Vigil

here then is my fresh hair after I drove home with all my car windows including the moon roof open I didn't want to get much of my face in this photo because there is nothing like sitting in front of a giant mirror for 2 and a half hours looking at yourself especially with wet hair aka naked mole rat to waken all the feelings of insecurity at least I'm not bald (my mother was bald from a very young age and took to wearing the most hideous of wigs) though I look like it in this photo that is just white hair and I love it and if it were to grow all over like that instead of in skunk stripes then I'd let it the white hair refuses color seriously I could dye them black and the dye would instantly fling itself off the way Paris the Genius Cat used to fling Petromalt off his paw when I tried to cajole him into eating it come hairball season

going to the City takes a strange dance I can't drive when I'm manic I am all over the road and I don't give a flying fuck about even getting out of bed when I'm depressed so I have to plan as little in advance during a balanced spell and hope I make it such as today when everything was easy driving parking listening to Mozart and Sufjan Stevens then Mozart again turned up loud hit the freeway like a champ leaving the forest for the highway entering the City bursting with cherry trees and my beloved crows who I miss so much in spite of the ravens and eagles and hawks here those crows are part of my sense memory their humor their voices their names for we humble humans their care for their own I loved seeing them and looking at all the fancy of the city and later after the prostitutes on Aurora I went to the Duck Blood Store for fresh Greek feta and good bagels and incense and driving home I started to shake like a dog shitting peach pits when I realized that eating an apple this morning and a banana for lunch had caused my blood sugar to bottom out and when that happens I look like a broken wind-up bird I could barely hold on to my steering wheel

once I got home I crammed an entire bagel into my face and made the rest of my potato salad then had a huge helping okay two huge helpings of it which were delicious and the shaking stopped I get shaky when I'm manic too so I wasn't sure if I was truly happy happy or becoming manic happy what with the trembling but it turned out to be happy happy what a fuckeroo I did love my trip though two hours each way I remembered my true City Girl Heart but I was so thankful to leave even the crows and the noise and the stink and the rude drivers and the purple balloon in a tree that was not a hawk

I love my salon stylist Mandy and I will sing her praises forever and I told her she wasn't allowed to retire or move until I die never NEVER AGAIN will I get my hair pretend cut out here in the sticks

it was 61 degrees which felt like August in New York which is why my hair blew all around and up and out then went flat as it is in the photo but I've fluffed it back up so it is pretty now and no one but the owls and coyotes to see

it's quiet here the boy has escaped and I probably will be forced to eat all his chocolate yes I still buy my adult son an Easter basket and I probably always will

this is one lame ass post

xoxox

Passover

Dear Darklings,

I am about to drive into the City to get a decent hair cut because there is not a decent hair cut to be found in this town nor the next town over nor the next so Seattle it is yesterday was the first day in one hundred and eleven days without rain with actual sunny sunshine and as soon as I saw the bright I put on my red plaid boots and headed outside to dig up one of my three garden plots and dug trenches and into those trenches I planted 21 potato tubers each spud with three eyes which I cut therefore I planted 63 potatoes and then I raked the front yard which is a forest which means I raked down the almost gravel path from the mailbox and pine needles flew right and left then I raked out to the cars that path with even more sodden pine needles and then I stood and admired my work which looked clean and lovely and mostly my brand new potato patch looked like a bunch of mud and last night my upper body let me know oh yes it did it let me know that the Queen of Slack was visiting all the muscles barking at once but today I feel so fine and the sun is shiny shining again and I am off to the city which caused me great stress and anxiety last night I couldn't could not sleep and when I finally dozed off I dreamed that Martha Stewart was taking me to dinner at the Canlis Seattle's fancy restaurant but my mouth was so dry in my dream my entire being parched that I could not even ask for a glass of water I could not speak but the wait person placed a glass of water in front of me in which there was a small #2 pencil sized pink and gray polka dotted cigarette butt floating I tried to drink it but no water came forth

yesterday I finally brushed the dried soil from Orlando's grave off my bright green Converse shoes and polished up the white parts with white vinegar which to me represents the end of the end in a way though green is always beginning this morning I walked around the back forest and said hello to Figgy Pudding and Marylinn Magnolia the former has a sweet bud on its tip the former is now taller than I and the deep purple lilac tree is about to burst out of its green sweater

no anxiety today I just boiled eggs for my Pagan Easter celebration potato salad tomorrow I will go to mass with my new haircut and navy blue dress and worship the goddess good morning good morning from my island where it smells like the best summer camp you could ever dream of.

