The big black bumble bee is collecting nectar outside my window. The overcast day is good.
I have a bitchin scarf that is black with golden stars. It hangs with my turquoise necklace that calls out to my cowboy boots. It is a turn on.
While studying, researching, and thinking it out, approaching a documentary film is very exciting. I have experienced that most times I walked alone or only with a few in some of my most valuable and emotional endeavors.
So, it is still moving on…
In a world of turmoil and strongest of strange… I find comfort in my ride. Like a ride on my white mustang over the trails of the Santa Monica mountains. It smells of sage, fennel, and life. It holds a narrative, story… and it will be told.
My mind is wandering on the trail of possibilities… it is so wild and good. Technologies are forming from the realm of new and accessible possibilities… it is so cool. Time for a Diet Doctor Pepper.
Here is a song that really sets the stage of my journey into documentary film making…
It was at the rear of the Starwood nightclub parking lot where the members of Social Distortion were inquiring about official-looking police badges and related items, their curiosity piqued by the allure of what these artifacts could represent.
I seized the opportunity to mention my brother Steve’s extensive collection from his time as a movie extra, elaborating on how he meticulously accumulated these badges, each with its own unique story and connection to various film sets.
Intrigued by the idea, they eagerly leaned in as I provided them with a selection of these badges, which shone under the dim glow of the nearby streetlights, making the moment feel even more surreal and memorable as we exchanged stories and laughter about the eccentricities of Hollywood.
“To the question, “Why am I old?” the usual answer is, “Because I am becoming dead.” But the facts show that I reveal more character as I age, not more death.”
― James Hillman, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life
(Accumulation from posts from Facebook and Instagram…. all tied together here)
A time of family Closure. Steve’s only tattoo he got in the Navy Reserve, DICE.
I doubted my memory about this. A subtle move on Mike’s part if he even remembers me giving the badges to him.
It is nice when The Fates send their gifts of magic. Helping me to remember more clearly, and helping me with the confidence to say,
“Yes this is the truth. It really happened as I remember it happening.”
My oldest brother Steven J. Hudson died a couple of years ago. He was found in his apartment. These details are sketchy, and he is survived by his son and grandson.
Below is a story about my brother who spoke to me from the grave. I think he and Dennis Danell, the original bass player of Social Distortion, both are having some fun on the other side. They caught me in an “amber moment.” Affirming to me that the line between eternity and earthlings is often a fine line.
Brother Steve was a character… he died in his early 70s. He did so many things in life. He sailed, surfed, was a scuba diver, drank, ran marathons … he was a ladies’ man. He was a movie extra for years and knew many characters in the film industry too.
He told me once he kept books and documented all the shows and episodes he was on. I wish I had those books now.
Brother Greg and Steve once said they were going to write a memoir or novel about Steve’s movie experiences. I told Steve I was eager to do it too. If Steve only asked me to do it… it would have been done.
I have viewed him on many shows. I like watching reruns from the 60s through the 80s because you never know where his mug will show up.
Here is the story documented … with images to boot… a real life from the beyond story.
I saw SD at their 40th anniversary last December. Mike / band was impressive. He was wearing the badges I gave to Dennis (rip) on his guitar belt. I stole those badges from my oldest brother Steve. He had several police badges and such. He got them as a movie actor / extra. He was pissed. A nice synchronicity.
Crazy night, I am watching Kolchak: The Night Stalker and saw my brother Steve (rip). He was a movie extra for years.
I am watching the Bad Medicine episode.
Steve is playing a police officer! I took his badges … a few years later. He kept them in a basket in his apartment. Those badges have a story too!
He just confirmed it tonight! Wow … ❤️ kind of spooked!
Thanks Kolchak!
Notice the Browse star police badge on Steve’s shirt and Mike’s guitar belt… the touch point of humor from the other side.
The rhythm and blues, rock and punk rock and the continuity of a beat blows through generations. The beat, guitars and some vocals all take on a life of their own.
I first remember hearing the Rolling Stones by way of my siblings’ records or from the radio.
Something new and fresh after years becomes,
“I wonder how many times I have heard this song !?”
Yet a good song will bloom and expand out into a new generation.
Blues, rock, and punk rock…
As the musicians play the songs, beat it out, as the music goes up and down our spines it has a life of its own… it enters our DNA.
As a young girl walking home. A car drives by and that song is playing loudly. Ya that song and the beat held me for a short time as the car raced by.
Listening to it on a record or at a live show, that same song grabs you and shakes all those memories from your guts.
We mortals get old and die but the beat, the songs live on until a giant earth explosion … all gone…until,
The black-angel says to the white-devil…
“Dig that song, that beat!”
