Tag: personal

Sew

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Yesterday I bought a sewing machine. It’s a Brother XL 2600. It was $87 and change from Overstock.com. I simply can’t wait to start sewing.

The reviews for this machine are that it’s a great starter, but not a workhorse. It might not last me two years. This is fine by me, cos I’m just exploring my sewing possibilities right now. $87 on a sewing machine means if I get two wearable shirts, or a wearable shirt and skirt out of it, it’s paid for itself. If I love sewing after a year, I’ll consider upgrading.

I’m grateful that my mother had me by her side while I was growing up, so I could watch her cut patterns, alter patterns, and sew by machine and by hand. I helped her wind bobbins and even learned to sew on her old metal Singer (which finally died last year after over 30 years of use.) My mom clothed herself, my dad and me, and did countless projects on that machine, including quilts, pot holders, curtains, suits, dresses, shirts, shorts, skirts, banners and costumes. The machine was heavy, metal and she could take it apart and fix it. None of this computer bullshit, and no automatic whatevers (well, the bobbin winder was kind of automatic.)

I think finding a workhorse like that would be hard. I mean, the only plastic parts were a bit on the front cover and the plastic bottom.

I’m excited. Now to find some plus-sized patterns that don’t suck. 🙂

Settling Into Winter

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Today is the 2nd anniversary of my arrival in Seattle. It’s been a wild ride, and I don’t think I ever imagined that moving to a new city would change my life so much. To this day, I marvel at all the changes that happened because of that move. Since I’m not really religious any more, or believe in that woojie stuff that makes things go — like fate or destiny — it’s still rather wonderful that my life has fallen into place in such a short period of time.

Winter means rain in the Pacific Northwest. Rain and darkness, a great bit of time to pursue angst and bitterness as a hobby, and use those favorite drugs of caffeine in the form of our famous coffee, and alcohol in the form of our hoppiest beers to drive the winter blues away and ease our weary spirits.

As for me, I’m settling into nearly a year at my current job, already finding it not as challenging as it was when I first started. I love a good challenge, and I love “wowing” people. I think this is why I love customer service — almost as much as I hate it.

My hopes for this winter start with a change of dwelling — a brand, spanking new place nearby that will offer a bit more space for the two of us. I’m also hoping, ironically, to find that social energy that I’ve been lacking with my hectic schedule. I’ve settled into the state-working drone persona, and now I’m longing for something with a bit more pizazz. This includes friends, associates, and other amusing types that are outside of my realms of work. The virtual friendships lodged within these Internets are simply not enough. I worry I’m growing stagnate, and I long for professional and personal development.

And a sexy pair of shoes, but that’s another story altogether. I want to look, feel and be fabulous. It’s not just an effort to lose weight, it’s an effort to be powerful and healthy — the kind of person that can climb a mountain, or maybe just climb the hills in Seattle without stopping for breath. The kind of person that doesn’t cower, with lungs aching, at climbing the tower in Volunteer Park. The kind of person that will revel next spring in exploring the great outdoors of this fine state with the only survival questions being those of mosquito and tick fighting, not out-running a bear. Well, I think even a perfectly fit person might have a problem with that, but you see where I’m going, I hope.

Incidentally, as the holidays come up — along with my birthday — please take note of the following —

I like jewelry (necklaces, rings (size 7 or 8, depending what finger it will go on) from Tiffany’s
Macy’s and Aveda are places I commonly shop.
Coldwater Creek, Eddie Bauer and Land’s End are a few catalogs I gawk at.
Coach makes the handbags I just absolutely love

I’m also wanting picture books of Mucha.

Gift certificates are always welcome. 🙂

And with that, I end this rambling blog post.

Here’s to a great winter!

Happy New Year!

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First and foremost, I’d like to extend my well wishes to all the people heading out to BurningMan this year. I wish I could go, even though I’m rather skeptical about how much fun one can have in a now huge, manufactured community. When you pretty much HAVE to bring a wheeled device to get you around because it’s so big, it just starts to seem too much.

