Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

When the worst has already happened

That’s a dead squirrel on a paper plate with a wilted flower placed in front of it. A zoom of the photo seems to reveal that the squirrel’s throat has been cut, but maybe it died of natural causes . . . and somebody thought it would be nice to leave it in the CFA area next to a tree. I came by the next day and it was still there, but the paper plate was gone. I have a pic of that too, but it’s a less fluffy squirrel after being dead for a day in the rain. I haven’t been back by there since.

So the squirrel paid the ultimate price for art or maybe became art accidentally after tossing aside this mortal coil. One thing you can do when you’re distressed is to ask “what’s the worst that could happen?” wtwtch? this I learned from Olga’s blog. So maybe the squirrel’s predicament is the worst that could happen to anybody. But I don’t think so. Some people seek death as escape, which would imply that it’s not the worst thing ever.
So what if the worst thing that could possibly happen already has? Jean asked me a couple of days ago. *blink* What would I have to lose? I’d be free. I could stop worrying. I could love everyone as much as I could. I could take any risk. I could go in any direction.
So what direction to go in? Man, I dunno. I feel kind of damaged. I’m kind of glad to be trapped in the limbo of grad school as much as I want to get home as soon as I can. As much as I feel isolated, it’s like havign a testing ground for differnt directions or something. being here doesn’t feel like real life. I saw a movie over winter break called The Red Desert, in which a woman has a nervous break down and is surrounded by desolation. She says to a sailor, “It’s just that I need to remember that these things that keep happening to me are my life.” It’s a really good movie but it was bit too much for me to watch when I was watching it.
I feel sadder about losing my mom than I feel about losing Christi, and I dunno why cuz I always thought it would be the other way around. Maybe cuz when I lost my mom is when I lost Christi too, really. Maybe cuz I never really had Christi. Maybe cuz Christi’s not dead, thank god. Tho I don’t really want to see her or talk to her right now.
Ok, so I said I would post about sleeping with as many women as possible and I wrote a post and I decide to post it and then I change my mind and then I change my mind again. Which is kind of how I feel about sleeping with as many women as possible…. la la la…. here’s the post I wrote yesterday:

Sleeping Around

Normally, I try to keep my blog posts pretty pg-13 and I think this one will prolly be around that level. Maybe R. However, if you are a relative or have the power to write grades on my coursework, please shoo from this post and read the archives instead or something.
Now that I’ve got your attention…. ok, so one of the rebounding things I listed was “sleeping with as many women as possible.” Which has a million pros and cons. I met a guy a couple of nights ago who was all sad about some boy and I said that people had been telling to rebound by sleeping around. The sad guy said he didn’t think he was capable of such a thing, which reminded me of my first girlfriend….
Ok, so I was very young. 17.5 – 18.5. She was the same age. (I’m in disclaimer land. I bear him no lingering ill will. I hope him the best.) Our relationship was non-monogamous. (I know the hip term now is ” polyamorous,” but this was 1993 and we didn’t yet know such a word.) What this actually meant is that she slept around and had another girlfriend who she’d been seeing forever . . . and I was just seeing her. This was not an ideal arrangement, obviously. She encouraged me towards non-monogamy. She told me where to meet chicks. She even left me alone with aggressive females she knew were hot for me. For whatever reason, I was only interested in her. Our relationship wasn’t very good, obviously, and we broke up around the time I left to go to college
I arrived at Mills and decided maybe I should finally embrace this nonmongamy thing and try to get some chicks. this was grossly unpopular idea. Several people explained to me that monogamy was where it’s at. Some of those people (ok, one) later had six girlfriends who didn’t all know about each other, but whatever. It was during this time that I developed my current mack technique which involves giggling stupidly, blushing and looking at my shoes. This didn’t work so well at the time, but somehow is working now. anyway. So finally, I succeeded in getting a couple of chicks who I was kind of dating, but not seriously and it seemed kind of doomed and then I got with christi.
christi insisted on monogamy. I was more or less ok with it, although it was an issue that came up occasionally.
Fast forward many years . . . christi and I were still together but on different continents. We decided to be nonmonogamous due to separation. I was half heartedly pursuing a few straight women who were really not interested. As far as she told me, Christi wasn’t hooking up either.
Um, so this idea of “sleeping with as many women as possible” would be a dern new experience, even as it’s an old idea.

Pros

Make up for missing life experience. Fuck the pain away. (as Peaches would sing) Make new friends. Feel like a part of the queer community. Get a larger audience for thesis concert. Know more undergrads. Kind of fun.

Cons

undergrads are all around 20 years old, I think. risk of drama. risk of disease. risk of her getting attached to me. risk of me getting attached to her. um, could this hurt my future academic career? takes a lot of effort. cuts into sleep time. pain just comes back later, maybe worse cuz of no sleep. getting shot down could hurt ego. somewhat confusing.
And so, rebounding person can have a warm body next to her for one sleepless night. and feel like there’s some human connection, where there hasn’t been that much of one, unless there has: who knows? if you take critical theory ( a required subject for all undergrads here), you wonder what does it all mean because things do not just signify themselves. Sex with near-strangers is certainly a technology of the self. Maybe identity is formed in contrast to the other? Maybe it’s hard to know what to think.
Jean told me to do it and a bunch of people have agreed, but I dunno.
Tumultuous affair was a good idea.
Sleeping around is, well, different. hypothetically i mean. of course. yes. goodnight.

Last letter from mom for a good long while

So I was reading through the letters and I came upon this one and I think I’m going to put them away for a few more years after this.

Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 14:40:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: Bro Robert
Dear Celeste,
Brother Robert’s address is [address]
Dad gave me some bad news last night. He said that
you and Christie aren’t coming on Thanksgiving. Of
course I know that this is only a vicious rumor. I was
counting on you.
I’m losing my memory in odd ways. It isn’t
Alzheimer’s,
I don’t think; the pattern, judging by articles and tv

reports I’ve seen, isn’t right. Daddy’s and Tom’s
patterns of deterioration were pretty much similar to
the reports. My problem isn’t so much in being
confused. I can still learn new presentations for the
museum, and remember what I previously learned; I can
do great in narrating the slide presentation for
Westward Ho! and communicate very well with visitors
on my tours.So what is the problem? Well, it’s hard to
describe. The other day I went to the Moo to help
count out fliers to be distributed to school district
offices. I walked in and there was Chuck Morrow, who
has been out sick for months. I gave him a welcome
back are you ok now, etc. One of the other docents
very tactfully explained that Chuck Morrow was out
leading a tour, and this was Richard Sachen. I was
mortified. Still, even at that, it took me about half
an hour before I really realized who was who. The bad
part is that I know these people well. Then when I was
assembling the packets, I got them all mixed up. No
one realized, but it scared me. Daddy thought I was
Winifred, but by that time he was disconnected
generally. What’s happening? The pattern is wrong.
Some other things have happened also, but none as
serious as this. Still, I can take detailed notes at
meetings (2 a month), produce an average of 4 to 5
typewritten pages, and there are no corrections made
at the next meeting. But I have to realize that
something is beginning to happen. Please say a prayer
for me.It’s scary. These things never used to happen.
Is there a forseeable weekend you can go to LA to see
Catherine? Grandma will come too. I think we should do
it soon, while both of them are still able.
We took Grandma to the Grand National Horse Show and
Rodeo yesterday. I think she really enjoyed it.She
said she went to Bro. Robert’s for dinner last week.
She was delighted that you asked her. You can’t
imagine how important your continued contact with her
is. Bro Robert was right when he said that your heart
is in the right place.
Please come on Thanksgiving if at all possible.
Love to the world’s best daughter, Mom

