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100 Things about Crystal

What an incredibly narcissistic thing to do. How easy to lay out your life in 100 easy steps. Then again, what is this site, but an exercise in reflection. Our lives. Our thoughts. The reflexive desire to write the intimate in the least connective of settings. Begin.

I am woman, hear my evil laugh unfurl. Curl. Churn the distances between.

I am near sighted. Not so much that I can’t do and play and sans glasses, but driving would be a very bad idea.

Blue near sighted eyes. Blond when I’m given the time to go outside. Long, long hair because I can’t be bothered to cut it. Straight. Straight hair. Straight teeth. Curving mind.

I can believe three diametrically opposing things before breakfast. Argue passionately one. Believe fervently another. Murmur under breath a third. Spin. All valid and true, because everything’s subjective. Even subjectivity. Life is hard when you’re a cubist. Even when I’m not and I’m exactly as straight forward as I seem.

I am however really bad at math.

I am also very bad at foreign languages, which is odd because sometimes I can speak French. Okay, bad French, but I can get by in France, so whatever.

Obsess much? Certain ideas have spark. They consume me. I feel them running in my blood like inevitable wine dark seas and I give in. Burn up. Wash away. See where they take me.

First remembered obsession. When I was in the fourth grade I read twenty sum books on Greek Mythology because I wanted, I needed to know. But you can’t fake it. North Mythology just wasn’t the same.

When I was a child I used to lay a deck of cards in order of suit on the floor then slide them out of sequence. Then back again.

Around the same time, I loved to draw mazes on grid paper. Sometimes mazes connecting to mazes on other sheets.

I also had an imaginary herd of horses, with a variety of names and abilities. Speed. Flight. Running.

I loved to run and I’m inclined to think that I was pretty fast.

I still walk very fast.

I was (and still am) fascinated by fire. I was constantly lighting candles and watching them. Collecting wax. However, never try and put out a wax fire with water. Valuable lesson.

I constantly built tents in our backyard. From the clothes rack. From my play house. Around a box. Although, in retrospect perhaps my fascination with building little alters with candles in my tents may not have been a good mix.

I never had any pets as a child. My parents were both raised on farms and animals had to have a purpose. Okay, I once had a collection of twenty or so snails all named Fred (well, who could tell them apart.). I eventually mass murdered Freds, because you know they were snails and couldn’t exactly release them into the wild of mom’s garden. I gathered them all together in the spot where we buried Ralph, the bird that ran into the window, and I crushed them. Then I poured some of mom's perfume on them in a myrrh and frankincense sort of way.

I had a play house that my mother built under the eaves of our house. It was two stories tall (in play house fashion). The ground floor had a trap door with a sandbox under it. The top was just under the houses eaves. I was actually afraid of the sandbox area, because I saw a black spider there. And also, it’s where we stored the trash cans when the trap door was down. I liked the second story though.

I decided to avoid the sun/tans at an early age. I think of it as a long term investment in health and beauty. And you know, the whole family history of cancer thing.

I didn’t learn to drive (i.e. get my driver’s license) until I was 20. Just wasn’t interested. I rode my bicycle everywhere or took the bus. Or bicycle and the bus.

Historical obsessions. After reading the Seven Pillars of Wisdom I read dozens of books about T. E. Lawrence. A. E. Ross. Now there was a mercurial man. Lots of issues and yet every person who met him described him as an Enabler, someone who enabled others to reach the best parts of themselves. Certainly something I’d aspire to be if only part time. Maybe.

I talk to myself constantly. And by this I mean every single moment that I’m not talking to someone or working, I’m talking to myself. I imagine stories and plot lines. Often the thing that obsesses me the most at the time. Or just conversations. Snap at threads of philosophical thought.

