This morning seemed like a perfect day to enjoy the outdoors. Still mostly cool, the air was breathable and pleasant. Michael and I headed to Piedmont Park and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. After being mildly dismayed by the cost per person (12 dollars/adult), I was glad to see a thriving garden with many nifty features.

Of course, what was also wonderful about this trip was the first time I could really play with Michael's camera, a digital camera. I've only used film, and I have to say, the ability to focus on composing and less on technical stuff is really neat. Of course, I STILL think it is cheating with digital, but there was a lot less stress when I could preview a frame before I saved it.

The following pictures are only about half of the ones I took. It is hard to NOT take a good picture when all of the subjects are so beautiful, and for the most part, still.

Additionally, the Atlanta Botanical Gardens are also doing a fun exhibit including model trains and landmarks of Atlanta made out of twigs. I think it was marketed to children, but I was thoroughly impressed.

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...THIS IS NOT MY CHILD

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...THIS IS NOT MY CHILD

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...

My Day at Atlanta Botanical Gardens...as seen through Michael's Fancy Digital Camera...

Yesterday, I went to look at a new car. I drive a Hyundai which has given me just about all that it can muster for a tin can. The car is in quite laughable condition. The door handle won't work, it's been kissed by too many a hailstone, and there seems to be some creature dwelling underneath the hood. I must wake this beast up every time I turn the car on, because it squeals and shakes. The air conditioner, however, works quite well.

I was looking at a Honda Civic Si, a very Euro trendy car that has a neat shifter knob in the middle of the control panel on the car. It's a small, fun car with a good crash test rating and a lot more horsepower than the Hyundai. (Most gerbils also have more horsepower). The price, however, was about forty dollars off the mark on the payment each month, and I wasn't willing to do it. Especially after I reconsidered the car-to-person ratio in Atlanta.

Atlanta is one of those pathetic examples of how urban sprawl can lead to absolute misery. The city was poorly planned to take on the growth it has encountered in the past two decades. While every suburb we drive through is being loaded with huge homes and even larger Wal-Marts, the downtown area is being avoided by most suburbanites. In fact, most people make their money during the week in Atlanta, then avoid it on the weekends. This is too bad; they are missing out on the nice things about cities: museums, theaters, and homeless people. Instead, suburbanites hole up in their huge homes with their plasma T.V.'s. Occasionally, they run to Wal-Mart.

We are all aware that the death of public transportation and the advent of the family sedan has led to the suburbs. We are also aware that in time, with fuel prices going through the roof and poor environment concern, we may not have these options anymore. Only the very wealthy will be able to afford to live outside the city because only the wealthy will be able to afford all that gas. In the meantime, most of us poor suckers in Atlanta are going to sit in the parking lots of the Interstates 85 and 75 until we start demanding something better.

Like a commuter rail system.

Here's an interesting fact: Goodyear tires began purchasing vast amount of stocks in railway when Goodyear really took off. Why? Simple: to own, and then close down, the American train system. Get the rubber, get the car, get freedom and independence.

When was the last time that Georgians really had a nice town like the one in 'Fried Green Tomatoes' (the movie)? Are any products that we purchase for daily needs coming from a nice small town where the locals all know one another and everyone still plants vegetables? Nope. That's because small towns are dying, thanks to Wal-Marts and suburbs. The car has killed the small town. The car has invented the suburb. The suburbs have led to more problems than you can shake a stick at.

Georgian conservatives don't want trains. Some take the low road and say it's primarily because white conservatives in the suburbs don't want black people in the neighborhood. I think there are a lot of reasons conservatives don't want trains, and one of the reasons is conservatives love big S.U.V.'s and love the share holders of those S.U.V.'s. Politicians cater to the upper crust of the middle class who can afford these monstrosities on the road. Politicians also like suburbs, because they can make a killing on appealing to middle class values and all the money that's in strip malls.

I didn't buy that new car, and that's okay. After all, I can stick with what I have until I get what I really want: not a nice fancy car, but a long, relaxing train ride with a cup of coffee and a good book. Hopefully, other Georgians who are tired of breathing in the smog accumulating from all those vehicles on the I-75 and -85 will look that way, too.

My Rejectors. See archives for details.

I did not sleep so well, last night. It was either too much coffee or a guilty conscience. After going over things, I think it's the coffee. I don't feel so guilty about much anymore. Is that bad? Does that mean I've become amoral? Amorality, in my opinion, is worse than immorality. When you're immoral, you know better but choose to ignore it. When you're amoral, you're just neutered. That's just plain awful.

