Oh, if only I had magical coffee, the coffee that bestows instant and perfect wakefulness, and eternal youth. That coffee. No, I just have this milky brown water.

Er...yeah.

Yesterday morning, Spooky took the following two photos (behind the cut) of me while I was trying to wake up. They should give you some idea of the disassembly of the hole where I hide...I mean, the office. Fold it all up. Stick it a box. Send it a thousand miles northeast. And hope this is the last big move, ever.

( Waking in an Empty Office )

Yesterday, I wrote 1,138 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. Good pages. I think I'm finally beginning to find my way into Sarah Crowe. And after the writing, there was, of course, packing. Sorting through a mountain of papers and such atop my file cabinet (visible in the first photo, packed or discarded now) and on a shelf. But the good news is that Byron showed up about 6:15 pm, and we went to the Vortex for dinner. Moose was our waiter, which is always good. Afterwards, back home, we watched the final episode of the 9th Doctor's run, "A Parting of the Ways," because I found myself needing Christopher Eccleston. And then there was Martha Jones in the new episode of the current series, and then a particularly good episode of Battlestar Galactica. Good enough that even the commercials didn't ruin it for me. Afterwards, I spent a little quiet time in New Babbage (Second Life), mostly just sitting in the Great Hall of the Palaeozoic Museum, listening to a recorded thunderstorm (on Radio 3, Bratislava), unwinding, contemplating future exhibits. Later, Miss Paine (Spooky) showed up, and we walked down to her pie shop in the Canal District, on Bow Street. There's a room upstairs I rather love.

And after that little bit of Second Life, Spooky read to me from House of Leaves. That most frustrating chapter, at least for me. XVI. The examination of the wall samples, following the "Evacuation" of the house on Ash Tree Lane. But most of the data recovered by Mel O'Geery's Princeton lab, the knowledge of the age and geological composition of those walls, has been lost, replaced with XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, because Johnny placed a leaky fucking jar of ink on that stack of pages. And pages went missing at the publisher. And, on the one hand, every time I read the book, this section drives me mad, and on the other, this is Danielewski doing it exactly right. He taunts with hints of answers, then pulls back, lest the mystery be dissolved in mere fact. When Spooky got sleepy, I read some of Chapter 7 ("Osborn, Nature, and Evolution") of the Henry Fairfield Osborn biography. At 2 ayem, I turned off the lights and drifted down to the dreams.

Spooky's taking Hubero to the vet at 2 pm, to have him checked out before the move, and to get him a bottle of kitty Valium.

Oh, and I should post this again, because the sale price of $12.99 is good until Monday:



And, also, 350.org.

So, Spooky called my doctor yesterday, about the tick. And my doctor immediately prescribed a ten-day regimen of doxycycline (one of of the tetracycline antibiotics), as a preventative measure, just in case the Lone Star tick in question was carrying one of the four rather nasty diseases for which they can act as vectors. But, on the other hand, my doctor is a little overzealous with antibiotics, and I've not been on any antibiotic, by choice, since August 2002 (when I needed them for an infected spider bite on my leg). But. I will take the doxycycline, though my instincts tell me not to, because I don't want to risk Alabama getting in the last laugh by rendering me sick all summer with some vermin-borne illness. By the way, the tick in question now floats in a specimen jar of alcohol on my desk. She's a rather fascinating little thing.

Yesterday, we read over what I've written on Chapter One of The Red Tree, again. Recall, we just did this on Sunday. But I wanted to be sure I have the narrator (Sarah Crowe) solidly in my head. With luck, I can finish Chapter One and maybe even toss in a vignette for Sirenia Digest sometime between now and next Wednesday. That will be my last normal "work day," the 21st, before the move (14 days remaining). We also did a lot of packing yesterday. I lost track of how many boxes of books. The new battery for my iBook arrived via the post.

I've been asked to write a "signature review" (one with my name on it) for Publisher's Weekly, though I cannot yet identify the novel or the author. I even get paid. This was one of those things I really didn't have time to take on just now, but I did, anyway.

