Redneck Shaman

One of my favorite book series is the Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel. The main character, Ayla, has always spoken to me for some reason but not so much as she has for the last year. Basically, she is a Cro-magnon child adopted and raised by a Neanderthal family. She struggles with being different while growing up and finally she has to be true to her own nature. As a result, they curse her with death and cast her out on her own. As she went through the motions of trying to survive and unlearning childhood behaviors, she would say to herself, I'm already dead, so what difference does it make what rules I'm breaking now? I find myself thinking similar thoughts as I try to rebuild my own life, almost utterly alone.  Not quite though, because I have had friends I can count on who have been there for me.    I've learned that I am empathetic, forgiving, and genuinely kind. I'm flaky as shit sometimes and while I try to minimize it, I am still learning copi...

Then there comes the day where you realize you have given your last fuck about a situation.  I wonder which one it was ..I might have said a proper goodbye to it. It fucks you up a little at first, I think. Like, you sit there, and you think I "should" give a fuck.  I used to give a fuck.  But, I honestly seriously cannot find one fuck to give anymore. You might even like..look around your chair or something to see if maybe you dropped it on the floor.  Nope.  Not there either. Then you think..holy shit, I'm truly free!  At peace, even. I get a little paranoid after that..I think, what if I'm just smoking really good weed right now, and I really do give a fuck? Nope. Not about that. I'm saving my fucks for important stuff.  It's a heady feeling to realize that you came out on the other side of a bad situation with your...self intact. I have spent the last year getting to know myself again.  Sounds dumb, but it's part of self-healing. I ga...

50 Year Old Women        A friend of mine asked the other day who was “thirstier” lesbians or or men.  My response is women over the age of 50. Do you want to know why?  Because we know we can’t get pregnant.  For real. Men, if you dump your woman when she turns 50 for a younger model, you done fucked up, and I don’t mean financially, although, she’s happy to take your money too. Women after the age of 50 turn into sexual freaks!  That freak you think you want in the 20-year-old who doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing?  Seriously, why do men do that?  Is it fun to have to teach someone new how to please you?  Why do you think middle aged women suddenly take up yoga and other fitness activities?  So, they can have the stamina for more sex. You see, we spent all those years paying the price for the sex we had.  Either we had kids, or we stressed about not having kids or both. Do you know ...

I was talking with a friend the other day.  She's a very smart, motivated and talented lady.  I admire her greatly. She mentioned something in particular that made me think.  She said she once took some time off from the world. We all need to do that.  In this fast-paced world, we have forgotten how to just be.  Words like self-care and other words are bandied about and it can get confusing. The concept is a simple one.  You can't take care of anything else unless you take care of yourself first.  You have to be able to feed yourself, make messes, clean up your own messes, learn what makes YOU thrive as a person. If you aren't thriving, if you aren't well-balanced, you cannot begin to nourish another and be any kind of real help to them. I think many of us get caught up in taking care of others before we learn how to take care of ourselves properly. There's a reason kids are supposed to go out in the world.  There's a reason they have ...

What the hell happens to men in New Orleans?  I swear to you some juju gets into them in that City. Maybe it isn't just men.  Do you realize what we do for some plastic beads? This gives me a lot of faith in humanity that we would show our chests and all kinds of other depraved things..for some 25 cent plastic beads.  And they probably are like penny plastic beads. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong.  But seriously the first time I went with my husband of 20+ years he changed into a different person. This fella, who has not cared for gew gaws the entire time we've been married, bent over and picked up some beads that were laying on the ground, covered in God only knows what, and presented them to me like they were made out of the rarest diamond. And they were broken, to boot. He held these things out and expected me to worship him for the God that he was.  And, you know what I did?  I took those nasty beads, twisted ...

I was relaxing with my husband the other day.  We were reclining on our bed enjoying postcoital relations. I was proud.  I had done a lot of work to make the bedroom an oasis of love. The air was permeated with the smell of Tahitian flowers, there was a splash of yellow on the bedspread to add brightness to the gray of winter. The bathroom and fixtures were gleaming with cleanliness. The sun was shining brightly through the window in a stronger than the usual weak sunlight of winter. We connected.  Well, I thought we had anyway. Maybe no so much.  I am very sensitive to his body language and when he started getting melancholy, I didn't understand. Then he said when it got warmer, he was going to help me take care of the cars and whatnot. I looked and saw what he saw and all I could think is "Darling, you are looking out of the wrong window."

I can't sleep and what I do when I can't sleep...is write. I am confused and broken and more than a little feral. Where did it start?  When did it start?  Am I righteous in my anger or just angry? Is anger my new default?  What about fear? Where did the capacity for compassion and love go? Was it stolen?  Am I truly crazy? At the end of the day, do I  like myself? I was woken up by a song playing in my head this morning.  I'm smart.  I know the answers to these questions, yet I can't prove it definitively. In this day and age if there isn't empirical evidence, then there is doubt.