The Art of Mindful Breathing

Dance-Along Nutcracker 2011

2011-12-06T18:34:00.000-08:00

I recently joined the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, which is an impressive community ensemble that has been making beautiful music and supporting queer visibility since 1978.

This weekend, we'll be doing three performances at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that all add up to the band's one BIG fundraiser of the year. The money raised from this event will keep the band doing things like marching in San Francisco's first ever Veteran's Day Parade (11/11/11) in honor of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

The show is a Dance-Along Nutcracker set in the most holla-dazed and confused decade of 'em all: the 1960s. The story of Clara's Magical Mystery Tour will be acted out by a great cast of local celebrities, including DJ Flynn and comedians Fifi & Fanny. We're replacing the traditional harp with live electric guitar solos by Woodstock veteran Harvey Mandel. The Christmas tree will be incredibly high and the dance floor big enough for all the Mamas and the Papas and those of us who flew in on Jefferson's Airplane. Costumes of any kind (love beads, surfer girls, go-go boots, Supremes, sugar plum fairies, rat kings...mashups thereof) are encouraged. Tutus available for rent on site!

I'll be attending the Saturday night (8pm) performance as a guest and performing (representin' in the flute section) in both the Sunday morning (11am) and Sunday afternoon (3pm) shows. The Sunday shows are super kid-friendly, and there is a lot of extremely adorable footage of kids getting all of their wiggles out on the dance floor.

For tickets and more information visit: http://www.dancealongnutcracker.org

See you there!

Does the Future Hold Ever-More-Inclusive Family Names?

2011-07-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning wondering about whether any of the people born with hyphenated last names have decided to further hyphenate their last names post-marriage or post-other-family-oriented-union. Am I the only person on the planet who would enjoy getting holiday cards from the Mendoza-Smith-Berkowitzes or the Chesterfield-Lee-Meyerses? A facebook search might get me some easy answers; but, surely, someone must be doing sociological studies related to trends of chosen last names in the US! There are so many interesting questions related to this topic, and what better way to answer them than with statistics?

Of those who change their hyphenated last name during an interpersonal merger, is that group more or less likely than other similarly merged folks to chuck their given names completely?
Of those who opt for a name change of some type, is that group more or less likely to go in for the patriarchal standard convention of adopting a male partner's name or to go in for the radical-style invention of a new name for both partners?
Which name(s) do the kids get?
Are people born with hyphenated last names more or less likely to change their last names in their lifetimes at all?
Are they more or less likely to enter into a marriage/partnership for that matter?

This started out as totally idle curiosity, but the questions raised feel culturally important. The proprietary history of marriage and the powerful nature of naming imbue the choices people make about their names with profound social significance. Behavioral trends in naming must tell some fascinating stories about private identities and public acceptance. Maybe the hyphenated demographic could give us a particular kind of "state of the union address." Just looking at marriage certificates alone would be interesting enough, but I'd be especially interested in comparing them between states who have (or have had) marriage equality and states that have not. It seems obvious to me that the institution of marriage has changed in response to various civil rights and feminist movements over the past 50 years, but has it become linguistically obvious yet?

I know that semantic change takes time, discourse, dispute, and a lot more time--I read a bit of structuralist theory and cultural criticism in graduate school--but the redefinition of marriage in at least the legal system feels long overdue. Indulge me in a little impatience, but couldn't the rate of change itself be accelerating as we fly through life on the 4G wings of the Information Age? When Ferdinand de Saussure died in 1913, he was supposedly depressed by his theories not having become widely acknowledged over the course of his career. As much hope and freedom as one might find in the idea that the connection between the signifier and the sign is arbitrary, waiting for a particular change in the connection can still be terribly depressing.*

~~~

So, I sat down this morning with these questions and curiosities over coffee and a long-held but, until this weekend, unread copy of The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and the universe totally thwacked me upside the head! The next story after where I'd left off yesterday was "An Open Letter Concerning Sponsorship" by Margaret Muirhead. Since it was one of the early LCRW stories, I expected it to be somehow related to the topic of keeping the zine afloat (see the appendix in the back of the collection for true subscription antics). Instead, it's a hilarious and not entirely implausible request for bids on the naming rights of the narrator's progeny in exchange for lifetime financial support of the same. In the letter, the narrator explains that she and her husband have chosen to keep their given names "like many modern couples," and choose a different last name for their children:

"We considered splicing and grafting our names, all to hideous effect. We then bandied about the names of our favorite composers, poets, filmmakers, and household appliances. We are especially fond of our toaster oven and are grateful to its manufacturer. We are also fond of the verb bandy."

Both parents are well-educated, employed, and able to make a fairly comfortable life for themselves in an urban area, but they are "remuneratively challenged" and have come up with a creative financial strategy for funding the extremely expensive endeavor of procreation by taking notes on the tactic employed by many of the nation's ballparks and stadiums. In real life, the author and her husband (who share the names of the parents signing the letter) seem to have found some way to pay for the two kids they've had since the original publication in Volume 4 of LCRW in 1999. How did they do it: writing a series of children's books, moving away from the city, or naming the kids after the highest bidder? I suspect a combination of the first two, since the kids' last name is not listed on Margaret Muirhead's website and her letter clearly stated that no name-dropping opportunity would be missed had they actually found a sponsor.

