Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I'm sitting sewing and watching the second season of Dexter. The rain is pelting down hard and the dogs are laid out sleeping in that way they do in the summer--you can see them soaking up the air conditioning through their skins, spread out as though they could unzip their fur and lay it on top of the vents. Wave it around to catch the breeze. There is a calamitous knocking coming from the laundry room like someone is hammering. Jesus Marimba, I think, what fresh hell might this be?

I go into the laundry room and the racket continues. I see nothing out the window--my first thought being the electric company geniuses have arrived with some insult. I walk outside and there is a great fucking woodpecker dismantling the house near the utilities connections. In that short amount of time, he's done an impressive amount of damage and revealed a carpenter bee nest.

So, I guess this means I need to put "paint the house" on the long list of crap I can't afford to do. Ack! Splpppt. Now I'm wondering if this is retribution for the yellow jacket holocaust I brought about recently.

June has sort of snuck up on me. The rabbits are everywhere and bold as Jehovah's Witnesses coming into the yard to bring me their good rabbit news. My poppies and hollyhocks are blooming. There's a slider turtle big as a turkey platter down in the frog pond--it's been wet enough to keep water in the pond for the first time in two years. Still needs dredging but there are tadpoles jetting around the willows that sprung up during the drought. Willows love wet feet.

An unfortunate casualty of the rains has been my ancient walnut down in the glade where the sentinel chimney stands. I need to see if it took out the chimney. It most likely did. Looks like the ground got so wet that it couldn't support the tree. I asked around and there evidently isn't much call for walnut wood anymore. They used to make gunstocks from it--it's a beautiful wood--but now they use maple. Still, I'd like to find a way to get the massive tree lifted out of the little holler so I could at least cut it up for firewood. Wouldn't mind having something carved out of it. It was my favorite tree on the property.

I've been sewing, making nightgowns. I like to sleep in Victorian chemises. I'm about to cut up an old favorite to pattern it. Or maybe I'll try to pattern it without cutting it up--takes a while for cotton to reach that tissue thin, soft as puppies state. It's right before it shreds into nothingness leaving us naked and exposed to the rough muslin of life.

about Tennessee doctors.

The most ironically named healthcare organization in the world, Mercy Health Partners, has granted me an audience after a year of them refusing to return my phone calls and, notably, of them leaving me to writhe in agony in a pool of my own feces for five days. That, you may remember was back in September (my birthday week) and I've been in therapy for PTSD ever since. I had begun to find a sense of peace with that when they called asking me to come kiss their ring or something. But of course, it all came roaring back and now I'm back to not sleeping and major crazy time burning in effigy and calling down curses upon the Assholes and the Assholes they rode in on (aka Rural Medical Services).

It's not good for me feeling rage like this. So, I deflect with humor as much as possible. But with all things truly hilariously funny--there's an edge to it. After all, it's only funny if the baby carriage actually does fall down the stairs or if the pain patient actually gets poo on themselves in my case. Anyway. I agreed to go to the appointment and now I find myself wondering if I'll be able to get through it without erupting into a Medea-esque crazy bitch rage. Or making unending references to their soullessness, lack of medical ethics or insatiable desire to kill kittens.

Do you remember the Germans episode of Fawlty Towers? If you are too young to remember this, go find it on YouTube. In it, Germans are staying at the hotel so no one is supposed to mention The War. So Basil (John Cleese) spends the entire episode making Hitler references.

How am I supposed to get through this appointment without mentioning The War, for God's sake?

My friend, Brad Green, asked me to submit something to The Legendary, a journal he's joined as editor. Brad has one of those strong, flavorful and most definitely virile Southern voices--the sort you expect from Texas. If you haven't checked out his blog, Elevate the Ordinary, I encourage you to do so. Read A Visit to a Tittie Bar. I like that one. A lot.

Anyways. I sent him a selection of what I had coming off the burner at the time and they chose The Adamantine Heart and Love Cats.

