So yeah, yesterday my bosses sat down with me and had a chat. Not the right job for me, will give good recommendations, want to send me out with no hard feelings. Bout as well as it could have gone. I just nodded a lot and said yes, I agree completely. Because I do. I've been hanging on out of sheer stubbornness pretty much since I got hired. Trying to do a job an order of magnitude more difficult than any you've previously held in a fast-paced environment while no one will tell you what your job is actually supposed to entail or explain to you how to go about it was never the part I liked. The part I liked was being able to almost manage to do it in spite of everything.
I told Mom on the phone last night (Amber and Pearl weren't home) just that I was "actively looking for another job". They are apparently being super nice about it and might (I'll ask tomorrow) be letting me tell people I resigned rather than got fired. Lady boss even called her dad's office and asked the manager there if the doc and his group needed anybody. Their physical therapy clinic is about to be looking for a receptionist; I said I'd interview for it but I'm none too keen on the receptionist gig.
Looking on Craigslist today was a little irritating for a similar reason. I felt like Goldilocks scoping out the porridge. Too big a job, too small a job. Red flags (to my eye) in the postings signifying a nasty boss, a truly ass-smashing level of busyness, or a company with no proverbial legs. Sent out a couple of resumes, but I don't feel too happy with my cover letter emails. I'll have to, grr, coordinate with Mom on what to put in those as I continue to apply for shit.
I feel a strange mixture of optimism and lack of confidence. I know I can adapt to all sorts of places and situations, but on the other hand I'm not too strong on having a "professional appearance!" or being "deadline-driven!" or any of that shit.
My big hope is that I can get something not too ass-smashing reasonably close by and still have enough time and energy to keep practicing with the stringy thing and start to practice writing more prose. Wanna start a band. Wanna write stories. Wanna be a shrink. Wanna be a teacher. Waah waah, working as an accountant is lame.
note:
The crows actually did weird me out, it seems.
I couldn't stop thinking about them the rest of the night. The thought that annoyed me most was this. What if, instead of the incident indicating some kind of message for me, what if it indicated an opportunity for me to send a message, make a suggestion, take an action? And in having too generally passive an attitude, there was an opportunity and I did not take it? Today I'm just annoyed with myself for putting focus and energy into this crap when visible life needs my attention.
For the second night in a row, I had a weird series of emotional-fighty things happen as I was falling asleep. Couldn't remember my dreams.
I couldn't stop thinking about them the rest of the night. The thought that annoyed me most was this. What if, instead of the incident indicating some kind of message for me, what if it indicated an opportunity for me to send a message, make a suggestion, take an action? And in having too generally passive an attitude, there was an opportunity and I did not take it? Today I'm just annoyed with myself for putting focus and energy into this crap when visible life needs my attention.
For the second night in a row, I had a weird series of emotional-fighty things happen as I was falling asleep. Couldn't remember my dreams.
speaking of that bitch
Got sent home early with half my day's work done. Which, oh, included half a day's work from last week that I couldn't finish cause I didn't have enough damn time.
Instead here let me post up a song I wrote the other day. It's my new happysong.
-----
[that bitch]
who says I never wanna take a chance
who says I never try
who says I never wear my underpants
who says I always lie
and pretend
that I'm somebody
who says I don't deserve the time of day
deserve a piece of pie
who says I don't deserve to run away
with you into the sky
the horizon in front of me
she's jealous I've got
all I desire
that bitch in my mirror's a liar
a liar, a liar
it only takes a little criticism
takes a little poke
she can deflate me with a witticism
make it just a joke
that I just wanna make you come
or maybe something got away from me
it wriggled through the crack
she's acting like she's all afraid for me
I'll never get it back
oh, there's no more
where that came from
she's mad I got up
when she'd thrown me
that bitch in my mirror don't own me
don't own me, don't own me
there's something on the other side of me
it's dancing to get out
she makes an ugly little pile in me
of fear and shame and doubt
shoves it all up against the door
but now it ain't to her I'm listening
I swear I'm gonna learn
love and grace and gifts and giving
ain't no thing you gotta earn
let me learn
what my heart is for
where is truth, where is love
there is power
that bitch in my mirror's a coward
a coward, a coward
-----
On my way back to the apartment from the train I saw five black crows chilling in the unpaved parking lot across the street. Maybe six. I told them hello, I was happy to see them, they were beautiful. Extremely beautiful. As soon as they caught sight of me one flew up to a wire and checked me out, and when I crossed the street onto my block it came over and sat on top of the lamppost I was walking under. I told it thanks for stopping by, that I wished I understood but I didn't understand. As I was heading up to the front steps I told another one, which was looking at me from a lamppost across the street, that if it really wanted to reach me, dreams were the best way because I have a head like a rock. At that the five of them took off and flew into the alleyway that leads behind the building, but a sixth stayed on the lamppost across the street and watched me till Dave came down to let me in the front door.
Things like this no longer weird me out. They seem as natural as people stumbling over their own feet if I look at them suddenly when I'm roiling with tension, or environmental city noises providing appropriate punctuation to important conversations, or warning omens preceding bad luck or the impulse to a stupid decision.
I don't even think of that as what magic is anymore.
Instead here let me post up a song I wrote the other day. It's my new happysong.
-----
[that bitch]
who says I never wanna take a chance
who says I never try
who says I never wear my underpants
who says I always lie
and pretend
that I'm somebody
who says I don't deserve the time of day
deserve a piece of pie
who says I don't deserve to run away
with you into the sky
the horizon in front of me
she's jealous I've got
all I desire
that bitch in my mirror's a liar
a liar, a liar
it only takes a little criticism
takes a little poke
she can deflate me with a witticism
make it just a joke
that I just wanna make you come
or maybe something got away from me
it wriggled through the crack
she's acting like she's all afraid for me
I'll never get it back
oh, there's no more
where that came from
she's mad I got up
when she'd thrown me
that bitch in my mirror don't own me
don't own me, don't own me
there's something on the other side of me
it's dancing to get out
she makes an ugly little pile in me
of fear and shame and doubt
shoves it all up against the door
but now it ain't to her I'm listening
I swear I'm gonna learn
love and grace and gifts and giving
ain't no thing you gotta earn
let me learn
what my heart is for
where is truth, where is love
there is power
that bitch in my mirror's a coward
a coward, a coward
-----
On my way back to the apartment from the train I saw five black crows chilling in the unpaved parking lot across the street. Maybe six. I told them hello, I was happy to see them, they were beautiful. Extremely beautiful. As soon as they caught sight of me one flew up to a wire and checked me out, and when I crossed the street onto my block it came over and sat on top of the lamppost I was walking under. I told it thanks for stopping by, that I wished I understood but I didn't understand. As I was heading up to the front steps I told another one, which was looking at me from a lamppost across the street, that if it really wanted to reach me, dreams were the best way because I have a head like a rock. At that the five of them took off and flew into the alleyway that leads behind the building, but a sixth stayed on the lamppost across the street and watched me till Dave came down to let me in the front door.
Things like this no longer weird me out. They seem as natural as people stumbling over their own feet if I look at them suddenly when I'm roiling with tension, or environmental city noises providing appropriate punctuation to important conversations, or warning omens preceding bad luck or the impulse to a stupid decision.
I don't even think of that as what magic is anymore.
ach, I give up, I need to make some words
My hours at work have been cut down during the summer slow period. Which, in addition to making me cut into my insurance money for bills, means I have less work time to do the same work. Oy. On a similar note, we sat down and did a monthly expenses thing last week. And yeah, our monthly expenses are more than I make at the moment, by a couple hundred at least. So when insurance money runs out, situation could be bad indeed. No cable and no internet bad.
However, there is in this nothing new or scarier than I already knew it was.
I have been practicing not panicking. I want to get a "DON'T PANIC" tattoo on the part of my right thumb that connects with my wrist. For now if I just mentally picture it in letters of fire and stare at the spot until my mind goes blank, it will if nothing else become a reasonably effective prayer/spell/whatever.
Responsibility doesn't have to drive you crazy or make you less of a fun person. I've spent days, months, weeks at a time being frustrated at various responsible people (Dad notable among them) for allowing the panic brought on by responsibility to rule them and make them miserable. Which means it would be hypocritical of me not to try and overcome the same panicky urges in myself, be they howsoever...persistent.
Dave has been great about getting me calmed down when possible, and not egging me on when calming down is impossible. In fact it was him that pointed out how much I'd been letting myself panic and how much unnecessary unhappiness it was causing me. Have I told everyone lately how I admire his singleminded pursuit of happiness?
But I should stop talking about this. Thinking about the panic makes it more likely to resurface, especially considering I'm at work right now.
I re-read Paladin of Souls yesterday. It was wonderful and uplifting and all the awesome stuff we always say about Bujold. Among the many other life lessons of which the book reminded me, I've been turning this one over in my mind a great deal. In order to be a proper mage of whatever type I turn out to be, I have to maintain my psyche demon-free. This is not to say I can't be friends with elemental creatures or people. Friends, however, just stop by when you have a reason to chill or work with them. It takes a very special circumstance for a genuine ally type invisible friend to take up long term residence in your psyche. Whereas with demons (parasitic elementals, predatory emotiforms, whatever you wanna call 'em) taking up residence is half of their raison d'etre.
Yesterday was a very calm, happy, meditative day for me. It occurred to me that maintaining a completely demon-free psyche is a most pleasant way to live. Takes a lot of effort and bandwidth, but I'm already spending that in pretty much that direction anyway. I am just at the point where the self-maintenance energy I've accustomed myself to always exerting can be distributed in a more efficient manner.
Enough for now. I have the usual shitload to do and pitiful little time to do it in.
However, there is in this nothing new or scarier than I already knew it was.
I have been practicing not panicking. I want to get a "DON'T PANIC" tattoo on the part of my right thumb that connects with my wrist. For now if I just mentally picture it in letters of fire and stare at the spot until my mind goes blank, it will if nothing else become a reasonably effective prayer/spell/whatever.
Responsibility doesn't have to drive you crazy or make you less of a fun person. I've spent days, months, weeks at a time being frustrated at various responsible people (Dad notable among them) for allowing the panic brought on by responsibility to rule them and make them miserable. Which means it would be hypocritical of me not to try and overcome the same panicky urges in myself, be they howsoever...persistent.
Dave has been great about getting me calmed down when possible, and not egging me on when calming down is impossible. In fact it was him that pointed out how much I'd been letting myself panic and how much unnecessary unhappiness it was causing me. Have I told everyone lately how I admire his singleminded pursuit of happiness?
But I should stop talking about this. Thinking about the panic makes it more likely to resurface, especially considering I'm at work right now.
I re-read Paladin of Souls yesterday. It was wonderful and uplifting and all the awesome stuff we always say about Bujold. Among the many other life lessons of which the book reminded me, I've been turning this one over in my mind a great deal. In order to be a proper mage of whatever type I turn out to be, I have to maintain my psyche demon-free. This is not to say I can't be friends with elemental creatures or people. Friends, however, just stop by when you have a reason to chill or work with them. It takes a very special circumstance for a genuine ally type invisible friend to take up long term residence in your psyche. Whereas with demons (parasitic elementals, predatory emotiforms, whatever you wanna call 'em) taking up residence is half of their raison d'etre.
Yesterday was a very calm, happy, meditative day for me. It occurred to me that maintaining a completely demon-free psyche is a most pleasant way to live. Takes a lot of effort and bandwidth, but I'm already spending that in pretty much that direction anyway. I am just at the point where the self-maintenance energy I've accustomed myself to always exerting can be distributed in a more efficient manner.
Enough for now. I have the usual shitload to do and pitiful little time to do it in.
Tuesdays With Abhorrent Fiends vol. 38 (final edition?)
This blog has been up for almost four years now, which is a heckuva long time for a blog. I know it's only been a few days since I last posted, but I've been thinking about a lot of stuff in those few days.
People react to life changes in many different ways, and one of my reactions to Dad's death was to throw myself more firmly into work. To "buy in" in the sense of becoming emotionally committed to an organization in a way I've never really done before. I've seen other people who go through the motions, don't invest their emotions in their roles at work, and end up hopping from job to job in a vain search for that perfect "government work" type position where they can get adequately paid for doing virtually nothing at all. Some do find it. I've seen other people commit heedlessly or thoughtlessly, pouring themselves into job roles where their talents may be misused or where people of the first type abuse them shamelessly until they're burned out. Some of those, too, get lucky and find a job where neither the manipulation nor the risk of burnout is severe enough to grind them to a halt.
Perhaps that dead Greek guy was right (don't recall whether it was Aristotle or Plato) that virtue lies in the median between the two extremes of any quality a person can have. Then let us say I've moved a smidge closer to the "job commitment" pole of the spectrum in search of virtue.
Leaving the question of virtue aside, this development has had the effect of vastly reducing my internet time. I had been accustomed all through my work life to getting the bulk of my websurfing time on the job. Maybe the lack of a second computer at home has decreased my web time. Maybe it's just that I have Dave there, with whom I can chill and hang out for long periods of time without strain, as opposed to Dad, from whom I did tend to hide a bit after the first two or three hours of nightly discourse. (Discourse in this case mostly means listening.)
