Multidimensional Missiles

Girl's got issues.

2011-08-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

A decade ago, or even as little as six years ago, I would notice people I knew online dropping out of the face of the internet and be baffled by it. The effect was even more acute (back before facebook) when I would meet someone, find out they had accounts on sites I was familiar with, make digital contact, and then stop seeing updates from them. I could not understand what could cause these acquaintances to slip away from the digital sphere. Sure, I knew that they were out there Doing Things, but in my mind Doing Things meant there was more to write about, more to share on Livejournal.

And then I got busy.

Oh. I see.

----

But that's not what pushed me back to my keyboard today. What brings me back is actually one of the ideas of the blogosphere, the kind of issue that gets tweeted and linked and forwarded and shared, the kind of issues that many bloggers with uteruses put on their Real Faces for.

Body image.

The reason I'm bothering to write about it instead of just heading over to one well-known body-related blog or another is that none of the posts I've read quite speak to my form of the Body Issue that I'm dealing with. Also, I'm dealing with it, and it's my blog, just like it's my body, so I want to say something. :P

I've gained weight.

I can still usually fit in the (generous) size 0 dresses I have, and often pick out the XS size to try on at a store, but there's no denying that some pants are fitting better, some pants are fitting worse, and with some pants I no longer need to wear a belt with. I see pockets of fat cells under my skin, I feel parts of my body touching each other and... it sucks.

Yes, I'm a healthy weight, yes, I'm (visually) an okay shape, but I can't deny the fact that I'm hitting an age where keeping the same diet and exercise patterns (patterns best described as 'benignly apathetic') aren't going to help me keep the physical condition they did 5 years or a decade ago.

But my id hasn't caught on yet. I know I should be eating more green things and fewer high fat content snacks. But despite my changing body, I'm having a hard time *caring*. It bothers me that I'm out of breath so quickly when I go hiking, but I haven't yet been motivated to put a plan into action. It should be easy. Once I start, it should all be breezy days between me and that idealized form of self that is comfortable looking in the mirror. I have all the muscle memory of a gymnast, a dancer, an athlete. I remember sprints, flexibility, and lifting heavy things with little strain. But maybe those memories are why it's so hard to start. The goal is *too* easy.

I'm pretending to try right now. I did a little bit of yoga, and I'm in the arduous process of syncing the C25k app to my iPod, but I'm still not energized about the amorphous "getting in shape".

C25k is a decent kind of goal, but since I have no interest in running a 5k, a bit hollow. Trail running is a little more my style, but not exactly "wake up and go" accessible, same with swimming. (Dear Kang, I want to swim. Even though my bathing suit is... get this... too loose to go too fast in. (It comes close to coming off when I dive.))

Maybe I just need to find interesting and achievable goals within the lousy parameters I have around me.

Like being able to walk 50 yards on my hands. Or do an unassisted handstand for a full minute. Or running a mile uphill without stopping. Those sound interesting enough. And let's throw in "touch my heels to the floor" for good measure. (It's a downward dog/yoga thing.)

Upper body strength. Balance (and strength). Cardio. Flexibility.

Great. Now if I get those (or close to them), I should be in good shape to dance when the opportunities come along. :o)

I'm less worried about food than exercise. For all my affinity for cheese crackers and sour cream (not together), I trend towards green things when they are available. Even if it means cutting open a "steam in bag!" bag of veggies to make myself an omelet.

I wake up and read a poem.

2011-06-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday, so I can afford such a luxury. I afforded the luxury of grappling my pillows and going back to sleep when my alarm went off at 7:30, then spending five minutes in bed daydreaming about someone when the dreamlands solidly rejected me an hour later, so I can afford the "luxury" of reading a poem now.

Though a better part of myself frowns when I call it a "luxury". That part of me sees reading a poem as a spiritual experience that should be sought by all. This part of me is also the one that wrote an elegant argument about how all people should try poetry at various stages in their lives, seeking it in different places and in different lights. I think the world would be a better place if every human enjoyed one piece of poetry a year.

Making poetry a staple of my morning would make my life a better place, I believe, so it's not fair to call it a "luxury", but if I think too much about making it part of my routine, I'll put pressure on myself and feel guilty when I don't.

Anyway, today I did take the time. I flipped open the poem delivered daily to my inbox, thinking, "why not?" and hoping for a nice surprise. I almost liked it.

The poem in question is Daily Life by Susan Wood.

I appreciate the imagery at the beginning--

A parrot of irritation sits
on my shoulder, pecks
at my head, ruffling his feathers
in my ear.

--and the subtle way it ends--

... the sun
a blood orange in the sky, the sky
parrot blue and the day
unfolding like a bird slowly
spreading its wings, though I know,
saying it, that it won't.

--(I left out the line that makes the closing make sense), but the middle is a little... pedantic.

to wit:

Too much to do today: the dracena
that's outgrown its pot, a mountain
of bills to pay and nothing in the house
to eat. Too many clothes need washing
and the dog needs his shots.

My objections are one-third about this specific poem and two-thirds about the "image" creative writing* in general and poetry in particular have in my head, but I can't easily extract one from the other, so I'll try to explain it all at once.

In my mind there is a Type. An Archetype, really, the Middle Aged MFA. I've constructed this type in my head and it somewhat rubs me the wrong way. Probably because I've never confronted one of this Type and tried to understand it, tried to meet the poetry heart of such a person instead of focusing so much on the dracena/bills/pantry/laundry/dog part of such a person.

For some reason I put up walls when a settled in, nested down person gets "creative" and starts writing poetry about the birds in their yard or collaging with doll catalogs. For some reason I get privately angry when I flip through Poets and Writers magazine or find myself in a painting class surrounded by women old enough to be my mother. Until today I hadn't put my finger on it, but I think it can be boiled down to a lack of passion. They're on my turf, they're in my game, but they don't seem to have the passion for it that I do. They're not hot, opinionated, driven, and challenged to express their vibrant inner lives. Or at least I don't sense it. My creativity is based in imagination, exploration, awareness of the universe, rather than just beauty, and it seems I react poorly when aesthetics are the most important part of creation.

Hm. I'm very young.

:)

Perhaps it's unfair that I judge Susan on this level based on a poem titled "Daily Life". It feels so much like something cobbled together out of cliches and blue feathers while she was waiting for the dishwasher to finish its cycle. But maybe that's part of the point. There is undoubtedly a large number of people who will relate to this sort of daily life. I just don't want to. Not yet, and maybe not ever.

But cliches, oranges, and feathers aside, I do appreciate the well-crafted way "Daily Life" ended, the last line's antecedent hidden six lines before and obfuscated by three or four vivid images. It does something right.

Leftovers

2011-05-23T03:05:00.000-07:00

He shuffles into the apartment in a too-large overcoat and rummages through the pockets. The rain has drawn a soggy gradient across his shoulders and down his back. With one eye peering around the edge of her book, she looks for patterns in the spatter as he empties his pockets of keys, mail, and crumpled receipts.

As he turns toward the rest of the apartment, toward the kitchen with his dinner warming slowly on the stove, toward her, she tucks her face behind the book again. She licks a finger, turns the page, and says, without looking at him, "Your fries are still in my car."

I have a theory about leftovers. About scraps of all kinds, really.

People like to think that by wrapping these unconsumed morsels up and taking them home, they will feed themselves later. Or maybe feed their dogs. Or in the case of fabric, yarn, and other crafting scraps, the pieces will be woven into a future project. I believe that the intent is good and pure, but completely misplaced.

We don't really want to hold on to the tastes that will go cold and soggy and stale (and frayed, unraveled) in a number of hours. What we're really looking for is a way to revisit the experience of the meal. The ritual of moving food from styrofoam to plate, nuking it, then testing it gently with a fork (then pressing a finger to it, because you can't really tell with a fork if it's hot or not) before tentative consumption isn't about feeding yourself, it's about reheating the memories.

The fries from Friday night were never going to be as good as they were at the restaurant, but we took them anyways, believing that one of us would take them home and suffer bites of cold potato for the chance to close our eyes and remember the toast to toasting, sitting on phonebooks, and leaning close over a sideways table... all that preamble.

Year of the Flood

2011-05-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

There's a welling-up point, a tipping point, where a book becomes something I can't put down. (Though I did put it down to write this post.)

In reality, I put down Year of the Flood, companion book to Oryx and Crake because I wanted to share that emotional moment with someone. In this little clutch of people I talk to frequently, however, I believe I am alone in my experience of this Atwood novel.

It's funny, I was so worried about reading more by her and having my reverence for Oryx and Crake damaged, but my worries were pointless. Year of the Flood is actually making the first book a richer experience, and I'd like to go back to O&C when I'm finished here, become more deeply steeped in the world.

But, oh, that emotional moment where I saw things in a new way! It would've been so nice to have someone to share that understanding with. Books are so hard to share in the way we share movies. Instead of the set timelined experience, we read at our own paces, and can't share the rhythms of text the same way we share the rhythms of the screen.

Hm, gr.

In any case, more reasons to go back and finish the essays I have about O&C, and expand them in the new light of the Flood.

Downtime.... kindasortanotreally

2011-04-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

So. I've wrapped up work, made my tragic cross country expedition, and had three hectic weeks of adventures in CA.

It's Friday, my third week-iversary of returning home. I just sent in a resume for a job I really really really want, did some vacuuming, and now I have a few minuets before I need to get ready and either flake on bonfire plans, or (more likely) get ready to attend.

I could be applying to more jobs or cleaning my room, but I happened to recline on the downstairs couch. Something smells good, I'm listening to a fantastic mix I put together, and the internet doesn't work too well on my laptop upstairs.

And it's been six weeks since I've updated my blog. !_!_!_!_!_!

The massive tide of dates has receded some, I'm down to three or four guys who return my calls (and I return theirs). And one of them is out of the country. So more downtime is looming. I can't wait!

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2011-03-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray and had a very particular thought related to writing. But I don't remember what it was anymore.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dorian Gray as having improved my life, and I hope to return to it. The title character, however, is not what will draw me back. Lord Henry Watton, with his wit, his hedonism, and his paradoxical philosophies, is much more intriguing than the rise and fall of Dorian.

I picked up this book (er, downloaded it to my kindle) based on the strength of the dialog in The Importance of Being Earnest. While the verbal sparring is my favorite part of this Wilde work, too, but it isn't the front and center focal point. I suppose Wilde was enjoying having so much prose space to work with, as a dozen or so pages are spent on everything Dorian collects and studies over a span of 20 years. Next time through the book I'll likely give that a half-over while spending double time on each scene in which Lord Henry waxes philosophical, tossing out one liners like flowers after a play.

In one memorable exchange late in the book, he goes six or seven volleys with the Duchess. Each round of their conversation evolves the metaphor farther, shifting the scope of their witty battle, and neither party misses a beat or a point.

"Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes thigns wonderful."
"One may lose one's way."
"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."
"What is that?"
"Disillusion."
"It was my debut in life," she sighed.
"It came to you crowned."
"I am tired of strawberry leaves."
"They become you."
"Only in public."
"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.
"I will not part with a petal."
"Monmouth has ears."
"Old age is dull of hearing."
"Has he never been jealous?"
"I wish he had been."
He glanced around as if in search of something.
"What are you looking for?" she inquired.
"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it."
She laughed. "I still have the mask."
"It makes your eyes lovelier."

And I'm speechless.

I know exchanges like these are pure fiction, illusions of their own, only possible when both voices come from one mind, a mind which has infinite time to jigsaw the pieces together. It still makes me swoon. Still makes me dream of having this sort o mincing dance in my own life, or at least in my own writing. Given the chance to re-write this book (a mental game I play with most things I read), I might be able to improve upon some of the plot or characterization of some of the players, but Lord Henry was perfect.

Is my accumulated knowledge of Poe, my familiarity with Doyle, and the passing of generations that make me immune to the twists and turns in Dorian Gray's plot? Why did I suffer no illusion about it being James Vane that was killed on the hunt? Why did I feel no suspense about the possible endings the novel could come to? Did the lack of salacious details regarding Dorian's sins and the scandals he dragged others into prevent me from investing more deeply? Perhaps, perhaps.

I wish I felt more strongly the pull of depravity on Dorian's soul. His betrayal of Sibyl, his part in her death had no intent behind it. I wish I'd seen him slip more gradually, more willfully into corruption. Or maybe it's there but I'm not seeing it. In the quote above, I don't know what the strawberry leaves are, or the full depth of the fencing references.

All in all, to my terribly untrained mind, I can't heap much praise on the bones of Dorian Gray, and can't see myself heaping it upon others in recommendation, but I'm glad I read this classic novel, and I will be eternally grateful for it introducing me to Lord Henry.

This issue. (Feminism)

2011-03-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

I'm watching Californication, Season 1.

(I'm also knitting, so it isn't a complete waste of time, and I vaguely like the show, despite the commonalities it has to Terriers, with none of the intense, redeeming plots of the latter. Californication has shades of Entourage, too. But these things are moot right now.)

Four episodes in, I have big question marks above my head about the female characters.

I try to stay away from feminism issues in general, as it tends to paint 50% of the population with a large brush despite each individual in that segment deserving its own color, and so many people try to wield that large brush with so many varying opinions.

It seems whenever a male writer pens a female character or vice versa, critical readers/viewers will try to say that opposite-gender characters are (to varying degrees) stand-ins for every person sharing their genitalia, as though characters aren't allowed the same rights of individuality autonomous, non-fictional people are.

What brings this up is although I'm generally enjoying Californication (despite knowing Hank and his ex will never get back together), I can't get behind any of the adult female characters. In short, it flagrantly fails the the Bechdel Test.

Rundown of female characters in the first few episodes:
- Karen. Hank's ex. Seems interesting enough, but doesn't have much of a point other than being the ex, Becca's mother, and engaged to Bill. I had to look up her name and couldn't tell you if she has a job or not.

- Hank's girlfriend. She's an "attorney" to whom Hank was a total asshole the first time they met, but he made a couple good jokes when he apologized for being an asshole, so she forgave him and they started dating... because her other relationship was long term, with a married man. And maybe she's still sleeping with said married man, talking shit about Hank behind his back.

- Hank's agent's assistant. Twenty-two year old who gets fired for being a fuckup assistant, sends her boss a link to her Suicide Girl profile, and gets rehired so they can play Secretary.

- Mia. Bill's 16 year old daughter. Stalked and seduced Hank, and keeps toying with him, using his innate sexual attraction to hot young women against him, despite him saying "this is wrong, you're not an adult" each time she tries it.

- MULTIPLE other women... married random in the pilot, movie producer's wife, porn star, dinner guest, tabloid writer... FIVE in four episodes (not counting the dreams) have thrown themselves at him. He didn't sleep with the tabloid writer or the porn star, but fucked the other three. The porn star and the dinner guest especially irked me, however, because they both insecurely asked Hank to judge their bodies. "What do you think? what do you think of my tits?"

In this context a woman who wasn't all over Hank or another man in the show, a woman who was loyal or reserved or remotely not-crazy, a woman who was down to earth would stick out like a sore thumb and look like a prude in this company.

There is nothing remotely real about this show. Even with the "family" moments, the occasional sweet things Hank does, it's pure voyeurism and entertainment. Messed up relationships, some sex, some laughs, some tits. Asking myself, "If you have this issue with the show, what do you want?" it's not easy to answer. I guess I want a woman with some dignity to drop by, to be made a pass at, give Hank a funny look, tell him he's a jackhole, then walk off without bitchy histrionics. But that's pretty boring, huh? Maybe I want a sense that there will be some redemption, some happy ending.

The character on Terriers who was still in love with his ex (who was, in turn, engaged to someone else) didn't get a happy ending, but there were things going on in that show besides the relationships between the main characters. There were other avenues to show growth.

Maybe that's what Californication needs, a Steph character, a sister (or something) who has other things going on, interests besides men.

You know, even Becca, Hank's 12 year old daughter is already fucked up over this. Caught kissing a boy and told it was inappropriate behavior, she said, "How else am I supposed to get them to like me?" For the most part she's a punk kid, precocious and funny, but I'll be interested to see how she develops over the seasons... if I keep watching.

I have a lot of knitting to do... but there are many many other things on my Netflix queue.

Bite the bullet.

2011-03-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Five years ago I was traipsing around the hills of Northern San Diego, wondering when I'd see my new! favorite! person! next.

Today I'm sitting in my a tiny room in an outer borough of DC, wondering if I'll ever see him again.

Either the physical person who has persisted from then to now, or the intangible person I felt so strongly about. Our contact these days is reduced to text messages about taxes, paperwork, and the dozen boxes he's holding in storage for me.

Next free day I have could be devoted to picking up those last boxes, fortifying and labling them, and sending them ahead to California, where I will once again roost. I could do it under the cover of workday, slip in, haul out, leave his storage key under the mat. Other than the lump over foot and the sixteen words hidden deep in his cell phone, he wouldn't know the difference. No confrontation to take coveted items off his shelves. I'd give up and be gone, my will and influence departed from his life, no say over what he does with time, money, goods.

The waves created by this tectonic shift in my life have lessened over time. They're less frequent, no longer a daily occurrence, but when the swells do come, they are sometimes enough to capsize me. On those days I'm bleak and hungry, but I'm not sure for what.

Last time I saw him, the day I packed the last of my belongings, I could barely look him in the eye. Shamefully I hid the muddy chaos of my mental state. I wanted to ask "what are you feeling? how are you doing, really? what do you think of...." The trailing off would gesture to the frayed ends between us. There's a clear division, like that painting I once made with two trees nearly but not quite bridging the chasm between them. The wind might blow branches over the tug-of-war line in the middle, but they never really overlap, never connect. Did we used to? Could we again? Should we?

But I can't start that conversation. It'd be pointless, masochistic, and a repetition of every reason I cried on the floor of the guestroom in the first place.

* * *

3.14.06 was actually ripe with livejournal posts. It's interesting to look back on how much hasn't changed.

aw, crap.

I clicked on the game chef link on someone's LJ... and the design bug bit me.

The transmission of this post was interrupted by me having the sudden desire to draw a picture of myself getting gnawed on by nine giant bugs.

*fallsover*

I AM AN ANNIE OF IRONY, SELF DEFEATING AND SELF ENHANCING AT EVERY TURN!

... I want to write about that. I really do. I want to follow up and say how I'm always pulled in six creative directions, how my art is as crappy now as it was then, how Mike gets on my case about never knowing what I want to pursue, but this blast from the past (exactly 5 years ago!) subverts that impulse:

Most of my time since Friday night has been spent wrapped up in arm and/or brain with him. We partied (for three hours) in Escondido on Saturday, we did creative things (for two hours) in Oceanside on Sunday, we drove (for four hours) to Upland and back Monday.

The potential separation came up in conversation once. My brain is split, the left hemisphere not knowing what the right hemisphere is caring about, and vice versa. I throw myself towards college with the same gusto I throw myself into a vat of hearts juice, and my brain can't reconcile the incompatibility. This came up in conversation once, and he said, "I don't know what to say yet, but I don't think we could do long-distance." I pretty much agree. Neither of us are good on the phone, and he does many times better in person than he does via text.

At that point in time I'd applied to school in Savannah and planned a campus visit with my folks. On that trip I would find out I'd been accepted, and was so certain about the way life was going, purchase an engagement gift for him (for when the time came).

I suppose that era was so ripe with romantic brainsplatter that reading my diary for any day in 2006 would yield the same shuddering angst. Same or worse.

* * *

I'm getting divorced and moving back to CA. I'll live with my parents, find a meager job, and go to school, shooting for journalism.

These are the things going on in my life.

Quiet Moments

2011-03-07T22:52:00.000-08:00

It's nice to have some place to be alone on the internet. It's somewhat passé to have a personal blog or journal on the internet, and I don't know if i'd be better off posting in private. But I do so much writing in private. I was prepared to compare this space, my creation of it, my dominance of it, to Summer's apartment in (500) Days of Summer, but now I'm imaging it having more in common with a picnic for one in a forgotten--but stil lovely--public garden.

I like the breathing space of this large text box blogger offers me, compared to the one or two lines in Facebook or Twitter. And no risk of truncation if my poetics run long. I poked my head into yer olde tweet can a couple times today after another extended absence, and didn't much like the smell of the place. Pictures and links stacked like cordwood, retweets and name-drops all shouting for attention.

I've been 'turned off' by the internet a lot lately, and the insidious way I let technology dominate my life. This is a theme I will write more on soon. For now I return to the darkness and the silence, hoping sleep finds me soon.

Or, more realistically, I'll spend time doing that isolated sort of writing reserved for lightless rooms and locked diaries.

Uses for $75

2011-03-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

1) Fancy Haircut

There's a salon called Urban Halo in Arlington. I walk past it about twice a week, and it always looks very swanky, the kind of place yuppies and hipsters go. After looking it up on Yelp, I find that haircuts cost $75 there. Even though it's more than three times more than I've paid for any haircut ever, I'm still considering treating myself one of these days. My hair is almost-but-not-quite long enough to put up and in desperate need of a style/trim. After having it done by myself or a friend with clippers for so long, I figure my average price-per-cut over the past 10 years would still be about $5. And while going to a beauty school is an option, I'd rather pay for some expert knowledge/styling and get something that will work for my face and grow out well than just pay $25 and hope for the best.

2) Work Shoes

Even though I'm going to be maxing at 6 hours a day soon, my current work shoes have no cushioning and pinch around the widest part of my left foot. Something more comfortable, and even something that could translate to daily wear outside of work would be nice, as my old black sneakers are dead. My manager recently called me out for being out of dress-code, so it might be a worthwhile investment.

3) Music Swag

Kenna's been my #1 music artist since I first saw Hellbent (*note! that is not the music video i'm talking about the original is protected, and thus not on youtube*) on Cartoon Network's showcase of animated music videos. The first few times I listened to his second release, MSTSMF, I cried. His third album is coming out... soon. Supposed to drop tomorrow, but a massive computer failure... ate the whole thing, so the release got pushed back until April so they can re-record and re-produce the whole thing. NONE ARE INVINCIBLE FROM THE HAND OF CHAOS. While I was already interested in buying the big swag pack (shirt, hat, jacket, album, stickers, pins), now I like the idea of tossing money his way to help fund the re-recording, too. The flight jacket is really cool.

4) Bradbury Poetry

One of my favorite writers doing on of my favorite literary forms. Even without linebreaks and rhymes, Bradbury is one of the most poetic authors I know. Five hundred pages of it. I'm guessing it was a small print run, as the cheapest used copy is $75. YIKES. And not to be morbid, but he's 90. The price is only going to go up from here. Until I'm dead, too, and it all comes into the public domain. Or some time in the middle, when a new massive collection is released on his 100th birthday. But for the next decade, definitely a good use of $75... for someone who doesn't have to work an 8 hour shift to make that much money. And maybe me, too.

