come_love_sleep

I woke up clearly hearing this music, though my room is empty of aught but birdsong. It was restful and pleasing.


(I woke from a dream with Draco Malfoy and Catherine Deneuve, set in some odd version of the Squirrel Hill Library, the point of which seemed to be that one's circumstances have a lot to do with who one becomes. Draco Malfoy was a lot less bitter with Catherine Deneuve as an adopted mother.)

But! Neat Works In Progress meme from rainjoyous.

Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations (sayeth Laura, and agreed with by Gen, bollocks to that, most fun bit). No more than one sentence!

First; a line apiece from a bunch of unfinished spoken word pieces and shreds of poetry:


I wonder--where is the point that emphasis begins to mean nothing?

To stay in love with you I need you to be less afraid of *silence,* because while thunderclouds start in the quiet, so do forests, and to stay in love with you I need more than the cultured little knot-garden of affection that seems to be all you'll plant for me.

and I don't remember being jealous of you, my little fairy-baby

There are some choices that make us not human anymore, for a minute, a year

(I wonder if I/will have those hands, when someday/I've earned my black belt)

The day I left my mother's house, my hands were painted with maps, and arrows were stitched onto the soles of my sandals

And then, some stuff from stories:

It's the drizzly, I-can-do-this-all-day sort of winter rain that makes the entire world seem as though it's dead or dying--there are no birds today.

When I woke up today, I was already at work.
I am not sure if this is a horror story or not, because it's strange and slow and sad.

English magic is strong, but it is hardly the only flavour of the Art that exists, and betimes a man likes the taste of something unfamiliar.
(That's from the Sedna story that I still can't make work.)

She's not overlarge, a sweet, young thing, golden of wood and barely stained, unencrusted by barnacles, her sails a deep rose in hue. Every inch of her is bright against water or sky.
(My Canterbury-by-Sea collection. It's coming along okay-ish.)

Still, she did have to go out among the wolves to get the things she needed to keep her hair so red.
There was something alien behind Grandma's face today.
Two separate attempts at a very particular sort of Red Riding Hood tale.


And then, some fanfic

First, a handful from different approaches to a Walter/Seras Hellsing fic that I'm beating around, or a couple of them, really:
Alucard was full of a fizzing energy, a sharp-toothed delight, that Walter found questionable in the best of times; laid against Seras' evident fear, it was disgusting.

The vampire--Master, came the knowledge again, bright and joyful and fierce, and the desire to do right by him--who had killed and then unkilled her seemed much less interested in her now that the tall blonde woman was around. He dumped Seras unceremoniously on the back seat of an expensive car, and Seras drifted out of consciousness until the door opened again.

Behind the dark-haired man, the front doors opened, closed. His lips thinned, though no irritation marked his brow. "Welcome to Hellsing."

It didn't matter where she'd been, how long she'd been gone from the pillow, but every time she laid her head down to rest through the day, there was the faintest breath of lavender from the linens.


And then some other stuff;

'I always wondered," Simon said, "If your ears were more sensitive than mine, since there's more there to play with."
From my as-yet-untitled Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Viral/Timeskip!Simon that just WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE

And in his arms, she went to light and mist, and the wall went to snow, and Katara wept, scrabbling for the Avatar
The best Avatar fic I feel I've ever written, hands-down. Unfinished. Sigh.

"My son was older than you when he died, Toph." Iroh said. *cough* ahem. Yeah, exactly what it looks like. But I swear to god she isn't twelve in it.

Thoughtful today.

I learned to read when I was three-and-a-half years old. By five, I was reading adult novels, Heinlein and Asimov and McCaffrey, though I did not have the context to understand them. The first time I read The Last Unicorn, I was five or six; this probably goes a very long way toward explaining who I am.
My mother told me once that I learned to read out of frustration; there was this entire universe and I could not touch it. Could not understand it. There were stories there, and I could not touch them; there was magic there that I could swim in, but I couldn't get through the wall of text to find it.
I think sometimes that all I am is a quest for understanding. If I could find the words, and be understood, then I would not ever be left alone again.
(This is, of course, not true.)

Much of the time I think that my desire for, my love of language is just because--there are stories I still can not understand. If a printed page is a garden, the words are the garden gate; strong structures that can still keep me out. Once I get through the gate, it's green spaces and orchids and trees to climb,and in English words are filigree holding something beautiful. But in other languages, wrought iron and alabaster, interesting to look at but impassable.

I love words in any language. 珍しい, for instance, めずらしい, mezurashii, the word for unusual or rare in Japanese. Petrichor, the smell of the desert after rain. Fuego, fire. Pomme de terre, 'apple of the earth,' potato. 萤火虫, yíng huǒ chóng, 'luminous fire insect,' firefly. Beautiful.

But the more I learn, the more I want to know.

It feels like--somewhere, there's the Story. The one that makes everything make sense, opens up the world like an orange and lays it all out to be seen and tasted and understood, and loved. For some people, this has to be religion, but religion was never wide enough for this, for me. Sometimes I read a sentence here or there, I hear someone talking in passing on the street, and the words just ring in me, and I know; that was part of the Story, just then. A little piece of the truth.
But there are so many words that I don't know, in so many, many tongues. I was a teenager when I realised that this thing I am hunting can not be entirely found where I am from; that if I want more of it, I have to give more to myself, because English can't hold it all. And even if I regain fluency in Spanish, and gain it in Japanese, in Mandarin, in Tagalog and Italian and Greek, I will never find it all.
I'm Pellinore, and the story is my Glatisant, as much metaphor as beast, and I shall probably hunt it until I die.
The thought of that actually makes me very happy.

Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
Mine are from rainjoyous:

1) Kendo, obviously and first off, seems such a passion for you now =)
Kendo makes me a better person. Since I really decided that this was something I was Going To Do, it's been like--there is a foot of steady earth under me. Everything else might be turmoil and mudslide and pandaemonium, but under my feet, a step forward and a step back, there is firm soil.
It helps that I have a massive amount of respect for my Sensei and my senpai. Very good people.
As I write this, I'm nursing a blistered hand and a split-callused foot; kendo probably never stops hurting, I guess, though callus builds and blisters are few and far between these days. Some weeks, if Eric-senpai has been teaching, I spend every step well-aware of what I've been doing, stiff-muscled and wincing every time the shape of the terrain shifts. I get massive bruises from missed dou strikes--across the thigh, big as my hand, or under my armpit in the soft flesh next to my breast, livid blue and purple and gold.
Last night I tore the callus on my foot, for the first time in some months, on my *very last strike;* I felt it go and cursed, but I was happy to have gotten through all my strikes so it was okay. And watching Rob cutting graceful through a crowd, or the way that Eric sits, I can't complain; this makes my body better, too.

2) Long hair. I know you've cut it since but in my mind it's always there from long ago pictures, this insane long mermaid-hair.
Hair is just about the first thing that I notice on a person. As a child, I always wished that my hair was black like my mother's; the deep brown-with-red-highlights thing just didn't do it for me, if I couldn't be as white as my peers would like me to be, I wanted to be more visibly other. And I always loved the idea of Snow White's mother, with her own dark hair.
(now, paradoxically, as my adult growth ends and my hair is suddenly coming in black, I find that it doesn't matter much at all...)
All of my siblings had long hair, even the boys; my sisters' hair, like mine, was inching down toward the knees, and my brothers' hair brushed their shoulders. I didn't cut it because I didn't ever want to; I was the girl with long hair, it was a big part of me.
Mom once cut her hair to spite my father, because she was angry he'd shaved his beard, when she didn't much care for his face without it; it never grew so long again. Julian remains convinced that the spite permanently altered the way that her body works.
Every boyfriend I've ever had, save one, has a lock of my hair in a braid--when I left England after my first visit, I took a section as long as my forearm and as wide as my thumb and made it into a token for Dan, after he asked me, gingerly 'can I have some of your hair? To keep?' My hair is long enough now that I could begin to do that sort of thing again.
I tend to be a bit superstitious about hair, where I leave it, who I leave it with.
I found one of Jonathan's long, pink hairs on my blanket the other day. I wash my sheets and blankets once a week; it's been a year since we dated, and he has never been in my apartment. Some things *stick.*
My sister Heather used to braid my hair together with hers. Hers was knife-straight while mine fell in big loose curls, and hers was the colour of deep creek water, silvery-dark where mine tended toward copper-dark, and I liked the sight of them both looping and crossing each other, knowing the difference would be invisible from across the room but seeing it clearly so close-to.

