Happy Birthday Christine!

Today is the 20th birthday of one of my oldest friends, Christine. Longtime readers might know her as Chris, and really, really longtime readers might remember her as Sean. For most of her high school years she lived her life as a boy, but has now come into her adulthood as a young woman.

I met Christine online back in 2004, in the transition period between my old life and my new life, before Tara came into my life in later part of the same year. We used to IM each other all the time, at all hours of the day and night, since she used to be online a lot. Maybe she still is, but I stopped using IM programs years ago. We were both going through a lot of pain in our lives with difficult relationships and our own inner conflicts, and we supported each other as best we could, given that I was in Houston and she lives in Pennsylvania.

I think when two people go through the kind of trauma and life-changing events that we did together, it forms a bond between them. I sometimes compare it to being war buddies, but on a lesser scale, although there were definitely times when I worried about her hurting herself. I even made her promise me certain concessions if the worst were ever to happen, but thankfully, we never got to that point.

If nothing else, Christine has a singular distinction in my life. She was the first person in my life whom I met on the Internet who progressed to the point where we talked on the phone, yet surprisingly, we've never actually met in person. I still remember our first phone call, the first time we heard each others' voices. I remember the times she called me when she was upset because she had been fighting with her now-ex boyfriend, and I would try to comfort her. She wrote me a lovely letter on her old Web site once for Christmas, telling me how much I helped her deal with stuff. I think helping her actually helped me in turn to have a better perspective on my own problems.

Christine has had a difficult life so far, certainly, but I think she's a survivor, and she's a much stronger person than even she knows. She's now writing about her life on a blog, which is linked to my public blog, if you care to read it. With all the crap she has been through so far in her young life (and some of it is truly tragic) she deserves all the happiness in the world. I hope she finds it.

Happy Birthday, dear Christine! I'm so glad we crossed paths when we did. I hope that someday I will be able to say all these things to you in person.

Limerancing through life

After a few days at home and not feeling my best, I decided to shake the doldrums and head into the city for some solo adventures. Yesterday I went to visit MOMA and then met up with Lori for a little bit to tell her the news about Tara and do some grocery shopping. Then I met up with my friend Kyle at the Thursday night polyamory meeting at a Chinese restaurant in the East Village. I met some people there who knew me and Polina from PolyNYC, but mostly they were new faces, and many of them older folks. Some of them were old enough to be my grandparents. I guess I know where I'll seek out poly company 20 years from now.

Tonight I met up with Angel, one of the women I met at the pansexual women's Meetup group, the one who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the finance department. We met down in the lobby after she got off work and toured the special exhibit entitled Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.. We walked through some of the other galleries before we headed up to her office so she could get her stuff, check her messages and shut down her computer. Then we walked to Madison Avenue to a small cafe and had a slice of pizza before she had to leave for her night job at a theater. She seems like a nice enough person, but probably not my type for anything more than a friend.

Tomorrow Tara and I are going to Connecticut for the day so she can have a band rehearsal before her gig on March 6, her band's first concert performance in more than a year. We need Yoshi to pack her drumkit and take it back home. It will also be the first time we've seen each other since last Saturday night, although we've been talking a lot on the phone each day since. Being apart hasn't been easy on either of us, and we're both dealing with it in our own ways.

I found this wonderful poem while Googling the word "limerancing" - something Penny is doing right now, celebrating life and love in Argentina. I love what this poem says about life, about love, and dance.

LIMERANCING IS A DANCE

i am most definitely
limerancing!

i am an incurable
limerancer!

yet again
i am in
that
first stage
of mad attraction
with
all my
hormones engaged and flowing
and things feel oh so right!

limerancing is such an awesome gift of the soul

a beautiful dance of dna

the melding of emotions and body and soul

it is ku panta!

some warn about it

they warn that it is painful
they warn that it rarely lasts

all this can be said of life
in any one of its manifestations

few of us give up on life
because we know it will end in death

and in the same way
i will not give up limerance
because it ends with a good-bye

instead, i live in the moment
enjoy the moment
enjoy the journey

i choose
to be intoxicated
with life
intoxicated with love
and
not to
dwell
on what is sad

all hail limerance!
all hail the dance!

Movies and music

I filed my income tax returns for federal, New York and New Jersey today - it's the first time I've done my own returns in decades. Of course, the last couple of years have been a bit complicated due to my shifting life circumstances, so I preferred to get professional help. In 2008, as I've said, my life has been reasonably stable, so I thought it would be nice to save some money on tax filing.

Yesterday I went out to the movies by myself and saw Slumdog Millionaire, the Best Picture Oscar winner this year. The only thing I can say is that it's a good movie, but it reminds me so much of Forrest Gump, but set in India. It's a tale of an extraordinary life, a lifelong love, and overcoming the obstacles set in our path. It's an enjoyable ride, but not really the kind of movie that I'd see over and over again.

I've also made plans to go down to Fort Washington outside of Philadelphia on March 1-2 for the Second National Polyamory Leadership Summit. It's a follow-up to a meeting in New York that I was invited to help moderate back in October following PolyPride, but I couldn't attend because we had plans to visit MOMA that day. We're expecting about 40-50 poly leaders from all around the country to discuss the future of the movement and how we want to move forward with a unified purpose.

I've been listening a lot to my live concerts of Linkin Park and Muse that I got for Christmas, and it's inspired me to think about putting together a mix of live concert music from different bands. Those bands, plus U2, Rush, Porcupine Tree, Peter Gabriel and Jeff Buckley, have incredible performances on DVD that deserve to be heard as much as their studio recordings. The trick is to capture those performances on mp3 so I can put them on a CD. I have the equipment to do it, but wiring it all up is a bit daunting, so it's something I'll let marinate for a bit.

I also pre-ordered the Borders special edition of Twilight on DVD which comes out March 21 which includes a bonus disc and postcards. That will be kind of neat to see again on my home theater.

Unconditional love

Tara and I woke up yesterday and had a long, serious talk over breakfast, and decided to make a change in our relationship. I wouldn't exactly say we "broke up" because that implies a more formal structure than we work within - that, and we still love each other. But I think we're both finally coming to the realization that we've grown apart in the last 18-20 months and our relationship isn't giving either of us what we want out of life at this point.

These things are always a lot more complicated than can be explained in a single blog post, but the crux of the matter is that for Tara, dealing with my polyamorous nature and activities makes her miserable. For my part, I didn't like having to hide or defend things related to it, like my feelings for Penny and my growing role with Polyamorous NYC.

Despite this, I could deal with all that if Tara could have met me halfway and we had a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of policy, as some poly/mono couples do. But concealment (as opposed to outright deception, which is never an option) isn't the ideal for either of us in a relationship, and she simply couldn't deal with knowing that I'm polyamorous and what that could entail now and in the future. And while I wasn't nearly so unhappy with her, I couldn't continue to profess to love someone while knowing that being in a relationship with me was making her miserable.

I have been telling her for several months now that if she truly couldn't accept me as I am and I was really hurting her so much, she needed to let me go. Neither of us wanted to end the relationship, but we just couldn't find a way to overcome the fact that our natures are so incompatible. I think up until yesterday, Tara held out hope that we could somehow recapture what we had in May-June 2007, when we were closer to being a real poly family that ever before or since. But it's not worth all this pain and drama to just wait and see if things change, especially since I'm not sure anybody wants it as much as she does, and our family dynamics in terms of discussing options and goals are so complicated.

Regardless of what she thinks of me, I still love Tara, and I always will. But for me, part of loving someone unconditionally is knowing that if being who you are drives that person crazy, you might have to let them go for their own good. For me, love is all about making the other person happy, not about me. Possibly that's why I end up getting hurt by love a lot, but many people suffer worse for their beliefs. I can't honestly say to myself I love someone if I don't think I'm good for them, or I put my own interests above theirs. I think we've tried very hard to overcome these obstacles, but in the end, we both have to be true to ourselves and our convictions, and hers do not include acceptance of polyamory as a sustainable and legitimate lifestyle choice.

So where does that leave us now? We had a reasonably normal Saturday night dinner with Bee and Bug, although there were some uncomfortable silences at the dinner table. Our card games livened things up a bit, with Bee and Tara trading fortunes after last week's Valentine's Day massacre, then we watched two episodes of Heroes, which seems to be regaining some lost momentum. Tara and I are going to give each other some space and see how we handle being apart. Also, I think we both need some time to grieve over what we've lost, although I still have hope that the goddess will someday bring us back together to stay.

