Street Cool and Steampunk

I've been reading and writing a good bit lately. Writing a short story and rolling ideas around in my hands, seeing what they feel like. But, I do not want to neglect this more lucid, revelatory outlet of expression, my blog.

Two things:

1. I am at a coffeeshop after having a long run in the park with a new friend. Earlier, as I neared the entrance to the coffee establishment I crossed the path of two, we'll say, urban gentlemen. They had the dark baggy clothing that looks to me like a toddler playing dress-up in his big brother's closet. They had pristinely groomed patches of hair on their chins and shiny stones in their ears. And one of them was carrying an iPod dock complete with iPod, completely turned on and completely playing some illin' beats matching the rhythm of their swagger. What is this, the early 90's? It's socially strange to have music playing to your walk, like you're in some Chris Tucker movie and everything's cool because your ego's being bolstered by you thinking people are watching how awesome you look.

**Note: Overheard a table conversation. You only need to know what one of them was saying. "Oh so are you a nurse? Are you in nursing school? Oh, you're a doctor!" Nice work.

2. I have pleasantly, officially discovered the subgenre/subculture/style called "steampunk". If you've been into steampunk forever and think it's crazy I only just found out about this, hold on a minute. I've been reading books, watching movies and enjoying things that could be called steampunk for, well, my whole life. I only just discovered there was a specific name for it. And now that I can focally identify and define this sublimely intriguing world of art, fashion and literature, I just can't stop going, "Ooo, that's steampunk," in my mind to things that fall into this subcategory. Like I said, lots of books and entertainment I've enjoyed can be acurately called steampunk. The first one that came to mind was Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and the His Dark Materials trilogy. Then, and I know it doesn't fully qualify, but I thought of the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson. I love this post-apocalypse creation not only for the story itself, but for its interesting blending of past and future aesthetics.

And now I can buy that knee-length tight leather vest I've been eyeing for years at the local Renaissance festival and not feel like I'd look like a renny (new term for you? Look it up) when I wear it. It's definitely something Lyra would have worn on the way to find Lord Asriel in the North.



That's all for now....Now, go have an adventure sometime in the coming week! Even a small one, like taking a walk to a new neighborhood, or going to work a different way than the day before. Those things help life seem a little more interesting, and they are good for happiness too.

Sticking to the Plan

I’ve recently been questioning the idea of writing intimate details about myself, sans alias, in a blog. It got me in a little fix at work, and I have been hesitant about continuing to write what I feel and go through in the days following. It wasn’t that big of an issue with my boss in reality, but just the fact that someone said, “No, stop,” at all was enough to take my hands off the keys completely for a bit. I believe in complete intellectual, and therefore, writing freedom, but those who take that freedom up should be prepared to answer for what they write (in my case, when I write as well). I didn’t see it coming, so I wasn’t prepared.

It won’t stop me though. See, here I am, and hopefully will be in days to come (with a much smaller gap between posts). So don’t lose faith in me, those of you who are readers of my blog: family, friends, and people I don’t know, though I’m pretty sure there are much more of the first two than the last one. I’m not shot down easily.

I even started losing my emotional footing while I couldn’t write (blogging is currently my most continuous writing outlet). Though I wrote a couple of fragments of things, put them aside and sent one to be judged for a contest, the satisfied aura of having written a few lines I actually like fades until I do it again the next day, or whenever it happens that I do it again. Having a definite place to set out some scenes and images for anyone to read has become a kind of nestling place where I can settle down in and roll out of being recharged emotionally. I can’t give that up and be a complete person.

If I have to have one outside of my husband and my home, if I can’t remember why I’m where I am, if I need one to tell my stories as a human, a child, a lover, a believer, a reader – this blog is my happy place. It’s become what I created it to be, and that is the most beautiful thing when you set out to create something.

Whoever is out there reading this right now, I have an idea. I’d thought about putting some fiction I write on my blog. Not whole ones, of course, just parts and pieces so I can use them in the future and they won’t be considered “published”. Anything I put on here would, of course, still follow the Pancake Plan of finding beauty and happiness in life, however abstractly or subtly. What do you think?

Notes from a parking spot

I don't have much time to write, but I haven't posted in a few days. I'm sitting in my car in a parallel parking spot downtown on main street with my laptop open on the dashboard. Fresh from my husband's high school soccer game. They lost. Waiting for him to drive the kids back to the school and meet me downtown for food.

The word on the street is I got busted for blogging at work. Hence, my longer absence than I would have liked. How did this happen? I friended my boss on Facebook and he used it to read my blog and nail me for some revealing things I wrote about my blogging intrigues at my work computer. Doesn't take me that long to write. It's not like I'm not doing work or something, not getting things done. Whatev.

So from now on I have to write in the in between times of my life. Like now, in my driver's seat in the dark, with carhorns and kids yelling to each other across the street. It somehow makes me want to string words together even more, now that time for it's hard to come by.

Now I have to close up and meet Daniel. Don't worry, whoever is actually reading this - I'll be back tomorrow.

