I've had an old silver cigarette case for years, and now it holds tiny vials of perfume samples.  Today I wore Knize Ten

*Holy Hell, what is going on in my nose?  I discard a ton of adjectives without pinning down the sensation.  It's not spiky, sharp, medicinal or fuel.  Is it rosemary? The bug-killing juice of geranium stems? A chemical spill in a barbershop?

*It's out there like The Tick is out there.  Waaaaaay out there.

*My grandmother used to brew Earl Grey tea in a coffee percolator, reheating the pot during the day; that's the bergamot here, severe without explanation or apology.

*This is a very dangerous dandy.  This is Sydney Greenstreet as Gutman.  Or possibly Howard Stark.

*Something in this smells like if you removed all the sweet 'root beer' notes from sassafras root.  There's an occasional soapy note, but it's a mug of shaving soap.

*Oh, wow, leather.  New car leather, suede and solvents, with whiffs of savory cold vanilla.

*And the tail end is sandalwood.

 Things I've done so far in 2014 instead of working on the novel:

1. spent many hours fiddling with my BPAL spreadsheet wherein I review the twenty-seven imps I have (analysis tab), filter and sort my wishlist (survey tab), and compile my next parsimonious order of imps (specimens tab).

2. knit two slouchy hats and a sweater, crocheted the components of a small afghan, and a net bag to hold the pieces until they're put together.

3. read "The Fourth Turning" by Howe and Strauss, which is an intriguing narrative.  I can see how seasonal generational temperaments could be a thing, but it's also a precious time capsule of a retro-future envisioned before 9/11.  I want to put the book into a cage match with Taleb's "The Black Swan".  I think their angry-sex lovechild spawn could be the closest we come to Asimov's impossible 'psychohistory'. 

4. watched a fair amount of "Good Eats", "Parks & Recreation" and Sophia Loren movies.

One the plus side, I have a sweater and I smell interesting.  Also, I've made it once again through the depths of winter without going off the rails or losing steam entirely.  And I've mostly avoided the head trip of guilt and recrimination about the Important Shit I Should Be Doing.  So I'm calling it a win and deciding to move on.

Things I need to change wrt writing:

1. thinking about the hot mess of a first draft I have so far (with occasional forays into the other first drafts also moldering on the shelf), which only engenders a daunting despair.
Solution: Don't look down.

2. expecting quality to come without making the effort of quantity.
Solution: Shut up and climb.

Sometimes the first step is simply owning the fact that you haven't been walking lately, and that's okay, and then getting on with it.

As a generally composed and easy-going person, there tends to come a moment when someone who is getting to know me realizes that, yes, as a matter of fact I can manage confrontation pretty well.  In most instances without breaking my veneer of detached calm.  It's a mental martial art I learned in my thirties, this ability to pick my battles instead of letting others do so, and then following through ruthlessly.  The more I practice it, the less stress I have in my life.

It's a virtuous circle.  When life hands you shit, don't eat the shit.  You may have to use it build a fucking cob house to live in for a while, and burn it for fuel, but just don't eat the damned stuff.  So the next time you're handed a steaming pile, you're at least dry and kinda warm and you aren't poisoned by a bellyful of someone else's crap.

Because yes, there's always a next time.  But I'm learning, as I did crossing the flyer-infested quad back in college, that someone trying to hand you X does not equate to you taking X into your hand.

It always gives me a perverse satisfaction when someone who's mistaken easy-going for passive goes down the wrong path of the decision tree, is brought up short, and then fucking loses it to no effect whatsoever.  Their rage is just so much sunlight trying to move a mountain.

I used to be the sunlight in such situations, blazing away and only blistering off a layer of lichen.  It's delightful to be solid granite in the shape of my choosing.

Okay, so it wasn't all bad.  There were some lovely things, and I didn't lose anybody I loved.  But when it got bad, it tended to really dogpile.  In a rough sketch:

Health, Act One: FeldDad went from zero-to-heart-patient when he started gasping for air in January with a 99% blockage of the main coronary artery that cardiologists call 'the widowmaker'.  After a double bypass in April he now feels better than he has in years.

Health, Act Two: FeldMom had an eight inch section of her gut removed due to a stricture so small that corn niblets couldn't pass through.  Another full recovery.  But Mom was on a Monday, Dad on a Friday that same week, in two different hospitals.

Health, Act Three:  Mr. F did an eight-day stint in yet another hospital, for something apparently ideopathic ("we don't know why this happened") and transient ("things seem a-okay now") yet at the time shit-scary ("let's roll a saving throw on that kidney, shall we?").  Act Three's audience participation was that this was concurrent with my losing a seven-week pregnancy.

[Caveat: In no way am I making any statement about miscarriage in general, or trying to be flip, I can only speak for myself in this particular instance.  A person feels how they feel.  This was wanted and a wrenching disappointment, I'm still baby-crazy, it couldn't have happened at a worse time, it was uncomplicated and I handled it un-medically, it felt like a version of labor for about six hours, I had more important shit to take care of, it took about two months afterward to stop feeling that I was a quart low on blood, for me it did not parse as a loss of a baby but the loss of a pregnancy and the hope that came with finally catching a spark--what stabs in a lingering twinge is the trepidation that what I really lost was my last chance]

Job, Act Zero: I had a part-time gig as an accounting clerk for a narcissist with negative people skills.  It had amazing flexibility of hours.  I listened to a lot of podcasts.  It started as a favor for a business acquaintance and I stayed for over a year.  One day, after two major attempts at actual communication with this woman over the previous few months failed, I simply walked out.

Job, Act One: Mr. F opened a business this fall, which is developing nicely, and I'm getting used to the whole hair-raising entrepreneurial thing.

Job, Act Two: I still have two other part-time gigs, one of which putters along at ten hours a month and I only bother to invoice 2-3x a year.  The other I'm not sure it if will get off the ground because communication is again an issue--only this time it's lack of goal clarity and the nagging feeling that if I overstep a boundary this person will simply grit their teeth and not tell me.  I do not have time to coddle this situation.

Job, Act Three: I now have a full-time gig, in a field that uses my qualifications, at a company with a shockingly collegial work culture so far.  I'm not making bank, and the shifts are a bit too varied sometimes, but it's remarkably inoffensive even at about two months in.

Art, Act One: I did a watercolor this summer.  Okay, it was a quick sketch at the beach, but it turned out well, it isn't fussy, and I just let it happen.  I'm calling it progress.

Art, Act Two: I'm at 19,441 words deep into something, which has been in a holding pattern since November (Health, Act Three was immediately followed by Job, Act Three, which put the kibosh on writing for a while).

Art, Act Three: I wrote fic!  Plural!  It's been ages!

On occasion, I've been known to make a decision based on rejecting the choice I'd regret more.  While this is as flawed a method as any other, it tends to steer me wrong less often than other methods I've tried, such as exhaustively researching, being super risk-averse, or waiting until I have no choice left.

Looking back, the more impulsive my decision, the wiser it tends to be in the long run.  Most of these were commitments to living beings.

"I just need to get laid already, and I know he's funny and hung." - Eventually married him.
"I don't want to stop petting her, she's so wonderful." - Ancient Cat turns twenty in November.
"Sure, let's do this thing." - Kiddo is seven and we haven't screwed her up yet *fingers crossed*.

Though past performance is no indication of future return, I can't help but pet these platitudes like the fluffy cat of whackaloon villain (as opposed to Ancient Cat, who has become a whackaloon villain herself).

Things most often turn out alright.  Scary things are often just huge things that change your world in an awesome way.  Hard work is how we get stronger, at least physiologically.  An element of chaos is integral to healthy homeostasis.

It's the closest I get to having faith

~*~

I've been talking with FeldMom lately about my ill-fated confirmation back in the day.  When my brother later came of that age he refused to do it, and mom backed his play much to the consternation of the nun who taught catechism (we were tag-and-release Catholic, mom went back to the church when I was eight and my brother a newborn).  Since then, and especially with each passing decade of my agnosticism, she's felt guilty that I was 'pressured into it'.

I think I've finally gotten it through to her that I wasn't being passive or coerced--at the time I really thought that if I made a big public commitment toward a higher being that faith would follow.

"You really thought the heavens would open up and God would talk to you out loud or something?"  Mom said with unease at my naivete.

"No, that's not it," I replied, and this is where the penny finally dropped for her that my agnosticism might just be like being born without the ability to sense the ineffable something she'd always felt herself, "I just thought I could make the decision *yes* and the question would be settled."

~*~

The thing is, it did make me comfortable in my lack of faith.  I had pulled out all the stops and made myself open to the universe, and the universe just vibrated with non-answer the way it always had.

