Elizabeth Taylor died today.

Elizabeth Taylor died today.

What a strange occurence … Not that people die.  Or even that Elizabeth Taylor should die, but that she actually did.

Our intimate relationships with human embodiments of concepts, i.e. Living Symbols, are strange strange strange …

I suppose it’s fitting that Elizabeth Taylor would pass away the week in which so much has been revealed to me about my own personal relationship to Romance — the inner workings of that portion of my brain, which decides my romantic interests, the type of women I’m attracted to, female personalities I find intoxicating, soft-lipped visages atop pear-shaped flesh who simultaneously fog my senses with overwhelming swoon & ache.  In this period of anguished yet liberating illumination, my old concept of Romance along with one of its Star Symbols has passed away …

Elizabeth Taylor as an actress & public persona, I believe, embodied the concept of Romance — in its ethereal & decayed extremes.

One of the great infatuations of my childhood, Liz got me through early pubescent HELL.  While the dismal reality of a problematic existence seeped into my awareness — I desperately sought escape from real life through fantasies of Romance.  By that I mean, I spent my entire summer as a 13-year old watching every Elizabeth Taylor film I could find & reading a thick 500-page biography on her life.

I spent hours lying in bed under layers of worn comfy cartoon blankets and imagined myself making movies & trapsing about the 1960’s world with Liz Taylor. On sets, exotic cruises, you name it ~ Elizabeth Taylor & I pranced arm in arm.  I didn’t know yet exactly what a “lesbian” was, but I’d imagine myself going to sleep and then magically waking up on her 1965 doorstep.  She opens it and falls madly in love with me. By that I mean, she fell instantly unconditionally entranced with me just because well … that’s what happens when two kindred spirits meet 😉  She then decides to adopt me because I am only 13 after all & don’t want to end up in foster care!  That night, in her large mansion, we snuggled in bed.  She, of course, wore nothing but pearl white lingerie from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  Yup, I still had no real clue what “lesbians” fantasized about. It was just a girlhood dream to me! ;p

As I grew older, Life’s polluted damaged side flooded the forefront of my consciousness, and the inevitable day came when I could no longer deny that the spry powerhouse vixen of youth had eventually aged into a drunken sailor-mouthed alley cat with grey hair.  Maggie The Cat’s flawless technicolor-toned skin eventually deteriorated into the black & white lull of “melons-bobbing” Martha.  Elizabeth Taylor, my splendid relief from the broken grey shards of real life had become a direct reflection of it.

At  age 15, I just couldn’t deny the double-sided mask of Life anymore. Consequently, the same went for Romance.  From Cat on A Hot Tin Roof to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf — we are all doomed to go … I came to believe that for many years.

My imagination still played with Romance at her best, but now more so at her worst. My fantasies had adjusted to “reality.”  No longer were Liz & I to be the enviable masters of Destiny — traveling Morocco in pastel-colored hour-glass shaped dresses. I forlornly accepted that fantasy had to curve to reality if I was still to believe & enjoy it.

Thus, Liz & I chucked grace, tenderness, & peaceful embraces out the window of our 1970’s private jet.  We’d drink scotch in mid-air, & then later that night at her movie premier after-after-after party, she’d cheat on me with Richard Burton. The next morning — she’d realized what she’d done and immediately regret it.  Oh, the mistakes a broken woman makes when she’s been drinking out late! 😉  Aching, I’d leave her without even a goodbye, she’d track me down and beg beg beg me back, and although ripped to shreds inside & distant ~ I’d return because, well, we were “meant”… so on & so on our tragic romance went ~ always in chase of the unattainable other.

…  That being said, I adored each phase of Liz equally.

For me, Romance has appeared like a Dove.  In the beginning, Doves seem like angelic pure messengers of light, but by the end, after spending much time truly getting to know them, you come to terms with the fact that Doves … are really just Albino Pigeons.  Burrrrrrrn. Ouch.

I’ve been doing a lot of renovation work on myself lately, and the more I heal the more I come to find that I was completely mistaken about Romance — as a Concept & Symbol.  It isn’t a dove at all, but an entirely other animal altogether.  A stronger, profound, more intuitive beast of some sort … I’m not exactly sure what kind yet …

Elizabeth Taylor died today.

Liz,  thanks for helping me survive my teens.  You were one fabulous & beloved dame.

Two of my Favorite Movies Ever:

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Theatre gets me high & then Romance pulls me down, but I lived happily ever after anyway. Yayee.

Well, I’m sitting in my granuelita’s walker next to her in the emergency room lobby. She’s feeling a whole lot better, thank goodness. We’re just waiting on the Doctor’s final ok. Anywho, she’s making friends and talking up a storm with the ladies in emergency. Lol! As usual. My grandma — The Cool Chick.

So I’ll take this time to blog it up. Theatre in LA rocks my socks off. I’ve seen a lot of killer underground shows here. Live performances that leave me feeling high. Higher than alcohol and oreo cookie shakes ever did in my wild-thing years ;p

Alas, Art calls blackjack.  I’d rather be conscious of, fully attentive to the real manifestation of fabu BRILLIANCE than lulled into satisfaction with mediocrity by belly-warming frontal-lobe butchers. What I’m trying to say is that I saw a HILARIOUS genius theatre show and didn’t sacrifice any of it to go chug Mickey’s Malt in the trunk of my Ford — not once!  If you feel like getting high on the arresting brilliance of the unpredictable human imagination — FairyTale Theatre is your show.  It basically warps childhood fairytales into moral fables that twisted adults can relate to, laugh with, and — strangely enough — learn from.  I ate lemon rinds & cackled for an hour straight, like a hyena on shrooms.

To think I wanted to cancel so that I could go home and work on my book promotion til’ my eyes dried out! The spiritual nourishment and replenishing creativity I would have missed. One of my beloved best friends & spirit sisters — Kunteemonster — generously got me a ticket.  I wanted to see her and promised I would go. I’m working on cultivating being impeccable with my word — for the purely selfish reason that estimable acts seem to fortify my self-esteem.  27-years into this game and now I figure it out!  😉  SO I threw a 30’s hat onto my overgrown greasy hair and lugged my makeup-less eyebags from the hood to the westside. I’m thrilled and grateful I did.

As I elatedly sauntered back to the car after the show, I thought of 3 people who would especially LOVE this show: 1) My mom “Mamushka” 2) Baby Dewds — another bestie & spirit sister and 3) An old friend I once fell in love with / got the romance cramps for …

The first 2 people I can actually call via android and vulnerably, passionately invite them to share the great discoveries of life’s madness with me — like this show.  The last woman though … well she’s traveling the other way, in the opposite direction of my trek — so I can’t.

It made me sad to think of her.  It makes me sad to think of her.   Side Note: I hope she finds the used Ella Fitzgerald CD I bought in Paris when I was 19 / 20.  I miss singing “I got a pebble in my shoe” while reminiscing about watching shape-shifting cobblestone streets through speeding amtrak windows.

Once a dear friend she’s now not even an acquaintance … a love of mine that never was mine.  Ah vell, life ticks on in the hands of train station clocks and beings fall in and out and in and out of love until the end of Nature.  So it is with me.  Although often times after having seen some great piece of theatre, I do still miss her friendship and then a tinge of ache about what never was but could have possibly been between us shoots to the tips of my nerve endings.  Both sentiments, however, have waned and faded into memory with passing days.  They’ll eventually take on the look and feel of photos developed at a Thrifty’s fotomat circa 1992.  This I know from past experience.  Thank GAWD! ;p

Another notable came after her. Conversely, this other young woman had a bountiful of love to share with me.  Through her, the world revealed that its vast seas of sweetness stretched far beyond the horizon. Her gentle transparency brought the embarrassed tenderness guarded within me out of dark corners into the light and lulled my dejected cynic to sleep for a brief lovely while.  In a breath, our paths intertwined and then diverged again.  Having reached a perpendicular fork in our road, we mournfully followed our selves away from each other and bowed in respect with “goodbye.”

Sometimes, on a night like yesterday’s, I feel the singe of halfness echo through my chest again.  After which I think to myself, “Maybe if I had a girl, I’d finally feel whole.”  Melancholy wonder warms my healing, pockmarked heart as I remember gazing into sundry pairs of eyes whose circular shades of blue sky, green bark, and velvet turquoise hugged a fixed black dot.

That being said, personal experience has taught me that the romance-solution is a “quick-fix” falsity.  I know better by now.  Wholeness has only come about through honest self-search and service to others.  A romantic partner is much like Life herself — palpable and powerful, but transient.  Relative to relevance.  Some girls accompany you for a month, others for a decade … All of which depends on whether you’re walking toward personal wholeness together or away from it.  The more I accept the romance process for what it is, the less I try to curate and manipulate my romances.  The more I appreciate each circumstance exactly as is, let it be, and, if needed, let it go.

Que Será Será.

Okay, now onto Awesome Photos I Found on The Internet!!! Let’s end this post by reflecting on these images, shall we?