Not exactly sure what's going on out there

The weather and the calendar and my expectations for what they mean are all not matching up. It is May. It is raining, but it is not the beautiful welcoming rain of last summer and the air is cold and still requires blankets at night and slippers in the day.

The beginning of the week was so hot that the cats in our house did not even yell for food from our house/cat-sitter, and Boris is now shedding great clumps of fur at the slightest move. His sister keeps trying to eat them. Cats are not normal creatures.

Today my father and I wandered up into the attic to look at what all we've got stored up there. It is time to start bringing it all back down and sorting it out. Most of my things are still in boxes, or are monstrous pieces of furniture acting useful around the house.

Next week begins my summer schedule. This week my co-worker leaves and another co-worker arrives. People do not replace other people. Our hours are shifting, our responsibilities will also. I will miss my friend. I wonder if I am conserving energy, or at least not using my full allocation in the deluded hope that I can shunt some of it her way as she will need it to entertain and say her farewells.

Much has happened in the last month. There are many words to add to the things that have happened. Today is for some quiet reassessment and observation. We've seen the shelves in the attic and now have a better idea what it will take to get things begun. Tomorrow my parents begin looking for our storage unit. Tomorrow our new co-worker begins. Today I must do laundry and read some more and pet the cats and enjoy dinner with my mother and father as it is my mother's birthday.

These deadlines are always such odd things. They are there for a reason - they define beginnings and ends and that is completely acceptable, but they hum like some over-zealous magnet and it is not always easy to stay out of their way.

Smell of a drizzly morning

It was that first feel of ozone as I left work this morning. A greeting so familiar and hoped for and so surprising.

Today would be good for ...

Icelandbob's Music mix.

Keats' Endymion

Fellini: I'm a Born Liar

wings at Carson's

Cardamom tea

Charles Lamb's Essays

Monster Commute from the beginning

Blank-it from the beginning

OR

...adventure with ninja electron wearing galoshes and rain-proof capes with neon goggles - we go to find the perfect person to run a by-the-cup tea and coffee shop in Brownville who will also have granola bars and fruit and sometimes some bean soup with carrots in it that tastes of thyme and parsley and bay leaf and who grows basil in the window for the love of it. we fly on her unicorn cat steed named Claude. we end the day with cocoa, bitter and thick, and croissants and also lasagna that someone else cooks for us. and then someone we know will draw the whole thing and then we will make it a poster and then never be recognized on account of our face-covering, but not really hiding, clever masks. maybe with feathers. made of old yarn and pipe cleaners and starch paste.


i really need to write more.

I think I will do ALL OF THIS. except for the part about all of the reading - that shit just gets in the way.

An open apology

I know that I said I would send the check today, but that was before I knew that I would sit on a bench in a park reading Keats to a frog croaking in the creek.

There was chocolate.

The sunshine was warmer than the breeze and the only other people in the park were pleasant and headed to a bench to be with not me, just themselves.

This morning brought work, this evening brings more, and I am content.

If this is what my life leads me toward, this self-scheduled mess of cleaning and eating and reading and writing and Keats and Strunk & White and tater tots and cool water and work that makes sense to me - then it is good to keep working to live it.

I do not think you will be angry.

I saved some birdsong and some of the frog's croaks for you. I have put them near the dappled sun you saved for me so many miles ago.

This evening I may venture out again and see about evening mists in the trees down the street. You never know what bench may need a reader, or what reader I may need to be.

Much love,
Me

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time
by John Keats

My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an indescribably feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.

Also - This is the funniest thing I have read in a very long time. If we ever hang out, remind me, and I'll read it aloud.

Ah, summer. Ah, summer chick flicks ...

Okay, that's not entirely true. Or fair. For two reasons: 1) Not all buddy road trip moves are chick flicks, and 2) that is not the blog I'm writing right now. I will write it (the one about how 'chick flick' as a referenced genre needs to be redefined to include those of us 'chicks' who would rather soak in lime than watch yet another normative romantic comedy with deeply troubled stereotypes and predictably bad plot turns, and who choose to enjoy their celluloid porn in the form of men getting sweaty and trying to kill each other with swords, or dusty and deeply angry about something, or, you know, well written assassins being flawed and more flexible than me (damn you, George Clooney!!!). You know, that blog) eventually, but not right now. And probably not until I've seen Cowboys & Aliens. Because you know they made that movie just for me, right? I mean, it's all over the trailer: The silent punchy type with odd jewelry as Daniel Craig and the very interesting Olivia Wilde (too thin, but then again, aren't they all?) and Harrison Ford. AND ALIENS.

*sigh*

This is one of the many reasons why I really enjoy science fiction movies. There are some issues (metal bikini, anyone?) that are not, I repeat, NOT omnipresent (Miss Piggy in Space, folks, come on) and they are mostly buddy movies. With ships and guns and muppets and things, and that is always a good way to fill in the necessary back drop for the standard buddy movie plot.

Humans love buddy road trip stories: Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel around and fight each other and then become besties and then fight other people and then *AACK, No Spoilers* Sorry. Right. Moses and Aaron and all of their friends wander around the desert for a really long time and they got a movie. Jesus and his friends got super famous for being really good friends and also really good storytellers (re-read The Gospels and then tell me I am wrong). Star Wars is a brilliant buddy road trip movie. The Muppet Movie: one of the best movies ever made, again, same thing. Galaxy Quest, Star Trek(s), Lord of the Rings, Erik The Viking, Condorman, RED: all of them, buddy road trip movies. (Side note: RED also happens to be a wonderful movie about a really fucked up first date. But, hey, it's Bruce Willis.)

We make friends and we walk around. It's kind of a thing with humans. We always look for these grand differences between humans and every other life form ever and sometimes, I think that the simple things are the most beautiful and to be encouraged: the ability to be friend; the physical freedom to change geographical location (a thing which ought not be taken for granted as it has not always been, and is still not always a right that is available to every human being).

I tend to compare my very favorite novels with very long walks during which you meet everyone on the road and get to know them really really well. It's a form of buddy road trip story, just fewer buddies. The quest thing tends to get a bit grating after a while, but I love the way that groups build during stories. Blazing Saddles has one of the best making-of-a-friend-groups ever. It's straightforward and believable.

And here's where I get all torqued - I despise buddy movies where I don't believe that there is anything like friendship between the characters, or where I believe the friendship is toxic. I do not want to see that. I do not care about it, and more importantly, at the happy ending, I am not happy. I invent story lines where Shirtless Jason Statham shows up, pissed off and drenched in motor oil and goes all River Tam focused and homicidal on everyone. Sometimes, this is my happy ending. (see why I choose to redefine 'chick flick' to fit into a different paradigm?)

So, I'm in a new town, and I'm finally getting around to making some friends. It's not a short process and not one that I take lightly. As you might have noticed. Tonight, I went with two of my new friends to see the movie Paul.