~~~

Synergy can really freak me the fuck out sometimes! After I finish reading this collection, I'm considering either pursuing a career in sociology or semiotics, adding a corporate dimension to my kid-contingency financial plan, calling up all of my hyphenated friends in an informal pole of their thoughts on gender equality in family nomenclature, or maybe just going back to that copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose that I put down some time during junior college.

Wish me luck, internets!

*True Fact: the last time I was able to post anything in this blog--or write anything longer than a poem really--was in the crushing month of November 2008 when most of my immediate family joined the slight majority of California residents in voting for the removal of marriage equality from the state constitution. It was a crushing blow to my already fragile feelings of self-worth, empowerment and hope for the future. Eh...it's also true that the election coincided with my 30th birthday, coming to the unsettling realization that Harvey Milk was killed only a few weeks after I was born, and the theft of my Scattante road bike (a.k.a the beloved extension of my body from 2006-2008). So, the roller coaster of emotions was definitely accentuated by personal context, but the voter approval of Proposition 8 really did send me into a depressing tailspin.

Moody Post-Election News

2008-11-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

I had no idea that wikipedia was brought to us by a nonprofit organization. Turns out that they're called wikimedia and have other charitable wiki projects out there running on their open source wiki software. This is the kind of thing that helps cheer me up after the passage of Prop 8 here in California and all the other appallingly discriminatory propositions passed in other states this month.

Of course, knowing that wikipedia has a lot of good will for society behind it isn't quite as encouraging on the human rights front as the Florida court decision earlier this week. It really shouldn't be such a relief to hear this type of rational statement in a court of (supposedly separated from any church's pulpit) law:

“It is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person’s ability to parent.” --Judge Cindy S. Lederman, Miami-Dade Circuit Court

Sadly, the Flordia law banning homosexual couples or individuals from adopting children has been on the books for 30 years and the state will appeal the decision in the Florida Supreme Court. The idea of the state making a case that people like me have a "higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse among same-sex couples, that their relationships are less stable than those of heterosexuals, and that their children suffer a societal stigma" (NYTimes article above), is chillingly reminiscent of 20th Century arguments made about the intelligence of black people and women based on cranial size. Using pseudo-scientific studies to justify racist/sexist/homophobic beliefs is the pathetic flail of the ruling class as they feel their means of oppressing the rest of us slip through their fingers. It's disgusting, but it's also extremely revealing of the unfair bias of the claim. Accepted scientific inquiries have that inconvenient attribute of objectivity and are not touted as facts but rather theories that are not only provable but also disprovable. Science allows itself to change and reminds its community to keep an open mind, to consider all possibilities, to think outside the given box. In this case, the sweeping, scientific-sounding claims made by the state's "experts" were refuted by studies of individual families showing "that children raised by gay parents fare just as well or better than children raised by straight parents” (same article). I don't know how much the experts vs. studies argument will bear on the Florida Supreme Court's decision when they are eventually obliged to hear this case, but it's good to see signs that the quality of life is improving and will continue to improve for unconventional families in this country. Just as the ability to score well on an IQ test will go up when one is no longer forced into manual labor or domestic servitude, the ability to create a safe, stable family life will increase when one is ALLOWED to have a family. Makes sense to me.

