goddamn right

I will never understand why people with drug-resistant TB travel on airplanes. I understand legally, but not morally and epidemiologically, why they aren't somehow quarantined until they show some sort of common sense. (Do you look both ways before you cross the street, sir? Do you cook your meat all the way through? Do you cut away from yourself? Excellent, you may leave quarantine now.)

To endanger other people like that, to put other people at risk and know you're doing it.... To put it eloquently, how much of a fucking jackass are you?

[Happy New Year!]

It's Friday night and the neighbors downstairs are having a party. It's not particularly noisy, but there's talking and laughing and the clinking of glasses and cutlery, and it's keeping me awake.

And then it suddenly occurred to me that if I can hear them, then they can hear me, or more importantly, my kittens, my clanging around in the kitchen, my sex life, and my impromptu dishwashing karaoke, in that order of frequency and loudness. I feel particularly bad about the kittens. When they're running around after each other, they can be irritating as hell. (One of the holiday visitor cats somehow got on top of the refrigerator this evening as The Boy and I were eating dinner. It was pretty impressive, but we still had to give him the requisite scolding.)

All this boils down to: I'm sorry, downstairs neighbors, and I will try to prevent the bed from squeaking too much or the kittens from pushing any more glasses off the coffee table.

I had a real reason for writing this post, though, and that was to squee about and comment on several new books. It's the semester break, so I've been sucking down everything as non-academic as I can find. This started out with The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Go drop everything and read it. Seriously. I actually met the author a while ago and told him I would read his book, and then my manager squeed a lot about it, so I picked it up. It's fantastic. It's the first third of the life story of an arcanist, from his childhood through his early adolescence, and--get this--it has a dragon on crack. I'm not even kidding. I can't wait for the next in the series.

Then I read (or tried to read) Diary of a Bad Year, since I'm a giant Coetzee fangirl. Couldn't get past the first 50 or so pages. It was kind of painful. Maybe when I'm in a different mindset or something, but right now I'm not feeling it, stylistically or in terms of content.

So after that I picked up The Yiddish Policemen's Union, because I'm determined to read Chabon backwards from The Gentlemen of the Road (omg BEST). And it's omg SECOND BEST so far. Because I still can't get over the pure joy of Gentlemen.

Also I Am Legend was really good, with the added bonus of a bunch of short stories in the back that aren't noted at all on the front (the I Am Legend part is half as long as it looks from the outside.) A couple of things irritated me. Mostly the re-use of nouns three or more times in close proximity (I'm still a little scarred by the number of times Matheson managed to put the word "chest" in a single page, because I keep imagining Charlton Heston's chest, which I've seen way too much of, and yeah.) But the story itself was fantastic. Now I want to see the movie.

Finally, I borrowed In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. As an avid cook/baker/lover of all things vegetable, animal, and mineral, I've always been interested in the American attitude towards food, and although I'm not quite halfway through this book yet, it's elaborated on a lot of the things I've always wondered about. Like how hundreds of thousands of cultures around the world can eat vastly different diets and still remain healthy. How scientists and therefore Americans have moved away from things we recognize as "food" (an apple, a carrot, a cut of meat) to things we recognize as "nutrients" (vitamin-fortified, highly packaged, processed edible things.) It's a good read, too--you might know Pollan from The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a hot seller at Borders a few months ago, but which I have unfortunately not yet read.

So those are the ones I've read and loved so far. I read a few more that I didn't love, but liked enough to finish, most of which I will probably do a short commentary on later. And as it seems now that the party downstairs has moved to a different room, it is time for the sleep.

Two weeks ago, I was bitten by something while asleep. The bite swelled into a hard red welt, itchy and painful, and I was sure we had bed bugs. I literally stood beside the bed, unable to get in, for hours that night.

As it turned out, the kittens had attracted a small flea population, probably from the squirrels that live on the trees surrounding and overhanging our back porch. We got the requisite flea treatment paraphernalia and eradicated them. I, however, had done too much reading online and was petrified that the insecticide would kill the kittens. Even though I bought the most benign formula I could find, I insisted that we lock the kittens into a well-ventilated room as far away from the living room (where the fleas were) as possible. The Boy looked at me a little funny, but complied, even when I stuffed towels under the doors so they couldn't possibly inhale any of the aerosol. I placed a fan blowing out the window behind the couch, and attacked said couch clothed from head to toe, wearing gloves that reached to the elbow and a scarf over my hair. The Boy came into the room in a t-shirt and socks, told me I looked absurd, and wandered off in search of soda.

I read the directions on the can of insecticide four or five times. I aimed it down. I judged two to three feet. To be sure, I crouched until I could see the distance from the side instead of the top. I made uniform sweeping motions until all surfaces were just slightly damp.

With the windows open, it was probably thirty degrees in that room. I was sweating by the time I finished.

The kittens are still locked in their room. After scrubbing myself in hot water and soap, I allowed myself to go play with them. I might let them back into the living room tomorrow, but the thought of it makes my heart pound.

