Twenty-six and still aging. How non-monumental a number, but still, it's a birthday, and even birthdays in between the tens and fives are important. Also, and perhaps more importantly, Stars - Your Ex-Lover is Dead, which I've been listening to compulsively since discovering it nearly a week ago, is one of the most beautiful things I've heard in years, so beautiful it occasionally causes me honest physical pain.

This is cross-posted from my other blog which I had not posted to in months and in is slowly getting a redesign...or as much of a redesign as one can give their blog on livejournal. Also, more attention. It's vaguely symbolic that this is being done done while my life is in the middle of the current dishevellment, I suppose, but as far as I am consciously aware, it is also coincidental.

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New beginnings. I've not written in a while, and this itself is not uncommon; though, this is perhaps the longest I've gone without writing here. So, new beginnings. It's a phrase that gets tossed around a lot. Leave the past behind, get a fresh start, begin things over with a cleaner perspective. It sounds like too much of a fallacy to me. The past is always with you. The trick is not leaving it behind, but not letting it consume you. My old works are embarrassing but occasionally surprising and an unavoidable sign of who I once was. If I want to move beyond them, I must mentally move my mind forward, not forget my older work ever existed. There are no fresh starts, no new beginnings in any real sense. Life continues, and if I want to move in another direction, then my life simply takes a turn. Nothing starts anew. The metaphors that insist otherwise are misleading. The everything that has come before will, to some degree, always remain with me, as it should, so while I know some people would call this a new beginning, while I understand "the thing to do" is to start a new blog to leave behind everything the old one meant, I will be doing none of these things. It's true I might eventually open another blog, but that would only be to have a blog that's not hosted on Livejournal. Also, I would post the link here and import (and copy edit. I mean, dear god have you read some of those posts?) all my old posts. I would be kidding myself to say they mean nothing, even if they mean nothing good.

Still, the subtle changes you see here do, in fact, correlate to changes in the physical world. A farewell to some old friends, several of whom I still wished to be friends with despite, well, despite a variety of things that had occurred between us. A conscious decision to, once and for all, get over old habits developed in my youth for reasons that really were very foolish; though, perhaps I could not realize it then. It surprised me,on reflection how much those old habits remained with me over the years without my realizing it. Yes, things are changing. I very much hope for the better.

So, I've recently read both a Wizard of Earthsea and Perdido Street Station. They're both excellent books but are dramatically different in writing style. Ursula K. Le Guin accomplishes what Mieville does in a third the number of pages. Her writing style is sparse, and at first this was a source or irritation, but for all its simplicity, it is not simplistic. There is nothing poor or insufficient about it. It is, in a sense, minimalist if it must be given a label. It tells you everything you need to know to enjoy her story, suffers from no ostentation, and never fails to be powerful in the dramatic moments of her story.

Mievelle's writing, or rather his prose, is lush. There were occasions I wished I could scoop it from the pages it and physically savor its flavor. He is one of the only writers in years that made me reach for a dictionary at regular intervals, which I appreciated. His prose itself gave details of this fascinating world he created and the societies within it; though, sometimes his love of his own word was painful to observe. Spelling chemical spelled with a "y" instead of an "e" is one thing. Using a full page to describe the geography and inhabitants of a district followed by a description of which districts surround it and what train lines runs through it during one of the most dramatic moments of the book is irritating. If I really wanted to be reminded of where the Sud Line ran, again, I would look at the map helpfully provided at the beginning of the book.

