Catboy love, twisted access, a 'splat' and Jade

First off, Cheryl, who has always worked tirelessly for the government and with the postcard project, and with the 'Keep Beth Alive' project has caught ‘Dread Lurgy Reanimated” which is a type of cold which seems to take 7 to 10 days, goes into the lungs and is really wretched. She caught it at a work retreat and is now suffering, too far for me to be able to bring her soup, or some hot lemon for her throat. If you want to send her a card please send it to:

Elizabeth McClung (for Cheryl)
P.O. Box 2560
Port Angeles, WA
98362

That would be really kind. If you want to be extra kind, please send pocky (actually you can send to both of us, since pocky seems to go with bed days like, um, strong, red haired women taking a slo-mo shower go with an increased breath rate (Go Scully!).

I haven’t been out much but every time I go, I try to record something different. The fact that I have my own immune system literally chewing through my brain helps me get a ‘different’ perspective. This is what the trees look like outside the video store. They remind me of the bamboo forest just outside Kyoto where the artists, poets and other outcasts from the royal court made an artists colony in their exile.

Trying to use up the blue cross while we had it, I had been to the optometrist and this was my reward (When I haven’t been hungry or thirsty for a couple years, and the only taste buds I have are at the back of my throat and in my nose, plus if I get excited I stop breathing, the whole motivation/reward thing gets odd). The optometrist dropped another of those little bombs, the ones that let me know that even if being ‘terminal’ is somehow in my mind, my body is changing, both rapidly and permanently for the worse. The muscles in my left eye (the one the eyepatch is on in pictures) aren’t working correctly. To avoid getting double images my brain has been more and more ignoring the left eye entirely. Inoperable, just another bit of the brain gone wrong.

She asked, “So have you found this has affected your driving?”

I told her, “Honestly, I can say that this eye problem has not diminished my driving one bit, or caused any problems.” (Linda was above me restraining from strangling me).

Optomitrist: “Ohh?” puzzled.

Linda: “She doesn’t drive, since she passes out…”

Me: “Not EVERY time!”

Linda: “….and she has seizures.”

Me: “Those are getting less frequent.”

Linda: “So, no, she doesn’t drive.”

Me: “Yet! I haven’t had an accident in years!”

I have to hope that one day Linda will let me drive (or more like absent mindedly hand me the keys). Okay, true that now I can’t feel my legs as the massive bruises on the back of my legs Cheryl found this weekend indicated, but again, if those kids can do it with sticks and stuff in the movies, I am sure I can too.

We decided to go out to the Bengal Lounge, but getting in was, er, complicated and for wheelchairs involved starting a series of switchback ramps (four of them) which started behind the bus depot. I was freezing! Once I got inside, then it was only an elevator ride up another three steps until the hallway to the Bengal lounge. The Conference Center which had this ‘maze for wheelchairs’ has posted next to the elevator for three steps the ‘Special Award for Excellence and Innovation of Design”. I have noticed that the further a wheelchair has to wheel, the more the designers applaud themselves. If 10 stairs can be turned into a 14 switchback series of ramps which take a quarter mile of wheeling – that is SURE to get an award.

We were not the only ones to want to go to the Bengal Lounge, and it had a long wait. They were playing Jazz with piano and a double bass in the corner. Sadly, after talking with the native art experts for 30 minutes, I had a little TIA and passed out. Here I am after being propped up, you can see how the side closest to Cheryl is dead and the other side of the face is compensating.
But here are some of the masks we saw in the Gallery Quality stores in the Empress Hotel. I have visited this store; it used to be at the end and have the largest collection of Inuit art outside the Canadian Government. Now they do all West Coast groups, and Linda and Cheryl found a mask by Hunt. It is sort of odd to have a sculpture on the wall by the same person in an exclusive Gallery. What we did find is that Mongo Hunt, the father of Richard Hunt and grandfather of Jason Hunt not just opened the carving shed at the BC Royal Museum, he built the long house inside (it is in the pictures of when I went to the museum – lowly lit to represent firelight with piped in sounds of light drumming and dancing). I loved hanging in that long house as a child, left at the museum while my grandparents got food for the trip back to the woods. I never thought that one man could have made it, and the totem poles inside, much less that I would met and talk to his son and have a commissioned piece by his grandson.

