Dollface tries to make a go of it in Portland, Oregon http://www.dollface.net Once upon a time there was a young girl who believed in fairy tales. She believed that there was one man in the all world that her life was being drawn to, that eventually they would meet and fall in love and live happily ever after. Her Prince Charming. She understood this was implausible and ridiculous but she felt that she was right, in her very heart, that despite early love and heartache and disappointment, that it was all just a rehearsal for the time in her life when He and She would meet, at last. Her name was Doll. And she had no idea that her rehearsal would be over so soon at the tender age of twenty. http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=673 Gray skies, cold hands, damp earth - this is October in Portland. The air outside swirls with the scents of decaying leaves, brewing coffee and burning wood. The shrill cawing of crows and the hissing of tires on wet pavement are the soundscapes. People start planning for Halloween, decorating their yards and houses with skeletons and cobwebs, deciding on ridiculous costumes and candy, and the horror movie elbows its way into most homes, setting the mood for scary. It's no surprise that this is my favorite month of the year. The overcast skies, misting rain and early nightfall makes with the dark and the dreary, while corn mazes and haunted houses and silly costumes makes with the fun and the whimsical. http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=672 Back in 1999 when I met Adam he was living in New York City while I was still thrashing against my cage in Michigan. After our initial collision one life-altering evening in NY, I headed back to the Midwest with a sad goodbye and a sorrowful sigh, not sure if we would ever meet again. But 670 miles could not come between the spark that we had ignited, and the next five months pulsed with love letters, poetry, flowers and phone calls that lasted well into the night. On some of our late night phone calls Adam would read to me. He would read me poetry and passages from Shakespeare, and one night he read T.S. Eliot's, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had never heard it before and I sat there, breathless, as he read me these words that sank within my soul and crashed around within me in echoes and whispers. I made him read it to me again immediately. http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=671 Horror movies. No other genre can garner such fervent reactions from people. Emotions ranging from disgust, shock and revulsion, to amusement, joy and laughter. I've personally experienced the gambit of feelings over the 26 years that I've been watching horror movies, but no nightmare or terror or abhorrence can keep me from them. I've often wondered why people, and more to the point why I, love horror movies the way we do. I don't think anyone can challenge the protests of people who can't stomach them. But what is it that keeps horror audiences coming back for more? One theory is that people who watch horror movies are sensation seekers. They crave adventure, danger, a taste for something unusual, perverse and exhilarating. But given that most of us are normal people with average jobs and loving families, our real lives don't come anywhere close to being that thrilling. So we experience those emotions in the safety of our homes, vicariously, through the intensity of the horror movie. Another theory is that it shows us how we take lives for granted, and reminds us just how easy things can fall apart and how much we would fight for our own survival. They're life affirming, if you will. http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=670 The business of living and dying - Part 2 http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=669 The business of living and dying - Part 1 http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=668 I've never had a close relationship with my grandfather. We loved each other, no doubt about it, but I think we also annoyed each other and that got in the way of our being friends. My sister and I, and our cousins Bobby and Billy, spent a lot of time with our grandparents when we were kids. They lived in a house on Bennett lake in Michigan and we would spend weekends there or sometimes entire weeks, either during summer vacation or a holiday or sometimes just when our parents needed a break or a vacation by themselves. My cousin Bobby (my mother's brother's youngest son) was about my age and we were both the younger siblings of our respective sister and brother. From the time we were babies we were inseparable. He was the brother I never had, my best friend, my partner in crime, my champion, my cousin. I loved adventure but was wary of all things creepy and crawly, dank and dark, gory and gross. But Bobby was fearless and he shared his bravery like bubblegum, forging ahead when I hesitated to prove that I had nothing to fear (or proving that I had everything to fear). When we were both staying at the lake house he and I used to take the paddleboat out into the channel and go fishing and catch turtles and frogs. We would spend entire days in the water sitting in that faded red plastic paddleboat, wet and dirty and smelling of swamp water and of everything that lived in it. They were days to be unrivaled by anything else in our young lives. http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=667 There's a great many things in life that are on my wish list of things to do before I die. Some of them are practical things, like owning a hairless cat, living in Hawaii, or learning to play the piano. Others are more on the ridiculous side, things I never expect to happen but remain on the list just the same, like being in a girl gang, becoming an archer assassin, or battling the undead in the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. And then there are others still, things that lay somewhere in between the practical and the ridiculous. Things that can be realistically done if only I'm able to muster enough courage to do them. Some examples of these things would be, say, getting a shit load of tattoos, doing a burlesque performance, or becoming a treasure hunting scuba diver. And until very recently I could have mentioned skydiving on that list. But now it no longer belongs there because I went ahead and did it. Holy fucking shit! http://www.dollface.net/replies.asp?index=666