fevers make me wistful

tonight marks the end of the light half of the year, the end of the most bountiful of the autumn harvests, the death of the sun god. and the mother will weep until the spring resurrects the blossoms like new birth and life erupts and thrushes across the earth in triumph.

this is a time to take stock and prepare for the darkest months. gather yourselves up against the cold and void. now is the moment of sleep.

with which namesakes earn their stripes.

everyone around the office is leaking from their face-holes and miserably acking and wheezing and moaning. actually, most people i know at the moment. 'tis the season for mucus death and whatnot.

i've given out these two recipes a half a dozen times today, so i figured why continue this charade? i'll just post them on the internet and cut out the courtship period where you complain about how shitty you feel and how you can't go to the doctor because you don't have insurance and i say that i have the perfect thing for you and you say 'no, that's ok. i'll just get some tussin from rite aid' and you drink half a bottle of icky chemicals just so you can feel woozy enough to pass out and then tomorow you say 'let me try that recipe, cuz this tussin is fucking with my head and hurting my tummy'. this way, it's here when you need it and i can stop writing it down for a while.

without further adieu-

the fix-it tea to end all teas and the best cure all a non-alcoholic beverage can be:

one bag green tea

one bag fruity herbal tea (i like peach spice)

one half of a lemon

1/2 inch piece of ginger

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp honey

(for after hours, i make it in a bigger cup and add a half a cup of brandy, yes!)

pour hot water over tea, honey and cayenne. juice the lemon and plop the peel in for an extra jolt of citrus oil goodness. peel and bruise ginger and add to tea. it has a kick, but it works better than theraflu!

part deux. this soup is straight from your head cold's wet dreams:

2 large tomatoes

1 or 2 tsp brown sugar

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 or 2 small red thai pepper(s), halved lengthwise (or seeded and minced if you're brave)

1 small red onion, minced

1 small serrano pepper, seeded and minced

1 poblano pepper, minced
salt and pepper

1 stalk lemongrass, halved lengthwise (if you have it) or one tbs of the paste stuff

1/2 can of tomato paste

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth (you can add more if you like, i'm just not a fan of overly liquidy soups)

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/2 inch piece ginger, bruised

(i also add red curry powder and cayenne, but this is because i'm almost sadistic sometimes. if you don't have the stones to do this i won't think any less of you, swear. milk baby.)

preheat oven to 350. halve the tomatoes and rub each piece with a little brown sugar and olive oil. roast in the oven 5-8 minutes or until slightly smooshy. remove and let stand a minute to cool. peel the skin off with your fingers and dice. heat a little olive in a medium sauce pan. reduce heat to medium and add garlic, onion, peppers (and lemongrass paste). sautee until onion is transluscent. add tomatoes, curry, cayenne, salt and pepper. toss to coat and add broth, tomato paste, lemon juice and ginger piece (and lemongrass stalk). bring to a boil, reduce heat then cover and simmer for 15 minutes. remove ginger and red peppers (and lemongrass stalk).

blend one cup soup until smooth and re-add to pot. simmer another five minutes and serve with a big glass of ice water.

your clogged air passages will thank you.

phantasmaglorio-us.

last night i dreamed that d and i boarded a plane in new york city to fly home. during the taxi, we fell asleep leaning against each other. while we slept, i watched the plane crash on the brooklyn bridge. everyone died but us. we were preserved, we didn't wake up for hours. as we lay deep in the fitful slumber that i always find on planes, the fires burned out, the engines cooled. and when we woke, we found ourselves alone. the bridge was empty, the lights of the city cast a warm glow in the sky. we stood there, looking out on the abandoned streets and the quiet cool air and we talked about where we would go next. and we held hands in the doorway of the plane, afraid to leave the burned out husk.

sometimes, dreams don't mean anything at all. but sometimes, they seem more like chimeric visions. not always of the future, not always like one foot out of the present, not always hindsight. but when you wake up, you feel like you know.

i'm not afraid to leave the wreckage, abandoned like a failed utopian cult.

v stands for many wonderful things, too.

i am that stupid softly rolling happy that courses safely under the fear of the other shoe dropping. it's not a manic high, but a boring joy. i'm in love with it. it feels long overdue and everything i've been hoping to find on the other side of tumult.

it seems selfish to revel in oneself, but i do it unashamedly.

darling d and i spent the weekend in the forest with the amazing b-dill and ay-d. my deep rooted lust for off the grid life left me swollen with cabin-fantasy. i pressed my fingers in to the dirt and bled part of me out there. i left reluctantly, promising myself that this fundamental wide openness was a place i would return to. do we always portion out the most seemingly unattainable thing as a reward for the end of some perceived requirement?

so, i returned to my small corner, and the sun was still shining on the things i love and i felt relieved, as i always do, to find the journey in between full of light.

to pacify my longings, i lay down seed where i can and learn to appreciate it in spite of and because of it's smallness.

these winged babies were dancing with the lantana and lavender verbena in my window box.

