Good News

It's raining. It stopped for a while but will recommence later today & is expected to continue later this week (till sundown on Shabbos).

Que milagro, my friends, que milagro. The first burst of rain, which came during my fit of agonising insomnia at about six, blew a thick burst of white & black soot in front of it that coated every surface, inside the house & out.

Thankfully I had my computer off & covered, although it still required a good half-hour of cleaning in my room and the common rooms. My soles have been jet black since the fires commenced and only a pumice-stone removes it (by scraping the skin itself off).

The thin black ash-mud coated the outside of houses and horizontal surfaces, but the rain that followed was surprisingly thick for SoMex and it has washed a good deal away. It has also improved air quality significantly, a great bonus given the fact that the news was warning local families to check the air quality before letting their kids go out trick-or-treating tonight. Yeah, it was that bad.

Anyway, nothing much to report. It's cool & damp, I'm struck with horrible insomnia & therefore feel rather out of sorts & I'm somewhat bored. I think maybe I'll watch some TV or maybe a movie. We have Matrix: Reloaded inhouse, and I could watch that again.

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I am currently listening to: Susheela Raman, Love Trap
I am currently reading: the emilys' Waiting for Dorothy

A smart woman in a short skirt? Dood, get a fucking grip.

Looking for a smart woman in a short skirt: "Im a handsome, happy, single guy, looking for my soulmate, playmate and counterpart. I really enjoy doing just about anything outdoors, am a great cook, love to BBQ, beach it and enjoy a fine wine over candlelight. I love to snow ski, golf and travel. Sound good to you? An adventurous and intelligent spirit are two things that I give to any friendship/relationship, and things that I would like to see in return. Concern and compassion are also very important! My ideal match takes care of herself emotionally and physically, loves to travel, enjoys anything outdoors and has an open attitude toward sex. A great sense of humor and honesty are also very important to me. If you like hiking up a mountain, walking along the deserted beaches in winter, or dancing up a storm when the mood demands, then please write."

CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN TO THE BREEDERS THAT THEY HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE?

I know, I know. I've said it before & you don't need to hear it again. I just want to impress upon you how fucking often I have to put up with this shit that I post on it every couple weeks: every goddamn day I get IMed by some wanker. Literally. Like he's typing with lube on his fingers & then is deeply offended that I don't want to talk him off.

So I look at the fucking Yahoo profile just for goddamn sport. How do we match each other? Yahoo will tell you by highlighting the appropriate sections.

Now if the above description of a worldly, short-skirt wearing trailblazer marching up & down the fucking hill hasn't already made the point that I ain't her, let's review how I match his desires: well, he wants a non-fat woman who doesn't smoke.

How do I utterly miss his requirements? He wants a Christian woman. He wants an employed woman. He has no political opinions (he says). He wants a woman who will watch sports with him. He also wants a woman who will travel with him.

Okay, so not only is my city in a national state of emergency, but this unclefucker wants me to put on a tiny dress, watch football and Pray to the Lord while hiking the fucking Alps. And drinking.

Let me remind the viewer that I am an agoraphobic, politically rampaging feminist who has never worn a skirt in her life, is a Buddhist, a teetotaller, unemployed and is most kindly described as a woman by default - I ain't male, so I gotta be something, right?

The funny thing is that all of this is visible to him - except for the gender ambiguity, which may be visible in the picture but isn't really something you can note in a quick online profile because they only give you two options, male & female.

Not only that, but the only way in which he matches my desires - and he can see this when he reviews my profile - is that he doesn't smoke. Every other category - and there are 25 - doesn't match. Including that I am looking for a WOMAN.

Somebody get me a club. He stops in the middle of a fucking national emergency to send me an icebreaker?

My City is Burning to the Ground Around Me

San Diego is burning, and the largest of its fires is out of control. The sky is glowing red in two directions from my house. From outside the city reports show an impenetrable wall of smoke. When I got up this morning, the sun was blotted out to a red cherry and ash was raining down from the sky - it looked like Pompeii. The air stinks of smoke, even in the house. Sometimes it's hard to breathe without coughing because of all the junk in the air. I have covered the electronics in the house because the ash filters in the cracks and settles on and in everything.

