No One Can Prepare Themselves

No one can prepare for the inevitable unenviable position of being an ailing elderly parent's caretaker, but the weight must fall on someone's shoulders. The role reversal might bring up pains from your own childhood, it may cause grudges between siblings, tremendous guilt. You just finish emptying your nest, and now this? Join me this week on Healing Wisdom as my guest Dr. Katherine Arnup and I chat about her book, "I Don't Have Time For This". Hear her personal journey and professional insight this Thursday at 9am ET on Cape Cod's Outermost Radio, 92.1 WOMR-fm in Ptown and 93.1 wfmr-fm in Orleans, streaming at WOMR.org

Homeboy Tennessee and the 15th Anniversary of the Kern County River Rapids Expedition

REPOSTED FROM SEPTEMBER 1st 2013:

I took my husband to see A Cat on a Hit Tin Roof. Tennessee Williams plays are like salty lips lathered in strawberry balm, beaded with brandy, a burning shower in peach Ciroc aftershave and a slap in the face, a frantic shuffle to undress in a tight space that leaves bruised lovers unsated, huffing and puffing.

With our country pushing us further into WWIII, it seemed perfect to be celebrating in the town that is the fist, of the flexed arm of American chutzpah. Packs of short, small-boned, heavily-cologned, twenty-something-men in brand new flannel shirts, skinny pants and thong sandals smacking bubblegum converged outside karaoke bars and night clubs that seemed like Disneyland, if Disneyland did "A Las-Vegas-style Seventeenth Century Seaside Villa in the Green Zone". Wild-eyed short-haired lesbians on beach cruisers rode straight down Commercial Street, almost hitting us, and chortling. With laughs like batting eye lashes and rose perfume.

We drank Chamborde at a galley-like dive bar festooned with rusty anchors and lobster trap buoys. A Dutch-angles-state-of-mind created by the slanted floor boards and the octave-and-dimension-surfing refrains of Roy Orbison on the jukebox. If ghosts were there, they were busily ignoring the living, twittling their hair, like mermaids contemplating land-lover careers as burlesque dancers. The drinks were weak, and ungenerous, from the youthful hands of the the seasoned older blonde bartender, business savvy and cold to non-natives. Her face was white like a mermaid at war with oxygen. She's a sharp-as-a-tack shapeshifter, who can wear her years like a horsewoman, and peel 'em away in a flash of her smile, in the snap of her fingers. The vespertine atmosphere is like that of The Specs in SF, if The Specs was a ghostship that ate mushrooms and melted deep into the earth, Chernobyl style.

The blanket of rough, broken shells on the shore met with the black water and black sky sisters, holding up the small narrow boats that looked like glass slippers and wooden clogs, wobbling side to side in the lapping Kahlúa sea. The angels were out on the water, twinkling, lilting, and bending beams of light. Hubby and I darted with the herons along the shore and under the wood pillars of docks and houses, before we barefoot climbed between darkened houses, along wood beams to a crushed abalone-filled parking lot at Angel Foods. Pure coincidence, mind you.

My Eternal Jukebox Versus the Flags of Other Peoples' Dreams

In my own way, I'm married to the Goddess. Maybe you could even call her my wifey.

As much as my Eternal-Summer-loving Los Angelino spirit denies it, it's high time for the depth of night to envelope my soul. It's time I was overtaken by the resolution of ruddy Autumn. That I lay, chilled and blanketed, surrounded by the simplicity of disrobing trees. Injuries and vindications, triumphs and tribulations, zeal and ecstatic revelations, all cast downward in a freeing display of surrender. The summer distractions will be replaced by the action of Autumn...the contemplative hunter will confront the teeth and claws of the bear, before he can take his medicine. The proverbial autumn kill will sustain us through the hours of quiet creation Winter affords. Autumn is the Odalisque of seasons, while the summer is the Quaalude of reasons. A time of sober judgment in the wake of pratfalls and the seductive rapture of August. Battles fought in heat, leave sidewalks lined with pretty sorrows like lingerie that will never look quite the same again. Reparations reside in melancholy melons and squishy squash, moaning autumn breaks us away from the freedom of summer heat.