When I was younger and just deciding to be a writer, I had a decided preference for more minimalist writing. It was my belief that all the flowery descriptions and metaphors didn't really matter. What did was the story you were telling, and all those other descriptive flourishes, in the end, just got in the way of it. Years later I began to abandon that stance with no real conscious mediation or logic attached to the decision that I can recall. Now I've come to some place in between the two stances and wonder if I will, for some reason soon come full circle. It does not help that I was just reading the writing of someone who was once a very dear friend of mine (though I am not sure if she ever realized it. She has since stopped speaking to me. I'm not really sure why. I don't recall having ever said anything or done anything untoward to her, nor did she ever mention I had. I suppose I do have some ideas why, but they are petty, and in the end, I suppose I really do want to think better of her.) and she has mastered prose. That much is obvious to anyone who reads her writing, but what she lacks is inspiration. I don't believe them to be mutually exclusive, but I remember a conversation about writing we had once where she expressed having difficulty finding stories to write about, which it seemed she really did want to do. She's now, last I heard, a newswriter. As far as I am aware, she has not a creative work to her name.

Perhaps this comes to mind because mind because, more than what to write, my mind tends to paralyze itself with indecision regarding how something should be written. iInvariably when trying to write anything significant , several different ways to write it come to mind. This is far from comforting, but I currently have a great desire to write, and I worry this will affect me once again.

Finally, my mother has cancer. I discovered this not long ago. Perhaps this has spurred my current desire to write. It was this, in fact, that I originally meant to write about, but even now I find my mind veering away from the topic, as if afraid to discuss it. She just underwent surgery, which went, as do most things, both better than we feared yet not as well as we had hoped. If you are religious, please keep her in your prayers. If not, in your thoughts. I would be greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

I have been negligent, and horribly so. I had pondered whether or not I was going to remain on the site, and in the end I remained, but did nothing about that fact. A ridiculous course of action if ever there was one. I suppose it does not help that I've only had access to the internet for three days out of the last two week, but that is two weeks, not two months, which has roughly been the time since I made any investment of reasonable measure to the forty-eight dollars I pay every year to the owners of this site. Entirely too much has passed for me to catch up just now, given the amount of distractions pending and my current state of mind, but in summary, this has probably been the worst two months of my life, and yet I don't really feel bad about the fact. This means either something is really wrong with me, or very right. To mention the least of my troubles, I should first mention I've resisted modding my phone for the more than twe years I've had it. It struck me as unnecessary expenditure, and, to a certain extent, I supposed leaving my phone unmodded made it unique. Regardless, I am cross with Sprint. They had given me a free ringtone, it seemed, for no reason other than that I am a customer, but now I don't know which one to chose. This, I am now sure, was part of their insidious plot, eventually intended to result in the purchase of many other exorbitantly-priced ringtones,but I shall defy them. They will see. I will come away with but one free melody, and my phone will be rockin...something because of it.

I've been inactive for a stupidly long time. My apologies.

So, Mexico. I haven't been there since I was roughly two years old, and it's probably from this visit that the earliest memories in my life come from. Returning, then, was nowhere near as strange or surreal as I had anticipated it to be. I had heard the warnings given to me by my brother and sister, both of whom visit Mexico much more regularly than I, about the state of the area, my grandmother's (Abuelita) house, and the general condition of everything, really. In a sense, I was almost disappointed to see things in so un-desperate a state when I arrived.

I visited to help Abuelita around the house with a handful of longstanding issues neither she nor the recent visitors to her house were able to deal with and to celebrate her ninetieth birthday with her. In truth, though, those reasons were bordering on ostentation. I did and was happy to do both of those things, but the reason that called me there most powerfully was I had begun to feel I never really knew my grandmother. Whenever I saw Abuelita anytime after my two-year-old trip, it was when she came to Chicago. I can't remember a time, though, when she wouldn't talk lovingly about her house back in Mexico and say she couldn't wait to get back to it; if we wanted more time with her, we would just have to go visit her there.