The scales are tilted and we all need to pull our weight in balancing them. The news that wikipedia's mission to allow free access to the sum of human knowledge to all and sundry is a hefty addition to the underserved side of the scales. They are running on donations and are about half way to their 2009 goals now. Maybe my money would be better spent by supporting literacy programs or by helping more poor people & communities gain access to computers, but wikimedia does a lot of good and every little bit of good helps.

Two-Headed Girl: Story No. 9

2008-10-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay. Here's the thing: She dared me to do it! She dared me.

Well, that's interesting. Are you going to go through with it?

Okay. So, yes? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe?

Maybe?

Well, It's just... I'm not really sure whether it's something I should be doing right now.

Hmm.... I don't want to overstep my bounds here, and you can tell me if I'm off-base, but that sounds like a bit of a cop out to me.

What? A cop out? Come on! It's completely reasonable to worry about what consequences your actions could have, especially on a dare.

Listen, I'm as cautious as the next person--god forbid that person does Xtreme Sports or something--but, I really don't see why you need to feel like you "should" or "should not" be doing something you obviously really want to do. (Don't look at me like that! You are DYING to do this. You've been waiting for the motivation for years.) It just sounds a little bit like you're worried about the outcome because you don't want to be personally held responsible for whatever happens.

Wow. You think I've been personally shirking responsibility, huh?

No, that's not what I--

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I appreciate your honesty. But, while we're being honest, who really wants to be held responsible for anything anyway? With this, it's more that I just don't feel like I'm particularly qualified. It's like I've just told a funny joke and now I've been asked to do an HBO stand-up special, and I know that I'm not able to perform at anywhere near feature-length. I'm afraid I'll end up like every Adam Sandler movie you've ever seen, repeatedly kicking people in the balls in search for a laugh as good as the first one.

I'm sure you won't have to go as far as that! And, of course, there are ten people on every bus that are more qualified and have more will to follow through with this than you. So what? They laugh when Adam Sandler kicks them in the balls. You're the one who's been challenged. She did you a huge favor and laid down the gauntlet for you. Are you going to run it or not?

Well, okay. But I'm going to need new shoes.

Really?

Yeah, the tread is completely worn on these.

And?

And...yes! I'll do it. Yes. Definitely. I'll do it tomorrow.

Tomorrow?

No. Scratch that. I'll do it tonight! Yeah! I'm ready.

Really? You're up for getting this show on the road tonight? How about right now?

Yes! Now. All systems are go!

Alright, then. I'm in.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Yeah! Wonderful! Hey! This is really great news. I'm psyched! With the two of us doing it, how can we go wrong?

I can't imagine.

We'll kill.

You mean: "Make a killing?"

Quite possibly, my friend. Quite possibly. But, in the meantime, there are at least two of us who can take the blame, and another can be held as an accomplice. We should decide right now who should take the fall, if it comes to that, and who should get away Scott free.

How I would take off the peel of an apple all in one go

2008-10-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

I've been practicing this magic trick for a while now. It's more slight of hand than magic, but, if you get the slight just right, it's more magic than anything else.

The magician places the apple in a boiled egg holder that has been fitted with a small length of wire under the base of the stand. One end of the wire should be attached to the base, and the rest of the wire should be coiled lightly underneath. This allows the magician to show the boiled egg holder to the audience without revealing the trick.

Once the magician shows that she has no wires up her sleeves, she uses her pinky finger to secretly unravel the wire and release it onto the table behind the holder as she sets it down. Then, she uses one hand to steady the stand while she uses the other hand to place a perfectly normal apple on top. Keeping her steady hand in place, she slides her other hand along the table, quickly picking up the free end of the wire between the index and middle fingers. If she keeps her attention focussed on the apple, she can make this motion mysterious enough to lull the audience into not noticing the wire. The motion of picking up the wire should also be smooth, quick and seem to be nothing more than a prelude to moving her hand up to hover just above the apple stem. This motion will straighten the wire and the magician must take care to bring it into firm contact with the backside of the apple.

The dramatic conclusion:

Uttering the magic words and creating the correct tension in the wire, the magician grabs the stem, pushs down, twists, pulls up with a flourish, releases the wire and triumphantly raises a perfectly peeled apple that can be presented to a lucky audience member by the stem.

The slight is more in the wrist than in the hand and more in the elbow than in the wrist.

Days, Months, Years: Story No. 8

2008-06-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

Days, months, years--all the same thing, really. Just different denominations of time passing. Samples of arbitrary size brought into being for the purpose of defining reality.

He often thought about things like "the arbitrary nature of time" and "the absurd notion of reality" when he was running late to work.

Tangled Legs: Story No. 7

2008-03-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

The azure voice of the singer slid up and down my pant leg. I coughed and shifted my weight against the wooden arms of the old-fashioned bar stool.

The Palace of Forgotten Arts: Story No. 6

2008-03-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

The conductor's momentary lapse of attention passed under the radar of every last player in the orchestral group. This little-known fact would have shocked the impeccable sensibilities of one audience member, who liked to think of himself as the lowest paid but highest valued member of the nationally acclaimed music review editorial staff at Nashville's illustrious Daily Courier.

However, that tiny breath of indecision lead way to the revolutionary shiver that ran down the make-shift aisle of the Havana PakBel Blues Cubby Room. A touch of magic seeped from the conductor's pen, which waved wand-like through the air and momentarily vanished. A blank stare came over bespectacled eyes that had been darting from sheets of staff to soprano sax, from trumpeting phone to crunching time clock, from creshendoing closing of doors to bass line accounting. Before the weight of the gold-plated pen clicked back into view, it had whispered its spurious hint that misled each contract artist headlong into a floating chaos. Swimming in the abyss of mindless meter, they forgot their inculcated drive. Forsaking the path to uprighteous citizenship, they gave way to a little toe-hold of free association among qwerty keys and headset snap and gave utter artistic license to a collective id.

To the instruments of their daily demise, this liberation went all but unnoticed.

Casual Friday: Story No. 5

2008-01-25T22:33:00.000-08:00

I had been with the company for several years before realizing that the boss had a lazy eye. How could this happen? After all it had been literally staring me in the face for all that time, or at least one of the eyes had and one of the eyes hadn't. And yet I remained oblivious.

This oversight on my part would come back to haunt me in the specter of puns lacking both intention and taste.

Paddy used to say that the misdirection of my deeds were the worst part. I had the heart, the pluck, the follow-through, but the direction? Paddy would just scratch at a spot on her head, invisible for all her orange fluffy coif, and she would say, "Betty, you're a piece of work--and an oddball one at that!"

Fantastical Interlude: Story No. 4

2008-01-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

A giant tentacle of foliage burst through the wall in an explosion of white plaster and pink insulation. Beige paint chips rained down upon the startled humans who staggered back in crouched defense. A massive trunk the size of a small tree curled up toward the ceiling of the opposite wall. The tip of the vine quivered and dodged as it explored the retaining space, looking for the Achilles' heal that would allow it to continue its path of architectural destruction. Even the offshooting leaves were sentient, twitching, alert. It appeared to the humans who caught tentative glimpses over the tops of their file folder shields, that they were being investigated by a giant serpentine office plant with squiggly leaves for scales.

Dead Man Walking: Story No. 3

2008-01-23T21:34:00.000-08:00

My boss rounded the corner with his usual air of piercing self-satisfaction. I quickly slipped my hands out of my pockets so that they could assume the swing of the strident. Out of sheer instinct, my mind instantly cleared, my guts steeled, my breath quickened in preparation for the coming face off.

The hall wasn't big enough for the both of us. It would have to be him or me, and it wasn't going to be me.

Halltalks: Story No. 2

2008-01-22T23:11:00.001-08:00

I slipped into the hallway for the eighth time in what had threatened to become an interminable 3 hours, wondering whether I'd make it to lunch without imploding in a puff of polyester and sawdust. With a sidelong glance at the "overhead light sensors" (aka "slave monitors") hanging derisively at regular intervals down the length of the hallway's popcorn ceiling, I felt behind me to make sure my shirt was well-tucked and no belt slippage would provide fair grounds for ritual ostracization and commensurate dismissal.

A person in my position, can never be too careful. Even the likes of Janet Jackson, mistress of pop, diva of dance, are susceptible to the disastrous effects of wardrobe malfunction. What's a stealth-mode operative like me to do when faced with the choice between the safety of the mission and the aggravation of relentless re-tucking?

I grabbed my collar by the sides, smoothed it along and gave it a tug for good measure.

