badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

drinky, stealy...

Now for the real test of time. Is the liquor cabinet in the same place?

***

Yes. And there is fancy port!

raffle

I'm reading a book of all the R@ffles stories. I never knew they were so very queer and sexy! Wow.

I totally want to be R@ffles, and have my own fag. Possibly I was him in a former, fictional life. He's so debonair and tricky.

As I was taking a bath just now I noticed this sort of opaque white tupperware-looking thing by the side of the bath that my mom used to always keep on the bath to rinse our hair with. Now that one was odd. I mean it's not like she said to herself 30 years ago, "Hmm, I think I'll always use this one nearly featureless yet distinctive plastic cup to rinse the kids' hair with for many years, and then I'll move 3 times and then get rid of most of our crap and go to V3n3zuela and then move back and then wait till one of my kids has a kid and then I'll produce this object out of nowhere and put it in its traditional spot and use it for its traditional use so that my neurotic daughter will be oddly creeped out."

But all sorts of things like that are around that you'd think would have been garbage long ago and I haven't seen them in years and years and so I guess what happened is she was going through boxes and throwing crap away and thought for some of the things, "Oh, this was a kid thing, and so useful, I"ll save it and lay it out for when Moomin visits."

I can't help it that it feels creepily and falsely like the first option.

For all i know this tupperware object has a whole History for her, like, it was the one wedding present that any of her aunts gave her, and she's attached to it because no one else bothered to get her anything because she was knocked up. I will ask her tomorrow what the heck it is.

cute

cute and hilarious photos of my parents being teenagers and twentysomethings.

i *told* her she had a maternity minidress where the top was this red bandana halter top, and the bottom was denim. MINI. she denied it absolutely. i now have photos. i remember her enormous denim belly, lumping around under my hand, and the way there was no lap anymore to sit on. and i thought that was the coolest dress ever. i did not quite grasp that there was going to be an actual live baby until afterwards.

funny photo of her junior prom or maybe it was the sr. prom

also some of her and her sisters in crinolines. eerie!

and the wedding dress WAS hot pink and pretty short. maybe not totally mini, but super short. i saw the home movie of their wedding. if it's half your thigh showing, i think that counts as mini. if your butt is actually hanging out that's micro-mini.

i was tripping out looking at the photos of the apt. in MI and remembering the velvety texture of the couch with its orange and brown and old squares sort of modern-ly superimposed on each other and how you could smooth the nap of the couch velvet down and the color would lighten, then you could ruffle it carefully up and it would darken. the trick was to smooth or ruffle it with complete evenness.

also the board and concrete block bookshelf where i would lie on the floor and listen to records and just stare at the carpet and the concrete blocks which were like cinderblock, but square, with a sort of flower pattern of concrete hollowing out the middle. the close-up texture of the cinderblock.

I wonder if moomin trips out like this. Sometimes i look at him spacing out and I tiptoe past not so that I can sneak off and write but so that I won't interrupt his reverie. I figure he is having one, even if he doesn't remember it in the way I do in a pleasant way... I don't know... maybe...

He likes it here. he rode a horse around a bit. he liked holding its halter rope while it grazed. he had a huge smile and sort of a tender possessive expression as he gazed at the horse. He likes the pool a lot too but mostly just being at the edge and fiddling with the squirt guns and stuff.

little horse

moomin playing with the f1sher-price horse that came with the barn. i slept with it when i was younger than him. some of the legs used to be taped on with electrical tape long ago. but then they all just came off at the knee and so it's like a munchkin horse. it had a whole personality of being sort of suffering yet resigned.

i remembered the wooden blocks as being way bigger - the size of my hand. it's just that my hands are bigger... i love that size dissonance thing.

just so i know i'm not nuts

i'm scanning photos. I'll hve you know that I just found a photo of myself as an infant, sitting in that green plastic laundry basket.

dont' think i don't know...

