badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

short stories, and hell

I read "Time Gypsy" and "A Flock of Lawn Flamingos" today - really fun. And then I don't know what came over me but last night in order to calm down and sleep I started what I thought would be an innocuously dull Pollyanna book I got for free in the library free box. This morning I finished it out of some masochistic impulse because it wasn't just soothingly awful - it was stomach-churningly awful and all about Pollyanna teaching everyone that women need babies and moms shouldn't work or go to school or do anything other than be glad about having babies. Jesus Barfarama Stepford Popsicle Hemorrhoids, Batman! why did I keep reading it? Now I shall turn to something more cheering.

***
Speaking of motherhood - I had a nice afternoon with Moomin despite the cramps. We filled up the plastic pool. When he jumped in, slipped, and fell on his ass, I have to say... he coldly screamed at the universe, "This is NOT GOOD! This is NOT RIGHT!" Someone teach that kid how to a) use contractions b) swear. For fuck's sake! I didn't do it! But then we had a lovely time lying on the blanket feeding the birds and reading "What's Michael" cat comics. He rode his bike, I weeded the garden. We ate cookies and had juice.

***

Chula nicely compliments me by saying that I put the sin in Wisconsin. Well, she will see next year that it is plenty full of its very own lovely sin already!

the cramps, and I don't mean punk

Oh my god the cramps. I've been bleeding a little on and off for days and days, and now suddenly wham, I can barely sit down and blood pours out of me. It even hurts to walk, like it's jarring my cervix horribly. It's mega-advil time! Could the super-heavy IUD-induced bleeding be why I am craving red meat all the time? I guess I should take iron pills or eat a lot of liver or something. I forgot to say about the plane ride - I had to keep ramming in the super-megalodon-googleplexia-hoover-dam-tampax every 45 minutes. You'd think that bleeding heavier would mean it would be over more quickly, wouldn't you? At this rate my whole period should be over in 2 days. GRRRRR.

bird, confused

There's a tiny grey bird on the potato-vine bush outside my window and for the last 10 minutes it's been flitting from branch to branch. It flits, then swivels its head two or three times to look all around at the bush's branches, then flits again. Is it looking for a nest? What the hell is it doing? Could it be a very young bird practicing its flying? Why do I keep watching it? Which of us is more confused?

from the airport

It occurred to me slightly too late in the airport last night that an airport is not a good place to lie on the floor with purple hair, reading an oversized edition of "Hothead Paisan, Homocidal Lesbian Terrorist." Fortunately no one noticed.

creaky but calmed and inspired

I did manage to push right up against the boundaries of my physical endurance this weekend. I'm aching all over - from lack of sleep, probably, and I suspect the plane ride makes all my joints-that-ache-in-the-cold ache more. So my finger joints, toes, and left knee feel sore. Years from now that will be where the arthritis hits. I'm taking it easy today. Unpacking... I'll get the oil changed in my truck... Maybe I'll water the garden in the sun (though because my feet and hands are so sore I don't want to get them wet.)

I'm left, post-WisCon, with lots of inspiration and the resolve to write lots of cool stuff.

On the side of regrets: I wish I'd pushed to keep my translation reading in the programming, because I'd like it out there, and I know people would like it and think it's rad. I felt a deeper realization of just how much cool stuff I've been doing that is not out in the world and no one knows about it - because I don't do anything with it. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for. Little things are published here and there, but why not more? Because I haven't really tried. So, like, 1% of what I do is visible. That's just... I will endeavor to correct that.

The other result of WisCon is that I feel firmed up in my thinking that getting a PhD is not the thing for me. I'm already doing good work; I need to finish it and send it out. The wonderful feeling of WisCon is not having to explain yourself and your entire worldview in baby-talk. And what I think academia would require of me is so much of that, that I'd be frustrated. I admire, for example, Professor Steed's book on Utopias, but it's so simplified, well, simple is not the word, but it's like the foundations have to be so carefully constructed to fit the specifications of the Code, that the wonderful buildilng never quite gets built. And I want to build wonderful buildings, so byzantine and complex - not the foundations. I'm not suited. And the "discipline" academia is offering (through Prof. Steed and Prof. F. ) would train me to pour concrete foundations onto the bedrock. When I'd rather be perching elaborate gargoyles on my flying buttresses made of mist. They want to convince me I need both, but I'm unconvinced. I want to go way further than the academic papers I heard and (just as in translator-world) when I look at the people I admire most, they are intellectual-critic-novelists on the fringes of academia or completely outside of it (yet not unfamiliar with it). (T.D., G.J., U.L, J.R.) That's where I want to be. (And frankly - without being arrogant I hope - that is where I belong, with the wide strange range of my inner library, of what I've read and have to draw upon.)

heard with excitement

One of the books I heard about but didn't find to buy - Andrea Hairston's Mindscape. She was incredibly sparkly and interesting and the book, from her description, sounded like just my sort of Thing. Dense, identity-boundary-weird, and smart as hell. I wish I'd gotten to talk with her more!

***
Oh. Duh. I didn't find it because it's NOT OUT YET.

And then, the juicy bits in which I reveal all that I am thinking no matter how foolish

I wandered around madly trying to find the Web panel which was scheduled somewhere else and the sign for it was somewhere ELSE but instead something else. I nearly gave up on it but then it turned out to be in one of the small conference rooms and I'm glad I went as it turned out that whump was on the panel. And H.W. who ... I was only half paying attention I have to confess as I was still messing with that wiki. (Oh. I forgot to mention that. I'll save it for its own post as it would be an enormous complicated digression and I'd like to get to the juicy part of the story.) ... H.W. who made my ears perk up by some passing reference to alt.poly. Actually when I had first come into the room while someone was being a little bit tedious I had a funny moment where our eyes met and I felt we were having a mutual silent laughter over the silliness of whatever it was. This could have been just my imagination. Anyway then we were talking afterwards about having kids and she put out there that it was complex with poly and then boasted on her girlfriend and boyfriend and how awesome they were. (And in between I realized she was the sort of marvellous woman who talks boastfully of how she squirts breast milk across the room to discipline her cats, like a handy squirt gun.) "Oh, so who's your boyfriend and girlfriend?" "B. and N." "OMG not the incredibly fucking hot (*attempt at expressive hand gesture meant to convey sexy body and like, presence of giant brain*) woman I was in the hot tub with who just... *second speechless hand gesture meant to convey intellectual and physical lust*" "Why yes! And yes she is so very *more funny hand gestures* And oh, here they come now... you should...*expressive glance with eyebrow-waggling*" "Yes I most certainly SHOULD..." What, telepathy? It was hilarious. Wait - I just realized you might think I'm talking about H.W. the wondrous librarian but I mean the other one. Unless they're both librarians.

*** continue for the long version if you like the details and overanalysis and will try not to laugh at me ***

Do you know the muffin men - who live on Wiscon Lane?

Men at WisCon are afraid to flirt with me. That is as it should be; they are correct in their perceptions that I am fearsome. Then - what is it about the loud strong asskicking feminist women who mate with reserved, rather shy, uber-logical, super-smart, sweet, noticing-things-quietly men who are surpised and pleased when women deign to speak with them? Has anyone else noticed this pattern? And they tend to be poly. I'm just saying. Natch there are plenty of dykely ones who don't fit this pattern so don't get up my nose for generalizing... But doesn't it seem like we go for these sweet maidenly spock-like creatures fairly often? Isn't that amusing? People have written reams about feminist-girlhood crushes on Spock and the conviction one has that underneath, Spock is a total muffin. Here we see a result of those feminist girlhoods 30 or 40 years later.

Whump was telling me about several notorious incidents of people (SF writers or fans) saying that men aren't allowed at WisCon or that to get in the door you have to be gelded. How very Gate to Women's Country! That feminist men - who don't make themselves Big all the time - who could fearlessly face Hothead Paisan with a clear conscience and a shy smile - are considered by some to be "feminized" men. Of course it is a compliment for this to be so.

I noticed something like it in The Country of the Pointed Firs - the way the men were, especially William. The way he is restful, comforting, and perceptive for the narrator amid the intensity of the imaginary and social-imaginary life of the intensely verbal village women.

Some of Monday

Monday morning I had the nicest calm breakfast, just me and my computer. Mmmmm! I crave things like bacon and hamburgers lately - after so many years of being a vegetarian, then a chickentarian, it still weirds me out to eat a hamburger. They go better with guilt, I'm sure.

I wandered all over this morning. I can barely even remember what the heck I did. The Broad Universe meeting... I said I'd post something about how we should all review each other's books on Am4zon and make those recommended lists. people had good ideas. I liked the idea of local chapters!

then - lunch with Amhar and Melisande from Sacramento who is fabulously full of enthusiasm and I hope she always comes to wiscon! I tried to bully Amhar into volunteering to start the B.U. local chapter; I was not sure if she was excited or appalled by the idea.

