So, I’ve been watching this on YouTube about every other day since it crossed Sarah’s FaceBook feed, and every time I am still in awe.
I think, sometimes, we get caught up in the grand spectacles of special effects, CGI, and blockbuster budgets. But sometimes a simple, beautiful, skillful dance can leave all of that stuff in the dust.
Enjoy!
For this, I would like to refer to far wiser words than my own, written by someone with the genuine authority to say them.
From the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, by Jeremy FiveCrows:
Indigenous Peoples’ Day gives us the opportunity to honor the millions of citizens with indigenous ancestry, to celebrate their culture, and to reflect on the evils, sacrifices, and struggles their ancestors were forced to endure. It also gives us the opportunity to educate the citizens about what can be gained by a greater understanding of indigenous history. By learning about the native cultures of this place and what the first residents knew about living here, the country is enriched with a greater understanding of its shared history, understanding of the ecology, and the philosophy of stewardship that could help heal the nation’s environmental woes.
The land upon which this nation is built molded the cultures of the tribes who called it home, just as it continues to mold the culture of the United States today. The tribes believe that we are of this land; this is true for everyone on earth. For all of us, this land is both the source of our strength and our greatest responsibility. This might be the most important teaching that the modern world could learn from indigenous peoples’ cultures and experiences. Of all changes the message of Indigenous Peoples Day could bring, perhaps the most important would be the realization that the native people’s story is part of the nation’s collective story. We are all connected to one another and to this place we call home.
Today, please make room for these stories told by those who were here long before the rest of us, and whose voices we should respect and honor every day.
(I will never pretend that I have any true gift for poetry, because I haven’t. But what I have is pain and rage and choking helplesness and grief. And this is its outlet.
Please forgive its every flaw and the person who was alive to make them. The only thing that matters is those who are lost, and those who are hurt, and those who are now both.)
Dead and Counting
You were dead in a roar of thunder
Before your body fell
And the body beside you
And the next and the next.
You died laughing, or screaming,
Or crying out to Jesus or Allah or Shiva
“Why” or “Please” or “No”
But no one saved you.
You died in a hail of hatred.
You did not die alone.
And one tragedy becomes two
Becomes twenty
Becomes too many
And the street is red
And the lights flash blue
And no one wants to score the dead.
There will come reasons, shouting,
“It’s your fault, you people!”
“It’s you who are to blame!”
But the blame we parade on sets and soundbites
Doesn’t kill the tears or the pain
Doesn’t cure the nightmares of those
Whose hands knew blood that night.
And we forget to blame hatred.
We forget.
Again we forget.
We light candles and sing
Signs and flowers and wreaths
We change banners and pictures
We hashtag our pain and prayers
We say we will remember
But we hate and teach hate and grow hate
And the candles are not soft memories now.
They are become the start of the next wildfire.
Forgive our tears
That we mean today
And will forget tomorrow.
Forgive our candles, our songs,
Our momentary grief
That will last in your bones.
We died tonight
Or yesterday
In any hail of hatred
And only still live by forgetting
You died,
You,
Whose name we do not know.
But you died in a war
Not between lines on a map
But within the human soul —
You died and we died with you.
We are your blood, cold on the street.
But you do not know this.
You do not have to know.
You already know.
You were dead in a roar of thunder
Before your body fell
And the body beside you
And the next and the next.
You died laughing, or screaming, or sobbing
Or crying out to Jesus or Allah or Shiva
“Why” or “Please” or “No”
But no one saved you.
We all die in a hail of hatred.
A friend asked me this weekend about my personality type as defined by the Myers-Briggs framework. I retook the test, but then I also looked back at my results from the same test about 6 months ago. Somehow, I’m not surprised I got pretty different results.
When I took the Myers-Briggs 6 months or so ago, I was an ENFJ. This weekend, I scored ESTJ.
I took the test here if you’re curious.
The website goes into depth on each of the personality types and some of what the various combinations represent. I think, generally, I fall somewhere between the ENFJ and ESTJ types. What I find to be particularly amusing in the entire analysis of it, though, is that both peg me as being Extroverted rather than Introverted, and both peg me as being Judging rather than Perceiving — and I’m not sure I agree with either in its entirety!
Extroversion and introversion are always an interesting tangle. Most commonly, they get explained as “do you get energy from people, or from being on your own?” But the problem is that I think such a distinction doesn’t work for me. Because whether I’m action or thinking oriented, whether I look for more interaction or less, and what exhausts me more — all these things are dependent on everything else. Sometimes I call myself an “outgoing introvert.”
