Sewing machine!
As I mentioned before, my mom said she would contribute some money for a sewing machine for me. Yesterday I finally went out and bought one! I got a beautiful blue Singer sewing machine. She is my new best friend.
I already made something last night. It was inspired by this apron-y skort-like thing that Ariel told me about recently. I copycatted it by sewing apron pieces to the front and back of a pair of black Target "sleep shorts." And then I ironed a blue star onto each apron flap, to make it look more official, you know, like it has some kind of brand symbol.
It's very sloppily done by the hands of a desperate novice. But my advisors and I decided that it was good enough to wear to a (dark) club. And only a handful of people pointed and laughed at me!
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.: posted by Vera 
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Schoolgirl Figure
I stayed in all day today. At 10pm I left the house. I parked my car and walked up and down Valencia. The only coffee shop that was still open looked like a high school cafeteria with its big tables and bright lights. That was not the kind of coffee shop I was looking for. I got back in my car and drove by the new drive through coffee place on Van Ness and 13th, not because I wanted coffee but because I am fascinated by that thing. I think it's the first drive through coffee place in San Francisco. It was closed.
I turned around, made a right and a left and found myself on a different part of Valencia, with smaller-numbered cross streets than earlier. There was a coffee shop that was still open and did not look like a high school cafeteria. There was a parking spot right across the street from it.
I ordered a hot chocolate because it was too late for caffeine. While I was waiting for it, I perused a poster on the wall. It was for a play called Schoolgirl Figure, a comedy about eating disorders. It was playing in San Francisco from November 12 to 20. Today is November 27th. I don't think I have ever been this bummed about missing a play.
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.: posted by Vera
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Un/thankful
Thankful:
- that I finally found Quark in the United States at the Berkeley Cheese Board Collective and the big bowl of blueberry cream Quark I made and am going to take over to my friend Robby's a little later
- for the six (six!) invitations from friends I had for Thanksgiving
- for the half hour long conversation I had with my dad two days ago, on his 56th birthday
- for my new blue striped collared shirt (I am loathe to say blouse, but who am I kidding, it's probably a blouse) that puts me back in touch with my former nerdier hermitic self who wore glasses and had no friends. I don't see her much anymore.
- for all the books and DVD's I am going to hole myself in with for the rest of the weekend. I don't plan on leaving the house much, and I get giddy at the thought of it.
- that I discovered last night that someone I know washes her hair even less often than I do
- that my roommate is moving to London, not because I don't want to live with her anymore (au contraire) but because it just seems like such the right thing for her to do right now, and I'm happy for her
- for All Over Coffee [via Amy]
Not so thankful:
- for the fact that I can only accept one Thanksgiving invitation
- for the hopeless anger that shoots through my veins at least once a day, sometimes more
- that I have no voice for the 32nd time this year
- for the fact that all plane tickets to Germany for Christmas week cost over $1000
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.: posted by Vera
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Just say Aloe
On Saturday my friend Shu said "Vera, I just realized that your name is just like the Vera in Aloe Vera." I said "You didn't realize that until just now? Well, duh."
And then I realized that I had never used the Aloe clue to teach people my name. These are conversations I go through rather frequently:
Somebody: What's your name?
Me: Vera.
Somebody: Zera?
Me: No, Vera.
Somebody: Fiora?
Me: Vera!
Somebody: Feera?
Me (holding up index and middle finger to make a V): Veeeeera.
Somebody: Ah, Viera!
From now on it will go more like this:
Somebody: What's your name?
Me: Vera, just like Aloe Vera.
Well, duh.
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.: posted by Vera
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Television, heroin and the observer
Terrence McKenna in Food of the Gods in 1992 writes:
The nearest analogy to the addictive power of television and the transformation of values that is wrought in the life of the heavy user is probably heroin. Heroin flattens the image; with heroin, things are neither hot nor cold; the junkie looks out at the world certain that what ever it is, it does not matter. The illusion of knowing and of control that heroin engenders is analogous to the unconscious assumption of the television consumer that what is seen is 'real' somewhere in the world.
This reminds me of a passage I highlighted in Douglas Rushkoff's Ecstasy Club a few years ago. The narrator had just done heroin for the first time:
[...] the high was [...] insulated and safe. Objects seemed to contain themselves within their own volumes with astonishing precision. The ashtray was an ashtray. The floor was just the floor, and nothing else. Duncan's voice, harassing someone about something, was just a sound. It had nothing to do with me. [...] Nothing threatens you. There was no need to make jokes. Who gives a shit about humor and self-reflection? On smack there is no irony. There's no need for distance since everything sits exactly where it is, apart from you and minding its own fucking business.
