until next week…

I’m going to be mighty busy.  I just can’t seem to write three papers and blog at the same time.  Forgive my silence, and I’ll see you all on the 6th of May.  

Wish me luck!

i can’t believe i forgot

so, friday was my one-year anniversary of starting this blog.  i don’t have a lot to say about it right now, but it was a really meaningful experience.  i feel like i’ve evolved a lot as a person, i’ve become a more comfortable writer (which was one of my goals, as i have always been incredibly self-conscious about it), i’ve made friends (which was another goal), and i’m constantly re-realizing that the very most important thing in life is to survive.  not to do well in school, or to be considered brilliant, or to be the best possible person, but to survive, with all my complicated parts that make me a complete human being.  i started this blog in part to claim the right to have a voice, however small, after many years, perhaps even a whole life, of being silenced.

so thanks for reading, everyone.  i could write about the day of silence, or the counter-event day of truth, and i will sometime i promise.  right now i’m working on a paper about lgbt youth suicide, and it’s making me so sad.  it reaffirms my own experience; though i didn’t ever try to kill myself, i know people who did or thought about it.  

but i’m really busy, and as a result have been flooding you with boring memes.  

what a lot has changed in a year.  i am excited to change some more.  plunge right in and see what’s next.  i think a tattoo is in my future, and yet more shedding of worry about what others think of me.  i want to learn more about anti-racism; i am realizing that i have privilege that i can only dimly imagine, and i want to become less comfortable in it.  i can’t erase it, but i can become more aware of it at least.

now that i’m writing this i want to keep going, and tell you everything that’s on my mind, but i have to get back to work.  like i said, thanks for reading.

meme from QRx

hey queerrose, i bet you thought i forgot!  well, i didn’t.  and i’m procrastinating.

Five names you go by

1. [real name]
2. second half of [real name]
3. polish interpretation of second half of [real name]; no i’m not polish, but i worked with polish people in ny, and it stuck
4. ice queen — in high school.  very apt, until i realized that there was life beyond straight people.  then i became happy and outgoing.  go figure.
5. people sometimes use the word ‘angel’ to describe me, but it never lasts long.  i wonder why???  i was given the ‘i may look like an angel…’ award my one foray into summer camp at 15.  apparently my looks are deceiving.

Three things you are wearing right now
blue cotton sundress, knickers, silver jewelry.  not wearing a lot today!

Three things you want very badly at the moment
to graduate yesterday, a job, an end to homophobia and racism.

Two people who will probably fill this out
lots of people i know already did this.  i’m late to the party.  as usual.

Two things you did last night
 socialized with very distant relatives that i wish i knew better, went to an amazingly awesome party.

Two things you ate today
red velvet cupcake (breakfast!) and cheese toasties (lunch)

Two people you last talked to on the phone
M., and…M.  i don’t talk on the phone much.

Two things you are doing tomorrow
presenting a big awful scary presentation in class and listening to arcade fire some more.  newly in love with them.

Two longest car rides
when i was three, we moved from CA to MA.  i don’t remember much about that trip except that i was learning to sing, and would scream at my family to ’slow down!!!’ because i needed time to comprehend the lyrics.  i was no one’s favorite that trip!  also our cat and parrot were in the car with us.  nevertheless, we stopped in yellowstone national park to see the geysers.  which i saw but don’t really remember.  i think we went to mt. rushmore too, but i don’t really remember that either.

the other one was when we drove to WY when i was 11.  my little sister and i made up a musical involving finger puppets with costumes i cut out of notebook paper and drew on with ballpoint pen.  i think my mom probably wanted to kill us by the time she’d heard the chorus for the 400th time, but luckily we managed to make it there and back in one piece.  i was supremely excited when we saw buffalo roaming the prairie.

Two of your favourite beverages
tea.  and whiskey.

book meme

Courtesy of Lady Brett, and in honor of the stupid Amazon ridiculousness:

1) What author do you own the most books by?

Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I was obsessed as a kid, and at one point had her complete works.  She was prolific!  I think half of them are still in my mom’s attic, but even half are enough to win this one.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

I don’t think I have multiple copies.  Maybe something by Shakespeare or Moliere, since when M. and I combined households we had been in many of the same classes and had the same books.  But I don’t know.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

Not at all.  I don’t like rigid grammar rules, and playing with language is one of my very favorite pastimes.  In fact, our language used to change much faster — the invention of the printing press slowed down its evolution considerably.  

