Christmas has landed at our house, and I'm glad of it, because I will be halfway around the world over the holiday and am indulging myself in vacuumed floors and sappy movies and family memories.
Except tonight. Tonight I am waiting in my office for the arrival of dinner guests. yes, it's hiding. of course, it's hiding. I'm a 37 year old English major who knits and watches TV shows obsessively on a regular basis, all of my friends live hours away and I have nothing (NOTHING) viable in common with most of my age group. I'm nervous. And hiding from my father's friends.
I never claimed to be a good daughter. I just make them laugh. And cost them money. And occasionally make soup. Oh hush, I make damn good soup!
Also, I avoid reading my Twitter page. It matters to know this. Because do you ever do that thing where you haven't read your last several months worth of blips and then decide that right now you absolutely have to take it all in without any kind of context - you know, just like everyone else sees you?
Me either.
Except that today, I'm hiding, and that means being ready to pounce out of the office and down the stairs at any moment, so as to be a responsible and respectful co-co-host of dinner and not embarrass my dad. We're not even going to go into how impossible it is for me to Not embarrass the people that I love. Ready-to-Pounce means no TV shows or games or long ass image threads of brilliant. It means five minutes maximum focused on anything. Which means Twitter.
I read my page.
I'm seriously considering locking myself in this room with the cats until dinner is over.
I wonder if my mom would bring me a cupcake ...
Monday 29 November 2010
Thursday 25 November 2010
Harvest Feast and other autumn joys
My niece is upstairs communicating with her mother via Skype/phone/headphone/microphone 21st Century convenience technology. My parents, after my father made off with my brand new copy of Planetary (which I'm still reading, by the way), went to the grocery store because for some reason, we are out of sage.
I would use this time wisely and watch Castle online or read Lamb (again) or write letters or fiction or something interesting about the coming together of mountain goats on hillsides and wandering layered dreams of storytelling and houseguesting and friendship, if I were less distracted by the smell of cupcakes cooling on the stove.
This is one of those holidays that seems to bring out the most in people. Not the best, not the worst, just the most. I notice it more at Thanksgiving because I am not a huge fan of what goes on around Christmas and so avoid it as much as possible. Also, Thanksgiving is more important in our family, so I pay closer attention. To what? To the excess.
I see an excess of food, of nostalgia, of disillusionment and my absolute least favorite thing of the holiday: cleverly bitter snipes about history and myth-making that are intended to somehow relieve the sniper from any responsibility to act on the anger that fuels the bitterness in the first place. It is one of those weird privileged person things: happy smallpox day, happy steal the land day, happy oppress people day. Cracks like that do nothing to change the situation, which is very likely the whole point. I take issue with them because they do not remove culpability, they merely assuage guilt in order to make room for temporary gratitude.
But it's not temporary - most of the people that I hear making snide remarks are people that I've also heard be verbally grateful to people in their lives on days that have nothing to do with the fucking Mayflower. Is it too much to think that perhaps the guilt is the problem, that and an educational system that does not acknowledge how destructive the anger that comes from disillusionment really is? I am forever confused at the strength of demonstrably false myths of history.
Today, as every day, I live loving and beloved and for that I am grateful. The people that I love make good decisions and stay safe, and I am grateful. We have food to eat and good company to keep, and I am grateful.
And maybe, just maybe, it will be the same in March when the winter is too much, the house is too small, the world is too big and all of these contradictory celebrations and long-held traditions are nothing more than fodder for a bitter heart. Perhaps something like the warmth of today's sunshine the sound of my nieces' laughter and the smell of baking chocolate will live in a layer of memory that reminds me of the power of loving people with integrity, and slow cooked food.
This will be the story of this year, of this holiday, when we were all to be in one place, and could not because of blizzards and other circumstances. When my niece had to nap because the world invaded her head and pounded for no reason. When my parents when to the store for sage and I smiled on their return.
Happy Thanksgiving, you guys...
I would use this time wisely and watch Castle online or read Lamb (again) or write letters or fiction or something interesting about the coming together of mountain goats on hillsides and wandering layered dreams of storytelling and houseguesting and friendship, if I were less distracted by the smell of cupcakes cooling on the stove.
This is one of those holidays that seems to bring out the most in people. Not the best, not the worst, just the most. I notice it more at Thanksgiving because I am not a huge fan of what goes on around Christmas and so avoid it as much as possible. Also, Thanksgiving is more important in our family, so I pay closer attention. To what? To the excess.
I see an excess of food, of nostalgia, of disillusionment and my absolute least favorite thing of the holiday: cleverly bitter snipes about history and myth-making that are intended to somehow relieve the sniper from any responsibility to act on the anger that fuels the bitterness in the first place. It is one of those weird privileged person things: happy smallpox day, happy steal the land day, happy oppress people day. Cracks like that do nothing to change the situation, which is very likely the whole point. I take issue with them because they do not remove culpability, they merely assuage guilt in order to make room for temporary gratitude.
But it's not temporary - most of the people that I hear making snide remarks are people that I've also heard be verbally grateful to people in their lives on days that have nothing to do with the fucking Mayflower. Is it too much to think that perhaps the guilt is the problem, that and an educational system that does not acknowledge how destructive the anger that comes from disillusionment really is? I am forever confused at the strength of demonstrably false myths of history.
