Author / Sixer

by Sixer

In a room with the shades drawn against the mist

There is something really delightful and magical in contrast. In the warm glow of a lamp amidst  the gloom and gray seeping through the windows, filtered partly by the shade. In the comfort of sheets, warmed through and through, folding around you; falling away at the shoulders to let in the cold. In bright, glorious days ending in stormy nights, and tenuous, unreadable mornings that refuse to promise anything.

I am in a mood to go on, poetically, without rhyme or rudder. To merely meander in thick, wordy sentences until the birds stop their half mournful, half mirthful conversation. And yet, there is a part of me which wishes to be doing, to be focused upon a point and be able to measure my approach. I wish to document how much time I wasted yesterday not knowing what I was about, and how many plans I have for today, and Sunday, and all the tomorrows to come after. I want to get up and, in defiance of the weather which has chosen my day off to be nasty, ride my newly repaired bike through the neighborhood, across the busy street, and down the wooded trail that leads to the library.

Yet, how nice it would be just to sit here and soak in the gothic beauty of the day, as if I were in a Bronte novel.

I’ve already done that, though. I have read the first chapter of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I have read it and exulted. Already, in the sixteen pages that make up the first chapter of the first volume, there has been one whole page made up almost entirely of footnote. I love footnotes, and, in a fictional work, they leaned such an air of bookishness   and respectability – believability, if you will. And with the book being about Victorian gentlemen – regency really, I suppose, so pre-Victorian – who make the study of magic dull to nearly everyone else and value books and discussion over all – well. I do have many weaknesses, but not many as deep as the one I have for descriptions of someone’s private library.*

But I suppose I really should wind-up here. Should shower and dress and arm myself against the pervasive air of laziness. How can a morning be so divided? For the very cold that makes me want to curl up and read on grabs at my toes and tugs me towards an adventure of my own making. And the birds, as they penetrate the solemnity of the damp and clouds, send thrills of possibility down my spine with every other chirp.

_________________

*See Inkheart

by Sixer

Hello World

I want to share something with you. It’s something I came across when I was still more worried about choosing my domain name than writing the First Post. But after I read it, I knew this was how I wanted to introduce myself anew. So here it is – written in September, 2011 – and it begins:

I started thinking about Writing on Tuesday.

Tuesdays are good days, because you have the whole week to look forward to, with one day already under your belt. And, if you’ll allow me to digress, the second and forth Tuesdays are wonderful excuses to show off a little. I think every one one of my flesh-and-blood connections has heard of how astonishingly horizontal my job is – how each person is content to control his or her little patch of paper work with only a few unofficial treaties to allow documents to flow easily between boundaries. It’s not necessarily bad, it even works really well and provides a wonderful sense of autonomy which I do enjoy. But, dear reader, there is a dark side to every light reflecting orb. In this instance the result is that when our office memo system changed no one really knew what to change it to, because no one was really in charge of it anymore, so they turned to the junior staff (me) and said “you do it.” So I did. And then they liked it, and so now I’m stuck doing it. But I don’t mind because, as I said, it’s an amazing opportunity to show off. I love to write, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and I work wonderfully with deadlines. The office memo gives me both without me having to worry about finding it lying around at some later date and wondering “how was I not expelled for this massacre of the English language?” I was never really fond of The Essay and have never written one I’ve felt proud about more than two weeks after getting it back. The office memo, however, not only obligingly dissapears  from my sight by Wednesday, it also doesn’t require me to be intelligent. It’s like a research paper (my favorite kind) only without field work or formal language. So Tuesdays are good days because I get to enjoy that feeling of creating something, of molding and forming, of drawing – out of dry facts and terse reminders – laughter and warmth and wit. They also lead to ego-inflating Wednesdays, but hey: everything has a dark side.

All that to say, it was perfectly normal for me to be thinking of writing on Tuesday, and I haven’t really stopped all week long. It has finally occured to me that saying I have nothing to write about is inaccurate. Surely an office memo has to be somewhere below “nothing” as far as content is concerned, and I refuse to describe my life as less eventful than an office memo. So what can I use as an excuse? There is nothing, really, but I do think that what I’ve meant all a long was that my life has no cohesive focal point. No plot, if you will. Writing about seemingly random events would work if I thought of this blog as, say, a strip in a newspaper, but not if I try to see it as a chronicle of life, or an epic novel. And, of course, that’s what I read. Knitting blogs, Sewing blogs, Cooking blogs – all of which have a very obvious thread running through them. We see the fabric bought and the patterns purchased. The pieces are cut. Then tragedy strikes. We read disaster in a crystal goblet. What will happen? Will all that work, all those dreams, be doused by a burgundy stain? The dilemma described, decisions must be made. The solution, perhaps drawn from the readers themselves, is finally settled on. We breath freely again. Or perhaps we mourn, why did she try bleach? Then, a month or year later, there it is again. The skirt she tie-dyed, worn with her new white blouse. That pattern (first blogged here) remade out of blue navy, with these and these adjustments made.

