Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit (and various iterations thereof) age: 23 location: oakland, ca hobbies: comic books, reading, writing, doodling, video games likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, animals, food, laughing loudly in public, SUSHI dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink(at)gmail.com wishlist cara good night's sleep money stress-free life hardon-kardon speakers world peace realistic wishlist transmetropolitan vol 5-6, 9-10long-term obsessions comicsslash writing reading music animals life and living current obsession(s) dexteravatar the last airbender writing a novel currently reading watchmen by alan moorethe lioness quartet by tamora pierce currently playing final fantasy tactics advancepersona 3 currently watching ugly bettythe west wing dexter |
Friday, August 1, 2008 [link] 04:55 p.m. listening to: nothing I've been listening to Radiohead's OK Computer, which I'd actually never heard in its entirety before. It's an amazing album, although perhaps not quite up there with Pink Floyd's The Wall or Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which still tops my list of Perfect Albums. My therapist is having me write a poem about space, which I don't entirely comprehend. Her "homework" seems to have no rhyme or reason. But it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something, taking steps toward wholeness instead of talking my issues to death. Talking is great, and a lot of what I need to do is communicating, processing my emotions, but after a while it starts to make me feel worse instead of better. I had a lot to blog about before I started this entry. Every day something happens, or I compose an internal monologue, and I think, "I should blog that." Then I get home and I don't, and eventually it all falls out of my head like sand. I thought that maybe I should get a Twitter account, get into that microblogging thing that everyone's doing these days. At the very least, it would allow me to capture thoughts before they flitter away. But now that I'm here, writing this, that seems less appealing. I need to learn to marshal my thoughts. Wednesday, July 23, 2008 [link] 05:58 p.m. listening to: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea I spent my rides to and from work today listening to In an Aeroplane Over the Sea, probably the first time I'd listened to that album with my new headphones. The difference was astounding. The music enveloped me, and there were layers and nuances I'd never noticed or heard before. It was like listening to the album for the first time again. It was nice; I wish we more often got second chances to appreciate things all over again like that. I'm very tired. I haven't slept well or much these past few nights, and working two jobs is taking its toll. I may have bitten off more than I can chew; normally, I take only jobs that have long deadlines. This time, not only is the deadline far too close for my liking, but I also have no idea how much I'm getting paid. I'm quite certain that I shall be completely ripped off, but that's what I get for accepting a job without knowing the terms. Sigh. So tired, and I've yet to build a collage for my therapist appointment this coming Monday. I suppose I'll do that now. Thursday, July 17, 2008 [link] 02:21 p.m. listening to: my iTunes library on shuffle Been a while, hasn't it? Oddly enough, I've had plenty to blog about; I just. . . haven't. Let's try a summary, then. I took a vacation last week, which oddly everyone interpreted as me going somewhere. I didn't go anywhere, and I had no plans to go anywhere. Going places is work, as far as I'm concerned. There is planning, there is packing, and very little rest. Vacations are for resting. So I took four days off from work. I spent one day cleaning and the rest playing video games, writing, and just generally recharging my batteries. I actually wish I hadn't taken that vacation now, actually, as it makes work seem like even more of a grind than it was before. I generally enjoy my work--I don't hate it, anyway--but having nearly a week of paid freedom makes work seem incredibly dreary by comparison. I've been to the dentist an awful lot lately, mainly because my fillings seem to keep chipping, breaking off, and/or coming out. I found an amazing dentist, which makes going to the dentist not as much of a horror as it usually is. He's unfortunately quite expensive, but fortunately my work has a reimbursement plan. Unfortunately, I've already used two-thirds of it getting fillings redone. I've ordered a nightguard, however, which should help me stop grinding my teeth during the night, and that in turn should help the state of my fillings immensely. I'm quite irritated that they keep breaking, because I just got all of them replaced two or three years ago. I've taken up letter-writing lately. After an initial flurry of letters, I've yet to write any more (though I got a reply to one!). I should write some more today, time permitting. Right now, however, I need to go cook ratatouille, as I have a lot of vegetables. Thursday, July 3, 2008 [link] 02:45 p.m. listening to: "Sin Nombre" - The Refreshments I am finally solo at work. It is pretty much the same as before, right down to the practices. Sigh. Thursday, June 26, 2008 [link] 08:16 p.m. listening to: "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" - Fernando Ortega Yesterday, about the time I was getting my teeth x-rayed at the dentist, a woman in Montgomery Station saw a train coming and stepped onto the tracks. The driver blared insistently on her horn, but she seemed to pay no attention and instead lay down. He was unable to stop in time, and at least three cars rolled over her before the train came to a stop. The woman was unscathed. She was immediately whisked away to the hospital, of course, and no details have been released to the press of who this woman was or what she was trying to do. Popular speculation, of course, is that she was trying to commit suicide. I wonder what went through her mind, as the train came toward her? Did she close her eyes? Did she think, "At last!" or "Wait, I've changed my mind!"? How did she feel, when she discovered she was still alive? Did she weep? Did she feel herself even more of a failure than she did before, someone who can't even die right? Or did she see this as an opportunity: a sign, perhaps, that her life was spared for a reason? Monday, June 23, 2008 [link] 10:32 a.m. listening to: mopey music I read this article at the New York Times, which filled me with such incredulity as to almost amount to rage. Next thing you know, people will realize that snow is cold. Or that the Earth is, in fact, round. Of course top students are lured by the siren song of big paychecks. If nothing else, you have student loans to pay off. (Tufts, I think, has the right idea by offering to pay student loans if the student decides to pursue public service--because let's face it, if there is one thing that doesn't pay the bills, it's doing right by the rest of the world. Yes, it's unfair. One of the greatest lies we ever tell our children is that life is fair.) These jobs are safe, secure, and when you've just graduated from college and you don't know where you're living or what you're doing or why nobody will pay you for this big fancy degree that you have, security and safety matter a lot. This article also doesn't address the issue of parental--and, to a degree, societal--pressure. I know a lot of recent grads whose parents would have had a fit if they took anything that made less than $50K a year. These are parents that think that a college diploma means an instacareer; parents that can't believe you're "wasting your college education" and/or "the thousands of dollars I paid" on public service; parents that are thinking of moving into retirement and would really like it if you could support them through their old age. Then there's societal pressure, like I said: those nebulous "they" that think you must have the corner office and the power lunches and the thousand-dollar suits in order to be "successful" and "happy." There's a lot I can't articulate about how and why I'm dissatisfied with society and society's expectations. A lot of it has to do with a previous entry about art and society, and that's linked to the lie we're all told about how we should all find a job that we love, how we should pursue our passions. They make it sound so easy, and it's not a lie, precisely. If your passion is making quilts, or fly-fishing, or heck even parenting, forget being able to do that for a living. Some of us have to compromise. Some of us have to compromise more than others. Thursday, June 19, 2008 [link] 05:05 p.m. listening to: lots of Flogging Molly I got the symphony with maybe five minutes to spare. Once I got my ticket and found my seat, that left me with barely even enough time to flip through my program before the lights went down, a voice announced that we should turn off our cellphones, and the conductor walked onstage to much applause. I sat next to quite a character. Extremely tall and thin, with cornflower blue eyes and a neatly groomed white mustache that matched his perfectly white hair. He was wearing a blue-and-white striped suit made of what seemed to be cotton (and was probably nice and cool in the heat), his lapel adorned with at least three incredibly gaudy brooches and a pin that said, "SFS [heart] MTT," whatever that meant. He was quick to smile whenever we made eye contact, and always the first to applaud, shouting, "Bravo! Bravo!" All eight fingers were decorated with enormous rings, the kind that cover one knuckle, and he had some rather ostentatious bracelets, too. And a straw panama hat. And bright red socks. And gold-rimmed glasses. And a paisley tie. I could go on and on describing this fellow, really. I could tell the first song was contemporary almost immediately, although I couldn't have told you how. I know almost nothing about the technicalities of music. But I could tell it wasn't "classical" the way most people think of classical music. It was extremely difficult to listen to, not because it was bad, but because it used so much minor key and never, ever let up. It was an assault of the most challenging and haunting sound, at near-constant volume. The gentleman next to me seemed very enthusiastic about it, though. Then came some very lovely Debussy vocal pieces, and for the first time I was close enough to the stage to see the singer's face. She obviously had opera training, and her exaggerated facial expressions added a great deal to the performance; the audience sometimes chuckled, although I'm sure none of us could understand what she was singing. (I discovered, later, that the program had lyrics and translations, so maybe they did know what they were laughing at.) After intermission (which I mostly spent reading the program), they finally started in on the Beethoven. It sounded