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Name: Justine
Location: Annapolis, Maryland, United States

Justine, is a little bit more than you'd expect. This is where you are supposed to put your "elevator speech". What you'd say if you were in the elevator with somebody you wanted to connect with. I don't have an "elevator speech". If I ran smack-dab into one of my "heroes" I'd just have to smile and be polite and keep my yipper shut and that's probably for the best anyway!

<$Wednesday, April 26, 2006$>
Taos Mesa Roadside

No coincidences?


Look closely at the picture above.....

Do you see it???????

The tiny stenciled head of anubis? On the railing wall of a bridge over a deep river gorge along the Taos New Mexico mesa?

We drove out to the mesa overlook and stopped the car to walk out onto the bridge. There was anubis in a pleasant butter yellow, waiting to be discovered in the high desert sun.

What does it mean?

Does it just mean I pulled up next to where some graffiti artist with a vent for Egyptian deities popped a spray? Does it mean that I just wandered across something in the middle of the desert by accident? Does it mean that the little idea in my head for a story was talking back?

Or was it just a meaningless coincidence?

Is there meaning in the message or a message in the meaning we see?

Have a lovely day freakies!
<$Friday, April 21, 2006$>
Vacation Countdown

Fun, Fun, Fun


6 Weeks until vacation.

6 weeks until I have 7 continuous days with no friggin' computers, barking dogs, screaming parents, laundry, dirty bathrooms, packing lunches, or FRIGGIN' ANNAPOLIS TRAFFIC!!!!!!

Ooooo can we go? Can we go now??????!!!
<$Tuesday, April 18, 2006$>
Physical therapy...
Physical therapy for the first time tonight freaky darlings.

I don't usually comment on the illnesses....I might run out of disk space. Ugh.

But tonight went for "PT" to try and get mobility back in some joints.

Feeling totally hopeless darlings. Totally whipped.

But I'll go again on Thursday night....

I'm one step closer to feeling like myself all over again....

One step closer than this morning.
May she rest in pieces.............

And may she rest in pieces.


Well my lovelies....tonight we sing an ellegy......
there's been a death in the family.........
and I've only just found out.....

I didn't even miss her at first...I didn't even realize she was gone until I made a detour into the past and ran into her.....right where I left her.....

That girl who hung out at the Carousel Club and dated the D.J. She's still back there in the past, wearing her Brittania Jeans and leotard and her very special grosgrain ribbon shoes. She's still dancing...in the past. Still living her own private hell that nobody else every saw.

But you know....she's dead. Dead and gone. Only an echo.

A few pieces scattered here and there in other people's memories and in the woman I've become.
<$Sunday, April 16, 2006$>
Speak your truth.....

Speak your truth, my lovely.


Sunday night my freaky darlings. Time to speak your truth.

At least that's the candle I have perched on my desk. It's a lovely scented one from a company called Zena Moon. I buy a lot of candles from them. I use them for prayer candles. Little scented prayers rising on the smoke towards heaven.

The gentle scent of Rosemary is given to the "Speak My Truth" candle. There is verse on the label that reads:"If you don't tell the truth, the right thing can't happen" - Lori Weisman

Perhaps, I have never said the right thing. Perhaps, never told the truth in my life. Perhaps...the truth is too hard and cold and immutable. Too much for such a fragile human to touch.

I was listening to the XM radio yesterday and the dj had a website. I looked up the website to get a look at what he had to say.

To my surprise he credited his whole choice of careers on a former beloved of mine. Someone I hadn't thought of in a long time.

Well darlings.... you know I try to live with no regrets. But for that one man, I have a stack of regrets knee high.

All water gone out with the tide now, but still I am surprised at how poignant and sweet it all seems to me now.

In truth, it was something that could not be. I wanted a life outside the confines of a backward, redneck hell. Even if it did have a beach. He wanted to jump into the club life and the hotel/motel industry.

I wanted to test my wings and fly. So I did.

But now, these days. I wonder if I had stayed, if I had accepted life on the dodgy side of town, and smoky bars, and night auditor's hours, if I would be much happier.

