Deep and Crisp and Even

Dec 26th

Woke at midnight on the 22nd, the snowfall breaking, and, unable to sleep, gather my things and finally the cat, bundling them into the car at 4 to catch the 5:15 AM ferry. The trip was cold, even the boat's interior icy, and I stayed in the car most of the time. driving south off the terminal was a revelation, the sky dark blue with dawn coming up in the Southeast, the strange geometry making it seem that I was driving south into the sunrise, staring down on the ecliptic, straight at the gorgeous last tiniest sliver of the waning moon. The landscape gorgeous, clear and frozen, deep blues and the predawn, climbing the mountains behind Nanaimo, the snow and the streetlights showing the shape of the land in ways I hadn't seen before.

It's been harder writing, lately. I've had trouble sleeping at night the last couple months, and my mind will not be still. L finally phoned today. She's home to visit, until the 10th, and at some point in there we'll hook up and she'll get her things out of the apartment. (Also at some point she'll be coming out to at least part of her family, something I am glad I'm quit of). I wish I knew some secret to make this less stressful. It is all strangely surreal. Not having any real experience dealing with a living, breathing ex is not helping here. I'm trying to put myself in her shoes and understand what's going through her mind, but it doesn't seem to work. She seems restrained somehow, guarded. I was upset and wondering why she didn't phone me when she got in, but she thought I was still up in PG for Eckhart's Dad's funeral. Why does anything she does upset me, still? How can it be that I have any expectations left, by this point.

Charlie Brown kicks Dennis The Menace's Ass and always will.

From Edge of The American West:

1968 in the Peanutsverse.

What's odd is I don't specifically remember the first Franklin strip, and certainly didn't register its topicality as a child (Vietnam should have jumped out at me, I would have thought), although our elementary schools were packed with Peanuts anthologies, so I certainly must have read it. And once I hit High School it was all Doonesbury and Bloom County, of course.

Still, well done, Chuck.

Aujourd'hui Nous Sommes Tous Americains

Victory.

3:40AM, 24 hours later, and I'm still buzzed. This feels like the world's victory. So many thoughts in my head. It occured to me yesterday, too late, that being unemployed, I had had the perfect chance to go work for Obama, if I'd had a few thousand - even a few hundred - bucks to spare. Not that they needed another volunteer, as it turned out. There is nothing else that matters Tuesday as I hang on every development all day long, staying glued to the computer and the radio wherever I go.

America...Fuck yeah. Jedi messages, when the announcement is made, he with his gal in some pub, I with C and company in a friend's apartment.

I wish I was in Chicago, I say

-me too, says he.

There was a moment - just a moment - when the CBC reporter turned the camera to show the crowd- celebratory? angry? gathering outside the White House, when I held my breath. Everyone in the room listened as I outlined the dangers of the scenario. All you need, all you need, is a few agents provocateurs, turn the crowd into a mob, and you unleash the police and the soldiers you've had waiting...

2002.

I remember being in a massive crowd celebrating Japan's world cup win, in Sendai, in the middle of one of the city's massive shopping arcades, a line of Japanese riot police with shields and truncheons blocking one end as the crowd dances and sings, and kicks a soccer ball into the rafters, bouncing it off a lamp. My friend Mars laughing, plunging into the crowd, wanting to share in the moment, not understanding, not seeing the danger...if that ball breaks that light, the police will charge, and tear gas will be fired, and we're in a cattle chute five blocks long with no exits.

But the ball doesn't break the light, and the crowd stays happy and slowly dissipates, and my Canada Jersey gets high fives and approval from Japanese and Brits, the Japanese for the novelty of the world at their party, and the Brits because of Lennox Lewis just having knocked down some American Champion that day. Who is Lennox Lewis? asks Mars. Who Indeed...

But back in 2008, the moment passes. The crowd stays jubilant. We cut to Arizona. McCain impresses me, his supporters less so. Then Chicago, and Obama rises to the occasion.

O is speaking. , I message. I can hardly follow some of the words across the conversation, will read the transcript later. I don't quite catch the puppy reference, for instance.

What are those sheets? Huge teleprompters? asks JC.

Bulletproof Glass, I say.

No matter. The images are magnificent, indelible. I wish I was there. I wish I was one of them, just this once. But I'm proud of them. The world was at your back.

Later, at home, I continue reading, wanting to absorb every comment on every thread, drink in the joy from all corners of my online 'verse. I post a follow up to Charles Stross on Making Light, trade giddy articles with Rabbit at 1AM before watching Stewart and Colbert's repeat of their live show, then plunge back online. Time enough for caveats and low expectations. The homophobes still run amok, even though the count's not final when I finally crash. I know what he faces, I know just how deep the hole is, but tonight, for one night, none of it matters. Anything seems possible, and all of us everywhere have, at long last, won one. There is shit to do and we need them in the game and run by adults.

I won't be coming home tonight. My generation will put it right.

Victory.

Cleaning out ma closet

(Crosspost)

Really odd things going on with my sleep pattern, almost to the point of being nocturnal. Mom and Dad coming to visit next week, so it's the usual batten down the hatches time. Do you need anything hauled away? Mom asks, but getting rid of an ex's stuff doesn't really work like that. Furniture is easily dealt with and gone long ago. Drawers of photographs, on the other hand, are another matter, and a pickup truck isn't really what's called for. Some sort of emotional electromagnet, maybe. Still, threshed my way through the main closet today, so progress made. Having the right boxes helps.

Webcomics I'm currently following, in no particular order.


Skin Horse
Something Positive
Questionable Content
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Fans!
Order of the Stick
XKCD
The Rack
Penny Arcade

And sometimes PVP, Devil's Panties, Punch n' Pie, Least I Could Do, and a few others.

It's funny, but except for Penny Arcade and PVP, none of these are strips I followed when I first got into webcomics.  A few from that era are still around - Sluggy Freelance, Scary-go Round, and Goats, for instance - but most have folded, or mutated into other forms.  Skin Horse is the sequel to Narbonic, for instance, and the mutation of Fluble (Amazingly, still on the web in archival form even if its official site is down) into the glory that is the Fafblog is a wonderful thing.  But it's odd what an impermanent medium the webcomic seems to be.  I wonder how much of the current web's content will wind up being lost 10 or 20 years from now?

Bonus: Fafblog interviews John McCain:


FB: Now let's get right down to it. Why should you be president?
MCCAIN: One word, my friends: leadership. As a Navy pilot I was shot down over Vietnam, as a member of the United States Senate I was beaten by my captors for five and a half years, and as your president I will continue to courageously endure those beatings for America.
FB: Well you make a pretty convincing case, John McCain, but why shouldn't I vote for a president who has even more experience being tortured, like Congressman Sheikh Mohammed or Senator Jesus or that guy who gets his head exploded at the beginning of Scanners?
MCCAIN: Because I know the problems Americans are going through right now. The American people are angry, my friends. They're hurt. They've been beaten by their captors for five and a half years. And they need a leader who's willing to stop federal tax dollars from going to research harbor seal DNA.
FB: We might lose our jobs and we might lose our homes and we might have to sell our youngest, weakest children to black market organ scavengers for a cardboard box and a can of refried beans, but we'll always be safe in the knowledge that our taxes aren't going to further our understanding of marine biology.
MCCAIN: Oh, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. Do you realize that federal earmarks last year directed literally thousands of your tax dollars to children's hospitals? Think about that now! Hospitals! For children!
FB: Now look John McCain, everybody wants to shut down children's hospitals, but how're you really gonna do it what with all the Washington gridlock and the Beltway infighting and the fatcat lobbyists from Big Children? I mean Ronald Reagan promised us he'd destroy the government and twenty years later we're still stuck with a functioning public sewage system.

Almost There

(Crosspost)
So, almost wrapped at work, and almost have my obligations discharged. Funny, between being sick all week and being distracted with the election, thanksgiving, and friends (helpful and not) I've slowly chipped away at it and now have only a few final things to wrap. Have all my actual physical stuff home, including my "severence package" task chair, and I'm done with the dollie. So, tomorrow, just have to put the dollie in storage, hand in the keys and do a couple hours' worth of notes, and that will be that. Exept for applying for EI and triggering my credit card insurance. Tradition calls for a booze up. but hard to justify it, really.

The loans people sent another nastygram around for my Ex, which is distressing. I keep telling her to deal with this, talk to them or get her address changed, but she seems to be avoiding the issue. Went shopping for a Mountie hat yesterday, but the available ones are either children's sized or have the wrong shape. (I;m not paying 150 bucks for a stetson that's shaped like a hillbilly's hat, thanks all the same, hat shop owner who doesn't understand the difference between triangular and square corners) Luckily, I have a plan B.

So much to do. Not enough hours in the day. But I persevere. Almost there. Next week I'll be able to get into a steady rhythm of half-days job hunting, I hope.

Notes.

The election was fun, but draining. Working sick was difficult, but being a registration officer was much lower impact. Afterwards did Karaoke and tore the house down with a couple fun numbers (Weird Al and Thomas Dolby), croaky voice and all, and met a new friend who is intriguing. It's not love at first sight exactly, but...what is it?

2)Any story about lower voter turnout that doesn't mention the voter ID requirements is missing something important. There was a small but consistent number of people who were legitimate voters who could not vote, or who appeared at the wrong polling station. ELections Canada is saddled with some onerous rules and does its best on a shoestring, but problems are inevitable.

3)I registered a man who looked more whitebread than I am, who was born in Samarkand. SAMARKAND. which is evidently in what is now Uzbekistan. Amazing, amazing what you see when you work an election.

4) I understand Harper's strategy. It's Rovian 50%+1, playing on pure tactics to peel off the bare number of seats to get the majority. BUt somehow this genius took Quebec -Quebec of all places! for granted. Lots of ugly identity politics in the air, I fear.

I wonder, now, about doing Once in a Lifetime at the next Karaoke. Could I do it justice?

