"Imagining Worlds Different than Our Own", "A Few Crooked Corridors", "It Really Sucks"

March 1, 1999

This cactus with a 'pincushion' bloom caught my eye yesterday at the arboretum. It was on the table of plants for sale. But I just took home the digital version. I was thinking of where to put this photo when I looked over the latest chapter of ATTWT. All those soft orchids seemed no place for a plant with thorns.

I felt in the mood to chance a poem, and one did result. In this morning's fresh perspective, it seems lacking, however. It's just not clear what I was trying to express. I was inspired by the orchid's similarity to human forms, in particular female ones. Both male and female intimate parts (transgendered ones as well) have been likened to floral design, and that set my mind on its track. No, however curious you might be, you won't find nekkid pictures of the Triad on the web. Sorry! There are places where such curiousity may be satisfied out there in webland. But not here, and not us!

(Note from 2-10-2000 - Okay, since that day I've broken that firm resolve. You may find a dimly lit picture with Julia and Laura clad only in hats. But it's DIMLY LIT!)

Fen Journals is a journal 'burb dedicated to journalists who are fans of science fiction. This has intrigued me quite a bit. I've gathered some journal excerpts that illustrate why I'm an eager fan. Forenote to the Journal Excerpts What I like most about good science fiction is its ability to capture essential truths housed within mythic elements people crave. Well, maybe I can't speak for most people. I crave these worlds of myths and heroes. I like them because they open our eyes and imagination to different ways of being. We can understand ourselves better through the art of the masterful storytellers that write science fiction. The following journal excerpts illustrate a crisis of faith I had recently and the way an especially moving Star Trek Voyager episode spoke to me. October 17, 1998 This morning, I had a crisis of faith. I feared that things would not get any better, that nothing would change, except towards the worst, and that I was powerless to do anything about it. I was submerged deep in this mood. . . October 19, 1998 . . .Whosoever.org is a website for LGBT Christians. I often go there as it has appeal for any spiritually minded person. They have a prayer request form to fill out and submit. I felt moved to fill it out today: Your Prayer: A sick spouse, she has an earache that won't go away. Strange thing is, it hurts on the top of her head. Maybe she's got a tumor in there. That's how my worries go. Anyway, she's gone to see the doctor again. My faith seems to have dwindled, and that is another cause of despair. Well, we humans keep plugging along, somehow, God or no God/Goddess. But I miss my faith. I hope my spouse gets well. Maybe someone else's prayers will do more good than mine. Thanks for being here. . . October 29, 1998 . . .Is the life teeming on planet earth a precious lone accident in the cosmos? Or is there a Divine plan? Does it matter? It used to matter for my security. I can't console myself anymore. The only consolation is that no one else knows any more than I do. And we are all in this together. That could be an illusion, too. When Matthew Shepherd was being beaten to death, did he feel a sense of unity with anyone else? Did it matter that millions would mourn his life? Maybe it would have, had he known. But he didn't know, and most likely he felt very alone and very frightened. He didn't feel any warm glow of a Heavenly Mother taking care of him. I've been grieving the loss of faith for some time now. It hurts to lose that security blanket. But it's just not there anymore. And I won't pretend. So what lies ahead in the mental landscape? Exploring it now, without the blanket, is chilly. But it's all I have. I will claim each cold, uncomforted minute, for it's real. Pain at least let's you know you're alive. . . November 18, 1998 Star Trek: Voyager aired its 100th episode tonight. The opening scene shows the ship buried under snow and ice. Chakotay and Kim are the only survivors. They, along with a friend, explore the craft, and see their frozen crew mates. Gradually we learn they are fifteen years in the future, and hope to change the ship's fate. Chakotay and Kim survived because they were in a separate shuttle craft. Kim was to relay co-ordinates for the ship to adjust their flight during the first use of a slipstream engine that would have allowed them to return home to earth. However he had sent the wrong formula. The ship crashed because the created wormhole collapsed on them. The small shuttlecraft made it through to the alpha quadrant. During the fifteen years since, they had acquired technology which allowed them to send a message back in time to save the vessel and crew. Of course, they weren't able to make it back to earth. (And spoil future story-lines?) However it was a thrilling episode. It ended in a special way. Along with the message of proper co-ordinates, Kim sent a message to the younger version of himself. Captain Janeway and Kim marvelled over this mystery. As I laid down tonight, preparing for sleep, I pondered a me fifteen years in the future. I wondered what she would tell me. I could imagine the warm, loving message of encouragement she might have for me. I could almost feel her. . . . . .And an epiphany came over me so strong that the force of it nearly pushed me out of bed and to the computer: It was me, all along, the Goddess was, and has always been a part of ME. I haven't lost Her, for She is right there inside of me, the best part of me! She's the best part of all living things. We like to externalize it, but that's not what it really is. I have long understood how people could believe they are 'channeling' a spirit which inspires their creativity, for poems will arrive in my mind whole. I seem but merely to write down the dictation. I knew it was really coming from that part of the brain people call the 'subconscious', the part from which arises all intuitive leaps. And so with the God/Goddess energy. It's really all right here, within us. The world seems a brighter place, now. ~ ~~~ ~

