per aspera ad astra

Prose poem in the works.

2010-03-12T12:08:00.003-05:00

In an effort to be a little more productive with my personal writing, I've been writing with pencil and paper. I do this for two reasons: not everyone wants to read my every mood in a blog (nor do they since my blogging is so infrequent) and I can get a lot more of this "creative" writing (isn't all writing creative?) done and it's more satisfying than pounding keys. Also, I can do it while waiting for Facebook to refresh which brings me to the prose poem. A friend and colleague used the word "penetralia" in one of her posts. Being the word geek that I am, I was impressed and tucked it away in my memory for use later. It ended up in the stream of consciousness that I often put down on paper to warm up for a writing session and so I made a few changes and present it to you.

Draft 2 of Nonsense and Gibberish

I find my better work is here with the soft scratch of the pencil, the fluid motion, the so fine line on the paper trail. The curve of the ess and tail of the why; a tapered tail, smartly held in the off hand. A figure stops, gazes, resplendent in its grace, while a gabardine minstrel cruises by. It is late on the docks and the bouy peals, bells pealing just for you, sweetpea my darling. Stay for a moment, and in your stasis find the mineral gem, the hard glowing core, the penetralia in perpetuity.

Dumb fun.

2010-02-15T15:34:00.001-05:00

So today's conversation of note revolved around the central premise that anyone on a gaming site who adopts the name "BigDick" is probably 12 years old, thinks he's pretty impressive, watches Star Trek, still plays Dragonball Z but gave up Pokemon because that's for kids, and are the type who either beg or outright demand that you give them gold in World of Warcraft.

You know the type. They hang around the guild just long enough to root through your vault and take choice armor and weapons then quit the guild without so much as a thank you.

We were discussing this in chat on the game Evony, a free browser-based game that is a lot like Sid Meier's "Civilization" series but with better chat capabilities and "alliances," which are like WoW guilds, where you can chat with your fellow lords and ladies. Without getting into the particulars of gameplay, another player and I started noticing strange system messages. The "System" always announces when one alliance declares war on another and the other day I laughed to see one announcement that said

[System]: Alliance MyFoot declares war against alliance YourAss. Diplomatic Relationship between each other alters to Hostile automatically.

I pointed this out to my alliance and everyone got a good laugh, then today we see BigDick.
First, it is reported that Alliance BigDick declares war against alliance Olympus.

Then,

[System]: Alliance SunTzu declares war against alliance BigDick. Diplomatic Relationship between each other alters to Hostile automatically.

Comments flew: that BigDick must think he's quite something, perhaps someone with "little man syndrome," and we listed the character traits that appear in the first paragraph of today's blog, and had ourselves a good giggle. Then the screen flashes:

[System]: Alliance VD declares war against alliance BigDick. Diplomatic Relationship between each other alters to Hostile automatically.

It was too much. Priceless! We hooted and stomped our feet but there were only two people - me and another player - who were online at the time to witness it. The rest of the alliance would never believe us when we recounted it. Then, the entertainment was quickly over because the system messages of wars being declared against BigDick became increasingly inane (Alliance Horny declares war against alliance BigDick, for example). Fun time over. Small things make my day.

Spring had better come soon. I've been at the computer much too long.

Spoiled Rotten

2010-02-13T15:48:00.001-05:00

I was thinking about this horrible financial recession we're in and trying to put things into perspective when I was snapped out of my funk of self pity. I had been spoiled. For a year I made enough of a living to do things like replace most of a wardrobe, buy a camera for my writing business, go out to eat a few times a week and put enough gas in my van to take aimless drives for the simple pleasure of wasting time by enjoying myself. When all that came to an end, I was plunged into the aforementioned funk. I know that wallowing in self pity is not conducive to creativity and I had to keep working in order to work through the feeling of utter helplessness I was feeling after losing my cushy contract job wages. What helped me work through was my recall of my great grandparents and my grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and who taught me everything I know about being thrifty. Drawing on the strength of their counsel and the core values with which they endowed my mother and her siblings, I have come to the realization that I am spoiled rotten.

I'm not talking spoiled rotten like the Paris Hiltons and Kari Ann Peniche kind of spoiled; I'm talking spoiled rotten like kids who can't live without their MP3 players, their smartphones, their high speed internets. I know, technology is where it's at but what happens when those very things are taken away from you one by one? Faced with a telephone shutoff or feeding your family, what do you do? You feed your family of course but the insidious part about living in modern times is that we tend to go through serious withdrawal without all of our talking, blinking gadgets.

For example, we lost power during a particularly nasty ice storm back in late autumn. For six hours we paced, we swore, we ranted. We went through denial, anger, bargaining and were mid way through depression and on to acceptance when the house suddenly hummed to life.

