I woke up sometime around 4 am, throat raw from crying, face wet, pillow case wet. I dreamed that I had reached for my dog, to cuddle her close to me as we are wont to do and I found that the slippery, loose, hot amalgamation of subroutines that equate to life had slowed and glitched and stopped. And I could not move, I could not get up, I could do nothing but lay there. My friend was gone, leaving me with this cold furry lifeless thing. I'm still not right.
That those of us of pen and word cannot agree is just absurd. We say a thing and that is that, though I mean dog and you mean cat. We enter into Show & Tell, two terms ripped from the bowels of Hell. And down the rabbit hole we go, so much think and little know. Some say Show is dialogue; a chat that’s had twixt cat and dog. Detail, others think it is. Megapixel spin and whiz. Others say it’s just a myth, for tales are told, lest I’m remiss. And some will granulate - they do to just a word, a letter, or two. All this faff and running ‘round, with no agreement to be found. Conclusion drawn from wild surmise, and no one holding the grand prize. For all of this is easy peazy. Don’t complicate, no lemon squeazy. Though I doubt that I shall influence, flat fact is Tell - Show is evidence.
The morning of 3 Kings Day (aka Epiphany, Jan 6) found me in Caguas, in the condo, swaying somewhere between gently and concertedly. It's not the first time I've felt a tremble beneath my feet. The Caribbean tectonic plate does her slow spin, sliding by and over the much larger plates in her vicinity. This tectonic plate is the reason I cannot - ever - agree with the majority of my Latino brethren that North and South America are one single continent. Sorry, but that idea fails in every single geological regard and only ever serves to stop there being an invisible wall between Central America - most of which lies on the North American plate, but some of which lies on the Caribbean plate - and South America, which lies on its own plate. And this is just the science upholding what are quite obviously two profoundly distinct and seperate land masses. Two continents. Not one. Geology does not answer to socio-political interests. 3 Kings Day is Puerto Rican Christmas. December 25 here is a church holiday. The giving of gifts is on the 6th of January (often on the eve of) where children fill boxes with grass and leave them beneath the bed for the 3 wise men to give to their mounts, leaving gifts for the children in exchange. I'm certainly no one's definition of a Christian, but I like the way the Puerto Rican way of doing things is less riven by deeply confusing, northern European pagan accoutrements and regalia. I mean, seriously, the nativity is pretty much an afterthought when one regards the whole little pine tree alter (admit it, it's an alter) we set up in the corner of our respective living rooms. And then I drove back to Moca, to the house in the hills. 4:24 the next morning found me in bed, that bed about three feet away from where it typically resides, cockeyed to the room. And the house was still kicking back and forth beneath me. Did I mention my bed has a wooden frame with solid wooden feet? No metal frame or wheels for me, thank you. And still, three feet across the room and cockeyed. And still shaking. A 6.4. It's the strongest seismic event to which I've been witness since the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 when I was receiving language instruction at the DLIFLC in Monterey, California. A 6.9 adjusted to a 7.1. There have been eleven seismic events since last night, two of which had me reaching for a wall to steady myself, one of which had me grabbing the dog as she whined and we ran outside and since the start of all this, eleven events with only two that made me wobbly and only one that had me running outside is a slow day. There've been literally thousands of events since it started at the end of December. Thousands. I've felt as many events here, now, as I did in the whole year I lived in California. What's the old curse? May you live to see interesting times...
