Tablesaw!

I'm getting the itch to do more tabletop RPG right now, just as one member of my regular group is in the hospital helping his wife through labor, and another member is preparing to do the same in two weeks.

This is a little bit heightened by going over to my friend Laz's house. I was just there to pick up my headphones which I'd left the night before, but it turned out he was running his own game. Using "The Keep on the Borderlands on a "rules light" system. This turned out to be a fuzzy simulation system with some unusual implications during combat. It was a decent time playing, but it was disconcerting to go from a group dedicating to breaking down the rules of RPG systems in playtest to a DM with hidden information adding hidden bonuses to hidden rolls behind a screen (an unknown number of them fudged) who categorically refused to give details about the system or its implications. (If I write about that, I think I'll make it separate, since there's a lot of stuff I'm processing, much of which is not particularly groundbreaking.)

It did get me fired up about Dungeon World and World of Dungeons, the sparseness of the latter vaguely resembling Laz's simple game. It also got me thinking about Burning Wheel, which is a system I played once at con, but always wanted to learn more about. And I'd just come across my copy of the book, so I thought I'd actually read about how the system works.

Except that the book that I'd found was actually The Character Burner, one of the two books that describe the system. And the other one, the half that has most of the system rules, was missing. I searched on and off for a few days, becoming more forlorn. By the time I told Psyche about it, I was near certain that I'd left it somewhere foolish, like the DMV.

She found it in about seven minutes.

ojouchan and I have broken up and ended our engagement.

You may or may not know that we've been having troubles and were taking a break. This is not a break; it's over. Please don't question the finality of the decision.

Our friendship remains essentially intact, but it's very difficult for each of us emotionally.

Comments are open, but I'm not entirely comfortable saying much about this publicly yet. I may reach out privately if I haven't already. I may set up a filter to process this.

Please also keep in mind that my family reads this journal and are finding this out too. Mom, Dad, I may not be ready to talk immediately.

I've been trying to write a letter to Ex, but it's not happening. Well, something's happening, but it's not the letter I'm supposed to write. Ex got married last week, and I have yet to say anything about it. The problem is that every time I set down something, I start pouring out my own issues, which isn't the point. And trying to cut all of that out leaves me with something so stiff and impersonal that it's almost and insult. Not what I want to say at all.

(For those just joining us, here's some background for my relationship with Ex and my relationship with Ex after my relationship with Ex: 3/17/2002, 6/22/2002, 9/19/2002 and possibly some other entries I can't find.)

Ex and I became close friends in Washington, D.C, where we attended one year of college together. At the end of that year, we both moved to different colleges, but we kept in close contact, thanks largely to her weekend job as a secretary at a business with a liberal toll-free-phone-line policy. Eventually, on a visit to LA, we started dating, and tried to continue it long-distance off and on for a while.

Breaking up with Ex is directly tied in to my ultimate crash at the end of a very long slide into the depths of depression. I can clearly trace back my depression to my Sophomore year in high school, but I'd always managed, generally, to keep things more or less balanced. Leaving school cut me loose in many ways, and I just got very, very bad. Depression severely warped my perception of reality in the months after I graduated from college, and I alienated my friends and family until I was pinning a lot of my life on my relationship with Ex. That relationship was falling apart because, well, I was falling apart; but I couldn't see/accept it. Eventually, on a long-before-scheduled trip to her home town where she finally, actually, firmly broke up with me, I had a complete breakdown.

Since then, I've been able to put my mind back together to a certain extent, though it's still a journey. Anyway, I need to get back to Ex.

At the end of our "relationship," Ex started seeing someone, whom we will call Xi (because I like saying "Ksaie!"). Considering what I've told you above, and even guessing at my mental state at the time, you can imagine that my view of Xi wasn't very pretty, or very accurate. A lot of my residual rage from that time is directed at him.

If you've looked at my "research" posts, you'll know that Ex and I have been in touch with each other for about a year now, through web journals. I guess this may be a new and interesting use of the Internet, but it's been good for me. I've gotten used to Ex being in my thoughts in new situations, ones that don't involve me being a ranting madman. But with this wedding, I realize that I haven't quite gotten closure on that time in my life. I've moved on, but there's still a little bit open.

I feel like I need to see her again, to solidify the communication we've had since the break up, to know that it's real, to have something slightly more like what we had before things got strange, back when we were friends who could talk for hours about art, philosophy, anime, and anything else.