startlingly like the recording I've been listening to on my iPod at first, so that the first movement was like an odd sort of deja vue. By the second movement it'd differentiated itself, and it charged from there straight into the third and fourth movements, with no pause at all; the musicians didn't even put down their instruments. By the fourth movement I was grinning, and so were some of the musicians. Beethoven's joy and triumph is clearly contagious. Monday, June 9, 2008 [link] 09:08 a.m. listening to: nothing I got woken up at 1 am by a cat jumping on my bed and walking all over me, purring up a storm. It was the same cat I rescued from the courtyard this morning. Divine retribution? Karma? Coincidence? We report, you decide. Sunday, June 8, 2008 [link] 02:03 p.m. listening to: "Banditos" - Refreshments I opened the garage today, to get my bicycle, and heard meowing. Thinking some poor cat had somehow gotten trapped in the laundry room, I investigated, only to discover that the cat had actually gotten trapped in the courtyard, and was now meowing pitifully at a window to the laundry room. It started purring ecstatically as soon as I appeared, and after some wrangling, I managed to get the screen up enough that the cat could squeeze through. It scampered off quickly enough that I almost locked it in the garage, but fortunately it appeared from behind a pile of debris before that actually happened. Cute little thing. It had one of those large-eyed, inquisitive faces. It rubbed my ankles, and my bike too, and I had to play with it a bit before I set off on my errands. Cats are so cute! Why am I allergic to them? Wednesday, June 4, 2008 [link] 07:19 p.m. listening to: "Bone In My Ear" - Bruce Cockburn I had a therapy appointment on Monday, which I approached with. . . well, probably not zero expectations, but I don't know what expectations I had. I think I was sort of hoping to hate her and find her completely incompatible with me, if only because I only have five free sessions with his woman and do not anticipate being able to afford her once said free sessions are over. I ended up liking her. A great deal, in fact. So much so that I'm trying desperately to figure out if I can afford her, although I have no idea what her rates are. Perhaps she can recommend a colleague at Kaiser that doesn't suck. I often end up telling my friends, quite loudly, that "you have to find a therapist that you work with. Therapists are here to serve you, not the other way around." I say this all while maintaining the same therapist at Mills, mostly because, well, she was my first therapist, and I had no basis for comparison. How was I supposed to tell a good therapist from a bad one, or an incompatible one from a compatible one? Well, the one I'm seeing now is actually a family/marriage therapist, or so her card says. She's a very sweet older woman, older than I expected. (She did not sound her age on the phone.) And she was just very kind, and a very good listener, and that was possibly the first time I left a therapy session feeling better than when I went in. It's remarkable, how easy it is to make a person feel better, and how cleverly she did it, so that I didn't even realize it myself until several days later. I think I may suffer from feelings of worthlessness, I said. Well, you must have some self-worth, she replied, because you write, and if you really felt worthless, then you wouldn't write. And I had never thought of that before, and as soon as I thought of it, I realized that it had to be true. It was true because she said it, and suddenly I felt as if I was worth something. If I wasn't worth something, how could I write? I got into an argument with my friend the other day, I said. She was upset that I tied my self-worth into society's expectations, and society's expectations of artists are nothing, or negative. Terrorists don't bomb opera buildings when they want to make a point; Joshua Bell plays in a metro station for three hours and makes less than forty dollars; novelists could go on strike, and nobody would notice (yes, I am aware that The Onion is parody, thank you). Well, she said, it is difficult to be an artist. There is no support system; you go against the grain. Yes! I exclaimed. That's what I meant, and my friend didn't understand me. Earlier today, I thought of that exchange, and realized that all I'd needed or wanted was just validation of my struggle; for someone to tell me, Yes, you struggle. And that was all. Sunday, June 1, 2008 [link] 07:37 p.m. listening to: American Idiot by Green Day I had a longish entry here, but I accidentally deleted it. Woe is me. Well, there was a brief description of my busy weekend: Prince Caspian on Friday, an R.E.M. concert on Saturday, fruitpicking and winetasting today. Loads of fun, but suddenly all my time is gone. I have far too much writing to do this week, not to mention some work for my second job, and errands I still need to run tomorrow. Constantine has started eating again, which is fantastic, but it means I now need to take time out of my schedule to buy rats for him. Ah well. First thing's first, and I have writing I need to get done tonight. As in, right now. Friday, May 23, 2008 [link] 02:56 p.m. listening to: "Northwest Passage" - Show of Hands What a week! I almost didn't go to work on Tuesday, as I had a friend over from out of town, but it was a good thing I did, because they scheduled my review for that day. I was so nervous I had to do that