Whisper Peir

I wrote this weeks ago and it has sat in a folder along with my motivation to write. Maybe if I post it something will shake loose again?

8:26

Woke up early with stuffy sinus cavities and patience depleted. My reproductive system causes chaos if left unchecked, and today it’s trying some shit.

My parents owned a boat-like car growing up. Although marketed as “mid sized,” this Honda Camry LE was so cumbersome it took effort to turn. Heck, this thing didn’t turn, it drifted in wide arcs like it was the only dang vehicle on the road.

I don’t miss having to wrestling the car in order to turn left with even an iota of urgency, but I do miss the tactical nature of the LOGIC CONTROL DECK (radio / cassette / cd console). It had large buttons that clicked when you pressed them, small knobs with soft ticks as they rotated, and bigger do-dads with satisfying thunks when they settled into your fan speed of choice.

To turn the aircon from “outside” to “recycled,” you slided a lever clear across the dashboard. There would be a little resistance at first, but as the lever moved along its track you could hear the whoosh of valves opening and closing. Did we change the setting in time to keep out the worst smells wafting from the county water treatment plant? Probably not, but the lever felt nice.

If you held down one end of the seesaw TRACK SEEK TUNE button, the radio would flip through stations every few seconds until you pressed it again. This is a marvelous feature for road trips. There is a special kind of joy when you discover a captivating local radio program while driving across country. Even when you start to slip out of range and you strain to hear the last few staticky minutes, car radio discoveries on the open road are sweeter than a streaming service.

Not so sweet is when the triple threat of migraine, PMS, and a mood disorder pushes hard on my the mental seek button for rage. Because rage is energy giving and there is a lot to be angry about in this world, you’d think my mental seek would select something motivating to ruminate on. No, of course I'm not angry in a way that's constructive. Instead…

…I’m angry about a friend of a friend who said something shitty and thoughtless. Once. Years ago. They didn’t even say it to me! The thing they said was cruel but it wasn’t violent. It was a small example of day-to-day misogyny in a cringy hot take that I bet the person would have walked back if asked to elaborate. It is not worth remembering. I promise.

“Look,” I want to say to the upset radio dial in my mind, “if we’re going to be mad, do we have to ruminate about *this*. Can we hit that SEEK button again and pick something we can leverage into taking action? Or maybe even recent?”

“No,” my immature mind shouts. It wants to be mad. It wants to be so furious over what I promise you is shocking close to nothing that I have a hard time reading the book I'm holding. This is frustrating, so in response my mind screams, ripping the ring out of an irritably grande with it’s psychic mind teeth, and throws that sucker directly into my chest cavity.

Uhg. Maybe I can write instead.

14:15

I want to watch movies about irritable people. So I do. Bonus, the soundtrack for I, Tonya is perfect for tomorrow’s drive. Not everyone around me appreciates radio finds. If I’m not proactive before a trip, I end up listening to an advertisement laden list of songs put together by a corporate software company’s guess on what will keep us listening the longest. It’s mostly disappointing, and if I’m going to be let down by a collection of songs, I want it put together by people, goshdarnit.

16:28

The ache in my head has climbed its way up the pain scale over the course of the day. Maybe a soak in the bath will help. I like to imagine magnesium from the salts working its way through my skin and into my face, soothing the twitchy lower eyelid and throbbing temple. This has caused arguments, my imagining magnesium working its way into my body. I've heard from people that they never "fight" with their family members. I seem to find arguments about all sorts of things. Maybe I'm a cosmic balance to one of the folk that manage to avoid conflict.

17:48

Ah ha! The rage seek button found recent memories to be angry about, and they are slightly more useful than hot-take friend of a friend. I am serious when I type slightly. The intensity of fury I feel in this moment is not at all proportional to the situations that have sparked this mental tangent.

