excuses and high lights

OK, an hour ago I still had the excuse of long-overdue catching up with a friend. Now it’s just the sneezing and the achy throat keeping me up.

Significant bright sides, both from tonight and from the past weekend: conversation over ginger lemon tea and a hummus plate at Diesel right up until they closed. Coming back home and preserving lemons brought to me by erstwhile Croatian visitors. Tasting the resulting lemon-juice-and-much-salt concoction, which won’t actually be ready for 5-6 weeks, but hey, I was curious; and experiencing a unique taste sensation that is oddly compelling. Listening to Ottmar Liebert, one of my favorite guitarists, whose album “In the Arms of Love” I’ve come to associate with the calm of late evenings.

Last Friday, seeing Mischief in the Machine, incredibly satisfying not least because the musicians have been practicing in my living room for the past several months, and some of the other performers are friends and acquaintances, and oh, also because it was an excellent show.

Food shopping with two friends and a kid, and helping the two-year-old through a comparative critique of two fairly complex cheeses.

Dinner (involving sushi), dessert (involving cherries and really actually unfortunate bacon chocolate) and conversation (involving three of my favorite peeps) underneath the Templet.

Helping a friend move – not under the best of circumstances for him, but satisfying both in a physical sense and in that I was able to participate. I’ve been on a bit of a streak reacting to what I see as empty pronouncements of love and sunshiny feelings towards the world – the only meaningful way I’ve found to counteract that is to invest of myself in my world, in practical ways that benefit it (them) and therefore myself. Hey, it’s not the best of motivations, but whatever gets me up and running, no?

Speaking of up and running, weightlifting is still having a profound effect on my life. Have I mentioned that? Yeah, like, every other post. Well, it’s true. Soon, if Molly and I succeed at mutually motivating, I’ll go check out BU’s gym facilities.

Going from strenuous move to the best picnic “brunch” yet this season. Quotation marks because it lasted most of the day. Molly and Rosa really know how to make a girl happy with food.

And then quiet and important conversation with Mark, one of the aforementioned favorite people; feeding my haptic interface; and an opportunity to start organizing my life – and snail-mail – and other paperwork – that seems to have been just the push I needed to start digging myself out of the piles-of-paper-everywhere hole I seem to get into at least a couple of times a year.

On balance, things aren’t bad. Except, of course, for the things that are. But, as I’ve written for the past several months, that’s largely out of my control.

Aki is sitting guard by my side. Time to go cuddle the cat – if he deigns to assent. Here’s hoping that the echinacea and goldenseal capsules counterbalance the lack of sleep, where my immune system is concerned.

jump start

Been a while since I’ve blogged publicly, hasn’t it? Hello, again.

I go to write this post, and notice a new comment from Regina, an old friend from Moldova who now lives in Israel, with whom I’d fallen out of touch a while ago. Holy cats. Hello, again. It’s lovely to hear from you.

(The timing of the comment and of my being compelled to write here again are a coincidence.)

Yeah, there’s been a lot of sadness that I’m not quite ready to write down. Luckily, the last month or so has also been filled with joy and light and smart people and work (hooray, work!), so it’s not like there’s nothing to tell.

My job at Boston University, the title of which has now settled at Digital Collections and Computing Support Librarian [in the School of Theology], rocks my socks so far. It’s not that I’ve done a whole lot, yet; it’s only been a month, and the end of the academic year at that, and my boss the head librarian has been out on vacation for the past two weeks, so things are relatively slow. On the other hand, there’s plenty to do in the computing-support half of the job. I’ve been learning [more] about how BU’s network is set up, which is nifty. We’re purchasing a big pile of equipment to replace old stuff – both servers and personal workstations for faculty and staff – which, you know, from the support standpoint is great. Soon there’ll be no more @$#%! five-year-old Dells to support, and many of the four-year-old machines are going away too. People are open to the idea of Macs, which is huge in such a behemoth mostly-Windows org. (BU is an immense bureaucratic machine, and I say that with all the affection that one would expect a girl to have for her alma mater.)

