…at 6:30am on a Saturday morning. To make home fries, some with bacon grease, some without, then get picked up in a big truck and go move some boxes from south of here to west of here. All of this before brunch, a couple of hours after which I’ll be hanging with a toddler for a while, and then with another one of my dearest.
Life doesn’t suck! Though maybe a little more sleep would be good.
…why it is I go to Burning Man, I invite you to watch the two collage excerpts from a BM documentary that’s being screened tonight at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in NYC. I watch these, and cry with longing.
This is as much a message out as a message inward: perhaps, when I doubt whether all the mad resources it takes to get there are worth it next year, this will remind me why I go.
Next year perhaps I’ll spin poi and drum; these are my two learning projects for the year.
This will be redundant if you read any of my housemates’ journals, but: I love my household. Interviewing potential new housemate last night was full of giggling and conversation about EVERYthing and cake and blueberry wine. I have my issues with living here (mostly having to do with allergies, and we’re working on this). But the people, and the circus band in my living room (oh, you think I’m kidding, do you?), and the art and science and foodie quotients are all near optimal.
My job continues to delight me. I suspect it’ll be taking up more of my brain in the next couple of months, as I transition from being almost exclusively computing support to doing more of the balanced mish-mosh of support and digital library work I’m supposed to be doing. This transition is right on schedule; I’m glad for the increased variety, and also glad to have had a reasonably intense introduction to networking and other larger computing issues at BU.
Random students whom I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met grin at me and compliment the blue hair. So do some of the faculty and staff at the school. Nobody has made a huge deal out of it, and nobody seems too weirded out. Also, I may have finally found a community event at work I’d probably feel consistently good participating in: Sabbath space, a sanctuary of sorts on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, in a beautiful chapel space used for prayer, quiet conversation, meditation and… coloring mandalas. Clearly not entirely Christian, for which I’m thankful. It’s been a strange landscape to navigate, this School of Theology. Before I came there, I thought STH was, you know, like majoring in religion except on a graduate level: you learn about as many different religions as you can, and do anthropology and cultural studies and stuff. But no, this is a Methodist seminary, and though they’re all excellent people and extremely tolerant and clearly versed in many religions (several faculty members have artifacts from all over East Asia in their offices), it’s still a Methodist seminary. People learn how to preach, they practice ministry, they graduate and go work in churches and on missions. To me, this is all alien, and the more vociferous Christian contingent hasn’t exactly been sane in this country of late, or anywhere ever. But, you know, so it goes. I’m there to do computer stuff, and to help create digital resources that help people of vastly different backgrounds find out about each other. I work with good people who do good work for their fellow human beings. Ultimately, what they believe in looks like a cross between anthropology, social activism and mythology to me. And I’d be willing to bet that not a single one of them has ever contemplated harming a doctor who performs abortions.
Spiritually speaking, I tend to steer clear of monotheism, and don’t like it around me. But the people at work are fascinating and multifaceted and kind and compassionate and, most of the time, present. I like people who are fully there in the moment with me.
It’s oh-gods-late, and I must go to sleep. There is a seven-day candle burning in my room; every one of those that burns down will light the next one until the vernal Equinox. A continuous flame through the darkest part of the year; thanks to Molly for the idea. G’night.
And I do, I really do. Via Rosa, by way of The Internet:
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
Although I’m thinking Joss is getting a run for his title.
New York Times’ Maureen Dowd contacted Sorkin to find out what happened when Obama met The West Wing‘s Democratic ex-President Jed Bartlet. Here’s what happened. (And here’s the LiveJournal backup link if you don’t have a NYTimes online account, and/or if NYTimes locks this thing down later.)
N.B., for the three people in the world who don’t know: The West Wing was fiction. So is President Bartlet. A shame, really.
Now with matching accessories!
A couple of spots are slightly lighter than the rest, almost turquoise. Dude in a coffee shop said, “Wow, it looks like there’s light coming out of your head.” I think I’ll keep it this way.
Lesson of the evening, learned for the 248th time: don’t drink strong coffee at 8pm if you want your sleep schedule to stay more or less normal.
On the other hand, party! For one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, on the occasion of her moving away to the Wrong Coast. With surprisingly fun karaoke, fantastic people and an impromptu aerial silks performance that, as usual, made me laugh in delight several times.
Conclusion: sleep is for the weak. (“But you’re weak, Vika.” – “Shut up.”)
Remember the Mooninite scare of last year? Well, Zebbler has put together a news-collage video to help you re-live the bad old days. Check it out, he says, before the news networks make him take it down:
01-31-07 Never Forget (aka the Great Boston Bomb Scare) from Zebbler on Vimeo.
And don’t forget to visit Zebbler’s site and Sean’s site.
Love you, guys. Keep making blinky shiny love art. And to the rest of you: has anything changed, do you think, in our collective attitude in the last year and a half?
Some helpful soul transcribed what-all Joe Cocker was singing at Woodstock. Helpful cat is helpful!
Don’t be drinking anything when you watch this, and oh, do watch it. Four-ish minutes.
Today marks eighteen years since I came to the U.S. with my family. I am a citizen of this country; I vote locally and nationally; both places that I call home are here. But I still don’t feel American. On the other hand, I don’t identify with any other single nation either.
This is neither positive nor negative; it just is. Actually, I kind of like this lack of an unequivocal anchor.
