Midnight in the garden of books

I check on my vegetable garden nearly every day, and every day I come away a little sadder. The storm that rocked us so heavily last weekend left most of my plants in tatters. I mean that literally, the leaves of my cabbage looked like the clothing of a poor orphan in 18th century London. My tomato plants, while miraculously still standing, look battered and war torn. One plant is growing two tiny tomatoes, but otherwise not a single new growth as far as I can tell. I wonder if they will grow at all.

My pepper plants are doing alright, I suppose. Some of them are growing peppers, though some of them remain tragically barren. Some of my basil plants struggle just to remain up right, while some are still growing, plodding along with strength and guile. I haven’t harvested any of them yet, though I very much want to.

I admit, I was not fully prepared for the life of a gardener/farmer. It is taxing. I cried over my damaged garden more than I think some of my neighbors cried over their broken fences, damaged houses and uprooted trees. Perhaps I am too emotionally invested. I don’t mind eating their fruits, but I am sorely wounded when mother nature gets callous.

The Fourthof July came and went this year with little, excuse the pun, fanfair. I’m not big into fireworks, I find them noisy and annoying as most of the people in my city set them off for a week before the holiday and at least a week after, so you’re always entreated to banging and booming. The cats get fidgety, and there is always so much debris and waste littering the sides of the road. I don’t get it, I’d rather just grill food and celebrate that way, if at all.

I have purchased a few new books that I will aprise you of.

Two of them are by Jane Austen. “Sense & Sensibility” and “Pride & Prejudice”  I have seen many a-movie that these books have been made into, but I haven’t read them, which I deeply regret and feel a sense of shame at having not even tried to read them. I love the time period and all the authors in it, and I love Jane Austen. So I have no idea what took me so long. I have read “Northanger Abby” which is a real treat to read. Parodies of the time period are funny and I enjoy them. I can’t help it.

The other is a surprising find. When I was at The Bookworm getting my new David Sedaris book signed, I looked over their sci-fi section while I was waiting. It was ridiculously small, smaller than any of my bookshelves at home and embarrassingly understocked, but they did have one new book that I was curious about. I liked the cover art, which I think does it for me when it comes to finding books I’ve never heard of. It is sort of the color and texture of tea stained parchment with a pencil and ink drawing of a hot air balloon with a boy clinging to a rope as it flies high into the air. I attempted to commit the name of the book to memory so I could look it up when I got home, but of course the moment we left the store the book’s author and title flew right out of my head.

That is, until I discovered it, again, inside the Boarders bookstore last night. Having a 25% off coupon helped with the decision, and I got it right away, lest I forget the name again. It’s called “The Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt. It is absolutely delightful. “A fantastical tale of high adventuring, low-life rogues, and orphans on the run.” 

Seriously, I don’t think our society uses the words “low-life rogues” nearly enough as it is.

The Society of Secret Holders

 

The first time I discovered A Perfect Circle I was living in Boston, barely 21 and experiencing a change in my life I can only describe as “pre-Goth-Girl” with all its trappings and broodings. I palmed the CD from my roommate and listened to it on repeat for hours. When I’d worn out my borrowing welcome, I purchased the CD on my own and started the listening rampage over again. I’d lie on my bed, leg draped halfway off the mattress, hand curled over my eyes, listening with my whole body. It spoke to me. 3 Libras was everything I knew about the world, everything I believed. A few weeks later I’d discover POE, which was like discovering myself, profound and debilitating. Just a few weeks after that I was dressing like an extra in Blade and waxing poetic about my place in the world. I’m only a little embarrassed for myself, because during that time period, despite the ridiculous clothing, I learned more about who I was and who I could make myself out to be than I would at any other junction in my life. I also discovered how pliable other people are, and how manipulation was an art I had a particular knack for. I knew early on that plying my dark talent meant I was destined for stardom amongst journalists and advertisers, which was fine by me. Stardom of any sort was good enough; I wasn’t picky about the destination.