Love

100% full

This is the Lucky Strike Brown Boy Exiled moon

Pig and farm report

yesterday I turned on the bathroom faucet to brush my teeth and barely a trickle of water ran out and I checked all the faucets in the house the same the same the same and panic stuck its needle teeth into my throat and tore and I stopped breathing as my heart hammered out of my chest I pried the nails out of the closet in which the water heater lives but there was no water in the floor no sign of a leak tears creeping around the edges of my face then I got my little accordion box decorated in blue and green daisies where I keep my business papers I found the owner of our neighborhood well I called and Karen who answered the phone said do you live in So and So (my ridiculous neighborhood name) I said yes and she said they had to shut down the main line for an hour or so no worries no worries at all not one worry and I laughed like an authentic crazy person and hung up then dropped my head between my knees so I would not would not faint and waited for the water to start up again

will I ever not think like a person living in dire poverty?
will I ever not fear something broken that I cannot fix or get fixed?
will I ever not fear summonsing the Slumlord who won't show up for a month no matter the season?
will I ever?

I hope so
after that all the water was brown for a while so I had to turn on all the faucets and run the dishwasher empty and the tub and washing machine and for a wee bit I worried about the bill then I remembered it's still just $300 a year period instead of $250 a month which is what I was literally paying in Seattle
just that

speaking of the dishwasher I decided to get in there and clean it on Monday I removed its loose bits and pried open the filter which I believe had never been previously pried open and went at it with white distilled vinegar a wire brush and about 352 Q-Tips™ and I scraped off hardened water with a butter knife pieces of calcified water flicking around me onto my pristine floor and I dug out gunk with the Q-Tips™ look I've never had owned or even used a dishwasher before but I had an inkling it might need to be washed even though that seems counter-intuitive thank you baby Jesus for Youtube to tell me how to do it what a strangely satisfying two hours it was thank you baby Jesus also for latex gloves because I do not and I mean DO NOT like to touch anything icky ever

The End.

Maundy Thursday

Sacrifice yourself give away your food eat bitter acorns pine cones roots give your water to the sheep slap your legs with nettles tie a blood-stained rope with three knots around your arms and waist suffer for God hurt for God two wooden spoons side by side in the dish drainer are a paddle bite down I was in this room I was here before you were born and after you said my name I ate honey from The Great Bear eggs scream down the chute poke a candle in stir it around the child Christ said this is good what are you doing here at this late hour what having learned the lesson of a rotten shoe the smell therein the embarrassment of leather the hurtful tongue there is nothing left to say.

Holy Wednesday

This morning the beach at low tide was spectacular the clean smells of wind sand seaweed smoke salt and the scent of animal souls at their beginnings and their ends. Be peaceful dear Darklings.

Dear Darklings,

Getting off Facebook combined with signing up for National Poetry Write-a-thon has opened my head to writing once again and finally. Elsie lives in my brain all the time has been there since I first saw the paintings at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle that sparked this adventure in 2009. Here is where Elsie lives in my house. The painting by Angela Simione is so huge it dominates an entire wall and deservedly so exactly the way Elsie and the other lost girls have dominated my dreams and waking hours for all these years. I'm putting Henry together for an April 1st deadline.

Mockingbird wish me luck.

Elsie Paroubek

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elsie Paroubek
Elsie Paroubek, whose photograph inspired Henry Darger during his writing of In the Realms of the Unreal. Photo by Matousek Studio, 1575 22nd St. near Kedzie Ave., Chicago, published in the Chicago Daily NewsMay 9, 1911.
Born	Eliška "Elsie" Paroubek 1906 Chicago, Illinois, US
Died	c. April 8, 1911 (aged 5) Chicago, Illinois, US
Cause of death	Homicide by asphyxiation or strangulation
Body discovered	May 9, 1911 Chicago, Illinois, US
Resting place	Bohemian National Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, US
Nationality	American
Known for	Murder victim

Eliška "Elsie" Paroubek (1906–1911) was a Czech American girl who was a victim of kidnapping and murder in the spring of 1911. Her disappearance and the subsequent search for her preoccupied Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota law enforcement for six weeks. Her funeral was attended by between 2000 and 3000 people.^[1]

The story of the girl's death, and especially her photograph in the Chicago Daily News, were inspirations for Henry Darger's immense fantasy novel The Story of the Vivian Girls.

lightbulb

Today I realized that battling my FaceBook addiction by switching to Twitter was a lot like battling my cocaine addiction by switching to another kind of cocaine.

