Din Mutha's Open Salon Blog

The Tribe.

Tue, 14 May 2013 02:05:33 -0400

We were giddy. Positively giddy. Sixteen women, readers, producers and stage managers, all quivered in anticipation for the show.

The cast and crew for Listen To Your Mother 2013 took up residence in the Bing Crosby Theatre greenroom as the theatre above us filled. Down below we primped, laughed, shared tips, tricks and skills with each other.

"That's probably the best bow I've ever tied," Caroline said, admiring her handiwork.

"Spanks. I'm telling you, these things are amazing."

"Clear fingernail polish keeps the blisters at bay."

It was a broad collective of women who, up until a few months ago, were more or less strangers. But there, in the green room, we huddled around one thought that binded us all together: The Mother.

The concept of "Mother" is much more subjective that one might think. Each woman had a different view on this one entity. And in one night we each shared our dearest perspective on the term. Our singular story of motherhood.

There were mothers who were grateful even when their children had special needs or special tastes and mothers who were simply grateful for the precious and fleeting moments spent with children who had passed on. There were mothers who fought for strength when their children were at their weakest and those who had been saved by their own mothers in tragic moments. There were mothers who taught how to birth babies and those who still grapple with their own births. There were mothers who could not have babies and through compassion raised others--and baptized others. There were mothers that celebrated triumph over infertility.

And in each mother, we learned to understand what a complex notion mothering can be. Motherhood does not always come from the womb--it comes from the heart. In front of a darkened theatre we shared our hearts.

And it is this "sharing" from this bold and beautiful collective that makes it so special. We gave of ourselves to each other and to everyone that would hear us on stage.

Once the final sweet story was over we gathered on stage, hands held and raised in triumph. And it was at this moment that our singular versions of motherhood did something marvelous. We no longer had solitary renditions of motherhood, but rather, we came together to create one story--a story of mothers that came together and through a collective strength shared a space and a moment.

But our story is not ephemeral. Our voices will echo through each day as we celebrate victory or experience sorrow. My heart fills with my mother-sister's words of life, love, acceptance, joy, pain, and worry.

These women give me strength in one simple sentence: We are not alone. We are a tribe who will survive together.

Thank you, LTYM. We are never alone.

Unexpected Arrivals: The Art Trade Thrives.

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 04:02:21 -0500

Unexpected arrivals of friends are a wonderful treat in the Methow Valley, especially in the long, cold days of winter. These arrivals are even more enjoyable when they are unnexpected artists.

Artists arriving at one's doorstep have created cultural changes as history has shown. In March of 1886 Vincent Van Gogh found himself knocking on his brother Theo's door. This knock instigated a turn in the artist's work from the pale and dim landscapes to luscious and vibrant tableaus of Parisian life. Had Giacomo Meyerbeer turned his starving friend Richard Wagner away from his Paris home, we might not have been given Der Ring ds Nibelungen.

Yes,artists at your door is a very good thing.

And as artist Gene Barkley arrived to the homestead, he came with gifts.

Gene Barkley has been an artist for as long as I have known him. My parents often hosted a salon-type gathering most Sundays bringing sculptors like the late Richard Beyers, and painters like Jan Cook Mack and Ron McGaughey. Gene has always been within the milieu. Gene was the rare pointilist of the group. His images, created from a million tiny pricks of a pen culminating into an almost tangible image.

He momentarily dipped out of my parents' home today and opened his Subaru trunk to pull out a pillowcase. He handed it to my father who drew a beautiful landscape from the linen. A collective ooh wafted from the dining room table where we all sat. Eagerly, my father pulled one of his own works off the wall, replacing it with Gene's work.

My parents' home, along with mine, is rich with the spoils of art trades. Artists, both regional and national, adorn the walls and pedestals in every room. Some of the pieces are tongue and cheek, like Rich Beyer's declined commissions deemed too risque (Beyer's "Waiting for the Bus" still stands in Freemont, Seattle), while some, like Charles Mavalli's boat dock study is a piece in earnest. (Shown here is Richard Beyer enjoying the fruits of another artist's work).

Perhaps one of the great joys in spending time with artists is the free exchange of culture. Most artists cannot afford to buy eachothers art, but the pure desire to share art and culture supercedes the need for a sale. I've seen these artists just after a trade practically giddy with their newly acquired art. The air pulses with excitement. This is what art is meant to be, I thought once I was old enough to understand, art is freely given among comrades.

And perhaps this is what we, the artists within the blogosphere do as well: We share freely our work with eachother in hopes to inspire, as Meyerbeer did to our Wagner, and to create new work through the inspiration of others.

