Pillars of Sand (Viva la Vida)

I used to rule the world

Seas would rise when I gave the word

Now in the morning I sweep alone

Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice

Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes

Listen as the crowd would sing:"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

One minute I held the key

Next the walls were closed on me

And I discovered that my castles stand

Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sand

-Coldplay

If I were a monarch, it would have to be a king, or preferably, an emperor. Either Arthur or Charlemagne. Actually, in the olden times, I would have liked to be Pope. Complete spiritual and temporal dominion.

Being a Queen would not quite cut it. I like The Empress and all, don't get me wrong, but I like the old-fashioned kind of power. Direct, undisputed, king power. Queens have a different kind of power, which is fine, and being Queen would definitely be better than being, say, the Head Janitor, but, if I could choose, I would be King.

There are so many ways to have power. Money. Beauty. Youth. Connections. Physical strength. Love.

I had it all, I lost it all, and I never knew what I had until I lost it. That sounds dramatic. Pluto in Capricorn is dramatic. And it's sad. Endings are always sad, even if they're inevitable, and expected, and far overdue. Who doesn't feel sad at a breakup, or a move, or one of those big life changes?

As to those, I detested puberty. I can barely stand to think of it even now. One day, I was running around without a care in the world, and then, bam. Blood and gore and brassieres and cellulite, and strange men standing too close in museum lines, and a lot of shit that I did not understand or want to. And that book, "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret" which they forced us at gunpoint to read, just made me sick. The bitch didn't know when she had it good.

I haven't hit menopause yet, but I'm sure that will be sad too. My friends who are there already, or almost, are in denial, and I suppose I will be too, especially since I never had kids. I never had a particularly strong desire to, but I always thought that it would happen, somehow, in extremis, and it didn't. At least, not in this lifetime. I'm sure I've had plenty of kids in other lifetimes and maybe this lifetime is just a time-out. I've always avoided the step-parent thing too. It seems fraught with difficulties.

I was sad when I got married, sad when I got divorced, sad every time I left one country or one man for the next, but I did it, because there's only one way to go in this life, and that is forward. This year, I got sick, and ended up leaving everything in California. I didn't have the strength to deal with it, but there was also some weird streak of illumination that was telling me that the losses were the whole point.

For what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and loseth his own soul?

I had the whole world in my hands, but I had gotten lost, somehow, down one of those rabbit holes it used to amuse me to explore, always so sure of my own power, of God's protective presence, but in one of those rabbit holes I encountered the void, and I got lost, like Carlos Castaneda in his dreams.

I didn't know up from down, or light from dark, and I was even getting used to living down there, away from the light, and the air.

Evil exists, is the point, although not necessarily in the way you imagine it. In fact, it's almost never the way you imagine it, because then you would recognize it and avoid it. Evil always looks exactly like good, except better. So you keep messing with it, sure that the good must be there, just below the surface, and it isn't. Somebody described eating Domino's pizza as eating more and more of it to try and find the flavor you know must be there, but isn't, and in the end you have a bellyful of pizza and a feeling of deep dissatisfaction. That's kind of the deal with evil. And evil isn't so much an active kind of wickedness as it is a lack of, well, good.

So God, like any indulgent but responsible parent, yanked me out of the rabbit hole and grounded me indefinitely, and here I am.

And I've said these things before, more or less, and it's not like I want to flog a dead horse, but what am I supposed to do if Chris Martin always puts the way I feel into words? Well, not always, there are a few songs on the new CD that I skip, but on their other CD's, each song brings an immediate memory of a person or an event in my life.

My pillars of sand have crumbled, but maybe I can use the rubble to fill the potholes in the castle driveway, so all is not lost.

Viva la vida!

Hello You Wacky Sagittarians

Needless to say, I scared myself to death the other night with my attempt at ghostly fiction. Luckily, God has blessed me with an almost complete lack of imagination, so I am not often tempted to invent spooky tales of wolf-people, or woof-people, as my stepfather pronounced the word.

Which leads me to today's subject: Sagittarians. We are now smack dab in the middle of Sajj and I have a message for all the Sajjes of the world--relax. Breathe. Calm down. Look before you leap. Count to ten. Don't fly off the handle. Don't make a scene. Don't get married again, at least until you've finished counting to ten. Then, walk around the block. Is your potential mate in bankruptcy court? Is he or she still married to somebody else? Don't do it, Sajj, you'll be sorry in about five minutes.

