It'll probably be an interesting and (I hope) useful tool, but my initial impression after digging a little deeper than I really needed to do was simply, "what a cesspoool."

During the slack moments at work today I'll try to come up with what to say on my profile -- or perhaps more pointedly, how much to say. I've always been rather careful about what I put online, especially in the hands of third parties, but in the case of social notworking sites, other people can put stuff up about you too, and you have no control over that at all.

Aynway. We'll see what happens, eh?

....it's been one hell of a crazy year. I hope I've learned something through all of this. I'll write up a recap of the years in a few days.

Anyone can hold a beat, a rhythm.. but it is in those fractional heartbeats that the master makes a rhythm their own, keeping the listeners just a little off-balance with subtle tugs on their heartstrings.

I first heard this piece many, many years ago, during one of the deeper moments of the game; a pause, a respite, a wondering-what's-next, a moment of mourning, a moment where you have to somehow find the strength and will to keep going desipte insurmountable odds. In a game filled with memorable music, this piece stood out.

I was one of those computer geeks growing up, playing whatever games I could get my hands on. It wasn't for the sake of playing games though; in hindsight I was using it as an escape; immersing myself in a world and system that I could understand and experience. Instead of the general platformer/action/etc tripe, I was drawn to games that exuded atmosphere and story, evoking emotion, emotion I could feel, emotion that was so lacking in my meatspace life.

This was also behind my voracious appetite for books; I'd escape into other worlds woven by masters of the word, consistent worlds populated by People. I capitalize People because not every person is a Person. I knew I certainly wasn't, and I had no idea how I could ever become one of those Persons who could create, change, evoke, emote, and generally be a master of their own world.

But I digress. There were many games (and many more books) but few really stand out in my memory. Some were true masterpieces, but most others boiled down to that intangible property we call Atmosphere. The feeling of another world, the little details in the writing and art, believable dialog, and phyrric victories. That there are sometimes no "right" choices. The price of attachment. Feeling of accomplishment. Especially those feelings; there was nothing that was good or bad, as long as I would feel something. Something that wasn't me, or so I hoped.

Sometimes... that atmosphere, that sense, that feeling, was carried by the game's music. Music is usually overused, especially today, wielded as a crude "This Is How You Should Feel Now" bludgeon, but when done right, it's something you don't notice, blending into the experience as a whole. Until you hear it later, out of context, and your whole being lurches in memory.

My most powerful memories are associated with music; for a long time they were the only emotions I really had. Over the years I've learned something of how this works; how to create atmosphere; how to invoke and evoke; how to weave words, notes, rhythms, and touch; how to show someone that there is something more than ourselves, something deeper, something higher, something greater, something smaller.

I still hear the melancholy notes of Jazz playing the grand piano in the observation lounge of the Concordia as it hides in an asteroid field to make critical repairs. I hear the clean plucked guitar of Erana's Peace as my hero sleeps beneath its tree. I hear Duke's one-liners overlaid on top of Grabbag, followed by the steady 5/4 progression of Stalker as the first level starts. I hear the haunting themes of the Agro Planet and New Constantinople, all alone against a dark, dangerous universe. I hear SHODAN's taunts as I crawl towards the CPU nodes on the Executive deck, carried by a thousand variations on a simple theme. I hear the dropship falling towards Presephone, leaving behind everything for... something that is little more than an unknown hope. I hear Synapse as I truck around Hong Kong after a frantic escape from UNATCO, its peaceful theme morphing into the aptly-named Opponent Within.

I hear the travels, the transitions; I hear the trials, the tribulations; I hear the quiet losses and the not-so-quiet losses; I hear trust and betrayal; I hear the wonder, the incompletions; I hear growth and change; I hear laughter and tears.

I hear memories and experiences, woven into me, sometimes with a deft touch of a pickpocket, and others with the grace and impact of a powersledge.

I hear my heart and soul.

Yet... were any of these real? These worlds I escaped into, these worlds that touched, changed me? Were they ever mine, really? Where is my world, my music? Where is my Loom and my place in the Pattern? Why did the swans leave me behind?

Are these words real? ...Am I real? Can we ever truly know? And does it really matter?

...So as long as we have and create music, sing, and dance, who cares?

I sit here, watching the curtains billow and sing from the cool fall wind gusting powerfully through the house, casting backlit shadows across stained carpets.

I sit here, music turned up, the pulsing bass rumbling through my my gut, foot tapping along to a beat older than time itself, only half aware of the lyrics that flow through my mind.

I sit here, breathing in the world, goosebumps rippling over charged skin, words flowing through electrified fingertips, touch leaping over distance and time, and wonder...

...Am I really sitting here?

Several friends keep threatening to volunteer, but something always seems to come up. So I say to all you secret admirers out there, now's your chance!

As the dust settles over the battlefield, I once again find myself asking that ever-present question: What do I do with myself now?

Every time I've tried to answer this, I get a series of qualifiers, but no actual direction. If I'm lucky, I can see the next step or two ahead before the cloying fog completely obscures my path.

It's been incredibly frustrating, but it's also forced me to live in the short term, making the most of everything that comes my way. And that... has been incredibly rewarding. Not just photographically, either.