Also, I need to meet Xi again. No, not again. I don't really think that first time counted. I think I'm better off assuming that I never met Xi and that what I remember from meeting him was just an elaborate imagining from my brain which bears no resemblance to reality. Ex really only talks about Xi tangentially in her journal, so that doesn't really give me a whole lot to go on. I feel like I need some reality to counteract the nightmare of three years ago, so that I can actually see why my friend is marrying him.

Wow. Three years. It's been a long time. I haven't really caught up with that part of my life. It feels more like a year ago. So much wasted space.

I'm still iffy on the letter, so here it is. Any and all suggestions are appreciated before I send this out: ( Read more... )

My last entry was written quickly, in a fury at LiveJournal for deleting my original post. I quite forgot that some of the information in the lost post was important. Like the fact that Wendy and I broke up last week.

I wrote all about the stuff leading up to it, but I don't feel like writing them again. I didn't feel like writing them in the first place, but knew that I had to do it anyway, to get it out of my head. Now, they're mostly out, and I don't want to repeat it all over again. But, in terms of the aftermath, Wendy's really depressed right now, was already, independent of the break-up. Like much of her depression, it's keyed into employment, or lack thereof. But now, she's also trying to deal with her first "amicable" break-up. One which doesn't leave one with the aid of deep loathing for the other person involved to get through things.

She woke up in tears, and cornered me on AIM asking why the relationship would be over if we're still fond of each other. Well, that's not prescisely true; she knew the reasons why. When we broke up, it was clear to us both that communication between us had a tendency to fall to pieces at a moments notice, so we were both mentally ready to go back to being friends, but now she's wracked with guilt that she may have screwed up something good.

I know we're still friends, but I don't really feel capable of being the main person in charge of helping her get over our relationship. I've got my own getting over of it to do. Beyond that, I'm also worried about her feeling depressed.

So, this is still very disjointed, but maybe that helps a little bit more.

The other day, I had a sudden overwhelming urge to read "Judas Danced" by Brian Aldiss. I knew which book it was in, SF: Authors' Choice. After my fever for this chaotic tale was abated, I noticed something odd. Scribbled on the inside of the paperback cover, I found the following, in pencil and in my hand:

Don't do what I did . . .
You keep saying,
It's OK, I can live with that
It's OK, I can live with that
Then you go: "It's too much
I can't live with any of it
You have to change everything."

I haven't a clue what it means or why it's there. I don't even know if the words are mine or if I heard someone else say them. All I know is that it was when I had this book out, which was during the last two years of college? It's very likely that I copied this down during my "Race, Gender and Performance" class with Catherine Cole [Archive link, 10/26/10], since I used another story in the book, "Day Million" [dead link changed, 10/26/10] by Frederik Pohl as the source for my final project in that class. Does anyone recognize this fragment at all?

SatNYTX: 13:45. Very fast, but there was one crossing of words I didn't know.

(LJ note: The update page doesn't seem to allow me to select a userpic right now. Hope that gets fixed.) (Update: It's back.)

I've been threatening to clean for weeks now, but haven't done so. A lot of that has been the show eating up lots of my time. Further, it greatly diminished the time I spend at home three days a week, making it easier to deal with the mess. But for the past few weekends, I've had something keeping me at the computer. And her name is Wendy.

(Well, actually, it's not. But come on! This is a public web journal, I'm not going to give your her real name!)

Wendy lives a bit far away, but thankfully not far enough that we can't meet with a modicum of planning. In fact, we did so last week. And it was very wonderful. Before that, though, we would chat for hours, getting the courage do meet for real. And so I'd end up frittering away my days instead of cleaning.

Well, Wendy has a job that prevents her from IMing at three in the morning, which means that I have time to clean. Which I did today. Started, at least. After some lazy time, I cleaned up my entire living room; I'm going to deal with my bedroom tonight. It was important to do so because tonight I'm going to be getting an actual sofa! Now I have two soft pieces of furniture on which to lounge!

I'm not sure when wjukknibs will be over, so I'd better get to bed early (which is to say, now). Good night.

He and She, at a party, suddenly converge, shoeless, on the twister board while the other partygoers swirl around them and, maintaining laser-like eye contact suddenly reveal information about their families, punctuated by periods of mutual reflection/contemplation.
(Repeat three times for folkloric resonance.)

That's not really a "meet cute"; what is it?


