the really sexy part of bellydancing, part two

I can't talk about the choreography we're working out for the finale at Undulation 2, but I can say that rehearsal tonight was one of the best I've had with the company yet. It feels good to finally be incorporated into a piece and be able to contribute ideas about how it can be done, the music's intense, and the video Jill took of what we had at the end of the night showed something cool coalescing from a set of concepts and key words and the movement vocabularies of dancers from very different backgrounds. On an intellectual level, it was a very interesting look at how a thing of beauty is made; how the lotus grows from the muck of practice and pulled hamstrings.

But more importantly to the lewd-minded who think that bellydance troupe rehearsals are pure sex is the way we're all sort of rubbing against each other as we figure out how certain sections are going to go. Everyone is going to think we're all sleeping together, one of the more bodacious of my troupemates whispered to me as we waited for our cue to take the stage. I stifled a response about how that wouldn't be an all bad thing, and as the chorus swelled we went out with the others and tried to build a story with our swaying bodies.

It's going to be hot. If you're in town, you should buy your tickets now. As I breathlessly wrote in the press release, this event will sell out.

this may be a relief to some of you

Who are sick and tired of reading about MonkeyScientist. But as much as I love him--and make no mistake, I do, unshakably and to the bottom of my cold and wrinkled little heart--I probably won't be blogging about him, or at least my feelings about him, directly for a while. Thanks to Statcounter it has come to my attention that at least one of the someones he's seeing in Berlin is apparently reading Waterbones. Knowing that she joins his ex-wife (yes J, I know, and have known since before Christmas. He didn't tell me, I figured out your IP address) in the group of those who now know more about me and my feelings about him than I do about them and theirs is simply too much for my comfort level.

I have tried to be cool about this. I have. He should absolutely be dating, and I'm happy for him that he is, even if I'm terribly jealous that other people get to spend time with him and I don't. I am looking at my options as well, and some attractive ones have presented themselves. I may or may not talk about those as they unfold, if indeed they do--which they may not, considering my rehearsal schedule for the next month!

That is not the problem. A year and a bit dating AX taught me a lot about people's capability to have meaningful contact with more than one partner at a time, and I do understand that what happens between MS and other people has no more bearing on how he feels about me than if our situations were reversed. We were friends for quite a while before we were lovers, and neither of us are willing to let go of that.

The problem is that I'm feeling really exposed, in a way that hasn't happened here before. Talking about my dad dying, or my feelings about a great many sad or unsavory or childish things, has been hard but worthwhile because I've been trying to get across a certain universality of experience. I have wanted, if at all possible, to make other people who are going through any of the same things feel like there is a way through. And if I can't do that, at least hopefully I've made some people laugh who needed it.

But the twin fears that someone is either a) using my blog to beat herself up or b) checking out the competition make me hesitant. I have done both of those things myself, and it sucked; other women's blogs were a neutral tool I put to evil use against myself. I want no part of the other end. That's not what I'm doing here. And truthfully, unless they plan to sleep with me themselves, the less his other lovers know about things like how I masturbate, say, the better.

For some reason this is different than knowing that the sisterwives could read me, back when they were sisterwives and not one supportive acquaintance and one goofy and loyal friend, as they are now; perhaps because I'd made it happen that I got to meet them both, perhaps because I could read their blogs as well and get to know what interesting and cool and human people they were and not feel so vulnerable and inadequate, perhaps because we were all in the same city together and had the same level of opportunity to see our mutual friend. Whereas I can't meet anyone MS is seeing until April, if then, I can't read his ladyfriends' blogs, if they have such, and...most important here...I can't see MS himself right now, and they can.

It's all so damn sticky and modern I can barely stand it.

So. Back to stories of bellydance and catering and the occasional prehistoric fish. Sorry. I'll try to keep it interesting, if maybe a little shallow.

something in the air tonight...or is it my conditioner?

The Environmental Working Group has a very interesting site where you can generate a shopping (or perhaps anti-shopping) list of self-care products organized by degrees of potential toxicity. There's more to it, of course; discussion of this ingredient (coal tar) or that (methylparaben); health concerns such as harmful impurities, carcinogens, unstudied ingredients, allergens, pregnancy concerns.

It's really scary, actually. There are some products that are about as safe as you might think from their advertising (Burt's Bees) and some that apparently aren't (the JASON line of products). Putting the word "organic" or "natural" on the label doesn't mean jack.

And even if you think this doesn't apply to you because you don't wear makeup, think again. Unless you also don't shave, use sunscreen, acne medication, toothpaste, or anti-dandruff shampoo (or indeed any shampoo).

In which case, you've got a whole 'nother set of problems, dontcha?

If anyone's looking for me, I'll be sitting on the bathroom floor sounding out the big words on my ingredients lists and muttering to myself about conspiracies. Which is about right for this neighborhood, believe me.

celebrity three

Carson, Miller, Thompson.

I was wondering who it was going to be.

We've also lost Gidget.

as a child, my favorite dress was yellow

Does that count? The blow-up doll, though, I don't know how I feel about that.

Your Passion is Yellow

You're a total sexual shape shifter. You possess a complex sex drive and are very adaptable. Of all the colors, you are the most likely to be bisexual. While you the most passionate, you are very open minded.

What Color Is Your Passion?

90th percentile!

Go Snufkina! Show that test you mean business, you Queen of the World you!

Guess working 600+ practice questions does pay off.

why i should stick to boiling water

Lifted directly from an e-mail sent to MS, who is threatening to make me eat onions for a week straight when I visit him in Berlin:

I cooked last night, for myself. Frozen shrimp and vegetable stir-fry from Trader Joe's; when I put the shrimp in the pan, the oil caught fire and there were foot-and-a-half-high flames leaping at the stove hood. All my kitchen cabinetry is IKEA, of course, and the first thought in my head--after oh shit I'm about to lose my eyebrows--was, I bet this stuff burns really fucking quickly. My second thought was, wasn't I going to get a fire extinguisher? My third was, the smoke detector's going to go off and wake everyone up. My fourth was, maybe I'd better try to put this out, hmm?

So I blew it out, which shouldn't have worked. Went and held a cushion against the shrieking smoke detector until it shut up. Wiped the scorch marks off the stove hood. And then looked at the shrimp, still frozen together into sad translucent clumps, and wondered if I dared cook them.

I dared. At a heat so low it took about twice as long as the package suggested. But I wasn't taking any chances.

I need my eyebrows.

not in our name

AX and Yezida have both linked to this horrific story from Dr. Salam Ismael about the invasion of Fallujah. It is every bit as awful as you might imagine, and more: if you're already convinced that our war on Iraq is unconscionable, you may not need this further proof. But I believe it needs to be as widely disseminated as possible.

The companion story from a cameraman who was imprisoned and abused by our troops is no better, but it's a valuable perspective.

I cannot believe there are people who believe this is an acceptable price for Iraq to pay for democracy.

thunder and lightning!

Like Mexico City, San Francisco is under an inversion; we very rarely get dramatic weather of the electrical sort. Which is why it has taken me so long to identify the rumbling from outside. Kept thinking, trucks rolling by... until I saw the flash. Oh, how lovely. I may open my back door and let some of that charged air in as night falls.

small pleasures

1. Fixing the bed; now it's high enough to store luggage underneath, and hopefully my 4x4s will hold up better than those crappy little IKEA legs.

2. Getting the press release pretty much done; I have a few details yet to beat out of someone, but the heavy lifting part is over.

3. Going out to El Rio for the troupe's last night there to make some noise in support. Drinking a German beer in MonkeyScientist's honor, or perhaps in preparation for my trip in April (I suppose I should also build up a tolerance for sausage and mustard, which doesn't sound all bad), and discovering that beer makes it easier to zaghareet (ululate) loudly and at length. They looked great tonight, and the crowd was into it; a fitting end to a years-long relationship. Hopefully we'll have a new monthly gig at a place in my neighborhood, which would be very cool from a logistical standpoint. Getting down to El Rio from here is a bit of a strain in full costume and makeup.

4. Ripping all of my CDs onto my computer, thus making it possible to work to music for seven or eight hours at a stretch. I know, you all knew how to do this already. I don't know why I resisted.

I know, dull post. But I'm waiting for water to boil, and procrastinating on some reading. I'll try to come up with something appropriately psychotic some other time.

disappearing act

Well, I guess this is how it is when one is a slash (writer slash dancer slash world traveler); long periods of near-complete lethargy followed by bursts of frantic activity. Such is the case for me right now. The troupe--excuse me, the company--is throwing a big fundraiser next month, and I got shanghaied into handling the press stuff. Which, up until now, has mostly consisted of plaintively poking at people and asking what's going on so I can write about it, and getting few if any responses. And then, bang, suddenly we've got to go to press RIGHT NOW and the two days a week I usually spend picking at my paying writing, I just spent ignoring the phone so I could field emails (why do people send 3 meg photo attachments? Why?), arranging and re-arranging guest performers, and experimenting with how many different ways I could say "hot."

