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.

++++

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

++++

Tea for the morning

noaa.gov - my favorite weather website - showed information last night that made me decide that today is a day to not leave the house. At all. It is a day for reading and for drinking tea and maybe even jamming out to Bitches Brew while I finally begin the process of making room for Lent. More on that not right now.

The thing is, the tea kettle drips like a moody bitch.

Wait, I have to explain: I live with my parents. I did not used to live with my parents; I used to live with cats and stuffed animals in small apartments in various places in downtown Lincoln. I have also been known to live with roommates and the occasional husband, but that doesn't seem to be a good idea, so ... yes.

umm.

I live with my parents in a very large house that has a very large attic. That attic holds all of the boxes of things that we've got stored away because there is not room or need for them right now. Most of my kitchen stuff is up there. None of my books are. There's also a really lot of china and goblets in boxes labeled with my name, which tells me that I'm gonna need that china cabinet when I go. And maybe a few more. eeesh.

It was sort of assumed that most of my stuff would not get unpacked, except that boiling water is kind of a thing that we do around here. We use it for all sorts of stuff: hot chocolate, pasta, hot buttered rum and, most importantly, tea. A saucepot works for boiling water for pasta or rice or eggs. For pouring into fairly narrowly open mugs or tea-pots, it is fail. Just fail.

But we couldn't find their tea kettle. The stress of moving is enough without access so comfort tool, so when I found mine I proudly contributed it to the cause of family happiness. Except, see, I forgot about the thing where the damn spout drips water everywhere. But only when the kettle has been filled past a certain point. If you only fill it 2/3, there is no drip. If 5/6, no drip - but you just try to fill the damn thing 7/8 of the way and then it's the inverse of Mount fucking Vesuvius.

And here's the part where it's important that the people that I live with are my parents, and not my peers: I have forgotten how to be self-sufficient. On my own, I had Ways Around Things that involved study and consideration and specifically placed empty mugs that would catch the splooping water and would then be warmed (yay!) while preventing stove-grody.

Not today. Today I watched the water sploop onto the hot stovetop and heard the crackle and crunch and did nothing but let my eyes float over to the shelf where my mother keeps my special Daughter Cups and wondered if I would take the honey upstairs with me or just season the whole pot of tea in the kitchen.

Links before supper!

I smell cooking happening downstairs.
My stomach is made of macrame knots right now, but damn, does that smell good.

Beautiful things found in my feed:

Friends of the Pleistocene From their sidebar: FOP is dedicated to exploring the conjuncture between landscape and contemporary human activity at sites shaped by the geologic epoch of the Pleistocene (2.588 million to 10000 years BP).
serious thinkers whose acronym spells 'fop'. win.

Legislation forces archaeologists to rebury finds. Not beautiful, not at all. Important is the word here.

A view of the news from the scientist who work in the ground at Archaeology.org. Alternate perspectives.

Part of New Zealand's Submerged 'Pink Terraces' Found and how cool is that? Really? Yeah.

The best news on this list, though?
Civil Rights Activist and Congressman John Lewis to write a graphic novel autobiography focused on civil rights activism and his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Yes.

And from Stumble, because I felt like something else was needed:
Early 1900's in Color
From the site: "In the early part of the 20th century French-Jewish capitalist Albert Kahn set about to collect a photographic record of the world, the images were held in an 'Archive of the Planet'. Before the 1929 stock market crash he was able to amass a collection of 180,000 metres of b/w film and more than 72,000 autochrome plates, the first industrial process for true colour photography"

New stuff from last week

For whatever reason, last week was the kind of week that brought good things on the drifts of snow that we all watched pile up and up and up. I am pleased to say that not only did most of it wait until late January to fall, but I'm pretty stoked for it to all leave and melt in the not too terribly distant future. Last winter was far too long and snowy for any mortal soul, and I'm ready for my move south of the winter, Mr. DeMille.

