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Author: pamela

the bones

Posted on by pamela

Continuing the thought of the things we lose to bias and prejudice and all that sort of thing…

Did you know that we have multiple extant contemporary guides to ancient divination practices? We read our horoscopes in the newspaper (ok fine, on popsugar or whatever) and feel connected to the past in that way, but not only do we have Proper Ancient Divination knowledge… in some cases we have COMPLETE KEYS to divination systems that are actually millennia old, even from practices long abandoned or subsumed. Among other things, not yet complete but impressive nonetheless, we have a set of Babylonian tablets, dozens and dozens of them, which describe literally thousands of potential omens which might be witnessed via celestial observation — stars, planets, wind, the length of days, etc. — and mapped onto events of the world. (This collection is called Enuma Anu Enlil, if this catches your fancy, and represents a practice used and shared across a thousand years or more, from 2000-3000 years ago)

The one I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is astragalomancy, which you’ll most often see as people rolling dice nowadays in search of truth or answers, but which started (and in several cultures persists, having evolved independently) as casting the conveniently-shaped knuckle bones from ruminant animals. If you looked at a set of these bones, you might think “wow, what strange hard styrofoam packing peanuts,” because that’s the basic shape. They have some interesting qualities. For one, they are effectively four-sided dice, because the bones won’t rest on their curved ends. Secondly, they are not remotely fair. The keys used to interpret the results take that into account. The structure of the bones gives rough preference for certain outcomes. And they naturally form four unique faces, which can be assigned different numbers or symbols and mapped onto a key.

The ancient Greek version of this practice (with some variation, including in number of bones used) assigned the numbers 1, 3, 4 and 6 to the faces, and used 5 bones for a possible 56 total results (the super negative outcomes are apparently less common with the actual bones themselves, which might be a relief). Our complete copy was engraved on a pillar in Anatolia from … maybe 400BC? I’ve lost the journal article I was reading, but here’s a reference with a different translation: http://opsopaus.com/assets/Astagalomanteion_Enkheiridion.pdf

Imagine, you’d be throwing your bones, likely scavenged from sacrifices and prepared, and read that pillar to determine your fate, and now we can do exactly the same process well over two millennia later and come out with exactly the same results. You can even buy these bones on Etsy!

If you’ve been listening to me babble recently you might have caught a note about the Gods and their epithets serving as different facets of a God’s responsibilities, invoked separately and specifically to seek favor in a particular area when mentioned during ritual or prayer. Here, too, we can see these examples, telling us a little more information about the outcome of our divination.

Take Zeus: we see Zeus Ammôn, which isn’t strictly Zeus as we understand him but a syncretic merger with the Libyan/Egyptian father of gods, which might refer to something like wisdom as this was a fairly remote shrine to which people were willing to travel to seek good counsel. There’s Zeus Ktêsios, which is the aspect of Zeus connected to household wealth (and specifically with keeping your larder full). That’s the epithet you might use when praying to Zeus as one of your household gods. We also see Zeus Xenios, which refers to Zeus as the protector of guests and travelers. And so forth. Layers of meaning which might flavor the interpretation of the outcome. It’s interesting stuff, and it’s amazing that we can simply mimic the very same practices which might have led people to make the decisions we’re now living through the impact of so much later.

the disappearing history of the everyday

Posted on by pamela

Something I think a lot about is how we choose what historical information we preserve (or bury). Often the biases are very easy to find. A hobby of mine is revivalist skincare and beauty, and the amount of information we in the west are interested in preserving is quite low, unless specifically extended to the specific cultural lineages which led directly to western practices. We know about Cleopatra’s bathing practices, Queen Elizabeth’s leaded white makeup, that one cold cream recipe from second century Greece.

We preserve all the little bits of pottery and cosmetics containers we find, but do comparatively little to explore what went inside them, and (the interesting bit!) why.

A recent example where I researched my way directly into a brick wall was an attempt to learn more about aker fassi, the Moroccan lip product stored spread across in clay pots and applied by wetting with a finger. It is universally a rich red, and can be made from a variety of materials, often poppy petals and pomegranate bark.

