And what is Goodreads?  It’s “the largest site for readers and book recommendations in the world” — a “social cataloging” site that allows readers to share what they’re reading, make recommendations to each other, review books, join book clubs, and even talk with authors. Right now it has over 6.5 million members with more than 220 million books in its catalog — which members are adding to every day.

And Goodreads recognizes me as an author. Cool.

Cyd went on to tell me that she could add to my author profile because

I’m a librarian, a lofty status I was awarded by asking, “Can I be a librarian?”, which means I can add your blog, a bio, a photo…

Very cool.  So she added my blog to my author profile, & I went on over there myself to check things out.  Next think you know, I had become myself a Goodreads user, so now I have two profiles, one for me as a reader, and one for me as an author. It turns out that it takes just a bit longer to be recognized as the author associated with an author profile than it does to be approved as a librarian (which I got myself appointed as too, in order to address some issues with a couple of books that stuff of mine appears in), but that should happen soon enough, at which point my author and reader profiles will become as one.  And then I’ll be able to do some additional cool stuff, as author, that I can’t do now.  But you can already, if you want to, become my fan.  (How strange! Me? Fans?)

This will be good for me, as I prepare to finish out my last non-”my stuff” writing obligation other than my editorship of Bent Alaska, and change gears to really focus on my writing.  The possibility of engaging as a writer with friends and potential friends who might like to read my stuff is a big motivator to do more writing, and actually getting it into shape that I can share with other people.

Related posts:

1. Amazon Rank – Google bomb 'em!
2. Field of Words
3. Momentum through Mystery

I feel like talking about the Book of Job again. This might be because a month ago I was asked to speak at Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (AUUF) on June 26, which coincides with the end of Alaska PrideFest, on the “need for liberal religious people to reach out to the LGBTQ community,” and today I was asked for the name I wanted to give my talk so it could be printed in the AUUF’s bulletin.

I told Beatrice — that’s Beatrice Hitchcock, AAUF’s interim minister — to title my talk “Take it to Heart: Faith & LGBT Youth.” “The first half of that title,” I told her, “is based on a poem I wrote, called ‘Sermon,’ which I plan to begin my presentation with” — that’s a poem based on the Book of Job — and went on to explain,

I will probably continue the presentation after the poem with Job: the idea of holding on to one’s integrity, in line with the UU principle of “the inherent dignity and worth of every person” and how members of liberal faiths needs not only to teach that to “their own” but also to reach out to people who have been taught to internalize self-hate & give them new heart… as it were.

(Yes, I’ve been reading a bit about Unitarian Universalism. I’m not a member, stubborn non-joiner me — but I am in profound agreement with the Unitarian Universalist 7 principles, the first of which — “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” — I relate to all that I think about that so-important-to-me word, integrity.)

And then again, I might want to talk about the Book of Job because I’ve been delving deeply into my email-retentive archives. The archives, in particular, of an email discussion list I belonged to during the latter half of 1998, when I was reeling from the loss of a relationship & the betrayal I felt over it.  As it happened, my partner & I later came back together — but in 1998 I didn’t know that would happen, & in 1998 I was hurting. Hurting like Hell.  And anyone who was on that list knows just exactly the double-sense in which I mean that word.

(Parenthetical: The character Hell from my portion of the shared story I crafted on that list has been renamed Helvetti in the novel form of the story, which is called Mistress of Woodland. Which I am working on again.  Which is why I’m delving into the email archive, because it holds much of the raw material of which Mistress of Woodland is made. Helvetti is Finnish for hell.)

In 1998, the Book of Job was already important to me.  I had, after all, already written that poem “Sermon.”  But now it took on new meanings, stemming from my visceral sense of being like Job: innocent, yet suffering.  And, moreover, being told that my suffering was my own damn fault. Which false accusation, of course, added to my suffering.

