Always Time

Completed Work.

It IS Time Travel - with Poppets! - 2nd Panel

This is the underlying panel for The Present.

The Past Panel is the entry right before this if you missed it.

It IS Time Travel - with Poppets!

The direction was a mosaic that showed the passage of time using at least 25 original photos.

I did it in triptych form - this is the underlying first panel for "Past"

Sleep, Once having found The Key,

was loathe to leave once established.

Reinforcements have been called in .

And all the Men and Women Merely Players

Sometimes, it's not the loss that causes the melancholy, it's the effort needed to rebuild.

There are things I thought I put away, not childish things in any form, but passionate ones. I played with little shadow versions of them, like puppet show passion plays. Those would/could/should be enough.

"Passion - Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latinpassion-, passio suffering, being acted upon, from Latin pati to suffer."

Isn't it funny how we've taken a word whose meaning is based on suffering and changed it into a kind of ecstatic frenzy - a euphemism for sexual love? A desire for more passion in our lives or our marriages takes on a whole different meaning when you bring it back to the root. Ultimately a possibly unhealthy meaning.

I was passionate about a boy once. When I look back on it, it seems like a derangement. Every moment was vibrant and alive with possibility, unpredictability, intese joy, intense sorrow. In the throes of passion doesn't mean the bedroom - it means all of the time you are controlled by this passion whatever it is, who ever it is based on. The connection to the suffering is real and immediate, everything else seems shallow and chalky and gray. Only the things related to what or who is the center of the passion seem real and bright. Everything is just something that leads you to the chance to surrender, to participate in that presence or action again. All the times you are not near or engaged are all the "moments before". The time of suffering while waiting to see what passion will bring. As poor fools in the throes of it all, we will call it many, many, things and we will try to use that word "passion" to make it fit those other, safer things.

But it will still be passion.

I got over the boy. If he even remembers me now he will remember our time together very differently than I do. Passion is a kind of insanity. You cannot build a life on it. Not the real kind where you don't die young, or end up stabbed 23 times by Senate.

Passion based on a person is by nature transient. The idea of suffering because I am not near someone if foreign to my understanding of love. When I am alone and I am loved, I am happy because I know my love for the other person is not based on proximity but security. I love them just as deeply two continents away, or two hemispheres away as I do when I am next to them, when we are entangled together. Distance is nothing to love. Love is like Damascus steel to me - tools we share, my beloved and I so that we can build and fight and defend to and craft together.

All of my beloved - family, lover, children - I am not passionate about them. The greeks who separated love: agape, eros, phillia, storge, they missed a word or category for this kind of love. Maybe "storge" but it didn't make it into a lot of literature, (possibly because it doesn't lead to tragic or comedic actions). But it is not passion.

I was passionate about an artform once. I had convinced myself that I could use the past tense. I could learn from it and chuckle with fond memories and traumatic ones and move on.

I am utterly and devastatingly wrong.

The tense is present tense. It's much stronger than a simple passion for a boy. Everyone knew it then. People who knew me later knew it still. People who know me now got glimpses when I played with the shadow versions. Then I stopped playing with those. Now the people in my life are blissfully ignorant of it. All was quiet on the passion front. Not the modern one with it's garish calls to buy things at Victoria's Secret or the pretty religious ones trying to create some form of agape with ritual and structure. Those puny passions are fine. I put aside the suffering. I became an audience ( for the first time?)

For those around me it was a good call. True Roman Stoicism for the good of the community and all that. There is a reason after all that they call it "suffering for one's art" and it is pretty obvious that great artists that could truly be brave for art or scientists (those monomaniacs of discovery) always had someone supporting them or no ties at all. But if you are the support - parent, breadwinner, wife - your art is best something to be dabbled with, shown proudly by offspring or spouse when visitors come to call. Art for Art's sake as long as it causes no one else any inconvenience.

And I believed that so completely that I didn't even realize I wasn't putting things together, I was breaking them apart. Or maybe breaking me apart.

