Just Kristin

(May I call you Badge?) I went today to the weekly Vedanta Soci­ety lec­ture with the Rev, know­ing full well that they would be, at least in part, hon­or­ing Easter. They did, in fact, men­tion all three lev­els of this hol­i­day: the pagan, the Jew­ish and the Chris­t­ian. How­ever, to give a spe­cial nod to Mr. Jesus, they arranged a per­for­mance of none other than “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”. I imme­di­ately started to gig­gle when I saw the sheet music sit­ting on each chair. The Rev was quite wor­ried, I am sure, since he asked me if I was going to be alright. :) I defused my laugh­ter by singing — the first time I have ever taken part in the more Mass-like part of the lec­tures — and all was well, but I did take pic­tures of the song. Too damn funny. It took all my willpower not to go Aaaaaaaaaaagh! Thank you, Badge, for the laugh. I hope your party went well.

I haven’t been sleep­ing well at all the last three nights or so. I am not sure why. Last night was my third night in a row of less than 4 hours sleep, this time both because I didn’t get to sleep until 4:30am, and because the noises of the morn­ing — the FedEx man rous­ing the holy bark­ing hell that inhab­its the dog, snor­ing and crunch­ing — con­spired to keep me up once awak­ened. I am not a light sleeper, really. My hear­ing when sleep­ing is rea­son­ably selec­tive. My prob­lem comes in the morn­ings. I am by nature a morn­ing per­son, so when I am try­ing to sleep past when I would usu­ally get up — say, 6am — I need silence because, once I am up, even momen­tar­ily, I am up for good. Going back to sleep once it is light out­side is a near impos­si­bil­ity for me.

Any­way, I had the bright idea about a half hour ago to call Jor­dan and have her give me a wake-up call in 15 min­utes. Gra­ciously, she agreed. Upon hang­ing up with her and set­tling down in my office chair, how­ever, I found that I was in almost a caffien­ated state: still tired, but too wired to take my nap. What the hell is my problem?

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I have been buy­ing a lot of (mostly) used books lately. Some­day I hope to read them all. My most recent pur­chases are:

