hello. i'm jenny page.
long ago, i had a kick#ss band in bakersfield cali, the dusk devils. you still can find dd music online. i'm from a tight family of brainy do-gooders & now live in the mountains with my spouse & pet children. i'm happy as a nut like me can be, in spite of the infernal coconut. life's an adventure, a chore, a beauty, a choice, a turn -- short, but as good as you make it (in this culture, anyways), so let's not forget that!
i've been watching the netflix french potboiler marseille (a sleazy-fun view: dallas for francophiles), starring gerard depardieu, my favorite crazy actor. he might be a nut, but can he emote more with his nostril & small wince of porcine eye than can most any other actor? certainement! and his voice: i've fallen in love w/various males largely because of their pipes (well, & large frontal lobes). only twice did i have boyfriends (ha!) of uninteresting, even annoying vox, & each time it was fubar enormous... it's always fascinated me -- maybe you, too? -- great &/or gorgeous men who go to pot: orson welles, elvis, marlon brando, oliver reed, even: maybe being that spectacular is too much for the human flesh bag to contain. no one since brando has puffed up & weirded out quite like depardieu, i don't think, but yet he allures...
then there's the experience that resembles depardieu: something ugly in which one must root out beauty, like an easter egg or junk store jaunt or exploring abandoned places or doing seemingly unending research... these experiences can be so much more rewarding than the new & "perfect," in my opinion, when they reveal beauty/revelation/discovery. and that's why i always will love bakersfield, which long ago i realized is like a bad relationship, so often dissatisfying, disappointing, even heartbreaking, but the moments when it is beautiful shine brighter than sunlight because of their rarity.
james tells me most places are "bakersfields," like even the places i used to think "if only i were THERE..." i think he's right. i can't demonize bakersfield anymore: nearly every place is bakersfield. there IS that thing called the bell curve, yknow, which, while not applicable, i don't think, to racial or SES matters, IS pertinent in our human cultural world, which maddeningly seems to slide toward the mundane, even stupid.
oh heck, i forgot why i got on here. oh yeah; something beautiful in bakersfield:
- we had to cancel shenanigan's yesterday due to the weather! dang it!!! and now school's cancelled!
when i worked in bakosfield, i woulda loved all these school cancellations. this is the 6th snow/wind/weather cancellation this year! not that i didn't like the kids in backwardsland, but i didn't love my job then like i love it now, teaching on the mountain. i know now how mama felt all those yrs. i could never understand why she'd stay so late at school, grading papers, arranging her room. she had the most beautiful room. she was a super teacher. she devoted herself 200% to school, as she does everything. mama is a lover & a doer, a creator, a leader. i'm certainly not in that caliber or ever will be, but i really enjoy now staying after school in the quiet, prepping everything just so for the next day. it's comforting, energizing: it feels right, like playing the pianny or talking to another woman drunk or listening to good music or running or watching a great movie or kids or animals at play or homo sapiens being kind to one another... anyways...
it helps to be rid of the distraction of always trying to be glamorous, yes, it helps being older (not really wiser, tho). i love the kids kinda like a grandma would, i think (gadzooks! i'm their near-grammy age!), plus i get to be creative at this school, so i get that "mama" feeling in that way. at this school, the boss lets us come up w/ideas & try them out, so now i'm doing drumline, color guard, art class, book room, library in addition to 6th grade class. yay! now she'll likely let me have meditation time for the kids who want it, tho likely under a different moniker so parents fundamentalist or otherwise won't freak out. we have a lot of traumatized &/or wigged out kids at our school: i think correctly planned, this could help the ones who want it.