So I am starting to ask myself, have I really got the minerals to support two blogs? I mostly need a blog, in practice, as a reasonably safe and central place to store any poetry or lyrics I happen to come up with. Considering the beginnings of this blog and the mental territory it has traversed, is this the representation of myself I want to put forward? However nice it may make me feel to imagine all that is an expression of "cards on the table" honesty, I wonder if it isn't something closer to intellectual mastrubation. Because you, the handful of people who actually bother to read the thing, are there because you like me as a real person. Not because my text is germane to the interests you are pursuing in your own life.
And maybe that, too, is another thought that's been leading me down this track. I've had a good run with my blog being my personal brainvomit station. It has been a very important therapeutic tool. But having a blog as a therapeutic tool isn't enough anymore.
It rather amuses me that what bubbled this post up out of my emotional soup on the matter was something that happened over at Accidental Historian. Some guy who Geds had reason to know from real life (I'll spare the details) took it into his head to leave religiony comments on some posts. These were not content-rich comments; rather the jist of them went something like, "I'm going to completely ignore the points you are attempting to make, restructure the discussion according to my pet definitions, and then condescendingly chide you for not toeing the moral line I have helpfully imputed here for you." None of my comments over there actually altered the discussion, to be sure. As I said to Dave yesterday, I got all amped up and took it into my head that the level of discourse could be raised, when I should have stuck to observed facts and participated in lowering it.
What that tells me about me is that I yearn for hatting. Pine for it. The mere presence of a reasonably articulate troll sent me into spasms of text. Not that I should feel bad about my reaction exactly--look at the example of the great discoursers of Western history. Socrates had an endless stream of trollish Athenians of wealth and influence (not to mention youth and stupidity) to spark his mischievous Muse. Shakespeare had Spencer and Will Kemp and all the other leading lights of the Elizabethan theater circuit, who all fought tooth and nail for market share and hung onto legal legitimacy by the skin of their teeth. (But oh, did Elizabethans ever have skin on their teeth.) Even the mighty Jesus had the Pharisees to kick around.
But they all went out and earned their own debate partners, both the noble wit-matchers and the blustering trolls. I should not be attempting to bogart the trolls of my friends! I should be attracting my own with the irresistible lure of my shiny content!
Which means I should probably be doing it somewhere else. Not here, where some of the painfullest and most ludicrous of my thoughts and deeds are recorded right here in gray and white (formerly tan and darker tan).
I believe that it is time for me to consider either moving to my other blog in its entirely, or deactivating both and inaugurating a new blog. A blog of splendor and magnificence. A blog worthy to be my workbook 2.0 for my next big project now that I've finished denizen and CONSUMER--my first-ever prose project. A blog worthy, in short, of the Anatomy of Trust.
People react to life changes in many different ways, and one of my reactions to Dad's death was to throw myself more firmly into work. To "buy in" in the sense of becoming emotionally committed to an organization in a way I've never really done before. I've seen other people who go through the motions, don't invest their emotions in their roles at work, and end up hopping from job to job in a vain search for that perfect "government work" type position where they can get adequately paid for doing virtually nothing at all. Some do find it. I've seen other people commit heedlessly or thoughtlessly, pouring themselves into job roles where their talents may be misused or where people of the first type abuse them shamelessly until they're burned out. Some of those, too, get lucky and find a job where neither the manipulation nor the risk of burnout is severe enough to grind them to a halt.
Perhaps that dead Greek guy was right (don't recall whether it was Aristotle or Plato) that virtue lies in the median between the two extremes of any quality a person can have. Then let us say I've moved a smidge closer to the "job commitment" pole of the spectrum in search of virtue.
Leaving the question of virtue aside, this development has had the effect of vastly reducing my internet time. I had been accustomed all through my work life to getting the bulk of my websurfing time on the job. Maybe the lack of a second computer at home has decreased my web time. Maybe it's just that I have Dave there, with whom I can chill and hang out for long periods of time without strain, as opposed to Dad, from whom I did tend to hide a bit after the first two or three hours of nightly discourse. (Discourse in this case mostly means listening.)
So I am starting to ask myself, have I really got the minerals to support two blogs? I mostly need a blog, in practice, as a reasonably safe and central place to store any poetry or lyrics I happen to come up with. Considering the beginnings of this blog and the mental territory it has traversed, is this the representation of myself I want to put forward? However nice it may make me feel to imagine all that is an expression of "cards on the table" honesty, I wonder if it isn't something closer to intellectual mastrubation. Because you, the handful of people who actually bother to read the thing, are there because you like me as a real person. Not because my text is germane to the interests you are pursuing in your own life.
And maybe that, too, is another thought that's been leading me down this track. I've had a good run with my blog being my personal brainvomit station. It has been a very important therapeutic tool. But having a blog as a therapeutic tool isn't enough anymore.
It rather amuses me that what bubbled this post up out of my emotional soup on the matter was something that happened over at Accidental Historian. Some guy who Geds had reason to know from real life (I'll spare the details) took it into his head to leave religiony comments on some posts. These were not content-rich comments; rather the jist of them went something like, "I'm going to completely ignore the points you are attempting to make, restructure the discussion according to my pet definitions, and then condescendingly chide you for not toeing the moral line I have helpfully imputed here for you." None of my comments over there actually altered the discussion, to be sure. As I said to Dave yesterday, I got all amped up and took it into my head that the level of discourse could be raised, when I should have stuck to observed facts and participated in lowering it.
What that tells me about me is that I yearn for hatting. Pine for it. The mere presence of a reasonably articulate troll sent me into spasms of text. Not that I should feel bad about my reaction exactly--look at the example of the great discoursers of Western history. Socrates had an endless stream of trollish Athenians of wealth and influence (not to mention youth and stupidity) to spark his mischievous Muse. Shakespeare had Spencer and Will Kemp and all the other leading lights of the Elizabethan theater circuit, who all fought tooth and nail for market share and hung onto legal legitimacy by the skin of their teeth. (But oh, did Elizabethans ever have skin on their teeth.) Even the mighty Jesus had the Pharisees to kick around.
But they all went out and earned their own debate partners, both the noble wit-matchers and the blustering trolls. I should not be attempting to bogart the trolls of my friends! I should be attracting my own with the irresistible lure of my shiny content!
Which means I should probably be doing it somewhere else. Not here, where some of the painfullest and most ludicrous of my thoughts and deeds are recorded right here in gray and white (formerly tan and darker tan).
I believe that it is time for me to consider either moving to my other blog in its entirely, or deactivating both and inaugurating a new blog. A blog of splendor and magnificence. A blog worthy to be my workbook 2.0 for my next big project now that I've finished denizen and CONSUMER--my first-ever prose project. A blog worthy, in short, of the Anatomy of Trust.
but the ghost
There's a longer, more descriptive story that goes with this song, but it's not going up here. I may put it in the official, totally unaffiliated blog if I have time. But for you, the lyrics. Which in my opinion are the meat, without which all the bread and cheese of my prose and narrative are hardly worth biting into.
(edited so the words match the ones I've taken to singing)
(edit to put in a new verse I wrote in, like, August or September or something--the one about the cat)
[but the ghost]
lost my hat
missed a funeral
missed it like hell
ate by the train
wait by the station
feel so fat
without my stubborn I'd be
death on toast
lost my cat
jumped out the window
landed all right
she learned to fly
if she can do it, honey
so can I
broke my back, but I got
so damn close
lost my dad
missed his departure
miss his cooking
borrowed his boat
feel so stupid that I
gave it back
we all did nothing, 'fraid I
did that most
lost my nerve
missed my stop
kept on moving
all the same
bastard told me, honey
it's your game
don't have to give up nothin' darling
but the ghost
(edited so the words match the ones I've taken to singing)
(edit to put in a new verse I wrote in, like, August or September or something--the one about the cat)
[but the ghost]
lost my hat
missed a funeral
missed it like hell
ate by the train
wait by the station
feel so fat
without my stubborn I'd be
death on toast
lost my cat
jumped out the window
landed all right
she learned to fly
if she can do it, honey
so can I
broke my back, but I got
so damn close
lost my dad
missed his departure
miss his cooking
borrowed his boat
feel so stupid that I
gave it back
we all did nothing, 'fraid I
did that most
lost my nerve
missed my stop
kept on moving
all the same
bastard told me, honey
it's your game
don't have to give up nothin' darling
but the ghost
happy to help
I already told Dave this whole story, and he made me feel much better and was very encouraging. However I think I still need to write about it to get it all settled in my mind.
Yesterday I was "in the shits" as we like to say here at work. Which is to say, I was totally freaked out. Good may come of it, but that remains to be seen.
We just this month instituted a new Purchase Orders system for keeping track of alcohol purchases. Theoretically, the manager puts together a purchase order when they order wine and gives it to me to set up in the accounting software. When the wine is delivered, the manager then staples the purchase order to the invoice and gives it to me to enter and match with the purchase order file. Then I take the now-accounted-for invoice and put it in my binder. There it will theoretically remain until I go through the binder, determine that it has been paid, and move it to the long-term storage cabinet in the other room.
In practice the managers have been creating purchase orders in my accounting software and doing it wrong, mostly because I haven't shown them how to do it properly. Often the purchase order is not created until the manager has the invoice in their hands. And the alcohol invoices binder is something I just haven't messed with. It is a filing disaster area that I have not really touched in months. The managers often go through it, pulling out invoices to check prices, see which wines we ordered etc. Of course if we had the PO system all together they could just look through those and get the same info...but since the purchase orders are often created incorrectly, sometimes not created, etc that is not yet feasible.
And, as I discovered yesterday, sometimes for some unknown reason, the alcohol invoices end up in my binder without me ever having laid eyes on them. Which is not just against procedure. It means that the money we spent in that invoice has not been put into the accounting software at all.
Which means that when I went to make the month-end report on everything we spent in June so main boss could bring it to the managers' meeting, the number I gave him was WRONG. Like, by about half. I've been struggling the last couple of months to give him correct numbers on our labor expenditures. First because the detailed reports we get from the payroll company are confusing and hard to interpret, and second because I had no idea which parts of our expenditure were the important ones that needed to be tracked in the report. Pretax wages, after tax wages, tips, employer portion of tax, etc. Very confusing. So I was concentrating so hard on finally getting the labor numbers right (which I did) that I didn't think it necessary to go back and re-check the physical files on the alcohol numbers (over which, as I've established above, I do not have control).
Main boss comes back from attempting to start the managers meeting and drops the end-of-month report on my desk and goes something like "What is this? I told you so many times to pay attention to what you are doing." I object that this was what I got out of my accounting software, to which he replies something like, "This number is not right, it can't be right. Go back through the invoices and do it again."
Which was upsetting to me in and of itself. But when I discovered the actual state the files were in I freaked right the fuck out. Lisa was trying to talk me through it but I was crying in my anger and wouldn't calm down, so she went to get big Z. He was very nice about it even though I actually yelled at him at one point and at another said some very negative things about myself, in the vein of "I can't do my job and this is just more proof of that." And he helped me calm down enough to attempt to come up with a plan. Which is of course the same plan, in its general broad outlines, that main boss has been telling me for months that I need to do, but given me absolutely no suggestions as to how I can bring it about in practice.
But I'm still just so angry.
Because in order to keep up with the filing aspects of my job I need to become supremely unhelpful to other people whose jobs have little to do with mine. This means not answering phones, printing menus, taking reservations over the phone, digging up receipt copies for customers, any of the dozen things I do throughout the day to make other people's lives easier. I really, really suck at saying no. Especially when the things asked of me are reasonable and well within my ability and will harm the restaurant if no one does them. I need to eliminate words from my vocabulary like "sure, no problem", "any time" and "happy to help." And I like those words. I like the way they make other people feel about me.
Now I'm going to go punch in and start filing like my ass is on fire. 'Scuse me.
Yesterday I was "in the shits" as we like to say here at work. Which is to say, I was totally freaked out. Good may come of it, but that remains to be seen.
We just this month instituted a new Purchase Orders system for keeping track of alcohol purchases. Theoretically, the manager puts together a purchase order when they order wine and gives it to me to set up in the accounting software. When the wine is delivered, the manager then staples the purchase order to the invoice and gives it to me to enter and match with the purchase order file. Then I take the now-accounted-for invoice and put it in my binder. There it will theoretically remain until I go through the binder, determine that it has been paid, and move it to the long-term storage cabinet in the other room.
In practice the managers have been creating purchase orders in my accounting software and doing it wrong, mostly because I haven't shown them how to do it properly. Often the purchase order is not created until the manager has the invoice in their hands. And the alcohol invoices binder is something I just haven't messed with. It is a filing disaster area that I have not really touched in months. The managers often go through it, pulling out invoices to check prices, see which wines we ordered etc. Of course if we had the PO system all together they could just look through those and get the same info...but since the purchase orders are often created incorrectly, sometimes not created, etc that is not yet feasible.