Throughout this phobia--not of insects, evil bloodsucking insects that lurk in couch cushions, but of the insect killer--some part of my brain realizes the ridiculousness of it all. I took all the proper precautions. No prolonged skin contact, minimal inhalation, no eye contact or contact with food surfaces.

But some part of me is still scared, just a little. Some part of me is in that first babysitting job mindset, when you're sure you're going to kill the neighbor's kid. Some part of me is ten and has to run to take the trash out after dark or the flying wolves will catch her. Some part of me is already in the heart-stopping adrenaline rush of coming up from the basement with the laundry, up an unlit, creaking external stairwell with paint cans and all manner of night creatures lurking in the adjacent crawlspace. And some part of me thinks all those other parts of me are pretty stupid and contagious.

Tell me that when I can't pick up a dropped sock because the giant red-eyed rats might eat me alive if I stop.

Working retail during the Christmas season would challenge the Dalai Lama's patience. But just when I'm about to give up on people altogether, someone comes along to tip the scales in the other direction.

Today, it was a boy in a teal shirt and beanie, and another with a beard and down jacket.

I was sitting in the creepy mural room at Memorial Union when a man in his mid-thirties came and sat at a table with a student. It soon became obvious that the man was on edge, probably on drugs, and if not dangerous, at least uncomfortably willing to invade personal space. The boy sitting at the table picked a moment when the man went to the bathroom to flee. When the man returned, he began harassing the next-nearest target--a girl studying nearby.

At first, I assumed that once she ignored him for a significantly long period of time, he would go away. However, he simply became more and more invasive, repeatedly touching her shoulder and moving her books and papers. She shrank back in her seat, and although I felt strongly for her, a giant part of me also has been raised not to become involved in escalating altercations. I've seen knives pulled on people who've done less. I was, however, pulling out my phone to call the police when a young man--the one in the teal shirt--rose from a nearby seat. He walked over to the girl and put himself between her and the man. "Hey, Sarah," he said. "How's it going?"

She looked at him. "Fine," she said, after enough of a pause to indicate that it wasn't her real name. The man looked at both of them for a long while, then recommenced his harassment. At this point, the boy left, presumably to alert Union security, and the girl was once again left to her own devices.

Seconds later, though, a second boy set down his backpack, pulled out a book, and sat across from her. "Ready to study?" he asked.

The man became sullen and edgier. He held out his hand to the boy, who accepted it and found himself trapped when the man wouldn't let go. "I need to study," said the boy. "I have finals."

"Fuck finals," said the man. "My tests were with life and death." He pointed at the juncture between the two hands, the sharp contrast in color. "You? You've got finals. You'll pass."

The boy nodded, doggedly keeping the man's attention until he tired of the game and moved to another room. Moments later, the campus police arrived, frisked him down, and kicked him out. The boy and girl introduced themselves, and left in separate directions. And I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and turned back to my work.

About a week ago, a woman came through my line at Borders with platinum blonde hair, long lavender nails, and two deep purple bruises around her eyes.

And I said nothing, even though I assumed all the things I've been taught to assume--her husband's beating her, she's afraid for the kids, she's afraid for herself, some part of her believes he loves her. I treated her just like I would have treated any other customer, asked her whether she had her Borders Rewards card and whether she'd like a bag. Wished her a good day.

Maybe she really did fall down a flight of stairs. I hate making assumptions about people I don't know.

But maybe someone hit her and what she really wanted was for me to ask if everything was all right, if there was anything I could do. I know there have been times when I've sat on the Metro, lips tight, and wished someone would ask me if I was okay. And I've never had two black eyes, except when I opened a car door into my face when I was a kid. (I also fell going up stairs and left tooth marks in the wood floor at the top and closed my pinky in a door that year--it was not my most graceful period.)

Maybe everything was all right. Maybe she has some sort of weird skin disease that makes it look like she has two black eyes when she's really fine. Maybe. Maybe.

I will never know. I don't regret not asking her. It wasn't my place. But some fundamental human part of me wishes I had.

(Pudgeball kitten has decided that he loves All Things Shiny. His best friend at the moment is a crinkly foil Christmas ornament that he carries around with him and stashes in various places. Also: all of the tin foil has disappeared from the recycling and reappeared in corners around the apartment.)

I should be editing the paper that is worth 25% of my grade right now, but instead I'm translating Old English that won't even be on the final, calling The Boy to make sure he's awake and remembers to mail the Christmas cards, figuring out how $15.33 is going to pay the rent (I have subscribed to Carmen's Theory of Dehydration, in which if you pour money on your checking account, it will magically grow in a beanstalk-like manner), missing the purring kitten that slept on my lap all yesterday, and deciding how to spend the week after finals, when I will be too exhausted by the Christmas madness to do anything anyway.

Ah, the last week of school. How I loathe and love thee.

There are a couple of things that mystify me about my country.

One of them is casserole.

The other one is how we manage constantly to maintain the most hypocritical attitude towards...everything. We'd like the world not to die, but we don't want to set concrete goals in order to provide for sustainability. We apparently don't want people from Mexico to cross the border, but our environmental choices are some of the main causes of Mexico's imminent uninhabitability. We get pissed off when other governments spy on and torture people, but we, y'know, spy on and torture people. We hold equality as one of our highest ideals, but we provide very few resources or education options to minorities and the poor. And I can't really figure out why.