I listened to most of an academic paper by the Katydid, on gender and how fem sf uses it to ... you know... to subvert the dominant paradise, I mean paradox, I mean paradigm... That Thing. Later she and I were taking the same shuttle to the airport and talked a lot about trying to do feminist work in academia. I complimented her boldness and bravery in doing that and told her that even the people trying to do it here had warned me it is difficult and would hurt me in an academic career. In her case (in G3rmany)- her department chair and advisor and someone else had called a special meeting to persuade her not to write about that topic because it was "not respectable." Ouch! "But I just refused to listen. They gave me money to be in the program - what are they going to do, kick me out?" And she makes an excellent living as an interpreter so was not worried about jockeying for academic position. All hail the Katydid!

false diffidence

A funny moment from Sun. night. D.N. saying "I forgot to mention 2 things in my speech. One, I didn't promote the anthology. Two, I should have introduced you as the jury chair." Me- Oh! I'm glad you didn't put me on the spot, I would have been embarrassed. D: You wouldn't have had any choice! It's not your decision! Me: Well, yeah, plus, scratch that, I wouldn't have been embarrassed. I would have suffered temporary false diffidence."

leaving paradise

In Across the Acheron there are many touching scenes of leaving paradise and I am just feeling one... If you have to leave then it is best to give someone the key. So I told Kate S. to read that book and see if she likes it which is maybe overly sentimental and gushy. But hey.

the exhaustion of the butterfly

Or perhaps the exhaustion of the giant moth that went beating its wings and tumbling through space to the Earth and back from the Moon - to save Otho Bludge.

I have flitted and tumbled ... first hanging out for a while with Amhar in our room - we femmed up for the fancy dress party and talked about the canon panel - then to dinner as I sort of invited myself with kate s. and ellen and g. as they were makng a dinner date in front of me. I keep doing that perhaps a little rudely? but how else to find anyone. It seems best to say way, way in advance a specific time and place instead. Anyway - we walked past the capitol to somewhere that was sort of odd midwestern-fusion. I have no idea what I ate - some sort of mint pesto pizza with sausage? no... it was tomato goat cheese, but in a very un-california combination that turned out well - and good thin crust, which I've never found in california at all (why?)

I heard interesting gossip which I'll keep to myself, nothing earthshattering...

On the way back I noticed the statue of "Forward!" from the 1893 women's somethingorother Columbian Exposition - a woman with her hand upraised - she was definitely leading a charge! There were pansies at her feet and I wondered if someone else from the con put them there as a feminist tribute.

I still have a crush. But actual hitting-on was going on in other quarters. And it seemed quite likely to have followthrough but I backed off because of comparing to the crush and not really... well... also, I was overcome by a feeling that might have been "prudence" - I can't say. It wasn't a very familiar feeling! I'm blogging in bed, instead.

So - then someone kindly gave me their dessert ticket - I ate rhubarb pie and strudel (YUM) - the "short announcements" were long, but interesting and inspiring. I'll link tomorrow to these but there were speeches from the carl br4ndon society about their new awards - and from the japanese tiptree-ish gender award. Wow! And from Broad Universe.

Gwyneth gave a very interesting, intelligent, clear speech about insanity. I liked her opposition of the dreary self-destroying Bell Jar vs. the positive outcome of "I never promised you a rose garden." (Which I read when I was 12 or so, and liked - in fact I sometimes think of it and the cool gods - the conversations with the Falling God impressed me at the time though I don't remember why. I also remember being embarrassed for liking the book even then - it had a very drippy, sentimental, horrible book cover.) Then going from the imagination-space of madness to an imagining of writers walking in the room accompanied by this wraithlike ghostly rush of their characters who are parts of themselves. I enjoyed that .. was happy to go there! Like the Dead riding with Aragorn. (Though: I don't buy into the thought that schizophrenia is close to genius and vice versa though it's often occurred to me and seems sort of temptingly attractive. To G.J.'s credit (of course - as she is blindingly smart) she only mentioned it as a possible thing suggested by some research but not substantiated... ) I was very happy to hear all her clear, focused, shiny ideas!

R.McK.'s speech on the other hand was endless and dull to the point where it was nearly unbearable. I got extremely annoyed at the constant self-deprecation. The whole speech was basically:

"I don't know how to write a speech and hate it more than anything in the world except coming to conventions. I don't know anything, and am incompetent at everything, except for hamsters, and dandelion fluff, and collecting dryer lint, which I do because it doesn't take any skill or thought. Oh, by the way, I'll put myself down again. Dryer lint is my LIFE. I first encountered hamsters when I was six years old. Did I mention that I'm incompetent at everything? [REPEAT 200 TIMES] P.S.: Homeopathy is magic."

Recklessly, I mock the guest of honor. It was necessary for my survival as a human being - I swear it.

The thought that anyone could confuse or conflate what G. and R. were saying as being part of the same thing was even more annoying. More on this later.

[***edit -- okay... now I feel like a total bitch for saying that and making fun. Perhaps I was just exhausted and not seeing and it went on a little too long. I got R.M's point about the "wrong speech" and everything else. I will, though, stand by the mild annoyance at the rhetorical strategy of repeated self-deprecation.]

fancily dressed with my hair in a swirl - i went to nearly all the parties.

grand convo

With a title like "Grand Conversation" how could I miss it? I'm not disappointed. Rosaleen Love just read the words "power to the polyps". Coral is cool! I should type up The Absorbing Story of My L1fe as a Sponge and email it to her just to give her a laugh!

Now it's Anne Sheldon reading something inannaish. wait... it's The Adventures of a Faithful Counselor. Wow cool. Everything cool is coming out from this press! omg I can't tell you what it means to me to be in a roomful of people who, I'm realizing, a good bunch of them know who Ninshubar is. If I were conversing with Anne I'd send her this: archive of translations from sumerian and especially the Debates and Disputations like the debate between Hoe and Plough; Winter and Summer. or oh- Bird and Fish is a great one.

Now - Eleanor Arnason, with other-planet myths...an ice planet. (and I'm thinking... here is a person who has read her jerome rothenberg....Everyone here is so deeply nerdy!)

wiscon

notes from the loose canon panel

Here are my very fuzzy, very un-edited, messily typed, not-including-everything notes from the canon panel. I'll make a nice list of the books suggested - I'll clean up that list, the spelling, add authors, etc. Most of them were in response to Bill's question about a 90s canon. We didnt' make a "Big Canon".

***

Steven...
prescriptive vs. descriptive
MUST have read - vs. - this would be good to read

Illicit Passage - Alice Nunn
revolution or direct political action from woman's point of view.
steven's canon - audience and panel quickly come up with what they think everyone has read or should have read (at wiscon)

- The Female Man
- Houston, Houston, Do You Read
errr... I got up to write down the others on a big piece of paper. Lori will have them.

common ground
history of genre and community. (audience - jennifer)

Linda Hogan. nativeamerican poet.
lori - open system.
hall of fame model

museum model. the entry hall - foundational works.
the utopian hall... the hall of books by men that demonstrate they get it.

stuff that's been said already....
Impact.....
sandra lindow - as a reader... internal canon. steps. "path" progress.
shapes how we write - as writers in that genre.
"slumming"
lori - what if you've read the crap of a genre? instead of the classics or canon of it?

janet:
keeping people "out" of canon
defining who is educated. (high culture? or subculture)
idiolect. an individual dialect/language
the canon as common language...
[i give my rousing speech about open system

steven - quality. snottiness. cultural judgement and exclusion.
mike - walk to the end of the world was literarily inferior but not as important.
but the furies was much better - (not her first novel)

erin - dialectic model of different canons in conversation with each other.
nonlinearity, anarchy. in a genre.....
lori to erin: will you marry me?
erin: that's my first proposal ever!

lori - i'm lazy and don't care....

i'm confused.

suddenly i realize that lori wants what's New - what is now? what is our own historical moment?
living breathing canon.

audience person - to what lori said. the books talked about over and over. i should readt his but i don't want to. chronnological tree- influential important books - what kind of canon are we looking for?
matt austern - tree metaphor good -branches forgetable, the crap is forgettable... but important.

lesley hall - literary history of a genre. vs. archetypal or "best" books in a genre
books no one is going to read for pleasure middlemarch influenced by ivanhoe but who wants to read ivanhoe.
Danger of setting up the altar canon. (the golden bookshelf of femsf)
The new woman novel of the late 19th century. approved list. who is being discussed and getting back into print. olive schreiner. mona k. sarah grand georgia edgerty? who?
constructive conversation and bouncing things off each other. "ont the same page"
To enable conversation you need common ground.
negotiating and constructing that common ground.
lori - construct lots of canons as long as always questioning the process.
mike levy - at academic sf cons - the academics only have the peaks. the fan-academics

bill henry.
canonical books are old books... our lateest one just came up with v. quick consensus - latest was 1985.
lori - predicting what will be influential (i think this is a different issue?)
janet -professionalness.
metaphors. landscape. paths. carrier bag. tree. museum. search engine back end.

jennifer. how is it used - protective. certain things not worthy of discourse, conversation.

the iron dragons' daughter
life druing wartime
female man russ
camp concentration tom disch
tim powers. ?? gates.

recommendations.
what frightens me about a canon. (2 or 3 that i've never heard of... go out and read them..) deviations from the standard.

what frightens me about not having a canon.

looking for new things to add to my list of femsf. multiple sources.

what might be on that canon - since the 90s?

stories for men - john kessel.
ammonite. nicola griffith.
slow river - nicola
elanor arnason - anything;
mission child.
canonical books that haven't won the tiptree.
white queen.
door into ocean - joan slonzinsky.
tehanu. leguin
paradigm of earth candas jane dorsey. and black wine.
stars in my pocket like grains of sand. ("that's not feminist")
sarah canary. kjf.
what I didnt' see.
little faces. vonda macintyre.
the mouth. carol emshwiller
congenital agenesis.
carmen dog. carol emshwiller.
Mall. Trisha Sullivan.
girl detective - kelly link
travels with the snow queen
ring of swords
handmaid's tale
orlando.
kathy acker. my mother demonology Pussy king of the pirates.
tiptree's work
tiptree winners.

janet- feminist books and books that are interesting to feminists. mindplayers - pat cadigan - not feminist novel but of interest to feminists.
sandra lindow - miles vorkosigan being feminized whihc makes series interestingly feminist.
lois bujold. ethan of athos.
octavia butler Blood Child, wild seed.
vonda macintyre - dreamsnake.
l. timmel duchamp - alanya to alanya
pamela sargent - shore of women
kelly eskridge - solitaire.

