Hungry Entities Be Gone!

Well... stranger and stranger... I have just gotten off the phone from talking with one of my more, uhm, unique friends, who goes by the code name of mrose. I asked her if she had been to visit my blog. She said she had, but that she could not stay long, because she sensed the strong presence of many 'hungry entities'. Bugger!

I have not, I repeat, NOT authorized any hungry entities to hang out on my blog. I hereby command ALL unauthorized entities to LEAVE right now. (This does not apply to you, Dear and Most Welcome Reader!) I am on my way to bed, for much needed rest. But, to monitor the hungry entity exodus, I leave the nose of Artus the Large. He will sniff out any hungry entities that try to linger here on my blog. And now I feel a sense of peace surrounding me, and I know that all is well.

Blankie Bliss

Last night at work there was a dirty, and oddly smelly, blanket on the couch. I asked who it belonged to and was told it had been abandoned by a former resident, and then used to sit on outside in the dirt and straw. I picked it up and discovered that it was amazingly SOFT. I realized my cats would love it, so I wound up taking it home. I washed it, twice, and dried it till it was all warm and fluffy. Then I folded it up and put it on top of the dog bed on the floor. The cats had long ago taken over this bed, and within a few seconds of the blankie going down, Gamma, the matriarch of the cats, had settled down onto it. I could almost hear a great 'Ahhhhhhhhh' of satisfaction as she sank down into the softness. Then Rexie came to check it out. He stepped onto it, flopped down next to Gamma, and immediately became enraptured and sprawled out in total relaxation. Yes, the new blankie is a big hit!

The photos tell the story:

An Appendix Blooms In The Desert

Lazily rubbing my belly, before getting dressed

for the day, I became aware of the scar from my

appendectomy. This made me wonder about my

former appendix, which had been removed about

six years ago.

I knew, from living in such a small town, that the
Marcus Welby, MD type surgeon who removed my

appendix had since retired, that his wife had
died, and that he'd put his house on the market.
The monthly bills from him, though money was
still owed, stopped coming years ago.

But enough about him, no matter how charming

he may be. What I was wondering about, as I

prodded my scar tissue, was what might have

happened to that big, upset appendix that he
took from me... where did it go, and what
adventures might it have had??

Yes, perhaps it just went into some bag saying:
'Caution! Bio Hazard! Medical Waste Material'

and was incinerated to protect innocent people

from being assaulted by my appendix in the wee

hours of the morning.

Yes... I can almost see my appendix sneaking up

on these people, as they sleep, totally unaware
of the horrible danger they are in. Yikes!! 'Night

of the Living Dead Appendix'... (I am not going

to post images of this here, as they are simply
too disturbing for public viewing.)

But, perhaps my appendix escaped the fires of
medical waste incineration, and went on to have
a different sort of future.

Maybe it was just tossed into the trash and then
taken to the local landfill. Maybe it was dug up
by a wiley coyote and made into a happy late night
snack.

Then, later, after the coyote had trotted back
across the sage filled mesa, under the full moon,
coyote turds would have fertilized the desert
flowers with the digested remains of my appendix.

And those flowers would bloom brightly and

joyfully... new life from old, transmutation!

All this and more is possible, and that is what I
realized, rubbing my hand across my belly scar.

Blue Rose

For Miguel

For Miguel
(1970 - 1990)

Miguel, you came across the border
looking for the American Dream,
and instead wound up, at age 15,
a beautiful boy toy, selling your body
on the streets of Chicago.

And by the time you were 20,
your dream had degenerated
into the nightmare of AIDS,
of pain, sickness, and death.

You asked me to take you and your mother
shopping for your coffin, and I did.
In the car, on the way back,
I understood your mother's spanish,
when she sighed, and said:
"Oh God! We are here only to suffer!"

After coffin shopping,
you pulled me aside,
and told me your greatest fear:
That they would say you were dead,
when you weren't quite yet,
and you would be buried alive.

Later, when you were almost blind,
and you hair was beginning to fall out,
I was there when the priest came to call.
He told you that your suffering was a good thing,
because it brought you closer to God.
You turned your head to the wall.
And I think we both were wondering:
Who really wants to be closer
to a God who can be so cruel?

