the saga continues

I've been busy, busy, busy with school and Seattle Circle stuff. I have volunteered to help write and edit Seattle Circle's application to the 4Culture grant. A few moments ago, I completed work on some revisions and prompts for further material destined for the two-page "Narrative Statement" section of the grant.

I had some fun taking the material and applying the technical writing concepts I've been learning in Jan Spyridakis' class. I found lots of juicy verbs hidden inside nominalizations and moved those into verb slots to make the writing more active. I even used a conjunctive adverb!

Cohesion and coherence will still take some work. We'll see how the rest of the team responds.

I spent Thursday night after class at the House of TravGor eating hot khashi and drinking cold vodka.

Khashi is a Georgian specialty, made out of hooves and tripe (stomach), cooked with lots of garlic, and then served hot and gluey. If you have a nasty cold coming on, like I did on Thursday, khashi will fix you right up.

And now I know how vodka is really supposed to taste!

So Igor cooked up the khashi, and then taught us various toasts in Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish. The vodka flowed, conversation flowed, and it was a good time.

At various points in the conversation, I noticed surprising things about the intonation of my voice when I contributed from time to time to the conversation. When I deeply believe something is important, it shows up in my voice, and people listen. I found myself realizing just how important certain things are to me by hearing it in my own voice. In some cases, I didn't even realize I had such strong feelings about various topics.

In contrast, when I'm just prattling along, sometimes even on things I think are important to me, my own voice does not convince me. I see listeners turn off, and my own voice irritates the hell out of me.

Sometimes I hear my own voice talking about something I thought was important, and I can tell when I'm not totally convinced of what I am saying.

Ah, the weird process of paying attention and noticing things about yourself...

Igor pulled out a vinyl album of a Polish blues-rock band circa 1971, and these guys were awesome! They had "it," and Igor said that Soviet rock musicians passed it around like a talisman. The recorded sound was amazing, and the guitars had that creamy tube amp "squawk" in spades.

Then we watched a DVD of an early Roxy Music performance and freaked every time the camera cut to Brian Eno in makeup and glam regalia. Brian Ferry crooned about his unfaithful inflatable doll, Phil Manzanera ripped out solos, and Eno ran about turning knobs and twisting sounds into wacky aural shapes.

Later, Igor later told me more about khashi and the history of the Georgian people (I asked him if the Georgians originated from Turkic tribes, but he told me the Georgians originated in the Caucasus Mountain, where they had common ancestors with the Armenians).

It turns out that khashi is a Georgian national institution. After a long night of drinking vodka, revelers crowd into early-morning diners specializing in khashi, and communally obliterate their hangovers. One bowl of khashi, one shot of vodka, and your hangover is cured. The khashi in these establishments has been cooking for six hours beginning at midnight, and Igor first experienced the power of khashi while on tour with a Georgian blues band, back when Georgia was a Soviet republic.

Mmmm...khashi...

Right now, I probably reek of garlic, but I can't tell.

I should mention that Georgian khashi is completely different from that "sticks and twigs" cereal (which may be spelled a little different). Sticks and twigs on the one hand, fatty and gluey on the other. Different worlds.

My body struggled to accomodate this influx of fatty protein, and I found myself awake around 5:00 AM after falling asleep in my clothes. I wasn't tired at all, but I still went back to bed, and now I regret it. I had a chance to get an early start on the day and blew it.

So it goes.

As it was, I got up at noon, stepped out my door, and found the police banging on L's door. She had earlier been upstairs banging on the door of A from Texas, who is studying Chinese, and she howled a series of racial epithets at him through the door.

So he called the police.

She was away when they arrived, although they later picked her up on her way back from the food bank. I ran into her in the hallway, and she went into great detail explaining everything. I asked her questions about her experience when she goes into a manic breakdown, and she told me she becomes psychic and sees spirits and demons. When she's in the grip of this, she says she can't control her emotions, and yet it somehow doesn't hurt her to be in that state.

She understands that her behavior is destructive and alienating to everybody around her, but she can't seem to control it.

L also told me about a former heroin addict roommate who had a bad habit of nodding off into hot pans of grease while she cooked.

In the meantime, she's been served her eviction notice and has a court date set up to fight it. The horrible scene with the eviction sheriff never materialized. We'll see what happens.

I strongly suspect L is way more wiley and calculating than anybody gives her credit for. She rules the basement of this building, and keeps everybody off balance with fear. But is it enough to keep her from being tossed out on the street?

When I got home last night, she was out in the hallway verbally abusing our new neighbors, some tattooed and pierced "ave. rat"/rocker-type guys, and one of their girlfriends.

L told this one guy with plaid pants and a nose ring that his piss smelled like dog or cat piss, which meant that he had AIDS, and that it totally disgusted her. L then told his girlfriend she was a "whore," to get her disgusting self back into her boyfriend's room, and that she "reeks of evil." This girl was definitely not used to this sort of thing, and I could tell she was scared to death as she walked away. (I'm pretty sure I later heard this same girl puking in the bathroom while I was sitting up in the throes of my khashi-powered wakefulness at 5:00 AM.)

However, one of these young guys among the new residents is having none of it. He is not "nice" and has no interest whatsoever in "understanding" her. I can hear it in his voice when he locks horns with her. Something about his attitude and intonation says "bully," and if she remains and tries to hassle him too much, I predict he will not be shy about slapping her around a bit to show her who's boss.

After all, what is she going to do? Call the cops?

At least I won't be bored...

Time to eat and then go practice some guitar.