We must explore!

Punk Rock Colleague & Historian and Professional Consultant

Hudley Flipside

The Naked Grace.

These times are asking us to go within. Over the generations we have taken this journey within. By choice, by accident and spiritually. Through drugs, side effects from prescribed medication or by magic.

A song can amplify this reality. A writer can share the experience. Songs filled with lyrics are poetry put to music. The images come forth and touch us. These three songs came to mind today when I was out in the garden pulling tall grass from the rich soil. It all came together. The dark earth holds things. Pulling on the grass and releasing the soil is a forward effort of movement. The dark moist earth has a relationship with our psyches.

I believe that unless we willfully take this inward journey as an individual it will be forced upon us. On a personal level or a generational level is how it goes. Anytime we suppress our shadow, blame others, or spread hate it is bound to a generation. Are we not observing this right now? Songs can help us. I need them like I need flowers in my garden or kitty cats to hug.

Here are three songs that explain this journey variable. From the 1960s Catch the Wind by Donovan is a peaceful song. From 1985 Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo is an amazing song that shares some interesting historical mysteries. Lastly from 1983 The Forbidden Zone by Charged GBH, one dose and you take their hand into a strange journey of a musician’s psyche.

♦Donovan is an unusual songwriter and folk singer that touches upon the light side of our psyche. He reminds us to remember the beauty in life. It is around us and in us if we go looking for it. Our psyches do often look back at us. We can reflect on this soft beauty from time to time.

“When sundown pales the sky

I want to hide a while

Behind your smile

And everywhere I would look, your eyes I’d find.”

♦Oingo Boingo’s song is remarkably interesting and worth listening to intensely. As a young punk back in the late 1970s I had an Oingo Boingo badge on my jacket. I was approached by a couple of punk chicks who mocked me and belittled me for wearing it. A time when the first signs of punk cultism started to show its ugly face.

“I was struck by lighting, walkin’ down the street

I was hit by something last night in my sleep

It’s a dead man’s party who could ask for more

Everybody’s comin’, leave your body at the door

Leave your body and soul at the door.”

“For English occultist Aleister Crowley, who was a painter himself, the artist ranked above the magician on the totem pole of illumination, and he considered poetry and art as precious tools for transforming one’s innermost psychic visions.”

~ Chapter Spencer Kansa, Pg. 92 Wormwood Star, The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron.

♥A wild journey inward to the shadowy psyche is found in the book City Baby from Highgate to Hawaii… Life, and GBH by Ross Lomas.

“This went on for hours. More and more of the same. It was incredibly intense. God and Jimi and Anne Carpenter and the devil and the fucking taxi driver, fighting over my soul right up to the point I passed out in exhaustion.”

~ Pg. 120.

“Take my hand and we’ll explore,

The forbidden zone.

When you’re in your own tree,

But don’t know if anybody’s home.”

Jimi Hendrix was playing guitar while Anne was a nun of salvation, this may show us that his journey was amplified by many elements as a fight for his soul. When the shadow opens to us it is always a powerful trip. Ross is stronger for his experience. A bite like this prepares us for outward tragedies as we are facing today.

It turns me on. Enough said

A reflection on our “anima and animus.“

“Cripples, Rebels and Criminals

Few of us can envision a genuine androgyne and few of us want to be androgynous. Like many potent words, androgyne has lost its true meaning. Nowadays, it suggests unisex, a mushing together of undifferentiated masculine and feminine energies so weak in themselves that they cling together to survive.

A genuine androgyne, psychologically speaking, is an archetype image in which the conscious differentiation of masculine and feminine energies is always being finely tunes. It is like a Stradivarius violin or cello, wrought to reverberate with the strength and delicacy of both energies in exquisite balance.”

Chapter 5 The Ravaged Bridegroom / Masculinity in Women by Marion Woodman

Now I try to feel it as often as I can. When I get the hard-on for life. Flowers blooming, a song, my friends all help to amplify this experience.

Jung Remarked of someone:

“At least she is trying to work on her animus and that is the most meritorious thing that anyone can do.”

~ Pg. 161 The Animus: The Sprint of Inner Truth in Women by Barbara Hannah

Love this picture my son took of me. It is that time when I united the male and female within me. Symbolized by my two tattoos of Dionysian Hollyhocks.