I’d say that Job walked into my thinking when a demand was made of me, early in the breakup period, that I felt incapable of meeting, without utterly compromising & losing myself — even though not to meet the demand could possibly mean losing the one I loved out of my life altogether. Which at the time seemed a distinct possibility.

But what’s the choice, really?  I wrote back to her, an email in which I quoted the Job poem — “Sermon” –

“I must abandon my integrity / or you abandon me.”

And then I said,

Well… I won’t abandon my integrity, not even for you.  Not even if you abandon me.

And I cried.  Long days of summer I cried.  Because it goes like this: call it your Self, or call it your Integrity — either way, it’s like a pole at the center of you, that you can grab onto in a high wind; or it’s an axis like the Earth’s axis, around which you spin.  If you keep a firm grip on that pole at the center of you, through even the worst storm, you’ll know where you are.  You’ll know who you are. But it won’t keep the bad shit from hurting you.

But if you let go of it, you’re lost. You’ll go kiting off into that storm, & you’ll be a long time finding yourself again, if ever you do.

That hurts worse.

I’ll have more to say about the Book of Job, both the stuff I learned back then, & the stuff I keep learning now.  But this is enough for tonight.

(I’m trying to learn how to write the reasonable-sized blog posts that other people write, instead of the long-winded posts that are my usual.  How’d I do?)

Related posts:

1. Sermon (a poem)
2. No Questions, Questions (poem)
3. Integrity, violation, healing

Weird

Never knew a time when I was not

weird

this is different
I am tonight surprised to find I care
in a way I didn’t think I did about it

weird

they wrote in my high school yearbook
they said weird, you are weird
(and many added, stay that way)

I don’t recall a time
this was said unpleasantly
however small, there was always care there

now I care in a way I never thought I would
that my niece in a childhood game
said You’re weird and got upset
when I said Thank you

I treated it as a compliment, and always had

she said But you’re weird! as if
to say a repetition of it would
impel me to remember
it was not to be treated as a compliment,
an identity, a friend

there was always something in me
that knew the value of my uniqueness

different

I care in a different way now
than I ever thought I would
because my weird makes me unique
there’s something different that’s the same
as unique and that’s

outsider

I have often thought myself a loner — this is how I’m free

different

to be free — yet I am an outsider
and each time someone has told me
as caringly as you told me tonight

You’re weird

there is something

different

I never saw before
I see now with my
high
di-
lated
eyes
that each time I’ve been told
even by friends who love me
as you do
it leaves a little hurt each time
because the meaning of

weird

is unique, individual, different, free

outsider

and sometimes in my freedom
I am so lonely, and want so bad

to belong

[17 Oct 1983]

About this poem

From my bad old days.

Days are better now (overall). But I’m still weird.

Related posts:

1. Alaska Love Poem
2. Literal (poem)
3. Vashti Speaks for Herself

Table 2, from the article "National Prison Population Growth: A BJS Report" in the Winter 1996 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum

Table 2

Between 1980 and 1994 the total number of people held in federal and state prisons and local jails almost tripled — increasing from 501,886 to 1,483,410.

— Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice

I am making a table.  My hammer
is the keyboard of the computer —
tap tap — my nails are the commas
and decimal points that keep these legs
of numbers standing true.
The grain is the roundness of zeros and eights,
leaning spines of nines and percentage signs,
sharp angles of fours and sevens.
I will call this table (slightly
modifying its original name) Table 2:
Number of Adults in Custody
of State or Federal Prisons or in
Local Jails; and though it’s only
a copy, when I’m done it will be
a clearer, cleaner version of
the Bureau of Justice Statistics table
from which I copied it to include
in the Alaska Justice Forum.

But it’s not the ideal table.

Though I’m of that kind, a maker of poems
whom Plato had Socrates exclude
from his rational, perfect Republic —
an imitator of imitations, my work
one step from the carpenter’s table or bed,
but two steps from the idea of table
in the ether around God’s head —
for my day job I’m also of that kind
essential to the Republic.  Sustained
by statisticians, I am a maker
of passionless tables that summarize
in numbers the reasoned philosophy
of this well-ordered State’s philosopher-kings.

