I sort of magically have archives now. Except I haven't figured out how to get the main page to display only the posts I want it to show, so currently I have, like, three months' worth of posts published and not much actual need for archives. Most every time I pull up blogger these days, I spend a brief moment being embarassed by how inept I am in the field of web design, to the point where I don't even bother to read the blogger FAQ because I might have to make notes. Then I have a brief moment of shame over how little I care. Then I decide that I like the default template, and it's my forum and I can make it look--or not make it look--any way I want, dammit, and I come here to write, not code. And then I move on.
Eh. I'm feeling kind of unmotivated tonight. I'm feeling kind of unmotivated in general, at least about anything that resembles an obligation. Because it's going to be October, people! I love October. The cooler weather, the breezes, the way the sky turns that deep, crisp, cloudless blue on sunny days, Halloween...woo. It's a good month. I get stirred up, though; unable or unwilling to sit still and take care of business. There's more struggle in my life in October.
More musings on October to come, probably. But now it's 10:20, and I'm going to bed.
"Ship of Fools" by the Grateful Dead
"The Wreck of the Antelope" by Privateer, assuming a recording really exists
"The Glasgow" by John Renfro Davis, again, assuming I can find a recording
"The Rhyme of the Chivalrous Shark" by Lesley Nelson, ditto
"The Reuben James" by Woodie Guthrie
"Nautical Disaster" by the Tragically Hip; I think the title alone qualifies it for inclusion, even if I think the song is actually about D-Day.
I don't how many people actually read this blog, but if you do and you can hook me up with any type of recording of the songs above (except the Hip song; I've already got that), please let me know. I'd appreciate it.
I just got off the phone with my best friend of almost fifteen years, HB, and now I feel nostalgic and weird. This same quality of feeling has been plagueing me the past few times I've spoken to HB, and I fear now that what I'm experiencing is the friendship softening and fading over distance and time. I knew this was more or less inevitable--we've lived several states apart for close to eight years now; the sort of day-to-day interaction and knowledge of each other's lives that we had as 11-year-olds living on the same street simply isn't possible. The distance between us has been creeping in gradually for years; I shouldn't be surprised. But it seems that there's been a noticeable...lessening of intensity, perhaps, of our relationship in the past few months. I can think about it logically and pinpoint several recent key events that are likely contributing: I finally finished grad school. She's beginning her third year of teaching. I got a full-time job. She officially came out to me as bisexual, although I had known, and she had known that I knew, for several years prior. I got married. She began her first serious relationship with another person, a girl whom I have met only briefly. She is planning to apply to grad school. I am considering maybe thinking about buying a house. We are both essentially becoming adults. There are myriad reasons why it is increasingly difficult to find our common reference points, all of which are natural, and many of which are to be celebrated in and of themselves.
I am still...sad.
She's been my best friend since I was eleven, since we were young enough to chase softballs in the street at dusk and make up songs about badmitton. She was my friend through basketball camp, through babysitting, through biking home past the chin-up bars in the park during middle school. She was my friend through different high schools, through our vastly different academic strengths and weaknesses. Through my adolescent trials with the Hubster-to-be, and more band-camp stories than she probably ever wanted to hear. Sometime during high school she told me about the awful, defining experience she had as a child, and I was sick to my stomach for days. She was my friend through her college application process, and her first year of college out-of-state. Through my own first, terrible semester in college, when we spoke on the phone every Monday at 11pm. When I was eighteen, she told me how to go about getting on the pill. She was my friend through her semester abroad in England, when I missed her so badly, but didn't realize how much until her mom finally gave me her number over there and I tried to call for days until her flatmate finally answered, then passed her the phone, and I heard her say hello and felt tears in my eyes. She was my friend through mutual depression and growing pains, through academic pressure and the time I spent with B that I wish I could blot from my memory; through the X-Files, God, the X-Files. So many of the formative events of my young adult life can be marked by what hairstyle Scully was wearing at the time. Through her graduation and my graduation, through her first job and my own move out of state for grad school. Through grad school. Through our trip to the UK, where we slept on trains and ate inumerable Cadbury Fruit and Nut bars from vending machines; where we stood in the rain next to a four thousand year old stone circle on the west coast of Lewis, in the Hebrides. Where we walked and walked through the back roads of Stirling, Scotland, seeing the Wallace monument rising up before us, but not knowing if we were on the right road or if we would ever reach it. She was my friend through my scrapped thesis topic and the ghastly eleven pages that went with it; through her K1 class and my first 10K. Through my real thesis topic and her State of North Carolina-ordered teacher Product. Through my wedding planning, and crazy days before my actual wedding. She was the Maid of Honor. She loves my sister, and took her out for the entire day on the eve of the ceremony, when I was trying to pack and move houses and see my family and the Hubster's family and not kill anybody before the "I do" part. Even though my sister was out of her routine and getting freaky and autistic on us, even though she's a rough ride at the best of times, even though HB was recovering from sun poisoning and a severe allergic reaction to a medication at the time. She was my friend through the honeymoon stories. She was my friend through all of that; she's been my friend for years; I know that's not going away. But God, I love her, and it kills me to feel the distance spreading between us. Natural and inevitable though it may be.
