Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

there isn’t always a countdown. i’ve resisted the urge to do so the last few years, but for some reason, i am ALL ABOUT m embracing my customary (though admittedly ridiculous) amount of enthusiasm for all things birthday.

so, at T- 32 days, there is still much to be done:

• find purple gloves and red wig for costume cause this year instead of only TALKING about being Jessica Rabbit i am actually going to DO IT. sheesh
• obtain pumpkins, and carve them
• take hodie down to the haunted trail and hope she does not repeat her larceny
• call mother and request she make me a batch of The Best Carmel In The Known Universe and then hoard it
• find ingenious new ways to subtly, but unmistakably indicate my desire for various birthday gift items
• devise system wherein my closest friends & loved ones will not bludgeon me before my birthday just to get me to shut the hell up about my birthday.

that last one’s going to be tricky.

last weekend a friend and i went for a hike out in “Stub” Stewart state park out near Vernonia. i picked the hike primarily because i always tend to do gorge hikes, and was curious about the newest state park. of the offerings, none seemed especially difficult or lengthy, so i picked the one that looked to provide the greatest challenge: The Bumping Knots Trail.

it ended up feeling largely like a stroll through a park, and was mostly a pony trail. some elevation change, but nothing more than moderately strenuous. even after the six-plus mile jaunt, i still had the energy to pick up said friend and give him a piggy back ride for a few dozen yards. these feats of strength, i cannot resist them.

there was a nice viewpoint along the trail with a little bench, but nothing to write home about. honestly, the most compelling thing about the hike was the discovery of the Banks Vernonia Trail, a portion of which runs through the park. it is nice and wide and flatish and very beautifully paved. and i suddenly wanted nothing more than to go for ride.

wednesday was my day off so i tossed the old trek up into the rack and motored out to the trailhead. the weather was less promising than it looked from inside my bedroom, grey clouds were in a looming mood. also, i seem to be not so much with the map reading skills, and though i tried to find a trailhead where the path was paved (which it is for all but 3 of its 20 miles) i managed to park in a place that left me 2 miles from the asphalt. to be fair, the trail is still in excellent shape, well maintained and covered in gravel, graded, and still a very good ride. the problem is that i have the narrowest tires in all the land on my bicycle and so there was a serious amount of vibrating, nerve-wracking, anxiety inducing bumpiness on my way.

once on pavement it was a lovely speedy cruise. i think i came up on some horsey-riders a little faster than they would have liked, but i was all ipod and momentum. i think it failed to occur to me at first that i would eventually pay for all of this speed…

the weather remained sort of gloomy and grey for most of the ride, but it was cool enough to keep me comfortable for most of the trip. i went as far down the trail as i could, but some constuction on the pathway turned me around at about mile 15. i’m hoping next time i go, i can start at the Manning trailhead, do the entire 20 miles and then come back.

one highlight was the trestle bridge about midway through the ride. if i hadn’t been so worried about the impending rain i was sure would fall at any moment, i would have gone off the trail long enough to get some scenic trestle bridge photos. as it is, i just got this shot of my trip across it. a few more weeks from now i’m sure the foiliage will be glorious…

coming back, i was to feel the flatishness wasn’t in fact as flat as i had led myself to believe. there was sweating. oh, yes.

coming back through the unpaved portion wasn’t as tough as going out was, though i did dismount AND carry the trek down the last grade since it wasn’t worth my life to take it on the wheel.

and, happily, the rain did not begin in earnest until i was safely tucked in the drivers seat and imagining with glassy eyed pleasure the turkey burger i was going to get at Burgerville when i went back through Hillsboro. plus also a blackberry milkshake.

and i am pleased to say, even considering the bumpiest portions of my trip, i was decidedly ungimpy after my ride. hoo-ray.

and not only because my birthday is Halloween.

i am intoxicated by patterns and textures, bags and shoes, silk and corduroy. i delight in surveying, and selecting, just the right combination of my garments. i array myself with clothes like armor and go to face the world thus protected, or exposed, depending on my aim.

each occasion calling for a mode of dress of a particular type is met with giddy anticipation. i relish planning for myself, i revel in making selections for others. and i have always taken considerable pride in my ability to portray myself in any manner i please in this way. i am just as easily the hipster as the harlot, jock or jade. i have an especial fondness for what i like to call Naughty Librarian Chic; fine fabrics, skirts just a shade too short, shoes just a bit too tall and pointy, tailored shirts with one button too many undone. i feel each of these choices communicates certain things about me to the people around me. and in most cases, i feel bolstered and safe behind the persona i don along with my clothes.

i hadn’t spent much time thinking about why i have such an obsession with clothes until recently. i could say readily that the utter lack of any choices about how i looked or what i wore as a child left me feeling exposed and vulnerable and was one of the most difficult aspects of growing up unsure of myself. i have somehow always associated being well dressed with confidence, security, and success. it was only when i began to notice a compulsive tendency to feel as though if only i could find just the right outfit, that all would be well, when my acquisition of habiliments became such as focus as to border upon addiction. i was putting the expansion of my wardrobe ahead of other more pressing priorities, and eventually, had to stop buying clothes altogether for a period of time.

and even now, that i am thinking about it conciously, i still have trouble controlling this impulse. moreover, the more i think about it, the stranger my ideas about clothing seem. recently it occurred to me that i always imagined that wardrobe was a fundamental focus for, if not every then certainly most, sophisticated attractive people with the means to dress as they pleased. having made several friends in the last few years who are unquestionably all of those things, but have little or no interest in clothing, has forced me to examine my biases about the subject.

and as i do so, i am forced to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth of what i suppose i know already; that when i refer to my clothing as armor, i am utterly serious about this comparison. i do not feel sure enough of myself to present indifferent dress. i can never dress solely for comfort or without considering exactly the perception of myself i am hoping to promote. the notion that people might see something i did not carefully craft sends me into a cold sweat.

which is not to imply i am always perfectly dressed, it is merely to say that i am never carelessly dressed. there is always significant thought invested in the selection of whatever i wear. and so too, in what it is i am attempting to communicate via my levi’s and low cut sweater, my capri’s and twinset, the exquisitely tailored cocktail dress, the tank top and peasant skirt.

and i have begun to envy these happy few dear friends of mine who seem so utterly at ease in their skin. who are radiant and appealing no matter what they wear. who do not have to look down at their outfit to tell them who they are today, who they want to be instead.

By David Ebershoff

enjoyable to read, capably written, this novel approaches the history and present of multiple marriage within the LDS church.

a fan of historical fiction, i appreciated the extensive research and attention to detail the author afforded his subject matter. while the mormon church enjoys a wealth of documentation due both to its relative youth as an organization and its doctrinal position that keeping records of heredity and history are critical functions of the church, these records are not usually available to “gentiles” and the more controversial the subject matter the more difficult these records become to access. Ebershoff even uses this circumstance as a literary mechanism within the context of this interestingly structured novel.

the book is portioned such that there are really three threads running concurrently throughout. there is the reconstructed memoir of Ann Eliza Young, the notorious 19th wife of Brigham Young, there is the modern-day murder mystery set in the backdrop of the sect of the LDS church which still practices polygamy, and interspersed are vignettes in the form of recreated newspaper articles, personal letters, and archived documents pertaining to one tale or the other.

the stories herein are interesting enough to have kept me entertained, if not especially inspired. the novel was well-constructed but lacking a certain resonance of tone considering the powerful emotional themes broached therein. themes of faith, human dignity, and the dangers of theocracy are approached, but not plumbed.

overall a fair piece of historical fiction. worth reading, especially for those with any curiosity about this particular aspect of the Mormon historical record.

***part of a continuing series “Wholly Unsurprising Revelations”***

i am a picky eater. much less so than when i was a child, and would condemn foods from entire ethnic groups without ever having sampled them (this is how i missed out on hummus for most of my life, i feel my narrowmindedness has been duly punished, as such) but still, it shocks the better part of my social group, an urbane sophisticated food crowd, the wide variety of things i will not eat.

part of this is habitual, part physiological.

habit amounts to a tendency to eat the things i know i like and avoid things i’m not so sure about. when i go to Slowbar they dont ask me what i want because EVERY DAMN TIME i go in there i order a pulled pork sandwich and a Heineken. (well, not anymore. now i order a Peroni, since they got rid of Heineken) i mean, it’s delicious, and i highly reccommend it as my favorite pulled pork in town, but still. such predictability!!

on the physical side of things, i am a supertaster. so, though i think this makes me special, really, all it does it make me sensitive to stuff most humans don’t seem troubled by. i fall firmly into the cilantro haters category. texture is also exceedingly important to my ability to enjoy a given food. moreover, it turns out i have a rather combative relationship with my body. it is constantly betraying me in a variety of ways. like when it falls down for no apparent reason with embraassing frequency. my immune system leaves a great deal to be desired, and most important for this discussion, my gastrointestinal system is frequently in a hideous uproar. if i eat breakfast i usually end up feeling nasty. if I fail to eat breakfast i tend to feel queasy. the answer seems to be to sleep til one o’clock and avoid that part of the day altogether. not the most practical solution. and it is not only breakfast that causes me trouble, just that breakfast ALWAYS does, whereas other meals only do with a randomness that borders on maddening. i can’t accurately predict whether a given meal or foodstuff with go south on me. this does not tend to make me feel inclined to try lots of new and different things. though in the last few years, i’ve been brave. trying for the first time; indian, greek, lebanese, thai, and sushi. and excepting the last of these, i have found tremendous enjoyment in all this new cuisine.

yet there are still a few core things i cannot, will not, shall not eat which most people consider fundamental foodstuffs.

Tomatoes: this one baffles people. i like salsa, spaghetti, pizza, and many other tomato-based food items, but i simply cannot abide uncooked tomatoes. its definitely a texture thing. buh-leah.

Fishes: and not least because i am terrified of the buggers. also because they are yuuuuucky. nothing from the sea. except, well, i’ll eat tuna. but it has to be safely in sandwich format before i will consider it.

Mushrooms: occasionally, in my youth, i ate them, but only for recreational purposes. generally speaking, i try to avoid fungus in my life. for example when it is growing in my closet and under my bed and making it hard for me to breathe. seems like a bad thing. i also have a relative who is the Mushroom Expert for the Lincoln County Poison Control and i have heard too many stories that end: “And then she had to get a new liver, but since they couldn’t find one in 17 hours, she died.” additionally, LOOK AT THE THINGS!! scary alien things. biologists cannot even really honestly say what the hell they are. i mean, fungus had to have its own KINGDOM cause it was impossible to classify any other way. i cant think of any other eukaryotes we deign to eat. i think there’s a reason for this.

there are a million other examples, but these are the ones that seem to interfere with my eating the widest variety of common dishes. i wonder if other people have this problem; hating something everyone else seems to love and therefore have to dodge said thing with great frequency.

ah, the curse of the supertaster….

also, i LOATHE LOATHE LOATHE guacamole. seriously.

i only don’t understand them.

*** i consider this post the first in a series i am going to call “Wholly Unsurprising Revelations” if you care to make any yourself, please, feel free!!***

Wholly Unsurprising Revelation: It is no fun to have someone point out things you do not like about yourself.

i am well aware of my shortcomings. in fact, i make a hobby of listing them and announcing them to others. in fact, i am here willing to proffer:

A By No Means Comprehensive List of My Faults

• self-absorbed: which seems only fair since i AM the center of the universe after all
• vain: but, you know, with good reason
• pessimistic: call me Eyeore
• alternately spastic and complacent: some call this bipolar, i see it as weakness of character
• demanding: i like stuff and attention. lots of both. now
• hypersensitive: i am squishy in the middle, there is frequent crying

and yet, as willing as i am to admit all of this, turns out it is NO FUN to have any of these things pointed out by someone else. this was made manifest to me this morning. it all started innocently enough, talking about golf…. ended with “Sometimes I forget how squishy you are” which, ironically, in itself was an attempt to avoid upsetting me.

sheesh. what a pain in the ass i can be. but dude, if you agree with me, keep it to yourself please.

i am not likely to be elected spokesman for any video gaming company. i have terrible hand eye coordination and lack the obsessive devotion to repetitive tasks so necessary for video-game mastry. however, when i was a young thing, i was madly in love with the commodore 64. and i am willing to bet i would still have a kick ass time playing with it, if i had one.

