Halloween--tonight

Happy Halloween!

This is a really long exposure. It's hard to hold still that long! 

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, from me. This is the first of what may be several Halloween Posts. I'm predating this (posting it ahead). Erin has announced that she will post and has invited others to do the same. This is me while preparing for the MOST halloween party, in the MOST bathroom. (It was in 2002; I haven't worked there for several years now.)

Happy Halloween!!

This is not an old photo, this is me now. Manipulated of course, for effect.

I'd like to note that I used a "caricature action" to produce a caricature of myself as a witch based on a stereotype. I don't mean to belittle real Wiccan "Witches" who believe in or practice Wicca. Wicca is the old religion, Paganism. It is based in part on the seasons and the movements of the moon. Halloween is a seasonal holiday, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

In Wicca, the "crone" is the "wise woman." I am a crone, because I have pssed menopause, but society and family no longer regards old women as wise, but only as useless and in the way and as a burden. Very few turn to the crone for advice any more. Instead, we shuffle our old ones off into the nursing homes or leave them to live (and die) alone in their homes.

But I didn't mean to write a treatise on Wicca or on aging, simply to wish you a Happy Halloween, however you choose to celebrate. 

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween From Me! 

Witchy and Tyrone's Kids

Happy Halloween! Another shot from 2000. 

Preparing my briefs

No, I'm not a lawyer. I am leaving shortly for a trip and trying to get my ducks in a row. I am giving two poetry readings, one in Snowstorm City and one in Coaltown City. I have to prepare poems for each reading, get driving directions, and make important notes to myself. I'm really going to miss K and G! It's so nice to be here with them. 

The Essences

I didn't sleep at all last night, during the night, finally slept a little this morning and had a short but very interesting (to me) dream.

Hooky ("MP")

Hooky

Jonathan kept tripping on the chickens. Maybe a thousand or more. Where had they come from? Perhaps he had been playing the pipes in his dreams and they had followed him home from farms over the distant hills. Maybe they'd poured out from under the manhole cover like clowns. Maybe there had been a blizzard of eggs and the moonlight or dawn was warm enough to hatch them. But no, these were too big. Too big, too white and too covered with feathers. Soft, angry, loud and milling about as if they wanted something. Maybe cheerios. But there weren't enough cheerios for each chicken to get one and then what would he eat for breakfast tomorrow? They had eaten all the grass and the zinnias. Maybe they were a plague of locusts, only different. Jonathan went back in the house and shut the door. He would have to go to school some other day. MST

* * *

My idea of morning pages is to write something interesting rather than just blabbing on about my worries and thoughts, which occupy so much of my mental energy anyway. I know that is not the intention of morning pages, you're supposed to be clearing out the crap, but there you have it. This piece, a mini-flash-fiction piece or a prose poem (I'm thinking ff), came from a dream, hypnogogic or hypnopompic this morning. There was one more maybe in the string of maybes about where the chickens came from, but I can't remember it. Now I feel "done," not necessarily with the piece, but with the morning pages. I want to get on with the rest of my day. Here's what you're supposed to do:

THE MORNING PAGES

"Doing your morning pages, you are sending--notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes."

3 pages of longhand writing, strictly stream of consciousness...

There is no wrong way to do the morning pages. Meaning, DOING THEM, PERIOD, is the right way. :)

Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Try your very best to write them, 3 pages a day, even if it isn't necessarily in the morning, or longhand. Morning, and longhand is best, but doing them at all has its own merit. And you're doing this for YOU, so do it with an "easy does it" mindframe.

Do anything until you have filled 3 pages.

"It is very important to understand that the time given to morning pages is time between you and God. You best know your answers. You will be led to new sources of support as you begin to support yourself."

With MPs, says Cameron, "[W]e begin to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings...." From The Artist's Way

Now for the real morning pages, which aren't intended to be read and not worth reading.

Witchy me

I posted a new self portrait of myself in a witch hat taken 5 minutes ago (today!) at my self portrait blog. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Slut-o-ween

I'm glad to see continuing discussion in salon.com and other venues on over-sexed Halloween constumes. It seems to me that if a woman is in the mood to be sexy, she wears something she feel sexy in and if not, she doesn't. It is certainly not our job to act out male sexual fantasies unless we choose to do so to please our partners and hopefully we're getting something back for that that makes it worthwhile. I'd like to think we choose partners who see us as whole people and not just sex objects. By which I mean, it's OK to choose to be a sex object, if your partner is also willing to play that role, but it is not OK to have it forced on you by society or worse yet, by manufacturers.

See more discussioon on jo(e)'s page.

My study

My study is red, a fairly bright red, but I did not paint it that color, it was that color when I came.  The house has weird colored rooms, and I may want to paint at some point.  I don't mind if the rooms don't go with each other, because from the study, you can see a little of the hall bathroom and Graham's room, but mostly you can only see the study.  Each room is primarily its own unit.  I'm not sure about red.  I never would have chosen it myself--I prefer light colors to make the room look brighter and larger.  But I don't hate it.  I do dislike the curtains, though.  They are so ostentatious.  Definitely NOT ME!