So now - when I checked the recent damage of self and current competencies - all of the ways I used to take inventory and maintain and repair had failed. Not because they were bad systems, but because I had used them up. They were finite measures meant for specific or surface damage. They worked bravely and well for over a decade. They are simply the wrong tools. There to fix- like love, not to upset and destroy and recreate - like passion.

That's not enough. Love does not conquer all, it cannot heal by itself and sometimes you can't fix things unless you break them a bit first. Maybe I needed to break them alot.

And so with a long hard look at what was broken, I stood on a crossroad with a different devil on every choice. I blinked instead, and refused the road alone. I invited the devils to follow me but I needed to go back. Or down. Everything that was wrong - all the pieces damaged, and battered and missing - I thought I had learned them in other places, through life or jobs or school or relationships and simple survival. That was the mistake. I had learned them all in theater.

All of them. Every last one.

Dammit.

Now I'm awake. The question is what am I going to do about it?

There are four devils following me to school. Dionysus is laughing behind them because they don't realize they're pulling the chariot. I'm hoping that Minerva is travelling with him.

We'll try not burn or break too much.

****

Passion - Date: 13th century

1 often capitalized a : the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and his death b : an oratorio based on a gospel narrative of the Passion
2 obsolete : suffering
3 : the state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces
4 a(1) : emotion (2) plural : the emotions as distinguished from reason b : intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction c : an outbreak of anger
5 a : ardent affection : love b : a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept c : sexual desire d : an object of desire or deep interest

passion applies to an emotion that is deeply stirring or ungovernable passions.

Villanelle for a Melancholy Robot

Hmmn. My Creative Writing book told me that no one writes Villanelles anymore. Apparently, being told that means I want to prove My Creative Writing book wrong, really, really badly.

Villanelle for a Melancholy Robot

by Adrienne Reynolds

Bright Monitors once flickered here; darkened now from sight

Electric lights once envied day, each an empty husk

I can see by Infrared O! how I hate the night

Old code on black screens, glowing blue, byte begetting byte

Rodents build with nested wires, emitting nano musk

Bright Monitors once flickered here, darkened now from sight

I endure with patience vile and anger at this slight

Depressing all mammalian things, so do declare me brusque

I can see by Infrared O! how I hate the night

No rest, recall, surcease, or sleep, alleviates my plight

Electric sheep are whizzing past, their starting gun is dusk

Bright Monitors once flickered here, darkened now from sight

Stealth offspring of Starfish Prime permeate the endless blight

Radiant electrons glow and gambol, gyre and flux

I can see by Infrared O! how I hate the night

Disembodied lullabots transmit fruitlessly “Sleep tight”

Awake I wait, with planet brain, and one eight-track tape of “Tusk”

Bright Monitors once flickered here, darkened now from sight

I can see by Infrared O! how I hate the night

Help Poppetropolis support the Lollipop Theater Tweetathon

The Poppets at Poppetropolis are getting ready for the Lollipop Theater Tweetathon tomorrow. Poppets like movies and helping silly humans. This is both.

UPDATE ! The Tweetathon is Today! April 5th!

The Organization - Lollipop Theater

Kids know about movies faster than Variety when it's something that they really care about. They are the captains of the Good Ship Anticipation. The movies they are waiting for, whether it's Coraline, or Invincible Me or the new Alice are things they anticipate and talk about for months in advance. Grown up movie fans are really just keeping in touch with their younger selves when they do that. In many ways shared movies and TV shows are how people define their relationships to each other.

But kids who are stuck in the hospital for long, indefinate or permanent stays miss out on the excitement of new releases, they have to wait until the hospital can get it on DVD and put it into rotation, by this time all their peers have moved on and what might seem trivial becomes isolating when you're excited as hell about the Sorcerer's Stone, and your friends are sick of talking about it and have moved on to Xmen- and they keep telling you spoilers dammit. It becomes just one more little straw on your back to make your life "different". It might not seem like a big thing - but it's another Thing, in a long list of Things.

An unnecessary loss of a moment of excitement, joy, living in the now. Living just like everyone else.

LOLLIPOP makes it possible for hospitalized children around the nation to see the season's biggest blockbuster movies* at the same time as their friends and siblings.