As promised yesterday, behind the cut are photos that Spooky took on Tuesday of the Ezra Winter murals at the Birmingham Public Library. They are a far sight better than the ones that the Library has online (the link above). Ezra Winter was born in Manistee, Michigan in 1886, and was educated at Olivet College and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He also studied at the Prix de Rome and the American Academy in Rome. After returning to the US, Winter began a successful career as a muralist, and did work in Manhattan, Chicago, and Washington, DC (his studio was in New York City). In "the early 1920s," the Birmingham Public Library commissioned him to do the murals for the main reading room of their (then) newly constructed library building, depicting various figures from literature and history. They're oil on canvas, fixed to the walls with white lead. Winter was present for the mounting of the paintings. I first saw the murals sometime around 1975. Back then, they were sooty and in bad shape, but were cleaned and restored in the 1980s. Anyway, the photos:

( Ezra Winter and the Birmingham Public Library )

Last night, Spooky made a big pot of chili, and after dinner we watched two more episodes from Season Two of Millennium — "Midnight of the Century" and "Goodbye Charlie." It was cool seeing the late Darren McGavin as Frank's father in the former, as McGavin also appeared twice on The X-Files, as agent Arthur Dales. Anyway, then I worked on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, mostly on the wall in the Great Hall devoted the pterosaurs (Dimorphodon, Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus, and Pteranodon) and fossil birds (Hesperornis and Archaeopteryx). And I think I was in bed sometime after two ayem, and Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until about three ayem. I was up at 9:30, because I'm trying to get on an earlier schedule, even if it means I slept only about six hours. Truly, I've already cut back on Second Life, and will be doing so even more in the end of May. The move, my health, and far too many deadlines.

And this is the very last time I'll post a link to the Amazon wish list thing before birthday -04, though we are only halfway through the Royal Birthday Month. And my thanks for all the comments yesterday. They help, these days, and I don't know that we've had that many for one entry in quite sometime. I should include nasty x-rays of my teeth more often.

350.org.

I am a very lucky nixar. No gaping, bloody wound in my head. My dentist is wise and merciful, and I was allowed to keep that right second upper molar. It seems the discomfort was arising from a problem caused by upper and lowers no longer occluding properly (because of the work done on the cracked tooth in February). A little grinding (not even the indignity of Novacaine, thank the gods) Still, she gave me Lortab and penicillin scripts, just in case something should go wrong in there before I find a new dentist in Providence. She's been my dentist since March 2000, and it was an oddly bittersweet parting. Anyway, don't ever say that I've never given you a glimpse of true horror, because if you look behind the cut, you'll find x-rays of my frelled-up mouth:

( You've been warned )

After the dentist, enormously relieved and not low on blood, we dropped by the storage unit to see just how annoying moving everything out of it will be on May 27th. Not too bad. And then we went to the Birmingham Public Library, and I sat beneath the beautiful old murals in the Linn-Henley wing. That part of the library appears in Threshold, and it's on that very short list of things I will miss about the South. Truthfully, in an alternate-world Alabama with an entirely different cultural and political climate, I could probably have lived my whole life in Birmingham. Anyway, Spooky took some photos, and I'll put them up tomorrow, after she's had time to edit them. Today, you just get gnarly teeth. We saw an assortment of flattened and living fauna along I-20: crows, buzzards, deer, armadillos, dogs, a hawk. At the rest stop just across the Alabama state line, we spotted a large (probably female) Broad-headed skink (Eumeces laticeps). Spooky tried to get a photo, but the lizard did not cooperate. Alas. After the library, we stopped by my Mother's house in Leeds, and spent a couple of hours there, just talking. She's coming up to Providence to visit in the autumn.

I suppose, now that there is not unsightly recovery to endure, I shall be trying to finish up Chapter One of The Red Tree, beginning today. I need to have that done, and also Issue No. 30 of Sirenia Digest by Wednesday, the 21st, at the latest. Not only will the packing schedule become so hectic by then that there's no way I can even hope to work, but, also, I have to go back to Birmingham next week, to see my regular doctor one last time before the move (and she's been my doctor since 1990).

