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AussieAri's weblog
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last modified Dec 22, 2001 at 22:31
Went over to the Hill’s to meet their long time friends and basically adopted daughters, a trio of lesbians that live on the road I drive to work each day. They do real estate and raise bouviers. You know, the dog that Hitler has a hit out on because one once bit him? They currently have 3 pups who are ridiculously wonderful in many respects and look like teddy bears. We swapped stories about Wimberley (they of course had many more than me), talked about the dogs and ate a great dinner. They left me with an open invite to their house. Yay!
I also went swimming Bill’s pool. Ah swimming. I miss the water but so often simply forget it’s even there as a possibility. Wake up girl! You live near the most prized rivers and creeks in Texas that insight envy in everyone who doesn’t live here! I will investigate them before summer is through I vow it.
There is a strumpet at TRF by the name of Dock Side Sally (just click the link, it will explain everything). I wish to become acquainted with said strumpet quite badly. Why? Think of it- I egg someone on into challenging me to a duel and when asked to chose weapons I produce strumpet. Yes. Strumpet. The bloke is strong enough to hold a man larger than himself and combined with his non-wash red lipstick he can devastate any courageous or manly displays.
Strumpet! Attack!
Hum…maybe Mistress Terry would agree to be a back up strumpet, or perhaps an off hang weapon Strumpet? Then again, s/he might just cut a bitch.
We’ve got three people on sharpening now who have never sharpened in the shop before. Sometimes the guys like to test the sharpness of the blades by shaving their arm hair if there’s no newspaper around at the time. They look like they’ve bloody well gone and got mange.
In Texas butch women are just that. They rope calves, ride horses, work on oil rigs, and fix cars. They are butch women. They are not dykes. And this is ok because hey, they’re not actually gay! I seem to get grouped in with them automatically. After the non-assumption of Santa Fe this is endlessly infuriating to me. When I do actually set the person onto the truth I get the same old blank eyed non comprehending questions. If you don’t get it it’s because you either don’t WANT to (because it means re-thinking your current understand of sex/sexuality) or can’t (der). Some of the things I can’t believe I’m having to re-state for the record again and again are:
When I say ‘suck my dick’ I mean it. Just ask my girlfriend. And no it’s not the dick you’re use to, and yes it’s still a type of dick.
Yes, lesbians do fuck each other.
I am not interested. Really. You don’t need to do something in order to know it’s not for you. In the words of Team Gina “If I wanted to suck [male] dick and pretend I like jizz I’d do it with a trans boi because he’d know where my g-spot is.”
Lastly, I do not want to be a man. I believe in expressing aspects of masculinity and femininity for everyone. Let’s just quote Madonna on this one to sum up the majority of the problem that I’m encountering here:
"Girls can wear jeans
And cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots
cause its ok to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you'd love to know what its like
Wouldn't you
What it feels like for a girl"
Grooved pavement (makes riding your motorcycle hella scary).
Zombies (literally and figuratively).
Fabergé Eggs (this one is actually an irrational fear).
And the most recent addition:
Rust (on weapons. Because I get to clean it). Joy.
- My own personal website (www.ariadnetalbot.com) consisting of past art/writings, current works, blog, and picture gallery, funny shit you can buy from me, maybe catalogue some collections of mine, and of course linksisies. I need to work out a deal with someone who likes to do the web stuff. I seriously can not stand that shit.
- Get some personal PR strummed up with an interview in some women’s magazine as a female apprentice bladesmith.
Oh yeah- we’re featured in the current issue of Blade magazine FYI.
Werk: Creativity may have been opened up a months ago but it is always deferred to Daniel. I try to not actually keep a tally of which ideas of mine have been rejected or changed several times and try to tell myself it is business and I am learning. Who am I to know anything? I’m just the apprentice.
You know that song ‘Scrub’? Well on our road trip we decided the female version (often seem in the lesbian community) will hence forth be known as ‘skunk’.
I’ve decided after two years of on and off practice and infrequent learning to actually dedicate to Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism.
Why?
This weekend was a friend’s fabulous off the wall party in Dallas (pictures here, they’re worth looking at). Just before I left here I spoke with a friend who has decided to break ties with another mutual friend. I completely understand his decision. I worry for our mutual friend because of it and because of what it indicates. On the way up to the party I chanted with our mutual friend in mind constantly. I’ve never really chanted for anyone else unless there was a pressing emergency. It has mostly been an exercise in coming to terms with my grief as well as serving to relieve some of its weight.
