"I do not feel anything when I brush against the legs of my wife, but mine ache if hers do." -Miguel de Unamuno

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Eventful. That would be yesterday and today. Chronological order seems like an easy way to tell things:

OO, guess who's getting an A in Econ? Hella Me! BAM! It was great, my teacher was calling people up to tell them their grades, and when she called up people who were getting A's, they'd be halfway to her desk, and she'd say, "Hmm, 100, 100, 100, oh your grade is hard to figure out, you're getting an A. Go home." She speaks rapidly with a thick accent (I think she's from an ex-Russian country), and she has a great sense of humor. We all laughed. And afterwards, you could tell when people knew they were getting A's, because they'd barely get up to go see her, knowing what they'd hear. When she called my name, I was halfway out of my seat when she said, "You got an A." I paused in position, almost confused, and said, "Really?!" and before I could say But..., she says "Yup." So I get up with this big smile on my face, and leave the classroom very carefully in case she stops me to tell me she made a mistake. Oo, but I rock! I swear, I must have subconsciously calculated the minimum amount of work needed to get an A, because god knows that what I did.

That set the mood for a ridiculously interesting/fun day. I say interesting because it was spent mostly with people I barely know but like very much. So Christianna, from my CIS 61 class, convinced me to go to this Alex Grey event. I'd wanted to go, but was sort of on the fence about it. But I mentioned it to her, and she was like, "Oh yeah! My friends and I are getting together beforehand and we're going to dress up. It'll be fun, you should come!" Well, alright. BUT... our hideously important final was the next morning! Now, an incredibly devoted student would pass on the event.

I bought my ticket online. We made a date to study before we went to the event. (The show started at 10, we'd go her friends' place at 7, we'd meet around noon for lunch, tea, and then studying.) So yeah, I got to her house at a little after 1. I had had very VERY little sleep the night before, but whatever. We proceeded to this tea house called Far Leaves. Nat had recommended it highly to me in the past; it was destined to be. It has the long, unfamiliar list of teas I've come to expect from any good house, and is decidedly beautiful:

That is the tiny, almost isolated little nook on a raised platform that Christianna and I inhabited for nigh on four hours. We got sushi from next door, and while we waited for our order, we went to a bird shop down the street. A parakeet asked me how I'm doing. How YOU doin' little man.

Studying. Then a break, and we went to the guy's clothing store two doors down to find some pants for her boyfriend. Didn't get those, but I got a killer pair of shoes and a sweater for $10 total. Woo woo! Okay okay, studying. Then we get home, dress, I meet her boyfriend Carl who's in a dumpy mood. We assemble costumes for each other. Christianna ends up looking "introspective French belle epoque/eighties maneater" and I'm "Renaissance genie forest angel". Carl fixes his mood, quibbles with Christianna over what he's going to wear, and we go to their friends' house. In the car, Carl becomes warmer--he's logical, musical, argumentative, and quick-witted. He does solar technology. He likes the friendship between Christianna and I. She herself claims not to have enough girlfriends, and I'm pretty much in the same boat, and we both act like girls who spend a lot of time with guys. It's nice.

We arrive at the house of Isabelle and, uh, let's call him Steve. Isabelle and Steve are a nice, young, new-age couple, though not annoyingly so. They're about as new age as my parents are Catholic; it shows in their house and some of the things they say, but it's obviously not a judgment point. Isabelle is a dancer, and Steve, an artist. They're both quietly beautiful and genuinely considerate.

Okay--what's with all these people I'm meeting who have charming, relaxed, interesting, committed boyfriends? Where did they all come from? And where's mine? (Kidding. Too soon.)

While we were at their house, I set up my crown. At Christianna's, we'd grabbed a crown of thorns made from dull barbed wire and some EL-wire (electroluminescent). (EL-wire's kind of like neon, but much handier for crafts. It's not hot, it's wire-thin, you can weave it in and around stuff, and it can be battery-powered. I had a short length of green, which I wove around the crown and its spikes. When I turned it on, I couldn't see myself, and I was with everyone; they oohed and ahhed, and I could take the attention for about a second before I fled to the bathroom to have a look at it myself. When it was lit, it was this wild green squiggle that rested on my head. It was indeed impressive. Funny trend: everyone gives me lighted crowns to wear. Kyle lent me his LED wreath for a while, which he said suited me well. And while I think of them as wreaths or crowns, everyone refers to them as haloes. A person would say 'halo' and I'd think, Huh, you see it that way? Haha. I think I'm a king or a priestess, they think I'm saint.

