Sweets and Girl Talk

Women are sphinxes without secrets - Oscar Wilde

Another windy day and the girls escaped from The Offasty for a brisk walk and a stop for milky Chai and 3 sweets, each one split three ways. S got key lime pie covered in thick whipped cream, A got the Aloha (thick chocolate goodie filled with coconut) and I opted for the éclair. We divided and conquered. What a little plate of heaven. As the minutes ticked by, the conversation drifted from human behavior to boys, to Sex and the City and back to boys again. It was like that episode where Miranda gets mad at the girls because they only talk about men and their lives seem to revolve around their partners. "Don't we have anything else to talk about?" she fumes. It would seem…not so much.

"And do they talk about us? Angst about us? Wonder what it means when we do some little thing?"

"No, most definitely not."

"So do we angst and suffer and mull over all these things just for our own entertainment and enjoyment?"

What a thought. Do we make up problems and issues and disturbances just to pass the time? Like that episode where Carrie makes up this whole drama with Aidan just cause she does not know how to deal with placid relationship seas. After all, a break of sweets and girl talk (involving boys) is pretty close to heaven in my book.


After much discussion, we came back around to the first episode of Season 4 when Carrie has the crappy birthday where no one comes to her dinner, she drops her cake and feels generally unloved, alone and OLD. Then the girls meet at the coffee shop and uptight-totally-man-dependent-little-Charlotte says, "Why can't we be each other's true loves?" And then Carrie meets up with Big and is not her normal psycho bitch, super-needy persona 'cause she already has 3 soul mates nailed down and men can just be that entertaining distraction that they are so darned skilled at being.

Women can discover everything except the obvious. - Oscar Wilde

DBC17, August 2005, Dizzy Dames 101


Step-by-step instructions how to transform yourself into one of the fabulous dizzy dames that we see so often in films. You don't have to be a beauty queen, just have an affinity for knitting, fast talking and stick in the mud men in glasses. Viva la dizzy dame! With a montage of our fav dizzy dames to The Go Gos, "Can't Stop the World." 76 MB, 7:8 RT


I wonder what good ol'Oscar Wilde has to say about all this? He joined us for sweets-n-girl talk and had this to offer up:

American women are pretty and charming: little oases of elegant unreasonableness in a vast desert of practical common sense.

All women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy; no man does, that is his.

Women are meant to be loved, not understood.

If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to the worst in him.

If you really want to know what a woman means, which is dangerous, always look at her but never listen.

For fascinating women, sex is a challenge; for others, it is merely a defense.

Women give to men the very gold of their lives; but they always want it back in small change.

I like men who have a future, and women who have a past.

If a man is a gentleman he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is likely to be bad for him.

Men become old, they never become good.

The world was made for men and not for women.

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, rather overestimated His ability.

A man can be happy with any woman, so long as he does not love her.

The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.

The husbands of very beautiful women usually belong to the criminal classes.

London if full of women who trust their husbands; one can always recognize them because they look so thoroughly happy.

Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; twenty years of marriage makes her look like a public building.

The only real tragedy in a woman's life is that her past is always her lover, and the future is invariably her husband.

In married life, three is company, two is none.

The proper basis for a marriage is mutual misunderstanding.

When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband; when a man marries again; it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck, men risk theirs.

Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.


- OSCAR WILDE 1854-1900

Spark and Vigor

Another early morning matinee, only this time the kids were not greeted by sheets of rain but gusts of wind and occasional bursts of sunlight. The weather wasn't sure what it wanted to do today. One moment it was hailing, the next the sun was shining happily, then light, fluttering snow followed by huge angry gusts of rain. Since I was staying late for dance class (I love being at work from 8am-9pm!!), I knew I needed to get a good, solid walk in, and preferably, get a good dose of sun while I was at it. S was out of the office for most of the day and A was covering the front desk so I waited till A was free to leave. Meanwhile, the phone rang so many times that I put it on Do Not Disturb. Sometimes a girl needs some DND to retain her fragile sanity.


