Wind magic

This is a very poetic post. I want to make this clear in case my more rational readers suspect that I have completely taken leave of my senses. The purpose here is not to describe the world as it is; it is to describe how I see the world, and how changing the way I see the world can make a significant difference in my life.

Life makes a lot of demands on all of us. When life got very demanding for me, my response was usually to gather up all the energy I could manage and charge right through it. Looking back, I don't think that technique ever worked as well as I had hoped, and it's resulted in a few breakdowns along the way, but I could kind of get by doing it. I'd always seen myself as a bit of a wimp, but I kind of got by.

That is no longer true. My illness has diminished my energy reserves considerably. I'm not completely incapacitated, but there is no "charging through" anymore. I have often lamented that I can no longer live with the intensity I used to.

I began to form an image of myself as a being desperate for energy. I pictured myself clawing at the walls of my life, hoping the friction would create the tiniest spark I could use. I pictured myself nursing tiny flames of life-force that could be blown away at any moment, leaving me barely able to get out of bed for days at a time.

Recently I viewed a broadcast of an opera with a friend of mine. There I realized that for me, fire is a poor metaphor for my power, and I suspect it always has been; perhaps that is why I have never seen myself as powerful. I drew inspiration from the singers, whose power came from moving air through their bodies, and I have adjusted my outlook accordingly. When life is demanding, I imagine myself becoming lighter, until lifting a hand to a task seems less daunting. When I start to get tired, I focus on keeping myself coasting until I can rest. And when I rest, I truly rest; I try very hard to let my preoccupations float away for a moment.

I don't think turning away from fiery thinking and towards airy thinking has actually given me more energy, but I think it has helped me better utilize what I have. I am a being of wind!

Vision

Fury

Why do I blog?

This winter I set the goal of doing something creative every day. Because of energy constraints and my desire to do things for my family like help out with the housework and take care of my kids, I've had to modify that goal. But I'm still trying to do something creative a few times a week, because it helps me to keep fighting through my health problems. Setting constructive goals for myself makes my life seem a little less pathetic.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't explain why I don't just create for myself and keep it to myself. Why do I put my creations up on the internet for all to see? I don't think it's egotism or exhibitionism. Those are excellent reasons to start a blog; I just don't think they're my reasons. I think I post my creations on this page because I honestly feel like this page is the only thing I have left to offer the world. There's a kind of desperation at work here; I hope you don't mind.

Thanks for listening.

Call for feedback

All right, readers (all five of you), I have some heavy stuff to throw out here in the near future. It might be a bit of a downer, and I'm sorry about that. But look on the bright side - it's me writing, and I can never be too depressing for too long. It just doesn't seem to be in my nature. So take heart; either we'll get through this together, or you'll go find something else to read. Either way, the world will go on (I hope - I'm suddenly really grateful the fate of the world doesn't hang on my blogging!)

There's a lot I need to say, so there will be a lot of writing involved. What I want to know from you is, should I put it all out there in one fell blog post, or should I try to put my thoughts into little bundles and post them a bit at a time? I can see advantages and disadvantages to each approach. The "one fell post" approach would allow me write about some things I really don't want to write about and move on as quickly as possible, but it would also be a lot to read all at once. The "small bundle" approach might be easier for a reader to process, but it also might be harder for a reader to see the ultimate point - where I'm going with all of this. I might lose them in the process.

What do you think?

I'm a lucky woman!

I have to keep telling myself this, because after a two year leave of absence, I have been talking to my professors about withdrawing from the biochemistry graduate program. This has made today very difficult for me, so let's focus on something positive, shall we?

I have a sexy husband who not only goes to work every day while my invalid ass convalesces, but he also does great cooking shirtless!

Ok, now that I've shared this, I suppose it's only fair I share bikini-clad soup-making pictures of me.

MMORPG roleplaying: Doyoh in training

I'm a big roleplaying geek, as I've mentioned before. So much so that, if possible, I like to turn my video gaming into a roleplaying opportunity. Therefore, I have written a short roleplaying passage for one of my characters in Final Fantasy XIV. Just a little background information: Doyoh belongs to a matriarchal, nocturnal community of cat people.