The Adamantine Heart (excerpt)

It's easier than you might think to turn your heart into Adamantine. It sneaks up on you while you are trying to get love right. It blindsides you when your teenage boyfriend drowns in a freak accident. It slides into you when your steady fellow in college smacks you around. It happens when your mother dies, then your father dies. It happens when you walk in on your best friend, hanging nude from your gravity boots while your husband, in a hood, whips her with your riding crop--the one you actually use on your horse.

Love Cats (excerpt)

Out on the pier they'd stand, looking out to the ocean with opal eyes, boding bad luck. They'd throw things into the sea from time to time. Someone said it was the ashes of their vanquished conquests. Someone else said it was the tiny bones of their hearts. And still another said it was a stack of handwritten valentines delivered into their hands by scores of damaged lovers. No doubt they were a couple, slinking through the night, all black eyeliner and sadness.

Many other excellent stories from writer friends-- Tim Yelvington-Jone's "Grace," Dawn Allison's "No Fear for Flowers," Frank O'Connor's "Raindrops," and many more. Go read!

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In other news...if you are whining because I'm not on Facebook more often--well, it ain't gonna happen until I get high speed something or other. Takes me six hours every two weeks to do what it takes most of you 20 minutes to accomplish on FB. Facebook's interface is about as elegant as a pile of dog poop--so, I've got better things to do than watch the swirling beachball of death and rebuilding my permissions every 20 minutes. But I love you guys and have no problem answering emails.

God, I love Spike TV--I can't be the only woman who'd rather watch Spike than Lifetime, am I?

Anyway, I've become addicted to Deadliest Warrior, which is basically Jackass with reenactors, computers and ballistics gel brain cases. It reminds me of being 12 and sticking firecrackers in metal tiki torches we'd put tin cans on to watch them go "boom." The epic pre-pubertal exploration of "gee, what can I blow up next?" Or later, as a teenager, launching bottle rockets by hand out the back of your friend's hatchback at night and that wonderful screaming sound they made--especially when you were really high. If you grow at all nostalgic for those more innocent, stupid times when gunpowder and marijuana went together like cake and ice cream, Deadliest Warrior is the show for you.

The basic premise is to match two historical warriors who would never have met each other in real life, rate their weapons then run computer simulations on who would win. The pairings are hilarious and unlikely: Apache vs Gladiator, Viking vs Samurai, Spartan vs Ninja, Pirate vs Knight... Here comes the funny part. They invite experts to whack the ballistics gel torso with their chosen warrior's weapons. A doctor comes out and explains in detail what just happened to the dummy and how terribly dead this guy now is. No, really, the funny part is getting the two teams of experts together and watching their faces when their warrior loses. Some of them actually whine at each other. I'm pretty sure if the show's producers allowed it, things would turn into an all out brawl. And if you want some real entertainment, check out the show's blog and read the comments.

Anyway. That's my guilty pleasure for the week.

Our first true, wet, Tennessee spring in two years has set the forest afire with flowers. Far up in the reaches, beyond the reach of dirty-foot dryads, are the poplar tulips. The blossoms are heavy like magnolias but not as big. Green, yellow and orange, you usually only see them on the ground after a big blow or a heavy rain. As luck would have it, I came across a huge limb blown down by a recent storm.

The flowers are pretty in the way I most like pretty--twisted with the colors off just-so. Like the pretty part of death or the pretty part of a dreadful calamity. I'm told not everyone is capable of appreciating such things. How pitcher plants and some orchids look like something from a dark place or a planet we couldn't possibly cohabit. But poplar tulips are like that, a delicate sickly green touched by jaundice with a splash of dangerous orange in the center. They look like something a clever fey would concoct a precious poison with--a poison fatal to inconstant lovers, perhaps. Or people who speak without thinking. Or the pompous. Or maybe not the pompous because they are just funny. Annoying sometimes but generally funny. I mean, it's funny when someone thinks they are better than you for whatever reason, since you can hear the thundering bootsteps of hubris clomping along behind them and the whistling displacement of air as said boot kicks the pompous in the arse. (As it always does...)

And poplar wood breaks with the exact brittleness of human bone. How cool is that?

So, Max is once again barking his frantic--OMG! OMG! OMFG! Lookit! Lookit! Lookit!--and that can mean only one thing--Snake. Or trapped something.

