tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-250680442024-02-07T14:24:25.096-05:00Mrs Morrison's HotelThe 100% personal official blog for Patricia Kennealy Morrison, author, Celtic priestess, retired rock critic, wife of JimPatricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.comBlogger418125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-31748839569546247492012-03-04T18:40:00.002-05:002012-03-04T18:40:55.762-05:00I Say, It's My Birthday!Kind of crept up on me this year...nothing special planned. A quiet day as usual, with filet mignon for dinner and chocolate pound cake w/vanilla ice cream and one candle. And of course a rummage on eBay for a smallish present to myself, nothing extravagant---perhaps a pretty teapot, as I've been getting into cuppa territory recently.<br />
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I don't really have anything profound to say on turning 66. It certainly doesn't feel ancient or anything; though a few joints have gotten a little creakier, all else is much the same. The plans for last year (TV series) fell through, sadly and disappointingly, but this year I'm going to try to knock out two books to make up for it. Apart from that, no real resolutions except the usual: go to the gym and work out more, get out more with friends, GET some more local friends, tidy up my bomb site of an apartment...like that.<br />
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But those are all good things to plan, and not so extravagant as to be impossible of achievement. On the whole, and with a few exceptions, I'm well pleased with how my life has turned out. And that's nice to be able to say. At least I think it is...Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-57168161695089138812011-09-30T01:03:00.000-04:002011-09-30T01:03:26.473-04:00Rejoice, RejoiceI guess it was because of Rosh Ha’shanah that I got to thinking of this really neat Israeli-gospel-folk-rock I downloaded the other day, but I was playing it earlier on the iPod, and bouncing and clapping to it as I sat here working because it is just that kind of music, and then the wind started streaming in over my shoulder and blowing my hair around, and it was a northwest wind with its charged-up ions and everything and that always charges me up even more.<br />
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But it all seemed somehow of a piece, and it sent my mood up to one of those toweringly exultant moments when you are so glad of the joy of creation, and Creation, that you just want to get up and fling back your head and dance with the world, and dance love to the world. I am exalted by those moments when they come: you can put yourself in the way of them, and even teach yourself to reach them at will, but you can’t really plan for them, they just happen for you. And they are more wonderful by far when they just come like that, out of nowhere, like a great wind out of Aldebaran.<br />
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And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Jew or a Christian or a Pagan or whatever, the joy all comes from the same place, the same Power. And everything you do becomes prayer and praise to that Power, and you can call the Power Adonai or the Goddess, or even not believe in it at all, but it is the real and undivided Power no matter what people think. And people are foolish to try to separate it out the way they do, or to deny it, to selfishly hug their little crumbs of it to themselves when really they could have the whole cake if only they tried sharing for once.<br />
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I often start thinking like this around this time of the year, as the sun heads south again and the days begin to draw in and the air gets chilly and the leaves start to turn. It fills me with joy that never grows old or any the lesser, because I know that it will always be there and always be like that.<br />
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Because it’s work that does it for me also. I am so lucky to have an art that is at my fingertips, as a friend reminded me recently. Her own art requires other people for its fulfillment, and she was thinking wistfully that it would be nice not to have to rely on the whim and will of others before she can perform it. I don’t have to worry about that. Sure, I like to have readers, and the more the better, and the smarter the better. But I would write even if I didn’t. I don’t write for them, or even for me, or even for my gods, though all those certainly figure into it. I write for the Power. I write for Creation. <br />
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And it’s THAT that makes me want to dance. You come dance too.Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-18308150600343043272011-08-29T13:11:00.002-04:002011-08-29T13:11:41.635-04:00New Moon Baby<!--Start Moon Phase Meme--><br />
<div style="padding:3px; text-align:center; width:350px; color: #aaaaaa; background-color: #000000; border: 1px solid #2e2eff"><span style="font-size: 130%; ">You were born during a New moon</span><br><br />
<span style="font-size: 90%">The moon is dark in this phase, because the half that's illuminated by the sun is facing away from Earth.</span><br><br />
<img src="http://spacefemmites.com/limg/moon/0.jpg"><br><br />
<br />
<div style="margin:3px; padding:3px; color: #aaaaff; background-color: #000030; border: 1px solid #2e2eff;"><span style="font-size:80%"> - what it says about you - </span><br />
<br><br />
You want to leave an impression on people and make your mark on the world. When you love an idea, you'll work hard for it, sometimes even dropping whatever it is you're doing to go on to the next new great thing that's captured your imagination. The more freedom you have to chose what you're doing, the busier you'll be.<br />
</div><a href="http://www.spacefem.com/quizzes/moon" style="color: #aaaaaa">What phase was the moon at on your birthday? Find out at Spacefem.com</a><br />
</div><!--End Moon Phase Meme-->Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-49287781855739853232011-08-20T12:00:00.006-04:002011-08-20T12:13:18.968-04:00Oxford Experience Blues<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7oyrpHDThmY9M4XxTmF9eOao94TA6ZDyFGonp2oPio_KexQh-EksZklcrSVW45nDSRQxl3s2MffE1F1FVpJhZMcSs0iSKDEebgIWbcWaUbSetuVc8xNVOrsRCAXl0HC-PbQHH6g/s1600/tom+quad.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7oyrpHDThmY9M4XxTmF9eOao94TA6ZDyFGonp2oPio_KexQh-EksZklcrSVW45nDSRQxl3s2MffE1F1FVpJhZMcSs0iSKDEebgIWbcWaUbSetuVc8xNVOrsRCAXl0HC-PbQHH6g/s320/tom+quad.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642971935286232418" /></a>
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqRz2xV2MXlpV1aVDqUJplbWW8da-Gw2lvhMRTHmxBkXGWlcrxuhObtNbKbzQbDUKKVwjbmOduDU9yWbGeSspZJhUuuQvu71DAUoiTAoumB48xdYtCc292jSC6JK0hNRXBCu54Ag/s1600/peckwater.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqRz2xV2MXlpV1aVDqUJplbWW8da-Gw2lvhMRTHmxBkXGWlcrxuhObtNbKbzQbDUKKVwjbmOduDU9yWbGeSspZJhUuuQvu71DAUoiTAoumB48xdYtCc292jSC6JK0hNRXBCu54Ag/s320/peckwater.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642971834335641986" /></a>
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAASmU9-S1aeX2Ed5zut59VSCDbgNrygQyh3cahpHwNs6Ga5YEzU7OHTzz2orzZWkxl6uNUK1y4vAQ2cvi6QJ5NX2KUW5T8g_v9rMzlVvh-aC2wOLZjeKPobl8G9sfyBhVPW5Gkw/s1600/great+stair.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 185px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAASmU9-S1aeX2Ed5zut59VSCDbgNrygQyh3cahpHwNs6Ga5YEzU7OHTzz2orzZWkxl6uNUK1y4vAQ2cvi6QJ5NX2KUW5T8g_v9rMzlVvh-aC2wOLZjeKPobl8G9sfyBhVPW5Gkw/s320/great+stair.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642971736946931618" /></a>
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBI2muQa2kOepw_nDgDVgeYhtbOfts4auw5Gkls78HrnxFkS5-GKt5iN0fQnMqCJiA0cZbhPBrmrQydIkcwLdnBijf4jemkgYujFOLLIqIKa2got7A-Jd4-UV_XXA8si62NH3V7Q/s1600/great+hall+christ+church.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 263px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBI2muQa2kOepw_nDgDVgeYhtbOfts4auw5Gkls78HrnxFkS5-GKt5iN0fQnMqCJiA0cZbhPBrmrQydIkcwLdnBijf4jemkgYujFOLLIqIKa2got7A-Jd4-UV_XXA8si62NH3V7Q/s320/great+hall+christ+church.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642971635301329554" /></a>
<br />I may have mentioned that I would be spending two weeks in England this summer...here's the report.
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<br />Well, where to start? London, I guess, where I landed after an uneventful flight and proceeded to steal another woman’s luggage! In my defense, it looked EXACTLY like my new big tapestry bag (except a little pinker, where mine is more purplish), even to the identical black leather luggage tag. What are the odds? So I didn’t realize it (except to wonder to the driver why my bag looked a bit pinker than I recalled, and the wheels made a strange new funny sound) until I got to my hotel in London and actually checked the tag, then fished into an outside zipper compartment to pull out a long black wig!
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<br />Oh noes! Holy crap! Not mine! Back to the airport, hysterical. I figured the other lady wouldn’t have been NEARLY as stupid as I was and taken mine in return, and my bag was probably still there and not halfway to Scotland by then, and it was indeed there, parked lonely as a cloud by the luggage carousel. Shamed, I slunk off with mine in tow and left the other (which the airport people were incredibly cavalier about, “Oh, just leave it over there, luv”…I could have had it stuffed with explosives). What drama.
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<br />London was...well, I think I may be done with London. For one thing, even though I know it’s the height of tourist season, it didn’t seem very British anymore. NYC is a polynational city too, of course, but I did not at all like the way I hardly ever heard English spoken by British people on the street or the train. And every tenth woman I saw was in niqab or a burqa. I don’t think I’m a racist, but it disturbed me very much...
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<br />Bought very little. Too ruinously expensive and nothing looked any good anyway. Even Harrods disappointed, though it was worth going there just to view this simply appalling huge bronze statue of Diana and Dodi releasing a bluebird of happiness, or the albatross of public opinion, or the seagull of something-or-other, whatev, that Dodi's father, former Harrods owner, erected in their honor in a prominent position...tackiest thing EVER.
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<br />I did indulge myself in Marks & Spencer prawn mayonnaise sandwiches (Rennie's favorite!) as per usual, a complete bargain for lunch or hotel room snacking. The hotel (the Royal Park, on the north side of Hyde Park two blocks from Paddington Station) was lovely and a decent price for London, but then again I did book back in February...current summer room rates on TripAdvisor were over the moon.
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<br />Went to the Tate Britain to see the Turners and Pre-Raphaelites, and walked in Kensington Gardens to visit the Peter Pan statue and the Diana memorial fountain. That was it, really.
