Alpha (or Omega?) with Miss Emma
Trans Partners Drop-in Group
I won’t be at the Trans Partners group at the Center tomorrow, since I’m away (on my way to Indiana & Purdue, actually). But you can still go – the other moderator is really very nice.
Helen Gets Cable, Pt. 3
Me watching HGTV is like an impotent man watching porn: pleasant, but ultimately a pipe dream.
In Better Days
< < Alpha and Omega, a/k/a The Cocteau Twins (we lost one of them this weekend to swim bladder disease)
Getting Ready
I’m somewhat anxiously but also excitedly getting ready to get on a train Wednesday in order to speak at a couple of colleges. Packing, getting books/work ready, all of that. & It’s a nutty process for someone who is somewhat of a homebody, and I can’t even begin to think about how much I’ll miss the cats.
& Yes, Betty too – of course I’m going to miss Betty – the difference is that I can tell Betty where I’m going and when I’ll be back (& that she’ll be flying to meet me in about five days) and the kittoi can’t know that.
So, back to list-making so I don’t forget anything when I start packing.
Word-a-Day Tarot
Sometimes I forget to pull off my Word-a-Day calendar pages as the days pass, & so I’m left with a stack of them when I finally catch up. I put them in my inbox and read through them at a later time; words I already know well & use regularly get thrown out, and ones I find interesting or useful and are less known to me I put back in the inbox so I can re-read them and re-read them until I use them in a sentence somewhere (usually only in my journal) and so learn to use a new word.
Writer’s habits 101.
But there was an odd little sequence when I pulled off a clump of pages recently.
On October 19th sansculotte showed up.
On October 18th, hirsute.
On the 17th, opusculum.
On the 16th, popinjay.
On the 15th, alterity.
To me it read like a Tarot reading. Had I asked the right questions as I pulled the pages off, of course.
What is my past?
The biggest hurdle of my past?
My probable reality?
My greatest fear of who I really am?
My truth?
I’m sure I could keep on doing this, since the 20th is mogul. (What is my most unrealistic wish?) I feel like I’ve invented a verbal I Ching.
Support for Same Sex Marriage Bans Eroding
Pollsters attribute the waning support for the bans to better organization and mobilization tactics on the part of lesbian and gay rights advocates, as well as a growing acceptance of homosexuality, according to USA Today.
Goodbye Alpha
Friday night Betty & I lost another of our beautiful fish; this time, it was one of our black and white sharks, half of the team we originally called The Cocteau Twins but who came to be known – because of the difference in their sizes early on – as Alpha and Omega.
At least we think it was Alpha who died; my guess is that he was actually a little older than Omega, since he did get bigger sooner. They did come to match, again, after a few years, where we couldn’t tell one from the other. They fought each other all the time – sharks will do that, they’re highly aggressive – so they both wound up with somewhat battered fins from their battles.
Alpha is somehat famous for being the fish that took the hugest dive out of a tank I’ve ever heard of. We were doing something – cleaning the tank, or feeding them – and they tended to get agitated with any change. One day Alpha manage to propel himself out of the 3″ opening at the top of the tank and propel himself clear out of the tank, up into the air about 2′ over the tank, and then landed – I kid you not – about 8′ away, onto our hardwood bedroom floor. It was one hell of an arc.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, we do have cats, too. So in a mad moment of complete chaos, Betty was standing there freaking out because this insane shark had leapt out of the tank, and my first thought was the boys – who, as these things go, had just come in to the bedroom to find out what all the ruckus was about. I hurried them back out of the room while Alpha flailed, and eventually, we got hold of his slippery, muscular self and put him back in the tank. He had unfortunately brained himself and so swam upside down for a couple of days until the huge concussion on his head healed.
& That wasn’t what he died of. He lived for several years after that, but died, like our poor Emma did, of upsidedown-y ness. I’ve decided that upside down disease (it’s actually called swim bladder disease) operates the way pneumonia does for older people – it’s a sign that the system, overall, isn’t working the way it should anymore.
We were thankful he didn’t have to struggle with trying to right himself for too long, and will bury him next to Emma.
It is sad to see our Omega, once one of three, swimming around aimlessly in his 40 gallon tank, no orange Emma to harass, no fellow shark to beat up (and to be beaten up by, in turn). We’re thinking we may get him some tiny, swift friends to occupy his time.
This Bitch Has a Name
An interesting essay in The Washington Post by Lonnae O’Neal Parker, about her experience as an African-American woman who once loved HipHop but doesn’t anymore – for the sake of her daughters.
My daughter can’t know that hip-hop and I have loved harder and fallen out further than I have with any man I’ve ever known.
That my decision to end our love affair had come only after years of disappointment and punishing abuse. After I could no longer nod my head to the misogyny or keep time to the vapid materialism of another rap song. After I could no longer sacrifice my self-esteem or that of my two daughters on an altar of dope beats and tight rhymes.
Proof Pages
Yesterday I received a small sample of the proof pages of the book so that I could see the layout, and I’m thrilled with how it looks. They’ve done some text formatting that is exactly what I like and that echoes my typing/handwriting in ways that are really groovy.
It’s an exciting thing to see, the first time the bookness of the book is really apparent to me, when it doesn’t look like a Word document anymore, but like the book it will become.