During the power outage I realized how noisy we are without even talking. We are silent in a house that speaks through whirrs and clicks and buzzes, creaks, ticks and that pervasive hum of electricity. We must be lulled by these noises because their absence caused much angst and gnashing of teeth.

So yes, we are spoiled. We have a small income still, which puts us better off than a lot of people we know. While I was considering whether or not to apply for food stamps, I kept thinking of my great grandmother and what she would think of living off the government dime. That's when the light came on. My great grandmother would have planted a garden, put aside vegetables and fruits in canning jars and freezer cartons, and baked her own bread. She would have taken clothing and removed the buttons, zippers, snaps, hooks, eyes, and rick-rack. Then, after adding these things to her boxes of like items, she would take the fabric and cut it into strips to either make blocks that would be sewn together to make a warm quilt or, in the case of woolen items, long strips that would find their way into grand braided carpets that were sometimes as big as a room and which kept the floors warm in the western New York weather.

She would have done many other things too, and I remember as a child, watching her pluck and dress a chicken for dinner. She showed me the eggs still in the egg sac and the liver and heart. I distinctly remember her hands, bony and gnarled, her deft fingers bent with a "little touch of arthritis," but which could turn out tatted lace edges for pillowcases and warm wool mittens for my own childish hands. I knew that she would use the chicken feathers later to stuff pillows and featherbeds.

I watched her work incredibly hard until the end of her life. Compared to her, I have nothing about which to complain. When I look at my cell phone which is due to be shut off any day now, and my cable bill, which I will try to pay because I really can't survive without the interwebs in these days of online publishing; when I look in my cupboards and realize that I have a store of recipes in my head for good food for cheap and I realize that I am capable of walking around and moving my arms and willing my fingers to do work, I set out once again with renewed determination and the thought that I really need to not be so damn spoiled.

How the Grateful Dead Ruined (and saved) My Life

2009-05-09T17:38:00.008-04:00

The Grateful Dead, God bless 'em, enjoyed a career that spanned 30 plus years. I enjoyed them for perhaps 25 of those, although not as devotedly as others who built a lifestyle around the band and their pantheon of counterculture icons. I was too young to be part of that San Francisco scene, and too far east, but I caught the bus when it went by and I stayed on the bus in various ways for a long time.

I can safely say that I got to enjoy an extended young adulthood. Long after I saw age 35 and even after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, when I turned 40, I made my place in this world with other Deadheads, enjoying a sort of idyllic life and yet trying not to fall into the "hipper than thou" trap. It made for interesting times, sometimes incredible fun, and a social safety net that could catch me, with all my eccentricities, when I fell. In retrospect, and I say this because I now find myself on the margins of this hippie caste, it was indeed a long, strange, trip that has culminated in a clearer understanding of what went wrong with the counter culture.

My own story is nothing special. I grew up in a nice suburb in a nice "medium sized manufacturing city" as an old friend used to call it. I knew that I heard that different drummer early in my life when I got wind of rock and roll and The Beatles. When the Summer of Love happened I was barely out of grade school. When Woodstock happened I was fourteen years old. I wanted to be a part of rock and roll and the music scene and was rabid about reading everything I could get my hands on. I had the first issue of Rolling Stone. In later years, when Cameron Crowe wrote his screenplay for "Almost Famous," he was writing what I dreamed of. What would eventually be diagnosed as a crippling case of clinical depression and imposter syndrome as well as social anxiety would keep me from realizing those dreams. For the most part I dropped out. I was never in danger of addiction, however, since I had a low tolerance for alcohol and most drugs. I wasn't a drinker. I did inhale.

The difference between then, or life up until May, 2000 and now, is that I have been away. The past decade has been a crash course in focus and determination. More to the point, coming home made things stand out in much sharper focus. There is the old song from the world wars that goes, "how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" (pronounced in true American hick: pair - EE). Well, I have been to the academic Paris. I did what most every red-blooded American single mother does when faced with a child starting Kindergarten: I went back to college. It was the best of both worlds decision in that it kept my child from being a latchkey kid.

Going back to college was my first clue. My friends were incredulous, my family dubious. I had a checkered employment past (I feel that I was doing "research" for "life skills"). I had started college once, but wandered off, never really quitting, just "putting it off for a year or twenty."

... continued

Oh and by the way ...

2009-05-09T16:19:00.001-04:00

I did end up taking that job after all. I actually like my job and the people with whom I work. I still refuse to dangle prepositions.

Bad Blogger

2009-05-09T13:12:00.003-04:00

I'm a bad blogger. Not only have I not posted in here in a year, but I have multiple blogs, none of which get any attention. For me to consider myself a writer, this does not bode well. I was just playing a fascinating game of Bejeweled Blitz which is mildly meditative and thinking about how I blow off my writing all the time, as if it were a red-headed stepchild and then I admonished myself for having more than one blogging spot. It is foolhardy to try to keep them all fed with blistering social insight and so it is easier to simply do nothing.

