Another Day, And More Undead To Slay...

Seven Line Poem

Endymion's a restless dreamer

Stormtossed coffin bound in raging moonlight

Cold skin, warm lips,heart full of nails

Your Sleeping Beauty's a boy tonight

That Siren sweet singing will never raise the dead

But the song is a prayer and his breathing is steady

And the night smells like Hyacinth and miracles...

(detritus)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

Aquatic Tarot Of the Day

Four of Wands (Completion): A chance to rest and rejoice, having successfully resolved a matter of great import. The initial success of a business venture or creative project. The blossoming of a friendship or romantic relationship. Conclusions drawn based on hard won experience. Spiritual, material, or emotional rewards for diligent effort. May suggest marriage, childbirth, or a victory celebration.

Queen of Pentacles: The essence of earth behaving as water, such as a hot spring: A warm and generous host, providing shelter and comfort for all who would seek it. A person steadfast, practical, and domestic, able to create opulence and stability in any setting. The qualities of maturity and sensibility, coupled with an innate appreciation for nature and the material world.

(detritus)(dream)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

Why I've dumped most of the men I've ever been with...

...simple neglect.

I ask very, very little. That doesn't mean I want nothing. So maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe I should stop being so easy going and understanding and then I won't ever be in a position to be treated like a doormat again. Maybe failure to be demanding is essentially saying to a guy "your needs and quirks and intricacies are way more important than anything to do with stupid little me. Which is why they are repeatedly baffled when I make any sort of request at all and stunned when I react negatively to their inevitable failure to fulfill said request. Maybe it's my own fault, I don't know. All I know is that I never, EVER want to hear anything approximating the following phrases ever again:

"Can we just order pizza for our anniversary dinner?"

"I know we RSVPd a month ago but can we blow off the party? I'm tired."

"Let's skip Christmas presents this year. It'll save so much money and I don't really care about presents."

Perhaps I ask too much. Perhaps my only sexual appeal is in that doormat type quality. But damned if the next guy I date won't be required to fake a little enthusiasm when I enter a room.

Finis,

Corbid

On Ice

There's an episode of "Friends" in which one of the characters is so frightened by a Stephen King novel that the book has to be put in the freezer. A friend of mine told me recently that they threw a copy of "The Shining" into the desert because it bothered them that much. While I myself am not a great Stephen King fan per se, I've been reading one of his books and I've come to the point where I think it needs to go into the freezer. Only it isn't a horror novel at all. It's "On Writing" which is part advice manual, part autobiographical epistle and overall a very sincere and insightful bit of nonfiction. But the postscript, or rather the idea of it, is terrifying me a bit. It's about his accident. And I know I should read it. I have a feeling it would be good for me to read it. But I'm kind of scared to. So I think I'm going to put the book in the freezer for just a little while.

Even Japanese mythology is bizarre...

Once upon a time there was a monk who was in service to a high priest. He was married and had children. One summer day, this man accompanied his master to Mii temple. It was a hot day and he was sleepy so he took a nap in a hidden corner in the hall of the temple. He had a dream and in his dream he was visited by a beautiful woman. They made love in the dream and the sensation was so vivid and intense that he climaxed in ecstasy. When he awoke he found a large snake laying by his side. His own clothes were wet with his ejaculation but he was astonished to see the snake lying dead with its mouth wide open. He was even more shocked to see his semen in the mouth of the snake. He had been making love with this snake in his dream and the snake had choked and died afterwards. The man was afraid and secretly washed himself. He wanted to tell others of the strange thing that had happened to him, but refrained for fear of damaging his reputation. He became sick for a while, but nothing else came of it. Be careful where you sleep, if others are not around! Corbid's Blog: http://members.cox.net/corbid/exponentialdetritus.html

Like an overenthused cafeteria patron...

...I have too much on my plate.

Amnesiac Lover

Baby's an amnesiac

and never ever calls you back

you could die tonight of a heart attack

amnesiac lover

would never discover

might confuse you with another

tells the same stories

tells the same stories

tells the same stories

a hundred times a day

Available White Female In Search Of A Deity...

Wanted: some sort of divine being or pantheon or mythical entity I can invoke to solve my immediate concerns just to the degree that I can cope with them and reverse my sour luck. Vengeful Father Gods and crucified martyrs need not apply. The proper candidate will enjoy my songs and praises and libations as well as some good word of mouth on my various blogs and maybe a statuette or a tattoo or something. Don't be shy. Do my bidding. Gender or species unimportant. I am an equal oppurtunity petitioner. No animal sacrifices or head shaving requirements, please. Requiring a vow of silence is probably unwise. Bonus points for religions involving temple prostitutes, feasting on roasted lamb and/or genourous imbibing of wine. I do still like to have my occasional reverie...

