{i'll be a single falling star in a lake so still that the ripples will be perfect on the surface}

[kaberett]

I would like to talk and I would like to interact but I'm feeling a little wearied & a little wrung out. Ask me questions?

(It feels a little silly to ask you to ask me questions when I'm doing so much here-are-my-innards on the topic of counselling at the moment, and then on the other hand it feels a little like I'm being all surface or all guts. Brains, eh.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

*points you thisaway*

Hugs?

[kaberett]

I am all for more wheelchair users in fic, especially when it's not the point of the character. (This is a lot of what I think A:tLA got super-right.)

& yes please to hug!

I want to get around to talking about specialisation/expertise at some point - I mentioned in elisem's place recently that I view myself as a conduit of knowledge, in response to a post about referrals - and I don't think I've talked about how I see my fundamental function as being a point of contact for a global network of experts? But it's a thing I keep meaning to. Maybe when I am more awake, if I wouldn't be repeating myself!

[alexseanchai]

Hugs!

About the 'not the point of the character' thing: Mai's canon shtick is using her sexuality to distract her mostly-[heterosexually-]male opponents. (...yes my canon is sexist, why do you ask?) I had the thought that I should not change that, because (1) if I did she'd stop being Mai (2) the thing where disabled women are assumed to not be sexual beings. But now I'm worrying that making her a wheelchair user would make the point of her character "yes, I'm female, yes, I'm disabled, yes, I'm sexual, IN YOUR FACE FUCKERS". Instead of the point of her character in canon, which is along the lines of "can't have friends if you let no one in" and "hard to keep friends if you don't keep in touch with them". I'm pretty sure this is not a reason not to do it, but it's still a thought I wanted to voice.

I do not think you have talked about the fundamental function thing, at least not where I have seen. I don't care if you are repeating yourself; I want to hear you talk about that. :)

[pretty_panther]

What are you reading right now if anything?

[kaberett]

I just finished Stolen, the sequel to Kelley Armstrong's Bitten (tagline on my bound uncorrected proof: she's a wolf in chic clothing). I have an abiding weakness for terrible werewolf romances, and at some point I am actually going to write the essay about how YA fiction based around werewolves is secretly all trans narratives!

I have moved directly on to Janet Mock's Redefining Realness, which I got around to buying last week, because... yeah. This stuff is important. (And thank you for reminding me that I should recommend it to the LGBT+ library I founded!) Really, really getting on well with it, in the "have cried several times so far and I'm only 15% of the way through" sort of way.

Next on my list is one of the volumes I borrowed from the poetry library at the weekend - I've got collected works of Walcott & Maya Angelou, and then RS Thomas' No Truce with the Furies and Tomas Transtroemer's The Great Enigma.

[sporky_rat]

I just bought a collection of Kit Smart's poetry. FAVORITE POET EVER (first even to William Blake)!

What're your thoughts on Kit Smart and his poetry?

[kaberett]

First reaction: haven't consciously heard of.

Second reaction: in any of my anthologies? [checks] Nope.

Third reaction: [searches]

Fourth reaction: clearly good, but not quite what I am in the mood for this evening, i.e. I should add him to my list of Things To Get From The Library and settle down properly at some point! :-)

[jelazakazone]

You sound like me --- desperate for deep connecting interaction and yet out of spoons as to how to get that to happen. <3

Here's a question for you: is it presumptuous of me to assume that an artist would want derivate art based on his own art? /o\ I am going to see the neuron artist on Thursday and part of me thinks he'd be thrilled to get a little neuron quilt from me and the other part is like, WTF brain? Nonetheless, I am forging ahead and making a neuron quilt. I can always take it and never show him and give it away or sell it later.

[kaberett]

That's so much an individual-thing, and a culture-of-fandom thing, though, isn't it? The way that transformative works are amazing and astonishing and precious and an honour? But then Elise has been talking about playing catch with art (this is what we do; this is also what we do).

But: I would be flattered and I would be honoured, and I think that it is definitely, definitely worth the offer.

[forestofglory]

Tell me about something lovely that you have eaten recently?

R just made me tacos for lunch, with re-fried beans, green onions, dried shallots, cheese and sour cream.