In Transition

It's going to harder and harder now to stay inside, to pretend to be an adult making money, pulling my economic weight. I am blaming solely the close sunshine, the air laden with the odor of blooming dogwoods and the yellow pollen. The cool, green grass subtracts years off my age back to about twelve, when I was still rolling around in it and clothing myself in it and in the meantime discovering womanhood.

The dogwoods remind me of it especially. They smell like menstration when fully bloomed, just like I did. I wore white jean shorts that day. Some boys I didn't know pointed at my crotch and cackled at me when I walked to my mom's car after school let out. But I only found out when I got home and went to the toilet. I told my mom I had chocolate in my underwear, but when I showed her she gave me the ultimatum.

"That's your period," she said, after deliberating then smiling like she'd discovered a lost secret, "You're becoming a woman."

The words tugged at my chest, as if someone was taking something away from me against my will.

"I don't want to be a woman," I said, and I cried for an hour, burying myself in the blankets on my mother's bed.

Later I walked out the front door into the summer heat of the South that can't accurately be called air. Down the road lived a horse named Lobo, whose owner had told me I could come brush it and pet it whenever I wanted. My size 5 Nikes took me straight to Lobo's gate, and I cried for awhile longer, explaining my newfound crisis to him and wiping my face on his mane.

When I saw in his silver-dollar brown eyes that he understood, I patted him and walked to the old Civil War graveyard overrun with ivy and anthills across the street. It was the only place in the neighborhood - the only place in town, I was certain - where you could get a cool breeze on a 92 degree day. In the summer, the atmosphere of the graveyard was damp and mossy, calming and reticent. It was only in autumn, nearing Halloween, that the neighborhood kids payed any attention to it and it became somehow ominous and creepy.

Of that day it's all I can recall. I'm sure I walked back home, ate supper with my family, returned to business as usual, as much as a little girl can with blood leaking from her vagina for the first time in her life.

The dogwoods, the tiny white flowers clustered, turning pink with bleeding edges as they age, will fall off and lay their backs on the hard brown earth in a few weeks. Spring seems to be the most short lived of the seasons, the adolescent season of transition. But it's the most florid and langourous, when things rise with new life and shed a bittersweet husk.

Part Irish, Part Cherokee, Part Elf

I figure I'd better go ahead and blog now or it might not happen today. The reason is because, if I know what I'm going to write about, I tend to think and think and build the idea until it's much too big for a blog and then because something of an opinion essay and potentally a dissertation. That just can't be.

Woke up this morning, went to the toilet with the song "Indian Outlaw" playing in my head for some reason. It's this Tim McGraw country song from like 1994, and I haven't heard it in years, let alone ever cared to hear it anyway. I suppose I know the tune by default because the side of my family I grew up around is a bunch of southern mountain folk, with a few hicks and a couple rednecks (there is a difference). This is not a bit of fact I am neither proud or ashamed of. It's where I come from. So, back to the song. As I was washing my face and brushing my face and humming "...half Cherokee and Choctaw...", I recalled that there was some controversy over "Indian Outlaw" within the American Indian tribes in the US. Being descendant more than one Cherokee ancestor, I kind of felt guilty for having looping in my head.

So I looked it up when I got to work and found that the controversy was over the stereotypical language about American Indians used in the song. I read the lyrics and yeah, they're dumb.

I'd like to know what percentage of Cherokee heritage I have. I guess it doesn't really matter, I'm just curious. I've been on a good many Native American websites and forums for different purposes, and the general consensus I've noticed is one of exclusivity, that if you're not full-blooded and part of a tribe those who are think you're sort of silly for trying to figure out your Indian roots. I know I've got to be less than half Cherokee, but it'd be nice to be able to place myself genes-wise. I'm dark-haired, dark-eyed and yellowish-tanned, with a round face and high prominent cheekbones. Kids in school used to always ask if I was Chinese/Hispanic/Italian/whatever else. In college it was sort of a joke and my friends just started calling me "ethnic". I know my looks come from my Indian genes, I just wish they were closer to my generation so I could claim them more easily.

So here's to being American, Southern Appalachian, a hodge-podge of Irish, Scottish, Cherokee and who knows what else.

Now, let's think about what's been good about today so far:

1. I didn't get any speeding tickets today. I was soo cautious on my way to work this morning. In fact, they should have pulled me over and given me a pardon for yesterday's offense for such defensive and apologetic driving.
2. My boss is out sick. Hence why I am blogging so early in the day. I may be getting too comfortable though, because I'm on my second cup of tea for the day and I still feel like I haven't quite woken up yet.
3. A lovely new writer I'm currenty enjoying. Her name is Theodora Goss and she writes these strange fantastical short stories. I'm reading her collection entitled In the Forest of Forgetting. I will definitely be writing more about her in a later post. For now I'm getting to know her stories better.

I wish work was like class and you didn't have to call in if you wanted to skip. I just want to go outside and play.

Actually I'd like to be making my way into this enchanted forest:




Yes, I think I'd much rather do that. Maybe I can find the Elves and they can tell me my heritage. Maybe Theodora Goss lives there somewhere.