In the other gallery, they had more contemporary Native art including this amazing piece of Jade sculpture, which has three types of unfinished, finished and a special polish all of the SAME piece of connected Jade. I know it is Jade because I have a few hunks sitting around, not quite as large as this from when I went with a couple 4 wheel drives, a chainsaw and a winch to a Jade mine where the Jade was helicoptered out. The price had dropped so Jade just sat in blocks on the ground. This underground fantasy with mermaid is far beyond anything I could have imagined looking at those unfinished blocks. I guess that diversity of vision is why I like human brains.

Well, the rule of three is that in any attempt for something new, 1 time it will be FANTASTIC! One time it will be okay and one time it will be a disaster. Going home with no booze, no jazz, and no talking in the lounge, it was pretty much a disaster. We worked on the postcard project instead, using postcards sent as gifts from the tip of South America among others. The back side allowed my strange mind to work as the writing says: “Hey!” cried Thad the security guard, “Take your catboy love out of the produce section!”Catboys: “But we love the smell of catnip and cilantro” (the joke is that cilantro is my catnip, I keep asking Linda to add it to everything: hamburgers, Mexican food…….cereal.)

Outside the construction has moved to the front, only 20 feet away and so louder than ever. It is a race between our sound bafflers on the room and the heat, since once we need to put in an air conditioner in the room, all the sound baffles will be useless and sleep will be hard to come by. Today, while taking pictures for the blog (from the art I have), we caught one of the workers doing laundry. He was spreading his work clothes on the cement and spraying them with a high power hose, then washing them and high power hosing them again. Here he has just finished and his laundry is done and drying.

Tomorrow HAS to be a bed day for me. The problem in bed days is my back (it generates heat but can’t escape, after an hour or so that means I pass out – so I have to use ice and fans to try to limit that). But for all the fantasies of the joy of being in bed, it isn’t: Physically or mentally.

“How can the world just carry on? How can everything carry on?” It is one thing to find out that I am not irreplaceable at work (not that they can do the work AS WELL, just that they can find 2 or 3 people to get some of it done), but quite another to find that I am redundant as a human being.

No one walking by thinks ‘who is up there’, even the workers who dictate my life and sleep probably don’t know what I look like or my name. In bed, without access to a computer I strive to gain back the reserves I need but…

My life I have spent trying to give 100%, and failing. I worked from the age of a tween, real paid work, and before that as a ‘trader’. I have always worked, and exercise, ready to ride or walk when needed. I went to university and had a full time job and an overload schedule. I scheduled every single minute and yet I KNEW I wasn’t giving 100%. Somewhere, between the breathing, the racing to school on my bike, making a new record and on weekends riding my bicycle to the top of mountains, or running them, it wasn’t enough.

Two years ago, I went on a picnic and came very close to dying (CTD in EMT speak: circling the drain). An EMT saw a gravestone and said, ‘That’s what we should put on your grave’ – it was a large single word carved in stone: REST.

Since then, as the daily activities have taken three times the amount of time as muscles and nerves die, then five, then ten times, I am always busy, always behind on things to do. Only now – free of the human feelings of burning and choking to tell me when I am deprived of oxygen, or the warnings for when I am working too long for my muscles as they lock up, or my spine locks. Nor do I get warning when my hands stop working as my spinal column is squeezed, or I pass out from working so hard, there just isn’t enough oxygen to keep me awake, but I don’t stop. I type with a finger, a bit of thumb, a nose, a tooth.

Now, I give 100%.

And it isn’t enough. And I don't know why.

The last while I have been more than pensive, I have been suicidal. I am only stopped because I can’t move enough. I spent so much energy each day working to keep myself going and yet I am pulled toward taking active control of my life and death. To die because I am not smart enough to keep myself from a cold, or because basic functions have stopped isn’t really a decision, is it? I mean, if I am not hungry and I don’t eat, how is that suicide?

The truth is that I am terrified. The unknown in front of me is not in any way sudden, but delayed, a fear I must climb painfully as it stretches before me. It is a test of my willpower. The day I did let my depression in, the day this week I gave in, I degenerated quickly, struggling to breath, passing out, weak.