Don't fire your secretary. Don't fall in love with your secretary. Pretend like you don't even have a secretary, unless you want to dictate a letter, and then, you know what? Just type it yourself.

If you're bored, Sajj, and I know you are, throw a party. You're good at that. Go dancing. You like to dance. Go to Madagascar. I bet you've never been to Madagascar. Wouldn't you like to see how they harvest cloves? Sure you would. You could fly through Amsterdam. Amsterdam is lots of fun and they have amazing chocolate.

Or, you could join a cult. I believe that I might just have an opening as a "Follower", but apply now, the slots are filling quickly!

The thing to remember, Sajj, is don't go with your gut instinct. Your gut instinct is wrong. Your gut instinct has gotten you into trouble in the past, hasn't it? You thought you were going to pull a fast one but it backfired, didn't it? So don't do it, whatever it is. Action is overrated. Thought is nice too, Sajj--you can do a lot of fun things in your head without getting yourself into big trouble.

So just relax, have another glass of champagne, and handcuff yourself to something heavy until that funny little itch in your stomach passes, the one you always get before you do or say something really unforgiveable.

We all love you, Sajj, but the Law of Karma is real. Once you get that ball rolling, it's not going to stop until it comes back and flattens you. Remember Wile E. Coyote? He was a Sajj. So if it's a good deed you have in mind, or a kind word, or some homemade lasagna, then go for it. Pull out all the stops. But if you feel like making trouble, just remember the Wheel of Karma, and order out for pizza instead.

On a Night Such as This

All around was stillness, the language of winter. The wind whirled and drove the snow like daggers into the soft belly of the night. There were no stars, no moon, just the faraway hint of a dirty mauve sky. And then, out of the darkness, a knock came on the door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Are you scared yet? I am. I am scaring myself. This is that kind of winter night, blustery and eerie, a night for haints to walk, which I sincerely hope they don't. At least, not here. If I see any haints, I will direct them to the nearest shopping center for some mall-walking. At this point in the story, a mysterious, lean figure with a cape shielding his face would appear at the farmhouse door.

He would warm himself by the fire, if he were willing to go out to the woodshed and schlep wood, and deal with a possible rodent living in the fireplace, and then he would tell a mysterious tale of a maiden's death yet to be avenged, or some other wrong still unrighted. And then he would ask to borrow the toenail clippers--I am still working this part out--and only upon his leaving would the unsuspecting farmer's wife discover a wolf's claw stuck in the nail scissors!!

I know that the "mysterious stranger is really a wolf" thing has already been done in Ladyhawke but I feel it has rich and as yet untapped dramatic potential.

But wait, what was that? Could it have been....a knock on the door?

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Shave Off Your Burns!!

As I stopped at the local library today to drop off my copy of "Cidade dos Homens" (great film, btw), my attention was drawn by a fashion statement so rare and wonderful that I literally had to stop and stare.

The statement was being made by a person who, it pains me somewhat to admit, must be about my age, i.e. FOREVER YOUNG!!! (Read: early 40's). The most eloquent part of the statement was being made by this person's hair, which was a flowing, waist-length mane of dishwater brown with some serious split ends. The top part, however, was carefully feathered and held in place by bobby pins and a copious use of Aqua-net. You could tell it was Aqua-net just by looking. The effect seemed to be a combination of The Mullet with the look made popular by Warren Jeffs' seven thousand wives, when they have their hair down, which is very elaborate in the front and long and stringy in the back. I gleaned this important bit of information by reading all the trashy mags, and if you need to know anything about Brangelina, ask me first.

I have to be honest here--I have never felt a particular fondness for Jen Aniston, a feeling the movie The Maid solidified. In fact, I had to walk out of the cinema after one of the characters expressed surprise that another character had not seen her own husband's, um, anus. And Jen always has a look on her face as if she'd just swallowed a mouthful of carpet tacks. But what I was going to say is, Brangelina, would you stop acting like anuses, and Brad, lose the Hitler mustache, ok? Brad Pitt seems to have absolutely no mind of his own. It probably comes of having a name of only two syllables. I could never love a two-syllable man, myself, but Angelina seems to think she has enough syllables for the whole clan.

Having had more than one glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, I will admit at this point that Angelina Jolie seriously irritates me. The Italians would say, "she stands on my dick", and, given the literal impossibility of such a thing, me being female and all, I think the expression renders the idea quite well. I have noticed, in an informal survey of my friends and supermarket cashiers, that Angelina Jolie has this effect on most females. I have never met a female person who finds Angelina anything but annoying. I have no idea what male people think, but I have an opinion of the male capacity for discernment that is, alas, on the low side.