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<br />On Sunday July 24th I went by train to Oxford (again, not hearing a single English-speaking voice the whole way), and checked in at Christ Church College, where I was to be in residence for the whole week of The Oxford Experience, as the program is called. Christ Church is known as “the House”, from its Latin name Aedes Christi, House of Christ. Founded by the infamous Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, refounded by his equally infamous enemy Henry VIII in 1532, it has the most gorgeous architecture, and is the largest but far from the oldest college in the university and therefore has not much really medieval stuff going on. Even the college chapel, which is actually the Oxford city cathedral, and huge for a chapel, though quite small for a cathedral and largely Norman, is built on the site of much older structures.
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<br />I stayed in Peckwater (Peck for short), a lovely, large, U-shaped building from the early 1700’s, all classical-looking tan stone, kind of like the White House north façade, Staircase 8, Room 6. Rooms in Oxford colleges are usually arranged opening vertically off a staircase, not horizontally off a corridor as we have here, generally two to a landing; if you want to visit someone in the next stair over, you have to go downstairs, go outside, walk next door and go up---you can't just walk down the hall. Each student has a bedroom (with sink) and a sitting room (with small fridge), and accommodations vary tremendously. Worn but functional furniture, though some rooms have antiquey-looking pieces. My first room, rejected instantly, was a claustrophobia-inducing ground-floor one where the windows barely opened and the tourists passed by only feet away; I whined and moaned and was rewarded with a TWIN suite, two bedrooms (small) and a sitting room (large and airy), on a third-floor (what the Brits call second floor) corner, windows and window seats all over the place, overlooking Peck Quad on one side and Canterbury Quad on the other.
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<br />But. No bathroom. A toilet two flights up in the attic, and showers and more toilets and a single bathtub in the BASEMENT six flights down. The flights were longish ones of 12 steps each, two to a floor, switchbacking...aarrgghh. I never could find the same shower twice, and only once came across the laundry room: the cellar of Peck was a maze of twisty passages and weird doors. Like the Tardis. And several times I ended up in the basement of the next staircase over. Some of the other stairs in my building had toilets and/or shower rooms on alternating floors, but not Peck 8. I know it's student accommodation, but it still seems stupefyingly primitive. True, only six or eight students live on each staircase, so there's not that much competition for facilities, but all the same...
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<br />I have been advised that next time (if there is a next time) I should book a room in the very Tudor-looking Meadow Building, to my taste by far the nicest-looking dorm, though supposedly the most unfashionable when built in the 1800's, when Peck was the real des. res. I would have grabbed rooms in Meadow like a freaking shot if I'd had a choice (or better information): first-floor (our second floor), with en suite bathroom and a view over expansive and bucolic Christ Church Meadow (which was full of big round hay bales from the recent harvest). I shall keep it in mind.
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<br />But the Great Hall and Tom Quad, the big front Christopher Wren quadrangle and gatehouse, were simply glorious. The first time I went up the famous stairs (used in the Harry Potter movies), I was bitterly disappointed not to find Professor McGonagall waiting for me at the top. It was splendid.
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<br />Food was pretty good, especially at dinner, though they were quite stingy for breakfast: one egg, one sausage, no hot breakfast at all on the last day, just croissants and toast and stuff. I’m not used to eating three sit-down meals a day, in company, so that was a little weird… But dining under the gaze of all those ancient portraits and under that hammerbeam ceiling (I sat at the Gryffindor table as often as possible, of course, Ravenclaw when I had to, though the movie Hall was merely based on the Christ Church one and expanded by one table, and they really don’t like the Hogwarts comparisons, too bad!) was A. MA. ZING.
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<br />Oh, and there was Morris dancing, which I love, in Tom Quad one night after dinner, and tours of the college and the town, and the House has its own art gallery full of Old Masters, and I spent a lot of time in the Cathedral, not just the Cathedral gift shop. Pretty darn fun. The town was FULL of Asian teenagers on tour or attending summer school all over Oxford: I don’t think there was a single Japanese, Chinese or Korean adolescent left at home. They were delightful, if noisy, and I have never SEEN traffic like Oxford traffic, foot or vehicular. Well, it’s a medieval city and not made for modern hordes.
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<br />But sitting in my William Morris-print-covered window seat at 9:05 pm (Oxford University, being five minutes west of Greenwich, keeps its own time of five minutes later), windows open, leaning on the sill and listening to Great Tom, the immense bell in Tom Tower at the gatehouse, ring out its nightly 101 strokes for the original 100 scholars plus one added later, was truly magical.
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<br />Classes began at 9:15 Monday, after breakfast. Two classes per day. First one ran to 10:45, then there was coffee and tea and bikkies in the Junior Common Room (undergraduate rec room), and then another class from 11:15 to 12:45, and then lunch in Hall. After lunch, we were free to do as we pleased until dinner, which for me meant just roaming around Oxford, one of my favorite British cities. I visited Balliol College (alma mater of Turk Wayland and Lord Peter Wimsey), Magdalen (pronounced maudlin) College, Merton College (where Tolkien taught for many years), Jesus College (T.E. Lawrence) and a few others, and some Inspector Morse/Inspector Lewis locations, like the Sheldonian Theatre and the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian Library and a few ancient pubs, and shopped rather more than I had in London. Corny as it was, I bought numerous Oxford- and Christ Church-related items…and didn’t get to see half of what I had planned on.
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<br />My class, "King Alfred and the Vikings", was, I have to say, deeply disappointing. To begin with, my tutor, one Dave Beard, had an Attitude as well as an Agenda. He trashed Celts (“there were no Celts”), fans of Celticness (“Celtic loonies on the Internet”) and Templars (“they don’t exist in modern days, despite what crazy people think”), all this despite me raising my hand instantly to protest. Hey! Celtic loony AND crazy Templar over here, thank you ever so much! So that pretty much turned me against him, and rightly so, on the second day of class. By his own admission, he was an archaeologist, not a historian (despite him also teaching a History of the Vikings in Britain class online), and therefore claimed that he couldn’t answer most of my very specific questions. Helloooo?? Which was, after all, the reason I was there??? Duh. Also he was way too fixated on Saxon town plans and stonework and other boring crap that just about put me into a coma. And the course material was, in my opinion, waaaaay too much King Alfred and nowhere NEAR enough Vikings.
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<br />So I learned a couple of things, but mostly I tuned him out, and refused to “contribute” (shakedown) to his “gift” (extortion) at the end of the week. Why should I, after he had trashed my religion, my ethnicity and my Order? I'd never have been able to live with myself if I had caved and done so. Stupid pretentious git, and I certainly didn’t give a damn what the other students thought of my refusing. And the program will be getting a very sharp letter from me regarding him, you just bet it will. Too bad he’s the program director. Then again, I doubt I’ll ever be going back, so I'm burning no bridges giving him the pointy end of the stick. I was told that The Other Place (as they call Cambridge) has a similar, and superior, program---three courses over two weeks, and choice of college---so that's possible too, and I hear it's even more beautiful than Oxford, but I have no emotional attachment there the way I've always felt about Oxford…we’ll see.
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<br />Anyway, I discovered that you can stay in Oxford colleges like Balliol, Magdalen, Keble and Wadham, among others, without being obliged to sign up for a course, so I may try that next time. The staying in college part was the best part, and it would be fantastic to crash in Turk's old dorm room, or Lord Peter's, or dear Oscar Wilde's...I did wonder who had stayed in my rooms over the years, and hoped to find ancient graffiti carved in the walls, but no such luck.
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<br />But the people, at least some of them, were nice, though most were five or ten or even fifteen years older than I. We had a snooty Australian cow of a girls' school principal who sat next to me in class (held in the tutor’s office in Peck 2, seated all round on comfy chairs and sofas), whom I rapidly grew to detest, but two older men, Bob and Bill, were very dear and kept me feeling involved in the class and not invisible, and another guy, Herb, was nice too. Some of the women (Yvonne, in my class, and Lena, from the class on the Brontes) were also quite pleasant.
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<br />Still, they weren’t Our Kind of People, my friends, and perhaps I was naïve to have expected they would be. Also it was very cliquey among people who’d been there before, and not very welcoming or friendly for newbies like me; in fact, they were quite rebuffing, and most were not terribly interested in what I had to say. I did try: I was one of the younger students there, and pretty certainly the only one coming from my sort of background. (I ‘fessed up to being an author, but kept Jim strictly out of it and utterly unmentioned by name…just “my late husband” if anyone inquired, which almost no one did.)
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<br />I did get a chance to reconnect with the wonderful John and Caitlin Matthews, authors and Celtic scholars, whom I hadn’t seen for twenty years. We had lunch at the Tolkien/CSS Lewis watering-hole the Eagle and Child, known familiarly as the Bird and Baby, on Wednesday afternoon (great fish and chips!). Unfortunately, I had badly hurt my left ankle on my way there: the Achilles tendon popped on a bad step (not even twisted it, no rough pavement, just stepped down on it wrong and BLAM!) and I thought I’d torn it. Oh, the pain and the ouchiness. So that was no fun. But after lunch I went for tea chez Matthews, in a nearby village, and then they drove me back to college. Missed dinner since I couldn’t walk, though thankfully there was a pizza truck parked outside Tom Gate where I got a really excellent (even by NYC standards) personal pizza for my supper, and went to hospital the next morning to have the ankle, by now swollen and screaming, checked out.
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<br />God bless the NHS, is all I have to say, and shame on this country for having no single-payer healthcare system. The college had recommended their own private medical practice (100 quid for a walk-in visit!); I said no thanks and went to the excellent and speedy ER at the John Radcliffe Hospital, for which terrific care I paid exactly NOTHING. Not tuppence nor yet one pence. Big difference, and more shame on Christ Church for not telling people they have this option. (I did make a donation, but no one even hinted that it was mandatory, or even expected...)
