I don't know yet if this qualifies as FAIL or not...

So, there is a knit-centric superhero comic book now. I haven't read it yet.

I'm...not sure yet how I feel about this concept. There's a certain knitting sub-community that is heavy into, shall we say, classic geekery: sci-fi, comics, gaming, and the ilk. This makes sense to me: there is a substantial overlap in personality types and interests in both groups, characterized in particular by an interest in maths, upon which knitting relies heavily. Yet, unlike at least the surface of the geek community, the knit community is populated primarily by women.

I have, shall we say, a history with the geek community that's not always positive, although that's a story for another time. So it's safe to say that I'm ambivalent when I run across the ubiquitous knit and crochet patterns for dice bags and Cthulhu amigurumi. But knitting (and crochet, and spinning, and other "distaff arts") and the reclaimation thereof are a significant component of the Third Wave feminist movement*, so even if I don't flip over your felted 20-sider I'm glad that something that's still mostly for us girls is getting it's own geeky life independant of the boy's club that is geekdom.

Yet...knitting, as a comic?

From the website's FAQ:

There isn’t enough knitting!
There will be. Not everything gets into every issue of a comic book. Jen owns a yarn shop. Ana and Alex both knit.

But...see...one of the first thing you learn as a writer is that, to make a good story, you need some kind of conflict. And there's just not really conflict in knitting. Okay, yeah, Continental vs. English**, the drama of the dropped stitch, wool allergies...wait, no, still no conflict. I cheer when I see people on TV shows that I like knitting, but if they were just knitting that wouldn't be so fun to watch. Hell, James complains if I knit too much and don't spend time with him. And yarn shops? Some of them rival libraries for their quiet, contemplative atmosphere.

So I'm wondering how there could be "not enough knitting"? When I'm not sure that it's even going to work as an active force in a comic in the first place?

Well, when I can afford it, I think I have to check this out just to see how tricky these writers are. It's an interesting experiment, and I need to experience this Handknit Heroes*** thing before I can decide how I feel about it.


*This a subject that we're looking to explore on the podcast as part of geekery and women.

**My Pennsylvania Dutch granny knit Continental, and that floated down in our family to my mother and me, but not my un-ambidextrous, poorly-socialized, math-loving programmer sister who didn't learn as a kid and now knits English. Cause I know you were wondering.
***I am pretty sure already that I hate that name.

Death Virus 2009 (Spring Edition)

So...I still suffer from the death virus, which means nothing much has been happening. I'm stuck at home and I'm even beginning to be bored by the internet. It palls after, say, two weeks. Or less.

In good, non-sicky related news, I made some more stuff for Etsy and I'm hoping to get out and do a photo shoot this weekend, if the lovely, lovely sun holds and doesn't turn back into the freak snow we got night before last. Seriously, Winter, what the crap? Anyway, it's not knitted. And I love it so much that I wanna keep one or two pieces for me! Which I think is a good sign. :) Oh, and I wanna get my men's vintage pieces up, too.

James is wanting to get in on the Etsy action with his art pics now. I think we're going to put our heads together over that tomorrow. Oh! And I bought seeds (40% off Lilly Miller Organic seed packets at Fred Meyer yesterday!) and starters so that we can start our garden! I love spending time with this man. Plus he's getting me back into playing music, which has been really good for me since I'm so disgusted with Seattle theater politics anymore.

I may also be doing this awesome project. It looks pretty exciting, and I can see how it will be good preparation for the extended version of Hungry Ghosts (which I've given myself a two-year timeline on). I think it'll be a great way for me to stretch my wings and stuff. And I miss collaborating.

Sicky.

All quiet on my front...because James gave me some flu-like disease. Possibly the flu.

I have major cabin fever to go with my high-temperature-type fever, so I've been on the internetz a bunch, pimping my Etsy page. In the last two days I've been featured in two "Treasuries", which are a big way that you get noticed by other sellers and buyers on Etsy.

The links only stay up for a few days, but the first one is about natural, green items and the second is because I'm a good writer (no, really!). Anyway, that's been the highlight of my week on the couch.

Dept. of Inconvenience.