As Dante Alighieri himself is just “Walking the Dog.”
rufus thomas
Baby’s back, dressed in black, Silver buttons all down her back High, low, tipsy toe, She broke a needle and she can’t sew
Walkin’ the dog, Just walkin’ the dog If you don’t know how to do it, I’ll show you how to walk the dog
Asked a fellow for fifteen cents, See the fellow he jumped the fence Jumped so high he touched the sky, Never got back till the fourth of July
Walkin’ the dog, Just walkin’ the dog If you don’t know how to do it, I’ll show you how to walk the dog
Come on now, come on, come on
Mary, Mary, quite contrary Tell me, how does your garden grow? You got silver bells and you got cockleshells Pretty maids all in a row
Walking the dog Just a walkin’ the dog If you don’t know how to do it Show you how to walk the dog
Come on now, come on, come on Oh oh, just a, just a, just a walkin’ Just a, just a, just a walkin’ Just a, just a, just a walkin’
Oh yeah, if you don’t know how to do it I’ll show you how to walk the dog, oh
Just a, just a, just a, just a, just a, just a walkin’ Just a, just a, just a, just a, just a, just a walkin’, oh
Chiron teaches us the philosophical perspective, and the perspective, that our wildness, which may put us outside the status quo, may be our wisdom.”
~ Pg. 88 Tim Lyons Astrology Beyound Ego.
One profound moment I can recall when myth and literature merged in my life started with a long stick, or some call sheath, of fennel and a stencil of Chiron.
“…so, it was left to Heracles to arrange a bargain with Zeus to exchange Chiron’s immortality for the life of Prometheus, who had been chained to a rock and left to die for his transgressions.”
~ Apollodorus, 2.5.4
Santa Monica Mountain Promethean Fennel sheath
They were in opposition to each other for a few years. I sat between them in my living room. Fennel was cut from a plant from my front yard. It stood about as tall as me. As it dries, a thick fennel stick becomes stronger and more resilient.
It rests near my hearth. The Chiron stencil is upon the wall in my living room. Art, I created years ago when my oldest son was young.
Yet there they were. I learned about the mythology that tells a story of Prometheus. He brought fire to humanity in such a fennel stick.
For this sacrifice he was punished and tortured by Zeus. Bound to a rock, and so the story goes.
“Prometheus, it is the logos—that is, knowledge, consciousness, in a word—that lifts man above nature. But this achievement brings him into a tragic position between animal and God. Because of it, he is no longer the child of Mother Nature; he is driven out of paradise, but also, he is no god, because he is still tied inescapably to his body and its natural laws, just as Prometheus was fettered to the rock.
Although this painful state of suspension, of being torn between spirit and nature, has long been familiar to man, it is only recently that woman has really begun to feel the conflict. And with this conflict, which goes hand in hand with increase of consciousness, we come back to the animus that eventually leads to the opposites, to nature and spirit and their harmonization.”
~Jung, Emma. Animus and Anima: Two Essays (pp. 11-12). Spring Publications. Kindle Edition.
As if a secret story was told only to me. I finally comprehended it clearly. I imagined dancing around while holding hands with my two dear friends. I finally stumbled upon a hidden myth that it was Chiron who set Prometheus free.
The day I found this out. My living room bounded with joy. Here in my little living room, I came to understand this mystery! I felt liberated as well in a magical way.
It took me a great deal of time to see this, but there they were in opposition to each other. Yet not them but the struggle was in me. I mused so many imagined ideas. How much longer was it that I also stumbled upon the quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s prose from “Prometheus Unbound?” I suddenly read the passage and knew the truth of what I read.
A conversation between the earth and moon. Prose describing the liberation of Prometheus towards the heavens.
Hudley Stencil.
Chiron, in Greek mythology, one of the Centaurs, the son of the Titan Cronus and Philyra, an Oceanid or sea nymph. Chiron lived at the foot of Mount Pelion in Thessaly. Unlike other Centaurs, who were violent and savage, he was famous for his wisdom and knowledge of medicine.
The moment Chiron sets Prometheus free.
The Earth
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vaporous exultation not be confined!
Ha! Ha! the animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.
The Moon
Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Sprint is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrated my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody
Through me through me!
– Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound
– 320 _ 330 Prometheus Unbound
I cried. my heart almost leaps out with him towards the heavens. Overjoyed how this all came together. I bear witness to this. Now I share my joy here. To at least know in a creative way, how liberation may be viewed by the earth and the moon. Also, I address humanity … we need to see how precious literature merged with mythology is. To feel it and be inspired. To know the hope, it offers us now!
Now to take this story further. Finding out that I will be working with Uranus, which is now in opposition to Uranus in my birth chart. I am taken down on a path to know Uranus better. To know myself better as well as humanity. I realize as we get older, we all share in this journey. Be it consciously or unconsciously. I want to know Uranus better consciously.
I already know Uranus better than I knew. I stumbled upon a book that made me realize all this time I had a relationship with the Uranian myth through what I have known about Prometheus.