So every day, every hour I do things that I used to think, “Put me out of my misery if I get like that.” Do I laugh now?

The secret that no one wants to know is that pain can be, not endured, but altered, there are tricks, like warping focus and grim will. Maybe it is because I did things that most people thought impossible while able bodied but I manipulate this body to the brink of death and beyond. Slap yourself hard to produce enough endorphins to counter the nerve pain, concentrate on the next letter in this post in order to not think about the pain in the spine, which flares so high I have to consciously disconnect the vomit reflex to stop the pain from making me vomit.

Imagine an arm on fire. Now imagine that the arm is on fire…..forever. Many people would rest, would curl up but I wondered, ‘can I move it?’ and I did, and it still hurt…..but I moved it. And if I moved it, maybe I can lean on it, maybe I can do something with it.

Yes, I have muscle pain, I have bone pain, I have fatigue (but the truth as some have found is to use the pain and the feeling of the knife at my throat to force me to move while with fatigue. No, it isn’t the worry and terror that if I don’t move the feeling of the knife will continue slit my throat it is rather the promise that I will. Peace. I am not allowed around scissors or knives. Not since I took a letter opener to my face, from the forehead to my cheek, right over my eye (Yeah, those months of no pictures of me). Do you think I am not ashamed, not wishing that it was something else, and that in a few moments of bliss and post exercise high, I think, I say, “I can do this” before I am crushed into the ground, my bones shattered by the weight of it.

If only broken bones would slow me down. And so, like the trees above the video store, I try to find anything of joy, anything that reminds me living is important.

Why? Because there are real people, friends, out there whose care has carried me. Because I am just too stupid to quit. Because dying is easy and living is hard. Because life is green, and only while I hold out, can that remain. The joke of it, right, someone who is terminal, and who doesn’t have an immune system (except the one attacking them) who cuts themselves in order to force themselves into eight or ten hours of non-stop work. I assessed I needed at least two bed days a week to get reserves to last the first part of summer. I figured that out over a month ago, and I haven’t had a bed day since there – too much to do, so much to do before it is too late. One thing I can thank my upbringing for, is to learn that almost anything can be endured. When I walked to school and passed by barbed wire in LA as a child, 8, 9, 10, I used to grab the wire with both hands, letting the barbs sink in, and found that it was survivable. Indeed, later I couldn’t understand why people put coats over barbed wire when going over fences….it is just flesh and pain. I was being prepared to be put in a concentration camp and be tortured to death. I used to practice at ripping my nails out. And no, I don’t have a high pain threshold, indeed, strong wind and even touch is painful to me. Linda said once that I might have the lowest pain threshold doctors have seen but the highest will and pain endurance.

But now, the things that happen to me daily, it scares me, it breaks me down, sobbing, and then I keep working. I once told Linda that God and I have an arrangement, that as long as I am in pain, God lets me live. I told her that over 10 years ago. Now, I wonder if I am sort of celestial experiment of what can be endured.

I KNOW that others endure these things too, but after a while, they just stop speaking about it. Though I now realize what at least two of my friends deaths were. And I think I know the death of another, that he just stopped fighting that daily fight, nothing deliberate, just worn out. So to take a bobsled down the major hill of town after taking a drink of barbiturates sounds like a pretty good thing. Or to sit somewhere with someone I love seeing what is good and beautiful as the last thing I know,it is so tempting. To have that something in my control at last.

I am getting a mouth guard, not because of the seizures, but the pain hitting, holding back the pain and keeping on, or just being conscious, so I can keep on, requires a gritting of teeth that chips them, creates cracks in my teeth. Sometimes I think that I am the fourth seal, the pale rider whose name is death, and hell follows me. Everyone assumes that means it goes out to others, but I don’t know, maybe it just describes a person who manages to live with hell, and stay sane. I think some others who have been there know that kind of pain logic.

I am sorry for the bible language, much like The Prisoner in Kafka, this was written into my skin with a pen of steel, over and over.

I asked for hope, for something to keep me going. And now I am going to create it, a picnic in two weeks, I think, a dinner out in three. Let’s all do it together and by the rule of three, one of the actives should be great, right?

