Category: diary

Progesterone daze

Posted on by Liz Henry

Not a lot to report here – but that won’t stop me from over blogging about it.  I did want to mention I had a nice dinner out and a gossip with “Criplishus” and then over the weekend had the “Sunday Loaf” with radgendervibes where we hung out and did little projects – I mended some things, conditioned some boots and  a jacket, and tried stripping the dye from my boot toes and re-dying them to see if I could get them brighter red while she sewed something that was going to be a pincushion but turned out to be a tiny jewelry bag with a ribbon instead. We had tea and cookies and gossip and then tried some ways to modify the skirt of her dress. I am going to her dance performance soon so I heard all about that and what “heels dancing” is.

Anyway, I love mending and maintaining things. and i love my crafting stuff and sewing box(es) and tool bags and my little carton of leather maintaining stuff and the supplementary box of leather dye and deglazer etc. It is like having this quiet superpower. Danny and I are thinking to make the Sunday Loaf a regular and low key event.

I am still working out how to organize and store my wheelchair fixing and modding tools and materials, right now in 4 different toolbags, a shoebox, and a giant bag full of weird clamps and camera tripod parts, and then some PVC pipe of different widths and lengths.

I am reading through the entire series of Inspector Rostinov detective novels which are set in the USSR in the 80s. They are grossly sexist but still readable (somehow). I also started having a look at a giant doorstop of a book I got at the SFPL main library bookstore, called A Treasury of African Folklore, figuring I will at least look at the rabbit trickster stories in honor of Uncle Wiggly but it’s likely I’ll just read through it too!

I am not feeling 100% right now as some hormonal weirdness kicked off. Because of extremely heinous hot flashes I started taking estrogen a couple of years ago, which works amazingly well, except you have to take progesterone pills for the first 12 days of the month along with that in order to decrease your risk of uterine cancer and if you screw up the timing of the progesterone, or just think bad thoughts, or look funny at the sky, then you suddenly get either “breakthrough bleeding” or just a regular old period depending on if you think you are actually in menopause or not, which is NOT really well defined.

Either way, it makes me feel quite blah, with moments where it takes a huge effort of will just to get up and Do a Thing, and I am suddenly bleeding all over after months of Not Bleeding (I had to go search the basement for tampons) and also am having regular old painful cramps. I also have some fairly gnarly fibroids including some fibroids inside the uterine wall and adenomyosis which, if you have heard people complain about endometriosis I have that too but ALSO have it INSIDE THE UTERINE WALL. I am not knocking my uterus,  which did its job as well as it could. But i wish that it would be done doing things, growing things, leaking, being lumpy in strange new ways, feeling heavy, sloshing around in there like a, I don’t even know what. Like a heavy sloshing crampy thing.

Have  you seen those videos where guys wear a period simulator and some giggling women slowly turn up the knob from 1 to 10? It is best when it’s more than one dude at a time so they try to out macho each other but fail. I would love to try one of those machines and see if it really approximates the pain!  It does appear to from the stunned look on the dudes faces and the way they bend over and then when the dial turns up higher, the pain goes skittering down their leg and they freak out. Truly accurate. I think the period pain simulator is nothing without pouring about a quarter cup of blood into their pants though.

I spent an hour on a video call with my nephew looking at bits of his college essays and offering light editing analysis. He is always a bit mysterious, has exhibited a sort of strategic flare, or genius, from a young age as well as being able to inhale vast amounts of detail and analyze things at a high level.He is a very interesting thinker and has mastered a certain kind of rhetoric that made me think he will make a quite interesting career doing policy or political work.

My ex mom in law died this weekend and I am thinking about her a lot. I am so glad I got to see her and sit with her earlier this year at my ex’s wedding (which was so lovely!) And feel that we still had a connection. She was a really amazing and very intense person. M. came over and we hugged a lot and looked at old photo albums and talked about her for hours last night. I found an old letter she had sent from her trip to Tanzania where she not only climbed to hut 2 of Mt. Kilmanjaro but also visited some hospitals and small clinics for kids with cerebral palsy and developmental delays or disorders. So most of the letter was about that and I know she worked on those connections for years getting them equipment and other resources.