I was reading that Indian Gurus’ overall goal is to unite all religions of the world. They also talk about united male female gods. Which is beyond us as very external and internal archetypes that we all share consciously or unconsciously.

A character archetype in unique terms is a type of character who represents a universal pattern, and therefore appeals to our human ‘collective unconscious.’

This is extremely simplistic I know. Also, the religions of the world have tended to be very male oriented. As most cultures or all cultures for the last two thousand years.

As a religious studies major in college, BA and Masters, I always had a thorn in my side.

With in-depth Jungian Psychology I have found the answers to many of my concerns. For me it was uniting the masculine and feminine within myself, or in Jungian terms the “anima and animus.“

“Together they form a divine pair, one of whom in accordance with his Logos nature, is characterized by Pheuma and Nous rather like Hermes with his ever-shifting hues, while the other, in accordance with her Eros nature wears the gestures of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene,) Persephone and Hecate. Triple Goddess

Both of them are unconscious powers, “gods” [archetypes] in fact as in the ancient world…”

Pg. 21 AION Carl Jung

I have a “hard-on” for life. Even within the diversity of life right now. I can’t help getting one when I see flowers in bloom and the whole of nature in a type of rapture. Welcome Spring or Autumn as my favorite times of the year.

It is not the male kind of hard-on but it something inside. Not sexual but very blissful-orgasmic at times

It is ironical for me to have these feelings while also having to balance it out with my compassion for what we are all going through right now historically. I know it is a dark time, a real challenge for all of us in different ways.

I am mindful of those suffering.

They are not alone when we think upon them. I have love in my home that comforts me.

Also, the human Ego is my friend.

I think that males and females have a different relationship with their Egos.

I feel males need to let their Egos float downstream a little.

I think females should ride their Egos.

It is good to be admired as it is to admire another.

I like the feeling of appreciation as well as when I feel the feelings of the appreciation for others.

As a female riding her Ego it is like riding in a canoe.

Sometimes the river is smooth and glossy.

Other times it is a prissy fucking nightmare.

Yet we need to express our realities to the world…

as I am doing here.

My self especially as contrasted with another self or the world.

The Calendar

In memory of…

Sigrid Hudson Bishop

“Eternity interrupts. It is as if there is a plane where there is clock time and then eternity puts its hand in for a minute and you have an archetypal experience. You have a feeling of what Jung said was “the infinite” and then very often the watch reacts to that.”

~ The Palace of the Cat: The Cat Marie-Louise Von Franz.

This is a short story about a friend. I find the best friends are not the ones that you make yourself but are the ones that find you. They stand the probability of time. They happen without planning and endure without much effort. She was like that. I first met her online on Facebook. We had common friends of friends. She was also interested in music as well as William Blake and Carl Jung. She showed up at my first speaking event at Whittier College.

Later she told me about a Punk event at UCLA college that I applied to and was accepted at. She was there for me and I shared many stories and my creations with her.

I think I inspired her to go to Pacifica Graduate Institute offering degrees in the clinical psychology, counseling, mythological studies and depth psychology.

At this time last year 2018, she offered me an extra William Blake calendar. I accepted it with honor. Every day I looked at the calendar and thought of her. Happy to have such a friend. Remarkable I am taken back by the last image of the calendar of The Archangel Michael Foretelling the Crucifixion. She passed away December 2019.

I believe that crucifixion is symbolic of a person’s day of release from their physical body.

As friends, have our souls not spoken to each other?

I think so.

“They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,

Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate

With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:

Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon; [ 645 ]

The World was all before them, where to choose

Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:

They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,

Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

~Book 12 Paradise Lost; Milton.

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

~William Blake

My heavenly shower

  My heavenly shower is a sacred place of hot, warm or cold water.  It is there for me in worst of times bones ache and chills of fever cleaning a dark soul quality away.  I sing, talk and compose there I talk to my medicine animals there and say my prayers.  It is an old shower with a whacked head yet the water cleans me inside and out my holy shower that sings me sweet words.