Famous obsession, well at least with me. Watching Fred Astaire dance in Top Hot, as I slouched in comforting chair. The absolute precision of his steps. The counter pointed music of tap fascinated. I’ve seen all the movies. Read the books, guy was interesting in a boring way. Very Core universe. I know all sorts of factoids, which I won’t share here, because that wouldn’t be about me. The point of this narcissistic exercise. I’ve made a great big Fred Astaire dances tape. All Fred Astaire dancing. Hours and hours. Good when I’m drinking round wine and giddy on life.

I enjoy good wine. Life is too short for vinegar or sugary. I want dark complex depths. Layers of flavor. Smooth. Lush. Chocolate and apple and lychee and butterscotch and vanilla. But not at the same time, because that would wrong and kind of icky.

“Half way through the journey of our lives, I came to myself in a dark wood and found the true was lost.” I love that line. That place that we’ve all been. Lost. Alone. Not sure of the path to take. In a wood that is not lovely, dark and deep, but more of the scary side of the afraid.

Writing is the dripping honey obsession. Nothing can be possibly as sweet as the flow of fiction, words that I didn’t even know a moment before I type them, flowing from, away, becoming the thing. The story. When it goes right. When it sits and sulks it is another thing entirely. These days I write so little fiction. Mostly facts like this. But if I can just fight me way through the projects, then I will get to write again.

Although, it will always be for myself, because I can’t stand criticism of anything into which I put my heart. And I am perfectly aware that no-one’s writing is perfect.

Oddly, enough factual writing is different. I make my living writing. I am a technical writer. I get criticized all the time. Whatever.

I don’t like reading manuals.

I hate being told what to do. I don’t like following sewing instructions. I hate unsolicited advice. I actually don’t like solicited advice. If I weren’t so rational, I’d pretty much do the opposite of every suggesting, they annoy me so much. But you know, blah, blah, personal responsibility, choice, blady, blady blah.

Karen is about the only person that I’ve ever met that can tell me to do something and I don’t automatically want to slay, do battle with, fight the good fight, fight the man, etc. For that alone, I would enjoy living with her, but beyond that I quite enjoy living the life of a Philosopher Queen, who is also a Danger Twin.

I’m very project oriented. Goals. Goals Goals. Everything is about drive. When I don’t complete a project it bothers. Like the unwanted guest at the feast. Stands in the corner watching. Hollow eyed waiting. I’m constantly creating and working on projects. I know I’ll never be free of the pile, because I keep coming up with new ones.

This also makes me a bit of a workaholic. Well, when I have a project due at work, I work long hours. I always seem to have projects due.

I once spent three months hand sewing a corset. I have an unmade suit sitting in a drawer two years taunting me

I believe that we do the things that we want to do. The things that we don’t do are most often the things that we didn’t really desire. Didn’t hunger for strongly enough. Or perhaps even want at all. So, if I don’t do something, I try to be self aware as to why. Because the excuse that I say is never the actual reason.

I finished my Bachelor’s degree in four years. Honors in my Major. French/English Literature. I later went to night class from 1994 to 1999. Trying to find some niche. Learn what it was I wanted to do and then the skills to do it.

At one point, I was so poor that I washed my clothes in my bathtub. Had twenty dollars a week with which to eat. Then again, I was trying to pay for night school and a social life. Travel of some small sort. So, clothes in bathtub was a fair exchange.

Sometimes when Karen is away, I wash some clothes in the bathtub to remind myself of some ephemeral inexplicable thing.

There was a time I went out five, six nights a week. Two, Three classes. Active social life. Long hours at work. That was when I thought I was infinite. I’m not. I can’t watch Iron Giant to this day because when I was looking for parking to go see the movie, I broke down in tears. I was so tired. It’s an odd thing to reach the end of yourself. To realize that your own choices are breaking the fabric of you. Time to choose a change.

I believe everything is about choice. I choose my life. I am responsible for my actions, my emotions, everything. It’s easy to say that people make you sad or happy, but really it’s all about my triggers, my patterns, my scripts. My responsibility to take charge of my choices.