Best of all, people want to learn. I’ve been getting to know the faculty and staff. Some of them are already doing digital humanities projects (like the History of Missiology site). Others have cool ideas (hello, Admissions Director using Facebook in all kinds of cool community-building ways). And still others want to figure out how computing can make their research and teaching (and administration, and the school as a community) more awesome.

This is what they hired me to work on. I’m unspeakably excited. Yeah, so far it’s been all support and no digilib, but I expect that to change. There’s a lot of hardware overhauling to do, and some basics to catch up on. That will take some months. But there’s already so much concrete investment of time, thought and resources in digital library stuff at STH that I have no doubt it’s going to go somewhere interesting.

Then there’s life outside of work. That’s been filled with friends, children, loved ones, cats, cooking, Burning Man planning, hand drumming, sci-fi reading, Battlestar Galactica, water and fire and earth, casual photography, breathing deeply. And the weather’s been nice.

Yesterday I flew to DC. Today I participated in a day-long grant proposal review panel for which I read a total of thirty proposals, which took an unreal amount of time and was fascinating and instructive, and I’m not being sarcastic about any of that. The panel itself was great too; in the past month or so I’ve learned a ton about the grant review and award process, and I fully intend to use this knowledge for good. I have generalized thoughts on the whole thing, but have to formulate them separately – must wrap my brain around the whole thing first, and also make sure not to cross any confidentiality boundaries. The whole thing made me feel awfully important, and going away for just over 24 hours meant I could travel with just my work bag, light and easy.

Coming back tonight, at the Reagan Airport, I texted a friend something to the effect of, I like traveling – the interstitial part, the going – even more than being places. She laughed and declared me liminal girl. Certainly that holds true for my life in a larger sense.

There’s more, always – the children I get to hang out with, the surprisingly strong presence of love in my days, feeling so strong from weightlifting with one of my dearest, the USB turntable I bought with which I’m digitizing records from the old country – but it’s 1:45am, and tomorrow’s a workday. Er, today. Whatever.

Albert Hofmann, 1906-2008

Albert Hofmann’s dead. At the age of 102, in good health almost right up until the heart attack at the end. As someone on a mailing list said, he had a good run.

Thank you, Dr. Hoffman, for the wonder and perspective you’ve brought into the world.

bad-ass pink cardigan

I have other thoughts to post, perhaps later. But just look at this for 40 seconds:

Molly rightly says, “I have never seen a more bad-ass pink cardigan.” Gods, I’d love to see this woman as our first lady.

the morning after

GNAAAAAAHM  by moominmolly

Penultimate drum-and-dance of the year in South Amherst yesterday. I brought my drum, even though I don’t have a bag for it yet and it was raining a little – but Molly and I threw garbage bags over the drums, and I’m very happy we did. By the end of the evening my hands were somehow hurting and a little numb at the same time, and I could still feel the just-played drumbeat in my ribcage.

I did better than had seemed possible, given how out of practice I’ve been with things that require sustaining a regular rhythm with my hands (drumming, juggling, playing the guitar which I haven’t done in any sort of sustained way since my first year in grad school). Concentrating on picking out, playing and sustaining relatively simple rhythms for several minutes at a time was great practice.

Molly and Natalie and I stayed over at our friends’ place in Hadley (Inspirit Common), and had breakfast at Cafe Esselon there. Natalie kept feeding us pretend food. The more ridiculously we reacted, the more giggles scattered, sparkling, across the table.

joss whedon’s mom

Thing I learned today: Equality Now was founded in large part thanks to (by a student of) Joss Whedon’s mother. No wonder he’s such a brilliant feminist. I just ran across this video of Joss’s acceptance speech when EN gave him an award in 2006.

I love this eloquent, witty, heartbreakingly stunningly kind and passionate man.

what do you do

…when you’re feeling restless? How do you release that energy? What do you usually do? What would you prefer to do? How often do those coincide?

(Obligatory periodic note to LJ feed readers: I don’t see comments made on the feed. Please to be clicking on the URL up top.)

everything is white and colors.

