It's too early for this.

I am so tired; I should not have stayed up all night watching The Wire. I'm at Richmond International Airport -- I have a 6 o'clock flight to Rochester, NY, to attend my cousin's wedding. I'm hungry and tired and grumpy.

People In The City

On Belle Isle again. I'm interested in the way architecture and landscape have a more fluid boundery here (in Virginia) than any other place I've lived. Probably just a matter of age; you see a boulder on a hill, chances are good it was once part of a building.

My Ugly Mug (In Motion)

Pay no attention to my lack of chin. Or rather, my abundance thereof.

Oh, You Pretty Things!

I'm not walking anywhere near as far today, since last week's sojourn seriously kicked my ass. So here's a picture of the railroad trestle over the river again.

It is a nice day, though; it's a shame I don't have the motivation to walk further.

Sunday in the Park with Bill

I walked to Belle Isle again today. This is Hollywood Falls, as seen from the island.

It occurs to me that i started reading again when i started exercising more consistently in June. Coincidence?

Belle Isle

The view from Belle Isle to the shore, along the pedestrian bridge.

Canalwalking

Out and about among the canals. It's a pretty evening.

Richmond

I got a new phone, and this is a test.

My ceiling fan.

Anxious Robin

"But-- WHERE'S THE SUN GOING??"

"Holy overeasy, Batman!"

"I really have no idea where to start here."

Courtesy The Shocked Robin Generator, via Oz and Ends.

I Got A New Phone...

And it takes better pictures than my old one!

The Empire Never Ended

This was in the parking lot when I left for lunch yesterday:



When I first saw it, I thought it was just high-schooler who defaced her car with poster paint. But then I read what it says (it accuses me of being an ignoramus!), and if that is the case, girl has some issues with paranoia.

I'm not sure I agree with the car. (I can't believe I just typed that!) A brief definition comes up as:

overthrow something: to undermine or overthrow a government or other
institution

Um, what is it subverting? The mass media seems, if anything, to encourage complacence. To overthrow is an action; the milk that flows from the media teat is all about remaining passive. This undermines our political system, but, if anything, can be used effectively by a cunning government. But I'm also interpreting it as someone who is slightly to the left; I suppose a relatively convincing argument could be made for a proponent on the right.

Coincidentally, I am also rereading (for the umpteenth time) Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, a media product that actually is very conscious of trying to be subversive -- if not of any particular government, then of the concept of identity and time itself. Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics actually discussed the book in depth, and suddenly a lot of the peculiar bits sort of fall into place. It is one of the few books that actually does aspire to be a graphic novel: reading it now, you definitely get a sense that Morrison knew how he wanted it to end. That's not to say that the trajectory was a clear one, but he always had the end in sight.

For some reason, I'm getting a lot out of it this rereading.

Nostalgia For An Age Yet To Come

I went to the AmeriCorps graduation ceremony today, and I had a really good time of it. To be honest, this is in part due to the fact that I have not socialized at all since I last saw Eric, three weeks ago. I mean, I've seen people through Target, but that is hardly a social situation, and the fact is that most of my co-workers speak Spanish or Haitian-Creole. So it was good to see people who I know, who I work with, who I like.

I had wondered what Ray and Daron would be doing next year, since I know neither of them is particularly happy in south Florida. Apparently, they have decided to continue to live together down here, which is good, since they are my friends, and I like them.

Anyways, I'm not going to get too into it, but it was just nice to be reminded that people still cared about me and whatnot. It was nice to know that they were interested. And it also gave me a lot of closure that the mass firing did not: I was able to talk to the other people who work in that community, and it came across as much of a surprise to them as it was for me. It was just a badly-coordinated conclusion to a badly-run program, and it heartened me that everybody in the community knew just what I was enduring in that office.

The event also (predictably) made me nostalgic about my AmeriCorps year. Not that I'd ever go back, but it was a lot of fun, and I made some good friends. So now, thanks to the wonder of the printer-scanner that I've recently brought, I present random pictures featuring my friends from that year.