"When faced with a choice of paths, chose the more beautiful."

But it happened to me. And I'm still shocked, two days later.

...I ran out of shampoo and conditioner at the SAME TIME.

It may have something to do with the massive backlog in my RSS feed reader; as I write this it's 11,400 entries, from something like 250 individual feeds. I fell behind on my trip to Arizona, and I've never managed to have less than about 3,000 entries in the unread pile since then. It would be worse, except my reader only keeps the last 100 entries from any given feed.

More than 3/4ths of the feeds are phography-related; a handful of photographer/technical blogs.. but mostly a deluge of photographs. It's given me many ideas, but more importantly shows me what works, what doesn't... and has really helped me hone what I want to accomplish.

The remaining quarter covers a wide swath, but the largest chunk of them are of a somewhat sexual nature, and of a rather deviant nature at that. I say "somewhat" because I'm not following them for the sexual content, but rather as an insight into the dark inner workings of the human psyche -- and sex is inexporably tied up in all of that.

Last night I found myself stuck on the couch with my leg wrapped up in a heating pad, with nothing to do except work on the backlog. And so I flipped through amazing photographs, read highly-charged stories of seduction and desire, and let the thoughts of dominants and submissives alike wash through my subconscious mind.

The more explicit something is, the less interest it holds for me. I like subtleties and suggestive visuals; letting the mind and imagination fill in the blanks rather than the "meat market" approach that puts it all on display. Similarly, I don't care for the "shop class" approach to writing (pound, drill, clamp, etc..) instead wanting to know what's going on in the characters' minds.

It's these mind games that I love; reading about the paradoxes of feeling, the conflict between reason and desire, the cascading snowball of emotions that destroy resistance and awaken the deep primal urges that we keep bottled up most of the time....and the sheer joy that comes from embracing them.

Immersing myself in this imagery, be it textual or visual, forces upon me a balancing act of sorts; feelings and parts of myself that must be embraced without being overwhelmed by them; the burning need to understand and how they work so that I can then see these hidden strings in others... and manipulate them to effect the effect I desire.

It's these desires and their affects that weigh on my psyche this morning. I have always needed other people, either as subjects or as an audience, and often both at the same time. Knowing what makes people tick helps me draw them out, past their projected shells, revealing themselves -- waiting for that perfect moment and capturing that emotion playing across their face in a photograph.

And later, the look on their face changing from (mock) exacerbation to a voiceless wow when they see the results -- themselves through my eyes. Their beautiful truth.

This is what I love; seeking out beauty, sharing it, and if I'm very lucky, creating some of my own. To do this, I have to open myself up as wide as possible, let the world in... and myself out.. to play.

It's no wonder life's been so interesting lately -- Like attracts like; passion begets more passion, and as some know, when I let myself out to play, it can be very fun indeed.

I finally broke down and registered a domain for my photography, www.peachyphotos.com, and while now it just points directly to my archives, it will eventually hold more of a portfolio/showcase of my work, as well as more day-to-day details of what I'm doing photographically. Or at least that's the plan.

And we all know what life likes to do with plans, eh?

Oh, just because I haven't been posting photos doesn't mean I haven't been taking them. I just haven't been posting 'em...

FINAL JUDGEMENT FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE

[.....]

IT IS ORDERED AND ADJUDGED:

6. MARRIAGE DISSOLVED: The marriage between the two parties, SOLOMON LEON PEACHY and CRYSTAL LEIGHANN HUFFMAN, is hereby dissolved.

[.....]

DONE AND ORDERED in the chambers of the Melbourne Branch Courthouse, Melbourne, Brevard County, Florida, this 13th day of April, 2009.

That was a false dichotomy, of course, for there was another option -- Be open and honest. But that doesn't necessarily imply that one has to advertise or flaunt themselves; just answer any questions truthfully when asked.

But old habits die hard, especially when they were developed and honed at an early age.

My parents converted to Islam when I was two, and while they didn't wear it on their sleeves (that I recall, anyway), it certianly caused many problems for them until they somehow managed to find work in Saudi Arabia. One would have thought the problems would have gone away there, and for them, it largely did, but for their children, it went from not teribly good to a whole lot worse. While they embraced the religion, and later the culture, of their dreams, us children were left swinging.

As far back as I can remember, I've always felt like an outsider. Being one of three non-christians (the others being my eldest sister and an Iranian kid) in Holy Name Elementary School, run by the Catholic church across the street. In Columbus, Ohio. Oh, I was a model student, and the nuns that taught me were kind -- except when the metal-tipped ruler had to come out -- and we never overtly made to feel bad that we weren't Catholic, doing their best to accomodate us.

But it's hard to meaningfully accomodate when so much of the school's routine revolves around the Church or Catholicism in general; from the crucifixes on the wall to the Hail Marys in the morning to masses and field trips to a factory whery they make those little Body-of-Christ-to-be wafers, the school lived and breathed Catholicism, and it was deeply embedded in everything they did.

