Oh crap.I think I'm going to learn web design.

Up on the Mountain my good buddy Ross gave me an...assignment, I guess...it was advice, actually. Once all the ideas of damage and hurt had been blown away, I was literally and figuratively, and then literally again, naked. I asked two people whom I respect immensely, incalculably, about what my next steps should be. Ross made arrow motions with his beautiful hands and directed me to focus on something for a month, write down all I know about it and then learn more about this thing for one month. I have been wandering around and trusting the process and trying to stay in my body and not be all up in my head space since I got back and then, right now, looking at some websites that are about websites that are online museums I thought: I should learn more about this website business. I should make this thing, this space carved out for me, more of a space, deeper and richer. I can also put my dreamed-of scissor museum on the the Internet and not in giant glass cases which I cannot afford. Plus, if I have a website that is more organic to me, more germane and responsive and reflective of my ethos and aesthetic, maybe then I won't have to send multi-page emails to the Glee Club Google group everyday. And endless text messages. So who know how to design websites and who understands the Internet? Let me know, you lovely you.

I direct you to deadmall.com, my new favorite waste of time. Fascinating, especially the glossary, which gives the definition of labelscar, which is that dirt and crud left from a sign or store; like when they move shelves at the grocery store? Anyway, they are 'readable'...the current archeology of dead retail spaces. But here's the best new word:

Mallmanac: A map which lists names of stores and diagrams the layout of a mall. This word is a Sniglet, which is "a word that should be in the dictionary, but isn't".

A definition within a definition! And now I have to figure out the word for the words you create from mashing together two words, like mandals, showmance, fraudience, and now...mallmanac.

My favorite part was the detailed submission regarding Toledo's Northtowne Square Mall, which I went to exactly twice, once for a discount movie and once to see my friend's boyfriend who worked at Scooter's Skate Shop. As the author charts the slow death by retail abandonment and gang infestation, he notes that among the remaining stores is "...a Deb store which, by all accounts, does terrific business." It's like Rainbow here in Chicago EXCEPT Deb's storefront is of quilted metallic plastic and neon signage. There was one at Southwyck; Southwyck is one of three dead malls in the Toledo area, and it's brown dome is pictured above.

I feel more sentimental and connected to the ebb and flow of culture when learning about dead malls then I do, say, listening to nostalgia radio--music doesn't stay fixed to a time, for me, and I didn't stay at a school or neighborhood enough to get fully immersed. But the malls of Toledo, my friends, they are my museums. Que Madonna's heartbreaking "This Used to be my Playground." Grab those bags by the plastic handles and have a fountain pop in hand. This was my childhood.

Reverse Stigmata

or

I Y LJ

I've been trying to heal the terrible wound in my heart for a very long time and I went back to the Mountain and looked into my heart and there was no wound. I mean, I looked very hard. I did a lot of naked transcendent breathing and massage in an attempt to coax it out with my mouth as bait. It was not working so I called God to come and help me look: nothing. There were goddesses, shaman, a salty rock of a poet, there was a gender fluid Child of God--these people are mystical and divine, with diamond eyes--and it's almost embarrassing, really--it turns out there is no wound.

My search for What is Wrong with Me took me on great adventures in search of poultices and tinctures and cures; I have lots of serums and can tell the kind of stories that make hurt people smile. It was good times and time well spent and worth the while it took, but now that I know I have nothing to look for, it feels as though I have nothing to search for and there is the prospect of boredom, as I am:

1) Not living in a burning house

2) Not harboring a deep and painful wound

3) Not so different from anyone else.

This is quite an adventure. It's like I was given an extra sense. You know what I said, on the Mountain, as the divinity common to us all was shown to me and moved through me?

Thank you God thank you God thank you God thank you God thank you God thank you God thank you God thank you God

I am not a house on fire

Crazy Mama set her house on fire. It burned down and killed the birds that stood in for my sister and I. I don't know if she set this fire on house on purpose on her and her pickled-puppet-boyfriend and daughter-birds, but it sure did burn. I remembered this David Wojznarowicz stencil from way back, and demanded it from the Internet. It rose to the surface of Google Images, and the flames were better than I remembered. Some art sticks with you, and you are glad for it when your mom becomes a drug-addicted arsonist.