3) Cooking - I know you love it as much as I do.
Cooking for someone is how I say I love you. It's inappropriate, perhaps, to forever be going up to my senpai and saying "Do you have any idea how bright you are in my vision? so I don't. I make cookies instead.
I have been cooking since I was seven years old, when Mom went off to work and I had to take care of the kids. Cooking is all about strength and home; if the people I'm close to don't know how, I teach them. If they do, I learn from them. If I am trying to show someone new that hello, I am quite considering making you family, I go to their house and make a meal; or I have them over to mine, though those meals are always had with big groups of people and generally serve a slightly different purpose.


4) Words. You have - a very particular way with them. I don't know anyone who captures the poetry of the day to day like you.
I *love* words. Actively. I love finding new ones, I love putting old ones together differently, and not just in English. I think that a lot of it probably is because of the synaesthesia; while sentences do not precisely have a *taste,* they do...balance. A good sentence falls whole into place and is finished, rather than having jaggy stick-out edges, and the whole of the piece gets brighter. If something's off, it's like having a dim patch in the work, and I have to go and hammer until it's glowing like the rest of it.
My favourite authors are also really particular with their words--Robin McKinley, Tanith Lee(her Tales of the Flat Earth series altered a lot of the darker parts of who I am), Peter S. Beagle.

5) A certain . . . *tries to think how to word this* I think of myself as something animal quite often, but definitely some sort of herbivore. You I sense the predator in. A lynx, a wolf, a vixen. Teeth and fur, anyway.
I always say that I am from a family of wolves, and it's true--we fight like wolves, we groom like wolves, we protect kin like wolves. But since leaving the pack, I am considerably more like a fox creature, small and big-eyed and travelling alone but not averse to company. Tricky and amused, a fox in the Japanese fashion.


( albums that changed my life meme )

I never sat and watched a football game before Sunday. Not a fan, you see. But Sunday I was with fans, and I kind of figured--between the team of the place where I grew up, and the team of the place where I live now? Surely worth watching for the novelty of the thing.

I hung out at the Ruskin dorms with friend Christian and a lot of screaming college students, and one or two hollering grad students. Chips and dip and Black and Gold cupcakes--it was surreal. So far removed from my usual crowd. I didn't understand a lot of what I was looking at, of course, but delight and frustration are easy enough to comprehend, so I watched their faces and hands as often as the screen.

The Steelers won--and then within a minute of the win, somebody pulled a fire alarm in the dorm hallway, and I pulled on my shoes and jacket and coat, and we went out into the bustling, scream-filled night. Christian's dorm is in the lovely Ruskin Hall, very close indeed to the Cathedral of Learning, but by the time we got out there--less than two blocks!--the streets were already packed with hollering people. There was a line of motorcycle policemen blocking traffic off of Bigelow, which is good, considering that no car could possibly have made it through the several hundred people gathered there.

The steps of the Cathedral were also covered in cops, who kept people from getting into the building. very sensible. Someone in the crowd lit off a series of fireworks, and people pulled back a bit as whistling fire sailed into the trees, too low. One of the trees began to smoke; someone thought it a good idea to climb into a smaller tree and break off pieces of branch to use as torches. Fire broke out in various places in the crowd; someone lit a garbage can, a round bulletin board, there were more fireworks.

I was glad to be with Christian, who is as open-eyed as I tend to be. He shouted and laughed too, but he never stopped paying attention to the tenor of the mob.

Police helicopters began to arrive. Whenever a spotlight touched someone in the crowd, they would shout in abject delight, and the people near them would push into it, as if it were a light on stage, waving up at the copter and whistling shrilly.

Someone climbed a streetlamp, and began doing chin-ups from where he hung off of it, thirty feet above the tarmac. There was the plain scent of weed, which I have no problem with--better far a mob on marijuana than beer.

I wanted to talk to the cops, to thank them for their hard work, but I was hardly going to interrupt them where they stood, marble-faced and flickery-eyed.

I felt very set-apart and alien even as I was amused; too busy paying attention to potential danger to lose myself in the mob, the way I might at a club. I am fine with this--even dancing I always have one eye watching behind me, and in a situation like the Cathedral lawn that night, better to have a spider's set of eyes looking in all directions.

There were so many people that it was not very cold at all--but despite the lights and streetlamps and fireworks and fire, it was still pretty dark. We called another friend, and she came to meet us. The cops started their motorcycles--so many cycles at once made a terrific noise, I could feel it vibrating in my throat, tickling my palms. And at the same time, there's a sound rather like ripping paper, and the night gets quite a bit brighter; Christian's head snapped up at the same time mine whipped around to see, and without really thinking about it the both of us were like "Time to go!" a fire engine arrived, the cops began to move, and we weren't going to stay there any longer. The cops take down Fifth, wrong way on a one-way street, and we move across the Cathedral lawn, which is at this point a sheet of solid ice. People were sliding like hockey pucks, ricocheting off of eachother and the foliage, though far fewer people than were in the streets. I did not slip--Christian slid once, caught himself without seeming to notice, and we went back to the dorm to find the friends we'd lost in the crowd. Another couple of dozen cops pass us, lights off of the motorcycles all in silent chorus, beautiful and fey. After them comes a fleet of cars, normal traffic or rather civilians; hardly normal, as the unbroken horns and wild shouts that come along with them would attest. Lots of Terrible Towels being shaken out windows, lots of plain and extreme delight on faces as they zoom by. We run across the street and get safely home, passing tipped-over newspaper boxes, empty wine-bottles, surrounded by the calls of sirens.

I thought at that point that my observations of the evening were finished--but hanging out at Christian's, the room was filled with that same honey light, and we looked at the window to see cinders drizzling down. Somebody upstairs had lit the contents of a wastebasket, or something similar, afire--and was dumping it out the window, large dangerous flower-petals sailing merrily out to the snow.
Really it was quite lovely.

And then, we went all the way to the airport to fetch a friend home; and then I slept, curled up tight on Christian's tiny but still soft couch, laughter from outside punctuating strange dreams.

I am soooo sleep-depped. But not much more to go!
Tonight I'll sleep like a dead thing, and wake refreshed at a human time for work tomorrow.

New reaction with my synaesthesia; the feel/sound of freshly-smoothed ice under a sharp skate is very very like having a hard-candy on my tongue, sweet and solid and satisfying. Also a little like swinging a quarterstaff.

Last night, Titus-Sensei recommended that I test for rank at the tournament. Even *typing* that gives me my physical anxiety reaction, a thrill up the backs of my legs and a momentary stiffness in my palms.

I really wanna do a Hellsing AMV to Kate Bush's "Lily." the singer would of course be Integra, starting off young, and I figure Gabriel would be represented by Alucard, Raphael by Seras, Michael by support staff and Uriel by Walter.
("Uriel" being to her left hand, of course, which tragically fits manga-Walter rather too well, and the character of Uriel in mythology guarded the gates of Eden, was 'pitiless as any demon,' a rescuer and an Angel of Repentance. It pleases me. So I'm a foolish little girl, fine.)
(Gabriel is the strongest; Raphael the guardian of young people, lovers, travelers, guardian against nightmares; Michael is the field-commander of the army of God, according to Wikipedia.)

Yeah, too tired now to really think. Lots on my mind! Family and friends, worry for some of those who are dear, work. Maybe I'll run myself a nice boiling hot bath, soak away the aches brought on by walking a few miles yesterday and then kendo and then walking a little ways and then ice-skating and then not sleeping.
It's good, though.

I'm buzzy-happy today. Good couple of days.

Yesterday, I helped Narumoto-Sensei with some writing (for which we went to lunch, and then hung out at my house while I made cookies and he roundly cursed the English language), and then went to kendo. After kendo, I walked to my friend Christian's place--Christian is the indirect cause of my meeting Harold, and I might have referred to him once or twice here as Prince Zuko, 'cause the first time I saw him, he was teaching a martial arts class and watching that's all I could think of. At Christian's I had dinner, interesting cake, and excellent conversation and watched The Punisher; ended up crashing out on a blow-up mattress in his living room because holiday buses are notoriously unreliable. Didn't sleep until way late, though, as we stayed up talking until what in Arizona, in summer, would have been past sunrise.

