3.31.2005

Split the Difference

Amazon leaves brown boxes at the boy's door, part of the mysterious Dissertation process. This morning there was one. I found it first; I hid it behind my back and made the boy wrestle it away.


Last week a big box came, with something for me too. But I picked up one of the boy's history-of-trauma tomes, Soldiers and Psychiatrists instead. I found my gift bookmarked on on the boy's bedstand.

Midway through the week, the boy is txting me at 7 AM as he is finishing the book. He is telling me I'm classically beautiful. He is falling asleep without a care. And me? I'm mad at Bad People, seething quietly into my pillow, waiting til his breathing slows to cast off the covers and putter.


We've been reading the wrong books.


I wonder what was in that box that arrived today.

From Russia With Love

The boy is having a party. I'm making Borscht for the first time. The recipe is a carryover from my time in Boston, when I lived with a young Russian named Dimitri, or Dima.

I was madly in love with Dima. I didn't worry about ruining our easy living arrangement, didn't mind that he was gay, or that I was happily dating someone else. Dima was never home though, and that concerned me. Occasionally the place would smell of some food he made, falafel? Deep fried doughy balls from a boxed mix. I knew he cooked in the afternoons; otherwise he worked long hours modeling DNA replication, and practicing for an international piano competition.

Weekends were the only time to see him. When he woke, he'd play music, loud. As the piano concerto ended, he'd dash to the bathroom from his room with a blue beach towel about his shoulders. From the kitchen, you'd glimpse a skinny russian superman, little hairy behind peeking out from under his cape. The first time this happened, I turned and stared wide-eyed at our third housemate. She smirked and said, 'what, you haven't seen that yet?'

In the spring, I set up my chess board on the kitchen table and made my the first move. The next day, black responded. We continued this way for a month. One weekend, he knocked on my door and insisted we finish the game. I didn't have the presence of mind to lose. On checkmate he told me, 'I already have two addictions, mathematics and piano. I do not have the time to sustain another.' New house rule: no chess. Ever. I tried later, again, with NYTimes crosswords, but to no avail.

Dima's mother visited from Moscow for a week. She spoke no English and produced a steady stream of borscht. Beet red, carrot sweet, chilled and topped with dill and sour cream. She left us the recipe, in russian, and when I left Boston Dima translated it for me.

So, I will be making it for the first time for passover this year. Wish me luck.

3.30.2005

Long Morning

Tuesday was sunny. I had a delivery from one university to another. Had a nice drive, felt like I took a gallon of gas and a cigarette and vaporized them both all up and down ponce de leon. Thought of places of relative plenty, where the oil and tobacco come from, and the little capillary of me, unwinding the spool of aerosolized toxins from Emory to Tech.

Spent the afternoon telecommuting from the crisis center. I sat at the second desk in the left office. Its pretty and clean inside, the doors are locked, shades drawn. The women there complain a lot. They're prone to various ailments... hyperalertness, stomach flu, obesity, bad mothers, ungrateful friends. All the calls I responded to were informational - no crises yet.

I had a phone call with my dad who is taking a trip to Italy to visit his girlfriend - he's wondering if he should charter a boat there, sail around the mediteranean. I told him to find a boat with a wine cellar in it.

Last night, saw the boy, who was gloomy and sick. I made him cinnamon muffins with too much salt - we pulled the sugary tops off and watched the latest daily show, then yesterday's rerun with the Reverend Al Green caressing the sofa to the sound of his own voice.

I drove home and opened the door on two squinting cats peering up from the unmade bed. Dreamt I was with the boy, but on the screen were his email headers - cheery subjects dated from 2004 from the dancer he dated last year, and his somber goodbye.

And it was a long morning. 2 hours of cats, vacuuming, construction workers wanting to know how to use the outdoor hose so they could paint. The boy sent me text messages in the morning - he had finished a book and sounded excited. I know I'm late when NPR switches to classical at 9AM.

And then work, where I very much want to sit on a hill and read a book instead. I have no sense of urgency, feel little need to do anything. Today's tasks dictate a people day - all my projects are stalled at points where I find people and talk with them briefly about quotes, specs, plans. But I just want to sit in the sunshine and read my book. Its about a current illness and an old war, dead doctors treating dead soldiers, sending them back to the fronts. The illness is a discourse, soldiers and doctors managing the decision to leave the front, return to the front, and when, and how. I like the author, he is cheery, he pities no one and he loves mankind, even in their anger and their folly.

