Oakland Pootie Awks

Despite a measly 4 hours of sleep for the past two nights in a row, my lids refuse to flutter down over my dry, itchy eyeballs and zonk me out, leaving tourists to wander the streets of San Francisco in search of the eco-friendly van that was supposed to whisk them away to one national park or another. Nope, I'm wide awake and openly taking reservations for points of common interest near and far.

And what is the source of this stunning commitment to wine tasters, giant sequoia seekers and Grand Canyon caravaners everywhere? You might well ask this, especially if we are personally acquainted and you have been kind enough to lend an ear to my workplace woes this summer. I might just as well tell you that I've been to the well. It wouldn't just be a corny joke, either. Last night was the Grand Opening of the The Sacred Well, near Lake Merrit in Oakland. The store has been a long time in the works for a friend of mine and his business partner, so the opening was an exciting event. The store is like the Scooby Gang's Magic Box, except that instead of a martial arts studio in the basement, there is a snugly saronged room tucked away in the back for giving astrological readings. As far as I could tell, there were no strangulating ancient mummy hands or even an eye of newt bulk bin, so it's not completely like the Magic Box; but it is warmly beautiful, with plenty of wooden structures full of all sorts of wicked / winged things.* In fact, the logo for the store has these neat little birds flapping around on it that remind me of this artist I found online awhile ago and then lost. Anyway, the shadows of birds are very sweet images these days.

Other sweet things at Well:

• Alt Life Merch!
• People who told me about the tattoos they've seen featuring the form of the Morton Salt Girl, a version of which I was wearing on my shirt.
• Grapes on the appetizer plate that an eight year old patron highly recommended.
  
• Old friends, new friends and freaky fairy folk.
• Crystals, stones, minerals and the people who imbue them with mysticism. I poked around the display cases, bowls, and way cool library cataloging unit, and came away with the 2 pieces featured in the picture to the left, which I am very excited about!
  

Up to now, I've never done much more than admire "pootie awks," as my cousin used to call them when he was little and had a speech impediment. Awks were pootie entirely on their own merits, but even more so when my little sister and said cousin presented us with stones from the yard that they'd transformed into full on works of art, complete with paint, glitter, feathers, and even rhinestones and lace if mom was around to wield the glue gun. So, there hasn't been much more than that and the index of refraction associated with crystals in my personal experience.

Last night whilst browsing politely, a weird little bubble of green with black flecks caught my eye and I thought, That rock looks like an alien spider. If the light from a laser pointer fell on just the right spot during an electrical storm, it would activate and start spinning webs that spelled out science fiction stories. Before I got to decide who was going to be Zuckerman's famous pig in this scenario, I found myself talking to a couple of clairvoyant cats (man variety) who'd acquired a fairly large chunk of stalagmite-looking rock that turned out to be a catcher's mitt for angels! One could see right off how the angels would get stuck in the labyrinthine turns of soft heavenly blue gemstone crawling out of a craggy gray shell. Then one of them put a periwinkle piece into my palm that had been smoothed and flattened like a river rock. There's an outlandish story about the first and only discovery of this type of stone in a Peruvian mountain. While it was in the telling, I glimpsed the alien spiders in the dish again and decided that they were going to help me write my science fiction nanowrimo novel. So, I consulted a reference book the store keeps on hand and found out that it's called prehnite and is an inspirational rock that aids in prophesy, visualization and the remembrance of dreams! Kismet!

Here are a few descriptions of the prehnite (prehinite, prehenite, alt sp?) that I found online, though neither of these are nearly as good as the mystical one in the book at the Well.

From CrystalsandJewelry.com:

Prehnite is a very protective stone and can protect one on all levels. It strengthens the life force and generally increases and stimulates energy [. . .]. It aids spirit communication through meditation or visualization, out-of-body travel, and is a powerful dream stone. Prehnite is also known as a stone of prophesy which stimulates inner-knowing. Physically, prehnite is helpful in the healing of gout, anemia, and kidney problems.

Although I don't have the conditions listed here, my thyroid needs all the energy-boosting help it can get.

From Neatstuff.net:

PREHNITE (zeolite) Metaphysical Properties- 4th and 6th chakras. [Huh?] Prehnite used to multiply energy, good for using in crystal grids. [. . .] Some like to call Prehnite 'prophecy stones' for they give one the ability to see into the future. This is a good choice to use in dream work, it allows you to not only remember your dreams, but it also will inspire you to remember long ago thoughts which may be helpful in personal growth. Also inspires one in every aspect of life.

Numerology- Vibrates to the number 7. [(Huh?) x 2]

Gemological Properties- Zeolites are a popular group of minerals for collectors and an important group of minerals for industrial and healing purposes. [. . .] Typically forming in the cavities, or vesicles, of volcanic rocks "basalt", zeolites are the result of very low grade metamorphism. Some form from just subtle amounts of heat and pressure and can just barely be called metamorphic while others are found in obviously metamorphic regimes. [(Huh?) x 3] Zeolite crystals have been grown on board the space shuttle and are undergoing extensive research into their formation and unique properties. An example of the most common zeolites include: Prehnite, apophyllite, gyrolite, okenite, natrolite. Heulandite, Chabazite. Mesolite, and Stilbite.

In sum, I've now got my little alien spider muse sitting near my computer (and a really cool Optical Calcite cut into a rhombohedron for more visual aid), percolating ideas, getting me ready to put my hand back to yarn spindle, and even keeping me awake at work. I'm jazzed! If you're strolling around Lake Merritt, I highly recommend stopping by The Sacred Well right across Grand Avenue. As their slogan says: Magic happens every day.

*Going to see Sunset Rubdown play tomorrow night and intend to make it there on time so that I might actually see the show, unlike last time! This song is from their new album called Random Spirit Lover.

Doris Lessing Won the Nobel Today!

After being on the short list for 40 years, Doris Lessing was finally awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for being an “epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” Though I still haven't read The Golden Notebook, her most well-known and important feminist work, I'm delighted to see that the Academy are willing to recognize someone with (gasp) science fiction as part of her repertoire! By the way (of using gendered pronouns), the NY Times reports that Lessing is the 11th woman to win the prize. That's right, only the 11th!! It's appalling, considering that the award has been given out almost every year since 1900! Yep, out of a total of 103 awards, just 11 women. I'm finding it difficult to let that really sink in.

You can see pictures of all literature prize laureates on the Nobel Prize site here, with head shots of each author and the summary of what merited their award. These are the 11 women:
2007-Doris Lessing, American
2004-Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian
1996-Wislawa Szymborska, Polish
1993-Toni Morrison, American
1991-Nadine Gordimer, South African
1966-Nelly Sachs (1/2 prize), Swedish
1945-Gabriela Mistral, Spanish
1938-Pearl Buck, American
1928-Sigrid Undset, Norwegian
1926-Grazia Deledda, Italian
1909-Selma Lagerlof, Swedish

Such a strange demographic: more Americans than any other country; a few men-only decades--1980s, 1970s, 1950s, and 1910s. What does this say Sweden's academic climate and world view? Since half of them were given in the past 20 years, maybe the efforts of de-canonization in literature course curriculum has paid off? Maybe those second wave feminists have finally gotten old enough to gain some recognition at having withstood the test of time? Maybe. The results are still disturbing.

One common retort to the protest of traditionally male-dominated book awards is that there just aren't as many woman writers as there are men. This, gentle reader, amounts to nothing more than a pile of ill-informed bull-honky. Despite having odds stacked against them due to second-class citizenship, disenfranchisement, relegation to the domestic sphere, and intensely gendered upbringings, women have been finding ways to write throughout history. They have been published under male pseudonyms, as mere women's writing, stuck in genre ghettos, looked down upon as being of lesser value, edged out of public discourse, but they've been there nevertheless and are there, whether we see them in Norton's anthology or not, like ghosts wandering the corridors of Hemingway Hall, looking for A Room of One's Own, or screeching what sounds like hysterical nonsense to the Academy like the Madwoman in the Attic.

After all that, I must say that touting Doris Lessing as a feminist or really even as a science fiction writer are dubious claims at best. Although Lessing has openly admired sf and has attended a con or two as guest of honor, she called her sf pieces, like Canopus, "space fiction," which gives you an idea of the goings on in the books. More importantly, Lessing herself has denied affiliation with the term "feminist," being from an older generation than the second wavers. From the scathing review that Ursula LeGuin (all hail the mistress of fem/sf) gave Lessing's last novel, The Cleft, it seems that the simple presence of strong, realistic female characters, which was the major element that made Lessing's early work so revolutionary, has been overshadowed by a third wave feminist expectation of deeper philosophical human equality regardless of gender. Still, I need to scold myself one more time in this entry for never having read The Golden Notebook.


An interesting factoid I didn't know until today is that Lessing was raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). This is one of those weird synchronicity things that seems to happen whenever I learn something new. Just two weeks ago I learned about Rhodesia for the very first time when I picked up a book called Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. This skillfully written autobiography describes Fuller's life growing up in Rhodesia. It's just the way of the ether that a defunct country name will continue to pop up in random places for the rest of the month now that it is in my consciousness. Or maybe it's just another kind of voodoo since it turns out that though Fuller was raised in Rhodesia, she is white, British by birth, and now lives in America--just like Doris Lessing! (That calls for queuing the Kids: "Don't Tell Me That!!")

From the SFBikeC Newsletter this week...

Save our Streets from Auto-geddon! Donate Now to No on H!
The campaign against Proposition H desperately needs your financial support. Prop H is widely understood to be the most radical anti-environmental, anti-sustainable transportation measure ever put on the San Francisco ballot. We are asking all SFBC members -- people who care about livable streets, global warming, and safe bicycling -- to donate $25, $100, $1,000, or whatever you can afford, to the No on H campaign. Polling shows than when people are educated about Prop H, support drops like a stone -- the money you donate will go directly to education about No on H.

Prop H would quintuple parking in the city, jamming our already congested streets, slowing public transit, and endangering bicycle and pedestrian routes. Save our city's streets!