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<br />Anyway, they said I hadn't torn my tendon, that it was just a severe sprain, and gave me this sort of compression stocking for my whole lower leg, called a tubigrip, a cane and some leaflets on care. I stopped at Boots, fabulous drugstore (chemists), for OVER-THE-COUNTER CODEINE PILLS and ice packs, and have been hobbling around (mildly stoned…) ever since. I’ll have it checked out by my own doctor if it’s still sore next week, but it’s improving gradually, though sloooooowly.
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<br />Needless to say, that put a damper on too much more roving around Oxford. But at least I escaped going on a boring field trip Thursday to Winchester (been there) and the Portchester Saxon Shorefort (didn’t care), so that was okay, and I spent the day in bed after the hospital. Though still a wasted day.
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<br />Friday was the last day of class, and that evening there was a reception in the Masters’ Garden (where Lewis Carroll had been inspired to write “Alice”...the Cheshire Cat's tree is still there) and a formal dinner in Hall. Oh, and on Monday night I had been invited to dine at High Table, as each student was one night during their stay: very nice. To both events I wore pearls, diamonds and my Templar breast star. You know (as Bill said sardonically), that order that doesn’t exist?? (He knew Templars himself, and we had a nice chat about it...) So sucks to you, Mr. Beard, arrogant, self-impressed academic that you are, and would you have dissed the Masons or Judaism the way you dissed the Templars and Celts? Well, maybe you would, in the depths of your ignorance…
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<br />On Saturday the lovely Liz Williams picked me up and drove me down to Glastonbury to stay with her and her husband the lovely Trevor Jones for several days in their fabulous house in the deep country, with dogs and cats and even a pony. We drove down through Wiltshire and Somerset: tea and market day at Marlborough (the wonders of Waitrose!), lunch at Avebury, in an ancient pub in the middle of the ring of stones (like the rest of the village), and met up that night in Glasto with our friend the lovely Elle Hull. A delightful evening of much merriment ensued, in the George and Pilgrim Hotel pub, and later we all had dinner at the Ashcott Inn in a nearby village. Steak and ale pie. Brilliant.
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<br />Next day Liz and I did the Viking Tour of Wessex, hitting all my Guthrum/Alfred sites: Athelney, Barrow Mump, the hilltop village of Wedmore, where the two kings signed a peace treaty, bunch of other places. Very helpful in visualizing how the land lay, even after a thousand years. MUCH more instructive than my class. And more than enough reason to justify the tax writeoff.
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<br />Monday we drove down to the Jurassic Coast, to Lyme Regis, a gorgeous old sea resort town much frequented in Jane Austen movies, where an evil nasty seagull kamikaze'd in and grabbed a piece of chicken sandwich right out of Liz's hand and we felt the need to recover from the shock with clotted-cream vanilla ice cream, as who wouldn't. Then along the coast to Chesil Beach, an amazing-looking feature (Google it!), and up inland again to say hi (it being Lammas) to the Cerne Abbas Giant, an equally amazing-looking hillside chalk figure of, er, impressive dimensions. Keep it up, sir!
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<br />Tuesday I spent mostly at Chalice Well, in Glastonbury town at the foot of the Tor, drinking sacred spring water, sitting in the peaceful lovely gardens and walking through the Healing Pool in hopes of repairing my hurting legs (surprisingly effective, so thank you, Chalice Well; I’m not limping quite so badly now, though my calf is still deeply sore and now my right knee hurts from favoring my left leg so much---sigh). I spent the last night at Magdalene (pronounced magdalen) House, a lovely guesthouse right across from the Abbey, so as to conveniently catch the Heathrow bus the next morning at 6:45.
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<br />More drama. Bus driver had to leave the M4 Motorway due to it being blocked completely by a bad accident, and then he got totally lost on his detour. No GPS. We must have driven around Basingstoke, Newbury and environs from every possible direction on every possible road (though we did pass right through Watership Down country, so that was okay, and went by Prince Charles's old school, Cheam), and were two hours late getting to the airport. Which was fine, as I still had three hours to kill before my plane left.
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<br />I tripped getting off the moving walkway and went crashing to the floor, but two very nice young men instantly ran over to help me up. And I had ordered a wheelchair to take me to the gate, but Virgin Airlines is so stupidly run that I had to walk halfway there myself, upstairs to a special “Special Assistance” room where EVERYBODY flying that day who needed a chair or had crutches or kids or language difficulties or other problems was corralled. Horrible polyglot bedlam, though I did get taken to my flight, finally, in one of those cool golf cart/buggy things. At JFK they put you in a chair right there at the check-in desk and wheel you straight to the gate, where you just sit for as long as it takes. And then the plane was an hour late. And I was wiped out from dragging about a half-ton of luggage: I never will learn to pack light, I fear. But I needed everything! And I had to buy books!
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<br />By the time I got home, about eleven pm New York time, I was exhausted. But all in all a great trip. My profound thanks and love to Liz and Trevor, for the wonderful hospitality and for tolerating my food preferences, and to Lily for the endless doggy kisses, and big hugs to John and Caitlin and Elle. My only regret is that I didn’t eat more fish and chips than I actually did…
<br />
<br />Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-16803703565973783702011-07-02T18:00:00.001-04:002011-07-02T18:05:07.507-04:00James Douglas Morrison 8 December 1943 - 3 July 1971<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj51qhMK2el3KYEAFGi6ttzXo-RKUvNi1Ggql2BHdH2Wqpr-jSp0Lrhk_zANzp4mcKxQQQvzJQlfgMdcKoa8lYCurAfkTPslbzIYMMHE7KQpzeXDHrAJaVmbra3H6lEGT5N_y9omw/s1600/Dionysus+of+L.A..jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 85px; height: 100px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj51qhMK2el3KYEAFGi6ttzXo-RKUvNi1Ggql2BHdH2Wqpr-jSp0Lrhk_zANzp4mcKxQQQvzJQlfgMdcKoa8lYCurAfkTPslbzIYMMHE7KQpzeXDHrAJaVmbra3H6lEGT5N_y9omw/s320/Dionysus+of+L.A..jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5624868721972097842" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong><em>And woman<br />I’m waiting for you<br />So that my fingers<br />may kiss your long red hair<br />& I may touch you once again</em></strong><br /><br /><em>--JDM to PKM, in a letter, June 1971</em><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Dark Angel</strong> <br /><br /><br />From a song I wrote for Jim...and also for Jimi, Janis, Kurt...all our lost and loved ones...<br /><br /><br /><strong><em>Something that we never expected<br />Something that came as no surprise<br />Hand on our shoulder cold out of nowhere<br />Closing our dreaming, opening our eyes...<br /> <br />We only had you while we had you<br />Should have understood you could never be owned<br />You were just here on a one-way ticket<br />We never guessed you were only a loan<br /><br />None of us ever thought you would leave us<br />We watched you bank your magical hours<br />Coining your blood to buy art on installment<br />We should have known you could never be ours<br /><br />Never found yourself a place to shelter<br />Crashed with us when you needed a friend<br />Hardly even got to unpack your baggage<br />None of us dreamed there was so much to mend<br /><br />We only had you while we had you<br />Didn’t understand you could never be owned<br />You were just here on a working visa<br />We couldn't see you were only a loan<br /><br />Who could have thought you’d run the table<br />But that’s just the way your loaded dice were thrown<br />You were in town on a visitor’s passport<br />Even in our hearts you were always alone<br /><br />We only had you while we had you<br />Nobody saw you get sliced to the bone<br />Nobody heard you bleed out silent<br />Nobody noticed you leaving alone<br /><br />I only had you while I had you<br />Didn’t want to believe you weren’t meant to be owned<br />You were just mine by the grace of our loving<br />Even in my arms you were always alone...</em></strong><br /><br /><br /><br />© Patricia Morrison for Lizard Queen MusicPatricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-43977539591549662792011-06-24T05:32:00.001-04:002011-06-24T05:34:35.253-04:00Happy 41st Anniversary, Jim and Patricia!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhRBPdiZ4o-xIaPa3NbpSwJRoMeZga2Uk8DAfZ3BaR_nHxXsAiaBINAMwNYRPhqjRT1xKZPwzqt_aFIyA-Pd1_408L0_wIjMz0vPdN4CQiCFHIanKSjEl0CHYIoBHp_8KAKeDzww/s1600/Dionysus+and+Ariadne.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhRBPdiZ4o-xIaPa3NbpSwJRoMeZga2Uk8DAfZ3BaR_nHxXsAiaBINAMwNYRPhqjRT1xKZPwzqt_aFIyA-Pd1_408L0_wIjMz0vPdN4CQiCFHIanKSjEl0CHYIoBHp_8KAKeDzww/s320/Dionysus+and+Ariadne.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621717310761313266" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><em>The past is never dead. It isn’t even past. <br /><br />—William Faulkner</em><br /><br /><br />Side warm against mine in frost-time<br />Chest my cheek rests upon, shield-broad, steel-ribbed<br />Arms around me, oak-strong, sun-warm<br />Flanks arrow-straight, the downward highroad<br />Slow honeyed flare of desire spiraling round us<br />Love, and peace within it:<br />We are gathered in like grain,<br />Our harvest each other<br /><br /><strong>—PKM, 1997</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />I know you<br />I know you<br />You are Valor & Desire<br /><br /><strong>—JDM, 1970</strong><br /><br /><br /><em>© Patricia Morrison, 1970, 1997, 2011</em>Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-56038689058200168172010-12-08T01:15:00.001-05:002010-12-08T01:18:12.074-05:00Happy Birthday, Jim!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZpyTuGqqBIBAgp86d-ZlKzfPgxkmsSow86z0WP24OzVph_cfkbQsR9ksTqstvBBBbLDA-YyoHvvrCUnLGPRw180QWpnso-pSzukRKLt9pwk9dUKfKk-ut0plKRW5e2Ck78IrLw/s1600/jim%252C+doors+office.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZpyTuGqqBIBAgp86d-ZlKzfPgxkmsSow86z0WP24OzVph_cfkbQsR9ksTqstvBBBbLDA-YyoHvvrCUnLGPRw180QWpnso-pSzukRKLt9pwk9dUKfKk-ut0plKRW5e2Ck78IrLw/s320/jim%252C+doors+office.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548191810138945266" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong><em>When the sunrise colors play<br />In the blueness clear and high<br />Sing a morning song and say<br />We are here beneath the sky<br /><br />When the sunset ends the day<br />and the stars are silver strewn<br />Sing a midnight song and say<br />We are here beneath the moon<br /><br />Will you come with me and dance?