Jamie and Patric, people as susceptible to car brain as the rest of us, will spew some bullshit while driving and then have the audacity to accuse me of not being on their side when I don’t agree with all they’ve said immediately. Confusing obsequiousness with respect, I’ve noticed, is an immaturity several people in my extended family display. This probably means I do too. Ain't that the way. I've also noticed this kind of behavior taps into an inescapable anti-feminine bias passed down generationally + a big dose of insecurity from painful histories of familial rejection. It's amazing how quickly driving can tap into a network of ick.

The point is sixteen years of romance and friendship is momentarily out the window if I don’t immediately agree that the driver who was slow to go through a light did so intentionally and is probably the embodiment of toilet bowl scum. “You’re never on my side,” they cry out as if we were twelve years old on the playground rather than slightly inconvenienced, grown ass adults.

This sends me up the wall, so I double down on reassurance. I remind them that I’m on their side and affirm that it makes sense to be frustrated at traffic. I don’t get much reassurance in return, however, that our partnership is more meaningful than unquestioning servility and mirrored emotions. Sure, everyone calms down in a few minutes and aslo Arg! I'm fed up with this particular game.

Next time I’m engaging differently. A simple, “that’s an absurd accusation against your partner of over a decade. I understand why you’re frustrated. I don’t understand why you’re taking it out on me.” I’ll leave it at that and see how it goes.

Thanks mental rage seek button, for prompting a little problem solving and planning. Maybe we can be done with the angry dial today?

20:26

At dinner I word vomited at Jamie about “not on your side” frustrations. They were sheepish about it and listened carefully. It turned into a nice conversation that resulted in each of us feeling better understood. Not to shabby for a struggle day, my DreamWidth friend. I hope the angry seek button is left alone for awhile.

There are 19 or so people in me + my partners' immediate families, and each winter I like to think of a similar yet personalized gifts. One year I gave everyone a zine that reminded me of them from Micropublishing, another enamel pins, and my most extravagant year I made scarves. It's practical to pick the same kind of thing for everyone, but that's not why I do it.

I pick similar presents for 19 people because I want to create magic.

The best gift I've ever received was a simple scarf made by folding over a strip of patterned fleece. It's comically long with cut fringe and a small felt octopus hand stitched at one end. I've never loved a piece of clothing more, even the pair of spectacular pink faux-snakeskin doc martins I thrifted at 16. Praise be the dumpster, that was a great find. The scarf is better.

This incredible scarf, the best gift, was handmade by a generous friend of a friend. They gave it to me in wintertime well over a decade ago, maybe pushing two decades if I'm honest. As I remember it, they'd made one for each member of an entire friend group, every scarf with a different animal.

The bighearted giftgiver and I spent maybe three group outings together, but they somehow knew my favorite animal and took the time to create something for me with their hands. They repeated this generosity a eight or so more times, linking us all together in a small, special way.

The only reason they took the time to make somethiing specifically for me, or at least the only reason I can think of, is that I must have been in a romantic relationship with the friend that linked us at the time. Looking back, I sigh for spending so much effort on the unkind ex when there were warm, sparkling people like the scarf maker so nearby.

The point is that this wonderful octopus scarf is made more lovely by the fact that someone thought of me—both as an individual and a member of a community—while they planned and crafted it. This is the kind of magic I aim to replicate each year. I never achieve it, but the attempt is always enjoyable.

This year I'm curating a mini collection of poetry for each family member. Inspired by a not-card company, I figure about 24 pages is good, stapled using a clever eraser trick (YT tutorial). If I start collecting poems now the projcet won't get overwhelming in December. Time to get a'reading.

What my privatized stress looks like today, see last list item

Well, those are some thoughts for you, friend. Here are some links I came across while searching for zine inspiration on Wiby:

• "I learned [arcane methods that don't work very well] because I enjoy, very much, the way they feel on my brain."
• Girls on Film via Quarantine Zine Club
• Guided order of magnitude visualization could be an excellent soundscape.
• "Punks and anarchists are notoriously conservative." From Homocore issue 4, June 1989.
• "Zine making to me means creating our own channel to express just about everything we wanna say and were never given a chance. It's so empowering. Especially coz in a lot of occasions it gives a voice to marginalized groups whose voices (and lives) have never been considered by mainstream society in general. Zine making is a way to exist, really."
• "Mark Fisher called this the 'privatization of stress' and pointed out how pathologizing individual instances of anxiety or depression makes it a personal inadequacy rather than a common form of illness that is largely unaddressed and actually exacerbated by capitalist values and priorities." From emreed.net which led to Everything is Going to Be Ok.

