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← back to installment I.1I. Daylight: MDeliverance delivers me to a three-story brick Victorian. It used to be beautiful, but it's spent decades crumbling into the cracked 1950's slum buildings to either side of it. The neighborhood feels dense with history and that makes me nervous. I step out of the taxi but nothing happens, despite the history. The rain has stopped but daylight doesn't come. I look at the half-flight of weathered wooden stairs to 315 Grant Street, shrug, and limp up. The wooden door at the top with the cracked black paint swings open easily, and I head up another flight to the second floor landing, looking for apartment 2A. The inside of the building is clean and white and freshly painted, recent enough I can still smell the chemical tang. A shiny brass "A" hangs a little crooked on the door down the hall to my left, and there's a "B" on the door to my right. I head left because I don't know what else to do and put my hand on the scarred old brass door knob and--  three men wearing woolen great coats dusted with snow and a stray cat with a white tip on its tail bounds to the sharp smell of fire and burned meat, choking and two men holding hands, tall and beautiful, knocking with sharp knuckles, the angry, round-faced woman calls the taste of mint and tears charlie, her red hair half-bound in a blue tie and slipping out all over her face, breathless and-- Black blots out the vision like the night killing the sun. The darkness unfurls into an eye, big as a city, round and flat like a fish but with the iris and pupil elongated and lumpy, like a cancerous goat. The dizzying smell of rotten sea creatures chokes me and I pull back, retching, but am frozen by its basilisk gaze. I stand before the eye for a lifetime. And then another. And then-- black out, blink back, charlie knocks again help! rage and pain and the smell of iron a pool of blood on a marble threshold shatter-snap! The man with the thin face looks and me and smiles. "Hello Serenity Banks. You will make a lovely new sacrifice. Your power is just delectable." I fall across the threshold of apartment 2A, the vision having lasted only the time it took to turn the doorknob. Like dreams or a trip to Avalon, I live terrible lifetimes in the visions, while only a fraction of a second passes in reality. Like dreams, the visions linger. I paw at the back of my head with my fingernails, feeling the itchy gaze of the awful eye on the nape of my neck, hearing the chuckles of the man with the thin face echoing through the hall. Seeing Charlie, who I'm too late to save and can only hope to avenge, lying dead as people with hoop skirts dance across the floor, disconnected from time. I'm drowning in history, whimpering beneath the weight of the years. Finally, I snap out of it enough to sort out what is possibly real. Candle light. Warm, yellow, flickering. The smell of paraffin and kerosene and wood smoke. A woman stretching on a divan, propped on one elbow. Long, black hair coils and contrasts against her white breast; a complicated black corset clasps over a flowing white gown; huge black eyes gaze at me with an expression on the edge between beneficence and savagery. I'd think it was just another vision, but to the right of her on a little table a television sits on top of a VCR and CD player, so I must be in the late 20th century again. Maybe I was wrong to stop taking my meds. Not that they helped. My breath catches on a snag of doubt and fear and I choke on it as I take three steps into the room, closing the door behind me. The woman on the divan sits up, alert. Like someone has thrown a blanket over my feelings, the ball of terror woofs out. My knees go wobbly with the abrupt change of state. I don't feel anything. Anything at all. It's like I've entered a world without madness. And that seems, rationally, mad in itself, but I really don't care.  A small, satisfied smile curls around the woman's face. She extends a pale hand and says, "Hello Serena. I'm M." Her voice is soft, calm, deep. I feel nothing. I expect her hand to be cold as death when I take it, but it's warm and dry, and her grip strong. "Charlie told me you'd come tonight; I have a room drawn up. Here, drink some tea." I drop her hand and fall back into an easy chair. An elaborate cast iron fireplace dominates the room, probably the original central heating unit in the house. Delicate scroll work of ivies and roses curl up either side, and a father time holding an hourglass floats frozen in wrought iron above the softly glowing coals. Heat radiates. A short antique table has been pushed off-center, between M and I. Small trays of tiny bones cover it. The trays are black lacquer. The bones are very white. A mis-matched tea set rests on the edge of the table nearest me, next to the bones. Steam curls from the thrift-store ceramic teapot. I feel nothing. Maybe a little comforted? Just briefly though; the feeling evaporates as soon as I name it. "What--" "You've had a very long night," M pulls herself the rest of the way into a full sit, and I can see her thin bones move beneath her white skin. Small bones. "You need tea. And rest. There will be time for questions in the morning." She pours tea into the cup and hands it to me. The tea is slightly bitter, but not in a bad way. Warmth spreads through me. When I'm done, M reaches out her hand again for me to take. I glance over at the little white bones in the little black trays. I take her hand. M leads me a short way around the glowing fireplace, through a kitchen, and down a short hall into a back room. Thick curtains pile over what might be a window. A queen-sized bed fills most of it. I lay down on the soft duvet and sink into a billow of warmth and feathers. I feel nothing at all. M removes my pajamas. She bathes me in warm water from a kettle, and puts cream and bandages on my feet. She dresses me in a soft sweatshirt and sweatpants and tucks me under the covers, and I realize the mattress is made of feathers too. M brushes her hand over my forehead like a mother and leans down and kisses me lightly with warm breath and soft lips. "Hush," she whispers, "sleep." I do. Tags: back bay, fiction
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I. Daylight: Serena and Deliverance Wee hours of the morning, rain pelting. My feet, bare and bloody on the gravel at the side of the road. I'm wearing the sodden, matted bathrobe and flimsy pajamas I'd walked out in, because I don't have real clothes anymore. Or, if I do, I don't know where to find them. The pale of the moon glows beyond the rain. Trees overgrow the narrow old road, mostly pine, some maple. I smell pitch in the darkness. I don't know where I am.  "Charlie," I begin, out loud, because who is going to tell me to shut up here? I wrap my thin arms around my thinner garments and squeeze. "Charlie, what now? I did everything you said and it worked, just like you said. But what now? What do I do now?" The night answers me with rain. Maybe if I listen just right, I'll hear Charlie's voice in the wet splats of the drops on the leaves of the trees. Or maybe I'm having a lucid moment, in which case I won't hear Charlie at all. "C'mon, answer me Charlie! It's only been a few days since you died, you can't have moved on already!" I'm surprised by the angry edge to my voice. Splat, splat, splat goes the rain. I'm cold enough that the drops hurt where they fall on my hands and face. Not on my feet though, my feet are numb and I'm scared to look down. I must've run miles in my skin, miles over grass and gravel and pavement and things I don't recall. I shiver into the rain. Despite the cold and the dark, I'm more clear-headed than I have been since childhood. And that scares me more than anything else. The moon-glow brightens, slipping its way down the sky suddenly fast. I pinch myself to find out if I'm awake or in a nightmare. I feel the pinch all right, but the moon splits in two anyway. Two moons now come at me very fast, very bright, so bright they are turning into suns. Two suns and-- "Charlie! Charlie's that's a car!" I stick my thumb out so fast I don't know I've done it till the car slides to a stop and the passenger's door swings wide.  Turns out it's not a car--it's a taxi. A bright yellow taxi, with a bent front fender and a big wide front seat. I can't see the driver but right now I don't care. Even if it's a homicidal axe-wielding maniac, that's got to give me better odds than staying where I am. "Charlie keep me safe," I mutter, as though she can protect me, as though she is even real, and I duck my head in. Inside the cab is warm and dry. I'm icy and wet and the heat hurts at first and I'm glad it's not January or I'd have hypothermia. Not that it would be raining in January. Here in Maine the snow lies thicker than the crust of the Earth in winter. The driver is older than me, but not too old, probably in her 30's. Her thick, wiry hair is worked up into a bun on the top of her head, away from a face both pretty and weary. Her skin is the color of strong chai tea--she even has nutmeg freckles--and her brown eyes are the color of kindness. I spread my own icy shaking hands out across my lap, the frozen white of the dead. "Funny place to wait for a taxi," the driver smiles at me. She's got no make-up, no jewels, no frills. My heart sinks. "I got no way to pay." My teeth chatter as I say it. The driver shrugs shoulders padded by a thick, dark, wool sweater. Can't tell the color in the bad light. "I'm not on duty yet," she smiles in a way that makes me have to smile back. "Even cabbies have to drive in to work, you know." She takes off and we drive for a long time before I'm warm enough to say, "I'm Serena." She nods her head, pleased. "Deliverance," she says, "Deliverance Brown. And before you laugh, my momma gave me that name, fair and square!" Then she looks at me and laughs. "Where are you--" "To Portland." "Where are we--" "About 20 miles northwest of the city, driving down the old Grey Road." Thank you, Charlie. I sink into the warm seat and close my eyes. Behind the lids, big men reach for me, hands hard on my wrists and ankles, grinding