01.06.09
Posted in holidailies at 8:30 pm by krystyn
What you see above is a representation of one of the things that totally sucked about 2008.
I hadn’t written about this previously, because quite honestly, it made me ill just to think about it, and also made me feel quite stupid to remember it. But, I guess it’s traditional to put the year to bed, and to make an attempt at purging the bad through recognizing it and letting it go.
On the very last trip I took to North Carolina in March, I had to have my entire apartment packed up and placed on a very large truck, a truck which would wend its way all over the U.S. (seriously – the next stop after NC was in New Jersey) before making its way to the West Coast. All of my furniture and nearly all of my possessions traveled thousands of miles over two or three weeks before reaching me here in Glendale.
It was incredibly surreal – I slept on an air mattress and ate takeout and snuggled with the cat and worked insane hours, and then the boxes arrived, and it would take me 3 or 4 more months before I would have a living room worth using, for all the boxes and moving block puzzle arranging of furniture. Anyway.
So on this last trip I signed many pieces of paper saying yes yes, you have my stuff, and it is numbered 1 through 1 billion, and I give you permission to hang on to all of my bedsheets and Tupperware and books for up to a month, no problem! and then I met with the car guy who put the Grand Prix on a big car truck, and I was staying with friends, and as I was packing up for the flight back to Burbank, I realized that one thing was missing: a small, slim metal tin with most of my DS games inside. The photograph above? Those are the empty cases for the ones I lost on an airplane. Somehow. Even though, through all of the flights I took from October to March, I made it home and back each time with all games and gadgets intact. This very last flight, I completely misplaced nearly twenty games, all with a significant amount of love and time put into them.
Even to this day, I can’t really think about my beloved Animal Crossing town, which was about two years old by that point and one of my biggest travel comforts while away from home. I know, feel free to laugh, but it really sucks. I miss my cat neighbor, Kabuki, something awful. I’ve since replaced a few of the games, but I can’t really bring myself to play them much. Newer games are alright.
So that was one thing that was a super-huge drag from last year. Sure, I’m lucky it wasn’t anything even more valuable, but it makes me mad and sad that I called both airports, filled out forms, and called the central lost and found depository in Texas several times, with no reports of the games being turned in. I am mad that I was not more responsible and aware, and it was a pretty big indicator of how burned out and exhausted and stressed I was getting with all the travel, the long hours, and (another) cross-country move.
And then I got laid off. Which, you know, sucked.
But the next thing that sucked is the thing that still sucks the very most. It is the thing that started at least a year and a half ago, and has been a frog-in-a-boiling-pot-of-water sort of suck.
My Dad is dying.
I haven’t wanted to really write about it publicly, because in so many ways the whole situation is just not my story to tell, it’s not about me, and it’s really just too sad and too awful and too much. But he’s my Dad, and it’s become a major portion of my waking thoughts, so I am putting pixel to screen and writing a few words about it.
He had a short series of small strokes, I guess, in the latter half of 2007. Mostly his voice was affected, but he remained positive and was taking advantage of his VA benefits to see about getting speech therapy to relearn various sounds that words make, and to re-pitch his speaking voice. It was quite a shock to get a phone call from him in December of that year to confirm our dinner plans, and hear the voice of a man in his 80′s speaking with my Dad’s speech patterns. Wobbly, frail, hoarse – almost unrecognizable. When I saw him, though, he was driving his car, he looked healthy, and beyond a few facial tics that appeared to be after-effects of the stroke(s), he was alright. His kiss on my cheek was a little motionless and awkward, but he was alright. Everything was going to be OK.
But as time went on, other things began to falter: his sense of balance, his fine motor skills. Once I moved to California, I tried to go out to see him when I could, which was not often, because I was still working insane hours, and we lived a not-insignificant distance from each other (quadrupled with L.A. traffic, naturally).