Listen, getting back to what I was saying, I find this blogging thing rather fun. I've kept journals my whole life. Silly, isn't it? I keep saying "I'm going to be a published writer one day" and then just keep journals. Pointless--no one reads the darn things. Hence, the blogging is fun. It's journal keeping, except the whole neighborhood has a key to it. A lovely woman made one kind comment, and I feel so grateful to her. First of all, she said my blog stood out, and secondly, she thought I was a cool girl. I've never been cool in my whole life! In fact, I try to pride myself for NOT being cool. That's because I'm envious of folks who are cool. But I digress. In any case, I went to her website here . Very cool, interesting person, herself. Good eye for photography. Not like I'm an expert, because I'm not. Hey, I still work with film! Michael's the one with the damn digital camera, little techno geek.

In any case, this kind woman and her kind post led me to start thinking about an Ani DiFranco song. I can't remember the name, but a verse of it refers to how many kindred spirits Ani has. Some of the spirits are dead and some she has never met before, and some she will never meet. I think that's life, in general. We get to feeling so down and out, and the human nature thing about always feeling alone and apart, no matter how many friends we have, or how many expensive shoes we have. But that's not really true, is it? There's lots of people out there who do connect with me. I'm too concerned with my belly fat to look; if I opened my eyes further and saw life for what it is, I'd be a lot less worried about being overweight and would take time to see: we're here for just a split second in the history of time. We're like the tiny little pixels that make up the big screen; that's how insignificant AND significant we are. If we could just stop WORRYING about ourselves and start giving back to the whole Other Part of Life, we would see: how beautiful we all are. How alive and unlike one another we are, and how much we are all a part of one another.

Now, the Bible is the greatest novel ever written, and I really enjoy its metaphors. My favorite metaphor is the first story of creation. You know the one I'm referring to: where God made the Earth in seven days, and all the animals and plants, and man and woman. Adam and Eve, the mother and father of our western history. Two shmucks caught with their pants down. A wily woman and an ignorant man. The birth of human sin. The origin of the fall. What a beautiful story about lesson learning. What a way to explain how humans are divine and human, after all. Even though I do not believe Adam and Eve are the parents of all of us, I do believe one thing: they are the parents of our imaginations, the historians of our culture, the enigmas of our true selves. Yes, I do believe in each of us, there exists Adam and Eve. We excavate truths for ourselves out of the fabric of reality, and blame ourselves for our mistakes. We dig to figure out our problems and dilemmas, and upon finding them, we beat our breasts. We also find simple joys, no matter who we are. I am the first woman in the world. I am the last to leave the Garden. Jesus is still hanging out in Gethsemene. I am waiting for him to find the fruit, and take a bite, and smile. Smile with all that knowledge.

Thank God for Kindred Spirits.

It is Georgia O'Keefe's "Horse's Skull On Blue", 1930, oil on canvas.

I'm becoming my mother. My mother is an artist, and she often painted in acrylics and watercolor when I was younger. She was quite inspired by Georgia O'Keefe, a feminist in her own right. I don't know if my mother was particularly convinced that O'Keefe's flower portraits were actually a beautiful perspective of the female organs, but in any case, O'Keefe's flowers are beautiful, no matter how they are viewed. In any case, my dear mother has turned to silk painting, and paints delicious scarves for very wealthy women, and most of her scarves are of Southwestern flora. But she has yet to paint a skull. This painting is so fluid, to me. Here, we can appreciate what it is that death, time, and the sun do to remains. Bleach us out, that's what. Purify our cells. Create texture where there was none before. Death is a new color for life; it's just a step to another evolution. Thank God for death.

Too much time on my hands...I've become a machine

As many who know me could tell you, Dear Reader, I have a reputation as being bitter and callous about men. Only several months ago, I had all but given up. And to tell the truth, that was adequate. I would be solitary, mysterious, safe.

But then, this dude had to move next door to me. He wooed me with small things. Long talks about the North, where we both originated. Leftover pizza. A lingering smile. Small talk. Small advances.

And as I lay my head on my pillow, I listened for him on the other side of the thin wall. I wondered about this man. He invaded my mind. He seemed (dare I say?) competent, intelligent, confident. Not cocky. Gentle. Too good to be true.

We went out on day-trips. Later, I would discover he had thought I was gay throughout this period. So much for my 'mystery'. I guess I struck him as a dyke. And then, small little sacrifices wer made. Not the kind you're thinking of--the kind the Incas practiced. A little heartache, a little exposure. But the fact that I made that available to him let him see: I was home with him.

Now, he sits on the couch, waiting for me to get off the computer and give him some attention. And I tell you, it is the greatest, grandest thing to be loved by Michael. He is the portion of the sun that does not burn, only warm. He is the safety net that I never had. He is the one person in the world who does not tease me, hurt me, laugh at me, view me as strange. To him, I am normal. To me, he is extraordinary.

This is a true love story, with no Hollywood nonsense, no suspense, no mystery. It is pure, sometimes mundane, and most importantly, for real.