bone. Their dead-fish gaze drinks me in as I scream and fail to get away. Annoyed, I open my eyes and focus on the pavement going by instead. Deliverance makes complex shapes in my heart: warmth and safety, pain and anger. Something broken, someone who fixes. "I'm gonna find out, Charlie," I take care not to talk to her out loud this time, I just do it in my head. "I'm gonna get to Portland and I'm gonna find out who killed you." I'm afraid again. I want to turn the cab around, run back time. But I'm not the one in control of the wheel. Deliverance turns her warmth on me, and her smiles, and her kindness, and says, "Serena Lynn Penny, that's your full name, right?" I can't breathe, for the racing of my heart. Maybe there really are worse things than the place I just left. "Funny thing meeting you here," the driver's eyes are back on the road, one hand lightly on the wheel. "I had this passenger a few days ago, told me you'd be out here. Told me to pick you up and take you to 315 Grant Street, tell you apartment 2A. You know anything about that? Know anyone in apartment 2A?" Fear becomes hope so fast I wonder if they're the same feeling. "What'd your passenger look like?" I squeak out with someone else's voice. "Woman. Tall, thin, redhead. Real green eyes. Soft voice." Charlie! She just described Charlie! But no, that can't be. I'm not lucid after all. I huddle back in the seat, nursing my thumping heart. A long time later the sky reddens along the horizon of the road. There have been more houses, and more often. The red light is different from dawn. "That's Portland," Deliverance points. "We're almost there."  I swallow, glad of the thinness of my robe and PJs now, glad because the heater in the cab has dried them. My feet throb and I don't look forward to standing up. "My passenger, the red head?" Deliverance says causally, eyes still on the road. "She told me to get you in safe. Told me you were gonna save the world."
next to installment I.2 →Tags: back bay, fiction
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 Unless it's for fine arts, I have a hatred of paper. It's unsortable, loseable, destructible--entirely untenable. Over time, I've phased paper out of my life; I've scanned it, transcribed it, swapped it for white boards, and even photographed it so I don't have to bring it home. Yet I've kept a notepad nearby because no matter how many alternatives to paper emerge, I'd yet to find something for sketching and scribbling hasty notes. Switching between keyboard and tablet is too awkward, typing on iPad is too slow, and for someone used to sophisticated control of her drawing media the fixed-width lines available on touch screen apps are frustrating at best (not even getting into the awfulness of the UI design). Enter: Paper by FiftyThree + Bamboo stylus + iPad. Which is what the drawing included with this post was created with. The most exciting part of the Paper app is that its drawing tools create variable-width marks, just like drawing tools on physical paper, which makes for a full range of mark-making expressiveness. Unlike physical drawing tools, that variation is created by speed of pen (or finger) rather than pressure on its tip, but it didn't take long for my hand to adapt. Plus the UI is designed to emulate actual drawing and doesn't get in the way of the tool and color switching. The only thing I wish is for more color palettes. Will this replace the notepad at my side, the physical sketchbooks where I still draw feedback loops and engineering diagrams and pseudo-code and maps and characters and bits of plot? Too early to tell, but it's definitely got more potential than anything I've tried before. Image: Digital drawing, Paper by 53 + Wacom Bamboo on iPad. Testing the capabilities of the technology for mark-making and color-blending. Tags: hoshi, pictures, technology
Current Location: Portland, OR
Current Music: Ultravox
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 Playing with the hipstamatic which simulates a badly behaved analogue camera and poorly developed film. While the irony of telling a $600 digital smart phone to act like a $10 disposable from the 70's isn't lost on me, there's a quirky, uncontrollable, unpredictable monster in pre-digital photography that I quite miss. That monster has equal potential for creating an accidental masterpiece or an utter disaster. Only now, I don't need to spend money on film and developing to find out which I've captured. This photo is from the tram stop at the top of Marquam Hill ( OHSU campus). Or, alternately, this photo is from another planet (an option which doesn't entirely rule out the OHSU campus). You decide. iPhone Hipstamatic, John S Lens, Blanko Film, no flash Tags: photography, portland
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I'm in this weird sudden space of renewed interest in fiction writing after over 5 years with zero interest. That sort of thing has happened before but typically not for quite so long a stretch (although this time there were "circumstances"). Some of my Interests are cyclical, not constant. 
