ghosts are good company

i went to bed thinking about working on this
gathered scarf, and proceeded to have a dream where i was going to go on a road trip (from the pacific northwest to san diego, i think) and i wanted to bring that project along to start. i wonder how to interpret that one, considering the above and that i’ve been borrowing my grandparents’ car this past week and that i’ve been trying to figure out how to get to portland in a couple of weeks.

it’ll be, if i make it out there, my first trip to the zine symposium without cubbie - but it’ll also be a trip where i know more people than ever. so it seems like a positive thing to do, and like there are more people from olympia going this year. i think i’m feeling like i really should do something awesome because typically i would be at homoagogo right now, but i’ve been travel-hungry for the past while anyway, as i mentioned.

last weekend (not yesterday!) a friend and i stayed in a (western) yurt at grayland beach state park. it was a really wonderful trip that made our overnight stay seem longer than it was, which i think is the mark of a successful retreat. we saw a pinniped of some sort on the shore… i’m pretty sure he was munching on seaweed, although that might have been in my imagination. also we flew a kite! and toured the gray’s harbor lighthouse.

most importantly on the trip, we learned that we can take the bus there from olympia! having acquired bus schedules for the region, i am excited about the potential for cheap minivacations by bus.

i’ve been trying to start skating again - i’ve been pretty wheel-shy since i fractured my tailbone, mostly because my sense of balance is missing. i went out the other day, though, and managed to calm down after a little while (my knees, they stopped shaking!!) and even fell properly (while falling managed to twist so that i landed on my fleshy hip, rather than my not-fleshy tailbone). i’m hopeful that the skatey trend will continue, but still laugh at the thought of ever being able to even take part in the tiniest part of derby.

i’m still trying to figure out some broad-based what-do-i-want-to-do-where-do-i-want-to-go questions. all of my ideas at this point seem more romanticized than realistic - i need to find a way to balance those aspects and find a life that can sustain me. ideas?

i have a job! it is seasonal and low-paying and ultimately would be unexciting except that 1) it is a job and 2) they offered it to me less than two hours after my interview. which made me feel shiny.

i also have maybe a plan! i’m hoping to do evergreen in the spring (see boat class, below), hopefully walk at graduation, and then do a different, cheaper, nice, amsterdam sexuality program in the summer. i like having plans.

in long-term plans, a friend of mine mentioned dreaming of moving to vermont, and i glomped onto it. spring? next year? i’ll have graduated, need a place to go to. vermont? two amazing people to live with? uh, sounds great thanks.

derby starts again soon, with a double header exhibition bout on the 23rd. … and my work schedule means no skating class for me. damn, must figure that out.

anyhow, job excitement is the moral of this post!

i haven’t updated many things in the back end of the blogs recently - nor the front end, for that matter (this is the part where i look shiftily at my “it is beginning to be autumn!” image). but! today, tonight, i updated wordpress to 2.13 (apparently 2.2 is coming out very soon and has tags…) and i created a tag cloud… list… for our categories. hooray! while i was turning off all of the plugins so that i could do the installation, i got seven spams in two minutes! insanity. thank goodness for the amazing spam filtration of akismet.

so, those are things.

also, i made a marble cake today. except that i don’t know where the baking powder is, and the molasses/baking soda suggestion… worked, but not so much. so it’s a half-risen cake, but that’s *much* better than my not-risen cakes of late. i substitute things much, and it’s a bad plan. i need to either recipe or not, i think. at least when it comes to baking.

do any of you want a blog here? especially those of you without blogs - i keep meaning to ask. there’s plenty of space.

what else? oh! i’m almost done listening to my music in alphabetical order by song. that means that i can return to listening to biased random mixes. i’ve been missing some of my favorite artists, who just don’t have as much music out as other folks.

i really want to go to daiso! my mother trained me to adore asian things by first doling out infrequent trips to uwajimaya, and then moving us into the fringes of an asian neighborhood in san diego (not *the* asian neighborhood, although i spent time there after school sometimes, but definitely a neighborhood that had lots of asian groceries). so, i miss mostly the shiny cookie aspects of these communities, and chamalyn, although amazing, isn’t doing enough - it’s too tiny. besides, where else could i get dinosaur origami paper? or mini bamboo furniture for aviva alexander?

