Carol, your post about yogic distress gave me pause for thought. I was particularly intrigued that a body position could cause an emotional reaction. I've never done yoga, so I haven't experienced this connection of body and mind -- not in the same way, anyway. Most of the time I think of my body as just the vessel that carries my soul around. On the other hand, if it gets sick, I feel depressed and pessimistic, and if it feels really good, the universe is a wonderful place to be. I've just never experienced body positioning making me feel a certain way against my will. Like I said, intriguing.

I'm almost past being upset that my body is getting old; I've lived with that feeling for a decade now. I accept that I can't play tackle football any more without breaking something (which is what happened the last time I did). My lower back pains me sometimes, and I'm not as flexible as I used to be, and definitely I can't run as fast. But I rarely get sick, I'm relatively trim, I have my hair, and I can still hike anywhere I want to go. Plus my sexual responsiveness is better than it ever was. So on balance, being middle-aged isn't so bad. Your body is only young for a brief percentage of your life anyway, so assuming you keep healthy, it's more important to keep your mind young and flexible.

Welcome terra; I'm enjoying your posts already, and I particularly like that desktop motif. No moping!

Stuart, you definitely have a dilemma on your hands with that job opportunity. I don't know if you are looking for opinions from us, but for what it's worth, I probably would not try to sneak one past the agency, even if it meant not getting the position. First, you probably wouldn't get away with it under the circumstances you describe. Second, it would be a big mess if you do get caught (a clear violation of a contract you willingly entered into). And third, worrying about getting caught will take a lot of the fun out of the new job. It's better to take the high road and never have to explain yourself. And I really believe that for every door that closes, another one opens. Maybe the next opportunity will be even better, with fewer strings attached. My two cents, anyway.

By the way, in Sissy news: Trubble is profiled on Kittenbeat this week. Don't believe anything he says (except the part about Sarascara being cool to hang with). The other interview is with Sweety, an original sissy who says he misses Pinga. Any chance of a comeback, Tim?

April 23, 2001

Welcome Nessa! Look, I put your journal in my list o' links! Am I not the coolest? What species of vehicle is Big Red, by the way? He sounds butch, like a Ford F150 with a gunrack, or maybe a '64 Dodge with fuzzy dice and purple lights under the dashboard.

Answer Man comes to G-Girl's rescue: it's spelled ovary. The plural is ovaries. I really hope you feel better soon.

Tomorrow night Crabbygal and I start our Spanish lessons at the local community college. Our friend Punketa is beside herself with excitement, because she figures the next time we see her, we can talk Spanish and she won't have to stumble along in her fractured English. She's actually better than she thinks she is. And I have grave doubts over my ability to learn a third language at this stage in my life. Oh well, I'll probably learn enough to muddle through. ("Yes, officer, how large a bribe do you require to take your hand off my girlfriend's bottom?")

Some of our group have gone AWOL. I hope they are okay and not experiencing some real-life crisis. Drop us a line, you guys. You know who you are.

Carol, your saying-goodbye-to-kara story made me laugh. I love your journal entries; you have a unique take on life that is always entertaining and usually makes me think too. The variety of points of view we get here, from all of you, is a delight. Keep it up, please; I need an excuse not to work. (Bloody PageMaker, grrr!)

April 22, 2001

OK, I get it now. Kara stopped off to see family on the way. Camille did go to Quebec City, although I mistakenly thought she had decided against it. And I guess Marek doesn't check his e-mail very often.

By the way, Marek, I nominate "pants steak" as the phrase o' the week, narrowly beating out "flee market." (That's where refugees shop, right? Badda BING!)

That was quite the riot story, Camille. I've never smelled tear gas myself, so I kind of envy you the experience. But from what I saw on TV, the way they were spraying the stuff around, the police must have got a volume discount at the tear gas store. Too bad they didn't go for the discount chocolate instead. ("Our top story tonight: anti-trade demonstrators were doused with melted chocolate as they attempted to...")

Now a word from Question Answering Man: yes, Paul, the dork who hit your car has committed a crime: failure to remain at the scene of an accident. I don't know how much priority the police put on those, however.

And at the risk of revealing my feminine, nurturing side, I gotta say that the image of rumpled, forgetful boy-genius Simon going to bed in his clothes, just to get a head start on getting up in the morning, is just too adorable. Kara is going to have such fun with you. Hee hee!

April 21, 2001

I'm confused. I thought Kara left on Thursday, but now I see that she's not arriving in Simonland until Monday. WTF? Is she traveling by canoe?

Beef, my hat is off to you and Toy Control for that serial adventure. My god you guys are good! You have inspired me to do something myself. IF I find the time, dammit.

Carol, it seems you and I are on the same wavelength on this what-can-we-write-about issue. I hope your group doesn't get bogged down with politics, because that can suck the fun out of it fast. Ruth and I used to be in a writing group, and it was really helpful plus a lot of fun. The thing was, we all had different political views, but we respected our diversity and usually just agreed to disagree. Most important, no topic was considered taboo. All that mattered was whether our words worked.

Camille, I bet you're sorry you're not in Quebec City now, aren't you? All those hot, politically intense guys dressed in black, out there striking a blow for the barter system -- if I was a girl, I'd be swooning.

Also, referring to an earlier post, my roommate Ian considers the Monday after Easter to be one of the three most important days of the year: "Discount chocolate, woo hoo!" Did you stock up?

Kerry, despite the silliness of my previous post, I can relate to you having second thoughts about revealing your intimate moments. I have struggled with the issue too. Many times I have had the urge to talk about this incredible discovery I've made, called hot sex after 40, but I don't want to risk violating the privacy of my lover. Even repeating some of the fantasies we have written for each other seems a little like a betrayal of intimacy. I dunno. Maybe there's a way for us to make anonymous contributions to a common page? Any ideas, you web wizards out there?

Another point: some members of our little group are in their early teens. Is that a bit young to be talking about this kind of thing? We don't want to scare them away from sex entirely. I dunno.

Last comment on this issue. I read some of the Lisa Diaries, and yeah, kudos to that Lisa for her openness. But it all left me kind of depressed. I think it's because "open" relationships always strike me as kind of futile -- an illusion of joy and freedom, cloaking a core of unhappiness. I really believe sex is a million times better in a committed relationship. True intimacy only comes when you have total trust and emotional commitment. Going from partner to partner to partner is a hollow imitation of the real thing. And my objection has nothing to do with morality.

P.S.: Happy Birthday Simon. I hope you had a great day. I hope you had the traditional English birthday lunch of kippers, tripe, sweetbread and bangers, washed down by a pint of best bitter. (Translation for you non-Brits: heavily salted smoked herring, cow stomach, cow pancreas, fatty pork sausage filled out with sawdust, and room-temperature beer. Yum!)

April 15, 2001

Let's take a vote. Who wants to read about Kerry's sex life?

Talking to Cindi about writing for a living has put me into Professor Mode. Pardon me while I go on a bit.

I was thinking after reading kara's comment about the writing group that she and Carol are in, that they "wouldn't write firstperson of a stripper. Exploiting a marginalized group." That made me think about the whole thorny issue of appropriation of voice. It was a major controversy in the writing community a few years ago, and I guess there are still those who feel that a writer has no right to try to take on the voice of someone from another race or culture. As in, only a First Nations writer should be allowed to portray First Nations characters, and only a stripper is permitted to write from the POV of a stripper. (By the way, I'm talking in general here; I don't know whether kara and Carol's group was thinking this way or not. But I know many do feel this way.)

I disagree (yeah, big surprise). I don't think that white writers telling a story from a non-white character's perspective are stealing anything. I don't believe that a writer must be confined to his or her identity group ("OK, you Sikh writers go over there and write Sikh stories, you lesbians go over here and write lesbian stories..."). It's not as if there is only a limited supply of Sikh or lesbian stories, and the privileged white hetero writers are using them all up. And it's no longer true (although at one time it was) that writers from marginal groups have inadequate access to publishing opportunities. We're all pretty much in the same under-funded boat now.

I will grant you that a Sikh or lesbian writer is likely to be more authentic in portraying what it's like to be immersed in those cultures. But that's a quality-of-writing issue, not a rights issue. Some white writers do a good job of crossing cultural boundaries. Why should they not try? I believe people from different backgrounds have enough in common as humans that it IS possible to understand "the Other." And I object to attempts to erect barriers.

If we are only permitted to write from within our own direct experience, all writing suffers. Writing is an act of imagination -- that is its power, and its reason for being. There should be no limits on imagination. If I want to try to get inside the life of a stripper, I can, and I will. Then it will be up to the reader to decide whether I got it right or not. My writing a stripper story does not stop any stripper from doing the same, and maybe doing it more successfully.

And who says strippers are a marginalized group anyway? Some may be trapped in the business, but some are there by choice because the money is good. I have heard of young women who put themselves through university by stripping, and then never had to do it again. They are not all crack-addicted hookers with no control over their lives.

To me, the best kind of first-person writing IS when you project yourself into someone else's identity. If all you can write about is yourself, you are severely limiting your potential growth. Evelyn Lau is an example of this -- a young, edgy writer who can only write about herself, and consequently has already run out of anything new to say. She's a diarist. A writer should be a storyteller, creating characters out of his or her imagination. I know the rule is "write what you know", but there is more than one way to know something or imagine what it would be like in some other circumstance. Living other people's lives is part of the fun of writing.