An evening with Anne Rice

I'm taking a bit of breather today after a busy two-day stretch of poly meetings. Every other month my two poly meetings fall on the same week, so on Tuesday I went to my women's poly group and Wednesday I had my co-ed PolyNYC meeting at the LGBT Center.

While I was waiting for the PolyNYC meeting last night, I went upstairs to browse the used book sale and found that someone had given away their entire collection of hardcover Anne Rice books, about a dozen books altogether. I picked up a copy of her seminal novel, Interview with the Vampire, for one dollar. The dust jacket is missing, but otherwise it's in pristine order. This is the third time I've bought this book, and that's an interesting story.

My first exposure to Anne Rice was through one of those book clubs that sends you new books every month unless you tell them not to, and I received a copy of The Vampire Lestat (the second in The Vampire Chronicles). I didn't read it right away, and it sat in my collection for a long time before I actually got interested in the author.

A friend in college named Lara Schultz (one of two redheads in my life from that time period) took me to a book reading at Rice University in Houston where Ms. Rice was a featured guest. I think she was promoting the upcoming Queen of the Damned, the third novel in the series. But since she hadn't quite gotten hit her popularity wave among the goth and gay crowds, or maybe because it was an ill-publicized event, the attendance was very manageable, unlike any of her appearances today. There wasn't even a line at the authors table, so I purchased a paperback copy of Interview and brought it to her to sign, and chatted with her for a while.

Later I loaned that copy of the book to a friend named Michelle Gardner (my predecessor as opinion editor at the college newspaper) who then graduated and skipped town without returning it. I later bought a hardcover edition that I lost in the fire of 2005, but ever since losing my signed copy more than 20 years ago, I've been extremely reluctant to loan books out, as you might imagine. I can probably count on one hand the number of books I've loaned to people in that time period, although important people like my ex (who I lived with and therefore merged book collections) and Tara (who has the same rule) don't factor into that. This year Penny has proven herself trustworthy enough to break that rule, as she has nearly as much reverence for books as I do, although no one can possibly compare with Tara in that respect.

Even though I don't read Ms. Rice's stuff anymore, it's nice having a copy of this first influential book in my collection, since it's the wellspring for a lot of the stories I've been reading lately - The Twilight Saga, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter and the Sookie Stackhouse series, plus I'm watching Joss Whedon's "vampire with a soul" TV series Angel on DVD. What Rice did in 1976 was take the Bram Stoker model and inject a modern and seductive homoerotic element, plus introduce or embellish concepts like "good" vampires, child vampires, the Old World vampire in modern day angle and the first-person narrative to the classic horror story. Even if that woman can never finish a story, her contribution to the vampire mythos will never be discounted.

Second piercings

My maintenance man woke me up early this morning to come fix a few things around the apartment, so I'm actually awake before noon, which is pretty unusual for me these days. I'm listening to my recordings of No-Man, the group started by Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson while my super works in the kitchen.

Yesterday I got a second ear piercing at Pleasureable Piercings in Hawthorne, NJ, the first time I've been back there since I got my first piercings on my first trip to New Jersey in October 2005. That trip was the first time I met my family in person, and a big milestone in our lives that we still celebrate to this day.

Yesterday I went back by myself and picked out an cerulean blue stone set in a stainless steel stud that is normally used for oral piercings, but they didn't have the blue topaz in white gold ear stud that I had wanted, and I didn't want to wait for them to make it. The oral stud has an advantage in that it has a flat screw-in back, so it doesn't poke me when I'm sleeping. The downside is that the post is about three times thicker, so the needle used for the piercing was a lot bigger. Seriously, I felt like the guy was jamming a big piece of lumber through my ear, and I could hear/feel the pop of the needle breaking through my skin much more than last time. Although that possibly could be because it was higher on my ear and therefore closer to my eardrum.

So I picked blue because my favorite glasses that I wear have clear blue accents on the sides of the lenses, so I thought it would be cool to have that picked up on my ears, regardless of what other earrings I choose to wear. I only have one pair of predominantly blue earrings, and I wouldn't want to wear them as often as I wear my glasses. Once the piercings heal, maybe I'll get some pink studs to match my fuschia glasses that Tara prefers.

I would have posted pictures of my new piercings and my glasses, but as I've just gotten up and don't have any makeup on, I thought I'd spare you the sight of the huge pores on my face this early in the morning when I take macro-closeup photos of myself. Maybe next time :)

Valentine's Day

You would think that a poly person would have a bit of a hard time on Valentine's Day, but it wasn't an issue for me, mainly because Penny had other plans and doesn't believe in making a big deal about celebrating love on arbitrary days like V-Day. My family does like to celebrate anniversaries and other holidays, but we've always been a little skittish about V-Day and holidays involving birth families. This year though, if there were any difficulties, they were kept shielded from me, so I made the day as enjoyable as I could.

Tara and I woke up early together Saturday morning and had some extended time in bed, as I was feeling in need of some extra cuddling. We had our usual breakfast of pancakes and bacon (although we both did an extra-fine job of cooking this week) with a beautiful bouquet of red roses on the table. I think it's the most perfect dozen of roses I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot over the years, mostly of the white variety.

We went to IKEA after breakfast to buy a bookshelf because we needed Yoshi to carry such a long, oversize item home. After I dropped her off, everyone came over in the evening and we all shared some Valentine candy, and I added some bags of Valentine M&M's as betting chips to our poker game. It certainly amped up the game, and the highlight for me was a hand of five-card draw where I got four 10's, plus a wild card to beat Bee's full house. However, at the end of the night, I came in second to Tara, who was the big winner in both chips and candy.

As you might guess, I'm feeling down about Penny leaving for Argentina today. The best I can do is to try and stay occupied and live in the moment. That's not to say I'm trying to hide my feelings, as I have been so good at doing in my past life. I don't need to learn that lesson again.

Until we meet again

I've spent a lot of time in the past week thinking about my relationship with Penny, since in less than four days she's leaving for Argentina for two months. Truly, up until now, I haven't spent a lot of time analyzing the relationship, knowing that this forced separation was coming up. To do so would be against my philosophy of living in the moment, and loving unconditionally. But in her absence, I do have a chance to take a step back and ponder (borrowing her term) about whether I want to continue deepening my relationship with her once she returns in April.

I know I've grown and changed a lot since the last time I had my heart broken, and unlike the last time, at least I know she's coming back in two months. But it seems that love is never easy for me, and it's a tricky balance between honoring my feelings and being afraid of getting hurt. This is something I will be pondering about, and talking through with people I trust, for the next two months.

Last Thursday afternoon we met up in the East Village, and I walked with her as she completed her afternoon delivery duties. Then we went to a nearby magick shop, where we picked out a pagan amulet for her trip. We stopped for hot chocolate and a quick exchange of books and music before heading down to Union Square, where she took me to her yoga studio to meet her instructors and so she could say her farewells.

We left the studio and met up with Lori outside Whole Foods briefly before Penny had to catch a bus home to Staten Island. Lori and I then met with four of Lori's friends for dinner and dessert at Max Brenner. Lori has a very diverse group of friends - two were Asian, one from India and the other from Turkey. Lori and I split a chocolate toffee crepe, along with two cups of their famous Swiss hot chocolate.



Sunday I went to a new Meetup.com group of bisexual and pansexual women at a Japanese restaurant near the LGBT Center. It was a pretty large group, about 25 women in a small restaurant, so we really couldn’t talk to very many people because we were seated at a long table against the wall. Fortunately, I met a few women I connected with who happened to be sitting near me, including one who used to date one of my fellow PolyNYC Board members. She's a dog trainer and interior decorator. Another woman I met works in finance for the Metropolitan Museum, other is a nurse, and other is a fashion buyer. Again, quite a diverse group, and a few of us left after dinner together to visit the LGBT Center next door and browse some publications before we went home.

Tuesday night my family took me out to see Coraline in 3-D, which was terrific. I haven't read the book by Neil Gaiman, but I did read the graphic novel, and I was a little disappointed with the ending of the movie. However, the visual feast and imaginative imagery were stunning to behold. I just wish I'd known to wear contacts so that the 3-D glasses weren't such a distraction.

