I was born on May 29, 1981, in LaGrange, IL, at roughly 11:00 am. The name they wrote on my birth certificate was 'Brian Edward', which I will always regard as an act of betrayal. Brian was my father's name. It has never been my name. Why they wrote it on my birth certificate I will never understand. I use Iorwerth nowadays instead of Edward. It's the Welsh version for Edward. It's one name I can call my own.
My childhood was like a queasy dream. I knew nothing except strong emotions and inexplicable, unshakeable biases, which, once they were challenged, I had to admit had no identifiable basis in reality. Why I got ideas into my head I don't know. A few, I'm sure, have remained with me to this day; it wasn't until I was in high school, for example, that I slowly began to realize that women were not all-powerful and all-knowing. [For those of you who prefer the Latin, that would be omnipotent and omniscient.] I still have a few phobias left over from those queer days. I can't eat raw vegetables on that account, without getting nauseous, because when I was about four or five I made up my mind that vegetables were something I could not eat. I very rarely eat cereal - y'know, like normal breakfast cereal - because I got used to eating cereal dry when I was a kid, and the shock once I found out you were supposed to have it with milk was just overwhelming. That was a weird, weird time for me. I wish I hadn't had a childhood. Life would have made so much more sense.
I lived with both parents, who were married. I still do; they still are. Throughout my early years I was vaguely conscious of my parents' love, which was perfectly constant; but somehow they never seemed especially interested in me. There's a vital difference there. It was like they loved me, but only so long as they never really knew me. Like they were afraid that if they ever really got to know my world there'd be something there they wouldn't like. And I think, looking back, this had a vital effect on who I am and what I've become. I'm an extremely affectionate person. And I have an amazingly low self-esteem. That's the way I've been my entire life. It's probably something I'll carry with me to the grave.
So be it!
Puberty was an enormous change. I was taught, at a sex ed class in 6th grade, to expect something vast and threatening. When it came I loved it. I'm still so glad of all that changed during puberty - so many things, not just physical. You learn so much about yourself. You become capable of introspection, you become capable of looking back at yourself and understanding all the follies of your past. All the shit you clung to like it was a life raft. But puberty also opened up a whole new environment that I, for one, was totally unprepared for, and in order to hold onto my sanity in a world that had nothing to do with anything I'd ever known, I did something I've always been ashamed of. I took refuge in religion. I can see now what cowardice it was. I became an extreme Catholic - the Pope appeared as semi-divine - the very priesthood was not strict enough - the forces of sin were all around. I combined, with this, a sense of total disgust for my cultural surroundings - Americans were uncivilized barbarians, corrupted by their stay in the wilderness and their contact with ignorant Mexicans and stupid blacks. I longed for the ultraconservative milieu of a monarchic, hierarchical, upper class England that probably did not exist and very likely never had. I was the lone representative of civilization, stranded in a vile hole known by that black word, "America".
That was a scary time.
It was a kind of a transitional phase; it couldn't have lasted much more than a year or so. It began mid-way through 7th grade. It was an easy way of rationalizing my own inadequacies - while everybody else was getting girlfriends and experimenting with getting drunk, I was high and dry, with my nose in the air pronouncing them all uncivilized sinners. Everything that to others seemed to come so easily, that to me seemed impossible, I blithely identified as sin. And so it continued till sometime in the middle of 8th grade. What happened? I became sane.
Specifically I became a heretic. First I began to flirt with classical Protestantism - y'know, like the Lollards, the early Lutherans, the followers of Zwingli - and then with the Pelagian heresy, articulated by a Brythonic Celt named Pelagius and his followers in Roman Gaul and Britannia. I slowly began to tear my old philosophy down, piece by piece, and rebuild it in a new direction. I've done that three different times in my life. Once, after my conversion from Catholicism; later, as Protestantism gradually gave way to Druidry; and then finally last summer, on the occasion of the Summer Solstice of 1997. I observed a vigil till sunrise, during which I meditated, thought really deep thoughts, sketched, and read a book of wisdom from Mahatma Gandhi.
This last occasion was probably the latest 'stage' of my development, my evolution. It was then that I began to realize the importance of my upbringing in shaping who I am. It was then that I had the disturbing thought that maybe I should choose not to have children, for fear of being as bad a father as my father was.
But, then, who knows, I'm probably such a coward I'll have children anyway. So what if their lives become a worthless nightmare.
But anyway, I'm veering off my subject. What's been happening since my birth? In 1995 I entered high school. I met a few hundred new people. In 1996 I enrolled in a Speech Arts class taught by Michael Drake. I was the greatest ham in the class, so he generously pre-cast me for a play he was directing that March. It was the first experience with theatre I'd ever had, and I both adored it and hated it. I never felt like I really knew what I was supposed to be doing, what was going on; I never felt like I was bringing anything to the cast. And probably I wasn't, but it was a blast. An enormous first. I've been in three plays at my high school since then. It gives me something to do. And I know the ropes now, so it's just a pure pleasure. I know just about everybody who's into theatre, which I didn't before, and that is definitely a rare treat. I just love actors; they're the funnest people. And I just adore acting. I've gotta take my hat off to Michael Drake; he got me onto a good thing.
On May 29, 1997, also known as my sixteenth birthday, I presented my Honors Project to my English class. This was a project where everybody 'selected' an author, read three of their books, analyzed the shit out of them in a 50-page outline richly supported with quotes, and gave a 20-minute oral presentation to the class in a suit or tux or dress, with visual aids and appropriate music. I chose Kurt Vonnegut for my author; I analyzed hell out of three of his best books, and - I swear to God - I had fun doing it. What does this tell you about me?
Sometime that May or June I began preparations for a novel I'm writing. I'm still doing preparations for it. I know the title for it and the dedication and introductory quotation and all but minor details of the plot line. I even know a good proportion of the individual events I'm going to put in there - individual anecdotes and such. It'll be mostly autobiographical, partly fantasy. Partly just story telling. It'll be fun. I'm looking forward to writing it.
That's me.
Last updated August 1, 1998
From time to time I define myself in terms of the people I love. Once in a while, I can say, I love everybody I know. And it'll be true. And once in a while I'll realize there's just one person in the world I love more than anybody else, and somehow she never quite manages to love me back, and that's okay. Life goes on. And once in a while there's a handful of people who, it seems to me, matter more than the other 5.8 billion combined.
So, I thought I just had to devote one section to the people I love. If you find your name is up here, you can go away with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. If it isn't, that doesn't mean anything, because this list isn't intended to be exhaustive. Sometimes, when I'm bored, I make lists of people I love that have thirty, forty people on them, easy; (as Meredith Brooks would say - it makes me feel alive). These also aren't in any particular order. So anyway.
The people I love - My sister Elizabeth, affectionately known as Zuzu. My dear friend Jenna Bartz. The one and only Nik Mihajlovic (what can I say, you da man). My 'big brother' Van Roudebush. My cousin Matt Colgan, who I can credit for introducing me to the wide world of the internet, though he'll probably never see this page since he never checks his email [hint hint!]. Katie Marsala, Lizzy Gore, Laura Graham, Corinne Rotermund, Kate Nodulman, Ben Labolt, and several other women. Amanda Vinicky (toujours, girl!), Katie Kokontis, and the entire cast of The Mousetrap. Matt Owens, Jenny Meyer, Kate Webster, Mark Harrison. And of course, (don't think that I'd forget you!), the one and only Kelly Sortino, a minor goddess on earth.
Kurt Vonnegut has written that the brain and the soul are two very different things, practically antithetical. I know this because it was in Galápagos, which was one of the three books of his I analyzed into extinction. Up till now I've been talking a lot about my soul, what it's experienced and who it loves, but I haven't told you all that much about my brain. What has it been up to all these years?
Well, it has not been idle. My brain is incredibly restless. Sometimes I try to tell it to shut up, but it won't pipe down. It keeps demanding newer and more interesting puzzles to tinker over. Partly this is satisfied in my study of languages. At school I take French, as I have for five years already. C'est comparativement facile, la langue française. You never realize how arrogant Americans are until you try and see the world through French eyes. We, of course, retaliate by ranting about how snotty and arrogant the French are. Propaganda.
I've also had some fun studying Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Turkish (very briefly), Russian (for a long time, with no tangible results), Esperanto, Ido, and bits and pieces of other languages too. I'm also self-taught (a bit) in linguistics. I'm a dab hand at the International Phonetic Alphabet, I can describe phonologies and morphologies to you, and at one point I could even explain X-bar theory. I've forgotten it now though.
What else do I do ...? Well, I'm fascinated by international relations - different cultures and ethnicities throughout the world, and their interrelations. I'm one a few Americans who have not only heard of the Guaraní, but can also tell you where they live and what makes that country so special. Give up? It's Paraguay, and it's the only Native American nation-state in the world. It's the only country that belongs, almost entirely, to the Guaraní, and to which, very considerably, the Guaraní belong. Of course, Guaraní don't actually own any of their own country - that privilege belongs to foreigners and to a hispanophone élite in the capital city of Asunción - but still, it's a start. Geography fascinates me. They don't teach it here. Americans are lucky if they know where the frickin' Equator is, let alone Burkina Faso or Saint Lucia or Guam - much less Uighurstan or Gujarat. (Ask around. See how many people can actually tell you where Guam is. It's ours, and we don't even know where the hell the place is. Just one of many reasons I support Guamanian independence.)
Calendars are of interest to me. I ought to include a small site explaining the French Revolutionary Calendar, and how I think it can be adapted to be used in a modern day environment (where it would be much more user-friendly than the Gregorian).
What else do I do? Well, I suppose I read extensively. I guess that's mostly it. That's what you do whenever you surf the net. I mean, apart from jerking off, that's really what you're doing: just reading. Finding an interesting site, and sitting down, and reading whatever it has to say. Most people don't realize that.
Organizations I've belonged to - Plaid Cymru, Mebyon Kernow, Socialist Party USA, the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL). I have the rank of Bard in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, but since I don't put much stock in organized religion - in any form - I usually just call myself a Pagan (sometimes a Druid) and leave it at that. The Catholic Church still claims me for their own, and there's not a hell of a lot I can do about that. I was a member of ACLU briefly, but didn't renew my membership after it became apparent, These guys have no principles whatsoever. When I'm 18 - that is, as soon as it's legal - I intend to join the Industrial Workers of the World, an anarchosyndicalist labor union. I'm 17 now. I turned 17 in May of 1998. Think of that, I'm a member of three political parties, and I can't even vote.
Other interests - oh, hell, music (Tori), art (sketching - pencil and paper, gotta love it), Monty Python. Acting, speech teaming. All that kind of stuff. Same old, same old. What does anyone do?
I wish I could put an age verification service on this. I'd make sure nobody over twenty-one could see it. My parents have no business reading this page or anything on it. Or, rather, they do, but it would be wrong on my part. I give a very negative impression of them which is rather unfair.
If you've read about my interests and talents and can think of a profession you think I'd be good at, please - let me know. At the moment, I'm thinking I'll be lucky if I keep myself off of welfare. I've got brains, but Jesus, what good will they ever do me?
Or, if, for whatever reason, you'd like to get in touch, feel free. My address is as below:
LaGrange, IL
United States of America