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

I spent my teenage years completely in love with the Phantom of the Opera.  I could go on and on psychoanalyzing this — love in isolation?  loving some masculine person who had to keep something really hidden and secret?  sneaking around and having everyone else I cared about disapprove?  Yeah, it’s all there.  

I’ll have you know that I read the original novel, not just the musical.  And a modern take on the story.  And a newer translation.  I was obsessed.

Since then, though, I basically stick to real people for infatuations and crushes.  

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?

Little Women.  I re-read this one about every two years, since I was 6 years old.  My godmother gave me a beautiful leather-bound, gold-leafed edition when I was 8.  It consistently resonates with me and makes me feel glad to be alive.  I think it’s easily dismissed as a trite, moralizing book, but if you read it through the lens of Louisa May Alcott’s desperation to make some money, as well as her potential dykeishness, I think it becomes a poignant story of gender and coming of age.  

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

See above.  And, of course, everything by L.M. Montgomery.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

All of my school books.

8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

I really couldn’t say.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?

Well, I’m not tagging anyone, but I might inflict Little Women on them, just so we could talk about it.  Or maybe Ulysses.  Or maybe The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

My pick already won — Orhan Pamuk.  I am so out of touch with literature these days I don’t have a more current opinion.  But I’m telling you, Pamuk’s books are fantastic.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

The best literary movie adaptation is by far, hands down, Shakespeare In Love.  I thought it was just brilliant, weaving together Shakespeare’s works of that moment into the narrative of R&J.  I don’t think anyone will ever top that.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

I basically don’t like movie adaptations.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

Oddly enough, I don’t remember my dreams unless they are really horrible nightmares.  And I mostly stopped having those as I pulled out of my mid-twenties.  So literary figures don’t really play a role.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

Every once in a while I pick up one of the romance novels that line my little sister’s bookshelf when I’m visiting her and can’t sleep.  The last time was last July.  It never fails to amaze me how mindless and similar they all are.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

Well, I think that Ulysses was really difficult to read, since every single word was significant in some way.  The Iliad almost killed me with boredom.  My quantitative research textbook was similarly lethal.  Emotionally difficult was The Bone People, but brilliant too, for beautiful writing and an intense take on the brutality that can exist alongside love.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

I’ve worked on so many, and seen a lot too.  Othello?  Twelfth Night?  Henry something?  The Roman one?  I’ve seen Hamlet and R&J and Midsummer (also the opera version)… oh yeah and the Tempest.  I made a feathered cape for that once.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

Novelists?  neither.  I prefer Great Britain and Ireland, as well as the rest of the colonies.  English-language (non-translated) is the best in my opinion.  Maybe the others would be better if I could read them in the original, though my experiences with French novels in French makes me think it’s more of a true preference than a language barrier.

18) Roth or Updike?

Roth.  See below.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

Sedaris?  I haven’t read Eggers.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Oh, I dunno.  Shakespeare I guess, but Milton is great too.  I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare people from such disparate time periods — Chaucer is great in his own way but isn’t in the same category.  They are all three different.  I think I would have liked Milton if I’d known him personally.  I’d rather be stuck on a desert island with the other two’s work, it’s more lively and about the drama of people’s personal lives.

21) Austen or Eliot?

This is so hard.  Austen I guess, because of the lack of religiosity, but both are GENIUS.  I had such a good time reading Middlemarch, I still think back to it fondly.  Of course I’ve read everything Austen ever wrote and own her complete works, so by that measure I prefer her.  But I want to give Eliot her due.  

[Lady Brett, I took this to mean George Eliot, whom I adore.  Good that there are multiple Eliots, so that we can all choose the one we love or love to hate!]

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

Queer theory.  I’m working on it!

23) What is your favorite novel?

Little Women.  I’m starting to feel repetitive.

24) Play?

Romeo and Juliet.  Because people say it’s unrealistic, but M. and I lived it almost to the letter (minus the murder and the friends).

25) Poem?