I do think about things like my mom's (well, both parents) passion for h0rseback riding. I think of my comfortable life as a little kid and that I had what, 2 years or something like that, of rid1ng lessons. If it were me being the parent i would have at least once been like, "Damn. This sucks. It's my turn now. Kid, sit here with a book and watch your little sister, and I"m riding the damn h0rse now." but she never did. On the good side, it shows a marvellous unselfishness that I lack, or at least, I am only unselfish for a while and then I become extra selfish possibly to make up for it. On the bad side, i think it was one out of many symptoms of how she over-gave up her own desires and personality and life, which made her way overinvolved in mine(ours?) and made her deeply unhappy which contributed to be her being nutty as a fruitcake and very annoying. I would have, if asked or had it explained to me that there was not much money, have gladly had every other r1ding lesson instead of one every week. you know? but the opportunity was not there. Maybe it should have occurred to me independently to offer.

sometimes it is in little things that i notice my basic assumptions of entitlement, wh ich i'm usually willing to give up. For exmaple the other day i was parking in the driveway and I thought vageuly, "hmm, i always park in the driveway as i get home first, and Rook always parks in the street, is that fair? Oh, but if he cared he'd say something." Then I realized: a) not necessarily woudl he say something as he is a person who at all costs avoids the appearance or expression of pettiness. b) even if he didn't ask, maybe it would be nice of me NOT to park int he driveway for a while on purpose, and he could take the spot. Got that? that is how I am. I assume that other people will SAY if they want something even a tiny bit. Becasue I do say if I want to sit in the restaurant chair that looks out the window, or eat the last donut, or something. that doesn't mean i woudln't give it to you if you had the tiniest pendulum swing of wanting to eat that last donut yourself, people. I've been on a general campaign to do things like that whenever it occurs to me, which is really not very often.

by tomorrow, i will be completely frothing at the mouth insane. expect long posts.

whore clothes? who knew?

i think my aunt must have sent these things or else my mom went temporarily mad, or bought t hem specially in the wrong size and far too sleazy for herself on purpose to give to me. because ... black tight sleazy tank tops? que??? I"m taking them.

and she was right - the t@lbots jeans DO actually fit me. don't worry, i didn't go into the store. i just tried hers on (some pair she had leftover from some dark unknown past when she was my size) It is hard to find pants that aren't mutant and yet don't have to be rolled up or hemmed. they're slightly old ladyish and i would prefer levis with the extra length cut off, and i'm not going to buy them, but taking them for free is different.

maybe.

i feel slightly contaminated. but i watched her try on all her various outfits and show them off and my brain did not melt and I made appreciative comments about the 20 pr of identical pants and shoes etc.

I also successfully avoided being forced to watch the makover show last night - pressure was applied heavily... i resisted...

yrrrrgh.

i'm in my mom's outfit right now. since when does she buy skintight white spaghetti strap tops with built-in bras? and since when is it suddenly okay for me to wear them in her opinion? I don't get it.

"You're not going outside like that, are you? in public? " my dad said just now, appalled at my breasts. "With nothing, like, over it?"

"Yeah," Rook chimed in. "I don't know what kind of a total SLUT would buy that outfit. My god."

My mom tittered and mock-punched his arm.

all very funny if you dont actually have your stomach sort of heaving from the memories of being backed into the corner and slapped around while your parents are screaming at you that you're a fucking little whore, slut, cunt, that they wish woudl die. this, if you're wondering why all this makes me a little crazy just to be here. um. i'm not complaining really. they are being really nice. and they are fun. and they're relaxing to visit. kind of. and it was all 20 years ago. so you'd think i'd just be automaticaly "over it" right? hahahah. NOT.

Actually, what I think is that it's very odd to act like one is "over" something and it just shows that I lack whatever self-defense gene would actually be healthy and good for me to have.

minefields of good and bad

as i unpack a bit it's like my mom has laid out little minefields of sentimentality and memory for me as she knows by now how i remember many things and associate memories with things. so i opened the drawer in the bedroom she put me in (which by the way, has a new airfilter and some non-perfumed kleenex, so amazingly thoughtful) and there in the drawer this paperweight that i used to treasure hugely as it looked like jewels trapped in the glass and i started crying as i knew she had put it there on purpose for me to see and feel sentimental over. you kind of never know if the treasures are going to be thrown away or maybe randomly preserved over years and years and produced somehow like magic at a moment like this

waaaaah. i feel guilty and like i should visit more often. maybe if i keep it to short visits and learn how to stand my ground on things that upset me and also trying not to upset them.

i took wads more allergy meds and sat outside by the pool. rook and my dad and mom all whacking each other with the styrofoam noodle things and being uproarious and having races and acting like creative 12 year olds. Moomin laughing hard and noodling too from a slight distance. Time passes. My mom films. Rook and my dad use them as digeridoos and Moomin joins in and boasts of how they are playing the noodlehorns.

a lull. Rook and my dad look at each other and my dad gives a tenative slow hoot. Rook hoots back slowly and questioningly, young gorilla to imposing old silverback. There is a meaningful pause. "Hoot!" "Hoooooot!" Hoo. hooooo! Hooo! They appraise each other with happy wryness. And a hoot-fest begins and they jump around madly whacking their giant styrofoam noodles into the water and then poising them in threatening ways. Somewhere, neanderthals flip quietly in their graves. Rook poses majestically with his spear upraised, hooting! He aims at a pool raft! My dad follows suit! They jump about in the agitation of the hunt! They spear the mammoth!

it's very much like the cl@n of the c@ve bear movie, or the 2001 apes in front of the obelisk!

