Sick

That is all.
-C

Cities

So tonight was the night I almost didn’t post. Not that anyone other than me would be disappointed in that fact. Hell I’m not sure if anyone is reading this. Blogging like this seems to be, at least to me, like casting a message in bottle out in to the ocean. Except that I there is a chance that I might get a response. It’s an interesting paradox. Throwing something off into the Void with the expectation that one might get a response. It seems to be a fundamentally human urge. We did send Voyager out into the unknown, not expecting contact, but hoping for it. Odd. Anywhose on one hand I’m not sure if anyone is reading this, but just in case I don‘t want to offend. Strange, it is at once very liberating, supposedly being able to state your opinions through the veil of time and anonymity, and at the same time censoring oneself, just in case. Odd in deed.

Not much happened today. Work and hanging out with a friend and chance encounter with another whilst buying beer. I think that’s what I love about this city. The fact that if I am in the People’s Republic there is a good chance of running into someone I know, and, that if I wander out to other neighborhoods I am just another anonymous person. Its like have a small town and city at once. So that when you tire of one you can go visit the other.

I have to say that I like the fact that I run into friends and acquaintances on the street. I spent most of my 20s as nomad, and if I ran into someone that I knew, it probably meant that I worked with them. And that they were just as much of a foreigner or outsider as I was. It’s been a long time since I have truly gotten the opportunity to get to know an organic neighborhood. A place that has developed and changed over time and really wasn’t planned.

I never liked living out in the suburbs; it always felt so artificial, fake and unnatural. Everything was chains and anything that wasn’t was in the process of being forced out. It always felt like a very transient place to me. A place without roots. Or maybe that was because, living in the suburbs also coincided with the time that I lost my physical link to my roots.

Even so, in this city that is almost a thousand miles from my childhood, I feel that are roots, even if most us who live here are transplants. It’s also the first place that I have lived permanently since leaving my parents home. Maybe that is the reason for my attachment. After all it is very odd for me to be attached to this city.

Had I told myself even 4 years ago that I would live in Atlanta and love it; I would have laughed at myself. I mean I’m terribly far away from home and any long established support network. There are no mountains. No easily accessible woods. It’s really fucking hot in the summer, and no snow. But there are amazing people who have surprisingly become a support network in a very short amount of time. Wonderful neighborhoods for me to explore. Awesome music that reminds me why I enjoy going out to see bands. Interesting architecture that changes styles every couple of streets. Several really good bookstores. Secret hidden parks that you can walk past a thousand times before you notice them, tucked into a hill below the road. Places where in the midst of the city all the noise seems to recede. The scuzziness and the danger. The way the city forces me to pay attention. The odd community that seems to have surrounded me while still leaving me with ability to have my space.

It’s a city of paradoxes. After all I live in a city lacking a central identity where each neighborhood seems to have a very defined one. However those defined identities are very fluid and change with years. It’s a city that more so than anywhere else reminds me of an organism. Like a coral reef. Made up of many unique individual parts that don’t seem to follow a unified pattern, but that create a wonderful chaotic whole.

Maybe I’m just attracted to cities. I’m always curious why they sprout up where they do and why some endure while others fade. What makes people love them and hate them? Why does one place speak to some people while at the same moment drive others away. How they are able to be places of tight knit communities and at the same time harbor soul aching loneness. Maybe I just like paradoxes.
Till Tomorrow- C

PS The cricket in my kitchen wall seems to have vacated my apartment. Either that or its really been digging the music I’ve been playing.

Attack of the Nerd Girl

So it’s an odd Tuesday for me. No dice are rolling, no beer is being consumed, and no hill giants are being turned into squirrels. No Tuesday D&D ( Dungeons and Dragons). Its odd how this event has become a staple of my week and how I rather miss it. However since I spent the day feeling like 18 kinds of garbage it’s probably a good thing.

Work was another day of slinging coffee and dealing with the craziness of working at a small business. Nothing terribly exciting save the fact that my back hurt so bad that I had to sit for a bit. And tomorrow will be more of the same. I should go put the aspirin in bag now.

Okay aspirin is in the bag. I guess I need to find a topic for this entry lest it become an exercise in rambling. Topic, topic, topic…. Topppppppic……. Topic.. To-pic……… I guess I’ll write about gaming. It works well enough.