A few weeks before my trip, my sister called me. She had just come from Abuelita's house. Despite the fact that she had visited Mexico a few times in the intervening period, she, too, had not visited our grandmother at her house since our childhood visit. The conversation was about many things, in the background were those things she said Abuelita needed help with and how she wished she could have stayed for Abuelita's birthday celebration. Her section of the town she lived in wanted to throw a party for her. She had become the neighborhood's grandmother over the years, but she would not have it. One of her sons had died not long ago. She was still in mourning. Instead, the local church would dedicate a mass in her honor. The most important part of that conversation to my mind, however, was my sister's account of Abuelita's behavior. What she described did not sound like the grandmother I knew. It sounded like someone much more vivacious, someone much more alive. Abuelita in her element, in her home, it would seem, was much more than the person I thought I had come to know. Her ninetieth birthday was coming, and work was slow. I booked a flight the next day. I wanted to get to know my grandmother, really know her, before she died. I'm sure she still has a good number of years left in her, but the timing was opportune, and that was not a chance I wanted to take.

The end result was a trip spent uncovering a good deal of exaggerations. Abuelita's house was nowhere near as small or dilapidated as my sister had led me to believe. My sister was fond of the place, it would turn out, so she left me with a series of disclaimers so I would not be taken aback by it when I arrived. I grew fond of it as well. Her garden was similarly not as large as was described to me in the tales I had been told, but it was still larger than I had expected. She has plants growing she does not know what to do with. Some of these plants happen to be trees. None of them are weeds. In the middle of this is my grandmother. Abuelita has a brand of tortillas she likes. They make them a mile away. They sell them in stores near her, but some mornings she wants them straight from the source and will walk there to see them made, chatting with friends as she passes their houses along the way. Her memory, at ninety, is not what it used to be. She will forget, sometimes, where she put one thing or another and have to spend some time looking for it. Sometimes, though, something you say will remind her of a song lyric or poem from decades ago, and she will began to recite or sing it, word for word, from memory. Also, as much as her children insist, she will not leave her home. She's happy with her life there, and if she dies, she says, she dies, much to their horror. She's had ninety good years. If God comes for her tomorrow, why should she ask for more? Everyone dies. If they're so concerned about her welfare, they should visit her more often. The doctors have declared her sound of mind and she stands by their judgment.

In short, she is an awesome old lady. I was aware of this before, but I am more aware of it now. There's something about having conversations like this:
"So how old am I now, eighty-six? Eighty-eight?"
"Ninety."
"I did just celebrate my ninetieth birthday, didn't I? Mother of God, I'm old."
That sets her apart in my mind.

On a side note, while I am normally annoyed when writing is peppered with seemingly gratuitous, easily translatable foreign words, I do it here for a number of reasons. Abuelita for those of you who don't know, is Spanish for "Grandmother." As happens with some relatives, that has become how I refer to her and have referred to her since I was a child. I put it in italics, though, so non-Spanish-speakers don't think that's actually her given name. The thought of my calling her by her given name, you see, feels disrespectful. Abuelita is my name for her, even if it is not the one on her birth certificate. As a name, and not a title, it would inappropriate to translate it. I do use "grandmother," on occasion, but I use it in reference to the relationship much like "my friend" or "my cousin" is still used in writing where they are also referred to by name.

So, as long as I can remember I've had a profound like of good stories. They've always been one of the most wonderful things to me and have dictated the various forms of media I would take in. It goes back to my father reading, no, telling me stories as a child. So long as we were in bed before nine (Yes, we had a late bedtime, but when you look at your parents and say, "But to wake up at seven I need to go to sleep at eleven to get a full eight hours, I think they're kind of stuck.) he would tell us a story. I don't remember him ever reading us one, though. Instead, he would just weave it as it was being told. They were invariably fascinating and I'm sure at least partly responsible for my never doing my reading homework, as on any given day, hungry for stories, I would most likely had read through the story assigned for class months before and already answered the comprehension questions in my head, therefore having no desire to repeat the endeavor on paper. I remember being so fascinated by The Indian and the Cupboard as it was being recounted to us during reading time that I borrowed the books from my teacher at one point when we had a three day week-end and read ahead, finishing the entire series before she finished reading to us the book we were on. When I was eight I took my birthday money and went to Borders, which had become my new favorite place in the world, and bought as many books as I could afford. Most of them were disappointing, but Bunnincula, the one hardcover I purchased has remained a favorite to this day.