"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape."

5) Don't spend it

The camera that snapped that beauty (at the American Art Museum) is still only about half paid for. Part of my plan right now is to pay it off before re-quitting my job and moving back to CA.

Decision, decisions.

Histrionics

2011-02-16T23:46:00.000-08:00

Two very little things, but I want to remember them, as they may be my last memories of him ever, and if not ever, meetings will be few and far between.

First in the early evening. I knew when to expect him and didn't concern myself with searching the deeper recesses of the room. I'd get a smile before I left for my meeting, and with the crowd, probably no chance to chat. Besides, I had friends to talk with. And then, all of a sudden, I catch sight of the back of his head in 3/4 profile. The rest of him was hidden by a doorway, but the shape, the haircut, were quite familiar and I swooned a little. A sketch of a symbol, a slight glimpse of a reflection, and I felt the clack, clack, clack, whoosh of the roller coaster leaving the station.

Like all roller coasters, I was turned out, staggering with adrenaline, too soon. Too soon was some hours later. The place was packed when I returned with friends, and we were graciously ushered to a corner. From my seat I could see him laughing, bantering, working, on the other side of the room. A conspiracy of friends and strangers kept me from bellying up and making a fool of myself. But at the last minute, I was heading toward the door where my coat and bag were held on patient standby. He turned into the aisle; I blocked his path, first by coincidence and a split second later on purpose. In an unprecedented act of friendliness, he reached out and gave me a hug while my tongue fumbled through suggestions of pleasantries.

It was a chaste crush, irrational and fading, but I have no regrets.

lots of typing means I'm working... right?

2011-02-12T21:32:00.001-08:00

I'm clinging to the couch as the movers, two burly men who communicate in grunts and nods, carry it into the stairwell...

A handful of regulars from my writers group get together on weekends to "write". We meet at a coffee shop, or occasionally in someone's apartment, with laptops, notebooks, and books. Sometimes editing happens, sometimes actual writing happens, and sometimes it's just brainstorming, research, and poking around the internet. Socializing, however, is a given. It always takes more than an hour, often more than two, for us to consume our beverages and settle down into those private mental spaces where imagination happens.

We're at Mike G's place today, and it may be the last time the five of us are together like this, absorbed in our laptops, which harmonize in a concert of cpu fans. (Jess is playing the rhythm section, shuffling and flicking index cards on the desk as she reworks a plot, perhaps the only one engaging as a capital-W Writer.)

I'm longing for this now, doing my best to experience and capture this time with these friends. Mike G and I are sitting on his couch, one of the few pieces of legitimate furniture left in the room. The couch, Mike, and I are all on our ways out of here. He's headed to one end of California, myself to the other. I wonder where the couch will go. Though even if I met it, center of many fantastic, rambling conversations, again, I probably won't recognize it.

Sara claimed the slipcover, comparing the army green waffle fabric it to the paint swatches. Bobby pulled the swatches from his bag with a flourish and showed me the colors of his future. Their future. Bobby and Sara will be housemates soon, a topic which makes me collapse with exaggerated grief each time it's mentioned. Even as I'm moving away, they're getting closer, Bobby moving into the idea space of "housemate" I used to occupy.

After a long stretch of silence, Mike digs into the cellophane bag of hard pretzels. Bobby takes one, then Jess wanders over, then I take one and offer the bag to Sara. So the silence is broken and our crunchy pretzel break begins. Having commented earlier that the rhinestone ampersand would be "cooler" if it was a pretzel, I took my crusty sourdough specimen and strung it on my necklace. "Check out the bliiiiiing!" We laugh. Sara tells me to wear it to the pub tonight. "Then the guys will really be all over me."

Every so often Bobby points to something else in the apartment and says "You getting rid of that?" Reading lamp, reading chair. Curtain rods, now the paper Ikea lamp hanging over what used to be the dining nook.

They're talking about Firefly now, and Doctor Who, the conversation floating over my head as I keep typing and contemplating my fate. Who in California will talk up Cowboys and Aliens to me? Who will spring into a religious debate that rages from old testament to new testament to literalism and back, then peacefully ends with no love lost? Who will smash strange words together and contemplate the pirninjas and the econopocalypse?

"I grew up on Star Trek!" "So did I. You wanna dance with me?" "Check out this picture of Worf." "I know that episode." "It's time for a new generation of Star Trek" "Done by Joss Whedon" "I wonder what he's up to now."
Side by side on the couch with our laptops, Mike and I both go to look. He hits wikipedia, but I go for imdb.

And twenty minutes later, three laptops are simultaneously playing a youtube vidoe dildo lightsaber duel.

---

"I've been hosing my plant down with chloroform."

Ok. This is just getting silly. But that's just why I love them.

2011-02-09T23:57:00.000-08:00

Antsy and angsty in the middle of the night, I throw off my sheets and turn on the light. I'm looking for something to read.

It's not hard to find it... or rather find that I don't have it. I only grabbed a small handful of books when I left home. The only books of poetry I brought with me are old issues of my high school literary magazine.

The quantity of appalling poetry isn't why I avoid looking through them to find my inspiration--but the quantity of that quantity which is *my* poetry is. Oh, yes, I used to be quite prolific, smugly believing I turned a pretty phrase now and again. I'm still fond of a number of those poems, those exploits of literature and youth.

Oh, my, I just skimmed my section of the 2001 edition... a full ten entries, up from eight the previous year... and I wanted to run screaming from my own head. I was very fond of rhymes. Occasionally I managed to use it in an adorable Shel Silverstein kind of way, but too often rhymes were employed to "heavy" topics in an annoying sing-songy way.

But here's an example of a rhyming poem I still like, one that still holds truth a decade (!!!!) later:

Danger Zone

My bed is a graveyard
of habits and tasks,
of flares of activity
that just didn't last:

A job from last weekend
still haunts me this wayL
needlenose pliers
and here they'll stay;

My wallet discarded
spilling from it
ID cards and pictures
given as gifts;

Two weeks ago's laundry
clean but still out,
my fuzzy slippers
and other shoes, no doubt;

Old work from school
on which I'm now scrawling,
but it already has doodles
of soda cans brawling;

A book that I'm reading,
a Gameboy near dead,
a brush and recorder,
any room for my head?

Small pieces of candy,
my computer, no less
(do you think that this may
cause my mother distress?).

Due to CDs and text books
among nameless more
I think that tonight
I'll sleep on the floor.

Funny. Now my bed *is* on the floor.

And, no, despite my proximity to said bed, I am no closer to sleep.

of several drafts

2010-12-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

I like it when I can't feel my headphones.

I'm wearing a really... *really* odd hat I just finished, and between it and my ever-lengthening hair, the sensations of earbuds gets lost. My music is at the perfect volume to where maybe, just maybe, it's coming from inside my head.

If only I really had such clarity and recall of this wide variety of songs.

a sampling-

Part of the Machine - Jethro Tull
Rock 4 - Maxis
Sister May I - Voice on Tape
No One Lives forever - Oingo Boingo
Small Children-in the background - mogwai
Preston Miller - Tracy Grammer
Roll Over DJ - Jet
On The Outside - Oingo Boingo
Sunshine - Keane
A Little Rain (live) - Tom Waits
Reunited - James Horner
Sandy's Tune - Eartha Kitt
Take It Or Leave It - Jet
No Spill Blood - Oingo Boingo
take me home - Crystal Gayle
Rock 1 - Maxis
Side - Travis
Temptation - Holly Cole
Marche du Capitulation - Triarii
Liar - Three Dog Night

And I left out some Squaresoft tracks, because their game placement codes don't really translate to comprehensible song titles.

But looking back, some things surprise me.

1) Out of the 1100+ songs on my mp3 player, 34 played, and of those 34, three were by Oingo Boingo, three were written by Tom Waits, and two were by Jet. While I have an extensive Tom Waits collection, Jet and Oingo Boingo aren't huge.

2) YouTube had videos for all but 2 of the tracks I sought. I didn't even check for the Maxis/Sims songs until the end, but surprise-surprise, there they were.

The Voice on Tape tune not being there isn't a shock.

3) how much time and effort I put into looking things up on YouTube.

It's bedtime. Stay here. I miss you.

(but it's very appropriate, so take this one last song from the shufflin' playlist)

Cusp, again.

2010-11-14T11:17:00.000-08:00

I'm on the verge of a valid thought, an important action, but I'm not sure either one will happen as long as I'm trapped in my internet.

Obvious solution: just stop.

Despite having symptoms of illness, I don't really feel that lousy. I could do all those things. Or at least some of them. Hm.

Times blogging is for

2010-08-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

Feeling abnormally good right now, so these are the times I should be blogging, yes?

But I didn't take any photos today. Or yesterday. Took a couple the day before, but the time for that passed, eh?

Journaling before bed is a nice habit. Bed before midnight is a nice habit, too.

Today would make an incredibly nice normal for me. Except the visit to IHOP. I could usually do without that. And 3pm wouldn't always have to be a thunderstorm... though I might not mind if it was.

Sitting in the living room, no lights on, watching the sky dim as clouds gathered, I said something really neat. Something like, "the weather doesn't know we're here, it has no concept of time, the storm just passes over the land."

Mike was on the phone with Robin, talking about the storm, that it was heavier where she was out west, and it hadn't hit us in Fairfax yet. I was imagining how the storm might not know it was moving, hitting different places at different times. It wouldn't know the difference between populated areas and the empty ones.

Got some good work done today, and good feedback on the work I've already done, so that was nice. After dinner I even elected to finish the chapter I was on instead of watching a movie.

Then I reached a point where I didn't want to look at a computer anymore, so I picked up a book. This is not a typical behavior for me, but I'd like it to be. Enjoying John Updike's prose.

Sometime this month I want to cook a big meal. Like, with recipes and stuff.

askme, again

2010-06-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

part of an ask metafilter question

How can I force myself to love something I naturally do not?

I realize "learn" is a probably a better word than "force".

PROBLEM
There are many things in life I wish I could enjoy -- (certain) people, sports, dancing, university classes, foods, etc, but for whatever reason, I do not. I love computer programming, my friend loves working out. And there's no middle ground between these two...

my reply

I notice three things about your examples.
- community
- immersion
- time limited

((#3 might be less of an issue with the Polynesian diet, but unless you thought you might live there forever, it still counts as a contributing factor.))

Community - you want to connect with people. The want for that is bigger than your dislike for X, so you ignore the dislike and focus on how it will bring you closer to others. Find how to see your other activities through this lens, and pay attention to it. This may be a specific group of people, like a writers' group, or it may be an abstract one that you're just trying to share headspace with.

Immersion - similar to community, you couldn't get away from the food in the South Pacific or screens playing soccer in the world cup. You had to adapt or be miserable. Find ways to fake the immersion.

Time Limited - This, I think, is key. Living in the South Pacific had an end. Enduring World Cup frenzy had an end. In contrast, The Seinfeld Method has no end. The things you want to learn have no "end". This brings all kinds of psychological trickery into play. There's greater risk because, if you fail, you have to start all over, and you're not willing to give up. Because there's no deadline, you think "sooner I start, the better", but also "what does it matter if I put it off?"

My suggestion: Give yourself permission to not pursue something you're interested in. Spend a limited period of time "forcing" yourself to enjoy/appreciate something you want to like. If by the end of that time period, say, 90 days, you don't enjoy the person/activity, spend the next 180 days accepting that you don't enjoy it. Then try again... or not!

One final thing to try: find articulate people who like the thing you're trying to love, and talk with them about their passion for the subject. I find enthusiasm incredibly contagious, and it's normally fun to catch.

Zero. Or, Blog Is For Emo

2010-06-05T15:23:00.000-07:00

I've been awake for 11 hours and have done a grand total of... take a shower (and internet/video games). Maybe I've been awake for 10; i don't remember if I started killing goblins the first time I checked the time or the second.

Naturally, I feel incredibly guilty about it.

Still feeling crushed by a massive sleep-debt, too, but laying around doesn't seem to be helping. And my site/domain is having issues, which is stressing me out.

I felt inspired for a short while, but then got out of the shower and failed to act on any of it. Boo, me.

I'm exhausted and feel like crap. Should probably take myself for a walk.

Where's the snooze button?

2010-06-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

I've had a good, long day, but it's only 5:45 and I'm already too tired to enjoy it.

Walking, writing at starbucks, more walking, lunch at 5 guys, then two hours in Alexandria.

Touring the Torpedo Factory with Mom and Reagan was my best trip through the building so far. I saw the art more thoroughly than ever before, and took more inspiration from it.

All I really want right now is ~~beer~~ a new sketchbook to draw in. Sure, I have lots of paper, much of it blank, some of it bound into book form, but there's something extra comforting about the familiar size, familiar format, etc. The thought of sketching in my hardcover, non-spiral black sketchbook just doesn't excite me.

Actually, I want a nap, and considering the fact that I go to bed late and wake up early (whether I have a reason to or not), maybe a nap isn't a bad idea...

AskMe Three

2010-06-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from a discussion on one of my favorite sites.

Original question/post

For various reasons, I've been spending an increasing amount of time online (just regular day-to-day stuff: forums, Wikipedia, shopping, weather, news, but quite a bit of it) over the past 5 years or so, and I'm pretty sure it's had a deleterious effect on my attention span, willpower and ability to concentrate. I'm ADHD to begin with, so I'm sure that hasn't helped, but I used to be able to hyperfocus on books, math problems, etc., in a way that's just not possible now. Right now, I feel like I can barely follow a conversation, and it sucks.

I'd like to try seeing if less internet would help me get my mind back, and I was wondering, first: does anyone have any experience with any aspect of this that'd suggest the process is reversible-- that the brain can return to its previous baseline even following cognitive changes due to overstimulation? (Inspiring success stories would be great, if there are any out there!)

And second, any ideas on how I can approach the problem of how to structure this internet fast? Should I be aiming for total abstinence, or a one-week cleanse followed by gradual reintroduction, or just avoiding the linkiest sites, alternating days online and off, or what? Obviously, I'd like to continue using as much internet as is consistent with keeping my focus intact; but how can I estimate just how much that is?

part of a comment I flagged as awesome

When my Internet odyssey began in 1994, I immediately sensed this was not another office Christmas party. People were engaged. They were talking with each other about anything, and everything; and they were unshackled. Free from the bondage of tradition. Except for the old-world corporate culture trying to reinvent television, they still are. The Internet isn't about power and control. It's about life. Ours.

Ebullient, spiritual, emancipated, cold, hard, plugged-in life. As one of the author's of the aforementioned book, David Weinberger, says, "We're having a party and the news reports are missing it entirely — like covering the Mardi Gras by reporting on the gross profits of local liquor stores." Millions of forums, billions of World Wide Web sites, billions of human beings being humans.

What is it that makes the Internet so compelling to so many? Aside from the obvious fun and entertainment, educational and business opportunities, and show-offism; I think it boils down to a slogan taken from the eighties. No fear! The playing field is level. Size doesn't matter, really. Inhibitions and reservations are out the window.

Internet life is people with diseases and addictions, exposing souls and sharing their recoveries. It's about overviews of history warning future generations not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Sure there are a few kooks to throw us off guard, but mostly the Net is just us being ourselves without fear of reprisal. How refreshing.

The Internet is people talking and sharing ideas. Our best and brightest, wallflowers and flower children, the girl next door and the Doc who delivered your kids. It's about you and me. We are all using our own cognizant voices, and we're listening too. We're challenging the status quo, and we're offering alternatives. Collaboration on a global scale all tied together by that simplest of cyber friendships, the hyperlink. Communication has never seen anything like it.

my comment

I'm in your shoes, and have had no success with the thing I'm about to suggest, but want to try it myself.

At this moment, I have my laptop open in front of my desktop. Both are focused on Firefox. The desktop has 31 tabs open. The laptop has 48+14 tabs open (two windows). After I finish this comment, I am going to "deal with"/close all the tabs, and arbitrarily limit myself to 3 tabs on each computer.

Tabs are not conducive to follow-through. Even as I'm in the process of writing this, I switch over and browse LJ (even though there's nothing new), I check on facebook, I skim six or seven open tabs without actually *doing* anything. Not bookmarking/tagging, not absorbing the content, just... looking at it. If I added up all the time I spent just... looking... at stuff on the internet, hopping from one thing to another with no clear goal, it might add up to hours a day. And staying on the surface level like that, it gives my brain a lot of chances to fret over stupid little things, which would vanish from my mental periphery if I applied myself to any focus at all.

So I'm going to make a giant effort to do fewer things on the internet at one time. With only three tabs, I think I'll either reach a stalemate faster (and go do something like read/write/etc), or I'll internet in productive, focused ways.

Built up, broke down

2010-06-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have this mental image in my mind that blog posts have to be visual, of a certain length, maintain a certain level of intersetingness, be intrinsically cohesive, include lots of links, and hit the other top 10 blogging points that the successful ones outline.

Eff that.

I've posted for years without caring too much about hitting those marks, or having superfantastic readership. Why can't I resume the bloggityness and take up that easy-going manner again?

BY THE WAY, besides doing more writing lately, I'm also doing more editing-type-stuff, so the contrarian in me does a dance of glee at every word in this post my spell-checker doesn't recognize.

Today I'm super exhausted from very little sleep last night, then spending all day riding trains and walking around DC with Reagan and my mom (who is visiting for 3 days). I use the term "all day" loosely; we might not have gotten on our first train until after 11 (which, in my family, is a late start).

We hit up the Freer Gallery where I indulged my love of Whistler paintings (including discovering the downstairs collection!), had lunch at the Austin Grill (I ordered a salad, then mostly ate the meat that came on it. Delicious, delicious meat), walked back to explore the Hirshhorn, and finally had high tea in Arlington, where "high tea" was defined as beer and splitting a burger three ways. Mom had cranberry juice, not beer.

A Wednesday without a pint at RiRa just isn't a real Wednesday. :)

As obnoxious as most of the Color exhibit is to me, it inspired some of the highlights of the day: Reagan taking photos of me in the room of flickering lights and sound, and sitting in the low light room with my mom, observing the artwork and talking about William Herschel. Mom's reading a book about him, so she had tidbits about how he would observe the stars through his telescope for hours on end, shouting dictations to his sister.

I wish I could paint another highlight of the day from outside myself. I felt such a surge of joy in discovering the secondary collection of Whistler's Nocturnes, that I skipped down the hallway to look at the a Nocturne set at Cremorne Gardens.

A lot of the way I live is restrained and calculated. Even though I feel real happiness and express it, I don't think I often exhibit delight in a natural, uninhibited way. I also get caught up in my head, questioning what I like, or what I say I relate to/identify with.

Do I *really* like Whistler, or is it just lip service? Or a facade that I put up because I think I should be someone who likes his work, or want to be someone who does?

Ah, bloggity-blog. You double edged sword.

This is not a post of completed ideas, but i am rip-roarin' exhausted and need to go lie down and read some comfort food (Emerald Storm!). But if I don't post it now, it will sit in drafts FOREVAR.

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2010-04-12T15:54:00.001-07:00

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Going in blind

2010-02-25T10:49:00.001-08:00

I had a great reading experience over the past couple days. I've never read anything by Dennis Lehane before, nor seen Mystic River (though it's been on my list for ages).

I didn't even know he wrote the book Mystic River until I was partway through Shutter Island.

Late Tuesday night Kazu tweeted

Shutter Island (the novel) is a good read. Not everyone is going to like the ending, but most of the build up is brilliant. A page turner.

My initial thought was "by saying some people won't like the ending, I'd probably be one who does."

Like I said, I'd never heard of Shutter Island, the book or the movie, prior to Kazu's mention. His recommendation means a lot to me, though, so I looked for it on Amazon. Not only is it Kindle available, it's currently at the price of a discounted mass market paperback.

Without pausing to check the synopsis, genre, or reviews, I downloaded the books sample. Within minutes of finishing the sample, I bought the whole thing. All from the comfort of my own home! xD

I read until I fell asleep that night, and in the morning until I had to leave for the theater. Actually, at one point, fearing how nightmarish and dark the book was headed, I strategically put it down, so I wouldn't be going to sleep scared. But for the most part, I dove in and read without pause.

Which, I think, is how Shutter Island is best experienced. While reading, I didn't stop and have the chance to analyze the story. Not in the sense of picking apart the past, but predicting what was going to happen. I was too concentrated on squeezing everything out of the current moment and getting to the next page to worry about what happened farther along.

Also, due to reading on the kindle, I had a percentile bar telling me how far into the book I was, and a "page" count, but I never really stopped to look at how many pages I had left. I never pulled myself out of the narrative to feel the thickness of the book and ponder what needed to be wrapped up by the time I was done.

Starting a book (or movie) ignorant of the content (though not quality) is an experience I know I like, and Shutter Island is another example that it's a good policy to have.

Messy, messy, messy

2010-02-18T23:34:00.000-08:00

I have an abnormally strong desire to watch an episode of Better Off Ted right now. But I'm under the covers and relatively warm and don't want to jeopardize that.

The past couple days have been stressful and emotional, but not for anything happening close to me. Amanda Palmer launched a project yesterday. It's a lighthearted carnival-punk muffin frosted with kiddie porn and child exploitation.

If you're saying to yourself, "but I don't frost muffins!", that's kind of my point.

The idea that those two topics should not intermingle that way is not the only thing about the project/launch, but it's the biggest part to me. Other bits are "crip drag", nonconsensual fiction, and AFP's 'open mic' gaff (tweeting something she really should have filtered before it reached her fingers).

I've engaged in the discussion in public, in a limited-access way, and in private, and it really gets to me.

It gets to me that there are so many touchy subjects in play that the whole thing is a tangled mess.

It gets to me that my main probelm right now isn't even with AFP, but with the people who passionately disagree with me. (Amanda admitted that the traumatic backstory should have been a secret ingredient in the muffins, not the frosting on top, which I thought was a good move, but it got lost in the roar over other things.)

Overall, I don't have anything new to say about it. The whole experience of being caught up in the discussion has been pretty disheartening. Especially the part about Art giving an Artist license to be unapologetic.

I think criticism and analysis is something in orbit around Art that can't be loved or hated. I don't want Art to be without it, but I don't want criticism to be the stronger of the two. But there are no rules in their relationship.

Why does it all have to be so messy?

not just bad, but boring

2010-02-12T00:33:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I went through a phase of cognitive dissonance. I wanted to write, wanted to enjoy it, but the thought of sitting down and typing repulsed me. It was a nearly psychosomatic pain. Some message from my subconscious was trying to break through, and I couldn't quite hear it.

