So many years have passed, a decade really, since I worked this blog site. I remember those daysin SE DC, my son was so small, a third grader, and that apartment was cute but really just a shell. And Badness and Mr.Blake were my cats and I was -as now- terminally single. The difference is, now that I have been through the fire of emotional abuse and come out the other side scathed, raw, and finally healed, I am much happier even if I am greyer and warier of myself and others. Wary, but no longer scary and mad. So there is that. Why did I stop blogging when I used to look for opportunities to get home so I could post my pictures and write on this site? Ah, yes, the advent of social media and Facebooking. What an opportunity FB provided and how exciting it was to reunite with practically everyone from my international school past! Unfortunately the attention span for writing turned into a 140 character affair - and I don't Twitter. Here's the truth, though. I liked blogging here and I will start this site up again as of TODAY. So there. First things first, though, I will finish this coffee, go home and get to meditating (it's my new juice) and walking my Siberian Husky, Ruby, and get to work because I'm on a deadline and these bills no longer pay themselves (that's another post). I also want to redesign this site. It should be fun tooling around blogspot to see if I can make it look more like a wordpress site LOL. Ugh. I can see already that my writing has taken on a status-like feel.

Re-Blog

I am going to shut this blog down within the next few days. Going to redesign and revamp and reblog for the first time in ages.

Rehabitation

Moving back into this blog.

I believe in magic and angels and clusters of notes falling from the heavens. Aisha said if I believed enough I will feel them sprinkling onto and into me. Now is the time to revisit all I've taken for granted. Twenty-seven years of clinging to The Scary Nothing fossilized the original good in me.

Princess Charming

Princess Charming by The Abundant Creature

Waist down in leather is just this short of gna-gna, or fashion no-no to the unitiated. There's just something so right about it when you find a vintage Adam and the Ants tee-shirt, though. No need to do your hair, but a crimson and turqoise cocktail ring is de rigeur and screams fancy, so play down the lipstick with a nude glint of shine. Same for the nails. Pretend that your handsome with some metallic sea tones on the top lids and get ready to crank the stacks to eleven.
Princess Charming by The Abundant Creature

PaganArts Promo Video

Recently I realized how removed from the real world I am. Politics and environmental damage have always been interests. These days I am more confident

38 Special

The longer I stay away from this blog the harder it is to write. Back in the early days I couldn't wait to get home to post something. And once I'd posted I couldn't wait to get up and out with my Fuji to document my life. Now it's hard for me to eek out an entertaining paragraph.

Becoming a New Yorker

My mother told me that I'm becoming like a New Yorker. Hard edged. Back up against the wall. Spiteful. All or nothing. And she's not quite amused by this, because it's not natural to the girl she knows.

Years ago, when I was a sunny, ever smiling twenty-something, Claude, who had recently turned sxty, told me that people in their thirties and forties were "shit". That they were too consumed with houses and jobs and getting ahead to give of their time, ears, hands or hearts. And so he spent his pension financed afternoons at the KultuurKaffee playing Chess with the Flemish grad students. I even saw him at the Tappers Fuif ("keg party"). Danced by him

Will Day One Ever Come?

The absolute worst thing about addiction is the stench of when that hovers over everything I do.

Will Day One Ever Come?

The absolute worst thing about addiction is the stench of why

Intersection

Back in DC's Golden Triangle, working another wildly exciting temp gig, deep into the matrix, thankful to have a weekly check. In the afternoon I make sure to leave this place of delight and stretch my cubicle cramped legs by walking the bustling city blocks. Today's sun shone brighter than it has in a couple of weeks which made for pleasant strolling. I stood across from Lafayette Park and noticed the doors of the White House were open, perhaps they are spring cleaning (there's a lot of trash in there that needs to be thrown out)?

The sun gently patted the top of my head as I strode down H St admiring the newly planted tulips, the Grecian inspired lampposts outside the Chamber of Commerce, the delicious scent of java emitting from in front of the Cosi. I was revelling in District Love, a rare spell cast in spring light, when I saw a tall gentlemen in a fancy black top hat walking across the street in front of my office building. "Poor bugger" I thought noticing as he sat down on the sidewalk that one of his eyes was sewn shut. I reached into my wallet to give him a dollar thinking, "well,we all gotta work"."

"Thanks Lady' he said, keeping strict panhandling etiquette and not touching the inside of my palms as he scooped the change. It was his voice I remembered.
"Raifert? Remember me, from Capital Park?"
He nodded mutely and then cleared his throat.
"Tiger gone."

That would be the woman who bum rushed his house with her three young sons and turned it into Crack Central.