Last night, after finally getting back to Atlanta about 9 pm and grabbing some Thai food for dinner, we watched two episodes from Season Two of Millennium ("The Hand of St. Sebastian" and the hilariously wonderful "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense", the latter with Charles Nelson Riley). Oh, and discovered a tick latched onto my left hip. No idea where I picked the little fucker up. Maybe at my mother's (rural location plus dog), maybe at the rest stop earlier. She was a female Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum), and was surprisingly painful when Spooky removed her. The blasted thing had apparently been on my clothing for some time, had only just bitten, and hadn't yet started to feed (no blood), or had fed only a very little. We dropped the tick in a jar of alcohol (70%), where she survived for a hour. Spooky's calling my doctor about it today, just in case she wants me to take any precautions beyond those we have taken already. And, please, no oogy tick-borne disease related stories. Thank you.

Later, I tried to work on the Palaeozoic Museum (New Babbage, Second Life), but the damned asset server was on the fritz again, so that didn't happen. I did make quite a lot of progress on it Monday. Oh, yeah. Monday. On Monday, I worked on the Museum, we got dinner from the Vortex at Little Five Points, and watched two episodes of Farscape ("Home on the Remains" and "A Constellation of Doubt"). I went back to the biography of Henry Fairfield Osborn, which I hope to finish before the move. That was Monday. Huzzah.

Also, I should repost the link to 350.org.

Is it just me, or are these entries getting far too long winded? At any rate, only 13 days remaining to the dread birthday -04. Blegh. But my Amazon wish list is here, if you are so inclined.

Oh, and since this entry has gone on Way Too Long, I may as well mention how I've been complaining about the sudden proliferation of needless contractions, because people simply can't be bothered. Sure. It's not really anything new. Nabisco stopped being the National Biscuit Company back in the early sixties, but, lately, it seems like this is happening everywhere. National Geographic as NatGeo?! The Biography Channel as Bio? I wonder how many people still remember that WB stands for Warner Brothers, or that KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken, or that iHop is shortened from the International House of Pancakes? But the one that really tears it for me, that set off a rant last night, was seeing Scarlett Johansson called "ScarJo." What the holy fuck?! Okay, sure. First we had JLo, but that was just Jennifer Lopez, so who really cares? Not only is Scarlett Johansson a fine actress (The Black Dahlia not withstanding), she has a cool name, so why ruin it with a silly contraction like "ScarJo"? It is beyond me, these things that people do. Maybe I would be a more popular writer if I went by CaitKier. Or just CRK. Regardless, I am looking forward to hearing her album of Tom Waits covers. And now the platypus says if I don't stop and drink some coffee, sheheit's going to start gnawing my ankles.

Yesterday, I was reading John J. Pierce's Odd Genre: A Study in Imagination and Evolution (Greenwood Press; Westport, CT, 1994), when I came across this rather wonderful passage:

Cordwainer Smith's opening passage from "Scanner's Live in Vain" (1950) may be the acid test of a reader's taste for science fiction. A genre reader, coming across this scene for the first time, will think, 'I don't know what a "scanner" is, or how he adjusts his blood away from anger, or why he has to "cranch," but I've got to find out.' A nongenre reader, by contrast, is more likely to think, "This is gibberish — I don't know what's going on here, and I don't even want to know.' Smith's technique of plunging his readers into such a strange situation is not universal in science fiction even today, yet "Scanners Live in Vain" illustrates a principle that is universal to sf: It is a literary juxtaposition, even a synthesis, of the strange and the familiar.

