It's official!

We're a band! Paper Cats! That's us. (I am, by the way, proud of myself for that name.)

And we've made it onto their folk charts! The songs Chris and I have posted on our blogs are up there (he's posted a few I never got around to, actually!), as well as a couple more of Chris's solo songs. This is so, so, so much fun.

In other good news, I've got the bug for writing again. I'm in the smut fanfic mode (and, strangely, the non-smut fanfic mode, which is entirely new for me) and hopefully that'll translate into feeling like working on original fiction, soon. But we'll see.

In still other good news, we're moving in less than two weeks! TWO WEEKS! AAAAAAAAAH! (It's about two blocks away, but it's a little bigger, a townhouse--complete with stairs, stairs, stairs!--and a little yard, very exciting.)

Maybe I'll write a few substantive blog entries, soon. But probably after we're moved in. :)

The less danceable, sweeter songs.

If this was a truly, evenly schizo serious-fluffy journal, I would've spaced out lyrics and song and lyrics with something about. . . Idunno, my cavities or that funny swollen lymph node and the inequities of the American systems of marriage and insurance, bigotry, etc. But Lancelot is licking plastic and attacking spider plants, so it's time to buck up and post his lyrics, instead. I can carry a musical theme for five whole posts, see? Not bad, that.

Since we put up our shaky copy of "the Only Living Boy in Turlock," let's see if I can't persuade my lovely Lover to put up the first runs of Lancelot's Song and the Late-Afternoon Lullaby, while we're at it. . . Since, as I said, they're not at all the same without the music!

Edit: In fact, he was persuaded! Click here to hear Lance's song, and click here to hear the Late-Afternoon Lullaby--which is my favorite, I think, of these three.


And here're the lyrics:

"Lancelot's Song"

Watch them, see them, hear them
Strange and loud and fuss and laugh and
Running fast
Very fast!

Singing out loud in the sunshine
Sleeping too long in the dark
Tearing around in the Sunshine!

Running to and fro and
fro and to and to and fro and--
Jumping high
Very high!

They tearing around in the sunshine
they Singing out loud in the dark
they Sleeping too long in the sunshine

(Instr.)

And they call and grab and
clutch and hold and love and cry out--
all my names
Many names!

They soaking all day in the sunshine
They tearing around in the dark
They singing out loud in the sunshine!


. . . .which would all make more sense if everyone knew our boy (The Boy, Shtinkertoy, Bunky, Lanceamaphone, Lance without Pants, Lancelot sans coulots, kitty fricasee, etc) and how we are with him. The lyrics are from his perspective; we were going for a sort of anthropological observation Lance-a-pot style.

Now, this one was to music Chris was going to pitch because he didn't like it (which I still can't believe). I told him it sounded like dapplied sunlight, late afternoon, and that I loved it, and he kept playing it for me but didn't really get what I meant 'til I sang the words for him. I think he likes it better, now. :)

"Late-Afternoon Lullaby"

On the side of some old desert road
Lying in the sand
Staring up at red rock cliff face
Hand in dusty hand

And we'll dream
Sweet dreams

Dappled sunlight through old birch trees
On a fading porch somewhere
You lying with your head in my lap
My hands in your hair

And we'll dream
Sweet dreams
Dream, dream, sweet dreams. . .

(Instr. bridge)

I'll sing to you
in a voice rough with age
And you'll play for me
hands old sweet and sage

And we'll dream
Sweet dreams . . .


. . . the first version of that I wrote (and lost) on a bus to Monterey on a zoology class field trip. Listening to a couple of girls in the seat ahead of me, one of whom actually happened to be a student of Chris'. In one breath criticizing him for her not participating in class, and in the next talking about dogs: "Eugh, I don't want a girl dog, girl dogs are so stupid. . . always having babies and stuff. . . " Hm.

Sometimes Turlock hurts. But that was a couple posts ago. The apricots are trickling in, now, and soon it'll be peaches. Out on the verandah, three of my five tomato plants are flowering or bearing green fruit (well, one of them is actually indoors on the desk in the War Room--doing better than a lot of the others, we get more sun there than outside, somehow), my radishes are growing, my bell pepper from last season, which has now self-resurrected from near death two or three times, may or may not produce something resembling buds, this year. Basil, parsley, chives, and cilantro, chervil from seeds, a few weak sprouts of pansies (also for food, also from seeds, also scraggly, also growing best on the desk, the touchy little bastards). . . Two cacti (a weak aloe, a strong little funky crossbreed that's sort've green and lavender), two kinds of columbines, two kinds of daisies, mums, azaleas, fuschia, most of which are in between bouts of flowering but looking happy. . . Inside (with one of the tomatoes and some of the pansies), two "tropical plants," two Wandering Jews, three Pothos, 8 spider plants in pots and 6 rooting in a bowl, two different kinds of ficus, and one pot of ivy. Most of which I/we cloned/rooted.

There is green everywhere.

Not bad for an apartment and verandah with difficult light!

It feels so, so good to be surrounded by plants.

Oh! And there's a green plant living in with the fish. I forgot about that one, since I consider it more like FishFish's pet, I suppose. Fishfish, who, a year and a half later, is still alive. Through fin rot and fussy eating. . . despite the white bubble growing on his head. . . That is one tough fish, there. That's why he's FishFish the Ferocious. Keep swimmin', FishFish.

I posted the lyrics not long ago, but. . .

Now we've gone and done it. We've made a little recording of "The Only Living Boy in Turlock," not much tampered with or fixed up, yet, so be kind, and there's an extra accidental chorus thrown in, somewhere. Other than that, though, it works okay! You'll get the idea!

So, CLICK THIS to hear the recording!

Please! ©, etc. Don't make a nice girl cry. Chris wrote the guitar music, I wrote the lyrics/melody line. Of the songs we brought down to my mother (the others of which we also made little first run recordings of, tonight--Lancelot's Song and the Late Afternoon Lullaby), this was m'mom's favorite, the one she demanded we make her a recording of. So, for my mama and all.

Thinking I'll cross post this at my fiddly bit journal, too, though. . . 'cause, y'know, I'm curious. . .

"The Only Living Boy in Turlock"

(The song came from a warp on Paul Simon title and associated chords. Teasing, but lovingly. These are the "wrote all at once and they're fun to sing" lyrics evoked in the last post. Presume the nonsense syllables to be guides representing scatting. To music by Chris, and it's not the same without it. But he was surprised I hadn't posted them, so. . . . Here's a little piece of Turlock, CA. © 2006 Lauren Byerly and Chris Nagel, etc, thx.)



Can't catch a bus through the cars, but the cows
come closer than people--won't talk--
Two hours from the nearest place without lights
Two hours from the nearest place with life
Tell me, why am I here?

I duck and I wave and beg and I try to find someone else who smiles but
Not in this little town
No, not in this town!

La t-da dadida ta da bada didow,
latasi za za di da
Doom, ba da dadida la tsow zada bida
gadda ba la tsi da da
boom, La ladadidow,

Zat zatta da lee zat zatta bop dee zat zatta rah ta ta tee za
-- zat dadida dow
--zat Li La Li Lie

People shouting in print, but I think people thinkin's
Fewer and further between than us hippies,
long haired and hiding out behind guitars
and run to the coast when there's a little
Time to breathe. . .

I duck and I wave and beg and I try to find someone else who smiles but
Not many'n this town
No, not in this town!

La t-da dadida ta da bada didow,
latasi za za di da
Doom, ba da dadida la tsow zada bida
gadda ba la tsi da da
boom, La ladadidow,

Zat zatta da lee zat zatta bop dee zat zatta rah ta ta tee za
-- zat dadida dow
--zat Li La Li Lie

(Bridge)

Eating peaches and getting pickled on rum
and juice in the hot hot sun and then
dancing 'round in the rain and watching the muck
come out of the air and pretending We
the only ones here, today. . .