There were lots of little stories over the next few months that indicated that things were not improving for my Dad: some of them I heard second- or third-hand, and several others I witnessed myself. I would show up to spend time with him, and have his girlfriend explain the quickly-healing gash above his eye that he’d lost his balance yet again, and fallen forward against the edge of a table. I saw him lose his balance myself a few times, noting what the doctors had: his reaction did not include the instinctive throwing out of his arms to catch himself. He would simply fall. I began to guard him closely any time he got up to do anything or walk anywhere – it was imperative.
Eventually, Dad moved in with his girlfriend, and my brother and I helped as much as we could (mostly my brother) to tie up loose ends, gather furniture to be donated, and box the rest to bring over with Dad to her house so she could help take care of him. He was no longer able to really speak or emote at this point, and there were often pads of paper or portable dry-erase boards for him to use so he could communicate.
At first he was resistant to a cane or a walker, but came to depend on it, as he was simply not able to walk without falling. He began to have trouble swallowing, especially liquids. Doctors were initially hesistant?/reluctant?/unsure? about giving him a proper diagnosis, as the combination of rapidly attenuating symptoms did not seem to point to any one thing. They umbrella’d him for a long time, and then finally, there was a possible name for what he was going through: CBD – Corticobasal Degeneration.
At the end of October, my Dad was transferred from his girlfriend’s home in California to an assisted care facility in Texas, thanks to the Herculean efforts of my brother. It was a very emotional and screwed up situation in general, but suffice it to say, there was some enthusiasm for where Dad was placed and the care he would get.
Right before Christmas, my Dad had one of the worst falls he’d ever had. He was walking around with his walker, and he fell and hit his head so hard there was bleeding in his brain. Perversely, one of the things that saved him that day was the CBD itself – the brain atrophy he’d experienced up to that point left room for the blood, which thankfully stopped bleeding during his hospital stay.
However, the fall did a lot to further his condition – he was no longer able to walk on his own, or to sit up on his own. He also stopped eating, and continued showing absolutely no interest in television, movies, e-mailing, looking at cards and letters sent to him, etc. He lost even more weight than he’d lost up to that point. The last time I’d seen him in California, he was getting very bony already.
While there is certainly an observable pattern of decline and then plateauing with CBD patients, this last fall changed the landscape considerably.
After an emotional call with my brother, I flew out to Texas for a few days leading up to and including Christmas.
It is quite possible that this visit would be the last time I will ever get to see him.
And there is really no way to ever find the right words, or the right way to say them, even if we haven’t been close for so many years now, even if he can’t speak or write any words back to me. And even though his facial muscles can no longer make definitive expressions, his blue eyes said quite a lot as I told him things from my heart and told him stories and relayed stuff my Mom told me to tell him. I felt awkward and stupid and horrified. I only wanted to say the best things, but instead I stuttered and sometimes fell quiet, because I suddenly felt like the world’s floor had dropped out from under me, and nothing I could say would ever suffice. I forced myself to talk, and occasionally found things that made him laugh (a short gasp and moan) or cry (a moan, eyes filled with tears).
I don’t even know if it’s right that I am writing about this, but I think about him every single day, and I know that he is not plateauing at the moment, and he is only 64, and I just want peace for him and I hate that wishing peace for him means something horrible. This is horrible.
This is a mystery filled with rage and sadness and fear and love, and there is never a good way to tell a story like this. I love you, Dad, and I am so sorry that this horrible thing is happening. It’s fucking unfair, and I will never understand it.
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01.05.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:56 pm by krystyn
I just found out that a perfume bottle I’ve had for a while now was created and sold in 1927. The box design is gorgeous, the bottle is still sealed, the glass stopper still attached to the neck with a black elastic. I nabbed it either from my Mom or her husband some years ago, and has always been a pretty decorative element on my dresser or bookcase.
However, it’s not entirely clear if the perfume name/scent itself a tribute to a ballet produced that same year, called The Red Poppy, or if it was truly and singularly a 10 year anniversary scent to commemorate the Russian Revolution.
Either way, it’s pretty neat. The box design is gorgeous. I had no idea it was this old. I knew just from the general look and feel that it dated back to at least the 1940′s, but I was still surprised to find that it really does seem to be firmly placed in history at 1927. Cool!