From Panacea

From Panacea

From Panacea

the mint that i planted exploded (as mint is wont to do) and now cascades down the side of my building.

From Panacea

in spite of the forceful nature of its neighbor, the basil is thriving in its own space.

From Panacea

and i never knew they blossomed.

From Panacea

these tinies appeared one morning in my window box.

From Panacea

From Panacea

those are the things that i'm growing. and this is what i'm no longer growing.

From Panacea

From Panacea

i couldn't resist the urge to shear myself any longer. so, i chopped off all my hair.

From Panacea

From Panacea

i like to think of it as a celebration of the restlessness of the season, the pushing towards a change, the pagan new year. but maybe it's just a restlessness of myself and an expectation of, but incapability to act upon, great things in the works.

i'm not sure. but i do feel more at ease.

demarcation is like democracy with different letters.

birthdays are the best because they give you an excuse to wax nostalgic and to revel in your you-ness. i've never been one for huge hooplas or blown out shindigs, but i do enjoy the company of a few good friends who'll throw in for a few hours worth of good conversation and possibly a few celebratory beverages.

my darling d's birthday is today and this is our big plan for the evening. we'll be at old zinnie's from 7:30 until some point after that. people will come and then they will leave an increment of time later. you can be one of those people, if you want.

qui totum vult totum perdit

the sun is shifting across the earth's north south axis with the changing season again and my kitchen window swells with sunlight and casts rainbows across the floor now.  i have such a small little life here.  but i'm learning to love it fiercely and devoutly in spite of its inconsequence.  i think that might be part of the grand point.  letting go of needing to feel like your thumbprint on time is making or will make a huge indentation.  acquiescing in a self deprecating manner to one's own relative irrelevance is surprisingly easy on paper.  it's releasing that tight feeling in your heart and lungs that tries to squeeze importance or weight out of your deeds and actions and thoughts and ideas that is embarrassingly difficult.

breeding neurotic perfectionists with a sense of entitlement can hardly be what mothers intended with their sweet bedtime promises. but what woman is going to tell her child that not everyone will grow up and conjure golden dreams from a magical pool of stardust, that sometimes you can find transcendental happiness living in an apartment and working behind a stack of papers to be filed?  how do you define for some fledgling thing a genuinely accepting version of 'i only want the very best for you/i see a bright future full of many successes for you/i don't ever want you to settle for anything' that doesn't make teenagers want to die in bathtubs of their own blood for scratching out an awkward space in the world instead of shining like the prodigy mom knows they are?

some days it still makes me want to lay perfectly still on the floor when i look around and realize that i don't have a filigreed piece of parchment paper that validates the rest of my life framed in gilt and hanging in a place of prominence.  and it's not even that i forget for a second how unhappy that lifestyle made me or how my body rejects the very idea of that future, i just for one minute care that no one will know my value without thousands of dollars of debt to prove it.   

and then i wonder how on earth i ever came to be burdened with such bullshit prerequisites.  and how, in all of my years of striving for a more informed sense of personal perfection, i haven't managed to shed them entirely.

i don't know.  i don't know that it's important to know.  i just hope to forget one day that there are paragons that i fall short of.  or, failing that, that it's ok that i do.

 

delta dregs and detritus

the last time i was at a fair was in syracuse, new york. upstate white trash is such a different beast than down south white trash. it centers much more around cheap reproduction swords, faux hippie wall hangings and bad thrash metal and less around nascar, high school football and milwaukee's best. not that there isn't an element of that, of course. maybe it's because i grew up around the latter, but i never could quite sit right with upstate wt. whenever we'd go on road trips, i'd get all misty and nostalgic as soon as we'd see a love's in virginia full of that neutral toned cowboy plaid.

of course, now that i'm back in the south, i've fallen back in to hating them all. but i am happy not to be in texas anymore at least, nobody should be privy to that kind of mess.

when we walked through the corridor at the delta fair with the requisite paraphernalia pushers (leather living room sets next to plastic jewelry and vitamin cleanses) and out onto the midway with all the food booths and games, i was overwhelmed with this warm sense of that palpable excitement that wafts off of every 17 year old girl who's nervous about the possibility of giving her very first blow job behind the porta-potties. it's a heady mind-fuck to realize that these girls are tasting the turned out freedom of the religiously repressed with one night away from their dogmas and their parents. there's no naughtiness like the absolute hooch of a teenager all tipsy off cheap beer that some college boy buys her who's letting go of herself and saying 'i ain't never goin' to end up like my mamma'. they look terrified, doe eyed and delicious. so, i put whiskey in my flask and i forgave them their transgressions against my own personal set of values for this one night of taudry wantonness.

i had also meant to take pictures, but i forgot to charge my battery (as apparently always happens to everyone with intentions of photographing anything ever). but i did manage to squeeze off this gem before it went kaput.