I remember the exact point where my desire to read good stories evolved into a desire to tell them. I was in the tenth grade where we were given the task of writing the account of an astronaut's findings on another planet. Most of my classmates wrote a paragraph or so detailing specimens or resources found. I wrote a four-page (I think it was four, but don't quote me) account of an astronaut whose shuttle went off course taking him outside of the solar system where he was picked up by an alien shuttle just as the last of his ship's life support was failing. In the end, he ended up joining up with a rebel faction who stopped the government from plunging the alien planet into an interplanetary war with Earth. While writing that story I thought about how I always enjoyed essay assignments and decided what I wanted to do was to write for a living. This decision would be challenged various times, but it would never lose. That is not to say, however, it is the only such decision with any conviction behind it, but that is a story for another time.

I'll write about my trip to Mexico next time. I meant to now, but I keep running into posts I forgot I was writing.

Gah. My head is always full of posts I mean to make but rarely ever get around to posting. As it is, most of what's in my head right now is in a jumble, but I should try to get it out now before I put it aside again and never commit it to legible form. I'll start in the present and work my way back. So, what am I doing now? I'm Listening to Colin Hay, going through a backlog of SGC posts and ACEN e-mails, and attempting to consume my roasted garlic hummus before it goes bad. Normally I eat my hummus with baby carrots (and visa-versa), but I haven't actually bought any in a while. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop my hummus from aging, so with nothing else advisable for mixing with hummus on hand, I decided to try the unorthodox combination of hummus and Triscuits. I find the results surprisingly palatable. Also, Colin Hay's music is pretty awesome. Moving on, I don't know why the hell I disappear from the internet as often as I do. It's a problem I've had as long as I've been online. I just disappear for intervals with no real explanation. My apologies to anyone that might annoy the heck out of.

As far as ACEN goes, I just have to shake my head about the whole thing. I signed as a volunteer at the con this year, but it's been pretty silly so far, and the sheer amount of events taking place this week-end I would have liked to attend but discovered only after I signed up as ACEN staff is nothing short of ridiculous. Even if ACEN weren't this week, I would still miss far more than I would have liked to because it would be impossible to attend them all. The world must learn to spread it's awesomeness out more evenly for the betterment of mankind. ACEN, at least, looks like it will be good fun. I hope it is, otherwise I will have to shake my fist at it and yell, "I missed seeing Cursive live for you!" And it wouldn't like that very much. Needless to say, I'm rather fond of Cursive.

I would like to give theater a try, but I'm not really sure how. I mean, I know you need a head shot, can find auditions through The Reader, and can get information about most theater company's audition protocols through their websites, but I imagine there must be more to it that that. I simply have no idea what that might be. I should explain this is neither without basis nor does it mean I will give up writing. The latter is just never going to happen. The former is just untrue. I remember thinking about being an actor since I was a little kid, and I nearly majored in theater. Even though I didn't, I took several classes and worked on several university shows. Still, I wish there was somewhere I could go for a serious assessment of my acting abilities. It has always been spoken well of by most others, but I have always been insecure about it all the same. I suppose that I have no idea where to get a good head shot done doesn't help my situation any, either.

I'll save my musings over capitalism and Chinatown and misanthropy and democracy for later. I only mention it here so I'm less likely to not write about it in the future.

So, about those missing cross-posts. Here is the longest of them. It was originally written as an editorial, but was turned down pretty universally. I later began to rewrite it, but never got around finishing the rewrite until months later. This is the result:

You'll have to forgive me. This was intended to be posted months ago. I don't imagine it to be anywhere near as relevant now.

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It has become rather popular to hate President George W. Bush at the moment. It has become so that, within many groups, expression of even the notion that there may be something redeeming to him are met with rebuke and disdain. Everyone is doing it, even Republican senators. Senators who, previously, never failed to side with him were taking the special opportunity that presented itself after the speech he gave two weeks ago, in which he presented the bare outline of a plan to send more troops to Iraq and after which his approval rating, uncharacteristically for presidents after giving a speech, dropped, to side against him and cite flaws in his plan. Seeing this reminded me of a historical anecdote I heard some time ago, so you'll have to pardon me if I get some of the particulars wrong. The quotation marks that follow, then, are not intended to convey actual quotations, but are simply to facilitate the telling of the anecdote. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev was giving a speech to the Communist party's elite in which he was decrying the evils of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. It was his intent to de-Stalinize the U.S.S.R. and to do so, he felt, he had to the expound on the evils that Stalin's rule had resulted in. At one point during this vilification, someone called out,

"And what were you doing while this was being done. You tell us how evil it is now, but when it was happening, where were you?"

Angrily, Khrushchev demanded, "Who said that! Step forward!" after he received no reply he called out again, "Who said that!" But the only answer remained silence. After a few moments, Khrushchev replied, "That's where I was."

I do not mean to here compare Bush to Stalin in any real sense nor their respective tenures. Rather, the anecdote brings to mind our senators who seem to have found where Krushchev had gotten to without the luxury of his excuse, giving value to their tenures tenures equal to the value many unfortunate Soviets were forced place on their lives. (Though, admittedly, most likely without thinking about it in that respect.) Oh certainly, they are all now siding with the American public, which makes me wonder where they would be siding if the American public had sided with Bush. We won't know the answer to that, though. All we will get instead is to hear a congress rallying against a war they voted in approval of now that it has become politically opportune to do so. Asked about it today many will say the pre-war intelligence was insufficient, but when asked separately why they voted for the war, they will contend they were deceived by the pre-war intelligence or voted to give the President the ability to go to war should the need become apparent, as it is something the president should be able to do to defend the country when the need arises. The truth is more likely in an environment where a paraplegic war veteran could loose an election for being unpatriotic, none of them wanted to risk suffering the same fate. This meant doing their best to give a reasonable explanation why the war was acceptable then, which puts them in an embarrassing position when they have to explain why they are (and in some cases always have been) against the war now. It was easy to see the cracks in the pre-war intelligence, even at the time. I personally feel a strong case for war could have been made, but these reasons did not involve the disputed intelligence, which I cannot honestly believe fooled any of them. To my mind, then, they failed in their duties. It was their responsibility to decide when it is prudent to go to war, not to give carte blanche for the president to make that decision for them.

But let us go back to Bush, as the blame is not today falling on the senate. No, with their current opposition to the president they have rendered themselves blameless in the public's eyes. What interests me instead is the interview President Bush gave sixty minutes after his speech because it reveals a great deal that we normally don't see. In it he admits mistakes were made in the war and pre-war planning, claims the democrats are just a patriotic as he, apologizes for his tough-guy speeches such as when he famously called for the enemy to "Bring it on," and candidly admits he couldn't bear to watch the entire execution of Saddam Hussein, among other revelations. I am not a fan of President Bush. Far from it. I was among his first detractors, citing the hypocrisy of his actions in the political battle following the 2000 presidential election. Still, I doubt that he made these mistakes came to him in an epiphany the morning of the interview. Instead I imagine he knew he had made these mistakes for some time, but only now revealed he felt so. I will admit there are many possible reasons for what seems to be his latest strategy of telling as much truth as he can safely get away with. (I say safely get away with because while he admits to having made mistakes, he does not admit to wrongdoing, which no one would reasonably expect him to.) Further, most of these reasons have no basis in altruism.

