The Usual
The stink. The plink and clink, so rinky-dink,
Our winkless cries went down the kitch’n sink.
Oh, strum und drang. D’you know what you’ve done?
No time to weep, the trumpet calls us to — run!
And yet you pop and sigh in glee: my woe.
Your mind in the clang of madness, in angry throes-
No part is left of a once and feral heart,
No soul to honor love, of the deepest sort.
-E. Carere
I found a long lost poem; one I wrote at age... 21 or so.
And lest I lose it again (although I remember it when I sing):
ORACLE
ORACLOracle
| I walked numb and drunk to the oracle at Delphi that I might inhale Pythia's smoke and gaze into tomorrow I met a priest who drank the wine of wisdom he told me to go home but instead I stole his cup and the gods have grown bored with my possibilities I can tell by the way my prayers are left bleeding in the dust over the entrance to the temple an inscription reads Know Thyself I know my gods I can smell them on my hands I kneel at an altar made of rain but i want to be Athena babies in my oceanic belly gods of war sucking at my breast Oh, Oracle, do not leave me alone with the vanishing smoke ask of me something I can give but the Oracle does not ask it tells and in this darkness where I stumble I discover I do not know the question I want to ask |
Quatrains: December 17th, 2022: Wake Up!
In the ancient and eternal city
Missing the signs of God’s pure face.
Seeking religion in selfish self pity,
In shopping for leather, trying on lace.
Looking for meaning in Babylon,
In clouds, in darkening sky and rain,
Not children nor carols, nor trumpeter swans.
But in youth and wealth. In fame. In vain.
Where is love? How would do we know?
What’s the point of how we live?
We know this world is fleeting, though,
Every day emptied with less to give.
No! You’ve lost your mind in your revels, or
An abominable lack of imagination and love.
Wake up, O blessed traveller.
You’re asleep again, wake up. Wake up…
Tinnitus, 4:48 am
Ringing silence in my ears.
My husband’s gentle breathing.
The air filter. A car outside.
This high pitched tone within,
A presence eternal
And louder as the years go on.
Is it the Divine waking me up at dawn,
Secrets to distribute to its
Devoted aspirant, me? or
Some biological problem soon to give
Medical bills galore; Dizziness and
Thundering pressure;
My greatest hope is
It is a symptom of allergies
Or migraines
As every other potential diagnosis-
Which I cannot get with our current insurance anyway
As it covers almost nothing-
Is dreadful, dreadful.
At least there’s
Something always to look forward to,
(Sly lift at the corners of my mouth)
But the holy spirit does not like snarky jokes.
Cynicism is not the domain of my lord of kindness.
I know not from whence that comes in me
Only that sometimes I delight in its
Dark pleasures
But I do believe in peace and
My husband emits heat like an oven.
I have thrown off a weighted blanket,
One he had placed tenderly
Just on my side. Just for me
And listening to him now
I think
I have never loved anyone
The way I love you,
My love
For this marriage is
A blessing and
You are my rock
And we squabble daily but
I don’t even need words like faith and trust because
You are you so deeply and
Completely
You
And you are so utterly the definition of
Faith
And trust
I know I’ll never have to worry until
The terrible day one of us…
The air filter kicks up a notch
Randomly, it seems
Why in the middle of the night
Would it suddenly have to
Filter so strongly?
Is it because I awoke
And am emitting a different
Chemical in my breathing? Or
Some other presence as
I shiver—
A car speeds by
And then fast,
Ephemeral,
It’s gone
And now I am awake
Sul serio,
For real, for the day,
Undeniably. A
New chapter and
There’s something in this moment
I don’t want to lose
But I will carry it with me
Throughout the day
Whether I want to or not
Although I desire greatly yes to
Bring forth
The loudest sound, that chorus of ringing angels in my ears
Ever present
But not louder
If I listen
To the heartbeat of my love.
My neighbors have a beautiful display-
red and yellow flowers, bowls of mango and gourds, sugar skulls.
Photos of those who have passed lovingly placed in the center.
I pass by respectfully and dream of my ofrenda.
