BadMormon

more imaginings

It’s the trains. clunk clunk clink clunk clink…ratttle shake roll. I’m not sure what the real sound of a subway is, there are shrieks and a constant loose holding of my body frame while I snooze or just think with eyes closed. You tune the noise out.

The armor of the modern day warrior is iPod and izClosed. (see what i did there.)

The cherry seat is the one in the corner with a wall to lean your head against to the side, backpack on lap, arms held across in the closest approximation I can get to fetal position while staying upright.

And I usually snooze.

Sometimes I am too awake, or I have a coffee in my hand and I listen to the music, think, try to figure out everything, reverting to 10 as much as needed?

Today I was myself with myself. Old and young. Floating. Told her to stay there. The sucking was coming, life was gonna change, don’t rush it, just float, let some one come to you, it’s better so wait, wait wait wait wait wait .wait ..wait …wait

Stay. Here. Then.

Oh my vey

These are mental fantasies, I understand that.

I should probably pick up a book, “how to grieve for dummies.”

Not good at denying reality for very long, however it may have looked to others recently. Hence my fairly harmless addictions. I can tell when something has made my life suck.

Or better.

Tv is on, as usual, a distraction and friend, and there are tender daddy with kid moments. I am crying.

And on the train I remembered another thing, that I remember again now, I said on stage the other night, about my Dad buying us marathon bars on the way to the lake to where he had a heart attack while water skiing. UP on the skies, drifted down, letting go of the rope…

He bought chocolate stars and let me eat as much as I wanted as he worked on building the new house in the twilight. I remember chocolate melting on the tongue as I lay on concrete staring through 2×4’s at the stars popping out in the summer sky.

I remember naps after work, hobbies in the den, laying in bed watching HBO, first HBO in the neighborhood and being gone – not home, Bishop and Businessman. But saying good night was a hug and kiss, the smell of old spice and a handful of m&m’s in the dish on his side table.

Sunday nights were pizza, popcorn and ice cream when he was home. Monday night was family home evening with a moral mormon lesson, a different family member planned the lesson each time. Usually ending with something fun, like dinner of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. (Mom cooked from scratch, literally, grinding her own wheat from our 2 year supply. Grinder was electric however. And not all the time. But that meal above was my favorite. And a special treat.)

What is it that I missed so much from him, besides his life? I felt abandoned by him before he was gone forever.

The answer that popped into my head, and tied into everything else, is that I wanted him to talk to me.

hmmmmmmmmmm

I hate that psychology is so fuckin obvious when you start playing with it.

I just wanted him to talk to me.

Get it.

That is where the crazy is.

paradigm shift

For most of his life my son, The Boy, has split his week between his Father and me.  I pick him up thursday night and keep him till sunday night/monday morning.

His dad and I spent years with him calling me sunday night at 7pm asking where The Boy was and me replying that he was right here, please feel free to come get him. Then he would hang up on me and I would spend some time overridden with anxiety waiting for him to do something really, really shitty.  I had realized I didn’t have to run all over NYC doing both pick up and drop off just because I had once said I would.

As I was leaving him, barganing for him to not be angry I had arranged it.  The Boy was young, had day care in the neighborhood.  BDiddy best friend’s younger sister had a room for rent.  Ex was working a odd ended week and had Monday and Tuesday off.  I had told him I would pick The Boy up and drop him off, for some dumb reason feeling guilty for wanting to leave this man.  His line had been I could leave but I wouldn’t take The Boy.  As my ex’s best friend loaded my things into the truck and my ex threw things around in the apartment and my baby boy cried and reached for me, the friend muttered to me, “You’re doing the right thing.”

Now we need change it so that Dad has him Friday night and to Sunday afternoon and a few hours monday and tues after school so The Boy can play with his younger brother by another mother.  For real.  This is because a power struggle that has gone on for all of BDiddy’s life with every other person in his world is escalating when baby daddy tries to make the kid do things, like shower and get a haircut.  The Boy is getting pissed.