The Nasty woman is me

The Nasty Woman

“In his late works , he embodied these and other ills in the nightmare ridden figure of the cosmic giant Albion, or universal humanity, who has fallen in to deadly sleep of mundane existence. In humanity’s coma, the divine is a remote and forbidding sky-god: nature a sterile heap of atoms, lovers and family members, enemies; and one’s own innermost being, an unrecognized alien.”

~Blake’s Poetry & Designs ` A Norton Critical Edition.

Smörgåsbord of words and feelings… some very nasty…. like me.

I realize I am being confrontational, nasty, and outrageous. It is that two-week time as we move into the autumnal equinox. I hate this time of transition, but I love autumn.

Today I had to get gas on the way to where I was going. This local gas station charged me a 30 cents gas fee. Yet this is the normal way to skim the top and make a lot of money off millions of poor people. I remember when gas stations had attendants pour the gas, check the oil, and fill the car tires. It was service with a smile.

I wish one of these monster gas companies would be brave and bring the service attendants back. They could collect the cash and we could give them the service charge… instead of a fucking machine.

Every time we take away a person’s job and replace them with a machine, we become less human.

I went into the mini-market and the cashier, who seemed to be acting as an employee, knew nothing about the fee and said,

“I don’t know why you are asking about it. You are the only one that cares? No one else has asked about it.”

I looked at her silently and squarely.

“You should know about it and all the things around you here. I must pay a fee and it is dirty filthy outside around the gas tanks. I remember the day…”

A man came forward and interrupted our conversation and the cashier looked away.

“Excuse us,” I said.

“We are talking.”

I used a finger to point to the cashier and me.

“Grumble,” said the man under his breath.

I left, telling the cashier she should lose her job for not knowing anything.

Then I came home to find standing outside my home a strange older man smoking a cigarette.

“Are you waiting for someone,” I said.

“No.”

“Then why did you park here?”

The street had no other cars around. He then looked up at the tree. I then asked him to please move his car I needed to park our truck there. He seemed nice enough for not having a reason for being there besides smoking a cigarette. We talked back and forth.

“We have had issues with drug dealers around here.”

He soon left and I moved the truck out. I know I was being ridiculous. I thought it strange that he would get out of his car with his cell phone in hand to smoke a cigarette under our lovely olive tree. I did say to him.

“I don’t like the smell of cigarettes and I am sure the tree doesn’t either.”

I think upon a poem I wrote.

Any time of the year but now it is moving into the Autumn poem.

Green-gold olives

This eve

I take my broom

Last ray of sun is dead here

…it is real…

The shy clouds hide stars

Only the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn shine their breast plates.

Of radiant light…

I take my broom to the front of our home

into the dustpan goes

Dry brown and yellow

Pointy olive leaves and hard green-gold olives…

Into the waste bin…

away away.

Goes all the thoughts of this day

Of a wooing Crone…

Looking around as I sweep and bend

For any Fay to show their haunting ways

In the clouds sailing on the night or

Upon the grasping arms of the olive tree.

Queen of Elphame mocks me

As I move quickly and consistently,

I call her Sabrina…

How symbolic have I become?

Wild movement… yet strangely calm.

Sweet sweat dripping

My dusty perfume…

I do as many an old Crone

Sweeping clean the front of their home

At this transforming time.

Today I am a nasty one..

Chi Chi Hawa Harmony

“Hello, baby, hello
Open up your heart and let your feelings flow
You’re not unlucky knowing me
Keeping the speed real slow
In any case I set my own pace by stealing the show
Say hello, hello.”

Chi Chi Hawa Harmony

Chato from Painted Women / The Mustanger and the Lady (The Brandiron)

~ Dusty Richards

You don’t catch a Painted Lady—you join her journey.

Resilient

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”

― William Blake

It was terrifying living through California fires. I took a picture across the street then of what I see as a fire monster. At least it looks like one. The fires approached so close to our home.

When Spring came so did the thousands and thousands of Monarch butterflies. Sixty six years living here I never witnessed something so beautiful here before.

A flying path over our home called us to visit the burned hills. I was beside myself with wonder. How resilient nature is. I know these hills well, and I saw blooming flowers I had never seen before. A multitude of creatures and fresh green hills. Roadrunners and rabbits have also returned.