I do believe that I would have been loved and cherished.

Something which I do not have.

For all the trials and travails and mountain tops I've overcome...for all my protestations..for all my sacrifices...and mad-insane attempts.....there are many things I have done.....but garner that kind of affection is something I have never repeated.

It was the thing I flew out into the world most hungry for...and I didn't even know myself well enough to know it by name.

Can one be true to one's self and still be loved?

Is there any woman who ever lived that knew herself well, lived her life as she was called to it, and was loved by any man?

Loved for being herself? Loved for what she was instead of someone else's long list of "if only"s?

Oh darlings....Sunday nights are known for reflection. But tonight....is bittersweet. Extremely so.

I wrote the owner of the website where I read about "B". They kindly replied, amazed anyone else remembered the bad old good old days. It would be interesting to get to know someone with some of the same memories of the Paleolithic times.

Perhaps they will write back and we can share more.

Perhaps, my freaky darlings.....perhaps I can be brave enough...to speak my truth...and good enough.....to hear someone else's.

Nighty night freakies!
<$Wednesday, April 12, 2006$>
What I learned from HST

The Top 5 Things I Learned From Hunter Thompson


5. Let them discover the bats on their own. Don't ever try and explain the bats!

4. When you start a serious drug collection, it's very hard to stop.

3. If you're going to have sex on the diving board, put down velvet first to protect your knees!

2. Always keep a ball peen hammer in the glove compartment in case of cougars.

1. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I am now a Pro.



Get going
<$Sunday, April 09, 2006$>
Oh.....

Oh!?


Well my freaky darlings, you have been so omniously silent! No emails, no response.

Do you just come to my humble web site to pick up vintage french postcards?

Well, then you won't notice if I submerge for a while.

Am I spending a few days at the beach with S?

Well that would be telling wouldn't it?

In the immportal words of Jimmy Buffet "I'll try to surface in a day maybe two."
<$Friday, April 07, 2006$>
Thunderstorm....alone.

Why do I live?



I am a body thief
Is there any reason why I live?

Now, too late,
I notice your beauty
Now, when it is too late for me to whisper your name
Or touch your alabaster skin.

Why do I live?
Now, now I wake up?
In the middle of the night?
When there’s nothing I can do about anything?

And I chose this!
With every footfall,
With every misstep,
With every clambering grab onto safety.

There is no safety.
Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing to do.
It is to die when you should be alive.
It is to throw diamonds and pearls into the gutter
For the parasites to feed on.
It is hoarding something that can’t be kept at all.

There is no safety,
Only raw, unburned joy
That lies out on the edges of the darkness
Just beyond where the streetlights shine
Just beyond where we put our fences,
Our boundaries,
That wall us in.
Like anchorites walled up in churches of damp stone,
Blathering away out light
As if
Burning it for nothing but the darkness
Was what God wanted.

God,
We made him the boagey man,
Gave him whips and shame
To beat us with
So we’d have excuses to stay
In our tiny cells
Penitents for things that were not sins
Committing the great sin
Throwing our lives away
On a vainglorious illusion
That we should not live
But cower in safety that is not safe.

Now that I am a brittle hollow bone
That nothing comes through
I am ten of swords melodramatic
Howling at the night
As though I
Am the only one
Who ever heard the secret
Too late.

My beauty
That sharp current
Electric
That jumps through my jaded nerves
Each time I behold you,
Reminds me
That I used to walk along the ocean under the night sky
Hold my hands up to the stars
Expecting the night wind
To fly me away
Fulfill my hunger for life.

Now, instead
I am caught,
When I should be in full flight,
Trying to give birth to myself
Burning the Phoenix feathers
Crying to resurrect the one
Who died on that beach
Instead of lived.

I am the body thief
In full immolation
Catching a glimpse
Of something across a crowded room
Wanting it to bring me the taste of memory.

I am afraid
I would drink you up
Like water on a hot day.

I am afraid you would spark
Something in me
I could not control.

I am afraid I will stay in control forever
And die one of the damned.