The Boy has been telling me he doesn’t want to go back to his dad’s.  We’ve decided to try this modified schedule.  We were talking about it tonight in the kitchen as he demolished half pound of pasta and sauce.  And I kept marveling at what a casual guy posture he’s adopted since I bought him a bunch of jeans last week.

I have also figured out that I am a sucker for him and am trying to wisen and toughen up.

So I ask him, “Do you want to live with me just because I’m a pushover and you get to do what you want to do?”  He had pushed a sleepover to a very long day with his best friend but I think it was healthy, went to soccer game, hung with guys, at pizza, was yelled at severely to get his butt home.  This family has been totally pickin up our slack as I try to work and be a mom.  And The Boy hates coming home to an empty house.  Doesn’t like to use his keys.

Oh, so I ask him if I’m a sucker and at his dad’s he doesn’t get away with stuff (I know that’s crap or HE WOULD DO HIS HOMEWORK!  Not one assignment handed in this year yet.  I had to make him pull out the two pieces I have sat for hours making him do and hand them to his teacher.  He said he’s afraid he’s gonna be told they’re bad, in fact he knows they suck.  They don’t suck.)

He answers, “You’re not a pushover, it’s hard to get it, I have to wheedle and…and…”

“huh.  really.”  Note to self start making favorite word, “no.”

But anyway once again I was talking to him about it, the tales of his father vs my home, asking him how much he exaggerates the incidences he is telling me about.

He admitted to playing down the good parts, but not really telling me all about the neglect and how bad that can be, but maaaaybe making it sound worse when it’s bad, but bad is still not good.

And I said, “Yeah, well, maybe this will make it better, we’ll tell him he doesn’t have to worry about hair, grooming, getting homework done, you guys can just relax and have fun, and maybe without the worry he’ll chill out.”

My son popped his head up, finished chewing an entirely too large bundle of rigatoni and said ” Huh.”

I replied, “What”

“Oh I just realized something and I have to go to the bedroom and cry but it’s a good thing.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you but i have to go cry first.  It’s about my dad.”

“Ok sweetie, whatever you got to do.  Ya gotta cry ya gotta cry.” The curiosity/worry made my neck throb.

He walked out into his room and closed the door for a whole 30 seconds and then was back.

“I talked to much, I can’t cry now.”

“Oh yeah, that happens.”

“But you know what I realized?  Dad is mean because he loves me.”

“Yeah, you got it, he worries and doesn’t know what to do with it and wants you to grow up happy.  We both love you so very much.”

And he sat in my lap and I rubbed his back.

“That’s a very mature realization.”

“I’ve been mature since i was four.”

“Oh you get to be a kid too you know.”  I looked him in the face for a minute, noting every feature, every divot, assigning it to the parent or grandparent or side of the family it belongs too.  It’s a game I play.  I see a chance to ask him a question that’s been nagging me.  “Hey, did you ever play as a kid?  Make up stories, um play?”

“He looked at me for a second, breaks into a grin, “Nope.”

“Haha, I couldn’t remember much.  Oh well, some brains like to think and organize more than play.”

“Yeah”

“So, um, can you do what needs to be done to keep things cool if you stay at your dad’s more?  You know, do everything he says exactly when he says it?”

“um”

“yeah, I won’t write that letter yet then, we’ll talk some more, good I was gonna write it tomorrow.”

He smiles again, my son relaxed is just a beautiful creature and I’m NOT biased, and says, “Yeah, don’t write the letter.”

Lompyville

I’ve been doing a lot of impassioned off the cuff writing on my boards.  You can see a link to them in my menu bar.

It’s left me unfocused on the long form All-About-Me stuff I meant to concentrate on.  Which will consist of  me telling my stories about my life.  MEMEMEMEMMEEEEE!!!  I’m ok with that. :)  It is the decade of self-promotion and I’ll try to be a little bit humble and charming about it, at least.

But due to a rape in my artistic community, and a discussion thread on the boards about it with my friend telling her side, and the community struggling with how to deal with it, with previous happenings around it, with the loss of friends, with how strong of a stance to take, etc. I have not been blogging or linking or finding any funny videos.  Instead I am furiously typing my answers and feelings and policies, moderating replies, possibly losing my mind a little.

