That’s what SHE said.

Hello internets.  I know, I know, it’s been a while, yes?  A good long while.  I’ve been pursuing various illegal non-writey-type interests, which of course leaves very little time for this blogging thing.

Or does it?

Actually, what you all may not know is that I actually have been blogging here.  LOTS AND LOTS.  It’s just all private, and NOT for public consumption.

Not that this post is going to be appropriate for public consumption either.  But more in a half naked soccer way, as opposed to a ranty vitriolic way.  I don’t know about you, but I’d be way more into some naked blog stories instead of blah blah drama blog stories, right?

Brace yourself, readers.  It’s gonna get a little steamy.

When I was a kid, I loved to play soccer.  My dad and I would go to the park across the street from our apartment, the crisp autumn air sparkling in the early morning sunshine.  I could do all those soccery tricks, bouncing the soccer ball back and forth on my knees to keep warm and ready, and we’d kick the ball around.  For a girl who isn’t really on speaking terms with her father, I think fondly on those memories as one of the times I really enjoyed spending time with him.

So.  Getting hot yet?  Yeah, me too. Ha! No no I kid.  Really.

Anyway, shoot forward a few years *cough* and here I am, not having played soccer since I was a kid, and I get this email:

Good morning!
You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the Portland Netrippers e-mail list or have played with our soccer team in the past.As you may or may not know by now, the Netrippers are sending a team of ladies to Festival of the Babes 2009.  We’ve registered already, so now– we just need enough Babes to make up a team! That’s where you come in…

What’s Festival of the Babes (FOB)?
It’s an annual soccer tournament for lesbians “and those willing to be mistaken for one”, held up and down the West Coast. This year, it’s in San Francisco on Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 4th-6th. This is the 19th year of the tournament, and generally about 350 lesbians show up to play!… the games are held during the days, and there are excellent parties at night.

So….soccer, new friends, hot girls, and crazy parties.  In San Francisco.

SIGN ME THE FUCK UP.

The tournament was last weekend.  It was three days of hedonism a very enjoyable time!  And since I don’t think I saw any of you there, here are a few things I’d like to share with you, my dear readers, from that experience.  I’ll let you live vicariously through me THIS ONE TIME.

  1. A soccer team of lesbians really can have a great weekend without any Ani Difranco being played.
  2. Soccer refs who wear giant beer can costumes will give free kicks to players who can fall and not spill their beer.
  3. At this particular kind of soccer tournament, you need to watch out for marauding gangs of hot soccer babes who will tackle you and pour alcohol down your throat, do nasty sexual acts upon your person, or both.  While you’re playing.
  4. If you walk around San Francisco with a banner made of twine and lacy panties, and you and your teammate are each wearing one of the banner-ed lacy panties, thereby in essence attaching yourself to your teammate, no one will bat an eye or think that is strange in any way.
  5. Nor will the liquor shop employee question your drunk ass when you flash a half-full flask of Jameson tucked into your bra and say “Gimme another one of these.”
  6. Just because a girl is hot, doesn’t mean she’s a good kisser.
  7. But don’t let that stop you from making out with her a good long time anyway.
  8. Beer helps you play longer, because it makes all those nagging aches and pains and sore muscles go away.  Also, more serious injuries.
  9. Not every gay female soccer team is hot.  Only most of them.  Especially if they have a team name like GI Janes.
  10. Canadian women are crazy, friendly, and hot, and love giving away stuff.  They also love dressing up as lumberjacks.  And running around topless.
  11. You really can party until 2am and then make it to a soccer game at 9am across town the next morning.  Your soccer skills may suffer, but hey, everyone else was at the party too.
  12. It’s very easy to become accustomed to either randomly grabbing or being grabbed by women in public and have mutual sexual molestation commence.
  13. It’s also very hard to readjust to ‘normal’ life where that behavior might be frowned upon.
  14. The liver is an amazingly hardy organ, and can withstand immense amounts of abuse.
  15. If you’re not having fun, you’re #doingitwrong.

So I return home with new friends, great memories, a well-boosted ego, sore muscles, a hangover to kill all hangovers, a sunburn (How in the heck *do* you get sunburned when it’s misting and cloudy half the day and you’re wearing sunscreen, anyway?), tons of missed sleep, and no regrets.

And that, my friends, is one awesome weekend.

The Politics of Silence

Shall I speak of silence?
It flows from me like an invisible tidal wave
Perfectly formed in its silent conflagration

Shall I speak of caution?
It is a paroxysmal pursuit
Couched in silence, draped in regret.

