Meet Art

I love this recycled scrap-wood art the guy was selling;
sandblasting winds be damned!

How are you today?
Great, how are you?
Psychotic, but in a good way!

I picked the goddess balanced with both male and female power, as he jubilantly explained.
I got to kiss his statue for luck
and he welcomed some Hannah/Patches ashes into his man-bag.
My purchase brought him 15$ closer to his goal for the day;
I pray he met that goal with great Joy.
Art of the Goddess, for the Goddess, by Art.
It's even signed.
I am so blessed.

Venice Beach Drum Circle

Out of the Tatooine-like sandstorm that was the Venice Beach Boardwalk,
Joy Observed Joy Multiplied...Relocate the joy, and it still multiplies...The power of the human spirit cannot be quashed by man nor god.

Thematic Photographic - Drink 3

Good Mornin' Los Angeles!
Ain't it funny how much better the coffee tastes if someone makes it for you??
Thanks Christine! Thanks Gary!
Thanks coffee growers & pickers & roasters & transporters!

Wanna play along?

Thematic Photographic - Drink 2

Break out the meds, diana's in town! ♥
Thematic Photographic details here

Thematic Photographic - Drink

Sushi and Beer, just the way Mitch liked his dates with Christine.
~♥~
My first foray into this photography project.

Contrary Meme

Stolen from Jeff Sabo,
who openly admits to stealing from Frank Maier and Laura Flynn Endres
feel free to steal from me ♥
__________________________________________________________
15 Things you DISLIKE, HATE or CAN'T STAND & everyone else seems to like/love

1. FOOD
The very best Tamales made by YOUR grandmother. Still gross.
(same goes for her specialty dish containing any variety of internal organs)

2. DRINK
sports drinks (really, they don't make your teeth itch?)
anything containing artificial sweeteners (you can't taste that, that, that chemical haze in the back of your tongue?)
beer (there are more pleasant ways to obtain a buzz, lots of them)

3. BAND/MUSIC GROUP/SINGER
It used to be that I didn't like Mitch's music - White Zombie on our first date - so when he insisted on playing EZ E for me, I insisted on singing along... something about those words coming out of *my* mouth convinced him that maybe that wasn't the best soundtrack for our life. I still know all the words.

4. SEASON
Summer vacation season - I don't want to be anywhere where everyone is going to be at the same time. Sweaty crowds are not my thing.

5. SPORT
American Football. Kickers specifically, because they're not *allowed* to be tackled, they're from Italy: Fragile. Eat turf or get off the field, I say <3 Play REAL *foot*ball with the rest of the globe.

6. MOVIE
I refused to the The Titanic at the theatre, Joanna saw it more than 15 times. Good, yeah; great, nah. I'm not a big fan of Donny Darko nor the Saw series.

7. ACTOR
JIM CARREY. If I hadn't ever seen him be sweet on Jenny and her son, I'd want to run him over with my car. Luckily, I'd just rather never see him acting on any screen in my life again.

8. ACTRESS
The brainless ones, ya know like how I used to like that guy from Northern Exposure until he started dating Bo Derek, who makes Farrah Fawcett look intelligent...

9. TV SHOW
ER - I have pictures of myself on set at Warner Brothers; I still miss Chicago Hope with Mandy Patinkin ('ello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you have killed my father, prepare to die).

10. BOOK
Eat Pray Love It's a joke by now, everyone I know has read it and enjoyed it on some level. I've received two paper copies and the audio version. I don't know why, I'm a voracious reader cum listener who's tolerated far worse... even the insipid, truly insipid, Memoirs of a Geisha, and still can't make it past the old guy's house in India.

11. CAR
Anything new that sucks gas! My 20+ year old Honda car got 30+ mpg, it's obscene that there's any car made today with less!!
oh, and I think the new rounded Volvos are hussies.

12. HOLIDAY
Memorial Day* we're so busy in the country that we had to schedule a day off work so people could remember those who've died before - really?! That just seems sad sick and wrong to me - and to the folks who only get their headstones washed and read on the last Monday in May.
*with the caveat that you use it to Remember My Birthday

13. WEATHER
Strong sun, especially on the beach.
My whiteness loves the overcast, rainy beaches in Oregon - with bonfires, of course!

14. COLOR.
Black - not a big fan of sharing my lint collection with the world, nor investing my hard earned cash on lint removal -- lint camouflage is the best investment!

15. RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY
Hiking... though this may change in light of the recent HUGE increase in physical movement of diana - mostly I like camping where you drive up, unload your car and camp :)

Dance with Death, part ii

Gramma Bunnie, the ironically nicknamed ex-wife of the aforementioned Grampa Harm and mother to my mother, had a little brother named Uncle Lydell. He's our family's encyclopaedic entry for Asshole.
We'd spend nearly every Sunday of my young life in their mother's home, Gramma Emma, in a tiny town 18 miles away. There were two kinds of Sundays at Gramma Emma's house: Drunk and Angry or Happy and Peaceful; the happy/peaceful version usually included homemade cake and scoops of icecream from the deep freeze in it's own dedicated room. It's easy to guess my favorite kind of day. The positive food reinforcement didn't work though. Uncle Lydell still showed up. He was still angry. He was still medicating his pain with a lot of alcohol. And he didn't much care who knew he was upset, he needed to GET IT OUT!!! So he did.
On those days, I don't remember what it was that got the man so freaking upset, though I was glad to know it wasn't me (one less pissed-at-you-adult was a freaking sacred gift in my world). I'd just sit under Great-Gramma's sideboard and play with the molded plastic train piggy bank, discolored and smelly coloring books, broken crayon chunks, and a few other ancient toys we kept stashed there, just for these moments.
Lots of crying on those days, always the women; the men didn't step in and stop anything until the end, when they convinced him to go have a smoke and calm down.
It still wouldn't be safe to come out for a while, the weeping women would sometimes grab you up into their suffocating busoms, smelling like tears and misery, and it was just plain confusing; so unless I really needed to pee (and I could dart from my vantage point) I stayed put.
For hours.

