Good, long morning

The phenomenon of all three of us being up and relatively active before 10 on a Saturday morning has me smiling and wanting to hide in my room to read and write and make lists and pray and ponder and plan.

The kittens are being very adorable and running all about like the small bundles of barely confined energy that they are. The constant distractions of little grown-ups. And Anne moved the microwave.

Caved in and checked out yet another book before leaving work yesterday. I am reading through our collection of Jose Saramago. The libraries have only the novels that have been translated into English. I am pleased that there are about 10 of them, but am discovering that I would rather read them in the Portuguese. The story isn't hampered by the translation, at least it reads clearly and well, but the language is so specific that I wonder how much of the poetry is lost. I suspect that my feeling is mostly inspired by my desire to learn another language. The motivation to travel frequently brings this need or desire to the fore of my thinking.

Today is a good day. I am glad to be in it.

Beautiful little story

In the midst of my recovery from The Book, I found a little small book by Jose Saramago and fell in love with it as I knelt in the aisle between the shelves not concerned with the other patrons, not feeling the need to take the little book out of the library with me, but feeling the need to finish the lovely tale before my dishy lunch with Andy.

The Tale of the Unknown Island.

It starts with a man petitioning the king for a boat.

Writing that could break through the fog that I'd walked in for two days, the beauty of it was stunning. It's a fairly quick read. A nice stop on the way to whatever else sucks.

Well, of course I was right

The Book is read from cover to cover. In that order. Was informed last night that there is to be a gathering of folk to discuss on Friday, therefore a gag order is in place until then.

Not surprisingly, I am still recovering, after spending six hours at the Coffee House, barely moving, nose in book, almost totally unaware of anything going on around me - with the minor exception of the young woman who had picked up her copy, read the first page or so and then immediately got on her cell phone to call people and tell them she was reading it (hunh?!), and the man who sat down across the end table from me who was startled every time I giggled out loud. I do that. It happies me that I do it, but I can understand how it would be startling.

Anne has it right now, and I'm doing my best not to bombard her with questions. Failing miserably, of course. So, where are you in the book? Are you liking it? Etc.

I will not go on to drop hints or give spoilers or anything. I am not that person.

I am satisfied. And I was right. It is done.

The Grand Cleaning Out

The decision, in it's current permutation, is to travel for 6 months around the Mediterranean and then see what happens after.

That doesn't change the trend in the house towards Anne and Sarah getting rid of shit. I have taken 6 boxes of books to A Novel Idea. 5 shelves worth of books. 5 of them. Started going through the closet today. Probably already have 2 boxes worth on my bed. Still many many to go through. I do have a pile started for Sierra, although I have to remember to add Johnny Tremain to the stack.

Threw out 3/4 of a box worth of papers, with the box. That was fucking exciting.

Made some executive decisions:

Martha Grimes goes. MamaPapa have them all, there is no need to duplicate.
Eco stays. Because I fucking love him. I have all of the fiction and it will take a certain amount of focused energy to collect all of the non-fiction. Unless I am patient and wait for some other fanboy to publish the anthology in 3 volumes including never before collected articles on the cultural phenomenon of Underoos and bad cop shows. I would be this fanboy. Yes. Yes I would.

The Boondocks collection stays. Someday it will be joined by others: Achewood, Pibgorn, MacHall, Sandman and anything else I love that I can find in bulk.
Oh, I remember. I bought a book today. yeah, I know, bite me. It's an Everyman Library Collection book of creepy ghosty poetry. I am totally sold on the Everyman Library Collection books. I have one of TS Eliot's poetry including The Waste Land (dear goddess I love that poem). I am thinking of taking about 4 or 5 of them with me on my travels. They are smallish, well-made and just the thing for a me.

It is fucking hot out.

Love to all.

I am S E Johnson, a Family Company

Really not here today. Spent most of the morning at home trying to convince myself to get going as I have two whole days off in a row once I'm done at work today and there is no reason to get all lazy now.

Riiiiight.

Memory is such an odd thing. Especially if you consider that most events are read differently by the people involved in them even as they are taking place. Went through another box of papers and crap yesterday and while I understand why I kept the things that I did, it feels good to be getting rid of so much of it. Just talking to one of my co-workers about my upcoming travels (not leaving until the beginning of March at least) and how the memories that I record in one place in one way may require a different method in another place. Kind of a fun thought, that. I have no patience with cameras and video even less so, which is going to demand a certain degree of creativity on my part, I suspect. Maybe a Polaroid I can handle. My strength is in words, not necessarily making images with images and color. I can draw, and that might be a handy skill to pick back up before leaving. Hell, it would be handy to have now, just because life is good and there are plenty of ways to record it now.

Knowing that we are all leaving is making it important and easy to be here in the house now and enjoy it while we are still here. Strange to think that while the relationships are not finite, the situation definitely is.

