Badger bag - messy, surly, full of books

"She has been called, and rightly so, the Boswell of the Octopus."
Dastardly Dan needs help, he is back from the "big house" and if you can spare a little cash for him give it to me and I will pass it on.

Thursday, July 31, 2003

back up

My darkshire email is back up. Blogger is working again. All is well.

The River Alphaios, in the form of Minnie, has whooshed through the horrible Augean stables of the papers on my table and floor. Six months of bills to be filed, poems, cat hair, junk mail, M.'s paintings... it was several filing cabinets' worth

posted by badgerbag 7/31/2003 05:04:00 PM comment

regret

hate... neighbors... who start.... construction.... at 8:00am...

should not have eaten pot cookie and drank margarita. fortunately, did NOT get up on karaoke stage to sing "rappers delight", "jessie's girl" or "walk like a man". Or "Convoy". Or "Besame Mucho" or Lagrimas Negras.

The Notorious Kimberly was in full force with that Jewel song and "Be my Baby", gliding in graceful descent from the stage like a goddess with arm dramatically extended... the crowd around me melted away like magic... and a 6 foot 3 glamour queen with a pansy in her hair knelt to sing to me. Please let there be photographic evidence! Oh please!

At some point in the evening I remember saying to S. "I'm having fun, but I'd rather be reading a book. In the bathtub." Without missing a beat she replied something like "Sex? In the bathroom? Now? Oh honey maybe not this time I'm not up to it." Leaving me to wonder all night in a dim, befuddled way if she just pretended to mis-hear me for comic effect, or if she REALLY thought I had just invited her to have sex in the bathroom.

posted by badgerbag 7/31/2003 08:31:00 AM comment

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

take a mystery number

Just spent nearly 5 hours in the DMV to get new plates. It was incredible.

Just as I was about to give up, as I had to go pick up M. at 3, this strung-out sleazy looking woman walked up to me and offered to trade her number for mine - I had 83 and she had 73, and they were going through about 6 or 7 numbers an hour. But she wanted to leave and come back. I thought for a second she was going to ask me for money for it, but then she said she saw me looking at the clock and also how I was playing with this little girl (I kept someone else's 15 month old entertained for about an hour with some paper planes, drawings, and various stupid games). She figured how I must have to pick up my own kid from school! Well, how right she was. It was like I had won the lottery!


posted by badgerbag 7/30/2003 03:25:00 PM comment

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

assassination futures, anyone?

I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS!!!

"The Pentagon yesterday scrapped a plan to establish a futures market that would have allowed investors to bet on the probability of coups, assassinations, terrorist strikes and other events in the Middle East...."

The Pentagon had listed the program in defense budget plans sent to Capitol Hill and had briefed congressional staff members about it earlier this year. A Web site had promoted the program, and the registration of up to 1,000 traders had been due to begin on Friday, with trading set to start Oct. 1.
There is nothing I can add to this. Our government is insane. A few years from now, what country is going to take me as an exile?

posted by badgerbag 7/29/2003 08:23:00 PM comment

I'll be ordering my PFLAG t-shirt now

M. is in the tub singing "In the Navy" with wild enthusiasm.

posted by badgerbag 7/29/2003 08:21:00 PM comment

crucial life skills, passed on from parent to child

I can rest easy, now that I have taught M. how to twist the two halves of the cookie before pulling them apart to lick the inside.

posted by badgerbag 7/29/2003 03:57:00 PM comment

translate THIS, fucko!

Went up to The City to the Center for Art in Translation. Their office is right under 80, for maximal earthquake fantasy fear, but it's pretty. They need a new executive director, someone who has a lot of experience with fundraising.

On a whim I decided to go to City Lights bookstore and see if they wanted some issues of Composite. It's somewhere in North Beach, right? Drove around SF for a while, mildly and pleasantly lost. City Lights employees do Not want to talk to anyone. They do Not want to accept any grubby little poetry magazines, despite being "pocket poets" central. Fuck 'em!

There were some 50 cent copies of a translation magazine, Osiris. I have never seen it. I wonder if they still exist?

In Black Oak bookstore around the corner I found some fabulous treasure, if dusty old pink poetry books from the Colección Austral are treasure, and they are to me. A somewhat odd little book "coplas a la muerte de su padre" by Jorge Manrique, with more footnotes than poetry. Amado Nervo. An anthology of Peruvian poetry. Browsing amongst the tiny selection of books in Spanish, I realized with a shock that I was reading with reasonable fluency. That won't help me with Manrique, who wrote in the 15th century, or Rosalia Castro, who wrote in Galician. Doh!

The Black Oak people (I bet they were the owners) were remarkably friendly and un-hipstery, giving me the sort of friendliness discount only a sympathetic reader in a used bookstore can give to a grubby, wistful girl in a silly hat when she spends 2 hours sitting on the floor reading and then surfaces with an armload of obscurity. They also seemed happy to take the Composites, asking suddenly even friendlier questions, unlike the City Lights jerkwater suck-Ferlinghetti's-cock hipster clerks.

When I got back to my truck, my back license plate was gone and I had a hundred dollar "your license plate is missing" ticket. Goddamn it! I wish there were some way I could blame this, too, on the guys in City Lights.

posted by badgerbag 7/29/2003 03:31:00 PM comment

day of listening

- how they do autism therapy training session
- endless town council meeting on using recycled water on playgrounds (more about this later)

After this, you might wonder what powerful driving force motivates me today. I yearn, I lust,
for the sharpie-marker style lip ink that s. showed me!!! It is out of stock and yet I must have it. Lipstick! But without the "stick" part so that there is no grody layer of stuff on there.

Alas, I slinked out of the council meeting at 11am, ashamed that I had never been to one before, unable to wait any longer for my 3 minutes to speak.

On Sunday, M. followed me around demanding something I didn't quite understand. It finally resolved to "Mama, please wear that skirt on your butt!" This at least parsed as English but I didn't get it until he handed me the apron and explained that I had to pretend to be Howdy, the storekeeper hamster.

posted by badgerbag 7/29/2003 08:49:00 AM comment

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Post-blogathonic stupor

Well, that was fun and stimulating. I feel all healthy and clean and sane now, as if the ship's doctor had prescribed me a black draught and a blue pill for my mind.

Later today I will go back and add some links, internal and external, where appropriate.

That place where whump made a cameo is making me laugh, now that I look at it again. He has just brought us coffee and sandwiches and a copy of "Read or Die", and we are about to play Carcasonne Hunter Gatherer.

I heard an earful about skarat's rpg where he mixed his cartoon novel world and all its pop culture and reality. The players played themselves, souped up a bit. Aliens had sold some hi tech bombs and the Earth destroyed itself with, I dunno, cobalt planet buster bombs? Other aliens come back and realize the Earth's former pop culture is a fabulous resource for export, so they resurrect everyone. Having no way to discern between fictional, pop culture, and people, they resurrect everyone, so you might be on the subway in the planet-wide city and run into Prince and the Revolution with big submachine guns.

[game playing interlude]

La la la, I rule, go, me, for I have won Carcasonne with 146 points. It is true, Hunter Gatherer is more balanced than the first version. The huts and river systems are way better than the boring old roads.

Cannot wait to watch Read or Die, which J. has been telling me to watch - it's an anime movie about a librarian girl with a lot of books and incredible superpowers.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 03:40:00 PM comment

Dreams again

Wow, I just went back and read the first post of this morning. I had completely forgotten that dream. Now I remember it again, like magic.

Tomorrow or whenever I wake up and my wrists work again, I will go mark up links and interlinks and fix any typos, but no editing otherwise.

That's that! I'm not waiting for the magic 600 to roll round.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 05:53:00 AM comment

imaginary demarcation scrupulously obeyed

You know, I just want it to say "posted at 6am". then I will stop, stop, stop. I will continue stopping, even though that is impossible because you can't keep stopping if you aren't going.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 05:49:00 AM comment

The end. and they lived happily ever after.

I think I really ended an hour ago. Let's pretend I did. It was almost a neat wrap-up. But part of this live writing thing, part of its allure is seeing the writing process. If I had been writing a series of essays to be published somewhere, think how different they would be, without the stuttering, goofing, fucking up, rambling reminiscent of the Three stooges or even to make it a degree of imaginariness removed, reminiscent of Kerouac rambling on about the Three Stooges.

Removing another degree of reality means more decadence, like M. preferring to watch out the window rather than to go outside. Ooo, that was an amazing feat of over-interpreting!




posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 05:45:00 AM comment

The Blogathon itself, the art of photography

What a cool project and I salute the people who organized it! I just went over to blogathon.org to see if I must go till their declaration of 6am, or my own clock. Lo and behold they have all these contests and things posted! I had no idea. Was writing nearly every minute, with bathroom breaks and reading-I,Asshole-breaks.

Well, what a wild ride! I am kind of blogged out. Let's return to the notes to see if ANYTHING IS LEFT.

Hmm, there is a jumble of words, clearly written "post sleeping pill" in the cloud of amnesiac glory that is Ambien.

Stereoscopic photos, the world of photography and how it affects our perception of the real world. I'm in the middle of a book on the history of photography, which I got for L. for her birthday but like a big jerk, kept it to read it first. PHotographs were art, mass produceable art, that affected the real world in huge ways, politics, war, spying, mapping, defining "truth" in a moment in time.

Then I wrote:

"future: brain maps? holographic experiences but instead of light, brainprints or movies that are all encompassing? not a new thought. "

Umm, whatever, Badger-on-Ambien.

Soon I will join you in the fabled realm of sleep!

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 05:33:00 AM comment

"la-ser"

Let's call this the 5:30 post because if i stop writing, I keep leaning my head back and then... zzz. must keep laser like focus.

I feel somewhat abashed at this point, have been sort of bragging on myself here egged on by all those comments and emails saying "What a fabulous genius you are". I like it, but don't feed that monkey on my back too much now. already in this blog, not just blogathon, every sentence has the word "I" in it at least once, don't think I don't notice it and it's embarassing. What do to. If I tried diligently to write abstractions, removing the I, I, I, it would take WAY LONGER to say anything.

At this point through this odd form of mental yoga I do feel I have achieved some odd new plateau of self understanding. Christ, it just took me about 30 seconds to type the world "plateau" correctly. How would one transcribe the self-derisive noise that, say, bugs bunny would make in a cartoon by flapping his lips when hit in the head? it's like that. not a raspberry like "pbbbbtttt" but more like "blehbl-blehbl-blehbl-blehbl."

That was NOT laser like focus. Is there anything left in my notes?

"taking control of history, imagined history. lies."

That word "lies" stops me cold as I look at it. Whenever I write in my journal I feel it is in some sense a lie, no matter how honest I am being. I've never figured out why. It is hard to capture the wooliness of thought and feeling in slow words, so it always feels like a lie to say anything.

That was an odd thing to say.....!

I'm speaking/writing but more than in speaking, I'm listening to what is written and exercising more judgement, so it feels less spontaneous than speech and thus less honest. But I can say better what I mean in writing.



posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 05:20:00 AM comment

how not?

And sometimes people come over to my house say for a party and I just think, how can you not be looking at my books? Forget talking to me, just cast a glad eye about you and not only will you be entertained but you will understand more about me than you would after knowing me for several years.

Not that there's going to be ANYTHING UNKNOWN LEFT TO KNOW ABOUT ME after this night is through.

This is part of the sad thing about living a life that is largely imaginary. It is difficult to share it, or to find other people who share the same base of interests or knowledge.

Well, okay, I'm sure people who fetishize belly button lint feel the same way, and that's what the internet is good for eh?

But built into this trap of the imaginary is also a built in pantheon of imaginary friends. I don't have to call Coleridge or send him an email, he is my friend across death and time. I probably know him better than I'll ever know most of my Real Live friends.

Look how neatly I just tied a whole bunch of stuff together there, that's how you can tell it's getting close to the end! Poets do that sometimes!

I just forgot what else I was about to say.

O yeah, the quote I can't find in Anima Poetae. It was about just that - something about how depression hits him, not from anything specific but "the daily wearing away of life", and then the only consolations are the beauties of nature, and friends, and he specifically includes dead people who have written congenial books as comforting friends.

How have I gotten this far without driveling about Marcus Aurelius?

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 04:56:00 AM comment

Even more about books

It's only fair after that to analyze my own book collection with the same ruthless eye.

First of all, there is a jesus-fuckload of books. But they are in sad disarray. There are vague categories. Poetry has 3 bookshelves and is nicely in order thanks to a noble fit of alphabetization by jhk recently. there are several shelves of just Penguin Classics all nicely lined up in a place of showing-off and handy accessibility. Moving on through non fiction in the living room there is a set of 1914 encyclopedias. How amazingly useful they are and what a fabulous perspective of knowledge from a different time. Also what the Brits considered important is interesting so that Boston will have a page and some pissant village in Britain has a level of detail you can't even imagine.

A bunch of history. I still prefer to read anything that is not Europe or US, either produced there or about there. With some exceptions. It is necessary for balance. So, a lot of stuff about Latin America and china and India, not so much about other places. The chinese lit has a place of honor and there's a fair collection for a non-chinese reading amateur scholar.

Back in the dining room a bunch of reference books like stuff on native edible plants and composting (so useful for those post apocalypse tribal acceptances!) and how to make figures with string and make paper and identify birds and tide pool life. Useful things like that! Medical books, for the resident hypochondriac who shall remain nameless but who has been called B----- upon occasion. There is a whole shelf of crappy books on their way Out.

In the bedroom is fiction. Oh wait, there is a 2-bookshelf wide Bastion of Order and the Forces of Light -- it's an awe-inspiring collection role playing game books and binders with stuff about starfleet battles, kept in meticulous order. That would be jhk's personal and beloved Fortress of Solitude, the extension of his brain, oft referred to for sage postings on rpg newsgroups. I don't know how such an organized person could ever put up with me. I love him so! I could write a whole entry about his imaginary worlds!

Then the fiction which is approaching orderliness, again, thanks to you know who that lives here and it's not me and M. can't read. What an odd mix of fiction, there is no rhyme or reason to it, though there's an undercurrent of feminist science fiction. Hmm, up on the high shelves there are a bunch of scary looking sex books.

In M.'s room are some towering edifices festooned with books which I am hoping someday he will read. Then he has his own small bookshelf full of books that he likes to hear and look at.

Next to one of the beds, I wonder whose, is small bookshelf crammed full of old journals ranging back to 1990 and since we are omniscient and not really a stranger at Badger's PenSFA party, we know that there are 2 giant plastic bins in the garage are full of the notebooks from before then. The big bookshelf has been recently cleaned out but it seems to hold binders with writing projects and books being read and then the one golden bookshelf of things like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and the Bhagavad Gita in various translations.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 04:30:00 AM comment

More about books

When I go to someone's house I like to look at all their books. Do they have any books? Some people have them but they're all boxed up for some reason and never got unboxed, like my friend J.A.O.'s cool book collection was at her former house for god knows how long. Maybe they are all one category or two, like mysteries and some cookbooks. Do they have a few shelves of books that are grouped in obvious "college classes that I took a while back" groupings? It is fairly easy to tell which classes.

Do they fall into the category of people who have a lot of books other than those college ones? Now that gets interesting because again, their books will fall into various categories. I guess I make judgements on people, which is not fair, and I prefer to think of it as character analysis, but yeah I'm looking. I assume the possibility of library books, or bad, bad, cheaters like me who wait for fetishists of the new like whump to buy all the new books and then I borrow them off of him. So when I lived near J. I read wads of comic books and history and whatever else he had, and now that I live near whump I read lots of popular science and new, fabulous, luxurious, feminist science fiction, as he is a starhawk-loving member of the secret feminist cabal.

I am thinking at the moment of L.'s bookshelves, which are difficult to put into any category, but oddly enough, I think I could and it would be a) her college books, which overlap with mine to some degree b) the cream of what I have read, excluding the really long boring stuff like chinese epics c) girls' series books d) modern art and design and photography books which somehow signify more hipness that I could ever hope to attain. She sometimes makes comments where she puts herself down, as if she were not any kind of intellectual, but compared to about 99 percent of humanity her bookshelf reflects a wide range of knowledge and she should take some credit. L. I hope this does not piss you off that I comment on you.

those fabulous PenSFA parties, I love them for the amazing bookshelf analysis opportunities. It can be a little bit like torture being in the presence of so many cool books unknown to me, filtered through the collecting and reading bug of some obviously wacky person, and I can't borrow the books because I don't know them well enough. But the analysis... first since it's PenSFA obviously there is tons of SF. It seems popular to have carefully contructed shelves built in, that are exactly the size to fit a classic SF paperback, and then they are all in alphabetical order meticulously. I swear that one guy with the high ceilings and the bookshelves going all the way up and the rolly ladders, I almost had to kill him and steal his house. If I could pull off a temporary brain trade, that would also work. Then they will have other books grouped off somewhere else. The last party at RPG and S's house, I cruised the shelves, snippily and privately noting when I found duplicate copies of some book out of order. Actually all their non-SF books were out of order but I forgive this easily, as I am messy beyond compare. They had many dictionaries, many foreign language dictionaries, travel guidebooks, very cool classic books on having good sex, books on sailing, computer books, legal books of some specific category that I've forgotten, odd and funny things like the 1860-something book of medical curiosities, which was so good that I sat on the floor and started reading it and making ew gross comments about every 20 seconds. And there was more but it doesn't stick in my mind.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 03:56:00 AM comment

Getting there!

Oh the hilarious I, Asshole! !!!! <----- Extra-exclamation pointy. I have to confess she is my current rock star. Instead of going around humming bad 80s music, I'm muttering, "...a job title that isn't Breaky, Stealy, or Drinky in the Back Roomy." Heh heh heh.

At this point in the evening paranoia is cropping up slightly in a somewhat grandiose way, much like the state I used to get in after writing poetry all night long and imaginarily dissing on other modern poets until I was deluded with grandeur enough to be mentally writing my Nobel Prize acceptance speech. So, the current paranoid fantasy is that my fabulous blogathon is suddenly outed rather like Salam Pax, not that I compare to him, but that some media... you know, I'm mentally writing bad journalist prose like "Bisexual blogger, L---- Badger, mother of one and resident of California, admitted in her unusual online journal that she prays to Aphrodite and fantasizes about being raped by policemen. Badger, whose frequent grammatical errors will grate upon the eyes of anyone really educated, declined to comment, as did her entire extended family, who have now disowned her for the 3rd and final time. The Child Protective Services Agency will be investigating her fitness to be a parent."

I have SO lost track of what post is what half hour. Let's call this one 4 am.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 03:45:00 AM comment

What a tree-hugger!

Well that felt really self indulgent and cosy. This is officially the Day of No Diffidence. I am not modest, but I can be diffident.

Back to the subject of imagination and religion. During the time of declaring atheism or really sort of deliberately illogical pantheism, before we moved to Texas, I had this fir tree in the front yard that I loved passionately, and I would climb up it and pray to it. I would just think about the tree and how it had been there and might continue to be there after I was dead, not being sure how long the life of that sort of tree is, and I'd try to draw strength from that very idea. It was peaceful up there. I'm sure a lot of kids do this, or something very like it.

Nowadays, not being heavy into tree climbing, I have similar feelings in caves or oddly, in trains or buses, when I am not talking to ambassadors from other planets.

The tree was also a good thing to think about while falling asleep, though I stopped after a while when we moved to Texas, because it made me too sad because I really missed that particular tree.

But while it lasted, I would sit up there as if on the mast of a ship, and would think about the roots going down into the ground as if the tree trunk were pointing at the center of the earth. Which I guess it was. And then picturing myself in that position above the surface of the earth but with the earth spinning so that I was orbiting like a satellite, and trying to add in the motion of the earth circling the sun and moon and then spinning around in the galaxy, etc., etc.

This fantasy also became a good going to sleep fantasy, only helped along by my secret sex partner, Carl Sagan, a couple of years later.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 03:26:00 AM comment

Books, books, books!

RJ asks, "How many books do you read in a year?" So happy that someone is reading, I started replying in comments but then continue here.

Ha, good question. I have never counted, but there were times when I was keeping "Bookmania" pages and at least got some approximation. But I wasn't really keeping track even then because of all the shameful re-reading of "Harriet the Spy" and "Honeybunch's First Trip on a Houseboat" and "The Bobbsey Twins at the Ice Carnival".

I would say that I read at least a book a day, and usually more, but it is hard to tell because there will be several books going in the background for different purposes like reading in the tub vs. boringest book possible for going to sleep vs. stimulating thoughts book vs comforting childrens book such as listed above.

As a kid I would certainly read at least 2 kids books a day, and I know this because it was the limit for middle school library, and in the morning I'd check out two, and by the end of the day I'd turn them in and get more for night, and then in the morning I might be done and turn them in again. It is a great luxury to read quickly, because I feel free to read any old crap, and also I can read a huge series very quickly as one unit and get an impression of it, I think I read Dance to the Music of Time in a week, but I did almost nothing else.

It is a luxury but also a vice, as I use it to tune out Real Life, which, again, means I'm not doing anything else, oh fuck putting this in the comment box, I am going to paste it into the next entry.

Heh, this is my chance to spout off about all this, I guess.

I have noticed over the years when reading over someone's shoulder, I note the speed versus the other person's speed by the number of times I have to re-read the page before they are done. Most people it is 4 to one, so I read the page 4 times before they turn the page. jhk reads 3 or sometimes 2 to my one if I am tired. Skarat was notable for his maddening 5 to 1, though I love him dearly, I cannot bear to read even a comic book with him, I go crazy as if trapped in a sensory deprivation tank with no vibrator. L. refuses to read with me looking on so I have no idea, but she is no slouch -- just consider how many countless times she has read the entire Patrick O'Brian series. Dossie and Kristine K. read the same speed as I do.

Yes, it probably means I am missing something, but then I re-read the whole book.

On an airplane trip I just do crossword puzzles. I can read in cars without getting carsick. I can read while walking. I often read while brushing my teeth or washing my hair, though I try to be extra careful with other people's books and Not do that.

Again, as a kid, it was a major escape technique, not entirely healthy, somewhat pathological, so that during meals, if forbidden to read, in order to stay sane I would read a jar of mustard or a cereal box. With a limited amount of text, I would practice finding anagrams.

A super factual boring history book, like if I tackle "Our Oriental Heritage" or one that is in really archaic language, that takes longer.

Part of the temptation, beyond ignoring real people and real life, is to keep absorbing more and more information like a sponge, without ever synthesizing or producing anything. That is why I sometimes feel really driven to write a lot down. Also on some level, don't barf or anything, I figure on some level, if I CAN absorb a lot of information this quickly, it is in a way my responsibility to do something with it. If I don't produce something out of all this reading, I am a fool and my life has been largely a waste.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 03:06:00 AM comment

Imaginary conversations with Aphrodite

I'm tired...

have I run out of steam finally?

I return to the list of topics that, with incredible foresight, I jotted down earlier in the week. "Prayer and religion and myth as the realm of the imaginary". Okay I can do that.

Here I was thinking of my early atheism. I read the bible, skipping the long "begat" sections with compunction, or impunity, or maybe both. I had also been reading a bunch of Greek and Norse mythology, I think starting from D'Aulaire's and branching out from there. Hello! they seem pretty much the same to the 7 or 8 year old mind. Any mythology was eagerly devoured, anything I could find in the library.

It seemed illogical to be a Christian. If you were going to pick something to be illogical about on purpose, why not Norse gods? They were much cooler. Let's see... Moses? or Freya in a flying chariot drawn by giant grey cats? I'll take the chariot, thanks! Jesus? Or Athena in full armor? Guess, take a wild stab in the dark. I liked the idea of pantheism, or atheism, either one. All or none!

My poor dad sitting on the edge of my bed holding his old copy of "the book of common prayer" and trying to impress upon me a) knowledge, which I have, and experience, which he has from being old ("That's just not fair!") and b) the "leap of faith". Oh, I wasn't buying any of that. I feel bad for him now. He was very upset and i was very scornful. There was never any big deal about religion in our house, but we went to church. I did not know the word pantheism, and just said things like "why not just believe in all the possible gods or make some up." But I did know about atheism from reading the newspaper, I think Madeline Murray O'Hare was getting some press at the time, late 70s. Did I spell that right? Or is that the airport? Or are they related?

So anyway, chant the refrain with me: I had a point here. And it was:

Later on I used to pray rather experimentally to various gods and goddesses. I would work myself up into a sort of belief or rationalization that anything MIGHT be possible and even if it were just pretend, it still might have some voodoo-curse type of effect because of belief.

So I would pray to Venus at 6am in the morning at the bus stop, if Venus was visible. Nothing big, just "please, Aphrodite, make it so that when I grow up and am having sex, my allergies are better so that I don't have to stop during sex and blow my nose every couple of minutes." Happily, sex makes you all full of adrenaline, at least it does when you vigorously wrestle gay policemen, and the adrenaline fixes the allergies for just long enough. I wish I could go back in time and reassure myself of this happy fact. There might have been a prayer or 10 million about "Please let me get tits sometime before I am 20 years old so that people stop making those jokes about how I am really a boy, or a carpenter's dream, or a pirate's dream." (carpenter's dream, flat as a board. pirate's dream, she has a sunken chest)

Prayers to Athena could be anytime. Wisdom was key. It was clear that happiness was a dumb thing to wish for, you might get a lobotomy, or have to be a shepherd with no shirt on. Who the fuck wants that? Especially with the sunken chest and all. However, wisdom seemed like a good thing to wish for, so I added it to the list right up there next to "not having to blow my nose during sex".

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 02:40:00 AM comment

back to fantasies

"But who is that ravishing, sexy woman?" I hear you cry. "Her nose-picking technique - exquisite! And that blotchy rosacea! That acne! That leopard scrunchie! Those deep, soulful, crossed eyes! The way she talks about nasal scabs! I must know... she must reveal all!"

Your wish is my command, Gentle Reader, though you be entirely imaginary for sure at this hour of the night.

any fantasies that are actual sex fantasies that I didn't already cover down there...

I guess another childhood one was a standard "seduction of Mr. Spock" fantasy, which involved him breaking down and crying on me, and me patting him soothingly, and then some hot really rough sex where I get to slap him around. Here we see an example of fantasy becoming reality, because I grew to be the geekfucker extraordinaire of all Texas and possibly all places everywhere. I think it was all that imaginary practice.

I no longer need that fantasy, as it was my life for many years.

Another funny fantasy is the Car Wash fantasy. In it, I lie on a sort of futuristic conveyor belt and go through an enormous thing like a drive-through car wash with giant swooshy things and all sorts of other things that are programmed to do exactly what I want, or what will please me but I didn't know I wanted. This is a nice fantasy for jumpy girls like me, because there are no people and no creepy, creeping, gently caressing, sneak-you-naked human hands to induce flashbacks. Robots! Car washes! That would be just great. Or a sensory deprivation tank where I feel nothing at all from my body except specific sex things. Then, I could also perhaps ignore my aching knees. I know it's sad, but again, I would not mind being a brain in a jar, if I could still have a wide variety of "mind-blowing" orgasms.

Well, maybe I would miss taking funny photos.

I've said enough, perhaps, about the poor Thai policemen, who must work overtime so often here in California for me, their demanding mistress. No? At this point I can't remember what I have said. But they work overtime lately. There's like this younger one who is the cadet being trained by the older one. They handcuff me across their motorcycle, which of course they share, it's more fun if you have a cadet riding with you, right? The older one is all slapping the cadet around and bossing him and making him mess around with me. Since it is mercifully a fantasy, being handcuffed to a motorcycle does not hurt me in any way and the motorcycle is a rock of stability and there is no klutzy falling over with motorcycle on top of me and no getting burned on the exhaust pipe. And then, Houdini-like, I escape the handcuffs and kickbox the policemen a little bit, not too badly, but they are cowed. I guess they just forget their guns or they don't have any. It's not like this is logical. Let us draw the veil of Otranto over the ensuing scene. Let's just say I like gay porn. Sometimes I disappear completely from the fantasy and just become a guy. That's pretty frequent actually.

Really stupid gay porn involving uniforms, cowboys, plumbers and stuff. It's almost always really funny if you read it -- still funny in movies and magazines but less than the hilarious "literature".

I also kind of like those Gor books. Shame! There is nothing like cheesy soft porn dialogue with an IQ of 50, bonus points if it's so ludicrous I start laughing! But better still are the Sharon Green knock-offs like "The Crystals of Mida". O, wow, that book is so great! The violent tribes of knife-wielding Amazon women who ride giant dinosaurs! The men are all in cities. Scenes switch off crazily between getting captured and gang raped by the raw-meat eating women, and then cleverly escaping, and the women getting captured and shackled and usually not gang raped but instead taken by a master as if they're married, and then they cleverly escape, managing to humiliate the men in the process, and the whole cycle continues, but meanwhile, both sides develop almost-respect for each other. It's so cool! And it's all sort of PC, almost, sort of, if you're really flexible about such things, so you don't get the lingering guilt of the stupid Gor books.

I often still fantasize about fisting my ex-girlfriends, there is really nothing like it. I guess not just them but also all those random women at leather faerie parties, it's not like I remember their names but often they were so lovely and I felt very affectionate and loving toward them for this amazing experience... Wow, that one woman I think named K----- who had the annoying husband, I think of her relatively often, how radiant she seemed during sex, like the most beautiful woman on the planet. She was in one of those Michael Rosen books.

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 02:07:00 AM comment

Badger conveys an emotion

See below for the complete quotation.

"Hers is the head upon which
'all the ends of the world are come'...."



...
"... and the eyelids are a little weary."


...
"It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh,
the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts..."

...
"...[set her] beside one of those white
Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity..."

...
"...and how would they be troubled by this beauty,
into to which the soul with all its maladies has passed?"


I swear, I keep trying to get that malady-affected soul out of there,
but instead I just get all these little scabs! What's that all about?

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 01:42:00 AM comment

Let's get fancy!
Woman! when I behold the flippant, vain,
Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.
Um, no real point here, but I have always wanted to say that, and never had a good moment to whip it out and declaim it.

Let's run with that and look in Bartlett's.
The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.
-- Lionel Trilling
I got this Bartlett's Quotations for my 13th birthday as a present from my parents. It was very cool- how many times had I read The Long Secret? It is an ideal present for a thinking child, giving clues to where they might want to read more. I think at the same time they gave me the Norton Anthology of Poetry, or that might have been at 14. They were pretty cool up till that whole puberty/sex thing. Again, I am very lucky that I wasn't one of those girls who started busting out all over at age 9 or 10. What a disaster that would have been.

Anyway, I got very very intimate with this book. Even now I just looked up "fantasy" in the index and was like "Oh, page 223, that will be in the huge "shakespeare quotes" section, I won't bother to look that one up." (I like shakespeare, but why quote him? Everyone does it, so overused. There ARE other people who wrote well.) This Trilling one from the index, I was making a game of it, thinking, "page 865. It sounds like Freud. It could be Freud. But 865 is past the 19th century, too late for Freud." Lo and behold, the quote is from the Trilling essay "Freud and Literature". I love my Chronic Answer Syndrome! Even when I'm wrong, I'm sort of right!

This is sort of nauseating, but also strangely appropriate to our theme and the time of night:
Hers is the head upon which all 'the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed?"
Yes, that's what goes through my head each time I look in the mirror, thanks for thinking of me back in 1873, Walter Pater! And I'll show you the photos to prove it, in just a few minutes!

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 01:18:00 AM comment

confluence, is that the word?

No, there is some better word for the coincidence of thought. Coleridge argues strongly for the value of re-reading:
The best plan, I think, for a man who would wish his mind to continue growing is to find, in the first place, some means of ascertaining for himself whether it does or no; and I can think of no better than early in life, say after three and twenty, to procure gradually the works of some two or three great writers... and amidst all other reading, to make a point of re-perusing some one, or some weighty part of some one, of these every four or five years, having from the beginning a separate notebook for each of these writers, in which your impressions, suggestions, conjectures, doubts, and judgments are to be recorded with date of each, and so worded as to represent most sincerely the exaxt state of your convictions at the time, such as they would be if you did not anticipate a change in them from increase of knowledge. "It is possible that I am in the wrong, but so it now appears to me, after my best attempts; and I must therefore put it down in order that I may find myself so, if so I am."
Got that? And can't you just picture this dude having about 20 different blogs?

Next kid, if male, must beware of being named Coleridge. But no, I would not do that, it is far too horrible. I still like the name "Huckleberry".

posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 01:01:00 AM comment

It's getting silly! Nicknames, a speculation.

They came home and M. was wide awake. jhk put him to bed. You know, he really needs a better nickname than that. In my exhausted state, "jhk" looks a little like "jerk", and he just nobly volunteered to take a shift at 3 am and blog for me to let me sleep. But don't despair, my adoring fans, I'm going to stick it out till 6 am.

Besides, he is one of those people who never got any cool nicknames. I thought of calling him by his korean name as an endearment - apparently it was just his name until he was 5 or so. There are a lot of dumb puns on "john" like "long john" or "john thomas" but that's not quite right either! A--- used to just call her husband "the boyfriend" or as a method of direct address, "Boyfriend", because she could not quite handle the idea of having a Husband; it was too damn weird. I also found it weird, but have gotten used to it.

I actually like it when people call me my full name or variants of it. And think of all my aliases and nicknames! Candiru! L-----d Amazon! Dr. Lizardo! Badger! Lizzie Latex! Wicked Wanda! It was a good 6 months that I had the word "slut" shaved into my head! I'm sure there are more silly nicknames and we'll just ignore the ones my enemies made up, shall we?

Maybe some inuit or chippewa or hawaiian name, to encourage people from the midwest in their delusions about tall half-asians! That's an idea. How about "Running Dog" or "Paper Tiger"? Then you get a vaguely chinese feeling as well. Heh...



Or how about "Nelly"? Try explaining that one to the sprog when he is of sentient age.

Oh look! It's that gangsta bitch, Nudibranch Leopardi! She's flashing a sign... it's...
West Coast in da HOUSE!





posted by badgerbag 7/27/2003 12:34:00 AM comment

Saturday, July 26, 2003

aliens

There were some other rambly notes in my list of things to blog about "the alien" meaning not that creature with the anal probe who stops your car while you're on a remote desert highway in Arizona, but the idea of aliens. Back about a hundred years ago when my wrists weren't hurting, I was talking about imagining that some other person is trading places with me. I would also imagine letting an alien or an artificial intelligence hitch a ride in my brain. Hmm, is that any crazier than inviting Herodotus to take a ride? I mean, he DID have his thumb out, and it was the middle of the Arizona desert - what was I to do?

This would mostly entertain me on buses or trains, or at bus stops. It was a Thing of Boredom. I was like an ambassador for the imaginary alien visitor. I'd look around at all the other people with renewed interest, charmed by everything I saw. "And what's that? It's very artistic." "Oh, that's an old flattened, blackened squodge of chewing gum that's been stepped on for several years, Ambassador Xzzylk." "How fascinating! What a quaint and curious custom! Tell me more, Ambassador Badger!" "With pleasure, my dear sir!" "Back on Xzilkia IV, our public officials would never think of such a unique and participatory decoration for a public airship terminal! I'll suggest it!" "Great idea!"

I think about xenophilia in general. I like to play tour guide to real people, always have, and hearing their reactions to things I don't see. Imagining being this tour guide to an off-world alien is a stretch for me, an exercise useful for shaking me out of a rut. Besides being useful to fight boredom at bus stops.

It's almost midnight! 18 hours down, 6 to go! Did I do that math right?

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 11:50:00 PM comment

Late night writing, sleep, health, inspiration, translation

still in solitude, meant to count as the 11:30 post

M. and jhk are still at that LOTR role playing game. Lest you think me a Bad Mom, I will boast that I remembered to put the leopard blanket and pillowcase in the dryer, dried them, and put them on the bed for my young sproglet, though I hope he'll be very asleep when they get home.

Speak of the devil again, I think I might hear them. Hmm no I think it's the partying neighbors.

In high school and much of college I would stay up writing far into the night. I usually had several notebooks going at once. It's not good for you to never sleep, remember that, because my health began to suck, and insomnia settled down and focused and never left. In around 1995 I made it a firm rule that I would take sleeping pills and never write at night, because I'd get all worked up, like right now, and be unable to stop writing. That is one reason this blogathon sounded just irresistable - I could return to this lovely forbidden bad for me behavior.

The rules worked; I slept; asthma and fibromyalgia and sciatica and horrible neck/shoulder thing got slowly but surely better. It also helped to have rules like "do not lie on stomach and read and write propped up on elbows as that makes sciatica go crazy". It's hard to figure those things out when a lot of things are wrong with you at once.

that stuff I was saying about the frenzy of poetry does not happen every time but when I feel it, I can feel I'm in the zone, like an athlete. Other times, I can still write well, or competently, but I don't call the poem finished or really feel confident about it until I can have that moment that I think of as a holographic moment or as verbalized synesthesia.

Translations are harder, because I rarely if ever feel that level of inspiration. It is just work, and the moments of insight and inspiration are smaller, on the level of two words or two lines of poetry that suddenly resolve clearly. This means I can work more steadily, whether I feel like working or not, and something fairly decent will result.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 11:16:00 PM comment

And now the moment you've all been dreading

Having settled down, focused, caught up, and closed the bleeding cover of that journal from 1986, I turn to the list I made earlier this week of topics to write about and find: "what is going on when I write poetry, post a poem". Let the buyer beware. Here is a poem. Note that the quotes make it a dialogue. Goddamn it, my s and w keys are sticking. Fuck fuck fuck! That was not the poem.

Fallen camellias



"Scattered handful of red grenades,
unnatural cabbages,
sowing of alchemical rust & hot pink lipstick,
your individual ruffled wingbeats
shudder hot
round the gold stamen wheat clusters.
Oh sprawled constellation of Mars & prostitutes,
you abandoned yourselves to a star couch new fallen with
philosophical grace flaming through the atmosphere,
in the dappled shade of moss and dead oak you kiss earth proud,
pink shock of glory, red harvest of matches all lit at once,
unrepentant revolutionaries shot without blindfolds by an invisible firing squad,
your carnelian lips scorn all secrets but your own
multifacet knives prism-dripping with artificial blood.
Your burn almost shames me - "

"No! We won't decay alone - our pact,
our Sacred Band of brothers taunting death,
our tenderness demands it.
We hurried to put on crimson robes.
No pity was in us.
No particular wind did it.
We leapt so you could see us without lifting your heads,
without looking up to the treestar canopy.
Look at us - how we trembled on the branch
and all leapt together into the tumbling sky
with no parachutes & yet came down
gentle to this bold repose."

And one blossom heard these words,
fell kamikaze to my crown
& broke open like a blessing and explosion.
If you made it through that, and you don't have to if you are a habitual skipper of the poetry parts of books...

Gosh it's funny but I almost feel the impulse to put the word "chiaroscuro" in there, I wonder why? *smirk*

Uh so anyway, could someone bring me some medium-spicy chicken tikka masala and a can of compressed air?

I am feeling the shysies coming over me. Poets don't mind hearing this stuff you know. I don't normally go around talking about it; felching as a dinner topic is more okay than one's own poetry. Yet believe it or not I have had people at poetry readings come up and ask me "how I write my poetry", "what are your sources of inspiration", etc. etc. And these are people calling themselves poets so shouldn't they know that sort of thing? I expect them to figure that stuff out on their own, go write a lot till you freaking figure it out.

Back to the camellias.

I still like this poem; I was having an epiphany staring at some flowers on the ground that were so shockingly colored, and I stared at them for a very long time while I was sitting on the ground at Filoli Gardens and there were hundreds of them, and I felt an obscure refusal to write anything about ruffly pink petals, it was way more dramatic than that. It was like a meteor shower in the immediacy and intensity of vision. I imagined the many bad poems that could be made of the scene.

At some point I work myself up into a frenzy of metaphoric vision and that frenzy connects into the verbal thing and any nasty cliches about ruffly petticoats are shooed gently and effortlessly away, like those goats in the marble temple in my ex-husband's going to sleep fantasies. Remember that? Good job. Then I get this sense of rhythm going on. I can hear the whole shape of the poem, or at least most of it. There is synesthesia, big time. I'm tripping out! It's good! I'm writing as fast as I can and just riding it! This frenzy exhausted me and I scribbled everywhichway across many pages. Driving home in the car I kept seeing more bits or reshaping. I could still see the fucking camellias vivid as phosphenes and in fact can see them now. It's a great feeling like a drug, like controlled insanity, like the good kind of hallucinating, non-scary, controllable.

The thing going on with these flowers was that they had all fallen more or less at the same time, there were only a few left, but they were so freshly fallen and so hot pink in a bloody kind of way that they seemed like noble soldiers and for the first time I felt like I understood some sort of beauty in the suicidal charge of say, some civil war soldiers against a bunch of cannons, I am thinking of some particular charge that I read about but don't remember which one. Mostly I read about a bunch of soldiers charging into death and think "Dumbasses, idiots, not me, buddy, I'd be in Canada so fast your head would spin" But I swear these flowers made me see it and feel a certain masculine, soldierly glory in wartime mass suicide for a cause that might be no more than loyalty to comrades, a kind of hopeless love.

so though this may be obvious, the first stanza is me speaking, or the observer of the flowers or soldiers, and the second is the flowers answering, and the third is just there because it actually happened as I was beginning to shut the notebook nearly satisfied with what I had written, a freaking camellia fell on my head and burst into all its separate petals, which scattered all over me and my notebook. A good omen - like having two eagles wheel on the left...

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 10:55:00 PM comment

disaster?

Yeesh, that was the worst traffic on 101 ever. Every mountain view exit and up into Palo Alto was blocked off by police and flares. What the fuck just happened? Is there some poison gas? A fire at Shoreline Amphitheater? Just normal procedure for a Saturday night concert? It was way beyond Rengstorff with tons of police. "Too bad my window won't close in case of poison gas" I think like an idiot, and then like 1 nanosecond later realize that a closed window would not help stop poison gas from entering the cab of my Tinfoil (TM) pickup truck.

I feel calmer here at home. In the car I thought more about my high school self and my confessional impulse. That ghost self haunts only me - is basically invisible to other people. It seemed like a good idea in my crazed state, once I started, to spill my guts about this. It's not like I have a corner on the market in teenage misery, but it still seems worth writing about in many ways. Hmm, I'll stop apologizing now.

The notebooks, I saved them for a reason and that is for self-analysis. Little badger, I will not forget you and will try not to betray you. That is part of the moral imperative for self-analysis. Besides just being over the top, off the scale on the Narcissistically Wounded Meter.

Here is an interesting essay on academic theory and narcissistic wounding by someone with the unfortunate name of Nick Tingle.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 10:32:00 PM comment

10 pm, sort of

This has got to count as the 10pm post because my hands are shaking from the coffee and I need to drive home.

Notebook continued, we're almost done,hang in there. I list a bunch of anarchist presses. I appear to be in love with a younger girl, A------ J----. I deflowered her boyfriend in a friendly way before she went out with him, I don't think she ever forgave me for this. Alas, because she was so smart and cute. I think she ended up getting way more conservative, that's what I heard. I would deliberately torture myself by encouraging her to talk about how in love she was with my friend. (I liked him because he gave me the book "Demian" and liked to talk about philosophy, and would suck on my toes.) She did asinine things like put his cologne ("Polo") on a teddy bear, and bring it to sleep over at my house, and smell it. For fuck's sake how cheesy is that? I forgave her nobly.

I write nobly about heartbreak, then record the deterioration of my non-relationship with my parents. I am not sure and am losing my cool again and afraid to read this section. Nope, no can do.

And people routinely mock the angst of suburban middle class teenage girls. I am telling you it is a fucking miserable fate.

Wow, there is a decent poem that I actually kind of like. And another one, an ode to Delmore Schwartz. A conversation between Freud and T.S. Eliot in which I mock them both for being sexists. The poetry keeps being moderately okay for high school poetry, though I seem to really, really like the word "chiaroscuro". I write about the final slutty experience with a guy I barely knew who asked me if I had any diseases. He was cute though with that skater boy haircut. I write some more pretty decent poetry. I copy down huge chunks of "The Three Marias Portugues Letters" and marge piercy. Taste is improving.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 09:46:00 PM comment

Notebook exegesis and mocking continued

The list of boys slept with is pretty astonishing, let's count them:
17 in high school then there is a discreet line clearly indicating post-high school
13 in the year post-high school, that would be 1986? Apparently I hauled this notebook to college and just opened it to record names for a bit. Wow, I had forgotten many of the last names, but here they are in print. Cool! Well now that's not really THAT many is it? Is 30 so bad? I thought it was much worse. I guess it took me a while to warm up.

I rant about lying, lust, and mind games, jealousy, people who won't just let me be free, free love, etc. I write about Utopia. I write a long crazy-ass thing about the Von Trapp Family Singers. I resolve to be Really Honest With My Notebook. I write about how school is bullshit meant to make people tame, sheeplike workers.

The Me of now continues to wince at the bad poetry, but I like myself for the ranting and feel proud of Me Then. Go, Badger! I cheer you! I see that you swore to K------- that you would grow up and be a professor of something and have tenure and dye your hair purple! Guess what, Me Then, you called it correctly, at least the hair part.

I write a long essay about the horrible book "Dare to Discipline" which I noticed on the shelf of my high school guidance counselor. At the time I was reading a lot of psychology and pop psychology books to try to understand a system where I was getting labelled as crazy. Thomas Szasz, though he is freaking nutcase, more or less saved my life along with Alice Miller, thank you, the ghosts of both of you.

I write a long account of how I pick up K----y S----n at a party and we go off and fuck, leaving my current boyfriend, K--y S----n's best friend, in the lurch without a ride. K.S. was a much better lay, cute, not stupid and crazy like that current boyfriend, who was only a convenience because he was an out of town college boyfriend well known to everyone, so most people stopped trying to lay me after I had a Known Boyfriend.

K.S. was very amusing, had funny stories about smuggling coke and doing crazy ass frat type stunts and pranks at Rice. There was no love involved, but I think a feeling of mutual, mild friendship. At some point I recall feeling like "hmm, this guy is reasonably intelligent, though he may not know that I am too, and he is also pleasantly amoral, maybe this is the sort of person I SHOULD be in love with, as far as two amoral, narcissistic sluts can be in love." Hmm. It was a fleeting thought. There was some point in his college dorm room, I believe he was playing "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" and there may have been a red light bulb involved. heh. snort. I disrobed in some fairly dramatic fashion and had on a red and black lace teddy from Fredricks of Hollywood as a surprise sleazy bonus. He dropped to his knees and sort of kow towed but in all seriousness and held up his hands and started raving. "Jesus God almighty, holy fuck, yes, K., this is real, you can touch it..." like that. I started laughing. It was kind of nice, being called "it" at least felt honest, and clearly I was playing the game correctly. I felt like a benevolent goddess scattering largesse to the hungry.









posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 09:28:00 PM comment

Going a little nuts, hands trembling! help!

Okay, this is the 9pm post... uhh.. I think I am starting to lose it.

I have an hour and a half of battery life to remain in this comfortingly public place, which is hopping with jazzy music. Cars whizz by. People with dogs and strollers stroll by and amazingly, there is still someone left in this part of Silicon Valley who feels the need to stop and comment on my 12 inch powerbook. Ooookay, how can that possibly, possibly be?

Back to that pesky, nightmare inducing notebook. I'm not sure if I'm tying this in very well to imaginaryness, but let's remind ourselves of the tenuous thread: that my understanding of my past self, who is in some way dead and gone, is imaginary. That past girl is a ghost, like the ghost islands of the Atlantic, recorded by cartographers and then searched for in vain.
I don't know what sort of experiences those women have, but I'm sure they're similiar to mine: the pursuit of love has a lot to do with vanity. Although happiness for them may be like an island in the Pacific, the Indian, or the Atlantic Ocean, it's an island you can't find on any map no matter how hard you look. It only appears by chance, through countless, crashing waves and endless, bitter seas. And because these little islands of utter happiness may disappear again later, scientists call them "ghost islands".
-- From "The Other Woman", Ding Xiaoqi


Okay, I am snarfing a bagel and feel better now. Just realized I hadn't eaten since the Tapioca post... when was that? No wait, I had some toast after that. Well, food feels good. "Settle down, focus, eat a bagel, catch up.

Back to the notebook, one of countless notebooks in increasingly and intentionally awful handwriting as a sort of anti-parental cryptography:

Hmm, a long ranting about free speech and kids' rights. Some pages on why I hate Hemingway. A slogan in "cool style writing": "Conform or be Cast Out". Hahaha. Poor self conscious ghost self, I can't help laughing at you, you are so cute.Ooo, I appear to be planning the underground school newspape( for which I was suspended during final exams) Then some poetry so bad I can't bring myself to type any of it; suffice it to say that it has the word "chiaroscuric" in it. A veil is drawn over the horror, like in "The Castle of Otranto". Honestly, if I read it now from some high school kid, I would notice at least a small spark of originality. I put in plenty of time writing sonnets in rhyme and meter; this was TS Eliot, ee cummings, and Anne Sexton time. I write a stunningly embarrassing fake hindu myth. Uh, that was like a punch to the gut.

The page mercifully turns... I'm gonna hyperventilate, this poetry is mercilessly bad. I did successfully give myself permission to write absolutely anything and to experiment wildly with form. There are different colors of ink in the same poem which can be read various different ways and directions to form different poems. TOO BAD THEY ALL SUCK ASS. I also note that almost none of these made it into the "list of finished poems" in the front of the notebook. "Why does the echo/of a non-kiss/follow me so persistently?/My body/expectant as a tree/my hands waiting". that sux too but at least I could type it without slaying myself.

Ooo, ammo! I meticulously record the horrible details of a horrible fight between me and my parents. Try and deny THAT happened, suckers.

Pay dirt! A list of all the boys I screwed around with! In chronological order! It goes all the way up to the one right after Skarat! I included my date rapist with a little asterisk, and the one girl, K---------. She and I used to stay up late at our "sleepovers" reading poetry and writing and typing it out on my typewriter. Photo to follow!






posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 08:58:00 PM comment

Dana Street

Thank you Dana Street Coffee and Live.com for the free wireless access! I really needed to get out of my vile, messy house. Whump left for the party a while ago, before I started into the Wittigy wigging-out.

I should also mention before I forget that I still think with great hilarity of the oddness of whump's reading Starhawk books, no wonder he put up with me, because I was always spouting off about the freaking patriarchy back then. In true Spirit of Dork Tower perky goth style I used to sit on his lap and we'd log onto various Austin BBSs. Oh look, his ears are getting all red!

I'm getting freaking PUNCHY from all the coffee. All wound up and the gears and teeth are grinding! The outlook for the rest of the night is GRIM.

Let's delve back for a moment into one of the notorious notebooks. This gem is from ... it appears to be 1985 or early 1986. My parents have disowned me, but told me that I can continue to live in their house "because it's our legal duty".

(To this day, they deny this whole period of my life took place. At least my mom does; it's not like I'm gonna bring it up to my dad. My sister remembers to the extent that she can or wants to remember anything of childhood; she does remember how while we were fighting and screaming downstairs at night, she would cry in her bedroom until someone came to see what was the matter, and then she'd say she was afraid that our parents were going to get a divorce, a fear she made up on purpose to deflect attention and screaming from me; for which I am eternally grateful to her scheming, clever, kindhearted 11 year old self.)

Uh, my point was? This is why I was quoting all that coleridgey "comfort food", talking about this makes me wig out and have asthma.

Okay... let's repeat the immortal words of Josh Kornbluth: "settle down... focus.... CATCH UP". Settle down.... focus... CATCH UP.

I was looking at this old notebook from 1986 or so. It has sticky-on big black letters on the front that spell out the endearing words "FUCK OFF SOCIETY". I recall at the time being mildly self conscious of all my sophomoric endeavors, but then thinking, "What the fuck, at what other time in life do I get to indulge in being sophomoric? Clearly this is the time." Look, it worked kind of. I mean, I no longer write that kind of thing on my notebook covers, and I didn't go off to latin america to become a guerrilla like my dad was afraid I would. He was like "you're just the kind of person who would do that because you are an idealist and plus, you have no idea how to behave, you are NEVER GOING TO LATIN AMERICA EVER". (This in my response to sign up for one of those "study abroad" programs, even before the fights over my insisting I had a right to have sex.)

Okay.. uh.. settle down, focus, catch up. The notebook! Do I dare crack its cover?

When I think of myself, my identity back then, I feel a deep kinship and also extreme pity. I see nothing that would have made my life any easier. In fact, it so easily could have been SO much worse.

Inside front cover of "Fuck off society" notebook: a quote from "Demian". Ha ha, I am laughing at myself already. Oh look, the lyrics to "I am a rock". It's still my theme song! Go teenage badger! I feel like the world will explode if I open the cover of this notebook any further. Then a list of all my poems. Oh, I'm Very Afraid. Then many pages of addresses from Poet's Market. Some jottings on Anna Karenina, The Way of all Flesh, The Idiot, and Crime and Punishment. Sophomoric, yes, ambitious, check, determined to read all the thickest books on the shelf, check. Golden bookshelf, I am nearly done with you and ready for New Things. Oh my, it's the essay I wrote that magically got me into the honors program at U.Texas despite my "flunking out and crazy and suicidal" semester. In which I talk about a bunch of books I have been reading, and mock myself, and angst a bunch about free will, and artificial life, and sex, and sexism in the media, and consciousness, religion, my elementary school atheism, and my hatred of Reagan.


posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 08:37:00 PM comment

In which I piss everyone off: Sex is imaginary

I have no idea if I'm caught up to the "every half hour" thing; probably, but let's start a new thing anyway and I'll go back and make links in the last few posts in a few minutes.


Back to Wittig for a bit. I'm digging the essays in The Straight Mind immensely because they're amazingly just like my old Slut Manifesto. I mean, it's way more coherent and good, but I said much of the same stuff. I guess I was a materialist feminist and didn't know it.
The category of sex is the product of heterosexual society that turns half of the population into sexual beings, for sex is a category which women cannot be outside of. Wherever they are, whatever they do (including working in the public sector), they are seen (and made) sexually available to men, and they, breasts, buttocks, costume, must be visible. They must wear their yellow star, their constant smile, day and night. One might consider that every woman, married or not, has a period of forced sexual service, a sexual service which we may compare to the military one, and which can vary between a day, a ytear, or twenty-five years or more. Some lesbians and nuns escape, but they are very few... Although women are very visible as sexual beings, as social beings they are totally invisible, and as such must appear as little as possible, and always with some kind of excuse if they do,. One has only to read interviews with outstanding women to hear them apologizing.
Okay, now that I've pissed you off by quoting this and liking it... I pointed out in The Slut Manifesto that lesbians and celibates were trying to escape what I was calling "the sexual market system" in which as women, and i mean a social construction of "woman" not an essential biological notion of woman, as women they were commodities. I say "trying to escape" and still would say that despite Wittig's optimism about lesbians being able to opt out. I recall saying something like "you can call yourself a lesbian till you're blue in the face but you've still got the pussy and can still decide to fuck a man". Or be raped. Or realize "the" "lesbian" "community" is commodifying you as woman, as femmy woman, just the same like an insane parodic echo of patriarchy.

Now, the few people who weren't pissed off by Wittig, I have now pissed off! Maybe not! I did warn y'all that "I'm not a feminist, but... I'm a radical feminist."
For the category of sex is a totalitarian one...It shapes the mind as well as the body since it controls all mental production. It grips our minds in such a way that we cannot think outside of it. This is why we must destroy it and start thinking beyond it if we want to start thinking at all, as we must destroy the sexes as a sociological reality if we want to start to exist.
Boy readers, take heart, because Wittig proceeds to rip a new asshole for essentialist proponents of Matriachy. "Matriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the sex of the oppressor that changes.... there are lesbians who affirm that 'women and men are different species or races, men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability..."

Well, it's stuff like this that I've been thinking and reading and writing (again, lo these many years) to the point where, when my friends on the playground say something about "boys" I look at them and think "how quaint", feeling as if I am listening to someone who sews frilly covers for their piano legs.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 08:06:00 PM comment

Parageography and living in letters

"It's like going from writing in C to writing in LISP," this said in typical whump-style, of our recent "Shadows in the Fog" game's rule system's use of tarot cards as compared to our Vinland game's use of whimsy cards.

He talks about Doug Parker's class on Parageography and then another on Improvisation. I can borrow the notes, which whump has faithfully kept. Jazz, poetry, journals, exegesis on the journals. Whoa cool! Coolio coolio and LLCoolJ! I always wanted REALLY BAD to take that Parageography back at U.Texas. MKML took it back when he was just plain MKL alias Skarat. Why don't I just call him Skakat because MKML is too much acronym and the blog is already bad enough with its vaguely anonymous people. Anyway, I yearn strangely to read whump's notes on Parageography from 1988 or whatever. He also notes how he was weirded out by my posting about my confrontation with the body of scary womanhood; he thought I was so self-assured, or self-possessed. "The patriarchy made you wear that dress? I had no idea!" Dude, that was funny. As my dad used to remind me, there is knowledge, and then there is experience.

Now my thoughts turn to Skarat and his imaginary novel and his million letters. Why don't I just embarrass everyone from my past so t hat I have no more friends? Mmmmm... no, how about I don't do that. But Skarat, or his creator, lived in a world equally imaginary to mine or maybe more so. Somehow, at the time, desperate for more time to mack on RMM and K.K. and countless hapless virgin geek boys, I convinced him that rather than corner me and talk endlessly about movies that I hadn't seen and ineffable, evanescent, difficult to describe feelings and obsessions, he should instead write me letters, which I could read at leisure. He developed the letter writing and construction into a high art. It was like getting to be in The Tale of Genji, where the characters plan their letter content carefully with the paper and envelope to fit the season and situation.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 07:39:00 PM comment

Back again

As I walk into the coffee shop there is a yell from the sporty red liberal-bebumperstickered pseudo-ricerocket of my friend Mr. WH. Speak of the devil! I feel more than usually happy to see him, needing a little riffing fuel and response here.

He says he saw my photos and he also dreams often of the old co-op with its maze-like walkways, catwalks, blue railings and near-fatal balconies. I dream of it too. "It was like the co-op, but not really the co-op, and I found this door that was never there before," has come out of my mouth countless groggy mornings to the un-joy of whoever else is in my bed, lo these many years since 1986.

He also riffed off my paranoia posts.

In which whump says "nucular" a lot

He mentions a book called farnham's freeholds - a Heinlen novel. He never read it but know part of its plot from people talking about it in middle school or high school. Reagan also worried him greatly. He would be driving out in the middle of nowhere, Texas with the family to visit his sister. He's in middle school and it's what, he's a few years older than me so it's like, 1982? Since they were outside of Dallas, they would escape the blast radius and immediate poisoning. In the Fall of Society, he and his family would hole up in the middle of the Piney Woods in East Texas, felling some pine trees and using mud to make a log cabin stronghold. The energy at ground zero in Dallas would be so powerful the blast woudl rip a whole through space time. All the people in Dallas would go through this rift and end up in some other world.

His other daydream was that there were agentS from the future trying to make sure there was no big "nucular" war. They had tools stashed about like antigravity fighters that would be useful at some point. He wrote these out as short stories, still alive or dead on some old floppy disk in his parents' house. Later, he read a book called Days of Cain that fed into his paranoid apocalyptic fantasies, where the future was looking out for the past. Every bit of available matter is turned into a substrate that you can do computing on, so at the end of the universe, you have God. "Say you have time travel. You want to go fix things, like deal with Hitler. " How I love it when people say these things out loud. We discuss time cops. This is also why I love going to those PenSFA parties. I'm missing one right now!

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 07:19:00 PM comment

More Coleridge

"If the idle are described as killing time, he [the good man, a well disciplined, understanding person of method, industry, intelligent, perceptive] may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the conscousness but of the conscience. He organizes the hours and gives them a soul; and that, the very essence of which is to fleet away, and evermore to have been, he takes up in to his own permanence, and communicates to it the imperishableness of a spiritual nature."

Okay, am now leaving for Mtn View, back soon.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 06:45:00 PM comment

old notebooks

Am digging out some old journals. I have a Very Large Array of them. I like the parts where I copy bits of other stuff, so let's just perpetuate that with this excerpt from a 1996 notebook excerpting the Orkneyinga Saga from 1200 A.D. because I need a slight break from my own mind and its past.
Constantly north-curving
the coast: a roaring
sea makes sport
of our sturdy timbers.
My verse flows - vain
your envy, villains -
seaward from Spain
slips my slim prow.
I didn't note the translator but will look it up later, since now I am obsessed with attributing work to translators. Think of the way people quote "kafka" when they are actually quoting a translation of Kafka. Not fair!

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 06:32:00 PM comment

On the way to San Jose

Am thinking of going to Dana St. Coffee in Mountain View. I need a change of scenery! Now that the house is quiet I want to leave it, perversely.

Could also go to a party but I'm not sure if it would be okay with the hosts if I sit and blog. It's not like going to Mr. W.H.'s house where if you don't have a wireless computer in your lap, he boots you right out the door.

However, have just paused and read another blog which made me burst into tears and now am tempted to just continue tripping out on my bad teenage years and million boyfriends and girlfriends and all that. However, that would make me a big fat copycat and i still have plenty of things to say about fantasies, dreams, and imagination.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 06:18:00 PM comment

Old photos, the past imagined and imaged and written

This is cool and i never thought of it - I can take digital photos of my own old paper photos. It seems to work okay, but it would be better if I had some kind of tripod or stabilized platform set up.

Coming up as soon as they download and upload: see young badger using that gender to the fullest!

[interlude of downloading and ftp-ing]

Hey! Patriarchy! You made me put on this dress didn't you! No I'm serious, you, over there, Patriarchy! Hey big boy, you want a piece of this!? It'll cost you! It's the notorious badger at age... 19?


and

Look, I made a whole 50 bucks!



Heh. Anyway, besides being a total exhibitionist and having this great opportunity to flaunt my pre-nursing breasts all over the INter-net, I did have a point. a) puberty was a shock and really not what I had imagined and b) besides my disjunction with the imagined future, I also think about my own myths of who I was, who I used to be, who was that girl? How am I a continuous being and how am I different people at different times? If I were less vague and wooly minded, and less self-absorbed, I'd put this into philosophical terms instead of writing about myself and flashing this sort of photos. But there you go. When I refer to myself as a jaded whore, I actually mean it.

Which reminds me of more Wittig - I was reading all these reviews of The Opoponax, which I thought brilliant and wild, shining with meaning and truth that it would not be possible to express any other way - truth about being and the way people come into being - and even the positive reviews mostly missed the point, which was that it was philosophy. When Rousseau writes about his childhood it's philosophy, when Wittig does, it's a "lighthearted romp" about catholic schoolgirls. Hmph.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 05:52:00 PM comment

Sex, sex, sex

The time has come to say something more about sex and this time without any shameful references to 70's television.

The first thing about sex meaning gender. The photo of me wearing the plastic "crime against eyeglasses" was and is my self-concept much of the time: simultaneously that small, undeveloped reader of feminaries, and some kind of cross of gothicness and ruthlessness, of lower class Morticia Adams and a grim Medea.

I was about 18, which would put me 3 years into puberty and not quite finished with it, having heavily explored the possibilities of manipulating and seducing other people ever since the slightest ghost of tits had showed up apparently making me absolutely irrestistible, when I saw myself thusly: I was lying down on the floor on my side, naked, looking at my night-reflection in a sliding glass door. The hard floor meant that my right hip, the one touching the floor, was tilted to lay straight with my body, and above, my left hip curved WAY up in the air and wham! it hit me that this deeply curvy woman’s body was actually me; it was mine, and it was me. I would never go back into the straight-lined and slightly podgy androgynous body - the body that was me for so long. A mixture of sadness, nostalgia, satisfaction, and anger filled me. More than actually being in this body, suddenly the sight of myself in this unexpected mirror, posed as if for an odalisque painting or photo, was what brought me to a full realization.

I couldn't have been more surprised if I had seen a penis on my reflection. I'm talking about a serious feeling of "oh, fuck!" I wasn't waking up as the wrong gender but somehow I felt I had escaped any gender, despite using mine to the utmost in many ways. However, the evidence was before me.

Yes, I know that is odd and silly. It can't be helped.


posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 05:36:00 PM comment

catachresticness

Catachresm? Catachresty? Ah, catachresis. Am thinking of alternate histories or actually am thinking of Les Guerilleres which is not an alternate history but a real mythology. Using myths catachrestically to create a deliberate dislocation, the way she says "Alexandra Ollentai" rather than Kollentai and threw me for a loop until E.P. pointed out that Ollentai started with the all-important O.

On the "mr. blogosophy" logical level I know the difference between last week's war and, say, the war between Ozma and the Nome King. But on the level of truth in metaphor, or myth, the Land of Oz exists to me. I've imagined it more thoroughly than I've imagined Australia, studied its maps and its people and its history. It seems real to me and I've experienced it as real. The wars and the women of Les Guerilleres are as real to me. I think this is what Wittig was aiming for.

"I'm up in a tree like a giraffe with brown spots," says M., aka Custard, climbing up really high. "I'm a squirrel, pretending like all animals, pretending like a monkey climbing, then I want to be a giraffe, and I'm pretending to be a gopher, and I'm pretending to be a squirrel in a tree, like this. Meow, meow, meow." jhk woke up from his nap and M. had a strange conversation with him in which they both apologized for saying no and being mad. They are about to leave for J.C. and G.B.'s house where M. will feed the bunnies and play with their vast collection of stuffed animals.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 04:54:00 PM comment

through a glass

M. just refused to come outside with me, though sometimes he likes watering the flowers. He prefers to watch me through the window. He was smiling and waving. I know I over-interpret, but it's like he enjoys reality way more if he gets to experience it one level removed. Otherwise he is unnerved, if not terrified and outraged. Me with a hose through a window is safe; there will be no accidental wetting of socks, no stepping on sharp things, no mommy pressing him to dig in the dirt or smell a flower. All remains safely behind glass. But beyond safety I think he enjoys artificial distancing.

It's not like I badger him to play catch with me all the time, I hate that stuff. But an occasional playing outside? A getting dirty? *sigh* I laugh when I think of my friend Max and how he would talk about how it would be cool to spend time with M. and teach him some trampoline skills. That ain't happening with my guy. He won't even go into one of those bounce houses unless it's empty of all other kids.

He makes me think of Custard crying for his nice safe cage. He is brave in the same way, when pirates threaten - then he gets a sword. But in normal life he prefers a nice safe cage.

He is so born to play video games. I thought of teaching him about using the video camera - it is too heavy for him, but I could mount it on something and then we could make short movies with his stuffed animals for actors.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 04:24:00 PM comment

as if Vision were an appetite
Sometimes when I earnestly look at a beautiful object or landscape, it seems as if I were on the brink of a fruition still denied - as if Vision were an appetite; even as a man would feel who, having put forth all his muscular strength in an act of prosilience, is at the very moment held back - he leaps and yet moves not from his place.
Ah, that's just what I was feeling the other day, expecting to be happy from staring that blue jellyfish (Velella velella) but not quite making it. That is also from Coleridge's Anima Poetae; I searched for this book for years before the net made it trivial to find out of print books. Anima Poetae is a diary or book of meditations or I guess we can call it a proto-blog. Can we retroactively declare things "blogs"?

I can't find the quote I'm looking for in here, but these others will do.

When I got this book - published 1895 - most of the pages were still uncut.

I like Coleridge's diary, seeing his doubts and insecurities and attempts to convince himself o various kinds of faith - faith in poetry, faith in love or friendship, in philosophy. Or arguing pettily over his right to resurrect old words like "eloign" or create neologisms.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 03:53:00 PM comment

Coleridge and Hamtaro

Two great things that go great together!!! Just as well as blogging, poopy potties, and tapioca go together. Can you tell I'm getting just a bit edgy? And yet it wouldn't be the true badgerbag if I didn't bitch a few times about doing the most basic and simple housework and child care.

Ooo, lookit this! "... and my motive, or, rather, impulse, to do this seems an effort to eloign and abalienate it from the dark adyt of my own being by a visual outness, and not the wish for others to see it." (That's the Coleridge, not the Hamtaro).

Meanwhile we have switched the video to "Frontier Friends". M. is still running to the bathroom every 10 minutes. Now he is grunting in a disturbing way near me on the couch. I refuse to deal with this! I prefer to eloign and abalienate from it! I do know adyt is probably "adit", one of those crossword puzzle words, and besides I was just in one at the dude ranch.

The ranch had a fun and odd imaginary landscape. Besides the unsavory shooting of "varmints", which explained why it was the woods and yet there were no animals anywhere, no squirrels, raccoons, no nothing, it was also disturbing to think of all the mine tailing dust we were breathing along the trail. Or really how much the trail guides were breathing. Possibly all those old abandoned gold and mercury and copper mines could also explain a bit of why there's no freaking animals up there. I didn't mention this to anyone but there's no nature up there in the national forest - it was all put through hydraulic gold washing processes a hundred years ago and is still being logged by giant logging companies.

But back to Coleridge. He goes on to say "It consists in a sudden second sight of some hidden vice, past, present, or to come, of the person or persons with whom I am about to form a close intimacy - which never deters me, but rather (as all these transnaturals) urges me on, just as the feeling of an eddy-torrent to a swimmer. " what is he talking about, making friends at a coffee house, or being about to sleep with someone? I'm not sure and I guess it could apply either way.

Why Hamtaro? Because it was just requested by my sprog and I spent a painful few minutes at the Hamtaro web site clicking on Pashmina and Oxnard and now he's watching the video about buffaloes and prairie dogs yet still talking in the Hamtaro voice and saying cute little Ham-ham words. Atata! Hablah!

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 03:29:00 PM comment

not imagined

okay, I hadn't imagined at all that I would spend an hour talking about poop and going back and forth from the bedroom floor to the bathroom. Very tedious! jhk has fallen asleep.

I just decided, screw this and I'll put on a video for him, but unfortunately he chose the video of himself that seems to be narrated by my mom at her most irritating. He seems to be trying to connect "who is that baby in the video with my mom?" with himself and is partly succeeding. "It's M. and he's just like a baby but he's pretending!" I'm not sure what that means! It's a video from May 2001, which would make him... uh... 14 months! He seems just the same though. Determined and sort of self possessed. He was not the vacant-eyed staring type of blobby baby.

My goal here was to trip out on writing all day, not to do my usual skimping along on thinking once an hour and dealing with M.... let it be a challenge I guess.

He seems so happy to see his nanny from back then! I wish she had stayed in touch. He seems to remember her. In the video, as always, we all keep interrupting what he is doing and what he is actually interested in, to get him to do something else. How irritating! Why can't we lay off! I feel less bad about neglecting him sometimes and by neglect I don't mean real neglect, just letting him play alone for hours while I read on the couch nearby. He does hate to get out of bed, possibly he's enjoying his own imaginings in there without any interference.

The video continues. We're letting him be now and he's looking at books. Wow, we had less toys and kids' books then. In RL now he's getting all pissed off that there's music on the tape. For gods sake I wish he would chill out a bit. After last night's "I want my leopard pillow" hour long freak out because the leopard pillowcase was in the wash.


posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 03:12:00 PM comment

ack

child is calling, must come back in a sec. arrgh, arrgh, argh.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 03:01:00 PM comment

Or not

Or no I won't, because my kid refused to get off the couch.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 02:31:00 PM comment

uh-oh!

uh-oh, jhk and M. came back from movie theater where M. freaked out and wouldn't go in, screaming and kicking. Arrrgh! I am going to take over for half an hour and take M. out to a garage sale where I know there will be toys. Back soon with more imaginary fun. At this garage sale I will find some Perfect Toy and also the fabulous incunabulum of my dreams.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 02:20:00 PM comment

More about maps

I just had to deal with some geocache email, and that does tie in to imaginariness and fantasy. Caching, or just knowing there's caches around, makes me so happy! I can imagine there is secret treasure everywhere! More than the treasure being there, it is the thought that someone else imagined it and went to the trouble to hide it. That means they imagined a hypothetical Me, a person who would be so thrilled to find secret treasure. And here I am in real life, thrilled to find an ammo box filled with some crap from the party store, in the bushes in some squalid city park.

There were times when I was a kid that I used to hide some toy in an odd place. I didn't want to leave anything really good - I was stingy. But a scummy old matchbox car. To fix my stinginess I would imagine some Very Poor Child with no toys coming across it accidentally and being really happy. I also hid a time capsule note in my brass bedstead. Oddly, I couldn't think of anything good to say. I also liked saving things for my imaginary future children (I'm sure this is common). "I'll save this Duncan butterfly yo-yo forever and ever and pass it on to my future grandchildren". Okay, a) Is it forever and ever yet? b) I do still have my Duncan butterfly yo-yo, but also still like it and want it for my own, I don't want my kid flinging it on the floor and breaking it. c) By the time I have grandchildren, if ever, they won't want my crappy yo-yo. d) And I still won't want to give it up because let's face it, in the sort of nursing home I could afford, they won't be giving me a laptop and net access, so yo-yoing is about all I'll have to do.

Also, on my old muds, I used to hide pointless stuff. Even before I wrote mud areas, I'd be whipping down the road west of the town of Midgard, passing The Shire on my way to Solace to push 20 townguards into the same room and then kill them all with one gas breath, and if you know your Diku muds you know what I'm talking about, and at the end of the road there would be a hollow tree. I'd put something random in there, a pot pie at worst, at best something weird or useful, or something useless like a key to somewhere entirely different, imagining a bewildered fellow mudder finding it and wondering "why?" or "does this MEAN something?"

Later, writing mud areas, I put in a crazy amount of detail and easter eggs. In the Dream of Red Mansions area, the scrolls all have quotes from the actual book. The characters are all accurate to their descriptions, even though there is about a one in a thousand chance that anyone will ever notice and appreciate it. There are bad jokes like when I made the father in law "poking in the ashes" and you can kill him and take the poker - since no one will ever get this, I will explain here that in the book he seduced his daughter in law and that in chinese, as I learned from some footnote in some other chinese epic, that is called "poking in the ashes" and to say that is to be very mocking.

Hmmm, okay. That is one of my goals this summer, to get my mud areas up and running on a working mud that I control. It was a fantastic exercise to transfer a book to textual geography. I read deeply and made little maps on paper and then to describe all that geography and relations of one place to another - in less than 5 lines - that was a fantastic challenge! I never quite finished Dante's Inferno, crapping out near the end, in the middle of level 8.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 02:00:00 PM comment

Naming, experience, and decadence

Now thinking of the winged migration movie and birdwatching. The movie told a lot of stories or had various subtexts and sometimes really overdid it on anthropomorphizing the birds and their "feelings".

I was thinking about birdwatching, and the pleasures of naming and identifying. It's seeing evidence of the imaginary - I read in a book and saw a picture and imagined seeing an avocet, perhaps in breeding plumage, and now I am really seeing it. Greedily I grab for the experience as proof that the imaginary exists. I know there are avocets, I can see their picture - why must I see it for myself in the marsh in Charleston Slough? What good does it do me? i already believed in them, and the picture, or the movie, is nicer.

I think this is part of the idea of decadence, which I said I'd write about. The decadent always compares the real to the artificial.

Here is the end of the chapter in Huysmans where Des Esseintes "goes to England"...
After all, I have felt and seen what I wanted to feel and see. I have been steeped in English life ever since I left home; it would be a fool's trick to go and lose these imperishable impressions by a clumsy change of locality. Why, surely I must be out of my senses to have tried thus to repudiate my old settled convictions, to have condemned the obedient figment of my imagination, to have believed like the veriest ninny in the necessity, the interest, the advantage of a trip abroad?
I quote this because I have this tendency. Yet I do love to travel and see new things and when hiking, can barely stop myself even when I'm dropping from exhaustion, because I want to see for myself what comes next. It can be disappointing to have the imaginary destroyed by the real or visible, but then, there are the moments when what I expect isn't there, and something better is.

It is possibly another kind of decadence to enjoy matching up the imaginary map with the real experience. To be looking at a paper map and then walk on the path and then forever when looking at the paper map, remembering (which is really another kind of imagining). I think the good kind of love (as opposed to "romantic love") is all about matching up the reality with the imaginary map.

Melville describes this whole process beautifully and hilariously in Redburn, with the hero's trip to Liverpool, which he had imagined so often from a tattered old guidebook and his father's descriptions.

But back to geography and tourism, have you ever seen something and said or thought, "Oh, look, it's just like a postcard!" We revile postcards for being trite and popular, not high art. Yet when looking at something sublime like the sun setting over laguna beach and a lone palm tree on a cliff, all I can think is "Look, it's as beautiful as a postcard". Or "Oh look, irish people really do talk like that, and wear those funny tweedy hats and serve you tea, and can tell from looking at you whether you're Catholic, Protestant, or neither." The reality of another country or other people jibes and clashes with my stereotypes.

posted by badgerbag 7/26/2003 01:32:00 PM comment

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Ranting, complaining, speculating, confessing from Badgerbag in an extended Crossing the Line ceremony.

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