A particular Frontline series comes to mind, however. It is called "The Dark side," and chronicles the power struggles within the the government, focusing on Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. If you trust their sources, then, despite the vast amount of information this particular Frontline series provides, there is one part that strikes me as being most prominent. (Or at least most prominent for the purposes of this current stream of thought.) It describes the reaction of President George W. Bush when the pre-war intelligence is first presented to him in whole, which can be summed up as, (Once again, these are not exact quotes, but rather are used to facilitate recounting.)

"This is it?" To which former CIA Director Tennet responds

"This is a slam dunk."

"Well then we have to play it up," Bush said. "You say it's a slam dunk, and you know what you're talking about, but to the American Public this won't look like enough. We need to make it sound convincing."

It has been widely said while this is one of the most powerful executive branches we've seen for some time, this is not respectively the strongest president we've seen in some time. Similarly, Cheney is easily the most powerful vice president ever to hold the office. Once again, I do not mean to imply none of President Bush's mistakes are his own or that he is not to blame for many of the wrongs committed during his tenure. Rather, I wonder how much the George W. Bush we see differs from the George W. Bush that exists away from the crowds and advisors, where no one but himself and perhaps his immediate family are there to hear him. I wonder who this person is and how would the presidency have looked with perhaps a more worthy cabinet and him at the forefront. I suppose it might have looked no different at all, but, somehow, I doubt it.

It occurs to me that there are a few posts I haven't actually cross-posted here. Huh. You've all probably been wondering if I fell off the face of the earth. Again. I'll admit, it is a fascinating thing to do, but it's entirely too time-consuming to do so on a regular basis. So, no, I have not. I've just been careless, apparently. I would post these missing entries here, but I have something far more important than a stream of elaborate invectives against our government to report. (Of greater present importance to me, anyway. I'll post the invectives some other time.) I have met the most confounding girl...well, perhaps not the most, but one of the most I've ever met, and we are rather taken with each other. This does not make the miseries of the world fade away. This does not fill me with blind hope or make the world seem a better place. This does none of those horribly cliche romantic things you hear about. I suppose to some extent this should worry me, and were I a saner man, perhaps it would. Instead, this gives me some degree of comfort. This whole thing makes me feel...different in some indescribable way. A, hopefully, positive way. I'm not sure this is necessarily a good thing, but I'm comfortably certain it is not a bad one. We are only casually dating now, but I still have hope. Oh, dear, did I just contradict myself?

So, I was listening to Cusive's The Ugly Organ earlier today and began wondering if they were stopping by Chicago anytime soon, having never seen them live. Turning to their website I was somewhat disappointed to see they would not be stopping by anytime soon. It came to mind, though, while I liked their music, I didn't really know much about them. As a result, I decided to take a look at their artitst wiki on Last.fm. There I noticed they were touring with Mastodon and Against Me! Remembering their website said they weren't coming to Chicago anytime soon I got rather upset that I wouldn't have a chance to catch this concert. That was until I decided to check and see where they were playing and saw Chicago on the list. Exited, I double-checked and it seemed Cursive was just being lazy with site updates, and tickets would go on sale tomorrow. I haven't actually gone to a concert in a while and this struck me as one I would rather not miss, but it was then I saw the date. They're coming on May 12, the week-end of ACEN, which I already signed up to volunteer for. Now I'm very upset...also, of the belief that the world set up my discovery of these events in this order just to mock me.

So yeah, I just came in from stepping in outside and the first thing on my mind was, "I'm going out somewhere in this?" It's the middle of the day. This is allegedly the warmest part of our current twenty-four hour cycle and the temperature (without wind chill) is already in the negatives. Ugh, I wish my coat weren't at the cleaners right now. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally fond of the cold, but having spent a good deal of time outside yesterday under similar conditions leaves me less of a desire to wait for the bus in this weather, which part of me currently believes should be relegated solely to the realms of fiction and the arctic circle. This is silly, of course. I've been out in and had fun in worse weather than this, but I imagine I was less sane, then. Also, snow was involved I'm sure. Ah, cold. How I will miss you when I leave for warmer climes.