Related quote: "He's pretty sarcastic for a guardian angel, but he's still a good guardian angel."

I'm taking a break from putting things into boxes. Not only because I'm a bit tired and need a breather, but also because a little while ago, I took a few things out of boxes.

I have a box that I'm keeping for a friend. It's a box of evidence of a relationship. I've had it for years now, and I've never really looked at it, but today, while I was evaluating what, from my life, to keep and what to discard, I was drawn to the small cardboard box of mementos. I flipped through. All in all there wasn't much, but there was a large stack of communiques of various types, neatly stacked.

I didn't read the emails. I didn't want to or need to. I was already struck with how meticulously clean they were. They didn't seem to be folded or crumpled or to show any other marks of mishandling. They were pristine except for occasional stray notes, doodles, and periodic underlining of the text. It surprised me that my friends had been able to organize these aspects of his life so delicately, ultimately making it possible, then, to put it all into a single box to be given to someone else for an indefinite period of time.

I simply don't function like that. It's hard enough for me to keep my financial information in the same place where I could be expected to find it within five minutes. But I couldn't decide to be jealous of my friend's ability or glad that I lacked it. On the one hand, having that information organized, one can always refer back to something. On the other hand, always having the information at hand means, in a physical, or perhaps geographical, way, being unable to forget. There's always something there to remind you.

I have mementos from past relationships. A few are on display, like the only picture I have of a girl from Montana, but most are hidden behind, around, below, within the maze of information that is around me at all times. And it's times like this, when I'm moving or cleaning or otherwise sifting all of my possessions, that these physical memories, stored outside of my brain, come back through my fingertips and speak.

Somewhere in that room, or possibly in boxes somewhere that I packed months ago, there is a picture of an old ex-girlfriend, exer than Ex. She's in high school, getting ready for, I think, Homecoming, wearing a green dress and looking lovely despite an obvious weariness in her eyes with the process of having her parents photograph her before the dance. Attached to it is a photograph taken of the two of us in Georgetown on some night out with a group of friends. I'm wearing a winter coat and my insulated arms hold her close; her black leather (faux-leather?) jacket wraps around my arms as well, and the dark clothing with the night flash makes her clear face luminous beneath mine. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll hold it in my hand and remember when I held her in my arms, when I fell in love, when we studied together and I couldn't stop staring at her pale shoulder, off of which her shirt had slipped, when we first kissed, sitting on a bench on the Washington Mall, when I cried, when she embarrassed herself and my friend in front of me while drunk, when she lied to me. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll ask myself whether I should simply let it fall away from me, into a dustbin and out of my life. And when I find it, as I always do, I will place it carefully into whichever pile I've designated for things that I'm not sure what to do with, where it will be covered by stray notes, or postcards, or newspaper clippings until I find it again.

I was invited to a party on Saturday, but I don't know when. Better get in touch with my friend, assuming she's back in town. It'll be a busy weekend overall. There's the party on Saturday and a baptism on Sunday, and before the baptism, I'm plan on walking from work over to the new Our Lady Queen of Angels Cathedral to attend its first Sunday Mass.

I've requested time off on October 1 and 2. This will be the time for me to move into my carriage house. I am so excited.

Feeling kind of lonely, right now. Part of this is psychical energy absorbed from a some friends' bad situation, but it's been a while since my last relationship. Sigh.

Later on the Kevin and Bean show, they played a clip of outtakes from Anna Nicole Smith's movie Skyscraper. Here's the director trying to cue Smith with her lines as a helicopter pilot.

Director: "I'm heading eastbound, leaving your airspace."
Smith: I'm east now, leading your hair space.

Also, I thought I'd mention this very special Harry Potter Quiz. Sorry, my results are secret.

FriNYTX: 26.

While dictionary browsing, I found this:

sex kitten n (1958): a young woman with conspicuous sex appeal

I want a sex kitten.

Now let me unpack that a bit. I don't want in the sense of ownership. Nor do I want an actual kitten to have sex with (thank you very much gutter-minded ones). But I would like to date some one with conspicuous sex appeal.

I found it interesting that, even as I let my lizard brain do the thinking, I didn't want to go out and find someone solely on the basis of their perceived "sexiness," instead I wanted to find someone brilliant and beautiful and then be lucky enough for her to be a sex kitten as well. It's almost the inverse of swisscheesed's "Well, it's nice that you have a brain," where it's the brain that's the pleasant afterthought.

( Back to life... )