~ 2003 ~

Black Balls?

Take a good look...
How many black balls do you

see in the grid image below?



Click on the image to see it larger, if you want...

Our Capacity for Evil

Here is something that got me thinking today. Aldon Hynes wrote on his blog, Orient Lodge:

"We all have the capacity for violence and cruelty and we all have different ways of dealing with it. We can talk about the media or changing laws. We can do charitable works to balance out our capacity for evil. Yet, I think my friend is wise in encouraging us to all acknowledge our capacity for evil, as part of our efforts to build better defenses to contain them and keep them at bay."


I agree with this, and it made me think about the rage of the Virginia Tech shooter, and it also made me think about my own inner rage, especially that which burned within me as a child after my parents died. That anger, in retrospect, seemed to have burned so hot that simple kindness and human decency were incinerated. And the world reflected this harshness back to me. At the boarding school I was sent off to, at age 11, the other children sensed I was dangerous creature and kept their distance from me. When people say they can't understand how someone could go on a killing spree, I find myself pausing and thinking, not without revulsion, that I DO understand. Then I wonder for a moment if I'm somehow monstrous to have that understanding. I think not. I think I am simply one who has looked at some of the darker, uglier, and less acceptable aspects of my self, and they have looked back at me, and we've nodded at each other in silent recognition.

And I see now also, in retrospect, that there have been several key turns on my path, or places that I've rested, that have sweetened me and helped to distance me from the rage. One huge one was living in a gay community, Provincetown, during the late 1980s, and working with people who were dying of AIDS. And so many were dying. For those of us who loved them, and lived among them as they died, our hearts were ripped open over and over. Experiences like that have a way of shifting perspectives, and bringing in a different focus.

Another huge rage softener has been humor. Laughing at the world, laughing at myself, laughing at things that more tightly laced up folks don't find amusing at all... while I won't claim it has kept me 'sane', it has indeed been my best medicine through the years. Being on Planet Earth, wearing a human outfit, is a very funny activity. It's hard to be in a murderous rage while you are laughing. Or, put another way, as a friend once said to me, it's hard to be angry when there is a cat on your head.

Remembering Temple

Tomorrow, April 21, would have been the 47th birthday of my little sister, Temple. She killed herself 14 years ago, slitting her wrists after drinking a bottle of vodka. She was thirty-three years old, five years younger than me. While Temple had been having trouble in her life since she was a teenager, battling addictions to various substances, and perhaps mental illness as well, I always thought that someday we'd be old ladies sitting on the front porch together, laughing about it all. But it just didn't turn out that way.

Summer 1960 ==> Me, holding Temple the cat,

and Wylie holding our baby sister Temple.

Temple and I were the two youngest of six children. I used to pull her around in a little wagon, up and down the long central hallway of our house. She was a typical bratty little sister, putting pink lipstick on my white and grey cat, dumping out the little bottles that came with my chemistry set, and stealing the money from the 'Please Help Us Feed Our Cats' collection box I put out at one of our parents' cocktail parties. Our personalities were very different- while I dressed in oversized sweatshirts and played with cats and cowboy guns, Temple wore pink ballerina outfits and played with make-up and other girly stuff. My favorite children's story was Alice in Wonderland. Temple's was The Wizard of Oz. She had the soundtrack to the movie on a record, a red vinyl record, which she played over and over again. I seem to remember that one of my parents finally broke the record in two because they just couldn't stand hearing it any more.

Temple at 15

An odd footnote to Temple's life... A few years ago, just for the heck of it, I entered her name into Google and did a search, to see if anything would come up. I got a hit for a cheesy low-budget vampire movie, called 'I Married a Vampire'. Temple was listed as one of the actors. I ordered the video. If anyone reading this has actually watched this movie, Temple plays the supporting character Portia. It was an awful flick, but it was very cool for me to watch Temple in it, and hear her voice again. It was like having her pay me a strange sort of visitation, 10 years after her death.

So... Just to let you know,

I'm still thinking of you, kid...

Happy Birthday, Temple!

A photo montage that was
made for her memorial service

(click on it to view larger image)