Today, as every day, I live loving and beloved and for that I am grateful. The people that I love make good decisions and stay safe, and I am grateful. We have food to eat and good company to keep, and I am grateful.
And maybe, just maybe, it will be the same in March when the winter is too much, the house is too small, the world is too big and all of these contradictory celebrations and long-held traditions are nothing more than fodder for a bitter heart. Perhaps something like the warmth of today's sunshine the sound of my nieces' laughter and the smell of baking chocolate will live in a layer of memory that reminds me of the power of loving people with integrity, and slow cooked food.
This will be the story of this year, of this holiday, when we were all to be in one place, and could not because of blizzards and other circumstances. When my niece had to nap because the world invaded her head and pounded for no reason. When my parents when to the store for sage and I smiled on their return.
Happy Thanksgiving, you guys...
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Here's something disturbing
so, I was watching more of The Big Bang Theory (because apparently, I love this show. (See, here's the thing: it's never a good idea for me to 'love' a television show, I lack attention span for pop culture, cannot remember lines that are funny or meaningful on only one viewing and therefore must watch everything of the show that I find interesting until it ends or I get bored. In the case of Deadwood and Carnivale, well okay so those were entirely determined by poorly thought out relationships, but they did sort of end before I stopped paying attention. (it occurs to me at this moment that this applies both to the shows and the relationships (and now morning is awful (but that is not the point))) Deadwood did have one more season, I will admit, but it was on TV, and I would have had to make time in my day to watch it and who has that kind of willingness to define their day around passive entertainment? Not I, said the bored unemployed poet who really ought never be bored because it is bad for her and annoying for anyone living with her. I enjoy fiction with set endpoints, because it is what happens between the beginning and the end that define the shape of the thing. (Happily, I called the end of LOST sometime in the middle of the second season and therefore did not feel badly about losing interest.) Also, that kind of story containment means that you get the experience of revisiting the whole thing and learning new stuff about characters and development and exactly how much you hate the people who nitpick in public or go all drooly over characters all the while thinking that it's the actor thinking that the actor is a person that is at all accessible in the real life of someone like a person who gets all drooly over a fictional character (this really could go on forever). It gets really boring and borders on the obsessive, so I avoid it. Like I avoid so many many many things - it makes me a boring conversation partner. I hate that. Conversation is an art form, it is a dance, it is something beautiful and filled with all manner of joy. It is not to be shat on with pointless gossip and constant references to things that are removed from the day to day randomness that is life.)) and then decided to write a blog, only it turns out that I don't really have anything to say.
Saturday 13 November 2010
Saturday Morning (and afternoon (and evening)) Cartoons!
First up, a whole show about how people who talk about stuff say things and what it means!
After the break, see it in action (given AND received (woo, baby!))!
More on the theme of The Value of Having Some Fucking Perspective, Folks!
Why actors shouldn't be President, presented by someone Living History As It Happens - gasp!
and, um, I like this group made of conjoined twins, so I put them in here, too. Because this is my Life Channel, bub.
After the break, see it in action (given AND received (woo, baby!))!
More on the theme of The Value of Having Some Fucking Perspective, Folks!
Why actors shouldn't be President, presented by someone Living History As It Happens - gasp!
and, um, I like this group made of conjoined twins, so I put them in here, too. Because this is my Life Channel, bub.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
Abduction is my new favorite word
"This procedure occurs in the decoding of known linguistic terms as well, when one is uncertain about what language they belong to. When someone tells me /cane!/ in an excited voice, in order to understand whether it is a Latin imperative («sing!») or an Italian holophrastic indexical proposition («dog!»), I must hypothesize a language as a frame of reference." page 40, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Umberto Eco, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1984.
(it should be noted that blogger does not like the symbols for absolute value. it thinks i'm trying to 'tell' it something. i find this beautiful. and fitting.)
Abduction - very quickly explained is the process of observing a Result and determining, finding or guessing the Rule that leads to the Result. In order to get to something like a Rule, Cases in which the Result can be verified must be thought of or studied. Well, that's not entirely true - Copernicus couldn't actually study the truth of the heliocentric universe outside of theory and "admirable symmetry (p 42)."
There is a huge amount for me to be excited about here, not least of which is that this is the first thing he's talked about in the whole book that has managed to make sense in the long term (i.e. after I closed the book).
Because it relates to how people learn each other, not specifically and I am sure that I'm taking this fashion for interdisciplinary studies far too far with this amateurish thought play, but isn't that part of learning too? If I have always been a professional then when have ever learned? I can't even imagine how dull a life lived without learning could be. It's better than drugs, kids. And the high lasts. And, yes, it is a high. Intellectuals: stoners without pot.
I feel less presumptuous than I could given that Eco uses examples of nonlinguistic signs to discuss an activity that he seems to regard as important to the understanding of language as method of communication. Friendship falls under the category of nonlinguistic, I believe.
I believe that friendship is a kind of relationship that is strongest when people pay attention to each other in reasonable moderation. No Stalky McStalkington. Also, none of that I Define Me As You nonsense. Neither of those approaches expresses affection, respect or love. I would even argue that those tendencies, along with other really extraordinarily bad relationship habits (many of which I've had) are not about the loved one but about the lover. There are at least two people in every relationship - if both are not involved, then there is no relationship.