They go to the hospital and literally roll out the red carpet, create a movie preimre atmosphere and distribute movie tickets and memorabilia. Here's the important bit - They screen movies ONLY available in theaters.

Sometimes the stars of the film drop by. To ensure that no child ever misses a movie, LOLLIPOP provides multiple screenings in group and isolation settings.

And tomorrow, April 5 they are doing a really big awareness/fundraising Tweetathon. Here at Poppetropolis and the Dreamtime we're going to help. You can skip the personal note below and go right down to the "What's going on" heading.

The personal note is just why this charity is important to me.

A Personal Note:

I don't usually put real-life, completely direct information in my blogs, but for this I will make an exception.

When I was younger I worked at Barnard College for what used to be called the "Office for Disabled Students." (It is now called Disability Student Services or somesuch.) In the past I had also been a Candy Striper for Holy Name Hospital. I have always been involved with the Disability Rights movement since I was first politically active.

The most interesting thing about the job at Barnard was that I was the same age as the students that were utilizing said services and I got to see a large gamut of very smart, accomplished, young women with wide range of disabilities making the transition from childhood to adulthood, while I was doing the same thing.

As the administrative assistant to the Dean for Disabled Students and the Assistant Dean, I was the one who kept them company while they were waiting for appointments or when they set up camp waiting for the deans because they didn't have one. I worked on wheelchair access issues, computers and disability, getting Ivy League professors to meet 504 requirements and admit that Ivy league disabled kids still were entitled to some accommodation, and that it is not appropriate to say to a pre-med student that someone can "just carry her up to the steps of the class" if her wheelchair can't get in the room.

Some of our students were born with disabilities, some acquired them through illness, some through accident. Disability is the only minority anyone can join at any time.

But the one thing I knew, because we were all 18-24, was that our teenage years were very close to our childhood years. None of that fuzzy haze caused by being grown up. Our students with cancer and with cystic fibrosis and other disabilities were Ivy League students with amazing writing and speaking skills and often approached by different groups as role models for younger people with similar disabilities and diseases - so they wrote and spoke for various groups and charities a lot. We provided support for student activism too, so I was lucky enough to work with them and sometimes help them polish their presentations.

One of the things I heard a lot was what life in and out of hospitals for long stays was like for them. They wanted to do normal things, they had chronic illnesses but they weren't dying. They were still just kids. I learned about how to clean stuffed animals without losing too much fluff for kids to take them into the hospital. I would hear stories about doing makeup and trying to find way to make hospital gowns more like fashion when they were tweens, about how they hated all the hospital "themed" toys that the hospital had. . They wanted normal dollhouses dolls and play supermarkets and toy cars. A lot of hospitals would only have toys that "helped them accept the hospital environment". There were some toys that they couldn't play with because they presented risks to other kids on the floor (a lot of longterm wards mix the terminal illness with the "in-treatment" kids for various reasons like socialization or at least they used to - I've been concentrating on 508 enforcement these days so I'm less in touch).

So the thing is, these wonderful, successful, smarter-than-me young adults that happened to have disabilities had far more weight than the the studies that show what "helps" made by doctors and scientists. At least for me. And what I learned is that kids with disabilties stuck in hospitals for months instead of weeks, or years instead of months, or scheduled for long stays for care management between periods of living on the outside, want one thing universally. The same exact things the kids who aren't disabled do.

Later when I was a toy reviewer, I used to try to donate the toys directly to long term care children's wards and ran into the "only if it's a hospital, or doctor's office playset" rule directly. Not all long term wards but an awful lot. I hope that this is changing. Playmobil Castles are for everyone dammit, and that goes double for Pirate Island!

It almost seemed like because kids had medical conditions all the grownups wanted them to do nothing but face reality, and they left no room for normal imagination and dreaming.

And frankly that just sounds like the exact opposite of what's good for children who are NOT dumb and all too aware of their reality.

So What's Going on? And what are you doing about it?

So here is Lollipop Theater - a charity that wants to bring first run movies that are actually in the theater to the kids who are in hospitals (and I hope maybe someday for the kids who can't go to a regular theater because of autoimmune issues).

