Yesterday was my dog’s birthday. Well, it would’ve been. I know I have told this story a million times but hear me out. I had always wanted a little girl dog. My parents took me to a farm. When we pulled up to it, you could see a small play pen in the yard holding three little white puppies. We got out of the car and the lady asked me to help her carry one of the puppies. She handed me one and when it looked into my eyes, for some reason I knew that this was the only dog for me. But it was a boy dog and I wanted a girl… I debated. I knew that if I didn’t pick this puppy, based on whatever it was I saw in his eyes and him in mine, that I would regret it for the rest of my life. I am glad I listened to my heart that day.
I was so tired Saturday morning. QT Pie had been sick that night and I must’ve taken him outside five times. Well actually that could describe every night that week, him waking me up to take him outside five times… or maybe for the last month, I have lost track. He was starting to get antsy again. I woke up and looked at him. He was staring at me. More like gazing, a loving gaze, really.
When I found out he had renal failure, a month or two earlier, I spent the night alone crying in the living room. He soon appeared out of nowhere to comfort me like he always had. This of course made me even more upset. Whenever I cried, since I first got him as a 12- year old child, he would lick the tears off of my face and lay down next to me until I felt better.
My Spring frock came from Ross Dress For Less. I love that place. It is a zoo but I know it so well now that I can get in and get out quickly. I could spend lots of money there that I do not have. But I got this dress for less than twenty bucks and it made me happy. I had it tied around my waist and that tie came undone at the gas station. I didn’t realize it was hanging half off of me as I went into the station to pay my bill. This dress is trouble. I wore it to a community dinner at my Mom’s and I felt good in it and got a compliment from her which is rare. But what I really wanted to do was share my new dress with a lover. I know I would enjoy vamping around the living room showing it off to a fun fellow but there is no one like that in my life right now and that makes me sad.
So I vamped in front of my hallway mirror and got some great shots. Playing around with my camera is one of the things I love to do. I did not use my self timer this time but I have figured out how to twist around so that the camera is not in the scene with me while I pose in the mirror. I must have taken about twenty photos and I had fun.
As I sit here smoking a skinny joint from the balcony of my posh Hollywood Hills mansion, I cannot help but remember the days when I slaved away in a dilapidated nursing home for $9 an hour. The management were such scumbags to me there that they fought over giving me my yearly $0.30 raise and settled on a $0.15 raise for one year and a whopping $0.10 for the following. Thank-you sir may I have another!?
During those days when my boss would leave for the afternoon, I’d stare out the window and wonder how the hell I ended up in this mess. I would watch the sun go down slowly from my office window and know it was only temporary and that one day I would transcend this position by a million percent. I hated it there.
I don’t really care about mansions. I don’t really care about marijuana. I do care about options and possibilities. I don’t live in a mansion and I don’t smoke pot, but I would like the flexibility to do so if I wanted to. I have always had an interest in film. When I write my books, I envision them in three dimensions. I see them playing out in my head like the movie and that is how I often create realistic dialogue and dramatic tension. Some of the people I admire most are Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, both writers and famous filmmakers. Both are also individuals who would be considered late bloomers by society’s standards.
Tarantino worked at a Manhattan Beach video rental store until he was thirty. It was around this time a friend with connections encouraged him to write Reservoir Dogs. It took him three weeks to write the screen play and once made into a film it received high acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. The rest is history….
Kevin Smith has a similar story. Smith worked as a clerk at a convenience store. Around age 30, Smith maxed out his credit cards and borrowed money from family to create the epic film Clerks. The production of Clerks cost $30,000. It was filmed with a regular video camera in black and white. Smith used the convenience store where he worked as the movie set. Filming in black and white allowed him to conceal the fact that they were always filming at night (because the store was open during the day) thus giving them more flexibility for the chronological details of his script. After the completion of the film, he entered it into The Sundance Film Festival where it was picked up by Miamax almost instantly.
Last weekend, I called a phone psychic. Yes, go ahead mock me, I know, what a waste of money, yes yes… Anyways, you are right- what a waste of money indeed! Especially since I am psychic and can read my own fortune (with the help of the local Chinese restaurant’s cookies, of course). Anyways, I asked her about my dog, would he be okay? “Hayley your dog is very sick and in a lot of pain. You need to do the right thing and put him to sleep.” Silently, I balked at this comment, as QT Pie has been to two different vets at least once a week for the last several months. He was not in pain, both vets assured me. And to put him down? Was she crazy? Send my dog to an executioner? He would be so scared, to go to the vet again and get a needle, or to have some stranger come to my home and give him a needle. I was not going to pay someone to murder my baby.