"How are you Raifert? Do you still stay there?"
"Naw, this my home now."
"You make it to the park for dinner when the nuns come?"
" Nuns ain't been out there for a minute, but when they out I make sure to eat. You got a menthol cigarette for me?'
I could see rheumy liquid from the stitches in his eye.
"You know I always smoked Marlboros, Raifert."
He shook his head and nodded thanks to a man who had just given him a nickel.
"Fuck that shit. Rather quit. Gimme one."
So I did and we smoked and watched the traffic, the tourists coming up the street from the White House, my coworkers streaming back into the building.
"Well, I gotta go Raifert. Good seeing you."
"Yeah, nice to see you old neighbor."
"Yeah, stay outta trouble, y'heard?"
The little umber feather in his top hat waved at me as he laughed. "All I gots is trouble, baby girl. That's all I gots. You work up in here?"
My turn to nod.
Raifert laughed so hard more goop ran out of his eye.
"Looks like we is co-workers now girl!"

March Fourth, a day to go forward

All of the stuff is packed and ready for the new space. Here I go again. I'm really excited to change my life completely from here on out. Otherwise I think the stress will kill me!

Shit on her face

It's abundantly clear. I've got to get away from the people I am around. They are bad. They are fucking assholes. They are MEN.

A Stitch in Time

This photograph of my maternal grandmother Julia was taken in the late 1940's, probably in Louisville, KY. I will ask my mother if she knows the where and when.
My grandmother Julia was the first piano player in the family, as everybody reminded me when I was young and showing promise. Up until finding this picture I had forgotten she was a needle wielder, though I now remember her giving me a rose colored sweater --- perhaps crocheted? I don't remember, it was so long ago and obscured by the intricate intarsia and fair isle cardigans gifted to me by my paternal, Scottish, granny. But I was much closer to grandma. I remember her telling me "a pretty girl is a dime a dozen" and "I was country before country was cool". She would also laugh uproariously --- like I do --- when telling the story of The Afro That wouldn't Stand and how the train porters would warn her "Ma'am you're in the colored section". She was one of the most beautiful women I've ever known or seen, and I miss and love her love her love her.

Goodbye 613

This is the end of the band. This is the end of the coupled hand. This is the end of the harvest land. This is my ego on remand. This is the lift off of new demand.

Bootie Fest Oh Eight

delicate booties
My son turned 11 a couple of weeks ago and is in such a curious hurry to get grown. He has a special girl, tiny clusters of brand new pimples faintly dotting his chin, an obsession with his MP3 player and the telephone. There's no interest in being clutched and cuddled by his kissy-kissy momma.

My friends are taking their couplings to that biological next step, and it's making me broody. I can smell new baby at the top of my nostrils just thinking about them. A little girl would be so wonderful to....have? Now you know it's a whole lot more than that ....

What I do have is a burgeoning knitting stash that's beginning to get on my boyfriend's nerves. "Why don't you ever finish anything?" is a natural question when you see the proliferation of skeins and hanks spilling out of the small closet in our even smaller bedroom. Of course I get defensive. Most of my purchases these days have been of the cheap, craft store variety. Acrylic skeins at under $5 a hank. He should not complain. My local yarn store is four times more expensive, which is why I haven't been there in five months.

What happens when you mix equal portions of broodiness with unused stash? "Bootie Fest 2008".
I'm starting with a pattern from Precious Baby Booties by Carolyn Christmas. I've decided to crochet the first pair for a more structured shoe. Being the loosest needle wielder in the universe means I had to swatch carefully, and ended up going down two needle sizes (E) which is normal for my hands.

These boots knit up super quickly, about an hour per boot with snack breaks. The first boot ended up an un-photographable disaster. That's because I didn't count diligently when making the sole. I ended up with a turning hole and it wasn't big enough when I fastened off which I didn't check for. Seeming the sole to the body of the bootie is careful work as the pattern calls for you to sew through the back loops only, which I was able to do successfully only until hitting the first turn. I'm taking more careful now, which is one of the greatest joys of this hobby. It's so pointless and time consuming and fun. Which is kind of like procreating, raising kids and being alive!

Well hello there Blog....

This blog has been neglected. This blog forgotten. This blog an idea that rarely visits anymore. There are no cookies in the larder, no welcoming red tapis for a blog as lonely as this one. This is the bog of all blogs.

Next Time

Next time I won't hurry
Next time I won't fall
Next time I'll respect myself
Next time I'll stand tall

Last Minute Blog Entry: Jet

Whilst cleaning out my computer today I found some old writing that never made it onto the blog site. Here are brief, unfinished glimpses of an abundant 2007:

OK. I can verify the alacricity and thoroughness of www.craigslist.org but if there was one thing the Abundant One would want her gentle readers to pack away in their little bloggy bags it is this: caution.