I'm sitting at the keyboard and posting something, dagnabit. Here's a list of moments from the past week:

• I wrote down all the ways I interact with the 13 companies prioritized on the BDS movement's website (prompted by Randa, a Palestinian teen surviving with her family in Gaza). I learned more than I expected from the exercise, made some immediate changes, set new boundaries for future purchases, and have plans to transition a few services to alternatives. The No Thanks app has a helpful barcode checker for in-the-aisle decision making. Learning and acting is on going.
• Sleep audio is a helpful way to quiet the inner monologue, and listening has become an important part of my personal night routine. Unfortunately this can backfire in a big way if the audio is too engaging or, worse, finding the right track tuns into a multi-hour scroll session. To mitigate this, I've begun mixing my own audio in Audacity using noises.online and sitcom episodes. On the to learn list is how to make voices sound like they're coming from another room as in these videos.
• "Where it is Easy to Do Good" by Everest Pipkin + Cookies Bakery is a magical, video game related combo. "The work was hard and tedious. But my friends, programmed for endless kindness as I oriented myself in this new place, were soft and generous and forgiving. They truly didn’t want anything from me but to see me succeed. We were all in it together." (How I interact with games is naturally on the brain given the boycotting efforts. Microsoft devours indie game makers and uses game pass profits to enable mass surveillance with horrific consequences, recording "a million calls an hour.")
• CSS for DreamWidth still got me stumped. The browser's night mode leaves the background an eye-searing gray and Dark Reader bulldozes my prefers-color-scheme media query. I'll keep fiddling.
• For all the faults of my shit-hole, roach infested, leaky apartment, this is the first home in my life where I have a whole room whose function is completely up to me. It has become something of a catchall for depression mess in the past year, so I've started excavating. Here's a preview of the satisfying progress—it's so nice to have access to the closet without having to move the bike.

Another blog post posted. Thanks for reading, friend.

I've written and scrapped a few essays without posting. Either I fall into free-write journaling habits or I revert back to my time in marketing and spit out a flimsy "how to" article. Tonight I'm putting mild frustration aside and posting something.

Since finding DreamWidth, I've enjoyed surfing the indie / personal / small web so immensely that it's inspired a mini web dev kick. Here's a temporal list of recent projects:

• Finished(ish)→ A CSS animated splash page for my neglected website. The browser drifts around a massive collage I put together from public domain images. After learning a little about image compression, this picture is large with a low, 425KB footprint. The aesthetics of some of these compression techniques are chef's kiss. I did run into an issue with Dark Reader that I'll tinker with soon. Speaking of which, I want to do something about this blog's night mode, yikes.
• Fiddling with→ Yesterday I spent quite a few hours poking at Apache settings. Today it's running, and I've written a few basic PHP scripts. Tomorrow I plan to go through this simple guestbook tutorial.
• Up next→ I'd get a kick out of a menstrual cycle counter webpage. I'd title it THE BLOOD MOON RISES, complete with moon animation and maybe a color theme that goes from black to red as the days count up.

Or I might learn to knit socks. Hey look, a post !!

I’m thoroughly impressed by the daily diarists I’ve seen on the Latest Things page. My mind groups them with people who have lush gardens while living in dinky apartment complexes. Or parents who bike to the grocery store with a kiddo (or three) in tow. What admirable put-togetherness these folks have.

Not to say that I don’t appreciate the every so often posters just as much. Documenting a life and sharing with the world is generally a nice thing to do.

A post and three books of personal writing that I've enjoyed recently:

• How the Blog Broke the Web by Amy Hoy
• Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.
• Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gange
• Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby