What Is Your Name And…..

Telephone Number???

I am pleased because I managed to get one of my father’s books up on the web site - the back jacket, and the prologue.

For me, it is the usual mood-swing-y day, with worries about people I have never met until I started writing here - Sherri, in Oklahoma with an ice storm, Desperate Writer, who also may be near the storm, GAAAA - I wake up with the stone on my chest of worries of my own life! Good God!

So, I am happy to have put up the prologue of my fathers book, because he was so anxiety riddled in reading the newspaper headlines, combined with his own life, that for tonight, I felt he was sitting right here with me, only now he is dead and he is laughing his ass off at how much time he wasted being worried, and maybe he is trying to tell me not to worry, just tackle the damned page! If you blow it and erase all of the work, who cares???

I am trying to roll with him, folks, I am, I swear.

If anyone out there is reading this, go to my web page, it is on the blogroll,, and when you get there, to the left, go to the page William Allen Mahan and read what he was reading in the headlines in 1974.

It is eerily similar to what we are reading, and worrying about, now.

People, his own sister included, used to say he was a shitty writer.

Maybe he was not perfect, but he was certainly writing what he saw, and felt, wasn’t he?

And isn’t authenticity, from one’s perspective, a little more interesting than observation for observation’s sake?

Love some feedback, as always.

Stay safe and warm in these storms, all of you.

The Day Of The Dead

As many people know, the day after Halloween is a Mexican celebration called “Day of the Dead.” Actually, it is a three day celebration, some say it starts on October 31, then November 1st is “All Saints Day”, and November 2nd is the official “Day of the Dead”. I am by no means an expert, but if you go to my web site Kelly Mahan Jaramillo I have put up a few links on the home page that are bursting with information.

Eileen Nelson, director of “American Dumpling”, the documentary Tomas is composing the music to, was very interested in this old Mexican tradition. Her producer, Darrell Hanzelik was also intrigued, and we wound up talking about it for quite some time today. Eileen is Jewish, and when I asked her if Jewish people had a ceremony or ritual of remembrance, she told me they lit a candle on the day the person died, every year. Some started it the night before. She and her mother Marie, who has a few scenes in “American Dumpling” (and she is a crack up, but not like you might think) had just done it for Eileen’s father, Sam Nelson, in October.

I am fascinated with all different cultures rituals, especially concerning the dead. Not from a morbid standpoint, but from comfort, and a celebration of their life, that they are not forgotten.

Eileen and Darrell, who is of Czechoslovak descent, and most likely Catholic, both decided they were going to learn more about “Day of the Dead”, and have a mixed Jewish and Catholic ceremony today and tomorrow.

Although I am Irish, we were not Catholic, nor Protestant. I do not even know if I was baptized! I have no one to ask, partly my choice, as the few living members of my family seem alien to me, and I am pretty sure they feel the same way. So, we do not stay in touch at all.
All I remember is my father, Bill, believing in “something” - not the good old wrathful judgmental God that so many in this country embrace. (Their choice, I have no problem with it, until the hate and intolerance reaches the breaking point.) However, he felt there was something bigger, and that is where I float around. I often refer to myself as a ‘lazy wiccan’.

Anyway, to wrap this up, the three of us, Eileen, Darrell, and I are having our own versions of remembering our loved ones, human and animal.

Eileen is remembering her father Sam, her cats Loretta, Liba, and Vaska, and Darrell’s deceased wife Jessy.

Darrell is remembering his cats Vaska and Liba, and his first wife Jessy.

I am remembering my second husband Abel Jaramillo, my father Bill, my cats Ratty and Monkey, and a long ago friend named Tracy Proctor.

It really did bring a sense of peace and closeness, and for the first time, no sadness, regret or guilt.

It was a very good day.

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Very strange happenings going on right now. Half of Southern California is on fire, for starters. Yesterday, Tomas and I woke up after the night of wild winds, to see a HUGE dark brown and yellow cloud just to the north. A few days before the winds began, I casually mentioned to Tomas that, living in the west Valley, we are quite protected from fires - the whole city would have to be on fire first. Van Nuys would be the last to go. I do not know why that popped into my head, but two days later, fires everywhere.

And here they are. The dreaded Santa Ana’s. I am worried about my biography subject, Warren King, as he lies in Santa Clarita, and I have written him twice, no response. I am edgy.

What does this have to do with my brother Kerrigan Mahan? This morning I had a very vivid, short dream about him. I was in the laundry room, throwing in a load of laundry, when I heard someone behind me. Tomas was due home, but I did not hear the door. I turned around, startled, ready to sock him on his arm for sneaking up on me, and it was not Tomas. it was my brother. I have not spoken to or seen my brother in over three years. I will expound on this on the memoirs page on my web site, as it is long and complicated. I was surprised, but very glad to see him. We hugged, and he told me that he and his wife Melanie, (more on her in memoirs - the little time I spent with her, well, I think she is a very cool woman) were moving to Canada and just wanted to say goodbye. I started to ask if it was because this country had gone to hell in a handbasket, but then woke up. Okay.

