About MAGIC WOOL

AUTHOR BIO: Christina Oxenberg is an award winning author with many published books, a weekly blog and a large loyal readership. Oxenberg was badly educated at too many schools to bother listing, including one highly suspect institution where poker was on the curriculum. School was mostly in England but also Spain, and New York City and the Colorado Rocky Mountains, if only to finish with a flourish. There would be no University. Instead Oxenberg went directly to Studio 54 where she was hired in a Public Relations capacity. This was the 'gateway drug' that introduced her to everyone and everything she would ever need for the rest of her life. A Pandora’s Box to be used with great care. The culmination, to date, is a heap of published books, a great deal of wonderful experiences including five magical years in Southern Colombia (not a hostage). Throughout her adventures Oxenberg always wrote. www.wooldomination.com ❤︎ All books available on Amazom.com

How To Get Laid Like A Rock Star

If you are a female all you need do is leave the house. You will likely get picked up on your way to the bar. All that nonsense about face paint and trendy clothes is lost on the heterosexual male. Just say, ‘Yes’. It’s that easy.

I have the opportunity to speak with a multitude of musicians as I can pose as the press, and amongst the biographical questions I always drop in some research to add to the Large Animal Research Station. For example, how to pick up chicks like a rock star. The musicians laugh and tell me they can have whomever they want, from the pool of those who want them. Which makes them rather like females. In that they do the choosing. Consequently they are very confident with females.

If you get on stage and you can play an instrument or sing a song you will get laid. Next sub-issue is the ratio of your talent and your looks which determine the quality you get to pick from. But there’ll be someone!

Unless you know some tricks, such as how to be extremely rich, as a regular fellow not onstage nor overtly displaying talents your chances of getting laid are close to zero. Minimally helpful suggestions are; offer to buy her something, very important is that you don’t talk too much, ask questions, tell her she’s interesting. Yes, it’s time consuming for the average male.

Or learn how to play an instrument and get on stage. Then you’ll do the choosing. On a biological level what is happening is the transmission of good vibes which gets everyone’s peptides ablaze. This misunderstood transaction of energy is a known quantity in the world of psychiatry where the patient becomes besotted with their doctor. It’s called ‘transference’. It even has a name.

Dudes, it’s worth a try, please buy yourself a guitar and wear it for an accessory and see if I’m not right on this one. 

***

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-oxenberg/how-to-get-laid-like-a-ro_b_9696656.html

Nile Rodgers, Duran Duran & Xperimento

I met Nile Rodgers winter of 1991. I was newly divorced and freshly hooked up with a hot-ass boyfriend with a ponytail and a bass guitar.
After seven years of servitude to the husband whom I had adored and labored for, for sure, when I left him it wasn’t my first choice, it was my only choice. I was bereft but resolved. I packed him off to Italy, ostensibly meeting him there; a lie. We wrestled through tearful long distance phone calls.
I had worked with the husband for years because for us to survive we needed him to create ‘content’ aka ‘artwork’ and for me to sell the fuckers. And we did.
Next came Ponytail and I fell directly in step with my previous behavior. The enabler.
Ponytail said he wanted to be a rock star, I said show me what you got. He busted out some tunes, and they were soulful. I liked them. No more and no less than the husband’s paintings and I’d had no trouble moving those.
How hard could this music business be?
I produced a music video as a means of delivering Ponytail’s music to my connections, which are considerable.
I badgered everyone until eventually I was introduced to Nile Rodgers. I had no idea who he was so I phoned him up and asked for advice.
We met. It was instantaneous, like old friends we greeted each other and fell into deep meandering philosophical conversation that bonded us.
He listened to Ponytail’s music, critiqued it and said, ‘I’ve got to get back to work, I’m in the middle of producing the B52s. Let’s have dinner soon.’
And dinner we had. And that was the end of Ponytail. Nile and I remained friends. Which is why I’m on stage with him for the opening of his tour with Duran Duran in Miami, last Thursday April 1st, no joke!
See time 5:22 for the moment when Nile recognizes me on stage with him!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9VV9A3j_w
With me is musical impresario and trumpet player Emiliano Torres of www.Xperimento.com and his lovely lady Tuli Torres.