wow! it's really coming down out the wihnder! they cancelled school, i think, bc of high winds/rain, the latest storm. altho it's been in the 30s & 40s, relatively warm compared to january, we're sposed to have more snow tonight. i read an interesting bit about rain/snow conversion on our local weather website, w/which i'm obsessed. living in this elemental place can cultivate obsession even in the most normal, i'd think, & weather-mania is a healthy direction to point craving feelings. here's the website, maintained by a golden local, god bless him for being so meticulous: www.fpweather.com
- this might be only interesting to me, but maybe you, if you're interested in such things: i downloaded an android altimeter app (called simply "altimeter") & discovered the following: long beach ca, where most of our music gigs are, is at 13 ft elevation. poo! whatever! however, our house is at 5040 feet. i like that! now come the big contrasts: downtown frazier park, just 1 mile below our home, is near-400 ft lower. no wonder it's so hard to chug up that road on foot! our exit from the interstate, 5 miles down the road, is 1200 ft lower. my school is 1800 ft lower. the entrance to the san joaquin valley, the rd to bakerspatch, is 3800 ft lower than our home!! i hope our blood is becoming super-rich from all the elevation changes we experience daily. :)
- anyways, back to today: when dad fell off a 5-foot ladder some months back, indomitable, hyperbolic aunty rita called cousin tushi in tx & told her "uncle gil fell off the roof!" aunty rita's a member of the same mutant race james is. (he, too,'s been known to shuck facts in favor of a rollicking tall tale: maybe it's a trait connected to the superhuman metabolism of such folks?) she called this a.m. at butt-crack-thirty to tell me "you gotta get off that mountain. they're saying on the news the winds are gonna be blowin' 90 mph. you & james gotta get down to bakersfield NOW." merde! i got back in bed, somewhat troubled, clutching james's warmly sleeping hulk for comfort. soon after, a gust blasted the house, shaking its timbers & ripping across the roof like god's gigantic comb. ah! we just lost the roof! thought i. how much is THAT gonna cost?!?!
no more sleeping now.
but the weather says the gusts only will be 65 mph.
i think we'll be ok. :) we've had 70, & no one here blew away to oz.
at this rate, tho, we'll never get to play shenanigan's on a thursday night til winter is completely over. va fan! this has been a heckuva winter, tho i know pallid by past-decade standards.... cacahuates! now it's snowing again! how is that posssible when it's 37 degrees?!? time for more coffee.
he is learning postermywall & so has been making gig flyers. we will be at this show tonight unless it rains in long beach... have a parent mtg for one of my favorite kids early, better get cracking. happy day.
am trying to blog, but the cat won't have it. he crawls behind the computer & swipes a claw at the mouse as i move it. with great effort, i haul his gigantic bulk to the ground, & he responds with a pounce, teeth bared. earlier he was a big fat sweetheart warming my feet as i rested, but now... we know if he were human-sized & human, he'd be an autistic psychopath & we'd both have been shredded to pieces long ago...
been having weird dreams the last few nights. they come up whenever i'm sick. today's, time was kerflooey, as dreams are, & i was telling my ex-husband, a good man, that i'd been a crummy wife, then i jettisoned a yucky creep, feeling much better about the whole thing than the way it shook out in real life many yrs ago... then was looking all over for james to tell him BC i felt he'd be proud i'd been honest & in the dream, i FOUND HIM & all was well. he was silly & dashing & goofy & tough, like he is. in past dreams, i can't find him. so this is all good. 😀
wanted to post about decent silent film just watched on pub-d-hub (think that's what it's called) on the old roku on the old tv we just got free from a local lady... set it up in bedroom for lovely tv viewing on sick bed day... feeling weary. it's one of those "it's going around" illnesses... but wanted to share that this is worth watching for its social realism & lead actress & poignant plot & lack of misogyny... the goddess ... not the greatest film ever, but worthwhile.... if you're near long beach ca us this eve, go see the amazing whiteboy james on stage all night. if you don't know it yet, he is an astonishing performer, the wonderful, one-in-a-billion, big-hearted galoot... better go now. be well.
yesterday, no school due to snow that Never Arrived... today, snow day numero dos! and this one is warranted! it's wondrous to witness the changing weather up here. this a.m. i had my coffee & watched the dark sky to the east suddenly melt into the most beautiful robin's egg blue tinged with eastery pinks & yellows & silvers & thought, well, that's it, better get ready for work, when shazam! just like that, black clouds enveloped the heavens & walls of snow started dancing & prancing across the sky like a scene from a vintage holiday movie! james says after a lifetime in smell/swellay (my name for it, not his), he enjoys seeing four seasons. i second it!
but oh heck, what now? i've had coffee, straightened the house, read for quite a while, petted the cat, researched how to fix an electric keyboard, paid bills, ate breakfast, drank more coffee,... (thumbs twiddling...) ... and now begins the descent into instant Cabin Fever... arrghhhh...
this past wkend was quite busy with music & being in the car going this place & that. here are nice pix snapped by roger f & richard c sat at shenanigan's. i will not write that i need to lose weight. oops -- already did... oh well. it was really fun playing that day with wonderful anthony & king james. we thundered!! we kicked a*s!! the place was packed. people cheered & laughed & danced. it was a real kick!
we are getting old, but we still take a good pic, i think...
i hurt myself working too much in the book room at school yesterday, but that's a good thing about being formerly athletic (as well as a female w/lifelong entanglings w/the moon)
: i know what physical pain feels like, so i can bear it. plus gimme muscle pain any time over the head & chest pain i lived with in bakersfield (sinus infections, asthma, allergies, blehh!)... long ago, a kind friend gave me a buckwheat-filled heating donut, so that's easing the throbbing muscles & joints right now while i cool my heels, waiting to go to school on a snow-delay day. we'll see what happens weather-wise. supposed to have snow all week. woo-hoo! that's good for the mountain. however, we're supposed to be at shenanigan's this eve, so hope the weather won't prevent that!
- now i know why james's childhood friend lisa, a very successful reality-tv producer, opted NOT to create a reality show based on james. i read this article in the NYer (my fave mag, yknow, cause i get free copies & can read & read & read for hours & hours, plus the cartoons are great). the article was about a female reality-tv producer, likely someone lisa knows bc the article's subject was a co-producer on one of lisa's shows, the bachelorette. the business sounds soul-sucking, requiring one to resort to calculating, brutal, immoral tactics. lisa said at the time, i can't subject james to that. the article's subject (no, i don't remember her name) eventually quit & produced a parody of the reality-tv biz, the name of which i can't remember, either. ah-so. this comes up bc this pic came from the cartoon part of the "pitch" i created for lisa for james's prospective show. i used the image for tomorrow's music show at shenanigan's. - we celebrated an anniversary, kind of, on jan 8, what would've been elvis's 85th birthday. jan 8 2010 was the first time i saw james in the flesh. he remembers me as having birds & flowers tweeting & flying around my head, like snow white, he says, & an entourage of guys flocking around me, he likes to say. and that's the eve he told his former guitar player, "i'm gonna marry that girl." wow! i remember a tough-looking boy-man with large forehead & determined, fixed gaze who tho bald & obviously middle-aged was boisterously friendly & cute as a big kid. then he kept laying kisses on me, & tho wet, they were very romantic, not lecherous. i'd never had anyone do that! i was wobbling, confused, seeing stars as my former guitar player & i got in his car to drive off & he said, "i think someone LIIIKES you!" here are some pix from jan 8 2017, in front of the gias' beautiful door, & one from later that day at o'henning's in bakersfield/ oildale, where james played some & i got up to sing one w/him. we'll be there this sunday, too, to support kaykay, after saturday's show at shenanigan's, where i'll be bass for the day. with steve at his place in hawaii right now, i'm looking fwd to seeing little anthony & playing some music. old fart who don't like me, be danged. ha!
ok, so to be more linear, here's where we'll be:
-fri, snowed in, no blasters show in ventura
-sat, shenanigan's, LBC, 2-6 pm
-sun, o'hennings, oildale/bakersfield, kaykay jagger benefit, 3 pm
the snow is doing 100 different dances outside, & here is what i posted on facebook. bye for now. :)
Snow day! Originally we were on 2 hr school delay, & in a moment of miracle, our bad cat sat in my lap (only the 2nd time he's done this) & went to sleep as I drank my morn coffee & admired the (then) light snowfall. Now it's really coming down: lovely! Yesterday at school, the kids were lunatics toward end of day!! What is going on with you guys?!? I implored. We're gonna have a snow day tomorrow!! they cheered. How can you tell? I said. We just know! the little barometers cried. But the snow bunnies! they whined. We don't want them to come up here! They make a mess & we cant go anywhere!! Yes, on NY Day, get this: an estimated 168,000 people came up to this mountain to see the snow. 168,000!!!! The entire greater mtn population is less than 15,000! In attempt to better regulate things, signs coming up the mountain now read Chains Required & 2 Hours to Snow Play. It was taking 2 to 4 hours on NY to drive 15 miles! Tons & tons of garbage, too, were left by the roadsides. I hope this time will be better!
no, this site won't let me upload a simple music file, either... if i knew more about coding, i'd be able to do it, no problemo...
(hang on a minute...)
(...)
(...)
https://sites.google.com/site/duskdevilsaudio/config/pagetemplates/jennypage-audio?previewAsViewer=1
i don't know if that will work...