Ribcage: plain. It says "deceived", and yes, it is spelled right. There's a keyhole, however, and that is for the individual with the key to my heart. I have found him, and his name is Michael.

And the tattoo on my lower back: The kanji in the center means 'Jesus', but a Korean friend in college, who spoke some Japanese, said it really was closer to 'Happiness'. That's fine with me. The bird is the dove of the holy spirit, and the branches are olive, God's (and early Romans') symbol of peace.

With some playing, this is my tattoo on my ribcage

This is Charlotte, who lives amongst my plants on the deck. No, not a very original name, but just the same, she invokes a nostalgia for childhood...remember Wilbur, the simple pig? And Fern, that ridiculous idealist? Anyway, MY Charlotte keeps my porch relatively free from mosquitoes...a small example of our fragile ecology

Three Faces

So, I posted to my friend Katie and Anna. Anna's website is www.annativity.blogspot.com and Katie's is http://nontwins.blogspot.com/. I asked to be a member with them, and I have been rejected. I have been rejected because I am an only child and not a member of their sorority. This is too bad.

Why, this has been the second time this week I've been rejected. I asked my lesbian friend if she and her girlfriend would like to go out to dinner with Michael and I, but since I'm not cool anymore, having settled down with a man and what not, she's rejected me.

I am listening to a new mix I made. It's all scratching. DJing before MCing became more important. I could go into a whole rant about how Hip-Hop is now lost in the circles of Puff Daddy and the like; the marketers of rap. It's a shame that some of the most talented folks who started on the edge of Hip-Hop have been blackballed out because of the benjamins and bling. I'm listening to DJ Q'bert, Mix Master Mike, the Xecutioners, DJ Shadow. I have a wide range of musical preferences, most of which is underground, independent, and not groupie wannabe punk. And if Anna or Katie IS reading this (which they won't be, because they've rejected me like a pair of smelly socks), I HATE FRED DURST. Nasty, raunchy, porno-making sicko...He looks like someone who would have a venereal disease but would never tell a partner. Ick.
But they met him, so maybe they have some insider scoop on him. Insider scoop..ha! eww...

Well, I was going to go on a rampage about Atlanta's smog and transportation problem and then the Nazi's telling me I can't smoke anymore because it's a threat to OTHER PEOPLE....but then, these two SQUATTERS came and totally freaked me out....

See, Kit-Kat is my best friend who I never see and her sister, Anna Banana, is this really awesome chick, too, and apparently, they are also BLOGGER GEEKS and so now I have to wish a great big

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KATIE....
So, there...you're spared the lecture this ONE time...

This is becoming a problem... Adobe photoshop allows me to really have fun with just a few tools...and some people make their living with this program! It's ridiculous!

This is entitled 'Ghost'. Which one is the ghost? I don't know, either. Take a stab at it, if you care...

Here's a cat that says: "Bet you're sorry you neutered me."

I was just thinking about the 'feminaztion of America' the conservative compassionate Christian whoevers keep blaming everything on.

Some say that because women have LOWERED traditional 'feminine' values (like being prudes), our society is now falling apart. That is: life would be fine if only the MEN went around spreading venereal diseases, cheating on wives, and getting into fights. But now that women do those kind of things, too, the world is in crisis. [READ: If women are given the same opportunities as men, then society does not know how to behave and will go into shock. Keep women in the church pews and in the kitchen. ]

Maybe we should worry less about neutering pets and worry more about eliminating the threat from the Conservative Right?

Lila and I consider the fallen...

Just a friendly reminder!

Iraqi civilians who have died: OVER 25, 000 SINCE THE 'WAR' BEGAN

U.S. Soldiers who have died: 1,700.

This comes to you on the heels of news that four Georgia National Gaurds were slaughtered in another homemade bomb incident.

But, according to General Tommy Franks, US Central Command: "We don't DO body counts"

Does anyone else see the horrifying semblance to other totalitarians? Sadly, the Bush sign was paid for by Clear Channel, and therefore, I can't listen to any of THAT anymore. It's frightening that private corporations are doing more than just helping at the polls; the President is in their pockets, and that means Americans are, as well.

Feudalism, my friends, is just around the corner, so make sure you sell your soul to a halfway decent corporation.

