Dino-might

22 years ago, on sunday i was an overweight purple fat baby struggling to live.

they put me in a plastic tank. with wires on my head. i lived.

so i dance. every year i dance to remember that its great to be born.

dancing barefoot on the beach, at dusk while weaving in and out of tiki torches with loved ones is one of my many little birthday rituals.

in these moments, once a year, i am free. i am reminded im loved. i reminded i am alive.

this year some traditions were kept. some were broken. some were made.

KEPT:

* traditional 'Orange Dream' cheers with my mom & favorite aunt and my cousin Jay. (they havnt missed a single birthday) :)

* the traditional rad cake.

this year - DINOSAUR and volcano

BROKEN:

* Family friends Yvonne& Juhanni have celebrated with me for the past 15 years. This year they couldn't make it in physical body, so as a gift they made full sized masks of themselves. i love having middle-aged friends. :)

MADE:
Andrew spoiled me.....with the gift of a JACKKNIFE. (my lifelong dream) ( the knife in fact is so wonderful it deserves its own blog entry tommorrow)Andrew also surprised me with my very own DINOSAUR outfit! the teeth and the eyes GLOW in the dark! good gracious im lucky.

we danced. to CCR and James brown.we danced as good as any t-rex can dance. and i was a very very happy girl.

an ode to alice cooper

"One thing I miss is Cold Ethyl and her skeleton kiss

we met last night making love under the refrigerator light" -- Alice Cooper

When I was six, I proudly sang the entire song, "Cold Ethyl" to my Sunday School teacher. I figured she'd especially dig the line, "If i live 'till ninety-seven/You'll still be waiting in refrigerator heaven". Anyone who uses the word heaven in a song, obviously loves jesus. To my surprise my teacher, the middle-aged churchlady responded to my simple song about necrophilia, with more horror than aww. It took me many years after that to realize why ms. mcgonegal didn't adore alice cooper.

my dad sang me alice cooper for bedtime songs.

the album "Weclome to my nightmare" was a sing-along fest for father-daughter car rides.

When i was 9 or so I did my first mini oral presentation about my favorite spider--my "research" was based solely on the lyrics from "The Black Widow". when asked by my teacher why i chose to talk about black widows, i responded by reciting the following lyrics to my fourth grade class:

"You know what I love the most about her is her inborn need to dominate possess. In fact, immediately after the consummation of her marriage to the smaller and weaker male of the species she kills and eats him (laugh) oh, she is delicious.. and i hope he was! such power and dignity.... unhampered by sentiment. If i may put forward a slice of personal philosophy, I feel that man has ruled this world as a stumbling demented child-king for long enough! and as his empire crumbles, my precious lack Widow shall rise, as his most fitting successor!"

(awkward silence followed)

For my 10th Birthday my parents took me to see him in concert. i was by far the youngest fan there, but i sang along to all his songs just as passionately. i swear to this day he looked me in the eye, and pointed to my smile when he sang, "poison". after that i caried his photograph in my pencil case for 4 years.

At 13, when i got my first period, I listened mournfully to "Only Women bleed" and wept.

Alice Cooper trumped my childhood crushes on Fidel Castro and Tom Delong, simply because he was more than a girlcrush. he was the lullabyes of my girlhood. the soundtrack of my youth- the voice that, oddly, continues to connect me to my past.

Last week a stranger who couldn't find a bed slept on our couch. we awkwardly sat across from eachother while sipping tea, not knowing what to say. he needed shelter, i needed company. we both needed something to talk about. then it happened, an alice cooper song broke the silence, and his toothless, adorable grin beamed brightly as a toothless adorable grin could, and there i sat, in my living room, singing along to alice cooper with a middle aged aged homeless man who liked to rock.

thank you jesus for creating alice cooper.

bound

i've always secretly been satisfied whenever people have pointed out to me that i am full of contradictions.
for a long time i wasn't sure why i felt the contradictions in my life, my identity and my values to be a source of liberation. why did they secretly make me smile...
i ran across the following paragraph the other day while reading one of my favorite books, which articulated in words the idea that ive only known through feelings, for far too long.

"our contradictions and differences are more than political obstacles: they are reminders of our boundlessness, confirmations that we can never be fully captured or circumscribed, that no label or movement can ever hope to encompass all we are or hope to be. And that diversity is our strength in the face of the familiar, tyrannical Western project to impose the monolithic, all enveloping truths that have marginalized, suppressed, and erased so many of us all in the first place"

- rikki anne wilchins.

a monday afternoon

yesterday was a virile day :
* i borrowed 9 books from the library about gender and sexual subversion and grinned shamelessly all the way home
* i sat cross-legged beside the garden admiring said books for close to 40 minutes, and did "e-nee-me-ne-miney-mo" at least a dozen times inorder to figure out which one to start with....
* Optimus Prime, Bunny-of-Doom had her first bath
* i laid blissfully in the grass for several hours devouring "Read My Lips: sexual subversion and the end of gender" by rikki anne wilchins *i watchedandrew tinker in the carrots and every little while i nibbled on peas

* i not only witnessed the icecream-man in action for the first time in my whole life, buuut i met him too.
*i made lime green Shepard's pie for people i love

yes- it was a virile day indeed.

when andrew was fat.

rafters

last night andrew & i took some old boxes down from the garage rafters. these boxes contained me. fragments of who i once was, reminders of those i once loved and remnants of places and i once knew as home. they contained the photos, the scraps, the scribbles, the poetry, the letters and the doodlings that shaped me. from a simple note scrawled on a napkin from a past lover, to a cryptic collection of angsty teenage journals, these boxes hold my story. we sat cross-legged on the garage floor, as i introduced andrew to my childhood and my youth. to the friends i thought i couldn't live without, and to the memories i swore id never forget, but did. reminiscing may be one of my favorite things to do in life.
it's weird, i recall seeing the pictures and keepsakes billions of times, yet somehow they've transformed over the years and their meanings and significance have changed. i see and feel things with my adult eyes, that i hadnt in the past. part of me is amused by this, part of me terrified. looking through these boxes is especially fun with another person, because they point out odd things, that otherwise i would not notice.

andrew grudgingly brought to my attention, which i would have otherwise glanced over as normal, my utter teenage obsession with tom delonge from blink 182. it gets a little embarrassing. i was madly in love with tom. apart from the usual large collection of tom clipouts, a poster of him in a speedo with the word RAPTURE written under, and doodles of his name on all my school work, we found a ccreepy journal i did for school, where i was suppose to write from the perspective of when i was 27. in this journal i had married Tom, and because my mom thought being a punk star wasnt a promising future, i convinced this ravishing hunk to become a journalist instead. (which at the time i believed to be second best to punk star, as the sexiest profession ever). not only did we find an entire DETAILED scrapbook of the wedding i planned us (complete with pictures of the outfits, the budget, the guest list and the vows... and even a fake marriage licence where i forged his name beside mine), i even had a detailed account of the love child i mothered, whose last name was delonge as well. i suppose my unwavering love for tom was kind of creepy. we even found a crumpled up piece of paper- a letter to god which was written in sparkily brown gel pen and said: "dear lord god, i want to love and serve you forever. but please let me be a professional skate border, and please let me meet tom delonge. i love you god. i love you. amen".

chalk