Then Uncle Lydell met Karma. Though I bet if he described the situation for you himself, it's more like he met Karma-as-Kali, farm-style.
Deservedly so, my then 8-year-old-self decided and at 40, I still concur.
My inner child's version of the tale; for authenticity, I'm not verifying facts with the family, ymmv*:
Uncle Lydell was baling hay with a neighbor, when the neighbor was called away. Now, everyone knows that you're never to bale hay alone, it's way too dangerous. Lydell did it anyway. It was believed the twine meant to cinch the grass-cubes became tangled and, instead of turning off the machine to deal with it's malfunction, he reached into the running baler, the twine cinched his wrist, he was pulled into the machine and, consequently, his fat ass made the thing explode. They came to Aunt Mary with glasses-in-hand; glasses they found in the neighboring field.

I don't remember who told me, maybe I listened at the door while my mom retold the story for friends on the telephone. First thing I really remember is standing outside our green stucco house, outside the white picket fence, the sun shining on my face and I felt JOY! The next trip to Great-Gramma's was guaranteed to be a Happy and Peaceful one with Cake and Ice Cream Cones. I was getting too tall for the hidey-hole, anyway! I'd get to hear the windchimes over the voices, every.single.time. In that moment, I came to realize that Death could be a release, a happy, happy release. If not for the dead guy, for those who had to put up with him while alive.

Then I walked into the house.
Mom was crying. Gramma Bunnie was crying. People were sad. It made my skin crawl.
WHY? Feel what you really feel, for goodness sake people! We all hated the man, we're all glad he's gone, he'll never ruin another day at gramma's for us, why would that make you sad??!?!?!?!
Then I was just plain pissed. My parade was rained out by hypocritical tears and snotty nonsense. I didn't go to the funeral. I think Mom wanted to keep my giddiness at home. I kept my frustration and confusion to myself. To whom do you bring these feelings?
Again no one had anything to help me understand.
Alone, but for those niggling questions and a deep, burning desire to find different ways to do this whole death thing. There wasn't a lot to believe in, in my young life, but here I found faith, faith that I could move beyond what had been my experience, thus far. A faith that has proven unshakable.
____________________
*ymmv = your miles may vary

Unconscious Mutterings

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Sunburn :: Prevention
2. Aquarium :: not good in an earthquake
3. Otter :: Hearst Castle
4. Awesome :: Me! says Christopher Moore
5. LOL :: ROTFLMAO song
6. Accordion :: Grampa Bud
7. Hot Pocket :: Pleasure Chest
8. Grandstand :: Sioux Empire Fair
9. Shaved :: No Thanks
10. Upgrade :: Evolution

Top 25 of 1986

It's meme month for me (& Frank, it seems :::bg:::) So here's another one for ya!

Top 25 songs of the year I turned 18 - I almost posted the top 100 (I heard R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. on the radio, just last night) but it was indeed too embarrassing. Really! How much did we, uh, drink to make this music okay? or that hair? Frank, you should feel much better about too much otherFrank on your list, at least he didn't overdo the eyeliner!

For further entertainment, I've thrown in pictures of me on or near my 18th birthday, with gay-boyfriend Dave (Rita), best friend-turned-lesbian Becky, and my totally normal (not a testament to anyone's gayness, merely their abnormalities in general ::bg::) little cousin Trisha (mama to Bre) - oh! and gay Dave's boyfriend Ray. I graduated on my 18th birthday ♥ May 27, 1986

1. That's What Friends Are For, Dionne Warwick, Elton John, and Gladys Knight
2. Say You, Say Me, Lionel Richie
3. I Miss You, Klymaxx
4. On My Own , Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald
5. Broken Wings, Mr. Mister
6. How Will I Know, Whitney Houston
7. Party All The Time, Eddie Murphy
8. Burning Heart, Survivor
9. Kyrie, Mr. Mister
10. Addicted To Love, Robert Palmer
11. Greatest Love Of All, Whitney Houston
12. Secret Lovers, Atlantic Starr
13. Friends And Lovers, Carl Anderson and Gloria Loring
14. Glory Of Love, Peter Cetera
15. West End Girls, Pet Shop Boys
16. There'll Be Sad Songs, Billy Ocean
17. Alive And Kicking, Simple Minds
18. Never, Heart
19. Kiss, Prince and The Revolution
20. Higher Love, Steve Winwood
21. Stuck With You, Huey Lewis and The News
22. Holding Back The Years, Simply Red
23. Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel
24. Sara, Starship
25. Human, Human League

My Dance with Death, a foreword

It started as a comment on Melissa's blog, then expanded to it's own blogpost... as it lives in the draft file, this here tale grows and grows and grows. As I can only write it in chunks: chunks of emotion, of vocabulary, of memories, of time, so too will it be easier to read in chunks.
You are heretofore invited to participate in my first ever serial, err, serial something that just might turn into a real novel/memoir/book/ABC afterschool special/somethin, someday, though not today...

and so it begins:

Death, in my family's tradition, is the root of all hypocrisy; uh, not fair, mayhap Death merely casts away the shadows that hide our family's tradition of hypocrisy. At least, my first glimpse of hypocrisy came with my first taste of death. And death comes with an expensive lesson; every time. As Life partners with Death, so do I; in a Dance of Balance and Understanding.
I learned those first steps early in my life... perhaps from the very beginning, as I understand my mother's labor was sparked by the death of her grandparent. Born of Death, Bourne of Death, me.