It’s snowing white all over and so, so quiet outside.

This past Saturday was Frostbyte’s memorial auction. I arranged food for what probably ended up being a couple hundred people over the course of about 24 hours. Didn’t really cook, except in a minimalist sense. Still, it was lovely – several times that day people asked me the requisite how-are-you and I would answer, “in my element.” Providing good food for people, even if I just shop and chop veggies and open cheese and get others to help me, fills my soul like nothing else does. Especially when people I don’t know take note of the food and are pleased with it. Especially-especially when I get to participate in a group effort such as this was, two years in the making (by others: I only came to it within the last month). Labor of true love, it was, despite the complexity and frustrations of the organizing process. The next day, as we were finishing cleaning up, one of my co-organizers smiled at me and said, “You’re a new old friend.” Burners’ spirit of instant community is priceless.

(I don’t actually know whether the person who made the above remark has gone to Burning Man. But he’s old-school TEP, and I gather that’s pretty close in all the relevant ways.)

Saturday evening I sat on a couch in front of Tensor, weaving slow conversation with the human beside me into its constantly changing color-light play. A swing hung between us and Tensor. Its shadow in the bright lights, sometimes swinging empty, most of the time complete with people’s silhouettes, was the narrative of remembrance unfolding. If the mark I leave on my community when I’m gone even approaches Kevin McCormick’s – he died at just 29 – I’ll have done well.

Yesterday I spent a few hours with a sweet, social two-year-old and remembered how exhausting and satisfying it is to live only for the present moment, all the time. I remembered the realization I’ve been coming back to over the last couple of months: the kind of family I want, the village that it takes to raise children and be the change I/we wish to see in the world, is already there. Here. All I need to do is participate in it.

Last night another new old friend, the luminous human with the Tensor-side conversation, brought me a present, a square of squares of color-cycling light. It is making slow progress in its simple programming as white snow layers itself onto the skylight, sounding like grains of sand falling. White cat at my feet, I watch the color cube and feel his still calm.

seeking peace

At a weekly teachings/meditation group this morning, conversation turned to… Dubya. If love and compassion for all beings is a goal, how do you reconcile that with strong negative feelings you have towards someone, whether a world leader or anyone else affecting your life in significant and negative ways?

Someone said that it helps her to think of humans like this as people who are seeking peace and love and contentment in their own ways, which she may or may not understand. We may disagree with how they’re going about attaining that contentment – even strongly enough to attempt counteracting the effects of their actions sometimes, when the price they are willing to pay is too high. But the fact of this quest is in itself worthy of compassion.

Then there’s something else. Negative feelings directed toward another human being happen sometimes. Like thoughts happen while you’re meditating. With the latter, it’s useless to deny their existence: you acknowledge them, detach your self from them, watch them pass like clouds. Over and over, gently, until (presumably; I haven’t gotten to that point yet) they stop coming. Maybe the negativity is like those thoughts; we can acknowledge it, but channel whatever feelings arise into love and compassion, and act from there. The resulting action may be the same; but where it comes from will inform its true content and impact, and maybe even how it is perceived by others.

Just idle thoughts; as my mom would say, I have an A in theory. Practice is harder. But in the meantime, I give you “Imagine This.” Do watch the video; it’s strangely inspiring and thoughtful, not at all a mockery, as I had expected it to be.

If you haven’t inspired me yet and feel like doing so, please comment there. And if you have, thank you. What people have written so far has brought home the astonishing reserves of kindness manifest in those I know.

lightness of heart

…is a treasured rarity. After a three-hour (or so) conversation over food and drinks and even dessert, I came home with a light shining somewhere near my solar plexus. Excuse me while I go savor the feeling of a good-people day. (Or is it a good people-day?)

happy birthday, mr. architect!

OK, so I hadn’t seen much of Oscar Niemeyer’s stuff until today, but just check out his work in Brasília, Brazil’s capital city!

The man turns 100 today, and is still working – in BBC’s words, “sculpting curves from [steel-reinforced] concrete.” Damn.