I wasn't really planning to see Penny again this week, but I really wanted to since we didn't get to say a very meaningful goodbye last Thursday before she had to catch her bus home. So Wednesday we met up after her yoga class so we could hang out before my PolyNYC leadership meeting and her tango dance classes in the evening. We went to her grandmother's apartment so she could drop her stuff and charge her phone, then to a Thai curry house for lunch. We planned to go shopping at Loehmann's for her sister's birthday present, but we couldn't find what we wanted. Penny talked with her mom on my phone outside the store about alternative gift ideas while I took pictures of her:



Eventually we went back to her grandma's place to pick up her stuff, and say our goodbyes in private. Then we walked to Union Square to meet briefly with Lori and browse the Barnes & Noble for alternative birthday presents for Penny's sister. After we left the bookstore we all went our separate ways and I attended my meeting, which was very cordial and productive. Afterwards, my friend Simon was feeling stressed out, so we went to watch the movie Taken at the movie theater near Penn Station before I went home.

Imbolc

Today I celebrated Imbolc with a special mention of the Celtic goddess Brigid in my short prayer ritual at my altar. Imbolc has always been my favorite sabbat for some reason, maybe because it's a time to set intentions for new directions in one's life. In honor of Brigid (and other fire spirits in my life), I lit my candles today - the Christianized name for Imbolc is "Candlemass", and the secular celebration for this day that marks the last day of winter and the first day of spring involves groundhogs. Unfortunately I don't have the movie Groundhog Day in my collection anymore, because that is one of the best comedies ever made.

Last night I watched my King Crimson concert video and enjoyed it very much. You might recall that we saw them in concert back in August at the Nokia Theater in Times Square ("King Crimson" - Aug. 18, 2008) and the video was very reminiscent of that concert. Watching the video inspired me to do work on a playlist of cool songs, some of my all time favorites that I'm not ashamed to say I like. A lot of the music I listen to day to day is cotton candy, that I know. But I do know good music when I hear it too.

Speaking of my cotton candy mix, I just finished a mix of music that represents what I'm listening to right now, some of it influenced by my waning Twilight fetish, other bands I'm discovering from checking out random CDs at the library. Combine that with some old favorites that I'm reacquainting myself with, and you get a pretty random mix of tunes. Here it is:

Attack - 30 Seconds to Mars
The Great Escape - Boys Like Girls
Extraordinary - Liz Phair
Crushcrushcrush - Paramore
Right Now - Van Halen
I'm No Ordinary Girl - Anika Paris
Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne
Schism - Tool
Shadow of the Day - Linkin Park
What I've Done - Linkin Park
Was It A Dream? - 30 Seconds to Mars
When It Rains - Paramore
Five Minutes to Midnight - Boys Like Girls
Why Can't I? - Liz Phair
Viva La Vida - Coldplay
The Flame - Cheap Trick
I Wonder - Diffuser
To Turn You On - Roxy Music

Tara and I took a quick trip to the Met on Sunday so she could charge her new amulet, and we spent some time in the Asian wing visiting the Buddhas and Lord Ganesha. Saturday night we watched Enchanted on the big screen, which was delightful and every bit as good as the reviews made it out to be. Plus, the weekend update segment on Saturday Night Live was hysterical because it made fun of New Jersey.

I actually did watch a little bit of the Super Bowl, and saw the 100-yard touchdown play at the end of the first half because I was in the gym working out. I've been working out every day this week, trying to get my cardiovascular health back into shape. The net result is that sometimes I get sleepy early in the evening, but other times I still stay up until 4 a.m. reading my Anita Blake books.

I had a long conversation with one of the Board members of PolyNYC on Saturday, and he said they are considering asking me to join as a member of the Board. We discussed some of my reservations about that, and other positive things, but I still need to find out what the organization is going to be like moving forward before I commit to any kind of official role.

City visits and job interview

Tara and I had a MOMA trip planned for Tuesday, but when we got there, we found to our dismay that the museum is closed on Tuesdays - wtf?!? That was terribly disappointing, but we managed to salvage the trip by visiting the Cloisters on a very uncrowded afternoon and spending some quiet time there. Which was a bit of a relief for both of us because we were talking about our relationship and poly issues throughout the whole trip. Not that I mind talking about relationship issues with anyone and we had a nice afternoon together, but our energy was anything but peaceful for most of the day.

Here's a picture that Tara took of a newly opened section of the main chapel section of the Cloisters:

I met with the HR guy from a PR firm yesterday in the city and had a brief but encouraging talk. I might hear back before the end of the week if they want to proceed. It was supposed to snow heavily yesterday, but it was mostly rain and ice, so at least my movement was not impeded.

After my meeting I met up with one of my friends from PolyNYC for dinner, a guy named Kyle, a 45-year-old FTM. We went to a diner in the city and had a nice chat about life and transitions and stuff - he's writing a book about his life and experiences. We stopped at a drugstore to pick up some cookies for the meeting, and then proceeded to Simon's six-story walkup apartment in the East Village.

We had nine people at the PolyNYC leadership meeting, and it was a barn-burner. I think everyone just needed some time to vent, and they did. I mostly stayed quiet and listened, and tried to input a calm, unbiased perspective where I could get a word in. I think we have a lot of work ahead of us if we are to get the boat moving in the right direction with this group.

After the meeting I met up with Penny, who was coming out of her tango dancing class, and we walked and chatted together for about 30 minutes until she had to leave. We continue to try and carve out time in our busy lives to see each other until she leaves for Argentina, but it's difficult with all our other family commitments.

Year of the Ox

Today is Chinese New Year, the year of the Ox. Nothing special planned for me, just wanted to mark it somehow.

I told my family the other night that when I look back on my time off, the biggest accomplishment so far would probably be reading a lot of Laurell K. Hamilton books. I'm on a quest to read all 18 of the books in her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, and I'm on book nine (Obsidian Butterfly) at the moment, so I'm halfway there. I'm in the part of the character's storyline that has a lot of polyamorous and BDSM themes pertaining to shapeshifters, and I'm discovering that those characters are indeed more interesting than the vampires in the earlier stories. Despite their pulpiness, they are surprisingly rare at used book stores, so I'm checking out some titles from the library to conserve funds.

The other big news at the moment is that I've been invited to join the leadership council of Polyamorous NYC as the Communications Manager. I spent about four hours on the phone last night talking to some of the council members and other people about it, and I'm considering the offer (it's a volunteer position). The organization is going through a lot of changes right now, and I'm still deciding how much a part of it I want to be. A lot will depend on a leadership meeting we're having this Wednesday night and how things go with that.

Cooking party

As you might have guessed from my last post, there have been some interesting developments with Penny. It started on Sunday, when I had invited Penny and Lori over to my apartment to cook a meal together. It's the first time I've had anyone outside my family over to my place since moving to New Jersey. The two of them met back in early December the night Penny and I saw Stomp! at the Orpheum Theatre, and became fast friends.

Lori arrived first and I picked her up from the bus terminal in the early afternoon, and we went to Whole Foods to have a quick lunch before coming back to pick up Penny. Then we went to Costco to shop for food, and to the Asian grocery store for dinner ingredients. Lori taught us to make fried tofu with mushrooms and snow peas, and fried Japanese eggplant with mushrooms and garlic. We also made Ghirardelli's chocolate brownies for dessert. We created a very nurturing energy among ourselves, Lori sharing her cooking wisdom, and each of us contributing our efforts to create a meal that was shared by all. It was a very positive experience for me to open myself up a little more to my friends. Since Penny gave her permission to use it, here's a photo of her at my house:

After dinner we watched The Forbidden Kingdom on my projector screen and looked at Lori's photos on her computer. I showed Penny some comics she was interested in, like Castle Waiting, Frank Miller's Wolverine miniseries and the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books. It was around midnight when we left the apartment to drive back to Staten Island, which is about an hour's drive each way.

We got lost in SI trying to find Lori's house because she's never driven there before from New Jersey, but her boyfriend Erik was nice enough to help us over the phone, despite the lateness of the hour. We finally dropped her off and went to Penny's house. We walked in the door about 2:30 am, and her mom came downstairs to greet us in her bathrobe. She asked if I would like to stay the night, and I asked Penny if she wanted me to, and she did. I called Tara and left her a message so she wouldn't worry about me.

We stayed up for another couple of hours, looking at pictures on her computer and talking with her older sister, who was home for a visit. When we were done looking at pictures, we brought an extra blanket and pillow upstairs and shared the queen-size inflatable bed. Truth to tell, I hardly slept a wink all night - partly because the bed was really firm, and these days of unemployment have made me accustomed to a very late sleep schedule.

