"As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are equal.  We now practically read it, '...all men are created equal except the negroes.'  Soon, it will read, '...all men are created equal except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.'  When it comes to this I should prefer immigration to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty, to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

~Abe Lincoln

I wonder what Abe would say, if he'd known that almost 150 years after the north won the war, that all STILL wouldn't mean all, and that human rights are today still withheld from many Americans to be viewed as privileges rather than as rights?

I'm pretty sure he would be beside himself with shame that we are still a nation of hypocrites, pretending to love liberty and equality.

WE ALL have a human right to self-determination and pursuing happiness.  

NO ONE has a right to deny anyone else their civil rights because of how they live their life.

To do this is AGAINST the United States Constitution.

ALL, means ALL.

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better place than we found it, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one breathed easier because you lived.  This is to have succeeded."

~Walt Whitman

Someday I want to have a big yard with lots of vegetable, herb and flower gardens spilling bright colors everywhere you see, berry bushes, apple trees, a bird bath and bird feeders, and a lilly pond with Koi fish and cattails, and I will spend hours here. 

This is the most beautiful thing I have seen today.

I checked out my stats and found out that people from 10 different countries have viewed this blog.  Kinda crazy.  Who ARE all you people and how did you find this silly blog of music and emotions of mine?? haha!  If you visit this page and are not from the U.S., let me know you were here cuz I'm a curious creature =)


my email address is: neverthelessilive@yahoo.com.  Say hi, or hola or bonjour or whatever it is you say..

Lillian likes movies, and she likes a front row seat.

Jenna Skyy did this same performance at The Rose Room last night and it basically melted me. I was so overcome with emotion I had to resist the urge to run up and hug her.

I don't like this night. Nope.  I have to be up early in the morning for an ultrasound so it would be great if I could get some rest, but there's a loud thunder storm, and all I can think about is the dream that woke me up last night.  It stirred up all these horrible feelings I used to feel all the time when an evil man wormed his way like a serpent into my mother's life and turned our lives into a daily nightmare.  I feel like I've been slimed by some voodoo shit with all his messing around with dark powers.  I feel threatened by someone I haven't seen in years, yet I'm sitting here all alone in my own space, with the doors locked.  I really wish I didn't have to sleep alone tonight.  I'm going to find the happiest most light-hearted movie I can, like Milo and Otis or some silly cartoon, and play it on repeat with a light on, until I can fall to sleep.

Joe Schmuck

I've been having another season of bad dreams.  They usually wake me up after only a few hours of sleep and then I just lie there restlessly, usually unable to go back to sleep.  Last night was one of the worst.  I awoke already consumed by a panic attack with my chest tight and my breathing shallow and with the feeling of impending doom and darkness surrounding me.  I immediately grabbed my phone for its light to hunt for my anti-anxiety medicine in the dark and took one.  I turned on my laptop right away as a distraction of some sort, sat up in bed and clung tightly to a pillow, staring at the screen.  In the dream I had been trapped in a 2 story house with my mother's abusive ex-boyfriend who was the un-argued authority in this house and called all the shots.  I was downstairs trying to do something but couldn't because I needed to plug something into an outlet and no power was coming out and there were no lights on.  I knew I was supposed to get this thing done or I would be in trouble in some way, it was in my best interest and for my safety to accomplish this task.  Joe was up on the second floor where the power was working, and he was pacing the room, uttering some sort of mantra or chant out loud but in a low voice.  I went up the stairs to tell him there was no power and he sent me back downstairs, trying to mask his irritation at my interrupting him.  I went downstairs and tried to call my mother.  The cell phone wasn't working, the battery was dead and it needed to charge, but the outlets were all useless.  I was desperate to speak to her so though I was terrified to, I risked going upstairs once more to explain that nothing was working downstairs and I couldn't do my job unless there was power down there.  He sent me down once again, and from down there I heard him call my mother on his working cell phone and begin to tell her horrible lies about me.  This is about the point I woke up in a panic.  I spent some time wondering to myself if it had a meaning and began thinking about his daughter, who is my sisters age, who lived with him back while my mother was dating him.  I always had this nagging suspicion that he was sexually abusing her for various reasons that all seemed to point to the possibility.  I do know that he was accused of abusing an older daughter years before and went to court over the ordeal, and he claims he was falsely charged and convicted, but this daughter no longer speaks with him.  As I understand now, his younger daughter at some point left him to live with her mother, and no longer speaks to him either.  That man caused so much trauma in my life, and for my family.  Just the idea of how evil his mind is sends shivers down my spine.  I have this itch to contact his daughter who I do have a connection with via Facebook, and ask her the very personal and painful question that has always haunted my mind.  I don't want to hurt her.  I don't want her to suffer more, from shame and painful memories, but it is so horrible to know, but not know, and to know that he's out there, using his mind control methods that he researches and studies to find easy victims to manipulate, brainwash, and squander all he can squeeze out of their bank and their life.  This was a horrendous dream.  I do not think I would be able to handle it if I ever came face to face with him again in real life.  He represents so much of the twisted side of humanity all wrapped up in one disturbing package.  He really was a nightmare.

                    So purdy!

I <3 this fan-made video.

