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thedarksiren2It all started yesterday, well, December 29th I guess. I went to work and started all the paperwork catch-up games that I usually do after being gone for a weekend. I get lost in this box of an office, barely bigger than my bathroom, really, and more crowded with junk - makes my brain cloudy and muffled. I feel deaf and dumb in that space, but I am stuck in there for at least four hours each night I work, so I make the best of that time.
I came out of the box for a short while to see how my staff were doing, how the residents were, etc. Everyone was in a good mood, and the smiles and hugs, laughter and silliness was inspiring. I wandered around the house, checking for anything that might need done. Simple tasks, such as curtains being pulled closed in bedrooms (the residents just aren't concerned about their nakedness, I'm afraid), lights being shut off, beds being made, toilet paper stocked, what-have-you. They are everyday tasks, simple matters that somehow make the world known as Howe House go around.
I walked into the kitchen and was smothered in the wondrous smells of pineapple upside-down cake. Knowing how such a concoction works (did I mention I am a bad-ass cook?~;), I moved the cake from the top of the stove to a trivet so that it would cool enough to be flipped shortly.
Well, shortly came and went, and everyone was sitting to eat dinner, Johnny Cash on the stereo making one 65 year-old woman very happy. Pulled-pork sandwiches made mouths reddish-orange with BBQ assault, and the edentulous gummed at their potato chips because they still like the pseudo-crunching. It never ceases to amaze me what a person without teeth can manage to consume.
I made sure everyone was settled, staff as well, and went to check on the cake. It had cooled, so I flipped it onto a platter and walked into the dining room where I told my staff what I had done for them.
I thought this was a good deed on my part, but when the one staff looked like she'd seen a ghost, I wondered what I could have done wrong. It was just a cake for dessert, right? The other staff explained that they had planned something "impromptu," and that it was no big deal. I thought about it, and remembered that one of the residents really enjoys pineapple upside-down cake, and said, "Oh! I see...no problem, I can probably flip it back." They smiled and I flipped the cake back to being right-side up, thrilled that they had planned on surprising this resident with her favorite dessert. How thoughtful!
Well, I had no clue of their thoughtfulness, really. In fact, I was absolutely clueless when they walked into the dining room with said-cake twenty minutes later, covered in candles and decorations and a card they had made with the residents wishing me a happy birthday. In all the seven years I have ever worked at Howe House, no one has ever caught me by surprise like this, not for my birthday, not to mention I haven't had a cake in 8 years or more. I would have started crying, only I was so embarrassed, to quote the one staff, "She's as red as her hair!" LOL
This is how my birthday began.
Driving home, I listened to A.M. Coast-to-Coast with Art Bell, fascinated by theories about celestial beings from Mars, the Nephilim as aliens taking on human wives (see Genesis), and the Christian Fundamentalists trying to defeat said theories unsuccessfully. Outstanding! Not that I have anything against any religion...I do not. I do, however, have problems with people discrediting others' ideas when they have no solid proof with which to do so. This, along with any attempts at converting me to your program, will make me avoid you like the plague. I digress...
I sat out in my car too long, listening to the rain between the words and theories, and then the news...the magnesium fire was a spectacular sight that I did not bear witness to, unfortunately. I heard of lightning coming from the ground-upward as the rain reacted to the chemicals and caused massive explosions throughout the day. Daylight lasted longer than it was supposed to Monday night for some Clevelanders.
When I came inside, my roommate greeted me with a smile, and told me I had been getting phone calls all day. Check my messages, friends, family, and one a day early. Then it was on time, but I sat in my car too long and missed the call by moments, literally, with no ability to return the call despite my wishing so.
Thank you for keeping your promise. The good ju-ju acquired by such acts means more than anyone can know by my simply saying so. Hoorah for deposits into the Dawndom Emotional Bank Account (ask me some other time...fascinating yet simple little concept that makes the world a little better).
Jay and I sat up and talked more about Mars and martian gods, great martian highways and looked up the Nephilim in this extraordinarily large bible from 130+ years ago that I stole from an old home I lived in when I was ten. The pages are gilded, and almost too heavy to stay in-tact. But it's such an amazing creation, and it has all the Apocrypha included in it, as well as several indexes and dictionaries - kinda reminds me of House of Leaves, honestly. At any rate, we stayed up and watched The Salton Sea, and laughed at Pooh-Bear squeaking, and I eventually fell asleep on the couch, which is becoming a fairly regular occurrence, as my insomnia is most cruel when I make attempts to sleep in my actual bed anymore.