Crossfade

I'm enjoying using my new livejournal, a requirement for joining the MVK board of directors. The posts there are simple, matter of fact. It feels more public somehow, which I suppose it is. This blog feels more like Memoir. I've never successfully kept a diary, but LJ seems easier somehow.

Wednesday was the first board meeting, Thursday was Jedi's birthday and meeting his new gal (I like her, and the Bettie Page 'do doesn't hurt either) and Friday was Elections Canada training followed by sending off a resume, followed by my Mac Dying.



So now I'm doing some wrap up at work, which is also my only computer access until my Mac is fixed, however long that will take. May go to the Island tomorrow for turkey with the niece. All so frustrating and strange. I must remember the old saw about how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

Tonight we party like it's 1992.

The song is amazing, The video is incomprehensible,
Ladies and Gentlemen, from the dawn of Nu Metal,

Faith no More.



We were So Happy...
Things worked out better than we had planned
Capital from boy, woman and man
We were like ink and paper
Numbers on a calculator
Knew arithmetic so well
Working overtime
Completed what was assigned
We had to multiply ourselves

A bouncing little baby
A shiny copper penny

And he spent himself
Would not listen to us
But when he lost his appetite
He lost his weight in friends

Baby became a fat nickel so fast
Then came puberty
Exponentially
Soon our boy became a million
People loved him so
And helped him to grow
Everyone knew the thing that was best
Of course, he must invest
A penny won't do (no) A penny won't do (nooo)
A penny won't do (no) A penny won't do (nooo)

But he made us proud
He made us rich
But how were we to know
He's counterfeit

Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)
Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)
Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)
Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)

Lovers in a dangerous time.

So on Saturday, after helping set up equipment for a community-based leather party, going home, voting for the beleaguered local candidate (Memo to [Unnamed political party]: when Mr. "Nelson Mandela is a Terrorist" MP sends me a piece of [Unnamed political party] propaganda using his free mailout paid for by [Unspecified Calgary Riding] taxpayers to me six months before an election - well, that pisses me off, son), heading back downtown for the AGM of said organization, then heading back South of the Fraser for a friend's birthday party, I somehow got elected to the board of directors of said leather organization.

Time will tell if this is a good idea or not, I suppose. But they need bodies, and as C said Friday night, what's more important to your future? And since that epiphany at Rascal's a few months ago, it's been clear where the future lies, one way or another.

More later. I need to haul a dresser over to Value Village while the sun shines.

***

I didn't go in to work yesterday at all, though there are a few things left to do - there is simply no rush. My South African quasi-replacement (doing the work of three people) radiates a fearsome competence and is sure he can handle everything. Well, who am I to tell him no? I'm just spending a few days cleaning up the home front, putting L's art in storage.

-Any prospects yet? Teak asked on Saturday.

Haven't looked, really, I'm taking a few days to shake the panic out.

-Well, you're very employable.

***

Driving home from the storage locker, I get to Cambie and pause for a second as the advanced Green Turn left arrow ignites. It's physically difficult not to turn left, head east, to the office and/or the many domestic oriented megastores there - IKEA, Home Depot, Staples - as I have done easily hundreds of times. All over now. I shake my head and head straight, an angry and aggressive Richmond Driver already swerving around on my right to speed southwards at top speed, the delay of perhaps 3 seconds utterly intolerable. You go, buddy. The decaying leaves on the recycle bin outside my place formed some kind of burgundy paste, and I note my arm is now covered in wine coloured stripes, along with my shirt. The setting late afternoon sun is golden, dying,wabi-sabi, as I think about taking the long way home. But no good reason to, nothing to do and nowhere to go, so I wend my way back to the place, picking the indirect path required by this city's strange variations on a grid layout.

***

Get home, dive into the cleanup and at long last find my phone, in a place it could not possibly have been that I have looked in several times already. The Republic is saved. Then, remember too late that the 2nd Obama/McCain debate is tonight, catch the last few minutes then dart to the store for cheap Chinese before it closes. The post debate analysis is reassuring, it was hard to tell much from my limited slice. Finally can phone a few folks who have been concerned about my well being, start job hunting in earnest. Mom has been having kittens, in her way. Time to call her.

***

The conversation is smooth enough, but I'm getting tired. We won't do Thanksgiving. Or maybe we will. Fall asleep watching Colbert. No outrage left. Trying to arrange things with L, who wants to send money and hadn't heard anything about anything (Par for the course in her family, so obsessed with secrecy) and wants to know the story but I have no strength for the telling. Safari keeps dying as I compose. why? Exhausted. Barely able to rise at 4 AM, shut off the infomercials, andf the lights, and stagger to bed.

Hey. Dog. Fuck you, Black Dog.

It's about 8:40 Pm on Thursday when everything grinds to a halt. I turn off the CNN feed, close the chat window with JediSchoolDropout, lean back in my (her) chair, and realize I have no desire to go anywhere or do anything, and no idea what I would do, anyways. I should go back in to work, and finish emptying my desk, but even contemplating the thought is strange. ..And then what? Is all I can think, overwhelmed, numb. High school led to university, first degree led to second major, led to third degree, led to Japan led to Library School led to L, led to this job led to heartbreak led to unemployment and to brick wall, sometime in the next week.

Thirty Nine and I can go anywhere, do anything. But the problem with my generation has never been an inability to make choices or recognize the necessity: it has been that we are expected to choose in a game of 52 card monte. As Bruce once said, the problem isn't that we need to pick a door and go through it: the problem is that there are a hundred doors, they open and close at random, and many - maybe even most - have brick walls behind them. Case in point. Nineteen years of my life have brought me through the pachinko machine to this point.

I need to get up, do something. Everything tiny thing is frustrating. I still can't find my phone, the cat wants attention, I can''t even do laundry because some stupid cow has abandoned loads in all three machines. HOw is it Thursday? I have no idea. I recognize the inner brittle feeling, know I need to move, to do something. Alll I can think to do is drive, get some of my favorite Chinese takeout. I am medicating with food but I need to go. The gym is already closed. Knight street and the bridge are wall to wall with construction for miles, so I have to detour absurd lengths to go via Oak. I cannot think of what I did this week. How is it Thursday? I force myself to reconstruct it.

Tuesday I sang with Phantom and the gang at the Jupiter, seems job losses are imminent for a lot of our community. Did okay with Something About You and Round Here, too flat and tired by the time I did Side. Wednesday...Wednesday was the munch, only four of us, Shibbari and the host were deep in BDSM philosophy again. Dropped by Jedi's, the two of us commiserating, our conversation rich, expansive. Human history is clear to us, but what to do about it, another matter. Today the fired VP development, a thoroughly decent man, bought me coffee and suggested the time was to move fast, grab what I could, and introspect later. Bird in the Hand, and all. Start getting prospects in the hopper. SportsTalk on the radio, I think of Fireworks,

She said she didn't give a fuck-a-bo-ut hockey, I never heard anyone say that before.

Home, the cat buzzes around me in a quantum shell , curious about my day-olds and fried beancurd and mushrooms, and I wonder when my life became a William Gibson novel, Bulgarian pop music, planetary infonet, and all. But no email from assassins in mirrorshades with a job offer. The analysis from some distant galaxy confirms my suspicions, Palin did okay, but Biden won, The adults are back at last, far, far too late. Sink exhausted into the couch, let Jon Stewart take me out. Sleep helps, food helps. Laundry will help, eventually. Morrison's Invisibles in my mind, the clarity that comes with the gun in the mouth, the inevitable arrived at last as it always did and always will.

I know the secret of magic.
There is only one day.
There is only ever one day, and it is today,
The day of nine dogs, the day of illusions.
Today will always be the day of nine dogs.

Do you understand now?

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

Half the company has been laid off at a stroke. I feel strangely calm, under the circumstances. I guess your priorities just come into sharp focus at such a time. Why waste time feeling angry? I have things to do. The only galling bit was to be told (in effect) that I wasn't enough of a generalist. Five years of not being specialized enough, and now this. I'm employed until the 17th, but it's mainly in service of wrapping things up. Loose ends and such. Heh. At least I'll be able to retrieve my personal files and music off my machine. The company will be reeling for years. Oh well, as I've been saying since May, Not My Problem Any More.

I'll have UI, and references, and I'm not without resources. But still. That ol' iceberg sure showed up fast, didn't it?

Sauve Qui Peut; or, Arashi ga Kitta.

Did it bother you, needing to deal with your ex's paperwork? Asked C, over salad last Monday, wondering why I was so detached and sealed in my own head.

She was right, of course. I'd been in a foul mood all that week, and much of it had come from needing to scan and send off to L a nastygram from the BCSL people. Her payments bouncing because she hadn't put money in her account, the letters coming to me because she hadn't changed her address with them. I've warned her about this, and about her need to file taxes, but it's ultimately not my responsibility. I think she's gotten bad advice - potentially disastrous advice - on the tax front, but what can I do? Warn her yet again?

Of course, it stirs bad feelings because she owes me a little money. This has happened before, and of course I stepped in each time and did what needed to be done, but no longer.

In the scheme of these things, it's not so much. I have a friend who had his bank account cleaned out and his car stolen by his girl, (he eventually married her) and a cousin who was almost murdered by his wife for the Life Insurance (and if not for the RCMP intercepting the plot when her new lover was a little too clumsy when mail ordering poison, she might have succeded). So, perspective is helpful at staunching- or at least slowing- the curdling of feeling. And it's more the money that she doesn't owe me per se, anyways, that galls, the gifts unreciprocated the year she was away, the inability to remember my birthday, and so on. She has a gift for me, she says, that she will bring back from Korea when she comes back. Of course, she's postponed her return many times, so that only reminds me of other broken promises, so you see the problem. She says I'll see her in the Spring. Sure. But she said that last Fall, too. And then went to the Phillipines, with her lover, as it turned out.

She says, and has said, she will pay me back, and I don't doubt her sincerity or desire so much as her finances and her - well, let's just say that she and I both are bad at keeping things organized, if in different ways. We both thrived in chaos long before we met and will continue to do so as we tumble through the cosmos on our increasingly divergent paths.