Anyway, I find he is yapping at a black racer snake living behind my heat pump. The racer has caught a baby bunny wabbit and is squeezing it to death. Not sure how the bunny got there--unless the bunnies are living there and the black racer came upon them. Or Max chased the bunny into the snake's opportunistic reach. Not sure, but squeezing was well under way by the time I found them.



I'm actually sort of glad to have this sort of snake living around the house because they eat mice and rats and all sorts of things I don't want around. But I've kept snakes before and I would have sworn this was a much more ambitious meal than a snake this size could handle. I found a big one in the chicken coop once that had eaten the fake easter eggs I'd put in the nests to encourage the hens to lay. Had to kill that one since it wouldn't have survived with all that plastic in its gullet.


I gave him some privacy to concentrate on consuming the bunny and when I came back out he had stuffed himself in the hidey hole between the heat pump and the house. So I didn't get a picture of the lump. But it might have looked like this:


Except with a bunny rabbit.

Well, since I no longer have the goat herd keeping the vegetation down, the snakes have arrived in spades. This morning, I go out and Max is having kittens over near the drop off. I go over because I know how a dog behaves around a snake before it has been bitten--and Max is doing just that happy dance. The one before they become intimately aware of what a massive envenomation feels like. I call him off and there right in front of him, reared up like a cobra and coiled in four zig-zagged, snakey neck springs--OH NOES--it's crotalus horridus! A Timber Rattler. Actually, it's the only rattler I've seen in the wild here, not counting Pastor Jimmy's church snakes. I stand there clapping my hands to keep Max's attention--he's scared because he thinks he's pissed me off--until the rattler backs down. Max and Shadow get frogmarched into the house where we wait for the snake to find a better place to hang out and for Max to lose interest.

Speaking of venomous reptiles, I ran into Pastor Jimmy and Pam outside the library last week. It reminded me how much I've missed their company and I think I should make an effort to go to church. Perhaps it will pull me out of my funk. And Jimmy should really come snake hunting up here now, especially now that the snakes are back.

The story I've been writing this week has not been going well. Primarily because I got sucked into my research. There's something about the late 18th century that calls to me in a very personal way. Anyway, I've been rereading Sade--yes, as in the Marquis de...and feeling very sympathetic towards him. I've actually shed a few tears for him this week. His life was such a train wreck and the deeper I delved into his life, the more I realized he reminded me of Scott--I think because Sade lacked filters like Scott does. And if you are reading this, going on what you think you know about Sade, then you may be a bit horrified I feel so sad for him. But really, if you compare him to the monsters that surrounded him--beings like Robespierre and Saint-Just--he comes off as a kitten. A sort of screwed up, self-involved, control freak kitten with issues needing serious therapy, but certainly not the boogie-man history painted him as. I think he was pretty much robbed. I hope he got a do-over without the maniacal monster-in-law.

Anyway, I started writing a story using Sade's voice but realized I wasn't ready. Sometimes you have to wait until you are ready to write a thing and no matter how much you force it, it won't come. I know that story is in me, it's just not ripe yet.

I go into the doctor today because I've had these icepick headaches for two months now. They've gone from being 3 minute crash-to-your-knees events but over quickly so easily ignored, to something akin to a migraine that requires I sleep on ice packs. Anyway. Can't ignore them anymore. My entire philosophy of survival with chronic illness is a delicate balance of denial and actually treating my problems. I've discussed this on the blog. It's all based on the idea that if you pretend nothing is wrong, then nothing will be wrong. Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight is my role model.



So, the crashing one-sided headaches have made it difficult for me to pretend nothing is wrong. Particularly since it's on the bad side of my brain. The left side. So a neurologist gets to be the latest in my merry band of medical caregivers. I don't know what they think he or she can do about this. But we must protect the brain because it's all I've got left.