Today I studied the ideal of contraries. It is part of who we are as human beings and nature and the cosmos. I cannot think of a better quote than William Blake’s above to understand what we are going through right now. I want to share a hopeful part of nature as well. Contrary it may seem now. It is a dependable pattern we can trust.

I captured these images … my hope is even what we are going through now in the Los Angeles wildfires and winds 2025 will bring us into a new bright world. And through this destitution we face together as a part of our dependable worlds gone from us… a new one is forming from hope for our future. Nature is Resilient and so are we.

Purple mystery flowers from the Santa Monica Hills.

In its highest sense.

“According to Jung, humanity holds a special role in creation: to contribute to the act of consciousness, and the point of view of morality, in its highest sense.”
~ Johnson, Robert A. Ecstasy (p. 64) Harper One. Kindle Edition.

Time of Coyote

As we move into the Summer Solstice I celebrate the “Time of Coyote!”

We have been beginning to walk in the Santa Monica Mountains again.

I was not feeling well enough but my two sons went for a walk today.

Guess who popped out of the wild to show up?

Coyote.

Youngest son said Coyote had a big grin with tongue hanging out and then leaped away.

Coyotes are magical animals who only let you see them if they want to!

I know Coyote knows me, and also knows my two sons, because Coyote showed up in the wild to say hello!

What an awesome delight that is to know!

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/coyote-tattoo/

Driving towards home the dark night held all the romance that a woman could ask for. Falling in love after 30 was not a goal. Looking out of the passenger seat coyote was eyeballing my lover. He looked back at the wild thing that was part of a mythology deep in this hill’s subconscious. Hadn’t he been on top of coyote hill and tasted the nectar of adventure? Once on top years earlier coyote turned to look as coyote defined his territory. A wild thing knowing all those living there. A sacred path that went on for generations.

Posts about Coyote

Coyote Hill

Coyote Green Stone Story

Yellow Behind the Ears…

Coyote

Never ever, no way, give up again!

A Letter to Bernie Taupin, Alfred E. Newman and Gahan Wilson.

Al Jaffee, King of the Mad Magazine Fold-In, Dies at 102

“Allan Jaffee (born Abraham Jaffee; March 13, 1921 – April 10, 2023) was an American cartoonist. He was notable for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. Jaffee was a regular contributor to the magazine for 65 years and is its longest-running contributor. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, “Serious people my age are dead.”

~Mechanic, Michael (September 24, 2010). “Cartoonist Al Jaffee, the Original Mad Man”. Mother Jones. Retrieved October 10, 2012.

These are the Benadryl days.

Dear Teachers,

Too much listening to Elton John and remembering my crush on Bernie Taupin. Foggy dreams. Dreams where the threads of remembering can’t be pulled down into this world.

A changing mixture of memories swirling around me that I have experienced in real time. Remembering my, heart heart ~fun fun, days as a youth and teenager.

As sitting under the pool table in the boy’s room reading Mad Magazine and Playboy. Alfred E. Neuman or cartoonist Gahan Wilson, Allan Jaffee or Jack Davis went on to inspire me in my own fanzine days.

Where I created images or doodled between the pages.

Magazines are now becoming obsolete. Newspapers stands too except for the billionaires that do resurrect some.

A fight that is not going to win.

To my teachers that came from those awesome perverted magazines.

Love,

Hudley Flipside aka Holly

Jack Davis Mad Magazine original!

Within our Nature

Thus it is our fate to manage within our nature the complexity and the competition of two opposing tendencies: that which stands with life and love (the Dionysian) and that which is greedy, power hungry, and ego-driven (the Titanic).

Aguilar, A. Marina. Alchemy of The Heart: The Sacred Marriage of Dionysos & Ariadne . Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.

The Grecian god Dionysius sat enthroned on a leopard.

Rocket Man Review: The Film

PUNK ROCK COLLEAGUE & HISTORIAN AND PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANT HUDLEY FLIPSIDE

Centrifuge Going So Swiftly

“And we went to California and up and down the Pacific Coast for a day and a half, settling at last on the sands of Malibu to cook wieners at night. Dad was always listening or singing or watching things on all sides of him, holding onto things as if the world were a centrifuge going so swiftly that he might be flung off away from us at any instant.”