We walked down to the water and discovered that we were not properly dressed at all. The wind cut through our thin spring jackets and whipped angrily at our hair. But we persevered none-the-less for the delicious taste of freedom and the great outdoors. The wind was pummeling the lake so intensely that you could see white caps from the top of Main St. At the boathouse, pockets of ice bits sloshed around the shore in a frenzy of wind gusts. I cursed myself for neglecting to bring my camera - after all, see something beautiful, must capture it, must, must, it is called OCD - does the moment even exist without evidence?). We walked along the shore and discussed work and men - but not with bitterness as A pointed out later, but with humor! And isn’t humor the key to EVERYTHING in life? Without the ability to laugh at things and take them lightly, you are really screwed when it comes to this long-lasting mortal coil.


Not ready to go back to work quite yet, we headed up to Muddys and then Mirabelles for delicious hot chocolate. As I said later to A, "It's French! Oooh la la!" and did I mention that it had real whipped cream? We sat on the City Hall steps and soaked up as much sun as the clouds would allow. Across the street was work and our small walled offices but we held out as long as was possible. When we finally returned, the walls felt a little farther off and the phone calls less painful. Fresh air and sunlight seem to fix any ailment. Oh, and the overwhelming smell of hyacinth doesn’t hurt either.

"Life and death, dreaming and wakefulness: stations for the perplexed soul. It traverses them stage by stage, taking signs and hints from things, groping about in the sea of darkness, clinging stubbornly to a hope that smilingly and mysteriously renews itself. Traveler, what are you searching for? What emotions rage in your heart? How will you govern your natural impulses and capricious thoughts? Why do you guffaw with laughter like a cavalier? Why do you shed tears like a child?"
- Naguib Mahfouz, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma

Later, we were talking about something (which escapes me now as much of the day slips away into the nebulous cave that is my crappy rotten memory) and I told S that she had "spark and vigor." It is the truth too. And every office needs some spark and vigor to bring it some goofiness and entertainment. So that is what we provide (on our good days), some bright spots in the dark, daily grind that is this waking life. And that is what The Offasty is. A little bit of the Office, a sprinkling of Dynasty, and a whole lot of spark and vigor - and voila, you have The Offasty! Watch at your own risk and do your own episodes of the Offasty!

DBC23: The Offasty, Episode 1: Burnt Toast


DBC24: The Offasty, Episode 2: Stolen Yogurt

All I Have to Do Is Dream

Last night I looked out the window and the world was draped in a thick veil of mysterious fog. If it hadn't been past midnight and if I didn't have to get up the next morning at 8am, I swear I would have been out in that fog, searching for the seams between the dimensions and listening for the ocean crashing against distant rocks. Instead, I went reluctantly to bed and was awakened to the glorious sight of early morning fog cloaking the tentative light so delicately.

The rest of the day was mad, mad, mad. It rained hard and furious and Main St was lined with bright yellow school buses letting kids off, picking kids up, pumping hot exhaust fumes into the never ending rain. We got 2,800 kids into and out of the theater despite the fact that the show ran long, the rain was merciless and everybody forgot to bring umbrellas.


And I found out that I don't know how to pronounce Leicester, much to the merriment of the volunteers. What I assumed was "LeiCHESTER" is apparently, quite simply, "LESTER." Luckily, I figured this out BEFORE I did my dismissal. Again, I threw in some Flynn trivia questions and the kids went wild trying to guess how many seats are in the theater (FYI: 1,453). The more time I spend in front of that huge audience, the more comfortable I get. Watch out Vegas, she might be taking this schtick on the road! Oh my!

Below is an email that I sent to three people in 2004 when I had recently moved back to Vermont after a decade of living in California. I was (and still am, in some respects) in the midst of culture shock, homesickness, and frequent jaunts down memory lane. Also, I was having serious difficulty making inroads in VT and laying down roots in my old home state. Additionally, I was inspired by Isak Dinesen, rainy days (daze) and dreams. Wish I had more dream time these days and some time to wander aimlessly in the fog and the rain...

