Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Now that I'm not wearing a mask whenever I'm outside the apartment, and also mostly using the disposable medical masks instead of reusable cloth masks that tie behind my head, I'm starting to wear earrings again.

I wear dangly earrings (rather than ear studs), which can become entangled when I remove a mask, or put it back on. Also, they're effectively hidden by the combination of the tie-behind mask and my hair, now that it hasn't been cut in fifteen months.

I don't know if other people will notice the earrings, but I think it's time for me to go back to wearing them. And unlike some other aspects of reopening after the pandemic, the worst thing that will happen if I'm wrong is tangling the earrings in my hair and/or mask, which isn't a big deal.

I have a pair of earrings made from Scrabble tiles. They were a gift from adrian_turtle; the letters on them are the initials of my partners (their ordinary names, not their aliases here [1]), since the store didn't have my initials available.

When I was in Montreal, papersky asked why I'd picked those letters, and when I explained, told me I was "ridiculously sentimental." I'll grant the adjective.

A lot of my earrings have some association for me, in one way or another, though most of them are less likely to provoke comment. For example, there's a fine pair of paua shell earrings in the shape of turtles, gifts from Papersky (so associated for me with both her and Adrian), but "why do you have turtle earrings?" is a less likely question than "why those letters?" There are several pairs that I got from elisem at haiku earring parties, and the "Song of the Lesbian Elephants" that I won in a contest Elise ran. I like having those bits of connection, along with the visual pleasure of the earrings and the feeling of them hanging from my ears.

I'm wearing the Scrabble earrings today. On our way up earlier, one of my neighbors noticed them, and asked if they were Scrabble tiles. I said yes, and she asked where I'd gotten them, and then whether there was a meaning behind the letters. I answered "My girlfriend found them in a shop in Boston" for the first, and something like "Yes, I picked them on purpose" for the second. My neighbor didn't ask for more details. I'd evaded because I didn't want to try to explain my poly web to a casual acquaintance in the time it would take the elevator to get to the fifth floor, but if she'd persisted, I would have. If I weren't somewhat open to explanations, I'd have said "a friend," though "girlfriend" is ambiguous in that sort of context.

[1] Two of my partners share an initial.

I have just had a very pleasant visit with elisem; we both would have liked more time, but circumstances didn't work for that.

She gave me "Song of the Lesbian Elephants," the earrings I won [an odd thought] from her a month ago. We then spent a bit of time sorting out that no, I hadn't asked to be in this month's Artist Challenge of the Month, for reasons partly of time and partly because I don't have a great affinity for jasper. And I got the basic earring-making lesson that didn't happen at last Wiscon, including advice about working on a piece of cloth and not eating or drinking while making jewelry.

Elise also took some time to pet and praise julian_tiger; she's known some fine orange cats, and said that he was excellent by that standard. (Fear not, pnh--her coat and sweater were safely in a cat-free closet.)

After Elise left, I tried what she'd shown me. I had to throw away two pieces of wire--this is why I'm working in steel rather than silver, for the instant--but the third one worked. I used a sterling hook, because the style of hooks I've got in steel aren't comfortable for me and I didn't quite catch the trick for modifying them. I think I'm going to want more beads, because the ones I have do a remarkable job of not going together, for the most part. In the meantime, I have two single dangly earrings; I designed both, and she made one.

I mostly wear pairs, but since I'm inherently asymmetrical (three ear piercings, one of which always has the same purple captive bead ring), so I may wear one of these with an unrelated earring (perhaps one of the orphaned ones left after I lost their matches), or maybe cattitude will want one.

I have put away the beads, discarded the stray bits of wire (had I been working in silver, I might have kept them; were I working in gold, I surely would have), and made a cup of tea.

elisem asked people to post their contributions to her haiku/earring not-exactly-contest to her journal. I wound up with two sets of earrings. For the second set, Twilight's Beacons (each has one large hollow bone
bead, with star-shaped holes carved into it; two blue and one copper bead above, one blue below), I wasn't happy with my haiku. After thought and discussion, I wound up with this prose poem:

Twilight's Beacons

Emerging from the chaos and endless waiting of the terminal, we boarded a coach, over roads never seen before, but the birds are the same, the trees are the trees of home, and the sky on my planet is still blue, only a deep purple through the front window, above the same green world. Road names speak of other places--Harlem, Shattuck--as the twilight settles upon us.

Darkness ahead, of rain much beloved, but also feared. Lightning leaps for the clouds, leading us onward, and the sky on my world is a pale nameless not-quite-blue as the red setting sun shows me the place my people are calling home, for a little while.

Vicki Rosenzweig
Madison, 27 May 2001