a few games in particular stick out in memory as being extra-strength awesome. my absolute favorite was REALM OF IMPOSSIBILITY. Hells. Yeah. this game consisted of threading your way through various levels of mazes to obtain keys which would then allow you to access other levels of mazes. pretty sweet. you were hampered in your attempts to obtain these keys by pesky zombie dudes who were all up in your shit like the SECOND you came into the place. and your only recourse was to keep away from them. you could hide behind structures, but you had no weapons to speak of, you were only slightly faster, and if they touched you, it hurt til you died. your one means of protection was to drop behind you, as you ran away, a trail of little crosses which would impede the zombie progress for a while until they eventually disappeared and once again leave you vulnerable to zombie touching. it was best to play with a partner who could also participate in the cross dropping, but you had to be careful cause you couldn’t leave the screen area without your homey and if they died the mission was a fail. so, if you were, say, my older sister, who’s approach was to view her “partner” as nothing more than an expendable cross dropping pack mule of sorts, this was not necessarily the most effective strategy. i never actually managed to beat this game, as the final level, the Realm of Impossibility, was, well FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. so.

another gem was RACING DESTRUCTION SET this one was neat primarily for the level of customizability built into game play. not only could you select your car, you could build a unique track out of a variety of surface materials like ice, dirt, mud, or asphalt in any configuration you chose AAAAAAND select the degree of GRAVITY you wanted your track to have. so you could pick moon gravity and be flying all AROUND the place, or pick jupiter gravity and stick to the track like glue. was fun stuff.

and then there was ARCHON which was like wizard’s chess.  your pieces would move across the table and attack each other in interesting ways based on what kind of mythical critter they were.i liked being the Dark Side since the snakes and nasties were way more entertaining in terms of the wickedness they would unleash.

there was also RUSH N ATTACK (get it?) this game had the worlds most annoying precussion sound track. i can still hear it in my head: dat dat da da da DAAT dat dat da da DAAAT. it played relentlessly overtop your rambo style recon mission of doom. there was a lot of running, and jumping, and leaping from the tops of tankers to the tops of bulidings and the occasional stabbing action. i do remember liking the bazooka and flame thrower quite a bit.

i also remember playing something i want to think was called DREAM HOUSE. it was like playing dress up, but with paint and furniture. i remember being excited BEYOND ALL REASON when i discovered you could ANIMATE the scene by hitting the correct sequence of keystrokes. this mean the kitty would swing its tail, the clock would tick, and the fire in the grate would flicker. awwww yeeah.

thinking about it, i’m pretty sure the reason video games dont appeal to me anymore is cause they are no longer so basic and limited by technology. for me, the more simpleminded the better. ahh for the old days…

By William F. Buckley

plucked this one off of an endcap at the library and was hoping for better.
written in an approachable, easygoing tone, this novel took a different tack than the typical Washington Scandal Book, most of which are rigid, intense, and gripping. here instead we had a scandal, cover up which resorts to arson and murder, and the ruination of a presidential candidacy all discussed with a remarkable lack of engagement or urgency.
this lackadasickal emotional approach translated into a rather unengaging read. action was interestingly conveyed, but improbably casual. even the reactions of many of the characters to the circumstances in which they found themselves seemed disingenuously detached and unemotional.
the end comes rather suddenly and without the drama one would expect from the events as they unfold. i expected to find at least 3 or 4 more chapters after the last page and was left feeling a little perturbed. not so much because i was so interested in the story as to long for its continuation, but because i was incredulous that it would end with such percipitance.
i felt like the underlying plot was interesting and could have made for a gripping Washington Scandal Book but was poorly handled and incompletely developed. ( )

Harper Paperbacks (2008), Paperback, 288 pages

by John Updike

i realize this is meant to be a modern classic, but dudes, this is a weird little novel.

into what would otherwise be a poignant and well written character study, Updike has entwined strange tendrils of Greek mythology.

the opening scene is exemplary of this trend; we have our main character, a high school teacher, shot with an arrow by one of his students through the leg and trailing a bloody hoof.see, he’s a centaur, apparently. once he reaches aid in the form of a mechanic able to cut the arrow, he goes back to class and struggles to complete his lecture under the jaundiced eye of his in-school nemesis, the vice principal.

the point of making any of these characters mythical creatures is completely lost on me and the execution seemed inconsistent from both a psychological and practical sense. a centaur that drives? how many legs do they have again?

to my mind this choice distracted from what would have otherwise been a solid, if somewhat gray, snapshot of a father-son relationship captured over the course of a handful of wintry days.

not bad per se, a little bizarre. perhaps just not to my taste.

Ballantine Books (1996), Paperback, 320 pages