“…the planet Uranus was reflected in the myth of Prometheus: the initiation of radical change, the passion for freedom, the defiance of authority, the act of cosmic rebellion against a universal structure to free humanity of bondage, the urge to transcend limitation, the intellectual brilliance and genius, the element of excitement and risk.
So also Prometheus’s style in outwitting the gods, when he used subtle stratagems and unexpected timing to upset the established order: he, too, was called the cosmic trickster. And the resonant symbol of Prometheus’s fire conveyed at once several meanings—the creative spark, cultural and technological breakthrough, the enhancement of human autonomy, the liberating gift from the heavens, sudden enlightenment, intellectual and spiritual awakening—all which astrologers consider to be connected with the planet Uranus.”
~ Tarnas, Richard. Prometheus the Awakener (pp. 20-21). Spring Publications, Inc. Kindle Edition
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth.
The last of the summer Dionysian Hollyhocks in my Garden
Grief and responsibility are two words that I am feeling right now after the death of my older brother Greg, or some call him Gregory.
When I was young, he was a fun and challenging responsible brother. As I got older, I found him distant and lacking the kind of responsibility that comes from a life that is often not perfect. We all have our demons, but Greg was not shy about his.
I am not going to write about his life here.
I have studied many esoteric books and I can give Greg the respect of inspiring me to look this direction.
He studied Rudolf Steiner and others. I think we studied and experienced our share of mysticism and occult as well as Native American spirituality. We both grew up on the same hills that were wild and whimsical… calling us to our natural spirituality of questions.
I have learned that after death we are given the ability to look over our lives. All the good things and bad. What we did to ourselves and others. Yet when a family member dies, we too ‘the living’ indirectly go through a parallel experience.
I am letting my psyche grieve out. Like the rain today that is a gentle sprinkling while shearing, the cosmos gives back gems and reflections of memories too.
I love my brother Greg and I will miss him showing up out of nowhere, to get a pint from the local Pickwick pub with some Fish and Chips. He was not dependable, but he had a unique pattern about him that made life fun.
I have come to realize that I am a responsible person. Greg was too as a teacher who had good friends.
I like to document things, write, and take care of my family. I wish Greg followed through with some of his writing project ideas.
I can say that Greg had a good life holding many adventures, trials and loves. I wish him well on his journey away from us. I hope when he comes to me during his retrospection of life, he will find one of his four siblings doing what they do as reasonably happy and forgiving.
This is what we humans are made up of, our contrary ways. None of us get away with anything…
Greg had a dark side too. Our family does… standing up to them has been something I had to do. I am glad I did. “So It Goes.”
“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly.
April 22, 22. A new edition to this real narrative.
An image / watercolor has come back to me. Greg sent this to me once. My mother framed it for me. She always kept the image in house. After they passed it soon was gone.
One day Greg decided to go throughout my parent’s house. Cleaning and maybe taking things.
He had some strange notion that the images and art on my parent’s walls had some vast hidden child favoritism. I did not see it that way. Yet my mom had a way of preserving many of the things of her kids. This image is one of them. So, the journey of this image is a profound one.
First in the 1970s Greg created it and sent it to me. I loved. Mom and I framed it. (1972) Then after our parent’s died Greg took the painting back with him to northern California. (2013) After Greg’s death his x-wife returned the watercolor back to me. (2022)
From Northern California Siobhan mailed it to Missoula Montana. My sister Sallie received it and mailed it back to me in southern California.
A strange journey for a watercolor.
It reminds me of the film The Ninth Configuration (also known as Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane). A sign was meant to be given to one of two friends. Whoever died first would give that special message. That life goes on after death.
I think this is a good affirmation from my brother that life goes on. My brother loved me. I loved him and thinking back to when I was a very young girl that meant all the world to me.
I went in shock after receiving this watercolor. Now the watercolor is framed and hangs on our living room wall near the hearth.
Near mom’s clock frame which Greg hated. He wanted to through it against the wall every time it played this tune. “The Way We Were.”
Today I want to say a hello to all the people around the world who access my site. It is an honor and out of this world cool feeling to correspond, be united in mind and heart, with people all around this globe.
Euterpe plays her music for you.
Regardless of governments, pandemics and all that jazz, we can still go beyond and be friends… share our stories. It is truly amazing to me… I love it.
And I am sure the Praying Mantis is there all around the world… so here is to all Praying Mantis and all the people who share in this strange adventure called life… here on WordPress…
In the early 1980s, as a wild, crazy-looking punk chick, the Los Angeles Rosicrucian Fellowship let me in and loved me, even though I was very wild. They included me in the fellowship, and I grew to trust them and love them, and I learned esoteric knowledge from them.
Right off Sunset in Los Angeles on Rosemont Ave.
Picture taken 2024.
