trogdor!!

it's the end of year survey!

01. What did you do in 2016 that you’d never done before?
participated in a grand slam! visited oregon and minnesota!

( Read more... )

52. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

You're not real, but you're something
You're not real, but you're everything

- JANK, "caitlyn"

so leftbase picked five interests from my userinfo page and i'm talking about them. let me know if you want me to pick five of your interests.

creative nonfiction
Howard Finster
Northampton
sociology
string theory

1. creative nonfiction:
it's my writing of choice. i've been writing more fiction than nonfiction lately, but i love finding a good real-life story and telling it in a compelling way. if i could just be an essayist all day, i think i'd be okay with that.

2. Howard Finster:
where my screen name comes from. he was a folk artist who lived in georgia and created Paradise Gardens, where a band called R.E.M. (you might have heard of them) filmed a video:



my aunt collects his work and took me to Paradise Gardens when i was young. he's pretty great.

3. Northampton:
home of smith college, where i went to college for two years. formative years, those. also where i met aliyaskie, who is still yon BFF. i adore noho. i wish i could live there without having to deal with massachusetts winters.

noho is also known, incidentially, for its lesbian population.

  Q. how many straight women in northampton does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. both of them.

4. sociology:
briefly considered majoring in it when i was at smith. the first day in my intro to soc class, we discussed how a) race is a social construct and b) just because it's socially constructed doesn't mean it doesn't have real consequences. that stuck with me.

5. string theory:
i see why you chose that one ;) i've been fascinated by this and related branches of physics for a long time. i read hawking when i was 11 and wanted to be an astrophysicist; since then, i've read tons of popular texts on string theory, quantum mechanics, etc. brian greene is an excellent guide, both through his books and through his PBS specials, if you want to get a good grounding in the ideas behind string theory.


ok, everyone else's turn!

comments are back on. i'm not completely happy yet, but the last couple entries in this tag are addressing some of my concerns. i don't think any of my friends have cyrillic turned on, but if so, could you guys maybe not post on f-locked entries in russian? i can only pronounce it anyway, not actually read it. my TIP prof would be disappointed that i didn't retain the insane amounts of russian i learned the summer i was 13.

so it's now a few hours late, but happy birthday leftbase! and now not at all late or early either, happy birthday samverick!

forgive me, those of you who know better: i suspect that this process is a bit like amputating a gangrenous limb. maybe it was no longer healthy to keep, but that doesn't stop you from missing what it used to be, everything it did for you, the unbidden joy of simply existing together and working in harmony. you learn to get along without it. every tiny memory is an itch in your new ghost limb.

unbuckling oneself from a life one has maintained for years and maybe even grown rather fond of...the habits, all the unconscious gestures, are the hardest to unlearn. you're chuckling to yourself when suddenly you realize you're sharing a private joke with no one, you're the weird uncle at the edge of the room. people try to hide the fact that they know, or they wince quietly whenever they make a reference to someone else's happiness. or they bypass decorum altogether and ask you all those nosy aunt edna questions you still haven't managed to answer satisfactorily for yourself. a tight smile helps; remembering that no one wishes you unhappiness helps more, even if you are sure that the entire city has judged you and found you in transgression.

i am getting my car checked over again. this time it's the brakes: the barrier between me and a grease spot on the pavement. it's a faulty sensor, nothing more, but my knees get twingey every time i summon the image of sliding forward into the dashboard before my seat belt can stop me. tomorrow (or wednesday if disaster strikes), i drive.

the point of this journey is to be left alone with my will for a while. we haven't really been on speaking terms for years; i turned off what i wanted, small-scale at least, for the sake of a smoother, more peaceful existence - with everyone in my life. being the Give In Girl looks like popularity if you squint. and now i find myself driving down the highway, noting good places to stop on the road signs, but not stopping - why? i am being literally and figuratively driven, it seems, by some remote and automatic part of myself that still believes my time is not my own. i don't know whose schedule it thinks i'm on. that gauze-wrapped hand no longer has the wheel.

seared into my synapses is the image of white naked peaks, they don't know any better, they just stand there proudly for all the world to see their nakedness and i look because i don't know any better either, i just stare in awe of the majesty in front of me

i walk their tightrope, i take my stick firmly in hand and dig into the soft sand and trust that i am going somewhere anywhere this is my journey please let me go somewhere anywhere

but i have to get there first. hour 12 behind the wheel, my eyes cross willie is too nasal for hour 12 better something with a beat you can dance to it

i dance i am always dancing i will die of dancing

i lived here before time began. or this place lived me. before time began again it is always beginning

i am always beginning

posting from my phone. I figured I would give it a go. nothing much to say - life is in a moment of relative calm.

for those of you who don't know already, I will probably be getting a divorce in the next couple months. don't really want to talk about it too much, but if I seem out of it or erratic in my posts, that's why. thanks, all.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

"We're actors - we're the opposite of people."

tom stoppard, you dear man. great play, and having acted in high school, i can identify with that line and also laugh at it. i kinda miss acting sometimes. i've long thought that if i returned to theater, i'd rather tech than act. but that's just the geeky part of me that likes pushing buttons. the rest of me would still rather learn her lines and make people laugh and cry. i think doing stand-up comes out of that for me. i'm writing my own script, but it's learning lines all the same. and it feels good to perform again.

...but my sense of humor has apparently gotten darker. i used to be the Wit. not sure if my stand-up bears out this particular interpretation, but i make jokes about pedophilic blowjobs, so why not?

Your result for The 3 Variable Funny Test...

the Provacateur

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