I feel like I'm in a swirl of feelings and circumstances that don't have a lot of room for one another. On the one hand, I am swamped in real life generally, mostly because I am finally getting opportunities to do things and saying "no" to those feels like a betrayal of the nearly forty years I spent, you know, NOT getting to do the things. (Or really, rather, building towards those things or not getting to do them enough, etc.)

So I'm working and I have friends I don't see as much as I ought and I have theater and podcast recordings and skating lessons and all that. At the same time, having attended Left Coast Sherlock Symposium and then this past weekend KiScon, I want to get caught up in fandom again and just don't know how. I don't know where it is and when I do find pockets of it they seem unsuitable or unnavigable. I want to write but I feel I have forgotten how to produce, or maybe I've forgotten how to create time in my life where production of that sort is possible.

I've also got an ex-coworker texting me her feelings about Spike since she's watching Buffy for the first time, so hello again Spike feelings.

So yeah. I still have all these thoughts and feelings flowing around and through me, and I don't know what to do with them because not only are they diffuse they are undirected and in addition, the logistics of my daily life are, you know. Compromised, time-wise.

I don't know why I'm posting all of this here, except to try to kickstart myself into figuring this out. If I want to write this fic about Kirk, I should do it. If I want to be involved in fandom, I should find it and stop whining about it not being what I want. It's just hard to know where to start when it feels like "starting over" in an arena that used to feel so organic and natural.

Last November, I was in Orlando, helping out with a friend's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Mr. Daroga, lettered and I were providing the music, and we arrived in time to have a few rehearsals and meet the student actors.

( Warning for cruelty to puppets )

I have to say, a surprise!marching band (particularly a punk/indie one) is a million times better than the regular kind. Especially when you're at an art opening and think some high school is practicing way too close until you realize they're coming up the stairs at you and are actually dressed all in black/white/red and are not at all high schoolers. I like to imagine they just crash various events.

News of Outdoor Star Trek interest:
Casting is completed, and at this point it seems that another girl and I are "vying" for Kirk and Spock. As in, she was the top pick for both, so we're going to work out who's-who in rehearsal. That should be interesting. I am somewhat delighted by the notion that people cannot actually be delineated as one or the other--I would have thought that Kirk/Spockiness (as individuals, not slash) was somewhat innate and mutually exclusive. Then I would have thought again and laughed at myself.

I am actually posting, however, to point out two awesome Dreamwidth communities I am avidly following and highly recommend:
writingthewall is a discussion community devoted to real person fiction, and all the discussions so far have been fascinating.
queering_holmes is a very interesting community "for research/discussion of Sherlock Holmes and queerness" which spans the books, the new movie, and in general the treatment of queerness and homosexuality in the 19th century as well as today's fandom.

My birthday gift roundup presents what I think is a fairly interesting picture of Where I Am Now. (All presented by Mr. Daroga and lettered.)

Music
The Left Banke ("Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina")
The Association ("And Then... Along Comes The Association")
Franz Ferdinand ("You Could Have it So Much Better")
Muse ("Origin of Symmetry", "Black Holes and Revelations")

Books
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T.E. Lawrence. Following this essay, I put down my copy of the "abridged" 1926 edition and decided I should read the original 1922 text. And now I have it! Unfortunately, this paperback edition is very print-on-demand, and is not only horribly formatted but printed on letter-sized paper, making it impossible to read in bed. Still, I will brave it.
Exposed: The Victorian Nude by Alison Smith. Obviously, the apparent cultural contradiction interested me. Ahem.
Robin Hood: A Cinematic History of the English Outlaw and His Scottish Counterparts by Scott Allen Nollen. Funny story: this was on my Amazon.com wish list, which is where lettered saw it. When she found it at our local Half Price Books, she thought it fortuitous that there was a copy there--not knowing it was this exact copy which I had been watching for months and which had prompted my placing it on the list in the first place.

Other Media
The Adam West Batman, Season 1
Tickets to a new stage adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this afternoon

Last night, we went to the Melting Pot and had cheese and chocolate (and this amazing "strawberry drop" drink that would turn me into an alcoholic if I could get it whenever I wanted--and I hardly ever drink). Then we went home and watched the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. All in all, there are worse ways to turn 30.