Are we just oblivious? Do we think that we're better than everyone else? More deserving? Are we complacent? Do we not have enough charismatic leadership? Are we too preoccupied with concerns about war? Terrorism? Have we become too entrenched in our elitist meritocracy?

It's interesting. And it used to make me really angry, to the point where I couldn't even articulate my feelings, but recently it's gone so far beyond that as to be simply bemusing. The thing is, I think I could get behind a strong movement for change. But I know enough about myself to understand that I'm not the voice of that movement. I'm not charming or charismatic or science-y. I'm reasonably smart, but I know a lot about dead British poets and Medieval verse, not really the now.

Is that voice out there? Have you heard it? Is there anything but old men talking about nothing that changes anything and the slow heat of silence?

(P.S. Title from the gorgeous Apocalypse Lullaby by the Wailin' Jennys, which I will not post an .mp3 for because the blind monkeys at the RIAA might think it was costing them money and sue me for 8.5 gajillion dollars, and I have $15.33 to my name right now. No-go. :P)

I may have lied about being back when I posted a month and a half ago.

Currently, I have four classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, thirty-two hours of Borders shoved into the other four days, a fifteen+ page research paper to write, an Old English poem to translate, a draft to revise, a take-home exam to complete, and three tests to take. In addition, I am making just enough money to keep me from destitution (although not according to the Federal government--yay being under the poverty line!--or to my mother's standards, because when I let drop in conversation that I had $1.14 to my name until payday, she nearly had a fit and accused me of bad money management. I did not point out the part about being officially under the poverty line. That would have ended not-well). Between me and The Boy, though, all of us (now including one adorably twitchy and one lazy little pudgeball kitten) get fed, housed, clothed, and sometimes even not-stressed.

(Yes, The Boy still exists, apart from a sort of...glitch? we had back in October when things were bad for a few days. He still rocks most of the time, except when he's driving me nuts playing a video game or ranting about the deliciousness of Chipotle burritos when all we have left to eat is a can of tomatoes and some pasta or demonstrating the "correct" use of the parking brake in cornering on an ice-covered Wisconsin road. But we're still together, and I'm insanely in love with him even when he dries his boxers on the shower rod, so it's good.)

Anyway, I am slightly busy.

As a result, I have not kept up with SPN or FNL aside from the first few episodes of each, which was a giant crisis for me. I ultimately chose 3.5 hours of sleep a night and some semblance of sanity over the media. Besides, I'll be able to catch up at semester break. Hopefully.

On the plus side, working at Borders rocks. Well, most of it does. The pay blows monkeys, and as with any job, there are parts that I dislike, but the discount almost makes up for it, and the fact that I get to find people books all day long wins by a long shot. Also that we sell DVDs, and so I get to rant about Ratatouille and Escape from New York and Blood Simple to unsuspecting customers. They never know what hit 'em.

Oh! Speaking of Blood Simple, All and Sundry should see No Country for Old Men. Easily one of my favorite McCarthy books, easily the best Coen brothers film yet. As creepy as their early Fargo-ish stuff, with that gorgeous eye they have for the scenery and the setting and the characters. Intense shit, yo.

And now! Off to write about effective design strategies for after-school programs targeting minority and low-income urban children!

As always, I apologize for the long delay. I tend to fall in and out of love with the internet and fandom, especially during the summer, when all I want to do is spend as much time out-of-doors as physically possible. When I want to remove myself from any traces of academia and taste the sunlight dancing on my tongue.

I might start updating here soonish, since this is primarily a fandom/writing journal with a little life thrown in, and both SPN and FNL have started again. When I get time to write (and more importantly, read) fic, I'll definitely begin posting again.

The real reason for this post, however, is to share a friend's website/blog/project with you. It's called The Intimacy of Strangers, and it's a fascinating venue for connection and conversation about life in general, New York living in particular. Go check it out. (For those of you who read both of my LJs and have therefore seen this announcement twice, go check it out more than once!) There's a great discussion about the inherent versus assigned versus interpreted meaning of photographs going on right now. Pop in, give it a look, and maybe drop a comment or two into the discussion. It's still a work-in-progress, and it could definitely use some of the intelligent commentary I know you as a group could provide.

Anyway, I'll be catching up with you all sometime in the next few weeks. For those of you who've recommended or commented on my fic recently, I'll get back to you ASAP. I had no idea how many new people I'd rather passively acquired. For now, I'd just like to let you know that you're appreciated, even if it's taken me this long to notice. *cringe* And it's good to be back, even in this tiny way.

I don't know if I can keep following the Tour de France. Every time I turn around, one of the main contenders, one of the men I look up to and emulate and wish to hell I could ride like is disqualified. And after a while, it starts to crush me a little, because seriously, how valid is a race in which at least three of the pre-race favorites have broken the law? It's unlikely that whoever wins would have won otherwise. I've got my five bucks riding on Leipheimer, but that's just because he's American. I wouldn't want him to win like this.