Ever since I read that, I have been trying to go through my own life from the perspective Douglas Rushkoff describes. I have been trying to look at things from the third party perspective, from the outside, from a distance, so as not to feel threatened, overwhelmed, frustrated, or whatever other negative feelings self-reflection can bring with it. I am not advocating becoming completely numb and passive, but sometimes I wish that just for a moment I could look at my own situation like I was as indifferent as if I was on heroin or as if I was watching it on TV. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I can look at a beautiful girl talking to a beautiful boy as if they were just that, a beautiful girl and a beautiful boy, without feeling envy. Or I can look at somebody's super cool outfit and not think "I wish *I* had that outfit" and just appreciate it for what it is. Or I can look at my own struggles as if they were just a story. You know what it feels like to cry because of a book or a movie? It hurts but it's not your own pain you're crying over, and that's why it actually feels kind of good?
Aleister Crowley in yet another book about heroin, Diary of a Drug Fiend, describes a similar sentiment when his narrator is high on heroin:
I noticed [...] that my thoughts were uniformly pleasant. Curiosity impelled me to fix my mind on ideas which are normally the source of irritation and worry. There was no difficulty in doing so, but the bitterness had disappeared. I went over incidents in the past which I had almost forgotten by virtue of that singular mental process which protects the mind from annoyance. [...] I recollected every detail with the most minute exactitude. But the most vexatious and humiliating items meant nothing to me any more. I took the same pleasure in recalling them as one has in reading a melancholy tale. I might almost go so far as to say that the unpleasant incidents were preferable to the others.
Wouldn't it be great if we could feel that way more often about our own lives, even just once in a while? Sometimes I do feel that way about sad periods in my past because, since it's no longer real and imminent, I now have the distance of the observer's eye, in which all tragedy is glorified. And sometimes we all recall embarrassing moments from our past and genuinely laugh about them. But what about pain and suffering in the present? It's really hard to distance oneself from that and feel indifferent or even good about it.
But sometimes, as I said, I get tiny little glimpses of being the observer. Earlier this week at a place I frequent I ran into a person I have been trying really hard to forget and avoid. The encounter made me very upset and left me wailing for hours. Today I was at that same place again, and stupidly and regardless of how upset I had been the last time, looked around, somewhat hopefully, to see if that person was there again. And for a second I hated myself for doing that, and embarrassment and shame and frustration and resignation all came bubbling up to the surface, but I was suddenly able to push them away and look at myself from a neutral standpoint, and I recognized and accepted that this is just what I'm going through right now, and I started to see the devastating beauty in it all.
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.: posted by Vera
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I sew need to do more of this
After ten years of deliberating and walking past polka dot fabric thinking "That sure would look good on me as a dress," I finally took a sewing class. This is what I made in it:
The pillow on the left. The smaller one on the right was made by my mom last year. They kind of match, don't they?
A place mat. It's light pink and has pansies on it. Except that my sewing teacher said "How cute! It has little dog heads on it!" And once she said dog heads, I couldn't see the pansies anymore.
Also, I'm hearing voices right now, and these voices are telling me to take the apron class next.
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.: posted by Vera
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More than you needed to know
My friend Colin was in town this weekend. On Friday night I picked him up at the San Francisco Hilton where he was staying. We drove to 1015 and got an awesome parking spot. Once we were inside and loud music was all around us, Colin asked me "So how have you been doing?" I pulled him over to the table farthest away from the speakers and answered his question in at least ten paragraphs. We kept getting interrupted because people I knew walked by. Colin asked me "Do you know everybody?" I said yes. An hour or so of hugging more people hello later, Colin said "You do know everybody." I wasn't sure if I should take that as a compliment or a complaint.
Dance, dance, dance, blah blah blah.
Colin was ready to go before I was. I asked him if he needed money for a cab. He said no; he would just walk. I told him to walk up 6th Street towards Market and that 6th Street would turn into Taylor past Market and to make a right on O'Farrell, and that his hotel was right there on O'Farrell and Taylor. His jacket was still in my car and we agreed that he would get it from me the next day.
Colin didn't call me at all the next day even though he said that he would. At about 10pm I found his cell phone in the pocket of his jacket that was still in my car. That's why he hadn't called, I figured, he didn't have his phone. There were two new messages on his phone. One of them must have been from me from earlier that day. I called his hotel from my cell phone and asked for him by name. I was in Oakland, picking up Maryann to go to a party at the Noodle Factory. I told Colin that I might drop off his jacket and his phone on my way home from the party at about 3 or 4. He said that he would be asleep by then.
Dance, dance, dance, blah, blah, blah.
I was back in San Francisco at about 3:30 in the morning. I drove to the San Francisco Hilton. I parked my car in front of the hotel in the white area behind a cab. I put on my hazard lights and locked my car. I walked towards the entrance. I was wearing a short skirt, platform shoes, pig tails and a belt made out of plastic hearts, all in candy colors. I talked to the door guard. Even though I was completely sober I felt as if I was drunk or high while I was talking to him. The reason for that is, I think, that out of the two of us in that particular situation, I was the more likely one to be drunk or high, and I was poignantly aware of this. After exchanging several sentences, he decided that it was okay to let me in to drop off Colin's jacket at the reception. I walked towards the reception. The guy at the reception looked me up and down and smiled. I said "I need to drop this off for Colin [Lastname]" and handed him the jacket. He took it and smiled. I smiled too and said "thank you very much" and turned around and walked towards the door. The two or three hotel staff in the vicinity of the door all looked me up and down and smiled. One of them held the door open for me. It was a moment of acute awareness of how different my life is than other people's, even within this very city. It made me feel both happy and sad.
On Sunday night I once again drove to the San Francisco Hilton. I got an awesome parking spot. I went up to the room Colin was sharing with his friend. The Simpsons was on; beers were drunk; the view from the 23rd floor was amazing. It took me a while to figure out which direction the view was facing. When I had finished my beer, Colin and I took the elevator down and walked towards my car but then decided to eat at the Indian restaurant on the corner instead of driving somewhere. Colin hadn't had Indian food in over a year. I wasn't going to let that stretch continue. We ordered four vegetarian dishes, but only ate about half of the food because we were both on diets. After dinner Colin talked to a homeless man who didn't look like a homeless man and who kept saying "I'm homeless but I know that I don't look homeless." Then we crossed the street. As we were getting into my car, a guy that was sitting in the passenger side of a purple car across the street vomited out of the car window. Colin saw it happen but I only saw the resulting mess on the street. We drove to the Mission to pick up my friend Diane. Then the three of us drove to Club Six for Compression, a new jungle weekly that used to be a jungle monthly last year but then stopped. Colin and I completed a circle that had started almost six years ago when Colin took me to my first jungle weekly in Santa Monica.
When I dropped Colin off at the hotel, he ran up and back down and gave me a beautiful long and soft orange-red-and-yellow scarf that his mom had knitted and that he thought I would like. It was a present. I am wearing it right now.
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.: posted by Vera
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Sorry everybody
A lot of people are really sorry about this year's election, including myself. If you are sorry as well, perhaps you would like to let the world know.
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.: posted by Vera
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Song of the week
Duplex - Escape Velocity
It's in a mix by Jan D. that Starrie gave me a while ago. From an email to Jan in which I ask her for the name and artist of the song:
It wakes something up deep inside of me, something from a long time ago, but I don't know from where.
It's true; I don't know from where but I know approximately from when, which would be the mid to late nineties. I don't actually think that I had ever heard the song until this year, but it reminds me of the kind of songs that first exposed me to electronic music, the kind of nameless and faceless songs that were on certain compilations that my then-boyfriend would play and that I would listen to osmotically. Hearing this song now makes my heart hurt synesthetically, not because I miss my then-boyfriend or those times, but because it was so long ago and because I wish I had listened to the music more actively THEN instead of time traveling NOW. And because I feel like I really KNOW the song even though I don't really know it at all.
Update: Mystery solved.
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.: posted by Vera
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My neighborhood
Today was a really beautiful day. I saw my surroundings in a whole new light, literally. I took a walk and some pictures. All pictures were taken within a two block radius of my house. The concept brought back flashbacks of 22 months ago.
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.: posted by Vera
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Fucking fuck and all that
I cried a little bit this morning. Did you?
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.: posted by Vera
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Costumes
By popular demand, here are pictures of the costumes I wore this Halloween weekend.
Friday and Saturday: Rainbow Brite, continued
I realize that the legs are cut off but if you really want to, you can see them here.
Sunday: Pippi Longstocking, playafied
You may not have realized that Pippi Longstocking hoops but let me tell you, SHE DOES.
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.: posted by Vera
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Hallow morn happy faces
This is Maryann and I at about 8am on Halloween day. We had just been dancing all night at the Gingerbread Warehouse and were now at the Brass Tax Renegade party. We were happy.
Like every year, I was wearing my Rainbow Brite costume (hidden by layers at this time). Maryann, otherwise known as Orange, let her alter ego, Blue, come out and play this weekend.
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.: posted by Vera
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