I've been extremely fortunate in friendship to know people who are fully involved in their own lives, and so all of the learning of each other and the paying attention has happened over a long period of time. I can't think of a friendship in my recent past that has involved more than the most fundamental and basic explanation of personal codes and motivations. In other words: the work of putting a Rule to a Result has been slow and easy and occasionally even conversational and allowed conversants to learn as much about each other as we did about ourselves. Double Win Fudge, baby!
What always throws me for a loop is the dating version of that process: the assumptions that people make (informed or delusional (which are really the same thing (but anyway))) in order to define the person sitting across from or next to them. (What the hell is it about romance that makes assholes out of people? I'm not comfortable with the roses & rainbows version of romance and that was problematic for me for about, oh, a month this summer. Only, I'm really good at ice cream and long walks and sitting on the porch and wandering living conversations and if that isn't what connects your life to someone else's in the best possible ways, I pick no.)
When you say something about a decision you've made in the past, and someone then asks you what you would do in a totally different but somehow related situation and files that answer away in the third layer of Things Known About You? That's abduction - trying to find a Rule that fits your Result.
It's completely natural, and not a bad way to learn people. Unless. There are Rules that govern the behavior of people who fall into different categories, and all of those categories are associated with a specific set of personality traits. Recognizing what category defines a person most closely is part of how we as people, as humans, decide with whom to make friends, or who to pick up at the bar. Until you are outside of that bar or you meet someone whose life does not run according to familiar routines and suddenly those Rules and categories are meaningless and, in some cases demeaning. They become stereotypes and labels rather than heuristic devices.
Raise your hand if you have ever decided to just stop explaining yourself because it never sinks in anyway. Because it is impossible to avoid breaking someone's carefully constructed model of the world when you have to explain that much. And that's not usually fun to be around.
I'm over it by now, and have discovered a willingness to leave a conversation without rancor when necessary. I'm also lazy and prefer to use my energy according to my designs.
The people I feel the most for are the ones who are the poster children for Category, the ones whose behavior always fits the Rules. According to the 2 dice square thing that we were taught in school - those people are much rarer than the anomalies like us. (think about it - how unique is everyone that you know? how 'crazy' is your family? how many people do you know who are the only people you know who would say that thing or make that cake or put that spin on a thing? - we are not so unique, we individuals) What about someone who is entirely determined is going to elicit specific love and appreciation? Really - it's easier to love a weirdo than you might think.
There is something kind of lovely about not testing people's personalities in order to verify what I think of them. It is even lovelier to have befriended people who think of me what they will without having to test me (or each other) to validate their opinions.
(it should be noted that blogger does not like the symbols for absolute value. it thinks i'm trying to 'tell' it something. i find this beautiful. and fitting.)
Abduction - very quickly explained is the process of observing a Result and determining, finding or guessing the Rule that leads to the Result. In order to get to something like a Rule, Cases in which the Result can be verified must be thought of or studied. Well, that's not entirely true - Copernicus couldn't actually study the truth of the heliocentric universe outside of theory and "admirable symmetry (p 42)."
There is a huge amount for me to be excited about here, not least of which is that this is the first thing he's talked about in the whole book that has managed to make sense in the long term (i.e. after I closed the book).
Because it relates to how people learn each other, not specifically and I am sure that I'm taking this fashion for interdisciplinary studies far too far with this amateurish thought play, but isn't that part of learning too? If I have always been a professional then when have ever learned? I can't even imagine how dull a life lived without learning could be. It's better than drugs, kids. And the high lasts. And, yes, it is a high. Intellectuals: stoners without pot.
I feel less presumptuous than I could given that Eco uses examples of nonlinguistic signs to discuss an activity that he seems to regard as important to the understanding of language as method of communication. Friendship falls under the category of nonlinguistic, I believe.
I believe that friendship is a kind of relationship that is strongest when people pay attention to each other in reasonable moderation. No Stalky McStalkington. Also, none of that I Define Me As You nonsense. Neither of those approaches expresses affection, respect or love. I would even argue that those tendencies, along with other really extraordinarily bad relationship habits (many of which I've had) are not about the loved one but about the lover. There are at least two people in every relationship - if both are not involved, then there is no relationship.
I've been extremely fortunate in friendship to know people who are fully involved in their own lives, and so all of the learning of each other and the paying attention has happened over a long period of time. I can't think of a friendship in my recent past that has involved more than the most fundamental and basic explanation of personal codes and motivations. In other words: the work of putting a Rule to a Result has been slow and easy and occasionally even conversational and allowed conversants to learn as much about each other as we did about ourselves. Double Win Fudge, baby!
What always throws me for a loop is the dating version of that process: the assumptions that people make (informed or delusional (which are really the same thing (but anyway))) in order to define the person sitting across from or next to them. (What the hell is it about romance that makes assholes out of people? I'm not comfortable with the roses & rainbows version of romance and that was problematic for me for about, oh, a month this summer. Only, I'm really good at ice cream and long walks and sitting on the porch and wandering living conversations and if that isn't what connects your life to someone else's in the best possible ways, I pick no.)
When you say something about a decision you've made in the past, and someone then asks you what you would do in a totally different but somehow related situation and files that answer away in the third layer of Things Known About You? That's abduction - trying to find a Rule that fits your Result.
