On the Subject of Spiders

I accidentally killed a spider yesterday. I was trying to fish him out of the sink so that I could use it, but the surface was too slippery for him to climb out on his own, and too wet for me to slip a piece of paper under him like I normally would because I don't let them crawl around on my hand anymore, so I was trying to scoop him out with a slotted spoon that had been nearby, and he was afraid of me so he was trying to scramble out on his own, and then he'd panic and fall down and we'd have to start all over again. After a few tries, he panicked a little too much, and his legs crumpled up and he tumbled into the bottom of the sink again. It's a bit hard watching the thing you were trying to help die right in front of you, I must admit. Out of a combination of deference to the dead and just plain laziness, I waited until this morning to do the dishes.
Spiders and I have a long, painful history. When I was very little, a certain relative of mine, who shall be referred to as “M” because she's actually a delightful person and I don't want ancient history to be running amok with her for the sake of a story, realised I was a bit afraid of spiders. Consequently, she told me many stories of how spiders devour their prey, and drink their blood, some of them eat birds whole, all of them have a deadly bite that kills stuff, and there were a few very clever works of science fiction, for which M doesn't get nearly enough credit, thrown into the mix as well. Apprehension turned into unbridled terror.

This went on for a year or so. Lights could not be safely turned off because the evil spiders were just WAITING for the chance to crawl out of the woodwork and devour me, crevasses and dark corners were visions riddled with peril. Nowhere, I quickly learned, was I safe from the terror of the arachnid. I would pull cups out of the cupboard and find them waiting for me, scrambling all over my arm while I screamed and shrieked in protest, only to run under the sink as soon as help came. I would take casual strolls in the park, fighting off hypothetical pirates, and discover them sitting complacently on a park bench.
Eventually, this issue became recognised as a potential source of trouble, and family members crowded around me with kind words and reassurances that not ALL spiders were bad, and most spiders weren't black widows. M even introduced me to the daddy-long-legs, which one could have crawl all over one safely and not even get bitten. Later, when it no longer mattered, other relatives told me that these guys are actually quite poisonous, they just don't have the capacity to bite people, but I've recently learned that this isn't true either. Gradually I realised that these terrible creatures were usually running from me when I found them, and none of them were actually big enough to knock me over, drag me to a dark alley and eat me whole as my imagination suggested. I grew out of the fear of spiders.
“M” didn't.
I'm not sure if it was the stories she told me, or watching the movie arachnophobia or what, but she became nearly as terrified of the little monsters as I had been. By the time we moved away from California, she was reduced to hysteria by the sight of them, and the house in Colorado had its fair share of spiders. I would find myself dragged out of my cosy bed and instructed to kill some hapless spider that she had found in some obscure part of her room on a weekly basis. After a while I got tired of it, and I wouldn't kill them, instead I'd pick them up and let them crawl all over my hand.

“Aw!” I'd coo, “Poor Mr. Spider. Did the mean M scare you with her screaming? It's okay, sweety, I'll take you somewhere safe...aw!”
M did not take the hint. Now, I know several other people who go rigid when they see a spider, and with them I sympathize. They are rendered non-functional by the mere existence of things that possess eight legs, I understand, and I try not to be glib about their plight, but if you have the power to scream and run around with flailing arms, you have the power to do a lot of other things, like pick up a shoe and throw it, in M's case with reasonable accuracy. I did not see how my involvement was necessary.
Things came to a head when we moved into the second house in Colorado. I remember hanging about in the kitchen around lunchtime one day, making myself something delicious, while M had the telephone in thrall on the hammock in the backyard. All was well, life was peaceful, corn chips were a good idea. Then the pleasant hum of normal life was shattered by an ungodly scream.
What?! What could it be? Murder? Rape? Fire? Did Pikes Peak turn into a volcano? I don't know, and yet M was in the yard, screaming relentlessly. At last, words emerged. “E!!!!!! E! There's a SPIDER on the fence, E! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!”
Spiders are supposed to be on fences. They belong, if anywhere, on a fence, defending our borders from the evil Annoying Insect masses. This is nothing, positively nothing, to scream about. So I opened the back door and screamed back. “M! You are a PRESBYTERIAN! It was PREDESTINED for you to encounter that spider so GET OVER IT!”
The screaming stopped. M came in. She was probably mad at me, she might be mad at me now for continuing to tell this story. I was never asked to kill another spider again, and in general, unless I am left with no alternatives, I don't.
Also, the next time my parents met up with our next door neighbours, the neighbours said, “so, you guys are Presbyterians, huh?”

On the Subject of Subjects

I've been a Christian for a long time now, and I've drifted in and out of the Sunday schools from a quagmire of denominations (and rigid non-denominations which are kind of their own denominations) since the dawn of human perception, or at least my perception. The best part of this is listening to all the explanations on the “whys” of the world. It's very exciting and it took me a long time to stop being confused by all the theological collisions whirling 'round in my head which I didn't even notice until someone pointed them out to me.

If only we could see the tapestries of our thoughts all at once so that we can find the big picture and sort out where all the discrepancies lie. I say that now, but if it ever really happened and we could see how all the things we believe at once fail miserably to work together, probably the suicide rate would rise exponentially. The method of realising it slowly or never bothering with it at all is probably the better alternative.

A n y w a y... I can remember at least three explanations for why God created humankind to begin with. One was because He was lonely which was really convincing for a long time until I thought about if for a bit and...well...apart from the fundamental problem that this implies a God who has needs and is therefore not perfect and is therefore not God (the Koran explains the logic behind this nicely when it describes why it doesn't think that Christ could be the son of God but it doesn't apply the logic to creation, so it doesn't realise that there could be more than one reason for doing or having something)...YOU try being three beings all at once and see if you get lonely. I mean, even people with multiple personalities are only one of themselves at a time, and even when you're in a crowd of people it's very easy to get lonely, so it might be hard to imagine what it could be like for three perfect beings to come together eternally, but loneliness is not a by-product of that kind of communion. Also, considering the above observation about crowds, I disagree with the theory that creating a massive amount of noisy little megalomaniacs is the best solution to loneliness.

Somebody very clever proposed that God created the universe and all the peeps within because He wanted to have people who would choose to glorify Him freely, not angels because angels have no free will. He created beings who had free will so that they could freely chose to love and worship Him. I expect that Lucifer was the rare and wonderful exception to this logic strain...but really, what a short sell, huh? God practically has to resuscitate us and rebuild our core being from scratch before it will occur to us to worship anything except our own humanity and/or the trimmings that come along with it. This is on par with being given the most awesome of ice cream flavours and refusing to eat it because we have just discovered the sugar jar and are gorging ourselves on it. We're silly that way. So, ya...if that's why He made us...He got gypped.

Free will isn't really all it's cracked up to be, anyway. It seems that unless we dig and search and struggle to find out what His will is over ours, we just keep screwing up or getting screwed or both. “Free” is such a nebulous concept: there are too many definitions of it. Perhaps I shall invent my own word to describe what I think “free” means, but first I shall have to satisfactorily define it and that's such a trouble, I'll probably end up just taking a nap.

The theory that made the most sense was “He did it for His own pleasure.” Really, if you're God, and you have everything you need, and you ARE everything you need then that's the only reason to do anything including but not limited to creating stuff and having a son.

It's a pity Muhammad isn't listening, though he'd probably just send me a she-camel and then kill me for hamstringing it anyway. It appears that it was impossible to resist the temptation to hamstring the she-camels that Muhammad gave out, he talked about it so much. I'm trying to imagine standing in a tent with a she-camel, holding a knife in my trembling hands and thinking “Must...resist...urge...to...hamstring! MUST!!!” and then looking down and finding that, despite my struggles, I had done it already as if mystically propelled by some unknown force, and my next thought would be nothing more than an obscene expletive. I just can't stay on track to-day, can I?

