This Sunday at Woman Made Gallery:

Sunday, October 3 ·
1:00pm - 3:00pm
Woman Made Gallery
685 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL



Myths, (S)heroes and Revolutionaries

Featured guests include Ching-In Chen, Maureen Flannery, Jenny Priego, Susan Slaviero and Kristen Uyeda. Curated by Nina Corwin.

The reading parallels the concurrent art exhibit: After Adelita, marking the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution:

”For many decades, the name Adelita has evoked multiple meanings. Various interpretations of Adelita identify her as a hero, a myth, and a revolutionary. Popular ballads tell the story of Adelita as a young woman who fought during the Mexican Revolution. While some believe that she is an actual historical figure, others see her as a composite of the many women who joined in battle during the Revolution. The image of a female revolutionary, with blouse, skirt, sombrero, and ammunition across her chest, serves as an iconic representation of the Revolution and of Mexican history. Songs, books, plays, films, and calendars have interpreted Adelita as a sex symbol, a brave champion of the people, and a proto-feminist."

news flash

I am still alive.

This is probably a good thing.

Blah, blah, blah & various

Perfect.

How I love that break in the work schedule, the mythical unicorn I call My Lovely Day Off.

I spent today making collage, writing, cooking (a pan of brownies, another pot of marinara sauce because Z and I seem to live on spaghetti dinners these days, a batch of Jasmine rice for frying up in the wok with veggies tomorrow) and just generally pretending to be human. I am worried about my sanity. I suspect I am showing the symptoms of premature menopause. I am sweating profusely even as I write this. I am always hot, and everybody else is bundled up in their hoodies. I feel strange, but this is nothing new. Perhaps I will wake up tomorrow sporting a spiral horn in the center of my forehead.

I spent a bit of time taking the Kid to & fro today, as I often do.

No doubt I shall dream tonight of my body imploding.

I found a recipe for potato waffles that sounds intriguing. But at the moment, I am full of spaghetti.

The next unicorn is due to arrive in six days. Rumor has it she likes buttered popcorn, rootbeer floats, and Japanese horror flicks.

I want to get dressed up and go dancing.

***

stats for 9-16-10

What I said to my mom on the phone today: "I feel like I'm living in a David Lynch film. I keep waiting for a severed ear to appear on the front lawn."

What I'm reading: Blogs and Cereal Boxes

What I'm feeling: Mood-swingy, Distracted

What I'm eating : Way too much spaghetti, peanut butter sandwiches with honey on whole wheat, Golden Delicious apples

Mired

And so today was one of those days when I realize we must all need a nemesis or two (nemesii?) because the universe keeps sending them to me. Really, I don't want them. No, thank you. My life is about to become overpopulated with bad. Yet, I smile and nod and say how lovely and try to remain awesome through it all.

I am still writing every day and this helps, especially because I am pondering the nature of horror with wild scenarios. I also fantasize about becoming a night baker and making bagels for a living. I like bagels. Plus, bagels make people happy. Unless they're crazy and don't like bagels, of course.

I am in that want to disappear kind of mood that is part hormones and part bad freaking day.

I bought some new scissors and two pairs of fishnet stockings because sometimes even the most enlightened need retail therapy. I also bought nectarines, which I really hope don't totally suck. There is something about stockings, scissors and nectarines that suggests femme fatale. No doubt my purchases mean something wicked and symbolic and Freudian. I smashed my finger today and it hurts like mad. The gods are conspiring against me.

I wish somebody would adopt me and give me my own room, a pink bicycle with a banana seat, and an allowance. I am feeling childish.

Hyper. Text.

I find it strange how writing makes me feel all happy and normal, considering the bizarre nature of my subject matter. Yet, it does. I am writing every day and feel so much better. My house is gross, of course. And my office looks like a fire trap with books and papers scattered everywhere. Research! I love research!