So we headed to the event. The show began with a performance that Carl thought was disturbingly cultish. Alex Grey is an obviously spiritual painter, and a lot of people see his paintings as a glimpse into their idea of god. The performance reflected that, and Carl, who had a very logically-based upbringing, hated the whole idea of it, felt like he was being mentally manipulated. Christianna and I, who both have Christian backgrounds, felt that this scene was far more benevolent than the ones we came from, and what was he so upset about. But he'd made up his mind not to have a good time, and it was bringing Christianna down, so the two of them went back early.

Alex Grey himself was luminous. He did a spoken word piece about sex and reproduction, and it was so raw and real, and beautiful. In his words, sex became this thing that was both carnal and holy, central and utterly inspiring. He left everyone breathless. I couldn't repeat a word of it. Just before he left, Carl agreed that had the show started with Alex Grey, he would have been much more open to it.

While AlexG was in the latter half of his piece (past sex, now into breathing), he started us into a visualization. It was a variation of the ball of light in your hands. He had us imagine the ball of light, then that the ball was the earth, and asked us to focus our strongest healing energies on that ball. I'm familiar with the ball meditation, and so I started it. But I went in a different direction. I didn't want to visualize the earth; that seemed a shaky proposition. I did for a little while, but I felt like I was wasting my efforts. Instead of visualizing the earth specifically, I visualized a glowing ball of interactions. Like, imagine you can see all the molecular reactions in a space, except that it's especially dense and you can feel it in your subtle hands. And it's all moving around unimaginably fast, but it's a stable sphere, and it has a sort of surface. I wasn't so much feeding it energy as feeling its own. I was imagining holding it in front of me, approximately where my corporeal hands would hold it. But there were constantly people passing close in front of me, and the ball kept dissipating or I kept having to draw it back in. Eventually I got smart and set it near the ceiling where it would remain undisturbed. It took a little more concentration to feel my hands there, but at least it wasn't being broken all the time. And I realized I could do something kind of cool with the passersby. They were constantly dropping off little bits of energy, when they'd avoid bumping into me or cut me glances. It was neat, I could just usher those little bits of energy toward the ball, clean them out, and feed them in. And I'd started feeding it a little myself, and as it grew, 'cracks' formed in the surface, or rather it tessellated, and the light inside peeped out in the form of rays. I was afraid it might explode, but rather, the rays grew longer and more solid, curving to form a lattice. A lattice centered around the ball that reached out into people and the air in strange ways. And the more people passed through, the more energy it got, almost feeding automatically now. I was hoping it wouldn't turn cancerous, but it felt benign, and so I let it do its thing, and held it safe. It was more lattice than ball now, the ball simply being the point of origin. I felt it reaching a critical point, and then, it all massed up, retracted toward the ceiling like a large intake of breath. It held there, churning for a second; then I felt a mental cue and let it go. And it burst into a fuzzy lattice again, not taking this time, but dissipating, like a rain cloud. (I realize now that's a lot what it was like, the process of taking loose energy, cleaning it, and co-opting it; rain is a natural absorbtive distillery.) Giving it back. And the ball, haha, that was still in my hands. Point of origin, everything in there came back to me, and I can honestly say that my vision at that time became clearer than the people around me. It was like an Alex Grey painting; his visualizations helped form mine. I felt my chakras light up, like a city block regaining power from bottom to top in a flash; and my head became luminous (ha ha, it was) and I could see right through it. A crown spurted up like flame or flower around the top of my head, and within that circle my head was opening like cabbage. Kinda freaky, but beautiful enough not to alarm me. It opened, and out of it rose a small figure that was like crucified Jesus and newborn at the same time. And it rested there above my opened head, kinda twitching and adjusting itself, but comfortable overall. And it just came to rest there, right there. And that's how my head was, open with this strange little newborn like this living headdress. And then I could see everything normal, but I felt different. I mean, I was aware as I was doing the whole lattice thing that I must have looked like I was tripping on something--looking up at nothing, eyes wide and unblinking, face expressionless with perhaps a hint of euphoria. But afterwards, I was feeling good but extraordinarily sensitive and clever.