Keep your Cher, keep your Bette and your Gaga too. My divas brandish pulse rifles and tune Epstein drives to electron-ripping speeds. They wear power armor and pimp slap d-bags into an alternate dimension. Also... I have a type? Whodathunkit? View attachment 23026
Why did I step down as admin? If you care to read on, I’ll get you up to speed: The aftermath of Hurricane Maria quietly morphed into the first passes of eldercare on my part. Maria aged all of us in ways that none of us can deny, but for my parents who were already well into the senior zone, the mark Maria left was game-changing, and I’m the only one around to provide for their care. And Puerto Rico’s recent inclusion into the Very Seismically Active Club™ has been a new flavor of crazy to assimilate. I was also growing deeply despondent with the way people engaged here, a fractal facet of Anglophone culture as a whole. The zeal with which people morally policed one another was hard to engage, especially when, from an exterior POV, no one held much of anything in the way of moral high ground. I don’t pretend my culture has any higher moral standing, but that’s the point, my culture doesn’t pretend to be what it’s not. We own our warts, and they are many. But the policing and shutupsky squads became the color and flavor of nearly every interaction I made here and even I got tired of wielding the ban-hammer because, as someone pointed out to me at one point, I was becoming deeply cynical. He was right, but the problem with that charge is that the indictment of cynicism speaks only to how we feel about a sentiment or phenomenon. It doesn't address veracity or verisimilitude, and often the cynic is drowning in unquestionable empirical evidence. So I stepped back. Initially, it was intended as a complete stepping away, but I am as much a creature of habit as any, and I’ve been part of this community for a goodly while. To the mods and admins, I promise to uphold the kvetch I so often made, that this place was ever and always a place to discuss writing. That’s what I intend to do and I will do everything in my power to make sure I am never someone with whom you are made to deal. To those who remember me, I may not be who you remember. Much of our interaction in the past may have been filtered through my prior position where I had little choice but to tolerate some viciously intolerable behavior. If I block you, it’s because I intend to hold to my promise to the staff, and also to a commitment to an internal locus of control, which includes the idea that I get to pick the engagements I want and swipe left on the ones that I don't. So, on to writing…
I'm chatting in one of my alumnus pages for the DLIFLC and recounting a story that took place during my training at DLI. Someone responded and gave me some unexpected insight and I am still covered in goosebumps. Me: I'm having a one-on-one with my mentor Г-н Яхно (sp?), an intimidatingly brilliant man, all of 90 lbs, one pound for each year he's been on Earth (or so it seemed to my much younger self, he was actually only in his 60's at the time). He used Shakespeare to help me understand goal-of-motion words like куда, откуда and the related concepts that permeated certain verbs that had motion vs static counterparts. He made a game of collecting American neologisms and sprinkling them into his English with the most charming sparkle in his eye. I never learned who he had been in his past life, though I did know the lives of some of my other instructors. My palatalization was not exactly excellent. I'm Latino and the similarity in phonology between Russian and Spanish kept bringing out the Ricardo Montalban in me. That's what he called me, Ricardo. It was never an insult. I was the only one with a pet name in our little group. I felt super special because the mentor had a pet name for me. I got frustrated when he kept hitting me with lessons to get my palatalization correct. I felt like my pronunciation was really good and this one thing kept getting pointed out and it made me feel foolish, which was in such stark contrast to how this alarmingly thin old man usually made me feel. DLI was filled to the brim with young people who had been the best and the brightest whence they came, so that kind of attention was hard to get - lots of competition - and most of us were so young, just kids really. I had a minor lapse in decorum this day and got angry that he wasn't letting go of my failure to get that dang мягкий знак right. I said something to the tune of, "Look, [redacted] can't even get the X right. He keeps saying "ya yekel, ya yekel, ya yekel.. and you never say anything to him." He stops for a minute and looks at me, hard, and says, "And he'll never get it right. He'll be lucky to get a one plus*. You should get a three. I want you to get a three. I am the mentor, you know." It was a life lesson. A small one, but an important one. This brilliant man was paying extra attention to me, and I was being an utterly privileged little brat. I never complained again. I got a three*. I can't