now what happens?

I am operating on the basic principle or belief that food is love. And just like love, food can disguise itself. Just like love, without food you will perish. A mother gives you the first experience of food. You eat from your mother. And then when you are full of her breasts, she feeds you another kind of food, the food of the earth. And so she is connected in your spiritual understanding of the earth as the provider of your nourishment, your love, your satisfied belly and heart and soul.

Now what happens when the nourishing ingredients of the earth are diluted, adjusted, cut in half, turned upside down by the demands of the hungry culture? Those ingredients make a thing that looks like love, only it never really fills you up. It makes you reach out for more, always hoping to get your fill, but never allowing you to really feel the state of peace that you know in your deepest knowing you deserve. This bastardization of the ingredients of love turns us into addicts, crawling on our faces for the original feeling we were promised directly out of the womb: that instant connection to another living creature, filling us with the whole food of our mothers. We get locked out, the earth no longer available to us, though always promising silently to hold us and feed us, behind the double paned window of what we think we want. If the ingredients of love are stolen and made alien to us, so that we may no longer be the creators of our own love, we shrink, bend under the promise of a good feeling.

what not to wear

I thought you should see this.

love betsy

oh my f-ing god you guys.

Can you believe it. I mean, every single thing ever that was ever made to be sold to a woman except for maybe herpes medication or a breast cancer fundraiser ( i.e. problematic diseases and stuff we like to feel sorry for women about) is made to uphold the idea, against all kinds of reality, that women are supposed to be married to their households.

I have not had a television since I left home for college, but I've been subjected recently to stuff like the Discovery Channel, chanel, what? And sometimes the occasional episode of What Not to Wear. I'm just kidding. sort of. Oh my god I'm so ashamed. If you ever want to feel really paranoid about going outside watch this show.

So between these so called programs, there is this one f-ing commercial that keeps popping up and its about a mop. The swifer mop that mom fell in love with... and this broom keeps showing up trying to win her back. Because now she has a swifer, that skank whore. And the broom is like trying to woo her and give her flowers and shit. Baby come back.

So, if that's not a great example of objectification and mannequinism and how it's looping women around in this neverending oscillation between wanting to be perfect and not being good enough, well then...

In my current research I have found that alot of women are curious and skeptical and dare I say a little turned on by this housewife stuff. now let me see...why could that be?

Even if you close your eyes really hard and scream at the top of your lungs till you pass out you still can't ignore that one of the most prevalent images that women have of themselves in a succesful moment is the image of a good clean counter-top, or a seven minute hamburger helper casserole. Wow, I can finally breathe easy you guys cause now I dont have to kill a chicken.

Didn't we evolve past simple instincts? Aren't we supposed to have, like a creative urge for metaphor and symbols?
I'm going to go ahead and mention that john Lennon wrote a song called Woman is the Nigger of the World.
I think that's true.
Mysoginy wins! I guess that will take care of this Sara Palin bullshit. whew...

The sad thing I think is that all these women, myself included are hungry and actually inspired to have a connection with home that harkens back to a time when there was a hearth. Ok so you dont have to get in the hearth and make out with a bottle of windex, but the bastardization of this lovely connection is what I think confuses women so much.

Oh gee I guess im just domestically challenged.
It's not you its the house.

love,
betsy

Rabbit Hole

Untied all the laundry from the lazy week of wearing clothes and walking through the rain in the dark. Slept in a ship with the lover and the dog and invented the spinning of the sea: the pool of threats and throats that holds you to your promises and strangles your attempts at escape. Fingered hairs into a ball-you really have to wonder deeply what is the difference between me and the sad one? Why are you sad and unhappy about nothing?
AKA------>
Rainbows. Animals. Fluffy stuff. Pie. Aprons. Miniature housewife:
I’m only a small part of that tidal mass of womanhood that tries to get you to love her through peaches, cans, biscuits, ham, coke, whiskey, cornbread, tomatoes, shoes, frilly brassieres, apple bottoms, dolly face.