Fabula Rasa: Story No.1

2008-01-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

It was a dark and rainy day. My beige-walled cubicle was clammy with recycled air pumping in from the ventilation duct overhead. Despite torrents of rain falling on the other side of the window pane, ever-increasing humidity emitting from the air conditioning unit, and no less than three beverage varieties sitting on my desk in anticipatory hydration, my mouth was drier than the most pretentious of martinis. Bone dry.

I kept slorking water from the soggy waxed paper cup left over from this morning's dash through the gas station near the freeway exit for a breakfast of sugar and caffeinated concessions. No amount of liquid would satiate my thirst.

If swishing a half-shot of vermouth around, dentist's office style, and spitting it out into my tiny office-issue trash can without smelling like happy hour had been a viable option, I would have done it. Between the Superantioxidance Vitanutritorganic Smoothie, the Big Gulp filled with water, and the lukewarm coffee leftover from the morning, all I was getting was an aggressively energetic need to walk down the hall to the restrooms every hour, parched no less.

A Story A Day

2008-01-20T21:43:00.000-08:00

New year, old fear: I will continue tripping down a path of mediocrity, never contributing significantly to the beauty of the universe and therefore failing to justify the continued energy expenditure on behalf of the conglomeration of atoms in which I reside.

In November 2007, I attempted my first nanowrimo novel: Marshmallow Macabre. I got through about 8,000 words in 30 days. Though a far cry from the 50,000 required to win, that's the longest story I've ever written. I self-deprecate. Yes, but I realize that building the kind of stamina I want will take practice. And so, on recommendation from a friend who knows best, I'm embarking on "A Story A Day" starting tomorrow.

The Rules
(as they currently stand)

Every day, I must write one story.
The story must be posted/linked in this blog.
There are no length/genre requirements.
Stories may be contiguous to stories from previous days.
There are no acceptable excuses for not writing a story.
No end date has been established at this point.
Some, but not all, of these rules are subject to change.

Unlike my approach to nanowrimo-ing, I see this primarily as an exercise in time management and discipline, as much as the actual storytelling. That said, I'm now 15 minutes past bedtime and too full of internet gobbledy-gook to continue any further examination of this endeavor. So, if you happen to find yourself tuned, please do stay that way for tomorrow's daring, outlandish, scathingly accurate, and even presumptuously precipitous: "Story No. 1!"

Scifi Channel's The Tin Man

2007-11-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm really looking forward to SciFi Channel's The Tin Man, coming soon to a basic cable packaged television near you. Personally, I'm going to try rigging the set in my Boise corporate apartment to record it for me as I'll be teaching and then back in SF on the days of the first airing. Of course, past experience with attempting to get VCRs to record leads me to really bank on SciFi airing this miniseries again on days when I will be around.

What is so compelling about Dorothy Gail's story? Is it the metaphor of the tornado? Is it the reinterpretation of the real world in terms of fantasy that we understand on a deeper level? Is it the framing of the stories and the wizard himself? I completely geeked out over the website for The Tin Man which literally dives into the Russian doll framing of the story-within-a-story, world-within-a-world. I recommend using the lever on the upper left corner to go full speed and then reverse it all!

I also HIGHLY and capitally recommend Geoff Ryman's novel WAS for a wonderful explosion of the entire world of OZ and L Frank Baum's novel and the Hollywood version and the effects of it on people in a "real" world and a very different perspective of what Dorothy's life might have been like. If you know Kansas you might also really enjoy this as Ryman uses excerpts from Kansas settler's dairies, memoirs, historical record to reconstruct the landscape itself. Even more than any of the sort of straight versions of the story, Ryman brings out that capability in all of us of letting the world get ripped to shreds in our pursuit of the magic, safety, or just plain quiet that might await us in the eye of the tornado.

Home is Where Your Car is

2007-11-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, was the day that I did the Dance of Unfettered Joy all the way up the street, eight-count triple-stepping past the guards at the Federal Mint, and moved my car on up. Yes, after 4 years of living in the city, having a car off and on again and never once coming at all close to have a garage or parking space...*rolls the drum*....I finally got my residential parking permit! The dieties behind the double-paned bullet proof glass at the Department of Parking & Transit have finally deigned to grant me the chance of finding viable parking near my home. It's been a long wait. So, when the shiny blue sticker came in the mail, I ripped it open and shamelessly tore out of the house to move my car into the open space right outside my front door! Yes, I practically skipped the last few steps to my car singing, "Home at last, thank god almighty, Home at last."