It seemed so wild at the time (~20 years ago) that you could email some random hospitals in Tanzania and introduce yourself, then show up, inspect everything, give some lectures, actually work a lot, and create a lasting connection. Never mind “going on vacation” – far too dull. They stayed in hostels a lot and would cook for everyone and then just go around meeting random Korean businesspeople who lived in town. You could also count on her and her husband both to do things people told them not to that were dangerous or forbidden or generally unwise. If there was a sign saying caution stay back, they would take it as a sign to investigate…. Sometimes maddening but also endearing. She also set money aside for all 5 of her grandchildren to help them through university. But, my memories of her are more about how hilarious she was and how she was a sort of shrieker and blurter and witchy cackler, and a generator of chaos, in a way that made us kindred spirits in a certain chaos goblin way. She only retired a couple of years ago at age 86. I am sad she has died but a little comforted to know she had been doing things like, reportedly, declaring it was fine now on her way out to have THREE DESSERTS if she felt like it. Correct!!!!

As I told various stories to my kid I had more of those stereotypical Gen X moments where i was just casually telling about something and the young person’s eyes go wide with concern and shock as they go “I’m so sorry that happened to you!” and they make you stop and get a hug. I cannot remember what the things were, because they don’t even register for me as particularly bad, but sometimes I can take the hug, step back, and think, Huh. OK. I’ll take a kind of care that I didn’t think was needed. Maybe it is!  I can learn things!!!! I thought a little bit about older relatives and how curious I was or would have been about their war experiences but how reticent they were to share.

We looked at several photo albums of their babyhood and toddler years and both sets of grandparents holding them and playing with them and I think that was a good grounding thing to do that made some space for emotions around loss but that were also making space for love.

 

Legion of Honor 100th anniversary festival

Posted on by Liz Henry

There was so much cake! A marching band! Sketching in the galleries! Ballerinas and an organ player! Printmaking and free art stuff and activities in a sort of swirling all day chaos. I spent all day at the Legion of Honor and had a great time.

a ballerina in mid step in a marble hall art gallery with marble rodin statues

It was heartening to show off this gorgeous corner of San Francisco and a day of amazing culture to my parents, who have moved here from Texas! My sister and I hauled them around the museum  – we went through the Mary Cassatt special exhibit and both gift shops – and to the lawn where we had our sandwiches and cookies we brought from home & then attacked the aftermath of the Cake Picnic.

I hadn’t realized that to get into the Cake Picnic proper, you had to bring an entire cake! Per person! (or maybe a small group?) I have to share photos of the before and after. There were hundreds of different cakes. After the main crew of cake-bringers were done, they unleashed the rest of us onto the remains strewn across the labyrinth of long tables covered in white tablecloths. The mess of plundered cake plates looked almost as beautiful and colorful as the “before” tables. dozens of differentcakes on tables on a lawn

My favorite thing about this was watching people wander through the devastation and the emotions playing across their faces. First, being overwhelmed and confused  – then desire, even greed and lust, warring with a sense of the forbidden – and the moment of decision where people just said Oh fuck it and dove right into the smeary cake stands to get a glob of icing and crumbs. It was so beautiful.  That is how you know the cake picnic was art. It made people FEEL very intensely! The absurd abundance, the variety, the love and intent behind making something so delicious, unnecessary, and flamboyant – and the collectiveness of everyone bringing cakes!

a long table covered in the remains of many many different cakes. a man leans over and puts a finger into one in the distance

(There were forks over by the statue of El Cid, but by the time I realized that it was far too late for me, personally.)

We all laid on the lawn on my picnic blanket and my dad commented after a while that he hadn’t sat on grass for probably 20 years. “No fire ants here!”  Maybe he will warm to California!!!

I made prints from someone’s lovely art  – a poster of Alma Spreckels and another of a scene from the movie Vertigo – And got a free embroidered patch of the  statue of the Thinker – And then somehow a free magnet of the museum building which is now on my fridge.

a screen print of the legion of honor building with its many columns and an old fashioned car

The Mary Cassatt exhibit was great especially for seeing the parts showing her drypoint and aquatint process and experiments. I will be back to see that entire exhibit a few times!