It's completely natural, and not a bad way to learn people. Unless. There are Rules that govern the behavior of people who fall into different categories, and all of those categories are associated with a specific set of personality traits. Recognizing what category defines a person most closely is part of how we as people, as humans, decide with whom to make friends, or who to pick up at the bar. Until you are outside of that bar or you meet someone whose life does not run according to familiar routines and suddenly those Rules and categories are meaningless and, in some cases demeaning. They become stereotypes and labels rather than heuristic devices.
Raise your hand if you have ever decided to just stop explaining yourself because it never sinks in anyway. Because it is impossible to avoid breaking someone's carefully constructed model of the world when you have to explain that much. And that's not usually fun to be around.
I'm over it by now, and have discovered a willingness to leave a conversation without rancor when necessary. I'm also lazy and prefer to use my energy according to my designs.
The people I feel the most for are the ones who are the poster children for Category, the ones whose behavior always fits the Rules. According to the 2 dice square thing that we were taught in school - those people are much rarer than the anomalies like us. (think about it - how unique is everyone that you know? how 'crazy' is your family? how many people do you know who are the only people you know who would say that thing or make that cake or put that spin on a thing? - we are not so unique, we individuals) What about someone who is entirely determined is going to elicit specific love and appreciation? Really - it's easier to love a weirdo than you might think.
There is something kind of lovely about not testing people's personalities in order to verify what I think of them. It is even lovelier to have befriended people who think of me what they will without having to test me (or each other) to validate their opinions.
Friday 5 November 2010
Poet, heal thyself, with chocolate.
It's a lovely fall day in Maryville, MO. Leaves are finally falling off trees in acceptable numbers, my mother can't leave the house without a hat, and all of the mouth-breathers in town are much easier to spot as they have yet to change into pants and jackets, thereby assuring that their baby-making bits will shrivel up and cease functioning.
I love autumn. I love a season that is so fantastic that it has two names. I love knowing that in less than two days, it will be pitch black night at 1 in the afternoon because of the time change, and that by the time March rolls around, I will have lost the will to live in the sunlight entirely and have to be dragged screaming and inebriated into the light.
Because this is the season that is the setup for my springtime krazy fest. It's awesome to know me during April when I can't stop the lucid dreams or make complete sentences or keep from drooling at the sight of anyone without a shirt on. My friends totally earn their bribe money that month.
It is also the season of The Cold. The Cold that inflames your throat just enough to keep you from actually enjoying that cigarette, or wine or whiskey, or whisky, or pretty much anything that you would really like to be enjoying because the weather is on crack and there's nothing you can do about it. This one has also laid an egg just below my right eye and slightly out of reach of my right nostril. It's going to be disgusting when that hatches.
And so, on a trip out of doors and to the grocery store with my mother, I casually tossed in a bag of the only thing in the world that I know will make me feel better: Peanut M&M's.
Yeah, there's a story there. It goes like this: Summer Youth Group retreat thing leads to strep developing in my young throat while we head, as a family, to Isle Royale in Lake Superior where the only doctor on the island was on the other side of it tending to a hiker with a broken arm. (Later we learned that everyone breathing at the retreat got strep (because teenagers are germ-factories-without-hygiene) and all of them but me went to the doctor Right Away) I got on a ferry with my family, got to the island, went to the doctor's office (minus the doctor, of course) and then went to the c-store at the hotel to find something to help me feel better. I was 13 and chose to medicate myself thusly: Orange Gatorade, Peanut M&M's (the bigbig bag) and a work of unparalleled literature called something like Midnight Affair by someone called something like Alberta Nunn. (I found it! Midnight Affair by Nan Ryan!)(It's a terrible book - no one read it)(Really, I'm completely serious. The sexual stereotypes alone are awful, add to them the cultural, ethnic and socio-economic ones and it's just a fucking mess of bad.)
That book stayed with me for the next 7 or so years, and I read it every time I got sick, sometimes more than once. Every page, every time. It was the touching and stereotypically horrifying story of a young woman half-bastard-pirate who falls in love with a slick Rhett Butler type named, no seriously this is one thing I remember perfectly: Hilton Courteen. Yep. Named after a hotel. *head shake*
Anyway, the thing was set in some mythically idyllic New Orleans and there was a costume ball and lots of random sweaty sex and a lottery and a storm and people died and the only gay character was also made of pond slime and driftwood, but you know, it was something to read.
Until. Until my father threw it away. The bastard. (He also threw away the jean shorts that were made of safety pins holding seams in place and the tennis shoes that were little more than the suggestion of uppers with soles made of squeaky mold, and okay so I get the point Now, but That's not where I'm going with this, so just stop reading here and get on with it!)
So. My Novel That I Read When I Feel Like Dingle Slime got tossed. Sad.
Orange Gatorade. It has no flavor. It is, in fact, utterly unredeemable and made entirely out of plastic (the bottle is just less liquidy). I am unrepentant about changing my consumer and consumption habits to fit my personal belief system and so have quit the Gatorade. It will always hold a place in my heart, along with Ultra-Strength Rave Hairspray and Pseudo Echo, as something that was good to have, but really there were better options.
The Peanut M&Ms are all the remain of that first terrible moment of ill. All that I can hold on to as part of my I Have No Insurance And So Must Heal Myself medical plan. Everything else of that trip has gone. Well, okay, so the Lake is still there and so is the island and the hotel, and Gatorade still exists, but Dammit! I slept for 36 hours while my family wandered about the wilderness and ooo'd and ah'd and oh'd at nature. Sleep and showers and the healing power of sugar-coated mediocrity got me through until we were back on the mainland and in a doctor's office getting diagnosed and then not running over the drunk guy lying across our path on Axe Murderer Highway.
Now the M&Ms are gone, and everything that I was going to write about today instead of this personal wandering has poit!-ed itself to a future date. There is tepid tea and the comfort of sleep. Oh! and something a little creepy and wonderful also:
Come Into My Parlour from Moog on Vimeo.
I love autumn. I love a season that is so fantastic that it has two names. I love knowing that in less than two days, it will be pitch black night at 1 in the afternoon because of the time change, and that by the time March rolls around, I will have lost the will to live in the sunlight entirely and have to be dragged screaming and inebriated into the light.
Because this is the season that is the setup for my springtime krazy fest. It's awesome to know me during April when I can't stop the lucid dreams or make complete sentences or keep from drooling at the sight of anyone without a shirt on. My friends totally earn their bribe money that month.
It is also the season of The Cold. The Cold that inflames your throat just enough to keep you from actually enjoying that cigarette, or wine or whiskey, or whisky, or pretty much anything that you would really like to be enjoying because the weather is on crack and there's nothing you can do about it. This one has also laid an egg just below my right eye and slightly out of reach of my right nostril. It's going to be disgusting when that hatches.
And so, on a trip out of doors and to the grocery store with my mother, I casually tossed in a bag of the only thing in the world that I know will make me feel better: Peanut M&M's.
Yeah, there's a story there. It goes like this: Summer Youth Group retreat thing leads to strep developing in my young throat while we head, as a family, to Isle Royale in Lake Superior where the only doctor on the island was on the other side of it tending to a hiker with a broken arm. (Later we learned that everyone breathing at the retreat got strep (because teenagers are germ-factories-without-hygiene) and all of them but me went to the doctor Right Away) I got on a ferry with my family, got to the island, went to the doctor's office (minus the doctor, of course) and then went to the c-store at the hotel to find something to help me feel better. I was 13 and chose to medicate myself thusly: Orange Gatorade, Peanut M&M's (the bigbig bag) and a work of unparalleled literature called something like Midnight Affair by someone called something like Alberta Nunn. (I found it! Midnight Affair by Nan Ryan!)(It's a terrible book - no one read it)(Really, I'm completely serious. The sexual stereotypes alone are awful, add to them the cultural, ethnic and socio-economic ones and it's just a fucking mess of bad.)
That book stayed with me for the next 7 or so years, and I read it every time I got sick, sometimes more than once. Every page, every time. It was the touching and stereotypically horrifying story of a young woman half-bastard-pirate who falls in love with a slick Rhett Butler type named, no seriously this is one thing I remember perfectly: Hilton Courteen. Yep. Named after a hotel. *head shake*
Anyway, the thing was set in some mythically idyllic New Orleans and there was a costume ball and lots of random sweaty sex and a lottery and a storm and people died and the only gay character was also made of pond slime and driftwood, but you know, it was something to read.
Until. Until my father threw it away. The bastard. (He also threw away the jean shorts that were made of safety pins holding seams in place and the tennis shoes that were little more than the suggestion of uppers with soles made of squeaky mold, and okay so I get the point Now, but That's not where I'm going with this, so just stop reading here and get on with it!)
So. My Novel That I Read When I Feel Like Dingle Slime got tossed. Sad.
Orange Gatorade. It has no flavor. It is, in fact, utterly unredeemable and made entirely out of plastic (the bottle is just less liquidy). I am unrepentant about changing my consumer and consumption habits to fit my personal belief system and so have quit the Gatorade. It will always hold a place in my heart, along with Ultra-Strength Rave Hairspray and Pseudo Echo, as something that was good to have, but really there were better options.
The Peanut M&Ms are all the remain of that first terrible moment of ill. All that I can hold on to as part of my I Have No Insurance And So Must Heal Myself medical plan. Everything else of that trip has gone. Well, okay, so the Lake is still there and so is the island and the hotel, and Gatorade still exists, but Dammit! I slept for 36 hours while my family wandered about the wilderness and ooo'd and ah'd and oh'd at nature. Sleep and showers and the healing power of sugar-coated mediocrity got me through until we were back on the mainland and in a doctor's office getting diagnosed and then not running over the drunk guy lying across our path on Axe Murderer Highway.
Now the M&Ms are gone, and everything that I was going to write about today instead of this personal wandering has poit!-ed itself to a future date. There is tepid tea and the comfort of sleep. Oh! and something a little creepy and wonderful also:
Come Into My Parlour from Moog on Vimeo.
Thursday 4 November 2010
So, this is how it happens...
First thing I do today is wake up way too early.
Then I go back to sleep only to wake up way too late and dump myself in the bathroom for much needed hygiene action.
Toddy with rice milk and honey, yes? Yes.
And then, there is the internet.
In this order:
1) Facebook - to see how popular I am last night.
2) Twitter - to tell the world what my brain thinks and maybe even reply to other people's awesome even though I have no idea who they are, and/or everyone else has already responded because they are that well known.
3) Gmail - for Spam and the unlikely event of a pleasant email from friends who are, in actual fact, stupidly busy and anyway they call, so why write?