But if this poem I make by night is a pale
faded imitation of the table I made by day,
the white spaces between my table’s columns
are paler copies yet of the concrete walls,
steel bars, control rooms, keys, and guns
of guards in towers.  And its numbers in their
hundred thousands, the total in its millions
(seven digits divided by commas)
imitate in mere paper and ink the bodies,
the sweat and sheen and stink of bodies,
the rage and fear and anguish of minds,
the sorrow and grief and violent hatreds
of prisoners one mere step away:

embodying the closest approximation
of the ideal that waxes ineffable
in the ether around God’s head.

[April 15, 1997]

About this poem

Before 1990, most of what I knew about the American justice system came from fiction — books, movies, TV.  Then I took a job as a publication specialist at the UAA Justice Center, which entailed amongst other thinks making lots of tables & charts on various aspect of the justice system.  That’s the lens through which I became aware of the extraordinary growth of correctional populations in the U.S., especially due to the so-called “war on drugs” that began during the Reagan administration.

Sometime in about 2001, the U.S. surpassed the Russian Federation to become the nation with the highest rate of incarceration in the world.  Here we are now (from an article  in our most recent issue of the Alaska Justice Forum):

Figure 3. Rate of Incareration in Selected Nations (most current data available as of February 2011). From "Prisoner Reentry and the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act" by Deborah Periman, Alaska Justice Forum 27(4), Winter 2011.

Makes you feel all proud & patriotic, eh?

As for Plato’s Republic: Plato didn’t much like poets, because the poetic imagination weakened the power & authority of the Plato’s idealized philosopher-king. As James P. Carse writes in The Religious Case Against Belief,

Plato’s Republic is a completely rational and comprehensive system. It is threatened more by the poets than by its military enemies — in fact, it needs those enemies.

Explains a lot, that does.

For my part, most “philosopher-kings,” idealized or not, go off the rails almost from the moment they achieve power & authority. Give me a poet any day.

Related posts:

1. No Questions, Questions (poem)
2. True Diversity Dinner video, part 5: Diane Benson
3. God of Mosquitoes (poem)

Teakettle Mountain, Columbia Falls, Montana. The industrial area that the tracks lead to (at the mountain's foot) is Anaconda Aluminum Company (now Columbia Falls Aluminum Company), where I worked summers during my college years. I took this photo sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Vashti Speaks for Herself

But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command conveyed by the eunuchs. At this the king was enraged, and his anger burned within him. (Esther 1:12)

He said that?  you heard him?  The bastard!
I used to love him.  Some ways I still do . . .
but honey, don’t believe all you hear.
He can put it on Larry King Live,
he can write it up in the Bible
for every preacher to preach,
it’ll still be a goddamn lie. . . .

Did you know my name means beautiful?
He knew it, too, first time he saw me
parked on my bucket, graveyard tired
with the rest of D-shift, waiting for the whistle
to blow us off-clock for that wild headlong hurry
to the changehouse and showers and gate.
All I wanted was clean, and home, and bed.

He was a C-shift man, walking in,
and I felt his eyes, and I felt them the next
morning and morning till finally he spoke.
Didn’t matter then my jeans had holes
from hot cryolite spat like brimstone
from between the devil’s own teeth, or that
my hair was dull and gritty with ore
and my shirt stank of eight hours’ baked-in sweat
and my skin, rough and red from pitchburn,
stung at his whiskers’ kiss.
Grime and all, he saw I was beautiful,
and I saw in him the same.

But no sooner did he stick his ring
on my finger than he wanted to yank
me clean out of my steeltoes, drop me into a dress
at some jewelry counter at six bucks an hour.
He told me a man’s work wasn’t for me.
I guess he thought union wages weren’t, either.
I guess he thought he should be enough for me.