I imagine shopping for supplies,
lovingly attending to it throughout this thinning of the veils.
But I have no photo for the spirit of a daughter
who never took a single breath, never emerged from
my womb with a cry of "I am, mama! I am!"
Never.
I've heard people say a woman my age without children is selfish.
They do not know what they are saying.
They do not know how hard I tried.
And yet, perhaps I am.
Selfish, I mean.
To weep for a pain I will never feel,
to indulge in hours of daydreaming over the most mundane of things.
Teenaged fights. Picking fallen leaves. Searching for four-leaf clovers.
If I had my daughter--
curly black hair like her father,
big eyes like mine.
A little crossed,
but we'll get surgery for that when the time comes.
Dimples in her cheeks and one in her chin.
Bright, interested in science and the natural world,
A lover of Napoli's football club,
Fiercely brave and loyal.
At times, cold to those who've wronged her,
unable to hide her true feelings
and disdainful of those who do.
Eternally giving to whom she loves, though,
And like her parents,
Sometimes she gives too much.
On this year's Day of the Dead
I cannot create an altar to honor those I've lost
because I find myself still mourning
the one who will never be born.
I imagine this is the kind of question that makes sense only once you've had an alternative experience.
I think about a vision I had once while meditating in a cave in the Himalayas along the Mother Ganga.
I was in all darkness, cold, but not so cold, lost in the darkness until I smelled- something earthy- fecund, perhaps- and above me I felt a sort of spreading warmth. I pushed up against- who knows what- it was so dark there was nothing visible- and a pressure below and within urged me to keep pushing, pushing, and above me the warmth kept spreading and then opening and softening and suddenly I burst through and I could see I was a sprout, and rapidly I watched "my life" pass before me, I grew tall and slender and bloomed and around me were all roses and I was a rose and I could smell the blossoms and sometimes I yearned for the sun and sometimes the dew came and I drank and I laughed and sometimes night fell and I closed in upon myself, and eventually I watched pieces of myself, pink and vibrant no longer, now falling all around me and scattered by the wind, and then...
It was over.
And I think this is what it is like to be alive.
Of course the monk in India will have many different experiences than the woman in Los Angeles, and both of us in 2021 (or 2007, or 1984) have a different experience compared to 1532 or 400 BC or a million years ago, in a way.
But we are all made of stardust, so...
To be alive as me right now means a million different things. It means constant interruption by the world, intrusions into my thoughts and my writing and my music, and yet if I shut everything out for fifteen blessed minutes or an hour suddenly there is an eruption and someone, somewhere needs something; I need those things for means of survival, for paying bills and not shutting off technology that provides my income and dreams to flourish, I find myself lonely without these relationships in my life, I am not just contained into one singular being, me and my thoughts, I am actually myself and my relationships and my works and my intrusions and my culture and the nature that precedes all of the above-
And to be alive now also means to expand greater than the sum of all those fears and needs and hungers and devouring desire and to
Shrink back into the demand of this moment, the essay I have assigned myself for a novel I can never stop thinking about, a character who wakes me up in the middle of the night, her need to be alive when she has never yet existed outside of my brain and words I type endlessly into a slim silver screen with a keyboard attached, listening to Cosmic Dancer on repeat, a song that doesn't even have a thing to do with the story of the character (let's call her Joan) or the time in which she actually would have been alive had she been a "real" person, but in listening to this song and allowing myself to just forget myself and my name and let myself dance myself into the tune or is it the tomb
The feelings that swell inside of me
Of being alive
Joan, she wants these things too,
You, me, the reader, the writer, we want these things,
To know constantly that
I am
that I am alive
that I am dancing,
out of the womb, right to the tomb,
now I'm just copying a great songwriter and all is lost once more.
And this is being alive.
But this slim silver screen, this keyboard, they are, right now, a part of me, and therefore as alive as I am, which is approximately at 67% because if I allow myself the full awakening of my existence my head begins to explode but
here it comes, can you feel it?