I wrote somewhere around 1,000 words yesterday. I don't have an exact count. I spent the entire day trying to write an afterword to A is for Alien. And then, finally, having finished the first section, and having had Spooky read it back to me, I realized that it was pedantic, and wearisome, and that mostly I was grinding an axe I have with a particular reviewer at Locus, which is not the sort of thing that a) I should be doing in public or b) expect anyone else to want to read or c) should burden the collection with. I'd had in mind an afterword that accomplished a number of objectives — justification of dystopian sf, examination of mankind's innate hatred and fear of the alien in itself (making the idea of "first contact" with an extrasolar civilization absurd), an explanation of why I feel science fiction should not be expected to have predictive value, and, lastly, confess that it does not bother me that I wear my literary influences on my sleeve. But...it would have gone on for at least four thousand words, and, as I said, it was terribly pedantic. I stopped writing and called Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. We talked about the problem. I suggested I find someone else to write the afterword. He agreed that would be a good idea. A number of authors were discussed, people we might approach, and finally we settled on one we were both pleased with — Elizabeth Bear (matociquala). I asked her last night, and she kindly agreed. So, that's one thing I don't have to do in May.

Actually, I also spoke with the fellow who's publishing Joshi's Machen collection, and my deadline is not until July 30th, and he'll settle for 2,000 words, so that's something else I don't have to do this month. This means that today I can go back to work on The Red Tree (thanks, in large part, to the package of reference material and photos of the Moosup Valley region of western Rhode Island, which Spooky's mother helpfully gathered and sent to me). So, huzzah!

Also, note that subscribers can expect Sirenia Digest #30 a week or so early this month, sometime around the 21st, as I'm going to have to get it out of the way well ahead of the move (we leave Atlanta on the 29th, a mere 20 [!!!] days away, if we do not count today). And if you are not a subscriber, now's as good a time as any to correct that.

A couple of links. I wanted to repost the Green Porno link, Isabella Rossallini's bug porn, as it really is marvelous stuff. I've been making myself watch only one or two a day, so it'll last a few days (so far, my favorite is "Snail"). Also, my thanks (again) to robyn_ma for this link to Evan Dorkin's take on the phenomenon of furcons. Spooky and I laughed until we bled. Truthfully, I had nothing at all in particular against furries until I started Second Life, where they are, quite simply, a plague. Just try helming the bridge of a Federation starship when your captain is an anthropomorphic "funny animal" fox. Just try! Sure, I'm a pervert, and I have more than my fair share of parahuman and paraphilic turn-ons (Isabella Rossellini bug porn, for example), but really people.

My cold is much, much better.

Last night? Byron dropped by with Season Two of Millennium on DVD, so we can watch it as quickly as we want and don't have to wait on Netflix. We watched the first three eps — "The Beginning and the End," "Beware of the Dog," and "Sense and Antisense." As good as Season One was, Season Two is much better. Later, I did maybe an hour, an hour and a half of SL rp, so my thanks to Pontifex and Omega. Then Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until we were too sleepy to think anymore.

Postscript (3:05 pm): I meant to include this in the morning's entry, and forgot. The opening monologue for the first episode of Season Two of Millennium, which gave me shivers (behind the cut):

( Beginning and the End )

And yesterday was the sort of "day off" that I dread, the usual sort. Truthfully, I should have had the good sense to leave the house, go to Fernbank or the Zoo in Grant Park or maybe the Botanical Gardens...anywhere. In fact, I didn't step outside the house all damn day. I thought I had a plan, but it spiraled into something else, which, as I have said, is the usual way of things. I could neither rest nor keep my mind occupied, and the frustration mounted, the frustration and the boredom.

High points of yesterday: I read Chapter 9 of Chris Beard's book on anthropoid origins (Chapter 9, "Resurrecting the Ghost"). The chapter was mainly concerned with Beard's fieldwork in the Eocene beds along the banks of China's Yellow River (Huáng Hé), between 1994-1997, before the strata were flooded by construction of one of the nation's many idiotically short-sighted hydroelectric dam projects. I packed only two boxes.