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history ofAmerican literature. He is generally considered to be among the most talented, ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of thetwentieth century. Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the residentially conferred National Humanities Medal. Doctorow was born in New York City on January 6, 1931. After graduating with honors from Kenyon College in 1952, he did graduate work at ColumbiaUniversity and served in the U.S. Army. Doctorow was senior editor for New American Library from 1959 to 1964 and then served as editor in chief at Dial Press until 1969. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University and over the years has taught at several institutions, including Yale University Drama School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California, Irvine.
__________________________________________________________________

I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it.You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life.... They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing.He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options, but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to. This president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing --- to take power,to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead; he does not feel for the thirty five million of us who live in poverty; he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance; he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills --- it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel.But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for overtime because this is actually away to honor them by raising them into the professional class. And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneously aroused over soul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.Finally the media amplifies his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
E.L. Doctorow

If you're standing on the edge of an abyss, the only progressive step is backward. William Sloan Coffin

Work is most pointless, at best.
Yes, that's right. I've had it with work and warrants and methamphetamine abusers and parentless children. There's really nothing in it. See, I show up everyday and push these papers around and arrest people and type my little notes in the computer and it does nothing. This is just silly. Is most work like this? I mean, do educators feel this way? Data analysts? How about doctors? I would hope not, but there it is...nothing ever changes, no matter how many warrants I write, no matter how many treatment centers I recommend, no matter how many people I discharge. There will always be more.
Some might call me depressed about my job, and I think they are right. I think I am also being a realist. I think I'm burnt out. At 26. I'm burnt out at 26. That's still relatively young.
I was thinking to myself last night, as I watched yet another news report about a terrorist bombing, haven't the terrorists kind of lost the message in all this? I mean, a bomb in Egypt. What does it mean? Is it the Palestinians? The Israelites? The Muslims? Al-Queda? Who knows?? An innocent Brazilian is shot in London, and for what? We're not quite sure. There's this horrible hopelessness involved in all this...we're going through motions but we're not sure why. Hence, my paragraph about work. How silly it is that I'm here, at work, when I could be planting a garden, finding something useful to do with myself. For a paycheck...my God.

I read the news today, oh boy...about a lucky man who made the grade.
And tho' the news was rather sad, well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph....HE BLEW HIS MIND OUT IN A CAR...
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared...

History repeats itself in such mundane ways. We should have learned, my fellow readers. By now, we all should know something better than this anger and this death.

Ah, but this is just a blog...a blog in the big wide world of information...and pointless, at that.

"Hope is a thing with feathers"
-Emily Dickinson

I have an almost-double-major in Theology from Creighton University, a Jesuit college in the middle of the prairie. And through my education and self-exploration, the clearest way to Spirituality is through the Buddha. Now, I am not suggesting that Christianity, in essence, is NOT a direct enough path for most, but on this Sunday morning, The Buddha has far more compassion and meaning for me than the white Jesus of the Fundamentalists. And I do believe that Wal-Mart and White Jesus are in cahoots (it's a marketing process). No, Buddha would not be involved in any such corporation that supports suburban sprawl and the death of the small town community.  

JESUS SAVES!! 

SO CAN YOU! SHOP WAL*MART!!! 

Is Sunday the beginning of the week, or the end? Does it really matter?

Sunday is my least favorite day. It's the day that says, 'Hey, late nights are over. Get ready for work.' Sundays are quieter; nap days are on Sundays.

Of course, there are some good parts of Sunday. For one, NPR has some good shows on, and no matter what anyone says, 'Prairie Home Companion' IS funny and interesting. Secondly, it always seems to rain on Sundays (at least here in the South), and rain is a calming sleepy friend. Even the cat seems to snooze more and bite less.

I've watered the plants on the deck while Michael naps, and have pulled off peppermint leaves from their spindly vines. I take the leaves inside and rinse them, then crush them between my fingers and let the green run into my ice tea. Even now, over the smell of cigarette on my skin, I smell peppermint. Peppermint is a late summer smell.

This Sunday, Michael's parents left to return home to Kentucky. I believe Michael was crying a little--as only children are wont to do when parents disappear. I should know, I'm an only child, too. While I like his parents, and find them warm, I was glad to have the apartment back to just us. On the other hand, there will come a time when my parents will come visit us and I will be sad to see them leave but Michael will be relieved. That's the nature of parents, isn't it? Why, we all try to act so grown-up and serious or artsy or know-it-all like, but when parents are involved, you can't help but become a child again, at least to them. It's also a bit revealing, too. Constantly, I am comparing his mother to my mother, his family to mine. Michael doesn't go to the hospital or the doctor, even if he is sick. His mother said, "That's the way it is with us" [Read: Our way is better AND Michael is still an 'us' and not a 'you']. Not my family. You're sick? You go to the doctor. You stay home and rest. Eat soup. Read a book. That's what WE do. Does it really matter? No, not so much. Michael's mother makes potatoes differently from mine. Michael doesn't eat vegetables. Does it matter? Not so much. But there it is: "My mother doesn't do it THAT way...." Mothers are a presence, aren't' they?

Of course, in the end, I'll win. He's with me, now. And I'll turn into my mother, and our children will be raised by me, and they WILL eat vegetables and they WILL say please and thank you, even to waiters and waitresses, and when they are sick, they'll go to the hospital.

Mothers are women, and women, in the end, always have the final say. And that's the truth about Mothers.

