I’ve been writing a book. Or rather, I’ve been writing a series a books, in fits and starts, in the few hours I can grab between doing this and doing that and pretending to be a responsible adult. I’ve got one close to done and many others started. Right now I should be pouring through my recent edits and making a crap draft into a good working draft. Instead I’m drinking chai, watching the rain and listening to the dryer.
Despite having not achieved much more than a long, long walk and few household chores yesterday, I am utterly wiped today. I feel like I’ve been beaten with sticks. Like I could sleep for a week. Hopefully the chai will clear my foggy head enough that I can intelligently string words together in some semblance of story of and character development.
I want nothing more than to lounge in bed all day and read comics. Okay maybe something more. Maybe someone could prepare my food and bring it to me and rub my feet too? I never think I’ve done terribly wrong with my life until I’m forced to confront my lack of houseboys to do my bidding, then suddenly my choices seem sinister and stupid. I could have done better. Sigh.
Last night I went and saw Only Lovers Left Alive with Darrah. It was playing, as far as we could tell, only one week, Mon-Thur, two shows a night, at different times each night. At a theater inconvenient to most anyone who would probably be interested in it. If they could even discover it was playing. 7pm on Thursday and the audience was the two of us, a solitary fangirl (I saw you, ma’am and recognized what you are), and two 50s-ish guys. I mean I guess the theater can argue the limited run was for lack of interest but, c’mon, Nashville. Why wasn’t this at the Belcourt,and publicized, like at all?
Still I’m grateful we saw it the theater, and in a quiet theater no less, because it was amazing. I couldn’t watch the first couple minutes, where everything was spinning. Too vertigo-y for my delicate brain constitution, but the rest of it was fucking perfect.
I want to crawl inside this movie and live forever. I over identified with Adam’s character, so crawling inside it obviously means Tilda Swinton would be my wife, which is all I’ve ever wanted out of the world. But there’s more reasons than that. My coworker asked what it was about this morning, and I said, “it was vampire movie, but if I had to use single words to describe it they would be: soft, comfortable, calm and romantic.” There really wasn’t angst and suffering in OLLA, just a little irritation and exasperation. And of course, the vampire thing. I started reading Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro when I was 14 or 15. Yep the vampire thing is kind of over played in pop culture now, but it will always be a huge part of my emotional and intellectual upbringing. OLLA was the vampire movie of my goth teenager dreams. It filled me with the same calm wonder as discovering the Romantic poets did, or finding The Chameleons UK and feeling like someone else really understood my inner world.
The pacing of the movie was oddly relaxing. There was no real sense of urgency in it, even when people were hurrying to do things. There was tension, but it never felt scary or anxiety inducing. There was just this pervading sense that whatever came could be handled, somehow. Which is perfect, if you’ve lived forever and been through everything, sure this too shall pass, you know it will. The film was also very much a snap shot. No long flashbacks, only casual discussion of their long past together. Just here, right now, a small window into a long long life. And everything was left to be inferred. There was no explanation for vampirism or powers or anything, it was just a given you’d know some parts and figure out others.
And of course now all I want to do is go shop for just the right white leather jacket. I mean if I can’t marry Tilda Swinton can I at least please be super cool like her?
I left the theater feeling both calmed and utterly delighted. I want to write stories like this. Stories that are merely a slice of life, a small window of a larger tale, but still utterly engaging and interesting. Stories that lack complicated plots but are rich and detailed with character, scene, setting and tone.
I totally recommend OLLA, but watch it undistracted, so you can live in it while it unfolds.
Wow, so yeah I haven’t really been blogging at all recently, huh? Maybe it’s time to start again.
I’ve been complaining lately to friends about how much I miss LiveJournal. The heyday of it anyway, since it still exists. Recently I’ve watched a lot of movies and TV that I want to squee with someone about. I miss my old LJ community, a group wide, deep, and diverse enough that at least surely a couple people would be interested in talking to me about which Korean dramas I’m watching, about German pop-glamrock bands, about anime, and about why I might be the only person left who still enjoys Supernatural (do I enjoy it because I watch it in a void without fandom’s influence? I may never know). But now I feel like I’m just shouting into the void or pestering my friends with things they don’t care about but indulge my babbling out of love (which is actually kind of awesome in it’s own way).
Lacking that community I’ve been trying to seek out folks I lost in the diaspora years ago. Looking the Tumblrs and the Twitters, poking around sites I last saw faces I recognized, but everyone has moved on to unknown fandoms, has changed their names, or otherwise I’ve forgotten how to recognize them. Which is kind of sad, but won’t stop me from continuing to shout into the void.
So I’ve been watching Ouran High School Host Club (OMG Hitachiin twins!) in fits and starts, mostly when I work out. Which it’s totally not conducive to working out because I find I’ve often slowed or stopped and am staring at the TV, slack jawed. I mean really it’s like an entire anime made up of nothing but fanservice. And layers of meta so deep you need hip waders to get through it. Somehow despite how obvious it’s pandering is, it’s still gripping and smart enough that I actually care about all the characters.