Life is good and sometimes it is bad. Today I had an old-fashioned Marie Calendar’s chicken pot pie and I listened to the Saints. One of my favorite songs drummed by Ivor Hay…
For over forty years I have had both Max Heindel and Carl Jung books dancing upon my bookshelves.
A friend brought them together for me in a book. I had already brought them together in myself and often that contrary element was there. Yet the two I speak of have come together in so many profound ways.
Max Heindel and the Rosicrucian Fellowship
One of my favorite images of Max at Niagara Falls
I also took the same train from Los Angeles to Oceanside for visits. The same journey as Max and his wife Augusta Foss. She too was a profound astrologer.
The holy grail, the philosophers stone, astrology, philosophy, psyche, soul, myths, magic, mysticism, occultism, good character building and individuation. Hope from despair, unconsciousness towards consciousness. The strange elements of light, darkness, and shadow play. The real world of freedom and responsibility.
At the same time, I have been asked to go back to the beginning. To start over to be punished for all my studying, prayers, and service. What was inspiration having all turned to dogma.
In the book I speak of it has brought together Max and Jung through a journey like mine.
For Jung it was a walk with astrology and theosophy where he found Max and the Rosicrucian Fellowship in Oceanside California. He took a correspondence course to learn Astrology there. Me too, how wonderful this is to know.
Carl Jung and Jungian psychology
I knew that they held a connection within me but now I have the proof outside of me with facts, documents and much more.
Jung included everyone with his words and the more I study him and his works I find a similar rich world that is within me and outside of me… both Max and Jung helped me to come forward from inside of me to outside of me… as my soul and my creativity… in a punk controlled measure like a good Saints song.
The world is in a constant state of contraries. It is up to each person to find balance. Today is a contrary day for me of great joy and great sadness.
Original art was Sold December 2022 at Jail Guitar Doors Art Show benefit. A simple layout for a Flopside comic.
This is a Flopside Bubblegum Comic I did a few years back. I like to doodle and when I had my HP Printer it came with an online creative app that offered many different options for creative endeavor. The left and right handed kind.
Today Kerry Love Canal, as I affectionately think of him, asked for my rock drawings to add to his site. I may take him up on his offer. Back to doing what I do best, doodle.
SO, here is one I resurrect for Kerry.
Now I must find a creative app that goes with my new Kyocera Printer. I think the best of life is having creative endeavors.
( I added Dodger Dog Joey Ramone original for New Wave Chicken Art about Baseball)
In Celebration of Women’s History Month! March 2022 !
Ward Bond and Marjorie Main
“Lucy : [singing] If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck, I’d dive to the bottom, and never come up. Oh baby, oh baby, I’ve told you before, the more I drink whiskey, I love you the more! Oh baby, oh baby.”
The Women, 1939
To publish books by oneself is to find a place which works with an ideal of freedom and responsibility. Working with other publishers did not work out for me. If you want to define it in a nutshell doing it yourself is what punk is. Yup!
We punks had to do it ourselves, Or D.I.Y.~ cause no one else worked with us or the way we wanted to do it. No-one else was interested.
We punks created the concept and this created our scene. We did it!
Now many people approach me wanting to know the story.
Below is an excerpt from my little memoir that came out a couple years ago.
My Punkalullaby is a desirable little punk number. It is not perfect because stories aren’t meant to be perfect … because stories are just stories.
“I was becoming one with My Punkalullaby. I coined the word punkalullaby. It means that the whole time I was in the punk rock scene, from beginning to end, it was all about a song. One song to the next pulled me throughout the scene. Once that loud music got into my blood there was nothing like it. I was socially awkward, wild, and morally uncultivated. I was a perfect product for the Los Angeles punk rock scene because I was someone that the normal culture had completely abandoned. Yet here I was, welcomed into an underground counterculture.”
Page 17, My Punkalullaby
And though over the years I have tried to hide, ignore, and give it the finger, the punk scene always catches me with a huge tussle to the floor. A revealing movement of love, music, and friends pull me back in.
Promoting books through a small publishing company is not some big gorilla. It is a nudge like a pint at the local pub, a cup of coffee or sharing a yummy cupcake. No big deal really. Makes me happy. It is amusing to me.
Hopefully, whoever finds this little punk number will be inspired to walk through the door. Finding books like this is a pass time that many of us share. The love of reading a story is part of who we are. It is how My Punkalullaby is modeled.
To all the books we find or that find us…. that inspire us.
It was that time of year when shadow comes to visit. I am not a novice on these matters.
Flying in the room the winged insect flew up to the wood support beam between the kitchen and the living room. Dark, lively, and awkward as this insect bug seemed, it was nothing compared to the sound our yellow tabby made.
A continuous sweet meow yelp came forward from him. Nacho heralding this cat party- ritual had begun! He was on top of the kitchen table.
Nacho
The other three cats came into focus upon this amazement. The two black kittens Poobah and Whisky and then Mikey the noodle love cat. His green eyes glowed with the look of attack.