So I’ve been a RPGer for ages, since I was 14 actually. Now I don’t do computer games or larp-ing and I don’t play to many board games either. I just really enjoy getting together with a group of friends and rolling dice while becoming someone else. I just enjoy getting to deal with parts of my psyche that otherwise get repressed and tend to cause trouble. Yes I am a nerd, a total geek, seriously go take a wander through my movie collection, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the first two X-Men ( the third was awful), all of the official Sean Connery, James Bond movies ( I totally blame my high school boyfriend for this), season 2 of Battle star Galactica ( the new series not that campy 70s crap), Highlander ( there can be only one), Labyrinth, season one of the Muppet Show, ( I freaking adore Jim Henson), Serenity, Young Frankenstein, Space balls ( I love you Mel Brooks) and of course the original 3 Star Wars movies (before George Lucas decided he needed to basically shit all over the Sistine Chapel of Sci-Fi). Yup nerd, plus I have comic books, too.

I’m actually pretty excited about a new character I’m going to start playing in a new game. It’s my first time playing an RPG outside of D&D in ages and my group is playing Rokugan which is a setting in feudal Japan. I’m really exciting because for the first time in forever, literally since I started playing, I am not playing a thief, or a bard ( which I view as a thief that can use magic, hey in 2nd edition I still had backstab). No I am playing a straight up shit wrecking fighter, or in this case samurai, and in this system there is one family in one clan that has female samurai and I’m part of it. My character’s external motto is, “If I can’t kill it, I’m probably not going to be much use.” No negating or using tactics for this one. But what has me really interested is the fact that I’m using her as a way to explore non-traditional women and how they cope with there femininity. I want her to try and establish an alternate to traditional femininity without completely aping traditional masculine behaviors. It’s going to be a constant struggle for her since she is treated essentially like any other samurai by the society but I feel that there should be this conflict within her. Oh yeah and she’s going to be very attractive which is very odd for women in this family so that is something she’ll constantly have to be dealing with.

So is this escapism on my part? Hell yes it is. But in escaping Chris and all the preconceived notions people have of me and that I have of myself, I get to learn a lot about who I am. Especially when I know what I would do in a certain situation is totally at odds with my character. Since I’ve been playing for awhile I know how to fight the urge to make the character do what I would. But it’s still hard, very hard, almost disturbing sometimes, but then again it’s a great way to learn about who you are and what you honestly believe in. Plus it’s a good excuse to sit around and bullshit with friends afterward.

Still it’s nice to have a week off from it. So to help with the slight nerd withdrawal I’m off to go watch some Doctor Who and drink a metric ton of OJ in hopes of feeling better tomorrow.
Till Tomorrow-C

PS The Cricket in my wall appears to like early Radiohead and Iron and Wine. While it’s an annoying little bastard at least it has good music taste.

You can have this chair for the "affordable" price of one arm and one leg.

So in an effort to get used to writing again I’ve decided that as much as possible I’m going to post daily on this thing. Even if it’s short and mundane. Even if I don’t feel like. The one thing I’ve always felt I’ve lacked as a writer is a solid idea of a voice, as well as decent grasp of grammar and an ability to locate misspellings. So this is an attempt to hopefully developed one, as well as fulfill the whole narcissist urge to yell, “Look at me! Look at me! I have something important to say.” It’s really awkward when you do that in public, people stare at you funny.

So that all being said, today was an excellent Monday. I am wiped the hell out. I spent it furniture shopping with a close friend and for the first time in ages I left what I have deemed “The People’s Republic of Atlanta.” I normally live my life and work in an area of Atlanta that seems to run on a slightly different track than the rest of the city. It’s different enough that anytime I wander over to Peachtree Street and into Buckhead or the Westside, I feel that I have wandered into an alternate city. It’s odd for me to think of an Atlanta where cyclists, tattooed freaks and skinny white dudes who dress like my little brother are not normal. But that is what’s normal.

Any way we hit up the garage sale at City Hall East and found a lot of crappy office furniture. Unfortunately anything we liked was already sold so we contented ourselves with being allowed to wander around part of City Hall East with out getting arrested. For any non-Atlantans City Hall East is a truly massive structure located down on Ponce. It has been abandoned for as long as I lived here, and the city somehow managed to sell it and now has to vacate. The thing that makes this place truly awesome is the fact that it was, from the 20s to the 70s, the Sears catalog distribution center for the Southeast. Its industrial architecture from before it came to be soulless and dead. It’s fabulous and it makes me happy that it’s not getting torn down but made into something else. I know there will be housing but the space is just too massive to turn it all into apartments. I’m curious to see what gets put in there.

The customary visit to Ikea was paid to look for shelving and I of course got lost in my Ikea fog. I enjoy Ikea, and for whatever reason it is one of the few safe public spaces for me to allow my ADD to go and wander. And on a Monday I don’t have to worry about hitting people. It was great. I wonder if they’ll ever dig up an intact Ikea one day in the distant future and assume that it was some kind of massive public housing project or that we some how lived in the display rooms. Any way it was a fun thought to ponder as we wandered around trying to find utility shelving. Which is the lasting thing you see before you hit the warehouse section. Unfortunately none of it worked. Where the height was fine the depth was to shallow and etc. Coming out of an Ikea fog to try and figure out what the real dimensions of an object are is a difficult thing to do.
We laughed and headed out.