{dork}

Yesterday I worked until mid-afternoon (yes, outside in the rain and this makes me happy because I have that gloomy Irish temperament) and then I came home and wrote for a couple of hours and gave myself a monster migraine. I popped a bunch of Advil and and napped for four hours thus losing the rest of my day, but technically, I was still *productive* I woke up and made a batch of veggie fried rice with broccoli and carrots and red peppers and lots of garlic and ginger and it was yummy. Z and I watched the X-files and then I fell asleep again. Have I mentioned that my kid is awesome? He is.

I still have a gigantic piece of gingeroot and I'm thinking about fresh ginger cake or maybe some stir-fry noodles. Seriously, this thing is the size of my entire hand. I couldn't resist it.

I woke up a 4:30 this morning and took the dog out and attended a meeting for work at 6 a.m. and then I went home and I wrote some more. I have to go back later on today and be nice to people and still I want to cook all kinds of crazy things when I get home tonight. I'm going to run out of steam eventually. I know this.

I am participating in this fabulous project and feeling stoked about it because I love the tarot and have cool ideas for collage.

The Chicago Poetry Brothel is less than two weeks away!! I need new fishnets. And I must prettify my journal for the reading.

Wow. I sound really hyper in this post. Also: I want brownies. I might make some. Later.

***

Random Things On My Mind: Harpies, A Cheese Omelet, Striped Stockings, Norse Mythology, Skeletons, Steampunk, Rain

Our Lady of Perpetual Exhaustion

I realize, of course, that I am incapable of saying "no." I have overfilled my metaphorical dinner plate yet again because I associate "mad busy" with "happy."

People keep coming up to me and telling me I look "beat" or "tired." This is code for "You look like shit. What's wrong with you?" My hair is stringy and I am having a weird resurgence of middle-aged acne and my eyes are all puffy. Allergies and exhaustion, mostly.

And still, I find the time to blog and generally mess around online. Ha.

I am doing lots of way cool stuff and I had an epiphany about book manuscript #2 (which has been simmering in the subconscious for too long) and I am banging away at it, writing new pieces and feeling stoked about all the weirdness floating around in my head but by next week I will probably hate these poems again.

I have not sent anything out in a while. I did have a poem picked up by a magazine last week that I'd forgotten about so this was a nice surprise. I might be ready to send things out by October or November. Too many ideas, not enough time. I have not updated my website since, like, 2008. So sad. I keep saying I will and then I just can't get to it. I have sketched out the new design in my journal, at least. Submissions are rolling in for blossombones and I must get reading before I am buried alive. See? Too much stuff. Still, I know people who do so much more and make it look dead easy. I hate them. No, not really.

The weather is finally changing and soon it will be dark, dark, dark. I love this. The leaves will change colors and drop and I will walk through the quiet neighborhoods once it gets cold enough and the people stay inside. I am already making chai for breakfast and thinking about soup and bread and things made with apples and pumpkins and wonderful spices. I want to light a fire in the fireplace and shut myself in and feel rested and peaceful and warm.

In the meantime, I am continually plagued by dreams of the dead.

***

I dream about murderers and vicious, bloodthirsty ghosts. Last night I dreamt I was in my childhood home surrounded by floating women in white dresses with anger issues. They were very stabby. (And by stabby, I mean they were wielding knives and sharp silvery scissors which they would gleefully plunge into one's abdomen if given half a chance.) I felt at such a disadvantage. How does one defeat the dead? After all, they cannot be killed, right? I captured one of these ghosts and forced her to reveal her weaknesses. She admitted to being incapable of moving through glass and said that if I pinned the names of her victims to her dress, she would dissolve. At some point there was a coconut tree, ripe with clusters of severed heads. I shook the tree and the heads plummeted down into the grass. I recognized some of the faces. The necks were oozing something gooey and yellow. Later I was at a literary conference where I was forced to share a hotel room with a pair of dead lovers. They were entwined in the white sheets, stiff with rigor, their mouths hanging open in tortured ovals. I told the concierge, "I cannot sleep here. These people are dead."