And this man in full costume walked by, caught my eye, and stopped in his tracks. He had harlequin makeup on his face, and wore sort of venetian clown clothing with a strange and elaborate hat. He smiled broadly, and I almost said something, but realized I didn't need to, and just smiled back. He stood square in front of me and held a tool before him. It was like a rod with a small dish on top. He pulled a dixie cup out of his bag and placed it on top of the dish, then gestured with that hand to look straight into his eyes. I did, wondering what sort of magic trick would follow. He kept eye contact, and bowed his head slightly, ever so courtly--pouring water into the dixie cup from the tea kettle on his head. I was so happy, I clapped. I was thirsty. He offered me the cup, and how could I refuse? As I sipped, he walked away, placing a hand on his heart and giving me a fond look farewell. With friends like these, who needs myths?

It was intermission, and the dancing would begin shortly. I wandered around the crowd. In the hallway, someone stepped on a plastic cup in passing, loudly and accidentally crunching it into pieces. A man against the wall, with clothes like a rich pirate and a face like a demon, stepped forward and savagely finished the work that person had started, smashing the rest of that cup under his boot. A couple people noticed and gaped. I saw it happen, and he earned my respect.

I wandered over to where a little altar had been set up around this painting:

Everyone had different reactions to it. Carl would have hated it. But I liked it for what it was: a unique altar to the collective human spirit. There were some wooden stage stairs off to the side of it going up to the platform where the show had been. There they piled all the mattresses and pillows that had been on the floor during the show. I took up station on the stairs to watch the people, the stilt-walkers, the minglers. I started moving my feet impatiently. I slapped my heel down on the stair and it made a hollow thunk. Hmm. I did it again. It took some force, but it was a nice deep baritone thunk. Heel, then slapped it with my toe for a lighter kind of pop. Mm-hmm. Stairs are a strange instrument, but it sounded good and the beat was called for. The people around understood and amplified it in their steps. After a minute, one person looked at me, a performer. He went behind the altar and brought out a large bass drum. He walked past me, into the crowd, and the beat was made public. In ripples outward, people began to dance. The drumbeat grew, and was enough to war to, to grow corn to, to light a fire in its voice. Soon--at just the right time--something changed about the beat. It was amplified. The DJ had taken the stage.

And, like I had been waiting to all night, I danced a storm; I danced symbols.

I got back to Christianna's house at 3, asleep by 3:30. Awake at 7:30. Lets finish studying! Okay!! Caffeine! Breakfast. Writing Code. Dressing and Test. Not too bad, but not stellar. As expected. Hopefully I get what I'm praying for.

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I read some articles on marriage on Salon.com. That's where I got the quote up top. My sister didn't get it; what it means is, their love is not such that he is turned on by her anymore, but he feels what she feels.

An interesting one I read was written by a Christian Scientist, Confessions of a Virgin Marriage. (If you want to read it, just go ahead and get a free day pass. It just means you have to watch a clever Salon ad, and then you get full access.) It was really interesting, and it said some things that reminded me that I wanted to read Science and Health. I called Johannes, and talking to him was just downright fun. I don't know how it happened. It was a miracle of a moment. Not that we're on bad terms, but that while we were talking, there was zero awkwardness and a lot of happiness. At the end we sort of remembered that we had broken up, but when I got off the phone, I was excited that we could talk like friends, if only for a little while. It's a start.

I called him because I'll be seeing him at Y's birthday party tonight, and I asked him if he had that copy of Science and Health that he promised me, and he said, "No," like he was really sorry but he thought I wouldn't want it because we'd broken up and he knows thats a silly idea so he's sorry, "I'll get you another one."

2:06 p.m. 2003-12-13