#uncoffeed...

There’s a lot of uproar in our country right now.  Lines are blurred as everyone tries to stick with the status quo: choose one label for yourself, and go at it hard. Choose my label, so that our team will win ; there's strength in numbers!  Sorry, guys, our bodies and our psyches don’t work like that. I am several things: female, white, not white, human, writer, artist, introvert, pacifist, arrogant, heterosexual…I make a damn fine Venn diagram. Someone named Joe Manion once said, “We give up something when a choice is made.” Write this down somewhere, because he deserves credit for his words and his observation is solid. How, then, do you choose one label for yourself? If you choose human, do you give up your gender? If you choose pacifist, do you give up your right to defend equality? Very few people on this planet are comprised of a singular race or cultural genetic makeup; more people spit in the tube every day and are surprised by their DNA results. ...

So I did this thing I have been avoiding for years.  I did it because my promoter, Moe, told me it was the right thing to do and I believe her. She knows her stuff. This is me on Twitter . This is the biggest thing I've done since getting a smartphone. I'm still Android - be gentle with me. There's nothing left but Snapchat to be conquered. I'm afraid.  So if you have any advice or suggestions, please let me know. This picture, by the way, was taken from Moe's kitchen. She had a jazz band in there. We'll discuss that later.

The more ideas I have, and the more I work out the math in my own mind to find them feasible, the more I realize how much I've shut myself down in the years prior to 2018.  It's a little galling, but I know I didn't do all of it to myself. Also I realize how much I have always been exactly what I am. This is not a post about casting blame. We're going to talk about discovery. In 1975, I was ten years old. For the second time, my school had me evaluated (to see if something was wrong with me.) I met with a guidance counselor weekly and she gave me various tasks that didn't make sense, but I performed them well. She typed my parents a letter that begins: "The most apt phrase to describe our most delightful Debbie is that she 'bites off more than she can chew.' Although this really isn't the case." I love this line. But then she follows with "Deb could do the work if she'd like to but perhaps she gets more attention if she...

Despite coming off the ocean, the wind was hot. It was baked like challa and it twisted through the oven of concrete and tilted brick buildings. It bounced over the wretched pile of rocks and earth that comprised the town square after the earthquake. Nobody had the fortitude to clean it up. Squalid children played in the mudholes (there had been no rain for weeks, and thus only the very worst of possibilities as to whence the mud had come.) Dogs as dirty and thin as the children wafted in and out and over the rockpile, like physical manifestations of the devil-breathed wind. America stepped carefully between the loose bricks of the street, as though she would be able to preserve the sheen on her freshly-polished shoes.  In defiance of the heat she was fully dressed - splendidly so - in pitch black: from her patent leather shoes to her stockings to her tight-fitting dress and the hat with a blackbird sleeping on it. She did not wipe the beads of sweat that gathered under the ha...

Addiction is a real problem in our country - Drama Addiction. Facebook, media, entertainment, even our government are all drama-fed.  Like any addictive thing - pizza, drugs, lovers, political scandal - we feel the absence when we aren't surrounded by it.  And we go looking for it.  Looking for something because you are desperately craving it will inevitably lead to trouble.  You already know this is true, and now I'm calling you out.  The stats on my blog show you like Drama Addiction better than you like Diet or Psychology. So. Collectively, we're being sucked down the drain of drama, and taking our nation with us. We live in a reality TV show. Drama's insidious, though; it sneaks in under the guise of love and friendship.  It starts by listening to someone's problems.  There's a level of vanity involved when you offer advice.  Usually there is mutual feel-good, and the next time one of you has problems, you'll get together again....

This is how I spent my weekend - I’m still digesting the juxtaposition. Here are two movies that each have a finger on the theme of phony identity, and that's pretty much all they have in common. I think there's some accuracy to the perspective of the black protagonist in Get Out. I can't say for sure, because I'm pretty white. Very White. White as **** (thank you, Moneypenny, for always answering the awkward questions honestly). See the movie; it's really well done. Especially if you identify as white you should watch this movie. Go ahead and get mad about it, or see the brilliance. If you haven't seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, any spoiling done here is not my problem. The thing you need to know is this quote:   "She's a phony, but she's a real phony." I love that line. Holly is no longer fulfilling her birthright. Holly Golightly, for reasons not explained in the movie, saw a need to be something different from the per...

Last night I was at Holiday Inn Central in Washington, DC , but this time as a guest. Big things happened to me in the 12 years I worked there: a life ended and a new one began, and then that life died, too. I’m three reincarnations past the point where I left that building and the people who remain; there was a bit of family reunion to the visit. I had to explain a few times how I was no longer married to that Pakistani guy. I was in town to see Henry Rollins (Henry Fucking Rollins!) present his vacation photos . It turns out he takes pictures like I do – of moments, not just people and things. Sometimes things, though, because sometimes things are funny, like Black Flag shirts on the other side of the world. Let him tell that story. He started with the last time he’d been at Lincoln Theater. The notoriously tough DC audience (because DC people are smart, he said, but I know they are dry as fuck – you’re nice, HFR) kept looking at their phones like they were bored.  So...

Bells tinkled somewhere, and children laughed while they chased a dog with sticks. The dust sparkled magically as one passed through the Prayer Gate - it was the visual counterpart to the tinkling of unseen bells, thought Peter. He  moved slowly forward. The heavy thud of his own boots, muffled by the dust which was everywhere, and the lumbering walk of a former soldier who was no longer carrying enough weight on his shoulders - these were nonexistent to him as he moved forward, numbly as if carried by a conveyor trolley on a movie set. Sights and sounds detached and tunneled around him. He felt himself shrinking smaller and smaller. Like the small boy he once was, he tugged at the soiled garment of a blind man who sat under a sparse tree next to the Prayer Gate. "Can you tell me my future?" he queried, putting a sandwich into the blind man's gnarled hand. The blind man's donkey idly lipped the sandwich as the man returned to Peter a few-toothed grin. ...

This is something you need to know about me: I am my own law of physics when it comes to dancing.  I can't lead, either - I just spin.  Okay, maybe it's not just dancing.  Yeah, pretty sure it's everything.  Having arrived here several times in my life, I am no longer interested in trying to adjust.  I'm good with spinning. Each of us, if we were paying attention, has lived several lifetimes in the skin we now own.  Maybe it's better to say we're leasing it - we will give it back.  The skin, the bones, everything will ultimately return to ash and dust; no chemicals can stop the process forever.  See this map on BBC: we have millions of years to work on it.    Nothing is permanent. Take a few minutes and sort your history - not into chapters, but into the lives you have lived.  The easy way is to note each allegorical death.  Less easy is to realise that each death is followed by a rebirth, messy, painful, embarrassing....

I don't feel like going outside, but I have this thing to do I really want to do.  You know what an introver...maybe you don't, exactly. You might think an introvert is a standoffish person who likes doing things alone, but that's only part of the story.  The part you need to know is this:  Let the introvert do her thing, but keep communication open - even if there isn't any sound.  The introvert doesn't want to be alone; she just can't control the energy draining from her. Interaction is an app that saps the battery. When I first moved to Annandale, VA, I realised I could easily fall into a pattern of going from home to work to home.  I researched to find people I could deal with doing things I actually like.  It is useless to force yourself to do things you dislike just to connect with humans - no, it really is. See above comment on sapped battery. So I found this book club , and we're reading one book for over a year now: Gödel, ...

Djinn This is what I do Shutter tight the world's eyes Strip down to what's behind the mask Turn the water free, hot like fire, A memory of whence I came This is what I do Drop magic in the pool at my feet Vetiver like the earth holds me down Exotic acacia gathers far corners With calm hands from another lost life This is what I do Inhale the burning mist Press my wet face against the wall Escape via space between cold metal And demons washed down the drain They can't see me here.

There are catchphrases out there in webland, circling the lamp like tattered moths:  Dumbing-down of America, Alt-Left, Alt-Right, others I largely ignore, but also this one: Scientists Prove Something You Wanted to Believe. Clickbait .  The popular profile of science is twisting like a plastic pinwheel from the fair. Actual science seems to be dying...or is it? There's good work being done. How do we filter it down to the America that watches Reality TV?   “But the results are the results,” I exclaimed. “Shouldn’t we just let the data tell the story?” He shook his head. “That’s not how science works, Chris. Data don’t tell stories, scientists tell stories.” - Chris Chambers, The 7 Deadly Sins of Psychology  The British Psychological Society published Chris Chambers' own version of the story:   A Vaccine Against Bias - The Psychologist... The article will show you the foundation under the dumbing-down of sensationalist scientific articles so t...

Today my grandson didn't want to go to school.  He's 4 years old. I was also 4, maybe 5, when I first didn't want to go to school; when I wanted to stay home and keep my life the way it was. I didn't want to hatch out of the egg. My parents, like my daughter probably did with my grandson, cracked that sucker for me and dumped me out. Get dressed, to go work - this is what the rest of your life is going to look like. Start getting used to it now, kid. Half a century later, I am still scarred by the bullying that started in kindergarten.  Back then the  idea that a child might not be emotionally ready to socialise was newly-formed.  The idea that parents needed affordable day-care, though, is old as time.  My mom was fully prepared by her public education to be a top-notch housewife and then she gave birth to imperfect children (we all do, no matter how perfect we want our children to be.) Maybe she should have kept me home another year, and sent me to school w...

I am edified by your mere existence, yet it's complicated - It's like wrong bodies starcrossing parallel paths in misplaced timelines and incongruous events - these are inconvenient facts.

I miss being in love...and by this I don't mean being enamoured with another person like I am with my boyfriend Edgar Ramirez or Scarlett Johanssen's arse (that doesn't make me gay; it makes me human).  I miss reciprocal love, the synergistic reaction that goes beyond mutual respect and mutual attraction. In love, like in a hot tub, with another person who truly gets you and truly wants to be there.  I realise that there are people out there who haven't ever been in that hot tub, and I remember to count myself lucky.  Is it really better, though, to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?  Can I remove from history the person who came up with that misleading one-liner?  I did have that love, and he died, and we broke up before he died.  I broke up with a brain tumor; it was complicated. But he remains, through many subsequent crash-landings, the one person who accepted me for what I was:  all my brillian...

It's crazy-making how impossible it seems to create a set of boundaries for society and then adhere to that set. Let us first define society as a set of self-aware beings operating within the same boundary.  The boundary, for purpose of our discussion, is whatever it takes to enclose all the sentient beings. We're good, right?  We're good until someone steps over the line, or starts drawing boundaries where they are more comfortable. Face it: if all people were in agreement on what constitutes decency, we wouldn't need laws. If we were capable of enforcing our own laws, we wouldn't need enforcers.  There is an obvious inherent flaw, and I would really like to start with everybody recognising the obvious. Everybody. Nobody is better than the next sentient being at judging, better at abiding, better at compassion; we are all flawed. And yet we still judge. The only thing that makes one being better than the next is effort: whether a being keeps trying. I...

...so when this knife set showed up at my door for Christmas, I painted it. I'm still working on it - it's the gift that keeps on giving. It seems his name is Martin. Hm.

I'm wrestling, as always, with art - I have bruises. It's wrong to merely follow a set of instructions; it needs to rise from my gorge on its own volition, force me to vomit it out. These are too many words. But when you birth children, you want at some point for others to find them as wonderful as you do. And you listen carefully to the judg(e)ments made over them. And when they are not separate humans from yourself but things which live only in clay or on paper , you have the option to act on those judgments, or not. You have the opportunity which you don't with human children: you can adjust them, make them closer to perfect. It's tempting, and the struggle begins. A-grades were always easy for me.  I knew the correct answers: I gave truth and it met the parameters set forth by the instructors.  I felt the envy of my peers, and for one split second it felt good before it turned ugly. A part of me wants to recapture that feeling and I start craving, manipulat...

Our children have left us for the cities. We Nenets have migrated across Yamal Peninsula for generations. We take care to not disturb the beings that live around us. Yamal means End of the World . All the way to Kara Sea there are low shrubs and wind-stripped birches. There are bogs, lichen, howling winds, reindeer, and us. We move north in summer so our reindeer can graze on fresh pastures. We return south when the Ob River freezes over. I have given birth to three sons; one died an infant and two went to the city. Once they were no longer afraid of the Communists, our children gave up herding reindeer for what they called civilization. They went to universities to learn other words than those we taught them. They speak Russian and no longer regard the spirits. My sons think I am simple because I follow reindeer with my sledge. I know other words, city words. I have no use for them. Cities have terrible stories. Our Nenets children are bewitched by bright lights...