Author: foxtongue

I don’t want Romance or Monopoly, I want Reciprocity

An excerpt from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet, (Crosswicks Journal, Book 1):

There have been a number of times during the past years when one of my “children” has come into the library, puttered around the bookshelves until we were alone, and then sat by my desk to talk about love: should I sleep with him? does he love me? is this girl just having me on? what do you really think about marriage? every boy you go out with expects you to make out, all the way; the girls want anything they can get out of you, but I think this one is different; how do you know if you’re pregnant? my parents don’t like her, they think she’s a tramp, but she isn’t, and I love her.

They really don’t want me to answer their questions, nor should I. If I have not already answered them ontologically, nothing I say is going to make any sense. Where I can be of use is in being willing to listen while they spread their problem out between us; they can then see it themselves in better perspective.

But over the years two questions of mine have evolved which make sense to me.

I ask the boy or girl how work is going: Are you functioning at a better level than usual? Do you find that you are getting more work done in less time? If you are, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you can’t work well, that you’re functioning under par, then I think something may be wrong.

A lovely example of this is Josephine: the spring she and Alan were engaged, when she was eighteen and a sophomore at Smith, they found out that they could not possibly be apart more than two weeks at a time; either Alan would go up to Northampton, or Josephine would come down to New York. She knew that she would be getting married ten days after the close of college. And her grades went steadily up.

The other question I ask my “children” is: what about your relations with the rest of the world? It’s all right in the very beginning for you to be the only two people in the world, but after that your ability to love should become greater and greater. If you find that you love lots more people than you ever did before, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you need to be exclusive, that you don’t like being around other people, then I think that something may be wrong.

This doesn’t mean that two people who love each other don’t need time alone. Two people in the first glory of new love must have great waves of time in which to discover each other. But there is a kind of exclusiveness in some loves, a kind of inturning, which augurs trouble to come.

Hugh was the wiser of the two of us when we were first married. I would have been perfectly content to go off to a desert isle with him. But he saw to it that our circle was kept wide until it became natural for me, too. There is nothing that makes me happier than sitting around the dinner table and talking until the candles have burned down.

I have been wondering this summer why our love has seemed deeper, tenderer than ever before. It’s taken us twenty-five years, almost, but perhaps at last we are willing to let each other be; as we are; two diametrically opposite human beings in many ways, which has often led to storminess. But I think we are both learning not to chafe at the other’s particular isness. This is the best reason I can think of why ontology is my word for the summer.

A Russian priest, Father Anthony, told me, “To say to anyone ‘I love you’ is tantamount to saying ‘You shall live forever.'”

I am slowly beginning to learn something about immortality.

biting the sun

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

– Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are

letting the cat out of the bag for a trip around the block

Shane Koyczan
Promotional photo for Shane Koyczan.
  • ChatRoulette Love Song: speed dating done right.

    Arron took me on a driving lesson the other day, all the way from Home Depot to Metrotown, the farthest I’ve ever gone in a car. I suspect he found it vaguely terrifying, but given my lack of experience, I think I did rather well. No one died, nothing got wrecked, and I finally found myself okay with driving at more than 30 km/hour. I had been vaguely concerned that driving his truck would be somehow scarier than the little car I had been learning in with Young Drivers of Canada, (bigger equals more dangerous), but instead I discovered that though I disliked the hugeness of the thing, (the amount of space it takes up is slightly ridiculous), my years of living in a truck have apparently made me significantly more comfortable sitting higher up. It feels more natural being able to look down at other vehicles, rather than up at them. I blame my mother and her addiction to vans. Also, not dealing with a clutch meant that I stopped mixing up the pedals, so that was a victory, too. The best one, probably. Notes: remembering to check blind spots, figuring out how much space is actually required to change lanes. (Hint: significantly less than I think).

  • Little Wheel: a sweet, beautiful art game involving robots.

    I had a try-out day of work with Agentic yesterday, the web development company I’ve been interviewing with that I rather like. It was a very relaxed time, some easy work in a nice environment, surrounded by quiet, friendly people, not stressful at all. I was mostly left to myself, just me and a desk and a small pile of simple tasks. It was only after, during my gentle walk home, that I started feeling worried I wouldn’t get the job, as if my body had saved up all my concerns for later, tucked away in a bottom drawer of my heart until it was deemed safe to let them out. Silly, in a way, as it is out of my hands now. Everything left to do is on their side – talking to my references, deciding which candidate to hire, then calling us with the decision. (I was told they’ll let me know no later than Monday.) In the meantime, all I can do is wait and cross my fingers that I am what they need. It would be great to work in a positive environment again. I’m tired of spending time in offices where you can tell that everyone there wishes they weren’t.

  • Mills & Boon: self-portraits that mimic the covers of romance novels.

    My others news: Lung and I are finally starting a photography business together, Fox-Rain Wedding Photos. We’ve been talking about it for years, but the timing was never quite right. This time, however, I’ve already kludged together a solid rough draft of our website that I plan to take live in the next few days, before he leaves for California next week, and hope to get some sort of quick logo nailed down by the end of today, the better to toss on business cards asap. Neither one of us is particularly flush at the moment, so start-up money is tight, but I’ve done my research and I’m not only certain we can do this on the cheap, I’m absolutely confident we’ll succeed. If we can get everything together quick enough, things could even be up and running by the end of the month. Expect us at a tacky wedding fair near you, soon! We’ll be the people who don’t suck.