• Nikos Kazantza­kis: A Biog­ra­phy Based On His Let­ters by Helen Kazantza­kis [I can’t wait to read some of his per­sonal writ­ings, since his nov­els are so won­der­fully expres­sive and descriptive.]
• A Chance Meet­ing: Inter­twined Lives of Amer­i­can Writ­ers and Artists 1854 — 1967 by Rachel Cohen [A book review on the April 6th edi­tion of Fresh Air had me lust­ing after this one, and it looks good now that I have it.]
• Writ­ing Fic­tion: A guide to Nar­ra­tive Craft by Janet Bur­roway [Some­day I hope to broaden out, but fic­tion, essay, drama, who knows?]
• The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael J. Bugeja
• Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time by Eavan Boland
• The Song of the Earth by Hugh Nis­senson [I fin­ished this one. It was very good, a bit dis­turb­ing. More on request.]
• The Snow Train by Joseph Cum­mins [The only book I have heard of so far where the main char­ac­ter suf­fers from the same thing I do.]
• Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dun­sany [A bril­liantly dark, under­ap­pre­ci­ated author who was well before his time.]
• All the Fun’s in How You Say a thing: An Expla­na­tion of Meter and Ver­si­fi­ca­tion by Tim­o­thy Steele
• The Poet’s Hand­book by Jud­son Jerome
• The Hashish Man and Other Sto­ries by Lord Dun­sany [Ditto above.]
• Writ­ing Per­sonal Poetry: Cre­at­ing Poems from Your Life Expe­ri­ences by Sheila Ben­der [This looks a bit too much like a book on how to write nau­se­at­ingly SPSesque poetry(?) (Wow, that was catty!), but it was rec­om­mended to me, so…]
• Noth­ing Spe­cial: Liv­ing Zen & Every­day Zen: Love and Workby Char­lotte J. Beck [Once I get off my spir­i­tual butt, I plan to spend week­ends with her…]
• Wel­come to the Mon­key House by Kurt Von­negut Jr. [Yay, dog­gies! Yay, Von­negut! I’ve read one story in if so far.]
• Dying for Tomor­row by Michael Moor­cock [This was the first Moor­cock I’d read, and I haven’t fin­ished it, but I like it so far.]
• Unlock­ing the Air and Other Sto­ries by Ursula K. Le Guin [No one is a bet­ter world-builder than she is.]
• The Rock Gar­den, The Greek Pas­sion, Free­dom or Death & St. Fran­cis by Nikos Kazantza­kis [Prob­a­bly, from a literary/linguistic stand­point, he (and his trans­la­tors) are on my “top 10 favorite fic­tion authors” list]
• The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde [I am sure I have these in a larger book some­where, but one should always carry Wilde around with one, and this was the per­fect size for that.]
• Con­fes­sions of an Eng­lish Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey [Some­thing I have always meant to read…]
• Great Short Poems edited by Paul Negri
• Imag­ist Poetry: An Anthol­ogy edited by Bob Blais­dell [I have read lit­tle imag­ist poetry, and should.]
• Favorite Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfel­low [Fell in love with Snow-flakes while deal­ing with my intense home­sick­ness for the Wiz, and had to have more.]
• Selected Poems by Paul Lau­rence Dun­bar [One of my favorite poets, he is able to be mov­ing and even strik­ing while stick­ing close to clas­si­cal forms.]
• Songs of Milarepa by Milarepa [For when I need Bud­dhist poetry.]
• One for the Money by Janet Evanovich [So mom and I can dis­cuss a book :) ]
• Oryx and Crake by Mar­garet Atwood [Heard her speak about this one recently. She was bril­liant. I will post about her talk later.]
• 3 Lit­er­ary Friend­ships: Byron and Shel­ley, Rim­baud and Ver­laine, Robert
  Frost and Edward Thomas by John Lehmann [Rela­tion­ships fas­ci­nate me.]
• Morn­ing in the Burned House by Mar­garet Atwood [I did not, until now, own a book of her poetry.]
• What If? Writ­ing Exer­cises for Fic­tion Writ­ers, Sec­ond Edi­tion by Anne Bernays
• Danc­ing Girls by Mar­garet Atwood
• Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Rea­son Behind the Rhyme by Chris Roberts [Fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries behind children’s rhymes. Per­fect for my obscure trivia lov­ing mind.]
• His­panic Fem­i­nist Poems From the Mid­dle Ages to the Present by Angel Flo­res (Edi­tor), et al [It used to be Rim­baud and Beaude­laire, but now Sor Juana gives me the moisties.]

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I bought this love sac today, although with a denim cover. Can’t wait to get home and sink into it. Been think­ing about it all day at work today. The only other thoughts that seem to be able to find their way into the coher­ent part of my brain are along the lines of, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if, not only did we have lit­tle spin­ning hour­glasses or rain­bow wheels in our pupils that showed when we were men­tally tied up, but we also had sounds that accom­pa­nied the cul­mi­na­tion of thought the way Win­Blows will ‘ding’ when a down­load is com­plete?” Who needs pot when sleep depri­va­tion has the same effect. So tired. Only 5 min­utes left in my day. No car here yet, but soon, soon.…More tomor­row, I promise, and more than just lists.

1. First a Nazi, now a deity? Here’s another gram­mar quiz, thanks to Aaron:
   
   You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

   If your mis­sion in life is not already to
   pre­serve the Eng­lish tongue, it should be.
   Con­grat­u­la­tions and thank you!

   How gram­mat­i­cally sound are you?
   brought to you by Quizilla

2. Any­one for a game of 1000 blank white cards? Bad­gerBag sug­gested it. Maybe we should find a way to play a vir­tual game?
3. An oldie but a goodie, the flash face was men­tioned recently on Neil Gaiman’s blog.
4. The Skep­tics’ Anno­tated Bible is a great tool for fuel­ing debate.