<br />Will you take my hand and go?<br />We shall share a single glance<br />And we will smile, for we shall know<br /><br />That never ends the day for us<br />Never once an end to love<br />Now another way for us<br />Now our words we send to love...</em></strong><br /><br /><br />(c)2010, Patricia MorrisonPatricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-49287906149343464182010-11-30T00:28:00.001-05:002010-11-30T00:30:50.328-05:00California Beamin'<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-q9PZHcqpc7DU70fal1wpPQCDAUabNounOY0fqh-GDy5WlGuGNrxAfXAjvTQax9FosJcm5MbVXmjUG2sHF6A3YN5IO7guFLIJJbM6D385sn3rpmnSWaZDaePKAI7EQAYYeuzvfA/s1600/carmel.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 198px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-q9PZHcqpc7DU70fal1wpPQCDAUabNounOY0fqh-GDy5WlGuGNrxAfXAjvTQax9FosJcm5MbVXmjUG2sHF6A3YN5IO7guFLIJJbM6D385sn3rpmnSWaZDaePKAI7EQAYYeuzvfA/s320/carmel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545210883457670738" /></a><br /><br />Man, turn around and rhere's another month gone...still, it's been busy around here on so many fronts...<br /><br />Just got back from a week in LA, staying with friends in Malibu. Business first, then a lovely drive up to Big Sur from Monday to Wednesday. Stayed in an adorable little cabin-style renovated motel called Glen Oaks, deep amongst oaks and redwoods, looks nondescript from outside but the rooms are terrific: stone floors in the bathroom with underfloor heating, gas fireplace in the wall, Asian decor. Clean and elegant. No TV, alas, so I will have to do some catching up online.<br /><br />I saw deer outside my window when I woke up, and a flock of wild turkeys clomped around on the roof, and I tried to sleep under a barrage of acorns, like little, or not so little, bombs falling from great heights. Those oaks are TALL. Not as tall as the redwoods, though: how amazing those trees are. Also saw elephant seals in a rookery, and sea otters in the wonderful Monterey Aquarium (no humpback whales...I've watched that Star Trek movie too often), and the glorious San Carlos mission in Carmel, where Father Serra himself is buried (shoutout to Franciscans!).<br /><br />We ate like kings: the first night at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hippie/hobbit delight of a place where I will absolutely stay if ever I go back there, I had pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon with a mushroom/apple/red wine au jus and a parmesan polenta cake on the side, with the best crab cakes EVER for appetizers. Sublime. THe second night we had dinner at this famous place Nepenthe, perched on a crag overlooking the ocean, almost as good: I had duck in an Asian BBQ glaze with basmati rice, my traveling companion had chicken with sage stuffing, and we split homemade Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream. And breakfasts at a tiny cafe right next to the motel: pancakes recommended.<br /><br />The coastline is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on TV: ocean, rocks, trees. But I thought the Ventana Wilderness/Los Padres National Forest, which we had to pass through on the way up that terrifying Highway 1, was even more gorgeous. Huge heaped rocks, mountains shouldering their way down to the water, hairpin turns...fabulous.<br /><br />Then back to LA, and home on Thursday. Altogether a most excellent adventure.Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-27270063801278234822010-09-25T13:44:00.001-04:002010-09-25T13:46:03.849-04:00The Road Goes Ever On and On...Right now on my Facebook fan page, I'm having an online reading of "The Lord of the Rings". I assign a couple of chapters every two or three days, and then we talk about it in posts. Everyone here is welcome to join in: we're only up to Chapters Two and Three, the assignment for this weekend, to be discussed on Monday, so you can easily catch up. <br /><br />We just started on September 22, Bilbo and Frodo's birthday: I reread the book every fall and spring, and it occurred to me that it would be nice to do it in company this time...<br /><br />Here's the FB link, if you're interested: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Patricia-Kennealy-Morrison/120820558798Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-4219609080968189442010-08-28T00:44:00.001-04:002010-08-28T00:46:13.137-04:00Yeah, SURE You Are...Another MySpace jackass messages me to tell me he's Jim reincarnated.<br /><br />Told him he wasn't.<br /><br />"Well, how would you know I'm not? I FEEL like him!"<br /><br />Doubt that very much. I know what Jim felt like...;)<br /><br />Oh, and? Because there've been approximately 1,387 other morons who also think they're Jim reincarnated. (Fight it out amongst yourselves, worms...)<br /><br />Also: Because I'm his wife and he's my husband and I WOULD know.<br /><br />Also also: Because he's not coming back until we're together again. <br /><br />Also also also: Uh, WITCH???<br /><br />Yeesh. The stupid are with us always, yea, even unto the consummation of the world...Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-50318794127135278692010-08-03T01:37:00.001-04:002010-08-03T01:39:27.820-04:00Happy Belated Lughnasa!I haven't been posting here as much as I should...so with Lammas I resolve to change that and be better about it.<br /><br />In appropriate harvest news, I have finished the current book, Rennie 4, "A Hard Slay's Night", and am now free to move on to the Viking chapters my former agent asked for. If he thinks he can sell it, that's what I'll be working on. If not, either I will write it anyway and do the Lulu thing, or I will do Rennie 5, "Who'll Stop the Slain", which is the Woodstock one and which I was playing around a bit with last week...<br /><br />Sometimes I get very depressed and down about it, as it seems that I'm writing in a void and not reaching anyone with these and they might as well be fanfics (which would probably reach a lot more people!). But I can't NOT write them...so there's really no choice. Except of course which one I'm working on.<br /><br />Anyway, I am taking advantage of Lugh's energies and pushing on through...and I WILL be better about posting...Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-72740770818653140192010-07-03T00:01:00.000-04:002010-07-03T00:01:01.550-04:00James Douglas Morrison, 8 December 1943 - 3 July 1971<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8FJ6SBk2noKXnQkfL24wBJNJ57nDqUEbqS3m6GPwAkhTWEYWDMxV8OynY04hlKnYRgPgz3NNdpXzvYyz9qphcACnGhvm3MQIG0RmiutP_6dVxm3n3nJ0sBKqj9xSEJduk_fGhig/s1600/peonies.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8FJ6SBk2noKXnQkfL24wBJNJ57nDqUEbqS3m6GPwAkhTWEYWDMxV8OynY04hlKnYRgPgz3NNdpXzvYyz9qphcACnGhvm3MQIG0RmiutP_6dVxm3n3nJ0sBKqj9xSEJduk_fGhig/s320/peonies.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489488690314989298" /></a><br /><br /><br /><em><em>Therefore I give this song to you, who gave such grace to me...</em></em><br /><br /><br /><strong>Some may come and then abide<br />Others smile and ride away<br />Pain referred is pain denied<br />Let me heal just one more day<br /><br />You’re gone<br />Like a shadow on the sun<br />Unscheduled port of call on the last ship<br />Your trip was hijacked in the middle of the run<br />But when all is said and done<br /><br />Just because you left us long ago<br />doesn’t mean I don’t still miss you<br />Just because you’re somewhere out of reach<br />doesn’t mean I can’t still kiss you<br /><br />Sometimes though you aren’t even here<br />I can feel you right beside me<br />Sometimes when I don’t know where I am<br />I know you’re the one to guide me<br /><br />Remembering how love was and is for us<br />I will always know <br />Remembering how you somehow always knew<br />You’d be first to go</strong><br /><br /><br /><em>—from “Referred Pain”, <br />© 2010 Patricia Morrison for Lizard Queen Music</em>Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-3148922407923127542010-06-24T02:19:00.003-04:002010-06-24T02:23:10.602-04:00Jim and Patricia Morrison, 24 June 1970 - 24 June 2010<em><strong>A midsummer day's night's dream
<br />her long hair chains his hands
<br />his length upon her
<br />Did the earth move
<br />No, the galaxy shifted
<br />Are they possessors
<br />or just possess'd...</strong></em
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-21675680649995128542010-05-05T02:59:00.001-04:002010-05-05T03:03:44.086-04:00Forty years ago...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrWyrpsSv9BLZKRC-p19QJeQvRBUw9lQ_g7jSQPp1qy-5LnpvA965BF7B2tsTY87aiND-L0PQv6Bqn5rBPffbvFra_DHkTbJ5mQ3UDMl5V7hh7_wBhBuzCBX1p1QgXED_UznfmTg/s1600/JIM+10_0001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 253px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrWyrpsSv9BLZKRC-p19QJeQvRBUw9lQ_g7jSQPp1qy-5LnpvA965BF7B2tsTY87aiND-L0PQv6Bqn5rBPffbvFra_DHkTbJ5mQ3UDMl5V7hh7_wBhBuzCBX1p1QgXED_UznfmTg/s320/JIM+10_0001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467677806203857234" /></a><br />He asked, I said yes, he wrote this...<br /><br /><br /><strong><strong><em>In which he finds<br />a wife at last<br />on the Isle of Stones)<br /><br />They meet in Arden<br />Two young lovers<br />He asks her to wed him<br />She is Sorceress<br />witch<br />his fair enchantress<br />Her magic is silver & golden<br />Circe herself upon her own island<br />could not equal her allure<br /><br />Like Ulysses<br />he is held<br />But unlike the Ithacan<br />he will sail no further<br /><br />There is no Penelope<br />& he will stay w/his lady <br />of the spells</em></strong></strong><br /><br />5 May 1970Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-86820343811736228352010-04-04T01:58:00.003-04:002010-04-04T02:24:23.691-04:00The Jig Is UpWhen I was a kid and forced to go to church every Sunday, I especially detested Easter. Because there was always some self-serving Easter message sermon to the flock about how the One True Catholic and Apostolic Church was just the bestest and the biggest and the One and Onliest, and everybody who didn’t buy into that was doomed to hellfire eternal.<br /><br />This did not make sense to me, and the fact that there were seven sacraments for men and only six for women made me very, very angry. And if a seven-year-old can see the sheer wrongness of the institution, that doesn’t say very much for the institution, does it. Admittedly, I was a smart kid, but it didn’t take much to realize that any Church of Women Are the Cause of All Evil and Humans Are Born Damned to Hell by Original Sin and Anybody However Good and Moral Who Is Not A Catholic Is Likewise Damned to Hell is no church I wanted any part of. And no god I wanted any part of.<br /><br />So here’s <em>my </em>Easter message to the flock: <br /><br />If the Catholic Church, as it loudly self-proclaims itself to be, is really the church of Jesus (however you conceive him to be), then I put forth the proposition that Jesus (however you conceive him to be) would want nothing whatsoever to do with this rotten, corrupt, evil, seething mass of hypocrisy, and would, were he to return (in whatever form you conceive him to be), promptly and without hesitation kick the living, well, bejesus out of the predatory, self-important, self-aggrandizing hierarchy that supports, condones and covers up the mass-scale rape of innocent children by its own minions.<br /><br />The Church of today is no more than a shill for its own passion for power and money and control. The Passion of its founder means nothing to them; in fact, if he ever really did come back, they’d crucify him before he could even open his mouth. And they’d be right in their own interest to do so, because he would condemn them to the hell they don’t seem to believe applies to them.<br /><br />I don't have any children, and if I did I would never in a million years have raised them Catholic. But I would have sliced the dick off any so-called priest who molested them, and stuffed it down his throat. And when I now read the vile, self-justifying apologia issuing forth like sewage from people who seem to think that the Church is above the law of any land, and apparently above the law it claims for itself (“Suffer the little children…”), it makes me want to wave my hand and destroy it.<br /><br />According to their latest, ever more desperate defense, we shouldn’t blame the Church for these thousands of cases of raped children, because child abuse goes on all over the place and has for centuries and this is no worse than that. Do you people even HEAR yourselves? Any clean, healthy mind of ANY faith has to be revolted at the twisted, evil logic that came up with that one. And the further twist that anyone who tasks the Church for it is somehow anti-Catholic...well, that’s simply beyond anything.<br /><br />So I don’t want to hear any whining from Catholics about Oh we’re not all like that and most priests aren’t like that and we do a lot of good for the world. Because yes, that is quite true: you’re not, and they’re not, and you do. Absolutely.<br /><br />But if you want to be the good guys you vaunt yourselves as being, then you have to do a lot <em>better </em>than that. You have to rise up and vomit these miscreants forth. You have to stand up for what YOU believe in, not the sycophantic ravings of the lackeys of Rome. You have to let it be known that you won’t support any hierarchy that condones and covers up child rape. You have to grow a spine and some balls and you have to speak out against it and let it be known amongst the lands and the peoples thereof that you will not endure this one more moment.<br /><br />Oh, but then anyone who tries to hold the Church accountable is accused of Catholic-bashing. Oh, please! Don’t even TRY to play the victim card, Ratzinger. You lost the moral high ground when you chose to defend the violators and not the violated. When you decided that saving the Church’s sorry ass was more important than justice for the Church’s innocent victims. How is it bashing to hold the Church to merely the law of the land, let alone its own self-proclaimed moral superiority? Better than everybody else? Oh yeah? Well, let’s <em>see </em>it, then.<br /><br />But the Church has never had a moral leg to stand on. It killed its own (Cathars, Templars, Inquisition in general). It killed those not its own (Muslims, Protestants, Pagans and everybody else). It preached for centuries that Jews were deicides who murdered God (not even their <em>own </em>god, mind you...). It had a sweet little secret handshake deal going with Nazi Germany: you look the other way, Adolf, and so will we. (Et tu, Benedictus? More like “Sieg heil!”) It twiddled its bejeweled thumbs while Jews, Roma and other defenseless people were taken away to death camps. It arranged for Nazis to escape trial for their war crimes, and now it enables child rapists escape the rightful consequences of their actions. <br /><br />Is there no end to the utter hypocrisy and sanctimonious filth of this evil, barbarous sect, this long-outdated medieval relic? Will no one rid us of these troublesome priests?<br /><br />Supposedly the Vatican had no knowledge of the child abuse. Well, any priestling who says so is a lying liar who lies. They knew, right enough, and they tried to make it go away by ignoring it. Some moral compass you’ve got going there, Rome! You posture and preen as the world’s guiding light and moral authority, but your authority is founded on nothing but pure muck. And people are finally realizing that they’re sick of it.<br /><br />The Church is at present “investigating” American nuns: to see if they’re abject and submissive enough, to make sure no uppity women are sassing back at priests and the Pope, and to reinforce all the misogyny that has been rampant in the institution ever since Jesus took a powder. I suggest they turn some of that inquisitional scrutiny on themselves. Can you <em>IMAGINE </em>how fast a nun who tried to officiate at a Mass would be kicked to the curb? Light-speed, baby! So why haven’t any of these spoiled pederast rapist priests been tossed out like the garbage they are?<br /><br />I have no idea how this will play out. Probably the way it always does: the Church will continue to cover its nasty ass with both hands, squealing like a stuck pig; money will be paid to some of the victims, which will do nothing to alleviate their pain; and the vile business will go on as usual.<br /><br />But you know, maybe not this time. Maybe this time the wrath of the Goddess will come down upon the petty, vile, evil little men who have denied Her and Her power for two millennia, and blot them and their offenses from the face of the earth. I’d very much like to see that. And I’d do anything I can to make it happen.Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-7296706115683819842010-02-18T17:46:00.020-05:002010-03-21T19:12:08.767-04:00Something About Mary<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0i8910FpQtJ5KKApYcTsaWm80EUi7_1Y5l8plUzf8pWqcc0IVeCC0qEVF9S_AlFjy4QaA1OCaNRvQLeK6bIhCANtXmlf7oIjqBetziS1YBQt6kbkQoKK06-5v8rdH5MYS5Wn2WA/s1600-h/mary+hayley+bix.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 204px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0i8910FpQtJ5KKApYcTsaWm80EUi7_1Y5l8plUzf8pWqcc0IVeCC0qEVF9S_AlFjy4QaA1OCaNRvQLeK6bIhCANtXmlf7oIjqBetziS1YBQt6kbkQoKK06-5v8rdH5MYS5Wn2WA/s320/mary+hayley+bix.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5439719156113576050" /></a><br /><br /><br />I am SO not supposed to be doing this. Mary was the one who had promised to do it for <em>me</em>...yet here we are. <br /><br />And, because she loved words so, here are some she loved. I didn’t write these first ones. But they are mine nonetheless. And hers also.<br /><br /><br /><em>I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.<br />So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:<br />Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned<br />With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. <br /><br />Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.<br />Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.<br />A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,<br />A formula, a phrase remains—but the best is lost. <br /><br />The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,<br />They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled<br />Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.<br />More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. <br /><br />Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave<br />Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;<br />Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.<br />I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.</em><br /><br /><br />I met Mary Herczog (that's her, with her dogs Hayley and Bix) in 1992. We had met over the phone in May, when I was in L.A. on my book tour for my memoir <em>Strange Days </em>and she phone-interviewed me for Venice magazine. We hit it off immediately: that separated at birth, <em>Anne of Green Gables </em>race-that-knows-Joseph kind of immediate connection. Bestest friends forever, which is how everyone who ever knew her felt about her, and all of us were correct to feel so. But we didn’t meet in person until she was in NYC that Thanksgiving.<br /><br />We were booked to have dinner at the Telephone, a wonderful British pub a block away from my apartment. I walked in, and there she was, sitting on the banquette, looking just as she should! And the rest, as they say, was history, oh yes indeed.<br /><br />Over the 18 years of our friendship (the exact number of our age difference, ooooh cosmic!), we talked and visited and emailed endlessly. We talked about love, and hate, and jewelry, and chocolate, and books we'd read and books we'd written, and the British royal family, and food, and dogs, and travel, and chocolate, and figure skating, and rock&roll, and chocolate, did I mention chocolate?, and just about everything that two smart and wicked friends talk about. <br /><br />I went out to L.A. every other year or so to stay with her for the fabulous Oscar parties she and her rock critic husband, Steve Hochman, would host: guests had to bring food that had some relevance to a nominated movie...as you may imagine, the menus were spectacularly idiosyncratic. <br /><br />She consoled me when I was going through hideously painful stuff about Jim that vile people were throwing at me, and counseled me through any amount of other difficulties, and I like to think I did the same for her.<br /><br />I got to help her a bit with her wonderful book <em>Figures of Echo</em> (which was made into a Lifetime movie called "Custody", not much like the book but go rent it), and to put her as a character (Mariota) into my own book <em>Blackmantle</em>, and to halfway base another character (Prax) in my rock&roll mystery books on her, and to dedicate the first of them, <em>Ungrateful Dead</em>, to her, because she'd pushed and nagged and bribed and threatened and cajoled and encouraged me until I finished it: “For Mary Susan Herczog, who bossed me around.”<br /><br />And she bossed me around FOREVER. She got me to do things that no one else in this world or any other could have gotten me to do. And she stopped me from doing things that I soooo wanted to do, <em>bad </em>things, when she was the only one who could have...she’d just lie down on the tracks in front of the locomotive until I promised not to.<br /><br />And either way, she was always, <em>always </em>right.<br /><br />In 1997, when the cancer had just been diagnosed but not revealed yet to her friends and family, I had a terrifying prescient dream, which I recounted to her, reluctantly, and which of course she <em>instantly </em>wrote about in one of her L.A. Times articles about the cancer experience, because she knew a good story when she heard one: I was alone in a dark scary house, with knives in my hands, screaming for her and Steve, trying to protect her against some terrible, malevolent thing that was moving around outside and wanted to get in. They weren't home, and so I set my back against the door, and I resolved not to let it in, and I woke up hysterical and shaking from head to foot.<br /><br />I was staying at my friend Phyllis Curott's house when this dream came to me, and I told her about it, and all day long I had this horrible sense of wrongness, that something was terribly amiss with someone I loved. So I cut the visit short and went home and steeled myself to phone Mary and tell her, and when I did, she was silent for a moment, and then said, "Did I mention I have breast cancer?" And we both freaked a little. Well, a lot.<br /><br />And so the dark malevolent thing got in no matter what any of us could do.