silly thing where you write "person" on your hand and swallow it. (It worked, to an extent, and I had to do it several times.) It turned out to be fairly straightforward: I read the review that my supervisor wrote, and it was favorable and contained nothing negative that we hadn't talked about already. My shift supervisor, the newsroom supervisor, and the president of global operations were there. P of GO is fairly removed from the newsroom, and I had a sense that she was present at this review mostly for her benefit, to give her an idea of what was going on in there. I told them that my experience at Business Wire has been positive overall, which it has been; the biggest thing, for me (and I told them this), was the feeling of a supportive network. I remember (I did not tell them this story) a few weeks ago, when one of my coworkers made a mistake and BW had to run a correction; though it was her mistake, her supervisor was there the entire time backing her up. That would not have happened at any of my previous workplaces. I wouldn't say that my previous coworkers were backbiting or anything, but neither was there this feeling of solidarity. Anyway, so the review went well, and I got a raise! The whole thing has done a lot to bolster my confidence at work, and I think my performance has improved as a result. I wonder if anyone has noticed a difference? Saturday, May 17, 2008 [link] 07:09 p.m. listening to: Every so often, I have these imaginary conversations with my hypothetical therapist. I say, "Sometimes I feel like I'm living on crumbs of affection because I feel like I don't deserve the whole cake," or "I don't actually think about people when they're not there, and I'm afraid this is just a coping mechanism for something larger," or "My sense of self-worth is so incredibly damaged that when my friends tell me they miss me, I actually think, Really? Why?" My imaginary therapist never says anything; it's just nice to get these things off my chest. In other news, I finally called my company's EAP! Maybe I'll actually get therapy. Friday, May 16, 2008 [link] 06:44 p.m. listening to: "Fugue in G Minor (The Little)" - J.S. Bach There's been a heat wave in the Bay Area recently. Nothing bad by Southern California standards, where in the summer you'll have five solid weeks of temperatures in the hundreds. Here, though, the mercury rising about 90 is a seldom enough event that it drives people mad, and it's all people will talk about, especially in the city. ". . . couldn't sleep last night, it was so hot. . ." ". . . my kids' soccer game isn't this weekend, they die in this baking heat. . ." ". . . had to let the dog in. . ." I went to the bank yesterday morning, during one of my breaks. It was early enough that it wasn't scorching yet, but still just a little bit damp from the morning fog, so that when you breathed in you smelled the wet. The city was flushed with the morning commute: pedestrians cramming the sidewalks, cyclists careening recklessly along the streets, delivery trucks rattling along inches from the curb. It all seemed so familiar somehow that I had to pause on the corner of Montgomery and Market to try and figure it out. It hit me in the middle of Market Street, a sense-memory so vivid that for a moment it felt like I was actually back in --Beijing, 1997-- --Shanghai, 2003-- --Hangzhou, 2006-- In fact, I remembered vividly standing on a street corner in downtown Hangzhou, afraid to cross the street by myself because the people here drove like street signs were meant for other people, and the pedestrians simply crossed like they'd never heard of fear. I recalled scoffing at a friend who'd once claimed that "all cities are the same, deep down." I saw no way to claim that Los Angeles and New York were the same, or Chicago and Minneapolis, or Seattle and Dallas: cities so clearly have their own distinct personality, based on its people, its architecture, its history. But then, one morning, I closed my eyes in San Francisco and it felt like I was back in China. Sunday, May 11, 2008 [link] 05:25 p.m. listening to: "Iowa" - Dar Williams Lovely, lovely day today. I spend most of the morning cooped up inside playing video games, feeling as if I wanted to avoid the Sunday church crowd that tends to clog my street on Sunday mornings, compounded by the Mother's Day crowd. Then I got my things and trekked over to Piedmont Ave., where I bought some black licorice for my licorice-loving coworkers, ran into a Mills alum while purchasing fountain pen ink, and then spent a comfortable hour in the La Myx tea bar, writing and drinking several cups of white tea. I've run into several Mills alum working retail or at coffeeshops since graduating, and it always makes me a little uncomfortable. What did I do to get myself a cushy job that they didn't do? Mills women do end up in powerful places eventually--or at least making very comfortable amounts of money without necessarily being famous--but that has little to do with being a Mills alum and more with being the kind of person who decides to attend Mills in the first place: a smart, stubborn, hardworking woman who Wants To Make A Difference. I have no doubt that these women will eventually get themselves out of retail or waiting tables and kick some serious ass in the world. I just wonder how I managed to fall into a well and come out with fistfuls of gold. Saturday, May 10, 2008 [link] 11:05 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey It's been a year