The Search for Self...

I was going to write something about how I am an absurdist, and yet I am in some ways a sad person. Then I looked up Absurdism in Wikipedia (didn't want to make a fool of myself) and decided that if it meant reading Kirkegaard (sp?) and Camus, then no, I'm not an absurdist. What we need, perhaps, is a way to separate people who think about philosophies and people who do them. And maybe even those who live them.

Not that I've really lived a philosophy in any grand sense. I was in the Bay Area during the eighties and only went to two Cacophony events. So much of my life is in my head. But I hate philosophy--it rattles around in my head in a totally meaningless way. Good stories are different. I wish I had some.

The weather is sort of dreadful. And I feel more prey to it just sitting there. (Whoops, am I in the wrong blog?)

Do I have to be associated with "a movement"? Probably not. It does help to have a label to slap on yourself in conversation. Of course, I don't know how to talk to people... I'm too intense. Still--I'm pushing 50! I don't think I'll ever become a quiet suburban type. I'm going to be the terror of the old folks home. First off, I'll have been pushing my own chair for years! But most of all, I'm not very good at just going along to get along. (I may even have that backwards.) I get stubborn and yell out what I think is true.
It sounds like I'm bragging, and of course I love myself, but it's difficult to live this way. Always having too many odd corners to even be a square peg. Work, relationships, always seem to be outside my grasp. Yes, I've had my current job for 10 years. But I don't know if there's room for advancement. And grade increases seem to be caught in bureaucratic tangles.

I have no idea what this edition is about.
This blog is typeset in Georgia. I thought about Helvetica, but this seemed a little more daring.

What I hate..

... about the way the aftermath of these shootings plays out in our culture.

Amateur analysis. Idiots with no better understanding of why people do this and no more training than watching too much Law and Order (or reading too much true crime) offer up lack of god or mother issues or whatever cliche has been making the rounds for the past two or three shootings.

The instant replay of the whole gun debate. I'm not sure if any of this is actually new, or is everyone simply repeating what they say the last 20 times. I'm also not sure of the actual power of these debates ... discussions ... ritual calls and responses to change people's minds. Instead, we have a bunch of endlessly recycled "clever" remarks and photos with text that is supposed to be devastating to the other side, but is just the same ol' same ol', repackaged for the 21st century.

I suppose that in that first instance, any explanation is better than looking into that abyss. And for the second? Anger is better than pain, than grief--that other abyss, I suppose.

And I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. I'd like actual solutions to come about. I'd like for young white men to turn their backs on their inner monsters. (Maybe young, white men can't do that, because they aren't Klien bottles. Okay, I'm going for the familiar comfort of mixing metaphors.)
Or maybe it's because we have to do so much untwisting in order to make progress...
If we posit that we have tied ourselves into knots, culturally speaking, that we have made ourselves into (metaphoric--and not exactly a comfortable one for me to use) cripples who cannot walk straight, straighten our bodies, straighten our souls (boy the words I'm using)--then all of this Sturm und Drang is simply the mouse wheel that we run, and run, and run and never get anywhere on, because if we want to walk somewhere, directly, gayly forward, we have to do the work of untwisting the lies we tell ourselves and each other, rebalance our bodies, strengthen ourselves where we are weak, and hurt, hurt, hurt, bleed, bleed, bleed where we have tied ourselves off from the truth.
(And really and truly, I don't know what's what with the metaphors I chose. I suspect that it comes from, in part, a need for strong words to express the sort of "untwisting" I did in my head, as I tried to wrap it around the huge, tangled spaghettis of contradictions and horrors and snakes and shadows and chains and connections and sorrow that lives... somewhere... Isn't it annoying how the unexplained resists explanation?)

he only took tips

I'm not sure what to talk about.
How about tipping?
How much are we supposed to tip at cafes? I usually give 10%. I don't think it's as much work as waiter/ess, less walking for one thing. But I don't like to leave nothing. So ~10% for counter work and 15+% for table...
And bartenders. It's a dollar or two per drink. I'm beginning to think that that's bizarre, are they getting more than cocktail waitresses? and if they are, is it the old preference of male over female and mind work (mixing drinks) over schlepping things/physical?
Not that that's all that simple.

Not really a blogging breakthrough, but it may be time to slog out an entry or two to get to something deeper. Practice and all...

Dessert

You can call it irony, you can call it a plot twist, you can call it a just dessert for my wicked ways, but a couple of weeks ago, my boss took me aside and said that the Clear the Clutter people had photographed my cubicle and turned me into the Division Deputy Director as a messy cube.
I had to write a plan to get it done by end of the month.
Can I say that it was sort of like being a child.
But, I decided to do it with the best grace possible.

I only allow myself one extra fedex box. (I use them to put mixed paper in. I have a full box for white, because there's a lot of paper that goes through my hands and into the recycling.) Toss it out at the end of the week.

I'm hauling all sorts of stuff home, as well. Aegean Stables, anyone?

I don't know if I'm allowed to have a whole spindle of used cds, or if I have to take those down for recycling weekly, too.

Today, at the com center, I found two boxes... Three or four feet long, 8 to 10 inches high, about an inch deep.

I brought them home...

Off-Shoot

I am seriously getting ready to do a separate blog focused on my amputations and life in a wheelchair.
I can't think of a good title. "Without Restraint" is going to be the title of my second post. It's about public transit. Not "Hell on Wheels". Not ...
Well, I can't think of many of the rejection titles... I know there was another one with "wheels" in it though.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/S-F-Target-makes-Metreon-a-better-box-3934217.php#photo-3550879
I work near the Metreon. There's a pretty good food court, and so I like to go there. Problem. If I go to the actual court, as opposed to the restaurants that are directly on the street, I have to take one of those weird cripple elevators that some places use. You may have seen them, they are open, have room for one and are made of steel or something like that. All too often, when I take it, I cannot open the door at the bottom. Sure the guard will open it for me, but fuck that. I feel like a cattle (beeve is probably the correct word) in a chute. Thank you.
I can go around the other side. I doesn't take me long. I can zip around the building.
There's a big bank of doors, 6 or so. The one on the far left as I enter is the one with the button to open it for me to push. All of the rest of the doors open to a ramp. In front of the cripple door there's a three-riser staircase. Are they tone-deaf to the need of the disabled community to feel welcomed and part of the whole? Or are they just following the ADA the same way a 10-year old boy follows the demand that he cleans up his room--dragging his heels, following the letter not the spirit.

*eyeroll*

Plugging Away

My new thought is to rate things on a scale of one to ten and get rid of anything below a seven. Haven't done much with that, but I'm plugging away.

Over-Shopping

The over-shopping this past weekend was entangled with the whole drama with the break up of Terminal City and apparent break up of Apokiliptika... How totally banal of me, using material goods to paper over the cracks in my mind/soul/heart. How, darned, American...

This thing has been a blow to my pride... first off, there's the rejection thing. Then there's my trouble in dealing with it, with re-establishing my equilibrium.

I'll say it here. I loved Smashy and Jet and Raga. I loved Terminal City and I enjoyed hanging out at the  shade structure last year. And confronting that damn art car--um mutant vehicle.

Baggage--child of divorce (blah, blah, blah)

Am I still the Miracle Train Baby?

Dare I use that as an avatar?

*********************************************************************************

This is a very half formed blog, here for the discipline of blogging, rather than because I have a clear thought to share.

I'll leave it up. It can serve as a benchmark of how low I can go, bloggishly.

Meanwhile...

So, I have gotten sidetracked from the issues of hoarding.
Today I went out and went to all sorts of retail outlets. I got:

1. three plastic jar things
2. a bag of licorice
3. four books (plus one out of a free box)
4. a cd--which I"m not even going to burn for a while--it's Russian
5. and three little tea tins from that free box.

That is all

Moving Trains

In the past month or so--twice during the burn, once this week--three people (all women--does that make a difference?) have told me (paraphrased) "I don't bother with all the politics". The first two were in response to the deliberate brake up of Terminal City and the freeze-out of Apokiliptika, the Swish Embassy, and Sex, Filth Avenue. (Without the person doing the breaking up, telling everyone what was going on.) The third was in response to the utter collapse of Apokiliptika itself.

All these people were planning on, or actually, camping with the entities that were given birth to in the break up. I don't get it. Of course, I've always got that thing in the back of my head from being slightly jewish. That thing that says: They'll kill you! But more than that: Fuck you, if no one camped with the Black Rock Army because of the despicable actions of its founder than it wouldn't it exist. You are tacitly giving approval to the method of the break up when you camp there.
Ditto the woman going back to Kilbuck and his Sideshow...

You can't be neutral on a runaway train...
All that it requires for evil to triumph in this world is for good people to do nothing.
or

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller

I had no trouble telling the woman from Apok where to get off... the others are more problematic for me. I don't feel fond of either for right now, but things change and one at least has been a good friend for some years. I'd call her my best friend at the burn. *sigh* 

Somedays I want to tell people I gnawed off my legs to get out of a trap. This is one of those days when it sorta feels like a good thing.

...jumble...

It is at times like these I do not know how to approach a blog. My experience is more in the area of journaling. I think that the journals did help me develop a voice that was honest. (Well, there's always room for more honesty; we hide ourselves reflexively, and almost never can take off all the layers...) So, not honest, but honest-ish and open to the fact that it may turn out I am very wrong. Oh, and the taking responcibility that is my own experience, not a truth for the ages. With the same caveats as above.
I don't know what to say. I am, of course, still processing my feelings on the whole tabasco (I know, fiasco, but I want to be mrs. malaprop, and this is my blog so I get to.) And I'm trying to rush myself--I want to figure out what I'm doing 11 months from now--right now! I want to get to some sort of end game, that rewards those injured and injures those who were careless with the rest of us. I want to hand feed some people crow. And I don't much feel like plucking it--they can eat the feathers, too.
How much of myself dare I reveal on line? If I say something that's true now, because of the rawness and the grief, will I want to, be forced to, stand by it in a year's time?

In some odd way, it comes at a good time. I want to stand back from my involvement on the boards--it takes up so much time--and maybe move into blogging. I've certainly had enough impetus to blog--nothing like pain to inspire the writing.

And, of course, if I stop going to the event, I will have time and money to do something else.

Implosion

I found out that Apokliptica is probably done for.

Fuck, less than a month ago I learned that my village had been killed by a stake to the heart.

I kinda don't want to go to the burn without Apokiliptika. I really don't want to go to the burn w/o Apokiliptika.
I've stayed in five camps. And nothing against the other four--Apok fit! I want to sit in the Kantina and be political officer. I want to find 30 more random, incomplete matrushkas. I want to learn Russian--heck, I just bought some tapes...

Maybe I'll just go to Russia instead.

I can think of three camps that would have me, right off. Actually, four, but the sideshow thing really isn't that interesting to me. I've been the bearded lady for more than 30 years, I want the things that I lost to depression and stein-levenfalls, not more of the fucking sane. And I asked a fifth in my first shock of being homeless.

I'm thinking of starting an eplaya bidding war, just for the fuck of it.

I haven't cried like this since Scott died...

I can't really add to this. Too broken-hearted...

No One Has Ever Written Poetry About Me

Probably just as well. I don't do poetry well. It annoys me. Probably less spoken aloud, but reading poetry just causes the words to rattle around in my head so I can't understand them. So if some guy had ever written poetry to me, I would have stepped on his poor open heart with the savage cleats of my laughter.

Nonetheless...

I had one great love;  I had one man very much in love with me. Fuck, we got married... That's already more than many women have had. But I never had much of feeling of womanly power. Not sexual power, necessarily, but the almost certainly mythical love of ... well, something. Something that happens all the time in books (and movies and songs, too, but those don't get into my mind and heart in the same way as a novel.)