5 Oak Hill Drive

I wish there was an organization that adopted out grandparents.  I miss mine so much.  I wish I could go to 5 Oak Hill Dr., and just walk around the yard and through the house another time.  I know where every creak is in the floor boards.  I can picture every square inch of that house in my mind.  The closets I hid in playing hide and seek, the fire place and mantle in the living room with the big beautiful Degas over its center which I hung the 12 days of christmas decorations on each December, the shelves in the laundry room lined with my grandmothers pickles and jams, my grandfathers desk with the paperweight containing one of my mother's school photos and the wooden spinning top I spun every time I went into that room.  I can see the painting of their old dog Ike hanging on the basement wall, the cold damp blue bedroom that was mine for a year after my parents divorced with the Japanese dolls up on the closet shelf and the brooding, dark painting of a fishing boat caught in an angry, black, ocean storm, and every single window that I would wash for them in the spring.  I can picture my grandmother's geraniums in the hanging pots and the on the back of the house, the lilly of the valley along the foundation and smell the wood chips my grandfather surrounded the house and the base of every tree with.  I can taste the rhubarb that grew along the fence and the raw pole green beans, carrots and tomatoes we ate as we picked every summer.  I want to touch the giant smoke bush in the back yard, and watch the birds perched in the bright yellow spring forsythia from the living room window.  I want to sweep the acorns from the giant oak tree off the back deck one more time, and watch the squirrels go flying off in the air when they try to raid the anti-squirrel bird feeder.  I want to see my grandmother's eyes light up at the sight of a visiting neighbor and hear the sound of her happy sing-song voice as she greets them warmly, and gives a cheerful laugh here and there as they chat about life and family and happy things.  I want to give them haircuts one last time.  I want to work a jigsaw puzzle with them on the dining room table once more and want to play one more game of scrabble with my grandfather and ask him about his collection of coins.  I want to set the dining room table for one more meal as an entire family, complete with one of my grandmother's beautiful pies for dessert and tea using her cherished collection of tea cups all unique and different from one another.  I want to hand my grandfather the bowl we all know he will want for the pie since he had to eat any berry pie as if it was cereal, in a bowl with milk poured over it.  I want to help my mother and aunts clean up in the kitchen and set their table for breakfast in the morning.  I want to sit on their couch watching The Vicar of Dibley or game shows guessing at prices or letters or words together while my grandfather holds Coco in his lap, and my grandmother tells Sugar to roll over and giggles at her.  I want to spend a night there and wake up to their cheerful morning routine, my grandfather in his house robe and slippers, reading the paper in the living room, and my grandmother in her nightgown brewing coffee and preparing cereal and donuts for breakfast.  Flowers picked from their garden arranged in a bouquet on the kitchen table by one of my aunts, my grandfather might comment on them, then make a strange joke or statement or two showing his quirky, unique sense of humor or at least show it by wiggling his ears while eating his breakfast, then return to his paper while my grandmother clears the table to join him to finish their coffee and read the paper together.  I will never stop missing them, or this place. 

Oh how I need you in my life!

I am dying for a massage.  I am covered in painful knots in my arms and shoulders.  Too bad for me since I'm broke and single, not gonna happen.  I really hate having no income.  It is that day where everyone wears green and claims to be Irish, maybe if I go out and buy someone enough green beer, I can score a massage in return.  Can I trade in the kiss, and say, massage me I'm Irish?  It might be worth a shot, never know.  Maybe I just need to find a rainbow to follow to it's end.  The gayborhood is a good place for rainbows, I wonder if drag queens sing Irish songs on St. Patty's Day?

Tribute to Gertrude Stein

The Decision

With wonder the lines squirm and merge encased in the outlet desperately

Heard above the voices of tall and true, and dancing in that shade of doom.  

To count them would be the news of the century, 

The last shining sound of the last woman's company of withering columns of grey. 

 I'd stay and listen to this one's stature of purpose and not fittingly drive it away.  

The gesture of lilacs and covers with stitches and bandages all float and are tamed.  

Its lost once again the distant brilliance of whispers turned to the sun, 

The last rosy petal of passion and fashion and fruit with the fearless grows dim.  

In the instance of fortune we cast out the groom and feed all the others some dew, 

To lift up the chair, to find nothing there, is the emblem of me and you.  

The geese are the leaders of the broken and weariless, wild with rational plot, 

The things we remember are two-fold and gender is really the word that is not.  

You can't slight the sea with rote memory, you can't bite the roof of the barn, 

You can only decide with glassy eyes about baskets of honey and jam.

We has blue eyes.

Either this documentary on Netflix is what every person in our society needs to watch so we can collectively wake up, accept reality, and start taking action and making changes to protect our planet and make better use of our resources to better meet the needs of all people or I'm just a crazy person suffering from the effects of insomnia and stress on my reasoning while staying up till 3 AM watching documentary after documentary on 2012 and on survival techniques of the dwindling population of ancient aboriginal tribes who hunt game with poison arrows and dance to communicate with spirits and ancestral elders...

...some people go to Florida or music festivals on their spring breaks, not me...

http://www.2012timeforchange.com/

I'm desperately trying to be okay,

to control sad thoughts eating away at me.

I'm getting tired of learning the hard way,

I should never allow people to mean much to me.

This guy gets it. He goes into the world, takes ugliness and turns it into art. Of course cops would hover over him trying to find a way to determine this a criminal act. How dare he turn those ugly gum splats into something colorful and interesting!?

words can't describe how much I miss this baby boy

I just want someone to hang out with for the rest of my life...