Brianna, Sandra and I at the old De Porres P.L.A.C.E. Brianna and I worked as teachers at the site, and Sandra was a student there who eventually became the secretary and office coordinator. I think this picture was taken when we were celebrating my birthday.

Dawn being harassed by the Catman during my one and only trip to Key West. He came across as a faux-French pervert, and his cats kept trying to make a break for it. I still have the sticker that she is holding, too.

This is Dave and I from the very first week of AmeriCorps, in front of the fabled sculpture, "Sister, Your Mask Is Showing". This is indeed the sculpture that inspired Dave and I to write poetry while waiting for our appointments to get food stamps, which my cousin and I later recorded as a "song". The stain on the crotch is on the print of the photo, not on the shorts that I am wearing. I swear.

It was a very good year. This year will be even better: that's what I keep telling myself, and that's the story I'm sticking to.

Meme-ories Are Made Of This

Blame Minge.

What is the earliest memory you have as a child? Think far back.

My earliest memory is when my parents were moving from their first house, and into the house we lived at until I was 12. They had to go back to the old house to retrieve my sandbox once all the furniture had been moved, and the new owners were really nice to me. I suppose they probably thought that I was adorable, since I was only 2 years old. I don't remember ever living in that first house, but I remember moving. This fact that I can remember that far back has resulted in my being designated "the one with the good memory" within my family. Except when they think that I'm not remembering things right, in which case, and in spite of all evidence, I am declared a complete nitwit.

What is a special memory you have about someone? It could be a grandparent, family friend - not including your parents - that you knew as a child. What do you recall about them that makes the memory special?

My grandfather once paid what I thought was an obscene amount -- $6.00, if memory serves -- to get a library card once while I was staying with him and my grandmother one summer. They lived outside town, and had to pay to get the card. I was a little surprised that he didn't already have one. I ended up using it to borrow James & The Giant Peach for the umpteenth time -- my second grade teacher had read it to our class, and I became obsessed with reading and re-reading it. I dunno: I don't much cotton to "special memories".

What was a favourite game you played as a child?

Hide-and-go-seek in the dark. Our basement had no windows in it, so that meant that when you turned the lights off, it was just about as dark as you could possibly hope for. Plus, there were rooms and closets to hide in. The only time I ever played it seemed to be when my cousins were visiting, so that also might have something to do about why I enjoyed it so much: I always liked seeing my cousins. I was never particularly good at it, because, even then, I was the biggest and most uncoordinated of all of us. If I ever moved at all, to try to make a dash for "home base" -- the stairs upstairs, which, if you reached it, meant you were safe -- I was as good as caught. Not only that, but to this day I am incredibly prone to giggle fits when I get excited, so that meant that I would always be hunched over in the darkness, my hands clamped over my mouth, trying desperately to stifle my laughter, hoping that my brother or cousins would give away their position or get caught before my peals of laughter would erupt uncontrollably from beneath my fingers like the lava and ash from Krakatoa.

What was a memorable trip that you can recall being a little kid and what did you do that makes you think about it even now?

My family regularly drove out to Colorado to visit with my father's family in the summers. One summer, my brother and I flew out a week early, and my parents were going to drive out (in the Chevy Citation) and stay for a week themselves. The flight itself was memorable, because my brother kept on chanting "I WANT FOOD" and banging his little fists on the tray table. I was so freaking embarassed. But the stewardess did take us up to the cockpit to meet the pilot during a stop-over, which was neat.

The week progressed fairly dully: we were staying in my aunt's family's trailer up on a mountain, and it was sort of irritating. My family is theoretically Christian, but this family was the born-again, evangelical kind. The kind where being Christian is an active pursuit, rather than a state you are born into. I think at the time the father was actually a preacher in a church that was essentially a pre-fabricated aluminum building with dirt floors. These were people who named their children after characters in the Old Testament. (Eventually the entire family -- mom, dad, two kids -- went completely off the rails, started doing massive quantities of drugs, indulging in affairs with people they met on MySpace, declaring themselves Sovereign Citizens and not paying taxes, and getting involved with the mob. Seriously.) But the "holy roller" bit was completely new to me, and I did little to ingratiate myself to them by insisting that The Book of Revelations was one of my favorite pieces of science fiction. I entertained myself by reading Bobbsey Twin books, which my mom had bought me a stack of in anticipation of the vacation.