- the 1st song is james & me fiddling around one eve when he was feeling sentimental about his long-time friend & mentor... but i wish i had practiced before recording it... i've developed a potty mouth in past years, never would've said "sucked" in previous life (however, just read those who swear are more imaginative, so maybe i'm gettin more maginative)... james came in to my classroom this eve (i stayed late to grade papers & do the 100 other little tasks teaching school requires) & started playing "help you dream" on the classroom pianny, singing the melody so sincerely over the wrong changes like he does (how does he do that?!?), so i stopped grading & played as he sang & looked into my eyes with a little tear & a smile & it was a moment surely sweeter than when mr alvin did that one night long ago when i'd gone to see the blasters... james is pure heart, which those who love him know (but as he always say, most who think they know him, don't at all...)
the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th are these: a song i wrote while we were separated; a voice acting demo i recorded from a book & i forgot the details of, which is lame bc its words are very wise; and a song i wrote years ago in the dusk devils days that james wants to use in his repertoire/album eventually, but i wanted to put it on here now bc i have little self-control at times, so if i put this one on here, i won't put on here the other 10 songs i want to, ones he's gonna put in his repertoire eventually cause i shouldn't do that, but i wrote this one & actually used to sing this it, too, so i'll put it up...
what else? deutsche kuchen red cabbage & apples. bomb-a*s aldi, our new favorite grocery store. (we went in germany! there's one in backwardfield! now THAT is weird!). new strength moves. the trabampoline. a new side job as book clerk at school. tomorrow after yoga, if i can find a haz-mat suit, i'll go to school & start cleaning it out. today, a clean septic tank for only $600 (aaah! kill me now!). funny how the bathroom smells so much better now, less eau de bum. neat articles about ursula k le guin, leonard cohen (the new yorker: endless reading, so cheap, & the best cartoons). power failure on the mountain. caveman cavey's, such great pizza. yum! 23 degrees this morn, with ice so hard on my windshield, the ice scraper couldn't budge it! our cat, his whisker now mysteriously curled. such a feline butthead, he certainly would never rescue us from a vicious dog, as a bakersfield cat hero recently did when its 6-year old human-child was attacked. something i just learned about: quipa. and the language created by & used by only women: nushu... so much blablablaboloney that doesn't make any sense, even swimming in the head that thinks it... you might know how the big dumb coconut can roll like a big wheel... through a georgia cotton field... so i will hush. ta-ta for now!
just checking in since i haven't written in a long bit. here are some randoms:
- went to post office, which was closed, bearing tardy holiday gifts that are past-due needing a-mailing, saw group of frozen locals standing on edge of highway with signs reading "if you won't respect our home, LEAVE." man, you should've seen the traffic crawling along the little highway! mile after mile of visitors, which the locals were protesting: the messy, multitudinous snow bunnies who've clogged our roads & hillsides of late. our poor little mountain has looked almost bad as the 405 at some times recently.
- james & i caught some of it driving back home on christmas day. at first we grumbled & complained, then started to enjoy watching all the flatlander families playing in the white stuff, hundreds, maybe even a G of 'em between fort tejon & gorman along the 5 as well as along the highway to our town, clambering & sliding on the hillsides, climbing over private fences, taking selfies, laughing, making snowmen, packing snow in their vehicle beds & on hoods, heck, one family even had out a full picnic & BBQ set up!
- still, presence of the hordes ultimately is annoying bc we live up here in part NOT to deal w/urban human numbers. funny: Facebook wags referred today to "snow dummies" & "citiots," the latter of which definitely is my favorite neologism of late... it made the whole thing light-hearted again. plus, give this a week & we'll be back to being a tiny mountain hamlet with near-no visitors... with luck the bunny/dummy invasion has helped local business...
- oh, i think that's it. vacation is over, it's still cold cold cold up here, but tomorrow morn bright & early, i'll be in the stalwart subaru heading to school... i've missed my students, but there's much to be said for sleeping in... feliz anyo nuevo [sic]
get hold of james to find out what he's selling and how to get to the bizarre bazaar! orders accepted by mail, as well... now til the new year... tell yo friends! (see poster for his contact info)
ps, come see us this thurs at shenanigan's, shoreline village long beach ca, 7 pm-11 pm, for our holiday show (which means i'll sing christmas songs and we'll do the rest of the regular combo show, with james leading the repertoire!)... haven't written in a good long while, but all is well... look what mom & dad celebrated yesterday! wow! happy holidays!!!
i have to go to the bathroom, but the cat is on my lap. he looks up at me with trusting green orbs, blinks, puts a soft paw on my arm. dang it. i have to go to the bathroom!
we had such a great time in swellay. actually hollywood. i'll have to post more later.
oh good: kitty just remembered he really is a wild, only-semi-domesticated beast & swiped at me with claw. off the lap, beast!
now i can meet nature's call...