That was Wednesday, and you'll note in the photo that street sweeping won't happen again until NEXT WEDNESDAY at 8:00am. Which means that I can fly away to Boise and come back Tuesday evening with plenty of time to move my car. And if I can't find a space, no sweat--literally. I can roll out of bed at 7:50 on Wednesday morning throw on some shoes and slouch down stairs to clear out before the sweepers come by. That's my apartment, just to the right of the tree. So, no jogging frantically up several blocks only to find that they came a little early and I owe another $50.00 to The Man.

Oh, how I have seriously paid my dues during my time here! Not only have I spent hundreds of dollars on parking tickets, for everything from the classics--street sweeping and over-extending the time limit--to the occasional emergency indiscretions--expired meter, parking in a loading zone, parking in a tow-away zone. In my defense, the last one was only a tow-away zone during certain rush hour times of the day and I got there to move only 5 minutes late. That ticket was seriously $60.00 and it was on Halloween (a holiday for which most San Franciscans get in a festive mood), but the woman was writing the ticket as I ran up and absolutely refused to stop. Anyway, I've done quite a bit of community service to pay down some of the debts that I haven't had the cash to cover.

So, why didn't I just get a permit right away? This is a simple question with a very complicated answer that has changed depending on whatever situation I have found myself in during my time here. What it comes down to is that, even though San Francisco is the place in which I have felt the most comfortable and found the most kindred spirits, it hasn't been until just this year that I have finally found myself truly at home.

In February of this year, I moved into my girlfriend's two bedroom apartment right in the middle of the city--not in the downtown part, but right in the geographical center of San Francisco. I really did not want to move into this neighborhood after living in a quieter one for the last year. Also, I had serious doubts about moving in with a Significant Other after past experiences that ended in metaphorical flames. But before agreeing on the move, we worked really hard to establish the ground rules and workshop the fears and possible icky scenarios, so that when I came, we shook up the space really well and served the re-furnished, re-painted, re-vitalized rooms up with a dash of her taste and twist of mine. It worked really well. In fact, people who have known her during her entire 5 year stint in this apartment have commented on the fact that they not only like what I've brought to the place, but that they feel for the first time that this HER space, too. Her past series of roommates all had a temporary or utilitarian way of living in the apartment, but she and I have managed to build a little nest that is comfortable and welcoming and just the right amount of wacky.

It's been a great few months. Not completely conflict-free, but the way that we've worked through the few confrontations that we've had has been reassuring. As with all matters of the heart, there is a possibility that flames will end this, too; but, if so, I think that they will be the cleansing kind that remove all the impurities and leave the true core of you shining solidly among the ashes.

So, now that my home-life has been registered and validated by the parking gods, one of the complications was that I was asked to go work in Idaho for several weeks straight. I found myself unable to accept the full teaching run, despite the intense need to get away from the painfully paradoxical job situation. Since last October, I have been spending 40 hours a week in a somewhat isolated office at odd times in the day doing mostly solitary work. And the business that has cloistered me: TOURISM! Yes, it's a perfect example of the doctor's sick wife or the cobbler's barefoot son. Anyway, I had started craving the dynamic social atmosphere of the classroom almost immediately after signing on with the company a year ago and, after watching almost every other co-worker go off on long extended backpacking trips to other continents, I've just needed to get out of there. Nevertheless, my heart is now in San Francisco, so I instead took the option of commuting via air once a week until the middle of December. It's the best of both worlds: I'm traveling, teaching, seeing a new place, and on Tuesdays I get to come back home to my books, my kitchen, my couch, my collection of tacky knick-knacks, and my insightful, passionate, solidly grounded sweetheart.

Oakland Pootie Awks

2007-10-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-10-11T16:01:00.001-07:00

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...

2007-10-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

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!