And, as I discovered yesterday, sometimes for some unknown reason, the alcohol invoices end up in my binder without me ever having laid eyes on them. Which is not just against procedure. It means that the money we spent in that invoice has not been put into the accounting software at all.
Which means that when I went to make the month-end report on everything we spent in June so main boss could bring it to the managers' meeting, the number I gave him was WRONG. Like, by about half. I've been struggling the last couple of months to give him correct numbers on our labor expenditures. First because the detailed reports we get from the payroll company are confusing and hard to interpret, and second because I had no idea which parts of our expenditure were the important ones that needed to be tracked in the report. Pretax wages, after tax wages, tips, employer portion of tax, etc. Very confusing. So I was concentrating so hard on finally getting the labor numbers right (which I did) that I didn't think it necessary to go back and re-check the physical files on the alcohol numbers (over which, as I've established above, I do not have control).
Main boss comes back from attempting to start the managers meeting and drops the end-of-month report on my desk and goes something like "What is this? I told you so many times to pay attention to what you are doing." I object that this was what I got out of my accounting software, to which he replies something like, "This number is not right, it can't be right. Go back through the invoices and do it again."
Which was upsetting to me in and of itself. But when I discovered the actual state the files were in I freaked right the fuck out. Lisa was trying to talk me through it but I was crying in my anger and wouldn't calm down, so she went to get big Z. He was very nice about it even though I actually yelled at him at one point and at another said some very negative things about myself, in the vein of "I can't do my job and this is just more proof of that." And he helped me calm down enough to attempt to come up with a plan. Which is of course the same plan, in its general broad outlines, that main boss has been telling me for months that I need to do, but given me absolutely no suggestions as to how I can bring it about in practice.
But I'm still just so angry.
Because in order to keep up with the filing aspects of my job I need to become supremely unhelpful to other people whose jobs have little to do with mine. This means not answering phones, printing menus, taking reservations over the phone, digging up receipt copies for customers, any of the dozen things I do throughout the day to make other people's lives easier. I really, really suck at saying no. Especially when the things asked of me are reasonable and well within my ability and will harm the restaurant if no one does them. I need to eliminate words from my vocabulary like "sure, no problem", "any time" and "happy to help." And I like those words. I like the way they make other people feel about me.
Now I'm going to go punch in and start filing like my ass is on fire. 'Scuse me.
thought it was the 4th of July (till I got a calendar)
Still no clue what's going down on the 4th. Of July, you know.
Been posting less at work lately, for a very good reason. Main boss had a chat with me last week about how he'd like to see me be a little more focused and organized and things. And it did occur to me that I have been coasting a little bit here. Just a smidge, you understand. Too much internetting and not enough caring about worky stuff.
Today we got another calendar from Yamasho! They're a fish vendor form whom we only occasionally buy some fish. But they have these gorgeous calendars that they give out as customer appreciation gifts and I was worried we wouldn't get one this year. Each month has a like a 24"x36" photo of a natural scene somewhere in Japan, like a lake or trees or a mountain or a waterfall or something. They're printed on glossy translucent plastic film which, when separated from the calendar, is friggin perfect to put up on a window to block on the harsh, direct sunlight. Now, I'm a gal who likes pretty pictures of nature, doesn't own too many window treatments, and has massive high windows that are a pain in the ass to keep covered. So getting this calendar in July is like an Xmas in July present. Because I have to remove exactly half of the pretty pictures on their translucent plastic film in order to display the current month. And, O! The poor lonely pretty pictures have no place to go except home with me! :D
Feeling a bit crampy today but it hasn't dampened my spirits. I leave that to the positively muggy climate in the office. Seems no matter how angry lady boss gets at our regular AC guy for breaking his repeated promises to her, he is still on vacation and the AC in the office is still not fixed. As she has said to him repeatedly on the phone, it seems like the whole summer's going to be gone before we'll have air conditioning down here.
Been posting less at work lately, for a very good reason. Main boss had a chat with me last week about how he'd like to see me be a little more focused and organized and things. And it did occur to me that I have been coasting a little bit here. Just a smidge, you understand. Too much internetting and not enough caring about worky stuff.
Today we got another calendar from Yamasho! They're a fish vendor form whom we only occasionally buy some fish. But they have these gorgeous calendars that they give out as customer appreciation gifts and I was worried we wouldn't get one this year. Each month has a like a 24"x36" photo of a natural scene somewhere in Japan, like a lake or trees or a mountain or a waterfall or something. They're printed on glossy translucent plastic film which, when separated from the calendar, is friggin perfect to put up on a window to block on the harsh, direct sunlight. Now, I'm a gal who likes pretty pictures of nature, doesn't own too many window treatments, and has massive high windows that are a pain in the ass to keep covered. So getting this calendar in July is like an Xmas in July present. Because I have to remove exactly half of the pretty pictures on their translucent plastic film in order to display the current month. And, O! The poor lonely pretty pictures have no place to go except home with me! :D
Feeling a bit crampy today but it hasn't dampened my spirits. I leave that to the positively muggy climate in the office. Seems no matter how angry lady boss gets at our regular AC guy for breaking his repeated promises to her, he is still on vacation and the AC in the office is still not fixed. As she has said to him repeatedly on the phone, it seems like the whole summer's going to be gone before we'll have air conditioning down here.
hooray for school
Last night's dream was a doozy.
I'd gone to bed early (around 11:45) because I was actually tired and we'd already hit for the cycle of fun activities. We may have skipped playing San Andreas, but we did that on Tuesday. Anyway.
At the start, me and the character who looks like Gothy were standing outside an enormous building that I knew was a middle school. I saw her name written on the wall, and she looked at it, then looked at me and said "don't call me Goth". Her scorn levels were high enough that she disdained to even say it forcefully, as though it were a stupidly obvious piece of information.
We went inside. Dave may also have been with me at this point, but I don't have real images, just a sense of events that passed in a jumble. There was rushing about and people getting sorted out. And whatever bunch of people knew what was going on, I didn't see them and they weren't aware of me and they certainly didn't bother to inform me what it was, and I was aware of this.
Next thing I remember, I was in a large room, like a conference room or boardroom. Many other people were there, not individually distinguished; we were all seated around a big table. I was extremely upset. Panicked, even. But it was one of those dream scenes where part of your awareness is in front, doing things, while another part watches in a curious but dispassionate manner. With the "doing" part of me, I was trying to scream, was desperate to make some kind of loud noise. But no matter how hard I screamed and hurt my throat and strained my vocal chords, only the tiniest whisper emerged. The watching part of me was equally puzzled why I couldn't make anything louder than a whisper and intent on planning out my path to the door that led out of there.
Once I emerged into the halls, I came upon an area where some sort of lame activity had been set up. No one seemed to be around. I took a seat on a blue mat, kind of like the padded mats they have in gyms, which was near a wall across from the erstwhile lame activity. I may have had a snack or something, or maybe just wanted to rest.
Before I'd even got settled in my seat, some brusque young lady in a fit of pique (obviously one of the people who'd known all along what was going on) stormed up to me. She thrust a paper citation at me and snapped, "You have placed your butt in a non-butt-sitting area! You are hereby sentenced--" I interrupted her with a wide, engaging smile, bowed from the waist, and said something like, "Why thank you so much! Now that I am aware of it, I am happy to comply with this regulation!" Then I snatched the ticket from her hand, got pissed, and decided enough was enough.
Last scene, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror here in the apartment. The mirror and toilet and tub along what is the west wall in real life were all normal. However, the other side of the room was completely different. It had four very large windows, knee-to-ceiling height (the ceiling was very high), all of which were cranked half open and had screens. I made silly faces at myself in the mirror for a bit, feeling that this was the wrong thing to do for some reason but not minding it especially. Then I glanced up into a corner of the ceiling and saw an axe embedded high up on the wall. I looked down, and there right to the left of the mirror was another axe, shorter of haft but wickeder of blade, with what looked like gang symbols painted around it. I looked over my shoulder at the windows, and sure enough, on the one all the way on the right the screen had been neatly slashed along the right-hand side from top to bottom. Next to it I could see a wooden back porch on the building next door which led up right past that window. Hurriedly I cranked both of the right-hand windows all the way shut.
As of the moment, not too many ideas what it might mean. But it was cool as hell! I worked a nine-hour shift, all of which was busy, came home and watched part of the NBA draft and a couple of TV shows, and still had the whole thing!
I'd gone to bed early (around 11:45) because I was actually tired and we'd already hit for the cycle of fun activities. We may have skipped playing San Andreas, but we did that on Tuesday. Anyway.
At the start, me and the character who looks like Gothy were standing outside an enormous building that I knew was a middle school. I saw her name written on the wall, and she looked at it, then looked at me and said "don't call me Goth". Her scorn levels were high enough that she disdained to even say it forcefully, as though it were a stupidly obvious piece of information.
We went inside. Dave may also have been with me at this point, but I don't have real images, just a sense of events that passed in a jumble. There was rushing about and people getting sorted out. And whatever bunch of people knew what was going on, I didn't see them and they weren't aware of me and they certainly didn't bother to inform me what it was, and I was aware of this.
Next thing I remember, I was in a large room, like a conference room or boardroom. Many other people were there, not individually distinguished; we were all seated around a big table. I was extremely upset. Panicked, even. But it was one of those dream scenes where part of your awareness is in front, doing things, while another part watches in a curious but dispassionate manner. With the "doing" part of me, I was trying to scream, was desperate to make some kind of loud noise. But no matter how hard I screamed and hurt my throat and strained my vocal chords, only the tiniest whisper emerged. The watching part of me was equally puzzled why I couldn't make anything louder than a whisper and intent on planning out my path to the door that led out of there.
Once I emerged into the halls, I came upon an area where some sort of lame activity had been set up. No one seemed to be around. I took a seat on a blue mat, kind of like the padded mats they have in gyms, which was near a wall across from the erstwhile lame activity. I may have had a snack or something, or maybe just wanted to rest.
Before I'd even got settled in my seat, some brusque young lady in a fit of pique (obviously one of the people who'd known all along what was going on) stormed up to me. She thrust a paper citation at me and snapped, "You have placed your butt in a non-butt-sitting area! You are hereby sentenced--" I interrupted her with a wide, engaging smile, bowed from the waist, and said something like, "Why thank you so much! Now that I am aware of it, I am happy to comply with this regulation!" Then I snatched the ticket from her hand, got pissed, and decided enough was enough.
Last scene, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror here in the apartment. The mirror and toilet and tub along what is the west wall in real life were all normal. However, the other side of the room was completely different. It had four very large windows, knee-to-ceiling height (the ceiling was very high), all of which were cranked half open and had screens. I made silly faces at myself in the mirror for a bit, feeling that this was the wrong thing to do for some reason but not minding it especially. Then I glanced up into a corner of the ceiling and saw an axe embedded high up on the wall. I looked down, and there right to the left of the mirror was another axe, shorter of haft but wickeder of blade, with what looked like gang symbols painted around it. I looked over my shoulder at the windows, and sure enough, on the one all the way on the right the screen had been neatly slashed along the right-hand side from top to bottom. Next to it I could see a wooden back porch on the building next door which led up right past that window. Hurriedly I cranked both of the right-hand windows all the way shut.
As of the moment, not too many ideas what it might mean. But it was cool as hell! I worked a nine-hour shift, all of which was busy, came home and watched part of the NBA draft and a couple of TV shows, and still had the whole thing!
Miércoles con los Amigos Invisibles special edition: Categories!
Categorizing things is a great hobby of mine.
The thoughts I had in my last post I can categorize as at least partially the result of panicky feelings. Amber and Pearl are still my awesome sisters and we still have a great sister thing going. I have faith in Dave and he in me and both of us in us. And I don't have to get any closer or truthier with Mom than I deem necessary. So there, panicky feelings! :P
I started out wanting to make this post about me and the everlasting Dave's categories for music. They don't have to do with sound or production methods. Rather, they describe the emotional tone the music-maker is aiming to produce.
The categories, as I recall them, are:
Rock
Funk
Soul
Smug
A musical group will have differing proportions of these qualities. The Waterboys, for example, have an enormous proportion of Soul (which may also be called Spirituality) and a respectable amount of Rock as well. Soul Coughing is almost entirely Funk (which may also be called Groove), but they have quite a bit of Smug and certainly some Rock. They Might Be Giants are more Smug than anything else.
This relates, in my mind, to the four qualities of poetry and lyric I learned about in college. These are:
Story
Word-musicality
Meter
Rhyme
Word-musicality is tough to explain, unless perhaps you've listened to a lot of Mike Doughty. The man oozes it. You can't even speak the phrase "buddha rhubarb butter" without experiencing a taste of the Funk. It IS different from rhyme, and for beginning poets a lot of times the focus on rhyme strips word-musicality and tosses it right out the window with the bathwater. My weakest category is story. Meter is probably my strongest--though given how I feel about categories, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
You might say it's an obsession, but obsessions I think tend to be more overt and specific. (See? Categorizing even now.) You could go so far as to call it a trait or a characteristic. I am a poet and a lyricist, which one doesn't usually associate with the sort of mentality that wants to put everything in a neat little cubbyhole. Or with someone who self-identifies as a Discordian for no externally discernible reason.