So, I emailed this whole link to my creative mother. She said I shouldn't have shown off so much about my personal life. And she's an artist. I think to myself, that's what art is! Exposing the most tender, fragile parts of yourself through some kind of medium. Personally, I think it was the Shit Essay that did it. Of course, what's ironic about her offense to the essay is that's my POINT EXACTLY; we really shouldn't be sharing these things with others. Bathroom time is quality time. Of course, my crudeness absolutely eliminates any sense of propriety, and therefore, my dear mother is probably heartbroken.

So, for Mom--I'm sorry I offended you. Please note: this website will continue to be mildly offensive.

I wonder what people thought of Picasso's nudes. I think they are mildly offensive, myself. And Freud! He had a mother! What in the world did SHE think? Egads!

More later on mothers; now I am off to spend time with Michael's parents. More on that later, too.

Here's my big butt and my hair extensions...taking photos with my film camera. I don't know what compelled Michael to take this silly photo, and further more, I am not sure why I'm posting it... 

Michael doctored this with Photoshop, but here I am on the bike...looking SO non-Harley...'cause I'm a Honda gal... 

Here is one of my tattoos...we need more pictures of the others. It is a lotus flower done in the traditional style of the Sacred Heart. The V of the blue shading represents the chalice, a symbol sacred to womanhood. It was extremely painful while being done. If you want something this beautiful on your skin, be prepared for major pain! 

Michael and I kiss at the Detroit Zoo 

The unfortunate thing about Photoshop is amateur artists such as myself playing on it. Here is some morbid incarnation of myself. It looks nothing like me, but surprisingly, it brilliantly displays how I feel most of the time....















And here is another incarnation of myself. This is Lilith, my motorcycle. She is my first. We are quite close and have had some tough spots together along the road. But she is pretty. My boyfriend is a little jealous, but I am not sure if he is jealous of Lilith or jealous of me.

Remember the days of being able to take a shit and not feel guilty about it? Those days have long since passed; we live in a post-Cold War era, where anything resembling a missile is a threat, an advance on civilization, a merciless front of plague and terror.
I blame terrorists. If those damn terrorists hadn’t bombed the twin towers, maybe we wouldn’t be so paranoid about taking craps. We’re now so concerned with everyone’s personal life that even the bathroom has become fodder for criticism.
Although my therapist would suggest that my confusion about bathroom etiquette spawns from a subconscious hatred of ‘letting go’, I think it’s simpler than that. You see, I was raised in a home where no one spoke of the bathroom. What you did in the bathroom remained there. Truly, it may have been too repressive, for if I was cursed with the runs as a kid, I had to gently state to my parents, “Please excuse me from the dinner table. I am experiencing the need to visit the little girls’ room.” No questions asked. If a smell lingered after a visit, you cracked a window and did not refer to the stench. In my father’s case, you might blame the cat. But you did not go into detail about the bathroom episode.
This was all fine and dandy with me, until I moved in with my boyfriend. Both of us are only children but have very different experiences of the bathroom. While we both shared one bathroom with our parents as we grew up, we have entirely different perspectives regarding toilets.
“I’m going to have a B.M. in the P.M.” Michael will announce after dinner. All the fantasies I have of Michael being my own personal demigod are smashed when he makes these statements. Suddenly, I have become all too aware of my own behavior in the bathroom. I’m spraying fumigated aerosols while perched on the throne; every gassy smell that I sense arising out of me is treated with scent. I wipe incessantly, insomuch that my butt has begun to look like that of an old woman. I worry about early colostomies; enema fairies threaten me during my sleep. In fact, I now check the contents of the toilet bowl, and, based on what I see, may take a ‘French’ bath after I examine the results. The whole trend makes me feel dirty and useless if I’ve just used regular toilet paper after taking a crap. In short, I’ve become anal about my anus.
But this new experience is not solely the fault of my very regular and expressive boyfriend. Bathroom ‘business’ is now a part of a marketing scheme making millions of dollars for the fat cats of the bathroom industry. Wile watching a documentary on Discovery, we’re reminded during a commercial break of how very important it is to ‘feel fresh and clean!’ and to purchase toilet paper that is immersed in Aloe Vera gel. Cuddly, animated bears appear from behind trees and do provocative dances with dampened toilet paper around the special dispensers for such paper. Baby wipes are now sold as adult wipes. When Outkast wrote that song about being so fresh and so clean, I think Andre was referring to some kind of procedure done after taking a dump. It’s absurd.
The fact of the matter is: I don’t want to know what’s going on in-between the cheeks of others. When I go into a store and see some stranger comparing sweet-smelling wipes to country fresh toilet paper, I envision that person on the toilet, wiping with the product of choice. No, thanks. All I care about in another individual is some kind of showering routine. People should be allowed to do their business in private. As for me, the next time I want to do something revolting, disgusting, and utterly human, I’ll do it with no shame, no fuss, and I’ll blame the cat for the stench.