No matter how I thought about it, the explanation “for His own pleasure” kinda felt insulting. All this human suffering, all this agony and pain and disappointment and all that stupid rotten sodding hope, hope, HOPE that only turns around and stabs you in the face anyway, all because He felt like it? Seriously?! Did I really have to be a part of this arrangement? Couldn't I have just never existed? Yes....yes, yes, yes. I know the suffering is a by-product of original sin, but it's not like He didn't see it coming. Couldn't He have found some other thing to do “for His own pleasure”, like croquet or something?

I keep seeing bits of the story that are in fragments, and incomplete, friends who moved mountains to be with their grandma, only to miss her death by one day. I see the whisper of children and precious little things who never saw the outside of their mum...just because. Grandmas ought to be allowed to live until their granddaughters can at least say good-bye. Surely it's a design flaw that our umbilical cord is so noose-like, those babies just don't stand a chance. People who are much better at being upstanding citizens than I have no right, no business, getting into fatal car wrecks, and don't get me started on all those beloved people who were simply snuffed out, no chance to wrap your head around the matter or come to terms with it, whoosh! They're gone! There can be no explanation for why any of this had to happen in the first place.

And yet “His own pleasure” is the only thing that makes sense. “Because He wanted to,” “because He felt like it.” What is He, an adolescent? Oh! I get so irritated when I think of it.

This coming from a person who creates people in her head, puts them through hell (at least once I've done that literally) “for her own pleasure.” And I don't see anything selfish about that. I do it because I am inclined to do it, not because I like imagining the tortured screams of people that I carefully crafted out of bits of grammar, but because it is right, it's where the story needed to go. And it doesn't stop with writing, Everything I do I do “for my own pleasure” except, maybe, working at the fast food joint. When I sit down to paint a picture, or make clothing or jewelry out of the nothings and cast-offs of the thrift stores, when I sit down to play the piano, or sometimes when I sing obnoxiously loud while other people are trying to do their jobs, I go into a zone of pleasure, and it is MIGHTY. Look what I am able to do, look what I have done with nothing but a larynx and a set of lungs, or a piece of paper (sometimes not even blank) and something with a smutty tip. Marvel at it. That's an order.

Thinking about how I might do it was pleasurable of course, and one would expect that the delight of theorising into eternity all the wonderful things that I am capable of would be sufficient, but while I knew I could do it, duh, I'm awesome, thinking about it was nothing, peanuts, compared to actually doing it. And when I get down to it, the itty gritty parts of it, everything, the sewing, the writing, the drawing, the singing and playing of pianos, all start to become the same thing; it's all another way of “doing”.

Art is a language, I tell my students that. I tell their mothers that. Crafting is a language, too. Music. Math. Science. Everything is saying something to a different part of our brains. Every aspect of the universe has been coated over with a new iteration of Word. Anyone who creates, or works with their hands, or studies the world, or breathes the air has access to some version of a language. Even time is a language, the way it repeats itself over and over, the way everything seems to fall naturally into a cycle, often so well that I can see what is going to happen tomorrow or the next day or the next because I've memorized the pattern.

Occasionally when I create, I can hear all the languages, all working together and melding together, swirling into eddies and currents and tides until they all rise up like the singing of the ocean, and I am at its shore, listening to Everything, and it all says the same thing, “Glory to God in the Highest. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.” And I almost understand what “His own pleasure” means, and it's not the least bit insulting: it is perfect. It is right. It is the most beautiful, most thought-out story ever. It is the subtlest of systems and equations. It is an anthology of poetry, every person a poem, a song, all indicating the absolute, and it barely delves into the creator.

I once painted a picture of a black box while trying to translate a part of this, before I knew all the words I needed, but only some of the people I showed it to could understand it. Others appended their own meaning onto it and got their conclusions all muddled up and talked for a ridiculously long time trying to blunder their way into it until I interrupted them with a verbal translation multiple times and even then they didn't understand it. The current fixation on subjectivity can be very frustrating.

How important it must be to follow your calling. Even if you can't find a career in it, you have to stick with it, you have to keep fighting for it. If you don't, you're wandering away from the language you understand best, and the language you speak best, like plugging into the wrong interpreter at an international convention. Why would anyone do that?

That “happy place” I'm supposed to find when I need to relax or calm down quickly used to be lying a trampoline, looking up at the sky just before a rainstorm (you're supposed to stimulate all five senses when you go to that “happy place,” did you know that? Hence the eccentric complexity.) Nowadays it is on a cliff covered in lavender above the ocean at sunrise, I am wearing a white linen dress that glows orange in the sunlight, listening to the roar of the sea and feeling the morning wind on my face. I know why it changed. The whole point of having a “happy place” is to get away from Everything, but you can't really get away from it, can you? The best you can do is step outside of it for a moment.

A Very Very Old Story

Long ago, I had two diaries running at one time. One was to be filled with nonsense and whatever struck my mind and all sorts of arbitrary things, the other was to be filled with all the angst and misery and sorrow and boy trouble that I could conjure. These days, I use only one, and I have decided to consolidate the two for better book keeping. While doing this, I found an entry in the random diary about eight years old that I felt well worth sharing, but honestly, I don't know what I was doing or reading that inspired it. I am well aware of the words I heinously mis-used. I think those bits are particularly funny.

May-1-03

"A Battle with the Gmadp"

As I wandered through the torpid waste of my own imagination, I chanced upon a nightmare most vicious, and yet so supremely innocent that all other reveries fall short, in the same manner that they exceed. We take them at their own value.

‘Twas a nightmare of a battle, a most pressing struggle betwixt myself and a much liked fruit, the battle against the giant, mighty, awful, dreaded pomegranate, or GMADP for short. And both the P and G are silent, don’t you know?

When this terrible phantasm embodied of both delight and gluttony rose before my eyes at first I was most pleased. Things look much smaller at a distance, don’t you know? I ran towards it, to inquire if there was someone to whom it belonged, or should I count this counted encounter as an uncountable treat. Though admittedly I had just had my lunch, and was not eager for another feast, it was my intent to pocket it and carry it with me to dine on at another occasion. In my haste and eagerness, I called out my intentions as it was yet a ways away from me, and being a most adapt pomegranate in the art of hearing, I am afeared that my words greatly affronted it.

“What dares this little upstart,” thought our friend the Gmadp, “that she should think herself capable of consuming ME? Behold her spindly legs, her overdrawn demeanour, how clumsily she moves, showing neither heed nor respect to the elements of wind or rain, save when they are an inconvenience to her. I would show a mercy, should I make amends and destroy her!”

And thus began our quarrel. Its brow furrowed and set, what there was of it, the Gmadp gave a sudden jerk and detached itself from its clan, bade a solemn farewell to siblings and cousins, and advanced upon me in a most menacing fashion. It was then that I noticed the error of my assumptions, for obviously this particular pomegranate had feelings and I had cruelly trodden upon them. I declared most contrite apologies, and begged that we be friends henceforth, but neither heed nor care did it give to me. For once resolute, a Gmadp never changes its mind, don’t you know?

At last we stood before one another, face to skin, and both our complexions quite red from exertion and sun, and I must confess, now that I had examined it, it seemed a little too ripe for me. “Good day, sir Pomegranate!” I said, regretful that there was no English word to address a neutral noun, “the offence was of my own doing, I bid you now take your choice, will you fight me with spoons, with knives, sabres or guns?”

“I grow hot in this irksome sun,” said our friend the Gmadp, “I require a less trying trial, let us fight by checkers, and then by chess.”

This was as I feared, for I am terrible at both, but I had given it first choice and so the game was set.

Wise though our friend the Pomegranate may be, it did neglect in his calculation one small detail, it has neither hands nor feet, so every move it made, it made through me, and thus was I able to ascertain its actions. Sadly both games ended in a draw. Then I stood up and declared, “these petty games accomplish nothing, I must confess neither you nor I shall gain by them, I declare we have a formal duel, will you choose your second?”

The Gmadp shook itself and said, “I refuse, for why should your friend die as well as you? No we shall face each other in formal combat and let that be the end of it.”

