Once I started singing verses of various songs in an almost empty Indian restaurant. The chicken vindaloo had lost its luster, an I had to make my own fun! I started with Eartha Kitt's version of "Santa Baby" and ended up at Peggy Lee's "Fever." I can't blame it on drinking because I wasn't, and my companions begged me to stop, but I continued complete with creepy hand motions, like a Supreme gone wrong. A couple at the next booth were meeting with their wedding planner, going over the details for the big day. "I want flowers, not funeral flowers, but really beautiful ones. This only happens once. I don't get a second chance to make my big day special." Where do people learn this sense of entitlement and the vocabulary for it? Furthermore, who says you only get one big day? My mind cast back to a tank top I'd seen once that read, Stop Talking About Your Fucking Wedding, and I began laughing so hard that I spit the sip of water that I'd just taken all over the table. My sister calls this kind of merriment being "drunk in the spirit," when everything is funny for no reason. Our waiter looked over at the table, the soaking wet place mats and shook his head. I attempted to compose myself until one of my friends confessed that her boyfriend pets his dog while they have sex (quite a feat of dexterity!), and this sent me off into more laughter. I did not sing or drink water anymore out of fear of making a bigger ass of myself than I already had.
When a dear friend of mine visited Detroit, I took her to the Motown Museum. We went with two other people in one of my vain attempts to allow my friends and then-boyfriend to get to know one another in hopes that they would see in each other all the wonderful qualities I did. The group dynamic was similar to the old experiment with prisoners and guards -- my friends made passive-aggressive jabs at one another as we saw Michael Jackson's glove and The Commodores' singing costumes. When we got into the last part of the tour, our guide picked three of us out of the crowd to sing "Stop In The Name Of Love." I wanted to die when he looked at me and said, "You can be sexy Mary Wells." I tried to be a good sport and went along for the ride. When I did my stop hand motion, I directed it toward the people who, despite loving me, could not love one another. They could not, as St. Francis dictates, love each other constantly or even a little. They could barely eat dinner together! In a situation like this, the best thing you can do is sing, even if you don't do it well. At least you have a chance of making someone laugh even if it's only yourself.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.” Francis Bacon
Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Shinebox The Gourds
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!
14 comments:
Stop! In the name of love.
I've never been to Motown, Michelle, but in the next episode of the Sopranos (the next to last one) some of my Jersey crime family will question their allegiance to me. And there will be a tragic case of mistaken identity. The episode is called "The Blue Comet." Don't miss it, and thanks for all your support of the Sopranos, Michelle!--Tony
Haha -- that must've been one helluva vindaloo dish!
I love the phrase, "Drunk in spirit." I think I'll borrow it.
Now i know why I have an inbred tendency to drive people away from me. I will never have to wonder if friend A will get along with friend B; because there is no A or B.
There are some people I care for deeply but then their time living their life is for them, not me.
I have lived my life thus far without having to try to even for a night trying to make an ass of myself, because it comes without hesitation or effort and if the people that I am tasked with entertaining, still can't get along with their mutual dislike over the show I put for them. They can go their own way and live their life and spend the time the way they wish. I personally don't care.
I can be loved but not owned and I owe nor own anyone else.
But I do like the water out of the nose at the tank top saying because you know those people at the next table spent 20k on a wedding that probably lasted 5 years max.
"To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.” Francis Bacon...this is such total fallacy. you suffer as long as you want to and fear of anything is for them who refuse to kill whatever it is they are afraid of.
No one on this earth (which is all mine by the way) can name one fear that I have, you only fear the things you care about and think you might lose. Lose the fear of loss and you lose the fear.
CajunQueen
ROckinMamaSmiles
FunnyStories
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andLittleElves
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MightyEyes
Shzammmmmm!
R2C2!!!!!
Beautiful post! You can't help but smile at so much on-page laughter. And you can never have too many special days, either--definitely not you. I hope yours are going as well as you indicate. I've been OK.
You just plunged into this one, and it's hilarious creepy deep and romantically laced with energy. You're all that. Really. Your writing is just so damn good to read when it's like this. You threw out some lines and ran with it. You didn't try, did you, miss I didn't spell check so fuck it all, it's the writing on the wall and it sticks? Great use of the things you love as inspiration, as well as metaphorically backing that up with every facet of this gem.
Awesome when you feel that good about your writing. I'm still flying high on writing with no real aim but to really dig in and throw down every day just like that, a couple times or more if I can find a way to get it all working.
And written on a friend's proffered stationary. Thanks, m.
And the pics the last few days are telling. You've been looking the way you feel for a while now. And I know you feel good as you write like you do and it's freaking amazing to read today. Hope whatever it is keeps you there, glowing and writing and singing your soul out on the page.
I crack myself up most of the time. It often erupts loud and full no matter where I am, and for some reason or other, usually in the quietest of places.
~That scene with you in the restaurant was great!
Tasteless Prose
You’ve been starving all day. You’ve been drinking all day and the bells are ringing and somebody you know was shot earlier in the week, in a drug deal, similar to the one you just did that morning before his funeral.