Woke up slowly and leisurely, too cold but aware of having had the next part in a serial dream I've been having, and had some cookies for breakfast, watching Christian's roommate John work on a bit of comedy, and Christian work on kata, for performances they have in a class today. Both were enjoyable to behold.
And then, the Inauguration! I do not often feel pride in my nation, but today there's at least hope.

And then I get home, and jojo_kun has posted the fanart I won in the meme, Walter/Seras fluffy pornish goodness!
I feel good today!

...which was unsettling. You can't get to my back porch without vaulting a ten-foot fence or sneaking through a strange windy courtyard and then coming up a flight of stairs. Whoever it was, I guess I scared him off--but the very fact that he tried the door, with me sitting right there, less than five feet away and fully visible in the window, is not nice.

My fingernails are stained grey from messing with my Rapidographs, but now four of my Rapidographs work again. This time tomorrow, all of them will.

(I used the cleaned ones to ink a bit of Hellsing fanart. Geek? Yes. But next I will use them to ink the stuff from the drawble meme. And I'm happy with my Prisma-coloured Walter! I may put him on my door, like a fourteen-year-old girl.)

And now, back to shelving in the Kids section. Dear dear dear.



(Today, the Forces of Evil are powerful, down here in Shelving and Stack Services, so it's just as well that I get upstairs for a bit. Maybe get something to drink, hide in Eleventh. ;P)

(not really, all-seeing bots that scan my every word and report to my boss! I will be doing cleanup in Children's, honest!)

The first five people to comment to this post get to request a sketch of a character of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their artistic/writing ability. If you absolutely can't draw, you can offer drabbles or icons or something instead.

I *can* draw. I am not brilliant, but I look forward to the challenge, should anyone ask it of me. You may also ask for fic.

I will not draw--

• Shota or loli
  
• Non-con
  
• Torn-up little-kiddie parts.
  
  Anything else, throw it at me. :)
  
  ETA: Coming along! Room for two more.

...and though I feel well-rested for the first time since I got sick, I am still admittedly pretty damn sick.
Health insurance would be nice. I am beginning to fear that this is antibiotic-worthy. I am into my second week of sick, today, and if I have to skip kendo again, it'll be my second practice doing so--a week since I last attended kendo, today.

But I really think I have to skip.
Sucks.

Sick of being voiceless and ill.

So I'm gonna sit here and read some Hellsing fanfiction, and in a bit I am going to take a nice long bath, and work on some comics. And then I am going to sleep some more, probably.

Step One: Decide, since voiceless, sore-throated and too ill to move for more than very short bursts at a time, to alternate between carefully going down the stairs and doing laundry (it's taking me four times as long as usual to take those damn stairs) and sitting on the futon wrapped in Dave's old sleeping bag with a computer on my lap.

Step Two: Remember that hakama and keikogi need washing, decide to do it now, before I fall asleep again. Wash them.

Step Three: Upon removing keikogi from washer, immediately drop it into a pile of masonry dust.

FAIL

ETA:
And THEN--just to really excel--how about in my desire to fold my hakama, I throw the keikogi onto my bed? And my nice dry blankets. You know, the ones I'm curling up in when I'm not doing laundry.
And then maybe I could not clock it for, like, half an hour.
*facepalm*

I am not updating very often, these days, am I?

This has been a very, very eventful year. Murder attempt, suicide attempt, anger and fear and sharp, cutting joy. Kendo, and friendship that doesn't sting in both directions, and standing up straight. Frustration. Hope. I'm blessed to have survived it all, I think.

It used to be that I could actually accurately sum up a year in a few paragraphs. Dan proposed, I went to England, I came home, or this year I had to choose between my family and sanity, or I have been happier this year than any year since childhood. This year doesn't fit like that. I can't make neat, itemized lists (girls played with: one. Boys played with: more-or-less, technically, six. Cookies baked: Lots. Books read: Maybe too many) and I can't find some overriding theme to it all, unless maybe that growth is to be chased after with both hands, and that It'll All Turn Out All Right is nothing more than a comforting lie but that sometimes if you tug at it long enough you can make that sort of thing be true, too? That you can reorder the Universe if you have to, if you're lucky--that sometimes, all the luck and begging won't let you so much as shift a stone off of your toe.
Perhaps this year has just been to teach me about the methods of chaos and entropy.

(Julian laughs, when I say that I want to fight entropy wherever I can--picking up dropped candy wrappers, righting tipped-over flowerpots. "Entropy is the driving force of the Universe," he says, in that dark-honey voice of his, and I shrug and do it anyway. We're different kinds of people these days, or we communicate with different arts. This is a change.)

I think that I like who I am at the end of this year better than I like who I was at the start of it. I'm harder to walk on now
(Dave, staying with me last night, and when I visited him last week in Baltimore, quite agrees with this. Not so uke-y anymore, he says.)

I have a lot of determination, walking into this new year. Last year I barely noticed the change, shattered as I was by Jonathan, by what I'd made him in my life and his subsequent mad dash out of it. This year--I'm quite, quite single, and quite, quite in love with the world, and with the people in it--Nikki's laugh and the way that she sometimes stands entirely straight, laughing profanities and impossible to push down. The way that Rob cocks his head when he thinks I've said something stupid, the careful considering pause before Eric imports some knowledge that he really wants me to think about, the way that Narumoto-Sensei laughs almost disbelievingly at something ridiculous. Søren's delicate wrists. One particular mournful look on Harold's face, or the way that he grins, not facing one, smile just barely visible around his shoulder. Alex, trying to share something funny with me--Mallory, trying not to share anything with me--Julian, dancing in his kitchen, licking chocolate from his fingertips. Leah's projection of serenity, and the subtle understanding that if one were to hurt one of hers, they'd spend a long time paying for it. Kate shakily, anxiously, defiantly happy about kendo. My baby sister's voice just a thread and a whisper on the phone line but still it's her. Dave's--well, just Dave, just Dave, fierce are you strong enough? grin and refusal to slow down for anyone. All of my friends, and the people I wish were more my friends, and the people whose friendship I'll fight for...this is better, I think, than having a boyfriend. For the moment.

(later on, I'm perfectly willing to have both. But it's been a good year to be single, I think.)


But the biggest thing of all, right now, is that I have stopped defining myself by other people.
Eldest of six/ ______'s girlfriend / student of _________/ teacher of __________/--no more. Even if these things are true, on and off, I begin to find out who I am that is none of these things.

It will be interesting to see, at the end of this year, what I am then. For now I'm just going to have to work hard.

I am not updating very often, these days, am I?

This has been a very, very eventful year. Murder attempt, suicide attempt, anger and fear and sharp, cutting joy. Kendo, and friendship that doesn't sting in both directions, and standing up straight. Frustration. Hope. I'm blessed to have survived it all, I think.

It used to be that I could actually accurately sum up a year in a few paragraphs. Dan proposed, I went to England, I came home, or this year I had to choose between my family and sanity, or I have been happier this year than any year since childhood. This year doesn't fit like that. I can't make neat, itemized lists (girls played with: one. Boys played with: more-or-less, technically, six. Cookies baked: Lots. Books read: Maybe too many) and I can't find some overriding theme to it all, unless maybe that growth is to be chased after with both hands, and that It'll All Turn Out All Right is nothing more than a comforting lie but that sometimes if you tug at it long enough you can make that sort of thing be true, too? That you can reorder the Universe if you have to, if you're lucky--that sometimes, all the luck and begging won't let you so much as shift a stone off of your toe.
Perhaps this year has just been to teach me about the methods of chaos and entropy.

(Julian laughs, when I say that I want to fight entropy wherever I can--picking up dropped candy wrappers, righting tipped-over flowerpots. "Entropy is the driving force of the Universe," he says, in that dark-honey voice of his, and I shrug and do it anyway. We're different kinds of people these days, or we communicate with different arts. This is a change.)

I think that I like who I am at the end of this year better than I like who I was at the start of it. I'm harder to walk on now
(Dave, staying with me last night, and when I visited him last week in Baltimore, quite agrees with this. Not so uke-y anymore, he says.)