[skip over long garbled ramblings about a friend’s wild themed party and why you should not grapple on this kind of lawn in a bikini. Just go to the picture if you want to know.]
I was riding back the next day and just about at Waco it hit me. I don’t really have anything she kept close to her. I went thorough all her possessions and sorted out all her belongings into what to keep and what not to but it’s all packed way miles away from here. I have no physical proximity to my mother anymore. And I simply began to realize how much the end of her touch and her smell hurts. Does anything on this earth still posses her scent? How long will it take to fade from the one hat? That one shirt? Altogether? I pulled over onto the grassy shoulder of the road and started balling. My father calls at that exact moment. My first impulse is to ignore it. On second thought, I think, maybe just this once I’ll try to reach out to him in what should be a grief we both have.
“Hello Bube, how was your trip to Santa Fe?”
{I try to catch my breath}
“I’m on the side of the road in Waco.”
{traffic sounds}
“You’re what? I can’t hear you.”
“I’m on the side of the road. In Waco. Just. Crying about Mum.”
“Oh. I’ll call you back a little later then.” *click*
“GOD DAMN IT! WHAT THE FUCK! FFUCK!”
{he still hasn’t called}
I move further onto the grass median and away from the traffic noise. I call Cheryl. I feel like a kid (I am a kid). Sure I’ve got a career I’m trying to establish, trying to support myself, keep a house, have a girlfriend, living on my own, making new friends. It doesn’t matter though. I still feel like a little kid who’d much rather have the comfort of laying my confused and frustrated head in my mother’s lap but quite obviously I might as well consider myself an orphan. I start to doubt if I told her everything I could have before she died, if I hugged her enough. I know I couldn’t on both accounts and I couldn’t have known how much I would miss her.
Every relationship we have with a person has its own communication by action- that which we can’t possibly express in words. I will never have that communication I had with her with anyone else again. I realized that there are better ways I could have treated Cheryl by my actions. For whatever reason, I’ve been selfish in ways that I don’t find acceptable with her. That isn’t what I want. I want my actions to show that much care to those I know or at least care in what we are interacting over if it’s a complete stranger.
I spent all my free time as a teenager trying to mentally dissect the world. As soon as I was legally free of my parents, I went to a place based on just that where I could spend as much time thinking as possible. I’m done with academics now and my life is truly much more action than it ever has been before. I know logically how I want to treat people and how I should treat them but this does not mean I actually do it or am prompted to. There is a disconnect between the purity of the thought and the action that can not be bridged by more thought or simply more attempts at action. I have to first want it. Then it must became manifest inside myself. I thought of the people I admire most and they all have this quality. I tried to think of what it is that they do in their everyday lives to support this. In the end, the only way that I can think to do this for myself, to activate this care for others and desire for their and my own happiness, is to chant.
Basically, I’ve already been doing what a Nichiren Buddhist would so why not bring that forward, focus it a bit, and acknowledge just how much my practice can help my life? This isn’t really an organized religion as much it is one based off of practice. I won’t join an organized religion and accept things I don’t believe in simply to belong to the religion. In this case though, Do therefore Is and I want to be because being is better than believing.
Why. Can’t. I. Get. You. Pregnant. Sharon Stone!!! –Cheryl
Nope. You don’t poop. You’re not the type. –Cheryl
Good butches are hard to find these days. If she skins a skunk every once in a while. Eh! - Cheryl
Feels like ‘AAAaaaaoow’. –Guy
Like a wolf on a waffle! -Bobby Chad
I can tell she likes me by the way she spit on me. –Guy
I’m like Hitler. I’m sentimental. – Cheryl
So, what size are the needles you use to inject your testosterone? – Blake K.
No actually, my life is really awesome if I could just manage to enjoy it. –Eric Q.
He’s not hobbit, he’s injun. He’s from that Lackanukie tribe. -Bill
My mind has been doing unfamiliar things at work. I don’t mean I am daydreaming or fantasizing, thinking out philosophical questions or the question of what’s for dinner. I’ll be doing something that doesn’t require my total concentration- sand blasting, grinding or polishing (things I could still considerably hurt myself doing.) and memories, dreamscapes, people and places I haven’t thought of since the first time they occurred to me bubble up from my subconscious so richly and distinctively it’s as if they were occurring again or a synthesis of their essence were presenting itself to me. Maybe it’s because my life these days, even with the study I do is so much more about action than contemplations and processing. This has never happened before to me to this extent. I remember reading Mutant Message From Down Under. In it the tribe’s people held that dreaming is a natural part of waking life. That much of the sickness in modern life was because people did not dream together and were not allowed to during their waking lives. They felt this was the greatest deprivation of modern life. I take these experiences as a good sign. At very least I haven’t lost a digit while they’ve occurred and I feel tranquil and timeless when they do. Maybe its just that I am finally at peace enough during certain activities at the forge when I am uninterrupted to let my subconscious roam. A former mentor suggested that the sword was absorbing my psychic reality. I hope so.
Visiting Santa Fe I was reminded of my long term dream- to not only have a forge of my own but to be a part of a learning self sustaining community. My initial foggy idea was sort of an artist’s community with permanent structures, dorm and housing facilities all self sustaining and off of the grid. There would be a permanent staff, rotating staff of visiting teachers who would offer courses in exchange for housing/food/use of facilities and students that can come and in exchange for lodging/food/classes/use of facilities will help do the majority of work to maintain the place.
I talked with Jax and Lori, former commune owners, about their experience. They suggested actually selling individual houses/plots of land to people so that they are more directly personally invested in the community and its continuity. Now after reviewing the idea with Dan he pointed out that if this was how I did it I’d actually not be assembling a commune….I’d be building a town. Wow. Remind me a bit of what i've been told about that village in southern Indian who's name i can't remember. To big a dream for now perhaps? Let’s just stick with the ‘having my own forge’ bit then.
“You know why things [the weather] are so crazy in Texas don’t you?” - Sandeep
“No. Global warming?” -Ari
“Well maybe I shouldn’t bring this up so abruptly and should write you a letter but it’s because the world is going to end soon.”
“It’s about time.”
“Well if I can manage to get a ticket as soon as it [bird flu] breaks out then I’ll head back to Oz.” –Ari
“You just want to live out your Mad Max Road Warrior fantasy.” –John
“….SO?! There’s nothing wrong with that!” –Ari
Exotic Meats are 45min away in SAN ANTONIO. When Lindsey first sent me the link I didn’t bother to notice where they were located but now…*drool* oh yes. The organic game meats ARE MINE!
Cheryl and I headed down there and here’s the stash I got for just over $100:
2 3 pack Venison Patties
1 3 pack Yak Patties
““ Kangaroo Patties
““ Elk Patties
““ Antelope Patties
““ Llama Patties
1 pack Elk Medallions
1 pack Venison Flank Steak
1 pack 4 Venison Frenched Rib Rack
1 pack Venison Medallions
1 pack Wild Boar Bacon
Now when I go to my fridge I can say “Hum…I wonder what four footed animal I should eat today…”
Cheryl and I found a kitten. It ran under her landlady’s shed the night before and wouldn’t come out. The next night it was still there and as soon as we stepped out of the car she began to mew desperately. I coaxed her out and was duly affectioned upon. Cheryl decided to take the kitty in if it has no owner. The kitten is female, 3 months old, and Siamese. As near as I can tell she’s a ‘tortie seal point’. She was taken to the vet, etc etc., add in the local paper under ‘missing pets’ and no responses. Looks like she’s Cheryl’s to keep and just as she was talking about getting a cat. One water opal eyed soft 2.2lb kitty with a stripe down her dark nose. I will refrain from going on at nauseating length about her cuteness. Cheryl named her Maya.
Apparently we’re getting two new apprentices in the fall. Mixed feelings because I know how few people we have and how new people who aren’t trained strain the forge’s work and how my inexperience still does at times.
So disregard the usual exclusive statement ‘the first four years are knives, the next four are swords.’ I’m constructing Bright Knight swords. This is not to say I’m running the milling machine or programming them and I’m certainly not doing any hot forging. I’m also not grinding out the flats, edge bevels, or sharpening, but I am putting the fixtures together, making sure they fit, cold forging the handles, doing all the little tricks to make it work. Current quota is 3 high end ($2500+) and 3 low end ($1295-1495) a week. Not that I’ve GOT this since I just started but by comparison I am ahead.
Special personal project sanctioned by Daniel: I made a chisels set from untreated S7 steel scraps from the sides and tip of milled bar stock blades. Used an acetylene torch and oil quench to harden them. Next I need to practice my open space line work. I’ve chosen a version of the open space pattern used in the background of the Arabic inscriptions at the Alhambra. I need to practice drawing it first then get some chisel skills. If it turns out well Dan will let me sign it but not sell it. Woo! If you know the importance of signing your work and a master allowing an apprentice to sign work done in their shop this is significant indeed. My little particular brain is coming up with exactly how I’ll sign it. In Greek of course. Oh but what forge stamp should be mine? The minotaur is taken, and I doubt I’d actually want it. Perhaps the crown? The sprigs carried by bacchanats?
I’ve been finding it funny when people apologize for that which is in their nature and doesn’t really harm me. For those actions you can predict and aren’t surprised by in the least because you know and accept the person doing them. I appreciate the gesture of the apology I suppose. They are aware they did something not generally accepted etiquette wise or that less familiar people might be upset by, but really!
‘Sorry I left you with my friend you just met tonight so I could nail this chick I’ve been fooling around with.’
‘Sorry I got upset by traffic.’
No, I know.
Going into Austin once a week or so tickles me pink. It’s still a huge novelty to live near a real city. Targets, Best Buys, and Bed Bath Beyond every 5 miles in a seemingly endless repetition. Ha! Bubble tea joints? Wee! How many titty bars? Novelty. But I love Austin and not for these things. Things like meat pies, I heart Video, The Austin Drag Kings, Roller Derby, the river and park life, I won’t even begin to speak of the music. Hell yes ma’am.
The rains have given us fogs in the evenings and mornings. The frogs adore this- they come out onto the slick roads to enjoy it. That is why there are all these little gray and whitish splat marks all over the tar.
“If you don’t like it, just wait 5 minutes”? It’s true. It’s oh so horribly true. I just don’t understand it- it seems like it’s been raining since I got here in March. This place is turning down right wet lands on me. Any day now I expect this part of Texas to simply cease to exist because of all this deluge. Driftwood Texas will become driftwood in the Gulf of Mexico. There is something being defied in the laws of nature here. Monsoons have their ways and their season. I’ve lived through enough of them in a variety of places to know this. But this inconsistent precipitate of massive scale? It’s just wrong I tell you. The worst part is the weather changes in 5 minutes but you CAN’T TELL the weather 5 minutes ahead simply by looking at the sky! How fatally flawed is that?
What makes me cry now is simply how much I miss her. Nothing about her death, anything anyone said or did anymore. No trauma. I feel like even if I listened to the songs that remind me of my grief and loss daily there would never be a time that they would not trigger me to cry.
The grass has been laid on her grave. It is in no longer the cold and dry desert dirt that stretched almost the whole plot field. It feels much more comfortable this way. The head stone hasn’t been changed but neither has my father who’s duty it was to change it to what she wanted. Not a big surprise but still disappointing on both counts. She died younger than everyone around her. As much as I see burial in coffin as morbid I don’t have morbid feelings about her grave anymore. I still visit and wish I could do so more.
Sadness is better than depression. It doesn’t stifle life, snuff the flame right out of everything that matters, petrify what should be fluid, even if it does colour everything it’s not the same drab colour. There is most certainly room for melancholy, tenderness, preciousness, and plenty of bitter sweetness.
Trip to Santa Fe. Oh dear me. First and foremost I miss my mum. Secondly, Santa Fe. When I describe it to people they always understand the physical beauty aspect of the high desert local, however I find myself attempting to describe the community. There are things that happen in Santa Fe that I haven’t seen happen anywhere else. It just is that way.
I use to measure things in loss. After visiting Santa Fe again that thought is still alive. I just miss it like I had finally found myself a home and left it for the first time. I had wild thought of simply staying and not returning to Driftwood. But that wouldn’t be life in Santa Fe. It would be escape in the same old place. I may instantly feel physically healthier, generally more emotionally secure and therefore happier in Santa Fe but I have no real occupation or calling there for what to do with all that goodness. You can only let the world go by for so long before life at large catches up with you. I think that’s one of the reasons for a good deal of wars fought at the moment. The rest of the world’s time is trying to catch up and measure the rest. Fuck, I’d resist it if I thought it worthwhile or possible.
Instead of the relaxing reflective trip I had thought filled with reading, sun bathing, hiking and visiting the gravesites my trip was one social engagement and strenuous physical activity after another. As soon as I got there I wanted to catch up with all the people who I used to live with- perhaps an attempt at trying to recapture my old life there. It’s depressing for me to think that one day I will be free to return to Santa Fe again if I like and I will know nearly no one. I visited the grave twice and got horrendously drunk both nights. I also attended Kate’s wedding which was a far greater emotionally packed event than I had anticipated. I so deeply wish her the best.
Highlights:
- Fourth of July with Jessie and Natalie. Barbecuing with not entirely adequate coals and playing Prince while drinking mojitos. Grand time to just spend doing nothing much with other people.
- Kareoke at the gay retirement home’s bar. After I did ‘My Humps’ both male and female versions by hanging a button up work shirt from one shoulder when I was doing the male vocals and showing only my spaghetti strap shirt on the other while doing the female part. There was a barrel chested man at the bar who was wearing a shirt that said “Butch County Forest Service”. I couldn’t help myself. “Wow! I need that shirt!” after some joking about us trading shirts he actually came back a little later in the night and GAVE me his shirt! I left a fat tip with the bar so that next time he comes in he’ll hopefully get a free drink.
- I got a deer hide from Superland, still can’t figure out what kind it is. Mule maybe? It’s BIG and thick though! It serve as a nice mat to the wood stove and the kitten loves it.
- Circus! Made it just in time for BUST. After the opening ice breaker act in bright white light with clowns, the lights dim, a prop swings down from off stage, cue music, the red lighting comes up, and performers are left alone on stage and….Magic. That’s really why I love circus. Just transcendent magic.
- Kate and I made amends on Wednesday and I was invited to her wedding on Saturday. I gave her a hand made knife as a wedding gift, she gave me the pelt it came wrapped in return so it was all kosher.
- Alas, the best chocolate in the world (aka Kakawa) had not opened its new shop yet and Eski’s in Taos with their famous green chili beer has lost their head brewer and is down to only 3 kinds of beer. Waaaah!
-White Sands and Carlsbad! How can you beat them? I really liked the outskirts of White Sands where there is still vegetation. As alien and barren as the inner dunes were the gypsum sand was incredibly comforting. It’s a soft substance you can pulverize between your fingers (unlike actual sand, the second hardest substance after diamonds) and it doesn’t tend to hold heat in quite the same burn-your-skin way as sand.
-Visited http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tips/getAttraction.php?tip_AttractionNo==6223
Tiny Town north of Madrid for the first time. Also saw Tinker Town and will have to go back for a more thorough look at all the detail.
- Got my arse kicked at the Venkatesh workout on Thursday. First time I’ve ever really lost most of my vision and felt like I was going to black out. I suppose the blood I had taken for my nutrition test didn’t help. I ended up with a horrendous headache the rest of the day. When I worked out with him on Sunday I just couldn’t get any kind of explosive energy because I had so much lactic acid in my muscles. I did alright at kettle bells but nothing impressive. The best was probably an incredibly troglodyte-like activity of shoving a low-bounce medicine ball into a heavy duffle bag and swinging and slamming it around outside on the cement. To end it all we played some games of ‘Medicine ball ping pong.’ Set up fall mats vertically accordioned across the gym’s middle, take bouncy medicine ball, ‘serve’ by hurling medicine ball from inside the 3 point hoop, hope to god you can get to the ball in one bounce as it suddenly appears over the tops of the mats as it’s returned. If you’re playing doubles you can pass with no bounce but you must do a burpie after passing. I need some medicine balls, a punching bag and a pull up/hang bar. I’ve got that little cement patio entrance to my apartment that could accommodate them all! Ah well, I’m inspired again to get back into my previous buzz saw blade good shape. It’s not that hard now that I know how to do it and that I’ve done it before.
-My blood test came back showing all my organs were doing just fine (Yay my OOOOORRRgans! We are Edna, Ariadne’s digestive organs. We are responsible for the processing of foods in her body). Now I just need to get vitamins and minerals back into me. I blame how much I worked out in college combined with Aramark cafeteria food. Damn you Aramark. And you’re provider Sysco too.
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