biogenic amine

i ended my hiatus from singing...and i just nearly puked in the sink.

my eyes have been pretty itchy, but a daily dose of patanol has been keeping the rub-my-eyes-till-they-bleed-instinct at bay. i haven't noticed too much post-nasal drip, so i went off the loratadine about two months ago.

it seems a falling tree does make a sound if you're there, but just not listening to it.

yesterday, i did some light warming up, pulled out a new art song and started getting the notes in my ear. today, i attempted more demanding warm ups. a couple high c's later, i was rushing to the bathroom trying not to puke. it seems that the vibrations shook loose some post-nasal drip, and my gag reflex was not prepared to bump into an unexpected acquaintance.

so i'm back to singing and back to loratadine (and maybe some salt water gargles before practicing for a couple days, just to be safe?).

refraction

having put myself in closer physical proximity to the people and places of my past, i find myself making mental plans to visit as many as possible. many aren't necessarily people with whom i was incredibly close, but i want to see them nonetheless. it's fascinating to see how people grow and change. it's also a humbling experience to visit the self you used to be through these people you used to know...and to see who you were and who you are through the lens of who they were and who they are.

however, i have not made plans to visit two of the people with whom i was closest in college. i don't know if i want to visit these women. i don't know if they'd have me. and i don't know how to answer all those don't knows.

one is the roommate. i was never her closest friend, nor she mine, but we spent nearly all of college living together. i think we made good roommates. really good roommates, actually. she was so simultaneously silly spunky and yet somehow conservative. i still do her little leprechaun dance when i'm feeling free and silly. i've sent several emails over the years -- some as innocuous as asking her advice on grad schools for my sister who was going into the same program she had been in -- but with no response.

the other was the best friend. one of the most interesting and talented people i've ever met. and so honest. when i remember the substance in college life outside the theater or the classroom, i remember talking with her, trips to chicago with her, and more talking.

the best friend and the roommate actually *were* best friends, so i was kind of the odd girl out in the trio. that's always been my place -- in but out. i suppose that's the space i've created for myself, or perhaps the only space i knew how to occupy after a childhood of moving every year or two. all the cool people have already bonded with their best friends, so when i show up late, i take what i can get.

after several years of an occasional email sent but never responded to, and rejected friend requests, i am in casual contact with the best friend again. in fact, i think she might have sent me the friend request this time, and we've exchanged a couple cordial comments.

our senior year was tumultuous, as i think it always is. for kids who've never been "on their own," there is an anxiety simmering under the surface. the only routines and responsibilities we've know are about to change forever.

i went through my first breakup. i had no clue what i was going to do upon graduation. i got really freaking depressed and put myself in counseling. i flirted with alcoholism. i found physical affection where i could, and not always in the best places. and my so-called best friends said "i don't like the choices you're making" and "i don't know who you are anymore" and they washed their hands of me. i spent most of my time out of the apartment so i could avoid their freeze. i quit singing because choir necessitated placing myself in proximity of their freeze. five months to graduation, i had to find a new social circle.

i may have crossed some boundaries in trying to be a helpful friend. i confused and possibly hurt a mutual friend with whom i had a fling. but I WAS 20 YEARS OLD!! am i exempt from ever being allowed to fuck up? am i exempt from one little semester of being young and scared and stupid? if i were my friend (and i try to be), i'd say: yes, you are allowed to be imperfect. you are allowed to make mistakes. and i still love you.

is there something i'm missing? was there something i did that i have no clue i did? is there some justification for their actions other than a) they didn't really care about me or b) they were too self-absorbed to be a good friend to me? they made the time to be friends for each other...why weren't they a friend to me?

my one call for help, my one moment of need, and the people i thought were my true friends failed me. part of me is making excuses for them ("they were probably dealing with their own shit"). my sense of justice is inflamed suspecting that their memories may have erased the good and replaced it with some skewed image that doesn't resemble me...and likewise suppressed their failure to be there for me the one time it counted. perhaps i'm mostly just trying to avoid feeling how hurt i was, and still am, by it.