So during Mass, us three got to sit in the rear pew of the church and not particupate in communion. My mother taught me to say "Hail Mary, Mother of Cod", and sort of tried to explain that they were wrong and we were right without really explaining anything at all. Oh, and as long as the wafer remained a wafer and not the Eucharist, I could eat as many as I wanted. Oh, and especially no drinkng the blood!

I don't begrudge my parents' choice of that school for us; we were not living in a good neighbhorhood, and the only public elementary school available to us was a hellhole. Many years later I was later told that it was so bad that there had been a rape in the halls of that (elementary!) school.

As I said earlier, I was a model student, and the only thing that kept me from getting perfect grades was my handwriting. I do have many happy memories of that school... but through all of it, there was the feeling that I was an outsider; that I didn't belong there; and I suspect a goodly chunk of my trying to be an ideal student was due to me trying to "fit in" by being everything my teachers wanted me to be, even though it was doomed to failure.

I still remember the lyrics to the solo part I had in a musical from second grade. I had perfect pitch back then. I had no part in the following year's christmas play, being in a bit of a sulking funk when they were signing people up to particupate. The reasons escape me now, but not my feelings: hurt, and oh-so-very alone.

I grew up culturally isolated; my parents tried to insulate us from the big bad world and western culture, but unforunately they didn't fill that void with anything else. Being the working poor, they could barely make ends meet, and as such us kids were largely left to fend for ourselves. We didn't have the strong home life or that strong sense of cultural identity (that defines so many immigrant families) to give us a sense of place.

We didn't have a television, though we later got one to use as a screen for an Atari home computer. It was a flaky black-and-white-set, and despite having a coathanger for an antenna, it managed to pick up enough of a signal for me to sneak the occasional set of cartoons after making myself breakfast in the mornings -- Voltron, Thundercats, and Transformers I remember in particular, though if Transformers came on, it meant that I had better get going to school or I'd be late!

We even had our own Muslim "Sunday School" and the two Eid festivals every year, but they always felt poorly tacked on like a misplaced tail during a party game. In hindsight, that was because everyone else there seemed to have that sense of identity I lacked; strong extended immigrant families that already had their own culture and communities. Being a white, blonde kid in that sea of dark hair and dark skin.. I not only felt different, but I *was* different. My parents had abandoned the culture they were born to, yet were unable to assimilate us into anything else.

Even back then, I played along, figuring out and doing what I felt that other people there expected of and/or wanted me to do. After all, I already had to play lip-service to Catholicism at school every day, so this came naturally, and not only did I succeed, I even won an award, all the while wondering what it was that everyone else had that I was missing, why I just didn't get "it", and feeling ever more alone. (Keep in mind that my family left Ohio a week after my ninth birthday -- when I say that this goes way back, I mean it!)

I didn't really have any friends; though my family spent a lot of time with the aforementioned Iranian family and their kids. One of them, Milad (sp?) was my age and classmate, and he and I battled it out for Math Supremacy.. but I recall little else, other than he and his older brother were troublemakers. (Oh, did I mention my eldest sister and I were born in Iran? My parents only left because of that pesky Revolution..) On a more daily basis, the ones I ended spending time with, at least during my final year in Ohio, were local neighborhood kids, and not the best of sorts. (As an example, I later found out that one of them had stolen my sisters' big wheels from our yard/garage..)

Oh, even then I knew the neighborhood was bad, and there are more than a few occasions that in hindsight I'm amazed nothing truly bad happened to me. I had nobody to talk to about any of these things, least of which my parents -- though in this case, not out of fear. I remember not wanting to burden them with it; they were already going through so much, and they'd only get more stressed, worried, and try to isolate me even further.

I remember sugar maple trees with their propellor-like seeds whirling down into my hands. I remember the heat from the fire given off by our neighbor's garage, set alight by some arsonist. I remember the police busting our other neighbor for growing pot. Twice. I remember being woken up by Nutkin, not too long after she graduated from a stray to our housecat after a praticularly nasty blizzard.

I remember COSI, with their "please touch the cool stuff!" policy. I remember snowball fights and roasting fresh corn on a gas stove. I remember the carpet in my bedroom having a perfect pattern to be a parking lot (and plane of destruction) for my collection of (ever-more-battered) hot wheels cars. I remember staring out the front screen door one summer afternoon and asking "Why did God put me Here?" (Here in the physical sense, on this planet, rather than the more metaphorical sense..)

I remember Mrs. Love, my kindergarden teacher, and the embarassing scene she caused when she saw me pick my younger sisters three years after I had left her classroom.. I remember the elaborate GI Joe and He-Man toys of Tony's (the thief-turned-friend), their dying batteries sending their spidery legs creaking over the floor and wondering just what was supposed to be fun about them. I remember a particularly nasty car crash right in front of my house. I remember the first time I ate a fruit roll-up. I remember building things out of Legos, some of which I still own.

I remember a lone cardinal perched brilliantly red in a pine tree in the dead of winter. I remember gleefully mowing down giant mushroom growths in the front yard. I remember sneaking the occasional quarter to put in the Ms. Pac-Man machine in Morris's Market a few blocks up the street, making up stories to my mother about how eggs were getting more expensive. She only called me out once on it, and even then, there was a weary kindness behind her righteous anger. We needed the money, but I was her favorite. And I still am.