But in any case, I should count on no financial help from that quarter. Certainly not in a timely fashion, or enough to change the big picture. How many early colonies or besieged cities scanned the horizon looking daily for the relief that would never come? I feel shamed, and petty, to think of it at all. But it chafes, slow and unyielding. All I want is a gesture. A card, even. Something to keep in my pocket while I cut my way out of the trap in which I've been caught. This is Stalingrad, and the snow has started to fall, and it's sixty miles of Russians and landmines between me and anything resembling safety.

So, what to do? It seems, now, that junking this job unless absolutely necessary is to be avoided. For the storm has finally come, and like most of my generation, I am still paying off the debt of 1980's educational policy. How is it that I didn't lay a solid foundation in my 20's? writes my new acquaintance the sex columnist, but of couse, almost no one our age did, because there were no careers to be had, and no one had any idea what to do about it, least of all our elders. Education is valuable for its own sake, they said, and Student Loans are a great deal. It's free money! When I hear my baby boomer colleague complaining about how kids today don't seem "passionate" about education and learning, or I read that professional flibbertygibbet Margaret Wente yack about how we've all done it to ourselves with our Student Loans and Credit Cards, I want to commit an act of violence. Or introduce them to my English Advisor, a briulliant woman who was still working as a sessional instructor in her late forties, her Phd juat allowing her to be a better class of temp.

We were all fleeced, you fools. It's a casino and the game is rigged.

Anyway, priorities. Redouble my efforts to pay down debt, whatever the cost. Perhaps a second job. Well, after the election, anyway, which will see me working as a registration officer. Anything will help. But what about all my friends, my countrymen, in worse positions than I am? I at least have options. I'm afraid for you all. Even L, rich family or not.

We have been standing and talking when we should have been running. And all my years of education may have done is let me see, clearly, what is coming, and what it means as the snowflakes start to fall, ere the snows begin to swallow us and everything we hold dear.

The cake is a lie.

It's been strange, seeing what gets in this blog and what doesn't. No great chunks of biography, just small, often cryptic notes. For every one I write, at least three don't get written, or hang around under drafts. For four months I've been reevaluating everything, and yet my perspective keeps changing, shifting, and I keeping seeing new possibilities amid the deaths of old ones.

For example, I met someone on a personals site with an entertaining blog, who, while a curvy gal herself, has decided to date only men lighter than her. Why? because the people you hang with have an influence on what you do, and who you become. A heavy partner will make you heavier, an active one the opposite.

The horrible thing is, she's right, you know? It sounds so very cold, but on the other hand, you are what you do, and being inactive will kill you. It's not the weight, it's the lack of exercise. In May, I found myself turning away from a lot of my hobbies - gaming and so forth - because they were sedentary. Married men's hobbies, Settled hobbies. Not places to meet women. Instead I got active, hit the gym, poured energy into constructive things. And I kind of miss the craziness and the horrible energy and the not being able to sleep, because damn it, when you sleep an hour a day you get things done. And yet when I started to sleep and I started to get back to normal and see my friends again socially, what was the first thing to go? Time for exercise. And when I have gotten out and met girls? Well, I've been doing a lot of things with C, but they tend to be things like shows, and gaming. And that's not what I need. Or what she needs, either, come to think of it.

Is that really it? A choice between friends and no exercise (and an early exit), or exercise while snubbing friends?

People say that you need balance. But my life, thanks to my sedentary work that I have to drive to, is already unbalanced. My coworkers eat like birds, trying desperately not to let the job kill them. I step outside and see dozens of programmers and office types desperately jogging around the compound in their every spare moment, trying to stave off the inevitable. It's madness, all of it. And it's my life, at least for a few months yet.

Is the answer really to throw it all out? Throw it away? Renounce my deskwork and do what? Become a day labourer?

I need to throw out scads of my life, I know. May made that clear. The things that used to bring me joy suddenly turned to poison, to reminders of things that will never happen. I have a bookcase full of books about Japan, for instance, against the day I would return to Japan to work, or get that fourth year of Japanese and go work for Monbugakushoo. I could have been a Japanese bureaucrat. There might even still be time now. But I won't go back there alone, and my dream of going with her is dead. She'll go with her lover. Maybe I'll go in five years, or ten. But it's a young person's game, and so all those books have to go. I've started already. I could have been a Lawyer. Could have gotten a masters in English, or Theatre. But there's no money for such things, certainly not if you're over 30. I doubled down on a Library degree and a job with my all-but-fiancee's family, and the house won, hard.

All I can do now is simplify, and so I have been. Giving things away, selling some other stuff, giving some of her things back to her Aunt. But there is so much yet to do. I have been sleepwalking so long, and I awake from dreams, and I awake, and awake, and awake, yet never seem to reach daylight. I am a trained librarian working as an accountant, and the time has come at last, dispassionately, to weed.

Prospero or Faustus, either way, the end is the same, if you want to save yourself.

I will burn my books. Ah, Mephistophiles.

Monstrous Wheel

I want to write, but don't seem to get much time to really get into the details of what's going on. It's been a busy week or so; in the past 10 days I have seen (and heard from) easily 90% of the people who are dearest to me in the world, friends of twenty and even thirty years' duration, loved ones near and far, related and not.

And yet, as I settle to the end of this odd vacation, I find myself mulling the news of my friend's niece, who at 14, went to the doctor last week for a soccer injury and thanks to a random question discovered she has cancer of the bone marrow and the lymphic system, with no clear origin point.

Beautiful, athletic, sparkling. Fourteen. My niece's age.

It makes me angry, in a profound and subtle way. Words seem irrelevant, in the face of that. Except perhaps in the sense Ondaatje meant in White Dwarfs and Other Worlds, writing of the deaths of stars and mutilation of mules, of snuffing out of talents and cutting out of tongues, profoundly sad and yet refusing to surrender something to the dark, something small, human, undefined. Dignity, perhaps.

So after such an obscenity, what would I want to write of, anyway.

Wryeclan '08

I'm recovering from the week's reunion, nursing a few insights in what used to be my maternal Grandfather's basement, reading Charles Stross' Singularity Sky while browsing on dial up and otherwise hiding out from the late-summer Alberta heat:

1) I had no idea the reunion would hammer home my new singlehood at every turn;

2) My career path seems to bear no resemblance to anything my profession has anticipated, to judge by the capricious and unreasonable demands for even the most entry-level of positions;

3) I am rapidly accumulating demands on my time, not all of which are helpful. And on That note, i get to juggle quite a few of them this weekend. Heh.

Ah well, I fly home tomorrow. All will be well. And Stross is really enjoyable.

If I am so smart...

Why is it I've spent all week killing myself for my day job and various social obligations, only to now, finally having driven a stake through that project, find myself pulling an all-nighter before a 7AM flight (Bus at 430!) just so I can fire off a couple applications and maybe get some packing done. I clearly need to be doing something differently.

And one of the postings, I now see, evidently wants not merely references, but reference letters. For on call casual work with no guarntee of hours. Five years experience and I can't get an interview to answer the phones at XPL, and now this.

Why oh why did I ever enter this field? It surely seemed like a good idea at the time...

"What I'm saying is, I like you"

One interesting consequence of being attracted to intelligent women is that you sometimes find yourself hanging with people who are so smart that it makes them socially awkward, and they can be difficult to have conversation with because they find it so difficult to tone things down to your level. But when someone of that ilk takes a liking to you and wants to take you shopping for something a bit flashier, well, you just say yes, stupid, once you wrap your head around the fact she's not making fun of you. And try not to feel too much like a tongue-tied adolescent when you're around her. It's strange how many of us were shy growing up, now that we strut around in enough leather and harness to outfit a Roman legion, but there you are.

LadyFlourine has a boyfriend, has her pick of play partners, (all of whom are as intimidated as I am) and that awkwardness makes her hard to converse with, and yet somehow she sees something of interest here, and just wants to hang out and do normal things. She also gets a glint in her eye talking about piercings and eyeing my virginal skin, but she's just joshing.

...I think?

Choose your own adventure!

Someone you know, who you have told very clearly that you "could only be friends" has done her best to hold herself in check but has made a pass at you. Do you break her heart now and cut off all contact or try to compromise and almost certainly break her heart later anyways?

Do it now! turn to page 73

Do it later! turn to page 101


Fuck, I hate being put in this position. But you know? Some women must feel like this All. The. Time.

So for Today's dating site adventure...

I had to give the brush off to someone I believe to be a closeted transsexual who wrote every communication in rhyme. It was like having the Riddler come on to you, in a bad dress.

Hey, they can't *all* be fun and titillating stories...

Kinky Karaoke!

Went out to a karaoke night in the West End and had a good time with a mixed poly/kinky group, of which I knew a few folks. Good and interesting to see a younger crowd., but man, am I out of practice. My guts were roiling (the bad chinese food may have helped there), and I had a hard tome getting a solid core of air, but got to do a couple faves:





I still have JC Superstar stuck in my head from Sunday, to boot.

Been up late pretty much every night the last several days, since discovering a couple of interesting dating sites. Taking a couple pages from Savage Love and seeing if I can meet people who are good folks first and GG second. It's worth a shot...

Off to Pride...

...don't wait up.

Mr. Andersen, welcome back. We missed you.

Had a co-worker insult me to my face today, and frankly, I don't have to take that. I don't care how much experience you have; I've done the fucking legwork. Look, I've set things up the way I have set them up for a reason, and if you want me to change them, at least listen to my reasoning: because the fact is that I considered doing things your way, and rejected that approach, for actual reasons, and while you may disagree, I do have them. And if you won't let me finish a sentence of my explanation, say "I won't argue with you", and storm off calling me hopeless, all I can say is:

Enjoy doing it yourself, lady. In about...16 to 20 weeks. But I think you'll find that first step is a lu lu...and if you don't smarten the fuck up you'll find out a lot sooner.

Applied for PT/On Call at Large Public Library today. We will see.

