Dry Ice Factory

I'm just back from my second trip to Rockaway Beach on the Oregon Coast with my friend Kristal. Kristal is a breast cancer survivor whom I met at the beginning of the year through my co-worker Abi. Kristal has been a huge support to me while I've undergone treatment, accompanying me on long walks to help me keep my strength up, and sharing her own harrowing treatment stories. The chemo she went through not only took all her hair and eyelashes, but eventually her fingernails too. In the beginning Abi was usually part of the outings, but eventually she found a boyfriend, and Kristal and I started walking and talking on our own. Then one day she invited me to join her on a day trip to Lummi Island, and I felt that something was beginning to happen between us.

Not long after that she invited me to join her on a two-day trip to Rockaway Beach to celebrate her birthday. I wasn't sure what her intent was, but I took it as an opportunity to get to know her better. So I asked her a bunch of nosy questions including why she had invited me. She told me that she just liked me and thought I'd be fun to hang out with in one of her favorite get-away spots. Fair enough. However, my own affection for her was starting to change in response to getting to know her better: her camera-shyness; the way she obsessively listens to the same music over and over (currently Bon Iver); her dysfunctional family background; her love of poetry; her desire to enjoy life to the fullest while she still can; and her mad skills as a photographer.

So I was the one who pushed for another outing to Rockaway this month. Last time we hit the coast on November 8th and then watched with horror as America elected Trump as president. That really ruined everything, including our attempt to escape the world for a little while. This time would be better, we hoped. Unfortunately, despite all the signs that she wasn't interested in me romantically -- the lack of physical affection, the way she immediately deflected any flirtation or expressions of affection on my part -- failed to penetrate my silly heart, and I started feeling frustrated by her unresponsiveness and emotional distance. Eventually I started feeling pretty grumpy and alienated about it. I woke up on Friday in a foul mood, thinking I didn't understand her or what the hell was going on. I walked out into the front room before sunrise in order to stew upon it in the dark and spotted the three-quarters moon hanging over the trail from the cottage to the beach.



It was like the beginning of a pirate movie, or a gothic thriller, or an A. Merritt super scientific adventure. I felt that I had suddenly been transported into a much larger, more glorious universe, where my romantic confusion was a piddling bunch of bullshit that had been blown completely out of proportion. I threw on some warm clothes, raced down to the frigid beach, and felt myself in the presence of an archaic power much more ancient than life or love and before which I was completely helpless. Which I think is Kristal's goal in these trips to the ocean: to connect to a deeper sense of mystery and awe than we generally experience in our day-to-day lives, and that is a particularly healing solace to someone with death by cancer looming over their future.

Today she confirmed that she just wants a traveling buddy, not a boyfriend. I've been on the other side of that divide, so who am I to pout? Well, a human being, that's who, but I hope the pouting doesn't last long. It turns out I very much do understand her and what the hell is going on; I was just in denial. Why waste time on minor riddles of the heart, when there are much vaster mysteries at work? Mysteries that can open me like a can opener and swallow my innards whole in an eyeblink. It happened to me last December, in fact. My world and life have been transformed for the worse, but it's still full of beauty that takes my breath away. I yearn for love, but I've always made do with a sense of wonder. Meanwhile, I hope that Kristal and I can continue to console each other for the shitty bad luck we both ran into when we ran head first (or breast first, in her case) into cancer.



POSTSCRIPT: I know that at least one of you saw a post I put up briefly after the November trip. If you saw that one, I ask you to pretend you didn't and restrict your comments to this one.

The year is drawing to a close, and I am succumbing to the urge to look back. The calendar year is an arbitrary unit for contemplation, but it's also a handy way to parse things into intelligible chunks. As such, 2014 doesn't seems very remarkable in any way, but maybe I'm just in a jaded mood.

