Personal

So I’m taking a PTO day today – not having felt too well after a late-night maintenance window for work (I know, 2am isn’t that late for me, but I think it was just catching up with me). And I’m checking emails, and doing the morning check over on facebook to see what’s going on in the world and my cousin Traci is online with a semi-cryptic status line about prayers needed for Kelli.

Now I’ll grant you that after my folks divorce I wasn’t too close to that side (paternal) of the family. But over the last year or so it’s been nice chatting with many of them again by way of MySpace, FB, etc. I’m famously not hot w/ names, but something was ringing a bell. On checking her page I find a link and after some hunting, here’s the answer:

Worst fears of mother, girlfriend prove true

Police: Dad Who Killed Daughter Threatened Suicide Before

The unnamed mother is my cousin, and the Kelli mentioned was her only child. Now I never had the opportunity to meet Kelli, but I’m just shaken to the core. I’ve made travel arrangements already, now just waiting to find out what hotel everyone is staying at.

Traci was my closest and fondest cousin of that side of the family – also being the only one that I was closest to in age (only a few years my junior). I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s feeling. An accident, whatever, would be one thing, but something like this is quite another.

I hadn’t exactly expected to do the paternal reunion this way, but like I told my Aunt, I think my dad and I can hold off on the grudge for the time being. This rather trumps our beef. Just wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.

They’re heading back to Gobles, MI which is where they’d lived previously. Viewing is Friday, and Funeral is Saturday. Gobles, near Kalamazoo. I didn’t even really think Kalamazoo was a real place, more like Shangra-la. 6″ of snow they tell me, 8 degrees above zero today when adjusted for the wind chill.

Yes, I’m just rambling now. Don’t mind me. Just trying to process it…

You know when there’s a wedding that the ceremony makes mention of Cthulhu, zombies, the apocalypse, and brains – it’s going to be cool. Until Kendra’s wedding, the one’s I’d been to where people would describe a wedding as “being reflective of the couple’s personality.” They would tend to be an exercise in freaking out the muggles, or just plain campy (not in a good way), or come off as neither sincere nor anything other than a bizarre series of in-jokes.

Most recently Matt & Michelle’s, probably the singularly most fun wedding I’d ever had the pleasure of attending. It was fun, light hearted, sincere (the expression of simply love and joy at Michelle’s reciting of her vows to Matt was probably the most amazing look of adoration that I’ve ever seen), and overall just a rock’n good time.

I really didn’t think the photographers would really fully understand what all was going on. I was wrong. Fully. They didn’t just “get it” they were able to emote in their slideshow of the wedding and the reception the favor and feel of the evening.

Thanks again guys for having invited me. Without further adieu, here’s the slideshow (and be sure to have the sound on to enjoy the music).

http://www.chungliphotography.com/w/michelle_matt/highlight_slideshow/

THE WORLD should look different today, but it does not. The streets look much the same as they did Tuesday, Monday and many days before. The leaves are piling in the gutters and kicked aside by children on their way to meet the school bus. A wet wind gusts out of the south, promising one more day of warm weather before autumn reality returns.

On the day after Barack Obama’s election, San Francisco and the nation are physically unchanged, and that seems wrong.

It seems wrong because so many things have changed in the past 24 hours — expectations, assumptions and old, worn-out certainties.

None of that is visible today, because little has changed in the world:

Only hearts and minds.

So Palin continues to deride those areas and individuals who don’t vote Republican in the election, that they’re really anti-American. They’re traitors to their country, and they don’t really love god, the flag, or apple pie.

I was reading over a post by a blogger who was extolling how Palin will ride to the rescue in 2012. Why this soccer mom – the idea of a muggle deciding to get involved in politics is a nice idea, even up to the state legislature level – getting any real consideration. All she can do is evade answers to any real questions. She’s uneducated, uninformed, and dangerously so backwater that I wonder how she allows herself out of the house (her mentality is shades of women supposed to be barefoot and pregnant).

I suppose what pisses me off most about this election more than most is that the Republican’s only option is to come from a platform of fear. If you don’t vote for us, you’re a trator. If you don’t vote for us, you’re killing our children by encouraging terrorists to bomb the US. The lists goes on.

Big city people have an infinitely better sense of the bigger picture than yokels from backwater hamlets. But it’s just those small town, small minded people who are still clinging on to the idea that those WMDs are still out there in Iraq. All they know is their own backyard and care about the next PTA meeting. There’s nothing wrong with living in a small town, but really, don’t pretend to know about (or care about) things that go on in the world that happen beyond the county lines. Palin’s a great one to push for the new bake sale, but she has no business being on a national (let alone international) stage.

Of all the Faire seasons of recent memory (now granted I’m already well famous for having a somewhat spotty one at this point), I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced or seen one quite as rough on a personal side as this one.

I don’t think there’s a producer I know of that hasn’t had deeply personal problems this year: separations, divorces, major surgery, death in the immediate family, loss of home, loss of job, everything one could imagine almost. With each next person chiming in that they had to take some personal time to step back, another story was waiting around the next corner.

It seems like another lifetime ago when I hopped into the car to head off to set up for the Symposium weekend back in Feb. I still have a particular feeling that I’d gone up the hill to Tahoe, but never came back down again. I wonder what it’ll be like to go back again next year – who will I be by then, how will it feel to go back to where really everything started (and ended).

Life goes on. So does hope, and aspirations, and love, and friendships. Even as close as it got this past year to it not going on – I learned a great deal about myself and about what I want out of life, both in the near as well as longer term.

And I learned to no longer be afraid. Of myself most notably. I’d blamed faire for many of my behaviors – but doing so was really like an alcoholic on a bar for their addiction. It was a crutch, an enabler, but I was letting myself get swept along instead of standing up and doing what I really wanted most.

Now for the Holiday season, and then to 2009. I hope most earnestly that 09 is a vast improvement for myself, my friends, and my loved ones over what came in 08.