My hard drive died a horrible death yesterday morning, making a sound no hard drive should ever make. I woke up, tried to boot up my machine, and waited. And waited. And finally got an error message: one of the .sys files (which turned out to be a HD driver) was "damaged" and needed to be repaired with the XP setup disc. Fine, except my computer is a custom box that Devon built me for a Christmas present a year ago or so, which means that I don't have a copy of XP. My brother-in-law does, and Ian has a ghetto hacked XP disc (for instance, one can install Windows sans IE if one so chooses...), so my sister and Ian came over and we (mostly Ian) fiddled with the machine for a bit.

After several hours of inspection by Ian, my sister, and myself, we pronounced it DOA. I had feared that James, mystifyed by techmology, had accidentally given my computer the flu...but, actually, my hard drive is just dead of a hardware issue. Kaput. Oh well.

So now I'm on a backup machine; being my father's daughter (and the only one in the family besides my mom that doesn't code) I have three other working computers in the house. This is the one that my bro-in-law gave me that I was going to set up as James' school computer...for now, it will have to be the house CPU.

What this ultimately means is that I may have lost ALL of my notes for the new project for which I am writing a grant. Shit. Ian is going to perform some rudimentary forensics to attempt to recover the files, but they are very likely lost.

Again, blerg.

Speaking of arts funding...

...I'm applying for a grant.

I've been a collaborator on grant proposals and non-profit business plans before, but never one for just me. And I've never written a budget all by myself before. I'm feeling a little conflicted about it.

On the one hand, I need just this kind of kick in the pants to get me rolling again, so I see this is an excellent opportunity, even if I do not get awarded.

On the other hand, if I were on a grant panel and I read my biography and resume, I'm not sure that I would think that I could be trusted with the on-average award of 6,000+ American dollars*. But that's probably the currently less-than-stellar self-esteem talking.

Blerg.

*At the moment, this seems like a legendary and unheard of sum to be in my possession. Do these people run a credit check or something? After all, I might foollishly spend it on overdue hospital bills. And it still would not be enough to cover them all.

"Pop".

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I'm sure he's unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he's still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He's so unhappy, to which he replies . . .
But I don't care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I've been saving; I'm laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I've got on mine and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; 'cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop's black-framed glasses
And know he's laughing too.


By Barack Obama, age 19.

*****

Oh, but he's not really the president.

Who the hell is Barry Soetoro anyway?

Oh, well.

Via Slog, HuffPost.

Yeah, but still.

Not much going on today. I am too lazy or too depressed or too unfocused to upload the picture of the gloves, although I did discover the difficulty inherent in a right-hand-dominant person taking a picture of a glove that in on one's own right hand.

My insomnia seems to peak during one of two times of the year. I think we're in that time now. Twice this week I have laid down to sleep and gotten up 45 minutes or so later. Last night I got to sleep on my second try, around 4:30am.

I have been writing some during these times, though. I've barely been able to put a sentence together in the last year but I've written a few pages of dialogue and notes and such. I have a couple things gestating; it's been too full of a year to be able to process much until now.

I think that I also, for the most part, hate theater people. This might be (probably is) nasty emotional detritus left over from this spring, but still*. Mr. ARS once told me that, in his opinion, I wasn't an actor at all, but a writer. Keep in mind that he never saw me act, although he had a great deal of respect for me as a writer if not as an actor (or a person). Anyway, I have an awful fear that, ultimately, this will prove true, and I am sick with the notion that I will never perform again. However, I have been toying with the idea that, maybe, I'm a solo artist, and that's all it is. I don't play well with others**. Not that I'm an utter social maladroit. Merely a partial one.

Or I could just be in a complete funk (read: depressed) on account of the recent bout with not leaving the house, which in turn is on account of the high winds and flooding rains of the past two days. It's dark all the time.

But I did get paid! I did a nice custom order for a lady in Chicago: an over-elbow pair of fingerless gauntlets (hand-dyed, fair-trade Suri alpaca, vintage buttons and ribbon) for her 22-year-old daughter's Hanukkah and received her check and thank-you note today. She purposefully overpaid me, as well. That made me feel a hell of a lot better; apparently I am not yet completely worthless in the eyes of American capitalism!

Man, I gotta ease up on myself.


*James maintains that "yeah, but still" is the ultimate end to an unwinnable argument, the final, desperate gambit when you know you have been proved wrong but are just too contrary to admit it. It is a common phrase in our household.

**This is an awful pun. I'm sorry. Completely unintentional.

I went home and did just what he said I'd do.

I now have three all-time favorite unforgettable best pieces of theater art and a second most timely for me as a person work.