Five fires are burning; the only open highway runs along the coast and large numbers of the outlying areas had to be evacuated. Because of the Sta. Ana winds that blow off the deserts, the humidity had a grand high today of like 13% and gusts of wind drove the flames along as fast as the pumper trucks could drive away from them, about 45 MPH. Some people have been found dead in their cars because they were unable to outrace the flames.

This area is full of eucalyptus trees, which are essentially giant oil tanks and explode like bombs, raining burning liquid all around them. Already the largest fire has burned a sixth of San Diego City, the part enclosed by the city limits proper. Damage to the county is unmeasurable in a literal sense: we cannot guess at the disaster they have caused.

The city is cut off from evacuation to the south, east and north; only northwest on the 5 is still open and it is bumper-to-bumper. Even the Mexican side of the border is impassable: a wall of flame has devoured the road from Ensenada to Tecate and the American parallel highway was already gone this morning. So we are sitting in a ring of fire with our backs to the ocean and thick, oily smoke choking us.

In the chaos today, a Cessna crashed on the 163 highway about a mile West of my house while trying to land only thirty feet from the most densely-populated region of the city. It crashed about a two-minute walk from where my mother and sister stayed when they visited me, in fact.

I live in North Park, which is the middle of the city. Right now, the fires are about three miles from my house along the main highways; they have evacuated a community that is about a five-minute drive from my front door, Tierrasanta. Hopefully the fact that I live here means the fire will not burn here; there are almost a thousand fire fighters fighting the largest fire, which is out of control and directly north of me. They will do anything to keep the heavy areas of the city, the backbone of San Diego, from burning up.

If I'm evacuated I might not be back online for a bit. Don't panic, I'll be around.

Ridin' the Bus

"The Bus" is a Boston nickname for an ambulance. And that's what my roomie is doing now: riding the bus.

He's been ill for a while, but tonight he hit a crisis point and It Was Time. Deciding to call the Bus is no easy decision unless someone has a 2x4 in their head; you have to weigh guilt that your problem isn't sufficiently severe against reality, and it's never an easy sell. I evaluated him and listened to his opinions, but in the end I didn't think he was quite ready to be the person making the decision. It's better to take the sick person's experience and then decide to call 911 on their behalf than to make them make the decision alone. You have to be proactive, especially when they are stubborn about having others help them.

So I talked to him and told him my honest opinion, and listened to what he said, and told him that for X and Y reasons (symptoms), I was going to call the bus unless he explicitly insisted I not do so. This was especially important to decide for him because he was not entirely lucid, although he insisted he was.

For like the millionth time in my life (but the first time for this roomie, mind you) I got to call 911: I was really good on the phone, I had already everything in order that I needed to know and it was like "blah blah blah" and everything was imparted. I had done every preparation they want you to do (put up pets, get his i.d. and med cards and meds) and even cleared the hallway and outside stairs and gotten a neighbour to go stand out and wave the men down and packed his toothbrush and extra underwear and t-shirt and sweater.

I walked them in like a pro, giving them his name and any information he might skip or is pertinent and then waited patiently until they had assessed, moved him to the Bus & tried to figure out where they'd be taking him.

How many times I have done this, oy. Calm as a cucumber, without a quiver in my belly. This kind of emergency I can handle without any emotional excitement to interfere.

Now is the afterword. Now is when I freak out. When you are assessing health, evaluating and deciding, making that great step of dialing 911, you don't have the luxury of panic or excitement. You have to move like a ninja: no step out of place, silent and fast. Then you fall down in exhaustion and emotional overdrive.

I'm going to go do that now that I've told someone (you) this story: you kind of need to talk to someone about these kinds of experiences, a little after-action debriefing, and frankly it's three and not another soul is awake that I know. Now that I've reviewed what happened I'm going to go lie down and watch cartoons until I fall asleep when I'm not paying attention.

Scariest Fucking Movies I've Ever Watched

28 Days Later, which I watched this evening on DVD, has to be the second scariest fucking movie I have EVER seen. It was so scary it almost beat out the number one slot, which probably will always be, hands down, Boys Don't Cry. BDC was so utterly horrifying I had to watch it in ten minute sections with ten minute breaks inbetween, and only a long time after it actually came out on DVD could I get up the nerve.

Still, second-scariest movie for Sikozu is no small feat. This is the girl who laughed out loud through every scene of the uncut cult gore-fest Dead Alive, which made most people nauseous, and revels in horror-fests like se7en and has been known to start a cheery mood by sticking in Resident Evil during breakfast.