Gads...If I had known what I was getting into, I certainly wouldn't have named the website 'Democracy in Action'. Or, perhaps, it is too appropriate...not sure. In any case, I do like to diddle out poetry. Not that I've even been published or follow a rhyme scheme, because both of those words are far too hard to spell correctly.

My favorite poets? Hmm..e.e. cumming, Yeats, Byron, Whitman, Dickinson, Hughes, Merton...to name a few. I guess I'm not really selective. I like the way certain poems roll off the tongues of those reciting. Poems, you must remember, were meant to be read out loud. I'm going to throw a bunch out there, because I can. Because I am now a blogger...

For Michael

The lavender has toppled its crown to the sun
And spread its roots about the dirt;
And now breathes lustrous fragrance through the air.
It is a living thing.
At nightfall, I shall gaze into his brown eyes,
As they narrow with sleep,
And think of him as lavender, slowly veiling close.
That he should sleep with deepest root incumbent.
Upon the morn, he’ll rise before me
And lift his hands above his head in praise of day.
He’ll bow to bed as I doze and whisper
Green things in my head.

I wake after he leaves…
And every morning, I cry out, hoping
He is near.
My dear one has gone on. Only silence meets
My ear. There is, however,
That subliminal memory of his kiss.
So that I can go outside and watch the lavender
Begin the dance, again, and know
My brown-eyed love will be with me at dusk,
Telling me green things that whirl in my head.

**
Tribute to the Two Trees

The fairy queen long ago dropped
The Glass of God.
The marred spurs of fragments shattered
And sliced the flesh of mortals.
We gazed upon each other with disgust
as reflections turned all bad out.

The glass was never mended; too many angels
Drew blood upon the slivers, and so humans are left to walk
About with shards in our pupils.
Tears gather when gazing upon the truth of things.

Long ago, the glass was whole and filtered out the wrongs
Of man. God let us go upon that green hill and hither we ran.
The fairy queen, a beast of beauty, did see the glass as vain.
Though God’s own creation, she drew it near her heart
And pondered her own fairness. In turn,
Her hands grew clumsy and let slip the mirror, gilded.
The demons clutched for the shards and narrowly missing,
Threw darts into the sides of men. And women shed the blood
Of all those misplaced horrors. And so it goes:

We are left to walk about with shards in our pupils,
Glass in our heart, and eternal mending in our soul.
But so is God mysterious, reflected near each evil
We commit, each crime upon each other. God slivers
Into the Truth, as well the fairy queen, and both look
Out upon the Universe created, a place of things
Both good and bad, generous and mean.

So it is that the fairy queen, in selfish acts of hell,
Did bring ruin to mankind but also unleashed God.
And now God is with us, each time we gaze upon the bitter glass,[Yeats]
Our souls mirrored in haze amongst our dire humanity,
Our blessing mixed with curses, our curses tinged with grief.
**
Had I known that love would
Shelter me in such mundane ways—
Had I heard your voice a year before,
Had I closed my eyes in the sunshine—
Why, had these things occurred,
Then Love itself would be as orchestrated
As it has been chaotic.

I am relieved I have the rest of my life
To fine-tune this wonderful
Unforseeable
Impeccable emotion.

Life’s Anxieties

For those of you diagnosed with
The following:
Schizoprenia, Depression, Mania, Anxiety:

Heed me when I tell you
Do not stop taking those little white pills, for
Those pills contain the peace of modern living.

Why, the other week, I stopped
Taking my little white pills and instantly
Felt dizzy and sad about
The terrors of this modern world from
The Middle East to the mushy brakes
Of my Korean car.

It was all too much for me to bear.
I had to call off work and stay home,
Wrestling with the demons of this life.
After a day or so of this,
I came to see:
My anxieties are no threat to anyone.
I am not crazy, merely somewhat more afflicted
By the news, the sad deaths of children, the abuse
Of power in Office,
The mushy brakes of my Korean car.

If you are one who comes to view the television
For ambient light and noise and not
The threat that it truly is,
You do not need these little white pills.
The rest of us, however,
Desire a different kind of relaxation, and so
We must resort to
Those little white pills.

II.

Night comes, and I lie awake on top
Of the covers. He rests besides me, asleep as fast
As a wink, blink, and nod.

I, however, must take a different route to sleep:
I must imagine flowers. There are bright flowers to chase
Away any flies of sadness, and there are vines wrapping
About the Soul, cradles of soothing.

If every night, I dreamt of flowers,
My mind unhindered
The days could be lighter.

Yesterday, a bomb exploded and killed forty-seven people and counting
In London. The world was shocked.
If I dreamt of flowers, I would not wonder
Why the world was shocked, for that many and more die
Everyday in other terrified nations…everyday.