The study represents another woman's taste.  I'm plunked down in the middle of it.  Graham still occupies the closet and Keith has the couch and part of "my desk."  If I had my druthers, I'd start over from scratch,. but that would be expensive and time consuming.  It may happen some time in the future.  Meanwhile, I'm here in this red room.

I looked up red in Feng Shui:

RED:

• Strengthens physical energy.
• Alleviate colds, and flu.
• Helps with listlessness.
• Confidence: You can do anything you desire.
• Physical Strength
• Power
• Action, movement, change and transformation.
• Increases the appetite.

  Red is represented by fire. The fire can create or destroy. Use red with caution as it can cause you to anger easily or get agitated. The power of the color can change your life, it activates the fame area of the Pa Kua and can bring your dreams to action. Know what you want the red energy to bring into your life. For example, restaurants use red tablecloths to increase the customers appetite.

I was worried about the anger aspect of red.  And I don't want to increase my appetite.  But I would like to bring my dreams to action (lol!)  In terms of my writing, photography, art, and a long loving marriage.

STOMP

We went to see STOMP tonight. I didn't know what to expect, but I was surprised and pleased. It was great fun, very creative, always surprising. I recommend it! ***** 

Morning Pages with new fluffball poem

I posted my morning pages this morning to my half-formed blog because they contain the first two drafts of a new poem about an encounter that I already mentioned in an earlier post. From there, you can see the third draft if interested, in my poetry blog.

Comfort Meme

Comfort Meme from jo(e) and Erin
(and now Sara.)

1. Comfort food : Homemade meatloaf with baked potato and squash, sloppy joes, raw cookie dough (these days a forbidden pleasure).

2. Comfort beverage: Herbal tea. Sleepy time. (I'd also like to down lots of sweet, milky coffee, mocha or hot chocolate, but can't have them either).

3. Comfort read: Books written for young people. Right now reading Ann McCaffrey's Dragonsong; for the umpteenth time. Also, The Woman's Comfort Book; And good poetry. Mary Oliver, Stanley Kunitz, Marge Piercy, Linda Pennisi, Pat Lawler, Janine DeBaise, many others.

4. Comfort television/DVD/music: Copying jo(e) here, cause I agree 100%: It would never occur to me to turn on the television for comfort. I watch very little television, and even then, only because someone else has turned it on. The only time I can ever remember watching television by myself is on September 11, 2001. I was home alone, and heard it on the radio and turned on the TV for the visual impact. [That was NOT comfortable!]

comfort music: Mozart, grateful dead.

5. Comfort companion(s): My husband, Keith. Sara, Erin. Graham, when he's sleepy. Certain close friends.

6. Comfort activity? Hugging, snuggling. Hiking and being in nature, sitting in the sun, reading. Sailing in a light wind. I also am comforted by being on-line and reading blogs and looking at pictures and art.

7. comfort clothes? jeans and a T-shirt

8. Comfort animal? huggable kitties and puppies (I no longer have a pet other than a bird).

9. Comfort smell? My husband. Vanilla, fresh bread.

10. Comfort hairdo? braids

11. comfort place? nature, home in bed or a comfy chair (of which we have none at the moment)
--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

The last one

I just put a load of darks in the dryer after removing a load of lights.  I'm hoping it will be the last load of laundry I do in the Kimbrook house before I leave.  I was hoping the visit to my Mom yesterday will be the last visit before I move and the lawn mowing Keith did Sunday will be the last lawn mowing before we're gone from here.  I had also hoped the shopping I did a while ago would be the last, but unless a miracle happens, I may need to buy more food--one day at a time.  Of course with each passing day, there'll be more dirty laundry--I just took off a set.  I can take them with me, if I don't run out.  Still, any day now, each thing I do will be last thing I do here.  And that is happy and that is sad.  Mostly, at this point, I am eager to go.

barbecued chicken on polenta

I took a break from the frenzy of trying to get ready to move. Started a batch of fresh from scratch polenta cooking with onions and garlic, Whacked up mushrooms, broccoli and zucchini with more onions and garlic, started them sauteing, put the newly cooked polenta in the same fry pan in a pancake shape, and then rolled chicken in cornmeal and flour. It only took a few minutes for the chicken to cook. Put the polenta on the plate, the veggies next to it and the chicken the polenta and spooned on some barabecue sauce (Dinosaur). It was delicious and only took about 15 minutes to make--YUM! Then ran downstairs and started some laundry. Gotta go put it in the dryer and start some more.

the squid

I decided to serve my squid, scallops and shrimp marinara over a stirfry of yellow squash, broccoli and organic POLENTA (since i just had linguini yesterday).  I',m cooking it now.