sunday scribblings

y'know, i used to consider myself a diehard city girl. well, small town girl, anyway. i grew up in a little town in southern california called placentia, and yes i've heard all the phonetic and spelling jokes, thanks. it sits right in the middle of anaheim (home of the original disneyland), brea, fullerton, and yorba linda. it's a tiny little city, only 46, 500 people at the new millennium, up from 5200 back when i was born.

we had two freeway exits: one coming from the 91 fwy E/W, and the other from the 57 N/S. in the summertime we kids would stand on the brick wall in the back yard and watch the fireworks over at disneyland. we got none of the tourist income from the people visiting disneyland, or even the angel stadium. not even later, when disney built the duck pond and brought hockey to orange county. brea sported a mall that was actually listed in the top 10 places to shop in california a few weeks ago. fullerton has CSUF, home of the titans. yorba linda's where all the yuppy, million-dollar homes are located. and what does placentia have?

crude jokes and lots of mexicans.

but it was my city. i was a southern california girl, through and through. i was mightily in love with the vast expanses of track homes and ribbons of freeway spanning five, six, and seven tiers like a steel and concrete monument to the greatness of man's ingenuity. the smog bothered my asthma, but i'd been living with bad air all my life and near-death-by-asphyxiation experiences were The Way It Was. my bio-mother raised us on southern california tap water, so we were never lacking in our minerals, ha ha.

and the horizon! i would sigh with a passion akin to a lover's, beholding the horizon from the south all the way to the mountain range in the north. from east to west, the world was mine to behold. the sun kissed my skin a honey bronze for nine months out of the year, with a touch of red ochre to match my dark, indian-straight hair that belied the native in my blood. my people had always lived in the desert, and the shale and chapparal, the browns and reds and dull yellows against the pale blue sky was beautiful to my eyes.

the city, the desert, the flatland with a coastal breeze...it was the breath in my body and the blood in my veins. i was a desert creature. i was a city child.

i was a california girl.

then i was taken, kicking and screaming, to the strange and frigid pacific northwest. wild and untamed, raw and primal to my over-urbanized so.cal eyes. where was the dull and constant roar of the freeway not a quarter mile from the house of my childhood? where were the sounds of gunshots in the night, as gangs battled in the disputed territory where i called home, fighting and dying in the alley behind my house? where was the soft hallogen glow of an urban night? where was the horizon, open to me like a mother's arms?

now the only sounds to reach my ears were the soft chirps of crickets and frogs, and the echo of no traffic that was as thunderous and deafening as a scream in the night. the wind in the trees, sighing and whistling words on the edge of understanding. whispering a strange language i could not understand with my city ears. the night was black as a killer's heart, except when the moon was full and shone like bright, quicksilver midnight. it, too, caressed me with soft, sensual fingertips and spoke in a tongue i could not understand but my skin could feel. the vibrant and verdant trees towered over me, touching the sky into eternity, and sent me into such wild panic attacks because i could not find my beloved horizon.

my neighbors had farm animals. animals! horses and chickens and llamas! cows! i actually almost ran off the road in my car a few times because my city eyes grew wide whenever i saw something so incredible. i'd only ever seen farm animals once, back in preschool, except at a great distance. and never anything so exotic as llamas! and i'd never seen a tractor on the street before. ever. it blew my urban mind.

and yet...now i visit so.cal and i return to my northwestern wildness ill from the polluted air and hard, overly-chlorinated water, the hostility and natural apathy. the noise is deafening. we're talking seek-and-destroy my inner Funk. my soul has flourished in the softness of the oregon wilderness, with its rolling, verdant hills and soughing trees laden with sweet scents and snow as the season dictates, and crystalline cold streams secreted away in fae corners of anywhere...

town or country? my spirit is wed to the wild country. i'm from oregon...what are you talking about?


read more town & country scribblings...

sunday scribblings

masquerade!
paper faces on parade...
masquerade!
hide your face
so the world
will never find you.

flash of mauve...
splash of puce...
fool and king,
ghoul and goose...
green and black...
queen and priest...
trace of rouge,
face of beast...
faces!
take your turn, take a ride
on the merry-go-round
in an inhuman race!

-"masquerade" from phantom of the opera

at first i was tempted to write about the masks we wear for appearance's sake, the metaphorical mask. but we all wear masks, and isn't the topic a bit overdone?

what about halloween? it's only my favorite holiday of the year. of course, i also happen to find it fun to shout, "happy new year!" to passersby and chuckle at their confused, startled expressions. where i come from, halloween is called samhain (pronounced SOW-en) and is our new year's celebration. it's a time to remember the past year, and reflect on Those Who Have Gone Before.

but in the meantime...it's also a fantastic time to dress up. i always joke and say it's the one night of the year i can actually dress like myself. i get out my broom and pointy hat. but aren't we all like that, in some fashion or other? we dress up as things we want to be, because something within us feels an attraction, a pull, towards it. we're drawn to those things we recognize within ourselves. halloween gives us the freedom to revel and delve and explore it more deeply.

you wanna dress up like a troll? go ahead! what trollish qualities do you possess? revel in them! how can you make them a positive and powerful force in your life? you wanna be a fairy princess? a dwarf? this coming halloween i'm dressing up as a huge present with foil wrapping paper and a big, fat bow. the tag's gonna say, "TO: Men of the World, FROM: God."

hey, whoever said a bit of confidence and ego was a bad thing? *grin*

but seriously, there are masques and balls, not to mention convensions and cosplays all over the world. people love to dress up, to play, to be something "other" for a day, a night, a weekend.

sometimes those masks are truer than we think...

ready for more about masks?
mask picture above from GoblinArt

roots

i haven't been participating in the sunday scribblings lately because i've felt that i never had anything to contribute, i couldn't think of anything interesting to write. honestly, i started participating in memes to see if i could get more people reading iGoddess, to see if i could get people to think and imagine and grow to like my voice. i've since discovered that, unless you have tons of communities you belong to or you blog about a cat, the only way to get people to read what you write and actually respond to it is to leave comments on tons of blogs. well, i just don't have the time or energy.

here's where i would say, "well, then it's time i just get back to the roots of this blog." but...the focus has changed. and i've been true to that, i think. but sometimes i wonder at my reader response, my few and very loved and valued faithful readers, and how it reflects my life now with my few, but very loved and faithful family. perhaps the blog hordes just don't appreciate a rootless wonder gypsy wanderer?

most sunday scribblers have chosen to write about their own roots, where they come from, and where they are today. and as i sit and think about it, i have to wonder...

what do you do when you've mutated into a completely different plant than what your roots originally designed?

once upon a time i used to think that if i ever had to leave the house where i grew up (aka the house of oppression), i'd never go more than a few miles from the epicenter of my childhood. not that i liked my childhood, mind you, but in my case my roots had made it impossible for me to embrace the possibility of change. instead what happened was i was dragged, pretty much kicking and screaming, to the pacific northwest with a new baby and my white knight.

the knight error errant.


the memory makes me die laughing now, thank the Supreme Funk. now you'd have to drag me, kicking and screaming, away from portland. but it's not because of a panic at the thought of being dragged into the unknown. now the reluctance to leave stems from a deep and abiding love of having truly found my ideal climate.

my own eagerness to escape my abusive home made a cutting of me, clipped and taken far away from the mother plant. in my case, this was a Good Thing. five generations previous, my roots had taken a serious disease and it had spread throughout the root system to infect the entire plant as a whole, even though no one spoke of it and simply passed the sickness on to their budding little sprouts.

well, i was diseased, too. the cutting had the disease of the mother plant, after all. and while, for a while, i got worse, i've since discovered that my ideal climate doesn't foster such a disease, and it's being purged from my root system even as we speak.