Happy Endings Ain't F' Wimps

Fans! is back. How did I miss this?

This is one of the oldest webcomics, and a few years ago went dark, putting its archives behind a paywall and wrapping up all its remaining loose ends. It seems to be back with a vengeance, and that particular theological argument (paywall or mechandising) seems to be settled.

Well, almost all its loose ends, except the question of how things would work out in its central relationship. And here's where I have a dilemma, as discussing that without giving away a major spoiler that only appears in the 1600th installment of an 1750 episode webcomic is a hard trick to pull off. But it's fair to say that this is one of the only mainstream portrayals of a non-vanilla relationship I know of, and one that treats kinkiness as a character trait, not a plot device or something to be overcome. This is s strip about Science Fiction Fans saving the world, after all, and next to all the other tpes of geekdon, an unconventional relationship seems to fit very naturally.

It's odd to me how much there seems to be a link between geekyness and kinkiness. Teak mentioned this a month ago, and Jaye's new friend mentioned it last week. And here again.

I need to dig into this more in writing, I think. Well, after I feed C's cats, do the recycling, and pack for tomorrow. God, I hate being a night owl at times. If I last at my job long enough to leave on my terms it will be a major miracle.

Useless, but not for long/ The future, is comin' on

Well, it's not as if I mind that your heart ain't exactly breaking.

So it seems Lief had a pre-existing arrangement, which was very casual, but he's now asked to tighten things up a bit, and that's where she wants to spend her energy. I don't think Teak saw that coming when she tried putting the two (three?) of us together.

On the one hand, it's a shame, because our styles were pretty compatable, but on the other, I am still pretty messed up in a relationshippy sense, which is what I think Lief was starting to think about. And there were about 2 or 3 major deal breakers lurking like mines below the surface out in the medium distance- religion, drugs, and health, just for starters. So, that was an entertaining two weeks, anyway.

And well, on the other front, Teak has a girlfriend who she's crazy about, occasional urge to indulge boxing glove impulses with me or not, so better start investigating other baskets and the possibility of eggs to be put in.

Where does this leave me? Itches a little scratched, feeling a little better, but the fundamentals are unchanged. A little higher up the hill, a little bit more braced for when the next wave comes.

And once again, a bit numb.

It's Niece's birthday this weekend, so that should be a good time, if I can keep it from being a drain-Uncle-of-all-his-money fest...Ai ya.

Reviews!

Thursday: Saw Spamalot, with friends. Excellent. Can't discuss without spoilers.

Friday: Saw The Dark Knight in IMAX, with friends. Excellent. Can't discuss without spoilers.

Saturday: Teak's out of town, so went to Rascal's with Lief. She has an excellent bed for chaining people to. Excellent. Can't discuss without spoilers.

Sunday: Had best Dim Sum in Vancouver, with Lief and roommate. Excellent. Highly recommended. Catsitting for C while she is away at brass camp. Watched Penn and Teller's Bullshit! Season One. Excellent. I don't beleve it's a spoiler to say they debunk a lot of bullshit.

Monday: The heat finally breaks a little, but my desk is Ice Station Zero. Bad news in the company family. Work itself awful and draggy. Bah. Procedures Manual. Writer's Block. Can't work from home with my machine having brain seizures. Not a gripping read. Thumbs down, way down.

Applecore

I also wrote this yesterday, and RMT kinda liked it. Who knows, I may need to prove authorship some day.

So, called Apple Care, they close at Six

Thus, went down to the Apple Store.

But, it seems we all need our appointments

If- we want to see the "Genius Bar" for service.

"Yeah, you can make an appointment online", says the iClerk.

"But, my computer's broken." I then say.

"Gee, that's too bad," says the nervous blueshirt,

"Here, use our internet" he goes on.

"Okay, there's my contact info" says I,

"Whoops, no space today", he then opines.

"Hey, it only shows Thursday Friday", I note.

"Yeah, I guess just two days at a time-

Hey! whatabout tomorrow night or Friday"?

"No, I'm not free till Saturday", I then sigh,

"This", I make a gesture, "is a bad business model"

"Gosh", says iClerk Stephen, chastened.

"But," I'm trying, "can't I just drop it off here?"

"No", he checks with someone orange,

"No, it takes time to take your info"

Fuck, I'm thinking, how much fucking info?

"Here", says Stephen, quickly, "our card with web address"

Again, I'm thinking, My computer's busted

"Thanks", I say and smile but don’t quite mean it,

Out, I walk, while thinking to myself,

Damn, this place sure looks like Mammon,

Mammon, with these yuppies groping touchscreens,

Gasping, like they've never fucked before.

Soviet Akihabara

Better today. The sunlight doesn't bother me, and the black dog seems to be at bay. For now.

Took my broken Mac Mini down to the Apple Store, and ran into a brick wall, with the chipper but helpless iClerk completely unable to do anything, as imprisoned in his script as any bishoojo shopgirl I met in Tokyo, his faintly panicked smile exactly like those I saw when some hapless teenager was wondering what to do with the crazy crazy Gaijin who just kept wandering all over the invisible lane markers on the highway of shared cultural assumptions, always wanting to know why. Asking those horrible, horrible why questions. The staff are wonderful, the service friendly, but they literally cannot do a thing once you jump the tracks of their little customer service script. And the script requires you to make an appointment online to get your machine serviced.

What the propellerheads at Apple never seem to have contemplated is:

1) If someone's computer is not working, their internet access is likely to be nil.

and

2) Even if you let people use the store computer, if your store refuses to see anyone without an appointment, it may be a good idea to let people book an appointment more than 48 hours in advance.

not to mention

3) Some computer problems really do not require a half hour appointment. They just need 5 minutes, as in: Hi, my computer's RAM is bad, I already ran a diagnostic using your tools, it's under warranty, here's my proof of purchase and my contact info, call me when it's ready. byyyeeee!

Hello, again.

-It sounds like you're trying to use all this anger and negative energy and bend it to your own purposes, said Teak over dinner, last week.

That's right,

I say to her, as I have so many times, to myself,

I understand, from when my lover died ten years ago, grief is a kind of poison. I'm not going to sit in my apartment, and wait for the black dog to show up.

-But the black dog is here with you already. It already has its teeth in your throat.

...

I can't recall what I said to that. I think I just listened, and let her speak of when her heart was ripped out, not so long ago.

But something is breathing down my neck today, for sure.

Line of the night

-So, what would the Catholic Church think of you going out with a Pagan Priestess?

I think they'd be fine with it, so long as I felt sufficently guilty and confessed afterwards. Not like I'd be able to escape, really.

-True. And you could always confess to me.

That could work.


Also note, recovering heartbreak victims, if someone says

"Hey, wanna go to Vegas sometime?"

and your first thought is

OHMIGODSHEWANTSTOGOTOVEGASANDGETMARRIED,

No, it's just you, freaking out, and yes,
it means you are still kinda f'ed up.

And on that note, yes, C is just fine.

Clumsy. Or, yeah, before stepping into mid-air, let's just make note of this moment...

So, I have LD's birthday party at 5, Then afterwards Lief is coming over for dinner and ?, Teak may be joining us if she's free, and on the tail end of that IM conversation, C innocently messaged and asked what I was doing tonight. I really hope that wasn't the sound of her vanilla crush finally smashing against the brick wall of how things are. Sigh. I like you, but I can only protect you from yourself so much, kiddo. I thought you'd gotten over that. I hope I'm just imagining things...

I'm worried enough - or precoccupied enough - with me, Lief, and Teak and how that's gonna play out. I think when two hungry hungry people sit down to dinner, it's hard to focus on planning the menu and waiting for your dining companion, rather than just diving headfirst into the buffet. And yet, here we are sitting down to dinner anyway.

Speaking of which, better stop by the drugstore...just in case. Lief is ravenous, after all.

Damn, this stuff is so very complicated. A function of the complexity of the personalities involved, I am sure, but still...

Clothes Swapping

Placeholder, wherein I discuss hanging at a vestement-related social gathering with Teak, and gratuitous nudity occurs.

Today's Job Interview, as a haiku.

Painfully rusty:
A bunt, a single at best
Needed a triple.

My Dinner with Teak. (July 8)

A placeholder. Wherein, I try to catch up the last two weeks. hah!

Never Asked Questions, July 2008

So it's difficult to find the time to blog, but I will keep chipping at it. In case anyone wonders,

-There really is a lot more going on than I get a chance to blog about. I'm in a recovery phase, and the less time spent in front of a computer the better. I have spent 10 hours a day at a desk for a living for four years now, and that's stopping as soon as I figure out how. Maybe a book some day. Who knows? Will I ever get back to talking about meeting Phil Foglio or that douche merchant on ebay? Who can say?

-No, nobody wore a fur suit. There was a cute set of fuzzy ears, and a lot of collar and leash play, and woof woof noises, and some doing it like they do on the discovery channel, but it was in general just plain adorable. I supplied the petting and brushing.

-No, there isn't really a theme per se. But writing in English should be pithy, it should be funny, and it should teach you something.

-I've reverted back to my traditional name for this blog, not so much because I need the anonymity, but because others might. Every name in here is a pseudonym, and some of them are pseudonyms for a pseudonym. I don't really care about my anonymity at this point, and may never again, but some of the folks I'm meeting now are very young, and may not be out to their parents, and so on. People's lives can get destroyed by some of this stuff. Many interesting stories to tell, but not all in this venue, I think.

Didn't see that one coming, or, Department of things to do before I die.

Things to do before I die checklist:

57) Have a threesome in a fancy hotel with an ex-porn star and a furry, both at least ten years younger than I am:

done.

And no, I'm not telling you that one.

But it was fucking awesome. And, all things considered, pretty wholesome.

Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was a freak like meee...

Strange creatures; or, dances with she-wolves (June 18-20)

Note to those that know me personally: if you read the following, you'll be able to infer some things about my sex life, if I haven't told you already. But that's okay. If you haven't told me already, I've probably inferred a few things about yours too. When they put me in the ground, I'd like it remembered: I lived, damn it.