I am SO not making this up - and it all happened with no words, only hoots. It is all happening without reference to anything else or any giggling audience. Bly would be so proud!

My mom and I helplessly doubled over with laughter.

capacity for spontaneous silliness is a requirement for being in my family...

I left out the part where my mom, filming, walked into the pool in the deep end and yet managed to keep the camera over her head while shrieking and half-assedly treading water.

steak and mashed potatoes are being cooked for us. i have been ordered out of the kitchen.

yeep

as usual, but somehow more than usual. all the THINGS in my parents' house are trippy. the avocado-green plastic laundry basket from 30 years ago - still in use. because my mom is just that way and her things from 30 years ago look perfect and are maintained with care and precision. there are new things, and nicer things, but salted liberally with just random stuff you'd think would have disintegrated by now.

Not only can I remember Minnie crouching in that green laundry basket and her goofy gap-toothed grin, I can remember what it was like to be fully under it myself, so that it was completely covering my body and was resting on the floor.

Moomin's room is all laid out nicely with toys and me and Minnie's old books on low shelves as if the montess0ri fairy had been here. i think she has.... she is reading and playing and they are having a fantastic time up there...

i'm all squirming because i got my hands on my old piano music and i can hear it in my head and want to play it, but there is no piano anymore.

it's a comfortable house...

The allergies, oh god the allergies, I'm on a double dose of over the counter meds plus all my standard crap plus I"ve been doing all the steroid nose sprays and inhalers for a few days in preparation, but it's unbelievably horrible. wow. how did i ever live here? ever?

There are good books everywhere. and my dad has explained all about enr0n to me. (just picture me, but 20 years older and fatter, and balding, and a guy, very overexcited with a beer in my hand, giving a very long excited explanation with a lot of handwaving, and then repeating, "it boils down to this. they're crooks. they're just crooks. they're crooks at the top. just crooks. smoke and mirrors. crooks!!!!!"

Yesterday Red made me think about getting a phd again seriously and I now have the feeling i should at least go investigate it and talk to someone about what kind of support is available and etc. would it be completely insane and i would remain a huge drag on rook? or woudl it like, pay me some sort of support money, maybe more than i'm making now with part time work, but less (maybe not so much less? ) than I"d make scraping up community college jobs part-time. and how long would it take in theory, and would anyting i've done for my masters apply? I don't have the faintest clue. Red basically saying "what you are doing anyway, just on your own projects, could be getitng you a phd. " Maybe this is true and i'm stupid not to get it. but then what good would it do me? my dad was like, "by the time you get it, it'll be time to retire." just being flip but... hmm.

what i would be afraid of, in order:
1) Rook supporting me that long. the long-term financial cost to us as an economic unit.
2) The time i spend doing phd-specific things means I"m not doing my own projects which might actually be better than anything that's molded into something acceptable to academia.
3) my creative brain being contaminated by over-academicness.
4) does it get me where i want to be? what good is it? will it help?

my plan has been to work and do what i can and then "phd before i'm 50" as a long range plan. but maybe it's stupid to put it off if I want to do it eventually anyway. do I ? can I?

more betta

It's "pet week" at school and they sent Moomin home with a betta fish. Of course I could have said no to the excited Moomin who was nearly swooning with delight over His Fish and How Happy It Was To Be His Friend. Riiiiiight. Thanks, preschool, that was an option. Maybe a little warning beforehand?!

One visit to petstore later. "Swimmy is so happy! He loves his new home! I will make him a sign with his name and a picture of him! So he will like it! He loves to be my pet! He loves his tank! He loves his new rocks and his plant!"

So it was annoying but Moomin is so cute about it I'm glad I said yes. One more weekly chore though. Grrr. I had better steel myself for when he comes home with a new kitten as a christmas present for me.

***

I'm packing, laundry, cleaning things, trash, etc. and our plane leaves at 8:30 tomorrow morning...

badgers that go W0o+ !