Mikey
It was late and we did not know how the insect came in the house. The lights outdoors enticed it into the house. We also have a loose screen in the back bedroom.
The cats jumped up to heights trying to reach the bug. It was brown as a water bug, or cockroach, or may have been a beetle of some sort.
The beetle flew into the kitchen hiding as the four cats made their rounds. We tried to move the insect outdoors into the hot summer night. We turned off all the lights except for the one at the small entrance into the house. As moths fly to fire so this little creature may take the same bate. It did fly out a few times only to fly back as the cats followed it. No luck.
I looked back into the kitchen to where the insect flew, and I swear I saw a cat on the stove.
“Hey, look over there one of the cats is on the stove, it may not be a good place for the cat.”
No cat was there. I did take a picture and saw the dark outline of a cat with white eyes. It was very scary. I thought maybe some darkness flew into the house this evening. The cats alerted me to something more than just an insect. They are good at that.
I did a brief sage cleansing of our home. I said a prayer while moving throughout the rooms. I especially focused on the kitchen where I saw the shadow animal. I saw the dark shadow outside our kitchen window as I closed it. It was told to leave and not come back. I deleted the image I took as well. A symbolic action.
I then fell asleep on the couch.
A deep underbelly monotonous growl woke me up. I listened and looked around carefully to see where the sound was coming from. Seems one of the little black kittens had the insect contained on the ground. I quickly threw a towel over the insect and ran to the front door to put the creature outside. I saw it struggling on its back. I pushed it over. It took fight.
Poobah and Whiskey as kittens…
Entering the house, the cats were redirected with some treats from the cupboard. They must have enjoyed the Winged Insect Party.
The cats had their fun. An exorcism needs to be performed now and then and my cats do enjoy the process.
I wrote to my government representatives and to Sacramento a year ago. No response and here we are going through the underbelly of a police officer fascist system tied in with a towing impounding company that steals your car for ransom. FUCK YOU Baby!
A nice Saturday afternoon and we noticed our truck was gone. We called the police and contacted our AAA insurance provider. We thought our truck was stolen. Then this nasty story revealed itself for the darkness that it is.
We have had problems with the DMV during the last year and a half. Lost information, driver licenses never showing up after being paid online and a non-issued renewal notice was not mailed to us. This causing our registration to be about five months behind. Wow what criminals we be?
We went out of Los Angeles County to renew our Real IDs and Drivers Licenses. In a small-town surrounded by oil jacks, open tree farms and the desert. I really have grown to like Taft California. Has the small-town feeling showing us what it is like to go through a pandemic? Yet the lines and the service at their DMV is short, curt, and done in an hour.
In Los Angeles County the fucking DMV experience is hell on earth. Long lines, rudeness and a heart attack is leering around the corner.
So, we have found a way that moves around this devil. Los Angeles County needs more DMV buildings to service the increase in population. But no, how could they be that thoughtful or nice. They refer us to an online system that is currently corrupted. Lost files, information and my car renewal and driver’s license all uncomfortably gone or wicked wrong. I wrote to my government representatives and to Sacramento a year ago. No response and here we are going through the underbelly of a police officer fascist system tied in with a towing impounding company that steals your car for ransom.
A simple fix it ticket would have been the normal and decent thing to do. Especially it would have alerted me to the fact that something is wrong. I did not get my car renewal.
Our was impounded. A family car that was parked in front of our home. The police knew this. All it took was a knock at the door, but I was told they do not do that. They enforce laws and the towing companies charge fees. It is the type of scam that you see in the movies. It is real here in Los Angeles and it is a dark story.
So being that it happened on a Saturday we had to wait until Monday to get anything done. The renewal DMV online told me that the truck’s VIN and license plate were invalid.
I finally found a service online. Fucking rip-off criminals called California Need Tags.
A third-party company that is not associated with the DMV on the DMV’s official web page. Now if that is not corruption and hacking, I don’t know what is. The DMV are clueless to this too. It is crazy. Yet, we paid the fee.
I called the police and they told me no I needed a one day driving permit to drive our car to get it a smog check. Oh yes that was cleverly added on to the dark equation of stressful possibilities.
So on to Taft California to get a one-day pass to get our truck out and pay the ransom.
The last dark tunnel to check out is if the Taft DMV will honor the registration fees we paid recently online. We were charged late fees too.
Even though the DMV never sent me a renewal and I could not renew my registration online.
Update: They did not so we had to pay the registration fee again. We wanted to pay our other truck off. The registration is due in September. Yet they told us we could not because it is too early. We have not received a renewal notice either. I usually receive them about 5 months in advance. So, I am overly concerned.
I will go to my local AAA to register our other truck in August.
Think about it, only 5 months late on our car registration fees the police can take your car and impound it. Ya you may have the pink slip, and insurance and the car may be parked in front of your home… they can take it.