Then I duck and I wave and beg and I try to find someone else who smiles but
Not in this little town
No, not in this town!

La t-da dadida ta da bada didow,
latasi just me and peaches,
today, a da dadida la tsow zada bida
Keep your guitar out the rain and
boom, La ladadidow
--Da lie la li lie. . .

Not to jinx, but to encourage. . .

I feel, I feel, I feeeeeeeel like I'm coming through. After not having been able to write more than a few words (and then in role of editor), I wrote three songs, this afternoon.

No, I didn't. That's such a lie. What a liar I am!

What I did, actually, was to write the lyrics for three of Chris' songs. One I had most of, already, and was sort've. . . finalizing, I guess. One I had pieces of, and got in order (and wrote another verse for). One--the long one, the daunting one, the spunky one, for which I had not previously had a word, on which I could not muster a thought, let alone a line or verse--I wrote in its entirety.

And it is fun. I am so, so pleased--which is saying a lot, since I have a long and sordid history as a horrid detractor of myself. They need work in that I need to be more comfortable singing them than I am while he's playing them, and it's good to practice together, but.. they're.. . I like them. Goodness, that song is fun to sing. One of the others is fun, too. And the last--it's pretty. It's working. And Chris likes them all. Which is important, since it's his music. That makes us officially musical collaborators.

Which is, by the way, pretty hot.

Speaking of hot musical collaboration, and inspiration to write:

"I'd love to turn you on. . ."

Chris and I have been absolutely ploughing through the Beatles Anthology, which he found for us because he is fantastic. We just finished the 6th segment, which includes the making of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. In particular, Paul (and George Martin, too, come to think) talk about the writing and production of "A Day in the Life."

Now, I was raised on the Beatles. And as far as explicit lyrics and raunchiness go, I would hands down say the Eagles and Jimmy Buffet (also formative) had it over them. My adoration for the Beatles was consequently deep and pure and utterly innocent.

And it wasn't 'til I was probably 19 or so that I caught wind of the strange and elusive beast, Beatles slash. I don't remember if it was before or after that, though, that I really, really listened to "Run For Your Life," from Rubber Soul (an album I'd had and loved since I was about nine). I mean, I'd heard it and knew it, but I mean really, really listened. And realized that it was rough sex in vocal form.

Delete several paragraphs of rampant pornographic waxing here on the general subject of sexuality (mostly mine) as related to the Beatles.

Ahem.

In short, through this and that, I've come out of that nonsense about them being innocent. The drugs weren't a surprise, but it was harder, about the raunch. I'm seeing it, finally--seeing the sexuality in the show, understanding. The tens of thousands of girls who screamed when they leaned in inches from one another, heads together, mouths at the same mic, and sang high harmonies together didn't just like the music. I can barely keep my chair, now, and yes, the harmony is part of it, but it's not all.

And it's even occasionally in the lyrics. I hadn't noticed. "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?" was too obvious to ignore, but the Beatles were subtle. I'd heard "A Day in the Life" a thousand times, and heard--and sung along with more often than not--the line "I'd love to turn you on" as it halts and sighs and pulses long, and assumed they either didn't mean it that way, or that it just didn't mean that then. It was the 60's, after all, a time of innocence.

I'm not sure how I managed that. It has to do with knowing it from before I was able to understand, I think.

And here was Paul, talking about writing with John, making music with him, waving off any claim of professionalism--he was, he said, a big fan of John's, and that it wasn't calmly joining to write, no--they were excited by what each the other was doing. "I can't wait to get my hands on that one!" and so forth. And there was something missing, in "A Day in the Life," he said. And when that line came up--he sang it in the interview, soft--it was it. And Paul has a way of looking naughty and knowing, you know. Turning his face just aside while looking forward, and lifting his eyebrows while lowering his eyelids and parting his lips, holding his body very, very still.

It was in the lingo, at the time, he said. Everyone knew it, he said, but no one had put it on an album, yet, dared to. "Do it! Put that in, write that down!" he repeated himself, sounding breathless and excited and sly. And I see it.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, still eager to get their hands on one another's work, still meshing and collaborating, sitting close across over a keyboard, thrilling, when one of them looks up and sighs a non-sequitur, sings to the other, "I'd love to turn. . . you. . . on. . . "

And the other whispers, "Yes!"

Mid-morning lullaby.

When I was little, my father used to sing to me.

He was one of those people who couldn't really sing--at least, couldn't carry the tune quite right, and probably couldn't have matched key to save himself. But he had one of those voices.

You know, one of those.

I could've listened forever. It was a good voice for a dad to sing with, I remember that. He sang low, and quiet, and his voice was a little rough. I think, now, looking back, it would've been one of those that's good with an old guitar playing old--old--country songs. Jimmy Rodgers old. But I can't really hear it, anymore. Not quite. It's been too long.

Have you had that? Remembering something you're not sure you really remember well, but you've seen the photos or watched the videos or heard the story told so many times, you've sort've filled it in? I remember him singing. I remember what he sang, how he sang it. But I can't hear his voice. Except for how it sounded on family movies from when I was 4 or 5. My father's voice: perpetually muted and muffled and 20 years ago tape-deck.

It's strange; I can still sort of smell him. Bay rum, something just a little sour and damp behind it from sweating, sometimes. And the way the scarred skin by his shoulder felt when I hugged him and got that smell, those times, soft and cool. I touched his forehead at the viewing: that's a feeling I wish I didn't remember as well as I do, the absolute cold, there. Stiff like clay, but not as pliable. But it's fading.

His face is come a shifting amalgam of every picture ever taken of him. His hair anywhere from dark, deep brown to almost white with grey--every time he shaved it off, it came back whiter. He dyed his hair and beard green, once, for me, on St. Patrick's (I'd done my own hair with food coloring, before). I found that picture, recently. I'd forgotten. Him with his jambok (what he called his bamboo walking stick--he'd never, ever use a cane), sitting on the bed in their room, with the tropical murals on the walls that my mom painted over when she tore the house apart. It couldn't look the same as it had.

But his voice. I remember him singing to me, at night. Songs I'd never heard anywhere else, some. He'd come to sit on the edge of my bed, and sing me a song about a lovely Indian maid and her handsome brave, and he'd humor me by putting my name in instead of Little White Dove and the name of whatever boy down the street I had a crush on that week in for Running Bear. Soft and sad and sweet, that song, old and calm and gentle, full of love.

Sometimes he'd sing Purple People Eater. We had that on a tape--I knew that one, that way. He drew me a picture of the monster, once, after asking me to draw what I thought it looked like--it was good. I'd never known him to draw, otherwise.

Then he'd sing one that was environmentalism disguised as religion. About the old oak tree, that loved the babbling brook, and on up to the clear blue sky, until man came along. ". . . And the babbling brook is solid ground. And the mountain hiiiiigh don't stand so high, and there's a cloud of smoke, cov'rin' up the clear blue sky-y-y. . . " Then something about if she'd left the apple on the tree. Sometimes he'd end with Amazing Grace. I liked it. It's never sounded the same, from anyone else.

Day to day, he'd sing bits of "Sixteen Tons," and "Soldier Boy"--"You are my first love, and you'll be my last love," he'd say to me, sing-song. I didn't know it was "Soldier Boy"--didn't know the song at all--'til I heard an Old School night on the local hip-hop station, lying in bed.

