nowhere = now here

now we dance

If we're gonna howl we gotta dance - happy new moon - welcome sun in Taurus .....
    Twist & Shout   Beatles
    Back to the Crossroads   Todd Snider
    I Second That Emotion   Smoky Robinson & The Miracles
    Love & Happiness   Al Green
    Girls Just Wanna Have Fun   Cyndi Lauper
    Why Didn't You Call Me?   Macy Grey
    Redondo Beach   Patti Smith
    The Tide Is High   Blondie
    Ecstasy   Rusted Root
    Moon Dance   Van Morrison
No slow dances when you dance alone....

11 to make me howl

The weather here in Western Carolina is passing strange - booming thunderstorms, blustery day winds, snow. I love weather extremes, and got out today to walk in the rain, and later in winds pushing against me, and fast flying snow.
When I finally settled down and warmed up, itunes threw up Howlin at the Moon ... so here are songs to howl along with....
    Howlin at the Moon  Sam Bush
    Wagon Wheel  Old Crow Medicine Show
    Walls of Time Emmylou live
    Free My Soul   Rusted Root
    Help   Beatles
    Hound Dog   Elvis Presley
    I Will Follow   U2 live
    I Would Die 4 U   Prince & the Revolution
    I Wanna Take You Higher   Sly & the Family Stone
    Man of Constant Sorrow   O Brother soundtrack
    Heroes   Wallflowers
Happy howlin yall.....   

today

Whole and Without Blessing                Linda Gregg

What is beautiful alters, has undertow.
Otherwise I have no tactics to begin with.
Femininity is a sickness. I open my eyes
out of this fever and see the meaning
of my life clearly. A thing like a hill.
I proclaim myself whole and without blessing,
or need to be blessed. A fish of my own
spirit. I belong to no one. I do not move.
Am not required to move. I lie naked on a sheet
and the indifferent sun warms me.
I was bred for slaughter, like the other
animals. To suffer exactly at the center,
where there are no clues except pleasure.

I will follow

yes - Little Sister loves to do like BigSis -
I picked the first song, which on ITunes random often seems to set the tone.

    An Cat Dubh - U2
    25th Floor - Patti Smith Group
    Me & The Devil - Cowboy Junkies Live
    These Arms of Mine - Otis Redding
    The Same Situation - Joni Mitchell
    Blue Sky Mine - Midnight Oil
    Redbone - Cassandra Wilson
    When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin
    Sweet Love - Anita Baker
    Cry To Me - Solomon Burke

Sort of like AM radio... I like ITunes Radio too, especially Sing Sing Sing Radio, which I can listen to for days on end and never hear the same song twice, and often have never heard the song before, or that version before. And plays all styles, what I miss about AM radio.
Thanks, TL....

poem for spring

Auntie Em’s Dream

I’m going to climb on my broom and rush over the rainbow
inscribe the sky with my desire
a spell
emblazoned in red and green smoke
One long howl:

I WANT . . .

Fill  in the blank, frail earth creatures
as you scale the hill in front of you
looking in vain for the house
sleeping on me
and the dog who won’t let go.

A windstorm whisper,
I sigh:

I want . . .

The brown winter is endless
here
on the plains of middle age.
Me and my broom race twilights.
I no longer wind clocks.

Spring
and the world blooms now in color.
Landing carelessly,
I whimper:

i want . . .

to feel heat one more time
    twice if I’m greedy
        thrice if I’m dreaming
            baking my bones in a poppy red field.

tis the season

TO HAVE WITHOUT HOLDING            Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts, to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch, to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say, it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry.
You float and sail, a helium balloon,
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bondage, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