Anyway I was poking through old stuff I'd written and came upon this ancient, unfinished project that I started like, no joke, 15 years ago. It's a collection of short, surreal stories on themes of transformation that take place on a parallel version of this island I used to live on. 
I don't really know if the stories are any good--I haven't reread any of them because I was more intent on re-familarizing myself with the cyberpunk world of Liminal (a project I actually did finish, and on re-read 5 years later still feel is pretty damn good). But I did create these curious pencil drawings to go along with the island stories. 
These drawings are pretty strange to me because they represent a super-precise hyper-realistic style that I've not really worked with since, oh, maybe '98 or so. All of my more recent work (back when I was able to do any of it) was all in the direction of the collage painting wackiness, some of it dangerously bordering on (shhh, don't tell!) abstraction. 
I look at these weird drawings and wonder if I'll ever do anything like them again. I could, but will I? Do I still have that in me, or has my own Muse moved on? 
Tags: lj, personal history
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I am posting this study information for a colleague. If you have been diagnosed with an ASD, and have not taken the survey yet, you may find it fun / interesting, click-y the link... (note you do not have to be a student to take the survey). Survey to Assess Needs for Improved Course DesignsAs colleges and universities offer more courses online, it is important that we consider how students with autism spectrum disorders approach online communities, especially online classes. My experiences as a diagnosed high-functioning autistic student and instructor have led me to question how online courses could be designed to better serve students with autism spectrum disorders. I am conducting a survey, seeking to determine if there are characteristics of some online communities ASD individuals prefer. I am also interested in learning what qualities of online communities might be disliked by individuals with ASDs. If you are an individual with an officially diagnosed autism spectrum disorder interested in offering opinions about online communities, I hope you will consider completing this brief online survey. You do not have to be a student. However, you should have some experiences with online communities so you can explain what design qualities are or are not appealing in various communities. This will be an anonymous survey. Only your answers to interview questions will be saved and referenced during the study. The survey is offered via a secure server and all data will be destroyed after analysis is complete. If you are interested in participating in these interviews, please visit the following survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6hUN2HISyDpNYnlwPpLkxQ_3d_3dClick Here to take survey Thank you, Christopher Scott Wyatt Doctoral Candidate Rhetoric; Scientific and Technical Communication Digital Literacy and Pedagogy Dept. of Writing Studies University of Minnesota wyatt050@umn.edu This study is referenced by University of Minnesota IRB Code Number 0909P72516. Tags: internet, lj, science
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Participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project You are invited to participate in a continuing online research project called the AASPIRE Gateway Project. This online research project is conducted by the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE, http://aaspireproject.org) in collaboration with Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. The AASPIRE Gateway Project is recruiting participants with and without disabilities, and participants on the autism spectrum, for a series of continuing online studies on topics such as health care, Internet use, online sense of community, identity, problem solving, and perspective taking. The goals of the online AASPIRE Gateway Project are (1) to collect the Gateway Survey data; (2) to use the Gateway Survey data to invite eligible participants to AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies; and (3) to use the Gateway Survey data in AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies. You may participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project and contribute to continuing AASPIRE research studies if you are at least 18 years old, and you have access to the Internet. The first step in joining the AASPIRE Gateway Project is completing the online AASPIRE Gateway Survey. The AASPIRE Gateway Survey asks about (a) personal information, such as age, gender, disability, education, and employment status, (b) information about which hand you prefer to use when doing activities such as writing with a pen or pencil, and (c) information about your personal preferences regarding interests, habits, and social interactions. Completing the AASPIRE Gateway Survey will take approximately 20-40 minutes. In return, you may choose to be entered into a drawing for a 1 in 25 chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com or to receive 1 extra credit point in your introductory psychology class if you are a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Adults who identify as having a disability and adults who identify as being on the autistic spectrum are especially encouraged to participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project. If you're interested in participating in the AASPIRE Gateway Project, or would like to learn more about AASPIRE or the study, here are three ways you can get started: 1) Go to the study’s website at www.aaspire.org/gateway. 2) Send an email to info@aaspireproject.org. 3) Make a telephone call to Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, at (503) 494-9602 or Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, at (608) 262-6989. OHSU IRB # 3762; UW IRB# SE-2008-0749 Principal Investigators: Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, Oregon Health & Science University Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison Katherine McDonald, PhD, Portland State University Dora Raymaker, Autistic Self-Advocacy Network Tags: aaspire project, science
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I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to write about and process.
