sweetheart redux

When I was 15 years old, I awoke one morning to the vision of a tall, horned, upright creature, with huge talons, a huge erect penis, and sharp teeth dripping black saliva.  This, I knew, was what some people imagined a demon to look like.  I was so tired I didn’t care what happened to me as long as I didn’t have fully awaken, so I turned to face the wall, like que sera sera, and I just went back to sleep.   There were no unexplained wounds on my body when I woke up later that morning, and I didn’t feel any differently than I had the day before – I didn’t feel haunted or hunted or sick, so while I never forgot the visitation, I reconciled the experience to an upsetting experience that made me feel sorry for myself and scared of dying young.  Something else weird happened later that same year.  I was playing Ouija Board with two of my friends during one of our gin-and-Pepsi slumber parties.  I was not scared of the Ouija Board, because it was a mass-mar...

Here is a vastly incomplete list of a few of my fictional heroes. Housekeeping I love and try to dress like Auntie Sylvie and her niece Ruthie, from the film Housekeeping (1983), based on the 1980 Marilynne Robinson novel of the same name.  The novel should be on the reading list of every woman prone to a desire for secrets and the urge to run away.  I love the book but there's something singularly comforting about the film, mostly just seeing how great the actresses are who play these two great characters, and seeing how haphazard their clothing is -- a pretty old nineteen forties dress and big boots, and wild unruly curly hair.  these two amuse each other and themselves and would be completely happy among the friendly mice, stray cats, and pretty knicknacks of their house, content to read fantastic human interest stories from the newspapers they stockpile out loud to each other,sometimes sneaking peeks through their neighbor's windows to see what's on tv th...

"How do you think it feels/when all you can say is 'if only'?"

Nomy Lamm is a legend.  In the 1990’s when I was a fairly successful zine writer, I often became penpals with other zine writers – we seemed approachable to each other, like instant friends, so keeping in touch felt natural.  Not so when I read Nomy’s zine “I’m So Fucking Beautiful,” started in 1993.  I didn’t feel like I could just send her a letter like “so what are you into?”; I felt like she was eons ahead of me in intelligence and experience, and that I’d do better to learn from her than to try being chummy with her.  We were acquaintances when I moved to Olympia in the early 2000’s, and recently she did me the favor of letting me sell some of her zines at a friend’s table at the SF zinefest.  I’m quite happy she is letting me interview her In 2003 you recorded the album Effigy, featuring the accordion.  What led you to shift your focus from writing to music?  Have you played accordion for a long time?  I could be wrong but I...

as with the other treasure boxes I've posted so far, this one holds fun, happy and depressing memories with a couple antiques and sequins thrown in.   it's a neat old battered velvet box that is satin-lined inside: The less personal antiques I've kept in here over the years (I think I started this box during college and continued adding things to it through my early twenties) are two little notebooks; one is a giveaway pocket notebook from union-made Carhartt Master Cloth Overalls, from 1947, and a little blue daily calendar, another free giveaway, from American Surety Company, from 1943.  Someone has written their social security number in that beautiful old-fashioned cursive, but there are no engagements or anything written in the calendar.   Then there are little assorted things like write-ups pertaining to me in some way that I'd ripped out of L.A. Weekly -- these are all from when I was in high school but I think I moved them from an old  tr...

the window on the passenger side of my old car had been thoroughly shattered, but nothing valuable was missing inside, because there was nothing of value in there.  The one strange thing was that whoever it was that did this had taken my favorite compilation CD, one I’d made recently and had left on the passenger seat.  I wasn’t sure if the cops were only called when a car had been stolen or something valuable like a cd player boosted from it but my room mate said an attempted break in was worth their time so I spoke with a team of cops that came by the house and took some photos of the old car.  Later I ripped up a thick green yard waste trash bag and duct taped it to the hole left by the broken window glass.  This made me look poor, but I didn’t mind; I was young and I’d been to college and it felt good to look poor. One day a few months later I was driving down Sunset and there was a fragile, slow-moving blue Hyundai driving in the next lane, which I immediat...

This is an older treasure box, from my younger teens I think.  It's full to the brim so I won't bore you with its entire contents. Pretty handkerchiefs, a change purse made out of a shell, a pretty box from those English Pastilles candies, a glass strawberry, the usual. My favorite object from this panoply of sentimentality is a little notice in the employee's bulletin that Hudson's put out the day I was born.  My grandmother Hope worked there; it was once the largest department store in the world, and was definitely the primary shopping destination in Detroit, from 1911 to 1983.  The bulletin is dated March 17, 1979, and says "Hope Pulve of the YOung Guy Department is a happy new Grandma.  Granddaughter Robin Hope was born March 1st and weighed 8 lbs."  This is a special memento because I only met her once and was always very curious about her. As you can see, this photo focuses on my compass, a wonderful piece in my priced shell collection, an...