Even when the dumb-ass DMV fucks up… you cannot… that is a double standard that does not add up. It is called corruption. Thinking of the many years of paying these fees and our car insurance, they can just take our truck is very disturbing.
I think we should pay one registration fee for a car when it is first purchased only. Not every year.
The nightmare is over but please be careful. They are all on the take… the police are in the business of “grand theft auto” and holding your car for ransom.
All it took was to wear one of my UFO T-Shirts, something as simple yet profound as that. Whether it was my Mothman shirt with its cryptic design or my large green Alien T-shirt adorned with a striking UFO flying saucer nestled in the eye of the alien, I knew I had found a conversation starter. The moment I slipped on that shirt, I felt a surge of enthusiasm and curiosity in the air, as if the very fabric beckoned others to share their thoughts and experiences. I figured it out; it did not take much at all to create an opening for dialogue. They would tell their stories—tales of late-night sightings, mysterious encounters, and even their beliefs in the unexplained. Every individual I met had their own unique story, and through these simple T-shirts, I became a conduit for the fantastical narratives that connected us all.
At a Home Depot I walked around looking for something. The young man walked up.
“Hey, I like your shirt.”
“Oh Thanks.”
“I was just talking about UFOs with my friend last night.”
I looked around and noticed he was an employee. He was tall with a funky beard. Had the nerdy youthful thing going on.
“See I drew this last night on some note paper.”
I looked and saw a doodling of a UFO like the one on my T-Shirt.
“Wow that is so cool.”
Then the young man got close and said,
“You never know?”
“Know what?
His face got very nerdy indeed and he said,
“You never know if you are talking to an extraterrestrial or not? They may be everywhere.”
I love T-Shirts. I wear them until they literally fall off my body. The above shirt is almost there. Yet of all the shirts I wear It is the young men nerds that always must tell me a story of something real and bizarre. I mean if I was a youngster and wanted to meet guys. No brainer I would wear a UFO Shirt.
Today I was at the local Ralph’s and the checkout guy was instantly pulled into my Mothman shirt. We talked about it, and he didn’t have to tell me he was really into stuff like that.
“Oh, this shirt, ya you can see it everywhere on Facebook. I just had to get it.”
He then stopped and talked about some story of a Banshee. He was going to go to some town where there is supposed to be a Banshee in the mountains. But he canceled his trip because of the pandemic.
“She shrieks in the hills before people die.”
“It is an old Irish folklore that seems to have come over here.’
He shook his head with enthusiasm as most young nerds do.
T-shirts have the power still and that is good…. It can bring nerds and fans together in strange ways.
I also was at a Furniture store looking around for a new bed with my green alien shirt and another employee came up to me and started to share his otherworldly stories about Aliens, UFOs, and such. I am always fascinated by these nerdy guys who love this stuff. It may be true … extraterrestrials are everywhere.
A juxtaposed desire between two fellows I would like to meet someday… B. Taupin and E. Kuepper and well at least their music did. Yes!
In the heat of the summer
Better call out a plumber
Turn on the steam pipe
Cool me off
With your big crime fighters
And your newspaper writers
Still need a drugstore
To cure my buzz
~ Circle Jerks
My “drugstore to cure my buzz” has evolved into writing. It cures so many of my problems. In the heat of this summer 2021, I was thinking upon two fellows that I would love to meet someday.
While driving the hills above Santa Barbara and beyond we found many highways less traveled.
“If it came to pass that they should ask
What could I tell them
Would they criticize behind my back?
Maybe I should let them
Oh, if only then and only then
They would understand…”
~ Songwriters: E. John / B. Taupin
We passed by the Roundup Ranch where Bernie Taupin lived for years yet sold a few years back. I know he loves horses and that is one thing that I like about him. I love his lyrics which were a big part of my life growing up as a cowgirl in the mid-1970s.
“Are you feeling fine?
Have you really got the time
To bother to write one line?
Don’t lay you on the line
It’s easy when you’re the missing link”
~ The Saints, Songwriters: E. Kuepper
Another fellow is Ed Kuepper. His guitar sound literally woke me up and The Saints lyrics amazed me during the late 1970s as I transformed through many growing pains of horses, boyfriends and finally in finding my opus of punk rock’s dysfunctional triumph.
I devoted many hours to Elton John album covers. Memorizing the lyrics with my girlfriends. Wondering who these English fellows were that seemed to sing about American things. It was more the feel I got wondering and experiencing the music. It seemed sacred to us, and it still does.
Just recently I viewed one of Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s songs being used in a commercial. (Tiny Dancer – Elton John: vaping in the spotlight!) It was absurd and disheartening. So, writing and affirming the good that this song once inspired will cast out this demon commercial’s hypocrisy and justification for cancer.
