dangerous compassions

I call you / from the comet's cradle

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

trust girls

This morning I went to weed at the Vedanta grounds with P, which was fun, and I want to go again tomorrow. The idea is to get some things done before the rains come.

Tonight we voted absentee ballot, which we'll hand-deliver Thursday. What I'm most adamant about is no on prop 85, which is the same as last year's 73, oppressing girls who need abortions. Family communication can't be legislated, and any girl who is too scared to talk to her family about her choices might have good reason to be scared.

Long nap this afternoon--I'm still sleepy. No trick or treaters, no jack-o-lanterns. Just candle feelings and memories of dead friends. Lots on the to do list for tomorrow. Erik's got projects, to make CDs for example, and stuff he needs to buy, like a new matcha whisk.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

nothing else

Today I saw written in the dust of a back window of a car: Love you forever. I don't know if I've mentioned here that I would like my next master's degree to be in the anthropology of car dust writing.

I went to Trader Joe's by myself for the first time today. It went perfectly, even parking and unparking.

Lately some students taking a class at cal state Sacramento have been showing up to Vedanta for worship service. I like overhearing what my friend P says to them. They're taking some kind of spirituality class....

Having brown rice with flax oil for lunch, and it's good. Avocados have been Too Much for me lately. What else, what else?

Saturday, October 28, 2006

this is just to say

Don't mind me
as I am elsewhere
under water
mostly enjoying
other things.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

the grapes

Those huge grapes I bought last night are really delicious. In fact, maybe I'll go back for more. Part of their excellent is their crispness. I didn't know I like my grapes crisp.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy

Tonight after choir practice I stopped at the grocery store for bread and eggs. I got a compliment on my bumper sticker, which hadn't happened in a couple years. I bought the biggest grapes I've ever seen.

Still windy and cold. Windy enough I needed to pick up tree branches from the street--cold enough that I want socks but feel too lazy to go get some.

a household is not a closed system

This morning, there's lots of cold wind. My mind has turned to Halloween and Thanksgiving, the holidays to anchor my thoughts of fall. The fridge is getting empty, and the recycling is piling up.

Last night I talked on the phone with two friends, one in Oregon and one in Arizona. I'm not lonely anymore in mind and heart, but I wish more friends lived near.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

great news and personality type

I was accepted as a reviewer for Zine World. I'm so happy because I feel validated and honored that such an important, valuable review zine wants me to be their volunteer. Also, I'm happy because I'm doing it under my real name, so I can put it on my resume, and maybe it's a baby step toward finding paying work in publishing.

This morning my friend C sent me this link to info about INFJ personality types, and reading it, it's totally me. Having this information makes me feel good, that I may be a freak, but one percent of the population is like this, so actually there are a heck of a lot of us.

internet explorer

me: It always encounters a problem and needs to shut down!
Erik: Kind of a timid explorer, huh?

Monday, October 23, 2006

very convenient

It's really good having a CD burner now so I could copy the CD we kept checking out from the library over and over again, They Might Be Giants' Mink Car. "My Man" is one of my favorite songs of the year (track 11), after "Fistful of Love" by Antony and the Johnsons and half of Innocence Mission's Befriended.

It's gingerbread time. I think I'm going to make some tomorrow. Or else just write letters. I'm very behind. My dearest Austrailian sent me many zines a couple weeks ago, and I'm writing a letter to her in response that just won't end.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

the weekend

This weekend there was a puja. I went to a meeting where I met five new people, and another more private meeting. Erik and I had drinks in midtown with a new friend. I went to worship and vespers. And I talked on the phone with a different new friend that I had never spoken with before. It was the most social weekend of recent memory, and my conclusion is that recent efforts to reach out more have worked. Interaction with other beings is one of the few meaningful activities available to us, and I'm getting better at it.

Erik starts work at the grading factory tomorrow, so I will have to learn how to be alone for long stretches of day again. SAT scoring is fine.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

the illusion of grandeur

This evening when I went to get the laundry from the line, there was a mantis clinging to the railing right by the door. Erik stopped scoring for a moment to look. It got scared and climbed from the railing to the wall.

We made the holes for the string binding for #39 with an awl this time, as opposed to the power drill. I said we should tell a folktale, sing a folk song, and wear traditional dress. Erik said we should get our food from a chuck wagon. I told him we weren't pretending to be white people.

We have brown rice cooking for a late dinner. Erik's keyboard makes satisfying clacking sounds as if I'm really getting something done.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Oct 18th is the realest day of the year

Today I have been writing a letter to one of my dearest penpals, the man who made the cover for issue 39, and assembling issue 39, which hurts my back, so I can only do it for little sessions.