So, going to college early may not have all of the glamorous perks that I figured it would (then again, I am the stubborn one who lacks all manner of good homework habits), one of the many wonderful surprises was rekindling a friendship with a guy who has just published the first issue of Nix Comics Quarterly. It arrived in my house last week, and I'm writing about only now because my father (ahem ahem) absconded with it and I've only just found it again in the piles of paper that define my space in the living room.

Happily, I loved it. The stories are quick and well-written and Ken's found artists whose work compliment the sort of story-genres very well. Also, he's just wrong in the head and the little blurbs between the stories are just fun. Almost makes me sad for the days of Dr. Pepper and Rum. Almost. But not really. He's accepting submissions for his second issue and if the website doesn't lie, it looks like he's going to be out and about in public and at events doing things this spring.

On a side note: Ken financed the first issue through Kickstarter just as some other fine people have begun doing, and I'm getting to think that this is a wonderful idea for a way to use the Internet that doesn't suck ass.

Also, I love you, Whitechapel.

And!
My webcomics reading has informed me of things that I wish to share!

Like, The Beat and Girls Gone Geek, both comics news sites that have given my daily feed an unwholesome dose of nerd-love and geek-gasms, and frankly, I like them better than Bleeding Cool. Sorry, dudes, but it's true. io9 is still pretty fun, but too much graphics for my little 'puter some days.

And!

Andre's moved his blog to something named Treacherous Grey Matter, going with nomenclature that more accurately represents the state of his brain. Pitch Black is still where it was before (whew, changing feeds is just like 30 seconds worth of work, mang!)

um.
I think that's all.

Oh!
I remember: Love On The Run! YAY. I love this. I love that porridge papers does it. I love that other people love it. I super love that I get to volunteer at it on Sunday morning. (psst: you could come and see me and we could hug!)

From the desk of me

I've moved the furniture around a bit. Mostly in fits of irritation that I've accomplished so little else. Ever.

Also, I like moving furniture around. It's an environment thing. Every season saw a new arrangement in our living room, and I frequently moved the things in my bedroom about as well, in mimicry. I am good at a certain amount of mimicry.

I'm going to buy a very odd lamp and octagonal end table (with storage) once the weather clears up and I can get to work to get my paycheck and put the things on hold.

Anyone who has ever lived in a house with limited closet space will know the struggle of the storage tubs. I do not make things any easier for myself by beginning to collect books for the library that I will eventually be involved with creating. It's five years hence, at least, and yet: literary criticism and anthologies of literature and BF Skinner have taken up residence on the floor of my office.

The cats are restless today because of the wind and the snow and the fact that because of the wind, the snow does not look the same out of every window. Out of the east windows everything is horizontal and apocalyptic. The world to the south is merely blanketed and falling.

And everywhere is chaos. And everywhere go my prayers. I do not worry that there will be no wind to carry them, not in this weather.

I have been happy in the water of Carl Sagan's voice and Cosmos these last few evenings. The show is very specific and careful and yet utterly odd feeling in its organization. The music is familiar and makes things like Coilhouse's blog archive that much more fun to see.



And Warren Ellis tells me of fab blog that I need to read, and now will, and so can you! The Beat: The News Blog of Comics Culture

Dark Roasted Blend has a whole page for Steampunk stuff and links to more of it. That is today's moment of beauty.

My afternoon is undecided. The Chronology of Librarianship, Philobiblon, Possession and browsing the catalog at Lincoln City Libraries for the books of library history I've already read all vie for my attention, as do the lap-seeking cats who seem to find peace only in the act of keeping some human or other firmly attached to a chair.

I may prefer more Cosmos (I'm only on episode 4, after all) to all of that. But I will need to be careful: I've discovered that I'm inadvertently crocheting with my hair.

Be well.
Be safe.
Be joyful.

Too much Too much Too much!

Which, of course, means: WIN.
(without the ! because then you're screaming it instead of simply making the very loud and confidant statement. which is what you're after: loud confidence.)

This blog is also known as Why I Love My Google Reader (it is important to stress that it is MY Google Reader and not anyone else's because no one else follows exactly the people that I do.)(did I mention the part where I've been watching a lot of Fry & Laurie? A Lot.)(yes.).