But I was fucking terrified. I couldn't barely watch it. I had to take breaks and breathe and walk and drink tea and play with the cat. It is like food spicy way, way beyond your league: for me, it's a pleasure that has no intestinal side-effects, it's just a question of getting it down, writhing in pain, actually crying and moaning in pain. It's worth it; it's even addictive.

This movie pushed the limits for me, and I love amnesia stories and horror. I can't quantify why: there was something clich� in the "corrupt army post" and the Evil Bad Men, but there was also some remarkably moving moments such as the gas station scene and the London graveyards of the unburied and the delayed-but-inevitability of the rape of the women that was so horrifying to watch.

Let's just say this: there are two alternate endings on this film on the DVD, one of which was the ending, which apparently was fucking dark as Satan's bowels. I can't watch that for a while. I need to roll around in the current ending for a while to ingrain it in my head before I can dare step into such a nightmare. Apparently audiences couldn't handle it; if the rest of the film is good representation of what it must be like I'm scared shitless thinking it's on the disk in my room.

So: watch it. I dare you. Then come talk to me. I love discussing the cultural memes that horror movies, particularly zombie movies, are parasitising: they reflect our own fears and amplify them, which is why we love them. We get to face them. So face the fears and let me know how head-on they are for you. Apparently I'm the intended audience - for one version of the film, anyway.

A Lot of Information at Once

The following is an edited excerpt of an email I sent to my sib. I feel like it makes a lot of points so I'm reposting it here.

One excerpted passage had a line I can't resist citing here out of context: I swear to god it's like living with that detective Monk, only an angry homosexual S&M leather bottom version thereof.

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Sib: "You know what? Even though you are chronic, I think that you ARE better because you can control things compared to how it used to be... Your disease is no different than a physical illness."

I know, but I always held on to the hope that the CAUSE would fade. I hate taking meds with no forseeable end in sight. I hate being nonfunctional, it's boring. I'm not direly depressed, but that did take some time to accept so I was kind of down.

"What's this about moving back? What's the story? I like road trips, so I'd be in for it."

Well, I always said I didn't know when I was coming back. I would just know when the time was right. When winter has finished in New England the time may be right. I've considered Vancouver mostly because I can't stand to be a US citizen anymore, it's a fucking travesty, but prolly I should go back to New England for a while. Some of my friends there are planning to Move to Vancouve as well, so we can spend some time planning and living in Cambridge and if we get the schools and work and info worked out then we can go to Vancouver for good.

I don't miss the seasons although I do miss the actual land itself: swamps are miserable, moist, bug-filled holes, but hey: that's where we grew up, so I kind of have this special place for them in my heart. I knew the car culture would make me crazy with rage out here but I underestimated the insanity of this problem and the fact that I would suffer so much from IvoryToweritis. I might not be the smartest person in SoMex but I sure as hell am the only intellectually-minded person in 2200 miles. Christ, I like to be laid back but all these people do is take meth and drink. There's a great local music scene here, maybe the best in the nation to be honest, but I can't deal with people so I just listen to the pirate radio... which I get over the internet.

And frankly, I haven't made friends. I can't seem to meet anyone interesting, either sexually or not. [my roomie] is wonderful, but he has a GED and severe dyslexia and a strong aversion to pretty much everything I like intellectually. We don't have a lot in common to talk about as roommates except he likes to watch Star Trek, a surprise to me since he hates sci fi. [Another friend] is also wonderful but he's soooo Dad crossed with Grandpa J.

I have no female friends at all except for the extremely attractive married woman who lives next door with her super-cool record-spinning husband. [A old female friend of mine] is here but I've seen her twice despite the fact we live on the same street: she is one of those kinetically bizzy people who is also in graduate school.

In short, I have done enough healing in the sun. I'd like to get back to a more pleasantly populated place now that I can talk to people and want to go out and socialise some. I'd like to get back to a place where I can shop not in giganteous monster malls.

Finally, I still hate Mexican food and the ghetto people are so not for me. You know I've been stoned twice here by mojados who took me for a Muslim woman, right? Yeah. Seriously fucking amusing in hindsight, especially given that it was probably illegals who were assaulting me for being 'unamerican' when really I'm a Buddhist transsexual, but the fact that I now have to carry a weapon when walking alone bothers me. (Gee, I wonder why?)