Erik has been scoring all day. Tonight I need to qualify for SAT scoring, which starts tomorrow. Right now I'm eating some good dinner--whole wheat pasta with vodka sauce and pine nuts and cheese.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

changes and what we did

Yesterday in Berkeley was lovely. We had lunch, and Erik both ordered and paid so I could avoid the worker who over-flirts. We had mali kofta there for the first time--it was a special. The sauce was lovely, but the dumplings were too hot for me, so me and Erik kinda traded--he enjoyed them very much.

We got bread and apple turnovers from Acme. We went to Cody's where I read a book called

High Pink by Franco Mondini-Ruiz (that's the cover) halfway through that was just what I needed to read--a gay Mexican-American growing up in Texas, wonderful non-fiction vignettes, sort of like a zine but with color photos of kitch. I wanted to buy it but couldn't justify the expense of twenty dollars before seeing if it was at the library. But the content nourished my soul. How it feels to be mostly white but not entirely white.

Erik got me a pillow he has been wanting to get me for months, a buckwheat hull pillow at one of the Japanese stores he likes. He got himself some matcha.

I bought beautiful postcards--just lovely--but I can't scan them right now because Erik has my computer. It's officially scoring season again, and he's training at the moment, on my computer because it's far superior.

Then dinner was the main reason we went over to Berkeley, for dinner with my loved R. My eggplant was just perfect. Erik sat at the zendo and joined us later.

SAT scoring starts Thursday. I'm taking a deep breath, and if you notice me underwater too long, send help. Monday Erik's off to the grading factory for a project that's supposed to last into December. So life is about to change in a big way, and it's stressful, but I won't say entirely unwelcome. My unemployment ran out just recently, so off we go.

Erik also got an Eddie Izzard DVD last night at the Ameoba on Telegraph. He'd been watching a lot of Eddie Izzard on youtube and wanted to get something legit.

Monday, October 16, 2006

the real story

Happy first day of needing an extra blanket on the bed.

I got equality stickers in the mail! Let me know if you want one. They're from the human rights campain, square, dark blue background with bright yellow equals sign, which I guessed at first was some kind of code for mathematicians on the road.

We're heading out of town today but not in too much of a hurry. Erik's got his matcha and is reading my new poem "not the real story."

Saturday, October 14, 2006

just the news

A swami came to visit from Austratia, so I went to satsang this morning, which I had never done before, and I liked it. Then choir practice was right after. So my brain got tired from concentrating for a long time. Tonight, the visiting swami is giving another talk. Last night there was a Samiti meeting, and I loved it.

My friend Saint Alexander made a cover for Erik and Laura-Marie Magazine #39 and put it in the mail to me yesterday. So I will have the new zine done and sent out within a week.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

DIY mint

Mint ice cream almost always has chocolate in it, but I don't eat chocolate, so what I do is, I get some vanilla ice cream and add a few drops of peppermint extract. It's the finest, loveliest, like the Shamrock shakes of my youth....

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

wherever you are

Wishing luck and strength to everyone coming out today. Happy coming out day. I love you, my queer friends.

http://www.hrc.org/

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

moving on

Today a worker came to do paperwork with us for some free weatherization on the apartment. He was nice. However, I would always prefer advanced notice of visits.

I got a zine in the mail so cute it hurts--Christoph Meyers' kid Herbie's zine Mean Zine Submarine. It's first-rate reading.

I also got a postcard from my friend's dad, who I guess is my friend now. He lives in Idaho, and we're conversing through postcards.

We finally finished The Years by Virginia Woolf. That last scene has got to be one of the longest scenes in literatrue. When the sun came up and I realized they had partied all night, its length made more sense to me.

Monday, October 09, 2006

cookie update

I ended up making the jam bars without any jam because I didn't have raspberry after all. They're good but too much sugar. I think I probably won't make this recicpe again. If I'm going to eat that much sugar, it might as well be in the form of cheesecake.

better

Erik fixed my computer. It seems one of my RAMs went bad. It was a long and difficult process learning this, and he was up to the task. His computer is fine now too. One of his RAMs wasn't in right.

This morning we went for a walk at the park. It was quiet, and the trees were stunning. We joked about chocolate and saw an egret hunting in the creek.

I'm trying to remember what else we did today, but we must have been abducted by aliens, because I have no recollection. Well, I wrote a letter to P in Arizona and K to Finland. That took a minute.

Oh, I did some writing and editing too. I'm working hard on a poem called "withheld" that the ending is messed up. I worked on a little essay called "turning 30" for issue 40 of the zine.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

trials

My computer has been behaving very badly since last night. We thought (hoped?) it was the power supply and got a new one at Fry's, and Erik switched them out, but it doesn't seem to have been the power supply. It's working randomly. Everything's fine tonight, but tomorrow it might not turn on again. Motherboard? Just the switch? We're super-confused and don't know quite what to do.

But we nicknamed our old power suply Medusa Head.