I was probably fifteen or sixteen when I realized how badly I missed all those songs. When he'd been gone a couple of years, and hadn't sung them in years before that, either. When I remembered them, and could remember whole verses, but realized I didn't know the names of the songs. Where they'd come from, whose they were. No amount of searching seemed to be able to turn them up, for me. I would be 20 before my ex-girlfriend's father--who had a strange knack for singing out loud the songs in your head--started gruffly puffing, "'was a tall oak tree! 'loved the babblin' brook!" one night.

It took every ounce of will and pride I could muster to not cry before I could ask about it. I remember feeling desperate, elsewhere, and I think my eyes were like that, like my face had sunk back away from them; I was up off the floor and turned 'round to him like I didn't weigh anything, and my voice too high and thin, asking, "What's that song? How do you know it?"

Hee-haw, or Hoe-Down, or something. One of those old country shows when he was a kid. "Tall Oak Tree," that was all. Not an old oak tree. I thanked him before finding a bathroom to crumple in.

I found that song. Glen Campbell. I found "Running Bear"--two versions, Johnny Rivers and Sonny James.

Some of the kitschiest, most over-the-top, annoying tracks I've ever heard, the lot.

My dad really couldn't sing very well, if well means representative of the original. (Johnny Cash's "Sixteen Tons" was closer.) But I could kind of hear him in them. Slower, without the trumpet lines (why on earth were there trumpet lines?), without the badly--insultingly--faked Native American flair, without the snappy swing, without the twang or Roy Orbison-esque vibratos. Some of the melodies missed. A verse skipped, once--the one about the devil tempting Eve. But something like.

Somehow, my father took that stuff and made old--old--country from it. He took Johnny Horton and made Jimmy Rodgers. He took jump and made lullabies.

Places I want to be and am not wanted.

First off, I want to apologize: I know that some of the people who don't donate blood have really, really good reasons. Like (a) being unable for some legitimate reason--can't without blacking out, unsafe for their health, etc--and/or have been refused for similar, or, (b) having been refused outright for a reason rooted in some variety of institutionalized bigotry or paranoia.

Red Cross (any blood donation center I've met, really--Delta, UCLA. . .) doesn't care if you own the tattoo parlor and have sterilized everything used on you personally. They don't care if you were a vegan when you lived in England. They don't care if your male-male sex was protected, or occurred twenty years ago. They don't care if the possible incubation period on any disease is long up since you were in whatever neighborhood they find high risk. Accounting for things like that would take too much time and effort, when they can overgeneralize (and still not rule out the possibility of disease, surprise surprise). Being over- rather than under-protective of the blood supply, despite severe shortage, is one thing. Perpetuating shit like this despite options for more reasonable screening, especially in the face of shortage, is another.

Bastards.

So I apologize if I came off high-horse--I didn't mean to. I know it's rotten. I do want to encourage people who can--who are allowed to--to do it, despite the bullshit of the system. It doesn't hurt much, it doesn't take too long, they'll usually give you a gift certificate for a pie or something. And a lot of the people who don't/haven't donated just haven't thought about it, or haven't found the time. But I wish the system wasn't so fucked. And I wish I knew what to do about it.


Second of all. Tangential relation at best, started to write/post this last night, but couldn't get through it. I'll get sick of crying through that song, eventually:


I only just learned that some of the biggest St. Patrick's Day parades--ones in New York and in Boston, for instance--ban gay groups (and even gay marchers) from their midst. Don't want them. Explicitly.

. . .I think I may be heartbroken.

See, I had a tiny inkling--just a little weak tickle, every year--that some year, eventually, I wanted to be in New York or Chicago or Boston for St. Patrick's. I'm religion-free, and I'm a mutt, but I know where I identify more strongly on the rare given day I try. And I wanted to cross the country, to be somewhere with a strong Irish-American community that celebrates, that revels, that adores. One that turns out and is game to enjoy it. Here, there's the occasional green shirt, and I hear P. Wexford's in Modesto goes to town, but that's an Irish Pub. And that's the only one. The Guinness goes on sale, and if you get 6 packs or more, you get a few dollars off on your meat.

It's not the same, you know?

I guess I just wanted to see it, sometime. New York! On March 17th! Just once, maybe. . . Decked out and vibrant and lovely. I wanted to go and dance, sing along. Maybe learn a new song.

Maybe not.

Maybe I'll go to Chicago.


"Oh, the shamrocks were growing on Broadway,
Every girl was an Irish colleen
And the town of New York
was the county of Cork!
All the buildings were painted green!

"Sure the Hudson looked just like the Shannon,
Oh how good and how real it did seem!
I could hear Mother singing,
the Shannon bells ringing,
'twas only an Irishman's dream!"

It's that time!

Yes, it's Blood Donation Time for Lauren.

For several months, now, I have given blood THE VERY DAY I was eligible to do it again, after the last time. I think it's a good policy. That is, one can donate blood every 56 days, and I have done it every 56 days. November 12th, January 7th, March 4th. . . I've been pretty good about it since I was first eligible (late 2000, early 2001, I think?), but there were a few several month gaps, in there, owing to being dorm bound, some of that time, and occasionally I'd have a pulse too high to be able to do it when I went, and have to wait. But that's not happening, anymore. It's not going to. (I may take the 6 month hit for acupuncture and a few more holes in my ears, sometime--that's two opportunities missed--but I'll do it all at once and Right After I've donated.) In any case, no other avoidable dooms. Lately, I've been very careful. No caffeine the morning before. Drinking plenty of water, so my blood volume is good and moves fast. And I think I was pretty close to Optimum Donation Efficiency for a donation or two before they gave me the handy calendar with printed in reminders--If you donate May 4th, 6/29 is written underneath it in red: your next eligible date.

The Delta Blood Bank (our local collector) in Turlock is only open Thursdays and Saturdays, however. And when I missed April 29th (ran out of time :( ) it set me back to Thursday. Today. So long as I can keep going on Thursdays, at least, I won't lose much more time on shedding platelets and hemoglobin and red blood cells and so forth. I aim to have donated 2 gallons (to Delta) by October--this will be 14 pints for them, today, 1.75 gallons. And I gave something like 3/4 gallon to the Red Cross, when I was in or visiting Southern California. So that'll be about 20 pints from me. 40 cups. 320 fluid ounces. 640 tablespoons. 20 pounds.

So I have donated my entire blood volume at least twice over.

For visuals, that is about:
- 5 (64 oz) jugs of juice.
- 5 cartons (1/2 gallon) of milk (or two and a half of those big mother jugs).
- 13 (24 oz) water bottles
- more than 12 bottles of wine (or fifths of your favorite liquor--mix and match!)
- more than 21 of those big cans--more than 5 of the 4 packs--of Guinness.

By weight:
- 4 (5 lb) bags of flour.
- 3 of your average infants
- 2 average cats or 3 chihuahas (or one Maine Coon cat)

Now go. Go to your kitchen and look at your milk or juice or hooch. Or Pooch, if you like.

Isn't that a trip?

Then find an hour, some time, and go give up to three people another chance to go be miserable to one another--or really, really good to one another. (Or put a pint dent in the up to 6-8 pints commonly needed in leukemia treatment, 6-12 pints for a gunshot wound, 10-100 for traumatic organ damage. This is a pretty big issue.)

Some Fun Blood Facts.



Edit, already: This is actually only *13* pints to Delta, today. So make it an even handful of the four packs of Guinness. :)

Whirlwind.

You can't imagine how freaky only 3 or 4 trucks showing up at the port of Long Beach is unless you've been stuck in traffic headed for the Vincent Thomas at 3 in the afternoon or 9-ish in the morning. Well, maybe you can. But it's fantastic.

One of the many stories about it--one of the less insulting.


"The New Colossus" -- Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


Frankly, as long as that's what we've got posted at one of our borders. . .