My attitude is this. I am essentially a cautious, even fearful person. Everything in the world is alive. (Always start there. Saves time when you later discover signs of life in a particular pattern, object or postulated entity.) Anything that lives has the power to choose, in other words, the power to change its mind. Which makes the world a place of extreme uncertainty, in which literally anything can happen at any time. All that is necessary for any wild and unthinkable event to take place is for many, many living creatures, all at once, some knowable and others--if only for reasons of time--unknowable, to change their minds.
So it is necessary to make one's way in a bizarre and chaotic universe governed by the whims of uncountable, ineffable beings. Some of whom borrow your pen and talk about the weather with you and would laugh at the idea that they are, in fact, ineffable beings actively involved in the continual creation of the mysterious universe.
My solution to this is to get to know all the people and things around me in a friendly sort of way. Because, according to my theories on trust and friendship, when you are friends with someone and they with you, you grow to understand them. Parts of who you are become similar enough to parts of who they are that you can imagine how they might feel about things, how they might be moved to choose for themselves. Though trust, you can get an idea of how and why a being is likely to change his, her or its mind. You come somewhat to understand what moves and shakes them, what changes their world and how the world changes around them.
Then--and here's the beauty part--you can take everything that isn't that, and stuff it in neat little boxes with word-labels on them. What is a being's religion is sacred to them, and when you're dealing with sacredness you have very little idea, let alone any control, over what might happen. But when you know what is non-sacred, is profane in a particular context, then once you've got it pigeonholed you don't have to worry about it anymore. You can just leave it in its little pigeonhole. Meanwhile you can concentrate on all the mysterious sacred things that might jump any which way, turn into a newt, or cause someone to get really, really angry at someone else in a way that you neatly manage to avoid by having an understanding of why the first person was likely to get angry.
So you see, it's really very simple. Categories are for all the things that can be categorized. Relationships are for all the things that can't. And if you tell me that's an oxymoron or a tautology or any such nonsense, I'll just go sit on my own lap and sulk until you see reason.
(If you do, would you please point it out to me?
Bastard owes me five bucks!)
The thoughts I had in my last post I can categorize as at least partially the result of panicky feelings. Amber and Pearl are still my awesome sisters and we still have a great sister thing going. I have faith in Dave and he in me and both of us in us. And I don't have to get any closer or truthier with Mom than I deem necessary. So there, panicky feelings! :P
I started out wanting to make this post about me and the everlasting Dave's categories for music. They don't have to do with sound or production methods. Rather, they describe the emotional tone the music-maker is aiming to produce.
The categories, as I recall them, are:
Rock
Funk
Soul
Smug
A musical group will have differing proportions of these qualities. The Waterboys, for example, have an enormous proportion of Soul (which may also be called Spirituality) and a respectable amount of Rock as well. Soul Coughing is almost entirely Funk (which may also be called Groove), but they have quite a bit of Smug and certainly some Rock. They Might Be Giants are more Smug than anything else.
This relates, in my mind, to the four qualities of poetry and lyric I learned about in college. These are:
Story
Word-musicality
Meter
Rhyme
Word-musicality is tough to explain, unless perhaps you've listened to a lot of Mike Doughty. The man oozes it. You can't even speak the phrase "buddha rhubarb butter" without experiencing a taste of the Funk. It IS different from rhyme, and for beginning poets a lot of times the focus on rhyme strips word-musicality and tosses it right out the window with the bathwater. My weakest category is story. Meter is probably my strongest--though given how I feel about categories, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
You might say it's an obsession, but obsessions I think tend to be more overt and specific. (See? Categorizing even now.) You could go so far as to call it a trait or a characteristic. I am a poet and a lyricist, which one doesn't usually associate with the sort of mentality that wants to put everything in a neat little cubbyhole. Or with someone who self-identifies as a Discordian for no externally discernible reason.
My attitude is this. I am essentially a cautious, even fearful person. Everything in the world is alive. (Always start there. Saves time when you later discover signs of life in a particular pattern, object or postulated entity.) Anything that lives has the power to choose, in other words, the power to change its mind. Which makes the world a place of extreme uncertainty, in which literally anything can happen at any time. All that is necessary for any wild and unthinkable event to take place is for many, many living creatures, all at once, some knowable and others--if only for reasons of time--unknowable, to change their minds.
So it is necessary to make one's way in a bizarre and chaotic universe governed by the whims of uncountable, ineffable beings. Some of whom borrow your pen and talk about the weather with you and would laugh at the idea that they are, in fact, ineffable beings actively involved in the continual creation of the mysterious universe.
My solution to this is to get to know all the people and things around me in a friendly sort of way. Because, according to my theories on trust and friendship, when you are friends with someone and they with you, you grow to understand them. Parts of who you are become similar enough to parts of who they are that you can imagine how they might feel about things, how they might be moved to choose for themselves. Though trust, you can get an idea of how and why a being is likely to change his, her or its mind. You come somewhat to understand what moves and shakes them, what changes their world and how the world changes around them.
Then--and here's the beauty part--you can take everything that isn't that, and stuff it in neat little boxes with word-labels on them. What is a being's religion is sacred to them, and when you're dealing with sacredness you have very little idea, let alone any control, over what might happen. But when you know what is non-sacred, is profane in a particular context, then once you've got it pigeonholed you don't have to worry about it anymore. You can just leave it in its little pigeonhole. Meanwhile you can concentrate on all the mysterious sacred things that might jump any which way, turn into a newt, or cause someone to get really, really angry at someone else in a way that you neatly manage to avoid by having an understanding of why the first person was likely to get angry.
So you see, it's really very simple. Categories are for all the things that can be categorized. Relationships are for all the things that can't. And if you tell me that's an oxymoron or a tautology or any such nonsense, I'll just go sit on my own lap and sulk until you see reason.
(If you do, would you please point it out to me?
Bastard owes me five bucks!)
Tuesdays With Abhorrent Fiends vol. 38
I feel low-energy and sulky now.
Just crept up on me as the day went by. Maybe I should've eaten a bigger breakfast before leaving the apartment. Maybe I'm unsettled because Mom is coming to visit tonight.
You know what messes with me?
My lady co-workers asking me about Dave. Innocently enough, true.
Just simple questions about our current situation, but I hate their reactions. Their perfectly innocent reactions.
Like I ought to be embarrassed. Like I'm an idiot.
What the fuck am I supposed to say? I feel helpless. Things are going well, dammit, just slowly. I can't impart a timeline, can't give other people the weight of times passed to explain what is and what isn't reasonable. I can't be like, "Look, I don't see it like that for the following reasons." Because that won't help their opinion of either of us at all.
You know what? WE are the happiest couple I know. Lady boss and main boss are the only other actual couple here--and they are either too polite or too focused on their own issues to ask much about ours. These other ladies are single or very recently single and maybe their unwillingness to put up with one situation or another is why. Or maybe they'd picked crappy mates before. I dunno. I'm just mad that I can't explain and mad in a different way that I feel like I have to.
Me and Dave talked about this for awhile last night. So I'm not going to say anything else about it here because if we need to talk about it, we'll do it in person.
I'm also mad about Mom and Amber and Pearl. Not, you notice, mad at them. I haven't talked to Amber and Pearl much lately. Amber seems to be radically shifting her melant'i and I don't know where it leaves me. I don't know what's going on with Pearl at all. And Mom can't make up her damn mind about me. Which is fair, because I can't make up my damn mind about her. Are we going to be friends? Enemies? Continue this weird dance of let's-not-talk-about-it till the end of time?
We're not going to have the problem we had when I was younger. I'd tell her something she didn't like, she'd start out not believing me, then asking me to conform to the version of reality she did like, then going back to pretending none of it happened. We haven't so much been having that problem the past five or six years or so because when there's something she won't like, I don't tell her. Saves a lot of steps, you see. We'd get back to the point of both pretending an important aspect of reality doesn't exist anyway, so why experience needless pain and waste needless effort?
Pearl has had good results with being upfront with Mom and telling her the truth about stuff, however. Mom had moderated her stance on books, movies--all sorts of things that ease social polity but don't require an actual shift in worldview. The fact of the matter is that my problems with Mom are things that I don't have the language to explain to her.
Maybe if I get her drunk we can have an honest, heart-to-heart, Mom and daughter discussion about the facts of morality and truth. And how where morality and truth are concerned (especially in the area of family) facts have only the faintest relationship to what any of the parties involved are willing to accept as reality. And how the definition of reality is mostly in the hands of those a particular social group chooses to designate as its gatekeepers.
But she won't be staying the night after all, and was never much of a drinker in the first place. Only an idiot would want to let themselves be made vulnerable by a chemical, y'know. One is made vulnerable enough by the definitions of reality within which one is forced to operate.
Just crept up on me as the day went by. Maybe I should've eaten a bigger breakfast before leaving the apartment. Maybe I'm unsettled because Mom is coming to visit tonight.
You know what messes with me?
My lady co-workers asking me about Dave. Innocently enough, true.
Just simple questions about our current situation, but I hate their reactions. Their perfectly innocent reactions.
Like I ought to be embarrassed. Like I'm an idiot.
What the fuck am I supposed to say? I feel helpless. Things are going well, dammit, just slowly. I can't impart a timeline, can't give other people the weight of times passed to explain what is and what isn't reasonable. I can't be like, "Look, I don't see it like that for the following reasons." Because that won't help their opinion of either of us at all.
You know what? WE are the happiest couple I know. Lady boss and main boss are the only other actual couple here--and they are either too polite or too focused on their own issues to ask much about ours. These other ladies are single or very recently single and maybe their unwillingness to put up with one situation or another is why. Or maybe they'd picked crappy mates before. I dunno. I'm just mad that I can't explain and mad in a different way that I feel like I have to.
Me and Dave talked about this for awhile last night. So I'm not going to say anything else about it here because if we need to talk about it, we'll do it in person.
I'm also mad about Mom and Amber and Pearl. Not, you notice, mad at them. I haven't talked to Amber and Pearl much lately. Amber seems to be radically shifting her melant'i and I don't know where it leaves me. I don't know what's going on with Pearl at all. And Mom can't make up her damn mind about me. Which is fair, because I can't make up my damn mind about her. Are we going to be friends? Enemies? Continue this weird dance of let's-not-talk-about-it till the end of time?
We're not going to have the problem we had when I was younger. I'd tell her something she didn't like, she'd start out not believing me, then asking me to conform to the version of reality she did like, then going back to pretending none of it happened. We haven't so much been having that problem the past five or six years or so because when there's something she won't like, I don't tell her. Saves a lot of steps, you see. We'd get back to the point of both pretending an important aspect of reality doesn't exist anyway, so why experience needless pain and waste needless effort?
Pearl has had good results with being upfront with Mom and telling her the truth about stuff, however. Mom had moderated her stance on books, movies--all sorts of things that ease social polity but don't require an actual shift in worldview. The fact of the matter is that my problems with Mom are things that I don't have the language to explain to her.
Maybe if I get her drunk we can have an honest, heart-to-heart, Mom and daughter discussion about the facts of morality and truth. And how where morality and truth are concerned (especially in the area of family) facts have only the faintest relationship to what any of the parties involved are willing to accept as reality. And how the definition of reality is mostly in the hands of those a particular social group chooses to designate as its gatekeepers.
But she won't be staying the night after all, and was never much of a drinker in the first place. Only an idiot would want to let themselves be made vulnerable by a chemical, y'know. One is made vulnerable enough by the definitions of reality within which one is forced to operate.
happy twelve string dream log
Plenty of other things I could write about. Mom's almost-visit this evening. How furniture in the apartment is being arranged. My gradually shifting image of myself. Conversations at work.
Instead I will tell you about a dream I had about a bass guitar.
(And I wonder why nobody comments on this thing.)
Act one is completely gone.
Act two involved some squat, grey-faced, sharp-toothed dream people. They were little more than dark grey round heads on light grey bodies the shape of a thumbnail, but they didn't seem like the sort with whom one would want to associate. There were three of them. I know we conversed, but I don't know what we talked about or even what sort of an interaction it was. Maybe there wasn't even a conversation, just a slow measuring look. In a dream, that can count as an entire act.
Act three I was walking. Not precisely indoors or outdoors, I was simply next to a building. It came up on my right. The lighting was, as in a few recent dreams, just barely dim enough not to interfere with visibility. Same indoors and out. The building was dusty and disused; the windows showed little of the interior and the unpainted boards seemed weathered. I saw a sign on the door (the image a jumble of letters, I just got the meaning of the sign) indicating the place to be some kind of psychological therapy or rehab place, with an emphasis on feel-good smarmy group encouragement type stuff.