**************************

DREAM EMAILS … July 2004

From: "Eva Rabbit"
To:
Subject: snooze
Date: Wed, Jul 7, 2004, 2:10 PM

m

i have been dreaming too much recently. my life is so mono-tonal and dull that it is only in my dreams that my imagination takes flight. it is so hard for me to wake up that i often can't raise my head off the pillow till noon....and this is despite the pleading whining dog begging for her morning exercise. so deep are my dreams that i am tired when i wake up, as though i had traversed great distances. so complicated are my dreams that i can't communicate in the morning. my head is all misty from the multitude of undertakings i have been participating in.

last night it was some sort of a counter espionage thing and, as is often the case, the fate of the world depended upon ME! i was planning a very careful route through some mansion into some other world where i was going to, without arousing the detection of the bad guys who were everywhere and controlled everything, somehow manage to steal some very secret papers that were somehow going to aid the resistance in their fight against evil. i couldn't understand the directions properly so another freedom fighter wrote them down for me. i managed to follow them successfully to the other world where i went about finding the special papers. i got them and was on my way through the customs booth back to the other world when something happened. was i discovered? found out? all chaos was breaking lose around me and then i realized, "it's him!" i pointed at the little shrunken, innocent head of the shrunken companion that i had thought to be my ally and yelled, "It's him!" all this time he had been a spy for the other side. the clarity of discovery washed over me. then i woke up.

it is like this almost every night. the real world is losing its flavor by comparison. not to say that it is all bad. there are some good things too. i love my cable access show and my family, pets, garden and cooking madness. but i haven't managed to meet any like minded people here yet so there is just my solitary job projecting where i drift from one imaginary world to another....not so different from my dream life i suppose. and then there are books and there is tv. i go from one story to another, never living them myself, just experiencing them vicariously.

i am trying to be positive about it, after all, at least i have this fascinating dream life, and it is better than nothing. and there are so many daily, simple pleasures to enjoy...tea in the morning, reading in the hammock, baths at night, making pancakes, frolicking with the dog......but no stories of my own making....

here is to hoping that the big apple will give me some scintillating conversation and flirting with pretty people and perhaps even a story or two of which i can be a supporting player, if not the STAR!!!!!!!! or at least let me spin a tale or two and let some listeners catch it and remember it...

i read this before dosing off last night. it is from "7 Gothic TAles" by isak dinesen. it was written in 1934 but it couldn't be anymore relevant to what i have been blabbing about. The character is an old storyteller (who happens to have his nose and ears cut off....ooch! another thing for me to be thankful for) who is bemoaning his disenfranchisement with life......

"what is life, Mira, when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent, accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playful puppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinny nags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delights and terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink ground rhino-horn?"

...........

"what is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine? You may even ask which is the more intense craving and pleasure: to drink or to make water? But in the meantime what has been done? A song has been composed, a kiss taken, a slanderer slain, a prophet begotten, a righteous judgement given, a joke made. The world drank in the old story teller Mira. He went to its head, he ran in its veins, he made it glow with warmth and color. Now I am on my way down a little; the effect has worn off. The world will soon be equally pleased to piss me out again, and I do not know but that I am pressing on a little myself. But the tales which I made - they shall last."
.............

"And in my dreams I still know fear. Things are terrible to me there. In my dream I sometimes carry with me something indefinitely dear and precious, such as I know well enough that no real things be, and there it seems to me that I must keep this thing against some dreadful danger, such as there are none in the real world. And it also seems to be that I will be struck down and annihilated if I lose it, though I know well that you are not, in the world of daytime, struck down and annihilated, whatever you lose. In my dreams the dark is filled with indescribable horrors, but there are also sometimes flights and pursuits of a heavenly delight."

that pretty much sums up my dream life of recent date, not to mention my bitter musings about the world. to drink or to piss? oh m. it does me good to think i am in some faraway person's thoughts, even if you are just staying that to be kind, it warms my frozen solid heart.

is this over dramatic? please excuse me but i exist in a dream state, come on, cut a girl some slack. tell me more about what you ate for dinner. and tell me if this world is essentially good or bad? i have a lot of time on my hands to mull over this.

xoxo eva xoxoxo


TO M IN SEATTLE
----------
From: "Eva Rabbit"
To:
Subject: something affectionate
Date: Sat, Jul 17, 2004, 2:57 PM


dear m

thanks for dashing off that lovely reply. it didn't feel at all dashed and i hope that you made it to your fiddle appointment on time. you are always spoken for these days? every moment is accounted for? yes, that drives me mad. i have hit a point in my life where i go mad if every moment is relegated. i very definitely need snooze time and space-out time and tea and paper time in the morning (mid-afternoon if you want to be exact).