Shall I speak, then, of regret?
It flows through me with no ripple or trace
Dealing damage only realized with time

Let me speak of desire unknown
It consumes me and is consumed
Until nothing is left but glowing, ashen remembrances

Silence, caution and regret.
A stalemated, paralyzing trinity
Enemies of desire.

No more buttered scones for me Mater

I have this friend.  We’ll call him…Jim.

He and I, we went through stuff together.  Lots n lots of stuff.  Some cool.  Some weird.  Some awesome.  Some of which I should most likely blog about someday.  All memorable.  And out of all that stuff, we have this huge, massive, totally-something-I-treasure-even-tho-I-only-see-him-every-couple-years cache of inside jokes.

I mean it’s kinda freaky sometimes.  I don’t see him for years, and the moment we get together, it’s like the time apart never happened.  It’s awesome.

So just for the heck of it, in honour of this friendship that I should totally cultivate way more than I have been, I offer this selection of THE BEST AND MOST FAVORITEST MONTY PYTHON VIDS EVAR.  Oh how I’ve missed these!

And if…uh…Jim sees this….

JIM.  No more butter scones for me Mater, I’m off to play the grand piano! Pardon me while I fly my aeroplane!








My Loss is My Gain

Everyone loses stuff.  For starters, you probably lost a good handful of hair today.

No?  Your wallet perhaps?  Gosh I hope not.  Losing your wallet is probably one of the worst things to lose, right?

Well I’m sure you lost something today.  Maybe just a couple hairs.  Your keys.  Some time.  Your way.

Sometimes though, you lose big things.  Big, by virtue of the size or amount of stuff lost.  Or big because the stuff lost was hard, or perhaps impossible, to replace.  Stuff that makes losing your wallet kind of …well, not quite as bad.

Don’t get me wrong, losing your wallet gives you days of headaches while you replace things.  I know, I’ve done it several times.  It’s not fun.  It sucks ass, in fact.  But really, the most important thing you lose is your time.

I’ve lost a lot of stuff along the way.  Lots.  Stuff that’s hard to replace.  And frankly, I’m glad about it.  By losing all that stuff, all those times, I’ve learned acceptance, to live in the moment, to find peace.  I’ve learned not to get attached to stuff.  Because it’s just that, stuff.  In the grand scheme of things, stuff is not what we’re here to collect.  We’re here to learn, grow, and connect with each other. Losing those connections is a far bigger tragedy.  Sadly, I’ve lost many of those too.

But there is one bit of stuff that I’ve never managed to come to terms with losing.  Something I cannot ever replace.  Something that has meaning only for me.  In memory of that bit of stuff, I give you this, something I wrote long ago.

And love is light
And light is warm
And warmth is safe
And safety is knowing
And knowing is good
And goodness is laughter
And laughter is belonging
And belonging is love.

Amalgamation: a story.

“I’m leaving.”

“Hmm?”, I replied.  “Where are you going?”  I feigned obliviousness.  It’s a defense mechanism built out of hope that I was quite adept at using.

“No.  I mean I’m leaving”, she said.

When you walk into the surf at the beach, and stand in the water, just ankle deep, you feel the immense power swirling at your feet.  You’re just not in deep enough that it can really affect you, not yet.  But it’s pulling you out to sea, out to where its power is stronger.  I felt that power now, except this wasn’t the tide, it was fear.  Swirling just at ankle level, and rising quickly.  My heart skipped a beat.

“You mean…”

“Yes”, she interrupted.  “I’ve taken the offer.  I leave at the end of the month.”

I sighed, bracing myself for the discussion we had had so many times already.  Tapping into the seemingly endless pools of patience I always managed to find at times like these.

“I thought we decided you’d wait until I could find a way…”, I started.

“No.  I don’t want to wait anymore.  I’m doing this for me.  I’ll be back, but I need to go.”

Inside my mind, inside my heart, I heard a low rumbling.  With every passing moment, the rumbling grew louder, more shrill.  I recognized it; it was the sound of desperation.  The sound I heard when I gazed into the dark abyss of loneliness that I knew so well.  It was coming for me again.  The sound surrounded me, as the fear lapped at my knees, slowly engulfing me.  I faced that sound, faced the growing fear and what lay behind it, and firmed my resolve.

“Then,” I said, “you should go.”

The look of relief on her face spoke volumes, while I felt at once both pride and pain.  Pain, from the agony of knowing that it was over, that I would never see her again.  My skepticism would not allow that she spoke the truth that she’d be back; we both knew it was a lie, one for my benefit, and all the more stinging because I knew it.  Pride, in knowing that I could let her go to follow her path, that I could stand fast and remain true to my beliefs in the face of such pain.  I knew the loneliness that lay before me, and could still let her go.