I passed through a lobby, only remarking the emptiness of the place, not any of its features. Again, a feeling that someone was supposed to be there or normally was there, but they were keeping out of my sight because I wasn't there for a reason that involved them. Then I quickly moved into the next room.
Either the light in this next room was dimmer still or the wood paneling of the walls was much darker. There was nothing in the room except a bass guitar on a stand, facing me. I walked up to it slowly, studying it. It seemed to be a decent instrument, not in as bad shape as the building around it. Instead of four strings, however, it had four sets of three strings each--red, yellow and blue. I looked at it dubiously and wondered how it would be possible to play the instrument, since three strings are much harder to press down with one finger than just one.
End of dream.
Now, last time I went out to visit our nice friend who told me about soundpost guy, she let me hold her twelve-string guitar. The twelve-string is a wonderful device invented by some smart person who realized that doubling each guitar string makes it much, much easier to play chords. When you want to press down a string with your finger, your finger naturally presses hardest into the space between the two strings. Because they are somewhat rigid, this merely presses them further down against the fretboard even as it presses them slightly apart.
The bass I saw in my dream was also a twelve-string, but in a different way. Four sets of three. Fans (?!) of my cosmology will recognize this instantly. Four elements (or modes of action), plus three forms (interactive qualities). Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each of which can be used in the mode of Sulfur, Mercury or Salt. The base (ha, pun, pfft), the foundation of the understanding of the universe I've hammered and strained out of the flaxy muck that is occult symbolisms.
So I go to disused part of my mind that is meant to be some comfort, but instead is nigh-abandoned and loitered about by unsavory characters. In a dimly lit back room all by itself I find a symbol of something I think is important to me, something I've worked very hard to make a useful method of determining and directing belief. And when I find the thing I essentially scratch my head and wonder how the hell it can be of any use.
I don't know whether this represents something good I need to pursue, or something non-good I need to back away from.
What ties it all together is a lyric from a Waterboys song I've had stuck in my head for the last few days. The song is called "Lucky Day Bad Advice." It is a collection of the bad advice people have given the songwriter over the years on how to "improve" his band by watering it down to fit their favorite fads. The lyric is:
You can't spend all your life
Sittin' on your cloud, playin' your twelve-string
Instead I will tell you about a dream I had about a bass guitar.
(And I wonder why nobody comments on this thing.)
Act one is completely gone.
Act two involved some squat, grey-faced, sharp-toothed dream people. They were little more than dark grey round heads on light grey bodies the shape of a thumbnail, but they didn't seem like the sort with whom one would want to associate. There were three of them. I know we conversed, but I don't know what we talked about or even what sort of an interaction it was. Maybe there wasn't even a conversation, just a slow measuring look. In a dream, that can count as an entire act.
Act three I was walking. Not precisely indoors or outdoors, I was simply next to a building. It came up on my right. The lighting was, as in a few recent dreams, just barely dim enough not to interfere with visibility. Same indoors and out. The building was dusty and disused; the windows showed little of the interior and the unpainted boards seemed weathered. I saw a sign on the door (the image a jumble of letters, I just got the meaning of the sign) indicating the place to be some kind of psychological therapy or rehab place, with an emphasis on feel-good smarmy group encouragement type stuff.
I passed through a lobby, only remarking the emptiness of the place, not any of its features. Again, a feeling that someone was supposed to be there or normally was there, but they were keeping out of my sight because I wasn't there for a reason that involved them. Then I quickly moved into the next room.
Either the light in this next room was dimmer still or the wood paneling of the walls was much darker. There was nothing in the room except a bass guitar on a stand, facing me. I walked up to it slowly, studying it. It seemed to be a decent instrument, not in as bad shape as the building around it. Instead of four strings, however, it had four sets of three strings each--red, yellow and blue. I looked at it dubiously and wondered how it would be possible to play the instrument, since three strings are much harder to press down with one finger than just one.
End of dream.
Now, last time I went out to visit our nice friend who told me about soundpost guy, she let me hold her twelve-string guitar. The twelve-string is a wonderful device invented by some smart person who realized that doubling each guitar string makes it much, much easier to play chords. When you want to press down a string with your finger, your finger naturally presses hardest into the space between the two strings. Because they are somewhat rigid, this merely presses them further down against the fretboard even as it presses them slightly apart.
The bass I saw in my dream was also a twelve-string, but in a different way. Four sets of three. Fans (?!) of my cosmology will recognize this instantly. Four elements (or modes of action), plus three forms (interactive qualities). Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each of which can be used in the mode of Sulfur, Mercury or Salt. The base (ha, pun, pfft), the foundation of the understanding of the universe I've hammered and strained out of the flaxy muck that is occult symbolisms.
So I go to disused part of my mind that is meant to be some comfort, but instead is nigh-abandoned and loitered about by unsavory characters. In a dimly lit back room all by itself I find a symbol of something I think is important to me, something I've worked very hard to make a useful method of determining and directing belief. And when I find the thing I essentially scratch my head and wonder how the hell it can be of any use.
I don't know whether this represents something good I need to pursue, or something non-good I need to back away from.
What ties it all together is a lyric from a Waterboys song I've had stuck in my head for the last few days. The song is called "Lucky Day Bad Advice." It is a collection of the bad advice people have given the songwriter over the years on how to "improve" his band by watering it down to fit their favorite fads. The lyric is:
You can't spend all your life
Sittin' on your cloud, playin' your twelve-string
dry runnings
Haven't used the internet really at all this week. I bet the dudes at my forum think I wandered off never to return. If they've thought of me at all, heh.
On Wednesday I got to hang out after work with a friend of mine. And among many other things we discussed, I declared that I was going to have to write a song for her to sing. It being written, I realized it suffers from a problem that keeps me from performing many of my songs; it's too on-topic.
You know that thing where it's very difficult to write an awesome song unless something has ripped a chunk out of your soul, and the song comes in to cleanse and sanctify the new emptiness in you? Well apparently it's true of writing songs for other people too. It helps if you have a frame of reference for understanding their hurt; it also helps if you're close enough emotionally to them where you can do that non-verbal telepathy stuff. Whatsit...empathy, yeah.
But what I did, with this, uses a sort of poetic conceit. The example that springs to mind is [for sound reason], which I don't think I've sung to anybody, ever. I basically wrote it trying to imagine precisely the way in which I might go mad with grief if Dave died or left me. I say [for sound reason] sounds like an angry whale getting stabbed, though done right it's meant to make your hair stand on end and try to crawl right off your arm. Take an intense emotional state, carry it out to its logical extreme, write a song about it. Most likely many people use the technique to write songs about subjects where they have trouble feeling their own feelings clearly, whether because the topic is painful to consider intellectually or for some other reason.
So here's your song, milady. Let me know if you think it would be sensible for you to actually sing it, and we can talk tune!
[drains you dry]
open up a ten dollar bottle of wine
and a piece of my mind
do you know you're real
do you know if you're really mine
if I run my fingers through your hair
will you crease your brow
will you turn and stare
like I'm out of line
tell me what you're after, baby
tell me what would make you cry
tell what's behind the shadow in your eyes
are you gonna drown it
are you gonna quench it
have I got your heart now
or even your friendship
open up a ten dollar bottle of wine
and a piece of my mind
fill your cup, bottom's up
do you know what you're gonna find
if I scream till I break your confidence
it won't mean anything
cause it won't make sense in your own damn mind
tell me what you want, baby
tell me what'll make you see
you can't lose yourself that way without losing me
are we gonna make it
are we gonna fail
I'll pull up my anchor
I'm ready to sail
before it drains you dry
before it drains you dry
drains you dry
On Wednesday I got to hang out after work with a friend of mine. And among many other things we discussed, I declared that I was going to have to write a song for her to sing. It being written, I realized it suffers from a problem that keeps me from performing many of my songs; it's too on-topic.
You know that thing where it's very difficult to write an awesome song unless something has ripped a chunk out of your soul, and the song comes in to cleanse and sanctify the new emptiness in you? Well apparently it's true of writing songs for other people too. It helps if you have a frame of reference for understanding their hurt; it also helps if you're close enough emotionally to them where you can do that non-verbal telepathy stuff. Whatsit...empathy, yeah.
But what I did, with this, uses a sort of poetic conceit. The example that springs to mind is [for sound reason], which I don't think I've sung to anybody, ever. I basically wrote it trying to imagine precisely the way in which I might go mad with grief if Dave died or left me. I say [for sound reason] sounds like an angry whale getting stabbed, though done right it's meant to make your hair stand on end and try to crawl right off your arm. Take an intense emotional state, carry it out to its logical extreme, write a song about it. Most likely many people use the technique to write songs about subjects where they have trouble feeling their own feelings clearly, whether because the topic is painful to consider intellectually or for some other reason.
So here's your song, milady. Let me know if you think it would be sensible for you to actually sing it, and we can talk tune!
[drains you dry]
open up a ten dollar bottle of wine
and a piece of my mind
do you know you're real
do you know if you're really mine
if I run my fingers through your hair
will you crease your brow
will you turn and stare
like I'm out of line
tell me what you're after, baby
tell me what would make you cry
tell what's behind the shadow in your eyes
are you gonna drown it
are you gonna quench it
have I got your heart now
or even your friendship
open up a ten dollar bottle of wine
and a piece of my mind
fill your cup, bottom's up
do you know what you're gonna find
if I scream till I break your confidence
it won't mean anything
cause it won't make sense in your own damn mind
tell me what you want, baby
tell me what'll make you see
you can't lose yourself that way without losing me
are we gonna make it
are we gonna fail
I'll pull up my anchor
I'm ready to sail
before it drains you dry
before it drains you dry
drains you dry
the cherubim of the bored
On my mental mp3 player:
Selfless, Cold and Composed ~ Ben Folds Five
Today, I am grouchy for reasons not entirely clear to me. All I wanna do is go smoke and read novels and write things and not pay attention to anybody. The bosses are out of town, which has pros and cons. Pros: I can catch up on my paperwork, no one is around to tell me "stop working on that, do this thing for me really quick" umpteen times a day, no one walks up to me and demands instant explanation of some bizarrely obscure aspect of the business which no one has ever mentioned to me before and gets mad when I don't have it at my fingertips. Cons: No one is in the house to sign checks, give permission to order things from vendors or spend cash from the safe on sundries.
Had a fun conversation this morning with Eileen, a sales rep from one of the companies from which we buy most of our sundries and restaurant-related operating supplies. We talked mostly about career paths, the types of things different people want to spend their day doing, how we ended up in our jobs. She's in her fifties and has been with the company she's at for almost as long as I've been alive. The combination of freedom and flexibility, moving around from place to place but still being many people's go-to problem solver, and getting to meet interesting people and hear stories about their lives and jobs, is very fulfilling for her and makes her job a happy-making thing.
I still think being an English professor would be happy-making for me, but I don't think it would be so right now.
I find myself thinking back every day to "To Say Nothing of the Dog", that wonderful novel about time travel set mostly in Victorian England. The mood at the time travel lab in the futuristic "present day" of the story is similar to the way things were here at the restaurant over my first six months or so on the job. People were constantly getting exasperated and quitting, or getting better offers and walking out. Which left a skeleton crew of trainees, the underqualified, or the indescribably overworked to actually get everything done.
One lady, originally a clerk of some kind I think, ended up sticking around as the only person in charge of programming the time portal to send people through. People great and small, screaming and wheedling, smartly-dressed and soaked with mud, come rushing up to her in every scene in which she appears. She is continually surrounded by vying groups of desperate researchers saying "Me! Put me through the time portal right now! My transfer is unbelievably urgent and everyone else you are trying to serve can wait!" Oh, and she also does laundry and inventory control and a host of other necessary tasks which were meant to be done by others who fled from the project. The author describes her with ironic reverence as "the cherubim of the Lord", because in the crucible of her workplace she takes on a terrifying demeanor. Which makes it all too easy to imagine some great angelic being, wreathed in flames of pure and holy exasperation, with eyes and swords and rushing wings going in every direction.
I've been telling people Max Klinger from MASH is my work role model, but it's really that lady, the cherubim of the Lord from "To Say Nothing of the Dog." That's what I meant when I told Mom that I feel like there's something I need to do here before I can move on to the next phase of my life. I am working on a transformation. It seems evident to me that on the way to bodhisattva one has to pass through cherubim. A scary, dedicated and hopefully not too irritable angelic being comprises many, but not all, of the qualities of a teaching saint! And the only way you can transform yourself is by lighting your personality on fire and pouring it into the mold of a social role, a situation in which you must be something to somebody in order to accomplish something. And the only way in which I can learn to be a cherubim is to sit at this desk and become not only competent, but serene in the continual storm.
Still have a ways to go in the serene department.
Selfless, Cold and Composed ~ Ben Folds Five
Today, I am grouchy for reasons not entirely clear to me. All I wanna do is go smoke and read novels and write things and not pay attention to anybody. The bosses are out of town, which has pros and cons. Pros: I can catch up on my paperwork, no one is around to tell me "stop working on that, do this thing for me really quick" umpteen times a day, no one walks up to me and demands instant explanation of some bizarrely obscure aspect of the business which no one has ever mentioned to me before and gets mad when I don't have it at my fingertips. Cons: No one is in the house to sign checks, give permission to order things from vendors or spend cash from the safe on sundries.