I dunno. I feel like I'm not expressing myself very well. I'm just frustrated out of my mind and sad that a sport with such a strange and interesting history, such a wide and varied following, cannot live up to the most basic expectations of those of us who watch, holding our breath, as the peloton glides as gracefully and perfectly as a bird in flight.

I am not stressed about anything right now. It's amazing. I can't remember the last time I wasn't under some sort of stress over school or work or paying rent or a relationship or a friendship or a pet or something. But as late, I sleep through the night, I wake up in the morning wanting to get out of bed, I take long walks, I come home after an uneventful day to be slammed against a wall and molested by The Boy before I even get a hello, and it's pretty damn good.

I haven't been writing as much as I should, but that'll change as I get back into the habit. Speaking of which, I'm going to be making my poetry posts private soon--I'd like to start submitting and putting together my thesis, and having that stuff available online could be a bit awkward. So if you want anything, save it, and if you decide you want something after it's gone, just let me know and I'll send it along. This is of course assuming that you want something. If not, feel free to go on about your business.

I just finished reading J. M. Coetzee's Foe. It is superficially a retelling of the writing of Robinson Crusoe. That's interesting, but not the part I was interested in.

Because really, it's an exploration of the inherent darkness of writing, its seductiveness, the loss of fact in pursuit of truth, the loss of truth in the pursuit of a beginning, middle, and end. About how storytellers are always a little in love with their stories. About how authors warp and bend to fit their needs, starting with a stolen grain of truth and finishing with a masterpiece of fiction. About substance.

And I wonder: am I that author? Is writing inherently a process of theft, each one more clever than the last, until we are left with nothing but hollowed-out shells of the truths we have used?

My aunts constantly reinvent family stories. Each Christmas, they bring out the whole repertoire, each time making themselves the centerpieces of others' experiences. When I was young, my mother told me never to take what they said as truth without asking her first.

This fascinated me. Not that they lied, because I lied then and lie now, as does everyone. Not that they lied, then, but rather that they perceived their lies to be truth. That they could tell a different version of the same story each year. I began asking for the same stories, noting dissimilarities between each person's telling and the various tellings of a single person.

The project of documenting my family's inherently incomprehensible past thus became instead a project of understanding the mind of the storyteller.

What I post here is as true as I can make it. Yet I constantly resist the urge to invent myself, to tell stories that never happened, to embellish those that did. I don't want my sister to pull aside her children, ten years from now, to tell them not to trust me. And I live in a subtle but constant fear that one day I will not be able to know the difference between the stories I have lived and those I have lived only in my mind.

Just finished letting my batch of toffee cool. It turned out well--I used a recipe from a chocolate cookbook that I got on super-sale from Avol's, and although there were too many directions (I hate directions! Tell me the ingredients and the temperature and how long and I am perfectly capable of figuring out the rest!), it was good. I am impatient and therefore did not wait for it to cool completely before breaking off a corner and gnawing at its chocolatey sugary goodness. As a result, my mouth now feels a little gross.

Had my first bad bike crash in a while yesterday. I'd been riding in the rain with The Boy when we took the big bike trail hill down towards a bridge. Normally, hills as steep as this one make me nervous, because I'm still adjusting to my new frame and handlebars and don't have the control I'd like. Most of the time, it's just nerves--I'm fine once I get through. This time, though, I didn't see a curb coming much farther out than it seemed from the top of the hill. It was, of course, invisible until I was curled into a little ball, loosening up for the sharp bridge turn. I had time to make a decision whether to swerve, lose control, and skid onto the concrete, whether to swerve, somehow maintain control, and crash into the bridge turn, or swerve far enough away from the curb that I could ditch the bike and take a grass fall without causing too much damage to either of us. Opted for the third scenario, and made a decent exit and rolling recovery, managing not to hurt myself apart from bruises on my knees and right hip. I did knock the front wheel out of true, but I didn't break anything, which was fortunate.

My right hood is also beginning to crack, and the left one is nearly worn through. Looking for replacements has narrowed down the age of my bike, though--the hoods that fit my brake levers/shifters are pre-1998 Campys. So. One more clue in the mystery of where it came from.

I am seriously in love with that thing.

When I was a kid, five or six years old, I asked Mom why rain splashes when it hits a puddle instead of just slipping in. She told me it was the water sprites that lived inside the raindrops coming out to dance.

Today, The Boy and I were driving back from his parents' house through one of the midwestern storms that make me feel incredibly small. I looked out the window of the car, watching the rain splash down into the running water in the gutter, and realized that I still believe her.

I quit my job two weeks ago. I'd had enough. I was going to bed angry and waking up angry and dreading work from the moment my alarm went off to the moment I walked through the front doors. It was damaging my ability to be kind to people. And when I felt, more often than not, the urge to tell customers to fuck off, I decided it was time for me to go.

After I turned in my two weeks' notice, my managers talked to me, offered me a raise and a guaranteed thirty hours a week. I almost said things I would have regretted, but I refrained. Sometimes, I do actually possess self-control.