I am, of course, being a total bitch.  It works for me.  But again, I’m trying to be a fair bitch as well.  You’ll have to be the judge of that.

I am seeing a deep potential here for feeding thoughts, commentary and publicity between my blog, my boards, my artistic friends’ websites, and the blogging feminist, activist community.  A flow of information and ideas back and forth to work towards world peace, global care taking, and EVERY PERSON being treated decently.  (I’m a dreamer, what can I say.)

I have a lot of art to make that will say these things as well.  I see how this blog, this board and a group of friends can do that.

To get that ball rolling, well you have to have an UBER BRAND.  A name to exploit, color in, associate your personal dealings with.

Or a cool name for a webportal so me and my friends can try and get people to see what we’re doing.

Bad Mormon I’m keeping all to myself.

Lompyville, well, that’s a hard one.  It’s being used now but is it one to keep?

Lompyville was my first webpage online, before blogging software existed.  I had friends put it together and then I went in and learned enough html to create a new page, insert text, hyperlink, not difficult.

The name Lompyville itself goes back 13 years, The Boy was a baby and my relationship with his father was awful.

Wait, no, really, it goes back 16 years, when I moved to Sante Fe with my fiance, D.  He was a big guy who was into death metal and had a mohawk.  I was 19, living back with my mother in Utah in a tiny little town, working at the truckstop, having been there about 6 months after my crystal meth streak in Mesquite, NV had left me with my tail between my legs and a need to detox before I would never get out.

My best friend had convinced me to move in with her in Sante Fe.  After all I hadn’t been there before!  I said yes, we planed for April, I met D.  I proposed to D. and we packed the car my mom bought me (god do I owe that woman) and moved to New Mexico.

So we went and stayed with my friend for a week or two as we looked for an apartment and she introduced me to a book.  It was called Seth Speaks.  It is material channeled by Jane Roberts for an entity who has name himself Seth.  I believe he was designated as an Oversoul.  It’s a concept that takes the spirit guide/angel motif and sticks it to you that it’s really a bigger portion of yourself in the gestalt that is the tied together universe.  There was enough there for me then.

I read it and was hooked.  The thing was unlike most of the new age crap I had run across.  This stuff had some practical sense in there.  I haven’t read it in years and I don’t know how it would stand up today if I look at it but then, well, it seemed very helpful.  (I still have many many books, can’t quite throw them out.)

Things happened, life turned over and I ended up being 23 and heading for NY.  I had kept up my Seth reading but even in Sante Fe, the new age mecca of the west, the books were hard to find.

Bless the streets of new york and their tables of used items.  I not only found book after book I stumbled across some recent ones, put out by a small press with web addresses and emails in them.

I moved Nov 1993 to NYC.  I spent the week before the move at my brother’s house getting my first real taste of a virtual world.  He had AOL at $3 a minute, or something ridiculous like that, and I found chat rooms and I fell in love with my boyfriend, the Internet.  I believe you may have met him?  I don’t think the World Wide Web had started quite yet but was on it’s way.  Hell, I remember my roommate in Sante Fe coming in and telling me about this email thing he had just gotten at his job at the Community College!  SO freaking Cool!

So in 1994 I met baby daddy, got pregnant, ended up moving me and my books into his parents basement with Bdiddy (babydaddy) at about 8 months preggertime.  They had a computer with a modem.

The books told me how to get in touch with a Seth based community.  A MAILING LIST!!!!  What fun it was to get mail all day long, arguing points, discussing life, supporting each other through sucky things like human communities, in reality or in virtual, do everyday.  And the people from the mailing list started meeting in real life.  Crude web pages went up with photos and fun.

I was 25, my son was a 5 – 7 months old?  And I would escape from a house full of angry people, a babydaddy who was mean, and the depression of feeling I was trapped with no good way out and go on adventures with the crew.

At one point I became good friends with another young mom and she threw a get together at her lake house cottage upstate.  A few of us Sethites showed up, drank some booze, hung around a fire and pulled out the Ouija board.  Jane, the channeler of Seth, had started by doing research for a possible book by trying out the magical game.  We wanted to try it too.  The nicest thing about the Seth philosophy is that “the present is the point of personal power” which means right now you can change everything if you want.  Right now you have the power to do it.  And we wanted to do it.