But oh, how I hated the thought of being alone.  What a fool I am, I thought.  What a total fucking fool.  A fool for love, and a coward in the face of loneliness, unable to walk away from love even when it’s all wrong. But now the struggle was over, the fight lost.  Or was it?

It would be an end to the lies and confusion.  No more wondering who she’s sleeping with behind my back.  No more thinly veiled recriminations, or being told that nothing I tried was ever *quite* up to par.  No more struggling to be understood.  No more questioning myself when I knew full well the answer.

Yes, as always, this would be for the best.  She was not the one.

I pulled out my suitcase and began to pack.

This was not the end.

This is a story.  An amalgamation of those moments when the relationship, my relationships, end.  I’ve learned many things from my past relationships:

  1. There is always someone crazier than you out there.  You can’t fix them, no matter how much you love them.  Don’t make excuses for them either.
  2. Maintain your own identity.  Don’t lose your individuality.  You, and your relationship, will be healthier for it.  And always tell the truth about how you feel.
  3. Sometimes, the problem *is* you.  Fix it.  Be self aware.  But sometimes it takes screwing up something truly wonderful to figure that out.  Sucks, I know.
  4. Don’t settle for someone you’re not interested in just to keep away the loneliness.  Don’t sacrifice your standards; you’ll just both get hurt.
  5. Yes, you still prefer women.  And yes, you are awesome, and don’t let anyone tell you different.
  6. Attraction is very, very important.  So is communication, understanding, and compromise.  And letting the one you love follow their own path.  And not forgetting to follow your own.

Through it all, I have never given up on love.  I am frankly amazed at the fact that I keep bouncing back, willing to try again; for all the times I’ve been hurt, I ought to be jaded beyond repair.  But I’m not.   I marvel at my heart’s resilience, and look forward to the next lesson.

Valentine Pub Crawl

Just in time for Valentine’s day, I submit to you, worthy readers, a valentine pub crawl.  Except instead of crawling pubs, I’m gonna crawl countries.  And instead of sampling libations*, I’m gonna swirl words of love around my palate in different languages, see if the mouth feel is nice.  Test the bouquet.  See if the tannins are overpowering.  In homage to Valentine’s Day, join this humble, hopeless romantic as we journey ’round the world in my flying gondola of love. 

*False advertising, you say?  Whatev.  Deal w/ it.

Let’s start in that passionately contested northeast corner of Spain, where they pronounce Barcelona with the c sounding like –th, Catalonia:

T’estimo (Catalan) – Short and sweet.  But not too sweet.  Sounds a bit fiduciary, in fact.

Wo ai ni (Chinese (Mandarin)) – Falls off the tongue with a touch of earnestness.  Interesting, for the Chinese to sound earnest in love.

Jeg elsker dig (Danish) – Full and robust.  Would sound great yelled from below a balcony, I’d wager.

Ik hou van jou (Dutch) – Melodic, strong, with a nice rhythm.  I think Dutch singers probably have the edge, here, no?

Je t’aime (French) – Hello, this is the language of love, right?  Making the knees of women weak for centuries.

Taim i’ ngra leat (Irish Gaelic) – Probably one of the hardest languages to learn, but oh so rewarding. This is the one that you yell out amidst the fields at twilight, and who’s to say if your heart’s true love is the girl or the island.

Ich liebe dich (German) – Frankly, German is not the most pleasant on my ears.  But I’m sure if you’re German, this is one of the nicer things you get to hear.

S’agapo (Greek) – Agape! Greeks, who gave us Aphrodite, Zeus, Adonis, Cupid, the Muses, and at least three different words for love (agape, eros, philia, and possible thelema and storge).  Truly this country has inspired love in the world for eons.

Szeretlek (Hungarian) – Whoa.  And I thought the only cool thing to come out of Hungary was Béla Bartók.  They don’t fool around when they say I love you.  They fucking mean it.

Ti amo (Italian) – Ah, the Italians.  I do have a fondness for the Latin languages, I must confess.  They all just sound…right.  Like they invented the idea of love, and the way they say it is the way the universe would if it spoke in words.  They don’t call them the Romance languages for nothin!

Ya tebya liubliu (Russian) – Not what I would have expected the Russian to sound like.  Sounds a bit like you’re talking to a pet instead of your lover.  Meh.

Kocham cię (Polish) – Sounds a bit demanding, but musical.  Still better than the German, if you ask me.

Eu te amo (Portuguese) – This is my favorite.  But then, I’m biased.  I freaking love this language.  Eu te amo, meu amor…Sinto saudades de você.

Techihhila (Sioux) – Native American languages are so awesome.  You can almost touch the desire in this one.

‘Rwy’n dy garu di (Welsh) – You know, if I could figure out how to pronounce this, I bet it would sound just beautiful.  I’m sure my pronunciation is all fuckered up, and it still sounds poetic. 

 

Well, my star-crossed lovers, I hope you enjoy my little love sampler.  This Valentine’s day, when you whisper sweet nothings in your true love’s ear, try something a little exotic for a change, and whisper one of these.  Impress him or her with your worldly talents.  Maybe these exotic words will inspire you and your babe to try other exotic pursuits in the name of love, right?

Peace and love to you all, this day and every day.

Spreadin’ the blog love

My fellow bloggers have truly been outdoing themselves lately.  So I thought I’d just give a shout out to some great stuff they’ve been writing lately.  Hey, Valentine’s Day is coming, right?  What better way to spread some blogger on blogger love then to …ahem…expose each other 😉

@caseorganic, aka Amber Case, wrote a great post with five dating tips for nerds.  Very useful!  Plus, she quotes me, so you know it must be really good info. 

@melissalion, aka um, well Melissa Lion, has tasked us with crawling up from the muck that is our paltry existence, raise ourselves up and try to be her!  Oh happy day!  If you think you’re up to the task, my pretties, take a shot at The Melissa Lion International* Superiority Smugacity Self-Improvement Challenge.  I’m making chai.  From Starbucks. 

The Recovering Straight Girl has some food for thought on the idea that being gay is a choice.  I must say, I agree…whether or not it’s a choice, I wouldn’t want to be any other way.

Seems my love affair with PDX is rubbing off on people.  @jarvitron aka zenboy wrote this blog post about how much he loves Portland, too.  We should have a PDX love-in or something.

As far as work-type blogs go, one of my favorites is Web Worker Daily.  Although they tend to cater to gig workers, there’s still lots of great info.  And now, I have a go-to article to send all my friends to when I find myself at a loss to explain the coolness of Twitter, complete with some of its drawbacks.

And not the least, @cecivirtue posted some AMAZING phone pix of the opening night party of Coraline.  They had the actual sets on display at the party!  Wow.  Cherry blossoms done with spray painted popcorn?  Very, very cool.  Makes me miss my old movie construction days, when I built breakaway doors, installed fake plastic Japanese roof tiles, and got to play with gas torches to distress wood beams.  Ahh, movie magic.

Spread the blog love, and take a peek at some of my favorite bloggers.  Or check my new blogroll over there on the right.  Yeah over there.  Under my recent flickr pictures.  Read their stuff, and comment often.  They and I will appreciate it!

I can haz grace!

Hallo interwebs!  A little Morgan history:

I once tripped over the same spot in the sidewalk three times in a row.  And by once, I mean last week.  And when I say in a row, I mean I went to get coffee, trip.  Came back from coffee, trip.  Stopped, walked back to see what I tripped on, trip. 

Apparently I am not the most graceful person out there.  Everyone seems to have this opinion of me; my friends, my coworkers…even my mother.  I was actually forbidden from using knives for a while when I was younger, since I seemed to cut myself so often.  I still have scars from some of those incidents.  She’d always yell at me for flipping things.  Cans of vegetables.  Sticks.  Frying pans.  Crepes. (Although I firmly believe you’re supposed to flip those.)  Rocks.  My brother.  (oh, that’s ‘trip’ not ‘flip’ on that last one, sorry.)  She’d yell at me, claiming that it was just a matter of time before I dropped it, and crack! would go one of the ceramic kitchen tiles, and I’d be in TROUBLE!  Because, you see, I’m clumsy.  She’d say.

I think it’s a vicious lie, however. 

No kitchen tiles ever broke to my knowledge.  Those were some strong, hefty tiles!

So in order to quell this rising tide of bad publicity, a few years ago I decided to silence my detractors once and for all. 

Yep, I was going to teach myself to juggle.  Because really, that’s sort of what I was getting at, with all that flipping anyway, right?

And damnit, I did it.  I can juggle, three balls, pretty decently, for a few mins at a time, if I’m practicing.  Without droppage, much to my dog’s dismay.  (She thinks it’s some kind of cruel canine torture.)  I even went and bought myself some NICE juggling balls, that come in a fancy box.

And then I tried pins.  And those were awesomely fun.  And I even juggled with someone else, once, and we actually managed a transfer.  Once.

Then I tried rings.  Those are kinda hard.  Still haven’t gotten those down.

And THEN, because I grew up in the 80’s and watched Labyrinth five BEEELION times, I tried contact juggling.  And while I’m not ready to, you know, break it out at parties, I will say my skills are much better than when I first bought my clear acrylic ball.  Which is now scratched up beyond belief.

So now I think of myself as a juggler.  I’m really bad compared to Cirque du Soleil.  But next to my dog, I’m a wizard.  I realize that’s a pretty wide range there, but suffice that I’m in there somewhere, and not at the very bottom.

Imagine my glee, then, when I make the aquantance of one @lawduck via Twitter, and we’re gonna have a Camp. Because that’s what you do in Portland, you find a couple people who like something, and decide to host a Camp about it so you can share it with everyone else.

This is gonna be a CircusCamp. Wherein, I’m guessing, there will be juggling. And juggling lessons. And other circusy-type stuff.  Perhaps bears.  Juggling bears.  And fire eaters! 

<gasp>

Fire juggling!  <my inner pyromaniac is twitching>

Ok maybe not.  But maybe! 

So.  If you’d like to help create this CircusCamp thing, ping @lawduck, or me (@morganpdx), or @dietrich. 

And then start looking for some really kickass juggling balls.

Remember, remember, the 4th of November

On November 4th, America decided to give one of the hardest jobs in the world to this guy.  There were parties.  And speeches.  Lots of warm fuzzies to be had. 

I partied pretty hard along with everyone.  (not as hard as I used to, or as hard as I would’ve liked to, but hey, I’m not in my 20s anymore right?)

But for me, it hit home on November 5th.

I shed quite a few tears that day.  I felt like a member of the world community again.  I felt…redeemed.  LIke the US is not doomed, and …well…like this.

I wouldn’t feel like this again

I spent a lot of time looking at those pictures four years ago.  It was the only thing that gave me hope that my country had not turned its back on people like me, with my ideals, my dreams, my beliefs. It sure felt like it at the time, though.

But now, in less than a week, all that work, all that hope, all that struggle, will culminate on January 20th, Inauguration Day.

So I thought I’d post a few of the moving things people said on November 5th that I collected.  Just so we don’t forget what it felt like. 

 

This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten.  America is rebecoming a New World.
“On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes…”

– Rama Yade, France’s black junior minister for human rights, on French radio.

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.
…there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.
Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that.

– Thomas L. Friedman, NYTimes

We have so many hopes and wishes that he will never be able to fulfill them,”

-Susanne Grieshaber, an art adviser in Berlin who was one of 200,000 Germans to attend a speech by President-Elect Obama there in July.

President-elect Obama thanked all of us tonight — his speech was an acknowledgment that we all had hired him with the responsibility to better our world. He humbly accepted our mandate, both with a profound sense of history and a compassionate appreciation that we and he have changed the entire world for the better.
And what of the world? Tonight, it just sighed with relief – good things can happen to good people, it seems, and Americans are good people again.

-Shirin Sadeghi

In America’s journey toward a more just and truly democratic society, tonight is another milestone. And not just because the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas is now President-Elect. But also because tonight’s outcome is a declaration that we are once again a nation more driven by hope and promise than a nation driven by fear.
But these challenging times also will provide the new president with the opportunity to really transform America. As Gary Hart points out, “Great presidents do not emerge from quiet times; they arise in times of chaos and crisis.”
It’s a theme Michelle Obama touched on many times on the campaign trail. “Barack Obama will require that you work,” she said at a rally on the eve of Super Tuesday. “He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism; that you put down your divisions; that you come out of your isolation; that you move out of your comfort zones; that you push yourself to be better; and that you engage.”

-Ariana Huffington

I want Obama to win with 99 percent, like Saddam Hussein.  I swear if he doesn’t win, I’m going to take it personally.”

Hanin Abu Ayash, who works at a television station in Dubai and monitored early returns on his computer

The margin of victory was emphatic and, whatever else follows, today the world changed,” said an editorial in The Times of London, and The Guardian newspaper proclaimed: “They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world.”

 

When he was preparing for the Democratic primary debates, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

Just when I thought I couldn’t love the man more.

Comment on Huffington Post by “cantbehavingwiththis”

 

As we start fresh with a constitutional law professor and senator from the Land of Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial might be getting its gleam back.
I may have to celebrate by going over there and climbing up into Abe’s lap.
It’s a $50 fine. But it’d be worth it.

Maureen Dowd

And a final thought from me:  Good luck, President Obama.  I know that’s not your title yet, but I’m just trying it on for size, you know?  Your country is 100% behind you.  Or at least I am, and pretty much everyone I know.  We’re five by five, and Ready to Go.  Let’s get back on track, shall we?

But first, time for another party!