4) Google Reader - I love Google Reader. This is where my day actually begins. Comics, Blogs, Pictures and Quoted Passages passed to me with so little effort on my part that it is not entirely unludicrous. Something always catches my brain by the electric bits and I feel the overwhelming urge to tell Almost EVERYONE I KNOW about how someone not me wrote about Barbie or voting or shirtless hippies building islands that float about on plastic bottles that got thrown into the sea or public art. (I freaking love grafitti and public art and splattered paint and tape art and I even love Banksy)
Now, this is where The Daily Show comes in. Because, see, I've got my Facebook tab still open up there, so the (1) thing that happened to something that I did can validate me for the whole day. And, like everyone else, I've liked The Daily Show and so am invited to watch last night's episode in full! Whee!
I have such a reference crush on that show - they have excellent researchers and compilers. My brain wants me to make out with their research skillz. Madly. Over coffee. And maybe some pasta primavera (but only if it's from the Ren Fest at the Bellevue Berry & Pumpkin Ranch, cuz that was creepy good).
So, I'm watching last night's episode today, and two things happen: I remember why I don't interact with news media anymore (I hate them all and their total lack of perspective or history or sensible vocabulary) and I have a deep and abiding need to know a thing.
Here is the thing that I want to know: I want to know what the distribution of parties has been in Congress since the beginning of the country. Meaning: I want a map, or a table, or a pie chart of the party demographics of the 1st Damn Congress, and the 2nd, and the 3rd, etc., all the way to the 2nd Session of the 111th Congress. Because I am curious about just how much hyperbole and smoke-blowing-up-asses is afoot. It is entirely possible that all the of overblown rhetoric is not entirely overblown. It's not probable, but it is possible.
And now I get frustrated: the website for The House of Representatives is mostly geared to the now, not the then. The Senate's website is similarly focused.
Okay, Library of Congress, then? Only the site is taking too long to respond today, and when I get to the place to search the Congressional Record, it only goes back to the 101st Congress.
My mother enters the dining room at this point and, like the totally self-absorbed ass I am, I start talking about how all I want to see is a map of representatives for each state. Google points me to GovTrack.us and their map. I've totally told Stumble about it. Because it is pretty cool.
Not cool enough. What I want looks like this: a timeline at the bottom with a dealie that tracks where you are on it as colors that represent the different political parties, move about slowly as the demographics of Congress are charted through time from 1789, on a map of the US.
Dear The Daily Show's research staff: please?
Also, um, could you, would you, write a book? You know, about how you find out stuff and things. I would totally read it. Probably I wouldn't buy it, because I am broke and poor, but I would suggest very strongly that my local library buy it and then I can check it out and read it and tell everyone that they need to read it to. And then you will have global respect, if not any riches or actual fame. But you could spread the message of "Do Your Fucking Research On An Issue, It Makes You Look Cool And Not Like A Blowhard."
Then I go back to sleep only to wake up way too late and dump myself in the bathroom for much needed hygiene action.
Toddy with rice milk and honey, yes? Yes.
And then, there is the internet.
In this order:
1) Facebook - to see how popular I am last night.
2) Twitter - to tell the world what my brain thinks and maybe even reply to other people's awesome even though I have no idea who they are, and/or everyone else has already responded because they are that well known.
3) Gmail - for Spam and the unlikely event of a pleasant email from friends who are, in actual fact, stupidly busy and anyway they call, so why write?
4) Google Reader - I love Google Reader. This is where my day actually begins. Comics, Blogs, Pictures and Quoted Passages passed to me with so little effort on my part that it is not entirely unludicrous. Something always catches my brain by the electric bits and I feel the overwhelming urge to tell Almost EVERYONE I KNOW about how someone not me wrote about Barbie or voting or shirtless hippies building islands that float about on plastic bottles that got thrown into the sea or public art. (I freaking love grafitti and public art and splattered paint and tape art and I even love Banksy)
Now, this is where The Daily Show comes in. Because, see, I've got my Facebook tab still open up there, so the (1) thing that happened to something that I did can validate me for the whole day. And, like everyone else, I've liked The Daily Show and so am invited to watch last night's episode in full! Whee!
I have such a reference crush on that show - they have excellent researchers and compilers. My brain wants me to make out with their research skillz. Madly. Over coffee. And maybe some pasta primavera (but only if it's from the Ren Fest at the Bellevue Berry & Pumpkin Ranch, cuz that was creepy good).
So, I'm watching last night's episode today, and two things happen: I remember why I don't interact with news media anymore (I hate them all and their total lack of perspective or history or sensible vocabulary) and I have a deep and abiding need to know a thing.
Here is the thing that I want to know: I want to know what the distribution of parties has been in Congress since the beginning of the country. Meaning: I want a map, or a table, or a pie chart of the party demographics of the 1st Damn Congress, and the 2nd, and the 3rd, etc., all the way to the 2nd Session of the 111th Congress. Because I am curious about just how much hyperbole and smoke-blowing-up-asses is afoot. It is entirely possible that all the of overblown rhetoric is not entirely overblown. It's not probable, but it is possible.
And now I get frustrated: the website for The House of Representatives is mostly geared to the now, not the then. The Senate's website is similarly focused.
Okay, Library of Congress, then? Only the site is taking too long to respond today, and when I get to the place to search the Congressional Record, it only goes back to the 101st Congress.