ETA: BBC has a 30-minute radio piece on him here. The first minute or so is about something else, but don’t despair.

bang on de drum

Friday afternoon I left town just a bit too late, too close to Friday traffic going out of the city along the Pike. That and the slush coming down from the sky made the trip to Inspirit Common in Hadley a two-and-a-half-hour one; good thing that just before leaving I had downloaded some talks by Ajahn Brahm (thanks for the suggestion, Rob, what I’ve heard so far is good).

Together with Emily and Bucky (the friends who own and run the above-linked mind-body-spirit center) and their six-month-old son Kadin, I went to a drum-and-dance event. And for the first time ever I played a djembe in a drum circle, for half an hour or so. It’s a rush! I came in with this tightness in the middle of my chest, which almost worked itself out in the course of trancy dancing to the drums, but it was still there afterwards. Sat down to make rhythms, next thing I know there’s a lightness where the bad used to be. Later on in the evening Bucky said, “It opens up the heart, doesn’t it?” That’s exactly what drumming did for me. I will buy a djembe before I buy an iPhone, and that’s saying a lot.

Driving home late at night, I took the long way along Route 9. On and on and on through endless trees and industrial towns and mist. The road looked like it belonged in Neil Gaiman’s stories.

global warming and daredevilry

Newsbit: Evel Knievel is dead. Not from a stunt, either. I’ve never been hugely into him, but the guy had some guts, and was entertaining. May he rest, etc.

And a video, in which a science teacher proposes a pretty decent way to think about the global warming debate (and where you personally might stand regarding the issue) by approaching it as a risk-management problem. At the end of the video there’s reference to an “expansion pack” – a video cataloguing sources for finding out more about the issues involved. I haven’t watched that one yet, but the one below is worth even the ten long minutes it runs. Especially since the decision-making process this guy describes is applicable to many other areas of life.

[geek] Oh, excellent!

Via a wee goddess:

Astronomers rename asteroid to honor George Takei.

I am, sad to say, not a fan of the original Trek, so didn’t know Takei from his Sulu days. But he’s been an impressive presence on Heroes, my favorite currently-running geeky TV show.

But, dude. How much of an impression do you have to make to get an asteroid named after you? Takei is beyond cool. And modest, of course:

“I am now a heavenly body,” Takei, 70, said Tuesday, laughing. “I found out about it yesterday. … I was blown away. It came out of the clear, blue sky - just like an asteroid.”

Cheesemas, and directional

Today was cheesemas. Cheeses were bought and brought – drunken goat, mozzarella, robiola, explorateur (?! - hokey name, but most excellent cheese), some other alcohol- (port-)laced semisoft cheese, Valdeon (a Spanish blue), raclette and half a dozen others. Someone even brought raclette ice cream which, really, was much milder than it had any right to be. Add to that fruit, bread, fig-and-vidalia jam, wine, beer, sprakly non-alc cider, fifteen folk or more and two mostly happy and social toddlers, and it’s cheesemas in the neighborhood. My undying gratitude and love to my cheesemas-elf conspirator.

Unrelatedly, I thought some this evening, and wrote down the following:

north is triangular, steady, monument-al

east is rounded, exotic, otherworldly

south is light, scintillating, hot

west is radio, diagonal, big

the center is small, sensitive, reactive

Turnabout.

Once again I keep getting these flashes of “should really blog that!” and then immediately “but there’s so much unsaid over there.” So, in short:

I defended and graduated.* To paraphrase my landlady, I’m Vika Zafrin, Ph.uckin’ D. That paraphrase involved changing fewer letters than you might imagine. For the first time in my adult life I am not a student pursuing a degree full-time at an institution. Mostly there’s a giant feeling of relief, but I already miss research. Although that balances out, because I sure don’t miss the constant insecurity, the “not good enough”ness, the 24/7 feeling like I have to be working.

OK, I still mostly feel like I should be working. But it’s getting easier to compartmentalize, and you know what? There’s a whole big life out there, with books and spiritual practice and cooking and friends and friends’ children and visits with mom, who lives in driving distance for the first time in thirteen years. Who knew?