Beautiful Memory

You bite me, you wound me, bruise me. Intentionally. I construe this as love. But that’s my issue, not yours.

I stand tall in the high grasses and you, large beast that you are, camouflaged on a branch, you see me. You are meant to.

I lope and predictably you pursue. Uncoiling, bounding from your vantage point. I easily clear rivulets, I cut sharp turns but you are right on my flank. We gallop, we stir up cloudy flurries of murk, disturbing the peace of other animals. You overtake me, which I allow, I con myself. With wit and sensuality you strike my jugular with scimitar claws and I give in, slowly gently and falsely. It’s a game, we both laugh. Love struck if you like.

We fixate, staring and saying nothing. Fruitlessly hoping our sentiments are tacitly conveyed. I love you. Can’t you feel it? I don’t want to say it.

For one perfect tiny terrarium instant life was gorgeously intense. We were semiprecious stones gathering no moss. More than mere gaseous thought, while amorphous these interactions are not nothing. And so we consume a batch, we indulge, we overload. We tremble from that feeling of safety, its very chill overheated by our selective beautiful memories. White weightless bones. Interpret as you wish. Blink and love what was. That’s all you get. Ask no questions.

Strike me, scar me, drink my blood. I won’t care. I’ll make more. Every infliction you deliver I take as a gift, a sample of the variants of tastes. I’ll taste your renditions, your stories, I’ll taste your gloating, I’ll taste your shame. And I’ll sip it down through the tip of my ostrich quill.

You’ll bite, and then I’ll write. You’ll go through your motions, your modus operandi. And I’ll suck it up, like the proud vampire I am. Your blood-letting is my bitch. The war endures but this battle is mine. Thanks love!

 

***

Signs of Change

Seeking redemption, just in case, a scattergun approach to Zen, she collected her spare change and made for the church on Duval at Eaton Street.

She reckoned the donation would in some primordial way ward off ill will.
 
She was modern, she was western, but on a primitive level she never conquered her superstitions. She believed in signs.
 
The route she chose from her home on Solaris Hill took her by Fausto’s Food Palace, and the antiques store, and the brothel, boldly named ‘Living Dolls’, as if to coyly dissuade the necrophiliacs? This is a place where for a price everyone’s clothes come off.
 
There’s a man a few stores down the street who refers to them as ‘The Whore Next Door’.
 
Which got her thinking, why not them? As beneficiaries of the coins. Certainly they were as deserving as any church. After all, no one climbs the pole just for the fun of it, not at work anyway.
 
She placed the plastic bag heavy with silvery and coppery coins, and spread it flat at the center of the black rubber doormat. A heap of winking metal petals. Just to say, fare thee well on your quest.
 
When she got to the corner she turned to see the bag was already gone. She wished she’d seen who’d taken it. Obviously it was the right place to put it.
 
She interpreted this as a good sign. A chit for the future. Just in case.
 
 
 
***
 
 
image by Leigh Honey Vogel at www.leighvogel.com

Wolves, Love, Wounds

Sometimes you stumble into a fit so right no introduction is necessary.

Typical of the human is to take for granted and expect more. We always forget to remember that a time may come when what we know is no longer. You’ll lose the love of bad dogs and forge friendships with good wolves. As fate gives equally she takes. She closes some doors and chucks those keys deep into the turquoise sea.

I heard a story about a man and his friend from long ago when she decided to visit him. They were secret lovers for a decade or more. Privately through their respective romances the thread connecting them never broke.

How perfect, he thought, his lover with him in this place he loves, an amplification of perfection. Basic math.

In his driveway he waited for his friend. He leaned comfortably against his shiny chrome chopper and smoked a cigaret. She arrived startling a squall of dust when she parked. She opened her door, long legs in boots and jeans and as she exited he crushed his cigaret underfoot and went toward her. She looked exactly as he remembered. The cloud between them kicked up a miasma obscuring reality. He walked and walked but he never found her.

Sure, the woman who got out of the car she was real enough, but their bond was lost, he could see it not in her eyes. This stranger tarried a few days in his space. It was a relief to say goodbye. She retreated to her confusions, he to his ruminations. Feelings were singed, permanently.