My Google Reader shares things with me. It tells me that people around the world are doing much more than I am and that I had better get off of my ass and go to the coffee shop and have a read for a bit before going to the store to get stuff to make dinner tonight, which I think will involved carrots and cauliflower and potatoes and sausage and maybe a salad or something. In my world, that looks like this:

Pitch Black

Freakangels

xkcd

Questionable Content (psst: you guys! I totally work there now! except for take out the bread and replace it with books and breakables!)

Warren Ellis

The Guild of Book Workers (I Will Be One of Them)(Oh, Yes. I Will.)

Okay, I have to take a break here and just have a sigh at the cut vellum work. It's gorgeous and amazing and I'm absolutely terrified that anyone would ever let any other human being touch it and yet thrilled that such a thing exists to see and work with. Ready? *sigh*

Fashion for Nerds (I love this woman. Love her. Love her.)(Also, I am Danish, so this entry really spoke to me and my inherent need to layer with fabulosity.)

I went looking for Robin LeBlanc and found her. Then I found This. And now I am thrilled.

Also, I went looking for Friendly Hostility. Sunday may be the day that I read this again - from the beginning and in its entirety.

There is something just wonderful about reading webcomics from the beginning, isn't there? I mean, I love reading books and magazines and all that and I do really enjoy my trades of Freakangels and share them and read them, but I also find a great deal of satisfaction reading all of Devil's Panties or Wapsi Square (I love reading Wapsi Square from the beginning - just because you can and it's delightful) or catching up, with a certain degree of overlap on Sam & Fuzzy.

I suppose I could actually articulate a thought about the observation. I don't feel like it.

Friday is an okay day by me.

Much love to all.

An afternoon with too many words

I am happy to say that my resurrected relationship with Netflix is going well.

Although I have to admit that the constant reminder that my tastes run to the 'witty' and 'quirky' and 'cerebral' is a bit galling on many levels (not least of which is the knowledge that no matter what I try to do, anti-intellectualism will always be a problem in my life (compared to things like hunger, rampant disease, living on a trash heap and war on the street outside, I'll take it)).

My own specificity is hardly a thing I need shoved down my throat. Nor do you need me to shove it down yours, so, yes.

Moving on.

I started a letter to my niece a couple of days ago and then lost it, have found it and added to it and would like to finish it today, only I'm seriously tempted to go on at some length about The Book of Kells and then The Secret of Kells and then scriptoria and the history of texts in the 7th to 10th centuries and how I really want to go to Whitby and Wearmouth-Jarrow and Iona and also Bobbio and Monte Casino and how sublime it is that humans can create such a beautiful thing as a hand-written, hand-decorated and illuminated and bound and covered thing as these texts are. There is nothing of waste in the continued contemplation of a well-turned phrase or deliberate decoration. The repetition of form is what has made us and every other thing on the planet, our attempts to be involved in that creation are occasion enough for pause and reflection.

These are hardly thoughts fit for a 12 year old who is less trusting even than I was at that age. They were the stuff of most of my ramblings over the summer. I fear The Porch may have begun to thrum to the familiar words spoken out in different orders again and again in between dancing princesses and wandering writers seeking ink from artists in communes deep in the jungle, finding reeds born from fungus made of blood. There is a whole story. It is too long to tell right now, and does not fit without the ground I have walked to get there.

I have forgotten how to make the sentences that invite, that fascinate without obligation. There is little of gentleness in my written manner; I am too focused to be less than sharp.

I want to watch a little movie. Something easy and predictable and human. I want Tom Hollander and Eddie Izzard to be brothers running an import business from a shop in the middle of some crowded neighborhood. They live in the world immediately around them and do not worry about the rest of it (a nice counterpoint to the global nature of their business, eh?) until they fall in love with, oh, I don't know, Emma Stone and Rani Mukherjee (who are both blessed with husky voices, yes.) and it's not so very angsty and there's dancing and a bit of spontaneous singing in the shop (I don't know about you, but this is a thing that happens regularly) and it's 3 hours long and somewhere in the middle is an adventure involving a runaway muppet who stole a packet of cookies and also puts sugar in people's potatoes without asking.