 

I’m paralyzed by those two years spent amongst Boston’s beautiful history and dark underbelly. I have stories in spades, and yet they remain untold, stored up inside like some terrible emotion. Those stories are toxic, the best kind to be told I suppose, but not by me. Somehow by not telling them, they remain just that, stories. Not non-fiction, not my life, not my terrible choices or the things I’d seen. Fairy tales, maybe, or at least tales of caution. Careful kids, this could’ve been you.

 

Which I realize is ridiculous. It wasn’t nearly as terrible as my mind spins it to be, and I certainly came out of it just fine. And yet, for all my love of creative non-fiction, this is the one area that seems off limits. My very secret diary. They aren’t just my secrets, they belong to others too. A society of secret holders. A lifetime difference and with no desire to return.

 

When I returned from Boston to Omaha, it took only a few days of being back to feel the heaviness disappear. Like a shroud being drawn back from my face, I felt like a person for the first time in a long time. Not some marionette. At some point, driving on the interstate, I made the decision to not talk about my time in Boston, to put it away, to keep to myself. To not have to face those things or those people or those moments that I regreted. I wanted to believe, I still do, that I regret nothing. But that’s not true. I regret things. I don’t hate them or fret about them, but I am not quite ready to profit from them either. I’m not quite ready to reunite that section of time with the rest of my life. Like the missing link between the truth and the fairy tale, I’m not ready to start connecting the dots.

 

Some CDs, including Mer de Noms disappeared into boxes under my bed, recalling moments and time that I had no interest in returning to. It took me several years before I could listen to POE again, and even to this day the emotion it welled up inside of me is no longer there. Music is the great emotional memory of every person in the world. Hearing a song can take us back to a moment, back to a person or a time or a thing that is potent. An anchor in time. A Perfect Circle takes me right back to my bedroom, draped across my bed, emotions welling, mind racing, a new persona roaring out of the gloam.

 

Yesterday I placed 3 Libras on my iPod play list. Reluctantly. Like a ticking time bomb. Hitting shuffle, I never know when it’ll appear or if I’ll listen to the whole thing before a shaking finger pushes the next button. I have a sinking feeling this was a bad idea. Knowing that it’s there, waiting to be heard. One out of 204 songs could unlock it all. Damn it.

A dinner for two with pictures

I made dinner on Thursday to celebrate my husband and my first anniversary. It was pretty low key and after dinner and dessert Ryan went back to studying for his big insurance exam tomorrow. But it was

 still nice.

We did get some Super Smash Brothers Brawl in before bed though.

The couple who brawls together, stays together.

I made asparagus and baby portabello mushroom pasta with homemade sauce over cavatapi pasta with a side of organic roasted garlic bread topped with balsamic vinegar and garlic. It was divine. I used a little bit of red pepper flakes to heat it up and combined with all the spices, it was a small taste of Tuscany at our fingertips. Heaven.

The dessert was not made by me. I picked it up at the store. White cake with sugar free raspberry jello and whip cream with strawberries and chocolate syrup (I did that part). The whole thing was made of yum. I wish we could have had wine with it but it wasn’t in the cards.

It was nice, even if it was low key. I’m excited about celebrating hardcore in Vegas next week. I’ve got to tell you, the idea of spending 6 days sans Internet has already given me the shakes. I’d be lying if I tell you I haven’t looked into renting a laptop.

I’m so ashamed of my addictions.

.

I’ll never have my own hellspawn.

I have a six year old brother who came and stayed the night at our house last night. Mostly he comes over to play my video games, but I think he likes me well enough.

 Still, he’s a very well behaved little boy. We went to lunch at a kid friendly place and he didn’t go wild. He went to the store with me and held onto the side of the cart as we walked around and did not go wild. He didn’t raise his voice or beg for random cheap toys. He’s a good kid, all in all.

He needs to learn to read. He’s having trouble doing so. We’re not sure why. It’s not that he’s not smart enough, quite the contrary. He just…can’t seem to focus long enough to go over more than one word. He finds it daunting and this scares me. At his age I was reading already and loving every minute of it. I don’t want him to turn out like his brothers and sister (step siblings of mine) who can barely read past the back of a cereal box.