Ethan and I have moved up to Boston. Best move we could’ve made. Wanderlust is tugging at my pants leg already, but I could be happy living in Boston for a long while. Given that wanderlust is my muse and near-constant companion, that’s a hefty statement to make.

The house we live in has seven human residents, five cats, a dog and (temporarily) a bird. Gods bless the marvel that is modern allergy medicine. Our two cats have established relationships with the three who have lived here for long. Nochka the tiny black cat has a hissy fit any time DJ Spooky, the black boycat thrice her size, comes into our bedroom seeking food. And there’s the impossibly beautiful lynx-y Winter, who is afraid of almost everyone. Other than that, feline people are chill. Humans are also mostly chill, and really, how bad can it get when you live with geeks and musicians (and a funny man who inexplicably deals with insurance all day)? A circus band occasionally practices in my living room. Beat that with a stick.

The past three months have been spent largely acclimating to the new house, the new life rhythms, the big questions like where to go from here and how to plan out the long term. I’m working outside of academe now, but who knows how long I’ll be able to stay away?

So much is changing. Mostly I like it. Some of it is hard growth, but on the whole I feel like I’m stretching after a long sleep.

*Oh, and my work? Here, in its entirety. Get yourself Firefox and enjoy. It’ll take half a minute or so to load, but is thereafter very fast.

China Miéville and the Vikings

Not at the same time, mind.

There’s a review in Wired of China Miéville’s new book Un Dun Lun, which looks fun. Though I never quite got into the third book (The Iron Council) of his trilogy, I more or less swallowed up Perdido Street Station and The Scar. And, right now I’m reading Looking for Jake – a collection of his short stories that, all except one, are Miéville distilled, without the buildup. Fabulous, in both senses. He’s like a slightly more creepy Neil Gaiman, and boy does he have a way with words.

Aaand, check out these Viking-era gaming pieces that someone just dug up-and-out.

Peter and Sean need your help. Yes, you.

On a mailing list someone wrote:

Our good friends are still in real and serious danger.

This hit home — again — when I read the AP news article sent around on the same list.

I hadn’t made any phone calls since I live in Providence, but the article – dated today – made me do it. So I just called the attorney general, the mayor and the governor. My main question to them was: the two were arrested (more or less) before Turner made their statement; Turner has since taken the blame and a settlement has been reached; Mayor Menino said pretty definitively that Turner/Interference was the culprit; Peter and Sean are contractors twice removed. So why are they still on the hook, but more importantly, why has there been no public statement as to their fate? Will their prosecution just quietly go on its merry way, regardless of the above? That doesn’t make sense to me.

The phrasing was different, but this is the gist. I was pleasantly surprised by their taking my comments seriously and courteously, even though I am not part of their voter base. So make your calls, y’all, regardless of where you live, and ask that the charges against Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens be publicly dropped.

Attorney General Martha Coakley: (617) 727-2200
Mayor Thomas Menino: (617) 635-4500
Governor Deval Patrick: (617) 725-4005

[a|in]spirations

“You see, I keep thinking that what we need is a new language. Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry… and I think that in order to create that language, you’re going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass into another kind of perception, where you have that sense of being united to all things… and suddenly you understand everything.”

–André

Charges dropped!

4 February: the below is wrong. The charges haven’t officially been dropped. MSNBC, screw you for the misinformation. Everyone else, I’m sorry for spreading it further.

Here, watch this. Turner’s apologized to citizenry; they’re in negotiations as to $1M that they’re purportedly wishing to pay out (nice of them to cover costs and a little more), and the charges against Sean and Peter have been dropped. “Now,” the news anchor said (I’m paraphrasing), “all that’s left is for Boston to apologize to its citizenry for overreacting.”

I especially love the way the anchor talks about Philadelphia, where 56 of these things have been delighting audiences for “two weeks.” Ever so slight hint at “I can’t believe this is even a news story.”

Yay!!