Regina Noctis

The insomniac is tired before dawn. It’s a rare event, but it happens once in a while, and understandable since this is Hell Week at work.

But guess what? Tonight I HAVE to stay up until 5am-ish because of a series of bad connections with Lothlorien for the dress I want to wear when I meet my honey next month. If they haven’t contacted me by then, I don’t get the dress, but I have to be up until then, in case. They leave at 5 for a show in which the dress I was going to buy will be sold.

And all I want to do is sleep. I’m exhausted.

Well, only 30 minutes more, at least.

About 28 hours now since I had a cigarette. I started getting hit by the physical withdrawal symptoms really strongly after about 24 hours. I could ignore them up until then.

I WANT A SMOKE!

Too bad I can’t have one.

At the risk of sounding like a character from Airplane…

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

We celebrated Andrew’s birthday today. We met for lunch at Todai, an all-you-can-eat sushi place at Vallco mall. I arrived late (unusual for me, but happens more and more often since I started working at First American and keeping hours appropriate to working from 3:30pm to 12:30am.)Everyone always wants to do things that are, for me now, so early in the morning. A lot of people consider sleeping until 10am to be “sleeping in.” It used to be the case for me too. Now, getting a phone call at 10:30am is something like one of my friends who have “normal” hours getting a call at their 3 or 4 in the morning. But I dealt with it, and hauled my butt out of bed at the equivalent of 5:30 in the morning for me, and off we went on out merry way.

After lunch (breakfast for me) at the sushi place, they all decided that they wanted to hang out at the mall for a couple hours. We had time to kill before heading up to San Mateo to pick the last member of our party up, and then packing ourselves into the cars and going up to the City. Since I didn’t want to be tempted to spend money I can’t afford to spend, and was missing my angel, I bowed out of hanging at the mall. Instead I went home to relax for a couple hours, and spend time talking with Pete if he was around.

Unfortunately, Pete wasn’t around, so I considered napping, briefly, but decided I’d never wake up in time. Instead I worked on some graphics, and then Carol showed up to pick me up. We gathered everyone together, and headed into San Francisco.

Andrew had never been to Alcatraz, and he’d always wanted to go. Actually, none of us in the group had been to Alcatraz, even though all of us have, at some point in our lives, been longtime residents of the Bay Area. So Carol bought tickets for everyone for the evening tour.

I had never had any particular interest in going to Alcatraz, which is why I hadn’t yet. It never sounded appealing, and I figured I’d just be bored with the whole thing. But it was Andrew’s birthday, and it was what he wanted to do, so I put a good face on it. I can simulate excitement convincingly if I need to.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to simulate anything. I actually enjoyed the tour. Well, enjoyed everything but the long hike up a steep hill part of the tour. I’m a smoker, overweight, out of shape, and extremely arthritic. That is not a combination conducive to hiking up hills.

I trooped along, however. I’m used to living with pain, physical pain, on a pretty much daily basis anyway, from all the damaged and deteriorating joints. I just gritted my teeth, and marched along with the tour group. I even, for the most part, managed to keep up with the main body of the group.

At the cellblocks, we took the audio tour of the prison. Carol says that her little tape player had an audible hum through the background of everything, which got on her nerves. Mine, on the other hand, was crisp and clear. With the sound effects and acting to go along with the history the tape gave me, there were times that I almost felt like I was there, during the time Alcatraz was still a maximum security prison. Once in a while, sounds from the tape would catch me unawares, and I’d turn around to see who was walking up behind me, or which door just slammed, or who was yelling down at the end of the cellblock corridor. I’ve always been good at suspension of disbelief, putting myself into the story I’m hearing or watching. It had its advantages today, since there was a tension, and even an underlying spookiness to the whole experience, that I don’t think would have been there otherwise.

I discovered quickly that most of the people who were along on the trip didn’t have the attention span (or maybe just the equivalent ability with suspension of disbelief that I have) to tour slowly through, in rhythm with the tape. I purposely separated myself from the group pretty quickly. They charged on ahead, while I waited with my tape on pause for a good ten minutes, studying inmate artwork. Then I resumed the tour.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that I enjoyed it. Granted, my main areas of interest have been ancient Greece, medieval Japan, and England from a bit before the War of the Roses until the end of the reign of Henry VIII, I am a big history geek. And I was fascinated by the history of the place, once I began the tour.

