things and people

There is something about being in an unfamiliar place that used to scare the daylights out of me, but now, with some degree of fiat, knowing that I have my car parked out front to take me away if it gets lame, knowing that I'm never stuck, it's made me more bold, and I take more things into consideration, if only for anthropological observing. The National Geographic narrator voice deep within my psyche kicks in as I observe the cultural habits and mating rituals of some tribe or another, be it in exurbia where there's a minivan in every driveway and chinos on ever male over thirty, or a swank condo with a glittering view of downtown where I am profoundly underdressed in the punk rock t-shirt in a sea of party dresses and sweaters, one drink (and one drink only as I designated-drove and I'm all Mary-Mary-Quite-Contrary somehow going on about how the garden grows is important as hell. 

 Don't get me wrong, I've got little patience for the local food cultists, but I do think that we need both the city and the country to exist. Cities where everyone moves tend to be awful and difficult places for the poor and middle-class who become poor by default: see almost any Real City anywhere: Mumbai, Shanghai, Dubai, Rio, London, NYC, DC shall I go on, or places like Paris where the city is a playground for the affluent and the tourists and the immigrants and other folk are stuck in the suburbs isolated from everything.  Hell, even when my burg was really populated, life was great for the Rockefellers and Hannas, but sucked pretty bad for most of the working schlubs crowded into slums and ethnic ghettos, getting poisoned by factory smokestacks and sick when the slaughterhouse reek blew downwind. No wonder people wanted to get the hell out.  THIS IS WHY PEOPLE MOVED TO PARMASTAN FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, this is why the suburbs existed even before white flight.  

I'll probably be a city kid til the day I die, but I understand why people live in the suburbs, or why people live in the country, and that even if we go back to a mythological "way things were" that things won't be any better. Sure, there were streetcars back then that ran all over the city, but my grandpa was picking up coal from the railroad tracks so they could be warm, my grandma came up here to work as a domestic and then quit to work in a factory after the man of the house tried to take advantage of her. This was the way it was, and neither of them ever talked about "the good old days."

 But I read too much, and I'm not very cool, and I'm not voting for Obama and even though I take the bus to work, I love driving my car because it helps me help out other people and gets me from my house to Parmastan to see the folks and shows that I go to by myself, and home from places after dark where the bus doesn't run. I had no social life before then, and it's made life much better now even as I know that this isn't necessarily good. 

And so then Saturday, I handed out candy to kids that came through the doors at church to play games and drink hot chocolate, despite the mayor cancelling the holiday for good, 600 people came through the doors and then back out. Tangerine joined me and we decamped to the Big Egg for late night diner breakfast food, for girl-talk and life-talk and wondering why people create dubstep remixes of "Sweet Child O' Mine," and my sister's life drama hit the fan even more thanks to the Internets, though it seems such slander was redacted, and I was full of thoughts and ponderings and decided to join my old Parmastani homies for foodage and laughter to end the night and restore the equilibrium. Politics was skirted and thankfully not discussed, one more day and all this crazy will be back to the stupid normal.

What I've concluded over the past election cycle is that ultimately we as a society consider things and concepts as more important than human life or even the life of the planet. We might "buy green" but we're still conspicuously consuming, and job creation involves consumption of unnecessaries, and I know I'm complicit due to my love of books and music and art. The blood of women and children in countries that worship Allah are considered a worthy price for the freedom that we're continuing to lose, to keep the money for our student loans flowing, to maintain the cars we drive. We're willing to prop up regimes that stone women for adultery and don't allow them to drive because there's a supposed "War on Women" going on here. I kind of feel sick sometimes if I think about it too much, the lack of love and compassion and seeing outside of one's own sphere and perceived needs and comfort is profoundly disconcerting. I wish I had more love and compassion than I did.

