Southern · Hyperbole · on · High

crooked letters are an extended over a long, long period of time performance art piece.  Mainly non-fiction narrative, though often with an experimental edge with a few fiction pieces, playlets and video shorts throw in for good measure. I haven't written one in a long while. But I have felt the stirring to take up my pen and examine my life and the world around me once again as part of this particular project. Old projects never die, they just sit on the back burner for a while

crooked letter 25: Tis Sheila’s Season to be in a Deeper than Deep Blue Funk
 
Some of y’all have heard tell of my atheist/mystic split before this particular crooked letter.  But for those of my readers who are puzzled by this cheeky turn of phrase, I now will explain.  Sometimes I believe in God/dess, most of the time I do not. 
 
I have decided that reconciling this contradiction, spanning this schism, is too much to ask of this little lifetime of mine.  Maybe I will work on it in my next life, but as I believe, more often than not, that this life is my only one, I imagine the contradiction will shun any un that might try to resolve it.
 
Time for what appears on first glance to be a tangent:

We have entered the season when the younglings dream of ripping into Mt. Presentest, dreideling through eight miraculous Maccabbeen nights of oil soaked latkes, liberating the tree from those damn syncretinizing Christians or successfully remembering how to pronouce all those African words in time for candle lighting and libation pouring. 
I have entered the season when I dream of sticking knitting needles through my eyeballs and stirring my brains vigorously.  Tis the season to be jolly well down in the dumps. 
I feel I must warn my readers that my depression is the star of a bad melodrama; its lines are crappy, its acting is bad and the gestures and emotions are all over the top.
End of this tangent seeming section.
 
At this time of year I long to believe. I hopelessly pray to any glimmer of a gleam of a glance of something bigger than myself for relief. I know this seasonal despair will end.  Many of you know that it will end, having seen me here before. It will end and sometime in early January, I will stumble out ready to resume my life among the living.  The flip side of this little bit of hope is that next December will probably be just as shitty as this one. 
 
This year I wish for a whisper of faith.  Science still has an infantile understanding of depression. Its technologies are little more than hocus pocus tricks.  They are somewhat more than slight of hand, but not much.  And my brain no longer suspends disbelief.  There is no rabbit pulled out of my hat.  Instead I follow the rabbit down the hole and fall and fall and fall. 
 
I grasp at roots; I grasp at straws.  I read a book on the history of prayer.  I read books of prayer.  I read books by Pagans and Christians, Buddhists and Jews. I read books by “Food Not Lawns” permaculture performance artists and “Crunchy Con” countercultural conservatives- the kind that dislike big business and want to save the environment but sing the every sperm is sacred song, no tongue in cheek. I read the books of believers. Maybe I can absorb black inked faith as my fingers turn their pages.
 
I am falling, despite family, despite friends, despite the deep love of an amazing man, despite my art, despite my work, despite my connections and commitments.  I am failing.  I most likely will not be able to carry through on many commitments I have made.  This is the blackest bile.  My inability to focus or to work tangles up my finances once again.  When this season passes, I will pick up my wreaked work and pick through the mess of my money and, with some bitterness, try to make right all the things that now are beginning to go wrong.
 
Moments like this; when despair tears at my chest, make me long for absolution.  I want to believe that some friendly deity or angel or fairy is coming to help me bear this cross.  I’d put my head in the lap of the Buddha, if I could find it. 
 
Small bureaucratic battles to get paid to teach my art (a long story for another time), forgotten tasks, work done with half a heart and half assed, the thoughtless remarks of others, all of this weighs on me.  It would be annoying, if I were well.  But I am not well.  It is devastating.  I roll my eyes but must refer myself back to “depression as star of bad melodrama.”
 
I want God to save me.  S/he never does.  Though sometimes wisps of faith sneak around the corner right in front of me.  I observe the faith of others and find small comfort in brief proximity to belief.
 
I wrote many of these words at The Clock, a 24 hour diner.  Next to me was a table full of elderly couples.  They had come from Tuesday Night Square Dancing.  Some of these couples, I gleaned from my eavesdropping, have been married 40 plus years, enough time as one woman said to learn every single button to push. Their conversation was banal, though at one point someone made a comment that if it wasn’t out right racist was pretty dang close, and that started an annoying rattling on about how they, the people at the table, are not prejudiced. I cringed and felt sorry for the African American sitting right next to this table full of clueless old whities. 
 
They talked about the overpriced food at the new Green Market in the Millhopper Shopping Center. They talked of this and that.  Then the conversation turned to life and death.  One old woman, the one who knew every button to push and swore she wasn’t prejudiced, said, “I’m having a ball.  You’re only going to get to go this way one time, might as well go with gusto.  I decided a long time ago, I was going to be dead a lot longer than I was going to be alive.”
 
As I wrote about despair, sometimes with tears in my eyes, I found some small, strange bit of comfort listening in to the old farts talking about nothing in particular.  I do not want their lives, but I want whatever it is that has keep them keeping on into their sixties and seventies.  They were vigorous. They were content. I think it takes courage to live well. It takes courage to enjoy life.  I want their courage, though perhaps not their complacency. 
 
I want to live long enough to be an annoying old fart with somewhat embarrassing to the younger generation opinions and anecdotes to be overheard by some solitary art freak at the next table over. 
 
This is my prayer, a hope, a small thread to cast up into the heavens and out into the future.  May I live long and well. May I sit contented at a table- one of the old farts- kibbitzing after dancing and before eating, and may I inspire some no longer young but no where near old someone to keep on keeping on. 
 

I just have to finish working on two more pieces, write an introduction, acknowledgements, my bio and get someone to write a forward and then con someone into helping me design the cover for my book and then I will be able to upload the damn book and have something concrete to sell after my years of doing performance work. Ugh!

Here's a scene from my performance piece, The Story of My O: 25 Short Scenes Playing with Myself, which is one of the pieces I have to finish editing/re-shaping before publication. Content explicit, so NWS.


( The t-shirt Award )

I slowly but surely am working on a young adult fantasy novel (dare I say series) set in a fantasy world resembling in more than a few ways Florida in the early 1800's. But I'm changing things around- mixing and mangling some Spanish and Portugues into my world. In my world, the place resembling Florida is a "free" country. Free meaning there are no slaves. Behind the cut is a rough draft sample of some of my writings for this project. Those of y'all who like fantasy will do me a much appreciated favor by reading over this little bit of text.

( Johanes Jump is having a bad day )

(very beginnings of a rough draft of a crooked letter- I'm going to edit and add to this today, so y'all can ignore this, I'm using my journal as a word processor today in between sessions of prentending to be a smoker who is trying to quit to test 3rd year medical students on their history taking/patient eduction skills.)

My people are built to survive famines, which means in our surplus society that most of us are fat. At 185 pounds, I am at the edge of where overweight tips the scales to read obese in bright red letters, at least according to the BMI charts. I do not have a simplistic view of what it means to be fat. To most people I do not look fat; I wear my weight very well (stacked in the front and the back). Even at my thinnest, I am heavier than the "ideal" because I come from a prodigiously strong people. I have great muscle tone without even trying. One lover of mine nick named me "sturdy girl." The only way I would end up skinny is if I was dying of some horrible wasting disease. And while I have occassionally bought into the beauty industry bullshit that only incredible thin, tall women of no more than 20 years of age are desirable, for the most part I like being sturdy. I like being strong.

I also come from a prodigiously obese people. I have an Uncle who weighs near 600 pounds. A cousin who is an inch shorter than I am and is down to 280 pounds (after hitting a high of 380). My uncle is not healthy. He can barely move.

But I don't want to to be fat the way my family is.

(Jump to another thought- rough draft I said, rough draft)
It is easy to get caught up in the simplitic debates about fat. But fat is a complex molecule, it requires time to digest it. To break it down into smaller pieces. So many ideas, opinions, academic disciplines intersect when we seriously chew the fat. When we talk about fat we talk about health and beauty, the economy and the way work has changed in the past 100 or so years, urban and suburban geography. We talk about genetics and evolution. We talk about biochemistry. We talk about agriculture and marketing, psychology and self help. We talk about individual choice versus determinition by environmental and/or genetic factors.

The subject line should be heard as if delivered by an old 50's comic launching into a schpiel about his wife. The reader must imagine me wearing a man's suit- sharper than what a man might wear to the office, but still restrained in comparison to what performers would wear in the 60's. The image projected onto TV screens is black and white. The broadcast is live.

( Live and on the air )

I have cramps. I have a slight sore throat. I got the new stereo that my uncle paid for installed today. I spent the afternoon re-typing scenes of a play I'm working on called Will. I lost big chunks of it after a compter crash a long while ago. Luckily, I had a hard copy.

In between re-inputing and editing my words, I bantered via email volley with my overseas friend. Which was fun. I spent the evening with my friend Kelly at The Clock doing more re-inputing, reshaping, editing. I have that good because I did a chunk of work today feeling but a little yucky because I'm having a small bit of artistic anxiety feeling. And my head now is all swimmy. I don't want to be sick. Oh, well.

For those interested in seeing work in progress, I submit for your enjoyment

( A small rough draft bit of Will )

I live in Florida, because as sick as it may seem, I love the humidity. Today is beautiful, and the air is soft and slightly moist.

I spent the morning interviewing Chris Miller of Electronic SubSouth for a piece for Satellite Magazine, a monthly news magazine. And then I went home trolled the net for a while, chilled out. I biked to one of my various paying gigs with which I support my artist habits. And came flying down a lovely hill, where you can get up to 30 mph. Fabulous! Now I'm killing time before pretending to be the mother of a 14 year old so 2nd year medical students can practice their triadic interview skills.

'Cause it is not all positive is going to the name of my next cabaret. I'm going to raise money for various reproductive rights organizations in town because, well I put on good shows, and I'm pissed. Not sure where or when yet.

Calling for submissions of music, short stories, poems, short monologues/plays, short video pieces on the not so great side of sex and/or the more twisted side of sex. These pieces can be funny, silly, deadly serious, sad. They can be about awkward sex, difficult sex, the lack of sex, sexism, homophobia, sexual violence, and/or sex on the edge. I plan to show a video called Learning to Say No. If you are interested and live or are going to be in North Central Florida this Spring (most likely early April show) then email me: sheila@crookedletter.com

I'm thinking about putting a book together called Sex Negative, so those of y'all who don't live anywhere near Gainesville, FL can submit something of written on this here topic.

And in the sex negative vein, Sci Fi Horror Sex Fantasy, a poem about what happened if men paid a stiff penalty for conceiving children:

( Sci Fi Horror Sex Fantasy )

I am stupified with tiredness. I have been up all night doing data entry. I feel a certain absurdist streak trying to take over.

A streak of a stretch of the imagination where red dolls hang back from hugging lollygagging youths. Youths who have no proof that the sky is fixed. Is it fixed? All of it? The game? Your life? That job interview where they had someone else in mind, and it wasn't ever going to be you? Because you weren't the niece of the nephew of the son of an old college buddy. You were just some poor schmuck who opened up the classifieds and sent in your resume and cover letter. You were hoping for some job at a nonprofit. Something to pay the bills and to, well, mean something. And so you hunted and searched. And you picked your brain for just the right combination of sentences explaining why you were qualified for a job answering the phones and making copies. A meaningful job answering the phone and making copies for some worthy organization that have some mission that didn't make you want to vomit. You think that if only you could get one of those jobs. That'd be good, you thought.

Years later stupified with tiredness you remember that you finally got one of those jobs. And it was the worst job you ever had. And pretty much all the jobs you've had at worthy organizations that have some mission that you can, like, stand, ate you up. Right in this moment you are not bitter. No, you look at the cards that you played in that game, you life, and you nod. It was what it was, you know. Not bitter. Oddly content. The fact that all those meaningful jobs meant you suffered way too many days of despair is understood with empathatic detachment. No way in hell would you want to do it again, but you value your hard won knowledge. In this moment, you don't regret it at all.

Read Notes towards Post Modern Romance first to understand this post fully, though it stands on its own.

I care for particularities more than philosophies. Did Martin Heiddegger's office smell of musty old books? Was it a room full of dark brown bindings and leathers? I want to know whether or not Heiddeiger twitched tobacco stained fingers when Hannah Arendt sat in his office? Did her skirt rise as she shifted in her seat? Did he cross his legs to conceal stirrings?

Did she squirm, becoming more and more aware of the leather against the back of her legs, more and more aware of the place between her legs? Did his heart beat faster? Did her mouth open ever so slightly? Did his breath quicken? And was all of this due to the meeting of their minds?

Did the long, phelmatic sentences in German, pregnant with "Being" cause ( (more) )

Do you want to make love?
an entry made on Monday, February 13th on V.C.'s blog.

Do you want to unmake love? Pull it apart, slowly, bit by bit. Grind off the sharp edges. Flatten it until it is as thin as a piece of paper and as transparent as an old, glass window that has slowly dripped down toward the bottom of the window frame.

Then it could be slipped under doors. Instead of a greeting it becomes a letter. Maybe even a covert operation, inflitrating the homes of persons unware of the letter slipped under their doors, into the heart of their homes.