But the nurse makes me get on the scale and I'm the fattest I've ever been. I'd gotten to a point where I was okay with my fatness, but damnit--it's not okay anymore. I don't look like me and yeah, I hate myself. Not in a weeping fat lady hanging all over Richard Simmons sort of way, but in a dark, emo, crawl into my cave because I'm Grendel the monster sort of way. Take up bulimia again, sort of way. But one of the library ladies is maybe giving me a treadmill so I can walk without fear of falling--so that's good.

Anyway. I'm completely owed a do-over. This life has obviously been one big fat karmic payback session because obviously I was some sort of monumental asshole in every previous incarnation I've had. Next time I want to be healthy and mildly stupid so stuff doesn't bother me so much. You know. Normal.

I love the golden light right before it becomes too dark. Here, like many places in the South today, it has been storming. Anyway, I looked out the window from the reviews I was writing and saw the sky as one bruise with the wind whipping. And there, just on this one mountaintop, was light, all gold and green. The rain has made everything so green here and it is at the point in the spring when each hill has thousands of hues of green--but fresh green not dead winter green. Just this one ridge in all that angry purple. Then just a smudge of rainbow appeared above it. Just an afterthought of a rainbow. Then darkness.

It reminds me why I love this place so much.

Tivo Alert!

Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods visits Appalachia tomorrow night at 10:00. Looks like he's sampling some of my personal favorites like liver mush and chicken fried squirrel. Also on the menu are bear meat (which I've always wanted to do a Food Porn article on but haven't gotten any donated for the cause), wasp larvae (WTF?) and mushroom coffee. He actually goes squirrel hunting, which I gotta see. Looks like his promo even has a possum in the process of being "perished."

The dogwood trees are amazing this spring. The blooms are the size of saucers, the canopies dense as clouds--I don't think I've seen them quite like this before.

I've got a story that went live today on The Litterbox Magazine. It's called "The Ugly Tango Dancer." I hope you like it.

It was inspired was a stage I went through where I only dated people with disfigurements. Really. I think I had some metaphysical reason for doing so. I think I bought into the Hallmark idea that one's soul could somehow balance the accident of being born ugly. But I needed research to back up my belief. Thus, the ugly lover stage. What I found was that the two states, the physical and the spiritual, do not seem to be even distantly related. The ugly can indeed be ugly down to a cellular level. Their wounds do not ennoble them. The converse can be true of pretty people, but they are just as likely to be suppurating beneath their lovely skins. But the sad thing I found was that souls are much more likely to be ugly. They don't just pop out pretty--they are ugly like human babies are. Oh come-on--you know human babies aren't pretty! They come out looking for the world like blood drenched Shar-Peis.

Rail at me if you wish. Scream at me the things your mother told you. Or your minister. But it's true. We are ugly to the bone. If you aren't working on making your soul beautiful (and those who know me know I'm not talking about religion, Christianity or otherwise--you are as likely to adorn your soul in a church as you are to find a sensible, reasonably priced pair of Christian Louboutins) then you have the typical Quasimodo-ish human soul. And, as Stuart Smiley says, that's okay.

Anyway. I have to work at it lest I sink into a vat of bubbly nihilism. I'm way too fond of shadenfreude. I'm reading Andrew Davidson's beautiful debut novel, The Gargoyle, in an effort to sound less bitter and jaded. So far I found myself thinking, "Damn--he seems really vanilla for a porn star." 'Cause I'm ugly.

Many times when I've writing, I use something from the natural world as a jumping off point--or as an element in my story. Because I don't like being wrong--a particularly girly thing about me--I usually double check my facts, even if I think I know everything I could possibly want to know about a thing. I'm always amazed by how much I don't know. Take barnacles for instance...

I'm writing a story and bring up barnacles. I'm thinking I'm only going to use the clingyness of them, how they cement themselves to something then proceed to cover themselves with limestone secretions, living their lives in one spot until scraped off or eaten by stone crabs. Because that's what I know about them.

But HOLY MOLY! They gots penises that are 8 times and long as they are high! So, in human terms, that's like a 6 foot tall dude needing to lug around a 48 foot long schlong. Even given dips in too cold water or other shriveling type events, that's just johnson overkill.