So I think this is simply how my brain resonates as its particular corner of the universe.  I want to be settled and confirmed and sure and still like stone, but I can't be.  There are always possibilities and tensions and missing pieces, and my ultimate work here is to figure that shit out.  Not to answer the questions, but to physically work out how to carry on regardless through the chaotic soup, sans guidance and sometimes with only a mug full of ersatz hubris clenched in my white-knuckled fist.

  #4 fbf   "Avengers/Marvel Movie Universe. Natasha. Secretly a virgin."

Vasilisa by feldman 
fandom: Avengers
notes: I should have expected this kind of challenge from the person who dared me to write Crais/John/Furlow.  
summary: I see your Russian (Method Acting) Stoicism, and raise you Compassionate (Anger Management) Buddhism.



Natasha crests the rim of the impact crater, this time in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse store.  Banner's puddled in a depression, improbable bulges of muscle jumbled together like a still frame of a pot at a roiling boil.
( Vasilisa )

 #3 elliejane  "Farscape; High School/College AU."

Can't Think of a Word that Rhymes by feldman 
fandom: Farscape
notes: title from Alice Cooper's "School's Out"
summary: There are times Mr. Crais regrets passing the background check to become a teacher.

( Can't Think of a Word that Rhymes )

  #1 thassalia "Handcuffed together. Any fandom."

Orange Sunshine by feldman 
fandom: Avengers
warnings: spoilers for IM3
notes: Title refers to an old SNL skit wherein President Carter talks someone down from a bad trip.
summary: Pepper & Bruce, friends-in-law, Bobsey Twins, the big guns you keep in the holster.

( Orange Sunshine )

Yesterday's chili is quite tasty, but I perhaps used too much beer to deglaze the pot after browning the meat.  The other flavors meld well in the actual dish, but the dirty bowl left over is pretty aromatic of Oktoberfest.  Not if you sniff it head on, then it's spices and meat and tomatoes, but wafting about a foot away is pure beer tent.

I have now tried a second time in my life to watch "A Philadelphia Story" only to drift away early on and let it play ignored in the background.  I think I'm just bouncing off of Katherine Hepburn, who's too jaw-juttingly breezy to carry the story set-up for me.  I shall prevail.  I got my speech parsing wetworks to handle "His Gal Friday" (loved it!), I can conquer this.

This Bob Ross remix makes me quite verklempt, and I choose to believe that's because of the optimistic creative belief it expresses, and not the fact that my period is imminent.  What good is the cycle for, if not to add variation and needed chaos into our observations of the world?  We can't always inhabit the painful sensitivity of those days before the oven engages self-cleaning mode, or sustain the ballsy can-do momentum of the jiffy-pop ovary twins.  So we rotate, checking the view through each lens in succession.  Perhaps I am normally too jaded or dismissive of the messages of the Bob Rosses of the world.  And so I take this time, when my bust feels about to bust, to listen to the happy little trees and clouds, and maybe, just maybe, believe that creativity can be play again.

Happy.  Little.  Clouds.

 So I did not make the Labor Day deadline for having a completed draft of what I'm calling "In Suburbia, Land Owns You".  But I've been doing some fierce wrestling with demons here and keep coming back to it and adding more words.  I've broken the 10k barrier that is littered with the busted skeletons of many previous projects, and instead of feeling broken it's started to get that organic feel of when wheat paste transforms into dough.

I had an interview today, which went pretty well, and could be a decent fit.  Now that my parents are finally in decent health and the kiddo is back in school, my schedule has gaping holes that I'm planning to fill with adult socialization and a paycheck.  I have another tentative offer, pending funding.  And today I may have scored a part-time tax-season gig.  Rains/pours.  But it bodes well for something to pan out, at least.

In entrepreneurial news, the store is open!  We've gotten a great response so far, which is wonderful to see in part because this has been a dream for Mr. F for a long time, and I love seeing him bring it into being and just rock the community building.

I made these little fingerless gloves for the kiddo, with this yarn made by a friend of mine.  Now I'm making these entrelac fingerless gloves, with this yarn that looks like the most shameless autumnal colors ever.  Take another look at these colorways, which she can make stripe fast, slow, or over the course of a full skein (or several).  Meg is a wizard of spatial math and gorgeous color.

I am pressed on many sides by people listening to their souls and making them happen in the world, and I think that I'm running out of excuses *not* to keep writing.