Carving out a corner to post random crap.
Madame Malcontent knows it's not wrong to charge cash money for a reading. She draws the line, however, at asking for $$$ in order to teach someone what only intuition and a creative bent can give a gal. As Madame Malcontent likes to say: Some got it. Some don't.
Peering through the spyglass
watching the other half
stare back in a trance
Trust in Happenstance
Hmmm? Oh! Mmmmmmmmmmm.
She can't remember the lady's name, but somebody told Darla long ago to write down her thoughts so she could close the book on them before they took root in her ticker. So, here's what Darla wrote today:
I was born a stubborn old fool. Ruled by my brain and allowed the heart to wither. To love is to show the world my hole-riddled bloomers! I am fixed (obsessively so) in my ideas and there is only My Way or the opposite of that which is I don't know what but it fucking scares me. I search for community and when I find it, I kick the whole damn town to the curb, never to associate with them again. How do you like that? I start and never stop until I discard a project and begin again. I have a lot of scraps! The lemniscate is my sign that I've gone 'round the bend on many a wrong turn. I'm far from ready to write 'The End' but boy do I need a better fitting outline ASAP. And yes, I fall quickly in-and-out-of-touch, love. It's how I'm able to create all this nonsense. I am definitely getting more savvy at spotting a bargain, though. Intuition led me to my broken keyboard. He's never going to get fixed but I can hot glue glitter and ribbons and stars to his ass and stick him up on the wall next to my Victorian hair wreath.
I haven't heard anything official. He's just not here.
Yeah, umm … there's a funny story about that.
Who has the shekels to be zaftig?
I can only capture your image during a downpour.
What does it mean when people are upside down and objects look just right?
More a love bite than a parting shot:
The time I've spent with you has shown me I've got one well-developed Snob Muscle.
from sprout to blossom to kindling
we all have our day of beauty
Loved by all
understood by you alone
I am the result of all my life choices
stars are meant to heal
Gary Q. needs to keep daily entries in his journal so he remembers to sleep. He picked up a notebook made from grass clippings and old maps the last time he cruised the Prairie View (got it from that tiny thing with the really short purple hair) that helps him keep track of the days. Gary scrawled a reminder two months ago to pick out one of those flowery ones for Phyllida. Phyllida is a crazy notetaker. Gary wants to be like his friend someday. Rock solid dependable, always around, never skips town. Doesn't play recklessly with feelings and dreams like C. Beautiful, shrouded in secrets, and sharper than aged Cheddar. Gary could build a happy life with that vixen of mystery. C. Even her name turns Gary's dearly held beliefs inside out and about to go rancid. Gone bad like fryer grease. C. has really clear skin considering what she surrounds herself with on most days. Most days Gary can be found prioritizing To-Do's (he uses a complex, cuneiform-like system of symbols to compose his lists) and editing poetry he'll spring on C. sometime soon, hopefully, like:
You are learning. I'm unlearning.
You're coming. I am going.
We hold a tiny piece of each other's soul near the place that hurts the most.
And therein lies the magic!
Be The Aurochs
(but without the extinction part.)
I. A Heart
Judging
A Ginkgo Leaf
Falling
A Raven
Mimicking
II. The Sun speaks of renewed trust, but do I take this as a sign everything is all right? Not so hasty. Lines are drawn farther and wider now, and still you see some good in me. Let's clarify what judgment really means as we're attracted to the dimming light. To love is a white-knuckle wager for the rest of our lives.
III. Berkana asks why the Sun shines for someone else. I tell her it's because I steal my friend's stories, like the one about getting lost in a swamp and drinking beer in a magically mobile juke joint, and call them my own. Berkana asks why I rob the skin off a neighbor's back. I tell her it's because I do not want to be judged.
IV. Hey Luddie! Not everybody understands Island Time. La Profesora is a fine judge of character, hips jutted and forehead creased, as she eyes her timepiece. It has not escaped her attention that you have a habit of evaporating.
Art is a mirror. If you don't like what you see, look out the window instead. — Darla T. Varney
Ort is the one who's struggling, not me. I'm all show and rehearsing my shtick for future use. This conversation will make it in The Book someday! I do listen to what Ort tells me, though, what with his double-talk and veiled references. Ort has honest-to-God debilitating coping mechanisms. How else to explain not stepping outside for a year save to crouch in a corner of his backyard under cover of moonlight? Eating fast food delivery while engaged in the sedentary activity of building model tanks plus their historically accurate dioramas (history buff that I am, btw)? Ort is one of the kindest, most sensitive people I know. Folks like that get eaten alive on this rock. I do what I can to soften the blow of reality for him by being a 21st century version of Fanny Brice, but that only serves as a balm for a couple of hours each month. I hate to think his role outside the circuit is to be a carbon-based ATM and guinea pig for that damned Buford. I may not be the most shining example of what a friend is supposed to be, but I don't leech off my buddies. But Ort's definitely packed on a few pounds here in the past few months. And his color's gotten really bad. I barely recognized him when he walked up to the truck the other day with balled up baby wipes in his fist.
Even though I drew it
I didn't need to cross it
Everything I make
I undo
You've registered your discomfort
I've rendered myself a trigger
All in the quest to learn
What is true
A pole climber
A clown
A grocery cart pusher wearing someone else's ring
A girl who crossed the International Date Line
And waited for you in a bar nobody else could find
You wrote her name recently in a book of receipts
Heartache and anger rearranged the letters
taKe
15 years and too many miles to matter
We walk on stage with nothing to say
This is what the pink moon showed us today
What are you going on about "limited doses?" You can only "handle" me in "Limited Doses?" Tell me what that's supposed to mean …
So, you're saying …
You can see why some people would think I'm a pain in the ass.
Ah, well now I finally know what your opinion of me is.
If this is my prescribed daily dose of medicine …
You're not qualified to hand out samples of lunch meat at Piggly Wiggly.
This is what I get for following unsolicited advice. From people who love me?
Your job was to simply sit and listen.
No. I can't outrun a sabre-toothed tiger. But I'll always have two paces up on you which will spare me from being a meal. #LiveToSeeAnotherDay
Then I told you this: "Always know the score. As long as you know the score, ignore it and live in fantasyland. Or meet the situation head-on and change it. Walk away with clean hands or an upset stomach. Just know what's happening around you." #SituationalAwareness101
Oh, and next time? Reach deeper in your bag of tricks when you schedule one of your unexcused absences. #NotTheOnlyGameInTown
People call you kind. It is precisely your kind of darkness that prevents these sentences from becoming sentimental. #SecretsWillOut
Tintypes & Polaroids. #IllusionsCarefullyCurated
Semi-Daily Scribbles 