Everyone had a turn.  Two of the women, a mother/daughter combo, had done this before and had a special dollar coin they liked to use.  It moved around, people put their fingers on it and Oversoul Naming began.

Well when I sat down it didn’t take long for my fingers and coin to start scratching across the board and the name to reveal itself.  L – O – M – P – Y.

really?

YES YES YES

You’re my Oversoul?

YES YES YES

Right, of course, because my Oversoul would be named Lompy.

We cracked up, prided ourselves on our rationality and knew that it took practice to get real results.  But I was called Lompy for a while.

The Ouija board turned into auto-writing at home for me and then I bought my own and then the marker would rush around faster than it could be read and the words would be in my head with personality and intonation and phrasing and his name changed to Kirt, then Josef and the finally, just before I quit channeling for good because I didn’t like the life it was leading me into, the responsibility of being a “magical” voice to others, Arabicus.

But during the channeling experiment I started my first web page “Lompyville: the world inside my head.”  I had many writings on many subjects and the name is near and dear to my heart.

And as I spontaneously splashed up the forum for my arty farty friends to get their internet interpersonal connections on I named it Lompyville, the vague idea of making it an actual virtual community and world influencing my decision but frankly, knowing me, wanting to remind myself of what a goofball I and everyone else truly is.  Of course I also just love it for no other reason than it is solely mine.

This was what 2, 3 weeks ago that Lompyville was reborn?  I’ve played with it, found some people like it, others don’t and as with all new things there are growing pains.  The design is slapped together and it is simply a limited board for discussions.

I have a vision though!  A wonderful vision of publicity and support and MERCHANDISING!!!! (Cause I’m always needing more cash flow, The Boy costs dollars and cents baby.)

That means a name.

And the horns of my dilemma.

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”

Oh Juliette…  I think she is wrong in worrying about the smell of an individual object.  The name to humans matters and if Romeo had a different Family Name he would have been as sweet but I’m betting they wouldn’t have both died.

What do you think?  Comments?  Names?  HELP?

I WAS promised a rose garden! And a Planet too!

Growing up Mormon I was taught that if I Chose the Right, Kept the Covenant and Prayed Sincerely I would receive everything I needed and wanted.

To reinforce these ideas we were told many object lesson stories. For example: A good man, but not a mormon, had a family of five and NO money. They were poor, poor, poor. So poor in fact they could not afford food. Things were bleak. And due to this extreme poverty the father decided they couldn’t go on and had a plan to turn the gas on in the house and kill them all.

So one night when there was no longer a single morsel of food in the house he put his plan into action. But before they would blow out the pilot light on the furnace and lay down to sleep they had one last prayer together, as a family.

As they knelt in their living room (in my mind it was always a ranch style house with many bedrooms, like the one we lived in, and empty of furniture, having been sold or something for survival) in a circle, as a family, and prayed for one last salvation the doorbell rang!

The suicide plan is halted, the prayer stopped and the family goes to see what it possibly could be. For some reason they didn’t have friends around either and were shocked someone came to see them!

It wasn’t a person! It was some bags of GROCERIES!!!! Anonymously left on the doorstep! WHOHOO! They are saved!

See apparently their Mormon neighbors had been watching and knew things were hard and were moved by the spirit SUDDENLY to pack up part of their two year supply of food all mormons are told to keep and hand it over to the neighbors, who are poor.

Well the Father didn’t kill the whole family after all! I can’t completely remember how it ends but I’m betting in his paternal wisdom instead he found out who sent the groceries, learned about these wonderful Mormons who save other people without looking for credit, and then joined the group.

Which is smart if you’re poor cause they have the best welfare programs ever and will even give you money for rent if you are obviously a true enough believer. Not often but once in a while to save your butt.

As I type this story out I can see every aspect of my personality in it. Hence my still identifying as a Mormon. Brainwashing like this doesn’t go away.