The Absolute Write forum has been a decent place for me to go for writing advice. Like Mur Lafferty said in a recent podcast, there's no new advice, generally speaking. Practice-wide breakthroughs don't happen. There aren't new developments about the science of writing, and there's a lot of overlap in the habits of successful writers.

Especially at the rough draft stage (where I am), advice is rudimentary: butt in chair, fingers on keys. This is basic story time, worry about the style and prose later. "Give yourself permission to suck" is a common chunk of wisdom I'm working at accepting. Permission to suck kept me going when the prose was painfully flat and--what's the opposite of clever?

Today I enhanced my license to suck by adding on a clause that gives me permission to be boring.

While telling Reagan about my writing sorrows, I realized I enjoy treating this current story like a documentary. In this rough draft stage, I've outlined the "what" of the plot, and now I'm detailing the "how". When something related to unicorns happens in Bethany's life, I want the footage. When something goes down with her friends at school, i want the footage. I want to know every turn in the story, every inch of character development, inside and out. That won't happen if those twists and turns aren't on the page.

In the larger scheme of things, I want to have good pacing. Amy recently advised "make every paragraph interesting", and someone on the AWForum dropped the gem "Start a scene late and leave it early" (actually, I think that's from a famous writer). Also, the woman who wrote a blog ripping apart the first two and a half Twilight books hammered home to me the point that describing daily routines and movements are boring. (And that adverbs are bad, but I'm not worrying about that yet.)

All those things, I take them to heart. I understand the value, but when I try to apply those lessons to this manuscript, they drag me down. Giving myself permission to be the patient documentary director, to shoot the full length of every relevant scene of my main character's life, takes a load off my shoulders. I like spending time in these scenes and watching the characters closely in my mind.

So that's today's development.

I figure the first draft is for plotting anyways. Second draft will be for editing and story revision. Third draft for polishing the language. That's the ideal, anyway.

Permission to write boring. And to relax.

scheming, scheming, scheming...

2010-02-09T23:20:00.001-08:00

Well, I paid for four more years of domain hosting, so that's decided. Still going back and forth on the site redesign/blog change.

"Are blogs dead?" is a question I've noticed here and there in the past months. A lot of the time it seems like this one is. Despite the long history, I don't post regularly right now, and I never post art anymore, so it's just navel-gazing with the occasional bit of Writing thrown in. And I don't read blogs either (she said with much chagrin). Not even the ones that I consider dear to me.

I had a really bad jag of emo-ness go on earlier this week, and as I howled over my failures, I asked Reagan when my failures would be "enough" and I could give up for good. He said four years.

Of course, all the lessons and methods he has for his art don't apply the same way to writing... or do they?

On the surface, the hustle is different with writing. People don't browse fiction on the internet the same way they browse art. And I'm supposed to (by my own decree) be dedicating this year to writing. Instead I'm BSing on the internet.

This hour and a half before bed I said I was going to get some words in, but I spent the first half hour cleaning house and the second half hour taking care of business.

Necessary evils, necessary evils.

*hangs up "under construction" sign and goes back to work*

Painful decisions.

2010-02-03T12:39:00.001-08:00

Blogger and I, we go way back. But I have a long history with my own hosting and my own domain address. But this love fest is breaking up. Blogger doesn't want to hang out with my server anymore, and my domain host is getting needy.

Strange that all this is happening at once: my domain name expires and blogger stops supporting FTP, all within a month.

While this is a welcome invitation to scrub down to the basics and start over, I'm not ready to shake things up.

Not like I have anything to lose, though.

I beat time I set. I rejoice.

2010-01-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

Strider is one of my favorite books. It's in my kid's lit pantheon with Tangerine, The Westing Game, and A Wrinkle In Time.

Children's literature, writing, and objective failure/subjective success are all on my mind today.

I've determined that UA is what "they" classify as 'middle grade', and therefore have been thinking about it differently. Today saw a lousy number of words, but I made strides in structure, themes, and characterization (sic; no spell check on the iPtouch, and I'm not sure that looks right.)

Today also found me crunching numbers and breaking my big million word goal down into categories and projects and giving them ballpark word quotas. It seems like I evolve my process once a week, honing day by day to find out what works for me.

Speaking of the big million word goal, i'm starting to believe I won't make it by the end of the year. For one, January is nearly over and I'm 25,000 words in the hole. That's more than a week's quota. Spread out over the remaining days this year, it's only 70 additional words daily, but considering the struggles I'm having keeping up right now, that's more difficult than it sounds.

On the side of subjective success: I've written at least 300 words every day since I started this project on January 3rd, and my running total is over 40,000 words for the month. The project is working. I'm taking writing more seriously. Even if I keep fumbling along at half my daily goal, I'm still going to get a heck of a lot done this year. The million word mark isn't just something to do for 2010, it's also an assignment for me to get the "crap" out of my system and put a few practice novels in a trunk. Even as i fall farther behind schedule, I don't despair.

I beat time I set.

It hurts, Annie! It hurts!

2010-01-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

Lines from The Miracle Worker, such as the one above, keep running through my head.

It does hurt, but I'm too tired right now to do anything about it.

Writing was awful all day. I don't know if it's just a matter of exhaustion or what. Today's just been weird. Everything I wrote, I wanted to smack myself in the face, but I didn't want to throw in the towel either.

Surviving January 26th was a masochistic endeavor. (First line, anyone? Or maybe it should be May 3rd...)

Example of how worn out I am:
23:29 - close firefox to take one more stab at writing before midnight
23:31 - deem writing fiction a lost cause for the night.
23:33 - want to blog about the day, but starting firefox again is such a feat, BLOG FROM iPHONE.

Because typing with two fingers on a touch screen is the easiest thing ever.

All my works in progress bore the crap out of me.
I have no idea where the current scene in UA is going.
I haven't touched TUMORS in over a week.
The short story I wrote last night was total wankery.
I have no desire to give up on my writing goals.

Those are all complaints.

I bore the crap out of myself.

That is also a complaint.

But my biggest complaint right now: crappy blogger/iPhone interface.

just to be.

2010-01-22T23:26:00.000-08:00

Still confused and struggling, as usual. It feels a little different these past couple weeks, since I set out on an epic writing project that thwarts me at nearly every turn.

Emotional moments from today: frustration at the lack of spontaneous expression in my work. My art wings are still so small. I don't have my own voice with it. Writing is good, but it doesn't feel expressive. I imagine that dancing or playing music (or painting) could scratch that itch, but-- Actually, stompy dancing would do quite nice. Good thing I'm my own downstairs neighbor.

Neat trick how explaining something in a poetic way offers a solution.

Other emotional moment: frustration at my inability to turn off the recording device in my brain. Not the one that makes memories, but the one that takes not on what I see and hear and processes it into something more. I needed to relax, but books made me think about writing, and music made me think about drawing, and I just needed to let go.

Speaking of letting go, I crunched some numbers and reorganized my database of writing goals. I'm giving myself Saturday off. It means bumping my wordcount the other 6 days from 2800 to 3250, but I think it's wise to give myself a day off. Writing won't be verboten on Saturdays, just not required.

I've taken to writing 400 words at a time using Write or Die. The desktop edition is nice because it has a word meter and a time meter stacked on top of each other so it's easy to see how words-written compares to time-left. In the New System, 3250 words = 8 "sessions". That's pretty much my workday. I should probably start spending the other 30 minutes each work hour doing other, you know, writing. Or reading.

Instead, this past week I spent those in-between times watching the fantastic second season of In Treatment.

But come Monday another weekend of performances will be behind me, and I'll start setting my alarm for 9:30, and we'll see how things go from there.

Turning in

2010-01-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

After three days of good progress on my project, I'm writing today off as a "nil".

Quite little sleep happened last night, followed by a good dose of Museum, a great dose of Social, and an epic dose of Cooking (curry). Now I'm just blasted worn out at 10:30, and have to be up in 10 hours.

Correction, today's not a nil, just 21%.

...

...

Upon reconsideration, my laptop is coming to bed with me. Twenty one percent is a good deal more inspiring than a blank page. With the little bit of evening remaining, I'll try to work that up to a 40% or so.

Soupy twist.

half-edited flash

2010-01-06T21:36:00.001-08:00

Palette cleanser between midnight snack and going back to the novella. Half-prompted by my own prompt to Correspondence Chapbook Collective for Creativity to Try Writing an omission.

"That's really what you want?"

The fish looks half dead in the water, rolled on its side to show a pale belly to the equally pale sky. It looks half dead, but I know it is alive because it waves a fin in the air, mirroring the fin underwater that keeps the fish beside my boat. That, and it speaks with me.

Laying on its side is the only way the fish can look at me with its dark, gaping eye as we converse about the weather, the lake, fishing, and, of course, my wish.

Reeling it in, though no easy feat in itself, hadn't been enough. No, besides locating the most singular fish west of the Rockies, besides luring it, besides pulling it out of the water (all twenty six inches, then I was allowed to let it back in the lake), I also had to charm it. Ladylike. Luckily, that part had been in my study materials, so I had come prepared. At least I didn't have to kiss it.

When magical creatures like this fish are discovered, treasure hunters make a cottage industry of pamphlets, ebooks, and guided tours. But few outside the business realize how much trial and error experimentation goes a verified discovery.

Some creatures need gifts, some need favors, some need validation. Some needed to be haggled with. Some need kisses, some need tickling, some need blood. Some need a stiff drink. Each creature of wonder has its own rules and rituals that must be observed, and unlike the combination locks securing the vaults that hold the world's gold, magical beings can't be defeated by a stethoscope, a good ear, and a deft touch. Very often. Less than one percent.

I had researched diligently to find something to grant my particular wish (magical entities aren't immune to poisons of bigotry and jealousy). Every listed creature within three hundred required more sacrifice, money, or vacation time than I had stashed away. Stumbling onto the possibility for a local, magic fish--and an easygoing fish at that--was a boon.

Truthfully, the discovery was more tripping over than stumbling onto. A story of the wish fish was printed in a newspaper wrapped around a jewelry box beneath a stack of Spanish language National Geographics in the junk room at the end of the hall on the third floor at an estate sale in the house that Jack built. I was there looking for cast iron.

And damn if the paper wasn't older than my mother, but the report was succinct. It said all the lucky wish recipient had done was catch a massive fish with black eyes and green fins, reel it in, hear its voice, toss it back, then have a nice chat with the magical, socially-starved individual.

Where I'm from, people don't really talk, so that last bit was harder than it sounds. I practiced chit-chat at a local coffee bar for a full month, but eventually the owner asked me to stop making the other customers uncomfortable. I wasn't comfortable either, but practice wasn't helping so I set off to talk. To. That. Fish.

It's passed now, though. The slimy, scaly conversation is heaped in my mind's junkyard of useless memories alongside how to get to my elementary school, the combination of my brother's bike lock, and the number of trees on the northern bank, which I counted while waiting for the fish to take my bait.

Now that fish is floating gently and staring at me, as though willing my body to tip from the boat and drown in its deep, black eye.

"You're sure?"

I nod.

"Well, alright then."

With a flick of its emerald tail, the fish wriggles back into the darkness far beneath my boat.

I don't notice any change, or feel any different. But I don't suppose I would.

Did you know that to be called a fish, an aquatic vertebrate has to have at least two pairs of paired fins? I need to revise some doodles, and stat!

This is quite a bit more edited than the 10k words of the WIP I have going. Less than 1000 words are more forgiving for proofreading in that way.

I want to go on about everything I'm discovering by writing so much this week, but I'm too busy writing.

Yay letters that make words.

2010-01-06T19:43:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I try to avoid proper nouns, namely names, in my work. This most commonly happens in slush work, like the novella I'm currently plowing through. From the outside it seems a little contradictory due to my interest in identity and name magic, but sometimes I'm just playing with concepts and don't want to invest in fully clothing my characters. (That sounds way worse than I meant it.)

This can be solved by picking generic, nondescript names, like the Billy, Bobby, Evan, Jack and Frank who star in one line of this novella. Find-replace will be my friend when I evolve these characters, or maybe when I do a full rewrite they'll have different names.

Other solution: picking out random letters from something nearby, or playing with pleasing sounds in my head. Sometimes this doesn't work for the best, like the "Burbull Bolt" my character is exploring in a collaborative project. Occasionally, however, a name like "Echston" pulled from a bag of dehydrated veggies brings a degree of serendipity to a story.

This Echston bought up a lot of property in a city, beginning with an orphanage, then the surrounding buildings until he owned everything around a public square. He closed off the square and hired people to be part of his secret project. They all lived/worked in Echston's buildings around the square. Yes, it's a bit cult-like. Especially when you find out the people living in that area are calling themselves "Archstones" and the orphanage at the center of it is called "Keystone". It works so well, it amazes me that Echston was the first piece, not the last one, mutated to make the others fit.

...
...
Well there's 300 words and 40 minutes I won't get back.

Double edged sword cuts both ways

2010-01-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

I've undertaken a new project that I will be referring to a lot (especially on Twitter), but not talking about much. Bits of it will be posted from time to time as well, but it's all very rough. If I was at my computer right now I'd show a bit of tonight's work, but I'm in bed on the Touch again.

Correction: if I was on my laptop, I'd still be working on the blasted thing.

I modified a NaNoWriMo spreadsheet to keep track of my daily progress (quantity, not quality, dearies!), and determined that my system will count by calendar days rather than wake/sleep days. Two nifty benefits of this: first, my push for end of day numbers happens while I still have a couple buckets of energy in me, and second, as long as I make use of those post midnight hours, I have a headstart when I wake up in the morning and am at my worst.

Suffit. Any more and I risk tipping my hand.

New toy!

2010-01-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

My mom got a new iPhone for christmas, and kindly sent me her old 1st gen to use as a Touch.

In the past ten minutes alone it has made my life better by providing a flashlight so I didn't trip over Reagan's slippers while he was sleeping, and then made my life much MUCH better by introducing me to the possibilities of silent, handheld blogging.

You see, it's around 26 degrees F outside, and the basement where my computer is has an uninsulated sliding glass door, and I leave the thermostat (one floor above) set at 60 (I'm paranoid about really high heating bills, unprecedented due to spending my first 25 years in temperate climes). My eyeballs get cold down there.

Up here, however, our bedroom is the warmest spot in the house. I'm curled nicely under blankets, benefiting from my husbands body heat, and noiselessly returning to a beloved pasttime.

Oh, the joys of an iPhone. If only it could act as a remote for my 'lectric blanket...

2010

2009-12-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling very good about the new year. Not in any excitable way, but chill and confident. Well. Chill, at the very least.

The Moment was spent curled up on the bed with Reagan, a plate of special cheeses between us and glasses of Strongbow in hand. We were watching a live feed of Time Square. When the countdown was in the 40 second range I commented on how anticlimactic the new year was going to be for us. I didn't mind much, some of late 2009 was spent discovering that I'm a person comfortable with anticlimax.

We watched the giant screen in New York via my small screen balanced on my knees as the east coast reached single digits. We didn't count along, but let the crowds call out "six, five, four" for us. Then the connection slowed, leaving us with a frozen picture that didn't pick up again until the confetti was falling.

Yes, my New Year was defined by lag. We laughed, kissed, then toasted with our hard cider.

Happy Decades. A cheer for surviving the old one, and a fierce wish for the one to come. Let's all make the most of our new tomorrows.

Colorblind

2009-12-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

Life hasn't been normal since before my last post. Hm.

Life hasn't been normal for a touch over two weeks, but these two weeks have felt longer. First came the Long Night with Reagan being away (preceeded by a weekend of Togetherness), then the snow came, driving us out of the basement to the close-quarters, third-floor warmth of our bedroom.

And I haven't left yet.

I've left physically, to do dishes, to romp in the snow (that washed away today :( ), to go to the Base with Reagan, and for one long, freezing day when our windows were replaced. Daily operations, however, still take place from, well, bed.

Until today I bore the confinement with relative grace, and even today I wasn't too cranky about it. But it took me until to day to realize that The Long Day (which I'm calling this past week) is the other side of the coin I minted during The Long Night.

When all my time is spent in one place, there's no clear division to the days and hours. Even when I'm not keeping on the same schedule as my husband, the weekdays are clearly divided into Reagan At Work, Reagan At Home, and Reagan Asleep, which gives me structure, and things to do. (For some reason he assumes the duties of cooking any time he's home... and I don't really argue.)

This past week I've let my days devolve into little bits of many things. A little writing here, a little writing-theory there, a handful of doodling when I feel the need, and a lot (lot) of aimless wandering around the internet. But wandering to useful things (I tell myself). The result is not being able to tell when I'm "working" and when I'm "playing", which brings me to a moment like this when I need to force myself into something, but I can't tell if I need to relax or close down some distractions and get something done. Often I want to kick back, but can't justify it since i haven't accomplished anything substantial.

Now that I have made this discovery, I feel the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend will go more smoothly.

keeping busy

2009-12-17T02:45:00.000-08:00

last Thursday

tonight

Behind me you see just one of the six cabinets I put a coat of paint on. I ran out of masking tape before I could get to the seventh. Second coat goes on tomorrow.

That's not right!

2009-12-11T00:22:00.000-08:00

The last thing on my todo list today was scanning art.

About 40 minutes ago I discovered the scanner wouldn't talk to my computer unless my computer had drivers/software installed. I didn't want to take the time to find the CD and install the software, so I decided to make use of my tablet and approximate for you a sketch from my new sketchbook.

I put on Pandora and had fun with.

Don't think it was faster, though.

Frustrathon

2009-12-10T00:38:00.000-08:00

I am peeved that Firefox did not restore my session. I had some good recipes open! (I think)

Before Firefox did not restore my session, I was frustrated because...
1) I'm 20 minutes from Extended Bedtime and 40 minutes passed Normal Bedtime
2) I only finished 4.5 of the 6 things on my ToDo list for today
3) The next two prompts in 3am Epiphany aren't things I can reasonably attempt in 20 minutes (even if it is near the titled 3am)

Soon I will be annoyed because I'm not communicating clearly, or my bread starter is separating, or I'm too excited to fall asleep, or I realize how much miss blogging, or... or... or...

But all those things are minor. I play them up to the audience, saying how angry or frustrated I am with a great big smile and a laugh just under the surface. When I have an emotion other than "good", "fine", "happy", or "utterly depressed" I parade it around like a prize I've won, and marvel at what chaotic turmoil it's causing in my brain. Maybe because those "troubles" are problems I get to solve.

Short, explicit summary: Things are going (very) well.

Some time in the past couple weeks I turned a corner and had a series of... more determinations that epiphanies.

The first behavioral breakthrough was beginning to ask myself "what's the little thing I can do right now to improve the situation?"
Second was planning out cooking way in advance.
Third is very recent: limited ToDo lists. Crossing things off is fun, and by only putting a handful of things on the list, I can accomplish a high percentage and still have time in my day to do other things.

Three (relatively) big things I have going on:
- Signing up to help a local Community Theater for their next production. I volunteered for sets and sound-tech, and expect to start next week, maybe the one after.
- Helping write a historic superhero comic for a friend of Reagan's who lives in the area. I'm still in the early stages. I did a draft of the pilot issue's script and am doing background research.
- Starting a chapbook exchange group! This is possibly the biggest risk, as it's the only project of the three I'm completely in charge of. I set up a facebook group for people to join a small group, put together some recent writing, mail it to the other group members, get (and give) feedback, then start the process all over. I guess it's "workshop: lite". The response I've gotten is thrilling!

(See?! it's already past my late bedtime! and I'm worked up!)

Major event of the past worth mentioning:

Lots. Of. Cooking.
Except for last week (due to a prolonged headache), I cook something new about four times a week. Usually with a recipe.

Today I also cooked cranberry... sauce? relish? chutney? (it did have a dash of curry powder!) and mixed up some pie dough for hand pies with cranberry as the filling. Very tasty with a little cream cheese.

At this very moment I have a yeast bread sponge at my elbow. Tomorrow I'll bake my fourth loaf in the past month, and my second this week. Acquisition of bread flour and a cooking scale really amp up my baking. I'll probably go off the charts when Reagan buys me a stand mixer.

But with all this cooking and baking, I need to redouble my efforts to exercise.

Event of the near future worth mentioning: Next Monday Reagan leave will spend the work week tramping around in the snow, shooting guns and jumping out of helicopters. :(

Actually, I'm just going to pretend he's asleep and the week is an unending night that I can spend being hyper productive. Cabinets? Painted! Boxes? Unpacked! Kitchen island? Assembled! And other such things.

Sigh, blog, you are a bad influence on me. It's 20 past four and my teeth aren't going to brush themselves. I must hasten away, lest Reagan wake up and leave for work before I get a chance to steal his warmth.

Diurnal

2009-11-17T20:14:00.001-08:00

I miss the floating stasis of night time. I miss staying up late and feeling cooperation and harmony among my motivation, my emotions, and my mental state. I miss how productive I used to be during the midnight hours when I was blinded to the impatient dimensions like sun and supper.

These days time passes before my eyes, not beneath my feet, and I seldom feel my consciousness relax enough to fill the vacant sky. I think it's a lack of solitude.

Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of alone time during the day, at least a solid six hours of idle time while Reagan's gone, then another, scattered three when he's home in the evenings. But during daylight, no matter the weather, I feel the presence of the rest of the world. I feel the trees and the birds, the neighbors and their pets. I feel the cars and the kids and the noise and the work; the huge, lit reality out there is oppressive. I see it, I hear it, I feel it, and I can't shut it out.

But the shadow blacks of nighttime are a blank canvas to me and for me. Silence pulls me out of my head and belittles my inhibitions. At night I find my focus better than I ever feel it during the day; it's just my nature.

I've taken decently well to daytime living, though. I wake up before six and fix Reagan some breakfast. I clean the kitchen and pass my day, watching the sun so I can move my flowers, watching the clock so I can time my shower, errands, or at the very least plan dinner. Structure is good. Going to bed at the same time my husband does is good. Those last minutes of shared awareness are treasured every day.

Tonight, however, I left him upstairs to sleep alone.

I'm down here missing the darkness.

Bounce-back day

2009-11-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

A day off in the middle of the week is like an extra long autumn daylight savings day. A holiday without the obligations of a weekend. A snow day without snow.

But that was yesterday. Today is still rainy and delightfully overcast, and I'm determined to get things done (even though I slept in again).

Actually, all I want to do right now is play Andy Goldsworthy in our little backyard, with its drooping grass and purple-gray leaves

In other news

2009-11-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

My old everywhere-sketchbook is full, and in it's place I've taken to carrying around a Memoranda book Reagan was issued sometime during his training. (Firefox doesn't recognize "Memoranda" as a word, but it's clearly printed on the front of this federally supplied notebook.)

In any case, I ripped out parts of the first 5 pages that R had written on. Nothing interesting was lost or remains, but it's a way to keep the source intact and still be able to find the beginning of my own scrawlings.

It's mostly lines of poetry and story ideas based on things I read. None of that is fit for public consumption, but there is something I'm willing to share. In one of my writing magazines there was a short humor article about the two sentence biographies that follow articles in most publications. I started writing some of my own to have on hand in case I forget how to blurb myself between now and becoming a real published writer.

Annie Rush...
... (assuming that is her real name) hails from next door (as long as you live in a suburb), but spends all her time writing in a moving car. Her husband does the driving, of course.

... is a pseudonym adopted from her cats. They dictate her short stories and articles, but she's on her own for the poetry.

... started writing at age six, stopped at age nine, and has been rehashing those ideas ever since. She has no sense of humor.

... and her self description will never fit into this space, much as her feet will never fit into that perfect pair of Mary Janes she had in the third grade.

... mixes metaphors for your enjoyment every Tuesday at her basement comedy club. Please tip your waitresses and mail carriers.

... would like to level with you. She's only good at writing, so take a look at her novel: Spreading It Out in a Nutcase.

... was born a girl, grew up a bear, grew into a jackal. She is now a young adult author.

... is the real-life inspiration for Nancy Drew. She gave up detecting adventures to sit at home, chew pens, and, occasionally, write.

.... can't decide if she would rather read everything or write everything. People keep sneaking off with her ideas, so it will likely be the former.

What's your blurb?

Checking my work

2009-11-10T18:59:00.000-08:00

I finished the first draft of this about 11 hours ago, so unlike many of my postings, it's been proofed and lightly edited!

((Reagan's going over it. While he does, I'll report that dinner was excellent and I got my google wave invite today. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I'm an early-ish adopter!

R's laughing. I think that's good. It's meant to be comedy.

I'm suddenly craving lebni cheese.))

Mom pulls the cover off the serving platter with triumph glistening on her face. We all hunch forward for the reveal, then turn to Mom and watch the triumph run from her face like watered down mascara, to be smoothly replaced by mortification. Taking our cue from her, the rest of us are horrified by the dinner we are being served.

This side of the apocalypse, pink and gray are not appropriate colors for food. I cover my mouth with my napkin, just in case.

° ° ° ° °

I won't lie about this. The smell coming from under the lid is gross. It smells like something died, in the wrong way. I want to leave, but "dinner" has me locked in its tractor beams, and Dad would holler if I left without permission. No way I'm taking the first bite, though. Or the second or the third. Not even on a dare.

Jessie looks like she's gonna puke.

= = = = =

I know the kids are looking to me to be the brave one and throw myself in front of the gelatinous horror that looms in front of us, but Sandi's counting on me, too. I can read those eyebrows clear as semaphores, and she couldn't stand it if I rejected this meal she spent all day on.

Everyone's waiting on me, but I can't bring myself to say a word, so the silence has a field day in our midst. Sometimes it's a layered tension binding us in our seats, sometimes it's a thin wind whipping around the room, both obvious and invisible. At some point it shifts from anticipation to quiet, dumbfounded curiosity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They're all waiting for what's next. Clearly, nobody has any intention of eating what I cooked, or rather ruined. I can't say I blame them. The kids looked from me, goddess of the kitchen who betrayed them, to their father, hero of evenings, fixer of things, but this culinary disaster is beyond his powers.

I cover the dish again. "Kids, go back to your homework. Dinner is postponed."

"Can we have pizza?" Of course Colin is leveraging my misfortune for his greasy gain.

"No, Mom, order Thai."

Jessie's never had Thai food; the odd request just prolongs the silence which hasn't completely left the room.

"Go... do... your homework. Your father and I will figure something out."

= = = = =

As the kids scatter, I go to my wife and kiss her cheek tenderly, in case whatever happened to dinner is contagious.

"Thai food?" she asks me, query punctuated with an incredulous eyebrow.
"She's seen it on TV. People are always having it delivered."
"I guess."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"No, no." Sandi is resigned to launching a second attack on hunger with one of her plan B contingencies. "You can go back to whatever. I'll make something quick."
"Mac and cheese?"
"If you're lucky."

I give her another kiss and follow the kids upstairs.

* * * * *

But we can't stay away. I am the first to arrive by mere seconds, but dinner#1 is laid bare again, its shroud nowhere in sight. I stand in the doorway held in thrall by the slick rosy slopes. Dad appears in the opposite doorway, serving the food a hard stare with a side of frown.

Colin joins us, almost as though the casserole of crap had summoned us to the table side to gaze upon its splendor again. "What _is_ it?" he breathes.

I don't even notice he is gone until he returns. The squirt climbs up to stand on Mom's chair. I don't pay much attention to him, preferring to watch how the light wraps itself around the gray lumps on the table. A white flash interrupts the warm light on our cooling dinner.

Colin brought back a camera. My camera!

° ° ° ° °

I'm focused on the rubbery mass centered on the table. Focused and capturing its horror to warn my friends and any future dinner guests... but not to focused to notice Jessie's face tighten when she sees what I'm doing. Mom senses danger--or returns to collect the leftovers... leftunders... whatever you call untouched food--or maybe she, too is beckoned by the mystery.

Mom comes in from the kitchen and hollers, "Back to your rooms! Let it rest in peace."

Jessie launches an attack at me, saying I took her things, but Mom pulls me off her chair and deflects Jessie. Much like an eagle snatches a squirrel from a wolf... then eats it. I'm hauled into the kitchen and set on a counter while Mom shuffles around, opening jars, boiling cans, and however else she cooks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nothing seems to be quite normal tonight, so I prefer to corral my space alien when I can keep an eye on him, often two. His heels kick the lower cabinets, but today I don't care. I'm simply happy the boy still behaves like a boy, even if chicken doesn't behave like chicken or potatoes like potatoes. And the boy is also behaving like not-boy, seeming to nibble at something square and shiny in his hands.

"Jessie's camera?" I hold out my hand rescue the gadget.
"Pepperoni?" Colin does a keen imitation of me, seeking a bribe for his compliance.

"Clear the.., uh-humm... off the table." I say, dropping a couple over-crisped slices in his hand.
"Okay, Mom."

I check on the pizza in the oven, then sweep up the meat crumbs in Colin's wake. Before the door to the dining room has stopped swinging, he's in the gap again. "It's not there."

I try to take the news in stride.

"Tell your sister to wash again, we'll eat soon." Colin stops abruptly as I grab his shirt. "And return this."

He takes the camera and I call my husband.

= = = = =

Sandi yells for me when I'm right around the corner. She doesn't know I'm heading for a third examination of the dinner that was not food.

"I'm here, I'm here".

"Did you do something with the--" She coughs and glances significantly at the white expanse of our dining room table.

"No, why would I..?" I notice then that it is gone.

"Why would you throw out inedible food?"

"Well, that's the logical thing to do with it, but I haven't yet. Didn't you?"

"Would I be asking if I did? If I didn't chuck it, and you didn't, and Colin didn't...."

I say "Dingoes?" the same moment she says "Jessie?"

But neither of us are confident.

"Then where is the dish? The lid, even? Your mother gave those to me for our wedding."

My wife is troubled, but there's nothing to do now, when none of us have eaten supper. And a timer is ringing in the kitchen.

* * * * *

Mom and Dad both glare at me when I come down for dinner take two.

"What?" I give them my best impression of an annoyed teenager.

Mom starts "Did you---" But Dad steps on her line.

"Help your mother get supper on the table."

There's nothing to do but follow Mom into the kitchen and stand next to her at the oven.

I can tell she's still nervous, hoping her kitchen magic didn't fail a second time. Her knuckles are white on the heavy door's handle.

"Courage, Mom"

She takes a deep breath and opens the oven. The pizza inside looks marvelous. The edges are black and crispy, and the toppings are a bit past well done, but the smell makes my mouth water. Her triumph is shy--but pure--as she carries the steaming pie to the table. I grab the cheese and pepper in her wake.

We sit down again, usual places, usual faces, and dig in.

I think I fulfilled the exercise's demands, even though I neatly exceeded the word count by half. Without Mr Brian Kiteley here to check my work, though, I'll never know for sure.

The voices for the four characters aren't as differentiated as I'd like. Each section is preceded by a special header which indicates the next narrator, though, if you want to mental-map out that kind of thing.

Other themes for today:
- apartment vs. house, both in terms of our current living space and my various pursuits... am I renting or buying the mantles of writer and artist?
- binging on writing magazines. I dropped some cash on three different writing magazines, and unsurprisingly, they are both inspiring and demoralizing.

Royal We

2009-11-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

I counted the words I wrote in this exercise. 707. "Dead on!" I thought to myself. But when I checked the book, the "Royal We" prompt was only for 600. Unedited story text follows. Blah blah blah at the end.

We escaped the night they forgot to put a guard on duty. Normally one of them hassled Paul when he went out to take a piss around three, but that last time no rifle nudged him harshly in the gut. No thick-gloved hand shoved him in the direction of the piss-pit, and no gravely voice made rude remarks about his bodily functions or about his wife. We took advantage of the oversight and escaped.

Susannna was skeptical, saying first that it was a trick, then later that we shouldn't leave the others behind. The crowing of a cock awoke her instincts, though, and our four feet shuffled cautiously over the dirt threshold. Her conscience struck again halfway between the cover of the bunkhouse and the freedom of the back fence and we had to spend a few seconds arguing in harsh whispers. Paul threatened to go alone, saying he would go back for no man and would wait for no woman.

For the next fifty meters, all we heard was the crunch of our own footsteps on the crust of snow littering the yard. Tears fall lightly and make no sound.

We'd never discussed escape, alone or with others. Paul seemed to know what he was doing, though, when we reached the fence. Before the night's chill could fully seep through our worn out sweaters, the wire curtain parted for us, and swept closed again in our wake.

Freed from the oppressing depravity of the camp, Susanna releases the chokehold that had clamped down her emotions for the past several months. Without even moving into the trees, beyond the sight of the tilting buildings of the camp, she breaks down crippling the momentum of our escape.

We are lucky that the snow swallowed the sound of her sobs, but the cold was little encouragement to move farther towards safety. Paul tried coaxing in soft words, but his voice was too comforting. Movement on the barren side of the wire fence forced his hand.

We both reeled from the pain of the slap. The shock of violence was sharpened by the cold, then dulled by adrenaline. Susanna found her feet as the torrent of emotion shifted abruptly from exhausted relief to indignation and anger. Progress came swiftly then and we were beyond earshot then eyesight of the camp within minutes. Susanna was chasing revenge, but we were both leaving the bellows that fueled that fire far behind.

The anger died out as quickly as it had leaped up; our concentration shifted from the quarrel to the struggle across rocky ground in the darkness. Paul led the way over ravine filled with sticks, across broad slippery boulders, and skirting the frequent patches of snow. We labored silently in the moonlight for a thousand frosty breaths before the pace relaxed.

At the top of an embankment Susanna hesitated. Paul already slipped over the side onto a ledge several feet below. We looked at each other for a moment, struggling to climb out of the too-familiar mode of survival and return to a mindset of interaction and humanity. Paul reached it first, lifting his arms to assist his wife.

Susanna reached the same awareness after our feet were once again planted side by side. Our eyes locked, each reading the whirl of thoughts and emotions in the other, waiting to fall into the right gear for our predicament.

Susanna's emotions picked up where they had been left, furious about the violence inflicted by the person most precious to her. We struggled as she tried to pull away. Paul tightened his grip and murmured the sounds of our private language, hoping to cut through the confusion. We argued in short, wordless bursts, exchanging glimpses of fear, worry, and protection.

Paul was watchful. Paul was brave. Paul rescued.
Susanna was caring. Susanna was devoted. Susanna supported.

We gave up our tension a fraction at a time, forgiving each other, reminding each other of the love that had brought us together and kept us together.

After one final squeeze in the embrace we had worked ourselves into, we shared a level, sober gaze. Danger was behind us. The frosty dawn was around us. We could see nothing before us on the path we traveled but black, wet trees.

Hand in hand, we walked forward.

This was hard. And awkward. The idea was the easy part, even though I knew I had to write in the odd "we" point of view. I even have a list of three other ways I want to use the format, though I doubt any of them will be easier to implement.

I picked this version of the prompt to write out first because it's most true to the exercise description in the book. Some of the feeling might've been different if I had re-read the prompt at any time during the writing process (it was several hours, if not a full day, between reading the assignment and starting to write).

Something I avoided in this was using both names in one sentence. Whoever wrote the two line example use both names; had I re-read that bit, I might've done the same. In general, though, I think it's a practice that weakens the "royal we". Unless I weakened it by allowing each sentence to legitimately be able to come out of one mouth or the other.

Maybe I should try again with a duo and permit both names in one sentence (all my other ideas involve large, shifting groups as the "we"), but I don't think those tries will be worthy story attempts. This style falls into an uncanny valley of writing. I think it's a legitimate style to refer to oneself in the third person, or to use the royal "we" as an individual, but using "we" for a finite people and never using "I"... is just uncomfortable. (An exception to this would be someone on the sidelines in a group, where the narrator never does anything alone, but others do.)

Anyhow, the attempt above is very loosely inspired by a scene in the movie Katyn. Despite going 107 words over wordcount, I left out a lot of description and detail in the action covered above, plus have a second act I could add to it. We'll see.

I had a cool title for this post that covered both today's writing and today's dinner, but I can't remember what it was.

Dinner was late and in a hurry. I dumped white rice and a few roughly smashed cloves of garlic in the rice cooker to be our starch/side. We don't have a meat mallet, so I filled an empty salsa jar with water and used it to pound a chicken breast flat. It was a pretty messy way to go. Flat chicken breast was wrapped around some diced onion and fresh rosemary, then the whole thing wrapped in bacon (4 slices). Popped it in the oven. Boiled then cooled some fresh green beans, tossed them in a skillet with sauteed red bell peppers to keep warm. Salt and pepper.

The bacon was slightly under cooked (for how we like it), but the chicken was perfect. All plated up, dinner looked wonderful. Tasted good, too.

These days I usually prefer to use a recipe than just cook on the fly like this (not because I screw up regular food, but because I want to try more different things and expand my skill set), but it's nice to know I can make a good dinner out of fresh ingredients, even if I'm clueless 20 minutes before I start.

Perfect is the Enemy

2009-11-07T20:23:00.000-08:00

Thinking out loud. No pictures here. And the thinking isn't even original.

I'm suffering from information overload again, caught between the desire to cast a wide net and the desire to actually catch anything in the net. I'm starving for my inability to eat fish for need of sorting fish. (I love my convoluted metaphors.)

I finally connected my consumption compulsion (with regards to media/information) with the handful of posts about Barry Schwartz'sParadox of Choice a few minutes ago. I nearly bought the book (yay kindle!), but read the reviews and decided there wouldn't be enough "help" for me in there.

It's a struggle to grok that I won't become who I want to be overnight.

At "lunch" today I said that I don't think in the long term, and that's true. Despite my "complaint" that one of our democracy's difficulties is its inability to make long term plans and decisions, I realize I don't do that on my own either. Perhaps it's a byproduct of moving an average of once a year for the past 8 years, but I can't really map out my future more than a little bit at a time. Gannon (more than a decade older than I) mentioned things he wants to do with his art over the next ten years, and that kind of foresight, that distance of vision, was outside my zone of familiarity.

It shouldn't be, but I won't change this overnight.

As part of that lunchtime discussion I brought up cultural pressure to be an instant success, or at least one that reaches viability and maturity within a couple years. Even though I can't think of life without my creativity, I also can't think of what my creativity will be in ten years. How will it change? Where will I go? What will I reach?

Ach, mea culpa. It's about the journey, not the destination. Even if there is a "there", I won't reach it overnight.

Nothing happens overnight. Even if I can sculpt a reasonable 25.5 year old version of myself in the next few hours or days, I won't make the habits I want to have as soon as I imagine them.

But what are those little change I need to make? How will I find the quiet time for rejuvenating and the spare time for stretching? How will I exchange breadth for depth? How will I always remember that I can't read everything, so it's better read and grok a few things than skim and bookmark many things?

Limit your choices. Limit your choices. Limit your choices.
Good is good enough. Good is good enough.
Output is more importance than input.
Perfect is the enemy.

Pardon my overstating mantras.

It's not a joke that I need to let go of the road not traveled, though, and stop fretting over missed opportunities. (Heehee, there's a story in this somewhere.) Even if I have benefited from obsessive skimming and gleaning, I don't think it's going to bring me a cure from obsessive skimming and gleaning.

Where's my f$*%&($#*&in discipline?!

Another small thing from lunch that I think will help in some way: I had an opportunity to explain, to other and to myself, why I don't do more inked/colored/finished drawings. I like the quantity and physical progress of drawing in a sketchbook and working my way through photo books, a certain satisfaction that doesn't come from digital work, even if I post it online. I need to work out quantities to be printed and posted in my room... or in a dark dark folder never to be seen... to give myself the same feeling of accomplishment and progress. Maybe I can apply that to this other messy instream of info somehow that will maximize my productivity.

Good thing tomorrow's a Monday. The beginning of a workweek is a great time to experiment on myself!

Thrift... Score?

2009-11-07T16:20:00.001-08:00

Reagan found this at Goodwill. It cost us 25 cents.

It has basic things like "time" and "alarm", but also has buttons for divide, multiply, plus, and minus, leading me to believe it's a large precursor to the digital watch. It also has stopwatch buttons.

There are probably many clever things to say about this, but I'm distracted by listening to Randy Pausch's Last Lecture again. Every time I find the link to send to someone, I end up watching it again.

This time the someone is Gannon Beck*! Reagan's known him online for a while, and I've followed his blog. He was in the area to see some people at Quantico today, so we met him at a local Vietnamese restaurant. I think we all showed up a little after two... and didn't leave for more than four hours. It was a great, engaging afternoon of talking about art, writing, philosophy, history, storytelling, and politics.

Behind the Casio gadget in the above photo is something that was not thrifted (came from an antique store for not-chump-change), but is definitely a score: a soft vintage rug of kangaroo fur. It's rectangular, not animal-shaped, and will be our new snuggling spot in front of the fire... as soon as we get the wood to build one.

Nice day. Yeah. Hot buttered rum for sipping, and doodles galore. :)

----
*Note to Gannon: Blogs are better to link to than profiles on Facebook!

I DIY'd it

2009-11-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

Home is a little more homey, now. I hung our first bit of decor.

Plastic squirrel "feeders" by our front door, to be used as key-holders.

Reagan and I found them in a cool antique store on Route 1, and couldn't resist the hilarity. Or at least I couldn't.

Now we get to always come home to this:

:D

Failure! :D

2009-11-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

Actually, today was anything but. Except for the candied pummelo peel which just ended up soggy and sweet. I think the heat was too low.

But dinner was a smashing success, though even if I use the recipe again, it won't be the same. Even if I make the same corn-for-half-the-beans substitution, it won't be the same. Since I was doing a double-layer of enchiladas in a loaf pan, I needed a sauce, and used some leftover sauce/liquid from stuffed peppers earlier in the week, mixed with a packet of taco seasoning. Curse my ingenuity, and using available resources!

Dinner has been great all week. Stuffed peppers, food-loaf, meat loaf... plus banana bread. I love my loaf pan, don't I? (note: meat loaf was made with a pie plate) Until tonight, everything was decided by the seat of my pants, using what was available and needed to be cooked.

Now I have a new method: Google calendar as meal planning.
In general, I stay on the lookout for good potential recipes. If it's in a book, I'll fold the corner. If it's on the internet, I'll tag it on a favorites site. Don't know what I'll do with a recipe from another source.
Keeping in mind the rhythm of our schedule, what we have on hand, what needs to be used, and frequency of different starches and proteins, I skim folded corners and saved links until I see something that sounds promising, then add it to my calendar. Internet recipes have their full text pasted as the event details, with the recipe's URL in the "where" field. This way, when I need to make a shopping list, I have an easy place to look for what we need for the next few days.

I'm on day 2 of this method. So far so good.

But after nearly a week of our new normal, I'm foreseeing one major problem: I'm cooking too much food.

Four dinners and one loaf of banana bread into the week, plus soup planned tomorrow, our fridge stocked with fresh food is becoming a fridge stocked with leftovers, with no sign of letting up. Tomorrow's dinner is soup, thankfully, which freezes well, but I had to revoke Reagan's authorization to make curry over the weekend so we could have time to deplete the surplus of leftovers and reclaim some of the tupperware that's tied up in the icebox.

My life is so hard. :P

Really. I had to forcibly detain myself from starting scones for breakfast tomorrow (in order to use up some berries before they go bad.

Other notes that don't fit the rest of this post:

+ Pummelos are dangerously good. They're the pomegranate of the citrus family.
+ I managed to cook, draw, and write today, plus a pinch of yoga AND got out of the house. I rock.
+ Tomorrow I'm going to leave the house and take my car with me to run errands!

Uphill

2009-11-03T12:02:00.001-08:00

I've decided to keep "doing it wrong" and continue yesterday's writing post in the direction I was heading instead of course-correcting to fit the (perceived) spirit of the assignment.

Part 1 here

Stripped, part 2

Tuesday, March 16
I got called into Bruce's office today after lunch. He said I've been distracted and not working very hard. Since I spent the hour before lunch working out transit schedules, I think he's right. Ralph's plight is getting to me. I'm determined to help him escape. Bought what I hope will be the keys to his escape after work.

Thursday, March 17
Apparently I'm not the only one trying to jailbreak the bike. Yesterday I took a wrench and a late bus down to Ralph's parking sign and the grips were peeled off the handlebars. I felt like a thief in my black sweater and stocking cap as I unbolted the seat and hefted it onto the last bus home. I guess I am one.

Is it solace to know I'm not the only one? Today I saw that someone made off with Ralph's battery and a bunch of wiring. His liver and nervous system, maybe? I don't know where this fits in the extended metaphor of this machine being slowly dismembered on the streets of the city.

The seat is currently propped up on the stumpy log that acts as an end table by my reading chair. I dubbed it the dreaming perch.

Friday, March 18
Weekends be damned, it's late and the excitement has worn me out.

When I took the long way to work today, I was shocked to find Ralph's back wheel missing. Bare metal of the chassis was scraping bright lines in the concrete. It was a struggle to concentrate at work, both before and after I confided in Toby. I don't know him well, but he's the only person in our department with a car, and he was willing to help.

Dinner was long and awkward. The movie was long, too, but distracting and therefore less awkward. After the movie he suggested coffee, but it was late enough to hurry to Ralph's curbside.

Despite owning his own car, Toby isn't great with mechanical things, so I did the prying and unbolting, but he was helpful with lugging the bike's front end into his back seat, then up the stairs to my apartment.

Handlebars, seat, front wheel, old stump. The corner of my studio looks like a bad art installation. Someone give me some looping video and I'll show at the MoMA.

Saturday AM, March 19

I woke up too early and talked to Ralph while the sun struggled to break through the clouds.

Ralph sounds haunted, all front half and top half. I don't ask him about What Happened, but when I ask him about Before, his answers are incomplete. He can tell me about the taste of the soil and the color of the light and the pulse of speeding through the woods, but names, dates, and people are gone from his memory.

Going to try to arrange him a bit more respectfully.

Saturday PM, March 19

Ralph has another name: Josie.

I took my camera and went to see the parts of the bike still locked to the sign. While I was there, taking detailed and mournful pictures of the chained convolution of metal, a man sitting on a nearby stoop asked me what I was doing. I told him about seeing the bike--and its gradual disassembly--on my commute, but didn't mention my part in the proceedings.

Turns out the bike had belonged to this guy's kid brother until that kid brother fell off, broke his collarbone, and asked his older brother to get rid of the bike. This family's version of shooting the dog that turned on its masters, I suppose. Except I don't remember those stories ending with the gun being thrown in the river, which Henry did with the keys after locking the bike up outside his building. He was angry about an insurance snafu or something. I wasn't paying attention then.

Henry (the older brother) tried to sell on craigslist to help pay his brother's medical bills, but selling locked up motorbike without the keys to the lock or the bike is a little too hinky, even for craigslist. And then parts started going missing.

After Henry got his depressing story all over me, I repaid the favor by getting my poetic story all over him, about the caged bird, the mouse missing its tail, and so on. After it seemed like he'd stopped paying attention, I slipped in an admission that I'd taken bits, then offered to buy the remaining bike.

He took a long time to answer, but soon we were knocking on doors looking for bolt cutters, then once a super loaned us an old set, we took turns jumping on the handles till the chain broke. I called Toby and promised him beer if he'd come pick me and the chassis.

While we waited Henry and I walked to the market to buy beer. He told me about his brother and road trips they took to go snowboarding. I think the tale of why the bike was named Josie was in there, but I can't remember.

Once the rest of Ralph was loaded in Toby's car, there wasn't enough room for both Henry and me, so we shook hands and wished each other luck.

A neighbor had to help Toby and me bring the chassis up. Now my studio looks... cluttered. And crowded since they both stayed for beer. My fault for asking.

Sunday, March 20
Henry came by after lunch. I asked how he found me. Turns out that even though it was an old address on the check I gave him, the new tenant there had my current address. And a large envelope of mail for me, including birthday cards.

Besides bringing mail and takeout, Henry brought a back pack filled at a hardware store. Except it was filled a long time ago at several hardware stores. All the tools were well used in contrast to the shiny wrench on my window sill.

He told me he came to say thank you, and urged me to relax while he worked. I got out a book that's been on my night stand a while, but spent most of the time watching. We only spoke a couple times, functional things, while Henry built the bike stand for Ralph.

Pipes and bolts and glue and tape were involved, but I couldn't explain how it was done, only that the seat, body, handlebars and front wheel are all back together now, standing on a platform in the middle of my room.

"Give it a try," Henry told me. I climbed gingerly on, and quickly off when it wobbled a little. Henry fiddled more, then helped me on again. This time Ralph held steady. I made motorcycle noises and imagined trees around me, instead of a painted box.

Henry took a ride, then I took one more, and we talked about fantastic places and imaginary trails until the food was gone.

I have my feet on Ralph's bare handlebars now, sitting on his back and leaning against the wall as I write. He's telling me about the fantastic travels we're going to have together. I may have to put a blanket over him tonight so I can sleep.

I feel like I'm in a Calvin and Hobbes strip turned inside out.

Another 1100 words on a 700 word prompt? Yes please....

Yay for accomplished. Now I need to start cooking, husband will be home early. :)

Pleasure Baking (read: procrastinating)

2009-11-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my kitchen!

Enjoy the fantastic view. Really. This is the only window in the kitchen-area, and it's technically in the breakfast nook.

But that's a pretty nice tree in our yard, excepting the fact that it's leaf-molting season and we don't have a rake.

But garden-related woes aren't my point today, my point is cooking something that isn't a meal! Ignore for a moment that it is necessity baking (isn't all banana bread necessity baking?), and spend a few moments enjoying the familiar sensation of blending butter and sugar...

It's almost a shame I have to add things to it. So before I do... tea break!

Our kettle could probably use replacing. It's a battered old thing that saw us through our early years in Savannah. I've also recently been converted to the ways of electric kettles, but don't have one of my own yet. It's a mouse/cookie scenario. As soon as a kettle shows up, it's going to disappear to our studio in the basement, and I'll have to get a second one for the kitchen.

Ok, water's boiling. This is where we keep the tea: high cabinet above the stove.

I desperately want to move it to here....

big blank wall across from the stove

... by slathering that wall with magnetic paint and popping on a few of these magnetic wire baskets. And spice tins and tea-towel hooks, too, of course. Can you believe I'm excited about having baskets that hold tupperware lids on that wall?

Back to the baking at hand...

Eggs! The reason I didn't make the loaf yesterday.

I crave better lighting and better workspace, both of which will come to me as soon as I can shift from here:

To here:

You notice that perpendicular counter is made out of translucent shapes. That's because it doesn't exist yet. I hope to acquire one in the next few months, whether by finding a freestanding counter used, buying one new, or building something myself.

In the meantime... stir, stir, stir...

... pour, pour, pour....

... and hurry up and gulp down that tea before it's cold.

lookit all that hair!

....

An hour or so of photo-tweaking and blogging later... TA-DA!

It's nice and chewy, came out of the pan like a dream, plus there's a slight crunch near the edges. I can't wait to toast a slice!

----
Kitchen high(low)lights not touched on in this post: poor lighting and the icky cabinets. Both of which I'm working on.

Second Win: Part 1

2009-11-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

Honestly, how does Brian Kiteley expect me to tell a satisfying story in 700 words? (Which raises the question if any of my 3am exercises have really produced satisfying results, but we'll leave that to one side for now.)

Confession: I haven't written 700, or even 600 words for this "Journalism" exercise. Currently it clocks in at 575, but I'm only about 60% done with the arc.

Today's premise is to write part of a story in the form of journal entries. It's possible I'm doing it wrong again. First off, this isn't "part" of a story (which may be a clue as to where I'm going wrong and trampling the suggested word counts), but the other "wrong" bits come from the extended prompt, which I'm not going to write out or enumerate. Trust me. I'm doing it wrong.

In any case, I'm basing this story on this sketch by Stephen Gardner.

Stripped

Friday, March 5
The rain is coming down so hard today I think God has folded the world in half and the Atlantic is spilling down on us. Stopping it from drenching you is futile. Even if newspapers were a nickel again, it wouldn't be worth it to hold one overhead; you'd be covered with inky pulp. I suppose an umbrella could've protected me from the downpour, but I still haven't replaced the one I left on the subway last month.

All this to say every sane person had their head down and hurried from place to place. I did. But that didn't prevent me from seeing a motor bike chained to a parking sign between the subway and my bus. It's only three blocks, how many strange things can happen in three blocks? But in just the past week it's been an old, smashed phone booth, a woman in a cooked turkey costume, and now a motor bike chained to a parking sign.

Monday, March 8
The motor bike is still there. I checked, it's a motor bike, not a motorcycle. I don't know where anyone would ride one of those in the city; I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to, anyway.

My neighbor suggested that maybe it's not still there, just there again. It was parked at the same angle both days, a weekend apart, but maybe he's right.

Tuesday, March 9
I chalked the bike today. Just curiosity, like that which swept over the face of that lady leaning out the window across the street. What was I doing crouching by this silent bike and examining its tires?

What was she doing in a business suit with her hair in rollers at four-thirty in the afternoon?!

Friday, March 12
Still there, and the mark hasn't moved all week. I did a little research about the bike yesterday, mostly on youtube. Now the machine on the sidewalk looks like a caged bird in my eyes, caged in a land far from home. Picture a peacock in an antartic lab, or a hawk. (The hawk is in the antarctic lab, too, because it seems like raptors exist pretty much everywhere. Except Antarctica.)

It's an injustice for a bike like that KTM to be somewhere so flat and paved as this city. I guess that's why it's chained, otherwise it'd go brrroooooOOOoooming off towards the thuway and the backwoods upstate.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle was a great book. I hope kids are still reading it.

Monday, March 15
Ralph lost his tail over the weekend. After cooping myself up in the apartment all weekend, trying to bang out a new song for Go-Nowhere Band Part 67, I got up early today. Setting my alarm 40 minutes early let me toss my morning routine out the window and take a new route to work, a route that would jog me past the motorbike before work, instead of just after it.

Quite a jog it was. I had to cross to the wrong side of the street to go past it, and when I bent to check the chalk mark (still there, same spot), the whole muffler apparatus was missing! I think. My obsession is just romantic and poetic, I haven't gotten into anatomy lessons.

Where once shiny (though scuffed) pipes swept out of the bike, there's just a dull emptiness and the backsides of some other... pipes.

The delay, both double-crossing the street and checking ~~Ralph's~~ the bike's cavity, threw off my timing and I had to run to catch my train. That's where the jog comes in.

Find part 2 of this story here

Top thing I like about this format: I feel liberated from descriptions. While I love finding the right handful of words for details, writing a journal in someone else's voice pushes me to describe less, just as I describe few things about my daily surroundings in my own journal.

Top thing I dislike about this format: When working in a format I'm accustomed to being autobiographical in (and garbling the English language in), it's difficult to write in a voice other than my own. I found myself falling into Annie's verbal patterns instead of finding Narrator-Girl's patterns. Maybe I'm fretting too much about this detail of a daily writing warm-up.

Moment of joy.: I have a bookmark folder called "write about", and the sketch I based this writing on was in that folder. This is the first time I've actually gone back to that folder of things that inspire me to make use of them. Minor victory!

Despite the cluster of sub-minor failings while I was plating dinner, today was mostly small victories, along the lines of getting chores done around the house, getting things organized. Making lists, and cooking a delicious dinner.

Tomorrow will have both more hours and fewer chores, so we're predicting high productivity. I, especially, hope some of those hours will have photography in them, because this post is pretty text-heavy.

-----
Post-script footnote to say "good things" about Stephen Gardner's work in general. He makes nice sketches, even when not drawing [[*spoiler alert*]] dismembered motorcycles.

Mark making

2009-11-01T19:04:00.001-08:00

I took the weekend off to feel lousy and watch shows, but that's over now. I did do some drawing, but it was mark making, not anything inspiring. Most of two days worth of drawing fits on two pages. Two pages filled with parallel lines. And another half page filled with thirty five head profiles. That's somewhat interesting, but I have some odd aversion to scanning anything myself.

Tomorrow is Reagan's first real day of work as a Marine photographer.
Tomorrow is my first day as.... ??

Exactly my point.

Markers, both false and real, tell me that playtime is over, and tomorrow is a new beginning to be taken seriously. But I have no gameplan. I'm not exactly worried that I'll fall apart and spend all day procrastinating, not exactly.

I've told myself that I'm a writer who will take myself seriously... but I've also told myself that I'm an artist who will take myself seriously, and a housewife who will take myself seriously.

Excuse me. "Domestic goddess."

By the way, I'm also a self-taught student who will take myself seriously, and a creator and designer and builder and photographer... and... and...

What is the new routine that will bring success? What are my ways and paradigms that will prove all--or any--of the above things to be true?

Yes, this is a freak-out familiar to my blog (and my life), but it feels more real time. Not just because it's directly ahead of me, but because the shift to ___________ is a real one this time. Or rather Reagan's shift is a real one, and I move with it and around it to keep all cylinders firing.

I believe my marriage is an outlier that doesn't follow the normal rules, but doesn't everyone?

If nothing else I'm taking my 3am Epiphany book upstairs with me to prove I'm thinking about writing and intend to work on it tomorrow. Then I'll play DS until I fall asleep.

Art Update

2009-10-28T22:15:00.001-07:00

Good way to start the day.

I hates acrylics a lot less last night...

... than I did the night before...

... but I hate all those photos equally. Must set up lightbox...

These aren't serious painting attempts by any means, just playing with the medium to burn off the last hours before bedtime. Doodles without sketch prep.

Speaking of sketching, I've done none at all in the past week. Hardly any in the past month, much to my chagrin, but the house is set up now, as is my desk

... so drawing days will soon return. Yay! Perhaps today!

In the meantime, Reagan's started scanning some of my art from this year...

Really Reagan? Rum and YooHoo?

2009-10-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, he's doing that on one side of the scale, and I'm researching aromatic bitters and interesting cocktails on the other. Lucky for me, there's some blog event about vermouth this month, so I have something to do with our bottle besides martinis, which rarely appeal to me. Hence the bitters research.

But this isn't a post about cocktail hour! (Half hour, really, or more like 20 minutes because I use it to bribe Reagan into a second episode of Arrested Development.) No, this is a post about expectations. And things I've made out of spare cardboard.

When I left Savannah, I hoped my era of cardboard furniture....

.... was over.

Between Reagan joining the Marines and us saving up money this year, I thought a little cash for real furniture was a sure thing. Boy was I wrong.

Sure, we have chairs and a table of real wood, plus clothes storage that isn't piles on the floor and cardboard boxes, but...

Aside from our bed (two flights of stairs above our studio), that's the most comfortable seat in the house. Here's a shot without me obstructing the view:

I had a bunch of cardboard boxes to break down after we bought Ikea furniture and ordered other things online. I have a cardboard box fetish or something. The smaller ones are piled in the workshop. I had planned on breaking down those too destroyed to reuse (or too big and flat to be useful) to see new life as canvases. How I happened on the idea to fashion it into a lounge... I don't remember. But lounge it is!

The base is made of strips of cardboard, each about 3.5" wide and of lengths from 18 to 30", rolled into spirals and fastened with scotch tape.

The back is two big pieces of rolled cardboard, the lower one stuffed with a bunch of paper that was helping pack our scanner.

Not the most comfortable seat ever, but with another blanket and a couple pillows, it'll be a nice place to rest. And big enough for two!

More about that scanner business and the tender red buds of poetry when I've lost and regained my focus enough to write again.

Three things that make me happy

2009-10-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

Most nights Reagan and I have a nightcap, or other small after-dinner-drink. Tonight it's a half bottle of Steaz Green Tea Root Beer, a half can of Hansen's Creamy Root Beer, and an unknown quantity of Sailor Jerry's Rum. And a twist of lime, as you can see.

It tastes mostly of root beer (unsurprisingly), but there's the notes of True Sugar (from the Hansen's), the spicyness of rum, the tart hint of lime, and (best of all) an aftertaste of green tea.

Reagan's concoction. He did very well! (He usually does.)

Fruit on our counter. Fruit and garlic.

I am amazed by how quickly those bananas went from green to brown. They didn't even pause at yellow, if they ever saw it. Speaking of seeing, I see banana bread in our future! Hopefully there's a pan to bake it in also in our future.

Unpictured happy-making thing: new Mustek flatbed scanner. It's an affordable 11x17 instead of the usual 9x12 (or 8.5x11).

----
Footnotes:
I am nearing both the 400 mark for posts (402, but that includes drafts), and my eighth year on Blogger. Maybe I'll do something special for November to commemorate that. NaBloPoMo is an option, but too easy. NaNoWriMo is also an option, but not quite thematic, but who's counting?

Lazy Sunday Tuesday

2009-10-27T11:03:00.001-07:00

As long as Reagan's here, I'm sure every day will feel like a weekend. :P

It's only 2pm, but we've gotten not-insignificant amounts of organizing and relaxing done, plus there's a car acquisition happening in a couple hours. But I wanted to share this favorite part of my day so far.

Today is chilly, so I had to eat it before I could get the perfect picture.

Simply

2009-10-26T21:12:00.001-07:00

I didn't get much done today between helping Reagan get stuff done on Base, workmen doing stuff to our townhouse (termite guy, and a new kitchen sink)... and buying (!) Reagan a new (!) car. (One of these in blue.)

We left home at quarter to five and didn't get home till nine thirty. I'm a little worn out.

Instead of all the fanfare and hoop-de-dah of showing off our new place* I'll just leave you with one of my favorite homey little details:

Here you see Reagan's shaving towel (bottom right) and my old (oooold) bath towel (bottom left) hanging inside the door to the master bath, paired with bright and soft hand towels from Ikea. On the floor is a navy blue bath mat that has a nubby texture that is delightful underfoot in the mornings.

I also like the bathroom's silver switchplate. I may need to get a silver doorknob at some point. :>

(Talked to my mom on the phone tonight for the first time in a couple weeks. Brief, but nice.)

------
*At one point I'd thought it would get significantly better in furnishings and decor, but the car payment is a bit steeper than expected, so until I start earning the dough, certain projects and details around the home will have to wait.

That's obvious, isn't it?

2009-10-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

This blog, specifically its title, i what I refer to as obvious. Not that the game of naming a blog should be to confound and confuse the reader. In fact, Laura is refreshingly straightforward in how she names her blog.

The reason I tilt my head and sigh a bit is because ~~I made an excellent G&T a while ago~~ I've been thinking quite a bit lately about what kind of blogger I'd like to be. (Wow, that sip was lime-y. In a good way.) Laura (the cooking photographer) announces front and center what her blog is (and delivers on the announcement, if I may say so).

In the past five years or so blogging has become a way to "make it". Posting on the internet (usually with photos) is a new way to success, measured by ad revenue, pageviews, merch sales, and bookdeals. Not everyone who finds their spotlight on this global stage sees career-level success like Ree Drummond does, but not everyone quits their day job once they've found their revenue stream (which may or may not be sufficient for bills/rent/car payment/new treat from time to time).

Once again (I'm sure this topic has been broached in the past several years I've been coming to Blogger to make real my thoughts) I ask myself "what kind of blogger will I be?" I find myself at the end of a road, again, and many possibilities spread before me.

I'm in a new town, I'm in a new home, I'm in a new state and a new time zone, in a situation I can't begin to fathom the depths of. Next week Reagan will go back to work, and even if home-making continues, it surely won't occupy all of my time. What will? I ask myself.

"Pursue your interests! and blog about them!"

My current interests include writing fiction, drawing, painting, photography, DIYing our house, furniture building, cooking/baking, and sewing. I think that pretty much covers it. But when I think about the blogs dedicated to any one of those things, I'm not particularly inspired to emulate them. Especially crafting/decorating blogs, and cooking ones, to an extent.

I think what I've come around to in the past week or so is that I don't want to pursue online status like I have in the past. Even though I'm in a position to jump into spheres with a vengeance and build my time around social networking (and content) it doesn't appeal to me right now. I could redesign my blog, wordpress it up, come up with a new and classy title... but it wouldn't be authentic Me.

No, I'm going to stay broody and pensive. Maybe write more poetry. (It is that season, donchaknow.) Broody, pensive, capricious, prolific, honest, and with a background I've had for almost three years.

Maybe not the last one, I guess.

Home alone

2009-10-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

*pulls covers up to her nose*

I just dropped Reagan off for a special work day shooting the Marine Corps Marathon.

His alarm woke us up at 2:15, but I woke up about twenty minutes before that from a dream that we overslept.

Despite successfully going to sleep at 8pm yesterday, I think I'm going to try to get a few more hours. This home making stuff is exhausting!

Yesterday I put together one of these, one of these, and six of these in various sizes. The wire racks took lots of hammering. The table and wire racks involved lots of screw-driving.

Dad, of all the tools you've gifted Reagan and I with over the years, why couldn't a battery powered screwdriver been among them?! ;D

Speaking of Dad and things I'd normally post to twitter, phone reception here sucks. Calls get through, but texts don't seem to. And I haven't been carrying my phone, or taking time out to post status updates anyway.

Mmmh. more sleep.

Quick morning post

2009-10-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

Feels good, doesn't it?!

I slept in a few hours past Reagan's get-up time, and while I was sleeping our big order from Ikea showed up.

Yesterday was our BIG SPENDING days at both Ikea and Costco, so now in addition to a lot of things, we have a lot of places to put things! I have a big weekend of putting things together ahead of me, but I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I'll take "in progress" pics today so you can see furniture in boxes, then assembled. :>

I'm awake and in a good mood! that is all.

The only way to describe it...

2009-10-22T19:29:00.001-07:00

... is weary.

I've had an exhausting couple days, and there are a few more ahead.

Monday... I can't remember what I did Monday. Stress out, I think. But some of it involved going on Base and getting paperwork squared away.

Tuesday was almost a day off. We went to Fredericksburg, VA to browse antique stores. Found an amazing tea and spice shop, but Reagan wants to make a special trip for stocking up on teas. Silly.

We signed papers Wednesday, listened to the landlord tell us about different stuff. After moving the first carload of stuff into our living room, we hurried back to the motel to check out and get the rest of our gear.

Our first trip to a grocery store was minimal, food for the moment and a couple indulgences. Ikea buying trip #1 yeilded a mattress and two chairs; Costco trip #1 was similarly (that is, minimally) fruitful. (I was too tired and cranky to get a cart after we'd paid for our membership.) Putting together the chairs was satisfying, though.

Today involved waking up early for the Internet Guy, waiting for the plumber who never came, hurrying on Base to find out plans for Sunday, then mass quantities of shopping at the PX and the commissary. The latter resulted in a very full shopping cart.

In store for tomorrow: waiting for the plumber who will show up, and a second trip to Ikea! We'll be getting a worktable and something to keep clothes in, plus start collecting those things that make a house function like a home... like shower caddy, hand towels, the thing in your silverware drawer that separates the forks from the spoons. Also: more time at Costco, and storage for surplus non-perishables.

Previously we'd planned to go to a building surplus store in Maryland on Saturday, but I'm not sure I'll have the energy. I want tools for a couple woodworking projects I have in the pipeline, and they're having a sale.

Then Sunday... Reagan has to be at work at 3am to work the marathon in DC. I'll take him there, and pick him up again late that night. I have the whole day to myself to.... ?

Monday is another early day on Base to do some administrative stuff (motel refund, household move), then come six blissfully planless days.

Now, despite still being too worn out to game, much less write, I'm going back to some well-earned sloth. The clever and thoughtful posts come later.

Dates, they are Up-ing

2009-10-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

I'm doing my best to resist the mild panic that's setting in, re: the monumentality of things going on right now.

Typing is not easy right now, my space bar is occasionally failing me. Just frequently enough to be distracting. I think I need to clean my keyboard.

Reagan has had to go in to work all this week, and I've had to drive him since we haven't had a good opportunity to teach him the ways of the manual transmission yet. Tomorrow may be the last day of that, may not be; Monday he has to make a brief appearance for his MstrSgt to sign off on his paid leave.

