Ian went to his prom with his best friend Sadie on Saturday night, this is the first of the pics. :)

Borderline symptom of the day: blah

I posted the story of the implosion of my second marriage over on E2 about a year after it happened. I'm reposting it here, but adding to it the story of just how I met Sam, and how that changed my life. Don't want to lose this, you know? And my friend Nancy Smith is interested in hearing more, and thinks this testimony is important, and since I consider her a very wise woman, I'll do it.

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I'm digging through my hard drive looking for the PDF file of my book, and ran across this old essay I wrote for Written By Me about a million years ago. Enjoy!

Okay, I've often said that I do not critique poetry. I guess that I lied. In a sense. I'm not really going to critique any particular poem or poet here, because I do not do THAT. BUT.

There is some truly Bad Poetry out there, folks. Poetry that I have read that sends me running for the bathroom to vomit out my dinner. Poetry that makes me want to jab my eyeballs out with a pencil so that I will never accidentally run across anything similar to it, ever ever ever again.
Douglas Adams discusses horrible poetry and the desire of the Bad Poet to force other people to listen to it in his first book, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, wherein a species of particularly horrible aliens takes great pleasure in torturing their victims by reading Vogon poetry to them, poems that run along these lines:

"OH FREDDLED GRUNTBUGGLY
THY MICTURATIONS ARE TO ME
AS PLURDLED GABBLEPLOTCHETTS
ON A LURGID BEE!"

This goes on, but I think you get the point. Please tell me you got the point, because my eyeballs are now bleeding from having had to even type that in and spellcheck it.

Now, just what is a bad poem, other than the above example? Please bear in mind that this is all solely my opinion. You may think MY poetry is Vogon poetry, and you are welcome to your opinion. But I have my own ideas about Vogon poetry, and since this is MY rant, I will spew them forth here. If you disagree, I invite you to write your own rant and send me the URL (j3nny3lf@yahoo.com). I would love to see what you come up with as Vogon.

HOW TO SPOT A VOGON IN HUMAN DISGUISE:
(All poetry examples used herewith are from my own twisted brain, so if you think you recognize anything here as your own work, you are a Vogon.)

1) If they use cliched and overused rhyme schemes, such as

"Nothing can ever break up our love
It was given to us by God above
Your touch is as tender as if you wore a glove
And your eyes are as gentle as a dove"

Then you can be pretty damn sure that there's a Vogon in the house.

2) If they feel that they must stick to rhyming poetry, but they have clearly not read their poem aloud to see if it really rhymes, you have discovered a Vogon. Example:

"Yesterday I had had it
I said we were through
And I want you to know
It was really rough!"

3) If there is... creative use of line lengths, such as:

"I wander in the bright sunshine

Roaming hither and fro amongst the hills and dales and dancing in the daffodil fields with my finger in my nose

and my heart calls out for you

as i look at a lovely purple pink yellow orange green giagantically fully in bloom cabbage rose.

Call the Intergalactic Terrorist Squad, you caught a Vogon.

4) If as you read their many 'works' you feel like you've fallen in a Hallmark shop and you can't get up.. guess what? It's a Vogon.

5) If the poem is filled with strange and creative spelling and grammar, such as:

"I wondered down in them there feeldz
Two gather my rosebuds wile Aye may
But then I felled down on my knees
And instead to my God I did Begun to Praye."

Oh well hell, what else can the author be but a Vogon (although, to be honest, I could not bring myself to spell as badly as a true Vogon generally does)?

These are just some of the many ways to spot a Vogon and his or her poetry. I am sure that each of you has run across a Vogon in the past, and will discover new ones in the future. Perhaps you are a Vogon yourself, or have been one (as every poet has at one time or another, yes, including me. I have reams of crap I would never share with the world because the Geneva Convention strictly forbids torture, regardless of what they do at Gitmo).

If you are a Vogon, you don't have to remain one. Any Vogon is free to break out of the trap of crappy poetry. There is only one way to do it. Write. Write often, and write honestly. Throw away that rhyming dictionary you got in the office Kris Kringle last year and write the words of your HEART, not of your head. If your head tells you: "Oh wait, that didn't rhyme", tell it to shut the hell up and to stop trying to rule your heart. Let the words flow straight from your soul to the paper (or monitor, as the case may be). Just let it flow. If it happens to rhyme, nifty, your soul gave you a rhyming poem. If it doesn't rhyme, nifty again, your soul gave you another kind of poem. If you have to struggle for it, it is not real, but Vogon.