Movies are a gateway to imagination and dreaming.

It is exactly the kind of thing those students talked about back in the day - where they can have experiences and conversations about regular non-disability related things with everyone; abled and differently abled. It's not escape we're giving these kids, it's just little bit of everyday life and admitting that a disability doesn't define them - being a kid does. And providing them with things that let them just be kids - like the same movies their classmates are seeing.

I can't even explain how important this is. Just trust me. Or talk to your friend with CF.

So if they can't get to the movies - lets get the movies to them.

Craig Ferguson ( who is awesome) joined twitter - which I have only recently joined - they are hosting a Tweetathon on April 5 to raise money and awareness.

Here is a video that explains things a bit:

Here is the Trend Topic on Twitter

http://www.trendlollipoptheater.com/

If you tweet please help spread the word tomorrow - I've kept a very low profile so I only have 7 followers, I'm sure anyone reading this has more. I'm @DreamtimeDrinne

Please tweet with the hashtag #lollipoptheater on all your outgoing tweets.

It would be even better if you could donate a little bit too.

Here is the website for Lollipop Theater itself

http://www.lollipoptheater.org/

Please Tell A Friend

Tomorrow - in honor of the Lollipop Theater Tweetathon there will be a blog entry about when The Most Adventurous Red went with us to see Coraline in the Theater and the story of how he got his second chip.

Thank you!

V-Day - The Boy, His Girl and his Coffee Poppet

It started several weeks ago, and became quite epic. As we dug out of the Plethora of Celebrations and Midterms we realized another Holiday was coming. And we checked in with each other to see if anyone at The House was going to do anything about it.

When everything was said and done, someone was indeed going to do something about it.

Last year The Boy and His Girl were a couple and it was their first Valentines Day with each other or anyone else who wasn't related to them. Which was sweet. He got her a Simply Pink Poppet which is not the same as this but it's close.

But he had gotten pretty sick at that time and couldn't do much of anything else for her, so this year he wanted to do something to "make up for it".

This is the point where I need to observe that

a. The Boy is not yet 16 and

b. His Girl didn't feel that way about this year, or last year, at all.

So when asked about plans (as they are a heavily chaperoned pair, and his plans require group arrangements between families) he informed me that he would like to prepare a meal for her. Which was very sweet.

But she was thinking of preparing a meal for him too - So I was starting to envision a kind of Valentine's Potluck - where they split appetizers, main course, dessert and sides . . . and I was secretly thinking "Oi! this could get complicated. "

We gave them another week to figure it out. Some outside things played into their decisions. My Perfectly Normal Husband was going to have to work that day, so I would be available for chaperoning and shlepping if necessary. His Girl and he were deciding where it would be easier to cook and The House was chosen as the more convenient location for they both have Sisters but his is a bit older and hers is good bit younger. While I'm not sure what went into the final decision (since they are chaperoned, not spied upon) it was eventually decided he would make a Valentine's Day Dinner for her.

So it was now 3 weeks before V-Day. He discussed options with me, and chose the menu. All this week I will be posting the recipes he chose and the pictures of him and the Poppets making them, and the stories that go with learning new things. So I will be blogging more about the menu selection later - there are four recipes, plus this. I will post one per day and link back to the previous ones.

It was an epic dinner. The dessert took three days to make.

As he sat with the cookbooks spread out and listed the things that she liked, one of the things that came up was that she enjoyed cappuccino. He had made a very conscious choice not to get her a material gift so that it would not be "too much". They were still kids after all. But he did have funds saved up and he wanted to use them for the meal. He had mentioned getting a cappuccino machine previously (Which to be honest was a bit of a sore point since he had broken mine when he was a toddler and I hadn't replaced it since.)

I told him that if he wanted, he did have enough money saved up to get a lower end machine if he would like to serve cappuccino in his dessert plan. Then we would have a cappuccino machine here and he would also no longer be held responsible for his wanton act of destruction when he was four - not that I was holding a grudge.

