THE PRACTICE

Ingredients for this My Time: a yoga mat, a yoga membership, a summer heat, and low nights.

Oh Honey, I just LOVE working out. I mean YOGA. It's not EXERCISE, it's BECOMING A BETTER PERSON. Which can't happen when you jog. Duh. And how I LONG to become a better person.

So when each summer rolls around and I'm off from all my charity work in the Midwest, I travel to the West Coast of the United States and begin my PRACTICE. But alas, this summer, I've decided to stay in the Midwest for the summer, where I can just as easily do my PRACTICE and also not spend time with my mother, Empress Von ThighMaster. She's busy tanning, anyway.

But, ALAS, I realized that my understanding of a PRACTICE from my kooky, wordly ways in not the same as a PRACTICE in the Midwest. My Goddess Pose was NOT well received the first time I brought it out.

But alas, I think the wonderful Midwestern politeness has saved me, for no one has mentioned anything ever. And yet, Honey, because I'm a fucking rich cunt--so fucking rich--I can't understand a lot of the yoga I've experienced in the Midwest, and because (just a reminder) I'm such a fucking rich cunt, I can't help but gasp at what I'm experiencing.

Some things I hear while my face is bent over in my crotch:

"When I say the word 'prana,' THAT'S OKAY. If you're Christian, and I AM A CHRISTIAN, this word might make you uncomfortable. But it just means 'energy.' And Christian or non-Christian has energy."

"If you read old books you'll see that western medicine is wrong when it doesn't account for meridians. The east knows about meridians."

"The meaning of words is only possible in opposites. We would have no idea what 'hot' is or how it feels if we didn't know the word 'cold.' It's yin and yang."

"Twist to put your left elbow on your left knee."

"When the flies land on you during your PRACTICE here it's an opportunity to still your mind."

"I look toward the East."

Because the drugs have made me daft, I wonder, why don't the Christians have flies landing on them? And who made a trip to Tuesday Morning for all those amazing candle holders? If I clean my yoga mat with a natural antibacterial wipe, do they clean theirs with holy water? Can Christian Yoga ever encompass Kundalini Yoga i.e. can they RELEASE THE SNAKE?

Doing yoga in my small town outside of my fabulous mini-mansion is kind of like taking a vacation, Honey. I mean, with all the flies on me, it's like I'm in India without the dysentery. I mean, THE EAST (CUE FIREWORKS). And, forgive your little Daggy, but I do feel like a stranger in my home. Like a little runway muffin looking for a new path. I mean, PRACTICE. As I got excited to settle in this summer and strengthen relationships with friends and lovers in my town, IRONY happened, for in this summer heat I found a calm cold.

I AM A MUFFIN

You see, Honey, maybe it's because of the drugs, maybe it's because of the espionage, maybe it's because I left my heart along the way with RODRIGO in the 1980s while I was at Andelay's in Puerta Vallarta

                                              maybe it's because I'm a soul musketeer

                                          maybe it's because goddesses bring death, suffocating warmth, 
                                          and too many arms to hold the world which they always hold, maybe
                                          it's because of how here, running the charity committee I

                                                   instead of elsewhere, where I

                                         and maybe it's because how I think of myself, my
                                         power in the world, is changing from FUN shame

                                    to an older sureness of calm battle, a good cartoon fantasy,

but something is shifting around in here. The battles look different, and here I am, with my selenite orb, with my flourite orb, with my clay. Staring. Solid. Present tense. Crazy as ever. And leaving a lot of shit, a lot of people, a lot of strength behind. So here I am, in the Midwestern summer, freckled and pink from my Crunches with Christ, getting good work done and being alive. Maybe this Midwestern yoga is really working.

Something stirs here in the summer and I like it along with my stomach muscles and red wine spritzer.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Ingredients for this My Time: natural phenomena, wistful thinking, scheduled drinking.

Hola, Lovers. It seems like the farther along I get with my project, the less I am able to connect with my "fans." It is atrocious of me, I know. And if I had a human heart enough to care, I wouldn't be using this sentence to pretend that I care. But hear me out.

My pure bred, feral linx got sick, and I was with her in the exotic animal vet. Then, I drove across the country to one of my summer homes in Malibu-Lite, then all these boys visited. Boys! They came from the muscular farm sun of Missouri and the mysterious clouds of Washington, with Iphones and tight jeans, with proper shaving and nice white shirts, with lisps and foul mouths, with cocktails and appetites. It really brought me back.

After being so long in my project that I was sure I would not gaze upon such greased up gorgeousness again, I was just dumbstruck. I drank margaritas, I smelled their hair when they weren't looking, I thought about all the things they could say to boss me around, I ate their hand towels, I worshiped at the altar of the patriarchy, and loved every minute of it. While they watched other women, I lasciviously watched them. I devoured their desires through breath and, as if exhaling is having, I made them my own. I imprinted them on my body, and like that, it was if their desires for the women around us were desires already writing on my skin.

That reminds me, I need to cash another alimony check...if I won't ever be able to fall in love again--ha ha, I kid--I've never loved anyone except God and Mr Grey Goose--ha ha I kid again--my heart is so fragile that it breaks like each marriage egg and fucking fries, Lovers, fries like a bad simile--

then I will spend their fucking money. Which reminds me. You know how I really knew my marriage was over with the fucking classy man? Well, beside the fact that he played Everything But The Girl at dinner parties? Well, and beside the fact that he was already married, thus leaving me with no alimony after it all went kaput? When we started going Dutch. I mean, who are these Dutch people with their awful rules for women? How dare they think I'm dignified enough to pay for my own lobby and champers. As we all know, I have no dignity. I want no dignity.

