The Things You Loved as a Kid are Still Pretty Great

The Things You Loved as a Kid are Still Pretty Great

by RasmeniaNo Comments
Google Alerts is a useful tool. I added a couple of alerts about 10 years ago and occasionally, I'll get one letting me know where my books are being pirated. Pretty handy. But mostly, I get a bunch of alerts for Wrestlemania. Why? Because apparently, Rasmenia translates to Wrestlemania in another language. I haven't figured out which one yet.What's weird is, I'm not into wrestling.Okay, what I mean is, I'm not into wrestling anymore.When I was an eight-year-old kid living in Indiana, my mom's boyfriend took me and my friend Patty Foreman to a wrestling match. We drove all the way up to Fort Wayne from our little trailer park in Bluffton. I didn't like Mom's boyfriend, but that night, I didn't notice him. Patty and I bounced around in our seats squealing and giggling with glee while large sweaty men punched one another and bashed faces with folding chairs.Months later, me and Mom were in Colorado with her new...
Read More
In Defense of an Aging Rock Star with Shitty Opinions

In Defense of an Aging Rock Star with Shitty Opinions

by RasmeniaNo Comments
Every day the Internet tells me which artists I'm not supposed to like anymore. As much as I don't want to enable anyone's shitty behavior, people have a right to say and do stupid things. I don't participate in public shaming mobs online. If an artist says an assholish thing that I can't abide, I simply stop giving them my time and money.But the work they did before that stupid thing isn't ruined for me. Mel Gibson is a shit bag, but I still love Lethal Weapon and Braveheart. Louis C.K. can fuck all the way off, but I still think Louie is a masterpiece and Horace and Pete is the closest thing we've had to The Great American Novel lately. Thriller is still a major part of my childhood soundtrack even though Michael Jackson is... well, you know.Sometimes, the offense is less severe, but more baffling. Like when punk icon Johnny Rotten goes full MAGA/Brexit. Or when Dave Mustaine...
Read More
Why I’m No Longer Mad at Boulder, Colorado

Why I’m No Longer Mad at Boulder, Colorado

by RasmeniaNo Comments
You can't go home again. That's what they say. Which is weird, because the truth is that you never really leave. Regardless of how many years or miles pass by, there's always a part of you trapped in that place. A splinter of home is forever lodged in your psyche.Home is a complicated thing. It isn't just a place. I'm not talking about those corny plaques that everyone's grandma has hanging in their kitchen that says something like, "Home isn't a place, it's a feeling." Or even worse, "Home is where the heart is." That's all too simple and trite. Especially if you've had many homes.One of those places wasn't my home at all. I never lived in Boulder, Colorado. And yet, I've long had a thorny relationship with the place.Curled up on the floor of my cramped bedroom in a little trailer park in Indiana, I drew one enormous picture after another of mountain scenes with my fat Crayola...
Read More
Read the First Chapter of Tied Within

Read the First Chapter of Tied Within

by Rasmenia1 Comment
Chapter 1: Entering We’re talking about nothing again when someone asks if I know what terror feels like. A familiar voice, an echo, reaches through the smoke. Behind the guitar assault grinding and growling though a blown speaker, I know someone is talking to me. I summon the effort to focus my attention on the voice’s face. “So, do you?” One of the twins, the one who parts his hair to the left, passes me the joint. He looks like one of those guys from A-ha. His twin brother, who parts his hair to the right, looks like the other A-ha. Holding the joint out to me, he tosses his head back, shaking hair out of his eyes. “I don’t mean a little bit startled. I mean stark terror. Unable to scream. Shit your pants scared.” I take the joint from him without answering. “I know what that feels like,” Dom says, twisting the cap off a bottle of beer. “When they brought my...
Read More
Black Stories Matter. Here’s a Few I Really Like.

Black Stories Matter. Here’s a Few I Really Like.

by RasmeniaNo Comments
Stories matter. They change our minds and teach us empathy. Stories help us to understand ourselves and those unlike ourselves; experiences we can never truly understand, even though we must try. If we want to make the world a place where human beings can do things like go jogging, relax at home, drive a car, or go shopping without taking a bullet or having their windpipe crushed as they call out for their mother, we must try. We must learn. We must listen to the stories. Because black stories matter.Sure, it's true that some stories are more helpful than others. For every Uncle Tom's Cabin, there's a Birth of a Nation. Every day, you have to decide what you're going to feed your brain and body. What kinds of stories you're going to consume. What kind of person you are and who you're going to be.I read as many books as I can. I try to watch all the things...
Read More
One of the Many Things I Learned from My Dog

One of the Many Things I Learned from My Dog

by RasmeniaNo Comments
Human beings have a weird tendency to project ridiculous ideals on themselves. Until someone or something sets them straight and they learn to embrace and live with who they really are. For me, it was my dog and a cherry tree. Yeah, a cherry tree. And my doggo.Several years ago, my husband Olivier and I bought a house out in the countryside. Like many people in the same situation, we wandered through the empty rooms seeing nothing as it actually was. We only saw everything as it could be. None of the rooms appeared empty. We were operating under a hallucination, each corner filled with our furniture. Our wall art, bric-a-brac, and books. From room to room, projecting ourselves into the blank spaces. Each of us meandering through our own personalized holodeck.Outside, we inhaled the scent wafting from the lavender bushes and craned our necks to gaze up at the tops of the tall pines in the front yard. We...
Read More