He was the type said his home was his castle.
His was a trailer, east side of town,
all trimmed up in antlered heads
that rode home down the North Fork road every fall
under tarps in his pick-up bed.
He never bought meat— his freezer
was full up with moose and venison steaks.
Stay home, I bring home all we need, he said.
He thought he could rule by the depth of his bellow.
My lungs got real tired proving him wrong.

When he came home that night after eight hours’ swing
and two or three more at the North Fork Saloon
and shook me awake at 3.00 AM
to play pretty hostess to his buncha friends —
goddamn, I was working day-shift that week!
did he think I could work without any sleep? —
yeah, you betcha, I yelled, I said, That’s what you want,
then just shoot me and stuff me and stick marbles in
my sockets and nail me to your goddamn wall.

So yeah, he can say all he wants to about it
and look for a nice quiet good-looking wife.
But it wasn’t him that put through the papers,
it wasn’t him that opened the door.
He didn’t push me, and he didn’t dump me.
I rid him of me — and I rid me of him.

[February 9, 1994]

About this poem

This poem is centered in an aluminum reduction plant in my hometown of Columbia Falls, Montana, where I worked summers during my college years. But the poem’s characters are fiction.

Cryolite is a compound used in the reduction of aluminum, often found in the plant in its molten state.  Ore is what we called alumina, or aluminum oxide, the product of the refining of raw bauxite.  The plant’s function is to reduce it — remove the oxygen—to produce aluminum.  It’s a white powder with much the same appearance and consistency as baking powder. Pitchburn is a chemical burn to the skin, looking and feeling similar to a bad sunburn, caused by exposure to hydrocarbons used in the reduction process. The
North Fork is the North Fork of the Flathead River, Flathead National Forest.

Related posts:

1. Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You (poem)
2. Ballad of the Splash
3. Spiritus Mundi

April: National Poetry Month.  I’ll be (trying to) post a poem every day this month, some mine, some not mine.  Today, one of mine — fitting in well with my recent preoccupations with matters of spirit & writing.

Mielikki

When they told me who to put on the throne
I said, no, I will not be ruled.
The gods they showed me were tyrants
who displeased me with their judgments,
their injustice, yes, their cruelty.

Tough, I thought, and rugged.
Above the law am I —
an outlaw, a renegade
from the unhappy Kingdoms of Gods
who would cast me to hell and damnation —
there was no compassion, no love:
I was alone.

Running and running, cold and lonely,
hungry and tired — I kept my mouth shut
and my eyes hated everyone.

I was a hero, hungry and tough.
I was a hero, subsisting on crumbs.
Walking through cities, rubbing shoulders
with the people, the subjects, the soldiers,
all of them, of the enemy.

I scoffed at them,
and I knew I was dying.

But messengers sent from my own land, my homeland,
you sent them with messages in their hands
that I slowly trusted to touch me.

And homes where they brought me,
where I could not fall to harm –
where they expected nothing, only asked
if I might come home, to you.

Who are you?  the one who sits not on a throne
but runs hidden in the weather that surrounds me —
who follows but does not pursue me —
who knows always where I am when I
have shaken off everyone else —

who leaves secret love notes
in the heart of my deepest shame —
how do you find me when I, myself, am lost?

Today if I wake in wilderness,
in hot desolation, with cracked and dry lips,
I know you will give me comfort:
a cool stream from the dust,
the promise of peace
when I come home to you –
worn by travel, but wiser . . .
and always loved.

[June 11, 1984]

About this poem

This dates from the finding of my central “household god” — recounted in part in my 2006 post “A brief spiritual history” — the forest spirit Mielikki, who is metsolan emäntä: Mistress of Woodland. The name Mielikki combined the word mieli = heart, mind, consciousness, desire, etc., plus the suffix of endearment -kki.

Mielikki is also a central figure in my novel-in-progress Mistress of Woodland, which I’m finally back at work on.

[Good! We've been waiting! — M.]
[Yes.  Still waters run deep, but waters that are too still get stagnant. And grow algae. — V.]
[So says the Slackwater Man. — M.]
[When the helvetti you gonna write a poem about me? — L.]

