New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is an artificial construct that we as a group that make up a particular culture have created. Tonight is no different than any other night in regards to the greater cosmos. Tonight is just one turn of the planet in its course around the sun. We have given New Year's Eve all of its power and meaning.

And it does have power and meaning.

It designates the start of a new year and gives a reference point for history. Both personal history and the history of our species.

2009 was...

Personally revolutionary.

New Year's Eve gives the prompt to review the year. It was good in that I kept writing, kept doing odd moments of art, learned more mathematics, continued correspondence and deepened my friendships with some amazing people, learned to live more in the moment, and discovered ways to be joyous through even the most trying of circumstances.

My geography changed, my relationships changed, aspects of my priorities changed. Through all of the trials of this last year, I learned a great deal. I learned the importance of wonderful people, that kindness is something that changes lives, and the small gesture or compliment can be gargantuan. I learned how to make sunshine in the rain. I learned an adventure can start at any moment and memories can be both remembrances of the past and future stories of plans now being conceived.

Was 2009 a good year or a bad year? Because of 2009, I look forward to the future.

The other power inherent in New Year's Eve, is to look forward to the future and make plans or resolutions. While any day is a good day to begin, New Year's holds a certain poignancy. What are my plans for the future? I am very excited about plans that I have to visit a very dear friend who lives far away. My resolutions for the year are to read the news more consistently and stay current with current events; to reread mythology and the ancient classics and refresh my knowledge of the myths and epics; to read at least one book per week rather than constantly cruising the internet and reading blogs and odd news articles (I may actually start taking a lunch at lunch time so I can read.); to organize my poetry so I can review and revise it; to write one hour per day or seven hours per week on my fiction; to spread kindness where I can; and to dance frequently-- perhaps even daily!

I hope that 2010 begins a decade worldwide of peace and justice, innovation and exploration, an expansion of research and resulting knowledge, and social and environmental responsibility. I would love to see become manifest a greater emphasis on scientific research and funding for the arts. I hold optimism that the future will be filled with moments of joy.

Merry Christmas to Everyone!

And the stockings were hung on the posts of the end table with care...

Yup. We don't have a fireplace. So I had to improvise. The zombie conifer is up and decorated and I ate two cookies and had a glass of dandelion wine. I still have to put tags on the presents so that it is obvious who they are for. Right now my kitten, Pixel, and I have retreated to the bedroom. I am in a contemplative and grateful mood. What I want for Christmas is not a thing. I have enough things. More than enough. I love clothing and I shop the thrift stores and resale shops aggressively for bargains. I recently bought two hand knit wool sweaters for five dollars a piece and I bought a short wool skirt for seven dollars. I have more clothing than I can possibly wear in a week or even two. And none of it is very meaningful. Fun to play with and better to be dressed than naked, but not the axis that my existence spins on.

Last year I wrote the following at Christmas time:

I have been puzzling about what to write about Christmas. The last day or so I have been remembering Christmas time when I was growing up. Christmas felt different. Somehow it was more special. I remember getting up very early on Christmas Day and running into the living room to see all the presents. It was very exciting. After opening presents at home my mother and I would go over to my Grandma Hansen's house. She lived about four blocks away. My Grandma's house was always the place that the extended family met for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. We would have dinner at one in the afternoon and then open presents. I have mostly very good memories about being with my extended family when I was growing up and Christmas was a time to play cards, talk, and see all of my family.



At this time I have lost the connection to my extended family. I moved away and went to college. My cousins and I have grown apart. I still have fond memories of playing with them when we were kids. I have been an activist for environmental causes and the peace movement. I choose different past times. I define myself in different terms and value different things than anyone in my biological family of origin. The divide that separates us grows larger every year.



Further, the important people who perpetuated the traditions have passed away. My Grandmothers are no longer in the kitchen roasting turkey, making rolls, and mashing potatoes. There is no more banana cream pie or fruit salad. No more golden angel smiling down from atop the Christmas tree.