Thanks much to my friend Yulia who helped to translate the Cyrillic lettering on the box. It’s a strange lettering – I had been able to get at least the letters in the upper left that translated to “dukhi,” which is, well, “perfume.” I assume the swipey calligraphic style was meant to be Asian (specifically Chinese) in feel, which supports the idea that it references the ballet, but I just don’t know. Any web searches I’ve made come up with astonishingly little on the provenance of this bottle.
tiny clarification made after more research: the bottle may only be from the 1950′s after all, which makes sense. but the perfume itself has been around since the 1920′s.
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01.04.09
Posted in holidailies at 9:36 pm by krystyn
Bret is pacing the room, talking loudly with our friends Lenore and Tom in Northern California. We’ve taken a little break from Rock Band just now, which has become quite a little tradition for Sunday afternoons. Bret’s got a headset on, and the guitar hanging on him from its strap. I can hear them tinnily through the headset, and slightly through the television. Occasionally, I pick up the microphone and add to the discussion, even though I am sitting here, typing.
What has also become tradition is the white bean and basil hummus that we pick up from Trader Joe’s, along with the pita chips (either sesame or sea salt). And this morning, I baked up a whole batch of the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that I so love to make – I added in even more vanilla this time than I normally do, more crystallized ginger, triple the chocolate, and even a dash of allspice. They are cakey and very intensely tasty without being overpowering.
We devoured far too many of them this afternoon.
It’s nice to have these tiny traditions from week to week, as I am not at all getting used to the not-going-into-the-office thing that unemployment brings me. Lately Bret hasn’t been able to come by, but in his absence it must be said that a tiny community has sprung up around the whole experience: people are beginning to jockey for guest spots in the band, and there’s some instrument juggling as we try to figure out the best configuration/combination for maximum rock potential.
Additionally, the Northern Cali contingent has gone hi-tech, setting up dual webcams (picture in picture, even), streaming the video live on a webpage with a text chat setup. One cam points at the Northern Cali rockers, and the other points at their television, so people can see the avatars we’ve all created and how well we’re doing, video game-wise.
It is all delightfully geeky, and I am grateful for the organized nature of what is normally a pretty casual hobby. I like the structure.
The only thing that’s a little bit sad or lacking in the experience is the slight delay in the game between party leader and remotely-networked guests – this means that the vocalist can never be heard remotely by the other people in the band – the lag would throw everyone off. So, if you’re not in the room with the vocalist, you just hear the original vox track for that song play in its place.
I am grateful to get to spend time like this with far-away friends, especially during this period of time when things are a bit unsure and open-ended.
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01.03.09
Posted in holidailies at 7:53 pm by krystyn
It is very weird to finally have the time to open up and explore the boxes of things that have been sitting virtually untouched since I threw them in there at the beginning of 2007.
I played all the way through Act I of the game Diablo II today, if that tells you anything.
It’s as if my old life went entirely on hold as soon as I taped up those boxes that went on the truck in March of ’07, and I was given over to a trance-like improvisation of a new me. The old pieces of my personality stayed in hiding, in archival status, stacked and expiring.
There are too many things here I thought I’d need. I will keep some of them. But mostly, I want to give things away and re-assess what I’ve got and recycle a whole bunch of it. I keep a lot of things through guilt, and through a weird sense of poverty-memory. Back in the day, every last little thing I had was precious and hard-won. Now? Well, I am certainly in frugal mode, and that’s not likely to change any time soon, but I now understand a little better what it means to be mobile.
It’s dangerous, this woolgathering. One minute, I want to stay in this apartment as long as possible. Hang some drapes, earthquake-proof the bookcases, put up that huge old school map on the living room wall. Move the TV. And the next, I just want to hie myself back to North Carolina or something.
It’s all about safety and comfort, no matter which direction I find myself leaning. I just want to feel safe.
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01.02.09
Posted in holidailies at 5:47 pm by krystyn
It is so foggy and grey out that I can’t see the hills surrounding me, which is weird.
And yet, I don’t feel like I am back in the Midwest, or anything. I am in some weird Doctor Who otherplanetary landscape that is cold and grey and weirdly barren of color.