I also keep two blogs for one main reason and that is because I have a few readers who are on the same site. I consider one of those readers to be a dear friend, a kindred-spirited, menopausal reinvention of her former self, who braved the tempestuous ride through graduate school along with me but we will manage to keep communication.

I have been toying with the idea of going completely Google-based on my home computer. I already use most of their plugins, my opening brower page is my iGoogle page, my resume is online courtesy of Google, and I have all my photos uploaded with Picasa and hosted online by Google. It's really one-click fun despite all the people who bitch about Google. I have been assimilated by Googleness. That and Facebook. And Twitter. But those are other stories.

So I'm paring down to two blogs now, both on Blogger. My Motime account, Yankee in a Red State, will languish but really, that was my Florida blog. I'm still a Yankee but I no longer live in a red state and not because Florida went blue this past presidential election. I've changed latitudes and attitudes (apologies to Jimmy Buffett). You can catch me here most days, and sometimes on Where's Chindo?

Things are looking up?

2008-05-23T08:47:00.002-04:00

This is the way the world works. I filed the last blog entry. The phone rang. My sister said her company was interested in hiring me for a contract job. We'll see how that works out.

Beating the Pavement

2008-05-21T13:26:00.002-04:00

So, here's how our little slice of America goes at the moment. A snapshot, if you will, of an average American family trying to get by. Keep in mind that the price of gasoline is up to $3.97 a gallon in some places (cheapest gas is $3.87).

Both Frank and I get up early. He usually beats me to the computer. We feverishly check emails for notifications from CareerBuilder. I wait, and have my coffee and start to craft some beaded earrings to sell at the local markets because they're quick, I have the materials (generously donated by my friend) and I can sell them for egg money. It's odd that the term "egg money" comes into play here because that's the depression-era generation's term, not mine. I'm from the generation that was supposed to benefit from all the postwar prosperity we kept getting promised in film strips while sitting in a darkened classroom somewhere in the 1960s.

Once Frank is done at the computer I check my CareerBuilder and Monster.com accounts. We both apply for everything we feel we are qualified or skilled at and we wait.

I make the mistake of watching the news. The news is not good. Unemployment is up. My ancestors wail from their graves, reminding me how they survived the lean years. I'm glad I listened to their stories when they were alive. I'm glad I paid attention to my great-grandfather when he showed me how to grow things and how to milk a cow. It might come to that.

I'm frightened and fairly sick with worry because we're in our 50s and beginning to feel like no one values us as employees. We begin to learn that perhaps we are experienced in the wrong areas for this global economy. I begin to second-guess every decision I have made in my life.

Friends assure me that this is tough for everyone and I remind myself that things would not have been much better had we stayed in Florida. But I am still fraught with fairly self-reducing if not destructive thoughts about how we may be living IN boxes soon instead of out of them.

On the more cheerful side, I have started a book for people who suffer from depression. Let's call it "darkly hilarious" because we depressed folk need as much humor as possible to stave off the dark days. This is oddly juxtaposed with my obsessive worry, of course, but it's my safety net.

I did consider not writing this post but if a blog is not for venting sometimes, then what is it for? Yes, yes, I know: I have seen the openings for professional bloggers. I have yet to be able to separate professional from personal. My profession and my personal life are fairly intertwined and while I can separate the two, I think this blog would be incredibly dry if I didn't stop for a moment to voice fears that perhaps all of us are having and that saves me from total despair: I am not alone.

Home is where the stomach is.

2008-05-16T21:42:00.002-04:00

*Burp*

Home food. Diner food. Good old grill in the back, hot turkey or meatloaf sandwich food.

Hot dogs that split open when they're on a charcoal grill or in a frying pan. White hot dogs! Two hots with everything and a side of fries from Gitsis Texas Hots. Garbage plates. Country Sweet chicken and ribs.

Amish pancakes. Chicken soup with a matzoh ball as big as a child's fist. High Falls Brewery - a fancy name for Genesee "Jenny" Cream Ale.

Buffalo wings from Buffalo. Italian sausage with peppers and onions. Cheeseburgers with hot sauce, Abbott's chocolate almond soft-serve ice cream, Pontillos Pizza.

Friday fish fries: haddock dipped in beer batter and deep fried. Served up with coleslaw and a baked potato (French fries if you don't like the baked spud.)

The Public Market on a Saturday morning: steaming hot coffee in one hand, canvas bags in the other, nose and toes freezing equally while buying bulk cheese, home grown vegetables, donuts from the Greek guy, bunches of fresh basil to make pesto with and bargain Monk's Bread made at the Abbey of the Genesee by real monks.

Tom Wahl's root beer. Charlie Reidel's loganberry drink. Pop. Not whiney "soda" or snooty "tonic." Just pop.