Hand holding a clay surface coated in golden/reddish powder which is visibly brighter red where it has been wetted and swatched on the hand (photo by Troussi)

Aker fassi is centuries old (at least five of them) and was popularized by Berber women. That’s it! That’s all I know. I wasn’t able to find any scholarly research on the topic. None. It’s not in wikipedia. It wasn’t in other resources I searched. There’s probably some books somewhere or recorded notes about it stored in Berber I’ll never find. But as far as my ability to access information about it, it’s just coming from advertising copy (and one journal article indicating poppies likely had cosmetic purposes).

Cosmetics and skincare products are a very exaggerated example, because in no culture is there a “set” way of using them, and so we do point fingers directly at the examples we’re certain about: Elizabeth did do her beauty routine a particular way. Geisha makeup is well-documented. But how did you use your clay pot lip product? Did you use it on your cheeks or as a stain you wipe off, like people do today after buying some from etsy? Did everyone use it? Was it for special occasions? What did it replace? What was it used alongside? This can be incredibly bright in use, was it actually used that way or thinned to create a sheer wash of color? Did people mix it with or apply it over or under something moisturizing made from oils or animal fats? Was this for young women? Older women? Was it something you wore more for yourself, for confidence, or is it meant to be seen? And how have the answers to ALL of these questions changed over the centuries?

So many unknowns. We document this sort of thing incredibly well now for our own products, thanks to advertising, magazines and various video. We have people who specialize in product formulation, makeup artistry, public filings on materials used. If any portion of today’s internet is accessible in a thousand years, people will have no doubts about the “look” of westerners during the 2020s and the evolutions of the major trends, and will also have access to the reality check that those trends are often simply ignored. Some lucky future researcher will go digging and learn about 1990s skinny brows, and that one year we all wore metallic lip gloss, and those little bonbon nail polishes, and the rise and fall of matte liquid lipstick.

Because when serving as our own historians, we actually care a WHOLE LOT about the everyday, and give far better representation to femme-centered topics, and are constantly sharing summaries, lookbooks and “history of makeup: the last 25 years” sorts of materials, same as we’re filling the internet with recipes and fashion pairings and lifestyle content. It’s frustrating when the people who actually DO our research on earlier cultures don’t have those resources… and don’t have the people passionate about uncovering the answers and who can connect them to modern times. I’m SO tired of reading “and we didn’t know what this was… until we spoke to a modern-day weaver! or hairdresser! or reproduction seamstress! or this one woman who does hair taping and knows this would have to be sewn to distribute the weight!” Maybe it’s time to solicit information more widely about ALL the topics we have big unknowns about: tools of unknown purpose, cultural practices. Instead of dropping things in a museum and pretending the information is lost because there isn’t someone around who cares enough to ask questions.

behind the covid wall

Posted on by pamela

I’ve long been collecting and/or appreciating images of art pieces and snippets of poems and songs and such for a while of people left behind by those able to pretend the pandemic now affects no one.

People who lost their ill loved ones, people who lost their caretakers, the people still too sick to participate in social networks who could really have used a lot more help than anyone was ever prepared to give … now betrayed by things called “weekly bar quiz night” and “meetup at the museum” and “potluck at Ben’s” ENTIRELY replacing the once common “grilling outside” and “drinks on the patio” and “watch party on zoom,” as though we have not just passed through some great gate into the world of shared airspaces, but must remove all evidence that we once enjoyed such things regularly.

Everyone seems to want to claim that lockdown made great art to explore… what, yet more pieces framed around extraordinary privilege? Temporary brushes with an existence in which people now live INDEFINITELY but with their accommodations now freshly packed up like they never existed?

Framed as though people losing interest in masks and giving up was the end, but that wasn’t the end! The foundations of even close circles and families cracked when people started to do their normal activities again, but this time with a wall keeping the “vulnerable” people out. It was a SEVERING. Some went on and went back. Some are left behind, BEGGING them to act like human beings and make it safe for others to be in the room with them, to stop cordoning off access to the joys or even just the basic requirements of life, to not reduce human beings to the percentage that they won’t bother to accommodate, to the barrier to maximal ticket sales, to the ranks of “excess deaths” and “the uninsurable” and “dead from complications after a long battle.”

They beg you to care enough to ensure that someone who needs clean air, CLEAN AIR, a fundamental requirement, the most basic of basic needs… can actually access it under your leadership.

