may have a weird opportunity for the right person

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in memory of mansions

Yesterday, I wound up having to go down to DC for the day at the last minute. I used to live in DC (it's where I went to uni and I stayed for a bit after), but I haven't been back in years. sykii and I were planning a trip there together shortly after 9/11 and then 9/11 happened. Since then, time's just gotten away from me.

It's remarkable, really, how it all remains exactly the same. And there was something about being in business clothes and walking out of Union Station, all smart and sharp, into the cold to wait for a cab. I was there to Do Business, and really, it's hard not to feel a thrill of being part of the supposed machinations of our world.

Of course, I hit the cab driver jackpot. Immediately, he's ranting at me about the right to bear arms (frustrating, because does ANYONE have a middle ground on firearms? Because apparently I do, but I was not pro-gun enough) and making racist statements about the guys who do the deployment at the cab stand. I was already an hour and a half late (thanks to snow on the way down) or I would have gotten out of the cab. Instead, I smiled and nodded and felt a pang of weird sorrow when he talked about his daughter the black-belt army officer and her three tween daughters.

So I did my meeting. And then another meeting, and then it was coffee with some of the people I work with and there I was drinking hot cocoa while men talked about their fixation with WWII history and didn't even look to see if I was still in the room. I smiled into my cup and thought of the greatcoat in my closet at home and all the wrong ways I always learn about important things.

Then it was off to the World Bank. The building is new and wasn't there when I lived in DC. And I'm not really much for modernist architecture, but my god, you know how we were promised flying cars? This was flying cars. The inside of the building is a huge, dimly lit atrium, with ambient light coming from some softly glowing pyramid sculptures. Everything is bluish and offices rise up around you and you can't look up without feeling these cities of numbers and hope -- I should have done maths, I should have gotten a PhD. I'd tell you to go look at it, and maybe they have tours, but yesterday it seemed pretty clear we couldn't get in without an invite and an escort.

When I lived in DC I fell in love with mansions. I put personal ads in CityPaper asking what we would do on a date, and I went to a bunch of embassy dinners that way -- the Russians, the Moroccans, the Swedes. Maybe that's the only time I was really ever a girl, like, the way you're supposed to be.

I was rarely happy in DC -- school was a struggle because I often found it hard to care enough and my interpersonal relationships were chaotic -- but I had mansions and monuments, a world sorrowful and all to myself. DC's a funny place - if hell mouths were real, there'd be one there, maybe two; I have never spent a single moment in DC when I didn't feel like the ground was trying to put roots up into my body and take over the whole of my veins. It just, the soil has a funny energy there. And it sounds nuts, unless you know DC, spent nights on its stoops listening to blues music from the bar next to the voodoo shop down the street from the Masonic temple and up the block from the restaurant with the taxidermied fucking panther hanging from its ceiling.

DC formed my way of seeing and my way of grieving and my sense of selves squandered. And so yesterday was strange (and tiring -- I left our house at 5:15am and got home at 11:15pm) and I spent the few quiet moments I had thinking of when I wanted to be a war reporter and of the Torchwood/West Wing AU I keep swearing I'm going to write.

It's such a bright city of such terrible things.

sundries

Claudette is adjusting well. She is more secure and lets both Patty and I pet her. She is eating well and seems to have figured out the temporary litterbox we set up for her after the horrific destruction of a really cheap Ikea throw pillow. Patty took this picture of her (along with many others that are AWESOME) to send to the woman who fostered her: ( here she is )

Openly gay MP to make the case that supporting gay rights is a key element of modern conservatism. I grok the argument, but can barely grok a political landscape in which that is true in the US although my gut tells me that the guy is right in that a lot of gays would vote on conservative/Republican lines here if gay rights weren't part of the issue. This makes me uncomfortable, because too often I see many members of the gay community wanting equality on gay issues so as to have their privilege on other fronts back (seriously, the organized gay activist community has a shit track record when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity).

Pride House opens at the Olympics. Because several countries participating in the Olympics have legal sanctions against LGBT people, Pride House is prepared to address asylum claims. So far, they have already received four inquiries.

Gay boutique hotel planned for NYC. That'll be interesting. Wonder if it'll be no girls allowed. Why do I ask? Similar ones I know of in Europe and the dance club anchorage.

Some states are planning a battery of tests that would let high school sophomores that complete them to skip immediately to community college. On one hand, good. On the other hand... why can't high school be high school and do the job it should and produce students who can write so that a B.A. is something other than people learning skills I had the luck and privilege to master in 6th grade?

The story we were expecting to break on Gov. Patterson finally did. And it's about the sharp rise of one of his aides. It is discussion candy. First, it's filled with framing that's unpleasant, and I feel nearly sure wouldn't be there in so voluminous a fashion if the protagonists in this tale weren't PoC. But then again, the New York Times having RaceFail? Is anyone surprised? It also, however, raises the question of whether domestic violence perpetration should disqualify someone for political work. This is something of a hot topic in New York State politics because of a case involving a state senator as well. If you follow the coverage of the cases there is, I think, a subtle undertone of shrugging acceptance that of course some powerful men beat women, and what are you going to do about it? Disturbing.

John Hodgman on the very weird world of fame.

Daily obligatory promotion of tw_itallchanges. Episodes are staring RSN.

The Infinitus CFP deadline has been extended. I wonder if I should send in another one.