Bless me. I need an Alka Seltzer.

Lost Things

2008-05-15T17:58:00.002-04:00

I am not sure how someone "loses" a mattress. (We have the box spring.)

Perhaps it was delivered to someone with no sense of ethics and who saw a pretty nice pillow top by Simmons and said "oh yes, this goes in the master bedroom," thinking "this will never be missed."

They claim it isn't in storage where it sat with my other things for a month.

I know for certain they did not leave it at my former abode because the buyer's agent was being a snot about every particle of anything that belonged to us being out of the house before they would do their walk-through.

So I leave it up to them. They are a national carrier with a big reputation and I am sure they will do the right thing. They say they have 45 days to work it out. If they don't I shall publish their name on this blog and then they'll be sorry. Muahahaha!!

Working in America

2008-05-13T17:52:00.004-04:00

I know that one of these days, the perfect job will land in my lap. Either that or my perfect job (writing and editing from home) will start to pay.

Right now I am staring at what is left of my last paycheck, which would have been my last paycheck even if I had stayed in Tampa, my husband's last paycheck, and the ever-mounting pile of bills. I knew I had 30 days to secure work. It is Day 13 and work seems to be very far off on the horizon.

My problem is that I'm too brainy. I know it all and if I don't know how to do it, I will once someone shows me and then please leave me alone to do my thing. Don't hover.

But people can smell wiseass on me and so my application/resume/CV/cover letter go to the bottom of the pile. "We will hire her if we're desperate." Because the know they would be miserable and so would I.

But this is how the Universe watches out for me. In a moment of panic, I walked into the local diner (where I worked 9 years ago before I left for Florida) and inquired about the "Help Wanted" sign in the window. I had asked before and had been told they needed a cook and so I pondered the possibility for a week because as I said, we need more income and less outgo. I explained that I had 10 years of experience cooking at various fine dining establishments and that I had, indeed, worked for the previous owner of that very diner. The woman, whom I suspect is the owner's wife, blinked and stuttered a bit before she said "we-we've uh we've found someone."

I knew in my gut that no way was she hiring a fat, fiftyish woman to work in her kitchen.

I couldn't help myself. I gave the smarmiest smile I could, and said "well, if it doesn't work out, let me know," and I left. Getting into the van I gave the boy a look and said, "bullshit." He laughed and agreed. He and I have great bullshit detectors.

Today, almost a week later, the sign is still in the window. And I KNOW don't want to go back to short order cooking unless it's the next thing before prostitution. And so I narrowly avoided yet another job that would suck. The Universe will steer me again toward something better and I will work diligently at getting my own gig off the ground because I swear I was not meant to work for people. Here's an example of why:

Today, we spent an hour driving to Palmyra, home of the founder of the Mormon faith, so my husband could interview for an assistant manager's position with Subway. The interview took almost an hour and they told him the job pays $7.15 an hour.

. . .

I know what goes into doing food service. I know what it is like to deal with employees who don't show up, don't do their jobs, are insubordinate, who tamper with people's food (you don't want to know) and who come in under the influence of alcohol or drugs. I know what it is like to deal with customers. What if the store is robbed? What if an employee injures him or herself? Seven dollars and fifteen cents to START? With no future? Eff that.

And it cost me $10 in gas just for the pleasure of waiting for poor Frank, who has over 20 years of experience in life and work, to be told that he is worth minimum wage to manage a crew of sandwich slingers. It would have cost about three dollars in gas back when I used to live here.

Oh well. At least something good happened today. I got a mattress and a box spring that won't go up the stairs and a rug for my dining room, courtesy of my mother and sister. (The movers lost my bed.) Life ebbs and flows.

Arrival

2008-05-11T11:20:00.000-04:00

We are back home after eight years in Florida. Some things are different, most is the same. I am here at the perfect time, before the snow and gray sameness of winter months has me going batshit. I do not miss the South. Read my Yankee in a Red State blog to know why.

I am happy to be back among friends and family, where my northern habits do not surprise people, where my haste and noise blend in with others of my kind. I have figured out that I need periods of dormancy just like my beloved lilacs and spring tulips. I do not thrive in a tropical climate. The heat and humidity wear me out.

Here, the cold makes me get up and move around. I no longer sit, sluggish and sweating, surrounded by a cacophony of mosquito buzz and traffic snarl. Songbird voices replace the maternal calls of the alligator. The roar of the train passing with its cargo of precious poisons has been replaced by the near-silent passing of woodchuck, white tailed dear, black bear and wild boar (I am told that the boars come to gore the local Holstein kine).

I am off to the local flea market to see what the tschochke du jour is. I may pick up a home-baked pie at the Trading Post. In the meantime, there are pictures of my view taken with my ne'er do well camera phone.

Please send good digital photography equipment ASAP.