P03try Fl@sh accepted my essay/review thing! I'm so excited. Maybe I can write more for them! they have a huge circulation! people actually read it! it's in every bookstore! yay!

the good, the bad, and the milbrae

Good: Free wireless in the Milbrae Peet's!

Bad: The cool chinese bookstore went under and was replaced by a Trader Joe's. The bakery guy and I discuss the problems of gentrification. He (chinese) compliments my scholarliness in loving the bookstore. "A scholar does not need food from Trader Joe's. You need food for the MIND. Good, good!"

Other: nifty, mildly skeevy stores, bakeries, cafes and chinese seafood restaurants abound.

store cruised: "Shadow Connection" (?!) or was it "Shadow Collection" ? many a plastic zippered bag that says "hello catty". "The Lady Store" - cheap, slutty clothes -- I got a $3.99 pink thing sort of a cross between hot pants and a lacy girdle, and a $15 black skirt... there were all sorts of tight sleazy shirts...

Chaos Park

Swirling throngs of children last night at the concert-in-the-park. Everyone brought fabulous food - except me, I brought fish crackers and the tail end of a bag of chips - how lame is that?!

There was a teenager making balloon-shapes very competently. He made a little more than 1 balloon a minute for a dollar a balloon... about 3 every 2 minutes. It was amazing.

Moomin ran about happily with his balloon-sword, fighting in fine style with one hand on his hip, shaking his ass to the funky music of the very loud cover band, and retreating backwards as more and more 4 foot high kids beset him. I like it when he whirls and leaps and then lands on his feet with the sword extended, yelling "HA!" (A thing I've demonstrated many times, but he does it with way more panache than I can muster -- he studies D@nny Kaye.) It is Time for the Fred Astaire movies.

I gave Sophie a dollar for a balloon and me and Jo watched the legendarily lawyer-like Iz talk her out of it. We could not stop laughing for a long time as we cautioned Sophie about confidence tricks, fraud, sweet-talking women, begging techniques, and more. I think that her cousin C. listened with all ears open to my advice on begging, with its 3 main principles:

1). Ask the dads. They are soft touches. This means they're suckers.
2). Always ask for at least 5 times more than you actually want. Put on a bold front and ask for 5 dollars. Or 10! Dads don't know what a balloon costs.
3). Say winningly that you want the money to buy balloons for all your friends. It makes you look generous and kind instead of greedy.

Jo and I burst into spontaneous bump and grind dancing during I think "lady marmalade" or whatever that song is where they're going on about "hey sister soul sister" and then some mildly suggestive french propositioning. I think we might have burned the eyeballs out of some people.

I also alienated some random dad during this scene:

Me and Random Dad (standing there neear balloon man waiting endlessly)
Throng of kids
tiny blond girl, maybe 2 years old, in pink dress

Tiny (lispingly, batting eyelashes): Can I have a dowwa for a bawwoon?
Me: Um, sorry... no... *pat on head*
Tiny: (to Random Dad, tugging on his pants): Excuse me, can I have a dowwa for a bawwoon?
R.D.: Uh, sorry I don't have any more dollars. (huge lie)
Me and R.D.: She's not yours?
Me and R.D.: Nope. No, not mine.
*we look around and see no obvious parent of the begging tot*
Me: Actually, I'm running her by remote. Net profit a hundred bucks an hour. When she gets a dollar, I send a jolt directly to the pleasure center of her brain.
R.D.: *Looks away, pretends not to hear me, looks faintly nauseated, sidles in other direction*
Me: (thinking) Did I cross the line?

Today:

Milbrae. Cafe. Translating. Red comes down on the train to visit! Chula comes down on the train on her way out of town! There will be dim sum and maybe the chinese bookstore if we have time.

font

Why did my font just get really tiny?

math has been reached!

Moomin came home with math problems written out! 1+4 = 5, with lots of erasing and re-writes. We talk about this but I've never tried giving him a lesson or done more than briefly explain what plus and equals means. I guess they taught him!