And speaking of the packing of the second box, I shall now offer another unsolicited testimony to the durability of Apple computers. Somehow, I tangled my ankle in the power cord of my seven-year-old iBook last night, pulled it off the desk, and it fell three feet to a hardwood floor. And besides a bent jack on the yo-yo power adapter thingy — which is not truly a part of the actual computer — no apparent damage was done. It's only my secondary computer at this point, as I now work on the iMac, but it was still a moment of sheer fucking horror, watching it crash to the floor. I assumed the worst. I was amazed. Thank you, Apple.

Oh, but that was not a high point. Uhm. There must have been others. We watched two more episodes from Season One of Millennium ("Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" and "Broken World"). I built a sort of homage to Dr. Suess' McElligot's Pool behind my Abney Park Laboratory (in Second Life). To quote the message I posted to the New Babbage forum (written, of course, as Prof. Nishi):

"The Abney Park Well:

While trying to recalibrate a portion of the lateral array of my temporal-spatial teleportation beam, I confess that I accidentally confused the X and Z axes, and, thereby, vaporized a vertical shaft of masonry and bedrock just behind the laboratory. The width of the vacated area is approximately 4.2 metres in diameter, with a depth of some 100 metres. The accident has unexpectedly tapped into some subterranean extension of the Mare Verne, creating an Artesian well (though the salinity of the water renders it unpotable). However, initial investigations indicate that the pool is inhabited by a number of species of marine life, including fish of various sorts. All those curious are invited to visit the pool (which, for the sake of public safety, I have walled in) and fish there. I have named the pool in honour of that great, lately deceased New Babbage ichthyologist, Dr. Theodor Geisel McElligot. No swimming, please. Study of this new hydrological feature will continue..."

Spooky (Artemisia) did most of the actual work. I did the design. And yes, you can really fish there, and really catch fish. I also made a few new LJ icons, inspired by what I'd written about Panthalassa yesterday. The one that I'm using today is, of course, a view of North America during the Late Creaceous, with the Mississippi Embayment and the Western Interior Seaway very prominent. I also did one of Pangaea, and one of a Tyrannosaurus rex, and a William Stout painting of a trilobite. I did a little work on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, adding another of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins paintings and two lithographs of Archaeopteryx. That was the best of yesterday.

Today, we make corrections to the manuscript of A is for Alien, which came back to me from sovay and Massachusetts on Friday.

And here, a mere 21 days remain until Birthday No. -04. Shudder. Belatedly, I'm taking a cue from docbrite and faustfatale, and declaring the whole month of May to be my Royal Birthday Month. So, if you are given to such things, here's my Amazon wish list. Thank you. You wouldn't think a world could get this much more messed up in only -04 years, but you'd be wrong.

I want to write more about Panthalassa — particularly about how one can simultaneously be an atheist and a polytheist, and how one of the things that, increasingly, disturbs me about "orthodox" Wicca ("Gardnerian") is that it is drifting ever nearer a default monotheism, a sort of surrogate Xtianity where the tripartite goddess stands in for Jesus/"God"/the Holy Spirit (maybe chuck the Virgin Mary in there as a "female" mask), and any number of Panthalassa-related issues. But this is getting long. I'll save it for tomorrow, instead.

One of the marvelous things about having two consecutive days off is, on that second day I can blog about anything I want, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with writing, unless I decide that it will. For example, the fact that Spooky made toasted slices of raisin-cinnamon bread with cream cheese for breakfast. It's as relevant in this moment as anything else.

