Who we are

is unknown

what we do is

beyond the norm

no one cares

or so it seems

Why do we

find ourselves

addicted to

a cavalcade of

8 second

mindless memes

Expand your mind

prepare your being

to take a

psychedelic trip

On a convoluted

twisting path

where lack of clarity

is just the tip

Out here

on the perimeter

of insanity

we abide to

the laws of none

Because we are

the psychonauts

of absurdity

in search of

the bizarre One

Poetic justice has no rhymes

The streets of Paris full of mimes

Beautiful graffiti created by the blind

Guided tours within the mind

Societal dropouts the estuaries of desires

Sexual frustration without orgasms and no one perspires

Trying to void actions and emotions of disappointments

We scoff at hypocritical political anointments

The government acts as though they’re benevolent

In actuality we know that they are thoroughly malevolent

"If I had a time machine, I'd travel back and fuck you good when you were 17"

A delinquent grin shines through his devilish eyes as he says it; the same look every time. But her reaction varies, depending.

---

First time she probably just scoffed and teased: "What makes you think you're capable of fucking good now anyway?" to which he'd mock mimic her orgasm sounds, then shoot her a look which exuded a profoundly scoundrelly confidence, and she couldn't help but smile back, blushing, real schoolgirl like. Fair point.

---

Another time she got mad and scowled "yoooou pervy fuck'n pedo." she accused, profusely drunk her owndamself. Then she'd stuck her tongue out defiantly and collapsed on the bed... she was too smashed to remember much of anything past that, but she woke up with a sore pussy and some familiarly glue-smelling gunk on her inner thigh, so chances are they made up.

---

Another time she just grinned all lovey dovey "Fuck yeah you would. You're amazing. Only gotten sexier with age, even regardless of the practical talent you've accrued. Dead sexy now. waay sexier than you were back then. You'd rock my 17 yr old self to paradise with that hairy chest, those squeezing arms, that long-lasting magically solid cock... She wouldn't even know what hit her. It'd be pure ecstasy."

---

Second time maybe, or one of the times anyway, she'd got all sad and dejected about it: didn't respond, just sat there, tears in her eyes, petting the old cat curled on her lap.

"What's wrong?" he'd said after he noticed her facial seepage.

"Nothing. It's stupid." she'd responded. Then he got angry that she didn't explain herself so she tried to unpack the mental goo; "It's just, life's a bitch. That's all. I'd much rather get fucked now. I enjoy it far more now than I did then. I'm in my prime, as far as libido goes, hormonally, I'm dripping with lust. But my body's a wreck to look at. I'm a hag now. It's just cruel is all." the cat let out a grumble of agreement. The feline had seen better days herself. She tousled the cat's chin-hair in an extreme bout of melancholic empathy. "couple of ol' hasbins you and me, ay puss?" she cooed, kissing the precious kitty-cat's cheek.

"Stop being dramatic." the husband commanded, putting in his best effort to be a comfortingly upstanding gent: "You're not a hag. you're just a bit... fat and saggy." She smile-glanced up at him the way he knew she would and chortled some through her tears. Her look said really? in hopeful-desperate manner, but she knew that he was right. "Anyway it doesn't matter to me." He continued on his grand consolation splurge. "Men don't care all that much about looks ya know. We just want a warm place to get our wieners wet."

"Sure," she replied, chuckles morphing back into sobs. "that's why you can't think of anything better to do with a time machine then go back and fuck a 17 year old girl." She shot him a daggery look. A fake-angry-real-sad look that said nice try, but you ain't foolin' me none.

"What you need's a good fucking right now." He grinned, displaying his cock to her. Waving it right in her face. The cat grumbled indignantly, displaced from her favorite padded petting-place. The wife smiled up at her man, sadness forgotten, and gave his dick a playful lick.

"If I had a time-machine," She said, with all the sudden confidence of a thousand-dollar hooker, "I'd travel back and suck your cock when you were 17."

He moaned in concurrence as her lips traveled wetly with versant pressure up and down his throbbing shaft... "I wouldn't have lasted two seconds."

Dear Crooks,

(Including skallywags, hoodlums, ruffians, and whomever else this fateful letter may concern,)

It is with grave solemnity and solemn gravity weighing upon my tremulous bosom that I am compelled to write this letter. It is a perilous action I here undertake, which I nevertheless fear to be necessary in order to implore the sound adjustment of your better natures.

The writing of complaint letters is by no means an easy business. Notwithstanding, it is a responsibility I have taken upon myself, growing as I have in popularity and expertise over the years. It was my hand, for instance, which penned the notorious affidavit of George Soper, (a letter he then folded delicately and placed into his front pocket for later procurement) in which he firmly but genteely accused poor Mary Mallon of asymptomatically and quite unintentionally I'm sure (as the letter tactfully reiterated) spreading Typhoid Fever relentlessly into the trembling mouths of the masses. When dealing with matters of such potent delicacy, I'm sure you understand, it is of utmost importance to ensure that the accused reader does not feel unduly reprimanded, even when they do deserve to rot in all manners of foul sludge and fetid excrement as hardly-adequate penance for the plagues they've inflicted upon society...

Don't get me wrong gentle readers, purloiners, pilferers, filchers and snitches, we're all human here. All filthy vermin and pious pustules alike. Indeed, we are nothing but vile hypocrites at heart. Every one of us. I too have been tempted by the supremacy of the greedy bastard party. You might not know it from my dainty handwriting, but I in fact attained my beginnings in this burgeoning industry of complaints whilst writing itineraries for a criminal mastermind. Oh yes. No one is immune to the fluffy inducements and carnal lusts of brazen law-and-order shirking. It is not my intention to shame you, fellow scoundrels, only to help you to understand that there is a better way forward.

In my illustrious career as a professional complainer, I have complained about almost everything under the sun;

Talentless bassoonists and the rise of phony Buddhism in the tourist industry,

Dodgy saddlemaking and the way it effects the price of tea in Caracas...

Everything...

from grainy raisin manufacturing

to spotty yurt construction-instruction-manuals,

the successful cryogenic preservation of presidents,

the persistence of strawberry-flavored soda, even after it's proven influence on violent crime,

low flow spoeds in axial flow turbines and the concurent frequancy of speling errers in importent dokumunts pertainung too marshian interloping tecnologies.

purportedly backwards-counting odometers which actually count forwardly,

Insolent Rumba-dancers and their inability to structure their barbaric gyrations around the timeless beauty and grace of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony,

The extreme amount of ass-kissery which must be required to be permitted to bring the mass-murdering technology of a thermos into a regular gunfight...

These are only a few of the many extraneous examples of what can go horribly (and often quasi-intentionally) wrong in the average human lifespan. Indeed these are merely a minuscule sample of the egregious injustices which have been deemed worthy of my skillful complaining. It is an utter disgrace, I am sure that we can all agree, how frequently my services have been required.

At this juncture I am sure you have guessed the covertly hinted-at purpose of this; my final letter. Yes, it is after this full life of passionate disdain and careful duress, a life of eloquent courtesy and of turbulent address, I find myself at the end of the fabled rainbow. I had, until my arrival in this abysmal locale, been under the youthful impression, as many of you have been or are currently also under, that the end of the rainbow supposedly contains a great many golden treasures collected in sacred chamber-pots wielded by jolly leprechauns, happily frolicking in green fields of gaiety...

Alas, it is not so. There is no gold at the end of the rainbow. Only starchy sheets stained with the soiled reputations of thousands upon thousands of incontinent wretches who befouled this region before me, demeaning nurses administering discomforting suppositories, and painful memories of better times.

Thus, I have decided to join the ranks sinners for once and for all, and commit the dastardly atrocity of doing myself in. Please accept my fervent apologies for all the numerous inconveniences my heartfelt admonishments have caused over the years. I wish you the fondest of farewells.

With sincerest condolences for robbing you of my continued existence forthwith,

Yours, etc,

Mabel Smellyweather.

Dead stars don't fall from the sky

They burn out

Lose their light

Or explode and stop existing altogether

Stars have deaths too

We just don't see things in the dark

Mama always used hot rollers and wore nylons that came up over her stomach to cover her stretch marks. She’d take the rollers out, flip her head upside down, shake out the curls, make a big pile of fried and bleached spaghetti—or maybe linguine, because the spirals were a little thicker than spaghetti. Then she’d put on the Barbie pink Wet N’ Wild lipstick, slip into her work clothes, and head to the Chinese restaurant down the street for her shift.

Her life was glamorous, even though she’d often have a black eye or two, and even once, a neck brace. When she’d send my brothers into the Pony Lounge to ask the bartender if our daddy was there, I’d think, how lucky am I to be on this adventure while all my friends are stuck in bed? One day, maybe I’ll get to go into that place and see what kind of ponies they got.

There were other places like that, too. Like when daddy was around sometimes and not ‘shooting dope’, as mama said on the telephone to Aunt Jo, he’d walk me down to West Coast Video for two-for-Tuesday. Snow White and Pocahontas for me. And for daddy? Well, he would head through the silver streamers that led to the back room, the one for grown ups only, and I’d think wow. One day, maybe I’ll get to go into that place and see what kind of movies they got.

So I’d put my hair in hot rollers and get my black tights that went with my Christmas dress and pull them up real high on my tummy. Then I’d sneak into mama’s bathroom, look in the mirror, slap myself in the face a few times, and run her Barbie pink Wet N’ Wild lipstick across my mouth. Because being her, even if sometimes she got black eyes or cried herself to sleep at night, was like being a movie star.

And then when she started drinking, she was Marilyn fucking Monroe.

The static sound of a radio vastly echoes from the corn field behind the house.

Between the sweltering heat of the afternoon, the piano in static noise could be heard and somehow slightly easing the heat.

The peaceful day in her grandparent's house moves unhurriedly.

She was tired of hearing it everyday. Whilst the piece was part of an audio drama, it was played over and over again until she eventually memorized how the notes went.

Until everytime she hears the piece,

she was always reminded of the summer heat in the farm,

the small little hut that was built in the middle of it,

the painfully peaceful day that leads to boredom,

the chickens venturing everywhere,

the earthly scents combined with heat,

the fresh breeze that sometimes comes and goes,

the sound of her grandmother's broom scrapping the soil while she sweep the dried leaves piling up,

the neighbors coming in for a little bit of chat and gossips,

the high pitch laughters reverberating,

And her boredom.

But when they had to go and find a place to stay in town, they had to leave the rural village behind.

Surprisingly, she missed that feeling. Though in her disappointment, she didn't know the title.

Years passed,

Her habbit of randomly playing a music became her chance of rediscovering old tunes playing on her head.

'Chopin - Spring Waltz',

The first note suddenly felt a bit familiar, she then let the music freely echo in the living room.

And the forgotten summer heat once more engulfed her memory.

https://youtu.be/YCl-0lu0vHM

I seem to want to destroy myself again,

jump into whatever thrill,

whatever drug or mental numbing agent

I can get my hands on,

whatever will kill the pain

for an hour, a day, a week, a year

only to throttle me

into the dark depths afterwards,

submerge me into the dregs of temporary death;

I wish I could stay level,

learn balance,

kill my demons, embrace my angels,

find that flickering light

that lives hidden deep inside my soul,

make it grow,

help it to live again.

age 0) In the womb, (or maybe even before I was conceived) something in the universe embedded a glimmer of hope for humanity in my initial cell structure which made my whatever-I-had--or-was-at-the-time shiver in primal appreciation when I first felt (yes felt, not heard, I hadn't developed ears yet after all) Nina Simone sing Feelin' Good:

https://youtu.be/LR1bWhdoIXM

age 1) The only place I'd be willing to sleep as an infant was on my father's chest. That exceedingly devoted man stayed up late most nights, coddling my chubby little baby form and watching classic Dr. Who. As a result, this theme (and an alarmingly persistent proclivity for sleeping on hairy heart-rythmed pillows) will forever be imbued in my being.

https://youtu.be/VeXVrBaLMWs

age 2) I was a rambunctious but shy little thing at this stage. Still a difficult sleeper, clearly. My Dad had this ingeniously unique lullaby he'd play for me on cassette tapes at night time. Really it was just one of the only cassette tapes my dad owned aside from Sex Pistols and Judas Priest. I guess he figured this particular cassette was more fitting than the other two for nighty nights (and by goshkins was it ever the perfect choice... though in hndsight I wouldn't have objected to punk or metal either.) without further ado, the incidental lullaby was of course:

Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds:

https://youtu.be/Poii8JAbtng

age 3) I suddenly realized that all this time I had had an extremely loving extremely quiet mother in the background of my life. It was a breathtaking realization, that this timid, sweet, caring nurturer contained in her a glimmer of courage; of humor, even! She laughed with me, such joyous laughs. She is such a little woman, my mum, I think I'd already outgrown her in kilos by this time (just kidding, but only kind of) ... When she gives you a hug, my mum, she just melts right into you. I think she has buckets of tears weighing down her insides all the time because I often see them well up and come out... But oh the courage she has when she works herself up; what courage it takes to smile through tear-welling throatlumps. I know now. I know. it was at this age something horrible happened to me (the same that had happened to her as a child, but mine was not near as bad as hers) which wouldn't come back to bite me till my nightmares got out of hand years later... So I know now, but then I was cluelessly chipper. I remember twirling and dancing around the living room with my dear mum on a few occasions at this stage, to "I Have Confidence" from the Sound of Music:

https://youtu.be/JJYz8pyXOG4

age 4) A lot happened at 4. but I'll stick with the bare necessities: https://youtu.be/08NlhjpVFsU

age 5) to this day I still cannot express the fathomless feeling of exuberant idolatry this epic tune stirs up in my gut. I remember one day one of my dad's nerdy acquaintances came over and asked me who was my favorite, between Captain Kirk or Mr Spock. I just looked up wide eyed and panic stricken. A question! A grown-up asked me a question! ... but I didn't know the answer. My Dad shook his head sadly and muttered "I've failed as a father...we'll have to remedy that." it was that night that I was introduced to one of the first and greatest loves of my life. I was a trekkie to the core from that moment on. (oh and the answer to the question was Mr. Spock. all the way.)

https://youtu.be/hdjL8WXjlGI

age 6) I guess we're going to have to whip this list into shape (it's not too late..)... Devo gave me the impetus to get up and move, without which I could've all too easily spent my life as a pathetically-yearning-for-other-things couch potato.

https://youtu.be/3bXEHGUvVrA

age 7) It had to happen sooner or later. I pretended to be sick one day so I could stay home from school, and got taught something so much better than whatever they were going to teach me that day; I'm speaking of course of the event of a lifetime: being introduced to epic film scorer Ennio Morricone's music via Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns.

https://youtu.be/PYI09PMNazw

age 8) My beloved grandmother introduced me to the timeless joy of Luciano Pavarotti whilst cooking and cleaning one Sunday afternoon after church:

https://youtu.be/xCFEk6Y8TmM

(okay I seriously have to shorten this or we'll be here for several millenia. from here on I'll just jot down a few associated memory engrams followed by the song... unless I can't help myself... yeah. sorry...)

age 9) Saint Seiya ost, "sad brothers" stayed with me through one harrowing night when I lost a baby pademelon I was trying to save the life of:

https://youtu.be/gQetFlEK1Wg

age 10) I was in the depths of despair one evening after I'd stayed up late reading Anne of Green Gables and the series was tragically over and there wasn't any more!... and I'd got my first period and everything seemed like the end of the world. it must've been just after my birthday because my dad had bought me my very first second-hand disc-man (portable CD player) and took me in to an old record shop which sold mostly vinyl and just had some CD's (pieces of new-age plastic junk to the store owner) in a bin by the door. I rummaged, picked out a couple of CD's, one of which was a Frank Sinatra collection called Nothing But The Best. Years later I couldn't decide which I liked better between the Sid Vicious version or the original, I seriously couldn't decide, but for most of my life this would become my favorite song of all time, in either format, for the way it soothed and stoked my visceral-aches and made me believe that everything would be alright again, that it's alright to do things my way:

https://youtu.be/qQzdAsjWGPg

age 11) The nightmares started recurring in a too-big way to ignore. Sleeping had always been touch and go for me anyway but now I was petrified of it. late one night I snuck out of the house, little transistor radio in my pocket (discman had broken then I guess), into an old dirt-floored shed in our backyard to sleep next to my pet sheep. I was sobbing into his wool thinking about how horrible life was. Right when I needed to hear it the most this Beatles song came crackling over the radio. when it ended my sheep let out a commiserating "baa" .. we both wanted to hear it again:

https://youtu.be/2Q_ZzBGPdqE

age 12) 50-min-long drives back and forth from the wildlife park (my first job, alongside my father) we listened to lots of great music. Eclectic tastes, my dad, like me. But I particularly remember Queen:

https://youtu.be/HgzGwKwLmgM

age 13) I got left alone with my awesome uncle for an evening, and as he awkwardly scrounged for some morsels of food to offer me (hand-rolled cigarette in his obviously-hadn't-bothered-eating-much-in-days mouth.) I said I wasn't hungry but he kept scrounging anyway... he inadvertently introduced me to Jimi Hendrix (playing in the background) as I stared around the squalidly unkempt and slightly weedy-smelling domain of an artist's heartbreak in abject admiration:

https://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY

age 14) Got suddenly obsessed with romance in every way. Sitting on the rocky shores of Tasmania's north coast at sunset, casting longing glances out into the tumultuous waves, listening to Romeo and Juliet theme, composed by Nino Rota (this time via a fancy schmancy mp3 player discarded by a wealthy classmate because it had a scratch on it's screen):

https://youtu.be/WCmUWNUzaqo

age 15) I started chatting online to the young man I would eventually marry. on a clunky desktop keyboard left over from the dark ages and dial-up internet which was already obsolete enough that no-one bothered to try to fix it when it went out. By the grace of the gods it worked sometimes, and by their wrath sometimes it didn't. I remember it stopped working halfway through this glorious music which my then-heart-throb-now-husband had sent me. Requiem in D Minor by Mozart. I went crazy needing to hear the rest of it (literally, I think I might've gone quietly insane and stayed that way ever since):

https://youtu.be/kbptIHgEdyA

age 16) my Mum, my darling sweetest-thing-on-earth Mum... she was crying to herself in the kitchen. She'd found out some months prior that my Dad was in love with another woman, that he'd left her. Broken vows. The tears in my eyes reflected hers; that pain in her heaving bossom... she crumpled on me as though she were dying (I had definitely outgrown her in size by then) and I held her, pretending to be the man she needed back. I was so much like him after all. It must've been so painful for her to look in my eyes. I did the only thing I could think of to do. I'd been an extreme Youtube-delver at that stage, so I had the situation well in hand. I rushed to the computer and looked up the song I knew she needed to hear. "I will survive" by Gloria Gaynor. Then we both did the smile-through-tears thing we women of this bloodline are evidently prime exhibitors of, and I twirled and danced with her again like the big old child I'll always be inside.

https://youtu.be/6dYWe1c3OyU

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can't do 17 without giving you two vivid memories in quick succession:

age 17 part a) oodles of time listening and re-listening to this song by myself while I hungered for the touch of the manchild on the other side of the planet whom I mentioned in age 15. Righteous Brothers's Unchained Melody:

https://youtu.be/qiiyq2xrSI0

age 17 part b) no rhyme or reason to this one, but perfection nonetheless; it just happened to be the song playing in the car radio while my nervously cold-fingered sweaty hand perused his warm masculine one. finally, finally, at long last I got to touch that overwhelmingly swoon-worthy demigod in person (I lost my virginity that night)...

Billy Joel's Piano Man:

https://youtu.be/HVKtL9VU8rQ

age 18) On my birthday the one-and-only of my life was back on the other side of the planet again. I was lovesick and lonely so I started bonding big time with my wonderfully talented tattoo-artist older sister. I got drunk on Jack and Coke while she tattooed the requested lion's head on my thigh, with "property of then-heart-throb-now-husband's name" type-scripted in the mane (much to my sister's mildly feministic dismay)... We both loved this song, though. And she let me play it on repeat as the ink sunk in to my alcohol-muddled veins. "I'm eighteen" by Alice Cooper:

https://youtu.be/7nptFEl-nwM

age 19) I dropped out of college and moved to the other side of the planet to reunite with and marry-the-heck-out-of the man who's name my thigh-lion guarded. Traveling from Hobart, Tasmania to St Louis, MO. Long plane flights. Lots to leave behind. My over-clingy sob-faced perpetually-looking-backwards self had to cling to something new now; something to look forward to. Of course, true to form, I found my future in the past, delving through the free songs available on the plane, I happened to find my destination more than a hundred years in the past as it happens. "Meet me in St Louis, Louis" by Billy Murray:

https://youtu.be/FWWNkutko9Y

age 20) When I was first-time pregnant, living in a foreign country, working as a full-time hospital cleaner for 7 bucks and some decent health insurance per hour, the love of my life shattered my blood-pumping mechanism into a thousand cataclysmic shards. I've been trying to collect them and glue them back in ever since. I needed him so bad... I wept so hard trying to salvage the soul-scraps of who I thought he was. Crying, crying my heart out into too many un-hairy un-heart-rythmed pillows "stop! in the name of love" by the Supremes:

https://youtu.be/UGJQPkfwlAc

age 21) In an unfathomable display of reconciliation and solidarity, the man-shaped entity I was married to decided to be a real man, and a husband, and a father, after all. He sang this song to me and our newborn daughter when the three of us were alone in the hospital, and I bawled my eyes out, cradling this beautifully red-faced screamy life we'd somehow spawned together who now slumbered peacefully in my exhausted happy arms... "If I Didn't Care" by The Ink Spots:

https://youtu.be/UC_VzbtRGr0

age 22) breastfeeding and a newfound love for home-cooking in the previous year had made me both ravenous and eager to win my man's heart back through diligently abusing his stomach (and mine in the process.) As a result, at this stage of post-incubation I was immensely obese. I had to dig deep to find some interest to distract me from food; some idiot-proof method which could be carried out with a baby-in-tow. (I wasn't ready to go back to writing just yet. it was too much.) so I got myself an MP3 player and went on walks, carrying my daughter strapped to my chest and my dog's leash wrapped around my wrist, we'd walk, we three. Happy go lucky care free through horrid-weather walks. I'd walk and sweat and listen and think. Think of motivational things like Rocky Balboa's passionate punches at life... or ya'know, just Rocky Balboa's passion in general...

https://youtu.be/r81AviZECUE

age 23) hard times. I'd lost about 60 or 70 lbs, renovated our first hovel, got preggers again and had our first son. Too much going on that year. Husband sick, lots of job changes, had to go back to work myself for the health insurance all through second half of pregnancy and breastfeeding. (it is so doggone hard to leave a newborn with somebody else.. the hardest thing. but you gotta do what you gotta do. Humans have lived through worse.) Listened to a lot of the local rock station K-SHE 95 on the drives to and from work. Lots of great great music I knew very well from my youtube delves years prior. Hard to single one out, but if I had to in the very moment I'm writing this, I'll pluck out Pink Floyd's "Time" as it brought back some nice memories of art college and for whatever reason I was caught off guard and pleasurably flabbergasted one early frosty morning when I heard those familiar chimes of it on this local American station.