But what also kept me awake was the significance of sharing an intimate space with this girl I'm growing to love. She is only the third person I've ever shared a bed with in my life, not counting group sharing (Tara and my ex-spouse are the others). In some ways, our relationship has progressed very quickly, considering we started seeing each other only four months ago and haven't spent all that much time together. However, hardly anything about our relationship is "normal" so there's not much point in analyzing it by conventional standards.

In the context of my last post about the nature of love, I feel I'm attracted to her specific wavelength of energy that I can feel when we touch each other. I've written before about the importance of touch and Penny is one of the few people I've ever met who communicates through touch the way I do, possibly because we were both raised by families who practice massage and healing touch. Apart from hugging and kissing, we transmit energy through non-sexual touching, mostly through our hands. We can be sitting through a PolyNYC meeting in a roomful of people and have this wonderful exchange of loving touches, almost like having our own private, unspoken conversation. It's very difficult to describe, but it is real - Tara and I have shared this as well.

I also feel it through my other senses, like my sense of smell, which has become a much more powerful pull on my emotions than it used to be (we primates tend to forget that for most mammals, smell is more important than vision when communicating with each other). But probably most important right now is that Penny and I share a connection through polyamory, and we agree on the basic principles contained in my theory on unconditional love - meaning we try to enjoy our moments together without regard or expectations for what the future might bring, or what we might want from the developing relationship.

Despite all this, there is one future event that does loom on the horizon - she is leaving for a solo trip to Argentina on Feb. 15, so we will be mostly out of touch for two months. I'm trying not to think about how much I will miss her while she is gone, because I don't want it to spoil the time we have until then. As I've said before, one of my three tenets is to live in the moment and fully experience happiness as it comes, and I will continue to do that. But I also have to recognize that the moment is not meant to last forever, and the only way to prepare myself for when it's gone is to live fully in the present, so that there are no regrets later about moments left untouched, unlived.

The nature of love

Have you ever thought much about the nature of love? What we look for in a partner, how we know when we're in love, how to make it last and why we fall out of love? I've been thinking about it a lot lately, especially since New Year's Eve when there was a passing mention of the topic in a conversation with Penny's friends Patrick and Louis.

Looking back on my life, I have to admit that I tend to be rather impractical in the targets of my affections. I've always believed that the initial attraction that sometimes blossoms into love is something you can't control, although it's only been recently that I've fully accepted that belief. I've fallen in love with different people in different ways over the years, and tried to make the best of imperfect circumstances - to sometimes disastrous results. Let's just say that if love were a team sport, I'd be one of the last persons to be picked.

So what to do when you find yourself in such a position? Change the rules, of course. If traditional monogamy ("TM") can be viewed metaphorically as a competitive, winner-take-all kind of game (say, like a tennis tournament), then my version of polyamory is more like a multi-player cooperative videogame like 1985's Gauntlet with the infinite health points cheat enabled. Instead of viewing love as a prize to be won (i.e., the happily ever after), why can't love just be part of the journey through life, with different players coming and going as part of a larger, ongoing process of personal growth?

I want to be clear that I'm not saying my way is better or that I'm somehow more enlightened because I choose not to buy into an institution with a failure rate of just over 40 percent. I agree that TM is a valid relationship option for a lot of people. The only thing I'm saying is that there are options besides TM, and among the infinite diversity of humanity and life situations, some of those options might actually be better than the standard, one-size-fits-all relationship model. Even among poly people, there are a plethora of different approaches and options that may or may not be compatible with each other. If someone chooses to follow a poly path, it's disrespectful and egocentric to assume that they are making a bad or illegitimate choice because of a bias toward TM, or to assume they are "settling for less" than the presumed relationship paragon of monogamy. It's like assuming everybody would be better off if they embraced the majority religion in the neighborhood.

Of course it is my place to defend polyamory since I practice what I preach, but there also has been some talk about why gay marriage rights activists aren't defending polyamory and the answer is simple. There are two components to the traditional view of marriage - the nature, and the number, of the participants. While you can use the same logic to argue against limitations to both, we Americans as a whole are much closer to being ready to change the nature of who can get married (extending it to homosexuals) than we are to changing the number (defining a marriage or family to include more than one adult participant, like a business partnership). Perhaps someday we will be able to broaden our concept of a lifelong romantic commitment by recognizing the validity of alternative relationship models that include more than two participants, but that time is not right now.

But I digress from the original purpose of this post. What I'm trying to do is find the commonalities between polyamory and traditional monogamy. If more mono people understood the reasons why people chose poly, maybe we could make some progress that would enable more people to pursue their own version of happiness. Once people accept that poly love is as valid as gay love, then maybe we can spend more time loving each other instead of fighting each other's rights to love whom and how we choose.

So the best way I can attempt to make this connection is to talk about the nature of love itself. Since the time of Plato we've been discussing the topic, but I will focus now specifically the early phase of love - I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about. It's that sometimes overwhelming burst of energy at the beginning of a relationship the brings individuals together, overcoming fears, boundaries and irritations that might preclude forming risky new connections between what are essentially strangers. It's the period of time when anything seems possible, where all obstacles can be overcome with love, and it's difficult to think about anything other than the object of your interest.

Poly people call this feeling "NRE" (new relationship energy), but I'm sure you can see that as I've described it, NRE is not just a poly thing. It's a human thing. It's another way of describing the feeling of "falling in love." And for those of you who have felt it, I'm sure you will agree that NRE is one of life's greatest blessings, a gift from the gods that can provide the energy and motivation to make huge changes (for good or ill) in one's life, as well as historically providing the inspiration for some of humanity's greatest artistic achievements.

An apt metaphor for NRE would be viewing it as the booster rockets for the space shuttle, in that they provide the extra power to get things moving off the launch pad and out of earth's gravitational pull. If the boost is strong and long enough, and everything else goes well, the craft escapes the atmosphere and the boosters are no longer needed. At that point, the rush of NRE fades and the relationship is guided by "LTE" or long term energy, which is wonderful and fulfilling, but not often as hot and exciting as NRE. However, without LTE, a relationship fueled only with NRE is probably going to burn out and crash, so both are necessary to ensure a meaningful and lasting relationship - if that's your goal.

This is all probably pretty intuitive for most people, whether you're poly or mono. People fall in love, go through a courtship phase, and either form a lasting commitment or realize once the sizzle subsides that an ongoing relationship is impractical or unwanted. The key difference with poly people is that we sometimes experience NRE and LTE with different people at the same time. Or we have to deal with (i.e. remain in a relationship) a partner with whom we have LTE who is going through NRE with someone else. So I readily admit that poly requires skill at compartmentalizing not dissimilar to the way I professionally advocate zealously for multiple PR clients at any one time, or how many people keep their work and home life separate. And yes, I admit this is harder and more complicated than focusing all your attention on a single person.

However, along with these concessions comes the realization that there's a price to pay for the stability and simplicity of traditional monogamy. Choosing TM means that you give up any foreseeable opportunities to experience NRE. It typically means you put all your eggs in one basket relationship-wise, meaning you only have one source for everything you require from a significant other. It means if you are tempted to act on NRE with someone, you have to be dishonest about it to preserve the TM relationship (i.e., cheat). There is also an expectation of fidelity that means you spend a fair amount of time enforcing agreed-upon behavior instead of spending the energy communicating honestly about the core feelings that lead to behavior in the first place. Basically, many of the common reasons why marriages fail are the compromises you make when you choose TM, although many of those can also end poly relationships as well.

So, there are two things we have to remember about NRE that helps us to deal with it. First, we should recognize it for what it is and not make it into more (or less) than it is. We should be able to understand that NRE is an altered state of consciousness (not unlike being intoxicated with alcohol, but less voluntary) that causes us to view everything through "love goggles" that alter our perceptions from those of our non-NRE-influenced partners. It also helps if those partners can be aware of NRE without being judgmental about it. Throwing out the phrase "oh, you're just in NRE" as an accusation is about as productive as telling somebody they only disagree with you because of PMS. Patience or even amused tolerance (if outright enthusiastic support is not possible) in dealing with a partner's NRE experience will do a lot to enhance the LTE relationship versus falling into a set of negative reactions. It's important to remember that while NRE is exciting and sexy, LTE is really what we're looking for if we want meaningful, lasting relationships rather than a series of casual hook-ups.