i’m glad that you understand.

today was one of the super!productive! awesome. so much stuff recycled and landfilled and going to community thrift tomorrow. we spent six hours sorting. hurray!

i really have no idea, career-wise - which is scary, because that precipice is coming up. everyone keeps asking me if i’m going to graduate this spring, and… i doubt it. i would like to, would like to use that to prove that i’m not as messed up as people probably think i am, would like to use that as proof that my disabilities aren’t debilitating - but i don’t want to graduate just for proof.

the next is a rundown of my summer plans, which don’t exist. chances are you already know these things.

i’ve been waiting and waiting to see the listings for my school’s summer classes. at the beginning of march, “Summer 2007 listings will be available in March” was changed to “Summer 2007 listings will be available in April.” now it’s april and i’m still waiting. a comrade in waiting found the class schedules for summer, though - so at least i know who is teaching when, and the first forty characters of the program title. surprisingly enough, that gives me a lot of hope and eases my worries a bit.

i’m also working on an application for this summer program. it is doubtful that i could both the school of unity and liberation summer school as well as an evergreen class, but i’m hoping that i could work it out - there are a few short-term evergreen pieces that i might be able to schedule around a summer with soul.

if neither of these things work, and if the former works, for that matter, i’ll be looking for a job. i should actually be looking for a job now - temp work would be optimal - to build into the summer, but… i haven’t started. job hunts are an anxious project for people even without anxiety disorders. yippee!

another thing that i want to do before i graduate is take part in this program in the netherlands. working this summer would obviously help support that some… the application for fall isn’t due until may fifteenth, so maybe i should work on that just in case. …except that the program is full. wow.

the netherlands program would also be helpful in my work toward the modern thought and literature program at stanford, in case that’s what i decide to do. for that, “it is recommended that students begin the program with an advanced knowledge of at least one foreign language.” my spanish has always been horrible, but i want to start working on that again - however, by the end of the program i would need to have reading knowledge in two languages. still, i thought at first that it was in two languages *before* the program, so that’s good.

ahh, just thinking about this all is making my stomach hurt. and these are the touchstones, the potential knowns of my future! eep, it’s time for bed.

in one of my classes, i’m doing well - getting each week’s work (because it’s online) done quickly, being on top of things… and it was just mentioned that i hadn’t signed in, yesterday, since the fourth. which is only a week, but apparently in the world of the internet, that’s a Long Time. what can you do?

so, i also haven’t updated here since then. so that’s a Long Time as well. i guess.

it’s been a busy world for cubbie and i, full of lots of delicious drama. we’re working it out, which is lovely. we’ve been Going Out and Doing Things, having dates, which we haven’t done for a while.

in searching for things to do with cubbie, i’ve also found things that i want to do on my own. gay shame meets every week, which is great because i had thought they were defunct.

trouble is, though, i keep finding things to do and then… not doing them. i have one in-person class and the rest are online and you’d think that maybe i would want to get out of the house more, but… no. this is why i haven’t been updating, see, because then i’d have to tell you about this and that’s certainly no fun.

what else, though. something is fun, and i’ve forgotten what it is. cleaning the house? no. um, oh! we’re thinking about moving to a new apartment in our building, if we ever make an appointment to see it. apparently there are studios that are only $50 more per month that are bigger and overlook the bay! i’m so hopeful.

that’s all i got.

i can’t imagine what it would be like to live my life without so many artists around me.  sometimes i forget about the art, because it seems like it’s part of breathing for so many of my friends… most of them write and write and write amazing stuff without even having to think about it - or at least that’s what it looks like from this end.  others take pictures, others make physical art.  and crafting!  there’s so much crafting, and that’s an art of its own.

i’ve always been an arts and crafts person, afraid of formal writing - i never have enough original ideas for fiction, and i can’t keep my mind on one track long enough.  somehow, though, i’ve been impressing people without even trying.  i have mentioned this other places before, but three of my teachers this quarter have complimented my writing - two in a “you should try to be published” way and one in a “i’m going to hand out this exam and on the side note that you’re very skilled at writing” way.