Because if I don’t, then I’ll never be me. And my goal in life is to be the absolute most me that I can be. Me isn’t necessarily nice or kind and well, you know, whatever. My only obligation is to suppress the desire to prevent you from being you. Didn’t you know I’m the center of the universe. I’m writing a hundred things to prove it. This was kind of a turning point decision for me because I’m not as cheerful, outgoing, positive as I may appear. However, pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain’s folds.

In Meyers Briggs I’m an INTJ. Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging. I think about everything. Yet, ultimately my decisions are all emotional intuitive leaps of faith. The less said about judging the better. I am introverted. Too many people are like this great big life forcesuckingness beings. Odd as it may seem to anyone who has ever met me, but I’m actually quite shy. I just choose the other thing. To do less would be a waste of time.

I have a hard time admitting when I’m sick. I’ve generally been ill two or three days before I mention it. I’ll turn green and begin the putrification process before I’ll take time off work. Although, I have recently discovered work from home, which is a nice compromise from infecting all my work mates.

I turned green once (okay twice if you believe Christy). When I was working in England. My boss took one look at me and sent me home, cause you know green. I even called in sick the next day. A momentous event in many ways, especially since I had to do it from a payphone on the street corner in the sleet. My bedsit didn’t have an outgoing line.

I feel guilty when I ask for time off work, although I never feel bad when I’m actually away from work.

When I a little spark, my family did a fair amount of camping. By which I mean we each carried a backpack out for several days hiking up into the nowhere and camped. I was quite startled as an adult to discover this car camping concept. Showers. Bathrooms. Wow!

On one of these camping trips, we hiked over a 7000 ft pass. Just below the summit my parents made Macaroni and Cheese to which they added freeze dried vegetables. I fairly carefully picked out individual noodles to eat. Vegetables are bio-degradable and the outdoors are full of rocks. This took awhile and I didn't get much to eat. To this day, it's a bone of some contention, did I have altitude sickness or was I just hungry and cranky because after a day's hike I got half a bowl of macaroni. Guess which theory I ascribe too. Damn vegetables.

I am a carnivore. I always think it’s funny to listen to vegetarians, because I would die by that lifestyle. I hate vegetables. And often when I try to make myself eat food I don’t like, I just don’t eat. And that’s never good.

I have had braces, retainers (top and bottom) and head gear. It took awhile to re-learn smiling for pictures.

When I don’t get enough sleep and I skip meals, I get really brooding in the desert for twenty years on the meaning of lifeish. It’s really weird. Or cranky. I much prefer the cranky.

And then there were the teen years, well really just the summer we moved to the Bay Area, where I would stay up for 24 hours or so, watching Doctor Who, not eating, devouring books, getting dizzy. I spent my food money on books. I still love to read, but food is also good.

I lived in the same house until I was fourteen. From then until 27, I moved at least every two years.

I currently have a wonderful apartment on the Bay. It’s a cold beach we have, but it’s a beach.

When my parents divorced, they assured me that it had nothing to do with me. My response was that of course, it was because they argued all the time. Why would it have anything to do with me? Duh. (well, it was the 80s.)

I love to travel. I’ve been to nineteen countries, four continents, forty-five of the fifty United States.

When I graduated from college, I went to live in England for six months. Another three months in Ireland. Then I traveled for a month. I owned nothing. Had no debts. Was completely responsible for everything that was me. I went to Prague because I heard it was cool. It was.

I vote in every November election. If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain. So, there. So much for cubist.

If people don’t like me, well, okay then. One of the most valuable things my mother ever told me was that not everyone in this life was going to like me, but that was okay. It’s enormously freeing. Especially, since when all is said and done, I’m amazingly cranky. It’s nice knowing that you don’t have to like everyone too and that they’ll live, even if I am one hundred facts of the center of the universe.

I like dancing. The movement. The freedom. But not dances with set specific steps. Line dancing or set dances. I just want to do whatever dance. I like ballroom because it has the basic form, but all the freedom to just mix it up. I’m also amazingly silly.

My favorite dance is Danse Macabre, because I can feel the desperation to enjoy that final dance. Spin. Give into the music.