For me, it all depends on the day, the people, and how my brain chemistry has decided to line up. I spent a large portion of this past weekend in crowds of people and felt more energized than ever — but those crowds were my two most comfortable communities: the Twin Cities Women’s Choir and the convention committee for CONvergence. Sure, I was in a room with 100 people, and I had to be social, and I needed to be on my game, alert and quick and chatty and entertaining. But I was with people where all of that comes more easily to me than, say, a group at a ballgame or in the store. The TCWC women have been my sisters and aunts and cousins for 11+ years. They know me, and it’s fine for me to be myself, just as I am, around them. I’ve known the CVG crew for less time, but, if anything, they are even MORE welcoming of me and who I am and how that presents today.
Contrast that with my usual circumstances at work, where I can go a whole day and sometimes a week without interacting face-to-face with a single coworker, in spite of sitting in the middle of a “cube farm” as it were. I answer emails and IMs, and the few-and-far-between phone calls, but for the most part I find those weeks without people more restful and easier to handle. The days when I don’t have to chat with people, or stand up in front of a room to give a presentation or training session, are the days I’m the most productive, the most relaxed, and come home feeling the most refreshed.
One hour-long meeting at work might be all the social interaction I would want in a day, but I can easily spend 3-4 days with the TCWC or CVG and never feel the fatigue of introversion. So the “E” of the Myers-Briggs only works, I think, when I’m within a group where I already feel safe. When I’m an outsider, though, or when I’m still finding my way, then I would challenge that “E” more strongly.
I’m probably not a genuine extrovert all of the time, or even most of it, but when I have room to be myself, then I take that room and enjoy it.
Similarly, the judging/perceiving divide doesn’t QUITE work for me. It’s not quite as neat a divide to explain, but it seems to come down to “are you more likely to organize and follow a clear plan, or let the world give you some ideas and improvise along the way?” And, once again, in a lot of ways I find myself to be both.
I am, generally, an organized person. If someone asks me to make a plan, or figure out how to get XYZ things done, or set up a schedule with lots of conflicting information, I can usually breeze through it, produce something straightforward and logical, and enumerate the exact sequence of events or precise steps from start to finish. I have the capacity to orient the world in my head and snap it into order, whether I’m doing it with my spreadsheets and plot structures or the exact to-do list before a road-trip.
But, honestly, a lot of that isn’t because I need it for myself — it’s more a result of everything else. Living with Sarah, it helps us both for me to be able to make clear and concise plans she can use. At work, I’m a data analyst, so my brain naturally whirls through numbers and patterns to create trends and graphs and correlations and conclusions. I don’t know that I necessarily see the world in concretes, nor that I even need to perceive it that way. But that’s the path of least resistance because that’s how I tend to keep life moving forward.
When it’s just me, living inside my head, I don’t think I bother with so much organization and structure and order. I don’t typically make plans unless plans are necessary by some outside force, and I know things will get done in their own time. I don’t bother to pin down the 15 different scenarios for every outcome of every branch of what I might do — I just go on my merry way and adjust my steps when the path changes or a rock creeps up. Also, the “P” type tends to attract the non-conformists and I am ABSOLUTELY a non-conformist. I’m the person who wanders around in ratty sweatpants in the nicest stores in the richest suburb because I CAN and I find it funny when people blink at me, as if somehow I’m “doing it wrong” by existing without being perfectly put together.
I do tend to interact with the world on the “J” side of the divide, but I think, if there were no world and just me, I’d stick to the “P.” But, part of that is that I don’t need the plans of a “J” for myself because I know even if I stumble, I’ll catch myself and keep on walking. But I plan, because I’m trying to make the path easier for anybody else walking with me.
So…I’m not sure I’m a good candidate for Myers-Briggs. And all this is before you get into the nuances of trying to do personality testing in a constantly-fluctuating brain with bipolar tendencies. It’s like trying to thread the needle of a sewing machine while it’s running. You might hit it at just the right moment, but for the most part, you’re going to miss.
I understand why these types are helpful, both for people who want to learn about themselves and to help others understand one another. I just don’t think they help ME very much.
But then, it’s just one more box, one more set of expectations, one more world of nice clean lines for me to willfully and cheerfully ignore when it suits me. One more way to defy the mores of conventional understanding.
Because it’s fun.
And anything worth doing or being is worth doing and being yourself, for yourself.