QT Pie has not been sleeping well and Saturday morning after a night of him waking me up several times, I woke to him gazing at me lovingly. It was like the first time we met. My parents took me to a farm where there were three white puppies playing in a playpen. I was hell bent on buying a girl puppy so I could put bows in her hair. The breeder asked me to help carry one of the puppies into the house. She handed me the puppy and I cradled it in my arms like a baby. The the puppy looked up at me with this loving gaze and my heart sunk. It was the first time I ever felt this- this love at first sight, this feeling that if I don’t choose this spirit, and instead choose to walk away and choose someone else, it will be something I regret for the rest of my life. Immediately I knew that this was the puppy I wanted. I sighed and hoped it was a girl, then looked down and saw that it had a penis. Damn it.
Once inside the house I debated. Would I get a girl or the boy. The two girls were yippy and annoying. They tumbled around attacking each other and the little boy who sat silently not really interacting much with them. It was a tough decision, but I decided to go with the boy (and to put bows in his hair when no one was looking). So Saturday morning I awake to him giving me this same look that he did when we met. I said to him that he was such a good boy and I petted his head and ears. I gave him a kiss and wrapped him in blankets. Then I moved him to another room in a dog bed so I could get some sleep but about 20 minutes later I checked on him and he was shaking. I picked him up and tried to calm him down but it was as if he was looking through me. Like I wasn’t there. I begged him to stop shaking, but it seemed that he was having a seizure and about 15 minutes later he died in my arms. I could not believe it.
Grief stricken, I did not want to bury him and began to understand why, as strange as it is, people get their dead pets stuffed. I held his lifeless body in my lap for a while. As soon as he died, it was as if he lost weight and became lighter, like a spirit really did leave his body. He was no longer QT Pie, but as listless as a teddy bear. His face did not look the same as it kind of twisted and contorted into something strange when his spirit exited in his final moments. When my father helped me bury him later that morning, I was truly one of those people who throw themselves on the casket and do not want the lid closed.
When I checked my email later that afternoon, I had an email telling me I had a free 5 minutes from that psychic. So I called her, why the hell not. I told her my dog died and she started to tell me about dog heaven. Ummm… I know I have a youthful sounding voice but I assure you, I really am 26 years old, not 11. Then she told me that dogs spirits go into something called an energy pool. This is total bullshit in my opinion. Well at least it was a free five minutes… My mother tried to console me and tell me that he was in heaven with my grandmother. This only pissed me off more, “Fuck heaven,” I responded. Why did heaven need my dog?
I started to wonder where he went. Seriously how can someone be here one minute and then completely gone the next? How could that be? I stopped seeing a point to life. If the point of life was to help other people and perform good deeds as some sort of fulfillment of a test I didn’t see the point was regardless of how well you scored- because in the end you just die, so isn’t it all in vain anyways? And for a while I lived life trying to have as much fun as possible, thinking that maybe the point of life was enjoying it- but soon it became clear that this theory of mine was also incorrect- as the things I wanted I did not get, and that of course, not getting what I wanted was no fun at all.
I think I will die young. Not because I am suicidal (I’m not) but because I just have that feeling. Also I worry about my gynecological health. When I got the ASCUS result on my test last year I was terrified. I know that it is usually a body part or something that caused you great mental pain in life that can kill you. I know that because I was raped there is a good chance something in that region will eventually kill me. There is too much focus down there and it is not a good kind of focus. This region of my body has been violated and I have never fully come to terms with that. It is something I have to deal with because it is part of my body a part that will always be with me, but it is focus like this that turns into cancer- the pain it has caused me can turn into a physical illness one day if I don’t get over it. Unfortunately, I cannot get over it and it will always affect who I am. How can I get over that? I imagine that if I ever get married I will die fairly young and that my husband will be sad because I was a nice person. Regardless I see an early grave in my distant future. My friends hate when I talk like this. At the same time I do not want to get old and sickly, so dying young and beautiful almost sounds like a pleasant experience. I only hope that I can finish everything I”ve set out to do before it happens and that I can write all my books, make some films, and meet and marry someone who will actually care about me.
I do think we truly stick around until our purpose in life has been accomplished. I guess my little dog QT Pie did a good job of accomplishing his. Though I don’t think I will ever truly believe that last sentence as I am greedy and want my friend back… Like I said before, fuck heaven.
(Oh and I apologize in advance for my blasphemy- I do not believe in Heaven or Hell- I believe that your karma is balanced in this life one way or the other and that Heaven and Hell are just excuses to justify actions -or non-actions- )
Before I moved to Arizona in 2005, my father brought me my first real camera. For about a week or so I drove around taking pictures of sunrises. It wasn’t so much that I got up earlier as that I stayed out late…
Sometimes when you are looking for love it gets all tangled up with sex in the same way you sometimes find yourself in a dark place fumbling for a light switch. In an empty warehouse, sex glows like a jewel on black velvet. Love is another thing. Love cannot bloom in the darkness.
Though my adventures with the men in warehouses have faded, the embers of memories will glow forever. I have been with two different fellows in the warehouses where they worked. The first one lived in a warehouse. He had a loft way up in the corner of a cement factory. He was an inventor that designed and built a big machine that added filler to cement. He and his partner marketed it and had made lots of money. The company was still thriving when I met them, but there was trouble too.
As the weather gets warmer and the radio plays Journey, Chicago and other band’s love ballads non-stop, I cannot help but think of the summer I spent with the only guy I was ever in love with. I guess it kind of tarnishes the good memories when I remind myself that he treated me like shit. But that is besides the point, and also the reason most men and women stay in abusive relationships for so long (because whether you want to believe it or not, there are some good times mixed in between the bad ones).
Today my aunt told me about a documentary she was watching on the actress Dolores Hart. I had no idea who Dolores Hart was, but then my aunt told me that she was an actress, and why I had never heard of her. Back in the 1950’s and 60’s Dolores Hart was a rising star in Hollywood. Engaged to be married and at the height of her career her life seemed perfect until one day, while visiting Italy, it took a very unexpected turn. While in Italy, she met Pope John XXIII. This encounter inspired her to quit acting, sell off her worldly belongings and dump her fiancee to join a convent. She has been a nun ever since.
I have thought of doing something similar from time to time. I always felt spiritually compelled- but compelled enough to live a life of celibacy and service? Sometimes I feel like I am already there (without an official title, of course). Despite my pleas with the universe, miracles are still like seedlings and do not sprout in timely enough to suffice me. I do not think I am greedy. It has just been a long and arduous journey and with my little dog getting ill, it’s about to get worse.
Miracles are like seedlings, slow. Take for example an event many consider a miracle, the birth of a child. After the sperm and egg meet, it takes approximately nine months for the baby to show up. Nine months of development for the fetus, nine months of waiting for the parents. It takes nine months for a child to be born and even longer to make it happen. There’s the idea of having the baby, planning, and some people try for years before there is a successful conception. Like a seedling, a miracle often takes a long time, but you know it will eventually turn into a tree; this is called belief or faith.
Miracles, or acts of God, are like anything else. They too take planning, waiting, and persevering. For some reason, I, like many others expect miracles to happen instantaneously. Time after time I’ve hit what felt like rock bottom, and expected God or something more powerful than myself to help me find (or think of) the missing puzzle piece, only to hit rock bottom again and again. I think there’s a plausible explanation for this and it lies in scientific fact.
On Friday April 6th, famous “painter of light” Thomas Kinkade died. Kinkade is known not only for his beautifully cheerful paintings but his strong faith and belief in Christianity. Within many of his paintings, he hid the names of his family members as well as Christian messages and symbolism such as the fish that he painted under his every signature. His nickname, “painter of light,” is likely a reference to the Renaissance; the era where the techniques of point of view and specifically light and shadow depiction were technically developed and perfected. In this era, the technique chiaroscuro was born. Chiaroscuro is a technique that utilizes light and dark shades and shadows to create realistic depth through usage of these various contrasting tonalities. The discovery of this way of painting light and shadow was drastic in comparison to the Byzantine style used throughout the middle ages.
