“Long before there was spirit, or confession, or redemption, or the true quest — there were those hands. They were twisted and sinewy, and whenever I pictured them, decadently bejeweled. Even with a spindly, lipstick-stained cigarette held effortlessly between her fingers, they still somehow looked as though they should have been draped over a sceptre and an orb. In conversation, between long, glorious, menthol drags, her fingers seemed to pinch and poke at some smooth, velvety fabric that no one else could see. After just ten minutes spent in her presence, I longed to touch it also.
Perhaps encountering a true prophet in the ladies’ lingerie department at Sears is wholly unbelievable, but the chances of recognizing it as such are even more unlikely — particularly when you are as ardent and confused a non-believer as I was then. But witness her, I did — and the first thought that chiseled itself onto the inside of my forehead was, ‘Alea iacta est’:
‘The die has been cast.'”
— The Queen of Cups
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About muffybolding
Muffy Bolding is a mother/writer/actor/knitter/feminist/withered debutante who likes the smell of asparagus pee, and remains obsessed with the bathroom hygiene of her three children -- despite the fact that they are 23, 19, and 16. She is blissfully married to a cute Jewish boy who looks like Willie Wonka, but remains tragically in love with the dead poet, Ted Hughes. She has the mouth of a Teamster, and her patron saint is Rocco (pestilence relief.) Ms. Bolding lives in Southern California, where she enjoys typing words, making movies, and plucking the rings from the fingers of the dead. She was the co-creator and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning satire zine, Fresno Lampoon, and in between writing screenplays, carnival barking, and savagely threatening her trio of darling larvae with a wooden spoon, she currently publishes the zine, "Withered Debutante." More of her work can also be found in the anthology, "Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts", the compilation zine, "Mamaphiles III: Coming Home", as well as in The Cortland Review and hipmama.com. She is currently writing and producing for film and television, and working on a book of essays entitled, "Inside A Chinese Dragon." She has slept around, but not nearly as much as she would have liked.
muffy bolding 