There's no room for regret here. I don't regret quitting the job. Sure, the next months are probably going to include a lack of chocolate-covered espresso beans and possibly also apologetic, cringing calls to the landlord to ask for a little pity while I scrape together rent. That's not the problem. I've been without money before.

The problem is that I want something to work. I want to do a job I like, I want to do a job that means something to me. I want school to mean something to me. I want to get up in the morning because I'm looking forward to my day, not because I can't afford a no call/no show. I don't ever want to burn out as hard as I did at the end of this school year. I don't ever want to wake up angry again.

I'm taking a few weeks off--The Boy and I are driving home for my brother's graduation. Hopefully, my head will be on straight by the time I get back. And I will be able to breathe again.

I am in love with a piece of steel.

And with its noisy chain and twitchy derailleurs and newly-trued wheels and bright yellow saddle that is as uncomfortable as anything I've ever set my ass on for any long period but with time will do me well.

I'm in love with the white-and-green paint scheme with yellow accents. I'm in love with my delicate-looking Campagnolo (referred to affectionately by the boys at the bike shop as Campy) shifters because my hands are tiny and normal shifters integrated into brakes are difficult for me to operate.

I am not in love with the pedals, but that's just because I haven't gotten new ones for it yet.

Mostly, though, I'm in love with my bicycle because no one can explain where it came from.

It's a LeMond frame, trial paint scheme never put into production, internal brake cables never put into production, a bunch of Campy Record parts. The bike shop boys guess it's an early 90s prototype, but no one really knows. They spend hours online looking for bikes that look like mine with no luck. And they're all insanely jealous, because it's mine.

I took it out for a first test ride yesterday, which resulted in (a) a pedal coming unthreaded and falling off (b) a flat front tire and (c) mud in unmentionable places once it started to rain. It was amazing. I am giddy in love.

I've been struggling with what Sicily means to me lately, because all I can come up with is home. And it was more than that, and less than that, and I was so insignificant among the sand dunes and the ruins.

Sicilia

Columns that held up the sky
temples ancient and crumbled
hills like brown patchwork to the horizon.
I will gain your sunburnt shore.

I will walk back home to you. I will
wear sandals and carry my heart in a backpack,
shuffle over the needled beach of Baltimore,
beyond the foam and fishermen.

The ocean will spread before me. I will walk
along its warm surface and sleep on whales
and eat fistfuls of salty plankton
as I pass the Straits of Gibraltar.

When stars begin to press themselves
into the vaulted darkness, then I will listen
for the waves, lapping at your edges
that reach seaward to pull me home.


( And another one, related in theme and imagery )

Last night, I was in what I think was the worst pain of my life, with menstrual cramps so bad that I literally couldn't breathe for ten or fifteen seconds at a time. The Boy, despite his dogged insistence that he wasn't tired and would stay up with me, passed out around four in the morning. I didn't have the heart to wake him, so I crept into a chair nearby and started making lists of things to distract myself from the fact that I could barely function.

My most important list consisted of ways I'm going to reduce my environmental impact. Yes, I get environmentally conscious when I'm suffering. Sue me.

Things I already do:

-ride a bike, walk, or take the bus everywhere
-re-use paper
-use as little water as possible
-drink tap water
-use a coffee mug instead of disposable cup (except from Cafe Soleil, where they use biodegradable "plastic" cups)
-buy local produce
-conserve electricity by using as little light as possible
-try to buy unpackaged (or sparingly packaged) food
-recycle
-buy organic, fair-trade coffees and teas

Eco-friendly things to continue or start using:

-dishwashing liquid (continue)
-detergent (continue)
-general cleaning products (continue)
-pads/tampons (start)
-shaving cream (start)
-conditioner (continue)
-lotion (continue)
-sunscreen (start)
-sponges (start)
-natural-fiber toothbrush/hairbrush
-toothpaste (continue)
-unbleached toilet paper, paper towels, coffee filters, etc. (continue)
-my fertilizer-free garden! which I'll have next year! (start)


Eco-friendly things that I can't afford now but will when I'm not a poor college student:

-100% natural-fiber clothing
-recyclable/biodegradable shoes
-100% organic food, especially locally produced

I've been half-following the whole FanLib thing over the last week or so. (Actually, I'm doing a whole lot of fandom catch-up [hi, fandom!] because school is done--I'm finally getting enough sleep to both read and understand things simultaneously.)

Anyway, it doesn't worry me. I feel like it probably could, and possibly will in the future. However, there are a few things about it that make it intensely non-worrisome:

1. It's godawful ugly. Seriously. This was the first thing I thought when I went to the site. Whoever designed it clearly did so in a Jolt-fueled rush of Ooh! Those fannish people would like this! And this! And this! Way too much going on.

2. It's condescending. And kind of stupid. Its marketing vibe seems to assume that fandom doesn't really exist on the internet; it needs some new place to hang out. Look what we're providing for you people! Don't you appreciate us so much?

Okay, guys? Fandom has been hanging out online since there was an "online." We've been through mailing lists and archives and FFN and messageboards and LJ. I'm sure there are other methods of fanwork distribution. Those are just the ones that I personally have participated in.