today's solar flares

Much very intense translating. I got into it. There were solar flares prolonged forever as I realized just the right ways to say things. It's a cycle of short poems, very tough to translate, very non-linear thought, all about the photos of F. Woodman. And this morning I melded with F.W. and her poet Z.M. and i managed to do something very strange with my mind where I convinced myself that I knew what Z.M. meant by everything. The poems are not only non-linear but they have huge layers of ambiguity. And the SOUND. I read them out loud (in the cafe... quietly...) and English can't DO that. English has so many sharp corners. I played with the liquidity and the sharp corners and the meanings until I felt I had it right. And many things became clear that had not been clear before, like when Gandalf wrestled with the Balrog and became the White Rider. I got up and did a little happy dance - when I figured out how to avoid saying "nipples" as it's just not a very good word in a poem especially this poem, and how i fixed it actually fixed all the other things wrong with the poem too and made everything claro. I slammed neologisms and images together at high speed. Part of what made it all click weirdly into place is that I've been writing very similar stuff lately - a cycle of short poems meant to be taken together and with very short lines and not always perfect sentences or grammar. A looseness or simplicity but also each thing has to do the imagist thing.

Whew.

Then I went to the mall and bought some socks.

Then there was much castling and spaceshipping and tinkering of toys. And now I have snuck off to write again. I have 10 more short things - can I get back into the correct state of mind, and finish it?

clone wars

"If I had a clone, honestly, at this moment... instead of doing what I'd normally do with my clone, which is fucking myself all day, I'd send the clone to H0uston, so that it would visit my parents and my mom would take it shopping and I wouldn't have to deal."

"If you had a clone, it would send YOU to H0uston."

"Are you kidding? I could kick my clone's ass!"

How many times do i have to tell my mom no, I will not go clothes shopping with her so she can pick at me and talk about fatness? I dread the poking, and the way she tries to show me her arm flab so that we can bond on how much we hate ourselves. BECAUSE I DON'T.

I shall go to no malls. I swear it!

In which i'm immediately cheered by my own blithe whorishness

5 minutes after having a spasm of soul-searching agony over whether I'm kind of jerky for trying to do everything in life and maintain my sluttiness, what am I doing? Sending flirty propositions over email to cute, shy, smiley, nerdy, bookish girl I met at a poetry reading. Really now. It's nice to be me. Like it or lump it.

Actually that might should be described as "sleazy propositions" not "flirty propositions".

I am spending tomorrow morning working on Z.M. translation project ... I can't wait... I'm so excited! she says she has a publisher in sp@in and maybe another one in argent1na !!! Yow. Can I pull this off? I wish I'd finished it all months ago.

Rook is making me watch the very first buffy episode tonight. I'm liking it.

And my tonsils feel almost all the way better - I am eating normal food again.

Tomorrow I will take Moomin to the super-great wading pool in Polo Alto. We will wade amongst fountains and spouting water-bicycles and the tiny slide.

This afternoon we were on the swings, and he got on the swing himself (a major achievement - he is short) and pumped by himself, and we took turns saying random things about our swinging: "superhero flying! tree flying! leaf flying! leaf falling off the tree flying! moon flying around the earth flying! truck flying! horses flying! horses galloping flying! happy flying! happy birthday flying! cake flying! ice cream truck flying! chocolate flying! sword flying! spaceship flying! airplane flying! rockets flying up to the moon flying!" I love it when I can start babbling and he will take it up and babble back and forth with me. So much fun.

I have amazing powers, world!

and after this one buffy I will finish Time Regained...

***

no... it's a 2 part episode. after these 2 buffys i will almost-finish Time Regained.

more defense of evolution

I used to be very slothful. (but also consider the chronic pain as part of that)

Now I'm incredibly energetic and driven. Part of what drives me is ambition which though it can be very ignoble can also be seen as glorious feminism, so there. The other part of what drives me is caring for other people, or love, or something, which I think has always been true, though the ignoble/flip side of that is that I only want to do that caring-for if it results in constant praise and appreciation and love, let's hope, getting laid fabulously.

But is that so strange?

This is not what I meant to do today and now I'll go do some quick poet-things before the teenage babysitter leaves and I become Mom again.

you've seen my tonsils, now take a look at something even worse!

Badger: i'm kind of a jerkwad, i think...
.....
J: Not to say that you can't be a jerkwad sometimes.

