Kitte

This is a sand cat, the creature that Kitte resembles in a short story I have been writing & revising.

"Story"

Tell me a story, my lady said
as I folded her into blanket and bed
but I saw she was  listening to  Morpheus calling,
Her head on my shoulder, her eyelids falling,
the curtains closing on the waking stage,
the scenery stored away
the set already struck

I took my bows too, and followed her down
A step behind the hem of her gown
off backstage to change our clothes;
Then back up to the empty house we rose
In new costumes for the night
Robed in wishes
Clad in magic

And  out we went past the velvet chairs
down the carpeted, marble stairs
from the mezzanine to the lower floor
beyond the great mahogany double door
Out to the night, glittering with snow
the icicle moon
the crystal stars

Upon the sidewalk we danced, we twirled,
So that our cozy, warm cloaks swirled
and flashed their hidden satin hues;
We strolled along in our shining shoes
Lifting our voices in tipsy singing
lips in the shapes of  rosy lyrics
breath in clouds of white

"Where to now?" My lady smiled.
With the mischief of a child
she ran off down the boulevard
So I chased her, sprinting hard
splashing puddles creased with ice
reaching out to catch her scarf
as silken as her stride

It spooled out behind her, a kite tail,
Her laughter billowing, full sail.
We swam through pools of lamp post spotlight,
We flew on wings feathered with night,
Changing as fast as the colors of dusk
the brush of thought
on imagination's palette

Gods upon the wind

In her embrace, time over-spills its measure;
The heat of her body is a golden treasure
The curve of her side is a nest of safe sleep
To dream her dream is a prize to keep
She whispers, a susurrus of enchantment,
Tell me a story...
And I do.

Work Space

To my eyes, my desk is a mess. About half of it is full of knick knacks and bins to sort junk (holiday cards, wedding invitations, things I have picked up but not stored where they could go) and junk mail (credit card "convenience checks" and other things to shred). The disarray spills over to a side table. There are boxes on the floor.

It is not dirty, or particularly cluttered. Scraps of paper with notes relating to my recent/current writing project pile up in a too-be-recycled stack. On the desk are objects that I love, like the glass jars with candles, and objects that are useful, like the little analog clock. This corner also contains a shelf heavily laden with my bead supplies, notebooks, letter boxes, and my inkwell and other letter writing paraphernalia. Naturally, the wall hosts an array of oddities as well: a Chinese paper fan, a Japanese O-bon fan, a box of minerals and shells, a photo of a beach at sunset, a fairy print by Amy Brown.

This has been my fiction writing space. It is largely wrong for anything else in this condition. My desk does have to serve other creative uses. If I had the space, I wouldn't want to spread out too much since that usually just means that the mess has more room to grow. If I want to steampunk those 3D movie goggles today or if I want to draw (doodle, really) that I will have to clean today. Since it is nearly Lunar New Year, too, some end-of-the-year cleaning seems in order.

Not too much cleaning, though! Today is a precious free day, and I have creative energy to tap.

The Right Amount of Busy

One summer when I was in elementary school, I was bored over summer break. Our back yard had not yet been landscaped, and there were some concrete blocks among the small wilderness of weeds and low elm tree branches. They looked like ancient ruins from a strange civilization to me, in small. I made up stories about that Amazon-like people, but I was still bored.

I was always dreaming up stories. I still do. Back then, I didn't realize that I could write those stories down. "Audience" is a scary concept. When I was very little, five or so, I liked to dance and sing, so my father built a little stage into a space by the carport where we kids used to play. That was the end of my dancing; I never could go up on that stage. Maybe some of my fear of heights comes from there, too.

During that summer of boredom, I had an epiphany that I now think of as, "only boring people get bored." I was a lazy child who loved leisure. Boredom was no good, I realized. It wasn't a fun kind of nothing-to-do; it was a waste of my time. I decided then that I would always have something to do during the summer break. Consequently, every year after that, during the summer school break, I either took summer school classes or took up an activity. I was lucky to have the parents that I had, who enabled me to go swimming, practice yoga, travel to Hawai'i, and learn basic programming. All those summer school classes left me with a weird high school schedule, full of art classes, literature, and drama. (I regret giving up on the hard honors chemistry class and not taking physics.) I can honestly say that summers were never boring again. They had the right amount of new stimulus activity and leisure vacation time.

Ah, nostalgia.

In adulthood, I struggle with time management and the energy to accomplish all I want to do. Seeing what falls by the wayside only really happens if I keep a to-do list. If I don't keep a to-do list, I turn around and suddenly realized that some things are no longer in the wagon. If I'm lucky, I can remember what. If not -- and this is, sadly, more common -- I find what's missing when I need something that isn't there.

The to-do list is an amazing tool. First thing on the to-do list does seem to be "make a to-do list," however. Last thing should probably be, "make the next list." A friend suggested keeping a mix of difficult and easy things on the same list, so that there is always something that can be accomplished, even with limited time.

Post winter holidays, work has been challengingly busy for me. I have certainly been using a hand written to-do list on a daily basis. A handwritten list allows the deeper satisfaction of the sound of crossing items off, that wonderful sibilance of pencil against scratch paper. The daily duties combined with randomly added (metaphorical) fires to put out are just too many tasks to keep in my head, and the list makes it possible for me to be efficient and effective. Because work has concrete tasks, often with set deadlines, the to-do list is a powerful tool.

Outside of work... well, this update has been on my list for about three weeks. Some things stick around until they approach crisis (laundry!), then have to go to the "top" of the list. Making a list generates more items for the list, sort of like when too many things are jammed into a small container, and after the top items crammed in are pulled out, a spill of hidden items happens.

It's hard to be unhappy that my personal to-do list hasn't had much crossed off, because a top item has been Writing. That one word encompasses a lot of dedicated time. I don't cross it off because, right now, my writing energy is at a significant high point. I'm sending myself a lot of notes when I'm not at my keyboard, and when I'm home, I've been at keyboard in a series of bursts. There is a gentle undercurrent of guilt for one or two things that I would like to do but not enough to prioritize over writing. Even reading has felt like a secondary activity; I'd much rather be looking through the windows of my own worlds, even during my bus commute.

I count myself very lucky in being able to put writing at the top of the list. Sure, attending to the basics has to happen, but I have enough time to call my own to be able to choose what I do with it. I once promised myself never to grow up, but I do enjoy the empowerment of being an adult, combined with being abundantly blessed with opportunity. Boredom only manifests as an uncertainty of what I want to do next. As the saying goes, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." Not only am I keeping busy getting things done, but it seems to me to be the right kind of busy.

Written World by Rob Gonsalves

I love this artist. Today I found a calendar that used this painting, and I thought I should share it. (Image credit to Discovery Galleries.com)

Silly Musings About (Hot) Beverages

Q:Tea or coffee?
A: Yes, please!

You take a piece of a plant, roast it, brew it with hot water. Sometimes you add a sweetener; sometimes you add a milk of some kind. This is true of both coffee and tea. With coffee, the plant part is the seed (bean) of the coffee fruit (cherry). With tea, if it is a true tea then it is the leaves or twigs of a plant (camellia sinensis). If it is a tisane, it may be any part of a variety of plants, from root to flower.

So why the "or"?

Then there are all the ways of preparing the beverage. Both coffee and tea can be brewed in a variety of ways, depending on the effect that you want. You can sweeten it with that stuff in the blue packet, or you can use cinnamon and star anise. You can fill your cup with steamed hemp milk, or you can roll your espresso over slow-churned ice cream.

I have habits, but it is tough to say that I have a favorite. My habit for coffee is espresso. I like short Americanos -- shots of espresso dropped into a few ounces of very hot water -- taken black. I also have a nostalgic fondness for coffee Cuban style, where the strongly brewed coffee is served separately from a mug of hot milk, to be added to taste. My habit for tea is Assam or a smoky tea, loose leaf, brewed on mug at a time in my favorite mug, which holds about two and a half cups of liquid, and is made out of brown clay with a glossy sable glaze. I got it in Winthrop, right up by Washington Pass. It has a chip on the lip, now, but it will have to be in pieces before I give up using it.

Both coffee and tea are comfort drinks. As I've gotten older, I've started to see the effects of caffeine like a normal person. My days of drinking coffee late at night but having no trouble sleeping are lost to my decades passed. That does mean that I drink more green (lower caffeine) and herbal tea now. I have even found that drinking green tea, when I have coffee jitters, smooths out the jitters. Camellia Sinensis has components (theanine) in it that make the caffeine in it operate differently.

Here is a short entry in the US National Library of Medicine on caffeine and theanine:
Although both contain behaviorally significant concentrations of caffeine, tea is commonly perceived to be a less stimulating drink than coffee. At least part of the explanation for this may be that theanine, which is present in tea but not coffee, has relaxing effects. There is also some evidence that theanine affects cognitive performance, and it has been found to reduce blood pressure in hypertensive rats.
Read the rest of the article

I read that as "hypersensitive rats" and thought it sounded like an insult that Holly Golightly ("Breakfast at Tiffany's") would use. If you read the entire entry, or follow some of the related reviews in the sidebar on the same site -- the others seemed much more technically worded -- you'll see that theanine still isn't fully understood.

Does that make it fair to call tea a more complex drink? Does that complexity appeal to discerning beverage drinkers who favor it over the egalitarian nature of coffee?  Maybe?

No, I'm not buying that, either.

For Americans, coffee is the drink of the average Joe. It's even called "joe" as one of its many names. Unless it is fashionable coffee, such as a "venti skinny sugar free macchiato extra hot, no-foam" from that infamous espresso coffee chain.  By the way, never order that drink. What you'd really be drinking, there, is a pint plus a quarter cup of semi-scalded nonfat milk with artificial vanilla flavored and caramel flavored artificial sugar syrups covering up the two over-extracted espresso shots. That is a sad drink. That drink is a lot of milk and sugar, and you will get used to it, and later wonder where the extra weight is from when you always choose the "diet" options.  And yes, I am a Seattle coffee snob. I was a barista for eight years. The families that pick coffee with such care (on farms such as my brother-in-law's farm in El Salvador) want you to drink good coffee.

Tea has a ring of the exotic. Tea connotes English tea-time, the Mad Hatter's tea, exotic China, Japan, and India, and... fussy people who can't handle coffee. Once you get among the loose-leaf drinkers, you'll find out about all the things you didn't know about tea. Sit down with a Chinese tea seller at his tea table, watch how tea is brewed Chinese style (no teapot!), and drink cup after tiny cup of red tea, and it will change your life. Curl up with an aromatic mug of Indian chai (which just means, "tea"), a drink spiced with cinnamon, ginger, star anise, and more, perhaps sweetened with honey, made thick and silky with creamy milk (non-cow milk is good, too).

Japan has a tea ceremony. Ethiopia has a coffee ceremony.

And what about chicory? Isn't that cheating? Because chicory, deliciously nutty and slightly sweet on its own, is a tisane if brewed in place of coffee. Chicory is traditionally added to coffee to give it a distinctive, regional taste. It might have started out as a way to make do when there wasn't enough coffee to be had, but it has become a style of coffee all its own.

So why limit yourself? You can have it all.

Or you can have a hot chocolate.

Steam Engines, Cyberspace, & Starships

It's dusk on the east side of Snoqualmie Pass, and my little group, unfamiliar with this side of the Cascade Mountains, is trying to find a place for a stargazing picnic. We pulled off Interstate 90 and discovered that our chosen spot required a Discover trail pass after sunset, something that we forgot about in our spontaneity. One of our number pokes at his phone. The screen casts a night light glow inside the care while he calls out navigation to the driver. He has Google Maps up, and has found a tiny neighborhood park nearby. We get a chance to eat our sandwiches by starlight after all.

Contrast this to the more recent night of a friend's birthday party. Again, my group is in an unfamiliar neighborhood, but this one is in the urban wilderness. It is, in fact, in a part of the city that the birthday girl warned us was the "Bothell Triangle," a GPS thwarting conjunction of overlapping city borders not unlike the Bermuda Triangle. We're on foot, trying to find the party house that is supposed to be a short walk away from the Park and Ride. However, this time the maps app is failing us utterly. We end up calling for help, and the host and hostess come to pick us up. Later, I find out that another guest tried for half an hour to find the house, but her car's navigation system sent her elsewhere.

In the not-so-distant past, I carried a Thomas Guide map book in my car, at least ever since getting lost in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles and finding myself in Echo Park at midnight (not a great combination for a very young woman alone in her car, circa 1992). Before my acquisition of a smart phone, I planned ahead and wrote down directions. Along the same lines, I remember when people were more patient to wait for someone who was late, in the times before cellular phones.

I like to write about how ordinary people use technology. Whether it's clockwork and steam engines or smart phones or cryosleep chambers, my characters are shaped by the technologies of their worlds. Much of the time, ordinary people -- especially urban denizens -- don't have a whole lot of choice about using tech. In a race to offer consumers the most to purchase, industry pushes the newest technology and packages it through marketing as essential to... life, happiness, and everything.

Technology is perceived as a male dominated industry, but around me I see that everyone uses tech. Computers are common in city workplaces and households. In Seattle, it can look like everyone not only has a mobile phone but a smart phone, there is an assumption of internet access and usage, and fewer than six degrees separate any one person from someone earning her daily bread in a technology job. According to a recent article in Forbes, the Seattle area is top ranked in the country for technology jobs. In my every day I see women using technology along the entire spectrum. I know women who have their own servers, and I know women whose highest tech usage is listening to music on a portable mp3 player.

It's fascinating to me to see how some people embrace technology, and whether they do it because it excites them (geeks, pretty much anything) or because it keeps them at the top of a particular social class (hipsters, first to have iPhones). Then there are others who accept tech consciously, often grudgingly, and those who accept tech without thinking much about it.  Those who grew up in the age of computers are probably easier about accepting the latest gadget than those of us who remember ditto purple.

A simple truth of technology is that embodies change. In the context of an individual, that place of change is the dynamic of story.

The funny thing is, technology and how it affects a person is always more interesting when it breaks. (Just imagine if one of James Bond's secret weapons didn't work. What would 007 do?) Since it is supposed to make our lives easier, it is designed to make us dependent on it. I think we can all relate to that moment where something in the background becomes the focus of our attention because of the obstruction it has become.  I've been in many an office setting where the copier breaks, taking our fax with it, and workday gridlock ensues. I've experienced text messaging fail often enough to create protocols for that method of communication. How often has an empty printer cartridge, dead battery, or burned out light bulb been an obstacle to things running smoothly?

Maybe it's the poor tailor who is first to get a sewing machine, or the wounded space pirate with the outdated robotic leg. Maybe it's the child who is replicated, or the thief who is caught because of a phone, or an engineer whose field of work becomes banned. Any of these are characters whose stories I will want to tell.