<br /><br />But once it did, she was the most amazing warrior in the world as she dealt with it. She battled it with courage, and with wit, and with all the strength she had (which was a LOT), for twelve years. During which her style was not cramped in the slightest: global travel, food porn, a house in New Orleans...she did it all.<br /><br />In early January, before she publicly announced the rapidly deteriorating situation, we had a long talk, when the decision was made to not pursue more punishing chemo that wouldn’t help anyway, and I think I got to tell her all of how I felt. Which of course she already knew. And whatever I didn’t say, she knew anyway. Because, as we all know, she always did.<br /><br />Strangely, then, I did not sense her actual going, and usually I’m deeply attuned to that kind of thing. But for weeks before that, I did sense her moving away from us, like the moon, like the outbound tide. I saw pictures of her taken a couple of days before she died, the day she received her master’s degree (straight A's, unprecedented in the school's history, not even an A-minus among them) in theology from Claremont, "God school" as she called it, how terrifically wonderful an achievement was that, and I could see immediately that she had her skates on, that she was ready to roll. <br /><br />She died on Mardi Gras morning: how perfect for someone who so loved New Orleans and all its traditions, and how perfectly Mary. <br />Yet, for all her spirituality and theological learning and leanings, she was unconvinced about the afterlife, or said she was. <br /><br />But <em>I’m</em> not, and I can SO see her riding joyously into Aslan’s country atop a giant flower-bespangled parade float, in a gorgeous gown and of <em>course </em>a lovely diamond tiara, with adoring and cheering multitudes hailing her as their Queen. Or being met by Dumbledore in the spiritual King’s Cross station, and boarding a train that will take her On. Or dancing in the ruins tonight, and every night. And that’s what I think, no matter what.<br /><br />She lived in her extraordinary lifetime about eighty-seven normal people's lives, all of them crammed with incident. She was more vividly alive than anyone I’ve ever known, and funnier and braver than anyone I ever met. I was prouder to win one praiseful word from her than a spate of them from strangers, and I loved her very, very much. <br /><br />So, a few words more that we both treasured…<br /><br /><em>What though that radiance which was once so bright<br />Be now forever taken from our sight<br />Though nothing can bring back the hour<br />of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower<br />We will grieve not, rather find<br />strength in what remains behind<br />In the primal sympathy, <br />which, having been, must ever be.</em><br /><br />‘Bye, my darlingest Mary! When you meet up with Jim, well, you know what to do...Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-78733163697767877822010-02-16T17:44:00.000-05:002010-02-18T17:45:32.958-05:00Mary Susan Herczog, 31 March 1964 - 16 February 2010My dear and much beloved friend Mary died this morning at 11:11 am California time, in her Los Angeles home, after a 12-year battle with cancer. She was surrounded by her family and friends. Several days ago, she was presented with her master's degree in theology and philosophical studies from Claremont School of Theology. She was the author of many books and the reader of many more. She leaves her husband, Steve Hochman, her mother and siblings and nieces and nephews, and many, many grieving friends.<br /><br />She was the bravest person I have ever known. May her journey thrivePatricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-58538424676755810582010-02-14T01:23:00.001-05:002010-02-14T01:25:20.598-05:00A Day We Were Together<strong><em>"Love hides in the strangest places<br />Love hides in familiar faces..."</em><br /><br />---Jim Morrison</strong><br /><br /><br />Happy Valentine's Day, honey, and thank you again for the diamond heart...and everything else.Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-88370014290648062372010-01-26T19:09:00.000-05:002010-01-26T19:10:00.023-05:00Burqa's SneerageI see where France wants to pass a law banning the burqa, and all the usual suspects are having fits about it. Including me.<br /><br />Now, it might seem racist or sexist or religionist or whatever to try to legislate against “traditional” ethnic clothing, but don’t let the bleeding-heart libertarians fool you. This is about WAY more than a walking tent. It’s really about whether the West is going to be allowed to stay Western. Because, make no mistake, we’re under siege.<br /><br />The burqa is merely emblematic of a raft of utterly unacceptable practices used in Islam purely and simply for male thugs to control women. Charming things like genital mutilation, “honor” killings, religiously approved polygamy and other such prehistoric attitudes clutched to male Islamic bosoms as a means to allow them to refuse being assimilated into the Western country under discussion: France, the U.K, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S., Scandinavia…<br /><br />The burqa is NOT traditional except within a very small sphere of fundie reactionaries and in the utter civil-liberties hell that is Saudi Arabia. It’s purely political and totally unreasonable: the Koran does NOT demand it, imams have spoken out against it—gosh, they’ll probably be put under fatwa for it! Since that’s the way Islamics tend to do things—and the West has every right in the world to not put up with it.<br /><br />I notice that women in Islamic countries are not allowed to do all sorts of things, like drive, and work, and be educated, and divorce their husbands, and, yes, go out in public without wearing a black shroud. So Islamics really have no business whatsoever complaining when they’re forced to abide by OUR rules, in OUR countries. They make the rules where they live, and expect outsiders and immigrants and even tourists to comply; so how dare they bitch and moan when forced to comply with the rules in ours? Turnabout is fair play.<br /><br />But not, it seems, for them. Doesn’t work that way for them, oh nonononono! They issue death decrees against political cartoonists and try to kill them. They HAVE killed filmmakers who “offend” them. Resident U.K. Islamics are trying to get a separate system of justice set up just for them, superseding the fantastic British common law that has endured since Magna Carta and imposing Shari’a. Not on! <br /><br />And you know, if this sounds racist, I don’t fucking care. Because it isn’t. It’s fair commentary on horrible and immoral practices. Yet that’s the card they all play, the racism one, whenever anyone dares to utter a syllable of criticism of their precious primitive ways. So, primitive AND thin-skinned… Can’t take it? Too bad! Grow up and join the rest of us.<br /><br />If Islamics living in France insist on the burqa, then I think the French government should fine those who impose it on women. Severely. Or deny them citizenship. Or deport them. There’s apparently no way to make things better for those women, and the males (they’re not men…) will probably just make it worse for the ones under their domination. Countries suffering under the Islamic onslaught might also do well to reconsider letting any more of them in, too; but that’s a whole other rant, as is the rant against homegrown nonsense along these very lines preached and practiced by rabid young converts who attend terrorist mosques.<br /><br />If ignorant immigrant Islamics insist on bringing their 1st-century goatherder attitudes with them when they move for economic reasons into 21st-century Western societies, they need to be firmly shown (a) the error of their ways, and (b) the border, on their way back home to the medieval satrapies they fled. They’re only here because they can make more money and live more comfortably than they can at home without ever having to participate in our national lives. <br /><br />Listen, when you come to the West to live, you live by OUR laws and OUR ways. Not yours. As many immigrants of many cultures do. If you can’t manage that, or don’t want to, stay in the desert, or go back to it.<br /><br />What REALLY gets up my nose is that Islamics pass off all this as "religion." It's not. It's primitive, sexist, racist cultural practices, and it has GOT to change. Before it destroys everybody. Oh, wait, isn't that what they want, and what their "holy" book tells them they must do?<br /><br />Well, Christians and Jews got past being told in THEIR book to stone to death people who wear cloth of two different threads or plant two different crops next to each other and to sell their own children into slavery. <br />I'm sure that a race of people who invented higher mathematics and had public street lighting and public gardens in Spain when the rest of Europe was living in filth and ignorance can certainly manage to take the parts that have real spirit and relevance, and leave behind the rest.<br /><br />If they want to.<br /><br />Islam badly needs and requires a Martin Luther, or even a Dr. Martin Luther King...Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-88685637391907991552010-01-25T14:14:00.001-05:002010-01-26T19:17:24.122-05:00A Day to Remember...This afternoon 41 years ago (41! How did THAT happen?) Jim and I met for the first time. I was in his hotel suite at the Plaza to do an interview, the only one he did that day. <br /><br />And because no woman ever forgets the first moment she met the love of her life, I was wearing a dark-velour tunic, brown leather pants and sand-colored suede boots, with tigereye scarab earrings and a long gold chain; he had on his concert clothes from the Madison Square Garden show the night before---a rough unbleached white cotton peasant shirt, black jeans and black Frye boots.<br /><br />What a day...and after.Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-28106725501733887292010-01-18T15:57:00.000-05:002010-01-18T15:58:20.238-05:00MLK"We are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Thank you, Dr. King...Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-41318389094141396552009-12-21T15:47:00.002-05:002009-12-21T19:32:33.083-05:00Happy Solstice!<strong><strong>Frost doth gleam and wind doth blow<br />To join the Wild Hunt we shall go<br />To honor Lord of Ice and Snow<br />This cold December morning.</strong></strong><br /><br /><br /><em>With Solstice here we'll celebrate,<br />this sacred time and have much cheer.<br />We will bring warmth, we will bring light,<br />unto the darkest time of year.<br /><br />The mistletoe will be cut down<br />with sickle from the sacred tree.<br />A kiss I'll give to you, my love,<br />a pledge of friendship made to thee.<br /><br />For greater than the will of man,<br />or want of that which can be done,<br />it falls and shines on where we stand,<br />beneath the great unconquered sun.<br /><br />For this is now our turning point,<br />the shortest day, the longest night.<br />We'll look unto the months to come,<br />when the sun will grow both strong and bright.<br /><br />A versèd crown all decked with green<br />that tells of winter's tales and mirth<br />will bring great gladness and much joy<br />to all who walk upon this earth.