I hope someday to live again with people and feel as good about it as I do right now. This is new for me. I like it.

Realized this morning that I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen in the next five years. I love it! No plan, no routine, no obligation to anything but being the best version of me that I can cuz that works out pretty damn well. Good people around, good food to be eaten, good books, good family, good home. Plus, I really like being me - it's a fun place to be, my brain.

Thinking of Chandreyee in CA having traded tarantulas for painted walls and wine glasses without even realizing that she'd done it. I see why she misses them.

Now I'm all thoughtful and in need of something to fill my gut. Will get back to work.

Love to all,

S

Dillemma-ing day

to blog or to work more on nothing because there's nothing left to do outside of packing boxes, which is not advisable as the strained back is a direct result of said activity.

to journal this morning or to play solitaire for over an hour because I was afraid of what the words that came out of my pen would be.

some few things make more sense. the words in my head, because I believe that words have power, are becoming more clear. meaning that they make enough sense to me that I can see myself saying them out loud to a person, one for whom they would be intended. nothing specific, just clarity and understanding. without these things I am lost and floundering in a sea of mismatched vocabulary and there is nothing good about that.

daydreams about punching people again. not just random people, specific ones. the same specific ones that i've always had, although I have lost the need to deck joe. pete is still open game. and there are a few girls whose heads i'd love to bash in. I figure anne can take care of her own ex-boyfriends, so i'm not waiting around for just any old opportunity. now, the fact that I probably would not be physically able to perform said smack-downs is a huge factor as well. so, instead of feeling weak and unable to live up to my own expectations, I read books.

two more of the Camilleri mysteries featuring the lovely moody grumpy forty-something Inspector Montalbano. While talking to a co-worker yesterday, we started describing him as a Sicilian version of Greg House. I love House. Love the show, love him. Haven't seen fit to get the whole thing and watch it obsessively, I seem to be hanging on to the fringes of detachment at home, but I love it just the same.

Another co-worker overheard parts of our conversation and asked me later if I am dating said Sicillian version of Greg House. He said he couldn't visualize it. I'd like to be able to say that I agree with him. But, I like grumpy ego-maniacal men. I am grumpy and ego-maniacal at times, and it's nice to be able to be around someone who gets it. Although, they usually don't. They tend to be all shocked and weirded out by it. And then they go away. With something much younger and totally yuck.

This has happened over the years more than once, I am sorry to say. (for the naysayers: I historically marry against type, allowing myself to be the grumpy one in the relationship.) I like people who are what they are, and who are willing to speak their minds, and whose minds are even goofier than mine. And I have respect for people who can be angry at the world and not expect me to do anything to fix it. Because that's not my fucking job. When I love someone, it is because of who that person is right now, not chipper or sleeping or sweet or wounded or in the future or in the past, right now, moods and all, breathing here in the space that we are sharing.

I suspect this has more to do with my commitment-phobia (did I mention that I have one of those? yeah, that was a fun morning) than any romantic ideas I have about acceptance and adventure and the nature of true love. Because how can you share a life with someone who cannot bring himself to share his life with you? It's a built-in exit strategy. Only, I don't want out of the relationship I have with myself, so I think I have to do something about that.

In other news, new self-help book coming out called Feel Good Naked. I think I might have to read it. The whole point of it is that if you can feel good about yourself in the raw, you can feel good about yourself in the not-so-raw (would that be cooked?) and that does nothing but help the spiral of goodness and light that lead to salvation here on earth (not a religious version of salvation, just that whole "happiness" thing. Speaking of, did I write about the blurb I read from an interview with a psychologist who has written a book about how stupid humans are about what will make them happy and how we never seem to think about the fact that just as sadness with pass, so will happiness? cool stuff)

Someone got Shot in downtown Lincoln last? What?! What the fuck city do we live in?

Andrea Camilleri. I recommend him.

dream

in the dream there was a man, he winked at me as if to say that he knew the joke and so did i, he wasn't trying to trick me, he wanted to see if i could see how he was doing the trick. it was a coin, a large one - maybe an inch and half across, silver in the middle with a gold edge, like the old francs. on one side the coin was worth 39 cents, on the other side it was worth a dollar. one of the sides had a smaller coin attached to it - magnetically, maybe? he would flip the coin - not toss it, just flip it over and the littler coin would be there, and the player would make a bet with his own coins. it didn't depend so much on what side came up, rather how well the player could match the value based on what he had in his possession. i can't remember which side had the little coin, the dollar or the 39 cents.

somehow it seems important.

evening at home

This is one of those moments when I am aware so much of why my husbands found me so intolerable.

