Comes the smiling mortician

"Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician"

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti 

Living creatures are fragile. You'd think that living in a town that's the only place on earth where several species live, and where floods and droughts seem to occasionally accelerate the cycle of life and death, would make this more obvious, but sometimes I'm still surprised by it.

I've had a few reasons lately to think about this gossamer mortal coil that grows more delicate every day. Last week a friend's father died -- a man I was fortunate enough to know when I was a little girl. He was a college professor, a perfect profession for a wise and wonderful person whose light should be spread across the world. The biggest consolation is that his son, my friend, is a wonderful expression of that light, and so it shines on. 

The next day, I found out I have to get a colonoscopy. There's no concern about cancer, but my stomach has been so messed up for so long that dozens of diagnoses are possible -- maybe just IBS, maybe Crohn's, maybe something more, and I'd be lying if I said I weren't nervous about it. I'm trying to focus on the fact that it's not as serious as a surgery, and that I will basically get to do a colon cleanse for much less money than I'd pay for the same thing at a spa, but there's the lingering "what if" in the back of my mind that I hope will leave once the anaesthetics kick in. 

And for the past week or so, I've noticed my eldest cat, Tom, has not been eating like usual. He usually loses his appetite to some degree when the weather gets hot, but he's also been spitting up a little bit pretty frequently and I think he's lost some weight over the past month. He has an appointment with the nice ladies at the vet's office on Friday. I'm hoping maybe it's something as simple as a hairball blockage, but I'm worried they might find something seriously wrong with my old man (he's about 13, so if he were a human he'd be almost 70 years old ... which still seems too young to die). 

St. Francis, who loved animals and
just about everyone else

And yet amid all of this, the party of life goes on. Everyone wakes up every day, the sun rises, the river flows, babies are born, families have barbecues, lovers reunite, I still get up and drink tea and laugh and smile and have brunch with friends, the universe keeps churning, because all of these things that feel like the end of the world are just a part of life. We're born to break. It's what we do despite the delicate condition of mortality, what we do before we break irreparably, that makes the whole struggle worthwhile. 

I recently re-encountered one of my favorite quotes from Charles Bukowski:

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."

And I try to remember that -- to not get terrorized by trivialities, to not freak out about a diagnostic procedure, to not look at my elder kitty as a furry pile of symptoms instead of a living creature I love. And I try to let the fragility of life motivate me to love more, and to live more, rather than to curl up and hide away from the inevitable. Which leads me to another quote from Bukowski:

"We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."

May we all do just that -- may Death tremble to take us all. 

Prologue to a manifesto of sorts

Last week, I posted a fragment of the novella I've been fretting and sweating over to get it polished up and pretty. This is another fragment of it -- the first fragment, actually, that lays out what the book is truly about. The plot has to do with a hippie lady and her artsy friends and cooperation and chaos and community, but what it's actually about is a kind of global spiritual shift. It's a shift I believe has been coming, and I'm not alone in believing that it's happening right now. And so I give you what appears to be a socialist-artistic manifesto that flowed through me to give me the framework for the short book, "Enlightenment: The Messy Birth of a New World."

The San Marcos River, the centerpiece and source of life in the town where our story begins

Creation is a nonstop process. Just because our galaxy is flying around in space, just because the Sun and all the planets have formed and seem to be moving as they should, it doesn't mean this is all there is. Water flows in riverbeds and oceans, plants grow and flower and spread, animals frolic and feed. Humans move vast distances and wear business suits and have developed the technology to buy and sell portions of the planet with the touch of a button. Yet there is much farther to go.

On our little round piece of the universe, there are certain places where it seems as though the power to make and remake comes up through the earth in eruptions, like a geyser. And the only vessels around to receive that power are the humans in the vicinity. Sometimes the ambient creative energy is powerful enough to override basic human behaviors -- the desire for wealth, the tendency to rush and worry. The people who are drawn to, or born to, these plumes of creativity and choose to remain open to the power and let it move through them believe that everything else will fall into place. They let the energy carry them. A group of people who share this belief will take care of each other, whether through emotional encouragement or help in providing the necessities of life, because they understand that they are all in it together -- atoms drawn together into molecules and joined in a perfect mass of living creation.

