xaara

Whoo, just finished a local 20K and have time to sneak in a nap and some LJ before work. It was a fairly brutal run, given the recent unpleasantness with my knee, which means this is the longest I've run at a stretch for six weeks or so. But I took it ridiculously slowly--as in, 10:35/mile--which was boring but didn't result in pain. And then I ate curry!

A meme that keeps circulating and is always fun:

1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

lassiterfics asked me the following:

( Sex, Drugs, and organic unsweetened gluten-free cereal )

1. Spending way too much time on Wikipedia playing with ideas for my remix fic. I am so excited about it, so of course I am procrastinating like crazy and writing 200 words at a time before looking for some detail like average rainfall in a certain place at a certain time of year (*poker face*) and then looking at pictures of Mt. Etna and reminiscing about volcanoes and ash clouds (you guys think this Iceland thing is bad, try living in a place where it rains sand for serious), which leads to research on the various types of volcanoes, which leads to reading about Romans, and yeah.

2. Falling HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE with Justified. (You can also find it on hulu, which I find to be a nicer, more browser-friendly way to watch.) I love Timothy Olyphant, and therefore Raylan Givens. I love Elmore Leonard for giving him to us. I love every single supporting character. I love the south, and the way come morning in Kentucky, the fog curling and the cicadas warming to the day hot already, it's like the land knows you're there and doesn't mind much.

3. Slinging drinks. And burgers. And, when it gets to be late-night and there's no one out in the stupid Wisconsin spring drizzle, doing plenty of crosswords. And remix plotting. And re-reading Dante's Inferno for a John/Mary fic that I really really want to write but that I haven't done anything but sketch out, because I have very little time right now, what with remix and watching Justified like a million times so I can get the character voices right for fic I am not writing. *cough*

4. Being my usual excitable self.

I've been fiddling around with a few fics lately, gen stuff, some set in season two, some in season five, and an AU of Lucifer Rising tentatively titled "Sam Listens to Dean For Once in his Goddamn Life; Also Dean Doesn't Act Like an Ass, and There's This Angel Dude."

However, I keep getting distracted. I keep getting distracted, because the story I want to tell and can't figure out how, the story that is really getting to me this season (and last, actually), is Dean's drinking.

In the spirit of full [tmi] disclosure, I have quite a bit of experience with drinkers. I work at a bar. My last boyfriend was a bartender; the one before that was a (now-recovering) alcoholic. My best friend is a recovering alcoholic. For about four months following one really, really bad breakup, I was mostly either drunk or hungover, until I realized that I could go one of two directions: down, or up.

Bearing that in mind, watching Dean's drinking intensify over the last couple of seasons has been an uncomfortable experience. I desperately want Bobby or Sam to notice openly, to say something, but aside from a few offhand comments here and there, they don't seem to think it's that big a deal.

It's a big fucking deal. Here's what it's like to be a high-functioning alcoholic: you wake up because your blood sugar drops dramatically, disoriented and slightly nauseous. You get out of bed resolving that this is the morning you're going to drink just water and maybe a little juice. Then, you think it can't be that bad to pour a shot of whiskey into your coffee, because it'll make you feel better. It does make you feel better. It takes the edge off your headache, and gives you a slight buzz, because you're so dehydrated that anything would get you buzzed right now. You fight to clear your head, and after a while you have a sort of gentle awareness of the world around you. It's like reining your brain in so it goes from functioning like a modern computer to functioning like an abacus, capable of doing only things that make solid, tangible sense in the solid, tangible present. You eat some cereal for breakfast, take a shower, and are careful to brush your teeth, despite the fact that the taste of toothpaste makes your stomach heave.

You go through the day on autopilot, and by the time you're done with your obligations (you've probably had a beer or two with lunch) you decide it's time to kick back with a movie and a glass of whiskey. And another. And a third. By ten, you're drunk and tired and just want to pass out, or you're out with friends just getting started on the real drinking of the night. Either way, you pass out--you don't sleep, not really, not with all that alcohol clogging up your body--and you wake up the next day, suddenly, and your mouth tastes like you licked a bar rag and you think, Man, I could use a screwdriver about now.

It's not romantic. It's not fun. It's painful, and disgusting, and alienating. You drink to get away from what's bothering you (in my case, grief and anger and loneliness; in Dean's, well, grief and anger and loneliness), but because the alcohol dulls your mind's ability to multitask, you end up unable to focus on anything else. So you drink more, because if you drink enough, eventually you'll pass out and you won't have to think about anything.

This is a liability at the best of times. When you're drinking consistently (even if it's not much--it doesn't have to be much), you lose the ability to create mental hierarchies. You're chronically sleep-deprived. Your reaction time and decision-making skills are moot points. It takes ages to process new information, and even important things like names and faces and remembering to call your mom on her birthday just sort of slide away.