Musical tastes, I like lots of things. Metallica. Enya. I don’t like sappy soft music. I want drive in my music.

Sure sign that I’m sick or tired. I start reading Harlequin romances. It means my brain isn’t capable of anything but the same plot over and over, with hopefully a nice coating of language and emotion. Or not, I buy them at thrift stores. It’s like cheap candy. I don’t expect much.

I don’t like social hugging. I only want to hug the people that I’ve given the keys to my emotional kingdom. Everyone else, well I put up with it. Grr Argh.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my favorite t.v. shows of all time. The pop culture. The kick ass heroine. The layers and layers of symbolism oceans deep. Glowing darkness. Deepening light. Joss Whedon is a freaking genius.

My favorite word for a color is incarnadine. I’m not sure I have a favorite color.

Every week I talk to my father on the phone and we use really big words. He used to be a trial lawyer and I know he enjoys the mental exercise. I like its perspicacious flex as well.

The first time I ever experienced Stendhal’s Syndrome was standing on the deck of a ship sailing up the Bosporus. Night. Lake smooth water, silvered glass, misted with a light fog. The world was made of silver under a bright moon. Everything was so incredibly alive and quiet and still, but for the soft wake of the ship. The winking lights in the distance. People on their islands. Alone in the silver night. It was like the night filled me up with its soft light and I gave up, gave in, watched.

The best trip that I ever took was to France with Karen and my mother. We saw absolutely incredible things. I saw castles and cathedrals and cave paintings thousands of years old. Standing there, look at these pictures of color and perspective and knowing this was a person just like me. Reaching out and forward even as I stood there reaching back to understand their world. Well worth the eight hours of furious driving it took to get there. We arrived with ten minutes to spare.

Almost every picture of me as a child is of me in costume. I love exploring the me. The faces. The masks. The subtle slices. Really all clothes are costumes. Have I mentioned narcissism yet?

The best costume purchase I ever made was my leather waist cinch. Totally worth it. And plus, sexy. Well, come on it’s not all Stendhal and Dante.

Technology is a wonderful thing. No matter how much I like the clothes from another era, I’m incredibly glad that I live now. I like the vote. And you know, penicillin.

My Grandma Carroll was a painter. I can’t draw, but I compulsively change photos of us in costume in Photoshop. I wish she’d lived long enough for me to show her.

I find jeans really uncomfortable. I like corsetry, but for some reason not a tight waist band. I like pants that gape and don’t actually fit.

I watch cartoons. If they’re good.

I am sci fi. I am also romance. Some mystery. No wait, I am genre. Now if they would just create the genre channel.

When I go on vacation, a big one, I make a book out of the photos. Not just pictures, but words. The feel of the trip, so that it’s amber caught for future years when I’m missing my knees when they’re gone and reading my life in reverse.

I, I, I. I don’t like games, arguments or praise. Okay, I like praise, but I both desire and don’t desire it. I never quite know how to deal with it. It embarrasses me with riches. You do your job, your task, your passion as well as you can and there it is.

It’s one of the odd things about being a Christian. Okay a weird I have my own take on the Bible, which I have read cover to cover, don’t go to Church because I don’t agree with other people’s interpretations, don’t tell me what to believe Christian. As much as possible, I don’t think about Heaven. I want to believe with absolutely no expectation of reward. The God I believe in has no need of bribes or prices or defense. God doesn’t need my defense. God is bigger than me and probably a lot smarter. Plus infinite wardrobe space. God is the ultimate costumer.

I’m a Scorpio and a Bull, which puts my birthday at 11/07/71.

I’m currently 31 and I like it. I don’t quite get the nostalgia for teen years or early twenties. I cried all the time and everything hurt my feelings. Crazy people always sat next to me on the bus. No I do not look like your ex-wife. That would be illegal. Eww…And I had no money. Thirties are nice. Emotionally stable, secure is a nice place to be. Plus crazy people not as much a problem.

My first not involving my parent’s job was at a used book store where I used to hang out in Willow Glen. It’s a wonderful place. Kinda rambly and big. My job was to sit out front with a book display and sell books and do my homework when there was no one to sell books to, but I always wanted to come inside.

My first trip far and away abroad was Greece. All year these girls had been teasing me, “What are you going to do?” My reply, because we were studying Greece was, “Going to Greece.” I was well trained when mom asked where I wanted to go on vacation.

I love to read. That sense of loosing myself in a new world. Exploring what does not exist.

I am a faux morning person. I can wake up perfectly well. Early. No trace of drowsy. But, I don’t actually like to work in the mornings. I’m never very productive. However, every day at around 3:00 or 4:00, something clicks and everything starts to fall together. Right about when it’s time to leave work, which is why I have very little problem working long hours. Well, I resent going in early, but late, I’m just getting started.

My favorite writers, Lois McMaster Bujold, well, she’s the one I keep going back gnawing on. She has such great quotes. I often think of her main character, Miles Vorkosigans, struggle with self in Memory. As he seeks to find that core of himself, the place beyond which he will not go. “The only thing you shouldn’t give up to get your heart’s desire is your heart.” Or something like that.

I combined a love of Lois and travel and mapped a star chart of her books. It’s about time I go through and refresh it. Along with a hundred other should soon do projects.

I went to UC Santa Cruz. Yes, I am a Banana Slug. We didn’t have grades (narrative evaluations), we shopped for classes and there were more trees than buildings.

For some reason, in that college sort of way, in my first year my friends and I decided to be the four horsemen. I was war, because my comment when watching any horror movie was, just kill him or nuke him.

At one point we were going to make a movie, The Space Monkies from the Andromeda System (the joke is that Andromeda is a galaxy not a system). We wrote a script. Cast people. Came up with a great recipe for blood (water, red food dye, coffee to make it brownish, flour to thicken it. Much cheaper than kyro syrup). And never had a camera to film the thing. We built a great mother ship though, which we tossed repeatedly off our dorm room. It is exceptionally sturdy.

In college, my sport of choice, saber fencing. It was a lot of fun and great exercise.

I’m fascinated by history. Because it’s just one great big story. And it’s the most important story, because everything that happens in the now, grows out of the then.

Then again, I can’t stand watching the news. I find it depressing. Printed/net media is better. I can skip around and pause the inflow of information at my pleasure.

I don’t like watching sports. Boring. I don’t like games. Boring and frustrating.

When I was in junior high, I rode my bicycle to school.

Every day as I made that trip, I past this little girl, grammar school age, going the opposite direction. She’d trudge along. Tired. I decided that I’d smile every time I past her on the way. No matter how I felt. Tired. Sick. Smile for ten seconds as I past that little girl. After awhile, she smiled back. And after a bit, I could tell that she was waiting at a particular corner for me to go by. The last time I rode that way, before we moved, I stopped and introduced myself. I wish I could remember her name. I’m very bad with names.

When I was five, my father and I went to Disneyland. He took me on Space Mountain. I asked him if it was a fast ride. He said that it wasn’t. I rode the ride. Didn’t scream, just gripped the handlebar. When we got off I told him that if I had a little girl and if she asked me if a ride was fast, I’d tell her the truth. Poor man.

When I was five, on that same trip to Disneyland, I wanted one of those giant multicolored lollipops, but I couldn’t have one until I was nine. Ah, arbitrary nine. So, I waited. Each year it was a little closer. When I was nine, we bought one. It tasted like green beans. I gave it to my cousins when they came for a visit.

Oooh, the last five. My favorite website/net board that isn’t mine, All Things Philosophical About Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fascinating discussions of literature and history and Buffy.

When we retire, if life makes such things possible, Karen and I are planning on moving to London for a spring, a summer and a fall. Get a little flat. Be little old ladies wandering around a great old city. A great old country.

In the more short term, we are saving to buy a house. Okay, a condo/townhouse, which is all that we can afford, in a Bay Area prices sort of way.

I love my lifeamgood life.

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