I'd never go back to being eleven, but sometimes I think of her and wish it was possible.
I don't know anyone face-to-face in NYC, but it doesn't fucking matter. Ten thousand dead--I can't even begin to imagine. I'm sitting here fearing for Miriam and her family, and Francesca, and CLFinn, and Ins's relatives, and people I've never even talked to, because there's no other way to make it real. I wish I didn't have to think of them--I don't want it to be real.
This morning I was thinking about how I was hung over and didn't go to work on Monday, and wondering if I should maybe get some counseling. Driving to work, I told myself that I'd ask my buddy who's a social worker for her opinion, but that there probably wasn't anything wrong with me that a reality check couldn't fix.
Oh my God. LaT's not kidding--blogging while lit is a bad idea. But I was in a bad fucking mood earlier, so I drank an entire bottle of wine by myself. I think it's lunar related--and spare me your sarcasm, because I've already gotten it from the Hubster--but July 4th I was in a filthy mood, and a month after that too, and I haven't actually looked outside, because that would involve standing up, but I'm pretty sure it's close to the full moon now. And I felt like crap earlier. I'm thinking there's a pattern here.
Because I'm too blasted to write email:
LAL: If you're reading this, I'm sorry I haven't emailed you back yet. I hope you got my package, and that you've been enjoying the tapes.
Aral: I hope things with you and T are working out, sweetie. I did get your letter with the article, and I enjoyed it very much. "Guns, guns, guns, strong homoerotic subtext, more guns," is how I described it to the Hubster. I'd like to re-read it before discussion ensues, but expect to hear from me soon.
MR: I don't know if you read this blog or not, but hang in there, hon. You'll get time to write, and Adam and Ian will be waiting for you. I miss them too, if it's any consolation.
Oh, dear. I drank a full 64oz of water in the last two hours, so with luck I shouldn't be hung over. But I still have an 8:15am client tomorrow, so if you people could wish me luck I'd appreciate it.
My alarm clock this morning woke me out of a vivid, highly detailed dream of Ray and Fraser in some sort of bizarre Shakespearian stage production, which is weird in and of itself, but also because I almost never used to have fandom-related dreams, yet this makes the third or fourth due South dream I've had since I got into the fandom. That's, oh, three or four times more nocturnal character appearances than I had in a little over a year of Sentinel fandom, and a considerably higher proportion than I had in roughly two and a half years of X-Files fanaticism. Although, my XF dream holds a place in my heart merely because the one time I did dream in that fandom, I had the honor of dreaming in Vehemently's "Sovereignty" universe. Mulder, Scully, and Krycek, staring at each other in the hazy glow of a DC steetlamp while rain falls around them, uneasy awareness thrumming between the three of them...aaaaaahhh. Few writers make me miss XF fic the way Vee does.
