The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

 

I've been feeling this song a whole lot lately. Mostly I've been hearing it in my head in the a capella nigun form we sang together during Shabbat services at the havurah I belonged to in the Boston area in the 1980s. There seems to be a lot of return going on in my life right now, both profound and prosaic:

• After majorly falling off the wagon of my healthy weight loss adventure, regaining all the weight I had taken off and then some, and re-inflicting on myself all the accompanying chronic pain and restricted mobility, I have as of this past June once again returned to a healthy weight loss regimen. Hopefully, this time I will do it with a lot more support, and a lot more humility.
• After going on two years of under/unemployment and scary financial times, the kind so many people have been facing these days, I am slowly pulling myself out of the hole via a job I landed in March, and returning to some modest sense of financial security.
• After the emotional slough of despond caused by those first two items, I am slowly returning to my more normal cheerful self.
• Perhaps because of these changes, perhaps for other reasons yet to become clear to me, I am returning mentally to memories of my childhood and youth, trying yet again to sort out the family-of-origin psychodramas and maybe make some peace with them.
• And there are other returnings going on, but these are already plenty to start with, yes?

In any case, when I saw that NaBloPoMo's theme for this month was "Return," I knew I needed to sign up, return to this long-dorman blog of mine, and make the commitment to blog every day and see what came up. Of course not every post I'll make in September is going to be about return--but as they say in so many writing programs, when you simply make the commitment to show up at the page every day, you make it possible for interesting things to wind up on that page.

Oh, and it hasn't escaped my notice that the Jewish High Holy Days, with their major theme of teshuvah (literally, return), fall at the end of September this year. Whether I will literally return to a synogogue or havurah this year, or perhaps make a more personal journey of slichot (reconciliation) on my own, remains to be seen. But there it is, waiting to be explored.

The song, by the way, was written by the famous Singing Rabbi and pioneer of the baal teshuva movement, Reb Shlomo Carlebach, and is performed in this video by his daughter and protege Neschama Carlebach, with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir under the direction of Reverend Roger Hembrick. The lyrics:

Return to what you are,
Return to who you are,
Return to where you are born and reborn again

Return again, return again,
Return to the land of your soul
Return again, return again,
Return to the land of your soul.

Sesame Street: Kermit Sings Being Green

Okay, I'm sure that every other NaBloPoMo blogger this month is going to include this video sooner or later, but I just couldn't resist--it's a classic. And by Frog, sometimes it really is just kind of difficult being whatever it is you happen to be. :-)

Packing to move: how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways

Once again I am packing in preparation for moving, and once again I am loathing it with every fiber of my being. I don't think it's only because I've moved so many times in recent years--something like three times in the last 12 months alone--though that surely doesn't help matters. And I don't think it's only because, as I've gotten older, the amount of effort involved has increased. In fact, with this latest move I actually have very little to pack because I never really unpacked all too many of my belongings ... but I'm hating it anyway (and obviously procrastinating by doing such things as playing around with my blog).

Nor has moving been less traumatic for me when I've had other people helping. i remember once when I was simply moving my stuff from one bedroom to another in a multi-person household, and one of my roommates volunteered to whisk all my stuff from one room to the other for me. Well he started whisking--with breathtaking rapidity. And suddenly, for reasons I could not explain, I began to feel overwhelmed, even panicked, until I found myself bursting into tears and begging him "stop stop stop!" And I could not bring myself to say out loud, to his bewildered face, the reason for my alarm that popped into my head: you see, this was a fellow who could be extremely absent-minded and careless about his own belongings, and here he was moving mine, so quickly that I couldn't keep track of where things were winding up, and the lack of control over my stuff was freaking me right the hell out. Nevermind that, given it was just another room in the same house, all of my stuff would turn up in the new room sooner or later. It was the feeling of loss of control over my stuff that was getting to me.

And I think that's at the root of all my hatred of packing to move. I'm excruciatingly slow at it, because I want to make sure that everything goes into boxes in such a way that I can find it again sooner or later. I think I'm even unconsciously trying to memorize where each item was stashed. And I still have a really hard time letting other people pack for me. Realism--and my cranky back and joints--have dictated that I have people actually move the boxes and furniture for me, but you better believe it's a huge exercise in self-talk for me to let go and let these other people do this. I've finally discovered the joys of hiring professionals to do the heavy lifting--yeah, it's not inexpensive, but the psychic cost of my trying hard not to freak out at well-meaning friends who drop a desk is much higher.

With all the moving around that I've done, I hadn't thought of myself as a nester--not like, say, this one friend of mine in Boston who had lived in the same (charming but tiny) apartment in the Fenway for literally decades before buying a house with his extended family. But apparently I do a different kind of nesting--I nest in place wherever I happen to land. And I think I do it all the more fiercely because I have moved so often--I get to a strange new place, I start making it psychically home swiftly and profoundly.