Had a fun conversation this morning with Eileen, a sales rep from one of the companies from which we buy most of our sundries and restaurant-related operating supplies. We talked mostly about career paths, the types of things different people want to spend their day doing, how we ended up in our jobs. She's in her fifties and has been with the company she's at for almost as long as I've been alive. The combination of freedom and flexibility, moving around from place to place but still being many people's go-to problem solver, and getting to meet interesting people and hear stories about their lives and jobs, is very fulfilling for her and makes her job a happy-making thing.
I still think being an English professor would be happy-making for me, but I don't think it would be so right now.
I find myself thinking back every day to "To Say Nothing of the Dog", that wonderful novel about time travel set mostly in Victorian England. The mood at the time travel lab in the futuristic "present day" of the story is similar to the way things were here at the restaurant over my first six months or so on the job. People were constantly getting exasperated and quitting, or getting better offers and walking out. Which left a skeleton crew of trainees, the underqualified, or the indescribably overworked to actually get everything done.
One lady, originally a clerk of some kind I think, ended up sticking around as the only person in charge of programming the time portal to send people through. People great and small, screaming and wheedling, smartly-dressed and soaked with mud, come rushing up to her in every scene in which she appears. She is continually surrounded by vying groups of desperate researchers saying "Me! Put me through the time portal right now! My transfer is unbelievably urgent and everyone else you are trying to serve can wait!" Oh, and she also does laundry and inventory control and a host of other necessary tasks which were meant to be done by others who fled from the project. The author describes her with ironic reverence as "the cherubim of the Lord", because in the crucible of her workplace she takes on a terrifying demeanor. Which makes it all too easy to imagine some great angelic being, wreathed in flames of pure and holy exasperation, with eyes and swords and rushing wings going in every direction.
I've been telling people Max Klinger from MASH is my work role model, but it's really that lady, the cherubim of the Lord from "To Say Nothing of the Dog." That's what I meant when I told Mom that I feel like there's something I need to do here before I can move on to the next phase of my life. I am working on a transformation. It seems evident to me that on the way to bodhisattva one has to pass through cherubim. A scary, dedicated and hopefully not too irritable angelic being comprises many, but not all, of the qualities of a teaching saint! And the only way you can transform yourself is by lighting your personality on fire and pouring it into the mold of a social role, a situation in which you must be something to somebody in order to accomplish something. And the only way in which I can learn to be a cherubim is to sit at this desk and become not only competent, but serene in the continual storm.
Still have a ways to go in the serene department.
don't forget
the diamond shows its face to you
and turned around it still shines true
c'mon, try one and two and three
first you see you, then you'll see me
can't see can't fight can't breathe can't fight can't walk can't fight
damn straight that's right
every level has its rules
the only ones who learn are fools
who know every gun's always loaded
they're careful their target is sure
never touch the trigger till their sights are on target
for what must no longer endure
don't forget that some rules change
and others always stay the same
no one can tell the difference but you
don't forget what's true
some clubs will batter down the door
and some you like to dress up for
step back before you hit the joint
breathe deep and say, "what is the point?"
think twice before you raise your hand
and when you ride, ride for the brand
you signed up for it--see it through
even if no one knows but you
you're only as strong as you're loyal
your fists answer both to your mind
a heart poured out like burning oil
is power no stranger can bind
don't forget the worst defeats
come from the ones you thought were sweet
they've always got a reason why you should
don't forget what's good
a golden cup can hide a drink
more bitter than you'd like to think
fill yourself up and do be clear
whether you hold love, rage or fear
learn to play to your weaknesses
what kind of game d'you think this is?
the power to heal and to forgive
is in your heart, long as you live
and after your living is done with
you'll bear your love into the dark
and hope what you learned to have fun with
will answer that you made your mark
don't forget the world's alive
no fathom is too deep to dive
the chalice of God's mercy it is always full
don't forget what's beautiful
they'll say your father was a sword
whose last years were dismayed and bored
a wheel-and-dealer just gone south
gone postal living hand to mouth
that's bullshit, kid--I stayed for you
past when my days should have been through
so let them whisper on the phone
"died in a bathtub, all alone--"
it's in the cards for everyone that someday
we'll move into the ground
forgive me, Love--I only know the one way
to lay this burden down
don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget
don't forget I love you
don't forget I love you
don't forget I love you
and turned around it still shines true
c'mon, try one and two and three
first you see you, then you'll see me
can't see can't fight can't breathe can't fight can't walk can't fight
damn straight that's right
every level has its rules
the only ones who learn are fools
who know every gun's always loaded
they're careful their target is sure
never touch the trigger till their sights are on target
for what must no longer endure
don't forget that some rules change
and others always stay the same
no one can tell the difference but you
don't forget what's true
some clubs will batter down the door
and some you like to dress up for
step back before you hit the joint
breathe deep and say, "what is the point?"
think twice before you raise your hand
and when you ride, ride for the brand
you signed up for it--see it through
even if no one knows but you
you're only as strong as you're loyal
your fists answer both to your mind
a heart poured out like burning oil
is power no stranger can bind
don't forget the worst defeats
come from the ones you thought were sweet
they've always got a reason why you should
don't forget what's good
a golden cup can hide a drink
more bitter than you'd like to think
fill yourself up and do be clear
whether you hold love, rage or fear
learn to play to your weaknesses
what kind of game d'you think this is?
the power to heal and to forgive
is in your heart, long as you live
and after your living is done with
you'll bear your love into the dark
and hope what you learned to have fun with
will answer that you made your mark
don't forget the world's alive
no fathom is too deep to dive
the chalice of God's mercy it is always full
don't forget what's beautiful
they'll say your father was a sword
whose last years were dismayed and bored
a wheel-and-dealer just gone south
gone postal living hand to mouth
that's bullshit, kid--I stayed for you
past when my days should have been through
so let them whisper on the phone
"died in a bathtub, all alone--"
it's in the cards for everyone that someday
we'll move into the ground
forgive me, Love--I only know the one way
to lay this burden down
don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget
don't forget I love you
don't forget I love you
don't forget I love you
Miércoles con los Amigos Invisibles vol 9.
Remembered last night's dream.
Act one, I was outdoors in a beautiful woodsy / fields sort of place. The place-tag in my mind said it was India, but since I don't have a clear concept of what India looks like, the actual foliage was the type of plants you'd find in America. Summer day, blue sky, good temperature, slight breeze. Everything looked extremely alive and smelled wonderful. I wandered around for awhile, smelling and looking at and enjoying everything and (by so doing) drawing in happy mana like it was on sale.
I'd had a conversation with Dad, actually during the week before he died, about traveling. That week and the ones previous he'd wanted to talk guns and money-making schemes and such and I'd kept pulling the conversations to things I wanted to talk about, like Wretched Slum and traveling. We were discussing a dream I had quite some time ago that seemed to me was a real traveling dream, but that had gotten cut short before the images in it fully developed and I'd never been sure why. I was standing in what felt like a gargantuan loading dock, but one not currently in use, looking out through the friggin huge entryway at a gentlly rolling hillside of lush green grass with like early-morning mist on it. And in the dream I'd inhaled deeply, trying to smell the grass and appreciate its prettiness. That action kicked me out of the dream, back into my body, and possibly awake. Dad pointed out that in a real traveling situation, you've pulled yourself up out of your body and are connected to it by a tether of whatever the energy is that invisible people and stuff are made of. Mana, I might as well call it. After all the word literally means, "What is it?" So if you try to draw on environmental mana whilst actually traveling, it weakens the connection between you and your body. Incarnate people--for their spiritual health, I think--are supposed to get all their mana filtered through the body. So his theory was that I got kicked out of the dream experience by my own reflexes (possibly with polite help from whoever was trying to communicate with me) when I was about to do something that would endanger me. My silver cord just snapped back like a rubber band.
Told you that story to tell you this. In last night's dream I was sucking up happy mana like a sponge. Which I can thus take to mean I was not traveling, but rather staying inside my own mindspace.
Act two I don't have good images for; I only remembered it upon further review, and had initially thought this was act three. I was in somebody else's house. She vaguely reminded me of lady boss but I knew it was a representation of a relationship type and not a representation of a person. The house was wood-paneled, not brightly lit though visibility was good, reasonably well-maintained and decorated, but unfamiliar enough to me that I didn't feel quite at home. I was doing something on a computer or helping the person figure something out on a computer, and I'm unclear on who thought who was doing a favor for whom. But somebody was being helpful despite having second thoughts and I don't know what was up with that.
Act three me and Goth (yes, dream-person in the form of my ex-girlfriend Goth) were walking down a street and decided to go into a Japanese restaurant. I mainly knew it was a Japanese restaurant from the language the signs were printed in and the fact that the decor included those nifty walls made of paper. Much like the house I was in earlier, the lighting was dim but visibility was very good. But I couldn't see beyond the main "public" space of the room we were in, and didn't think to look more intently. I didn't actually see anybody who worked there or other customers, just got the vague sense they were around somewhere. Weirdly I did notice a hanging plant (or unlit lantern?) and one of those stand-up fridges full of cold beverages that they have in like Dunkin Donutses or other places where they sell beverages but it isn't a mainstay of the business.
So me and Goth sit down, and this guy comes up to us and takes one of the empty seats at our table. He is dressed business casual and well-groomed but still manages to seem unkempt and nervous with his doughboy figure and anxious body language. Looks sort of foreign, but in a way where you couldn't tell what country he's actually from or whether he's local. He has like a clipboard or something, but we can sense right away that he's a dweeb and is just going to waste our time bothering us without even working up the courage to ask us out so we can say no and be done with it. Eventually we do get him to leave our table but he just goes and sits at a nearby table, as if hoping we'll change our minds. Goth is pissed at him but thinks it's funny, too, 'cause he isn't a threat, just a dweeb.
It wasn't till I was running for the bus this morning that I had the following thought. If, in fact, the dream-person in the aspect of Goth with me was my the little girl, then I am way mentally healthier than even I suspected! It would make sense, too, because the last time I remembered seeing the little girl we were actually sitting down and talking. (Okay, yes, she tricked me into getting nasty bug-worms all up in my hand, but I could totally handle that. Plus I should have known better than to stick my hand in anything in a forest made of things-about-to-die. And she doubtless thought it was funny.)
If that were the case, then our relationship has progressed to the point where we are allies. Arriving at place together, sitting together, being accosted by dweeb together, rebuffing dweeb together, sharing thoughts on reaction to rebuffing of dweeb. That's, like, at least a steel trust level. Maybe all the way up into silver since we had a level of emotional understanding and agreement as well. For her to appear in aspect of Goth is also very telling because of my associations. Girl who is beautiful and dangerous, proud and impetuous, possessive, vindictive and in many ways callous--but as sweet and cuddly and eminently desirable as she is scary crazy. This, you understand, is the balance of my memories of Val as I saw her when we were dating. And five or six years ago this same aspect of my psyche was represented by a scary spider who confronted or leapt at me, from whom I fled in panic every single time. So for her to take on the image of my sexy yet scary ex-girlfriend is a massive and to-be-celebrated improvement.
Act one, I was outdoors in a beautiful woodsy / fields sort of place. The place-tag in my mind said it was India, but since I don't have a clear concept of what India looks like, the actual foliage was the type of plants you'd find in America. Summer day, blue sky, good temperature, slight breeze. Everything looked extremely alive and smelled wonderful. I wandered around for awhile, smelling and looking at and enjoying everything and (by so doing) drawing in happy mana like it was on sale.
I'd had a conversation with Dad, actually during the week before he died, about traveling. That week and the ones previous he'd wanted to talk guns and money-making schemes and such and I'd kept pulling the conversations to things I wanted to talk about, like Wretched Slum and traveling. We were discussing a dream I had quite some time ago that seemed to me was a real traveling dream, but that had gotten cut short before the images in it fully developed and I'd never been sure why. I was standing in what felt like a gargantuan loading dock, but one not currently in use, looking out through the friggin huge entryway at a gentlly rolling hillside of lush green grass with like early-morning mist on it. And in the dream I'd inhaled deeply, trying to smell the grass and appreciate its prettiness. That action kicked me out of the dream, back into my body, and possibly awake. Dad pointed out that in a real traveling situation, you've pulled yourself up out of your body and are connected to it by a tether of whatever the energy is that invisible people and stuff are made of. Mana, I might as well call it. After all the word literally means, "What is it?" So if you try to draw on environmental mana whilst actually traveling, it weakens the connection between you and your body. Incarnate people--for their spiritual health, I think--are supposed to get all their mana filtered through the body. So his theory was that I got kicked out of the dream experience by my own reflexes (possibly with polite help from whoever was trying to communicate with me) when I was about to do something that would endanger me. My silver cord just snapped back like a rubber band.
Told you that story to tell you this. In last night's dream I was sucking up happy mana like a sponge. Which I can thus take to mean I was not traveling, but rather staying inside my own mindspace.
Act two I don't have good images for; I only remembered it upon further review, and had initially thought this was act three. I was in somebody else's house. She vaguely reminded me of lady boss but I knew it was a representation of a relationship type and not a representation of a person. The house was wood-paneled, not brightly lit though visibility was good, reasonably well-maintained and decorated, but unfamiliar enough to me that I didn't feel quite at home. I was doing something on a computer or helping the person figure something out on a computer, and I'm unclear on who thought who was doing a favor for whom. But somebody was being helpful despite having second thoughts and I don't know what was up with that.
Act three me and Goth (yes, dream-person in the form of my ex-girlfriend Goth) were walking down a street and decided to go into a Japanese restaurant. I mainly knew it was a Japanese restaurant from the language the signs were printed in and the fact that the decor included those nifty walls made of paper. Much like the house I was in earlier, the lighting was dim but visibility was very good. But I couldn't see beyond the main "public" space of the room we were in, and didn't think to look more intently. I didn't actually see anybody who worked there or other customers, just got the vague sense they were around somewhere. Weirdly I did notice a hanging plant (or unlit lantern?) and one of those stand-up fridges full of cold beverages that they have in like Dunkin Donutses or other places where they sell beverages but it isn't a mainstay of the business.
So me and Goth sit down, and this guy comes up to us and takes one of the empty seats at our table. He is dressed business casual and well-groomed but still manages to seem unkempt and nervous with his doughboy figure and anxious body language. Looks sort of foreign, but in a way where you couldn't tell what country he's actually from or whether he's local. He has like a clipboard or something, but we can sense right away that he's a dweeb and is just going to waste our time bothering us without even working up the courage to ask us out so we can say no and be done with it. Eventually we do get him to leave our table but he just goes and sits at a nearby table, as if hoping we'll change our minds. Goth is pissed at him but thinks it's funny, too, 'cause he isn't a threat, just a dweeb.
It wasn't till I was running for the bus this morning that I had the following thought. If, in fact, the dream-person in the aspect of Goth with me was my the little girl, then I am way mentally healthier than even I suspected! It would make sense, too, because the last time I remembered seeing the little girl we were actually sitting down and talking. (Okay, yes, she tricked me into getting nasty bug-worms all up in my hand, but I could totally handle that. Plus I should have known better than to stick my hand in anything in a forest made of things-about-to-die. And she doubtless thought it was funny.)
If that were the case, then our relationship has progressed to the point where we are allies. Arriving at place together, sitting together, being accosted by dweeb together, rebuffing dweeb together, sharing thoughts on reaction to rebuffing of dweeb. That's, like, at least a steel trust level. Maybe all the way up into silver since we had a level of emotional understanding and agreement as well. For her to appear in aspect of Goth is also very telling because of my associations. Girl who is beautiful and dangerous, proud and impetuous, possessive, vindictive and in many ways callous--but as sweet and cuddly and eminently desirable as she is scary crazy. This, you understand, is the balance of my memories of Val as I saw her when we were dating. And five or six years ago this same aspect of my psyche was represented by a scary spider who confronted or leapt at me, from whom I fled in panic every single time. So for her to take on the image of my sexy yet scary ex-girlfriend is a massive and to-be-celebrated improvement.
Tuesdays With Abhorrent Fiends vol. 37
[convention in town] 6-9-08
oh, if I were a pickpocket
I'd love to work this crowd
they're innocent and indolent
from out of town and loud
take cash and credit cards
and brown bag lunches - I'm not proud
oh, if I were a pickpocket
I'd love to work this crowd
oh, if I were a murderer
I couldn't stand the smell
cologne and sweat and confidence
that I'm bound straight to hell
with every pair of eyes I see
I wonder, can they tell
oh, if I were a murderer
I couldn't stand the smell
oh, if I were a rapist
then these dames would turn me on
their hair and clothes and faces
all just look spray-painted on
they take a half-step back
and look relieved when I am gone
oh, if I were a rapist
then these dames would turn me on
but I work right across the street
where all these people come to eat
it makes the business bittersweet
I punched out - I'm already beat
I've got to fight my way through them
to get back home again.
*****
I'll be crossposting this little songy thing on my new "official" blog. Maybe add relatives to blogroll later.
This song is a blues tune that I have written many, many times. At least once every six months I get a blues song--often comic or satiric, as this one is--with the same freakin tune and chord sequence. Don't always keep them or write them down, since I feel it's downright embarrassing to write the same song over and over. I try very hard to be innovative. Though I make this harder for myself by not practicing guitar and not learning to play other people's songs on it. Such would expand my musical horizons, fo sho!
I now have verses one and two of [don't forget]; there are going to be four. The first quatrain, posted below, will fit onto the fourth verse. As far as playing it on the guitar, I have yet to attempt even the chord sequence. One problem with composing on the fly (ie, not with an instrument to hand) is that if you're not all that great at your instrument, the background music in your mind tends to wobble and shift as you try to pin it down to the few chords or notes you know well.
Phone-conversating was weird last night. I called up Amber, and ended up talking to both my sisters and Mom as they passed the phone around the room. Only took twenty minutes, and it was nice to catch up, but it felt weird. I want time alone with my two sisters, dangit. It always seems like either there's only two of us or other people *coughcoughMom!cough* decide to tag along and bust up the three-headed-hydra effect. Now, Dave finds the three-headed-hydra freaky and prefers not to participate and let us do our thing, which I suppose is quite reasonable. For Mom it's a rush, I think, to see her three daughters get all animated and talky. Dad was also always happy to see us gabbling sororially. But even parental pride takes on a different shape in different people, and I don't wanna talk about that right now.
The hell do I wanna talk about?
I wish we had a big, shiny masterplan, a series of steps we could all follow that would lead to comfortable wealth levels and respectable positions in whatever communities we chose to join. But instead it's like every magic is. You can only see the next step, and have a dim awareness of the step after next. Sometimes the serendipity bird poops in your brain or on your timeline, and what you thought was the next step turns into something completely different and sweet. All I can do in the present is figure out what I need, what I've got to work with, what my duty is regarding those in whom I've chosen to invest my loyalty, and see if it all matches up. Plus try to consider ahead a little bit and see what avenues of possibility I open up with every action.
This, today, is one of those mornings where I will not be entirely human until after I've had my coffee. And unlike yesterday I will be a good girl and not hop up to the kitchen every ten minutes to see if it's made yet. These are our busiest days of the year and the cooks each have an elephant's diaper of crap to shovel to prep for lunch. Once again I find myself thanking dog and my past career path choices that I'm not a server or busser right now. Yes, they make good tips, but they earn them in spades. With the convention in town the front of the house turns huge numbers of tables, many with large parties who are from out of town, don't know each other well, and definitely don't know what they want to order. *shudder* I've become known here as a patient and (to my astonishment!) laconic person, but it would mess with me emotionally to have to be patient with customers while standing up for hours at a time.
Had a slight headache last night, I think from too much staring at screens. It went away for awhile before sleeptime, but then came back when I woke up this morning. Curses. I took an aspirin this morning along with my regular vitamin (alas, we ate the last of the excellent gummy vitamins yesterday). But even though the headache has faded again I'm sluggish and grouchy because of it. Ach, I've circled back to the needing coffee whine. That's it, I'm'a go read webcomics. Or, y'know, do real work.
oh, if I were a pickpocket
I'd love to work this crowd
they're innocent and indolent
from out of town and loud
take cash and credit cards
and brown bag lunches - I'm not proud
oh, if I were a pickpocket
I'd love to work this crowd
oh, if I were a murderer
I couldn't stand the smell
cologne and sweat and confidence
that I'm bound straight to hell
with every pair of eyes I see
I wonder, can they tell
oh, if I were a murderer
I couldn't stand the smell
oh, if I were a rapist
then these dames would turn me on
their hair and clothes and faces
all just look spray-painted on
they take a half-step back
and look relieved when I am gone
oh, if I were a rapist
then these dames would turn me on
but I work right across the street
where all these people come to eat
it makes the business bittersweet
I punched out - I'm already beat
I've got to fight my way through them
to get back home again.
*****
I'll be crossposting this little songy thing on my new "official" blog. Maybe add relatives to blogroll later.
This song is a blues tune that I have written many, many times. At least once every six months I get a blues song--often comic or satiric, as this one is--with the same freakin tune and chord sequence. Don't always keep them or write them down, since I feel it's downright embarrassing to write the same song over and over. I try very hard to be innovative. Though I make this harder for myself by not practicing guitar and not learning to play other people's songs on it. Such would expand my musical horizons, fo sho!
I now have verses one and two of [don't forget]; there are going to be four. The first quatrain, posted below, will fit onto the fourth verse. As far as playing it on the guitar, I have yet to attempt even the chord sequence. One problem with composing on the fly (ie, not with an instrument to hand) is that if you're not all that great at your instrument, the background music in your mind tends to wobble and shift as you try to pin it down to the few chords or notes you know well.
Phone-conversating was weird last night. I called up Amber, and ended up talking to both my sisters and Mom as they passed the phone around the room. Only took twenty minutes, and it was nice to catch up, but it felt weird. I want time alone with my two sisters, dangit. It always seems like either there's only two of us or other people *coughcoughMom!cough* decide to tag along and bust up the three-headed-hydra effect. Now, Dave finds the three-headed-hydra freaky and prefers not to participate and let us do our thing, which I suppose is quite reasonable. For Mom it's a rush, I think, to see her three daughters get all animated and talky. Dad was also always happy to see us gabbling sororially. But even parental pride takes on a different shape in different people, and I don't wanna talk about that right now.
The hell do I wanna talk about?
I wish we had a big, shiny masterplan, a series of steps we could all follow that would lead to comfortable wealth levels and respectable positions in whatever communities we chose to join. But instead it's like every magic is. You can only see the next step, and have a dim awareness of the step after next. Sometimes the serendipity bird poops in your brain or on your timeline, and what you thought was the next step turns into something completely different and sweet. All I can do in the present is figure out what I need, what I've got to work with, what my duty is regarding those in whom I've chosen to invest my loyalty, and see if it all matches up. Plus try to consider ahead a little bit and see what avenues of possibility I open up with every action.
This, today, is one of those mornings where I will not be entirely human until after I've had my coffee. And unlike yesterday I will be a good girl and not hop up to the kitchen every ten minutes to see if it's made yet. These are our busiest days of the year and the cooks each have an elephant's diaper of crap to shovel to prep for lunch. Once again I find myself thanking dog and my past career path choices that I'm not a server or busser right now. Yes, they make good tips, but they earn them in spades. With the convention in town the front of the house turns huge numbers of tables, many with large parties who are from out of town, don't know each other well, and definitely don't know what they want to order. *shudder* I've become known here as a patient and (to my astonishment!) laconic person, but it would mess with me emotionally to have to be patient with customers while standing up for hours at a time.
Had a slight headache last night, I think from too much staring at screens. It went away for awhile before sleeptime, but then came back when I woke up this morning. Curses. I took an aspirin this morning along with my regular vitamin (alas, we ate the last of the excellent gummy vitamins yesterday). But even though the headache has faded again I'm sluggish and grouchy because of it. Ach, I've circled back to the needing coffee whine. That's it, I'm'a go read webcomics. Or, y'know, do real work.
news update. blerg.
Have now created:
Facebook account for general consumption (no content yet)
Extra blogger for communicating with relatives (one post)
Dummy email account for "spamming" or registering on lesser forums
List of chores, starting with the internet:
Update Facebook and connect with relatives
Put relatives on blogroll on extra blog
Find lesser forums from which to recruit potatoes* for Day of Discord discussion
Call Howard, talk about insurancey stuff
Call Jim, talk about landlordy stuff
Open utility bills, figure out which things need to be paid...then worry about switching them into my name
Actually got the first verse of [don't forget] today. Maybe the beginning of the second. Busy at work as expected; glad I went to bed somewhat early, cause I was beat and today I need the energy. New Saltation chapter finally posted after a month-long wait! This is one of those times where people are talking to me about random crap because I'm in a friend/confidant role to them, thus interrupting my work AND my play and it makes me mad at them. Interrupting me is the way to go! Sign up now for a free sample of my nonexistent wrath! Other people are also of course getting interrupted, but they get to get mad about it themselves.
Want to pout and be grouchy but it's too high-energy of a taig today for that to even remotely work. I'm just hoping I'll be able to print out a chapter of something and go outside for a few minutes. Day like today the peeps and their peeping would follow me out onto the sidewalk, around the block, all the way to the bus stop...
Unless I get my ducks in a row before steeping away from my desk. Blerg indeed.
*potatoes sit just as still as cabbages, but taste better and are more versatile as foodstuffs. I am also a potato.
