My mom, dad, sister, and I celebrated Christmas with my mom's side of the family, since most of my dad's side of the family is a) extended, b) scattered throughout the States and the world, c) actually kinda religious. Whereas my mom's side of the family is Jewish, so we just get together for Christmas as an excuse to see one another, eat tons of delicious food, and give each other nice gifts.

So I spent yesterday at my grandparents' beach house, enjoying deli food and dim sum that I otherwise don't get to eat very frequently, and enjoying the company of my family members that I don't get to see very frequently. I took a long walk on the beach with my sister, compared knitting tips with one of my aunts, hit up my grandma for poi tips... oh! Yes, that's right, my grandma used to do Polynesian dance, performing with a troupe even, and she was able to tell me all kinds of neat things about the Maori poi traditions. She said if she found her old poi set she'd give them to me! In turn, I showed her some Youtube vids by Molly Wyldfyre, one of my favorite fire dancers and someone who's local to me in Indiana too. My grandma thought her dancing was very neat, though quite far from traditional/authentic. But it's what seems to speak to modern audiences these days--music, movements, and costumes they can relate to. It's parallel to what we of Different Drummer Belly Dancers do with Middle Eastern dance for modern audiences.

I'm kinda itching to learn to dance with fire now... probably I'll just start practicing with the practice-poi I have in my apartment, and try to link up with some fire dancers in Indiana to start learning about fire safety, and from there move on to more stationary types of fire dancing (brushing up on my candle dancing, maybe investing in fingers or fans) before considering lighting up and spinning.

I realized yesterday that our family is still very gift-giving-oriented, even for grown-ups. My parents got me a nice pair of winter boots, and my mom got me this flask. From aunts and grandparents I received many things, including some fabulous cookbooks: Larousse Gastronomique (THE food encyclopedia), Baking Illustrated, and Babycakes (recipes from a vegan, mostly-gluten free bakery), along with assorted other gifts to help me on my way with my pursuits. Yes, I realize that I am spoiled rotten. I think my family is very caring and likes to express this in concrete ways, hence all the gift-giving.

So, Christmas was nice, in a completely secular, family-and-food-oriented kind of way. I also taught my sister how to knit and got to chat with Pan, who remains in the frozen winter wastes. I'm actually not minding the thought of returning to Indiana, because I love my peeps there and am looking forward to my research there.

I was going to post about something I hate. Something holiday-related, insofar as childish negative reactions to the holidays are holiday-related.

But it's Christmas Eve, so even though I'm sick and operating on five hours of sleep, I'm in pretty good spirits. I worked 11.5 hours yesterday so I'd only have to put in four hours today. After that, it's a long weekend of feasting, relaxing, and spending time with family. AKA better things to do with my time than cycle more hate into the internet.

"We the American working population
Hate the fact that eight hours a day
Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us
And we may not hate our jobs
But we hate jobs in general
That don't have to do with fighting our own causes.
We the American working population
Hate the nine-to-five day-in/day-out
When we'd rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the pastimes
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope"
- Aesop Rock - "9-5er's Anthem"

[A]t the very heart of sexist thought is the assumption that the bodies we are born with ought to dictate our character, our behaviour, our appearance, our choices, the nature of our relationships and the work of our lives. Feminism puts forward the still-radical notion that this is not the case. Feminism holds that gender identity, rather than being written in our genes, is an emotional, personal and sexual state of being that can be expressed in myriad different ways that encompass and extend beyond the binary categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Feminism holds that prescribed gender roles are a tyranny that no-one - whether trans, cis, male, female or intersex - should be forced to conform to in order to prove their identity, their validity or their human worth.

(thanks, amazon_syren!)

So, thanks to someone's fuckup at work, I'm not going to be able to take advantage of the offer to work a four-hour day. In fact, I'm going to have to put in 9.5 hours each tomorrow and Wednesday just to work the usual six hours at the end of the week. It's not too big a deal; I've worked plenty of Christmas Eves in the past. But I was looking forward to it and it's still irritating to have someone else's mistake mess up my plans.

I might request a couple hours off to make up for it, but I'm not sure I want to make waves. And getting time off on the week of Christmas is nearly impossible.

I'm posting this in large part so I can have the recipe handy for later... but also to share it with my peeps in case anyone is interested!

This is the recipe my family uses. Makes 2 (small-ish) drinks.

1/4 cup pear brandy (my mom makes her own)
2 Tbsp unsweetened pear nectar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp simple syrup

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour ingredients in. Cover and shake vigorously for one minute. Strain and pour into chilled martini glasses. If desired, garnish with thin pear slices, or rim glasses with lemon juice and dip into coarse/raw sugar.

I'm not a great mixologist, and I recently tried my hand at these and they're delicious!

I've been wanting to post about Catherynne M. Valente's novel Palimpsest for a while now. I'm not certain that after two readings and much thinking, my thoughts are any more coherent than they might've been after that first mind-blowing experience with the book.

Short version is, it's an amazing novel, and you should read it.

There perhaps should be a caveat that this is a book somewhat about sex, and so you have to be okay with some amount of reading about sex. I would not, however, state that the book is only about sex; rather, this book is about desire.

I saw the book described as being about a sexually transmitted city; that seems to sum it up even better.

But to return to the idea of the book being about desire, well, that's one of the book's core themes. Desire for a sense of belonging, desire for one's lost lover or sister, desire for a place to call home, desire to be a home... this book is a tantalizing, delicious, and sometimes erotic journey through various states of desire, and the protagonists' increasingly maddening and mad attempts to access their desires.

It is also a book about homes, about immigration, about loss and coping and grief and sublime love.

