Turn Ons that I Might or Mightn't Do

I was having a conversation with a friend who mentioned something about anal sex and somehow we got onto the topic of Sarah Palin and anal sex and I found myself getting aroused. Hm. So, my friend said (yes, I told him that this was happening), so you'd have anal sex with Sarah Palin? And I said, "NO WAY, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't turn me on." So... I figured I'd explore things that turn me on that I would or wouldn't engage in personally.

Turn On-Fantasy / Will do or Participate in?

*Anal Sex with Sarah Palin / Nope.
*Vaginal Sex with Sarah Palin / Possibly, if she doesn't moan in that nasal tone.
*Glass Dildos / Absolutely
*Waterfalls / Yes Yes Yes!
*Gay Men making love / No. (Just no real place for me there, you know?)
*Having sex with a cop who's pulled me over for speeding. / ??? (nothing to do with getting/not getting the ticket)
*Having sex with another driver who's nodded for us to get off at the next rest stop / No!
*Red Honda Del Sol Convertibles / No room to fuck -- unless the top were down...
*Sofia Coppola in Godfather 3 trying to get Al Pacino's forgiveness / Not interested in the Mafia.

and, by the way, with all respect to Ms. Coppola for her film direction, she turned in a very difficult-to-watch performance in that movie. And it STILL got me. Amazing.

*Public Sex / Yes. Sorta depends on the public, though. Like at a Gala or Ballroom Affair.
*Sex in the water, pool, jacuzzi / No.
*Sex on the kitchen floor / Yes. As long as it's been cleaned.
*Sex with a stranger - Met on a Subway, An Audition, A Waiting Room / Nope.
*June Cleaver / Nope.
*Nancy McKeon / Nope.
*Valerie Bertinelli / Yes!
*John Hughes Films / Yes. I mean, if that were possible.
*Reese Witherspoon / Uh-uh.
*Rose petals / Yes -- a bed covered in rose petals -- yes
*On a stage with no audience / Yes! yes!
*iPhones / Nope. Don't want those radiowaves inside me.
*Cigarette Packs (before they're de-celophaned) / Nope.
*The turning of a lined piece of paper that's been written on with ball point pen / If I could...
*Sideways Glances / Yes!
*Eddie Izzard / No.
*Eddie Murphy / Yes.
*Eddie Vetter / Yes.
*Edward R. Murrow / Yes.
*David Strathairn playing Edward R. Murrow / Yes.
*Edie Brickell / Yes.
*Snakes / No. No. No.
*Alanis Morrisette / Yes.
*Ani DiFranco / Do I really have to even answer this?
*Annie Lennox / Yes.
*Michelle N'degeocello / YES YES YES~
*Queen Latifah / Yes!
*Cellos / The players...yes. Not the male ones. Jacqueline DuPre over Yo-Yo Ma anyday.
*Me. / Yes.

:-) Make your own lists and share 'em.

Peace,

Pandora

Gravestone Musings

If I were to have a gravestone, I'd want something that really expressed something about my essence. I've studied a lot of gravestones - I'm fascinated by how people boil down their lives. Mostly, they boil them down to their relationships with other people in their lives or they have a short quote from the bible. I haven't been to a Buddhist cemetary --- that's a new one on me --- I should definitely check that out. In any case there are two problems with what I want on my gravestone -- the first is that I want something that totally gives the person reading it a sense of who I am or...was... and then second problem is that I don't want to be buried so where the Fuck is the gravestone going to go? In any case, left to the conventionalists, my gravestone may read something like:

Pandora Scooter: Daughter, Mother, Grandmother. 1971 - 2076
(I'm being very optomistic...I missed out on the bicentennial - I really want to make it to the tricentennial - seriously.)

But, if I had a limited number of characters - which I imagine it must cost a pretty penny (funny phrase) to have a gravestone or placemarker (if it's made out of bronze of something) carved -- it might read something like:

Pandora Scooter: Kick-Ass Mom and All Round Awesome Human Being. 1971-2076.
(If I keep typing "2076" maybe it'll come true... :-)... a girl can hope, right?)