View Exhibit A: Flegette Munyon Rippey my current roommate thanks to Craig’s cornucopia. Shortly after my brief stay at Washington Hospital’s Psychiatric “visiting” ward I had to get out of Anacostia. There wasn’t any money in wallet and school and family pressures were building to a climax. M.A.B was walking around Southeast, making his presence felt. Joanne and I were embroiled in an angry standoff, which would end with the loss of my brilliant purple hooded parka and fab Kowloon Go-Go boots. Hopefully you’ve never “gotten” this picture. In September 2007, such was my life.

Anyhoo, it’s helpful to type 85WPM and “know my [sic] way around the Internet”. Chick. Tsack. 85 year old man needs tenant to wipe his ass. In exchange will provide furnished rooms and Ensure breakfasts… no, not really, instead I found Jet.

Our first conversation: spark off the motherfucking cosmic match head. That whole Gemini/Leo/Fire/Air thingy (read: my mother, Lu, various nightclub Queens well versed in the Bitchy Arts™ - good for a night of well mischief). She wanted Gay friendly? Hey! My son had served as a ring bearer in my friend Bryan’s union ceremony and my boyfriend was living with two gay men! She was “in sales”. I was “in school”. Somehow we managed to get from “that’s so cool we both smoke cigarettes” to a coy “ohmigod I also smoke pot from time to time!!”. Hey, tonight looks good, she invited us and after a Metro ride made wavy through the magic of Geodon Will and I were walking down the alley off of Kansas Avenue….for the first time.

It’s hard to wade through the mental thicket back to that place after ten months and – we’d have to confess it – numerous Def Leppard “F-F-F-Foolin’” sing-a-longs later. Hey, I’d be re-miss if I didn’t state before I dive into the familiar refrain of “Oh my room mate drives me craaaazy” that I like Jet.

When she’s not drunk, which happens on a daily or at least every other. She likes to pull the grey office chair a foot away from the Panasonic’s 50” screen and drain two Sam Adams with a fifth of Jim Beam. Please believe I wouldn’t spew vitriol about her addiction between my seven “Euro” joints every night spent when Jet’s in the same state. Wouldn’t have a single thing to write about if she wouldn’t make it intricate with her snide remarks which occur mid-way through the end of the Adams’ and the start of the Beam. Common themes include how snooty I am. How I don’t know anything. How she’s such an asshole, a loner and how she knew when I first called her that I would be like her little sister, but not one she would like in a sexual way even though her type was light skin, eyes, etc.,

This is heavy to write right now. She’s in front of that Panasonic watching a Heroes re-run and the soundtrack’s a symphony of sadness. While her back’s been turned I’ve been staring at her with my face contorted like a Balinese mask of anger: die bitch, die bitch…

Four days ago Jet woke up and decided she had had enough of me and Will and resolved to hate us to our graves. No lie. I can’t even believe it and I’m not being sentimental, I am the die bitch mask, remember ;) Listen, web trawlers, I am a whole lotta crazy but making up room mate drama isn’t my skein. And I’m woman enough too, yes I am! , to grant that it’s her right as an earthing, American, the gay black lesbian she always titles herself to be to decide who the hell she wants to fuck with on a regular or not. So she wakes up and doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore, whatever.

We’ve had more fun than just the singing, many nights of great conversation and fun, laughs, and silly goings on. She’s even told me that she wanted to kill herself on many, many an occasion – over the senseless murder of the only man who she ever loved, the only friend she ever had whose name was, curiously, Sam. The thing about Jet is the same afternoon you think you’ve made a really good friend leads into an evening when you have to challenge her in front of your landlord because you overheard her telling him that she doesn’t have the rent because she’s been “supporting” you and your boyfriend.

And then she left her job, not even because it was paying only $165 or something per week. Quit….because. And you took her to that telemarketing farm job casting call, where she was booted because she wore jeans when you told her not to. You went into “mother mode” and marched her across the street to Target where she tried on a couple of pairs of polyester office pants, got a blouse and pair of shoes. She protested and promised to return, well dressed, in a few days, it’s true. But you knew she could get the job today, needed the job today to pay Jerry the landlord, and why not help a friend? Besides, you could return the clothes to Target and get your money back and if not, well, Merry X-mas if she gets the job we’ll work it out.