13 blessings

A prayer much with me these days : thank you for letting me live to see this day. Usually uttered in gratitude for a breathtaking sky or the sudden realization I no longer work in the basement. (It is not as melodramatic as it may sound. Two years ago, I was told I had chronic acute gum disease and would die from it if I didn’t let the dentist pull all my teeth, so I did. While that was going on, I had two car accidents in six weeks, and walked away from both.) Thank you for letting me live to see this day.
BigSis may be saying this prayer too: she got some good news from the last scan of her liver. Die, cancer, die.
I was gifted with the most beautiful laptop this week, a shiny iBook who seems to be called Suzee – as in “wake up little”, or the hairdresser in a screamingly funny piece by Maggie Estep … I hope I’ll write more, since I can be more comfortable and since I’m working on my desktop so much now. Thanks to friends John and Alison, not just for the laptop, also and especially for the faith that this self employment gig will work.
LilSis is working in a coffee shop now, and brings me home all these yummy blends. I don’t know what I’m drinking but I like it.
My daughter and her boyfriend have been out of the house almost two months now, and I am slowly bringing some order back to my nest. Be likes not living here, but is not sure she wants to live with 2 other guys besides her boyfriend, so she may move in with a girlfriend here in town. I would like her to be closer, but I’m also very proud of her for knowing she has choices, that she can live where she’s happy and still be with her boyfriend, that it’s ok to say this isn’t working, let’s make a change.
I am still enjoying an internet correspondence with a recent transplant to our mountains; he is a triple Gemini from, most recently, Maine. He’s a good writer who appreciates thinking about the hard stuff, and we both appreciate the candor and freedom we’ve found in writing each other.
Maybe a negative peace, but I am finding some about Be’s dad. I haven’t heard from him, which is all he needs to say. I am practicing aversion therapy – whenever I think of him I tell myself "what a fuckin idiot” and think of something else. It works as long as I stay away from his web page – the pictures, you know.
Two of my clients have filed their taxes for last year – I feel like we passed the test.
Made my car payment.
I’ve been studying moon cycles – right now the moon is Aquarius. I can feel the effects as the moon passes through the signs – and it’s much more of a comfort than attributing all my feelings to hormones. Which I could do, since my periods are getting irregular. I’m not one of those women who will be glad to see her last period – I’m always happy to bleed; I can feel how it helps.
So I’m grateful I just had a period – as soon as I got out of the basement. Making me wonder how much my recent irregularity had to do with working in a crypt.
I am writing more – not just to Internet Guy, but in my journal, and I am beginning to use that old spell – write it but don’t send it. It’s amazing how writing it out can order unruly emotions. I also worry less about style and more about content.
Music!!! Favorite songs right now – an acoustic version of Patty Griffin’s Every Little Bit, Ani DiFranco with Radiohead’s I Wanna Know, the Indigo Girls version of the Mark Knopfler tune Romeo & Juliet (Romeo? I think I used to have a scene with him!), and Ani’s Icarus.
It’s 9am and I am in my bathrobe sipping coffee and counting my blessings.

13 things to look forward to

I met with a new client last night, the one who tipped my scales to self employment. I have the time for the work.
When I got home, one of my clients called with an urgent referral for one of their clients who needs quickbooks help quick.
The boss who fired me two years ago also called to check out the air between us, probably because he wants a babysitter for the business while he goes to Europe next month. This is the guy who thought I was no good at quickbooks cause he couldn't learn it. I have no time to sell him.
All of my clients want more of my time. And I like them all.
I am rejoining the YWCA and reclaiming my 9am swim time 3 mornings a week. That's weekday mornings.
Yesterday I saw crocuses.
Tuesday night we had a thunderstorm.
Earlier in the week the sun and new moon were both in Pisces. Feel it?
I'm having a lively email-respondence with an interesting triple Gemini.
Another poem. Soon.
Last week, after several emails and phone messages, I spent a very long time on the phone with Be's dad, and neither of us mentioned it was the last minutes of Valentine's Day. We spoke again a few nights later when he called for Be. Almost normal - in patches.
Me and friend Shay are planning an April Fool's ritual on her family farm. April Fool's Day was my granny's birthday and is my witch day. Big fire and we are building a sculpture to mark Shay's spot of power.
21 March 2000: began vow of 7 years celibate.

hanging the elephant

When one Is determined to hang the elephant
There must be a trial.

First:
What crime has been commited?

The elephant didn’t ask to be in the living room.
Indeed, she’s been giving off signals for years,
stamping her round feet and
blowing hot air from her swaying trunk,
eating everything in sight or
refusing to eat at all.

And – the evidence?
Yes – everyone saw the casual hook,
the body flying through the room,
coming to rest on the wall-to-wall,
sprawled and surprised
and quite quite dead.

But –
Who among us wasn’t aware
of the extreme provocation?
Surely we can concede some element of self-defense.
We saw the truth.
We admired her forbearance.
Neighbors, what woud you do under such a weight?

Search your hearts, friends.
Is death the only answer?

Are we really ready to hang her
Cause there’s a noose handy
And money to be made?

13 things I won't miss

Seeing my boss in her underwear (nuff said).
Having nothing to do.
The basement.
The closed blinds; the stuffy air.
Micromanagement.
Constant drug use.
Saying the same thing over and over and nothing ever changing.
The clocks.
Using a windows computer all the time (sorry, I'm a Mac snob).
Lying as part of my job description.
The Chatty Cathy I become when faced with misery.
Fear of computers.
Fear of being the one to find my boss dead.

In Memoriam, 1 April 06 - 28 Feb 07