this hasn’t happened since my senior year of high school, which leaves me wondering if it’s just a context thing?  both places i’ve been with students who have been told that they’re not so good at school (here at a community college, then at an arts school where we learned about “punctuation, your friends and mine!”), so maybe it’s just the pompousness of my writing style that’s impressing people - that i have been doing this long enough that i can make fun of the form and the structure?  i don’t know.  what i do know is that i wrote a paper last week, the final paper for my transphobia class, and it was awesome.  it wasn’t quite in my normal, scoffing tone (the easiest papers for me to write are the ones where i hate the subject matter), and cubbie noted - and i agree - that it’s somehow more mature than the rest of my work.

the piece gave me a glimpse into a place where i can write from knowledge - because surely an opinion-piece on trans stuff is somewhere i have knowledge.  it makes me look at my procrastination and wonder what my work would look like, if i weren’t always afraid that it was going to avalanche  down on me.

not that i have, you know, any immediate plans to stop procrastinating.  and i’m going to turn that submission that i’m working on for that anthology…  sometime.  i have until the end of the month, anyway..

my friend erin just posted in her blog about a class at uc berkeley that’s happening next semester - it’s called “Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco,” and is taught by susan stryker. this course makes me giddy.

i’ve been trying to figure out how to make things work out so that i can take the class. i found this bit on the ccsf website:

This program with CCSF and the University of California, Berkeley, provides qualified students the opportunity to enroll in one free UCB course.

… but then i came across this bit, finishing it up:

Students who have attended four-year colleges or universities are not eligible.

humbug.

all of this came up as i was in the middle of looking into some things that i’ve been wanting for christmas, and i was like “yes! this is the best christmas present ever!” … but it turned out to be a lie.

any ideas on how i can fenangle this, anyone?

in other news, i was a fantastic eleanor roosevelt! i’m thinking about wearing the costume again and making cubbie take pictures of me wearing it, because it’s pretty darn cute. i got a lot of compliments on the outfit, and it sounds like my fairly unrehearsed presentation was amusing and educational. woo! one course down.

today i purchased a coat! it is exciting and will keep me warm. i am so very happy to have a coat.

this coat is part of the final project for my lesbian and gay culture and society class, where i will be playing eleanor roosevelt. and it will keep me warm all winter!

sorry, i’m just excited about it. it was a good investment. which fits! (here is the part where i twirl around in circles) it was from old navy, which is silly, but coat!

it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas. during my costume shopping today, every store was playing christmas music. cubbie and i have finally ironed down our travel plans (san francisco to oakland to vegas to tampa (december nineteenth through the twenty-fifth) to albuquerque to san diego (december twenty-fifth to thirty-first) to oakland to san francisco. phew! now we all we have to do is figure out new year’s plans….

i know i do. and i probably will talk about some things here that you won’t understand, or at least won’t understand why i care about them or why they’re important to me. but if i’m talking about them here (generally!) i do, or they are. so ask. i like to hope that i can provide articulate answers and explanations.
it’s been a time recently of a lot of Thinking. i’ve spent a large part of my life trying to figure out what i want to do When I Grow Up, and all that jazz. i was thinking about law for a while, i was thinking about museum studies, but after investigating them and taking classes around them, i found them all to be too… something. they were all too constrictive, in precise and difficult-to-articulate ways.

also for most of my life, i’ve been doing activist work. a lot of this has been done through nonprofit organizations, and i’ve thought time and time again about doing something in that arena - but also time and time again, i’ve burnt out like crazy. i need a career where i will not go through cycles of crazy.

and i don’t know if that exists yet, but i know that i need to build it. since moving to san francisco, i’ve met some folks who have been very supportive of me and helped me with ideas. one, who took it for granted that i was going to grad school, suggested a couple of graduate programs to me - the history of consciousness program at uc santa cruz and the modern thought and literature program at stanford both sound fantastic for me, especially the latter. i don’t know if i’m ready though, both because i’m so young still [twenty-one is so young for anything, for everything, but especially for commiting to a ph.d program! also, i should have mentioned in the baby chatter in my last entry - these are plans we’re working on for five to ten to more years down the road], but also because i really need to get my mental health sorted out before i can move into anything that big. i’ve melted down so many times throughout college, which is what’s supposed to happen, somewhat, but… maybe not this much.

well, that was cheerful and optimistic.