It's been good, though. Oddly, I do my best when everyone else seems to be panicking. It's like my system secretes special anti-panic hormones to try to compensate. Now, if everyone else is calm I might very well go around the bend. But today, I've just spent thinking, let it go, let it go. The trickiest part is accepting someone affiliated with the company as an editor; I feel like I'm being patronized when this person makes suggestions, and I have to bite back on the impulse to point out that I am, after all, a professional writer--with a big new check from a glossy local mag sitting in my bank account now to prove it--and willya back off already. But this is my problem, not theirs. Writers and their egos, jesus. Which reminds me that I still need to tell the bedroom slippers story.

Anyway. So there's that (as well as the three rehearsals a week for the dancing part, oh yeah, I'm getting to do that part too, and it's really, really cool), and there's still modeling and catering to be done, and suddenly I realized that I have two readings next week and I need to pick the best three minutes of my essay because Pooja will shoot us if we read our essays in their entirety (not to mention what the audience will do), and oh yeah, I'm spending May in Eastern Europe and should probably be pulling all that shit together. Like, visas. Hotels (last night I discovered that Ukraine's leading marriage agency also rents out apartments to travelers by the week; do you think they come, um, fully equipped?) Trains. Shots. And it's impossible to fly to Berlin without stopping half a dozen times because everything has to be routed around Heathrow, what with Charles finally marrying Camilla (and you should have heard the American Airlines rep I talked to last night complain about that).

I had a moment tonight, after I announced the readings to the artists for whom I was about to disrobe, where I realized that I have sort of an interesting life. I didn't know you wrote, said one, a woman I've worked for occasionally over the past three or four years. I do a lot of things, I said ruefully.

And they don't all consist of generating dirty dishes and wadded-up Kleenex, which is how it sometimes feels.

So if I'm a little quiet for the next few weeks, you know what's going on.

i hesitate to admit this

Considering how irritating I find their ad campaigns, how relentlessly cheerful their stores, how cheaply made their products. But I recently went to Old Navy because I needed a tank top or two, and some panties, and I was doing some freelance proofreading nearby, so it was easy to drop in. All I can say about that particular experience: oy. The logic of the layout completely eluded me. Everywhere there were displays of items in various combinations, but the items themselves, the ones one might buy, were nowhere to be found. Or hung on racks far, far away from the displays. Actually, this makes a perverse sense: if you have to truck all over hell and gone to find one "perfect fit ribbed V-neck baby-T", you might get distracted on the way to your Grail and end up picking up another item or two on the way.

Or maybe the place was just laid out by monkeys, a possibility I'm not discounting.

Anyway. It did remind me of something that has always bothered me. Not particular to Old Navy, but still curious.

Why, on racks or in stacks, do they put all the small things first, and work back to the large ones? Perhaps the super-skinny people who wear those S sizes are too fragile to dig all the way to the back? Maybe it's time to switch that around. Not that it will make a big difference to me, being a solid medium in all things but my massive feet, but still. I started to feel demoralized just flipping through to the M's; I can only imagine the cumulative frustration that must weigh on bigger girls (and guys) as they look for things that are going to fit in the way back, crushed against the wall, or at the bottom of the pile. A distinction that is made very clear at the Market Street Old Navy, as it happens: the area for the more generously-figured is all the way in the back of the store, and designed in such a way that you can't easily see into it from either the street or the rest of the store.

I can see lots of reasons why my suggestion wouldn't work. And I understand that the truly petite don't have it any better and often find themselves shopping in the Girls' department just to find things that fit. I'm just saying. Also, why are all the mannequins the same size and about the same height? Does that creep anyone else out?

no, indri, how do you feel about it?

People in general are sometimes surprised by the vehemence with which I hate Valentine's Day. Men who have the misfortune of dating me in any given February are equally--and often unpleasantly--surprised by how much something I claim to hate means to me. I feel like I should warn new people well in advance that this is very touchy for me, and that it is in their best interests to acknowledge the day somehow, as early in the day as possible. Because if I spend the day wondering if he's going to call, or leave me a little note, or surprise me in some way, and he doesn't, man, will there be hell to pay. Or even if he had something in mind, but didn't get to it until the afternoon, things will still be ugly.

I have no idea how it would be with a woman. I haven't been through a February with a female partner. Maybe that's my problem, hmm?

But Indri, I can hear you say, don't you call, or leave a little note, or something? Why is it on him?

To which I respond, I do. Sometimes it's nothing more than a little tentative e-mail, hoping I'm not being too presumptuous, hoping I'm not impinging too much on him, y'know, his space.

I am not speaking now of this year, although I did in fact send a little e-mail, and got a cheery little response. There will be no bloodbath this year, because, well, he's there, right? He's having his own fun (or maybe not, first Valentine's Day in years without his wife, maybe it sucked rocks.) And the imbalance in our feelings is something to which I have been reconciling myself for some time.

I expected nothing. Which is one way, as the Buddhists tell us, to avoid disappointment.

No, this is deeper even than love, or my current situation. Because I've had a few Valentine's Days where I was partnered, and they ranged from delightful (Slice) to dutiful (BowlCut, who had thought me too hip to care about something so square. Fortunately for him, this was before I was a martial artist.) No, it's those fucking junior and senior high flower sales. Who thought that was a good idea? Did they have these at your school? So much worse than the grade school routine with the exchange of little cards, where there were parents dutifully making sure, the night before, that every one of their child's classmates got something. I don't remember hating the day back then--why, look at this one!



When I was eight someone was crazy about me!

Let's not dwell on the fact that I still have this, twenty-seven years later, and it's one of the three most sincere such greetings I have ever received from anyone other than my parents. Perhaps the only three. Let me see. Marc Flatt wrote "I love you" in a hundred languages on a card he made for me a few years later, and bought me a box of chocolates with allowance money he'd saved up. Took me ice-skating, too. His mother drove. His little sister came along. Yep. Romance was in the air, let me tell you. And if anyone knows him, could you let him know I've been looking for him? Blond, blue eyes, maybe still a little chunky?

No. I was getting to flower sales. Flower sales are the worst. If I were the principal of a school, or even the assistant principal (Pavlova?), I would ban them outright. They're a blatant popularity contest, with glaringly visible markers of who's winning. Someone coming into a classroom to deliver the blossoms to the smugly smiling oh gosh are those for me? popular kids while those not so fortunate look on, wondering if they should be changing their acne medication. No sir. And it's worse when your homeroom teacher, doubtless thinking she's doing you a kindness, sends you a flower. Because there's that moment, right, before you look at the tag and you think, maybe?, and then you crash right back down. And then you're left wondering if she sent flowers to all of the kids in your homeroom, or just to you, because you're such a socially inept loser and she knows it because she's been hearing other kids laughing about it behind your back. How does anyone even survive high school? Seriously.

Bitter, party of one. I hate this day because without fail, it brings back all the old insecurities, every last one, gibbering, drooling, and scratching. And then I feel like I've made no progress. And get insecure about that. It's exhausting. Which is why I generally spend the day asleep, if it is at all possible.

go osama

Anyone who knows how I feel about Valentine's Day will understand why I appreciate this so much. Happy fucking Valentine's Day indeed. Courtesy of The Onion.

wtf is this thing?

Gee, the civilian version doesn't come with a turret gun. For $225,000, I expect a turret gun. And a chemical toilet. And a minifridge. And as a friend would add, a redhead.

too hyper to post anything of my own

I'm too busy drowning out neighbors with Gang of Four on headphones (I love a man in a uniform!) and speeding on chocolate-covered cranberries, but there's an interesting discussion of fascism going on over at AX's blog that's worth a look. AX is my go-to guy on fascism theory; this expands on a discussion we had over a delicious greasy spoon breakfast a few weeks ago. Tell him I sent you.

postscript

I wobbled home to find a check from the Art Institute for money I'd totally forgotten they owed me. And it was for exactly two dollars more than I'd just agreed to give Equality California. The angels are on my side.

Actually, they're jumping up and down on my head, but that will pass.

we must draw a line in the sand

Last night was a benefit gala honoring Mayor Gavin Newsom, thrown by Equality California, at the first anniversary of the same-sex marriages he facilitated. Although the Supreme Court eventually, mystifyingly, struck them down, Newsom is still a hero in this town for having attempted it.

