Blackmoor Vituperative

I am here with my cat Vixen watching the snow fall, and feeling very grateful for how my life has turned out. I am not the smartest, wisest, or most hard working person I know. And yet, here I am.

I think I have generally made good decisions, but I have also made a number of mistakes. That my mistakes have not ruined my life is … I am tempted to say miraculous, but of course that’s nonsense. Good things happen to people who are better and worse than I am, and bad things happen to people who are better and worse than I am. There’s no secret plan. No hidden hands are pulling strings. Life is just chaos. We can ameliorate it a bit, but we can’t eliminate it. We can choose whether to build a house on sand, but the snow falls on the just and the unjust alike.

I’m not sure I would even want my life to have been perfect. Some of my most entertaining memories are from times when things went wrong. I once spent 24 hours in snowstorm, trapped in a crappy little Chevy S10 pickup truck that was nearly out of gas. I started the engine for a few minutes once every couple of hours, just to keep from freezing. All I had to eat was a frozen pizza I found behind the seat. I had nothing to drink at all.

It’s not 60 days in a Chilean mine, but it’s about as life-threatening as my memories get.

I have been really phenomenally lucky, all thing considered.

I wonder about my family and my friends, sometimes. They are good people, by and large. They have made decisions, some better than mine, some worse than mine. Chance and chaos have taken their toll. I look at their lives, and I would not trade with any of them. Do they feel the same way about mine? I really hope so. I hope that despite the things that have gone wrong, that they appreciate what they have, and would keep it even if offered the chance to trade.

The snow is a couple of inches deep now. I wasn’t expecting this. It was 60 degrees yesterday (15.5 degrees Celsius).

I really hated this house when we bought it. I hated it for not being what I wanted. I wanted two basins in the master bath. I wanted a vaulted ceiling in the living room. I wanted hardwood floors. And so on. I am more materialistic than I would like. I think it’s because I grew up poor (although even then, I never truly wanted for anything — I had a safe home, and food, and clothes, and toys, and parents who loved me).

Suffering is caused by desire, or so the Buddhists say. There’s some truth in that, obviously.

I have been noticing more about the house than what it isn’t, the past few days. Being grateful for what is, rather than resenting what isn’t. I would like to do more of that.

I just noticed that the yellow flower that bloomed yesterday, the first flower I have seen here, is covered by snow. I am going to go put a plastic cup over it. Maybe it will survive.

I turned 45 this week. I had a great week. We got a new kitten, Vixen. A friend and his son came over and we grilled hot dogs and watched a Batman movie (Mystery Of The Batwoman). We had dinner with a different friend at Famous Dave’s (a rib place). Life is good.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

Spent an hour or so with Erik, one of my oldest friends, this afternoon. That’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a few weeks.

Sometimes the simple things are best. That’s what I like about this plain glass beer mug. It’s solid, sturdy, comfortable… it’s just a good, practical mug. Like the Pepsi mug, it was a gift from my mother.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

Hope everyone is safe from the hurricane and is among people who care about them.

This mug was made just for me by someone who cares about me: my sister-in-law, Danica. Danica is super artistic; she has her own photography studio. She engraved this mighty beer mug with my name and gave it to me for Christmas in 2009. (Susan received a wine glass, similarly engraved. Hers has her own name, of course.)

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

In the late 1980s, I moved to southern California. City of Orange in Orange County, to be exact. If you start at Los Angeles and drive south until you can see the horizon, you’ll be in Orange County.

Shortly after I moved out there, Susan flew out and visited me there for a week. That’s the first time we went to Disneyland together. We weren’t even really friends yet, at that time, although I’d had a crush on her in high school. By the time she went back to Virginia, all of my friends had a crush on her, too.

A year or so after I’d moved to California, my mother followed. I don’t think it’s because I lived there. She’s always been something of a rolling stone: an artist and an explorer, never satisfied with one place for too long. Very Jack Kerouac, my mother. There was a span of about six months in the late 1980s when neither of us knew the other’s address. We weren’t estranged: we just fell out of touch for a little while.

Anyway, before that, she lived down the road from me in Orange County, just behind an Arby’s on Tustin Ave. That’s where this mug came from. I admired it at the time, and years later, in the mid-1990s, she gave it to me. I don’t recall if it was for my birthday, or Christmas, or if she was just moving and didn’t want to pack it. The important thing to me is that she remembered that I’d liked it.

According to Google Maps, that Arby’s is still there.

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I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

We spent the night in Virginia Beach because we were going to our niece’s “graduation” that evening. While at a gift shop, we saw some pirate shirts. Susan bought a really cool pirate shirt in Savannah, GA years before, but it was in storage. We found the exact same pirate shirt, and some similar pirate shirts, so we each got a new pirate shirt. Then we purchased a couple of pirate mugs, because we did not have any, and we thought that would be a cool thing to have. This is one of those mugs.

The girl at the counter said, “Y’all must really like pirates,” which still makes us chuckle.

I also got a half-pound of fudge, which I am pretty sure I ate all of before be made it back home.

Nikita Lolita Chiquita Banana Maria Conchita Alonso Blackmoor
“La Femme Nikita”
1995-10-01 — 2011-08-17

Black Cat

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

— Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)

When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she confessed that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference:

Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of peoples’ reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief.

(from Ode to Billy Joe, Wikipedia)

My family is from North Carolina, and I had a cousin who committed suicide when I was seven or eight. It was the first funeral I ever attended. I remember that I had a hard time trying to keep from giggling (I didn’t think it was funny: it was nervous laughter, an involuntary response to anxiety).

This is my niece, Makayla. I think this is pretty amazing. When I was her age, I never did anything like this.

When Makayla Heintz, 11, learned the Breast and Cervical Cancer Program at Harbor Hospital diagnosed her grandmother with breast cancer, she decided she wanted to make a difference. She started a lemonade stand and raised nearly $70. At Harbor’s 1903 Society Reception, Heintz presented the profits to Harbor Hospital President Dennis Pullin. That evening, Dennis and Angela Pullin offered a special challenge — they each matched Heintz’s donation and invited others to do the same.

Heintz’s story has motivated others to give, creating Makayla’s Challenge. Donations made as part of this challenge will be used toward the purchase of a blanket warmer for the Oncology department and to set up an emergency fund for oncology patients in need. It is not too late to participate in Makayla’s Challenge by giving $70 or more. Donations are being accepted in the Philanthropy department by cash, check or credit card.

I am not sure what’s up with the Batman museum, though.

Today is my sweetie’s birthday. As a present, I converted the videotape of our wedding to DVD (something I have been meaning to do for, oh, five or six years, at least). Since it is Mother’s Day this Sunday, I made copies for our mothers, as well.

Okay, so once that was done, I had to make the graphics for the DVD and for the case liner. I have to: I am like that. I browsed the typical “wedding” images, looking for suitable images, but I had some trouble. Our wedding was pretty traditional, but the color scheme wasn’t. The bride’s wedding dress was teal and black, and the bouquet was dark red roses with babies’ breath, wrapped in black crinkly fabric. The wedding cake was black chocolate with teal cream cheese icing between the layers; the icing outside was black with white piping.

Suffice to say, the typical white flowery wedding images did not really fit.

Then I saw an image of a black rose, and I had an inspiration. My sweetheart and I were huge fans of a game called Vampire, which was published the year we were married (1991). It is the only role-playing game my sweetie has ever really liked. The game is out of print, and we haven’t played it in well over a decade, but it was a great source of joy for us in the early years of our marriage, and it still holds a special place in our hearts.

Happy birthday, sweetheart. And thanks, Mark Rein-Hagen and the rest of the White Wolf folks, wherever you are.

P.S. I just realized that I should have called this blog entry “Blood and roses”. Ah, well. It’s far from the worst mistake I have made recently.