San Marcos, a town in the middle of Texas that people have heard of but don't really know, is one of the places where this energy is strong. The power rises from the ground with the water that feeds the local river, freshly sprung from a vast underground source. It's as if the Demiurge has a compulsion to continue expressing itself with the minds, hearts, hands and voices of anyone nearby who will open up to it.

This isn't to say that everyone in the town spends every waking moment philosophizing, writing, singing, dancing, making soap or knitting hats, though more of that goes on here than in a lot of places. People have day jobs. Some are lucky enough to get paid for being vessels for the creative energy. Others, out of necessity, may hold jobs that have nothing to do with their creative purpose but allow them to pursue their passions with financial and/or moral support. Others may not have what is typically considered an artistic bent but have found time and energy to serve their muses. Some feel their children and families are their highest purpose and are stay-at-home parents. Some really love talking to people and go into retail or customer service. Some really love clothing or beverages or food and have been able to find work that lets them be surrounded by those things all day. Still others -- a handful here, but from what I understand they're the dominant species elsewhere -- have closed themselves off to their purpose and do what they do out of greed or ambition, ignoring the urge to submit to the creative energy and dismissing the importance of that urge in others.

This is where the story of the Great Breakdown begins -- this is where a new wave of creation and compassion crashes down over the useless systems that only benefit a handful of people who have shut themselves away from the universe's growth process. The cataclysm begins in a small town at the foot of the Texas Hill Country known mostly to outsiders for its outlet malls and university football team, even though music always fills the air and the Creator is busy feeling and shaping the world with the people's hands.

I'm not making this up! Well, actually, I guess I am ...

I've been working on a novella forever, or at least since 2013, which is forever in Internet years, and most people haven't seen a single sentence of this phantom manuscript. Really, it does exist -- it's not just an excuse to get my introversion on. So, in part to get a fragment of this thing out into the world, and in part to prove that I'm neither insane nor posting on Facebook about writing and revising when I'm actually marathoning "Firefly" again, here's a little excerpt from the current iteration of the novella, currently called "Enlightenment: The Messy Birth of a New World."

"What do you wear when you're dressing to impress five guys at once?" Charlotte muttered, apparently asking her open closet for fashion advice. "Dammit!" She closed her closet door and looked around her room -- the hats hanging on the wall, her bass guitar, her Buddha/Jesus/Yoda shrine, the fez sitting on her bookshelf, the plastic tackle box full of makeup she never wore unless she was going out at night.

"Dammit," she whispered again, failing to find inspiration for her outfit for the night.

She got up and went over to her dresser, where a motley assortment of necklaces and earrings hung on a jewelry tree. Her eyes wandered to the spot on her mirror where she'd written "You're a hippie" in lipstick in case she ever forgot.

Finally, a gold coin necklace caught her eye.

"Yeah, belly dancer," she thought. "The guys always love a belly dancer."

It was Friday night, and Charlotte was dressing up for what promised to be a great evening at Triple Crown, the local live music hot spot. She was most excited about the headlining band, Moksha, the glam band whose guitarist and lead singer Charlotte had known since childhood. Charlotte had become a devoted supporter of the band -- not only did she love spending time with them, and they with her, but they were amazing musicians who put on a theatrical and energetic show. Besides, hanging out with a glam band is a great reason to wear the kind of outfit most people would only wear on Halloween. Charlotte often borrowed from the sparkle and jingle of her belly dance wardrobe for Moksha shows, figuring if the outfits were beautiful enough for her to wear when she danced at a belly dance show, they were beautiful enough for her to wear when she danced for Moksha in the front row.

As she assembled herself for the evening, Charlotte felt warmth percolating just under her skin. It wasn't the kind of excitement she had experienced in her years as a journalist, which often ranged from frustration to danger -- it was joy. She smiled at herself as she found a clip to hold back some of her long, vivid red hair. She knew part of her happiness was about getting to see the Moksha guys, but part of it was a warm fuzzy feeling about getting to see Baron Samedi, another local band she was friends with and loved so much that she sometimes felt like she was "cheating" on Moksha whenever she went to see Baron Samedi play.

