One Lucky Girl Blog 1/27/09

NOT CURRENTLY BORDERLINE-SUICIDALLY MISERABLE!!
Dating and being influenced by an atheist, feeling intellectually atheist, and never having been very religious before that, I don’t know who, besides Goodness and Grace to thank for this, but I have been much better lately than I was weeks ago when I wrote my ME! ME! ME! “Thrill of Defeat” ediccione, if you will. (As it were.) Before, I was really struggling financially, going to busk in Suburban Station, but not doing well at all because it was just after the holidays and people were super broke (not to mention this stark and dreary economy we’re in).
Now, several factors have added a little sweetness and light to my days insofar as cashmakery is concerned: My $5 full-length slimline CDs are doing quite well indeed, thankfully, and while I’ve always had repeat customers before, it’s much more so now that my CDs are a third of their usual price. As I told my CD Maker Girl, “Why didn’t we think of this before?!”
So, I am truly appreciative of this. Also, I’ve been really blessed to have both local and semi-long-distance companionship and horizontational hobby-age, if you will, to also really help to ease the sting and discomfort of underemployment and non-self-sufficiency insofar as living arrangements are concerned.
Every day I am thankful for my strength to write during these times, because I know someday my story will inspire someone, if not only Moi-self. This keeps me focused on the fact that I won’t be here forever, and going in the direction I need to go to make it so.


ARTMAKAGE A.K.A. ARTMAKERY
I am extremely prolific in my writing and composing these days. I carry my usual journal in which I write my usual essays, diary, blog notes. But unlike before, and for the first time in my life, I am carrying my songbook everywhere I go, too. Now, when I have an idea for a song, when I hear a catchy phrase or concept, when I have the first few lines of a song, it’s not just my mobile phone (cum instant recorder) I use to log and promptly forget to retrieve it, hence losing the song forever, but now I have with me my very priceless lyric book. It has my latest song lyrics and works in progress, it has concepts for future albums, it has the names of venues I should hit up for a gig.
I’m also writing a lot of essays, and I’m organizing my first book manuscript, which so far is about 60 pages long. More on my writing and music progress in my next ME! ME! ME! Newsletter.


THE SEMI-SO-CALLED “RELEASE” OF CAPABLE OF LOVE
It may seem as if I’m not giving this CD “Capable of Love”, my first studio recording in 5 years, adequate exposure. After all, I’ve only announced it to my mailing list and various online groups (MySpace, etc.). It’s not in any stores (yet), and on only one online store. But I’m not worried about it.
I have this strange and quiet assurance that everything is going according to plan, and that there’s a reason and a system for this, and for everything else.
I believe in synchronicitational qualities. For example, I was thinking of singer-songwriter Arjuna Greist a few days ago, and then I met someone who mentioned her to me, had hosted her as a house concert performer, and then invited me to perform at her house as well. Yesterday Kia Gregory and Sam Wood, both staff writers at the Philadelaphia Inquirer stopped by to chat and shoot video of me at Suburban Station. Apparently they’re doing a feature on us buskers and a friendly SEPTA copper told them about me. Those police officers may get a bad rap elsewhere, but to me for years they’ve never been anything but kind. I’m meeting lots of people who want to meet me for tea or lunch or just hang out and chat. It makes me feel much better scrolling down my cell phone numbers and seeing more names and numbers of people I want to get to know. I’ve been quite lonely for years, and wondering if I’m supposed to be like this – have so few close friends that most of the time it feels as if I have none. But that’s for another subject – this is about Capable of Love. It’s going to be just fine. I’m not worried about it.

By the way, I’ll be performing on Feb 28th at 6:30pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown. I will be performing a 2-hour concert including a brief intermission and Affirmation Sing-Along. When: Doors open 6:30pm, Showtime 7:00pm Where: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown 1565 S. Keim Street, Pottstown, PA 19465 Directions: Google Maps. How much: $5 in advance/$7 at the door. (Please bring a canned good for the community pantry for the needy.) Contact/Info: Courtney Tel: 14845242635. More gigs will be posted at www.myspace.com/cassendrexavierMUSIC.


