wild mercury

mercury is no longer in retrograde. not all of us made it out alive.

i don't believe in astrology. yet i swear -- and may even have posted before -- that every single time a lot of crazy or just plain bad shit happens all at once, and nothing seems to get done, and i remark upon it in frustration to someone, they say, "well, mercury is in retrograde, ya know." mainly it means communication breakdown and at best rough transitions; here is an interesting summary of its effects. the planet mercury rules both my sign and that of a surprising number of people close to me. i think but am not sure that means it affects us more. in any case, this last round (which ended saturday) was straight from hell.

on sunday i read that, according to marilyn vos savant in parade magazine, every day on earth, about 150,000 people die (and 350,000 are born). funny how the scale of that statistic shrinks when one of the 150K is someone you love. that is a whole bizarre trip about which anyone who's been there knows all, and if you haven't, there's no explaining it. just be glad you don't understand, b/c you will. but as weird as it is to experience a loved one's death, there's a whole new set of weird when helping someone else through their own bizarre trip. it's like, you -- or, really, i can only say i -- almost feel like i want to go through it for them. knowing how awful it is, i want to spare them. but, duh. it doesn't work like that.

mercury in retrograde, however, is also supposed to be a time for reflection, deliberation, caution. it's no time to be trying to execute crazy ideas, or any ideas at all. that's not practical, of course: it happens for three weeks, three times a year. (next time beginning july 4 -- hide the fireworks!) now i find myself in my own sort of retrograde, trying to find time for reflection but resisting it. thinking leads to a real heavy sadness. even the war and all the usual freaky murders of the week seem distant, misty. not worth paying attention to b/c ... whatever. it'll still be there when i look in on it again. i have been thinking a lot about loss and potential. about, what is a life. and about how to help someone get on with theirs.

is this desire?

yesterday the l.a. times ran a feature on bettie page, the iconic '50s pinup. she's 82 now and quite arthritic, but still game to perpetuate the legend -- she was interviewed while slowly autographing a pile of her memorabilia, which is hotter than ever (hence, l.a. times feature). and she refused to have her face photographed, so that people can remember her as she was. she says she thinks nudity is natural and not shameful, which may be why she doesn't like the title of the new film about her: the notorious bettie page. the movie's producer explains the title was "meant ironically."

bettie guards her privacy and is a born-again christian of many years. she tells of how she made most of her outfits -- bikinis and lingerie -- which explains why they fit her so well, now that i think about it. anyway, she seems ok with it all, but two things were telling, one sad and one ironic. she and her sisters were all molested as children by their father; and bettie desperately wanted her mother's attention. she did well in school, but her mother seems to have been jealous of bettie and blamed her daughter when the woman's much-younger lover came on to the girl. then there were the klaws -- makers of the cheesecake photos/films bettie starred in. one very popular subset of bettie photos is the bondage scenarios, which she says in the article are the only ones she regrets. the klaws made her do an hour of the hog-tied, chair-bound, whip-wielding jazz in order to get paid for the other stuff she did. "but i never whipped anybody in my life," she says. "it was all pretend."

it's just an interesting portrait of a weird, ultimately symbiotic, cycle of exploitation (which is still going on -- asking an arthritic old woman to sign autographs! it takes her a whole minute to write her name). used sexually by her father, and rejected by her mother (the classic components for exhibitionist tendencies, although certainly not always the case). yet somehow maintaining a fair level of self-esteem: despite her mother's utter lack of interest in anything her daughter did, bettie valued being a good student and even tried for a scholarship. even with the modeling, she wasn't locked in a room and beaten into submission. she chose to do it b/c she could make more money than being a secretary. on the other hand, she was forced to compromise where she would have drawn the line: b/c she wanted to continue posing, the klaws compelled her to appear in scenarios she didn't really want to be in, as a condition of getting paid.

eventually bettie page got caught up in the moral posturing of her day, made to come to d.c. by sen. kefauver as a part of his investigation on pornography. the times article says she was never compelled to testify, which makes me think it was some sort of grandstanding move on the senator's part. but in any case, the klaws packed it in. by age 35, bettie was saved and living with jesus in relative obscurity.

it was interesting to catch a glimpse of her now, still being exploited in some ways, and still also willing to accept the exploitation of others in order to profit from exploiting herself. (she of course has her own web site.) that's been her life -- a life lived so long that all the old crimes and misdemeanors are just stories to tell, so long as someone is interested.


london calling

incredibly, another tidbit in the l.a. times worth noting: today's travel section had an article on affordable places to stay in popular cities, such as london. one of the places was the portobello gold, a pub in notting hill where my new pal and the doc's old one, boss goodman, is the chef. (i can't link to the reference b/c for some reason you have to be registered to view the item.) when i went to london last fall, i drank and ate at will at this wonderful spot -- boss is a prince among men; i was spoiled rotten just as if i were in my own home -- but i did not stay there, although i wish i had. and next time i will.

toxicity

i am walking poison. i am in a toxic mood. the whole world feels toxic, so why not me too? although the truth is i would be this way even if i lived in the garden of eden. especially, no doubt, if i lived there. in fact, i would probably be the serpent, slithering in to muck it all up. pssst! hey, eve. eve! over here...

i'm filled with anger and hate and despair and jealousy and resentment. the reasons are not important -- except for the ones that are. but those are the ones that everybody knows. and the other ones ... are not important.

i don't really need an excuse to feel like crap. it just so happens that i feel like crap. i am physically well enough. i am just morally and emotionally sick at heart. for selfish personal reasons as well as altruistic communal ones. except i hate all of humanity and think extinction might be the best fate for it. at the same time i hate to see people suffer. but it pisses me off when people support their own oppression. so then i think they're stupid, so they deserve to suffer. it's all very tony soprano, isn't it?

i feel extremely alone and i don't even mind. in fact, i wish i were more alone. i crave isolation like insert some bad addiction metaphor here. i can barely stand to look at people, let alone talk to them. i don't know why. some of them i love a lot. urgh. but my soul is moth-eaten. i feel walled-in like the thing. i don't want to know anything anymore. i don't want to think about anything, and i really don't want to feel anything. since that is impossible, i seethe instead.

i am chemical-bright rage on legs. i hate everything and everybody. and no one more than myself.