The wall people have thrown up to keep out the expendable is a forbidding one. THAT is where the meaningful art comes from. It bleeds out onto pages and into endlessly repetitive patterns (because it’s difficult to concentrate) on reclaimed scrap yarn (because it’s a risky outing to fetch more). Projects of weeks and months taking years. Songs written by people who still can’t push the air to sing them or sit up to play.

Solidarity until it’s inconvenient. Inclusivity as a fad.

I know someone who makes, privately, ransom note cutouts from the packing slips and labels from the endless shipment, demanding a life back with each. A furious little prayer to a hostile god. By her choice, her work will never reach the eyes of the unaffected … for this wall has two sides. The best art of these times, perhaps, we must now jealously horde away from those who make it necessary. Those who cannot be trusted with your safety certainly cannot be trusted with your pain.

wizard needs food badly

Posted on by pamela

It’s not that I’m becoming a multiplayer gamer, so much as that I’m a gamer who is increasingly tired of the inside of her own head and finding it harder to escape it. Games are more of a distraction than a movie or book, but not quite stimulating enough to grab my attention away from my personal river of existential horror. Metagaming is a surprisingly good solution! It’s fun to plan out goals, to talk about how I want gaming to make me feel in a given game session, to set new additional challenges and imagine the ways a game might be used to modulate a mood or provide some fun.

I’ve said three things recently and then realized each was entirely true: I don’t really want to be the main character in a game, I just want to let the game (or the other characters or ideally other people I’m playing with) control the decision-making, and I really need constant dopamine (or serotonin!) hits from playing. That means I can’t remove the challenge from the game for myself (but I should minimize the frustration) because if there’s nothing to complete, there’s no reward, and I want my rewards frequently or I’m gonna get bored. And I should find company that is willing to create mini-goals for us or is really on board with the idea that I’m just gonna tag along carrying stuff because the idea of exerting my will on the universe is generally distasteful and exhausting at the best of times but just impossible now. I’ll pick if I have to, but mostly I just want to follow around like a puppy, thanks!

tiny sprouting plant just getting started

I really do (and I’ll keep saying it until people get interested enough to indulge me, a team of three is ideal) want to finish out Lord of the Rings Online because thinking about it, this hit all three. You’re important and helping a lot of people, but you’re not the savior of Middle Earth, just one person doing their best among many, it’s perfection. You’re on a general story arc and although you can stop and dive into any area you like and you’ll find days of entertainment anywhere that catches your fancy, you can also just let it guide you around. And it’s absolutely the best for rewards and incremental accomplishment, ever… you’re collecting cute clothes, you can craft dyes, you can decorate your house, you can hunt for particular pets, you can cook and feed all the other players, you can dig into lots of really interesting side stories, you can relive historical events, you can run around grinding the in-game currency by finishing deep dives into the various historically-important locations or learning a lot about particular groups of people, it’s basically like a constant comfortable drip of enjoying yourself, and even if you don’t want to do any of that at all, it can still be fun to just wander over to a particularly pretty spot and fish, or just watch the sunset. (This is a game that should have come out today, and it should have been VR!)

I used to play a whole lot of single-player RPGs because it gave me an excuse to get away from people and it made me feel like I had some sort of control over events during times when I had none. Now, I basically want the opposite of those things. No wonder I keep picking up a controller, playing for ten minutes and then wandering off! I’m a different person now, and what I want more than anything else is to feel like things are stable and consistent and manageable and comfortable. That’s not exactly a “stop the bad guy from destroying the world” game. But it’s not really a cozy game, either. Nothing bad can happen in some of those worlds. You’re not going to go hungry in Stardew Valley, or anger someone so badly that they’ll never speak to you again. You’re not going to cry over the cute little puzzle game because it moved you emotionally. Something in between is nice. A situation to resolve or come to terms with. Strength from those around you. Good things that without tending WILL go bad. A struggle that means something.

You can get a lot out of a game. But you do occasionally need to switch it up.

the creative power of “fuck it”

Posted on by pamela

I’m one of those people who makes usable things only when my mind is flipped on and tuned to a very specific channel. Often for good reasons, like breathless laughter or an uncharacteristic bout of evil glee, but just as often because something is gnawing on me. It’s never “hmm I think I’ll have a cup of tea and work on my values study.” That would be nice, but it’s just not how I work. That’s just practice. For a finished piece I care about and will go through the effort to try to make perfectly, a switch needs to flip.