3.26.2005

Kite Boy Hero

Saturday sun, summer returning. I haven't seen them but I've seen the skirts and the legs all this week - the city's undergraduates lined outside the tanning salon all weekend to put on a little preemptive glow.

I woke up early, and found text messages from the boy and umbrella. The boy and I rendezvoused for salty tapas breakfast and some misguided art. I practiced line quality with charcoal, watercolor pencils and a beta; the boy sanded and scraped and burned paper, window frames, lemon, red acrylic paint.

We met Umbrella at the tavern on Piedmont Park and after the first round - a half hearted effort to remain sober and solvent, we had cocktails - strawberry daquiri, mint julep, margharita. A one man playboy bunny parade slunk up to the outdoor patio, gave a god-loves-transvestites-on-easter sermon and danced with a baton. There were cheers and some hysterical conservative jeers.

We wandered the park, one of Olmsteads projects, which I hear covers 260 acres, a pool, a playground, courts, botanical garden, pond, gazebo, and dog walk. In my mind is divided in three. SE: frat boys with frizbees, khakis. SW: downtown, black families in white. NW: midtown, shirtless gay boys in expensive jeans. The groups mix into one another in the middle and its a freak show for all.

As we walked west we were attracted by the sight of petals flowing from the tree like background for a karate match. We watched over and saw it was caused by a cute gay boy trying to retrieve his kite. His friends were throwing a football at it, over and over, and he had crawled halfway up the trunk to shake the branches, dislodging petals and pollen.

We sat on the grass and watched, and when they gave up, the boy climbed up and retrieved the kite and recieved a beer from the cute gay boy for his efforts.

Saturday sun. Good weekend.

3.25.2005

so I talked with my boss today

And told him that I'd been sick a lot in November and January. And gave him all my timesheets to sign.

And then I told him about my big dark bad mistakes. How I'd organized the coding aspects of a research project and how in the end the interrater reliability rating is .65, not >.70 like it needs to be.

And also how I don't get money - where it comes from, how to get it, when I'm supposed to spend it for projects.

He seemed to think that it was all fine. And mentioned that he was bringing me on a conference in May with his boss.

!!!

Its alarming how disparate my view of my work and the worlds view of my work is. Either I put on a good face and the other shoe will drop, or I'm actually within the normal range of odd behaviour.

I dunno.

- Ms. Bling

3.24.2005

Bad Mood Day

What do you do on a bad mood day?

I guess the same things you do on a good mood day, just don't enjoy it.

Feel like crap today, grumpy, pessimistic. I'm hungry and thirsty and I have a headache and nothing seems to work.

So I get ready, go to work, make some phone calls, plug away.



oh well. 8 more hours to go til Friday.

- Me.

3.23.2005

Landlord

So, one thing I haven't blogged about thats not nessecarily of interest to the general public, but is of interest to me: I've been playing violin again. I always thought I'd hated it, I remember one time my parents made me practice for 3 hours before a concert and I was so pissed off I decided to play really loudly and badly the entire time. I can trace about 5 bad playing habits back to that particular session. But . . it must have been a little oasis of quiet for all these years, because thats whats coming back to me now that I pick it up again. I think the quiet started around middle school, when I'd gotten somewhat skilled, and outgrew the local teachers. I studied with this one woman, Ms. Davis, a mean old bat who taught at college in Providence. She gave me Bach's concerto for 2 violins in A minor. I took it home and once I figured out how it was supposed to sound, I thought it was too beautiful for me to butcher. I told her that and she cracked up.

My last year in high school I was at Exeter and I had a wicked good teacher. I forget his name, but he played for the BSO and he was so anal he would make me stop playing so he could remove bits of lint off my shirt. He showed me not so much how to play as how to mark up a piece so it was playable, how to diagnose a problem and how to practice it away. I played an awful lot that year. Prepared a solo, played orchestra and learned viola so I could join a good quartet.

Quartet was fantastic - we played Handel and Schubert, I don't remember what pieces. None of us were superb players, but something in our group clicked - we really, really listened to each other and dug how the other players made us sound. There was one moment during practice I especially like. In the closing bars, I had triplet eigth notes and I was playing them wrong. The cellist called it, and the two of us took a moment to make it right. Then we played the piece again as a group. As we hit those closing bars, the alteration was magic - something in that middle viola voice, same note but different rhythm, made all four of us click to something about the harmony that was alive. Its like an old book that takes 4 people to read, and when you make a breakthrough, its not a personal meaning, or a verbal one, its kind of like a shared emotion or idea.