Of course, it just may be that the most annoying thing about Angelina is that Brad likes her. Obviously, I am into Symbols, and Brad Pitt is, arguably, The Symbol of the desirable male in the Western world. And therefore, his choice of a life partner has a bearing on all of us females, indirectly. And it has to be said that his choice is something of a disappointment. I mean, I'm not saying he had to like Rita Levi Montalcini, but fuckin Angelina Jolie?? The upshot here is that Angelina is, by process of elimination, in the position of World's Most Desirable Female, meaning that the rest of us women feel at least slightly disenfranchised. So maybe that's why we hate her.

The good news is, Jennifer Aniston is also extremely annoying, and even though Vince Vaughan has gotten to be decidedly chubby, I really think he can do better than Madame Carpet Tacks.

But I digress.

What I witnessed today is an anachronism and I was so happy. I remembered why I love living in Ohio. You can have a Fundamentalist Latter Day Mullet on your head and be taken seriously, by someone. This person also had a mysterious chain hanging off of his belt and I'm sure it only adds to the attraction for the denizens of the parallel universe in which he lives. He was very thin, clad in all black, with some of those white leather hi-top tennies that I'll bet you haven't seen in a while, unless you also live in Portage County. He smoked some kind of smelly cigs and had copious sideburns. It was wonderful!!

I am not being mean, I'm really not. I would personally rather endure Death by Sloppy Joes (my mom, who went out of town for the holiday, left me Sloppy Joes for sustenance, forgetting that Sloppy Joes is not food) than commit such a fashion coup d'etat, but I am a Capricorn, forever condemned by the pissy planet Saturn to a life to be lived in shades of taupe. That doesn't mean I can't envy the other signs, the fun ones, who don't live their lives in fear of ridicule.

Now, having expressed my joy, I must return to my pasta, which is a variation of La Boscaiola. Meaning, we have sausage, a tiny bit of tomato, garlic, mushrooms, and cream, but instead of the peas, we have squash. And oh fuck, I forgot to buy Parmesan, but I have a certain Innocent Flirtation with the Butcher, a thin and intense type with tattoos, so another trip to the store is never as tragic as it could be. If you make this dish, you have to be very careful because the squash is sweet, so it has to be balanced with an appropriate amount of spices and acidity. Key word: Tabasco. Not Frank's. Not hot pepper flakes. Tabasco. Buon appetito!

And let me breathe in freedom

Yesterday, Buddy the dog and I were in my mom's minivan on a deserted road, when a bald eagle flew directly overhead and went soaring out over the lake. I had been lost in my own thoughts and Buddy in his, but the eagle woke us up to an immediate and full awareness of our surroundings. Ok, I'm giving Buddy Black Jack a little more credit than is really appropriate, but he did kind of move and wiggle his tail a little bit and in this world of cell phones and i(Pod)solation, I call that an impressive level of awareness. The bare gray trees, the snow gradually melting in the warm sun, and the utter stillness that you experience sometimes on a holiday, when everybody is at home. And then this magnificent apparition.

Today, not far from where I saw the eagle, I came across a dog dying in the road. He had just been hit by an SUV, and I pulled over and started wildly honking my horn, hoping that someone would come out of the houses and claim the dog. But nobody came.

The SUV, an old model plastered with Obama bumper stickers, slowed down and stopped when it heard me honking. I guess maybe it read an accusation into the car horn but that wasn't the intent.

The dog was still writhing in a pool of blood. I never knew blood was so thick. I didn't know what to do so I just crouched down by it and laid my hand on its neck and spoke to it until it died, in Italian, of course. That's the language for kids and dogs. The SUV guy came up and asked about it and I told him to go knock on the doors until he found the owners, which he did, except nobody came to the doors. They were all out at the sales, I suppose. Here the stores opened at 4 a.m.

The SUV guy came back as I was gently trying to move the dog's body to the shoulder of the road. He just matter-of-factly picked it up by its neck and the skin of its back and laid it down in somebody's yard but I made him move it closer to the road so that it could be seen and claimed.

"It wasn't my fault," he said. I implied heavily that it was and that he should have been more careful. There was perfect visibility and nobody on the road. He got kind of mad. He wanted me to say it wasn't his fault, but it was.