“So be it,” said I, “I give you your choice again. Will you fight with spoons, with knives, with sabres or guns?”

“None,” declared the Gmadp. “We waste our trouble to find these tools, I say we wrestle to the death.”

This was as I feared, for I was half its height, but I had given it second choice, and so the game was set.

“Very well, my androgynous friend,” said I “have at thee.”

The Gmadp made to roll over me and crush me with its weight, but it ran over the pointed head of the black bishop (the one confined to the white squares) and let out a yell so shrill that I jumped in surprise. Angered by this sudden mishap, the Gmadp grew gmadper still. “How dare you use a tool to wrestle?” it cried indignantly, and rushed to strike me even harder.

I will not say that I would have come out well in the match had the elements not interfered, or that there was any flaw in the technique which my companion produced, for any move I made, its response was to simply roll over it, a method I could not counter, and thus we fought for a quarter or an hour. At last, whether by the heat, or the sun, or the puncture made by the intrusive bishop I cannot tell, the Gmadp split ear to ear, and at the next roll, caught me in the rift. Then the horror of the situation came upon me, the intended consumer was just consumed, don’t you know?

In such confining quarters as the inside of the Gmadp I found myself, struggling against the over abundant seeds within. I could not turn back, for the Gmadp, aware of my predicament, had rolled with the rift against the ground, and yet I could not move forward, I lacked the strength. And thus I remained, on the inside of a Gmadp with neither light nor air for a full minute, flailing helplessly against the skin and sides of my opponent, before at last I realised that in my haste to rise from my lunch, oh so many minutes ago, I had neglected to replace my orthodontic device, and though I could not fight, I was at perfect liberty to bite. Although I was quite stifled, and my lunch still sat heavy in my stomach, and I was quite worn out by the efforts of the day’s activities, I proceeded to CHEW my way to freedom. I nibbled and struggled and punched and kicked, and I think I tickled my opponent, for I heard it giggle. How often I thought I would never see the light of day again, and how often my mouth became too sore and I had to dig with my hands, and oh most often, I was led to believe that I would perish as the innards of a fruit, but at last I reached the wall of the Gmadp’s skin, and with a vicious kick (sidekick, I believe it was) I burst through my enemy into the light, and escaped to return home, leaving its skin, dripping of red juice, behind me.

But though I am told this encounter never came to pass, how can I explain the purple tinge to my skin, or the reddish hue of my hair, as other than a trophy of my struggle against the Great, Mighty, Awful, Dreaded Pomegranate? But the true conclusion of this story, which I’m sure you’ll see quite plainly, is that I’m very bad at both chess and checkers, so I beg you to allow me to stand by and watch.

Parks, Recreation and the Decision Making Process

Tomorrow, I think I'll take Ritter to a park. I have a few days off this week, and I've been trying to spend them in practical ways. Today was kinda shot because I had a class to teach that ended up being cancelled, but a lot of my day was wound up in that, and by the time I untwisted everything and then woke up from an accidental nap, there was only time for the usual malarkey. Still, I'd like to take my dog to a nice park tomorrow: the weather is supposed to be pleasant, I have a day off, and I could certainly stand to spend some time drawing. Besides, if I don't plan something, I'll just spend the whole of tomorrow morning sleeping.

To which park, out of the many here in town, should I take my dog? Hmmm....not Memorial park, I don't see anything particularly appealing about Memorial park, it's mostly just a great big lawn with some stuff in it. Boooring! Now, there was this one time when I was fourteen and we went there to see the fireworks for the fourth of July, I remember that occasion with a fair amount of fondness, but really, do I want to spend a morning walking around doing nothing but thinking about a single occasion that happened a long time ago? No.

So, what am I looking for in a park? Lots of big, beautiful twisty trees, lots of shade since I'm not a huge fan of sunlight, things to draw...I'm thinking of a park where everything is a castle, and any two trees standing parallel instantly become a doorway, faery or otherwise. The paths are made of gravel, the ground is littered with leaves and acorns. Where is this park? It took me nearly five minutes to realise that I was thinking of Thousand Oaks park, which is in California, and a bit of a ways away from where I live now. Besides, it's not the same park any more. The playground is no longer made of wood, the troll bridge is gone, and the space ship, and the swings where everyone once thought I had died because it had looked like I snapped my neck when I fell but I'd only filled the side of my face with scabs. The pole where the whole object of the game was to jump off of it and not get killed (a winner every five minutes!) The fish-bowl-on-a-wall thingy that everyone told me not to sit on. That's all been replaced by some plastic monstrosity. I saw it in 2008, it's very dull now. The guilty thrill of possibly getting a splinter in your foot is all gone. I think they even replaced all the sand. I liked that sand. Digging in it, we were going to dig all the way to China, but after we dug a foot and a half we hit dirt and that was the end of that scheme.

The best part of that park was the castle made of shrubs. They were allowed to grow wild for ages and ages. The leaves were tiny and dark, and looked like they were made of horribly abused leather, but in the Summertime the bushes bloomed with tiny puffs of blue flowers. The bushes were spaced apart poorly and little round sections of bare ground in between them made chambers and hallways, and I think somewhere there was a throne room, but I never spent much time in it. Each cousin and each friend got his or her own room to claim. My sister had the biggest room, but as she spent the most time there, it made perfect sense. My room was the only room with a ceiling, this was because it was in the dungeon. It was made out of a bush that had a significant part of it's centre cut away into a cave with handy branches for sitting.

While I was there, I was once attacked by demon beasts from hell who chewed and gnawed at my door, clawing and screaming and raging at me. It stopped being amusing when they turned out to be real, although they looked a lot like massive chow dogs, taller than my waist. They were not supervised. They came straight at me from the neighbouring houses for no good reason and struck with no higher authority to call them back. There was no place to escape to and my sister was far away. Sasha, a dachshund, rose to my defence and drove them off, and ultimately I only had a scratch on my forearm instead of having my throat ripped out. That was a pretty interesting day.

Those shrubs are all gone now. In fact, the only thing left of our old castle is the shrub where my dungeon room used to be and the tall chimney tree. I suppose it would be impractical to hope that I can take Ritter to a place that no longer exists.

There was another park that sprang to mind, with big twisty trees and bushes that billowed over a cool stream like clouds that made pathways in the wind. The bushes were laiden with blackberries, and the paths were lined with mint. We used to spend hours there, staining our faces with our berry swag and coming home with handfuls of mint stalks that met no end happier than a garbage can. I think I was six the last time I was there, so probably not the Blackberry Creek or Mint Isle either. Nostalgia is a bitch.

The tidal waves at the beach and Half Moon Bay are probably not a good idea either, I won't find a decent plane ticket at this time of night.

There is a park with twisty trees and a creek in Manitou, of course, but I went there last week. Palmer Park? No. No, I go there all the time, but the air is dry there, the sun is too warm. The trees are all pine which would be okay normally but it gets a trifle boring after a while looking at all those needles. There's the train park across from my old church, but it hasn't been interesting ever since they got rid of the old, concrete trains and replaced them with another plastic monstrosity. Honestly! What does the State think children are? Of course they're going to get hurt once in a while. Taking away all the wood and concrete isn't going to stop that, additionally, I seem to remember burning my feet on the hot plastic much more often than getting splinters, and it turns out that when you fall over and smash your chin on the ground and bite your tongue, plastic and concrete feel alarmingly similar.

Besides, I'm older now, and without proper play mates it's better to visit castles and dungeons in my head, they're more perfect there. The only thing play structures are really use for anymore are games of “Ultimate The Floor is Lava.” Which reminds me, I need to organise one of those. We should do it at night next time, I think.

