kali

rm gave me a gorgeous bracelet (at some point, I'll take a picture of it and post it -- IHNIIHBT fans will get a kick out of it, I think); hofnarr, some awesome Whovian comics; Dave took me to see Chicago & Tam took me to see Le Corsaire.

I can't wait till the death trinkets begin to roll in! (Kidding. Obviously.)

But TONIGHT there was, courtesy of faris_nallaneen the spectacular surprise of seeing Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer at Housingworks, where among other things, they read, sang, told stories, held hands and gazed adoringly at each other like total cuties (!!!) and finally came out of the closet and admitted that they are fucking dating. (All forms of punctuation appear to apply.)

It was the bit where they asked each other questions (supplied by audience) and Amanda says, "Ooh! I like this question... because I want to hear what you're going to say..."

And Neil says, "uh...."

And Amanda says, "So Neil, given that you and Amanda Palmer were naked in a bathtub together on twitter, are you going to admit that you're fucking dating or what?"

Then she blinked at him expectantly, and he stuttered, "Seriously???"

And then said very quietly, "yes, we've been dating for months."

And then Kali yelled said in a penetrating whisper, "Duh!" (I'd had a few glasses of wine by then.)

They gazed into each other's eyes some more, and then said: "AWKWARD!" and moved on. To Amanda auctioning off "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" + some used stockings for $1300. (!!!)

It was a great night.

There were also steamed clams with fennel and bacon, and an utterly divine caramel balsamic gelato. Mmmmmm.

I love Amanda Palmer. I want to buy all her albums.

TOMORROW THERE WILL BE FIC WRITING, OMG. I promise, you guys. (Especially Rach!)

Also, David Eddings is dead. Weird. I have a more contemplate-y post about authors and celebrity and memory, but that will wait for when I am not tired, achy, and soaked by incidental rainstorm.

If you know me in person, you know I am mostly on time for things. Not always, not every day, but I spend a lot of time on street corners, waiting for people to meet me.

The sad part about this is, of course, that it's made me think of myself as the Person Who Shows Up. (Corollary is, naturally, When Other People Don't.)

Perhaps you know the feeling? You're waiting by a predetermined location. It's cold. You eye the crowd, picking out a jacket color that looks familiar, or a certain way of walking. There they are, you think excitedly, this is them! But they come closer, resolve into focus and out of expectation and you realize it's not the person you're waiting for at all, wrong hat, wrong height, wrong face, wrong, wrong, wrong.

And then you wait some more, and do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If I changed this around a little bit, tweaked the metaphor, it could be a description of my entire childhood and adolescence. Longing, waiting, expecting, and the inevitable rush of disappointment. Over and over and over: waiting to be met, perfected, chosen.

Never happened.

That's true. It never did.

Because the trouble is, of course, while you're waiting, you have tunnel vision. You miss a lot of stuff. In the background, over there. While I was waiting to become cool, to become a musical prodigy, to have some stupid boy fall in love with me -- things were happening. Ordinary things. I was being chosen, and not only did I not know it at the time, if I had, I probably wouldn't have cared.

In an elevator, I was about a year and a half old, a toddler, and going down to the laundry room with my mother. The woman who lived in the apartment above us was in the elevator too. Somehow, and I don't know why or how, she met my eyes -- and she must have fallen in love. That's what she says, anyway. Flash forward a little more than a decade, and she's taking me with her on a trip to Tennessee, and a little place called Highlander.

It's there that I meet Rosa Parks, who tells me that she thinks I'm stubborn & tenacious. And that means I'll do great things. It got her places, after all. I don't really care; I'm much more concerned about not getting that solo in chorus.

A few years later, I'm in high school. We're singing with Pete Seeger in some concert in Central Park. Sweet Honey in the Rock is there too, and out of the chorus rehearsal, Bernice Johnson Reagon picks me out of the line - (I'm in front because I am short.) She calls my name, says in that deep, rolling voice of hers: "How are you doing? Remember you used to sing for us in that apartment in DC? We talk about you all the time... Don't you waste your promise, child."

I didn't really care about that either; just an old lady I can barely remember from when I was a kid, nattering on. Not important. Much more concerned with an argument I'm having with my friends, and how lonely I feel all the time. No one sees me, I think. A few weeks after this, I perform a social experiment: I stop speaking except when absolutely necessary for three weeks, to see if anyone notices. No one seems to, and I feel humiliated. And vindicated in my humiliation.

There's so many of these encounters, I can't even tell you.

I met someone in an elevator -- not that I remember it, I've just been told -- and they fell in love. That had nothing to do with me, I was just a toddler. It was just grace. Luck. And because of it, I was a child who was known to so much of the civil rights movement -- heroes, REAL heroes -- and I didn't notice or care.

Today I heard that Odetta died.

I don't know what to say except that I wish I had appreciated being chosen to be a child in the presence of greatness like that.

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.
-Henry Vaughan

I learned that poem, and an innumerable host of things that I cannot catalogue from the novels of Madeleine L'Engle.

Who died yesterday.

I've known she was sick for a very long time, and it's good that she's at peace now, but I am...I don't know. Utterly, utterly sad.

I loved those novels, and I hope somewhere in Lucien's library I will one day find a copy of The Other Side of the Sun.

Thank you, Johnny, and good night.