MY SEX LIFE, OR “I AM NOT A SLUT!!”, OR, “AND THEN THERE WERE TWO”
So, I had three guys I was a jugglin’ there for a while – my long-term Philly sweetie a.k.a. “Orgasm Giver” I’ve been with off and on for 5 years, my “Nice Jewish [40 year old] Boy” from Long Island whom I met and started dating when I was living in New York (NOT a former client of the research I was doing for my “Working Girl” novel, by the way! There are no residual lovers from the line of work I was quite realistically and titillatingly researching). Then there was a new guy. Mr. Number Three from a little town near Allentown. We didn’t make it. He wanted to, but I didn’t feel there was enough of a psychic clicking sound or a good emotional fit. Also, it seemed to me that he didn’t make enough time in his schedule for a lover, even a part-time one, which would’ve been fine had we wanted a casual affair, but neither of us wanted that.
(It must be so confusing to people reading this who aren’t used to the poly lifestyle and who assume that if you have more than one lover, they all must be casual.)
Right before I was to spend a couple of days with him at his place (far ass away), I got in touch with my guttal reggiones and decided it was best not to go. After all, we’d only been on a couple of dates, and I hadn’t even felt it was time to let him know where I live (Oh the magic of internet dating!). So, I figured, if I wasn’t even ready to let him know where I live or let him even drop me right at my door, why then would I board a bus and travel for hours to be at his place which I’d never seen.
Plus, I’d asked him beforehand about certain conditions I could expect, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be comfortable. I won’t go into details, because he reads my writing here, but I will say that we didn’t seem to click past the usual “you’re hot, let’s shag”, which is fine when you’re 23, but slightly different when you’re near 40 and looking to settle down. But we really respected and liked each other as human beings. I think that’s what was also making me think for a while we might be or were becoming an item – he “looked so good on paper” as we say in the business. He had accomplished a lot of things which were very impressive to me (supposedly – I never met his friends or anyone to corroborate his claims, while he could see all over the internet that I was who I was and do what I said I do). These things were impressive not only in their scope for various reasons, but also because they indicated the quality of his character, which to me, was of deep substance and value, and man, did I think that was hot, but in concept mostly. Things didn’t really precipitate down yonder, however, if you know what I mean, except for the times I think I picked up that he was feeling something on his end (pun intended). Basically, I kinda ended things weeks ago, but I wasn’t as firm about it as I would’ve liked. He texted and I texted back. We emailed exactly two times. I think it’s over, and I’m not completely easy about it, because I sometimes question whether I’m making the right decision. But I believe I did part of it right – the part that went with my gut that was telling me not to go to Allentown until the coast was clearer.
So for now, I live, work, and love (not always in that order, heh-heh ;-) in Philly with my sensual cuddle-buddy and dinner/TV mate and I spend the occasional weekend away with Mr. Action and Adventure. Of course it’s not all that sweet and perfect, but that wouldn’t be as fun nor as private to write :-) The deeper stuff will be in a future Book or never come out at all.



THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS
a) Free movie passes – I love them so much. I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely young woman in my early Suburban Station busking days who put me on the mailing list at her job which promoted movies. For years I’ve received, thanks to her, passes to see movies for free, and I have cherished these things. I’m going to see a free movie tonight. I’m so excited! I just can’t hide it! I’m about to lose control, and you know what? I think I like it! (I do! I really, really do!)

b) Toilets I don’t have to line. Dear Lord baby Jesus. Dear Tiny Kid Christ with the balled up fist. Please let me not have to line another toilet for a really long time, god, please? Please let me leave the public bathrooms of my busking lifestyle and someday have my own tour bus and private office at home and spend most of my time in clean places and bathrooms where this is no longer a part of my past? ‘Cause if I had buck for every time I’ve had to get creative and/or re-hygienify a restroom before I had the confidence to use it, I’d be giving Bill Gates a run for his money right now. Well, not really, but you get the idea. I spend a hell of a lot of time lining toilets, and I am sick and tired of it!! Trader Joe’s errand – gotta line a toilet. Play the subway – gotta line a toilet. Use my group office, - line that bad boy. It’s getting to where a toilet doesn’t look like a toilet unless hit has a bunch of toilet tissue layin up there on it all pretty crisscross-y like, or one of those professional thin paper toilet seat liner jobbies. I don’t even recognize it. And that’s just wrong.