It could be described as a work of fantasy, or magic realism, or metaphor... I've seen the book described as myth or fairy tale, and as a folklorist, I have to contest the use of those terms as we use them to refer to quite specific genres from oral tradition. Certainly, the book incorporates motifs, elements, and plot structures from myth and fairy tale, most notably the quest/journey. Some of my favorite fairy-tale motifs to appear in the book are incest and dismemberment; there are also people with the heads of animals, rivers of milk, and sentient trains. Valente draws on folklore and incorporates it seamlessly into her writing, but her writing is not itself folklore.

The book outright seduced me, and I think everyone should read it. (it boggles my mind that my ex put the book down after a few chapters, saying it felt smutty; just one more reason it didn't work out, I suppose)

Better yet, the book takes on a meta level of meaningfulness once you've read it, and once you know people who've read it... you can talk about turning your rings inward or outward; you can say whether you feel like you had to flee a situation like the chimera fleeing her saint; you can speak of the maps that mark (mar?) our bodies and our loves and our lives. In this sense, Valente has created an astounding and pervasive realm of folklore, an ecosystem of traditions that inhabits her work and reaches outward to inhabit us.

Or, as Pan and I discussed over omelets and Irish breakfast tea one morning: We should find a way to Palimpsest. Make our own map. Or make our own city--become our own Palimpsest--where our desires can roam free. We'll create Palimpsest here, and explore and intertwine our loves and lives, no matter how deviant, and become a waystation for other travelers looking for home.

(if only the book I have to review for an academic journal, though on revised fairy tales, were so interesting... but in the spring I'm presenting a conference paper on Valente's Orphan's Tales, which ought to be really fun to research and write...)

When I flew into L.A. at the beginning of this week, I was taken out to dinner at marché LA, a restaurant opened by one of the people associated with Palate (a wonderful food experience in and of itself; they offer a "porkfolio" appetizer, need I say more?). Our dinner at marché was delightful: the service was inobtrusive and prompt, and the dishes were all delicious and inventive. The menu is like a cross between a prix fixe menu and a tapas menu; the dishes were all more-or-less a la carte and meant to be shared. The culinary influences ranged from the obvious French overtones (such as the coddled hen's egg with shaved truffle appetizer) to a truly Californian emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients reminiscent of Alice Waters's cuisine. We had lamb, a fois gras pate with cherry preserves and brioche, orange-cured olives, house-cured veal tongue pastrami, baby carrots with violet artichokes, and more. The mocha creme brulee that we had for dessert, which came with house-made donuts, was phenomenal. We shared a bottle of Sangiovese that complemented everything we put in our mouths. In short, totally worth checking out.

I've been treated to Mexican food, specifically huevos rancheros, at Carrillo's (a great local place on Sherman Way near Corbin), Brazilian BBQ in Long Beach, and eggplant parmigiana sandwiches at the Bay Cities Italian Deli in Santa Monica. Oh, and during our trip to drool over the kitchen goods at Surfas, my parents and I shared a Valrhona dark chocolate brownie to go with our espresso... yum! (if I had my way, I'd only ever bake with Valrhona chocolate, but that shit's expensive!) We've also brought home bagels from Western Bagel, which I've been eating the traditional way: lightly toasted with lox and cream cheese on top.

In terms of home-cooked meals, we've had chicken marsala, my mom's pear-caramel ice cream, my mom's pumpkin whoopie pies, roasted chicken, pasta with veggies and pesto from our garden, fig tart, and a stunning coq au vin and quinoa pilaf combination that I assisted lifeofreilly with the making of while hanging out.

I've felt the urge to knit again, so my mom and I looked up local yarn stores and ended up at La Knitterie Parisienne, which has one of the best yarn selections I've seen in my entire life. And in the few years that I've been knitting, I've managed to visit a lot of yarn stores!

So, good times have been had here in L.A. I've also made it out for a number of very nice, very sunny, very non-freezing-temperature runs, and spent some quality time with my dog. I'm looking forward to time with my sister and a handful of friends, and hopefully also some peace and quiet so I can catch up on my academic obligations like book reviews and essay revisions and dissertation research and the like.

Updating from the Indianapolis Airport before I head out to L.A. to see family and friends. I'll be there til January 4th, hopefully also getting research/reading done and getting in exercise and eating and all that good stuff.

Hopefully the pear brandy will be ready to drink by the time I get back...

So I got dressed up today to attend Dark Side Tribal's winter hafla. It was quite fun. d_c_m and I did a fun tribal improv duet to a Watcha Clan song, wherein we showcased many of our new fun cues, including a grapevine thing I invented that is also kinda inspired by Unmata. I enjoyed dancing as well as watching everyone else dance. I feel like watching tribal improv, when you know how it works, is really engaging and intriguing because it lays open the creative process and lets you observe expressive culture in motion. Everyone should give an improvised art form--whether it be tribal improv belly dance or jazz music--a try, in my opinion.

I also decided that since I was all pretty, I should use my webcam to take pictures of my NEW SHORT HAIR!!! Yes, that's right, over a foot of hair was chopped off this past week. The quality of the pics isn't too great, but they give a feel for how it now looks:







I imagine there'll be more pics over the next few weeks, due to holidays gatherings with my family (which always involve picture-taking) and maybe a photoshoot if anyone can squeeze me in? Lots of my Bton peeps have seen my hair while I was out and about this weekend--thanks to everyone who's taken the time to tell me how it looks! I was actually kinda terrified to chop off so much hair because it feels like my hair's become a big part of my identity, but I'm lovin' this new look so far. It doesn't get tangled, I can't accidentally slam it in my car door, it doesn't hurt if I sleep on it the wrong way, it doesn't give me a headache to have it up all day (since long hair can get quite heavy), and so on. I may be a short-hair convert, who knows...