That brings us to the second point: we should recognize that NRE doesn't last forever, though LTE might (or might not) pick up when it fades. Most poly experts say NRE typically will last six to nine months, longer if it's a long-distance relationship, but the range varies widely from person to person. In fact, it's good advice not to make any decisions regarding career or housing until NRE has cooled off, just as a sensible precaution to ensure safe NRE enjoyment. And for the LTE partner, being aware that NRE will fade can be a comfort, plus highlight the need to continue nurturing the existing relationship without succumbing to the temptation of blaming NRE (unless real needs for time, energy, love and/or sex are not being met).

In short, the point is that poly and mono people experience love in basically the same way. The power and validity of those feelings engendered by the emotion of love are the same. Both versions have different rules and boundaries, and both have compromises. One is the overwhelming choice of the majority of the human population, sanctioned by the state, most organized religions and society in general - the other is not. But that doesn't mean that love between poly people is any less important to them than it is to TM people. When we as humans are attracted to a specific wavelength of energy put out by someone, we all feel it just the same. It's what to do with those feelings that we each have to decide however is best for us.

Letting my geek flag fly

I have a big post incubating in me about NRE (new relationship energy) vs. LTE (long-term energy) and the nature of love, but I'm not quite ready to put keys to screen and write about it. Instead, allow me to offer a short update and also embrace my inner geek-girl for a bit.

I've been feeling under the weather for the past week, probably a result of inactivity combined with exposure to allergens over the holidays. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were spent in homes with pets, and last Friday (January 2) Tara and I packed up her drumkit and drove to Hartford, CT for a long-planned rehearsal of her band. At the home of their keyboardist/bassist Kevin (along with their cat and dog), we set things up in the basement that belonged to his adult stepson, which looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. But it was very exciting listening to them play, since it's probably been almost two years since their last gig, and I am hopeful that the endeavor ultimately will be rewarding for all of them.

It's been almost a month now since I stopped working, which qualifies as a long break for me. Although I did have that nine-month layoff that I call my "cocoon period" between the time I quit my job in Houston and started working in New York. But during that time I had a lot of other things going on, including relocating to New Jersey. But I'm certainly not missing work, especially since I'm sick right now. But to put things in perspective, I've been working constantly since 1991 without a break longer than a week, other than my cocoon period and now. This is only the second time in my life I've involuntarily left a job. On the progress front, I have an interview with a recruiter about a position with an engineering firm on Friday in SoHo, so hopefully that will be productive.

My family recently finished the entire Star Wars cycle, Episodes I through VI, and it's the first time I've seen the classic trilogy since seeing the prequels. Obviously, I'm of an age where I was brought up on Episodes IV-VI, so I know them intimately, yet by watching them right after the prequel trilogy, I found so much more nuance and significance to both trilogies and the canon in general. I think we all agree that if someone had never seen a Star Wars movie, the best thing to do would be to start with Episode IV: A New Hope and proceed in order of release date, but then re-watch the original trilogy again to catch all the references. This makes sense for lots of reasons - the duel at the end of Episode III is a natural climax, and the bad acting in the prequels becomes less grating if you're already invested in the story are two good reasons.

This week Tara and I also finished our Star Trek movie marathon, nine films from Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Star Trek: Nemesis (we skipped Star Trek: The Final Frontier since it's so awful neither of us felt like gagging on it). The trilogy of movies 2 through 4 obviously stands alone as the highlight of the bunch, but we also both felt a renewed appreciation for Star Trek: Insurrection, one that has never been high on my list. I still have to say Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is my single favorite movie because of my loyalty to the original crew, but Star Trek: First Contact is a close second.

Last night I finished the Firefly series, one that I started last year with Bug and put on the shelf for the entire year. I watched the whole series (one season only) in the last two weeks, and loved it. After I watch the movie Serenity, I'll probably head back to the Whedon universe and finally finish the Angel series that I started last year - I only completed Season One, so four left to go.

2008 in review

Today is January 1st, and longtime readers know that it's time for my annual year in review recap. When I was thinking back about this year earlier, it seemed to me that I wouldn't have much to write about, because this year has seemed much less eventful than the previous three years of my life. But looking back in my 2008 blog entries, what I realize is that instead of big dramatic events - like surgery or house fires - there have been a lot of small milestones that have quietly become the fabric of my life.

But before I get into the annual tradition, it's time for a little holiday catch-up, since I've been absent from this space for an unprecedented two weeks, my longest unannounced absence ever. Obviously I've been enjoying an extended holiday break with my job layoff, and we've been getting some snowy weather here in the northeast lately, so I've been spending a lot of time reading, watching TV (i.e. Firefly) and movies.

Christmas Eve my family did its traditional vegetarian feast, which Bug handled solo this time, and I got lots of cool presents, mostly graphic books that continue what I'm currently reading: Fables Vol. 11: War and Pieces, Jack of Fables Vol. 4: Americana, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men Vol. 2, The Brave & the Bold Book 2, Batman: The Black Glove, X-Men Legacy: Divided He Stands; plus an assortment of books and music tangentially related to my Twilight fetish, like Linkin Park's Road to Revolution, Paramore's The Final Riot, and of course, Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion. I also got a couple Neil Gaiman books - The Graveyard Book and Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett) - the novel of the Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In, and a new deluxe hardcover of Camelot 3000, one of my all-time favorite graphic novels. I got about a half-dozen other assorted books and DVDs - my family does enjoy spoiling each other for birthdays and holidays, as I was by no means the top recipient in number of gifts this year.

On Christmas Day, a day that traditionally I have either spent alone or with Tara, Bee was kind enough to bring me along to her birth family party, which is only the second time I've met any of my family's birth family (we ran into Bug's father by chance at a restaurant earlier this year). We shared a wonderful traditional holiday feast (which included, for once, meat) and passed presents around. I met her parents, grandparents, brother and sister-in-law, and their little dogs too. I loved seeing photos of Bee when she was young, and even glimpsed a picture or two of Tara in the house.

I will digress here to return to the purpose of this post, the year-end recap, before I return to my New Year's Eve activities. If the major theme of last year was about recovering from surgery, the main theme this year has to be the growth and development of my poly family, and the impact of my intention to live polyamorously, which I decided in mid-January. In February I started attending monthly meetings of Polyamorous NYC and helped found a new poly support group for women only on Meetup.com. I also started the regular routine of cooking dinner for my family on Saturday nights at my place. This year I've learned to fry tofu and dumplings, and make stir-fried bok choy and curry chicken, among other things, so I've been productive in the kitchen.

On March 10, Bee and I had an important talk, which I refer to as "the bookshelf talk" because we were building bookshelves while we were talking. It was the first time since mid-2007 that we talked openly about our poly situation and how we were feeling about it. Even though I'm the avowed poly girl, I rarely talk with her about the subject because I don't think she's as comfortable about it as I am, so it was good to hear her thoughts firsthand. The only problem is that these talks are not a regular occurrence, since we haven't had such a candid talk since then.

Just like last year, June was again a milestone month for me, and not because of jury duty where I started reading Twilight. On June 11, an overnight thunderstorm led to Bee, Tara and me spending the day at the beach, the first time we'd done anything like that since we dissolved as a triad. Two days later, Bee was attacked by one of the dogs she was training and badly mauled on her arm (the first in a string of mishaps for her this summer that included a bout of stomach flu, falling down stairs and tripping over her feet at work, once straight into a pool and another time cutting her forehead). Since she couldn't drive her company car, I took five days off to help them get around, and in that time we all became much closer as a family. I spent the night for the first time with Tara in her bed and Bee on the couch, and a couple days later Tara spent the night at my place for the first time, which has become a regular Friday event, followed by family nights on Saturdays.

However, the goodwill did not last for very long as Tara and I continue to struggle with our poly/mono differences, along with my own day-to-day communication challenges of a poly novice navigating a poly relationship with two people who don't wish to learn poly communication strategies. Up until Mabon (late September) dealing with my theoretical poly-ness was difficult enough, but things became even more complicated when I met Polina (Penny) at the PolyPride event in Central Park on October 4. After less than three months, we have become affectionate friends, although many obstacles impede the development of a serious relationship. Still, we enjoy spending time together whenever we have the opportunity (about once every seven to 10 days) and we try to connect in some form or fashion - email or phone - at least once a day.

