The indigenous arts thing is today, not yesterday; Paul and I sang and played for a while here (he wasn’t prepared and was having a hell of time with remembering words but we laughed and sang and played anyway, so there) and then went to his place where we worked on household finances splitting for a while which was interesting (helping him set up a spreadsheet) and then Katie came home and told, rapidfire, a very droll standup routine about her job, and fixing machines at work, and how she’s covered one end to the other in bruises, which you’re gonna be if your brand new to the ‘moving marble’ game. Then I begged her to take me with her to pick Alex up and his smile was almost enough to power me through a week and Katie dropped me off.
Laundry is complete in the sense that the clothes are clean and dry.
Thinking about that tourtière but I have to get through the leftover Chinese food first.
Fringe final season is really about how we’re all doomed without love; I currently feel like I have plenty. I’m not suffering from family strife and dislocation right now, so I’m above the happiness waterline, whatever my stupid brain and weird biochemistry has to say about things.
Just had the most amazing and wonderful convo on line with an old dear friend. She’s got hard times but lots of joy anyway, and I love her. OMG THIS IS WHAT SHE SAID ON FB ABOUT THAT CONVO
This morning, I had the longest facebook messenger convo of my life and it was, with little exaggeration and without getting into personal details, a life saver.
Technology really can overcome distance and give you meaningful connections with people far away.
Reach out to your friends, and you will get and give support in ways you can’t imagine.
We all need each other.
I am grateful and thankful for the love and support of my girlfriends.
I JUST MISTOOK AO3 FOR AOL in a convo and I’m like the picture of an embarrassed boomer. And there may be one person who reads this blog who understands the reference.
Somebody on facebook said tell us 10 books that stuck with you. Since I could just yell DOROTHY DUNNETT FUCK YEAH and sit back down again I purposely left her out of the list. Instructions were spend no time on it just pick the 10 books you remember as meaningful and memorable and here they are.
The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels
You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen
Sex Time and Power, Leonard Shlain
Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak (This is the book that gave me permission to structure my novels the way that works for my brain, kinda untraditional but still with a clear thruline)
Sandman comics, Neil Gaiman et al
A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman
Kingdom of Carbonel, Barbara Sleigh
I’m trying to think of if these books have anything in common beside the fact that I read them, but it may be interesting to see the threads….
The Gift of Fear taught me that even if little girls are supposed to comply, if you’re scared BOOK IT. I avoided gang rape by following this book’s advice. You don’t forget a gift like that.
The Gnostic Gospels, as well as exposing me to the 1400 mystery cults that were apparently coexisting in Palestine and environs in the early years of Christianity, exposed me to Sophia, the presence of wisdom, as female. I’m an atheist but it was a telling moment. Also, the Bible was not dictated by God! and it was hidden and reworked and assembled like the world’s fugliest philology convention had a speed dating/face punching round! Thanks, Elaine!
You just don’t Understand taught me that men are judgemental assholes, real fucking clownbags, morons, hypocrites and straight up manipulating jerks when it comes to communicating with women, and I can turn that to my advantage if I want to completely forget how I was raised. Essentially it analyzed, in broad terms, the communication styles of men and women, mostly from English language research, and I learned that men really suck at communicating but judge women for their style because it isn’t theirs, while we have to learn everything about the way men communicate or they’ll fucking rape and kill us. Unless they’re among the little bubble of men I hang out with, who just aren’t into that. I did learn one very useful trick when talking to men and I must use it every week or so. I’m not going to tell you what it is, and besides you’re still mad at me for calling men clownbags so just hang on to that rage kids.
Sex, Time and Power – Jeff gave it to me for Christmas fourteen years ago and I read it in one sitting. It made a lot of sense to me. My new understandings of the underpinnings of society being buttressed by the crypto nature of women’s reproductive systems (in terms of ovulation) and the non-crypto nature (in terms of menstruation) were absolutely crucial to how I structured sixer sexuality, and how it would impact their ‘society’.
Already let you in on how important Forty Rules of Love was to me. Tammy gave me that.
I’m not going to talk about the Sandman comics; you should read them, if you haven’t.
Maus. It took me THREE REREADS to understand the ending, and then my heart broke, and rebroke ever single time I thought about it for almost a month. An unbelievable work of art, of homage to his difficult, opportunistic, racist (after Auschwitz/Oscwiecem, oy), hoarder, judgemental father, of historical reckoning, of emotional truth.
Conundrum got my foot on the path to wanting to understand the transgender experience. Morris was privileged in ways many transgender people aren’t, and doesn’t really address that too much in this work, which I read in paperback in the early eighties, before Kimberlé came up with intersectionality. Transgender activists are now among my strongest, strangest and funniest teachers as I slide down the rest of my life arc. I thought about my perceived gender and my felt gender quite a bit over the last ten years, and my feelings are complicated enough that I don’t want to talk about them in public. I will say that I’m happy with the body I was issued and have no complaints or plans for revision on that score, mostly so my parents can sit back down and unbug their eyes.
A Distant Mirror. I find it absolutely hilarious that when myself and a potential new friend are talking books, this one comes up. Almost every intelligent person I know who speaks English has read it. SOMEBODY MAKE A FUCKING MOVIE ABOUT THE SIRE DE COUCY Calice, tabernac.
Kingdom of Carbonel is the middle book of a trilogy of talking cats novels written in the period between the late fifties and the early seventies. Of all the children’s books I ever read this one comes closest to limning how kids feel about ‘summer friends’ the families and children you only see when school’s out. Gone Away Lake is the next best example of that.
Are there any common threads? I read non-fiction and am changed by it more than fiction. The fiction I read must broaden my perspective, open my heart, and challenge my vocabulary. But the non-fiction is what goes under my foot and in my hand; it is my connection the real world of unfolding understanding of how the grand scheme of things and the most trivial of pastimes are all of a piece.