I am afraid you will see me for who I am
And laugh.

I am afraid I would laugh myself.

But let me dig deeper,
There is no stopping now.

There is no stopping this torrent of screaming
This bleeding
This birth
So late in life
Perhaps not too late
To leap into the arms of the night and fly
After all.

All because
I am the body thief
And I saw you across a crowded room
On a Saturday morning
When I didn’t even brush my teeth
Before I left the house.

April 7, 2006


Why do I live?
<$Thursday, April 06, 2006$>
Might as well jump?

Wish he'd straddle me!


Well freaky darlings.... I'm a bit cheered this evening. Thinking about being a bit freaky myself.

Ah, it's so much to do at once, take care of the momster, sell the old house, think about getting a house for myself, trying to get the health in line, working on the novel, contemplating surgery that looms again, and wanting to put velvet on the diving board with the little giggle monkey at the mall.

I AM a busy girl!

Demented but Busy...oh send me kisses and hugs and all the warm wishes you can muster. It's not often one is conscious of birthing oneself into a new life...of birthing oneself into themselves from a husk of the past.
Thrumming Thursday
Back at work. Loaded to the gills with the best modern chemistry has to offer for defense against springtime suffocation.

My blood feels like it's jangling in my veins. No mellow trip this batch of chemicals!

Work, is the same. Just one day after another of stupid, goofy, unimportant "disasters".

I have decided that "S" as distracting as he is, is just that, a distraction. If something glimmers into existence, that would be very sweet. Otherwise, perhaps it would make me feel much better to continue to lurk about the edges of his existence.

Who knows? I'm not in the way of feeling in fighting trim these days.

I seem to be looking at a mountain of crap to do and a tiny sliver of energy to do it with.

I will eventually have to go to Florida and clean out the house there. I'm still struggling to find somebody to list the albatross.

It may cost extra scratch, but I do believe there will be professional movers involved in this situation! I can not imagine orchestrating moving even the few pieces of furniture without professional help.

Meanwhile...I am starting to loom large into my vacation time.

Too much fear. Too much resistance. Part of me marching ahead and part of me screaming and dragging it's heels.

Change is the only option here kiddies. To remain in place is to die. Die even more than I already have. I'm like the walking dead now. Not to change is to finish mummifying, drying out and crumbling to a husk with unfulfilled life and no hope of afterlife.

Big scary diving board, bigger scary ocean to dive into. Bigger scary oblivion ready to engulf me if I stay put.

Help me get all my entourage on the same page darlings! We all need to move forward towards the exit in a calm and orderly manner.....none of this screaming and thrashing! Our world is rotting down around our ears and there is naught to do but to take the exit sign from this stagnant rotting old theater and go out into the open, into the street, into a new day and a new life....into becoming ourselves again.

I am not responsible for the abuse that made me the way I am....but I am responsible for picking up the pieces and moving on. What I make of the rubble is my business, my task, my life's work.

What could have been? Who knows? What can be? Who knows? Change must come? All know!

Rattle and hum, every drop of blood, every molecule of bone are singing away darlings. I pray we all leap forward and swim in the sea of change...all of us paddling away joyfully towards that balmy foreign shore of the future.
<$Wednesday, April 05, 2006$>
Ugh.

Ugh!


Been unconscious for the last 24 hours pumpkins. High tree pollen count, allergies, and asthma don't mix.

Apparently Claritin is not always non-drowsy. Also when you mix Claritin and Benadryl...well it's better to close your eyes and go to sleep. Because you're gonna see wild things either way and it's better if your asleep when you do!
<$Monday, April 03, 2006$>
Let's Play
Ok, my freaky darlings.... I'm wondering who you are.

Am I out here alone?

If you'd like to drop me an email and introduce yourself....it might be fun.

Email me at justine@tuxedoinn.com

By now, you've noticed.... I've changed the name of the blog and I've updated the profile pic.

It's Spring and it's time for a little fresh air here at the Tuxedo Inn.

Bon Nuit!
Justine
<$Sunday, April 02, 2006$>
Returning to myself

Returning to myself