More amazing lists here:
http://www.feministsf.org/femsf/
and #include Tiptreewinners;
***
Note: I have shown many more people my underwear. JUST BECAUSE. It's girls gone wild day here at WisCon!

I think I'm not quite getting the technorati tags... I'll try this...
wiscon

in which I sink to new lows

Several people have gratified me by asking, "Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Obviously that's why i'm walking around with a banana in my pocket - to test who will blurt that out.

Last night I promised Jane H. that I'd show her my underwear once it was worth seeing. She didn't expect the sudden flashing.

Eleanor A, Jane, Larisa M. from Moscow, Martha, & etc. are talking about class distinctions in sf. Eleanor explained some "class for dummies" for us...we have yet to related the discussion to SF. it's good but i'm having a hard time paying attention. I might be awful and duck out to buy books... I'm afraid if I dip more than a toe into the dealer room, it will suck me down into a black hole and I'll never leave.

As always at cons - most people are wearing their Best Black T-shirt. This crowd has the best best black tshirts I've ever seen! And buttons.

Jane just used the word "confusticate." I'm in love again!

open head, pour in coffee

I signed up to open the con suite at 8am. I had pictured a room as deserted as the dark side of the moon - in which I'd make coffee quietly and poke around until I figured out where everything was. Yaaaaaaa! instead there were several volunteers and an entire family living in the room. Everyone super nice - except me, snarling and coffeeless. We bustled and bumbled until breakfast was laid out to everyone's satisfaction - with military precision in some cases.

I'm not quite revved up or un-cranky yet. What I need is about 5 hours of concentration on something absorbing yet not very taxing - like untangling a very large skein of yarn (the one in my head?!)

Amhar drifted into our room last night around 1am. We both have crushes already. What will be surprising is if we escape this conference with only one crush each.

Feminism for Dummies

Yesterday I suggested there should be a "Feminism for Dummies" book - as Rook and I had just been stunned into giggling incoherence by "Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies." Feminism for Dummies would sell quite well.

It was unfortunately inspired not just by the funny book in the game store but because at breakfast before Minnie's wedding, my dad and my cousin Tiffany asked me what the deal was with "feminist science fiction."

Dad: What is that... like, science fiction written by a woman?
Tifffany: Is it like.... what would be, like, feminist? Like, a tragic heroine?

I opened and closed my mouth like Bertie Wooster doing his best imitation of a goldfish for a little while... I began to hyperventiilate... Several realizations hit me at once:

- My dad apparently has senile dementia, or is deaf; we have been discussing feminism since I was about 10 years old. Lecturing from me, sure, but also real discussion.

- If I end up teaching community college I'm going to have to explain what feminism is to young women like Tifffany. I'll have to start at the very beginning. How to do this?

- The depth of misunderstanding I had just witnessed. Friendly... detached... slightly indifferent... polite social curiosity as to what feminism might possibly be? My reality is not their reality.

- I don't have a simple "what is feminism" explanation to give these people.

- The bitter laughter of despair. It seemed attractive. Moderated by heroic effort not to fight with my family, it came out as the nervous giggling of despair.

Rook then began to explain the plot of "The Left Hand of Darkness" to my dad in a slow, soothing way until we were able to get the hell out of there.

So: the point is - who should write "Feminism for Dummies" ? Debbie asked me this in the hallway when I brought it up, but I couldn't think who. Maybe after I sleep on it. Gentle readers... who?

wiscon report

I've never BEEN in an enormous ballroom full of people who scream YAY! and wave their hands around like crazy when the person on stage says, "Are there any feminists in the room?"

**

Why are they suddenly bidding in prime numbers?

yes bill, i'll tag this later.

p.s. This is going to be my sloppiest speed-writing ever. Be warned.

** it's later now. is this thing on? tap tap... **
>wiscon report

sat., freakishly early, and all morning
I read sarah orne jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs" which immediately rolls me in glorious melville-ish-ness and then seems like it will be a certain thing - that ghostly town with the fog and cobweb people of ultima thule - then I realize it's swedenborgian - then that it isn't doing that hting at all - then, well, what? I start to grasp it... I have detailed notes on this book offline that i took while reading it as well as marking up passages. i'll just say for now that if I know you well and you don't shed a tear at the crucial scene in the queen's twin chapter, I'm surprised. by that time i was crying crying crying at the excellence of the story and with passionate crazy love for sarah o.j. Granted - i'm super pms-y but I could read this sstory over and over. it was deeply comforting to all the uncomfortable feminist-consciousness awareness - it was really recognizing... urgh, I will write more later, but what a fantastic experience it was to read this and think about it all morning long. it was very much like glimpsing that swedenborgian heaven over the wall like in "uncle silas" (in a nice not a creepy way) and in fact lately i've been reading books that keep surpassing each other so that I feel like i'm continually arriving into more and more wonderful places. if you are the sort of person who suddenly realized that, say, Middlemarch, is really cool, but you also were disappointed by it,well, sarah orne jewett is like perfection incarnate. it is about women and the connections between them and their connection to the world - the way they all casually refer to their whaling voyages to china or wherever; it's not like they are "limited" to some male-concept of domesticity and the ways the men are talked about were surprisingly excellent and new and perfect, sympathetic yet putting them in the subaltern position constantly as they are cut off from the sociality, they take their reality or any verbal qualities from the women who even if dead are more vividly real than those men. and their physical qualities - the way their voices singing are described or they seem important narratively but then clearly aren't (put in their place neatly by mrs. todd) ( And the end - i'll just say I never saw thelma and louise on purpose because it annoyed me so much to know they drive off a cliff for fuck's sake but I was thinking on the last pages of Pointed Firs that no no no I'm just going to sort of pretend that it happened differently. not that it was bad or unfeminist ending but you'll be going no no no! with me in a cheerleadery way, I think.) (also, like the cheesy end of narnia where they keep getting into more and more real countries or countries that are becoming more and more real)

Sat. 1-ish.
Minneapolis airport. I felt that it was ennobled, enveloped in a golden halo of being in the city that is forever the home of Layne Johnson, Plain Layne, and the incomparable Odin. Somewhere in this town there's the Applebees where she had her date with that unsuitable guy!
I eat a sandwich, edit that latin article some more, and play "spot the person going to wiscon". There are 2 possible candidates. One sits next to me on the plane - something nerdly about her - I try to make eye contact a couple of times but she looks out the window steadily, occasionally sniffling and possibly crying. I make up a whole thing where she is going to Wiscon and is cryingn because pat york just died and they were great friends. In my imagination we figure out our vague connection and share a cab. This doesn't happen. I still wonder if she is here.

sat. 3:00-ish
on reg packet written "badger is a hot babe. i'm in room 437" well! i guess we didn't need that panel on how to flirt and get laid - after all. that's the kind of registration packet that should be at every conference!
alex formerly aliena spun me about...
dropped off giant armload of books
peeked into reading by kelly link and carol emshwiller
settled in identity/consciousness what makes a mind, rebuilding a mind panel. amy thomson, john m. scolsi, andrea d. hairston, beth A. Plutchak. andrea hairston talked abotu her novel Mindscape - it sounds quite interesting w. double consciousness (whether feminist or race other consciousness raising, andrea mentioned henry louis gates... also thoughts very much along the lines of how i think about continuity of identity. She's so loud and bouncy and excited ! I'll read her book.

personality changes thru meds.

constructing biological constructed intelligences. genetic engineering, dna, evolving....
a.t. - buddhism and not needing a substrate for consciousness....

[what i think is that in having our Grand Conversation that is a way of non-individual consciousness. like when peopel keep talking about integrating different bits or synthesizing, well, what for - what the big anxiety about integrating and having this one consciousness...]

panel and audience becomes very boringly about people's "I know someone who has alzheimers or is autistic" anecdotes. sorry y'all... damn boring.
empathy - if you lack it you lack consciousness? humph. and ....

***

****
i'm running into the entire bay area here in wisconsin... donya... ellen k....
sudden semaphoric excellent conversation about feminist history and the Pointed Firs with oursin, in the Green Room. we made a pact to meet to go to dinner and escape the overstimulation - very smart of her.
hiatus...
i babble incoherently at Amhar...
I'm bouncing around blurting things to anyone who pops up in front of me - I'm popping up in front of people like a raving prairie dog...