imagine that Г-н Яхно is still with us these 30 years later, but I remember him like it was yesterday and the opportunity and the privilege he afforded me. * Our final exams were threefold: Reading comprehension, writing proficiency and conversational skill, each test scored on a scale of 1 to 3 with pluses in between. My final complete score was a 2+,2+,3. The response: I knew Dr. Jachno very well. You were, indeed, privileged to study under him. He was one of my most beloved teachers when I went through the DTRA (formerly OSIA) Russian Arms Control Speaking Proficiency Course in 2003. Pyotr Stepanovich (Dr. Jachno), sadly, passed from this world in October of 2011. By that time, I was on the faculty in the Russian School and his wife, Lydia, was one of my colleagues. We had the pleasure of hearing many of his stories and, man, did he have a lot of them. The following is from a 2010 article in the DLI publication "The Globe". In 1943, the war raging in Europe had finally made its way to a small town in Southern Ukraine. For Dr. Peter Jachno, this would mean the beginning of a life-long adventure that would eventually take him to Monterey, Calif., to teach Russian to students attending the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) course at DLIFLC. The Nazis ripped Jachno from his home at age 16 and placed him in a labor camp in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was forced to work for the Axis powers war effort until the camp was liberated in 1945. Jachno did not want to return to the Soviet Union following his internment, so he travelled through Europe as a freed man until 1949. He stayed in United Nations relief camps looking for work and had an assortment of tough jobs like coal mining. “Work was very hard to come by in those days, but I did not want to go back to the Soviet Union,” reminisced Jachno. Because of his “stateless” status, Jachno was able to immigrate to the U.S. under the Law of Admission for Displaced Persons. “I was looking for a way to make a better life for myself. I thought I could find a hopeful future in the United States,” said Jachno. Less than a year after Jachno immigrated to the U.S. he was drafted into the Army and spent 10 months on the front lines during the Korean War as a machine-gunner in the 40th Infantry Division. His actions in Korea earned him the Expert Infantry Badge and the Bronze Star. “I practically didn’t speak English, but soon I learned ‘Army’ English,” said Jachno. When he came back from the war, Jachno applied to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), but was told his English was not good enough for university study. This didn’t deter him. He went to Los Angeles Community College for a few semesters and worked on his English proficiency until he was admitted to UCLA. In 1958 he graduated with a degree in psychology. Soon after graduation, Jachno received word through a letter that his 74-year-old mother was alone and disabled in Ukraine. “I decided to go back to the Soviet Union to help her. So I applied to the consulate to receive permission to go,” said Jachno. When Jachno returned to the Soviet Union, he looked for work to earn money to help his mother. Being a decorated U.S. Army veteran did not help his social status in the Soviet Union and work was not easy to find. Thinking that he was more of a burden than a help to his mother, he went to the authorities to tell them that he would like to go back to the U.S. because he could not find work. “They told me that I better keep quiet about going to the United States because I would get myself sent to Siberia,” he explained. Then, unexpectedly, one of the authorities decided to do him a favor. He was taken to a metallurgical plant where he received a job as a quality control manager. As soon as Jachno’s reputation spread as having been educated in the West, he was sent to work at a middle school as an English assistant professor for two years. Recognized for his academic excellence, Jachno was sent to the Soviet National Pedagogical Institute where he worked on the methodology and psychology of teaching foreign language, and earned a PhD on the same topic. While studying, he began conducting experiments to prove his theory that assimilating a lexicon for foreign language in secondary education forums was better than existing Soviet methods. These unique and innovative experiments revolutionized foreign language acquisition in the Soviet Union. In 1986, Jachno found his way to DLIFLC where he began teaching Russian in the basic course. In 1994, he was recognized as a candidate to stand up a new DTRA advanced Russian-language program that trains service members in advanced Russian language skills to become interpreters and help mitigate Weapons of Mass Destruction threats from the former Soviet Union. “The Russian Department was a wonderful place to work. I am proud that I spent so many years training interpreters (linguists) for such an important endeavor like DTRA,” Jachno said. Jachno retired from DLIFLC Feb. 1, 2010 after 23 years of service.