I can, for example, take another moment to mention Panthalassa, which is the name I have chosen to signify the sea "goddess" whom I shall use to encompass all sea goddesses and all non-anthropomorphic features of the sea. In paleogeography, Panthalassa ("all seas") is the name given the world-wide ocean that surrounded the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea. In the NeoWiccan/Neopagan system I'm working on, Panthalassa will function as one of my primary godforms, and will never be given any single physical form. I arbitrarily refer to Panthalassa as "she," and even as "goddess," but, in truth, Panthalassa is by definition without gender (though she contains all genders and all forms of reproduction), as she is without any single form. I would be equally justified in giving her the form of a trilobite, a stone lying on a beach, a water molecule, a kelp forest, a seal, a great white shark, a sailing ship, a hurricane, or a mermaid's purse. She is equally all these things. Within her is contained all true and useful myths of sea deities and beings: the Oceanids, Poseidon, Amphitrite, Oceanus, Tethys, Triton, Proteus, Rán, Ægir, the nine daughters of Ægir, Pontus, Nereus, Doris, the numerous Nereids, Varuna, Manawydan, Manannán mac Lir, Arnapkapfaaluk, Idliragijenget, Nix, Susanoo, Bangpūtys, Tangaroa, Yemaja, Neptune, Phorcys, Ceto, et al. Panthalassa, though not factual, is true, in that she is the avatar for my reverence of the sea, the focal point of my devotion and meditation. From space, the world is blue, and blue is the colour of Panthalassa, but so is black and all shades of brown and grey and green and the white of sea foam and clouds and water spouts. She is as colourless as she is colourful. It's an idea I've been working on for some time, and it seems to satisfy my needs for a central, infinitely faceted godform tied to something which evokes awe in me (magick being the willful evocation of awe). All life on Earth comes from Panthalassa, and all rain, snow, all rivers and swamps and marshes and deltas, the act of sedimentation, salt, plate tectonics, and so on, all these things are merely expressions of Panthalassa. Panthalassa is indifferent, non-conscious, unfathomable, and endlessly seductive. The choice of name was made largely for personal aesthetic and symbolic reasons; Mother Hydra would work just as well. So far, it's only an idea, an appealing, functional idea filled with contradiction, but it's a start.

As for yesterday, a good day off. Spooky and I drove up to Roswell, to the Phoenix and the Dragon, the witchcraft shop we've used for years now, because we knew we'd likely not have another chance before the move to Providence (not counting today, we have about 26 days until the move). Spooky got me a new hematite ring to replace the last one I broke, and a pretty little Pierre Shale ammonite, Jeltzkytes nodosus I think. Oh, and a night light for the bathroom in the new apartment, translucent porcelain with the moon and a mermaid. The traffic up Peachtree and back down Piedmont was awful, but the day was cloudy and not too warm. I packed four boxes. My tooth hurt less than the day before. I read Chapter 8 of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey ("Ghost Busters," mostly about the Duke University primate origins conference in the early '90s). After dinner, we watched two more episodes from Season One of Millennium (1-17 and 1-18, "Walkabout" and "Lamentation"). Later, there was a bit of Second Life, and when we went to bed about 1:30 ayem, I read McElligot's Pool to Spooky, which is unusual, because she usually reads it to me. I got a remarkable 8 hrs. sleep. That was yesterday, pretty much.

Oh, two screencaps from SL last night, courtesy omegamorningsta. The first one should put Sirenia Digest subscribers in mind of "Flotsam." Behind the cut:

( Omega and Nareth )

And speaking of Sirenia Digest #29, my thanks to scarletboi for the exchange yesterday on "Regarding Attrition and Severance." One of my greatest fears about letting people read the piece was that it would be misinterpreted as mere "torture porn," that they would miss the Cosmicism that is critical to understanding the story's intent. He wrote, "I'm glad you chose to share it. It was graphic and horrific (in the original meaning) and brutal. But it was also beautifully written and deeply involving. To be honest, I probably shouldn't have read it until my current work is finished, because I have a feeling it's going to affect the mood of it...I understand the worry. The narration is indifferent enough to be almost clinical, academic. If it took more glee in the proceedings it might edge toward the torture-porn of Saw or Hostel. But I think it came across more elegantly than that, and I hope other readers pick up on the cues as well." Too which I can only add — me, too.

Whoops. I went and fucking wrote about writing. Ah, well. Blame the neglectful platypus for not yet having brought me coffee.

