A Candle and All Hallow's Eve

Last night I participated in an old Irish custom I've read about in books.

When I was but a child, my mother's friend gave me a book for my birthday called Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts by Edna Barth. I've always had an affinity for Halloween and the change of seasons, which in Los Angeles happens in very subtle ways, and I was delighted to read the book.

Barth's book was written at a child's level to help children understand the meaning of Halloween and the origins that spawned the Halloween symbols of carved pumpkins, ghosts, witches, owls and cats.

Barth writes, "There was nothing make-believe about the fears of the Scotch, Irish and English on this same evening [October 31st] years ago. This was the night when ghosts, the spirits or disembodied souls of the dead, were thought to return to their former homes, looking for warmth and cheer.....Throughout Gaul and Britain, huge Samhain fires lighted the skies above hilltops. Their bright flames were meant to guide kindly ghosts on their journeys home and frighten evil ones away."

In Lisa Carey's novel In the Country of the Young, Oisin MacDara is a moody, lonely, solitary artist who, as a child, had the gift of "second sight" where he was able to see spirits that lived alongside the living. After his twin sister's suicide, he loses the sight and wishes every day to regain it. The book jacket reads, "Then on a quiet All Hallow's Eve, a restless spirit is beckoned into his [Oisin's] home by a candle flickering in the window: the ghost of the girl whose brief life ended on Tiranogue's shore more than a century earlier. In Oisin's house she seeks comfort and warmth, and a chance at the life that was denied her so long ago."

In the vain hope and mostly superstition, but also as a link to my Celtic ancestors, I lit a candle in my window, last night on October 31, as a way to welcome my aunt and uncle home, wherever they may be.

I should blog about.......

Why don't you blog about natural cosmetics and lotions? Why don't you blog about politics? You're a good writer, why don't you blog about art or landscape design or eco-friendly technologies?

These are the things I hear from parents and friends. While I thank them for the kind words and for nudging me along in my writing journey, it's not so easy for me to just start blogging. SilverTonguedLass started out as a very personal online diary; a place where I could write about me and my life with little regard to anyone else reading it. Sure, I figured close friends would read it, and between trans-continental phone calls, it was a way for them to see how I was doing and what I was up to. But mainly, this blog was also a way for me to keep my writing skills sharpened. I was the only editor and these blog entries were up to my discretion; no word count limits; no one editing me or rejecting my pitches. I could write about anything I wanted.

But somewhere, I started wanting to get my name out there. I wanted to write a blog. Amelia has been writing about all things vintage, with a specific bent on vintage clothing, for three months to my three years, and her blog theimportanceofbeingvintage.blogspot.com has already had over 3000 page views. Sure, she's writing about a much broader, and more interesting topic than myself, but I still grow jealous at the thought. Jealous, perhaps also because she's wildly talented as a writer, one more talent to her arsenal. I always thought writing well and engaging pieces was my special talent. Now, I feel often like a jane-of-all-trades and master of none.

Amidst thousands and thousands of blogs written by "writers", I want to be the real deal. I want my blog posts in this digital age to lead somewhere. I dream of a novel or a book. A deal. A web content job. A way to freelance and travel this wide open country the way I want to. Even if it's to learn that road tripping and lonesome wandering isn't as romantic as I think it is. Maybe I won't road trip or travel, but entertaining the idea and a growing savings account are dreams as well.

My issue is that I find too many things exciting and important. I love art and design, whether it's a poster or a well designed landscape. I think solar panels and rain water storage barrels are great technologies that I hope will allow us to use energy efficiently enough to help humans as a species survive into the next century. I love Burts Bees and other lotion/ cosmetics companies that make paraben, pthalate, and petroleum free products and do so using plastic free packaging.

Successful blogs, however, come from one direction, are updated regularly, and discuss one particular topic. My skills and interests have always been scattered, so coming up with an umbrella topic where I can discuss drought-tolerant gardening, efficient, sustainable technological advances, favorite food and alternative country music records in a cohesive way is quite difficult.

Should anyone have any ideas as to how to accomplish this or to narrow things down, please let me know by commenting to this post.

Competition

One of the senior privileges at my alma mater was that seniors got to choose a favorite quote that would stand as a personal motto of sorts, listed under their senior photo in the yearbook. One of my best friends listed this as her quote:

"In the end, the only person you're competing with is yourself."

I view myself this way, or rather, that I compete with this version of myself that I think I should be; the version of myself that took risks, that was rougher and meaner around the edges. There's a part of me that wishes I could flirt easily, pick up good looking men, laugh with them, bed them and then leave them quietly sleeping in the morning. I wish my heart was colder, more detached.  I compete with the version of myself that lives independently, even if it were in a dump in east-shit hook, because it seems wussy that I live with my parents now. There's a part of me that wishes I could jump on a bike or a car with nothing but the money in my checking account and take off the way Kerouac did in the forties. The life that I see one particular person living, with all the calamity of a burning fire; and yet, I don't even know if that's in my head, my skewed perception of his life, or if it's an accurate reading on someone I never knew very well. Something I've learned from my father is that the grass isn't always greener on the other side; sometimes, dare I say it, often times, the grass isn't greener. It just looks that way.

I'm only competing with myself because I only have my life to live with. No matter how close you are to a person, you can never know all the difficulties, the worries and anxieties, the ups and downs and the obstacles of someone else's life.  Life is happening now and I choose to put my life in a particular direction every day, the way I put my feet on the hardwood floorboards when I get up in the morning. I really choose the life I want every day, every second of every day; some seconds I'm happy and some seconds I'm not. But I choose the life I want, and I think it's one of which I can be reasonably proud. There's something profound in knowing that I'm only competing with myself and no one else.

The truth is, that I may want to jump on that bike or in that car, but I don't want it enough. Why does that pseudo dream keep rubbing me the wrong way? I don't know. But, I think that's me. Perpetually torn in two different directions.

 I'm only competing with myself, so either way, I'm bound to win.

 For anyone wondering what my senior quote was, here it is:

"And I heard that highway whisper and sigh, are you ready to fly?"---Jackson Browne.

Prophetic, no? Even when I was 17, I knew that road was talking to me in ways I didn't even know. 

The Fabulous Fuoco Siblings

It seems like I have been grieving for longer than I can remember; grieving over illness, over loss, and now, death. In the last two months, I have lost two relatives I was exceptionally close to. My aunt and my uncle have passed into the infinite, into the space between spaces and are, at the least, together.

Some people believe that the afterlife is a manifestation of what we want here on earth. I like to think that's true. Like the things and places we loved most, the people we were closest to, are the things we experience when we are no longer restrained in our bodies.

So here are where Joe and Linda are now.

A world traveler, my aunt loved the tropics, so right now, she's chilling on the shores of Belize or the Bahamas, a pina colada in her hand, a book in her lap. She's making friends with everyone, in the way that she did, inviting them into conversation in the easiest way.

My uncle is young again, and back in playing form. He's swinging away on the Pebble Beach links and after his game, he will kick back with a glass of single malt scotch. Family and laughter were so important to these siblings, so they'll do what they did here: they will meet for martinis, play marathon canasta games, where they will discuss family, friends and everything else. And they will do what the Fuocos do best; gossip,  love, laugh, joke, and laugh some more.

Shot tastebuds

My taste buds are shot. For food. For people. At the behest of some of my friends who have had good experiences using online dating sites, I decided to actually use a paid service.

I sift through hundreds of photos and find that no one, or VERY few people are attractive to me. It isn't that they're bad looking, they just don't pop from the page, they don't make me thrill, or jump or get the butterflies. And alas, here is my problem.

I'm pretty, smart and a good person, but guys aren't lining up to date me. I want to get out there and enjoy different people and say that I dated, so when the right one comes around, I know it. I can look back and say I really did date and have fun in my twenties, I'm not just settling on what's come into my life.

My friends say that I'm being too hard on people, that I can't just judge a person by their picture. That I should give someone more than a first date to see if they spark me. But I've never had to give anyone more than a first date, an initial meeting, to know that in the past. Chemistry happens, it grows with a mind of its own and comes when it does, usually the second I see that person or talk to them, or know that they like me. That's what's great about sexual chemistry; it just happens, there is no premeditation, no thinking about it, no trying.

But I can't even muster the energy or the interest to just date, because for me, I've always had to be attracted to someone in order to date them. That's the problem. I don't get attracted very often, so I've already self-selected myself down to a few people, and more likely than not, those people don't feel the same way for me as I do for them.
 
So, I'm kind of fucked and the grief I've lived through in the last few months has numbed my ability to taste people or food, although I'm more hungry now than at the start of this year. I'm actually dying for a taste. I dream about tastes, and I'm numbed to it in real life.

Leaping from a ledge

And this is what it feels like to take a flying leap off a ledge....I've always been paralyzed by fear, and the need to make it go away leads me to be a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush kind of a person. So, it's very scary to know that someone I loved at one point is engaged. That's it. No going back now.

I sit here, clearly upset about this. If he's happy, then great, but it still leaves me with a question mark on the future. Like.....where's my partner? Do I have one? I was the one that broke up with him, not because I didn't love him, but because we weren't the right fit and I loved him so deeply I was always afraid of hurting or stringing him along, so I ended it. I let him go for good reasons. And I've been rewarded with loneliness, a thing I avoid at most costs, with the exception of co-dependence.

I keep telling myself that I will not be with someone simply because I'm afraid of being alone. Although an empty bed is starting to wear on me in ways I couldn't previously imagine. In fact, I've really been drowning in grief, barely treading the water. I've always been a person to take into account that life is full of suffering, and I'd like to form a partnership with someone, so we can hold one another's hands when the chips are down. There's a great piece of a dialog from an otherwise mediocre movie that is In Good Company; something to the effect of one character asking another how they knew who the right soul mate was. The older character says, you know, life is hard, you just grab who you think is a good partner, get in the foxhole together. That's kind of the way I've envisioned it too.

So here's my leap. I ended it knowing this could happen, knowing he probably would move on permanently with someone else. My leap of faith is the fact that there's no guarantee there's someone else out there. Man, I hope there is. I really do. But I have the cold piece of comfort to know that I made the right choice for both of us.
 

Cigarettes

What is it about cigarettes that are still so fascinating? Especially in light of decades of empirical non-partisan research that shows smoking causes many types of cancers in the human body.

I ask the question for many reasons; I've been watching the brilliant television series Saving Grace and Californication which both feature self-destructive characters that smoke like chimneys. The characters' love of cigarettes, promiscuous sex and heavy drinking are all signs of self-destruction, but I beg the question: why is self destruction so sexy?

It's not of course. I've seen too many family members die from complications from smoking to know that there's really nothing sexy to it. It's disgusting really; inhaling vapor death. Yes, all people die, but since I've witnessed cancer and complications from smoking firsthand, I can honestly tell other people, that cancer is not a good way to go. No way really is, and few are lucky enough to die in their sleep, but cancer is sickening pain; sick cells replicating themselves and spreading, attacking the inside of the body until nothing but pain is left.

Why is self-destruction sexy? Maybe it's because it's such an intense, passionate emotion. Maybe self destruction is the beginning phase to creating someone better; the way the phoenix has to explode into painful fire and die down to ashes in order to return strong. Or maybe it's because the phoenix only shows its most magnificent feathers seconds before it incinerates itself. Either way, the beauty comes at a price.