April 1, 1994 - December 30, 2008

Bizgilbert came to me when she was five years old, right before Christmas of 1999, a really hard, disorienting year for me.

"Miss Biz" had grown up in a household with an older domineering female, and thus always had a meekness to her, a real "fraidy cat."  But her former foster mom came to visit a year later, and couldn't believe the difference in her.  "Her head is so high! Her back is so high! Her tail is so high!"

She had a powerful effect on any visitor.   She would hide amid the arrival of feet, but come out when everyone settled down, and all eyes were on her.  She was so elegant, but always had the eyes of a kitten.  And all those mystical stripes.  She was never a fat cat, deceptively small until she stretched her to her slender length.  And every visitor understood that her approval and her approach were not proffered casually.

And yet, she was easy to laugh at too.  Biz had fantastic energy, a snap of lightning, or a quick barreling thunder from one end to the other.  She took great pleasure in the long hallway between our love seat and the dinner dish.  But moreso than any cat I've ever known, she was eager to please.  We had a profound thing between us and my approval meant the world to her.

I remember one time that I stood up and she started to sprint down that hall, leaping up onto the bed in transit.   And I had something else in mind, and said, "Wait," and she stopped right in that split second, between one bound and the next up on the bed, as though inertia itself had less power over her than I did.  It seemed like the most uncanny thing that I'd ever seen.

Still does.

It was just Biz and me, you see, living alone together for so many years.  But I won her over most of all because I taught her that I was on always on her side, something she'd never experienced before, and I treated her with enormous respect.   I shooed her away sometimes, but it was damn rare and only after she'd had a fill of attention from me.  And oftentimes, I'd stop whatever I was doing, even when it was important to me, to simply take some time out to make sure she didn't feel lonely.

And she in turn was there for me during the most severe experiences of my life.  And a few of the good ones too.

She was never real comfortable as a lap kitty, more as a hipside kitty.  But it presented a problem when I started spending so much time on the big computer working on art and poring over photographs.  (I did all my reading with a laptop on our loveseat.  She loved that, at my right hip, with my hand loving her head for hours.  Sometimes I'd quit reading and just love on her for an hour more.)   So for the first few months of my new obsession, she dutifully spent as much time in my lap as she could bear, but would spend more time on the floor at my feet.   I realized over time that I didn't like having her so close, but just out of reach too.

So I found a handy chair, an simple old wooden chair, and would pull it out right beside me when I worked.  And she'd spend hours there (and still come into my lap from time to time).  We both just so dearly loved one another's company.  We were really deeply kindred about feeling close.

It's worth noting that Biz never expressed almost any of the classic affections.  She was never a licker, never a kneader, never liked to be picked up or held to the chest, and never purred out loud (only discernibly to the touch sometimes).  And notably, I only got her claws into me - at all - about twice in all our years together, and once of those was when I unexpectedly picked her up and carried her right out the door!

She was absolutely a housecat, and never inclined to dash outside at all.  (Once, she tried it, but returned with a snap when I barked at her.)  But I was moving into the way cooler apartment upstairs (the one with the long hallway).  So I moved up most of everything else first, and then came back down to just pick her up.  She was terrified as we walked outside, sinking her claws into my chest, but only for about a minute, until we got back indoors and she saw our new home upstairs.  It was our  loveseat - she deeply understood its significance.

I could tell countless stories, couldn't I?  Every little intimacy I cherish to remember.

But what is more intimate than sleeping together?

I sleep on my chest, turned slightly aside to breathe and balance my shoulders, facing arm up, rear arm down.  My legs form a figure 4 with one foot at my other knee.  Most notably, that figure 4 has to reverse when I switch aside in my sleep.  My first kitten back in the 80's had found that place, and I learned to gently reverse around him in my sleep, so he could stay there unperturbed.  We only had a couple years together, but sleeping with that little life wrapped up in my legs became one of my deepest nirvanas.  Neither of my children in the 90's ever did that.

When Biz was brought to me, an unknown quantity in an unknown place after hours of transit, she was understandably confused and afraid.  She was not eager to meet me, and quickly found places to stay out of my reach in my last Memphis flat.  I would spot her tentatively exploring from time to time - it was a big place with many rooms - but she stayed reliably away from me.

Until the third night, when she came to sleep in my figure 4.

It took years before she was untentative with me.  (It might have been moving to Lexington that really bonded us.  I took seven weeks to set up the new camp before going back for her, and the long drive was really hard, but she lept up onto the loveseat as soon as we arrived, and beamed, "Oh, so this  is where you've been!"  No displacement anxiety at all.)  But even while she was still wary and easily startled by me in those Memphis days, she found my figure 4 almost every night.

How could I not fall completely in love with her?

Over time, our "beddy-bye" ritual grew more elaborate.  I'd call to her but sometimes wait a while, until I heard her crunching her last snack down the hall.  Then she'd magically appear, and come to my outstretched arm while I lay on my side.  Her head would settle into my loving hand, her length along my arm, so I could lull her into my own drowsiness.  Sometimes her tail would cast so sweetly across my face, a gentle tickle for my nose and mustache, until finally I had to roll onto my chest for sleep.  And then she'd find her spot, and many mornings found her still there with my legs.  I suppose the nirvana was mutual.

You see, the thing to understand is that Biz was not my pet, and more importantly, she was not my child.  I'd had two "children" in the 90's and that was a completely different thing.

Biz was my girl.

Love, and affection, and a deep mutual respect for each other.  I called her "pretty little goof" a lot, but she knew that I took her needs and her heart very seriously, as tender as it was.  I respected all that insecurity in her, and I guess maybe I really understood it?, but I loved her like I wanted to be loved, and nurtured all the confidence and security into her that I could.  She knew where she stood with me, that she was  so dearly important.

She was my girl.

And it's making me wonder if the hardest thing about death is...?

That we build a little world of intimacy with someone, unfathomably private and personal and defined by all our little habits and understandings of each other.  Not just the experiences, the understandings.

And then we're left in that empty world alone.  Suddenly, there's no one else to understand it with  you.

Maybe we have countless worlds with countless others, but that one world that felt so special is suddenly completely personal, impossible to truly share.

I've always been so terribly proud of Biz, bragging on her dearness and beauty to anyone who'd listen.  And yet I can't shake this isolation that even my best of friends couldn't possibly get it.  As many people who offered to "trade cats" with me, who saw that she was extraordinary, still couldn't possibly know.

And I wonder, if that's the hardest thing about death?

But I suppose that's the secret, to moving on while cherishing forever.

To cast aside any doubts, and know that she  did.

Bizquick...  Bizgilbert...  Miss Biz...  my Biz. 

April 1, 1994 - December 30, 2008

I am so glad that you went with arms around you.  

An all-time cheesy conclusion to a year gone by...

Happy new one! (From after midnight where I am, but before midnight in North America...)

I was going to write this on Christmas night, but I got home from Qatar about 9 at night, exhausted from two brutal hours lost in Hofuf. There is no straight line through that city, or single uninterrupted road. I had plot a fourteen-step route from Google Maps, and noted an ambiguity at the very last step of the way: "Will I be able to turn left there?" But I thought in the worst case, I could turn right and do a Uey. (Everyone else does.) But that last critical step was closed completely, and without a map in my hand, had to wander around on my sense of direction. (Which is, fortunately, really really good, but I was chasing false assumptions, you know, about a city that would make logical sense.)

It wasn't so bad for a long time. "I'm a new world traveller and this is paying my dues." But then I hit two unmarked and violent speedbumps at about 80kph in the dark, and I just wanted to be home already.

The Qatar trip was good. There for a week, and I learned my way around this time, and ripped about 1500 shots with my camera of a huge variety of subjects (including my first model in over a year, a lovely Hindi flight attendant with a megawatt smile). And the trip was exactly the right kind of escape and relaxation. Robert kept me a little more busy than I would have chased myself, but I ended up seeing a lot because of it. Got a lot of great shots at the Doha Zoo, for instance, and learned my way to do some nighttime skyline shooting of my own.

It was all good for breaking in the new iPod. Finally took the leap right before the trip. Had been saying for years, "not until they're bigger." So now, 160gig! seems adequate. Half my entire collection, *lossless*, so that's why I'd need more space than "normal people." (I wouldn't mind AAC on the iPod, but I don't want to juggle two different formats.) Made a great "road trip mix" of about 1000 "forward" songs and only heard one twice in the whole trip, U2's "Rejoice." Heaven forbid. ;-)

However, interestingly, my hyper-sensitivity means that earbuds feel really bad for me, so I'm leaning against them in common use. Using it more for broadcasting to my own FM radio in the car. It's been nice to have wheels this year, but you can't imagine the stress of this traffic until one drives through it yourself. 5% of them speed like maniacs, and drive deliberately on the edge of risk. A lot of these kids drive with their headlights off at night in "stealth mode," and then flash their lights suddenly when they're driving up your ass at twice your speed. It sure keeps the left lane clear, that's for sure!, but it makes yourself drive faster because you just want to get it over with. There's a sense of "three hundred and sixty degrees of potential danger or impact" that I don't think most Americans can imagine. (And it hasn't helped my own nerves that I got rear-ended in November, while patiently waiting my turn.)