Past two weeks I've been practicing scales and a Bach concerto in C minor for oboe and violin. Its initially composed for harpsichord, so in the end its got to be delicate and flighty and restrained. Tempted to play it glam rock style though - sometimes I plow through it in my head like a cheesy electric guitar solo. But I'm nowhere near style yet, just taking it apart and using different bits as practice pieces to get my hands back in working order.

Its in C minor, so 3 flats and a naturals thrown in every once in a while. And, lots of arpegios with string crossings and relatively awkward fingerings and varied bow style. Everythings in 1st through 3rd position, so not biting off too much all at once.

Main objective lately has been getting back in tune, and then getting some speed and rhythm into my left hand. All the funny muscles that give you rhythm in your fingers, like the 'lift' muscles, are completely atrophied from years of typing, where rhythm is irrelevant - only sequence matters.

Its a nice mind excercise too. Demands focus, attention to small things, anaylyse little mechanical problems. If I get nervous about a shift, my hand tenses, and then everything sounds bad. If my mind wanders, I forget what note I'm on, what key I'm in, what the fingering is, whether my next note is a major or minor third away, where I should be in the bow to get to the next phrase. Have to concentrate, disconnect my anxiety from my hand and feel confident. Then I sound good.

In 2 weeks I've made a few breakthroughs. My hand is remembering where the shift points are, and how big a half step is in first position, and how fingercrushingly small a whole step is in 5th.

I remembered that there are three points of movement in the arm- shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Simplistic, but good to remember. I got my wrist back into the action and now I can play really, really fast if I want to. Still can't do string crossings cleanly and having trouble with volume control, but slowly slowly.

In other news, I get home this morning to find 2 men drilling holes in the asbestos paneling of my house. No masks, no bubble, no signs, no publicly posted 'permit to work,' no abatement, no nothing.. just... drilling holes in asbestos. I already tried that story out on the boy and its clearly not very funny. Regardless, upside of the not-so-funny story is, the landlord is making a laundry room on the first floor. Yay. No more schlepping to the laundromat, losing all my sweaters.

And, lil sis called today. She's working hard and just seems to be doing all great. Somethings pulled together for her in the last year, she seems to be asking all the right questions, staying true to her voice while trying to listen and learn and respect everyone else, pacing herself, trying to take care of herself while she's stressed... all that good stuff.

Ciao bellas,

Ms. Bling

3.21.2005

Windows and Doors

Some itinerant readers have decided that Ms. Bling in the ATL has a "distinctive voice" which she infrequently lives up to. According to sources, her last post, Neverland vs. Neverland "could have been written by anyone."

Hmmm. Not sure what I think about that. It could be a good thing - I am always endeavoring to put on a public face that is more like the rest of y'all. Have I succeeded too well, and now you run away bored? Even if so, I remain suspicious of indulging friends' wishes that I be more amusingly bad-girl 24-7. Everyone seems to like to hear the story about how I was hauled in by the director of the rape crisis center for making a grown man cry. Or - how on my last family reunion, we dug up my grandfather from his resting place under the living room floor, took pictures with his dessicated remains, then buried him again in the backyard. Funny ha ha to hear about, but for me, I felt really stressed out and really, really guilty. My friends don't have to live with the consequences of being abrasively, intimidatingly, undeniably right all the time. I do, and its really, really hard.

Case in point: me last Friday night at the supermarket. As I walked in, the security guard at the grocery store told me to, "smile." Unlike Terry Schiavo, I do have a cerebral cortex, so I gave him skeleton face, where I stretch my lips out as far up and out as they'll go, baring all my teeth. Then I cracked up at myself for being an idiot, and he was like, 'there you go. Now thats pretty.' Thanks. I gave him a glare and relaxed all my facial muscles into alexithemic putty - what the boy calls, 'public transport face.' 10 minutes later, as I'm perusing the aisles, one of the staff interrupts a cell phone conversation to exclaim with alarm, "you want cry?" I was like, 'what?' He starts making sad clown face and draws imaginary tears down his cheeks. I was like, 'god, no! I'm fine! thankyou, sorry, yeah, no, I'm good.'