Reading the latest Martha Grimes - Dust. I am terribly in love with Melrose Plant. I have been for years. Never mind that he's fictional, or that even if he weren't fictional he would still be something like 20 years my senior. He's just so unhappy and so content to be that way. Grumpy. Practically an alcoholic when he can get around to it. His friends are elitists and utterly silly. Did I mention the part about the house? The estate. Yep. And the days filled with sitting in front of a fireplace reading or mucking about. I could almost not mind the regularity of murder.

Yes, I read detective novels. And instead of being head over ass for the detective, I pick his moody moldy buddy to fall for, this is the best thing ever written ever in the history of anything. He drinks Old Peculiar. And he reads French poetry. For fun. Because he can. He still smokes.

With Anne off wandering the wilds of Southern France and Brad negotiating the wilds of Lincoln, the house is mine and the CD is classical. But, remember, this is me. Classic Wynton. Trumpet solos by Wynton Marsalis. Cuz, come on, if Ken Burns is going to act like the history of jazz is wrapped up entirely in this family, I can get behind the classical music detours every now and again. Portuguese blues next.

Water crackers, bland goat cheese (oh, did I mention the part about the blandness of the goat cheese? I'm going to try white wine to see if I can pick up any flavors whatsoever that might be getting over-powered. by the water crackers. yeah. the texture is gorgeous, of course, but come on, goat cheese should make your lips go a little tense for a moment, get your tongue off the bottom of your mouth, wake you up to eating, not inspire drunkenness as a last resort for flavor.) but the wine is cheap and enjoyable and i have a carton of smokes at my leisure.

My, but I am insufferable, in that whole i-like-what-i-like-and-fuck-you-
for-interrupting-and-judging-and-i-hope-you-don't-mind-being-married-to-
an-icebox way. It is good to know that there are some things that haven't changed.

Thank the Goddess.

Life and Times of a Toad Suck Shake

Iconium, MO.
From the Book of Acts.
More later - my father tells me good stories.

yes, yes, the day goes on

there is an intermittent hissing noise coming out of something that controls the highly unstable air quality and temperature of this area. it sounds like highly controlled competition peeing.
Country Weekly comes out every two weeks.
Today is the kind of a day where it occurred to me at a very unfortunate moment that it's incredible that the months of the year are called the same thing every year and that every year they happen in the same order. Repeat any common word to yourself over and over and over again until it becomes not only meaningless but almost impossible that the word ever had meaning. Leave it alone and the meaning comes back. I am teetering back and forth between being and being in the reserve room (for that read: not being). Reading for the book, reading for work, reading at all or am i just processing the letters in the alphabet to guide my feet and hands to the right place on the shelf?
I will enjoy processing this so much later - along with the Dyer déjà vu and the connection because of the rain and how is it that lunch at the coffee house is so inexpensive, really? and why oh why does every-fucking-body feel the need to go the noodles place on the one day that I want to go?
must head off and work some more and lost my sense of the reality of words and place and meaning. Yay!

I know you're seeing things

I bought myself a composition book at walgreens the other day. and pens. it is a gift i have not given myself for more than a few years. many many years more than a few in point of fact. it is good. the words are closer to my hands and i have been finding them more easily.

i am reading a book called "yoga for people you can't be bothered to do it." it's a travelogue. seriously. this last 6 days have been so utterly uneventful and yet it seems that so much has happened. it's like the reverse of being on a train watching the world go by. i feel it in my stomach, that slightly off-kilter rocking sensation where normal is moving and standing still makes you sea sick. i drink and have not gotten past tipsy - not even the spins. i am still working on the 2nd bottle of tequila - no, brad, i have not finished it yet. and then i wake up and everything is all topsy turvy. my head is dry, my mouth is spinning, my stomach feels full before i eat, i am fascinated by the colors outside and find my room a terrorizing place to be.

my room. my bedroom. shared by the kittens and wigs. also now the place of pilgrimage for visitors come to see the babies. it is deeply troubling. no, it is more than that. i fucking hate it. i hate that i take people up to see the tiny beings who need to sleep and eat and learn their mother and their family. i hate that we are going to send them away in 8 weeks. (not because i want to keep any one of them. they are moving out.)

i don't want anyone in my room besides me on the best of days. anne has taken to knocking - it's like we live in a dorm. and yet, there is nothing correct about keeping potential families away from the kittens. there is nothing inappropriate about it. and once i move them into anne's room, i'm not going to hate it any less. it's the same thing that i go through when folks visit to see newborns or just to take a look at your new place. you can't interact with the babies - they are too fucking small and if there are too many people around, wigs will move them and move them and freak out and there will be paranoid, stressed out, angry felines everywhere. however, if people don't play with them, they will never be socialized (or so the books tell us).