These are the things I think about lying
On top of the covers,
Imagining a garden of flowers
Where there is usually only a dust of indifference.

III.

The cat has got her claw stuck
To her tail. She looks
Like a breakdancer, scrubbing the floor in a circle,
That one rogue claw hanging on to black fur, not relenting.

We laugh at this; it’s funny! She has great determination
To free herself from her own grip yet she is doing
Nothing more than squirming about in a circle.

She is probably very frustrated about the situation and wishes
Someone would help her instead of laughing.
This is how I feel when I am perturbed at politics;
People laugh at my seriousness but I am not funny.
I am angrily twitching about, hoping
Something will change if I can just get my claw
Out of my own ass.

IV.

Summer rain comes fast
Fallen petals wash downstream
The sky is steel gray

Damp soil freshens herbs
Lavender stretches to sky
Purple blooms on high

Willow tree bends down
Kissing wind and tall soft grass
Long boughs melt with earth

Ice Blue

The blue eyes of children lost stare at me behind a curtain—
A glaze of something more insidious than any overt
Evil. These are the girls and boys, the devotees of
Crank, ice, crystal meth.
It is almost like a Grimm’s fairy tale.
These children (so many of these children) are walking
Through a deep forest, and they are lost. The children
Hold hands; some of the children are older and lead
The others to a safe warm place, a kitchen, an oven.
There is an oven in the woods, baking
The strangest cookies of all.
And the children with the blue eyes begin eating
These cookies, wondering if parents will look for them.

The parents are standing at the edge of the woods, with
Hands on hips, looking disgruntled. No one wants to go
Into the woods, but all recognize they should be in the wood.
No one takes a step.

The children eat the mysterious cookies baked in the black
Smoking, lecherous oven in the wood. The older children begin
To bake other cookies, and the younger children watch
Diligently. And soon, all ingest these cookies with
The appetite of ravenous baby birds. They are helpless.

And the parents look at each other as the sun sets
On the dark forest, and they consider:
What could they be doing?
We gave her everything!
I was a good mother.
I was a good father.
And a strong wind whispers back:
You weren’t good enough.

The children with the blue eyes, the brown eyes, the green eyes
Begin to fill with the cookies while their bodies break down.
Sores open on their arms, like a plague from God. The children age
Under a horrible curse; suddenly, they look like wrinkled ghosts.
The cheeks are sunken. The bones protrude. The skin
Mottles. And a horrible, stinking monster is lurking
In the background, behind the greasy belching oven.

The children are dying. They lie in the arms of one another,
Like death camp victims. The parents have wandered into
The wood and smell the death, like burnt hair, like rotting flesh.
Some of the children with the blue eyes are alive; they whimper
At the foot of the great oven, and the monster spikes
His feathers and stomps a great hoof. The noise hurts
The ears of the children with the blue eyes, and the parents,
Finally, finally, but far too late,
Rush to their children, gather them up, hurtle them away from
The monster, who is crunching the bones of the dead in
His teeth.

The children with the blue eyes are brought to me,
And left for me to supervise. I make sure they go to classes
About the disease they have, this addiction.
When they go into the woods for more, I put them behind
Bars. When they cry for help, I listen with half-interest.
Most of them will succumb to the monsters in the wood.
I cannot help them, even though the children stare
At me, pleading with me, begging me to make
A valiant effort to defeat the monster lodged within.

The parents beg me, demand of me, to keep the children
With the blue eyes out of the wood, away from the monster.
When the children are found once again near the great black oven,
The parents come to me with a shaking fist and anger bursting
Through their red-lined skin.
Why haven’t you stopped this?
Where are the programs to help my child?
This is your fault; you knew he would use again!

I listen carefully, and after the parents are done yelling
And begin crying, I explain to the parents:
The chance of the children with the blue eyes
To be free of this monster is very small. Most of them
Will die, crazed old people in young bodies.
Most of them will have cancer. Many of them
Will be incontinent. They have used up their
Body and left only a shell of who they once were.
I’m sorry. I clasp my hands in front of me.
Inside, I am screaming:

Where were you when the children with the blue eyes
Wandered away?
Where were you?

Here is my feral cat, Delilah Amelia. Sure, she looks cute enough right now, but she is a black cat, and comes with mystery, nocturnal tendencies, and an overall essence of all that is Gothic. She's right up my alley.

Bertrand Russell wrote Why I am Not a Christian, the absolute in Christian apologetics. In this vein, I attempt to explain: Why I am Not a Patriot.