J: sometimes I think the biggest jerkwaddy thing you do is taking a certain amount of pride in being difficult

Badger: go on please
Badger: no, go on
Badger: explain
Badger: lord knows i need someone to tell me how i'm jerky in a way i can understand, who isn't actually mad at me at the time
J: Well, it's like you know that you are doing/being difficult about something, but on a certain level you think well dammit I'm right and everybody else is wrong, or at least it's part of what makes me me so fuck em if they don't like that part of me
J: I'll be true to myself even if it hurts them
Badger: ack
Badger: yup
Badger: like it or lump it
Badger: "the rest of me is so great, you shd just put up with me"
J: I guess the thing is, and this probably relates to the whole narcissitic wounding and such
J: that you don't yet seem to get that you can bend and still be at the core you
Badger: i AM bending [Instant defensiveness! bristle!]
J: Not all compromise is betrayal of yourself
Badger: i KNOW
Badger: no one seems to get it when i DO bend and i totally do
J: Well, maybe so, but maybe not always in the way that's needed
Badger: well
Badger: I'm bending a lot but i do have a line [grrrrr! watch me get my back up!]
J: like you'll do something that you think is very accomodating, but it's not what the person needs/wants

[I burst into tears (real life action) and start whining (textually) ]

[much even more heinously detailed analysis deleted because I do have SOME sense of my own privacy and other people's]

[J. says that I am expecting the very difficult or superhuman, and so must behave superhumanly]

Arrrrr! Everything J. said is so true and I can apply it to myself from nearly my very earliest memories of self-awareness. I mean I was like that when I was 7 years old. And being like that is very much my virtue and my flaw at the same time. If I weren't, would I have been so obnoxious as a kid about declaring my atheism and weird politics everywhere? And my queerness? And my superpower of just saying whatever and being in people's faces? And those things are massively important to me. And society needs people who are capable of it, doesn't it? (my justification for nearly any obnoxious behavior on my part or anyone else's, and okay, i realize maybe my justifications wear thin after a while.)

But it's helpful to have J. point out the obvious to me, of how difficult it can be for other people to deal with me. (Actually, at the beginning of that conversation I had just said that everyone gets sick of my crap, that I'm intolerable long-term, and Rook is just dumber than most to put up with me, and then J. bitch-slapped me into shutting up, instead of as I hoped contradicting me and telling me that I'm all fantastic and stuff. Oh well. ha on me. )

So without being all whiny about it, I'll just admit I'm a jerk. I am so, way, way, less of a jerk than I used to be. I actually try not to offend people. Lots of times. I try to be considerate. When Person Y recently was massively hurt by something I did, I tried to quit doing it and in fact did, and I wrassled my head around to respect their feelings on a deep and sincere level. Only because Rook and Person Z practically sat on me in a very alcoholics-anonymous-intervention way, and then I spent days doing nothing but thinking and writing about it.

But there you have my other superpower: I am willing to put enormous amounts of energy into thinking about how to change myself and try to improve and I will actually listen and try. And I also spend a huge amount of time thinking about what other people feel, and what they might feel, and what they think of me and how i can be nice to them. Doesn't that count for a lot? some? a little?

I am not perfect... I get mad and defensive sometimes too... there is no space for that kind of thing, though...

If I hadn't said "fuck 'em, i'll be true to myself" so so so many times in the past, think where I would be now. no really just think about it. I can imagine many awful possibilities.

but again in my defence I'm SO not saying that at all and instead have said very different things. if people could look a little past my automatic pilot of "I'm not bending" and see the bit where I am bending.

I'll sew myself up now. I have amazing recuperative powers. If I'd written this in my normal paper journal I wonder if it would have the same effect as it does when I blog things like this? Because despite the crypticness of it, it's public and I think has a greater effect on me in some weird way. in a little notebook on my shelf my thoughts are almost as forgettable and easy to leave behind as they are if I don't write them at all. Do we all forget dozens or hundreds of complex insights every day?

musings on imaginary girlfriends

My friend J. from Blogosity, on the surface, would seem to be possibly the worst person in the world to ask for advice on interpersonal relations. But sometimes an alien observer of human social customs gives a much-needed perspective. So he told me like it is and I'll post that in a minute.

exhibitions

"I wouldn't be doing this in public if I weren't an exhibitionist; and, let's face it, you wouldn't be reading it if you weren't a little bit of a voyeur." -- Almeda,
via ozarque's comments.

a nifty idea

I'm gonna make a cool "proust soundtrack" and burn CDs for everyone at the Tom Purdue group's last meeting! Suggestions welcome for what should be on it.

Bowie: "Sound and Vision".
something by edith piaf.
"Time Tough" by toots and the maytals.
Most certainly "I was a bad boyfriend" by Pansy Division.

HOORAY

i can't really explain but i'm all proud of my friend and burst into tears at the new phd. so much hard work! she is so great! Her open g3nomics thing is so cool!

i can't even begin to explain the odd mixture of intense feelings this gives me. Feeling sentimental thinking of all her ambitions and dreams and everything. what could be nicer than to know that from way back and then to see it to some degree fulfilled. and knowing how hard it is hard work and also just on a personal level the difficulty of believing in oneself consistently enough to do anything this kickass and what it means. forgive me but i'm just feeling very sappy about it.