The only thing better than all of that has a smoke sticking out like a silly sad rock and roll cupcake sundae.
I want you to drive me down a dirt road with your hand in my head and skirt and eyes.
I want to go to the picture show even after I die while im dying, before during and after I die.
I would like to travel with you to the land of weddings and sea food buffets. And shiny little pink and epic cocktails.
If everyday is a small party, a treat, a sneak away from home, a sexy romp in the basement shower, a telephone call to the high school sweetheart, then what, what do we do with today?
I know one thing is true, you can never predict anything.
Let me be your radio signal when the clouds roll close.
I’ll siren at the sunshine and comatose the rain.
I will be an electrocutionist in the afternoons spent waiting to go outside to finish collecting the rust after the fire.
This is the aftermath of a minute steak. Will you make me eat it all?
Grandpa likes to make racial slurs at the dog: The fucking dog is a dirty jap.
Inside my hands are the rivers and boats of dirty jap fishing boats filled to the brim with dogs. The dogs of the heart that are eating away while you ignore the news and stomp on the grapes
I used to love you but then I read the paper.
I used to love you but then I drove the meat truck.
I used to love you but then I moved out of oz and figured out pretty quick what makes an old heart soft.

KANSAS:
The plains, the big cereal rolls sitting sleeping on the slight curve of a pasture dusted with snow for breakfast. In winter, the hummingbirds wings freeze in mid flight, makes a statue of a many-winged thing. The freeze catches the multiplicity and holds it till spring when the garlic comes up and knocks the poor bird into action again, like a sobering for sugar. A winter nap to digest the need and the little pink and epic cocktails hanging in the trees.

I used to open a handle of whiskey and stick it into the dirt to fuck the worms all up. Too drunk to move, they dissolved into my garden and the tomatoes on your plate whistled at you like you was hiking your skirt up and showing your thighs.
When you bit into one it would go straight to your head. I got an underground distillery and the worms work for free, I don’t need any sugar, so they’ll never get after me. I'll just feed you tomatoes and watch you dance and when you’ve had your fill I'll lay you outside again and let you melt into the fruit bed. How I want you as part of this circle. How I want to dig out a home from the clay hill and hear no rain or wind when it comes. Like a Rabbit Hole.

queen of the parade

wow, I can't believe I forgot this:

Dan is working at the VFW in Lawrence ( The Veterans of Foreign Wars club) as a bartender. Ok.

I have become relatively pouplar among some of the auxilary ladies there ( I dont even really know what that means yet)
and after singing them a song last sunday they actually asked me to be the queen of the VFW for their St Patricks Day Parade contingency...float...thing.

Im thinking this might be my first big opportunity for performance terrorism.

And David Paige told me to wear a camo prom dress. with the tulle and everything.
I think that's a little harsh.

I'll let you know if I accept.

*d

three armed hottie

Working on a performance project called The Miniature Housewife:

All of these implements are just a little too big for me.

I ask you to answer the following question:

Would you make a good housewife?


In other news: A real adult life is so incredibly difficult.
I can't imagine I was so spoiled as a child that this comes as a shock to me.
I'm not even going to pretend it isn't difficult beyond my wildest fears etc...

Here's what I know: I only owe it to myself.

Dirt Lesson #1

Sept 7th

Everything sliding on an angle, on a grade, parked in waiting for the final tilt to horizontalism.
Mr. Fix it, the hummingbirds and a postcard from the metropolis comes and fixes up some breakfast for you while you wait, knees curled up to your chest, for a ride on the radio flyer.

We were taught as very young children to tie everything down and make sure it wouldn’t blow away in the wind.
We swept up all the hills before mom came home and swept them again, thinking oh how the dust settles on me and me alone.

A thick coat of dust and sun falls steadily on my home and the rain comes and tries to wash it off, it paints me golden.
It finds me sleeping in a seeping pile of grass, the heat unbelievable underneath.
On the horizon you would imagine a tall ship coming to get you, but the massive mirage of your movement, your body, is reflected in your ranch style home, it lies flat and rolls forever toward you, bringing you no such boat.
No sail in the windy belt of the United States.