This is what I’ve been trying to emulate. It’s not strange, is it, to copy what you love? But it doesn’t appear to be working all that well yet. I may be the center of a sprawling saga, but I’m still on the farm plot wise. During the week when I originally wrote this post I saw The Phantom of Opera’s 25th anniversary performance – the recording played in theatres, that is. I made beingets and scones, and successfully sewed the front of a jumper. I did my homework, un-aging a picture in photoshop. I tried to sew the back of said jumper, only to hit a snag when my bobbin holder mutinied. I spent hours trying to find a book to read – I was all over the place. Even just this week I’ve been here and there, girl-lyfying my wardrobe with shoes, studying Japanese, moving songs I never heard before off of their native vinyl and onto my computer, and, of course, trying to cram a whole world’s worth of geekiness into one week as I prepare to move from Blogger to WordPress.

Even though most of this posts was originally written back in September, even though the idea for Pandamonkeyum was started a year ago, in that strange period of time where I worked as a nanny, they still ring true. I’m not sewing, or baking, or candle making, or any of those nice artsy, focused things. I’m a dabbler. I’m attracted to beauty, whether it’s pure ingenuity, unvarnished, or an attention to detail that leaves a bit of the attender’s soul. Sometimes the beauty is only skin deep for me, a sparkle or flash that I feel no need to return to, and sometimes it’s like a river which refreshes and renews the land it flows through. In that case I’ll mark where it lies and vow to return and drink from it again, but I probably wont set up store. Maybe one day I will, we’re supposed to settle down as we age, right?  But I haven’t yet, so I’m going to admit that my real hobby is joy, and that talking about interesting, cool, intriguing, sublime things is one of the most joyous things I know, especially when talking really means writing.

And that is why I’ve started Pandamonkeyum. It’s chaotic and sprawling, like me. It has strange categories that don’t always seem related and then suddenly overlap in a way that makes you wonder if they really ought to be grouped together after all. It’s a little bit of everything and all things, with quite a lot of potential for something, even if that something isn’t ever really specified.

I hope you enjoy your time here. I hope we (the blog and its author, and whoever else may come along and add their thoughts to the fray) can make you laugh a little, or just shake your head and smile. That we inspire you to try your own attempt at making beauty, or help you see how much wonder there is already in this topsy-tipsy world: not just beyond the pandemonium, but in its very midst.

by Sixer

Tasting Sounds . . . .

Rather like not consuming, but to the contrary I have been consuming life in large quantities this month. Big, thick drafts of sweet life: full of variety and pleasant old friends. For instance, my car got released from the shop two weeks ago. It had been in there for three weeks and I was starting to forget it’s brilliant copper color, but there it was on the driveway when I was driven home for the last time by a Gracious Parent. Gumiho, I named it right there on the spot. I’ve been trying to call it Ali Lee all year, since that’s what her license plate spells out, but for some reason when I saw her there on the driveway I knew her name was Gumiho. A gumiho (literally, nine-tailed fox)  is a mystical beast native to Asian folk lore. Gumiho is the Korean name for it, and yes, the Korean fox is a malevolent, carnivorous beast. The thing that makes it perfect is . . . well, do you remember Pokemon? Yeah, one of my favorite Pokemon was a Vulpix, which evolves, of course, into Ninetails and is, quite coincidentally, a gorgeous fiery red.

Moving on.

Having a car again made the literal tasting portion of this month much easier. It was at just such a tea tasting event last year that I got my foot into the doorway of teas, and I’ve managed to keep it pretty wedged in there over the past year without going in or coming out. I’ve been drinking a lot of tea at work, though, because it fits my need for something melodramatic and mysterious. Despite my burnt mouth (I’m very rarely without one in the winter), the three teas we sampled all had wonderful depth of flavor, being brewed to a perfection that I usually only get to imagine. Let’s see, we had Oolong, Puerh, and a Yellow tea – which I had never even heard of before – and they were all delicious, with varying notes of earth, and spice, and barley, and honey.