Sure, I’ve had suicidal ideations. And so have you. Saying you haven’t is a lie. You know it’s a lie. I know it’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie. Everyone has thought of it. Everyone. The question is, in fact, disingenuous. “Have you ever had suicidal ideations?” is not the real question being asked. What’s really being asked is: “Are your survival instincts still sufficiently intact so that you lie to me (and likely yourself) with respect to the answer?” That’s the real question.
This will be a blog entry that is continually updated. ------------------------------------------------------------ Sometimes I feel like my own community has no idea what it wants. We want representation. Clear representation. Fuck your subtext. Stick the lines between which you expect us to read right up your wazoo. Queer-in-name-only is a smug copout. Fuck that right in the face with all nine inches of my disdain. No, reboot Lando, your vague flirtations do not earn you a Rainbow Pass. And then I come across things like this post, currently doing the rounds at all the major LGBTQ internet venues... View attachment 22995 So, in response to the above, my little list of books I've read that I feel satisfies both the need for real, honest, upfront representation and also the need for such stories not to always be coming of age, sappy love stores about how people come to grips with their sexuality. Like, let's move past that, culturally, into other realms. This list isn't remotely all-inclusive, and, full disclosure, it clearly represents my own personal tastes as a reader and as a gay dude of a certain generation. Again, I'm not including any stories that revolve around being LGBTQ, just works that I have enjoyed that include LGBTQ in the framework of stories, front and center, above and beyond just being LGBTQ. I begin with Robert J. Sawyers Neanderthal Parallax. View attachment 22996 Pontor is a Neanderthal (the word they use of themselves is barast) scientist involved in a neutrino identification experiment in an alternate timeline that parallels the work of neutrino scientists in our world working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario, Canada. A freak mishap that occurs simultaneously in both timelines causes a juncture point and Pontor is shunted into our world. All of this taking place in Canada (and boy, Sawyer drops a uniquely Canadian product placement every other paragraph to be sure we don't forget it), Pontor is engaged by his homo sapien counterparts with that most mythically ensconced of all Canadian virtues, overtly performative politeness. We learn along the way, and rather early on, that Pontor is bisexual and involved in a polyamorous relationship in his own world. DO NOT expect the definition of either of those concepts in these books to represent the Party Approved™ meanings we use in our current world. Sawyer makes use of a little-known bit of real-world scientific knowledge that concerns the unusual gender assortment we tend to find when Neanderthal fossils have been found in groups. There is a mild tendency (not a rule, but a tendency) for these fossils to be found in same-sex groupings. Sawyer lifts that small statistical anomaly and uses it to create a Neanderthal world where everyone has both a husband and a wife. Everyone. He gives Neanderthals a mating season, rather than a monthly cycle like homo sapiens, and uses the two dynamics to create a society where you live with your same-sex spouse for most of the year (it is a full and complete sexual relationship), and then when the urge to make babies comes upon you, you go stay with your opposite-sex spouse. I have no idea if Sawyer is or is not a member of the Rainbow Community, but he does fixate on Pontor as a sexual object. He finds himself desired in the homo sapien world of people he encounters, and, we learn, to put it plainly, that Pontor is remarkably well endowed. Sawyer spends a whole scene detailing Pontor's prodigiousness. Gay or not, Sawyer is a size queen. But it's not Pontor's bedroom proclivities that anchor the story (though Sawyer is not shy in giving these details). It's the differences between his world and ours, the mistakes we've made that they haven't and widdershins likewise, the chance for a peek into how things could have been had different choices been made, for both Pontor and the homo sapiens who befriend him. -------------------------- Richard K. Morgan's series A Land Fit for Heroes. View attachment 22997 Ringil Eskiath is a man stuck on the wrong side of time and history. Once a hero of epic proportion, swinging sword and fury into the scaled enemy threatening their borders, ready to kill or die a furious death rather than submit to subjugation and defeat, Ringil is now part of an inconvenient prior age. Younger thoughts and minds (and even some of his contemporaries) find his presence a nuisance to their newly freed abilities to think as they wish and do as they like. He is the victim of irony and already sliding down the backside of youth and beauty, known now only