So I have a confession: I love suits. I blame Scully, because it was with her in mind that I tried on a double-breasted Ralph Lauren pinstriped pantsuit at a friend's Nordstrom birthday party in high school. It fitted me so well and flattered me so thoroughly that I stood in front of the mirrors trying to figure out a career that I would enjoy that would involve a wardrobe of suits. My imagination failed me in this matter.

However, the desire to be suited remains. Suits are comfortable, fairly practical, and exude an aura of competence. As I near graduation with a terminal degree, I imagine interview scenarios wherein a suit might be an advantage or necessity, and when I was at the mall yesterday I prolonged my stay in the air-conditioning by hitting the suit section of Macy's.

This was, perhaps, a mistake. This time of year, the suits are apparently being liquidated to make room for more summer dresses, and masses of suits were on clearance. I sorted through a morasse of cutesy and faddish suits (the fashion industry really doesn't want one suit to last a woman for twenty years or more, as it has tacitly accepted one suit doing for men) and found a classic charcoal grey number that fitted my hips and waist perfectly (fellow women will know how bizarre this is in a pair of pants) and looked both flattering and professional. For half off.

So I resigned myself to having this suit forever the One that Got Away, until I mentioned it on the phone to my mom. "What was the fabric?" quoth she (have I mentioned my mom is a textile artist?) and when I told her, she wailed, "Why didn't you buy it? That's a PERFECT SUIT!" So, in short, I had to edit this blogget to remove the forlornness, because I got an early graduation present and I am now fully ready to suit up at a moment's notice.

I admit I've been pretty negative about moving to the Golden State. I've been ungrateful about the way the drivers and roads are training my reflexes and skills, and suggested that the state's most lauded private academic institution is a cruel maze from which escape is perilous. I have, as my coworkers could tell you, stared out at blue-sky day after blue-sky day and sighed after the variation and excitement of cloud and rain.

However, this state has its points. And chief among them, in my opinion, is the bird life. I'm not an ornithological authority, and apart from the occasional hummingbird or finch, I've little idea what birds are flitting around my yard and mocking my cat from behind glass. But they are many, diverse, and lovely. Qubit likes to watch them...or at least, feels compelled to do so. From the frustrated hacking growls she emits, I don't think she enjoys it too much.

I like to listen to them. When I sit at my dining room table, their songs come from several directions. I feel surrounded by their music. In my study, I can hear the clear repeated trills of a bird that frequents the tree in the front yard. These songs are far different from those I'm used to in Oregon, the sounds that are so much a part of my childhood I barely heard them until I left the state and returned. These are more tropical, like the calls at the zoo, from the aviary or on a looped soundtrack at an exhibit. They are merry and beautiful, clearer and more warming than the sunshine. I won't live in California forever, and I'll miss the birds when I go.

So upon reflection and discussion, I'm really quite indecisive about what divides, if any, to forge between my professional life on the internet and my footloose bloggery on the faerienet. Ryan, the man who manages to mix videogame reviews, rants, and paens to pie with his coding offerings and opinions on wonko.com, thinks my entire mental framework is outmoded. The idea of 'personal' versus 'professional' web presences, he would have it, is more or less gone. And I'll admit, since I didn't pseudonym up this blog, he may have a point. Regardless of whether I think some coy non-linking and non-use of keywords and a separate domain is a conceptual bright line, the average intertronner probably does not see or care about that line.

So what is gained by pretending? I'm not sure. Perhaps the sense of consequence-free play that gave rise to Justice Man and the Lure of Milk-Bones and Master Taco. If I think 'serious' readers or, goddesses forfend, editors might be looking on, would I feel so free to drivel at the mouth and overflow at the brainpan? Does my dim little bright line actually fool even me enough to allow such tomfoolery these days?

And what's at stake? Well, there are the unknowables. The people who might not want to be associated with me if they read, well, Justy. And there are the archives. By posting it, I said I was okay with it being known; but by making faerye.net a part of my professional web presence, I'd be owning this as part of my writerly persona. I might have to go through the archives pruning things. That sounds daunting, and even possibly dishonest. But it also, to venture even further into alliteration, bears a resemblance to due diligence.

So, opinions? I know EMeta, at least, has been frustrated by my strange and arcane attempt at compartmentalization. Lemme hear it, folks. Is there a line between personal and professional on the web? At least, when you're non-anonymous and under thirty? Why did you choose what you chose?

nota bene: whatever the outcome of this discussion, Faerye Net is due for a rehaul. Hopefully it should be shinier, more folksonomic, and more RSS-friendly quite soon.

Or, to stray from the Golden Ticket metaphor to the Real World, my first published story is on a newsstand near you (at least, it is on a newsstand near me.) Go to my totally dignified author site for all the par-ticulars!

The Grey City I
The Grey City II
The Grey City III
The Grey City IV
The Grey City V
The Grey City VI
The Grey City VII
The Grey City VIII
The Grey City IX
The Grey City X
The Grey City XI
The Grey City XII
The Grey City XIII
The Grey City XIV
The Grey City XV
The Grey City XVI

There was a curious sound that Carys could not place. It was short, percussive, and repeated at odd intervals. It sounded like something fragile breaking, far away. crack.

Then Carys heard her mother hum, and she remembered. Sunday mornings in their house, Mother would sneak out of bed and start to cook. Papa would lie in the bed, sleeping as if his body knew it was his only day of rest. Eirian, in the little cot the sisters shared, lay curled into a cozy knot like a hibernating squirrel. As the smells of cooking spread out from the cast-iron stove, the sleepers would stir and sniff, then kick off their covers and stumble towards the table.

But not Carys. It was not her nose, cold above the quilts and sheepskin, that woke her, but her ears. crack. In Mother's hand, resting against callus and ground-in dirt, egg after egg broke against the edge of the stone mortar. crack. Carys knew that each blow split an egg perfectly into two ragged, hollow bowls, knew without opening her eyes. And she did not open them. Not until Eirian or Father had snuffled out of bed and Mama had said, "I've led you out of bed by your nose again!" did Carys flutter, blink and stretch. Such sweet deceit she remembered now with the absent-minded tune and the muffled, delicate crack.

Carys remembered it all, every moment her childish mind had been too busy or careless to catch. The pain and fear she had never forgotten; the body thinks it needs those things to survive. But the joys she now recalled — deep beyond memory, or rediscovered like a beloved toy at March's first thaw — overwhelmed the sorrows.

The sweet smell of milk that had led her to Mother's breast, the first rainbow, the spring breathing lavendar onto the tall slate hills, the way a lamb butted your hand when it knew you were safe. Father teaching you to dance, the voice of the girl who lost her baby raised in song more beautiful for its knowing ache. Figgy pudding, the warmth of a blanket burrow on a stormy knight, and Eirian's breath, as familiar as your own, warming the night beside you. The voices of Mother and Father are drawing closer, more than a memory, real voices singing a song you do not know. Now you are remembering the good parts of your last months with your family, the moments you could not see through the fear and grief. Papa telling you tall tales and family history from his sickbed, and Mama — oh, how could obligation and worry chase away this glow of pride — Mama telling you she trusted you to look after your sister, knew your heart and strength.

The song was strong now, and there were words in it, indistinct as if heard through a door, felt more than understood. The dark around her was alive with warmth and music, but she could feel a thread of chill like a draft on her back. It came from the body's world, the City she had escaped, escaped alone, and Carys turned and followed it, swimming into the cold current of time, back to the City, the night, and to Eirian.

The creepiest thing about coming home after a few days' absence is that the hobo spider funnel web in the bathtub is invisible until it's fogged up from your shower. Yeeeeeech.