After a few BurningMan experiences, and living on a school schedule a majority of my life, it very much seems to be like approaching a New Year. I hope this year is a good one, filled with awesome specticals, joys and ecstatic moments. Be safe out there.

I will be spending this next week the same as I have the past year — admitting patient after patient (I’ve now admitted about 100 patients in 8 mo), getting to know them and hoping to help them move on with their criminal charges. Yay mental health!

I suppose it could be almost like BurningMan — crap food, drugs (medications), crazy people running around, making noise, saying weird shit and more than 2 people who would probably try to torch something if they only had incindiary devices. And then there’s the patients! (yuk yuk)

Have a good one, peoples. And light something on fire for me.

Culture of Gathering

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Here’s some random thoughts I’ve strung together lately.

I first went to BurningMan in 1999. I was coming from Chicago, and had newly attached myself to a portion of the subculture that the festival exemplifies. I went there with almost buzz-cut blue hair and got there by way of misadventure (it’s really another story altogether.) The whole experience was awe-inspiring, harrowing and dramatic. I was 21 years old, had only been away from the insulation of growing up in suburban Cincinatti for two years, and was ready for a mind-fuck. To this day, what I remember the most fondly of the BurningMan experience are things that I have since identified in our rather pedestrian or banal culture. I have started to come to the conclusion that BurningMan is really not that special an event, but as with most things in human society through the ages, is merely a carbon copy of our deep, collective unconscious that desires ritual, ecstasy and communion on a sublime level.

Our world has been sterilized, homogenized and legitamized for our protection. It is in branding we trust, and when some stop trusting the brands of giant corporations, the trust transitions to non-branding, which becomes a brand in itself. This really isn’t much of a modern phenomenon, but just the current incarnation of the human need for juxtaposition to impart meaning.

Human beings are curious creatures. We cluster together creating urban centers, we huddle for warmth, we gather on specific days for feasts and fasts, we build great monuments to our inspirations, we gather in great halls that inspire reverence, awe and legitamacy, we wear symbols, badges, uniforms to let the world know who we are. We do it all without having to think about it. And only on occasion does anyone really sit and ponder why we do it.
***
I recently read the WONDERFUL book, The Devil in the White City. It presents in GREAT detail the Columbian Exhibition (Chicago Worlds Fair) of the late 1800’s, the architects who built it (and a large portion of the great architecture of the time) and the serial killer who dwelled nearby. The book claims that the spectacle that was the Columbian Exhibition was one of the things that inspired Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Indeed, when reading how the Worlds Fair came together in a flurry of sights, sounds and smells of the far-flung reaches of the world combined with the excitement of new technologies and thrills, it’s not hard for me to bring Disney World and Disneyland to mind. People flocked from all over the US (and the world) during an economic depression to see and experience it. It became a community of revelrie that was pristine in comparison to the modern urban environment. It was all the optimism of what a city and society could be.

And at the very end, the architects sat back and wondered what to do once the gates closed and the Fair was closed forever. The truth that eventually, it would fall to ruin didn’t set well, and the awesomeness of the experience was something that was supposed to be finite. Some of the architects sentiments were to burn it instead of letting it to become a ruin. Alas, without their hand, Fate took care of it herself.
***
My husband and I went to Disney World in Orlando, FL last year. It was the first time I had been there since I was a child in 1985. It had been 2 yrs since I had last been to BurningMan, and I was stunned with the similarities between my BurningMan experience and my Disney World experience. They are both idealized versions of our world, and thrust the participant into an experience that is withdrawn from the modern world, allowing a sense of freedom, security and pleasure within its confines. I think that what REALLY drew the comparison for me was at dusk in the Magic Kingdom, as people with funny hats and blinky lights crowded around together at the best viewing points for a fireworks extravaganza, complete with mildly thumping electronic music and laser light, the world around becoming magical and twinkling.