Just now Jupiter the Wonder Cat chased a fat mouse from under the sofa upon which I was sitting I put my feet up but did not squeal eek like a tv girl from the 1950s I calmly drank my coffee and watched her corner the mouse behind the fireplace & now she's watching for it to come out so she can dispatch it this is the 8th mouse she's caught in 11 months she is WONDER CAT Jupiter is getting tuna for elevenses she is one brave and caring creature. Good morning from the eye of the storm on my little island. I already did the dishes started a load of laundry & heated (het?) up the soup I made yesterday. The power has been flicking on & off for an hour. I have filled all my glass milk bottles (we are close to a dairy!) with water & filled all my pitchers with same in case I need to emergency flush before the power comes back on etc. 

I thought for certain it was Saturday when I woke after a full ten hours of sleep. It still feels like Saturday which is never a bad thing. Welcome Darklings to my weekend.

Love

Dear Vogue,

I never asked for the free guest subscription and I threw every single magazine you sent away while it was still in its prophylactic plastic wrapper. I hate Vogue because it has nothing to do with my way of life my style or anything about me at all but mostly I hate Vogue because it stinks. Literally stinks. The awful perfume samples smeared on strips of narrow paper put my sensitive sinuses in a roar. And I TRULY did not appreciate the fake letter you sent today through the US mail that contained no return address (of course because then I would have thrown it away along with your stanky magazines) that was marked FINAL NOTICE which made me panic a wee bit because I'm still waiting for bills from my recent cancer screenings. Imagine my disgust when I opened the fake letter with my sweaty little paws. Shame on you Vogue and fuck you.

Rebecca The-Less-Than-Smelly Loudon

April Fool

I have signed up or rather I'm attempting to sign up for National Poetry Month aka NaPoWriMo aka write poem a day month. I tried this once and while I managed the poems the force of it went totally against the grain of my daily practice. Then I sent 10 postcards a day in April for a few years but that eventually began to feel like throwing poems at a wall for no reason. This might just be the jump start I need.

Pig and farm report #2

Dear Darklings,

I don't remember much of what I posted yesterday and lost but I did not yet plant my spuds or dig my spud trenches since my body gave out early and today it is pouring down rain the quinoa experiment went horribly awry and burnt around the edges and became rather like a meatloaf as far as I can tell the slow cooker is only good for one thing which is cooking beans but I cook a lot and I mean a lot of beans actually all I eat most days is yogurt (I gave up on the ground flax seed which seemed to be doing more harm than good yet again another doc not willing to go beyond) bananas apples and black beans tarted up with queso fresco and pico with a squeeze of lime so much useless information going out into the great big world I am concerned about FaceCrook so I have stepped away for the time being but I am not completely gone because there is so much personal writing I put up there that I want to protect I saw Zuckerberg on CNN last night and his non-explanation of how things went horribly wrong did not impress or comfort I did go to this website and learned how to disable apps that other people can see which I promptly did and yes I noticed I have grown a strong addiction to opening FB and wasting time this is not a surprise since I have an addictive personality to begin with and have struggled with food cigarettes cocaine etc my livelong life so it goes

today I put some horrible oil that contains steroids on my scalp for my plaque psoriasis which has been getting worse in part I think because of the delicious well water I drink and wash my hair in and in part because of good old American Stress and illness and well you name it I applied it with gloves and put the little plastic shower cap on my head after I applied it and put a towel around my neck and closed it with a hair clip and when son came out of his room with his bags packed ready to head back to the orchard I told him I just dyed my hair black and he simply said okay which means he expects craziness from me I am stuck with the plastic cap and poison scalp goo for eight hours so I'm making soup and later I think I will make pretzels and I'm binge watching Mad Men on the telly this post is lame but I am not lame in fact I feel fine in fact I feel spectacular and quite frankly I don't want to do a goddamn thing today except play with dough tinker around and let rain fall

in even lesser news here are the guts of the terrarium that I believe now is at least 30 years old I cleaned down the sides and put the red nerve plant in and trimmed everything back and added some fresh dirt and gave it a good watering but everything else is as it has been since 25 years ago when I moved into the horrible house and planted it anew it continues to amaze me every single day has in fact never stopped amazing a rain forest contained and lovely and loamy and loved

 and in case you were wondering remember this sweet little bird house it now lives in my forest

also this important reminder for vegetarians everywhere

ps. now that I am back to typing on my Mac I discovered that while I was manic not only did I change all my passwords which I promptly forgot even doing I also hid several charging cords from my computers in fact I hid them from myself and had to tear up my closet to find them sheesh doublesheesh even

psps. also while manic I also broke off both my horny thumbnails while prying open my Ottercase in order to get to my cell phone because I was convinced something was in there though nothing was and I wanted to tell you that one of the metal heron sculptures on Camano Island Gateway Bridge was wearing a hot pink feather boa yesterday she looked surprised and pleased with herself

pspsps. I am on Twitter @rloudon though I rarely post there I might start up

I'll be back if anything at all interesting happens

Love

Dear Darklings,

My stomach did not start aching until 4 PM this afternoon and I wanted to write here and finish answering your comments. 4PM is a record in fact. Last year on this day I was in hospital so today is great. At noon I put some quinoa in my slow cooker. Here is what it holds:

1 cup of quinoa rinsed 3 times
3 cups of whole milk
1 cinnamon stick plus some ground cinnamon
1 peeled and grated apple
1 dried out pathetic vanilla bean that was too arid to split plus a good splash of Mexican vanilla
1 large glop of organic manuka honey
a huge glop of “fig spread” whatever a spread is but it tastes figgy
1 tiny handful of dark brown sugar

I opened the cooker a while ago and tried it out it is still mushy but otherwise it tastes incredible and next time I will add steel cut oats seriously my entire house smells like apple pie in the oven

this morning I went to one of the two outbuildings on my property (I cannot even believe I wrote my property much less outbuilding but there it is the shiny wing-ed truth hey thanks for dying mom!) and fetched my garden tools the big ones shovel spade etc tp prepare the garden for potatoes on account of it is potato time and they grew so well last year that I drove to the orchard orchard up the street and bought some new tubers probably too many to go with the tubers I saved from my harvest last year




wlll fuck
I had a long rambly post and I accidentally opened it up on another computer (Kindle grrrrr) and saw draft so I hit publish and lost most of it except this and now I cannot sit up Barbara, I'm so glad you were here to read it

here at least is how the post ended

Equinox

there I am warts and all

my son is here to check up on me my beloved jailor

last night he said you look gray

today I told him he kind of hurt my feelings when he said it then he said you really did look gray

though I am the same color today as I was yesterday and today he thinks I look fine

do you ever want to kill your children?

not really! HAHA! just kidding! joke!

no worries he is leaving again on Thursday and I will be allowed to move about the plane on my own

today I listened to Geek Love on my iPad and embroidered a pillow case the listening part was spectacular I made it all the way to book two but the embroidery bored me even though I love to do it the meditation and quiet of it perhaps it's difficult for me right now for the same reasons that make it impossible for me to read (again) I want to map my manic a little bit if I can if I can bear it bear witness to it I want to explain somehow attach carabiners and ascenders and climbing harnesses and quick draws and slings and belay devices and ropes and cords and webbing and nuts and helmets and climbing gloves and campus boards and hexes and tape to it I want to climb that fuckery in a safe manner from a distance

so to speak

here is a place to start
some of the strange things I did while in the center of it

1. Joined the only Catholic church in a two hundred mile radius and I mean I truly joined it filled out paperwork gave them my phone number and email and yes information on my divorce (not the first one I always forget that short-lived marriage) I have yet to attend mass though I might on Easter since I bought a beautiful very expensive knee length dress navy blue with a silk lining and long belled sleeves

2. I bought a very expensive dress

3. I went on a HUGE shopping trip at Costco and when I got to the checkout counter with all of it and I mean all of it I couldn't find my credit card and then I panicked and retraced my steps and went to security to see if anyone had returned it 