here's a poster i made for saturday night. i'm gonna play on this show.
ahhhh.... vacation: leisure time! i like it. :)
may your holidays be filled with love & not too much internal conflict as you reconcile breaking bread w/dear ones in commemoration of a genocide... i choose instead to focus on the fam!
our cousin, the super-beautiful one, was accepted on a cooking tv show, i just found out. master chef? i will tune in. happy for her -- she's long-been on the edges of the entertainment field! the only cooking show i watch is chopped, tho that one gets old quickly. i love the female judges, all beautiful in marked-different style, & supernerd host ted allen, & superman-handsome scott whatever-his-name-is... i've learned from chopped that one can combine the most disparate elements to make a palatable dish. james shrugs, says, "chemistry," as if it's so everyday, to know this particular magic. me, i, who kisses better than cooks, to paraphrase my fridge magnet, made a delicious casserole this morn from leftovers: thank you, chopped... included in dish were the powerfully-aromatic garlic fries we had yesterday eve, at charlie brown's terrific americana-overload junkporium, en route home from biker gig in san bernadino. we took the city route over, the desert route home w/dusky heavens flamed w/color the way they do only in high-desert: gorgeous! :a nostalgically maxfield parrish feast for the orbs.
he's home from store; i'll write more later.
he brought my favorite ice cream: thrifty's chocolate malted crunch!!!!
truly this is vacation time... :D
........... strident, ham-fisted, but passionate & pugnacious michael moore called it one wk ahead....... .......... i asked ppl repeatedly for reassurance over past months. they all said, "no way." ppl aren't that stupid or mean, they said. the feeling i had of foreboding, however, was palpable, a bad dream, but real. i knew, i just KNEW. and now it's happened. i've never had much prescience. why'd it have to be now? sh*t & double sh*t.
- many funny memes have appeared in the wake of 11/9; one shows dubya holding up a drink. "congratulations, america," it reads. "and you thought I was an idiot."
- "i survived 8 yrs of ronald reagan," dad philosophized. but reagan was a statesman compared to what now we face.
- the best thing to happen for us was, after two days being heartsick, mournful, & bilious with disgust, we sat down & started howling sad songs & ended up writing a whole lotta music, new stuff, even stuff james said was good enough to add to his new CD. the national bullsh*t turned out to be fertilizer.
- i will miss our handsome, smart, circumspect gentleman of a president & his beautiful family. never has there been a classier commander-in-chief, free of personal scandal, "just a good guy," as james has said, certainly not w/o errors made, but what integrity & resolve barack obama has had. what dignity & friendliness. and what a wonderful smile!
- if i taught high school, day after election i would've worn to school my obama & dr king shirt, a 2008 collectible. however, my job is not to indoctrinate children, tho i guiltily acknowledge some of that's inherent in the uniformity of school structure. my job is to help them gain skills & learn to be kind & to desire to contribute to society... and to insert tiny bits of questioning of authority, cause in my book, that's the decent thing to do. even 6th graders shouldn't be robots!
>>>>>>>>>>>>
we had a mock election in my classroom on election day. they ran a terrific little article about it in our terrific little mountain paper. here are pix of it:
-another nice thing is, the ancient treadmill we got from mom & dad finally will run for longer than 5 mins. james added grounding mechanisms, so this eve i cautiously jogged for a while, holding the handrails cause i've been so sick (stupid sickening election! stupid weak metabolism! in the old days, i spose i woulda been said to have a "nervous condition").
- as uncle henry would've said, "sometimes peanuts, sometimes shells." time to get off the cyber ride & back onto the terra firma of "reality."
- oh, wait.
- sh*t!
does no drama in life make life boring? the things i now post about are reflections, memories, ponderings, the stuff of which an older person thinks. even three years ago, my brain too often was lit up w/confusions, fear, immaturities, bullsh*t. my husband & i are as mellowed out as we can be. james has creative activities going all over this house. he is playing music, still the greatest frontman i've ever seen. sometimes i go with him, sometimes not. sometimes i even play! it's fun. my job is great. the drive each day is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. i'm a good teacher. the other teachers are hard-working, friendly. i have lovely, sweet, & intelligent friends. my immediate family can match any other on earth for kindness, sense of humor, humanitarian good works, talent. our cat is... very pretty, tho a mercurial & rather dumb feline. and i wouldn't want to live anywhere except here! mountain views on all sides, deep blue sky, so calming, so restorative...
if this life is boring, i want more! f*ck drama!!!!
how bout you? what you tink?