The axe feels heavy and clumsy in Doyoh Binbotaj's hands. It isn't precise like a spear or fast like a bow. She can't do any fancy footwork while wielding it like she can with her fist weapons. Doyoh swings it at the training dummy again; her arms feel like jelly. Why did she pick up the blasted thing in the first place?

The haze of her fatigue gives way to specks of moonlight shining through branches. In her mind Doyoh is back in the forest with her mother. She rolls onto her back, stuffed with fruit and antelope meat, contentment spreading through her body.

Never one to miss an opportunity for a lesson, Cemi Binbotaj speaks. "This is why our family have never been farmers, Doyoh. There are harvests all around us, all the time, if you just have the skills and tools to collect them. Training is the only seed you will ever need, and you will prosper."

The moonlight from her memory fades and once again becomes the shining metal of her axe. That was why she picked it up; to add one more set of skills to her toolbox. Doyoh takes a deep breath and swings even harder.

8/24/14 haiku

What is this odor
Like tomcat urination
I need a shower

Electronic music and constructing womanhood (and a little physics)

Anyone who gets to know me a little bit will discover that I'm a huge fan of VNV Nation. I drew heavily from my experiences with their music in writing about my fictional band Rupture Effect, when I wrote that their words have a way of describing everything about the world that thrills and disgusts me, as well as everything I hope for it. Their words can grind my heart into the dirt with their bitterness, then lift it - dust still falling from it like rain - with a call to stand up, endure, and help create a world worth living in. When I want to dramatically enhance my life experience - whether it's creating, celebrating, wallowing, contemplating, working, playing, whatever - I often turn to VNV Nation. What they have achieved is the reason anyone should strive to create art - they make life better. To make a long story short, I'm a huge fangirl.

(Quick side note: I posted a link to "The Concert" mostly to let people know or remind them that I'm very slowly writing a work of fiction. If you choose to read it, keep in mind that it's still pretty rough. I think it needs a serious overhaul.)

Anyone who gets to know me a little bit more will know that I also love singing. I enjoy listening to a good song as much as the next person, but I really enjoy it when I can sing along with a favorite. And lucky me, VNV Nation has some great songs for singing along! The down side is that VNV Nation singer Ronan Harris and I have different sets of pipes; namely, thanks to all the testosterone, his are pitched a little lower than mine. I have a deep enough voice that I can sing with him most of the time, but occasionally he hits a low note and loses me.

Physics to the rescue (which is only right, since physics got me into this predicament in the first place)! As it happens, if one wave has a frequency that is a power of two times that of another wave, those two waves have a special relationship. They still have different properties granted by their respective frequencies, but certain parts of their oscillations line up. What this means for sound waves is that if you play two such waves together it doesn't sound like crap, but neither does it have the complexity of two waves that create a pleasing interference pattern. In fact, the two waves sound very similar - so similar that musicians give them the same note name and call the frequency interval between them an octave. So yes, I could have just told you that I resolved this issue of vocal range by taking parts of VNV Nation's music "up an octave," but where would be the fun in that?

This solution was disappointing and unsatisfying. The power that infuses VNV Nation's music was gone. I sounded wimpy, and in a small way I cursed myself for being a woman.

At this point I want to state very clearly that I don't believe the female voice is incapable of being powerful. The opera world is full of powerful female voices! I'm not even saying that in a more modern context the female voice is incapable of being powerful. I'm not nearly as big a fan of Within Temptation as my husband is, but I still have to admire their power. What I'm saying is that most female singers express a different kind of power from what is expressed in the VNV Nation songs, and that's what I completely failed to capture.

As I tend to do when I run into an obstacle, I analyzed and intellectualized. While Ronan Harris's singing voice is very masculine, his poetic voice is not. At no point in listening to VNV Nation music do I feel excluded from the experience by being a woman. I never think to myself, "That was obviously written by a man," or, "You must need to be a man to 'get' this part." The words call out to my humanity, not my gender.