Note the date: I've been recovering faster than I can blog about it. That is a good thing. I'll backfill later, but for now, the short version: Once I started to be able to sleep at night around June 6 or so, and the physical symptoms abated, and I'd cleared my space some, things turned around. The first two weeks were murderous physically and mentally, and the last two have been much better by comparison. I'm not questioning it, you understand.

All of which found me, on Wednesday, at a munch at a cafe on Commercial. Now a munch, for those of you who don't have familiarity with the term, is a kind of coffee klatch for the leather and PVC set to meet up in civvies and get to know one another under relaxed circumstances. Think of it as a community-based defence mechanism against predators, a kind of secret handshake. I'd only been to one since L went to Asia, and this one had moved from an old location under, ah, political circumstances while I wasn't paying attention. But still, it was good to go out and practice my social skills again. I only knew a couple of the people there, and them distantly, as most of my and L's old running crew has scattered either to marriage or sadder fates far from the city. But this kind of gathering was where I first met L, and if you want to get back in the habit of meeting people, you have to go where the people you'll want to meet are. This was a small one, only about a dozen people, with a few vets but mostly younger people.

And it's all about the people. I'll get to the three leatherdykes and the gorgeous Asian boy I spent Saturday night with in a minute, but first, let me say this: as far as I am concerned, there are two and only two truly great Star Trek authors, Diane Duane and the late John M. Ford. And Duane wrote one truly amazing and transcenent novel, called The Wounded Sky. In it, the Enterprise must save the universe from being consumed by a kind of anti-entropy, a higher plane which is for all intents and purposes indistiguishable from Heaven. A Heaven in which people can, at long last, become the version of themselves they are inside.

You know the Matrix, where everyone is an idealized version of themselves? Pretty cool, right? But it's actually tame compared to Duane's version, which predates it by at least a decade. If you could really become who you are inside for everyone else to see, why would everyone stay the same gender? Why would everyone stay, say, human?

So anyway, at the Munch I met Prince, (a pseudonym that's not based on the singer, just a kind of riddle. A prize to anyone who solves it) a very nice 22 year old University student, cute, shy, slender and Asian, who'd managed to get out to a couple events but been too shy to approach someone. An interest in rope, and being tied up by strong women. All kind of...familiar. And I recognize Karma when I see it.

Prince, you're with me, I said, Let's go to Rascal's on Saturday. I'll help you get your feet wet, introduce you to some people.

"But would anyone want to play with me?" He says.

I smile at everyone else at the table, all of whom smile back at me. "Prince, you're young, cute, and want to be tied up...." Everyone else is grinning as I finish, "I don't think you'll have any trouble."

I arrange to pick him up at the cafe on Saturday after he clears dinner with his folks, and practically skip as I head back to Richmond and my gaming crew. I know Karma when I see it. And I know what it was like to be 22 in an age before the internet or Savage Love, and have no idea how to proceed, and I know what it was like to have to wait until I was 27 and random chance put a prodomme in my local comic store for a visit. I'm not saying those five intervening years weren't good years, but, would I have taken the plunge at 22 if I could have?

Instantly. Once you pass through some doors, you can never go back. But for some of them, why would you ever want to?

So, skipping ahead two days (wherein, I bought a new outfit, bought a new computer, and had beer with !L), I found myself back at the same cafe, where I stolled in, flagged the newly arrived Prince, and bustled him into my car for a drive up Commercial Drive.

"What is this place?", says Prince.

"A concert venue, normally. It's an old dance hall from the 20's, I think. But anyone can rent it, and that's what Rascal's does."

"Do the neighbours complain?"

"They're used to loud music, and we try not to go outside in anything outlandish"

Prince is in his basic black outfit, dress shirt and pants, and once we get inside I will duck into the washroom and change into a millworker ensemble for the evening. Something loose, comfy, not really designed to attract anybody, just something different. It's a world of makebelieve, really, a kind of theatre, and it's contributing to the atmosphere if you dress up somewhat. Some events in town are more clubby, and insist on fetishwear, but here it's much more about socializing and play. Besides, all that PVC, latex and leather gets pricey, you know.

At the door, I introduce Prince with a smile as we pay the cover. "He's completely new", I say, and the lean sixtyish man in the thong and hawaiian shirt and the Operatic-sized woman with the breastplate the size of a Buick both break into broad smiles. "Welcome", they say, and lay out some suggestions for newbies - you don't have to play with anyone, and the first time can be overwhelming, so it might be best not to play at all.

Even though we're relatively early, the place is pretty full and we take a table near the playfloor. It's a bit like cabaret, with a front area for sitting and socializing, and a play area for apparatuses. Think of it this way: your average apartment dweller doesn't have room for a St. Andrew's Cross and a rack in their living room, especially in this city. A lot of folks are here just for the chance to just hang out and be themselves, but if you want to do some real play, you need to go to a private club or one of these events. Lots of room to swing a flogger, no neighbours, freedom to be loud, 9PM-1AM, cover charge $20. Come on down.

It's not for the faint of heart, though, and your first time can be overwhelming. Mine was (a long story in itself, for another time) but Prince is eager, full of questions about the history of the devices, the conduct of the room. I brought some books on the subject, but he drinks in the room and the atmosphere like a man emerging from a desert. I know that look, I remember it. It's like being gay and entering a gay bar for the first time. You'll either run screaming or think to yourself, At long last, I am home.

A group of visitors from the Okanagan settle down next to us, middle aged and smiling, one in a Chadour that she quickly doffs due to the heat, revealing the sleek black dress so common here. Common, but not omnipresent, as there's always variety. Lingerie, camisoles, fishnet body suits, all around. Transvestites, ponies, every variety of body type and ethnicity, even if the majority are still white. All so human, all so beautiful.

The visitors introduce themselves and I do the same. "This is Prince. It's his first time". They all grin. "This is Larry. It's his first time", one woman says, indcating a sixtyish grey-haired man in black. We are, all of us, home.

I had hoped to play with !L tonight, but she won't show up in the end, which is a disappointment. Perhaps I misunderstood something. And again, none of my old crew are on hand. A few familiar faces, sure, but no one I really knew. But the evening goes in an unexpected and welcome direction when Teak, chief dungeon monitor for the evening, stops by.

Now a party like this needs a lot of volunteers, and the monitors' job is to walk the floor and make sure that everyone is playing safely and following the legal and safety rules. Partly for liability reasons, partly to make sure everyone's being safe and willing, partly for legal protection. What's going on here is not even remotely an orgy (Hint: orgies have sex) but Fraser Q Constable may not know that, and that's why every public party has a set of rules that are posted and everyone is expected to read, thus affirming we are obeying the letter of the law. The fire code says no open flames, hence, no candlewax, for example.

T. is a charming and adorable sadist, a bookish dyke in a utilikilt, shirt, librarian glasses and cap that's been bejewelled with a rhinestone skull and crossbones. It seems Prince told a friend on Facebook I was bringing him here, and that friend dropped a bug in the ear of T. to keep an eye out for Prince, not knowing she's basically running the room tonight.

T. quickly assesses the situation and sets about finding someone to top Prince. Her initial idea is a charming woman in a fishnet top and breastless basque, who unfortunately looks like a dominant but is in fact a sub. When I chat her up, recognizing her from Appropriately-Themed-Personals-Website (ATPW), she complains about the constant confusion. people don't read the profile, she sighs, they look at one toppy photo out of eight, and the deluge begins. Male profiles on APTW outnumber women about 5 to 1, but 4 of those 5 are idiots who are pretty much indistinguishable from spammers. Can't spell? Have a picture of your cock and not your face for an introduction? buh-bye. We wind up talking about theatre, and she suggests I look at an auditions list on the VPL website. Might be worth a go.

T, meanwhile, ventures into another part of the room and comes back with a young female couple she knows who, it turns out, wouldn't mind practicing their knots on someone new. They're about Prince's age, and a bit shy, but practically luminous with joy at being here. Xi, the bottom, is a butchy South Asian boi with shaved hair and large friendly curves, while N is white, cute, and practically bouncing with energy, as if hopped up on sugar smacks. Their delight is infectious.

N reminds me of someone, but then a lot of people here do. The woman hosting the guests from the Okanagan looks uncannily like my grad school advisor, and I say so, but she obligingly musses her hair into something ridden hard and put away wet to break the spell. Larry in fact went to school with my advisor, and doesn't see the resemblance. "I've seen her more recently, Larry" I say, which settles things.

N and Xi quickly decide to haul Prince off to the back of the raised stage, which is semi-secluded. I haul some red rope (from a genuine Japanese sex shop!) and a neoprene blindfold out of my toybag, hand the rope to N and the blindfold to Prince (it helps you feel less inhibited in public, I say), and watch them go, giving Prince a push with both hands as they go. Best best case scenario ever.

"T", I ask, "do you see that couple over there?" indicating a lesbian top in a red latex dress crouching behind her petticoated partner who's down on her hands and knees with her pretty ass in the air, the top punching her partner's thighs and buttocks, a kind of impact play resembling heavy massage. "What is she using? I can't see what she's got on her hands."

"Those are actually a kind of pink boxing glove", says T. "I gave a workshop on punching a few events ago." A twinkle forms in her eye. "It's a good technique to use on bigger people. I completely messed it up when I said it, though, I think I said 'fat' and insulted half the people there. I was loopy on cough medication"

Did I just hear...

"Bigger people eh?" I put a finger to my lips. "Say....I'm a bigger person"

She puts her hand to her mouth, forming an O of mock surprise, eyes dancing. "Why...you're right!"

Oh Yes.

The Okanaganites indicate Prince up on the stage, a bit obscured from this distance, but shirtless and losing a kind of virginity as he walks through a door he has imagined his entire life, with exquisite style. Even I've never played with two female tops, however young and inexperienced.

"Looks like Prince is having a great time, eh?" Says Larry.