Have a pic of my sister and I sticking our tongues out in excitement at our feelings of identifying with the lady reading a book:

liz and sister grinning, sticking out tongues cheerfully while liz points at famous Cassat painting of a lady with a book

It is always thrilling to see the real paintings of art that I have only seen in books or online before. You can get right up and see the brush strokes and the tiny lines of the canvas showing through which makes it seem so, almost holy, and real, and created, and I feel a shivery feeling of connection with people long dead!

(Though honestly when I think about it, which i often do, i also feel that way about every object i’m looking at, like, a random brick or whatever. Or – riding the bus past SF’s cute little houses – I look at the ornamental moldings or features of the houses, like the plaster shield things, and think about the decisions and aesthetic sense of the builders, carpenters, or house owners who might have wanted them.)

I had a good time trying to sketch in the upper gallery. It was set up so you could get a card to sketch on, printed with a border like a gold picture frame. You then could choose 5 pencils from their boxes sorted by color, and there were stools you could also borrow to sit on for sketching. Here is the painting I tried to copy,

rough sketch of lady in neck ruffle dressoil painting of a lady in a low cut dress with a huge neck ruffle

While I have never been able to really do faces and also never had any art classes I do love to draw and manage to do it expressively – there were some years where I drew comics and loved it but I was so slow at it that it was sometimes frustrating. Someday I’d like to take art classes and do a live drawing, contour drawing, all that kind of thing!   But words come more naturally to me and are my first love.

I tried to get one of the free wheelchair van Waymos, but none were around. My sister drove our parents back to the East Bay.  I ended up barrelling to Geary down the huge hill, which I love anyway — it is not like I go faster downhill in a powerchair, which limits my speed, but it feels extra joyous anyway on that particular hill and it’s a gorgeous landscape. I recall thinking, Huh a guy in a flat cap , looks a little like Horehound – but I raced past without even looking somehow and then we realized at the bus stop on Geary that we knew each other. It was nice riding the bus and chatting with Horehound (one of my favorite poets in the bay area – along with Steve Artnsen, Juba Kalamka, and Daphne Gottlieb, and Diamond Dave –  and some person named maybe “King” of indeterminate gender who read a brilliant poem about pouring milk into their cereal, while crouched on a stump in Holly Park earlier this year – and i’d like to meet more poets!!! I hope next year I will go to more open mics! )   A good end to a glorious day of connection with other people, strangers, my own family, and a fabulous poet acquaintance who I should go email right now so we can exchange information about various readings coming up.

Poesía hangout; bus stop philosophy

Posted on by Liz

A sunny cafe table at 18th and Castro – Sun’s out, buns out fully in force – I remove 3 layers of clothing from the chilly morning – A delicious salmon foccacia sandwich and the wifi password – pride flags flutter in the mild breeze – Conversations at neighboring table wafting towards me – they do not APPRECIATE my paintings, they are MEAN to me – they didn’t HANG THEM how i said – the DEYOUNG – I side eye over to the irked artist and her sounding board – cute boys with white beards quietly sip their coffee, one of them in a men’s dress shirt with spangled epaulettes – As the youth say – the vibes were impeccable.

colorful art nouveau poster taped onto a light pole of a sexy masked lady in a bustier and red stockings for an event called fancy pants

I did a lot of fiddly online things setting up stuff for my nonprofit, GOAT. And wrote lists of more stuff to do, and drafted posts and emails and emailed people and did all that kind of stuff. No poetry was written today (alas) in Poesía. I stuffed extra dollars in the tip jar for table rent.

Earlier – I tried to buy some flowers on 24th street and thought “Oh a bargain, 7 dollars” but then surprise, they were 84 dollars. What?! What the fuck? Absolutely not. (the “7” was merely an internal store code?) No flowers for me!

My brother in law texted me from the beach and I invited him to join me at the cafe, so then we had a lot of discussion of things like engineering meeting practices and what happens in the work life of a Principal engineer, what we might do someday if we retire, the intricate fucked up politics of our various families, and of course (because I was thinking about it) blogs. Lua was mentioned – Scheme – I suggested he might like looking at Spritely (goblins?)–

We drank two large bottles of water in an interestingly striped glass, striped sideways so when you look through the bottle, you see the stripes intersect and cross the stripes on the other side of the bottle, and I thought about how to do that myself maybe with some sort of calligraphic paint pen and a long narrow stencil cutout – Imperfectly.