On the one hand, I don't like the presentation-of-self advice. I mean, its 2 in the morning and I'm rousted out of bed by a couple of flea ridden lint factorys to go buy kitty food. Whats to smile about? On the other hand, its not right to walk around the city looking like I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the all night Kroger.

Yeah, thats all I've got to say. I'm handing off data and my interrater reliability correlation for two coders is way, way off and theres nothing much I can do about it now. So... thought I'd procrastinate.

Ciao ciao,

Ms. Bling.

3.15.2005

Neverland vs. Neverland

We've got two Neverlands in the media right now. Wacko Jacko's real life paradise for pedophiles, and Johnny Depp's venture into Victorian child worship. The movie is the sicker of the two.

First off, this isn't about the people. WaPo today has a headline pitting Condi vs. Hillary, and in a celebrity deathmatch, I'd root for Condi. I would expect she'd wear her black boots and the pointy ends of her flip hairdo would turn out to be razor sharp cutting implements. Maybe her piano would fall from the sky and crush Hillary and then Condi''d play a minuet and flash a smile to the crowd.

In a real election I'd be down in Florida every weekend again, with Hilary Victory 2008 stickers all over my car.

Jackson and Depp? I'm sad about Jackson's path, and I'm sad for his family. Theres something really... wholesome about the Jackson family's music - Janet Jacksons smile has something beautific about it. The Jackson 5 is just damn good music. I don't know what happened to the man, but he's definitely out of touch. Not just with fashion, but with his day to day reality.

Speaking of fashion, Johnny Depp - well, he dated Kate Moss. And anyone who dates Kate Moss is more than alright with me.

I saw Neverland when it came out - on my birthday, actually. Me and the boy had a fight on the way in, and then we met up with Umbrella and Allycat. The movie was trash. Basically Depp is out of touch with reality, lives in a fantasy world. He finds some kids who have suffered the death of their father, and their mother is dying too. Their mother refuses to admit she is ill, so she won't see a doctor or take medicine or even prepare her kids for her death, even though they are canny enough to see that she is dying. Depp and the mother avoid their troubles for an thoroughly adult fantasy of a child's innocent oblivion. Depp even writes a fantasy play vindicating the mothers' dementia, about a world where medicine is poison, and no one ever dies.

Depp and the mother abdicate their responsibility as adults to face death and help the children cope with impending tragedy. Instead, the mother remains in denial, and Depp plays melancholy voyeur while the oldest son grows up to soon and demands his mother see a doctor and come clean to the family about her condition.

While Depp is tearfully observing this drama unfold, his real life is falling apart. The one person in the film who insists that Depp and the mother stop mooning about and play adult is demonzied.

So, basically the film sucks. Depps an emotionally twisted person who prefers his fantasy life to emotional honesty with his wife and play-lover. The mother is an impossibly saintly, tuberculosis ridden waif who is unable to care for her children until they are old and mature enough to manage the responsibilities of adults.

Yeah. Its a insidiously shitty film with a deeply disturbing message. Don't believe the hype.

The other Neverland story seems more inspiring. Jackson is correctly recognized by the public as inappropriately childlike, and as putting children in inappropriate, adult situations. I wish he were less of a spectacle, because I feel bad for him and his family, but really. A grown adult man shouldn't, wouldn't show up at court to answer charges of pedophilia in his pajamas, complaining that he was late because his back hurt.

Speaking of grown adult men, I should get to work.

- Ms. Bling

3.14.2005

Goodwill Hunting

Wah.

So. Strange days. All you regular ATL Bling Bling readers (come on, I know there are at least - oh - four of you out there, even though Umbrella's new corporate ownership cut off his internet privileges) may have read about how I spoke power to truth at one of my last rape crisis trainings.

Well, apparently I ruffled a few feathers. The speaker with whom I disagreed, lets call him Ulysses (don't read into it, it sounds a lot like his real name) cried like Tonya Harding to the director of the program - said I had invalidated 20 years of work when I disagreed with his assessment that Patriarchal Masculinity is a direct cause of rape, not just a framework in which it takes place.

So, they called me in for a little tete-a-tete to see whether I had any empathetic defects or not.

I acquitted myself gracefully, but left the meeting unsettled. Being called in by the director of a rape crisis center to explain why, exactly, I'd made a grown man cry is - well, its a wake up call. It bothers me to think that I'd unknowingly hurt someones feelings. I don't mind defending my point of view but I try not to be to mean about it. I was worried about what exactly I'd said/done, so I borrowed the videotape of that training session and rewatched it.