The absolute best switch to flip, and I will recommend this to anyone, is when you think about an idea and you’re not sure, and maybe you’re feeling a little muddled, or you are overthinking it, and suddenly you just feel this welling up in your chest and you say “fuck it.”

Two women in the desert ready to smash small TVs with sledgehammers

That’s the cue. You’ve only got a minute or two. Swap out whatever crummy supplies you have been toying with and pull in the good stuff. Get yourself ready to record audio, or flip on the lights, or break out the camera, or grab the palette knife because whatever your next move is, it needs to be archival quality. You’re going to want to save it. It might not be something you can market and sell. It might not be something you can even finish. But it’s time to preserve whatever you’re about to do so that you can hit that state over and over again, getting faster and freer with your inspiration and smoothing your own way.

This is why you learn your craft, build your skill, study your technique. This is why you stock your materials. This is why when you realize you really like the texture or look of something or a turn of phrase you came up with some day, you should make sure it’s accessible again, that you understand it, that you’re ready to shape it. Because instead of an eventual product, you’re about to make something wild and wonderful, and the benefit of professional experience is how quickly and clearly you’re going to translate that passing momentary desire to make EXACTLY what you’re imagining into an actual finished piece. When you know how to plot out a novel of a particular length and can just start writing into a familiar structure, and when you know exactly the bottle of glimmering blue ink you want to feature, and when you have a comfortable place to work and can clear your schedule and just CREATE something, you’re ready for this moment.

Because the secret, unspoken whole phrase is actually “fuck it, today I’m going to make what *I* want.” There’s no more powerful form of inspiration than the chance to just will something into existence one day which would otherwise never be.

please stop applauding people for lack of effort

Posted on by pamela

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how many aspects of life serve as an immense strain and burden on some people but not others (like, at all) and how fucking unfair it is that this isn’t more widely understood and accepted.

The opposite of struggle isn’t perfect willpower. It’s simply lack of a struggle in the first place.

But somehow we assume that it’s the people who succeed handily and without major effort who are deserving of praise? Why??!?

People with ADHD can have immense difficulty overcoming inertia and distraction to Just Go Do The Thing(tm), facing not a simple disinterest in doing the task, but a full-on crisis state where it’s all they can think about. People who struggle with weight can have their mind tuned to a constant food-and-weight-noise channel at all times, occasionally punctuated by the judgmental comments of others, treated like they’ve made poor choices rather than face medical issues or busted metabolisms. People with anxiety might struggle so badly with phone calls or social situations or facing particular fears or circumstances to the point where their safety, their happiness, their survival comes into question.

Man who has been thrown by a kicking horse, surrounded by dust from its hooves

Stop giving people credit for things which come easily, who fucking cares??? Oh good job you’re always at the gym! Well, except for most people the gym is actually fun and fulfilling, and that’s why people make time for it. I’m not going to be impressed that you’re following what your calendar says. I’ll be impressed and supportive of the person who really struggles to go, or is going to physical therapy appointments, or rehabilitating an injury, and ISN’T enjoying the process. You don’t need my encouragement to do things you love, and most of us love at least a few physical pursuits. Oh, and you don’t have any complaints about your weight or any symptoms of an eating disorder, and your weight only fluctuates by maybe 10-15 pounds ever? Well, uh, good for you? It’s just, you’ve got 3 million+ years of instinct and internal structures designed to eat a varied diet to stay near a built-in set point. Toddlers can feed themselves, too. It’s when those instincts get overridden or signals confused or the body starts sending mixed messages or loses track of that set point that the difficulty level absolutely skyrockets, and people living on hardcore mode should always have our support. Oh, you simply don’t mind speaking in public or visiting new places? You practiced a bit and now you’re able to just do the things? Cool?? What do you want me to say? Good job not being ill? Excellent lack of childhood trauma?

Now, the people who find good systems for themselves, or who don’t give up, or who learn to love things about themselves EVEN THOUGH they have grown and lived in this weird world where we give credit where none is actually due. Where people who seem happy are happy not because they don’t have reason to worry, but because they simply are wired not to do so? Where people get blamed for their own illnesses as though they’re in control of them? The people who just keep moving, make it work, or don’t want to struggle every minute and just live their lives as best they can? THOSE people kick ass. You’re fucking rock stars. You deserve all the good things. You deserve that ease once in awhile, too.