***
Debbie N. moderating panel on women and the draft. hmm, just as at the potlatch panel i saw her do, it is moderated with pleasant balance and skill.
i missed the very beginning of the panel
david haseman. was in military. in favor of universal draft but training expectations must be same. no 5 extra minutes to put on makeup or doing only 15 pushups instead of 75. hardass, all he wants to care aboutis, will this person watch my back, will they be trustable in combat. interestiong. eliz. bear making good points... it's all going too fast. nonie also. there is less disagreement... no one is saying "it's inherently unfeminist to be in the military" nonie saying "universal service - even if conscientious objector or whatever)
someone in the audience brings up ptsd - affecting men and women differently? (hrm, what's the point of bringing that up?)
jeanne g. in countries where they have a draft does it mean that more people, more citizens, everyone, is involved in the decision to go to war or not - i.e. more people care because more people are affected.

david h. - draft law going into effect this summer. men and women must register for the draft.
women not in combat zone...
nonie - speaks a little bit to what jeanne g. said - universal service might make people more connected to the military so they care more.

ack, i keep interrupting but not making any point... i get too excited...

is it in some way unfeminist to support war.
empowerment, or brainwashing? rioting? makes criminality of underclass more prone to violence? makes revolution? destabilizes society?
isn't the hierarchical setup of the military inherently patriarchal... obey w/out question... making of yourself a tool for someone else to wield and spend.
could there be a feminist military training?
what would a feminist military look like?

wwii - guy in yellow yelling about how every woman was in uniform unless had kids or a job? everyone talking... some yelling.

sex and birth control. "sexual intimacy is immaterial as long as i can trust you not to get me shot and to watch my back in combat..." (david again) A good point...

person in audience - and what about between ranks because people have power over each other. nonie: what happns in military right now is senior male and junior female and it's a problem.. becuase of societal imbalance of sexual politics...

person in audience.... her attitude is pretty basic ew icky military ... etc. andwhat about women and kids jmore likely to be beat up by returning soldiers (i've read this too) what about then less victims b/c then the women have training too and can't be beat up so easy. can defend themselves. all really good points...

nancyjane moore talking about boys and girls.. differencesnow... in sf we can change that and say what if it were different.
alan b. even tho the women in military are self-selected but we don't "expect" them to be able to do the same things as the men. but these women don't know... the men don't know what they are capable of.

Debbie - if we're saying that the army's job is conversation, negotiating... etc.... these are the things that supposedly women are good at. so why ... as a culture we're failing men and boys more than we're failing women in the educational system. this maybe partly why more boys go into the military - there are less choices for them . (hmmm I am not sure if I agree with that - military? or housewife/childbearing slave?great choice. women also failed by educational system...)

guy in audience with point about gender and gayness and being beat up for it and that not being fixed by being in army
david h. says that black guys in military helped civil rights in this country.
eliz. bear - make military more attractive to people - health care, adequate pay, etc.
nonie also thinks vietnam helped racism in this country (Hmm again - did it? i think of my dad giving lip service to beign in service with black guys and how it made him less racist - but he's still darn racist, and what's the stat, something like 1/3 of black men still end up in jail at some point in their lifetime - )

david - our job as sf writers is to prepare our socity. sf is explicitly educational. (here i disagree)
***

dinner with oursin! she's splendid! Suddenly London sounds like a nice place to go!

***

auction. ellen klages in a darth vader mask.... space babe! saving the galaxy from outmoded gender roles in speculative fiction!

monster women lunch box... well, it quickly went over $100!
diptych of the space babe entering the secret feminist academy! "area restricted"...
a bottle of lydia pinkham's vegetable fcompound. yes, really! 120 bucks.
a copy of how to suppress women's writing. ooooooo.... russ might! just might! come to wiscon next year!
bidding now turns to your very own "[email protected]" forever as long as the tiptree shall last...
My heart goes out to the poster of space babe for wwII... perched on a book of Secret Feminist Tales asking "What are YOU reading?"
And the small posters - Whump got them. "I don't need to bid against him! I can visit him and see it for free!" "You are not getting the point of a charity auction..." Secretly I resolve to try to bully Whump into giving me the postcard triptych of Amazing Stories Spacebabe covers! After all - it's almost my birthday. Perhaps I could push him into the hotel pool. Give us the precious! It's our birthday presssssent! Oh - whoops, it got wet. Darn.

***

I wish that these posters would get printed for all of us... wouldn't a hundred people paying 10 bucks be better than one original, auctioned? One could still auction the original. The audience seemed so sad.

**

now in panel on little-known women you should be reading...
Everyone's going on about Karen Traviss with high praise! 2 3 panelists and much of the audience agreeing. complexity... ethics... feminism... interesting science...

***

Of all the books being recommended - the one that I want the most is "A Field Guide to Bacteria" by Betsey Dexter Dyer. I can't WAIT. (I know it sounds gross - but think of E.O. Wilson's giant book on ants - and how great it is! Okay, you can't think of it very effectively if you haven't seen it - but it's great even if you have no particular interest in ants. )

***
vague flitting about. exhausted. why am i not in bed?

Some people are very dressed up for the Tor party.

Hot tubbing. 4 or 5 of us had funny-colored hair so that I felt like gonzo with the funkified alien gonzos from the big spaceship in Muppets in Space. Home! My people!

the Con Suite has fortune cookies. mine says "A long life has its effect. If you live long enough you will see a wrinkle... in time." Did they get these specially made? I'm impressed!

I can't get the hotel wireless from my room so i'm in my purple batik nightgown with turtles on it on the 2nd floor, doing some soothing midnight blogging before bedtime. I can't talk to another person! Everyone's so nice...

introducing people is very easy. Cool feminist nerd, meet another cool feminist nerd. See how simple that was?

the dinner thing

Oh and if you look here you will see a photo of me and albatrossity halfway down the page with M.W. What a strange event that was (the "article" - does not convey it but I'll blog more about it later.)

best party ever...

That was so much fun. I think i started crying when T.'s voice was cracking and he was saying about honoring Minnie and meanwhile a gigantic butterfly with yellow wings was flitting over his head and rose petals blowing all around us in the sunlight and gentle breeze. How he was gazing at her! Yay! She was extremely princessy in her floaty dress - glowy and sort of carried away by everything. (Some people should always have tiaras and veils floating back - she is one of them.) Then again when they read the poem by haf1z (translator mind wondering whose translation?) at the line about the beaut1ful animals so that I was sort of giggling at the thought of V'ger and Ch1na as the beau1iful animals but - really- the whole poem. how cool. I liked the flowers and all the little fat bird things in the middles. Our dad, as we were all packing up afterwards, red-faced and jolly like an admiral after one of those dinners in Hornbl0wer, throwing a little bird at me and joking about flipping me the bird. My mom being sort of cute though I didn't hang with her much somehow and would come across her hunched over having a bad-girl cigarette at odd moments. The after-party catty dissection might not be all that bad. Instead of being immediately appalled by all and sundry, instead, Minnie and I suddenly looked like quite normal California grownups of our generation amidst the lovely buffer of our friends and their half-ironic outfits or tattoos or like, the Pilot's cute mohawk and casual nursing-of-baby. So it was wild how our parents just calmed way down on some major level. Because the reason to be scared of your children being freaks is fearing that they will be lonely outcasts. right?

Moomin dancing his graceful dances - long performances. Chefily got him vogueing. Later, inside, he danced with amazing feeling and connectedness to the music - listening, then doing different stuff to each song - I'm serious, he was dancing with emotional understanding of the music, so expressively! and a reasonable amount of flair and grace, with hip-hop looking stuff, the vogueing, swirly motions, tap moves, ballet, and karate all mixed together. I was impressed. I think he was inspired by the natty suit and new dress shoes and the stage-like settings of the large room with oriental rug...

The food was good. Cake (Chefily's) incredibly good - sour cream cinnamon with chocolate frosting, the perfect not-too-sweet-ness.

Could it have been any more idyllic? Even our hideous aunt getting completely trashed and sobbing on the shoulders of total strangers just made it more perfect.

what lesbian turtle?

Driving back to M.'s place from the fancy-ass Merryville mall - we were behind a car that had some rainbow flag bumperstickers. It had one that was your basic queer-pride rainbow but was the shape of a giant sea turtle. We were like... "huh? turtle researcher that happens to be gay? New logo for being eco-queer? what is it?"

And then just now Rook asked me if turtles have some special meaning for gayness or lesbian culture because of the T4mora Pierce books being set in "Tortall". I have no fucking clue but came up with funny theories anyway. Lesbians! Turtles! They have so much in common.

notes on today's family intersections

I can't capture much of today right now but it was both nicely mellow and interestingly intense. We met up with M. and with T's family and our parents for tidepooling... not managing to get there all at the same time really but still nice... and then one of those headachy unbearable hullabaloos of when you have 14 people and no one can tell what anyone else really wants or why or what should happen next or where the food will come from. That blew over once we all realized (I think) that it didn't matter much, we could split up and meet later...

We all ended up at M. and T.'s place which is very pleasant for hanging out in outside or in. I played upw0rds with T.'s mom while other people played T1cket to R1de. Now - I had been warned that T.'s mom could not bear swearing (this, not true, but his older brother is quite bothered by it and by other things so mild I could not even figure out what was going on - like when T.'s sister was comparing leg hair with me and we were bitching about how we weren't going to shave our legs and strangely, the brother loomed over us switching his finger scoldingly and going, "Nuh-uh-UUUUU-uh!" with a stern frown - same as he'd do and say if anyone swore - but for leg hair? whaaaa? too crude? why? - In any case, T.'s mom was a brilliant and shark-like word game player and spelled "SLUT" in mid-game. I liked her. I'm afraid to play scr4bble with that lady...

So an all-afternoon and evening hang-out and bbq- which was very nice and slackery and relaxing.

Feeling v. sappy and loving about everything and everyone, vaguely.

Rook and I played hooky for an hour or so to buy him dress shoes at the fancy-ass mall in Merryville. At the "Alddddo" shoe store I was giggling at the stuff and got some pimpish sunglasses and a very butch, sleazy chain and realized that all the accessory stuff in the story was straight out of 1985 sleazy italian mobsterness, all crosses and itali4n horn good-luck necklaces and the most maf1a sunglasses you've EVER seen and these glittery whorish clothes - I can't convey it but certain relatives had it right down and our neighbors the zambonis... These sunglasses are SO my ex-boyfriend's uncle Pauly... omg I'm going to grease my hair straight back and wear them with all my best 7/16ths s1cilian pride!

I bought little jeweled and wire headbands, like tiaras but not, and matching bracelets for T.'s nieces. Because I like kids at weddings and think they should have unexpected presents. I like kids at weddings because you know they're a little bored but also having an unusual memorable experience.

I had many thoughts especially driving home about families and childhood and especially that book "Ord1nary Fam1lies" and where it fell short (the end-marriage was lame - like narrative shorthand for what should have been a whole different complicated book (and probably was). I was disappointed the narrator never was able to successfully imagine the inner life of her siblings. Well - a great book but just those flaws struck me today as I was overwhelmed by the reality of all other people and felt pleasantly invisible and inconsequential like a ghost or like a minor player in an interesting play.

I was thinking a lot about Rook's current project and how interesting and cool and creative it is and how in social situations like today and in most of Real Life all that just never gets seen. It's complicated enough so that to understand it, you'd have to listen to him talk, with diagrams, for ... well, at least 20 minutes or so I suppose, but probably longer depending on what sort of things you already know. And who in a social group is going to listen to another person with close attention and with thinking turned on for that long? It's rare - though really at parties, that is what I like is to have some Real Conversation like that and see something new in depth. I like to do it, too, to talk and be listened to, but it is not necessary for each conversation: what is necessary is for the talker to assume and show that they know, on a deep level, that I have something equally complex and creative going on even if there is not time for me to have my turn right then. And this led me to think about blogging and how much I love it because it lets me see people in depth and the gloriousness of their ideas. Books are one way - letters also - but think for a minute how different blogging has made things. Blogging makes "knowing people" a whole different game. Think of a book or a diary or a long conversational monologue like a lecture - as an opportunity to express something too complex to be expressed otherwise (with fiction being a particularly good tool to express the complexity of the truth of human relationships and social/cultural/political possibility) but also as a way for that self that doesn't get seen socially to be seen and known. Blogging takes that potential and runs with it. I think we are part of a Grand Conversation and I'm very grateful it's happened.

pant pant

school board/ education meeting thing. aaaaaaa! <<<---- short version.

writing up report of it. (took way too long) (done by someone else and sent just before I was finished)

not finished editing other article...

mom demanded i come immediately sooooo. i trotted off to do that.
now at Minnie's, folding little booklets, zineishly.

parents clearly shocked, appalled, that Oakland is full of black people. lord give me strength.

whew

Parents being particularly nice... they got here and were starving from not having eaten anything from 7:30 am to 2:30. brutal! after we got back from the Hole, they sucked down cheese and crackers with the focused attention of ravening wolverines. My dad had some beer. Then he noticed the toys...

Wow that was the coolest thing ever... as no one else really gets down on the floor with Moomin and makes up long stories. my dad had it all down. there was one castle of good guys and one of bad. then, across the room, a forest full of animals. in between, he set up a chessboard. so the good guys had to go through some kind of chess challenge to go ask the animals to help in the battle against the bad guys to get back the magic ring. Wow, how perfect! The thing no one ever gets is that moomin is continually heartbroken that no other kids know how to play that sort of game, and he doesn't know how to describe how to do it or how to negotiate.

T. came to get them and they all left to go to Marin... Moomin and I played some more. sadly - i got bored (not having had enough beer, I suppose) so we read calv1n and hobbbes comix.

my mom getting good at faking approval of things - my dress actually i realized is appalling - totally appalling to her - I have leg hair - underarm hair exposed which believe it or not I had not thought of - she didnt' say anything but I realized it in a horrible flash. well. she did her hair, and showed off her new eyebrow wax and dye job... v. sophisticated... and changed clothes a few times, debating what to wear to the bbq in marin... well! she knows I'm the last person to give that sort of advice. I was glad she went easy on me.

errrr. perhaps i will go and buy some sort of short sleeved jackety thing to go over the dress.

a rose is not a rose

After Jo and I talked briefly and perturbedly about everything in the universe and its dog - I drove up to SF, a straight shot today with no traffic, miraculous.

C. and I walked from the haight to Divisadero and Chestnut which on a map is only 2 miles there and 2 back. What the maps leave out is the truly enormous hill in the middle! My knee performed nobly and my cardiovascular system equally well. This time last year I would have been limping after 6 blocks and if able to keep going, probably would have stopped to rest and breathe at every corner going uphill. The inhaled steroids have been great for my asthma... And then after this giant walk I feel really peppy and calm and cheerful and centered. Yay exercise! I missed Chula while she was in L.A. and won't see her till thursday after next so it's nice to have this time.... We sat in the Coffee Roastery on Geary and I dove into translating for my thesis/anthology project. She worked on her novel... then we walked back along Divis. and at the very top of the hill you can see to the bay and to the golden gate inlet all down both sides of SF. We had fabulous pizza at L1ttle star... while we waited for a table a hugely pregnant girl came up to us with a long story about a seizure, having just gotten out of 15 hours in the hospital, no one helping her find shelter, the hospital turning her away, etc. She had a hospital bracelet on. Oh, and she said 3 months preg and then 2 months, with twins. But she looked at least 6 or 7 months. Flecks of horrid white foam at the corners of her mouth and a certain vagueness. Should I give her 20 bucks? Not even considering whether story true or not, she is pregnant and miserable...

Chula also disturbed but quite cynical about the woman being on 8 million bad street drugs and the money probably going straight for more and not for housing or food. Then told me a long longg story about being a hard core serious activist for homeless people when she was in college and organizing a big debate and helping found these organizations... and then an even more amazing story, how later the successful organization was busted by police as they had drug counseling with confidentiality but the cops wanted them to narc on the homeless who got the drug counseling. they refused and then some trumped up charge was brought against the director and other staff for allowing drug dealing to happen on the premises and they were thrown in jail for years. And there was more... about a program that helped people pay their deposit and first month's rent on a place with the promise they'd pay it back, and the program worked and stayed solvent rather than the borrowers blowing them off and not paying back.

Well anyway.

the translation went swimmingly. After P3rlonghher's poem, everything else seems simple, like doing the monday times puzzle. I did about 6 or 7 poems by Enr1queta Arvelo Larrrrriva, poems from 1922-1935 or so. Oh, they were good! She's the aunt of a poet I translated for 8 or 9 months in 2000. Her stuff is very weird, philosophical, and cool. I realized all of them had multiple dimensions: they'd be about some simple incident like the rainy season starting and hearing some children run outside fighting and playing and getting wet, beautifully described; but then it was also about spiritual renewal and aging and time and creativity and poetry; but THEN also about politics and the political situation at the time during the huge riots and arrests of 1927 when all the students and poets were thrown in jail (including her nephew) and many were killed. And I felt certain to the core that most translators and probably most critics and anthology makers would COMPLETELY miss that dimension and instead (as I've read over and over) women write about domestic and personal things; a sweet poem about looking out of one's windows into the rain, where the children are fighting. OMG!!!!

Then - I did 2 poems by Em1lia B3rnal. And this time I had english translations. I tried not to peek at them till after a first draft. And here it was quite true - the translator missed EVERYTHING. the words accurate, but the meanings of the poem just went whoosh over her head. Whoosh! Over! Clueless! The poems were turned into dippy-ass hallmark cards; one about fog and snow in central park; they other about a rose. And OMG. The fog one was about grieving and death. but was translated as... well, as I said, as a dippy poem about the snow like a baby in its cradle, la la la, pretty snow. BUT NO. it is a creepy, chillingg, interesting poem about the way fog blurs the edges of reality and makes the divisions between things dissolve so that the real world and unreal blur together and there is mention of the baby in the cradle covered with the silver blanket, but CREEPILY and sadly and she is watching over it in a death-wake. Oh man! Then. the rose one was a very catullusy, sly, clever poem about a beloved "rose" that used to be perky and stand up so tall and firm, but now is, alas! drooping and limp, and perhaps if she kisses it all over, it would stand its head up again. HELLO. NOT a dippy hallmark poem about a pretty flower. But instead - move over, Perlllongher - a poem about cocksucking.

carmen

I'm re-reading "Carmen Dog". I forgot how excellent it is. My god!! a fucking brilliant feminist apuelian story... I just made up that word but it works okay, doesn't it? and you know, the M4rcus Aurelius quoting, how could it fail to charm me. SO well written and strange.

is that a bustle or is your ass just happy to see me?