https://youtu.be/JwYX52BP2Sk

age 24) I adored living vicariously with my younglings at this age. (still do. Who am I kidding?) The height of it was rediscovering and sharing with them this show I used to watch when I was little which is the best children's content ever devised by mortal imagination. I have to add the intro to Jim Henson's The Storyteller to this list. I simply have to:

https://youtu.be/6VZv7pQ2ck8

age 25) Miscarriage...no words to describe the stark juxtaposition between that forever-agony-swelling loss and holding my cluelessly happily grinning life-living younglings on my knees at the same time. I made the gorgeously painful mistake of watching Dumbo with my two litluns the evening after I came home from the doctor's office, while I was still bleeding out the remains of the sibling they never knew. I don't think I've ever tried so hard to suppress an expression of emotional turmoil in my whole life. Such anguish... and yet simultaneously, such gratitude. The tears leaked out despite my best efforts. No matter what mood I'm in, (and I get in some pretty emotionless moods) I will never be able to witness this scene or hear this song with dry eyes ever again.

https://youtu.be/Q-8MbgMS6jo

age 26) I got a wee bit mindsick(er) and realized I was an all-over-the-place manic-depressive lunatic, or at the very least an extreme oddball. My sister came back to visit me and since my husband detests my sister, and since she reciprocates with a fiery vengeance, it was decided that the best thing would be if I just went off with my sister for a few days to sight see and spend time with her. I was pregnant again, delightfully, and intent on being super cautious and super healthy, so I hesitated a little bit taking her up on the trip, yet my in laws offered to watch the first two younguns while I was gone and reminded me that it wasn't healthy to never get out or do anything ever, so after some more hesitating and extensive safety research about travelling while pregnant I eagerly accepted the opportunity to spend time with my dearly loved sister. It was on this trip I got torn asunder by own expectations of reasonableness on my husband's end all over again. He punished me for this inexcusable dereliction of motherly duty (while my kids were being happily spoiled and pampered and coddled by their caring, sensible and most-trustworthy-people-on-earth grandparents) by not returning a single call in the entire three days of nigh-on-a-hundred texts and calls I'd send into the echo-less void of him. Serendipitously, during one of these ill-fated call attempts, Blondie started playing over the stereo of the cool retro antique shop we were hanging around in. Oh how I swam, sank, paddled and drowned in this song. I'd heard it before but I hadn't felt it before. After it ended it kept on playing and playing in my head just as though it were still corporeally audible:

https://youtu.be/uWhkbDMISl8

age 27) after enough time caving and simpering and "all-my-fault"ing with my ears tucked down and my tail between my legs in the pseudo-love cage (that place in which I am both housemaid and whore to the man-shaped thing whose name was still guarded by my thigh-lion... or is that too harsh? he's still a person after all... still my one and only... maybe I'm the one who's crazy for thinking he's changed?...) I'd mercifully managed to delude myself once more into blissful ignorance. One magical close-to-christmastime day my husband was snowed in, had to call off work, and we spent the day baking cookies and decorating with the kiddos; my husband played his favorite christmas tune from when he was a lad... and forever now it's our favorite too, me and the kids. The way he sang that song in his deep voice like Santa, the way he was making best-dad-ever memories in the minds of our litluns.. Whatever happens, it's our favorite christmas song from then on till we die:

https://youtu.be/9f5cyiTH3KI

age 28) ... I can't really type out all that happened in that year. so much. far too much. most importantly another miscarriage followed by an immediate new pregnancy during which I was stressed out over a host of other things (long drives, getting swindled, knowing but refusing to know that I would never be loved, illness, mortal every-day dread of a late-term stillbirth and a multitude of other various exacerbations) then my son lived. My son lived. I had four children. Life was full. Oh so full of so much meaning. There were no words when I was bottle-feeding my darling son my previously-pumped breastmilk. No words. Just music.

https://youtu.be/gvUg7KLAclA

age 29) the next one speaks entirely for itself. Ruth Etting's rendition of "so is your old lady" I inwardly smiled to myself while doing the dishes to this one. Another serendipitous coincidence in my automatic youtube song recommendations:

https://youtu.be/K2O85qXltrc

age 30) right now? As I'm typing this? My lifelong semi-insomniac ass stayed up all night and day writing this. What do I feel... right now? All possible human emotions. Everything all at once.

All of the above and so so so so many more...

In then end, I'm just another one of the Animals... Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood:

https://youtu.be/YMDrTMnm1IE