Lint from the Dryer Trap in my Brain; or,
Kat's Experiment in Egomania

...or, oh, god, it's another freakin' weblog.

Contents may include comments on/links to things I find cool; medium-shallow philosophical maundering; weather notes; idle chatter; story recommendations; and general self-referential blather.

Who needs it? Take me back to the stories!
E-mail Kat.

 
 

Monday 30 April 01

What a marvelous weekend.  Didn't get anything written here, but I was happily busy with all kinds of other stuff.  (Still need to update the links on the left, to add some LiveJournal folks.)

So, today's theme is "buoyed by others."  Because, first of all, I'd finished the draft of the new story and wasn't really happy with it--parts worked, parts didn't--and I sent it to the fabulous Speranza (an act of nerve, but then she'd asked for it <g>), and she went through it with me in real time on IRC, put her finger on the various bits here and there that needed fixing, and then said, in effect, "Here at the end, you're doing blah blah, and maybe what you need to do instead is blip blip" and it was like--lights coming on! door opening!  brain humming! Yes!  So I've been going back through and tuning up other parts to jibe with the revised ending, and I'm almost happy with it now.  Should be out soon, I trust.

And then Sunday I got to spend time with Deb and her horses.  We hadn't met before in person, and I hadn't realized for a long time that this marvelous writer Debchan actually lives nearby.  And has horses.  And was willing to let me come out and spend time doing horsy things!

I was an utterly horse-obsessed child but while my parents were willing to fork out for occasional riding lessons, having a horse was totally not in the picture.  I had toy horses instead, the same way some girls have dolls--a herd of about 15, made of porcelain, each with its own name, identity, pedigree, personal history, and each with its own stall, made out of a shoebox and bedded with dry grass for straw, and each had its own bridle and saddle made out of yarn and felt scraps.  But spending time around real horses was my life's dream.

That dream kind of got lost when I got older and was broke and in school and without wheels, though I did get riding lessons in here and there over the years.  Until yesterday, though, I don't think I'd ridden in maybe twenty years. 

And what I'd kind of forgotten is how wonderful it is just spending time around horses.  Riding is marvelous, sure; but grooming a horse is one of life's great sensual pleasures.  All this big heated solidity of muscle, gloriously aromatic, live, resilient and responsive, and getting to lean into it and smell its breath and feel its heat and smooth it all over with brushes.  The action of grooming another living thing goes straight to some deep monkey-brain pleasure center, I think.

And there are many other pleasures, of course, the feel of velvety prehensile horse-lips taking a carrot from one's hand, and the arcane complexities of tack, and then riding itself, not just the grandeur of being up there on top of this powerful being, but the tentative establishment of communication, negotiating a joint purpose with this being so different from me, moving together, finding rhythm and flow.

The eros of horses...it's something I need to write about someday. <g>

But leaving aside the horses, it was marvelous to get to know Deb and spend time with her--she's an extraordinary writer, of course (I say "of course" but bafflingly, I don't think she's as widely celebrated as she ought to be).  But she's also someone of exceptional presence, in person--there's an utterly unpretentious, unshowy authenticity about her, genuineness, warmth, calm solidity and sanity.  And she's smart and funny.  And she's invited me to come back and do horse stuff again, yay! so I guess I didn't screw up too bad, even though I've lost all but the rudiments of how to post to a trot <g>.

So I'm deeply happy this morning.  (And not even all that sore--I guess the too-infrequent sessions at the gym on the adductor machine paid off.)

And just as I was typing this, my landlord came to the back door to somewhat apprehensively tell me they're having to raise my rent, for the first time in nine years--which is to say, instead of paying [figure insanely below going market rate] I'm going to pay [figure only slightly less insanely below market rate].  For this beautiful apartment, which I love.  And to tell me that I'm a good tenant and they're happy to have me here and don't really care about making a profit off the deal. You know you're an incredibly lucky person when a rent increase makes you realize how lucky you are.
 

Friday 27 April 01

In the good-news department, Rowan's back!  And Miriam has a bunch of interesting new stuff up ... hey, Miriam, FWIW, my verdict is that middle age begins whenever you decide it does, and rollerblading is a fine thing to take up when you feel time's fell hand getting all clutchy.  P. gave me rollerblades for one of my recent middle-aged birthdays, and they are a gas.  I've been kind of a chicken all my life, or risk-avoidant as we psychologists politely say, and learning to skate was, for me, a really fascinating experience in going right up to the limits of my own fears and then pushing them a little.  On rollerblades, I'm usually afraid, in that sector of my brain that knows I'm not in complete control of the situation and can vividly imagine broken bones and lacerations; to feel that level of terror and set it aside and keep moving onward is a great tonic for the middle-aged soul.  (For my 50th birthday I'm going to try skydiving.  Yelling "Turtles!" as I leap, no doubt, and confusing the hell out of everyone.)