Anything by Mallarmé.  See?  the English-language novels are my favorites, but no one beats the French at poetry.

26) Essay?

Don’t have one.  But I’m partial to Malthus.

27) Short story?

The Bank Robbery by Steven Schutzman.  M. and I almost read it out loud at our wedding, way back when, and we decided not to because it might make people think we were weird.  I really wish we had done it.  Some day I am going to print it out in some aesthetically pleasing way and hang it on our wall.

28) Work of nonfiction?

Cookbooks.  

29) Who is your favorite writer?

I have so many.  I can’t choose.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

WELL.  This will make me unpopular, I’m sure.  I was going to say Updike, but he’s recently dead.  And I acknowledge that he was great, but really — that great?  So I guess I’ll have to go with Franzen.  There’s a whole genre of self-conscious, sordid, ‘realistic’ literature that I find risible, and he is a great example.  Ian McEwan is another example.  Can’t stand any of them.

31) What is your desert island book?

The Boy Scout Handbook.  Tells you how to dig a latrine, build a fire, and tie a knot.  Invaluable.

32) And… what are you reading right now?

Articles about LGBT youth mental health for school, and sometimes the newspaper.  I’ve been in school so long I have no idea what the state of current literature is, but I hope to get to some this summer!  I know there are some good book recommendations floating around the blogs, but honestly I might choose to re-read an old favorite.  It’s been two years since I read Little Women…

And since writing that title on my blog this many times is sure to bring some random searchers here, let me say conclusively that I think Louisa May Alcott was probably a lesbian.  I have read almost everything she ever wrote, as well as several biographies, and I think that the recurring themes of secrecy, women dressing as men/wishing they were men, masks/hiding true selves really points to the possibility of her being family.

snapshot

At the local lesbian coffeehouse a weekend ago, we were sitting and talking about, well, life, and love, and sex, and things like that…when the conversation turned to fisting.  This isn’t a sex blog, so I won’t go into details.  But M. did!  As the conversation got more animated, M.’s voice got louder, and she began to gesture with her hands as she explained some crucial details.  And then started using “you”  liberally in the discussion.

I began to blush; I looked around, and it became clear that anyone who was paying any attention at all was getting a blow-by-blow account of, well, something I wouldn’t rush to share with just anyone.

I bet Amazon would de-rank us too.

because you asked

Tagged both by sarcozona and leo, how can I say no?  This one comes from llcooljoe:

The rules:

1. You’ve got to post a link from the person who tagged you.
2. List 8 things that you know about on your chosen subject. You get to choose the subject.
3. You don’t have to tag anyone but you can if you want. If you do, let them know on their blog that they’ve been tagged.
4. List the rules.

So:  once upon a time, I had a strange and wondrous career that involved a lot of fabric.  And so I bring you 8 things about dyeing.  No, not dying.  I don’t know much about that, thankfully enough!

1.  Proper handling of dye powder is very important.  If you’re being responsible, you wear a dust mask at all times when measuring and mixing, and after you’re done you spray down the work area with water.  Then, you carefully wipe up the work surface with a damp cloth, since even one loose granule of dye can land on your project and cause a great big splotch.  Generally right where you don’t want it.

2.  Fabric needs to be wet when you put it in the dye pot, and should be pre-washed.  That way you take off the water-resistant finish that the manufacturer uses to make it crisp and appealing in the store.  This goes for ready-made garments too.  Little-known fact:  often fabric is finished with formaldehyde.  Gross, huh?

3.  A good dyer is left with almost clear water when they’re done with their project — the fabric will literally soak up most of the dye in the chemical reaction.  Not that the water is clean!  It’s quite toxic.  That’s why you wear gloves.

4.  Salt helps the dye process along, as well as vinegar and warm water.  This combination opens up the individual fibres so the dye can lodge deep within them.  Then, you rinse out the salt/vinegar with cold water — which closes the fibres, trapping the dye.  Bleach is really toxic (I hope you already knew that) but if you must use it, rinse your textile in white vinegar after you’re done bleaching it.  Vinegar neutralizes bleach, which otherwise will live in your fibres and slowly degrade them.