This summer was the first summer I enjoyed a true vacation in years: floating in the ocean and the ponds as light as a mermaid who has had her way. Slowing down to play with my son, be with him, and be there for him in ways I can't during the school year. Taking him to the beaches, having picnics, using our imagination, building forts, teaching him about art and history. Subservient to happiness.

Alas, there were moments I was at the mercy of my own tequila-fueled pleasure in the wake of my uncle's mysterious murder. I let my savage brain live in the moment, on ice, escaping the raw secondary emotions in favor of those one might imagine from a sauntering cavewoman who has just discovered tango, or a lone cowgirl a-sail under a charcoal sky animated by constellations. A perfect balance of togetherness and alone time has defined my reverie. After an unnatural and callous Winter, despair lining the vessel of my familial ship, I sought comfort in what I possess, in what is mine. My husband and I began dating each other, and after seventeen years together, that's really something. I called him my boyfriend twice, reminding me of our early days when we'd drive his Plymouth Scamp to 50s diners for all American breakfasts.

There were some kooky events and exchanges that punctuated the vast space of summer, that hit me unusually like fireballs hurling through a midnight cabin or green falling comets that explode into a carnival of fairy dust when they reach the earth's atmosphere and go mostly unseen by those around you. I see ways in which some of those I love have made me invisible and in effect I've allowed this to unwrite me from my own life.

This summer Death has touched me. When I didn't sink, the Skeleton Specter conspired with the Morrigan Fates to test if in fact I am a witch. Despite the Reaper's attempts to abscond with the gold from my heart and the Eternal Flame from my mouth, I remained afloat if in a sea of nectar and salt, while He took the brick road home to his master. Meanwhile his playfellow, the great white banshee, snowy Owl, has been dive-bombing the barn on my prairie. Showing me what I need to change and transforming things for me.

My Eternal Jukebox seems to be playing louder than ever. My need to dance is louder than any sound. My need to sing is louder than any praise, any club. I sing because I must talk with the dead. They confide in me their stories. I must reach out to the immortal ghosts, for they unite me with the elements, with God, with my soul.

Vows, values and pledges spoken in words only, rarely remain intact at the root. I have wandered the monasteries, the ethereal cloisters resounding in hymns, where angels have gathered. I have made like a waterfall into the powwows of the ancients, resting amid grandfather stones to renew my alliances and allegiances. Human vows and human values are written with human frailty. I cannot be friends based on circumstantial evidence of similarity. Rudeness and snide attitude, shallow mindsets and jealous joshing are feminine housewarming gifts I prefer to live without. I would much rather marry into a tribe of deer or cardinals, than make small talk, putdowns and profess opinions written into the cells that defined me at my birth. Living my life impersonal and with more negative space than words, would turn every interested, hungry, curious and incandescent part of me into a Hallmark card. I return to my origins to renew my faith, my fortress, my integral lines with Spirit. The religiosity and team spirit sewn into the brands that form relationships are flags of other's people's dreams. None of that computes in my alien heart.

It is the songs, the rhythms of the Heaven and Earth bridged that ruptures my failing ego and blossoms healing in my ailing wounds.

My gothic threads aren't going to go away. Like Baroque architecture, my structural integrity is here to stay. I can dress it up in secretary chic or gallery wino hip, but whatever its incarnation, this gothic sensibility makes it so that I can't watch TV, give a rat's behind about professional sports, or heed the advice of glossy magazines. I don't want what other people are having. I see the crowd and I'd break shoes and garner bruises, scale a cliff to run in the other direction. I've discovered I cannot pee into a mason jar in a midnight tent, but that won't stop me from waxing poetic about it. Small town life isn't for me, but here I am. All in all, I'm quite satisfied, swimming with the oily Selkie, hearing the silence of dawn, blooming in my own rhythm while helping others in the garden unfurl.