However, all day our little white cat Vinnie has been sitting and staring at the exact spot where I was standing in the dream. At first Tomas and I thought it was a mouse, we (well, he) tilted both the washer and dryer up while I looked under them for a mouse or rat or whatever. Nothing. Dust bunnies hugging the usual horrifying mixture that grows under big appliances, where after a few years there is a small city under there.

We shrugged and went about our business. But Vinnie would not leave. All day, when I have gone into the kitchen, he is staring intently, then he beeps at me, as if he is saying, “Hi! Aren’t you going to say hi to your brother?”

He is not acting stimulated, like he would if there were something alive, he is not acting freaked out, if the winds or the fires were upsetting him, and just now I quietly went into the kitchen and watched him. He is lying down, ears erect, paws out, and he slowly gazed across the washer and dryer, then looked up, exactly how he looks up at a person.

Maybe it is me, but I have a gut feeling he is seeing something I cannot see, he is alert but relaxed, and all I can think of is that my brother has died.

Our friend Pete Evans believes that souls only hang around for three days. I disagree, but none of know, we all have our own experiences with something that may challenge our senses, and we desperately need to make sense of it.

My father, Bill Mahan, has been dead for over five years, but I have had many bizarre happenings concerning him in those five years. Of course, when he was dying, I made him promise to haunt me. He got a real kick out of that, and believe me, he has. He is having a grand time gaslighting me. I knew he would but LORD!

I told him he could rearrange the furniture, make good light bulbs go out, just have fun. He has, and continues to. He liked to have fun. Just look at him! Little Billy Mahan. So Pete and I have different theories on the afterlife.

But Pete’s theory has stayed with me, and today, between the dream and Vinnie’s completely out of character behavior, has my mind and heart spinning. Logic and emotion are in a headlock. I want to call or e-mail my brother, as it is the only way I would find out - I have dropped off the radar with my family. Obviously, I am easy to find via the internet, but…..let’s just say it is not for certain anyone would make the effort. Again, more detail on the web page.

For now, a note to Kerrigan, the only blood relative I have feelings for -
I love you, and I am so sorry we just cannot seem to work it out. It is not all you, it is not all me, maybe we are just too much alike, and where we are different does not get along at all. I wish I were enlightened enough to accept the whole package, but I cannot. Especially since you are so tight with the other two. I am sorry.

Next life maybe?

I still have a small wish that in this life, you show up at the door, and we have found a common ground. But I have made it hard, because I figure at this point, I need the reality of if you want to find me, you will make an effort. I probably sound like an asshole, a princess, but I know my life, and I am tired of making the first move. Maybe I am an asshole.

I digress.

Ker, I just hope you are happy.

It is almost six o’clock p.m. on Monday, and Vinnie has still not left his post.

Bobby the Crow is sitting beside me, playing with Bills old fishing sinkers, and I have work to do.

I think that may include talking to a ghost.

Although, it just occurred to me, it could be the Monkey-man……who died on Bill’s birthday, and Vinnie misses him terribly. As sad as that is, I hope that is the case, because if something happened to you, dear bro, it would hurt more than you will ever believe.

Oh brother, where art thou?

Writing - can’t live with it, can’t live without it

My husband, Tomas Hradcky, is an Independent film composer. I am a struggling writer. In other words, we are broke. It is difficult to shut out the anxieties of too much to pay out, too little coming in. It is not conducive to creativity.

I used to use writing as an escape, instead of focusing on my real life problems, and before I knew it, I had four almost finished novels in my computer, about a zillion short stories, and future ideas in a folder. I started wondering if I should take this seriously and perhaps try to make it a career. After all, I came from a writing family - both of my parents and my Aunt had published books, my father wrote a syndicated column…..

I started taking it seriously, buying more writing books than I needed, and forcing myself to write every day.

That is when it became absolutely no fun. It was not an escape anymore, it was a chore, and I started hating it, avoiding it, considering going back to my old escape, the downtown sibling of Sister Morphine, because I was depressed! Where had the fun gone?

So I stopped, and got even more depressed. I was constantly pulled back to something I had written, kind of liked it, and would spend the whole day writing, feeling great. Normally, my addictive personality says, if it feels great, do it all the time.

Not this time.

Perhaps it is the serious case of arrested development colliding with a serious desire to be a little more responsible. Or perhaps we are trained that when we hear the word “work” it is synonymous with “hard and miserable”.

So, for the hundreds of dollars spent on hundreds of writing books where all of the authors insist that you sit down and write every day, I am doing just that, in the form of this web page and blogs. I am going to have a blog for almost every mood, be terribly self-absorbed and self-indulgent, and if someday I make a little chicken with writing, that will be the icing on the cake.

If nobody reads it, who cares. I am enjoying myself again, and for a suicidal type like myself, that beats the hell out of making money.

Although I do like to eat, too…..