I didn't sleep, but I might be on my way. Anne Lamott helped. I told my trainer (no matter how many trainers I hire, she will always be my trainer, the first, the one) on chat that I'd probably eaten 7000 calories today and she said she didn't feel so bad for having cheesecake, then. I like that in a friend.
Vampires, man. I don't know. Shit. So many rules to follow, but even worse, so many you have to make up. You have to figure lots of stuff out. Spiritual or scientific? What's the metaphor? Because monsters are never just monsters. Or maybe I could just leave it all up to the unconscious mind and type; this would be preferable, but I hate it because my unconscious mind will suddenly hit the brick wall of my knowledge. Like in a story I was writing the other day, this guy BLAMMO! was on steroids. And I was like, REALLY? Really, Samus Mind? Does he have to be? Can't I take that out, pretend that never happened? Because now I have to stop writing to research steroids. And Samus Mind was all like, nope, right, and she sounded cheerful about it. Nope, he's on 'roids, and I'm not giving you another word of the story until you figure out 'roids, and the gateway performance enhancers.
That's been going on all through this novel. I've typed out about 100 usable pages, 1.5 spaced, and it's been all because of hard work because shit keeps happening that I have to research. Rodrigo was a conquistador? Brilliant, okay, wait what? He proved himself to the natives with some kind of Amazonian insect? But I don't know anything about insects. Shit. And so I go researching, and after a lot of false starts I discover the correct insect and I'm like wooopaaaah! and I go writing writing writing until I discover that the main character is into punk. So I email a friend who knows about this stuff and I say I'll save the punk for the rewrite and I plow forward. It all feels like plowing, man. I'm so proud of those 100 pages because usually I'd give up a lot quicker.
Which reminds me, I was thinking about that today. I mentioned in another entry about piano, how I faked it a lot, how I didn't try very hard to succeed when I was growing up, and now I'm quite different. I wanted to give up at the range today about midway through. I was embarrassing myself around all the experts with their compound bows and their targets with holes only in the yellow. I made some self-deprecating jokes, like when my arrows went to the left of the target I'd say, "Okay so if the animal I'm aiming at just skitters THIS way, I'll have dinner..." Luckily, they laughed. But it was tough on me, my ego sucks. But then things started to click, one at a time. One guy told me where to put the string, how to aim it, and once I did that, my shoulder locked back and I went, oh! I did it again the next time, I felt it, and then again, and again. And pretty soon I was shooting so damn well that the other people were watching, and saying encouraging things, and making impressed noises, not so much because of my skill but because my arrows had been landing on the wrong targets for an hour and suddenly I was hitting my own, and mostly keeping it within the circles too, and sometimes getting it into the yellow, and often grouping them, which I learned means that they're all hitting in the same place, almost the same hole in the wall.
I felt good about myself when I left because I'd wanted to go home before the things clicked. One guy said that it takes him sixty arrows to start hitting where he wants to hit, and he was mega experienced. I thought about how embarrassing kickboxing used to be when I sucked at it, and I had that same experience when I first *got* the round kick. One of the teachers said, once you get it, you got it, and it's true. You feel it, and then you got it, and you just have to throw a million more round kicks to perfect and maintain it.
I read a study about weight loss; they'd put a bunch of people on different diets and they found that none of the diets were particularly better than the others, that what counted was sticking to it. Same thing with quitting smoking, apparently; the goal is not to Not Fail but to Not Stop Trying. Isn't this a lesson we learned from a little train when we were kids? Add this to the list of stuff I think the Bug really needs to know while growing up.
I am forcing myself not to do unhealthy things tonight.
I started drinking this dong quai tea. I have PMS like... I become a monster, you wouldn't believe. I hate feeling that way. I start wondering what "real" and "normal" is. I don't know which of my problems are relevant or just hormones. I blimp out, sometimes gaining up to ten pounds (!) of water, I'm irritable, angry, I want to fight constantly. So I picked up the menstrual health tea.
I had some weird moments at first. I felt my uterus cramping. I hardly ever have cramps, and I wasn't on my period, so this was super odd. But then I looked it up, and apparently it does make your uterus contract a bit in order to strengthen it. Or something. It wasn't horrible, but it did concern me, that and the tender nipples. But also - joy! - I felt wonderful. I was happy and horny, even in the car, and the cramping uterus sometimes made me feel yummers. I thought I looked good, too, and I didn't care what dong quai did to my hormones if I could just go an entire cycle without once clenching my fists because of how Mister Aran was
breathing.