<br /><br />And greater than the will of man<br />or want of that which can be done,<br />it falls and shines on where we stand,<br />beneath the great unconquered sun.<br /><br />---Steeleye Span</em><br /><br /><br />Ave Sol Invictus!Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-91049304857123394642009-12-15T00:17:00.002-05:002009-12-15T00:21:56.126-05:00Love Him Madly...<em><strong>From Chapter One...Rennie and Prax are at the Whisky A Go-Go, primo L.A. rock club, for the debut of their friend Tansy Belladonna's new band...</strong></em><br /><br /><br />As the crowds shifted and parted again, carrying them to the edge of the empty dancefloor, Rennie’s eye was caught by someone sitting alone at one of the little tables near the stage. He looked extremely familiar, though she couldn’t immediately place him: very tall, thick straight streaky blond hair, great hair, all the way down to strong-looking shoulders, neatly trimmed full beard. Quiet clothes, most unrockstar-like: cocoa suede shirt, black jeans, Frye boots; no flashy Navajo jewelry or anything, just a handmade leather cuff carrying a simple watch and a small pendant visible in the open neck of his shirt. And really handsome. As he became aware of her gaze, he inclined his head gravely and lifted a glass in salute.<br /><br />“Praxie, who’s that, do we know him, do we want to know him?”<br /><br />Prax shook the feathers out of her eyes and looked. “Oooh, it’s Turk Wayland, idiot girl! I haven’t seen him in ages, his hair’s gotten so long, and the beard, come on, let’s go sit with him.”<br /><br />“What on earth is he doing here? Didn’t he dump Tansy like five minutes after she dumped Bruno for him at Monterey, before Lionheart went out on that big tour? Come to think of it, we never even saw them together much. They’re not back together?”<br /><br />“Yes he did, and no they absolutely are not, she’s with Bruno again, you know that. He’s probably just here to be gallantly supportive—he is a Brit, that whole perfect-gentleman trip. And I never <em>could </em>figure it out in the first place, Turk and Tanze: if she weighed <em>twice </em>what she does, his I. Q. would <em>still </em>be the higher number, and they both said it wasn’t the sex so who the hell knows. He’s not with anybody now that I’ve heard about though of course he could be who’d let something like <em>that </em>go to waste TURK!”<br /><br />They had reached his table, and Turk Wayland was rising courteously to his feet to greet them. Rennie couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized him, though, as Prax had said, the hair was much longer than when they had last seen him, and the beard didn’t help. Didn’t help the recognition factor, that is; the gorgeousness factor, now that it helped a <em>lot</em>. Not that he had needed any help there either: he was quite ridiculously good-looking clean-shaven. Perhaps his brief flutter with Tansy had aged him; he looked more serious than he had at Monterey. Or maybe that too was the beard: he was only a couple of years older than Prax and Rennie.<br /><br />He was one of the most sublimely talented of rock princes—a guitar god of the highest order, just about as famous as it was possible to be. But he’d always stood apart from his peers, held himself deliberately aloof, even, resulting in a reputation unique in the rockerverse. He rarely drank, seldom did drugs, never acted out in public, never got busted—if he hadn’t been so completely cool he’d be totally square—and he possessed an intelligence that in his profession was equaled by few. The rock star that never was on land or sea. Except, of course, he was.<br /><br />All of which meant that he was pursued by groupies as a rock Holy Grail, or maybe Unholy: legend had it that the austere Englishman never indulged himself with groupies as his colleagues did, so scoring him would really be a coup de fucque, though, Turk being so unlike other rockers, the groupie girls didn’t understand him at all, and the fact that he refused to sleep around their ranks confused and scared them. <br />Which only added to his mystique. So no groupies; but by all accounts he never seemed short of female companionship: models, actresses, lady rockers like Tansy.<br /><br />As for his music cred, that was beyond legend. Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Music, he had been tossed out on his ear for incorrigible rock and rolling, as he amusingly recounted in interviews. It didn’t matter: he had already found gainful employment as the founder, leader and trail-blazing lead guitarist of the blues-rock band Lionheart. <br /><br />Since his teenage days with British blues outfits he’d been nicknamed Slider, for his bottleneck prowess and the flash and filigree of the sustain-fueled technique that had made him a star. Now he was a superstar, also dating from Monterey, when Lionheart had wiped the floor with everybody but Joplin and Hendrix—and those two had watched and listened with their eyes on sticks and their jaws on their knees. <br /><br />His real name and history were as yet not in the public’s domain, or even known among his bandmates and friends; for all intents and purposes, ‘Turk Wayland’ was it. No antecedents, little backstory: to hear him tell it, or not tell it, he’d sprung fully formed and Stratocaster in hand from the brow of Dionysus, who if anyone was the rock god he was. And really when you thought about it, that was all anybody needed to know.<br /><br />“Praxedes, how nice to see you, it’s been much too long…” Upper-class English accent, deep and pleasant baritone voice. He took Prax’s hands and leaned over the table to kiss her on both cheeks, then cut his glance sideways. “And I know very well who this lady is—”<br /><br />Rennie looked up—way up, he had to be at least six foot three to her five-six, strange she hadn’t remembered how tall he was—to meet a pair of alarmingly aware and intelligent cobalt-colored eyes, strange she hadn’t noticed before how intelligent…<br /><br /><em>Oh Holy Mother of God! He’s SMART! There’s nothing walking this planet since the dinosaurs went boom that’s more dangerous than a rock star with a brain…why do I have the feeling this guy is going to be big, big trouble?</em><br /><br />They did the double-cheek Eurokiss, murmured mutual courtesies—we met briefly at Monterey you wouldn’t remember, oh but I do, at the hotel Saturday night and then we all had breakfast at that diner on Sunday morning right before we heard about the last murder, love your work, love your work, heard so much about you from Tansy, me too also from Tansy, what are you doing in L.A., oh I live here now, what a coincidence so do I. Prax sat them all down and waved a waiter over with drinks, and she and Turk immediately dived into shoptalk, Rennie content just to listen.<br /><br />Lionheart had a huge chart-topping album out at the moment, Clarity Road, their first for Centaur Records, who had snapped them up at Monterey and rush-released the LP. But when Turk mentioned their next, now under construction, Rennie couldn’t keep the eyeroll under control.<br /><br />“You’re calling it <em>COCKCHAFER</em>? For the love of God, Montresor! They’ll never let you get away with it—the suits at the label.”<br /><br />Turk smiled straight at her—not the usual calculated-to-a-millimeter rock-star-bad-boy-guaranteed-to-make-you-curl-your-toes-and-drop-your-knickers smile, but the real one, the slow warm one that reaches the eyes and says Right, you pass the test, you’re obviously a person, maybe we can talk after all—and Rennie almost fainted. <br /><br /><em>Dear God, you could raise crops in those dimples… Well, take your best shot, guitar stud, but I’m telling you, you won’t land a glove on me! I’ve been prettyboyed by pros, so bring it on!</em><br /><br />“Of course they won’t,” he agreed, dropping his voice another octave, although that really didn’t seem physically possible. “Especially our dear label president, Freddy Bellasca. Ah, I see you’re acquainted… Well, it’s just strategy, the title. You toss out something outrageous that you know you haven’t a hope in hell of getting approved; then when you’re shot down, you cunningly suggest as a ‘compromise’ whatever it was you really wanted in the first place and now stand a far better chance of getting.”<br /><br />“A clever ploy.”<br /><br />“You’d be surprised how often people fall for it. But it’s not what it sounds like, you know—‘cockchafer’. Means a great huge—bug. Giant grasshopper, cicada, sort of thing. Makes a disproportionately big noise when it flies. It seemed to fit us. Oh, and I too am an Edgar Allan Poe fan, by the way.”<br /><br />Ohhhkay, gloves coming off now… Rennie smiled and stirred her drink with the tip of one index finger, glancing up at Turk; then, still holding his gaze, she put the finger in her mouth and slowly drew it out again, lips pouting kissily around it, soft inner lower lip turned out, fingertip lingering in one final flick. They’d never had a serious verbal sparring session before; but gauntlets had clearly been flung, and now all that seemed about to change.<br /><br />“I think <em>Road </em>is maybe the best album I’ve ever heard in my <em>life</em>,” she said then, voice pitched deliberately low, slow and challenging.<br /><br />Turk looked down, then up, then away, and his face both brightened and colored. <br /><br /><em>Oh my paws and whiskers, he’s SHY, I don’t believe it, this could be fuuuuuun…</em><br /><br />“Exactly what do you admire so much about it?” he asked, swinging his gaze back to clang across hers like a naked sword, though there was a glint of amusement in there too. “I’m not fishing for compliments—I’d just like to know what people actually mean when they say something like that. We hear that sort of thing so often, I thought I’d ask. Now that I have the chance.”<br /><br />So much for shy. Obviously an opponent worthy of her steel—she liked that so much in a man. Though she didn’t quite cackle and rub her hands together, Rennie settled down with something like enthusiasm to a song-by-song dissection of the groundbreaking, earthshaking Clarity Road, which had released in December and was already being hailed as one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time and space. <br /><br />With equal enthusiasm, Turk fluently disputed her every word, taking the opposite viewpoint to whatever she said purely for the pleasure of arguing with her. Prax just sat there, looking back and forth like a Wimbledon spectator as the arcane musicological points—they were hurling genre influences at each other like javelins, everything from medieval plainsong to Delta blues—were served, returned, lobbed, volleyed and scored, a knowing grin overspreading her face.<br /><br />After awhile, Rennie noticed that some people across the room were waving Prax to come over and Prax was showing signs of wanting to join them. She grabbed her friend’s arm and spoke in an urgent mutter, while Turk courteously excused himself and left the table to fetch more drinks.<br /><br />“Praxie, don’t leave me, whatever will I talk to him about?”