Personal Meme: Three Interests

1. Belly dancing
http://www.shira.net/howtomove.htm

This is the only kind of dance I'm good at. I don't have much head for choreography, but in belly dancing, I don't need it. I can just hang my hips from the drumming and let the music do the work. It's a beautiful type of dance -- many types, really, since tribal styles vary *a lot* -- and it's good exercise. I've been practicing belly dance on an occasional basis for, hm, 18 years or so. I am by no means an expert, but good enough to have fun and to turn heads.

Collateral interest: I also make a lot of my own dancing garb.

2. Hypatia
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/hypati1/a/hypatia.htm

Hypatia of Alexandria is one of my oldest ancestor-patrons. In life, she was a famous mathematician and librarian. She was murdered by Christian zealots for being a Pagan and a woman of power. The exact details of her martyrdom vary widely, but they're all pretty gory. That didn't stop her, though; she still serves as a kind of patron saint for Pagans who work with words, books, free speech, and feminism. From her I get some of the truly magical things I can do in a library, like being able to wander around and find exactly the book I need by intuition rather than by hunting in the card catalog.

3. Astronomy
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx

I just love the stars and space. If I can't get there in person, I'll settle for studying from dirtside. Plus, it's a source of much inspiration for my science fiction. If I'm going to put science in a story, I want it to be at least reasonably plausible; and I also like writing about things that seem bizarre and unbelievable but actually have hard science behind them.

1) Grey School
http://www.greyschool.info/

I serve as the Dean of Studies for the Grey School of Wizardry, and I also teach many classes there. It's a great online school for learning magic outside the context of religion. We're always open to new faculty and new students. My friend Oberon Zell-Ravenheart enticed me into getting involved with the school back when it was still under construction.

2) intentional community
http://www.ic.org/

Mainstream society is broken in many ways. The housing is sprawled and inefficient; social ties are tenuous at best; and skills of cooperation and problem-solving are sorely lacking. I believe we can do better. Intentional community covers a wide range of practices all centered around building robust relationships with a group of people and creating infrastructure that supports this.

3) xenolinguistics
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~swellsj/xenolinguistics/

Languages in general have always fascinated me. Xenolinguistics is the study and/or creation of alien and/or invented languages. Hence my interest in LAadan, Klingon, Sindarin, etc. I also enjoy puzzling out the languages that my characters speak -- I often wind up with vocabulary lists that go with a particular story. The idea of communicating with alien or otherwise nonhuman species excites me. Also I just enjoy playing with words and sounds and meanings.

1) Celtic
http://www.ibiblio.org/gaelic/celts.html

I have some Celtic ancestry. I find the lands and languages of Celtic peoples to be beautiful and inspiring. I love the artwork. The mythology and religion resonate with me very strongly. Also Celtic culture places high respect on poetry and poets.

2) Science fiction
http://www.panix.com/~gokce/sf_defn.html

SF expands the mind and encourages readers to think of strange new things. It can provide inspiration for space exploration, product development (ever notice how many cell phones look like Captain Kirk's communicator?) and other stuff. It can warn us about the consequences of mistakes. It can help us practice for things we might need to do someday, such as making first contact with aliens or terraforming another planet. Plus, I just enjoy the mental stimulation of a good story.

3) Spirituality

Spirituality deals with the experience of the numinous, and the relationship between human and divine. It is more of a personal experience than a group experience. I'm intrigued by spirituality and religion in general because the wider the diversity, the more I can see of the world.

1) GLBT
http://www.glbthistory.org/

The acronym stands for "Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender." I enjoy studying the whole spectrum of human sexuality. There is so much diversity, and some of the iterations are surprising and delightful. Plus, GLBT folks often enjoy speculative fiction about species and cultures with different sex/gender arrangements than humans have, and that's another interest of mine.

2) Memetic engineering
http://thedailymeme.com/what-is-a-meme/

This is one I coined myself. A "meme" is a tiny bit of information that spreads itself. There are beneficial memes and harmful memes. I'm a maker of memes, and I wanted a term to describe that -- hence "memetic engineering."

3) Gardening
http://www.garden.org/home

I have a strong connection to nature and a compelling need to spend time outside in close contact with plants and animals. I'm also not very pleased with the quality of food available in supermarkets, so I grow as much of my own as I can -- which, alas, is not much, but it's better than nothing. I grow many types of herbs: tarragon, catnip, sage, chives, lemon balm, stevia, sorrel, spearmint, chocolate mint, ginger mint, thyme, and so forth. I also grow fruit: wild strawberries, mulberries, cherries, black raspberries, apples, pears, currants, etc. Some of those grow right in the ground, others in containers.

