Sunday, October 07, 2007
Friday, October 05, 2007
Quote of the Day
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Day By Day
I wrote this last night and deleted it soon after because I got overly self-conscious about it, but apparently my LJ feed picked it up anyway, so everybody getting my feed via LJ read it anway. Jackie thinks it's one of my better posts, so shit, since LJ's already seen it, I'll put it back up:
-------------------------------
'People are often lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.' --Anonymous
"You can't fight diabetes -- you have to befriend it otherwise it will take you."
One of the gifts of nearly dying, of continually living at the edge of dying, has been this incredible realization of just how fleeting and precious life really is, of how easily it slips away.
I know what dying feels like: you go to sleep. It goes dark. Everything stops.
Everything just stops.
The journey I've been on now, this life I'm living now, this is all borrowed time; it feels stolen, and ever so precious. It means I appreciate the people in my life more. I love more. I take more risks, because I realize that sometimes, we don't have the time for second chances.
I'm even more adament about following my heart, my passion, my bliss. But more than that, I am learning all about the stuff that isn't "me" and "mine."
I spent a lot of time trying to protect myself from everything, trying not to get hurt, because I was so screwed over in my first relationship, because I became a person I didn't like. I ran all around the world and proved I was strong and independent. I thought I had proved that I didn't need anyone or anything. I had a grand merry fucking time, and I still plan on hopping all around the world, but the stuff I was looking for, that hole in my heart, that was always still there. I just got better at pretending that that's how life was supposed to be, walking around with pieces of yourself missing.
I have learned bravery. I've learned to love people only as much as they will let me, and I've learned to pursue what I am passionate about. And I have learned so much compassion. I am learning so much compassion. Because when you have been so scared, so lonely, so full of fear, you understand that craziness in others, that desperate grasping for something stable and solid in a crazy fucking world.
You learn patience.
Because life is big and loud and precious, yes, but it's also really terrifying and really hard.
But trust me - it's all a lot better than death. Better than dying with a hole in your heart.
That's what I want to make of my life now, the person I want to be. I want to let people back in. There is risk, yes, but the potential reward? The full life? Living it out as a whole person?
Totally worth the journey, even if you never get there.
We have only this life. This is what we've got. And it's always shorter than you imagined, there at the end.
"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."
-Robert Heinlein
Not Surprising
Which Female Action Hero Are You? | |
 | You are The Bride. When you get an idea in your head, you simply won't let it go! You constantly search for normalcy, love, and sometimes revenge--and your vicious stubbornness inspires you to fight to the death to get what you want. |
| Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com | |
Free Berkeley Lectures on YouTube
Berkeley's put free full university course lectures online: Chemistry, Bioengineering, an "Introduction to Nonviolence" and more... and they're apparently planning to put up more (also, why do I always misspell Berkeley? There are too many "e"s in this word).
Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat
I've discovered the coolest songs over at Whiskey from a Wire, I swear. iTunes is now also my best friend.
It's not Drive, but it's still a pretty sexy song....
Artist: Lucinda Williams
Song: Righteously
Album: World Without Tears
You don't have to prove
Your manhood to me constantly
I know you're the man can't you see
I love you Righteously
Why you wanna dis me
After the way you been kissin' me
After those pretty things you say
And the love we made today
When you run your hand
All up and run it back down my leg
Get excited and bite my neck
Get me all worked up like that
Think this through
I laid it down for you everytime
Respect me I give you what's mine
You're entirely way too fine
Arms around my waist
You get a taste of how good this can be
Be the man you ought to tenderly
Stand up for me
Flirt with me don't keep hurtin' me
Don't cause me pain
Be my lover don't play no game
Just play me John Coltraine
------
Stuff to Do Today
Finish writing another fucking Rhys chapter.
Chapters from his POV are STILL the hardest.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
The Disney Princesses Talk About Chlamydia
Because really, who else is going to link to shit like this?
Onslaught
Whoever came up with this Dove campaign? Fucking brilliant.
Here's their latest: Onslaught.
My Life So Far
Meme stolen from Gigi.
20 Years Ago, I...
...was about seven years old and had a first grade teacher who didn’t believe in giving us pencils with erasers. He made us circle all of our mistakes. It made every single one of those mistakes stand out: a hideous failure. I also had a passionate desire for a pony.
15 Years Ago, I...
...wrote my first book, which was more of an epic novella about an evil queen who was thwarted by a jester and a scullery maid. I was mooning over a blond boy. I decided I wanted to be a writer.
10 Years Ago, I...
...was living in Bellingham, WA with my high school boyfriend. He asked me to marry him. Twice. I was torn up over the whole thing, too terrified to end it, but feeling that terrible feeling you get when someone asks for the rest of your life and you know that saying yes would be the worst mistake of your life.
5 Years Ago, I...
...started graduate school at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa. Learned a hard lesson about love. Lived with a lot of cockroaches. Drank a lot of red wine.
2 Years Ago, I...
...started dating again for the first time since high school. It ended badly and spectacularly, but it meant I spent some time every month for a year in New York City. It was enough time to know I never want to live there.
1 Year Ago, I...
...was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, dated and broke up with and lost my best friend, and was laid off from my first real job, plunging me into what I considered, at the time, to be a staggering amount of debt.
So far this year, I've...
...moved to Ohio, got dumped by my distance boyfriend, been to Spain and Switzerland, gotten something very close to my ideal job. Every day is a fucking adventure.
Yesterday, I...
...biked to The Greene to buy new pants and discovered that – for the first time since getting sick last year – I’ve actually dropped a clothing size, and I’m back at a comfortable weight for me. I no longer feel like something is broken.
Today, I...
...am spending time at the day job reviewing documents, working on my next novel, and continuing the process of working to overcome my insecurities. It’s going to be worth it.
Tomorrow, I'll...
...go kick some ass at my martial arts school, cause my podiatrist has cleared me for kickboxing again. Man, I’m going to be fucking scary at 30.
Can’t wait.
In Which the Protagonist Gets Her Head On Straight
OK, feeling better. Sometimes you have to get your head out of your ass, remove your own insecurities from the situation, and get your shit together.
Tra-la.
Monday, October 01, 2007
At Least My Aim's Improving...
Went shooting with a friend on Saturday:
He doesn't make fun of my aim anymore.
The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2007
Always makes me happy to see so many successful women in one place.
Reminds me that I don't see that kind of grouping often.
1943 Guide to Hiring Women
Pure entertainment.
Here's an excerpt from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine - some tips for male supervisors looking to hire women.
"Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: There's no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.
Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:
1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.
2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.
5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.
6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.
7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.
8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.
9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.
10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.
11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy."
Yummy yummy.
Positive Affirmation of the Day
Half-coherent personal life dialogue this morning:
Me: I hate emotions. They're bad.
Stephanie: They're not bad. You're just not used to them.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Router Running
Router went out on Friday. There's been enough going on that I didn't actually miss it all that much. I don't know which I found more amusing: that we couldn't live more than 2 days without one (Steph and the Old Man picked it up today), or that once I logged back in, nothing of interest appeared to have happened anywhere the entire two days.
Perhaps the world is slowing down.
Friday, September 28, 2007
I Really Should Get Back to Writing...
Really, really.
I need to find some angst to funnel. I know it's there. I've just been too good at distracting myself to deal with it.
I've got to review my writing schedule for the year, too. Black Desert isn't going to get done all by itself, and right now I open it up every day and it just sits there and stares at me. It's like that world is a thousand miles and three lifetimes away.
Maybe I should distract myself with some other writing project.
I feel sort of adrift, writing-wise, these days. Been that way since mid-August, which may not sound like a long time for some of you, but not writing, for me, is really tough. I'm usually a much saner, clear-headed person when the words come.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Honesty Divide: Is Brutal Honesty Brave or Hysterical? Check Your Gender
None of these revelations [from men] of personal weakness seem to undercut the esteem in which these male critics are held. Nor has there been expressed an air of disappointment that they failed to live up to some bloodless, bileless ideal of who they are. Because stoicism is expected of men, their personal revelations -- the more embarrassing the better -- register as brave and honest. When women do it, they are merely confirming the worst suspicions about their gender. How, then, is a woman to write honestly of her experiences that do conform to gender expectations? If she is to maintain respect in public realms, must her public evocation of her private life be a lifelong performance? A series of lies, or at least omissions, constructed to leave an impression of unyielding strength and impenetrability?
To sum up: "....it's time we grew up and realized that it is possible to exhibit both intellectual strength and personal weakness simultaneously."
Amen.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
All Quiet on the Western Front
Things here have been all quiet on the western front, mainly because I've been out and about a whole lot. I knew there had been some sort of odd turn when I realized that I hadn't read my LJ list in several days and didn't particularly miss it. I finally understood that what keeps me spending loads of time on the internet is, often, lonliness.
And I've been desperately lonely for a long time.
David and I bowed out of our year-long distance relationship a couple weeks before I went to Switzerland, and even so, we spent a grand time together there as friends. Though the ending of the relationship wasn't my first choice, I respect and understand his decision. I think you can build a mutually fulfilling relationship over distance, but both people have to want to do that, and have to want to work at it, and the passion for doing that was, alas, one-sided.
So it goes. Nobody you can blame for that.
So you get up. You rebuild.
And in this case, what that means is that I've been out a lot doing this bizarre "dating" thing that, apparently, the majority of people do in this country.
"Dating"... ha ha.
When was the last time I actually fucking "dated"? I mean, really?
You know, I'm so bad at "dating." If somebody makes it past three dates, it's either cause I'm serious or... well, OK, really, it's only cause I'm serious. Or bizarrely attracted to them even though I know we're not good for each other.
I'd like to say that it concerns me that I don't "get to know" more people, but you know, I get to know a lot of people everyday - at work, on line, at cons - I figure those are as much casual dating experiences as actual dating, only without the uncomfortable "interview-like" atmosphere of a first date, which I appreciate (there is nothing, NOTHING worse than one of those first-date "interviews"). I think my preference is always to be friends first. Then there's less pressure, and you're already familiar with some of the more standard quirks by the time you end up making out.
Anyhow, lovely as it's been to get around Dayton and actually eat out and see shows, I've come to realize that DATING IS REALLY EXPENSIVE.
Sure, splitting most expenses while traveling to see your SO is also pretty fucking expensive four times a year, but going out three times a week? Pretty fucking expensive. Expensive: all the time.
But!
But.
Hanging with somebody and laughing ridiculously all the time?
Having somebody around who holds your hand?
Engaging in Shakespearean-like insult wars?
But anyway, dating = good but expensive.
Also, dating = less writing time.
But that's OK, because the dating is distracting me from the cold hard fact that my book's on the examining table in two particular places right now, and it's something I have no interest in dwelling on. Or thinking about. Or, in fact, writing about.
So I'm going to eat some Chipotle, read some books, and go be silly somewhere.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Group Conformity
One of my fav social experiments:
Asch conformity experiments
Demonstrating the power of one person speaking up and making a fuss. Groups need the impulsive individuals to keep them honest. This is why I speak up and talk back.
If you don't, it's very possible that no one else will.
If you do speak, it's very likely somebody else will stand up, too.
Sometimes you have to have courage because others don't.
Um
Um, I mean... REALLY??? WTF?
One of the toughest things to find when you're going to an SF/F art show looking for art that features tough female heroines is finding tough female heroines who are actually wearing clothes and looking like physcially tough female heroines. You know, the sorts of heroines whose outfits don't make you burst out laughing.
Sigh.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
September Simmer
The good news about getting a writing job is that 1) it's a writing job! 2) it pays me more than 20K a year!
The bad news is, all that extra moolah needs to start getting funneled back into stuff that I couldn't afford to do back in March.
This month I'll go back to paying two regular student loan payments that I deferred back when I was unemployed, and starting October 1st, I'll be paying a "token" rent payment of $250 to my far more fiscally responsible roommates (this basically just covers my share of expenses and maybe some book money for them).
To be honest, being able to pay *all* of my bills *and* make a token rent payment again pleases me to no end. There's nothing I hate more than feeling like I'm not pulling my share. I want to be the strong, fiscally responsible one - letting other people take care of me when I'm down is one of the most frustrating, aggravating things about being sick and unemployed. Yeah, yeah, I realize people are supposed to take care of each other when they're down, and there's the karma thing, and when I'm successful, I'll take care of others, but it doesn't make accepting kindness any fucking easier.
I'm glad to be in the place I am right now, but fuck did I have to burn through a lot of scary shit to get here.
Have I mentioned how much the last year has SUCKED??
But there's a lot of light out here on the other side.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Workaday Morning
First impressions and assumptions (from here):
The family picture is on his desk
Ah, a solid, responsible man
The family picture is on her desk
Um, her family will come before her career
His desk is cluttered
He's obviously a hard worker and a busy man
Her desk is cluttered
She's obviously a disorganised scatterbrain
He is talking with his co-workers
He must be discussing the latest deal
She is talking to her co-workers
She must be gossiping
Read the rest here
The Dresden Files
Why do they cancel good shows?
No, seriously, why? What's the politics of this?
Let's take a show about a perpetually single guy wizard and his ghost-in-the-skull assistant who gets to help out these distressed-but-oh-so-not-weak, usually very kewl, romantically inclined female characters, throw in a tough female police lieutenant who he can work with and have lots of sexual tension with, and then....
Cancel it.
Let's do that, because, you know, too many good characters here, too many roles for Women Who Don't Completely Suck (no, it doesn't bother me that they're often hot on the geeky male lead - that's the genre. If it was a woman wizard [omg the kewlness!] I'd expect the same sort of men [and possibly ladies!] being romantically inclined toward her thing), too much fun and world building.
I mean, for fuck's sake, Buffy got seven seasons.
Granted, OK, I've only see the first disc of shows. But COME ON people.
This is why I don't fucking watch TV, because people keep canceling Firefly, Carnivale, and shows like The Dresden Files.
Fuckers.
The politics of these decisions are just baffling.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat
Melissa Ferrick - "Every Three Words"
I can only hear
Every three words
So make 'em count
Cause I'm out here
Barely hanging on
There's no else I'd
Wait around this long for
Take this much no for
Makes me wonder what we're in for
So would you give me some hope
Ya give me a reason
To keep on trying
Come on buy me flowers
Smile me that smile
Cause I just need a little something from you
For the rest of my life
And I'm sure that I've got some kind of
Motive here and when I figure it out
I'll fill you in
But every body knows
That I'm a sucker for a hard sell
Ya look at me dancing
All the way into your slaughter house
Look at me dancing for you
So would you give me some hope
Give me a reason
To keep on trying
Come on buy me flowers
Smile me that smile
Cause I just need a little something
All I need is one crack of light
To see where the entrance is
Come on open the door baby
And let's expose the answers
Yes as to why we have been through
All we've been
So would you give me some hope
Ya give me a reason
To keep on trying
Buy me flowers
Smile me that beautiful smile
Cause I just need a little something from you
For the rest of my life
For the rest of my life
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Quote of the Day
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
~ Samuel Beckett
The Family: Here, There and Elsewhere
Back in Washington, my nephew decides to borrow my mom's glasses and do a little light reading....
And my little brother, now in his MIB program at Portland State, teaches my nephew how to look stylish.
Here in Ohio, Ian and Steph acquire another four-footed friend for Casa de Dayton - Kimmy Lou.
Getting the girls ready to go out...
Kimmy Lou takes it easy...
The Brave One
Jodie Foster's boyfriend, Naveen Andrews (mmm Naveen Andrews... ah, sorry), gets beaten up and killed. Foster, sick of living in fear, buys a gun. And you know all those people who harass you on the street? The guys who bully and threaten?
Yeah, she goes out and starts picking them off....
And it's called The Brave One.
There are some delicious moments in here, of course, like when the guys on the subway bring out a knife and start threatening her with it, and she calmly pulls out her gun and blows their brains out. It had about the same appeal for me as that chick in The 300 gutting the guy who fucked her and then sold her out.
Problem is, you know, these are delicious movie moments, not ways to solve real problems, and certainly not any way to fill up the hole left in your heart when you lose someone you love, nor any way to assuage the fear you have after being menaced and/or attacked.
I had a lot of trouble with the obviousness of the plotting - Foster's character actively wants to get caught, and does everything in her power to get caught. There are some great things they *tried* to do, like her pseudo-romance/attraction to the guy who's investigating her case, but there were too many neat and tidy coincidences and run-ins and she was just so blatantly obvious in her murders, she wanted to get caught so badly, that even my thinly held suspension of disbelief began to flag.
I thought Foster was a great fit for this role; it reminded me a bit of her role in Silence of the Lambs - the fact that she's such a small, seemingly physically weak woman who's got this incredible sense of inner strength, of power, really works well here. You can see, physically, why she's intimidated, and you can see on her face, inside, there, where all the power is when she blows your fucking head off.
But at the end of the day, the movie avoids dealing with the really tough issues that it brings up. It doesn't deal with how you actually do overcome grief, doesn't fully explore that incredible danger we all court when we try and become strong and brutal in order to combat those things we fear (it's ever so easy to become the exact same thing you hate), and it doesn't adequately explore how you go on after losing everything, how you remake yourself, whether or not you can come back from becoming a monster; how you atone.
Mostly, it just sort of ends, and all of those cheesy coincidences and convienent plot clashes were a little too annoying.
But damn, it was satisfying to watch a woman being bullied fight back.
Indeed, if nothing else, this movie was a sort of good example of *why* violence doesn't solve or address anything, it merely opens up more holes (we should have seen more about how the loss of those people she killed tore up holes in others). It's not an adequate solution, and one that only belongs in the movies, but I don't mind getting that satisfying substitute on the screen so I can remind myself why, in fact, it doesn't work that way, and why I have to work so hard to find other solutions to fear, to intimidation.
There are better solutions.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Coffeeeeeee.......
.... but I must admit, functioning on less than four hours of sleep never felt so fucking good.
Should Diabetes Be Considered a Disability?
Interesting discussion......
On the one hand, I'm dependent on something grown in a lab in order to survive, but if insulin grew on trees and you could eat it like food (cause we're all dependent on food), would I be considered able-bodied?
I don't know, cause it takes blood sugar testing too - it takes an external device, external means that can't be grown on tress, in order for me to stay alive.
On the other hand, there are definately some days where the joke about me being one of the "special" people with a "condition" hits a little close to home, like when you have 10 units of insulin left for the last 10 hours of an international plane flight....
Believe me, you start feeling real "special"....
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Switzerland: Full of Cheese
I am back in the country (though stuck in Philadelphia), and finding it strange that I can now, once again, order a coke using fewer than three languages....
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Faith
“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.
“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”
Read the rest here.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Blogging Break
I'll be radio silent for the next couple of weeks. Have some wounds to lick, some traveling to do, some books to write, and all that jazz.
Really, you know: par for the course.
See you in a couple weeks.
Be excellent to each other.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
How I Play the Game of Thrones
Your Score: House Lannister
72% Dominant, 36% Extroverted, 72% Trustworthy
Confident. Dangerous. Unrelentingly sexy. The master of all you survey, you are of House Lannister.
You are a dominant personality—and how! When someone asks “and who are you, the proud lord said, that I should bow so low?” your response is probably, “FUCK YOU! I’m a fucking LANNISTER, that’s who the HELL I am!” And then you’d pimp-slap them with your golden hand. All joking aside, you view leadership as your natural, god-given right; it is a trait, just like your golden curling hair and irresistible sex appeal. It’s who you are—a Lannister.
You are introverted, meaning that you prefer to keep your ambitions and devices to yourself. Unfortunately, your personality is so vivacious that (despite all your intended secrecies) you are still a very obvious person. Though no one knows what avenues you will travel, your destination is clear to all. And of course, yours is a road to greatness! You have a magnetic, polarizing personality: people either love you or hate you. They also probably find you exceedingly intimidating. Their fear is probably well-placed.
Finally, you are trustworthy. Does this surprise you? Remember your unofficial motto: “A Lannister always pays his debts.” Though you enjoy keeping secrets and playing games, everyone knows you are a major player. Underhanded tactics are so expected from you that they don’t particularly count as untrustworthyness—it’s more of a family legacy than a choice. Your promise is as good as the gold that you shit.
Representative characters include: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, and Tywin Lannister
Similar Houses: Greyjoy, Stark, and Targaryen
Opposite House: Tyrell
When playing the game of thrones, you play it balls to the wall.
| Link: The Song of Ice and Fire House Test written by Geeky_Stripper on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Quote of the Month
"The grand essentials in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." -Addison
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Sunscreen & Letting Go
I was going through a certain common drive that has some songs available and listening to some old stuff. I happened across the old Baz Luhrman "Sunscreen" song that was all the rage 10 years ago. 10 years ago, yeah, man, 1997.
When I was 17.
I thought this song was hugely profound at 17.
I didn't realize it would hit so close at 27 that I would cry.
Yeah, the shit that matters is the shit that hits you at 4pm on a Tuesday. It's never the stuff you predict. Life, yeah. Stop overthinking.
I wonder what I'll think of it at 77.
The Sunscreen "song":
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’97 -
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you
Sing
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss
Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body,
use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own..
Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
(Brother and sister together we'll make it through. Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there I know you've been hurting, and I know I've been waiting to be there for you. And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can. Everybody's free.)
Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen…
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Black Desert (Excerpt)
Nyx didn’t touch the letters again until she and Eshe and Suha were back in Faleen, holed up in a little two-room rental with a terrace at the edge of the Chenjan district. The call to evening prayer rolled out over the city and was taken up by half a hundred muezzins out on their mud brick rooftops. The air vibrated with the sound of it; just another warm, close night in the desert. Warmer than the coast,
anyway.
She sat out on a rickety wicker chair on the terrace with a whiskey in one hand and the letters in the other. Her burnous was wrapped snugly around her. Winter warmth was a different sort of warmth than the summer kind that drove rich First Families out into the hills and the poorer sort up onto their rooftops. Winter meant sleeping with your clothes on.
She tugged a letter out of the bunch at random. Rhys’s neat, familiar scrawl curled across the front of the pale beige paper, but she saw no return address. She flicked the page open and found the address there at the bottom, next to his signature. Rhys Dax, he had written, his old nom de guerre.
Nyx didn’t know Tirhan very well, but she knew the city he’d listed: Shirazi. She’d been thinking she’d have to get a boat and deal with all that water, but Shirazi was an inland city. That meant she needed to find some way to get across the border through one of the mountain passes. During winter. She’d heard about snow up in the mountains, and seen some pictures, but never experienced it. Frozen water, all around. It sounded bloody awful.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, and put the letter back down with the rest on the low stool next to her. She sipped her whiskey. Nothing about this note was easy.
Suha came out onto the terrace with her. “You hear what’s on the radio?” she asked.
Nyx shook her head. A few muezzin calls still sounded at the outer edges of the city, moving out into the desert. Now, though, she could hear a low, tinny murmur that must be the radio on inside.
“They’re opening up Mushtallah tomorrow,” Suha said.
“What’s the final count?"
“Eighty-four thousand dead. Already burned.”
“Any First Families?”
“Huh. Don’t know. I’ll look into it.”
“Do that. I want to know who lost a first born and who didn’t.”
“Sure thing.” Suha leaned up against the railing, looked out over the narrow street below, the flat rooftops. The dark sky had a hazy orange-lavender glow, a perpetual haze created by dead and dying bugs of a hundred thousand kinds and the ruddy light from glow globes and other forms of bug light. There were no gas lamps this far from the interior, just the constant piss and reek of the bugs.
“Quiet,” Suha said.
“Usually is, after the muezzin.”
“Eshe’s asleep. Been throwing up since we got in.”
“I know. He’s got a sensitive stomach. Don’t want to take him in if it’s nothing.”
“Yeah, he’s all right, seems like now. I gave him some soda and he nodded off pretty quick.”
“Yeah. You know I need to look up a guy in Tirhan?”
“The magician? Yeah, I figured. Boat?”
“Overland.”
Suha gave a slow nod. She continued to gaze out over the rooftops, eyes glassy, big mouth set. She worked her jaw for awhile. “I got a sister married to a gunrunner,” Suha said.
“I remember,” Nyx said.
Suha sighed. “They do a lot of work during the spring and summer running shit up through the mountains and into Tirhan, but I don’t know what they’re running this time of year. I’ll look into it. She can probably get us overland. Don’t know how long, though.”
“I’ve heard it’s a six or eight day trip.”
“I mean, how long til she can set us up.”
“Yeah, well, that part we can butter up. Tell her there’s a shitload of money in it if she wants to play guide.”
Suha clasped her hands. They were big hands, too, like her mouth, dark and bruised as wine-stained leather. “You want to take Eshe with us?
“Where else is he going to go?”
“Dangerous crossing for a boy.”
“He can shift it.”
“Long way to go and stay in that form.”
Nyx took another long pull of her whiskey. Steady burn, steady hand. “I’m not stupid, Suha.”
“Just wanted to say it out loud.”
“You think he’d stay behind if I asked?”
“No.”
“Then don’t nag at me.”
Nyx let the whiskey burn into her belly. She lifted her head and gazed out over the street again. A group of women passed below, talking in loud, drunk voices. They wore bloody burnouses and had the confident swagger of tax clerks or university students. These were smart, rich girls who would never know death or disfigurement at the front. If they had brothers, they had never met them, or they took the Book at its word and didn’t care so much for it.
Nyx let herself wish for a body like that, a future like that. Why not? She needed another drink.
As the girls passed by the dark recess of an arched doorway mounted with metal studs, Nyx saw a shadow there at the mouth of the doorway, something more substantial than gaping blackness. The door was already cast half in shadow, lingering at the edge of the halo of light cast across the street from the big bug lamps at the front of Nyx’s hotel.
Nyx turned her head away from the door, but kept watch out of the corner of her eye. The shadow moved again; a figure pulled in the edge of a dark burnous that had a sheen of the organic about it – far too new and expensive for this part of town. A bel dame might know better than to dress that way in this quarter, but she’d risk it if it meant wearing an organic burnous that could effectively shield her.
Nyx finished the whiskey and set the empty glass on the stool.
“We have spiders,” Nyx said.
“I saw her,” Suha said. “The door? I wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“I have us set up with a back exit.”
“If they wanted us, they would have moved already.” Why hadn’t they moved, then? It was a busy street this time of night, sure, but her place didn’t have great security; no filters and one lonely house guard who spent most of her time snickering in the kitchen with the cooks.
“We’ll need to get out discreet in the morning,” Nyx said. “They may be hanging out to see where we’re going.” Or, to see how much we know, she amended. But know from who? Alharazad? What did Alharazad have to tell them? Did they want the reel back?
“You think they’ll follow us into Tirhan?”
“I’m not looking to find out. Don’t talk destination with any of the Faleen magicians. You run into them, you tell them we’re headed back to Mushtallah now that it’s opening up.” Nyx picked up her glass again, remembered it was empty, and set it back down. “That includes Yah Reza.”
Yah Reza, perhaps, most of all.
Overthinking
One of the most annoying things about being a writer is the whole constant introspection thing. Blogs are largely selfish enterprises, and I, for one, write a lot of personal posts here because setting it down into some kind of narrative makes it all make sense for me.
But at some point, I think, you start to overthink things. You start overthinking your life and either second-guessing yourself, or basing decisions on what you think is perfect logic, only to discover that people aren’t ruled exclusively by logic, let alone perfect logic (you least of all). Just because a Shakespearean tragedy is easy to predict doesn’t mean life works that way, too.
The older I get, the more I realize I don’t have a fucking clue. I keep thinking I’m learning from all of my experiences, but the more you have, the more you realize that not every experience prepares you for the next one. You can’t apply all of your learning about one person/friendship/relationship to every person/friendship/relationship you have that shares one or two or ten of the same things the last one did, and no matter how much you work to align the stars and test for all the right traits and work toward understanding, at the end of the day, even the earth’s orbit wobbles, and our galaxy is continually spinning closer to oblivion. Nothing is constant. Nothing is absolute.
Nothing is terribly rational, either, and no matter how hard I try and work life into a narrative, I’m starting to think that narratives only work in fiction.
Which probably explains why I love writing fiction.
Monday, August 27, 2007
It's All What You Choose to Do With It....
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time given."
and
"Life is what you do with the things done to you."
Sitting around bitching about it never got anybody anywhere, and certainly never sent me on any interesting adventures.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
And Now, We Sleep
Note to self: the next time I suffer from these yearly sinus infection/allergy things, I need to get the right drug hookup from Stephanie's Old Man, who, of course, has the best lineup of allergy meds on the market.
I can BREATHE AGAIN!
More Stuff That Doesn't Surprise Me
Your Score: A Pirate Raider
You scored 5 Honor, 4 Justice, 7 Adventure, and 8 Individuality!
More than just the usual swabbie, you demand not only the life at sea, free from landlubbers and their rules, but also you require adventure and excitement. You're happiest when the guns are blazing, the risk high, the outcome uncertain, but the chance for reward substansial. Your kind are welcomed as allies and feared as enemies.
Put on your wooden leg and hook. You'll do just fine!
| Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test |
Friday, August 24, 2007
P.S.
For the record, I am also currently suffering from my twice-yearly sinus infection, and too groggy, muzzy-headed and miserable to write anything of any substance at any length. So things might be short, sharp or otherwise quiet for a while.
Also, I would KILL for some fruit juice right now. Like, a gallon.
Holy Hell
Went to the pharmacy to pick up testing strips for my new meter and a couple of glucagon kits.
I was nervous when I went to pick these up because they said they only had the testing strips in cases of 200.
Generally, testing strips cost a little less than a dollar a strip. One of the reasons I was using my other meter is because I could get the strips for a "deal" price of 50 for $29.99.
So I was ready, even with insurance, for a bill of at least $40-$60.
My bill, for all 200 strips, with insurance: $10
My bill, for all 200 strips, without insurance: $180.87
Sweet holy hell.
Two glucagon kits, with insurance: $30
Two glucogon kits, without insurance: $170.39
How do drug companies sleep at night? It's like, with insurance, you're paying the reasonable cost. There's this incredible assumption that drug companies make, that everybody's going to have insurance, that the people with insurance...
Yeah, it's just incredible to me, still. After the last year of paying crackpot prices for drugs, this is all just insanely surreal.
It's like, staying alive is actually affordable. Or something.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
My Diabetes Makeover
FIRST.
FIRST, YES:
MY A1c is 5.9!!!!!!!!!!
My A1c is 5.9!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let me write that again:
5.9!
5.9!
5.9!
I AM A SUGAR NINJA.
I fucking knew it. Those of you who know me or read this blog know that I work my ass off for these numbers (anything between 4.5 and 6 is what a "normal" person would have. Diabetics need to keep it under 7).
I have also never experienced that much Patient Love from any doctor.
We sat down for over an hour going over my whole history: how I learned I was diabetic, how often I saw the doctor, the insulins we'd tried.
Looking at my A1c she said, "Have you ever considered a pump?"
"Well, I said, they're sort of expensive and they keep upgrading them. I was thinking about insulin pens or something though."
She gave me one of those incredulous looks. "You're not using insulin pens?"
"Um. No."
"Oh wow, she said, you need a whole... you need a whole new.. you need a..."
"A diabetes makeover?" I suggested.
"Yes, EXACTLY!"
All of my numbers were good. Blood pressure, cholesterol, thyroid was good, A1c was great, all of my reflexes were great, everything was.... great.
So I kept waiting for the bomb, you know, kept waiting for the weight rant.
She gave me some free Novolog and Lantus pens (no more syringes and vials! Yay!) and prescriptions for more, prescription for a glucogen kit, and I got a new free meter, one that can actually download my information into my computer so I no longer have to enter the numbers manually.
"Did your other doctor recommend any diabetes education classes?"
"Um. No."
"So how did you figure out how to get numbers like this? And do carb counting?"
"Um... the internet?"
She was mostly speechless.
And you know, honestly, I can't express just how fucking good it felt for somebody to finally acknowledge all the fucking hard work I've been doing to get these numbers and to do it largely on my own (with massive support, of course, from friends and roommates who are willing to make diabetic-friendly meals and cook in diabetic-friendly ways and put up with my wackjob food preferences and don't pressure me or give me crap for not living on pizza).
Finally, after getting all these new goodies, and all this sugar-love, she's asking if I have any more questions for the second time as we're working over more than an hour of our little chat together, and finally, I blurt out, "I'm just really surprised you haven't said anything about my weight, because that's all my last doctor would talk about when he saw me, about how to lose weight."
She cocked her head, flipped through my file. "Is your weight a problem? All your numbers are great. This is all really impressive."
"I just keep gaining weight. It won't stop, and I'm so strict with what I eat and I exercise regularly..."
"Well, slow weight gain is just for the same reason we all gain weight. Sedentary jobs, immediate availability of high calorie food. But didn't you lose weight when you were sick?"
"Yes, about 60 lbs."
"And you've gained... "
"Um. 30 lbs."
"And you gained most of that the first six months?"
"Well... yes."
"That's completely expected. I know it's frustrating, but expected. Let's see, though... according to this you were 212 in January, and today you're.... 209."
"What?" I said.
"You've actually lost three pounds since January."
No fucking shit?
Wait.... I'm not gaining weight anymore????
Oh holy hell.
So I packed everything up and got a referral for a pre-pump class that they have at the hospital that covers different kinds of pumps and how to use them and gives recommendations. She said I'm an excellent candidate because my numbers are so good, and says insurance should pay most of it, but I'll need to do some research.
Overall:
Sugar Love, man. Sugar Love.
When you're looking for a new endo, ask other doctors. Stephanie works at a clinic, and asked two different doctors who the best endo in Dayton was, and she was it.
Yes, yes she was.
By the Numbers
I see my new endocrinologist today, so I was going through and updating my numbers spreadsheet. For shits and giggles, I created a chart of my sugar numbers. I don't know how useful it is, but it does look pretty.
This chart tracks my numbers from June 2nd to yesterday.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Note to Self:
Though I may, in fact, be sitting up listening to Chris Pureka songs on repeat, posting the lyrics of said songs, in this instance, might make this look like some kind of teenage angst blog, and I'm not particularly angsting tonight.
But man, sometimes songs feel so good. It's not just lyrics, just as fiction isn't just words. It's telling the story with emotion, with passion; it's drawing that all up out of me and making me feel it all over again.
Evoking those pent up emotions - anger, pain, love, joy, heartache, betrayal, hope, rage - somehow validates them, and when they're validated, you can channel them into something powerful. Instead of it being a weakness, all that passion becomes a strength. It drives you.
That's magic, I think. And power.
I love being a writer, yo. I want to be a writer this good, this passionate. I don't want to just tell you about it - I want you to feel it.
So anyway:
Driving North
Great album.
Black Desert: Excerpt
Rune was a coastal city, a loose collection of homesteads perched along the edge of a wooded isthmus that thrust itself into the sea at the far eastern edge of Nasheen. It was the sort of place that made Nyx’s belly ache and her palms sweat, being surrounded on three sides by all that water, only one road back to the desert; or maybe all that discomfort was just the sen and the whiskey. Too much of anything these days made Nyx feel old and skittish, like some dying piece of bug tech.
She stood over a munitions table on Anneke’s salt-battered porch with a dozen pieces of decaying tech spread out in front of her. She had her cane resting against the side of the table, and if she didn’t reach out her hands too far from the wide sleeves of her coat, she didn’t have to look at her two-toned skin.
Half of Anneke’s brood of children clustered around her, their dark little fingers clutching at the edge of the table. Their faces were smeared in mud and loam. Just beyond the sweeping eaves of the tiled porch, feathers of rain blew down from the leaden sky. The world smelled of pine and mud and the peculiar stink of the oak hybrids, a rosy tannin smell that got a lot worse when you burned it; not that anyone out here was burning wood. The fine was three hundred notes and a stint in prison. The only time Nyx had ever smelled burning wood was at the front.
The other half of Anneke’s thirteen were out in the yard squealing in the mud. They had a covered well out there, and a big covered bug bin for refuse. They’d gotten a permit to cut down some trees, and there were still three or four big bulbous stumps the color of honey rearing up from the black soil. The latrine was out back, swarming with dung beetles, and whenever the rain let up, the place was crawling with mosquitoes big as Nyx’s thumbnail. But it had been raining since Nyx arrived, and the wet got into everything. The wood and synthetics of the weather-blown house were warped and perpetually damp. Nyx could feel the wet through her shoes.
She’d left Eshe and Suha at a local dive in town. They’d gotten some coastal gear, including Nyx’s coat and proper shoes, at a secondhand store. She hadn’t planned on buying anything, but she forgot how cold the coast was. During the winter season in the desert, the days were shorter, and the winds were high. She forgot that winter on the coast meant something far more uncomfortable.
Anneke sat up on the porch railing smoking a pipe that smelled of marijuana more than sen, and in her lithe, calloused hands she held the barrel of a z1090 scattergun with a bulb of acid on the backend that turned the thing into a flamethrower for about forty seconds before burning itself out. They were good for burning out the nests of fire ants that took up residence at the edges of cleared land. Nyx and her mother had taken those out once a month back at the farm in Mushirah and stalked the property line, looking for the tell-tale heap of neatly cut grass and leaves.
Nyx was in the middle of taking apart a black beetle cutter mine. She’d already shown the kids how to diffuse it, but Anneke was looking to teach the little bastards all about how to defend themselves in a pinch. Her boys would be headed to the front, and the girls who didn’t become hired guns would probably end up there, too.
“This is a real easy one once you get it to this point,” Nyx explained to the children. Their eyes were big and black, like Anneke’s, but they were all pretty tall; six years old and most of them already reached Anneke’s shoulder. Not that that was saying much. Anneke had always been a little shit.
“What you’re probably never going to get intact is a good fuse, so you’ll need to use the trigger from the one you took apart or from something else you scrounged, yeah?”
A couple of the kids nodded. Nyx had once asked Anneke how she kept her children away from all the guns she had in the house. The place was crawling with munitions.
“I don’t,” Anneke had explained. “Most of `em are a better shot than me. Now let’s unload some mines. I don’t got anybody around who can teach them munitions. Glad you stopped by.”
It was as if Anneke had retired to the coast to build her own private army for the end of the war. If the end ever came.
Nyx looked out over the porch rail at the other six children playing in the mud. The mine was heavy as an avocado in her hand; but not nearly so tasty.
The kids, being kids, had formed ever-changing alliances. The ones out playing among the stumps wanted nothing to do with the ones dissecting mines on the porch. Not today, anyway. Tomorrow the alliances might change, and there would be two different groups, or three, and tonight they might all act like one big happy organism for a short time during dinner. But Nyx didn’t count on the latter. She’d had too much experience with her own siblings.
Anneke’s kids were more openly physical than Nyx and her lot had been, but maybe that was because Nyx’s mother had hated violence. She’d wanted them all to grow up to be farmers and tax clerks, however unrealistic an idea that might have been. When Nyx and her brothers started street fighting, they’d done it at a small mining town just south of Mushirah, in secret.
Eventually, they would all learn to fight in the state schools, and the boys would all die, because they were Nasheenian, and that’s what Nasheenian boys did. The girls fought too, of course, but they didn’t die as often. Not that way.
Instead, Nyx thought, looking over at Anneke, we grow old and bitter and fat and sit out on our porches by the sea, breeding more boys to feed to the desert. She remembered finding the eyeless body of her sister, one arm flung over the side of the tub, mouth gaping, bloody beetles lapping up the blood on the floor, a sheen of spidermites skating across the pinkish water. There were all sorts of other ways to die in Nasheen.
“So once you get the trigger,” Nyx continued, turning back to her attentive audience, “you’ll need to pair it back up with the cistern, here. Sometimes it’s not a great fit, but if you’re wearing repellent” - she showed them her greasy hand – “you can generally give it a good twist without a fatal reaction and bang it on there.”
She deftly pulled off the broken trigger and slipped on the new one. A couple taps with a smooth stone, and the thing was patched up enough to be workable. She held up the little mine, no bigger than her palm, with the round green trigger at the top. “You make sure that trigger’s flush with the ground. The organic mesh here at the top, that blends in to whatever you set it up flush with.”
“But how do you diffuse it if it’s already set?” one of the girls asked.
“You call in a pro,” Nyx said.
Anneke snorted. Nyx shot her a look, but Anneke ignored her and started pulling her gun apart and laying it all out on the other side of the big amber table.
The house behind them was empty; Anneke had left the compounds when her kids were three or four and bundled them all up to the south where there was still some homesteading to be done for people who didn’t mind the occasional Heidian raid or raft full of Mhorian refugees.
From the porch, Nyx couldn’t see the ocean, but she could hear it, and smell it, and that was almost as bad. The whole idea of that soupy-salt sea put her off dinner, but she needed to find Rhys, and this was a good place to start.
The kids on the porch asked her some questions about placement, about timing, about weight restrictions. It was like being back at school, only on the other side of the table. Nyx had hated school, but she didn’t mind it so much from this side.
When the kids started reaching out to play with the scattered tech on the table, Anneke lifted her head and barked at them. “All right, that’s enough! Ya’ll go get wet!”
The kids giggled and pounded down off the porch and into the rain. Nyx watched them go, the little mine still resting in her palm.
Anneke had four boys and nine girls; not a bad spread, really. Most of them ran in packs, but they had their black beetle, too, a solitary girl who’d been out there since Nyx arrived, building a little mud village at the edge of the woods.
The boys and two of the girls from the porch started playing a capture the hill sort of game on top of one of the tree stumps, shoving each other off and declaring themselves the victor. The other group continued to play at their stick fighting, and now that there was another group out there, they started stalking them, running to thump them before they went back to thumping each other.
Nyx started to clean up the gear and pack it away. She wondered how long it would take for one of the groups to decide it was time to stomp through the black beetle’s mud town out there on the edge. They would destroy everything, eventually, and beat themselves bruised by the end of the night. Nyx had done the same when she was a kid.
“I’m surprised you don’t have some old man here,” Nyx said to Anneke. She’d always imagined Anneke settling in with some man and deserting to Mhoria or Ras Tieg. Raising kids at the coast just didn’t seem to fit.
Anneke snorted. “Coastal men are sour as old piss. Just a bunch of ugly, bitter, bloody old soldiers. The good ones all had sweethearts long before. All those women wait.”
“You should take up with a woman, then. It’s lonely out here.” Nyx tugged at the collar of her coat. It was too cold here to rely on a burnous. The nights would be even colder. She listened to the low roar of the sea as she removed the trigger from the cutter mine.
“I got thirteen kids, Nyx. I ain’t lonely.”
“You know what I mean. Maybe you’re not too keen on the sex, but that’s a cold bed.”
“You’re one to talk of cold beds.”
“The desert’s warm enough.”
“Uh-huh,” Anneke said, and spit on the porch. She took the pipe out of her mouth and grinned. “You got lots of women in Mushtallah?”
Nyx shrugged and took up a seat on one of the porch chairs. She watched two of the girls with sticks stalk toward the girl playing in the mud, the solitary one. Here was the destruction Nyx had been waiting for. Nothing anybody created really lasted.
We’re all a bunch of bloody, brutal cowards, she thought, and grimaced.
“Come on, Nyx, I know you ain’t retired. Why the hell you come out here? You fucking hate the coast.”
“Yeah, well, wanted to make sure your kids were getting a good education.”
“That so?” Anneke grinned. “Don’t catshit me. You seen my kids.”
“Any of these kids shifters or magicians?” Yeah, she’d seen Anneke’s kids back in the compounds, back when they were just a brood of anonymous squalling babies. She hadn’t had any idea what to do with them back then. Now that they could shoot a gun, they were a lot more interesting.
“I sure fucking hope not.”
“Yeah, well, me too.” Nyx leaned back in the chair until the back of it touched the wall behind her, left her feet dangling. The girls were circling the town builder now. She had her back to them, hunched over the mud town, protective.
“I got a note,” Nyx said. “Another pretty fucked up one.”
“And you took it,” Anneke said, resigned.
“Yeah.”
“You get blown apart before or after?”
“During, actually.”
“Great portent, you know. Rhys would say it was.”
Nyx lost her words, then, and just nodded instead. Yes, he would have said that.
Anneke did not look up from her work. “You come out here for help? I can refer you to a good munitions girl.”
“I’m not looking for a great girl. I’ve got one of those back in town.”
“Who?”
“Suhaila Asad.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“No joke. She’s worked with some good bel dames. Comes highly recommended.”
“Didn’t she help shut you up in a trunk once?”
“Didn’t you shoot me once?”
“Eh, totally different thing.” Anneke’s hands worked all the while on the gun, strong and sure. One piece, another, laying it all out. Like a poem or a song. “So you ain’t retired.”
“No.”
The two girls thumped their sticks next to the girls’ town. Splattered mud. The little builder started, then slowly reached out, picked up a glob of mud.
Fucking clobber them, Nyx thought. She palmed some sen and tucked it under her tongue.
“You get any letters?” Anneke asked. “From Tirhan, I mean.”
Nyx felt her gut go icy. It wasn’t because of the sea, this time. “No,” she said. Her voice sounded colder than the air. Much colder. Where had that voice come from? What did she care? She wasn’t any lonelier than Anneke. She had a whole team. She knew how to rebuild. Shit got fucked up. You just kept on rebuilding until they killed you.
The girl holding the mud said something to one of the girls with the stick.
“I been getting letters,” Anneke said.
Nyx tightened her hands into fists, relaxed. “How long?”
“Couple years.”
“You never said anything.”
“Naw. You never asked.”
“Because I don’t care,” Nyx said. “Whatever life they’re out there building, I want no part of it.”
“No?
“No.”
“Then why are you out here?”
Nyx firmed her jaw, watched the girl with the stick stared out over the mud town. Her stick-sister curled a lip.
They’ll mash it up any time now, Nyx thought. She saw it all as if it had already happened. The ruined town. The tears. The triumphant hoots of the destroyers. She had seen the same thing played out a hundred times at the front, a hundred more since then.
The little builder said something else.
The stick girl lowered her stick. She set it down next to her. She knelt in the mud, started digging some kind of moat around the town.
Their sister, the one still standing over them with the stick, glowered.
Nyx would have given a buck to know what that little builder had said.
“I need his address,” Nyx said. “I know they don’t want me out there, but he’s got some information from the last job that I need. I figured you might have an address for him.”
And then the girl with the stick brought down her stick over her sister’s head. Not the head of the builder, no, but the girl who’d defected.
All three girls started screaming, and the screaming made Anneke turn up her head.
“Hey now, fucking enough!” Anneke yelled. She jumped off the railing and into the mud and stalked over to the girls.
Blood was running down the defector’s face. The girls were tall, sure, but Anneke was still bigger, and she was mom. She smacked all three girls upside the head and sent them inside to clean up.
The girl stalked inside, the defector taking up the rear, the little builder in the middle.
Nyx watched all three of them go past. The only one with her head up was the one still carrying the stick. None of them looked at Nyx.
“You clean yourselves up and go get dinner ready. It’s not done when I get in, I put all three of you to digging out the latrine! You understand?” Anneke yelled after them.
Anneke swung back up onto the porch. She settled in and spit on her cleaning rag.
“Don’t ever fucking have kids,” Anneke said.
“I’m not planning on it,” Nyx said. She took a deep breath. “You give me the address?”
“You know I will, boss. I just don’t think he’ll be too happy to see you come around cause you need something from him.”
“It’s better than me poking around for no reason. I’ll get my shit and go.”
“You’re not looking for a magician?”
“I’ve got some magicians I can sign. I don’t need him.”
Anneke nodded. She slid off the porch rail. “I’ll be a minute,” she said. “You want some sugar soda?”
“No, thanks."
Anneke went inside, and Nyx watched the rest of the children play out in the drizzly yard. She was tired.
Anneke returned with a small, greasy bundle of folded organic paper in hand. She shoved it toward Nyx.
Nyx raised a brow. “I said I needed an address, not a dissertation.”
“Yeah, well, you might what to know what’s going on before you get there.”
Nyx took the letters. She wasn’t going to read any letters. Anneke should have known that. It would take her days to get through these, and she didn’t have days worth of time.
“Yeah, whatever,” Nyx said, and tucked the paper into her coat pocket. “These coded for you?”
“Sure, but they weren’t tailored to destruct. All the words are still intact.”
“Thanks.” Nyx righted herself in the chair and stood. “I should head out before it starts getting dark.”
“Where you spending the night? That bakkie leaks, I’ll wager.”
Nyx thought about a night in Anneke’s busy house. The stink of the ocean, and all those little feet, those thirteen anxious, spirited voices. You’d never get lonely.
“Naw, I’ll take off.” She reached forward and took her hat; another coastal affectation. She pulled the brim low. “I’ve got a place downtown with my team.”
“God, not that trashy hotel.”
“You and me stayed in worse.”
“Ain’t that the fucking truth.”
The sky opened up then, let out a tremendous gush of water that sent the remaining children shrieking.
“Come on in!” Anneke yelled at them, and the little groups disbanded and ran through the growing puddles. They pounded up onto the porch with mud splattered faces, the hems of their trousers dirty, faces bruised and scratched from rough and tumble fights for dominance.
Nyx watched them all clomp inside. The formerly quiet house lit up with the sound of them and the yard quieted. The kids were unshuttering the globes inside, spilling light. A warm orange glow slanted out onto the porch. Nyx stood on the edge of it.
Anneke crossed her little greasy arms. “You sure you want to drive in this?”
“Good practice.”
“For what, the Flood?”
Nyx grinned and touched the brim of her hat. “You take care out here.”
“Watch yourself, old woman.”
“You too, boss,” Nyx said. She stepped out into the swampy yard and made her way over the graveled walk, past the girl’s little mud village. She looked over and saw that the muddy rivulets of rain had cut through it, the river through Babylon, carving away the shoddy little mud globs and stick roofs of the world. The detritus of the mud town washed out over the graveled walk. Building the moat and the roads had just made it easier for the water to get in.
Nyx opened the bakkie door, drenched, and slid in. She shut the door, pulled off her wet coat and dripping hat.
For a moment, she gazed back at the porch, at Anneke standing in the orange glow of the doorway of her house, and she felt something like loss or regret or maybe the smoke from Anneke’s pipe had just made her nauseous.
A houseful of noisy children by the sea, a wet coastal city on the edge of winter. It was everything she’d never wanted.
So what do you want, then, Nyxnissa?
And the answer came, unexpected, stupid:
I don’t want to die alone.
Because out here on the edge of everything, in the cold, with her sick stomach and her pounding head, she felt it creeping up on her. Death, like birth. Inevitable. Close. The stuff that kept it all going. Slipping away. Sand.
It wasn’t the kids she longed for, or some brain-addled terrorized soldier or a woman who worshipped her like a minor god. It was less than that, and more: she didn’t want to die alone in some ditch somewhere, bloody and helpless, and get eaten by cats or slowly devoured by fire ants.
She wanted to die with a head full of white hair. She wanted that warm orange glow. She wanted to die warm. For the first time in her life, she wanted someone to hold her hand.
It was the worst sort of dream for somebody to have, in her line of work. It was the dream you could never make come true. It was or it wasn’t. All you had to decide was what to do with the time you had.
Anneke moved away from the light of the doorway and went back to cleaning her weapons.
Nyx started the bakkie and backed up down the drive.
She had a long way to go, and the rain wasn’t letting up.
In Which My Exhaustion Finally Catches Up With Me...
Boy, what a shitty time it's been.
But I will catch up on my sleep, at least. Sleeeeep.
Also, I have a mighty hankering for Chipotle. Me and the guys at work keep talking about the damn place nonstop and then don't go.
No, really, I have nothing else of interest to talk about. Me and one of my work buddies worked on SOPs all fucking day. Would you like me to ghost a machine for you? Cause I probably could, now. My head is full of technicalese.
Also, the scripting in .bat files reminds me of Neverwinter Nights.
Which reminds me: I have a frickin' job in Edmonton I need to reapply to. You gotta look on the brightside, yo. Work, work, work.
And....
Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep (I better not dream about writing SOPs).
More on the Fabulous Writing Life!
Got my check last week for my Year's Best sale and cashed it yesterday. Yippeee!
Friends and relations, however, were rather horrified to learn that the going rate for a Year's Best anthology sale is... about $100.
I could say that nobody writes for the money, but actually, I now write for a living. So, let's say: nobody writes *fiction* for the money.
Except maybe Dan Brown and Stephen King. Maybe Danielle Steele. And I think JK Rowling has so much money now that money is just a moot point.
For Travis... (to clear up a terminology dispute)
Your Score: Modern, Cool Nerd
60 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 39% Dork
For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.
Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!
Congratulations!
Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST
| Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test |
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See, I may be a nerd, but I scored NEARLY AS HIGH on geekery!