So give it a shot--but do wear the wristguards <g>.  I can only imagine what a pain one-handed diapering would be.

Argh, and I missed Maygra's birthday.  Hope it was a good one, and marks the start of a wonderful year!
 

Thursday 26 April 01

Have been enjoying everyone's comments on this week's Buffy/Angel--and I also enjoyed the heck out of the shows.  Despite the fact that I really don't care for either Buffy or Angel as characters (no intent to trash them, they just don't do anything for me), the secondary characters and overall quality of the writing have sucked me in.  That, and the fact that it's so much fun to once again be caught up in a live show, where half the pleasure of watching is imagining friends' reactions as they watch along with me, the little distant whoops of fannish rapture over Spike In Chains, or Xander's incautious appreciation of Spike's bod, or the Evil-Hand scene.  And then getting to talk it all over the next day.  Haven't had anything like this in a long time, not since way back when the X-Files was good.

Shrift, I'm right down there next to you in the Gutter of Spike-Worship, drooling, and drafting petulant imperious diktats that they must, yes must, keep the messy hair.  And Lindsey has definitely attained Hottie status--but beyond that, I was very impressed with Christian Kane's work in the episode; it's a great pleasure to see an actor given such great stuff by the writers and really running with it.

And a week from tomorrow this blighted semester will be O-VAH!, and the stories are inching along, and the cat is acting like she's just fine again, and at this very moment I have the back door open and fresh almost-warm air pouring into the house.  So, happiness.
 

Tuesday 24 April 01

Ah, springtime.  Hysterical adolescent weather (last Monday, snow and three-below-zero windchill; five days later in the 70s; three inches of rain and freezing the last few days; by Saturday it could be 80).  The almost audible sound of the planet turning on its axis, shifting gears.  The end of the academic year, and all my students coming unraveled at once.  Flood reports leading off the local news, day after day.  The sun suddenly rising on the north side of the garage outside my window (my own personal Stonehenge) and hitting me square in the eyes as I type, early in the morning.  Change change change.

Big vague life/death thoughts too.  I was rereading Maygra's weekend blog entry, about her mother, sending big ether-hugs her way and hoping all stays well there.  It made me think about my own mother, who's been in my mind more often since watching "The Body" on Buffy.  Dead almost fourteen years now, and she's not often in my conscious mind any longer, but she shows up in my dreams still, thankfully as she was when she was healthy. 

It was late April when she made her final trip into the hospital--I remember that, making the daily drive up the River Road under the leafing-out trees to visit her.  Bringing her daffodils, telling her what was coming up in her garden.  It was June when she died.  I remember only little splintered bits of that day--the way Cheyne-Stokes breathing sounds, the way she looked at me, with huge amazed eyes, when it was clear she no longer remembered who I was, the dark bruised mottling of cadaveric lividities before the doctor came to pronounce her.  The sound of birdsong and the smell of fresh air, coming in her window--it was a perfectly beautiful June morning, I remember that too.

She died way too young, and she was one of the good ones, like Maygra's mom, one who made everyone feel better just being around her, generous and warm and funny.  She was able to make me believe that she loved me, even though it was also clear that I was in no sense the kind of daughter she'd expected or had in mind; she would have loved to have a daughter who was happy and popular and fun-loving, with lots of friends and parties and clothes and boyfriends, and instead she got this asocial moody neurotic bookworm of a kid.  She told me, more than once, when I was miserable about being who I was, that she not only loved me as a daughter, she valued me as a friend; that I'd made her world larger, led her to read and think about things she never would have otherwise.

She always told me I should write, and I never did until long after she was gone.  I wish now that I could show her my stuff, as awkward as that would be in some ways <g>.  She'd have read it, and even if some of it freaked her a bit, she'd have accepted it, and been proud of me for doing it. 

Maygra, give your mom a hug from me, and take care of yourself.  (And thanks for the kind words, sweetie <g>.)
 

Saturday 21 April 01

Well, the weekend started with a bang, with a 4 a.m. trip to the emergency veterinary clinic.  I'd been woken by the cat sounding off with her this-is-serious-shit yowl, the one that usually means strange enemy cats have been sighted on the back deck, but she wasn't at the window, she was in her litterbox, straining and yowling and unable to pee. 