Whatever ephemera had infused their romance, the colors in the gaslight were beyond dimmed, they were evaporated. The only honorable mourning is to love what you had. Light will splash the east window, a knife without a blade. I promise you through your occluded eyes you’ll see the good wolf trotting in the shadows of the valley’s mountain peaks and no introduction will be necessary.

Hurricane Spring Break

In my five years in Key West how often have I been asked, “What about hurricanes? Aren’t you afraid?”

As if I ought not to consider being here on the off-chance I might be trapped in a downpour or pinned to a tree or drowned at sea. Living here is not quite so dangerous as the lip of an active volcano. Besides many factors are responsible for more deaths per year than hurricanes.

Where should one live to avoid all natural and/or manmade disasters? There’s one murder per year in this beach town and generally it’s someone who, as they say in Texas, ’Needed killing’.
Meanwhile, since I’ve resided in Key West a tornado, an earthquake and a hurricane hit New York City!
I celebrate our romance with peril and the fixation of humans with scary stuff and whatever it is that keeps our noses pressed against the cold window panes of pain and holds our attention so.
A local business has craftily found a way to both benefit from and cater to this insatiable fascination. Half way along Duval you will find the Hurricane Simulation Chamber. A tube of clear glass into which you step and are sealed. Wind and water is flushed into the canister and you, the vacationer, are battered and drenched, enjoying the thrill of a real storm!
Out on the street and equally entertaining are the young ladies bent over the gutters, friends surrounding them holding the precious hair far from the vomit spume. She heaves, they all cheer, they are bonded.
While storms have hit here, of course, the worst scarring is perpetrated by tourists, spring breakers, and ‘rainbow’ hippies who fake being friendly, all smiles and touchy-feely, until they bum a cigarette to which you say, “Sure, for a dollar.” Only then will they depart, huffily, leaving chem-trails of patchouli stink.
Never fear here, but don’t completely relax. There are unexpected threats on the rock that is this final link in the chain.

Butterflies

Just as with life itself sometimes town doesn’t deliver what you’re looking for. Sometimes it delivers what you need. A bat to the gut, something hard enough to shatter your soul cowering in the solar plexus. Down in the recesses where the butterflies flit and inflame the inner lining of your feelings.

Have you ever been in a cloud of joy, in the thrall, deep in the moment and while you flexed in the comforts of love, tears might have tumbled down your face, for no discernible reason?

Take a step back, pan out and see the good fortune to be alive at all. 

At a bar last night a man danced leaning on the arms of his lady companion over whom he towered. They held each other by the wrists. It was a while before I noticed from his knees to his sneakers he was operating on prosthetics. He boogied for several dances. It was impossible not to be impressed by his determination and indomitability. He smiled while he danced.

In the very late of nights I’ve been dragging up and back along nutty Duval Street pausing by the open bars listening, prowling. I’ve heard a lot of magic. As much mediocrity. But so many moments of blissful inspiration. Where musicians have hit their grooves, meshing with each other after enough shots have relaxed their inhibitions. This freedom of their talents is seldom if ever captured in recording sessions, so to buy the CD is often a let down. If you want to get drunk on that energy you have to do your part, you have to contribute to the extent that you have to show up and plug into that visceral tangible live wire of passion. It’s simple, if you want the reward you must get off the sofa.

The trick is to give in. To go with it. Let the power of electricity overwhelm you, cleanse you, ground you. Let go and play.

Miss Ex

He was in a castle, at a party. He was in an ancient room with walls of golden stone when dawn began squelching out shadows. As castles go it was one of the creepy types which crawl up the top tier of a Balkan mountain and vanish in the clouds. He remembers nothing except the noise, and he was knocked out.
 
Later he stood on a shimmering cobbled street. He had no money in his pockets and no key to his apartment. The city was quiet from a million years of fog, and very small people ran fast along sidewalks.
 
He was hungry, all he wanted to eat was cake but he didn’t know where he was. He asked people and they laughed at him.
 
Back in the castle he searched through crowds of partygoers, across dance floors, in mosaic arched basement spaces. Then he saw his ex, Mary, Miss Kentucky. He didn’t question why she was there. He went to her but he never reached her. People delayed him, everyone he passed grabbed at him, smacked him hard on the back, macho, they said, “Hey Champ!” No one saw him wince.
 