this morn when i got up & opened the doors, the air was fragrant w/earth & rain, a musky vibrant scent: scintillating! then we had coffee & listened to "welcome to night vale" for a bit & then i got back in bed (because it's saturday & i CAN!!!!) with dumbbell the kitty (2 yrs young last night!) & i started bouncing on the decades. in 1976 i was a heavy, precocious, backwards kid already a misanthrope, just waiting for a drink, i think. in 86 i was one yr out of high school & working & kind of going to jr college & really starting to mess up my life w/male & substances. by 96, i was one yr sober, already w/the fellow who'd become my 1st husband. in 06, i was immersed in self, playing music, gallivanting all over the country, messing around, of some worth to the human race finally, yet still pretty much a moral ass.
this year is best of all decades, even w/the plummets in the roller coaster. i love this life right now!!
all i know is, 10 yrs from now i have no clue where life will be!
hello, bunnies, hello, quail, hello, birds, hello, mountains, hello, camarados!
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
today is my sister's birthday. :) there only are two of us, & i'm the elder. she is a good egg, always has been, so talented & hard-working, a helper of humanity. like james, she's always had tons of friends, a trait i admire but don't have. she always had clusters of kids around her when we were growing up, all the oddball kids, everyone happy, jabbering away like a chicken coop, sprawling all over our house... her daughter's become the same way, except maddy's always The Leader. angie is very religious now & frets too much, i think, & unlike me, she's always been a chameleon. dad even called her "zelig" at one point. she is the only one in our family who doesn't have a cartoonishly large head; she also is, i think, the most well-adjusted. :) when i look at her, i still see the tiny, slight, lovable & kind child i remember. angie is a good soul, funny, interested in so much, a wonderful human being. :)
we will celebrate for her this weekend. i know she won't read this, so i'll tell you what i got her: a beautiful pair of brown frye boots for near-nothing (if they'd fit me, i woulda kept them -- yes, i know that sounds selfish) & pajamas with octopi on them bc for some strange reason (i think it has to do with lovecraft) she loves them varmints. (james says he hate them bc of their tentacles, but i think it's one of his faux-fears, like how he claims so incorrectly to hate midgets!)
phone's ringing, gonna go.
happy bd, seeeesturd!!!
aunty rita always has said that's not possible, but i just realized she's not right. i just took a sad, crappy situation & a song immediately jumped from it.
certainly that overturns my favorite aunty's dictum.
i realized this week that i love my job, really love it. it's the first time in my life i truly can say that. i hope i can get these kids to read & do math with greater skill. i am doing whatever i can. i am finally being a good teacher. i am finally being more like mama. the feeling is clean; i like feeling clean. :)
this weekend is sister angie's birthday. i hope all will go well. after all, life is an ecstasy, to quote emerson. the next line reads, "life is as sweet as nitrous oxide." since that sounds like emerson mighta been on some of the good stuff, i'll cop that, like narcotics, sometimes life is bliss & sometimes it's hell, but it always is life. oh brother; that didn't make sense. i'm still kinda down...
ok, i think that's it. time to go find a good serial killer documentary. they weirdly make me feel better when i am blue. but nothing cures my blues like having a song spontaneously pop from its depths: then i know there really is a god, even if the song's not a good one.
thank you, universe, for creation. thank you for the clean feeling. thank you for life.
love,
jenny
(it's been such a nice wkend, after kick-butt fun show at sue's just one mile from home, i think i'll repost this post from last week, which i'd gotten in a crappy mood & deleted. happy sunday to all!)
just had a cool shower (sometimes the hot water is unwilling) after a nice slow hike up to the water tower (golden evening w/its low shadows was far too lullingly beautiful to stay inside) followed by nice bowl of lukewarm spaghetti consumed while reading a moderately-interesting article from NY times mag, which was in the pile of mags mama gave me yesterday... am seized w/desire to write a bit. the crickets are whirring so fast these eves, in these early autumn eves, they sound like an army of south american whistles or a whispering sea of wind-up instruments... they will be dormant soon as nights get colder... it's a nostalgic sound, a latent memory sound, a lovely churring song...
have had an extremely low-key but pleasant day cleaning house, rescuing a beetle, washing up dishes, playing w/fatso the cat, reading, napping, trying to stretch out & strengthen my rotator cuff, which fear i've injured, continuing to edit a book about mama's championship 1965 european choir, watching all kinda top-10-this & 25-most-that videos on youtube on the tv while james snored gently away... it's been 5 yrs this wkend since he first came over here... what a difference a half-decade's made!
ok, i'm interrupted & he is calling me, but what a rush of thoughts, what a jumble, what a chorus! today's been mostly me & my mind, which sometimes magically magnifies in ways quite enjoyable, stirring, frightening, resolving, rewarding. i got fixated for a while on all the loved ones, then all the millions, billions of humans that have perished on this earth over time & our lot in life, to perish, & was pondering that one for a while til thought of sister angie's prescient wish from years ago (for now they actually do this!): to have one's corpse buried with a sapling so that we all who choose may become trees, but now all the other mental goofing & meandering's gone except this short story i read today by doris lessing, about snails. i enjoyed it. you should look it up.
tomorrow is school again, & life has been nice, then a chore, then a trial, then a puzzler, but now it's good again, & that's how it seems to go around here, maybe for all us hairless apes, tho to varying degrees.
may you be happy.
- i was an obsessed child. were you? i was obsessed with drawing pictures, comic books, typing stories & musings on my olivetti, mad magazine, &, once i got past the plateau, playing the piano. then i was an obsessed teen, but such a weirdo: i was obsessed with middle-aged actors, first humphrey bogart, then james garner & hal linden, & at my most obsessed, feverish peak, gene hackman. ha! why was i so strange?! i even had a plastic blue file box filled with folders about all of hackman's movies, movie stills, details of dialogue, casts, reviews lovingly typed & assembled.
- i remember the moment i became obsessed, watching bonnie & clyde, when brawny, burly hackman leaped effortlessly, limberly over the bank teller window. then watching him, all 6-foot-plus & 200 lbs, sprint athletically after a street punk, pulling a punch to threaten with meaty pink fist in the french connection. such bulky uber-male demonstrations drove me nuts!
- i know now it was just the flip side of the more usual teenaged-girl safe attraction to the androgynous little slips of boy whose polished smiles still beautify the covers of teen mags. although it's a step toward real relationships, attraction to perfect-pretty boy idols & hulky man-hunks are so far-removed from the real boys at school!
- we were raised in the church til aged 10, then given a choice if we wanted to keep going. my sister & i screamed NO!!! (at least that's what i remember...) my theory is, the less god or sense of the spiritual i have had in my life, the more obsessed i would get. oh my lord, the obsessions have been many in the many years, even after i got sober & had periods of hugely unspiritual living! now being up here in the beautiful mountains, in a, yes, often-trying but loving, rewarding, emotionally edifying marriage, with fulfilling & immersing work, my obsessions are at bay... tho they still crop up!
- for instance, james & i've gotten obsessed in the past six months with columbo, tho me more than him, of course, cause, well, i think i'm just more neurotic. next weekend we're gonna stay at an old motel toward the mojave desert for one night, & i found out it has served often as a movie-tv locale, & then i kept looking (obsessing) & found out -- sh*t! -- they used it in an episode of columbo!! -- tho unfortunately not in one of the patrick mcgoohan episodes, cause that would've been a trifecta of obsession, to be w/james at a motel where a columbo was filmed starring my current-favorite deceased actor!!! (mcgoohan, coolly, stoically handsome, did not drink or kiss onscreen because he was married & felt otherwise would disrespect his wife. he turned down the role of 007!)*
- there was a picture of the episode, so i clicked the link & found a site & realized: i am garden-variety obsessed. the person who made this website is full-boat, jenny-at-aged-16, maybe-whackadoodle obsessed! click here and see what i mean. http://columboscreenshots.blogspot.com
- columbo is such a terrific show! peter falk was a genius! so at least the man who assembled the site has directed his obsession toward something worthy. just imagine if he put his effort & mind toward solving a world problem: he could change the planet, maybe!
(ps, here's a picture of patrick mcgoohan, just so you can see what i was enthusing about above...) :D
(tho of course james is far more handsome!!!)
* (from http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2015/04/20/batman-as-007-twelve-actors-who-turned-down-the-role-of-james-bond/:) A little more about Patrick McGoohan who had he accepted the role may have been the best actor to ever play the part. But it was not only the womanizing McGoohan objected to; he truly despised the character, calling Bond “contemptible and simplistic.”... McGoohan, a man of very strong ethics said in a 1960’s interview about the Dr. No script which he turned down, “I thought there was too much emphasis on sex and violence. It has an insidious and powerful influence on children. Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn’t see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.”