I read some apocalyptic stuff the other night out of Ezekiel where God goes on a big rant about religious people screwing others over, and people using power and usury to take advantage of society's vulnerable, and rulers enriching themselves and their friends at the expense of the people, and those who prey on the women, the children, and the immigrant, and I can't help but think "Oh jeez that's us completely," when I think about mourners being bombed at funerals, and the cruelty shown to those who have darker skin than me who live here and work our crap jobs and speak Spanish or Arabic or whatever. The powers that perpetuate such suffering, and those of us who get enough bones thrown our way to keep them doing what they do best.
 

bilibin redux

spooky noochies

Not as into the Hallow's Eve as much as others, surprising given the melancholic persuasion. Not so much into the macabre, I guess, which makes me no fun on movie night sometimes for not being so much into cinematic excursions like Cannibal Holocaust, though we did watch the following and I enjoyed it immensely and was glad that my CD player worked well enough to drive home through the dark streets listening to choice cuts off Bloody Kisses.

It's been a straunge week, what with these storms and the dark streets, the breakdowns in communication and the kafkaesque absurdity of human resourcing and Infernal Papers of Doom. Thinking of The Children means the postponement of trick-or-treating til the weekend especially since there still isn't electricity at church and therefore no way to see much inside. My lights are back on and there's some feline lurking in my stairwell meowing back and forth with my cat, not sure what the story is there.

Never liked a lot of horror outside the Hawthorne/Poe/Gorey some bits of Calvino and mythology and folklore, preferring spooky to slashy. Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan ghost stories from old Japan are highly recommended, as is anything having to do with Baba Yaga. That being said, swank art redux:

 And for those who prefer to call it Reformation Day, you can insult scurvy popery like Martin Luther who had a potty mouth indeed.

Also, tuneage.

eyes and storms

So last night I was postponing the Halloween shindig and the getting my sister out of the apartment where she lives with some stupid druggies and giving her lots of advice culled from years of living with roommates who were crazy or just plain crazy people (those times when I left my musical gear in friends' apartments and kept my laptop, cash, and a change of clothes in the trunk and hid the Cutco knives in a pile of clothes in my bedroom closet, I don't miss those days at all)...

The advice to get everything out of the house you can now rather than later (which can be tough going if you don't even have a key despite paying rent), letting your landlord know that things aren't good, that the friendship that will be lost never really was one in the first place.

And then, that being figured out as much as humanly possible, I chilled out with a pile of books and choice tuneage on the stereo until the lights went out, incense burning and all the candles at my disposal lit, tapers, tealights, lanterns and votives. Those novena ones from the supermarket with the Virgin on them were especially useful since the glass keeps the flame contained and those things burn for days like a nightlight, so I went to sleep curled up fetal in the loveseat wrapped in blankets and listening with awe to the wailing wind.

I've never heard a sound like it go on for that long and that loud until it became white noise and I woke up to go to the station and realized I didn't want to drive in that wind and opted for a couple extra hours of sleep and a bus ride downtown in almost absolute darkness, making the morning commute something dark and surreal.

I find out upon arrival that I could have played hooky with no repercussions, and of course it's just the way it goes that the schlubs who schlepped it down here get the satisfaction of being good little cogs and the lazy punks get a free day off. Because that's fair.We're told it'll come back around and of course we'd want to be here anyway because wouldn't you rather sit at a desk and stare at a computer instead of chilling at home with a cup of tea and a pile of books? I know what I'd rather do.

Though the rest of us had to do without, and if I had punked, I would have screwed over the only peons left, and there was ample amounts of swank free leftover food and a couple hours of easy overtime so no complaints from the peonage besides eye-rolling with MaggiesFarmisms of those who think they work so hard.

The paper's almost done, the pigeons have returned, and it keeps getting darker and more comfortingly dreary...got phone calls involving dinner and warm places and movie nights, part of me wants to return to my cocoon but it's not every day day demi-disaster brings us together.

scary monsters and super creeps

While the east coast prepares for the storm of doom, we just get a lot of rain, and I was running through the West Side Market Friday night a few minutes to closing time in search of a bag of sweet potatoes and some cilantro. Hung out at the usual spot with the usual suspects talking music and sundry geekery, listening to punk 45s. Kids were running around and playing with balloons among aisles full of records and CDs covered with ersatz cobwebs.

Helped decorate for the big radio station party we throw every year with a night of free tunes and general revelry. Did lots of random finishing-touch kind of stuff, last-minute runs for art supplies and lighting and rock band tour rider items, by the time we were finished, it was time to start, and I didn't bother wearing a costume, just the flannel shirt and the black leather jacket, no makeup, nothing weird. A few people said something to me but they were drunk anyway.

The people-watching was of course fabulous, I had to wonder if some people are just really like this all the time or if they were just playing up that other part of their nature. Not as many unoriginal skanks as a Kent Halloween, a few of the local creepers, enough people I knew that I could mingle freely as both Glenn Danzig and Beavis shilled for votes.

And The Avengers sounded great. I'm a huge sucker for female-fronted punk rock though after taking a hit to the sternum by some crusties, I got out of the pit area after four songs, being too old for this kind of thing. 

The end of the night, we were caffeinated and some of us were buzzed, plans to go nighthawking at the diner down the street deemed irrelevant with the presence of leftover pizza, swank soda, and booze. Conversations about the existence of God, colonialism in Africa, and life, the universe, and everything ensued that kept us laughing and loud until 4am in the dark theater.

And now the daily grind, and bailing my sister out of her apartment situation so that she's not stuck living with some real jerks, and wondering what to do if we've got Halloween shindigs planned for The Kids and the city's decided to cancel it. I fell asleep in class today, but there was so much good time with good people that I'm still buzzed on all the love.

slackened

It's hard to go to class when there's nothing to learn, when the motivation is kicks and giggles rather than graduation and there are few kicks and giggles to be had. The people in the class are pretty cool overall, the subject matter should be treated as something way more interesting, but since it isn't, it's hard to get motivated.

Instead, a walk to the cemetery, and the cathedral in the misty rain as it gets cold and autumnal. Frustrations of the political kind are tantamount and better articulated by others. It feels wrong to escape, too absurd to ruminate. Maybe when I get out of here my neck will feel less stiff and my soul will re-quicken...

the morbidity and mortality weekly report

As a lowly undergrad, I used to shelve the government documents on a dark and spooky tenth floor of the Kent State public library while listening to mixtapes in a seemingly indestructible cassette walkman that went through a pair of double-A batteries once every two months. Most of the items were congressional hearings in paper that was falling apart but there were also volumes of statistics involving Schoolbus Rollover Fatalities, a journal called The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,the PRMC hearings featuring testimony from Zappa and debates about the cultural merit of Twisted Sister, and Reagan-era coloring books to educate The Kids about drugs.

 Ephemerals are one of the reasons why I've opted for low-level bibliothequery, and why thanks to Arabella, I ended up at the medical museum last night for a free lecture involving swank and morbid photos from the Burns Collection of opium dens, world leader pretends, and dead folks. I get to see some of this stuff in my line of work, but not much on this level of swank. Most of the ones from last night are in this slideshow (be warned, there's some ickiness in there)

After the talk, we noshed on good food (because fresh berries, pear tarts and pumpkin ravioli are not regular things in my world) and wine while looking at archaic and disturbing methods of contraception in the medical museum (what the hell people shoved that up there?), straunge and vvonderful tomes about monstrous beasts from the Elizabethan era, and surgical implements of old.

Was in no mood to be inside on such a beautiful almost-summer feeling night so I called my partner in adventures and diner geekery and we met up at Algebra to catch up, talk girlstuff, and play scrabble and jenga, which quickly became slap-happy constructions of blocks and chess pieces.

 

It was almost balmy outside and the air was so fragrant with autumn leaf musk that we took a long walk through Little Italy looking in shop windows and soaking in the beauty of the last warm night of the year. Everything felt just a little bit magical.

Drove back to the west side, stopped up at the radio station to guest DJ a fill-in slot, played absurdity, no one called in. Reduced to giggles with the selections "Baby Bjork" and Old Skull. 

 

Somehow not ridiculously tired. Looking forward to the weekend, need to find the little sis a nice birthday gift and get into the whole Halloweenish thing. Nights like yesterday remind me of why I'm glad I stuck around Clevelandia.