And I learned something. I'd thought I simply didn't like Ulysses message. But as I watched my responses to his speech, I realized what really ticked me off was that he was being dogmatic. He did this creepy thing where he would solicit answers to a question from the crowd, incorporate our answers into one of his conclusions, then imply that everyone in the audience agreed with him - that we'd all worked together to arrive at his big stupid idea. It was a big fake consensus with nominal input from the crowd.

Ulysses wasn't too tolerant of disagreement, either. As people raised their hands with different points of view, he either said they were off topic, that people needed to think more, that often women were afraid of facing the enormity of the problem, or that he was running out of time and needed to get to his next point. About 2/3rds through the speech, he'd used these techniques to create a consensus in the room where the only people who offered answers anymore were people in agreement, and the women who'd previously shown other points of view fell silent. Except me.

What I did during the class was make it clear that I disagreed with him whenever I felt that he was coopting us as a group into his consensus. So when he asked for suggestions, I'd offer 'wrong' answers that couldn't be digested within his framework, forcing him to look for another person to answer. For example, he asked for a definition of gender bias, and I answered that it was when someone treated someone like a man or like a woman before recognizing them as a fellow human being. When he asked for questions one might have for him as a Man Against Violence, I asked whether he thought that knowing the nature of perpetrators is part of the healing process. Both times he kind of paused, frowned, then moved on.

I think I did good. I liked everything I saw of myself in that video, except that I looked like dogshit. I guess I've been under a little stress and though I haven't been venting, I've definitely let it get to my hair. Time to buy new shampoo or something. Anyone tried John Freida's 'Brunettes'? I'm curious if its worth the 7 bucks.

Something Borrowed

So V3 gave me a call over the weekend. V3s an old friend from London who lives in NY now. I went to see her when I went skiing with the boy in January.

Funny story V3 - she keeps her gender and sexuality deliberately ambigious at times. I call her she but, having grown up with a lesbian vegetarian sister who dates men and eats bacon, I've never tried to further pin it down. I remember when my siblings were in high school , my brother made an effort to educate his close-minded friends about our sister. When she got back together with her old boyfriend, he felt a little let down and told her she was 'confusing his friends.' Lol.

Anyways, V3's brother is getting married this spring, and she wasn't too pleased about having to go to the wedding a.) because its on Cass in Detroit and b.) she's not altogether fond of her brother.

So, during the planning stages, the bride-to-be decides she wants V3 in the wedding party - but on which side of the aisle? Bride or groom? She decides to approach V3 about her gender affiliation so that she can participate in the wedding as the correct gender.

V3 recognizes that she has found the ideal excuse to not rent a tux/buy an ugly dress and decides that now, if ever, is the time to stand on the fence. So she will be blessing her brother's union from the front pew in an outfit of her own choosing.

In the words of Paris Hilton, "Thats hot." Its the best excuse I've ever heard for getting out of a wedding party.

- Ms. Bling

3.07.2005

Hero

Finally watched Hero last night with the boy. My review? Well, its kinda like every other hong kong film...
My review in short:

Me: Was that fascist propaganda?

Boy: Yes.

Me: Just checking.

I'm not the only one guessing that in the next 100 yrs, China will assume more world power, as the US fades. I am somewhat glad and somewhat sad that I won't be around to see it. In the meantime, we'd better nurture our traditions of liberty and individualism, because they are going to come in handy when the totalitarian communists take over with their fascist propaganda films.

Speaking of which, whats going on in Lebanon? This is crazy! Syria out of Lebanon? Muslims and Christians protesting together for a lebanese nationalist cause? Insane!

Don't know much about it, I think Syria is in Lebanon to enforce the peace between the Christians and the Muslims, and to attack Israel. Neither Syria nor Hezbollah have changed their tune towards Israel, so... I don't understand why this Lebanese nationalism looks so promising. But it does.

Hezbollah is staging a protest against - you guessed it - the US, tomorrow, so we'll see.

In other news, had a good weekend. Went rock climbing and my whole body feels like snappy rubber bands, good ouch. Weathers nice, cousin 007 is flying in tomorrow to hang out. I got new glasses, so I'm seeing the world anew. Already crashed into a curb pulling out of the parking lot tollgate, and twisted my ankle coming off the curb of the BP on N. Decatur. Growing pains, this too shall pass.

Ciao,

- Ms. Bling.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?