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© 2004-2008 Linda Escaip
"I may be grumpy, but I like you."
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The Suns and Moons of the Grumpiest Girl in the Room.
Welcome to my journal, sweet-feet.
Walking This World 06-April-2005
You get out of bed and sleepily shuffle out to the front of the house to feed some hungry cats breakfast. You glance over and see Sidney perched alertly on the antique table in the entry hall; she has vomited on your wallet, a bill you need to pay, and your keys. Judie has run out from the back of the house. She has poop stuck to her butt and needs to remove it immediately, for she is a lady. She drags her bum all over the wood floor in an effort to detach it, creating a skid mark here, a skid mark there, a darling skid mark everywhere. Birds outside are warbling their cheerful morning jingles. Judie; dear, sweet, spazzy Judie. You simply cannot catch a Judie when you need to, or any other time for that matter. You start to cry. You decide you don't really want cats anymore, and you might be moving out.
I love when we move the clocks forward. Summer is coming, and soon the wasps will be here looking for the perfect location on which to dangle their ghoulishly creepy nests. I just don't want to talk about it. They scare the living cracker-lovin' hell out of me. Give me a snake, a gorilla, a bear, some scorpions, a few serial killers. Just keep the wasps away from me. Wasps and sharks. And fundamentalist right-wingers.
I am attempting a stress-free existence. That is just some kind of hilarious, when you're me. But it's good for a laugh, I guess. I feel like walking. Maybe today will be the day I walk to Canada. Sometimes while I'm walking I imagine that's where I'm going. But I don't know why. Maybe it's because England has the issue of that big ocean between us, and I don't know how (yet) to walk on water. And there would certainly be sharks to contend with along the way if I chose to swim, and now you know how I feel about sharks. I have nothing against them personally, I just don't want them near me, not even between glass, unless they are of the mini variety. Then it's OK.
So, while I am attempting to change the way I react to everything, I am staying away from some of the stuff that gets me all worked up. That includes people who do not honour my worth. What the hell's the point? Of course, total avoidance isn't the answer, it's merely a provisional tool to help me relax while I learn different ways of being in the world. I have been in fight-or-flight mode for many years and definitely need some respite. A lovely walk to Canada, perhaps. An ice cream cone and some tenderness, for sure. And time alone with my piano, some lotus incense, and the moon.
I've been loading up my iPod mini with tunes. I think there are 186 songs on it at the moment, which, if you ask me, is an adequate amount. (I first typed dongs instead of songs, probably because I am a first-class pervert.) There's no way I'll ever have 1000 ditties on that little pink treasure (more pervert talk). Well, never say never, I guess. By my next entry I could be whining about the lack of available space on that thing. But I don't really whine. (When the someone I live with reads that sentence, there'll be laughter.) I finally located the 1973 hit "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" on a 70s compilation CD at Amazon, which is a rather large thrill for me. I had the 45 when I was a kid, and would sit on the floor with the portable turntable before me, playing it over and over again while watching the story play out like a movie in my head. Reading the lyrics all these years later I am left to wonder why the holy fuckout anyone would ever write such a song.
It's about this dude named Seth who stops off at a bar for a quick drink on his way home from Candletop, wherever that is. Oh, probably somewhere in Georgia. (I catch on eventually.) He sees his best friend, Andy, who tells him his young bride has been whoring it up with that Amos boy (who I hear is quite the young stud). Naturally, Seth becomes enraged, because you obviously don't want anyone screwing your young bride, and Andy, being sort of socially retarded, adds insult to injury by stating that he too has been shtupping Seth's bride. What a moron; that's the sort of thing you keep to yourself or share with Playboy. But he doesn't just say it. He offers this:
"Boy, don'tcha lose yer head, 'cause to tell ya the truth, I been with her myself." Like that's going to comfort Seth or something. It would have made more sense for him to say, "Don'tcha lose your head yet because you'll want to save that explosion of rage for when you hear that I, your best friend, been bonin' her too."
At this point, Andy becomes frightened of what Seth might do to him, so he walks home. He has just lost his only friend because he is an opportunistic pig with a poor sense of social etiquette. Seth goes home and gets his gun, a souvenir from his daddy, who apparently was pretty stingy because that's all he left for him (either he went out one day to buy cigarettes and never came back or kicked the bucket—this is undisclosed information). I don't know how this next part of the lyric escaped my attention all those years ago.
"And he went off to Andy's house (with his gun!), a-skippin' through the backwoods, quiet as a mouse..." A-skippin'? No way. Nobody skips on their way to murder someone. You might be a little light on your feet so as not to make extra noise, but there's no way you're going to be skipping. The word skipping is utterly harmless, light, and jovial. Gay, even. You skip over to the ice cream store. You might see people a-skippin' to the movies if they feel so inclined. But you would never see anyone skipping on the their way to shoot someone. That is wrong. Anyway, while he is allegedly skipping through the woods, he sees some small footprints that certainly could not be Andy's, because Andy's got some big feet. He reaches Andy's place, peers in the window and sees Andy lying dead in a pool of blood. He hears the police and, like a complete idiot, fires a shot to get their attention, apparently forgetting that his ex-friend is dead and he's right there holding a gun.
The judge, who has some dinner he needs to get to, hastily declares him guilty and sentences him to death by hanging. Now's where we get to what really happened. The singer lets us know that she, Seth's sister, did the killing. But not only did she kill Andy, she murdered Seth's young bride as well, and declares that no one would ever find the body. She lets us know what a crack shot she is. And all the while, she's peppering the song with the chorus, which gives us a quick summary of what went down. But what I want to know is why did she have to stick her fat nose in all of it? What business was it of hers who Seth's wife was bumping clumps with? I have a theory, but I always do. She, the sister/singer whose name we never do find out but I'll call her Beula-May for some unknown reason, is one unfortunate-looking broad. Seriously, she has two or three teeth, one eyebrow, a dozen or more unidentified body parts growing out of her head, a cauliflower nose from too much moonshine—it's tragic. The poor woman has never had a lover, and people can be so cruel, what with all the focus on outward appearance and all.
She was jealous. All that passionate moaning and sighing she heard while camping out beneath Andy's window (she would have camped out beneath the Amos boy's window as well, but she couldn't find the house) made her crazy with jealousy. So she killed the lovers. Sure, we could think it was loyalty to her brother that drove her to murder, but I doubt it—you should see this hag. Anyway, in my theory, the reason no one will ever find the body of Seth's wife is because she cooked her and ate her, believing she would become infused with the beauty that his sassy young wife possessed. Whatever. That is one crazy song.
Still, I can't wait to hear it again in its entirety, as opposed to the snippet of a sample on Amazon, which I have to say was pretty exciting in spite of its curtness.
Now that I'm thinking about it, if I'm going to walk to Canada (or England, providing I am able to do the Jesus trick across the oceans) I will likely need at least 1000 songs for the journey since that will be one long trek. It is best to have plenty of good music when you're walking the world. And I'll need one of those rainbow umbrella hats for extra sexiness, because it's all about looking sexy. It isn't really, I just typed that to thrill the nuns who I know are sure to be reading this journal. I don't know if I remember the last time I truly felt sexy. The someone I mentioned earlier thinks I'm all kinds of sexy, but the thing is, if you don't feel it, no amount of someone telling you you're sex on wheels is going to do it. And that's true for anything. When I was younger I experienced far more sexiness, but I think that's because I felt like I had this exciting future, and it's easy to feel sexy when you think the world is yours. I don't know if the word sexy can be used alone to describe the feeling; there must be a companion word somewhere. Any woman who has at times in her life felt a strong sense of herself knows that feeling. And it's not that the world isn't mine anymore, because it will be until I die, it's just that I keep forgetting some really good stuff that I would fare better to keep in mind.
My sister, the kickass photographer, has asked me to be her subject while she gets to know her new lights and camera equipment. I am very excited about the whole thing, even if I do dislike being photographed. She said she's going to help me fall in love with myself. YAY! I could use some of that. I can't imagine feeling comfortable in front of the camera, whereas often I am not comfortable in front of the mirror. But it's time to make peace with my face once and for all. I won't get another one. I won't be taller either. Tomorrow morning when I wake up, I will not be someone else. I'll be Edna A. Slipic of the West End Slipics, and don't tell me that's not one hell of an anagram of my name (Linda Escaip = Edna A. Slipic).
I don't think I genuinely believe I'm ugly; it seems to have more to do with not knowing what I look like. It's as if I am unable to grasp the reality of my reflection. I just don't know what I look like. I should scream that out the window. Maybe someone who hears will offer a solution. Asking for help is good. Cake is better. But, you know, at some point (hopefully) the whole enough-is-enough thing kicks in and you say to yourself wait just a fucking minute. And you take a look at the way things have been, at the way you've let them be, and you decide there are other options, so you look around for your car keys and a map, soon realizing that neither are needed. You can get there without transportation, you just have to go the other way.
I'll continue to walk this world, leaving a trail of dreams behind me with every step. And one day I will get there, wherever that is. But in the meantime, here I am.
Quote From My World
"... And she has a jiggly, cellulite ass! Rob found it!"
-the excitement felt when you realize the bitchy princess isn't all that
Well, I'm off to polish these dangling participles. I love the way they linger so gracefully, but they really should sparkle. Thanks for reading.
Linda
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