i've put down my own roots now, i think. they're not going to ever be a fantastic root system, like some of the mightiest trees with their spreading roots to stabilize it and help it stand in the earth. nor am i like the amazing big-rooted springbeauty which is only a few inches tall but possesses a taproot that commonly reaches ten feet or more in length.


honestly, i think i'm more like salvia divinorum, the sage of the diviners. her roots are thin and spindly, spreading over just enough area to keep her stable, but the only way to propogate her is through cuttings. i flourished after i was cut from my mother plant. i've been uprooted a baker's dozen times in the span of only a few years, nine of which were in the last three years. yet i always sprout roots immediately and flourish as best i can. and if i don't, i uproot and transplant myself elsewhere. somewhere where the soil is rich and the sun warm, where love rains down upon me and i am sheltered from the worst of storms.

and even after the worst of storms, when the sun comes out, there are rainbows. how many people can say they grow in their ideal climate, whether possessed of enduring root structures or transplanted cuttings?

sunday scribblings

the topic this week was "crush," and the first thought to go through my mind was, "ew." no, seriously. i never had crushes; i had obsessions. every heartthrob was a potential white knight who would save me from the bio-parents. and if he couldn't save me, at least i could pour all my attention into him so i didn't have to face what was going on in my own life.

ah, denial is a beautiful thing.

so thinking about my own past crushes just makes me uncomfortable. i just got finished reading women who love too much by robin norwood, so i've already done a lot of pondering and reflecting on past crushes, thanks. on the other hand, as i've gotten older i've heard a lot more of people who had crushes on me. and, y'know, i never noticed. never even realized anyone was walking around with feelings like that. and for me!

and flirting! i never realize when someone's flirting with me. i just figure they're being polite and gentlemanly, so i'm polite and ladylike right back. i think it goes back to my non-existant self-esteem once upon a time. it just never occurs to me anyone could look at me that way. kind of like gravity, you just take it for granted and never think about it. it just Is. well, except for when you accidentally drop something and say to yourself, "yup! gravity still works. just checking."

not that i'm saying i still have non-existant self-esteem, just that i'm still in the habit of being totally oblivious to romantic affection.

it's like that time i was out with the parents and *cc*, and we went to this mexican restaurant they knew. our server was totally blown away by the fact he tried to trip me up speaking in spanish and i spoke it right back. his eyes went wide, everyone laughed, and i said, "gotcha!" he was really nice, though. i was uncomfortable with the conversation i kept trying to politely end and he kept trying to revive. *cc* finally saved me by pulling me outside into the sparkling, frosty night. a good girl speaks when spoken to, right?

oi vey, i still have a ways to go.

i blinked, waiting for my dad to unlock the jeep. "...was he flirting?"

"DUH!" came the universal reply, practically in 7.1 digital surround.

see? accidentally drop something, seeing if gravity still works. "oh." blink, blink. "just checking."


read more crushes!

sunday scribblings

my mission from sunday scribblings, should i choose to accept it, is to blog about chronicles. now, chronicles of what is entirely up to me. and since we're still so close to the inception of iGoddess, i've been trying for the past eighteen hours to think of something cleverly and breathtakingly literary, or at least something off-kilter and funky, since this is iGoddess, after all. (see definition of iGoddess above)

however, after talking with *ds* last night and venting, as we do sometimes, about our history of work in call centers and the resulting creation of a lasting aversion to fucktards (see friday posts), i thought i would come forth in a most humble manner and share a website i've loved and visited faithfully for years, the chronicles of george.

it's cathartic, in a way. not to mention it helps me feel mentally superior sometimes when i need to. if you're in the tech-support industry, work at call centers, or have anything to do with customer service, the chronicles of george was made for you. every stupid customer, every sarcastic comment, every moment you've had to stand there and smile, bend over and take the crappy and abusive treatment of some ignorant customer...every one of those moments was a baptism of sorts, and makes it (almost) worth it. so now you can begin reading, and feel the love, baby. feel the love.

...just fear the banality.