Courting the Crimson King

THE DANCE OF THE PUPPETS:
The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.
The purple piper plays his tune,
The choir softly sing;
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue,
For the court of the crimson king.




Scene: 
Lucifer in his study, hunched over computer, contemplating his next move. Suddenly, an instant message.

God:               U there?
Lucifer:           Hey, sup?
God:               Getting mixed signals from the third planet again.
Lucifer:           Now what?
God:               Beckfest on the DC Mall
Lucifer:           Oh, yeah.  He's one of my best - a real emo huckster....LOL
God:               I whispered "get educated"
Lucifer:           Good plan
God:               So he started his own university...WTF?    
Lucifer:           Just in time for election season.  Ain't Pride grand?
God:               UR asking for it...
Lucifer:           Hey, get jiggy with the media - he was the perfect tool.
Lucifer:           It only takes a microphone and a chalkboard and Fox News...
God:               W8 - I didn't give you that type of license.
Lucifer:           Yo, low overhead and a cut of all the dumb tees sold. Sweet!

No Time to Be a Muse

"I didn't have time to be anyone's muse... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist." --

Leonora Carrington, 1983




Now that my blog rhythm is returning, I am continuing to ease back into writing by falling back on the yahoo writer's prompts.  Sundays are Art Sundays, a chance for me to delve into the visual arts and visit inspirations new and old.

My natural medium is writing, so my natural thought patterns lean to metaphor and simile and finding the points of commonality and uncommonality between me and my subject.  To find irony or magic is a bonus.  It may be somewhat natural then that I find myself intrigued by the surrealists, the visual counterpoints steeped in symbols and meaning. 

I intended to blog on Frida Kahlo, a particular favorite female artist whose self-portraits are imaginative, colorful and above all symbolic.  Instead, I stumbled on Carrington.

Whatever Gets You Through the Night

I wrote the following in August 2006 when New Orleans was still abandoned, the citizens still relocated, the housing still debris one year after Katrina rolled through and the levees were breached. 

Now approaching the five-year anniversary, it's still difficult to gauge what has been lost forever.

In my visits to New Orleans, what impressed me most was the unique vibrancy that was completely a creation of the culture fusion of its people.

It was the 80's - my job was the victim of the Reagan-era mergermania of corporate interests, but I was offered a transfer to the new headquarters, located directly across from the Superdome.  After several trips, and tours of the neighborhoods and investigation of options for my family, I declined and parachuted out to California.  Later, when I thought of thousands trapped in the Superdome, it gave me shivers.

Gave Me the Simple Life

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.   ~~ Victoria Secunda


Another August 26, Dad's second birthday since he died in July 2009.  Still miss him, still realizing all the deep ways in which he very quietly and confidently imprinted me.  As the oldest and a girl, I wasn't always quite sure of my way for this was a time in which the role of women was starting to change.  Pre-Title 9.  He encouraged education and involvement for me and all my sibs, but there is that strange push me-pull me between dads and daughters as the quote suggests.

My dad loved me.  Of that I have no doubt.  What a gift.  The only thing I could think of as a thank-you was to give a brief eulogy during his service.  He was a master speaker in business and foremost fan of every speech I practiced for Student Council or sophomore speech classes.  Here is my eulogy; focusing on this helped to get me through your loss - thanks again Dad.

All We Hear Is ...

Although I think of myself as primarily a visual learner, I've realized in retrospect that the auditory has more subversively affected my life.  Despite a writer/reader''s love for the sight of type on white, the things I've heard have retained their effect on my thinking and my mood far more significantly; my memory box is more immediately and richly opened by music and sound.

As a child in the Bay Area, I remember a neighborhood teen and occasional babysitter, Beverly, walking by our house, a transistor radio the approximate size of an I-phone pressed to her ear.  No doubt, in those days, the sweet harmonies of doo-wop or the mellow baritone of the King were pulsing into her one ear, powered by transistors.  Rock around the clock.

I'd sit alone and watch your light

My only friend through teenage nights

And everything I had to know

I heard it on my radio

My first radio was the old-style clock radio with a rotary dial.  Now living in the Chicago burbs, I'd frantically spin the dial back and forth between WLS and WCFL hoping to create my own version of an all-Beatles all the time station.  I'd follow my favorite deejays, spinning that dial, feeling I was sharing the hip and larger cultural experience I could only imagine. A musical revolution was taking place before my ears and somehow, by just listening, I was in it.

It's Delovely - Song Saturday

Bush ManLove

From Waterbro blog
June 8, 2007

The public discourse shouldn't be about the governmental role in hetero marriages while limiting gays to "civil unions." Rather than seeking to alter the Constitution, a strict constructionist would see that civil unions should be available to all, while marriage is something private and more religious than governmental. Mexico is an example of a country where some want beach, or even underwater weddings, but they must also take the drive to an oficina where the legal aspect is addressed separately from the religious or ceremonial bonding, which may or may not be solemnified by a ceremony.


The least intrusion possible into personal lives is the proper role of government. Many people's civil unions are separate from the ceremony and religion of marriage. I have performed many marriages by the authority granted me by sending in an application for ordination taken from the classifieds section of Rolling Stone Magazine. These arrangements are legally sanctioned and valid, made so by the Universal Life Church and its tenet that government has no say over who can or cannot perform marriages.


It's pure silliness to distract voters with the "threat" of gay marriage while spending so many billions on destruction and massively irresponsible tax cuts. It's a civil rights issue that the elements of civil unions be made available to all, absent discrimination, and then if people want their pastor, rabbi, mullah or whomever to sanctify the union in a marriage ceremony, the religious aspect (if chosen) is completely separated from any inappropriate governmental role.

~~ Tim Carroll

I've reposted this Tim-blog, complete with this original and politically ironic selected picture depicting man-love, because it still makes sense.  I can't recall what was happening that moment in 2007, but it was no doubt connected to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the ever-popular wedge issue of gay rights.

Marriage in the old days was more like a transfer of chattel, a convention to pass off a woman to a man, in some traditions with the gift of livestock as dowry for the lucky groom.  "Here's your goat - where's my ring?"  There are as many definitions of marriage as there are religions and cultures. 

Well, we've come a long way baby and modern marriage in America has changed with the times. 

Art Sunday on Monday

Didn't procrastinate this time -- just so busy with work that I didn't have time to find a new artist and read up before blogging.  Day late, dollar short.....story of our lives lately?

Anyhow, I live in a small town with a growing art footprint.  Featured today are some of the many murals around town.  Nothing like a touch of paint on some bland surface to add that ambience that makes this a great place to live.

I'll discuss more about public art and specifically our engineering department's growing incorporation of design into our infrastructure - the boys on the second floor - well they've been growing their right brains and the results are quite impressive.