Results of my cleaning and bustling:

A whole grocery bag full of books is sorted out from my stuff - good books - and ready to go to W1sCon. Now I wish I'd mailed it to someone in M4dison but surely I can manage to check one bag and lug it through the airports, right? For a good cause!

The stack of papers to be sorted reaches waist-high.

Moomin's room is next. I need to sort through kids' books and all his clothes and toys. I think too much space in the room is taken up by my kid-book collection and not enough by the stuff that's his!

Baby toys are flowing to Peanut in a steady stream...

Two shelves of other books are ready to be given back to lenders or donated somewhere.

All the other books except for 2 medium-sized piles on the floor - they're roughly alphabetized or in categories.

Categories:
general fiction and stuff alphabetized by author.
history, myth, art, atlases. (daily life in byz4ntium; secrets of the cabala)
encyclopedias and reference.
chinese and indian stuff.
foreign lang. dictionaries (oh, i love my weird dictionaries! welsh, sanskrit, mongolian!)
comic books/graphic novels.
feminism and literary theory.
Spanglish.
books in spanish.
kids' books.
Poetry.

There is another category I had separated out that I'm not sure if I'll leave that way and it's sort of: adventures and exploration, or books about the sea, discovery, etc. This is a nice category to see all together, fiction and non.

book sought

Porch1a's aphorisms, the complete volume in spanish. dammit - I can only find it in expensive used volumes overseas. Merwin translation all very well and I admire him and all -- but I do not trust him as far as I could spit. It would be like him to leave out half of it and do it all wrong.

Porch1a put out a zillion different versions... I will look in Staffnord library! surely they will have it in several different editions.

more about bags!

And speaking of baggage! I pimped that ugly-ass straw "boxy t0te" handbag with the oldsmobile-green trim to the mom-club. And those ladies were creaming their $400 jeans. I got ... oh, 6 or 7 emails from ladies who were desperate for this handbag! WHO would buy such a thing totallly at random? And why?

I tried to keep an open mind, but as I was remarking to the Pilot, while I might easily spent $200 on some sexy go-go boots, I'd then wear those gogo boots for the next 10 years. But handbags, I am just realizing, they change in fashion every year or maybe quicker, and you have to have different ones for different seasons that match your outfit. For fuck's sake! And if you're super class-conscious, you must have a Real Brand one. It's not llike I didn't wake up to the hunger to have actual jordache jeans or god, maybe some gloria vanderbilt ones, when I was 13 or so. (god forbid i end up with "chic" plastered across my teenage ass.) So I can sort of almost understand. BUT THEY're like that their whole lives!! How horrible and alien.

I recall marvelling when i was temping at the women around me, thinking... "You are spending 1/10th of your take-home pay on getting your NAILS DONE, you dumb bitches." just as part of the routine of normal life - not as an interesting special femmy treat.

So anyway I drove up into the hills to drop off the handbag. and a house the size of a small mental institution lay before me, sparkling amid the vinca and redwoods like a genie's palace. who would open the door? Would she be an obvious alien? But no - a nice-looking, femmy woman, probably younger than me, but .. you know, classy and sophisticated and femmy looking. With even slightly hipster-looking glasses. The house had... fancy dark wood china cabinets that were obvious real furniture, and... decorated, sorta... In the distance, maybe 8 rooms away in another wing of the house, I heard a baby begin to cry... Where are this woman's sweat pants and why is she not covered with babyfood? I had to wonder. It is all due to the magic of owning many matching handbags.

Baggage isn't just a river in egypt, you know

My mom is also on my ass to buy some new luggage. i guess i had the same backpack and wheely thing, you know... a black suitcase with wheels and a handle... for the last 10 years but many, many years ago they broke and were sewn up and glued and broke again etc. Until last year when I threw them away. So -- just as she gets a bug up her ass that I must start buying the proper brand of paper towels or disaster will strike - suddenly, the mission is clear. I must have luggage. In vain I protested that I would far prefer to get something at my leisure. But if I don't fucking come up with luggage in the next day and a half then she will insist that we go to the mall together, or walmart, and buy it for me right there so that she can make sure that I do it and get something RIGHT.

As she is out here for M.'s wedding I think this is extra annoying. She should hang with them. and play with moomin. and ignore my clothes and possessions. (It does not matter if I continue saying this to her face... I might weasel out of going to buy baggage, but only at the cost of pissing her off hugely and a lot of poutiness and having it suddenly be a big fucking deal.)

Anyway. Wish me luck. For I am off to (where? ) to buy a small suitcase on wheels.

LIKE THIS FAMILY NEEDS ANY MORE BAGGAGE? <<<----- obvious line

early

It sucks to wake up at 5am but i enjoyed watching the morning develop out my huge window! Little birds everywhere, perching and flitting. I wrote a bunch and then went back to the 4th "protector" book... toast and cheese and coffee, yum.

I noticed suddenly that the Wild Mage's powers make all the animals around her get intelligent. But it's only the cats and dogs and sparrows and horses - everyone still eats chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, and cows... heh.

i had a dream

I had a dream I can't remember but it woke me up at 5:30am. Whatever it was made me wake up thinking deeply about that one time when I was around 23 or so that I posed for the photgrapher who was supposedly "so safe" and "part of our community" but then who suddenly started jacking off and freaked out and told me never to tell, he'd never done it before, well maybe one other time but he'd never do it again, don't tell or I'd ruin his standing with the community and ruin the book that was going to come out. I was bothered very much but took my 50 bucks posing fee and you know, still wanted to be in the book or something. My feelings were complex. I didn't want to go around shrieking that I'd been raped - because I hadn't. But I felt that I had not consented, that something was deeply wrong and full of lies. And the guy knew that he had done something wrong. And when I talked to people who I thought of as the community elders - one of them my girlfriend - they were unnerved and what I got was more lies and evasion. So then part of what was wrong about what happened was the (incorrect or inefffective or perpetuating-the-problem) community response. and I can't stop thinking about that. This has happened before. (I mean, me waking up in the night thinking about it.) And maybe 6 months or a 9 months ago from listening to the story of another person in the SF perv community and realized what she was talking about was another edgy situation where the borders of consensuality were crossed and she was looking for a way to deal with that, and though I didn't know her well, I was now in the position of an older person in the community. I didn't know how to respond. Meanwhile I had run into the photographer dude socially and realized that I would see him again. And I started picturing writing something and giving it to him and to a couple of people who gave me the not-so-useful-for-me response at the time, and seeing what they would write in response so that an actual conversation woudl take place, an open conversation.

What did/do I want as a result? for this guy to be ostracized? I didn't want that then and don't want it now. for him to apologize? he already did - right at the time. I want an actual conversation where I feel like people have understood something they didn't before. Because I listened to their side. Did they understand mine? Did they ever think about the incident again? How could they have responded differently? How should situations like that be handled in a community? (And one in which a bazillion kinds of scandal were constantly taking place as open secrets - but as a community we were vulnerable - would you destroy the community by taking something public? i'm thinking of worse things, like that guy Master whatever he was, who would persuade his bottoms that he was a guru with psychic powers who could kill the hiv virus by thinking about it so, they should have unprotected an4l sex with him. I've forgotten this guy's name, and eventually he DID get kicked out of the community on some level, thank god or i'd freaking lose all faith in human nature.)

So my point is that I'm going to really do this and publish it somehow if peopel will agree to participate (me, photodude, my ex-g, this other person who is still making her living in the community in various ways and is for sure a leader and elder (and who also gave me the unuseful answer) and possibly the person who is 15 years younger than me who had a similar problem. (And part of the problem in her situation was the lack of dialogue. The person who crossed her boundaries would not talk with her about it, which made her feel much worse and compelled to take action against them.)

Getting people to participate I think will be very difficult and may require a level of somewhat bogus anonymity since everyone who was around at the time will know who is being talked about and people who don't could find out by gossip; all these peopel to some extent make their living off being sex radicals and would be afraid of hurting their positions. (But isn't that also part of the problem, and doesn't that prove that something inappropriate happened? Again - I'm not calling that something "rape" nor myself a "victim". However - It was definitely theft and a violation of trust at first, and then the community response made it a dirty secret, which was a worse violation of trust.) I could probably persuade them to have the conversation, but part of the point of the conversation is for it to be one that is public.

I was inspired lately by the "Breaking Out: feminist consciousness and feminist research" book about feminist research methods (in social science, but most everything they said applies to personal situations and literary criticism as well.)

deep in the peeps!

Rook is still deep in encyclopedias and game design. Somehow it's about post-restoration politics, and entomology, and the royal society. I"m throwing 1660s women poets at him for background (The Matchless Orinda (slightly earlier) and Aphra Behn (writing slightly later, but around). The game will be set in 1668 London. There are some astronomers a few years later scattered about ( i mean, women)... Coming up with these examples is useful for imagining daily life without disappearing the women from intellectual life.

going in circles

I'm having a lovely day... reading, organizing things, light gardening... Jo and I went to the hardware store and laid down wads of cash so that we could fill up the back of my truck with a huge load of STUFF to be butch with. Her hammock is heaven, by the way! In case you were wondering what happens when you're good all your life and then you die.