So, I went to get the oil changed in the car – only a month overdue, but I’ve hardly driven the thing at all, and the weather’s been mild, so no harm, no foul. I got a free car wash out of the deal, as well: vacuum, wash, detailing. Sweet. I sat inside the building as I waited and drank a small styro cup’s worth of their coffee, and dipping their complimentary shortbread cookies inbetween sips. The waiting area was much quieter than usual, so that was nice, too.
As I was in the area, I decided to head into South Pasadena and find a movie location I’d been meaning to scout since I moved here: Andie’s house from Pretty In Pink. After passing up the street once, I finally found it, and was ready to pull over and maybe take a quick picture, except someone was sitting on the front porch. Snapping a photo suddenly seemed sort of creepy, rude, and lame, so I kept driving. The person looked right at me as I drove by, with a stare that seemed to indicate that she knew exactly why I was there. I could almost hear her thoughts: “NERRRRRD.”
It was neat to see the house, though, and have the train tracks right there (because, you know: Andie totally lived on the wrong side of the tracks!!). The whole block there is a lot less run-down now than it was when the film was shot, which is sort of interesting.
I think at some point I will make pilgrimages to the prom hallway scene (at the Biltmore hotel in downtown L.A.), and to Trax (now apparently a bar) at 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Hmm, it occurs to me that I might’ve walked right near it when I was here in 2005 for the Last Call Poker ARG – a bunch of us went to Cafe Crepe at one end of the promenade, and spent some time walking around the area. How funny.
I still love that movie so much. So much of the experience of the 80′s teen life is captured well (not difficult, though, as it was released in 1986). The makeup, the styles, the music, the angst. My nickname was even Duckie for several years, until I was dubbed “Wellsie” sometime in college. (Thank goodness, too, as I was getting a bit tired of all the duck-themed t-shirts and figurines and other stuff people kept giving me because they were apparently under the impression that my nickname directly referenced the actual water fowl instead of Jon Cryer’s floppy-swooped hairdo and funky shoes.)
My life may be weird and open-ended and scary, but it was good to get out of my head for a bit and explore the area a little, since I live here and everything.
I’ve got the time, after all.
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01.01.09
Posted in holidailies at 9:39 pm by krystyn
Last night I went over to Tom and Jon’s place for new year’s festivities. Familiar faces, and lots of snacky things which included dried fruits and pretzels (with chocolate-dipped versions of each), bacon-wrapped bread sticks, Jon’s mother’s caramels (which are to die for, and I very conspicuously tucked one into the pocket of my hoodie so I could take it home with me and savor it, for I am a sucker for a good caramel), and the pinnacle snack of the evening: beer nuggets.
Beer nuggets are essentially fried bready dough balls that you dip in marinara sauce, and directly contributed to the Freshman 15 for most of the student population at my university lo so many years ago. Biting into one was immediate and harsh nostalgia – those long weekend nights in the dorms, waiting for the Pizza Villa truck to come around, paying your $5 for a large white paper bag filled with these suckers, so good when piping hot, especially in the dead of winter when studying for finals. We were out in the cornfields of the Midwest, Tom and I were, and these beer nuggets loom large in sense memory of that time. Amazing. He did a great job making them, and I demanded they make a reappearance at future gatherings.
We all played lots of Guitar Hero World Tour, which was an interesting experience as I found myself feeling a bit resistant to the experience. The interface left a lot to be desired, and one of Jon’s guitars was having button issues – held notes would suddenly stop mid-note, even though the strum had been completed successfully and no other buttons were pressed in the interim. But it was still loads of fun, and I even got to try out the drums with cymbal attachments. I never get to play drums. And when I do, it’s usually in front of people who are very good at them, so I’d just be wasting my time and theirs by attempting to get by on Easy skill level.
The new year happened (hooray), and there was pink champagne and lots of hugs, and then we watched Kathy Griffin and laughed our asses off until it seemed like it was alright to try and drive home.