Anyway, I'm not going to go into that any further, here. At the moment. I wound up going off happily at the delightful blog of Joe. My. God.--more than I'd planned, because there was an interesting comment left there. His post was friendly--I was just going to make the note that we're also ALL immigrants, another thing that keeps getting left out of this discussion. Irish Need Not Apply, for instance, came around when the *other* European groups thought the *Irish* were substandard and didn't deserve to pursue the "American Dream" and shouldn't be allowed to take *their* jobs. So the Irish worked. . .building. . railroads. And got sent off to war. With the exploited Chinese and Black and Hispanic populace. Which I'm sure the English and German and Italian families who'd been there a few generations longer and had proper work in shops and government were all clamoring to do. (Blazing Saddles: "All right, we'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we don't want the Irish.. . .")

I should've probably saved it for here, and posted a proper entry. But, eh.

I don't know that my brain's in that kind of space. I'm torn between posting my half finished fanfic smut (which I intend to do over here, at my 'commenting' journal if I do, which I've been using way more than I intended, already [EDIT: Four fics are now posted, one X-Men, two Farscape, and a hockey fic]) and talking about my brother. Which I'd do here.

Lucky you, huh?

So.

My brother's going to be hospitalized. Institutionalized. Here, I think (though that's only just about the half of it). Until he "gets better." 3 weeks? 4, 5, maybe 6. . .

I guess we'll see.

So. Um. We don't know if visiting is going to be allowed. Or how soon it'll start. Anything, really.

All I know is UCLA. And that it's important, and they think it's necessary.

So I'm a little scared, you know?

Mushrooms. A little chocolate. And some black beans and rice.

Christ, food never tasted so good.

So. Now would be the two day mark, but I was foaming (! What the fuck, reflux?) so I gave up a handful of hours ago and eased myself into some gentle food. I'll eat well (mostly) tomorrow and then have another clean day. Without as much spearmint-loaded tea, this time, I think.

I feel strange! I've teetered between feeling quite good--quite a lot better, really--and feeling vulnerable. But I suppose that makes sense. At least I haven't taken down my previous entry, yet. That's been a bit of a battle. Hopefully I'll manage to not back off?

I'm realizing increasingly how freaking lucky I am. I know and love and am loved by some very beautiful, special, fantastic people. Thank you.

But, in lighter, fluffier news (and because my blog, apparently, follows a pattern of back and forth between grave and absolutely fluffy--I just noticed this, today), I discovered that Piotr (the Purple Piggy, down the page) jumps when you click him only until you've clicked him a lot and rapidly, at which point he does something incredibly cute. (This thing is what the spraybottle is for--I'd had no idea.) Go see! Click him silly, then use the spraybottle, and then feed him an apple and tell him what a cute piggy he is. It's good for your health.

Love you.

What my insides look like, right now. (Not fluff, and not what I expected to be writing when I sat down.)

So. I'm fasting.

We're still in the toddler stages, yet. I had a couple of chocolate covered marshmallow eggs before midnight, last night, and it's 3 pm now. I've had a little veggie broth, a couple rounds of "detox" tea (Yogi Tea's version), and a couple sips of juice and coffee, and I'm about to start into some Jasmine green tea. So it's a modified juice fast. No food, though I had to write myself a note to remember. I've applied more food to my body than usual, though (homemade oatmeal brown sugar scrubs, milk/oatmeal/honey bath, and so forth). I almost forgot and nibbled at parts of that stuff, but otherwise I've behaved. I may go through Thursday (starting back on food Friday morning), which would be four and a half days, or I may just go until Wednesday morning (two and a half), and share some (small, gentle) meals with Chris before going back on fast with him, for Thursday. I'm going to see how I'm doing Wednesday before deciding, I think!

So. Why?

I just haven't been feeling up to snuff, mostly. My last fast was a flop (changed my mind) and I haven't had one proper in at least a few years, and I do think they have a good place in health. Especially when one isn't doing so well. I had some fast food and restaurant food over the weekend (as is often the case when visiting Mama), and that never leaves me feeling quite right. And mostly I've had issues with dwelling, lately. Feeling very emotionally clogged and sluggish and irritable; a good physical cleaning of the innards will help me with the less tangible stuff. (The food on body stuff is part of the same thing, really; cleaning my body thoroughly and well.)

See, it's getting on towards two years that I've been here, together, with Chris, and they've been beautiful. That means, though, also, that it's been on towards two years since I broke up with my ex (simultaneous events), followed by many months and later spurts of unpleasantness, none of which was beautiful. I fall in and out of dwelling and depression and anger about the lot of it with some frequency, but it was much, much better for a good while, there. There's just been a sort of upsurge, lately. It's been two years for some of it, seven years for some of it, a few months for some of it. But it's been long enough that I feel like I shouldn't still be upset, you know? I can still feel weird about my dad, sometimes, 8 and a half years later, because that was my dad dying, but a breakup (etc)? It doesn't seem right.

Part of it's the weather. There's been a lot of gloom and grey, which I love, but sometimes it does things to me. Being one of the many sufferers of depression and anxiety, I also just get to deal with periods like this, due to my wiring. Plus tumult related to graduating, figuring things out, etc. And, I think part of it's because of all the pretty awful things my lady friends have been going through lately (or that I'm learning about them having gone through). Some of it looks really familiar, and maybe that's part of what's keeping this shit in mind. Some of it just feeds the feeling or shakes my good feelings about the world. And then I just remember the things that have happened on their own, for no good reason, and can't seem to shake them.

Most of you have heard all about this stuff, I think, but maybe it'll do me good to write a little of it down in the open.

When I left my ex-, it was a big surprise to everyone. One of the things she said to me was, "But please don't tell everyone what a bad girlfriend I was," advising that she wasn't down with talking shit on one another after a breakup. She was crying! She was professing more emotion and care for me than she had in the previous few years combined, she was saying she understood and still loved me. So I, crying, said that I wouldn't. And I didn't.

She did not follow the same rules. She at least only had the material of my leaving, though that got used for all it was worth, by her and our formerly mutual friends and so forth--building it into assumptions that if I could leave like that, I must have been lying about loving, about caring in the first place, etc. Handy for disparaging someone who's been good and nice and sweet. Because frankly, I was a good girlfriend, a good friend. Fed into the codependent tendencies, clung, etc, but I wasn't cruel, I wasn't unaffectionate, I did what I could for her and with her and didn't hit her with the car when she asked me to. I was friendly, I was warm, I was loving. I dragged her through school. And when I left, I didn't admit how miserable I had been, and I didn't admit that a lot of the reason I left so abruptly was that I had been afraid of her, and that I didn't think she loved me--or even liked me--anymore, and so wouldn't care except to be mad. Because I didn't want her to feel worse about it than she already did, being left, once I realized she did care, some. I didn't admit that the way she'd treated me for most of the 5 years we were together was horrid, and the main reason I was leaving. I didn't say what I meant, when I told her I had to go because I was in love, which was really, "I'm not leaving you for him--I'm leaving you because I have to get the fuck out, and he's just finally made me realize it, made me realize I deserve to be happy and not miserable, made me realize I deserve to be treated with some fucking human respect, which is not how it is, here." I didn't bring up the time a year or two earlier that she had slapped me for defending her to my mother, or that I'd thought honestly about leaving then. I didn't admit that, once, because I couldn't really handle it anymore, and was so desperate for an out, that I left her alone to the bath without checking on her, so that if she really wanted to kill herself there (I'd just pulled a bag off of her head a few days before, though I think she was probably shitting around rather than being serious), she wouldn't be stopped by my accidentally catching her part way, or be in an easily recoverable state (which is, I think, the most foul, disgusting, weak thing I've ever had go through my head). I didn't tell her that I thought a car crash that killed one of us or a terminal disease held some appeal. I didn't tell her that I stabbed myself with sewing needles and leaned my throat into hard things until I was dizzy from the asphyxiation, towards the end of the relationship. I said I was sorry, that I'd been unfair, putting it to her so quickly, and that I should have known better than to think she wouldn't be so upset as she was. I should've trusted her more.