I woke up at around 4:30AM, and it was as if I had drank a dozen cups of coffee. So I wrote, and IM'd a few of the many amazing people I know, wrote some more, and at around 8AM I decided to try to sleep again.
When I woke three hours later, I still felt like a crackhead, so I woke![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wraptboy up, called a few friends and we all went to Bob Evans for brunch and silliest of silly conversations, scaring the elderly clientele with talk of porn stars and crooked boob jobs, make-out sessions gone awry and interpersonal dramas that need not be approached again.
Dropped a sharp-n-shiny goddess off at her work, found a Beavis and Butthead video for a whopping $1 (wraptboy's never seen an episode) and got my plates and drivers license renewed. Best picture ever for an ID. YAY! Oh, and the BMV lady, she was so swell! I told her so, and she blushed sweetly, saying thank-you and happy new year.
We then went to pick upbindrune, and we, the three amigos, went shopping for other people on my birthday. I bought my friend Amy a gorgeous purple wig, and Teri a new coat rack for her new house with sun-faces all over it. Everything is on sale everywhere, and my thrifty shopping skills were outstanding! Bonus to the wig...the store was doing the whole, "Buy one, get one free!" deal. I now have an insanely red and orange-spiked fire-like wig with horns coming out of the top. Fabulous, I say!
We had initially planned on going tobogganing, but that fell through because some not so happy financial situations happened over the past week. So we all went home and watched Finding Nemo and listened to a LOT of Morphine, and the phone rang like it hasn't in years, and I called a few friends to invite them out. Two people were not happy campers, but they didn't want help, as much as I tried to offer. I am still worried about them several hours later.
Off to The Winchester we went to sing (s)karaoke. Ms.ladytetsu was already there, and she bought me my first birfenday drink, already an half-hour ahead of the rest of us in drunkenness. I cannot explain just how surreal it was to walk into a bar I used to DJ at regularly two years ago and see the differences as well as everything that has remained unchanged. For instance, the giant warrior rune on the wall of the "dance-floor." David Lynch would have had a field day with my psychosis tonight!
Several friends showed up -theshadowsfall, Cable Mark, nimort, Xentrix, Bill, bigjohnsinging, and eventually, ras_sinister. Our table had the best singers in the house. My friend Bill did an incredible, chilling version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game." Like, I had NO IDEA he could sing, let alone pull off that song. I think half the place melted.
Then Missy got up to sing some goodness, and again, I was floored. She is so quiet and shy, yet she pulled off a Fiona Apple tune like it was child's play. I was tickled pink! Later she would make everyone gooey with Madonna's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" as well.
bigjohnsinging sang some Sinatra for me, and told the KJ it was my birthday, who proceeded to make note of it thereafter. I lured in the sailors with Berlin's "The Metro," Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl," (my new favorite song to toy with) Concrete Blonde's rendition of the Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows."
End the night with silly conversations with feisty blue-haired Xentrix, and yet again, sitting in a car in my yard, only this time talking about synchronicity and both the internal and external workings of the emotional self withwraptboy. I had to stop it all when my bladder screeched at me, however, and so I peed, checked my messages on my voice mail (yay psycho boys who are on the brink of freaking me out!), checked my e-mail and came across my yearly tradition of the day-after hor(ror)scope:
CAPRICORN: Wednesday, December 31
If a professional partnership or romantic situation is on thin ice or
coming to a head - let it. At this juncture it's less about upholding
arrangements that take a tremendous amount of effort on your part and give relatively little and more about making the room for setups that allow you to be your glorious self.
Today's star rating: ** 1/2
I cannot even begin to explain how dead-on this is in almost every aspect of my life. I am all about being me, and it has occurred more to me in the past few months just how much I have allowed others' opinions and agendas interfere with my own throughout my life. Sounds self-centered and perhaps a bit self-righteous, but well, it's me being honest so whatever.
I adore people overall. I like meeting new people, exploring them on any and all levels they will allow me to. Similarly, I like letting people in and allowing them to explore as well. However, I do not like wasting time and energy on emotional/psychic, whatever-word-you-feel-like-using, *vampires*. I think I blind many of them with a strange light, which pretty much just pisses them off. In this regard, I am amused because, in as much as I don't like stirring the stew too aggressively, anyone who feels the necessity to insult or to judge, to take life so friggin' seriously that they overlook all the glorious beauty around them? I have no time for it, other than the occasional amusement of witnessing such events as their shriveling in their own refuse. Sounds horrible, I suppose. Really though, it's not. I see so many more people doing breast-strokes in larger pools of life and their spirits lift above all the madness just long enough to share their wonder. For this, I am grateful.
I have had this constant sense of nostalgia the past few days, thinking back to hiding in woods somewhere in Fredericksburg VA, catching fireflies for the first time in my life. I wanted a lantern, a natural one. Needless to say, it didn't work so well, and when their lights began to fade, I felt shame and fear, and let them all out, scooping the weaker ones onto branches so that they may live a little longer and light the night sky for days to come. It was a strange duality, the need to capture something so breathtaking yet the sadness that overcame me after letting it go.
Some things in life aren't meant to be captured so much as admired and appreciated. You can still love them without holding them in bonds. I don't think enough people realize this, thus smothering one another and forgetting what the original intent was.
Be my friend, and I won't smother you, not with my hands, my judgment, or my heart. Just be willing to accept the good with the bad, and we will be everything to one another for a while, and it will be good. It's all just moments in time, interwoven and glimmering a little differently, depending on whose eyeball is reflecting what light and when.
I am grateful and in awe of the love and companionship I have been witness to. Thank you, everyone, for being who you are, and for loving me as I am.
***Dawn Dawn
I came out of the box for a short while to see how my staff were doing, how the residents were, etc. Everyone was in a good mood, and the smiles and hugs, laughter and silliness was inspiring. I wandered around the house, checking for anything that might need done. Simple tasks, such as curtains being pulled closed in bedrooms (the residents just aren't concerned about their nakedness, I'm afraid), lights being shut off, beds being made, toilet paper stocked, what-have-you. They are everyday tasks, simple matters that somehow make the world known as Howe House go around.
I walked into the kitchen and was smothered in the wondrous smells of pineapple upside-down cake. Knowing how such a concoction works (did I mention I am a bad-ass cook?~;), I moved the cake from the top of the stove to a trivet so that it would cool enough to be flipped shortly.
Well, shortly came and went, and everyone was sitting to eat dinner, Johnny Cash on the stereo making one 65 year-old woman very happy. Pulled-pork sandwiches made mouths reddish-orange with BBQ assault, and the edentulous gummed at their potato chips because they still like the pseudo-crunching. It never ceases to amaze me what a person without teeth can manage to consume.
I made sure everyone was settled, staff as well, and went to check on the cake. It had cooled, so I flipped it onto a platter and walked into the dining room where I told my staff what I had done for them.
I thought this was a good deed on my part, but when the one staff looked like she'd seen a ghost, I wondered what I could have done wrong. It was just a cake for dessert, right? The other staff explained that they had planned something "impromptu," and that it was no big deal. I thought about it, and remembered that one of the residents really enjoys pineapple upside-down cake, and said, "Oh! I see...no problem, I can probably flip it back." They smiled and I flipped the cake back to being right-side up, thrilled that they had planned on surprising this resident with her favorite dessert. How thoughtful!
Well, I had no clue of their thoughtfulness, really. In fact, I was absolutely clueless when they walked into the dining room with said-cake twenty minutes later, covered in candles and decorations and a card they had made with the residents wishing me a happy birthday. In all the seven years I have ever worked at Howe House, no one has ever caught me by surprise like this, not for my birthday, not to mention I haven't had a cake in 8 years or more. I would have started crying, only I was so embarrassed, to quote the one staff, "She's as red as her hair!" LOL
This is how my birthday began.
Driving home, I listened to A.M. Coast-to-Coast with Art Bell, fascinated by theories about celestial beings from Mars, the Nephilim as aliens taking on human wives (see Genesis), and the Christian Fundamentalists trying to defeat said theories unsuccessfully. Outstanding! Not that I have anything against any religion...I do not. I do, however, have problems with people discrediting others' ideas when they have no solid proof with which to do so. This, along with any attempts at converting me to your program, will make me avoid you like the plague. I digress...
I sat out in my car too long, listening to the rain between the words and theories, and then the news...the magnesium fire was a spectacular sight that I did not bear witness to, unfortunately. I heard of lightning coming from the ground-upward as the rain reacted to the chemicals and caused massive explosions throughout the day. Daylight lasted longer than it was supposed to Monday night for some Clevelanders.
When I came inside, my roommate greeted me with a smile, and told me I had been getting phone calls all day. Check my messages, friends, family, and one a day early. Then it was on time, but I sat in my car too long and missed the call by moments, literally, with no ability to return the call despite my wishing so.
Thank you for keeping your promise. The good ju-ju acquired by such acts means more than anyone can know by my simply saying so. Hoorah for deposits into the Dawndom Emotional Bank Account (ask me some other time...fascinating yet simple little concept that makes the world a little better).
Jay and I sat up and talked more about Mars and martian gods, great martian highways and looked up the Nephilim in this extraordinarily large bible from 130+ years ago that I stole from an old home I lived in when I was ten. The pages are gilded, and almost too heavy to stay in-tact. But it's such an amazing creation, and it has all the Apocrypha included in it, as well as several indexes and dictionaries - kinda reminds me of House of Leaves, honestly. At any rate, we stayed up and watched The Salton Sea, and laughed at Pooh-Bear squeaking, and I eventually fell asleep on the couch, which is becoming a fairly regular occurrence, as my insomnia is most cruel when I make attempts to sleep in my actual bed anymore.
I woke up at around 4:30AM, and it was as if I had drank a dozen cups of coffee. So I wrote, and IM'd a few of the many amazing people I know, wrote some more, and at around 8AM I decided to try to sleep again.
When I woke three hours later, I still felt like a crackhead, so I woke
wraptboy up, called a few friends and we all went to Bob Evans for brunch and silliest of silly conversations, scaring the elderly clientele with talk of porn stars and crooked boob jobs, make-out sessions gone awry and interpersonal dramas that need not be approached again. Dropped a sharp-n-shiny goddess off at her work, found a Beavis and Butthead video for a whopping $1 (
wraptboy's never seen an episode) and got my plates and drivers license renewed. Best picture ever for an ID. YAY! Oh, and the BMV lady, she was so swell! I told her so, and she blushed sweetly, saying thank-you and happy new year.We then went to pick up
bindrune, and we, the three amigos, went shopping for other people on my birthday. I bought my friend Amy a gorgeous purple wig, and Teri a new coat rack for her new house with sun-faces all over it. Everything is on sale everywhere, and my thrifty shopping skills were outstanding! Bonus to the wig...the store was doing the whole, "Buy one, get one free!" deal. I now have an insanely red and orange-spiked fire-like wig with horns coming out of the top. Fabulous, I say!We had initially planned on going tobogganing, but that fell through because some not so happy financial situations happened over the past week. So we all went home and watched Finding Nemo and listened to a LOT of Morphine, and the phone rang like it hasn't in years, and I called a few friends to invite them out. Two people were not happy campers, but they didn't want help, as much as I tried to offer. I am still worried about them several hours later.
Off to The Winchester we went to sing (s)karaoke. Ms.
ladytetsu was already there, and she bought me my first birfenday drink, already an half-hour ahead of the rest of us in drunkenness. I cannot explain just how surreal it was to walk into a bar I used to DJ at regularly two years ago and see the differences as well as everything that has remained unchanged. For instance, the giant warrior rune on the wall of the "dance-floor." David Lynch would have had a field day with my psychosis tonight!Several friends showed up -
theshadowsfall, Cable Mark, nimort, Xentrix, Bill, bigjohnsinging, and eventually, ras_sinister. Our table had the best singers in the house. My friend Bill did an incredible, chilling version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game." Like, I had NO IDEA he could sing, let alone pull off that song. I think half the place melted. Then Missy got up to sing some goodness, and again, I was floored. She is so quiet and shy, yet she pulled off a Fiona Apple tune like it was child's play. I was tickled pink! Later she would make everyone gooey with Madonna's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" as well.
bigjohnsinging sang some Sinatra for me, and told the KJ it was my birthday, who proceeded to make note of it thereafter. I lured in the sailors with Berlin's "The Metro," Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl," (my new favorite song to toy with) Concrete Blonde's rendition of the Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows." End the night with silly conversations with feisty blue-haired Xentrix, and yet again, sitting in a car in my yard, only this time talking about synchronicity and both the internal and external workings of the emotional self with
wraptboy. I had to stop it all when my bladder screeched at me, however, and so I peed, checked my messages on my voice mail (yay psycho boys who are on the brink of freaking me out!), checked my e-mail and came across my yearly tradition of the day-after hor(ror)scope:CAPRICORN: Wednesday, December 31
If a professional partnership or romantic situation is on thin ice or
coming to a head - let it. At this juncture it's less about upholding
arrangements that take a tremendous amount of effort on your part and give relatively little and more about making the room for setups that allow you to be your glorious self.
Today's star rating: ** 1/2
I cannot even begin to explain how dead-on this is in almost every aspect of my life. I am all about being me, and it has occurred more to me in the past few months just how much I have allowed others' opinions and agendas interfere with my own throughout my life. Sounds self-centered and perhaps a bit self-righteous, but well, it's me being honest so whatever.
I adore people overall. I like meeting new people, exploring them on any and all levels they will allow me to. Similarly, I like letting people in and allowing them to explore as well. However, I do not like wasting time and energy on emotional/psychic, whatever-word-you-feel-like-using, *vampires*. I think I blind many of them with a strange light, which pretty much just pisses them off. In this regard, I am amused because, in as much as I don't like stirring the stew too aggressively, anyone who feels the necessity to insult or to judge, to take life so friggin' seriously that they overlook all the glorious beauty around them? I have no time for it, other than the occasional amusement of witnessing such events as their shriveling in their own refuse. Sounds horrible, I suppose. Really though, it's not. I see so many more people doing breast-strokes in larger pools of life and their spirits lift above all the madness just long enough to share their wonder. For this, I am grateful.
I have had this constant sense of nostalgia the past few days, thinking back to hiding in woods somewhere in Fredericksburg VA, catching fireflies for the first time in my life. I wanted a lantern, a natural one. Needless to say, it didn't work so well, and when their lights began to fade, I felt shame and fear, and let them all out, scooping the weaker ones onto branches so that they may live a little longer and light the night sky for days to come. It was a strange duality, the need to capture something so breathtaking yet the sadness that overcame me after letting it go.
Some things in life aren't meant to be captured so much as admired and appreciated. You can still love them without holding them in bonds. I don't think enough people realize this, thus smothering one another and forgetting what the original intent was.
Be my friend, and I won't smother you, not with my hands, my judgment, or my heart. Just be willing to accept the good with the bad, and we will be everything to one another for a while, and it will be good. It's all just moments in time, interwoven and glimmering a little differently, depending on whose eyeball is reflecting what light and when.
I am grateful and in awe of the love and companionship I have been witness to. Thank you, everyone, for being who you are, and for loving me as I am.
***Dawn Dawn
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 10:43 am (UTC)Have a good night.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 05:53 am (UTC)I just got it for Christmas, and its so freaking good! What a book! My friend Ashley (killyoutodeath) and I are reading it together and gonna do a lil book club thing. You should join us!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 10:46 am (UTC)I read the book about two years ago, and it has since become such an intregal part of everything that is Jawndomay.
If you haven't listened to it, listen to Poe's "Haunted" album, and when you're done with HOL, there's a companion book, The Whalestoe Letters. I have other fun things for you to see, but I will wait until you've finished the book.~;)
Enjoy it, and have a wonderful new year!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 02:20 pm (UTC)I knew about Poe's CD (her brother wrote HOL), but i didn't know of the other book.
The book club thing. Basically, we will IM or something every so often to discuss the book and how far we are and what we think might happen. Just converse about the book. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-01 11:47 pm (UTC)Knew he was Poe's bro, yup yup. Craziness.
Lemme know where you are in it, and then we'll chat more.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 09:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-01 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-01 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-01 11:49 pm (UTC)Thanks so much...for the kind words, the friendship, and for enjoying yourself last night. It was nice to see you smiling and having a good time.