Related posts:

1. Metsän henki
2. A brief spiritual history
3. Breaking through on Ophelia

This porridge isn't congealed. But I needed a photo to illustrate the post, & this came closest. It's entitled "Breakfast with Dexter": people who have seen the title sequence to the Showtime series "Dexter" know what I talking about. It's actually just an innocent serving of steelcut oats with raspberries and walnuts. Yum.

I don’t know why anyone would search on congealed remains of porridge.  Nonetheless, yesterday not just one, but two searches on that term led people to my blog.

If you Google on that search term yourself, you’ll find two results beating out my blog for the highest ranked searches.

Top honors goes to “In Vietnam, Cauldrons on Every Corner” by David Farley in the New York Times for 21 Mar 2010, which story begins,

“You like congealed pigs’ blood?” my travel companion asked, pulling me over to a street cart in Ho Chi Minh City. Before I could answer, two bowls of chao, a rice porridge bobbing with slices of pork sausage and cubes of coagulated blood, were plopped in our hands.

Pig’s blood porridge? It’s like a conflation of “Goldilocks & the Three Bears” & the “Three Little Pigs”!  But the story’s worth a read: it’s about a culinary tour of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) led by Michael Huynh, one of New York’s top Vietnamese chef’s & restaurateurs. The article had a similar effect on me as the Vietnam passages of Anthony Bourdain‘s A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines: it makes me really want to visit Vietnam and try some of that great food. Maybe even pig’s blood porridge!

Failing a trip to Vietnam, maybe I’ll reread Bourdain’s book and visit my local Vietnamese restaurant.

The next highest search result is a detailed answer to the question, “When are liquids considered like solids? [liquids: congealed]“ from “The Gisi Turkel Maseches Nazir: Outlines of Halachos from the DAF” prepared by Rabbi P. Feldman of Kollel Iyun Hadaf, Yerushalayim (Jerusalem).  This was more difficult reading for me, as it contained a number of unfamiliar terms — though I did see pretty quickly that it had to do with Jewish dietary law.

Halachos, Wikipedia reveals, is “the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law (the 613 mitzvot) and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions,” and Kollel Iyun Hadaf is a group of Jewish religious scholars, teachers, and writers operating from P’nei Shmuel Synagogue of Har Nof, Jerusalem. One of its rabbis, Rabbi Pesach Feldman, is charged with preparing point-by-point outlines for the Dafyomi Advancement Forum (DAF). Daf yomi, meaning literally page of the day (or, more accurately, folio of the day, because both sides of the page are studied), is, per Wikipedia, “a daily regimen undertaken to study the Babylonian Talmud one folio…a day. Under this regimen, the entire Talmud would be completed, one day at a time, in a cycle of seven and a half years.” Thousands of Jews worldwide participate daily in this study of the Talmud, a central record of Jewish rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs, and history.

So what this search result landed me on was a point-by-point outline intended to assist students of Talmud around the world in their daily study — in this case, a folio from Nazir, a treatise of the Talmud “devoted chiefly to a discussion of the laws of the Nazirite laid down in Numbers 6: 1–21″ of the Hebrew Bible (per Wikipedia).

I like knowing this. I like having stumbled upon an entire web of human relationship in which men and women around the world are deepening their connections to one another and to their faith.

But what about the third search result? This is the one that actually landed two people on my blog: on the story “Goldilocks & the Three Bears: A Retelling” — the only one of the top three search results, I might add, that includes the terms congealed remained of porridge as a complete, unified phrase.  [Patting myself on the back.]