He was wearying of this, he was tired and wanted sleep. He opened doors, he saw things, he closed doors. By some miracle he found Mary. She was in bed, “Come here,” she instructed. As he rolled into the warmth of her she was already asleep.
 
Morning and he awoke, alone. His eyes adjusted to the forensics of daylight. He registered a balcony. Twisted in a sheet he crawled to this stone lip catching sunshine like raindrops. He lay naked, exposed, a lizard on the rock, and in the middle distance he saw Mary playing in turquoise water. His muscles relaxed, his head slumped. He still did not know where he was and then he heard it. That noise. This time it was accompanied by the balcony jolting an inch. And then it jolted some more.

Cruising The Main

For five centuries many have contributed to creating this perfect tiny city of Key West. Lush with green dripping trees dangling with flowers amongst the frolicsome cottages. Pirates and runaway slaves, wreckers and shrimpers, Cubans, Haitians, Spaniards, buccaneers, drinkers, gamblers and ship’s carpenters all brought their specialties and left their marks, such as balconies carved with seahorses. The Civil War Fort has yet to be finished!

Tennessee Williams dwelled in Key West for a stretch. He kept away from the clutches of the literary crowd, to their endless mortification, instead focusing on playful sailors, and writing and painting, and his great friend David Wolkowsky. I wish I could have heard them banter.
 
When author/journalist John Hersey traveled to the beyond, where automobiles are of no use, he bequeathed his 1969 robin’s egg blue convertible Mercedes Benz to David. Since I’ve come to town the car, a beauty if you love cars, as I do, has sat idle.
 
At last road-ready David and I puttered that spectacular car down Duval Street, from where it starts at the Atlantic Ocean. We motored especially slowly, counting up the admiring stares, giggling as we scooped compliments. We might as well have had Elvis with us. Car lovers waved, one saluted others cheered and whistled. We were the parade. To turn around we pulled into the Pier House Hotel with its views of the Gulf of Mexico, built by David. He pointed out a cottage by the water, The Chart Room Bar. “I moved it from up the wharf, it was something to do with a fishing boat.” Signature David. This winter the weather has been lousy, tourists are glum in their sweaters and jeans. It has rained like a mother for days here on the Rock, except when David and I went cruising the main street, the sunshine came out and he put smiles on people’s faces.

Rae of Light

For medical purposes I again closed my favorite bar the one and only Green Parrot at around 4 this Sunday morning.

Here’s the thing, my doctor tells me dancing is the cure for all that ails me.

News got out that something special had come to town, so Friday at 10 p.m I felt obligated to saunter on over and judge for myself. I was already doing a jig as I made my way to the bartender to get a bottle of water and then I slid in with the crowd that was moving fast to some mind blowing beats.

Trae Pierce & the T-Stone Band is the brainchild of 4 time Grammy winner Trae Pierce. He is one rocking delight, he plays the bass he plays electric guitar and he sings with a rich entrancing voice and he also does something called talk box which makes you feel you’ve entered an alternate universe. It feeds your soul.

The band is all men with powerful talent and wide range. And these guys put on one hell of a show sometimes being ferried aloft, still playing, still singing, while on the back of a roadie pushing through the crowd of cheering revelers.

The lead singer, Rae, is the son of Mr. Trae Pierce. Rae had the good fortune to be born into a world of music, and the joyous energy that he transmits to the crowd is completely overwhelming. It is impossible not to boogie down. Quite simply Rae is a music machine.

These gentlemen have been playing together for about 3 years and they are meshed and grooving on an elevated level. I had the opportunity to chat with them and while they are all charming they are serious about their music. More to come on David D1 Grant, co-creator, producer and keyboardist, watch this space for news on him. This band is as good as my original love Xperimento, and I did feel a little bit like I was two-timing.

Thank You Key West, thank you Green Parrot and especially thank you to the band. I danced from Friday night to Sunday morning, and I smiled the entire time, I couldn’t help myself. Oh and thanks Doc for the great advice, I am cured!

Dear readers if any of you are experiencing backaches please visit www.TraePierceAndThetStoneBand.com and heal thyself. As Rae says, ‘This ain’t your ordinary blues!’