Lyrics of the Day

"The butcher the baker and the baseline maker say you can leave her I can take her you spend your whole life like a minute or two later one day it's gonna and sooner than greater...oh, what would the loved ones say, what would the loved ones say?"

Elwood and I are gettting the band back together...

"I'm gonna ask you the question people always ask me...what do you do?

Show me don't tell me. Send me something you've written (fiction, poetics, obscenely verbose ranting, I don't care) or digital photos or scanned art or some music you've recorded or whatever else you do that's creative other than things of a tactile or aromatic nature. We're creating something here. We're on a mission from god. We're reviving my frustrated literary editor ambitions and giving the lot of you an audience and a forum all at the same time. It'll be Punk, it'll be diverse, it'll be cool. I'm calling it Spitegeist. Send me some things to put in it. I'll post the link when the inaugural version is ready to go live. Then I'll feel important:)

That is all,

Corbid

Resolution Number Nine

Today I will make a half assed attempt at succeeding.
We'll see how it goes. Arete, mi amigos.

cat people tarot

Ace of Wands: Creation. Beginning. Invention. Start of an undertaking. Fortune. Enterprise. Gain. Inheritance. Birth of a child. Beginning of a meaningful experience. An adventure. Escapade.

Three of Wands (Virtue): Practical knowledge. Business acumen. Enterprise. Negotiations. Trade, Commerce.

Lyrics of the Day

"The rich are getting richer
The poor are getting drunk
In a black and white world,
there's a lot of grey funk...
they're telling you questions
and they're asking you lies..."
- The Replacements

Not to be a bleeding heart, but the prospect of the two class society is looming nauseatingly near again. My friends range from upper middle class but heavily indebted to one paycheck short of an eviction notice. But I don't think I know anyone off the top off my head who's "comfortable."

September 11th

Just when I'm thinking it couldn't get any worse, the date creeps on me and I realize there are people who have suffered in much worse ways, like having to choose between jumping to a certain death and incinerating in an office building. So perhaps I shouldn't sit here and feel sorry for myself anymore.

Not saying I'm giving up completely, but...

Every time I get up, and get the willpower to try and do something about the mess that is my life I get kicked in the head. One of these days I'm going to conserve the pointless effort and just not get up again.

Too Much Information

When I swore I'd never write about this, I guess I lied.
The part of it that none of you will ever understand, that I can never explain, is how much it hurt. The absolute bloocurdling, mindsplitting, unfathomable pain of my guts spilling out into my body cavity and my spine all but snapped in half and still somehow I'm struggling to get on my feet, I'm smiling, I'm politely asking to be allowed to just go to sleep, just for one minute, and I'm fading fast and my blood pressure's dropped to almost zero and I cannot wrap my head around how much it hurts. I think I'm going to go mad, I think I'm going to split in two. The human nervous system is not equipped to process this sort of pain. And yet there I was, coherent and reasonable and asking softly if please they could just let me close my eyes, if please they could just put me under. And they're begging me, pleading with me to stay awake, because if I close my eyes I might never wake up and I think at some point my mind just snapped. I don't think I really came back to my senses for months after that. I don't know if I ever really came all the way back at all. Apparently I was moments away from dying. I was bleeding to death. I somehow stayed awake until the operating table where they cut my skirt off even though they'd already cleaned the surgical area, presumably for dramatic effect. And there on the operating table, on my deathbed, I was yelling at them about ruining my good black skirt and then I begged them again to put me under and this time they did and I woke up sore and disoriented in a dull morphine haze in a hospital bed, still not really getting it. I asked if I could go back to school the next day. Two months and most of a vital organ later, I would emerge from my Chrysalis a torn and jaded moth and all I could think about was at least I would be thin now because that's the sort of fucked up thing a teenage girl thinks of at times like that. Like I'd won some sort of liposuction lottery or something. But jesus holy fuck I could never even begin to explain how much it hurt. I myself can't fathom it. It just fucking hurt so bad. It isn't the nearly dying or the isolation or the uncertainty of the thing that got to me. I've known a number of people who've faced death or been sick or been traumatized. But I've never known another soul who could understand how much it hurt. It just fucking hurt so badly. I hope I've described it inadequately because I wouldn't wish that kind of suffering on anyone, even a pale ghost of it. But I've never committed it to print until now and I wonder if it'll somehow help me to do so. They always say write what you know and maybe this is what I know better than anything. So there it is. It hurt. It just fucking hurt. It hurt so bad. I can't begin to tell you how much it hurt...wow, that feels better somehow.