Only: surprise! Can't find it. Very cranky.

May have to settle for A Bit of Fry & Laurie again. Season 3, if you can believe it.

Some day I will quit complaining.
and then you will know that I am dead.

Sunday blog of love.

There's a cat on my lap.
My lap has been the site of a cat ever since I returned over a week ago. I am certain that the increasingly cold weather plays a huge role in their need to be on my lap, rather than any desire for companionship or need to make sure that I stay put whenever I am home.

Which is much less lately now that I have a job. Granted it is part-time and minimum wage, but it is a nice place to work, people are friendly and while there are some coffee snobs, most folks are forgiving and seem to be there to do what every coffee house customer is really supposed to do: talk. To each other. Sometimes to me. Mostly not. Steaming milk is my great challenge.

Foam eludes me. Repeatedly.
Foam is a skill.
Book Lady can learn.

I get to be a book lady. It is good to be back with books. So good.

My father and shared reading material this morning. Adrian Smith is helping a call to cut funding to various 'wasteful' funded agencies. Like, potentially, the National Science Foundation. There is a such a thing as a latte made with honey and a bit of nutmeg. Guess which one of these factlets I will take to work with me on Monday.

Chris Wilson has been sharing gorgeous photos again.
Paris.
Istanbul.

Hey, Chris - next time we go to India, wanna join? We're thinking that Jordan needs to be visited as well. A lot. Crusader castles. Just saying.


Robert Wurth got his Retrospective on, and while I am loathe to choose only one favorite (anything)(ever), I have to admit a huge soft spot for the last one. There are dogs in it. And Stormtroopers. So much less-than-three. So much.

Best thing about facebook? School-mates all grown up and being way more awesome than me. Hands down, best reason to follow anyone.
Case in point?
Broyls.
You get one.
Go read the rest on your own.

Wil Wheaton continues to make me smile by just being. Really.

Lotsa love today.
All for the dudes, apparently.
Hm.

Mama made french toast. and bacon.
I'm gonna go eat that now.

Much love.

Fog and The Taj Mahal

On a foggy chilly gray day in January, six of us stood with our guide and realized each in our own ways that yes, we were standing in front of the Taj Mahal. It's not entirely real, that. So many images and stories reach into life about the greatest tomb; a testament to true love, craftsmanship and mystery, that to think of marble, stone and streets lined with shops and hawkers, monkeys, street dogs and other groggy tourists glad for the chance to be surrounded by less large crowds than expected, disappointed at the sunrise that did little more than lighten the sky's shade of gray instead of marveling at the wonder of the Taj Mahal, is almost blasphemy. I could not do anything but.

Symmetry is a design principal that always seems a better idea than reality to me. It is a condition of living a life that finds its center on the z-axis, somewhere in the neighborhood of vellum. All respect, then, to the architects and planners who made something of the sublime out of what could have been nothing more than parallel lines, centered on a tomb.

Centered? Not exactly. In fact, if you believe that the Yamuna River is the northern boundary of the grounds, then the whole thing is off - it is out of balance. The reflecting pools are the center, and the Taj itself stands at the edge. This is an asymmetry which puzzles people, and has for centuries. Why follow so many rules of precise planning and balance, only to put the largest building, the focal point of the work, anywhere outside of the center? And just what is that on the other side of the river?

There is a legend about a tomb that was to be built there, on the other side of the river, that would balance the Taj and create a unified whole. The legend calls it the Black Taj. The guide book that I skimmed before we visited suggested that the legend of the Black Taj was utterly untrue and suggested that we not trust anyone who told us the story presuming we would accept it in good faith. While we were fairly tour guide savvy at that point (remind me to not tell you about Dimple someday), it was with a certain degree of sadness that I heard our very nice Taj guide tell us about the tomb that Shah Jahan had planned for himself. It was to be on the other side of the Yamuna, and was to be built of black marble. His son, Aurangzeb, took power from his father and imprisoned him in Agra Fort before work could be begun in earnest. It is easy to forget your status as 'tourist' even in a place where everyone you see does not, by definition, live there.