Stop comparing yourself to the people coasting. Fuck them. If we have to walk uphill, we’ll do it together.

time warp laundromat

Posted on by pamela

All but the newest laundromats seem to have a funny timeless quality to them. Tile that is inevitably broken and aged, but broken and aged juuuuust enough that it could be ten years old or fifty. Washers designed for strange commercial applications with designs that haven’t changed appreciably in years. Lighting that hurts your eyes no matter where it comes from or which bulbs they use. A laundromat is just there to scream “come on inside and feed me quarters, you unwashed wretch!”

We have an especially confusing one, clearly placed over the nexus of multiple temporal events. Several of the machines are old enough that they ARE recognizable as long-discontinued styles of machines, made by long-defunct companies, 80% with signs claiming them to be out of order.

Sepia-toned photograph of a bank of older washers, photo by Sonny Sixteen.

The plants are dead, and have been dead for years. Remarkably well-preserved! But dead. Stickers proudly proclaiming chamber of commerce membership decorate the sliding doors, somehow stuck in place since 1995, continuously open nearly that full time, with an occasionally staffed counter (so it seems, though we’d never seen any proof of it) and a single employee who would come and silently sweep at a bit after midnight before locking himself into a back room, face oddly unmemorable.

It seems an end of an era, then, to have recently visited and discovered that the flow of time had somehow suddenly been jostled… artwork of unknown vintage replaced by a local public health poster, a fresh clock on the wall and a brand new sign: Open 6am-Midnight. Doors automatically lock at 11:50pm.

As if now to eagerly reclaim all the time it leaked out into the wrong spaces over the years, our own little twilight zone. Now, suddenly, for one night, a proper laundromat. Or maybe this is the true laundromat, the version it was always meant to be, just for a moment, caught at the right time when the timelines synced up perfectly. Maybe next time we visit, it will have come once again unmoored from our timeline, anachronism creeping back in. The artefacts indicating displacement still lined the walls depending on where you looked. The 1970s vintage soap dispenser looking bright and cheerful as always, prices unchanged, still one of the rare sources for a refreshing can of Slice, virtually impossible to find in the outside world. I expect next time we’ll wander in to find Ms Pacman restored, the lighting near the entrance broken once more, a pile of 90s magazines to flip through and enjoy.

There’s a price to time loops and portals, of course, and thermodynamics takes its toll: now a full 90% of the machines are inoperable.

when did blogs stop being fun?

Posted on by pamela

I last used wordpress many moons ago, and remember it as a violently different creative experience, with a haphazard interface and a wide variety of themes that felt as unique and expressive as the people who used them.

Somehow in the intervening years, the “market” seems to have shifted into something I barely recognize. Where there once were brightly-colored, highly customizable themes meant for music fans, teenagers, parents, book lovers and people with all sorts of senses of personal style, there are now pages and pages of commerce-optimized themes and integrations… it’s clear a battle was fought (and lost) for the soul of the weblog as primarily a fun way for humans just to write and play.

Tiny fabric gnome figurine with a red knitted hat in the snow, skiing. Image by Susanne Jutzeler.

Honestly it was really off-putting. It used to be fun to scroll through the assorted blog themes and plugin lists for different software. They were filled with goodies… shoutboxes, games to play, fun ways to find and collect sites from friends or on topics you enjoy, custom radio station plugins, quizlets, anything you wanted, tied up nicely in a bow.

Now even the interface feels like I’m meant to be plugging my most recent item for sale, well, you can’t have it! I’m not selling! 😛 make your own! If I try to sell you something I make, it’s going to be from the most virulently glittery, least streamlined site I can concoct. It’ll be like tripping over a pile of clothes thrown in the corner. It’ll be neon lights and plastic lawn flamingos and a hideous background that kinda works but makes you pull a face every time you see it because you’ve gotten so used to seeing “light theme” and “dark theme” that you completely forgot your monitor can do pumpkin orange and lime green and mouse cursor trails that drip stars all over the page. That is my pledge to you: I won’t try to sell you anything I make without making you regret it.

… wait crap that’s not how I meant to word that. Also this is meant to be a personal blog! Stop getting off-topic!

(edit: I’ve introduced the stars. You’re welcome!)