muffy bolding

A while back, my dear old friend — the AWESOME NYC writer/artist/zinester/flâneur, Miss Ayun Halliday — posted as her Facebook status update this marvelous quote from Miss Amanda Fucking Palmer:

“Stop pretending art is hard.”

Concurring to my core, I responded with, “THANK YOU. Cleaning hotel rooms is hard. Picking grapes is hard. Mining coal is hard. Creating art is a GODDAMNED PLEASURE — and anyone who tells you any different is COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT and should be immediately kicked in the taco.”

I am just sitting here on this lovely, soft, clement Los Angeles evening, drinking my soy latte, meandering down a random, delightful Facebook path through the pages of all my treasured old Fresno comrades, when suddenly I randomly come upon the page of THE GROWN CHILD of one particular boy with whom I used to be…let’s just say…”quite wicked”, to put it mildly. I gotta tell you, it makes me shake my head and belly chuckle to imagine what she would think if this lovely young woman — who, by the way, has several STRAIGHT-UP BIBLE QUOTES ON HER FB INFO PAGE — knew even a single CAMEL THROUGH THE EYE OF A GODDAMNED NEEDLE about what her now sweet, decent, respectable old dad used to be up to back in the day. 

I just gotta say that I LOATHE how we have commodified and fetishized babies and motherhood in this culture. Just the thought of it makes my flesh crawl. It’s time to move past the $300 diaper bags with hand-embroidered bluebirds of happiness on a chocolate brown organic cotton background, and the vintage, Mid-Century, original Calder mobiles hanging above their motherloving reclaimed old forest growth Danish Modern-design blond cribs that cost twice what my parents paid for their first house.

We need to get back to the ways of my fierce Sicilian grandmothers:

Squat-drop like a BOSS, push that adorable little motherfucker outcho bagine in the middle of a vineyard, strap it to your chest, pop your nipple in its mouth, love it with all your heart…AND GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT, BITCHES.

‪#‎howonearthdidernestborgninegetintomybathroommirror‬

‪#‎yeahchuckleitupallyouperky22yearoldmotherfuckersthiswallisexactlywhereyoureheaded‬

Middle Age. Like death and skintags, it comes to us all.

But, trust me…delivered along with the gunt, the stray grey pubes, the chin hairs, the crepey face, and The Florida Evans Neck, there are fabulous advantages to being a Woman of a Certain Age.

When your waist gets a little thick (okay, a LOT thick), your elbows get a little baggy, and your titties no longer sit high and tight like they once did when you were 22, and all light beyond a single struck match can be considered “harsh”, and it becomes glaringly apparent that pool boys, indie musicians, cute grocery clerks at Trader Joe’s, and guys who live in your building are NO LONGER jockeying for position to fuck you on their futons, it takes your focus off the external and puts it squarely back onto your soul, your self, your dreams, and your powerful presence here in this place.

It frees you from the distractions and constraints brought about by constantly fretting over what others might think of you.

Your DGAF Factor explodes off the charts.

You squat, belly laughing, and take a righteous metaphorical dump on your bathroom scale as a social statement against the idiotic, insulting, insidious, impossible beauty standards imposed on women and their bodies in our culture.

You refuse to keep the secrets and carry the shame for even ONE MOMENT LONGER. It is a time for TRUTH…and as a result of this truth, you suddenly realize the full arc of BEING — and you, at long last, BECOME.

This newfound wisdom illuminates you from within, drawing others to your light, asking how they, too, might radiate the light that exists inside them, as well. TELL THEM WHAT YOU KNOW.

This new Age of Enlightenment of Age draws back the veil of youthful illusion and reveals to you the reality of just how fucking awesome and powerful you truly are.

No, wait. It doesn’t simply draw back the veil — IT JERKS IT OFF YOUR GODDAMNED FACE, DOUSES IT WITH GASOLINE, AND SETS THAT BITCH ON FIRE.

Done.

But here’s the best, most hilarious, most unbelievable part:

This wisdom and awareness makes you bold, audacious, focused, fierce, free, and fearless — which, oh, so ironically…FAT, OLD BROAD or NOT…makes people want to fuck you.

HA!

Shantih. Shantih. Shantih.

And, amen.

#oldbroadstothefront

TRUTH:

“A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care much for pie.” — Tenneva Jordan

I once took part in a lively online discussion about the invaluable assistance of employing mind-altering substances to enhance the creation of one’s art, a discussion that was compelled by my posting the following quote:

“See, I think drugs have done some good things for us. If you don’t think drugs have done good things for us then do me a favor. Go home tonight and take all of your records, tapes and all your CD’s and burn them. Because, you know all those musicians who made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years? Real fucking high on drugs, man.” — Bill Hicks

As for me, I tend to believe that altering one’s consciousness — by whatever means works for each individual — is an integral part of what it means to be a human being. We have done so since the beginning of time — this root, that weed, those mushrooms, that fermented fruit juice, those 60 seconds spent spinning around on the summer grass when you are 5 years old, or dragging over a chair and climbing up to sit on the refrigerator when you are 8, just to see what the world looks like from a different vantage point.

And if the freeing of your mind through such tactics helps you achieve what you wish to achieve, helps you see what you need to see, helps you create what you are compelled to create, or helps you survive what you need to fucking survive, then we will do it…because it is in our nature to do so. It’s a mathematical certainty, my friends. The young will experiment, indulge, overindulge, and eventually learn their limitations; they will learn or they won’t survive. That’s how nature works. Heartbreaking and tragic though it may be, that’s the reality of the situation.

As for me, though I certainly spent the years before I had babies with a cold, frosty one in my hand or glad-handling a baggie in a bathroom stall at The Wild Blue, I don’t partake anymore — but not because I am against doing so. I just no longer need the filter, the impetus, the refuge, or the pose — TIME and TRUTH ARE ENOUGH TO CARRY MY FATASS NOW. I am who I am and I require shelter from NOTHING. Bring it on, I say — the past, the present, the future.

BRING IT ALL THE FUCK ON.

I now insist on being PRESENT in this life…through all of it — the horror, the ecstasy, and especially the precious mundane. As a writer, a chronicler, a witness, I NEED to gaze at it, feel it, smell it, taste it, savor it, juggle it, kick it in the taco, sway through it like a gentle manatee, run my fingers over its surface, carve my initials into it, make out with it, or even scrape it off the bottom of my shoe — but to do this, I HAVE TO BE PRESENT.

And aside from all that, whenever I lament the fact that I never got to drop acid, be a tree, or bellow hallucinogenic dirges into a mailbox with my teenage trip sisters, my husband, Gregory, always smiles, shakes his head, and tells me, “You don’t need drugs, honey, BECAUSE YOU SEE THE WORLD LIKE A PERSON ON ACID EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE. For someone with a mind like yours, drugs would be redundant.”

Indeed. I feel like a tree.

“With the solitary exception of the Eskimos, there isn’t a people on earth that doesn’t use psychoactive plants to effect a change in consciousness, and there probably never has been. As for the Eskimos, their exception only proves the rule: Historically, Eskimos didn’t use psychoactive plants because none of them will grow in the Arctic. As soon as the white man introduced the Eskimos to fermented grain, they immediately joined the consciousness changers.” — Michael Pollan, author, The Botany of Desire

Can I get an AMEN up in this MUTHAFUCKA?

‪#‎fucktheseguys‬
‪#‎ibelieveinunicornsandobiwankenobi‬
‪#‎maytheforcebewithyou‬
‪#‎always‬

About to get my talons tinted by my best girl, Miss Lani, whilst wearing a delightful rendering of my GORGEOUS GUSBAND, Miss Jackie Beat, across my heaving, scandalous bosom. Life is astounding.

‪#‎luckyslut‬