: i know what physical pain feels like, so i can bear it. plus gimme muscle pain any time over the head & chest pain i lived with in bakersfield (sinus infections, asthma, allergies, blehh!)... long ago, a kind friend gave me a buckwheat-filled heating donut, so that's easing the throbbing muscles & joints right now while i cool my heels, waiting to go to school on a snow-delay day. we'll see what happens weather-wise. supposed to have snow all week. woo-hoo! that's good for the mountain. however, we're supposed to be at shenanigan's this eve, so hope the weather won't prevent that!
: i know what physical pain feels like, so i can bear it. plus gimme muscle pain any time over the head & chest pain i lived with in bakersfield (sinus infections, asthma, allergies, blehh!)... long ago, a kind friend gave me a buckwheat-filled heating donut, so that's easing the throbbing muscles & joints right now while i cool my heels, waiting to go to school on a snow-delay day. we'll see what happens weather-wise. supposed to have snow all week. woo-hoo! that's good for the mountain. however, we're supposed to be at shenanigan's this eve, so hope the weather won't prevent that!
this comes up bc this pic came from the cartoon part of the "pitch" i created for lisa for james's prospective show. i used the image for tomorrow's music show at shenanigan's.
- we celebrated an anniversary, kind of, on jan 8, what would've been elvis's 85th birthday. jan 8 2010 was the first time i saw james in the flesh. he remembers me as having birds & flowers tweeting & flying around my head, like snow white, he says, & an entourage of guys flocking around me, he likes to say. and that's the eve he told his former guitar player, "i'm gonna marry that girl." wow! i remember a tough-looking boy-man with large forehead & determined, fixed gaze who tho bald & obviously middle-aged was boisterously friendly & cute as a big kid. then he kept laying kisses on me, & tho wet, they were very romantic, not lecherous. i'd never had anyone do that! i was wobbling, confused, seeing stars as my former guitar player & i got in his car to drive off & he said, "i think someone LIIIKES you!" here are some pix from jan 8 2017, in front of the gias' beautiful door, & one from later that day at o'henning's in bakersfield/ oildale, where james played some & i got up to sing one w/him. we'll be there this sunday, too, to support kaykay, after saturday's show at shenanigan's, where i'll be bass for the day. with steve at his place in hawaii right now, i'm looking fwd to seeing little anthony & playing some music. old fart who don't like me, be danged. ha!
Snow day! Originally we were on 2 hr school delay, & in a moment of miracle, our bad cat sat in my lap (only the 2nd time he's done this) & went to sleep as I drank my morn coffee & admired the (then) light snowfall. Now it's really coming down: lovely! Yesterday at school, the kids were lunatics toward end of day!! What is going on with you guys?!? I implored. We're gonna have a snow day tomorrow!! they cheered. How can you tell? I said. We just know! the little barometers cried. But the snow bunnies! they whined. We don't want them to come up here! They make a mess & we cant go anywhere!! Yes, on NY Day, get this: an estimated 168,000 people came up to this mountain to see the snow. 168,000!!!! The entire greater mtn population is less than 15,000! In attempt to better regulate things, signs coming up the mountain now read Chains Required & 2 Hours to Snow Play. It was taking 2 to 4 hours on NY to drive 15 miles! Tons & tons of garbage, too, were left by the roadsides. I hope this time will be better!
this comes up bc this pic came from the cartoon part of the "pitch" i created for lisa for james's prospective show. i used the image for tomorrow's music show at shenanigan's.
- we celebrated an anniversary, kind of, on jan 8, what would've been elvis's 85th birthday. jan 8 2010 was the first time i saw james in the flesh. he remembers me as having birds & flowers tweeting & flying around my head, like snow white, he says, & an entourage of guys flocking around me, he likes to say. and that's the eve he told his former guitar player, "i'm gonna marry that girl." wow! i remember a tough-looking boy-man with large forehead & determined, fixed gaze who tho bald & obviously middle-aged was boisterously friendly & cute as a big kid. then he kept laying kisses on me, & tho wet, they were very romantic, not lecherous. i'd never had anyone do that! i was wobbling, confused, seeing stars as my former guitar player & i got in his car to drive off & he said, "i think someone LIIIKES you!" here are some pix from jan 8 2017, in front of the gias' beautiful door, & one from later that day at o'henning's in bakersfield/ oildale, where james played some & i got up to sing one w/him. we'll be there this sunday, too, to support kaykay, after saturday's show at shenanigan's, where i'll be bass for the day. with steve at his place in hawaii right now, i'm looking fwd to seeing little anthony & playing some music. old fart who don't like me, be danged. ha!