Gene Barkley

Photos: Van Gogh, Gene Barkley's work from LakeChelanArt.com, Richard Beyer from timepuzzles.blogspot.com, Gene from me.

Verbiage: Editing Erotica and Machine Maintenance

Tue, 5 Feb 2013 01:02:06 -0500

Consider yourself warned.....this is dirty.

Today was an odd one as far as multitasking goes. One of the great pleasures I have at work is the free mental space. I don't have to socialize or entertain folks. All I do is roast the beans, sort the beans, blend the beans and bag the beans. Well, it's not all beans. I'm also a mechanic. But for the most part, I'm thoughtful.

This leaves me in a state of blissful contemplation, until machine maintenance muddles and befuddles my mental process.

I'm currently rewriting my screenplay "Kinky Lee," about a respectable soccer mom turned closet erotica writer living in the bible belt who gets found out by her neighbors and chaos ensues. There are about four PG-13 sexual fantasies intertwined throughout the story, and all four of them need work.

Yes, I was writing erotica at work.

Whilst heaving giant bags of green beans I was contemplating the value of words like "thrusting" and "heaving" and "undulating." I am proud to say I kept my composure with all of these sultry words throbbing in and out of my brain. I'd write little notes to myself with dirty word couplings--kama wordra. Words that fit together uncomfortably (like in the back of a Volkswagen) managed to wrap their meanings around each other and celebrate blissful crescendos within the pages of my swollen moleskin notebook.

And then the alarm went off on the roaster.

It's a typical alarm that cracks off just to let you know that everything is going all right (one o'clock and all's well!). I have a gawddamned heart attack every time.

Maintenance time. With my brain full of erotica and flesh and thrusts and all that good stuff, I had to grease the machine.

This is kind of how it went:

The zerk, the grease fitting was dry. The machine's grease nipples begged for saturation. Alarms wailed into the midday din of productivity. The machine ground and gritted its teeth in desperation. It needed lubrication. I grabbed the grease gun with a firm confidence. The machine shuddered with antici.......pation. The mouth of the gun fumbled then bit tightly around the stiff zerk. With one hand I held the metallic lips to the fitting and with the other I pulled back on the trigger. Luscious food-grade grease sank deep within the fitting and slicked the bearings and the shaft, leaving the excess contents to gather around the mouth. Dislodging the gun, the machine began to purr. I wiped the grateful fitting and walked away confidently, knowing the machine would never be the same.

I bet you had never thought a mechanics work could be so.....interesting.

Girls don't typically want to become machinists. Hell, I didn't. When most people think girls and machinery, they often recall this gem of a flick:

I gotta be honest: Sometimes I feel a little like Alex--well, except for the dancing and the unitards and the Porsche and the hot-hunk-of-loving-manimal parts. And maybe the sexy shower thing. Yes, definitely not the shower thing. But the whole "she's a woman in a man's world" voice-over part? That's me.

So that's what I do all day. I write erotica to machines. Then I come home and I write erotica like this:

He dismantled her shirt with the precision of a 9/16 wrench. Then, after a thurough brushing, he sucked the excess particulates off of her skin like a Craftsman 20-gal wet/dry vac. All junctions and bearings required lubrication, which he applied directly. Once all work spaces had been appropriately prepared, he inserted......

.....and so forth.

Perhaps the worlds are colliding and making an illegitimate lovechild of a profession. Maybe I should get out of both the writing and the machinist biz and start writing erotic maintenance manuals for various pieces of machinery.

Or perhaps, maybe I should cut the day dreaming and the blissful contemplation out of my work day.

The bean pic is from volcanica coffee online. The Flashdance is from youtube. The Metropolis is from the blessed Fritz Lang by way of the objectified cogs of humanity as represented by google. Fight the power, friends.

"Kinky Lee" and "Outre" screenplays are currently registered and copywritten through the Writers Guild of America.

Budget Sex: Fifty Shades of Hunter Orange

Sun, 4 Nov 2012 12:11:24 -0500

My buddy Jo came over to watch the game tonight. She's a great ol' gal who puts out forrest fires and then starts other ones in a more prescribed manner. "I get to be out in the beautiful nature and light stuff on fire," she brags, "how lucky can you get?"

Jo is a 52 year-old derby girl, but that doesn't really matter right now.

We felt pretty darned middle-class tonight while we drank our sodas and ate chips with dip. We reveled in the moment, then got talkin' about the novel I was writing. "Say, you know what you could do, Buddy Rose? You could write one of those sex novels that all those old gals are reading right now. What was it? Fifty Shades of Grey? I'm sure that the writer is making rooms full of money on a book that seems like it only took her about a week to write!"

If Jo is good for just one thing, it's a cogent argument. "I think you're onto something there, Jo."

"Naw, I'm serious. All the old ladies at the Church are all excited about those. Boy, I'd like to see what comes through the ER after someone gets experimental after reading one of those books. Especially around here."

She had a point. Around my neck of the woods, there aren't too many brazillianaires with silk things and fancy ropes. You'd be lucky if you had some good kevlar or some jute twine, which is inarguably a less-romantic medium for Nawa Shibari. And unless you are an engineblock, you probably won't be suspended from anything.

I bet this fella was thinking sexy thoughts about that chain.....

"Will ya do something for me, Buddy Rose?" Jo asked. Since she is my hero, I pretty much have to say yes to pretty much anything, but the topic of discussion did have me more than a bit concerned to hear her request.

"Will you write one of those, except take out the rich millionaire? It's just not very realistic."

"So make it a bit more vernacular?"

"Well that sounds fancy, doesn't it?"

"How about Fifty Shades of Flannel?" I asked.

"Flannel can get pretty schmancy. That's pretty darned middle-class, there."

FiftyShades of Hunter Orange: The Trilogy

"Okay, how about Fifty Shades of Hunter Orange?"

"Oh yeah. That sounds about right."

I then confessed that I hadn't even read Fifty Shades of Grey, well not really. "I saw that my mom had read it." I confessed. "I read the first page of the first chapter and the last page of the sixth to get a sex scene. I got the gist."

"That's all it took was the last page of chapter six? Why chapter six?"

"Well chapter six is usually...Freytag's pyramid....I dunno. I flipped and guessed. Maybe I read the end of chapter eight."

"No matter what, I'm sure you picked up on a steamy one."

"It was weird. I felt pretty dirty."

"Yeah," Jo agreed. "It was pretty sexy."

"No, I mean, I was reading pages from my mom's copy of the book. That's just weird. It's like getting my mom's sloppy seconds."

"Or something worse than seconds."

That was perhaps the creepiest part of reading the brief excerpt of the book. Well, that and the grammar errors {writer's note: Just because I can sniff out other folks' grammatical errors does not mean that I can find my own, so don't start judging me now that I've alerted your attention to one of my copious issues}.

"So you can get some sexy hunters in there. I'm sure if you wrote a book like that you could buy a castle and move it here." Jo started to dream for me. "You could get lots of double-paned windows and new tires and someone to shovel you out in the winter."

I started to dream with her. "Maybe I could get some hot hunk of a hunter that's not super rich but has a steady job with benefits, too."

Shut up. We all have our dreams.

All images were taken from the internuts. Blame google for their accessibility.

Neighbor Rage.

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:10:25 -0400

It's snowing this morning. My run was pitch black. That means I have some big balls, right? At least that's what gets me going at 6 AM.

Today's run was a little slower than usual, but no biggie. I must look ridiculous in my floppy headlamp and a damp reflective jacket. Fortunately, in all of the time I've run my river road I have only seen a handful of cars.

I live rural. I never thought I'd get smugged.

That's right, I was smugged this morning. Some one held me up with a smile and robbed me of my dignity. And it was my neighbor.

She pulled her truck up to me. She began to talk through Gogol Bordello in my ears. I walked over to say hello.

"Well you're a brave one to be out and about in the dark, aren't you?" the old broad asked (I call her an old broad because she is. She's my height, a little heavier and fourty years older and she drives a truck and has nothing nice to say. Ever. The first time I met her she told me that it was a "treat" to see my three-legged dog go for runs and if it were hers, she'd have shot him).

"Oh, I'm all right. I have my headlamp," duh, "and my jacket. Folks can see me." I defended.

"And I'm sure the cougars and bears will respect the fact that they can see you well," she smiled. She smiled. That's how she rolls.

I didn't say anything. I said, look here, bitch, I'm going for a run because it's the only time in my day where I'm not taking care of children or working, and life's not been too peachy lately, and there are days--many days--where the only good thing to come out of it was a good morning run. I said this to her in my head.

"Well, I guess you should run faster then, shouldn't you?" She smiled and drove away.

Road rage.

I started to run again, cheeks hotter than before. Argh. Blergh. She got me in just a few lines of conversation. That passive agressive bat. I ran faster and not because of cougars and biddies and bears, I ran faster because I was pissed that she tried to smug me on my morning run--my church, my little happy pill, my cigarette,my glass of wine, my sex. She made it real and a little bit uncomfortable. Now I have to worry about bears and cougars on my run? Blergh.

My splits were good after that. I hate that she helped me run faster.

Thanks anyway, you old broad.

So that's my run today.