What is BurningMan but a carnival? What is BurningMan but an exposition of our hopes and dreams laid out for all who will be present to experience? It’s a festival showcasing the same basic nature that some of in society can’t help but market and attempt a profit. At the end, it all disappears through a coordination of fire and packing up the rest. It is over, like a dream, and the participants attempt a transition back to the banal.
***
Last night we went to Golden Gardens to celebrate our friend’s birthday. We had never been there before, and it turns out to be a sandy beach on the northwest part of the city. People were gathered all over the place, barbecuing and celebrating other birthdays, or just soaking up the sun. I haven’t been on a coastal beach since I was a kid, so I was amazed at the gathering of people around fire, communing with each other, and sharing in feast. I started thinking about the story of the beginning of BurningMan, with Larry Harvey just hanging out and burning a man in effigy on a California beach, and people gathering around making it into an annual event. As I was standing on the beach, it became obvious to me how it all happened .

Humans just can’t help it. The way I see it, about all ritualistic/religious behavior calls to a basic human need that some people feel uncomfortable scrutinizing. I think that sometimes it causes that nasty cognative dissonance that gives birth to the paradigm shift. I consider it an essentially terrifying experience –take a comfort zone of fundamentally believed in vehicle for ecstatic revelrie (ie. specific denomination or counter-culture ideal) and see it as being no less special or different from any other mode, including those one is directly opposed to, and watch for the fireworks. I think this is why many people focus so much on difference instead of similarity. The possibility of acknowledging that we’re just as loony as anyone else in our beliefs is too much to bear.

But then there are a few like me that find cognative dissonance is the best thing about being alive.

Preparing for Pride

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Next month is June, which means that Pride and all the celebratory festivities that come with it, are coming fast. This year, the Seattle Pride parade and festivities have been moved from the Capitol Hill neighborhood (the center of Seattle’s gay community) to downtown and ultimately, Seattle Center. This means a lot more visibility for the parade (and the issues accompanying the parade), and I suspect more protestors given that the festivities will be on less traditionally friendly teritory.

It’s great to think that this will enhance visibility. Seattle is a pretty small town, after all. It’s not the size of Chicago, where I went to many a parade. As liberal as the Left Coast might be, the small-townishness is pretty evident, and the liberal vs. not is a bit more apparent. Maybe this is because in Chicago, the parade (and the neighborhood the parade is in) is focused on the young, beautiful gay boys and their loud stereotypical music hanging out at their lush and loud stereotypical bars/clubs. I’m not saying this isn’t great, but it smacks of a bit of out-and-proud counter-cultureness that taunts the urbane sensibilities of both the cosmopolitan and blue collar Democratic Chicagoan. The colors and attitude of Chicago Pride scream every color of the rainbow in revelrie in honor of the single, available, virile, hunky 20-something gay man. This is not to say that other aspects of the LGBTQ community aren’t there, but the vibe very much focuses on the former.

Last year I wandered out of my house with a couple of friends to take part in Seattle’s festivities. The whole thing was much less a revelrie in the young, virile gay man, but more a revelrie in the kinky (straight and queer), and just plain queer people next door. People with families, steady jobs and a mind towards social change and political movements. The vibe was much less, “we came to party” and more, “we came to make a statement, celebrate, and be home to cook dinner and spend time with the ones we love.”

I wonder if the Seattle style might be more offensive to the more anti-gay people of our country. I can only suspect that it’s easier for some anti-gay people to pish-posh the gay boys of Chicago. Afterall, it’s a world that is so Id defined that it doesn’t command an introspection or empathic response, for perhaps these haters have no concept of celebrating there own sexual expression. I would think that LGBTQ people living and celebrating their lives in a way that was so similar to the stereotypical heterosexual standard might be more problematic. Marriage seeking? Church going? Child raising? Oh god, gay people are people too?!

I’m concerned about how this years Pride festivities will go. The move to Seattle Center for Pride upset many businesses, community groups and individuals who want to keep Pride in the neighborhood. This has spawned another parade and festival on Capitol Hill.

I’m thinking perhaps I’ll stay in the neighborhood this year, if only because I don’t want to be reminded of how far LGBTQ people have yet to go to be equally accepted by the wider world.