I didn't see the mayor himself, about whom I once said some rather unkind things I now regret. I didn't know he had the chutzpah it turned out he has, and although some people say his defense of gay marriage is nothing more than a calculated move to increase his popularity among his gay constituency, what a move! I did see Supervisor Mark Leno, who gave a really wonderful, rousing speech where he noted, as I have, that gay marriage is a win-win situation. Although he told a better joke about it than I, namely that the city's sales tax revenue would be able to pay for a whole host of useful things if gay people were allowed to marry, based on the sales of ice sculptures alone.

But the problem's not just that those couples--who thought they were legally married--have had it yanked away from them. The religious right is pushing for an amendment of California's constitution in 2006, which is, as AX noted last year, scary for everyone.

Essentially, I worked for free. Because when Kate Kendall, the (completely hot) head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights got to the mic and started exhorting the crowd to make donations to fight this amendment--there's a one million dollar challenge grant at stake--I sidled up to one of the clipboard people and asked if EQ:CA was taking money from waiters. It's not much compared to what they need, or to what other people were saying they'd give--one guy stood up and pledged 10,000 bucks, right there, and I wondered which captain had that section, and how much wine she'd been pouring--but it seemed fitting. Especially since I'd arrived at work in a foul is this the shift where I stalk off, swearing never to return? sort of mood, and here I was being given an opportunity to transform some of that anger into grace. We cannot lose California, shouted Kendall. What is your liberation worth to you? What is it worth to you to escape oppression? I swallowed my fear of ending up homeless and destitute and said I'd contribute my paltry wages for the shift.

Clipboard guy, who I know I've worked with but whose name I couldn't remember, neatly wrote down my little number, under someone else's $2,500 and someone else's $5,000, and kissed my cheek, which moved me in a way I can't name.

Then I went out and got totally blitzed on labor-intensive lemon cocktails with one of the chefs. A good night.

two surprising signs that one is aging

You go in to your gynecologist for the yearly indignity. And instead of the lecture on the number and spacing of your sex partners since she saw you last (were those all at once, or spaced out over time?), you get the talk about how you're at the age where it's time to start getting mammograms.

You go in thinking, how do I explain that, ah, thing that happened at Burning Man with a straight face? but it never comes up because she's more interested in your cholesterol count, which she has never mentioned before.

You are thirty-five now, she says. It's time to establish some baselines.

Uh, yeah.

when in doubt, eat a plant

That's the helpful advice one guide to cooking for cancer patients gave me when I was heading home a couple years ago to help my mom take care of my dad. Many of the usual rules are different for someone going through chemo and/or radiation--you want them to gain weight, so there's an emphasis on fats--but this is the one that holds no matter what. And a real challenge for me.

In fascinating someone-is-procrastinating news, I have just eaten a bowl of steamed broccoli and carrots, with lots of butter to cut that lipsticky taste cooked broccoli has. This is noteworthy because I don't believe I've ever actually steamed vegetables before. Here's where I admit the embarrassing truth: I didn't know how. I thought you had to have one of those perforated foldy metal things, with the little legs. I didn't realize you could steam perfectly well without the foldy thing. Thank god there were instructions on the bag of pre-washed, pre-cut veggies. I'd planned to eat them raw.

Yes, I was raised by wolves. Where I come from, the application of heat to food is a foreign concept, unless we're talking about my father broiling steaks (have I mentioned the paper cocktail napkins Mom found? The ones that said dinner will be served when the smoke detector goes off?) or my mother's occasional holiday brisket, which was always much tastier than she thought it was, even if by the time it was served it had no structural coherence of which to speak. I learned to cook in self-defense, but my education was fanciful. I can make chocolate croissants from scratch, but I have to call Princess, the ex-sous chef and current food critic, every time I want to boil an egg. Incidentally, I hate it when he travels--he's in Oaxaca right now climbing ruins and doing book research--what if I need to sift or fold something? I could starve here. I should tell him that he's not allowed to be out of phone range for more than three days at a time. Yeah, that's it.

But tonight, shamed by a post in Thread's livejournal about how she ate a vegetable and liked it, I thought, hey, that's not a bad idea. Something to counterbalance all those cookies I ate last night. Considering that I've been on the mac and cheese and fruit juice diet for the past couple of weeks, it seemed like time to get crazy and rash and eat something green. So I steamed, and buttered, and la voila, I am a healthy eater and not, apparently, either a strung-out junkie or a stoner, two possibilities for which someone sifting through my trash could make a strong case.

The comforting thing about all this is the knowledge that if anyone ever marries me, it will be for qualities of character, humor, intelligence, whatever. Because it sure as hell won't be for my cooking.

catch the bats, release the bats

Haven't talked about bellydance in a while, I know. I've been feeling awkward about my position within the troupe, I haven't been taking enough classes, and I feel like I'm in sort of a trough phase all the way around with it. But Monday night's rehearsal, although I can't talk about it very specifically because it involved creating new choreography, was more fun than I've had with the troupe in a while. So I'm going to shamelessly mine an e-mail I wrote about it.

The new choreo is something a little more in the modern vein. Jill, Rose, and Holly had come up with a list of moods and visual ideas; we watched the dance scenes from a few films and videos and talked about what we were seeing. Then we listened to the music, which is pretty moody, and threw ourselves around accordingly. Giggling like loons when we crashed into each other.

In the past couple of months, we've lost five dancers. Yes, that's a lot, even out of a 23-person company. But two are getting married, two are going back to school (including our token male, sadly enough), and one wanted to pursue other things. So now, not only is the group photo we took in October virtually obsolete, but remember when I said I was either the third or fourth tallest member of the troupe? I am now one of the two tallest members of the troupe. Possibly the tallest, depending on how much goop I have in my hair.

Yes, I find that hard to believe as well, but only Sami and Kristin were taller
than Erica and I, and they're both gone. I'm not the heaviest--I think that would be one of our uber-curvy girls--but I'm close.

Which means that I can take the "post" role. Post is the dancer, acrobat, clown, or gymnast who holds up other dancers, acrobats, clowns, or gymnasts. For example, local clown and Clown Conservatory founder Jeff Raz is post when he performs with Diane Wasnak as "Pino and Razz", because he's huge compared to her.

At 5'6" and about 145, I'm not huge in the real world, but within the troupe I am. I'm also strong, and an aikidoist with Contact Improv training. I'm used to lifting and throwing other people; I'm used to falling. So I was having a good old time Monday night moving around through the group, starting interactions with other dancers to see what happened, and lifting the smaller ones and swinging them around a little. Which I think startled them. I'm pretty quiet in rehearsals and classes, and I don't really know anyone well. So the first time I lifted Terri, who may weigh a good forty or fifty pounds with her hat on, and did it as a one-arm underarm fireman's carry, I think she was, um, taken aback. I guess I should have mentioned what I was going to do before I did it. The second time she was ready, and let me potato sack her around a bit.

But it wasn't just fun because I got to--literally--pick up cute girls. We'd been told to try for something raw and emotional. And child of the 80's New Wave that I am, I've got plenty of "catch the bats, release the bats" in my movement history. Some of you will have an easier time with this than others, Jill said before we began, and for once it was nice to feel like I was on the "easier time" end of the spectrum. Although I think we all surprised her; she was very pleased with how into it everyone got. It will be interesting to see how the dance shapes up.

I admit it; I'm looking forward to manhandling (girlhandling?) some troupemates. If there is something I bring to the company from my life before, we might as well use it, yes?

is your screen dirty?

You may not know this, but your screen needs to be cleaned from the inside, too.

nobody is in the right bed tonight except the kids upstairs

Apologies in advance to the people I'm about to piss off or hurt, but you know: my blog.

I was doing so well. And they were too; the note worked for a while. But tonight it was loud voices and heavy boots and now they're screwing and I haven't got a broomstick to bang against the ceiling, or the heart to interrupt someone in the throes of love. Even if my own body's on, surprisingly, a sort of sexual hunger strike that has made for a socially difficult couple of evenings lately.

And I just sat here for a moment, trying to play a complicated computer solitaire that's been flummoxing me and ignoring the dishes I was going to wash, and out of nowhere I was crying again. I hesitate to mention it at all. I don't want to distress MonkeyScientist in Germany or his STBE-wife here (well, and I don't want to give her the pleasure of seeing me suffer). But unbidden the words arose, the ones I've been very carefully not thinking for a month now. Five short words that almost aren't words at all, but what we had before words; the emotions that pressed us to make language so we could make these primal things heard. And it's weird, knowing that he's probably thinking them too. About her.

Why did you leave me?

I know the world's not fair. I got that. But does it need to be this deeply unfair?

my stylist, the hussy

When my hair was a quarter inch long on the sides and half an inch on top, I went in every six weeks, religiously. You can't have hair that short and not stay on top of it. Now that it falls halfway down my back, I can go months without dealing with it.