March 2, 1999

I'm up early. It's quarter to five. It might be because the weather is changing. We left the bedroom window open all night. It got chilly, though. Both Laura and I rolled in towards Julia, the "Warm Thing", to partake of her heat. And now I am sweatered for comfort.

I keep thinking about Science Fiction. I wish I'd of heard of it in my sheltered teen years back in the seventies. It would have opened my eyes to the possibility of worlds different than our own. Those scary realizations about myself would have been easier if I could have imagined a society structured differently than ours. But I stumbled about in confusion as I reconciled inner reality with outer reality. What was it that made me notice full ripe breasts and curving hips with mouth watering delight? Why did society think me strange at best? But, oh, if I could have imagined a culture where it wasn't considered a detriment, then embrace of self would have been unselfconscious and natural.

I had heard of Science Fiction briefly before I met Laura. I'd sent for a paperback of gay and lesbian Sci-Fi stories. It had a yellow and purple cover. Sadly, the book has been since turned inadvertently into Bookman's. But I remember a story called Black Rose, White Rose by a Rachel Pollack. The love between women in that story was enchanting. I didn't know at the time that Pollack is transsexual. It might have meant something to me, later as I stumbled about, coming to the realization I'd fallen in love with a transsexual. I recall one night I was driving to the MCC in Hinsdale, the line repeating in my head over and over, "Wow, I've fallen in love with a transsexual. Wow, I've. . .". I took a wrong turn and drove for a mile or two, dumbstruck.

Before Laura and I had met Julia, she had introduced me to all sorts of Sci-Fi during the previous seven years. By that time, I was a confirmed "Trekkie" and eagerly waited for the newest Star Trek, The New Generation episode each week. When I fell in love with Julia, when WE fell in love with Julia, yes, I did spend some time stumbling around in amazement at ourselves. But I said to myself, "What if we had been born to a society in which TRIADS were not exceedingly unusual?" I could imagine a society in which Triads were the norm. After all, there are certain benefits of this set up. Besides the economic advantages, there are other ones once the jealousy issue has been solved. Even those who have children might be glad of another person there to help in childraising. Such a culture might exist somewhere in the galaxies. This thought helped to ease the shock.

Just imagine, a person of fundamentalist mindset reading this will declare, along with the D&D roleplaying games, that science fiction is EVIL. They don't want people using their imagination very much. Those who rule with fear can't have their subjects using their minds very much, period.

~ ~~~ ~

Today will be another full day. Laura has an appointment with her doctor down in Tucson. We'll make a day of it, turning in old videos and CDs to Bookmans for trade credit. I have an awful CD in mind to bring. Of course, someone else may just love the King's Singers' Street Songs. I've added many integral albums to my collection from those who no longer wanted them and brought them to Bookman's.

Tucson street view with Catalina mountains

Laura did well at the doctor's. They gave her a new prescription to replace the Azmacort that PacificCare no longer covers. Good thing, for the Azmacort costs 50 bucks otherwise. Her blood pressure was good, 148 over 88. They want to check her for osteoporous. Since she quit estrogen, Laura's the same as any postmenopausal woman her age. So she goes back in June

Earlier in the morning, we brought three large boxes of books, videos and CDs in to Bookman's. They took nearly all except a few books, which we gave to Goodwill.

I left with three CDs and returned with three new CDs: songs from Les Miserables, the violinist Maxim Vengerov's compilation CD The Road I Travel, and a NEW Chieftains album. I read about Tears of Stone in a magazine this week. Released only February 23rd, one week later, it's in my hands! Tomorrow I'll listen to them all.