So where should I go tomorrow? Not the green belt by our old house; I'm pretty sure that won't end well. Not Cottonwood park; in order for that place to be fun, you need an ice block and sole claim on the hill by the baseball diamond, and in that case there's nowhere to put a dog. Oh! There's the park near the Fine Arts Center. There are lots of lovely twisty trees there, and a pond that I'm not allowed to wade in. There's a flower garden and plenty of shade. I had my highschool graduation photos taken there. Come to think of it, I had all my graduation photos taken there. And the garden should be coming into bloom nicely right about now, I can practically hear “O Mio Babinno Caro” playing in the background, except that it's for reals playing on my itunes right now as I'm writing. Very well, I shall go there.

A House

I fell asleep on the futon today instead of engaging in some of the various enterprising things that I had cunningly listed at school and fully intended to get to today. I think I slept for about three hours, and as I've been craving juice for the past several days, it was probably a good alternative to my intentions despite my chagrin. Heh. I said chagrin. All it really means is that I continue to procrastinate on making my Easter dress and I still don't know French. One out of two of these issues is starting to become urgent.

As I slept, I dreamed, which is far less common than you would think. Usually, my dreams are chopped to bits in the process of waking up, and all I remember by the time I get back to my feet are tiny insignificant flashes in my head of things that never existed. I like it that way, I think, though I do also enjoy the ones that tell a story and stick with me forever. This time I dreamed of a great, big mansion of a house that I had come to live in for obscure reasons. Someone, a friend, needed this house occupied and maintained, so there was another family sent to live in it with me, and I was to look after the basement. I must have a thing for basements.

It took me forever to get my bearings in the house; any time I came to what I thought was an end, there was another door that led a level up, or another room out, on and on and on until I swear the thing had three attics and occupied about a square mile.

There was the room that a girl was going to live in, she was older now, and clearing out all her old dolls. I half expected that when I moved aside the curtain behind the doll house, I would find a tiny door opening into a closet, or possibly Narnia, but it was only a wall, then I turned around and found a door that led to the rafters. My subconscious got a real kick out of my double-take, I'm sure.

The door leading to the basement was too narrow to be used because apparently the cement door frame had become organic, and grew a few extra layers of rock wall while nobody was paying attention, but once you got around this, or found one of the other access points, it went on for ever and ever, almost like a wide dance studio but without any mirrors. It reminded me of an old dream that I had a long time ago, and made me smile.

It was an old house, and it smelled of pine and cedar and rosemary. The stairs were narrow and creaked when you trod on them. The walls, most of them, were painted a deep, rich warm red, and the floor was hardwood with Persian-looking carpets thrown down where appropriate. It was filled with antique furniture, with painted Chinese urns on every mantle, and Indian styled paintings in European frames hung on the wall. There was gilded wainscoting, the occasional animal head mounted on the wall, the now frowned upon tiger rug was placed without ostentation, which is incredibly hard to do with a tiger rug, in front of a marvelous fireplace, and all of it was swallowed and unified in the rich red, red, red of the walls.

It looked like the kind of house that three generations had broken in all at once, and then left alone for a few years, just long enough for it to wake up in solitude and develop an eccentric personality, like a very old man left to his own, quite, pipe smoking devices. It should have been kitschy and definitely not the cup of tea of the chic or anyone with half an inkling of interior design (probably there was chicken wallpaper in the kitchen somewhere), but now that I'm awake, I miss dreaming about it.

Pah!

Do you know? I hate the show Glee. I just...I hate it. When it first came out, I received it with interest, which quickly turned to befuddlement as all the characters created problems for themselves and then dealt with them in the worst way possible. The choices people made, the pathetic dodges they tried to avoid the consequences, the way they flung themselves about hither and thither, like a bunch of marionettes desperate for attention, began to get a bit galling. About seven weeks into it, I managed to tear myself away from the growing addiction and dedicate the time to the Office instead. Since then, still having to hear about it and put up with it, my befuddlement has turned to disgust, and now I'm at the point where I just hate it.

I hate how it preaches at you and then condemns preaching. I hate how it tells you what to think and then pretends that it was only echoing something you thought all along, I hate how it takes the work of countless artists, most of whom had something to say when they were writing their songs, and contorted it into something that had nothing the hell to do with the original intent, it's like tossing an extra bucket of paint on a Jackson Pollock and saying "hey, it's still pollock, right? I mean it looks similar." I hate how it teaches people to think, and treats everyone who doesn't think that way with a pat on the head and a pretense of big squishy love. It crams pseudo-tolerance and da-daist crap down people's throats like a tele-evangalist, insisting that it's okay that there's just no point to life, especially since it means that we can all do what we want and are only accountable to our relationships.

We come from a rich history of cowards and kings, we do, whether we are in America or not. We were forged from the leftover words of mighty men and women, people who believed in something not just "because you have to believe in something; you can't go through this life all alone," but because what they believed in they knew, beyond the worth of their very lives, that it was grander, greater and more wonderful than their selves. I'm sure that just as many people in their day were very flexible with their principles for the sake of their comfort, but you don't hear about them much. I'm coming to the point where I think that drowning yourself in the conviction that belief is just a crutch to get you through the day, and otherwise life is just a mishmash of not bothering anyone else and not being bothered by anyone else - only to snap and shoot obscenities at the jackass who cut you off on the interstate - is the fast track to mediocrity. I'm so glad that a show that celebrates these high-minded ideals is so popular, it weeds out the competition and probably paves the way for my eventual global domination.

Nevertheless, it would be nice, once in a while, to see a role model or two floating around in the background. Not, mind you, the sort of person who never makes mistakes, but the sort of person who is willing to acknowledge them and pay for them, and do the right thing before the screw-up becomes heinous. The sort of person who does what he/she has to even if he/she doesn't like it, without complaining, without needing a whole group of friends to gather round and sing a happy song. The sort of person who knows when something is important enough to fight for it, and looks at the wisp of a creature suggesting that we all get along and see each other's point of view, pat their hand tenderly and say "Yes, dear, that would be nice. I need you to tell me where you're hiding the crack."

I'm probably misrepresenting the ideals of the show-makers, but then again, they're misrepresenting mine and getting away with it, so I have absolutely no sympathy for them. When I believe a thing, it isn't for my own benefit, it's because I am convinced that there is nothing else to believe, and you need to do more than wear me down with nonsensical relativism to change my mind about that.

What's the point of standing for something or living for something or dying for something if you really don't care whether or not it's valid? Pah! Glee! They take a stand, and they take it on nothing. Can anything be so vacuous or detestable?

Yes. I answer my own question. Serial killers who target people by their license plate numbers or hair color are that vacuous and detestable. To be fair, I don't like them either.

On the Subject of Non-Inner Beauty

I don't know what happens to us incredibly social creatures when we have our photos taken that upsets the aesthetic fairy so much, but I'm confident that she sends evil monster things into digital cameras and pays personal visits to all the photomats (for them old school people that use 'em) so that when people look at photos of themselves, what they see is a sludge monster of doom. It's a phenomenon I've often noticed, even in childhood. Auntie B would clasp a brand new picture of herself, tittle nervously, “Look, ehehehehe, look how horrible I look!” And I would, and I'd consider carefully what to say next, because the Auntie B in the photo and the Auntie B holding it looked pretty much the same.

A word on the subject of tittling. It's annoying. It's that whispy, sickly illegitimate sibling of laughing that people spew out of their mouths when they are trying to cover up how deeply embarrassed they are. It's a defence mechanism that fools nobody, so I really hope that it makes the people doing it feel better about themselves.

They: I'd like a number 12.

Me: (Blank stare with automatic smile of uncertainty. There is no number 12.) Is the number 5 okay?

They: Oh! Oh! I mean I want a number 5, 12 pack. TITTLE!

Me: (Smiling because they are embarrassed and I don't want them to be) Certainly, what would you....

They: I just have 12 on the brain, I guess. TITTLE!

Me: That's understandable, ma'am. What would you like to....

They: My birthday is December 12^th. TITTLE! (It's August)

Me: Happy Birthday ahead of time, ma'am. What would you like to dri...

They: I don't know what I'm going to do when I have my birthday on 12-12-12. TITTLE! (She'll probably accidentally order a number 12 all over again, and we will offer a number 5)

Me: (Rapidly so she doesn't interrupt me some more) It's fine, really, ma'am. DRINK?