best friend, i thought you were possibly the awesomest person ever. you are so beautiful and so funny and so talented. i've missed your penchant for goats and your silver tongued words. tell me, when you write it, do we become friends again?

homesteader

i've made my migration back eastward. being back in the mid-south, i'm finding that things are simultaneously familiar and new, which is actually quite a nice experience. we've been busy trying to build this apartment (with amazing potential but not devoid of some rough patches) into a home. i dare say we've made good progress. the next step is to get out of the house and make this city a home, too.

i had a lovely adventure driving out here with bf zerd. on day 1, we enjoyed all of the stimulating conversation we hadn't had time for in months before being accosted by a near-biblical downpour of mosquitoes against the windshield. on day 2, we were the accidental patriots, celebrating independence day at mt. rushmore by belting out the "ultimate american sing-along" with the 43rd army band from nebraska. on day 3, we tried to wrap our brains around what life must have been like for a homesteader as we visited wall drug, the badlands and a homestead with its original sod house (and believe me, the coughing mannequin with his pants down in the out-house was even creepier than the guy sitting out front). on day 4, i dropped zerd at what was once the place she called home, and i finally made it to the place i would make into my new home.

coat hangers

kudos to waldo l. fielding, m.d., for writing this essay for the ny times (click here to read).

i believe that women, as humans, have the right to control what goes into and comes out of our own bodies. please let us keep the right to have safe medical care among our options as we make our choices about what goes on inside the boundaries of our own flesh.

work instead of play

i've previously posted about the "stuff white people like" blog. it's useful in that is lets us look at ourselves with humor. it's a great door opener for white people to talk about race.

however, it doesn't really address issues of race and the way race works in our society (and i'm talking local, national, and global society), and it certainly doesn't force us to do the dirty work of really facing our own racism and the ways in which those of us who are white benefit from institutional racism.

this blog attempts to do just that: http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/

the white elephant in the room

portland is, by far, the whitest place i've ever lived. for such a "liberal" and "progressive" city, there is a really weird history of racial segregation here (as i was reminded by this article)...and a really weird collective ignoring of the messed-up ways race relations continue to work in this city.

i'll admit it: the overwhelming whiteness of city, and of my social circle herein, has been incredibly comfortable. race somehow becomes theoretical...or even invisible...when you're surrounded by people who look like you (in the bars, in the stores, on the tv, in the movies) -- and when the people who look like you just happen the be the ones who control most of the capital. (oh, but it's so much more complicated than just capital, isn't it?)

sure, i want my friends to be able to purchase affordable houses. sure, i hang out on alberta and i live in the northeast. but every once in a while, reality seeps in. the life that i and much of my social circle enjoy is dependent on the displacement of other people -- specifically, black people. (gosh, this application of black/white labeling to humans seems so absurd, and yet it is a social reality.) whether i want to admit it or not, the things i enjoy about northeast portland are inextricably linked to gentrification's whitewashing effects.

how do we, as white people, learn to see the selfishness inherent in our everyday actions? how do we come to break the learned selfishness and decide that the greater good is more important than our personal comfort, benefit and advantage? (ditto for sexism, my man-friends and heterosexism, my hetero-friends.)

it's some dirty, nasty, hard work trying to unravel the gnarly social stupidity we've been taught and upon which all of our social institutions are built. but it's good work. it's the right work. so let's get to work.

contained chaos

the seam in the time-space continuum has sealed back up. no longer as i stuck in that magical yet unnerving state of duality. now there is only all the shit that must get done in two weeks time.

our home is exploding as we try to find space for all the things that are packed amidst the things that are not yet packed. soon the empty space will reappear between the boxes and newsprint and rolls of tape as we crate up our life for shipping.

work is exploding, too. i've inherited a behemoth study that the previous owners made impossibly complicated. ugh. more and more i'm trying to preach the gospel of kiss (which was taught to us by our seventh grade english teacher as: keep it simple, stupid.)

i feel like i'm in line for chaos at opryland (which, alas, has since been replaced by a huge shopping mall). chaos, the indoor roller coaster that was nashville's answer to space mountain, opened right after we moved to nashville. what i remember most is not the ride but the effectiveness of the wait. an hour spent inside with artificial air and nothing to look at but the black walls and the people around you, with the constant sound of multiple dissonant clocks ticking and a lady's voice periodically saying "hurry to the station...your time is running out..."

i keep hearing it as i'm packing, as i'm working, as i'm shitting...when i should be sleeping. tick tick tick. hurry. your time is running out.

i catch myself holding my breath as i go about my day. if you see me, remind me to breathe.

party politics

as the primary progresses, i am increasingly disappointed with the democratic party. i understand that we want to put a democrat in the white house. believe me, i want that too!

that said, i also want the people of this country, not some party-loyal elites, to determine who that democratic nominee will be. this may be unavoidable due to our "protect the ignorant masses from themselves" delegate structure which gives totally out-of-whack super-representation to a few elite party leaders (and don't even get me started on caucuses), but it's too late to restructure the system for this election. what really concerns me, and what can be resolved in the here and now, is the democratic party's disenfranchisement of nearly 1 in 10 americans -- simply because they live in michigan and florida.

it is abhorrent that the residents of michigan and florida who took the time to vote are having their votes thrown out because of decisions made by party leaders in those states to move up primaries against the will of the national party. i see no democracy in this kind of petty party politics in which the punishment for not playing by the rules results in the mass disenfranchisement of citizens.

i also want party leaders and the media to start reporting the results of this competition with some sense of statistical context. again, i understand that there can only be one winner, and i understand the implications of the math if we're dealing with delegate counts which exclude michigan and florida. however, the reality is that obama's lead over clinton is less than 10%. that's a pretty small margin, if you ask me, and surely is not a decisive lead. what i don't understand is the audacity it takes to ask someone who trailing by such a small margin to drop out of the race. politics are gnarly, unpredictable stuff, and an upset can't be entirely ruled out with such a small margin and so many variables. furthermore, i wouldn't want to be counted out or asked to quit something when i trailed by less than 10%. would you?

fourth dimension

what is it about springtime that always gives me this feeling of deja vu?  perhaps it is the awakening from winter's psychic hibernation and that moment when you look at yourself and say hey, don't i know you from somewhere?

amidst the warmer air and longer days, i get a distinct sense of time overlapping.  it's like i've been here before, and simultaneously like i haven't.  winter feels so...linear. (perhaps i'm mistaking static for linear?)  in springtime, however, i find it highly unlikely that time functions linearly.  i'm not talking about a spinning wheel either -- time is way too messy for such a simply-structured model.  i suspect that the answer lies in relativity rather than in absolutes.

in this moment (if such a thing exists outside my brain's perception of the concept), i am open to believing in parallel realities, multiple lives or multiple levels of consciousness.  or is my brain just regurgitating theories and books and movies?  in this day and age (again, whatever that means if time as we conceptualize it doesn't exist), is it even possible to have original thought?  sometimes i wonder if we aren't so programmed that even our rebellion is merely an acting out of what we've been taught to do.

i have this low-grade, continuous flutter of deja vu in my gut.  the sun and warm air feel familiar and feel right, but are they only noticeable due to the contrast with what preceded? either way, they are intoxicating and rouse desire to do something risky, but they are also making me nostalgic.  i continue, overwhelmed by mystery yet emboldened by possibility.

huh.  i guess this is what they call spring fever?

sassy is as sassy does

i can't help but smile everytime i see one of the robin's egg blue cabs with "sassy's cab" running across the side. one of these days i'll remember to take a picture of it. i think i'll post it next to my monitor to remind me about what's really important.