Sonic Threat

SONIC BUMMER: not able to go.

(thanks to BH for sending this to me.)

Fashion Agate

fashion theme this week is grandaddy jewelry. today, it's the very large agate piece. he cut it, but didn't polish this one. sort of raw that way...ribbons of color squirrel all through it. he loved buying geodes and cutting them open to find the beauty inside. or not. "You never know!" he used to say.

ain't it the truth.

Sea Bean Sentiment

know what this is?
"it's a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom."

my granddaddy made this bracelet for me out of sea beans. since he had a cabin on the gulf coast, they were readily available for his collection. he then shined 'em up pretty for jewelry like this. back in his youth he was a shoes and accessories designer and had his own store. pretty pretty pretty pretty cool.

details of the bracelet show a feminine touch with the ribbon attached, even closer detail shows my grandmama's careful ribbon trimming. to this day i never leave a tied ribbon without the little cutouts on the ends. "that way it's finished," she used to say. it's a compulsion. it's unavoidable.

my grandparents taught me a million trillion beautiful things.

like always inscribe books you give as gifts.
like bite your tongue, don't be ugly.
like poetry.
like how to plait.
like how to fix stuff yourself.
like how men can cry and women can lead.
like how to honor people on their birthdays with a song.
like the peace that can be had in just holding hands.
like how poverty is never reason enough to not give a gift.
like always write thank you notes.
like self-expression is exciting and nothing to be shy or embarrassed about.
like how to spot and respect well-made clothing, shoes and jewelry.
like journaling.
like traveling and going and adventuring as much as possible, no matter how old you are, or if it hurts your legs/hands/feet/heart.
like how to put others' welfare before your own.
like how to keep a garden.
like how to love and respect animals.
like photography.
like how fun it is to collect.
like being out-of-doors as the place to be.
like how to butter the edges of a pop tart first, and then a little on the frosting.

that love hurts.
that beauty hurts.
and that gain and loss can be simultaneous.

The deal with Steve Jobs

turns out i was right. there was something really bad wrong with him! was it general knowledge that he had cancer? i hope the boy genius stops aging and feels better too.

Injury Log #5: the final chapter

since general practioner turtle-man doctor prescribed me steroids that i could not take without being the biggest downer of all time, i got an emergency appointment with a dermatologist today. the rash was spreading and getting taller. making a fist with my hand felt like i was folding a piece of felt in half. thick.

and it was itching more. it was becoming a stephen king story plot.

"Hand and Foot Eczema" (dermatologist) is the name of my "dermatological anomoly with a vascular id" (general practioner).

let's hope there is no such case of "Vagina Eczema."

and then the little old man from germany said, "severe hand and foot eczema." he gave me some cream that will fix it right up and a generous refill of 6. he said it comes and goes once you get it. he said stress causes. "ms. jones, did you have a tremendous amount of stress when this started, four months ago?"

i said, how about a huge wedding debt, a new marriage and unemployment?

he looked at me sideways and nodded, "this will help." and he wrote a script for "Vanos."

i was surprised he didn't add valium.

UPDATE: it is now 24 hours since applying the cream to my hands and they're worse. my mac is incapable of photographing detail. parts of them are getting better, but my hands are now changing shape. the fingers are developing decks and the webbing in between my thumbs and pointer fingers are growing diving platforms. i wish could shrink down and hang out in there. out here it's incredibly irritating. every little seed bead is an itch rising from it's core, every movement creates an itch that would orgasmic to scratch and completely destructive of tissue and perhaps even the beauty that i once felt my hands possessed. part of the upset i am sure is vanity, but what a mess. these hands are bordering on becoming too sick to look at. i'm so happy that i'll have gross, diseased hands in three weeks just in time for the hand-shaking extravaganza that my 20th high school reunion will be.

In The Garden

the garden is something i love and attend to every day. there is always something new and beautiful to see – like your favorite show airing a new episode every night...i come home from work excited to see how it's doing. every other day is watering day.

one day checking it out a song came into my head. it's a song from church of all things; i thought i remembered nothing from that time. but the lyrics came to me easily and suddenly.

In The Garden
i walk in the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses
and the voice i hear singing in my ear, the son of god discloses

and he walks with me and he talks with me
and he tells me i am his own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
No one has ever known

there were some good songs sung in church...i totally forgot. this was one of them.

how weird...someone else's life. so long ago...