He said it would be nice if we had one and told me to look. I was hoping to find small easily stored one - but was having no luck.

Now we must digress a bit to the way Poppets come into the house. My two Coffee Poppets have been here a while and know their way about, and have created a few new ways of their own. The Taunting brought many other Poppets to the house and The Boy, and The Girl of the House have small populations of their own, usually all of the Poppets get together and integrate pretty quickly, but the Many Holidays were so hectic, that some of the Poppets had barely come out at all.

So it wasn't until all this Cappuccino Conversation that The Boy's Very Own Coffee Poppet who came here by way of Grandma's House popped out of his box and introduced himself to the Highly Caffeinated and Slightly Less Caffeinated Coffee Poppets.

Maybe he was hibernating until he heard about the machine.

The Boy informed us that his name is Cappy.

The Boy and I were unsuccessful in finding the right Cappuccino Solution for The House, but Cappy knew a source, and suggested that the Poppets who ran the Poppet Cafe might be interested in helping.

There was immediate agreement with Cappy's plan. There was a legend of a stovetop steam based cappuccino maker with a Clik-Clak mechanism that helped steam the milk.

It wasn't from around here. They had to go where Steam was very important to get it to the House.

Cappy led the way and the other Coffee Poppets handled the negotiations on my behalf as well.

Dr. Black appreciated the idea of not adding yet another electric appliance to the mix and knew that the proposed machine was smaller. He arranged the transport. All of the steampunk poppets escorted the Bialetti Mukka Express to it's delivery point.

And they left behind some very excited Coffee Poppets.

Cappuccino for Valentine's Day! And Purim! And Mother's Day! And Birthdays! And UnBirthdays! And Days that have "y" in them!

They immediately got The Boy and I away from our computers to observe the wonder and the glory of the New Thing.

Luckily, we were fine with letting them unwrap it - I'm not sure what happens when you get between Coffee Poppets and a new coffee delivery system and I'm not really willing to find out.

Inside the package was a measure, a CD and a booklet. You know how some booklets of instructions have approximately 17 languages in them, but somehow English is always first? This was not one of those booklets. Oh there were a bunch of languages alright. And English was in there but symbolized by a little British Flag, without a US Flag to be seen, and that British Flag only came in after Italian and French.

After looking at the instruction manual we checked out the CD and we were really happy that we did - because I was so NOT kidding about the "Clik Clak" mechanism and I was much happier to see a video demonstrating it. Even knowing what it is and what it does now, it still scares the heck out of me when I hear it. It sounds like the top is going to pop off and there's no way of knowing "when" because it just does it when it's ready.

Now we are thoroughly familiar with the finer points of the Bialetti Mukka Express. Having read that we had to make three cups of espresso and throw them away, we realized we were going to have to get started immediately if we were going to get good at this before Valentine's Day.

The Trio of Coffee Poppets was persistent but we just didn't know when we were going to get that much time. Making the cappucino doesn't take very long but the cleaning and care instructions are very specific and time consuming. Then we got a Blizzard which gave us oodles of free time to perfect our technique and "season" the pot. Which I really think means make sure all of the industrial oils that might remain in the aluminum are gone by the fourth cup.

So here's what the Bialetti Mukka Express looks like before you start.

And then you have to take the whole thing apart.

How much water you put in the bottom portion apparently depends on whether or not you use a gas or electric stovetop. If you do use an electric stove top you should have a ceramic cover, which I happen to have, because I'm a snob who likes evenly distributed heat.

Lucky thing too, because you're not supposed to put it directly on a heating element and if we had no way to make our cappuccino and we were stuck in the blizzard we would have been very sad humans.

So we poured the water into reservoir tank where what they call a "line" actually is a ridge that looks like part of the construction. We had figured it out but that's one of the places where we were glad they gave us the CD.

And then you put the metal filtery bit on top of the reservoir tank. Cappy discovered it was bouncy.

Then you were supposed to put in your ground espresso roasted coffee. The Boy stopped the process at this point. "But we don't have espresso!" But it just so happened that we did. I picked it up in the pre-blizzard Valentine Shopping. I had thought I had purchased ground espresso. The Highly Caffeinated Poppet however, was happily diving in and out of whole beans like a toddler in a ball pit.