to me, they are not cute. they are incredible and amazing and loud and they already have their own personalities, which is good because two of them look exactly the fuck alike. they fight and they mewl and they feed and hiss and yawn and get their butts licked and hate it. one of them nuzzles. one of them climbs already. spleen is a boy. ew is a girl. one of the wigs jr's is a girl and one a boy. i think. sexing kittens is not tricky business (what they hell do they care) but i am no vet and haven't had enough experience with this to presume absolute knowledge. i am thinking of finding a place where they can be visited that will allow room for viewing and later room for playing without crowding anyone.

i have jet lag and have not travelled anywhere. everything is covered with the gray of coming to be, and nothing is there yet. that blur of definition in progress that comes when my world finds itself transformed into letter and rhythm and line and action. dogs approach me, cats don't run away, fireflies land on my hand without coaxing. it is not a wrong place, it is different. and the streets and houses and workplaces and people are all the same. they look different to me, as if in a dream only they are real, they are who i know them to be. perhaps this is the kind of thing that i will know from now on. perhaps this is why the writer of that book is so involved in philosophical discussions about the reality of place and the possibility of mental interference on that reality.

my glasses are repaired and yet i find myself taking them off because i see better that way.

Last time for stuff kind of thing

Seeing as how I only have another 11 1/2 months in this town, there are some things which I would like to do here before i do not have the chance to do them again. It's a thing, it helps me keep my focus and enjoy my time here to the best of my abilities - kind of a no regrets kind of a thing.

Movies on the Green starts July 12 and runs every week into August. I'm thinking of skipping Kramer vs Kramer, because it is a movie that I have no need to see, personally. However, 2001? oh, yeah. and M*A*S*H? on the Green? Fuck, there is no way I'm missing that!

I am still up in the air about Jazz in June. I've been. It's been cool. It's fucking hot this year. I don't think I need to put myself through that. Plus, there's yoga class to go to - why complicate things with more than one planned event an evening? I have a hard enough time with more than one planned event in a week!

Must go to Roca Berry Farms this year, as I have never been there before. There was something else, but I can't remember. No need to go to a football game, I've been in the stadium to watch the marching band. That was enough. It was cool, but whatever.

Been to Morrill Hall, never been to the Peace Park. Haven't visited all of the lakes around town - and there are quite a few. Not doing July Jamm again. It has gotten pointless.

The only movie theatres that I haven't been to in town are the new State and the Joyo. In my world, the Joyo is more important. It's actually a part of my family history. Back in the day before children were had by Mel and by Leatha, they were first wed and broke and would save up for the movies once a month. Sometimes they would go to the drive in, taking along a bag of home-popped popcorn. Sometimes they would go to the Joyo. The would go the Dairy Queen on special occasions and cooked at home all of the time. Their office had their desks front to the front and walls of books around them. The crazy quilt that hung in the office in Chicago hung in their office in Lincoln. This town is the town of their history for me. It is the town where my father's mother lived and would call to see if Mama was making fudge. She didn't call every time Mama made fudge, but she never called to ask about it if she wasn't. Here was where my father's father worked at the K Street Power Plant, where he drank and quit drinking in order to save his marriage and his fatherhood, where he is buried. I am glad that I moved here and have my own footsteps to leave behind. I would not leave without knowing that I knew as much of this place as it does of me. But this is not the city of my life. It is not the city of my death. I have distractions here that surpass my abilities to ignore them most days. Every corner brings the possibility for yet another unexpected, potentially undesirable encounter. There are more than enough happy sightings, but I am not of here and it is letting me know.

It's that final fuck before the end is absolute. Best make it a good one.

attempts to focus on a furry day

Rule to add to the list of on dating: never date anyone who doesn't hold the deed to their own ego

Finished a book yesterday called The Terra-Cotta Dog by an Italian man named Andrea Camilleri. What do they call those things? Police procedurals, that's it. Stupid stupid name. It was wonderful and thoughtful and human and there was food food food - no recipes and no gastronomic over-indulgences, just a man who likes to eat and who hates publicity and who is very happy with the routine of his much to the consternation of at least one woman - i like that one of the women in his life is attached without being pathetic. We'll see if the positive feelings continue throughout the next few books. Oh, did I mention that there are more? Yes, there are more. There are shows on Italian television. Happy.

The brains of the story don't show themselves right away, which is kind of nice. By the end, I was totally impressed. Made going back to Hamilton kind of depressing, like going out to lunch and having wonderful conversation with one friend, knowing that dinner will be with someone intriguing but temporary and pointless. Nothing life changing. I do tend to find the ones who will totally fuck up my perception of the world. It's the smallest changes that do the most to change things on a large level. Perhaps that explains my historic pattern of choosing companions whose world views are so drastically different from my own. It is easier to maintain a sense of myself in the face of overwhelming challenge. Then again, it is easier to stay the same when no change is even considered because it is coming from such an opposing force.

The Italian translation works well. I have no idea how it reads in the original. I think I will get around to learning Italian just for the pleasure of reading these and much by Eco in the original. Now that I have the time and energy to do this, well, life is full and good for me. It is what happens when I finally get around to letting go. There is not much in my life than can come back to haunt me that cannot be dealt with somehow. Not that I want to deal with any of it at all ever, mind, I mean, that would be stupid, yeah?

I am again remembering how much of knowing me is in knowing my words. Not authorial intent, not purpose or meaning or symbol. The knowing is in the reading, in the rhythm, the words, the flow of my mind as I let it loose through my fingers. It is a part of me desiring to be a woman of action, words are action, the more carefully I consider them, the more true the action becomes. It is not fair that one who will not read my words will not know me, it is a potentially unreasonable demand to make, though if the intention is to know me, the demand is a necessary one. It is not as though everyone does not place such demands on others. Some demand patience, some an air purifier, some need attention to phone calls and emails and drunken ramblings that repeat themselves with regularity. It is telling, those demands. A tell that I have no need to investigate. I'll leave that to people who analyze relationships, not to the ones who have them.

beginnings again, and again, and again

Yes, yes. I am already bored at work. It will not last long, and I only have a few minutes before other people show up and I start greeting them with "good morning" instead of "good afternoon," so I will take advantage of it.

One of my difficulties with blogging is that I rarely take the time to write a draft and then post. If I ever get around to writing poetry or a short something that I'd like others to see, that will be different, but even these little essays on life and personal events seem somehow scattered when I finally sit down to write. I do not know if it's just part of my process of writing, in order to find my rhythm in the act of writing my brain goes blank and then has to be jump-started, or if I just do better when not typing, or what, but there it is.

These last few days have been very eventful in my psyche. It is a time of year of many birthdays in my life, of people close to me physically and people absent from my completely. One dead almost 9 years, more than a few removed from me by distance and severed connections, a handful of peripheral acquaintances, a few friends and one of my roommates. And then, of course, the yearly facing up to the fact that I am getting older. I like getting older. Childhood sucked. Not because of my parents or because I was unhappy. I don't deal well with authority. I never have. As a child, almost every event that took place outside of my home involved a litany of "do this" or "don't do this." I believe that it is the same with most, if not all, children. I took it personally. One of the drawbacks of being preternaturally alert and sensitive.

And then there was this looming sense of loss. Loss of innocence. Loss of trust. Loss of laughter and tears. Loss of loved ones. And the ever awful reality that it is harder to accept that happiness is a perfectly acceptable state of being even in the face of those losses than it is to just be miserable and caught up in them. Yes, the hurt is worse while you feel it and no the void is never quite gone from your world, but it is okay and right and good to go on and not dwell. There can be so much guilt in not dwelling, like you aren't supposed to be happy when you miss someone. Someone died and they will never be around again and somehow you don't lose just a part of you, but all of you and that's what's supposed to happen otherwise the love that you felt for that person has been invalidated. Bullshit. Natural. Still bullshit.

So, I let go. Stopped it. And then.... besides the truly fucked up dreams involving a co-worker of mine appearing in the weirdest places speaking as though he was narrating the events in my head, suddenly there was clarity. Clarity that involved perspective. Clarity that hurt, as clarity does (ever wonder why I take my glasses off so much? yeah, that's part of it). I will not say epiphany, because those get so boring after a while. Which is cool, except that it brought back all of the stuff that I have decided to not focus on so much, which is to say that there are plenty of other things to think about which are much more interesting - why does Laurel K. Hamilton suck so much (There's so much potential, and I do keep reading these awful books, and I just can't stop and well, they are not so much good. Parts are good. Some parts. ow. my brain hurts. At least they aren't going to leave a permanent scar on my brain or my soul)? - can I make a melted crayon mobile with stuff that I have on hand? - do you suppose I can figure out a way to turn old bed sheets into a yoga mat? - what can happen to make the vacuum cleaners work better? - does a cat with wings have any real chance of learning how to fly with them? - do I really only need 4 hours of sleep or is it just my brain taking it out on my body for reasons that probably have nothing to do with me, but could really be figured out if only I were willing to involve myself? - You know, important stuff.

That happened, and there was yoga and today, oh my stars do I hurt! What?! I'll have to stretch out again this afternoon before the roast duck. Did I mention the roast duck? I don't think so.

Also, lots of good food this month. Most of it not bought by me. All of it with good company.