The opposite of Chaka Khan!

my ex-boss from 15 years ago is upstairs from my studio and now i can't relax.

what a coincidence. the studio in front of our house was rented to a woman named P. upon seeing her last name on some mail that ended up in our box, i put it together that she is the wife of the man who was my boss at the grateful dead merchandising company where i worked when i was 23 years old. this was confirmed when i looked him up, emailed him and he said, "confirmed. that's my wife."

i just heard them ascend the staircase. now i'm afraid of making noise and prompting him to come say hello. this is a problem with an uninsulated studio. there are sound cracks everywhere. and smoke cracks.

how horrible. an ex-boss in my private world.

which reminds me. my new way of saying "great!" is "chaka khan!" so far i have expressed it only in emails or text messages.

this is the opposite of Chaka Khan.

there's a story of course.

i was 23. i worked in a head shop that sold grateful dead stuff, duh. one of our suppliers is a guy who owned one of the companies. when i quit the head shop, he recruited me. his only other employee was a guy named...um...um...um...um...B. that's right. B. anyway, B's girlfriend was the manager and my immediate boss at the head shop. doesn't seem problematic until he started coming on to me. he was 10 years older than me. 33. at the time, to me, that was full-blown old adult. ha. due to a flaw in my personality, clearly, i sort of went along with whatever he suggested and we ended up having sex. twice. both times, horrible. and not because he had the tiniest penis ever possible. like the size of my pinky, but smaller. or was it because of that? i'll admit, since then i have wondered if he was a transsexual. it was that small. anyway, i stopped any progression of the relationship and he retaliated in an unspeakable manner at work. plus he was a speed freak. and i smoked some with him. ew. ew. ew. ew.

his reaction was to scream at me and corner me while screaming at me. it got so bad that i had to tell the boss that i was going to quit. it came out that it was because i refused an affair with B. and B. was being abusive in response.

not something you want your boss to have anything to do with! not something you want to have anything to do with!

so i quit.

and i never saw either of them again, until 1997 when i ran into B. at the Hole/Marily Manson tour at the Cow Palace. it was a quick, hello, goodbye.

oh my god, i just saw my old boss through a crack in the wall. oh my god.

(silence now.)

anyway. when i was desperate for work during the dot com crash in 2001, i looked up this old boss and asked for work. there wasn't anything for me. then, i ran into him this year, 2008 at trader joe's (15 years!) in san rafael. he was really happy to see me. i'm glad he didn't have bad feelings about me screwing his man main who was on speed, and for then quitting.

thank god it's not dark, when they would be able to see a light under my garage/studio door. i've got to fix this place up. it's not nearly as underground as it needs to be.

i can't believe this coincidence. i am SO GLAD i already went upstairs to go pee.

shhhhhhhh. i have to step away from the computer now, i'm afraid he'll see me through the crack.

Spider Country

yellow spiders that build webs in front of doorways, in cars and across pathways come out to play in june. i don't recall when they went away last year, but i'm guessing september. now that we've lived in our country house for a year, there is a full picture of exactly how much my spider phobia problem will be challenged. and when. and by whom.

arriving in september are black and white striped and brown and white striped and yellow and white striped spiders who get fat and huge and fast. they buy up real estate in more secluded places than their little yellow friends, although i did run into one face first last year while exiting the house through the front door. it was big enough to firmly grab with my hand, feel it's spiny body break like midget wooden matchsticks and hear it hit the plynl when i threw it down.

these mean, fat striped guys leave sometime in december. then it gets too cold and they go away.

until may. may brings wolf spider-sized tar-black octopeds filled with evil. they want to eat me, they can consume my flesh, they are too large to crush. i usually just run from them or throw heavy objects on top of them. like my hardcover copy of IT.

who knew there were spider seasons? not this city girl.

Q: isn't it just the funniest joke that this jumpy uncontrollable arachnaphobe bought a car without a roof, thereby unimaginably inviting her biggest phobia to reveal itself during the most inconvenient time ever?

A: no.

so hello little yellow spider season, so glad to have you back. in my eyes. in my mouth. in my hair. in my shoes. in my plants. in my rattan.

on my cat.



(picture immediately above by "P.S., baby you know it.")

Power Tool

Word to yr motha

picked up some powerful words at the fairfax festival last weekend.

assault at the gas pump

pumping gas this morning. i've got on a above-knee pink eyelet skirt that is very "pretty" and "cute" and "girly." i never wear it without black boots. that's totally mandatory. since it's summer, i can't wear my tall black boots, or my medium-tall black boots, or even my slightly-above-ankle black boots – so this morning the ankle-high stomper boots were the choice. they're so tough (Frye), plus the memory of 382 rock concerts is impressed into their "sole." when i first started wearing them, i had to grow new muscles on the fronts on my shins. the soreness was unreal. i guess each one weighs a couple pounds because the 2.5" heel is solid wood and the leather is thick. quality shoes, great tool.

with the "too pretty" pink eyelet skirt was a white tshirt, short black cardigan, and heavy black belt with a silver buckle slung low on my waist. a coordinating silver cuff bracelet to bounce off my thick silver hoop earrings and the belt buckle told the rest of the story. it's all incredibly balanced. this outfit is pure HCL, which should always be one's goal if maximum sexiness is what they're looking for, or even maximum interest.