On Friday I drank in, not hot beverage, but clear, cool, sound. I went to a performance of the Nordic Voices and loved it. I’m not of a temperament to love listening to classical styles of music all day long, but give me a bit to sit and listen to, eyes closed so the rises and falls of the melody can paint with delicate brush strokes a scene upon my mind, and I’ll be in raptures. It’s not so much because I can fully appreciate it, but because it seems so new and mysterious. It helps that the first half were Latin songs drawn directly from Jeremiah – I’ve been in the Old Testament prophets for what seems like an age now, and their powerful, visual language does beg to be put to verse. But I’ll readily admit my favorites were the happy Nordic songs they sang for the latter half of the evening. The things they did with their mouths were astonishing. The first Norwegian song they preformed, which they said had been written to emulate a sunrise – all misty at the outset and then light and “dancing” at it’s end – opened up with eerie, new aged moans which perfectly mimicked a day cloaked in clouds. There was even the sound of fog horns. And later they did something similar with – not groans, no, but not humming either – some stranger application of voice then, that makes it an instrument of wind and sinew distinct from the ability to vocalize. This they pared, at times, with the most controlled whistle. A whistle so high and sweet, but so full of tones, that you would think a flute had been secreted in their robes.

Not that they were wearing robes.

To top the bliss off, this Monday I got a taste of Shoe-fever:

Aren’t they a dream?  They were practically free. Practically, since I went there only to buy sunglasses and came out with quite a bagful of goodies (including four Olivia Newton-John records. I don’t remember ever listening to her before outside of my one encounter with Grease, but I burned two of them on my computer yesterday and loved them). I’m chocking the expense up to the sunglasses and treating my other purchases as promotional freebies.

My accounting practices might be a little shady.

Anyway, that was February in a bite sized sample. I have some pretty big plans brewing for  March, which hopefully y’all will be a part of. Don’t die of shock if you hear from me before April.

“I put my French heels on and I pretend, pretend, pretend I’m twenty-one!”
by Sixer

Endeavor Lives

“Achievement, n. The death of endeavor and the beginning of disgust”

            — Ambrose Beirce, The Devil’s Dictionary

A rather late welcome to 2012! Wanna see what I’ve been doing?

It’s a rather motley collection, I’ll grant you. There was Nanowrimo (an additional 6,000 words added to an already established story. I aim high), then there was tea buying, yarn shopping, and, of course, ebay browsing. Oh yeah, I’ve been producted. Productive.

Ahem.

The knitting above is destined to be Rebkahjoy’s version of Hewn. There is something really magical about knitting a pattern with modifications that a complete and total stranger emailed you. I now know the attraction of a cult, and it’s driving me towards actually finishing this little bolero. Of course, I’m not going there particularly fast. This project has already become a little comedy of errors. First, because I didn’t read the pattern all the way and began by increasing an extra two stitches every knit row. I didn’t realize how wrong this was until I had increased the back stitches to the desired 88 and was  trying to figure out how the thing was going to fit me (I have no spatial skills at all, so my blind trust is as necessary as it is dangerous). I had a little wrestle with myself over whether the seven additional side stitches would be noticeable, but I’m proud to say that Sense won out and the poor thing was ripped back to practically the beginning. I’ve been knitting at it ever since, but going slow as silly putty. And then, there was that five day hiatus while I waited for my knit pick order to come and replace the number four I had accidentally sat on and broke. Maybe I should move to metal needles, huh?

As for the colorful sticky notes .  . . . That’s my Japanese study. Yes, I’m still pulling that goal out every now and then. If we don’t exercise our dreams, you see, they’ll atrophy away. This time has been really fun because, despite all the text books I’ve borrowed from my sister, and the grandiose ambitious plans I’ve worked out with colored pens, I’ve basically done nothing but what I want to do, which is read Natsume Youjinchou. Natsume is my all time favorite anime. It’s about as eventful as a drying room, and sweetly sticky as if the substance on the walls were honey and not paint. I adore it. And so I jumped at the chance to buy five whole volumes of the series. Yes, five little comic books, each with three or four “episodes.” I’ve had these since a little before Christmas and I’m still on the very first of the very first story. Reading a single page can take an hour, and requires every resource I can scrounge up. I usually read with my Japanese-English dictionary, which I got at a second hand store in Japan. The more I study with it the more obvious it becomes that it was meant for people learning English, and not the other way round, but I love it all the more for that. It is, however, inadequate to the task. So I’ve added in my dad’s iPad, on which he has kindly let me put Jdict. Jdict is free, which is right in my price range, and allows me to look up kanji – and thus, ultimately, words  – by drawing them on the screen. Yes, that’s right, I scrawl a few lines, press search, and voila, it gives me five kanji it thinks are close. I usually have to try a few times, and the more complex kanji have a way of making it quit, pouting no doubt, but it still works really, really well for all that, and it comes with a radical* search as well, which I’ve often resorted to.