But anyway, the dS stage production. This dream was remarkable also in that I think it was the first overtly slashy dream I've had--I guess my subconscious likes subtext too, because during some of the ones I've had previously I may have been aware within the dream that so-and-so were vibing off each other, but there was never any actual (canon?) slash content. This particular dream actually had some rather impressive internal consistency, although in the illogical and convoluted way that dreams do. It began with me sitting in a crowd in a sort of outdoor public park, but with everyone seated in rows upon rows of plastic folding chairs on an awning-covered concrete platform of the sort that I associate with summer and fried chicken and church socials, not that I've ever been to a church social. So I'm sitting there with all these people, and I've got scads of luggage and cloth tote bags and stuffed animals and crap with me, because apparently I'm going on a trip. All of a sudden--maybe there was an anouncement, I don't recall--I realize that I need to move to the back section of the crowd, because it turns out we're actually on a plane and I've got to go find my seat. So I get up to move, but of course I can't carry all of my luggage with me because I've got so much crap. I pick up what I can and head through an open doorway into what is ostensibly the coach section of the plane, but it looks more like a crowded college classroom or lab, what with the hard plastic chairs and big wide study tables. I move to the center of the room and find an empty chair at this one table--there are people sitting at my back and to my right, and a girl sitting across from me reading what turns out to be an F/K zine, although I don't know how I know this. I put my stuff down, and then for a minute I worry that I've taken somebody's spot, because there's also an open F/K zine at my place, and it doesn't belong to me. I'm not one to pass up free reading material, though, so I start skimming and realize with a shock that it's a good zine. I haven't read the story before, and it's engaging and well-written and of course it's open to the foreplay, and it's good. I'm reading, and I'm having the same problem with this zine that I tend to have with zines, the one that makes me not particularly like them--I've only actually read two, but they were both formatted with two columns per page, and I have a really hard time not skipping ahead because my eyes expect to keep moving horizontally across the page. So I'm reading the foreplay, and unintentionally skipping over to the next column where there's some goofy dialogue written as though Ray's been gagged, because Fraser's kissing him and he's trying to talk around Fraser's tongue in his mouth. So hey, it's all good, and then an announcement comes over the PA system and I realize that the flight's leaving and I need to go back and get the rest of my stuff from the church social before takeoff. Turns out we're going to Thailand--why the fuck am I going to Thailand? Even in the dream I have no particular desire to go there, but I am anyway.
I make my way back through the classroom/coach area to the platform with the folding chairs, where I gather the rest of my belongings. They consist of a backpack and one extremely large stuffed bear with long, furry, floppy arms and legs. I'm rather self-conscious as I thread my way back through the people; I wish I'd had the presence of mind to put the bear in a duffle bag so I wouldn't have to display myself as someone who travels with security stuffed animals. I'm sitting down in my seat at the table, the bear's fur tickling my nose, when I realize that not only is there a little wooden stage running across the left side of the room, about four feet high and floored in light blond wood, but Paul Gross is standing on it. He's dressed in awful Gladiator-style Roman garb, with a short Cesar/George Clooney haircut under a laurel wreath or some such nonsense. He's giving an intense, melodramatic monologue in these horrible, high-pitched femmey tones, and I'm torn between fainting with shock and cringing in embarassment, with the cringing looking to win out. The dialogue he's reciting is all about pain and losing his one true love, and it's totally over-the-top; I know it's from Shakespeare, although I don't know which play. So I'm shrinking down in my seat, face burning, and suddenly I realize that PG's gestures and eye gaze are getting more localized--he's switched from giving a soliliquy to directing his dialogue at someone. I look far stage left (my right, of course), and there is CKR in the same sort of fake Roman get-up as PG, except he's got a little metal helmet with a plume on, because of course he's in the army. God. It's like those AUish stories by Viridian, except Viridian's are, you know, good.
Anyway, CKR--I don't know if they're supposed to be Ray and Fraser or the actors at this point--is cold and hard-hearted in the face of PG's sweeping melodrama. I think he's either the fickle lover or the haughty officer who won't return PG's desperate love. PG's getting nearer and nearer to him, still talking in that horrid high voice, and then he reaches him and leans in and utters his closing line. CKR's still stone-faced, and I'm sensing what's about to happen and thinking, "Shit, this is going to be so much clearer than 'Mountie on the Bounty,'" and not knowing if I'm turned on or weirded out or what, and the camera (what fucking camera?!) zooms in in time to see PG give CKR a hard, passionate kiss on the cheek. The frame freezes then, in this odd shot-from-below angle so we see the triangular shape of CKR's jaw and the longish stubble covering it, and his cold expression. PG has his eyes squeezed shut and desperation all over his face, and then my alarm goes off. Scared the hell out of me.