My mother enters the dining room at this point and, like the totally self-absorbed ass I am, I start talking about how all I want to see is a map of representatives for each state. Google points me to GovTrack.us and their map. I've totally told Stumble about it. Because it is pretty cool.
Not cool enough. What I want looks like this: a timeline at the bottom with a dealie that tracks where you are on it as colors that represent the different political parties, move about slowly as the demographics of Congress are charted through time from 1789, on a map of the US.
Dear The Daily Show's research staff: please?
Also, um, could you, would you, write a book? You know, about how you find out stuff and things. I would totally read it. Probably I wouldn't buy it, because I am broke and poor, but I would suggest very strongly that my local library buy it and then I can check it out and read it and tell everyone that they need to read it to. And then you will have global respect, if not any riches or actual fame. But you could spread the message of "Do Your Fucking Research On An Issue, It Makes You Look Cool And Not Like A Blowhard."
Wednesday 3 November 2010
Strange and lovely mornings
The night after my friends' wedding, I spent with My Name wandering in words through the weirdness of breaking up.
As both of my marriages have ended in divorce, and she's had several breakups as well, it seemed fitting that after a wedding, things would end. Happily, as neither one of us got married, we could be observers and therefore reflect rather than participate.
Because we both have this one golden memory of a mutual friend: one near perfect night shared on The Porch with conversation and song and poetry (I know, right!) and each other. It is a memory that I've sort of kept on a shelf with other memories of that person, hidden behind a screen of discomfort based on the end of our immediate acquaintance. It showed up in our conversation and she said "Yes! Oh, my god, that was an amazing night and I can't even think about it because it's like coated in this slime..." Bile of alcoholism and an overstayed welcome.
It is the blessing of good friendship that challenges me to keep memories for what they are: the imprint of a moment. Marriage and dating and commitment are all friendships of one kind or another, publicly acknowledged and privately confirmed. The act of being a friend is the real work of friendship.
Every friendship must come to an end, the end defined as the point at which both parties are no longer engaged in the act of the relationship. Everybody dies. Every relationship goes with it. I am no fatalist, nor am I all that pessimistic about love and relationships. They are more than vital and something I relish about living. I am completely in awe of the people who surround me and delight in verbal adoration whenever possible (this part is true and gets very annoying for many people. if you are one of those people, i suggest you keep me away from the tequila).
I have almost nothing good to remember about my marriages. There are no longer memories that spark joyful emotion or even a bittersweet smile. Everything is, to borrow from My Name, "coated in slime." Not because the marriages ended, but because of how freakin' long we took to get shit done.
There is so much damage you can do to a friendship between saying "It's over," and meaning it. That's where the slime and bile and fracturing happen. The worst part of healing is getting to the point where the crap on the outside of the memory isn't what you think about AND the sweetness and light of the memory itself aren't enough to inspire that one horrible, terrible, inappropriate thought: I still care, and wonder how he/she/they is/are doing. *sigh*
If you care, let it die.
Nothing in me would pollute the mental images and very real patterns of behavior I've built with friends over the years. They are not replaceable nor are they negotiable. They are also not stagnant. I trust these people to be who they are, and that means that we all get to be flexible and grow and stop and live. And when these relationships end, as they will have to, I like to think that they will be glorious to the last. Every story lacks a shape until the end.
I will, of course, be happy to forgo the hangover, if that is, indeed, an option...
As both of my marriages have ended in divorce, and she's had several breakups as well, it seemed fitting that after a wedding, things would end. Happily, as neither one of us got married, we could be observers and therefore reflect rather than participate.
Because we both have this one golden memory of a mutual friend: one near perfect night shared on The Porch with conversation and song and poetry (I know, right!) and each other. It is a memory that I've sort of kept on a shelf with other memories of that person, hidden behind a screen of discomfort based on the end of our immediate acquaintance. It showed up in our conversation and she said "Yes! Oh, my god, that was an amazing night and I can't even think about it because it's like coated in this slime..." Bile of alcoholism and an overstayed welcome.
It is the blessing of good friendship that challenges me to keep memories for what they are: the imprint of a moment. Marriage and dating and commitment are all friendships of one kind or another, publicly acknowledged and privately confirmed. The act of being a friend is the real work of friendship.
Every friendship must come to an end, the end defined as the point at which both parties are no longer engaged in the act of the relationship. Everybody dies. Every relationship goes with it. I am no fatalist, nor am I all that pessimistic about love and relationships. They are more than vital and something I relish about living. I am completely in awe of the people who surround me and delight in verbal adoration whenever possible (this part is true and gets very annoying for many people. if you are one of those people, i suggest you keep me away from the tequila).
I have almost nothing good to remember about my marriages. There are no longer memories that spark joyful emotion or even a bittersweet smile. Everything is, to borrow from My Name, "coated in slime." Not because the marriages ended, but because of how freakin' long we took to get shit done.
There is so much damage you can do to a friendship between saying "It's over," and meaning it. That's where the slime and bile and fracturing happen. The worst part of healing is getting to the point where the crap on the outside of the memory isn't what you think about AND the sweetness and light of the memory itself aren't enough to inspire that one horrible, terrible, inappropriate thought: I still care, and wonder how he/she/they is/are doing. *sigh*
If you care, let it die.
