Tilting Toward Theocracy

I have no words. Wait, yes I do. How the serious fuck can you become a judge without a clear understanding of the separation of church and state?!?

 Eligible for the carpool lane. 

My Contemplative Month

Thirty-eight years ago today was my wedding day. Which means I have been single again for nearly as long as I was married. Today is no longer a day that I celebrate, nor is it a day that triggers great sorrow or joy. It's a fact. February, for me, is riddled with dates that do trigger deep emotions. Obviously the 14th, Valentine's Day. And while it has been some time since I had a romantic partner in my life, it has come to be a day of gratitude for all the forms of love that do exist for me. I celebrate that. Yesterday was the birthday of my brother Cullen, whom I have written about here many times. He would have been sixty. A number of years ago I arrived at a place where his birthday triggers more love and happiness for having known him than sadness over his death. Though I still feel as though I should be able to pick up my phone and give him a call. So we could do what we used to do. Talk about everything and nothing, the ridiculous as well as the sublime. I still have some of his ashes that I plan to inter when I plant a tree for him here. February 21st is a difficult day. What happened on that day not too many years ago became a source of fear and pain, and for some time triggered panic attacks and anxiety. I have mostly worked my way through those negative reactions, I remind myself that it is also my dear friend Sara's birthday and focus on that. A Leap year is upon us which reminds me that my friend Tigh will be all of nine years old the end of the month. The twenty-ninth is also the day that my father died four years ago. I was not close to my father. At the time of his death I had not seen him since 1993, nearly twenty-seven years. I've searched his name on the internets a few times and still have not seen a death notice or obituary. This means part of my lizard brain would not be surprised should he appear at my door. My rational brain tells me that he was suffering from dementia and did not know how to Google so it's not likely at all that he would be able to find me. Eleven more days to contemplate. Let's hope for the best.

 

Can We Talk?

Here we see Jessica Lange portraying the faded, somewhat dusty Southern belle, Lillie Mae Faulk Capote in the series Feud: Capote vs the Swans.  

Here we have Madame, the puppet created by Wayland Flowers. I see a resemblance to Miss Lillie Mae. Maybe it's the whole Southern thang. I'd enjoy seeing them together, dishing gossip with all their mellifluous charm. Sipping mint juleps. A couple of sassy magnolias.

The Mathematics of Love

 

Asymptote of Healing

Bruised and battered, broken

Gaping holes of longing

Lingering within

Begging to be filled with anything

Something

To ease the pain of dealing

With each new day that’s dawning

Mired down

In the persistence of living

Without what you named essential

Now lost to you forever

Acceptance, faith and patience

Close and mend the wounds internal

Approaching

Never reaching zero

Healing full yet not complete

What remains alive inside

That thinnest slice of quickness

Is the scar of lessons learned

And room though just enough

For seeds of love to grow replete

I wrote this a long time ago. At nearly twenty years post-breakup, I have to say it's accurate. I have healed, but there is a scar, the scar has faded.

Super Bowl Sunday

I'm not into football. No favorite team, no depth of knowledge on players, nothin'. But today's game, Super Bowl LVIII, was played at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada. And that little bit of knowledge caused me to scroll back in my photos to November 2019. I happened to be in LV to see Santana at House of Blues, which was a most excellent concert. The next morning I snapped a few pics to capture the view outside the hotel room window. And what is that roundish thing just across the freeway? Yes! It's Allegiant Stadium under construction! It was open for business a mere eight months later. So there you have it. A rare instance of me knowing something about a football game. Pardon me while I ring up a friend in Hell to ask what the weather is like.

PS: The Kansas City Chiefs won. Overtime. Final score 25-22. There is no joy for the 49ers tonight.

Mr ROY G

 Mr BIV was not in attendance.

Avoiding Filing My Income Tax

I just ran across this scribbled note while cleaning my desk and organizing for filing my taxes. Which I have so far avoided doing. Because I run across interesting things like this scribbled note. I wish I could give credit to the author but I have a bad habit of scribbling things down when listening to a podcast or watching a video and then losing the scrap of paper on my mess of a desk. Sometimes for weeks. Months, perhaps. Which brings us full circle. I would like to share what is written here and hope the person whose mind it sprung from will see this and take credit. I think it's brilliant. 

Infidelity has always existed, since marriage was invented. It's very complex and we can't reduce these multi-layered human experiences to good and bad, victim and perpetrator, and black and white. In relationships we need to bring back complexity, nuance, and less judgement and more reflection.

This brings to mind a conversation in a grocery store aisle I had with an acquaintance shortly after I had become single again. It seems she had seen my divorce in the court news in the local newspaper. She blurted out a pretty rude question. She was curious as to whether I had been the slut or had my husband been the slut. As if infidelity could be the only possible reason for ending a marriage. I was astonished. I responded that I had not seen her in months, and if she was interested in why my marriage failed perhaps we should get a coffee or a beer and I would tell her all about it. But that never happened. So there was no sharing of beverages over which we could have had a real dialogue. She wanted a neat and easy answer that doesn't exist. She'll never know the pain and agony over ending it, the months of therapy, the loss of intimacy, the anger, the passive-aggressive behavior, the concern for our two sons, the financial worries. All she wanted to know was if either of us had bumped uglies outside the sacred bonds of our marriage. I guess that makes for better gossip. And less contemplation.

Thank You, HBC

Some days I wake up in the morning with my hair doing a second rate homage to Helena Bonham Carter. And I think to myself, this is going to be a magickal day.

 

Mother Earth Awakens