When these two dictionaries fail I usually turn to Denshi Jishou, conveniently accessible on the iPad. But sometimes the problem is grammar related. In these cases I turn to  Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, one of those books I borrowed from my sister, and  Barron’s Japanese Grammar pocketbook, which isn’t as good but has things the first book doesn’t have. Not to mention the later book makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for, bad romaji aside.
A lot of people who take their Japanese Journey online emphasis memorization and having fun. I’m too poor of a student for the former, and the latter for me must be weighed against my competitive nature. I can give up on a sentence ending (nowa, nanto, etc.  These have no good translation avaiable to them in my dictionary, though I could probably find some if  I really looked online), but giving up an entire word often feels too much like admitting defeat. Now that I’ve hit a panel that is completely unintelligible I’m having to weigh my desire to understand with my desire to progress.

Anyway, this and tea drinking have been really the only productive things I’ve done so far. Oh, and I wrote this post. In January. It’s a humble sort of achievement, I guess.

———————–
*Radical: I can’t say this word with a straight face. It’s just so . . . so . . . radical.

by Sixer

A Change of Sole

Looking around at my life, it’s pretty much an established fact that I was and always will be a late bloomer. No where is this more apparent than with shoes.
 Before I hit my teens “put your shoes on” was synonymous with “we’re going shopping,” to the point where we often assumed our shoes were in the car and then had to stay in the parking lot and wait while mom went in for groceries. I hated shoes and I hated socks, and both of them were pretty much tied up with dramatic ideas of oppression in my head. Sneakers were the worst because they not only required one to wear socks, even in summer, but they had to be tied and retied. There was a song we used to listen to about this (adult) guy who could do pretty much everything but tie his own shoelaces.
                              That was me until I turned eight. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t read about feet binding when I was a kid.
Eventually  I started having to be out, in public, for longer periods of time. Community College required me to be in shoes for hours on end and, grudgingly, I adapted. Somewhere around my fourteenth year I acquired my first pair of merrells. Those became my fall shoes, and I wore that first pair until they fell apart on me at college. Then I went and replaced them with the exact. Same. Shoe. Only the shade of brown was different, and that was a change they made at the factory.
My summer shoes were equally imaginative. My mom bought my sister and I matching navy sandals once and I wore holes into mine and then stole my sisters (a completely fair thing to do. I can still remember the gorgeous slip-ons with the star embroidery that I never got to grow into). Since then I’ve made it my go-to sandal style, closed toe with wide straps, though I’m pretty sure I’m getting them from a different company each time. These shoes aren’t anywhere near as durable as my merrells and, after a few months of constant use, they look just awful. My current pair was originally a creamy tan. Now it’s just . . . gray.
Somewhere in there I lost the feeling that wearing shoes was a sign of weakness and submission ( . . . . to the kind people who tear down metal jungle gyms. Remember, we’re talking tennis shoes here, not heels). I even like wearing socks now, although short socks still puzzle me unless they’re being worn with a poodle skirt. This acceptance has been creeping up on me for a while, as slowly as the callouses on my feet have softened. Okay, not that slow. But now that I’m starting to attempt to dress like a well-bred, if somewhat absentminded, lady, it’s really no surprise that I’m starting to think about shoes. Luckily I do actually have more than two pairs of shoes. My blue clogs, for instance, which I bought on a whim during one of the few sister-shoppings sprees I’ve ever partaken in. I only wore them once the first two years I owned them, but they’ve been a real life saver this summer, and I would love more of a similar shoe (perhaps in brown or burgundy) because they’re so . . . amphibious, transitioning well between barefooted summer and stocking-clad winter.
 I also have my black and white flats, which have to be at least four years old. These come in handy a lot, and as soon as I hem my flowy black skirt I’ll wear them all the time and pretend I’m a ballerina.
Then there are my cool shoes. These are the ones I only wear when I’m really bored, because my wardrobe, indeed, my whole carefully constructed image of self, can hardly support them. They’ve too much style. I’m always worried I’m going to ruin the sneakers, and the boots are . . . problematic to walk in. Which doesn’t stop me from enjoying wearing them, I just walk funny to compensate.
I was thinking about my shoe ‘drobe and wondering how to get the most out of it. What kinds of shoes I needed so that I could have smallest number of pairs and the highest number of options. And then I started thinking about stockings, because while I’ve only recently liked wearing socks, I’ve always loved the idea of knee highs.
                         Of course, if you get a girl shopping for socks, she’s going to want to buy some clothes to go with them. And there’s where I falter. It’s kind of scary to think like this, because of how fun it is, and how different. I’ve always been materialistic, but since that’s only resulted in some very well stocked bookshelves I’ve never felt guilty about it before. Now I feel like I might easily become either vain or a hedonist. I realize that I don’t think of clothes as important – though I felt no qualms in purchasing Inkheart, or a volume of H.F. Wells novels – and that, though I think dressing smartly is as valuable an art to nurture as the ability to make said clothes, I would rather buy eight yards of a really impossible coral-orange than admit to wanting to go shopping. With all that said, it’s going to be interesting seeing where my wardrobe is going and how it’s going to get there: I’m betting is goes by foot.