And boy do I flip out at personal space invasions! This has been particularly hard in recent years as finances have dictated that I've had to live in roommating situations. Roommates who barge in on me in the bathroom without knocking, who just invite themselves into my bedroom when I'm working, even though I only had the door open a crack, who blare the TV in the living room so I can hear it in my room, who put their stuff in my designated shelf in the fridge, who insist on talking my head off in the morning when I stumble into the kitchen for my coffee, even after I've explained to them multiple times that I am not a morning person and to please not do that... arrrrg. I was heavily considering some really distant and or iffy neighborhoods this move around, just to find a studio apartment I could afford to live in solo.

Fortunately, this time I think I've found a roommate who is genuinely on my wavelength about personal space issues--not to mention one who I genuinely enjoy to hang with when I do want to hang, and who has decent human interaction skills. And my room is of a nice size, and has all the makings of a really cozy nest ...

But first I have to get all my crap over there so I can start feathering that nest. And it looks like the remainder of my belongings are not going to jump into those boxes on their own, so ... time to quit fiddling around with the blog and get the hell on with it. Deep breaths ... happy thoughts ... you can do this, Ducko ... okay, let's do this thing. Urk.

ObOntopic "green" thought for NaBloPoMo: another motivation for improvement of the long-term money/finance/employment situation--so that one day I can in fact afford a decent solo apartment in a decent neighborhood. Not asking for a palace, mind you--a nice little studio with something resembling a full kitchen will be just fine. Just that even that takes more folding green than I have coming in now ... so on with the work of job-hunting too ...

A dac biet banh mi

A dac biet banh mi (Vietnamese sub sandwich w/everything on it) from Ba Le Sandwich Shop in Linda Vista. This shop is very "local color" (i.e. not gussied up for middle-class white folks tastes) but I however like them all the more for that. Plus they make a damn fine sandwich. Obligatory on-topic reference for NaBloPoMo monthly theme: look! There's green veggies in the sandwich! (cilantro and cucumber).

Tomorrow never knows

Those who may have been following my blog over on my NaBloPoMo page may have noticed that, aside from a humorous post on the first of the month, I have been studiously avoiding the month's announced theme, which is "Tomorrow."

This has not been by accident. Because of the uncertainty introduced into my life by the job situation, the subject of "tomorrow" is a bit fraught for me right now. To be sure, as the blog post I just linked to details, I have been planning for the immediate tomorrows like a mofo--and some of those plans are getting underway quite nicely. But there are still the larger, more high-falutin' existential dimensions to this current situation and its bearing on long-term tomorrows that are really giving me pause.

I had long suspected that there were major flaws in the rules handed to me by my parents and by society for achieving success and security. The rules being: get a good education, get a good job, develop a career, save and be frugal, invest in a house, and you'll have a secure life and an easy retirement. I've now lived through several economic downturns (the 1970s oil crisis that had people waiting in line to buy rationed gas; the fading of the "Massachusetts High Tech Miracle" in the late 1980s; the infamous dot-com bust in the late 1990s) and each of these has made me question those rules all the more. And now along comes this massive downturn, as the bursting of the housing bubble takes down the whole economic house of cards built upon it. And a lot of people who did their damnedest to follow those rules my parents tried to instill in me are now having the injury of financial hardship compounded by the insult that they did everything "right"--and still got stung.

Me, I was only middling at following those rules--did get the good education; kept changing the career so much that the nest egg is kinda puny at best; owned a condo for all of two years before I ran out of reasons for doing so, and sold it. And, well, I guess I've gotten stung too.

Let's leave aside for the moment the economic inevitability of cyclical booms and busts in a capitalist economy in which investors are always driven to game the system for profit regardless of any unintended consequences ... because for one thing, while this statement marks me as obviously cynical about the capitalist system and its ability to provide the greatest good for the greatest number, I confess that I'm even less enthused about any other extant real-world economic systems I've seen in action. So ... given that I'm stuck with living in this system, for better or worse, and given that I've seen that neither planning or failing to plan, neither following nor ignoring the rules, guarantee any kind of long-term practical security, what in blue blazes does one do?

I guess the only never-fail always-works strategy is to keep oneself ever ready to adapt oneself to new situations ... because whether you're ready or not, they're going to come at you. Hell, there could be an earthquake or a wildfire or a flood, or a catastrophic illness--god/ess forbid them all, but crap does happen--and whoosh there goes your nestegg. Hell, there's a growing environmental crisis bearing down on us that our species is still only just barely beginning to grapple with, that could make all this tsuris look like a garden party in comparison.

In the end, while it certainly helps to make certain pragmatic preparations for tomorrow, in the end the best preparations one can make are preparations on the inside: readying one's body, heart, mind, and soul to respond to changing situations, and to reach out to other people to cooperate and share. Without that essential preparation, all the rest is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

P.S. The subject line is, of course, the title of one of the more remarkable songs ever recorded by the Beatles. This incongruously silly video version is courtesy of the equally silly--and delightful--Beatles cartoon series that ran on US TV when I was a kid.

NaBloPoMo: I'm in for August - "Tomorrow"

Hokay, so as part of my project to re-bootstrap my esprit-de-corps about Life, the Universe, and the Job Sitch by means of blogging, I have signed up on the blogroll of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) just in time for their August theme, which is "Tomorrow." Of course, as NaBloPoMo themselves say, the theme is optional--but what could be more apropos to my get-a-grip-on-life project than focussing on tomorrow in a positive, affirmation-laden way?

But also of course, my inner Smartass, when confronted with that theme, can't help but hear bad parodies of that song from "Annie" running through its figurative head -- a song which is almost too easy to parody, being on the verge of self-parody already. And I can't imagine I'll be the only NaBloPoMo blogger who immediately goes here, either--it's just way to easy.

But but, as an old drag queen friend used to say to me, "It's not pretty being easy."

So herewith, a couple parodies I found on YouTube that made me smile--first, a classic from Forbidden Broadway:

And here, a drag Cawfee Tawk style parody (the actual song kicks in at a litte after 1:30; there's a few bits of "not-safe-for-work" language, and of course you need to be okay with drag humor):

And always remember ... no, not any lyric from that damn song--rather, the more enduring "She who laughs, lasts."

NaBloPoMo; Halloween (mis)adventures

So I was doing the free-association websurfing thing the other day, thinking about the infamous National Novel Writing Month but unwilling to put my fanfic project on hold in order to start a whole new piece from scratch, when I stumbled upon this whole other group madness known as National Blog Posting Month. Same general concept as NaNoWriMo--only instead of working on a novel throughout the month of November, the goal is to post to one's blog every day in November. Cool, thought I -- just the thing to get my blogging mojo back, which as many of you might have noticed has been kind of hit-or-miss lately. Plus the literary dilettante in me got a giggle out of NaBloPoMo's inadvertently "postmodern" acronym.

So here I am, officially kicking off my participation in a month of daily blogging. Wish me luck!

*  *  *  *  *

So today I am definitely one of the walking wounded--and extremely grouchy about it, too--and all because of Halloween. You see, I've been a huge fan of dressing up for Halloween since I was a little kid, and that enthusiasm (there's that word again!) only increased when I first came out and discovered that Halloween was like unto a major cultural holy day in the queer community calendar. So of course I was bound and determined to dress up yet again for this Halloween, only this year I added a few new twists:

1. Whereas every previous Halloween for as far back as I can remember, I have dressed up femme (even as a kid, when I would get into all my mom's costume jewelry and makeup), this year I decided to make my very first foray into drag king. 
2. Whereas nearly every previous Halloween, I have dressed not as a specific identifiable character but more a generalized theme (usually some kind of hippy/Goddessy-looking rig with long flowy skirts and lots of earthy jewelry), this time I decided to try my hand at crossplay and dress up as some kind of homage to--nu, who else?--my current anime obsession, Lupin III.

These decisions, of course, presented a number of obvious challenges:

1. The general challenge of approximating a male appearance;
2. The more advanced challenge that the vast majority of anime characters, Lupin perhaps moreso than most, tend to be drawn as impossibly skinny and long-legged, whereas I am anything but.

That second point, alas, there was nothing I could do about. So I basically ignored it. Not that I wanted my portrayal to be a burlesque or a parody--far from it; it's just that the fangrrl in me really really really wanted to do it, so I honored my inner child and went for it. Besides, I reasoned--correctly, as it turned out--in the context of the LGBT community events I was going to take this little bit of personal performance art to, the odds of anyone even getting the reference would be nearly non-existent, so I might as well have fun with a joke that probably only I would get.

As to the first point, well, there is a sizeable body of advice both online and in books on how to go about equipping yourself to do drag king, so I read up and started gathering and/or creating gear.

The men's clothing mostly came from thrift shops--I only had to cheat and go the women's clothing route with the iconic red blazer, because there simply were no guy's red blazers to be found in any size, let alone mine. But I lucked out and found an absolutely gorgeous bright-red menswear-styled blazer, wool and fully lined, for a buck--a steal the master thief would have had a good giggle over. I also lucked out on a truly gorgeous vintage square-bottom tie in a relatively subtle shade of yellow--yeah, I was going for accurate attire, but I also wanted this rig to be stylin' rather than buffoonish.

The chest binder I wound up making myself. I bought a couple of yards of white lingerie-quality spandex, used a snug-fitting tank top as a pattern, and stitched up a compression shirt that really did the trick and fit me quite comfortably--or so it seemed at the time; more on that anon. And for the iconic sideburns, I paid a visit to a theatrical makeup supply shop and purchased crepe wool and spirit gum.

Halloween afternoon, I settled in with my makeup kit and a mirror. It took a bunch of fuss and false starts--you try drawing symmetrical sideburns on your own face!--but when the smoke and expletives cleared, I was tickled to look in the mirror and see a pretty damn impressive pair of sideburns gracing my face. Some weeks previously I had started getting my hair cut short into a pretty butch hairstyle; I gave it a dose of spray-on black haircolor, and called the makeup part of the program done. I then climbed into my costume--including the rolled gym sock packy inside the (striped, of course) boxer shorts), and was ready to roll.

There were, however, a few problems with my rig that, while not apparent at first, eventually came back to bite my ass before the night was through:

1. That compression shirt, while amazingly comfortable for the first couple of hours, really started to tax my bod as the night wore on.
2. The shoes I was wearing--these great ankle-length black leather lace-up boots I had owned forever--were another case of "comfortable when first put on, more and more uncomfortable as time wore on." The issue here was lack of cushioning--even a pair of those damnfool gel inserts were not enough to protect me against a night of standing and walking on hard pavement and dancefloors.
3. Southern California weather, even for Halloween night, tends to be a bit too balmy to be wearing a fully-lined wool blazer over a long-sleeved dress shirt and tie over a spandex compression shirt.

Problem #3 had me carrying my jacket rather more than wearing it, and eventually just stowing it altogether in the trunk of my car. Problem #2 caused the boots to also find their way into the trunk before evening's end, replaced by my beloved pair of Vans slip-ons. I decided to just tough it out with Problem #1, which may have been a tactical error.

For when I awoke this morning, boy was I ever a hurting unit. Back pain, complaining muscles, complaining hip joints, complaining knees, and a general feeling that, yep, I'd spent way too many hours squishing my torso with that compression shirt. Oddly enough, it was not my breasts that were complaining--it was my rib cage and sternum. When I had read up on breast-binding for drag king performance I had noted all the warnings about the hazards of binding too tightly. But those hazards seemed to be more associated with the use of elastic bandages and tape and other such makeshifts, and I thought my homemade compression shirt was no tighter than some girdles I had known in the Bad Old Days, so I  thought I was alright. Guess not, huh? And even though I had ditched the boots for more comfortable shoes, apparently it wasn't soon enough to prevent a pounding for my knees and hips. Ow.

So after all that--after a day spent mostly sleeping, self-medicating, and taking hot soaking baths--can I say it was worth it? Hmmmmm ... maybe! I confess that, even though I thought I had emotionally prepared myself for having my costume go unrecognized all evening, it was still a bit of a bummer. I did at least get some nice compliments on the look from people who may not have known Lupin from a hole in the wall but who appreciated the drag king aspect of it--my favorite being the woman who said "nice tie!" in tones of admiration. And my friends, though nearly as unfamiliar with Lupin as the general population, were still incredibly complimentary on the general look--according to them, I definitely had the guy body language down as well as the costume and the sideburns.

Will I ever do any part of this again? Hmmmmm ... maybe! Another confession: though cosplaying at an anime convention might get my Lupin rig a hell of a lot more recognition, I am frankly intimidated about presenting as Fat Lupin to a crowd with so many cosplay perfectionists in it. It might be safer for my ego to make my first attempt at convention cosplay a character that's meant to be heavy-set. The problem, of course, will be finding such a character, let alone one I'd want to play. (Anyone tempted to suggest Super Mario: sorry, fuggeddaboutit!) But maybe I'll feel braver once I've gotten a little more familiar with that scene and had a chance to get over myself. God knows the desire to show off my vintage Airsoft replica Walther P-38 is huge enough to tempt me into all kinds of fun stupidity.

As for doing drag king again, the answer is an emphatic yes. That part, binder fatigue notwithstanding, was just way too much fun not to do it again. And fortunately, there are many exemplars of girthy drag kings out in the lesbian community. I'm especially intrigued with this dude Murray Hill -- not only is his build like mine, but I really dig his style of humor. Plus in the process of shopping for my Lupin costume, I happened upon a terrific charcoal-gray pinstripe suit that fits me almost perfectly (the sleeves could use just a little shortening). After all, a great clothing find like that demands to be used. Plus I have enough left-over crepe wool to make at least another several dozen pairs of sideburns.