my last job that took up all of my time made me angry in a strange way. i had to drive from oakland out to the presidio every day and sit at a desk for a film festival. i had to be in charge of people and hire people and be the "boss" type who makes the schedule. blech. not my thing. i began to rebel and every morning i came in a little later and then a little later still. no one had the balls to call me on it so i slowly worked my way to coming in after 11ish and then even after 1pmish. i just couldn't stand being there all day. and i took long lunches meandering through the tall grass at the pet cemetery nearby (have you been? heavenly, it's underneath the freeway that leads to the golden gate...) or sitting and soaking in the nearby ocean at Chrissy Fields. no one else took lunches ('cept to the local hip lunchy place).

no one else took walks. i couldn't get it. and the gap between me and the busy bees became too wide to ignore. i had a dream life and they had cocktail hour after work. what am i blathering about? who knows. i was glad when that job was over but i did like having nice people to work with daily...even if they drove huge SUVs and min-vans and my car was falling apart. also, i discovered at that job how to be a flake and get away with it. i basically did my job and so people just accepted my weird way of avoiding the ankle clamps and doing my own weird thing. blah blah.


the trip to nyc was nice but i couldn't help but feel a bit crazy amidst all that mad stimulation. when i was young i walked the streets of nyc with a weird confidence. i was hungry for noise and distraction and madness and chaos. i drank it up and looked for more. this time around i felt a wee bit more timid. the bustling streets made me feel lonely. the crowds made me claustrophobic. i was looking for someplace calm and cool in which to hide from the pee stench and the constant eye contact. what the hell happened to me? i'm like a scarred, bitter, once was adventuress. once was brave and now is afraid of her own shadow? well, at least i have my dreams.

yesterday at work one of the candy girls pointed to a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover of Star and said, "eugh". she had armpit hair and the cover story was about the stars imperfections./ it brought high school back to me and all the closed-minded, small town girls who abhorred the sight of anything different or bohemian...basically, everything that is me. i think i am here for reason. i'm not sure why yet but i think i have to face these teenage ghosts in order to move on.

it rained yesterday and i stood at the large windows of my movie theater, watching people get soaked as they ran the short distances from their cars to the theater entrance. the sky was dark and petulant. i could stand and watch it out those windows for hours. sometimes i do.

it was decades ago that it was me walking up to that theater and buying a ticket to "ET" and "Raiders of the Lost Arc." the hour drive from the sticks to the SHowcase was exciting like a death-defying adventure with a pot of gold at the end. i was young and deluded enough to imagine my life would one day blossom into a plot at least as interesting as what i was seeing on those screens. and now my life revolves around the screens and the screens only. but at least i have my window to the sky...and my nightly escapades through dreams...and at least i saw some sights that were above and beyond my little vermont world. unforgettable and burned onto my retina. plenty for me to mull over in these quiet moments that follow.

this babbling just goes on and on. no pressure to write me back m. take your time and think of me when you are rushing off somewhere and maybe, even allow yourself to be late!!!!! i'm telling you, if you don't make a big deal about it, neither will they! try it!

from the middle of nowheres-dreamsville,

xoxo eva xxpxp

Silent and Grey

Everyday is like Sunday
everyday is silent and grey
-The Smiths

Dark and dismal, perfect weather for a Sunday, smatterings of rain and absolutely no reason to go outside all day long. Holing up with computers, DVD burning, vlog researching, Sex and the City marathon and pancakes with the family. Sunday breakfast is just about my favorite treat all week. My family can eat so many pancakes that I don’t even get to have one until many flapjacks have been consumed and they beg for a moment to regain their appetites. That is when I get to start eating, but I love waiting, I love serving them and chatting about our weeks. We gorge on the hot buttered, fruit-rich, dense wheat delicacies and sip cup after cup of steaming hot, creamy tea. These little moments are why I came back to VT. For times spent like this.

DBC12 * January 2005 * Have You Ever Been Mellow?
Well, have you? This montage feature Eva Newton-John the Deadbeat prancing around her yard in the snow and singing the praises of being mellow. Come on, you can dig it! It's the deadbeat anthem! Kick off your shoes, close your eyes and light some incense man!

36 MB, 3:35 RT

********************

Isak Dinesen

Isak Dinesen is an amazing author and you should go out and read anything by her. It might start off slowly but stick with it because once you get through the thickness of her writing, her stories will swallow you up. Below are some quotes that I pockmarked in my book. The first quote seems to explain the act of blogging perfectly.