Nothing in me would pollute the mental images and very real patterns of behavior I've built with friends over the years. They are not replaceable nor are they negotiable. They are also not stagnant. I trust these people to be who they are, and that means that we all get to be flexible and grow and stop and live. And when these relationships end, as they will have to, I like to think that they will be glorious to the last. Every story lacks a shape until the end.
I will, of course, be happy to forgo the hangover, if that is, indeed, an option...
Tuesday 2 November 2010
How to make a city girl happy...
MUTO by BLU
The picture of the leaves was taken by me. The flag eatin' grasshopper was captured in the act by Jeremy Brozek.
Weddings, Haircuts, Elevators and other natural disasters
It is official, my friends have been lawfully wedded to each other in the sight of The Capitol building and their families and friends for more than a week!
One of my favorite things about people that I like&love getting married to each other, is that the reception is filled with other people that I like&love.
And so it was that everything clicked and I got 4 inches cut off my hair by a best friend wielding a pair of dull scissors in her kitchen. It looked fabulous, which is handy, because if you are going to have long hair that hides your face no matter how you wear it, it really ought to flaunt itself, you know?
The reception was held on a top floor, so the only reasonable approach was via elevator. My parents arrived before I did and rode up with a nice woman who started chatting with them only to discover that I've been talking about her for the last 10 years because I used to work for her. And working for her was one of the best things I've ever been involved in (dear heaven I miss field work) and she'd even been at my last wedding. I love that. I love that this is a thing that happened.
Weddings are not a time for the married couple. I know this. We all know this. We all want to believe otherwise, but here's the thing: if you're going to throw a wedding, be as selfish as you possibly can because your happy day is an excuse for other people to get dressed up, see their friends, dance like their hips can take it and get honest. Which is fantastic if you dig your friends and they dig you, but otherwise, well, yeah.
So, it was with pleasure that we rode the elevator up to the 20th floor with the happy couple. Because I love them. And also because I knew I would speak all of 15 words to them (combined) all night, and was happy they got to be pleasant ones before the drinking.
There is a bubble around happy people, even people as open and generous as my friends. It was nice to share for a while.
One of the pictures that did not get taken lives in my memory. It is a table surrounded by my parents and most of my closest friends. They are chatting and laughing and happy. It is the best gift friends can give to each other - the happiness of loved ones. I am glad that people that I like&love keep getting married to each other.
And, oh, how many hugs were there, and how happy was I to get them. And the honesty seemed easy and right, and the elevator became a gentle space-filled hug.
I have only gorgeous memories of the wedding left, because all of the sliding-off-makeup ones floated to the top and blew away in the fierce and demanding autumn winds.And they were fierce. Which is sometimes the way it has to be when the world doesn't quite get what it is supposed to look like.
Seasonal shifts are some of those wonderfully shifting thresholds that can take forever to cross. We've now had two frosts, and the hibiscus and my father's roses are still blooming. Impossibly pink in a red and brown and dying world. I love this time of year. Especially when it takes a while, none of this blink and you've missed it and now it is time to rake nonsense. This has been going on for a month or more.
Every street in this town, and every town that I've driven through has its glowing trees, the ones that changed first and brightest and then the leaves left after a couple of weeks and different trees have changed all to yellow or faded orange, or even dark purple. I drove through Stanberry and saw the road lined with young, trimmed trees gone the color of an orange crayon. But the grass is still green, and there are not enough bare branches to settle my eyes.
One of my favorite things about people that I like&love getting married to each other, is that the reception is filled with other people that I like&love.
And so it was that everything clicked and I got 4 inches cut off my hair by a best friend wielding a pair of dull scissors in her kitchen. It looked fabulous, which is handy, because if you are going to have long hair that hides your face no matter how you wear it, it really ought to flaunt itself, you know?
The reception was held on a top floor, so the only reasonable approach was via elevator. My parents arrived before I did and rode up with a nice woman who started chatting with them only to discover that I've been talking about her for the last 10 years because I used to work for her. And working for her was one of the best things I've ever been involved in (dear heaven I miss field work) and she'd even been at my last wedding. I love that. I love that this is a thing that happened.
So, it was with pleasure that we rode the elevator up to the 20th floor with the happy couple. Because I love them. And also because I knew I would speak all of 15 words to them (combined) all night, and was happy they got to be pleasant ones before the drinking.
There is a bubble around happy people, even people as open and generous as my friends. It was nice to share for a while.
One of the pictures that did not get taken lives in my memory. It is a table surrounded by my parents and most of my closest friends. They are chatting and laughing and happy. It is the best gift friends can give to each other - the happiness of loved ones. I am glad that people that I like&love keep getting married to each other.
And, oh, how many hugs were there, and how happy was I to get them. And the honesty seemed easy and right, and the elevator became a gentle space-filled hug.
I have only gorgeous memories of the wedding left, because all of the sliding-off-makeup ones floated to the top and blew away in the fierce and demanding autumn winds.And they were fierce. Which is sometimes the way it has to be when the world doesn't quite get what it is supposed to look like.
Every street in this town, and every town that I've driven through has its glowing trees, the ones that changed first and brightest and then the leaves left after a couple of weeks and different trees have changed all to yellow or faded orange, or even dark purple. I drove through Stanberry and saw the road lined with young, trimmed trees gone the color of an orange crayon. But the grass is still green, and there are not enough bare branches to settle my eyes.
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