5.  There are two major types of dye — acid dyes, which are used for proteinaceous fibres such as silk or wool, and cellulosic dyes, used for plant fibres such as cotton/linen/rayon.  Then there are fibre reactive dyes, which are meant for plant fibres but also work on silk.  Though silk is officially a protein, it is made by silkworms who eat exclusively mulberry leaves and there is enough of the plant structure left in the molecule that the dye works on silk too.  These dyes are quite vibrant, and used for batik since you don’t use hot water. 

6.  Speaking of batik — it is a beautiful product (originated in Indonesia I believe) made by applying wax to a cotton cloth and then dyeing it.  For intricate designs sometimes the process is repeated many times, for an amazing layered effect.  The most beautiful batik is made with indigo.  But caution!  Melting wax gives off a chemical that is not removed by most respirators.  Don’t do it too much. 

7.  Speaking of indigo, it is an ancient dye process that is still practised in many cultures.  It results in a beautiful, beautiful blue, which ranges from dark to light depending on how many times it is dipped in the vat and then exposed to the air to oxidize.  I have never participated in this process, but I think if I did I might quit everything I do and go be an indigo dyer.  

8.  All-purpose dyes, like Rit, are very convenient but not at all good for you.  And not good for your pots, pans, and kitchen equipment.  Which is not to say that I haven’t done it — probably all of us ex-fabric-geeks have at one point or another — but if you want really good results, use really good, fibre-specific dye.  And a dedicated pot.  If you don’t, at least scrub the hell out of it before you cook any food with it.

For awesome dyeing supplies, go here.

I would treat you to pictures of my projects from my awesome dyeing class, but it’s late and I don’t know where my portfolio is.  Trust me when I say that they’re gorgeous.  It was my favorite class I ever took.

definitely the best search ever

“Hot dyke enslaves straight girl”

Searcher, I don’t know what you were looking for, but it sure isn’t here. I’m gay.

a year ago, from my perspective

If you want the back story of this post, go here.

I’ll never forget the image of M. standing there in the doorway, making that ‘girl’ face with the pouty lips, all decked out in my stuff. My stomach dropped to about my knees and I felt so ill.  It was like something broke open in me, and I saw at once the power she had to hurt me, and that she had been hurting me.  For a moment I thought it was real, that M. was actually fluid, that she could toggle back and forth between these two looks as if it were nothing.  And then I had an even stronger feeling that she was going back to girl, reneging on her new self, giving up.  

I am described in that post as ’spectacularly angry’, but I would more describe myself as devastated.  Annihilated.  It’s hard for me to understand the full meaning of my reaction, but there was certainly grief involved.  Grief that she could have played what was all of a sudden a game for so long, with such harrowing results.   Grief that she could go back into that place even for a moment.  And there was anger too — anger that she could be so unaware of my feelings.  

There were times, back in the dark ages, when I wondered if she was straight.  She was trying so hard to be a proper woman, and was obviously so miserable with me, that it was the only explanation I could come up with.  Her true self was buried so deep I couldn’t find it at all.  Seeing her dressed up like that brought all of that back to me, along with the heartbreak of spending so many years completely miserable and alone. 

I went out with my new friend from buddhism a couple of nights later — she said “how are you?” at class and I just couldn’t lie.  She promptly scheduled a time to meet for drinks and got me talking about the whole thing.  And the story poured out of me, and she just listened.  The verdict:  I could have a date in five minutes, if I wanted one.  That meant a lot to me.  

Truly that time is the closest we ever came to breaking up.  I’m glad we slept apart for that time, strange as it was to fall asleep in a cold, damp bed with her still awake on the other side of the wall.  Eating separately.  Trying to go on ‘dates’, awkwardly.  She asked me out to dinner and a movie and I got an awful stomach ache, and I felt like I couldn’t tell her.  I suppose that part was like a real date, with someone you’re just getting to know.  Except that of course she did know me, and could tell that I was unhappy, and thought it was about her, when really I was just uncomfortable because I hadn’t been eating right all week, because we weren’t eating together, and we’d had a big restaurant meal — the whole thing was really stressful! 

So we got back together at the end of the week.  I was sort of surprised, but  I shouldn’t have been.  We seem to have a fatal attraction for each other…  

And there have been no more incidents with lipstick since then, thank god.