Native Americans believe it is an implicit insult to one's own living mother or father to compare another of the tribe to that role. On the other hand, damn if they don't go around calling each other cousin and grandpa" - Mark Twain on the California Indians

I'm going to see Chris Brubeck perform with the Stockton Symphony tonight, my little day-off treat. He will be debuting his piece on the works of Mark Twain, that old Indian-hater and single-handed inventor of the American vernacular novel.

"Do I contradict myself? I contain multitudes"- Walt Whitman

This isn't what I planned on writing. I'm feeling a little mechanical version of writer's block here- I know what I want to say, but my brain has codeine-hangover-hands . Im'a just let it rip.

Also, I'm almost to the home stretch with Ishmael , and let me tell you, 'cousins', if you can make it past the first hundred pages, the rest of it will make a mushroom cloud of your perceptions. The way I got this book, and the story behind getting into the story have been another one of those things I'm too fucked up to blog about. But it's been a slice, lemmee tell ya.

And I really really really hate monkeys. (Ishmael has a simian narrator. Almost said primate, but humans are primates too, deal with it, creationists).


At this late date, aet. 46, I find that what I was born knowing, what was passed to me via example and DNA, is much more powerful and true than anything my mother or my guru-whore cohort chose to believe.

I'm sounding crazy again, aren't I? Sorry. ; )

I want to be your mother and your fellow female brother and your comrade - in - arms , but I have a disclaimer to make - I'm have that most pernicious of Female Trouble, an inability to take a compliment.

I am impervious to both lack of attention and flattery. I pledge allegiance to the 'your loss,pal" philosophy of rejection.

But I still get pissed off if I feel I am 'liked' for the wrong reasons.

C'mon people, you know you do this too. There, I almost revealed a fellow blogger's confession, then deleted it. I'm not THAT tired.

Another thought- why CAN'T people, besides Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, have two contradictory and equally valid opinions simultaneously?

Whitey always does this. It works.

Okay, I'm winding down here, but I remember what I wanted to say.

The world is round. That's what gives us the howling horrors. Our social/belief systems are falsely and arbitrarily divided . This is what drives Tony Soprano to seek out ducks even at the top of his Dominator-Model game. It's what got us here, and if we don't stop the "Taker-Philosophy" from reaching its logical conclusion, this circular connectness to Earth and each other will save us.

Two other thoughts that have been going through my head since my Brazilian Samba teacher pulled me out to the front of the class last night- (contradictory thoughts again)

- Cultures who, in Western eyes, 'opress' women, have the sexiest, most exhilarting dances. What do Beledi, Tahitian , Flamenco, Tango, African, all have in common besides asshole Macho males? Hips. Female juice flaunted and celebrated through the hips.

We have 'sensitive' males, Paris Hilton and lipsuction. Teenagers don't meet in basements for dance-offs anymore, they copy music-video moves.

- My teacher has a bulletproof sexual confidence, even though she is my age, and doesn't have an atom of vanity about her appearance. Dancing behind her last night, I kept having the same thought- a 'round-world' type realization-

"This is a person who knows there is only ONE most beautiful girl in the village, and she is only the most beautiful until there is the next one. Who cares? I have hips."

Now I lay me down to sleep.