Anyway, it's been a good year for open ears to new music, though I am still fundamentally attached to proggy or punky rock music. To me, it's the music of vitality (not necessarily youth). For heaven's sake, Johnny Marr is three years older than me, and he joined Modest Mouse! I can't stop listening to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. And I've bought virtually all of their catalog from iTunes this fall. Crooked Fingers was my "dear" music of the year, so I've written little reviews of all their main albums on iTunes, if you're interested. (Look for "jTh.")

Jeez, I could review stuff until the day I die (or blog generally) - I'm so proud of the reception to my Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens review on Amazon - but I'm terrified of the impediments to getting real work done. But that said, I've got to make a new year's resolution to tame my most ferocious vice: *reading*. It comes and goes in waves as I attempt to wrestle with it, but it completely takes over all my available free time if I let it. I've pruned the majority of polblog reading, but I just find something else online to fill the void, science, history, psychology, technology, if left to my lazy devices. And I've got to beat myself back to the momentum that was lost from carpal tunnel in 2004 and from that whole disaster at deviantART between 2005 and 2006. (And I've left deviantART altogether this year.)

This is especially important because I met an unlikely character at a Christmas Eve party in Qatar, who's got all the know-how to grease my dream of becoming a travelling Photoshop instructor. (It was a conversation that just kept picking up steam. He's one of those "larger than life" characters with a ridiculous list of travels and accomplishments, but it takes a while for them to reveal themselves. But the barrell was downhill after about fifteen minutes, when it turned out that he went to Southwestern.) So I need to buckle down and get to work. "Not knowing the right people" isn't an excuse anymore.

But I'm so overwhelmed by all the different WAYS I could be working: on my art, on photography, on developing shots that I should finish for models, on research itself, on a damn web site! (Grrr... I have zero interest in that task that's got to get done.) I am torn in a dozen different directions, and nothing ever seems to get finished. But I'm hopeful to leverage the new contact for my own focus on driving the book toward completion. Not unrelated, but I found a stunning deal on the entire Adobe CS3 Premium suite of software, less than half than I would have paid in America, so now I'm armed with latest versions of Photoshop, Flash, DreamWeaver, and *InDesign* (the ultimate press and PDF software). And also Illustrator and Acrobat Pro. So there's no lack of software anymore. I need to focus on learning InDesign via a major project. My BOOK, dammit.

I've got the perfect job for it, a dream schedule come true that I'd been chasing half my life. Four hours of work a day, at NIGHT, and only nine months out of the year, so it's time to buckle down. Parallel to that, I need to buckle down on money and travel expenses too. Cost of living in America last summer was brutal. I don't think I'll be flying back across the Atlantic in 2008. (I can add a lot of bank by working an overtime semester in the summer here.) But it reinforces the worst thing about my whole scenario: I miss Biz! But I may try to have her flown over if I switch jobs into Oman next year. But Oman is probably going to be delayed a year longer than that. So I'm facing a year without Biz, and it hurts to think about, but I know Thad's taking dear care of her in Lexington. (And I know I made the most of our time together in summer 2007.)

So this has all been rambly, I know, but it should ideally illustrate a place in my life, anyway. Saudi drives a lot of Americans crazy, but I barely notice. It's easy to be at home, doing my own thing, and so long as I've got the internet, it just doesn't really rattle me. I don't like going to work but I usually enjoy it once I'm there. I've got one good friend on staff here, a couple of other decent cohorts, enought to get me by socially. (Alongside, I'd like to find love but I don't long for it anymore - it's easy to live without now.) We're almost done with the first semester, and then it's *another* vacation, poor me, haha. Might drive back to Qatar, then UAE and Oman (the most beautiful country on the Arabian peninsula), or might stay here and write like mad. (I'm leaning toward the latter, though the road trip with a cool Iraqi seems too rich to pass up.)

But I'll share a thought, if it's any use. Honestly, I think it's more applicable to me than you, my tendency to spin my wheels and settle for life as it is. Instead, I need to take more photographs, develop more of them, finish more art, get hustling on my book, and all that. I need to stop settling and make all my dreams come true. So I've written my new year's resolution in a bright red marker, to remind myself:

"Live the life you want to live."

Ha, maybe I'll add a phrase underneath it: "It's waiting." Hmmmm... ;-)

Anyway, wanted to get this new year off to the right start, letting you know that I'm thinking of you.

Happy two thousand and great!

The Last Straw of Solidarity

Sorry this has taken so long to write, but you know that brevity has never been my strong suit.

I was/am completely disgusted by the bannings of :devnifference:, :devSurrealistic-Geek:, and :devCageyButterfly: months ago, so earlier this year, I left deviantART. I engaged "the proper use of the Delete function" over a hundred times to reclaim all my work.

Exactly what we fought for, but I sure never intended to use it. And losing my outlet and audience there certainly isn't doing my artistic motivation any good.

But if legitimate criticism is met with hostility and a perma-ban, then I have no place there. (By that standard, I found Paddy's ban most shocking.) That place has never pretended to be a democracy, and neither would I accuse it of tyranny (since we're free to leave now), but clearly the monarchs will not welcome any scrutiny of their conduct.

So obviously I can say no more about it, not even here, since I do not want to be banned myself. And I wouldn't put it past them.

Instead, I would prefer that the record of our community action remain in my journals there. (Be sure that they're been thoroughly backed up, and find me at justThorne.com if they disappear suddenly.)

And besides that, I'd like to pop up there from time to time, to let you know how I'm doing.

I'll never forget, all the ways that you and deviantART changed my life.

:heart:

Independence Day

Strange. Eight years ago today, she moved out, after five years.

Don't get me wrong, it was a good thing. Went out for fireworks with some other single guys, to rejoin that club, and it felt overdue. Hadn't been happy in my own home in a long time.

But it's the five year duration that recurs, at strange unexpected junctures in my life.

Three different career phases ended after five years. Moved out of my all-time favorite flat after five years. Was in college five years, haha. (Now, automatically expecting that I'll be making my living in the Middle East for five years, before moving on to a next career.)

Weird too, because a long time ago, "Five Years" by David Bowie struck me like a thunderclap, charting my direction into music appreciation for the rest of my life. But little did we guess it would resonate more widely.

About two weeks ago, had signed up at deviantART five years ago. And now it's time to leave.

Funny story. Signed up at DA to check out a friend's art, did that business, and then ran the hell away from it. The plethora of amazing art beckoned me like a huge waste of time, and it didn't appeal to me then to sit alone at a computer gawking, nor did any prospect of an online social life. I was no artist (though had long wanted to be), and saw no place for me there.

Little would I ever have guessed...

Six months later, my real social life had become terribly disspiriting, and now craved something more constructive to do with my time. Stumbled backward into the deviantSphere and took a fresh look. All that amazing art, and a comments system that encouraged feedback. (If only our favorite musicians gave us such an easy way to cheer them on!) But reading those comments, felt a pang for the artists' sake. There seemed to be almost no substance to the responses.

Saw great, elaborate, sensational, intimate, and stirring works, treated almost disposably by the faintest of praise.

And found a place for me there.

Funny quirk about me, and certainly presumptuous, but I tend to present myself to others as if setting an example for others to follow. Nowhere moreso than in public online venues. So that strategy quickly garnered me a lot of positive energy in return, and quickly, finally, found the inspiration to become artistic myself. And, unknowingly at first, that artistic mission led to a new one, that still shines as the brightest direction in my life to this day.

On Monday morning, 1 March 2004, was hitting the snooze alarm in the middle of a dream, in which I had won DA's highest honor, their Deviousness award. Until finally woke up with a start at the implications, and thought to check. Sure enough...

"There's always something very special about receiving a comment from `justthorne. This is a deviant who goes beyond supporting the DA community with the volume of his comments, but puts a lot of time and energy into the quality. When `justthorne posts a remark on a deviation, you can be sure that he has something very well thought out and insightful to say..."

Of course, "something well thought out and insightful to say" would come back to haunt everyone later.

There's a long story behind the events kicked off in July of 2005. It shouldn't be retold here. But it led to over six brutal months of proof of my commitment to deviantART, an education in politics that I never could have imagined. 1 March 2006, two years after winning their award, felt like the greatest accomplishment of my life for living up to it.

So it really hurts to leave. It really makes me sad. Know, intellectually, that my accomplishment is none diminished, but emotionally, feel as if I bent over backwards to do right by someone who turned out to be a treacherous whore. We've all been there, right?

But if there's one lesson that's been slow to learn, it's that the secret to moving on is to quit taking things so personally. They've made their bed, and small men will never know the glory of noble ambition. It's their loss. But I can't help that it feels like my own.

deviantART did for me, what it was there to do. Will always be thankful for that.

But the hardest part of giving up on a relationship, is walking away from the dreams that guide it, and made it feel so special and singular in our lives.

Alas.