That's the first time I've put any of that in print with the intention of putting it up where it could be seen.

Because it didn't seem fair, you know?

I didn't send the emails and letters I wrote in fury and plain desperation to be understood. I didn't post on the old journal--ever again, in fact! I didn't post on LiveJournal at all, in case of searches for me, in case of discomfort. I didn't even post anonymously, or make a new journal, or make phone calls, or tell people who might still want to be around my ex-, since it might be uncomfortable. I didn't tell her to be better to her new girlfriend than she was to me. I switched accounts to post my poetry, and didn't submit the stuff about leaving her to the creative writing rag, at school, even though it was good. Nothing like that. Even if I was being trash-talked. Even if the things I had done and I had said were being posted up publicly and misinterpreted wildly until I was the clear villain. I knew and know it wouldn't make a difference in the way anyone thought about me, it wouldn't change anyone's mind, it wouldn't get back any of the friends I lost. And it didn't take long for me to lose all fucking interest in getting them back. I'd lied and said it was okay if they felt they had to stop speaking to me for leaving my poor, unoffending ex- the way I did. And I believed it for a moment, but then I stopped. The few people who went the route of, "I don't know if I can forgive you for what you did, but I understand and still want to be friends," who all either ceased contact entirely or only answered when I asked them direct questions, I eventually stopped addressing, because I was sick of it, and it wasn't fair, and it was pretty clear they wouldn't be too broken up about it. And I actually broke off a friendship myself. Admittedly, one I had thought had gone the way of the others. Another thing I was trashed for. But I was sick of being talked about behind my back and told love to my face. I think that's fair. I stopped missing them all. I got much closer to the people who were still there. I realized how lucky I was to have them. I felt more love for them. I've gotten angrier and more peaceful and then angrier again about the rest.

So. I know people were hurt. By me. And I do feel bad that anyone's gone through grief on my account. Sometimes I even feel bad that I let them get away without hearing/seeing any of this, since I think it's probably not good for them on some kind of spiritual level, before I remind myself that it would be left unbelieved and viewed as an act of desperation or pettiness at worst, and just make people uncomfortable to know at best. And maybe it would be petty, especially now. It would've been mean, then. I want to let it lie, I want to let it be dead and done and through with. I don't want stray emails about it, I don't want to be roused in anyone's memory, as I don't want them roused in mine. But in my moments of greatest clarity, where I try to be fair to myself as well as to others, I think my actions were understandable. And that while I could've tried to avoid the situation getting to where it was, there wasn't a better thing to do once it was that fucking quagmire that it became.

And I've still got it. I still carry it. The breakup, the abandonment, the uncertainty, the mass of hmming and hahing from those who hadn't quite decided whether or not I was too scummy to be involved with and lied about it to me, and the whole mess of a relationship that preceded the lot. I hear about a girl who trashed on me, and I fume. I remember being slapped, and I relive the insult and the hurt and am amazed (and upset) that I could have excused it then (she must've been very insulted and hurt, herself, after all, by my repeating what she'd told me in confidence about being upset [which I did in my attempts to fix what had made her upset][not that she hadn't done the same to me, chiding me to grow a spine and stand up for myself], if it was enough to make her slap me. . . "Make her slap me"--Is that a little sick? Isn't that a little too abused wife? I think it is). I only just told my mother and a few of my dearest friends about the slap, within the last two weeks. It's been eating at me. "Oh my God, that's so fucked up," "Why didn't you leave then?" "If I'd've known, I'd've come cut you out of there, even if you didn't want to go," "WHAT? Oh, no, I'm sorry, you'd've had your bags packed, if I'd known. . ." It's a comforting if stark change from, "Well, I guess if you say you weren't happy you weren't happy, but I don't know if I can forgive you for going that way. . . "

So. There's been a certain amount of bitterness recirculating through my veins. It feels toxic. But I feel a little bled, now, to have written it down. I'm finally going back on my assurance, but I don't think anyone involved is reading. And, you know, they'd have to be looking for it, if they were. So I'm sorry if someone's upset by reading this, but it's a matter of preserving my health. And I think this should probably exist somewhere outside of the clamoring in my skull that results from my thinking about it all and not writing it down, anyway, as long as I've avoided it.

I feel a little better.

On with the fast.

Mama Misses Me.

Over Spring break, we're going Back East. Or Up North. Or Back Up North East, you might say. There's a conference there near enough to a city we very much want to visit that it's only a rental car away, and thus a good option.

This means, however, that Spring Break will not be spent in the traditional way--that is, going Down South (at least, down South relative to here, Out West, which is to say, going to Los Angeles/Long Beach from Turlock) to spend it with my mother. Who still makes us freaking Easter Baskets stuffed with candy (she even made one for Chris, last time!), and thank goodness for it. I don't know what I'd do without baskets of candy. NEED BASKETS OF CANDY. NEED.

So, since we are going Back Up NorthEast, rather than going Out Down SouthWest for break, there needs to be an occasion to go Down South. Out a-little-bit-West, you understand. In brief, to follow the homing beacon back to the Bay--the South Bay, we call the area, in fact, in Southern California. I'd never heard of no Northern Californian "South Bay." So fuck you, San Jose. We've got dibs.

So. We need to find a time to get Down South, Out West, to the SoCal South Bay area (which is not the "NorCal"--and I cannot stand the phrase NorCal, by the way, folks; SoCal has a ring and a snap, whereas NorCal sounds like a branch of the food and drug administration [and I don't ever want to see/hear "CenCal" again in my life]--South Bay). To see Mama. Because Mama misses me, and I miss her.

So when to go Down South, Out West, to the SoCal-not-Northern-Californian South Bay area, to see Mama, who misses me, and my little brother who is not so little, anymore, and in fact is quite a lot taller than me, and even a little taller than Chris, and just a smidge taller than my father was at his height? (And it would have been my father's birthday, today; he'd have been 61, rest him.)

In a week and a half, that's when. For a weekend trip, the likes of which we've made a lot more frequently this year than last. And we're going to see a goddamn live hockey game, in the Long Beach Arena, between the ECHL hotstuff, the Long Beach Ice Dogs (who are the affiliates of the Hamilton Bulldogs and thus of the Montreal Canadiens Up North and Back East) who were local to me all my life, and the now-local to me--that is to say, local to the Turlock area, which is to say, located 45 miles North of here, but they're closest--Stockton Thunder, from the bottom of the league (who are the affiliates of the Pheonix Coyotes who are Back East from here but Out West from most places). Pure serendipity put a three day weekend for Cesar Chavez day coinciding with a quiet enough time to be able to go Out Down South West to see Mama, who misses me, and my little brother who is not so little any more, and whom I also miss, and with a game between my once local Ice Dogs from Down South at the top of the league and the now local Stockton Thunder from Up North at the bottom, and have them playing in the SoCal-not-NorCal-South-Bay-area.

Hooray!

The Recipe for The Feast

Because, however grandiose and grave I get, it still celebrates as a food holiday, here.

The Byerly recipe--at least, my version of it--for the St. Patrick's Day Almost Traditional Irish Dinner.

