Bopsie Flopsie Cottontail

Bobbie Probstein, my last living grandparent, passed away this morning. 

She was a vibrant, creative, sensitive woman with a young and playful heart. I'm proud to be her granddaughter, proud to carry her blood in my body and in my heart.

Just the Ten of Us: the Probsteins, the Murpshteins and the Probelinis, 1997

Mother and Daughters, 2007

Bopsie, 2011

9 am rehearsal

The best.

Not.

Most Excellent Exotic Marigold Hotel

or whatever the title of that movie actually is.

Chels, Soph and I went and saw it at Laurelhust tonight and had a lovely time. Any movie mostly narrated by Judi Dench is bound to make me sigh, but this one was particularly lovely. I'm glad we took a moment and get a beer and go see it.

Now I'm closing up shop after prepping snacks for Sophie and I's road trip down to Ashland tomorrow. I'm lying on the floor of the living room, listening to the Far Away mix CD Beth gave us all on closing. She told me later that the two mixes were originally intended to be one for Samantha and one for me, but they ended up so fabulous that she made them both for everyone. I've been playing the one she intended for me over and over, paying attention to the words she picked for me. Maybe if it was someone else, thinking of this mix that way would be over thinking it. It's not with Beth. I know she chose what she wanted me to not only hear, but listen to.

I need to go downstairs and pack but I thought I'd give you a bit of the love Beth gave me. This song is by Nina Simone, the woman who Beth say's represents her darker side. I love the way this song switches on itself.
Having just written the sentence above, I sat and looked at it for a moment. The way I love the switch isn't exactly intellectual and I think its because that switch is so true to me. The lies in the first stanza aren't lies to me, they're cover. Natural, daily survival lies. Polite lies. Smiling lies. Cover.
I recently had someone ask me why I lie to my friends when they ask me how I'm doing and what is going on with me. She pointed out that I allow everyone to tell me their problems and I support them when they are at their lowest but am not ready to let someone do the same for me.
I feel like the first stanza of this song is what I tell the world while the second stanza is what is in my mind.

You Can Have Him (I Don't Want Him)
by Nina Simone

I don't want him you can have him
He's not worth fighting for
Besides there's plenty more where he came from
I don't want him you can have him
I'm giving him the sack
And he can go right back where he came from
I'm afraid I never loved him
Sweetie he'd be better off with you
I could never make him happy

All I ever wanted to do was
Run my fingers through his curly locks
Mend his underwear and darn his socks
Fetch his slippers and remove his shoes
Wipe his glasses when he's read the news
Rub his forehead with a gentle touch
Mornings after when he's had a little too much
Kiss him gently when he cuddles near
And give him babies one for every year

So you see that I don't want him you can have him
You can have him cos I don't want him
Because he's not the man for me
Then I'd close the window while he soundly slept
Then I'd raid the icebox where the food is kept
I'd fix the breakfast that would please him most
Eggs and coffee some apricot juice and some buttered toast
Oh oh then I'd go out and buy the papers
And when they've been read spend the balance of the day in bed

So you see that I don't want him you can have him
You can have him cos I don't want him because he's not my man
I don't want him you can have him
You can have him I don't want him
You can have him I don't want him
Cos he's not the man for me

And then there were two

A roomie left today - moved back east for a month or so.
Chels and I are watching some TV in our new woman den/garage and getting some errands/to-do list items out of the way.
It feels like the house is bigger in an odd way, with our redhead gone. I have the whole downstairs to myself and I don't think I like it.
I love our house, but it is meant to be a home for three.

Kiss My Act

We went and picked up our new garage couch this morning and I swept out the garage and tided a bit, to make it more like a living space. Now the roommates are with their boyfriends, my mom has gone to bed and I am cuddled up on the new couch, writing my performance report and watching Kiss My Act.
Kiss My Act is a 2001 made-for-TV movie that ABC Family produced, starring Scott Cohen, Cameron Manheim and Daneby Coleman. It's a re-telling of the Cyrano de Bergerac story, with two women as the woo-ers and a man as the object of affection. I love this movie and have never been able to ever find it online or on DVD. All I have is a VHS with a copy of the movie recorded from when it showed on TV, early 2000s commercials and all.
I have a VHS/DVD player in the garage and as soon as I had the TV set up, I asked my mom to send the VHS to me. I was nervous, because this is the only way I have to watch this movie and I was sure that the United States postal service would find a way to ruin this for me. But it made it. I have it here and here I am - letting Scott Cohen and Cameron Manheim break my heart.
I usually watch this movie with a full bottle of wine to myself because I always follow a pretty predictable pattern: I spend 30 min So Glad I Decided to Watch this Movie!, I usually overlap that time with a solid 1 hour and 40 min of Oh Jesus I Love Scott Cohen and then, somewhere around the hour mark, I fall into Why Did I Decide To Do This To Myself? which lasts sometimes through the whole movie but at least until the final moment when Cameron Manheim admits she loves him onstage, in front of the whole auditorium full of people, at which point I promptly burst into tears.
I always want to share this movie with my friends, but then I think it is probably best that I only ever watch Kiss My Act with my sister.

Anyway - here is to beginning those movie that slay you right around midnight.

Queen of Pentacles

Tonight my mom did tarot readings for me and my roommates. She decided to use my grandmother's deck, which my mom has since given to me. Her name is inscribed on both sides of the deck's case in red ink. We lit some candles and all three of us asked serious questions and talked seriously about the answers. She read us each a ten card spread, with an eleventh secret card: the card drawn from the bottom of the deck we've cut.
My secret card tonight was the Queen of Pentacles.
The image is of a woman lost in contemplation of a star. When I first picked up this card, I said "She looks sad," which is true. In this particular deck's artwork, the star is least adorned portion of the image. Your eye is immediately drawn to the sphere in lap, simple in it's solid yellow shape, scratched only be the five lines that create the star.

There are a myriad of interpretations and thoughts about what this cards means, symbolizes, or stands for. My mom's tarot book divides possible meanings into Key Words & Phrases, Situation and Advice, and People. The People sections reads:
"A business woman. A good organizer. A voluptous woman. A shrewd, talented, creative woman of wealth. A patron of the arts. Someone fond of the good things in life. A practical woman with business acumen. A sensible money manager. A maternal, nurturing, down-to-earth person. Someone concerned with the welfare of others. A capable woman who is both a mother and businesswoman. A steadfast, sensuous woman who enjoys luxury and has a good sense of material values. One who works hard for material success. A helpful friend. A team player. A benefactress. A philanthropist. A provider. A woman who likes to display her wealth."

As my mother read, both girls just looked at me: "... a good organizer... a patron of the arts... a maternal, nurturing, down-to-earth person..."
At the end, my mom pointed to me silently and my roommates nodded their heads.

I pulled this card out of the deck tonight, after all the readings were over. I think I want to keep the Queen of Pentacles with me for right now. I just want to look at her and figure out what she's about, what I'm about, and where those two abouts become the same thing.

Curls

"My girl: linen and curls / lips parting like a flag all unfurled"
                                                                                                 - The Decemberists


Tonight, I am going to bed with my hair wet. This usually results in the most ridiculous curls I have ever seen. (As in, I should probably be really sure that a hypothetical significant other likes me a lot before revealing to this possible mate the actual curl-ability of my unruly mane.)

The house is clean, my new reading lamp is lovely and I cannot wait for all my myriad of guests to begin arriving.

The last time I took a shower before bed, I woke up with this on top of my head.

XIII

The Sonnets to Orpheus XIII, by Ranier Maria Rilke

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among those winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be - and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.



I pulled my Stephen Mitchell translations of Rilke's work off the shelf today, because I'd been thinking about this poem. I re-read this one and Eurydice tonight. He loves that story, ol Rilke. I think he liked the idea of being one's same self, yet irrecoverably altered.Orpheus sees the woman he loves in the woman he tries to save, but she cannot come back to him. Death has changed who she is in a fundamental way. She is "forever dead"; she can both "be - and yet know" because of what death has wraught in her.

I love this poem. Sometimes I think this poem saved my life. The first stanza perfectly captures what it feels like to be locked in your own emotion, with only empty and white on all sides. To not be able to see the end of your internal winter.  And then to have the poem turn around the way it does and suddenly become a celebration of self? A broken and weeping and joyous acknowledgement that even though you are so fucking fucked up, you are also so perfect that you, by yourself, can "cancel the count" of "all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve."

When I am at my bottom rung, I have a few things I say to myself to rally.
When life is hard, I remember Shirley Keeldar from Charlotte Bronte's Shirley and how she faced the world with a man's determination and summoned her strength by the name, "Captain Keeldar."
When life is nearly impossible, I lay on my bed and try to remember to "be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang."

Your Woman

Maria and I had a conversation last night about our women: our female singer/songwriters who connect with us in a way no one else does. I am sure it comes as no surprise to anyone who reads my blog that mine is Mary Chapin Carpenter. Maria's is Joni Mitchell. Beth says her sane one is Bonnie Raitt and her dark one is Nina Simone.

What I realized yesterday is that I don't share my relationship with MCC with anyone else. I fell in love with Fall Out Boy with Tessie, Ali and I rocked out to Mumford and Sons before I turned around and shared them with Mona and Gus and John. But MCC is different. My mother and I talk about her and go to her concerts together and listen to her music together and connect through her, but when I think about MCC I don't immediately think about my mother. I think about me and Chapin, how her music has always been there for me, how she understands me in a continual and powerful way.

When I was talking about her music yesterday, I said: "I use her songs like other people use medicine; sometimes I need it and sometimes it just makes me a little bit better."

Beautifuk

When I was in high school, I salvaged a typewriter at the flea market. It was gorgeous. I cherished it. I bought new ink spools for it and promptly typed up every thought I had for a whole summer.
At one point during this summer, my mother wanted to write me a nice note so she started to type, "Olivia Murphy's life is beautiful." Instead, she hit the wrong key on the last letter and wrote, "Olivia Murphy's life is beautifuk." I have this strip of paper taped above my bed at home.

I've been thinking about the term "beautifuk" a lot recently because I'm thinking that is indeed my life right now. It's everyone's life, always. It is so. fucked. up. and so heartbreakingly beautiful at the same beautifully fucked up time. Utterly beautifuk.

After the show tonight, I had a glass of wine with Samantha and Beth and John and then us ladies walked around PICA's TBA Festival, handing out flyers for our Spectacle March. It was wonderful and I felt so full of the magic that this show is and I bought kalamata olives on my way home and now, somehow, I'm here: swirling in my negativity, listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter like I expect her to fix me. I spent separate and distinct parts of today angry, exhausted, charmed, stressed, thrilled, confused, overjoyed and hopeless. I look back at days like today and know why it is that we can't have a real word for how horrid and fabulous 23 can be.

Lost

"At first I felt lonely, tired, ... maybe a little more lost than usual, but soon I got lost in a good way, with a book, which is also to get found, and my staunchest lifelong light."

- Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required

The Grotto