Case in point was Penny's New Year's Eve party last night at her family's house on Staten Island. About 25 of her family and friends showed up to count down and celebrate the new year, a big tradition for Russian families (her Jewish family is from Ukraine). As midnight approached, Penny's father organized a group ritual to write down the things we wanted to leave behind in 2008, which he then burned in a Pagan-inspired ceremony with a candle. We had all kinds of deli food, like half-sour pickles, liver salad, gelfite fish, seaweed salad, smoked salmon, etc. Penny showed us her Argentine tango dancing, and I even took a turn on the floor dancing with her dad. We played a competitive word guessing game, where Penny's grandmother showed her psychic abilities to jaw-dropping effect. We talked and talked until people started dropping off one by one to find a spot in one of the bedrooms to sleep. By 6 a.m. everybody was headed upstairs but actually, I wasn't all that tired, so I decided to drive home to sleep in my own comfy bed.

As I was telling one of Penny's friends Rosie last night (who seems to be a fellow introvert and easy to connect with - maybe because she's friendly to the goddess), the party reminded me very much of the parties of my old life, with multiple generations present and accommodations made for non-English speakers (all the announcements had to be said by Penny's father in Russian, then translated by Penny into English). I could almost imagine that this would have been the kind of party I would be having in Houston on New Year's Eve, if things had gone differently with my birth family, if I'd been accepted and loved for who I am instead of being disowned. Although Penny's family is not the same as my birth family (no one is), it was a pleasant illusion to indulge in for one night.

Speaking of the birth family, I did get an email from my mom over Christmas, the first contact I've had with them in about two years. She was kind of passive-aggressive, saying that she hasn't written because she thinks I don't want to hear from them. I wrote her a measured response back, correcting what has been the case for years now - that if they can't respect who I am, then it's better for everyone if we keep our distance from each other. I fully don't expect to hear from her for at least another year, but I'm trying to keep an open heart about it, should there be any kind of breakthrough.

So as you can see, 2008 has been a quietly eventful year, and mostly positive for me. I've deepened my friendships with Lori and Agnieszka, had a nice vacation at the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, fell in love with Wicked on Broadway and Twilight at the movies, and became a member of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. My family is still close, and we are still very committed to each other, even though we have our ups and downs. I am exploring my budding relationship with Penny, who presents a particularly stringent test of my theory of unconditional love that I ascribe to. I am still very much in love with Tara, and even though we sometimes have a hard time understanding each other, we can still make each other laugh and we still create magick together that sustains us through the difficult times.

Happy New Year everybody, and bright blessings for 2009!

Holiday update

Alright, so it's been a week since my last day on the job - time for an update.

The first four days including the weekend, I pretty much did nothing work-related. I slept a lot, read books, watched TV, movies and a couple of Rockets games, and spent extra time with my family. I taught them some new card games, which everybody seems to enjoy. This week, I've been sending out resumes and I've had a couple calls with recruiters, but I don't really expect anything to happen until January at least. So I'm just doing my best to enjoy the holidays, spend time with people I care about, and keep things as normal as possible.

Tuesday night I went into the city in a bit of a snowstorm to meet with my poly women's group, which was fun. We had a good turnout, even though Penny couldn't come due to a holiday party conflict. Wednesday I had to go into the city again to have some dental work, which was excruciating as usual. The worst of it is they didn't have a necessary component to finish the job, so I'll have to go back in January - ugh! After the dentist, I had some time to kill before a separate doctor's appointment, so I strolled around the nearby MOMA and saw some of the new exhibits that we've skipped in our recent tours of the marvelous Van Gogh Colors of Night exhibit.

After my doctor's appointment, I met up with Penny briefly to walk a few blocks over to the LGBT center for the PolyNYC Holiday party, but I was rather exhausted and in pain from the dentist, so I didn't stay for the party. It turned out to be quite the soiree, as Penny filled me in later by phone, so maybe next year I'll be more in a party kind of mood.

Laid off at work

I found out this morning that I have been laid off at work, effective immediately. There's simply not enough work in the pipeline for Agent K to keep me on, and I understand that. I see what's going on around me, and I'm not the only one who is hurting with the economic conditions. It does kind of suck that it's happening over Christmas, but I was pretty much twiddling my thumbs at work anyway. At least I get to twiddle my thumbs at home for the next month and a half and still get paid. The company offered me a pretty generous severance so I'll be on the payroll until the end of January. After that, the clock really starts ticking.

The upside is that this is certainly not unexpected. I had seen the warning signs for several weeks now as clients slowly faded away, and work began to dry up. So I held off on spending on major items, and I kept my assets liquid so I have plenty of reserve funds to pay the rent while I'm job hunting. Of course it would be ideal if I could find something before Feb. 1 so I wouldn't have to deplete my savings, but in this economy, it might be a challenge to find something suitable. But I've been through this before, under more challenging circumstances, so I know I can get through this. If it's one thing I've learned, it's that life is full of ups and downs, and you just have to keep going and not give up.

Christmas trees, museum and movies

Lots of odds and ends going on in my life, and for the moment, plenty of time at work to write about them, so here we go.

In the category of news of the weird, here’s a post from Neil Gaiman’s blog – apparently Australia has granted human rights to cartoon characters by a court ruling that X-rated images of Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson having sex together constitutes child pornography. This ruling means that every Australian who owns a copy of Alan Moore's Lost Girls (as both Tara and I do) is risking imprisonment for possession of kiddie porn.

On a lighter note, I actually had a great time at the company holiday party on Friday. We take over the sub-level of a nearby upscale Mexican restaurant called Dos Caminos, which has pretty decent food, and outstanding guacamole, even to a Houstonian girl like me. I started the night chatting with some of the senior members of the staff, two people who have been at Agent K more than 70 years between them. They were telling me all the sordid stories of bygone days where office sex and three-martini lunches were the norm, before political correctness and the threat of lawsuits crept in – it sure made the present day sound safe but boring in comparison.

During the prize drawing, I won something for the second year in a row, a Motorola Bluetooth wireless headset so that I too can look like Lobot (I’ll probably just end up using it at home or giving it to Penny). As the party started to wind down, all the young women in my group started to congregate at my table for some reason, making me feel a bit like a mother hen. Most of them went off to another bar to continue the celebration, but I’d had enough at that point and went home to watch my Rockets basketball game.

Tara came over later in the evening and we watched Star Trek: First Contact, continuing our month-long Trek movie marathon, followed by snuggles in bed. In the morning we had our bacon and pancake breakfast, followed by more snuggles, which was kind of a bad idea because you shouldn’t exercise right after you eat, but somehow we managed. Unfortunately next weekend we will not have quite the leisurely time of it because she will be getting up early to go to Hartford for a two-day rehearsal session. Her three-piece band is getting back together after a year-long hiatus to start performing again, and completing their second album.

Saturday night everybody came over for dinner and to help me put up my Christmas tree and decorations, and to watch two episodes of Heroes and a very funny Saturday Night Live (welcome back Amy!) Sunday we went into the city to kick-off the Christmas season by visiting our favorite trees, the Angel Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum and the big tree at Rockefeller Center. While we were at the Met, we toured the newly opened Medieval European galleries and the Italian Renaissance special exhibit, then took the subway to Rockefeller Center to visit St. Patrick's and the big tree there. Bee did her annual project of bringing cheer to the homeless by giving out bags of food to those we saw (we only spotted two because of the cold, but they were very happy to receive the gift bags). The howling wind and sub-freezing temperatures we encountered coming back to the Met was ferociously cold for everybody except Tara (who is half polar bear, half arctic bird it seems) but we managed to arrive with all fingers and toes intact. We drove back to NJ and had a fun and tasty dinner at one of our usual diners because everything else was closed.



Last night Tara and I watched Unforgiven, the 1993 western directed by Clint Eastwood that was nominated for nine Oscars and won four, including Best Picture and Best Director. This has long been one of my favorite movies, and one of the few westerns I like (others are Silverado, Tombstone, The Searchers, and The Magnificent Seven). Unforgiven is a bit different from most westerns I’ve seen in that it’s less of an adventure than a character-driven drama piece, although all the classic elements of the western are skillfully woven in. Happily, Tara enjoyed it very much so it was time well-spent.

Tonight I’m having dinner with Penny and Lori, the first time in my modern history that I’ve spent time with two of my friends at the same time (although my friends have brought their friends to spend time with me before). Given that I can count my local friends on one hand, this is likely to be a rare occasion.

Happiness is contagious

Our company holiday party starts in a couple hours, and it’s something I’m actually looking forward to – I’m actually wearing a suit for this. The last few years I’ve been pretty reluctant to attend these functions, but I’m trying to get more comfortable with it, to break out of my shell a little. Even though I’ll always be an introvert at heart, I am a human being and therefore a social creature. It’s just that when you can’t talk about your private life, it makes socializing with outsiders a little uncomfortable.

My co-workers are actually a pretty good lot of people, and I had a great time bowling with them on Wednesday night. I surprised myself by how well I could still bowl. We split into two groups of six and I was the high scorer on my team both games, and the overall high score on the second game (my high score was 119, I think, which isn’t very high at all). I gave a lot of pointers to my teammates, which seemed to help most of them. Bowling is actually a very team-oriented game, because everyone feels good when someone throws a strike. The only issue is that it’s kind of loud to have any conversations.

There was an article in the New York Times about how happiness is contagious, even among strangers. Maybe that’s what the world need a lot more of right now to combat all the downer news is for some people to spread happiness around. I know that part of the feeling of compersion (or frubble, as some poly people call it) is just that - being able to feel happiness instead of jealousy and negativity from seeing your loved one made happy by someone else. From now on, I want to try and focus on being happy and making others around me happy as well. ‘Tis the season, after all.

"Strangers May Cheer You Up, Study Says" – Dec. 5, 2008

This idea ties in nicely with what I see as a subtle shift in my spending patterns in the last couple years. I think about the fact that my last major purchase was my new flat-screen TV, but before that it was last Thanksgiving, when I bought my video projector and screen. Altogether my home theater probably cost me about $6,000 over the last three years, not including what was lost in the fire of 2007 or what I spend on DVDs and cable TV fees every month. But I think, like the author of this article in the Wall Street Journal, that it was money well spent, because every Saturday night my family comes over and we watch movies or TV together, and that has been the bedrock of my social life for the past year.

"Deals Abound, But Which Offer Lasting Delight?" - Dec. 3, 2008

I think going forward, I am going to prioritize my spending on things that involve my friends and family, rather than things that exclude them, as one expert in the article suggests. I already do this to a certain extent with museum memberships, Broadway shows, basketball games, etc., but I'd like to do more, if my job situation gets a little more stable.

Twilight the movie

I finally went to see Twilight last night with Penny and we had a very nice time, as usual. I’ve been collecting Regal Cinema gift cards at work the past few years because there are no Regal Cinemas in New Jersey where I live, so I have about $60 worth of cards saved up. Agent K gives them out as incentive gifts and for anniversaries, so I was glad to use them.

The movie was good, and extremely faithful to the book. And as a lover of the book, I thought they did a very nice job of capturing almost exactly what the reader would envision when reading the novel. The only issue I have is if I look at the movie as a separate entity, as a person who had not read the book, and if I watched it in that headspace, I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much because there are so many meaningful looks and lines that sound corny out loud if you don't know the depth of emotions and unexplained (in the movie) motivations behind them.

Surprisingly, Penny enjoyed the movie a lot more than she expected to, since she is not a fan of “vampires that glitter” (which underscores somewhat our inverted biological/emotional ages, since she is a lot closer in age to the Young Adult demographic than I am). Her idea of a good book is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, which she’s currently reading, and we're planning to read Tom Robbins' "Skinny Legs and All" together when she's done with that, a book that Bug got me for my birthday. She thought all the actors who played the paranormals were very sexy though, especially the actor who plays Jacob Black, whom she thought would be a good casting choice for the lead character in the novel she’s writing (she just completed the first 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo last month).

For me, a big part of the fun of watching the movie was hearing how they used the soundtrack, which I’ve been listening to non-stop since it came out a few weeks ago. Hearing Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole” erupt during the Cullen’s fateful softball game was a blast. In fact, I made my own Twilight-inspired mix on my iPod, since I don’t like every single song on the soundtrack album which incorporates some of Stephenie Meyer’s other picks from the entire series of books and some of my own emo-flavored tracks. My mix goes like this, with non-soundtrack songs marked with an asterisk:

Decode by Paramore
*Stockholm Syndrome by Muse
Spotlight (Twilight Mix) by Mute Math
Leave Out All the Rest by Linkin Park
Go All The Way (In the Twilight) by Perry Farrell
I Caught Myself by Paramore
Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation
*Starlight by Muse
Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine
*Shadow of the Day by Linkin Park
*The Scientist by Coldplay
*World In My Eyes by Depeche Mode
*In the End by Linkin Park
*Forgiveness by Collective Soul
Decode (Acoustic Version) by Paramore
*I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
*Creep (Acoustic) by Radiohead
*Brighter by Paramore
*Halo by Porcupine Tree
*Sweet Sacrifice by Evanescence
*Time is Running Out by Muse
*Valentine’s Day by Linkin Park
*My Immortal by Evanescence
*Clocks by Coldplay
*Miracle by Paramore
*Vicarious by Tool
*Assassin by Muse
*Born For This by Paramore
*I Melt With You by Sugarcult
*She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5
*My Heart by Paramore

I’m actually going bowling tonight for the first time in years, the first of two company holiday parties this week. The last time I went bowling was also at a company outing, but with my old firm in Houston. I actually do like to bowl, but it’s hard finding the time and companionship to do so, just like playing tennis and basketball and other things I used to do. So we’ll see how well-coordinated I am after such a long layoff and so many changes over the past few years.

The devourer of worlds

I was going to write something profound and serious about Thanksgiving, and all the things I'm thankful for, but on the whole, it hasn't changed much from last year. I'm thankful for my life here, my family, my friends, my health, and other year of growing and learning more about myself.


In the course of looking at things for my Christmas wish list, I found this awesome poster about one of my favorite fictional characters, Galactus. Classic.

News bits

One of my many obscure interests is precious metals, especially as related to numismatics (the study or collection of monetary objects). The physical properties of currency fascinates me sometimes, the security features, and the designs of foreign currencies and what they say about the culture that produced them.

In today’s New York Times, there’s an interesting story about the launch of a new U.S. gold coin, produced at the U.S. Mint in West Point. The coin is a $20 face value solid gold coin (worth about $900) that is a reproduction of a century-old design called the double-eagle – considered to be one of, if not the most beautiful U.S. coins ever made. When the coin was originally struck, technology was not able to make it commercially feasible, plus the director of the Mint at that time didn’t want to support the design favored by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. There are less than two dozen of the original coins remaining, making them among the most prized of U.S. coins, fetching prices into the millions of dollars. For the full story, see below:

"Century Later, Gold Coin Reflects Sculptor’s Vision" - Nov. 25, 2008

Also in my morning media sweep, I found a very compelling debate on gay marriage between Chicago Tribune blogger Eric Zorn and Allan Carlson, president of the Rockford-based Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society and Founder and General Secretariat of the World Congress of Families. What’s great about this online debate is how both sides are able to make their points in a civilized and intelligent way, without devolving into the name-calling and hysterics that the issue tends to engender among bloggers and their audiences. It’s a very interesting read for anyone who wants to understand some of the core points on both sides of the issue.

The great online gay-marriage debate

Tara came over last night for dinner and we settled in to watch one of my favorite movies, Se7en, directed by David Fincher, who went on to direct The Game, Fight Club and Zodiac. He also directed Alien 3 previously. Like Hitchcock, Truffant, de Mille and other auteur filmmakers of the past, I've admired Fincher's ability to redefine a genre, in this case, the modern thriller movie. I'm looking forward to his take on a different kind of movie next month with the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The other vampire movie

How ironic that on the opening weekend of Twilight, which as everyone knows I’m dying to see, I ended up going to see a very different vampire movie on Friday night called Let the Right One In, a Swedish film of amazing lyrical beauty. The story is not so much about vampires (although it does focus on an aspect of the vampire legend that is rarely examined in any of the popular art forms) but rather about the relationship between two outcast 12-year-olds Eli and Oskar. The film is in limited release, so it may not be showing at a theater near you, but I highly recommend checking it out when it comes to video. P.S. – if you look at the IMDB link, don’t watch the movie clip, it gives away too much from a critical scene in the movie.

Speaking of Twilight, with its opening weekend of $70.6 million it joined a very exclusive club of Hollywood movies that turned a profit in its first three days of theatrical release (the film cost $37 million to make, and $30 to market). Best of all, the indie movie studio Summit Entertainment announced that it has green-lit a sequel to Twilight based on New Moon, the second book in the series. However, they’re going to have to do some major adaptation work to give the cast something to do, since most of the Cullen family is absent for nearly the entirety of the book, including reigning teen heartthrob Edward, played by Robert Pattinson.

