Back in the saddle

How easy to fall off creative writing, expressive writing, to settle for single sentence flashes, maybe 160-character text messages. I feel the gap in my life though, so blogging seems in order. My life still has not recovered from the end of my marriage, but I need it to, as soon as possible. I find some moments of happiness a few times every week, but the rest is dread and worry. H.P. Lovecraft passages keep slithering into my mind, about days in darkness, huge slimy stairs, gibbering demons, and cliffs to climb. There must be a way into my life that feels alright, but my vision has grown dim.

My children still shower me with good love, my family is kind to me, and most of my friends tolerate my pro-longed somberness, so I am grateful to them.

Growing Pain

Wish to uplift, but I'm a bummer, most all the time. Had so many years of regularly feeling good, at least at some point each day or week, and felt fabolous beyond compare for many of those times. Will I ever get that ever new bliss back? Still believe in finding fulfillment in the now, which is why these words appear on this screen. Want the light to fill me, consume me, shine all around me, like it is. Too blind to see it. "That's not the electric light, it's just your vision growing dim." --L. Cohen. I see now why men perish after losing their families and money, harder than they could have imagined, emotionally honest or not. Of course, the October Country has left us to deep Autumn, the helladaze season, the frosty dying season. Must learn from then let go of past mistakes, work to feel light, remember to eat. Bless my friends and family for continuing to put up with me, believing that I'll come in around in awhile like a guy with a hangover sipping coffee.

Creative Processing, Ghost Dog Love

Ghost Dog Love

da pain, da pain, da pain
rains snows sleets dogs and dogs.
epic dogs, pheonix dogs, Rumi dogs
across my core, through our collective soul

Brother John taught me Stinkface.
works for bright light
hard emotions, angry or sad
a mask of facial tension
reflected darkness of our abyss

Ghost dog becomes ghost dog
charges forever inside me.
energy seemed boundless.
Now so in soothe

Pig Butcher Chen

The Butcher's Wife by Li Ang

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lin Shi's mother was all dressed in red. Her legs were bound with several coils of a long, thick rope. Stretching her arms out toward her daughter, she said over and over: "Ah-shi, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry...go beg some food for me, I'm hungry, I'm hungry."

Lin Shi discovered that she couldn't move a muscle, but she didn't know why. Momentary confusion followed. Unable to wait any longer, Lin Shi's mother plunger her hands into her own abdomen, fished out a mass of bloody entrails, and hungrily shoved them into her mouth, giggling as she said: "I've got nothing to eat, just this sweet-potato mash."

--excerpt from The Butcher's Wife



This is one of my wife's women's studies books that I just happened upon and found readable. Based on a true story, it's deeply sad but also oddly neutral. This book, maybe because it is Chinese, seems quite distant from the other women's studies type books I've started, most of which I could not make it through. I have to wonder about what's lost in translation, perhaps quite a bit. Even though the man is of course an evil fucker, the author manages to practically force the reader to empathize with him. One aquires an acute sense of being trapped in relationships: marriage, family, societal, and the world of pain & sickness to which those feelings lead. Tom Waits sings about in that song where "Frank hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead...bought himself a couple of Mickey Bigmouths, then he parked across the street, watching the thing burn all Christmas orange, and laughing; turned on the top 40 station", or something like that, folks losing their minds because of persistent belief in limits & measures in a limitless & measureless universe. It's the goddess forsaken dark ages in homes around the world, unfortunately.



Trapped as you agree to, trapped as you want to be, is how I figure it. Do whatchalike Kid.


View all my reviews.

Nothing Like Family

So here one can clear see the blatant insanity that runs in my family. Such a delight, to run wild, unfettered by the chains of reason. Mother, John, and Sam, of course, on Thanksgiving. Dough, for some reason the machine won't let me post these photos, but soonn....