Packing

These days are mostly completely occupied with packing.

I'm packing a bunch of my stuff that was still in Pittsburgh up to my mom's house in Canada, using a rental PT Cruiser that they gave me instead of an "economy" size. My mother pointed out, "Does anyone ever get the size car they reserved?"

I am researching freight forwarding so I can figure out how to get my crap to Australia. I also have to investigate how much crap I want to bring to Australia and whether or not I feel like just taking a backpack's worth of stuff and then buying everything else when I get there. So far, freight forwarding one bag of luggage (as opposed to multiple pallets of shrink wrapped cheap dolls that were made in Hong Kong by limbless children, eg) would run me about $450 door to door. USPS Ground is $327.

I could also take bags with me on the plane to Bangkok, leave them in left luggage for two weeks and then haul them with me to Perth. It costs 100BH a day to store them in the Suvarnabhumi Airport (which is approximately $3 at the current exchange rate), although I can't, according to Korean airlines, have bags that exceed 62" in total diameter (L+W+H) or 70 lbs each, which is somewhat limiting in terms of stuff.

However...what stuff do I really need? I was thinking it would be nice to have a fair amount of my clothes, and maybe some books and artwork and stuff, but I'm prepared to keep all that in storage if my other option is to pay hundreds of dollars for some twee shipping company to provide "valet service" for my one goddamned bag.

Remember, Remember

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason, and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

- trad.

So here it is November already and so much has happened in the measly two weeks since the last time I wrote. All right, two weeks is a long fracking time in this world of blog updates and other fun jazz, but here is a small sampling of the things I have done, will be doing, or am currently in the process of doing since October 24...

• Become involved with the funky production company EpicMegaPro to work on sending a fancy rock opera, created by iconic Swedish band Brainpool, on Swedish tour sometime in the next few years. I've been visiting with Swedish consuls, hanging out at Swedish mixers, and writing letters in Swedish, which is particularly engaging because I DON'T SPEAK SWEDISH. Thank you, Google Translator! They're probably all wondering, "Wow, this sure is an interesting idea, but why do all the letters sound like they were written by a five year old?" So far, no-one has pinged me as being little more than Eliza, and most Swedish people speak English anyway, or so they tell me. Our boss is going to Stockholm in January to have business meetings. As much as I would like to go to Sweden, STOCKHOLM...in January. Can I get a "Hell, no"? I'm sure the Northern Lights are very pretty, but I don't like freezing cold places with dark, gloomy daytimes.
• Received my Australian student visa ten hours after applying for it. You know, when I first saw the application process necessary for visa application, and the warning that it could take up to 3 months to get it after you applied, I started to panic. Proof of medical health? Four passport sized pictures? Proof of financial security? Gosh! Then I checked the online form, which didn't seem to have places to attach or append any of that information. Weird, I thought. Maybe they ask you to send it later. I filled out the online form, signed it digitally (basically typed my name under the place where it said "You better be you if you type your name here") and bit my fingernails. The NEXT DAY, at 7am my time, after I'd sent the application at 10:30pm, I received a blythe little notice that said, basically "Thank you for using our weed-out-the-truly-interested form! Because you applied online, we've ALREADY GIVEN YOU YOUR VISA. Here it is. It's good from right now. Yep, until March 2011. It's a party in Australia, and you're totally invited!" Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing, but it took LESS THAN TEN HOURS to get a visa for an entirely different country, which says I am allowed to study and work there for a long time. Um...sweet!
• Bought my plane ticket to Perth, via two weeks in Thailand. You know, I've never been to Southeast Asia. I'm totally into Southeast Asia. And so when I received the go-ahead from the Rotary travel agency that they couldn't find a ticket to Perth for less than $1200, I leapt into action and quickly investigated the sales I had just seen on STA Travel. Sure enough, there was a ticket to Perth for $986, including tax. But...hmm. What if I went somewhere else first? Let's look at other places I could go...Hawaii? Ooh, almost $2000. Solomon Islands? Fascinating, but tiny airport, and therefore expensive. How about Bangkok? Turns out that a one-way ticket from LAX to Bangkok (via Seoul) and then from Bangkok to Perth (via Kuala Lumpur) costs only $200 more than a ticket that flies directly to Perth. So who's going to Southeast Asia? Me! Got any suggestions for places I should contract intestinal parasites? I hear everyone does it. So far, according to my research, it's not really a matter of whether you contract diarrhea and vomiting in Thailand so much as when you contract diarrhea and vomiting. My hope? Not on a long ferry trip to Laos.
• Started writing for NaNoWriMo. I've done this a few times before -- the most recent time, I started writing TWO NaNo Novels simultaneously, one a YA novel (which I cannot locate on my hard drive, but I'm sure it must be somewhere) and one an erotic novel (hey, why not?) and then dumped them both in disinterest and languour only a couple of days in. The first time I did it, I blazed through, wrote the whole thing, and then got me a literary agent using that there NaNo Novel. I mean, she may be an agent who hasn't returned my phone calls in over a year, but she's still a god damn agent. So this time I'm writing a murder mystery, set at Burning Man. Why not? One of my favorite reads is a book called Murder At The War, written by Mary Monica Pulver, and it's a murder mystery set at Pennsic. I seem to recall someone wrote a mystery set at Burning Man several years ago, but *I* haven't, and darnit, now's my chance. So far, I'm wrestling with making sure I'm not just stringing together thinly veiled anecdotal vignettes, and actually creating a cohesive, interesting and FICTIONAL story, despite my amusing myself by putting people I know into it all over the place. If you can't directly describe your friends and acquaintances in a NaNoNovel, where can you describe them?