One day and one night with a six year old is all the reminder I need to know that I will never want children. I have to admit, on more than one occasion, I wanted to shove him off the ottoman and take back control of my Wii for selfish, greedy, ownership reasons. When I stumbled over toys this morning scattered around my beautiful dining room, I swore and kicked and growled about it. Even more than the annoyances of children, is this horrible unknown…what if he doesn’t read? What if they have to hold him back a year and it snaps his self-esteem in twain? What if he grows up socially deformed and unable to form lasting relationships? What if he takes up punk rock and cheap heroin? What if he doesn’t graduate high school? What if he never amounts to anything? Holy crap, what if he becomes a serial killer?

I could never be a parent, perhaps, not just for the selfish reasons, but for the fact I’d be watching every move they make, trying to analyze whether or not I’ve spawned an artist or an America’s Most Wanted.

She slays orcs on the weekends.

I was 21 and had just moved to Boston, MA from Nebraska. I wasn’t unfamiliar with roleplaying, but I had never done it or known anyone who had done it. When I was in high school, I knew an older student who played Magic. I did not know what that meant other than when someone would say “He plays Magic,” it was always accompanied with an eye roll or a smirk.

So when my new roommate told me that I needed to play in their weekly D&D game, I was a bit dubious. D&D? Me? Really? But I’m willing to try out nearly anything, especially at that time in my life, so what the hell. I made my first character, a rogue half-elf, the starting character of every shy girl. My first session was a disaster.

I got stage fright. Right at the beginning when we were describing our character, I froze up and couldn’t even whisper her eye color. I ran out of the room and had to take a breather. I couldn’t imagine the draw of such a game where terror could freeze my throat like that. How silly I was.

Now, many years later, I know D&D better than any other game out there, and I’ve tried some. I can put together a great character pretty quickly, and I can even do voices if I put my heart into it. There’s something satisfying about slaying orcs on the weekends.

My husband also loves roleplaying, it’s one of the things that brought us together. He leans back sometimes and tells me stories about the old days- the days before he played sometimes. The days of Gary Gygax and TSR. He reminds me that Gary hated version 3.0, which stands to reason that he hated my favorite version, 3.5. I like listening to his stories. I feel part of a tradition. A group. A club. A cult. But not one of those scary ones. The ones where every eats too much pizza, drinks too much soda, and heroically saves peasants from goblin hordes.

While I never met Gary Gygax myself, his legacy is all over our house. I was incredibly hurt when I heard he had died. The last time I felt this way about the passing of a celebrity, it was Hunter S. Thompson’s shocking death. So few people experiment on the world, it sucks when they have to leave it.

Gary built a world for me to play in. I’ll always remember that.

Sketchjournal: Scooters guy

Feb 19, 2008

Tuesday I hit the Scooters coffee shop on the way to work and the new barista had the most awesome cartoon face ever. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I just liked the shape of his person.

So I painted him. Inspiration comes from everywhere. I ordered a caramel dolche muffin and almond skinny steamer.

The Death of (Sub) Culture? A bedtime story

Between the years 2000 and 2002, I was a model of saturated goth-club culture. I had settled in Boston, MA for a binge of culture and shock-influence. I changed my hair, my attitude, my body shape, my clothes. I logged on to my first blog and began writing like I meant everything I said and did. My music adjusted but remained my choice.

For a while I worked at the Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend as one of the costume people. I became very good at drawing the tattoos for Frank. I wore a lot of black, but in inventive ways. In leather. In satin. With safety pins and barrettes. I owned three dog collars: One black leather with spikes, one maroon velvet, one black velvet with rhinestones. I owned black leather boots that went up to my knees and took me like ten minutes to lace. I purchased Urban Decay brand make-up and let out a creative center that seeped into every aspect of my life. I clubbed. I danced. I kissed strangers. Well, sometimes.