And the thing about those? Mailing lists tend to be the brainchildren of people who have an amazing amount of patience. They deal with those of us who can't figure out how not to reply all consistently; they deal with trolls; they deal with the 12-year-olds who somehow sneak into the 18+ groups. Archives (especially juried or otherwise selective ones) are still indispensable to me when I'm getting into a new fandom and want to attempt the birdshot reading technique. FFN. Oh, FFN. Messageboards were where I got my start, and in a lot of ways, LJ's similar flexibility in terms of ease of commenting is one of the things that drew me here. Obviously, LJ's taken off. To pull a random number, 2124 people have posting access to, say, supernaturalfic. As of ten minutes ago, there have been 10,360 posts to that community. And that's just a community I know about in a fandom I'm familiar with. I'm sure there are other, bigger ones.

3. I know where to find quality fic. I have a core group of authors whose work I will always read, regardless of the fandom they're writing in. This group changes from time to time as one decides to spend her time writing epic HP serial romances and I discover a new person who's doing something intriguing with linearity. I read extensively outside it.

That said, I don't go to non selective archives (read: FFN) anymore unless someone links me to a rec there or I have an urge to see whether anyone's written Bullitt fic. (Which they haven't. Come on, Bullitt fandom, you have to be out there somewhere.)

4. I'm not going to be looking for quality fic at a poorly-designed, ad-ridden archive run by invisible people who aren't known fandom names. I'm pretty sure other people aren't, either.

So. *shrug* I see where the concern's coming from, and I understand why people are worried. I don't, however, think this presents any real threat to fandom as we know it. After all, fandom is run on a fairly true egalitarian basis, with everyone receiving the same baseline benefits--free LJ, membership to communities, the abilities to post to archives--and those with writing/vidding/public relations skills rising to recognition. Which is just that--recognition. We're not, as far as I know, trying to become more mainstream. I, at least, am quite happy on the fringes.

After due consideration, I'm dropping out of spn_j2_bigbang. What with all the rest of the writing I have to do over the next few weeks (papers, exams, sample columns for a newspaper position I'm applying for), I just don't have the time to do my story justice or to work productively with a beta reader.

Which is not to say I won't complete and post my story eventually; it'll probably just take another month or so. I love the idea of bigbang. It just turned out to be the wrong timing for me this year. I hope it turned out to be the right timing for a bunch of other people because I'm selfish like that.

I went out to the lake today to talk to some fishermen for my ethnography and ended up being adopted by Rufus, Larry, Willy, and Mark, who insisted that I get a fishing license so I could join them on future trips and extracted a promise of lasagna for some undetermined future Sunday morning. The five of us fished (well, they fished and I watched) for about five hours before wandering over to the May Day celebration in a nearby pavilion and eating the hippies' bratwurst. It was excellent. I have a sunburn across my nose and the tops of my cheeks that's going to hurt like hell tomorrow.

The Boy will be back tomorrow from a trip with his father. I'm looking forward to seeing him and trading stories, since I'm sure his vacation was amazing and there's been a lot of work!drama in his absence.

Life is beautiful right now, and is looking to get more so as the winter cascades into spring: eighty-degree blue sky days and frat boys emerging noisily from their hibernation like cicadas seeking the sun.

ETA: I bought a cactus! I forgot about that. He's tiny and adorable. His name is Hjörleif, and I'll have pictures up as soon as my camera's batteries recharge.

I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't know anything about SGA or its fandom. And that this is therefore not really about the recent wank concerning racism in AUs. If you want to read about that, many of the posts have been collected in metafandom's most recent post. That series of posts, however, started to make me think about how we view race and racism, of how we think about what we say, how we contextualize our relationships with other people

What I'd like to address is not so much the issue of racism in fandom. Or anywhere, for that matter. I won't deny that it exists. In fact, I would argue that in many ways, it has become more subversive and more damaging as the institutions supporting it have been forced underground.

I won't deny that minorities in the United States have to deal, frankly, with a lot of shit. I know the statistics about high school drop-out rates and poverty rates and immigration. Minorities have trouble in this country.

I'm white.

Just putting that out there, because what I have to say has simultaneously nothing and everything to do with the color of my skin.

In a reply to a deleted post, which was in turn part of a discussion of the SGA fic that inspired this race discussion, scarletts_awry quoted the original poster (OP) as having said, "Well, I can't really comment on the racial aspect -- I'm a white girl, so I've never had to deal with that societal flaw."

Which is absolutely the crux of the race problem from several angles. First of all, the original poster felt that she could not comment on racism because of her own race. Secondly, the OP seemed to think that being white created a buffer between her and the world in which people are racist. Third, this comment implied that white people are somehow impervious to racism, and are never on the receiving end of racist comments or actions.