    • he came closer while I was being pushed away

    I am left by the side of the road, a fugitive leaning silently against a wall as I listen to his truck drive away. I’m tired, he said, of being the one who always has to be strong, and in that moment it was like he had wrapped me the most beautiful gift even as I crumpled, destroyed by the echo of those words leaving my own mouth, over and over again. I wanted wings, then, to furl around him, great feathery things, mythical and incredible, powerful enough to erase pain, the better to protect him from the world. Pinions that scraped the ceiling. Instead my arms found him, found him and held him, while a part of me shattered, horrified, against the promise that I would never be that person, as I resisted the sour memory of times that should never have been.

    And so, standing in the street, solitude, the desire to howl down the moon. Anger at myself, at the past that robbed me of what this could be. Such a gift should mean more to me, I should be thrilled, yet here I am, incapable of carrying it, too weak to shout, too weak to even speak, too beaten down. Years of inequality choking me, I rest against the wet cement blocks of an anonymous warehouse office and try not to hate. If such a treasure had been presented to me a few months ago, I would have been beyond grateful, filled to the edges with joy, a flower in bloom. It was the only thing I wanted, just for myself. I would have been able to cradle it, this admired jewel made of fire, but now feels too late. Instead I have been broken. The devastating distance I tried so hard to survive has finally claimed me for its own.

    simple lines, red in the shape of a C

    Tronapalooza

    Life progresses, salted with the exhaustion fall-out of CanSecWest, which was most of my last week. Getting up early, staying up obscenely late, helping where I could, dropping dead into the social scene, making people smile, checking badges, keeping certain people sane. I missed most of Tronapalooza, the big party on Thursday night featuring quadcopters and the actual machines from Flynn’s Arcade in Tron, but still managed to get back in touch with most of my interesting people, plucked from the anonymous sea of perpetual t-shirts and black CanSec branded pull-overs, so even though I didn’t tag along to Whistler this year, I’m satisfied with how I spent my time. Also, this year’s best misused skill: spatial dynamics! It took me fourty minutes, but I was able to weave bottles together well enough to fit approximately $2,000 worth of alcohol safely and comfortably into one hotel fridge.

    (Far more sane than the year before last, which was “Dexterity! Using an obscenely sharp sword to snap the top off of champagne bottles first thing in the morning, on little to no sleep.” Yes, there were some casualties. Apparently katana slice through aluminum like water.)

    Today: Walking away from tsunami and related nuclear news, and instead doing laundry, some spring cleaning, sewing a button back onto my coat, building a photography site for Lung, and generally preparing for my trial day of work tomorrow.

    fascinating security hack

    Hacking can take control of a car through an infected music file:

    But their most interesting attack focused on the car stereo. By adding extra code to a digital music file, they were able to turn a song burned to CD into a Trojan horse. When played on the car’s stereo, this song could alter the firmware of the car’s stereo system, giving attackers an entry point to change other components on the car.

    news from the dark

  • Chris Dame writes about our favourite night at Burning Man.

    Plans have changed, the April road-trip between Orlando and New Orleans with Van Sise has been canceled, perhaps to be picked up at some later date, replaced instead with a trip to New York City, when as yet unknown.

    In other news, the shiny web development company I interviewed at last week has asked me to come in for a try-out day of work, to see how I fit. They’ve whittled down the applicants to two. The other candidate is working with them today. I go in on Monday. It would be earlier, but this week my life’s been swallowed by a different madness, one of the best: CanSecWest. No sleep until Friday!

    • a thousand thoughts

    I felt immediately welcome at my interview this morning, which wasn’t stressful in the slightest, but an undeniably positive experience. I liked the questions, the interviewer, the vibe, everything! I especially appreciated the quick tour around the office at the end, as it confirmed my brightest hope about the company, that it’s built of the astonishing power that comes from good people doing good work. I feel like I could very happily fit in there in a very satisfying and productive way, like calling to like. I’m told I’ll hear back from them on Monday, but to send in another résumé in the meantime, one that covers my creative work, too.

    My only worry is that I may have seemed distracted, as I was silently agitated while we spoke, all too aware of my lover, sitting in a clinic across town, about to go into surgery. Between one waiting breath and another, his name will be called, and they will move him to one of the hospitals, then to an operating room where they will strap him down to a table and drill into his knee. It is not the surgery that concerns me, however, but the the anesthetics, because the only chemicals that will work on him are the sort that are tricky to properly balance. Too little and he’ll wake up, snap the needles piercing his flesh, and destroy the operation, coming out worse than he went in, but too much will poison his heart, a defibrillation-resistant dysrhythmia will set in, then, quickly, cardiac arrest.

    Being my usual reasonable self, however, I did my best to stay objective and only focus on the interview. I may not have been as winning as usual, but it was a pleasant conversation, even so, and I am grateful for it. If nothing else, it warms my heart to know that those people are out there in the world, making it better, a tiny line of code at a time.