Sodapop is wonderful. It is at the Playhouse. Go and see it next weekend. Buy pop. Laugh. It is good. I tell you this honestly, even above my personal bias (cuz Robie rocks!). It is good.

fun with photos

woke up this morning - at 5 - after what must have been an incredibly deep sleep. don't remember any dreams, though i know that something was going on in there, i just know it.

had some nice chat time with anne and some nice cuddle time with the kitten who is now pacing about and trying to help me type by pushing her soft little face under my thumbs. seriously, Street, there don't need to be that many spaces between words.

but, something that did occur to me, finally, is the scanner, that modern marvel of technology. so, now that i have my new page, after having deleted the other one in a moody drunken snit (which has passed as moods and alcohol do)(originally spelled 'moddy drunked'), i can (and shall spend the morning doing so) add pictures of my life before all of the craziness hit. this happies me muchly.

it is, i think, somewhat telling that there just aren't that many pictures of me from the last 12 years. partly i discovered that i had issues hanging out with folk who only wanted to look at old photo albums and take pictures instead of doing things, and then there was that guy on the Seine a million years ago who tried to tell me that he had no memories without pictures. he did take a picture of me, sitting on a bench, all gray stone and sky and air dressed in black with a notebook, looking every bit the wandering american girl looking for the right indie coming of wisdom film. he upset my reverie on an odd day wherein the only solace i needed at that moment i had found.

i remember him vividly, skinny, brown, Algerian. a man with a country and no nation, being french, but not really because of the nature of colonization and cultural bias. i remember he seemed lost, felt lost, out of place, travelling, looking, holding memories long enough to make them stand still. he had a nice voice and wasn't all that pushy. just bad timing or the wrong question. he would have been better off just taking the picture when i didn't notice. but he wanted interaction. he didn't want to do as i was doing, separating myself from people so that i could step back and see the world for a moment, look at it and try to tell what had changed, how i was to be afterwards. at 16 there is much of that to be had, at least there was for me. i never understood the rationale behind adults telling us that we didn't understand that we were changing, we wouldn't understand for years. i wondered if they remembered as much as they said that they did. it did not engender trust in adults. i knew perfectly well that all was different. every day something was new. i didn't know how to make it a part of me or my life, but i knew that it was changing. and i dove into it with speed that would make a cheetah blush.

it was good. i am glad for it. i do not know what will happen next. i do not have to. i am old enough to not have a plan and to be okay with that.

i am happy and a little bit wierded out to go through these old photos. to see a face that i know is what i carried with me, what i still carry with me, and not to recognize it, not to remember seeing it in the mirror or putting makeup on it, or being willing to accept what other people saw. i forget how mutable things are and have been - the subtle shifts of light that turn blue eyes green or brown or turquoise. the set of the face that makes it seem so removed or placid or angry or pleased. it is not a different face, rather a different set of filters through which it is seen.

my coffee is now cold, and there is fresh to be had. i have many more places to look for photos and scan them in. it will be a good morning and a good day. too gray to move about, too blanketed not to.

Thoughts on the walk to work

Who am I?

I am a creature who floats in and around the world, watching the sun change the color of things all day long, leaving me serene with the coming of night.

I hear the birds and watch the faces of passersby. Critters claim my undivided attention. Moving water commands me to stop and listen, to study the colors of it as it passes rocks, grass, floating bits of debris.

Bridges hold endless fascination for me. I observe cars and their drivers, buses and their passengers.

The stoplight is a never-ending succession of individuals hiding themselves in motion and blinking lights.

Entering the doors of work, I become a part of something, of the smell and feel of books, of the words pored and suffered over and bound into some barely controllable space.

I am undefined and free from structure, autonomous in my responsibilities.

Out of my purse comes, as it must, the length of blue fabric attached to a card, defining me as Staff.

cold feet, active vocab

listening to the news, been playing solitaire, hurting myself on myspace, sitting in a crouch trying to keep all of my bodily warmth from leaving the boundary of my clothes.
Our state wants to make pass a smoking ban for restaurants, bars, etc. I understand that businesses in Lincoln seem to be doing more business since the ban went into effect two years ago. I get that second hand smoke is dangerous and harmful. I get that smoking is dangerous and harmful. I smoke. I do not smoke in front of children and do not see that it is wrong for non-smokers to breathe air that is not polluted in that way. However, the excuse that is being given by lawmakers first, before the quality of health reasoning - fascist much?, is the belief that the ban must be passed statewide otherwise we will, in this state, have cities and towns which lie only a few miles from each other that have different laws! He stated that it is unfair and that it is his desire to even out the playing field for businesses this way.
This is where I say - jackass.
Dangerous attitudes. Even if this goes to a vote, I understand that it is just as likely to pass as not. Those who live in the 3rd district tend to resent governmental control over their favorites passtimes and habits. I wonder if they will have enough to keep the state uneven. I live in such a fucking weird state.

