Words’ End

Today, I feel like I’m under water.

Partly it’s allergies. (I have to fill a couple of prescriptions, one of them for an allergy med that ran out a few days ago.) Partly it’s the air, heavy with gray despite the relative presence of light. Also I haven’t had coffee yet, and have once again managed to get only six hours of sleep, which is not enough, in a big way.

But I was reasonably satisfied with what I got done at work yesterday, and plan to feel the same way today. As long as I stay away from reading the review book (only efficient when I’m awake) and stick to writing and writing and writing — some guidelines we’re working on, the work blog, a work email I owe people — I’ll be fine.

There’s a blue-dominated collage on my desk, featuring a sitting Buddha with butterfly wings. Inside, for once, I’m calm. Solstice is coming, I’m content to be right where I am and do exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t want anything right now.

OK, except maybe coffee.

S.A.D. is kicking my ass this year, but this doesn’t come close to last year’s suck. Of course, I’m also not in crisis mode this winter, but there’s still a lot going on, and it’s good and bad and hard to keep up with, and I’m swimming more than sinking, and that feels good.

Last winter was easily the worst time I’ve yet spent on this planet, but it taught me a lot about my own strengths, and these days I’m remembering the lessons and putting them into practice in completely different contexts. That also feels good.

Today I was… moody; let’s say, it wasn’t full-blown SAD crashing down on me like a storm cloud, there were just things that kept throwing me off-balance. I made it mostly a good day, but couldn’t stop the wild swinging until I started cooking. Only a few minutes into it I felt this weight that I hadn’t even known was there fall away. Happy conclusion, or re-learning, or what have you: cooking is not something I indulge myself in and carve out time for here and there. It’s nothing short of medicine. Remarkable, really.

Well, not exactly. But close! It was a horror flick, for sure, with some elements of classic horror both on film and in video games. Strange, as I don’t tend to like the genre, mostly because my excellent visual memory gives me nightmares afterward. The confusing part is, this dream followed a fantastic dinner with the housemates, a generally excellent evening, and a lovely IM conversation just before bed.

First I was at home, and I knew that sleeping here were also Molly and David, and AndyB, and some other people. (I know all of them in waking life, but don’t live with any of them.) They were all in a… band? Maybe in the band. I knew that the three of them and some others were going on a road trip when they woke up, and I distinctly remembered Molly saying to the some-others something to the effect of, y’all do what you want, but I am going to follow Andy up the river; he knows where all the good eating places are. I thought that maybe I should point them to a place I went to, up the river, but my diary entry for that place was more about the presentation, the good hostess who looked like a dancer, the pink tutu she was wearing, and a good but unremarkable meal. I decided against telling them; they might as well seek out remarkable meals, plus they were sleeping, plus there were bedding sheets in the fridge, which I didn’t understand and thought, maybe someone was having a fever, so I shouldn’t disturb them.

Next thing I know, we (who’s we? I don’t know, except Andy was there.) were in a big field; I feel like I knew where, and maybe it was even along the up-the-river route. At least part of it was a corn field, except the corn plants were all dead for the season and all the corn had been picked, and also the plants were in neat rows with trellises supporting them, which isn’t like any corn field I’ve ever seen. There were a few cobs left here and there, though ultimately I only found one. As soon as we plucked it, to bring to the… place where we were staying? as contribution for dinner maybe?… a monstrous vaguely-human was running right towards us. There appeared a… not exactly a worm, but something similar yet unmoving, at our feet. Andy, whose head seems in real life to be filled with obscure but vital information that comes in handy in a large variety of situations, told us to kill the monster by chopping up the worm. So we did. We chopped it up into little pieces with an ax. (?!) But then I was all alone, and more of those not-quite-zombies were running fast toward me, and there were three worms at my feet, and they were so tough that they wouldn’t break apart, and so I got surrounded.

A woman monster looked closely at me, and I said, please, just make it quick. She told her companions something like, this one’s mine, and amazingly they seemed to lose interest in me, though continued standing around. The woman monster started spinning round and round, presumably to transform into something that could more conveniently tear me limb from limb, and I realized that this was my only chance, and ran like hell. Nobody stopped me, because everyone had lost interest and the woman was busy transforming.

Then I woke up with a purring kitty on my chest and an asthma flare-up. Took some albuterol and wrote this down. Strange and seemingly disconnected from everything I’ve been thinking about lately.

…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.

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.

Right! I am once again falling into the trap of having so much to write that I don’t write anything. Bits and pieces are better than nothing. And so, bits and pieces.

In short: on Wednesday the 20th of last month I left home absurdly early and drove westward to Black Rock City, NV. I took a northerly route on the way there and went through Ohio, Duluth MN, Fargo ND, Billings MT, Custer National Forest, Yellowstone and Jackson Hole WY. I got to the burn in the afternoon on Monday the 25th, stayed in the desert until stupid-early in the morning on Monday the 1st, and got home around 4:30pm last Sunday the 7th. On the way home I went south to Las Vegas, and then drove through Albuquerque and Santa Fe NM, Tulsa OK, Little Rock AR, Memphis and Nashville and Knocksville TN, Pretty Everyplace PA and Sleepy Hollow, NY. I drove a total of 7,253.5 miles in my friend Molly’s little 2001 Honda Civic Something Just-Pre-Hybrid, which was a complete doll and got me an average of around 45mpg. I was gone nineteen days (Stephen King, where are you?) (The number 19 carries a huge significance in the Dark Tower series); my cats expressed their unequivocal disgruntlement, and are currently over it.

It was exhausting and exhilarating and exactly the cathartic road trip I wanted. I saw some friends I hadn’t seen for a long time, met new and fantastic people, had the best burn yet (of my meager three), and spent a lot of time thinking and singing, sometimes at the same time.

Neuromancer is a bitch to experience as an audio book if you’ve never read the paper copy before. When I told Mark (who gave me the audiobook for the road) about the difficulty I was having understanding anything that was going on, and mentioned it was my first pass through the novel, he looked downright sheepish. I am glad to report that, after several false starts, I did listen to it all the way through, and am now listening to the whole thing again. It is brilliant and well read.

It’s 11:18pm, and i’m sleepy. Many more thoughts on each of the above-mentioned places.

News in the past day or so: out-of-state couples will soon be able to marry in MA!!, as a 1913 state law originally aimed at interracial couples is repealed.

AND.

Jetpack.

I’d say we’re taking off, as a society.

Haven’t been updating, or not here anyway. Dealing with taxes and other emotionally loaded issues, as well as being super busy at work, participating in my village and preparing for Burning Man and its attendant road trip, have all kept me running around. You can see some of my life on Flickr. I suspect this – both the relative dearth of posting on Words’ End and the snippets viewable on Flickr – is going to continue for a while.

Today I went out on my bike for the first time in well over a year. Halleluiah for bike paths! I got past Arlington Center and out towards a football field – no idea how far that is from home, probably no more than four miles or so. Were it not getting dark fast (and had I had any water or food with me), I might’ve kept going – and will, soon, because oh gods that felt good.

Riding through swarms of insects out by Spy Pond in the dusk, though, maybe not so good. On the bright side, glasses double as mini eye shields!

On the way back, the ripening moon was peeking through the tree canopy straight ahead of and above me, along the path. And on ’til moonrise.

The lovely, warm evening ride gave me hope for dealing with the tax man tomorrow. Word to the wise: don’t be late filing your taxes. The penalties, they hurt.

At least one more ride this week. Next week I’d like to bike out to work.