I got my nephew an enamel pin in Cliff’s Variety for his half birthday and got myself sparkly bobby pins. It doesn’t matter how butch or masc I go – DO NOT LAUGH – I swear to god I’m so masc – I am GLAM BUTCH – like David Bowie if he wore sparkling barrettes – SHUT UP !!!!!!

:: shoots cuffs foppishly ::

On the 24 bus on the way home it was quite crowded as it always is at the end of the day – Full of school kids and people coming back from shopping or the sutter hospital – And a somewhat frail older lady stood in front of me and I explained I was going to brace my foot on the bit of the turned-up seat so she should not be alarmed or think I was rudely sticking my foot up; we were about to go up and down a roller coaster of hills and without my foot bracing me, me and my 100 lbs of powerchair would squash her like a bug despite the “brakes being on”.

(There are no brakes, it is a solenoid thingie that kicks in when the chair’s power is off but people don’t understand that so I just agree that “the brakes are on”. )

She asked me (not to be rude) in a few different (rude) ways what was wrong with me – was i born this way or was it a disease – You know what this lady was extremely visibly ancient and I give a free pass to people too old to have a filter on their mouths and I like talking on the bus anyway and I am not in the mood to be pissy to any human being who isn’t a fucking nazi, so I mildly turned away her questions with INCREDIBLE SOCIAL JUJITSU.

She then said that life is hard for all of us! you can’t always tell but really that’s just how life is ! for everyone! it comes to us all! I agreed and commented further. She said, there is a quote she likes by a Spanish philosopher (I already knew who it was gonna be, do you?) It was something about being Lost – she wishes she knew the name – Naturally I whip out my phone (already in hand b/c Pokemon Go loves the bus) “Oh! You are – of course the Young people – the google – ?!” I nodded – I was indeed going to young people internet google the shit out of her quote. Oh, to be in the incredulous bewilderment, in the fog, expectant, as the “young people” do things quickly in front of us. It will come to us someday – You young people and your brain fungus hijinks – zapping everything – I just can’t get used to it!

I then show her Jose Ortega y Gassett’s wikiquote page and read her a few zingers. “We cannot put off living until we are ready.” “Life is fired at us point blank.” Oh! I think she liked that. We parted fast friends at 24th and Castro, with a handshake, smiles, and an exchange of names.

Two kinds of soup

Posted on by Liz Henry

Did some blogging for my nonprofit, GOAT, to talk about the DIY lights and safety workshop we ran with ILRCSF, and a small conference I gave a talk at, Common Tools. I also did some extra work on my 2 consulting jobs, co-working on video chat with Sumana for companionship.

Before lunch I had a walk to bring soup to yatima since I made a giant pot of chicken posole yesterday. I actually looked up whether it might be possible to rent a miniature pony to bring to her in the garret where she is isolating, because i would like for her to have all the ponies, but maybe isolation and a visiting pony and several flights of stairs don’t QUITE mix.

At lunch (which was escarole soup my mom brought me yesterday!)  I read a kids’ book, Summer of the Swans, that I picked up from a little free library along the Bernal Cut. It’s a Newbery Medal winner from 1970 that I remember looking at and rejecting when I was a kid, basically for gender reasons as the main character bugged me so much I didn’t want to read the rest. I didn’t mind super old fashioned girls’ books when I was younger, like reading Heidi, or Pollyanna, or whatever, but a vaguely modern tween girl freaking the hell out that her feet were too big and hates her nose or whatever, was a big fat no.   However, I read it while eating my soup today.