I remember Joey, Bice, and Aaron, all classmates of mine. Joey had an amazing singing voice, and his father drove an ancient Ford station wagon. Bice was named for the US's Bicentennial year in which she was born, and had a tendency to flash her (white) panties to the classroom, much to Sister Marie's dismay. Once, I "took" Bice to a ballgame. It was the closest I had to a girlfriend or indeed, a date, until my sophomore year in college.

Aaron was a particularly imaginative kid who was the first to intentionally mangle my name. Salmon, he called me. His vivid imagination stood in stark contrast to my apparent lack of one; though I now understand that it was a side-effect of the mask I wore; oh, I had one then just as I do now, but letting it out would have been revealing, so instead I sort of froze every time I had to do something creative. I didn't know how I was supposed to act or do, at least until I was able to start copying what I saw others around me doing, or figure out what "they" wanted or expected.

But even with that semi-stifled creativity, at least there was still some, and there was a genuinely encouraging environment. If only it lasted...

A week after my ninth birthday, and just over five years after we'd arrived in Ohio, my family returned to the Middle East, this time to the birthplace of their adopted religion, Saudi Arabia. Everything in my life was turned upside-down. But as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But that... is a story for another time.

Janis Ian, Seventeen

I learned the truth the day before my seventeenth birthday, on a long bus trip with an Ace of Base cassette playing on a continuious loop. The bus was heading towards the resort town of Sharm el Sheikh, on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where my family and our hosts were to spend several days of relaxing at, and snorkeling in, the Red Sea.

This little excursion marked the end of a nearly month-long "vacation" in Egypt. I use quotes because while I technically was on my summer vacation, it was a working holiday. Our hosts were old friends of my younger sisters, and one of their many side enterprises was a summer camp of sorts, and my sisters and I were volunteered to help out. My mother came along to keep us out of trouble.

Our hosts' apartment and the camp itself were in Cairo's Maadi Gadeedah district, and the daily routine consisted of running out to a street vendor for some fresh fooul (essentially a fava bean concoction) or other breakfast, bundling over to the camp for a day of hair-brained insanity, and bundling back home for dinner with a side-trip for mouth-wateringly-fresh ingredients thrown in for good measure.

Most of the kids in the camp were what would be called "young tweens" now. Yes, I was helping educate, entertain, and generally herd a pile of eight-to-twelve-year-olds. Once I got over my impulse to flee screaming, I apparently did a pretty good job; the kids warmed over to me and I to them, and I genuinely enjoyed myself. In hindsight, my desire to teach grew from this experience.

During the first two weekends, most of the kaboodle piled into the aforementioned bus and drove to an apartment outside of Alexandria, overlooking the pearl-white sands and impossibly-blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. With that aformentioned Ace of Base cassette playing during the three-or-so-hour drive.

We swam a lot, relaxed a lot, I read general aviation training manuals (having exhausted my own meager supply of books fairly early on). I got the only earache I've ever had the first weekend. The next weekend, I fell asleep draped over a far-too-small couch while a birthday party of ten-to-twelve-year-olds raged on around me. And more swimming. And pool with missing balls. And sand castles. And card games. And then it was back on the bus again for the bouncy drive back to Cairo, Ace of Base blaring over the partially-blown speaker.

For the final (extended) weekend, it was just our hosts, my family, and a bunch of scuba divers, heading towards the Sinai Peninsula and the Red Sea for a bit of true R&R. Wait, Scuba Divers? I guess I need to back up a little first.

My sisters' friend, MT, was a former classmate of theirs who moved back to Egypt with her mother, DT, for reasons that escape me at the moment, as well as her father's name. He was still working in Saudi Arabia that summer, so it was just DT, MT (and the young'in, ST) in their apartment. And us Peachys of course.

DT's brother (whose name also escapes me now) owned a dive shop, and it was his shop's hired bus that carted the kaboodle around. The trip to Sinai was a regularly-scheduled dive trip, and as such there were a bunch of other people along for the ride this time. So that explains the divers.

So what does all of this have to do with my learning the truth?

Over the course of the preceding three weeks, I'd naturally spent a lot of time with MT. She was two years younger than me (fifteen), smart, pleasant, and attractive, not just physically but also in that "sure of oneself" confident sort of manner that she got from her mother (a true force of nature, I might add) -- Not that I was particularly (and/or consciously) aware of any this at the time. Like her mother, she wore a headscarf around me. A proper, demure young Muslim lady.

The bus trip to Sinai had quite a few strangers (to us) on it, so we clustered together. I had my usual seat in the right rear corner of the bus, but this time, MT was sitting next to me. and we didn't have a herd of kids to corral. It was dark, so I couldn't read; I was in a moving vehicle on relatively crummy roads, so I couldn't sleep, especially with the intermittent blinding headlights of oncoming traffic. And then there was Ace of Base, though by this point I could probably recite the lyrics in my sleep.

Thanks to the haze of time, I don't remember exactly how it started or progressed, but she ended up leaning against me, apparently asleep. At some point, I put my arm around her. Still later, our fingers met, and laced together. But what really blew my mind when she squeezed. She was awake, and an active, willing participant. In whatever it was that was going on. She and I sat that way for what seemed like hours. And it may have been, but my sense of time was pretty badly warped at that point. While part of me was basking in the "holy crap, this is something I've never felt before, and man is it good.." sensations, the rest of me was freaking out.

Growing up, my family was never particularly close or open. There was little real communication, and even less physical contact. I never felt I could really talk to my family, especially not my parents, about my problems. It seemed that I got back the kind of "why on earth would you think that?" blank stare at best, or at worst, anger that I'd question something they took for granted. In all fairness, it wasn't as bad as all that, but I always felt different from the image they projected, both consciously and unconsciously, in public and private, leading me to wonder from a very early age indeed, "just what am I? I wish I knew, but I know I'm not 'this', whatever 'this' is, but this can't be all there is..."

This was compounded by growing up (and going through puberty) in the highly segregated, repressed Saudi society. About the only interaction I had with non-familial females were the few on my school bus (provided by my parents' employer as we lived in company housing) that were even younger than my sisters, or the occasional friend my sisters brought home, MT included, not that I can really recall anything in particular about her before that fateful summer. In any case, there was nobody I felt I could really talk to.

My companions were books; I had few friends, and only a handful over the many years that I would have considered close. Saudi Arabia was a transitional place, and us expatriates were never sure if our contract would be renewed the following year, so few lasting friendships were possible. I later discovered the wonders of BBSes (yeah, this dates me, I know), and that became my lifeline to the world, but even while there may have been females on the other side, there was never that physical contact that I needed so badly. Not that I knew I needed it at the time.

So on the eve of my seventeeth birthday, I learned the truth; I learned that there was indeed something else I was missing, and while I didn't really understand what that was, that revelation completely shattered my world.

I didn't know how to handle it; so I did the only thing I knew how -- I tried to be logical and analytical. So despite the beautiful backdrop of snorkelling over coral reefs outside Sharm El Shaikh and swimming with a dolphin outside of Nuwaibah (with the Saudi coast visible in the distance!), I was a withdrawn zombie. I clamped down hard on my newly-awakened feelings, unable to express, talk about, or even let them out. It took me the better part of three years for this to finally break (during my sophomore year at Georgia Tech), and it wasn't until fairly recently for me to look back, understand, and accept what actually happened, and why.

Nothing was ever said on that bus trip, nor was anything said during that long weekend, or the trip back. I think I was too afraid of the watchful eyes of our respective mothers, and how (on the surface) it was a bad thing to do, bla bla bla. Yay, for a strict-ish religious upbringing and overbearing, judgemental parents! I don't know if it really would have been all that bad, but it sure felt that way.

After several days of navel gazing, I eventually wrote MT a letter, including a gawd-awful attempt at poetry, and just before I left, she handed back a reply by way of my sister. In what appeared to be the same envelope, so I originally thought my letter was being returned unopened. I wish I could remember what she'd written, though I suppose it doesn't really matter any more now. She remained in Cairo, and I returned to Riyadh. And that, as they say, was that.

We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, come dance with me
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me
At seventeen

You never forget your first, they say; not only was MT was my first crush, she showed me that there was an entire world out there that I'd been completely oblivious to, even though it was years before I realized exactly what had happened to me, and many more before I truly understood it.

So what ever happened to MT? Over the years, I've received a few out-of-the-blue communiques from her sister ST (who by now has probably graduated from university), but also from MT herself, mostly in the form of invites to random yet-another-social-network-site-I'd-never-heard-of. I've replied to some of them (and never heard anything back), but after the last one, I went digging to see what I could find out. She'd apparently gone on to medical school and became a dentist or oral surgeon (or something like that) and runs her own practice now. Smart, tough, and tenacious. She still has a love of the water, and if the photo I found is any indication, the years have been very kind indeed.

I have many memories of that fateful summer; fresh limeade, getting into and out of all sorts of trouble, wandering around Cario on foot for hours on end (yay for getting lost!), herding hordes of children, eating many delicious meals with wonderful company, swimming in the White Sea and the Red Seas, my first encounters with Israelis (arrogant pricks!), stroking the pocked and scarred belly of a wild dolphin, coming face-to-face with a tiger shark and a lionfish, discovering the sheer brilliance that is David Brin's Startide Rising, that I really don't like Ace of Base, and of course, the truth I learned, but didn't learn, at seventeen.

I've said very little about what's been going on in my life during the past few months. In part that's because even I don't know what to make of it yet, even as I scramble to figure out what it all actually means.. and more importantly, where I go from here.

It's the murky nature of the future that has me twisting into headaches; and not because of places I do not want to go.... but instead, because of what/where I do want, and my inability to figure out the general path -- or heck, even the next step or two.

Time is not on my side here, yet perversely, I have nothing but time. Patience and urgency, in conflict yet balanced, a paradox. One of many.

So what's coming down the pipeline? I am selling my house and moving as soon as realistically possible. Moving where? That's the loaded question that keeps me up at night even as I know there's nothing I can do about it in the short term.. but wait.

In the short term though... things have acutally been pretty nice, even though I cannot see more than a step or two ahead. I'm doing what I want to do... for myself, and the plans I am making are both good for me and true to myself, and will hold no matter where the long term takes me, and indeed, will likely effect it.

What can I say, life is strange, wonderful.. and beautiful.

Speaking of beauty, expect more photos.

But another truism for any lengthy trip away is that something will go wrong in your absence. When I was in Arizona, my cats came down with a massive flea infestation. This time, I was hit with a double-whammy; first a critical machine at work went down no more VPN!), then a machine at home went haywire -- within hours of me leaving town.

The work machine turned out to have several things wrong with it, apparently related to an upgrade I completed just before I left. After much cursing at the softwarer, everything seems to be running smoothly.

Unfortunately, the machine at home, pizzahut -- which among other things houses my entire photo archive -- was more problematic; I spent several hours on Sunday fighting it. The machine has been slowly dying for a while now, and unfortunately, despite its importance, there have been more important problems -- like the roof replacement, family obligations, a totally unreliable laptop, divorce attorney fees, and well, the mighty powerful urge to um, eat.

Anyway, things are back up again, and the weekend's tally came to 1422 images in some 13 gigs. At this rate I'll be out of disk space in another couple of months. And then I'll *have* to do someting..

It's odd, the way you don't notice something slipping away until it's completely gone and suddenly comes back and smacks you in the face with its full force. The soundtrack of my life's been..well, silent. There are, of course, many small reasons, all fairly insignificant, but their cumulative reprocussions have been fairly extensive. It's nice that I'm coming out of this extensive rut..

Over the past two years, the soundtrack of my life had indeed gone silent, squeezed out of me like so many other things, both large and small. And.. In recent weeks, it's come back in full force, with new layers and nuances filling new depths in my soul.

Once again, Lacuna Coil's haunting off-key lyrics and raw, barely-bridled power was a driving force; helping me punch through some particularly nasty walls. But perhaps more interesting is what I was cutting the Goth Metal with. I'd bounce between apparent extremes, dreamy ambient (Amethystium, Asura) to goth rock (Lacuna Coil, Evanescence (older)) to Enya to more rock (Vertical Horizon, Poets of the Fall, White Lion) to more goth rock... to Sarah McLachlan.

I think, more than anything else I rotated through, Sara McLachlan's discography had the greatest effect on me. She dropped out of sight at the peak of her career, coincidentally around the same time that I'd been going through the emotional trials of my college days. Aside from having an incredible voice, her music and especially lyrics deeply affected me, and over the years, even more so.

The first song of hers I heard was Possession. It was part of a televised Lilith Fair concert, playing in the background at a random "what are we going to do tonight?" gathering at a friend's dorm room. I didn't really hear the lyrics, or the music.. but the tone of it all caught my attention. Somehow or another I found out who the artist was, and thanks to the wonders that come from combining college students and a high-speed dorm network, quickly found some mp3s. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Possession remains the single more meaningful song I've heard; it touches me on many levels, including its more literal -- it was written about an experience McLachlan had with a stalker.

More recently, Drawn to the Ryhthm and Wait, or as it was originally titled, Blackened Sky have been running through my mind. To quote the latter's chorus:

When all we wanted was the dream
to have and to hold that precious little thing
like every generation yields
the new born hope unjaded by their years

What's on my playlist right now? Last night I switched over to Prem Joshua. On a lark, I saw him in concert many years ago. And what a show it was! But that's a story for another time.

The funny thing is, I never was much of a caffeine junkie; save from the occasional cup of very-strong tea or a soft drink with a meal. So eliminating caffeine wasn't all that big of a deal. Fortunately, chocolate was generally okay; by the time the caffeine would affect me, the sugar high would have long since had me bouncing off the walls.

I've wondered off and on over the the years whether or not I still need to avoid caffeine; for one "good decaffeinated tea" is an oxymoron, and I do so miss the occasional cup of Earl Grey or brewed-with-mint Turkish tea I grew up with. There also are times when I genuinely could use the stiumulation and not have to rely on sheer willpower to keep myself awake.

In Arizona I discovered that yes, caffeine and I still don't get along. And it was just a (large) cup of hot chocolate. Alas. But between the stimulation and the subsequent stomach cramps, I had no problem staying awake on the four hour drive under the endless sea of stars that gaze down on Northern Arizona.

I'm not sure where my love of tea came from; perhaps from my mother, but her preferred caffeine delivery mechanism was always Coffee. My parents measured their consumption in pots per day. Per person. My sisters gravitated towards coffee too, leaving me (once again) as the odd one out.

I never could stand the taste of coffee. Even diluted/cut/mixed into other things, chocolate, tiramisu.. there's something about the fundamental flavor that I just never liked. And before you say "that's because you never tried the good stuff", remember I grew up in a household of coffee lovers; I've made many a pot, prepared many a cappucino, captured many a cup of Turkish coffee in that perfect "just-boiling-over" stage of completion.. I know my coffees. Light and dark roasts, south american, ethopian, asian, and even that instant swill that would probably be improved by using it in an enema.