~Ray Bradbury. The Rocket Man

“I’ve been a cunt since 1975.”- Elton John

Rocket Man explained a lot about Elton John that confused me since 1975. I love autobiographical stories and memoirs. What a joy! Elton John shared his psyche with the world. A healed psyche that was given more then a second chance.

The film has that real deal 1970s thing going that sprang forth from the late 1960s. The chance that two genius dudes like Elton John and Bernie Taupin found each other is amazing. So grateful! I enjoyed the integrity, depth and darkness shared in this film. The world of rock & roll was not romanticized.

Fun musical choreographed dance scenes moved through the film. Bernie Taupin’s lyrics enhanced by being sung clearly and slowly made me want to sing and dance along.

I love Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s music especially the years between 1971-1974. I include in this review a conclusion with an early song written 1971 entitled Friends. I think the song Friends was a song of amazing foresight. As if Bernie knew the journey ahead would be a difficult one. Especially for Reginald Kenneth Dwight!

“Friends is a 1971 teen-romance film directed and produced by Lewis Gilbert and written by Gilbert, Vernon Harris, and Jack Russell. The soundtrack, with music composed by Elton John and Paul Buckmaster, and lyrics written by Bernie Taupin, was released as the Friends album, and John’s recording of the title selection charted when released as a single in the United States.”

1970 my favorite

To my two sons … 🌸

In the Pit: Experience found guilty via an individual’s fingerprints

26757457_1340892842683774_706547628002770944_n — https://www.facebook.com/AlisonBraunPhotography/

I see how the term Punk Rock is always trying to be defined by many. Yet the real-life definition is not an out their term to read about in academic journals because it is based on the foundation of experience. It is viewed by the action of individuals. As shown by Pudd’nhead Wilson, (1894) the novel by American writer Mark Twain; Punk Rock is as unique as a person’s fingerprints. Mark Twain is the grand Punk Rocker. Think about that.

Punk Rock is based on the foundation of experience and is unique as a person’s fingerprints. That is clear enough. It is not who you know, or what shows you go to, or if you wear the right clothes or sport the wildest haircut. You are a punk rocker who likes to camp out in the wilderness. It is when your deep-down dreams affirm to you that you are a punk rocker, then you know. It does not matter what others think of you either. It is a happy curse of creativity and inward ambition.

W.P. Witcutt authored a book on William Blake entitled Blake, A Psychological Study. He produced a term that explains the artist and visionary William Blake but also what a punk rocker is. A punk rocker has “introverted intuition.” Blake had introverted intuition. Blake took his deep-down creativity and brought it out upon the world in often wild, unique, and creative ways. Yes, he was a punk rocker.

Beatniks identified themselves as: Jane Doe, Beatnik, artist, writer, wife, mother. I too can say I am. Hudley Flipside, Punk Rocker, writer, artist, wife, mother. Alison Braun can be identified as Alison Braun, Punk Rocker, photographer, wife, mother (She may wish to add to the list).

When she took these pictures, being a female was not always the way of the land. Lots of guys in bands, as promoters and running record labels to communicate with and finding another female was not so easy. At least one who was a punk rocker living the life.

Creatively Alison Braun’s photos show unique skills of capturing a time and place in our punk rock history (1981 to 1990). This is especially important for surviving punk rockers to preserve, document and tell our stories. It is a healthy natural flow of our collective unconscious experiences. To take that deep-down creativity and bring it out upon the world again is grand! I am incredibly happy to see punk rock on an individual scale like this.

Wild thing

Wildflowers have taught me to be authentic. You cannot mess with a wildflower. It does its own thing. Too much water or love and if will die. One must look at a wildflower with a sideways glance. Appreciation is appreciated. Don’t expect a sweetness without an inward determination or discernment from the wild thing.

Euphrosyne is a Goddess of Good Cheer, Joy and Mirth. Her name is the female version of a Greek word euphrosynos, which means “merriment”. The Greek poet Pindar states that these goddesses were created to fill the world with pleasant moments and good will. Usually the Charites attended the goddess of beauty Aphrodite.