And I remembered why I love The Movies. I love trailers on the big screen. I love pre-show chatter in the seats. I love movie theater popcorn. I love that I get the kid's size snack thing with an Icee and a bag of M&M's and that's exactly enough. I love the dimming of the lights and the sense that I always get of being four years old and knowing that not long after the lights go dark, the world will be filled with Star Wars and John Williams and that I can relax and escape into such wonder as we humans have in it us to create and to share. The older I get, the more I notice the four year old swinging her feet and losing herself in the screen, and I am beyond content. Especially when I am watching a buddy road trip movie where one of the buddies is not a human. I love that I got to share that with two people who enjoyed it as much as I did. This is making friends.

I will not review the movie here. Except to say that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching a movie written by people who really sold it - the friendship, the travel, the adventure, the silliness, the dialogue (oh, the dialogue), and the respect for all of the movies that came before. It is often attempted and rarely accomplished - the well-done homage, the awareness of your cultural foundation, I believe we have a bad habit of calling it post-modern because we are pretentious fucks who think that all we will ever be is what we have now.

The future gave me tonight. And I laughed at it. Lots.

Also, I would like to apologize again to the 6 other people in the theater for the roller-coaster arms + scream. it was undignified. i will probably do it again. it was totally worth it.

This is just how it is

My Lent-like ends on April 3. I've already decided on the meal that will break my Lent-like-en fast: Singapore Noodles from Happy Garden, the Chinese take-out on the corner. Even in a town this small, there is a corner Chinese take-out.

I gave up drinking, meat, smoking and not practicing yoga for my Lent-like (so-called because I defined the dates of beginning and end and do not observe the Sabbath or Easter, except in respect to friends who are of faith)(I probably ought to write something more explanatory (I really want 'explicatory' to be a word, btw) but now it is not the time). The length of my fast was planned to be 42 days. (This is not accidental) I have observed all of my prohibitions, except for 2 days (which I planned into the experience because of the knowledge that Stuff and Things happen and sometimes, that pork cutlet is just what you need to eat) and for the most part, it has been relatively unstressful. I went vegetarian in order to spur some creativity in my diet. I went dry because why the hell not? I quit smoking because practicing yoga is easier when your lungs work and your breath smells better than an ashtray filled with cat piss. All of these things were very simple decisions to make and they have been simple enough to keep making.

Last week I noticed that I miss chicken wings. That's really all. I mean, I miss a hamburger for a moment every now and again, but I really miss chicken wings. I don't even eat them all that often. Like once a year, maybe. Apparently, this is my once a year and I'm not gonna have them for 2 more weeks. When they will be et in honor of someone else's birthday.

Yesterday I noticed that I miss alcohol. I like wine. I like beer. and I would like to have some. And I am not going to until probably Tuesday or Wednesday after my fast is broken. (I am not punishing myself with these prohibitions, and I am not suffering, just realigning my life)

The world is a not so cuddly place right now for many people. Jobs have been denied, relationships have ended and I've been denied to graduate school. Earthquakes and cyclones and unrest abound. Today would be a really good day to buy a bottle of wine and sit around and vetch with friends.

I am sad that that cannot happen.
I am sad that so much depended on all of the things that did not happen.
I am sad for the people that I love who hurt.
I am sad for the people that I do not know who hurt.

My response to these sorrows must be different that I am used to. They are all part of life. This is what happens. The immediate effects will fade, all the immediate sadness and frustration and anger.

Here are the words I have to rely on to give my mind its vent. And then the practice that builds my back muscles and reminds me that things change. It is new.

Everyday is the worst day of someone's life. Thoughtfulness and kindness travel well in small doses.

So, if y'all go out and have a beer today, would you raise a toast to the health and well-being of loved ones? And laugh together, and be gentle with each other. Resilience is one thing, but damn if the world isn't a fragile place right now.

Light thoughts on tactile living

This has been wandering around in my thoughts since Friday, just waiting to build up enough steam and shape to get me to the internet and let me write.

It is lovely and new and very very real to hold conversation with awareness instead of fear or paranoia or irritation, no matter the other person. There is much to be said for the quality of conversationalists in my life, and for that I am deeply grateful. Also, the adorable skinny art boy? Yeah, he totally hung out and read Yeats. Like we aren't in a small town in Missouri. Pshaw, baby, pshaw.

We spoke of Zarathustra and The Book of Kells and going to see Paul and of Martha Nussbaum and of William Goldman and birth rates and living with pets and Community Supported Agriculture and breakfast and cinnamon rolls and graduating and being named 'Sarah' and the challenge of course work that requires reading in almost direct opposition to the reading you'd find more meaningful and potentially more enlightening and the frustration of a longer view than can be seen from safely within the confines of an Ivory Tower, no matter how beloved it is (as a genetic academic, it cannot be otherwise, but that doesn't make higher education infallible) and being a mercenary agnostic and there were chocolate chip cookies.

I ate many of them. Also: zucchini squash & shredded carrot quiche.

As I am still unaccustomed to working long hours, I find that my efforts to reduce some of that fatigue leave me with an equally perplexing situation: what to do with my time now that I'm good and awake and don't have to be in bed for another hour or so. Netflix is always available to me, and relatively consistent, especially if I want to watch Cosmos or don't mind that Primeval will have to be buffered.

None of anything that involves a screen is of much interest to me at the moment. I am content in the world of voices and coffee cups and tables that need to be cleaned and genuine smiles on the faces of people sharing space with my space. The cats are in places they need not be. More books lines my long shelf and the project of a year of missing my friend is moved to a wall instead of the chalkboard it's been protecting from the onslaught of my need to list everything.

This week, I saw a copy of The Nuremberg Chronicle that was printed in 1493. We stood there and I covered my mouth as if breathing too much would alter the sense of the thing, the woodcuts perhaps of Durer, beautiful regardless. On a shelf, my mother noticed a book on a stand, its pages edge-blackened and curled, its shape disastrous. Brother Thomas told us it is Ethiopian, my new brother's face lit up to see the Amharic - he got a picture.

There is much happening in the house these last few days, with spring break happening and none of us actually packing to move, and all of preparing to pack to move and I've opened windows and can smell the world from my bed, resting easily on familiar pillows, contemplating the use of space and how lovely it is to share it with such as are these of my beloveds.

The entertainment and information and connection of screens and networks and characters are all meaningful, and they are real. My eyes are geared somewhat differently these days. The change of world calls them to textures unseen in two dimensions.

Quietly eventful Wednesday

It is the kind of a day that shows me the dust on the screen of my laptop like so many grains of the finest glass-making sand.

It is a day for thinking of Disaster Fatigue and how it is possible to approach such overwhelming chaos with gentleness and very deliberate energy allocation and love. Joyfulness is not merely the desperate laughter of morbidity overload, it is not the decision to turn pain into art. It is correct to find joy where it is to be had. It is correct to love and to be loved. It is correct to stop and to think of the plight of others and to think of your own life and to think of how it is lived and to decide if it is how life is lived best. It is correct to face tomorrow's headlines without fear or anxiety or hopelessness. The language of energy and resource responsibility extends to emotion and to thought and to personal action. If it does not, then we are entirely without agency, living at the mercy of a world that does not acknowledge or recognize compassion.

