Lauryn Hill...now there is a sexy mama...

I really mean it too. It is so nice to hear someone with an ego bigger than mine, makes me feel better about myself...Of course my inflated ego is a much more private endeavor, AND it is constantly being assailed. How is it that some of us are just born thinking that we are right even if we're not? While others, often _are_ right and they keep it all to themselves?
I have learned, just a little, that you can't always get what you want... but I find that what you need doesn't take very much effort at all, it just sort of falls out of the sky into your lap or your soup.

What exciting things will I be machinating for this evening? Well, as a reward for my diligent advancing of evil research project, I will indulge in my favorite form of self medication, oh and I'll probably have some MJ too... what? We should all know that my fav form of self-medication is _not_ substantial but rather essential, the losing of myself in the being a song...
I found a book of poems and songs among my things and while I never wrote down the music, I _do_ still remember it all. Most of it is silly Peace and Love stuff. No that's not true, there is a song written to a good woman, incidentally named Luna, (before the name carried the significance that it does for me now) who was brutally attacked and her girlfriend murdered with an ice-pick wielding midnight bike thief in the sleepy town of Rose Valley (no, not Thorn Valley). And it remains (and I think forever will) an a capella song, along the lines, and probably for the same reasons as "Me and a Gun" and "Behind the Wall" .
A lament cannot be instrumentalized. Period. Just the wobbling voice of a woman against the sky. Funny, when I wrote it, I had never really experienced, first-hand, the violence that tormented me. Now that I have, it just feels more urgent. I wonder if I will ever be able to record that, and the Water-goddess song... when we were playing with Maria, Bryan, Sean and Reid we tried to re-arrange it, but the vaguely funk/ electronic soounding crap was just that, it lost the spiritual searching part of it, turning it into just a song. Ho-hum. I guess it is a good thing she decided she needed to be a Diva.

I am remembering the gig M. had for the PMC big rollers (cyclists raising money... can be a good thing, sometimes, I guess, but man, some people just take themselves way too damn seriously) at Moakley Court house over-looking the harbor, and the sad look I must have had on my face to invite the unwanted attention of the aging cyclist, I was just imagining falling over the edge of the balcony and he strutted up with his Martini, seeing what he could get. It is funny, I played the game for a few minutes before telling him that my husband was sitting right behind... did it feel good to have someone pay me some attention? probably. No, I don't think I was even remotely interested in hearing about his bike-commute among the wild "big-dig" traffic patterns, but it was nice to not hear my own voice for once. That was the last time I saw Maria. I think that was why I was sad. I had been prohibited from seeing her after her inconsiderate retreat from the band, and really in terms of being a good friend, she was rather self-ish, I just didn't seem to care, or notice before, loving the sound of our voices together too much to notice the lack of reciprocity in the friendship. Also, we tend to give people we love the benefit of the doubt for far too long.

I think it is just sad when that benefit snaps like a brittle bone, utterly irreplaceable... Then even getting a $500 an hour gig for your "friends" doesn't cut it. The uncomfortable explanations, and the bright eyes, tears withheld. The classical guitar behind me, and the blabbering divorcé... and Luna, who never had justice... and the majestic sterility of the court-house, where those who have can pay for justice, and those who have not, well, they see their last moment of freedom fly out the enormous plate glass windows into the tempestuous harbor.

It is funny, though, that I can go from devilishly scheming to morose melancholy in the space of 4 paragraphs. I think that it is just that the melancholy is constantly hovering, and the diabluras are just ways to chase it...It is like flicking matches at a mammoth wave that is rolling in over your head. Terribly useless and backwards.

I look at the back of my right hand, I can barely discern the cigarrette burn that I asked Leo to put there, dared him really, you probably couldn't see it if you didn't know it was there, playing Truco, drinking espresso, even then I knew the end was lurking just behind the sparkling beginning, that is why I asked him to permanently brand me, so the reminder of the destruction would serve as its own precursor.

I remember as I look at my bitten finger-nails the lapse of a year, when I _stopped_ myself! I stopped myself biting them, for A., he wanted me to be more womanly. (Nothing like an external motivator to acheive what we never would want to do on our own) He wanted me to be someone I was not, and all I wanted was for him to be who he was, I thought, but then who he was didn't turn out to be who I thought. I promised myself then that I would never genuflect to the will of anyone else, for the gift of perceived love, but as is expected I failed myself miserably in that promise too. I put lip-stick on, I painted my nails, and then later I bowed to the fantasies of others never questioning what my own was. What fantasies do I have? They must be dead, I couldn't remember ever thinking I had a right to fantasies... I probably don't...

Daily, I just try to hold it together, wishing that to live didn't hurt so damn much. Why does it hurt so much, like an open wound is constantly being ripped at. Prometeo c'est moi? How dramatically self-centered... It's not the shackles that others impose upon us, but rather the ones we impose on ourselves that hurt the most. And I think that for now, I am done.