"We shall have to have freshly ground espresso instead!" immediately throwing things out of the cabinet in his rush to the grinder. "Oh how we shall suffer!" He chortled gleefully.

He's really quite excitable. I'm not sure having espresso around him is a good idea.

Oh well.

Now that the beans were ground, (and they did smell delicious, and strong, and fresh - Oh how we suffer!) we moved on to the next step. We are supposed to fill the filtery bit with the grounds and we are NOT supposed to tamp it down. We also have to make sure that all of the ridges around the thing are clear. Because if they aren't the machine creates a lot of pressurized steam that has places to escape and if things don't go boom, they will at least spray hot steam and messy half made espresso everywhere. So we made sure we didn't do it. Much.

See the Ghiardelli Chocolate? That's the base for The Boy's dessert - I'll be writing about making that tomorrow.

To make espresso in the Mukka Express you do everything except add the milk. If you are making cappuccino you have to fill the top part up to the indicator line ( which looks like a ridge) with milk.

And you have to press the button down on the Clik Clak mechanism.

Cappy of course, would not hear of anything else.

You can actually make a latte - or as the British based instructional CD told us a "Simple Delicious Milky Coffee". Which makes me wonder if they don't have lattes in Britain and where the derivation of Latte comes from. Or if it's one of those things that happen when a script goes through a translator before it gets to the voice over talent. It's cafelatte in Italian, Americans call it latte here, but latte by itself means milk, it says "latte" in the English version of the written instructions and "cafelatte" in the Italian version of the written instructions.

So I think that when the translation company got the original Italian script they translated "cafelatte" directly and literally into "milky coffee" not knowing that English had incorrectly borrowed the back half of the compound word. I also wonder if there are confused english speakers in Italy getting milk when they are expecting coffee and confused Italians in Britain getting coffee drinks when they order milk.

Translation for multiple countries of the same material used to be a big part of my job so these things may just be amusing to me. Now American owners of Bialetti Mukka Express may think that the British say "milky coffee" instead of latte. My own experience tells me that the voice over script was probably finalized by the translation service but print materials are usually checked over by native speaker to catch possible problematic nuances.

It kind of makes you wonder how different cultures manage to communicate at all. I think it's kind of awesome that we do - even if we make mistakes sometimes.

To make a latte instead of cappuccino you add much more water and you don't push the button down so it's not pressurized from anything other than the espresso steam.

In any case we were going for cappuccino, so we filled up the upper part with milk to the ridgy line, pushed the button down and waited for the patented Clik-Clak mechanism to do it's thing.

And with a sound that was a lot less subtle than the one in the video, it did indeed do it's thing.

And so we kept making cappuccino until we perfected our technique - The Boy did quite well, but I had one small incident with the upper and lower parts not being completely sealed. . . . everything is fine and cleaned up.

And now we're regularly getting this:

So the first of the new recipes that were being brought out for the Valentine's Day dinner was a success, thanks to the Steampunk and Coffee Poppets and Cappy taking a direct hand on His Boy's behalf.

Tomorrow, will be about the Chocopoppets helping him with the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Terrine. Complete with the actual recipe.

Not Ready Yet . . . . with Updatey Goodness

Tomorrow I have to do something because it's:

1. Prudent
2. Something I promised a friend
3. Something that should be easy for me
4. Something I may have to do soon anyway
5. Better if I do it now

But I'm not ready for it.

As a matter of fact I'm getting a really good example of why anxiety attacks are medicated and why that's a good thing.

For some reason all I can think of is Pooh saying "Oh Bother" and feeling like Rabbit trying to keep leaves from swirling in the wind.

Nope. Not Ready At All.

Bother.

*****

Update

I have done the not-ready thing.

And I did it without having had coffee.

It went pretty well, questions were asked, I had answers and then I remembered,

"Oh yeah, I'm pretty damn competent."

Funny how I forget that sort of thing.

At least I impressed myself. I'm a pretty rough audience.

