Tuesday, November 5, 2024

overuse

 





Milagros; take two and call me in the morning.




Dear Contemporaries,

Do you worry about overuse?  My dj played this the other day, and she explained that it was her favorite* Neil Young song and she doesn't like to play it very often, because she doesn't want to 'overuse it.'  

Well, it has happened to me; I used to love some song, and somewhere along the way, someplace while I was getting it into my cells, into my blood, listening over and over (or as they say now: 'on repeat'), breathing and sleeping it, I fell out: out of lust, out if infatuation, out of the desire to consume it wholly.  What does that mean?  Not to you, but to me?  Am I so fickle?  Is there only so much daily enthusiasm?  Is it so that familiarity breeds contempt?  Ooh, I sure hope not!!!  

But, overuse;  In my shoulder there is a thing like that, and if I had it to do over, I'd have saved it a bit more; I would have turned the crank of the press with my left arm, might have taken some care when I was painting to stop now and then, as I do now; to stop knitting before two hours have transmuted themselves into three inches of cloth; I have this Thera-putty now, which I squeeze and twist around in between some number of rows now; I don't know if it helps, but, it is kind of fun to squish this stretchy yellow goop- it's kind of unstructured, compared to the repeated yarn loops.

And, what about relationships? Or chocolate, sugar, caffeine, alcohol?  And, ooh, what if one day you woke up and suddenly analgesics didn't work for you?  It'd be a hard rain that fell that day, and you'd have to face all these endless little headaches and sprains, pains and bruises with nothing but ice and tears!  

It isn't our topic, I know, but I would be, umm, under the weather, feeling delicate, nearly every day if it weren't for these medical marvels of medication.  I won't list my ills or my cures, but, I think often how uncomfortable I would be without the things I 'take.'  Without, for example, sunscreen.  I have a friend, who maybe doesn't wear it?  In any case, she has to subtly maneuver you to the shade when you run into her and stop to talk.  It's a weird, distracting feeling; you know her mind is on something else, but what?  Over years I have realized what it all is, and so now I say; let's move over here, into the shade.  But still, just saying goodbye in the driveway at the car is a problem for her- she is always, everly, antsy, on her way to out of the sun.  Her world revolves around the not-sun.  Think of it.

Anyway, I want to mention it here, because I think we have an odd relationship to medication here, in our culture.  I think we think we have failed, we are losers in the game of health, when we need a prescription balm to ease things.  We seem to feel that it is actually dangerous poison, prescribed by sadistic Dr. Frankensteins, and that anything else, even lighting candles and praying to the Big Head in the Sky would be better than to take this pill.  I ask you, I ask myself, why would anyone make a cure that would harm more than it heals?  I know, you are going to tell me it is about money, and I am going to say no, I do not believe that.  You are now going to tell  me that they are ignorant, foolish; '"they used to think smoking was good for you!!!"  Well, that fallacy isn't worth a response from me, either.  Your world of dehumanized idiots is not the one I live in, even though you are right next to me.  I am fine with you just hating yourself for needing medication, but I am not, not, not fine with you acting like only weak, failures of humans need or take medicine.  So you are going to have to contemplate all that; that big, fat cognitive dissonance in your brain, and if I were you, I'd see a doctor about that.



*Hmm, what is mine???  Now I feel like I have to find one, and quick!  This is the nature of competitiveness, isn't it?  Out of nowhere, you have to have or do or be something else.


PS  

I have, and I invite you to join me, spent some time, many inches of knitting, and square feet of painting and drawing, considering why I may have harbored this 'medicine is for weaklings' crap, and I can tell you that you grow up in it; it is there when you are just 15 months old, and you fall, and you cut your lip, and you howl out in the pain of all that misery and shock, and you are told to 'stop crying.'  It is there when you hear your people talking about how so and so needs to take such and such now, because they are old, and will die soon.  So, yes, we are afraid, and that is fine, but the medicine is not what we fear actually, is it now?



Saturday, November 2, 2024

Wailing Woman

 











Dear All,

My DJ played this a few days ago, and ooh, what a La Llorona it is!  I hope you will gritar y llorar along!  If you don't know the weeping woman that can be heard at night in the arroyo near you, here is a short introduction.






Thursday, October 24, 2024

Re-done, and better than ever!

 



Schoenen, 1886, Vincent Van Gogh.




Dear Y'all,

I think I have spoken of the sublime sad & long goodbye of The Load Out, but Somebody's Baby, well, it wasn't my baby, until now, because this is The Greatest!  It puts me in mind of another couple of songs.  Like this song, an odd conflation of feeling: the lyrics are about confusion, questioning, maybe even begging, but listen to the sound-  it is surely the most upbeat song ever, as in Hurray!  I want you but you maybe don't or I maybe don't and this muddied misunderstanding is so great!