Okay, back to photos now. This mania doesn't stop with aunts of questionable pulchritude, it moves on to the drop dead gorgeous cousin “Look at that! I'm such a dork!” Mother, “I hate pictures of myself.” Friends, “I look so weird.” Acquaintances “I wish somebody had warned me about that.” To me, they all looked like themselves, except I would agree that a single clump of hair standing straight up like that might have been averted with a little forewarning. I didn't know at the time how these normal people were transformed into hideous gorgons that only they could see as soon as the photo was developed, but I began to frown at impending cameras, hoping that this would make them feel shamed in what they had done to all those people. There are several pictures of me as a small child looking confused and frowning.

Mirrors, too, were in on the joke. The gorgeous cousin would adjust a strand of hair and observe “Oh, god, I'm so ugly.” Other, older figures would remark, more subtly, “I look just terrible without my makeup on.” My mother would often observe “I'm the ugly one” which was either a heinous lie, or someone (some thing?) had misled her. I began to suspect that, in the same way that there were people living in the television set acting out whatever video we put in (although I later decided that the people lived in the cassettes, and that's why it was so important to get the right cassette when you wanted something specific) there were people living behind the mirrors and photographs, pretending to be you whenever you looked at them.

Unlike several other illusions, this one didn't stop with infancy, it only got worse. One day I saw myself on camera, performing the childish activities that I had just performed not ten minutes before, and I looked nothing like what I expected. What was this gangly creature with the dorky hair running around in aunt M-'s backyard? Wasn't me, couldn't have been me; my sister was herself, the two boys were also themselves, but that extra creature wearing MY overalls (of all the nerve) was not I. I searched among photos of myself, photos that I had delighted in, photos that were just awesome, because even if I wasn't as pretty as my sister and cousin, I was still something nifty. They were all tainted, every last one of them. Instead of me, I saw a sniggering goblin. Furthermore, in many of the earlier photographs, especially the group ones, I was either frowning or looking confused.

Then the mirror began playing similar tricks. Why, I don't know because up until that time the mirror had always been my friend, but it began telling me strange, startling things about myself. I watched as the years passed, and everyone bemoaned their photographs, and close friends would shirk in embarrassment at the removal of their make up, and all of them looked just the same to me, perhaps a little spottier, but inoffensive, and I completely failed to make the connection between their plight and my own. Every time I looked at a photograph of myself and saw that goblin grinning stupidly back at me, I thought “is this what I normally look like to everyone else? Are they just TELLING me I look nice because they're supposed to?”

Somewhere during the early teenage years, the mirror and I reached an impasse. I was just spending too much time trying to find the trick to the puzzle, and I decided to give up completely. I covered the thing up, and the cover stayed right there unless I had a specific inquiry to make of the mirror, like “What the dickens is in my eye?”

The day that my brother-in-law brought his fireman stuff for us to see was a turning point. By this time, I had learned that if you can't hide from the camera, or strike a really funny pose that will justify how ridiculous you are about to look, then you need to at least pretend to enjoy the results by tittering awkwardly and saying “Hee hee, I look so terrible in these” and everyone around you will coo, “oh, you look just fine!” First, my brother-in-law showed my friend and I how to put the gear on, then we all laughed as I got into it, then my friend's mother snapped a photo. She was always doing this sort of thing. For once, I didn't try to hide because I figured “hey, I'm barely visible in all this stuff, so how bad can it be?” Then my friend got into the gear and HER photo was snapped. Apparently at the same moment, I had had some sort of tasty beverage dribbling down my mouth and felt compelled to wipe it away with my entire forearm, and for once, I wasn't insulted by how terrible I looked in the picture even if my entire jaw was askew; it made perfect sense.

Well, my friend and I were showing another friend these photos once day. I had a crush on this guy, so I was being careful not to titter so much, or point out every single fault, and only claim crippling hideousness on photos were I actually thought I looked pretty reasonable. We came upon the fireman series. If I remember correctly, I was pretending to be the boogeyman in my photo so there was nothing remarkable there, but on my friend's photo, she suddenly exclaimed “I look absolutely terrible, here!” (How was this possible? You couldn't see her except for her eyes.) and he replied calmly, “I think E— looks a little worse.”

And I laughed, and it wasn't the embarrassment titter. I was genuinely pleased. He'd seen how ridiculous I was, too, not in all the photographs, just that one and he admitted it. That meant that I wasn't constantly ugly in every photo and in every mirror; occasionally I was just normal and only thought I was ugly, and sometimes I really did look ridiculous. Just like all my friends and relatives who ever claimed hideousness of a photo when they looked just normal, I must have had some Photo Goblin (and a Mirror Goblin, to boot!) telling me lies whenever I looked at a picture of me. What if this Photo Goblin could be placated, and taught to let me see me the way other people do? That was crazy talk, the Photo Goblin was too full of itself by now, but it might be possible to placate the Mirror Goblin, with which I had once had a working relationship.

I started by taking the cover off the mirror. Then I told it what the little old ladies in the supermarket and my grandfather liked to tell me, that I'm such a pretty girl. After a while, the Mirror Goblin started to believe me even if I didn't, and I found around the same time that I discovered facial make-up that I could control my own level of prettiness. The Mirror Goblin and I got to talking. “No,” said the Goblin, “the black eyeliner is much to dark for you, and I think you smeared it funny, so you either need to go lighter with it or use the brown instead.”

“I think you're right,” I replied and made the necessary adjustments.

“There! Much better,” said the Mirror Goblin, and it was telling the truth.

By feeding it everything the little old ladies, and gradually younger people, small children, and eventually my peers said to me about how I looked I trained the Mirror Goblin into civility. Even if they told me I looked ugly, they did it well. I was also able to gauge where I was at on the pulchritude meter: pretty enough to be noticeable without a lot of effort, but not so pretty that it was an encumbrance. Also, not quite so pretty that everyone assumes that I know about it, which is why they keep telling me. Only in October or April would the Mirror Goblin tell me a lie, otherwise, it was quite blunt, but respectful: “That sweater is a disappointment, dear, find something that does you justice.” “No, no, you don't see it now, but you look quite good.” “You'll feel better about it tomorrow.” “Well, dear, it's Monday, so I'm not sure what you were expecting, but you look just fine.” I even trained it to recognise when I was tired and bleary. “Fix your bangs, sweetie. There! Pretty girl!”

I see now that what I need to do to train the fearsome Photo Goblin is not pretend not to notice it, but to gently correct it. Already I'm finding much improvement in its general behaviour.

As a testament to how effective this training is, on Mirror Goblins, anyway, I woke up this morning with pink eye. A rude little dragonfly had crept into my space and sewed my eyes shut, but was interrupted from getting to my nose, mouth and ears when I woke up. I like walking around in the dark, I like being so familiar with my surroundings that I don't need much light, but it's a different story altogether when you don't know what time it is, or whether or not there is daylight, and you just woke up, you're trying not to panic and at the same time remember what kind of state you left your floor in. I staggered to the other side of the room to grab a washcloth, then I staggered across to the other, other side of the room, tripping over the empty sewing machine case (what idiot left that there?!? Oh. Yea.) turned when I finally found something like a doorpost, staggered up the stairs (Zeus-on-a-stick, I hope I'm not late for work!) fumbled for the basement doorknob, fumbled for the bathroom doorknob (God help anyone who might be in there already) waited for the water in the tap to get hot and was finally able to soak my face. After a minute, I could open my bloodshot eyes, and I saw what had become of me as my eyelids were crusted over, as goop dripped from my lashes.

“Pretty girl!” said the Mirror Goblin, automatically.

Thank you, Mirror Goblin. Now's not really the time, but I appreciate the effort.

EDIT: At least one person read this and expressed concern that they encouraged my Photo Goblin. I would like to take this moment to point out that, at this time period, I had not yet discovered the cloak. Yes, that one fundamental garment that moved on to determine how I chose my clothes, how I assembled myself, had not yet made itself manifest in my life. Small wonder that, during that fragile time when nobody was choosing my clothes for me, when I was too big for hand-me-downs to blame my awkwardness on and had to actually buy clothes from a store, and did not have the staple cloak to guide me in my decisions, I dressed like a goober. Also, no wonder the Photo Goblins had so much material to work with!

Inner Hell Beasts

I have a short fuse. In the early days of simplicity, this issue was solved by striking the offender of my temper over the head. They returned in kind, it began a brief, vicious cycle culminating in a lot of noise, lasting about five minutes and leaving behind a couple of bruises and scrapes that would go away in 48 to 72 hours. Ah, I remember those days. They were fun. Nowadays if I get angry to the point where I can't brush it off and change the subject, I say something rude to the other person and they, if they are worth their grit, will say something rude back. Rude sayings will fly like fists until it becomes ridiculous, until one of us begins laughing. I'll apologize for the original rude thing, they will apologize for carrying it on so well, we shake hands either verbally or physically and it becomes a running joke later on. Once again, I haven't changed much since infancy. Actually, very few people change, and the only differences between childhood and adulthood is responsibility, manners and a better dress code. The ones who do become other people, and aren't able to keep the same person that they were born as nestled somewhere inside themselves, do it darkly, and I am sorry for them.

Around fourteen, I discovered a new kind of angry. I shall call it “black rage,” I think, because it's rather like black ice, I never see it coming, which means that I cannot curb it and it usually lands me in a sticky mess. I am so blissfully ignorant of the onslaught of black rage that I do not understand or come to realise its influence until after it has set in. My short temper is even shorter, and it stops being the fun-loving “shrug it off or hit something” temper and degenerates into the not so friendly “FUME! Fume until the very vestiges of your soul are corrupted, MWAHAHAHAHAAAA!” temper. I get depressed more easily, but not the normal depressed where you sit in the middle of the floor, have a nice sob for about three minutes and then do something sensible, practical, helpful and uplifting such as reorganizing the sock drawer or re-alphabetizing the family dvd collection even though it is only going to magically un-alphabetize itself as soon as your back is turned. Once this is done, it does not have to be done again for another couple of months or so unless it is October or April, in which case, you'll probably have to repeat the process in about two weeks. No, the depression that comes with black rage isn't solved with the conquering of sock drawers, though blubbing does occasionally take the sting out, it rolls on and on and on, and it has to be addressed daily. One finds oneself searching for something that cannot even be remembered, let alone found. You think, one day, that you've gotten rid of the bloody weed of a thing at last and can move on with life, only to discover that it grows back during the night. In the meantime, the laundry moulders unfolded, dishes pile up, simple tasks go undone, and you're lucky if you fully dispose of it at all before the black rage is identified and seen to.

What is very terrible about the black rage is that life seems to go on as usual. One still laughs, enjoys little things even if they do seem banal, one is still capable of appearing to be a human being. You can make jokes, and be light-hearted from time to time, you can still see the broken, fragile facets of other people that make them so interesting, and be helpful to them. Since you don't even know that you are angry, your better judgement is muffled. You think that you are making good, solid decisions in your words and your actions, and the practical upshot is more like letting loose a whirlwind on a small suburb (it reminds me of the Diary of Rinya Pyris, actually, and no, that doesn't make her a Mary Sue). It's a bit of an indicator line, actually: the level of your abysmal stupidity is directly proportional to the closeness with which your current situation is linked to the real problem.

Sometimes I catch it in a matter of days, and sometimes it takes months to find out. In the meantime, the subject of the rage spills its bile over into little things that one was aware of but not bothered by. It seeps into old wounds that have already been dressed, cleaned and healed, and wakes up ancient monsters that had been slumbering happily for years. You work and work to bring the vastly culminating little things before God, and He disposes of it, but they keep on coming, and you keep praying for the wrong things (please, help me forgive this, please help me control my temper, please help me be like that, please keep me from doing this, please prevent me from being that) until the true nature of the problem is found out and laid at His feet.

When I was fourteen, this black rage was not subtle. I was a rude little beast to everyone around me (all four of them) and they, also being fourteen and not subtle enough to address the problem, left me to my own devices. I can't say that this did anything to improve my temper, it only added to the many superficial things that I was angry at, and utterly failed to indicate the real, raging issue. I only found it out when I snapped loudly at a distant acquaintance who hadn't even said anything offensive and if I remember correctly, was trying to encourage me. Lucky for everyone, he was a good-natured soul (or had a “shrug it off or hit something” temper) and was not sure what I was apologising for later on. I finally identified that there WAS a problem, which turned out to be 3/4ths of the battle right there, rooted it out by the grace of God and then spent days trying to track the damage that I had done in the meantime.

I did not know until this morning that I had been living in the black rage. I knew that I was angry, I knew that I was sad and lonely, but I did not know that all of this was because one of the pet dragons inside me had woken up. I may enjoy my solitude but I do not like to be alone. By that, I mean the sort of alone where one is forgotten all but entirely. Ever since the tragic “I'm sorry, L'ici, I forgot to tell you that you could come of of the corner” incident, I've never liked that sort of alone, and the worst iteration of it is to be alone and forgotten in a massive throng of people, and so many of the lies that I believe without meaning to tie back to this sort of alone.

I remember the day that I was ten, and I was with someone whom I loved, and she was angry at something else. When she is angry or wounded, it is her habit to try to hurt me. I remember steeling myself against her words, because I knew what she was going to do, I knew by name the voice that she put on to say these things, I've found it in the mouths of other people, compulsive liars, and I've laughed at them for it. But her words still got in. “Nobody really likes you. They only put up with you because they're nice people. They're just being polite.” I don't think she remembers saying these things to me. It seems odd, because I remember everything, even what I had been thinking right up until their emergence: I had been thinking about clouds. I've chased these words out of my head a thousand times. But I still hear them sometimes echoing in the darkest hours of the night, howling through me like a despairing wind. And like the words to a witches spell, I forget who I am upon hearing them, and the best parts of me fall asleep.

One of the people who uses me as a vessel of wrath is obviously going through a difficult time just now. She has been lashing out at me, my father and the whole state of Colorado for some weeks now, all of which are chosen things for her to be nasty to, to be angry with and to loathe in that order. It is regrettable because this woman should be as a sister to me, and we ought to be spending our conversations in sisterly things. Instead I have to always be on my guard with her, lest I wake her ire, I must measure and weigh the things I say to her because if I slip up she'll probably shove it right back in my face, either angry at my person or gloating at my failures, and I am obliged to seek and find sisters elsewhere, whom God has graciously provided. I know what it means when she's like this, that she's battling dragons of her own and hers are very very big, but instead of sympathising, I've been lashing right back.

At work at the fast food restaurant, the powers that be will put me in a position, tell me that it's only temporary and then forget and leave me there for hour after hour. I hate that under any circumstances. If they'd only tell me that I'd be there for hours I could wrap my head around it, but to turn around every minute expecting to be replaced and put back where I belong is a bit wearing. On Thursday I started to get frostbite in my fingertips because they had me directing traffic “just for a minute” and I found after holding my hand up into the wind for half an hour that my fingers didn't hurt any more, they felt like heavy chunks of wood mistakenly attached to my palm (never experienced THAT before.) Then the following day I was sent into another position outside with the wind and the snow blowing up the sleeves of a coat that is too big for me, one where I cannot even wear gloves because I have to have my fingers free for writing and fingerless gloves look trashy, and instead of merely being annoyed and dealing with it, I got furious, and took it as a personal slight. Obviously something is wrong, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.

I am alone. When I used to solve my problems by hitting people, it seemed absurd that I would make it to 25 unmarried, without any children, without so much as a single relationship in history to look back on. I never once thought of it as a possibility. My great grandmother got married at 14, my grandmother got married at 16, my mother got married at 18. Imagine my bewilderment when I got to 21 and was still alone. Fortunately, my sister married at 20, so the pattern hasn't been broken, it just got carried elsewhere. It's just as well, because the chap that I fancied when I was 20 had already out-grown me, and was too non-confrontational to say so, and I don't think I should have liked to be married to him. There are not many gentlemen that I can imagine living with forever and still enjoying their company (the Calvinist in me is a very narrow bottleneck), there must be even fewer gentlemen who would enjoy my company, I'm quite eccentric and scarce are the people who have that particular a taste. Best not to worry about it, I suppose. This isn't the problem, it's just a factor.

I am alone. Through circumstances beyond anyone's control, my family is about 250 miles away, not a mere upstairs, or even halfway across town, which is where I used to think they would be right about now. The old house is gone, all those familiar things are gone, and I'm left behind in roughly the same place, still trying to sort out what to do next. I don't even know what will become of me this time next year. This isn't the problem, either, just another factor.

I am alone. Three years ago, I left my old church, where all my old, healthy roots were, and sought fellowship elsewhere. I found a place to be almost instantly, and brought my parents over with me. When my parents left, the congregation did not know what to do with me. I wandered in the background like a ghost, no thing of real substance unless they summoned me to ask how my parents have been doing. I would draw near to some and ask how they were, what sorts of interesting things had they been planning and doing and reading and seeing, they left my questions unanswered and would ask me how my parents were, and if I said that I did not care to talk about my parents, they emphasized their sincerity by listing their names and trying to remember the name of the town that they've moved to until I withdrew, hurt and a bit bitter, and wandered somewhere else. We used to talk about interesting things, everything from spiders to Presbyterianism, including how and why those two ideas are linked for me, but all that went away when I turned into a symbol of my missing family.

This widened the gaping wound of the absence of my family, and opened a new wound of isolation in my church, and when I found that I could not go to that place unless I be grief-stricken and deeply irked so that I did not even remember that morning's message, I thought perhaps that it was time to leave. So I left, and I think that this is what woke the dragon because between the loss of the family, wandering into the patronage of kind acquaintances to live, and letting go of the dead relationship with my old church, I've never been so alone in my life.

This is all deeply, uncomfortably personal, and it is the sort of thing that ought to be left in the word file that I originally write these things in because, should you have failed to realise thus far, this blog is essentially comprised of tidied up entries in a diary. I'm letting it out anyway because I know myself, and if I don't bare it, I'll hide the matter away and pretend that it isn't there. It will only come back again, worse than ever before. So, since it all has come out here, let me accomplish some other duties.

I am sorry for my cruelty and bitterness in these past months, whether you saw it or not. I am sorry for turning a stony, withered heart to all the things you've done for me and shared with me. I am sorry, friend and holy sister, for my callousness, and for not knowing the words to help you. Please forgive me.

I am in a new church now, and learning all over again how to lay down a foundation. I'm very bad at this, but praise God for the graciousness of other people; they're always so much better people than I am. Intriguingly, one of my students attends there, so I suppose I shall have to mind my p's and q's, but her constant delight at seeing me wander about her church is encouraging.

It is a good thing that the black rage often comes to light while sitting in a pew. The association between one church and another alone might have helped me make the connections I needed, but it is well that the hard realization of my wretched behaviour came on Sunday. On the one hand, one spends the better part of the time not quite paying attention to precisely the thing one has come for, but on the other hand, once one has returned to oneself, one returns to the light and glory, to remembering what one ought to be, and who one serves and why. Most of it eeked out of the corners of my eyes during the singing, sitting, standing and reciting part of the whole business, so that I caught the message and exhausted much of my dismay by doodling around the sermon notes. Today was communion Sunday, too, and especially rich coming out of all that darkness, apparently this new church uses real wine. You wouldn't think that it would make a difference, but it does. The whole experience is like the best part of childhood, a time when if you ever came to understand anything at all you understood it as clearly as red blood on white snow, there was simply no room for half-comprehension or partial-confusion. It was or it was not. Math was the only exception to this absolute, for even the Holy Trinity was plain as day, and I remember wondering what my pastor found so difficult about it. I was very bad at expressing what I knew, so many people tried to find new ways to make me understand the Trinty, and I often wondered why.

The light and the glory must be attributed to the good place God has once again landed me in. How dismal it would have been to finally come out of this darkness, only to be told that I am probably a bad husband and father, and a terrible encourager, and a stingy giver, and NO WONDER nobody loves me, and hear Christ mentioned only as the little curl on the end of a pig's tail, or the flourish of a signature at the end of a very long letter. I have been blessed.

On the Subject of Naps

Naptaking is not usually deliberate because when it happens, there's simply no telling when one is going to wake up. When I fall asleep, I sleep so deeply that it takes me two alarm clocks just to stir me in the mornings. When at last I am induced to open my eyes, I need further inducement to get up at all, and not lie back down again 30 seconds later. I have my world calculated with precision to just how much time I need to get dressed for work at Chick-fil-a, how much time I need to get dressed for school, and how much time I need to get dressed for church, though I still haven't wrapped my sleepy head around the amount of time that it takes to get to church from my new location. A nap, such a simple thing, could easily turn into a catastrophe.

There was a time when the concept of a nap was laughable, and how I laughed at those silly other people who would sit down after a long meal, not move for the better part of half an hour and then suddenly begin to shift about blearily, trying to catch up on what they missed without admitting that they missed anything. The day that I accidentally fell asleep clinging to Lynn's inflatable mattress during the Ireland trip (actually, it was a floaty pool mattress of DOOM, but we were all too kind to tell her so) was a rare and shocking event. The onslaught of college and its terrible toll on one's internal clock took care of the shock value.

Now I find that if I'm not careful, and I sit down without some degree of caution, the sandman will snipe me from the rafters. Usually I know nothing about it until I wake up some two or three hours later and wonder why on earth attaching a squid to my handbag to carry my keys seemed like such a good idea ten minutes earlier. Just as well because it turns out that the object that I thought was a squid was only a discarded sweater.

My dog encourages this phenomenon as often as possible. I think he likes standing sentry over me while I sleep (see October entry regarding scent). He is a very small dachshund and he enjoys being cuddled and receiving attention as often as he can manage to get it. He's also fun to tease.

I sleep on a bunk bed, usually the top bunk, though occasionally I'll fall asleep reading and wake up a while later on the bottom bunk, too lazy to make any geographical changes. The dog prefers the bottom bunk because he has some difficulty with heights, but he shoves aside such apprehensions for my sake. He's also afraid of the dark and of dogs who look like they might be big enough to challenge his status as the alpha of a one-dog pack.

He greeted me with much enthusiasm when I got home from grocery shopping today. He doesn't like that I lock him in his crate/den when I leave the house, but after coming home from work many, many times to discover that he'd overturned the hamper so that he could commune with my clothes, and while he was at it he'd strewn the contents of the dust bin around the room presumably for the hell of it because half the time there wasn't even anything in there to interest him, after coming downstairs from a brief interim of watching crime shows upstairs only to discover that he'd found a way to get to my very very special pumpkin bread which I'd been saving as a treat for myself and devoured every crumb of it, leaving me to weep over the empty package about how all the especially nice things I'm given get ruined, after he similarly disposed of the cake of lotion which was a gift and had been working incredibly well and I'm still not sure how he got to it, we decided that the crate was the way to go after all.

I released and fed him, I let him run around outside until he'd worked himself into a bit of a frenzy while I pottered around on the internet (I pretend that I was being productive, but in reality I was only procrastinating on emailing the parents and telling them what I had subjected their children to during their art period today.) When I let the beast in, he bounded about demanding what appeared to be hugs and kisses, I don't speak dachshund so I'm never entirely sure. One thing that is very fun to do to him, apart from spinning him around until he can no longer walk straight, is hide and call to him. He plays this game well, and we usually call it quits when he sees me, though he best likes the version where I simply throw a blanket over myself and sit very quietly. He knows I know that he knows I'm there, but he also knows I won't move until he pulls away the blanket with his nubby little forepaws. It is so CUTE! Another game is to climb up to where he can't get me and call to him. He hates this, but it's fun.

