Iron man with a heart of gold

Happy birthday to the best dad in the world!

I have so many memories about my father to share, of which I shall save for a novel, but one that stands out today in particular is when we went to Hawaii as a family when I was a kid.

I don’t remember much from that trip, but one moment that clearly remains in my memory (and that is also thankfully memorexed on vhs) is when my dad, after swimming in the clear, turquoise Oahu ocean, slowly emerged from the water chanting “I AM IRON MAN” in a booming, pitch-black, low voice. I was sitting next to my mom on the sand, watching him act all creature from the black lagoon while she videotaped, laughing and saying he’s crazy. I didn’t get it then, of course, but pops was singing Sabbath. He’s always been like that, just like that moment: unpredictable, funny as hell, entertaining…intelligent, caring, always totally cool, with great taste in music!

Hopefully today’s 11.11.11 Black Sabbath reunion announcement is gonna be a pretty good birthday gift for my pops. Along with the ice cream cake and 111 lottery tickets I got him.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Remembering the living

I have been listening to a lot of dead people lately.

Dead musicians I’m obsessed with: Aaliyah, Eyedea, Amy, Selena, and Jimi just this morning

Dead people I’m obsessed with: a cassette of my oral history report I did on my grandma in 7th grade, Hemingway’s audio clip archives, George Carlin, Frida, Dom DeLuise.

Nancy told me a state of rebirth often requires ruminations upon death. That makes sense to me, especially because when I immerse myself in the art and personalities of those that have passed, I feel like they become alive and breathing again through me thinking of them.

So I guess I am not so much obsessed with death than I am remembering the living.

Music don’t lie

“Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.”

Hendrix

“A broken heart can kill you, and this may be one way”

Studies Suggest You Can Die of a Broken Heart

Lisa on loyalty

One of my favorite female hip hop and r&b recording artists is the one and only, Lisa Left Eye Lopes. I memorized her raps back in the day word for word and always loved how she put the crazy in TLC’s sexy and cool.

Here’s a lil video I posted of her:

Elisabeth the mystic

When I was a little lass, I made my own books. I illustrated and wrote them myself, using the pseudonym Elisabeth The Gypsy. That was my pen name, which was basically my middle name mixed with my fantasy that I grew up in a caravan of gypsies like my grandma. I read comics, too, but I was never an avid reader or collector until the Mystic series. The comic was short-lived, but I continued the series after it stopped running by making my own comics and including Elisabeth The Gypsy as a character, just for myself. My aunt finally finished my Giselle costume for me about four months ago and it looks almost exactly like this:

“Wouldn’t that be weird? A world without magic…”

Left my heart

The first place where I lived and where I loved here is not marked on this map. Neither is the second place. That is not at all aggravating, but rather amazingly appropriate.

Picture: Wendy MacNaughton

There is no friend as loyal as a book

I began all this quoting Hemingway in May

http://anitasavior.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/oh-hello/

Hemingway is one of my saviors. He taught me that what is put down on paper cannot ever catch up with what is in the mind. I can expound on that prior sentence for hours, so be sure to ask me about The Old Man and the Sea. I kept that book in my back pocket for about a month in the beginning of my literary journey.

The writer’s life, he said in a speech, is a lonely life.

50 years ago today, Hemingway’s favorite shotgun killed him.

July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared.

June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996

Create your legacy brothers & sisters.

Dexter Isaac’s confession:

Poem I found in my car