So I'll prolly come back once the ice melts to stinky Cambridge; I don't know where I can afford to live yet but I'm sure I will have to figure out a way to get a self-propelled vehicle of some sort and live outside the city. (Got an extra motorcycle? Heh heh.) Time to take the next step in evolution: break out of the chrysalis, take some grad school classes in Cambridge, and find a woman. I'm gonna be 30 in no time flat and I'd REALLY like to be somewhere by then. I'd like most to have the surgery but the chance of me getting help from anyone to do that is slim to none. insh'all�hah!

yr sister the herm-it
(get it? ha ha ha!)

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I am currently listening to: Chopin, "Minute Waltz" (IT Classic) - I adore the any-platform JAVA program iRATE
I am currently reading:

Up from a Dark Place

Coming back from a long, dark teatime of the soul & body, I wonder where the last few weeks have gone. It seems like I have done nothing, that only a day or so has passed between when I was working normally for me and till now, but in fact it has been pretty long.

I'm boosting my strength now, building for a new position of power. I'm going to walk on water any time now.

First, though, I need to get out of the house. I feel like I've been indoors since August & I really don't enjoy it. I will buy a bicycle and bike on water instead. Better for the health.

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I am currently listening to: the Clash
I am currently reading: L J Nixon's Proxies & J Lynch's Pacific Languages: An Introduction.

Ich fil Sich nicht gut.

I am ill now. Ick. So I am on temporary hiatus.

Apparently I wasn't wrong:





Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz.

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I am currently listening to: unh my head hurts
I am currently reading: unh my eyes hurt too

High, honey, I'm help!

Oh my sweet dakinis, O G�ndu Sangmo, I'm so fucking high. I take nothing illegal. I take only prescription drugs. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do shit. And I am SO FUCKING HIGH. I dunno what the problem is, but it's hard to think about it because I feel so good. I think I'll have a 9.0 Richter brain pain later today, I think that a headache like the volcano what smothered Pompeii will fell me with vision-cracking pain that will leave me moaning under the pillows in the deep dark cold of my room. I've kept it under wraps, my room, because I know it's coming. Nothing this lovely comes without side effects. It's because doc changed the prescription but I want to roll around in the sheets swishing my feet in the cool luxury of freshly laundered bedding. I can tell Thor's hammer is coming, though. This is unnatural weather before the lightening and hail and bridge-breaking winds. Locked the room down, kept it icy cool from last night when the windows were wide and frigid air sailed in to paint every exposed surface with sharp, pleasurable freshness. Alcohol swabs without the smell of alcohol. Now it waits, still like the refrigerator, for me to stumble in, hiding my eyes from the light with long silk scarf tied around the head, to burrow under the insulating sheets which keep the freshness fresh longer, and suffer and sleep.

I ate decent food, I drink coffee for the caffeine that slows the agony, I down glass after chased glass of tip-toppy water; there is nothing more to do except float in artificial bliss and try not to think about how the world might actually just be normal right now but for my chronic depression and anxiety. I might feel like this all the time. Maybe this is the normal people feeling. This is why they can do things: work and dance and go out and party and drink and date and talk to people and take the bus. They feel like this, which feels like I'm experiencing deus ex machina. This is normalcy. This is why people love life. And for me it is an unexpected and totally unfamiliar Himalayan height of high-ness.

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I am currently listening to: Tricky, ooh Tricky with Bj?rk a songbird with a tongue of pure sounds from �sland
I am currently reading: Can't read, talking!

FUCKKKK

Uh, I feel nauseous and my back hurts and I have to write this letter and I have anxiety and I hate my life and there's that fucking helicopter again and I don't want to wash my hair and I want to be a nice person and I want to go away and I have no food in the house and I have to take my meds and I have to self-inject my hypodermic drugs and I feel tonight will be insomnia again FUCKKKK

Knives Out! Knives Out!

In "Tantra in Practice: Mapping a Tradition", the editor's introduction of Tantra in Practice (biblio below), White establishes the validity of having a book on "tantra" by providing a definition of it. He conducts a lengthy exploration of the topic and cites a particularly nice comment made by an earlier author, Andr� Padoux.