There was no critical thinking about such a tale . It was not presented as a parable but as truth. This thing REALLY happened! No one wondered why state welfare and food stamps weren’t involved. Nobody mentioned social services for children who are not having their basic needs met or parents getting part time jobs even, if nothing else, or the sheer ridiculousness of father deciding to take out the whole family without bother to sell the house, move to a small apartment and hit a food pantry or two.

And how about that Mom, going along with Dad’s idea of gassing her children so they won’t wake up and feel hungry? How about the fact that this guy sounds like an abusive lunatic when observed from an adult perspective in the real world?

How about the adults who looked me in the face and taught me such a tale? To be fair, most of them were in their early twenties. Married at 18, 19, 20 and with 2 to 4 kids already the young moms taught children in sunday school and primary from the same manuals they had been learned from a few years before. No one thought enough to question.

I don’t know if this story still circulates but I do know it contains all the elements of good Mormonhood. Father in charge. God immediately and directly answering prayers. Mormons Saving people, WITHOUT THOUGHT OF PERSONAL RECOGNITION! This last part is important. Not simply because a congregation is more easily controlled the more their individual selves are sublimated and the group ideals and needs are elevated but because it’s a huge component of my own personality. Do the work, do the good, don’t make a fuss, don’t worry if you don’t get approval, promotion, attention for it. You will receive your reward later because Heavenly Father knows.

I was taught to read at an early age and started reading everything I could get my hands on. (You should see the lists of RSS feeds I peruse daily.) I started on science fiction and learned some logical thinking. I had feelings things were off and my Dad dying when I was 11 and my prayers not moving that mountain didn’t help for me to stick with the church either. At 14 I completely broke with the Church in my heart and stopped going no matter how much my mother sighed and prodded.

Changing your life usually happens in a moment. One thing flips the switch and you go a different way. My thing happened while I was listening to General Conference, the big meeting held twice a year and broadcast on TV and Radio all over the west, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho aka ZION. My mother had turned on the big cabinet stereo record player, blasting it all over the house, as well as the tv in the basement tuned to the same event. If you stood on the stairs the delay between the two gave quite an echo effect.

And while I read my book, trying to ignore the noise, the Prophet of the Church started speaking. I don’t recall any of it, or even who the Prophet was (Spencer W. Kimball was the old guy I remember seeing the most) but I do recall him calling on all the Youth of Zion not to Masturbate because it led to homosexuality.

I stared at the radio speakers, really? Really? He just said that?

I had already gotten into my own personal experimental routines before I had even known what the word meant. OF course at 14 I was reading the naughty high school romances and scifi is so packed with sex I always had a heinlein or something around for titillation. I knew the numbers of people who masturbated. I had pretty much figured out that sex wasn’t the sin the Church wanted me to think it was. And I absolutely knew that whether a lot of girls did it or not that the majority of teenage boys jacked off daily.

My brain did the math.

If pullin it leads to homosexuality then 80% (to be fair, it might NOT be 100%) of all men in the world were GAY!

Of course that’s not true, and I had to wonder if the Prophet had man on man fantasies when he was a youth and got his information from personal experience, and I barked out an incredulous laugh, and looked around and had no one to share this ludicrous statement with. Mom wouldn’t understand my side. My 12 year old sister wouldn’t get it.

Fine then, I’m out of this, I decided. There is no need to continue to debate it.

I still carried the premises of the religion with me though. The things that get ground into the neural pathways and take lots of cognitive therapy to get over. Like that Men Know What They Are Doing and Talking About. That Good Works are best when unsung. That Taking Care of Each Other Matters. And that Rewards Show when YOU ARE GOOD!

I may be bad at the other mormon rules, like keeping my hands out of my pants, or paying attention to anything any male declares to be truth again, but that last one I am keeping. And part of my brain still expects the rewards to show up and prove to me that my decision to break with the religion of my birth was the right one. Of course, this being real life and real life being ironic to the max the prizes have been glaringly absent though I have def had the abuse, poverty and suicidal impulse appear far too often. I can admit it, I am a very bad Mormon. Now where the fuck is my bag of groceries!