So I stuffed her in her carrier, drove through the pouring rain, with the Siamese Howl of Death in my right ear the whole way, handed her over to the tech, and sat down in the waiting room alongside a tough-looking young woman with two ferrets who was enrapt in watching Dr. Laura on the waiting-room TV, which made me more than slightly crazy, but I was in no shape, having not yet had coffee, to get into a socio-political wrangle with her.  (Besides, she might've sicced her ferrets on me.)  An hour and a half passed, Dr. Laura and the ferret lady both went their ways, the rain stopped, the sun came up, and eventually the (very cute) young vet came out and gave me a long and highly educational exposition of possible kidney ailments in older cats, complete with detailed info on the Nake's creatinine levels and blood chemistry and X-ray results, the nuances of which escaped me, given that I was still without coffee or breakfast or adequate sleep. 

Conclusion:  she could have a bladder infection, or she could have a kidney infection, or she could have kidney cancer--but in any event her kidneys are slowly crapping out on her (the most common cause of death for older domestic cats), and what I should do is take her in to her regular vet on Monday.  (Who will give me unshirted hell for letting her teeth get into such bad shape.)   I wrote out a staggeringly large check and drove her home, where she promptly ate, drank, washed, and went to sleep, muttering anathema at me the whole time.

So I may be faced with one of those slow-slide where-do-we-draw-the-line situations.  Which I loathe.  How much money and hassle do I pour into keeping an animal alive for another few months?  A year?  Two years?  How much of a soulless shitheel will I feel like if I don't go all the way to the bitter end?  To be ruthlessly honest, although I love her, she is beyond question a royal pain in the ass, much of the time, and beyond question my life would be simpler without her.  How much of a self-centered scumbag am I if I let consideration of my own convenience enter into the process?

On life's voyage, one encounters people at times who lead one to think, "Cripes, my life would be so much easier if I could just toss that person off the boat."  And (with few rare exceptions) we all leave such thoughts in the fantasy realm, and carry on.  We don't put people down simply because they've become too troublesome and expensive to go on with.  But with pets--it's different.  Whenever my cat dies, it will quite likely be because of a conscious decision I've made that going on isn't worth it for either of us.  But how much of that decision will be about her, and how much about me? 

I've been down this road before, all the way to the end, with her predecessor, Krazy Kat of glorious memory, and it left me tapped out emotionally and financially.  Never again, I swore at the time.  Next time I'll be prudent.  I'll be sensible.  But how do I know what "sensible" means here?

This is what happens, my brain informs me smugly, when make yourself responsible for other living creatures.  Yo, brain?  There you go again with the obvious.  I sigh, I stare at the monitor, I listen to the cat snoring on the bed behind me, and to the rain, which has started falling again.
 

Thursday 19 April 01

I came across a poem this morning, while looking for something else, that I'd put away to ponder and had forgotten about. Re-reading it, I suddenly realize I want to use it somehow in the long post-CotW dS WIP, the one where it all comes unstuck between them:

In the sludge drawer of animals in arms,
Where the legs entwine to keep the body warm
Against the winter night, some cold seeps through--
It is the future:  say, a square of stars
In the windowpane, suggesting the abstract
And large, or a sudden shift in position
That lets one body know the other's free to move
An inch away, and then a thousand miles.
And after that, even intimacy
Is only another form of separation.

          "Rules of Sleep," Howard Moss

Mmm.  Yes.  Reverb, resonance, story getting fed on a deep level.  What I want to do now is write.  What I have to do now is go to work.
 

Wednesday 18 April 01

So I've been slightly, somewhat, sucked into Buffy lately.  Somewhat.  To a degree.  With reservations.

I love Spike, of course (well, big duh--is there anyone out there who doesn't love Spike?).  Although I definitely need to see pre-chip Spike sometime, when he was just plain Bad. 

And I'm unreservedly crazy about Giles.  My favorite moment of last night's ep (no spoilers here) was the brief eventless one where Giles sits down after the funeral, drinking whateverthehell it is he's drinking, and listens to--yes!  Cream!!  Talkin' 'bout my generation, yes indeed. [After I posted this, Rowan wrote to let me know me that this references an earlier episode I haven't yet seen.  Heh, canon ignorance strikes again...  Thanks, R!]

But the other characters ....  Well.  I don't know any way to say this that might not give offense to the younger members of the reading audience here, which is absolutely not my intention.  But the thing is --

-- they're so young.  And youth is great, youth is wonderful and exciting, youth is a vibrant and filmogenic period of life.  Makes for exciting stories and good-looking people.

