bear

On Election Night, I went out to pick up groceries and ate an ice cream sandwich (cardamom ice cream with chocolate cookies) for dinner and then ignored the outside world as best I could. hyounpark was in San Diego for work; Elana invited me over to her friend's house, and I just couldn't with the world. I basically hibernated until Wednesday night, when I had to drag myself out for tech week for Carmina Burana.

I wore my What a Cluster! t-shirt; appreciative comments all around. Our director opened things up by leading us in Lean On Me a cappella. Reminded us that we, as artists, as musicians, were going to be called upon as "first responders to the soul." Read An Artist's Response to Violence aloud:

We loved [John F. Kennedy] for the honor in which he held art, in which he held every creative impulse of the human mind, whether it was expressed in words, or notes, or paints, or mathematical symbols. This reverence for the life of the mind was apparent even in his last speech, which he was to have made a few hours after his death. He was to have said: “America’s leadership must be guided by learning and reason.” ...Learning and Reason: the motto we here tonight must continue to uphold with redoubled tenacity, and must continue, at any price, to make the basis of all our actions. ... Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

And then we made music.

Afterwards, hyounpark and I walked towards the BART station, and at the light, a sedan with the windows down, passengers hanging out the windows, pulled up next to us, absolutely buh-last-ing FDT. Had a little defiant dance party on the sidewalk, a moment of community, and as the light turned green and they drove away, I felt a little better.

Lather, rinse, repeat for Thursday (honestly, tech week couldn't have been better timed for all of us in need of something to focus on and not doom-spiral over), and then Friday night concert. Someone on TikTok posted the first movement of our performance of Carmina Burana; their first time at the symphony. And they got to see a professional symphony conducted by somebody like them; see a chorus conducted by somebody like them. The classical music world has the potential to be a hell of a lot more inclusive; this is proof the efforts are worth it.

Since then, it's been reassuring to see people, commiserate, talk about next steps, what was getting us through the current moment. Even so, as I put things to try to look forward to on the calendar, it all feels so tenuous. But I've also been reminded of the value of being "900% me," as Kat put it. Showing friends the ridiculous platter of pastries we've been working our way through all week (thank you Paris Bakery, Alta Bakery, Ad Astra Bread Company, and Krispy Kreme); noghri remarking on the presence of donuts from that last iconic bakery with "you still like those?" Me: "I blame my Southern husband for continued exposure, but yes!" He, smiling, "I still remember how we met all that time ago." Me: "Yeah, my reaction made quite the impression, hahaha." So then I had to tell the other friends present the story of how I introduced myself to noghri, which is basically (seriously, I didn't manage to LJ this back then?! ugh, past self, why so coy!):

Setting: elemmire7's going away party, July 2003
Me: *perusing the snacks table, wondering what to munch on next*
*the doorbell rings*
noghri: *enters, bearing a box of Krispy Kremes, which were so new to Boston at that point they'd only recently opened up their Wellington location*
Me: *spies cute guy entering with said box of Krispy Kremes, promptly vaults across the room and lands firmly in front of him* "You brought Krispy Kremes! You're cool!"
noghri: *stares at me, a total stranger, at a loss for words*

Everybody hearing this story for the first time: "... yep, we can visualize *and* auralize exactly how this went down!"

So, yeah. Being 900% me in the topics I've posted about to Bluesky, since that seems to be where people are migrating for shorter-form conversation and staying in touch with each other at least one step further removed from the control of billionaires; so far I have talked about indie bookstores and transportation cycling and choral music. Being 900% me in digging into Thanksgiving menu planning - eyeing this pumpkin basque cheesecake, but also considering a persimmon custard tart with hojicha meringue? Kristina Cho mentioned it in her Instagram stories earlier this week; the recipe hasn't been posted yet, but it sounds right up my alley. Being 900% me in pondering, as Jackie asked us at coffee ride this week, what is my actual role in my communities now and in the future.

Because all I really have control over in the big picture is being true to myself, so.