But, if I had loads of money...hmmmm... like if anything was possible.... anything at all... Where and what would I want for a marker to commemorate my life?

It seems so impossible a question to answer.

I'd like a chip inserted into everyone's mind so that they have some reference for me and that I am missed by everyone. I mean everyone. Every. One.

But that's over the top, even for me. And, the next closest to thing to that would be to achieve the kind of fame and impact that Michael Jackson or JFK or Diana achieved. And, while anything is possible, it's also quite possible that that won't happen.

So, then I feel like maybe a marker, if I had to choose a place right now, would have to be in a place that means something to me. There's a stage - wooden stage - in the middle of a forest in Danbury, CT where I first felt the immense power of myself on stage. I could see my ashes being strewn around that stage and a marker being placed there. And, because it's at a camp, I'd probably want something inspiring to kids to be written on my marker something like:

Pandora Scooter learned the power of her presence in this forest. She wishes each person who steps on the stage to experience their power and achieve centeredness. 1971-2076.

Or maybe something a bit more poetic.

But really...my dream...is to have founded an arts-space by the time I die -- sometime in my 60s or 70s and have my plaque there. Dedicate myself to making space for others. Similar to the way that there a little alcove dedicated to Mr. Smithson who founded the Smithsonian in "The Castle" - the administrative building of the Smithsonian. I've always loved that alcove. It's so peaceful and well placed. And accessible.

Well, I guess I better get on creating that arts space, huh? :-)

Dreams are meant to sweeten life...not be beaten down.

Pandora Scooter: Power to the Peaceful and Love to All -- 2009.

Turn that Smile Upside Down

I smown or frile or something that means, I smile with a frown. I realized this a year or two ago when I became aware of my face. How crazy is that concept? Apparently, for years I had gone along completely out of touch with the expressions I created throughout the day. And one of them that I completely missed was the response I had to strangers and sometimes people I knew upon seeing them. I would turn down the corners of my mouth while executing a subtle nod. Sort of like the stereo-typical Deniro mug that reads something like, “Not bad, kid.”

I think I actually became aware of it when I noticed that I was greeting more and more people as I was becoming more open in general and that people weren’t smiling back. And rather than chalk it up to “People suck.” I actually delved into what I may be doing to discourage a more welcoming response. That’s when I became aware of my face.

My expressions are rather…extreme. Eyebrows raise into my hair line, eyes open wide like saucers (where did that phrase come from?). Lips poke out as if I’m doing some kind of “kissie, kissie” expression – but actually, this is my “thinking” face. Nostrils flare. Cheeks fill with air. (And this is all during the course of a typical exchange between me and the cashier at the corner deli.)

And, apparently, I frown when greeting people.

Today, at least a year (probably more) since I realized this, I still have trouble actually turning the corners of my mouth upwards upon making eye contact with people. Not people I know I’m meeting. People who are passer-bys.

When I succeed, at least 75% of the time, I get a smile (these people know how to smile) in response. Sometimes a head-nod. Sometimes an actually greeting, like “Hey” or “Hi there.”

This may seem like a lot of thought put into how I make contact with people who have no idea who I am and who will completely forget my existence as soon as I pass by, but I think this is important because a true smile shared between two people can turn a grumpy, crummy day into an ok, or even a good, or even, a great! day.

So, I’m learning to smile.

Life Celebrations

Ok. Forgetting for a moment the Carpe Diem-thing and the idea that "every day is a new day" or "every day is a me day" (the last being my particular theme song), I'm having some very serious thoughts about how we should re-jigger our thoughts about celebrating life.

Birthdays are nice. Yay, it's your birthday, let's have a party, let's have some fun, let's lavish a little extra attention on you (if you can call paying attention to someone "lavishing")...and then let's go home and resume our typical responses and relationship to one another. Kaput. Done. Your special day is over.