The article, Barnacles Can Change Penis Size and Shape, was in Nat Geo over a year ago. Evidently, they had some trouble in the lab because "it's hard to get barnacles to extend their penises on demand..." so "the team artificially inflated the barnacles' genitalia with seawater using a custom-made penis pump built out of tubes and hypodermic syringes." This only after copies of PlayBivalve, Nekkid Stripper Oysters and unhampered access to Internet crustacean porn in their little cubicles failed to do the job.

Also, barnacles are hermaphrodites so they technically don't actually need these enormous snausages, being able to impregnate themselves just fine, but "barnacles prefer to mate with other individuals whenever possible." And I think we all can understand that just fine. Right there with you, buddy.

I've gotten so much done this week since I decided to stay off Facebook. Computer life is nice again now that I'm not waiting 30 seconds for their bloated crap to load. I think I'm going to limit my Facebook time to once a week or something--at least until I get something better than 26K dialup. Been thinking about doing satellite now the the prices seem to have come down a bit. If I can get rid of my AT & T (AKA: The Great Satan), it might be doable.

I've been tentatively venturing into the yard to do yardwork. You know, every spring for the past five years, I've suffered a pretty bad fall. It just seems to be something that happens. So I've been trying really hard not to fall. One year I tried to not go outside and ended up falling in the house. But I have high hopes for spring 2009. I'll let you know in June if I made it.

I've been really disgusted with people who make censorship a way of life. It's not the people you think. It's the entire reason I've backed out of every group I've ever identified with, wiping my mouth like I'd kissed a sewer. Why do people feel the need to control the thoughts, emotions and speech of others? I just so don't get it. Especially marginalized groups of people, who, more often than not are the most intolerant of all. I'm just too weary of the non-stop whining. If you want something just shut up and fucking take it. That's empowerment.

And it was great! Listened to to last night and enjoyed it very much.

"They Made Us Walk to Eat" is read on the Diet Soap Podcast, aka Charles Lain's Podcast. So, if you always wanted to experience one of my stories but were too lazy to read them--you can download the Diet Soap Podcast from Podmatic or from iTunes. I'm linking to Podmatic because I'm on 26K dialup and just loading my iTunes takes forever and I can't have too many things going at once with it or it shuts my computer down.

Doug reads from his intro to the Sabotage issue of Diet Soap, turning the concept of sabotage (which we usually think of as a tool for the underdog), on its head, pointing out how the practice of sabotage has moved from micro to macro. Everything from our government to our economy engaging in self-sabotage or sabotage by the biggest entities on larger constructs.

"They Made Us Walk to Eat" is my fat camp story and it's very appropriate for this theme.

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I'm watching The Tudors and am completely hooked! I wish I was well-off enough to afford premium satellite so I didn't have to wait for shows like that to go to DVD--but I'm almost done with season one. It's a complete rape of history, but I knew that when I saw the costumes which are gorgeous interpretations of the period. Love them, but not truly authentic. Sumptuous, nonetheless. As long as you aren't looking for historical accuracy and can just sink into the story, it's very enjoyable. I love all the little jabs at history and art. Definitely more enjoyable if you know your art and history as these writers obviously did, but are willing to have fun with it.

The Teabaggers came out yesterday in Cocke County to demonstrate at Newport City Park. I hate that I forgot all about it while I was in town--though obviously it was in the back of my mind when I saw that truck with the truck nuts. Really, I wouldn't normally have gone off on the truck nuts like that, but I now realize it was my brain telling me I forgot something. Like maybe I should drive by the Teabaggers and get some piccies or gawk or something. Snicker. Stuff like that. Payback for the glazed months I spent after 2002 curled in a fetal position, retreating into the fantasy world of West Wing.

And I was framing a mockity-mock incorporating "Pie Hole" and "Teabagging." And The Pie Hole did run at least one article--more I think, though there wasn't anything in today's paper. Curious, I thought, since they seemed really gung-ho about it and all starry-eyed about maybe being Rupert Murdoch's bitch. No really. They love Fox News.

But no, being Cocke County, we had to shame ourselves on a national level--and not just because we didn't realize "teabagging" meant something entirely different in today's vernacular. That's totally not our fault--evidently no one at Fox or the Republican Party caught that one. Just don't suggest they follow it up with a rusty trombone parade.