World Fantasy Con - Collaboration Happens

Here is what is now officially titled " The House Where Halloween Things Live When It Isn't Halloween"

This is a picture when it was still in front of Poppetropolis Proper.

(Poppetropolis is the area in NYC where the Embarrassed Embassy is based, it's like Chinatown, or Little Italy but where all the expats from Poppet Planet live).

The Embarrassed Embassy is not yet a year old - but it's 1st anniversary will be soon. Like many construction projects in many cities, it has undergone some changed scope and is behind schedule. It is part and parcel of my reaction to Lisa's art. Lisa and others have told me that my reaction to her work is art. I'm still struggling a little with that.

But it is what it is.

In September, when she asked if I would do something with her for Halloween, I said yes. I had an idea that didn't belong to Poppetropolis and it would be more fun to do it with her. Then later we decided to bring it to the World Fantasy Convention and debut it there. Which is really grand but a little scary because we hadn't met in the Meatworld.

And so we got to explore a little of the surreality of our relationship and reaction to each other. There is no question that we had a relationship, but it was in the new ether of the internet, which is not the same as in person. We were now collaborating cross country, but the first voice contact we had was a phone call to let her know I was at the hotel.

We had emailed and shipped and consulted, and had pictures of each other and, I think a place in each other's lives, ( unbalanced, but equally real) and yet we were still introducing ourselves to each other, but we do know things.

One of the things we knew, is that we were both people who had been involved with conventions before. This ended up being a very useful thing over the weekend. I helped with the set up, I was very happy to be useful. I am always happier when I'm useful.

We set up the art show together and talked while we did. Here are the pictures of most of it without the bid sheets - for posterity . .

The sculpture in the center of this shot is called Blackbirds, and I believe Lisa will be making an 8ft version of it in the next year.

I was not the only person who travelled from distant coasts however, Lisa met with a Poppet Collector from Australia, who asked for a picture of the Poppet that Has Travelled to Australia and Back and the Creator of Poppets.

She is a wonderful lady and an excellent dinner companion. She was actually Queen of Australia and New Zealand, so I was honored by her Poppet's acceptance of an invitation to visit The House Where Halloween Things Live. This marks the first Visiting Poppet to that House.

He is an Outside Steampunk Poppet.

Here he is being greeted by Elul, who made the trip out to show off the House along with two of the Jackos and about 10 other East Coast Expats.

The Australian Outside Steampunk Poppet converses with the Raven and peruses the House Where Halloween Things Live Library.

Of course there was Poe. The book on the table is The Purloined Letter.

Many things happened at World Fantasy Con, I'm still sorting a bunch of it out. I'll write about it while I'm processing it. I have funny anecdotes, and weird ones, and serious ones. I will probably not tell them all. I have anecdotes that involve food:

Anecdotes of Lisa and the Poppet who lives on her desk.

Our mutual love of coffee.

and what it means when people ask you questions like "What do you do?" or "Don't I know you" or "What do you want out of this."

And of course the big one "Why are you doing this"

I think I have begun to have an answer for that last one -

I used to process all the things I couldn't say through words, but I put the words aside. It stopped being safe.

I used to use all the things I felt to communicate, when I was wearing the skin of someone else, so the personal could become universal. It was like breathing, but I learned how to hold my breath and now I cannot exhale.

I used to build things to create small worlds or hold other worlds at bay. I'm still doing that.

The words are too complex, the feelings are too deep to show in someone else's skin, I may have spent to much time trapped in my own. I can't use the older tools I have to process what happens to me when I react to Lisa's art. So I'm building things to help me understand my own reactions. I'm building things to share and show what's going on on the inside.

I'm having trouble telling the story, so I'm building it instead.

It's a stealth story, I've hidden it inside things you might use to tell your own.

And if you see or play with something I've built, then you're wearing my skin, sharing my world which is all ajumble and full of art. So it shouldn't surprise me at all that there are Poppets there.

I am just a little (very!) surprised that other people like it too.

The thing is, I would make it anyway. I don't think I could not make it.

Maybe that makes it art after all.