i finish pumping gas, return the phone to it's receiver ($4.69/gal for the low grade!), and turn around just in time to hear a short, messy-haired, dirty tshirt-and-jeans-wearing construction dude with a truck yell loudly as he passed me by, "NICE SKIRT! NICE TOP! HORRIBLE SHOES!...JUST THOUGHT I'D SHARE THAT WITH YOU." i'm such a dummy sometimes, i laughed and said, THANKS! and smiled. he was already gone then. and i'm glad he didn't see my smile.

slowly over the course of the day, it has occured to me exactly what a fuckhead thing that is to say to a woman. yeah, especially to a woman. thoughts of sexist high-heel female expectations have been steeping in my coconut ever since. the fury builds. what a fucking motherfucker! what a lousy piece of shit sad excuse for a man who gives men a bad name! why walk around yelling random criticisms at women about their outfits? in the morning? while they're pumping their own gas? something that should maybe be a stupid, dirty man's job?

my grandmama taught me to refrain from ugliness, but i have these thoughts anyway:

"Oh really, dirty man? will you please teach me about fashion?"

"obviously you know nothing about sexy."

"my horrible shoes are way effective at kicking ugly asses."

or the uncreative, but always effective, "FUCK YOU til the cows come home you rude, idiotic cunt."



ps. hey D, check out how great your fuschia is coming along this season!

Injury Log #5 follow up

so my substitute primary care physician doesn't know what the rash is. he didn't know anything, just like most of them. didn't ask me any questions. It was my idea that it could be poison oak, after he was about to send me packing with Tinactin for a foot fungus and a case of vascular id. very interesting, vascular id. when an infection moves from one part of the body to a different, very far away part (like for me, from toe to palms of hands after 6 weeks), it's called vascular id. (when he said it my first thought was, Of course. My id. My id has something to do with this). it has to do with your immune system becoming compromised and the body expressing stress by transplanting the problem elsewhere. (many many metaphors can be made here, none of which i have the attention span to work out, not even on strattera).

my substitute doctor walked in the room and it was nothing less than a shock. he was a total turtle-man. like the guys you see with all the underarm muscles that make them walk funny over on castro street. i liked him right away. he's an extremist. he's got a tiny waist.

substitute doctor was very nice and totally accomodating, but i did not bring up the sourdough spore fungus idea. he wouldn't have had a clue. he liked the idea of poison oak since i have a cat who lives outside in the marin hills, but the fact that the rash started on my toe and then just showed up on my palms is inconsistent with poison oak. unless it was vascular id, but poison oak doesn't really work that way...it spreads from one source outwards very rapidly. this stayed localized for over a month, then showed up on my palms right as it started to go away on my toe.

muscle doctor gave me a script for steroids without finding out if i'm even on any other medicine that it could counteract with. maybe it doesn't counteract with anything, but i find that unlikely. especially in regards to me, where everything affects everything. i asked him what kind of medicine is prednisone. he said steroid. it will make you irritable, gain weight and not sleep, but it will get rid of the rash.

when i realized our conversation had created about 20 new questions for me, i just stopped talking. it was useless besides i had another agenda to carry out before he got tired of me.

klonopin. what i always take when i fly, except twice. only one of those trips wasn't a horrific nightmare come to life. it's a touchy subject though, asking for a drug that has some recreational properties (although most people would just pass out, like guy did at his desk once when he took twice what i told him). i have experience with this so i broach it carefully and completely premeditated.

"I also wanted to ask my doctor if he would give me a refill on some klonopin because i'm taking a trip in about a month."

what's your dosage?

"1mg (although i always take 2mg in a sitting while traveling, saying the maximum would get me found out as a true obsessive over it's active ingredients. .5mg is the minimum and only for drug virgins, therefore declaring the middle is a smart tactic)."

how much do you need?

"hmmm." i thought for a few seconds and sort of made a counting motion with my head, because i was counting in my head and answering the question for real. "ummmm, let's see...two...four...six (seven eight nine)...and then back...i need 10." he smiled at me and said, so if i give you 20 you're not gonna pass 'em out at parties are ya? i looked at his face, saw nothing condescending, thought about how funny that would be if the general public took klonopin to party with, how fast they'd pass out, and told him, "no. i don't think so."

he gave me a script for 20 klons and a run of steroids.

doctor muscle does not know what's on my hand and what was on my toe and he wants me to take a drug that aggravates my biggest problems in life...this was just too much to truly believe in, but by the end of the day i had swallowed one day's worth of steroids. just to see.

the result wasn't immediate. it was the day followoing that was very very unpleasant. i had an overall feeling of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with every turn. it was like being on the estrogen and projesterone i had to take for the endo. so bizarre, and yet so familiar...which is what made it bizarre.

my decision to just continue to apply the decade-old steroid ointment came easily. although i am not lost to the fact that i am still on steroids, it is obviously a much kinder solution. plus, he said the ointment is still good, as he also commented, "our out-of-date medicines don't work, but we send them to Africa, and they work, so..."

with this doctor visit, as with all the others i am reminded that it's best folks, just to educate yourself and do it thoroughly. with anything that goes wrong. if you keep track, do research and listen to your body (refrain from hippie jokes), you are your best doctor. just use the people in the white coats as drug dealers because that is 90% of what they are.