March 3, 1999

4:26am - what the heck am I doing up so Early?

I am possessed of Weird Thoughts. Yes, this voice that imagines itself to be witty is wide awake in my brain, and LOUD. So what has possessed it?

Laura, of course, has been up now for some time and is dressed already. She's all excited with the new vacuum cleaner we got at CostCo. She waited until this morning to unbox it. This thing is so fancy it even comes with a video to tell us how to use it.

BUT they neglected to put an important part, the long stiff tube, in. Sigh.

So Why am I Up So Early? I was thinking of "The Last Entry", that piece I link to from both Book One and Book Two. One reader a while back ago thought I had already kicked the big one and 'passed on' when she read that. Maybe it Is kind of melodramatic. It's just after I am 'pushing up daisies', I won't have a chance to write that entry. Yes, I do have some wary paranoia of life's Final Event. I fear it will be Much Sooner than I'd like. Of course, any time, other than in one's nineties, is Too Soon.

No, hopefully some friend or family member will use our computer to put up the Real last entry, with all the gory details on what finally Got me. Whether it'll be by my Bad driving, or a plane crashes directly on top of our house . . . (Oh, hopefully not that way. Then the computer will be wrecked as well. Sigh.) In the amazing mind of complex Joan, there are a few crooked corridors. At least around the D-word, there are.

~ ~~~ ~

Laura's gone off to do her treadmill walking. She likes to do it in the morning, while she's still fresh. Julia and I will walk later. Then we'll have to go All The Way back into Tucson to get a vacuum cleaner with all its parts. I've been neglecting my sewing. Hopefully Laura's son James, who has the day off, will travel with her and drive part of the way.

Items in the News

$480 million buyout saves Calif. redwoods

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)(via Starnet) - Groves of towering redwoods that were saplings when the Roman Empire was at its height have been saved in a middle-of-the-night deal with the timber company that owns the tract along California's coast.

The state and federal governments spent $480 million to buy 12 square miles of the Headwaters Forest and two other redwood groves from the Pacific Lumber Co. and set the properties aside as public preserves. . ."

Meanwhile we CasaGrandians may get a new power plant:

An artist's sketch of Reliant's $263 million Casa Grande Desert Basin Generating facility

It's supposed to be a 'clean-running natural gas turbine plant' and 'feature the latest in technology'. Abbott Laboratories at 1250 W. Maricopa Road in Casa Grande is luring the Houston-based Reliant Energy to take up twenty acres beside it. They hope to have a buddy system going. But the local utilities are crying foul over an exemption allowing this proposed Casa Grande electric plant to avoid paying an estimated $9 million in property taxes. Right now, they are trying to get a bill passed that would diminish the tax exemption benefit. However, no special dealie, no power plant. Time will tell. (source: Arizona Daily Star)

~ ~~~ ~

I don't know whether the plant would be a "good thing" or not. I'm relieved the redwoods have been saved. Not as much as environmentalists would have liked. But at least twelve square miles will be preserved for generations to come. You can't really put a price on something so valuable.

~ ~~~ ~

Before I sign off the computer to do some serious work, I'll leave some thoughts with you I found:

Whether we name divine presence synchronicity, serendipity, or graced moment matters little. What matters is the reality that our hearts have been understood. Nothing is as real as a healthy dose of magic which restores our spirits.

--Nancy Long

~ ~~~ ~

I hope not to diminish all the fine values of logic and clear thinking, with this quote. Certainly one must not avoid hard truths in seeking for that elixir of magic. But, oh, what a boost it gives us. Life without it seems rather lackluster.

Don't forget it is the eyesight of the mind that lets us discover those blessings.

~ ~~~ ~

What we are today comes from thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.

--Buddha

March 4, 1999

6:00am - potato pancakes, 2 small cooked slices of sausage, glass of cranberry juice - and three maximum strength aspirin, along with two calcium pills. I have a dreadful sinus headache.

Yet I have one thing to report about the new vacuum cleaner:

It Sucks!

It REALLY SUCKS!

3:00pm - too much rocky road ice cream - I took a spoon and the round container and went to it as I surfed. I have no doubt how much I ate. All I know is the container seemed a LOT lighter when it went back in the freezer than it did when it first came out.

4:30pm - mug of 7-up, cup of "Summerhouse" tea, 1/2 bag popcorn

7:30pm - mug of ice water

(You'd be best advised to skip this hideous rant. . .)