Today while shopping the Sunday crowds were noticeable. The checkout lane was accepted. Yet even with the self-checkout open and the fifteen items or less open, two young men with several Styrofoam cups wanted to go first. They loomed close to me. Thinking my old woman ways would be forgiving and stupid to the fact they would eventually ask the question.

And then it happened the young man said,

“Can you do us a favor…”

I said with well learned flower intention and assertion,

“No. There is a self-checkout over there and a fifteen or less over there. Otherwise, you need to chill and wait like the rest of us.”

I went ahead with the checkout process. These two young men then decided to enter my space. I had to tell them to please step back.

“You need to step back because you are invading my space.”

They were in front of the cash check machine. I had to bag my things. They were shaking their heads like I was playing the wrong card.

You cannot expect older mamas to be sweetie pie by force. If these two young men were older and needed my help, I would have let them through and bagged for them. But these guys thought wrong about me.

It felt good to say “no” and “back off.”

I did not use fuck, or stupid or use my hand finger. I was assertive and authentic like the wildflowers in my garden.

Androgynous God

To Dionysus who now teaches me to believe in myself…

a niche for the conscious feminine

“But now women need to create structures in their lives and in society which ensure a niche for the conscious feminine. It is time to explode the fallacy that men and women are the same. Being equal does not mean having to be similar. Perhaps the time has come when we can afford to be different yet equal.”

–Rescuing the Feminine. The problems of the Animus in Women by Jasbinder Garnermann.

A Woman’s Day 2019

A Matter of Choice.

Maggie Paul

(Update I now run a publishing business and working with upgrading my ideology on profit and sharing while creating a professional and friendship-based community.)

I am not a feminist or a professional businesswoman. I took the more traditional path as a wife and mother. I am also an entrepreneur. I find I can balance the male and female within myself. Jungian Psychology calls this balancing the Anima and Animus.

I am creatively involved in projects that have meaning to me and beyond myself or the extramundane. I am naturally a supportive person that likes home, intimate relationships, and small pubs.

My goals are based on love, not profit. Yet, I am learning to be very happy to cross the bridge of financial stability and independence. (If I ever reach that place?)

I dedicate this day to the character Maggie Paul played by Marsha Mason from the film Cinderella Liberty (1973). I like her feel. A trapped feeling of being between worlds. A strange but appropriate place to be for many women.

RIP James Caan

A “Cinderella Liberty” is Navy jargon for a pass that runs out at midnight…

Maggie Paul curtains for rainy days in our bathroom.

The outdoor crystal that merges with nature and the Sun.

Doing the laundry is never dull work in my home.

One drop of rain

YEARS ON WORDPRESS

Originally posted 2019

I have Chiron square Mercury in my 7th house…

“Please believe me
Oh well, please believe me
Please believe me
I swear
I
Swear”

I didn’t speak much when I was young. Was not interested in writing either. Only a few poems. I played with my friends, but I found it more and more difficult to communicate at school. I felt restricted, invisible, or persecuted by my own peers. I was wild and not awake to the pounding of an education that seemed incredulous to me.

I now realize I had foresight, creativity and a natural spiritualism that could not find contact. Nature was receptive! My mom and dad tried with lots of watercolors and paper. A giant black board was painted in my room. Endless chalk drawings were created and erased, drawn, and erased. The old player piano in the boys’ room is where I spent hours playing any song I wanted that I learned by heart only.

Did I not express myself in school because of fear? Was it the constant fighting and alcoholism in my household which pushed my mind down into myself? Was it dyslexic, autism or a painful shyness that was the bewildering issue within me? We the children were not diagnosed back then.

Having foresight was a curse when no one listened! I did not have the proper device, neither did I have the wise ability to reach out towards others. I did not have a voice!

Now at 60 (66) I realize my heart & mind are mature and keen enough to reach my inward growing child. That is my reasoning currently to create a hub like The Seminary Of Praying Mantis Publishing.

To share my voice and reach a global community! I believe this is the truth. Finding one’s voice and sticking to it is wonderful. The years on WordPress has helped to make this happen.

While spending a few hours observing nature this afternoon. I know that the many voices were loud and some subtle. The chirp-chirp birds, to the black ravens on tall cypress trees. Above me high in the sky are the circling hawks and the commercial jets. Sounds of life. One drop of rain touched me. I am one drop of rain too.

