cigfran

"don't look at the dogs, just work the lock."

magnum squats by the car he's breaking into while two dobermans are bearing down on him, willing his attention to the problem and not the threat.

i sit at my desk and work through my tasks while deadlines and demands snap at my heels, willing my attention to those things i can control and away from those racing fears.

don't think about the consequences of failure, just concentrate on what you're doing.
ignore the threat, just get it done.

don't look at the dogs, just work the lock.

Fantasy is popular because, since heroes and villains don't exist, it's absolutely necessary to our survival as a species to invent them.

- k.j. parker

When all is lost, spite will get you through the hard times. If not, at least you'll have the satisfaction of inconveniencing your antagonists with your last breath.
—ectoplasmosis

a friend of mine once declared that if you're crossing the street and a quick glance reveals a looming car taking high-speed aim at you, the thing to do is lay out sideways in midair as it strikes, making damn sure that they'll have a hell of a time picking pieces of you out of their ruined grille.

has anyone noticed that this is actually the same topic as this?

i used to write long essays that took a reader (and myself) through a complete train of thought. i don't anymore. i tend to write the observations or the understandings, but infrequently together and even more rarely with full connective tissue.

i'm not sure why. it's certainly due to a more hunkered life, in which i really don't have time or energy to be so self-indulgent. partly it's because i've given myself over more and more to the fragmented, disjoint nature of my thinking and awareness. without question, simple impatience plays a part, as well.

but it makes it harder to get certain things across, that i think are important... or that at least are interesting to me.

i feel myself moving to a mode where i stop trying to weave altogether, and just toss a bunch of ideas into a box like half-polished pebbles, give the box a shake and hand it over to someone like a mandala, asking "do you see?"

entropy always wins
and i like to be on the winning side.

tranny: emits nonconformant behavior
cissy: "you freak"
tranny: "i'm not a freak, i'm a cripple."
cissy: "oh, well that's all right then."

the problem with the idea of GID is that it authorizes "objective" assessment over subjective experience.

recently, i tried to get someone to see the difference. consider for a moment the possibility that the "classic narrative" is true in a sense... not to the degree that we really are "women trapped in men's bodies" (or men in women's) but simply that we are what we are, and not delusional or maladaptive. is the disorder that we think we're something we're not? or is there a subjective disorder... that internal sense of disconnect or disharmony which becomes our negative compass? "this isn't right... go that way."

she didn't get it. she replied with a laundry list of kinks, quirks and frustrations and conceded that, yes indeed, she must be disordered and they may as well toss her in the nearest rubber room. she had capitulated to the objective, to the objectifying.

i let it go. i've had too many of these conversations with too many people - most of whom are comparatively intelligent - who cling to their boundaries and their language.

in any case, the objective sense is the sense that is so easily (mis)communicated when trying to tell others who we are. the distinction is subtle, the common sense facile, and it's easier to be pathetic than, well, strange.

it's a truism to the point of cliché that we live in a culture of fear. but we tend to divide ourselves by the classes of things we fear, calling others fearmongers and ourselves enlightened.

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the backlash against post-modernism is the reaction of normative authoritarianism, the dismissal of narrative in favor of categorical assertion.

i saw recently that tom delay has said of obama, "that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist."

and setting aside for the moment the ludicrous have-you-beaten-your-wife-recently backwardness of such a sentence, the thing that really strikes me is:

what the fuck is this, the sixties (or worse, 1917)? marxist? marxist? who the hell are they anymore? does anyone in 2008 really believe that there is such a thing? hell, even the fucking chinese aren't marxist, let alone the so-called "marxist rebels" that skulk in various undergrowths, eating bark and pissing on the borders of one country or another.

the last american marxists are vegans living in communes in the pacific northwest. they're nobody. they're not even cool anymore. no berets, no bongos, no obnoxious poetry... just tediously earnest self-absorption.

gimme a break.

well, the original version didn't work, for reasons i really just can't be bothered to go into.
so i've rebooted the "other" domain's blog under a different title, and this time as just me.
i keep looking to create the wrong things out of insubstantial material like hope. i think i'll just stick to more tangible media for now.
same drill. if you want the URL, let me know. i'll send it anyway to the few regulars.

a new building is being put up near our apartment.
on every pillar of every floor of the construction site,
safety belts with steel buckles are fixed to the concrete.
at quiet times - on the walk home or over the weekend
any wind shifts and flutters the dangling belts,
and the stone structure chimes.

Link: http://cigfran.net/index.php/skylark/2008/05/23/notes-from-a-failed-conversation

Link: http://cigfran.net/index.php/skylark/2008/05/20/the-moses-trip-1

we are ruled by the cylons.

actually, not quite. if you follow BSG, you see a cognitive and ethical evolution on the part of the cylons. they are angry children, lashing out at their parents then struggling toward awareness and empathy.

our society is, i'm afraid, going entirely in the opposite direction.

steve reich's "Piano Phase" played by a single person, live.

looking at the crap oozing across the net and even the cable news like virulent pus from the boil that is this nation's Id lanced by the credible prospect of a black man - or a woman - being elected president, i wonder sometimes if perhaps mccain wouldn't in fact be a better figurehead for this country's deeper nature.

i think i've mentioned before that my skin is nearly transparent.

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starting today, i'm going to post irregular fragments of my "work in progress" on my other, emusic-related domain. for now it's going to be a non-public link. if any friends want the URL, let me know by mail or comment. caveat: the stuff there will be tedious, unpolished, repetitive and just generally scruffy. but just getting the tinkering rendered will help motivate me toward follow-through.

as part of our ongoing review of old television programs re-released on DVD, we are now watching the mod squad.

as you'll recall, clarence williams III - whose acting is so understated that when he smiles it's as if he flicked a switch somewhere in his head: "engage smiling apparatus, now" - plays the "deep" apollonian Linc Hayes, across from the emotive dionysian, Pete Cochran.

(between them, of course - or alongside - is Julie Barnes, who seems to be there mostly to soften the group, but who remains oddly ill-defined for a feature character.)

As the moody, observant one, Linc usually gets the best lines... but also the darkest, one of which struck me last night like the doomsday weapon of misanthropy:

Julie (reacting to a particularly unpleasant undercover gig): "It was horrible. How can people be like that?"

Linc: "Why else would they call them people?"

you many be familiar with the ping/ack protocol. one "pings" a target to see if it's still active, and it responds with a signal sometimes called "ack" (for acknowledge).

a while ago, i established with one internet friend - who is prone to disappearances determined by her own cycles of depression, concentration, drift, etc. - the ping/ack protocol for online journals. it's simply a way of checking in, without imposing a requirement of detailed communication.

just recently i was pinged myself.

so yeah...

ack.