Dean's not in the best of times. He's in the middle of the capital-A Apocalypse. He can't think straight; his body is breaking down and betraying him. His reflexes aren't what he's used to, and his fine motor skills, especially new ones, ones he doesn't know like the back of his hand, are suffering. Mostly, though, his friends and his family, people who need to sit him down and say something, treat it like a minor issue. The show's writers seem unsure of whether to play it as a joke or just ignore it altogether, but they've written themselves into his mess and need to acknowledge it's there.

I don't want there to be some sort of Intervention! episode. I understand that hunters, like most men and women who work grueling, unappreciated jobs, often end the day with a glass of the closest hard stuff. I think it's unrealistic for Dean to quit drinking, but I also think it's unrealistic for him to continue at his current pace without serious, potentially deadly, side effects.

So yeah. I want to address that. In a way that doesn't send people running for the hills, since it's not exactly a lighthearted topic, and I'm not sure I'm capable of treating it in any way except extremely seriously. I want the show to take responsibility for the characters it's created, and their choices. If you choose to set a series in Modern America+Monsters, you are obligated to address the problems inherent in the setting. Dean's drinking, like that of lonely, desperate people around the world, is not cute and not funny. It deserves far more nuanced, careful, and responsible writing than I've seen so far, if only in deference to those of us who see him unscrew the cap on his flask and take a swig to steady his nerves and feel a sympathetic burn right below the sternum where we've tried the same medicine.

Back in the day, I was talking to my poetry professor. (It was one of the conversations we had that was actually about poetry instead of gardening, which turned out to be our other shared passion.) I told him that I couldn't hear my prose. I thought it was okay, but I wasn't ever sure.

That's because you're a poet, he said, and shrugged, and we went back to discussing how to use the metric ton of grape tomatoes our vines had yielded that year.

I didn't know what he meant until I wrote this, which turned out to be a lullaby, a long-form sonnet, a love song. Or, y'know, 400 words of pretentious iambic prose, complete with alliteration and internal rhyme. I've read it out loud a million times, I have a sore throat, and I'm done trying to figure it out.

As always (and especially here), all feedback ranging from "huh" to "wtf srsly" is welcome.

Title: Flicker
Author: xaara
Rating: PG
Timeline: season 5-ish (no spoilers)
Characters: Dean/Castiel
Summary: His charge, who sings the songs of sirens

( Flicker )

I started writing a few days ago, and, well, this happened.

Title: The Word
Author: xaara
Rating: R (violence & language), gen
Timeline: sometime mid-season 3 through 4.18
Characters: Chuck, Sera, OCs
Summary: All he can do is write.
A/N: I think some explanation of characters is in order. First, although I don't remember hearing a name for her, that odd half-blonde woman introduced as Chuck's publisher at the beginning of 4.18 is called Sera over at IMDB. It made no sense that she would be a publisher (what, she's got a printing press out on the back porch or something?), so I ignored that and made her an editor. Maybe working for a publisher. Second, at one point in that episode, Chuck says something like, "Phil put you up to this?" and looks at the house next door. Hence: Phil. Finally, I realize that parts of this don't quite jive with parts of "The Real Ghostbusters," but I'm really trying to will that episode into nonexistence. All right. Enough yammering.

( The Word )

I posted here a while back—a looong while back—saying I was abandoning this journal for a lot of reasons. At the time, it was true. I fully intended to leave and not to return.

However: I may have lied. I blame this on Supernatural, which has grown into such a beautiful, complex, and honest show that I am once again compelled to write back to it, to find my way into its world and its mythology. (Also, Castiel has run far, far away with my heart.) I thought about starting a new journal, but I didn't want to become a new fic-person or go through the trouble of rediscovering all my old fic-people, so I decided to stay me here. How's that for convoluted use of pronouns?

Having said that: it's been a very long time since I've written anything but poetry. Even longer since I've written fic. (Like, three years). It may be a bit until I regain my sealegs, so I'm starting somewhere small, with a little coda to the latest episode. A morning. Some words. A blooming.

--

Title: that it was good
Author: xaara
Rating: G
Timeline: post 5.14 (spoilers if you squint)
Characters: Dean, Castiel (gen)
Summary: A sunrise, a cup of coffee, and a conversation.

( that it was good )

[Happy New Year!]

It's Friday night and the neighbors downstairs are having a party. It's not particularly noisy, but there's talking and laughing and the clinking of glasses and cutlery, and it's keeping me awake.