It is a lovely story, though, and if there was to be no tomb in that place, what are the ruins? Elizabeth Moynihan has a theory that the gardens did continue to the other side of the river, and that the layout of the garden includes the river as an important element. She wrote a book called The Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at The Taj Mahal.

In this place, I learned more of what it is too look not just at the frames of the world, but at the world the frames show. Doors do not exist simply for the purpose of defining their own thresholds. They offer a perspective, the kind that I find in film: the potential to consider what is on the other side, and how the person or animal or flower will change that view by entering it.

We walked around the grounds, all of us in our own ways. We marveled at the workmanship, the scope, the marble, the red flashing sign. It was cold enough that my toes started to cramp and I had to slow down to loosen them. We did not stay long. Even had our guide not given us slightly less time than we would all normally have liked, it was too cold to do the kind of slow, systematic study of water erosion, bird life, plant diversity, tourist watching, that is the preferred method of sightseeing. We ate well at lunch.

The annual letter

I have a very strictly defined epistolary relationship with myself. Every year, at the beginning of the year, I write a letter to me. After that letter is written, I seal it in an envelope with some note on the front like "to be opened no earlier than Jan. 1, 2011" and put it away. I then find and open and read the letter I wrote to myself the year before.

This tradition used to include the game of finding the letter that I'd written the year before, a thing which happened every year, right in time for the holiday, and without any encouragement on my part. It was the kind of thing that people didn't really believe at parties and would back away from me upon learning. They do that when I talk about my deja vu, as well. Or medieval intellectualism. Or cumin. Actually, well, never mind. It's a bit uncomfortable - faith that your things will be available to you just when you need them. Or want them.

After a while, I started running into my letters all over the place - because I never collected them. I would find them, read them, think a bit about them, and then put them back in the general collection of stuff. During the early part of 2008, while I was beginning to actively remove unwanted baggage from my apartment and life, I decided to put them all in one place - at least for a while.

And then I read them. As it was July when I finally took the time to read them, it was more like a survey course, rather than an exercise in developing any ideas about common themes, or strengths and weaknesses. Until last year. Last year, my parents were out of town, the city was covered in snow, I had just painted my apartment as a gift to myself and so after I'd written my letter for this year, I sat down and read all of the letters that I'd managed to find and collect in my note box. (It should be noted that while I do not have letters for years that I Know I wrote letters for, I do have letters for years that I was convinced had passed with no missive at all. My brain likes to keep its secrets at times. I'm sure it enjoys them.)

Most of the letters are sweet and include thoughtful reminders to be gentle with myself and have faith in myself and love freely and like that. Not the kind of thing I would share with anyone else ever even under the pain of never eating Indian food again. (Dreck is dreck, no matter who writes it or how well-intentioned it is.) But there were these moments that were like gifts of scenery and remembrance tucked into typewritten paragraphs and scrawled lines. At the very beginning of 2009 I wrote myself two letters, folded them into a card and left them like pressed flowers or fabric soaked in amber. Because while one was my standard note addressed to my future self, the other was a rambling treat of colors and images and a story idea and it was that one that fired the thought of what it is that I love to read. It was the kick galvanic I needed to change everything using the smallest units I have at my disposal.

I decided that I would leave myself gifts on a regular basis. That it was my right to leave things that I love tucked away in books and boxes of magazines and file folders of magazine pages.

For several months last year, I did just that. I replaced the game of finding one letter a year with the delicious treat of finding as many notes with stories and images and moments as I can stand to leave. Not all of them are wonderful, and those I take out of the game and keep so that I don't have to find them again, but I don't have to pretend they didn't exist.

Today, I read my letter from last year. Most of it is chatty and kind of uninteresting, until the end. "Darling," I wrote to myself, "I miss your writing, would you do some more of that? Thanks."

Yes, dear. Yes, I will.