Sinus headache is pounding. I'm drugged with Hydrocodone to push the pain into a small enough place to deal with it.

All the raging self-doubt surfaces again. Am I pretentious? Am I filled with self-deluded vainglorious non-glory? Am I really just a fat insecure girl/woman, horridly insecure. Horridly insecure. You can't imagine. I'm whiny. Greedy. Impatient. Demanding. I also think I'm sweet, sincere, hopeful, romantic. . . "Flowery", but then I like flowery. What is the truth? The answer is the whole truth, of course. Is it possible for me to step back that far, or am I simply too myopic? What 'glasses' can I wear to have the clarity I need? How can I trust that it's the right prescription? Doctor, heal thyself? Wah-h-h!

Maybe this is all just a mood that will pass. One would think at forty I'd be done with all this adolescent moodiness. But I'm not. I suspect I won't ever be. It's so strange. One day I will look at something I've created, a poem, for instance, and be so utterly in awe of it. So full of myself. Is it not sheer greatness? Certainly this creation will stand the test of time, and be compared to the greats.

And then the next day, I will look at it and ask myself, Is this not the worst piece of rubbish? Why did I ever have such delusions? And the day after, I'll ask myself, what is it really? Crap, pap, drivel or sublime nectar? Or is it neither wretchedly bad, nor divine, just ordinary? I don't want to be just ordinary! And so I have pretensions, because I can't stand to be ordinary. Why is this so?

I should strive to be ordinary, for then I might be more understood. It works for the vast majority of people. But I turn my nose up at common things. And then pity myself immensely when I fear I'm not understood. What a case I am!

At least I'm not this bad:

A friend sent us the following:

". . .A friend of mine sent me some info on a Polish woman, Stanislawa Prszybyszewska, who wrote plays about the French Revolution. She lived an ascetic life in order to produce "pure art." She lived in a bare room measuring 7 1/2 X 15 feet, with mold and mildew growing on the walls and inadequate heat and food. She was also a drug addict and developed an arthritic condition at age 25. She hated the "common people," who she thought were beneath her, and only vied for a position among the greatest literary minds of her time. And all the while she crawled around her little room on all fours because she was too stoned or in too much pain to stand up. She died at age 34. What a fucking loony. . ."

Things could always be worse!

March 5, 1999

I still have the awful sinuses. I still have traces of the awful mood. It will pass, I know. Yesterday I did some sewing, but napped as well. I woke up to look at Julia's statue of Cybele on her chest of drawers. She took a plain clay statue from JBL statues and painted it herself. The 'crystal ball' Cybele is holding came originally from a wizard pin Laura had. The light coming in through the window illuminated it just right. The brass Chinese plate looks like a halo around this Goddess statue. (If your monitor is set to 800 x600, it should look right with medium size text.)

The month of March and early April were filled with all sorts of Goddess Cybele related festivities. It's as good a time as any to put her image up on the web. I looked through Meditations, Poetry, and Songs for Our Lady of Dindymus, to see if a poem could be put with her image. In these more skeptical days, I don't like much of my earlier spiritual poetry. But "The Great Prayer" still rings a chord with me, a chord true and strong. It's survived MY test of time.

I've just now looked at my collection of poems. I DO like them, after all.

~ ~~~ ~

A strange mystery arrived in the mail today. A box of CDs from BMG. I'd just sent off that big order for several Czech composers (an opera by Smetana, among them). No, THAT couldn't have arrived already. I only vaguely remember sending for Bryn Terfel's If Ever I Would Leave You. But I did recognize it, for I've come to really like his voice, and applied to songs by Alan Jay Lerner (old operettas), I knew it would be welcomed. But the other one - Classic Wynton - the jazz trumpeter doing various baroque selections, I have no recollection of.

I always save the magazine, with each thing I ordered circled, until it arrives. I didn't this time. So I can't check to see if I wrote the number down wrong, or the number directly above the one I wanted. I'm not into trumpets, but it's the nicest trumpet music I've heard. Terfel's rich deep bass/baritone, however, is just heavenly on these old show tunes. The last dregs of the crappy mood has melted away listening to him. I give it my highest recommendation.

He's not bad looking, either!

The mood has greatly improved, but not the sinuses. At least the medicine dulls the edge of the 'knife' wedged beyond my eye so it doesn't 'cut' so deep. I hope I feel better for the weekend. This sucks.

It really SUCKS! !