Feng shui recipe for love disaster? Oh, damn...

My "love" feng shui is fucked.

I've been reading up on it and discussing with single friends the idea of feng shui-ing our homes to create a space that is conducive to attracting a healthy romantic life. Some of the tips include implementing photos and wall art that depict happy couples, or that display the kind of relationship you hope to manifest, or just images of anything in pairs.

Hmm... So looking around the studio at my artwork, I see: a grotesque female with one boob clutching a cocktail; an old pulp novel cover screaming, "Why Get Married?"; a black & white photo of my deceased cat and dog; another black & white photo of a woman's legs; and a painting an ex gave me of a long line of mermen.

I shudder to think what feng shui experts would say this all means for my lovelife.

Yikes.

Well, maybe it's not a recipe for disaster, but just a blueprint for unconventional romance.

I never did do normal very well.

Up on Turtle Creek Ranch...

Last weekend, Thespian, his faithful hound Mango, and I took a bit of a road trip--about three hours on 101 through Marin and Sonoma counties, passing the odd but quaint towns of Ukiah and Willits, then past Laytonville, up and down an unpaved road to acres of private land with signs demanding a 5 mph speed limit, to get to the homegrown entrance and beauteous invite-only hippie commune campgrounds of Turtle Creek Ranch.

I hadn't been camping in eons--and certainly not since leaving Maui--but the grounds were so awe-inspiring, inundated with Hindu shrines, an art gallery, a dance floor with gargantuan projection screens and DJ booth where DJ Cheb i Sabbah spun later that night, a lounge for tea, yoga and conversation, and lots o' lovely hippie-type folk.

After Thespian successfully built an impressive love den (he's such a Cancer) in our REI tent, we dined on communal Indian fare and later connected our kundalini shakras and reached ananda down by the river...

Uh, can I get a ommmm...?

X marks the spot...

I get letters periodically from a talented young writer that I used to, uh, know and coincidentally, helped get published.

(read: we used to fuck, I got him to write for Maui Time Weekly, and his enormous cock-fueled ego has been the bane of my existence ever since.)

So every once in a while, he sends me his writings. For the most part, they involve his strange-man-in-a-strange-land perusals that generally revolve around his haphazard seduction of a hot local girl. But also, they're just fucking good.

Anyway, his latest story involved the revelation that he's currently in L.A. under the loving care and financial guardianship of a lovely, successful Mexican woman 10 years his senior, who believes in his literary ability so much that she has decided to support him--and that all day long he ponders his writerly pursuits while masturbating to visions of the portly neighbor girl or some random telemarketer... all of which translates into yet another tale to send to me (and, I'm sure, countless other of his past femmes du jour) to torture me with. And what my dearest friend Krista doesn't understand because I don't yet understand is... why does it mean so much to me at all?

It goes beyond ex-lover jealousy (I believe it was me who decreed first that we weren't a match made in heaven) and it's not just fellow-writer envy (yes, he's got skills but wasn't it me ultimately who helped create the monster?)... it's something altogether more strange and disturbing.

I just hope that someday I can make peace with it... er, him.

Pink tuxedoes and the hatted cat...

The birthday party was quite the spectacle, what with the Extra Action (see below), as well as the fire dancers, medical marijuana luminaries like Ed Rosenthal, colossal blunts that could rival the world's largest joint, a slide show, DJ's, and Thespian--resplendent in pink satin tuxedo--hosting a most excellent Roast/Tribute to this brother, with many special guests, including our own Elan doing a rollicking cannabis-lingoed rendition of Seuss's "Cat in the Hat."

Extra! Extra! Read all about it...

You might've noticed (or not) my absence this past week, despite all my planning to deter such inaction...

On the contrary, I have been in the throes of extra action, my friends-- as in, the Extra Action Marching Band-- a 25-piece sex-cacophony of sights, sounds and mayhem that dear, dear Elan hired for the monstrous to-do that was the 50th birthday of his medical cannabis activist boss (and Thespian's big bro), at the Oasis Nightclub in downtown Oakland last Thursday.

Extra Action is something everyone should experience at some point in their lives... more than just a marching band, though an excellent one at that, they are a boozy, crazy, dark carnival of symphonic delights, led with wild abandon by a team of hyper-gorgeous be-wigged dancing floozies (the photos above are NOT actually from that night but from their official website) who whip the crowd into an orgiastic frenzy.

It's all become a bit of a blur by now but suffice it to say that... I so totally want to be one of those hot spangled floozies when I grow up...

More yoga is definitely in order.

I scream for ice cream...

Kind of a trying Wednesday... forgive me if I don't feel like elaborating right now as I seek to process and absorb it all but... it sorta seemed like an all-day Chinese Water Torture in learning how to take constructive criticism.

But really, I'm thankful for the lessons.

Doesn't mean I don't still need to console myself with some Honey Lavender Vanilla and Latin Jazz (chocolate with chiles) at Fairfax Scoop!

Mmm...

The pussies know...

Trying to take a cue from my leisurely neighbors...

Sweet NINspiration...

What I'm currently re-reading: The Diary of Anais Nin, volume one 1931-1934.