The world is a troubled place. I hesitate to say it is more troubled now than before; although humanity always assumes the present is worse off than the past, and the future will follow suit, I know that history, thoroughly examined, shows otherwise. Why, whole civilizations have crumbled thanks to small pox. Rome fell; the entire Empire collapsed. Avalanches, tornadoes, volcanoes, Mount Vesuvius…the like…

And what was often experienced as a tragedy was actually a gift, in many cases. Alexander the Great demolished many great buildings, but left in his wake libraries of Eastern and Western philosophy, only for those to be burnt down by well-meaning Christians. And then, the Christians brought back great epic stories of the Crusades, and the Arthurian legend was crafted, and Camelot was created in the imagination of an entire people. So this is how horror turns to culture.

Now that I consider these things, I see that much of Western culture is born out of war, bloodshed, horror. Religion takes its cues from culture and history, and so there is this linear transformation occurring. Jesus becomes less of a pacifist and more of some kind of Godhead soldier. (Christian soldiers, marching unto war). If we remember some of history, even just the major points…the Magna Carta, the World Wars, the fall of Rome, the Great Schism, the Reformation, the Renaissance…we see: all nations are born of suffering. It is suffering that leads to greatness.

In this manner, America was made. The sufferings of a few English led to religious persecution, and so escape ensued. More death came on a frigid new land. Survivors adapted and those unable to cope died. The soil of New England was tilled with bitter hope and anger and God, unmistakably an angry God. Then, wise men gathered, and whatever their personal problems were, they collectively looked at the Law of Human Nature and crafted a quilt of ideas. Give me your philosophers! Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Mills, Descartes! For with the help of thought, a New Land was made fertile. Jefferson and Hamilton may have had conflicting ideas about how to run a new government, and the Constitution did go through many changes before coming forth as is, but the importance of these thoughts, these scholars, is far more important than the bickering back and forth. No! I say, even more importantly, it is these arguments that further heighten the importance of United States of America, a land that was able to see, for whatever purpose, two answers may be better than one.

What were we given, in return? Freedom from the English monarch; yes. Freedom from religious persecution. In following decades, we promised each other through blood that no American would stand apart from one another, despite differences. Slowly, our slaves were freed from physical chains. Women voted. Local governments created safe havens for communities. Do I dare say: the spirit of the Constitution breathed throughout this land, and heard the needs of its people, and evolved? For every crisis, an answer came with democracy. We were not free, really. But our freedom had less restraint. And the Law of Human Nature has stood firm the test of time, and proven to us that actions, countrymen, ACTIONS of the people are the actions that shall judge us, actions shall set us free. Remember Aristotle: judge a man not on his words or thoughts, but by his actions. And find the answer why…what is the motivation of these actions. WHAT WILL MAN DO NEXT?

Democracy is action.

Let us apply this Aristotelian method to the present leadership found in the White House, the Senate, and many local governments. Americans have been asked to give up freedoms in times of war. But I tell you, to give up these freedoms to our government is exactly the opposite of what the Constitution promises us. To circumvent freedom is to give up on the notion of Human Goodness, a law this land was built on. Remember the human rights: a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? No one wrote that these rights were to be suspended indefinitely should America be challenged. Indeed, to keep these rights in place is the epoch of squaring off to our enemies. “No!” Americans should shout, “We will NOT desert our fine institution of freedom!” For in suspending rights, we have caved to the enemy. “Yes,” we are whispering, “we are afraid, and will bow our heads in submission.” Is that what Jefferson did? Is that what Lincoln did? Is that what Socrates did? Indeed not. But our actions are belying the motivation behind them. Americans are afraid of themselves and one another. So, we give up our pursuits of happiness, our lives, and our liberties. We hand them over to the Government.

And then there are the actions of President. Listen to his words, his speeches about freedom, patriotism, and truth. Then, stop listening to him. Put Bush on mute. There are only his actions to judge him. I cannot begin the catalog of actions he has taken. To highlight some: invading Iraq with the pretense to oust Saddam as a harborer of terrorists. None were found. The next action Bush took was to look for ‘weapons of mass destruction’. None were found. What were his actions? To leave? To say to the world, “Okay, I guess none of that was so, I’m going back home to sort out problems there?” No. His actions were to remain in Iraq. He sent over a friend to run the country. He sent many troops over to ‘quell’ the society of ravaged Iraqis. They are still there.

I do not know if Bush is still in Iraq for power, glory, or oil. But I do know this: he is unwilling to admit his mistakes. His actions show America that he is a yellow coward, afraid of his own shadow. Only bullies continue to justify cruel actions after they have been made aware of the cruelties. And, as C.S. Lewis said, if Bush did not know better, he would not make excuses for his behavior. But he does know better, and that is why he is the worst kind of person. He is the coward who will make no amends for his sins. His atonement will never take place.

Ask me if I am a Patriot. I will tell you, no, I am no such thing. I do not believe a government whose actions do not match its promises. I will not forgo my rights for a wayward country. And should good arise out of the evils of these times, I only hope it is the actions of good people that reverberate throughout this land. May God have mercy on us, and save us from ourselves.