Today, I find myself feeling particularly pensive and introspective. I think it is becoming clearer to me that my life over the past two years has seen so much upheaval that I am holding lots of tension with regards to friendships and relationships. I am afraid to reach out, and I am afraid to make myself vulnerable, because things might change. I might go gallivanting off somewhere else. And perhaps it’s projection, or perhaps I am unduly influencing things, but it’s had an effect on how I relate to people, as well. I don’t feel like I have a good read on how people feel about me unless they are stupidly clear, and I get super-frustrated that I can’t relax, that I cannot make promises, that I won’t make promises I know I can’t keep.
It’s stressful, and it’s a small wonder I’ve been able to keep it up this long. I am craving stability of some kind. Nothing’s sure in this life, but you know, it used to be OK to at least think that I could believe in something for longer than six months. I am the queen of loyalty, after all. Sigh. More thought is needed. Or, less. Whichever way gets me out of this emo waltz my brain keeps taking.
I am looking ahead, though, preparing for the next small steps that bring me to a bigger sense of accomplishment and confidence. And one of the ways I can do that is checking behind me, where I’ve been. There are strong signposts and indicators. There are patterns beginning to form.
Mandelbrot is knitting me a huge Cosby sweater of win, I just know it.
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12.31.08
Posted in holidailies at 4:52 pm by krystyn
What can I say about this year? I am not even sure if I know quite how I would categorize it.
I was hired for my dream job, at my dream company, just before this year began. I bought a daruma from the origami paper shop downstairs from the office and filled in one eye. After a mere few weeks of contract work, I was asked to move to California and work there permanently. I filled in the other eye. 2008 began, and I had a series of adventures that were all too believable, and yet no less awesome for what they were.
When I got laid off, I went back to the office much later that same night and left what amounted to an altar on my desk: one business card, two clementines, and the daruma. In a sense, the job had gone up in smoke. It seemed only appropriate to leave the daruma in that place to burn in the metaphorical flames. (And lest you think I am being overly negative, let me also remind you that sometimes fire brings forth a phoenix.)
And yet, I still have a career. The job itself did not define me, nor did it constrain me from feeling lucid and capable upon leaving. That counts for something.
I am working on the frustration inherent in the disparity between effort expended, and results obtained.
I like to do a lot of prep work. I prepared for this new life, and now I don’t have it, and so now I am trying to figure out how to prepare for something that happened a few weeks ago. O for a time travel machine!
I don’t have the perspective, yet. I don’t have the right words to say that make sense, and show me to be a reasonable adult with a firm grip on her reality. I am treading water, muted by grief, about the stories I haven’t told you, about how my very limbs feel encased in ice.
Sometimes I think love is quite close by, and then I re-assess, and figure that I must be wrong. This back and forth is not a fun game. Things seemed easier when I was younger.
I face this arbitrary new year with trepidation and confusion. I am poised and ready to leap, to take risks, to change what needs to be changed, but the swimming miasma of colors just hasn’t reached focus yet. A godless wonder, me: feeling guidance and direction, courting destiny and making it my choice. It’s nice work if you can get it.
I take comfort in the small things. The blue lights strung up on my bed in my bedroom, the tiny container of makeup glitter I found in a box of old speech team trophies today, the smell of chicken pot pie when it’s done cooking, and the heavy enveloped feeling of the down comforter that I pull over me as I fall asleep at night.
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. - William Shakespeare
Too right, Bill. 2009 is the year I will attempt, once again, for stability and comfort without also sacrificing my creativity and passion. I want to design games, or be an intrinsic and worthy part of the development process. I want to feel more love and sweetness in my life in the coming year. There has been a lot of detachment and protection, and I think it’s time to reverse that conveyor belt of emotion.
I dunno. Tonight is just another night. Rent is still due tomorrow. Time continues on, and calendars and lists are only as good as one makes them, after all.
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12.30.08
Posted in holidailies at 9:40 pm by krystyn
Last night was a pretty nice night. My friend Woody drove up to Glendale and after making fun of Thomas Kinkade for a while, we walked over to the Chinese place near my house, where the lady taking our order greeted us nicely, and then her eyes widened and she greeted me again more enthusiastically because she recognized me from the handful of times I’ve stopped in for sit-down dinners or carry-out over the last several months. Funny.
