For Crazy Owl

Charles Emerson Hall 1927-2011

This is Crazy Owl. I'm struggling for words to describe him or how to accurately convey my experiences with him. I met him when I was 18 and working at the Co-op. He was a 75 year-old gay witch doctor with a doctorate in statistics. He was shorter and bald on top, but had long gray, partially dreaded hair and beard. He typically wore a green baja pullover and smelled of an odd amalgamation of weed, herbs and old man. His hands shook violently, ceaselessly. He had trouble writing; it took him ages to write me a check. I would have his assortment of bulk containers of honey, herbs, dried mushrooms, and grains totaled and bagged long before he even opened his checkbook. Once he started writing, you could barely make out anything he scribbled. I would wait for him to leave before getting his check out of the drawer and writing the amount written legibly.

When I was 19, I moved into The Fairy Mansion, an eight bedroom victorian mansion on Third Street. When I moved in, my friends that were already living there were intentionally "living in community." Living in community sounds less 1967 than saying living in a commune, but that's basically what we did. We shared this house, each of us having our own bedroom while the remainder of the house was community space. We cooked and ate meals together, each had cleaning and maintenance responsibilities. we had a weekly concensus-based meeting to address concerns and problems. When someone moved out and another person wanted to move in, we gathered for our house meeting and had to all agree about the potential house member. When it was my turn to be discussed, Crazy Owl, who was occupying the room that was next to the vacant room, cast the sole vote denying my chance to live there. Crazy Owl did not try to hide his desire to have some nubile young hippie living on the other side of his wall. He just didn't want that fresh young thing to be a woman. I tried again the next month and was accepted by all. I think Crazy Owl realized that since no young gay men had expressed interest, he should accept my rent money instead.

So, for about a year, I lived with this crazy man. He once tried to pay for weed with a check. He smoked a lot of pot, and his hands would shake so hard that the weed would fall out of the bowl. He would leave out swinger magazines, and he never hid the fact that, though he was 76, he was still feisty and looking for a good time. If there was ever an ill, Crazy Owl offered you a container of honey with various brown dried herbs steeping in it. He was long winded and usually unintentionally funny. Crazy Owl moved out of The Fairy Mansion in 2004 to live in a community of mostly gay men in Tennessee. He was a character, the kind that even the most talented author couldn't conjure. Even though I had not seen him in seven years, when i read of his passing, it made me stop and think of the craziness that accompanied this old owl. I'm glad he was in my life. Rest in Peace, Crazy Owl.

*It is 5:12am. i'm ready to go back to sleep. so I'm not editing this. there are errors and i didn't capitolize everything i should have. whatevs. i'll come back and edit later.*

oops, I did it again

I have completely forgotten about my blog! Yikes! I have a good excuse. Life has been going so swimmingly well, that I haven’t even thought to sit and write. This is an interesting thing, since I started this blog to focus on the beauty in my life. Now my life has constantly been full of beauty, yet I haven’t written anything at all. I am easily the happiest I have ever been. Life is exceptionally great and I am full of gratitude for the positive turns my life has taken in the past six months. It is nice to make major life decisions and be able to honestly say that I have not looked back. Not once. I was really afraid that I would go into the winter, into the darkest months of the year, sad and depressed over the changes I made. At one point I said I wanted a time machine to fast forward my life through the winter, into spring. Even if time travel were a possibility, I am so glad that I did not do that. Had I traveled forward, I would have missed so many great experiences and opportunities. I would have missed out on spiritual growth that has resulted in a peace and joy that can only come from a conscious connection. I would have missed out on the blossoming of treasured friendship. I would have missed out on reconnecting with an old coworker, a connection that has grown into a healthy and life enriching relationship. I would have missed out on traveling to the HONK! Festival with March Madness Marching Band. I would have missed out on a time of great experiential growth. Thank goodness for the inability to time travel. I do wish teleportation was a possibility, but I digress.

olfactory revelation

I just realized that I never followed up after receiving my little vials of aromatic magic. I ordered six vials, or imps as BPAL calls them, but they sent two extra samples. The samples were offensive, too masculine and overpowering. Of the imps that I selected, the two that I thought sounded the best from their sensual descriptions turned out to be the ones I liked the least. When I say liked the least, I mean I am tempted to throw them away because I dislike them so much. I do not recommend Hymn or Pannychis. After catching a whiff of them, it occurred to me that I do not care for jasmine or frankincense. The musky and flowery smells do not pair well with my senses. The four other imps were simply delightful and each one evoked a very distinct emotion and association.

BORDELLO: A decadent, deep perfume, lusty and luxuriant. The scent evokes images of velvet-lined Old West cathouses, tightly laced corsets, rustling petticoats and coquettish snarls of pleasure. Bawdy plum with amaretto, burgundy wine and black currant.

Bordello lives up to its description. It has a satisfying depth, while remaining sweet and libidinous. It is warm and cuts the chill of winter air. This one mixes delightfully with my body chemistry. It feels a little bit naughty, like I know a secret that no one else can know. Well, maybe one other person.

EVE: The spirit of temptation, the essence of lost innocence. Apple blossom, rose, ylang ylang and golden honey.

Eve is another sweet smell. It is summery and light and feminine. I think it is too airy and ethereal for winter. If my innocence was not already exhausted, it wouldn’t stand a chance while wearing this. I look forward to donning it once the temperatures start to rise. My only concern is that bees may follow me, detecting Eve’s nectarous goodness.

VICE: More Sin & Salvation. Voluptuous and indulgent! A deep chocolate scent, with black cherry and orange blossom.

Vice smells like Cherry Coke, but in all the right ways. I wore it on my birthday and it made me feel like a very alluring artisan cupcake. A male friend hugged me and told me I smelled like Easter candy. He couldn’t place which candy I smelled of, but he spent the remainder of the night trying to identify the smell. Any smell that stays on the mind of a platonic friend must be working some kind of magic.

ENVY: Part of the Sin and Salvation inspired group. Green herbs slithering through mint, lime and lavender.

Envy is earthy and sensual. It caught me off guard. It evokes the smell that a lady would have after cutting the grass on a humid summer evening. The sweet smell of sweat from honest hard work, clippings of greenery covering your ankles and the remainder of perfume lingering from morning. It smells of Michler’s greenhouses. Seasonally, it fits from the first sight of crocuses all the way through the first time you catch a chill after the sun goes down, the first time you get to wear your favorite hoodie and realize that things are about to change.

With the newfound knowledge of what I like and don’t care for, I will be ordering more from BPAL. I am certain that an ounce of Bordello will soon be in the mail to my address. I highly recommend just searching their descriptions. Alone the descriptions are enough to tantalize and excite.

I didn’t have the internet at my house for the past five weeks, thus no writing. I’ve missed it. Life has been filled with only the best. I received a turntable for Xmas. Not only was this an awesome thing to have, it was very symbolic for my current stage of life. In the past seven years, I there have been at least two record players in a prominent location in my home. Accompanying those record players were a collection of what ended up around 6,000 records. Music was always playing. Upon waking, during meals, while falling asleep, it was a constant. I have always felt very passionate about music. During these years, I was rarely the one that selected the music. Don’t get me wrong, I heard a lot of really good music and was exposed to things I would have never heard of otherwise. I am grateful for that music. However, stepping back from that situation, I’m realizing that my love for music went by the wayside. When I was alone at home, it was my rare opportunity to enjoy silence. Now that I am on my own, I am rediscovering the profound effect that music has on my life, how much I have missed it in my life. It’s as though music was hijacked for years. Living alone, with my own record player and my own records that I bought with my own money, I have been so moved by the depth and beauty that can be amplified then projected through speakers as a result of a needle falling into the grooves on a piece of vinyl. Grateful that I have the ability to hear and process that sound, then translate it into impulses that release chemicals that incite euphoria. The process of listening to a record, the loving act of carefully removing it from its cover, attentively placing the needle into the indentations and closing the cover gently as to not cause the needle to jump is a process. Dare I say it is a ritual? Having the pleasure of sitting and listening for about 25 minutes, then having to get up and do it all over again. Most of the records I have been enjoying lately are new releases. They lack the dust and age that gives them the snapcracklepops that records are known and loved for. Regardless, the sound is so much richer. The depth cannot even be compared to other forms of media. Even with speakers of the highest quality, other mediums sound flat and emotionless compared to vinyl. The last time I recall sitting and listening to a record, really listening, not just hearing it, was in middle school. After Denali goes to bed, a record goes on the platter and I sit in amazement at this newly rediscovered form of beauty in my life.

Are you there, Mr. Brezney? It's me, Lauren

I do love him so. He is an astrologer/writer. The good kind of astrologer; possibly the only one, ever. He writes Free Will Astrology. It is lyrical and poetic while being insightful yet leaving out the new age hippie dip that often accompanies any mention of the zodiac. My horoscope for this week:

You've arrived at a delicate yet boisterous turning point when one-of-a-kind opportunities are budding. I'm going to give you seven phrases that I think capture the essence of this pregnant moment:
1. wise innocence;
2. primal elegance;
3. raw holiness;
4. electrifying poise;
5. curative teasing;
6. rigorous play;
7 volcanic tenderness.
To maximize your ability to capitalize on the transformations that are available, I suggest you seek out and cultivate these seemingly paradoxical states of being.

Be still, my beating heart!

olefactory anticipation

After years of faithful subscribing to BUST magazine, I have seen advertisements for Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab for ages. It wasn't until Thanksgiving Day, while making my sweet potato casserole, that it occurred to me that I should look them up. While adding the prescribed spices to the mix, I reached for my secret ingredient, cardamom. Cardamom must be the most intoxicating scent ever created. It is sweet and spicy, yet lightly pungent. It is heavenly in foods and goes well with anything with cinnamon. I like to think of cardamom as cinnamon's unpopular and intelligent cousin that doesn't realize how awesome she really is. Upon opening the jar, I wanted to smell like it all the time. So, I opened up the BPAL website and fell in love.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I hate perfume. I think 99% of them smell like harsh chemicals. I can't imagine how people could get a whiff of it and think that they would want to smell like that all the time. Yuck. I have worked around too many people that do not realize how obnoxious and potent their chosen scent is. That being said, I have often wanted to have a smell of my own. A brand, if you will. Nothing sends me instantly back to a different time and place teaming with memories like a familiar, forgotten smell. I once was hugged after a day in the sun and the person told me I, "smelled great, like the beach and sweaty Lauren." Since that day, I've worn Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen, thinking of that comment each time I lather it on. So, with cardamom in mind, I went in search of my own smell.

The BPAL website is interesting. There all sorts of different groups of scents to choose from. Ones inspired by dragons, deadly sins, Egypt, whorehouses and the like. I quickly became overwhelmed by all the choices and decided to search for potions containing cardamom. I was in heaven. The descriptions of the blends are as sensual as the potions themselves. After about an hour of searching, I narrowed the field to six sweet scents:

BORDELLO: A decadent, deep perfume, lusty and luxuriant. The scent evokes images of velvet-lined Old West cathouses, tightly laced corsets, rustling petticoats and coquettish snarls of pleasure. Bawdy plum with amaretto, burgundy wine and black currant.

ENVY: Part of the Sin and Salvation inspired group. Green herbs slithering through mint, lime and lavender.

HYMN: Also part of the Sin and Salvation group. A paean to true holiness, spiritual purity, and sacred enlightenment. Based on an incense blend sacred to the Virgin Mary: perfect rose absolute and Palestinian Lily of the Valley with olibanum, labdanum, frankincense and myrrh.

PANNYCHIS: An attendant of the Goddess Venus. She presides over nocturnal pleasure, nighttime festivities, and all the joy and delight that can be found in the darkness. In later ages, it became the name of the all-night festival that closed the Eleusinian Mysteries. Night-blooming jasmine, moonflower, cardamom, sandalwood, black currant, ylang ylang, frankincense and lily.

VICE: More Sin & Salvation. Voluptuous and indulgent! A deep chocolate scent, with black cherry and orange blossom.

EVE: The spirit of temptation, the essence of lost innocence. Apple blossom, rose, ylang ylang and golden honey.

Once you find a scent that entices, there are forums for each potion. There are reviews that are luscious and tantalizing. Mentions of fore notes and after notes, how they smell in the bottle, wet and dry. Descriptions of the feeling each potion evokes, such as,
"This makes me feel ultra girly, soft, maybe even a bit vulnerable. Feel like I should be wearing a pink dress with frills. Over the past hour of wear i have to admit it makes me feel a lil dreamy, and I have the sudden urge to watch Molly Ringwald movies."

Waiting for a package to arrive is always exciting, but this one, more so. I ordered my vials of goodness on Black Friday. The BPAL site says that it takes 14-21 days to receive your potions, as they are all hand blended upon order to ensure their freshness. I find myself giddy to check the mailbox each afternoon, hoping for a package that contains the new smell of me. The anticipation is killing me.

beginning of greatness

After a November 1st post on Facebook about having a great day, my friend pointed out that I posted it on the first day of November. I hoped that the first day of the month was an indication of the rest of the month. It was. November was an excellent month. One of the best of my life. (I feel guilty saying that. After Denali was born, those were life changing and amazing months. However, I haven’t had to be up at all hours of the night, change diapers, or adjust to having to be responsible for a little new life.) December is my favorite month. My birthday, winter break from school, the culmination of another year and circle around the sun. It snows for the first time. My sister comes to town and I get to be with family and friends. Solstice brings more light each day. Things start getting brighter in December. It occurred to me last night that today was the first day of the month and that I needed to make it a really positive day. I woke up late, fussed at Denali and had to rush to get out of the door on time, which was really ten minutes later than usual. In the car, I apologized to Denali and he was very sweet and told me that I didn’t need to apologize, he had already forgiven me. He is truly such a sweet little soul. We started over and He got out of the car in a happy mood. In the car, I was thinking about acts of service and how I can perform more. It struck me that my job is an act of service. I love my job. I work with great people, have relatively little stress and I get to laugh a lot. Five days a week, I am providing a service to others. I was reminded that I need to make sure that my service was provided with a cheerful heart. I walked into my office, to find a little trophy and Hershey Kisses on my desk. The trophy is the LHS Lifesaver Award. Teachers pass it onto another teacher each week and fill it with candy. The teacher that passed it on to me is always happy and always asks how you are doing. “How are you?” gets on my nerves. It is such an overused phrase and most times, it feels rote, without feeling. This teacher always asks and always means it. She always has a smile on her face. She recognized me for my commitment to recycling at school. Last year, I created The Green Team. It is a group of my students that are responsible for all of the recycling for the entire school. Every other day, we travel around the school emptying the recycling bins in each class. It has been a great success and the students are able to work on vocational skills. It has shown regular education students that their peers with disabilities can be contributing members of our community. We have students that range from high functioning to low functioning. The best part of it is students watching kids that they would otherwise think of as having no functional skills, pushing a trash can or emptying recycling into the Rosies. This little thing perked up what was already a bright day.