So, the day my parents get there, the adults decide to go out to eat. Fair enough: some of my favorite memories are of the times when my parents went out to eat without us. We had a babysitter and her sister from the trailer park taking care of us. Well, at some point while we were washing dishes, someone broke a plate. Hey, it happens. So we toss it in the garbage, nobody thinking too much of it. Then the sitter asks if I will take the garbage out to the dumpster. I think I was a little put out that I was expected to do chores, but I held my tongue. I'd just complain to my parents later, citing laws against child labor, or whatever.

So I'm dragging this gigantic bag of garbage through the gravel driveway of this trailer park, because this bag was enormous, and I could under no circumstances lift it off the ground. I was wearing flip-flops, because it was summer, and I have never been a fan of wearing actual shoes. Suddenly, I just topple to the ground. No, not topple: I just collapse. Crumple. Deflate, almost. As I was dragging the trash bag along the ground, the shards of plate had worked their way down into the bag. I have no idea how, but one of them cut through the bag, sliced through my skin, and severed my Achilles tendon.

You have no idea how freaky it is to look at the back of your foot, and see a yawning gouge, with blood pooling in the bottom of your foot. Not only that: something was it their. Something white and organic and horrible. I prayed at the time that it was a piece of Styrofoam that had been in the trash bag, but I knew it wasn't. I was looking at my retracted tendon.

As you may expect, I just started wailing. I don't remember the pain at all: you have to expect that I was just in complete shock. What I was crying about was that I was going to have to have stitches. Something about being sewn up was just so horrific, so Frankenstein. That was my big fear at that moment: stitches. I think that helped me, just not thinking about what the hell was happening.

As I was howling, an old man was on the porch of the trailer right in front of me. I say old, but keep in mind that 30 was old to me then. Just rocking, rocking, in his rocking chair. He never got up. I couldn't understand why he wouldn't get up, why he wouldn't help me. It seemed like hours, me sitting there, unable to stand, or move, for fear of major blood loss, and he was smiling at me. He was smiling. Never moving. It was like a fucking horror movie: for years afterward, that memory has haunted me. That face became the face of death to me.

Thankfully, the rest of the trailer park reacted to my screams. I remember that poor babysitter, assuring me that I probably wouldn't need stitches. Sure, it was a lie, but it was a good lie. People were trying to keep the blood from pouring with clean towels, and everybody was really nice. The sitter didn't have a car, but a man next door offered to drive me to the urgent care facility down the road: we were in the mountains, remember, and driving to the hospital would mean driving all the way into Colorado Springs.

Once I got there, I was sedated, or maybe I just passed out from shock, so time sort of got wonky. But it turned out that my aunt and uncle didn't leave a number with the sitter of where they would be, or even the name of the restaurant. This was pre-cell phone, and so parents always had these elaborate rituals to help the babysitters contact them if anything went wrong. So I was stuck for hours in a darkened room for hours, face down, waiting for my parents to show up and give any sort of clearance for treatment. When my parents finally did show up, they were told what bad parents they were for not leaving the info with the sitter, when it was my aunt and uncle's fault. My parents always left the information with their sitters, always left it written down, and would call if their plans changed. My parents were (and are) the good parents. Unfortunately, I was too out of it to mount a thorough defense. My mom still feels guilty for that.

Long story less long than it possibly could be: I ended up having to wear a cast, which meant that driving home in the Citation was a pain in the ass. They ended up having to put down the seats, and put all the luggage in a car-top luggage thing that they had to buy.

The scar has faded, and now I'm almost proud of it. Hey, Achilles never did recover from the wound to his heel!

Did you ever fall in love as a child?

No, but I tended to treat all my male friends like a jealous lover. I demanded to know where they had been, and who with. But I did get one of them to kiss me in Kindergarten.
I did, however, have a MASSIVE crush on John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard.