time to update my blog

it's been a long time since i wrote anything here... la la la, let's see what's changed. i am soooooooo fucking tired, that hasn't changed.

another thing that hasn't changed is that i haven't gotten any further on megan's video. i'll tell you why. it starts with that freedom center party that only freedom center people came to where that turned out to be a good thing because half of us are socially phobic anyway. i do believe i mentioned earlier a transformative experience i had hooping to bucket bennie (i have since hunted him down & talked to him & learned we were on the same page, and we are planning to collaborate more in the near future.) well i had another transformative experience, and that was meeting rebekah.

who is rebekah... well she's the girlfriend (or "partner" if you prefer) of my friend sally. sally is awesome. i'd heard a lot about rebekah but never met her before that night. and then sally introduced us and glimmer sparkle clinking of champagne glasses excitement mischief beauty brilliance it was all there. i had met my future artistic collaborator. i don't know if i need to tell you how rare that is. there are very few people on this earth with whom i've really enjoyed collaborating. i loved working with marc on his video. i used to collaborate on some stuff with my husband david. before that, i think it was only betty. i might have counted star at one point but the idealism has long worn off of that. so, no. it's just been a few.

so i told rebekah about megan's video & where & why i was stuck. we sat down right there at the party, me on the floor her in a chair and we shot out ideas. and i loved her ideas. and i told her there was no money in this but i'd credit her & she said she would totally come over to my place & sit next to me at my computer & edit w/me. i was so fucking excited. i found a purple crayon & a scrap of paper & got her number. i've stuck it to the front of my computer and am staring at it now. i called her a couple days later - no illusion, she was still into it. we set up a date but had to cancel b/c of the rain - because you see she lives way out by the other end of king street & has to walk all the way into town & in pouring rain that's just not gonna happen. so we rescheduled for this monday. but we missed each other.

i didn't call her although i knew that i should. i didn't know if she flaked (i hoped it was her that flaked) or that she showed up on time (we were supposed to meet at haymarket) but i was a few minutes late so she left... i just didn't know. i would have found out if i'd called her but i kept putting it off. and off. all week, and up till last night i was still saying "i gotta call rebekah, i really want to do this with her." so i really thought i was working my way up to it.

today was saturday and as i have officially started massage school, i had to be there at 9am. yuck. no, i did not get enough sleep friday night. the night before the first class i did not get a single wink of sleep. the night before the 2nd class i caught a couple hours' worth of zzzzs. i got a few more fri. night but not enough. i got a ride to class with a girl who lives nearby. i went to class. and then i met sara. sara's this beautiful redhead sally'd told me to look out for, who she'd said was also starting the massage school this fall. but sara's in the evening class, i'm in the morning class, and the classes don't come together till saturdays, so today's when i met her. i don't know how she knew who i was but she asked, "are you jenna?" and then she told me the news.

and the news is this: that rebekah is in the ICU in a coma with multiple skull fractures. when the police found sally & told her to come to the hospital she couldn't even recognize rebekah beneath all the blood & the swollen blue face... she recognized her by her HANDS. by her fucking HANDS!!! the newspaper said the police (though they know rebekah well) didn't identify her until thursday morning. she was hit by a car wednesday night. she was crossing the street for cigarettes. down by the end of king street, near the pride station & d'angelo's. bad place. no sidewalks, no lighting. a young woman hit her, apparently wasn't drinking or speeding but who really knows. there were 5 witnesses. police are still working it out.

meanwhile this is the brilliant and beautiful and sparkling with intensity rebekah, my new artistic collaborator, whose life hangs in the balance. and while it hangs there, and she hangs in a coma, male nurses are handling her callously & perhaps abusively, and her family's pushing for the docs to add antipsychotics to her IV drip, and sally's there w/the most therapeutic skills of anybody but of course no legal rights whatsoever.

so that's why i'm still not done w/megan's video. it's so weird, i was thinking BEFORE i met sara, before she told me what happened (and sally had asked her to find me & tell me) that i should take the ideas rebekah tossed out there at the party & just start working w/them on my own, not wait, but get going w/it all & then she could help me refine it when we did get together. and now i feel like somehow this video represents the thin little thread i have connecting me to her life, and either working on it or not working on it will have some effect on what happens there in the ICU... i really feel like on a spiritual plane, what i decide to do with it is going to sway things one way or the other or in between and i don't know if it's better to work on it, sending her creative energy & thought all the while, or save it for her, save it because it shows i believe that she will come back to us and she will be here and we will work together. and if i don't save it, maybe that will be like giving up hope. i don't know. maybe it means nothing at all. but what is meaning, then, anyway???? it's left up to the interpreter, right? so if this is how i feel then this is real for me. and i have to figure out how it is that i'm interpreting the intersection between this project and these events.

in other news... basically there is no other news. well there is but i'll be quick about it. #1 i have realized that the greatest thing i can do for society as a whole (or at least the people nearest to me) is NOT DATE. i mean it, no dating!!! because dating makes me totally psycho and miserable. i'll make exceptions for old flames and for girls (because, historically, girls don't make me psycho.) but i haven't had a girlfriend in, like, FOREVER, and i'm not getting much vibe from the grrrls of northampton a.k.a. the so-called "lesbian capital of the world". so basically, public service: me not dating. #2 i paid off the garage & returned my plates to the DMV but still have to go to civil court & sue the asshole who wrecked my motorcycle. #3 kevin & i & maybe tracey are hooping tomorrow at look park, as an interlude entertainment for the florence poets' society gathering celebrating the publication of "silkworm" in which i supposedly have a teeny little poem published (no big.) the keynote speaker is leslea newman, who i'm not really gonna say anything about in case someone googles her name & it gets back to her somehow. but basically i think she's gotten a bit too much mileage out of being an oppressed jewish lesbian. she wrote that horrible, horrible children's book "heather has two mommies" which ONLY sold because it was basically the only lesbian-family-themed kids' book out there. but it had no plot, no characterization, nothing, nothing, nothing. it was not a story. it was a smiley-faced billboard shouting "children of gay people get ice cream & balloons too!" and that's all i have to say about leslea newman. HOPEFULLY she won't recognize me from that awful january term writing workshop i took w/her back in, um, 1986... which really should never be brought up again at all so please don't bring it up. anyway kevin's here & we have to mix 15' of music together for tomorrow's "performance" and i'm trying to use this absolutely craptastic piece of software called mixmeister which i "borrowed" from angus, who is not exactly on my shit list but, well, let's just say he does not at this point in time have the skills necessary for hanging out w/me & not driving me insane.

on that note... it was VERY fulfilling & therapeutic when i threw star's VHS tape of his late-80's music video (fleetwood mac-like band he was in) at angus and it broke. that just felt so fucking GOOD. yeah, yeah, i know it's "wrong" to throw shit at people, but there were extenuating circumstances. and that's all i can think of to say for tonight. adieu and farewell for now.