Facebook account for general consumption (no content yet)
Extra blogger for communicating with relatives (one post)
Dummy email account for "spamming" or registering on lesser forums
List of chores, starting with the internet:
Update Facebook and connect with relatives
Put relatives on blogroll on extra blog
Find lesser forums from which to recruit potatoes* for Day of Discord discussion
Call Howard, talk about insurancey stuff
Call Jim, talk about landlordy stuff
Open utility bills, figure out which things need to be paid...then worry about switching them into my name
Actually got the first verse of [don't forget] today. Maybe the beginning of the second. Busy at work as expected; glad I went to bed somewhat early, cause I was beat and today I need the energy. New Saltation chapter finally posted after a month-long wait! This is one of those times where people are talking to me about random crap because I'm in a friend/confidant role to them, thus interrupting my work AND my play and it makes me mad at them. Interrupting me is the way to go! Sign up now for a free sample of my nonexistent wrath! Other people are also of course getting interrupted, but they get to get mad about it themselves.
Want to pout and be grouchy but it's too high-energy of a taig today for that to even remotely work. I'm just hoping I'll be able to print out a chapter of something and go outside for a few minutes. Day like today the peeps and their peeping would follow me out onto the sidewalk, around the block, all the way to the bus stop...
Unless I get my ducks in a row before steeping away from my desk. Blerg indeed.
*potatoes sit just as still as cabbages, but taste better and are more versatile as foodstuffs. I am also a potato.
there's a reason they call it websurfing
Work It Harder Make It Better
Do It Faster, Makes Us Stronger
More Than Ever Hour After
Our Work Is Never Over
~daft punk
Can you believe [Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger] has been one of those songs that always makes me cry since the first time I heard it? In an "I'm crying cause it's true and shiny!" kind of way.
I have no logical basis for believing this, but I like to imagine sapient machine creatures of comparable size are generally happier and emotionally better-adjusted than humans. They can still be evil and choose to do bad things, of course; all living creatures can. But I think this because in order to fulfill basic life functions, mech life would need to be even more cross-integrated both vertically and horizontally. The information storage capacity of matter is really the sticking point, as I see it. What would machine life use that is as small as a protein and capable of performing similar functions? What of RNA, the minute structure of the brain, how could such functions be fulfilled by other structures in a silicon-based life form? So many unanswered questions. But I guess I have this idea that a silicon chemical base would have slightly less efficiency at deep information storage and expression, and if that's the case, then the lack would have to be made up by much, much more efficient information exchange between and among mech organisms. What you can't get out of your own cellular (or cell-analogue) systems, you have to get from your social environment.
Techno always makes me think about machines, but that style of music is almost certainly not what mech life would consider music. It's all based around the heartbeat for one thing, let alone being written for the really narrow range accessible to the human ear. I think that's a tradeoff all forms of life have to make at some point though: narrow focus means deeper experience of detail, means richer connection to one's living environment. A precarious balance of many, many needs which much be weighted against one another from one moment to the next! Life is always foaming on the crest.
Had a dream and actually remembered it. Still don't feel like writing it down. Maybe when I feel a little less unsettled or something. However, today feels like a good day. I just have so many things on my mind that when I go to write about something here, it ends up being something totally unrelated, because otherwise I don't know that I'd be able to stop.
Do It Faster, Makes Us Stronger
More Than Ever Hour After
Our Work Is Never Over
~daft punk
Can you believe [Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger] has been one of those songs that always makes me cry since the first time I heard it? In an "I'm crying cause it's true and shiny!" kind of way.
I have no logical basis for believing this, but I like to imagine sapient machine creatures of comparable size are generally happier and emotionally better-adjusted than humans. They can still be evil and choose to do bad things, of course; all living creatures can. But I think this because in order to fulfill basic life functions, mech life would need to be even more cross-integrated both vertically and horizontally. The information storage capacity of matter is really the sticking point, as I see it. What would machine life use that is as small as a protein and capable of performing similar functions? What of RNA, the minute structure of the brain, how could such functions be fulfilled by other structures in a silicon-based life form? So many unanswered questions. But I guess I have this idea that a silicon chemical base would have slightly less efficiency at deep information storage and expression, and if that's the case, then the lack would have to be made up by much, much more efficient information exchange between and among mech organisms. What you can't get out of your own cellular (or cell-analogue) systems, you have to get from your social environment.
Techno always makes me think about machines, but that style of music is almost certainly not what mech life would consider music. It's all based around the heartbeat for one thing, let alone being written for the really narrow range accessible to the human ear. I think that's a tradeoff all forms of life have to make at some point though: narrow focus means deeper experience of detail, means richer connection to one's living environment. A precarious balance of many, many needs which much be weighted against one another from one moment to the next! Life is always foaming on the crest.
Had a dream and actually remembered it. Still don't feel like writing it down. Maybe when I feel a little less unsettled or something. However, today feels like a good day. I just have so many things on my mind that when I go to write about something here, it ends up being something totally unrelated, because otherwise I don't know that I'd be able to stop.
shitting psitanium
It won’t come out.
I reach back through a patch of disheveled relevancies, mismatched associations. Poke fingers of my thought through phrases lacking clauses, crumpled paragraphs that won’t fan out into their sentences.
Want very much to be angry. Hungry for anger if that makes sense.
Can’t write it till you’ve chewed it up, swallowed and digested it. The lyric is the shit.
The shit that feeds the tree.
Disheveled irrelevancies, old interlocking symbol sets.
Been reading up in Wikipedia on the science of the brain. It’s fun to follow the cul-de-sacs and turnabouts that connect and reconnect the sciences of brain and mind. As if science itself were a gigantic brain, which may or may not be inhabited by an invisible part.
Today will be a day I hate the phone. Almost typed hat the phone. Typo demons and all today. I have already hatted the phone in a sense, by answering a call from our phone service company where the tech talked me through creating a new voicemail box. Then I showed Lisa how to use it just now. In another, unrelated sense, however, I’ve been hating the phone as its ringing grates against my hurty feelings and thoughts, and I feel intruded upon.
Serves me right for feeling and thinking at work, cha.
The self-dissatisfaction is back, which in its way is a good sign. Dave was telling me yesterday: look, when you stop writing, first you always get down on yourself for not writing, and then it starts to scare you, then you kick yourself in the ass and write something awesome. But I know, too, that my today feelings are an early-to-mid step in the process. As I’m fond of saying, you can’t write something till you’re out the other side of it. And I do agree with everybody and their brother that it’ll take time.
I just wanna write something else, think about something else. Like climbing up a hill in a snowstorm when the bus stop shelter thing is at the top of the hill. You’re looking at the shelter and saying to yourself, Oh, dog, if I could just already be at the top of the hill and in that shelter, this snow wouldn’t be nearly as bad and I’d be so much more all right, I can’t wait. But you know, even if you try not to dwell on it, that once you’ve gotten into the shelter and caught your breath, you’ll realize how cold your feet and hands and face are and that your socks are wet, and all you’ll be able to think about is the bus that’ll bring you home. That, I think, is a really good analogy. Because while what I’m going through right now is hard and painful, the thing that follows it is no walk in the park either.
Respect your elders, girlie. Processes like this one are older than your species. Recognize, foolish human! Recognize your state so as not to stumble and get all tangled up and get in the way of your own transformation, thereby dragging it out into something much longer and harder!
I like my environmental mana but I’m angry at magic, because the next thing I need to work on is hard for me. Reality always being more limited and requiring of effort than fiction, that makes me mad too. And even mana exchanges are disrupted right now cause my personality’s all swirling and agitated from bereavement and everything shifting to new alignments. I hardly know how to feel about the taig right now. And I love the taigs of the places I go!
Yesterday when I got home I guessed wrong on the top lock on the front door (thought it was unlocked; it was locked). Which was my sign that my emotional state was not well settled and it was a good night to doubly examine all my judgments before speaking up. Kind of how Dad would try and win three games of Solitaire using his system and if it didn’t work, he’d know his mind wasn’t in its most optimized state. At any rate that sign was dead right; I kept finding myself thinking things that would have been really, really mean—mean to Dave, to me, to the memory of Dad even. But I didn’t say even one of them! Which is a huge improvement over the times even a year ago, let alone in college, when I’d get in the particular mood that one turned out to be. I’d just blurt out something horrible when the emotional pressure inside my mind was high and I didn’t think of any other way to relieve it.
I’m angry at science, too, because I still do kind of suck at it. No, really. Reading sciencey stuff has made me remember what a vast body of knowledge, training and discipline a person needs to be able to innovate within a field of science. You can half-ass your way through everything and still get papers published, yeah. But if you want to really make inroads against a theory, let alone establish a new model or hypothesis, you’ve got to work like an irritable god is watching over your shoulder.
So there’s many pressures in my mind right now. And I can’t let myself think too hard about any one of them, because at the moment I’ve just gotta put one foot in front of the other, mentally as well as physically. Science and magic, poetry and psychology, my theories and Dad’s theories and everybody’s stories. Rent. Shelving. Groceries. Politics.
Oh and now it’s worky time. Let’s working.
I am so gonna try and get myself a lunch break today. I could really use one. I am so fucking hungry.
I reach back through a patch of disheveled relevancies, mismatched associations. Poke fingers of my thought through phrases lacking clauses, crumpled paragraphs that won’t fan out into their sentences.
Want very much to be angry. Hungry for anger if that makes sense.
Can’t write it till you’ve chewed it up, swallowed and digested it. The lyric is the shit.
The shit that feeds the tree.
Disheveled irrelevancies, old interlocking symbol sets.
Been reading up in Wikipedia on the science of the brain. It’s fun to follow the cul-de-sacs and turnabouts that connect and reconnect the sciences of brain and mind. As if science itself were a gigantic brain, which may or may not be inhabited by an invisible part.
Today will be a day I hate the phone. Almost typed hat the phone. Typo demons and all today. I have already hatted the phone in a sense, by answering a call from our phone service company where the tech talked me through creating a new voicemail box. Then I showed Lisa how to use it just now. In another, unrelated sense, however, I’ve been hating the phone as its ringing grates against my hurty feelings and thoughts, and I feel intruded upon.
Serves me right for feeling and thinking at work, cha.
The self-dissatisfaction is back, which in its way is a good sign. Dave was telling me yesterday: look, when you stop writing, first you always get down on yourself for not writing, and then it starts to scare you, then you kick yourself in the ass and write something awesome. But I know, too, that my today feelings are an early-to-mid step in the process. As I’m fond of saying, you can’t write something till you’re out the other side of it. And I do agree with everybody and their brother that it’ll take time.
I just wanna write something else, think about something else. Like climbing up a hill in a snowstorm when the bus stop shelter thing is at the top of the hill. You’re looking at the shelter and saying to yourself, Oh, dog, if I could just already be at the top of the hill and in that shelter, this snow wouldn’t be nearly as bad and I’d be so much more all right, I can’t wait. But you know, even if you try not to dwell on it, that once you’ve gotten into the shelter and caught your breath, you’ll realize how cold your feet and hands and face are and that your socks are wet, and all you’ll be able to think about is the bus that’ll bring you home. That, I think, is a really good analogy. Because while what I’m going through right now is hard and painful, the thing that follows it is no walk in the park either.
Respect your elders, girlie. Processes like this one are older than your species. Recognize, foolish human! Recognize your state so as not to stumble and get all tangled up and get in the way of your own transformation, thereby dragging it out into something much longer and harder!
I like my environmental mana but I’m angry at magic, because the next thing I need to work on is hard for me. Reality always being more limited and requiring of effort than fiction, that makes me mad too. And even mana exchanges are disrupted right now cause my personality’s all swirling and agitated from bereavement and everything shifting to new alignments. I hardly know how to feel about the taig right now. And I love the taigs of the places I go!
Yesterday when I got home I guessed wrong on the top lock on the front door (thought it was unlocked; it was locked). Which was my sign that my emotional state was not well settled and it was a good night to doubly examine all my judgments before speaking up. Kind of how Dad would try and win three games of Solitaire using his system and if it didn’t work, he’d know his mind wasn’t in its most optimized state. At any rate that sign was dead right; I kept finding myself thinking things that would have been really, really mean—mean to Dave, to me, to the memory of Dad even. But I didn’t say even one of them! Which is a huge improvement over the times even a year ago, let alone in college, when I’d get in the particular mood that one turned out to be. I’d just blurt out something horrible when the emotional pressure inside my mind was high and I didn’t think of any other way to relieve it.
I’m angry at science, too, because I still do kind of suck at it. No, really. Reading sciencey stuff has made me remember what a vast body of knowledge, training and discipline a person needs to be able to innovate within a field of science. You can half-ass your way through everything and still get papers published, yeah. But if you want to really make inroads against a theory, let alone establish a new model or hypothesis, you’ve got to work like an irritable god is watching over your shoulder.
So there’s many pressures in my mind right now. And I can’t let myself think too hard about any one of them, because at the moment I’ve just gotta put one foot in front of the other, mentally as well as physically. Science and magic, poetry and psychology, my theories and Dad’s theories and everybody’s stories. Rent. Shelving. Groceries. Politics.
Oh and now it’s worky time. Let’s working.
I am so gonna try and get myself a lunch break today. I could really use one. I am so fucking hungry.
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