all you need is a gorilla and a dream

"Mule Skinner Blues" is a Clive Barker Sundance film - an homage to Beanie Andrew and his trailer park cohorts, all performance artists and dreamers. Odds are, not one of these folks read "The Artist's Way," nor do they ascribe to creative visualization in the meditative sense. What they do is live their art. They perform, they suffer, they believe. The action is documented in a Jacksonville, Florida trailer park - the dream is making a film with the unlikely plot line of Beanie rising "from beneath the murky swamps behind the local junkyard in a blue ape suit" in search of hs severed arm. Miss Jeannie's "DUI Blues" threads its way into the storyline, as well as the tribulations of trailer troubadours and their amours. The point: Just Do It.

"The darkness moves through us in ursine shivers..."

- taken from Vizenor's "St Louis Bearhunt" - and so these winter days shadow us within our ursine memories. Yesterday the snow fell in fat light flakes, as if we were in a snowglobe. This morning dawns cold and bright and brittle light frosts the Ponderosa pines. Yesterday, bearlike, I kept to my den, comfortable with book and tea; today I must go forth into the bright light and secure provisions.

Alas! I tried in vain to find a fleur de lis to adorn my page - Who Dat? The Saints triumphed and all was well with the world. I was so excited I required a stiff shot of Jameson's to calm down. Back to winter for the northern Who Dat Nation.

What is it in the human psyche (assuming that everything else has a psyche and is not subject to this idiotsynchrosy) that causes us to focus on what we have not done, our endless list of sins of omission? Measuring our misfortune by our flaws. The mental flagellation that we apparently so require - unlike Pope John Paul II, I do not scourge myself with my belt, but with my infernal list of Things to Do. At the end of the week, I tote up Things Not Done. Things accomplished are soon forgotten; things not completed are highlighted with my hot pink highlighter. In an effort to mitigate this unfortunate tendency, I am not going to list herein either the things I did get done, nor the ones un-done. But, being the good Catholic Midwestern girl I am, I will not abandon my list, either. I tried that, and couldn't seem to remember to tie my shoes without a List of Things to Do. I'm considering losing the hot pink highlighter, though. Well, it's Saturday morning, and I'm off to finish up the week's list. If I can find it. I will proceed with precarious optimism.

Mea Culpa