We're in the process of renting a townhome. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to sign the lease and get the keys. So much stuff in transition, it's radical.

Also, today we seriously discussed a second car. As much as I'd like to be hip and awesome and made of public transit, I'm a tad too spoiled by the many years of having my own car to be happy with the bus system out here in the 'burbs.

May things calm down soon to assist me in getting back to business.

and for my final trick...

2009-10-05T00:10:00.001-07:00

I'm in my old room.

There wasn't much floor space in the room I usually sleep in, and the bed is already stacked with boxes (sheets and bedspread neatly packed in my car, too).

Sleeping on a couch downstairs was an option, but it seems more fitting to spend this last night in the room that was my home through my childhood.

I've done this before, contemplating the familiar geometry while the purpose and look of the room have changed many times over.

Today had some rough spots, but I don't want to remember those. No doubt my brain's etched more strongly with them than with the good moments, but I shall give it no encouragement.

The best moments were the dreaded goodbyes, first to Carol, then to my mom. I don't like to believe that things are really changing, that I won't see them on a regular basis anymore.

Carol really is my best friend. It's so hard to say why without sounding clinical. We, along with her boyfriend, went to California Pizza Kitchen where we have shared many a meal (and few a sangria), and spit the usual waldorf chicken salad, plus a pizza and these wonderful sonora egg rolls (I've gotta learn how to make those). Afterward we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert and hot drinks, and made sure to have Brian take a few photos of us. It took several tries to get it right, but I'm glad we did.

I tried not to say goodbye to my mom. Not that I avoided her, or avoided talking about leaving. I just tried not to make it feel final in any way. Sure, I want to be moving out for the final time, but, in terms of the relationship I have with her, I don't want moving out to be indicative of any kind of ending.

Earlier today, while I was creeping through the 80s (in terms of percent-ready-to-go), I asked Mom for some help packing kitchen things into my car. I showed her the space available in my car, and the items I'd pulled out of boxes. She helped me consolidate pots, pans, bowls, spices, utensils, glasses and my tea kettle into perfectly packed parcels.

Another time I thought of my mom today was on the drive to dinner. Within close proximity to each other, I saw license plates that said "8B48488" (and got to teach Brian that trucks have different kinds of plates than cars) and "B R A S". Talking license plates with Mom is always good times.

But the award for best times today go to Reagan. He calmed me down when I was slipping over the edge of meltdown tantrum, without making me feel like I was being completely irrational. Phone calls between us are rare, but a nice treat. Later in the day he was simply online to chat back at me when I was between heavy trips with boxes. One exchange went something like...
"Should I bring a space heater?"
"Yeah, it's getting pretty cold (for us)"
"Well, space heater or rice cooker? I only have room for one"
"RICE COOKER!!!"

I loves him so much. Can't wait to see him again. Something else Reagan-related that made me grin: Since much of our communication happens over text message, when he's going to the chow hall or out with friends, he says "I'm keeping you in my pocket". Normally on weekdays he's not allowed to have his phone with him (or really anything in his pockets), but I asked if he would make an exception tomorrow, so I can contact him from the road if need be. Reagan agreed to bend the rules for my peace of mind, saying that no one was going to search him, and they're eager to get him processed out of the detachment anyways.

While his integrity is something I admire about my husband, it makes me feel very loved that he'd occasionally pick keeping me happy over strict adherence to the rules.

Now I should seek out sleep because large unknowns and adventures await me at (after) sunrise. I take my final rest of life in Upland in my cross-country-travels sleeping bag, on top of the mattress Reagan and I shared in Savannah, in my childhood room.

:)

Right! This thing!

2009-10-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I'm going back on the road soon. Cross your fingers that it also means coming back to my dear old blog again.

Reagan finally got his orders today.

Instead of being somewhere in San Diego like we expected, we're moving to Quantico, Virginia. Holy smokes!

The good news is that if I could pick a base in the lower 48 to move to, it'd be Quantico. The bad(ish) news is that we're not really prepared for it, as all the diagrams, budgets, and schedules I've drawn up over the summer were for living in San Diego. The good news is I can throw all that out the window and start over! I love planning stuff like this.

Holding my ground (or maybe not)

2009-09-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

I did some writing Sunday! But it includes the margin notes "this is [crap]" and "need synonyms for growing brighter" and what should eventually be three paragraphs are currently three sentence fragments.

I thought about spinning a bit of fiction to relay my current state of mind. It was something along the lines of a woman singing on stage and being directed to hold the last long note of a performance for longer than she ever has before, an act that taxes her oxygen reserves.

That vignette hasn't been written because I can't give it an ending that would satisfy me or the reader. Trying to tack one on would stir up too much bitter sediment in my mind.

Typically, a Marine in my husband's situation would have known nineteen days before graduation where said Marine and his family would be stationed. (Nineteen is an unscientific number, but not an unreasonable one, from what I've gathered third hand.) That nineteen day benchmark was twenty three days ago.

Correct. Reagan graduated from his last bit of training last Friday, and high command has not told him where we will be spending the next five or so years of our lives.

I should be moving right now. Well, not quite. I should be having a few days alone with my husband in a really nice hotel. We should be sipping fruity drinks made with sake right now at Ra. I should be eating sushi, not mashed potatoes and spinach. I should be picking up the keys to our new apartment tomorrow. I should be moving on Thursday. I should be at a flea market on Saturday, picking out a neat lamp or end table.

Instead, I'm with my parents again, spending 20+ hours a day in my room, a majority of them on a computer. Frittering. I have things to do, reasons to do them, just no energy or concentration to get them done.

So in case anyone was wondering...

No, I don't know where Reagan will be stationed.
No, I don't know when he's coming back.
No, I don't know when I will know either of those things.

As much as things suck/are non existent right now, I still wish I was journaling more. But can't find the energy.

Don't think anyting of it.

2009-09-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

At first I didn't post because I was Just. That. Busy.

No, that's the primary reason, but not the first one. The first (but secondary) reason I haven't brought any new fiction (or other update) to the table in two weeks is because the next prompt in 3am Epiphany was so easy I couldn't think of what to write. Really. I had many many weak ideas, and though I knew the only way to make one of them strong enough to present would be to start writing and discover what the story was meant to be as I went along.

I finally got over that silly block by putting on some Philip Glass and let it paint the broad strokes of tone. Once again, the strategy was so good that I made it only halfway through the mini-story I expected to write, but already find myself beating out the word count. If it wasn't 6am I'd keep writing, but it is, so I'll try to come back to this prompt tomorrow.

Even on this vast expanse of wasteland, there is only one direction for me to go. I head for the light in the distance. Every time I try to avert my steps and walk into the darkness, the earth seems to turn under my feet and point me toward the tower again. So toward the tower I go.

I've fallen asleep three times on this cracked and dusty ground. Between these periods of unconsciousness, I tread the barren land for untold hours. Two? Twelve? Twenty? Each time I wake up, the tastes of salt and soil in my mouth, I can't remember laying down. All I can do is stand again and put one foot in front of the other, dragging my wagon in the direction of the beacon that never seems to get brighter.

At least the wagon is lighter now. A third of the rations I started with are gone. Too bad the power cell was more than half the payload, even at the beginning of this trek.

I wake up for the fourth time with the tastes of salt and soil in my mouth, and I cannot hear anything. I'm face down on the ground. My shoulders lift once, then droop again. I wonder why my body isn't getting up. In my mind, I stand as far away from myself as I can, and observe in a detached way this prone creature who does not stand, does not move. My hear-rate, already sluggish with apathy, slows more.

Johnny doesn't want to get up for school. His mother is ready to coax the family's sheepdog into jumping on Johnny's bed. She reaches to place a dog treat on her son's pillow, but his eyes snap open, looking directly into hers, and her hand withdraws.

"Time to get ready for school, Jon."
"I went to school yesterday."
"Well, school is open again today, so you have to go."
"I went the day before that, too. And the day before that. And the day before--"
"That was Sunday, you didn't go to school Sunday."
She looks at the clock. No hurry yet. She clears the biggest toys from the middle of Jon's room.
"Sunday doesn't count. Weekends are illusions."
"How's that?"
"They just trick us into thinking the rest of the days aren't the same."
"You've been in the seventh grade for less than three months. Where are you getting this from?"
Jon lies still, watching the line where the far wall joins the ceiling.
"You can't help growing up, Jon, and no one can help summer being over." She leans down and kisses his forehead. "But if you can live through the boring old dull days, you'll make it to another summer."

Jon watches her pick up the laundry basket and leave the room, then looks into a corner of the room and thinks about next summer: the bike trails and pool parties. the barbecues and bonfires. The tree-climbing and baseball-playing under the blazing overhead sun that never seems to set.

When I open my eyes, I am facing away from the light, but still it appears clearly in my mind, dimmer than ever, but undeniable. The image in my head consumes my attention, and I can only see the beacon. When I blink, sight restored, the tower's light remains paramount. I'm already walking, feet already moving under me, subverting my conscious intentions, carrying me towards the tower.

I was numb at first, but not anymore. But I keep going the same way, guided by the only thing I can see... the only thing there is to see.

I love this book. The 3am one. Even a mere 4 exercises into it, I can tell each one has a high replay value.

Things to do:

2009-09-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

Read Mouse Guard vol 2.
Write the assignment I've been on for several days.
Start laundry
Paint.
Study some French.
Clean off my bed.
Do yoga.
GO TO BED 30 MINUTES AGO

I think less than three of those things will happen.

Despite all the miles I put on my car, today was a good day. I spent time with Carolyn, both at Ikea and at our usual bookstore haunt, and did a tad sketching at the latter.

Later I jetted out to Alhambra for the weekly drawing session at Nucleus and met Kendra, who was friendly and told me about the drawing club in Glendale, plus made plans with me to visit the zoo on Friday. She has her own couples pass. Awesome!

i give up

2009-08-29T01:44:00.001-07:00

I really don't have the energy to write tonight. I will relax and let myself relax and tackle "First/Third" tomorrow.

Back on this hoss

2009-08-28T03:21:00.000-07:00

I am not pleased that I have to reference previous posts to remember how I styled the other 3am exercises I posted. (Even though the answer is "not consistently enough for this one to matter".)

Today's post that I started, uh, more than a week ago, comes from the prompt regarding unreliable narrators. Unreliable third person narration, to be specific.

(Quick note on why it took me so long: it started out as a difficult exercise, then I had a week away from home, the first two days of which were so eventful that it took me 3 miles to tell my mom the story.)

In any case, unreliable narration is a tricky thing to pull off without it looking like poor continuity or sloppy editing. The book doesn't say this, but when tacking each of my two attempts (plus a third that isn't written), I had to come up with a reliable voice of authority in the story that would point out what is unreliable.

The abandoned story, that looked like it would at least triple the required 500 words, had an authority in a pair of police officers that would be the sensible counterpoint to a main character who is lit by a Mary Sue lamp with a 150 watt bulb. I'd like to finish it at some point.

Story 3 (not written) also uses cops as the authority to reveal the flaws in the narrator's story, but breaks away from my frequent use of female leads with an ensemble cast, and a primarily male one, to boot. But, again, it's a concept that would have greatly exceeded the 500 word suggestion.

Instead of either of those, here's 585/500 words that did get written, hopefully fulfilling the letter and spirit of the Unreliable Third assignment.

The dogwoods were flowering the last time Shirley held hands with her best friend. Hunter took her to Greenstead Park for a date that day. He left their house just before noon with a wink and drove around the block twice before knocking on his own front door.

"Just a minute!" Shirley hurried around the living room, looking under chairs and cushions for a missing sandal. The man outside knocked again, but she didn't give up; the wayward shoe went best with the yellow sundress she had picked out.

"Anybody in there?" Hunter called, and his date replied with a wordless call as she rushed to the front door, both feet finally shod.

Shirley opened the door and exclaimed "Daffodils! My favorite!" at the bouquet Hunter offered her. When he took her arm to lead her down the path, Hunter kept Shirley on his left side, hoping she wouldn't notice the empty, broken stems in her flower bed.

Hunter escorted his lady to the car, opened her door for her, and shut it gently one she was inside. Shirley shivered with the pleasure of being treated so well and inhaled the deep scent of the car's leather interior.

"Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise." Hunter smiled, with his lips, with his eyes, with his soul, and put the car into gear.

As the breeze, smelling of tender growth and apple blossoms, pulled at her hair, Shirley watched the streets roll by as though for the first time. The picket fences were fresh and white. The neighbors, testing out their porches after months of hibernation, have the look of friendly strangers.

Hunter pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car in a space that knew its drips and tires well. He got out, walked around the hood to Shirley's door as she leaned forward to peer through the windscreen to the grassy fields ahead.

"Ooh, this looks lovely!" She took the hand he offered and squeezed it tight as she climbed out of the car.

She wobbled on his arm, wearing impractical shoes on unpaved paths.
He named all the children playing in the sandbox.
They doubled over laughing at the innocent humor in the outdoor puppet show.
He sweated through his shirt, pulling their rowboat across the pond.
She paid for two ruby-ripe apples when his back was turned, to stave off their hunger until they returned home.

The phone was ringing when they came through the door, wrinkling the image of Hunter carrying his lady over the threshold.

Shirley was shaking the last leaves out of her hair when Hunter returned from the den.

"I have to go to the office, Shirling. I'll be back soon." He kissed her cheek.

Shirley pulled her face into a tight smile; she understood and didn't want to make it harder for him to leave.

This time, when Hunter left, he closed the front door quietly. The click of the bolt sliding back into place echoed back and forth in Shirley's mind until it merged with the ticking of the wall clock.

It seemed like only a moment had passed when the phone shrilled for her attention, but looking around for the receiver, Shirley was surprised to see i was already dark.

Even after hanging up, she didn't reach to turn on the lamp at her elbow. Shirley lacked the strength; all her reserves were needed to keep her upright as the trunk of the many-forking, far-reaching tree that had to spread the word that Hunter's car had slipped on a patch of black ice, black as the abyss that Shirley faced.

So how obvious was it that I finished this more than a week after I started it?
And last thing before bed so I wouldn't be able to slack off with diminishing guilt for another day?

Don't get too comfortable, though. I'm on the move again starting tomorrow, so it will take a lot of effort to keep up the posting.

Some, but not all

2009-08-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm only on the mountain as long as I'm climbing. As soon as I turn my pack towards untread trail, I'm "home" again, all business, the romance of the woods lost on me.

But since I went farther and faster than any previous hike (much farther), I got a bad headache once I came home. Not my worst ever, but bad enough to prevent anything interesting from being accomplished.

I did manage 300 of today's 500 word exercise, but even still I'm only 1/4 done with what I mapped out, so not gonna finish or post it tonight.

This post has no point. But the practice is good.

I can't wait to get a new scanner.

Proof but no proofing

2009-08-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

Another 3am bit of fiction done! Today I'm well outside the suggested word count, and, again, I'm not sure if I'm doing it "right". The exercise was (surprisingly enough) to write a fragment of a story made up entirely of imperative commands. The language of the prompt seems to suggest that I should not have used "you" so liberally, and I should not have been so detailed with my storytelling.

In any case, 937/500 words it is.

How to Win Me Back

Realize that the door I left open on my way out is a symbol, not of the gaping hole in your heart, but I didn't fully shut the book on us when I said "It's over" and left. Heave yourself out of that sticky leather chair, and don't even bother to fix the skirt that's clinging halfway up your thigh. Wander towards the door, still in shock, jaw as wide as the doorway. Look towards the street where I usually park my car. Look, but don't notice I'm still there, watching your silhouette on the porch.

Close your mouth, at last, and feel the dry rasp of your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Take a gulp of the wine that's still in your hand; it tastes better now that it's had time to breathe. Go back inside before your eyes fully adjust to the darkness I left you in.

Kick off your shoes after you close the door, steadying yourself by holding the knob. Leave them there, in tilting disarray, instead of nudging them into their cubby hole, lined up with all the other. Hear only buzzing in your ears, louder than the TV you'll forget to turn off, louder than your own thoughts (if you could form any coherent ones right now).

Pull at the zipper at your side; you may have to glance down for a moment to see the button still clasping the fabric to your hips. Let the fabric swirl and fall to the floor. Take two more unsteady steps; set the glass on the coffee table. Don't spill. Reach down and pull off your blouse, over your head, tossed on the sofa. Ignore your glass of wine as you keep moving, grab mine from the counter and stumble seamlessly to your bedroom.

Don't turn on the light, just tilt towards the bed and drain the last of the wine before gravity has a chance to pull the glossy liquid into your precious area rug. Let the glass roll one way as you twist the other way, onto the bed, away from the light still invading your sanctuary from the other room. Grope the nightstand for the phone, and place it on the pillow that used to be mine. Wonder if it's meant to be dialed or answered.

Will yourself into a deep, dreamless sleep.

---

Wake up focused, no more laziness or pity. Look yourself in the eye in the mirror as you wash your face. Tell yourself, "No more fooling around." Mean it.

Triple check everything in the hall mirror before leaving for work. Make sure every line and crease, every tooth and nail is razor sharp; god forbid anyone crosses you today. Forget the files you pulled out of your briefcase last night before our "chat". Walk so quickly to your bus stop that you reach it too early. Pace until the bus arrives.

Ride the bus. Ride the elevator. Ride your damn fine legs over to his desk and stand your ground. Ask if you can speak somewhere private. Don't take no for an answer and don't let him lead you anywhere. Keep in control, my love.

Take him to an out of the way corner and tell him it's over. Tell him it was mistake, tell him you are in love with me. Say "I'm sorry", if you must. Leave him hanging. Walk away without another word. Make sure he knows it's not up for discussion.

Go to your desk, unpack your bag. Discover your papers are not all there, and smile to yourself. Lean over to Debbie, or Marsha, or Alexis, whatever her name is, and interrupt her call. Apologize profusely, explain the missing files. Leave your attache behind and make your escape.

Daydream about freedom as you ride down eight floors in a stuffy box. Imagine bursting onto a rooftop, sun on your face. Wish for a trolley to hang from dangerously, wind tugging at your hair. Step out of the box and wade through the stream of tailored suits hurrying towards the beige maze you just left.

Eschew the plodding schedule of the bus and hop a cab to the travel office. Stand in front of the window we skimmed past on many a date. Plant your feet in the tide of pedestrians and search the giant world map for the perfect answer. Let your eyes slide along jet-streams and latitudes, across borders and over mountain ranges. Waste an hour and ignore two offers for help from the travel agent before stepping into the storefront. Hand over your card to pay for the elegant, obvious solution.

Cross the street to the florist and pick out a simple arrangement. Choose violet flowers to match your eyes. Choose blue flowers to match your mood. Choose yellow flowers to remind me of the roses I brought you when we first met. Tuck the tickets from the travel agent into the envelope. Watch a handful of customers come and go as you decide what to write on the card. Help an older gentleman decide what to get his wife for her birthday. Ask the florist for a new card; you wrote something silly on the other one. Ponder how to best express yourself on a two by three bit of paper. Write "Take me back" on the outside. Finish the thought with "to our future" inside. Giggle to yourself, then pay to have the flowers delivered.

Catch another taxi. Wait nervously for me to appear and sweep you up in our favorite cafe... across the street from my office building... in the lobby... near the elevators... in my reception area...

I imagine this probably falls a little flat as text-fiction (when I started I wanted it to be a little more romantic), but I'd like to see it done up as a little film (or I could do it as a comic? :D ). It would start a tad before this text, with the actual break-up on camera. Then the narrator would depart and begin his voice-over. All would go as planned for the first section, perhaps even until the dumped character gets to work the second day*. But instead of breaking up with the man in her office, she says "he dumped me! we can be together!" Except we don't hear her say that, it's all in her body language/actions. The voice-over drones on, but the woman enjoys her day and her other man, finally FREE of the awful control freak.

(*one hint otherwise is that she mouths something else to herself in the mirror the second morning, probably "it's really over".)

And then the comic/film ends with the other guy leaning out of his office to ask his secretary something like "you're sure nothing's come for me?" or "Nobody's waiting for me?", unable to fathom that the woman he just dumped isn't crawling after him.

But, as I said before, when I first started typing it was the woman who left and was commanding the guy to do a bunch of romantic (but reasonable) stuff for her. When I got to the bit about getting out of the leather chair, though, a messed up skirt was a compelling image and I stuck with it.

hum de dum. time to draw.

I really did it!

2009-08-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

I got myself this book for my birthday. It arrived on Friday, and I arrived this afternoon, and got to work straightaway.

The first prompt was to write a story in the first person but only use 2 personal pronouns. I somewhat skimmed the rest of the assignment and only saw "600 words" before getting to work.

It took two sittings, but I came up with this (680 words):

The view from up here, tucked against the ceiling of the abandoned cathedral, is amazing.

Most of the pews are gone, either looted during the Days of Silence or broken down for firewood in the nameless cold months that followed. The few that remain were blessed by saints who prayed from them. Priests deemed those slabs of wood more valuable than their own lives and wrapped their bodies around the pews when the armies of Voiceless soldiers and, later, mobs of destitute peasants stormed and swarmed this castle of God. These pardoned pieces of holy furniture have been pushed away from the cathedral's main floor. They now line the walls of the vast room, and where the pews once stood, a few dozen people now tread rhythmic circles and switchbacks.

It might be impossible to pin down their exact numbers as they swirl and bob, hand in hand, hand to hand, across the polished floor. Occasionally two or three will slip through the heavy wooden doors. People shuffle in to join the patterned dance, or bow out to take a breath of cool midnight air in the courtyard.

The dance continues for hours, quite a feat with no music to guide them. Occasionally a single voice will be moved by the movement of his own feat and lift up the first words of a song. Others who know the lyrics will join in, and the humming tune will curl upwards to the rafters, but only for a short time. Each song begun is left unfinished, as the end of music, a cappella though it may be, could bring about the end of the dance. The time for that has not come yet.

Some of older folk, white ovals of hair from this vantage point high above, spin out of the group like fractals, faltering on old joints. They make their way to the pews to rest, leaning against each other for support and tilting flushed faces towards the ceiling. Fortunately this hiding place is well chosen, and their eyes fall from the cathedral's peak and trail down the walls, tracing the veils of soot that partially obscure ancient murals.

Only when every face is shining with sweat and every arm is drooping with exhaustion, every shoe scuffing the floor, does Arianna appear. She held her breath for a minute in the back room before entering into the midst of these people. Arianna knows that if she seems to calm and collected after the others have danced themselves to exhaustion, they will not listen to her well. Arianna knows what she is doing.

