From the Womb of the Cinema

I love going to movies. Usually, I come out into the light shaken.

When I go with somebody, and that somebody is intent on hearing my opinion about the film we’ve just seen, he typically ends up disappointed and/or annoyed. I am so shaken that I can’t speak.

To me, the question “So, what did you think? [pregnant silence]” sounds like “So, how was your meditation? [pregnant silence]”

Some things are for talking, and some things are for shouting. For laughing, crying, dancing and touching. And looking. For the gift giving of self-expression that can be communicated somehow, despite the limitation of words wrongfully stuck in the wrong places of the stomach, through magic of temporary truths.

I don’t know how to talk about movies. They are all about me.

Throwing hammers / Bloody ice-cream

Throw the sun in a cage.
Lock it.
Drop the drool on a wall.
Lick it.

Slide the fader a notch
Down,
Eat your ice-cream in red,
Clown!

All my gifts in my hands -
Needing,
Like a burn – or a bird,
Bleeding.

It’s alright, lose the fight,
Pout.
It’s my sun in the gun.
Out!

Baptism for cuteness

It was my grandma. She was a strong woman with a huge soul of a soldier and an addiction towards stoicism. I loved her, sometimes hated her, but loved her loved her loved her. She was my big mountain. She taught me to stand proud in the face of whatever came at me. She taught me to work hard and be alone and eat up the hurt. She was my link to the outside world, she was my instructor, my protector, my disinformer.

I was on the train the other day thinking about my whys and wheres and it suddenly dawned on me: all my life I was carrying her pain, without questioning the source of it.

It was so much fun to let it go. I don’t know who I am anymore (again!) but I am definitely more of me and that’s glamorous.

…Over the weekend I attended a media training seminar by one of my favorite people (the web site does not even remotely reflect how cool he is). I had an epitome – it turns out, ever since my teen years I have been avoiding direct language.

I was very much straight-in-your-face as a kid but then there was a boy. I was 15 and he had dark curly hair. He was hung up on metaphors, I loved him, we spent hours on the phone dancing around words, and I volunteered away my eloquence for the sake of being closer to his mind. Being a woman is a slippery path.

And yes I did sit down and catalogue all my past lovers (the memorable ones anyway). I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, so I did a little bit of both.

Cruel people, funny people,  I forgive you all. Yes, a lot of you sucked. Some of you were brutal. Most of you paid me back in one-of-a-kind units of art.

I sucked at filtering, caution and holding on to the whip.  But you are there, and I am here, and it’s beautiful. So….those of you who have been hanging out in the “unforgiven” bag till this moment, time for you to go. I need room for new things, and I hope to be a better me.  God help me. And I swear, there must be people still alive whose blood is as hot as mine. I read about them all the time.

P.S. Yes and I despise “girl-power”, it’s a bunch of shouting. Too many women in one place scares me unless they are lesbians or elders. This is strictly my diary. Besides, I am writing a book – this is a part of my thought process.

Banter, charts and happy new year (newsletter)

Happy New Year!!!!! Hope it’s working out nicely so far.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a poem. The poem was about the impossibility of describing the sensation of beauty and perfection precisely.

Before posting it, I re-read it one last time and realized that it sounded like an intricate allusion to a vibrator. I laughed, sent the poem to a couple of friends for verification – and they confirmed. I stopped laughing. I really meant something else but I guess I proved my point. So I  sat on it for a while till it felt okay to post, with a disclaimer.

Funny, I think I opened a can of worms when I started my“Thank You For Your Sex” (TM) web site. Ever since I started that site, the dialogues I get involved in, have changed. You know how when you do things, there is an inner observer who is looking at everything you do, with a smirk, and making clever comments intermixed with inspirational shouts? Well my observer is having a lot of fun with me.

Anyway, I am still #2 for New York on Reverb Nation’s pop chart (and #1 is Madonna). So I guess I am cool.

This year should be good, I will start touring again with a new program (finally!) – so if you want me in your city (village, at your farm), gimme a shout.

The notorious poem that does NOT allude to a vibrator (really)

I am an undercover tsunami

Under the cover of creme-brulee

Tough luck

My softness is violent

Like a helpless elephant with a moon of hearts

A blazing magical wand

Is attached to my pillows on the inside

It’s buzzing

It’s talking to me every day

And at night even louder

But I only show the tsunami

Cushioned by waiting

fuck

An extension of the FB post – LaVey, etc.

(It really belongs on Facebook but Facebook doesn’t allow me to type as many symbols)

But what really excites me is that, okay, a cult is a cult is a cult. It’s a social institution where those who know, know, and those who are not very smart, or needy at the moment, follow. I actually quite admire the ideology, and the fact that LaVey is revealing his own secrets so that only the dumb will not see it. The man is pure genius. (On a side note – the intro to “Satanic Mass” resembles a popular Russian folk song, I just can’t get this fact out of my head).

But – what really excites me is applying the same principles to early Christianity, because now we have an ideology that influences millions of people, but at some point of time it was just a little movement! So having the hindsight and an example of something in the early stages of development is pure art. Feels so good, art.

And speaking of followers. When I was 18, my best friend and I were in mad puppy love with the same guy. The guy was 20, and had two role models: Henry Miller and Jim Morrison. I  certainly landed the right guy!  So eventually, after I dumped him, she started dating him. One time, she called me all pissed and said: “Oh, now he is hanging out with this chick, a pagan. Pagan my ass, just a regular whore!”. I thought it was a brilliant quote, from the literary perspective.

So whenever I think of modern pagans, I think of this line (although I think being pagan is significantly healthier than being many other things – as long as you use your own mind and don’t just repeat somebody else’s mantra).

It all started with washing a cucumber

And so I washed a cucumber.

In my head, I twittered: “For the first time in my life, I realized that washing a cucumber can be an erotic experience”.

In my head, I got half a million  comments savoring the idea in a funny way, because it’s a fun subject – a girl washing a seedless cucumber.

For two or three seconds, I became very much intrigued by the notion of sensory reality vs. symbolic reality. Just how did the contemporary Western culture separate sex as talk-object from sex as…well, sex?

Example (I will stay with the culinary arts): a bit earlier today I was making muffins (no, it’s not the punch line). I accidentally poured oat bran on top of the kitchen processor, and the way the particles were moving around, pushing each other, jumping and shaking, was very sexual. Yes, you may say that I am that person from the joke,  perhaps I am. But that doesn’t change the way the particles were dancing. There was nothing lewd about it, nothing to make dirty jokes about, it was pure divine precision. So I am saying…

I don’t even know why I am getting annoyed with social cliches that have to do with anything sex, I just am.

P.S. The muffins turned out yummy.

Old hippie flat in Moscow

This is the person who used to jokingly chase me around an old Moscow apartment when I was in my teens. Back then, he didn’t wear hats. He studied circus, and took delight in mocking my treasure – a thick red English-Tibetan dictionary.^*

[via here]

The apartment was inhabited by several liberal-minded individuals including the owner of the place, Ded (the person in the picture), me and a couple roaming passers-by. The owner was a talented youth of aristocratic descent. He had huge tropical roaches for pets and cans of ancient apricot spread in the closet.

The apricots dated back to the sixties. One day I was alone at home and had some. When I found out the age of this thing I almost fainted but it was too late. It probably explains the rest of my life.

^*I thought Ded was breathtakingly beautiful, but I didn’t dwell on it – for all practical purposes I was green and didn’t qualify. One day he invited a real grown-up girl over, and when she walked in, she was so shiny and fragile, the air was trembling. I thought, wow.

Anti-gay legislation in Uganda and why?

First of all, don’t ask me why I am reading up on homophobic legislation in Uganda. Second of all, I have not spent days at the library studying the subject, somebody sent me a link, I clicked, and voila, I sinned blogged.

So disclaimer: this is an impulsive post and not a dissertation in anthropology.

But when I first saw the article, I was mighty surprised – for all I know about traditional African religions, there is nothing there against gay people.

And then I checked:

Only 1% of Uganda’s population follow traditional religions. More than 50% of Uganda is Christian.

Ah, now I understand.

Another blog by David Shankbone

http://blog.shankbone.org/2009/11/18/orhan-pamuk-discusses-his-new-book-about-love/

Wow things like that make me an admirer. David, for one, is great – I am a big fan of his writing. But the subject of the blog post, too.

Today, in the West, it is really hard to focus on the big word, “art”. Rotting in the underground is not pleasant, and those who cheer for it, are lying – there is no honor in it at all. And social pressure is high, and monetization is god. Oh there is no intrinsic conflict between art and money, not one drop of conflict – but there is no respect for art per se once you grow up just enough to feed yourself. In some societies it’s different, in ours it’s what it is, just a fact, not good, not bad. Every single one of us has contributed to the world as it is. Me too. Heros are on the couch collecting eye balls.

But when someone remembers the roots, stands up for his or her truth despite the dangers or criticism, one becomes immortal. God, it is so easy to do a short run, to carry the torch, to risk everything – it is so much harder to carry on and comply and remain immortal in a sneaky beautiful world of real life and real trade.