"Padoux (1986: 273), citing Biardeau, begins by saying that the doctrinal aspect of Tantra is 'an attempt to place kAma, desire, in every sense of the word, in the service of liberation... not to sacrifice this world for liberation's sake, but to reinstate it, in varying ways, within the perspective of salvation.'"

White then gives his own definition of tantra: "that Asian body of beliefs & practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains the universe, seeks to ritually appropriate & channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative & emancipatory ways. ... [M]any Tantric practitioners... would find [this definition] at variance with their own particular doctrines & perspectives. Buddhists, for example, would be inclined to replace the term 'energy' with 'teaching' or 'enlightened consciousness'."

White later goes on to clarify that the Buddhist "godhead" is in fact the fundamental quality of enlightenment present in all beings.

White also calls the mandala or utopian template of the universe through which the power flows a "mesocosm": it is a "middle ground" between the individual's microcosm and the universal macrocosm.

I am writing about such apparently esoteric things because there is a practical application to this information. Tantra is a method and approach to the practical matter of cracking open the universe and a fundamental way to change and learn. Images called 'yantras' are liberation machines; mantras are the sonic equivalents of higher orders of energy; letters, yoga and mudra are visual representations of the same energy.

All of this is eminently practical information. The Invisibles should have taught you that. Liberation from suffering does not take back seat to suffering. Tantrikas have existed in cultures and societies that sucked, that were fundamentally oppressive, that rewarded bad people and censured the good. Somehow, in those worlds, liberation flourished and the teachings of Buddhism changed cultures in very substantial ways.

Desire doesn't just mean lust. Desire is the whole package. I cannot bury my desire, choke my existence into nothingness as some white-wrapped virgin starving in the woods. I am built to burn. I am built to fuck, eat, sleep, shit, laugh, grieve and fight. No matter how fucked up the world becomes, I will still exist. I am scrappy, to quote someone I spoke to today: I am resiliant and nothing is going to slow me down.

This pep talk is a reminder to me that I fucking well exist. I'm not going to grey and fade away because some freaking lunatics run the country. No matter if this whole goddamn nation is stark fucking raving mad, which it is, and madmen seize control of the government because they think some god told them to rule the people because They Are Entitled, which they damn well might, I'll still be kicking people in the balls who give me shit.

Knives out, knives out, knives out. Radiohead wrote that song and I love them for it. It's my mantra.

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I am currently listening to: night insects
I am currently reading: White, David Gordon 2000: Tantra in Practice, Princeton Readings in Religions; Princeton NJ: Princeton U Press

If wishes were pennies, I'd have a vagina by now.

I wish I knew more than I do. I wish that that many-headed hydra, the Occupation Government, whose public faces include George "President Unelect" Bush, Condoleeza "Auntie Tom howdoisleep@nite" Rice & "No Justice No Peace" Ashcroft, would get its Herculean comeuppance. I wish my new governor wasn't as illegally elected as Bush. I wish my new governor wasn't Arnold "Sure I'm a Kennedy In-Law, Count the Molested Women" Schwarzenegger.

Mostly I wish this sinking feeling inside of me would go away: the one where men wearing arm-bands bayonet my queer ass because a small group of determined crazies hijacked my government in the name of the LORD.

Who woulda imagined "The Handmaid's Tale" would one day seem like a possibility?

Politics are definitely NOT as usual...

The Cali election approaches & I am filled with dread. First, will the recall succeed? If we are lucky, it will not. Second, will Schwarzenegger win? If we are lucky, he will not.

I have been offsite because I have been frantically researching, posting, educating & pontificating on politics. The race for the presidency fills me with what can only be described as "looming dread": it hangs over me like gastric distress about to strike.

One of the most respected economic and political theorists of our time has plainly stated that he sees our Occupation Government as a minority prepared to strike and seize power, a group opposed to fundamental notions of American government like basic democracy.

No kidding. Remember the election they stole? Remember the articles they wrote about the need to invade Iraq to start a world war against America's Enemies - before 9/11? Remember the fact that our own Attorney-General has covered over a traditional statue of Justice because he doesn't like what he sees when he looks at it? These are not erratic coincidences. They are emblematic of the fundamental opposition of the Occupation's leadership to American culture. They want blond children on a grassy hill praying to their breed of Lord and under the politico-religious leadership of their self-appointed minister-masters.

We've had our Reichstag fire: that was 9/11. What will our Kristallnacht be? Our Night of the Long Knives?