So it turns out Aral was right. I took her advice and blew several hours reading Kellie Matthews' "Turning" this weekend, and liked it very much. The thing is, though, that I think what I liked wasn't so much the story in and of itself, but the reading-memories it evoked for me. Reading "Turning" put me very much in mind of the second time I read "True North" by Crysothemis--no, hang with me here, it's a compliment. "True North" was the first long dS piece I read--I'm not counting "How Ray Got His Groove Back," as I read that months before I'd ever seen an episode of the show and purely for the nookie--and the first one to really get to me. That story ripped me up inside; made me love RayK and Fraser before I really knew who they were; made me wish for a love affair. The first time I read "TN" I couldn't respond to it--images were still reverberating in me for days after; the experience was too fresh. This probably took place in early or mid-November of last year. I'm not terribly sure, I just know I was deep in the morass of thesis-writing angst that was the fall of 2000. So I read the story once, and had to let it settle for a while. Then it was mid-December, my paper was finished, I'd graduated at long last, I was getting ready to go home for Christmas, and I...wasn't ready. I hadn't seen my parents or my beloved younger sister M in almost a year. Things--medication things, behavior things, school and life skills and supportive employment things--with M were not great. Things with my parents were...static. Marriage planning stress was settling over the Hubster-to-be and me like dust, making us snippy and brittle, and I just wasn't ready to face my family or my old hometown with my life in transition. I wanted to read "TN" again before I went: for strength, for love of the dS characters and universe, for an excuse to cry. But I couldn't make time.
Then we had an ice storm. Where I live this is a big deal--actually, everywhere I've ever lived, this would be a big deal. I'm from the south; we don't know what to do with temperatures below 40F. So we had cold and clouds and freezing rain and sleet and the roads iced up, and my city more or less went to ground. The radio and television were warning everyone to stay inside, stay off the roads, drive with caution if you must drive at all. I'd gone to hang with the Hubster-to-be earlier in the afternoon of the day the storm hit, so I drove the four miles or so back to my house in the icy grey of early evening. It was cold in the car. I didn't turn on the heater, so I could see my breath. I think I sang "Northwest Passage" or what I knew of it; my Stan Rogers CD hadn't come in the mail yet so I coudn't do the verses and had to just work on the chorus, practicing over and over, feeling for the notes. I made it home safely and settled into my room, where I closed the blinds and changed into my slippery green silky pajamas and fleece robe and slippers, then curled into my desk chair and pulled up Chrys's website. The room was warm near the computer, but cold was creeping in around the edges, and the halogen lamp I'd stolen from my housemate L made the light golden and soft. I read, and L came home and fell asleep in her bedroom. I read, and my other housemate A came home from his job at the restaurant with fresh flour tortillas and honey, and I drank tea and ate the tortillas still warm. I read, and it was cold in the story and cold outside, and my knees ached from sitting with my legs drawn up in the chair, and my mind was quiet.
The power went out around midnight, when I was about halfway through the story. I don't know if ice weighed down the lines, or if they simply weren't equipped for the weather somehow. My computer cut out, of course, but I didn't mind, because it meant I'd sleep and wake up with more story to read. Housemate A and I lit candles and consulted in the hallway; he was worried that L would get cold in her sleep, what with her light blankets and the heat out. We drew lots over who would go in and cover her with my spare blanket; I lost and had to fumble for the foot of her bed in the dark room. I brushed my teeth by candlelight, then curled up under my heavy comforter in my cold bedroom. The power did come back on shortly after, but the ice continued to build during the night, so all the next morning there was the odd, out-of-place sound of ice melting and water dripping from the eaves.
That's one of the sweetest memories I have of last winter--reading "True North" in a rare southern ice storm. So when I say that "Turning" put me in mind of that experience, well...it's a compliment.
...of course, every time I think of that night, I'm forced to wonder, "Now, was that the same night that I holed up in my room on the computer and drank so much tea and A took so damn long showering or buffing his toenails or whateverthehell he did in the bathroom and I had to pee so bad I ended up pissing in a bucket in the laundry room and then A came out of the bathroom in time to almost catch me?" And then I change my train of thought real quick, because that memory makes my face burn. Heh.
I'm going to hell. For real--I just read Cara Chapel's new dS story, and...I liked it. In fact, I kind of thought it was hot. I am so going to hell. I'm not even going to discuss the story themes here, because people would send me bus fare for the trip.
Heh. Bus Fare to Hell. That's gonna be my new album.
In other news, Aral linked to my blog! (Or, she expressed her intention of doing so as soon as blogger will let her). I am thrilled beyond belief! Perhaps now I will be motivated to move beyond the bare bones blog template and make the page a bit more exciting.
It's 8:30 at night, but I'm drinking one of those Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino things anyway. I had some mild internal struggle over the hour and the caffeine content, as our seminar at the running club this morning was on hydration. I'm a bit paranoid about hydration anyway--always carting around a 32oz bottle of water and slopping it all over--but these coaches are going to make me batshit. "Hydrate before you run, or you'll get dehydrated, go into convulsions, and DIE!" And when they say hydrate, they mean eight 12oz glasses a day when you're not exercising. If you're actually working out, you're supposed to drink more. "Drink till your urine is clear;" that's the motto. Well, I say that's more energy than I care to expend on my urine, thank you very much. I already spend half my life in the bathroom with my current level of hydration, which is about six to seven 8oz glasses per day. More water might impede my ability to hold down a job. So the upshot is, I'm drinking the damn coffee drink even though it's evening and I'm trying to keep my water levels up. It's Labor Day weekend, for crying out loud. I have to celebrate somehow.
Didn't do anything super exciting today. I went to the Marathon training group for the second week in a row, which meant I had to get up at 7am on a Saturday, but I was in bed early enough the night before to be fairly well rested. I think I'm really going to enjoy the group training. After our time trial last week at the opening session I ended up in the Orange group; the color indicating that we are Slow Ass runners. Within that section I placed myself in the eleven and a half minute mile group, although I don't know if I'll stay there. As I've never run in a situation where I worried much about keeping a consistent pace, I don't have a real good idea of how fast I typically run. I know I usually go pretty slowly, but I think I have the capacity to be on the less-embarassing end of slow, like ten to ten and a half minute miles. For instance, when I ran the 10K last December I started out extremely slowly. I did the first mile in, like, 12:45. But over the course of the race I speeded up until I blew through the last mile in something like eight minutes--a personal record--and I averaged about ten minute miles for the whole race. So I think I could be running faster, but would it be a good idea? Two miles or 6.2 miles is a lot different from 26 miles. I dunno how long I could keep up a faster pace, while I'm pretty confident that I can maintain the eleven and a half minute pace for quite a while. So we'll see about that. But I do enjoy running with a group. It's a nice change of scenery, even if that change usually reflects the stream of people passing me.
Other than run, I did a few errands, cleaned a bit, did a truly massive amount of laundry, and fixed dinner. Set the houseplants outside for a few hours of sun so they too could celebrate Labor Day. Threw out a deceased flower arrangement that S had brought us last Friday when we had people over for dinner. Started to watch a movie, then thought better of it. I had rented Chuck and Buck from Blockbuster because the reviews looked...well, I'd heard...okay, fine. Because I'd heard it had homoerotic content, alright? But I got about fifteen minutes into the movie, and it was really pinging my embarassment squick and giving me bad Nurse Betty-type vibes, so I turned it off and did laundry instead. Now the Hubster is at a night sailing race, and I'm contemplating reading Kellie Matthews' new dS story, but I don't know. On the one hand, the buzz is pretty good, and I typically like her stuff even if I'm not passionate about it. But on the other hand...it's over 600K. Six hundred. And I peeked at the beginning and I think it's in 12-point font, so not even big type. I'm scared to start something that long--I could lose the rest of the weekend. Not to even mention, I'm in the middle of an actual book that I ought to finish. So I dunno.