Even when that makes me personality type ???? and sometimes !!!!
Since the GPS competition seems to be having trouble getting the version of my story up on their site, I figured I would post it here. I know there aren’t a whole lot of you reading this, but some of you have expressed interest in knowing exactly what story won me the contest, and I really want to see what you think of it!
So, without any further ado, here is the tale of DIOGENES THE GOAT, Scott Imes Award winner for 2017!
Continue reading “My GPS Winning Entry!”
September 11th really gets under my skin.
September 11th means a lot of things to a lot of people. But at the moment, I can’t get my head out of what it means for me.
September 11th, 2001, was my second day at college. Instead of adjusting to a new schedule and thinking about new classes and friends and everything else, I woke up at 8:30ish CT to my dad calling the room. He told me he was okay – he was supposed to have been at the World Trade Center because he had a monthly trip out there for work, but because of driving me to Minnesota, it had been rescheduled. And he told me there had been an attack. I remember thinking it didn’t seem real.
I wandered down the hall of my dorm, still unfamiliar, still scary in its own right, to the lounge. There, the TV was on with the live coverage. One tower had already collapsed. I remember feeling so numb, so lost. I was already in a new place alone and adrift, and suddenly even reality didn’t seem real. I sat on the floor just inside the door and watched the second tower fall. I remember thinking I should have been crying and I remember not knowing why I wasn’t.
A junior who lived on the floor 2 or 3 doors down from me (and I remember his face and his voice but I’ve long since lost his name) sat beside me and asked if I was okay. And then he put me together with my door and realized it said there in big letters that I was from New York. And he realized I wasn’t okay. So he put an arm around me for a while.
Others came in from the floor, and a few from upstairs where I think the TV wasn’t working. There was a girl on the floor from NYC who was in her room trying to call her mom crying hysterically and her roommate asked the RA to come help. The kid from Iraq and the kid from Saudi Arabia came into the lounge and were horrified, but they retreated to their room soon after and people mentioned they might be scared. Already the news was making noise about Muslim terrorists, and the kid from Pakistan wouldn’t look at any of us.
I remember going to class with a new professor and he was cold. He said he didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to bring it into our freshman seminar. And I understand the value of going on with the day, but that…lack of empathy. I think now it must have been a coping mechanism, but I never forgave him while I was in that class for what felt so callous.
I remember the college called an emergency convocation and we crowded into the chapel together. I remember sitting with someone…but not who; I only knew a handful of people then. I remember still feeling so cold and numb and lost and I still didn’t cry even though I tried. Fuck, I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because I wanted someone to make it okay and there was no one. I wanted someone to pull out of their feelings so they could help me with my own because I had no understanding of how to handle what I was feeling.
What’s strange is that I don’t remember much more than that from that particular day. I remember checking the news – everyone was checking the news – and finding out about Flight 93. I remember feeling instantly grateful to be so far away from New York, as though that insulated me from the reality and my reaction. And I remember the rush of gratitude and pride that, even in the days and weeks afterwards, there was no backlash on my college’s campus against people from the Middle East or people who were Muslim or people who LOOKED Muslim. The backlash that happened in other places sickened me, and I was so, so glad to be around people who did not retaliate.
For most people, it was a day of tragedy and it led to a lot of ugly politics and a war and fear and many other things, but for me, it changed everything. Because I was a political science major and had been on that path since my junior year of high school. I was an international relations student and I wanted, I desperately wanted, to save the world. I arrived at a college especially chosen for its international relations program ready to march into a chaotic world and do some good.
And September 11th changed the very world I hoped to save.
I’ve long said that I chose not to continue into government work because of Sarah and the friends I had whom I didn’t want to leave, but I think that may only be fifty percent of the answer. The other fifty happened when the United States reacted to the attacks with war and hate and despicable rhetoric. The other fifty percent happened when September 11th scared me, both for what might happen to me out in the world if I served the US government, and for what the US government might do with me.
How could I lend my will and hope and talent to a government run by a warmonger who went into the wrong goddamn country just to appease what looked like latent daddy issues? How could I serve abroad when my very name and face and job could make me a target? How could I work in Washington DC and try to “protect” this country from a threat when that threat was defined by those in power as anyone whose skin and beliefs vaguely (and sometimes not even vaguely) resembled the hijackers’?
The world I wanted to save died on September 11th. Maybe not in reality, but certainly in me, it died. And I found I didn’t want to be a part of a system that killed civilians while arresting and detaining and torturing them. I found I didn’t want to be affiliated with the lies that my advisor debunked in class within days of the US presentation to the UN of the so-called WMDs in Iraq. I found I didn’t want to carry the United States like a badge into a part of the world we had rightly pissed off just because we were too stupid or too clumsy to tell the difference.
I saw the videos. I read the news. I followed the reactions. People worldwide started to view the United States as a racist, bigoted, violent, war-hungry nation because that is how we were acting. And I decided I didn’t want to help them do it.
I love this country. I have always loved this country. And to join in such actions and decisions felt like a betrayal to everything I love about the US, everything that makes it good. Everything that makes ANY nation good. I could not be a traitor to the ideals of justice and equal treatment and peace, not when those very ideals were coming second to ideas like “security” and “prevention.”
After September 11th, it’s possible the United States needed someone like me more than it ever had, but I just wasn’t strong enough to answer that call. I wasn’t strong enough to face down those men in power. I wrote my final senior thesis on the political philosophy behind espionage because it was the closest I could get to actually studying What The Hell Is The US Doing And Here Is What It Will Do To Us All without grief.
September 11th was a national and international tragedy and the beginning of many more. It was a day of death and sorrow and pain and fear, and it kicked off far more to come. What it is to the world cannot be understated.
It’s not remote to me now. I didn’t lose a friend or loved one in the Towers like my dad did. I didn’t breathe in the carcinogenic dust like the brave men and women who did their best to save lives.
But something in me died that day, and it is a pain that never goes away. Any time I see the NYC skyline, I ache for what is no longer there. Or in movies that haven’t been edited, I ache when I see the Towers stand. I ache because when they broke and fell, they took a piece of me with them. They took my future. Me the Diplomat-to-Be died that day, too. I hurt for the people of my nation and my state and my city (because NYC is MINE as much as it is anyone’s who has ever loved it, anyone’s who has ever walked its streets and felt strangely at home) and I will never stop hurting for them.
And I have never yet stopped hurting for myself, either.
September 11th, 2001 happened to me. It happened to me and it changed me, and while my suffering is nothing, NOTHING, like those who lost loved ones at Ground Zero or the Pentagon or in a field in Pennsylvania, it is no less real. And after it happened to me and it happened to the world, then the suffering went outwards in wars and bombings and retaliation and detainments and invasions. The cycle of violence and pain was exacerbated and spread to hundreds of thousands or millions of people who were just as innocent as those on the planes.
People forget what 9/11 began when they remember 9/11, but I never can. Because I remember my Iraqi floormate whose hometown was involved in fighting before we graduated. I remember my childhood friend and companion and protector, who was called to two tours in Iraq and for whom I was scared all the time.
It happened to me and then it happened to the world. And it KEEPS ON happening because we have learned NOTHING as a people. And maybe, maybe I should have found the courage and stood up and tried to be the change that is so needed. But I don’t have that kind of power.
And maybe that’s also why September 11th gets to me so much. Not only was it traumatic and tied up in the biggest period of upheaval in my life to date, and not only was it a defining moment for my future and choices and career, and not only was it outright horrific in every particular but for the selfless, wonderful heroes who ran into fire and ruin to save lives. But because I can’t forget all the people it happened to, people whose lives were never the same, people who have to live with it in their hearts even if they were nowhere near the attacks themselves. 9/11 isn’t just about the Towers and the Pentagon and Flight 93. It’s about Afghanistan. Iraq. Guantanamo. All that suffering, all those lives, all the weight of that terror and trauma in the world, and it happened to us all.
And there was nothing I could do to stop it, not any part of it. Not the hijackers. Not the invasion of Iraq. Not the prisoners STILL FUCKING HELD without their rights. I was just a little girl, 19 years old and without having grown any true courage yet. By the time I had courage enough, it was too late. The world had been broken and there was nothing I could do to fix it.
They say “Never forget.” But people do. People hoist flags and make speeches or just go, “Oh, it’s nine-eleven. That was so sad.” And they go on. They forget.
But September 11th is STILL HAPPENING to people. It’s still happening to me, too. I will never be able to honestly look at my life and know in my heart that it was all okay. Because September 11th scared me off a hill where I believed I was born to stand, and that future was lost.