When I slept last night under orange peels and the trauma of 50 children all begging me to understand, not to judge, to love them despite their wrong doings, despite their need to be the right child; I dreamt of a revelatory map- islands surrounded us. The continent broke into confetti bits all around the borders, this was the deception: that the icon of our continent had come to mean a truth to us. We believed that shape was our land.

That boat with legs and a pregnant belly spilling into the southern floor. A massive crown on its back.

Even after we made it a custom, we did not know what more there was to discover. As if a discovery leaves you at the end of a rainbow. Up Up go the towers and Down Down the pipes.

The night before, we moved into a building full of children. We stamped out our previous dreams with little feet. We held the feet in our hands. Our wrists were so sore the next day we threw them over our shoulders and ran. We ran until we could run no longer and then we fell to the ground and then the children were grown. They said: "why did you bring me here?"
It was too fast and too fun to forget. But I will forget. I will grow and continue to grow and then I will forget.

It is a lifetime guarantee, you will always be at the end of your rope.
The damn rope is dancing like the real part of your face that loves me in a breeze.
It makes such a poetry to really be in love with you.
To be afraid you might leave or I might leave, that little space of dread grows the beautiful flower.
I long to crack it open and dig out the reds and purples of regret that are living under the pretentious soil of what we believe to be a peaceful union. There is never any peace.

Once upon my foot that you stepped on in learning to dance, we got rained out. It was so sexy do you remember? We performed in a tight velvet box in paris and you held my neck in your elbow and pretended to choke me and they all squirmed in their chairs. We made them think we would burst. And then when we went home we did. We burst. We danced like sore old ladies down a popular street and made them all watch us while we led streamers behind us and our teeth were just humongous.

I had a fantasy that I could drive. Don’t laugh at me. I want to get somewhere. I want to escape the thunder of silence that crowds around me here. The human water and the human food that we have to endure to get to the bottom of things. Elixir for the young ones. Lets go try to find the natural healing authority. Where are the magicians? The witches. Lead me to them so that I might be among such a treat. Such a treat. I want to look down the black hole and jump in and float and get back out and try as hard as I can to get to the bottom. Throwing yourself down the well.

September 8th

Radius, radium, radial, radix, radical, radiate, radiation. Target practice for a new pioneer. Desperation may force you to find a center. At a loss? Try new radium, guaranteed to bring you back to square one so you may venture out anew, bringing light and love beyond the outer reaches of a circle.

My husband grunts and confronts the paper work of a difficult decision: How can I work for myself? How can I live outside the game and still rake in the bandaids? How can we eradicate the debt? Well surely we will be asking that question now. They gladly handed you the cash and then raised the price of everything including a hard-on and now you’re just like a continent, stuck between glaciers. It’s so hard to admit but I don’t yet conceive of the blood pumping through my veins. The responsibility of my aliveness is overwhelming.

Looking back on the crop, I seem to generalize a lot about nutrition. Well if it looks good then eat it. Then I’ll eat it.
Last night I dreamt we crashed the car. I sprained my neck in the curve of our crash. Quite possibly I was being reminded of the lightning. The drama in the sky about hot meeting cold and that endless banter between red and blue that can’t even let us have a single dream without them. Stubborn abuses. Asses in the sky. Sure you could call the authorities, but they would get all wet and melt and would be of no use to us in the morning when we stabbed each other over the no butter situation. Or no milk -or no eggs- or no meat -or no bread- or no fruit- or no fungus- or no fork to eat it with. That would indeed be a serious problem. You can’t rely on the rain to set you straight when the mealtime blues come sweating into your kitchen and sit down promising never to leave.

Oh my god, its so fucking obvious that when you are about to leave a place for what you might think is good, you start to really love it. Breakup sex. Traveler’s sex. Moving on sex. The really good things about a place in time only happen after you have longed for them. Lord fix upon me a permanent dye of contentment. Rig me a caravan that I may know my whole country at once and never confuse the west from the east. That I may eat the vittles of the road. The road kill of royalty, the kings shrimp basket is going soggy waiting for me to show up in the next town and dazzle the hearts of children. I am not a television personality. I do not care who knows it. I insist upon the needs of a great character. You will not enter the building in that fashion while I am inside performing a serenade for my lover.