2 posts tagged “marque”
I read the news today, oh boy….
She was my first Vox friend, and the most talented and dangerous. When I first read, “WTF is For Dinner” a year or so ago I couldn’t sleep. I knew there was a formidable talent in this community and I had to respond, as did so many of us. Marque could gather us in and put us square into her world with a laugh and a snarl; and with a style that had you dialing back for more. She made me want to write better.
People either loved or hated her, but they read her. And some posted that she was a fraud who made it all up; the drama, the stories of her abusive African American stepfather and redneck husband who abandoned her, the poverty, the divorce, the wild, wild energy that eventually took its toll. It drove her nuts when others did not believe her, and she could never ignore the critics and ‘haters’ as she so loved to call them. But she fed off of them and wrote even more raw and painful pieces, which escalated the doubters and empowered her illness. She sought the center of the hurricane, the eye, where it was calm and serene as all hell blew around her. Race car drivers and jet test pilots speak of experiencing this calm as they hurtle threw time and space in tin machines.
Towards the end she began to destroy the relationships she needed the most. It was a magnification of her illness, and many, including me, were players in that side of her illness. Lately it had gotten worse, and a few old friends felt the pain of her paranoia and disassociation. Only recently she had posted about overcoming the wild, wild ride, the incredible risks and manic mood swings that swept her across a different universe than the rest of us.
And maybe, in the end, as she left the motorcycle and hurtled through the air all time and space did stand still, and in that brief moment she found the calm she so desperately craved.
I hope so....
To read more about the her life and times visit this vox....
The other day we were drinking down at the Lariat and some of the new folks in town asked me about the name of our little city. Well, I will tell you as I told them…
Years ago this whole area was settled by a very special family named Blow. And the Blow’s felled the trees, and built the homes, and cleared the land and made the farms. Then they opened a store and a stable, and built the schools, and then factories and pretty soon the technology industry and eventually the internet. And whenever anyone needed a job, why the Blow’s would hire you sooner or later to do something.
It was common knowledge if you lived and worked in this area you most likely had a Blow job. And pretty soon it just came to be the way people spoke, “Yeah I got a Blow job down at the factory, “ or “my Blow job happens at the office between 8 and 5,” or “man I need a Blow job because the rent is due and I’m stressing about it.”
And there was always a Blow job to be found. Somewhere, somehow a fellow could get a Blow job in our area. One day a group got together and decided we all should pay tribute to the Blow’s for all they have done for us over the years. Some suggested a statue, some a street named after them and some thought we should name the town Blow. And after much debate and deliberating we decided on the statue and kept the original name; Swallow.