No, we made freaking Daily Kos with this one. Could we just keep our heads down for a few years? Please?

Okay. So, I'm in Walmart today after picking up the lawnmower and having a big ole pity party and a good cry at my therapist's. I leave with my groceries and as I'm walking off to my jeep, I spy a big truck. It has truck nuts. Big black ones. Truck scrotum. Srsly.

WTF is up with truck nuts, anyway? I mean, do they have some sort of purpose? Do they keep your trailer hitch from jouncing off? 'Cause if they do, then I might get some balls for the jeep--though I'd prolly see if they had jeep ovaries. Pink ones. Do truck nuts do anything? Anything, at all? Other than say, "My truck has balls and I have one of those mounted, singing fish hanging in a place of pride back home at the double-wide?"

This is my problem with the implied virile message of truck nuts. They are absurdly small if one was to take the anthropomorphic metaphor to it's ultimate conclusion. I mean, them's some tiny testicles to be dangling from the back of a Dodge Ram. And since they are swinging from the trailer hitch---the implication is the trailer hitch has something to do with it. And the trailer hitch is not the biggest part of the truck--if you get my drift. Maybe not the best thing to be advertising or drawing attention to, if you know what I mean. And they are sort of homoerotic in a Bubbalicious sort of way. I'm sure Scott would totally get what I mean, since he likes a bit of rough.

For one mad moment, there in the crowded Walmart parking lot--I sort of wanted to go over and give them a little squeeze. Just to see what everyone's reaction would be. If anyone would call me on it.

Woke up this morning to stark white snow coating tiny green leaves. House wrens puffed up in outrage on the porch, ruffled featherage. It started to snow yesterday while it was still warm. I had gone out to check the mail and caught a few chunks on my shirtfront. The problem with being bosomy is that everything lands on your shirtfront. It's like you carry around your own crumb receiver. And if you are in the slightest bit messy (and like most creative types, I take messy very seriously, indeed), then there isn't enough coinage in the world to cover your drycleaning. So I wear lots of black, washable garments. But this was just snow, so no harm, no foul. Luckily, it wasn't precipitating gravy.

It's still snowing.

I have two stories out in the current issue of The Birmingham Arts Journal. It's always very gratifying for me when a Southern publication accepts my work. It is my thang, after all. The two stories are: "A Pretty Little House" and "The Best Edible Wax Horse Teeth Ever."

"A Pretty Little House" is an all dialogue, experimental piece that takes place in a laundromat.

"The Best Edible Wax Horse Teeth Ever" is a period piece set in the late 1960's in Bluffton, S.C. Most people will recognize The Mercantile.

You can download a full copy of The Birmingham Arts Journal in .pdf HERE. Or, even better--get a subscription!

Everyone was so sweet to me while I was being fragile. I guess I still am, but the ice pick headaches I've been having have made me cranky---and that's always a good antidote for fragility. It's hard to be fragile when you want to kill something so very badly. I've been plagued by real-time stupid people recently and that does tend to make one cranky.

I see stupid people. Way more than I would like to.

Also, there appears to be a mildew ghost in my home. My wonderful neighbor who built my house is going to see if he can find it to exorcise it. It's very odd--there's a column of air in the middle of my kitchen--not attached to anything in particular--that smells of mildew. I've been sniffing everything trying to find the source. It reminds me of the cold spots ghosts hunters claim they can feel. But mine is smelly, too.

Hughes net sent me a free installation card. Price has come down on those so I'm seriously considering it. But a 2 year commitment is sort of silly. They are going to have to do away with that before most people will consider it.

But I've got several stories out right now. Dogmatika took "Applewhite." It went live on April 1st. I just found it yesterday--I have to keep an eye on these things and sometimes I forget what I have coming out.

In other news, they are going to read "They Made Us Walk to Eat" from Diet Soap #3 on a podcast. I'll let you know where when I find out. I got the copy of the magazine and it's really a beautiful thing. They even found a Shoney's Big Boy graphic for my story.