I have a lot of determination, walking into this new year. Last year I barely noticed the change, shattered as I was by Jonathan, by what I'd made him in my life and his subsequent mad dash out of it. This year--I'm quite, quite single, and quite, quite in love with the world, and with the people in it--Nikki's laugh and the way that she sometimes stands entirely straight, laughing profanities and impossible to push down. The way that Rob cocks his head when he thinks I've said something stupid, the careful considering pause before Eric imports some knowledge that he really wants me to think about, the way that Narumoto-Sensei laughs almost disbelievingly at something ridiculous. Søren's delicate wrists. One particular mournful look on Harold's face, or the way that he grins, not facing one, smile just barely visible around his shoulder. Alex, trying to share something funny with me--Mallory, trying not to share anything with me--Julian, dancing in his kitchen, licking chocolate from his fingertips. Leah's projection of serenity, and the subtle understanding that if one were to hurt one of hers, they'd spend a long time paying for it. Kate shakily, anxiously, defiantly happy about kendo. My baby sister's voice just a thread and a whisper on the phone line but still it's her. Dave's--well, just Dave, just Dave, fierce are you strong enough? grin and refusal to slow down for anyone. All of my friends, and the people I wish were more my friends, and the people whose friendship I'll fight for...this is better, I think, than having a boyfriend. For the moment.

(later on, I'm perfectly willing to have both. But it's been a good year to be single, I think.)


But the biggest thing of all, right now, is that I have stopped defining myself by other people.
Eldest of six/ ______'s girlfriend / student of _________/ teacher of __________/--no more. Even if these things are true, on and off, I begin to find out who I am that is none of these things.

It will be interesting to see, at the end of this year, what I am then. For now I'm just going to have to work hard.

Safe in Baltimore, with cookies and Dave's sweet family, and clean, clean hair, and MTV playing Coldplay and Pink, and Dave and Dave's mum fixed me a stocking and everything.
Good, good Christmas this year. Dave is--a blessing. I am glad of him. And now it's time to call Julian and wish him a good day, too...

Safe in Baltimore, with cookies and Dave's sweet family, and clean, clean hair, and MTV playing Coldplay and Pink, and Dave and Dave's mum fixed me a stocking and everything.
Good, good Christmas this year. Dave is--a blessing. I am glad of him. And now it's time to call Julian and wish him a good day, too...

My surprise Christmas present is that I am being Greyhounded to Baltimore in a couple of hours, and I will not return until late on Saturday night. My phone is operational, and I'll have plenty of time to check email and such, I'm sure; but I won't be in town to hang with. Happy Holidays, my dears, and I hope you enjoy yourselves!

--G

...the telephone that rings, but who's to answer?
O, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things--remind me of you.


I am sitting around in my PJs, really quite exhausted but I'm sure I'll be better later.

I have the coolest roommate in the world, by the way; last night I came home to be presented with a scarf, and the COOLEST glove/armwarmer things I've ever seen, warm and elegant and with-the-fuzzy-in. And then also with a gift card to the Cheesecake Factory, since she doesn't eat there! Wow! She's--a fantastic person, and I don't deserve her. :) Must find her a good Solstice present, since that's what she celebrates.

(me, I'm celebrating Spatula this year. Yay for Dada holidays.)

Kendo today. Must finish the work on my tsuka! All that needs to be done now is to tie a very particular sort of knot, though, and then the usual re-stringing and such that I've done a dozen times.


Having a lot of fun recording lately. Podfic, and a Gemma Files story (which I won't be putting up here, copyright and all that), and thinking about getting some music software I can tootle around with. Editing my voice has taken on a strangeness; it doesn't sound like my voice, since of course it is not what I hear when I speak, so playing with it is just like playing with an interesting instrument. I have a sort of distance from my recordings, which is actually a lot of fun.

Julian came over last night to talk a bit about his novel, and to play a lot of Zelda, and to make interesting cream/cheese/tomato sauce and noodles. Good to hang out, with the cold outside. I was pretty wiped from work, but just sitting there and taking turns at Twilight Princess was pretty damn fantastic. It's weird that I get to hang out with Alex, and I get to hang out with Julian, but so rarely the two of them together.

Anyway--time to get up, brush hair, brush teeth, find breakfast, pack stuff up and get going...




Gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow...

Title: Love, and Other High-Stake Games
Author: Rainjoy; rainjoyswriting
Reader: come_love_sleep
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: R; language, mentions of sex
Pairing: Ed/Roy
Format: MP3
Length: 25.5 MB; 30 minutes
Summary: "Ed receives a proposition it's hard to say no to for all the wrong reasons." I found it satisfying.
Link: Temporary Sendspace link; MegaUpload link

Crossposted to amplificathon

TEN things you wish you could say to 10 people:
(may I say, I generally find these lists to be kind of poisonous? Usually they're filled with spite and anger, and then people like me read them and wonder 'is that one meant for me?' But I like the rest of the meme, and while I'm brave enough to say any of these things to any of these people, they're all things I'm unlikely to say, because I don't want to cause melodrama.
On with the list!)


1. I'm sorry. I was a kid. I wish I had never said that; I wish I had never done that; I wish I had been stronger.

2. I have been in love with you for a year, now; and I've done *nothing* because you have had a girlfriend that was plainly dear to you. It's only been recently, actually, that I've been able to not be buzzingly aware of your every movement when you're in the same room as me; and that probably only because I fell for someone else who is equally unreachable. But because of you I'm learning how to fall out of love--something I've never managed before. For that, I'd say thanks.

3. If you asked me to quit my job, throw away everything I owned, drop my apartment, and run around the world with you, I would. As long as we could hit kendo dojos along the way.

4. I'm so steadfast about using your title when I talk about you because I think I need the distance.

5. I don't miss you anymore.

6. I'm not afraid of you anymore.

7. It's been five years since I've seen you, and there isn't a single day that I don't think about you; and rarely a day when I don't mention you, either. I wish I knew your phone number.

8. I will help you have the ability save yourself. Just stay strong for a little more time. I'm working hard.

9. I just can't be *angry* at you anymore. Use forgiveness wisely, 'cause a girl gets tired of this back-and-forth shit eventually.
All the same, I'm glad to find that my fury has quite fizzled out, and not left even cold ashes behind it.

10. If I'm kinder than you think you deserve, it's because I think you deserve it; not because I think you are my superior. And I do things because I care for you, not because I feel the need to serve. Don't take me for granted, my heart.


NINE things about yourself:

1. I don't like celery.

2. White milk in a black glass makes me feel a bright happiness in my chest; perhaps related to the synaesthesia.

3. I want my hair to grow to my ankles.

4. Sometimes it baffles me that other people think I'm smart. Other times it baffles me that people don't immediately notice what I notice. Balance, perhaps.

5. I think I am changing my surname to 'Valentine.' I have always loved the name, I like the sound of it, and I like the meaning; I made the decision before I remembered that it's also attached to a couple of video game and anime characters. That's actually the only thing that's made me question whether or not I want to do it for sure. I think I probably will.

6. I've never met another girl my age who likes sex as much as I do.

7. I think I would be almost as happy as a man, as I am as a woman. Definitely a bit gendersmudged.

8. If I am baking for you that means that I love you.

9. I'm a lot nicer than I used to be. And a lot stronger. The two seem to have come hand in hand.

EIGHT ways to win your heart:

1. Be competent.

2. Notice something I don't notice, or know something I don't know; and then enlighten me.

3. Be a martial artist or a dancer; be good in the kitchen; have an interest in poetry. Almost every single person I have ever loved has been two of the three; some people have been all of them.

4. Be smarter than me. Or as smart.

5. Push me to get better, unapologetically.

6. Get bright-eyed and enthusiastic about books, language, movie criticism.

7. Be unafraid of laughing, closed doors, and potentially getting attention in public.

8. Help someone that I love.

SEVEN things that cross your mind a lot:

1. Japanese language.

2. Kendo

3. Books, or things I'm reading, want to be reading, just read, wish I had just read, or read a long time ago and have found pertinent to the current situation.

4. Beauty, and how there's rather a lot of it around me lately. Wind and birds and sky...

5. Things I need to learn how to do to become a better person, stronger, smarter, or more emotionally capable of helping those I count as kin.

6. In the interests of honesty, here--I do spend rather an inordinate amount of time thinking about sex. But I bet almost everyone would have that on the list. Except maybe Julian, he'd replace it with Issei Miyake or something, even though he's dirty-minded.

7. My family, my friends, the people I love and have near, the people I love and can't have near, the people I care for who don't see me.



SIX things you do before you fall asleep:

1. Brush teeth, hair, take out contacts, all that jazz

2. Read

3. Sit zazen

4. Stretch

5. Talk to people on Gmail Chat, check my email

6. Fiddle with the radiator, and then either get the room cool enough but wake up four hours later freezing and sore-throated, or just say fuck it and curl up naked on top of the covers.


FIVE things that frustrate you:

1. Being unable to adequately explain or express myself

2. People who won't listen

3. When I know what I'm doing wrong but can't fix it for some reason, because as soon as I pay attention to something else the first thing disintegrates again

4. Lies.

5. Not having enough money or food despite working hard


FOUR things you love to do on rainy days:

1. If it's warm, go out and dance in it, climb a tree, get soaked, lie in the grass and watch the rain come down on me.

2. If it's cold, roll the curtains down and listen to it, meditate.

3. Bake cookies, and savory pies.

4. Light candles, even if the power stays on.


THREE biggest turn-on's:
(in no particular order)

1. Intelligent conversation

2. Competently-performed physical activity, i.e kata

3. Unusual sorts of beauty.


TWO things you want to do before you die:

1. Travel more

2. Help my sibs.



ONE confession:
What, only one? Hm. I'm pretty damn open, though...let me think.
Okay. Here's one that's true of pretty much everyone, good and bad:
I think I don't deserve you.

Today I look good. My eyelids are blue and green and silver, very pale, which makes my eyes look darker than usual; my lips are painted. My hair is pulled back in a ribbon the teal colour that my hair itself once was. I'm wearing tight black trousers and a misty shirt in shades of blue and white and thin, thin gold. I look good, and I feel like I'm going to war.
I've realised that certain necessary goals that I'll be struggling for in my very near future will only be accomplished if I can come off as an adult to people who think otherwise; so all of this is really just me testing battle armor. Little fixes here and there(my lips are naturally dramatic in shape, so a lighter range of colour is evidently best if I want to look less dangerous; I've probably worn lipstick fewer than fifty times in my life, so this is a learning process.
My fingernails are unsalvageable. They're very nearly boy-short by necessity, and my hands are increasingly boyish, callused and muscled. I'm getting the definition around the ball of my thumb that I noticed long ago in the hands of my Sensei and Senpai, and while I do not think it unbeautiful, it does make me look less feminine. If I am to be using femininity as a weapon against someone who has the advantage of territory and ego, there must be a workaround for this. Probably just keeping my nails in very good condition, but not painting them and attracting attention to their boyishness.

Yeah, I am thinking about this a lot today.

Thinking about a lot of things, really. I always feel more competent when I'm able to work on a plan and have a goal. But it makes me a bit anxious too, of course; there's more than just my happiness and safety at stake here, and that gives it an edge. It's not just counting coup, and it's not just playing Trickster games, not now.

But--for now, I'm going to pack up my bogu and go to kendo, and work on my heart instead of false and fleeting beauty. 'Cause if I'm going to need anything, it's going to be a steadfast heart and the ability to look my opponnent in the eye and betray nothing.



We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!
To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!

Today I look good. My eyelids are blue and green and silver, very pale, which makes my eyes look darker than usual; my lips are painted. My hair is pulled back in a ribbon the teal colour that my hair itself once was. I'm wearing tight black trousers and a misty shirt in shades of blue and white and thin, thin gold. I look good, and I feel like I'm going to war.
I've realised that certain necessary goals that I'll be struggling for in my very near future will only be accomplished if I can come off as an adult to people who think otherwise; so all of this is really just me testing battle armor. Little fixes here and there(my lips are naturally dramatic in shape, so a lighter range of colour is evidently best if I want to look less dangerous; I've probably worn lipstick fewer than fifty times in my life, so this is a learning process.
My fingernails are unsalvageable. They're very nearly boy-short by necessity, and my hands are increasingly boyish, callused and muscled. I'm getting the definition around the ball of my thumb that I noticed long ago in the hands of my Sensei and Senpai, and while I do not think it unbeautiful, it does make me look less feminine. If I am to be using femininity as a weapon against someone who has the advantage of territory and ego, there must be a workaround for this. Probably just keeping my nails in very good condition, but not painting them and attracting attention to their boyishness.

Yeah, I am thinking about this a lot today.

Thinking about a lot of things, really. I always feel more competent when I'm able to work on a plan and have a goal. But it makes me a bit anxious too, of course; there's more than just my happiness and safety at stake here, and that gives it an edge. It's not just counting coup, and it's not just playing Trickster games, not now.

But--for now, I'm going to pack up my bogu and go to kendo, and work on my heart instead of false and fleeting beauty. 'Cause if I'm going to need anything, it's going to be a steadfast heart and the ability to look my opponnent in the eye and betray nothing.



We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!
To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!

So the first bit of casting info for the Avatar movie has been released!

And now I'm actually, honestly, unhappy. Usually fannish stuff like this doesn't irritate me--hell, not since I heard that Constantine was being played by a spindly little American dude have I really noticed it, I live in my own happy funtime fan-land in my brain--but this? Fuck's sake.

Katara and Sokka? Are Inuit and Polynesian in design.
Zuko, and Azuka, and the whole damn Fire Nation? Japanese.
The Earth Kingdom, and Toph? Chinese.

Not white, folks. Not remotely white.
(White characters--Um...Suki. And Crazy Foaming Mouth Guy.)

Just--god, what a way to fuck my day right up, guys.

In my dream, I'm something like some sort of demon. I'm sitting on the floor, almost seiza, and I'm cradling a corpse in my hands. I've broken its face and am rooting up through the bone, trying to pull out the brain. I have brain-meat under my fingernails, and I'm stained and bloody well past the wrist, but I just can't get the damn thing to really come out. I'm scraping the inside of the skull in frustration, trying to peel off brain-slivers, the way you might husk a coconut. The thing is mostly whole in my hands, and I'm really hungry, but in the interests of completion I really want all of it, and it's just not happening.
I wake up freezing and mumbling.

Went to Søren's birthday party/Frank's I Am A Doctor Now party last night and ended up trapped in Friendship; slept at Julian's apartment(my old apartment) which would have been weirder if I hadn't been exhausted. As it was, I slept intermittently, interrupted by nightmares and odd dreams and by Ume-neko.

Got the bus in to work, where I now am, so now I'm at work and STILL freezing. But once I get moving around I ought to warm up a bit.

An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.
--Harold Lokes



I haven't updated in a bit--my mind has been churning and there's been a lot going on, so I figured it was better not to until I was in a more still place.

Thanksgiving was spent with Julian, and with Seth, a friend from Rochester. We cooked a great big meal and played videogames, and it was good.

I've been sick a lot lately. Dunno what's up. Sleeping like ten hours in a go, which is an insane amount of sleep for me, twice what I'm used to getting.

Thinking a lot about what this year as brought me. I am not the person that I was at the start of it. It seems it's been a year for unreturned affection, unrequited friendship and unrequited love, and I do hope that that is not making me a harder person. At least I'm no longer the sort of person who automatically assumes that it means I'm not worth the return of affection. Julian, in impotent frustration at the quiet, unhurried tears on my face, exclaimed that if the one I'm longing for can't see me as worth more than any other option possible, fuck'im; he's obviously not going to be worth my time. But I don't think that's quite true, either--some paths cross, some run side by side, some only touch for a moment and there's nothing I can do about it.

(Shortly before, almost apologetically, he said "You know--I'd forgotten what it was like to actually be in love, before Alex. I think the last time I was in love with anybody, it was with you." I am glad that I don't feel sad or uncomfortable or jealous that he's so happy with my un-brother, even if it absolutely is something out of a shoujo manga. If it is a manga, my life, then shortly and seemingly at random I'm to meet some dashing and elegant martial artist who'll make me forget the sadness currently nibbling the crispy burned edges off my heart. I look forward to it.)


This has been a year of hard choices. To try harder to forgive my mother, or to just decide not to speak to her again; the same for the monstersister. To hold on to various people, at cost to sanity and skin, or to be alone.
I've made some bad choices this year.

But I've made some good ones, too, and I think I am much closer to adulthood than I was at the beginning of it. I have been pretty blessed.

(Belated, Thanksgiving post:
Things I am thankful for:
Kendo.
Julian being in my life again, my good right arm.
Dave, and this summer, and Gmail chats at obscene hours
Alex; and Alex and Julian, unexpected development that reminds me that the world is beautiful
Harold, and this Autumn, and fresh fruit.
Mallory.
Everyone on the kendo team--Rob's bluntness, Eric's elegance, Nikki's determination, Titus-Sensei's compassion, Narumoto-Sensei's humor.
My new apartment, and my fantastic new roommate.
Katakana, Hiragana, and reading 森 entirely by accident on someone's zekken in Ohio.
Health; strength; willingness to survive.
Contact lenses. This winter, I can wrap my scarf around my face and not instantly go blind from foggy glasses!
Books, stories, songs.
I am not thankful TO anything--but I am thankful for, grateful for, so much. I am glad of my life, and the people in it, even if both my life and the people in it are occasionally troublesome. Tears are how you know you're alive, every bit as much as laughter.)

--G

Today has been a day of staying inside, nice and quiet, and waiting for the cessation of the roiling of my belly and the moaning of my throat.
Today has also been a day for writing poetry. I don't know where it's all coming from. Where all this writing at all is coming from. But it is coming, faster than I can catch it all, trying to hold a waterfall in a salmon net, the way the net will stay full even as it's emptying...
and dimly I'm aware that a good deal of what I'm writing is actually pretty good. Julian said that the latest bit I had him read was fundamentally perfect, needed no changing, and "much more emotionally mature than anything I have ever seen from you," and basically the other couple of opinions I have had on the piece have said about the same. Interesting.
I guess I am leveling up.

I feel very strange right now. It's like--well, everything that's happened this year--like my life just burned down around me, and now it's time to start seeing what seeds were buried under the soil, that all the ash has encouraged to grow. It's interesting.

I am simultaneously incredibly wistful, and something-like-determined. And outside, the snow comes down and down--this morning it was rain, this afternoon it was sleet, and now it is snow that is not sticking but probably will start doing so around midnight when the roads and sidewalks freeze. Life is--ah, well. Life.

And now to end this, and find someplace slightly warmer to be.

--G

Today has been a day of staying inside, nice and quiet, and waiting for the cessation of the roiling of my belly and the moaning of my throat.
Today has also been a day for writing poetry. I don't know where it's all coming from. Where all this writing at all is coming from. But it is coming, faster than I can catch it all, trying to hold a waterfall in a salmon net, the way the net will stay full even as it's emptying...
and dimly I'm aware that a good deal of what I'm writing is actually pretty good. Julian said that the latest bit I had him read was fundamentally perfect, needed no changing, and "much more emotionally mature than anything I have ever seen from you," and basically the other couple of opinions I have had on the piece have said about the same. Interesting.
I guess I am leveling up.

I feel very strange right now. It's like--well, everything that's happened this year--like my life just burned down around me, and now it's time to start seeing what seeds were buried under the soil, that all the ash has encouraged to grow. It's interesting.

I am simultaneously incredibly wistful, and something-like-determined. And outside, the snow comes down and down--this morning it was rain, this afternoon it was sleet, and now it is snow that is not sticking but probably will start doing so around midnight when the roads and sidewalks freeze. Life is--ah, well. Life.

And now to end this, and find someplace slightly warmer to be.

--G

Tomorrow I'm gonna be in *pain!*
But tonight was good. Or--good-and-bad-and-good.

I don't know if it's cause I''m living in the Southside or because I've suddenly grown an obnoxious second head that's visible only to everybody else but me, but I've been getting blown off a hell of a lot lately, usually in an offhand fashion and with very little explanation. I've been feeling apart and alone a fuck of a lot because of it.

So tonight was kendo, and kendo was good and hard to make up for the fact that there will be no kendo on Thursday. Last night, I did a hundred push-ups and probably half that many sit-ups, and the night before last I did eighty. Tomorrow I am going to ache, but I'll have come by it honestly.

And then I went out into the cold and the rain, and stood at the bus stop for an hour, in vain. And the bus didn't come, and the bus didn't come, and the bus didn't come, and I stood there with two shinai and a bokken in my aching hands, my bogu bag on my back and my budo bag too heavy on one shoulder, and the bus didn't come--so I called Harold, and Harold came, all white smile, and his car already too hot for his taste because he knew that I would be freezing. And I unwound my curled blue toes and wrapped myself in his scarf, and pressed tight up against the dashboard, and felt all my stiff-cold muscles loosened in the blissful warmth. And then we went out for dinner, and I had beef with broccoli and he had General Tso's chicken, and really I had a lot of his chicken and he had a lot of my broccoli, and I just sort of exhaled and felt better than I have in an entire week.

And now I'm at home, in a room that is surprisingly just a bit too cold, about to curl up and sleep six hours until I must get up and go to class.
And work, and class...
...but all is well

Tomorrow I'm gonna be in *pain!*
But tonight was good. Or--good-and-bad-and-good.

I don't know if it's cause I''m living in the Southside or because I've suddenly grown an obnoxious second head that's visible only to everybody else but me, but I've been getting blown off a hell of a lot lately, usually in an offhand fashion and with very little explanation. I've been feeling apart and alone a fuck of a lot because of it.

So tonight was kendo, and kendo was good and hard to make up for the fact that there will be no kendo on Thursday. Last night, I did a hundred push-ups and probably half that many sit-ups, and the night before last I did eighty. Tomorrow I am going to ache, but I'll have come by it honestly.

And then I went out into the cold and the rain, and stood at the bus stop for an hour, in vain. And the bus didn't come, and the bus didn't come, and the bus didn't come, and I stood there with two shinai and a bokken in my aching hands, my bogu bag on my back and my budo bag too heavy on one shoulder, and the bus didn't come--so I called Harold, and Harold came, all white smile, and his car already too hot for his taste because he knew that I would be freezing. And I unwound my curled blue toes and wrapped myself in his scarf, and pressed tight up against the dashboard, and felt all my stiff-cold muscles loosened in the blissful warmth. And then we went out for dinner, and I had beef with broccoli and he had General Tso's chicken, and really I had a lot of his chicken and he had a lot of my broccoli, and I just sort of exhaled and felt better than I have in an entire week.

And now I'm at home, in a room that is surprisingly just a bit too cold, about to curl up and sleep six hours until I must get up and go to class.
And work, and class...
...but all is well

I am alternating today between absolute cold fury and a sort of drained, empty exhaustion.
I haven't been furious for a while. It feels kinda weird.

So I am having a blueberry muffin, and some strawberry-banana yogurt, and listening to slam poetry. Slam poetry does make everything a bit better.
(At the moment, it's Beau Sia, screaming "I write poetry to make women fall in love with me! Women who listen to this--FALL IN LOVE WITH ME!")

It's been a busy week, I guess, though it's hard to pin into concrete words. Had Julian and Leah over for dinner and long conversation, watched seventeen episodes of Hana Yori Dango(live action), started two Big Creative Endeavors, at least one of which is going to be hitting the internet in a small way in the next two weeks.
(With luck.)


I did eighty push-ups and a few more sit-ups, last night, and my torso is moaning--but oh, it's good, it's good...

And now--time to go into the cold and fetch a book drop, really, woo.
*stretches*
*winces*
*stretches again anyway*

--G

the arrival of sparrows

I am alternating today between absolute cold fury and a sort of drained, empty exhaustion.
I haven't been furious for a while. It feels kinda weird.

So I am having a blueberry muffin, and some strawberry-banana yogurt, and listening to slam poetry. Slam poetry does make everything a bit better.
(At the moment, it's Beau Sia, screaming "I write poetry to make women fall in love with me! Women who listen to this--FALL IN LOVE WITH ME!")

It's been a busy week, I guess, though it's hard to pin into concrete words. Had Julian and Leah over for dinner and long conversation, watched seventeen episodes of Hana Yori Dango(live action), started two Big Creative Endeavors, at least one of which is going to be hitting the internet in a small way in the next two weeks.
(With luck.)


I did eighty push-ups and a few more sit-ups, last night, and my torso is moaning--but oh, it's good, it's good...

And now--time to go into the cold and fetch a book drop, really, woo.
*stretches*
*winces*
*stretches again anyway*

--G

the arrival of sparrows

Me, after kendo, in hakama. This is how I'm looking these days.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1050144&l=085b1&id=501743917

YAY COMPUTER DESK AGAIN

that is all

(well, that and--this is the first winter I can recall since childhood where my bedroom has been warm enough. Wow.)

Well, it's getting on towards three in the morning and I still can't sleep. Good chance I won't be making it into Oakland until work(Sorry, Act and Fact, today I simply do not give a flying fuck).

Tired, but if I sleep I am going to have nightmares. I can feel them tentacling around in the corners of my skull. Ah, well.

So much 'Ah, well' in my brain right now. I want today to be over and there's not a 'last night' attached to it yet! At least I have clean sheets, towels, underwear. That counts for a lot.

Good things about today: Made cookies. Did laundry. Stayed warm. Talked to Dave, which is the only reason I didn't spend even more of the day in tears than I did. Talking to Dave makes many things better. Stretched a bit. Got to watch a lot of Hana Yori Dango, which it turns out I quite love. Read some of a Japanese newspaper, that was kinda cool. Cleaned up a lot of my room, washed dishes, and for the first time in months my winter blanket is clean, which is good because it is snowing.

bad things about today: Throat hurts. Back hurts. Still don't have my computer desk. No winter shoes. Scalp itches and the shower is being weird.
Confessed growing(still not overwhelming thank god)love to someone who does not love me.


Long day.

--G

Had my first tournament-ish bout, yesterday. That was interesting.
(Well, the really interesting part was when it was over, and abruptly the room was full of noise. The 'during' bits might have taken place in an entirely silent, entirely empty place. That was kinda neat. I always wondered how a player could hear the judges, when there's so much *noise* but it turns out that the judges and the kiai of my opponent were really the only things I could hear at all, and those things very clearly indeed.)
(I got my ass handed to me, of course.)

Tired of being mortally tired.

Did five hours of kendo yesterday(well, four and a half) and played some really nice people. Got to learn from Ariga-Sensei for a bit(cool!) and then noticed that Ishii-san(Wataru Ishii-san's mother, Ishii-san the Elder)'s men had come entirely untied, so I went over to warn her; she was being motodachi for a bunch of folks that didn't even have hakama yet. She reached back to feel the himo dangling all the way to the ground, and she said "Oh, really?" and grabbed me by the arm, maneuvered me into her position. "You!"
So I was motodachi for half an hour or so, and got hit in the head over and over and over. So I opened to do, because I didn't want to teach kote when my arm already hurt pretty badly, and I received an almighty whack right across my right breast. To be expected! And only fair, considering the depth of my own ineptitude. I have definitely delivered no few really awful, too-hard strikes to people that I actually really love, so it's payback that I get it from strangers...

*bleary*
and now I am going back to sleep.

Had my first tournament-ish bout, yesterday. That was interesting.
(Well, the really interesting part was when it was over, and abruptly the room was full of noise. The 'during' bits might have taken place in an entirely silent, entirely empty place. That was kinda neat. I always wondered how a player could hear the judges, when there's so much *noise* but it turns out that the judges and the kiai of my opponent were really the only things I could hear at all, and those things very clearly indeed.)
(I got my ass handed to me, of course.)

Tired of being mortally tired.

Did five hours of kendo yesterday(well, four and a half) and played some really nice people. Got to learn from Ariga-Sensei for a bit(cool!) and then noticed that Ishii-san(Wataru Ishii-san's mother, Ishii-san the Elder)'s men had come entirely untied, so I went over to warn her; she was being motodachi for a bunch of folks that didn't even have hakama yet. She reached back to feel the himo dangling all the way to the ground, and she said "Oh, really?" and grabbed me by the arm, maneuvered me into her position. "You!"
So I was motodachi for half an hour or so, and got hit in the head over and over and over. So I opened to do, because I didn't want to teach kote when my arm already hurt pretty badly, and I received an almighty whack right across my right breast. To be expected! And only fair, considering the depth of my own ineptitude. I have definitely delivered no few really awful, too-hard strikes to people that I actually really love, so it's payback that I get it from strangers...

*bleary*
and now I am going back to sleep.

I have had somewhere around fifteen hours of sleep in the last three days. Am visibly quite exhausted (which does give me my mother's frail orchidlike loveliness, I rarely look so good as I do when I'm an inch from collapsing, very strange). I was lugging about my bogu bag and two shinai and bokken, schoolbooks shoved into the front mesh pocket of the bogu bag, heavy army coat slung over one arm. Just wanted to get home and sleep.

I get onto the bus, and sit down(taking up two seats, I hate doing that, but at least I was close to the back of the bus and it wasn't that full), and immediately the guy in the row behind me leans forward. "Shinais swords!" he says, and I turn to face him for a moment. Mid-thirties, really quite lovely natural orange-coppery hair, open face. Something kinda off, though. "Shinai." I correct him, affably. "Yes. I'm a kendoka."
"Where'd ya get 'em?"
"Online."
"Online? What'd they run ya?"
"This one--" I tilt the one that Jonathan and Mallory and Alex and several lovely South Dakota people bought me with my Christmas set, last year, "--is about 25. And this one--" and I nudge the bio-treated chokuto shinai, lovely thing, "--was sixty."
"Sixty! Jeez. I used to have those--I bought them here, in Oakland, and they cost me like twenty bucks."
I shrug, not wanting to get into another interminable backyard-samurai argument, really need to get my damn shinai case made up. He pauses. "You be interested in sellin' 'em?"
"No."
"No, no. Well. Okay. So what do you do with them?"
*brief pause* I'm so damn tired. I'm not looking at the guy, just want to put my face down on my bogu bag and sleep, but if I doze I'll miss my stop and be so much longer 'til I can reach my futon.
"I do kendo." Didn't I say that already? I think I did.
"Oh, kindo? Neat. I used to study stuff with a policeman, like, he was my Sensei. Karotee and stuff."
"Cool."
I stop talking. So tired.
"So I used to collect those. Shinais swords. And--what's that one--do you ever fight, with, like, the swords, with the prongs? Shinai?"
"...you mean sai?"
"Sai! Yeah. Sai."
"No. I just practice kendo."
"Kindo. Yeah."
Silence. For a moment.
"So--you look like you've been through a lot."
"I've been helping a friend with his med school application, and haven't gotten a lot of sleep lately."
"Oh. You should do that. Forty winks." He grabs my upper arm, briefly, just with the tips of his fingers, and I pull away; if he'd done more than that I probably would have shouted at him.
I don't say anything, and for twenty seconds there is blessed silence.
"You have a beautiful ponytail. I wish I had the patience to do my hair like that." And he reaches out and touches it over the back of the seat. It's in a three-strand braid, takes less than thirty seconds to do. I pull forward a bit, lean on my bogu bag, instead of saying "Fucker, don't touch my hair!" If I say anything I'm going to say too much. So I say nothing.
"So where are you going?"
"Home."
"Do you live in the Flats? Or closer to the Hill?"
I pull the cord to signal for a stop. "Closer to the Hill."
"Oh, I hope that's cheaper. I used to live in the Flats. Oh, you're getting off here?"
Hell yes, I am getting off here.
Sometimes I fear I possess too much contempt for the human race.

Went home really sick. Half-delirious, walked the five blocks or so from the bus stop to my house; tumbled into bed and slept and slept.
Problem with napping, of course, is the same as it ever has been. If I sleep outside my usual schedule, I get nightmares; and then I wake lonely.
So now I'm all out-of-sorts and wanting company, but it's cold and evening-time so there's not a lot that can be done for it.
Such is life. For now, more Raisin Bran and maybe the second Nana movie...

Things that annoy:
Cranky fire alarm, announcing its dying battery
Too little sleep
Cold weather when I want to take a nap in the park
Not having time for food.

Things that please:
Warm blankets
Cool air (from which to hide, under warm blankets)
Sparrows
Big green woolen coat
The surprising smell of baking bread where there should be none
Synaesthesia; the various people-smells of cloves, burning wood, honeysuckle.

Halloween photos!
Lookee lookee lookee!



I am particularly happy with this one. Even if my play-swordsmanship is embarrassing, Sheik is damn cool.

Halloween photos!
Lookee lookee lookee!



I am particularly happy with this one. Even if my play-swordsmanship is embarrassing, Sheik is damn cool.

I can not get the song from Lucky Star out of my head. I've seen like a single episode of it through, and found it intensely annoying, though I've been assured that if I gave it another chance it'd grab me; that song, though!

(I am having a lot of fun with this, thanks to Harold:




Gives me something to listen to at work, anyway, though really I haven't spent more than about five minutes throwing music in there yet.)

I really don't want to be working today. Saturday is my only day of rest, lately. But I need to pay rent, and having taken a day off sick means I really do need to work today. I had expected to only have to work until two, but no--gotta stay 'til five. Long shift. Ah, well.

Last night, I was so tired that all I did was try and sort out my apartment a bit more, and sleep. Was gonna go to Julian's party; didn't have the energy. Was gonna go watch Harold and some other martial arts kids spar; he didn't have the energy, either, so he stayed home too. Nobody I know is getting enough sleep these days, and everyone is sick.

But hell. Only another five hours and some, right?

I can not get the song from Lucky Star out of my head. I've seen like a single episode of it through, and found it intensely annoying, though I've been assured that if I gave it another chance it'd grab me; that song, though!

(I am having a lot of fun with this, thanks to Harold:




Gives me something to listen to at work, anyway, though really I haven't spent more than about five minutes throwing music in there yet.)

I really don't want to be working today. Saturday is my only day of rest, lately. But I need to pay rent, and having taken a day off sick means I really do need to work today. I had expected to only have to work until two, but no--gotta stay 'til five. Long shift. Ah, well.

Last night, I was so tired that all I did was try and sort out my apartment a bit more, and sleep. Was gonna go to Julian's party; didn't have the energy. Was gonna go watch Harold and some other martial arts kids spar; he didn't have the energy, either, so he stayed home too. Nobody I know is getting enough sleep these days, and everyone is sick.

But hell. Only another five hours and some, right?

Just glanced over at the next seat, here in the Hillman Library Computer Lab, and there was a gal reading some online paper in an Asiatic script. Is that Japanese? I thought. Saw no katakana or hiragana, so instantly corrected myself. No, it's Tyuugokugo.
And half a beat later--Did I really just think the Japanese word for 'Chinese?'
Did I actually think 'iie, Tyuugokugo desu yo?'

I am thinking of switching my desktop system to Fedora or Ubuntu. Ideas?
(There is no particular reason for this; I'm just interested in learning.)




Cloud-age symphony...

...so, I just picked up my favourite blue shirt. It's slim, has light-shattering flowers on it just over the left breast, but not cabbage-roses, just a very tasteful, daggery, five-petalled thing. The shirt is dark, dark blue of the sort that makes my skin seem more gold. My clothing is everywhere on the floor, right now, since I haven't any hangers yet and I've only just moved in, so I can't be certain of its cleanliness--typical check is, bring it to the nose and test for scent, right?
Little inhalation is something familiar and delightful, but not the me-smell that means it's been worn. Deep, deep breath--what is that?
Oh. It's shoaizome!
The dye used on bogu and gi and hakama! This shirt was in my bogu bag, as an after-practice to-change-into garment, but I never used it.
So I'm gonna go to work smelling like bogu. Mmmmm.

*facepalm*

...so, I just picked up my favourite blue shirt. It's slim, has light-shattering flowers on it just over the left breast, but not cabbage-roses, just a very tasteful, daggery, five-petalled thing. The shirt is dark, dark blue of the sort that makes my skin seem more gold. My clothing is everywhere on the floor, right now, since I haven't any hangers yet and I've only just moved in, so I can't be certain of its cleanliness--typical check is, bring it to the nose and test for scent, right?
Little inhalation is something familiar and delightful, but not the me-smell that means it's been worn. Deep, deep breath--what is that?
Oh. It's shoaizome!
The dye used on bogu and gi and hakama! This shirt was in my bogu bag, as an after-practice to-change-into garment, but I never used it.
So I'm gonna go to work smelling like bogu. Mmmmm.

*facepalm*

...trying to grow knives from my own bones.
Sick today. Woke quite delirious, know I called work but not at all sure what I said. Had to skip school and work; only crept from the house to vote. Am now safely ensconced once again. Gonna curl up in my sleeping bag on my futon, as my blanket is not clean.

(the room can not possibly be as cold as it feels. Woo, fever.)

Last night after kendo the team went out to drink with Rob for his birthday(which was two days after mine), and I finally got to meet his beautiful girlfriend. Didn't stay long, though, as my fever was pretty bad. Should probably not have gone out at all, but--didn't want to just go home. Moving always makes me feel disjointed and weird, and being around them makes me settle again, provides a gnomon.

Now I am very tired. Will probably just go sleep.
Be well, my dears.

I dressed as Lord Sesshoumaru, Taiyoukai, His Elegance Perfection in Death, Lord of the West and Master of the House of the Moon, for my 26th birthday yesterday.
Went to the Filipino Student Association's Halo Halo Halloween, and had Halo Halo, and hung out with Harold and Leah and Alex and Julian, and for a ridiculously brief span of time Mallory; then Alex, Julian and Mallory all bailed (saying they'd return, but never actually managing it), so Harold and Leah and I went out to dinner, and then to his place. Hung out talking and such until very very late indeed; and then I slept and had strange dreams.

(I can not decide if it was a good birthday; being bailed on, as well as a couple of other things, was very upsetting. But Harold and Leah were wonderful. And Julian did make me a magnificent cake.)

Today we all woke late, and had breakfast at Eat'n'Park, and then moved a good deal of my stuff into my new place. I am not sleeping there tonight, as we didn't manage to move everything; instead, I'm spending this last night in Regent Square, making lasagna and mooching internet.

Tired, but not sleepy...hm. What's a girl to do?

Fanfiction!

...and people, and the space between them.
This is all of the world that I can see.


I got something like three hours of sleep, and even being awake makes me nauseated. Am feeling as drained as one only gets through frustrated crying-oneself-to-sleep, which I must admit has not happened to me in a while.
(Stupid to cry because nothing is changing in one particular sphere of my life, because this holding pattern I've stuck myself in seems to be absolute, and while I can have very good friends, there's no one who's attracted to me beyond fleeting body-stuff. And yet. I am tired of unrequited affection, of the way that I seem to hemorrhage love.)
Perhaps if I went back to surrounding myself with total assholes, I wouldn't have this problem. I never had it so much before my friends were good and shining people. Part of the reason I work to have good friends is because, when one is surrounded by people who excel, one begins to excel; but this does not seem somehow to be the case with me.

Ah, well. The seasons turn, and I remain an idiot.

Gen needs to learn how to turn her heart on and off at will, it seems.
Anyone who can tell me how this is accomplished may have a chocolate cake.

I just finished the first story I've been happy with at all in something like five years. It's short, less than four thousand words, and while it is visibly flawed I think there's room for elegance in it, so if you can help me batter it into shape I'd much appreciate it.
It's metafantasy, springing from a question I had about Peter Pan, and how his habit of taking little girls away for months at a time would age; but it turned into something considerably different than I expected. I still might write that other story sometime.
If you will lend me a hand, just comment here, and I'll send you a link to the GoogleDoc, or send it to you as an attachment. Thanks!
:)

I will tell you what to look for.
What lies ahead, if you follow me.
You cannot say I was not honest from the start.

I will take you from your home.
I will strip away your ignorance
rip the bleeding scales from your eyes--
--but not from theirs.
I will give you stories
new words, new ideas
that you won't be able to explain without the words.

I will show you beauty
in things that they
(mother, father, sister,
lover, cousin, enemy, friend)
can't even see.

(This is what magic is.)

The thing about this--
the thing about me--
is, you come to it willingly, so
you can't undo it.
And while you can give it away
(to brother, lover, wife,
it doesn't get smaller when you share),
you have to do so knowing
you're stealing their homes away, too.
And they'll have to leave their families behind.
Like changelings do, or kidnap victims, or the dead.

(This is what learning is.
Don't think it makes you better.)

The thing to be aware of, is
climbing to the top of the mountain
does give you a better view
but not necessarily better company.
So tell me--are you sure?

I'm very tired today, and my throat has the beginnings of soreness.
But every stitch of laundry, save what I wore yesterday, is clean; and today I am wearing nothing at all that is not red(unless you count my garter belt, which is a rather delicate pink, and my long long socks are red- and charcoal-striped). Tonight I sew my costume a bit, if I can, and study for my Japanese mid-term, and sort bags and bags of books for easier travel. Ten days, and I will be in my new room in the South Side. I ache for my soft dream-tinted futon, and my candles, and my posters, and my books.


Oh! I just remembered that I have an apple in my bag!
Food today is also red on the outside.