"How mysterious and difficult it is to live, he thought, and what does it all mean? Why does my life seem to me so terribly important, more important than anything that has ever happened? Perhaps in a hundred years people will be reading about me, and about my sadness tonight, and think it only entertaining, if even that."
- Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

"While we are young, the idea of death or failure is intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear. But we have also an unconquerable faith in our own stars, and in the impossibility of anything venturing to go against us. As we grow old we slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and that failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mind what happens to us one way or the other. In this way a balance is obtained."
- Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

"The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, and are up against a force majeure. Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman, one flower, and make it everlasting. It is all wrong, he thought, to imagine paradise as a never-changing state of bliss. It will probably, on the contrary, turn out to be, in the true spirit of God, an incessant up and down, a whirlpool of change. Only you may yourself, by that time, have become one with God, and have taken to liking it."
- Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

Saturday Sun Soaking

Finally, a day of nothingness. But it is funny how when you get what you want, sometimes it can freak you out, for a second at least. After weeks of rushing, finally, I was going to be all alone to let my mind drift. A Saturday so no 9 to 5 doldrums, Margot going to Montpelier for the day, Mom busy elsewhere, Tanner off to work - just me and my thoughts. But as they all left and the door continued opening and shutting, a little pit opened up inside me. "Oh no! Don’t go! Don’t leave me all alone with just my thoughts!? They'll eat me alive without daily chatter and chit chat to cloud them!"

It is like you have been running, top speed with burning lungs, teary eyes and you want to slow down, you know you should, so you pull up quick and start to topple over, over, until you fall off into nothingness and suddenly, there is no longer ground beneath your feet and you just freefall for a bit. And then eventually you settle down and accept the freefall feeling and...slowly, surely...you find your footing.
That was today for me. And once I was truly alone to sip coffee and skim the New Yorker, a lightness settled over my chattering brain. Time to lie in a patch of errant sun, gaze out the window at the barren yellow yard and enter out into the wilderness to soak up as many rays as was possible. I walked across the greenish hills pumping ipod tunes. They were all just right, an instrumental, meditative piano piece from the Diva soundtrack, Sinatra singing "You'll Never Walk Alone:"

When you walk through a storm,
hold your head up high,
and don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm,
is the golden sky,
and the sweet silver song of the lark.
Walk on through the wind,
walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown,
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone,
you'll never walk alone.

And then some random songs: The Cars, Garbage, Simon and Garfunkel, T-Rex, Bernstein, Portishead, The Passion soundtrack - damn, I love ipod shuffle.

I found a spot and sat down under a tree, gazing up at the sun and soaking up as much as I could. The empty field and the crows flying overhead helped quiet the chattering monkey down to a dull hum - like a brook gurgling off in the distance. The sun reflected off the crow's oily black wings as it swooped overhead and I closed my eyes and drifted past the green patch of nothingness and into the perfect blue sky where all was right in the world.
The problem is, once you switch gears back to deadbeat nothingness mode, it is hard to come back - back to the land of the chattering monkeys where the conversation comes hard and fast and never lets up, not even to let you breath. And this is why I am so GOOD at being unemployed. Yes, the nothingness can be a little overwhelming and intimidating at times, but ultimately, it is the quiet open spaces where I feel most safe. This is why I came back to VT. I left CA because it was too cluttered, too full of cement and speeding and ideas spinning out of control. I came back to quiet the inner monkey, it hasn’t worked yet, and I still long for CA's sun.

I used to get my down time up at this swimming pool called Strawberry Canyon in Berkeley, CA. It was up in the middle of UCB's campus, across from the stadium and down the hill from the science museum and the top secret Lawrence Berkeley labs where they made bombs or something. I used to walk up to the pool when I was 19 and had just moved to CA, into a frat neighborhood.
We would lie underneath the thick grove of oh so green trees that surrounded the pool and just sink off into a sunlight nothingness with sparkling water gurgling in the distance. Years later, I used to go swim laps at the pool when I lived on Spruce St in North Berkeley. I would ride my bike up every there day and swim back and forth in the adult lap lanes. I wore flippers to get extra speed and when I came out after many mermaid minutes of breast strokes, the crawl and the backstroke, my fingers would be all puckered and water kissed. Then I would collapse onto a nearby towel and listen to my headphones as the trees wove back and forth in the warm summer breeze. Later, I'd ride down to Euclid Ave and grab a taco on my way home. This little activity kept me sane.