I'll start with the least interesting bitching about the airport / airline situation. My trip home was really horrible, and the only parts that went OK were because of a lucky meeting with a stranger who happened to be an extremely nice person.
I've actually traveled by airplane independently a lot. Especially after moving to Oregon, with my family on the opposite coast in Maine, I flew alone about twice a year for a while. I can navigate airports; I'm good with maps and there is a consistent System to air travel, a predictability. Or there was.
Unfortunately, it's become quite obvious that my days of independent air travel are quite over. Air travel is no longer accessible to me due to both the changes for "security" and the cluster fuck that is air scheduling these days. It's quite appalling how expensive air travel is in the US considering what a crappy service it is. A train ticket is a fraction of the price of an airplane, and has better service (and unfortunately takes too long to be practical at times).
( things that make me unable to do independent air travel now-a-days )
So my flight to DC I was with KMD and she handled quite a lot of situations for me, serving as Translator and advocate, which was sorely needed as the airline personnel were dreadful. Everything from arguing about the need to help me with security to not seating KMD and I together even though we'd explicitly asked, and her needing to trade seats with people at the last minute.
My flight home though was alone. KMD and Scott went with me to the airport, and we found that my flight was delayed, I'd miss my transfer, and of the options only one could be guaranteed. That one was of course much later. There was a huge mess getting through security, and then we waited. I got to spend more time with Scott while KMD tried to make the proper arrangements, like to get me pre-boarded. KMD met this woman in while waiting in line and got the woman to agree to help me out and got her ticket changed to sit by me. KMD and Scott have to go, and the woman is awesome at making sure I manged.
When we finally got to Chicago, there ended up being a nearly five hour wait in the airport. I was already pretty far gone from the conference and not functioning well at all, and well past the point of non-verbal (I'd been typing / writing since the DC airport). This wonderful woman stayed with me the whole time. She was amazing. She also ended up being really intelligent, interesting, and a marvelous companion. We got into some really wonderful conversation, which, um, almost caused me to miss my flight *grin*
I did get on the flight but missed the pre-boarding. At that point I was tilting back and forth over the edge of shutdown, and very little made sense. The stewardesses were doing things with my bags and it was confusing so I asked them (writing) to slow down, to tell me what was happening. They were then like, no, we'll do this other thing instead. Everything got super confusing and I missed big chunks. There were angry people on the plane and near me. The stewardess kept saying, "I put your bag there," but I didn't know what "there" meant, and I kept trying to get her to read my notebook where I'd written, "what is the number of bin where you put my bag" but she wouldn't read it, and kept angrily repeating, "there, I put it there!" It was so bad. "I was supposed to preboard but it got messed up," I remember saying, but that was unrelated to anything I needed to communicate. I got pushed around both verbally and physically, and my things were taken from me. I demanded I be able to take items out of my back pack first, and grabbed my pillow and computer.
I got in the seat and the horrible business men next to me started talking about how terrible it was they would have to sit by me. They started bartering over who would be in the seat directly next to me. "Well, at least we're on a flight to Portland," they consoled themselves.
I sat seething, wishing I had access to enough resources to let them know I was fully cognizant of what they were saying, and they should be extremely careful of their assumptions about other human beings. But I was too done for, motionless and mute.
Needless to say, the careful scripts KMD had given to me for asking my seat mate when to turn on my iPod, etc. remained unused and I just guessed for myself. There was no way I was going to engage with such pricks.
I finally got home at 11:30 PM Pacific time. I'd been traveling for 14 hours straight, without a break, in toxic environments. The fantastic woman who KMD found to stay with me is the only reason why I made it home.
The airlines are supposed to provide assistance for people who need it. This includes children traveling alone, and disabled passengers. In order to get that assistance, it seems one needs to have the negotiation, advocacy, and communication skills of a UN ambassador.
There is something very wrong with this. What if I'd been a 6 year old, or someone with Altzheimers? Would they have been completely abandoned by staff who can't wait to get as far away as possible? Who would have made sure they got on the plane on time? Who would have helped them make their connection? Would a 6 year old have been treated as I had been by the stewardesses?
I plan on doing a Full Investigation as soon as this last week of school is over. Because the experience I had was really unacceptable. Tags: human rights, life
Current Mood:  bitchy
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