Vogons are not a race of aliens. They are the demons we knew as our Sophomore English teachers who taught us that a true poem rhymes, a true poem follows a particular meter, a true poem uses flowery phrases that mean nothing and only sound pretty. They taught us that Byron and his peers were the only true poets ever to come down the pike, and they ignore amazing great poets like Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, poets who just let their emotions dribble down through their bodies into their fingers, out through their pens, onto the paper, and into the hearts and souls and minds of millions.. and often without a 'sensible' rhyming pattern.

Vogons are not aliens. They are us. But we don't have to be Vogons unless we want to be.

Don't be a Vogon. Write from your heart. And help save me from having to jab my eyeballs out with a pointed object.

Borderline symptom of the day: amused

So my friend Paula died yesterday morning. And I've been going through some major changes about this today.

I've been overwhelmed with grief, almost cripplingly so. I'm doing fine, and then all of a sudden, I'm sobbing over the loss of my friend. And this was filling me with incredible amounts of guilt.

Why guilt?

Last November, my grandmother, Irene Reiser, died. She was almost 94 years old, and suffering dementia to the degree that talking to her on the phone was pretty useless. She lived in Boston, and I'm in Texas. The last time I saw her was in 2001, and I knew at that time that it would probably be the last time I ever saw her.

But this was a woman who helped raise me. I spent so much time at her house that I considered it another home. She loved me unconditionally and without reservation, and I returned her love with everything I had in me.

Yet I feel more grief over losing Paula, a woman I'd only met face to face once, than I did over losing Grammy. And thus the guilt.

Until Sam put it all in perspective for me.

I knew Grammy's time was almost over. She was very old, had lived a very full life, and for the last year or so of her life, I was expecting the phone call any day. I had time to prepare, and really, did a lot of my grieving during that time, during the time that I would call her and have to sometimes remind her that I lived in Texas now, that I was no longer married to Koji, and that sort of thing.

Paula's death was very sudden and very unexpected. One day so alive, so vibrant, so THERE, and then suddenly... gone. And that's a shock to the system of anybody who loved a person who has died. There's no warning, no nothing, just a post on Facebook and LiveJournal and the end of a life.

So the guilt is gone. Of course I loved my Grammy, and just because my grief for Paula is so profound, that doesn't make me a bad granddaughter.

Thank God for a husband who can put things into perspective for me. May we have the forty years Paula and Bill had, and may they be as rich and full of love as their years were.

And I hope that Paula and Grammy are sharing a laugh together up in heaven, and discovering a kindred spirit in each other.

Borderline symptom of the day: grieving

I woke up tonight to the news that my friend Paula Gawne had died this morning. I am reeling. She was so alive and vibrant, I just didn't expect this news, and I am heartbroken and can't seem to stop crying.

I'd like to share what I just posted to her husband Bill's FB page, because I never want to forget what this amazing woman meant to me.

I would like to share with you how Paula became one of my dearest friends.

We knew each other vaguely through LiveJournal, she had added me after seeing my comments on mutual friend's journals, and we became friendly. Then one day, I posted something about wanting to die.

Paula tracked down my phone number, I don't know how, as I didn't have a contact page up at that time, and called me to
let me know that there were people in this world who cared deeply about me and didn't want to see me do something stupid.

Strangely enough, Paula always seemed to know when I needed to hear that. She would call me out of the blue when I was feeling particularly bad about things, even if I didn't post it, just to let me know I was loved and needed.

I am already missing her terribly, and I know that you and the girls are hurting badly right now and wish that I could fix it for you.

She was a wonder, and you were blessed with each other, for 40 years. I can only hope that Sam and I have so long a run of joy in our lives.

We love you, Sam and I do.

Borderline symptom of the day: grieving

Today, on Facebook, I have been called: N****** lover, Muslim terrorist supporter, BAD Christian, intolerant, and hate-filled. I've also been told that my family isn't REAL because the boys never passed through my vagina, and when I used the word vagina, was called vulgar. This all happened on several FB groups and a few pages belonging to friends.

Because I support President Obama, because I will NOT marginalize the LGBT community, because I will NOT tolerate people spewing "facts" that are anything but, I am an intolerant, bad Christian, hate-filled, N****** loving Muslim terrorist supporter.

Well.

You know what? If keeping my mind OPEN, not drinking the Kool-Aid, loving people for WHO they are, not WHAT they are, and refusing to let people sway me into ways of thinking that are anything BUT Christian or loving make me those things?

I'll wear the label with PRIDE.

And if you think anybody is less than deserving of equal treatment under both the laws of the country and the morals of humanity? Please, PLEASE remove yourself from my life. I don't need that kind of nasty rhetoric around me.

Borderline symptom of the day: RIGHTEOUSLY ANGRY!

My daughter Bonnie posted this to her Facebook today:

Bonnie Perry
Here is what a friend said to me tonight. I couldnt have said it better myself. He is wise beyond his own realization.
I was never introduced to religion when I was younger, so I went on this journey to figure out what was out there. I was like "yeah, I like that but that sucks", or "that's ok, but bite the head off of what?" I said to myself I wish I could take parts of this one, and parts of this one and put them into one. I sort of settled with a UU church. Then I had an epiphany, well two at once. First, I realized that my higher power was mine, no one elses, so how gave a shit how other people got along with theirs, all I had to do was get along with mine. The second epiphany I had was that I don't have to understand it and define it. I just had to believe that it loved me and only wanted the best for me. I am so analytical that I had to define every aspect of it and know it's insides and outsides before I'd accept that it's there. Who gives a shit. It's mine and loves me and is going to help me, and I don't have to know how or why.

His name is Jesse Burns.

Borderline symptom of the day: calm

I've been battling my depressive side today. Actually for the last few days, and it's starting to make me more than a little crazy.

So, I'm trying to think of things that bring me joy. God. My kids. My husband. My art. And it's helping, a little bit.

Then I look at the news, and get all pissed off at whatever RMoney said last. Gha, this man could possibly be our leader for the next four years? Please, God, NO!

Where was I?

Puppies. Flowers. Kawfee...

Borderline symptom of the day: depressed

So, I've taken up painting as a hobby, to keep my time filled, to be less bored, to enjoy my artistic side again.

I used to do polymer clay for that, but the arthritis is in my fingers now, and kneading the clay and working it is too painful. So, painting.

I'm using acrylics, and went hog wild buying a box of 56 colors, a ton of canvas boards, nice brushes, the whole nine yards. And I'm having FUN!

I can't paint real stuff very well yet. I'm working on one study of a mountainous landscape, I've made five copies of it so far, each somewhat better than the last, but none looking very authentic yet. But I see real improvement on each canvas, and that's a good thing. I'll be posting pics of my paintings as I finish them.

I'm also doing an art swap with my friend, M-A, he does amazing art, and I feel like I'm definitely getting the better end of the deal on this one!

So what creative things are you all doing these days? I admit to being out of touch and not being possessed of a single clue, so fill me in!

While Mittens rants about the 47% who think they're entitled to necessities such as food and shelter and medical care, I have friends who are struggling every day to keep the wolf from the door, and have no damn food, because it's food or rent for them, and the foodbanks are swamped and don't have anything to give them.

On days like this, I just want to *SHAKE* Mitt Romney and others who think like him until their eyes open and they see the pain and suffering in this world.

Tonight, Sam and I are ransacking our cupboards for food to bring to our friends D and A, who work their asses off just to pay the rent and utilities, and have had nothing to eat for a day and a half. Get that. Not a bite, in the richest country in the world, in a country that could afford to feed every single citizen every day and not even blink.

And I find myself thanking Spider Robinson for opening my eyes to the fact that yes, one or two people can make a difference in other people's lives just by sharing whatever they've got to give, whether it be money, food, shelter, or just love.

Not to toot our own horns, but Sam and I help others whenever we can. We feel that this is why we were put here, to care for others. We sure aren't making any big splashes in any other way, but we keep running across people who really need what we have to give. So we give. Time, money, food, shelter, whatever. We give.

If everybody gave a little, every day, what a wonderful world it would be.

Borderline symptom of the day: angry