This realization gave me hope. If the power of VNV Nation resonates with me, it is in a sense my power as well. There should be a way I can claim it as such. That is now one of the challenges I have set for myself whenever I sing along to a VNV Nation song. The goal is not to sound exactly like Ronan Harris (because physics says no), but to capture that power with my voice - a woman's voice. And in the process, I am incorporating that power into my version of womanhood, just as it is part of Ronan Harris's version of manhood.

Mathematics and embroidery

Finally! Something that's not a haiku! I enjoy writing them, but I don't want them to be the extent of my creative endeavors. So, what have I been working on besides haikus? An embroidery pattern for my poor skirt. This has been an interesting project because I have both aesthetic and mathematical ideas for the form this pattern takes. Because of the mathematical component, I think I'll ultimately turn to writing a program to create the pattern I want. For right now, however, I'm playing around with it on graph paper to get a better feel for it. Here is the result:

Not much so far, but I'm looking forward to working on it some more. Stay tuned!

8/17/14 haiku

Night flowers half closed
Promise me a mystery
You don't see in day

8/16/14 haiku

Old blood mixed with pain
Not mystical or icky
Only my body

8/16/14 haiku

Remnants of New Year
Glittering, festive helices
Still brighten the room

8/14/14 haiku

Find serenity

Or heat and choler take me

August is for strength

8/13/14 haiku

An open window
Is a balm for my fever
Both body and mind

8/11/14 haiku

Moment of repose
Reaching into the future
One link at a time

8/10 Haiku

My cup is empty
I carry it facing up
So it can be filled

Wardrobe malfunction ... no, not THAT kind!

A few months ago I made this skirt, and I was very happy with it:

I was also happy with the boots I'm wearing with it in this picture; however, the hard caps on the heels of the boots quickly developed a tendency to fall off. I became increasingly less pleased with them and eventually got new boots. Behold!

These boots hold up much better so far, but you may observe that about halfway up the boot, hooks instead of eyelets are used to hold the laces. I didn't think anything of this feature until I tried to wear the boots with my skirt. The hooks immediately began catching the hem as I walked. This was the result:

However, I have found a solution to this problem: embroider along the skirt's hem. I believe the tighter embroidery stitches will be too small for the hooks to catch, unlike the looser stitch I use for hemming. It will also hold the hem tighter to the side of the skirt, preventing the hooks from getting under the hem. Additionally, it will be pretty! Now, to devise a pattern ...

Coming soon: creating an embroidery pattern, how I make amazing soup, angry drawing, Ariana discovers the nanomachines

Update 7/18/14

I've realized that trying to put together a Patreon video has been seriously interfering with my other creative pursuits. So today I decided to just do a written profile, get back to doing what I was doing, and if some time in the future I find the time/energy/inspiration to do a video, great. I'm a lot better at writing than speaking, anyway. In a few days I should be back to doing the quirky, whimsical stuff you know and love.

In the meantime, why not check out my Patreon page?

Update 7/8/14

The good news is that I got video footage yesterday! Yay! The bad news is that I'm exhausted today! Boo! The sad thing is, it wasn't even nice, polished video that made it look like I really knew what I was doing. No, it was crappy video of me sitting on my bed in front of my laptop's webcam, and it still sucked all the energy out of me!

I've realized two things making this video. One is that I'm a female version of Jeff Lewis. The tones and cadences of our speech are very similar. The other is that I need to work on moving my mouth more when I talk. I'm not really sure how to go about improving that, but it's something I'll be thinking about. It's odd; I open my mouth just fine when I sing, but it's like my jaw locks up when I'm just speaking. Any speech therapists, orators, or theater types among my readers who'd like to give me some hints on that?

On a more positive note, my daughter deserves a big thank-you! I realized that I would look and sound more natural if I were talking to a person instead of a camera, so she hung out just above my web cam and let me deliver my pitch to her. She's so helpful!

Now to rest and get my energy back so I can do some (very amateur) editing! There will be naps taken and nuts consumed!