Notes and Errata of Mark of the Asphodel

Dreams are weird. My mom and her side of the family have a lot of ideas about the significance of dreams which I don't really share, but of late my dream-self seems really disgusted with my waking self.

Last night I dreamed I was cleaning my old room in my parents' house and found a box containing replicas of the UK Coronation Regalia. I have a 1/12th scale set for my dolls that my grandmother bought me in '91 but this was much larger, to the point where I could try it on. I grappled with the plastic band of the fake St. Edward's Crown, shoved it on my head and went in the living room.

There, I said to my husband, "You'll appreciate this. The core of this is supposed to be the crown of King Sisyphus and I feel like Sisyphus whenever I'm at work."

Trufax: My husband had Deep Thoughts about the myth of Sisyphus when we were in uni, the core of St. Edward's crown is thought to be very old but has no connections to Greek myth, and I do indeed feel like I'm forever rolling a stone uphill at work most of the time these days.

But yeah, in between that and the dream on Valentine's Day wherein I tracked down the guy who broke my heart in uni, Dream Mark is getting a wee bit... salty.

I'm on the sixteenth floor of a glass cylinder by the side of I-240.  It was the Hyatt when I moved to Memphis, and then the Omni, and then the Adam's Mark, and then by the time I had the money to stay here it was a Hilton. They're finally putting some money into refurbishing the place and have broken down and permitted free wi-fi, which is nice.  The view from the 16th floor is mostly treetops in a mix of green and rusty brown, punctuated by the spire of a church where I briefly took Latin lessons as a child and the nearby landmarks of Clark Tower and what used to be the UP Bank. Memphis, the city, is lost in the trees, which my husband claims is what Mitt Romney meant when he talked about the trees all being "the right height" in Michigan.  Two miles down the freeway is the large hospital complex where my father died, and then a patch of strip malls I used to frequent, and then Covington Pike with its auto dealerships and fast food restaurants, and then finally the exit to the desolate stretch of Raleigh where my parents unwisely bought a house in 1989, not knowing that the neighborhood was going to implode around them.

I can see none of these things from the sixteenth floor. The only landmark indicating Raleigh is the cluster of WMC radio towers, which I used to call the "Dinstuhl's Formation" because from my vantage point it was located just past the candy factory.  The candy factory is still there; I bought a packet of my father's favorite Cashew Crunch there last month in hopes he'd recover enough to enjoy it.  Since he didn't, we ate it. I bought another packet yesterday to be incinerated with him.

We took a ride yesterday to see that giant spiderweb at the north end of town, the one that made international news. We found the location, a vacant field in a neighborhood which resembled the place we used to live in Detroit (not a compliment), but didn't see the web. People probably already tore it up. 

This is a strange city, sprawling and low-density.  It has the population of Detroit in an area much larger than Detroit, which itself was designed to suit five times the current population.  Memphis got to its size by gobbling up "toy towns" and unincorporated land in a way cities can't legally do in the Midwest.  Driving along the north stretch of I-240 it feels like there's nothing there at all. What's off Warford Road? Dunno, never went there. No reason to go there.

Driving here is disorienting; I've always had problems with cardinal directions in Memphis, with its curious east-west alignment.  The river flows south and the money flows east.  My husband, a quick study in places as foreign as Vienna and Inverness, needs step-by-step guidance every place we drive, and he'd been visiting since 2001. No, you don't want Little Rock, you want Nashville.  No, not THAT Nashville, keep going toward Jackson (Mississippi). You never want to head to Jackson, until you do.

It's a bad dream populated by every terrible driver that haunted Detroit in the mid-aughts.

As some of you who follow me on tumblr gathered, I went to a labor conference this week.  Actually, it was a labor/women's rights convention hosted by a 40-year-old labor/women's right's organization, of which I am a fairly new member.  

It was interesting.  While the individual people I met there were friendly and helpful and some were inspiring, I got a front-view seat to two of the major, major problems facing any person or group trying to advance workers' rights or women's rights these days.

( On Church Ladies and Walmart )

Once upon a time there were two girls who swore they'd be friends for life and had matching lockets to prove it.  And these girls came across a magazine filled with pictures of rubies and emeralds, and they decided that one day when they were wealthy and powerful they'd have globes studded with gems to mark all their worldwide possessions and trapiche emeralds as paperweights on their desks.

And then they grew up.  ( Cut for length )

So I'm in a very nice toy and hobby shop on the east side of the metro area, looking for a pair of beginners' binoculars for my second cousin's upcoming birthday.

Me: Do you have any binoculars for little kids?  Aged three or four?

Shop guy: Boys' binoculars or girls' binoculars?

Me: Uh... gender-neutral, please.

Gender-segregated.  Binoculars.  W.T.F.  Now, the brand I ended up buying is a brand that's explicitly trying to get girls involved in science (by giving them purple binoculars?) but... wow.  Y'know, my first binoculars were black, like a little mini version of the high-quality ones my mom used.  They made me feel adult.  If someone bought me rainbow plastic binoculars I'd have felt someone was shoveling junk in my direction... which is exactly how I felt when I got Astronaut Barbie for my sixth birthday and my little NASA-savvy self looked at that rubbery blonde chick in her pink and silver "space suit" and realized Barbie was some kind of a sham.  After that I stopped asking for Barbies.

The girly binoculars come with a booklet for writing down observations of birds.  I presume the boys-only binoculars come with a scorecard for how many windows you've peeped into.  

Huh.

The Most Excellent Spouse and I are kind of on a roll when it comes to doing Detroit-type things.

Sunday: Went to the 1885 Log Cabin in Palmer Park.  The cabin's not in the best shape, but it's standing, which is more than you can say of many of the homes on the opposite side of Woodward.  Anyway, this log cabin picnic thing featured local food vendors and live music.  Pretty nice and we scored some good eats... all in all this "free" event cost us about sixty bucks in donations and munchies.  I'd never been to Palmer Park before, but it's pretty neat. The surrounding apartment buildings were once Detroit's gay enclave, which has since moved up Woodward into the city of Ferndale.

Wednesday: Took in a showing of A Band Called Death, an engaging documentary that didn't seem to place full faith in the music of the band in question but was definitely worth seeing.  The spouse and I are both perplexed that we somehow missed the story when Death got noticed a few years back. Viewing this also rammed home how much of an assimilated Detroiter I am, as I responded viscerally to the Detroit footage but not to the brief shots of San Francisco. I've never known a city this intimately, though-- it does help to have a car!

Afterward we walked to Greenfield Village and saw the fireworks show for free-- a nice perk of living where we do.  We were close enough to hear the orchestra playing along. 

Thursday: OMG so many fireworks please stop the air is turning gray.

Last NIght: we were supposed to go to the DFT to see a film about the Grande Ballroom, but the people we were supposed to meet there didn't confirm and we stayed home and drank beer floats made with homemade ice cream that never congealed.  Good intentions, I guess.

I had one hell of a dream before waking this morning.

( What is this I don't even )

Then I woke up. The mind is a weird, weird place.

NYC weekend blitz wrapped up beautifully.  We had "second breakfast" yesterday in the company of our Brooklynite friend at this amazing pie place. These are pies like your grandma never made-- thick, hearty reinventions of old classics.  The Rosemary Honey Shoo-fly pie was exceptional and the Oatmeal Black Bottom was pretty damn good.  The Lemon Chess was a bit too light in texture for my idea of Chess Pie but was fine as a thing of its own.

Then we went up to Queens via taxi and dropped in on some more friends, who took us to a Mongolian Hot Pot place for lunch.  I'd been curious about this sort of food for about fifteen years, since one opened in a suburb of Memphis, and all I have to say is this must be what "Mongolian BBQ" wants to be and isn't.  Also it goes well with cheap beer, and I normally have no use for cheap beer.

Then we had Lemon Rosemary Sorbetto at the airport because we apparently hadn't eaten enough.  

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I'm enjoying the Jugdral Name Change aftermath. Celice predictably is the source of the varying degrees of butthurt, but seriously-- it's over.  I already revised my four most recent relevant 'fics to incorporate "Leif" and "Seliph" and quite honestly I like the way that's working.  Hopefully NoA'll do as likable a job with the Spotpass characters.

-x-

Apparently they took out the Mute option for the Avatar voices though?  Sucks.  That promised to be funny.

I'm beginning to think one hasn't lived until one has been pursued by a mustachio'd man in a top hat riding around in a giant electrically powered Hostess Cupcake.

Or stood in line for mini-donuts ahead of a red-robed evil overlord holding a placard to let us all know he's hiring minions.  (Benefits Package: "I live, and you don't."  We asked.)

I could've done without having Luna Lovegood enlisting my help to find Harry Potter, though.

But the best part of all?  The steam engines and Edison dynamos inside the museum were OPERATIONAL today.  I've never seen that before, and it was amazing.