c) Weird food – I love Chung May in Chinatown on Race between 10th & 11th. They have cheap ginger candy, expensive Japanese candy, but they also have lots of other things including my new favorite: These leaf-wrapped sticky rice things. They’re awesome! For a buck fifty or $1.75 you can get this thing which is like a little over a cup of sticky white (sushi style) rice, beans, and either meat (pork) or meat and egg or meat and shrimp or no meat and only beans. The reason I say I like weird food is because people were staring at me on the bus while I was eating these. They’re wrapped tightly in some sort of living green leaf – I’m guessing it’s a palm plant. And that’s wrapped in white string. So, I remove the string, and then unwrap the big palm leaf to find the weird food inside and start eating it. It is so savory, easy, convenient, delicious, and 100% green. There’s no packaging that can’t be composted. The last time I thought my eating was weird was when people were making fun of me at home and on the train in NYC for eating dried seaweed.

d) Books – no matter what happens with technology, no matter how digital things get, I think that certain literary types like me will still seek the comfort and familiarity of the touchstone that a book is.

e) Google – if I could marry Google, I would. It stands for so much of what I stand for, and it doesn’t hurt at all that David Wolfe promotes them and says that the earnings of his stock in Google years ago yielded so much that he used the money to buy a house. Google is sexier than Wickipedia, but more confident and lustily ambitious.



c) Copyright 2009 by Cassendre Xavier a.k.a. Amethyste Rah. All rights reserved.Cassendre Xavier is a self-described “renaissance negresse”. Although she also enjoys acting and making visual art, this first generation American-born citizen of Haitian and Chinese heritage is mainly a musician and a writer. As a singer-songwriter/guitarist, Cassendre has released 8 albums of music described as “a cross between Tracy Chapman, Sade, and Enya” (Borders Music Expert Steven M. Wilson). Her sound has also often been compared to that of Roberta Flack, Joan Armatrading, Joni Mitchell, Pheobe Snow, and India.Arie, among others. Her latest musical recording, “Live at Tin Angel” was honorably mentioned as #9 of “Top 21 Local LPs of 2007” (M.J. Fine, Philadelphia City Paper). Under her self-assigned soul name Amethyste Rah and featuring music of light by Thaddeus (Sanaya Roman), she has a growing line of spoken word guided meditation recordings called “Affirmations for Survivors”, the first two being “Spirituality” and “Self-Love”. Her “snappy and redeeming” (Karen Gross, Philadelphia City Paper) multi-genre writing has been published nationally in various literary anthologies and periodicals, as well as previously self-published chapbooks “secrets & lies: poetry and other words” and “Making of a Woman/Artist: a book for every black girl and every black woman who has ever wanted to be an artist”. She wrote, directed, and starred in a 5-actor play called “Sex for Survivors” which ran for three days in the Philly Fringe Festival 2003. An award-winning cultural arts advocate, Cassendre is the founder and former director of several arts initiatives in Philadelphia including the Women’s Writing & Spoken Word Series (Robin’s Bookstore, 2002-2006) and the Black Women’s Arts Festival (The Rotunda and other venues, 2003-present). She received a $15,000 Leeway Transformation Award in 2005 for her work in art and change. A New York City native who has made her home in Philadelphia since 1990, Cassendre enjoys an active, raw vegan lifestyle, writing/composing/recording/performing, and getting as many naps and hot dates in as possible. Visit often at www.cassEndrExavier.com.



All CX bloggery (a.k.a. “bloggational devices”): ME! ME! ME! The Cassendre Xavier Newsletter, Green Smoothie Raw Blog, One Lucky Girl Blog, and Runner’s Log, all viewable at www.myspace.com/cassEndrExavier or http://cassEndrE.livejournal.com.