I love my life. I love the people in my life. I am not usually sorry for the choices I made; indeed, being in this life has given me opportunities and friends and chances I never would have found otherwise and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. But on any September 11th, two painful days after my birthday, I can feel the difference. The difference of what I could have been. Of where I could have gone. Of the other work I could have done. Of a time I put my head down when I could have stood up. Because who knows what might have changed and whose lives might have been spared if I had been there?
On September 11th, 2001, heroes shone bright against hate and evil. And I was too busy being numb and shocked and scared and lost to join them. I didn’t hug anyone else. I didn’t help. And I went on to not help. I went on to evade the hard work of making things right rather than digging in. It took me several years to analyze that day and what I did right and wrong, so I could teach myself to do better next time. So that I can be one of the helpers, and not one of those needing the help in the moment of crisis.
But I also never forget that I went on to become what I am because I had that luxury. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t have that choice. It wasn’t just my perceptions of the world that died in the aftermath of that day; it was my perceptions of myself. And all of that is completely worthless compared to the lives lost worldwide. I may have my own memories and feelings to deal with, but I will never, ever forget that my feelings are NOTHING to the true harm that came to the world that day and every day since.
So on any September 11th, you’ll find I lapse silent throughout the day. I get melancholy. I have trouble laughing or relaxing. I retreat and stop reaching out. I have a small downswing into depression.
It’s the day so many, many lives were ruined forever, and not just in NYC or the Pentagon or on Flight 93.
It’s the day fear spread far more quickly than a wildfire, and it was followed by pain and violence that has never since let up.
And it’s the day my dreams died and were replaced with a profound awareness that nothing I ever did with my life, no matter how spectacular or mundane, would ever make the world right again.
Forget September 11th, 2001? How could I?
Its shadow still falls all over my life, even on the brightest days. And I’m just a nobody in the Midwest who DIDN’T lose limbs or liberty or loved ones.
So when you remember 9/11? Don’t just remember the towers and the planes. Remember the people in other countries whose lives have been torn up. Remember every person who ever looked up in the sky of NYC and felt like running and hiding. Remember every person in every country who felt like they would never be safe again because of their heritage or their religion or their culture. Because 9/11 happened to us all.
Never forget that.
This is something I’ve been waiting a long while to celebrate, and since it’s actually also the week of my birthday, this is the time!
I am OFFICIALLY an award-winning author!!!
Back in the spring, I entered a local writing contest run by the Geek Partnership Society, which is a fantastic alliance of geeks and geekdom in the Twin Cities. I had dithered about what kind of story to write for them and actually started two different works, but ultimately settled on “Diogenes the Goat.” And I won!
I actually won the Scott Imes Award, which is an extra special honor given that it is named for one of the great patrons of science fiction and fantasy literature in the area. To win the contest was one thing, but to be granted an award naming someone that geeks in the area almost unanimously revere is something else.
My story will be posted here for those who wish to read it or enter the contest themselves.
Now that I’ve got this contest under my belt, I guess it’s time to see what I can do about publishing the next. But now, when I query a novel or submit a short story to a magazine, I get to be “K.M. Clantoren, winner of the Scott Imes Award.”
I have no words but thanks. And YAY!!!!!!!
So, this week I discovered a new band. It seems to happen to me that I only come upon things after their heyday has ended. I do this with music, with books, with TV series — give it 2-3 years minimum after a thing was big, and that’s when I stumble across it.
Which, on the one hand, robs me of the chance to share it when it is new and exciting with like-minded people, but, on the other, gives me the opportunity to get to enjoy it all at once when it is finished, or go in knowing it never will be. For TV series, in particular, this has served me well in protecting me from killer season-ending cliff-hangers.
This time, the discovery is of the band Gregorian.
Basically, take one part stellar choral singers, one part German rock, and one part Gregorian style 7-tone musical scales, and mix with pop songs. I stumbled onto them through their versions of “The Sound of Silence” and “Hallelujah” and promptly needed to buy all their music, which I’ve pretty much listened to unceasingly since then.
And if they hadn’t won me over by being amazing at what they were already doing, they acquired my loyalty forever by producing this:
The song “The Last Unicorn” comes from the movie of the same name based on the book by Peter S. Beagle and that book, and movie, are one of the cornerstones of my entire life. It’s one of the secretly greatest fantasy novels of all time, funny and moving and surprising and irreverent and shockingly real all at once. The movie was a staple of my childhood into my adulthood; it followed me to college and into my first apartment and everywhere else since. The music had a permanent place in my stereo for a couple of years (when stereos were still a thing).
I met Peter S. Beagle once while he was on tour and came through Minnesota. (There’s a lot to the story of Mr. Beagle that I’m not going to go into right now — but it’s worth some research on your part if you’re concerned. You should be.) He signed my book, and I also bought a poster rendition of The Last Unicorn which he signed for me, too. But when I was standing there, I just had to tell him.
In many ways, I was a last unicorn myself. And the story of Mr. Beagle’s unicorn gave me the courage to go on my own journey and find my own people.
(Mr. Beagle told me that a young woman had said the same thing to him once, a woman adopted into a family of a different ethnic background than her own. That “you can find your people if you are brave,” and that sometimes the people who belong to us, and to whom we belong, are different than the ones we expect or even know to go searching to find. He also told me he stole that line from a poem he read in his youth and couldn’t remember where he got it from now, but he was glad it had helped me.)
Sometimes I am Molly Grue, fierce and fearless and honest and brash and true, and only the last unicorn in the world would ever come to me when I am this. Sometimes I am Schmendrick, adrift and trapped in the lostness inside my own skin and foolish and wise at the same time and clever and desperate, and I did not know that I was so empty to be so full. Sometimes I am Lir, noble and brave and driven by a heart I can scarcely recognize and generous and sorrowful and alone, and bound on all sides by the knowledge that things must happen when it is time for them to happen.
But sometimes I am the unicorn.
When the first breath of winter through the flowers is icing
And you look to the north and a pale moon is rising
And it seems like all is dying and would leave the world to mourn
In the distance hear the laughter of the last unicorn
I did get a neat picture with my phone during the eclipse — the clouds parted just in time:
I wanted to say, for those 6 people who read this site, that I’m sorry for not posting and I’m sorry for spamming all the backdated stuff. This is nearly the last of it. See, I realized at some point that my lack of posting was actually making it harder to post, and it went around and around until even considering typing out an entry was overwhelming. So the only way to get through it, I decided, was to sit down and remedy the whole situation all at once before I could talk myself out of it, and then I wouldn’t have a great 3-month void to contend against going forward.
Writing this year has been hard. I’ve done well in bursts, but not well overall. I can finish short works, or I can alternate between works, but sustaining writing has been tough. In July I started another original novel, but I gave it up a week or two ago and put it on the back burner. However, that decision did seem to help and I’ve written more consistently since then, working on a short fanfic novel.
I also stepped away from Twitter for the same duration of time I stepped away from this blog. There was just too MUCH there. Too much anxiety, too much ugliness. And I couldn’t balance the world on my shoulders while stumbling over marbles, so I put the marbles away to focus on the weight that really mattered. It helped. My anxiety and my distraction-prone lack of focus decreased significantly.
I’m back to the blog now, and I hope to keep at it. I’m back to Twitter only in bursts when I really feel like I can keep it compartmentalized and away from the rest of my head. But the writing will always come first. And if it’s a choice between writing a chapter and writing a blog entry, the chapter will win every single time.
Still, I’ll try to do better.
This whole year has felt like an eclipse, like there’s just a deep shadow that blocks out light and energy and everything else. Maybe it’s temporary, and then we get some light back, but those moments of darkness feel endless.
Art is my lantern, keeping the warmth and light alive until the shadow passes over.
Time to light the lantern once more.
Halestorm is an AMAZING band and I have all the envious feelings about Lzzy Hale’s voice. Seriously. She is a powerhouse of awesome and talent.
Especially the more Sarah and I have gotten into our volunteering with Operations at CONvergence, though, this song has a lot more meaning for us. Because when it comes to amount of work people put in to make CVG go, the time and effort and stress being shared by a hundred leaders and a thousand volunteers — it is EPIC. But it isn’t just the volunteers or leaders. It’s all the geeks and nerds and dorks gathered together, having survived another year in a world of muggles where we are the outsiders and the outcasts and the strange ones. It’s all of us who get to celebrate our oddities together at CONvergence and, for one weekend, get to be ourselves in a world where that isn’t always easy. All of us deserve to be toasted, deserve to sing out together about all the mistakes and bad times and good times and awesome moments of triumph and just enjoy having gotten this far together.
Here’s to us, CONvergence.
*Please note that this entry has been backdated. Basically, the summer got completely away from me AND I lost access to posting on the site from the reliable computer I’d been using — and posting via smartphone is not as elegant as it sounds. So, to make up for it, I’ve retroactively put this entry here. Hopefully this won’t become an annual trend!