The Joy of Sake

2007-09-08T07:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight my girlfriend and I will host a sushi party in honor of our friend's birthday. Sounds gracious, right? The catch, other than the one we'll purchase by the pound, is that he will have to make all the rolls himself. After slaving away at the large quantity of sticky rice, the finely sliced vegetables, fruits and pickles, exacto-knifing the raw fish, rolling it all together and feeding all the hungry seals, er, friends, he'll finally sit down to his own roll stuffed with the last scraggly bits and probably find that he's not even hungry anymore, having taste-tested everything along the way. Happy Birthday, indeed! In my defense, I would not have been so gracious as to invite him to do this if he himself hadn't requested it. The birthday boy is actually one of the most strategically adept people I know. There are still hand prints on my bottom from the last time he thoroughly spanked me on the chess board. I know he's also savvy to the karmic principles of giving and receiving and could probably graph out the many happy returns the universe will have in store for him after tonight.

Meanwhile, I'm hard at work blogging and the gf's gone out to by the myriad ingredients we've committed to buying in order to pull this off. Here's the bb's wish list of items so far:

Staples:

Rice (botan or calrose)

Soy Sauce

Nori
Wasabi
Pickled ginger

Fish:
Salmon
Tuna
Fake crab (or real crab is someone's feeling generous)

Fruits, Veggies, etc:
Asparagus
Mango
Sesame seeds (kuro -n- shiro goma)
Cream cheese
Bell peppers of various colors
Cucumber
Green Onion
Mushrooms (shitake preferred)
Spinach
Tomago
Snow Peas

Living across the street from a major supermarket and a bike ride away from Bi-Rite--the upscale health food market near Dolores Park which spawned the dreamy Bi-Rite Creamery (warning: flavor list may cause sudden salivation)--shopping won't be too hard. The difficult part will be finding sushi-grade fish that is also wild rather than farmed.

Finding a good sake is also a challenge. In my experience you can never judge by how cute or sexy the bottle might be. Generally, I find it safer to go with an unfiltered, milky sake rather than the clear type. Two resources I'd like to tap in this regard are:

1. Sushi Zone: A great little sushi restaurant in our 'hood. Not the best ever and it's running way behind on the customer service beat (see Yelp! reviews from folks who seem to know their sushi better than I), but their oyster appetizer and low prices are well worth the 2 hour wait time you are likely to experience. And the unfiltered sake we had there a few weeks ago was deemed by a dinner comrade as, "the best sake I've ever drinken." Since said comrade & spouse are moving in right down Pearl Street, only a few houses down from the Zone next week, I'll have plenty of opportunity to pop in there and find out what type of sake they serve.

2. The Joy of Sake: A convention happening at the Hilton Hotel next weekend. There will be 300 of the best sakes that will be laid out in their prime quaffability, plus plenty of delectable bites to clear the palate. Would anyone like to take me to this cost-prohibitive, but plenty posh party?

Gays in the Military?

2007-09-06T11:39:00.001-07:00

I came across this hilarious video on Brave New Films after watching 5 minutes of the Republican presidential candidate debate, in which the panel of 10 white men, including Giuliani & McCain, attempted to individually avoid the question of whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military until finally the CNN questioner (Scott Spradling?) asked for anyone on the panel to take the floor if they thought that the ban should be lifted and the seconds tick by in silence. So, after that depressing moment, I found this video to cheer me up and ended up writing such a long comment, that I thought I'd repost it here:

Besides the Republican line of the hour, "Lifting the ban is a social experiment that would be irresponsibly dangerous to indulge in at this critical time of war," what is Mark Smith trying to convey here?

First, he wants to make it clear that Mark Smith (or insert other generic white male name here) has a rampant heterosexuality that is uncontrollable to the extent that he cannot even focus on his own impending death when there are women in short shorts around. The female body as an unfailingly sexy object of desire is also important to protect the macho image of the virile male. If he can't get it up for a couple of Hooter's girls having a pillow fight on the front line of combat, he is probably not good for anything.

By the same coin, the ultimate macho man ends up taking the place of the Hooter's waitress when he is the sex object for the gay soldier. Thrown into a troop of (scantily clad?) Mark Smiths, the gay serviceman must be helplessly drawn to Mark Smiths unquestionable manliness. He MUST! If he doesn't, well that must mean that there is something wrong with Mark Smith's pristine masculinity! Yikes! How can Mark Smith even think of subjecting the troops to that kind of identity crisis, especially when we're in the middle of waging an ideological war?!

