Eccentric Flower:199910/3 Days

Everyone who read the previous entry and thought, "Goodness, she went to Denver and all she's going to talk about is the plane trips?" - be calm. Your time will come.

It's just that I divide the journey into several mental categories. The travel part. The visit part. And the thoughts the visit inspired.

This is part two. Part three will take a while. I haven't sorted it all out yet.

So. I went to Denver. I met Ysabel and Amy. I met Lisa.

I can't link to them, because as it happens all three are in the process of moving their websites.

All three are intelligent, creative, verbose people. They are also quite weird, and Ys and Amy don't care who knows it. Lisa, I think, does care who knows it. There is a certain concealment, an "I'm not sure I trust you enough to show you my weirdnesses yet" outlook. I understand. I feel exactly the same way.

My conversation with Lisa was guarded at first. I hadn't communicated with her as much before meeting her, hadn't exchanged the secret signals that say, "It's okay to let your personality escape around me." I don't know what conclusions she may have formed about me, but I know that she didn't get the full picture, because even after I relaxed, I still felt the urge to censor a little, to clamp down. It's not personal, I do that with just about everyone until one day they say something that tells me - somehow - "All bets are off, it's okay to let your hair down with this person."

With Ys and Amy I didn't have that problem, both because I've been communicating with them and exchanging facts with them for a longer time, and because it's hard to be closed around them. They are footloose, unrepressed, and not scared to occasionally be childlike.

Myself, I won't be childlike around anyone but Nonelvis. And I try not to let my geeky background show around anyone. I cannot manage to not care what other people think.

Mind you, Ys and Amy do care what others think - on a few subjects. Amy is one of the most cheerful people I've ever seen, but she has her thin spots, and since I caught her in a rough period (sleepless, about to show her art in public for the first time) I saw a few of them. I'm glad I did. It makes her more human.

Similarly, it is obviously very important to Ysabel that she be perceived as female, that others see her as not just a female human but an attractive one. Ys can get away with this. I have only seen one picture of her before the transition, but she has to have had one of the most female-looking male bodies ever known. I am frankly envious, and I have told her so.

As I noted to Lisa, and she agreed, one of the main arguments against my ever taking that path is that I'd make a fairly unattractive woman. But that's another topic - one of these things in the third category that will take me some days to sort out. You see, we talked about gender a lot.

Talking about gender with Ys has a certain inevitability to it, given our common interests, but I was surprised to have a gender conversation with Lisa as well. Not displeased - I like any perspectives I can get - just surprised. Many people prefer to avoid the subject entirely.

I enjoyed the visit a great deal, although I had several conversations that left me a little depressed, especially with Ys and Amy. This is the depression that I always get from idea displacement. I've argued against Ys and Amy before, which is usually a bad idea because they agree on almost all major points of philosophy, and they tend to double-team me until my ideas are hiding in a corner of my head, begging for mercy.

Of course, their ideas are often right, but I have a lot of irrationality, especially where the very personal topics we discussed are concerned, and it's hard to lose that entirely - it's a matter of, "You're right, but gee, it's one thing to know it intellectually and another to implement it."

At least they aren't like other people I know where I now reject the ideas completely, however valid, just because of the style in which they're delivered.

What it comes down to: I trust these people. I trust them enough to talk to them about these things and even listen to advice from them. I don't know why I trust them, given that this is the first time I've seen them in person and eveyone knows how hard it is for me to trust even people I've been around for ages.

I suspect it's because they're so disclosing about themselves. So, take note, if you want me to be open and forthright around you: You go first.

But now this is getting deep. Deep stuff later.

The reason I speak so much about the conversations I had was because that was basically all I did. The only place I visited apart from people's houses and the art show (and umpteen restaurants) was an amazing bookstore, The Tattered Cover.

No, that's not true. I went to the mall and was traumatized. I'll write about that later.

The point is, I can't say much about Denver. I barely saw it. Denver is very dry. It is surprisingly flat. Everything is far apart. It takes a long time to get anywhere in Denver. The airport is so far out that, as Amy says, it's in Kansas.

My hair has not yet recovered from the complete lack of moisture in the air. My lips are badly chapped. The mountains are a ubiquitous feature of the horizon, always looming to the west, but Denver itself has only a gentle roll.

Ysabel's mother and stepfather are amazingly nifty people. They didn't talk to me like they would a stranger (and a weird stranger at that); they immediately treated me like an old friend. I'd see them again.

Lisa is amazingly nifty too. I'd see her again. Maybe next time I'll meet her significant other, whom I suspect is imaginary.

I won't say "I'd see Ys and Amy again," because that, again, is inevitable. We're already talking about when and where the next visit will be.

It won't be for a while, though. The travel budget has been seriously depleted this month.