<br /><br />“Sweetness, he’s flirting with you like a Southern belle! He’s doing everything but bat his eyelashes and I’m sure he’ll do even that if he has to, yes, and hasn’t he got long ones too, his eyelashes, I mean. If you were both in the third grade your pigtails would be in the inkwell by now. And we all know what that means. Two smart people being intellectual all over each other’s ass when even a blind albino cavetrout can see that each other’s ass is all they’re thinking about—man, the unresolved sexual tension is killing me here…”<br /><br />“I’ll get you some brandy and a fan, shall I?” said Rennie acidly. “Before you swoon clean away?”<br /><br />Prax laughed. “You’re not exactly pushing up the gain on subtlety yourself, O Queen of Nuance! That cute little one-finger exercise—I can’t believe you actually <em>did </em>that, you’ve been having sex with him ever since you sat down… Put us all out of your misery, will you? Just go fuck his brains out and get it over with. No? Well, okay, but believe me, he’s dying to talk to you without me around—and, indeed, to fuck your brains out. Mark my words.”<br /><br />“But he—”<br /><br />“You talk to people for a living, remember? Best not too much about Tansy, obviously—though do tell him how sweet and chivalrous you think he is to come cheer her on tonight even though he dumped her. Well, maybe not that dumping bit. Oh, wait, I just remembered, he’s into all that English history crap you like, talk to him about that. Yes, that’s it.” <br /><br />Heartlessly, Prax went off to join her friends, and Rennie glared narrow-eyed after her, thinking daggers. Not turning, but obviously feeling the stings, Prax waved backward over her shoulder, and Rennie laughed.<br /><br />Turk returned with two large gin and tonics, and sat down beside her a lot closer than he had when Prax was with them, in fact so close that their thighs were touching hip to knee under the tiny table. <em>Oh, that old trick… </em><br /><br />Rennie Stride had seen very little of Turk Wayland since Monterey. She certainly hadn’t encountered him enough to form an opinion—other than the standard critic assessment of his incredible talent and the standard chick assessment of his equally incredible looks—so she didn’t have sufficient data to effectively make one now.<br /><br />But if he was flirting, and it sure seemed that Prax was right about that—and hmm, how had he known to bring back only two drinks?—it was on some higher plane or deeper level that wasn’t flirting at all. Then again, probably every intelligent woman who had ever done anything so abysmally stupid as fall for a rock star—and you’d be surprised how many there were—had thought the same thing. <br /><br />Turk sipped at his g&t and set it down again, and then he put his arm around the back of her chair, where she felt the light contact right through his suede sleeve, heating up her bare shoulders like an electrified boa.<br /><br />“I hesitate even to mention it,” he said then, “as I understand from Prax and Tansy both that you’re a bit sensitive on the topic, and who could blame you, but I must admit I’m curious. You certainly seem to have a flair for—”<br /><br />“Murder?” Rennie’s smile was cool, but her green gaze was downright frosty; she’d been wondering how long it would be before that came up. It always did. “Yes, it does seem to happen a lot in my vicinity. That was how Praxie and I became friends: she was accused of three, count ’em, three, murders up in San Francisco. Well, actually formally busted on only two, but she was on the scene for three, and eyebrows were raised… Not to mention the ones I was around for at the Avalon Ballroom and Winterland and the Matrix and the Be-In in Golden Gate Park. Plus the murders at Monterey—but you were there too, you must remember those.”<br /><br />“I do indeed. But as I recall, it was you who proved that Prax didn’t do those first San Francisco ones.”<br /><br />“Yeah, but I couldn’t prove who did, not until he tried to kill me. Tansy helped me out a lot, oddly enough. She can tell you all about it.”<br /><br />Ah, the classic chick fishing expedition: practically dare the guy to talk about the ex, to find out if she’s really the ex or still just the pre-ex…<br /><br />But Turk shook his head. “Tansy and I aren’t together. Not since last summer. I’d have thought she’d told you? She and Bruno Harvey have been back on again for months—he loves her so much, and it was great for Turnstone when they were a couple. Intraband romance doesn’t usually work, too many power struggles, but for those two it somehow did. Now that she’s solo, who knows? Maybe it’s better for them to keep their professional and personal lives separate. At any rate, after we broke up, I went home to England for a while; when I came back my band went out in support of the new album, and we just came off the road two weeks ago. I haven’t even seen her in all that time.” <br /><br /><em>Well, that’s something. And yes, she did tell me…</em> Last June at Monterey, Tansy Belladonna had taken one look at Turk Wayland and listened to him play eight bars and had dumped Bruno for him on the spot, though she and Bruno had remained close friends and good bandfellows. But Turk and Tansy hadn’t lasted: by the end of July they were over; he’d ditched her, Tansy had said cheerfully, and he had never uttered a public word about it. <br /><br />And then, amazingly, in a move which nobody from one end of rock to the other understood, just around Halloween, with their first album topping the charts, Tansy herself had ditched Turnstone, in favor of this new assemblage, which she’d insisted on calling Moonfyre, oblivious to the thunder of eyes rolling from the Sunset Strip to Carnaby Street. And in a few minutes now, Moonfyre would be making their L.A. debut—though the rock-insider morning line had been stash your bread and wait for the album, studio tricks are the only thing that can save this.<br /><br />“No wonder Praxie and I haven’t seen you around. Very decent of you to come tonight, then.” Rennie looked sidelong at him, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, that came out really snotty. I meant it honestly.”<br /><br />Turk smiled again. “We’re still friends. She’d do the same for me.”<br /><br />“We’re going backstage after the set,” offered Rennie. “Come with us. Just to say hello. I’m sure Tanze would love it if you dropped in.”<br /><br />He took another, longer, hit on his drink. “Let’s see how the night goes first.”<br /><br />Rennie, who like most women was a past master at interpreting cryptic guyspeak, recognized that Turk had just spoken from that mysterious point of masculine entrenchment where the male mind was made up and further female prodding would only annoy, and she was an experienced enough campaigner to know when to break off. <br /><br /><em>Mission accomplished, anyway…</em><br /><br />She changed the subject by brute force. “Prax tells me you’re really into English history. That would be because you’re historically English?”<br /><br />Turk’s countenance kept its pleasant expression, but his eyes went the color of gun-blued steel, and he looked at her from under the blond bangs like an antelope checking out a waterhole for lurking leopards. He seemed to have gone on sudden red alert, though she couldn’t imagine why; his undeniable Englishness seemed a safe enough topic…<br /><br />“Yes, I expect it would,” he said levelly, sounding even more Brit than he had before. “Historically or otherwise. And enthusiastic fans make a good deal more of it than I do, if you take my meaning.”<br /><br />Rennie nodded comprehension; for enthusiastic, read obsessed. “That’s how it’s getting to be in rock. You can’t have secrets or a private life anymore, no matter how hard you try.”<br /><br />This time he visibly struggled to keep his smile from becoming a grin, though whatever the inside joke was, he wasn’t sharing. <br /><br />“Well, I like to think I’ve managed so far. And when you and I are married we’ll keep it that way.”<br /><br />They both froze, aghast, neither having the faintest clue as to where that had come from, or why. Rennie recovered first.<br /><br />“Okay, if you insist, but won’t it be a lot less complicated if we just fuck?”<br /><br />Turk burst out laughing, and the moment was saved. He had no idea why he’d said that. It had just popped out of his mouth, probably by way of his crotch with no brain participation whatsoever. But whatever he had been going to say next was lost, as a faint backstage commotion caught their attention. Nothing that would alarm anyone sitting farther away than they were, though at the next table Chris Sakerhawk looked up curiously. But to Rennie’s experienced ear, there was something familiar about the tone of the subdued turmoil, something horribly familiar…something just horrible…<br /><br />Like Rikki-tikki-tavi, like any good reporter, Rennie’s motto was ‘Run and find out’. She never hesitated, but with Turk right behind her, dashed straight through the curtain. The backstage space was full of crew and roadies and equipment, as usual for half an hour before a show, perhaps a little fuller than usual. On the far side was the open staircase that led up to the dressing rooms and offices in the loft above the stage. But Rennie and Turk both stopped, well, dead in their tracks, brought up short by the almost incomprehensible scene that met their eyes....Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-73103503187709044272009-12-05T14:41:00.000-05:002009-12-05T14:43:12.211-05:00Almost Here...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTMmajsLDK33p_0_WqmhyphenhyphenUQ6C2tGR5-SD92aXFhJ_eijp5j-XatGNOsAj1YSMJ7miGIDru9Qpz_MBOSgMaoSF5B1edYB4sMSKPRvL3k0Sm5b3dSYCV-LnLCXS87S8XfZbFeAJThQ/s1600-h/LHM_1201.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 219px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTMmajsLDK33p_0_WqmhyphenhyphenUQ6C2tGR5-SD92aXFhJ_eijp5j-XatGNOsAj1YSMJ7miGIDru9Qpz_MBOSgMaoSF5B1edYB4sMSKPRvL3k0Sm5b3dSYCV-LnLCXS87S8XfZbFeAJThQ/s320/LHM_1201.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411839920747757346" /></a>Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25068044.post-6516683791937760172009-11-14T14:37:00.001-05:002009-11-14T14:37:50.175-05:00Write WingA little writing advice that was passed on to me and that I pass on to you, for NaNoWriMo, since every Mo is WriMo for me: every scene must serve two out of three purposes. Exposition, character development or plot advancement. (Backstory can come in under any of these.) Occasionally you can pull off a triple-purpose scene, or indulge yourself in a single-purposer. But two out of three is the Way.<br /><br />To me, exposition and backstory are two different things, but you may not see them the same way. Exposition is laying big structural story framework (could be past, present or future), while backstory is fill-in parenthetical stuff that is useful and fun, if not necessarily critical to the tale. It's hard to quantify the difference, but I know it when I write it.<br /><br />The advice has a long pedigree: my first publisher, James Frenkel, passed it on to me when I was writing "The Throne of Scone"; I recently reminded him of it and he said HE'd gotten it from sci-fi author Vernor Vinge, who'd gotten it from someone he couldn't remember. So it's Ancient Tribal Wisdom for sure, being handed down in the ancient tribal style.<br /><br />Anyway, it's the best piece of writing advice I ever got, and I thank whoever originated it, and I pass it along every chance I get.Patricia Kennealy Morrisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08208243811708249314noreply@blogger.com0