From Panacea

for those of you who don't know, amanda got all dilated to see the avett brother's live, there was jumping up and down and excercising her evolutionary advantage by reaching over the heads of munchkins to touch the hands of musicians.

oh, and i had a ritualistic corn dog, or as the locally preferred brand has deemed them- pronto pups (ewwww...), which i don't normally do. but my beautiful husband had to work last night til 11 pm, and corn dog havin' is usually his own little celebration of trash and neon fair-time, so i felt obligated to the universe in some way to carry on this little family tradition of ours in his stead. it was less than satisfying, but also everything one might imagine eating a corn dog at a fair to be like.

later in the evening, all the whiskey conspired to weigh me down like lead and i fantasized about calling d to say that i was going to spend the night on amanda's couch because i felt too happy and sleepy to move, much less hold up my end of whatever delightful conversation was happening around me. but when my foster mother, miss lindsey turner, said she would drive me home, i found myself too pliable to refuse. thanks, lt, for delivering me to my doorstep and being such fun to hang out with, besides.

imaginary friends.

if lily tomlin wanted to be my best lady friend, i'd let her.



we could go on picnics and she could make me laugh so hard i peed. i would call her to ask how to handle things in the wittiest way possible and she'd tell me because we'd be friends and that's what friends do for eachother. maybe she would teach me how to be a funnier version of myself that people would want to have around at parties.

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.- Lily Tomlin

red red whine

whatever has become of me? far worse than realizing the way my hangovers seem to lurk in my veins far longer than they ever have, i begin to fear that i no longer am able to stay in my own head when i'm in my cups, as it were.

perhaps i should just stick to pharmaceuticals.

but the 'my so called drinking game' was an absolute panic. worth the moment of deep despair that came at 6:30 this morning when i understood completely what i had done. i may have od'd on nostalgia a little, but i think by dinnertime i'll remember what decade it is and everything will go back to normal.

thank you 1995 for giving the world angst and desperation and boys with emotions underneath their disdain.

beau monde-haut monde, bebe.

when you're a freak like me, you get a lot of stares. it's jealousy. i know it. everyone wants in on the secrets of my style.

just how do i maintain my elegant blend of 'dressed in the dark' and 'homeless chic'? i've held out as long as i can, but i fear the time is come for me to reveal my sources.

there is only one place on earth to acquire the sort of accoutrements that allow one to attain the dizzying vertexes of dernier cri that i brave on a daily basis. and that place is here-



oh, heavenly ether, receive my darkest divulgence and grant me grace in the face of adversity.

amen.

womanthrope.

i learned a new word, or rather remembered an old one, the other day. gynophobia. it means 'the fear of women'. i always assumed that it had something to do with obgyn's, but i stand corrected. i don't know that i necessarily am afraid of women, but i suppose that up til recently i've held on to a certain nervousness (like when a non-parent holds an infant) around members of the double x variety.

while most girls were in junior high and learning to break eachother down, i was being home schooled and reading classic literature. which was all fine and well until high school, when my parents decided that i would be socially incapable of relating to other people if i didn't do some down and dirty developing with youngsters my own age right away. not cool, but all parents just do what they think is best.

needless to say that the years i spent in my own company did not prepare me for the cluster fuck of highschool drama. this oddity hindered me a great deal in finding friends of any gender, but most especially my own. and i'm not so sure that i'm any more capable of deciphering the private language of women than i was back then.

but last night while drinking an entire bottle of rum, steeping in 2 a.m. dew-air outside in the street, marble-mouthed gabbing with some really cool ladies... the thought occurred to me that maybe my experiences are catching me up, maybe i'm close to making up that gap between me and every other girl i've ever known, maybe i'm close to finding the rosetta stone, so to speak. it's nice to think about not worrying that somehow my fellow ovariennes can smell it on me, my inexperience and discomfort.

so, here's to celebrating the divine feminine and trying not to run away from being one.