So that's what I've been up to. How about you?

Waves Above Chapter Three

Just a quick note to say two things:

First, I just bought my plane ticket to Australia a few days ago, via two weeks in Thailand and Laos. Well, I fly into and out of Bangkok (that's LAX-> Bangkok and then Bangkok -> Perth) visa Seoul on the way there and Kuala Lumpur on the way back. Sweet! I am excited to have 11 hour layovers at each of my partway airports, actually, because I'm hoping that means I can leave the airport which means I get the BEST souvenirs of all time: passport stamps for funky countries.

Second, here's the third chapter for The Waves Above.

My favorite thing

My favorite thing in the entire world, ever, to do is walk down the street at night looking in people's windows. Some people watch reality television, but I like the simple storyline-less act of just stopping to have a look when someone's lights are on, catching a glimpse of a dog's snout, or Finding Nemo on the television, or a bare foot scratching another.

My second favorite thing is listening to someone playing an instrument at night, from the street. You hardly ever hear this anymore; people don't play music at home, or they practice at rehearsal spaces or in the agonizing light of mid-afternoon, after they've stumbled out of bed from another late night at the jazz club (apparently, my favorite thing happens in the 1920s). But I can't imagine a greater pleasure than standing on the sidewalk outside someone's cozily-lit house, on a cool fall's evening that's still warm and delicious, the air smelling of sage and sounding of crickets, and listening to the piano spill out from those buttery windows.

It reminds me of one of Madeleine L'Engle's rules for a happy family, the theme that spread from the Austins to the Murrys and their children: singing and music in the home. I've always wondered, marveled at her families who gather together and sing in the evenings, or play instruments together; not like the Allman Brothers Band, but just like a fun way to pass the time in the evening, instead of watching television. Of course, I don't watch television usually either, preferring instead to engage in singularly repetitive evening behaviors, regardless of the day: I work, I read, sometimes I have sex. I sleep, before midnight. And I wonder, amazed and reverent, at the people who play music, because they remind me of a comforting, cozy world, where people can talk to dolphins.

I went for a walk through the cool night, watching people's lives out here at the sprawling complex in Camarillo that is my home until October 19, and passed life after life that could have been mine. People stay home out here; the young ones don't want to drive very far, or they invite their friends over on a Friday night...one house I passed had rouged lacy curtains, laughter, and the smell of pot. Most of the others have families and kids and garages and Finding Nemo on DVD and that's another kind of satiety.

I look in the windows and try on different lives, when my own is, quite frankly, a little disconcerting. I wander and wander, leaving a trail of good friends, and I miss and I want and I work but I don't have a job. My life promises to be opening out more and more, but if you open too far, holes can happen and things can slip through.

So I look in the windows and listen at the doors, wondering if there's some secret everyone else has to how to be happy in their sweet, beautiful suburban homes, and I smell the hedgerows of sage, drying against the desert air.

Staying right here at home

Since I've been a bit busy what with going to Europe and San Diego and also what with being a lazy bum whom spends all her time lounging in bed with small dogs, eating bonbons and clapping for my servants, I haven't gotten around to posting the second chapter of The Waves Above.

As a housekeeping thing, I've added a cumulative section in the sidebar of this blog, where all the chapters will go as I post them...it's down there under my archive lists. You can also click on this link right here --> link and it will take you to chapter two, which is disappointingly short for those of you who like to be able to read more about what's going on in a chapter. Sorry, that's just where the chapter wanted to end. But I'll be much better about posting following chapters from now on, so there won't be too long to wait in your frantic late night reading sessions, as you wait up, biting your fingernails, cursing me when another chapter fails to manifest itself. That's okay. I know you love me.

Although I'm not traveling anywhere particularly exotic over the next little while, I will be housesitting for some friends in Camarillo, which is lovely and deliciously remote from all the part of Los Angeles that I hate: namely, the city itself. So I get to go wallow in their house and do my laundry in their washing machine and vegetate on their couch watching movies on their TV and roll around in their bed and, most importantly, play with their cats. Have fun in Australia, Colleen and Peter! I'll just be over here MAKING YOUR CATS LOVE ME MORE THAN THEY LOVE YOU.

Back in the US...SR

My plane from Europe landed yesterday at LAX around 3 pm, and Justin picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at home, then immediately had to leave for a business meeting. Judging by the time difference, I'd actually been awake since 10:30pm PST on Monday night, since I didn't sleep on the plane (although I did watch a hilarious British film called French Film, as well as The Proposal, I Love You Man, and...geez, what else did I watch? I also started a Bollywood movie that has Shakrukh Khan in it, but they turned off our individual seat TVs before it got to the part of the movie where he takes off his nerdy glasses and shaves his moustache).

So needless to say, I was a little loopy. But it was just starting to cool off, and I'd been sitting down for essentially an entire day, so I walked over to the bike repair shop and picked up my bike, which is actually Justin's old orange-spray-painted Playa beater, and rode through the calm night over to my PO Box to get my mail. As I rode, it cooled, degree by degree, and I passed a house where someone was practicing the drums, which made me smile.

In Belgium, all the open French doors has calm classical music blasting out of them. Ray and I took a long meandering walk through the back alleys of Brussels, and passed window after window with warm light and curtains and violins and piano, such that we'd stop and listen to see if someone was playing themselves. Then we walked again.

Yesterday, riding my bike through the Los Angeles twilight, I felt so indescribably happy, and not just happy but CONTENT with my lot in life and where I was, that it was almost too much. But then some jerk in a car honked at me for obeying the road rules, and it shattered my contemplation. :)

In a few hours, I drive to San Diego to go to a psychology conference (exciting!) and stay with friends Jack and Charity (also exciting!). Justin is coming too, so I have a little family outing. I wrote in my journal (yes, my actual paper and pen -- although in my case, paper and Crayola marker -- journal) that I love my friends, how much they keep me going, and how I cherish them so much that I keep them around for ridiculously long amounts of time. I have friends I've known for 26 years, for 21 years, for 16 years. It's kind of awesome. It bodes well for staying in touch with everyone while I'm in Australia.

O England

There is only one full day left of my European odyssey, after having spent a whirlwind day-and-eight-hours in Brussels because we had some time to kill and couldn't figure out where else to go and we wanted to go SOMEWHERE. But since we decided that Brussels is actually the San Luis Obispo of Europe -- sunny, warm, pleasant, and you can't quite put your finger on why it's boring -- it was a very pleasant short trip. Now we're back in London, preparing to fly out the day after tomorrow.

There are so many things I'd like to see in Europe: back to Italy, for example, the land of loud men's clothing and flamboyant hand gestures. Eastern Europe and the majestic spirals of Praha. But I find myself missing the individual money -- all those deutschmarks and francs and lire and pesetas (not to mention drachmas) that are currently gone forever. Instead, we have bland old Euros, except in England. And Switzerland, which has apparently not joined the EU.

Mostly this trip has made me nostalgic, although my friend Raf and I were discussing how strange it is when parents get nostalgic for the past of their children...like when you wish your toddler was still an infant. Sometimes I get nostalgic for Europe, even though I'm actually in Europe, because I'm really getting nostalgic for what it was ten years ago, when I came here and you could get a hotel room in Spain for the equivalent of $8. I miss having everything be gritty and new and different, and the language polyglot, and smacking people by turning around with my backpack.

Ten years later, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it's still a complicated, immense continent, more like a place to live than a place you'd want to visit. And, conveniently enough, most of my trip here was spent "living"...staying in people's houses, visiting their families, learning their routines. No hostels, this time. No hostiles, either.

It's a different place, for all that there's a church down the street that's 600 years old. But I'm a different person. Thank god.

PS We went to Cyberdog today on the way back to Chalk Farm. Everything in there a) is very cool, b) would look fantastic on me, and c) costs immense quantities of pounds. A pity. So much cuteness for raver culture!