NEXT!

But wait. It took me 39 weeks (actually I think it was 37 weeks...I just couldn't wait to get out into this world and...spend it completely tied up in neurotic spirals of self-destruction - until the age of 30, of course, when everything started unravelling-in a good way. Or maybe I could wait to get FREE of my mother's uterus which housed about the same amount of tension as the Golden Gate Bridge, but without the purpose of actually bridging gaps, huh.)

ANYway, it took me 37 weeks to gestate into an organism that could sustain itself without much aid (food notwithstanding) and one day, the cervix gave way, my "pee" flushed out of my mother's vagina (my birth canal - isn't it interesting how my mother's vagina is my birth canal -- kind of like how Panama's Canal was the United States' "Look how we can manipulate Central & South America" canal. (I'm totally open to correction on this one, but that's how I currently read the history.)

ANYANYway, then, one day, my water broke through my mom's cervix and BAM it's time to be born and 18 hours later (which, spanned across a midnight from Dec 20 into Dec 21), I was born.

All this, and I get ONE DAY to celebrate?

And, in some people's cases, they don't even get one day to celebrate, they get one meal - or a special dessert after one meal.

So, 39 weeks - nevermind if there was actually planning involved -- (I shudder to imagine) -- is knocked down to a few hours of loud interaction, alcohol consumption and, in many cases of my peers who are nearing their.......(((((forties))))...drunken rumination about the point of their existence.

Hm.

I'm thinkin' somethin's off kilter here.

Now I know you know what I'm thinking:

39 weeks of celebrating! February 21-December 21 of each year is my birthabration (that sounds horrible, the word, not hte idea).

But, I know...no one's going to be able to celebrate their life, their existence, for 40 weeks out of each 52-week year. I mean, the cake/pastry and restaurant industry would LOVE it, as would computer software programmers -- can you imagine the software that could track who's IN their 39 weeks and who's OUT, so that you could appropriately send off "Happy Birthabration" emails to the correct people automatically? It'd come out on the Mac for Moms as iBirth'dU.

So, how about celebrating the following dates throughout the year:

ConceptionDay
First/Second/Thrid TrimesterDay
WaterbreakDay
BirthDay

That's SIX days throughout the year (well, 10 months of it) to celebrate your existence. If everyone I knew had six days to celebrate, well, there'd be enough celebrating to keep everyone in touch - and then there could be combined celebrations - my thirdtrimesterday with your waterbreakday, etc...etc... It would be a total boon.

And to those of you who may be rolling your eyes because you have *so* many friends that you can't even keep up with the ONE day of celebration each of them gets per year :-), I say to you: count your lucky stars and know that all your friends will know that you can only be in one place at a time.

Fuck 'Em

I think the word “them” should be recategorized to “four-letter-word” status in our language. The word has lost its literally meaning of simply “not us” and has taken on the denotation of “against us” or “not acceptable to us.”

THEM.

I heard someone say (in a rather neutral tone), “Well, it happened because of them.” And the first thing that popped up into in my mind was the image of “them” as these callous, robotic corporate types (my “them”) who were victimizing a totally innocent, Snow White (which, apparently, is my idea of an “us” – hmmm…more on that later, I think there must be…(Yoda I’ve become.).)

Fortunately, I saw RIG (Reactive Image Generator) for what it was and immediately began recasting everyone in the scenario: the woman speaking was actually not seeing the big picture; the “them” were actually trying their best, perhaps not succeeding; perhaps she was actually sabotaging them’s attempts to make the situation better; maybe the man listening is actually trying to decide whether or not to favor them and the woman was giving him her insight…

So then I had fourteen full-color stories going on in my head all because I was trying to erase the one black-n-white image.

But in midst of the mulit-hued and uber-nuanced re-interpretations of this single utterance, I realized that, in actuality, I knew nothing about the situation.