You're reading this, you're alive too, can you feel the soft expansion at the edges,
the light urging your forward out of the darkness toward the warmth and the gentle pressure to
breathe, to breathe, to breathe to
feel all that shit you didn't really want to you had been ignoring you had been
where had you been
where have you been all this time?
No matter, you're here now.
Let's dance.
Hey y'all! Here's a short version of the highlights of my work as Darlene in "Alabama Snake" on HBO.
Last night Carlo Carere and I attended the Drive In Movie Premiere of the HBO film, Alabama Snake. I appear as Darlene, a southern Holiness Preacher’s wife who is nearly killed by rattlesnake bite, the perpetrator of which is in question!
It’s a documentary and it’s also an incredibly wild story with a ton of filmmaking flair! Uniquely American, too. We’ve been seeing great reviews and I wanted to share a few behind the scenes pics with you as well!
It premieres tonight in HBO and then is available immediately after on HBO Max. Maybe later I’ll share a few of the really scary bts pics!
I want to add that the makeup artists and effects folks really did amazing work in this project. Also, my fellow cast mates were really wonderful. Your heart’s gonna open almost as wide as your mouth on this story!!!
#alabamasnake #laactress #screenwriter #screenwriting #hollywood #actorslife #nowplaying #makeupartist#hillbillyelegy #makeupeffects
Hey guys! Saturday night I performed as part of the Metropolitan Zoom's
--- formerly known as the Metropolitan Room of NYC ---
I am so excited that I can finally announce this!
Last summer I had a major role in the HBO film, ALABAMA SNAKE, coming soon!
Somehow, I'm not in this picture. Eek! But when you see the movie, you won't miss me!
Hint: I played a role that may or may not have been the antagonist. Or was I a protagonist? As Hamlet said, "nothing is either good or bad, only thinking makes it so." But this story, in which I played a real person, will make you wonder: just who was the real snake in this story?
Coming to screens near you a little later this year.
https://deadline.com/…/mark-jay-duplas-the-lady-and-the-da…/
ALABAMA SNAKE, directed by Theo Love and produced by Bryan Storkel, explores the story of Oct. 4, 1991, when a violent crime was reported in the town of Scottsboro, Alabama.
Glenn Summerford, a Pentecostal minister, was accused of attempting to murder his wife with a rattlesnake. The details of the investigation and the trial that followed has “haunted Southern Appalachia for decades.”
We filmed last year on location and I just loved Alabama. It was beautiful: at night, full of fireflies and magic. Everyone I talked with- and I talked with everyone, basically- was so very nice. I learned a lot about Pentecostal Christians, a world I hadn't known much about before, but could see parallels with some of the more ecstatic kundalini yoga groups I've stayed with in ashrams in India.
I also spent some time at the Scottsboro Boys Museum, delving into something I studied in high school but which I was soberly reminded of in person. It's a shameful piece of our US history that should be preserved and understood... and it saddens me that we are only a few steps beyond that. Black Lives Matter!
But back to the film. It was a great set. My fellow cast & crew were beyond excellent. I'd love to shout out to everyone individually... but then I'd basically just have to give a list of cast and crew as if it were a ship manifest or something. Still, you’re going to LOVE the makeup on this, and I truly miss a few of my wardrobe pieces that I grew oddly fond of. PUFFED SLEEVES!
Also, my inner adrenaline junkie got a HELLA lotta fixes. I can’t give away too many details yet, but let’s just say that not only did I do some stunts… and learned I can survive certain “enhanced interrogation tactics”… (OH, I LOVED IT, SO DON’T WORRY IF YOU’RE READING THIS, HBO.) But I also got to work with ANIMAL actors… You all know I love animals. Some of which are named in the title. Only after wrapping on my fellow serpentine talent did one of the snake handlers approach me to tell me I was “a very brave woman.” It was at that moment that I wondered to myself, “Am I brave? Or stupid?” Since I survived, I’ll pick brave!
Truly, I had 100% faith in the project! As you can tell, I’m very proud of this film and my part in it. I cannot wait for you all to see this beautiful, creepy, Southern Gothic exploration of religion and crime.
I'll share some more pics when I can. And certainly I'll share more details when the time is right.
XOXO
Erin