For contrast, try this song, on a similar theme; the tick tock regular rhythm of it pounds out a yes/no yes/no.  The confusion is deep and aggravating- "esta indecisión me molesta"- and the steady banging beat sounds like frustration.

This one,* on the other hand, is nostalgia incarnated; the sound and the lyrics.  Nothing I have ever heard feels as nostalgic as this, and I tell you, it felt exactly the same hearing it in 1977.  I really love this one, but it's kind of junk food, isn't it?  Sort of empty calories, like pink frosting, but ooh, it sure is nice to feel your teeth hurt like that, isn't it?




*  Also note that his Marianne has walked away- I am so proud of you, Marianne!  Amie should probably have committed more fully to walking away; I know they'd both be somebody else's baby in a trice!  And so would you, if you find yourself constrained, held, or pinned in some way that you aren't sure about anymore: walk on.



PS  Maybe you like to geek out a little bit on culture and meaning, and you wonder about the dates of these songs' first releases?  Somebody's Baby- 1982.  The Load Out- 1977.  Amie- 1972.  Should I Stay or Should I Go- 1982.  More Than a Feeling- 1976.




Tuesday, October 22, 2024

four

 







Dear Whomever is Listening,

That greeting isn't meant to be pert, I just sometimes don't know who all is out there, you know?  It's been a lot of years of writing you here, of calling that lonely phone booth on Mars, and I know you are busy with other things, and you don't always have time to write and reassure me that you care.  It's okay; I know that the wheels are turning, that atoms are zipping all over, willy-nilly, and who knows where they land or what they might mean to a person.  I don't want to be one of these humans who needs endless validation, but still, occasionally I wonder who is in this big electronic void that I am whispering/yelling into on the regular.

Anyhow, what I wanted to tell you is that it takes just FOUR pages for me to fall in love with another beautiful memoir!  Four!  I have always been impulsive and lightening fast to crush on people and things;  I was Boy Crazy and a Clothes Horse when I was younger; I chased boys day and night, it embarrasses me now to think on it- worse, the few times I managed to corner a hapless boy, I had no idea what to do with him- I didn't see the right kind of movies, you see?  I was raised on all these films where the boy leans over to kiss the girl; the boy edges closer on the sofa, the boy puts his arm over the back of the theatre seat.  I would get them in range, and then freeze, dumbly, waiting for a move from them.  Waiting.  All through the picture.  All through the drive.  All through the night.  

Of course now, I think what a little idiot I was, just to stand there looking at the fruit and never trying any, but that was a long time ago, and riding my bike past your house late at night just to see if you'll notice me seems shamefully stupid now; so don't bother to go to your window; I won't be there.

I was very poor reader of boys and men in any case; I always thought their hungry, starving eyes were for me alone, when actually, half of them were high, with unseeing eyes, and the other half were hungry for any attention, from anyone.

Now, the beautiful love I have for this book, though, it is quite another thing!  It is pure, unspoiled by my insecurities, it is Real.  Also, who the hell is Viv Albertine, anyway, and why, why, why didn't anyone tell me to ride my bike by her window???  How did I miss this powerful life force up until now??  I feel sure that if I had listened to the Slits I would have known what to do with these cornered boys, or better even, I might not have chased them in the first place.





PS  I know, I know!  I loved it before it arrived in the mailbox; I loved it when I saw the title; and who in this entire world would not love a book titled To Throw Away Unopened?




Tuesday, October 15, 2024

in motion

 












Dear Passengers,

I take a lot of these blurry photos out of the car- there are reflections of the inside, and smeary roads, bright halos, all kinds of un-photogenic artifacts.  I get a real thrill taking crappy photos, because, well, you know, I was kind of raised by a pack of shutterbug snobs, and boy! did those folks hate an an out of focus shot!  Whooee!  Like it was a cardinal sin.  I don't usually send you any of them, because it is hard to step out of the known and into the 'that isn't any good.'  By the known here, I mean the tenets of 'good' photography these vociferous wolves raised me to believe in, and by 'isn't any good' I mean all of, everything in the world that ever was or could be that doesn't fit into the tenets.  It's a lot, come to think of it, all the pictures with the heads cut off, the ones with crooked horizons, the poorly exposed, the low contrasted, the out of focused.  Maybe this is something you want to address yourself, all the dogma of what is good in photography.  Maybe you want to grab that camera and take a snapshot of your feet, or a picture of a tree while you wave your camera.  It might feel good to you, too.