You’re a writer; the unusual is your bag, and you love bags filled with the unusual. But now it’s late, so you eat a steak dinner from Denny’s, and smoke a cigarette. You smoke a joint; pour a drink to sit with you through the night. You finish your drink on accident, pour another and finish your smoke or what have you and your drink and grab that old copy of Crime and Punishment that got ruined for you by another book you only read the first forty-eight pages of before quitting. You put B.B. King on the stereo—his voice is the desert at night. You pour another drink and have half of it right on the spot before walking away from everything to sit down for a massive all-expulsive exorcism in the bathroom.
As you sit down on your green porcelain throne, your ex girlfriend calls your cell phone. You try to screen the call, but that doesn’t work. She keeps calling, so you eventually answer, even though you’re sure it can’t be good.
“Why are you calling me now?”
She starts by saying her Pomeranian is in heat and it needs to be fixed because it won’t stop trying to hump her leg. She ends up saying she’ll meet you wherever your dime buys her drinks tonight and she’ll fuck you there. Only she doesn’t call it fucking. She calls it nailing the bunny, as in “If you’re good you can nail the bunny for me tonight, sweetheart”. You can’t make shit like that up; you wish you had a tape recorder, but even if you did, you were caught with your pants around your ankles.
You tried to tell her you have important things in life that are demanding your attention, but you’ll call her. She starts to argue as you rip the wind wide open like a motorcycle goosing its engine, echoing on your bathroom tile walls. The ensuing silence was heavy on you both, the heart of a fucking brick wall chained around your throats. You would have died but it was your ex. She once endured a few blasts in the name of love.
After long moments that you did not breathe during for fear of laughter and disgrace something snapped. You finally told her you were drunk and high on speed and marijuana and you ate a gristly steak that was the greatest steak you ever had, tough knots of cartilage in the meat bought with all you had left to your name. You told her that Kevin was dead. “I knew Kevin” was all she said before you told her that’s sad, but you really wanted to listen to B.B. King and try to read Crime and Punishment even though fucking Heller ruined it for you in the first thirty pages of Catch 22. You said you could get laid right now if you wanted, all you have to do is call someone and a bunny will be nailed up shortly but that wasn’t true accept sometimes at night. You said you weren’t going to complain anymore, said you wouldn’t have the time to spend with her in the future. You tell her that might be the best thing possible for the both of you.
She agrees.
She doesn’t argue or bring up a dog or a nailed bunny. You are glad she didn’t as you might have even said you were sorry to her, tried to solicit a bunny nailing invite, or you might have even asked her what happened to end it between you two. Might. But you didn’t; instead you were content with the closure provided by an unexpected release.
And she agrees.
Blending the Shades
It’s sad when someone takes down a picture, of an ex wife or ex girl friend, or other excommunication of the spirits they once engendered in their home for the sake of love. To remove from sight any visual
reminders is a sound way of
trying to forget or change
your heart’s old world order
But that bright clean white spot
that the air could not get to long enough
to stain with the essence of every human being
who ever woke up, ate, talked, drank
laughed, spit or screamed
in love or unlove
or made love
or just fucked in your cozy little home
to infect it’s clean, frame shaped
surface untouched by steaming breath
since time immemorial—like that place
on you heart that you had when you were younger
it could use another cote of paint
like the awful walls of your home
that needed to be knocked down
and rebuilt from time to time
but each time was only white washed
or dirty beigewashed
or a nightmare entropy washed
that made you sleep best
laying face on a school desk
but you don’t as that shade of love
suits you enough to try
and come to it’s terms—
sometimes painting everything else
to match it’s remembered splendor
before another picture hanging hope
Of course alcohol will help all this
It often makes the walls look
a paler shade of love
for a time
any color fits as long as it goes on
easy enough to be done by morning
and it’s too late to worry
you live with it
until you grow used to it
or find a shade to suit your taste
even the old picture now means nothing more
than broken glass and shattered wood frame
as the colors blend together on your forlorn walls
pulling you down for a nap, tired old bastard
until the morning and the hangover
hung over that pale spot
bleeds through the paint
in its former glory
Hope you are well. Yep I'm fightin' the good fight.
I am what ever you think I am!
Just like you and em.
You're a great writer.
That's what I think you are.
oops. got a little too drunk, eh? Not to bad for one-eye, eh m?Left a crap last line on the poem, though. Damn those shitty first drafts.
Her face is half darkness becoming
infinite and alive through the aether
a mind; trapped, separate, darkness
Imagine a voice, a gift
as a pane of ice pure, cool
Golden crowned anansi
so supple your web spun round
each strand a thought
silent, a line, an idea
darkness looming, done for.
so far from the Jamaica plain
of her birth--deus ex machina
goddess in the shade, on the floor
with eyes as my own in the night
would she search the mirror still?
Her measure; horizontal, midnight blood
hidden though her grave is
in the eyes of the world
lovely, star crown of heaven's wish
--would she hate these very words?
--would I speak them to the darkness?
I am no suscimct Gabriel; infinity
good morning, m! that was a poem to Sylvia Plath.
I was half asleep and jarred myself completely awake with the idea.
I wonder if she likes it?
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