Three weeks into training she loses the job. It’s now June and she hasn’t worked except for three weeks at some scammy little so-called “re-mortgaging” telephone farm for ten hours a week, hating it from day one. Crying in the night, rocking back to forth in the grey chair while I sat next to her in the dog stained living room, howling over how Dawn left her, why can’t she get over her pain…

Cherry Onion Pie

From the bakery window you're salivating, so sure that that slice is going to banish hunger forevermore. It's interesting the things you manifest without intending to. You think you're getting cherry pie...and then you find out they put onions in the crust. So then you don't want what you wanted any longer. "Wahahahaha....woe is me....this is too pungent!" Unbeknownst to you the allium in the crust that you swear is giving you gas is busy anti oxidizing a cold germ that was about to sprout on your top lip.

The Abundant One is manic. Crazy. Colors swirling. Shapes winking. Memories blending with reality. The voices in my head won't stop, don't stop. And above it all the little boy who needs his mother to stop the insanity. The mask back on. Cracked. Tears of a clown. Walking in the street bawling. A bird sits on a wire.

I'm moving into Facebook land....

Many have accused me of living on Facebook --- they use the same tone of voice I do when I catch a fool watching The Apprentice. It's not like I can move into my profile page! But then I got to thinking and must agree it would be a pretty good idea. My page has delicious Asian food, a bar, a bakery and when I get bored just hop on the Travel map. I could sleep in the picture box, snoring away during the day, turning into a chump biting vampire every twenty-four hours. The only irritation might be the noise from all my favorite artists but I won't complain because Bob Marley lives five frames down!!!!. All my dearest friends from all over the world have moved into the same complex and have welcomed me with magical money plants and eggs that hatch Bichon Frisees that don't poop because Facebookland is so clean and well designed. Best of all, that luddite who ate my self confidence for kicks doesn't even know it exists!

A lot of people have avoided me since the BIG....PUBLIC revelation of my bipolar illness. Sometimes it hurts to sit and think about all the fiction in my head. What I mean by that is, there are people I think of as my closest friends, but if you were to look at my recent call list you can always find Alan and Jane. So I will lavish them with accolades in this post. Because they listen to me rant and rave and scream and cry and laugh and "conversate" and I can (and do and will) call them at any time of the day or night. And they'll take the call. You got that?

I realize a lot of people, myself included, wonder about the wisdom of "putting it all out there" on a public blog. There are posts that slag off family members, old friends, and let's never forget the fact that this blog is only truly abundant when my heart is weeping over That Man That Man That Maaaaaan

Tape Loop

Your words run a tape loop, ringing, modulating: "Loving you brought me down. All you ever do is beg and borrow. You've never done anything in the two years I've been wtih you. I was warned about you. Get out of my face." I try to shore up happier memories but your criticism and frowns are all I grasp. You fucked me and I've given birth to a broken heart.

Last Moment before Oz

I've never believed in all of that "If you can only count five friends on one hand at the end of your life than you are fortunate" advice. If you can only count five people as friends after an average lifetime it is fact you were a meansumbitch and glad you're gone!

That isn't to say ALL of your friends will stay with you until that last, dieing moment. But when you're looking up at that Tin Woodsman turned your neighbor who's volunteered to change your colostomy bag or what have you, the memories of all the love and fun spent with funky friends along the way will help lift you into that cyclone headed for the way beyond.

Sleep Deep, Feel Light

The beauty of getting to sleep every night at 11 is only surpassed by the gorgeousness that is the morning light hitting my eyes at 6:15 each A.M. The first week of sleep light therapy was exhausting, falling asleep - as is my habit of the past three years - at 2:40 in the morning only to be jolted into a difficult day by the blam blam of the alarm clock. And then my body and brain began to respond so that now, two weeks into the therapy, I find myself genuinely getting tired at ten o'clock, sleeping by eleven, even on a Saturday Night!

As boring as that sounds let the record show that I have lost four pounds in the past week without dieting. Plenty of rest and hitting the yoga mat first thing for a vigorous round of Surya Namaskars. As the finances are tight my nutrition hasn't been that great - though enjoyable considering one day my meals consisted of Galler chocolate hand delivered from Bruxelles. I'm still smoking like a whore in jail, but the local lock up -- not Rikers. Life is as stressful as ever -- housing issues, interpersonal relationships,money money money...still, I am not freaking out about anything and the worst of the anxiety like responses has stopped. Best of all I haven't cried in over ten days !

Sunday Sunday Sunday

We spent this day doing fun things: petting the dogs and cats who came to greet us as we walked down to the corner store to buy brunch ingredients; playing with the blue ball that works for basketball and soccer; making fun of the way Mom runs when she's trying to play soccer; and tweaking old photographs of me when I was four at Slide.com. -JM