But I digress. My dislike of the taste, coupled with the adversion of caffeine that's been with me most of my adult life, why bother with coffee at all?

....because I love the smell of a fresh pot of coffee. I've always found it invigorating and refreshing, but I recently realized it goes far beyond this any practical sense -- The smell of coffee is inexoribly twined with my sense of home.

Much like it's not home without cats; it's not home without coffee. Even more so because I don't drink it; even beyond the "do or say anything before I have my coffee and you die" savagery.. it's the first in a series of morning rituals in the kitchen that signifies that someone lives there, and its preparation a sign of, if not love, at least affection, caring.. or I suppose in some cases, self-preservation. It's not dissimilar to how I feel about cooking in general.

What brought on this particular train of thought? Saturday morning I brewed a pot of coffee for a houseguest in an old electric percolator that was gifted to me many years ago by another dear friend. With each plunk, plunk, the aroma grew until all I could smell was the rich aroma of the strong, dark brew. It was the first coffee I'd made in the better part of two years, and doing so felt good, but I thought nothing of this until I returned from my Tai Chi a couple hours later, walked in the door, and oh, the smell... Long-absent feelings I didn't realize I'd missed came flooding back; my house felt like a home.

...This morning, another pot of coffee was brewed. And it felt even better.

Add to that the new clothes, also the first in many years. Looking at myself today, I see someone who, while still dressed informally, has someone who cares about them. It's a good feeling, being cared about. Even better, actually caring. It really affects one's bearing and the image one projects out upon the world.

Why the sudden shopping spree? Aside from the feel-good attitude of "Because I'm worth it", it's long overdue -- most of what I have is either full of holes or rather tattered. But in the end, I did this in a desperate attempt to break the really scary self-destructive cycle I had fallen into, and actually do something purely for myself. It just happened to have practical benefits.

It's odd, the way you don't realize the hell you were in until after you start climbing out and are able to get some perspective.

I had just about given up on myself. I managed to break the big chains and start clawing my way out.. but I was being held back by a myriad of small ones... that collectively were much stronger than the big ones. My attitude about myself led me to make poor choices that only worsened my attitude about myself.

But now I'm fighting, kicking and biting and screaming, but it's not enough to break the chains; I must move from my place of imprisonment or the chains may as well still be there. Few things are as paralyzing as pain and fear, but in this case, better the unknown than the known hell. You just have to recognize it first.

Now if only I could get more sleep...

This, coupled with the fact that I was up to my ears in my senior coursework and was going to be spending a great deal of time in the College of Computing's labs, tipped the scales of a TA job from the "run like hell, just isn't worth it" side of the scales to the "hmm, good idea!" side.

I'd avoided the TA route before because most TAs were relegated to the festering swill of the (TA-driven) freshman weedout courses, and to a lesser-extent the required sophomore "Tell me you want more!" bitchslaps. But as bad as the weedout bullshit was, the inbred social scene amongst the TAs was far worse. But I digress.

So, during my senior year at Georgia Tech, I signed up to TA a junior-level operating systems course. Everyone in this course was there because they wanted to be there, not because they had to be, so they generally cared about learning the material and doing well. This made quite a difference in the attitudes of my students, and made the whole experience quite enjoyable. My motto was "give me an excuse to pass you" -- if they genuinely were trying, I'd go out of my way to help. But again, I digress.

As a TA, I gained access to the coveted TA lounge -- and its couch, which I stole many a nap on. One night in this overcoveted space, I was grading papers or something when I overheard a conversation between two of the other TAs. They were talking about bicycles. The details elude me now, but it reminded me that my bike was was currently chained in front of the Student Center, missing a wheel that an enterprising vagrant had liberated one evening a month or so prior.

So I sort of muttered to myself "Ugh, I still need to get my bike fixed." At this point the conversation suddenly stopped, and one of them turned to me and asked incredulously, "Is there anything you don't do?" To which I replied, somewhat startled, "...um.... yeah? Tons of stuff? ...why?"

It turns out that I had a (rather larger-than-life) reputation as someone who well, did anything and everything, and at the same time maintained a near-holy image of someone above the petty bickering of the highly active CoC (and in the case of the TAs, highly inbred) social scenes.

While I did have many interests, they were relatively shallow, as nothing quite appealed to me enough (and/or I lacked sufficient funds) to truly jump in. But this wide-spread nature went well beyond mere "interests". By this point in my college career, most of the folks I still hung out with (during those rare moments of peace) were in different colleges altogether, themselves having a pretty wide swath of interests and operating within their own social circles. I was loosely involved in quite a few groups.

During my freshman year I was half-jokingly given the nickname of 'The Pariah' due to this arms-length distance, known to everyone but not truly part of anything (save one group that I still never fully jumped into and eventually walked away from). There just never was anything that really appealed to me, though I did have a general sense that there seemed to be something I was missing; something that everyone else seemed to have. In hindsight, they didn't really have it either, and I sort of knew it but never quite put the pieces together.