Refinement Paper

In our current age of rampant gentrification, visible in almost every neighborhood in urban (and suburban) America, understanding the history of our fascination with making things beautiful on the outside demands constructive conversations about the end results of the neighborhood improvement projects everyone seems to be involved in somehow. Given that we have now more than 350 years of recorded experience as Europeans on this continent, it behooves us to look at what has become of our endless need for manners and propriety.
As I began reading The Refinement of America by Richard Bushman, I was curious, but slightly concerned. As much as I enjoy spending time in front of museum display cases filled with cups, saucers, pitchers, silverware, flatware and cutlery, the idea of reading an entire book that may well have turned out to be nothing more than a catalog of household items seemed dull in the extreme. Had I taken the time to read the chapter titles before diving into the text, I would have discovered earlier that I was very much mistaken.

Bushman does indeed spend much time discussing household items that seem mundane in their ubiquity and function in our very middle class world. However, he does so in prose that is easy to read, even in its details. He breaks down his chapters into short sections, rarely longer than five or six pages, which make it very easy to get through without feeling intimidated by the statistics. I found myself being pleasantly surprised at how much of what he had to say resonated with me as I thought of my own childhood and the importance of my parents’ wedding china and silverware, the ritual of Sunday dinners and the manners we were expected to learn. It was not infrequent that something in any one of the chapters inspired me to nod in remembrance or agreement.

The book is explicitly organized chronologically, beginning in 1700 and moving forward to 1850. Geographically, it moves from the coastal towns of the Colonies inward to the first cities of the new United States. Thematically, Bushman moves from discussions that focus almost entirely on furniture or some specific household item (like forks) to larger themes of power and culture and the spread of gentrification.

It is rather like taking a course in calculus, where what you learn at the beginning of the course will come back again and again throughout, and you must take care to pay attention because the little things do matter, even though at the time they seem simple and unimportant. Ultimately, forks matter very much. Aside from the handy cocktail party trivia about the appearance and spread of such silverware; the placement, use and ease of use has become very telling in a person’s character and upbringing. The importance of upbringing and ease in gentility and gentrified life is a theme that Bushman introduces very early on which continues, even to the last. And with good reason, as the culture he is describing from its infancy and on is very concerned with such things.

I found the discussion of urban planning especially interesting. The idea that it was a hobby of the unemployed upper classes to design and plan urban areas is ludicrous to me in this day and age, but sadly appropriate for the time. I say ‘sadly’ because there doesn’t seem to be much emphasis on the actual living space of the ordinary people who live in cities. The problem of designing both civic and commercial space is one that brings up another (potentially) peculiarly American urban attitude. Our cities seem to grow the most when the areas devoted to commerce are emphasized. There is very little importance placed on the civic buildings and needs – they become a side thought in the larger cities or take the place of commerce in the smaller ones. Most of our states’ capitols are not the largest cities. Bushman gives the example of London as a European city struggling to meet both needs, and how it functioned as an example to the designers of urban areas in New England.

"The subordination of civic to commercial seems inevitable in middle-class
American, with its homegrown elite based on trade and agriculture and its lack
of titled lords. Commercial London would be re-created in the colonies, it would
seem, not Westminster. And yet the idea of a balanced city with ceremonial civic
space to match its wharves and warehouses would not die. (154)"

As I write this, it occurs to me that Bushman is following a certain bias that we in the States seem to have. He never moves West of Philadelphia. It is telling that this book about refinement, with all of its breadth and intensity, is just as mired in the old ways as the old ways themselves. It is also telling that at no point does he explicitly acknowledge this, perhaps with good reason. We began on the East Coast. Those cities and museums and battlefields hold the monuments of our history. We have moved the manners of the East across the Plains and the Rockies and down to the Pacific. Now, we move the painted facades and quaint looking street signs into long neglected urban areas and dying small towns, without thinking of the larger ramifications or longer term results.

Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. Vintage Books. New York. 1992. 504 pgs.

Also - the bibliography is heaven and the index is wonderful. I wish that fiction writers would do this sometimes.

Warblings from my coffee cup

It is not without a certain amount of trepidation that I look ahead to the beginning of school. Living in a college town that is also a capitol city allows me to see and interact with a constantly shifting group of people (and drivers). I find that I would rather deal with the damn politicians.

I have been in an educational system for 30 years now, starting with montessori when I was 3. In that time I have learned to accept that I will be in an educational system for the rest of my life. Academia is a good place to be and I find that my own version of stability in life is quite happily met there. I am constantly surrounded by thinking people who are also doing what they love to do. It is a heady mix and one that I am loathe to be without.

Having said that: I detest college students. I hate them with a passion that is usually reserved for child molesters and batterers. It's not healthy, and I keep finding amazing peolpe on campus and in the field who totally blast my impressions of whatever class of undergrads or graduate students I may have developed. My illusions get built up, and then they come back to town. Droves of clones looking to get their degrees just to get a better job, generally not even in the field they happen to be studying, who don't pay attention in class, never get passionate about anything while they are sober and who speak of nothing but inanities outside of the classroom, and frequently in the classroom. The romantic ideal of roundtable discussion and socratic method is not an ideal, it is a reality in many worlds and many schools and many classrooms. It is wonderful to be a part of a group of people who are actively engaged in whatever discussion is at hand, even if it devolves into a mass condmenation of any movie with colin farrell in it. It is wonderful to see and hear people's minds change, to feel my own mind change, and to be actively dynamic.

So it hurts my heart when women and men on campus walk around seeming to care more about how they look and how little work they have to do in order to just pass and get out than they do about taking advantage of the environment in which tye find themselves, and not just to further social expectations of marriage and job. I hear stories of women saying that they don't agree with feminism because women shouldn't be expected to think for themselves. I see athletes lugging their beaten bodies around with students who are paid to do their homework and make sure that it gets turned in on time. Leaving class is a parade of flipping cell phones and declarations that class is boring and all anyone can wait to do is get to the bar or the movies or the pool or the tanning booth. Even the nerds are getting in on this! At the coffee house downtown, the only people who actually study are the ones who have a test tomorrow or graduate students.

And don't even get me started on the bar scene. I go to bars where the student population is very very low. I'm older than they are, I can get away with it.

My complaints are not new. People have been lambasting the younger generation for eons. It is not the younger generation that I have such problems with: it is the generations of people who are running around not thinking for themselves and not being actively involved in their own lives. These students are frustrating, not just because I don't understand their need to hypersexualize themselves, but also because they don't seem to have a concept of personal responsiblity. They have parents who will call the departmental offices if their child has a simple question. The number of parents who call for their children has grown depressingly in the last four years. I have done some data collection on this, as I used to work in an academic office, and I've asked people what their impressions are. The number of professors who are being relegated to the role of comedian or entertainer without being able to feel like they have imparted anything of substance is getting ridiculous to me.

There is a counter to all of this, of course. Professors and students who see this problem of mediocrity and are responding, as they always have, with an increased level of creativity and activity. Classes on the literature of science, independent reading courses that grow out of discussions in class because there are so many people interested that there just isn't enough time without it, research oppurtunities that involve undergrads in the work of their professors and in the application of the all of the memorized info and theories, the list goes on. I only hope to be a positive addition to that world, instead of feeling like every time I walk onto campus I am going to be assaulted by waves of apathy and hair product.

On a lighter note, I think I'm going to have go into geography. I'll start with History and then go to Archaeology, but I suspect that my research, which is becoming more and more urban oriented, will, in fact, lead me to my father's old office where I will be ensconced, quite happily, for the rest of my life.

back into the womb

or back out of it, whichever. i can't quite decide this morning. birth is tiring and messy and kind of smelly. my home is kind of the same way right now. been gone for ten days. felt like much longer - combination of working and being in beautiful country and having much done - much more mental space to interact with the world around me without having the constant filter of 'must get something done' in front of me.

to explain further: i am going into hiding, sort of. i have taken some time away from regular job and regular relationship responsibilities and am focusing on my home and my creative outlets so as to create a life that is the one that i want, truly and fully. i have writing to do, a desk at which to do it, a chalkboard at which to line it out or draw it out or whatever and many many ideas which need to be written down and rejected or fleshed out. i have yarn and knitting needles and crochet hooks and many projects in mind. i have a job, perhaps, making stained glass windows again, only this time, it's on my schedule (albeit with deadlines) instead of someone else's. i am thinking of working on a set of designs for glass insects - flies and bees and dragonflies and damselflies and butterflies and such. perhaps i will also work on designs for some of the native plants in the sandhills that i find beautiful and ingtriguing also. the colors will be more difficult to match and the customers for such work more difficult to find, but i would like to do the work of it.

right now, however, i have a home that is stinky. just plain sitnky. it is one of those unidentifiable stinks that is the result of the combination of cats, litter, laundry, dishes, chicken grease and very very high humidity both inside and out. oh, and we smoke indoors. the vacuum helps considerably, but i think the house has only been vacuumed once in the last ten days, so i must do that today. i have sage with which to smoke my room (the dumpster for our building is right outside my west window) which, in combination with doing the laundry, changing the sheets and vacuuming, should return it to a state that is acceptable and even enjoyable to me.

i tire of being social already, and i have only been home for 20 hours. it is a short time. i have only four days and most of that time will be spent doing things that i enjoy and that i know will lead to better things later on in the week.

oh, and myspace is being stupid on my computer, which is why i am spouting off here as opposed to there, which is, i think, slightly better equipped for personal rants than this one was intended to be, but i haven't been here in a while, so maybe it's a good thing to get back in practice, no?

slowly but surely, the world falls together with smiles and a happy sense of predictability. just a mess right now, and i kind of want sugar and much more sleep. only i have slept enough. it is time to wake up.