4. When I got home I found the card on the middle of my living room carpet with no idea how it got there

5. Contacted several people with whom I have been out of contact for fifteen or more years

6. I became certain that I had developed cataracts overnight or was in fact going blind I made an appointment to see an opthamologist in Bellingham then while I was at the Bait & Tackle I tried on a pair of old lady magnifying glasses and I could see perfectly fine

7. I thought my thumbnails were turning blue and this sent me into a panic attack (they weren't)

8. Visited a Universal Unitarian Church in Mount Vernon and became convinced it was a Children of God cult

9. Went to the Bait & Tackle my home store here on the island and word-salad talked and talked and talked and talked to every single person in the store literally everyone and now I am ashamed to go back

10. Repeatedly forgot to take my daily meds or took them twice and one day I took them three times making me vomit

11. I got a sample of Schmidt's Charcoal and Magnesium deodorant and used it for exactly for one month before my armpits broke out in a terrible itchy rash and I got the most disgusting body odor for days until just today when I went back to my regulation deodorant the thing is I know I am allergic to magnesium though not when found in nature

12. Changed all my passwords and did not write them down ahhhhhh! aghrrrrrahhhhhh!!!

that's it for now the beginning of double digits is all I have the eggs for today

*

here are some beautiful bountiful gorgeous magical hilarious things I saw during the dark time

1. A deer licking his butt I mean he is an animal and of course he cleans his behind I had just never seen a deer do it before and it made me snort with laughter

2. A deer standing directly in front of a yellow DEER XING sign which made me laugh so hard I almost veered off the road

3.  A coyote in my yard at dusk I hear them every night their plaintive howls which sound like a woman in pain but this is the first one I've seen out here

4. I saw Bill Gates jogging on my beach twice which made absolutely no sense until I read about his tennis match with Roger Federer I do know what he looks like up close I used to work for him

5. I drove to Mount Vernon and saw field after field of cabbage rotting because of our torrential rainfall this winter

*

the Johnny Cash Psychiatrist once told me that my bipolar disease appeared in me when I was nine years old I believe it because it explains so much about my childhood I used to dream constantly as a child that I was in a cart on a rickety old wooden roller coaster that was climbing up a click track up and up and up and up and up and up and I frequently panicked thinking it would never reach the top and begin its descent that's pretty much what bipolar1 mania is like I think I was dreaming my own diagnoses even as a child

Thank you Darklings for reading here for not judging or for being quiet about it if you do I am not 100% yet but every day gets better and forgive me my typos

Love

How the water swirled and boiled

desire’s grainy repetition

in my porcelain cereal bowl

bee floats inside

horse head floats topside
oats glue bone meal

cold in morning green

even as daffodils grieve

Orlando little peanut Evil Princess

in her grave my constant

ghosts I stand on the deer path

wait for comfort

bee floats and stares

       floats and stares

       floats and stares

desire’s grainy repetition

*

Depression Before Spring

The cock crows

But no queen rises.

The hair of my blonde

Is dazzling,

As the spittle of cows

Threading the wind.

Ho! Ho!

But ki-ki-ri-ki

Brings no rou-cou,

No rou-cou-cou.

But no queen comes

In slipper green.

~ Wallace Stevens

*

Dear Darklings, I am not depressed but I love that poem. I am back I will be back. The mania is passing passing though not passed. I wrote two poems this week my first in over a year not-Henry poems either though they are angry but who cannot be angry these days? And I'm dreaming again oh how I missed my dreams in spite of it all I love my brain. I have upped my Tegretol dose which makes me lazy and slow but this bout of mania held on with sharp nasty teeth. My lilacs have tight purple buds and wood violets have sprung up all over the forest floor a delicate purple carpet. It is early for me and I have been sending emails to myself to remind me what I wanted to tell you but could not. Soon. Today. I have to mop my kitchen floor first.

Love and thank you for reading here again for being patient.

ps. I really was paranoid when I wrote that I wasn't paranoid about writing about my mental illness. Thank you for not pointing it out to me. Thank you especially to my son who alerted me to my manic swing because for the first time since I was diagnosed I did not recognize it myself in time. Unfortunately it is a degenerative disease but so much magic has happened for me such beauty and natural joy.

currently in a Seroquel coma for mania I will return to this space soon but I am afraid (not paranoid) about discussing my mental illness here these days now that fuckface wants to reopen all the haunted old mental institutions now that he has declared that mental illness kills not guns

Pax
Love