Also on Friday, Polina (I’m going to start calling her by her nickname, Penny) came to see me for lunch at my office, and we shared a plate of eggplant and chicken at the local Chinese fast food stand, then came up to my office to have some of the leftover pumpkin pie from Thursday’s company Thanksgiving lunch. Saturday I took my family into the city for a museum day, which started at my favorite bagel store near my office where we had breakfast. Then we walked a few blocks to MOMA, where we saw the Van Gogh exhibit once more before it scatters back to the European museums the works came from.

We took the subway to Penn Station, and walked several blocks in the frigid wind to CoSM for a last look at the installation before it is shut down on Dec. 31 and moved to its permanent home in upstate New York, 65 miles north of Manhattan. I’d only been here once before on one of my early trips to the city with Tara, and it was a very moving experience to see this space again.

After our trip to the city we came home and had our family dinner, followed by a showing of Wall-E on the big screen projector. Every time I see that movie, I can’t help crying at the end, just like some of my all-time favorites, like A Beautiful Mind, Ben-Hur, and maybe one or two others whose names escape me. I hope it does well at the Oscars next year, as it deserves to.

Sunday I had a rest & recovery day, spent mostly doing laundry and on the couch in front of my 42-inch HDTV, watching basketball games and TV shows on my DVR and old 80s movies on DVD like The Final Countdown and Blue Thunder before my family came over in the evening for ice cream and watching Heroes and Saturday Night Live from the night before. I am so ready for the Thanksgiving holiday to start!

A recovering monogamist

I think one of the toughest things to deal with in my life right now is what I call the "poly/mono schism" between Tara and myself. We continue to make progress, one small, painful step at a time, and last night and today we made a pretty big step by making a decision to try and focus on being peaceful with each other. Aside from love, cultivating peace is probably the most important factor in building a sustainable relationship. Some people like the drama and fighting and making up - I don't think we are those people. We're like hobbits after a long quest - we've both had enough drama to last a lifetime.

I'd also like to show you an article published by one of my online friends who is a freelance writer for The Truth Quarterly. She wrote an article on her exploration of polyamory with her husband titled "Rethinking the Conventions." It's a nice introduction to polyamory from the viewpoint of a recovering monogamist, as she calls herself. The article starts on page 18 of the e-zine.

The Final Issue of The Truth Quarterly

This Sunday was the last of my burlesque dance classes with Agnieszka, and it was on glove and stocking peels. We're both a little bummed the class is over. After getting back from the city, I met my family at the movie theater and we saw Quantum of Solace, a first-rate James Bond movie. I was struggling with my toothache (I need a root canal repair on an infected tooth) but I still had a good time.

Afterwards, we came back to my place where I made dinner for everyone and taught them to play poker. Bee came out the big winner thanks to a smooth bluff she made on me - I came in second. Once everybody gets comfortable learning the order of the hands and betting rules, we might expand our repetoire to include some other games besides five-card draw.

"The Emperor is dead!"

Driving to the train station this morning, I heard this story on NPR about the mysterious death of China's second-to-last emperor, Qing Guangxu.

"Who Murdered China's Emperor 100 Years Ago?" - November 14, 2008

Modern science has now concluded that he was poisoned by the Empress Dowager Cixi, who followed him in death a mere 22 hours later, leaving five-year-old Pu Yi (a distant ancestor of mine) to ascend the throne as China's last emperor. This part of the story is told at the beginning of the movie The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, which swept the nine Oscars that it was nominated for in 1988.

Some of you know that my family history dates back more than 800 years in China, and includes a distant link to Pu Yi - my father's people were from Manchuria, what they used to call the northern part of China, and I am a quarter Manchurian by blood. Pu Yi was the first emperor from Manchuria - you can find a synopsis of his true story and tons of references at this site:

I've been trying to find time to watch this movie since I bought the four-disc Criterion version several months ago (it's almost four hours long in an expanded director's cut) and this new revelation has made me want to see it very soon.

The war against love

Something that my women's poly group talked about last night - I've never watched Keith Olbermann before (except on ESPN SportsCenter long ago) but this is the most heartfelt televised news commentary I've ever seen. Ever. And a compelling argument that I fear will fall on deaf ears.



Here is another facet of the debate that was featured in an op-ed in the New York Times recently - the attack on gay rights to raise children that could have far-reaching consequences beyond the issue of gay marriage.

"Anti-Gay, Anti-Family" - November 11, 2008

Plus, here is an interview in the Wall Street Journal with a constitutional law professor from the University of Southern California (Pearl's alma mater) about what's next in the aftermath of Proposition 8:

"Gay-Marriage Ban Sets Up Host of Battles" - November 7, 2008

Absolute Sandman

I was shopping on Amazon.com today, getting my fourth and final installment of Absolute Sandman and I came across these delightful bookends of Dream and his sister, Death. Fantastic!

Only two problems: first is that the set costs $345, which is a princely sum of money, even for me. Second is that I don't have any room for bookends on my shelves because they are too full of books. In fact, I'm about ready to buy a new DVD cabinet to handle the overflow of DVDs that are taking up bookshelf space, but I don't have much room in my apartment for a new shelf of any kind. Must think on this some more.

Speaking of books, I've been tracking my books on GoodReads for the past few weeks so people can see what I'm reading and what's on my bookshelves. Unfortunately, the site does not support comic titles, which make up a large percentage of my reading material, but oh well. You can see my profile and current reading materials by clicking on this link (you don't need to sign up to see this).

A museum weekend

I took the day off on Friday to celebrate my friend Polina's birthday - she had invited me to her party Friday night but I wasn't able to go, so we spent the day together instead. We met outside Penn Station in the middle of the tourist crowd and walked up to 42nd Street-Port Authority Bus Terminal to meet Laura, one of her friends who also came in from New Jersey, probably about the same time I came in on my train. Interestingly enough, Laura lives in North Haledon, which is very close to where I live.

The three of us headed uptown to the Museum of Modern Art, and we sat out in the courtyard so Laura could interview Polina for an anthropology project for school. After that was done, we took a short break in the cafe before visiting the marvelous Van Gogh exhibit that I saw a few weeks back with my family ("Poly public relations" - October 5, 2008) and viewing some of the contemporary art galleries. Since it was getting late and it was starting to get crowded because of Free Friday Nights at MOMA, we took off to do some shoe shopping so I could buy Polina a birthday present. We went to two stores and she picked out a pair of black Timberland hiking shoes, which will hopefully keep her feet dry this winter without having to resort to using plastic bags.

At one of the stores, we met up with another one of her friends, Patrick, who is a visual arts student and aspiring cartoonist. The four of us went to have a quick dinner before they had to take off to Brooklyn for the party, while I went home for my Friday night date with Tara. We finished our Hannibal Lecter mini-marathon with a viewing of Red Dragon and had our pancake breakfast in the morning, which unfortunately was marred by some difficult conversation.

Saturday was also a miserable day weather-wise: cold, drizzly and windy. I got my usual errands and grocery shopping done, and also got a manicure, since my dark purple polish was chipping off, and my nails were getting too long anyway. In the evening we had a nice dinner followed by a quick lesson in poker - five card draw and Texas Hold'Em - in preparation for watching Casino Royale, the last James Bond movie in advance of Quantum of Solace, which we'll go see this weekend.

I'm hoping we will have a full night of playing poker someday soon so I can play all the game variations I used to play with my old poker group (Pearl, Amy, Dominic and Little Vic) like Five Card Double Draw, Follow the Queen, Guts (or Balls, as we called it), and so many others. Good thing I wrote all these games down in a notebook that survived the two fires or else I'd have forgotten them myself. I'll have to poke around and find that.

Sunday we were planning to visit Alex Gray's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors but unfortunately we found out that morning that it's closed on Sundays. Then we wanted to visit the Picassos at Aquavella Galleries, but that too was closed - bleh! So we strolled around Central Park outside the Met and saw Cleopatra's Needle, a five-story high granite obelisk covered with hieroglyphics before going inside and touring the Philippe de Montebello tribute exhibit and the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art.

Busy long weekend, but lots of fun. Plus, I'm so happy that the weather is back to being cold and dry.

Love in the present tense

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've been thinking about my theory of unconditional love that I blogged about back in September ("Theory of unconditional love" - September 24, 2008) and how walking the talk is proving to be something of a challenge for me. Also, I just finished reading Jonathan Carroll's "A Ghost in Love," and that gave me even more to chew about on the subject of love.

What concerns me is that I find myself thinking about the future more than I should, and letting it affect me in the present. This must stop. I've proven adept at letting go of the past, but for me, that's easier than for most people. Thinking about "what might be" should not be allowed to determine the choices in how I live my life today.