as a despoiler of honest men in sweaty pawings within dirty barns. But fate is not done with Ringil. Like a dispassionate army that keeps tabs on its veterans, Ringil is called back into service. There is yet need of the steel sword he wields, no matter how much the citizenry may resent and disdain him for what he does with the flesh-sword with which he was born. I love Ringil for not being young or epically handsome or tied to those youthful days when we clutch our definitions to our bosoms with such prickly heat. Ringil's definitions have long ago proven to be lies. Those whom he loved have died or found settled lives of mere mortals, not the gods of war they once were, now grown small and quiet. These books will appeal - I think - to older LGBTQ folk. You'll find no sentimentality or saudade here. The realism of muscles gone soft with age and the ever-present enemy called gravity are taken into account. @BayView, if you've not come across these books before, they answer, I think, to the topic you brought up concerning emotional truth, rather than sticking to expectations or any kind of historical realism. In this case there is no realism to be stuck to since Ringil's world is not our own. Instead, here we find rather modern mouths speaking in modern ways to connect that emotional truth, rather than cleave to tropic expectations of how people will speak or behave in a typical Sword & Sorcery novel. As regards LGBTQ concepts, sexualities run the gamut in these books, but again, these are all people who have lived, who have run through the years that lead to regrets and are on the other side of that gauntlet, imperfect, sometimes broken, morally clouded, very real. --------------------------------- The Hexlisnger series by Gemma Files. View attachment 22998 Chess Pargeter and Asher Rook… where to even begin? Firstly, these are not nice people. Seriously - not nice. Ash is an ex-reverend turned desperado turned hexslinger (that’s cowboy talk for warlock). Chess Pargeter is a son-of-a-whore in the most literal sense. There certainly is a love story here, but it’s not cute or saccharine or pining for some fairytale stupidity. It’s dirty and broken and fucked up and deeply darkly sexual. Long story short, Chess and Ash are on the run for bad things they did at the end of the Civil War and because hexlsingers ain’t exactly “polite company” in this alternate world. They have some crazy times, take a great many lives, and those that manage to survive at their side never come away without some taint by association. Chess was born to a San Fransisco jezebel name of “English Oona”. When he was old enough to be brought into the fold of selling his flesh, he did so. Chess has no need to be forgiven for his past sins. Any accusation of sin is your problem, not his. And lord, he is desirable. In not so many words, Gemma Files makes it clear that if Chess weren’t so damned dangerous, if you didn’t have to regard him as you would a rattlesnake with whom you share a room that’s only 3 feet square, if you could slip past his ferocity, you would see that he is uncommonly, perhaps even unnaturally, beautiful. To fuck Chess Pargeter, or to have him fuck you, is to lay with an angel. But if you know your Bible, then you know that not all angels are to be trusted. Angel becomes a god when Chess and Ash are drawn to a conflagration of other hexslingers, brought together by an ancient goddess of Aztec or Mayan (in her eyes, she’s older than either) origin. She takes Ash as her husband and flings Chess into the rotten bowels of Xibalba, where the gods play ōllamaliztli with our souls in their sunken ballcourt, to make his way out... if he can. These books are not for the sensitive. They are not for those of you still demanding we be represented in a certain sort of idealized light. There are no pedestals to be seen. These people are outlaws, dirty to the core, fucked up from the floor up, and amazingly engaging and satisfying to read. -------------------------------- Clive Barker's Imajica View attachment 22999 In this story, the LGBTQ aspects are not quite as front and center, but I think it certainly merits a place on this list. John Furie Zacharias is no ordinary mortal, though he’s pretty sure he’s as ordinary as they come. He becomes entwined in the machinations of secret societies, assassin angels, and realms beyond Earth. He goes by the nickname Gentle - a bit of foreshadowing - and eventually comes across the idea that he may, in fact, be the Second Coming. Yes, that second coming. But this is Clive Barker, so don’t expect any humble genuflecting or deference to religious sentiments. This is the same man who brought us the Hellraiser series. In this story, God is not what we think. Earth, The Fifth Dominion, has long been separated from the other four dominions and stories have grown strange and distorted from that long ago time when we knew better. God (of the Abrahamic flavor) is not a creator, but a conqueror named Hapexamendios. A power-hungry warlord who burned an unhealing scar across the dominions...