Each of these three points is one I've encountered over and over, and each one makes me wonder, every time, why racism is considered so separately from any other form of discrimination. I'd like to take the time to come up with an organized, elegant essay on the subject, but I'm tired. So, point-by-point rebuttal:

1. Racism is discrimination. And everyone knows what discrimination feels like. You have been ignored in a classroom because the teacher likes the kid in the back more; you have been passed over for a promotion because your boss doesn't like you; you've tried to sit with a certain group of people at lunch only to be summarily shunned as they return to their self-referential conversation, ignoring you. These are smaller instances of discrimination, to be sure, nothing like the deep and often subconscious discrimination of racism, but they provide at least some common ground, somewhere we can all meet and say Yeah, I know what you mean.

White people are therefore no less able or qualified to comment on racism than anyone else.

2. White people have to deal with racism. All the time. I have to deal with it on a daily basis here in Wisconsin, an intensely white state; I had to deal with it on a daily basis when I lived in Washington DC, which was majority black. These two opposite experiences gave me some interesting contrasts to work with

3. It is entirely possible for someone to be racist against a white person. I'm sure it doesn't happen as often as it happens to minorities, and I know I've had very specific experiences that don't represent those of most Americans. But believe me, I'm speaking from experience in saying that it is very possible to be discriminated against as a white woman. Racism is not a one-way thing. It's a web. It's a white person discriminating against a Hispanic person discriminating against a black person discriminating against an Asian person discriminating against a white person.

As a sort of addendum to that: "white" is a race. The United States does not consist of "white" and "race."

I suppose my real point, which could probably be substituted for everything else I've said here, is stop telling me that I feel guilty about racism and start understanding that I sympathize.

There is nothing in the world I hate more than meeting a new person and having this inevitable exchange:

Person: So what sort of hobbies do you have?
Me: I'm a writer.
Person: Oh? What do you write about?
Me: ...

It's impossible to answer. I don't write about anything--I write through things and around things and to things and like things and towards things. Wrong preposition! I want to shout.

But usually I just smile weakly and mumble something about how I've been experimenting with blues rhythms and leave it at that. Because I have no idea how to explain what I'm doing, other than to bring out the work itself, and I know that's not what the person is asking for when they pose that no-so-innocent question.

It's like a cross between Indiana Jones' literal leap of faith in The Last Crusade and flying, this new glass walk over the Grand Canyon.

It's officially added to my list of things. I have quite a few of them, including Machu Picchu and a World Series game.

Also, it made me slightly wistful on Dean's behalf. Because damnit, I want him to see the Grand Canyon. He deserves it.

Proceed at your own risk. I just think things out better in written form, is all.

For some reason I've yet to decipher, I'm very sensitive to symbolism. I see it in everything, even where it doesn't exist, sometimes. I see a flag and it's a piece of cloth, it's a war, it's a place that raised me, it's something I swore allegiance to before I knew how to spell the word and stopped swearing allegiance to as soon as I figured out exactly what that meant. It drapes in the background of smiling pictures: politicians whose names cascade hierarchically down office walls.

But it's more than that, and less.

It's the interstates in a blizzard, the McDonald's that's the only food for miles, and love it or hate it, I was born here, and whether or not I like it, this is part of my soul. So I can't say I hate this country. I can't. It's a physical impossibility.

That's not to say I haven't said it in the past. When I was fourteen and fifteen, when I had never loved anything enough to understand hate, then I could say it and say it freely and listen to punk and breathe coffee until it oozed from my pores and Man, I fuckin hate this place.

I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what words meant. I had no idea.

All that I have ever asked from this country is a place to sleep, some air to breathe, other people who speak my language and smile my smiles and get dressed up to go to the diner and eat lemon pie. All I have ever asked is for a corner to make my life here. And I am so small, there must be a corner somewhere.

All I have ever asked is to grow up to be someone. Without fear. Knowing that my life is not costing others, knowing that my breath is not stealing someone else's, knowing that my home does not come back to me having raped and burned and decimated.

And I can't know that. Because it's not true, because my life is costing others, because my home does come back to me with blood flaking from its fingernails.

I don't.... I don't have the callousness to deal with that, I suppose. Most of the time, I can ignore it, can turn inward to words and outward to the joyous expanse of the pseudo-world online. But sometimes I read something or see something and that house of cards flutters apart, kings and queens and jacks and jokers staring up at me, hands tucked warm into their robes. Sometimes it's just not right, and I wish I could just hate this place and be done with it. But then the lake reflects the sunlight or someone who couldn't have grown up anywhere but the midwest crashes into my life and I love this land so fully my chest hurts.

My words aren't working properly. At all. This is not quite and more than what I'd intended to say, and is probably far more than you'd ever wanted to know. I just. Sometimes, I just don't know.

The following story is the combination of:

1. Random shuffle on my Zen
2. Way too much Coleridge
3. Not much in the way of sleep for the past three days
4. Three straight hours of blue-book
5. The fact that I made it through all of this was that I sure as hell wasn't going to die just before a new episode of SPN aired.