Months in which my stylist Dragonfly ups stakes and moves to another salon.

I'm starting to think it's me. A little back of the envelope calculation tells me that since I first saw him at Bladerunners in '98, he has worked in six different salons. I haven't been to him in all of those places; once or twice I've gone six months without so much as a trim (I know, horrors, whatever) and missed a place altogether. Oui, 3 Queens, for example (their motto: You're pretty; we'll make you flawless!, which bums me out, because I would love to make out a check to a name like that. Anyway. Maybe he's running from me.

It's not unheard of. For a while, every person who cut my hair would eventually get religion and move away to become a missionary or go to Bible school in Arkansas or something. I am not making this up. It happened three times. I want to believe that it's not me, that the accumulated horror of dealing with my hair doesn't make them snap and seek solace in God. But then, I had a guy once in a ritzy San Francisco place put his hands on my head, look at me in the mirror, and say, I don't know what to do with this. And idiot me, I let him cut it anyway.

Did a miserable job, and left me feeling completely uncool while he was at it.

So I am very, very loyal to the people who can engage with my hair in a meaningful way. You see, I have what stylist/author/goddess Lorraine Massey calls Botticelli curls, which is a nice way of saying I'm somewhere between soft waves and consistent corkscrews. In other words, challenging hair. I've learned some tricks for screening potential stylists. The first question is, can you handle ethnic hair? If they say something like, I'm good at African hair, that's a real plus.

There's the added challenge of my essentially being a boy in my ablutions and general grooming. If there was one product that would wash everything, I'd stock up and never look back at the five or six bottles currently cluttering my shower. I don't want to think about any of this; days where I get some eyeliner on are big days. So when Dragonfly starts in on me about how fabulous I would look if I just used this special unguent made from caviar or this microcrystalline shine wax or whatever the hell, I can feel myself glazing right over. Every now and again he asks, rather hopefully, if I've bought a hairdryer yet; I haven't got the heart to tell him that I have, but only use it to speed up the drying of craft projects.

So Dragonfly, well, he's a genius. None of that walking out of the salon thinking, maybe I'll get used to it. I walk out feeling sexy, and stay that way for a while; even when my hair was chin-length and shorter, his cuts grew out really well. He has accepted the fact that I'm going to spend four minutes tops dealing with my hair on any given day, ten on important days; he tries to simplify things for me.

So I noticed a couple of days ago that my hair was getting to the weighed-down, stretched-out, dried-up stage that means I'm overdue. I've also been obsessed with bangs lately; I've been pestering every woman I talk to who has them. Do you like having bangs? I ask, and they must think I'm a nut. But I haven't had bangs in something like twenty years, so I'm not sure how they'd work. I need to see Dragonfly.

Called the place where I saw him last. Oh, he doesn't work here anymore, they told me, disdainfully. Do you want to see someone else here?

As if it were that easy! I don't think so. I didn't ask if he'd found God, but politely explained that my relationship was with Dragonfly, not the salon, and the woman grudgingly told me where he'd gone.

So I'm tracking him down, again. Who knows what it is this time. One place he left because they wouldn't let him bring his dog to work. I'll have to make sure to ask when I see him.

appropos of nothing

A couple of helpful cool sites for those who, like me, can't keep their fallacies straight. All these things I missed during my misspent youth drinking and carousing.

Snort.

boa constructor

Hey, that wasn't bad. Marc's mad headline-writing skillz are rubbing off. Or I'm just loopy with exhaustion, which is more than possible.

So my craft-swap recipient just wrote that she loves her vegan boa. I danced around my apartment with it on last night! sez she. I am totally pleased. Now I get to make one for a friend of Kate's who looks like a 70-year-old Jessica Lange and loves peach, moss green, navy, and brown. Remember this woman; she has sparked something else I'll talk about presently.

This is going to be interesting. I have almost nothing in those colors. It's good to stretch outside my color comfort level.

one thousand words

I recently bought a scanner for thirty bucks off a couple who were moving to Asia, and I've been gleefully scanning all the bits and pieces of drawings that have been piling up everywhere like dust bunnies (or in my case, dust-and-hair bunnies). Here's one that sums up how I apparently felt about going back to ILM after an eight-month absence (probably for art school or because there wasn't work, I don't remember which). As you can see, it's part of a fax I was sending to someone.

I give good fax, if I do say so myself.

i fell for it too

The Muslim Formerly Known as Cat Stevens weighs in on the fatwa he allegedly supported against Salman Rushdie. Interesting stuff, especially if you, like me, have been going around badmouthing him. A little disingenuous, but I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I know I haven't posted anything really juicy in a while. Going through some complex stuff, and getting shanghaied into starting/finishing some projects that are Eating My Brain. But it looks like I'll be going to Europe in the spring, so you can look forward to watching me struggle with language tapes, train schedules, and the best thing to do with sugar beets. Doesn't that sound like fun?

just at the corner store

Buying yogurt and getting quarters to finish my laundry. Two in the morning. Guy standing outside with two leashes stretched taut into the store, connected to chihuahuas. I smiled at them--why do we smile at dogs? Do we think they understand smiles?--and then walked into the place, which volumetrically is about equivalent to the second-smallest U-Haul rental truck. And saw someone of indeterminate gender paying for something at the counter, with two more tiny dogs sticking out of her/his bag, their little eyes shiny, their little paws the thickness of pencils. Oh, it was too much.

the election in iraq

Sean over at Preposterous Universe sums it up nicely:

Nobody knows what Iraq will look like ten years from now, and anyone who claims to is just whistling in the dark. It might be a struggling but maturing democracy, or a repressive dictatorship, or have broken into pieces, or simply be a chaotic mess roiled by perpetual civil war. It may even be an Islamic fundamentalist theocracy, pursuing a vigorous program to develop weapons of mass destruction. That would be kind of ironic. But this is not a case where anyone should hope for the worst just so they can say "I told you so."

berliner rundfunk comes through again

That's right, Peter Schilling's Major Tom was also released in German. Duh. Being that Schilling is German and all. I wonder, if I listen long enough, if they'll play Peter Gabriel's Shock den Affen. Or Nena's 99 Luftballoons?

When I was a kid, back in the fabulous hair eighties, sometimes the radio stations (especially the late lamented WLBS, about which there is another story) would play the German versions of things, to up their New Wave cred. It's to be cool, man.

Hey contemporaries, what are some other ones I'm forgetting?

sublimation

Where did you go, girl? asked Thread when we talked on the phone earlier today. I was afraid you'd fallen off the face of the earth. She was home sick again--this cold season's been a hard one on her--and punchy. I was glad to talk to her, glad of the distraction.

Because she's right, I kind of have. Fallen off the face of the earth. It's a lot of things that you've heard me whine about a million times...the season, the weather, catering down-time poverty, missing MonkeyScientist a whole big lot. I haven't wanted to go out. "Out" doesn't have much to recommend it right now. And I especially like the current smell of my little Spaceship: burnt teriyaki salmon, chorizo omelette, a candle in one of those weird scents that probably isn't anything like its inspiration, a new watermelony shampoo that is allegedly designed especially for long hair. Allegedly. I go to the post office, I go to the studio for rehearsals, I go out to work. And this weekend, breakfast both mornings. But otherwise, I wrap myself in the smell and turn up the heat.

And make things.

It's what works. Tried going on a date with someone I'd been seeing at about the same time I started up with MonkeyScientist, and that spiraled swiftly into disaster. I don't drink much because it makes my dreams boringly literal. The money writing isn't turning me on right now, and the personal writing, while it helps, doesn't take me out of my pensiveness. But gluing things together? Ooo-kay!

So I thought I would show you some of what I've been doing.


This is a vegan boa, for the feather-phobic fashionista. I was wearing my first one a couple of weeks ago and I had a stranger comment on exactly that--how much she hated feathers, period. They give her the creeps. I should have offered to make her one of these. Anyway. This one is going to a woman I've never met in a craft swap, and I'll be bummed if she doesn't like it, because I broke three sewing machine needles making it, and gathered a few new white hairs on the way. But otherwise I'm pleased. It's four and a half feet long, somewhat Burning Man-safe (unlike feather boas, which shed), composed of at least 50% recycled material, and dramatic.

Unlike me right now. Definitely not dramatic. I'm whatever the opposite of dramatic is. The antimatter to dramatic's matter. If I met dramatic right now, I'd cancel it out in a shower of little grey sparks.

the pleasures of fresh grease

Our party Saturday night lasted all of an hour; it was what we call a trough party--buffets, disposable plates and forks, great huge wads of guests. The last event of a long day for a group of alums from a local university I shall not name. Although everything was done up in red and white, which should be enough of a hint for some of you, the usual big white esses were nowhere in evidence. The tables were covered in red linens, and the risers that held up the platters had been covered in red felt with white felt polka dots stuck on with double-sided tape. Combined with the red and white balloon arches over the bars, the effect was very Seussian, which I'm not sure had been the point.

Anyway. They had an hour to eat their little sandwiches, see how much chicken they could yank off the skewers to wrap up in paper napkins to take home, and pull the design team's apples out of the giant fishbowls in which they were displayed, nearly upsetting lit votives and setting all that red felt ablaze in the process.

I can't fault them; these people will probably still be paying off their student loans when their own children leave for college. But it was kind of funny. We'd been there for hours setting up, and of course we were there for an hour after they left, picking up chickenless skewers from where they'd been dropped (everywhere except the plentiful trashcans, needless to say), and I was struck yet again by the time, money, effort--and waste--that goes into a catered event.

Since we were out so early, we piled into cars and went to Liverpool Lil's, which is where we always seem to end up after gigs in the Presidio, and ate huge hamburgers at the tiny tables in the bar. B and I sat next to each other and pretended that we could only use the index and middle fingers of our hands, which is a lot funnier than it probably sounds, and Emperor tried to explain to us all what was happening at the Australian Open, which was playing on a massive television above our heads. Sort of a lost cause, considering that none of us care about tennis except Emperor, but B did take a moment to appreciate how much better-looking Andre Agassi has gotten with age. Across the narrow aisle the deeply gay Opera, who'd had so many martinis his eyes were getting slitty, gave Hound, who is male and deeply straight, advice on how to approach women. Which was, like B and I and our claws, much funnier than it probably sounds.

And then, bliss. Emperor drove B and I home, and as always happens when that happens, we stopped at Bob's Donuts for the best and freshest-tasting donuts you will ever find, anywhere. We had to: we'd been talking about it for probably two hours by that time. They use fresh oil! we'd enthused to our co-workers over the hamburgers at Lil's (I ate B's pickle, incidentally, but then he was surreptitiously eating the lettuce off everyone's plates.) They're not too sweet like Krispy Kremes! we said to each other around dripping mouthfuls of meat. They have real character! we said to the waitress, who had completely had it with us by that time but was managing to stay gracious (even when we found she'd made a fifteen-dollar error on our bill). Emperor, who recently gave in and got his first cell phone, called the donut shop to see what they were making just before we left the bar, which seemed decadent to me.

Bob's, Bob's, Bob's. Let me count the ways. B had a crumb donut, Emperor a maple bar, dense and sticky. I had a chocolate-covered raised that was like eating a cloud, if clouds were warm and yeasty and covered with chocolate. The two older couples who were there before us watched the donut maker--who could have been Bob, for all I know, a smallish smiling Asian guy with a little paper hat--dipping cake donuts in chocolate and decided to take some home for their kids. A man with a tangled beard sat at the counter sipping coffee and watching the television news.

Twenty-four hours. If you live in San Francisco, you could go right now. They'll be open. And the donuts will be fresh.

yow!

Go Bookslut! Jessica Crispin lays down some science on the asinine conceive magazine. Says everything I'd like to, in a lot fewer words. Sometime soon Bookslut's also supposed to be running a review of the anthology I'm in, so I'm keeping an eye out for that.

Incidentally, a casual search reveals that the anthology is being picked up by colleges and universities for use in social science classes. I just noticed that the University of Vermont has copies in their library. For some reason, seeing that it had a catalog number made it more real for me. And AX has used the word "badassitude" about my essay in particular. Which would be a fine thing to mention in the area Amazon so helpfully provides for guest reviews, hint hint to everyone who has a copy and has read my essay.

I have to admit that I still haven't read the other nineteen. I really should, before I meet the other authors when we sit down to read together next month.

climate change

Time to reread John Barnes' Mother of Storms.

What some of Amazon's guest reviewers say is true--it takes a while to get going, and there are a lot of characters. But neither of those are bad things, and I've thought about the book frequently since the tsunami. Considering that I must have read it at least five or six years ago--and I read a lot--it obviously works well enough as a story and a lesson that I've retained it this long.

ender's war

I'm sort of ripping off both AX and Spiral here, as one of them has already referenced the Orson Scott Card book and the other has posted relevant photos.

But I didn't know that the new combat robot we're sending to Iraq in the spring is operated remotely by a soldier using (eventually) a Gameboy-style interface--joystick and VR goggles--from up to half a mile away.

Not that I'm some kind of traditionalist or anything. I'm not saying we should go back to waging war using horses, pointed sticks, and Greek Fire. And I'm certainly for anything that keeps our soldiers safe (although my best idea for that involves bringing them home pronto, not a $200,000 toy). But this is really scary, this distancing. Will the VR goggles show accurate images of the insurgents the solider is killing by remote, or just little avatars in an 8-bit colorspace? Considering that two-thirds of the Iraqis dead so far have been noncombatant women and children--people our soldiers could see up-close and in person--what's going to happen when that immediacy, the smell and sound and impact of death, are removed?

This war is not a fucking video game.

we have different ideas about what constitutes the will of god

Considering my DES status, I really can't fault anyone else for going to some lengths to have children if they want. But this 66-year-old woman believes that it was the "will of God" that she get pregnant.

That, and nine years of fertility treatments. Which, for those of you who don't keep up with these things, means nine years of getting regular injections of hormones into your tuchus.

If it's the will of God that I become a crazy cat lady, I hope I'm strong enough to live up to my calling.

intestinal fortitude

Teutonia's got a gift for snagging free movie passes, so yesterday we went to see Hotel Rwanda at the Kabuki. It's sort of a Rwandan Schindler's List; it tells the true story of a Hutu hotel manager who sheltered 1,286 Tutsi and Hutu refugees from the Interahamwe in his five-star hotel, the Mille Colines, in 1994. Don Cheadle gives an absolutely phenomenal performance as Paul Rusesabagina (as do Sophie Okonedo as his wife and Nick Nolte (!) as the head of the UN peacekeeping force in Kigali), and it's definitely a film worth seeing.

That said, it's pretty violent, and I for one walked out sick with shame and anger. I'm not usually affected this way by movies--years in the industry, first as the child of a worker and then as a worker myself--have inured me to some of the emotional pull celluloid can wield. But I really felt this one. I found myself mouthing the words fucking Hutus over and over again, and welling up with tears through most of the film.

What made it even more intense was that I was sitting next to a German woman in her early fifties, and wondering what she was seeing as she watched this depiction of one group of people systematically slaughtering the members of another group of people. We must exterminate the Tutsi cockroaches was a phrase that kept coming up in the film, in some form or another, and the resonance with the Holocaust was pretty much impossible for me to ignore. We'd agreed that we'd sit and talk afterwards about what we'd seen, and I found myself wondering if we were going to talk about how it felt to be there together, one German and one American Jew.

As it happens, we didn't really. When she said, I don't understand how people can be so cruel, I let it slide. Because I was also thinking about how so many people try to justify the way nobody intervened to stop Hitler from decimating my people by saying, we didn't know what was going on in the camps. Which I think, frankly, is bullshit: sure, maybe at first, but years into it? Clouds of evil-smelling smoke blocking the sun? Give me a break.

But fast forward fifty years. We--you and I and every American who could turn on the news--knew that genocide was going down in Rwanda. And we let it happen. A million corpses.

You understand why I left the theater weak and feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience. Teutonia was pretty shaken up too.

the future's in citrus

This is very exciting. I wonder if the resulting products will smell like oranges?

not one damn dime day

I'm doing it. How about you?

Since our religious leaders will not speak out against the war in Iraq, since our political leaders don't have the moral courage to oppose it, Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending.

During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases.

Not one damn dime for nothing for 24 hours. On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target... Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter).

For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down. The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. Now 1,200 brave young Americans and (some estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan - a way to come home.

There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed.

For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind ourreligious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.

Please share this email with as many people as possible. Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America!

Bill Moyers

now seating passengers in rows back of beyond through god's country

I look at this, and all I can think is, shit, that's another hour earlier I'll have to get to the airport.

If I knew they were using some of that space for a gourmet kitchen, now, that would be different. Or a Jacuzzi and steam room. Or at least a small but carefully-stocked library.

edit: Courtesy of Daryl, we see that there are staterooms and a duty-free shop, but no steam room.

saudi kitties

Awwwwwwwwwww.

courtesy of Majikthise

it's got a beat, you can dance to it

I wonder how long it will be before someone has incorporated Titan's winds into a piece of music?

By this weekend, probably. Ain't technology grand? There's something dreamy about sitting at the computer listening to these sounds, culled from so very far away. And with a little bass thrown in, I can totally see ravers dancing to it.

bad science

So a recent study of 5,069 adults suggests that race may affect fitness levels. You can check out the Web site for the American College of Chest Physicians, who covered the study in their journal.

