Pleased to meet you....

Last Sunday I was estatically catatonic. Worn slap silly out from friday night dancin' and camping out with the little ones, playing hippie hoo-hah, and chasing stars. It was wonderful. I was punch drunk, giddy from exhaustion. I fell into bed on Sunday, racing the Sun to be the first to fall, and slept a glorious full 8 hours.

In those eight hours my life changed. I woke up rested, rejuvenated, full of love, and charged out the Monday Morning door. Cranked the car, blasted the music and joined the ratrace. And then I saw it. The orange glowing lights changing. Flickering. The clock in my car suddenly working again. It's been stuck on Midnight, the moment between yesterday and tomorrow since June. And so have I.

Other chics have biological clocks. I have a car clock. And Monday the alarm went off.

Ta! Dah! Sometimes, it's all in the timing...

Trash

I bought this book at the library sale, not because I wanted to read it so much as I was drawn to this first yellowed page.....

How
perfectly
and neatly
the librarian stamped
the word
"DISCARD"
under the title....

placed there with great care,
or caution,
or trepidation.

I can't help, but wonder, what thoughts passed, when this jacket was opened....
The words, "LOVE is the drug"
hanging there,
an empty prescription bottle on
a dusty bathroom shelf......

And how hard it was, for even the slightest addict, to reach up and touch it, pull it down from it's ageless safe place,
and finally
throw it out.....

Once upon a time.....

It was 1975. Hot. The highway melted, woven like a braided leather belt and in the rear view mirror, the trails of where we were yet to travel streamed behind us endlessly...... like those fluorescent tassels Skinny had on her new bike. We were piled into Christian's Impala, blazing down the interstate, Jethro Tull on the 8 track, and I can't count how many of us piled onto the shiney blue bench seats. I picked at the cotton peeking from a burn mark on the seat under my knees. Mesmerized by the sheer endless quantity of it. Sure that if I was really quiet, I could syphon it all out of the seat and the driver's side would slowly deflate, leaving Christian sitting on the floorboards. I giggled to myself. I could wad it all up at my feet, take it home on Sunday and put it on the spinning wheel. Yup........

My Mom had given me the dime. Not the nickel-dime bag, but the customary, traditional, "put it in your shoe" dime. We were headed to Tampa for the 24 hour fest.....KISS, and I wish I could remember all the others, but....it's hazy....24 hours of nonstop music, towel tents pitched in the sun, beer and Strawberry Hill, naked babies, peace......

The dime was to call home if I needed to.

I didn't .

The temperature rocked 100 by Saturday afternoon. The port-a-lets were full, the beer was gone. We were hot. The sun gave up and began to fade, giving in to the pyromaniacs on the stage. And then.....the water main broke. A giant upside down waterfall in the middle of thousands of sweaty, stoned, day-drunk hippies. We charged it. Bodies everywhere dancing in the make-shift rain. Lapping up the miracle falling from a hundred feet above our heads.....

It made the11:00 news...

"Throngs of youth out of control as heat and drugs, rock and roll, descend on Tampa Fairgrounds....." My Mother sat on the vinyl leopard skin couch, scooching closer.... "She's there"....

She watched as Eddie-wanna-be-newscaster-live-on-the-scene-in-his-three-piece-suit spelled it out for the audiences at home, as channel 9 flashed pictures of bare chested chics and bare bottomed guys with the tutorial black rectangle emblazoned on their privates danced across the screen....

She cringed.....

The 3 minute "Live from Tampa Fairgrounds" ended with a frozen shot of the ambulances..... dozens of them.....parked in the dirt......

She waited.

I had a dime, afterall....

She finally fell into a fitless sweaty sleep on the vinyl couch......"My God, they're naked....doing all those things" "What if someone put something in her drink?" "How many babies were born after Woodstock?" "Maybe they had enough sense to leave, but then.....why aren't they home, did they get in a wreck?" "Surely,the sheriff would have called me".........waking on Sunday morning to the Preacher on channel 9..... "You can be saved....."

We stopped at IHOP on the way home and laughed. "It's all good"..... We rolled in on Sunday night, sunburnt and kind of dirty actually, but fine.

I saw her face the minute I fell through the kitchen door.....

"You could've called".....

The Omen and other chic flicks

There are some things that just innately mean something else. Little intuitive omens on butterfly wings. “It’s a girl thing” “a psychic thing” “a psycho thing”. For about ten years I always blew a kiss to my car ceiling (hanging headliner flapping in the breeze) when I passed a one eyed car. You had to do this, you see, it brought good luck. I did this faithfully, for years, until I passed about 9 one eyed cars on a lonely stretch of highway being chased by a tornado…limbs cracking overhead, trash flying by the windows…

I used to groan and moan and go arrrrrggggghhh, when a black cat crossed my path, a childhood superstition, and then I had a black cat, who took up residency at my front door and not wanting to condemn myself to forever purgatory, I just got over it.

But there are still things I chink over, get a little thrill over, or a little chill over. Believe in. (ooops , can’t help myself, but I do) …little omens passing by….sometimes smiling…sometimes haunting….

A ring around the moon …. mischief stewing…
A dog whaling, I mean pitifully whining, howling to the tune of a distant siren…. that’s not good
Yellow butterflies, anywhere….hope, dreams, peace…you can’t wreck this one, I still BELIEVE
Hearing “Our song”…this one is wretched. For part of your life it is awesome, for the rest it is trashed, you want to hurl things. Live things. Don’t ever pick an “our song”, eventually it screws up the music forever.
Stopped clocks….I never pay attention to the time unless it’s stopped. And then I obsess over the hands, until they’ve passed the same place a gazillion times and I realize it has absolutely NO MEANING
Found pennies…As broke as I am, I still won’t pick one up if its not heads up
Broken love beads…I hate when that happens. Time freeze frames. Until I restring them and it starts again.
Ducks flying blindly into the hood of my car…another NOT GOOD thing
Tea stains on the kitchen counter….tarot cards by accident
Flying dreams….you don’t even want to go there
The sound of magnolia leaves rustling….Nana’s watching
SLB’s marbles….the meaning changes in the rain
Palm itching…I can never remember what this means, but it means something
Red Bird out the window…..blessed
Foot itching…run baby, don’t walk
Blue eyes…Nadine has been here, waving her wand, reminding me to pay attention
Smoke alarms…well, we all know what that means
Bird accidentally in the house…..ewwwwwww, not good
Sensormatic alarms… oh God, I left my vitamins in my purse again, and I’m going to be persecuted, prosecuted for shoplifting
“Can I see your I.D.?” ….. they have a bet going on
Toll free number…I should have picked up the pennies. I owe these people money
When the Bird of Paradise blooms…..Don’t worry about a thing, it’s all good

I don’t do horoscopes and no Ouija boards live here, but still….