Wow, November 1st. Soon it’s going to be 2007. What a crazy futuristic date. When I turn sixty the year will be 2045. This isn’t the past, it’s not even the present. I’m living in the future. Cyborgs, hybrots, space weapons of all kinds, I’m going to see it all assuming I live that long.

November 1st and I’m happy. That’s just because I’ve eaten and I am always happy when my stomach is full. Before I ate I was unhappy. Very unhappy.

Those damn trick-or-treaters. A lot came to the door this year, and by a lot I mean more than ten. Last year there was around two. The year before that there were none.

They depress me because they have a present that is a past I can never ever get back. Never mind that I never really enjoyed trick-or-treating, many was the year where I would freeze in some uncomfortable costume that I couldn’t see out of. I went as a barrel of toxic waste one year. I got the idea from a Calvin and Hobbes strip. That was a truly uncomfortable costume. Impossible to move in.

Why do I want to go back to a time when I was miserable? Childhood sucked. I never got along with anybody in school. I was that weird kid who wanted to be left alone.

So why go back? Why do I miss my childhood?

Damned if I know. The present is pretty neat. Yesterday I got a lot done. I finished editing the second chapter of Kira, Kira, and I finished a rough draft of a short story, I drew up a plot for what could be a pretty good novel if I don’t fuck it up with my clumsy pen, and I worked a bit on a movie script that I’d only been toying around with before. I felt happy. If it wasn’t for those blasted kids I would have been happy all day.


Things from October:

My brother says that one of his friends was propositioned for sex by a tranny. I asked him if the friend said yes and my brother said no.

futilelord tells me that the place he works is haunted. So many places in Albuquerque have ghosts in them. My mom says that there was a ghost in her old school. That’s the Southwest for you. I once saw a ghost in a canyon...

I ran into an old girlfriend, Ashley the Depressed. She told me that she’s doing better now and is working at a shoe store in the mall. She says that she’s got a boyfriend and that they’re engaged. It’s a wacky world.

For my art appreciation class I have to go to a gallery and write an essay on a piece that I find there. Second to last time I went to a gallery I was very-very-very drunk. This was before I was of age and I was desperately trying to hide how drunk I was from the attendant, who probably didn’t care.

I overheard this snippet while at a restaurant: “Dude, I can’t believe you don’t remember that! It was when we were smoking pot and—.” Shit, bro, I think I found the missing variable in that equation.

My dog nearly caught a two-headed bird in the backyard. I got it away from him but was so startled when I saw the second head that I let it get away. Or was that the month before?

I have just finished reading the web comic megatokyo for start to present and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Largo is fucking insane, it’s great.

I went to see Rudolfo Anaya at Bookworks, a small bookstore in Albuquerque. He is a well-spoken elderly Hispanic gentleman with a kind of deep humanity offset by a childlike playfulness. It’s hard to read a person from a brief encounter but he appears to be one of the nicest men I have ever had the pleasure of hearing speak. He read a rough draft of a poem he is writing and talked about his new book.

And that’s all that happened to me in October. Take care all y’all.

Dear you,

This is the first post I'm putting up on Butterfly Soup that's not originally from Everything2. It seems easier, dearly beloved, to write this as a letter than in another format.

It's been funny the last few days to talk to wertperch about our shared goal of writing daily throughout November. Same idea, but the difference in the way we execute it reveals quite a bit about our characters. He sets himself a goal - 750 words a day, and immediately starts...three days before November has actually begun. (What? Are you nuts? We don't HAVE to start until November 1...) Me, I plan to write every day in November, but without a specific word count, subject, and truthfully with a thoroughly modified definition of "every day". Five days a week, maybe, but I get weekends off if I want. And if I'm sick, I don't have to write. And exception, exception, exception. Wertperch is all about the rules, I'm already developing the exceptions. Wertperch is very concrete. My goal is far more loose.

But anyway, I want to tell you why I finally started to attempt to put my thoughts into this bloggish format. The inspirations behind this are the half dozen or so weblogs that I read whenever they post - and it's an odd collection. One food blog, one combination food and art blog, one letter-writing blog, one that is pure whatever-she-wants-to-write-about-today blog....and then one that is no longer posted to, but that I go back and read and re-read when I'm feeling adrift in my own life.

The blog that I most covet, as it were, is Julie's old awaken.net weblog, which I think of as the grandmother of all blogs. It's no longer available with that url, and I'll challenge you, beloved reader, to either hunt it down or to hunt me down via e-mail to ask where it's hidden now. Julie wrote about a series of spiritual questions and transformations that she was experiencing, in a most amazingly personal way. I love both the way she wrote, and also what she wrote about. She was incredibly willing to post her innermost thoughts onto the ether, (or at least what seemed to me to be innermost thoughts) and to let the world at large into them. I'm far more stingy with my thoughts, especially when we start using the world spiritual. Oooorg. I can feel myself squirm just slightly to admit that that is the heart of this quest.

One reason I hadn't started sooner was that there was not one obvious coherent theme that I consistently want to write about. Brendon has cooking, jessica has her quirky and wonderful self, Melody has music, Katrina has art and food - and I feel like a complete dilettante in comparison. I write, I cook, I spin and knit, I make costumes....I make landscapes, also. I write about being a parent, cancer survival, whatever is either tickling my fancy or taking up all my attention at any particular time. But not one of these is the dominating theme from which I frame everything else. I'm not an artist who cooks, a cook who paints, a writer who spins, a parent who knits...I'm not first and foremost a cancer survivor, or any of those other things, but they all color my life and my writing.

So then. A few weeks ago I went back, and again read through Julie's entire web site. I pondered why it appeals to me so much that I wish I'd written it myself. Much as I love reading all the other blogs and E2 postings, hers is the only one that I covet to that extent. I love reading spidercamp because I get a glimpse into jaypea's life, and her experience is quite lovely and different from mine. It's strange to get a glimpse into Julie's life because her experience is so similar to mine.

And here's the snag. The theme that keeps drawing me back, is her exploration of herself and her spiritual path. Yikes, there's that word again. I find myself going all aw shucks and toe in the dirt - first of all, I could have nothing remotely interesting to say about my own spirituality, and second, how embarassing. My physical reaction is that of coming out of the women's room with my skirt accidentally tucked into the back of my tights - my spiritual slip is showing.

So with that now said, there's the challenge. I'm going write about all the things I'm already writing about - parenting and art and cancer survival and writing and cooking and spirit. I"m also going to look a little more deeply at the well-hidden spiritual path that ties them all together.

With all my love,
christine

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