now, more or less, since I graduated. It's weird, because it doesn't feel like it's been that long. I still tell people, "Oh, I just graduated," but in the next few weeks and months, there'll be a new wave of college graduates, and I'll be another adult. I'm in a much better place than I imagined I would be, a year ago. I have my dream job, more or less. I'm writing; I'm working on a novel, even. Things that seemed impossible a few months ago now seem possible, and even probable. I like the person I am; I like the person I'm becoming. I've been lucky, and I hope I'll continue to be lucky, and gifted, and blessed. Saturday, May 3, 2008 [link] 10:15 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey Dead raccoon on the sidewalk, next to the chain link fence that separates the parking lot from the street. I first saw it this morning, when it still resembled something sleeping, or a plush toy. By the time I came back from work, someone had put an orange cone next to it and surrounded it with yellow caution tape. Flies buzzed around its head. Monday, April 28, 2008 [link] 06:07 p.m. listening to: "Horn Concerto in D, K421 - Allegro" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Went to Downtown Berkeley today, via BART--I just started bleeding yesterday and didn't want to do anything to exacerbate my womanly condition. It's also nice to just walk around once in a while instead of zipping by on a bicycle; I can listen to music, take my time, duck into any interesting little shops. If I'd been on my bicycle, I would never have noticed the tiny little Indonesian restaurant where I ate lunch today, for example. My errands were mostly a bust, though. I returned a book to the library and ate lunch; that was about it. The one store I wanted to check out turned out to be closed on Mondays, another store I went to in search of a messenger bag didn't have any that fit my specifications. (One came awfully close, but it was smaller than I wanted and also $65--which I don't mind paying for a bag, but only if it's perfect.) Reel Video failed to have the second season of Dexter or the first disc of Arrested Development. Berkeley Bowl didn't have my milk, but that was hardly new. On my way to Ashby BART for my return trip, I passed by another small outdoor-gear shop and paused outside the doors, wondering if I should chance going inside to look for a messenger bag. To my astonishment, this store--which I've passed by countless times before--seems to have been set up inside an old church. In the back was a large stained glass window of a sprawling fruit tree, glowing in the late afternoon sunlight. Rows of skis lined the wall below it; rows of jackets and parkas framed it instead of pews. Presented with such an incongruity, my writer's mind scrambled diligently and could only present me with a temple to conquering mountains. Sunday, April 27, 2008 [link] 10:29 p.m. listening to: "Killing the Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Things that make me angry about being a woman:
Sunday, April 27, 2008 [link] 10:29 p.m. listening to: "Killing the Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Things that make me angry about being a woman:
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 [link] 02:05 p.m. listening to: nothing Oh God, so tired. Saw John Butler at the Fillmore last night. Amazing performance; probably the best concert I've ever been to. John Butler was witty and kind, and absolutely some kind of fingerpicking genius. Watching him on YouTube is absolutely nothing compared to seeing him perform live. The climax--the several climaxes--of "Ocean" can only be described as an exultation. You can feel that fierce, wild joy pour off of him in waves and infect the audience. Also, I am a total sucker for audience singing, and the audience absolutely knew the lyrics to every single song, even the ones without words. My schedule, unfortunately, does not accommodate evening shenanigans. I tried to take a nap beforehand, which proved unsuccessful, and basically got only four hours of sleep last night. Made many foolish mistakes at work. Fortunately, they were all on practice releases (I think). Am going to take a nap now. Thursday, April 17, 2008 [link] 02:11 p.m. listening to: nothing there is something wrong with my shift keys, and ONLY my shift keys. i attributed this, at first, to the water i spilled on my keyboard a few days ago, except--as i said--it's affecting ONLY the shift keys, including the shift key on the side where i did not spill any water. getting the greater than and less than signs to populate just now to make break tags was very exciting. this is what happens when i hit my right shift key 1.x.x.p01.x what you can't see is that it also made me go backward and forward in this browser tab and also brought up the bookmarks panel in firefox. this is what happens when i hit the left shift key fq;8792KO: what you can't see is that it also brought up my history. in the past it's also launched mediamonkey, but i uninstalled it because it was driving me crazy, and also i don't use mediamonkey anymore anyway, since i switched to itunes. i was supposed to go to the compusa down the street from my work today to buy a new keyboard, but i forgot and came straight home instead. now i guess i'm going to try and hold out until sunday, because i have a coupon for staples that will get me twelve percent off on a new keyboard, but it's only valid from the 20th to the 26th. but it's cool, i won't