And then it suddenly occurred to me that if I can hear them, then they can hear me, or more importantly, my kittens, my clanging around in the kitchen, my sex life, and my impromptu dishwashing karaoke, in that order of frequency and loudness. I feel particularly bad about the kittens. When they're running around after each other, they can be irritating as hell. (One of the holiday visitor cats somehow got on top of the refrigerator this evening as The Boy and I were eating dinner. It was pretty impressive, but we still had to give him the requisite scolding.)

All this boils down to: I'm sorry, downstairs neighbors, and I will try to prevent the bed from squeaking too much or the kittens from pushing any more glasses off the coffee table.

I had a real reason for writing this post, though, and that was to squee about and comment on several new books. It's the semester break, so I've been sucking down everything as non-academic as I can find. This started out with The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Go drop everything and read it. Seriously. I actually met the author a while ago and told him I would read his book, and then my manager squeed a lot about it, so I picked it up. It's fantastic. It's the first third of the life story of an arcanist, from his childhood through his early adolescence, and--get this--it has a dragon on crack. I'm not even kidding. I can't wait for the next in the series.

Then I read (or tried to read) Diary of a Bad Year, since I'm a giant Coetzee fangirl. Couldn't get past the first 50 or so pages. It was kind of painful. Maybe when I'm in a different mindset or something, but right now I'm not feeling it, stylistically or in terms of content.

So after that I picked up The Yiddish Policemen's Union, because I'm determined to read Chabon backwards from The Gentlemen of the Road (omg BEST). And it's omg SECOND BEST so far. Because I still can't get over the pure joy of Gentlemen.

Also I Am Legend was really good, with the added bonus of a bunch of short stories in the back that aren't noted at all on the front (the I Am Legend part is half as long as it looks from the outside.) A couple of things irritated me. Mostly the re-use of nouns three or more times in close proximity (I'm still a little scarred by the number of times Matheson managed to put the word "chest" in a single page, because I keep imagining Charlton Heston's chest, which I've seen way too much of, and yeah.) But the story itself was fantastic. Now I want to see the movie.

Finally, I borrowed In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. As an avid cook/baker/lover of all things vegetable, animal, and mineral, I've always been interested in the American attitude towards food, and although I'm not quite halfway through this book yet, it's elaborated on a lot of the things I've always wondered about. Like how hundreds of thousands of cultures around the world can eat vastly different diets and still remain healthy. How scientists and therefore Americans have moved away from things we recognize as "food" (an apple, a carrot, a cut of meat) to things we recognize as "nutrients" (vitamin-fortified, highly packaged, processed edible things.) It's a good read, too--you might know Pollan from The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was a hot seller at Borders a few months ago, but which I have unfortunately not yet read.

So those are the ones I've read and loved so far. I read a few more that I didn't love, but liked enough to finish, most of which I will probably do a short commentary on later. And as it seems now that the party downstairs has moved to a different room, it is time for the sleep.

Working retail during the Christmas season would challenge the Dalai Lama's patience. But just when I'm about to give up on people altogether, someone comes along to tip the scales in the other direction.

Today, it was a boy in a teal shirt and beanie, and another with a beard and down jacket.

I was sitting in the creepy mural room at Memorial Union when a man in his mid-thirties came and sat at a table with a student. It soon became obvious that the man was on edge, probably on drugs, and if not dangerous, at least uncomfortably willing to invade personal space. The boy sitting at the table picked a moment when the man went to the bathroom to flee. When the man returned, he began harassing the next-nearest target--a girl studying nearby.

At first, I assumed that once she ignored him for a significantly long period of time, he would go away. However, he simply became more and more invasive, repeatedly touching her shoulder and moving her books and papers. She shrank back in her seat, and although I felt strongly for her, a giant part of me also has been raised not to become involved in escalating altercations. I've seen knives pulled on people who've done less. I was, however, pulling out my phone to call the police when a young man--the one in the teal shirt--rose from a nearby seat. He walked over to the girl and put himself between her and the man. "Hey, Sarah," he said. "How's it going?"

She looked at him. "Fine," she said, after enough of a pause to indicate that it wasn't her real name. The man looked at both of them for a long while, then recommenced his harassment. At this point, the boy left, presumably to alert Union security, and the girl was once again left to her own devices.

Seconds later, though, a second boy set down his backpack, pulled out a book, and sat across from her. "Ready to study?" he asked.

The man became sullen and edgier. He held out his hand to the boy, who accepted it and found himself trapped when the man wouldn't let go. "I need to study," said the boy. "I have finals."

"Fuck finals," said the man. "My tests were with life and death." He pointed at the juncture between the two hands, the sharp contrast in color. "You? You've got finals. You'll pass."

The boy nodded, doggedly keeping the man's attention until he tired of the game and moved to another room. Moments later, the campus police arrived, frisked him down, and kicked him out. The boy and girl introduced themselves, and left in separate directions. And I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and turned back to my work.