We.....I progress into the darkness without caution, without restraint. They say that courage is to know fear and act anyway. The courage of men and women to act, woken from the nightmares that have haunted them for years is something we don’t talk about. I applaud them, and the daily fights they make to work, to leave the house, to be there. I can’t promise you that a life turning to face that fire, the one which you fear the most of all, is one which will be recognized by others. But it is the reason I grabbed barbed wire at 8 years old. If I was going to be put in a camp, I wanted to face that fear.

I pray, like Samson, blinded, tortured, beyond things like pride and meaning, for the power to lift the world. Samson wanted sheer destruction, while I want to somehow grab hold of the invisible lines of fear, of insecurity, of pain, of despair, of desperation – grab hold of the whole world’s line and lift them, so that millions, tens of millions of people will know what it is like to overcome the fear and will rise up, and things will change. That's it, the hope things will change so that I will not die in a world that is more cruel, less caring, than one I was born into.

Hard to imagine that I am bound by frustration and despair.

My Birthday (ongoing!)! Plus four 'must have' Manga reviews

It was my birthday yesterday, or the day before - they became one long day (shudder!). I did not know until a few days before that I HAD a birthday until people started talking about it. And I still don’t know my age, Linda isn’t telling. Oh, also, Cheryl wrote a brilliant and insightful post on Girls' Gotta Fly about Constants, Changes and Boundries, which turned out to be SO applicable.

The thing is, that due to the exhaustion and the long hours of work I do, we have taken to assuming a sort of 10 year old to 12 year old default (going down to eight depending on how many hours awake and working). So the young me was excited about a birthday because I never had them when I was young and wanted to know what would happen; and Linda kept giving hints and the older me couldn’t remember exactly a good birthday celebration.

It turns out that my birthday is also my Friday the 13 sqaured. It was a disaster; like one of those days when you say at 3:00 pm after crying for an hour and all the other stuff that ‘thank goodness this day will be over soon.’ At 9:00 pm after 2 more hours of counseling people when Linda drops by to tell you that she and Cheryl talked and couldn't decide so, sorry no present, then I concluded that we will spread out the birthday as no day THIS bad and exhausting can be my birthday. While at 4:00 am after you are so exhausted you think there are rakes stuck in your eyes and so emotionally drained that you think it can’t get worse you whisper hoarsely, “At least it is over!” So when at 7:30 a.m., you are still working after you still have only gotten a total of ONE present it is the Hell Day which does NOT END!

The present, well due to my code, I kind of gave it my nephew because my 12 year old person realized that your nephew must have had a birthday too (this was confirmed) and the adult Elizabeth didn’t know that, didn’t remember, and so I needed to be better late than never. 12 year old Elizabeth wasn’t that happy with giving up only present (gift cert.) but understood that Family Comes First and If There are Only a Few Pieces of Cake you pass it around and If There is Cake Left, THEN you Can have some (proper manners and all).

After Hell Day I am literally rolled into bed. I wake up and get an email from Sis to say that I DID have a present sent, an gift card at Akadot from the day before which….disappeared. So many emails about that between naps today. Because when I get that bad, not only do I regress but Linda has to pick up the pieces (and the manga books), which, with little sleep she had, she did, having everything I needed to survive, including cuddles.

Akadot is a good place for me as right now (if the present gift cert arrives....oh, it just did!) as they are doing the ordering for the LA Anime Expo and want to make a good impression so taking LOTS of out of stock items which the manager has been ordering in long lists in hopes of finding them in some warehouse. She doesn’t know what is going to arrive until it does, so she has been finding books I asked for weeks and weeks later, usually 2 weeks AFTER I ordered or got it elsewhere (frustration!). But I did, after such a horrid day, with Linda’s permission make a order of a few books. I searched for slightly older art books (as in Japan, art books are not reprinted, even if they go out of print in hours, as often happens making a book printed 11 months ago, a RARE and old book!), I found some and got them, and now, four out of the five that I ordered were the LAST copy (so they are listed for others as ‘Special Orders’). As more stock of single books of older stock comes in, I will use the gift card to try and get one or two before others realize what is happening (also that they are hidden amongst over 1500 import books helps!).