"Absolutely. I met him on Wednesday, he reminded me of me at that age, I said, kid, I'm taking you to Rascal's". The smiles are genuine. We all turn and watch a rite of passage - well, and a lot of other things as well, for by this point the floor is full of all kinds of remarkable things. A woman in a clown nose flogging her sub with a rubber chicken, a couple of tall and graceful ponies in full regalia and headresses - with plumes, even! -being very naughty and trying to undo each other's bridles with their teeth. And always, always, the sound of flat surfaces striking skin.

Later, Teak settles in behind me, a little tired. We've been talking a lot all evening. At some point the story of L and I, which is my explanation of why I haven't been out in public in years, came tumbling out and T has lent me her perspective and her thoughts. She's in a long distance relationship herself, she's seen many similar cases of a drift from bisexuality into lesbianism. We swap geek talk, academics and sci fi conventions, her love of Archives and my survival of Archival and Library School.

We regard Prince and smile, conspiratorially. "We've done a great thing", I say. "We've earned a lot of Karma today"
"Absolutely".

She leans on my shoulder, tired, her ankle bothering her. The weight is reassuring.

"So...boxing gloves, eh?"

"Yes, I think we can arrange something"

"You can lean harder", I say.

"I know", she says, putting weight on me, pulling me into her, subtly. "It's okay". Letting me lean into her arm, just a hint of her chest, a deep breath escaping me, almost on the verge of crying for the first time in days, my first human contact of a certain kind in a year and a half. So warm, so soft. It's just...been so long, I've been so starved for...

"I just...have such a case of Skin hunger", I say...

"I have to be clear, though," she says, "Just to be up front. I am poly, but men do nothing for me sexually any more." Once you walk through some doors...

Is that all? I try to explain that sex isn't really the point right now, for me, where I'm at. Our discussion continues, common ground forms. She tells me of her parents, both bi, and her late Father, three years gone. I speak of my double loss of ten years ago. She's very busy the next couple months, but at some point...quite possibly. I'll add her on facebook, and we'll keep talking. The discussion is wide ranging, delightful, we compare our inner sadists, she describes her relationship with her partner in California, it's all very good. She regales me with leatherdyke tales and stories of new women, rituals of going M to F, opening windows on a subculture I'd never really had a chance to contemplate. The narrative turns, looks left and right, as the worldview expands, suggesting glimpses of whole other realms previously unknown that I will never visit, save perhaps in dreams. C.S. Lewis would be proud. Well, stylistically, anyway. I don't think he'd be down with the man to our right in the chinese dress being turned into a human macrame hanging. But Lewis's vision of Heaven and Diane Duane's aren't so far apart.

"I love this place", she says, "everyone is so happy," indicating the room "...and all these people are so...normal. There's a few classic beauties, but everyone is so...normal looking. And everyone here, everyone, is just free to be themselves, as they truly are inside".

"How old are you, T?" I try to think. She seems so young, and yet...early, mid twenties?

"29."

"I thought you were younger."

"How about you?"

"I'm older than you might think. I run with a younger crowd, always have. Young outlook. I'm 38."

"You're remarkably well-preserved. Do you sleep in a cryogenic capsule?"

"It's the blonde hair. The white just blends in seamlessly."

I propose coffee afterwards for the five of us and T is down with that. I do have to stay until closing, she says, which is fine.

Prince and his captors eventually return a little after midnight, happy and exhausted, N on the verge of crashing, Prince in a light but definite subspace. We wait out the rest of the hour, watching various scenes wind up as we do, chatting about this and that, changing back into our mundane (or at least more mundane) clothes, settling on a coffee shop. The lights come up, we help stack a few chairs, and get into our cars to head back down Commerical.

Over coffee, the theme is transformation. "You know", jokes T, "one simple operation and you could become a woman, get her back, all this could be yours..."

"I think she'd see through such a transparent ploy, really". And besides, it's not like she thought to ask. The idea of crossing that line briefly? Always intriguing. Permanently? Not unless it's really who you are inside. And yet later, the thought bobs up: What if she had?

N is fading, but Teke describes a kind of Japanese full-torso sheath/ facemask combination for transvestites, that laces up behind the head and has a wig built in. "Almost like dolls", I say, And she nods, but gushes "that would be so incredibly hot!" Xi chats about furries versus animal masks. Ponies, like we saw tonight, or mask play, that can be fun. But furries, something about the cartoon googly eyes sets Xi off. I mention the infamous CSI episode and Xi has none of it. CSI completely distorted the subculture, it turns out. Not that furries aren't wierd, and not that we're "normal", as we talk about a woman who spent a party in a cage as a cat, or an online picture of a woman who pony played as a Zebra in fill body paint, or the sad lack of horsehair tails for the ponies we saw tonight. But...those damn googly eyes. And plushy isn't sexy. T tells a hilarious story of being at NorwesCon in a massive troop of Klingons in full battle regalia, all terrified of the one friendly guy who showed up at the dance in a cartoon Squirrel outfit.

They're all incredibly geeky, and horribly shy, says Xi. They relate better to people from inside their costume.

I accidentally refer to Xi as she, which is evidently a faux pas. "He", corrects T, patiently, and I murmur apologies. Good to know that even now I can still feel like a hayseed sometimes. I thus stay quiet as T regales us with a story of turning up at some kind of Catholic-themed sex party dressed up as altar boys, and giving her drag name, which is evidently Irish, which leads into an in-joke that Prince and I don't get, which she apologises for.

I don't mention my catholic upbringing, the legion of priests and nuns in the deep grass surrounding my family tree, or the fact that T's drag name is my father's and grandfather's real one. Let's save that for another time, I think.

We talk about music, and evidently MSI is a better band than I give them credit for. I must give them a better listen. Depeche Mode was evidently a lot less metaphorical in their BDSM than I thought.

(My Mom is still wrong, though, the lyric is "Why does a man HATE another man", not "Why does a man TAKE another man".)

I suggest T. check out Goldfrapp's Strict Machine, not mentioning the Man-Wolf hybrid aspects of its charming mashup of D/S, sex machines, and Little Red Riding Hood, then promise to send her the link on Facebook. She'll be pleasantly surprised.

We're all exhausted, but it's a happy exhaustion, when, at 2AM, I announce, "Let's go home, Team Leather" to general snickering. We scatter, Prince and I dropping off T and she and I parting with a hug, and friendly words. On the way home I chat with Prince about his experience, he still full of questions, and we make plans to hit the next party, in two weeks. I leave one of my books with him when I finally drop him off, just before crossing the bridge to Richmond.

3AM when I peel Cat off the old iBook, firing it up before adding Prince and T as friends. A good day, a very good day, and I crash, Goldfrapp running through my head:

I'm dressed in white noise, you know just what I want, so please...
Wonderful, Electric
Wonderful, Electric
Wonderful, Electric


....

7AM when the sun wakes me, after this, the shortest night of the year. 4 hours light sleep.

Goddamn it.

GUST POSTE by KATTT

HUU MAnn Why NO ELatsioks? Play ealstics with Isiz Throh Elsastics Thro the EKLastics Why no throooooow Whynmove boxes on boxes why amke nooise whjy why why no ealstiocs wwwhyyyy>? Want Elasitcs nooow Waaant ELastiks nooow noooooowwwwwww Nooooowwww Waaaant!

Me n' RMT (June 1, Afternoon)

So I'm in the parking lot outside the venue while MSI rip the house down, watching punks go by, and make a few calls. First is RMT.

So, we're on the phone, and the call is hard, she says something about marriage, I break down, try to sleep, can't, wake up and in the morning I send her a shitty email talking about money and crap

-Ah. So a little bitterness escaped from the reservation, did it?

....

Yeah.

-Listen, I know you're smart enough, mature enough, to fix things.

Yeah, I sent her an email apologizing for it. It was crappy of me, assholish.

-Well, there you go. You're doing the right things.



When I first talked to RMT, he asked if I was a Stoic. I wonder if I'm doing it right. Is there some sort of Stoic reading to be done?

When I first broke the news to e-Man, whenever that was, and I asked hm to tell Marshall, his words were something like: we've all been worried a long time. Now you can finally start to heal.

I guess the blood was seeping through the bandages for months. Friends do notice these things.

Bleeding through a tourniquet smile.

Steel Wool for the Lover’s Soul (June 1)

The second conversation is far harder, now that the emotion has cleared from her voice and its clear how far she has moved on, come to terms with me, clear that she let me go three months ago and has not much more to say.

Things are much clearer now, how hard the ground has become, and she is here because she loves me, to help me, but she has moved on and some things will never come again except in memory. But she knows about Barb and wants to help me through.

We each try to joke, and accidentally cut the other deeply. The connection is crappy and everything is that much harder for the repeating, I cannot raise my voice with my guests in the next room, cannot help but struggle with the words, cannot stop the tears when they come, either. The connection cuts out moments after she makes a particularly misjudged joke about marriage, and I am left to wonder if she hung up. Dear God, how I despise the Korean phone system.

I wish you had understood you could have asked me.

-I needed to come to this decision on my own.

The ground is hard, the future faint and thin and remote and beyond imagining now, for I have misjudged and not been given the whole picture, and been guilty of the faintest optimism at the worst possible time. The accommodation was made years ago, and it was she who had accommodated me. I think of straws, and like a drowning man, I cannot stop my hands from reaching for them, cannot stop. And she, gently but firmly, must turn even these aside, like holding down a man in a seizure.

It is hard, but necessary, there can be nothing now but truth, and the time for illusions and white lies is long past, long gone.

We will salvage what we can.

-Yes, we will.

Generic Whiny Punkband (May 31)

Niece will arrive today, together with her mom and her friend A, Mom and daughter having dyed their hair pink for the concert I'm driving them to on Sunday. I'd wanted to be gone back with them all last night, but she has a sewing class today.

A sewing class? That's a good sign, mom.

-Well, still, she's like your brother. Thinks she knows everything already.