I sometimes think about Strawberry Canyon when I am soaking in the winter sun in VT. Leaning against the bright sunny window in the hallway down by the bathrooms at work, my forehead pressed as close as it will go, soaking, soaking, pretending those sun spots are behind my eyelids in Berkeley California. I let my mind drift and dream that when I open my eyes, I'll be wearing a bikini and facing a glistening pool at Strawberry Canyon. But no, when I open up, I see the staff parking lot and, far off in the distance, a little sliver of Lake Champlain and the green mountains beyond that. Well, at least it is sun!

And I will be back in that same work window sun spot Monday morning while my chattering monkey brain reminds me about that great time I had this weekend walking all alone and soaking up all that sun and all those CA memories. And I will continue to try and snatch up bits of nothingness every chance I get...

DBC21 * The California Show * Enjoy this montage of CA dreaming and VT Fall walking...

Chattering Deadbeat Monkey Brains

Maria de Madeiros playing Anais Nin in Henry and June.

Dreams are necessary to life.
-ANAIS NIN

Sometimes my head gets real full. I go blindly from one activity to another, never stopping for a break, a breath of fresh air. Filling my mind and my body with constant thoughts, to do lists, mental notes - frantically hurrying from errand to appointment to work and back home again. Chopping dinner, clacking away at my computers, paying bills, returning phone calls, trying to make sense when I talk, choosing which lettuce to buy, carefully composing emails, trying desperately to stay on top of this quickly sinking ship. Life becomes an endless stream of noises: ringing alarm clocks, telephones, beeping microwaves, whistling tea kettles, computer error sounds, the car radio, the ipod, the tube, car honks, sloooowly ticking clocks and the non-stop caffeine-fueled chattering inner dialogue going on in my head all day long. And through it all, this blur, this whirl of life and constant motion - what I miss most is the emptiness. The down time, the moments when I have nothing to do and nowhere to go and nothing to concentrate on. Those moments are so rare these days.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.
- ALICE MUNRO

I recently realized that I have spent most of my life alone. Probably a much higher percentage than most "normal" people who are quite content to fill their chattering monkey brains with work, home and tv without longing for dead time. The hours upon hours I have spent alone walking, soaking up sun, thinking, spacing out, reading, staring into space, doodling, planning, daydreaming. This is time I depend on, time I subsist on. Time that feeds my daily life and inspires my dreams.

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.
-EMILY BRONTE

But this stupid frenetic work world we live in. These ridiculous busy lives we lead, these jobs that take over our lives and our paranoid fear of being alone or inactive. Ridiculous. It is the empty spaces that I crave. Writer Alice Munro once said that her most productive, inspiring time of day was drinking coffee in the morning and staring out the window. Damn! It has been months since I stared out the window...well, there were those 5 minutes one week ago while I was cramming cereal my gullet, rushing off to work late, as usual.

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
-EMILY BRONTE

More than anything these days, I relish the emptiness. The time alone in my bath to empty my brain and release my thoughts, those few moments in dance class when I am concentrating so hard on getting the right steps that my brain unplugs. Watching the squirrel in the backyard tunnel through the snow and munch on the left overs beneath the bird feeder. Soaking up the sun in the brightest spot at work, getting odd stares from office workers while I glue myself to the warm window in the hall by the bathroom. Those empty moments are like gold to me. the moments in between, the moments my creative brain is most active.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.
-ANAIS NIN

My old hippy yoga teacher used to tell us to quiet our chattering monkey brains. But when you are always flying from one thing to another, how do you make your inner monkey SHUT the hell UP? Let's see what some other deadbeat loner heroes, internal-minded artistic crazy types have to say about this chattering monkey mess:

DBC7 * Tortured Artists 101 * Wanna learn how to be a whacko, loner tortured artist? Sure, we all do? Here are some easy steps to help you along your way to suicide, the nut house or a slow anonymous death! And to top this exercise off, a GNR tortured artist montage to see what you've learned!

Judy Davis playing George Sand in Impromptu.