In Summer of the Swans there are two POV characters, Sara who is about to be 14, and her little brother Charlie, who is non neurotypical in some way because of a severe fever he had when he was a toddler. Their older sister is 19 but acts maybe 15 by my standards even for 1970, maybe especially for 1970. Anyway, the younger brother has mutism and some kind of developmental delay, and his sister Sara has a fairly strong bond with him and defends him against people who bully or tease him. He then wanders off in the night and the extremely thin plot of the book is basically that Sara realizes how much she loves him and finds him in the woods along with the Yukkiest Boy she totally hated who turns out to be quite nice and asks her on a date for that very evening. The end!  Yawn. Did this deserve the Newbery? It is probably notable for having Charlie be a sympathetic character and including his point of view and how he thinks and experiences the world and what he considers important, and the fact that his family respects him maybe is radical for 1970 or even today.

The book goes right back out onto a free shelf though. I pick up a lot of free kids’ books like this, read and release them, and only a few make it to the bookshelf of honor and preservation in my house!

I am also well into, maybe nearly done with, Can’t Spell Treason without Tea, which is as fluffy or flufflier than Legends and Lattes, and is basically a knockoff of it where a tough palace guard and the land’s most powerful mage run off together to a small border town where they open a combination tea shop and bookstore/lending library while solving all the local political and magical problems and being adorable lesbians mildly processing their various insecurities and anxieties. Does our city guard “deserve” love or still feel she has to “earn” it? Does our mage take reasonable care of herself or run herself into the ground? Will they get married (duh yes but maybe in book 2). What will happen about the sucky, evil-ish Queen what’s her name? There are also mildly bad “puns” which I have to put in quotes because they hardly even deserve the name.

Obviously, I enjoy this comfort read and will read as many as appear before me magically on my Kindle.

Our contractors started painting today, or maybe just taping in preparation for painting the bathroom. Luis and his son also covered the back of the house in tyvek and started getting ready to do the exterior siding in the corridor alongside the new ramp, and also on the outside of the bathroom which was water damaged and a total teardown and rebuild. They are really great, but I am so ready for this project to be done with!!

Stardew and Voyager Farm await me – I am in mid summer and pushing hard on getting those 5 gold star melons for the Community Center bundle. I will also make myself amazing tacos with the remnants of the chicken posole. The broth is now gone, so it is just shredded chicken, peppers, tomatillos etc and the maiz blanco; I have white corn street taco sized tortillas which I will fry up lightly, maybe some refried beans from a can since didn’t think to cook actual dried beans, celantro, raw red pepper. I can’t remember if I have any salsa or cheese but am not feeling motivated to go out. Plain tacos are fine!

This weekend I am planning to hang out at the Legion of Honor museum festival with my sister and our parents and maybe my friend Mikayla. I will miss Lisa’s podcast for  Aaron Swartz Day this weekend (Saturday from 2-5pm) but planning to be on her podcast early next year to talk more about GOAT.

People told me slow my roll

Posted on by Liz

The song stuck in my head when I woke up this morning was Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi. A brilliant song (and album! listen to it all at once in order) and I also love the dreamlike music video where he keeps getting up off a couch and falling through windows and doors. (There is a different “official” music video that is oddly boring and standard.)

People told me slow my roll
I’m screamin’ out, Fuck that!
Imma do just what I want
looking ahead no turning back!

– Brought to you by the couch where I have my feet up and my knee in a stabilizing wrap

I flew to DC for a summit at Gallaudet on disability, tech, and labor rights! Went to the Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Natural History Museum! It was a lovely trip & I met so many great people- and will write that experience up soon.

Back home again, I was not feeling up to even travelling across the bay, but did my talk for Common Tools via Zoom. Another great gathering where I met interesting people and learned some things.

Last night went to Writers with Drinks, the Banned Books edition, which was also great!

I *will* have to slow my roll any moment now but not yet, lord….

Bathtubs and books, hippies

Posted on by Liz

I had a relaxing and luxurious bath this morning in our new clawfoot tub, which is blowing our minds after some years of only having a shower in the house. While I was in there I read a good way into a book someone left on our sidewalk bench, Polaroids from the Dead by Douglas Coupland. I liked the title and was curious what Mr. “Gen X” inventor had to say. (For accompaniment, I put on Lou Reed’s album Transformer.) So far, Polaroids strikes me as mostly accurate in mood and content. I moved to the Bay Area in 1990 so it was all very familiar. It did feel a little more like the late 80s but still, accurate.