And here's why I feel like Nin, reincarnated (although she died way after I was born but whatever--details shmetails):

P. 65: "If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation."

P. 89: "I too am interested in evil, and I want my Dionysian life, drunkenness and passion and chaos; and yet here I am, sitting at a kitchen table and working with Henry on the portrait of June, while Fred is making a stew."

P. 92: "But why am I not satisfied with my achievements then? Because, originally, what I truly wanted was a life of pleasure, luxury, travel, adulation, adventures."

Word.

Sexual SAMantics...

I hate the word "horny." And it's rather unfortunate because it's a state I find myself in quite often. But I just find the word so abhorrent; I just can't bear to utter it.

For me, "horny" conjurs Porky-esque frat-boy images and guffaws, or sleazy old men in trenchcoats at the video booth in the dirty city porn shop. The word feels decidedly unfeminine, and yet, the concept of being "horny" most definitely applies to the greater sex. I mean, hello.

But what other descriptives do we have to describe this highly desirous state? Excited? Hot? Mmm, yes, but a bit vague for when you do truly feel "horny"; sometimes a girl does not want to be unclear about this... Excited about what, honey? Oh, should I turn on the A/C? et al.

Okay, so what about "frisky"? Yeah... but it makes me wanna play with a ball of yarn or something--and it's just not very grown-up.

This leaves those of us with the particular "horny"-phobia to come up with more creative ways to express our lust. Or, to simply show it. And that's fine, I guess.

I just think we have a new gap to fill. Er...

You know what word I also detest? Masturbation. And again, no other word or term really quite does the trick. But I'll save this rant for another day, as all this sexual lingo is making me, uh...

??!

Peace, love and harmony...

After work, I drove up north for the big, 3-day hippie convention known as The Harmony Festival at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa. Actually, the extravaganza was host to some cool world music, like from Lila Downs, Angelique Kidjo and Yungchen Lhamo, as well as Arrested Development, George Clinton and some other boheme peeps, tribal/trance DJs and didjeridoo players.

I went to check out the Eco Village, which was supposed to be the center for all the latest in earth-friendly technologies for potential Pacific Sun green story ideas. The generous PR folk gave me an all-weekend, all-access pass for it and everything, so I scoped out my pal Elan, whose medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, had a booth in the Goddess Grove.

He gave me a tour of the immense site of hippie regalia, vendors and food--surprisingly, we had some of the best oysters ever, Elan rocked out some killer leather wear from an awesome German couple, I discovered a slew of fairly awesome lingerie, and then we bounced from backstage at the Mickey Hart Band stage (boring) over to the backstage of George Clinton and P-funk (krazy-ass tour buses!).

All in all, it was kinda fun. But I didn't wanna stay the weekend, so I passed off my pass to a cool chick and bailed.

It's not really my scene, you know.

A red hot plan of action, man...

More blogging, less lagging, needs to happen here. I really want this space to be a more all-encompassing arena for sharing what I see, hear, do, read, think, feel, eat and drink...

Okay, so here's how it's gonna go down:

Freewheelin' Fridays: LOCAL CULTURE--this'll be whatever crazy/cool shit's happening around the Bay Area... hopefully some of which I'll actually do one of these days...
Freelove Saturdays: LOVE&SEX--yep, a chance for me to divulge all the hot and dirty details of, you know, somebody else's love life... okay, maybe sometimes my own... yeah right so it'll be all about me so what it's my blog...
Freepress Sundays: BOOKS/MAGS/WEBSITES--the stuff I've read recently or that's worth your perusal... not necessarily one and the same, of course...
Freezeframe Mondays: PHOTOS--random pics and archival footage of the people, places and things in my world...
Freetime Wednesdays: MUSIC/FOOD/FILM/TV--what's currently inspiring and/or distracting me from doing the more necessary, tedious chores of my happy-ass struggling writer-chick existence...
Freestyle Thursdays: Yes, that's right. That means this entry actually counts as the first... ha HA!

See you tomorrow!

Just stealin' hubcaps, as usual...

Last weekend was lovely--a beautiful, sunshine and watermelon three-day Memorial Day weekend. Thespian even got Sunday off, which meant we were going to have a whole day together--the first since our fab stay at the Viceroy in Palm Springs back in November. At first, there was talk of us taking off with Mango (Thespian's adorable Visla, pictured top) to a cozy cabin with a hot tub in the redwoods up north... then it was all about finding a hotel room in the city and checking out the Power Exchange...

Anyway, we ended up staying close to home and having one of the best meals of our datedom at Oliveto Saturday night. Then the next day we (along with Mango) headed to Golden Gate Park and a nicely rockin' barbeque with an excellent sound system and DJ (pictured middle), and an ice luge with Acai liquor and organic vodka, and a keg of caffeinated microbrew of some sort.

Then some dude was trying to flirt with me only he was a pompous meathead and was trying to brag about being from Marin and living in Mill Valley all his life and how it's so affluent and nice that he doesn't have to worry about locking his doors. So then I piped up and said, "Oh, yeah? Well, I work in San Rafael and just had my hubcaps stolen" to which he replied, straightfaced and with much seriousness, "Well, that's because there are a lot of MEXICANS there."