Ed Kuepper has never played in the USA. The Saints are one of my favorite bands. As I say my only addiction. I think maybe we have some strange connection being my dad was stationed in Adelaide Australia during WWII. He was a captain pilot.
I wrote a short novella of my days with my horse the white mustang Sony. I dedicated the book to Elton John and Bernie Taupin. I did finally send him a message by way of my Instagram account. I never received a response. I may someday. I did get close enough to reach out … maybe?
I cannot tell you how many times I have reached out to people I admire. I have met many of them and received letters back such as Henry Winkler (rip) who sent me an image of him in a Hawaiian shirt, well there went my hardcore Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli.
Bill Clinton is the only politician that wrote back. I sent him a watercolor image of a rainbow that my oldest son painted at age 5. My family in-law on the maternal side, who are nasty conservatives, did not care. I say fuck that. I am proud.
This is not about fame, money, or anything like that. It is an applied punk experience on two fellows I have learned to love through their songs. So, I have now defined what punk rock is… bully bully… “superb” or “wonderful.”
The prayer or ritual before having a tooth extracted!
Tooth
You are dying
You will be seized.
You have been with me
Since our creation together.
Made up from generations
Of ancestors.
From star dust and good foods
Of calcium and DNA
We are one
Yet separate.
Your roots will be pulled out
I honor days of chewing.
And glowing smiles
To good conversation, candy, and pizza.
To your body soul and spirit
I release you from my mouth
my loving tooth friends!
Bless you,
To the hormones which inform you
To your root, neck, and crown
To nerves, blood, and vessels.
I release you.
In Ancient times before a tree was cut down a prayer or ritual was performed. To alert the living thing or spirit or elemental which lived there that change was coming.
I also think we need such a prayer or ritual before a tooth is extracted.
A tree and a tooth are similar in that they are living and deeply rooted. The tree in the earth and the tooth in our flesh in our being. They are part of an ecosystem. On the whole of a community of living things. A tree is a home to birds, bees and maybe an owl or possum and the elemental that lives there as a vital living substance. As ancient people knew…
“The Plane of Elemental Mind (A) comprise the state or condition and degree of mental and vital development of a class of entities unknown to the average man but recognized to occultist. They are invisible to the ordinary senses of man, but, nevertheless, exist and play their part of the Drama of the Universe. Their degree of intelligence is between that of the mineral and chemical entities on the one hand, and of the entities of the plant kingdom on the other.”
The Kybalion, Hermetic Philosophy. Page 78
Not to forget to mention the more subtle elements of a tooth.
Dental records are used sometimes to identify a person. Such as when the Iceman, a ruthless gangster killer, was brought to justice. Do to this very fact. A person killed was identified by their teeth records which broke a long case of killings.
When a tree is cut there is weeping in a community or ecosystem … when a tooth is pulled our being weeps. Our psyche questions this Lovecraftian horror. I know because I have experienced three teeth extrusions so far in my life. It is like a rape of the body and perceptions. Our bodily organs shiver and the bad wasps of our bacteria go in for attack. Pure trauma.
How does a prayer for a tree or tooth work you ask?
With good foresight it alerts a tree’s body or tooth that death is coming. Time to flee and move on. The aura is bound elsewhere or peepers the environment for change.
For a tooth it may be saying:
“Attention white blood cells.”
“Though we have been with you all our life together. I am dying and am leaving the comfort of my home.”
Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual body!”
An awesome responsibility. You see each tooth has a good relationship with a certain organ or place within our individual ecosystem. This is a process that a prayer or ritual must do! Preparing a trees spirit and our tooth, our psyche, for an experience like rape. To pull a tree or tooth from its lovely home quickly and with much force.
New Image July/25/2022 she has come to visit me again …
A good amount of time has passed since I first saw the upside-down praying mantis shadow on my desk. I looked up and there she was, inspiring the name of my publishing company.
She often visited on her tree, which has since died, but the original bush is still in front of my office. This space, a bedroom converted into an office, has been a hub for dreaming, creating, and dancing.
I love writing and sharing stories. Looking forward to a year full of adventures and publishing — you can count on me!
The Seminary Of Praying Mantis Publishing/ Hudley Flipside
The 99 Cent store had our Figgy Newtons which came in many flavors. Some of my best memories with my little son made those challenging days exceptionally good indeed!
Picture by papa John Cornell. First Son JF 1992
After the Punk scene, the East coast, getting married again and having my first babe, I went to Los Angeles Valley College. I had a few courses under my belt. Yet Los Angeles Valley College had an opening for childcare. So, I enrolled. After this I transferred as a junior into CSUN.
Valley college was exceedingly difficult for me. I was older than most students and I found many of the professors my age or younger. Incognito and acting dumb to get a humanities degree was not worth it. Yet in time as I entered higher learning one must have all the accredited courses.
One course was a journalism course. Having a 21-year-old ask me if I could answer the phone and take notes boiled my blood or having a journalism professor reach into the bottom of her big bag to find my ungraded paper was a wonderment, where the torching of her body came to mind. I waited half the semester for a grade on that paper to pass her course.
Nevertheless, the worst was the power play by a twenty something photographer who thought he was the guy. He would stand behind me in class and smell my newly washed hair. It was long and red back then.
He said he liked what I wrote,
“But it does not go well with my image. I will have to take hers instead.”
As she sat in his lap. He looked up at me as if he thought I was going to take on this sex challenge.
I realized I was dealing with children and walked away. It was a strange juxtapose of power… once having my good share of power to having none.
As having a child. I thought I would be treated with due respect and honor. I loved every second of being a mother of two babes. Yet I was treated like the worst of the worst by most people. All this holy mother crap melted my being.
The only sacredness was how my babes and I loved each other.
Walking down Van Nuys Blvd. with my oldest in the front seat of a shopping cart made my days of cruising the same Blvd. as a teenager seem surreal.
Pulmonary hypertension medicines act on the lower esophageal sphincter and cause it to relax thereby increasing the frequency of stomach contents entering the esophagus.
The above quote makes me angry. It seems no matter what doctor I see they want to put me on medicines. I know the side effects cause more problems than the hypertension itself.
Yes, it is natural after menopause, and as a woman gets older, to have high blood pressure.
Since Peri-menopause to after the doctors have been foaming at the mouth to get me on all sorts of drugs with all sorts of terrible side effects.
Some I had to take, and I am still suffering the side effects. The worst being in the throat and esophagus. I have done a few tests, and they looked up me and down me… all around me.
So, they come with an unknown variable. It may be this so we will give you this fucking awful drug that will rape you on the inside. And then I left there. Abandoned to heal from the internal cuts and bloody battle towards sanity.
I look and search for all forms of natural healing which do help sometimes.
It is a balancing act of medicine and holistic focus, and it is frustrating. I am sure I am not alone here.
As in the relationship between dentists to medical doctors. They both point at each other and say,
“Ask him?”
I am my advocate… not the insurance companies.
I believe that some drugs have caused such vast trauma on our bodies, instead of truly healing them.
“…clearly shown that knowledge of the emotional functions of biological energy is indispensable for the understanding of its physical and physiological functions. The biological emotions which govern the psychic processes are themselves the direct expression of a strictly physical energy, the cosmic orgone.”
Reich, Wilhelm. The Function of the Orgasm (p. 2). Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
Orgone is a pseudoscientific concept variously described as an esoteric energy or hypothetical universal life force.
I once had a dream where I was standing in a garden, I touched the big blossom of a flower and then reached out to the sun. I had a massive orgasm.
‘Psychic health depends upon orgiastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act.”
Reich, Wilhelm. The Function of the Orgasm (p. 6). Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
I have come to believe that what separates us “humanity” from the rest of the living world is this ability to be in a state of ecstasy. Humanity is not in a constant state, and maybe only occasionally. I think the rest of the living world may very well be. In a continual state of flowing ecstasy. My experience felt great, but it was more than as sex act. It was not one. It was being one with the “cosmic orgone.” Yet why define it.
My little spit in the wind theory.
Took me awhile to find The Function of the Orgasm a book from the past to help me understand an experience in our current time.
(Wilhelm Reich, 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957, An Austrian Doctor of Medicine and Psychoanalyst who studied with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.)
I am still studying this and of course it is based on my illness yet maybe someone who may read this may get some relief too.
The trauma still holds to my throat as a reminder and I want to heal its frozen hold. Dreams are a great way to get some good freedom…
“And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes— “with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,” says Billy Pilgrim.
As a child of a Fallen Angel of World War II, I am opposed to Nazism and Fascism, I am also a pacifist. Which made for poor conversations with my dad. Who actually had to fight in a real war against those “isms.” Let’s face it, if he did not survive, I would not be here. When then could we have fights over Jesus and war?
“On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn’t much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin—who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.”
Which is why I hold the above book as one of our greatest testimonies against war. It is filled with UFOs and life and death.
“There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn’t smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas. So it goes. The Maori Billy had worked with died of the dry heaves, after having been ordered to go down in that stink and work. He tore himself to pieces, throwing up and throwing up. So it goes. So a new technique was devised. Bodies weren’t brought up any more. They were cremated by soldiers with flamethrowers right where they were. The soldiers stood outside the shelters, simply sent the fire in.”
Kurt Vonnegut survived because of “Schlachthof-fünf.” (Slaughterhouse-Five) and like my dad he had children and told and wrote stories just like I am now!
I have never found answers to life’s mysteries better than I have in this book…. I am still learning from it too.
Such as the war against all Native tribes through out the USA… sucks too…. terrible history …
Quotes from Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (p. 215). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
All wars everywhere… all The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a science fiction infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut,