My Grandmother Hansen who knew that to ensure that everyone arrived in time for dinner meant staggering the invitations times is gone. I remember eavesdropping one year as she told my perpetually late Uncle Bruce to be at her house at eleven o'clock. When she was finished speaking with him on the phone I asked her about and she explained that Uncle Bruce was just on a different clock than everyone else and so she adjusted to synchronize with his time.

My Grandmother Miller who loved to play canasta is gone. She was always up for a game and would turn off her hearing aid so she could cheat and not hear everyone's protests.



Today, on Christmas Day, I hope all of my surviving extended family is well and enjoying themselves. I think for next year I will start thinking of new traditions for myself that will help to make the holiday as special as my Grandmothers used to make it.


So, what is meaningful to me today? I think that Christmas is about the connections to other people that we make and I will be sending out Merry Christmas greetings to the people who are significant to me. Even if I cannot be in the same geographic location that they are and give them the hugs that I would like to give to them, I can still pass to them the message that I care for them and I appreciate their being a part of my life.

Merry Christmas!

WOOHOO TO NERINE DORMAN!

Today is the big day!

Nerine's novel Khepera Rising is released internationally today, December 21, 2009 through Lyrical Press.

Which means Nerine's novel is available as an ebook and can be purchased for download anywhere.

Check this out: http://www.lyricalpress.com/khepera_rising

Nerine, fabulous work! You are pursuing and achieving your ambitions and I applaud you.

Realms of Fantasy is Offering a Free PDF Download

Passing this on. Realms of Fantasy has a new website and is offering a
free PDF version of the February 2010 issue.

The url for the magazine's website is: http://www.rofmag.com/

They kind of re-invented themselves last summer. I like the new format. I downloaded the PDF this morning and so far read a very good story by a gentleman named Euan Harvey. The story is entitled "The Demon of Hochgarten". Check it out!

My New Made Up Holiday That Needs a Name

Grandpa was an atheist and thought any religious person was a "sky pilot". He believed that people should be responsible for themselves and not wish for some deity to bail them out. He taught me to read using Bulfinch's Mythology because he wanted to get across the idea that there had been many different gods throughout history. I think he also liked to vex Grandma.

And he loved Christmas. Mostly the food and being with the whole family.

Good Christian Grandma Lillian would cheat at Canasta on Christmas-- it was a tradition. And turn her hearing aid down so nobody could point it out to her. My aunt who was the choir director for her church made me and my cousins sing in the choir, right up front, because if they put us in the back we made mischief. The pastor was never too keen on the day that we launched a barrage of paper airplanes from the balcony. What did they think we were going to do with those programs? Grandma Marie used to tell the members of my family to meet at her house at different times to orchestrate everyone arriving close to the right time. She adjusted the times based on people's standard amount of time for late arrival.

And there was the fruit cake. The stuff was so awful.

You say, "How awful was it?" because it is inherent to the nature of fruit cake to be bad.

Two weeks of aging improved it and Uncle Bruce's dog Miko still wouldn't eat it.

Oh great gods, I am going to be haunted tonight by Grandma Marie trying to feed me fruit cake with one hand and doing the Charleston with a wet dish rag in the other. Ghost of Christmas Past?

And then there was always the meat at any family holiday. Have I mentioned that I am a vegetarian and first became one when I was thirteen or fourteen? Two of my uncles hunt. We typically had venison, ham, and turkey on the table. We also might have things like antelope, moose, quail, rabbit, or mule deer. Whatever a mule deer is. I am sure that whole forest eco systems were depleted to feed my extended family. Talk about being haunted. Bambi is a regular feature in my nightmares. Except he has glowing eyes and fangs. One of my uncles was certain I would die of vegetarianism and sat me down to explain how it was harmful for me to not eat meat. He never read Diet for a Small Planet. He has also had two major heart surgeries. And one heart attack while driving his eighteen wheeler. You probably didn't want to know that. But I could have died of vegetarianism.

So, here we are at the holidays and I am all grown up and on my own and have this very confusing mix of good memories, odd memories, inconsistent beliefs and traditions, etc.

What is a vegetarian, atheist, Buddhist, non-conformist, science fiction writer, artist to do?

I know.

I will make up my own holiday!

