Day: December 15, 2004

“I’ve been cooking again,” she called from the kitchen, “I haven’t been like this since I was sixteen” “Sixteen?” He asked. “Yeah, that was when my uncle got sick and I had to learn to cook, take over the house a bit, you know?” She briskly chops up mushrooms, measuring the amounts by eye, her red nails clashing with the pale white with a startling clarity. “A wine sauce alright with you?” He’s fine with it, more than fine. He’s standing by her living room bookshelf, bemused to have been invited, trying to read the titles in the candlelit gloom. “I thought you didn’t like to have men over?” “We-ell, I thought about it for awhile, and realized I was being silly. No one is ever going to replace my husband, especially not over something as silly as dinner. This is my house now, I should start thinking about it like that.” He looks over to the mantel, glad she can’t see him, and sticks his tongue out at the picture of his dead friend.

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I hate it, the deadly crush of traffic, the people walking past, ignoring me. It makes me wish I was famous, it makes me wish that some of them would start to die, so I could save them. They could have heart attacks or choke on something or maybe need the heimlich manouuver and I would be there, stepping in bravely, sweeping people aside, knowing what to do. It could be like that movie where that guy slides under the truck and gives the funny looking girl the tracheotomy but instead of movie cameras, it would be the news, yeah. Millions of people seeing how brave I am. Then these idiots wouldn’t brush past me without a smile. What the fuck was that movie? Whadzisname made me go when it was playing at the bar, said we would meet chicks. He didn’t go home alone, but I sure fucking did. Didn’t fucking share at all. Fucker. Some friend, whatever the fuck his name was. Brad? Who cares, doesn’t matter, nothing matters. Not to these rejects, anyways. Corporate idiots, walking past me like I’m nothing. Bimbos and whores, the lot of them. Bet they’d want me if I had money.

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The lines of the motorcycle made her catch her breath. She held it, looking at the machine, an old Vincent Black Shadow, the best cliche in the book. She touched it, then realized that it was hers now, she could do what she liked. She lifted one leather boot over and straddled it, feeling her weight on the tires. She imagined tearing down an empty country road at breakneck speed with hollywood swirls of leaves flying yellow and red in her wake.

This is for Cherie and domystic, who everyone should have on their lists. Among other things, Cherie Priest saves kittens, tosses out some stunning fiction and generally has sweet stories to tell. domystic is a strong enchanting education in warnews, medicine, and life, brilliant in her views like the sun.

It’s been a warm December, walking in the pouring rain at midnight is a lush experience, a luke-warm shower of welcome water. Death by frostbite doesn’t happen here, even now you can leave the house in a t-shirt. Coming back from successful bridesmaid fabric shopping with Jenn, I started dancing to wakka-chicka music in my head, starship disco dive seventies sex music setting my feet tapping. I twirled on a corner to discover a new theater going up, an old style one, showing foreign films and old movies in the place where the ARTISTE Cafe & Gallery used to be. I never ate there, but I knew it well. The place made me think of Nathanial every time I passed. He painted the lettering on the window five or six summers ago. Looking about, however, I found the block lined with cars from the sixties. Cover blown. My first idea’s too interesting for this city, I thought, the woman who lipstick smirked at me on the corner through quick drags of her cigarette must be on perimeter watch for a film-set. I found it farther up, clots of people and equipment blocking foot-traffic and someone asked for my autograph.

It’s been a good year. People have collected, have flocked, have grouped, have collaborated. It’s been amazing, the differences. It makes me happy, (even if I still don’t know who gifted me with the pro account). (Someone better claim the pictures or my self-esteem will laugh at you.)