Five things phantoms_siren associates with me:

I'm not sure exactly how to address these, except to wonder, at least a little, why Phantoms associates them with me. Which is sort of the most interesting part, and I'd be interested in her thoughts on the subject.

Clear skies
I live in Seattle, which is known for its rain and overcast cloudscape. But what no one tells you (presumably for fear the city will be inundated by newbies like me) is that the summers are GLORIOUS. It's not hot enough (generally) to need air conditioning, and not humid enough either. So you open your windows and enjoy three months of temperate summer. The grass dies, but it always comes back. And the days are long, but not so long I can't sleep.

Even so, I find I miss the cloudy weather when we go a long time without it. I like how it feels to sit on the couch reading, or watching X-Files, with the light outside all diffused and dim.

Still, clear skies in Seattle is a far different thing than clear skies in Florida. Which spell sunburn and a sad absence of my favorite Florida feature, the 3 o'clock thunderstorm. I love being able to see the mountains in the distance, and Rainier looming over the city, and airplanes. I love seeing airplanes in the sky, because every time I do it reminds me how truly amazing they are. Big hunks of metal that fly.

Blue roses
I'm not sure I've ever seen a blue rose. I expect they're very unusual. I once knew someone who claimed she'd have blue roses at her wedding; for the life of me, I can't remember now who that was. According to Wikipedia, efforts to breed blue roses resulted in something like lilac until genetic engineering made all our dreams come true; though apparently not very well.

The other day I watched The Thief of Bagdad (1940) which included a "Blue Rose of Forgetfulness." I also recall one pinned to the lapel of Lil's red dress, in Fire Walk With Me, but I can't remember what it means. According to the Victorian Language of Flowers, a blue rose means "mystery, attaining the impossible."

I am nothing like a rose, much less the impossible blue one.

Peppermint
I have never been a huge fan of peppermint. Perhaps it is too strong; of the minty candy/gum flavors, I prefer wintergreen, and I do not enjoy hard peppermints of the sort you get at restaurants. Peppermint patties have far too great a peppermint-to-chocolate ratio.

I think peppermint works much better as an aspect of something, like fudge or ice cream or a chocolate mint Hershey bar. Yes, I am too weak for peppermint.

Brocade
There is a great discrepancy between things I like aesthetically and what I present to the world. Somehow I've decided that while I appreciate many fine things and enjoy dressing up if it is a costume, I am lying to the world unless I am wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Perhaps it is a matter of physical comfort, but I suspect it's largely mental.

That said, I think brocade would be a bit much, in any event, and hard to be subtle about. When I was younger, in the full throes of my 19th century literature/Phantom of the Opera phase, I wanted to decorate everything far too richly for my tastes now. I even bought a length of paisley fabric I was going to make curtains out of (or something--I can't imagine what I was thinking). But somewhere along the way my habits got simpler and simpler and now the most extravagant I get is painting each room a different color, with solid curtains on the windows.

But why? Why shouldn't I mix and match? I love rooms where nothing goes together--it's a matter of allowing that free reign in my own space. Which has very little to do with brocade, I suppose, but the only other thing brocade makes me think of is ValMalkovich.

Sea spray
Growing up, my father was mad about sailing. Finally, at some point during my teen years, he bought a boat. It was a 22' Catalina, and we kept it in Casco Bay in Maine. We lived in New Hampshire at the time, so weekends consisted of driving up to it and poking around the islands.

With sailing, it's all about the journey. Or so I'm told. I quickly got bored with it, because I nearly always want to get somewhere. It's not that I don't appreciate the journey, but when the journey is very much the same for hours and the sun is beating down on you, making you drowsy and a little sick, it's hard to keep that frame of mind. Later he bought a 33' Ranger for taking my grandfather (and me and my uncles) to Cuba, which he then sold, and sold the house, so he and my mother could move onto a much larger sailboat which they now live on. I guess that's his dream.