I'm not sure what's bothering me more about this--the fact that the study doesn't appear to touch on social factors at all, or the ugliness of the postings on the message board Yahoo! attached to the article, which I'm afraid you can't see because the link has expired since I started writing this post in December.

A few years ago, I was helping a woman who was working on her nursing school thesis try to get a grip on the writing part. She was studying hypertension in African-Americans, and public health approaches; it was fascinating stuff. And then, a couple of months ago, I was reading Fat Land by Greg Critser about obesity in America, and he raises some of the same points, as well as others.

So while I agree that obesity and hypertension are rampant in the black community--I'm thinking now about my own hometown--being black does not automatically mean that one is just naturally prone to being fatter or less healthy in general. But you're not going to get that much subtlety in this study, which didn't apparently allow for certain factors.

Some of which Critser and my student identified, quite simply:

Fitness correlates with income before it does race. If I remember correctly, Critser quotes studies that suggest that poor whites are just as likely to be obese as poor blacks.

Obesity often begins young, and young black folks are less likely to have consistent exercise--or safe places to do it--than young white folks. Critser points out that programs like AYSO youth soccer tend to start in the suburbs, which are replete with big open safe spaces in which to run.

This my student told me: black folks are less likely to trust doctors, or what doctors say, than white folks. So public health strategists have to take a different tack, but that tack hasn't yet been well-researched. She also pointed out that inner-city families have a harder time getting decent food, and tend to rely on junk and fast foods. My own experience of living in an economically depressed neighborhood full of convenience stores bears that out: I'm completely set for Doritoes here, but have a serious hike ahead of me if I want an organically grown vegetable.

There are a lot of factors, and I'm just touching on them lightly; I highly recommend Critser's book for the full story. What angers me about the article, besides the bad science aspect, is all the knuckleheads who logged onto the Yahoo! message board so they could say stupid things about how black people should be in great shape from running from the police all the time. Or who took the opportunity to post bizarre "Negro Fact Sheets" with masses of numbers that add up to telling us that blacks are sub-human. Ugly, ugly. Research twisted to a bad end.

on my end, i'll keep it down on the bellydance music

The kids in Unit One are apparently the sort that kiss and make up, and then some, after they fight. I was hoping they were the go-to-bed-mad kind who could be counted on to stew silently all night, but I guess they got all their processing done over the three hours they were fighting (with, of course, the television on). The moaning started just as I was going to bed, where I'd had big plans to comfort myself in the age-old fashion, and lasted for about twenty minutes. So I laid there with my hands chastely behind my head and just cried myself to sleep instead. I haven't cried in a few days, and it felt strange, although that might have been the sensation of the tears pooling around my (useless) orange foam ear plugs.

And I had to wake up early, to go model for this kind of strange but nice enough man with a big old warehouse studio space South of Market. When I'm up on the stand--in this case, an ancient kitchen table--I can see into the cars driving up the ramp that leads to the Bay Bridge. I try not to think about the corollary; I'm sure if there had been any accidents from drivers realizing they were seeing nekkid women, somebody would have said something to this guy. He's doing a whole series of me, trying to capture different emotional states: joy, paranoia. Today was sorrow, which I managed to fake for him somehow. Buried my head in the sleeping bag and cushion softening the box I was leaning against and went pretty much straight to sleep.

Here's an excerpt from the note I wrote when I got home. I'd gone up and knocked, hoping to talk to them in person, but I guess either they couldn't hear me over the television, or they just weren't feeling sociable.

...I have a problem I hope you can help me with. When they built this place, they obviously didn't think about sound. I can hear everything that happens up here. Everything. And while certain things, like fighting and fucking, obviously need to happen at their appropriate volumes, I wonder if I can ask you to keep it down on the other stuff? Loud television, walking around heavily late at night, the yelling...you may be young and energetic, but I am old and tired, and need to get some sleep.

I could have been less snarky, I could have brought them some cookies or something and tried to make nice-nice, but I'm simply too tired. And I've been up there before, they know there's a problem.

thanks for clarifying that for us

Where to start? Near the end is as good a place as any; that's the point in this article from the BBC where George Bush answers a troubling question. This after sidestepping another question about why nobody in his administration is being held responsible for the various dramatic missteps in the war on Iraq.

When asked why the administration had so far failed to locate Osama Bin Laden, more than three years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, the president responded, "Because he's hiding."

this was bound to happen someday

But I am still very distressed to see that you can now buy pre-made duct tape wallets. The whole point of the exercise was that you could make your own wallet with something you had lying around the house. And if you were vegan, you could still carry a stylish wallet without something having died for it. You could customize it, use different colors of duct tape, make prom dresses and alien costumes using the same techniques. It was cheap, it was funky, it was transgressive.

Now geeks who need a place to store their "bling" but don't want to get their hands sticky can just buy a wallet. They've even come up with a special kind of duct tape that's better than the old kind because it won't stick to all the "dog hair and lint" to be found in geek pockets. Is Monsanto behind this? The Ducti wallet is the Roundup-Ready of duct tape wallets

This is just wrong.

do not stick hands in cage

When I worked at ILM, I had a sign that said that hanging on the wall behind my desk. I have no idea where the sign went. I should find it, and hang it around my neck.

I am having one of those mornings.

Stepping away for a moment from the obvious--that exactly a week ago at this time I was wandering numbly around my apartment thinking about MonkeyScientist tightening his seatbelt on the airplane and wondering if he dared pinch the flight attendant, and that I have moments of intense sadness at his absence that no amount of streaming German radio can ease--the attentive reader will note that I am awake before noon. Awake, indeed, before 10 am, which usually only happens if I'm going to fly or vomit or some combination thereof.

I've actually been awake since 6:47. The same attentive reader can guess why; I'm not going to belabor the point, except to say that I just left a voicemail for the property manager to talk about noise abatement measures and the possible implementation thereof. Anyway, I've had three and a half hours of sleep, and have that sort of undercooked feeling as a result. You know the one? Less sleep, and at least I would be in a useful fight-or-flight hyperactive mode. More sleep, and I would be human. But neither is true. I'm just raw and groggy.

And there's this thing going on...it's part of the reason I didn't just go back to bed when Tarzan and Jane finally finished upstairs. You see, I am trying to have a copy of my show reel made. This should be an easy process. But it's turned into, in my mother's words, a clusterfuck. Explaining the whole thing would be boring, so I'll break it down into key words: bad dubs, missing one-inch master, lab screwup, expensive transfer of the wrong master to DVD, expensive shipment of said DVD from Detroit to SF, howling in Snufkina's living room, late-night chorizo sandwich, vivid dreams, news that original master did in fact occupy space at facility where the reel was assembled...and then was sent last April, for some inexplicable reason, to an advertising agency (excuse me, they're marketing consultants now) with whom I have no relationship, where there's an excellent chance it was destroyed.

So I need to take my bad VHS copies to Monaco Lab this morning, and try to talk them into giving me a credit, and then putting that credit towards making a DVD master from the one sort-of-okay VHS I have. Then I need to come home and write the resume and cover letter to go with it, which terrifies me; I hate doing those things. Yes, yes, I'm a writer, yes, I know. It's not any easier for us, I think, than it is for anyone else. Maybe it's worse.

This is a means, I keep telling myself, to an end. Get dressed and get out there and do it already. But I just want to go back to bed.

the sweat of my brow

Spent much of yesterday and today wrestling a big article into shape; finally, at 4:30 this afternoon, I was done and headed out to check my post office box and do a celebratory lap through the art supply store on Van Ness.

Which is where I was headed when some little pair of naked wires crossed in my brain and I remembered that I was scheduled to cater this afternoon. Or was I? I couldn't remember what my call time was, or where I was supposed to be, but I was sure that I was late. Probably real late. Captains usually come in between 1 and 4:30 for dinner events, and my cell said it was 4:54 and I was completely unshowered, meaning that I was at least an hour away from showing up to the job clean and tuxedoed. So I called the recorded message to get the job's location as I loped through the Tenderloin, sweating and cursing myself and trying to figure out what I was going to say when I did finally get to work. While I've been late to jobs in the past, never by this much. And I have never pulled a no-call no-show on a catering job.

What is going ON with me? I thought as I listened to my supervisor's recorded voice droning out the directions to the site, which turned out to be the Ferry Building. Not a difficult place to get to, at least. But still. How did I let this slip? Am I hating the work that much? Or am I that sad? And more insidious yet, even if I can make it, why bother? Call in with a faked injury. Say the graft in your knee just gave out. Say you were hit by a car. Just lie; they can do without you. Meanwhile a car trying to make the light on Geary nearly made it unnecessary for me to lie about an accident, and people made disgruntled noises as I streamed past.

Burst into my apartment, throwing off my purse, scarf, jacket, and sweatshirt in pretty much one motion in preparation to shower. Grabbed my datebook off the floor and saw

oh

this is the date I got taken off of last week.

So I put my clothes back on, switching out the completely sodden sweatshirt for something else, and went to the library to look for travel guides. And as I walked down Market Street to see if there was anything good playing at the Castro Theater's Berlin and Beyond, I thought long and hard about how worked up I'd gotten. For a job that gives me so little pleasure these days.

I think it's time I did something rash. I haven't done anything really rash in a while; people are going to start calling me "grounded" and shit.

I think it's time to look for a day job.

the brats upstairs

Must know, somehow, that I've just lost my playmate; they've bumped up their frequency to twice a day. I think they wait until they're sure I'm home before they start screwing. I heard her door open and close, one says. That's the sound of her bootheels, says the other, you wanna get it on?

But I have a new secret weapon. Streaming Berliner Rundfunk 91.4! With all the charming randomness of European radio stations, plus people talking fast in German. It's perfect for my purposes. Right now it's the morning drive-time show; Elton John singing "Nikita". Before this I got some ABBA, some Paul Young, Tight Fit doing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," yesterday it was the Traveling Wilburys and Alphaville jumbled up together. Bee Gees! Credence Clearwater! I've been listening on headphones, but I'm about to pull out the jack and turn it up.

Take that, you wretched children!

one difference between men and women

This is really interesting. I don't like making broad generalizations about "men do this and women do that" (although I often can't stop myself); I really do believe that many of the differences between us are socially constructed, and hence not worth setting in stone by nattering on about either sex being constitutionally incapable of a thing, or more naturally skilled at another thing, or whatever.

But I've noticed something small yet telling that I want to bring forward, and I think it has something to do with who feels more secure in the world.

Just got home from rehearsal--the first one I've felt really good about in a while; we were learning a new choreography, and I was getting it, quickly. There were even parts that I was grasping before some of the more experienced members of the troupe. I'm not necessarily doing it well, mind, but I'm turning in the right direction at the right time, etcetera.

Anyway. Although I was feeling all charged up and perfectly capable of walking the seven blocks home, I accepted a ride from Yvette, possibly the kindest person I have ever met. And hot, too, but firmly married, if you were even thinking about it. Firmly. So she drove me all the way home, taking all the one-way streets instead of just dropping me at a convenient corner and speeding off; she pulled up in front on my building, and waited until she'd seen me go through the front door before she drove away.

This is such a small thing, but I cannot think of a single time I have ever gotten a ride home from a woman who hasn't waited to make sure I made it into the building before leaving. While quite a few men have essentially slowed to twenty and put a boot to my butt; unless they're hoping for a little tonsil massage, many of my male acquaintances seem to be more concerned about getting on with their journey than making sure I'm safely home (AX being, as he so often is in any discussion of "what men do", a notable exception). Although, come to think of it, even some of the ones I've kissed goodbye haven't then watched to make sure I get that door unlocked without interference. And interference is always on tap in this neighborhood.

I don't think it's that men don't care about their female friends. I think they just don't think about it. The same way a lot of men don't give the same kind of thought to which streets they use to get home after dark that women do, or hesitate before going into certain bars, or a whole host of little decisions that pattern a woman's day.

so you think you know kung-fu, eh?

Not sure what compelled me to seek out an online typing speed test. I'm not going to embarrass myself here by mentioning exactly how poorly I did; I'm just going to muse that for someone who types all the time--so much so that her handwriting is now pretty much completely impenetrable--I'm surprised I didn't do better.

Go ahead, I dare you.

major life change

It may be the antihistamine speaking, or the astonishingly complete headache I've had since I woke up (more fool me, thinking I was going to miss out on getting a cold this season just because everyone around me had been sick and I hadn't). It may be the previously-detailed sadness. But I have spent some time thinking, and realized that I need to shake things up, try something new, branch out.

Which is why I have decided to go into the dog sweater business.

The upper end of Polk Street, where I was flailing along, trying not to jostle my head too much or dribble too obviously, is rife with stores and businesses catering to dogs. Heading north, first you hit Wags, which bills itself as a "Pet Wash and Boutique". Along the south wall there are four raised, tiled enclosures for pup-washing. But it seems that every time I walk by, there are a lot more dogs just chilling on the floor around the "tubs", chewing on things and wrestling with each other.

Farther up is Bow Wow Meow, the first place I have ever seen Judaica for dogs; little white dog yarmulkes (and here is another interesting use for the little skullcaps you usually seen on Jewish men's heads) with blue Stars of David and elastic straps to go around the dog's ears. They sell other things as well, but I couldn't tell you what; I was too floored by the window display and I am, as I have mentioned, on drugs.

There's one more place, but I can't remember the name right off. Suffice it to say, upper Polk is a bastion of canine delights, which makes sense when you see how many people wandering around up there have put clothes on their dogs.

I was walking behind a woman with a chihuahua just now. The dog was wearing a blue and red hoodie with a clever pocket on the back, just the right size for a driver's license or a Milk-Bone. The hood, though, puzzled me. What possible use could a dog have for a hood? In my experience, dogs really don't like having their ears covered.

Anyway, that's why I had the idea. It solves so many problems. First of all, especially if I focus on small sweaters for small dogs (for which I have already admitted an embarrassing affinity), I'll be able to work quickly. This also uses up yarn, which is good, because then I can justify buying more yarn at the store where Thread works.

It's also exactly the sort of thing that, if you mention it at a party, sorts out the truly interesting people from the ones you don't really want to talk to. You know?

reach

This from local performer and sage Nina Wise, copied into a journal of mine in April '03. Obviously I felt I needed the reminder then; it still speaks to me now.

We can only end the epidemic of isolation if we make contact. We cannot wait for our culture to change by some act of universal grace. It is we who are the instruments of grace; we who through our words and our actions acknowledge that we are not alone on this earth, but together.

butter, milk. butter, milk.

It's a trick for people who, according to one gentle writer, are too creative to stay on task. Because we get so easily distracted. So you're putting something away, and you keep saying, out loud, oh, I'm taking this tube of paint and putting it with the others, until you've done it. So you don't get confused and start doing something else, while you still have the tube of paint in your hand.

In my case last night, it was a completely delirious trip to the Cala up on California and Hyde, which is happily open 24 hours, so the fact that I couldn't get out of the house to grocery shop until 9 didn't make a difference. I'd made myself eat something before I left so that I wouldn't be completely stupid, but the contents of my basket still leaned to the fanciful...several kinds of spreadable cheese (I have no crackers or other substrate), a bottle of tangerine juice (actually intelligent), two packets of Le Petit Ecolier cookies, the ones with dark chocolate tops. I wanted Deluxe Grahams, I wanted to regress that much, but couldn't find any, and stood there with my mouth open looking again and again at the Spongebob-emblazoned packages of Fudge Stripes and Grasshoppers, hoping perhaps that maybe one of them would magically turn into a packet of Deluxe Grahams.

If I stood there long enough.

Didn't happen. So I trudged off to find chorizo, which should be easy in a city with such a large Latino population, but for some odd reason, Cala has their sausage products spread out over at least four locations. Seriously. I thought about cheese dogs, the kind with the cheese piped into the middle, I was feeling that small and sad and eight-years-old, but didn't buy any.

So eventually it came down to the last five or six items on the mental list, and I just couldn't be in the store any more. Too many couples shopping together, too much cheerful music, too much potential of spending all the money I had on raw cookie dough. So I started mumbling butter, milk, butter, milk to myself. Just to remember. Just to stay on track.

To the brave folk who called or wrote yesterday and got this from me--oh, other than feeling like I'm being eviscerated, I'm fine, thanks--I'm sorry. And thanks to everyone who commented, directly or through other people, on the last post; your kindness means so much to me. More than I can articulate. I'm a little better today (he wrote! from the plane!) and might actually get some work done.

And I have dairy products.

dancing with tears in my eyes

All becomes clear.

1.

In the first short story he ever published, 1939's Life Line, Robert Heinlein invented a machine that can predict when a person will die, and introduced an image that has stuck with me and informed my thinking since I was a teenager. The idea is that our lives extend forward and back from the present like the ends of a worm, and we only see the cross section that is the moment we're in. But that doesn't mean there isn't more worm. Dr. Pinero's machine can see the whole worm, from birth to death. I'm not explaining this well. Old Bob, crusty misogynist reactionary that he was, did a much more graceful job.

