcome!

The handholds on reality that I have been searching for lo these many years seem to have taken shape to at least the extent that I can identify where they are in the mist.

Since it is traditional within some of the communities within which I have grown or into which I have more or less brazenly/violently inserted myself to analyze one's life in terms of the material underpinnings of it, let me just say that I am living on my mother's money, and that it makes me feel like a gigolo/user, etc. As a matter of fact, I admitted to her that I was using her, but she, from love I suppose, told me not to worry about it. The relationship I have to the world at the present is 1) I need people for friendship, pleasure, conversation, learning, mutual support and succor (all of which are two-way streets), and 2) I need some occupation.

Let me go into the second fact first. As those of you who know me well at all know all too well, I have thrown away multiple opportunities to reach out for a stable career for reasons that apparently are mysterious to others, and have sometimes been mysterious for me. Let me just say that I have Rebelled, sought ego-gratification from Rebellion, have analyzed myself and my Rebellion down to the last atom and have found that much if not all of this Rebellion, which took on great significance and effect in my life (for I wished to learn how to hellp others in my situation) was useless. I believe now that I have nothing to prove and perhaps never did.

It was highly interesting during the four days that I was homeless-on-the-streets in June (because I perhaps foolishly didn't want to be in the torture chamber they call REhab) that I discovered that there were NO revolutionaries sleeping on the benches except me, NO homeless people (at least in the Parks where I was staying) NO drug addicts, except those who wished me to give them a blowjob or worse have public sex with them for a pittance of crack and NO "homeless street queens." (I did run into Josephine who shook her head in apparent pity at my tribulations but who did not offer me a place to go.) I was alone with no where to go except a few interim days with a crack-smoking friend of mine in Brooklyn and then on to my Mother's. As you might imagine I was dismayed and disillusioned. Apparently all the smart people who do self-destructive things along the lines that I have so counterproductively embraced, do them INSIDE somewhere in a safe place. It is sort of an urban joke on the aggressively idealistic person I painted myself as to myself and others.

Having said all that I am now facing the fact that I need something to do with my life that will make me feel happy, or at least proud of myself. I have not decided what to do. I have always resented "focusing" and "networking" and trying to convince someone, even myself, that I am capable of working hard and aiding some larger enterprise, or again, even myself. I was around in the early 80s when all of this stuff came in, when Reagan was president, so I know it's not necessary. You ought to be able just to walk in somewhere and be hired. I could list some optioins. First is some form of writing, second some form of teaching, third some form of research, fourth some form of sales, fifth some form of clerical work. I think that overall I would like to help people understand the ways of the world so that they can be successful and be healed and cared for within it. That of course is what I 've been searching for myself. As you can tell this is all vague. However, those of you who read what I have written can certainly, I believe, agree that I do have expressive skills, and that beauty and an awareness of positive energy do evince themselves. So maybe writing would be okay. So, Julia, write for the internet, write ads, write for an organization. All of that would be against the major project of my life, which quixotically continues to be, to let people know what are some of the horrendous facts of this society and help them do something about them, partly by relating what I have witnessed, what I've occasionally accomplished, and by leading people to the Goddess I serve, which is not separate from an account of the last 15 years of being "out" in my eyes. All so self-absorbed.

WEll, I've learned that if people don't llike me for WHATEVER reason, they can take a flying leap, and losing me is more of a loss to them than it is to me.

Before coming to a hopefully swift conclusion with this entry, I would like to alert whoever to the fact that I am still vulnerable to crack. I think I may have learned how to blunt the self-destructiveness that made my smoking it as damaging to myself and my friends as it is, but I cannot say it will never happen again. So the set of friends I have will probably be determined by that decision. I hope that those who know me now will not forsake me, because I will NEVER ask you or anyone else for money to support an addiction.

You see, the question is, what would never doing crack again accomplish, which is another way of asking, what is it I can accomplish, and the answer is I don't know. I do know that I am slowly redirecting my energy to other pathways than the ones I've been on for the last 3-6 years, and I believe that whatever happens that some of you will have learned from me some of what you need to know in your own lives.

I am not just a pushover, or a victim, or a laughingstock. I am an intelligent, caring human being, and I will have love and respect.

I hope this blog is the beginning of a conversation with people, especially those of Transie House, and that it will become more hopeful and more helpful over time.

Thank you,

Love



JM