be home a lot of tomorrow or saturday, so really today will be the most annoying day. Thursday, April 10, 2008 [link] 03:13 p.m. listening to: "Stones II" - Ultima Online Spring has sprung! The farmers market down the street from where I work now sells strawberries and asparagus. I bought a bag of kettle corn to share with my coworkers. I love kettle corn. I got a call yesterday from someone at Mills, who now runs The Weekly--er, I mean The Campanil. She wanted to talk to me about website issues and also wanted to discuss having me come in and train the new copy chief and the new copy editors. I was glad to help (the paper holds a very special place in my heart), and afterward she asked, "So, how are you? How's life?" "I'm. . . great, actually," I said, surprising myself. "That's good," she said. "You know, you sound really happy." "I'm in a better place now than I thought I would be," I admitted. I am very fortunate, and I think about this maybe once a week. I like my job. I like my coworkers. I make a pretty decent amount of money, enough that I can afford things I want, and better yet I can afford to be generous to my friends. I don't mind my apartment so much. I mean, it could be better, but I'm going to move, and I know I can afford a much better place. Things were bad for a while, but I really landed on my feet, and it's sort of startling and gratifying that someone can hear over the phone that I have no wish to complain of unhappiness. Tuesday, April 8, 2008 [link] 03:42 p.m. listening to: nothing One of my friend's greatest fears is that "people forget me as soon as I leave the room." Isn't that everyone's fear? Why is it so hard to shake the hard, certain truth (not necessarily fact; just because it's true doesn't mean it's real, just like it doesn't have to be real to also be true) that if someone were to erase you from this world tomorrow, nobody would notice that you were gone? Monday, April 7, 2008 [link] 06:56 p.m. listening to: Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach's Quartet in A Minor, Wq. 93 I've been listening to a lot of classical music recently. I haven't sincerely listened to classical music since high school, probably, and by "sincerely" I mean sat there and just listened to it. That's the only way you can actually listen to classical music, in my opinion--at least, classical music with any depth. I can't write, read, cook, or surf the Internet while listening to Beethoven; the Beethoven either distracts me from my task, or I have to block it out entirely, neither of which does my any good. I've found that the best times to listen to classical music are while walking or riding public transit. I could also just, say, sit or lie there and listen, but I find that a little boring; I'd rather be going somewhere or doing something, except that whatever I'm doing must also allow me to focus on the music. This results in an extremely limited range of activity. I went on just such a walk today, while listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and while it may seem a bit cheesy to listen to "Spring" while, well, enjoying spring, that's precisely what I was doing. It's really spring now, I think; I was waiting for it to begin raining again, but it's been an unusually dry winter--or perhaps the ones previous have just been unusually wet! But everywhere is a riot of sourgrass and golden poppies, and I spotted some thick, full-headed dandelions sprouting out of a crack between the street and the curb. There's a particularly fragrant bush on that walk. I went to the library today, for lack of anything else to do (I'm not in a position to spend money frivolously right now), and discovered that the tiny building is positively packed. Shelves behind shelves. Talk about an efficient use of space! I picked up the second book of the Lioness Quartet, as I finished the first today, as well as Clueless and four classical music CDs. I'm not entirely certain when I'll be able to find time to listen to them, so I'm settling for ripping them with iTunes to listen later. Wednesday, April 2, 2008 [link] 05:35 p.m. listening to: "Ocean" - John Butler Trio I purchased a typewriter at a yard sale the other day, completely on a whim; I had no room in my apartment for a typewriter, and I'd probably never use it with any regularity. But it was only ten dollars, and I have a fountain pen, so why not a manual typewriter? Googling demonstrates that I may actually have overpaid for my typewriter; it appears to be an Underwood 5, the first reliable modern typewriter, and the company produced millions of them. You'd be hard pressed to get more than five or ten dollars for it. I'm hardly disappointed--it's not as if I expected to pick up something valuable at a yard sale, and ten dollars is a small price to pay for--as far as I can tell--a perfectly good, still functioning typewriter. And the popularity of the model means I should have very good luck finding ribbon for it. Tuesday, April 1, 2008 [link] 03:12 p.m. listening to: "Edge of the Ocean" - Ivy To call oneself a writer is to declare oneself a little bit mad. There are too many good reasons to not be a writer: there is no money in it; neither is there any job security; you will forever be looked down upon by friends, relatives, and acquaintances who would rather that you grew up and got a real job, one that didn't involve making up stories that nobody cared about; the short story market is dead; the novel market is dead; people are in love with reality television; people no longer read the newspapers; people no longer read. Furthermore, to write means--as J.D. Salinger once put it--to always be a little bit unhappy. You put a little bit of yourself into each word, only to have them sliced to pieces by critics with no poetry in their souls, who were never brave or bold or insane enough to write stories of their own. You search for meaning in everything you see, smell, hear, touch, taste, and you always fall a little bit short because life doesn't hold the meaning that stories do. You are always a little bit disappointed. You are never quite good enough. You are always frightened. You always find yourself talking about things that don't matter to you because no one cares or understands about the things that do matter to you. And you are always a little bit alone, because writing is by nature a solitary occupation. Writers are even uncomfortable around other writers; you sympathize, but do not understand, because there are a hundred ways to tell the same story and all of them are true, right, and valid. I remember well telling the then-dean of students at my university, freshman year, that I wanted to be a writer. She gave me a look of startled horror, as if I'd just confessed to wanting to be a garbage collector, or a cannibal. "My mother was a writer," she said; ah, all was explained. "It was hard for all of us. . . but, well, if it's a passion. . ." It is a passion. It must be a passion, because otherwise it isn't worth it. As Harry Crewe said in Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, it is not a comfortable passion. She spoke of loving her new homeland, which to all the world seemed a barren wasteland, save for a few who understood and agreed that yes, it was not a comfortable passion to love this place, its heat, the scratchy wind, the endless sand. Do I wish I weren't a writer? I'd be lying if I said yes, and I'd be lying if I said no. Certainly my life would be easier and less complicated if my passion had been for maths, or aerospace engineering, or motherhood, or if not easier, at least more successful in a conventional (financial) sense. But sometimes I find meaning in a ride down an escalator, or I make someone laugh or cry with a well-turned phrase, or I write some sort of great and unholy truth, or a story suddenly takes a new and unexpected and altogether wonderful direction, and I am in love with writing all over again. I never fell out of love with it in the first place. Friday, March 21, 2008 [link] 03:53 p.m. listening to: "Wild Horses" - Rolling Stones Almost five years ago, my freshman year of college, I got a jury summons two weeks before summer break. I deferred, saying that I was going to be out of town and would be back in August, and they never contacted me again. Three weeks ago, while checking the mail looking for Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, I got another jury summons. And no Phoenix Wright! Talk about a bait and switch! To make matters worse, it was for a Monday, which is normally my day off. So I let my employers know that I had jury duty, in case for some reason I ended up having to go to the courthouse again on Tuesday, and grumpily went to the courthouse. I sat in the large jury room for a couple of hours until I heard my name called--and told to come back at 1:00, because our department wasn't ready yet. I sighed, went home, ate lunch, and then went back to the courthouse, where I sat for another half hour until my group was called again. After this point, I'm not allowed to talk about anything that transpired in the courtroom--because yes, I'm on the jury! The tale gets more mystifying and coincidental from here, but it'll have to wait until next week, when the trial is over. Wednesday, March 12, 2008 [link] 07:46 p.m. listening to: my library on shuffle Ever since I made a conscious decision to adopt a "lifestyle change" several years ago and eat more healthy, I've thought a lot more about my food, and consequently, where my food comes from. Really, it was not a radical change from my life before; my family's unspoken rule has always been, "the fresher, the better." This meant fresh vegetables (unless they were impossible to find fresh, like water chestnuts or baby corn) and fresh meat, whenever possible. It never even occurred to me to eat frozen or canned vegetables, when I started cooking for myself, and I'd never seen a bag of frozen chicken parts until my cousin Lee started shopping at CostCo. Part of this, growing up, was the luxury of time as well as money. My father made the money to buy fresh vegetables, meat, and seafood; my aunt had the time to cook them. It never occurred to me that some people might not know how to snap green beans because they'd always come out of a bag in the freezer. Meat, though, is where the real difference lies. With the doctrine of "fresh is better" came "alive is better." In fact, in Chinese, "live" and "fresh" are the same word, when it comes to meat (or at least seafood). It wasn't unusual to come home to a sink of live crabs, and I used to amuse myself by poking them with chopsticks until they tried to pinch me. I went with my aunt to the large Chinese grocery stores where live fish swam in tanks and waited patiently while the fishmonger netted one out of the tank, hit it over the head, and gutted and scaled it for me right there. My father disappeared to mysterious stores or butchers and return with whole chickens, feathers