I invite you to support The Seminary of Praying Mantis Publishing and celebrate with me. I have words to read, items for sale and images to make you laugh. I have grown as a writer, author, and artist.

It is amazing that so many tools are available where one can publish ones’ works! It can be achieved very cheaply and sometimes even for free as with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. I have taken the core of my punk philosophy, wild nature, foresight, and freedom to communicate with the world. I found a place to express myself. It is colorfully rewarding.

Sting like a jelly-fish

“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.”

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Today while walking into Ralph’s supermarket, I saw the familiar old lady under yellow plastic. She was holding a white tissue to her red nose. She sat in her wheelchair at a prime target getting her ‘a little sympathy’. She got mine. I went into the store and purchased a $1.95 Starbucks house coffee medium. I am still amazed that a ‘cup of joe’ costs so much now. I remember when it was 25 cents.

“I like watching Noir films,”

I said to the barista.

“It is a wonder in those films that a ‘cup of joe’ only cost five pennies. Twenty-five cents got you a cup of coffee, a ham sandwich, and a piece of pie.”

The barista smiled at me as I got the coffee. I put in some cream and sugar and then headed towards the old lady in a wheelchair.

“Here is a cup of coffee, you look cold.?!”

“I don’t drink coffee it is bad for you.”

“Really, I thought it would warm you up. Coffee is not as bad for you as you may think.”

“I have never had any.”

She looked down to her right at a dirty bag of oranges.

“It is all right I had an orange…I am fine.”

I was a bit upset. I never thought that she would reject a cup of coffee on such a cold and rainy day.

“Lady sometimes beggars can’t be choosers?!”

I realized that I could not reason with the lady. She had her right to say no. So, I walked on remembering what an old myth taught me. All about a woman’s psyche.

As Persephone went on her journey, she was advised not to give anything to those needy people who asked for something along the way. It was important for her to hold on to her strength and parts of herself that were precious.

I failed the test today. Then that sorrow thread pulled in me. I call it the thread of sorrow.

I think that our current society does not embrace their share of sorrow. That is why we have so many drug addicts and alcoholics. A social epidemic.

We all need to hold on to or embrace our threads of sorrow.

It can pull hard.

It can be an echo that mocks.

It can sting like a jelly-fish.

When we run from our share of sorrow,

ignore it,

or get lost in our addictions hating it,

it only manifests in our world as a monster shadow.

Creating hate, chaos, and terrible politicians.

That is why I love Jazz because it speaks to the human heart and soul.

It embraces its share of sorrow.

Age, shadow and beauty

His beauty was notable even in a province where the lack of it is more exceptional in a young man. It was the sort of beauty that is celebrated by the heroic male sculptures in the fountains of Rome. Two things disguised it a little, the dreadful poverty of his clothes and his stealth of manner. The only decent garment he wore was a black overcoat which was too small for his body. Its collar exposed a triangle of bare ivory flesh; no evidence of a shirt. The trouser-cuffs were coming to pieces. Naked feet showed through enormous gaps in his shoe leather. He seemed to want to escape the attention which his beauty invited, for whenever he caught a glance he turned aside from it. He kept his head lowered and his body hunched slightly forward. And yet he had an air of alertness. The tension of his figure suggested that he was continually upon the verge of raising his voice or an arm in some kind of urgent call or salutation.

~Williams, Tennessee. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (New Directions Bibelot) (Kindle Locations 22-24). New Directions. Kindle Edition.

Rendering of Flowers, lemon and Turkish Tea Pot… to be water colored soon by Hudley

Tennessee Williams wrote only two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950, adapted into a film in 1961, and again in 2003) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975) I have watched the 1961 film several times. Haunted by the film as many are, I had to read the novel to answer some questions that I have. So, the above quote is so beautifully tragic that I am taken to my youth and my world now as a senior citizen. Yet, the description above reminds me of the many young beauty punks I knew in my youthful years. I think, or should I say know… describes what I feel and saw back then. So perfect…. A door to a writer an education by him… what joy I feel. The right time and place to understand where I can alchemise his magic… a balancing of love and disdain I am sure.