In many ways the highlight of the year was the trip I took to Europe in August. It's hard to overstate what an acre lot of fun that was. The first part of the trip, in which my sister and I treated Mom to a visit to Amsterdam and ancestral lands in eastern France was definitely one none of us will ever forget. My sister's French friend, Kelly, opened up doors to our past that we probably wouldn't even have noticed if we'd been on our own. Then for me it was onward to London for beer tourism and the mighty Worldcon, which was almost fannish overload. Well, no, it was definitely fannish overload. There's a part of me that doesn't enjoy overseas travel as much as I once did, but it's hard to remember why while I'm in the middle of it having so much damned fun.

Other than that I traveled to San Jose for Potlatch in February and had a splendid time there with exotic foreign visitors (the Fishlifters) and various other well-memorized faces. This was followed by another of my retreats to Astoria and the Olympic Peninsula, which have rapidly become one of my very favorite things in the whole wide world ever. The other relatively long trip was the drive to Southern California with my parents in November, and I once again really enjoyed the scenic drive along the Sierra Nevadas on Highway 395. Other than that there were several trips to Oregon to visit the family, including the big pig roast family birthday party at my brother's place in July and another family birthday party at Waldport on the coast. Now that my parents' Oregon abode is back in Portland, I've really been enjoying taking the train from Seattle. It's a lot more relaxing than driving or flying.

A lot less satisfying in some ways was my year in writing and publishing. We only got out one issue of Chunga, and that was way back in January. We had been getting out two issues a year recently, so this felt like a step backward. I also felt like I didn't do much writing for other fanzines. I had pieces published in John Purcell's Askance and Pete Young's Big Sky (thanks, guys!), but the more major piece I wrote about 30 years living in Seattle was rejected by the fanzine that solicited it. Even worse, I had to agree that it wasn't a very good piece and thus not worth submitting elsewhere, and this failure has had me contemplating my navel a bit. Have I gotten stagnant? Do I have anything left to say? Why do I want to write? Sometimes I think I just write from reflex now, but then again, maybe that's the best reason to write. I just don't want to get rote, right?

The bulk of my writing was on the internet. I still feel very ambivalent about my (mostly) film blog, Dreamland Cafe, but it does give me a reason to write, even if I'm not sure of the reason why I write. Do I really have anything to say about film? Wouldn't I be better off to just write about science fiction, where I have twice as many decades of experience and knowledge to back up my analysis? Perhaps the most striking thing to me about the blog is that the two most popular articles in the past year have been one I wrote in 2013 about slavery stories, which keeps getting found by people using search terms like "plantation sex stories," and the piece I wrote in February about the French film The Ring Finger. Considering the fetishistic sexual interest that seems to be driving the readers of the slavery post, it's hard not to assume that people are searching for the piece about The Ring Finger looking for nude screencaps of Olga Kurylenko or to contemplate the sadomasochistic bent of the film. Nonetheless, that's probably the best thing I wrote for the Dreamland Cafe last year.

Meanwhile, my LiveJournal plugs along as a repository for trip reports, convention reports, book reports, and memorials to dead friends. I think I'm still writing some good things here, although since I outed my true identity it feels as though I'm writing less personal stuff. Not sure if that's actually true. Is this post personal?

The biggest surprise development this year came on the job front. After years of stasis partly caused by reduced budgets in the aftermath of the Great Recession, we were finally given the funds to hire two new reporting positions. Since I'm a "super SME" for student data, it will be my responsibility to train these two new people in the mysteries of student data, which means a lot more work is being put on my plate. What is perhaps most surprising is that one of the key figures behind the allocation of funds for these positions also pushed heavily to give me a significant raise commensurate with my new responsibilities (and my old ones too). That's all still being negotiated, but the tea leaf readings are positive. What I take away from this is that after 25 years of working here, I have developed some powerful allies. I still worry about what's going to happen when one of my biggest long-term allies and mentors retires next year, but it's encouraging to know that I'll still have people who might be able to help me if I need it.

Finally, there's my health. Three years after getting a wake up call about growing insulin resistance, which caused me to make fairly significant dietary and life style changes, I developed a nagging pain in my right shoulder that was diagnosed as rotator cuff tendinitis. This put me on a course of stretches and exercises that have increased my upper body strength. Between the recent weight loss, eating better, getting more cardio, and now putting on some muscle in my shoulders, I'm feeling unexpectedly fit. At the same time, at age 54 my body is definitely showing its age, and while I may have built up my shoulder muscles, I'm losing muscle mass elsewhere. Part of me wonders whether the tendinitis, which is caused by impingement, was the result of losing muscle mass that had previously been keeping the impinging bones at bay. In any event, I'm feeling pretty damned good physically right now, but the slow slide is in progress.

Well, no doubt I could natter on some more about various projects and plans and desires, but I won't. I've been feeling slightly blue today, but I think it's just a random existential mood. I remember when I broke up with Sharee back in 2005 I felt that I'd probably reached the pinnacle of what I was going to accomplish in life and it would be all downhill from there. Two years later I'd somehow finagled my way onto some Hugo-winning coattails. The thing I ask myself more and more these days is how can I help younger people face their challenges in the way that I was helped as a young man. My goal for a long time has been not to be a burden on anyone else, even if I'm not strong enough to carry anyone else's burden. But can I do more? Can I help to lift other people up? I really don't know, but it's been on my mind.

And on that note I wish you bottoms up for the new year.

For two days in a row I've left directly from work for a social engagement and not gotten home until late-ish. Both were related to the wedding of Andi Schechter and Stu Shiffman, which was held yesterday.

Amongst the group of people who came to town for the wedding were Rich Coad and Stacy Scott. On Tuesday I met them at John Berry's house (which I walked to from work because it's "just up the hill" from there), and we all went out for a beer and then to a Greek restaurant for dinner. It was a lovely, relaxed evening of stories and wisecracks and good cheer. Rich and I drank ouzo, and I reminisced about the time my brother and I were on Corfu in 1980 and met a bunch of guys from Lubbock, Texas, who bought a bottle of ouzo one night and invited us to join the party. We declined, but the next day we found the almost untouched bottle of ouzo at our hotel door. We drank it happily ourselves. Good times. Rich complained about the political correctness of modern fandom, and Stacy verbally rolled her eyes. John and I reminisced about the days when his street had only one restaurant, called the Surrogate Hostess and now long gone. Now the street is chockablock with restaurants and cafes and new condos. I got a ride back home from Rich and Stacy, and they came in to say howdy to Denys as well. They had never been to our house before, and of course talk turned to comic books once they saw Denys' massive collection. Fan talk.

Wednesday was the wedding itself, and it was at Burke Museum on the UW campus, so I just walked up there after work. Lots of folks were there, of course, including the winners of the Far Traveller Award, Mark and Priscilla Olson, who came all the way from Massachusetts. spikeiowa had brought badge ribbons in case there were badges, but we didn't need no stinking badges. Everybody was given a blue yarmulke, and most of us wore it during the ceremony. (akirlu was impressed that mine stayed on despite not being pinned to my non-existent hair.) It was the first Jewish wedding ceremony that I recall ever being to, so it was refreshingly different from past wedding experiences. A female rabbi presided over the lovely ceremony. I heard someone to my right entoning the Hebrew prayers along with her, and discovered later that it had been kalimac, remembering them from his own wedding twenty years ago. Carrie Root was in tears, and kate_schaefer eventually gave her a tissue. Afterward, Carrie thanked holyoutlaw for the tissue, much to his confusion. She hadn't seen who gave it to her, but thought it was him.

The meal afterwards was fantastic. I sat at a table with Denys and various old friends, but on my right was a woman I'd never met. It turned out that she has been Andi's massage therapist for twenty-odd years. I joked that most of the people at the wedding were either science fiction fans or therapists of some kind or another, since a number of Stu's therapists were there as well. In that aging crowd there were a number of other people who suffered from serious physical ailments of various sorts, and yet here we were celebrating a ceremony of connection and commitment against the tide of entropy, surrounded by the Burke's collection of fossils from ancient days indeed. There was music, and many smiling faces.

I'm beavering away at a number of different projects right now, most of them related to fanzines in one way or another. One thing is a collection of Curt Phillips' writing to promote his TAFF campaign. It will be going into the mail later this week. (I believe British copies will be going out next week.) I've also had three invitations to write for other fanzines, and I've completed one thing: a short piece about Ubik for Pete Young's Big Sky. The other two pieces are in progress. The Corflu 31 crew is gearing up to put out another progress report, and I'm helping with that, mostly nagging other people to write. (Have you bought your membership yet?) Meanwhile the Chunga crew is working on the next issue, which will be a special issue unlike anything we've done before, at least if all goes as planned. I'm herding cats on that as well. Looming on the near horizon is a trip to Spokane with akirlu for a walkthrough of the Worldcon facilities, which we're participating in so we can scope out the possibilities for the fanzine lounge. Also looming on that same horizon are voting for the FAAn Awards, nominating for the Hugos, and voting for TAFF and DUFF. At least I finally sent some nominations to Murray Moore for things he should include in the Fanthology he's putting together for Corflu.

Meanwhile I intended to do some gardening on Sunday but used the rain as an excuse not to. Mostly I was just too busy with other things! Although not too busy to watch movies in the evening, including a third viewing of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which remains a hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and refreshingly honest movie about troubled nerds in love. What a beautiful thing it is! A work of true genius.

Well, it was a productive weekend, but I felt a bit like a hamster running on a wheel. Will I ever catch up with myself?

Monday was the worst day I've had at work since the period right after my old boss was laid off two (or was it three?) years ago, and pretty much for the same reasons: I had some new reporting dumped on me that I didn't know how to do (and which had to be done by the end of the day), and one of our standard reporting databases (written by the old boss) was producing an error that I couldn't find the cause of. I got the new reporting done by the end of the day, after many consultations with others about how to do this or that, but I was absolutely baffled by the error. I went home feeling completely exhausted, fell asleep early, then woke up in the middle of the night grinding on it. Then on the walk to work, sorting through the various things I had tried and had looked at, a possible cause suggested itself to me, and indeed that turned out to be the problem. Once I figured out what was causing the problem, I was able (after consultations with others) to figure out the solution.

Other stressful things happened yesterday (including a return visit to the periodontist where I discovered there's still a small infection near the implant that was put in in July), although nothing quite as epic as Monday. Still, by early Tuesday evening I was still feeling completely wiped out and was grumbling to myself because I had a number of things I still wanted to get done before I called it a day.

On the other hand, I did get to watch the third episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is a show I'm really, really enjoying. It's the first new TV show to engage my attention in years. I love the quirky sense of humor and the unexpected political dimensions. There's something about the pace of the show that feels very energetic and slightly off-kilter. So far it is creatively embracing a number of contradictions.

And then I started reading Delany's "The Mummer's Tale" and was so caught up in it that I almost stayed up to read the whole thing before I sternly reminded myself that I needed some goddamn sleep, the more the better. But I was feeling stressed out enough that it still took me a while to drift off.

And so I'm feeling somewhat restored today, but still a bit burnt out. Who knows what fresh crises today will bring?

As I've probably mentioned, I've been painting the back of the house with a new color scheme of vibrant purple ("it hums to itself," as one friend put it) and bright green trim. I finally finished the purple under the eaves on Saturday, and yesterday I started on the trim, which required buying the paint first. Still have more to do, but I'm really liking the way it looks already.

