A while back, in an attempt to get myself to just fold the danged load of laundry that I had been transferring back and forth between my bed and the floor for the better part of a week, I grabbed my headphones and, instead of going to bed and getting a reasonable amount of sleep, turned on my music and bumped the volume and just… folded my clothes. Simple, right? Right.
Except, I wasn’t expecting how much more relaxed I’d be after I did it. Sure, some of it was the fact that my space was suddenly more ordered. And some of it was the feeling that I’d accomplished something. But even before I was done, when the room still looked a bit messy and chaotic, I could feel myself relaxing. I’ve got ideas as to why, of course. Some are probably right. Some are probably wrong. In the end, I don’t really need to know. What I do know is that I’m actually looking forward to folding my laundry now. It’s… kinda weird. But I’ll take it.
There’s a silly part of me that wants to try to connect this to writing characters, how the best ones have silly quirks and might find peace in the strangest places. And while that’s true and something I would certainly like to channel more intentionally as I continue writing, I’d feel a little disingenuous shoe-horning it in like that.
So, instead, I’ll just leave it at this: the weird little character that is me has found that she finds an unexpected level of peace and catharsis when she folds her clothes after every one else has gone to bed, music playing through her headphones more loudly than she might usually let it.
It’s humbling to face a storm. To encounter something that big, that untamed. That untameable. It’s easy to forget sometimes, how small we really are. With heat and cold most of us are fortunate enough to be able to escape inside where it’s shaded, air-conditioned, or heated. With a little wind, a little rain, or any of the other, quieter weathers, it’s possible to ignore them entirely once we’ve got a roof over our heads.
But a storm? A real storm?
One that sends lightning across the sky in ceaseless flashes? One that dumps inches of hail on the ground in a matter of minutes, ignoring the fact that the “official” start of summer is mere days away? One that comes with cracks of thunder so loud it shakes the very walls we hide behind?
That’s when you remember. You are small. We are small. And that’s alright.
At the risk of making my age (or the lack thereof) blatantly obvious, I’ve been struck lately by the frustrating realization that I don’t have time to learn everything, to explore and study and experience everything that I want to. Not in the sense that I don’t have time right now because life is too busy (well, that too), but more in the sense that I recognize that I have a limited time on this planet and more things to fill it with than minutes in the day.
There are going to be– have already been– things that I can do and would like to do that I will choose not to, because something else takes priority. That’s nothing particularly profound. That’s just… life.
And I think there’s a way to view that as a gift. Or at least to recognize the benefit of having to make those choices. It can provide a certain focus. The fact that our time is limited is what gives it such great value. So spend it well.
Here were are, skating in towards the halfway mark for the year. Wild.
Like I mentioned in my last post, my writing took a hit last month due to a number of unavoidable circumstances (and, admittedly, some avoidable ones too… but Tears of the Kingdom is amazing and I regret nothing) but I’m looking forward to making sure I carve out the time in my schedule to get back at it. I’ve got some fun ideas I want to play with for Tanner and Miranda, for one thing, and I’ve realized that the story I’ve been working on with Correspond is even bigger than I thought it was, so the plan is to put in the work to structure and outline it properly and use NaNo later this year to write the thing.
I did still manage to keep up with reading, which included the two newest Black Ocean stories out from J.S. Morin (space magic and time travel shenanigans!), the newest Country Club Murder by Julie Mulhern, as well as The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and The Giver by Lois Lowry. Currently, I’m still working my way through The Priory of the Orange Tree, which I’m appreciating for the complicated worldbuilding and the author’s penchant for following along with all kinds of high fantasy tropes just to turn them on their heads when it suits her.
Hope all is well with everyone reading this, and, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, enjoy the starts to your summers!
If I’d had a little more foresight, I might have posted up something like this at the beginning of the month instead of spending the entirety of May fooling myself into believing I could keep up with my schedule…
ANYWAY.
Like the title says, I’m considering May as a retroactive hiatus month. So, no story this month, and it covers that blog post I missed a few weeks back, too. But! June should be a calmer month (she says, full of optimism and deadly naivete), or at least one with less house guests and a more predictable routine– so I’ll see you then!
For all my griping about how ebooks just don’t match up to paper ones in my books (ha, ha), there’s one aspect I don’t think I’ve fully realized until more recently. And that’s their size. Or rather, the fact that outside of a number on the bottom of the screen telling you how many pages a particular book has and/or how long it thinks it’s going to take you to read said book, there is absolutely nothing differentiating a tiny little novella from some behemoth that has designs on all your free time for the next two weeks.
Now, I grant you, this has its perks. For one thing, if you’re the sort of person who might balk at some eight hundred plus page epic, if you don’t happen to notice just how long it is until you’ve been well and truly hooked, you might end up reading something wonderful that you otherwise would have assumed you didn’t have time for. That being said, if you’re the sort of person who is usually reading several books all at the same time, and you happen to pick up an ebook copy of some brick of a high fantasy novel that you assumed was something like four or five hundred pages long and is, instead, twice that length, you might have to adjust your schedule or accept that your library loan is going to run out before you finish.
At least with a paper book you’ll know what you’re getting into.
Now, don’t mind me, I have to go read another couple chapters of The Priory of the Orange Tree.
In the book I’m currently reading (The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri), I just finished a chapter containing one of the most effective depictions of grief I’ve ever read. It is beautifully written, of course, but no more so than the rest of the book has been. Its strength does not come from flowery language or overwhelming descriptions. There is no devastating itemization of the pain the characters are going through, no over-the-top metaphors attempting to capture all this human feeling and pin it to the page.
If there was, it wouldn’t have worked half so well.
Rather, she just takes several pages to describe the space the character that died once occupied and a few minor details of their existence, as well as an almost emotionless description of the actions taken by those they left behind. And the result is devastating.
It reminds me a little of That One Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you’ve seen it, I suspect you know exactly which one I’m talking about; it’s not easy to forget. If you haven’t, I won’t spoil it here, other than to say that what the episode shows Buffy going through in the wake of a sudden and unexpected loss is similarly powerful in the way it is utterly mundane and so terribly painful in the way it seems to just stretch on and on.
Both, I think, are phenomenal examples of the writer’s constant quest to show and not tell. As mentioned above, they don’t expend much, if any energy, in depicting every feeling, every emotion. Rather, they slow the action down to a snail’s pace and invite the audience to walk beside the characters as they have to continue on, handling all the things that must be handled when such things happen. There is, if anything, a distinct lack of emotion as the characters that might be expected to feel those emotions don’t have the time, the space, the ability to do so while so many things have to take precedence.
Maybe it’s that very lack of catharsis that allows both to weigh so heavily. There is nowhere for the grief to go so it just builds, piece by piece, growing until it cannot be ignored.
Here in Colorado we’ve been having some truly gorgeous days, all sunny and in the 60s and 70s and it’s been wonderful (she says, thereby summoning a snowstorm in retribution). It’s been lighter in the mornings, too, which combined with the fact that I usually don’t have to scrape ice off my car before heading to work has been a very welcome change.
Kinda like last month, my writing continues to progress slowly but consistently as I figure out how to juggle it with other priorities and responsibilities. Like the need for sleep. And social interaction. My work schedule currently leaves me with a lovely opening of a few hours on Tuesday afternoons, which has been perfect for relocating to a local coffee shop to get some work done. Sadly, that will all be changing in a week or so, and I’m not yet sure what the new schedule will look like. Bidding for shifts every few months is rough, guys.
Reading this month went fairly well, though! I’m definitely enjoying the fact that I set myself a slower pace this year, if only because I don’t feel like I have to devour the words on the page or risk falling behind. Don’t get me wrong– I enjoy the chaotic drive of doing it that way, or else I wouldn’t do it. But having this year as something of a break is really nice and makes me feel like I can take the time to read things a little slower, or try out some slower reads.
One of those slower reads this past month was Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel. I only made it through about a third of it before my loan was up at the library and I had to go back on the waiting list (alas), but my impression so far is that it is beautifully written with some very interesting prose. For those unfamiliar, the book is the first of a trilogy of historical fiction novels set during the reign of Henry VIII and following the character of Thomas Cromwell. Mantel uses a really interesting mix of direct and indirect dialog in her writing that took a while for me to get used to, but once I did, I found it engaging and immersive. I’m very much looking forward to getting back to it.
I also started A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra, a novel set during the Chechen conflict of the late ’90s and early 2000s, moving between various viewpoints and telling a very human story. Lots of lovely prose here as well and very real characters, and I’m looking forward to finishing this one too once the library gets another copy available.
As for books I actually finished, the one that was the most fun was the second of Brandon Sanderson’s secret projects. Since it’s still so new and I know there’s a lot of people (like myself) who have been enjoying the experience of going in blind when the new stories drop, I’ll just say this: it’s like no other Sanderson I’ve ever read, not to mention being a mix of genres and ideas that you wouldn’t think should work– and yet it does. It really, really does.
I also finished up Babel by R.F. Kuang, which is a fascinating combination of historical fiction/alternate universe fantasy (translation is magic!) that provides a biting commentary on colonialism (with a particular focus on 19th century British Empire) by tweaking the world just enough that you can look at the actual historical events with a slightly fresher eye. My one complaint is that it was almost too didactic at times, but given how many times I’ve caught myself thinking about it since finishing, it’s well worth the read.
Finally, I blitzed through The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle, in which he revisits the world of one of my favorite books, The Last Unicorn. Technically a pair of novellas, both following the character of Sooz, I really enjoyed dropping back into the gentle-yet-melancholy fairy-tale world that made me fall in love with Unicorn in the first place. The first (and shorter) of the pair is Two Hearts, which is my favorite of the two. With lots of characters fans will recognize, it felt the the most like the first book. The second, Sooz, I also liked, but the plot felt a little less carefully crafted, and some of the emotional and physical trauma our heroine suffers seemed somewhat gratuitous and over the top, though the writing was as beautiful as ever. Mostly, I just want to go re-read The Last Unicorn again.
Anyway! That was my April, more or less. Goals for May include more reading and setting myself back on a regular and more demanding writing schedule in the hopes of getting more finished– hopefully without burning myself out in the process. Onwards!
It was only supposed to be a day. Two days at the most, then back to the safe, sweet oblivion of coldsleep while the years and the light years slipped away. Two days, and she wouldn’t be the only conscious soul in all this great and awful void, with nothing but the creak and hum of the ship for company. That was what the new nanite interface was supposed to guarantee. Yet here she was, four days in.
Still awake.
Still alone.
Still no closer to a solution, any solution, than the moment she first woke up.
She felt so stupid. Since when had new tech ever worked as well in the field as it did in the lab? There was always another variable, always something no one predicted, always some way for everything to come apart at the seams. She’d just assumed it would still function well enough. Usually, she could find some way to get it that far. Usually, she had help. Usually.
She still didn’t know exactly what had happened. Her first assumption, that the trouble was just a nasty fluke of untested hardware and confined to the nanite systems, hadn’t survived even her first, cursory survey of the ship’s systems. The damage was too widespread.
And it was damage. That was the terrifying part. A software glitch would have been bad enough, with all its attendant troubles and impossibilities. But software could be reset. Worked around. Coaxed and tricked and prodded.
Fried and melted circuits, not so much. If she could get the sensors and the logs back online it might have recorded what had happened. A violent flare from some alien star, perhaps. A band of dark energy. Or just a fault built into the system itself. At the moment, it didn’t matter.
They had backups, of course, and redundancies. You wouldn’t try something like this without them. Not if you hoped to survive the attempt. The trick was just that all the important bits assumed there would be more than one set of hands available to make the replacement.
And.
Technically.
There were. Or there could be.
She could invoke Emergency Protocol C and bypass the safeties and the new nanotech interface the Twins had gotten, same as her. She could send a Full Wake Signal through their systems. It would just take a few keystrokes. A few command codes entered directly into the coldpods themselves. It should still work. She had checked.
But a Full Wake meant it would be years before they could go back into coldsleep. It wouldn’t be so isolating with more than one of them awake. Not as bad as this. But they only had so much food, so much water. So much air the ship could purify for the fragile humans inside. So, no. She wouldn’t use a Full Wake. Not unless she had to.
(The thought, the fear crossed her mind that the computer had been forced to resort to using the Full Wake to pull her out of coldsleep. But, she reminded herself, that would have showed on the medscan. It had to.)
Not that it was going to be functionally all that different if she couldn’t get her own damn interface to work the way it was supposed to. And if it was a choice between going slowly mad on her own and dragging one or two more souls into this hellish limbo just to make sure the mission didn’t fail right here, right now…
It hadn’t come to that yet.
She still had things to try.
If she could just get their nanite systems to start working the way they were supposed to, both hers and the Twins’, it would be alright. It would all be alright.
That was her first thought. Her first plan. But when the first day and half of the second passed without any kind of progress, she had to abandon it and find another. A tactical retreat. Not defeat. That’s what the Twins would have said.
Sometimes it’s a smell that makes it truly feel like the seasons have finally changed. The sights help too– new leaves on the trees, turning them green with a surprising swiftness; splashes of red and yellow, blue and purple as the first flowers bloom; the scattering of raindrops that cling to all the surfaces that were so recently covered by frost and snow. Yet for all that, it’s not until the first morning I walk outside and smell the sweet tang of damp earth that it really feels like winter is over.
Never mind the fact that there’s a non-zero chance another drop in the weather accompanied by another storm might blanket the world in snow once more before the week is out.
F.A. Hakimian 