According to my dream dictionary I am: a.) feeling oppressed; b.) feeling pangs of guilty conscience ; c.) in need of professional help ; or d.) in the midst of a powerful transformation. Of course, it is possible that I watched too many horror movies this week, too.

I am also researching Elizabeth Bathory for a poem.

I expect the nightmares to continue.

***

Scary Workplace Vending Machine Item of the Week: Twin Pack of Microwavable Chili Dogs

Watching: Dario Argento, David Lynch

(Re)Reading: Swimming the Witch by Leilani Hall

Feeling: Rather like Deflated Bagpipes or Fireplace Bellows

A new book review and a visit to the dreamspace

***

Evan Peterson reviews CYBORGIA at The Rumpus.net! Check it out.


***

"Last Night's Dream"

Starring:

Blueberry Waffles

A Poem About Cow Pies

A Very Young Heath Ledger



I dreamt about the Poetry Brothel last night, and in my dream I forgot to bring any poems. I tried to read from memory but I kept inadvertently using lines from old poems in my new ones. The audience was perplexed by the poetry mash-ups. I was asked to dance the Nutcracker ballet on stage and had to fake it. I nearly fell over the edge and broke my legs ( the stage was quite tall, as things often are in dreams ) but was pulled to safety by a man I didn't know, yet I knew him in the dream. He was slender and professorial. A younger Heath Ledger with long, dark hair told me he had fourteen children and that life was shite and asked me to write him a poem about cow pies. I did. It involved a robotic cow pulling a chariot made from an old pickup truck. I don't know if Heath liked the poem, but a man in the audience asked me if I wrote it back in high school and I was really offended. At some point, I attempted to make blueberry waffles but the batter spilled over the edge of the iron and made a huge mess. Still, the waffles were delicious.


***

Of course, now I can't stop thinking about blueberry waffles.

Haunted

Heather Cox interviews me at Ghost Ocean Magazine and I try not to sound too weird.

***


Today, at Stately Slaviero Manor:

M: Let's watch a movie.

S: Zombies or Cannibals?

M: Does it matter?

S: Does it have to be in English?

***

I am feeling funky and anxious and all varieties of ick. I want to be kickass for a middle-aged woman yet mostly I am afraid of bees and car accidents and making people angry, which seems rather uncool to me. I dreamed my left hand was a lobster claw, which probably has something to do with arthritis. Next, I will dream that my spine is a broken chainsaw and my brain is a bowl of potato salad. Yeah.

I watched a movie about cannibals tonight and M fell asleep. It was predictable.

At one point Michael Madsen said, "Come tomorrow I'll be gnawing on your bones" and I snickered. No, really.

Why do cannibals always file their teeth into sharp points and wear fur boots in horror movies? Hannibal Lecter is much scarier than mace-carrying savages because the man is civilized (for a cannibal, anyway).

A predictable movie about cannibals. It's true. Maybe I will fare better with the Zombies.

I am celebrating labor day by working. Hopefully, this will be followed by an evening of wine and horror movies, but I'll probably just clean up the mess and fall asleep. Awesome.

Seeds of Sin

Join the Chicago Poetry Brothel for a wicked good time on Friday, September 24th! Bring your corset or your cravat and be prepared for a literary seduction.


8:00 p.m.
House of Blues Foundation Room
329 N. Dearborn
Chicago Illinois 60654

Automaton

I feel like an automaton. I am all repetition, programming.

I feel like I exist in a collapsing box where the sides close in a few inches at a time. Eventually, the box will snap shut and I will be trapped, compressed into a dense pinpoint of matter, a singularity.

Yesterday I saw twin babies with mohawk haircuts and I couldn't decide if this was kind of cool or totally weird. M votes for "cool" but I'm still on the proverbial fence.

I have made far too many people angry in the last week but (as always) this is unintentional.

I work hard to avoid human pettiness, but this keeps me on the outside of things, always. I exist only on the periphery.

I cannot remember the last time I made a loaf of bread.


Reading : How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Watching: I Sell The Dead

Feeling: Ennui