murmurations 002
I dreamed two nights ago that I was standing on a balance beam. The beam was long and wooden, but narrower than they usually are, probably only the width of my foot. The room around me was a generic gym-sort of place: low ceilings; a bank of windows to my left, the start-at-shoulder-height bland rectangle kind. A film of early-spring late-morning light was shining in, touching the other people in the room, but they were distant, soft-focus. I could see the teacher waiting at the end of the beam, but he, too, seemed far away and unimportant.
I balanced on the beam, walking slowly down it, foot after foot, arms spread wide. I was nervous, but not afraid; I wobbled, but didn't fall. When I reached the end, pleased with my success so far, I took a cautious little jump. Immediately I could feel that something was off- my little hop allowed me to float gracefully above the beam, reposition my feet, and land easily. It was exhilirating, and surprising, and I laughed before turning to the teacher, questioning.
We've got the gravity set low, he explained, more bounce. Less fall.
I nodded, taking it as given. Of course, the gravity turned low, it made wonderful sense. I began to walk backward on the beam, foot behind foot, head up, arms up, concentrating. At the end, I was back where I had begun, but with a new sense of accomplishment and a rising sense of potential - this was fresh, this was different. I could feel the possibilities spreading out before me. I looked down the beam, and raised my hands for a cartwheel.
More bounce. Less fall.
At a team meeting in my office this past week, the subject of Semitic languages came up. (For a legitimate work reason, tyvm- we have an primarily Arabic journal as a client, and we were discussing some of their text display needs.) This led us down a path which I've traveled before, and along which I always enjoy the scenery, and thus it is your Current Wikipedia Rabbit Hole: namely, Maltese. Maltese, one of the two official languages of the island of Malta, has the distinction of being the only extant Semitic language which developed in Europe, and also the only one to use a Latin script. It is asymmetrically intelligible with Tunisian Arabic, and displays a fairly high rate of code-switching particularly with English. Also, it looks neat.
Dreamlights Radio made a triumphant return last week to the airwaves after a couple of weeks of technical difficulties! It was a great show, and only improved by the wait, imho. This week is the Pt. 2 for this pair of shows: ergo, all the non-jazz songs with "ain't" in the title! Tune in Thursday morning at 7 am PDT to hear everything from Meat Loaf to Styx to Ane Brun. Also hit me up in a reply here or @nmkerr on Twitter if you have any suggestions for shows you'd like to hear!
In other news, I went and saw Marvel: Infinity War in the past fortnight - I thought it was well done, but I think I've hit the point where I'm just meh on the massive-ensemble-cast movies as a genre. I loved Black Panther and Wonder Woman, so it's not the superhero genre as a whole, but in a movie where you have something like 25 "main" characters, it's just really hard for me to get into it enough to care what's happening to them. That said, the Russo brothers did the best they could with such a huge cast, and the writing was solid. I appreciated the effort to make the sentient thumb Thanos a slightly-more-than two dimensional character, and the attempt to provide each character with at least a hint of an emotional arc. I give it 3.5 out of 5 vibranium shields.
Also got to see my buddy C.B. Lee this weekend, which was great! She's got a new book out in her Sidekick Squad series, and I was able to pick up a signed copy, hooray! I'm definitely looking forward to checking it out, and if LGBTQ YA fiction is at all an interest for you, I'd recommend taking a look!
I'm sure you've all been anxiously waiting for #bujo updates, but don't worry, I have a page for you! I think this page is an excellent example of how bullet journaling can be fun, and also occasionally more of a hobby than tool: Was this page fun to make? Absolutely! Does it look neat? You bet it does! Does it serve any real purpose? Well... not really. I already have this info in an app on my phone. Did I totally spend at least a solid hour drawing and coloring 84 little circles? Damn straight I did!
So... yes. Therapeutic. Pretty. Possibly not the best use of my time. Ah, well. (Also, remember to erase your pencil lines before photographing, folks.)
#sportsball
Auuuuggghh Rockets/Warriors is finally here!!! I mean, obviously the Warriors are going to beat the pants off the Rockets, because the Warriors are amazing, but! I still get nervous.
Acro-yoga update: I've been really struggling with getting my body upside down, which is a pretty crucial part of the flying half of acroyoga. I never did any gymnastics or tumbling or anything as a kid, other than ye basic somersault which they teach in kindergarten, and that means that my body really doesn't know what it's supposed to do when it's inverted. It has a lot of questions, like, how do we balance? where do the knees go? and elbows, what about them? is this what it feels like to have your tailbone up? no? what about this? It's a disorienting thing to learn as an adult, especially as a large adult, but I think I finally had a break-through last week! The teacher, who is basically acro-yoga's version of Bob Ross, got me upside down with all the things pointing in the correct directions, and once I was there, I stayed there just fine, and was able to do some of the motions, etc. So! Fingers crossed that, having found "inverted" once, I can find it again.
Before I leave you, I wanted to share this little poll:
I'm trying to discern a frequency for this here email rag, and I'm on the fence. Twice a month keeps me a little more on top of it, I think, but that's also kind of often, and I don't want to spam anyone. Maybe monthly is better? Please to provide your opinion!
Last but not least, I present an excerpt from the Two of Blades.
This photo was taken when I didn't yet know Ivy all that well, but what's a little blindfolding and dagger holding between casual friends? These photos took themselves, and I still love them- it was cold, and windy, and the lighting was just right. You can see our write-ups and all the photos in this series on the Black Widow Honey website.
Sal-ħin li jmiss!