Glazed Corned Beef with Buttered Cabbage, Potatoes, and Mushrooms

You want:

Corned Beef Brisket or Round (usu. 2-3 lbs, handily packaged)

For glaze:
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp prepared mustard (with seeds is good)
1 tsp. honey

Several smallish white potatoes
One green cabbage
Several whole mushrooms--white, crimini/baby bella, any button-type.
About a half a stick (4 tbsp) of butter
About 1 tbsp parsley (dried is fine)

Big pot or dutch oven
Roasting pan
Small pan (or cup, if microwaving)
Good strong fork or tongs (for lifting the brisket from hot water)
Spoon!
Optional table knife or rubber scraper/froster


So, you get yourself a corned beef brisket/round. Cut the layer of fat right off, and any pieces of fat you can get to. (If you don't, it'll float, and get tough on the sides that are exposed!) Put the sucker in pot much larger than it is--try to keep the blood/"juices" with it, and the silly spice packs they give you are okay to add but not necessary--and cover it with water to about 2 inches above the beef. Bring it up to a simmer and cover it to cook it for roughly 45 minutes per pound (mine is 2.15 pounds, for instance, so it should go just over an hour and a half). Check on it a couple of times in the first few minutes--there will probably be foam which you should scoop off with your spoon and get rid of. It's unpleasant, you don't want it. If you threw in the spice pack, this is about the time you lose most of it with the foam (you can save it for after, though, if you want).

Wash your potatoes. Halve or quarter them into even pieces, maybe an inch and a half in any direction, but leave the skins on. (This is important because you're going to cook the hell out of them and they're too easy to have fall all apart without the skins--plus, they're good for you!) Wash your cabbage and quarter it. Wash your mushrooms and leave them whole. Mix the brown sugar and honey and mustard thoroughly until you've got a good, thick paste.

When you've got about 15 or 20 minutes left for the brisket to be simmering, toss in your potatoes with it. When the brisket's time is up, pull it out with your fork and/or tongs and let some of the water drip away, before plopping it into your roasting pan. Leave the potatoes cooking! Turn the oven on to Broil after setting the rack near if not at the top (leave enough room so that your brisket isn't touching the element, of course!) Throw the cabbage and mushrooms in with the potatoes--you want that all to cook about another 10 minutes. Glaze the brisket with whatever implement you see fit, with as much as you can get on it. Save any extra glaze.

Toss the brisket into the oven. You want the glaze to caramelize and the top to just toast a little--you only want to give it a couple of minutes. It'll depend on your oven, your brisket, and your tastes--keep an eye on it! Once it looks beautiful, haul it back out.

Let the brisket sit for a few minutes while melting your butter. Once it has melted, clarify it (skim off the white bubbly goop at the top with your Spoon). Carve the brisket into good, thick slices while waiting for the cabbage, potatoes, and mushrooms' time to be up. Once it is, you can either separate the cabbage and mushrooms out into one bowl and put the potatoes in another or just bung them all into the same, before slathering them over with your melted butter. Sprinkle the parsley over the potatoes (or the big mess, if they're all together). The leftover glaze is good for individual pieces of the brisket at the table or for a spread for sandwiches for leftovers!

If I'd remembered correctly, I'd also have got a loaf of Russian or Jewish Rye bread, pref. w/ Carroway seeds in it, warmed the bread, and let another few tablespoons of butter sit out to soften. But I did not do that, this time. So it's dark rye or sourdough for us, tonight.

I'm going to go start cooking, now. If I realize I've mistaken anything here too badly (like needing more butter!), I'll fix it. :) There's a certain amount of leeway with EVERYTHING here.

And Tada! Dinner!

An hour and a half from 17 March 2006, California.

"Wearin' o the Green"
anonymous Irish street ballad circa 1798

Oh, Paddy, dear, an' did you hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more St. Patrick's day we'll keep, his colour can't be seen,
For there's a cruel law agin the wearin' o' the Green!
I met wid Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's poor ould Ireland, and how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that iver yet was seen,
For they're hangin' men and women there for wearin' o' the Green.

And if the colour we must wear is England's cruel Red,
Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed;
Then pull the shamrock from your hat and throw it on the sod,
And never fear, 'twill take root there, tho' under foot 'tis trod!
When law can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow,
And when the leaves in summer-time their colour dare not show,
Then I will change the color, too, I wear in my caubeen
And till that day, plase God, I'll stick to wearin' o' the Green.

(when published by the expatriate Dion Boucicault, it got this new verse added:)
But if at last our colour should be torn from Ireland's heart,
Her sons with shame and sorrow from the dear old isle will part;
I've heard a whisper of a country that lies beyond the sea,
Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom's day.
O Erin, must we leave you, driven by a tyrant's hand?
Must we ask a mother's blessing from a strange and distant land?
Where the cruel cross of England shall nevermore be seen
And where, please God, we'll live and die still wearin' o' the Green.



I'm not Catholic. I'm not religious. I don't have any praise for an Italian coming into Ireland and driving out Druids. But the fact that I can sing Irish songs and dance and feast and drink and wear that color head to toe, if I please, on this day, without being killed for it, is only some decades old. It is too small and too precious a thing to forget, even a few generations and a few thousand miles away. Whatever this fucked up kleptocracy has threatened, broken, taken, squashed, and undermined so far, I'm at least not being hung, yet, for proclaiming a heritage and a bearing on a charged day. But maybe it's not so far away, again, if you'll take it for a more general sense. And play it out to other cultures and to political groups, across time and over many borders. . . Too many have died, already, in defense of small freedoms and small nations from the wicked, bloated ones bent on their razing. And I am not about to fucking forget it. I am terrified and angry for days ahead, and I will thrill in this day, now, keep it to praise and mourn what has been protected and what has been lost.

My tea tastes like Pez.

Rain

I'm in a state of child-like wonder.

We've had a lot of gloom and rain, on and off, lately, spaced with brilliant blue skies and hybrids of the two, but this morning, I heard a great rushing, outside, and saw born an enormous downpouring.

Real rain. SoCal-style torrential downpour. Maybe I'll get to that. . . It's been too long since I've run out and gotten soaked in the rain. Let alone since going out a second time directly after, when the rain had gotten harder and the street had started to flood.

I opened up all the windows, and turned off any lights/fans that were on. The sound of the rain has filled the apartment, and the brightness of the grey-white sky is illuminating all.

I went out and danced, skipped, dashed, hopped, splashed, stood, looked, breathed, got soaked to the skin, and spun circles. I wandered through the middle of the streetway, up several apartments, and heard how different the rain sounded on the different tin roofs over the cars, higher pitched, lower pitched, shhshier or rrrrrshier, listened to the good street sound of the rain hitting the asphalt and sidewalk, watched with glee as the rain came down still harder on me and made fields of tiny explosions with every fat drop crashing into the wet ground, so fast you couldn't trace the rain to the splash. I managed to look up into the clouds, for a moment, without getting hit in the eyes, and breathed the wet air. When I got back in after that second time, I dutifully hung up my soaked clothes, rubbed at my head (heavily dripping) with a towel, and put on soft, fuzzy, warm pajamas.

I forgot to smell for the rain, but a little of the sidewalk-water smell is coming up to the window. I love that.

It's best after hot, dry spells. Sudden rain on a hotter day has the sweetest, dustiest sidewalk-water smell, and it almost steams up from the ground.

The best rain-on-metal sound was actually at the dorms, when I lived there--painted aluminum rain gutters. It's not quite like anything else. Solid metal rings out, other heavily painted things more thwep, but together, here, there's a muffled rough, sweet sound. A flute blown poorly, maybe. It was wonderful to sleep to. The tin rooves here are too big, and grooved, so the sound becomes a steady whir, you can't hear the distinct drops on them the way you can pipes, or even streets. They sing like wind, rather than water.

Hm. I was going to predict flooding, but it looks like the drains caught up as the rain has slowed down. It's persisting, though, if far, far gentler. The grey is thinning into greater fields of white, above, so the light is getting stronger.

SoCal rain:

In Turlock, traditionally, there is slow, light, steady rain. It's an agricultural heaven--you get enough to thoroughly wet, without flooding overmuch and without drought. Once in a while, you get some heavier rain or just sprinkling. However (and we have, I know, global warming to thank for this), SoCal rain patterns have started migrating up here, to add to its repertoire. Hence the flash flooding. We also got a tornado, a little ways south of here, last week. And one each in Long Beach and San Francisco last spring. 3 is not a lot for a state, in that time period, maybe, and not for a state so big, but I reiterate that this is California. We get dust devils, we don't get funnel clouds.

SoCal--specifically, the just-inland-of-Long Beach area--is coastal desert running up against marshland/swampland and chapparale, and the rain there has three basic modes. Mist, drizzle, and torrential downpour. It is almost never anywhere in between. "Mizzle" is occasional.

Drizzle is like that; like when a shower head is almost off, but has taken to running like a clogged faucet, straight down in unbroken stream, no drops to speak of. Thick, not particularly cold and not particularly hard. Misting and mizzling (mist-drizzle) are just a step above ocean fog, and feel more like you've been spritzed with an ultra-fine sprayer than rained on. Torrential downpour is the rest of the time. It means floods, mudslides, trees losing their roots, streets running over and gutters running so fast you're like to be knocked over if you step into them, because the rain is coming so fast, so hard, so driving, and in such big drops that it digs its way into everything, overwhelms every drain (most of which are inadequate for it), washes everything away.

My mother had to get a pump. Because whenever it would rain at all to speak of, the backyard would flood up into the house, despite the fact that it was raised a few inches. So in the middle of the night, she'd have to get up, slip across the tile, and start the thing. (Her dogs, of course, are too scared to go out in it, because that's the way they are, so she also had to try to deal with them not being willing to go out to answer nature's call.) Anyway.

I remember once, a long while back. . . At least 9 or 10 years, but probably more like 12 or 13, getting back up late in the evening, when it had started up that way. My parents and Zach and I, with Wolfy and Venus (the dogs before the chihuahuas, who were not quite as afraid), stood at the back of the house with the big sliding glass door open and just watched the rain. It was the heaviest I remembered seeing it, up to that point, but the amazing thing was that, as it was so late and so dark, rather than the glowing stormy sky, everything was black, and the light at the back of the house was small, just enough to shine through the pounding, driving sheets of rain and the several inches of splash coming up from the ground, from them. And make prisms and rainbows of every drop.

It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

No, this is not up to par with hurricanes, and the like, and I know that--that's something, at least, that we still don't get here--but it puts the lie to the nonsense about California only having one season and no weather. It is proper rain. It is violent rain. And this week, schizophrenic--already, the sky is glowing blue, again, and the heat from the new sun is turning the water on the rooftops into great clouds of steam that are wafting away and fading. The streets are already drying out.

I suspect that by tonight, like last night and the night before, the clouds'll be back and we'll wake up to another wet morning.

In other news: the meat has arrived. It is practically black, the color's so deep. Absolutely gorgeous.



Correction: It's only noon (an hourish later) when the rain's returned. With big grey clouds, "cov'rin up the clear blue sky"

On Why I Am A Wonder-Widget

It has come to my attention that there is a little confusion as to why I am a Wonder Widget.

To tell the truth, I don't know, either. But there is a history. Albeit one that lasted about 6 minutes, and thus made it sound like a really good idea at the time. So here goes:

I wanted to use "A Little Wide Eyed," which is my email and longest-loved, best-loved internet thing, but for a name of myself, in a blog, it needed to be a noun instead of an adjective. So it needed to be a Wide Eyed something. Then "Wide Eyed Wonder" sounded very pretty, but it still wasn't a name. So, from there, "Wonder-_____" came along, and not being tall enough to be Wonder Woman, and having heard a lot about Chris' mighty Dashboard Widgets on his Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger, I think), I thought, "Well! Wide-eyed Wonder Widget! Genius!"

The End.

Sketches: Making Something Different of a Conference

I'm putting these up here, now, but they're in the Scraps section of my DevArt page with more comment, and with the snap of the page I used as a whole. Eventually I may take these down in favor of simple links (are these working, btw?).

In between penciling parts of a letter to Jala, taking notes on the talks, and generally paying attention to things which weren't quite the talks themselves, I sketched. Until Melánie's mother caught me. :)

So, without further ado. . .

Sketches of Philosophers!


This is supposed to be Matti (top) and Stephen (bottom).


This is supposed to be Kay (left) and Chris (right).


This is supposed to be the lovely ladies whose names I'm EDIT: no longer screwing up!--Ya-Huei (left foreground), Julia (left background), and Ayten (right).

Now aren't they all beautiful? I wish I could find proper pictures of them. I'm not thrilled with the accuracy or flattery aspects of the sketches (and usually those are pretty important in portraits--at least one or the other of them), but I can tell who I meant, and remember what they looked like. So not a total wash. I wanted to do more, and some of my favorite people from the conference I didn't get to drawing, but I don't think I could've done them well, as it is.

More about the conference:

We met this lovely lady, Stacey, who's doing research into blogging. Go visit her, damnit! She wants to know what bloggers get out of blogging, what it's like for them (the experience), why they blog, etc. Also just a very cool person, all around. We went to dinner with her and several others, that I'm getting to.

Now, the conference was a hybrid--the Society for Phenomenology and Media (SPaM) and Outis (roughly: deception). One of the others that came out with us was Randall, and Randall was good people, but in the strange position of being a government guy hoping to get info on deception, how it works, and how to get around it (in the sense of when other peoples' governments are lying to us, as opposed to our own) in a conference full of lefties more interested in deception by (you guessed it) our own goverment. Or in the case of the delightful Finns talking about it, not so much their own government, but the US gov, as well.

One of those delightful Finnish gentlemen (who came out to dinner/drinks, despite being 10 hours ahead of us, via time difference, bless him) was the lovely Aki-Mauri (whom I did not sketch, but of whom there are actual photos on the web, so it's okay). I don't know what to say about him other than that I absolutely adored him. It surprised me and also didn't, to find out he's a Major in the Finnish military. Does that make any sense? Ah, well. His paper was thoughtful and kind've heartbreaking, and he was just plain good people to hang out with. Plus, he's into hockey, so Chris and I felt less out of place caring about who was doing what in the hockey part of the Olympics.

I'm turning into an Academic-and-Union Groupie. Oi.

Anyway, the lovely, wry Kay (another paper I followed!), my lovely Chris, and I rounded out the dinner group.

The night before, however, we dined with Paul (the man who organized the conference), his wife (I think?), the lovely Melånie from Bordeaux (who like Randall and I was in something of an outsider position to doctors-of-philosophy--I followed her paper, too, though!), the lovely Stephen, and the very cool (and also lovely) Wendy and Erica, who are in the interesting position of being a couple of romantically attached hippie feminists in rural Pennsylvania. We traded war stories, as it were. They've got great senses of humor, and Wendy's paper was another that I mostly followed and also got stabbed with thinking about.

Stephen and Matti (who did not come out with us, for shame!) were absolutely wonderful to listen to. Matti brought in poetry, peppering the "trailer" of his paper (the ultra-condensed version) with it. Stephen wrote and spoke in a beautiful way, and, what's more, I think I understood most of it, which was sometimes an issue in the more technically oriented talks. They were wonderful.

Goodness, it was a blast. There was some tension, and I sometimes felt a little strange hanging on watching, but it was wonderful. It felt so good to meet so many wonderful people. And while I don't know if it's likely, I hope I'll get to come back into contact with them. I may have developed something of an idle crush, and that's too much fun to put away!

Yuck! Sign this, please!

Please, go have a look at this bill, and sign the handy-dandy email to your local congressperson.

Maybe you don't mind pesticides, mercury, and rBGH in your food/the animals from whom your food comes (though I hope that's not the case), but I do. This bill wouldn't change production, only take away information we already get (those of us who do). Voting down this bill would not add labels anywhere or prohibit any kind of food, it just would keep information from being removed.

So, if you love me (or someone else who doesn't like mercury), please don't let them wipe out the state labeling laws! Any state with any labeling law not part of the federal standards would have said laws stricken away, no questions asked. There is no rational reason for it other than to keep consumers from knowing things about their food they would find objectionable.

This only takes a minute. Throw in your name and address and they'll fire off the letter for you. Please, please, please.



(I have read the full text of the bill, there--the particularly offensive part:

sections (c) and (d), no State or political subdivision
3 of a State may, directly or indirectly, establish or
4 continue in effect under any authority any notifica-
5 tion requirement for a food that provides for a warn-
6 ing concerning the safety of the food, or any compo-
7 nent or package of the food, unless such a notifica-
8 tion requirement has been prescribed under the au-
9 thority of this Act and the State or political subdivi-
10 sion notification requirement is identical to the noti-
11 fication requirement prescribed under the authority
12 of this Act.


It further goes on to say that you can petition to keep something if it is very imminently dangerous but does not make trouble for interstate commerce. Is that cute, or what?)

It's hard to be a caramel addict with a cavity.

So. Chris and I are conscientious objectors to marriage.

I've got a link on the sidebar, there, to the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which I encourage anyone looking to look into. They've in particular got a wonderful page to the effect of "Why should Domestic Partnerships exclude heterosexuals?" that lays out a hell of a lot of good reasons why people allowed by law to marry would not, and while I don't like it labeled "heterosexuals" I understand that they only mean to imply a different-sexed union, rather than one necessarily between heterosexuals (as ours is not).

What struck me while I was reading it was the selfish recognition that almost everything on that list applies to us, somehow. While we're not widowed or religious in such a way that having come out of another marriage we couldn't marry, everything else was affirming. We've come out of negative situations in which marriage has gained negative connotations all by itself. I am not heterosexual, and do grapple with the spectre of being transgendered (and if I think I maybe should be male, am I really allowed to marry a man?). We're feminist, and the institution in its current "traditional" form is incredibly sexist (that is, "traditional" as in a woman is "given away" by the male that currently holds her as property to the male who soon will, that she may bear him children, give him her property, and pay for the wedding, with the promise to obey him). Historically, the additional aspects of explicit dowries, arranged marriages, and strictly economic and reproductive reasons to join in marriage also add just a little more negativity. Disgust with the concept of the "sanctity of marriage," in relation to this, or the idea of it as being a traditionally one-man-one-woman romantic Christian affair (which is frankly just false and recent--remember biblical tales of men with several wives? or remarriage to your husband's brother? or being a gift to a man? what about the plethora of other global cultures, in some of which same sex unions were not banned? or how just a few generations ago, marriages in the Western Christian sense were often strictly economic?) turn us away.

Furthermore, and maybe even foremost, the fact that it is a prejudiced, exclusionary institution, by current law, has us at least tangentially joined as part of the Marriage Boycott. A couple of generations ago, people in America couldn't marry over perceived racial lines--basically, only homoracial marriages were allowed. Is allowing only heterosexual marriage any less nonsensical, any less bigoted, any less inhumane? How does preventing a loving couple from, for instance, having a legitimate marriage under which to raise their children, while allowing a hundred women to compete on reality TV for a rich man's hand in marriage, hold up nobly the institution of marriage? Different-sex marriages do not currently require the bearing of children, the sharing of surnames, or the placement of a woman in a home and a man in the workforce, and in fact, as a society, we purport to value marriage for love and companionship (and sometimes for raising children), rather than strictly for breeding and monetary reasons. So where's the problem? What makes a trophy, loveless, different-sex marriage somehow legitimately better than a same-sex marriage of love?

Not a damn thing.

So, for all that and a bevy of other good reasons, we don't want to get married. Instead, we registered a domestic partnership (Marriage Lite™, "Hitched!™" the Home Game), in Berkeley. The only place in the area who would register a different-sexed domestic partnership without residency requirements. Because, of course, while we find our reasons good and legitimate, and though they recognize, insure, and generally give a liiiittle cred to a same-sex DPs, the state isn't going to recognize our purportedly diff-sexed DP any more than it would recognize a same sex marriage.

Fuck.

Now, I don't think I want to get married even if they fix the damn institution. I never liked the idea of a big pile of paperwork and legal documentation sitting there as a reason to stay together (and while I understand that's not the reason people tend to get married, I value the idea of staying together without it, and not being able to use it as an excuse in a relationship gone foul, without substance). Ideally, I think every relationship should have the option of marriage AND domestic partnership, without DPs serving as a ghetto for those not otherwise allowed to get married and marriage being shotgunned (usually by economic considerations) on those who aren't given the option of a legally recognized DP. Frankly, I prefer Marriage Lite™.

But as a person staying at home writing and working without pay, while my lover is working in a fashion that is paid, I'm in a sticky spot. They are, essentially, trying to shotgun me. My household income is such that there's no way I could get Medicaid/Medical or otherwise cheap insurance. But as a person without an income, I can't really afford to shell for more expensive coverage. And while we're doing just fine, financially, on one income, one broken leg without insurance is going to mean a lot of money out of pocket. And, more immediately, I haven't seen a dentist in 3 years. And I have, I am certain, cavities. And a wisdom tooth they missed when they were prying the things out of my face (they didn't fit--this one doesn't fit). And my glasses are shot. And my eyes have gotten worse. And I suspect myself to be at least a little hypoglycemic and hypothyroidic, in addition to the joys of my digestic life (GERD, IBS, lactose intolerance, etc), which just sort've serve to make things interesting.

And sometimes it feels like my heart has forgotten how to work. Sucks down and then leaps back up, shuddering, again (which is mostly only concerning because of a lot of other "little things," like that my limbs go numb with frequency, my muscles spasm, my joints are weak and arthritic [at 22 years old], my eyes and ears and balance are weakening, etc.).

Basically, I need a good tune up.

So, here's the thought: Political Stunt/Act of Desperation™

While I am strongly opposed to getting married, and do not think someone should have to to get appropriate, preventative medical care, I wonder if it mightn't be a good idea to go sign a marriage certificate, pop it over by the school, get onto the insurance, get as much work done as is applicable, get a good general checkup, physical, supposed-to-be-yearly woman's exam and so forth, glasses, fillings, etc., and then peaceably sign for a dissolution of marriage. The certificate and papers and touch of premium would still be a lot cheaper than paying uninsured for the work. They obviously don't ask questions at the start of these things, and we are a fucking no-fault state. It gives in, for a few months, to marriage for economic considerations, but it makes a good showing of Bullshit! on this sanctity of marriage thing. Plus, then I could say, when we explain my lover's marital past, that my first marriage ended in divorce, too. Which is almost worth it on its own.

There is the dilemma of giving in. I don't get to stand solid with my non-het sisters and brothers by suffering medically, BUT my non-het sisters and brothers can get their medical care through their DPs (which I cannot), so I think that's not something I have to worry about. And we'd get rid of it right away, so it wouldn't be used in taxes, etc, and it wouldn't get me insurance in a long term sense, or any of the other trappings of marriage. So I think the political-stuntiness would outweigh the brief act of marrying, by taking it back once the institution had been used like the economic whore it is (er, can be--no offense intended to my sisters and brothers in loving, egalitarian marriages). Getting into it just to get back off again.

The personal is political, right? It's at least something to think about.