Injury Log #5: the rash

1. so, the rash is still here. the toe rash. i thought i healed it with the decade-past-expiration-date medicine. then it came back on my toe and showed up on the palms of my hands. i told my friend A. about it, who gave me the medicine, and who also told me, i thought, of the "sourdough spore" fungus. turns out, she doesn't remember that at all, in fact, she has never heard of a sourdough spore fungus before. i was astonished to hear this. i so trust my visual memory, and i remember her voice and the inflections, and what her face looked like as she said it and handed me the medicine. but that's where memory gets weird. she said she never said that, never even heard of it. what crossed wires happened in my brain to invent this? maybe the same thing that saw a period in a particular sink hardware "call-out" on a "spread" at work, that was never there. saw it twice, changed every spread that had the call-out without the period. only to find out...there's no period there, never was. look, here's the email showing how there's no period there. the same email i made a sticky note about, and checked twice. "you see what you wanna see." or so they say.

i cross-referenced the medicine. it's a general purpose ointment...

we'll see tomorrow when i go to the doctor. A. swears she got it for eczema. i'm pretty sure i don't have eczema.

maybe i'm hallucinating all of it. nevertheless, it didn't show up in the webbing on my thumbs until she told me she used to get it there.

2. tripped pretty hard going up the brick staircase from the studio to the house. slammed my right knee directly into the edge of the second-to-last brick stair. had my laptop in my arms, with a fortunate nalgene bottle cushion right in front. both went slamming down. computer fine. nalgene fine. hand, has three small bruises right on outer bottom knuckles where bottle/computer slammed with all my weight behind. overall, a successful mission.

3. dreamed i had a huge scab right on my hairline. kept picking at it in my dream. woke up picking at nothing. at least we know this one isn't real.

Thirstin' for more lovin'

thurston moore has a new record, Built for Lovin'.

i'd say.

The Happening

very excited to see m. night's new movie. wonder if he based it on the pixies song. as always with his movies, the end is a supreme surprise, so who knows.

The Happening
by The Pixies

they got a ranch they call
number fifty-one
they got a ranch they call
number fifty-one
can't see it all
'less your flying by
just sitting there square
baking in the sun
beneath the sky

they're gonna put it down
right on the strip
they're gonna put it down
on the Vegas strip
they're gonna put it down
and step outside
into the lights
right outta that ship
saying Hi!

i was driving doing nothing on the shores of Great Salt Lake
when they put it on the air i put it in the hammer lane
i soon forgot myeslf and i forgot about the brake
i forgot all laws and i forgot about the rain
they were talking on the 9 and all across the amy band
across the road they were turning around and headed south with me
it got so crowded on the road i started driving in the sand
my head was feeling scared but my heart was feeling free
the desert turned to mud it seems that everybody heard
everybody was remembering to forget they had the chills
then i heard the voices on a broadcast from up on the bird
they were getting interviewed by some Goodman whose name was Bill
i'm almost there to Vegas where they're puttin' on a show
they've come so far i've lived this long at least i must just go and say
hello

Anger Analysis

my friend, W. has this opinion about my anger problems like maybe it's about the lie about how my dad wasn't my real dad and that i always felt different and didn't fit in because of the lie, then i found out the truth that it was all a big fat lie and it pissed me off and made me feel differently towards people and even the best of people like my mom and it all made me angry and i carry my anger with me all the time now and, she's not sure, but with all that i went through as a young person, she thinks it would make me depressed and angry and distrustful.

but i don't know.

...but keep the old

spoke with oldest friend in the world, M. it's been 31 years for us. how totally unreal. i told her, "Our friendship is a whole adult who could have three kids and be twice divorced by now."

she said, "Our friendship could have it's OWN 19 year old kid who could have THEIR own kid who could be in the middle of a divorce."

righteous.
(...one is silver and the other one, gold)

Behind the Garage Door

if they knew what was going on in here, they wouldn't let their children come so close to the garage door.

nebulas exploding. dented molecules. ones and ohs all over the place. fat stomachs full of egg salad and cookie. drugs. alcohol. cigarettes. madness.

spiders.

Cat Show!

Alameda Flea chair

bought a cool midcentury chair today for my new studio at the alameda flea market. very cool monthly event i've never been to in all my years here...it's gigantic. acres. like bangkok's sunday market, but sane.