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

There are only two writers whose timeless souls I worship as I do Jesus, the Buddha, the fierce Polynesian Volcano Goddess Pele and the Warrior Goddess Kali whose many arms slay and display simultaneously a demon's head. This is simply because these two playwrights charge forward through rainbow ribboned quantum portals dragging audiences along a ride like a baptism. These writer-Gods driving chariots of fire across an apocalyptic sun-flaring burning sky of righteous indignation. The landscape covered in resurrected sympathies ripe with emotion. Our scabs come undone as we grokk the gaping wounds of the characters before us. Our collective sweat pools, knee jerk laughs free us, our subconscious journeys underneath the stories like river snakes or goffers, while our etheric blood coagulates. We breathe in and sign out the landscape of human predicaments, pain, love, and lust. We stop off at Humiliation and are dumped in peels of laughter, and baptized in clarity that is unique to these two playwrights.

Tomorrow at 9am EDT streaming at womr.org, airing at 92.1 WOMR-fm in Ptown and 91.3 WFMR-fm in Orleans. In the am I will be speaking with Jef Hall-Flavin, the Executive Director for the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, where he directed Eugene O’Neill’s Diff'rent, as well as three world-premiere Tennessee Williams one-act plays, The Parade (2006), Green Eyes (2008), and The Enemy: Time (2009), among many other plays.

Hall-Flavin's recent directing projects include The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire both of which he staged in New Zealand; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Park Square Theatre in his home town of St. Paul, Minnesota.

As Associate Director of The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., he assisted Michael Kahn and Bill Alexander on several productions, directed As You Like It in a co-production with the Kennedy Center, and restaged Mark Lamos’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Shakespeare Free-For-All, as well as the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival.

Soprano, Pianist and Performance Artist Phoebe Legere on Healing Wisdom

Tomorrow on Healing Wisdom on Cape Cod's Outermost Radio​ WOMR continues to promote the hell out of the incredible PHOEBE LEGERE who is performing at the Brick Hill House in Orleans on Sunday at 7:30pm. Call 508-255-3864 for reservations. In our chat we learn about more of the metaphysical side of Phoebe. We talk Goddess culture and DNA. She is a composer, artist, film maker, arranger, songwriter, singer and performer on piano, accordion, guitar, cello, Native American flute, and synthesizer. Most recently, she's been shooting a film with Lena Dunham, but she's performed in orchestrated works as a soprano in operas and musicals all over. You've probably seen her on TV in the 80s.

Tune in to our incredibly casual conversation conversation 9am ET on 92.1 WOMR-fm in Provincetown, 91.3 WFMR-fm in Orleans or streaming at http://womr.org

Pandora's Jukebox Gets a Lift

My show from last night: You can hear it for the next 2 weeks if you follow the link below. Click "Station Archive" Click "23" Click "Poplife or Pandora's Jukebox..." http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/station/womr-wfmr

Lots o' #surf, #80srock and #electroswing

Pandora's Jukebox​ Playlist https://spinitron.com/export/womr75-pl2527-A54EtUct.html

I'm moving to every 2nd and 4th Sunday morning on Outermost Radio out of Provincetown, Mass in late October or even November through May.

It looks like my monthly Jukebox stints will continue.

My Uncle, or a Demon Doing a Damn Good Impression

My uncle, or a demon doing a damn good impression of him, has been in communication with me. Specter-style. Although, in my escapist fantasies Galen has disappeared himself, buying a one-way plane ticket to Japan in hopes of marrying some Christmas cake he met online, whose parents are desperate for her to quit her happy spinster ways. She has invited him to make her an honest woman in a little village far from Fukushima, shrouded by forest, and next door to a brightly painted Inari temple lined with phalluses. There his new wife makes a living selling goofy 50s/60s Science Fiction kitsch, like framed velvet painted scenes from 2001: Space Odyssey. Together they will heroically scatter the countryside with sunflower seeds, helping to rid farmland soil of radioactive chemicals.