One reason I didn't get a first coat down on all the trim (and also why I didn't go to the fannish pubmeet) is that my friend and old neighbor, Jay, came over. Hadn't seen him for a few months. We walked around Green Lake getting caught up, then I cooked Thai Basil Chicken, and we watched Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, which is based on Jacques Tardi's comic series. This is the third time I've watched the movie, which I think is a complete delight: "Amelie meets Indiana Jones" as the DVD jacket copy has it, with mummies, a pterodactyl, and a spunky, indefatigable heroine in Egypt and Paris in 1911. I bought the British DVD last year, but it's finally being released in the US sometime this year. Highly recommended.

On Wednesday TAFF delegate Jim Mowatt arrives, and massive socializing ensues. We're throwing a party for him on Saturday, if you hadn't heard already. Come join the fun!

A relatively social weekend for me, starting with lunch on Saturday with Denys and Glenn, but not Kate, alas. Still, we had good fun comparing and contrasting our portable telephonic computers and other technologies. Other than that I mowed the lawn and watched Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, which is an interesting take on the fairy tale that reminded me a little bit of The Company of Wolves. After that I watched Mirror Mirror for the fourth or fifth time. I actually caught things I hadn't caught before, such as the fact that Nathan Lane's costume at the big ball is a cockroach. (He's turned into a cockroach later in the the film.) I also noticed that the insanely catchy end-credits Bollywood song-and-dance number, "I Believe in Love", is presaged a number of times throughout the film in wildly different forms. Love that song. Love that movie.

Sunday was a barbecue at Andy and Carrie's to celebrate the release of Chunga 21. Various and sundry were there, and we put them to work stuffing envelopes and applying stamps. Much lively conversation ensued, and a surprising amount of it was about the novels of Iain M. Banks. I'm not sure our party conversation has ever been so sercon before. There was an array of wonderful beer to sample, including a number of saisons that I'd brought, along with a growler of Cascade Apricot Ale. Oops, and I just realized that I left the growler at Andy and Carrie's house. Damn! Ah well, good food (brats boiled in beer and then barbecued) + good friends = good times.

I had a To Do list a mile long this weekend. It got to a point on Sunday where I was rushing from one thing to another, feeling harassed and absolutely ridiculous. It didn't help that I slept in until 10:30 on Sunday, but hey, I was exhausted! And the cold has settled in for the long haul, leaving me with a bit less energy than normal.

Not that I didn't give myself plenty of time to goof off, too. For example, I went and saw Sally Potter's latest film, Ginger & Rosa, which I really liked. Yesterday I watched the DVD of Aulis Sallinen's 1995 opera, The Palace, that ron_drummond gave me a couple of years ago. A satire of penny ante dictatorship and the court intrigue it inspires, with a collage of musical styles that I wasn't sure what to make of on a first go-around.

The weather was extraordinarily beautiful, so I worked in the yard both days. I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, which is something that usually happens in April, I think. Global warming! Or whatever. I even managed to get a mild sunburn.

One of the things on my To Do list that I didn't get to was writing a review of David Toop's excellent book on ambient and other unstructured music, Ocean of Sound. Fascinating book, which made an excellent companion piece to Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise.

Well, I got plenty enough done. We now have all the articles for the next issue of Chunga and have begun layout and proofing. We're still waiting for some art. The second Corflu XXX progress report is also coming together. The sekrit projekt for Corflu may or may not happen this year, but it's something that could easily wait if necessary. Haphazard gardening will continue. There's more blogging to be done. Plans are afoot for a family trip in 2014 that will also be part of my Worldcon trip. Oh yes, and I'm having a tooth pulled today in preparation for an implant. And oh crap, I haven't done my taxes yet! Und so weiter.

I don't go to Vanguard parties much anymore, but on Saturday it was at janeehawkins's, which of course is a nostalgia trip for those of us of a certain age. So I put on my Vanguard disguise (a.k.a. the clothes I'd been wearing all day) and headed on over. Amongst other things, it allowed me to return the DVD of Jerry Springer: The Opera that I had borrowed from roadnotes (thanks again, it was brilliant!), and to bring some of jimtrash's Tiny TAFFzines and some TAFF ballots, which Jane had promised to flog because she was so entertained by the Tiny TAFFzines I had mailed to her. It was a pretty small party, with many notable figures Missing In Action (no Jerry & Suzle, no Andy and Carrie, no Ulrika and Hal), but I guess that's not unusual these days. Although Frank (of Frank & Molly) said that the last one they hosted was quite a bit bigger, so I guess it still waxes and wanes. Jane had just taken a course in soldering at a maker space on Capitol Hill and has become fascinated with the 3D printers on offer there, so she showed some videos of the printers in action and showed off a few objects that had been printed on them. Very cool! At some point five of us retired downstairs to smoke a little smoke. There was a time when the smoking room would have been full of people madly puffing away on various smokables, but that would have been a time when I still smoked cigarettes, which I don't really miss. Actually I don't remember seeing Jane smoke any tobacco this time, so now I wonder whether she's quit too. Well, it was great to chat with kate_schaefer and jackwilliambell just like old times, and there was John D. Berry and Vonda McIntyre and a number of other familiar faces, as well as one new person who came with Janice Murray but left before I got a chance to talk to her.

So that was the old tradition, and a very pleasant tradition it was. On the new front, I have now walked to SIFF Uptown in Lower Queen Anne three times on the weekend to see a movie. It's about three miles from our house and takes me an hour. So far I've always walked there via Westlake and Mercer (always running into a crowd entering or leaving the opera house), then I return home by climbing up and over Queen Anne on Queen Anne Avenue, with a stop at the Hilltop Ale House for a pint and a shot of Crown Royal along the way. The last two times I've done this, I've gotten to the area early enough to eat something in one of the restaurants near the theater, have a coffee at Uptown Espresso, and read a book. Yesterday I was reading Diana Wynne Jones' Hexwood, which is certainly weird and intriguing and very meta so far. The movie I saw was Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, which was the one 3D movie he made and was being shown in that format. Anyway, this new tradition is a fine thing, and I hope I can continue with it, although it depends on SIFF continuing to show movies I want to see. They've been on quite a roll lately. I can't remember how long ago SIFF acquired the Uptown, but they are really turning it into something special for film freaks. One nice thing about this new tradition is I've gotten to know both Lower and Upper Queen Anne quite a bit better than before. The upper parts have always seemed like an island on top of the world, isolated from the rest of the city because you never go through it on the way to anywhere else. Never say never, because now I've found a reason to pass through and to stop at the local watering hole to read a few pages and observe the local wildlife. All in the service of getting more walking in and thus maintaining some semblance of health. Life is good.

It was an irresponsible weekend, I tell you, although not as irresponsible as some have been. I did rake leaves on Saturday, but did I do anything else productive? I guess it depends on how you rate these things.

We are nearly done with Chunga 20, and I did do some work on that, including reviewing the mailing list. I saw two movies that I recommend: Lincoln and Life of Pi. I watched another movie, The Chivalry, the Gunman, and the Killer (1977), that was a nutty, hard-to-follow Taiwanese wuxia film with Yueh Hua and the fiercely beautiful Hsu Feng. I'm not sure how that ended up in my Netflix queue, but I was happy enough with it. Jessica Amanda Salmonson has written an amusing review, and it's difficult to argue with her conclusion: "So anyone with a fetish for tough swordslinging gals and a desire to see women get slaughtered will really like this movie."

I cooked curried black beans and sausage. I guess that was my other productive thing. On Saturday, after Lincoln, I walked to the U District for the release of the Big Time's Old Wooly barleywine. The place was pretty busy, because the release of the Old Wooly is something to celebrate. I read a few chapters of Chandler's The Long Goodbye, with an eye on the Alabama-Georgia game. One of the bar-backs is from Alabama, and when I told him that I'm an Oregon fan, he said he was glad Bama didn't have to face Oregon in the National Championship game. I think it's too bad myself.

It's a pretty carefree life I live. Come on, let's drift.