This was all well and good when I went out. I worked in a law office during the day and wore my jammies around the house at night. I wasn’t a doom and gloomer. I was addicted to the creative culture: the music, the comics, the movies, the books, the self expression. I dressed up like favorite literary characters and was applauded for it. That was just the way the sub-culture was for me and so many others. People jammed packed in my favorite club, all lights and darkness and thumpinghammeringsweating in my chest. For the next few years when I moved back home, I kept up with the creative culture, but not the clubbing. That changed. There was no outlet. I retired most of my clothes from that time period. I slid into punk rock. It fit like a glove.

The other day I was speaking with my husband and we questioned where the current subcultures were. It seemed that even the mallgoths were disappearing as Torrid took up the motto that Pink was the new Black and Hot Topic decided to turn to music and light and abandon it’s intimate hold on subcultures all together. Our music is lacking in distinction. There’s no big alternative, punk rock, gothic or even sappy pop girls and boy bands. It’s as if everyone with their fingers on the pulse of culture has taken a deep breath and held it. Waiting. “What are they waiting for?” my husband asked. I considered.

Most subcultures are formed from opposition to a more common culture trend. Things are at a standstill right now, wondering at where things are going to go next. Newmusic, which I hesitate to refer to, accompanied strongly with rolling eyes, is predominantly created on tv by television producers and a studio audience. The era of bad chick-lit has petered out. Disgusting, shameful, narcissistic George Bush era of government is crawling beaten and embarrassed towards the finish line. New messages and new candidates are fighting to take the place, promising something new: maybe not better, but different. Not the same old thing.

So what is the opposition? What are the current culture norms to oppose? My husband and I pondered but came up with no good answers. “Have we really become a culture of soundbites?” my husband asked, “Plugging in to YouTube, not to get the real thing, just 15 seconds of the best parts. Culture without context. Christ.” If my husband was a smoker, he’d have bent his head down and taken a long drag, hiding his disappointment. I think we both had wanted to exist in a different time period. Something else.

Something inspiring. I miss the music of the 90s where everyone sounded different. Strong women sang strong vocals and didn’t sound whiny or out of touch while doing it. It’s a culture norm to pretend to think of everyone as equal, regardless of race, class, age, sex, or hair color. So who do you fight against when everyone is bobbing their head and plugging their ears and whistling a jaunty tune written by a slimy fame seeker on American Idol?

My 13 year old sister’s eyes are dead. She doesn’t care enough to pick a subculture. She wades through with a “Gimme more, I deserve it. I’m individual. I’m unique. I’m guiltless” attitude that makes me recoil in horror. I don’t want to save her. I want to run away. Invasion of the witless.

The synapses aren’t firing, they’re taking a nap.

Homicidal Sweethearts and the Art of Creepy Little Girls

     I became interested in creepy little girls a long time ago. And while I realize this line should mark the beginning credits of a particularly unsettling episode of Law and Order: SVU, it is none the less, true.

In movies, it was always the creepy little children that bothered me the most. At it’s heart I suppose this fear comes from the idea that children are supposed to start out innocent, untainted, free of the troubles of the adult world. They represent all that was once good about ourselves, all that is blind in the world. So to see them corrupted, smarter than the average 6 year old, unsettlingly strange and dripping with potential malice…sends my skin crawling. I love it.

The first time I drew a creepy little girl, it was 2005 and I was at a coffee shop called Caffeine Dreams enjoying the afternoon with some of my friends. We met here religiously and poured inspiration and creation into our writing and art. Art, for me, was new. I could barley draw a person let alone paint, but I was not deterred. I drew on post-it notes and scraps of paper, anything I could.

The first few drawings were like stand alone comics. One scene, usually, representing me as a child. That’s where I got most of my ideas. I was a fearsome, ferocious little girl-all the worst and best traits of an only, spoilt child. My friends loved them because I think they did for them what they do for me- inspire the horror lover in us all. There’s nothing scarier than a pretty little 7 year old demon in pig tails.

Now I have the Homicidal Sweethearts to unleash my creepiness upon. I still can only barely draw (but at least now I can paint) but I get the job done.

When I was very young I wanted to be like Stephen King- imaginative and frightening. Now, I suppose, in my own way, I’m working that out.