Festivus. Nope. Already taken. One of the writers on Seinfeld wrote his family's made up holiday into the show. Festivus (for the rest of us!) includes such traditions as an aluminum Festivus pole, Feats of Strength, an Airing of Grievances, and Festivus miracles.

One of the women in a writing group I am part of suggested Saturnalia. IO Saturnalia. I kind of like Saturnalia because it involves a week of partying, a reversal of roles where masters and slaves switch positions, general mischief, and presents. Seems it has a great deal to offer. I wonder if it included orgies.

But no. I think I should make up my own holiday. Today I made pop art cookies-- sunflowers, hands, clouds, and heads in profile. Kind of Peter Max pop art cookies. Some of the sunflowers will become Van Gogh sunflowers.

I think I need to carry on some traditional Christmasy things too. Like sitting around a lit up and decorated dead conifer and getting presents in footwear. Can't do without the zombie tree and I like my three foot long stocking that my mother made me that has Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer on it with a frilly cabaret clown style ruff and a jingle bell for his nose. I am really glad that I never grew into the footwear or I may never have dated.

I don't drink. So enh on the alcohol, but others can include it if it makes things merry. I never want to squash someone else's cheer because, well, cheer is good. Yah for cheer! Cheer on!

But no eggnog. Yuck. It coats your throat like medicine and hits the stomach like a wad of grease. Bleck. Nothing improves that.

Food? Hmmm... Vegetarian. All the way. Fruit salad, pancakes with real maple syrup, and good coffee for breakfast. And then a fabulous midday meal with salad with cheese and fruit and nuts and a magnificent homemade vinaigrette, cheese crepes with sauteed green beans and roasted root vegetables and corn bread, and for dessert either chocolate cake or pie. Yum. The mythos behind the need for vegetarianism will be that all life will be honored as having the spark of ... well... life!

Now presents. I am not too keen on presents. I think the whole consumerism thing is totally out of hand. The presents just become more clutter and lose all meaning. Presents should be given but they should be imbued with vast amounts of meaning and be things people really want and it should signify commitment and love and all good stuff. But they should not be given without a ton of thought and people should tremble before the significance of giving presents.

Instead of presents, it should become a badge of good taste and decency to give time and money to good causes and things that help people, animals, science, the environment, etc. (No, not the Human Fund.)

So, let me sum things up. My holiday will have art inspired cookies, decorated zombie trees, giant footwear, no sacrificed once living life forms above plant life, optional alcohol that goes no where near eggnog, presents that are only given with extreme trepidation and thought, and donations of time and money to good works.

Oh, and I have to add sleeping, watching DVD's, reading the stack of books by my bed, and running. No orgies or sex this year unless Santa is real and flies someone in. But to be honest, it is kind of too weird of a concept for me that the jolly old man in the pimp suit could really be hooking me up so I think I don't want to go there.

I still have to think of a name for my holiday. Any ideas?

Dancing and Cookies

So things have been a little all over the cosmos for me for the last couple months and the number of posts is down. This is the first post for tonight. More coming!

I decided about ten minutes ago that I am compiling a play list of songs to dance and to work my abdominal muscles. So far I am putting Desiree's You Gotta Be, Jennifer Lopez' This Boy's Fire, Outkast's I Like the Way You Move, Christina Aguilera's Dirty, Rihanna's Don't Stop the Music, Destiny's Child Bootylicious, Reel2 Reel's I like to Move It Move It, Shakira's Hips Don't Lie, Nina Sky's Move Ya Body, Missy Elliot's Lose Control, Dem Franchize Boys' Lean Wit It Rock Wit It, and Black Eyed Peas' Shut Up.

Maybe Beyonce's Naughty Girl, Black Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow, Willa Ford's I Wanna Be Bad, Jennifer Lopez' I'm Real, Pussycat Dolls' Don't Cha.

Okay I am off for a bit to dance to the Black Eyed Peas and make cookies. Yup. Decided to make cookies.

Thoughts from Researching Lisa See

I was reading yesterday about the author Lisa See and her various writings and this spawned some different thoughts.