To make matters more confusing, while we were at Fry's, we bought some RAM for Erik's computer, and now his won't turn on, at all. It doesn't even try. So we went from two working computers yesterday morning to zero working computers this afternoon, and now we have one.

Trying to decide what to do. Erik's is super-old, slow, and crashes all the time, a hand-me-down from my parents. So we were thinking of buying a new cheap E-Machine and that would be his. I would keep mine, and hopefully we could get it to work....

Meanwhile, I think we need to return the power supply and the RAM, which is a pain. We backed up a bunch of stuff that's on my hard drive just in case. I don't even know what to do if it is the motherboard. Just give up? But if the hard drive was still fine, then? I know it's possible to do so much more than we're capable of doing.

This morning we slept in unusually late, and I missed worship service. I was feeling quite depressed mid-day. Vespers in the evening was very nice, and now I'm feeling fine. Emotional roller coasters lately.

It's getting cold at night but was quite warm today, 80. I got two letters and a postcard in the mail yesterday--good mail day.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

mass

Today we went to 5:15 mass at my friend S's church in midtown. I know her from Vedanta, but she's also Catholic. She does something I hadn't heard of before called Sacred Movement, which is praying with the body, sacred dance. From what she said, I gathered that this was the most liberal a church could be and still be Catholic.

I was impressed and interested in the idea, so Erik and I went. It was fun. I was happy to see S's dancing.

jam bars

I'm going to make this today.

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup butter softened
1 1/2 cups oats
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup toasted pecans
carob chips
12 oz jar raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 13 x 9 pan with foil--grease foil. Mix first three--cut in the butter. Mix in the oats, coconut, and nuts. Press half the crumb mixture onto the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with carob chips. Spoon jam over that--sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture. Bake 25 to 30 minutes.

***

Now that we have canisters, I bought flour, and hopefully moths won't get in. I probably don't have pecans and will use walnuts.

This morning a worker came and fixed our leaking tub spout for the third time. Do you think it will stay fixed this time?

Friday, October 06, 2006

laugh of the day



http://www.mcphee.com/items/11674.html

Note: Erik didn't find this as funny as I did, and I told him probably because he was never a little girl with Unicorn Problems.

"Were there a lot of unicorn toys?" he asked.

I said, "No, just a lot of unicorn thoughts."

The problem of a lack of unicorn toys combined with the problem of cold war fears makes for some intense mirth within me, when all of this can be resolved with one simple purchase!!!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

day in Berkeley

Today we went to Berkeley and had a stimulating, wonderful time. We ate vegan Japanese--here's Erik's sushi bowl.



We went to the botanic garden. Erik will post pictures of plants on his blog, I'm sure. Here's a fabulous one I took of him.



It was cloudy and felt like fall, though it wasn't very cool--just a hint of coolness in the air.

Here's one of my favorites of the day: rosehips.



And here's another: melon, or squash.

find

Got some lovely candy at Cost Plus World Market yesterday: butter fudge. It's heavenly, like See's candy but not dipped in chocolate.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

dental

Spinach makes my teeth feel funny.

flying V

Yesterday during our dusk walk I heard a funny sound. I thought, "What are those pigeons doing?" They were making weird squaking sounds. Then I realized, when I looked into the sky, that those weren't pigeons! Those were migrating birds, I think cranes, and I think sandhill cranes.

Months ago, before our dear Paul moved out of state to become a ranger, we were at a nature center with him and saw these same birds leaving. And yesterday they came back.

So Erik and I for a long time watched the flying V change into two Vs, back to one, with sidelines and sometimes a straggler bird who would slip into file. It was beautiful to hear their distant calls and beautiful to see them cross the cloudy dusk sky together.

Then later, there was another grouping. I heard another pigeon-ish sound, but it seemed to be coming from the ground. I looked around, confused, and finally looked up and got excited by the surprise of more.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

ahimsa

We have flies in the house. So this morning I caught four and released them outside. They're pretty easy to catch when they're cold.

Monday, October 02, 2006

fiction writing me

I'm planning to write a novel in November.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Anybody want to join me?

four good things

a sausage

I like soy chorizo so much because it doesn't have little hard things in it like a tiny bit of wayward tendon. But it's not spiced as well, is it--not quite as spicy.

a snack

Lately I like eating green olives stuffed with almonds. Something about the texture of the brine-logged almond within the tender olive fruit--it's delightful to me.

a fiber

Sad the governor vetoed the hemp bill. I hate to see prejudice against a useful crop.

a season

It's cloudy here, cooling down, really fall. My to-do list grows and grows as I just want to lie in bed dreaming.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

new artist I like a lot

This art makes me feel happy.



http://www.naoshii-u-iii.com/index.html

Her yearning for wearing the hat, she has never done, is expanded every time she looks it.