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.

Lev Davidovitch

Don't read history to find heroes. Any good history (or biography) is going to show feet of clay... We are all only human, filled with spite and self-justification and blind spots. Gandhi didn't get on with his children and Martin Luther King, Jr., slept around. In my continued reading about the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union, I know I will get round to Trotsky soon. I already know enough to say that he is no hero. He may have had fewer people killed than Lenin (although I don't know how we'd count the victims fo the Red Army) and certainly fewer than Stalin ("Uncle Joe" had long years in power, besides being much more of a son-of-a-bitch) but his hands are still red. (Pun not intended but accepted?) And when I consider that he jumped from the Mencheviks to the Bolzoviks in 1917, and already by 1920 and the end of the Civil War was being marginalized by Lenin, I want to ask if the moral association with that group of thugs was worth those brief years. But he jumped because he wanted power. And the Bolshoviks where the ones who were going to get it, because they were a group of thugs, because they were willing to do whatever it took in the way of murder and betrayal to get power. But I feel a little wistful for my imagined image of Trotsky. The firey orator, the thinker, the writer, the slut, the fighter for truth and justice... So, there's a list of some of my values. Never a bad thing to have. But no shelter from what I know to be the truth, when I start learning about his life, I will learn of repugnant things. And the reason why I prefer him over Lenin and Stalin... Lenin got his name from his writing. He moved from psuedonym to pseudonym, re-arranging the letters in his last name to create new names at need. Lenin is the one that stuck, or that made him famous. Stalin, ah yes, literally the man of steel. So telling. Trotsky? He took the name from the warden of a prison he escaped. That's a nice bit of surrealistic play.