Baby Bear has a rough go of it in "Goldilocks & the Three Bears: A Retelling"

The fifth search result, incidentally, lands people in my Flickr photostream at the picture that inspired the story, and where the story first appeared.  I wrote the tale for a Flickr group called “Lost Objects” that a friend of mine started in 2006.  “I like to go hiking,” my friend said, “and when I do, I come across a lot of lost objects. These objects raise questions, stories and that’s why I thought of creating a group were anyone can put their photos of lost objects they found and, if they want, tell a story about it, true or just imagination.” My lost object was an abandoned red & white teddy bear I spotted one day at Fairbanks Street & E. Northern Lights Boulevard in Anchorage.

“Goldilocks & the Three Bears: A Retelling” also has the distinction of being the 10th most popular post on my blog, with 603 hits to date.  It’s my second most popular post that has nothing to do with politics (the first being “Queensland floods” with 1,007 hits to date), which gives it a special place in my heart, since Henkimaa is trying really hard not to be a politics blog, and to be much more about stuff that feeds my spirit, like my writing.

And like laughter.  Because this story is also funny.  So please feel encouraged to increase my “not about politics” stats by clicking through & reading it.

(Disclaimer: there’s no conflation with the “Three Little Pigs.”)

I close with a special hat tip to Steve Aufrecht, whose posts about weird Google searches on his blog What Do I Know? served as inspiration for this post.

Related posts:

1. Goldilocks & the Three Bears: A Retelling
2. Now I REALLY feel like a writer again
3. Momentum through Mystery

….yawwwwwnnnn….

I couldn’t find a photo of me actually yawning, but here’s one where I look sleepy and have my mouth open, so it’ll have to do:

I do have an excuse.

From their Minority Report precog pool, the precogs may be heard to be crying out, “That’s what they all say!” All the same, it’s true: I’ve been busy.

There’s my day job, of course.  That always prevents me from becoming a full-time pajama-clad blogger.

But also, as announced on January 30, I’ve taken on the role of co-administrator (as well as ongoing contributor), on Bent Alaska, Alaska’s LGBTA blog. In the past few weeks, this has meant moving Bent from its former platform on Blogger to WordPress, starting up a Facebook page to supplement Bent’s (more private) Facebook profile, and joining Bent to the Twitterverse as @bentalaska.  On top of that, my co-admin, E. Ross, has been out of town for the past month, and so all posting to Bent for the past several weeks has fallen to me, as was the case last November just before my own trip to Australia.  I’ll tell you, the amount of work involved in just staying up-to-date on news, events, and other stuff in or of interest to the LGBTA community is pretty much a full-time job in itself, much less actually writing posts about all of it — I congratulate E. Ross on all she’s done to keep Bent Alaska going all by herself these past three years.

Besides posting for Bent (all posts for the past month have physically been posted by me, regardless of actual authorship), I’ve also written a few posts there, some of which I do not crosspost here at Henkimaa. The interested can find them here.  Most recently, I’ve written about the Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey (published originally as an op-ed for the Anchorage Press), a Fairbanks fundraiser for gay cabbie injured in an assault, the death two weeks ago of PFLAG’s Chuck O’Connell, and the consideration by the University of Alaska Board of Regents — and ultimately the passage last week — of a policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation on all University of Alaska campuses.

On the writing side of things, I’m still making it my business to head over every Saturday to Side Street Espresso, which has been my favorite writing venue since 1994.  We’ve lately been joined regularly by my writing buddy Rob, who I met through the past couple years of NaNoWriMo, and his non-writerly-but-nonetheless-very-cool wife Karen.  We’ve also been making it over to a new writing venue for me — the Sugarspoon — which has lots of tasty desserts that I never eat because I’m prediabetic, but also has great quiche, great coffee, great free WiFi, and great hours (Tuesday-Sunday, 11 AM — 11 PM) that are well-suited to the writerly crowd.  That’s also where the Anchorage Write Club (@AKwriteclub) & the local NaNoWriMo group (@AnchorageNaNo) have lately been meeting to cafe-write together every Tuesday late-afternoon/evening.

And what have I been writing? Well, up until the last couple of weeks, not a heckuva lot, really.  What I’ve been doing instead is using a great new (to me) program called Scrivener to get my writing stuff sorted out.  Fellow NaNoer Abby told me about Scrivener at the tail end of NaNovember.  I visited Scrivener’s website — or rather, the company’s website, called Literature & Latte — where Scrivener is described as

a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents.

Well, what could be longer and more difficult than the last four years of chaos — including passages of narrative spanning three centuries-plus of timeline; on-the-fly background notes & invention of a complex story universe; research notes; & occasional whinging about houseflies (mostly in 2009) — that I’ve written in my Cold/Long Dark story universe over the course of the last four years during & between NaNoWriMo’s?

So in early December, just before hopping aboard Delta 2223 for the first of my four flights between Anchorage & Brisbane, I bought & downloaded Scrivener to my desktop & laptop computers (both downloads on the same generous license!), & even started going through its well-designed tutorial during a few cafe-writing sessions with my BrizVegan friend Sian.  I finally completed the tutorial on my return, & spent most of my writing sessions on my return getting all my Cold/Long Dark material in order.  Let me tell you: Scrivener is all that it’s cracked up to be — & then some.  I intend (“They all say that!” cry the precogs) to put together a longer review of this magnificent application soon.

And then — yes.  I began to write again.  At the moment, I’m working on material from a storyline called “Arrest” featuring Louava Solà, who came to Earth as a “data trader” at a Consensus embassy in Vancouver (B.C.) after a childhood & youth at an orbital station around the Saturn’s moon Titan. Whaddaya reckon?

(Meantime, a story finished in the wee hours of November 1 featuring Esti Gusev, born in a really yucky Martian religious community, has been accepted for publication, but I’m constrained to be pretty mysterious about it otherwise.)

(It occurs to me that I seem to have pretty good luck with stuff completed on November 1.)

I anticipate being taken away from writing “my” stuff, at least somewhat, by upcoming work on the Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey. Scrivener should come in handy for that, too.  Important stuff… but I can’t help feeling ambivalent, given how good it feels to be running around in a science fiction universe again.

If I had time to write more Henkimaa posts, what would I write? Well, actually, I intend (“They all —!” — there’s those damn precogs again, STFU!) to actually write some.  There’s uploading my Australia pics & writing about my trip.  There’s stuff I’ve been thinking about restorative justice, partly in relation to the Anthony Rollins case.  And I’m still thinking a lot (& still thinking a lot about writing about) the form of governance I learned about last year, sociocracy, which amongst other things has helped me to better understand the governance of my fictional Cold/Long Dark society called the Consensus.  And I want to write more about writing & what I’m writing about.  And then I have a friend who’s saying, could you post more of your poems, please?

I’ll see what I can do.

But that’s what I’ve been doing.

Related posts:

1. About "Cold"
2. October plans
3. Momentum through Mystery

We saw this license plate outside Sugarspoon when we went out writing on Tuesday.  I have no idea what the car owner intended with this vanity plate, but for me it’s a reminder to upload more of my Australia photos & write some blog posts about my month-long trip to the Great Southern Land!

Related posts:

1. Return from Oz
2. Whatever in hell I’ve been doing…
3. The Daily Tweets 2010-12-10: Koala cuddling

• Gay Alaskan joins AmeriCorps, makes it better for himself and other youth http://t.co/JBpSZ7z via @AddThis #
• Enjoying the Superbowl by completely ignoring it & all its boring hype & instead writing at the Sugarspoon. #fb #
• Guess I should avoid Twitter today too. It’s all about Superbowl & commercials. Only thing more boring to me is Sarah Palin. #fb #
• Is the Stuporbowl over yet? #fb #
• The boy’s g/f & I were both glad I wasn’t home today: so she could watch the Stuporbowl, & so I could NOT watch it. I wrote instead! #fb #

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2011-02-05: Side Street Saturday, preparing for Sugarspoon Sunday
2. OzDust
3. The Daily Tweets 2010-11-27: Last Side Street Saturday of 2010