So, um, have a nice day?
Sorry about all that.
Lalalalala...

I don't know where that came from. I'm not even having a particularly bad day or anything. It just worked itself up out of some long buried scar tissue and - there it is. Funny how the human mind works. I don't think I ever even really remembered what it exactly felt like until just now. I mean obviously I had some idea it had been unfathomably painful, but I hadn't quite remembered the details of it in quite so intricate a matter.Kind of surprised at myself, actually.

Slave House

When I was ten, visiting the ancestral familial stomping grounds of the Southern Illinois-Kentucky border, I was taking to visit the following "tourist attraction." I don't know if it's haunted or not. I just know the horror of it is absolutely chilling. The absolute worst of what mankind can inflict on mankind. The stalls where they lived were dark and cold and had no room to sit or lay down - they slept standing. They were bred like horses. Anyone who can walk into that place and not feel crushing sadness and horror and guilt at being part of a species who could do this to itself is an inhuman monster indeed.

Old Slave House: Cries, whimpers of a haunted past

Oct 30 2001 12:00AM By

By MARY KAYE DAVIS Register-News

ALTON - Troy Taylor, president of the American Ghost Society, says one of his favorite haunted spots in Illinois is Hickory Hill - better known to many Southern Illinois residents as the Old Slave House. The Slave House closed to the public in 1996 and has been purchased by the state of Illinois. Plans call for the home to open as a state historic site in the near future. Hickory Hill was built in 1842 by John Hart Crenshaw. In those days, it was illegal to own slaves in Illinois, but because it was so difficult to find anyone to work the brutal salt mines of Saline County, it was allowed that slaves could be leased from other states to work in Illinois, according to information from Taylor. Crenshaw owned several salt tracts and began to put slaves to work. He initiated a scheme that would bring him more money than the salt mines could offer, devising a plan to kidnap free blacks and put them to work in the salt mines. He also sold the free blacks back to slave owners in the South, creating a reverse "underground railroad," Taylor said. When the house was completed, Crenshaw added a few touches, such as having a carriage door that opened directly in the house so slaves could be taken up a secret passage directly to the attic. The slaves were kept In the attic at night and, some say, subjected to brutal torture. According to the stories, there was also an underground tunnel that led from the basement to the river, where slaves could be loaded at night. Crenshaw devised another plan, historians say. He wanted to create slaves of his own, so he selected a slave for his size and stamina, then had the man breed more slaves. This man, known as Uncle Bob, was said to have fathered as many as 300 children. He lived until age 112, dying in 1948. Taylor describes the attic at Hickory Hill as a chamber of horrors. A dozen small cells had bars on the windows and contained iron rings where shackles could be bolted to the floors. The air was stifling because there was only a small window at each end of the attic; a whipping post was also located there. In 1842, Crenshaw was brought to trial for selling a free family into slavery, but the case couldn't be proven until after the trial was over. Crenshaw's slave-trading days were over, however. He died in 1871. Many years later, Crenshaw's house was opened as a tourist attraction, and tourists reported hearing strange noises coming from the attic - noises which sounded like cries and whimpers, along with rattling chains. An "exorcist" from Benton, Hickman Whittington, wrote an article about the house in the local newspaper. Whittington was in perfect health when he visited the mansion, but later in the evening he fell violently ill, dying hours later. As the years passed, no one would dare spend a night in the house's attic, but in the late 1960s, two soldiers who saw action in Vietnam ran screaming from the house, reportedly after being surrounded by ghostly shapes. The owner refused to let any more visitors in the home after dark, but in 1978 he relented and let a Harrisburg reporter named David Rodgers spend the night. Despite hearing a lot of strange noises, Rodgers beat out 150 previous challengers to become the first to brave the night in the attic. Taylor said he'd asked a former owner if he believes the house is haunted. The former owner said he'd never encountered a ghost in the home, but his wife hadn't been so lucky. And she refused to set foot in the former slaves' quarters.

(detritus)(dream)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

Movie Quote Of The Day

Lloyd Dobler : Joe. Joe. She's written 65 songs... 65. They're all about you. They're all about pain.

Joe : So what's up?