Here’s a GI-Joe™ missing an arm, missing a leg. There’s a Barbie™ upside down with no head, just a peg. There are random Lego™ pieces that are strewn here and there. This once was a Chewbacca™; now he’s bald, without a hair. This used to be a Slinky™; now it’s tangle beyond mend. This LightBright™ has no colored bits through which the light to send. This Battleship™ has not one boat to place upon the waves. Just one green soldier left, I fear, the rest all went to graves. These broken toys upon the floor, no, none belongs to me. My things are put away, my dear, whole and sound, you see. Do as you wish with what is yours, the chance we all do take, but leave them strewn about, it’s clear that surely they will break.
“Guilty on all counts, your honor,” I said. “You understand the nature of your plea, right?” asked the judge, his plain but not unkind countenance fixed upon me piercingly. “I do, your honor.” Did I? “I want to hear in your own words, sir, so that I can be sure.” The judge was certainly giving me every opportunity to sidestep and take a different route, but I was committed. “Your honor, I appreciate what you are doing. I do. But I am guilty. I went into their world and was initially intoxicated by what I found. I don’t say that as an excuse, just a reason, an anchor, if you’ll allow the metaphor, for how and why I stayed. I didn’t think I was going to like it as much as I did, but, months later, there I was, still there. I never understood it fully, to be honest. The fervor, the passion, the reason for the level of pathological commitment, and maybe trying to understand that was part of what kept me there too.” I paused, unsure if I was ready to say the ugly things about myself that were fighting for control of my tongue. “Go on,” said the judge. “They got into the most insane battles over ships and AU’s and I never really understood the meaning of coffee shop, not the way they used it, not the way they kept invoking that term. It never alluded to the same thing twice.” The judge nodded. “I wanted to know, to understand how these fires could burn like magnesium, to learn the dynamics behind antis and anti-antis, and anti-anti-antis and the proxy wars to which each of them gave birth. And the whole alpha/beta/omega thing, your honor, it was like turning over a rock just to enjoy being grossed out by what you found underneath. But…” And here was the truth. “… I was only ever a voyeur, and worse, my voyeurism was judgie and condescending and dismissive. I mean, seriously though, how does one whip oneself into a murderous rage over het ships vs gay ships? How does that result in arson? Multiple arson? I’m not really asking you to answer that, your honor. Obviously it’s rhetorical. But I saw it time and time again. And you couldn’t ask about these things without actually invoking the very things you were asking about. It would be as if talking about electricity created it, or talking about ice caused things to freeze. And there was a certain voyeuristic pleasure in that too, your honor. I know that doesn’t paint me as the nicest person, but it’s true.” The judge tapped his chin contemplatively with the end if a pen. “If you’re released, do you plan on returning?” I released a heavy breath through flapping lips. “Probably. Despite all the insanity, the rage, and the colossally sensitive nature of the denizens, there’s also a charm there that I can’t resist. So, yeah. If I’m honest, yes.” “You understand that if I release you, if I forgive these charges, and you go back there and get the brickbats, you won’t be allowed to form a complaint against them. You’ll have gone of your own free will, and whatever happens is on you. Understand?” “I do, your honor.” “Fine. I appreciate your honesty, but, as I’ve already stated, you’re on your own after this.” The judge banged his gavel. “Charges dismissed. You’re free to go.” I thought he was done, but his bright little eyes flicked up at me and he said, “One more question for you. Did you write that smutty little Expanse slashfic called [redacted]?” “Yes, your honor. That was me.” “It wasn’t half bad, but sex between two guys doesn’t work like that in zero-g. A little more research and it would have been a better story.”
