A rambler's hors d'oeuvre

I'm taking a long weekend in Boston with the hot scientist. He's attending a conference out there on test methods for figuring out how medicines dissolve in the human system. At least that's my non-scientist understanding of it. Whoo! I'm flying out to meet him because I have scads relatives out there--which makes the fact that we're going to spend the entire time dodging obligatory relative visits sound kind of contradictory. I really want to go out there to do a bit of rambling with the man. We haven't rambled much together yet. And also, one of my favorite aunts has been under the weather lately and I'd like to see her and my uncle. This is the Greek side of my family, the side that can take grave offense if blood relations who are within 100 miles don't stop by to visit. But we have only a four-day weekend. For me, two of those days will be spent in the air. And that leaves 2 days to hang out on the Cape with my aunt and uncle, and part of Monday to walk around Boston Common and get some coffee before taking the subway to the airport. The Greeks are going to have to stop their grumbling. I love Boston in the fall. And it'll be a nice expeditioning appetizer: In two weeks we're taking 10 days of R&R in Hawaii.

Reading, Knitting, and Possibly....Writing

It's been a very long year, free-time-wise. There was a new relationship, with the hottie I currently live with (henceforth to be referred to as HB--Hottie McBrainiac--because he's hot and he's smart). There was the sick and later dying beloved dog. There was the new job, the pregnant sister, the move to San Francisco. With all that, there was little time for watching movies or reading novels. The sweater I'd begun knitting (first sweater ever!) languished in fuzzy periwinkle pieces--front, back, half a left arm. No writing got done, save for pieces required for a short-fiction class I took last spring. But slowly over the last month, somehow the days have opened up. I don't have to pack nor unpack. I don't have to be anywhere except for home, with my sweetheart, doing sweethearty things like being cozy on the couch and reading together. Or knitting while HB reads. I finished the left arm and am well into the right. Now I'm feeling like writing short fiction, which of course is why I'm posting on this blog so soon after the last post. I'm thinking of doing something frightening like writing about a character based on my late father. Eeeek.

Pilgrimage and Reckoning

The Frank Visit went about as I expected. He left poorer in cash and richer in old vinyl, and I needed a couple of days to sleep in and recover. He loved Alcatraz (kept saying he'd been "sprung" after we got back to the city). He ate like a starving Newfoundland at every American-style place we could find and loved his birthday cake. And he took a full 12 hours to get back home on what normal, road-averse drivers like me make a five-hour drive out of. But that's his standard M.O.. He's still marveling at the pile of records and CDs he found up here and speculating about when he'll make the trip next year. I'm planning my own vacation, to somewhere tropical in November.
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I found a dear old friend not long ago, or rather he found me. And then he sank from view and hearing again, so silently and swiftly that I was left re-reading our emails to see if it'd only been a dream. Over the last 10 years I'd begun to think I'd never see nor hear from him again and had accepted that, though always with resigned sadness. And then, contact! Long discussion! We caught up over the phone and pledged to talk again soon. It's not to be, I assume for the same reasons as before--all out of my control. And so I'm holding this smooth worry-stone of loss again, tumbling it from finger to finger and meditating on the nature of friendship, my expectations around it, the concepts of attachment and detachment and of love in the face of both.

Brethren

Every reading of an epistle in the Greek Orthodox liturgy starts with the word "Adelphi," which means "brethren." At my church, which is tucked into a little corner of the Bay Area, the chantor, a venerable old guy named Demitri, says the epistle with just the right mixture of wisdom, the patience of ages, and fatigue. He has a Greek accent, which ensures that everyone listens. But it's that word, "adelphi," that always draws me in. Not sure why--probably because it sounds so collegial.

I have two brethren, one younger and one older. The older one, Frank, is very slightly autistic. He's highly functioning, meaning he drives, he has a steady job, he helps our mom around the house. The younger one, John, is not slightly autistic; he's solidly black-sheepish. I never hear from him and see him only on holidays. My older brother, however, is coming to visit this weekend. Being slightly autistic, Frank has a collector's mind and a mania for detail. His focus: vinyl. Specifically, the kind that can be spun on a turntable (he recently laxened his purist views and began adding CDs to his stacks). Frank makes no bones about the fact that when he comes to see me, visiting his sister is the second best part about the trip. It's used-record-store shopping that gets center stage. Nevertheless, I've insisted that one day of this weekend be taken up with campy tourist things to do. So I booked us tickets to Alcatraz for Sunday. He says I'm going to lock him up there and leave him for life. Depending on how many record stores we go to on Saturday (the average number is four, but we've visited as many as six in one day during past visits), he may be right.

Wired, Wireless, and the Three-Eyed Baby

I feel a pesky urge to write fiction coming on, which means it's time for my first post. A bit of good news: I've established a wireless network in my shack-up chateau (wireless for me, wired for my hunky keeper, the scientist). This after much back-burner musing, front-burner tinkering, and a good measure of cursing. Finally I got frustrated and decided to stay wired for a while. But this morning I woke up with a solution in mind and it worked! Voila, a secure wireless network named after the scientist's peskiest parrot. (We have three, plus a cat. Yes, it's a zoo.) I feel victorious. On to writing about writing!

Yesterday I told my great friend A.P. that I was about to rewrite one short story and begin on another. "Oh? What about," he inquired. "A woman who finds a baby in a trash bin," I said levelly. He bit. "Really? How about we find something a little less cliched than finding a baby in a dumpster."

"Don't worry about cliche," I replied. "The baby's going to have three eyes."

A.P. said he thought he'd been smacked down. And that he enjoyed it. I love amusing A.P. The bonus is that I'd avoided a bad writing trap: talking about story topic. If I tell someone what I'm going to write about before I write it, I always abandon that story. It's screwy writer-mind stuff, but I haven't been able to help it.

Of course, the moment I told him I was going to write about a three-eyed baby, the devil-on-the-left-shoulder part of my twisted psyche started talking to me about what symbolism I could find there, and how I should at least create an exercise out of the idea. The angel-on-the-right-shoulder started arguing with the devil about not wasting my time, again, with bad ideas, and I had to go to the gym to drown the din out. Sometimes I can't stand myself.