So, I'm in Miami-Lite, soon to leave to Oaxaca for one of seven weddings this year of the rich, fabulous people of the world that I'll grit my teeth through. I kid. I love a good wedding. So much free al-co-hol. And what woman, whose womb is as dried as a dead batch of corn, and who doesn't trust men as far as she can fuck 'em, doesn't love attending wedding after wedding and seeing something in this world work out? I strap on a bra, throw on a dress and a sun hat, etch lipstick on my face, and voila, I'm in another country at another wedding with less money and more opportunities for scandal. My life is fabulous.

But today, the wretched day of the week, Sunday, the day when it seems that all hope with fail, a solar eclipse awaits us. I, of course, will be with fabulous (and some foreign!) people on the roof of a Los Angeles LOFT, staring directly into what keeps me alive and might blind me. I don't buy the whole don't look directly bull--my strength and my problem is that I always, always, look directly into it and walk away with less sight but more vision. Of course, while others are looking I plan to stand behind them and suck their energy in through their ears, keeping my gorgeous, youthful skin that much more so. And cocktails, cocktails, cocktails, Honey.

The world can't keep a loveless wench--I mean a tender, romantic soul--it's so hard to tell sometimes when one's spirit is a pendulumm and one's life seems to follow--like me down if it can't keep its own sun.

Talk soon, Honies, champers on me! Ha ha I kid--on every ex who paid for breaking my heart.

The Full Moons (Madness) Are Your Time

Ingredients for this My Time: Feb 7, 2012, any natural stones and jewelry you have, water, a tray to put outside, selenite stones, and an angry familiar:

Without the ability to testify, we collect and collect and collect, almost just as much as I collect wine bottles in my "wine closet." Maybe that's why I got sick. See red nose for evidence:

It is red and makes me feel closer to death. There are so many people to lose in this world. It is as if they disappear into a world with two moons, or into the forest, or maybe, nowhere. (hold on...pouring a Greyhound in a sippy cup with a straw. IT'S GOOD FOR YOU WHEN YOU'RE SICK.)

When my father was killed, I was a 16-year-old righteous woman, wanting to see what the lower classes did, so I started my mornings at 5 am with a workout, went to a community college at 7 am (I know, it was like a satire of knowing), and started my work at a record store at 3 pm. Because this lower college experience is one I know nothing about as a member of the waxed upper echelon of society, I accidentally signed up for a motivational class meant for students with mental and physical disabilities. So I pretended my way through, ONLY ACTING THAT I HAD REAL PROBLEMS, and I remember for the whole four months one student in a wheelchair would never speak, even when addressed directly with a question or support. Another student who had a head shaped like a hairless football had been running through the fields of lettuce near our homes when a plane dropped pesticide on him and he was slowly dying, in pain and incredibly angry. Lastly, I dated an older man named Raul who lived in the southern California fields of Somis, and worked at the Pic-N-Save. When I went to meet his family in their trailer, in the shade of two one story tall pesticide tanks, I learned that they all had cancer and most were on their death beds. He lost his virginity under a full moon next to those tanks, the disease close to pleasure (seems fitting, I guess).

It was hard to keep up this working class disguise what with my french manicures and perfectly tweezed eyebrows, and eventually upon one afternoon lunch break of leaving my fake job at Tower Records, I drove past an accident where a mangled motorcycle lay on the road next to a Volvo, and all the fluids, blood and guts and car leak, were mingling in the road. Later that night I was called and told that this was my father, a well-known senator, who was taking his Ducati out for a ride in the wild wind on the way to an AA meeting (his own pretend working class attempt to expand his horizons). Basically, we were philanthropists. Or maybe we were scientists, researching the wretched.

Oh, how I digress when the moon is filling to the brim, and how I think about the opportunities for expression and silence. The reality is that my life is about My Time, so if someone comes down on me, my bodyguard, Boleslaw, will take care of it. But the truth is that on the full moon I try to see two moons, and I lay out my rocks and jewelry to be blessed under the light that shows what's really happening. Which is to say, what I could give a fuck about, and what I hold with me during my most sacred sleeps of two moons (besides the martini glasses): selenite stones. They charge other stones. In one hand is a selenite orb, and in the other, a wand, and behind my head, a sword. There is no undoing the importance of ritual, to be able to see what must barrel forward, and what will become silent. And to see glittery things when one is drinking...

I welcome my readers to take a special piece of jewelry or stone this full moon, dip in water, and put under the full moon. I might be missing somewhere, I might be a volatile, hostile, salty cunt, but I do it with a style and an abandon. For example, SURPRISE stirfry! What's in it? Everything!

Join me this full moon in blessing something before you pass out drunk face-down on a rug...I mean, before you kiss your loved ones before going to bed...and consider speaking to that real bitch of a moon what you need to say. She won't diss you for what you need to say. And consider saying nothing. I, for example, tape my mouth when it's time to, after I've worn out the words and begin getting eye rollings from the rich wasps at my whiskey (ahem, tea) hour. As if time actually exists--we all know the Uyghur people invented this to propel their circuses forward in storm and wind through the Han Chinese official policies! Obviously makes sense!

This is our time. Vent. Drink. Dance. Indulge. Be hated. Be loved. Get it, Honey. And remember to bless your mess with conviction. Cheers to that, Honey. Grab yourself a vodka and grapefruit and lounge in your kimono, feeling satisfied, but never, never proud--pride is tacky. And the moons you might see will tsk-tsk such pride. Approach them with shame, and turn away in reverence. Oh, we are all so lucky, Honey, to be rich and capable of using our My Time for such luxury.