But--I've been young, and it's a time I remember with no fondness whatsoever.  And I deal, professionally, day in and out, with the developmental angst of people in the 18-20 age bracket.  So when I come home, after a long day of sympathetically unsnarling young people's academic and personal and familial and romantic traumas, and coping with all the bad flashbacks they evoke, what I really want, what I really crave, is-- 

Older people. Not cute crusty senior citizens, good for a guffaw from the laugh track.  But actual human beings who've been around the track a few times, taken a few of life's beatings, who have some lines in the face and some adipose tissue at the waistline.

Harding Welsh. Rupert Giles.  Joe Dawson. Frank Black.  Al Giardello.  Walter Skinner. Frank McPike.

They appear, by and large, in our various fannish shows, as the mentors, the variously crusty or sympathetic parental stand-ins, the backdrop for the gaudy dramas of eros and adventure which the younger characters enact on center stage.  (I'm sure a chief reason I so loved Millennium, for all its flaws, was that it actually gave one of these guys center stage, for once.)

We do get, in fannishly-popular shows, plenty of characters in their 30s, to be sure, complex people who've gone through a certain amount of life-buffeting--Mulder and Scully, Fraser and the Rays, Bayliss and Pembleton, and so on.

But it's as if there's a great Age Rift that happens somewhere in the early 40s, and the characters we see on the other side of that gap only appear in secondary roles.  They exist only in terms of their relationship to the main characters.  Every so often they get an episode of their own, a moment in the spotlight, but in general they're peripheral, however necessary they may be to the main characters or the main plotline.  We seldom see their inner lives.

(Another noteworthy thing, of course, about the above list of older characters is--they're all guys.  The absence of age becomes far more striking in respect to female characters.  I'm sitting here struggling to think of a strong, intriguing older woman in any of our fannish shows who isn't somebody's mother, and the only one I'm coming up with is Madeleine, from Nikita.  But this is a whole other rant ...)

I know there are reasons for this, the chief one being that younger people seem, to the execs and the advertisers, likelier to draw viewers who will buy whatever products television programming exists to sell.  I think there's another reason for the Great Rift, though--it reflects a deeper reality.  Something does happen to many of us in midlife, a great inner rift between youth and age, a quiet and sometimes desperate transformation.

Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark
wood, for the right way had been missed. Ah! how hard a thing it
is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in
thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little
more.

Thus begins Dante's descent into hell, his own journey of transformation.  It's a scary place indeed, that dark wood, more frightening than vampires or green-goo-bleeding aliens.  It's just less telegenic; it doesn't lend itself neatly to 60-minute story packages.  But in there are the stories I really want to see.  Older people living their own stories, existing for their own reasons, not as some kind of gruff-yet-kindly in-loco-parentis appendage to the main universe of the pretty young things.

None of which is meant to diss Buffy; it's a good show.  It's just that the show I really want to see is the Buffy gang twenty-five years down the road.  Tara and Willow, in different cities, realizing separately that neither of them has had sex in months and remembering, dimly, when they were together and couldn't get enough of each other.  Xander realizing he'll not only never really be the person he dreamed of being, he can't even really remember that person any more.  The Slayer, getting creakily out of bed, testing her arthritic knees, and wondering, really not sure, if she can take the next tough young vamp to come down the pike.

I want to see the people who've been through the dark wood and travelled down to hell  and lived through it all, and hear their stories of what it was like.  (And no, I don't expect network television to pay much attention to my desires in this regard <g>...)
 

Tuesday 17 April 01

Having a thwarted moment here.  This is a week when I'd really love to take a sick day and just push ahead on the writing, and maybe even try to get down some of the essay-type ideas I've got floating around that are really too long and boring for blog-blather.  (Yeah, like the world's holding its breath for those.)  But we are heading into Registration Hell, which is one of the three times of year I can't go out sick (even if I am) because being absent would screw with the lives of other people, innocent youth who are trying to get themselves into rapidly-filling classes and need me to release holds.  Gah.  As LaT says, sometimes I hate being a grown-up. 

Shrift, Nestra, can I just beg really hard for that Krycek/Spike story?  That incendiary little snippet you posted has carried me happily through much workplace tediosity.  (Ditto for Livia's Hornblower thing, but I'm leaving Maygra to handle the emotional extortion on that one.)
 

To the current lint.
To the older blather.  (You mean you want to read more of this??  Freak.)
Return to top.