[kaberett]

The most extravagant: my mother came to visit me briefly on her way home last Thursday, so on my way home from work, I stopped off at the ridiculous cheesemonger near South Ken tube and bought a round of Selles-sur-Chere, our absolute favourite goats' cheese, and one I once made a not-insignificant detour for during a tour of the Loire chateaux. We ate it with membrillo paste she'd made from a family friend's mother's quinces, and with some of the ridiculous Swedish crispbreads the tiny corner shop opposite my house sells (along with garlic Lurpak, why is this considered a necessity where I live, what have I become), and it was lovely.

The most comforting: we had half a loaf of white bread gone stale. We had eggs and milk. We have dried dates in vast quantities, and we have spices and butter. I made bread-and-butter pudding. It is the best thing and never fails to make me happy - it is texturally Just Right for me, and I get to spoon apricot jam (or marmalade, depending on mood) over it, and it is comforting and warm and just the best.

[silveradept]

Is there a question that you really wish people would ask (more)? What would be the ideal response from you to that question?

[kaberett]

To me: I think the single biggest improvement to my quality of life would arise from people routinely asking my preferred pronoun & respecting the answer.

In general: why? More specifically: why do we believe this?

Which are staggeringly unoriginal, I suspect, but are what I've got right now! (How about you? :-)

[ex_we935]

Have you got any particular favourite vegetarian recipes you might recommend? (Any measurement format is fine with us.)

—N.

[kaberett]

Is it okay if I link you to recipes I've already posted? (Specific ones!) Also, disclaimer that my favourite thing depends strongly on the time of year :-)

[jjhunter]

Your thoughts wanted re: pod_together experience – :oD ?

[kaberett]

Will head over and do so now!

[macey]

What is your favourite place in the city?

[kaberett]

Ooh, difficult. But actually, I think, a tiny park with tiny sculptures near the tiny ancient St Pancras Church, on my way from KGX to my counsellor's place, just before the gingko tree.

Or maybe the minerals gallery in the NHM.

[thefairymelusine]

What is your go to comfort read?

[kaberett]

I Capture The Castle is very close to the top of the list, though it's been a while. recessional's Ten Thousand Things A:tLA-verse poly-fic. Howl's Moving Castle. My terrible werewolf romances. Haroun and the Sea of Stories, to some extent (the only Salman Rushdie you should ever read). My favourite poetry anthologies. Some Discworld - Soul Music, Thief of Time.

[quirkytizzy]

Why poetry? What about it calls to you?

[kaberett]

JJ says it best :-)

There's stuff about it being - music-with-words, because of the ways the rhythm and etc work; there's stuff about how it's so often spare-yet-intricate sketches of emotion; that descriptions-of-landscape are descriptions-of-interior; that they are deliberately rich in layered meaning and ambiguities, to find your own way through. Poetry introduced me to the idea that I'm an abuse survivor; that reminds me that my experience of depression is not solitary; that reminds me (often explicitly) that none of my experiences of anything are me-alone, because I can pick up a book in the middle of the night and be reminded that somebody I have never met, somebody I will never meet, has felt exactly like this.

It's the way the rhythm demands movement, flow, as well. It's - oh, it's so many things. Does any of that make any sense?

[khronos_keeper]

Heyooo...

I... am feeling kind of misplaced. Like I'm a step away from reality, and adrift. I'm successfully interacting with reality and making the right motions, but I'm having a hard time connecting. Do you have any good advice to sort of come back to myself?

[kaberett]

For me the key is often to remind myself that this sliver of a moment, right here, is real - not even to try to connect them, just to find that all unawares I've caught splinters of reality in my fingers (and then choosing to leave them there).

Some of this I do with embodiment - with perfume that I can bury myself in my wrists for (today I am wearing BPAL's March Hare, with is lovely, discontinued, and consequently horrifyingly expensive; it's lush rich apricot plus cloves); with jewelry that sits on me and grounds me (the rainbow thread bracelet on my wrist that tethers me to sky and community; the pendant on the chain around my neck that ties me to art and to earth). I disappear into poems to remind myself that I can feel, and that there are things in this world that other people made that I can feel in response to. I try to stop and look at the colour of the sky and the texture of the bark on the nearest true or the shapes of my hands. I see what happens when I concentrate on breathing.

If I can't make reality stick for any longer than those moments, then still I have them, and the best thing about them - for me - is that none of them are reliant on how other people feel about me or interact with me; they are all private, all for myself.

I think I am less good at this than the tipsy oracle, but it is where I start.