Bret was able to join us over at my apartment a bit later, knocking on my door as I was in the middle of showing Woody an epic battle (har) on the Suspense map in Unreal Tournament 3. It was actually a little bit hilariously depressing to say, “Oh, and there used to be this big gap in the rocks and rooftop here, and then they fixed it, and I –” and then I would fly over this spot in the Raptor, and those gaps were still there, glaringly obvious. “Haha!” I would laugh, in a weird sense of anti-triumph, “I totally bugged that!”
“And they didn’t fix it?” Woody asked incredulously.
“I … thought they did?” I replied, and I actually furrowed my brow, because suddenly, it felt like Backwards Day. I know I bugged it, because it was ‘my’ map, but that was back when we were testing for two other platforms that were not the 360. Is it possible that they regressed to an earlier build, or re-tweaked something that caused an old bug to re-occur? Quite possibly!
“You know,” said Woody, “when I play games and see stuff like that, I think, ‘why didn’t their test team catch that and fix it?’ – and now I know that they probably did!” I nodded and laughed. The development process for any game is a labyrinthine twine ball of esoteric progress. The only way over is through, but only every other Tuesday that falls on a full moon. The job gets done, but by the skin of our teeth. Etc.
I ran him through a bunch of maps, telling him funny stories about the stuff that used to be broken or completely different, scenery-wise: “See, this map did not have mountainous bookends to it. There used to be buildings here, and a long concrete tunnel, and a bunch of trees. But it was too much, the LOD would flicker in and out, and so they just made it all rock.”
“Oh, and this mesh here? Didn’t use to have collision on it. I would bug it, and then have everybody play a deathmatch with me. I’d get the Rocket Launcher, hide in this wall here, and point the tip of the weapon right at the outside edge of the wall and wait for dudes to run by.”
And then I’d catch myself, “Dude, I must be boring you. This must be insanely yawn-inducing.” Woody turned to me, looking a tiny bit like a kid on Christmas morning. “No! Actually, this is really fascinating!”
That was an awesome feeling, right there.
So Bret and Woody and I had brownies warmed up in the microwave, with mint chocolate chip ice cream over them, and we played Rock Band until far too late, when they had to head back to their respective homes for some shut-eye before work the next day. Me, I just gamely shrugged, and figured I’d sleep until whenever and then work on the old resume, or get rid of more stuff.
Which I did do, but under a miasma of weird sadness brought on by the fact that I really haven’t had a lot of social time like I did last night, and it was really nice and I forgot how much I just missed hanging out with a few people at a time, talking our heads off and playing some game. It’s just been too crazy in my immediate universe to have enough basic social contact since the moment I first decided I was going to pack up my entire life and go live somewhere entirely new and truly begin my career in the gaming industry.
And that, my friends, was back in February of 2007. Yikes.
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12.29.08
Posted in holidailies at 5:56 pm by krystyn
Picture frames slide right inbetween window ledges, chair backs and end tables line up, disappear.
Red beans and rice, cake flour, wheat flour, ready-made bread mix in cardboard, chocolate-covered ginger, old spicy cashews, eggs in their eggy cradles, angled and beveled pitchers of filtered water, combine, glow, dissipate. New music.
Things I want to sell, things I want to keep, things I want to send to my niece, things I want to give away, things I don’t even know why I have, things that keep coming back: spun, clicked, annotated, configured, obliterated.
Boxes of photographs, boxes of stationery, boxes of letters from my first real love, boxes of mix tape notes, trophies from speech tournaments, artwork faded and crumbling on construction paper, notebook paper, posterboard, cardstock, pieces of this time last year, chunks of 5 years old, whispers of birth, zero preparation for old age, combo bonus knockout powerup level up triple word score, new game +.
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12.28.08
Posted in holidailies at 9:29 pm by krystyn
I got the chance this past week to spend a little bit of time with my niece, Julia.
She is very very sweet.
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