So I never fully engaged, staying on the edges, keeping my options open, doing what others roped me into or what interested me -- with a general attitude of "whatever comes along" underpinning it all. My interests and experience continued to spread, advancing in bursts and then more slowly retreating as I discovered new things then got far enough into it to realize it didn't interest me that much after all.

This pattern would repeat many, many times over the years, though "que sera sera" has increasingly been augmented by a "I must make my own fate" attitude, more carefully choosing what I get myself into. But I digress yet again.

Fast forward nearly a decade, to this past Saturday night.

I was at a large drum circle, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. As it approached pumpkin time, I packed up my stuff and said my round of goodbyes. Almost to my car, I got caught up in a conversation that rapidly turned to of gossip -- the latest fallings-out and goings-on of a couple of the circles I'd largely removed myself from. Thrown in for good measure was the gossip about me that was spawned by my newly-single status. In the middle of this, it struck me just how little things had truly changed. I am still that pariah, but perhaps a more accurate description is a chameleon.

I used to cast about looking for a group to be part of, thinking that one arbitrary point was as good as another. I'd shift myself around to "fit" in these different groups, emphasizing a particular facet or two of myself, but never being able to bring all of myself to bear. Placed against against a different backdrop, I'd often look completely different. Different, but never whole.

So which one is the real me? For all of my skirting on edges, it turned out that I'm actually the center, and and it was the groups and/or the people that were off-kilter. They may have been, no, are part of me, but they are not me. I am spread far and wide, greater than the sum of my parts, and no matter the container, it will be outgrown and discarded.

So what's the point of all this rambling? All things are worth knowing, and specialization is for insects.

Yesterday I finally got some good flea meds for the cats, and tonight I dust the carpets, vacuum everything, and then mop the floors. And boil the bedding! Once that mess is finally taken care of, back to getting the house in order, one room at a time.

The "family room" is next. That'll let me empty out what will become the study, which frees that up to repair my desk, which will let me empty out the back room, which will then be converted into a studio. Swish and flick. Just like that.

I should think about throwing a house warming-over party soon.

Meanwhile, the roof replacement got pushed back until next Wednesday (the 14th) due to an emergency job coming up at the 11th hour. I'm rather glad for the delay, as it gives me more time to get everything else in order first.

The photos from my trip finished uploading Sunday evening, but I've barely gone through them due to the necessities of making the house inhabitable again. I'll be posting images, along with my commentaries, as I get more mental breathing room.

2007 wasn't such a great year, beginning with my getting married and having to stay up during my wedding night with a gun in my lap due to my sister's boyfriend going violently nuts. My wife's health problems went downhill a couple of months later, and by the time of our wedding reception in July her mental state had followed. 2007 ended with her totalling my car in a parking lot accident (not her fault).

2008 began worse, with my wife going completely nuts and getting arrested for shoplifting on our first wedding anniversary. And it went downhill fast from there. Two more arrests followed over the next few months. One's still working its way through the court system.

The housing and credit crash wiped out the decent equity I had in my house and left me with an (barely) upside-down mortgage, ruining my financial plans plus my longer-term plan-ish of emigrating to New Zealand.

It wasn't all bad though. I finally worked up enough courage and strength to walk away from my marriage. The separation papers were signed just before Halloween. She moved out over Thanksgiving weekend, along with the iguanas and two of the cats. Moved back next door with her mother. Yeah, I married the girl next door. Yeah, it's way too close for my liking. But I'm stuck for now.

It was nearly five months between the "It's really this bad, and I have to get out of this before it kills me" realization and the actual moveout. Bit by bit I started doing stuff for myself, by myself, at first to help clear my head and think, but later because I genuinely wanted to. I rekindled dormant friendships, rebuilt crumbling social nets, and leaned heavily on them through the worst of the times.

Throughout all of this I poured myself into my only real outlet, photography. Not only did I get out far more times to far more places, but the general quality of the results shot way up. I started seriously thinking about how and where I wanted to take it, and took the first tenative steps.

And through those steps, many more doors have opened up. I've met amazing people and learned more about myself, what I want to do, and that I have the strength and ability to make my dreams happen.

So what's in store for 2009? For one, my marriage will be officially over by May 1st. But here are a few general plans:

• Grieve, and heal. Grow anew.
• Finish deep-cleaning and rearranging the house, and make it truly mine for the first time ever. Re-equip the raped kitchen.
• Cook at least one good, multi-course meal a week.
• Set up a permanent studio.
• Work with models in a more formal, staged setting, and learn the technical and more ephemereal aspects of so-called "fine art."
• Get out camping or deep into nature at least once a month. Preferably with like-minded friends.
• Take and/or post a totally awesome picture every day.
• Take much better care of myself.
• Build more friendships, and do stuff together.
• Lots of wild, meaningful sex.
• Get my nipples pierced. Whoops, did this yesterday. Ow.
• Get my financial situation in order -- It's not bad, excluding the mortgage mess. Sell the house and move on as soon as it is feasible.
• Get hopelessly drunk on life. And stay that way.

....And as the Navajo say, Go in Beauty.

With beauty before me, I walk
With beauty behind me, I walk
With beauty above me and about me, I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty