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Easter Exultet
Today's sermon is brought to you by Radical Faery James Broughton.
Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!
~ Easter Exultet
Before Today
16 Apr 09
Today is the boy's 17th birthday. Seems like just weeks ago my wee turtledove was all big eyes and squeezing me around the middle, chatting my ear off and letting me smooch him. Now, not so much. He's still extraordinary, just in a different way. A tall, sardonic, has-a-life-of-his-own sort of way.
The coolest thing about parenting is watching this friend of yours spring up into being grown in front of your very eyes. Like stop-motion photography: pile of dirt, green spot, tender little shoot, all sorts of excited stretching and herky jerky unfurling and whammo, there's yer flower, right there.
18 Mar 09
Things that I've been doing instead of updating stabulous.com:
1. Drinking coffee. Specifically double tall mochas of the skinny variety. While typically "skinny" in regards to espresso is understood to mean 'made using non-fat milk', at some coffee establishments they will give you, in addition to non-fat milk, sugar-free chocolate for the mocha part of the situation. Terrible. If I can remember which espresso place did that to me I'll try to remember to tell them non-fat rather than skinny next time. Remembering things is tough, however, so I may have to drink a few more cups of heinous saccharine swill before matters are corrected.
2. Smoking. Since 1987 or so I've smoked exclusively Benson & Hedges Menthol Lights. Generics, cheaper off-brands, those weird faux-hippie good-for-you cigarettes, very rarely. A vice is a vice is a vice- why would I torment myself with crappy cigarettes that will eventually kill me as efficiently and unflatteringly as my consistently tasty brand name cigarettes will? Absurd. The price of my delicious name brand cigarettes here in Washington state has risen in approximate accordance with the cost of gasoline. It now costs one-thousand six-hundred and twelve dollars for a carton of B & H Menthol Lights. If only I'd thought to purchase stock when I first started smoking at 14.
3. Oversleeping. Despite my medication, despite my delightful Ultra HappyLite Mini Trademark Symbol Etcetera, despite getting in bed at 10pm, or 9, or some nights 8 o'clock, despite all best intentions I've overslept my alarm by two hours each morning since October. I foresee no change upcoming.
4. That's pretty much it. Some working, natch, Monday through Friday 9 to 5, like a good citizen. Lots of eating, mostly Snapea Crisps and cheddar cheese; and very little trotting, and zero yoga (driving across town in the foul, frigid dark in rush hour traffic to roll around on a mat amidst very nice middle-aged white ladies once or twice a week just sounds so terribly painful in the winter) which has netted me a nice ten-plus pounds around the midriff in the last few months. I don't so much like the way belly folds feel. It's very unpleasant and has had an entirely detrimental effect on how my body moves through the world. I'm lumbering, feels like. I'm stout these days. Sturdy? Fine. Strong? Terrific. But stout? Not so much, no not at all thank you.
Spring is mere days away and I'm still combating the cumulative effects of dark, cold, crazy and lonely. This has been one donkeyfucker of a winter, my doves. I'm hoping for nicer times, and soon.
04 Mar 09
Because I'm cranky and foul and have been for weeks and have nothing at all to say other than "Bring me cheese, you bastards! And candy! And make it snappy!" (to which I've so far received neither cheese nor candy) I'm going to have to insist that you head over to Twisty's and read her brilliant fucking survey. Please and thank you.
23 Feb 09
The birthday does approach. Coincidentally my 38th birthday will also be the one year anniversary of my ex and I splitting up. I was going to write of when my ex left me, and he did, and it was sudden and a terrible shock, but not a surprise. The night he left, my 37th birthday-eve, I cried and cried until I choked. The next day, my birthday, was fucking miserable but the day after that was better, the next day even better, and a week after he left I called to thank him for leaving. Together (off and on) for seventeen very dramatic years we'd reached a point of awful, detached disinterest in each other. Staying together had become an exercise in teeth-gritting and sighing and neither of us ever getting what we wanted, needed or just kind of fancied from the other. It had begun to feel like a waste of both time and energy. So it is, in the end, a very positive thing.
But there are still pangs, you know, of sadness. A tiny grief when I think about him. And a much larger anger, a roaring anger that rears up here and there. I've been trying to parse out this feeling, trying to figure out why I've got such fury. I'm glad that he left. I'm glad to not be in a relationship that gave me such longing for things un-had, such a weariness.
And I was just pompously telling someone the other day how I think that anger is just disappointment. Expectations or hopes unmet. When I look hard at it the anger is a reaction to how I'm feeling now, not how I felt twelve months ago.
And how are you feeling now, self? I'm glad you asked, self! Right now I feel pretty goddamned miserable.
Miserable how, sweet potato? Well, I'm bored a lot. And lonely. Really lonely.
Lonely for what? For the ex? For the ex, no. I'd rather be drowning in a pool of my own snot right now than be back in that death march. I'm just lonely. For the nice parts of being with someone. Holding hands and laughing and stuff.
So you're disappointed that you're not holding hands and laughing and stuff. You expected that. You hoped for that. Yeah pretty much.
You'd maybe think the answer would be to date more. But sweet Mary Magdalene I dated anyone for a while, just to get my hand held. Anyone. Jerky neurotics, alcoholic blowhards, half-interested passive-aggressives in the midst of prolonged breakups. A panoply of jive turkeys who really didn't give a fuck about much beyond the ends of their, er, noses.
So dating is out for a while. I can stomach no more dipshittery, from myself or from anyone else. It's my birthday and my life, such as it is, is entirely mine now and hopefully I'll find better things to do with it. Let's cross our fingers, shall we?
Ago
20 Feb 09
I decided that I would try eating raw/whole foods fairly strictly for a while to see if I could combat the crushing winter lethargy and really horrible crotch-pinching pants that have been upon me since about October. Already being vegetarian, I thought, would make it that much easier a (temporary) transition. (And while I'm savvy as the next cultural consumer I have been inspired by more than one poorly-constructed hippie family website, the kind where the fiercely lean and dreadlocked couple and their ninety gorgeous children are all aglow with perfect health and a deep, soulful irie because they subsist entirely on organic nuts and twigs and whatever).
My daily diet since that decision last week has been pizza bagels with cream cheese, cigarettes, ginger cookies and coffee. I have yet to experience any benefits.
However the HappyLite® Mini Ultra Full Spectrum Light Therapy System (which I bought primarily because of the name. I drive ten miles across town every few months to get a pedicure, passing approximately four-hundred and twelve mani/pedi places on my way, to a place called Fancy Nails. I also chose my last GP and current shrink because of their most excellent last names) has been paying off. It sits merrily on the night table and every morning that I roll over, switch it on and stare stupidly at the floor as it bathes the whites of my eyes with its full spectrum magick for the recommended fifteen to twenty minutes is one more morning that I manage to get out of bed without sobbing or putting my foot through a wall. A+.
On the site side I have found a (freeware!) photo gallery constructo-app that takes all the pictures I want to show you and turns them into a really great thumbnail thing and also makes an individual page per photo but for the moment I lack the necessary skillz to understand the last step, which is of course getting it onto this worldwide web. It's pending though, promise. Also, plans for stabululous AUDIO are in the works and you simply cannot wait. You'll pee yerself, watch.
Until then, feel free to go tell Details that women's bodies are not furniture (warning, shitty woman-hating images). I mean, FUCK.
19 Feb 09
1) Oy vey.
And
2) WTF, motherfuckers?
Dear World,
Why do you hate women?
Go fuck yourself.
No really.
1) Women's Health News, via Shakesville
2) RH Reality Check, via Pandagon
Long Ago
18 Feb 09
Today is my mama's birthday. When she was in the hospital in 2007 she got so small and fragile that one nurse said "Why, I can lift her- she's just a little peanut!". She was really very ill - she was there for weeks, in and out for months, and she died three times (and was resuscitated three times). I was in the room for two of her deaths and I still don't know what I think. It was the most vivid fucking thing I've ever experienced. I came very close to passing out. She said afterward that she was swept up, then spit back out. Then swept up again, and spit back out. After the second defibrillation ("They were throwing fireballs at my chest!"), when she came to and saw the eight or so hospital people ringing her bed she made a terrible face and said in the tiniest, most befuddled voice "What the hell are you people doing to me?".
She's still not 100%. I want to save her, as she saved me. I'd like to help her, or ease her suffering as she eased mine for a very long time, but it's not so much my business. It's hers. All I can do is love, offer her my love, and pay attention. Because that's part of what I think we're here for, to just pay attention to the lives of others. To help if we can (though usually we can't), to always offer love (even when it's hard) and to be a witness to the importance of their being here. I'm trying to bear witness.
Happy birthday, peanut. I'm glad you came back.
15 Feb 09
Jesus Jumping Christmas what a gut-shot crapboat of a week. The first Valentines ever, partnered or single, that being solitary got to me. While most facets of my life bumble along happily enough the dating portion of the program has screeched to a tedious, sexless halt. As I told the rest of the webs via Facebook, I keep throttling the internet and dating the hairballs it coughs up. Completely distasteful, and I've sworn off it.
Also vaguely troubled that I can't figure out how to (easily) insert a (free) blog up in here. Some of you have expressed a desire to be able to comment- to you I say figure it out for me, honey, and I'll insert the HTML. You can comment to your heart's delight.
On the upside, I am momentarily mellowed from the soothing delights of my Sunday night sangha. High on equanimity, I'm unable to do much here other than hurriedly update the very nice locations linkies on this page. Have a gander, doves, I'm off to bed.
14 Feb 09
Oh so many new old things! I learned new HTML this evening and made a list that links to other places within the very same page. My dog but that was hard. Worthwhile though, and what else would I be doing on a Saturday night? That happens to be Valentine's Day? That's right, not one donkeyfucking thing.
Long Long Ago
13 Feb 09
How I am is so fucking cranky I could pluck my own nosehair out. I blame winter. And Bush. And the Patriarchy, natch.
11 Feb 09
Updating linkies, searchin the webs for more old pieces and trying to figure out whether to participate in some sort of Valentine celebration or ignore it completely. Leaning toward ignore it completely, unless Raul Julia suddenly makes a preternatural appearance at my front door.
04 Feb 09
What the hell kind of week lasts for forty-eleven days and leaves you in terror that Friday will NEVER EVER COME? This one, apparently. Holy Moses. But. In 48 hours, like it or not Time, you're gonna cough me up a Friday.
Prehistoric
30 Jan 09
The old things page is pretty fleshed out, if you feel like mucking around in my attic. As to the rest of it, well for now there are bugs, bad links and lorem ipsum all over the place. You can email me about them if you like but believe you me, I know. Oh I KNOW, my turtledove. I'm building as fast as I can. Email me about something else instead, it's been a lonely week.