So, with apologies to

1. Zeppelin, whose song (or at least its title) sort of inspired this
2. Annie Proulx, whose work, with the exception of The Shipping News, is rather amazing
3. The world at large

I present:

I Can't Quit You Baby
-or-
Supernatural, the Gay Cowboy Remix
-or-
Cursed!Sheep Fic, Which Is Almost as Cracktastic as Yakfucking, Except I Don't Think Anything Can Be as Cracktastic as Yackfucking

( I Can't Quit You Baby )

Last night, I realized I needed a poem to turn in for workshop and didn't have anything in presentable order.

This was at, oh, eleven-ish.

Five hours later, I had something strange and lifted from a bunch of places and weirdly formatted and simultaneously the most abstract and the most concrete poem I've ever written.

It's in need of massive revisions, mostly for language, because I think I like most of the experimental rhythm and form and am going to keep it relatively intact.

Anyway, I'm pasting it in here because I'm terrified that I'll lose it somehow and it's about five solid hours of writing.  Yeah, I don't know what this is.

Terzetto
     to Edward “Son” House

[0.1.1  walking]

it’s just that sometimes
    when you look too hard
the horizon disappears

and that sometimes
    when you squint
all you see is the journey

Is it really, unbelievably sad that I saw a review of Pandaemonium, a movie about Wordsworth and Coleridge's collaboration on Lyrical Ballads, and immediately thought "Milton!" followed by "Coleridge/Wordsworth OTP!"

THIS IS MY LIFE.

*dies a little bit on the inside*

I really want to see it, though. Because. You know. You can't go wrong with lines like, "Sam, opium is not your worst addiction. Your worst addiction is to Wordsworth."

Oh dear. Now I want to write poet!slash. Does it count as RPS if they're dead?

A better question: what on earth is wrong with me?

You know, I used to think that people who said poetry was all about your feelings were kinda, well, entirely full of something that doesn't smell like roses.

Last semester, I revised that opinion to "almost entirely full of something that doesn't smell like roses."

Because it's like this: there's poetry. And poetry, for me, is something fundamental, something that's born more than created. Which is not to say that it's just writing down what you're feeling. It's not about that at all. When I write, it's from hundreds, thousands of points of view, from different times and places, through different senses, across different prejudices and mindsets. I'm not writing about me. I'm certainly not writing about how "i feel stuck sometimes/ like gum to the sole/ of the world's shoe."

Because I am not fourteen. But that is beside the point.

The point is: the poems are not about me. Most of them don't even say anything about my current mood, and at any rate, by the time they're revised enough to post or show to anyone (which is usually at least twice, and about two revisions before I pronounce them [temporarily] complete) they don't have any connection to my original frame of mind.

Every once in a while, though, one of the lines, or one of the images, or one of the quotes, will be so intensely about me that it will echo inside me for weeks afterwards.

The inchworm is proof of the existence of God, my brother said once, breaking an amiable silence that had folded like goosedown around us. He went on to explain why, how nothing that had evolved could possibly be that stupid-looking, how only a deity with a sense of humor could design something whose main function in life was to serrate the edges of leaves with its teeth and fold itself in half in order to move a few millimeters farther along. None of that made it into the poem. In fact, none of the context made it in at all; in the poem, it's something said by a "he" to an "I." The "I" is not me. The "he" is not my brother. Every time I read it, though, it means something to me that it means to no one else.

What brought on this sudden navel-gazing? you ask.

Two lines.

Bend an ear to the kettledrum heartbeat
of the pendant earth.

I wrote these a few weeks ago, scribbled in my notebook on the drive to Philly with my dad and brother. And I can't stop hearing them, listening to them beat out a tempo in the hollow where my ear meets my jawbone. They are possibly the most amazingly personal lines I have ever written, and I have yet to figure out why, since they do not relate to anything I can express. (Percussion, perhaps? Maybe I miss playing the tympani? Milton? The loss of paradise, the rushing void of the universe, something quivering and fragile and somehow as strong as the mountains?)

So I suppose my real question is: Is this a universal thing? Do you have anything you've written that feels very...I don't even know how to say it. Intimate? Are there aspects to writing that leave you wondering when you lost that layer of skin that kept the world from burning your fingertips?

The church bells toll six o'clock. I saw the sun rise this morning, shivering on the front stoop with a good friend while the smoke from his cigarette grayed the air. Sometimes the sun rises and it's just a sunrise, just light coming over the horizon. Sometimes the sun rises and it's a miracle.

I woke to the afternoon sun warm on the back of my neck, rose and made scones with walnuts and maple syrup. When they crumbled, they smelled like warmth, like comfort, like the song of the long summer day.

I wore a skirt with no stockings, paused to photograph a group of northern Italians who grinned at me from their position in front of the capitol building, arms looped over their friends' shoulders. Three, two, one, click. No, no, prego, di niente. Sì, frequento l'università qui a Madison. È veramente una città carina, no?

This place feels like home for the first time in ages, feels like somewhere I might like to spend the lazy wonderful summer. I can't wait until the semester is over. I can't wait until I have time to make breakfast. I can't wait until the farmers' market opens again, until I can rise at six on Saturdays and feel the pull of the morning in my stretching thighs.

There is sun outside my window. Right now. Dappling the trees, melting the snow, bouncing from car to car to car.

Yes.