You're welcome to ask about gardening, and if I can, I'll answer.

1) African (And what do you mean by this?)
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/africa/

I think I spotted this one on someone else's interest list and thought, "Aha! I should list my favorite cultures." I'm interested in African languages, art, spirituality (Yoruban is the branch I practice), and music (especially drumming).

2) teaching (Why does this interest you?)
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/teaching.html

Both of my parents teach in the public school system, so I grew up with it. I've always enjoyed learning and exploring, and I love sharing cool ideas with other people. More recently I've discovered that my knack for figuring out exactly what I'm doing and how I do it, and explaining that step-by-step so other people can do it too ... is rather rare. Teaching is one of the ways I work on making the world a better place.

3) world building (How did you get into it?)
http://hiddenway.tripod.com/world/

This just goes back all the way ... I have the ability to wander between worlds, which is where I get most of my story ideas. So it's kind of closer to exploration than construction. But I am interested in how planets form, how weather works, how plate tectonics affect terrain, how geopolitics drives cultural evolution, how biology channels societies, and all that stuff. This is a popular panel topic at conventions, and I'm equally likely to be on either side of the table.

1) conlangs

Constructed languages have many purposes. They're fun to play with; I love language in general, and tend to treat it like a box of legos. They're great for worldbuilding; I frequently use constructed languages in my fiction to reveal more of the characters' worldview. (Watch for "Peacock Hour" in Triangulations: Taking Flight.) I'm also intrigued by the idea of a universal auxiliary language.

2) verbal self-defense
http://adrr.com/aa/

ozarque got me interested in this. Her book The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense is excellent. I like investigating the ways people communicate, both positive and negative. I've written a class on this for the Grey School of Wizardry. Sometimes it pops up in my fiction too.

3) spellcraft
http://www.ladybridget.com/scmenu.html

Magic is a useful lever to make the world go the way you want it to go, more often than it would ordinarily. I like studying the theory of magic, how and why it works the way it does, how to use it to best advantage, and so forth. Spellcraft is largely about putting some kind of symbolic handle on energy so you can move it around more easily and precisely. It's fun to figure out what works best and why. There's a chapter on writing spells in my book Composing Magic.

Memes are meant to be shared! By all means, please use it yourself.

1) Cyberfunded creativity
crowdfunding

I coined this term to describe a new business model in which writers, artists, musicians, and other creative folks are marketing their work directly to an audience online. It usually involved a high degree of interactivity; people can band together, each making small donations, to fund a big project. Audience members gain more market influence; creative people retain more control over their work; and they cut out the middlemen which lowers costs for everyone. I encouraged haikujaguar to try some stuff like this with the one-card draw and the "Aphorisms of Kherishdar" project. I've met a lot of other people since who are doing different things with cyberfunded creativity. Mine is the series of monthly poetry fishbowls, which give me inspiration and give my audience access to more poetry.

2) space ship earth
http://reactor-core.org/operating-manual-for-spaceship-earth.html

My awareness of the Earth as a small, precious speck of life is apparently uncommon. But it's the truth. We absolutely must take care of it in order for our species to survive. "Spaceship Earth" captures the image of a tiny closed system in a largely hostile environment, something we need to maintain very carefully. Add in my propensity for activism and you can see why I occasionally introduce myself as "Bridge Crew -- Spaceship Earth." I'm one of the people trying to keep ship and crew intact.

3) saving the world
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/

Closely related to #2 above, I would like to see this place survive and thrive. Right now it's plummeting toward disaster. I'm working to reverse that trend. It's important not to saw off the branch you're standing on!

1) glbt

It stands for "Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender." My interest spans everthing outside of vanilla with heterosexual sauce. I like the diversity in the queer community, all the different ways people can express themselves and enjoy each other. Plus it ties into my fascination with alien/fantasy species with a different sex/gender configuration.

2) dragons

One of my aspects is dragon. I like dragons in fiction because they are formidable -- and when well written, they have a very different worldview than humans do. In artwork they lend drama and elegance. And nobody with any brains ever messes with dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good dipped in chocolate.

3) family of choice

I have a lot of queer and Pagan friends, which means I know a lot of folks who got kicked out of their natal family and/or avoid their relatives for sanity's sake. But most people need a family, so if you lose one, the thing to do is build a new one that suits your needs better. In today's fragmented society, there is much fulfillment to be found in consciously creating family ties -- and they don't all have to follow the traditional lines of genetics, sex, and marriage. Family is what you make of it, the people you choose to weave into your life.

"Any resemblence with the themes of this journal or Mating Flight are ... *hide*"

... wish fulfillment? ;) Sounds like fun to me.