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Saturday, May 4, 2002

Back again. Car did not break down, though it kept me on edge by making a funny noise all the way, as if a metal box half-full of pins was strapped to the right front fender. Other than that, the drive was very pleasant; though spring is well launched down here (and I love this particular moment, when the leaves have started to break out but the elegant branchy architecture of the trees is still visible, looking as if they'd been lightly airbrushed with green), up northwest it's still in that monochrome suspension between winter and spring, the only colors the faded dun of last year's dead vegetation, and the intense blue of the prairie sky. Lovely, in a stark austere sort of way.

The conference had its moments of interest; it was themed around the issues facing tribal colleges, and of Indian students in mainstream colleges. Thursday night we were invited to a powwow, with numerous drummers, singers, and dancers from local communities, most of whom seemed to be either related to each other or friends of long standing. Watching them, and pondering speeches from earlier in the day, with their emphasis on connection, community, tradition, family, the interrelatedness of all things, I found myself wondering what it would be like to live in that world, to live as someone for whom such things aren't just abstracted goals or nostalgic ideals but are simply baseline reality, as inarguable and fundamental as air and water. My own baseline reality is individuation, separation, autonomy, the freedom that comes from cutting ties; that's who and what I am, and I wouldn't really change it even if I could, but I get a little wistful sometimes looking at people who seem to live unquestioningly in connection. At one point in the evening, those of us in the audience were urged to come out onto the floor and join in the dance; it was a gracious offer, but I declined, feeling it would be hypocritical of me to pretend that I really had any business being out there.

Someday I really do want to write a story about Fraser's relationship with native people; I imagine that for him there's a lot of the same tension--the sense of alienness, the yearning to belong, the awareness of its impossibility.

Posted @ 09:20 AM CST [Link]2 comments

Thursday, May 2, 2002

About to hop in the car and take off for a four-and-a-half-hour drive to a gambling casino/resort on the White Earth Indian Reservation in far northwestern Minnesota, where I'll be attending a conference. Back Friday evening, if all goes well and the car doesn't break down (I seriously don't want to be stranded somewhere between Pelican Rapids and Waubun).

Two days away from the office and the phone ... heaven. Even if it is two days spent in a northern Minnesota gambling casino/resort. I don't gamble, so the recreational opportunities will likely be a bit limited, but I love long car trips, and this is a part of the state I actually haven't gotten to before, and I'm bringing my camera and my laptop with WIP.

Posted @ 06:58 AM CST [Link]2 comments

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

Last night's dream: I'm at a slash con, in some big-city hotel, having a good time, until right in the middle of one of the panels, a participant goes berserk, pulls out a gun, starts shooting, and by the time she's subdued she's killed six other con-goers.

What I remember clearly from the dream, besides the shock and grief, was a horrified sense of imminent public exposure: Oh my god, the police are going to be here! And the press! And they'll want to know exactly what we're all doing here, what this get-together is all about, and the cops will confiscate all the art show and dealer's room stuff as evidence, and there'll be huge lurid stories in all the papers, and we'll all be portrayed as unhinged potentially violent freaks, and legislatures will pass big anti-slash initiatives, and . . .

Heh. And if all fannish interaction took place in person, rather than on-line, there are times when I would want the metal detectors at the doors. I comfort myself with the thought that women are, on the whole, not given to random shooting sprees.

Posted @ 07:53 AM CST [Link]3 comments

Monday, April 29, 2002

So my cool new cabinet units arrived today from Ikea, and I'll finally have well-organized, orderly, attractive storage for the stereo, CDs, computer miscellany, overflow books, and the World's Largest Collection of Random Unlabelled Videotapes.

I will, that is, once I get the new cabinets assembled, which will be a fairly gargantuan project. Unfortunately, before I begin that, I must also unload and remove the big bookcase which is currently in the space where the new cabinets will go, doing an entirely inadequate job of holding all the abovementioned crap, and stash all its contents somewhere other than the limited amount of floor space which is going to have to be given over to assembly. Hm. The logistics of this are a little daunting.

So far, I've unloaded exactly one shelf, which was discovered to contain:
--17 cookbooks, and several other miscellaneous volumes (Edward Hoagland, Wallace Stegner, Click & Clack Car Talk);
--an old telephone that still works but that I don't currently use;
--an old computer mouse, ditto;
--outdated phone books;
--the screw-on attachment thingie for my camera tripod (I wondered where that went);
--a pair of nail clippers encased in a small model racing car, still in its original packaging, that someone gave me as an inexplicable gag gift;
--a friend's copy of Textual Poachers that I really need to return to her;
--the program from last year's Escapade;
--a very nice photo of the Coastal Range mountains, with a broken frame;
--gift wrapping paper, slightly crumpled but still useable.

The shelf right below that is mostly books; the one below that holds 67 videotapes (by rough count), entirely unsorted, many unlabelled; the one below that holds huge tottery stacks of audio cassette tapes, mostly not in their original cases, along with perhaps two dozen more videotapes; and the bottom shelf is heaped with random computer stuff, along with a semi-functional VCR and wads of mysterious cable and cords. All of it covered with cat fur and dust bunnies, of course.

God almighty. My own slatternliness astonishes me sometimes. And I have no idea where I'm going to put all this stuff for the time being. Maybe I could stuff it in big plastic trash bags and hide it on the back deck?

In other news, my cable is on the fritz this evening, which I interpret as God's way of telling me I ought not to subject myself to tonight's Angel. This also means my cable modem is down [sob], but fortunately I've got my old dial-up still working. (Yes, I'm spoiled, I know, I admit it. How did I survive all those years with a 26.6 modem?) All I can say is, the Time-Warner repair crew had better get out here before Buffy tomorrow; having sedulously avoided spoilers for weeks now, I'll be very cranky if I miss the next episode.

Posted @ 08:24 PM CST [Link]3 comments