I decided to run alone today
To chase away wakeful demons
Catch sleep on the other side

Ran, pre-dawn, to where
I’d buried Rocco, at the lake mouth
At dead end peninsula
Under the thorn tree
My favorite Springfield spot

Straight shot, from my room
Down a shadowed road
Old homes, older trees
Down the shadowed road

Halfway, I met a little beagle
Zig-zagin’ happy on the shadowed road
Hey pooch, I said breathing hard
In the air cooled darkly
What are you doing on the shadowed road?

I’m following you, he said.
And I, Alright, and we ran
And ran
A ways

But beagle, zig-zagin’ happy
Suddenly sped away
And, Why? wondered I
Did he go back, we’re nearly at
Shadowed road’s end

And there they were
Eighty, maybe a hundred black
Shapes perched in the trees
Perched in the jagged-zag branches
Like black, mascara tears
Hangin’ on the crows-feet
Of a beat’n harlot’s face
Dark pimp, Night, leaving her
For the Day

Who’s that, they said,
Trip-trappin’ under our tree?
Their voices grated
Like Caine’s teeth on
Able’s skull
Sable feather flutterin’
In the wind.

Trip-trappin’? I asked
Aren’t trolls supposed to hang
Under bridges, gluttoning
On living flesh
And a gruff goat’s entrails
Trailin’ from fangs?

Naw, they cawed
We’s vultures
And we go overhead
We’ve got the etiquette
To wait to eat till your dead

Plan on diein’
Any time soon? they crooned

Naw, I said,
Not in the plans

But you’ll let us know, they cried

Sure thing, I lied

Back on the shadowed road
And the shadows melted
And I got to the opening
Of the lake mouth
Near the peninsula’s dead end

Hundreds of seagulls, ducks, and geese
Struttin’ in the way
Move, I say, or I’ll tell the vultures that you’re dead
And they fled and fled and fled and fled and fled

Out of a hundred-hundred birds
One lone crow, I’m not lyin’
Black blanketed and bitter beaked
Crowin’-Cawin’-Keenin’-Sighin’-Cryin’
To quickly melting night
Crows are Night Birds, it’s true
Some of them misdirect
Like magician’s hands
In the day
So you don’t see what
They’re doing at night

Got that poem done?
He asked, anxious-like
Size’n up my eyes
Hungry for my eyes
Taught the Aztecs
To eat their enemy’s eyes

Workin’ on it, I said
Ready by December
Here to borrow some
Inspiration and sleep and dreams

Aye, he sassed
Flying from his tree
As I passed

There, at the peninsula’s dead end
Surrounded by lake and islands and
Gulls and geese
The thorny tree
And a sugar-glider’s grave

Hey Rocco, I said and
Hey little guy, I said
Need to borrow some mojo, bud
And I did, stooping down
To this familiar past
To this past familiar
Every magician needs a familiar
Says the book on my shelf
Even the word-weaving kind

And I ran back to my dorm…

[Jogger’s note: All the animal encounters are true, this morning, and in the proper order. Even the vulchers! There had to have been a hundred of them in the tree…a pretty ominous sign to see when you jogging alone at dawn. The speech…well…that’s just a rough translation really…]

Arghhhhh!!!

Why can’t I sleep???

Can you get insomnia from sexual frustrations? Maybe it’s the weird hours I keep. It definitely has something to do with my crappy, school issue bed…I think its time I go to the store and get one of those down comforter things, as I’ve found I sleep well on those. Maybe I need to run every single day (the one benefit of my sleep deprivation is that I’m in better shape than I was a few weeks back and, at this rate, that’s only going to increase if for no other reason than I need sleep).

Guess I might as well be productive and watch some more X-Files episodes…

In other news, during the Verbal Arts Festival here on campus (I think its on April 9th), some of the writing/theatre folk are going to be doing a series of dramatic readings/performances. Three of my monologue/short stories (“Thorns,” “Requiem for the Taste Buds,” and “Squeeze”) will be performed by the folk (we’ll see how that goes, they aren’t necessarily the ideal types of people I want to see performing my stuff…but they are enthusiastic…though…confidentially…I’d rather have an EC cast).

The stories cover everything from broken up relationships (with a surprise ending on who the jaded lover really is…), stealing food from funerals, vegetarian cannibals, incubus demons, what the Raven really thinks of OJ Simpson, why Oprah is a Goth Queen, and a rubber dildo named Bob (yeah…definitely not one I’ll let Grandma read).

And, in another writer’s short play, I got to enact the part of Jaded Jesus (even get to “break” a butter crumb cake with my espresso).

So I get a very static laced call from my Mom. My sister, who’s going to school in New York, came into her dorm tonight, to find a groggy roommate, moaning about something in her bed. When asked, her roommate said she took a bunch of NighQuill tablets. Danielle (my sis) was worried, but Kelly (her roommate) said that she was just really-really tired and wanted to sleep. My sis was not letting any of that slide and told her roommate that she was getting out of bed, NOW, throwing up, and then they were going to walk around for a while (this from the timid little girl I grew up with).

So they did and it was good that they did because soon thereafter, Danielle found a note, from Kelly, to her, telling her this and that about this and that and oh please tell my family why (yadda-yadda…I don’t think anyone has ever written an original suicide letter…it’s all the same self-centered tripe…I’d like to say it offends me as a humanitarian…but it really offends me as a writer).

These details I got from my mom, between bouts of horrid cell phone reception (damn you Sprint). The letter is scary and yet eight NighQuill tablets sounds a lot more like an attention grabber than a finale act – and the more static hissed details I received, the more it sounded like a means of getting the attention of a recently X’ed boyfriend. And of course, my Mom got all of these static screamed details, between disconnected calls with her daughter (infuriation…thy name is Sprint!).

So now sis is stuck in that tough spot – she has gotten very close with Kelly and now has precarious position of deciding what to do. A cry for help? Maybe. But Kelly’s Mom ought to know…but Danielle does not have that phone number…

…and I just got another call from my Mom. It turns out, Danielle (probably as I’ve typed this) has confronted Kelly and convinced her to call her Mom.

Looking back over the post…I realize I haven’t shown a lot of pity for the would-be suicidie. I do have sympathy though…but pity has killed more than one depressed soul. I hope she gets better and that her Mom can help…and I hope Danielle keeps her tap-dance shoes polished, to tick her in the ass.

Angry at the notion of suicide – but damn proud of my little sis (if only Sprint, in its infinite wisdom, would let me talk to her).

To end on a lighter note – I leave you with DARTH TATER…

Well, it didn’t end the way I wanted……..but this is the sound of total relief and reinvigoration.

Hell is a blank page and cabin fever doesn’t help. I’ve spent most of a week staring at a screen and keeping to myself and my notes. A long, LONG time of research and preparation built up so much inertia, that I couldn’t write. I felt powerless. I don’t think I ever felt as dismal about my talents as the last few days. Let that be a lesson. Research and preparation is all well in good, but sometimes you have to strike when things are chaotic and messy – in order to keep up the energy and innovation. My brain had a clog and it was painful.

But I’m past it! I won’t go into the details (I’m too tired) or the things I had to do and to think about…but I’m past it, at a clip. But now…I realize I’ll be here another semester. I have two days to have a rough draft…and don’t think I’ll realistically have one done until the beginning of May. Oh well I say. After running (which is getting more invigorating than tiring) I drove around with the top down…one of the best feelings in the world. The world!

Had to study Papa Ghede, the loa spirit of Death in the Vodou pantheon (he plays a bit of a role in the story). He’s the top hat wearing, cool shades donning, copious amounts of rum drinking, cigar smoking spirit of the cemetery. But voodoo folk don’t see him as morbid. He is also the spirit of healing, sex, and humor. He protects children…as they are too small to die. He has a lewd sense of humor, as unpredictable as a child, as dirty as a sailor. When he visits during a Vodou ceremony (by possessing the practioners) he brings a bit of levity to serious affairs. The ridden person takes on his persona, tries to kiss or press up (very suggestively) against all the women, and cause general mischief. But this isn’t for mere entertainment purposes. This is a spirit and a people that come from hard times, death, and a country with a high mortality rate in infants. In the face of that, you have to form a persona, a mask that can smile and laugh at mortality and sexuality. Whether we are in a coffin, making love in a bed, or just born – those are the moments when everything else breaks down and we’re at our most mortal and vulnerable…and Ghede laughs at it.

When you can crack a wicked grin in the face of the worst life has to offer, face mortality and see things through the purple shades…well that’s powerful magic.

Yesterday was Anthesteria – the Greek Festival of the Dead.

The Film NOSFERATU premiered in 1922 on this day (March 5th).

I’m trying to design a voodoo ritual that would, in my little fictional world in my head and hopefully on the page, summon the spirit of Crow.

Oh…and TIM BURTON IS HAVING A GARAGE SALE.

Barnes & Noble is a dangerous place…and again I bought some books. Danger guide books seem big these days (and they all come in that nifty, compact, handbook format). There are the Worst Case Scenario Books and How To be an Action Hero (or fill in the blank) books. There’s even a Zombie Survival guide (you have that book too…right Alex?). Today I got the next step THE BATMAN HANDBOOK. Everything a would be crime fighter needs from how you’d actually throw a baterang (spell check just won’t let me get away with that word) to what you’d have to include in a bat-suit (hyphen beats spell check!). Oh what fun.

If I ever have the pleasure of writing a script for a Batman graphic novel, comic, or movie, I think I”d open it up with this quote (I love quotes):

I literally got pixie dust in the mail today. I’m all better now.

Didn’t do much writing tonight. I wrote a reply to the ex. I tried to explain. Though I don’t have the words (I have so many words), I tried to explain.

I tried to explain that I’m wired like a cat (I wander, I’m aloof, but I stop to offer my love and when I do it’s very real). I tried to explain that she is wired like a dog (she loves deeply and affectionately, and can’t stand to be separated from her loved ones). I tried to explain that we were day and night and even though we hugged deeply during dusk and dawn – damn it all, but the spinning earth pulled us apart.

I don’t know how well I explained it…

Got an email from my ex today…

Round three. In regards to my narative poem of pridigiuos length, we looked at two of the three main characters SYTH and CROW. Now comes the third…or maybe the first, because she really gets the story rolling (well, the prologue gets the story going…but she starts the main story after that). Post prologue, the story’s action begins with a muse (Crow) summoned by a voodoo priestess in the acid burn streets of a city…

What’s in a Name?
“Mama Nancy,” where for art this name? Aunt Nancy is an obscure figure from Vodou lore (and yet she pops up in America, Jamaica, Africa, and other places I’m sure). She is a spider-woman figure associated with arachnids and weaving. The name, “Aunt Nancy” comes from a corrupted translation of “Anansi,” a spider god from West Africa – a clever trickster god who often defeats his enemies through trickery and wit.

So now I have a nifty name. I like how closely Mama Nancy (if you run it all together) sounds like “necromancy” (magic over the dead) or “onieromancy” (magic over dreams). More importantly it gives me a motif: spiders.

I feel confident in writing a strong, voodoo priestess character. But…how do I make her different than say, every other old voodoo woman ever written in any movie or novel? I take that name and that motif and I let it shape her, define her.

First of all, she is tall, and thin (ever notice how old voodoo women are always plump?). She has long, flexible limbs (she’s very lithe for her age), with long, spindly fingers. Her fingers never stop moving, they always seem to be in creeping motion (like spider legs?). She is likely a very tactile person.

Webs…those are meticulous. Mama Nancy is very meticulous, very careful, very far thinking. The reader will not know just how meticulous she is until the very last chapter (the epilogue, in fact) and when I let you step back far enough to glimpse her whole grand web.

Other Names
Oral history intrigues me. Urban legends are another form of that. The inner city landscape that Nancy exists in is full of these and she is at the center of much of it. She is a figure of urban legend and a complicated mythos. People know to come to her. Ice killer gang bangers know not to antagonize her. Story is sometimes more powerful than magic and Mama Nancy knows this. As such, she has acquired a plethora of names along the way:

-Mama Spex: Kids think this is for the purple shades she wears. Older folk will whisper to ya (but not too loud) that its actually short for “Specter.” Further whispers inform you that Mama Nancy can speak to the dead, speak for the dead, and, sometimes, they walk for her. Nancy only shrugs, if asked.

-Aunt Nancy: Nancy is also a weaver, and very good at her art. The children call her Aunt Nancy, after the spider woman. She takes in a handful of children, off the streets, and teaches them her art, gives them a skill by which they can help feed themselves later on. [This idea is based, primarily, on a woman I met in Africa. Her name was Mama Tie-dye. Her art was tie-dye – she made amazing pictures and art and clothing (things I never thought you could do with tie-dye). She would take in children from the very poor city and teach them the art…cause there are always rich tourists around to bye. I wish I had bought more.]

-Mama Lily: She lovingly grows the white flowers and is said to use them in rituals involving death.

-Mama Bone-Digger: Strung together, this nickname sounds too much like a very bad word. No one, NO ONE, not even the most vicious street thug in the area is willing to take that chance, not with her in ear shot, and sometimes not even outside that. There is a story about a guy who did though. He won’t be missed…

Image of a Mambo
As said above, she is tall and thin with long limbs and spindly fingers that don’t stop. A long web of silver hair falls over her shoulders, from out the wide brimmed, nearly shapeless, nearly colorless hat she wears. She also dons a set of purple shades – the right lens is popped out when she is channeling Papa Ghedi (showing that she is seeing into the physical and the spiritual worlds). Much of her clothing was woven by herself, various symbols stitched in (crosses, skulls, spiders, webs, etc.). Her skin is the color of creamed coffee and her demeanor ranges from sugary and sweet, to bitter and murcky. She is one of those people who’s age is a mystery – you’d be hard pressed to guess.