Um, so I guess that helps answer the when-did-it-start question. I guess this means I never really knew my mom at all, really. I don’t know what I wrote back to this. In the letters around it, she’s responding to me trying to convince her that feminism and communism are good ideas. And she writes for a while about being depressed. This wasn’t long after she got on prozac. Maybe she was never depressed at all. Yeah.
I think I prolly wrote back the wrong thing. The right thing was “go see a neurologist now!!” I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that.
this is a public service message: if yer family member complains of these symptoms, take her to a spciealist. If her tumor had been operated on then, it might have been treatable.
yee gods
oh yeah. Tom was my cousin, Catherine’s older brother. He had memory deterioration and lost his short term memory before he died. Daddy was my grandpa. He broke his hip and had emergency surgery and when the anesthesia wore off . . . well, it never did really. He was extremely confused for the five years before he died. My family, which celebrates intellectualism, learning and intelligence as high virtues, has a pattern of deaths involving slow, lingering brain diseases.

Letter from mom

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 12:11:13 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: Grandma
Dear Celeste
I left a message on your voice mail this AM. Grandma is having some
medical problems.(Bloody urine) and needs cheering up. Paul is coming
over to dinner tonight, and I was hoping my two daughters could come
tonight or tomorrow if possible. If not, maybe next week sometime.
Grandma is definitely not moving to the Retirement Inn until all her
medical problems
are solved. She also has a cataract
and some other problems. Love, Mom

dead letter. dead things in the letter: mom, grandma, “two daughters” relationship.

Rebounding

Pros and cons of different methods (not all of which have personally been tried by the author):

Letter

Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 12:24:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: forgot
Dear Celeste,
I forgot to mention that Bro Bob will be in Oakland next week, so we
gave him your phone number. I think that’s cool’ that he wants to see
you guys.

Catherine called and wanted to be remembered to you. She is in a
swwimming exercise program, only this morning she couldn’t find her
bathing suit. She saidit is worn and mended. We wondered whether the
laundry thought it was a rag and pitched it. One day Dad put out the
garbage and the garbage man took the can.
Love you, Mom

Brother Bob is a family friend. He now hosts all the holiday dinners for Christmas and Thanksgiving and whatnot. Catherine is my cousin. Actually, she was my grandma’s first cousin. She’s in her late 80’s at least now. She’s a nun. And I can’t blame the garbage man for taking those cans. They were rusty and dented. One didn’t have a bottom anymore. I don’t know how my dad kept using them. when we moved from San Jose to Cupertino in the early 80’s my dad moved the garbage cans too.

Left in this year

I got one ten page paper due monday where I must apply critical theory to Joan of Arc. I will be relying heavily on Cixous and talking about how, while with the French army, Joan of Arc escaped binary oppositions about gender. I got one 20 page paper due May 14th, which is a research paper applying critical (feminist?) theory to Christine de Pizan’s poem about Joan of Arc. And I’ve got to do my documentation of the electronic music studio + test utlities for setting up 4 channel audio, prolly also by the 14th. and some sort of installation for a parking garage muzak system by the first week of may. that’s it. then I’m done. till next year. My plan is, of course, to finish this all as early as possible so as to coast thru the last few weeks. or leave early.

all the undergrad thesises (thesi?) were due tuesday, as were many of the graduate thesi. Isaac, tho, is still working on his, although he can sometimes be spotted on the porch of India House, taking a smoke break.

but class has been a bit relaxed as a result of so many folks being done. Especially in the one with the prof whose still out sick.
Tom, who just turned in 70 pages single spaced, and whose concert is sunday, participates in a class discussion and installation artists.
And I took some time yesterday to finally get a haircut. Issac was nice enough to take my picture afterwards.
If I look like I’ve been rained on, it’s cuz it was pouring yesterday. connecticut doesn’t go half assed with this weather thing.

rainy day

but happy anyway. In fact, when I went to my see my shrink, I’ve been so chill lately that she told me not to schedule another appointment unless something came up. Apparently, the Wesleyan student health services has deemed me sane. Or sane enough, at least. Part of the reason I was in such a good mood is because Cola sent me a CD of an Oakland-based duo called The Coup. Cool stuff. Also jelly beans and dark chocolate. Cola is awesome.

So yeah, I’m not a game show host. I’m not gleeful 24/7. But damn, I’m doing better than I was in February when I had devised a plan on how to harm myself. Um, yeah. A plan I decided not to execute. Would have gone to a hospital instead. Didn’t want the world to know what a loser I was. Didn’t want to hurt my dad. Also knew that I would probably feel better later. But I did think about it. Bad times. I wouldn’t be blogging this unless it was 100% past tense.
So damn, what a year. There’s only three weeks of school left, but I have a paper due May 14th. I’m actually starting to really like school, now that it’s almost ending. Not that I’m not anxious to get home for the summer. Xena will be going to dog summer camp in Kentucky with Angela. I have two offers for house checking up, but no offers for subletting. Alas. I was thinking I should drive across the country, but Sophie points out this would take a week and flying is faster and cheaper. So… do I really need all the gear I was going to haul around? My desktop is excellent for running protools, except it doesn’t work. And I’ve barely run protools all year. Do I really need it for the summer? What if I just had my laptop, my bass guitar and some clothes? Maybe my basshead too, cuz it’s small. I keep thinking I should bring my drum machine, but I can’t think why. I mean, it needs MIDI to work and I have no MIDI on my laptop. Why is my drum machine calling to me? Maybe I could have discussed this with my shrink today. She wanted to know what’s been bugging me lately. Same old stuff, you know, but not so much I can’t just annoy my friends or feel better by the next morning. Couldn’t think of much to talk about. She said, “can’t you dig up some anguish?”
I got rythm, I got music. You’re wondering what a basshead is. Some bass amps are in two parts, the amplifier and a seperate speaker. I have an insanely huge speaker cabinet because some boy was giving me grief about my rig and I caved into peer pressure and now I have gigantic speaker that I don’t ever want to move anyplace. the head is a seperate part that actually does all the electronic amplification. It has a power cord. the speaker does not. Most people, despite what peer-pressuring boy says about “professional” bassists, have these peices joined together in a combo amp. the electronics are at the top of the amp and the speaker is below. I have helpfully taken a photo of my basshead sitting on my ludicrously large speaker. It will come in handy if I play in a too-loud punk band next term…

augh

protools is not working on my desktop. it crashes the computer with an evil hard bad crash. everything has been sketchy on that system since i went to 10.3 instead of 10.2. now i can’t run my most important application, basically the main thing i use the desktop for. can’t run protools on my laptop because it requires a pci card. double plus ungood.

pictures

what better way to distract myself from my woes than posting bad pictures of my campus?
That building is called the music studios. It actually has windows on the other side. there are practice rooms in the basement, then a bunch of classrooms and offices upstairs. There’s also a computer lab upstairs, but i don’t have any classes in that building this term, so i only go in the lab when i need to print.
That’s the big concert hall. It slopes downward into the earth. the stage is two floors below gournd level. It’s a nicer concert hall than Mills has, but there is not quite enough seating. It was built with some 70’s idealist goal of not having enough seating to turn a profit, so that it would always remian unblemished by commercialism. it’s pretty reverberant with all that cement, but they’ve got some wood stuff inside, which makes it ok for concerts.
That’s the rehersal hall, where I spend too much of my life. the concert hall is directly to the right of it. They’re connected underground. There’s a windowless classroom two stories down where we get to hear long lectures about random subjects once a week. On the surface level, the left window is the Electronic Music Studio.
I take classes in other buildings, but i spend most of my time in the music area. If somebody tells me to go to another building, I may stare blankly and ask them where it is. Which reminds me that I haven’t done any reading for my mom-music class tommorrow… dern it.

Give me feedback

on my resume. Or pass it along to you work’s audio department. Everyone is always looking for interns cuz we work cheep and it’s short term and companies will hire interns even as they’re laying off real employees. alas.

when acronyms go too far

I was just looking at the calendar for “wesfest,” a bunch of events organized for perspective students:

Queer Issues Panel
Curious about queer life at wes? Come talk to members of the LGBTTQQIPFAGBDSM etc. community about dating, coming out, bathrooms, activism, and anything else that suites your fancy.
Location: PAC – PAC 004

Is this a joke?