Part of the mood that I enjoyed was that it conveyed our (us being people roughly of my age in 1991 or so) attitude towards hippies and the 70s, which was that they seemed to have had all the fun and excitement but that there was a little left for us; they would kindly sell us blotter acid, and we could still go see them in concert.

I thought less about California in the 90s while reading this book and more about Austin in the 80s. I lived in or hung out at various co-ops (and yes it was pretty much exactly like the movie Slacker which captured the vibe perfectly (ofc I knew half the people in there) in that it was possible to live on your part time minimum wage job and go to school and fuck around doing art and music or whatever. ) So tempting to keep nesting parentheses, but no.

Here’s me with a guy I briefly “dated” (if you can call it that) from Arrakis Co-op and then a little after I moved into 21st Street Co-op in late 1986 or early 1987. He was a Deadhead and very nice, and had cases and cases of taped Dead concerts carefully labelled & often with very lovely art and handwritten liner notes. (I remember being impressed with this and also with how he would diligently do all his engineering homework, then hit the bong with equal diligence afterward.) But my point is that hippie culture was not at all dead in 1987, or 1990. It was alive and kicking. I was so relieved that I hadn’t missed my chance after all to experience it.

two white young people, me in sleeveless crop top, guy with mullet in a Woodstock tshirt

There was a guy who would come by the Loud Suite (where I lived at first in 21st St) named Motorcycle Michael, who had long white guy dreads done up in a crocheted hat, drove a van, and always wore pretty much the same outfit made of that gorgeous oaxacan or guatemalan woven cloth and a tie died tshirt. He seemed to be the most obvious dealer hanging out there and I don’t think I bought anything from him (I did not need to ; see above photo of me; do you think I got free bong hits or??! It didn’t even occur to me, and besides, I had no money) It did not have any sort of creepy feel (Drug dealer or pusher hanging out with teenage students) but rather, a sort of benevolent uncle and friend vibe. (Trust me I have seen the creepy, gross, skeevy ones and know; or maybe i just am overly impressed with any older guy who was decent enough not to hit on me) Like, his life was bopping around between Mexico and all over Texas maybe, living in his van, hanging out with people who were pretty chill, listening to good music, being super generous with his time and energy, telling funny stories, helping people out, going to Dead concerts. He was part of the culture! I heard a while back through a co-op FB group that he died, and then I just looked him up again and found this interesting memoriam.

Pic below of Loud Suite life:

several young people sitting on dilapidated couches, looking happy

Lest you all think of me as a drug addled fool, I can reassure you I was not much into excess, was a complete lightweight, would cut blotter acid into quarters, etc. etc. (We won’t even talk about where the other drugs like X came from, *cough* *Rice chemistry students*) It was occasional! And social! I swear! Anyway, I still graduated and I appear to have a reasonable amount of brain cells left.

A more wholesome photo, of a bunch of us cooking in the industrial kitchen – I learned to cook here, and was dinner cook (for 100 people) and menu planner for many years. Here, Ethan, Paul Macafee, Karen, Mike LeFebre, and I are drinking Old Milwaukee and cooking dinner. Ok, mostly wholesome. I blame Paul for the cheap gross beer choice.

several young people gathered around a giant bowl of steaming food. they are drinking old milwaukee beers

ANYWAY. Because of prepping to go see The Way to Eden in Star Trek Live tonight we watched the original episode yesterday and laughed our asses off at the space hippie children! (Their drug use is implied only, but their vibe is impeccable!) Star Trek tried hard to come to grips with how the future might see hippies. Were they wrong?!

There were really lovely hippietastic moments I remember, like about 40 people from the co-op all tripping and going to see Koyaanisqatsi together. It was fine! We were a lovely social amoeba moving across the town and into the movie theater! The point was not the drugs so much as it was being gorgeously social and also experiencing and creating music and culture together!

I have forgotten my point. I have more to say about hippies, drugs, and the internet, which we all talked about at DWeb Camp and which I kind of go into in my long poem “Whole Earth Catalog”. But here, I think my point was that I have found it funny and a little sad sometimes to see people now worrying that they missed raves, or grunge, or riot grrrl, or zines, or whatever, and then I absolutely fucking love it when they realize they can JUST DO THOSE THINGS. Nothing is stopping you! You are in history, too! You can make an entire scene happen, and also, whatever else you are doing now, someone is going to look back on with fondness and longing, in some way that you are not even aware of as a Thing! You are in your own Thing right now!!!!!