First, her autobiographical book about her family is entitled On Gold Mountain and it is the story of her family coming to the United States and settling in California. As I was reading about this book, I read something in an interview with Lisa See where she commented on that the book that people remember about World War II is the diary of Anne Frank. This is a book written from a very intimate perspective from the experiences of one girl as she is in hiding. Lisa See said something about how this kind of intimate view can sometimes illustrate a story more than the grand perspective.

So this inspired me to think about the intimate story versus the grand view. I was wondering about what kind of science fiction or fantasy stories could be told in the intimate view and what commentary on the current time, past time, or future might be made depending on the stories and the themes. What about an intimate novel told from the perspective of a girl who is a "slip-gene" daughter trying to escape oppression and war in a series of star systems and has been detained for questioning on a Federation space station for six months? What about the story of two brothers who have been captured in a raid on their planet and are being transported to become slaves? What about the story of a street girl who sells processing time that utilizes her brain and does brain damage but the processing time has benefits/minuses to be compared with her real time life?

I am still thinking about what kinds of things are possible and what stories might come from an intimate telling.

Secondly, I read about the background for Lisa See's novel entitled Peony in Love. The book utilizes a classical Chinese opera called The Peony Pavilion that was first introduced in the late sixteenth century. It was very popular. It also spawned a phenomena whereby lovesick maidens wasted away. The opera is about a character named Liniang who sees her true love in a dream and wastes away and is then brought back to life by the love. Educated and isolated young women from the upper classes of China would see this opera and then waste away and die in hopes of having some control over their lives. These women had little control and were married to men they would never see prior to their marriages. The hope in starving was that they would get some choice in who they would marry. The opera also inspired another book that was written by the three wives in sequence of one man that was called The Three Wives' Commentary. It was a piece about The Peony Pavilion and it was written by women. Lisa See wanted people to know about this book and other writings that were published in China by women-- thousands of pieces of poetry, literature, and commentary were written by women and published in China at a time when little was written and published by women anywhere else in the world.

I had several thoughts that were inspired by learning all of this. One was about the circumstances around The Peony Pavilion and how this particular opera touched the souls of so many women and inspired a type of fantastical hope that caused their demise. The opera had a type of power because it was relevant in an incredibly meaningful way at that time and place. I am still thinking on what would be something that would touch so many in such a powerful way (and hopefully not so destructive a way) now in our time and place.

I was also just thinking about how the facts of things are sometimes obscured. For instance, I did not know that there were thousands of women writing and publishing in China in the seventeenth century. I know now and I will go looking for translations of some of their writings. The slippery representation of history via perspectives from the present is nothing new.

I was also thinking about the way that Lisa See wrote the character of Peony in Peony in love. Peony is a "hungry ghost" through much of the novel and a great deal about Chinese ritual, customs, and metaphysics comes through. This got me thinking in some different directions and I may need to email a friend or two to brainstorm with me.

10 Cookies

I usually make cookies for the Christmas Season and give the cookies away. However I am in Colorado where I don't know anyone and the effort of making cookies on top of working two jobs with no specific aim for what to do with the cookies means that I don't want to put forth the effort or the expense of the ingredients.

So, no Van Gogh sunflower sugar cookies. No Matisse chocolate cookies. Or Mondrian shortbread.

I really don't want to bother with the whole nuisance of Christmas. Call me Scrooge. Right now, I would like to sleep for the two weeks of the holiday break with intermittent breaks of running and maybe watching DVDs.

I also decided that I am limiting myself to eating only 10 cookies this holiday season. That's about a pound of fat in terms of calories and weight gain. Usually food just turns up in sundry places this time of year and mostly it isn't very good. It's just around. I am trying to limit how much not-very-enjoyable-just-ate-it-because-it-was-there grazing that I indulge in. I decided that if I limit myself to 10 cookies for the entire holiday season this will force me to evaluate if a cookie is worthy of being one of my ten. It worked today. I wanted to support the bake sale at the elementary school where I work. I bought two cookies for 50 cents. I then gave them away. I decided they were not to be amongst the 10 cookies that I would ingest.