TX, 1991 --

exploding spaceships in there

a long afternoon of explodingg spaceships and t1nkertoys. my throat still hurt a lot and i realized i hadnt eaten all day long and nothing seemed edible. spoonful of icecream and off to the store with Very Helpful Moomin who reads the list and corrects me firmly when I deviate from the list. Another exercise in patience as things happen like he implores me to hand him each thing from the cart so that he can put them on the checkout conveyor belt. since he is extremely short this was pretty funny to see him heroically hefting half-gallons of juice and milk up above his head. A slow process. I felt mild paranoia that i might get sick and not have any food, but resisted the impulse to buy everything as if preparing for siege.

I had a somewhat odd phone call from my mom where in the middle of the convo she said, "Oh! let me read you this thing i printed off the web! maybe you have seen some of these books and they sound like you might like them! and you can tell me if they're really as good as they sound in the reviews!" and she started reading me these book reviews and it was TOTALLY BOOK REVIEWS THAT I HAD WRITTEN.

"Um. Mom. Yes. Yes those ARE books I'd like. And that is because I wrote those reviews."

Long silence.

"Is there not a name on the review? Maybe at the top?"

"Oh. Badger Hemulen. Oh yeah hahha. I'm so stupid!"

WTF? what was that? could it have been random? is my mom indeed googling "little known femsf classics" or whatever? how? ack? if she is, i'm so screwed. If you're reading this and you suspect you might be my mom, just stop now, I beg of you.

There was also some bigass pressure to go buy some particular pants at the totally nasty granny store and she appeared to have forgotten my heartfelt emails and our whole conversation about how I absolutely refused to go clothes shopping and I was very sorry but No. ??? how could she just forget that? it was like 2 weeks ago.

some vague, drifty piano playing was drifted... I discover i super super like theodor kirchner.... more tinkertoys constructed... castles built and deserts traversed... oases discovered... dinosaurs flew... more sneaking off to tool around on the keys... maybe a little deliriously? I am feeling a little strange.

Possibly i am really sick. just now something horrible happened inside my ear, a very sharp pain and then it went away, but now i feel ... sort of like i've been buffeted a mighty buffet by Little John or Friar Tuck or Will Scarlet... Rook just gently but firmly sent me to bed with advil... i'm incoherent... my crown has been cracked ...

i'll have to stay home and try to make a dr. appt and make sure I don't have strep or coxs@ckie or something gross... and my ear hurts.. fuck!

no pity no shame no silence

I'm Badger. I'm a survivor of sexual violence.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

a more useful meme than usual from
misia via final_girl

the art of patience

Patience with the very old and very young. I am not good at this, but i am having to practice it a lot lately and it is a good skill to have. Lack of patience being one of my main features. How impatience can be a virtue. How patience is useful and not.

I gather and sort all the papers in the room which makes a stack 2 feet high. Anything that has an obvious handle or title I can deal with. about a foot of it needs confirmation: Keep or toss? If keep, what to call it? interminable waiitng as mcc takes a paper in his trembling hands and slowly absorbs the subject. sometimes he goes back in time to an argument he had at a conference in 1953 and i get a story about who said what and who thought what else of it and what it meant and then, inevitably, when the people in the story died. The thought is in there leaping and brilliant but somehow there is a disconnect or an inability to focus for very long or else sometimes the opposite - changing tracks from one focus to another takes a strangely long time. It is a mistake to think that the thought is not there.

It can be 1 minute (still endless as I sit and wait without appeearing to be impatient, or waiting, but still paying attention) or 3 minutes of staring at the paper and thinking or remembering or re-entering the moment of having written whatever it was or read it or at one moment sometime in the last 2 months having decided to keep the paper, or 10 minutes if the story that bubbles up from memory is long and I don't interrupt it, and then i take the piece of paper gently but firmly and throw it away or put it in a new stack to file it in one of the 15 file cabinets because the paperless office is as far away as the memoryless brain.

After about 1 minute of silent waiting i start to idly read something else in a not very subtle way but i hope still with enough psychic quietness so as not to appear impatient at all. Because with age i think there is less impulse to drive forward. Time passes quickly enough. It is good to linger over the moment because what is there to drive forward to? There is no need to run up the escalator that is already carrying you effortlessly up and up to the top floor of nowhere. Resignation is dignity.