Well, to be a bit more accurate, I knew five things:

1) There was a woman who said the phrase “Well, it happened because of them.”
2) There was a man with her.
3) I am fascinated by interactions of strangers.
4) I did not know anything else about the woman or the man.
and
5) I have a proclivity toward interpretation

All because of the word “them” and my response to it.

RIG is powerful stuff. Not to be ignored. It probably is responsible for at least half or three-quarters of the disagreements that happen during the course of any given interaction.

**Oh, and about my “Snow White” as “us” thing… I guess I identify Snow White as being an innocent. But she was also disempowered, if I’m recalling correctly, and kinda super naïve. So, I don’t think of myself as being part of an “us” that includes Snow White…but when I think of innocent victims, that’s what RIG provides. How ‘bout for you? What does “us” or “innocent” bring up for you?

A Kid in Adult's Clothing

So, I'm at this 2-day retreat...(does it count as being "at" a retreat if it's held "at" my house?) -- Ok, I'm hosting a 2-day retreat of an arts organization of which I'm a part and it's 12:30 am and we've been working all day - since 11:00 am and I am ex-hausted - as in, I can't keep my shit together - at all. I was incapable of not giggling at the slightest misspoken word or slightest sexual inuendo (someone mentioned that marshmallows were 'elongated' and I couldn't help but say to that person (who was male): "If that's your idea of elongated...")

Usually, I'M the one who keeps it together. I'M the one who holds down the fort and keeps things rolling. Instead, here I was, the one who was being told to focus. Wow. What a turn of events.

I think it goes along with wanting glasses when I was a kid. I always thought that having glasses would mean that I was grown-up. I always wanted to be older than I was. I was being called "mature" and "wise" when I was 12. TWELVE. I mean, ok, a 12 year old can be wise, but I was putting together a RESUME when I was 11. I was pursuing this response from people - adults. I had no peer-to-peer skills. And I was always serious.

Now, when meetings are out of control and misled, I'm still usually the one to keep it together.

But this meeting had other people (folks who are 12-15 years my juniors!) who were keeping it together...so I could relax...for what seemed like the first time in my life.

For the first time in my life I have experienced what it is like to NOT have to be the one who takes things seriously so that others will do the same. I trusted these folks and it felt great.

Just FYI: I wasn't disrespectful. For the most part, I wasn't disruptive. I did have to stuff my face into a pillow for much of the last part of the meeting to keep myself from being disruptive. Not the most professional "face" to put on things, but at least I didn't impede the meeting, which was, in everyone's opinion, very, very successful.

It's nice to be a kid once in a while.

ISO: Brain Taser

I had a full-on temper tantrum last night.
Crying, stomping feet, hitting clothes (What? They were in front of me!)
I cried myself exhausted and then watched the hypnotism scene from Holy Man
(have you seen this movie? I know people totally wrote it off, but I think it's actually quite lovely)
3 times over
And then I watched the "Parcel of Peace" scene
And then I was tired so I fell asleep.

And, WHY?, you may ask, did I have this temper tantrum?

Because people say "Don't beat yourself up."
And I believe people.
Well, not all people, but I believe the people who say "Don't beat yourself up."

The problem with "Don't beat yourself up" is that if one has a proclivity for beating oneself up, then one has a proclivity for beating oneself up for beating oneself up
and then for beating oneself up for beating oneself up for beating oneself up...

Let's just say my brain is black-n-blue this morning.

How to stop the hamster wheel and just jump off into the shit pellets?
(Because even walking in my own shit would have been better than that turmoil.)

Breath.
Kombucha (I am totally addicted.)
Holy Man

And a brain-taser

I think people who get stuck in their heads too much
(ahem...like me)
Need a brain-taser.
Something to shock the brain out of it's overheating, overthinking, overeverythinging

And don't offer me meditation, because the last thing I need is to be left alone with my brain.
It scares me sometimes.

You know the saying, "You don't want to be inside my head." ?
Well: You don't want to be inside my head.
Seriously, folks, it's a very, very BRIGHT chasm, where there's no place to hide and I'm naked inside...
(ok, stop thinking about me naked. it's a metaphor, not a tease. :-) )

Anyway.

Brain-tasers.

Anyone got any ideas?

Pushing 40

So, the other day while I was in Austin, TX (yep, I did my first mini tour and it was in Texas, y'all) someone used the phrase "pushing 40." And then later that day I heard someone use the phrase "pushing 30."

We never hear "pushing 13"
or "pushing 25"

Something about getting to be 30 means we have to push the age...

Are we pushing it away?
Are we being pushed towards it, heels dug in?
Are we pushing the age...like drug pushers?

"50 dollars for 30 years, 100 dollars for 20 years, 200 dollars for 18 years... get your age here"

Again, what is with us and aging?
The anti-aging cream and the "pushing" meme.
"Pushing" 40?
Someone tell me what this means.

From Ben Fong-Torres (http://www.asianconnections.com/a/?article_id=577). I found this by googling "pushing 40."

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE IT to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there.

Into the 90s, you start going backwards ..."I Was JUST 92."

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"

May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!

So, obviously, we freak out about aging because we're freaked out about dying.

The two things we can actually take for granted in life: aging and dying - and we fight them tooth and nail.

What the hell would this life be like if we didn't age or die?
Think about it?

What age do you think most people would want to stay put at?
21?
29?
16?

Really.

Can you imagine a nation filled with 16, 21 and 29 year olds?
Everyone would be filled with angst all the time,
And everyone would be looking to "find themselves"
And everyone would be stressed out about the future.
And everyone would wonder constantly about what to do about their lives.
And everyone would think they knew everything all the time.
And no one could ever be elected president. :-)
And women would never reach their sexual peak.
And parents wouldn't have much experience to help raise their kids.

Now, I'm not teen- or twenties-bashing, here.
I'm just proposing that as we get older, we learn more and more
And become, some of us, more settled - not in that "I'm not going to grow" settled kind of way, but in that "Wow, life is ok and I'm ok" kind of way.

So, I'm pulling 39 closer to me each day
While enjoying 38 in every way.

Disclaimerville

So, I posted last week that I'd been having a hard time moving from tissues to handkerchiefs and rags... and this week I've found that I'm doing it. I just ran out of tissues and --- why do I think there should be another word before "tissues" - like "nose" or "snot" or "face" - oh, is it "facial tissues?" - augh. Anyhow... I ran out of 'em and haven't bought more and have been using my rags as tissues - and with the pollen count high as it is (I was going to write "higher than Bush's IQ" which would be interesting because it would be one of the first cheap Bush jabs I would have ever written/given airtime to - which is odd since he's out of office now... timing. Ti-ming. ti-MING) - with the pollen count as high as it is, I've been blowing my proboscus a lot. (Are you kidding? I actually spelled "proboscus" correctly on the first go? This can't be right... -- ok, I just checked, it's NOT right - which means the spell check on this blogger is NOT to be trusted. Oh, blogger, how you've failed me...) It's "proboscis." And it's only used "facetiously" with regard to the human nose. Well, since I don't have a facetious nose, I have a rather humorless nose, actually, I'm going to change my sentence to read:

"with the pollen count higher than Bush's IQ, I've been blowing my nose a lot."

Now...if I were really the geek I claim to be, I'd find out on what scale the pollen count is measured on to find out if it even makes sense to compare that number to an IQ number. But, I'm in a rush and, frankly, I think it's enough to acknowledge that it may be a totally erroneous comparison.

Besides, any number is higher than zero.

XTreme Recylcing

I'm in the midst of writing a couple of poems about the environment - about sustainability, actually - which has me thinking a lot about recycling. And whenever I think about recycling, I think about toilet paper.

Yes, toilet paper.