April 8, 2001

How ironic that my last post, which stayed up, unchanged, for nine frigging days, was a cutesy dig at Mendi for going AWOL. Pride goeth before a fall, I always say. And karma will rise up and bite you in the ass.

Part of my problem has been that I lost my high-speed internet connection, temporarily I hope (I'm posting this via dial-up, doing a cut and paste off-line). The techie guy is coming to my apartment on Tuesday to poke at the modem. Meanwhile my wired-up son Ian is going nuts, having difficulty staying on top of his website, and totally unable to play his online shoot-em-up games. He's been moaning and grumbling about it, so I tell him, "Life sucks, then you die." Helpful, aren't I? Then I add, "Pride goeth before a fall," because, like I just told you, I always say that.

Yesterday was not a good day for the poor boy. He took a bus down to Seattle early, planning to meet a bunch of his online buddies for lunch, then spend the night. These guys (and one girl) work with him on his website, and they were planning to combine a social get-together with a little brainstorming for the site. But at the US border crossing, the Immigration man decided that he was really going down to stay and work, so he denied him entry. I had to drive down to the border and pick him up, because the return bus wasn't for another four hours.

It really angered me. I'm going to write a letter to US Immigration, even though I know it won't do a lick of good. Some of their people are OK, but there are a few who just love throwing their authority around, screwing with ordinary law-abiding people, just because they can. They will pounce on some minor technicality, and there's nothing you can do.

Keep in mind that this kid is unfailingly polite with authority figures, and was completely open and honest about what he was doing and why. He had a small overnight bag with a change of socks and underwear, a leather folder thing with a bunch of notes and stuff for the meeting, and about $50 in cash -- hardly enough to start a new life as a frostback, right? Here is what the man, and then his supervisor, told Ian:
- his passport shows he's been to the US six times in the past year or so; that's "too often";
- he works as a website content coordinaator; there are "lots of jobs" for those down in the States (ha!)
- and the kicker: in among his website notes was his resume; Ian had forgotten it was in there. Supposedly this was evidence that he was intending to take some American's job.

When I came to pick Ian up, we decided to go in to their office to try one last time to reason with them. We ended up talking to the same guy and his supervisor, a really officious, no-listen type. I got maybe 5 words in. They basically scolded us as if Ian had been caught trying to swim across the river. They lectured us for not accepting their ruling, and kept saying, "Try again tomorrow." The clear implication was that tomorrow Ian would go through with no problem. Well, that's a big help when you have an appointment to keep. And if the kid was a risk to become an illegal alien today, why would tomorrow be any different? Obviously they themselves didn't believe he was going down to take an illegal job; they were just flexing their authority muscles, at his expense. Dammit, it sucks. Grrr!

Anyway, enough of that. There's lots to catch up on. A big woo-hoo welcome to Claire, for starters. OLP rocks, but I agree with Camille, the earlier stuff was better than their latest. Starseed is one of those songs that make me want to drive too fast and throw empty beer bottles out the window.

Brian, thanks for the link to the sci-fi cliches site. I had a good laugh, because it's all so true. It reminded me of the things about Star Trek that drove me nuts, the Universal Translator being one of them (like, how come it translated every alien species except the Klingons?) By the way, did you catch the first episode of the Dune TV movie on Saturday night? I thought it was pretty good, certainly worth the time investment. I'm taping it for my lady Ruth, who doesn't get the Space Channel.

Speaking of sci-fi, Ian and I were talking yesterday about the concept of the transporter, with matter being turned into energy then back again. He said, "Doesn't that mean that when you are re-formed, you are actually just a copy of your former self? And the original you is destroyed in the process, meaning the real you actually died?" I thought about it, then said, "Pride goeth before a fall."

Camille, your thoughts about the virtues of being patient struck a chord with me. I have always been a very patient person, and have found that it usually pays off in the end. Some things you need to grab -- an opportunity when it appears -- but other things need waiting for. At times I wonder whether my patience is really a form of self-denial, holding off satisfaction because I don't think I deserve it. Or is there a whiff of Martyr Syndrome here? Your comment about continuing to wait for someone who didn't show up made me think of that. I dunno, it's just bred into me. Ruth likes it -- she has no patience, and admires that quality in me. And it did pay off bigtime in the lovemaking department. Enough said.

I noticed Tim's question about family connections, and I do want to comment on it. I have two brothers I almost never see, for no good reason, really. But I'll save that one for another day.