Furthermore, if Mark Smith can't face the fact that every gay male on the planet would not fall for him immediately, regardless of what he might actually be doing on the ground in Iraq (i.e. dressed from head to toe in camo, carrying upwards of 50 pounds of gear not including firearms, fighting for his life, trying to communicate with desperate people who speak another language, surviving attacks and dust storms, or other NON-SEXY things), then our manly troops couldn't handle it either.

What the Republican party in general is saying with this line (see the above-mentioned GOP debate for multiple repetitions of said line) is that they need to protect the masculine ego of a uniformly hetero, male military.

But wait a second... What about all those women we've allowed into the ranks? Aren't the good old boys going crazy trying to keep in line when bananas appear in their pockets every time G.I. Jane marches next to them? Oh, well, maybe it's just understood that the women in the military are those "rough" "tomboy" types anyway. So, the GOP would be okay with assuming they are all lesbians, as long as they keep their mouths shut about it and, indeed, about anything else other than patriotic sloganage.

This is a tough topic. Like many other political debates, I find myself torn by the disconnect between conceptual perspectives and practical realities. I'm hesitant to shout, "Gays in the Military!" at a protest rally, because I don't believe that war should be waged at all. I am a pacifist and cannot see any war as justifiable. Having complete peace imposed on the warmongers--THAT would be the real social experiment, and that is probably not possible right now, if it ever will be. Furthermore, our government's treatment of the troops is morally questionable and fiscally irresponsible. (See Aztlan y Vietnam for accounts of racist & classist draft practices during the 1960s. See Fahrenheit 9/11 for documentation on military recruiters in action.) Why would I want to fight a political battle so that my queer family can go and fight wars that only serve to keep old white men in power? Those are my main objections. That said, the reality is that there are queer people who want and are able to serve in the military, but are disallowed or fired for being honest.

Unequivocally, I feel that the government should not be charged with policing self-image and identity. Those are personal things that should not concern public policy. What the goverment should be doing is supporting those people who are strong enough to choose this violent, traumatizing way of giving back to their communities. The government should be serving those people to the best of their ability, not forcing them to subscribe to a certain perspective on sexuality, or to lie about who they are to the people they work with. This policy does nothing but demean the professionalism of all troops, gay or straight, and results in the thinning of their ranks with intent only to punish the existence of human diversity. It's reprehensible and should be stopped.

Go to Lift The Ban for more info on what can be done.

A Breath of Fresh Air

2007-09-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

This is my second attempt at blogging. I plan to use this space to develop some good writing habits, and rid myself of a few bad ones, by publishing those inner monologues I care to remember here and, in case of actual intellectual content, juice up the roots of any ideas that have potential.

I'm also going to continue developing the art of the run-on sentence, because, after all, if it's good enough for William Faulkner, it's good enough for me.

That mofo knew how to make a sentence breathe!
Just imagine the expert flow through those nostrils:
sucking in surrounding particulate matter of all kind without prejudice,
until the color itself drains from the photo,
presenting us with the issue of blacks, whites and all the grays facing off between them,
making arbitrary definitions painful and fatal,
filling us up with all the space inside that olfactory orifice
until we cannot bear the sight of a sniffer swollen with such ugly history,
and, finally, exhausting these subjects in one prolonged, ghostly stream,
which raggedly flutters the wiley mustache hairs of dead white men,
in whom we have ceased to trust
and who can no longer betray our trust
unless we forget the whiskey stained nose of the writer who let it all out,
that last sigh,
frozen in time,
alternately indicting and exonerating
the perfect hypocrisy of a free life.

I have a defunct livejournal that I started in college and to which I have been sorely unfaithful. My purpose there was not so different as it is here, but I expect this one to flourish, since gmail makes everything in life so much more convenient. But maybe I'll just write this one entry and never come back. It's certainly a possibility, though not necessarily a tragedy. It could also be possible that if I don't spend any time blogging here at all, I'll become a speech writer instead and write some terribly underhanded speeches for the next GOh!P presidential candidate in which Shermanesque oaths are made under a veil of irony and sent out to the press 24 hours in advance. Throwing monkey wrenches into the belly of the beast sounds like an erstwhile activity, that would certainly benefit the world far more than web reminders to myself of how to clean one's bike chain.

Seems that I am setting myself up for failure either way, but there can be no success without failure. So really, what I'm looking at here, is clearly unavoidable success.