In my house we use rags for paper towels and cloth napkins and we use handkerchiefs or rags for tissues, as often as we can remember (for some reason, that one is more challenging), and I use cardboard applicator tampons (I'm slowly graduating to gladrags and, possibly, menstrual cups... TMI?). But we still use toilet paper.

Google "toilet towels" and nada.

Google "cloth toilet paper" and this comes up:

On average the US alone spends over 5.7 billion dollars on toilet paper alone each year. That is expected to double by the year 2010. We are literally flushing away the earth's numerous biologically rich habitat's down the toilet.

Contrary to popular belief, old growth and non harvested forests are used in the production of paper goods. These forests are replaced with tree plantations. The problem with tree farming is that these produce 90% less species than a natural forest would. Not only are we wasting trees but we are killing off important species of plants and animals that are imperative to the life cycle of the forest.

Regardless of the resources used to generate toilet tissue, it also makes us, as consumer's, dependant on one more thing and to the big box and retail stores. There is a growing trend in the natural family living communities across the country to institute cloth toilet paper in the home. Many families have made the switch happily.

Furthermore, this site comes up with directions as to how to make the move to cloth toilet paper.

Using recycled toilet paper is a good step. It is. But I think in this age of Xtreme everything, I'm going to consider going the distance and using cloth toilet wipes.

That is, once I get my car to run on compost.

(actually, probably before that...) :-)

Anti-Aging Cream

553,000 - that's the number of results come up when I googled "Anti-Aging Cream."

5 - that's the number of results that come up when I googled "Pro-Aging Cream."

Hm.

I was getting a facial - yes - a facial - a "deep pore" facial to clean out my pores and leave them feeling...well...vacuumed, really. And the facialologist, what the hell do I call her? - kept talking about "anti-aging" cream. And I just wanted to shout out:

FIRST of all: Is the cream anti-aging? In which case, it has no expiration date and should be good 'til I'm dead.

SECOND of all: What if I WANT to age? What if I like the process of walking the earth for longer and longer periods of time and I want my body to represent this?

WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT AGING?

I had a friend "confess" to me that she just turned 50. Seriously, it was a confession. Like she'd done something wrong by turning 50. Like she had to come out to me that she was 50. I was like, "Wow. Congratulations! 50. That's an awesome milestone. I'm excited for you."

This was not the response she was looking for.

And there is something wrong with a world in which aging is something that we try to hide.

Aging is like death - it happens to us all - and we should EMBRACE it. LOVE it. I know it's easier to say that if you love your life, but which do we have more control over:

Loving our Lives
Not looking like we're aging

???

I say: learn to love life and then stop worrying about aging - or at least about looking as though you're aging.

(I did buy the Dermaceutical skin balm and the exfoliant...for healthy skin. Of course.) :-)

Power to the Peaceful and Love to All,

Pandora

Welcome to Zen Scooterism

What is zen? An approach to religion, arising from Buddhism, that seeks religious enlightenment by meditation in which there is no consciousness of self.

What is Scooterism? An approach to life, arising from my experiences, that seeks acceptance, exploration, and loads of laughs in which there is nothing but the self. (See Liebniz)

So, why Zen Scooterism? Because, as the great Salvadore Dali stated of himself, "Pandora Scooter is contradiction." (Replace "Pandora Scooter" with "Dali" and you get what Dali actually said.")

Truly, I'm fascinated with Buddhism and I'm fascinated with the self and I know the two are at odds with one another, but I'm not entirely sure that I can't attain "enlightenment" -- what is that? when I achieve the place where I take nothing personally? I love taking lots of things personally: complements, love, constructive criticism, applause... augh -- while conceding that there is, actually, a self - albeit not the self that I usually think of as being there, but one that does still exist and helps push me forward.

So, welcome to Zen Scooterism, where contradiction is not feared, it's embraced; where confusion is not shunned, it's accepted; where self-depracation is the law of the land and self-love and generically specific love are the goals.

Power to the Peaceful and Love to All,

Pandora