The breeze of an unexpected spring blows over my shoulders and through my hair and I think of Coleridge and his prose and his observation that many shoemakers are philosophers and poets and I think of Daniel Day-Lewis and a shoemaker made old before time began by the ceaseless demands of princesses careless of his craft and his hands and his supplies, who must have shoes, whose shoes are the stuff of tragedy, doomed and made more exquisite for it. There are no elves in this story, the requirement drives the work, the credit is paid for the supplies, the workshop is clean and the shoemaker is left in silence serving an unseen destroyer of craft. One pair only, made of the last thing in the house on a day of bereavement and loneliness, the pair made from a carpet or a wedding dress or a child's blanket. A night spent sleepless watching without movement the shoes self-constructing, slicing through the remnant of a love, of a life, the heart of the shoemaker brutalized and made vengeful long years before the end of his life searching for the shoes that disappeared as every shoe did, before the fullness of morning, before his hands could find them, to touch, to examine, to steal and hide away.

I wonder if this is a story I can bring myself to write. Perhaps this is the work of character development - the character never known, only recognized as an archetype, but the actor has the story, and it is more than you will ever articulate, though it is all there for you to read.

The house is welcoming house guests these two days, and I am glad of the company and the weather and the adventure of visiting. My window is open and the blankets pulled from their winter's home still creased with folds or crumpled from the dryer. Gentleness finds me here, hands on keyboard instead of rushing about. The world's gravity does not have to be heavily borne.

The cat is having a much needed time out

No Shadow Conspiracy Allusions today. I am working on it, but between one thing and another thing and blonds showing up at the door, the day got away from me.

Just when I was starting to forget to think about it, my friend Chris posted a link to photos of the devastation in Japan on the Boston Globe's site. Slab gone is a phrase I never thought I'd know. Much less use again and again and again and again.

*******

My Other Other and I worked in the periodicals stacks at the public library for long enough that it was completely accepted that to her, paper dust has a different smell depending on the day. Some days it was chocolate. Other days it smelled of lemon drops. It was something that I didn't notice, always figuring that it had to do with 20+ years of smoking (off and on, people, off and on!) and that on top of what was not a great olfactory sensitivity to begin with. (It is balanced: I hear incredibly well at certain ranges) One of the things that we've been discussing over the last few months has become something of a goal reality for me of late, and I've begun collecting books with the intention of using them in a small privately funded public library. There are still many many questions that must be asked and answered before it is a physical reality, and I'm willing and happy to do that: it is part of the art of the becoming, but I do need books for the thing. And today I added a bunch of them to my LibraryThing catalog, in my new Other Library collection. I was sitting in my chair by the open window, laptop on my lap, books an the footstool, happily entering information, when it struck me that I smelled the dust - for the first time ever, I could tell the smell of the dust in the sunshine, and it was cardamom.

My Other Other understands the periodicals stacks of that public library better than anyone I know. She anticipates questions and organizational issues; she is weirdly able to find orphan issues and can spot volume and issue information hidden running perpendicular to the text in a box the size of a thumbnail in the space of 2 seconds after you've been looking for 5 minutes with a magnifying glass. It is right that she knows the smell of the dust they sloughed off - she is connected to the material. And now, so am I.

And I was happy in that place, and taking a break to let my eyes cool down a little bit and stop making decisions or lifting boxes when I wandered over to Whitechapel and found the monthly link to Webcomics. Fucking Warren Ellis, Internet Frost Swami!!!

There are already over 70 fantastic sites listed there. I've eyeballed at least 5 that I'ma have to feed to my Reader. And they all have archives, too. I am conflicted: ecstatic and dismayed allatonce.

Comics are now like some kind of very specific drug for me. And I do mean specific. I have said before that I don't read or very much like superhero stuff, and there are very few people who can write vampires without losing me completely. (I can think of three: Christopher Moore, Richard Kadrey and J.K. Rowling. So. You know. No one sparkling. Or angsty. I am so over the angsty.)

I get hooked, fast. I've said before that I read archives - in order to get my fix. Now you have an idea about why it was necessary for me to just link the damn thread everywhere and then find some other outlet. But that didn't happen. No. Instead, I saw that an old friend of mine was interviewed in one of his local papers about his new comic book venture Nix Comics Quarterly. He sent me the first issue in trade for a shout-out, which I did, although it was not as shouty or as outy as I think it deserved. Fortunately, he decided to do a Kickstarter project for the #2 issue. So, of course, I backed it. I backed it enough for a damn t-shirt. Because it is a good publication and it's locally funded and distributed. By local I do not mean only "sharing geography" as we live in the age of the internet which defines shared spaces more by use and combined traffic routes than by actual GPS points or physical destinations. It is not enough to say: "Someone is doing something around the corner and shouldn't we go because, hey, it's local." It is enough to say "This is a good bit of work. It is funny and it's dark and the stories are classically twisted and the artwork is varied and this author is fucked in the head in many good ways. Oh, and, hey - it's self-published and distributed - Well fucking done."

My fix was fed.

At least until I saw the super cool project that Lex Machina has going on Kickstarter! I love this! I think that this would be a fantastic reason to get a bunch of bellydancers together and head to Detroit and get decked out and photographed in a world of zeppelins and maybe even ray guns and jet packs. Jet Packs! I need to make more money so that I can spend it on all of this wonder.

There is too much horror in the world to ignore the potential for beauty in every possible place.

Although I still haven't had a chance to read any of my damn books today. I skipped chorale and everything.

PS: The cat is out of the room. She needed to cool down. There were blonds in the house.

William Carlos Williams: Tract

Tract

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral-
for you have it over a troop
of artists-
unless one should scour the world-
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black-
nor white either-and not polished!
Let it be weathered-like a farm wagon-
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God!-glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
how well he is housed or to see
the flowers or the lack of them-
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass-
and no upholstery phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom-
my townspeople what are you thinking
of?

A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.
No wreaths please-
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes-a few books perhaps-
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople-
something will be found-anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him-
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dig-
nity!
Bring him down-bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him
ride
on the wagon at all-damn him-
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind-as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly-
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What-from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us-it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.


First thing read when I opened my father's old textbook:
Interpreting Literature, 3rd edition. K.L. Knickerbocker, W. Willard Reninger, eds. Holt, Rinehart and Winston pubs, New York, 1965. Page 299.
(We call it playing The Game)

Love Blog for March 11

Ah, Friday! Ah, links!

For ways to help victims of recent earthquakes: New Zealand Red Cross, Global Giving project for Japan

For ways to keep informed: AlertNet; BBC Breaking News; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

For something beautiful in the way of Bridges from Veronika Von Volkova

For something sketchy and refreshing in the way of known characters from Scott and Skottie

For something less expected and more carefully built from Nest of Wonders

For the joy of sharing and because it's freaking brilliant from Happle Tea

BookViewCafe because I said so

For the love of librarians and articulate presentation Librarian in Black

For Aubrey and voodoo TPD (don't ask, just go with it) from Three Panel Soul

For the love of people I haven't seen in 20 years or more - I'm off to Kansas City next month to see my friend Shaun's show! Go to his website. Go to his show. If you are in Kansas City for the show, follow the sound of the barking otter laugh and you will find me. I expect to make this sound frequently. Dude is fucking funny.

So, in case you ever wondered How to Turn a Film into a Web Series, I totally know a dude who's involved in one! No Clean Break episode 10 right here, and I'm only linking to this one because the image you see is Matthew Jones, another someone I've known since I rode the school bus, and also awesome. Offical No Clean Break website here with all the episodes. So good. (also, now I'm all nervous and curious about episode 11! GAH!)

(Geez, what is it with MPA alumni, anyway?) No one wonders why I am totally writing a character that looks exactly like him.

Oh, yeah. Um, Matthew? ....

What would Friday be without me sharing Freakangels? A Monday, that's what.

I Want FELT ALIEN ASTEROIDS

Cayenee Mocha! CAYENNE MOCHA! I was just talking about doing this at my work!!!

I heart Jagermonsters so hard. It's kind of ridiculous.

So one of the things that I truly love about Wapsi Square is that I have to let it sit for a week or so before reading to catch up again, because it's so relatively complex and told very specifically and that makes reading the archives again and again very much like reading a novella. I know that I found the comic through another comic or through an archaeology supplies website (Ninja? help?) - it wasn't something that I just 'found' through Stumble, I mean. Possibly a Whitechapel recommendation. I add weight to those, because there are rarely shitbombs on lists and I'm pretty picky, so between us, I get good stuff. Not the point, the point is that it's a fantastic story about a bunch of flawed and intelligent women and other paranormal beasties. I do miss the museum/thinky/artifacts stuff, but, as I've said, the archives are right there and reading them is the visual equivalent of a rose petal bath.

Health Care is the Issue. The ever brilliant Coilhouse magazine posted a video made by a bunch of

"Wesleyan University students, determined to speak out against extreme conservative members of the House of Representatives’ recent attack on Planned Parenthood, have presented this straightforward, sex-positive rallying cry to fellow young people across the country"

Yesterday found me in conversation with a person whose beliefs are almost diametrically opposed to my own. It was wonderful. He is a person who believes, as do I, that faith cannot be legislated, and that health care and the right to medical care ought to be legislated, not the morality. It was a beautiful conversation and yet another reminder to me why I do so love people of faith, even though I am not of them.

Fundamentalists do more to hurt their own belief systems than they can ever seem to understand.

The day that Steampunk changed my life

I am a huge fan of the internet. There are amazing and wonderful things to find there. LibraryThing is one of them. And one of the many interesting and wonderful things that you can be on LibraryThing is an Early Reviewer. An Early Reviewer is someone who signs up to request a copy of a book that is listed by one publisher or another through LibraryThing with the understanding that upon receipt and reading of that title, you will write a review of it on LibraryThing.

If you do not write reviews, you are less likely to get books. It’s a pretty simple formula, and one that I think works. The system is a good one and benefits the parties involved. At least, I believe that it does for now, as the list of titles grows every month, as does the list of publishers taking advantage of a little painless advertising and the potential for more word-of-web marketing. I’ve now received & reviewed 4 Early Reviewer titles. You’ll notice I don’t say books.

The Shadow Conspiracy II, edited by Phyllis Irene Radford & Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff and published by bookviewcafe.com (more on them later), is the very first eBook that I have ever read, and it was the title that I ‘won’ as an Early Reviewer. (I kind of like that you ‘win’ titles on ER. It is sort of like a game, really – you add your name to the seemingly endless list of names to request one or another or several different titles (you only get one title a month, so requesting a copy of any titles that you find interesting (in other words that you are likely to write on) is a good idea) and then you wait until the end of the month when you find out whether or not one will be sent your way. Fun!)

This collection of short stories in the Steampunk genre was also my first non-Mieville, non-graphic Steampunk reading. I’ve kind of avoided the literature. In the hands of Mieville, steam meets magic and world-building and that is intriguing, whereas a corset and a monocle and a few brass gears is pretty to look at, but not necessarily the stuff of good storytelling. I thought it would be a fun title, and a quick enough read (and, yes, I know, I read quickly as it is) and was happy to read that I’d won it.

Happily, I was completely blown away. I found the adventure and the technology and the social stuff and the storytelling (especially the storytelling) and the characters and the allusions entirely up my alley. The writing was energetic and lively. There is a lot of reference to historical persons and places and ideas (and I do intend to create a list of those allusions in this blog at some point) (Because I think it fun.) which may be off-putting to minds that are not so comfortable without all the facts to hand. I get it. I mean, I don’t experience it, but I comprehend and would then recommend keeping a list of names to check and stopping by here in a few days to read the list of allusions and follow the links to their own happy ends.

I was relieved to read not one romance. Not a single one. Adventure and rescue and flying ships and automata and Voudon and Lord Byron and The Nile, to be sure, but no idiotic seductions, no teenagers in love and not one piece of normalizing romantic advice. That alone would have been enough, but when you read of Galveston and of river travel and of airships and trains, well, you can imagine my delight.

Half of the stories follow male protagonists and half of them follow female protagonists. There is one story told through the words of three different people: a German girl, an English man and an African man raised in England from the age of 8, so that is the anomaly. It is called The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and is a story that left me (me!) absolutely silent for many minutes.

This is good episodic story telling. It is strong and specific and detailed and concise.

Not at all a surprise when you consider that the publisher of both volumes of The Shadow Conspiracy (and yes, the first one is now in my files) is BookViewCafe.com.

From their website:

Book View Café came together in March of 2008 around a group of authors (click here to see our complete author list) with a simple aim: to use the Internet to bring their work directly to their readers. It was already clear that a revolution was coming to the publishing industry and these authors wanted to help shape its course.

Working with a shoe-string budget and volunteer labor, but drawing on a collective century’s worth of experience in the publishing industry, they created the Book View Café website. Rather than just another clearing house for books online, they created a space where readers could browse and discover new authors and titles alongside current favorites. Aware that the Internet demands variety, the authors made sure that fresh fiction appeared on their front page every day, a feat made possible by the extensive list of material available to over twenty professional authors.

The Book View Café site officially launched in November of 2008. Since then the site has experienced a steady growth in readers and in author-members.

Did you read the author list? Did you? I did. More importantly, I read the side-bars and went to the different pages on the site and have now bought an eBook and will likely buy more from them. I am deeply impressed at the thoughtfulness of this site as well as the range of titles and genres available.

Used to be that I was relatively ambivalent about eBooks, feeling that they were useful for ridding libraries of the need to keep 17 copies of anything cluttering up the shelves, and perhaps saving the real paper for Real Literature. Between this experience and learning just how much authors can make selling their own works as eBooks (therefore giving the big finger to middle managers and other RealWorld evils), I am now sold.

For my birthday, I would like a used Nook Color, please. Thank you.

Next time: Allusions in The Shadow Conspiracy-s

How to start reading webcomics

As happens with every personally familiar train of thought, I blithely assume that everyone I know has experience with the same set of stories, comics, formats, media, etc., albeit under individually defined circumstances.

As happens with relative frequency about this sort of thing, I am wrong. I feel it important to acknowledge that I am friends with a wonderful woman who also suffers from this forgetfulness when it comes to other people not living with the same set of references. We call each other on it frequently and I’m glad to say that I rely on her to keep my sense of perspective fairly sharp.

(It should be here noted that I am almost always right about everything else in life, although my right-ness does not ever stand on the presumption of someone else’s wrong-ness.)

It always stalls me to realize that other people do not read webcomics every day. That there are people who have been quite happy in their lives without needing to consider the differences in the visual formats of film and paper, even when a film is made to mimic a particular graphic style (à la Sin City and Lord of the Rings). I find myself stammering the names of the same three or four webcomics in no particular order or relevance with the persistence of a Star Wars nerd protesting someone else’s ignorance of The Force: “But Yoda, I mean, Obi-Wan – how could Luke have succeeded at all without it?” Empty words to people with a different context.

Also, I’ve been thinking it would be fun to revisit some of titles I started reading wa-ay back in the summer of 2002, when the world changed forever, and I discovered Sinfest and Scary-go-Round.

I started reading Sinfest and Scary-go-Round in September of 2002 on the advice of a young woman with whom I’d made friends the previous spring. We’d been in an American poetry class together (which was brilliant fun – it was good to be in a place where I could call Whitman a pompous ass and share differently voiced readings of Dickinson and swim in the images of Wallace Stevens without feeling like I’d missed something and be okay with not understanding Howl – it was a class of learning, one of those that set a foundation for future comprehension) and she and her husband were gamers who had found an online source for games that were essentially rules with a set of cards that you bought and played with pieces that came from your own board games. They were good at the cultural possibilities of the Internet, and we were, as yet, not.

One of my biggest struggles at the time was remembering that Sinfest was with a .net, and Scary-go-Round was with a .com. The world before I discovered the purpose of Bookmarks. (Oddly – I’ve still not made good friends with delicious, even though it is so exactly up my alley.)

I have played a computer video game maybe all of 20 times in my life, or, to be more specific: in the 27 years since my mother first brought computer games into the house, I have played something requiring more skill than luck and also pushing more than maybe two buttons less than once a year. And yet, I read Ctrl-Alt-Del, Penny Arcade and Little Gamers like they were the very people who spoke to my soul.

Boy On A Stick And Slither became regular reading about this time, as well.

Finding one comic from another is a piece of cake in web-world, you just follow links that look good, and in 2002 and 2003, archives were just not that long as most of the titles started in the ‘90s. Do You Know How Much That Is Now???? It’s like a month of deliberate reading! Of the same title! Every Day! Madness, I tell you. I read Girl Genius from the beginning just last month, and I thought it would take forever and do you know that it isn’t even close to being done yet and there are Complications! ahead yet! Madness! Madness! That said, I have no idea how I found these pages anymore. None.

My memory tells me that it was about spring or summer of 2003 that I started reading Goats, which kept me happy for a good long time. My generally accepted pattern is to find a new title and then read ALL of it until I’m caught up. In 2003, that meant quite a few happy weeks with Goats. And then somehow there was Something Positive and then Queen of Wands.

Friendly Hostility I found sort of on a whim, I think, and then it was Sam and Fuzzy and MacHall (which, as it happens, makes me smile just to look at (and also distracts me to this day seeing as how I keep flipping over to read more of the archives of Threepanelsoul) (GAH)).

I had time during that time to build quite a reading list, including: Achewood, Diesel Sweeties, Cat and Girl, and Ph.D.

I know that I haven’t talked at all about what makes these fun for me to read, or how they’ve contributed to my sense of culture, art, language, community and story-telling. That’s a whole other set of blogs. And I’m just getting started talking about the titles that got me hooked; y’all don’t even know the rest yet.

I’ll get around to it.

Because I can talk. Really.

Cities and their films that I love

I grew up in a city that I knew almost nothing about until years after I'd left it. I lived in a neighborhood of Irish Catholic Democrats, which meant that even though I'm a WASP by genetics and a Nebraskan by default, I'm still an Irish Catholic Democrat from Beverly. I even sang in the choir of a local Catholic church (outside of the parish where I lived).

The neighborhood we lived in, and the church my family and I attended were formed after the Great Fire in 1871. Since everyone blamed an Irish cow, and all of the homes of the Irish workers were destroyed (seeing as how they were made of wood), it was, um, prudent for them to get out of the city as quickly as possible. Social violence is one of those urban constants that we just haven't quite evolved out of. I should make this clear: my neighborhood wasn't actually established by those Irish workers and their families, but its extremely specific character was made by that influx of people. It had previously been German Presbyterian, or so my The Papa tells me, and he does never tell me wrong. Even the Northern Migration of the early 20th century didn't seem to phase anyone much in my neighborhood. The music was different, there were more churches, and the food had more flavor (sorry, but really? Irish potato salad from the South Side of Chicago is about the least flavorful food ever. EVER.) but everyone came out on Saint Patrick's Day and everyone was Irish.

At least, that's how it seemed to me.
Before I learned.

The Blues Brothers is one of those films that I didn't get for a long time. My father loved pointing out landmarks from the movie as we drove places in town or out of town. He loved Ferris Bueller's Day Off because it allowed him to point out exactly how impossible the movie really is. Which it is, and not because of Charlie Sheen, but because of the geography of the city and the timing of events and how long it takes to get places from other places and practical things like that. It is, in every way, a love story to Chicago - it has little to do with Bueller, and everything to do with a vision of a perfect day in the city. The Blues Brothers has been given the nod of the Catholic Church. This proves that it is, indeed, from the South Side. Even though Calumet City isn't technically in the city, it is still part of my home.

Paris, Je T'Aime and New York, I Love You are movies that are billed as short films made by amazing directors with stellar casts showcasing different parts of the named cities using love stories as the framework - the familiar way in to something unfamiliar (I love this device and must find a time to talk about ad nauseum). I have been to both cities and find them wonderful, and will not pretend to any special knowledge of either one of them. That said, I found that the New York pieces had more to do with the people of the city, and the Paris pieces were very grounded in the ground, even though many/most of the directors in the featurettes said that they were telling stories of the people of the city, not of the city itself. (I am, of course, slightly biased: my heart was lost to literature when I read Les Miserables when I was 15, and then again when I was 16 and 17. Hugo loved Paris. And he went on about it and its architecture. And on. And on. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a more diluted example of the sort of detail and exposition and social complexity Hugo runs with in Les Mis. In case you're ever interested in 19th century French Literature. Hunchback is also a fairly quick read. Quicker than Les Mis (The Battle of Waterloo)(Just sayin'))

Now that I've been to Delhi, and had some time to process what little of the city I saw, Monsoon Wedding and Rang de Basanti, both set in that very alive place, seem much more dependent on place than they did before. I've long said that Monsoon Wedding is a love story to Delhi, and that PK and Alice are the main characters, which is the basis of my central argument, because their relationship relies on their meeting, which is specific to urban life, and lives in an overlap of times which is specific to Delhi. Rang de Basanti, shamelessly nationalistic and heartbreaking (it is my go to movie when I need to bawl), shows a completely different set of areas of the city, we even saw one of them - and it was kind of odd, really. Challenged me very quietly to reconsider myself in places. Always a good thing, I think.

So much of any urban area that exists within the walls and behind doors and under sidewalks. Holes in the wall, as we call them - those restaurants with tiny store fronts tucked away down impossible lanes; bookstores with sagging shelves; a movie theater tucked above a bar. Something shifts in your vision when you learn to see the names of places, the quality of the light behind glass doors, the air that leaves the front door and how it changes the world around it.

My favorite city scenes in movies are the ones that rely on old European cities to be relatively incomprehensible to traveler's through. In Condorman, I'm never entirely certain that they will find the church. The Pink Panther turns a quiet round about into the middle ring of circus. The American finds his way around a town that I am convinced could not exist outside of an Escher print. Even The Illusionist turns Edinburgh into an incomprehensible system of surface tunnels - part of the feel of the movie is in the sense of displacement, so it works.

Felines surround me, faces upturned, meows growing louder: it is time for dinner.

For next time: How I learned to love webcomics.

All our humble opinions

I finished a book yesterday, Books by Larry McMurtry, and did it knowing that I would write a review before sending the copy back to the home of a friend of mine, where it lives. I wrote the review, rated the book, and then delighted myself by reading other people's reviews. Most of them were from people who really didn't know what they were gong to get and found it insulting. I love those people. They make very easy targets for practice and very easily defined sets of ways Not-To-Be.

Reviews are one of my most favorite form of literature. I love literary criticism. Fuck that, I love criticism. So much. It is awful and pointless and pointed and relevant and self-serving. It is clear and specific and timely and vapid and wandering and uncertain. It makes me laugh and cry and throw things and want to bake a cake. For everyone. I read criticism and want to explode into anything but a thinking human being. I read criticism and bask in the glorious ability of human brains to find and pursue connections in the most unrelated entities, to find the poetry in anything, to make of a pile of shit something that might actually be fertilizer instead of just a fucking mess.

I don't write many of them, though. Well, not to share. Not written anyway.

As super-powers go, I'd really love to be able to purr. There are few other things that I find compelling or likely to not get out of hand somehow or make going out for a nice evening relatively impossible. I mean, really, laser vision? flying? power boobs? (Hovering, like a Star Wars Hovercraft? That would be cool. (In my dreams, I occasionally travel that way from room to room or down stairs or well - so I sometimes dream that I'm in a mall (why? who knows) and I get around by just sort of lifting up about 4 inches and floating with Segue-speed to my next destination. Sometimes when I wake up, I can still do it. Invisible Segue Power. That would rock.))

My actual super-power, as I've recently discovered, is that I can bore anyone. Really. It's a gift. My friends are really good at not being bored by me, but then again, I do tend to shut up when I'm around them. Usually because one of them has just interrupted me, but that's not the point! (Full disclosure: We interrupt each other. There are a few of us who are still in the middle of conversations we began 3 years ago and will never finish because it's way more fun to keep things going by butting in with something else really interesting and immediate. Also, we have to, otherwise we would all never quit yapping at each other.)

I. Can Talk. A Lot. Impressively. With no need to stop. Or make sense. Or even really know what I'm talking about sometimes, although that doesn't happen all that much anymore, I've read a lot of books, also, I revel in being right about stuff especially when I'm talking at someone because I want that person to stop talking to me and go away.

Boring people is an extremely useful skill. Being not-interesting can come in incredibly handy and allows me to not participate in any number of accepted social events ranging from oo-ing and coo-ing over 'boys' to relying entirely (and by entirely, I mean 100% entirely, not the occasional giggle-fest because someone said "I believe it is a matter of great doctrinal import!" Different things.) on movie or TV show quotes.

And yet, I am somehow reluctant to put all of the thoughts I've had over the years about stereotyping in romantic comedies to why Brigadoon needs to be remade, but set in South Asia with better songs and huger dance numbers to my conviction that a really good study would be one that compares the Mrs. Collins's from the four major film productions of Pride & Prejudice to their contemporary cultures. I will talk about how silence in film is way too underused. I can go on about the delights of seeing a movie in a theatre on a huge ass screen with many other people who would really rather not hear me react to that movie.

Just not online. I will work to change that. Opinions do change, and I respect that. My opinions change less often than I'd like to admit, but I give them time. First responses are not always reliable. Particularly when it comes to movies. Books on the other hand, well, The Great Gatsby can still suck my lint and Les Miserables is easily the book that convinced me that I love cities.

You really don't want to be around for that conversation.

Really.

Next time: I will write y'all a review. Just for kicks.

A day with my books

A couple of weeks ago, flush with a paycheck from my part-time minimum wage job, and ignoring the valid and reasonable debts that I have, I decided to take the plunge and spend the 25USD to get become a lifetime member on LibraryThing.

I can't even tell you how pleased I am about this decision. Cuz here's the thing: I read a lot of books. A Lot of Books. Wait a minute, I need to back up a bit.

I have a library of just over 225 books in my office. It is small, and it is growing. A few years ago I decided that I would go to Portugal and so began to weed my life, including my library. I think that I ended up getting rid of about 3/5 of it, maybe more. That was before my appendix burst in August of 2007, I stayed in Lincoln, and by the spring of 2009 my library was 182 books precisely. I had room for every single book on a book shelf, standing vertically. Never let it be said that I have always been in need of new bookshelves. There has been a moment in time when it all fit.

I kept trading books in and out for about a year. In fact, I went 6 months or so without buying books (I even stopped grabbing books from the free book boxes outside of A Novel Idea (those are so damned dangerous)) at all. It was awful. But a growth experience. I am not really fond of miserable growth experiences, and suspect I will not decide to inflict them on myself in future. All that said, I don't have room for all of my books. I work in a used book shop. I get a good deal on them. And I love to read. Also, I am very curious about the look of my library - not the physical set up or the visual aspect of the spines, etc., but the subjects and the range of authors and the quality of the books. By quality I refer to something more subjective than outward monetary value.

There are titles of which I have two copies; one of them a paperback and much written in by me, and the other hardbound with a dust-jacket and relatively pristine. Some books are more comfortable in the pocket of my cargo pants, and some hold up a backpack with ease. There are some titles I love that I never have on hand because I buy cheap paperbacks of them in order to give them away because I think they ought to be read by as many people as possible. I love the size of Loeb Classical Library and Everyman Library books. I love the thin thin pages of collections of Shakespeare and Milton. I love the smell of my father's old textbooks and the trade publications of Freakangels. If a book possesses some such quality that appeals to me and will draw me to it in the future, it is likely to be something that will do well in my library. I might even read it.

Because I do have to be drawn back to my own books again and again and again. I love libraries. I use them, I revel in them, I want to spend the rest of my life working in and around and for and about them. So I tend to use university and public libraries more than I use my own. Which means that in order to be drawn back, there must be something on my shelves that cannot be replaced by someone else's.

I tend to prefer following paths that are known to me and the exercise of cataloging my books online is how I choose to become ever more familiar with these breathing bits of other people's lives and works that define such a large part of this space. I had long wanted to just get the lifetime account, but put it off and off and off until finally I could not justify having rated more than 1000 movies on Netflix, and only 168 on LibraryThing.

Next time: Thoughts on writing reviews (because you know I can talk).

Just one of those mornings

I've begun practicing yoga again. Patiently and slowly and with all manner of understanding that because I am a crazy person, I will get far too into it without some kind of balance. I love meditating. I think that it is a wonderful way to spend an entire day. I also love cobra and leg stretches and would likely spend far too much time doing those as well.

Fortunately, I do have a sort of low threshold for absolute irresponsibility. Sort of Low. Sort of Absolute.

One of the issues that I struggle with, as many creative types have found themselves doing for the last, well, since the beginning of creative types, is the focusing thing. Difficulties with or pertaining to focus have been prevalent enough that I probably could construct my autobiography around them. No jokes about staying focused long enough to finish it, please. Balance is a good thing, and in a constant state of flux, so I ought not be too surprised that in my quest for balance, I'm almost always in a constant state of flux.

Fun times with self-aware poets, eh?

(the cat, who has successfully stalked my lap, is now sliding off of it. i am not helping or hindering her. i am just giggling. very softly.)

This morning found me a bit cranky, owing to temporary physical blerg. I am not fond of being cranky when there is no one to expel it at. Home is not a place for that kind of thing. I like it here, why muck it up?

Mind you, it did take about 20 minutes to get around the complaining to the place where activity became possible and rational thought entered the conversation and I could get up and get on with everything. This is the part that I forget about every time I get around to changing my life on purpose: the part where I'm a stubborn cranky-pants. Every Single Time, I forget. It's kind of ridiculous - like Midwestern drivers who are always So Surprised when it snows. Assholes.

That's really not the point, I was just writing there because I find that just saying a thing doesn't actually tell anyone what I want them to hear. Particularly me. And since I do reference these bloggy bits on a not even remotely regular basis, I oughta leave something that is communicative and whole for FutureMe to read and nod and remember the entirety of the morning and why it matters that in the middle of gentle morning twists, I looked out of the window onto a snow-covered late winter day and thought of Agra and a foggy morning street behind the entry wall.

It makes no real sense. Which is normally not something I notice or acknowledge as important. Sense is best left to people who do not spend a whole lot of time in my company, including me. Paradox does not startle or confound; I am not undone by different perspectives. And yet. Between the almost constant deja vu, and now this - I will be happy in the library for a few hours today - nested in the spaces left by the covers of books I will never have the time to read.

Thinking about Love and other regulated activities

I started thinking about this blog as I was enjoying my Valentine's Day Week celebrations. As a single woman who lives with cats and her parents at the same time, there is some expectation that I'm to be bitter or apathetic or, at the very least, desperately obsessed with someone unsuitable, unlikeable and inaccessible. (We are, of course, going to ignore my revolving door of movie star crushes. Because I said so. And they aren't really the point.) That I'm going to somehow miss out on a holiday that claims to celebrate the joyousness of love.

It finally struck me this year that I could take advantage of my status as a single person and make whatever plans I wanted whenever I wanted them to bask in the holiday. I painted my nails. I never do that. I watched a movie that I'd been wanting to see. I sat quietly with a cat on my lap and just listened to her breathe. All of the things that I would have enjoyed with someone - the right someone - at my side. Which got me to thinking about my friends.
Which lead directly to thinking about India and traveling.
Which lead to population issues and driving instructions.
Which lead to normalizing posters - expectations communicated through advertising - the power of the spoken word to define a life whether that life requires outside definition or not.
(and since this is a train of thought I ride a lot, I've got quite used to the stops.)
Which got me to thinking about how impossible it is to standardize human beings, and how often that is exactly what people try to do.

It is easy to think of standardized shoppers and workers and politicians and archetypes. It is a bit startling when the easy thoughts of generalized expectations lead on to something like Valentine's Day.

We celebrate the holiday of a man who was martyred, and so the tale goes (altho the facts are a bit imaginary) he was martyred for performing weddings for soldiers, directly against the order of the Emperor Claudius II who believed that unmarried men made better soldiers. Learning that the facts are unfactual is a bit of a downer, but we'll pretend I didn't learn that part and go on.

It is not the spending or the gift-giving that I think of when I consider the standardization of lovers. It is the constant repetition of the form: one man and one woman and nothing and no one shall be loved as much as these two love each other. Friendships are not important. Family is only sought, never received, never expected, never involved. Co-workers are co-cattle. And please don't consider changing the sex or number of the people in the basic relationship, because there is nothing stable in the world if you do that.

How many romantic movies are about a man and woman who are only barely involved in family life and function solely as the subject of a spot light in the life of a friend group? How often is the word 'bromance' used as something kind of meaningless or sketchy? And, yes, as a woman who shared a home with another woman for more than two years, it is old and immature to believe that every female friendship involves naked pillow fights. And it is a dealbreaker. Then again, I also like my friends quite a little bit and do not tolerate being around people who can say nothing good about the people they claim to like. It is my choice to love the people around me and my choice to be around people I love.

But what about this world that has such issues with individuals loving other individuals, to the point that while in my country there is a need to keep the Church and the State separate, there is no need to see that regulating marriage is allowing the State to regulate Love. Married people are given perks that single people are not - socially, legally and economically.

In a world that is obsessed with zombies and robots and vampires taking over - things which are not human, things which do not make human decisions, things which are inhumane at best - the conversation about what makes a human being different than a robot or a zombie or a cow is less and less easy to have. Affection is a thing we share with other mammals, not just primates. We do, however, feel something that we elevate to a position of Proof of God: we can love each other. In our little skull prisons, we imagine the suffering and the joy and the stories of other people and sometimes those imaginings involve a greater concern for the happiness of another person than for ourselves - people call that love, the thing that takes you out of your selfishness and brings you into the world of other humans.

I think of how much it matters to hear the laughter of my friends. How easy it is to be with them. Not to have to speak. To debate the merits of pickles. The gift of dappled sunshine and a light breeze.

It is no grand adventure. It is not covered in hearts and flowers and balloons and it doesn't cost me anything.

To me, this is love. Whatever you call it, it is part of our human experience. Another very real part of our human experience is the inability to be standardized: it doesn't work, it never has, at some point people will stop following orders or suggestions or subliminal messages and they will resent the intrusion.

Humans will continue to love as humans will. Unstandardized. Legal or not. It is a only a lazy and desperate act of commodification and mechanization that does not see this. And it will fail. It always does.

My prayers to those who are in the center of the fight.
My respect to those who support them.
My love to all.

Fun with Misreadings

I enjoy those moments when the words my brain reads are only slightly similar to the ones that are printed for my reading convenience. For instance, one of the self-motivational things that Barnes&Noble sells reads something like Creating Your Life blah blah blah, and I read it as Cheating Your Life and then ignore the blah blah blah's because that's just fucking funny.

Today, in the midst of getting around to reading through the messing about with cats and moving boxes, I picked up a DVD on which is printed Live Your Dream. And I read Live Your Brain. And it made me happy. Happy enough that it's on twitter.

And happy enough that it's hanging in front of my window.

The part that really giggles me is the part where the little tassley bits are skulls made from bone that I got from a random ex. The stuff you find lying about the place, I tell ya.

Head in a Trashcan Day

Cold cold cold out there. Just like most February days.

I wrote in my journal this morning, a feat which lead to many smiles, and also to the search for a notebook as yet unfilled. I found one. And there was rejoicing in the land. Well, not in the land of Ethel, who has been following me around for the last several days just waiting for me to provide her with lap. She spent several minutes with her head in a trash can earlier this morning. I was adding books to my LibraryThing account and generally being internally brilliant. The head-in-a-trashcan move was her way of staying entertained. I don't think it was a message of any kind.

I really shoulda got a picture. Hm. Well - here's one of her hanging out in the rungs of an upturned bar stool. Just so you know that this is a Thing That Happens in my house.

Probably just over half of my books are now on my LT account. Interestingly (well, to me), (I'm having comma placement issues) about half of the books listed in my LT library are not in my physical library. They belong to proper public or university libraries or are just for wishing upon. le sigh. I am considering the paid upgrade. Honestly, it's not like LT isn't incredibly useful and made of a fantastic community. Book nerds, baby, Book nerds. Another le sigh, shall we?

Since I got the 1st issue of Nix, I've been reminded of writing that I want to do that is not (repeat Not) Mary Sue fiction. I am so stupidly excited about this that I cannot even tell you. I really will have to go and find my skinny and elusive drawing friend. We will discuss things. And then I will discuss other things, less like fiction and more like libraries with another person. And I will make a Valentine this weekend.

*headshake*
But back to the part about writing: I just like reading and writing non-fiction better than anything else unless it's well-done fairy taling or has visual art to go with it (comic books, my dears, comic books (only not superhero comic books unless there are no supe types with bulging bits and scanty cloths covering them (it's not good story-telling and does nothing for the readers (at least not when the readers are me)))) (also, didja ever notice that the Doppler effect of nested parenthetical expressions only ever goes in one direction - like the words are just headed toward you but will never get there because you've already read them and then gone on by the time all the closing parentheses have their say?) (yes, this is a thing that I thought of while trying to go to sleep last night.) (you should hear me go on about sandwich making) (I'm actually not joking there.)(at all)(it's the only part of Mostly Harmless that I liked right off the bat.)

Right. Non-fiction. So I write a couple of reviews yesterday afternoon, and one of them was fairly well-written about a book that I've not really got any emotional attachment to, and one of them was a piece of dreck. Absolute dreck. Brilliant! I can write terribly, post it on the internet, share it with people I'd really like to like me and still sleep well at night and still be a desirable source of heat for the heat-seeking feline (who is curled up wedged between my wrists as I type this. She's got one paw down on my thigh for support lest I move too suddenly and she roll off the desk. It's a smart thing for her to do. I am a bit UnpredIctaBle. *snerk*).

Also, and this is the Big Main Point: I skimmed a few old journal entries after writing this am and found that this is a time of year that makes the difference in the rest of it: when I write and read and organize and blah de blah de dooby doo, it matters in ways that are terrifying and positive and show up sometime in the early summer. My Lent begins in just under two weeks, and I'm terribly excited about it. Partly because it means that I get to spend 40 days (no breaks for a Sabbath in which I do not believe or fasts that will do nothing but build jealousy and self-righteousness) doing the things that I love to do without anything that distracts me from them.

Last year's Lenten experience was tremendous, altho a bit more Puritanical that this year''s will be. Nice thing about learning: you can change how things get done.

Update: Ethel did it again and this time I grabbed the camera just in time!

The Most Beautiful Thing I Have Ever Written

I just found this. I remembered writing it, but after I moved out of the apartment I lived in at the time, it seemed to vanish. As if it had never happened.

It had. It is real, and it is still beautiful, and I can no longer remember more about the writing of it than the clues I've left myself, the same clues I've left every reader. I am audience, weighted.

Context: Watched Simon Schama's Power of Art. This was written after the one about Bernini. (As an aside, I should note that I am rendered hopelessly enthralled in whatever Simon Schama is talking about owing to a massive weakness in most of my body parts whenever he starts speaking. I'm okay with it; it's fun. But I'm also big on a certain degree of disclosure.) The show is available at the Lincoln City Libraries. I refer to Martha Nussbaum in the piece. The book I refer to is called Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. It took me almost a year to read, and reading it changed my life.

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And now the time of stillness as I sit and wrestle with my memory of the last 20 minutes. Bernini thawed the chill of this day with its wind and threatened snow and gray showing all the budding flower plants almost, no, not almost, very clearly a shock as I have not even begun to think of what that means as I carry on. How closely studied can St. Teresa be through a television set/camera/commentator? How devastating the thought-notion of creation without access to the inside, the organs forever out of reach beyond her teeth. Beyond her pose what exists to make this real, and there I am lost in the worlds of flesh shown sublime not perfect. Sensuality without death or disfigurement. Michelangelo made marble float in light, Bernini granted it blood and heartbeats. I needed flan after all that Chocolate flan in a box on my counter next to the bag of muffins, cookies and cheesecake that I bought in the bakery where everything smells alive and sweet crusty with honey not cane. I smiled like I'd just been kissed. Words are not marble, no chisel or mallet or smoothing substance will ever render hard stone into such fluid stuff as lives in my hands and my throat getting in the way of every thought feeling action merely by its presence. Every mark in marble is seen, must be accounted for in some way or another and while it may seem presumptuous to speak about an art form wholly unfamiliar to my hands and muscles and language, there is something deliberate in the sculpturing of such as Teresa's ecstasy that sets the tone for the total re-creation of self and habit as Bernini is said to have undergone. We artists create in a sense of odd awareness no matter how adept or prolific or focused we are. It is no small element of that life to be responsible for its definition, no matter what that set of characteristics may be. The world of the bakery a golden yellow smelling warmth sending gifts into the world all gray like a movie, hard angles and biting wind and me typing in fingerless gloves at my table, drinking tea. Waiting for the laundry to be finished so I can start the next load, next chore, next round of this life in the afternoon: Chocolate flan and tea with Rembrandt. There is no asceticism in this nature of my home and body and brain as they wander about, running the internal mental thrums up next to the articulated finger motions, the sounds that do but throw my focus off like a girl in a scary wood. I would know more of the workshops of these artists, their sketches and plans and tools. I would hear the work marble uncovering its inner self in the form of veins and shades where the heat advanced and retreated slowly or consistently between the outside and the center. Where the pressure left its mark.

Thoughts of cities and art and humanity and the sublime and exaltation swirl about, but the DVD player is insistent and there are a least 3 more loads.

I wonder if it is right to continue Nussbaum's arguments about the different ways of experience perfect love into the world of Caravaggio and Bernini? It is impossible for me to see a Caravaggio without feeling weak at the knees, even when I do not know it is his work. The visceral nature of these sublime moments reaches a depth of understanding that I have found in few other ways and never as palpably. I wonder how it is that it is a purer thing to let go your self in witness to some great panorama of oil and light and shadow than it is in the act of sharing that self with another who is presumably sharing with you. I expect that says more about my own human frailty than that of all humans, but I am happy to know a place where it can happen, where the loss of self, even for a moment in awe or forgetfulness is the important part of the work. The artists very likely did, it would be a poor audience that did not show the same respect.

31 March 2009

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