Ok, I don’t think I have laughed this much in a long time. I wish it weren’t too late to orga­nize a sim­i­lar party. I’ll admit that the undead angle has never occurred to me before. Tee hee hee.

One of the orig­i­nal MTV VJs, JJ Jack­son, died of a heart attack last month. This is a sad thing, but even sad­der is the fact that I was into my teens when MTV launched, so the death of one of those VJs, cou­pled with the knowl­edge that I now count as fam­ily peo­ple who were barely born when MTV was launched, really under­lines my age somehow.

I am com­fort­ing myself with my new Bud­dha plushie that I bought today at the UNICEF store in Bal­boa Park. The other thing I have to order from the Unem­ployed Philoso­phers’ Guild is this pill case, and per­haps some mints.

Per­haps if I get a whole shop­ping list together, the Fortean Bureau will pub­lish mine along with Neil Gaiman’s and Steven Brust’s. God, I love Neil Gaiman. A good sto­ry­teller with a nice voice and sharp wit makes me swoon almost as much as a beau­ti­ful tenor voice, and even more than a woman play­ing cello… and that’s say­ing something!

I don’t have much of a list right now, though. Not even much of an imag­i­na­tion, for that mat­ter, and my home­work lan­guishes, as does my writ­ing. How­ever, here is a short list of other links to keep you entertained:

• In keep­ing with the sea­son, an entire page of links about Peeps, one of my favorite candies
• Air Amer­ica, the new radio sta­tion with a truly lib­eral bent.…the only one, really. Please lis­ten and sup­port so it doesn’t go away!
• A write-up of Al Franken’s first show on the above sta­tion — as funny as the show was!
• Proac­tiv­ity taken to the extreme

You are the gram­mar Fuhrer. All bow to your
author­ity. You will crush all the infe­rior
peo­ple under the soles of your jack­boots, and
any who ques­tion your motives will be
elim­i­nated. Your pun­ish­ment is being the bane
of every other person’s exis­tence, because
you’re con­stantly con­tra­dict­ing stu­pid­ity.
Every­one will be gun­ning for you. Your dreams
of a mas­ter race of spellers and gram­mar­i­ans
frighten the masses. You must always watch your
back. If only your power could be used for good
instead of evil.

What is your gram­mar apti­tude?
brought to you by Quizilla

Oh. Wait. I know why. Money. Money, and per­haps to boost a sag­ging career? Or to even momen­tar­ily be sur­rounded by barely-clothed mod­els while on a free trip to Venice? But geez, Bob, did it have to be women’s under­wear? Why should I (or any­one) want your endorse­ment of skanty things? I guess, though, that the other things you could be spokesper­son for — cig­a­rettes, booze and musi­cal instru­ments — either can’t be or aren’t adver­tized on TV, the one real lucra­tive ad medium out there. I am nearly as sad­dened by this kind of selling-out as I am by 60s/70s/80s bands that end­lessly tour play­ing all their old shit. Regard­less of whether or not their inten­tions are altru­is­tic — offer­ing another gen­er­a­tion the oppor­tu­nity to see them (an argu­ment that works with truly good bands like the Stones but not bands like REO Speed­wagon… then again truly good bands tour play­ing new music) — or oth­er­wise, I can’t help but think that they them­selves have to feel like non-artists at that point, when money becomes more impor­tant than pro­fes­sional integrity. So, what about you, Bob? What was your ratio­nale? Shit, a lot of us still buy your stuff. If you wanted to enlarge your audi­ence, why not star in ads for your music? *sigh*

I had to catch this melan­choly from some­one, and of all the peo­ple I’ve groped in the last few days, he was the last one to have it.

How is it that depres­sion makes all bad things so very believ­able, and all good things so incred­i­ble? For exam­ple, right now I am feel­ing lon­lier than I have in a long time, and this feel­ing of alone­ness is fur­ther height­ened by the rea­sons that I am alone. These “rea­sons” are most likely wrought into their huge, hulk­ing forms by the state of my mind — most likely mag­ni­fi­ca­tion or false attri­bu­tion — but they seem so sen­si­ble and so clearly valid.

This is the pathetic sound­track I am lis­ten­ing to right now: “You are not any­where near as inter­est­ing, sexy or wor­thy as TV, sleep, IRC or other diver­sions. Your blather bores peo­ple. No one wants to hear about the poetry that moves you, and they look for new and inter­est­ing ways to not say neg­a­tive things when your own poetry is the sub­ject of con­ver­sa­tion. The peo­ple that love you tell you that you are beau­ti­ful out of some sense of duty, and no one thinks you are sexy… Even some of the nas­ti­est blog-sluts have higher “sexy” rat­ings than you on Orkut. Blah. blah. blah.”

Granted, many of these things (“may” my evil mon­keys make me add) not be true, and those that are can­not be helped. Not every­one can be sexy or scin­til­lat­ing. Depressed, whiny peo­ple are def­i­nitely not sexy or scin­til­lat­ing. I guess I can help that part, and I am try­ing, slowly but surely.

Most impor­tantly, I am work­ing on not falling into this hole, learn­ing not to skate so close to it, learn­ing to call for help when I do find the ice crack­ing beneath my skates. That last one is hard, though, when you also see your­self as a bur­den to every­one. Godde, I hate these episodes.

It is dis­tress­ing to find that I have been liv­ing a stream-of-consciousness life for at least the past 6 months to a year. I am assum­ing that it has a lot to do with the sever­ity of my depres­sion dur­ing that time, but one never knows… I am hop­ing that it is my men­tal state, which has the pos­si­bil­ity of rem­edy, and not my age, which does not.

What I mean by stream-of-consciousness in this case is not so much any suc­cess at being present “in the moment” (although I wish it were), but rather my lack of con­trol over what my mind chooses to engage in, how long it stays engaged, whether it will engage in any­thing at all, and how long it will remem­ber any­thing about its pre­vi­ous engage­ments. My mind, it seems, is not my own. Through what I have stud­ied about Bud­dhism — my soci­o­log­i­cal opi­ate of choice — I am not to expect to have any real con­trol over the mon­keys in my mind-tree. Rather, I am sup­posed to smile indul­gently at their antics and get on with being all here in the now, all one with the one­ness. My angst arises from the fact that even my tree seems to want to van­ish, move about, stick “kick me” signs on my back, etc.

I want to run away a lot. Not really, of course. I love too many peo­ple too dearly to truly want that. I do wish for some dis­con­nect, how­ever. I think that I tie the limbs of my tree to so many peo­ple, places, things that I am in dan­ger of allow­ing myself to be drawn and quar­tered into logs. Hope­fully, should this hap­pen, I will pro­vide at least a cord of fire­wood for my loved ones. :)

Of course, the worry-wort in me keeps knock­ing on wood, cross­ing her fin­gers and wish­ing on stars and successfully-blown dan­de­lion fuzz that it isn’t *gasp* Alzheimers. As if I need some­thing else to worry about. Dammit, which one of you mon­keys threw that one at me?

I was going to post this extremely funny pic­ture of Doogles that I took today with my brand-spankin’(heh-heh-she-said-spankin’)-new Sony Clie TJ37, but he whined me into not post­ing it, so all yer going to get out of my hard-working ass this evening is what­ever ran­dom links I find between projects:

• Ebayn­ham, fun­ni­est t-shirts on the inter­net (they say)
• yet another coun­try with clue our coun­try doesn’t have
• Bush bashes Jesus
• Per­son­al­ized Google
• A Com­puter gen­er­ated weblog
• The White House <a href=http://www.whitehouseprops.com/”>Props Department
• Real lib­eral media via the radio or the web