"Thank you, God, for planting me in a small town full of wise and kind folk with guitars," she whispered, shifting her eyes heavenward, away from her mirror. She was ready to go.

As she traipsed out to her Honda, Charlotte noticed the world looked weird.

Full moon? She thought. No, it's the wrong time. She looked up to see if a streetlight that was always out had come on. No. But something beyond the streetlight, up in the sky, caught her eye -- a bluish-white light brighter than any star or planet she had ever seen in her four decades of looking at the night skies. It wasn't as big as the moon but was somehow just as bright.

            She said, "Whaaaaat?" but what she thought was, "Meteor?" In her mind, she flipped back through her day at work and didn't remember seeing any news stories about a meteor or comet about to graze the Earth, but she didn't know what else it could possibly be.

            Well, if I'm going to be taken out by an extraterrestrial catastrophe, I've got no problem with Baron Samedi and Moksha being my last memory of this world. 

Facebook People, I have legitimate concerns

I originally wrote a long blog post about why I'm stepping way the hell away from Facebook for a while. Mostly, that post had a list of questions about what refusing to vote in elections accomplishes ... or whether people honestly assume that just because someone holds an opinion on an issue that's become part of the national discourse, that person is just part of the "sheeple" being told what they should think ... or what people who think that news stories about injustices happening to minorities are just manufactured bullshit meant to keep us divided do if they see such an injustice happening in front of them.

But then I realized my whole point can be summed up like this: Facebook is about 80 percent a hybrid of the worst parts of Jerry Springer and 24-hour news channels screaming out of a little flat glowing screen at me. This 80 percent of Facebook is a world where reason does not exist,where otherwise very sweet people scream at and make accusations about each other and stir shit like they're making a roux. The other 20 percent is cats and funny shit and keeping up with friends and local events, and that's the only reason I haven't closed down my account altogether. That 20 percent gives me some sane answers to the questions I saved from the original draft of this blog post:

What do people talk about other than what boils down to Culture Wars? Republican vs. Democrat, black vs. white, gay vs. straight, citizen vs. immigrant, radical vs. moderate, fire-and-brimstone Christians vs. salvation-and-grace Christians, people of faith vs. atheists? Because lately, that's all I see on Facebook. The divisions that may or may not have been invented by some mysterious "they" and are certainly being fed by human nature, or human nature + technology. The divisions people complain about and yet can't stop talking about, apparently. People do still view themselves and each other as whole beings and not stacks of labels, don't they? Do people still discuss things like literature, art, going fishing, traveling, recipes, children, pets, movies, life, death, dreams, love, what they had for breakfast, what this human life is like? Is there an app for that?

Basically, damn, Facebookians, stop all the yelling. I don't want to hear about why the federal government, the military, either major political party, the patriarchy or Jesus is either out to get me or my only hope. I want to hear about you. I want to know who you are, where you've been, how you got to where you are, what you love, what you want, what you dream about, what you've overcome, what you struggle with, what your favorite song or painting or movie or sculpture or outfit or moment is. I hate the current state of public discourse, based on fear and misinformation and rage and as many different sets of "facts" as there are people. But I love you, Facebookians. I love you as people. The labels we wrap ourselves in are mummy bandages that hide us from each other, from the world, and even from ourselves. Take off the wrappings before you forget what you look like under there.

Och, what a whirlwind!

I had a couple of days off from work last week, and now I need a vacation from my vacation! Last Thursday, I saw the Minions movie at a sneak-peek at the Alamo Drafthouse in New Braunfels. It was awesome. It's set mostly in the '60s, in swingin' London, with Jennifer Saunders voicing Queen Elizabeth, and of course Jon Hamm and Sandra Bullock as the main villains. If you're a fan of the mellow yellow fellows, you will love it. My new favorite word in Minionese is the word for electric guitar: megaukulele!

Your humble blogger, standing on one leg
with a sword on her head

Next was the Sultan's Feast, our big annual belly dance show here in San Marcos. Every Sultan's Feast is fantastic, but this one knocked it out of the park (with a hip bump). I consider it a real honor to be able to share the stage with so many amazing ladies.