there’s a small problem in the schedule of my world where i’d really like to graduate “on time” in the spring of 2007. i could do this if i took few credits during the summer, but what i’d really like to do to finish up my college work is this program, which would be a semester studying gender and sexuality in the netherlands. i think that something like this would be an important experience to cap off my four years of queer and gender studies, because so much of what i’ve done so far is from such a (generally liberal) united states perspective.

another reason taking summer classes might be tricky is that i’m looking at two different summer programs down here in the bay area, both of which are based around anti-oppression work. they seem remarkably similar, with some subtle differences. the first, which i learned about from a guest speaker in my “diversity: transphobia” course (which i will mention in its own entry, because it deserves it), is SOUL - the school of unity & liberation:

SOUL Summer School is an eight-week-long intensive introduction to community organizing and social change, designed for young activists (ages 18-25) who have been involved with social justice organizing for at least one year. SOUL is dedicated to helping young women, young people of color, young working class people and queer youth step up to lead the movement, and SOUL Summer School provides a structured time when [youth] can work full-time to develop [their] grassroots organizing skills and [their] political analysis.

the second, which i found while trying to find the soul program, is diversityworks’ the works program:

The Works begins with an intensive five-week, anti-oppression, social justice training program in which 15-18 youth will come together in the San Francisco Bay Area for educational workshops, service learning and community events. Through these activities, participants gain a deeper understanding of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, ageism, and other forms of oppression. Youth will also develop their own skills as leaders and gain tools for bringing about positive change in their communities. The training program is followed by a month of group-led community action.

i feel like i should take advantage of these opportunities while i’m still considered part of the “youth” community. maybe it seems like this should be obvious - summer program and then netherlands program - but graduating “on time” is for some reason so important to me. i think a lot of it is that i’m currently at my eleventh school in my lifetime, and that’s a lot. it’d be nice to graduate with a degree that says i spent four years learning somewhere (even if it’s pretty much only been two).

anyhow. i’ve been working on this post for two hours. i have class in the morning. this is why my grades are bad.

xo

i’ve been having trouble sleeping, so i’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately. tonight i took a bath and finished (re-)reading my copy of genderqueer. the article about transy house, which is on page 297, i think, if you want to read it in google books. they have a cooperative house that operates in a family structure. the author of the piece owns the house, and discusses how wearing it can be, but the piece is so very full of hope. combining thought about that with the way that babies have been stars in the media that i’ve been consuming lately (the baby on lost is being baptized as i write this) and the dufty-goldfaber baby - oh, also and tango makes three… i’ve been in community baby-raising mood. i suppose it could also be that one of the guys we are hoping will be helping us with hypothetical child(ren) was (maybe is?) in town - and that cubbie is becoming friends with one of his friends who might want to carry a baby… so yeah. babystuff like woah.

i also think that cubbie and i should get registered as domestic partners soon. legal paperwork is good, sometimes - i also want to start thinking about what would be necessary should this type of baby-housing arrangement ever happen. eep.

anyhow, i’ve been doing crazily at school. i think i’m going to make twelve credits this quarter (after having originally registered for seventeen), and i should really pull eighteen credits next semester. i think i can do that, at least if most of them are online.

here are the classes that i’m looking at:

online
intro. to les/bi/gay/trans studies (3 credits)
mass media and society (3 credits)
racial and ethnic groups in the us (3 credits)
strategies for problem studies (2 credits)

in-person
aids in america (3 credits, wednesdays 6:30-9:30)
anthropology of homosexualities (3 credits, mondays 6:30-9:30)
supporting lgbt families in early childhood education (3 credits, tuesdays 6:00-9:00)
diversity: racism (.5 credits, 9:00-1:00, march 3&10)
diversity: classism (.5 credits, 9:00-1:00, february 3&10)

i could pick up a one-credit class if i wanted to get rid of the diversities (they’re early! it’s saturday! i have to get up at seven to get there on time!) in addition to one of the three-credits… i’m thinking that the e.c.e. class might not be for me. i think the best plan is to rank them and see what classes i can get, since my registration date is really late.

anyhow. i need to do better in school next semester, and then i need to graduate, and then i need to do well this summer, and then i need to do… something. and then maybe i’ll feel like i know what’s going on.