That long phone call with my mom yesterday is still bugging me a little. She just dug at every possible place in which to dig. Very rapidly! In turn! So that one minute she was saying, "PLEASE listen to me. What you SHOULD do - have you ever thought of this? - is go OUT and get a JOB, a full time job just doing ANYTHING, so that you can make some money and save up." Then -- two sentences later, It's important not to have Moomin in day care all the time, more important than anything, and it is my REAL work. Then -- I should save money. Then - immediately - I should buy a $17,000 car because mine is unsafe. Then - I should definitely reapply to Bezerkely. Also - I should not buy anything else ever and should get rid of all my stuff. Also, I need to buy myself some nice clothes.

Head still reeling. I didn't even get ticked off, in fact I just patiently repeated everything I've been repeating to her for years now.

Minnie points out that she is slightly more freakazoidy than usual over the wedding. This is probably true and I'll try hard to be super patient.

I feel a slight twinge of guilt over just selling that nasssssty handbag that my aunt sent. But hey! Some chick in the mom-club bought it for $150. I probably could have sold it on ebay for more. But now it's gone and I'm so happy about that!

an ohmu who is nice

Moomin has had the books of Nausicaa forever and loves them but he only just now saw the movie. I got this....

lucky

Oh my god. I just got the end of "Al4nya" and am completely blown away. Because there are FIVE MORE BOOKS coming that she's already written and is revising afte 20 years of sitting on them (why? well, people's lives are complex.)

strangely I'm in tears partly at the thought (self-centered but genuine) of myself in 1984-1986 while T.D. was writing this: with some kind of crazed grief and happiness that we were on the same planet of imagination-space at how alone I was and my desperate faith that I was not alone. and I wasn't. I feel lucky to have read this difficult, perturbing book. (I am just beginning to grasp how fortunate it is that i just read this amazing thing, and that I have the actual power in my hands to persuade other people to read it and to bring it to the notice of many people.)

not a lot of novels make me cry uncontrollably with gratitude that they were written.

infinity plus a googleplex

Moomin talking wild-eyed about gravity this morning. then in bed next to me with his giant stuffed alligator and wearing a green headband with pipecleaner "mouse ears" attached to it, going, "Infinity plus one, infinity plus two, infinity plus three... infinity plus twentyone, infinity plus twenty-two..." What are you counting, Moomin? "how long my friend the really really long snake is. His name is Infinity." Where does he live? "In the Wild."

Now he is doing something with a Wonderwoman action figure...

Rook is up (he awoke, groaning, to the counting past infinity) working on a mad project - a game design challenge - he is hip-deep in 1911 encyclopedia britannica volumes, giggling and reading me things about crazy silkworm scientists of 1669. "Swammerdam, hypochondriac and mystic. Dilating the tracheas of bees with a human hair. He ATE larval bees... they taste nasty, like rusty bacon..."

While I breathlessly near the end of Al4nya to Al4nya. Holyfuck but it's great! It's the whole history past and future of feminist struggle and theory and literature! omg! it's scary-good.

i will chill out

I really should practice CHILLING OUT. I was freaking earlier at the awful books and wondering if any good ones would appear. And then the last one I looked at kicked ASS and I'm in the middle of it - extremely impressed! It's doing something very complicated and interesting.

And I came across a short story which also rocks and is extremely fascinating & perfect. Yay!

The chilling out in the sun and shade was successful. I am so relaxed!!!! Also, I'm oily and soft and smell like coconut!

Moomin and I just finished the Capta1n Underpanttts book (volume 4 or something - but it does not matter too much if you start in the middle). He loved it and seemed to get most of the jokes. Especially satisfying for him was the idea of the teachers having to write on the blackboards at the end, "I will stop being such a crab." and "I will chill out" and "I will be very very very very very very nice to George the Great and the Amazing Harold." He said that he would like it if he could snap his fingers and then he would become the teacher and the teacher would become him. "How would you get back into your own body?" I asked. "I would not want to, because I WOULD BE THE TEACHER!". Oh man - Moomin has figured it all out. He has Problems With Authority and I don't blame him.

We are benevolent authorities but it's jail all the same and miserable slavery - with no privacy etc. - to be a kid.

in the sun!

I'm going to go lie in the sun and read the most promising of the novels. Yes, there were one or two good ones in this first batch - I freaked too soon.

Quilty wrote to me (she judged something once... the L4mbda awards?) to tell me I'm freaking too soon and I should expect quite a lot of dreck to cross my threshold.

to be calm... not to panic... !

The point is - after months of scrambling to do Things That Had To Be Done and any leisure tainted with guilt -- I'm going to

***** lie in the sun on a blanket on my lawn amidst flowers and hummingbirds. covered in hawaiian tropic dark tanning oil. * with a tall iced drink and a box of kleenex by my side. ******

Do not tell Chula or Rook. They aren't here and cannot lecture me about skin cancer or spray me with sunscreen or try to make me wear hats. Hello. i'm nearly half sicilian. i have MELANIN.

* topless.

so brilliant!

Rook has told me the details of the hilarious bachelor/bachelorette party... OMG funny!!!

They took Minnie to THE MALL. to get a MAKEOVER at the CL1NiQUE counter. at M$CYs. (this is especially funny because that is the brand of makeup our mom uses and i think when in junior high Minnie was forcibly taken to learn how to put on makeup at that very place (well, at its analogue in houston.) And they put horrible long bright red acrylic press-on nails on her. put her in a nasty, nasty, tacky wedding dress and a BEER HAT and took her to gl4mor shots (a photo place where they pose you and take those soft-focus photos...) Then, made her carry an enormous double-headed dildo as a sort of scepter and took her to a very fancy, classy cigar bar.

Yeah!!!! perfect! hahaha. Then to a strip club where she (drunk) got lap dances while... you know... glamoured up and in this sleazy wedding dress and holding the giant dildo.

Rook is very smirky. Our guy friends are brilliant! If Minnie had had a shred of dignity left in her, which is just faintly possible, it is surely gone.

I know the girls had equal or more fun with T. what I DIDN'T hear is that they obtained viagra and were going to give it to him secretly. Oh man! Well, it all sounds like a blast and I was sorry to miss it ! I can't wait to hear the story of what happened to T. and see some photos of how he looked in my velvety leopard pants and what happened. I think they had the remote-control vibrating panties for him. Good GOD. Anyone who thinks bachelorette parties are dull and silly should hang with this crowd. They have no boundaries. (You will recall that the last one, we hired Ouchy the Clown, who SHAVED ALL OUR PUSSIES.)

So -- figuring that this party would have to top that one -- by all the rules of honor and glory -- yeah... that's why I didn't go (because I didn't want to go there witih my future brotherinlaw...!) Whoever is the next to get married in this crowd is in for some trouble, because whatever happens next will have to top whatever just happened last night, which I'm sure was amazingly creative and awful, and this time, I'll be on the job!

purpley morning!

I'm up and snorffling fresh new coffee. There's piles and piles of new books on my desk. How odd and pleasant to get giant boxes of books in the mail, for free, shiny hardcovers... But then they turn out to suck unbelievably. I think the publishers are sending anything remotely SF or fantasyish that has a girl in it. Yo, assholes, that's not "expanding and exploring gender" worth a damn!

this one by Av1... Oh, the pain of it! It's so clunky. I wish I could say that a massively prize-winning author who has written 50+ young adult books would write a better opening sentence than: "It was in the year 1046, on a cold winter's night, when a fog, thick as wool and dank as a dead man's hand, crept up from the River Scrogg into the ancient town of Fulworth." yah... okay... then, 20 pages go by with cliche after cliche written in the dumbest-downed alphabet blocks ever! It makes me crazy when every noun has its adjective and it's always the adjective you expect. sludge is sticky, concoctions are hot, a slow simmer, the searing pain, faltering steps, a tattered gown, a clawlike hand, a tar-black raven. Christ. "Once there was an evil old man who was an alchemist. And a raven who couldn't fly. And a plucky orphan girl. And a mysterious monk who knows stuff. Stuff happened and good defeats evil. The end!" what a hack! I can't bear it! Think of how good other books are - like "The Great Good Thing" - and shudder with me!

How strange to wake up and Moomin not to be here!
Rook got in at 4am or so... dazed... I can't wait to hear the weird story of his evening.
Chula had hilarious adventures but I can't tell them - way too naughty.
I laid in bed reading feminist theory and blogging like mad till at least 2 in the morning!

in exile

After working very hard all morning without stopping... I had a nice afternoon with moomin. We went to the park with his friends. Then - to Oaktown - christ! the traffic! almost 2 hours! ate dinner - I had a crazy urge to eat a hamburger - all very cozy. In the car we listened to music together, one earphone each tentacling from the ipod, lots of discussion of the lyrics.

Moomin was excited about spending the night with little Dragonboy! Last night he wanted to dye his hair "quick, before I go over to dragonboy's house, because next week it will be too late!" And paint his nails blue. We didn't get to it... It was touching that he wanted to impress Dragonboy (whose hair is green) with his weirdness. "Dragonboy doesn't have a brother or a sister. And I dont' have a brother or a sister. And he is cool and punk rock. And he has a corn snake that eats mice and he likes Godzilla monsters. We can be like brothers!" (*sob* the cuteness!)

Rook is out, still, probably till quite late, with the bachelor/bachelorette party thing... I bet they are having a total blast!

Chula is in L.A. and had a reading tonight at A D1fferent Light and is out at some kind of f3tish club event thing.

Unfortunately I got into MORE traffic, and was on the bay bridge for another hour and a half at least because there is some sort of sports game... it must be unusually important but i have no clue what it was. Dotty called me from the bridge... "Can you call and tell them we will be late...we're stuck on the bay bridge..." They were maybe 10 minutes in front of me! Funny. So - I was not late for it after all since the presenters were also late!

(for the mildly sleazy bits, click here)

why not ask

I just wrote an inquiry letter to Nuevo Flakewad "College" in SF to ask if they hire temporary lecturers. Can I send you my CV and a course proposal? Heh. (if they say yes, I will have to HAUL ASS to make a cool course proposal.) But wouldn't that be fun? I'd totally do it for FREE, you know. Just for the experience.

I think I'll also try to teach a workshop at the rec center here... I was going to try this last winter, but lost the 9-page application form somewhere along the line. I'm thinking a 3 or 4 hour weekend afternoon t4nslation workshop. A 4-week evening class would be better though I would not expect anyone to do homework-reading - alas. Instead: mini-readings, 5 minute lectures, and multiple quick exercises in groups. hmmm.

Am also busily writing cover letters to the ML4 T & T series. which would be the perfect home for my project!

meanwhile, a new love!

OMG buggydoo! I swoon all over you. You're so strong! I'll be sure not to let you know that I too have trouble keeping my legs closed when in labor.

"Oh!" I cried, my voice a shocked, helpless mewl of distress. "Oh, help! Help! What shall I do! I flipped on the lightswitch, and the light didn't go on! What has happened? I don't understand! Steve, Steve! There is a problem that needs solving. Will you be in charge of of solving the problem??

hahahahaha!!!!!

3 hours of thinking

I have 3 hours to do whatever! (It's early pickup day for Moomin.)

Riffling through "Feminist consciousness and feminist research" to help me thinking about my anthology project. I am thinking hard about Dale Spender's intro to her book where she sent the chapters on people to those people. I can't do this because all the poets I'm doing are dead. What could approximate? I thought perhaps sending to someone who is a particular scholar on that person (if she exists - I somehow doubt anyone's making their academic career writing about Em1lia B3rnal. Yet.) But writing to someone who might know more than I do on that person's work and life and inviting her to contribute a paragraph or two. If I end up with multiple short bios of some authors that would suit me right down to the ground.

I was thinking about something (as I read all this criticism and the introductions to anthologies galore) that really bugs me. When women put themselves down or are especially self-effacing as an aggressive act and then on top of that, get praised for doing so. I am angry and therefore I will say how bad, dumb, ignorant, and unable to speak I am; I'll turn invisible. Because I don't exist except in mirrors and echoes, no one can take vengeance. I understand that this is a survival strategy, but it bothers me greatly. I think of the disappointment and horror of the narrator in "virgil, non..." when she comes to the lake of the suicides, or watches the parades.

Bulls in china shops everywhere, I praise your refusal to be invisible!

the girl from uncle

tonight I'll finish "Uncle Silas" by Sheridan Le Fanu. So far it's very Lemony Snicket, but the real thing, not the snarkery. ("real thing"??)

***

I wondered why the book jacket called it subversive. About halfway through I started seeing it. The heroine keeps seeing things and having the reality of her perceptions questioned directly till she thinks she's mad. And then it ... oh wait. Spoilers behind the cut.

But I can certainly say that the narrator's guesses about who is good and who's evil and her constructions of their motives - that is just briliiant. I'm a reasonably sophisticated mystery-novel reader and that's part of what a good mystery novel does - jerks the reader around doubting first one person, then another, then believing wholeheartedly in the innocence of that first person, then doubting them again! le Fanu did this perfectly. I didn't know what to think. And with the conventions of genre also twiddled around so that one minute I'd think Oh! of course the orphan's cousin will seem coarse and rough, but then will have a heart of gold! and the next - No, her cousin hides the most treacherous soul full of lies... Oh so perfect!

batty

Nene said I drive like a bat out of hell. Why do bats leave hell that fast? Why bats? I'm looking it up. It's been bothering me for a week.

strange annoyers

Moomin and I were irritated with each other all afternoon. this is quite rare... but we just couldn't get along... I am cranky and he is spastic. He won't shut up... clingy... hanging on me... whining, dawdling... he was actually rather naughty.

We went to the pool to see what it was like while Peanut had her lesson. This one instructor started talking to Moomin but in the most irritating aggro way. Like - everything he said being aggressive, like, "i'm going to squirt you, i'm going to tickle you! and you can't stop me!" I find this kind of behavior fucking CREEPY. And Moomin giggled like mad at the attention but it unsettled and freaked him more so that he kept running in and out of the pool area trying to get the guy to do more of that sort of attention. Exciting and scary right? But my GOAL in taking him there was to help him see that the pool is not scary and no one will splash you. that didn't work! And then - he kicked this pool toy into the teacher's head on purpose - obviously knowing he should not. (I can hear you all scoffing. But Moomin almost never does shit like that! And I'm cranky, so it extra bugged me. I automatically trust him to behave!)

Now, the dawdling! And the weird stubborn heinosity! I took him for a bike ride and he just balked at everything... finally, face-off when he insisted i had to stop at a certain point and cross the street for some reason and I was heading for a different place. Both of us ornery, undignified, yelling, "you have to come over HERE!"

Just now, bedtime... and the dawdling... o man! "You are not listening to me!" "By listening I think you mean I'm not doing what you tell me to." "Well when I tell DADDY what to do he follows my orders! You have to follow my orders!" "Just get ready for bed like normal and then we'll have time to play and read a book. Otherwise NOT." "If you are so mean to me I will not be your friend and I will not play with you! Because you are not fair!" "Dude. I DO listen to your input but when it comes down to it I'm the grownup!" (No one could have guessed i was the grownup from overhearing this conversation...)

We apologized to each other for being cranky. I asked him how he could figure out how to play AND get ready for bed.

I hate the nursery-school namby pamby thing where "listening" means "obeying." Like by calling it "listening" we're somehow less evil?

I figured all this hyperspazzing needed to blow off steam somehow. So I read him "Captain Underrrpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets" for a bedtime story. This made everything MUCH more peaceful. He thought it was great, he got to admire some bratty, naughty kids and laugh about underwear. Suddenly all was well.

I think he's really sick of being bossed around and behaving all the time. What to do? I'll try to pay more positive attention when he's playing nicely. I mean... usually i do pay attention in the afternoons and we have absolutely no conflict. Today I had NO reserve of patience.

All I can really think about is a hideous mixture of relief and disappointment... deciding to go for the compos1tion certification feels like suddenly taking for cosmetology or auto shop in high school, going "vocational"... i feel like i'll be on the defensive the rest of my life not having a phd... i know this is silly. and that i will super enjoy teaching world lit or whatever... remedial gilgamesh... I'd do it well and really like making people read stuff and write about it. and i coudl get nice fame stuff from writing and publishing.

Maybe it would be a million times worse if i WENT to bezerkeley and got used to the fancy wine and cheese parties with famous people. And then had to go teach Remedial Gilgamesh to child development majors at George Hutchins Community College. And then whenever i was around some phd they'd be like all pitying at my loserhood. You know... that would suck!

Actually today I had a fabulous idea. I'm sure someone's done it, but i imagined the wonderful anthology of manifestos I could make. I'd find weird ones that no one knows about, and throw them together! a kick-ass anthology! Evern if other people have done it, mine would be better.

I wish I had a poptart.

I shall obtain my certification, and create anthologies, and write book reviews, weird poetry, translations... happily...

I shall blog with glee, and pass into the West....

invoking and evoking

Because I know y'all love to hear the tales of moronitude.

(Later today I'll describe sweetly the good things about the Bad Class... but not right this minute.)

From last night's class party:

Dude from china: So, I don't get how, why, it says "May, pour into my heart." Is a month. How can one talk to month?
Fuzzy prof: Well, it's like you're talking to the month... you know... let's see...
Dude: Instead I think he is talking about month as metaphor, for, something else.
Fuzzy prof: No, you, see it's this whole poetic tradition, to talk to the thing itself. Like, think of TS Idiot and his poem where he's talking to Avril. "Avril is the cruelest month". It's like that.
Me: *worn thin, rude* No it's not. It's totally not. TS Idiot is not addressing Avril personified. He might be personifying it but not addressing the poem to it like a dialogue. It's like if I said, Mary, open the door. It's not like saying "Mary is an open door." TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
Fuzzy prof: *thinking hard, screwing up brow* Oh. Yeah... I guess so...
Dude from china: *is no wiser for the discussion*

Man! Tha stupidness! I can't even tell you... several people were listening to this exchange, looking confused. Instead of irritated. If I get to teach anything i will cram information into them. First. Before they get to "discuss".

mildly unsettled

I really really really don't want to haze my future brother in law at the bachelorette party ! even though it was my idea to do the switcheroo thing so I wouldn't have to haze Minnie. Fortunately everyone else is taking up the slack. some people get it that I don't want to - others don't and are like, awww, but we need your obnoxiousness and disinhibition! But I'm all ... duuuude... not going there. For once. It's like I've learned normal discretion 20 years too late.