She moves easily among them, bringing stillness in her wake. The minute without air made her eyes shine and her breath deep. The people see her intensity and gather around, crowding skirt to cloak. Arianna leads them in a wide circuit around the room and they follow like iron filings follow a magnet. She sweeps the full cathedral making sure she commands the attention of every man and woman. At last she speaks.

Her words are low at first. They do not reach beyond the last row of people, and even that outer ring has to lean in and concentrate to hear clearly. All shuffling and gasping subside, and after the lull of Arianna's voice has worked its way into every crevice of the crowd, they breathe in unison.

Her cadence rises slowly, tightening the grip she holds on her audience. Their eyes remain fixed on her as Arianna's voice rises and her movements become more animated. She paces and uses her arms to emphasize the words that are just now loud enough to reach the rafters.

Arianna's rhythm is quick now, quicker than the fastest boots at the height of the dancing. The people are leaning forwards, nodding slightly in time with her speech, mouths agape. With hardly any warning, she turns her back to the assembled people. The crucial moment is here. Arianna speaks the cue, "... mercy from above!"

My hands tighten on the railing one last time, and I propel myself towards her outstretched arms seven stories below.

I'm very pleased with myself for completing the assignment. I even did a tiny bit of editing (tweaking the second paragraph to have tighter sentences)! Two-thirds of the way in I thought I'd have to do a little extra song and dance to fill the requisite 600 words, but that turned out not to be the case.

On the other hand, I might rework this in a couple weeks to add the extra material back in. It expands a little on the "Voiceless Army", what Arianna is, and the state of things. Plus, a rework would let me add in a little more of the narrator, and indicate things like him calling Arianna his sister. Granted, I don't even know what Arianna is, or all of what's going on. It's interesting to write something in which my narrator knows more than I do.

I'm not sure how well I fulfilled the spirit of the assignment. Two bits from the prompt: "The point of this exercise is to imagine a narrator who is less interested in himself than in what he is observing" and "It is very important in this exercise to make sure the reader is not surprised, forty or fifty words into the piece, to realize that this is a first-person narration." Perhaps the use of "here" in the first sentence, and other hints at the narrator's current location did well to indicate it was first person, but I'm just the author.

All in all, if I had read the full book intro, chapter intro, and prompt intro, the resultant piece might have been very different than the bit of fiction above, but, hell, I'm doing this to help me practice writing, not for a grade. :D

(Wiped out)

2009-08-15T22:05:00.001-07:00

(That previous post was from Thursday.)

(I'm almost too tired to lift my hands off the couch.)

(All I really did today was spend three hours on my feet at the wild animal park sketching birds, elephants, and okapi.)

(It seems I can only draw for three hours at a time before I have to do something else to recharge.)

(Or it's just habit after two, count them, TWO sketchy figure drawing sessions this week.)

(The second one was in Encinitas Friday night, hence too wiped to post.)

(Had a great time checking out Studio 2nd Street, artistic home of Ron and Vanessa Lemen.)

(Might want to take classes there this fall.)

(I also finished Castle in the Air yesterday. Fantastic.)

The Tick

2009-08-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

I don't think about death often, but when it creeps into my thoughts, it tends to happen in moments like this.

I'm overtired after little sleep and a long day.
I have a husband-contact deficit.
I just finished reading a delightful book.
I hear the ticking of the clock.

That last bit is not meant in any biological way; it's no comment on my recent birthday. There's actually a clock in a corner of this room with a loud tick.

Lately my uncertainty has vastly outstripped my reassurance, and the clock's steady beat reminds me that the time for making decisions is growing closer. Earlier this summer I described the fear of seeing where I was headed, but not the path it would take to get there. Now I have a grasp on the last few weeks (just over a month) left in this separation, and it's becoming more urgent for me to know what I'll do on the other side.

The light at the end of my tunnel, I now see, is a brick wall with a bright beam shining at it, not actually a passage to the next realm.

Wanderer

2009-08-13T03:01:00.000-07:00

My car has averaged 9.2 miles per hour for the past 20 hours. That statistic feels a great deal more impressive than it sounds. I attribute that to the fact that I got up very early to drive (a friend to the airport) and stayed up very late to drive (myself to a long weekend in Escondido).

Driving 400 miles in one day is no big deal when you're on a road trip, but my sub-200 miles today were merely packed into a regular day. Airport, then home. Alhambra, then home. Then that long, soaring drive to San Diego County.

I had a number of interesting thoughts on the drive, but none quite compared to the simple magic of listening to Crystal Gale singing "Take Me Home." I might not have been "home" as the last notes guided me into a parking space, but it's always sweet to end a song and a journey at the same time.

After storing this up for a long time...

2009-08-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

It's truly a shame I haven't blogged more in the past couple months. If I did, I might have a better grasp of how and why I've reached certain decisions about my future. If I had written about them, I could go back and examine my motivations and judged them, and I would have more confidence in changing my mind or switching directions.

As things stand, I feel like a shallow layer of debris floating on the surface of a great lake, or maybe a bathtub. Scattered and undulating, my thoughts don't have a very good grasp on one another. I'm left with a sensation of forgetting things, and not being able to keep track of what is a core part of myself and what's just passing through.

Right now all of me is just passing through. *cue usual woes of limbo*

A few weeks ago I was very gung-ho about going to university in San Diego. I was going to find a way to go to school! I was really going to do it! The key thing that drove me to such a declaration was the discovery of the John Muir Special Projects Major at UCSD. It's a build-your-own major that requires administrative approval to get into, and a self-directed senior project for graduation. Prior to uncovering the existence of such a program, I was half-heartedly flipping back and forth between Fine Art, Art History, English Literature, or a _____ Studies type of major. Classical Studies was in the mix for a while.

Sometimes I would tell myself, "I can do anything for four years! It would be an adventure to throw myself into the deep end of specialized study for a period of time", but never really saw any of those topics as something to build a life on. Finding the Special Projects Major, it was like the heavens opened up and a glorious solution poured down upon me. From the literature I've read on the college's website, that one option would let me take a mix of classes that not only interest me, but support what I want to do with my life ("after I graduate"), which is write and illustrate graphic novels. Art, history, writing, mythmaking, storytelling, yes, please.

I've known for some time that universities Require(tm) you to submit transcripts from previous colleges for transfer, no wiping the slate clean, but only a couple days ago did I make a first foray into testing how those policies apply to my situation. Of course I got the boiler plate response of "Submit everything! And we probably won't let you transfer as a Sophomore." Though expected, that answer turned me red and green and purple and blue with frustration, anger, and other uncharitable emotions.

While I will go to the school in person and confront an admissions counselor, the wind has been taken out of my sails. I have a hard time getting excited about school if I'm going to have to slog through more time at a community college, contend with the low grades already on my transcripts, and accept credits for courses that I have no internal connection to.

Once upon a time I was taking Bookkeeping, Advertising, XHTML, and another business class I can't even remember the title of. Once upon a time I failed English 1A. Once upon a time I took two semesters of Japanese, and now can't even remember the full set of basic characters. I want to start over.

But I don't know if that can happen. My academic record may be scarred forever.

My point being: what's the contingency? If I can't persuade the university that they want to take me on for a full 180 units, will I do my time at a community college and go anyway? Could I stomach taking a less-desired major, just to get my diploma? Is it stubborn to say "I'll go to school, but only if I can do it my way."

Discussing this with Reagan on the phone yesterday, I said, "I can always go to Watts". But I did say it in a snide, dismissive sort of way. Understand, while I have a great admiration for the art coming out of the institution, I've often felt it to be several degrees more classical than the direction I'm headed. Technique training couldn't hurt my work, though. I admit that much.

The second layer of all this comes in the form of impersonal wisdom. I speak of Randy Pausch, whose Last Lecture I refer to often, and Jeffery Pressfield's War of Art which showed up in a box on my doorstep this morning.

While I haven't read much of The War of Art, I'm fairly confident Pressfield has a strong message of perseverance, as does Pausch, with his brick wall metaphor. Right now I'm at a point where I'm not sure if, should I fail the first attempt to hurdle the wall that is UCSD admissions, if my course of action should be persevering towards an inferior university plan, or change directions.

Pressfield seems to imply that changing directions would be giving in to Resistance (tm) and ennui.

Oh indecisive, indecisive, inconsistent I.

Midnight miscellany

2009-08-11T01:37:00.001-07:00

You can only see me when nothing happens. The pool, the path, the mirror is only clear on the days with no activity, with no disturbance, nothing to throw waves of interference across the sight-lines.

Few days are calm, free of activity to froth the waters of my mind. That froth throws up a spray that fogs my inward-turned eye, and quickens the pace of my heart. In such conditions I am not inclined to sit still and write. True, at the end of those days I am apt to sit still, but I prefer to escape into unreal worlds and forget my own existence.

***

Thank goodness I got that out of the way. I think there's something there, but it requires much brutal editing and re-working.

Contrary to the implication of that passage and what writing now would mean, I didn't do nothing today. I did very little, waking up less than 12 hours ago, but the bits I did were not insignificant; hanging out with Draco is always time well spent.

While I've been much better at thinking about blogging lately, I haven't been much better at doing it. Even today, when I take the plunge and fire up Blogger, I take a two hour break to read things I don't really need to.

Let's try to meet here again tomorrow.

***

Minor addition, because I want to remember.

Im throwing away my favorite skirt today. It's ankle length, tiered, black, and gauzily light-weight. With that ephemeral nature came fragility. Long ago the seam on the lining shredded, and all attempts to repair it have followed suit. Additionally, several seams on the outer layer of the skirt have come undone as well. I used to incorporate those flaws into my comfort-worn aesthetic, but the plurality and placement of the holes is getting inappropriate, especially combined with the shredded lining.

Goodbye, witchy skirt. I'm glad you were there for my 25th birthday. Here's to better days.

Critical response to family reunion

2009-08-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

Twice in the past six hours I bemoaned how I have slacked off in my writing practice.

When I asked my mom to give me some sort of prompts to get me back in gear until my natural inspiration takes over again, she suggested I write a personal analysis of the family reunion we took part in this past weekend.

Many of my thoughts went through the initial stages of organization earlier today over lunch with aforementioned mom, but once I got around to presenting them in a format such as this one (in fact, exactly this one), I discovered a blog post to be the perfect reason to get around to processing the couple hundred photos I took during also-aforementioned family reunion. Specifically, I want to use those photos to illustrate my essay. Novel idea, huh?

(And Mom wanted me to take care with my word choices!)

But now that I've taken 40 minutes to pick out my top 117 pictures (that still need to be cleaned up), I decide that there's not enough time tonight to do them justice. And they are needed to do the post justice.

Thus, I escape the vast pit that is introspection for one more day.

Affliction: Never standing still

2009-07-19T00:27:00.001-07:00

For once my primary reason for not posting has nothing to do with being depressed.

I've had spells of being emo, especially when I get too introspective (which is bound to happen when I journal on a regular basis), but for the most part I've been running around too much to be introspective or prioritize writing.

Basically since my last post I haven't had more than a two night (one day) stretch at home with nothing to do. Usually when I find myself with no particular plans, I spend the day staring dull-ly at a screen and making a few half-hearted attempts at drawing.

I'm working at using those times to really relax and recuperate, but when I vowed to make this my summer of drawing and getting in shape, it's hard to let myself off the hook when my busy days don't include drawing or getting in shape.

One of the biggest ordeals of this month so far was putting together a photoshoot of photos to send to my husband. It spanned two days (both of which included early call times and post-photo socialization), which were preceded by two days of frantic prep to make sure I had all my props and I was prepared in every possible way.

(Reagan loved his birthday present, and I couldn't've done it without my best friend, Carolyn, who took over 700 shots over the two days and was a great creative director and collaborative partner.)

I've been to the LA Zoo twice and the Wild Animal park twice since my last post, and I'm shooting for a trip to the SD Zoo before I go home again. I invested in annual passes to the LA Zoo and the SD Zoos, and they both let me bring a friend, which I love, and comes in handy.

But as a result, I've been putting a crazy number of miles on my car and spending lots of time with people, old and new. On a regular basis I've been going up to Victorville, out east to Long Beach, and down south to Escondido (where I am right now).

I'm running out of words and "out of time" (I think I'm expected to be up early tomorrow for a trip to the lower parts of SD county with my in-laws.

For more pictures, here's facebook albums of the shoot with Carolyn, another of a trip to Griffith with new friends, and last of all a Flickr set of pictures from the last week.

Yeah, I've been using facebook a lot recently. Deal with it.

The end.

Too tired for words

2009-06-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a long (Satur)day, and I'm not sure I'm going to sleep yet.

For not being home, I did a surprising amount of drawing on Friday. Besides (unscanned) zoodles (zoo doodles), four pages of my big sketchbook were filled. Here's one of them:

Most of the page is "inside" jokes (inside my head)... if you don't know the context for Yote and Jackal, Mbear and Fox... it's all nonsense. Except for the hair I colored. I think that's univeresally awesome. And the self-doodle in the lower right. That one is accessible.

This page doesn't really indicate why, but for the first time in a long time I'm excited about scanning and posting my art again. Yaay.

That last post was boring...

2009-06-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

...so here's an image quilt made hastily from the first 20 photos I scanned. All of these are from my recent road trip with Mom.

Living in the future.

2009-06-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

I realize that, in one way or another, the recent posts I've made can be boiled down to whining about my situation. I'm also afraid that today is par for that course.

Nearly all of today has been spent looking at and thinking about furniture.

It started as a lark while I was vacuuming the house. I decide to give myself a six thousand dollar budget and make a summer hobby out of finding ways to "spend" that money. From there I tumbled down to dozens of google searches, dozens of tabs, and dozens of pages of apartment therapy. Thankfully not for a dozen hours.

In the end today's brilliant idea is to get a one bedroom apartment instead of two (less money for rent, less money for furnishings) and learn how to build a bunch of modular tables/desks so that our living room can also be our studio. Besides an extravagant kitchen with a gas stove, ample storage space, and a KitchenAid mixer, the home-feature I dream of most is a large workspace for crafting. "Heartbroken" is a strong word (and better applied to things that aren't furniture, but I do remember the giant desk I had in Savannah with fondness.

How much trouble, I wonder, to construct a quartet of 30x30 tables? That put together and come apart without hardware? It seems especially silly to go forth and build furniture, especially knowing nothing about where I'll be living. The next week will be critical for finding out if I'm dreaming hard enough to dream these tables into reality.

The Lamp Eternal

2009-06-25T03:10:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid I read every volume of Garfield comic strips I could get my hands on. One strip in particular that sticks in my mind had a sequence of Garfield standing by a light switch, flipping it off, zooming into his cat bed while the room was still lit, and in the final panel (a dark one) thinking to the audience, "Faster than the speed of dark."

It's a silly thing to remember, especially because I can't relate to the experience. In this phase of life my room (while I am present to experience it) is rarely a dark place. Even if only my body is present, the light is still on. On many occasions my mom has said to me, "And you were still up when I got up around seven" and I reply, "No, I fell asleep with the light on."

Comfort is why the light is on. Or maybe fear. At the surface, I can point to practicality: I fall asleep with my lamp still burning because I read myself to sleep and don't wake up until morning.

Bedtime reading is another thing that has stuck around since childhood. First the years of being read to by my mom, then the years when we would read a book together before I went to sleep, then the years when I would sneak my book into the bathroom and devour chapter after chapter despite the discomfort of sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

But now as I think about it, I don't remember this sort of nocturnal reading taking place very much in the last three years. I have a book light, sure, for nights of insomnia or an especially exciting story. Those times are the exception. Normally bed time means snuggles, curling up with my arms around my husband, or pressing my back against his and enjoying the slow rhythm of his breathing until I drift to sleep.

Leaving the light these days lets me stay with the comfort of an author until my brain can't string words together anymore. Books keep me engaged with thoughts outside my own head, escaping my vast, underoccupied bed to courtrooms and communes, restaurants and raceways, manor homes and motorhomes. It doesn't matter where I go or what I'm reading; "not present" is all I care about.

Leaving the light on helps me escape my own introspection. Alone in the dark, I often have to spend several minutes aware of thoughts that race or lurk around my mind. When I loosen the tethers of planning this and puzzling that, my consciousness wanders and often falls into the abyss, the unavoidable chasm. Even though I've been staying on its precipice for about 150 days, I'm still vulnerable to its gravity. I'm afraid of that abyss and the raw hurt that never really goes away when my thoughts linger on what's missing from my life, my bed. I prefer to move straight from fiction to dream.

And so the bulb burns.

Occasionally, like tonight, I'm too exhausted to find any of my books suitably numbing. Sometimes I tell myself I'm not only too tired to read, not only too tired to move across the room to flip the switch by the door, but also too tired to stretch the two feet to snap my lamp off at the neck.

But tonight, while fussing around, arranging blankets and pillows and limbs into a comfortable sleeping position, I'll find myself close enough to the light. Despite my headache, I'll look up under the shade at the naked bulb as my fingers find the knob to cut the stream of electricity. It will take two clicks, then I will be treated to my own miniature, captive sunset. The filament will glow for an extra moment, reminding me that lightbulbs are a source of heat as well as light.

And finally, remembering the time Reagan and I burned a hole in a fabric napkin by draping it over my desk lamp in order to cast the room in San Marcos in a moody, reddish glow... I'll brave the darkness.

Two Note Day Two

2009-06-24T01:54:00.000-07:00

The majority of Tuesday

Today was limited in scope and depth so I vow to keep my comments on the day limited in length. My troubles were as few as my movements, though the correlation means little. I spent the majority of my day reading in bed. What can I say? My brother recommends a good page-turner. Tuesday might have ended there, with a small shift in pitch as the day's note faded out; when my book was over with (it seemed way shorter than 454 pages) I moved from a fictional court case in a novel to a fictional court case in a video game.

(Un)fortunately for my wish to sleep early, checking a walkthrough on my computer got me in contact with my best friend extrordinaire and I was inspired to put down my game and pick up my pen. And not just my pen, but my paints, too. I forgot how awful they can smell. Nothing beautiful came of the artsing session (and I can't get my scanner working), so no art to post just yet, but I'm glad that I pushed myself to be productive at the end of the day. Posting is cool, too. Now that I'm here I want to say more that these quick jots, but the hour is later than I thought.

Heartbroken: A typical tirade

2009-06-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

I swear I'm going gray

Writing is not among today's victories.

~~Drawing is not among today's victories.~~

~~Getting my oil changed is not among today's victories.~~

~~Resisting running away is not among today's victories.~~

Receiving a free mug of tea at the bookstore is not among today's victories. It happened, and it was good, but I don't think I can claim credit for it. Even if the free tea (well, hot water; I brought my own tea bag*) was precipitated by me looking awful from a bout of crying, I can't say the freebie was intentional.

(* I did try to pay for the hot water so I wouldn't be that jerk who tried to scam free food, but the barista asked if I was going to be hanging around, and when I said yes, gave me hot water in a mug instead of a cup and refused my money.)

I'm counting the small things that went right today because it was a day of such intense heartbreak that I did wonder how I might be able to run away from home, or run to my husband without looking ridiculously irresponsible.

Heartbreak is supposed to be over when you find your soul mate, fall in love, tie the knot, and live happily ever after. But then why, oh why, despite all the love, devotion, and affection I have for my husband, does my heart ache so badly these days? Absence, instead of making the heart grow fonder, makes the heart a harbor for irrational resentment, accusations, and feelings of neglect and abandonment. All of those are irrational. (See above: love, devotion, affection.)

And all of those good things are returned to me. I hear from him at least once a day, pushing himself to be more verbose in his notes, and putting into paper (or at least email) the things I usually see in his eyes. But woman can not live on bread alone. I'm pacing at the end of my rope, unsatisfied with how little we share.

I've become so out of touch with my husband that I bristle at almost any mention of him. When people ask about him, friends and family alike, I can only stand to answer one or two questions, sometimes less, before shutting down and saying, "I don't want to talk about it." These brusque dismissals are often followed by me going somewhere to privately fight off tears. It's humiliating, but the breadth and depth of my situation are difficult to convey in the casual settings the topic comes up in.

The victories, you see, are in the times I act normal.

The times when I cook and clean.
The times when I create.
The times when I exercise.
The times when I leave the house.
The times when I socialize.

Even when those actions are facets of escapism... three days in the high desert, two days by the beach, five days driving around the state... they're still victories.

~~Writing is not among today's victories.~~

Six days on the road with Mom

2009-06-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

Six days
Five nights
Four tires
Three cameras
Two women
One trip.

(Six cameras if you count our cell phones and my mom's, but I'm just speaking of what I shot with)

It was a pretty intense trip.

Day one was driving up to Mill Valley, just past San Francisco on the 101. Instead of jetting up the 5, we took the scenic route.

Had a fanTASTIC dinner at a neighborhood place in SF. I had duck, perhaps for the first time, and the peach slices in the salad just melted in my mouth.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge before sunset...

And spent the next two nights with her friends Erin and Joel. They are amazingly sweet people... who I have no pictures of. They did, however, encourage me to procure a head of garlic, take it with me everywhere, and snap pictures of it.

I called the project "Finding Something to Savor Everywhere I Go". About forty photos of my bulb of garlic made it into the flickr set:

It solved my problem of lacking a subject in some situations, and I challenged myself to work it into as many shots as possible. Most failings happened when the bulb was left in the car or at our motel. It's a concept I'll definitely play with again, though.

Rest of the photos here.

I've been on the road for many days and can't keep my brain sharp as late at night as I'm accustomed to. D: Stupid waking up before noon all week...

The uphill bit

2009-05-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

I read something. It was neat. In the midst of the reading I said to myself, "I should blog about this so I remember more about the piece and the experience". Then I got distracted and wandered around the internet. Because I'm lazy. But I want to be less lazy, remember? So here's digging in for some concentration and writing about it.

The personal essay in question is Dumpster Full of Windows by Raquel D'Apice who I normally refer to (in my mind) as theuglyvolvo. (It's not personal or judgmental, she chose that username.)

Raquel seldom posts, less than once a month, but the quality of her essays more than make up for the "pain" of having a silent party on my friends list. Each entry is a personal story, but comparing it to what one finds on most diary-type blogs is comparing mountains to molehills. And besides climbing such mountains, I'd like to build them.

Components I think I'll need to construct such gems of creative writing (I've included a single example of each, usually the first occurrence, not necessarily the best, but definitely not the only):

+ Attention to detail
The tan vinyl on one of the seats has been slashed and someone has fixed it by stitching it back together in a zipper pattern with light pink thread, the inch-long ends hanging frayed from either side.

+ Connections of "unrelated" things
The train slows and the woman’s automated voice says, “This station stop is: Nanuet.” . . . The woman’s voice says all the syllables clearly and distinctly, as if Nanuet is the final answer in a multiple-choice question that my teacher is reading aloud.
In 1863, the Civil War battle with the largest number of casualties was fought at which location:
a. Appamatox
b. Gettysburg
c. Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom
d. Nanuet

+ Personal recollection
“But what DO you actually do?” a friend asked once.

+ Personal revelation
I have only a beginner’s carpentry set that has been used mainly to hammer nails into the walls and assemble shelving.

+ Recurring themes
.She pulls her sunglasses from the dashboard—they are always in a small compartment in the dashboard—and puts them on and kisses me.
.She puts her sunglasses back into the compartment in the dashboard.
.Opening the car door she reaches for her sunglasses, which are always in a compartment in the dashboard.

Perhaps this deserves a little more explanation. The first mention of her mother's sunglasses is part of the attention to detail that immerses me in Raquel's writing. The second occurrence underlines the use of "always" from the first mention. The third time the sunglasses show up, they help to wrap the piece up neatly as her mother is fetching them to "help with the glare" that will no doubt be an issue when Raquel builds a house out of the windows she saw in a dumpster.

The thread of her mother's sunglasses is probably the most pedestrian running theme in the essay, but necessary for the conclusion:

I thank her and put on the sunglasses. I will wear these to work on Monday, I think. I will saunter in to the office in my mother’s sunglasses, holding an idyllic wood-framed window, which I will set on the wall of my cubicle, propped against a bookcase. I will leave it open—it is nice to have windows, but it is nicer, sometimes, to have open windows; to feel a little bit of air on your face.

I will leave the window open and the wind will rush through. It will blow the smell of cookies back into the far corners of the office, where people on other floors will suddenly realize that they are hungry, and it will blow the papers from my inbox—shooting them out in sheaves out onto 49th street, leaving the air hung with forms—white and blinding and precipitating like snow.

(I pause a moment to swoon again.)

One last component bullet point:

+ Creative wit
The strongest example of this requires too much context for me to copy verbatim. The author is telling the reader a bullet list of her rules for organizing her office. In the middle of the list, Raquel's mother interrupts twice. It breaks an informative section of writing into a narrative (though fictional, I'm sure) form in a way that tweaks my brain. In a good way. It feels as though in the realm of body-of-writing, platonic-ideal-author and platonic-ideal-audience, there is also platonic-ideal-Raquel and platonic-ideal-Raquel's-mom who can see and relate to the bullet point list as though it were a solid object, like a building.

The individual components aren't as impressive, however, as the intricate way the essay is constructed. Sometimes I write "essay", sometimes "story", but neither feels wholly true. Poetry, in fact, seems closer to an accurate description for the rhythm, refrains, filigrees of words, and charming way it all comes together to ride off into the sunset.

Forgive me, Raquel, for this attempt to dissect your writing. It is only so I may learn from it. I hope you are not of the bourgeois, those who will send the bobbies after this poor worker caught trying to steal their secrets.

1- I was going home and saw windows in a dumpster
2- future conversation with sister about #1
3- details relating to #1
4- unrelated joke about voice on the train (mentioned in #1)
5- long details about getting off train
6- sunglasses
7- conversation with mom ("relax")
8- description of job (ends with imagination)
9- more thoughts about job (ends with imagination)
10- interaction with mom (groceries)
11- sunglasses (#6)
12- continuation of #10
13- Kitchen description (#10)
14- stuff on sale (#10)
15- dollar stuff for office (8, 14)
16- office forms, poetry (#8)
17- exchange with mom (16, 2 [in spirit])
18- rule from elementary school (#16)
19- putting away groceries (#10)
20- interaction with mom, clothing details (#10)
21- more interaction with mom (20, 2[memories and Pam])
22- observing clutter (10, 20)
23- groceries, overwhelming, organize (10, 8)
24- "Rules for organizing a workspace" (10, 8, 17)
25- what are these (24, 17)
26- weird stuff "for grandkids" (25, 17)
27- "don't throw out the coupons" (14, 25)
28- deep breathing (21)
29- apology conversation (7, 20)
30- different job (8, 1)
31- talking with Pam, house of windows down the street (2, 1, 21)
32- check on the windows (1, 2, 3)
33- tools in the garage (24)
34- if i had that house... (1, 31, 15, 24)
35- glare in the house (34, 20, 6, 20)
36- work on monday... (8, 1, 6, 15, 16, 35)

In retrospect, that's a dissection with scissors instead of a scalpel. Not every description of a passage (one or two paragraphs or a section of dialog) is exact enough to know what is being referenced or reiterated when the number recurs. I hope the list conveys the snowball effect that takes place over the 3500-odd words of the piece.

I feel like I know the author once I reach the end. Not only because she shares many details about her family, her thoughts, her life, but because she calls on me to use those details of what she's shared as the "conversation" between writer and reader goes on. Little things accumulate over those 3000 words until you feel like you're sharing an inside joke at the end. Through the repetition the pattern, the web, of interrelated thoughts emerges, so when we're comfortable with the author's rhythm, the poetic, imaginative ending is very satisfying.

It's time for me to get out of bed, I've spent almost two hours on this. I'll ruminate some more, let thoughts settle and sink in, then see what I may be able to apply to my own reflective writings.

The chain (can you have a chain of two links?)

2009-05-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

While I can't say I'm unconditionally in love with my car, it does permit things like the above to happen.

And, by proxy, it permits things like this to happen:

(I went to SeaWorld today. Also did a lot of drawing, but scanning won't be happening tonight.)

The trip from here to Murrieta (or the reverse) is the perfect length, especially at night when the traffic is light. If I have an idea to work through, the meditative state of driving a familiar road in easy conditions helps the right part of my brain focus.

For example: Reagan and I are doing a world building project together and exchange a couple emails a day. Despite emptying my brain to him right before leaving Draco's place, I typed up another 300 words of ideas as soon as I touched down at home.

Unusually wiped out right now. Have a graduation shindig to attend for my cousin tomorrow and a birthday shindig for my niece on Saturday. Doesn't seem like life will be letting up any time soon.

More photos from Sea World here at flickr

Determination

2009-05-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

I am shocked and dismayed at how long I have left my blog unattended. It will take much effort, but I am determined to get back into the habit of posting daily (or nearly daily on the occasions I go out of town).

Things are bumpy, but not really hard, like those egg-carton foam pads. I can tell when my life is going through some kind of upheaval because I go on a spree of organization, as though sorting out physical thing will mean I'm sorting out mental and temporal matters.

Yesterday I was emptying every box and bag I could get my hands on, as though one of them contained the bit of self or the bit of truth I feel is missing right now. I did find my checkbook and the remote control to my slr camera.

Another analogy I came up with: my methods are like trying to solve a rubix cube, I'm only willing to stash a box away when there is a certain purity of contents. ALL dvds, or ALL Reagan's clothes, or ALL a certain type of scrap fabric.

I'm kicking my own butt right now for failing to remember how good for me it is to write like this. Even though I still type on a regular basis and email my husband a couple times a day, the rigors of communicating in that way are less strenuous than what I demand of myself in this text box.

Also, since a previous, abandoned post hinted at problems I've been having with my brain lately, I'm eager to run it hard in hopes that it's just out of shape.

The short, factual version

2009-05-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

I uploaded 200-some photos to flickr last night, titling the set "boring pictures of beautiful places", but, in fact, some of them turned out quite well. The six rolls from my film camera, especially. Only five are from the trip, but I find them gallery-show worthy. (/humility) ((/sarcasm))

Not all the uploaded photos are titled or tagged, and very few are described. I hope that once I reach Maryland I'll be interested in fixing that.

Tuesday morning I set of to drive to my first camp spot, Lake Folsom, near Sacramento. I stopped for lunch near the American River

and took photos of flowers and thistle fields.

The campground had wild turkeys and rabbits. I wandered around and took pictures.

The next day (wednesday) I navigated by intuition and picked a neat looking highway (CA-36) to take me to the coast. It was long and hilly and an absolute blast to drive. Lots of road-winding-into-the-scenery photos came of it.

I only stopped once in that 140 miles, when my engagement ring fell off in the car and I needed to find it. Also took some snaps while I was out of the driver's seat.

At the end of it I had to hustle to find an alternate campground, and pitched my tent as the sun was sliding into the ocean.

The next morning I took a long, frigid walk on the beach. It was amazingly productive from a photographic standpoint.

All day was spent driving north on the 101

Then another photo session on the beach after making camp.

My air mattress was mostly-empty when I woke up Friday morning, so I got an early start. Made it to Redmond, had a joyful reunion with Clarie after she got off work. Saw the local community theater put on HMS Pinafore, then chatted long into the night.

Puttered around Saturday morning, dropped off film to be developed. We decided to go on an impromptu road trip to Forks, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. Neither of us think the Twilight books are good, but we've read them and observed the hullabaloo around them with interest, so decided to roadtrip it up, departing around 6pm

After we took the ferry along the "quickest route"

we found out the ONLY BRIDGE to Olympic National Park was closed, so had to drive an extra 100 miles, arriving well after midnight at our overnight accommodations...

A charming place. Hot breakfast in the morning was included in the low price of our room.

We spent a good chunk of time clamoring over huge piles of driftwood at La Push

Before returning to Forks in broad daylight...

Mostly just cruised around town, talking about tourism, seeing the logging memorial, looking at the houses and discussing how we imagined Charlie's house. Snapped a few shots of twilight signage before heading back to Port Angeles for lunch and bookstore browsing.

Then the long drive back to Redmond. Now I have most-of-a-day to get ready to hit the road again tomorrow!

Another Day 1

2009-04-27T22:08:00.001-07:00

near the Pyramid Lake visitor's center, which was closed

Hello, internet. How are you, internet?

I'm exhausted and nothing too eventful happened today. I did things and went places and spent money and changed plans, and while today is important symbolically, there are no crazy encounters to report.

So just some pictures from the first leg of my first solo road trip.

Some of the blurry ones appeal to me, like the world is softened by dull focus, and is somehow more inviting

yeah, my windshield is mega-dirty

I was supposed to be in a campground... somewhere... tonight, but got a very late start and figured it'd be easier to stay in a motel where I wouldn't have to worry about setting up a tent after dark, or whether or not the campground would be full. On the upside: I'm less than 200 miles from the campground I'll stay in tomorrow night so I can take my time and do more exploring and some arting, hopefully.

It's not going to stop, is it?

2009-04-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

I like how this one reminds me of the view from a plane while flying

Tuesday: dropping Reagan at Camp Pendleton and dinner with a new acquaintance (driving and social)
Wednesday: lunch and shopping with Carol, dinner and hanging out with Draco (double social)
Thursday: Six mile (2 hour) walk with my mom (travel (similar to driving?) and social)
Friday: going to Victorville to spend time with my brother and his family (driving and social)
Saturday: returning home with a new stereo (thankyouthankyouthankyou!) while feeling slight pains of having too much fun the previous night (driving)
---right now---
Sunday: repeat trip to Camp Pendleton to spend a couple hours with Reagan and take care of some little things on base (driving)
Monday: get maps from AAA, wait for my last package to arrive, drive to Big Sur to camp. (DRIVING!!)

And from that Monday, I'll be... out there. out in the world. For longer than I ever have been, alone or with others.

It's a good thing I enjoy both being alone and being behind the wheel. I sent a text message to Reagan today saying I'll be part transformer by the end of this trip.

Ah, in any case, this post is important to me (and has an attitude of slightly drooped shoulders, but that physical exhaustion is minor compared to the mental joy) because a few hours ago I heard from Reagan. He told me he had on-base liberty with visitors tomorrow. Sunday was my last day pre-trip, my day to rest up, run a few errands, do last minute packing.

Arg. *fallsover*

It's not going to stop any time soon, but I don't plan on stopping either.

And since I won't be stopping, I'll have to do a lot of my photo-taking from the driver's seat and come up with stuff like this.

(Pretty much all of these were taken in slow traffic by pointing my camera in the general direction of what I wanted to capture and pushing buttons. safe driving is more important than photos. :) )

The lateness amazes me

2009-04-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

Chronologically, I'm one day closer to taking to the road. Can't say if I'm that much more prepared. Have spent the evening with my brother and his wife, and it's been great times. But I've missed Reagan extra.

My car will have a new stereo in the morning. But for now, here are a couple pictures of the letters I sent Reagan while he was in boot camp.

The pile of what he got from me over three months:

A sampling of a few of the paintings I mailed:

Close up of the last piece, with help from Sarah :)

Example of a typical letter. Many pages had more text or less paint than this:

And a macro look at all the mail Reagan received (a little of it not from me ;) ):

I'm astounded at the hour, but very glad I'm here in Victorville, and have some nifty photos of the drive up when I get a chance.

Midnight photo snack

2009-04-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

No crazy adventures today, unless you count a two hour walk with my mom.

Other that, I was inside packing bags. Well, I took one break to walk on my own earlier in the day. Even though it ate up more of my oh-so-precious time, I took a few minutes after my first trip around the block to grab the watercolor set that has lain untouched since I returned to CA.

The mountains looked transparent in the haze. Our local hills are much more likely to be wrapped in smog than mist, but today was relatively humid, and it was mainly water vapor obscuring the slopes.

Other than that, today has been spent inhaling and exhaling chaos. My room is a universe of stuff, expanding and contracting. Order and organization break over the accumulated things in waves as I gather, sort, then put clothes, toys, shoes, papers, and odd ends. Much of the day my bed was a map of thoughts... pens and pencils collected over here, food items over there, a pile of bags, and other little things I didn't quite know what to do with.

I've managed to rough out a basic structure for everything I'm packing. One bag for day use, one small bag for camping (clothes and such, camping gear gets a box of its own), one medium bag for staying in town with friends, one large bag for things I'll want in MD. A backpack for electronic goodies, a messenger bag for art supplies, a tote for knitting, and so on.

A disproportionate amount of Peter Gabriel is being played on my iPod tonight. Not that I'm complaining. Shuffle has been very good to me. I've only skipped one song out of 60.

There's a photo of Reagan hanging on a wall near the kitchen. I see it every time I go downstairs. He's in the dress blues coat, wearing a hat, and looking very stern with an American flag in the background. The context of the photo doesn't consciously influence me, but I miss him each time I glimpse the picture.

I test-packed my clothes in their various receptacles, but when I got to socks and underwear, the bags didn't have proper pockets for segregating them. Luckily the sewing machine (and my boxes and bags of fabric) were still arrayed in the dining room. A couple hours later....

The sock bags (pieced-together ones) have some... issues... and the seams on the fancy looking ones are far from professional, but they will service. I have a habit of being very scrappy in my sewing, improvising everything. Rarely do I follow a pattern faithfully. I keep telling myself "next time I'll do what I'm told and even iron the seams open when it says to" but that particular "next time" has yet to come around.

Besides those little bags from fabric scraps and a pair of exercise pants cut down from a extra large thrifted pair, my other recent project is the purse-like bag I'm replacing my old green bag with.

Again, fully improvised with what I had on hand. The only thing purchased with this bag in mind was the zipper, although I used the bag without it for a week. The top part folds over like so:

And take a peek inside:

Usually it has more stuff in it, but I was making a few improvements last night. I love how it has all the right pockets. The right things fit in the right places! Except my keys. I didn't account for them, so I still have to dig around to find them sometimes. Or perhaps one of the outside pockets was intended for keys, and my new camera displaced them.

Tightly wound

2009-04-22T23:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday left off at the beach --

--but my day by no means ended after I lunched on cold potato soup, fresh bread, hummus, and carrots. I splashed through the water a bit on the way back to my car, the last wave breaking over my knees and soaking the hem of my skirt. No matter, it's an acute memory of the day that makes me smile.

I made some "bad" highway choices on the way back, knowing the general direction of home and the freeways that would take me there. The traffic was horrendous, but I generally don't mind such things, and spent a nice hour nestled between awe inspiring and gorgeous hills.

(hm, looks like I need to clean my windows!)

(and give my camera a talking-to)

One of the roads I took was the 91, which is notorious for being packed with cars. It was, but slow traffic and unfamiliar freeway together spun the tumblers of my imagination and unlocked my idea vault, and I jotted down some ideas during moments of "stop" in the stop-and-go. The hills got me thinking about islands and continental drift, and also dinosaurs. The masses of wedged together cars even brought to mind a tale about an intergalactic ferry being hijacked and stranded in unfamiliar space.

I miss my husband

The 91 led me to the 15--

I seem to think that if I say this at random intervals and write it wherever is handy when I feel the urge, that someday Reagan will find the notes covering our walls or filling notebooks, or etched in the memories of our friends, and realize how important he is to me.

-- so the 91 to I-15, a very familiar interstate. Familiarity leads to comfort, and sometimes it's easier to be creative when that part of my brain isn't comfortable. Once I knew what was coming physically, I started thinking about what was ahead of me in other ways. Planning and fretting, those kinds of things.

The freeway I was on, however, did take me to a shopping area that had not one, but two camping stores, both of which enriched my day. I spent money at the second, not the first, but at the first an employee chatted me up as I walked by. After patronizing the second, I returned to the first and asked said employee if he wanted to continue our conversation after he got off work. I amazed myself with my boldness yesterday.

Lou (making music as Voice on Tape) agreed, adding that it was his birthday and he had no plans. ANNIE TO THE RESCUE!

Going out for dinner... initially he mentioned Olive Garden, but changed his mind mid-drive and directed me to an Indian place ("Yoshinoya! Sorry, but no. I have to draw the line somewhere")... that catered part of my wedding reception (next to Yoshinoya). Very tasty food.

After dropping him off, I stopped in for a bit to view the art of Jon Carling and listen to music, some of it Lou's. (another link to his myspace profile). I dug it. Quite lots.

I'm sad that I'm leaving the state so soon for so long and won't have another chance to hang out with him, or any chance to hear him play. Kicking back with the artist, listening to their music in cool blue light is one thing, but nothing matches the vibe of a live show. WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE MYSPACE.

Another beautiful moment: he plugged my iPod into his stereo and put on some Phillip Glass (Changing Opinions). I was blown away by hearing it on real speakers instead of just headphones.

--

Today was less groundbreaking, but another jam-packed day... Lunch with Carol (great salad from a local Portuguese/European cafe), then a bunch of shopping for various crafty things. My bag has a zipper now, and I made a new pair of yoga/workout pants. Both of those things were accomplished (the pants were cut down from larger pants using a pair I know fit as a pattern) while hanging out with Draco later in the day.

Now I'm exhausted, listening to Hannah's music and trying to work up the ooo-rah to do some cleaning, or at least yoga.

Inexact Science

2009-04-22T00:35:00.000-07:00

My day looked something like that. I drew in two locations: the beach after lunch, and outside Bass Pro Shop waiting for an employee to get off work. Both sessions were short, but better than nothing.

I dropped Reagan off as planned, and on time, although several things changed on the fly, such as not stopping at the bank, not getting Wings&Things, and R taking his iPhone with him instead of leaving it with me.

One of the sweetest things he said to me on the drive down was that he wanted to listen to my music, that it would calm him down and reassure him more than his own tunes could. Awww.

before leaving home

Driving on base was different this time, still very strange and alien, but in the back of my mind I was thinking "I belong here or at least I'm not a foreigner." I didn't get to/have to use my Military ID, though.

Heading towards home, I had no need to rush back, so turned off I-5 when I saw signs for Laguna. We've talked about living there if Reagan is stationed at Pendleton, this seemed like a decent opportunity to poke around. And I wanted to see the ocean.

It seems like a strange part of my day to focus on, but stopping for a grocery lunch was actually quite nice. A man who worked in the produce department whom I had passed and said hello to earlier asked if I needed anything when I had trouble finding bags.
The man in line behind me offered to let me use his club card. A woman complimented my hair as I left the store, and continued the chat beyond just "hello" and "thank you."

More driving led me to the coast! The first place I tried to park to eat said lunch didn't work out; none of the parking machines were operating correctly, and I had no small bills. The second place ended up being me picking a spot along highway 1 and feeding a meter.

UNH! Cliffhanger! I am exhausted.

Better things to do.

2009-04-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

I have been musing these busy days, and this window has sat open for a dozen minutes or more. Then I realized that I may not get another evening with Reagan for nearly four months, so I'm going to enjoy my cheese and crackers and husband away from the keyboard.

Ciao!

There are exciting things on the horizon, and I hope to be in a position to tell you all about them.

Computers: Just another way to feel rootless

2009-04-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

It should feel like I'm at the end of a race, but getting my husband back on Friday was just another checkpoint on this unbearably long road to stability.

Even though I'm in a familiar room with a familiar person and piles of familiar stuff around us (including familiar sheets on the bed), I can't return to the comfort of how things were three months ago.

My computer is different, half of my desk is gone, and the bed is arranged differently, too. Drawing could help ground me, anchor me to something safe, but with my physical and digital workspaces being altered, I can't find that studio so easily.

Drawing was a zen practice when I could give my computer loose parameters and be offered a delightful selection of references. Now I am much more conscious of being involved in picking out what I'm drawing. It's a choice rather than an assignment, and therefore I judge my performance more harshly.

Emotionally, I'm out of sorts, too. I have Reagan here with me, but the 10 days we have together are fewer than the days apart before and the days apart after this phase. I can't get too comfortable. And yet I can't prepare for what I'm doing for the month during his combat training, or even the 2.5 months of schooling that will follow that.

This is the last lap (I so very much hope) of multiple years of rootless limbo, but truly things are darkest before the dawn.

Info Loss

2009-04-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

Back in CA.
I'm hanging out in Victor-Chill.

Last night my brother handed back my deceased hard drive and said, "When this is back at room temperature, put it back in the anti-static bag, put it in a box, put it on the shelf. When you make a bunch of money in the next few years and can afford a couple grand, give it to the pros. They'll put the platters in a new device and you can get your data back."

I think about what's on there that I'm missing, I wonder if it's worth the cost.

A year of pictures (2008)? Rather big deal.
Two years of collected references? Sentimental deal, but acceptable loss.
A year of random mp3s collected from the internet? Annoying loss.
Personal art and work? Don't actually care that much.

The last two I never considered in the initial gutting, but now that things are certainly lost, I do notice the lack.

What I miss the most: story notes.

Story notes are gone and will never come back. Off the top of my head I can think of four solid ideas that each had a few hours of development done on them. A few hours each isn't spectacular, but comparing that to the few minutes I've spent on most others, it feels like a big deal. I can't remember the last time I had an idea that could be built into the size of a novel. :|

I need to get cracking, tap into those wells again, plant some seeds. Starting over from nothing (or near nothing) is painful, but considering how much I've changed since I first taped out those ideas, so brilliant in retrospect, it may be better to begin from scratch instead of returning to and renovating concepts that may not have aged well.

This has been the funeral for my dearly departed data.

Mourning over.