At this moment I am simultaneously angry that books lied about those things and that I've never had them. And at myself for wanting something that doesn't exist.

And maybe at the world, because I'm pushing 50, and it's not likely I'll ever capture someone's attention  that way.

And I wish I could turn this into some sort of magic card that would permit me to smite certain persons for fucking these imaginary things up for me.

The saving grace, if there is one, is that at least I don't take all this too seriously. Maybe I notice that part of me needs some care, but not as any actual deserving...

what-fucking-ever

A Joy Forever?

Maybe not a thing of beauty. Still, it has an over done awesomeness, overkill, a huge metal industrial tool that ten or twenty years later would be a cheezy plastic one. In avocado green or seventies gold. It does me no earthly good. I don't think I'm going to make labels with it. If I were even going to look for tape for it, I wouldn't know where to find it if not for the White Elephant Sale... This is more of a chrome elephant, I guess.

Yet, it's hard to let it go.

Before the burn I was reading a book http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Compulsive-Hoarding-Meaning-Things/dp/B005OHUP5O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1348368549&sr=8-2&keywords=stuff which was sort of shallow and annoying, the way most non-fiction books seem to be these days. But I did respond to one of the major ideas--that hoarders have trouble letting go of stuff because they see it as meaningful and not mere trash. Pity the hoarder in 21st century America--all sorts of stuff with all sorts of planned obsolescence constantly churned up by fashion.

I don't think I'll surprise anyone with the revelation that I am a hoarder. So, I'm trying to use this blog as a way to track and understand my feelings as I try to get rid of stuff. And I secretly hope that by taking photos of the odd beauty that I am moved by I can get stuff like this, fantastic stuff like this, that I will not have to own the damn objects myself.

Ironically, I cannot find the charger for my camera because it's lost in the piles. Oh well, I could see this as a voyage of discovery, discovery of all the wonderful stuff I can't find because it's under other wonderful (and not so wonderful) stuff. Including the charger...

Why Limpopo Kicks Ass!

So, why do I like Limpopo so much more than the Red Elvises...
Limpopo is rooted in, well, I cannot say Russian Popular music, but certainly assuming that they are about my age to maybe 5 or 10 years younger, a lot of what they play fucks with the sort of music they would have heard on Soviet radio or television. A lot if is rooted in what have become cliches: Volga Boatmen/Volga Haulers/Ey, ukhnem!, Dark Eyes, Kalinka, Korobeyniki, and Katiusha to list a few of the most familier. I've been sort of training myself to like these Russian standards. I'm sure I got fixated on some of those songs playing Tetris back when I had a Mac SE. But I listen to the Red Army Choir a lot, and the Leningrad Cowboys, who also mine those particular songs for all sorts of things.
Katiusha is my particular downfall. First off, That's The Song They Named The Rockets After!, and I guess that years of peripherally hearing "Katiusha Rockets" on the news it just sunk in as a sort of cool phrase. Then, it's so damn Russian. The girl is wandering in the orchard of blooming trees by the river, blah, blah, blah. Third, it has a lot of weird videos on youtube. It's a perennial patriotic favorite, and if you're producing a Victory Day celebration, you better include it. Finally, it's a pretty kick ass song. And Limpopo does it well. And pokes fun at the tradition as well.
Now, I'm fixated on odd musical instruments, and the accordion tops that list. (Okay, it's not really odd, but it is an instrument that doesn't fit in the rock tradition.) And they have accordion. And they have a bass trombone. And I love that bass trombone. I don't know that I've ever heard a bass trombone anywhere else, and I may never do so. But I love that brass trombone...
And the Red Elvises? They are so adapted to the pop american ear... They sound like most pop music--or at least pop music that isn't in the sappy ballad/easy listening vein of pop music. They just aren't as special. Yeah, I Want to See you Belly Dance is pretty good. I'm glad that people that give me such pleasure are getting bigger chunks of cash and more exposure. But it just sounds like most pop music. Yeah, it's better than a lot of it, but it simply isn't very interesting to me.