I know I'm judgmental. I was named for a judge in the Bible. If I had hit the dog, I would have judged myself. I wouldn't have said it wasn't my fault. That dog was somebody's joy and now it's somebody's heartbreak.

I was coming from the music school and I was singing in the car, an air by Handel. "Lascia ch'io pianga," which was in that movie Farinelli, about the castrato. It means, "Let me weep, my cruel fate, and let me breathe in freedom." I swear that I was singing that aria when I came over the hill and found the dog. What were the eagle and dog telling me? I don't know. Both times I cried, in my mom's minivan, which aroused the concern of Buddy Black Jack the Dog. Buddy's preferred therapeutic mode is to put his cold, wet nose on some part of your body and wait for you to feel better.

Yesterday, Pluto, the planet of death and transformation, moved into Capricorn, my Sun sign. One of the legends about the Eagle is that it would fly so close to the sun that all its feathers would be singed off, and it would fall to the ground, only to be born again. Maybe the dog was a Capricorn. But I don't feel like divining today. I feel sad. It could have been me in the red SUV, except for the Obama stickers and the fact that I object to SUV's. (I actually like Obama, but I don't like getting yelled at by a sticker). But we all get distracted behind the wheel, we're all in a hurry to go somewhere, we don't think of the consequences until it's too late.

And the owners, why did they let the dog run loose? Maybe it escaped. Maybe it just wanted to be free. My stepfather used to say, when Inga got loose, that he could hear her humming "Born free" on her way to the golf course. Freedom is a need, like food and air. Or maybe the owners were too busy trampling Walmart employees to care where their dog was. But I want to believe that the dog achieved its desire, and now he breathes in freedom.

Lascia ch'io pianga
mia cruda sorte
e che sospiri la liberta'.

Giving Thanks, Giving Back, and Giving a Disclaimer

The disclaimer is, I realized that I probably sound preachy a lot, and I don't mean to. This blog is mostly just me talking to myself, and trying to put my thoughts in some kind of order, and trying to make some sense out of things that seemingly make none. And if I preach, I am really preaching to myself, and not to any innocent bystanders that might accidentally be reading, because I am fully aware that I know jack-all, fundamentally.

With that in mind, I turn to our upcoming holiday, first and foremost, of course, with a sense of how blessed I am, primarily in the bright and glorious souls that light my life like the candles on a birthday cake. God has blessed me with incredible abundance, surrounded me with beauty and finally, peace, and sent me messengers of love in every imaginable form. I think of people, wandering in and out of my life, and my animal friends, and the music that is my direct connection to myself. And I sit here on my farm, watching the snowflakes meander and then fall, like toddlers just learning to walk, and I do know, truly, how very very special this lifetime is. I have no idea what will come next, or what came before, but I know that right now, my life is indescribably beautiful.

And I think of my struggles of this past year, so shocking and terrible to me, and of how many people would have gladly traded places with me, even at the most terrifying moments, because their daily struggles are so much harder, and of a much greater duration, and it is so humbling.

And while I am on the subject of thanksgiving, I want to bring up the related subject of forgiving. I still do not know what forgiveness really is. I asked my ex-husband, Tommaso, to define it for me, which is what I do whenever I can't figure something out, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend, who thinks that ex-wives should spend their lives in Timbuktoo or the North Pole, far from modern forms of communication, including carrier pigeons and smoke signals.

Tommaso's answer was typically brilliant, and beautiful: Forgiveness, he said, is saying, "That doesn't belong to me anymore."

And for once, I'm not going to get all chatty Cathy and interpret that statement in my own image. I think it stands pretty solidly on its own two feet.

So while we are giving thanks, and just generally giving, which 'tis the season to do, after all, it might be an opportune time to give back to the Universe all those ugly sweaters (metaphorically speaking) we don't need anymore, and just hang on to the really good ones, that we just can't quite part with, and let the Wheel of Karma do its job.

What you cause another to experience, you will, in turn, experience. That's Karmic law.

So even though I promised not to interpret, what that says to me is, I can't make anything OK, just like I can't make something a bigger deal than it really is. I can't protect anybody else from the consequences of their actions, just like I can't protect myself. Karma is the ultimate role reversal. So forgiveness, ultimately, is just lay that burden down. It was never yours.

That's it. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tarot Has Moved!

I'm putting all the Tarot stuff in another blog, The Blasted Tower. It just makes more sense that way.