When we finished the audio tour, we took a second tour. This was the kitchen tour, also known as the explosions and escapes tour. The kitchen itself was lighted, as was the basement with the escape hatch someone tried to use. But the bakery and dish room were unlit. Our only lighting was the flashlight our tourguide had. It made the tour very atmospheric, although I know atmospheric in a false way, historically. But still, spooky and fun.

The sun was pretty well down by the time we got herded out of the cellblocks after the kitchen tour. The wind had kicked up, and fog rolled in over the city. We stopped there, in front of the doors to Alcatraz prison, and watched the city for a while. The lights came up in San Francisco, and glittered on the water of the bay, and it was lovely. The view from The Rock was spectacular.

As it had been during the day, actually. I wanted, when we first arrived, to have my sketchbooks, pens, canvas, and paints with me, and spend the day making pictures of what I saw there. Both outside, with the view of the City, and inside with the Spartan barrenness of the cells. It was a study in contrasts, and I could imagine how the inmates there felt, to live lives under those conditions, and have that reminder of freedom and all else that they were missing spread before them every time they went out the door.

We were eventually herded back down the hill to the ferry. I sat apart from everyone else, on a bench out on deck, and watched San Francisco’s lights get closer as we sailed over the bay. The water was a little choppy, and I thoroughly enjoyed the pitch and roll of the ferry. I’ve always loved being on a ship, especially if it’s just choppy enough that you can feel that it’s a ship you’re on. Some of the other people in our group were a bit on the miserable side, with sea-sickness. I have never been prone to that, and acquire sealegs very quickly. Sometimes too well, so that being on land again unbalances me a little, and it feels as if the ground is pitching and rolling the way the ship was.

It was about ten by the time we piled in the car and got under way. The restaurant we decided to get dinner at, The Stinking Rose, doesn’t close until 11. We just made it, the last party to arrive before they would start thinking about ending service for the day.

That restaurant is a garlic-lover’s dream. We began with fresh-baked rolls with garlic pesto spread on them and roasted garlic olive oil to dip them in. Main course, for me, was gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce with roasted garlic, asparagus, and pine nuts. I adore gnocchi, and the gorgonzola sauce was perfect. For dessert, Carol and I split their chocolate espresso mousse parfait. The chocolate mousse, layered on top, was thick and heavy and decadently chocolate. The espresso mousse under it was light and airy, and a perfect contrast to the intensity of the chocolate mousse. Pieces of brownie were scattered through it, and those pieces had absorbed some of the mousse, giving them a wonderfully moist texture that made them melt on the tongue. To finish it all, I had a glass of deep ruby port, a Quade Starboard 1988. Not as quite as good as the 1990 Taylor Fladgate port, but excellent nevertheless.

We had among us one freak, at least when it came to the food. With all of this excellent food to choose from, what did he order? A plate of plain pasta, no sauce or anything, with some Parmesan cheese on the side, and a small bowl of ketchup. He dumped the cheese and the ketchup on the pasta, mixed it together, and that was what he ate. Now, I’ve seen some picky people in my time, and many people who were afraid to try anything new, as if it would somehow inflate in their mouth so they’d be unable to swallow it and unable to spit it out. Like they would be forced to taste it for the rest of their lives if they tried it. But I’d never run into anyone quite that picky or afraid.

Wolfie, I’m sorry now for the occasional comment I have made about your choosiness about your food. This guy makes you look like a starving rat by comparison, and suddenly it seems like you’re willing to eat nearly anything, after I saw the way this guy carried on.

We ate so much there. I think that they should include wheelbarrows with the price of the meal. You need something to aid you in moving our overfed self from the restaurant to the car. You could rest your overstuffed tummy in it and push it along ahead of you…

After dinner, we packed ourselves back into the car and headed home. I’ve only just arrived, and wanted to set down my feelings today, especially during the Alcatraz tour, while they were still fresh.

I can close my eyes right now, and see Alcatraz as I looked back of it, from the aft deck of the ferry. The sky a deep blue, very nearly given over to the darkness of night, but not quite. The prison itself with its windows lit up, as if it was still occupied. Floating over it, the moon with streamers of clouds banding it and picking up its light in a silvery halo. And the lighthouse flashing its warning to ships sailing the bay.

For some reason, that last sight of Alcatraz sent a shiver down my spine. And I felt a kind of lonely isolation for a moment. Maybe I just identified too closely when I listened to the tape, and former inmates talked about how it felt to be on the island, so near yet so far from the activity of the city.

Or perhaps I should just attribute the frisson that I felt to the cold wind blowing off the bay.

Throughout the day, in addition to all I saw and felt, I had one particularly intense desire. I often (usually, even) feel something like it, but it was incredibly intense today. I wanted to be able to share all of it with Pete. To be able to stroll hand in hand through the place while the tapes played. Maybe to steal a kiss when in the Hole, when the tourguide locks the cell door and the darkness is complete. To hold each other while looking across the bay to the city lights, sharing the view and our warmth with each other on the cold, windy courtyard in front of the prison. And, for some reason, most particularly, to be aboard the ship with him as it sails the bay, with the moon lighting the clouds and fog in silver, and the glitter of lights on the water. The rest too, but more than anything that. I don’t know why it hit me so strongly. I just know that, for some reason, sailing in the sunset and early evening with him, on the bay, is strongly appealing to me right this moment.

I think I remember a friend mentioning once something about dinner cruises around the bay. Maybe I’ll investigate. It was years ago that I heard it, if I’m remembering correctly. I might not be. And if I am, they might no longer be around. That was, after all, in the 80’s that I heard it. A lot can change in 15 years.

And someday, Pete will be coming out to visit me here, just as I’m going next month to visit him in New Jersey. Maybe this would be something special we could do together.

I’ll have to look into it, and also see if it’s something he’d like. Either the dinner cruise, or a tour of Alcatraz. Or maybe both.

Happy birthday, Snow White!

So, today is my dad’s birthday.

Wonder where he is. Not terribly concerned. More curious than anything else. We have been out of contact for long enough now that it’s more like a casual acquaintance that disappeared from my life. Don’t really think about him, except for every once in a while, something once associated with him will come up. And then I’ll wonder, briefly.

I wonder if I should feel bad that I don’t feel something more than that. He’s my father, after all. But ya know, after everything that went on, this vaguely curious indifference is all I can drum up. And can’t even feel guilt that there isn’t more that I’m feeling over him going missing.

Last heard from, lo these many years ago now, he was somewhere down in Mexico. I don’t even know where. Even the somewhere down in Mexico thing came third- or fourth-hand.

But hey, he chose to end contact. He knew I didn’t have his number, but he had mine. And it’s his loss, far more than mine.

After all, if he called, what I’d probably get treated to would be begging to help him get my mom back… followed by a lecture about how I am, always have been, and always will be a failure. His favorite refrain, no matter what I achieved, and said to me so often from such a young age, that it was my image of myself for a very long time.

Putting these things down in this journal has brought on some memories. And not of the time he was actually a good father. There is something, some event, and I suspect I know what it was based on nightmares I’ve had. All memories, especially those associated with my father, before that event, are gone. I’ve been told stories of when he was a good dad to me. I just can’t remember them.

All my memories start after The Event. When all of the sudden he was cold and distant and hyper-critical of everything I did or said. When he ignored anything I achieved, and focused instead on anything I failed in, no matter by how little the failure. I was about six or seven. Maybe eight. I’m not even clear on the age, since there’s a large fuzzy gap following the blank time, a period that I only have vague and disjointed memories of.

I remember the first time I won blue ribbons with my artwork. I remember how proud my mom was of me. I brought the ribbons, all five of them, and the one green ribbon, to my father. Partially, because my mom told me to go show them to my dad. Mostly, because I wanted him to be proud of me. I think, at the time, I still remembered what he’d been what he’d been a caring father. What I remember now is how I was so proud of my winning them, and how sure I was that this, finally, would make a difference in how my father treated me. I remember running up to him, with the ribbons in my hands, holding them out to him like a gift. And I remember the sullen, angry expression that came over his face, and how he wouldn’t look at me or the ribbons. All he said to me was to get out of the way, because I was blocking the TV.

I remember taking some variety of state scholastic achievement test. Part of it was an essay question. A couple days after the test was over, I was called to the office. I wondered what it was I was in trouble for (after all, you only get called to the office when you’ve done something wrong, right?) Even though I hadn’t actually done anything, I’d been living with the litany that I was a failure and that I could never do anything right for long enough by then that I felt automatic guilt as if I had actually done something to be in trouble for. I was well on the road to the eventual conviction I had in high school, that my very existence was a problem to everyone.

I met with the principal and my English teacher. They had my essay there on the desk in the principal’s office. They told me that this, the original, was going to be mounted at the school, because it was so flawlessly written and an absolute perfect example of the essay form. A copy had already been made and sent to the state. The following year, my essay would be distributed to everyone in the state who would be taking the achievement test as a sample of a perfect essay. In the state. A heady thought for a 12-year-old.

After it had been on display at the school for a month, they gave it back to me. I hadn’t learned my lesson from the art awards. I ran to my dad with it the first chance I got. I figured that, since he wasn’t watching TV, he’d take the time to look and be proud of me for once.

He was in the kitchen, pouring himself some milk. I ran up and told him, rather breathlessly, about the essay. He took it from my hand and looked at it, and for a brief moment, I thought that I’d finally done something Right. (And yeah, when I thought of it, it was such a focus that it did have a capital letter in my mind.)

That momentary flush of happiness was badly timed. It made the moment all that much worse when he put down the glass of milk, tore the essay to pieces, and threw it in my face. He told me it was shit, I was a dummy, just a dumb broad, and I’d better clean up my mess before he came back. And he left the kitchen, left me to pick up the pieces of my essay. My mess.

(Would that make it a messay? lol)

By the time I was 17 and just starting college, having graduated a year early, I hardly paid attention to the lecture about what a colossal failure and disappointment and dumb broad I was. I remember some of his rant. That I should have been taking a full load of classes at Berkeley like my mother did when she went to Berkeley(which we couldn’t afford for me, and would have been useless to go to when it was a career in art I was aiming for and had my sights set on CCAC in Oakland.) On top of that, I should have been married and either pregnant or already had a kid to support, and taking care of the kid full time like a good mother. And cooking for my husband and keeping the house clean and working a full-time job. Believe it or not, that was just part of the rant. There was more that I don’t remember now because I tuned it out then.

Yeah, I’m sure that everyone has stories about fucked up things that their parents did. I know that there are stories that easily top these few and make life with my dad look like a walk in the park.

The good thing about these stories, now, today, is that they don’t have an impact. They’re just stories now. There was a time when thinking about those events and others like them was intensely painful. Now, I just don’t care.

I don’t know whether or not the lack of feeling in either direction, love or hate, where my father is concerned, was the price I had to pay to lose the emotional impact of those past events. Maybe just years and distance were enough to stop those things from mattering. But the route I did take to heal from them has left no room to feel anything for the man that’s less than impersonal.

Even the vague curiosity that surfaces once or twice a year is rather impersonal in flavor. It’s almost like one of those “What ever happened to…?” retrospectives on a child star. Someone who starred in something I might have seen once, and thought was okay. Someone who matters that little in my life.

So, today, I wondered…

What ever happened to Otto Huber?

For about three years, I’ve been going to Digitalblasphemy to get the free 3D rendered wallpaper there. The man’s work is incredibly beautiful.

For two of those years, I’ve been considering becoming a subscribed member, to have access to all of his work, not just the few he puts up as freebies.

I subscribed tonight. $25 for a year, that’s more than reasonable, considering the quality of his work.

This is the guy who first made me decide that I wanted to take up 3D rendering. I don’t think that I’ll ever be as good as he is. But I’m trying!

At least I don’t drool quite so much over his work now. I can produce okay looking images these days, even if they are nowhere near as spectacular as his.

I recommend the site to anyone and everyone. Check it out sometime. It’s impressive!