Anyway. I've taken to seeing our lives--maybe not my own so much, since I don't really plan for the part of the worm more than a few months away--but those of my friends in this way. It's really obvious when I get close to someone; I become fascinated with photos from their childhood. I'm a nut for baby pictures. I want to wrap myself around their whole life, pour the affection I feel for them now on the child they were, hold them as a baby, reassure their teenage self that things don't suck nearly as badly as they seem to. AX in a fedora and suspenders and the exact same bushy hopeless hair I had that year, glaring at the camera from among the ranks of the chess club (sorry, babe, it's important to the story). Snufkina in her cheerleader garb and feathered hair (ditto). Almeida in Damascus, and then as a muscled twenty-something showing off for her boyfriend. MonkeyScientist as a tiny towhead, surrounded by German relatives, dour and unsmiling as trees. My mother with her father and his bird, her eyes huge and dark, her face shy. My father--no more than three feet tall--dressed in a heavy coat and a hat with flaps, holding his father's hand on a Chicago street.

There is a yogic partner meditation where you gaze into your partner's eyes and imagine them in the moment after their birth, and then as an incredibly ancient person. It's a similar idea. When I've done it, I've been thinking I hold and cherish your whole life. I am here, and I am there and there, and everywhere in between. Although you didn't know it then, and may not remember in the future, let what I have to give you now flow out in both directions.

2.

My friend was still wearing his wedding ring the first time I took him home. Which should explain why I haven't talked much about the situation, which should shed some light on the past few months. I am not the reason he's divorcing: it's really the other way around. I took up with him because his wife was leaving him, and it was the best thing, as a friend, I could offer him in the way of support and distraction. You took him because you wanted him, interrupted my mother's cousin C when I was telling her this story. C's just shy of eighty, beautifully preserved, wearing her third wedding ring. She's sharp. And she was right, that's also true. But it was not something I'd ever planned to act on.

Because although I was attracted to him from the first time I saw him, and although our subsequent friendship was occasionally a strain as I struggled with my own impulses, I honored his marriage. I believe in the part of the wedding where the officiant asks everyone present to help the couple honor the bond; as Naiad once pointed out to me, that's a heavy part of the ceremony that not everyone realizes is the heavy part. Also, raised as a feminist, I do my best to honor my sisters. I try not to compete with other women for male attention. I fail a lot, but I do try.

Point being. I took him home because he was realizing that his marriage was over, and he was in pain, and I wanted to ease that. Yes, I wanted him. Terribly. But that wasn't what was in my head the night he almost beat me at pool, and then scratched on the eight. I'm not offering sex, I said as we stood on Geary shuffling our feet with the traffic and the homeless people winding by, but if you want to come home with me, maybe I could offer some comfort.

I've offered a lot of comfort over the past few months. And he's reciprocated, despite his own pain. Remember that with the loss of my father, I have not been whole myself lately. I have needed something my friend was in a position to give. It wasn't just the obvious, though; he's cooked eggs for me, I helped him ship some boxes, we made sock puppets. I made him laugh, he made me feel like I knew what I was doing. He cheered me on when I needed it, and I tried to do the same for him.

And I have became attached to him, more than I expected. He turns out not to be as square as I'd thought; I think I turned out to be slightly less crazy than he thought. We've known each other long enough to be relaxed with each other. He keeps saying, We should stop before this gets heavy. And I respond, I understand if you need some time to yourself. But I feel better being with him than without, and remind myself that knowing something will end doesn't mean we can't enjoy it while we have it. Because everything ends, in parting or in death; I have had the rare good fortune of having a slightly better idea than most folks of how and when, exactly, I would lose my lover.

Thursday morning, the particular worm that is his life is about to stretch out in a very different direction. He's leaving the country for an undetermined length of time, possibly years. He is going to make a new life for himself in a cold place whose language I was raised to hate, words that feel like betrayal of my family and my history when I turn them in my mouth. And unless someone offers me a job and a work permit in Berlin, there's a very real possibility that I will never get to spend this kind of time with him again. As the lover and not the soon-to-be-ex-wife, I don't even get to see him off at the airport, and I can't begin to express how painful that is.

In the past when I've written here about friends leaving, this is who and what I've been talking about, this parting: the fact that no matter what I do or say or want, I have to watch him go. Even if I feel as though he's jumping out of a perfectly good airplane when it comes to the time we spend together, to the warm space we create between us, the laughter and the affection, the admiration I have for his strong mind and spirit.

This is what we do for our friends, if we love them. We let them go when they need to go, no matter how much it hurts. I learned this the hard way last year with my father; I have been learning it again since the moment my friend tentatively put his hand on my leg and asked if I was wearing my work pants, and I kissed him.

I can hold his past lightly in my hands, and the past few months that he has shared with me more firmly. But his future is very likely closed to me. Had he stayed married, maybe at least we could have continued as we were before, lunching and laughing with each other. But for a little while we got more than that, and now I will have less.

I knew this would happen. And I put myself forward anyway because I saw that there was something beautiful and good shining in the rubble, and greedy magpie that I am, I wanted it.

And I am not sorry.

Goodbye MonkeyScientist. Auf wiedersehen und viel Gluck, liebchen.

three by three rib

It's very strange typing with earplugs in; I'm used to being able to hear the keys a little better than I can feel them. And every time I scratch my nose, there's a weird sort of echo chamber thing going on.

Yes, the sonic warfare with the kids in Unit 1 has escalated. Not only do they have sex pretty much all the time, not only are they still walking around at night in their heavy shoes, not only can I make out every exquisite detail of his plentiful expectorations, but last night the people in the apartment above them, Unit 5, had a loud party. So the boy from Unit 1 apparently went up to talk to them, and when it didn't quiet down, started yelling shut the fuck up.

Repeatedly.

So I went upstairs to Unit 5 to ask them nicely to turn it down (I could also hear them), and then I went up again at the same time Unit 1 was there complaining, and I explained to both of them that I had had it. I believe I used the words efuckingnough already. No, I'm not pleased with how I handled it, but I was a little fragile. Unit 5 looked at me and apologized, Unit 1 looked at me like he was planning to slit my throat as I slept.

Not, of course, that I've been able to sleep, with all the noise.

So anyway, I came back downstairs, and twenty minutes later this terrific thumping started on my ceiling. No, it's not the bed, I know what that sounds like. Someone up there was banging something very deliberately against the floor, at irregular intervals, apparently until they passed out from exhaustion. This afternoon, it's just really loud talking.

Hence the plugs. The orange foam kind. At some point, I'm going to go up and try to talk nicely with those people, but I'm not in the mood for it yet.

The good news is that I've finished one of my knitting projects. This is a huge deal, as you all may remember from the sock monkey story; not only did I finish something I started, but it's a knit thing. The first knit thing I've seen through to the end. There's all kind of symbolism to this, but I just want to say that I was very pleased last night, putting it on and admiring it in the mirror. It's a scarf, knit in 3x3 rib, and I couldn't believe how...real...it looked. I stood there, turning this way and that, and said, wow, it's really a scarf.

I'm having a hard time getting across how cool this is. Trust me, it is.

he'll get to sleep on the bed now

If you need a happy story from the tsunami tragedy, here's one about a dog who saved his boy. I'm off to go cry now.

drink more water, get more sleep, and floss occasionally

I'm actually sort of making resolutions this year. Or maybe it's more like the Pirate's Code; a set of guidelines, savvy? Anyway. A list of marks I'm going to not try to hit so much as try to sneak up on and take unawares.

NYE was fairly quiet, and involved my drinking about one glass of champagne too many, spilling me into maudlin-land. Fortunately nobody noticed. But New Year's Day was more like it; spent much of the day on MonkeyScientist's couch drinking beer and knitting to the sounds of Miles Davis and flamenco guitar. I like the butch/femme tension of that. Although I don't need to see any more Tostitos, or ranch dip, or even leftover Christmas candy.

All of which I have had in profusion today.

Last year at this time I had just learned that my father's cancer had metastasized. I spent New Year's Day 2004 wandering around the deep Mission, down Mission Street past Cesar Chavez and El Rio, making a mental list of what I needed to do before I left for Detroit to be with my folks. A hardware store was open and I went in and bought, without really thinking about it, a packet of fake snow and some Christmas lights (all on sale, post Yule) and looked without really seeing at some packets of crayons. The weather was bright and cold, I had just been evicted from my flat by the master tenant so she could move her boyfriend in, and I felt completely silent and weightless. Sort of like the Hindenburg.

It's hard to believe it's been a year. Sometimes it feels like ten. Sometimes it feels like a month.

I could do with 2005 not being like 2004. I really could. If this year is as much better than last year as today was in comparison to NYD04, I'll be in good shape.
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In honor of both pirates and Thread, here are Ten Things to Do in Ocracoke. Not, I'm sure, that she's actually doing any of those things (crab beignets?), but she could if she wanted to, and you can too.