Welp, our numbers came up this week, after 240 weeks of successfully dodging it. Tuesday morning, I woke up with a slight sore throat and sniffles and opted out of going for that morning's planned run; H felt fine and did his five miles of hill running, part of a planned taper for the Monterey Half in just under three weeks. I thought it might be allergies, E had just been complaining to me about allergies on our walk Monday evening, but by the evening when my symptoms hadn't gone away even after popping the usual allergy pill, I got nervous. I tested; negative. H tested; positive. We promptly isolated from each other, turned up the air filters and opened all the windows, but no dice; 12 hours later, I, too, would get that second bright pink line on my test dongle.

H continues to be completely asymptomatic; my symptoms are relatively mild, and I'm doing my best to stay that way. We'd both just gotten freshly vaxxed as well for both covid and flu (the weekend before last), so hoping that bodes well for our fighting it off. Neither of us qualified for Paxlovid, but we are being good about rest and sufficient sleep. My mom dropped off soup from Noodles Fresh; our veggie box arrived on schedule and we will let the stove make soups for us; neighbors and friends have offered to do CVS runs as needed. We are aware of and following the COVID antihistamine protocol synecdochic posted about (and amused and delighted by how many of our friends from different corners of the internet pointed us back to that source). It helps that cetirizine was already a daily thing for H, and that famotidine, loratadine, and Flonase are all things I keep on hand for my body's continued functioning.

So I've spent most of the past 24 hours asleep, and when I've been awake, ugh, the 300 pages of election-related reading the state of California has sent us so that we can cast our votes in an informed manner is more than I can handle right now.

Instead, it's been all romance novels all the time. (Really, it's been that way all year long since I ate up Sarah J. Maas' ACOTAR series and the available books of Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean series - both of them suddenly everywhere in my fantasy recs.) Ali Hazelwood's Bride for the romance book club I recently joined; Kate Stayman-London's Fang Fiction, acquired at the airport before my early flight out to JFK last week; the latest Casey McQuiston (a food tour of Italy *with* a love story!). I've devoured the entire Emily Henry canon; Ashley Poston's The Seven-Year Slip (am I a sucker for time travel, yes/yes); Hannah Grace's Icebreaker series (I guess I'm falling down the hockey romance rabbit hole, at least as long as it stays away from the Russian mafia tropes?); and lordy, Abby Jiminez (break a love curse, lure me in with curiosity about the secondary characters, oh, and you run a bakery too?)

I think at least part of this is feeling like I don't know where to find good fanfic anymore (I know, it's not like AO3 has gone away) and also not feeling particularly inspired to read *in* fandom right now? Like, even with all of these new-to-me universes from what I've been reading lately, not wanting other peoples' takes on them just yet? Heck, with stuff I've been watching, like all the new Trek, and Dragon Prince, and fifty bajillion cooking shows, the finding process feels like too much? And feeling like I want something new in old dependable fandoms but at this point people have mostly petered off of writing for them? But maybe I'll know it when I see it, I just don't know what it is?

I dunno, what else should I read? Things I feel like reading these days: magical realism, fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary romance is okay but I'd prefer it to have at least ~something~ special beyond yet another New York writer finding heartbreak and their OTP in the city and then retiring to the suburbs to start their family - like, Sarah Chamberlain's The Slowest Burn (which I read on my flight last week) is at least about a writer and chef in the Bay Area, and the MMC doesn't drive because fuck parking in SF, that level of realism and trueness to the city it's set in, versus so many plot points in other books where of course you can get from Prospect Park to the Upper West Side in 15 minutes). More than okay with spice but not seeking too much in the way of kink (is there an overall scale for that? is it even possible to come to a common agreement about what kinks are (inherently?) more intense subject matter than others?)

(I mean, ostensibly in under three weeks we're singing about all the springtime sexing-up, just in Latin and Mittelhochdeutsch so it's classy, lulz, maybe that's contributing to my choices of reading?)