We met up with another friend for awesome burgers and more girl time. It was so nice to have a girl’s day. We wandered over to this store on the Westside to look at more furniture. Ikea it was not. Most of the chairs a. looked like they wandered off the set of Mad Men (and not in a bad way) and b. cost more than my monthly rent (and I live in a relatively nice area). And on their sign it said they believed that good design should be “affordable”. Last time I checked an affordable chair is not the average rent on an apartment in the city you are located in. Once I got over the prices (every thing was waaaaaaaay too expensive) I enjoyed what we were really doing there. Looking for ideas. My friend has been working on redecorating her space and I’m around to give my opinion. My opinion, we needed to hit estate sales about a decade ago, I swear I saw my grandma’s couch for the bargain basement price of a used car. Still I saw some kick ass shelving that I liked, and I am reasonably sure I can make it, or eventually go over the Container Store and pick it up for a tenth of the price.

We continued onward and upward to a store that has now beaten out my beloved Ikea for Chris’ favorite furniture store in Atlanta. CB2. It is a Crate and Barrel modernist spin-off and while it was much more reasonable than the afore mentioned furniture store it was sadly out of my price range (which lives in the Goodwill and shit I find on the street category). I still drooled over several items and laughed at several others and figured out how to make several others. Muahahah my Ma’s genes never stay dormant. Still, I loved the modern feel and blend of styles which is rare. Normally I hate a good 40% of the stuff I see in furniture stores. I’ve got odd taste. Ask my Ma, she’s helped me decorate several places and is very aware of how f-ing picky I am.

After that I got home with a renewed plan to keep my space cleaner. I managed to clean off my desk (an awesome off the street find, thank you) which is a far scarier task than one might imagine. It has been holding space non personal and non urgent mail for the past, oh, forever… Still for the first time in geological era I am writing at my desk, and as I am a cheap ass in a small space, it is also the first time in ages I’ve eaten dinner on it as well. So all in all I feel very accomplished. So now to watch crappy TV (hello True Blood how are you??) and to return to my regularly scheduled programming of coffee. Till Tomorrow- C.

PS Does anyone know how to kill a cricket that has decided to take up residence in your wall??

Creating dangerous people through......Teaching??

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. "- From Transmetropoltan by Warren Ellis ( he got the quote from elsewhere but I forget where)


So I've been using the fact that I'm not getting enough hours at work to, a. look for another job to make ends meet, and b. checking out the teach for America website. Oh yeah, I've been doing a little recreational drinking, a lot of walking ( go wandering from Inman Park to Cabbagetown, its really neat), and hanging out. But I find myself floating back the idea of teaching. Part me is really sure I'd do okay. And part of me is afraid of cussing in front of the kids and the fact that... gulp... I'd have to grow the hell up, which is something i have successfully avoided until this point. Cause let's face it kids, its put up or shut up time in my life. I can't keep doing what I'm doing. Its been fun but I need that purpose back, and maybe teaching is it.

I've always been a knowledge junkie. Information, even before beer, is my drug of choice. I like knowing stuff and I like sharing that knowledge. I really do. Trust me, if you've seen me on an good night at Manuel's you know this. Or if I've ever lent you a book. I think that it is something that really feeds me. Getting to discuss history, politics and why the world is the way it is, this makes my day and sometimes my week. Now I know a casual discussion and teaching a class full of kids who don't always want to be there are two very different things. And I also don't expect to change every student I meet. If I help one find a path then I've done something exceptional.

Its not that I have low standards, but I have realistic expectations. We don't remember all of our teachers, not all of them helped push us on a life changing path. And I'm cool with that fact. I don't want to teach cause I think I can individually change kids lives. I want to teach to change the system. The problem that needs to be attacked is the institution and how it lets too many people slip through the cracks. I got lucky, in many other situations the fact that I am twice exceptional ( learning disabled and gifted) would have meant that I would have fallen through the afore mentioned cracks. It was due to the fact that I have an observant mother and a really awesome 2nd grade teacher that I got diagnosed. That and the fact that my parents told me what was up in spite of the fact that the school district told them not to. ( They were smart enough to realize that I would a. figure it out and b. have very hard time trusting them again if they lied to me.)

And I believe that it benefits the general population of students to have someone who is like that in charge. Someone who was not just smart. Someone who has seen all sides of the public education system. Who has seen where it works and where it fails. I honestly belive the best way to change a system is not attacking from the outside, but getting inside and then subverting it. And I want kids to learn this. That if the system doesn't fit your needs, don't give up, make it bend in the ways you need it to. That is how I got through college. Be smarter than the system, study it, find where its not working for you and look for the ways around it.

I want them to know that the most dangerous people in the world are people armed with critical thinking and library card. I want them to understand that it ideas that fuel revolutions and change. In short for any comic book junkies reading this, if I teach I want to be the motherfucking Spider Jerusalem of education, minus the filthy assistants, the bowel disruptor, guns, nudity, and with less swearing. But want to some how get across the idea that truth is essential to our world and we need to be able to wade through the bullshit to find out what's really happening.

And that's another area where I feel our education system is failing. Through necessity and through standardized testing ( which unfortunately is one of the few concrete ways to judge how schools are preforming) we have created a society where we know things for the next test and then forget them. We are training parrots. Students aren't being taught to look for trends and connections. And through looking at those trends and similarities we can better understand the world around us. Our form of government depends on having a population that is able to look at facts and critically examine them and then only then come to conclusions. And we are losing this. And that scares me shitless.

They are missing that this on going quest for more knowledge is quite possibly the greatest thing humanity has ever accomplished. They are not learning that we are the only form of life that we know of that has a collective memory. And we have made contributing to that quest something that is not culturally acceptable. That learning for the sake of knowing is considered not cool. I still cannot believe that we have let our libraries turn into homeless shelters. We have free and unhindered access to information. That is amazing considering that most people on this planet cannot even imagine having that opportunity. And we treat it like something matter of fact, to the point where most of us don't take advantage of it.

And if in the course of teaching I can get one student to realize the importance of critically examining the facts, how to make the system work with out being a jackass, and to take advantage of our access to information then I have done my job.

Thank You , How did you know I loved crumbs?

Dear Asshole-
You're a pig. You are a pig because you left all you food dishes sitting on the floor. Now I understand that there is no bus station so I don't expect you to make the flying intuitive leap to ask where to put the dishes after you have finished, but I do expect you to leave them on the table next to your chair. Seriously. It was absolutely delightful to not only pick your dishes up off the floor but to also deal with the coffee cups that had been knocked over. Thank you so much for making my afternoon even more wonderful than it already was.

Sincerely
Your Barista.

What do I want to be when I grow up??

I might need to change the title of this as it looks like my time in the coffee biz may be coming to a close. A cut in hours has made me seriously start to look for another gig. Not because I am unhappy at my current place of employ, but due to the fact that they have had to cut hours across the board and it is no longer financially possible for me stay there. I need to make rent and when my work is no longer allowing me to do so I need to look elsewhere. And so I find myself pondering the question, what do I want to be when I grow up?

I thought I knew the answer to the above question, and for years and pursued that dream with a singled minded fanaticism. I gave up a stable job history, financial stability, stable friendships, relationships, living anywhere near my family, and living like a normal adult. I spent six years as a gypsy, going from gig to gig, climbing I believed, the ladder to success. I got pretty far before my lack of expreince and the fact that I was working against my natural talents, well, bit me in the ass. I was tired, worn out, and sick of having my ass completely kicked in by my job. I just wanted to stay somewhere for more than 6 months, and damn it I still had 5 months left on my lease.

So I took the first job that could possibly pay the bills. I became a barista. And for the most part its a pretty ok gig. Besides the fact that there is no opportunity for promotion ( I work in a currently overstaffed local coffee shop) and the financial rewards were just enough to barely make ends meet. But I was sick of hustling for a job so I made the best of situation until it became untenable. So I'm back to looking for work and again I am faced with the question I successfully ignored for a year. If I'm not a Props Artisan, what the hell do I want to be?

I never have known the answer to that question. I latched on to theatre in high school because they gave me power tools and it was a lot of fun working on team, and there was a tangible goal. I told myself that this was it, this is what I wanted to be. And on every occasion that I questioned that idea, I told myself to shut the hell up cause I couldn't think of better career path.

I am a passionate person and when I am not involved in something I care passionately about I wilt. And I haven't connected to something that I care about deeply for the better part of a year and I feel huge chunks of me languishing. So I've been trying to come up with a list. And I haven't got very far. Here's the list, museum curation, archeology, historian, teacher, professional crazy, going back to theatre, and finding a way for someone else to pay for me to travel while I keep my current apartment. As you can see, easily achievable goals.

I guess that's why I sit in limbo, I can't envision anything clearly. I see no good path, and I refuse to go charging down a path with no clear goal in sight.

But I have to find something else to pay the bills. Something hopefully a little more grown up and with vacation. I really need one.