Niece's hope is to be some sort of designer someday, so at least she has ambition, though there's a lot of had road between here and there. Her mom, God love her, is at least working again, which is something, given her condition. If life were a football game, Niece's Mom would be some poor schlub from the concession stand who, wearing the wrong team's colours, accidentally gets hit on the head and wanders out on the field, wondering what this football-shaped thing is that's landed in her hands just as she looks up into the murderous eyes of the onrushing defensive line of the New York Giants.

I digress.

Niece, being a cunning but completely transparent manipulator, has enveigled events so that she can see Mindless Self Indulgence, a group with a name so generic I have to write it down in order to remember it. She needs a chaperone for her and her friend in order to see the show, and I agreed to do it, but Niece and her mom decided that there was no way I'd enjoy it, and so she's taking them even though she hates the group, which is only fair, since she paid for the tickets initially. I think they imagine that the group is too hardcore for the likes of me, which I find hilarious, sitting here listing to Front Line Assembly rip its way through Millenium And Vigilante. I did give MSI a listen, and it quickly became apparent I could sit through their show, seeing as they constantly reminded me of other, better punk and electronica bands, who were, you know, actually musically inclined. Maybe I chose the tracks poorly, I dunno. But hey, probably not a time for acquiring new musical tastes anyway.

Stone Garden II (May 30)

Better living through chemicals. The over the counter stuff is enough to knock my semi delerious self into a fugue state long enough to sleep 5 hours or so, while Mom vents her frustrations on a weedy patch by the front door. Somewhat recharged at last, time to begin making arrangements for L's things. Her Aunt S. is very concerned for me when I call, extending an unexpected wing to gather me in, solicitous, angry.

This isn't fair to expect that of you, not at all.

It has to be done, I say, there is no one but me.

I do not add that L almost expected me to throw her things out the window. Aunt S offers any help she can, and we will see. I have been needing for a very long time to go through everything i own, as well, so this will not be quick. I remember as she speaks that Aunt S has been through something similar, has been in my shoes. She is, if anything, taking my side. It's complicated, I say, no one is to blame here. Dancing around things I cannot mention. She and I will be fine. We all will be fine. But time will have its pound of flesh. We talk of that dark place we both know so well, that must be crossed. She also advises eating well, and exercise. Swimming is good, she says. The water supports you, the repetitive motion calms.

Putting down the phone, I see mom, upset, emptying the dishwasher. Aunt S really enjoyed seeing the show with us last month, I say, which is the wrong thing to say, as mom begins to tirade about dad's behaviour there. Can't stand the theatre, but can't stand to be left home, it boils down to. As the conversation winds down and I get ready to go for a walk, I say something and mom says, Here, thrusts something in my hand. A stone. What? A heart shaped stone, like some cartoon valentine, rounded but rough.

What is this?

Found it in the garden, she says. Found it while I was digging.

Spoiler Warning

May 27. Another placeholder. I think this one needs a little bit of distance and an edit, maybe. Also, it's a companion piece of sorts to Stone Garden, which I wrote in 2002. Check back later.

May 28. The Black Posse Rides. Or: home is where you hang the shotgun.

Wracked with nerves all day, but finally get to Parksville about 6. The cool car deck of the ferry is calm eough, the ambient music I have cued up relaxing enough, that I get a precious 30 minutes of sleep, before I'm jolted awake by the forgotten and unfortunate presence of Gorillaz' Clint Eastwood. Angry music, good for venting, not for resting.

I had forgotten how purely physical the experience of grief is, how lodged in the body. Even in the mind, it feels physical, like ice skating. Keep your thoughts moving forward, narrow, lightly - stop, press down, or think of anything in detail, and the ice cracks and pain comes welling up, overwhelming. I had forgotten the details of grief, so constant and unrelenting those first weeks of 1998, I must have blocked them out. But part of me now watches detatched, taking what notes it can.

My mind is clear, lucid, but helpless to fight biology. I try to read Robert Kirkman's Invincible, but cannot manage more than a few pages at a time. Arriving home, Mom is as tired as I am, welcomes me in and we talk, moving over ground familiar and worn. So many times we've had to pull through sadness together. Dinner is beef stew and screwdrivers with decent OJ, me hoping to take the edge off long enough to eventually sleep, and mom joins in as well, mourning things that will never be. It quickly becomes apparent that I am too restess, pacing like a caged animal. She talks and I cannot focus as she speaks of untold times before she met dad, of stringers-along and days in Jamaica. She offers what help she can, but is hamstrung by being a youngest member of the greatest generation, the complicated relational algebra of generations X and Y is a foreign country to her, let alone the vector calculus that its more adventuresome members get up to.

Your father won't understand the lesbian thing, she says, best not to mention it. You know he's never quite wrapped his head around his sister.

Ah yes, poor unhappy, haunted aunt N. The baleful ghost of my grandfather, who smashed and drank his way through his wife and four children for decades before cancer finally took the old bastard down, gloats.

I wish you had had the chance to meet him, my dad said once.
So do I, I thought, thinking dark things, but not for the reasons you might think.

Dad phones later, from Peace River, his birthday today, they marked the occasion as any workplace might and he is cheerful about that, concerned for me. We'll talk when he passes through, I assure him. Hard to do things over the phone. I'd thought they might be more angry for me, and there is some of that, but more sadness. There are no black hats here, however clumsily this has unfolded. Well, maybe mourning hats.

It was ten years ago, I say. She nods.

I remember that old and empty place, ten years ago, I remember wailing, wracked, in the middle of the night, Mom holding me as she used to.

I don't want to forget her, I said
You never will, said Mom, you never will.

The old pain comes, now, wells up and I am hardly in the conversation any more.

Try to develop new hobbies, mom says. The ones you have require you to be calm, and you won't be for a long time. No.

Certainly not tonight. Sleep is elusive as ever. In the morning I will write the angriest thing I have ever concieved. But not angry with her. Never with her.

Stone Garden (Spring 2002)

A placeholder. I have to find the original file, and one of my backups has failed. As my life is being shuffled through boxes, this might take a while.

May 28: I have seen the lightning, amid the hailstorm of doves

0230, Wednesday.

Crap. No matter how exhausted I am, I cannot stay down. On the other hand, the continued sleep deprivation is better than Peyote, as I suddenly shift up into a blissful mood and the Universe at last gives the symbol I have called for, though of course, it and its meaning is mine and mine alone. The final tumbler clicks, I see it and understand as the board unfolds again and again and again, lighting a path through the maze to suggest a future action that will, in a stroke, give happiness to everyone concerned, her family, my family, her lover, everyone. I have seen twenty seven moves ahead and squared the circle, and a small smile finally forms. Everything changes and the moment stays with me, buoys me as later, the grief pulls me under yet again.

As the night drags on, unable to sleep I attack the front room in a sluggish attempt at cleaning to prepare for Niece's upcoming visit. Driving out to drop off some recyclables off, I stop by Unnamed Interiors Store and drop her old employee mini-manual in their mailbox. Figure that one out, you meddling biddies. I smile in honor of my old University residence and our group, Tri Kuppa Brew, and our pledge to make other people's lives a little more surreal. Oh, I got plans for you, you yuppie parasites. By morning I am finished enough to attempt napping, then finally settle on taking the 3:15 boat.

above all, patience

Meanwhile...

Remember for a moment that what you see here are snapshots, and elsewhere at long last email flows back and forth, the unexplained dam of silence finally broken.

Forgive me if i seem cruel because my words are clumsy, it is all new and I am in pain

-I would not blame you if you were, I would be if you had betrayed me

You didn't, you can't steal what you are welcome to take.

-You thought I would eventually betray you?

I thought I was clear, overseas is a long way, it is a long time, I granted you absolution, all I asked was that you be safe. I thought you knew that, all you had to do was ask me. The hurtful thing is that you were silent so long. I thought I had driven you away.

The true issue is, she needs to be gone longer than I can follow. and no one can build their life around an absence indefinitely. There is no accomodation, no arrangement, that can assauge that.

-How can you be so understanding?

I was in your shoes once. We all have stories. When you are in love with two people, each unaware of the other, and one is merely words on a screen, the outcome is inevitable. When you're young, you think there must be a way out that doesn't hurt someone. There isn't. The best you can do is offer a choice.

I wish you had understood you could have asked me. I wish.

Tell me a little about her.

-Her name is L, exactly like me.

Aha. Exactly like?

-They call us L and l.

Is she vanilla? Republican?

-No, and no. She's away in canada.

Canada? okay then. Small mercies accumulate. the future widens a hair's breadth, solidifies, ever so slightly.

-I let her think you were my ex. I wasn't truthful. I feel like I am in a bad soap opera.

You latinas and your soap operas. Tell her when she gets back from Canada, tell her what's happened, tell her why you're upset. If she loves you she will understand. You must do this.

-Yes.

Panoptic City; or, the fine art of the self inflicted kidney punch.

I ride on the cresting waves of some advanced level of cumulative exhaustion. 4 hours of bad sleep a night is not going to cut it indefinitely. But, things to do, and the body will not rest until it crashes and will not stay down when it does, lurching awake with knotted innards at 7AM, when the heat and the light of summer pour in. After that long and miserable winter and no spring, now the heat. And that damned, damned sun. Dad calls in the evening as I prepare to fire off a special resume to a target that has suddenly been alerted to recieve. My mom I knew would be on the brink of tears, I did not expect it of him, I think, only death does this to him. Hell of a kick in the nuts son, he says, choked, mentioning a time before he knew my mother, understanding the sudden need for space and a new job. Before I brought her home to meet him, he had never mentioned a time before my mother, and suddenly for that new audience he unfolded stories I had never seen before and I saw him yet again with new eyes. We are both strangled, exhausted, he having worked a 12 hour day. My family loved her, and she loved us. I still love her, she still in some way loves us, but that future will never happen now, not in that way, maybe not at all.

The panopticon is a popular literary symbol, based on a theoretical prison suggested centuries ago. Imagine a prison shaped like a cylinder, consisting of an outer ring made of glass cells surrounding a central tower where a single guard can watch the entire population at once, all constantly visible, silouetted against the transparent walls behind them. Imprisoned by light.