Jombie is scarier than Phyllis Diller

Nicole asked me today/yesterday if I ever did the Christmas thing, “Well, what did you do last year?”. This time last year seems unreal. I never think about it. My life was drastically different. I was out working at the fabric shop, cutting yards of holiday prints with cheerful red cartoon santas to the tune of a million piped in carols, and returning home to an increasingly failing relationship. I was stuck in a depressing house where I never felt welcome, never felt at home, too broke for busfare, too broken to properly leave, even for an evening. If I left, there was yelling sometimes, and serious shattering accusations. Christmas was coming and I couldn’t think of what that meant. I put up lights in the kitchen, lining the badly painted blue sill of the window over the sink. A turkey in the oven, my mother coming over with my brothers to decorate the plastic tree that Bill found at Ocean Sound. Most of my days were running on auto-pilot, every evening the exact same meaningless thing. The same dinner in front of a different uninteresting movie. I don’t remember the presents but for the ones that I gave away.

I reminded Christy the other day that soon we’ll have known eachother a year, explaining when she denied it that I met her the same day I met Ethan, at her SinCity birthday party. “That wasn’t you. That was the other Jane,” she said, as I detailed the fetish night, what she wore, what Ethan wore, where it was, which couch they had taken over. “The other Jane was *pause* chubby.” People worried about me, but they never said anything, not until after. When I left, when I moved in with Adrian, every last person I saw told me that “You look so much better, you were looking sick.”

It feels like last December was a thousand days ago. A different age of the world. I’m alright now, I’m okay.

December, January, February, March, April, May. One, two, three, four, five, six. I’m twenty-two now, my lucky number for as long as I knew how to count. I always knew I was right. Shedding flawed flesh and spirit, taking on friends again, drinking in frightening freedom. I live independently now, holding down the kids chat job for minimum seven months now, maybe eight. I pay my rent and have enough left over to squeak my way into performances and a few dinners out. This week I pay the thousand in debts I accumulated while living as a useless mouse. It’s a big thing for me. I have new eyes, glasses that work. I saw the moon clearly for the first time in five years last evening. I’m traveling, I have people I care about. There’s a thousand positive things that matter now, many hundreds of half-said moments, a lifetime of seconds building atom by atom into a life again, better than it ever was before.

This fall alone has been affirmation. Certain people have crossed paths with me and changed me. It’s like leaping from the bridge in the dark to discover that the river is made of soft supporting light. Photographs in my in-box making me matter, conversations in verse to poets, reckless discoveries that saved me, threw me into the fire to burn. I’m growing strong again, like I haven’t been in years. Like I have never been completely, because now I’m no longer strictly a child. My mental wings open, brushing the ceiling with starchy plum feathers, and I find that I like it.

I’m remembering who I am.

GET-TOGETHER MY PLACE, TUESDAY DECEMBER 21st, STARTING AT 5pm
if you want to see me before I go, this is it. Bring people, spread the word.

okay, this is just weird.

A man in a long leather coat smashed into a display case and stole the scrying crystal ball of John Dee, spiritual hack to the queen back in the 16th century. He took off with its parchment instruction manual as well. I think it’s amusing that someone would smash the display case and take a runner with them. That they were dressed so is like the cherry on top. Dee was an odd an interesting fellow who got famous creating a language with which he would talk to angels. He’s worth looking into if you’re interested in historical wierdos. Sort of a con-man wizard type, very authorative. He had quite the interesting position in court back in the day, the official philosopher occultist. 

Apparently there’s been quite the string off such olde world incidents in the news. Meteor showers, sightings of apparitions. Certain parts of the world seem to be going through an almost eldritch string of headlines. I quite like it.

In a beautiful moment of personal mythology synchronicity,   has made a stunning print of Spring Heel Jack, the perfect figure for this particular tapestry of related inspirations, the seed around which everything crystalizes into a tangible idea.

Oh, the kinky possiblities of nostalgia.

Sounds like the perfect time to introduce the world to zombie pin-up and defeat the RIAA.

“A combination picture shows traditional wooden ‘Krampuss’ masks seen during a parade of about 100 people in traditional attire known as ‘Krampusse’ in Munich, December 12, 2004. Krampusse consist of animal skins and masks attached to large cow-bells used to make loud and frightening noises, and are worn by young single men. They follow Saint Nicholas from house to house in December each year to bring luck to the good and punish the idle.”