Happy 2024!

Posted on by Liz

I didn’t do a year in review for 2023 and I hope I will do something like that. But it’s too much for this morning and I feel like just starting fresh with a diary of this first week.

On Sunday, NYE, I officiated a wedding in Golden Gate Park and that was really a lovely experience!! A first for me (and for the women getting married). My license was from American Marriage Ministries, which is non spiritual and non theist and which you can get free online in like, 5 minutes. We had several discussions about their feelings and what they wanted, I drafted a ceremony, gave them some sample vows to work from as a template, and we did the thing on about one weeks’ notice. Lovely group of friends, and the most biting and wearing of cat ears of any wedding I’ve ever officiated! On Jan 2 I went down to City Hall to turn in the license and got to enjoy the gorgeous building, and visit the statue of John F. Shelley, who is (probably) our house’s most famous former resident.

I hung out at home on Monday with Danny, then at Poesía Cafe to do some writing in the Castro and got a haircut and saw my sister & nephew. Allergy shots – More appointments – Cole Valley and Noe/24th – And today is Trans Nerd Brunch at Zeitgeist.

For reading: Foz Meadows Strange & Stubborn/ All the Hidden Paths (gay fantasy romance, angsty, good), Bookshops & Barbarians (not actually that good alas). A super cheesy kids’ series called The Historical House which is set in a particular made up house in London over 300 years, with a different 12 year old girl starring in each book. Each girl is incredibly bland but has some kind of ambition, and the stories connect. (Why do people dumb down books for middle grade! unnecessary! ) These actually sucked (SO BLAND, so bloodless) and yet I was drawn to read them all. I think because I just like the idea of thinking about the lives of all the people who have lived in a particular house.

I also SCORED majorly as I picked up an old paperback copy of The Unquiet Grave by “Palinurus” aka Cyril Connolly. I dipped in and out of it but haven’t read it through yet. He must have been fun at parties. (All that Benzedrine.) He may get invited to my secret End of Greatness club.

The best book I read this week was Wole Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon. This is just great, while it took a little bit for me to catch on to what was happening, about halfway through it built up to an amazing story of corporate gods and spirits and rebels, freelancer outlaws, power struggles between gods, a Nigerian and, I guess ancient near eastern (!) view of the world, a fantastic heist, a guest star spot by magician Aleistair Crowley & friend as well as his modern incarnation. The exotification of British magic was *chef’s kiss*.

It was so good also to have multiple times and locations within Africa, I don’t know how to express this in a way that isn’t clumsy, but, we get a sense of the greatness of history and huge diversity because of locations in Cairo, Tunisia (?), medieval Ghana, Axum/ ancient Ethiopia/Eritrea, and so on in addition to Nigeria past, present, and spirit-worldish.

This would make the BEST WEIRD MOVIE. Glitzy club scenes with terrifying rich people! Weird sex magic! Amazing historical panoramas! God wars! Spirit worlds! British Museum heist! Seriously.

As I read, I went on a zillionty Wikipedia and beyond spelunking expeditions, looking up people, places, myths, and so on. Any cultural reference I didn’t get, I looked up. I have to go back and make a list of the neat stuff I learned from my sidetrack habit while reading this book but one good starting point was the East African queen Gudit. And another neat one, the Eritrean Hawulti and other stelae!

Anyway, Talabi is another author I will follow with interest – I pre-ordered his next book, Convergence Problems!

And, if you haven’t read Africa Risen, it’s a very good anthology where I first encountered Talabi’s work, and I highly recommend it if you want to start getting into reading African science fiction authors!

Day off

Posted on by Liz

I always feel like I am taking too much sick time and people will be judging me but I looked at this year with my manager and I had taken 8 sick days and 6 vacation days. Something is wrong with how I am thinking!

I immediately took this Friday off to relax a little extra.

Some writing, maybe doing some garden work, going to Noisebridge, and I will get a massage. Wish me luck on getting someone who will pay attention to my need for gentle, basically geriatric, massage!