Had lunch with RMT today, who is the person to call on when your love life turns into a Strindberg play. Crimes and Crimes, in this case. Funny, I always thought it'd be Miss Julie, what with all those boots and all that power exchange. Anyway, he had good advice, and was as always an excellent sounding board. And if he was once wondering why I chose to confide certain personal details to him long ago, I think today turned out to be the reason why. 'Cause otherwise certain things and attitudes might appear completely mad to the outsider. You are not insane to imagine the future, he agrees, but no matter what though, the next few weeks will be hell on earth.

But on other topics, we noted what a strange and powerful tool Facebook has become, and it struck me later today just how it enables previously unimaginable correlations and linked actions. After firing off the distress flare on Saturday, I've been buoyed up by the incoming onrush of friends, each contribution small of itself, each small gift of advice (from flaky to prescient to vindictive and solicitous) or assistance adding to the pile of tools to work with, things to consider. I ride at the center of a wheel and feel a legion at my back. It is at our moments of greatest loss that we discover the immense reserves of compassion that everyone carries, held in reserve against such a day. I am large; I contain multitudes. I also think in allusions and I can't just turn it off. Fourteen years of university will do that to you. I see patterns everywhere.

And yet, like most swords, it carries that second edge. I have been sleepwalking for a year, and now I am awake and my mind is never more alive and acute than when it is in agony. Only death does this to me. Why do I hate writing? This is why.

Late in the day, I check Facebook by reflex, and note in my newsfeed that she's added an application. For the last several months, Facebook was the point of contact of last resort, as we threw chains of pixellated flowers and hatching eggs and valentines across the Pacific to each other, building up woefully weak defences against something coming that we sensed rather than understood. Fragments shored against ruins. So as she fell into radio silence, I would check it still, just in case, to see if she stirred at all or was doing okay. And somewhere in there, I nudged that little setting to report her actions more often. I clicked the news item out of habit to see what she was up to today, wondered at the name of it as Her profile comes up. "Miss You". Me?

And the pattern corellation function in my exhausted brain fires before I can stop it, realizes that if that was sent by someone, someone currently away from Korea, and that someone also posts on a wall, and a name repeats more than once-

Jesus Fuck. I cannot hit the back button fast enough, there are things you cannot unsee. I know who she is, now, probably. No wonder this was the weekend to clear the air. Fuck Fuck Fuck. I am an accidental stalker. From nowhere, a lyric from somebody rolls across the airwaves of my mind:

You look at her the way you used to look at me.

I fall back, gutpunched. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The pattern corellation function reports back it has no idea who might have sung that original lyric, or what the genders involved actually were, and I contemplate the prattle in the front part of my brain in stunned disbelief.

Was not ready for that. Eventually, sure, okay, but not today, not like that. Jesus. Fuck. I've creeped myself out beyond all recognition. The beast at the back of my brain murmurs about wondering just when someone met someone, as it's probably all there if you look for it. Fuck. Fuck. Get thee behind me. I am not this. I will not cross that line. There are crimes and crimes. She tortures herself because she imagines she has betrayed me. And I, in turn, see for an instant my own reflection in that mirror, unrecognizable. I get out of the bulding, try to get away, go home, do something, anything else.


yeah.


So, anyway, turns out I had to tweak that resume to get it out tomorrow morning, so I had to go back, get online. I gingerly open a tab and I flick the news setting to bring me news stories from that certain user a little less often. Maybe time to back off the net oh so slightly, step back from the light. The flare has fired and the cavalry are on their way, serried ranks assembled. I am off to the Island tomorrow, and for the first time since discovering facebook a year ago I'm glad it doesn't work on My Mom's ancient iMac.

I'll buy her a newer one, yes.

But not this week.

Ripcords

So, went in to work today and pretty much realized I would be a basket case -wait, I should back up.

So, after not getting much sleep the last couple days, I found myself on Facebook getting unsolicited advice from my first high school crush about how to get on with my life now. It's beyond weird at this point, how Facebook can seemingly collapse time and space so the different eras and areas of your life can interact almost at will. Even in my state, I know this is not the natural order of things. I note the time, yelp, and bolt out to the laundromat, where my clothes are drying. Of course, I arrive too late and my stuff's locked up overnight. No problem, I'll pick it up when they open at 7AM. Then, of course, comes several hours of trying to get to sleep, explaining myself to no one in the dark while the cat circles, entirely convinced I've lost my mind.

Sure enough, when I stagger out of bed and get to the laundromat, they've decided not to open today until what I presume will be 8ish. I stop by the bank, transfer some money, then go to get a coffee, then realize my card is locked inside the bank machine.

So, back to the bank at 7:50, where an employee assures me I can get the card once different staff arrive at 8:30. And of course, the laundromat is still closed at 8.

So, home, grab a shower, back to the bank, grab the crad, grab the clothes from the laundromat, hustle to work, throw appropriate pants on and sit down at 9 sharp to try and keep myself occupied.

I'm immediately struck by three things:

1)There is NOTHING on my docket.
2)I am still completely exhausted.
3)I am in fact, a basket case, and keep having to stop and get ahold of myself when the salutory effects of documenting a program error keyword proves insufficent to distract my forebrain from the implosion of my personal life.

So, after an hour and a half of shredding stuff and generally keeping a grip on things (usually my desk, with white kuckles at times) I make it to the 10:30 staff meeting, where comes the news that senior implementer M is quitting, and thus I am suddenly next in line to head the section. My dreams of quietly thinking things over for a couple weeks are up in flames, so I ask to meet with the Vice President, who although she doesn't know it, is now my Ex-Prospective-Stepmother-In-Law.

I somehow manage to outline the basic situation without breaking down entirely (minus the whole "other person" thing, which is really not my conversation to have) and take the week off, mentioning that given the circumstances, I'm prepared to stay on for the rest of the year, but will likely move on around the new year. So just like that, the ripcord comes out, the parachute fires, and I've begun the process of leaving a job that, while it had its moments, was definitely unhealthy for me. Huh. So now I have 7 months to solve the riddle of what the hell to do next in my oh-so-Gen-X uncareer. I couldn't get anything when I left grad school that was remotely a)local and b)anywhere near any of my fields, so let's see if things are any less crazy now.

I guess that big thing way down there is the ground. I wonder if it will be friends with me.

Signs

...ridiculous, the waste, sad time, stretching before and after.
-Eliot, The Wasteland.

There is a line in the (excellent) book version of Out of Africa to the effect that when we cry out to the universe for a sign, one will appear, some symbol that we can seem and find meaning in, even if it's private and for the viewer only. I can't entirely unpack what follows for you, but come with.

Coincidence or not, it's funny how the random pop culture ephemera around us can sometimes align and form brief constellations of meaning at key times in our lives.

Most of last week, I was run off my feet, exhausted and tired, and stuck by things wistful and melancholy, and well, then at last on Saturday the leviathan broke through the ice. But it was odd to see nonetheless.

Thursday night I was struck - really struck - by how sombre the new Indiana Jones movie is. Silly and frothy and fun, yes, but there is a note throughout the film of sadness, of mourning for lost friends and family, both dead and alive. It hangs lightly on Ford's shoulders, but still: if we live long enough, we all get old, even Indiana Jones. And being a survivor means that you survive what others don't.

To my mind, it makes it a strong picture, superior to Last Crusade, which was fun and exaltant, but also a bit Jokey, a father/son adventure with Connery and Ford veering ever so slightly into hammy fun. Glorious, yes, triumphant, yes, but nowhere near as rich as what the older Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas and their cast of ringers manage with Crystal Skull. I saw it Thursday, with E-Man and H, E-Man still wearing his original fedora from when we were all teenagers, lining up to see the first one. Impossible to see it and not think of time passing, moving on. When the line is given, at the end,

"So much of life is wasted, waiting"

it was hard. And then I rushed across town to let Dad in the apartment on his way through town. Thoughts swirling, old and tired, both of us. Slept about 2AM.

Friday night, then, after a long day of getting up at 630AM for breakfast with Dad before he took off upcountry for another shutdown, perhaps his last or at least one of his last, then working 9 hours, picking up that fucking eBay package, gaming, and stopping by the office at midnight to check for news from or a chat with Wryette, as I had done religiously every night for a year, almost all in vain in the last three months. There I found this served up on Boing Boing, and found it hypnotic and strangely heartbreaking.



It's a song mashed up from tiny audiobits of Alice in Wonderland, and it's perhaps the Rave-iest thing I have ever seen. Alice has always been sad and a little disturbing to me, an incarnation of primal childhood terrors and the lost world that all adults dimly recall. (Those pansies terrify me, somehow) All children's stories are stories of loss for an adult, and particularly this adult. I cannot think of playmates and telling stories without thinking of the playmates and listeners who I will never see again, and something of this struck me at a very early age. Today, writing, it comes to me - I watched Wryette play with Alice in Kingdom Hearts, and would read to her sometimes from a dozen books. Never occuring to me that any of them might be a final time. I will pack up her children's collection for her future children sometime next week. It will be hard.

I was hoping to see and review Prince Caspian this week, but I'm not sure I will now. Lewis is steeped in that sense of childhood's transience, of the preciousness of time, of meeting someone for an instant and knowing that if you somehow ever meet them again, it will be as best of friends, forever. There is a scene in Dawn Treader to that effect which is more powerful than a hundred Milton stanzas. For all we ever have is an instant, and we can never keep anyone at our side when their story calls them away. What is heaven but the place where we never say goodbye? Who could argue with the appeal of that vision. Wouldn't it be lovely.

So no, I am not entirely sure I can deal with Narnia this week, even if it's only in the company of the bland young Caspian.

And so on Saturday, after the call, I went out as previously planned with jedischooldropout to see Crystal Skull again, but now with the primary goal of occupying the front part of my brain, and found that almost final line was not so much revelation but coda.

So much wasted, waiting.

Monday awaits.