I found this amazing academic paper, which didn’t tell me much I didn’t know about OuranHSHC, but it did prove that I made major misstep in my life by not going into a field where I got paid to teach and write about things like anime and manga.
Man, this show is so weird. It gets as much right as it does wrong and I’m not sure you’d really enjoy it if you weren’t already familiar with anime and boy’s love manga. Or maybe you’d love it and be super disappointed when everything else didn’t turn out to be like the crazed, ridiculousness this anime is. It’s on Netflix, subbed or dubbed, and I think everyone should watch it and come contemplate Mori-san’s love for Honey-sempai with me. We can talk about how every episode is more batshit crazy than the last. It’s just nuts. Nuts only my fangirl homegirls would really understand. If only I could find them all again.
Let’s talk about Tom Daley coming out. For those of you who don’t know (I’m assuming a possibility that the media storm about it has only been in the kind of online circles I travel in) Tom Daley is an Olympic Diver from the UK who came out this week in a very sweet little video (link has a transcript if you don’t have patience for a video). I’m very proud of him for his brave act, but I’m more interested in the responses I’m seeing in the media and in comments I’m seeing on stories about this. Really I just want to address the common responses I’m seeing.
1) “It’s no one’s business who he loves.” While in an ideal world this is true. Tom says it himself in his video that in a perfect world he wouldn’t have to do this. I wish he didn’t. But he does because all over the world people are still persecuted, punished, stigmatized, shunned and even killed because of who they love. Coming out is the only way to combat that. When your family, friends, and public figures that you admire make public statements about who they love it makes the entire idea of queerness less threatening. It opens a conversation to help everyone understand that two women or two men getting married isn’t a threat to anyone’s way of life. Because, yes, who your partner is IS a private thing, but it can’t be a quiet thing until we’ve made society at large safe for every one in it. Visibility is key to safety and coming out is key to visibility. So, of course it’s no one’s business who Tom Daley spends time with but until he and everyone queer is 100% safe then public coming outs will stil matter, will still mean something. It’s fine if YOU don’t have a problem with it, but it is important to recognize that your support is much more meaningful than dismissing it as something that is “no one’s business.”
2. Tom Daley “still fancies girls.” This so important and so complicated. Headlines say, “Tom Daley comes out as gay!” People angrily respond that he obviously came out as bisexual since he made a point about liking girls. Headlines say, “Tom Daley comes out as bisexual!” People angrily respond that he did not label himself, so we should not label him, besides he’s young and this probably just his way of easing into gayness or not ostracizing part of his fanbase. This is such an important conversation and it’s important especially because it’s happening. Whether Tom is gay, bisexual or something else actually is no one’s business. He’s been clear that he is with a man, he is very happy and he feels safe and supported in the relationship. That’s all that matters. So why are we arguing about the label? Because bisexuality is a real thing and it is often ignored or erased. Erasure happens because if a person likes boys and girls they generally pair up with one or the other and immediately become identified as gay or straight. Bisexual men are frequently told that they are just not yet fully admitting that they are gay. Bisexual women are often told that they are attention seeking, confused, or just slutty. Homosexuals are as guilty of these responses as the straight majority is. So when Tom Daley says he fancies girls at a time when he does not need too (everyone is going to say he’s gay anyway, everyone knows he’s with a man, so why temper it with mentioning girls?) it matters because it opens to conversation about how sexuality isn’t binary. It isn’t just gay or straight. There’s a whole huge spectrum out there that goes beyond the Kinsey scale. What it boils down to is that it still shouldn’t matter who someone’s partner is, but it does matter that they feel supported in their lives. We’ve been making some strides with gay marriage. As a society we are becoming more comfortable with lesbians and gay men in public spaces. But the whole array of human sexuality, the bisexuals, transgendered, genderqueer, asexual and whole host of other possibilities are still invisible. So when Tom Daley says he’s fancies girls he’s allowing for public conversation, allowing for visibility for everyone who hasn’t yet been invited to the table of acceptance. No, it doesn’t matter how we label him as an individual, it isn’t our business, but it is our business to pay attention and to listen to our friends and family so we can better understand how they identify and make them feel safe as well.
So congratulations, Tom Daley, on your new found happiness, and thank you for making important conversations possible.
On a more shallow note, holy smokes, Tom Daley is beautiful and his boyfriend is so handsome! And they seem so smart and thoughtful. There haven’t been many present day celebrity romances that have me me all fluttery, but this feels very old school romancey to me, very Bogart and Bacall. I’ll be over here sighing, with cartoon hearts in my eyes, every time I see a picture of them.
Last summer I finally hit the wall of being so unhappy with my body that I had to take action. For years I’d gained weight and become more sedentary. I thought I ate pretty well and figured that genetics was against me and there was nothing I could do about my round little apple dumpling shape. And I didn’t care so much. I’ve never been terrifically concerned with beauty aesthetics and I am genuinely concerned with the way our society raises young women to starve themselves. I have a couple friends who underwent bariatric surgery to great (over 100lbs) weight loss and each of them told me that at the end of it, they were still who they’d been before and whatever demons they had still needed to be faced, skinnier or not. I knew none of my demons had to do with my weight so why fight a losing battle with my body?
But as I age my body becomes more my enemy. Aches, joint pains, longer recovery times, many new problems. Everywhere you look there’s a new study saying that exercise will cure everything. I got into physical therapy for my chronic, severe shoulder pain. I worked on my posture, I diligently did my recovery exercises twice a day and I decided to get fit. I mean if I was already doing some sort of exercise twice a day, why not add more? I determined the the optimum, most convenient exercise for me (indoor rowing) and set to it, with long series of staggered goals. The biggest one being “turn 40 being in the best shape of my life.” I rowed and rowed for weeks and the weight almost immediately started falling off. Exercise with a surprise benefit! I wasn’t just becoming healthier, I was visibly changing.
Fitness minded friends encouraged me to count calories and really look at my diet. I insisted I didn’t need to do that because I knew I ate pretty well: no gluten, mostly whole, fresh foods, very little packaged or pre-prepared food. But I caved pretty quickly and started using My Fitness Pal, initially to just track exercise but my use coincided with discovering my recent weight loss. I was encouraged so I started tracking what I was eating every day for a few weeks and yes, according to the general consensus, I was eating too many calories for my height & age. Sure they were “good” calories, but they were still too many.
Armed with numbers (weight and calories and energy expenditure) I didn’t quite understand, I read up on nutrition and on nutrition and sports medicine. There’s a mountain of information out there and lot of it is wrong. I sorted through message boards and essays of advice and I eventually made a standard for myself. Maybe some of it is wrong, it’s hard to tell, but for me it’s reasonable, practical and makes sense. I eat a low carb, high protein, high fat diet, still avoiding most processed foods. I spent months altering my diet slightly and recognizing what was making me feel better and what was making me feel worse. And the weight continued to come off, slowly but steadily.
In the last few months I’ve been pretty uneven about exercise. My consistent routine was upheaved by moving and the demands of the new house and my job, by not immediately creating a new routine when my circumstances changed. Days shy of turning 40 I’ve nearly met the weight loss goal I set when I started tracking calories and I feel great. I can’t stress enough how much pain I was in before and how much simple weight loss helped me feel better. But even when I was heavier I felt much, much better when I was exercising regularly. I’m small and relatively fine boned and extra weight was literally dragging me down, so yes, I feel better with out it. Exercise however has a threefold improvement: the satisfaction of accomplished a single task set out to do (row 30 mins, walk an hour), you get the immediate rush of improved blood flow, it’s calming and over time you physically feel stronger and more capable. It’s like this door to understanding has opened for me. Yes, of course we’ve all heard “it’s just diet and exercise” for ever. But I can’t state strongly enough how true that really is for me. It is hard work, not because it’s hard to do, but because it takes commitment and dedication and sometimes the returns are slow to show. But really unless you have a major medical problem, six weeks of dedication, to diet, exercise, or both should show you what’s possible.
Still I’m not nearly to where I want to be. Halfway there. I’ve got diet figured out, as long as I stick to it I should be fine (“it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change”). But exercise I’m still learning, it still feels forced some days and I don’t love it. Yet. I’m going to get there. That’s my goal for the next year. I know I need to work harder because just like my friends, here I am at goal weight for my height, age and build and I look in the mirror and I don’t see much that’s different than where I started (in fact I can only see the difference when I compare pictures side by side). Lumpy, poochy, misshapen belly, weak arms, shoulder pain that flares up when I’m too sedentary, aches that could otherwise be controlled. I am so much better than I was 11 months ago, but I’m not great yet and I want to age into greatness, into fitness and most importantly into strength. So I will keep working, keep striving and never set an end point, because I want to have a good relationship with this body and like all relationships, you have to keep at it, keep listening and keep trying.
And because no make over story is complete without pictures:
In past years I have always done a 30 day birthday countdown, giving myself a birthday month essentially. I didn’t do it this year, not by design, but because this year seems to have snuck up on me, like where did the last three months of my life go? How is it April already? How is it the end of April already? Ack ack ack! Rewind, I’m not ready!
But ready or not, here it is, a mere 6 days away, the big 4-0. I have no issues about turning 40. Or rather the issues I have are not the expected ones. Since I was 16 I’ve imagined 40 as being this magic barrier that I would cross and then suddenly be taken seriously as a woman. Surely no one is surprised that that magic barrier is both moveable and non-existent.
I’m pretty sure that what I see in the mirror is the reverse of this.
For many years I’ve attributed the way I’m treated in the workplace (and sometimes the wider world) as a factor of my youth or my youthful appearance. I have worked hard in sub-par professional jobs most of my adult life, been under employed continuously in relation to my intelligence, knowledge and skills. This, I believe, is a factor not just of my lack of ambition but the economic lows which have plagued my generation. But the longer I work the more barriers I run into that make me wonder how much my gender has also kept me pushed down. I’ve never felt like any employer has given me a chance to show what I can really do. I’ve felt a vague sense of being patted on the head told that I’m cute for working so hard, that it’s resented when I try to wield what power I have, that I’m valued much more for appearance than for my work (or not as valued when my appearance doesn’t meet some standard I’ll never understand). These are things that I’ve started to see as failings of my (mostly male) employers and of society as a whole, rather than my own shortcomings. I find myself in conflict with coworkers merely because I’ve politely asserted myself. I long ago let go of the false persona that tries to please everyone (as women are raised to do) and instead focus on the task at hand and the best way to get it done. I’m told that I’m too brusque and business-like, that I need to make myself sweeter and more likeable (ask my friends, I’m plenty sweet and likeable when it counts). No man has ever been asked to bake for clients to appease them (um, unless baking is his job). On the eve of 40 I can definitively say that it’s simply because I’m a woman that I am told to to be kinder, sweeter and less demanding of perfection at work.
This doesn’t empower me because I’m neither maiden, mother, nor hag and we revere none of these in our society.
At 16 I had imagined 40 as some marker where I’d be strong, capable and wise, and no longer recognized as a sexual object and therefore able to speak powerfully and be taken seriously. And there is a little truth to this. Very, very slowly it’s becoming more true (thank you, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and strong outspoken women everywhere) but it certainly isn’t cultural norm yet (why are we discussing these women’s hairstyle in the news and not their jobs and qualifications?). Women are still infantilized, particularly in my specific location (in the American South, working in construction, still a predominantly male industry). As a society we have not made the strides toward equality and justice that I expected to see in my lifetime. Growing up in the 70s we were all fed the “truths” that the world would keep changing at an expeditious rate and we could grow up to anything. Which I guess is almost true, assuming you have the right stack of privilege, luck and opportunity behind you. Yes, it’s been great to be alive to see all sexual orientations start to get their due, but what about the rest of us, the people of color, women, all the other marginalized groups? How long will we be stuck in some moderately polished up versions of the historical roles society forces on us?
I thought we were charging forward to change but we lost our way sometime around 1984.
I meant this to be personal not political, (but the personal is, oh you know…) but I can’t avoid it because at nearly 40 I know much more of the world than I did at 16 and now I can see that the problem isn’t small with only me as its isolated victim. It’s vast and keeping us all down and it’s shaped me over the years to dream of something better for anyone. Where once I wanted to be taken seriously as person, now I wish to be taken seriously as a gender. I want to live to see my sisters equally represented in positions of power. I want our governing bodies, the world over, to truly represent our whole society. Give me 51 female senators and 218 female representatives in my own country’s federal government. Give all my sisters equal pay and equal opportunities or rise to commercial positions of power. Bring us all up and punish those who strive to keep us down through sexual and physical violence, through words and actions, so that we may have justice with equality. For my next 40 years that is my fondest wish, to live to see a world in which women can see a reflection of their true selves.
More easily attainable is my fondest wish for the immediate future: time off to hang out with my friends and family, cute outfits to wear and feel confident in, trashy TV to watch, and maybe a little celebration. I will work on my ability to find ways to always fit those things into my life, because even as half of me always seems to be raging at the system, at the news, at the pit of ignorance our society has fallen into, I am still human and it is the small things that bring me joy. And isn’t joy (not love or money or happiness) what makes life worth living and gives us all the strength to keep fighting for a world where peace is easier to find for everyone? For my part I will continue to redefine beauty and style to be personal and not a mask of society’s creation. I will challenge everyone I meet to judge me for who I am and what I can do and not on my appearance. I will call out those who keep us down in speech and actions. I will volunteer where I am needed, help those who cannot help themselves and try as hard as I can to model the behavior I hope to see from everyone. I will relax sometimes, and enjoy the good still in the world. After all, I’m 40 now, it’s party time on the other side of that magic barrier.
I’d like to live a life of no regrets, but I don’t even know this guy and I regret that he got this tattoo.
Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness. It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.
Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.
Today we light candles and keep them lit. Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.
Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold. We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green, but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer! Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.
Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries. We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.
Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles. Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as it washes away. Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives. We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year. Tomorrow life begins again.
So ever since I saw the movie I have been thinking about the striped sweater that Kristen Wiig wears on the plane in Bridesmaids.
Of course it’s no longer in stores and all the similar ones I can find are priced way out of anything I can afford. So I set out to make it. How hard could it be, anyway? It’s like three pieces of fabric.
Test run #1 wasn’t the right fabric, but close enough. I used a shirt pattern I already had and tried to guess about how it should be broken up between stripes and black. The end result is wearable, although just not quite there yet:
But it’s close and super comfortable and it’s the first tee shirt I’ve ever made! Sewing with knits is not fun. Seriously do not like it. But the end result is good enough that I’m definitely keeping it. My second attempt I drafted my own pattern and found better fabric. Alas the pattern fit was wonky and way off and the fabric shrunk like crazy when washed. Still it is also wearable if not exactly perfect:
So close and yet still so far. I might make one final run on this. Redraft the pattern, keep hunting for the right fabric and eventually end up with the unbelievably simple shirt. Or maybe I’ll just give up and be happy with what I have. I mean I know how to sew tee shirts now. A whole new world of sewing is open to me!
Scrolling back through entries here I see I’ve often posted at length on the Winter Solstice, but not for the Summer.
Summer begins at 6:09pm. In Middle Tennessee, the sun today rose at 5:30am, then sets at 8:07pm, giving us 14.6 hours of sunlight. The longest day of the year.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the Summer Solstice. Here in Tennessee I feel a little cheated, perhaps because of our latitude. If I was in Seattle today I’d have a full 16 hours of daylight, being so much further north. It is one of the glorious delights of the North, the drastic changes in the amount of light make you value the seasons. It somehow gives you more visible seasonal drama beyond mere temperature changes and plants returning to life. And yet, even in the Great North I always felt the Summer Solstice to be somewhat bittersweet.
The light diminishes after flaring it’s brightest on this day. In Tennessee it means less in than it does in the North, as it will never get as dark in winter, so there is less burden to bear on that end. Indeed, the longest days of summer are still ahead of us, if we are measuring by heat, laziness and availability of good food cooked outside on a grill. But the light passing has always felt like loss to me. A downward journey that eventually ends in the darkness of winter. The beauty of autumn is joy to behold. As is the desolation of winter in it’s own way. Still today feel like an ending, a turn we took, walking away from spring. Fortunately spring will return next year, no matter what we do, and on the Winter Solstice we can look longingly at the slow the return of the light, knowing that spring must come on the heels of the sun’s return.
I don’t know the origins of my dark view of midsummer. Perhaps growing up so far north, where the loss of the sun means so much darkness. Perhaps it’s burned in genetic memory from my Scandinavian and Scottish ancestors. It’s no mystery that the Scandinavian cultures, and for northern European ones, celebrate Midsummer as a massive festival. Because indeed today feels massive, like the most there is, the best you can have, ALL the sunlight. And yet it is only today, quickly fleeting, like everything in life.
“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”
– William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (full quote here)
Yesterday morning (relatively speaking, to my current sense of time), I got on a plane in Barcelona. It flew out over the Mediterranean, which was spectacularly blue, and then turned sharply and went directly over Sitges, a town I had visited just days before. I wept copiously with a great sense of loss as the plane went over the entire length of the Pyrenees, until reached the Bay of Biscay and turned over the Atlantic, towards Philadephia.
I am presently too tired, too soul-lagged to tell you about it. Indeed I may never getting around to writing a narrative of it, but I promise lots and lots of pictures as soon as I get all 500+ of them sorted and tagged and all that modern day nonsense that allows me to foist my living room vacation slide show on you. For now my soul is still somewhere over the Pyrenees, perhaps, still dreaming of the Mediterranean.
What Spain Was Like
Spain was a taut, dry drum-head Daily beating a dull thud Flatlands and eagle’s nest Silence lashed by the storm. How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul I love your hard soil, your poor bread, Your poor people, how much in the deep place Of my being there is still the lost flower Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time And your metallic meadows Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages, Now devoured by a false god.
All your confinement, your animal isolation While you are still conscious Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence, Your rough wine, your smooth wine Your violent and dangerous vineyards.
Solar stone, pure among the regions Of the world, Spain streaked With blood and metal, blue and victorious Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets Unique, alive, asleep – resounding.
I started a dress last fall, or late last summer, with some fabric that I loved. Alas it was really the wrong fabric for the pattern (wrong weave, wrong weight), I tried lining it with little success, I cut the pockets wrong and sewed them in way too high, couldn’t get the back to fit together. What’s known in the industry as a wadder. Wad it up and throw it away in frustration. So it’s been hanging on the works in progress rack forever, taunting me. Yesterday I cut it up and made it into a blouse.
Most of my blouses are more of a cutesy, 40s-ish style, which I love, but maybe I’ve been needing something a little more grown up lately. So here’s the end result:
I’m actually fairly pleased with the fit and the drape. A nice silk would have been better. I might make another of these, though, because I’m actually pretty happy with how it turned out. I think this will be good with jeans too and maybe even shorts in summer. And this pic doesn’t really do justice to the colors of the actual blouse. It’s definitely more teal and purple, with nice neutral tan and grey in the alternating stripes. YAY I SEWED SOMETHING ALL THE WAY TO THE END. I think I can do this again someday. Very satisfying.
Just read a line in a Sherman Alexie story about standing in line at Bartell’s and suddenly I’m so homesick I’m not sure I can live through the heartbreak of it. In my head I ask Sherman Alexie if he imagines how many of his throw away lines profoundly affect people? I think of every word I’ve put out there, every bit of fiction I’ve written, and no one has ever come back to me with the important words, with the phrases that I labored over, they only come to tell me about the how they were moved by my fast lines, the ones that drop out, that I don’t consider at all before I put them to paper.
Perhaps the lines I don’t labor over mean the most, come more truly from me? Perhaps there is no meaning in any of it and will just keeping spilling out words, looking for the turn of phrase that will free my soul and find it someday. Perhaps Sherman Alexie labored over that line and still will never know will never know how his two sentences made me break my own heart. I could write him a letter and tell him, but I would labor too hard over the words, I would lose the importance of sharing what he gave me. I have always been writing this letter to him in my head, through out the years, every time I read his stories and poems. A letter that never makes it to paper, to computer screen, never achieves more than some small form of therapy for me.
I am talking to Sherman in my head (can I call you, Sherman, I feel we are close enough now) about my homesickness, about how I cannot ever really understand where he is from and he cannot understand how I am from where he is now. I tell him it is a continuum that no one but me can see, a story that can’t quite be told, but is important all the same. And the The Butchies pop up on shuffle on the old mp3 player and I start to cry because this is more homesickness than a soul can bear. But this makes me get up and start to cook dinner: fettuccine alfredo with smoked salmon (real, PNW smoked salmon), peas and caramelized onions. Because I am homesick and if I lived close enough that I could call my mom and ask if I could come over she would walk to me to a restaurant near her house (one Sherman Alexie has surely been too) and I would order some variation of this dish because you don’t really find it anywhere else in the world, not the way we make it in Seattle.
And while I am chopping onions the mp3 player turns again and gives me Kevin Gordon singing Watching the Sun Go Down, and I remember how I stopped at 6:42 am, on my way to work, to photograph the sunrise over an electrical power station, and got distracted by some horses too. I think of how the redbuds are surely more beautiful this year than they have ever been before, blooming riotously, everywhere, making the edges of every roadway glow purple. I think of how the heat in Tennessee makes me feel warm all the way through to my bones, like I’ve never been warm before.
So I tell Sherman that he is lucky indeed, to be able wait in line at Bartell’s, but he has to go through cold rain to get there and I am saved by the sun and the green in spring and the sounds, all the sounds, here in the dirty South. Perhaps I am homesick for a place that no longer exists. A place I visited, moved through in childhood, that is just a fairytale now, I can not go back. My adult self does not have the magic to cross back over the boundaries of the places I’ve been before, I can only go to new places or create them myself. And I’m still crying when I sit down to eat my dinner, but not because I miss anything. I am so lucky to have been so many places, both real and imagined. Lucky to be me and to be still so full of emotions good and bad (love) about all of those places I have been and the people in them. Even the rude lady in the Bartell’s line that you have to tell to fuck all the way off. So thanks, Sherman, for reminding of my home, the past one, the new one, the one that is always me and goes everywhere inside my heart. I’m certain that you never knew that namedropping Bartell’s in a story would make some girl in Tennessee break out the fancy smoked salmon from way back home and cook herself a good dinner on a night when she would otherwise have been too tired, too worn down by work, to do more than make a quesadilla. Thanks for dinner, Sherman, I really feel like we are close now.
(Pictures taken early this morning in Tennessee, when I stopped, before I even had coffee, to remember that there is beauty in the world. Even when you feel like you break to pieces because of the stress that swirls around you and puts the anxiety inside you, there is still the color purple and leaves that were not that green yesterday and sunrises. The redbuds really are spectacular this year.)
The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, which is said to have been devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. Whether it was Romulus or not, the inventor of this calendar had a penchant for complexity. The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:
Kalends (1st day of the month)
Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th in the other months)
Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th in the other months)
The remaining, unnamed days of the month were identified by counting backwards from the Kalends, Nones, or the Ides. For example, March 3 would be Five Nones—5 days before the Nones (the Roman method of counting days was inclusive; in other words, the Nones would be counted as one of the 5 days).
Used in the first Roman calendar as well as in the Julian calendar (established by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.E.) the confusing system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides continued to be used to varying degrees throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
So, the Ides of March is just one of a dozen Ides that occur every month of the year. Kalends, the word from which calendar is derived, is another exotic-sounding term with a mundane meaning. Kalendrium means account book in Latin: Kalend, the first of the month, was in Roman times as it is now, the date on which bills are due.
It seems sometimes that I’m on a biennial cycle for domain name changes. And really once every two years is good. Considering the amount of domains I own and don’t use and the ones I always think I want, I feel like I do a fairly good job of sticking with something at least just long enough for people to get used to it before I change again.
It doesn’t change as often as a hairstyle, maybe, but it’s a similar inclination. I like the outside, the label, to represent the work I’m doing. Even if the reasons for that name choice are only clear to me it makes me feel like I am properly presently myself.
So in line with my other projects this year, this space, is now evereadysmile.com. All previous domain names will still redirect here, so no need to do anything your parts, really.
Of course I did all of this yesterday while this site, and my others, were intentionally blacked out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Which means you probably missed everything I posted at Love Letter for an Occupant yesterday as well. It wasn’t an intentional taunt, but I got a new camera and was all excited to start posting pictures, the fact that my site was blacked out be damned!
I’ve only had the camera for a couple days, most of which have been spent at work, so I haven’t even had time to photograph anything that wasn’t inside my house (or my office I guess, but that’s even less interesting).
If you thought my web page layout was bright and jarring, well, it’s a reflection of my house and maybe the inside of my brain too. I can’t tell if this is good picture exactly, because when I look at it I simply think about how much I love my bed and how I wish I was in it reading a book instead if in my cold, cold office, or just about anywhere else.
Though everything is starting slow (and thus properly) I think my current projects are going well, both the public and the private. I posted a large self portrait without make up on yesterday on Love Letter and I’m still having pretty conflicted feelings about it (which was the point, pushing limits). It’s funny because I only wear make up, hmm, maybe 40% of the time? Events, any time I have to meet or talk to a lot of people or if I’m feeling either particularly insecure or particularly badass. An astute friend once said to me, “You don’t give a fuck today.” And I thought for a second and said, “No, is it that obvious?” And he said, “Well, you don’t have any eye make up on and you only do that when you don’t give a fuck.” Which is a pretty good summation of the entire situation actually. And yet, while I’m fine going bare faced into the world most days, it feels different to capture on film and leave it up for everyone to always be able to see. As Lyle Lovett says, “Here I am, yes It’s me.” Take from it what you will, because what you see will never be what I intend you you to see, which too, is as it should be.
First project started: Love Letter From an Occupant. This will be predominantly a visual project. Go follow it with your own Tumblr or add it to your feed reader or bookmark to read later and then ignore it. Or you can ignore it right out, I don’t mind. I will probably set this up so it streams to Facebook directly, though hopefully not intrusively. Probably I will add a wrap up of what happens over there here periodically as well.
I am actually glad for Facebook’s existence. It’s allowed me to better keep up with my family than I ever could, and brought me back in touch with people that I am thrilled to have found. But frankly it makes me lazy on the internet. I have been actively participating in online communities in a variety of ways since about 1992. It has opened doors to me, introduced me to many of my friends and made me creative in ways I never could have imagined. I think Facebook actually damages a lot of that. It’s easy to thoughtlessly toss up a picture, or a quick status and stop thinking about why things are being shared or taking the time to really write about things. I can’t give up Facebook because it is my main connection with some folks and that’s okay, but I am spreading out more this year than I have for the past couple years.
To some extent I’ve been locked up inside myself for the last 30 months or so. I am thankful that I’ve had the time for introspection and the chance to find myself again. Now I need to stretch a little creatively and a little personally. The Tumblr project is personal. I know from past year’s experimenting that I can’t do a picture a day or anything that requires specific time commitments, but there are pictures, narratives and imagery that I’d like to be sharing more thoughtfully and hopefully this project will be the beginning of that.
I was trying to think of a fitting send off for 2011, but really I wish it would sneak quietly out the back door and be done with. I can’t really even be bothered to tell it not to let the door hit its ass on the way out.
In 2011 I got better. I recovered, almost completely, from 2010 and 2009. I reconnected with some amazing, beautiful old friends who I am so very glad to have back in my life. I reconnected with my old online community which is no different than sitting down with old friends. I learned, I changed, I stayed the same, I became more me, I remembered who I was, and who I want to be. I think I managed to find myself again, or at least the creative center of myself, even if the rest of me seems much changed than who I was even a year ago. I am glad to be moving forward, looking forward, and carrying on with the people I have around me.
In 2012 I plan to take myself less seriously. I want to worry less about external pressures and ask less of myself. I want to write more and laugh more and sing loudly even when I’m out of tune.
I have an extensive list of new projects I want to work on in 2012. I’m not sure yet which will make the cut and which will fall by the wayside but I am going to strongly commit to one or a few and be dedicated and vigilant in my work on what I do choose.
I will be smarter and more me by the end of the 2012. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of myself.
I am so grateful for my huge, wonderful family, for my mother and my sisters. I am so very thankful for my friends and my community. I wish I had the words and time to tell each of you just how much I love you and how much you mean to me. I will carry that love in my heart every single day, I will use it to bolster myself against the hard times. I will do my best to love you all even more, every single day. I will trust you all and work to to learn to trust myself and my instincts more. I will try harder to be worthy of the love given back to me.
I was looking back through posts here the other day and I realized I am WAY BEHIND on sewing blogging. It’s not that I’m not finishing things, I just keep forgetting to photograph them. So here’s a couple refashions. The first one the ‘before’ pic is more than a year old. The shirt’s been finished for at least six months.
Before:
Silk blouse, pretty but boxy and just not quite me.
After:
I shortened the sleeves and used the leftover over fabric to put an elasticized panel around the waist, lengthening the top and making it more fitted. YAY, I love it now!
Before:
I got this beautiful silk dress for $3.50. It’s really lovely silk, but not at all my style. I feel like I’m auditioning for Little House on the Prairie.
After:
I shortened the sleeves and re-purposed the ties that held the waist back into trim for the hem. I have enough of the silk from the dress part left to make a skirt, or more likely a little sleeveless shell.
As soon as we get through the holidays I’m going to make a concerted effort to get at least one project a week photographed so I can get it up here.
It’s a cold, cold winter night here, so I did the only thing one can do, cooked and baked until the house was warm and smelled good.
Quinoa Red Lentil Soup
I used this recipe (the stove top version which only took about 35 minutes) which came highly recommended from a trusted friend. I saw it and thought, oh I have all those things, I’ll make that. HAHAHAH! Well, I had quinoa and red lentils. Of the spices I only had fresh ginger, paprika, cumin and thyme. So I used those and substituted 2 tbl of green curry paste for everything else. Also I didn’t have any of those vegetables, so I used a yellow onion, diced, a yellow squash (the zucchini like kind), also diced and a can of diced tomatoes and a couple cloves of garlic, finely chopped. I did follow the directions pretty closely, despite all the substitutions. At the end of cooking I also put half of it through the blender until it was smooth and added it back in with the rest (a secret that improves 85% of soups).
I think it turned out great. Would be excellent with a dollop of sour cream but there’s few things that isn’t true about.
Apple cake
2 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin spice
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 apples, peeled & chopped
Directions: In large bowl, beat eggs, applesauce and oil until smooth. Add sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, pumpkin spice, baking soda, salt and mix well. Add flour, beat until smooth. Fold in apples. Pour into greased and floured 9 by 13 pan. Bake at 350F degrees for 50-55 minutes.
I substituted Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose gluten-free baking flour. Also I normally would do 3/4 cup applesauce and no oil, but I was unsure about this flour mixture, because I’ve never used it and I figured a little oil might help.
I’ve used previous versions of this recipe (I seem to reinvent it every year, whole wheat flour, less sugar, no oil, now gluten-free) to make muffins for which it is excellent. The original recipe called for 2c sugar and a cinnamon and sugar glaze, but I really prefer things less sweet. You should experiment until it tastes how you like.
I wouldn’t say I’ve been too busy to blog, but you know, just too lazy. And I have so many things to share. Alas I won’t be sharing most of them here, because I still need to take or edit pictures and think about what to say and blah blah blah blah.
In the meantime, I’ve got a million tabs open with other things I’m thinking about, so it’s best I think to share some of them here so I can clear my head of them.
1. I can’t stop coming back to this picture. Firstly, Clint Eastwood is sexy. Period. At any age. But, um, WOW, this is above and beyond. Secondly, this picture so harkens to a long gone by era that it makes me incredibly wistful for time when I wasn’t even alive. Fortunately I figured out how to hack my Kindle, so I can make this one of the screensavers. It’s the little things in life, people.
2. Go listen to this Kevin Gordon song. I’ve seen him play it live at least half a dozen times and every time the room goes quiet like people realize that something is happening, like really happening. It’s a moving song that also touches on time gone by, and puts you right back into it, even if you didn’t live it the first time. Take some time to listen, this isn’t a background song, this is a slow build up, get involved in listening song.
3. The UN says women’s right to make choices about their own bodies is a basic human right. On the one hand I’m pleased with this though I doubt it will make any immediate impact in any women’s lives. On the other hand I’m appalled that we still live in a world where this is even in question at all. And not just in poor, “backwards” nations or countries under religious rule, but in our own land of the free. It is my basic human right to make choices about my body, how are we still having this discussion.
5. It’s my dearest, oldest, closest friend’s birthday today. Even if you don’t know her, imagine the sister that made me who I am today and do something nice for someone you love in honor of friendships that cross the years and the miles. I love you, Boots!
AJAX BELL 
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