Proust said something about buddhist detachment and the capacity for work being in the old, but there being a point of acceptance that because the capacity is there and the drive isn't, stopping is okay.

Relating all this to being around infants or little kids and to being me or not really me but in my role and maybe my idealized role of being in-between and being some kind of anthropological social functioning unit. The patience required from the role is nearly identical though the source of the need for patience is so different. In both cases it requires respect for a pace of experience very different from my own. If you've watched an episode of the teletubbies then you know pretty much the pace required. It has nothing to do with intelligence or lack of intelligence.

disgusting beyond compare

This morning I tried to look at my throat with a flashlight. Rook found a weird hugelooking spot on the back of my throat. and just now I had a chain-sneezing bout and coughed up the most disgusting thing ever - one of those tonsiloliths, right? but HUGE. Huge. huge. unbelievable. how long was that in my tonsils? ew.

I must have the nastiest breath ever... lord i hope not... as the thing smelled... well... it smelled a lot like, if you leave rice in the rice cooker by accident for a week and then open it and the rice has all fermented in there and gotten moldy. But worse than that. and it might very well have been some grains of rice stuck in there as it sort of looked like about 3 or 4 grains of rice dissolved into each other. I resolve to gargle a zilliion times a day. That was amazingly gross.

At least I'm not getting sick - I feel fine but with somewhat swollen glands and my ear on one side is all funky... but I bet it's from the aftermath of THAT THING reaching critical mass.

Finally, we see that chain-sneezing is good for something after all.

No one's ever going to want to kiss me again after reading this.... ew, ew, ew.

rrrrr.

unexpectedly, my ears hurt. and my throat feels a little funny like something is stuck in my tonsils. yuck.

noooooo... I won't be sick... I won't get a cold... nope nope nope.

perfect moon moment

driving home from the reading tonight with an old/new mix tape from years ago grabbed and shoved into the tape player - i was almost home when I noticed the full moon through a window in black fast-moving clouds and bowie "changes" was playing just at the moment of singing

Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

I enjoyed kvetch very much.... I have to pick maybe 3 events per month to go to - maybe kvetch, wwd, and w@verly and keep it limited to that... unless someone asks me to read especially like the cafe pom people. Plus I will have night or late-afternoon class 2 days a week. maybe i could alternate months between kvetch and w@verly.

on the way driving up to the reading i was just incredibly stressed and sad and could not stop thinking how i am sucking. i am dissing rook, who is the coolest person on the planet. what he said about that when he is here, i think his time should be mine and i expect him to pay attention to me and experience his not paying attention as withdrawal or rejection, and yet when i totally leave in the evenings and am not here I also expect my time to be mine or that he NOT experience it as withdrawal on my part. This is partly my dumb arrogantitude, self-centeredness, neediness and attention-whorishness, but partly I think an introvert-extrovert thing. also i keep inviting him to things and to hang out with groups of people as for me that would be an instant solution for my own feelings. but that is not true for everyone, duh. and, i'm so volatile emotionally and so used to that, and so... errrgh, I'm so 0 to 60 in every way, which can mean a lot of things and is true in many ways but here I mean that i am adaptable or something, which i think of usually as a virtue, but to other people, i've gone 0 to 60 and i'm ... arrrrgh... i dunno. I need to listen to people better is one thing, and to be able to deal better with anger...

So, still thinking about all this, but as the reading got going I suddenly had both a happy feeling of getting to hear a bunch of new people reading their work and being intensely interested and curious -- and also somehow magically feeling that i have faith in me and in rook and that everything will be okay.

And I enjoyed reading though I did not quite get worked up into the proper frenzy as i was feeling shy. But I did okay anyway and threw myself off the cliff with a little bit of style, i think.

I met a bunch of people tonight or ran into them again that I'd like to see again or have some emailing. It was also fun but super odd to meet this person and be like... "Um, hi, total stranger, I know way too much about your life, oh so randomly." Not a bad thing, in fact we should all hand our diaries to strangers instead of engaging in pointless small talk, and then go away into separate corners for a while and read the diaries and then come back and bow ceremoniously...

faster! slower! with page-long sentences!

oh god oh god oh god the end of Time Regained is like one big 200-page creamy orgasm. but only if you like reading about words and meaning and truth and memory and art and how we tell if art is good or not.

I'm squeaking a lot and trying to resist the impulse to draw little stars and exclamation points in the margin of every page.