A long time ago, in a lifetime far away, I began each year with a dip in Puget Sound. My friends and I would meet at Golden Gardens or Alki, suit up in keikogi, and warm up as if for class. Then, sometimes with a banzai, and sometimes in meditative silence, we would wade chest high into the frigid water. Sometimes we would submerge completely, other times conscientiously keep head and hands dry. Then each of us, when we felt we had been in the water long enough to prove a point, would wade back to the beach where hot coffee and sake awaited. Read More
ByGD
Stevens Passages: It’s All Fun & Games Until Someone Gets Hurt
ByGD
No Raffi in This Family
What is the female form of emasculating? I don’t think English has one. Why do we have a word for making a man less of a man, but no word for making a woman less of a woman? Is femininity so bullet proof? I think not. In practical terms, “motherhood” will probably serve, despite being the most feminine status possible. Body changes, sleep deprivation, and the touched-out feeling that comes from days spent with toddlers all join forces to strip women of the very thing that made (most of us- adoptive moms represent!) mothers in the first place – our sexuality. Read More
ByGD
In Which a Review of American Gods Turns into a Writing Riff
Fiction changes lives. I haven’t written fiction since middle school. (Except that one NaNo novel in 2008, but that was therapy.) Even so, I am subject to that universal writerly neurosis – I secretly think that deep inside me lies hidden the great American novel. At least I think it’s universal. Maybe other technical writers are perfectly happy with what they do. Maybe novelists secretly dream of writing that perfectly researched narrative nonfiction.
Anyway. When I got back from Airwaves, an idea for a story popped into my head; a few characters, some themes, a couple of scenes. This is nothing new in itself. I’ve walked around narrating stories in my head that I had no intention of ever writing down since – well, since I stopped writing them down in middle school. But these characters wouldn’t go away. Whatever else I was doing, a part of my brain was thinking about these broken characters and the shit they were going through. Since another good chunk of my brain has been following my kids around in this manner for the past five years, it left precious little attention for the tasks at hand, which has, unfortunately, been noted at the day job. Read More
ByGD
Pollyblog: When I Go Out With Artists (in Iceland)
Pollyblog: 1. When you don’t want to say too much, but 140 characters just won’t cover it. 2. Good ideas that haven’t got their legs yet.
Some people make things more interesting by adding “in bed” to the end of every statement. I use the phrase “in Iceland.” Anyhoo, this one time at band camp, I mean in Iceland, I interviewed many bands and it was very cool and I learned many interesting things. I am fascinated by what is, to me, the mysterious process of creating something new and beautiful. And the whole time I was doing interviews with bands in Iceland, this song was stuck in my head.
Here are the lyrics to “When I Go Out With Artists,” off the Crash Test Dummies 1993 album, God Shuffled His Feet. I copied them from this website because I’m too lazy to dig out my old CD and type them in.
When I go out with artists
They talk about language and the cubists and the dadaist
And I try to catch their meanings
And keep up with all the martinis
I don’t know which should be my favorite paintings
If I could see, if I could see, if I could
See all the symbols, unlock what they mean
Maybe I could, maybe I could, maybe I
Could meet the artists, and get to know them personally
If I were David Byrne
I’d go to galleries and not be too concerned
Well I would have a cup of coffee
And I’d find my surroundings quite amusing and
People would ask me which were my favorite paintings
What if the artists ran the TV?
All the ads would be for fine scotch whiskey:
Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, the whole single malt family
The artists of the future
Will make up new things and different nomenclatures
And they’ll stand amongst their pictures
And they’ll sing and laugh and quote from scriptures and
When they go home they’ll dream of brilliant paintings
ByGD
A Sign of Things to Come: Christmas Music
When my mother was growing up, she never had the kind of Christmas Hallmark sells, and she was determined that my brother and I would have a different experience. She was largely successful, but even so, not all of the traditions imparted were intentional. Some of her holiday ambivalence transmitted to me.
Case in point – our distaste for Christmas music. My mom and I both hate the commercial frenzy of the holidays anyway, but the Christmas muzak assault is the final straw that sends us both running to mail order. With extremely few exceptions, it is just BAD MUSIC that we are all force-fed for a month every year, and to add insult to injury, we are expected to feel nostalgic about it.