We played that today. I climbed onto the top of the bunk bed, and since no one else was in the house, I didn't trouble to shush him when he began saying “MOM! MOM MOM-MOM, MOM, MOM MOM!” insistently. I asked him what he wanted, but he seemed to be having difficulties expressing himself. He made it plain that he was no longer interested in food, and although mention of water stirred him to great activity, he had plenty of the stuff in his bowl. He said he wanted out, but his body language said something else entirely. Beyond that, I simply couldn't fathom what it was he desired. I nearly gave up and curled up under the blankets several times, but he was insistent that I was on no account to do any such thing. I asked him if he wanted up, and he began jumping up and down on the lower bunk, yelling at me the whole time. I told him that I didn't appreciate being yelled at, and he had better stop or I should give up on helping him help himself altogether.

We established eventually that he did want up (and he was sorry for yelling at me), so I clambered down, put him on the top bunk and, pleased that my work was done, sat down on the lower bunk. Oddly enough, this action had a very disquieting effect on him. He looked down at me, and whined piteously, and tried from many different angles to find a way down again. I call that gratitude! After I'd gone through such trouble to get him up there in the first place, too. I wish I had a photo of him looking down at me. He discovered the shelf next to my bed in about ten seconds, and might have been able to combine that with gravity to get down at much personal injury. I climbed back up, gave him a hug and a kiss and called him various nonsensical names.

Oddly enough, the next moment involved re-visiting Christmas, moving my bed until it was outside under the deck stairs and installing plywood boards as a replacement for walls and teleporting the whole house to somewhere were the Andes were in sight. The moment after that, I woke up to discover that it was five o'clock, and my turn to make dinner, and I still hadn't emailed the parents.

Regarding Silver

This entry is entirely about me, but I'm working on pretending to be humble, so we'll begin somewhere else. There's a reason why those word association games are so fun for people, the sort where some psychiatrist says random words at you, and you reply with the first word to come into your head next. I've never been in a professional situation with an actual psychiatrist (though a psychiatrist did once try to make adjustments to me on her own time, and I found her conduct reprehensible and have been rather off of psychiatrists since) but I assume that they still play this game and also give rorschach ink blot tests. I played it with my friends, though, and it was rather fun, not only to see where we would lead each other, but to gain insight into the other person. There are some things we would fixate on, and double back and return to later, some words were triggers for some very fascinating estuaries of thought, and it would be interesting to know what experiences led those words to their conclusions.

I have trigger memories, myself. Moments that stick inside my head as the epitome of some great emotion. I remember the time I had a solo in choir, and it wasn't just a normal solo. All us choral people had just finished singing a song where everyone stood in a different place in the audience and sung their parts. It was quite lovely, the lights were out, we each lit a candle and sang to our audience. There were several solos interspersed in that particular song: a small child, a little lamb, a mighty king and a narrator all had their roles to play. I didn't have a solo, I was part of the wind, but that song ended a little sooner than I expected. I went up to the stage while the other choir members made their way to the back, I could see their candles glinting at me in the darkness, and the jewel-shining lights that glimmered in the eyes of the audience, but what I could see most, so that it was almost blinding, was my own candle in my hand, the only one that everyone was staring at. My hands were steady, which is odd because usually they're the first prey of the jitters, but I'm thinking that most of my internal organs were trembling something awful. All of that had to stop, though. It was time to sing, everyone was waiting for me and it was senseless to keep them. All that nervousness welled up and melted away when I opened my mouth and sang Hodie Christus Nautus Est, and there was nothing left behind but a sweet, calm, lovely sound.

I can summon that memory when I feel particularly nervous, and unless it's test anxiety, it serves its purpose quite well.

There is a memory that has always associated silver with power for me. Apart from the whole anti-vampire anti-werewolf trope, which I suppose is reason enough in its own, one of my favourite moments revolved around silver. Oh, and fire. I like fire.

Once, I took a course on jewellery making, which I had assumed would consist of stringing beads in attractive arrangements, learning about findings and how to mount scrap objects as decoration, which is a legitimate form of jewellery-making, but I'm very pleased that I was mistaken. This class focused on forge tools and solder and transforming sheets of metal into pieces of wearable art, and I loved, loved, loved it. Ever since I was a kid I've loved forges and fire. At those reanacting farms, I liked hanging out in the blacksmith's forge and the apiary best of all. Now, at first this was only because those were the places to which my sister would drag me, and all autonomy of parental intrusion was good, but it turns out that watching the smiths turn iron into red hot glowing spears and wailing on them with a hammer until the iron transformed into something else entirely was pretty impressive.

Imagine my delight, little darlings, when, after much guidance and many words of caution, I set a spark to a torch and didn't set myself on fire! Oh! The power, how it coursed through me! How tangible was the thrill of soldering copper to copper, learning how to recognise that flash when you knew that you had accomplished your mission. I'm pretty sure I laughed maniacally when this happened. Actually, I know that I laughed maniacally because that twisted delight became part of someone else's story later on. Every project was a pleasure, every class period was a welcome relief from the otherwise stupid classes with which I was burdened that year, and I'm not joking about them being a burden. I can count on one hand the number of classes that I hated at that college; two of them were in that semester.

Then came the penultimate project (the final project was a “chose your own challenge” sort of thing, and not quite as climactic as a final project should be). The quest was to either make a bead...which was disappointingly banal, though it turned out to be quite difficult, or make a cuttlebone mold and cast it. Well, you can't cast copper without an awful lot of equipment that we didn't have, since copper is toxic in its liquid form, so those of us who were casting metal had to use silver instead. She taught us the form of what we needed to do, and then let us make our decision. I was the only level 1 jeweller to chose casting, so everyone else watched my progress with great curiosity.

Oh! That's another thing I liked about that class: all the different level jewellers were using the same space and the same class time. It was wonderful, there was a massive pool of experience to appeal to if ever one was stumped. One gentleman graciously gave me a green onyx cabochon because I said I liked the combination of copper and green. I made a hair pick with it, and sliced right through my finger doing it. Don't watch a horror movie while holding a jeweller's saw, or any other kind of saw for that matter.

The day that I finished making my cuttlebone mold was a mighty day. It was also a red lipstick day. There comes a time where you just know that you aren't going to get through the moment without some sort of glamour, and not being a fairy carrying a bag of the stuff with me, I have to resort to applying red lipstick. I was wearing very comfortable black trousers (God doesn't allow many of those to be made), a white blouse and a pinstripe vest. I think I was also wearing a tie that day, which suggests that I had had some kind of god-awful test in philosophy and had temporarily longed to cease existing. Anyway, the upshot of all this description was that I looked unusually dapper.

The professor handed me a crucible and some flux. To be honest, that was a bit scary, especially when several of the other students stopped what they were doing to watch my progress. I put my silver in the crucible and tried for a good while to make it melt. The silver slowly melded in on itself until it was one nebulous ball, but the professor assured me that it wasn't ready yet, and I would know when it was beyond any doubt. The silver glowed bright orange from under a veil of black ash, and sluggishly rolled from one side of the crucible to the other as I continued to point the torch at it, and I thought surely it was ready now, but it wasn't. Then the ash burst away and vanished, and the silver was undeniably liquid. It swished around, mercurial, in the crucible when I poured it into the cuttlebone cast, which immediately took on the odour of burnt hair, and turned off the torch. I can't describe the thrill of watching this, but I haven't found anything yet to top it, and it makes me sad from time to time that I can't do it again, at least not until I've found a way to make a forge of my own (probably some time after I've found a way to make an apiary of my own). Whenever I want to feel that world-dominationy rush, that sense of all powerful wizardry, I think of the day of the crucible.

So, I see that our local historical ranch site is offering a one-day blacksmithing course in the summer. I think I might take it.