Together, they will open their own War of the Worlds Laundromat with surf music, tsunami footage playing on multiple television sets and a vending machine with Coolpis Kimchee Wipe Out and Black Vinegar Juice Twister. They will build a Creature from the Black Lagoon mini-golf park known for its arcade with an interactive weather modification hologram featuring the Winter Olympics in China and an I-Survived-Swimming-in-Rio Olympics video game.

The newlyweds will start a fast-food joint called, Mac's Big Pharm, inspired by Nuclear Age Sci-Fi where Deadly Mantis burgers, Forbidden Planet French fries, and Invasion of the Body Sashimi will be filled with ADHD and anti-anxiety meds. OxyContin for Toddler Go-gurts will trend on #post-apocalyptic social media like new #HeadtripImplants(TM) that stream content both auditorily and visually without Google Glass.

As the poster boy for expatriate/Post-WWII-dreams fulfilled, Galen can be the George Bailey of affordable cat tranquilizers dispensed through Mac's Big Pharm Taco Tuesdays.

Each "fast-fun" joint with feature a miniature Yangtze River running through the grounds into which patrons will piss their meds directly. Folks can watch resulting DNA transmographication in a nearby miniature man-made gorge, where a large screen above shows play-by-play time lapse images of infertile fish trying to conceive, hermaphrodite tadpoles chasing their own tails, and octopi caught red-finned in embarrassing genetic mutations.

What's curious is this whole thing got started with her sending him postcards she painted of culinary creations she made up to look like scenes from Mothra Vs. Godzilla, Atomic War Bride, and I Married a Monster From Outer Space. She was really giving him the business right from the start, and now she is sewing Doctor Who costumes they will wear to Cosplay swingers' parties that mostly involve reading to each other from their favorite graphic novels and re-living their favorite graphic novel dialogue over impromptu diorama building contests. They stay up late singing karaoke over non-alcoholic St. Pauli’s and take lots of selfies of themselves wearing superhero masks. In honor of their imaginary relationship, I bought 3 red kimonos today, and the woman who sold them to me gave me a gorgeous wedding dress in exchange for modeling it on one of her horses, Mr. T. (She has rescued horses I visit.)

My Hero-shima is the best little man. He reads car manuals cover to cover and informs me of our cars' features, spends hours reading about anti-virus software and researching companies he may like to work for. He fixes broken things. He helps me in learning to play the piano. He builds stuff and today he put together solar powered fans. He just turned 8.

While contemplating the next incarnation of my Pandora's Jukebox logo, I've been looking at some of my favorite artists' works. Hero is discovering my art books: Kay Neilson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Botticelli, Salvador Dali, Maxfield Parish, Klimt, Mucha, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema...but he lingers with Jan Saudek's photos, probably because he thinks that they are inappropriate. Although, HR Giger (the artist behind The Alien film) creeps him out too much to open. Too many baby-faced condoms on the cover? I'll have to wrap my chocolate stash in Giger print outs.

Today, we ate wild blueberries on our walk with friends. I just wish summer could linger on for another couple of months. It's always too short. I have so many photos I'd like to take but I need the right models. I have a very Art Nouveau/Ingmar Bergman shoot in mind, but I really need three young ladies with very long hair in very long chiffon dresses with trains. Cape Cod in the summer is heavenly and I must capture this light and the gorgeous beaches and grapevines before the skies turn gray and the leaves turn autumnal.

Before we moved I found some old art. Visual art was really my first love, and as a result of not spending enough time my skill hasn't grown much. But, illustration and painting is something that I would love to go back to. Sad that most of my art got moldy and had to be thrown away over the years. Always take photos.

Here is my birth art:

Never draw your genitals in a less than ideal way, especially blown out, or you might found your self in stitches and in serious pain. I thought a rose was a cute metaphor for opening (like a blossom).

I really did give birth in a 20 dollar kiddy pool. Funny how it didn't retain any heat in the 7 hours I was tripping my brains out, acting like a gorilla and refusing to leave the pool. It was those goddamn ferns telling me to stay put.

This was how my goddess series started ten or twelve years ago...

I went through a femanazi phase where I read Bust and Bitch magazine, (and lots of Adbusters), with a little Cunt (the matrilineal neolithic term for challice/sacred vessel) and Adios Barbie for good measure. (Along with some classics from Mary Daly, Emma Goldman, Naomi Wolf, Betty Friedan....)

Here's what put the kibosh on my nanny career (I was 16/17 in Community College): Social Critique of the Capitalistic Agenda and Big Pharma

And... "Infantalism with Angela"

Here is a self-hate-portrait from that time:

Here's was my first pillow book for a tenth grade film analysis class where we watched Japanese porn, Bergman, Truffaut, Cocteau, and the like.

7th Grade: This globe is a snap of a print of a painting I made for a teacher-mentor-friend I adored. In 7th grade I read a 500 page biography of Oscar Wilde, was fascinated by Lewis Carrol, listened to a lot of Chopin and bought opera tickets with money I made from my art. I wanted to travel the world, see Shakespeare performed at the Globe Theatre and The Magic Flute at the Teatro di San Carlo.

5th grade: The kid who sat next to me. At ten I studied Viennese Baroque architecture, read Shakespeare at length and wrote sonnets in iambic pentameter, sat at museums and in front of Victorian houses for hours on end sketching.

Electronic Violinist Roswitha on Healing Wisdom

Hear my Healing Wisdom interview with Austria-born Electric Violinist and ecclectic singer/songwriter Roswitha. She's appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, in the movie August Rush, at the Latin Grammy’s, and was featured on MTV’s Unplugged. With the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas she performed with John Legend, Santana, Gloria Estefan and Patti LaBelle.

ROSWITHA POD HERE

We perform the full play Selkie: Between Land and Sea August 2016.

Also, Pandora's Jukebox moves to every other Sunday morning in the fall on 92.1 WOMR-fm Provincetown and 91.3 WFMR-fm Orleans.

Photographing a wedding this weekend.

Healing Wisdom Through July

Hello Folks,

Dance professors Leda Muhana and David Iannitelli from the Universidad Federal of Bahia will be talking about Brazilian dance and culture promoting a dance concert happening Wednesday July 29th at 7:30pm at Preservation Hall in Wellfleet.

Vocalist and guitarist Claudia Wellington and cellist Ellen Watters Sullivan will be on next week promoting their music and poetry event Friday July 31st at 2pm at the Truro Public Library. It's a Cape Cod Poetry Group event. Both women have performed in a women's improvisational music group that plays for people in hospice. Among her teachers Sullivan studied with Rudolph Kratina, an Austrian cellist who had studied with Strauss. A,ong other bands, Wellington sang with Kangeroo Swing Orchestra at clubs in Paris and the French Alps and performed as a headliner at the Beauvais Jazz Festival.

Sometimes God and The Universe talks to us in mysterious ways, through people, animals, through symbol rich poetry and channeled prose, sometimes even through license plates.

"MagicP" "Hands" "Seal1"

Fairytales such as the selkie stories, origin stories and mythological tales, speak to us in parables that resonate with the soul. There are so many things we can only know with our hearts and not our minds, because the invisible world is so vast and richly layered. The union of land and sea folks in Between Land and Sea is a wonderful metaphor for peoples coming together from different worlds and finding peace. It is only in joining forces that activated, creative, soulful people can defeat the negative forces on this planet that keep people focused on the surface world.

The Epic Adventures of the Rockr Grrrls