People often express an affinity for one element or another. I've never really known, except I don't think I'm Fire. Or Earth, really, though I may be fooling myself. But while I love the sea, I love watching it more than being on/in it. I love rocky coastlines, where the waves crash and little things get caught in tidepools and lighthouses warn off ships. The beach holds little interest for me at all. But every time I'm back in Rhode Island or Maine I go to Ocean Drive or Ogunquit and climb around on the rocks.

Happy Holidays, to those who celebrate! As a secular Christmas person by tradition, today's the day with presents and candles and a decent meal and things, which we'll be sharing later with new roommate E. and dog, Auryn. This is the second person from the internet who's moved into my house, by the way, and I highly recommend it.

As anyone thinking about it may have predicted, it was a Wellesian-flavored Christmas. I got Orson Welles at Work and Making Movies with Orson Welles by Gary Graver, as well as The Third Man on blu-ray. We also got the yearbook edition of Freaks and Geeks from Mr. Daroga's parents (funny, since we got them the same series). Among other things, I got Mr. Daroga a set of Mercury radio plays. So I predict some curling up with Orson today.

It's been snowing here for a week, and Seattle has a no-salt, no-real-plowing policy. They actually want to pack the snow, meaning it's unsafe for anyone without four wheel drive or chains to drive anywhere. We've done some anyway, because life doesn't stop for snow, but while E. and I can make fun of people who can't drive in snow all we want, there's a reason it's harder, here. We're just not equipped. But the dogs have enjoyed it, and it's funny how the whole city comes to a standstill. Which leads me to my next batch of photos, taken on Sunday after 11 pm. The cloud cover was low, the night was totally silent, and non one was about. The diffused light looked almost like daytime, or maybe a strange dream-like daytime. I haven't done anything to these at all. Without any cars or people out, we let Mr. Darcy run around wherever he wanted, and he finally got to tear through the cemetery near us.


( +15 )

I am obsessed with Orson Welles.

This is not news to any of you, I suspect, since I talk of little else lately except for the odd foray into Peter Pan outfits. Nor do I think it will soon pass, and you will be inundated with more reviews as I attempt to watch his entire body of work. But I don't bring him up to talk about him in particular, today, but about obsession.

See, it's been ages--it feels like years--since anything's hit me this hard. When I was a teenager, and through college, certain things would grab hold of me and not let go. Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera, T.E. Lawrence, The X-Files, all of them had their day(s) and all of them were certain to elevate my heart rate on a regular basis. Under these conditions I was most likely insufferable, but I also wrote a lot. Obsession, for me, is akin to that gut-level yearning that also spurred my writing in previous years, the stories I just had to get out and would work on incessantly until they were done, thinking of little else. They were never that long, and compared to some of you my output, even at its highest, was much less. These stories were not necessarily related to my current obsession (unless it was Phantom), but the feeling was similar.

That's part of the reason that my constant rumination on Orson makes me happy--I'd missed that feeling. I've missed being absorbed by something, probably because it's one of the few situations in which I feel at all passionate. I think I'm fairly dynamic in real life. I'm not a stoic. But that's just personality, and here I'm talking about the sort of thing that dominates my thoughts and proves to me that I'm still reachable.

This is most likely a little bit unhealthy. After all, there are "better" things to be passionate about--real world situations, real people, relationships. And this sort of passion is inward-directed, reachable only by me and then constantly spilling forth whether my companion wants to hear it or not. In this instance, I am lucky in that Mr. Daroga seems to feel the same and tkp at least finds him adorable and seems to be amused by the fact of my obsession in itself. (No, he's not my type at all, physically; but as I told her last night only half-joking, I feel this is good for me and represents, er, an expansion of my taste.) But in general, unless you are part of a cult or spend a tremendous amount of time online to the exclusion of your everyday activities, fanatical obsession is a solitary thing. Even when it's shared, the peculiar overflow of excitement is difficult to confer on another, and more often than not serves more as a feedback loop for one's own obsession.

But for whatever reason, and I believe I've mentioned this before, I was nostalgic for those days of all-consuming interest. I'd thought it lost in the face of "real life": marriage, pet parenting, full-time employment and the like. I just didn't have the time or energy to obsess. I was doing more important things. Now I feel that way again, and I want to prolong it and draw it out and revel in it. Why? Is it like the person who keeps starting and leaving relationships, so they can get that new love high over and over? The objects of my obsession always stay close, even when the fire dies down. I tried to jump-start my Phantom thing again, by coming back online and getting involved. I have succeeded primarily in addiction to a cracktastic role-play forum--perhaps that's another obsession, or perhaps it just sparked this one. Perhaps it was quitting anti-depressants that did it.

Whatever the reason, what I hope is that this marks a return to some of my other pursuits--namely, obsessive writing. Back then, my stories were not brilliant, but at least I was telling them. And the compulsion to tell them overcame any laziness or fear of failure or whatever else is stopping me now. I'm not sure I should be so delighted by my own insular fannishness, but I am.

What about you? Do you have an obsessive personality? Did you once and, like me, leave it with some part of your life as you moved on? Or are you astonished that I'm even remarking upon it because it's just part of life? What have you been obsessed with? And that strange feeling--do you like it? Or is it a barrier between you and "real" life?

And isn't Orson amazing?

I've been meaning to tell this story for awhile now, since it happened a few weeks ago. tkp convinced me to go to a pub quiz night. Actually, we danced around the invitation, neither of us knowing if the other one was serious about going/taking, but eventually we worked it out and there we were. The lure was Harry Potter trivia (which turned out to be lame). But in the random round, there was a question dear to my heart.

"What was the real name of the Elephant Man?"

I scribbled down Joseph Merrick, then put "(John)" after it just in case. "Just wait," I said. "They're going to say John."

When they read out the correct answer, of course it was John. I raised my hand like an overeager preschooler and said, "Excuse me! But that's wrong! Treves used 'John' in his account, but it was written after the fact and he was wrong; his real name was Joseph, even though the film used John."

Both answers got the point, and I got weird looks from the other people at our table. It was a proud moment. I was so earnest it was funny. See? There is a point to knowing stuff like that.

We still didn't win, though.

Tagged by stefanie_bean. Five favourite bands/artists, five songs for each, tag five people to do the same.

Oh, tagging... Um... Anyone want?

1. Belle and Sebastian
Stay Loose
Piazza, New York Catcher
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying
The State I Am In
I Fought in a War

2. Radiohead
Talk Show Host
Bulletproof... I Wish I Was
Paranoid Android
2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm)
Exit Music (for a Film)

3. Kate Bush
Sat in Your Lap
Night of the Swallow
Jig of Life
Cloudbusting
Rocket's Tail

4. Ben Folds Five
The Last Polka
Selfless, Cold and Composed
Mess
Missing the War
Battle of Who Could Care Less

5. Elliott Smith
Pitseleh
Waltz #2 (XO)
Between the Bars
Alameda
No Name No. 5

I didn't get the part. But I'm not too broken up, because I knew it already. Still... I made my folks alter our vacation plans in case I was going to be in the show this summer. Which I feel bad about, now.

In other news, I love this election. Even apart from who wins, or who I support, or why, I'm vastly entertained by all of it. I know entertainment isn't the point (or shouldn't be), but the excitement of it is fantastic and just the closeness of the race(s) and the engagement of the public is heartening. When's the movie coming out?

The store keeps not having Annie's Mac and Cheese (the regular kind, in the purple box so I have to eat the Arthur-shaped ones. I don't really like Arthur, but I like to pretend I'm eating little Radiohead bears.



( proof )

A few weeks ago, we discovered a rat in the window birdfeeder. Yeah, I know that's bad and stuff, but they haven't got in yet and we're not refilling it. I just keep forgetting to take it down. Because they're kind of cute. And they come in pairs and freak out the dog. He just jumps up and down in front of the window all night. It's hilarious. But also annoying. The cat has figured out she's never gonna get that, and doesn't take much notice.

In fact, the first night one of them came, the animals didn't notice it at all.

( the rat, and Kate not noticing it )

One night Mr. Darcy was so annoying I had to get up and close the blinds. But first I looked at the rat. It was a different one, not the injured one here. Instead of running away, he looked right at me. I touched the glass, and he put his nose where my finger was. I moved my finger and he followed me.

I think I have a friend.

It's really hard to think of them as pests.