-Say Anything, Cameron Crowe 1989

I asked my two year old...

...half in jest "David Bowie or Nirvana?" She said "Nirvana." I repeated the question to be sure I'd heard right. So Nirvana it shall be.

(detritus)(dream)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

Laborday Blues (detritus)

Half drunk still, he lurked in the shadows and I stood in the doorway and he said I looked like Tori Amos "in a cool and beautiful way" but the camera had a low battery so this can be neither confirmed nor denied. Still I felt the need to preserve it for posterity. Vain and selfish creature that I am. Sometimes men who you know don't love you are the ones who are most complimentary. And certainly you can trust them more. But holy fuck I'd have paid good money to hear a thing like that. Last week I found my keys and the remote control and I felt as if I'd won the lottery. I am a woman of simple delights. Every day, when I fail to wake up dead, I am grateful, except on the days that I wish I was dead which are thankfully sporadic in number mostly. Life is a mess but such a happy chaotic mess all the same. Love is what radiates from my girls' rosy faces and lights up their eyes.Sweetness is a name for refusing to let the assholes that make up the general population get you down. Politics are overrunning my television. Fuck the fucking fascist regime. Vive le France and God Save The Queen and there's no future and England's dreaming. Vive le revolution. The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. Just vote and vote justly. I am a simple woman of simple joys but I'll be damned if I sign my rights away to the corporate oligarchy this November. It's labor day. Which means. Respect the working man! Fight for justice! Support your fellow man! It was never meant to be a day of picnics and white sales. Read Michael Moore today or listen to Jello Biafra or register to vote. Do something, damnit! It's not too late (says the eternal optimist...)Just. Do it. Right Now.

thank you and good night

"If I Should Fall From Grace"

This is a documentary about Shane MacGowan about what a lyrical genius and an unrepentant drunk he is, and it's just f'ing awesome, I must say. Cameo appearance/interview segments with the fabulous Mr. Nick Cave abound. There's a bonus sing-along feature and an interesting little outtake of Shane peeing in the bushes. Klassy with a Kapital "K."

Also rented "The Last Seduction" which was noirishly badass and I'd somehow never gotten around to seeing. And some Japanime because I'm a bit of a geek. No tentacles, though.

My latest read was exquisite in its fashion: "Idlewild" by Nick Sagan (son of Carl.)
Like "The Matrix" with shades of "The Breakfast Club."

Other joys of late:

A "new" old Pernice brothers CD found at Barnes and Noble before my cash ran out for the week.

Latte from Caffe Nation, complete with an encounter with an old acquaintance that keeps popping up randomly every couple of years.

Peach pie and Beamish Stout at the Congress Street Grill (unofficial motto: exquisite diner cuisine cuisine served with a sneer)along with nibbles of Lizzie's "gianormous" pancakes.

But number one on my list has been the joy of manning the front desk today, so I have leisure to read and websurf and post. It's like a vacation on the job, except for those occasional pesky callers...

(detritus)(dream)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

In honor of "Little Phil"

Lizzie. please print this or pass on this link to your lovely niece.

The price of which is that she promise to read Edith Hamilton's

Mythology.

In fact, if the rest of you would read the frigging thing, I wouldn't have to explain this shite to you all the time, you'd just understand...

Mythology isn't "old and boring and out of date." It's a context. It's a frame of reference. It's Jung as opposed to Freud, Dream as opposed to Dogma. Symbolism to complement science. It's the Independent Cinema of the ancient world, for prechrist's sake.

Don't limit yourself, man. A little Classical mythology and a little Shakespeare never killed anyone, eh? Don't you wish you could say the same with that bloodthirsty gorefest of a bible?

(detritus)(dream)(poetica)(myth)(opinion)(divination)

My word of the day...

...was "feckless." Feck that. They've insulted my intelligence yet once more.

Found a much better word via Neil Gaiman's Blog:

The word Tulpa is from the Tibetan language and refers to any entity that attains reality solely by the act of imagination. The entity is created entirely within the confines of ones own mind, not drawn out, written down or even verbally described.

If its creator wishes, this "Tulpa Creation" may become physical reality through intense concentration and visualization. However, care must be taken to only bring to reality what is beneficial to the world, lest it's destruction becomes more problematic than its creation (see related account on Alexandra David-Neel.)

Also during last night's revelries, I discovered the joys of caramel vodka.

Is it candy? Is it liquor? Who gives a #@%$, it's good.

Not that I can afford that sort of thing right now.

In fact it's likely off to the payday loan place for me...