I have found out that in a lot of ways people want the OLD Elizabeth, the one who can disassociate herself to help others, the counselor, the friend who listens. The problem is that has a huge cost because that really isn’t ME anymore. For example, how do I disassociate in order to comfort someone who is upset because their career seems stalled when I am talking to them on the phone in bed? Or feels like they aren’t getting out enough, getting enough exercise or interaction when I can only leave the apartment once a week with assistance? I can still do it, it just costs a LOT on me emotionally and physically (sometimes, I just have to wheel into a room after a session, close the door and just sob and sob over what I have lost: what they are so passionate about, and I am there to hear and help with).

So when, on my birthday I did that kind of hard core 'super couselor Beth' for five to six hours, along with a few extra disasters, it literally put me in bed, where I am and will be for another day. I am trying to set a boundary that says, “I might not like it, you might not like it, but this is ME now. And if you force ME to be crushed down in order to channel my energy to be the brainy helpful Elizabeth because you NEED me, I will still answer that call, but it is shortening my life, and reducing my quality of life."

I am not sure yet how to say NO, but I am learning that there is a very literal and physical cost to giving what for me is as much support as possible; it is literally my life for theirs; in many different ways. Part of that quality of life was that today was to be my first 'cat visit' for those who are unable due to medical conditions to go out to see cats, they bring cats to you. It was my first chance to hold a cat in I can't remember how long and I had to cancel that because I was just too ill today. I don't know when they come around again.

So I am trying to get more people to want to get to know ME, the ME of now (the me who is a little cautious, a little lonely, a little bookish), and so SHE has friends and people who want to get to know her, and then maybe there will be more of a balance in my life and less days of disaster and weeks of recovery.

But, with the time in bed over the last um, time of Deer, Sheep and Wolverine and beyond (see post on Brain Board for reference), I wanted to recommend some of the manga which I have bought myself or has been gifted to me by some really kind people. And to get a gift that I can read in recovery which makes me feel that good is a great gift indeed, so thanks to all those who get me manga, it actually does make a difference in helping me heal. There is no book or path to follow on my disease and we just go day and week at a time, try not to do stupid that often and work slowly toward treatment in hopes that works for a time. Whether it is my last week, which I spend in bed or just one week in my last year, I still appreciate the kindness and the joy someone who never met me brought to me. Thank you. Because I not only get to read the manga, I get to share them with others! So, here they are, for teens, straight people, girls into a bit of boy/boy love (or boys), literature, feminist and gender study majors, cat lovers, and everyone else. In brief.

Top recommendation for everyone is: Maid Sama!which despite the cover, is about a STRONG and independent woman, Misaki is the coolest toughest girl in manga; top grades, student body president in a boys school where girls are a minority and she is trying to stop the boys from doing the usual antics (streaking, being rude, violent) in order to attract a more 50/50 percentage to the school. Plus trying to keep it all together, she needs to help her single mother with expenses including school tuition while dealing with the day to day hassles of boys who bully, etc. So she has a job where she doesn’t need to think (tired after studying) and gets good money: but it is at a maid café where the males come and are told, “Welcome Home Master” – she does it at a town over from her school in hopes it is never found out. Of course the ‘cool’ guy who seems disinterested in everything but gets good grades DOES find out (because she is literally working herself to passing out exhaustion). He doesn’t tell anyone, but he comes every day. At work she must be oh SO nice to him and can’t find out WHY is he doing this? Not only that, now he is interested at school at when the class gets rowdy at a school festival he dresses up as an officer and does a theme café, saying, “Oh my mistress, what can I do for you.” (essentially what she does), showing that who you are, and what you have to do to survive, or what you might wear is not the same. And while some students get suspicious of her always leaving with him (to go to her job), he tells them, “She is MINE!” and they envision her as his bodyguard! It is funny, it is a turnabout (like when he watches the café because she doesn’t understand that she is a GIRL and needs to be careful at night – only SHE catches two guys who want to ‘play’ with her and turn them over to the police while he is left slack jawed). This is not your damsel in distress, but he isn’t giving up on being her equal or more. It is a great read and as the second book comes out in a month I recommend buying it now!

Second would have to be the new release from DMP, Utahime the Songstress. I would say this is one of the top 10 manga of the couple hundred I have read this year!

A delightful book that is a long one shot (complete in one book) 200 pages, with another one shot after it (30 pages). It has our beautiful lad, Kain who has to face not only that he is the first male songstress (literally Song Princess), but that no one can know, as the village only prospers if the female songstress sings to protect the land. The villagers virtually lock the family (he and his twin sister) in a tower, fawn over the sister while they ignore him; after all – he is a boy and cannot be born with the gift of the songstress (ah ha!). Meanwhile, Thomas, a local cute lad with glasses who is the son of the chief finds out the truth that if the songstress does not sing, the law is that the village is killed, and that the village is in fact keeping the mother and children prisoners. Meanwhile, the King of this kingdom ONLY have males….except now there is a female born and after checking back and forth, yes, this is the offspring of the king. So as the book jumps forward and back with ease of story telling we have a female monarch and a male songstress; it seems the times are a changing, slowly. When seeing how happy his sister is with Thomas, Kain, the male songstress runs off at 12, leaving Thomas to protect sister. He returns when he realizes she is only imitating the sound of a songstress, which is damaging her. There are questions about love, about dependence and the capital T: Traditions, that any culture follows. It is a super read and I recommend it to anyone who likes excellent reading, which transcends simple story telling into literature without you even noticing. It is great as a gift and a way to get people into manga who might not otherwise, and would interest anyone in feminism, gender roles, the SCA, as well as romance, and a hint of beautiful boys. Seriously, grab it!

9 Lives, I mention this because this book may be going out of print and ANYONE with a cat or loves cats and the way they think should get a copy. In the future aliens who are cat-boys and girls and call themselves 9 lives come to earth for reasons no one knows but are soon collared pets because having a 9 life means if you die, the ‘pet’ can give you one of theirs. Except what do the cat boys think of this, living as slaves and giving their lives away? We meet a feral young 9-life, Conri, who has run away and lives with a ‘fake collar’. He is helped by a human named Adrian: who gets him food better ID and a better fake collar. Conri is SURE that no human would help a 9-life (after all, anyone who catches him has extra lives!) simply because and follows him. Conri wants to be free, but he also wants to be loved, and he can’t admit even to himself that Adrian could just CARE about him. Conri follows Adrian, steals his food, makes a mess, is essentially a feral cat. He agrees to stay until he pays off the food, but he is NOT a pet. Fine, Adrian tells him, I don’t want a pet. Conri can’t believe a 9-life would ever love a human or vice versa as all he has know are people exploiting those he knows. But staying (not LIVING since he so NOT a pet, and stop calling him ‘kid!’ he is a um…teenager!) with Adrian, Conri starts to see things a little differently in himself and with is 9-life friends. And while he will never have a ‘master’ but maybe, just maybe, he will admit there can be love between a 9-life pet and the owner. A great book for those who have a cat, or have owned a feral cat in particular, as if cats could talk and walk around, I am sure Conri would be there. Rated ages 13 and up, it is a great book for teens who love cats as well. This HINTS at boy/boy love but for those who don’t read between the lines, and see the attraction that is unmentioned, they won’t see it at all. Highly rated by me, Cheryl and one of our cat and pet experts.

I want to do three more but I will stop with the next one as I am exhausted, sorry. This is a hetero romance across time which has two lesbians (Cheryl and I) giving it top thumbs up: Shinobi Life 1 which was written as a one shot (complete in itself) until it was turned into a series by popular demand. It also seems to be going out of print so grab it while you CAN (seriously – you can get it for under $10 but used prices are already going up to $40). In the Japanese historical past Kagetora, a ninja, has sworn to protect Beni Hime (Princess Beni). In an attack on the castle, he is thrown into a lake and through time to wake up to OUR Beni, who is a tough, take no nonsense, girl whose mother died early and whose father seems only interested in the money of the family house and estate. Kagetora, confused by the difference of things, vows to protect Beni Hime now that he has found her, and Beni, unsure what to do, accepts (OH NO!). She thinks he is a guy who is a little strange and bumped his head, but he gives her an ivory comb that the family has had for generations. Wha? Could he be telling the truth, and meanwhile, Kagetora sees through the oily boyfriends who try to engage themselves to Beni to get the money. These are two tough and independant individuals. It is a story we have all heard one way or another but this somehow makes it fresh and exciting, particular when Beni and Kagetora accidentally enter the portal and end up BACK in time, where Kagetora finds the real Hime, who has hidden herself and her past…for love. Can this Ninja give up his vow and be with this odd girl from the future? Or will he keep to tradition and send her back to the portal alone. Will he accept the position of ‘bodyguard’ (no wink-wink there!)? Read it and see! It has continued on to book 2 and soon book 3 but if you want just book 1 it is a great teen romance (or 20’s romance, or for those older, hey, whatever!), and rated 13+ (for violence I think).

As for me, if you have any ideas of how to save my birthday then both the adult Beth and the 12 year old (and the 6 to 8 year old) Beth would love to know too (I have a lot of different emotions when I am younger it turns out!).

I have learned that a year is not just words but rather a string of events, of things done with friends, of lessons learned, of good and bad but of growth so that one returns to the same day or dates the same but a different person. I accept that birthday’s are important, as I never though I would see this one, and yet, I have learned so much in this last year. What I need to learn now is how to manage my limitations and yet still love openly and care for those who ask or need caring. Yet I need some limit so that I can survive more than one or two days a week doing that and then spending the rest in bed. I apologize if I have not emailed you back, I am trying to but find that my pain and my condition which if purple is a good color for a human then I would be well, but it seems I am not. I considered going to ER this morning due to my heart and I think I will soon, as I need to assess whether it is electrical or structural failure which is causing me to wake, which makes a –bump-bump-bump-gurgle/splot sound. Taking chances of, “I’ll get to it later, if I am still alive” because so much of your body is in partial or mixed system failure is not really the right way to live. Um, happy birthday!

lesbians, catboys, ukes, yarn and harlots: The Knitting Post...at last!

Okay, socially I am compelled to speak out about a “lifestyle choice” that is seems to be spreading. You see people doing it publically in sunny parks, behind closed doors (of course!) but now though recently rightly considered a PUBLIC THEAT these same people are now, according to a 2008 article, allowed to pleasure themselves on a plane, as THEY PLEASE. I am of course talking about knitting.
Yes, the lure of the yarn, Canada, the same country with legalized same sex marriage has as the number one blog, Yarn Harlot. I think the name says it all, and if it doesn’t, the names of the colors of yarn, the skeins, range from Eye of Jupiter to Dream in Color Smooshy and Maui Sunset. Do these not sound like drinks you have had, or the names of that waccy tabbacy or LSD? Yes, there is something seriously addictive about knitting and it all starts with this: the spindle. Sure, we have been warned by fairy tales to STAY away from spindles (and knitting), but do we listen. No!

I myself would probably be clacking my own special titanium needles, if my hand eye coordination were not so crap. Why? Because it is alluring, the colors, the texture, the softness, the click, clack, click, clack. The whole experience lulls you softly to the dark side. And yes, there is a DARK SIDE. Knitting has no limits, no restrictions on its ‘lifestyle’, one just goes from one orgy of color and creation to another until it is TOO late. Things like rules, like morals, mean nothing to a dark side knitter. Yes, all was shown to me in this book, Loose Knits (I really have this cover), “Her private life was her own business.” Well, I think we all know what that means. Sigh. Oh the tales that cardigan could tell!

Why does this man have droplets of sweat upon looking at the Cat Boy?Is it his erotic Uke charms (Uke is the traditional younger, more femme in a japanese male/male pairing) and the intricate pleasures of fur? Most certainly, but also because he knows that, yes, HE is a knitter (dare he approach?!).

And these women, don’t those eyes tell it all? I think so. Yes, they are knitters too! They are probably off now for the erotic pleasures which are the only interludes between their knitting projects (Now that I write that it sounds sort of fun...wait!...see how easy it is to be sucked in). There is no boundary, country, sexual orientation; lesbians do it, gay guys do it, straight people do it, bisexuals do it. So alluring.

Approach knitters with CAUTION! I am not saying that ALL knitters have got to the place where it all skeins and patterns, schedules and new needles, more colors, variants of patterns, breaking tradition, breaking rules until nothing matters!!!!! But some are. Here is a tragic case I see all too often. Young girls, allured in by the easy pleasures of knitting, but then find modern world too dull, too confining when a skein and two needles can make anything you imagine. They start hanging with the wrong element, looking for those fast and cheap thrills to fill that hole which knitting made. Yes, that’s right, you down the left, with your knitted cap and ear flaps, a good girl once but now, just another member of a 'girl gang'. A life wasted....for earflaps? Sigh.

Here we see a knitter who has just finished her project, floating on what is know as ‘knitter’s high’, yes, she is in her own world, dreaming of her next pattern and her next color, shall she use the swing needles and Jewel of the Nile? Nothing can reach her now, as she floats on the feeling of a project done. Even when they aren’t knitting, in a sad way, they still are.

This Uke is a knitter, and proud of it too, so boldly does he look in the eye. That is the confidence of someone who has completed several patterns, who has created a pattern variation and successfully knitted it. “But, but,” I hear you say, “as long as he is happy.” Well yes, he IS happy, but what about those around him (and what about his poor Seme who never gets to play or hold him, as the Uke is now so obsessed with knitting?), how many yarn widows and yarn widowers have we across this great land? I am a workaholic but knitters go FAR, FAR beyond anything I could do. They dream knitting I think, as every spare second, every minute waiting for a doctor or on a plane is spent, knitting, knitting, knitting. The closer they grow, they more they cling to those who speak the language of patterns and skeins and fall away from those of us who still love them. Love like this, my first girlfriend, who didn’t in the end have time for me, didn’t even talk. And when I could get her to relax, what is she reading? SOB!!! A book of PATTERNS! Yes, I knew then that I had lost her to knitting.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there, as knitting leads on to embroidery and all sorts of other hand-crafts. And while Kamikaze Girls is a great tale of a mismatched couple of girl who fall in love, it is also the embroidery love song as a girl who does her own embroidery ends up working for Baby, Star shine bright (VB rose, another manga/move also is about a girl, caught in the delicate web of sewing, of knitting, of embroidery).

Am I saying that all knitters are bad? Of course not, but to see this beautiful cat boy in a kimono, NOT enjoying the sakura Cherry blossoms because why? He is deciding that he should start that pattern over with a skein of Blue Hawaii rather than Belladonna. Can he not see the beauty around him, the moon, the flowers, the petals, the stars. Sadly no, only the skein of Blue Hawaii.
Here is a classic trio who have enticed a newbie into the lure of yarn and knitting. First, the one of the left is obviously aroused thinking of all the ‘help’ she will be able to provide this newbie in a community where people help each other with projects all the time, hands touching, knitting needles clacking, the soft rub of yarn…. The girl in the middle is the ‘catcher’, the one whose enthusiasm for knitting and how EASY it is pulls them in. Little do they know that a lifetime of knitting obsession awaits them? While the girl far right is already away, now that the little fish reeled in, she is back with patterns and possibilities. Oh, what will be made next? Already anti-social, even as she has convinced another to join her ‘lifestyle.’

Nor do I say that knitting (in moderation...with therapy) is bad, in fact, so many people seem to enjoy it I think there is a lot of good that can come of it; but much like pinball machines, we have to ask ourselves, what of those poor people for whom it becomes an obsession? There are literally so many patterns, so many people, like Yarn Harlot or Yarnophiliac who have openly embraced their addiction, who gladly push it on to others, not knowing if they can handle the strain. There is no way to complete all patterns, and yet, sometimes it seems that knitters will try. That the dozens of gifts will all be knit, that socks and sweaters will be done in record time. More, more more!

We finish with the fruits of labour, a knitter who has finished with her scarf and is enjoying a well deserved rest. Is that what you see? Because the truth is, she isn’t even looking at or enjoying the scarf she has made. WHY? Because that isn’t a book she is reading in enjoyment, no, it is a SCHEDULE that an enabler like Lene has created for her. No, no! Look at the trees, the park. But, for her, it is TOO LATE, she is already realizing that she is 90 minutes behind on her knitting schedule. And that is all she can see. No she didn’t turn delinquent, but there is a lonely lover waiting somewhere for her, who will have to wait some more.....she just needs to finish these socks before she can head home.