Single-moment-in-time-stretching-away-into-the-distance performances, in chronological order of my seeing them:

1. My hero Mary Zimmerman's The Secret In The Wings (Seattle Rep). Simply, it was a bridge between two parts of my life and had everything my girl's heart could dream and everything my woman's soul could need.
   
2. Elevator Repair Service's 6+ hour word-for-word performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald's grim tragedy of undying love, The Great Gatsby: Gatz. Set in a banal office, there is silence, then chaos, then silence again and I was fully entranced for the entire length.
3. How Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey.
   

Most Heartbreaking Reflection Of My Life performances:

1. Rent by Jonathan Larson. I was 20, has just had my first psychiatric hospitalization, and was an acting student living in Manhattan.
2. How Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey.
   

Last night I saw Mike Daisey perform his newest show, How Theater Failed America. If you don't know about him you may still have heard or read him, as he is not only an actor, writer, and fat man who sits at a table, he is also a commentator for NPR and writes for several magazines. I had seen him previously in his break-out 21 Dog Years At Amazon.com ten years ago so I knew what to expect: a sweaty fat man sitting at a table that you cannot take your eyes off of. Talking. Just...talking. And drinking water.

The basic premise of the show is the imminent economic failure of regional theater, which is largely uninteresting to anyone outside of theater and a terrifying white elephant to anyone inside of it. It tells nothing new. Most art does not tell a new story.

However, it struck me, and I had, at the end, one of those tunnel vision moments at the end, where he is speaking only to me, looking only at me, as though hundreds of other people were not present and we were alone together in the dark. He had spoken about his suicide attempts and being saved by work, nothing but work. Art, starvation, nothing but ramen for months, but it gave him life. And then he said, Go. Go do this work. Be as luminous as I know you are, as you know you are, because this is not political commentary or a failing industry but the only thing that will give you life. Go, work, and Godspeed.

I have no money. I have ten dollars to live on until the 15th and I have 2/3 of a large container of plain non-fat yoghurt in my fridge, uncooked soba in my cupboard, two large containers of salt, and a jar of honey. No produce, no fruits or veggies or anything unless my wonderful big sister buys me apples and carrots tomorrow at the farmer's market. I barely work and don't know if I can manage more hours. But I can't, literally, live another day like this.

The part of my brain that understands money is fatally broken. Things appear, or they do not. This simply is and is not connected to any other function. (I am not this way when I run a business, however.) I do understand that I am dying, right now, and if do not do something right this very fucking moment that very soon it may be too late for me. I cannot wait, it is an imperative.

So. So I guess that I am going to quit Balagan. They are doing nothing that I want to do; they are the Boston Pops performing an over-produced Copeland and I am Jimi Hendrix. The current season is full of large, ensemble casts of solid, proven works with moderate production values and not enough rehearsal time lead by an already-bloated, squabbling administrative team that I could come back and save (I would be very good at that) but, since it already sent me to the hospital, I feel that would be inadvisable. I want to see a man hang upside down in leather and spikes playing Moliere by candlelight for nine people. I want to have five people in panda suits eat sushi in a five-star sushi restaurant. I want to produce Hamlet in Space and cast rock stars who wear body glitter. I want to make punk rock theater. I want to be happy, not broken-hearted; free, not bound; alive, not dead. I feel cheated and tired and I have only thiiiiiis much left to live for.

So. To work, then.

Autumn weather.

I started therapy this week after a hiatus of five or six years.

One of the fringe "benefits" of a background in the practical applications of modern American acting theories is the socially questionable ability (or compulsion) to cry at any time.

Times this week I have cried:

• During therapy (expected).
  
• In a meeting with Jake.
• After sex.
  
• During sex, preventing orgasm.
• Walking down the street.
• Watching Six Feet Under (also expected).
• In Mr. Very Nice Rock Star's car (not his fault, never his fault).
• During a Weakerthans concert.
• Twice during my two-hour Planned Parenthood appointment.
  
• Writing an e-mail.
• Upon getting my period.
• At my day job.
  

It's not usually a huge amount all at once. It's more like a Seattle rain, brief and light, not soaking very deeply into the ground. But a couple of times there have been quick thunderstorms. Today it's chilly and bright with the wicked and surreal yellow Northwest autumn light, but in an hour we could hear thunder.

On the bright side, I want to write again. I'm gestating an idea for a companion piece to Space titled Box. It's going to end up being bloody and violent and a lot less emotionally distant than Space was.