But this morning I woke up and knew it wasn't a cure-all. Ah, crap. I snapped immediately, had the same ugly yucky body stuff that always happens around this time. And because I'm all action action action, control control control, I decided to fight. I took a shower, I treated myself a bit, and I reminded myself: Attitude. Gratefulness.
I shouldn't have eaten so much and I should've worked out. But I did go shooting.
About a month ago I bought a simple but good bow, some arrows, and some leather stuff and started learning to shoot. I put a TV box out in the gully between my group of houses and the next group of houses over, lined with trees, with lots of eyeline; I stuffed it with an old cushion and some styrofoam and started twanging arrows at it. And oh, it does me so good. I don't know how to meditate. I don't like to be still. I know there's purpose in meditation and in napping but I just don't wanna. I want to punch holes in things. I want
evidence. And archery does this for me. There's eighty things to think of, so that your mind has to be right
there, and then there's a moment when you're in position, the string drawn back, your body locked in that T. You breathe, or you don't breathe. You count: one, two, release. That moment, I call it California Zen. You know, zen without all the decades of training and shit. We get our zen down here in hour-long increments. My friends go to Bikram Yoga or whatever and get all zenned. We're too busy to actually zen. I'm verbing zen on purpose, by the way, I like it.
So archery for me is all about that One. Moment. Where I'm still. I took up archery and realized that's why I liked kickboxing so much, because there's nowhere else to be but
now when someone's about to hit you. But there's less getting hit in the face, in archery. Hell, I might quit the kickboxing gym and just go to the range every weekend for the same price, just have running and spinning and circuits be my workout.
I'm going tomorrow to the park to hang out with the SCA dudes who do archery. I'm nervous, man. Geeks are tough. I haven't been doing this very long. I don't know what I'm doing. Plus, after I'm done with them, I'm going straight to the Faire, and I'm going to shoot there, too, but after I've drank some cold port from my horn. I will feel better after some drinks.
I'm jittery now. I want to play video games, I want to argue on forums. That's what PMS makes me do. I'm refusing. I don't know how to make this better. I think if I just turn out my little lap desk's light and try to sleep, I'll lay here and stress, and write forum arguments in my head. I get the evil eye from that shit, though. When I've been particularly combative on the internet, I can feel all those people's energies stabbity stabbing at me. So today I promised I wouldn't log in, I wouldn't do it. I worked on my vampire story instead.
I just went into my dark office and pulled some books from the shelf (I lit my way with an open DS, I refused even to turn on the light in there, lest I get tempted to turn on the big machine). I have Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott on my bedside table now. I've put off reading it because the beginning is all such liberal doom and gloom and no matter how true it might be, I just don't WANNA. Mmk. Maybe I'll skim over that, because she does always put me in the right mindframe, and she makes me want to laugh at myself. Then I got Danse Macabre by Stephen King because I am, after all, writing a horror novel. Mister Aran got it for me forever ago and I knew there'd be a correct time to read it. This must be it, because I'm done with all the Sookie Stackhouse novels, dammit! I want Charlaine Harris to write a novel a day, because by god that's how long it takes me to read them, and I am all itchy now that I have to wait for another one. I did order the HBO DVDs of the first season of True Blood, so that's something to look forward to early next week. I've never seen it. I'm nervous, like anyone is about seeing the adaptation of books they love, but I've heard it's pwn.
My writing tonight was (ugh) expository, I think is the right word, where style just falls flat because I'm trying to get something out. Can't look back; style is for the rewrite. Just gotta pound it into the keys. Here's a paragraph from tonight which made me smile. And after that, I'm going to read. I think.
"You were nothing, you are nothing," says Sebastian calmly as he circles the pile of maimed, dead flesh, staring at it with blank eyes. Bryce's gaze follows him. "I swear upon her ashes that you will always be nothing. Yes." He looks up at One with half a smile, almost cheerful. "She is dead. I have never been so strong. You are out from under her spell. Rodrigo did this, and he stole her – interesting that he took the time to create this sculpture, an act of war, really – and her body is gone, and her blood's power has flowed to the rest of us, likely strongest to Rodrigo himself." He does not look up to see One crumple onto the floor. "Which means she is not the first." He steps gingerly to the mirror he'd punched into shards and bends over, peers into the largest of the pieces and combs his fingers through his hair.