Then was a dance workshop at Austin Belly Dance led by Roxxanne Shelaby, daughter of the original owner of The Fez Supperclub in Los Angeles, which was pretty much the cradle of American Cabaret style belly dance. Roxxanne held a Kickstarter campaign and has produced a documentary about The Fez. The workshop -- though I had to sit down about halfway through because I danced until the arches in my feet fell -- was hugely interesting and informative. It was a great experience.

And last night I performed a few poems at the weekly open mic at my beloved Triple Crown. I did one political-ish piece and two saucy pieces, including a poem about a "blue-eyed boy in a '67 Stang" and the raunchy piece popularly known as "the Excalibur poem." Favorite response from a stranger: "I have my '67 parked out back, and I left my blue contacts at home." Least favorite response from a stranger: "Make me a sandwich." Really, dude? (I responded with a "HEY! NO!")

Anyway, this week I am back to working on the novel, so most of my "spare time" is going to be devoted to that. I'll still make a few blog posts -- I intend to post a couple of excerpts from the current draft and then some lists that will probably be of interest to a few of you -- but mostly I'll be spending the next couple of weeks arguing with myself about a world that exists inside my own head.

Gettin' busy

My last post was bleak, but necessary. This one is happier.

I took a break from working on the novella this week so I could concentrate more on belly dancing because the big Sultan's Feast show is coming up Friday and for the first time, I am dancing in 3 different numbers. Eek! The costume changes alone are going to be feats of agility and speed. The show is two hours of lovely and talented dancers, with a meal catered by Euro Cafe. If you're in the area, check it out!

Saturday afternoon, I'm going to a belly dance workshop in Austin, and then Sunday, to get back into a writerly frame of mind, I will be performing some poetry at the open mic at Triple Crown. There are always some wonderful singer-songwriter types at the open mic, but there is poetry and comedy too. Signup starts at 7, and the show starts sometime after that. If you're looking for a mellow way to round out your weekend, come see me share words.

And speaking of sharing words, I will be doing some freelance work for SMTX/Bobcat Fans magazine here in town. It'll be great to spend a little time interviewing people, thinking up story ideas and writing about the town I love so much. I'm very excited about it!

The San Marcos Flood of 2015: It's Not Over

So as I mentioned before, we had a catastrophic flood here in San Marcos and Hays County over Memorial Day weekend. It's thought to be the worst in the region's history, and people are still trying to recover from it.

The night that the rains came, I was up late, keeping an eye on the weather via Twitter, Facebook and the NWS and USGS hydrology charts for the Blanco and San Marcos rivers. There had been talk of some flash flooding, and since I couldn't sleep and am kind of a weather geek anyway, I wanted to keep track of what was going on. I was shocked by what happened overnight.

This area has been going through a pretty severe drought for about 10 years. For most of that time, the Blanco River at Wimberley usually didn't have any water in it. In eastern San Marcos, where Highway 80 crosses the Blanco, it had been so dry for so long that trees were growing in the riverbed. Sometimes cattle grazed there. I had seen the Blanco River in flood before, but it was a rare and short-lived event.

The night of the flood, the Blanco River at Wimberley got over 41 feet -- a record-breaking height -- before the flood gauge washed away and they lost track of what it was doing. At that height, and running twice as fast as Niagra Falls, the river completely washed away houses, pulled up trees and even took out the bridge at Fischer Store Road. When the Blanco reached San Marcos, it covered Interstate 35. The Hays County Sheriff's 911 center and the jail had to be evacuated. Apartments were lost. Our local Wal-Mart got flooded. Our local Half Price Books got flooded. An entire trailer park off of River Road was wiped out.

It was worse downstream, where the Blanco merges with the San Marcos River, just above the city of Martindale. My best friend's family lives in Martindale along the river -- during our "100-year flood" in 1998, the water got up to their back porch but didn't get in the house. In this flood, the water got into their house, around their house and across the road. Moreover, with all the water from the Blanco rushing into the San Marcos River, the San Marcos backed up and neighborhoods here in town got flooded. A new apartment complex along the river with essentially a levee built around it caused water to go into a residential area. Parks along the river were inundated.