still dangling loosely from the skin. The fresher, the better. This scandalized some of my less ethnic (read: white) friends who'd never seen meat in anything other than a styrofoam package. Which brings me to today's topic: Why are we so ashamed of where our meat comes from? This cool guy says, "The minute you start to eat something like liver, hearts, ears, or tongue you become to connected to that food and that animal. You realize that it was alive because you're aware that your body has those organs or features too." I grew up eating offal: pig's ears, pig's feet, pork blood, chicken livers, cow's stomach, sheep's brain, chicken feet. As a matter of fact, I love these things. I become very upset if I buy a whole chicken and it doesn't come with giblets. He believes this is a matter of responsible eating: waste not, want not. I agree. I also think organ meats are just damned tasty. I am not bothered by seeing the animal's head on a plate. That's how I know it used to be an animal, and how I (hopefully) know that the animal was fresh and recently slaughtered. The fresher the better. I suspect that people who don't like their food to "look at them" feel guilty about eating something that used to be alive--that once used to actually be able to look at you with those eyes. I can't reconcile this at all; if you can't handle seeing that it used to be an animal, then you probably shouldn't be eating it. When did people become so disconnected from their food that they can't even handle that it used to be a whole animal? I've killed and eaten chickens that I helped raise from chicks, and I don't feel at all barbaric for doing so. In fact, I feel less barbaric. Isn't it barbaric to be willfully ignorant of where your food came from? Doesn't it say something, when you can't bear to look at something that died so that you could enjoy a delicious steak, or chicken parmesan, or barbequed ribs? Acknowledge it. Respect your goddamned food, because you are what you eat. Sunday, March 9, 2008 [link] 11:06 p.m. listening to: "Killing the Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Really, I'm just looking for a reason to archive the blog, as it's gotten a bit long in the tooth. (And hasn't been archived since. . . last year? This is less impressive than it sounds, as I no longer blog daily.) There was a time when I wrote daily, and I no longer know why this is the case. I suppose, like anything else, it's a matter of habit, and I've gotten out of the habit of blogging daily. But I do other kinds of writing, now. I write more fiction. For a while, writing fanfiction and working this job, I thought: Could I be happy doing this, maybe? Working at some job that I enjoyed but did not particularly love during the day and writing fanfiction for my own pleasure and the pleasure of others at night? This is something other people do, and I don't judge them for it, but I'd always felt that my "destiny," so to speak, lay in publishing. I was wrong; I don't seek the status or legitimacy that comes with publishing, I just want to be read, and I wanted people to enjoy what I wrote and--if possible--laud me for it. This was and is easy enough to accomplish with the Internet, and I have indeed accomplished it. But is this enough? Could I be content with this? I examine my life and frighten myself with the answer: yes. I feel some pressure from external sources, perhaps, to achieve the legitimacy of print publishing, in the same way that I feel pressure from external sources to seek a career, promotion, upward mobility. I remind myself on a weekly basis that a career or a promotion are not what I want; I want only to survive, and I want to write. It would be nice if I could make my living entirely from writing, which is another--very good--reason to publish, but it would not make me unhappy, I think, if such a thing never came to fruition. I am not terribly concerned with debates over "higher" or "lower" art forms, and I don't feel as if I'd be "wasting" myself if I did this for the rest of my life. Maybe other people would think so, but other people can go hang. However, a factor to be considered is that the audience on the Internet is very different from an audience you'd find in a bookstore. There's not a very large market online for original stories; people online seek familiarity in fanfiction, looking for characters and situations they know. Original works are successful online, so far as I can see, inasmuch as they mimic fanfiction in their tone and content (often escapist, very often erotic). While I love the praise I receive online, it still seems so superficial, and in the back of my mind, I know I'm being praised for the gay sex, the popular couple/pairing, or some combination of both. There's more freedom to be found in a book, but at the same time, there's more insecurity. I know that if I write gay sex or a popular couple and post it to my LiveJournal, that I will receive comments. This is less true for a novel, not to mention that with a novel I would also have to go through the nervewracking process of finding a publisher, finding an agent, etc. I guess the conclusion is that I'm afraid, and if I never start anything at all then I'll never fail. But fear is no reason to stay curled up in the safe confines of LiveJournal, writing fanfiction and gay erotica, where I know I'm read, where I've become at least a little bit successful. That's a sad way to live. |
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