From the Tao Te Ching

20 - Wandering

What is the difference between assent and denial?
What is the difference between beautiful and ugly?
What is the difference between fearsome and afraid?

The people are merry as if at a magnificent party
Or playing in the park at springtime,
But I am tranquil and wandering,
Like a newborn before it learns to smile,
Alone, with no true home.

The people have enough and to spare,
Where I have nothing,
And my heart is foolish,
Muddled and cloudy.

The people are bright and certain,
Where I am dim and confused;
The people are clever and wise,
Where I am dull and ignorant;
Aimless as a wave drifting over the sea,
Attached to nothing.

The people are busy with purpose,
Where I am impractical and rough;
I do not share the peoples' cares
But I am fed at nature's breast.

Arrgggg!!

Exam stress descended upon me yesterday with a vengeance. I am going to die. Or at least fail all my exams and be forced to live under an overpass, begging for change so can feed the cat and take aikido lessons. Or something like that.

I hate the end of the semester. As if stressing out about the exams isn't bad enough by itself, this is when you run out of money, start flipping out about jobs (again), have to make travel plans, and do a hundred other little things that would ordinarily not cause you to sob uncontrollably but because you also have to learn 4 months worth of law so you can spend 4 hours in a sweaty room trying to make sense of it all knowing you will be graded on a curve so how you do is really only half of it, coping just goes right out the door.

And people who are not law students keep telling me I need a break. Feh. That may be true, but the types of breaks I need are very specific. You know, breaks involving food, hugs, a pep talk, and then being gently ushered back to the pile of books with a nice cup or tea and a few kind words. Or the break that comes in knowing you are not actually totally alone, laboring in a vacuum, and that someone will come check on you in an hour or so. Not the break involving some wild tear at a bar or nightclub, or similar.

Oh joy! Oh Rapture!

The chiropractor has given me permission to train again! Hurray! I've never been so excited about anything in my life.

Happiness is being allowed to do breakfalls!

Now if only I could get excited about the establishment clause, we'd really be getting somewhere.

I really had not realized how much pain I've been in for the last 6 months at least. Now that's going away, my mood is so much better. I've had some other realizations or awakenings or something these last couple of weeks too, and my mood is so much lighter. Of course, the hamster in my head still seems to be on crack, and last night was the first night in a week I've slept normally, but somehow even with all of the stress and overwhelmingness of everything, I feel so much steadier now that the pain is getting taken care of. Hurray for getting better!

Things on my dressing table

Because I have a ton of work to do and am in a nervous tizzy over some other things (which I will post about eventually), I've been cleaning. Seriously, hamsters on speed are calmer than I am right now. It's amazing I'm not causing power surges.

Anyway, I was cleaning off my dressing table and found the following items mixed in amongst jewelry boxes and make up bits you'd expect to find there:

1. A pair of rather lovely pliers
2. A tire pressure gauge
3. My shinai
4. An extending roach clip thing I got from a PG&E guy once for lighting hard to reach pilot lights
5. An etch-a-sketch
6. A calculator

Huh.

Oooo Lace!

Before I run off to my chiropractor, here is the lace collar that I plan to use with the dress for Dickens. I got the pattern out of a crazy Norweigan lace book and had to translate and resize it (it was sized for a baby).

Here come the nerves...

Wow but am I nervous. And jumpy. I hate the weeks leading up to exams. Everything goes all nutty and I can't eat. Somehow this year it's the fragments of life surrounding the exams that are making me more nervous. I have no idea if this is good or bad, it just feels like so many things are in flux, there's nothing solid to anchor myself to while I try to deal with tests and papers. Blegh. I must learn to flow like the stream and not be the rock, or whatever it is you are supposed to do.

I think even the professors are getting nutty. My Evidence class was supposed to be cancelled today, but last night I got some random email about a web cast. WTF? As usual, I have no idea what in the hell my first amendment prof is talking about, but that's normal. Yesterday somehow he got round to Saint Christopher having been taken off the calendar of saints. Beats me, but that's the Socratic method for you. Oh, and my privacy prof thinks I should go in to teaching. Which is an interesting idea, but I think I still need some kind of actual job first.

I want to go to aikido and train until nothing else matters. Stupid back.

The dress

This is the dress I plan to make for Dickens.



I'm doing the view with the more fitted sleeves and buttons down the front, in a black and red waffle weave cotton. I'll use my hand knit lace collar, simple undersleeves (probaly just cuffs), a crochet bonnet I made ages ago from a period pattern, and one of my knit shawls. It should work out rather well and not take much more than a weekend.

I did pull out the pieces today, and I ask you, in what crazy insane world does one need 9 inches of ease around the bust?! What the hell? NINE inches? I know this is a gathered front bodice, but the under bodice has 9 inches of ease. I suspect they want you to pad out the bust as they do in some of the other Civil War patterns but still, this seems insane. I think it'll work out without too much altering if a cut out the front that fit my bust reasonably and a back that fits my waist reasonably, then I can fiddle.

Nine inches of ease. WTF?

Becasue I'm just that kind of crazy

The thing that has the most worried about my chiropractic care regimen is kendo and aikido training, and wearing a corset. Can I wear a corset for Dickens? This is actually a big issue. If I can't, what on earth will I wear? How I will even hold it up? The idea of being in a Victorian day dress all day without the support of a corset sounds pretty miserable, but I suppose I just wear it on the loose side? I'm almost afraid to ask the doctor.

A few updates

I finally went to see the chiropractor about my back. It's no wonder I've been having a hard this semester, I've been in pain since July and now I have proof I'm not nuts. Along with many other fun alignment issues, I have degenerative disk disease. Great. At least he thinks he thinks he can help.

The end of the semester is looming. I'm freaking out. But in a calm sort of way.

Nearly out of money again, with no one to call for help.

Lonely. Scared. Broke. Hurting. But nothing much can be done about any of these things. I just wish knew where the light at the end of this was.

Martial Arts rambling

This weekend the martial arts organization I belong to had a huge event in Norfolk. People came from all over the place and did all kinds of demonstrations and we trained, and it was pretty amazing. I wouldn't say it was "fun," intense is a better word for it. I still haven't sorted out my thoughts and impressions of the whole thing, parts of it were really uplifting, parts totally demoralizing, and I have no idea what the net effect was, but something very cool did happen.

I got promoted to a green belt in kendo. This probably requires some explanation. I was at the 9th kyu, and went to 6th. That's skipping over a the whole range of yellow belts. It's a big promotion. I have no idea how this happened, but there it is. The most I had hoped to accomplish was a yellow belt, which would be the 8th kyu. Again, I still have not really processed this, but I did notice a huge shift in my training on Sunday. Wow but are the expectations ever different! Kendo is intense as it is, but there's a whole other level that I wasn't quite expecting (though should have been). I think I just wasn't expecting things to feel so dramatically different. And I don't know if it's the expectations I have of myself now or those that my instructors have, probably it's some of each, but in either case I'm surprised to find that I'm so excited about this. I actually was glad that I was getting called on small things I was doing wrong, that I was expected to handle things I didn't think I could, and that when we were sparring (which I really dislike, mostly because I have no idea what to do) the crazy 14 year old yudansha I was working with refused to let up for a second.

I still think kendo is harder than aikido. You need a different degree and kind of physical and mental endurance. You need control and presence of mind, and those things are difficult to cultivate. But once you start to realize what it is you are trying to cultivate, the results are pretty astonishing. We don't talk about flow so much in kendo, that's more of an aiki thing, but it's not because kendo doesn't flow. It's that the flowing is harder to conceptualize, and somehow I think it's more complete. It starts when you pick up the shinai, and doesn't stop until you take the armor off.

What's the matter with my head?

So I have this bra. Every time I wear it, my right boob tries to escape and pops out every few minutes. It's no good, and yet, for some reason, I keep attempting to wear this bra as though somehow, maybe this time, the boob won't try to escape.

Why do I do this? How insane am I? The rational thing to do here would be throw the damn thing out, but no, every single time i wear it I think the exact same thing "Gee, last time I wore this one my boob kept popping out, but that must be because of X reason, so today it will be fine, it fit in the store after all." The day goes on, the boob escapes, and I think to myself "yeah, so this is hopeless. I should throw it out." And yet I never do, out of some misplaced bra-related optimism or some other major physiological dysfunction.

gah.

My new favorite shirt

"William and Mary School of Law...where your best just hasn't been good enough since 1779"

That about sums it up. Although, I'm starting to get interested in things again, and this is good. My privacy paper is coming along and the prof is really excited about it. David Nimmer, the God of Copyright Law, came and spoke yesterday and that was really interesting, and if things go well I should have an interesting externship next semester. So yay! Plus I've been looking into stuff for actual real people with actual problems (without giving any sort of advice of course), and it's nice to see that all of this can really apply to real life and make a positive difference for people.