Red Puzzle

there's a darkness in my head
I wander labyrinths of red
with exit signs that lead the way
to night

turn the lights on, it's okay
your brain cools on a summer day
the heat slows you and you
have no need to fight

I showed my puzzle to the night
I showed my puzzle to the day
the day said, "I wish
you would put that away"

I want to run, I want to hide
hide in a room filled with night
I want to get the stars
to snag on my skin
and then I want
to slow down
look out
it's alright

and then there's day
and then there's night
as long as the sidewalk
sizzles my brain
in a summer heat sedative fog
I'm alright
as long as the red puzzle
stays in its box
I'm alright

Dark Moon Afternoons

I know this is a weird thing for me to say, but on Friday, June 7, at work, I began feeling nostalgic for January, February (God knows why), and March. Especially January. First of all, that day at work I was listening to Bavarian Fruit Bread by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, and I was listening to Hope a lot in January.

We don't get much light in Chicago in January, but the light we do get is beautiful. It makes everything it touches seem to come alive, slowly... it's like everything the light falls on begins waking up from a deep sleep. I complained about all those gray snowy days but now what I remember is that clear, barely and calmly yellow light; the light could be considered bleak, and maybe it would be bleak if it weren't for the quiet, whispered, transparent hint of warmth that subtly transforms the bleakness into peace.

I am not going to discuss the cold.

In my poem where I say "the winter sun is her halo," I am speaking of the Dark Goddess, because winter is the dark moon time of the year. Indeed, this January it was very clear that 2012 had ended but 2013 had not yet begun. That's the way it is in January. It's an in-between time, like September (when I was married) and November (after which I named my blog. Incidentally, November shares with January this sparse, precious, yellow quality of light.)

I've got a nasty case of nostalgia for everything that's ever happened. It seems like parts of the past have flavors to them and the present time doesn't have a flavor. You don't realize what flavor a time is until it's over. Even drab, dreary times when you felt like a zombie and you thought there could not possibly be any flavor, even times like that fog your mind after the fact with nostalgia for the flavor you didn't realize was there, and you miss it, even if it tasted bad, because at least, in your mind, it tasted like SOMETHING.

The soundtrack to this post is "Clear Day" by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions and "Flavor" by Tori Amos. Buy the albums "Bavarian Fruit Bread" by Hope and "Abnormally Attracted to Sin" by Tori Amos and listen to "Clear Day" and "Flavor" while you read this. (Just FYI, a different version of "Flavor" is on Amos' album "Gold Dust.") Trust me, you won't regret it!

Didn't Holden Caulfield say something, at the end of Catcher in the Rye, about how you shouldn't talk about the past because you start missing everybody, even people you thought you hated?

Self-Love Installment #2

WOMEN WHO HAVE INSPIRED ME TO HAVE HAIRY PITS
Ani Difranco
PJ Harvey
Diamanda Galas
Patti Smith
Diane Arbus
Amanda Palmer
Grimes
Hothead Paisan
Paula Cole
Clementine Morrigan
Rose Polenzani
Lydia Lunch

I started not shaving on and off in high school, and so far my senior year of high school is the longest I've ever gone without shaving my armpits.You can imagine how well that went over :P

I was and remain to be amazed at how THREATENED people-- both guys and girls-- feel by the patches of hair under my arms, not to mention my leg hair. I started a facebook club called "In Praise of Grrrls With Hairy Pits and/or Legs." I called it that to clarify that it's not just for grrrls who don't shave, but also for grrrls who shave but dig body hair on other women, and dig their reasons for not shaving.

Even more than loving my body hair, my main body image project right now is loving myself
at the weight I am. I try to eat right and exercise (the operative word being "try") but it's for my health, not so I can look like a skinny model. My doctor said the number on the scale isn't as important as staying active and eating healthy, and that I'm still within the healthy weight range for my height.

When you start noticing how many commercials are targeted towards weight loss, and furthermore how it's the norm to assume that people who are heavy want to lose weight, it's pretty disgusting. My "diet" now is that when I feel down on my body, I pop in  Margaret Cho DVD! It's just a little difficult because up until I was 19 I never weighed more than 105 lbs, and then in my 20s I gained a lot of weight. But everyone has been overwhelmingly supportive... one of my guy friends even said, "You have some tits and ass now! It's not a bad thing!"And T loves my body, especially when it's hairy. ;)

I love to see women flaunting their gorgeous body hair, and hopefully someday I can see my own full figure as gorgeous! :)


WOMEN WHO HAVE INSPIRED ME TO LOVE MY FULL FIGURE
Margaret Cho
Adele
Penelope Garcia
Venus of Willendorf
women in Rubens' paintings
Queen Latifah
Beth Ditto
Thora Birch
Kelly Osbourne (obviously until she lost weight)
Kelly Clarkson (same qualification)
most Hollywood actresses when they're pregnant
Diamanda Galas (since she gained weight)
Lydia Lunch
Clementine Morrigan

looking on the bright side

You know, a lot of people pay good money for the types of hallucinations I (occasionally) have.

"Corporate Magazines Suck" --T-Shirt Kurt Cobain Wore for Nirvana's Rolling Stone Photo Shoot

When I was in high school Courtney Love saved my life and the Rolling Stones were a band a girl in my English class went to see with her dad and his boss. I love the Stones as much as the next girl, I really do, but what's true is true.

On Not Having a Biological Clock; and Fake Feminist Guys

When you fall in love doesn't follow a schedule nor is it timed by a clock. It's especially hard for grrrls... if you lose your virginity "too early," yr a slut, but if you lose it "too late," yr a freak. Similar with marriage... if yr a woman and yr not married by 30, evidently a lot of women's biological clocks start "ticking so loud they can't sleep at night" (I don't know where I read that... it might've been in "Backlash" by Susan Faludi... the quote was evidently a Sally Field line in some movie.) Anyway, I don't have a biological clock. I swear I don't. (In case you don't know, my husband and I aren't gonna have kids.) SOME women even believe that they have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than getting married after 35-- this urban myth (because that's what it is) started in the 1980s when that frightening and erroneous statistic was published on the cover of Newsweek. I originally thought that I would use my post-grad-school twenties and early thirties to focus on my career, and then marry after 35, since I didn't want kids anyway. I even wrote an essay for a writing class when I was 24 about how I NEVER wanted to get married! I should see if I can dig that up. Well, anyway, then my wonderful, wonderful T came along when I was 27, and that was that! I should tell you that before T, I was going through a slutty phase, and hooking up with losers, guys I didn't even like, guys who somehow thought they loved me even as they wanted to change major things about me (like the guy who wanted to marry me but didn't want me to keep my last name and was "confident he could change my mind") and stupid little boys who needed to grow the fuck up-- just all kinds of no-good not worthy guys.  The last such hookup was with a guy I wasn't even attracted to, I just slept with him to get him to shut up about wanting to sleep with me (sad, I know), and my friends and I had nicknamed him "Sketchy ___ " before I slept with him. It was so depressing and humiliating, not to mention shameful, that I decided I would not hang out with, date, fuck, or otherwise waste my time with guys who as much as they gave lip service to feminism clearly did not respect me. (Okay, my other feminists are gonna hate me for saying this, but I've noticed that guys who call themselves feminists can be the worst offenders when it comes to being lame, disrespectful shitty boyfriends. Example: one of my boyfriends who called himself a feminist wouldn't offer to walk me to my car at night from his apartment in a shitty neighborhood. I had to ask him to walk me every time. But I could write a whole post about how particularly shitty this boyfriend was, so I'll stop there.) So I didn't date or fuck for a year. And then I met T. There were clearly a lot of wonderful things I noticed about him at first, but a lot of them came from how thoughtful he was. And one of the ways he was thoughtful was that he showed me that he valued my time. For instance, in the past guys had called to say they were running a half hour late and then show up two hours late. When T and I first started dating, one time he called to say he was running 20 minutes late. I thought, "Great, here we go." He showed up ten minutes after that phone call. In other words, he is a gentleman. Which is something fake feminist guys don't know how to be. (By the way, I tracked down my 2003 essay on why I didn't want to get married, and I think it's best if it stays in 2003.)

Thus Spoke Grumpy Cat

I shouldn't have to say this, because it's all over facebook and the internet in general, but this image/text is not my original work and is not covered by copyright Elizabeth Caudy.

Grimes - Genesis