Just today, the San Marcos Mercury published a piece on the damage assessments -- almost 1,500 homes destroyed or damaged, businesses damaged, infrastructure hit pretty hard. Lives were lost. I had many friends who lived in areas inundated by the flood waters and wasn't sure until Monday night that all of them were okay.

Chasca at a United Way of Hays County benefit

Ghosts of Dixie at a United Way of Hays County benefit

It's no surprise to anyone who lives around here that relief efforts began springing up almost immediately -- besides the National Guard, Red Cross and eventually FEMA coming into town. The cities affected opened up shelters. People started setting up collection centers for donations of food, clothing, cleaning supplies, pet food, anything people could give to their neighbors in need. Volunteers went into neighborhoods to help people begin to clean up. One of my friends who had lived in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina went and lent her skills. People who had lived here at one time and still lived within a 100-mile radius showed up to help with the cleanup. (As one of my friends said, "Once a San Martian, always a San Martian.") I had just cleaned out my closet the day before the floods so I had 3 bags of clothes and purses and shoes ready to go, and I gathered up some canned food, pet food and first aid supplies and dropped them off at one of the donation centers.

Even some corporations stepped in to help out -- Tide Loads of Hope came through town to let people do laundry. Proctor & Gamble came through with cleaning supplies during the cleanup. The Texas-based HEB grocery store chain served hot meals to volunteers and evacuees for several days. Whataburger, another Texas-based company, gave free meals to uniformed first responders and Red Cross volunteers. Anheuser-Busch halted beer production at one of their facilities and instead put drinking water in cans to deliver to Central Texas and other areas across the state that were also hit with flooding.

MLuck and the Big Love at an
Eyes of the San Marcos River benefit

Later, at least three fund-raisers took place at local live music hotspots. My favorite, Triple Crown, even donated portions of their sales during the fund-raisers. It was a devastating tragedy, and the effects are still seen and felt. People are still trying to find places to live. People who've lost everything are still trying to piece their lives back together. People who lost loved ones in the raging waters will probably never be the same.

This devastation came from the same river we here in San Marcos consider sacred. It can be a beautiful, soothing sanctuary. It can cool down the hottest of heads in the dead of summer. But it is a river, after all, and sometimes rivers get angry.

And so, we're continuing to rebuild down here. It can be a frustrating process, but people are still working to help their neighbors, and until the Powers That Be do their part to make things bearable at first, and right at last, it's all that can be done.

If you're on the Book of Faces, there's a group where you can find out what's being done and what needs to be done to continue to help. The City of San Marcos also has a page up, and funds are always welcome at the United Way of Hays County. Everything helps. If you're a San Martian and know of another organization that could use donations, post in the comments. Much love.

Happenings

I have to write this quickly because I need to get ready for dance practice ahead of the Sultan's Feast belly dance show, which is one of the reasons I haven't been posting much lately, but there are some things you should know:

1. I'm hard at work on some rewrites on my novel after getting feedback from a judge at the Writers League of Texas competition this year. I aim to get this round finished by Aug. 1.

2. My friends Chasca released a new CD and you can find it on Spotify! Or be amazing and order it from Chasca's website. Here's my very favorite Chasca song on Soundcloud: Barbarian. Dig those drums! And everything else!

3. We had a catastrophic flood here in San Marcos over Memorial Day weekend. Like made-national-news-and-was-mentioned-on-the-BBC flood. The National Guard and Red Cross were here. There was a curfew. It was crazy for those of us who didn't lose life, limb or property, but it was devastating for many people in San Marcos and Wimberley. I'll be posting about that and the after-effects soon.

4. The Sultan's Feast, as I mentioned, is coming up July 10 at the San Marcos Activity Center. Dinner and a 2-hour show for $20! Get tickets here at Eventbrite.

And now I'm off!

Long time, no me

I'm a bad blogger. I've been busy -- mostly getting my financial poop in a group, doing more dancing than I thought I would ever do, and working on rewrites for the novel that's sort of the raison d'etre for this blog in the first place. As a friend said recently on Facebook, life is "lifey."

Apologies for the long absence, but I promise you a bunch of stuff is coming in the next few weeks.