I’ve been on the internet since the day it was born. Actually, since before that because when I was in the USAF in the late 80's, in the land of SCIFs, I made use of the communications channels that lent at least part of their code to what eventually became the modern Internet in 1991. And it’s never happened to me. Ever. Today I get yet another melodramatic message asking me to delete all traces of an account, a thing we do not do, and which not even the GDPR demands of us. Your identifying information? Yep, we’ll delete that. Your thousands of posts? Nope. Not going to happen and there’s nothing demanding that we do it. Sorry. No. But that’s not the core of the kvetch. I just don’t get what people are doing to cause these things to happen to them. In a fucked up way, I’m kinda’ wondering when and if I’ll ever actually have a stalker that I can’t get away from because I feel like I’m not getting the full experience, the whole ride, the complete park-hopper pass, so to speak. In the fic forums I follow, stalkers and personally appointed trolls are a dominant topic. Everyone’s talking about it, all the time, and me sitting in the corner feeling like the ugliest boy in the room, not even worthy of a stalking, because… It’s never happened to me. I’ve modded or adminned this forum for a decade now. I’ve banned the living daylights out of many people, some of them multiple times, all of whom thought it was personal, thought I “didn’t like them”, thought I sided against their politics, their gender, their religion, their {fill in the egocentric blank}, so god(s) know(s) there has been opportunity enough for it to happen. It’s never happened to me. Never. Every platform has a block or a hide or a delete feature. Every platform gives me a level of control over my engagement that means someone else only ever has the power over me that I give to that person. So what gives? Are we just drawing the line in the sand in completely different places? Is it the difference between adhering to a system of internal vs external loci of control? Is it just the difference between “I’ll just block this faff of a person” (click!) vs “I shouldn’t have to do a damned thing!” It’s never happened.
Janet Jackson has a new song and video out with Daddy Yankee, which is FIRE right now in Puerto Rico. The song itself is fun, vivacious, Caribbean, African, and the repeated refrain is that we’re “made for now, not tomorrow”. And the song got me to going through old Janet videos, and some of Michael’s, and realizing that neither of these legends could have or would have been allowed to flower in today’s hyper-vigilant climate. There’s too much policing from all sides for such demigods to rise, for the envelope to be pushed that hard. The People won’t have it. You’re about to list a number of mega-stars on the rise today. Spare me. They don’t come close in stature. They don’t hold a candle in regards to artistic breadth and depth. Their deepest dives are Janet’s wadings in the shallow end. Myth making is on hold. You won’t allow it. I was watching her uncensored video for “If” and thinking, even if it got made today, it would likely only air on HBO in America with a “clutched pearls” trigger warning. Black people engaging in apparent blacksploitation. And wait… wait… oh, no you didn’t! This video is not taking place in an extremely high-end Asian brothel?! *paces the room in stunned bemusement* I mean, where to even begin?! *looks for cellphone to dial 911* “Yes, police? Yes, Janet Jackson is being all kinds of wrong in this nasty-ass video. I need you to go do something about this, ASAP! What? Well, for starters, there's felony cultural appropriation happening. And it just gets worse from there.” If you missed the sarcasm above, allow me to clarify: scathing sarcasm. But maybe it’s also like a cycle. The works of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were a direct response to the cultural stranglehold they felt around their necks. I think it’s funny that when we look over our shoulders at the 50’s, we see only the whitewashed version of it, the retconned version, so to speak. We ignore, we unsee, the deep subterranean rumbling that was shaking the land and about to give birth to the 60’s. I wish I had the chops of Allen Ginsberg in order to document the power struggle in play now, in culture, in life, in this very forum, the way he did. To give words and shape and meaning to the waring factions, the self-appointed, self-anointed, Shutupsky Police Squads (both red and blue, genuflect now) patrolling the threads, to tell that future generation just how and why we devolved into a spittle-beflecked writhing mass on the floor. I miss the days of freedom that gave birth to Janet and Michael. I wonder who will be the Allen and the Jack to rise from this pressure cooker of fingermen in back alleys ready and waiting to pounce on your political incorrectness (both red and blue, though each will swear in church and court on stacks of bibles that it only ever comes on the opposing flavor). If you're to young to know the video I mentioned above...
Try as we may, try as we might, a dearth of offspring is our due plight. Just he and I, my hubby and me, with nary a sign that baby makes three. Now before I confuse, or lead you astray, let me make clear that I like it this way. No diapers to change, or bottles to heat. My home remains tidy and spiffy and neat. It’s the boon of my kind, the Dorothy Friends. We rumple the sheets, and that’s where it ends. So if ye be grown, then show it through deed, because kids I don’t want, I don’t seek, I don’t need.
This isn't the usual stick to what you know remonstration. This isn't that. It's not. If you came here glassy eyed, ready to pound the keys clean through your keyboard to correct me, sorry to disappoint you. Go away. I'll be talking about a different concept here, giving those words a different spin. Write what you know... We all have experiences. We all engage life. We are all here in our various different ways and lately it's become quite the talking point to be sure that one includes every possible way of being a human being in one's stories lest ye be guilty of the mortal sin of non-inclusivity. But, while you're carrying your proud social justice flag, finding a way to include that one Inuit lesbian demisexual vegan who was raised by gay fathers in New South Whales, remember that you, the non-Inuit, non-lesbian, non-demisexual, non-vegan, raised by straight parents in Boringsville USA/UK/Canada, you also exist and you too are part of the human story and are a worthy fount of characterization and backstory. One concept I've been including in my current WIP is growing up itinerant. Never in one place for more than four years, and this long before the ability to connect with past friends via social media. There was a time when itinerant kids either learned how to be really good snail mail pen-pals or they learned how to emotionally divorce themselves from the life they were about to leave - yet again - and start new somewhere else - yet again. That's something I know. It don't have to research it, I don't have to ask or imagine. My entire life was painted in that pallet. I can speak authoritatively on that life. I don't need anyone to give it a sensitivity read (groan). Write what you know... See where I'm going? Write what you don't know too, but don't discount what you do know. Write what you know.
Not a real princess, mind you. A princess of youth, high school royalty. Not a "mean girl", not a Regina George. A pretty girl of gentle birth on that side of the main road, which in our town was the divide between the wealthy and the merely mortal. There were two lines, really; there was the aforementioned main road and then there was living beachside, which was a different kind of wealthy. When I first moved to that town, we had a small house in with the mortals, and then, after a few years and some smart moves on my mother's part, we went to live by the water where old money leaned into the sand, though we were anything but old money. We weren't money at all. My mom was just frugal and canny and could squeeze a dollar out of a nickel. She didn't want to move to the other side of the road, where the neighbors would all be coworkers and the people cared very much about their gauche displays of buying power. She wanted the high whine of cicadas in Australian pines and sprawling, rambling mid-century modern homes of the beach that were the remains of the early days of the space race in our slice of Florida. Everyone there was old. I got a district exemption and continued on at the same high school as before. And today the princess of that high school, class of '88, 47 years of age, tall and graceful as a deer, with whom I worked for a few years when we were well into adulthood, though our social circles in high school could not have been more remote from one another, and who I came to learn had had as mortal a life as mine, filled with angst and divorce (her parents' and then her own), passed away. Her obituary was sent to me by a friend we had in common, and it's strange to think of her as gone. Every advantage in life was hers. She was certainly pretty, came from the kind of money that leads a person to believe that nothing is out of reach, so they reach, without the fear inherent to the poor, and she was a genuinely nice woman, without the callousness or crassness that the above description would demand of such a person in any Hollywood script. Life is so random.