Yesterday, I did a very respectable 1,277 words and finished "Rappaccini's Dragon," which you may read in Sirenia Digest #30 (May 2008). I do like this story, though its voice and directness, the very matter-of-fact way it approaches plot, surprised me. It's a sort of revenge tale, and I have subtitled it "Murder Ballad No. 5."

There's a wonderful line of storms bearing down on Atlanta. I am tempted to get my willow wand, go to Freedom Park and stand beneath the oaks. I would scream my frustration to the roiling sky and dare the lightning to touch me. Of course, I will sit here, instead, and finish this entry.

I just counted. I've done 43 stories specifically for Sirenia Digest (not counting "Rappaccini's Dragon"). This means I've published, since 1995, about 130 short stories and vignettes (short hardbacks, such as The Dry Salvages, were not included in the count). And fully 33%, almost a third, have been done for the digest. 130 stories in 13 years. That's insane.

What else to yesterday? Well, after the writing, I packed about 4 boxes, mostly paperbacks, in my office. Spooky made her yummy Spanish rice dish for dinner, and pintos. I got a check for $330.17 from Candlewick Press, royalties on "The Dead and the Moonstruck" from Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales (it's a very rare short-story sale that actually earns me royalties). I read Chapter 7 of Chris Beard's book on the search for the origin of anthropoids. I had a long phone conversation with my mother, mostly about moving. Byron had to be at a party in Athens, so we watched the new episodes of Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica alone. My tooth hurt, but not as bad as the day before. Then I did just a dab of Second Life. We drove over to Videodrome around midnight, but couldn't find anything we actually wanted to rent. Instead, we read more of House of Leaves, and I got to sleep about 3 ayem. That was yesterday.

Today will be a day off, as will tomorrow. My first days off in nineteen days, and likely my last until after the move. I still have to pack books, but no writing.

Had a short, but interesting, conversation with a fellow New Babbagite last night, who has also, independently, come to the conclusion that Second Life simply is not ready, yet, for "full immersion" roleplay. I would say it's only ready for rp on this level of intensity in very small groups. Three or four, and things seem to go just fine. But large-scale rps inevitably get idiotic. For rp to work, there must be complete suspension of disbelief (as with literature and movies), which means I do not rp with people who constantly slip out of character, or who use 133t, or who stop everything to IM with friends, or to chat ooc with friends who wander by, or who are illiterate, or who are not capable of keeping up, or who think "we're getting too serious," or what the hell ever happens to get in the way of good rp. It's a shame, because I'd love to see epic rp in SL. But there are just too many factors holding it back, the most serious of which may be the average age of SL users, and the tendency towards exceedingly short attention spans. Good rp sessions, I have found, require anywhere from 2-6 consecutive hours, and few I've met on SL (and I have met many) are up to that. Right now, I have a small number of people I can do exquisite rp with, and, as soon as I can get to it, we'll have the "Sirenia Players" up and running, but I am done with sim-level rp for the time being, until SL grows the hell up (which seems an unlikely proposition, at the moment).

I'd still love to hear some thoughts on Sirenia Digest #29.

Okay. Coffee. I've only just discovered that the damned platypus grinds the beans in hisherits bill...

By now, everyone who is a subscriber should have Sirenia Digest #29. It went out about 11:30 p.m. last night. It would have gone out earlier in the evening, but there was a slight hitch (Spooky forgot to attach the file, which is funnier today than it was last night). Comments are welcome, especially as regards "Concerning Attrition and Severance."

Today, I'll finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30, and then, tomorrow I get a day off, the first in eighteen days, I think. And then I'll finish up the ms. for A is for Alien and get back to The Red Tree.

And now it is May again, and Beltane. Last night, there was something I wanted to write out about how I've come to view choice as regards belief and paganism, but now it's mostly slipped away from me. For a long time, I could not allow myself to involve choice in matters of belief, as I held belief back for objective science and material concerns. I did not see how one could ever choose to believe. Partly, the epiphany simply required a different perspective on things I've been saying for years. The Cosmos (=tripartite goddess/horned god/divine adrogyne/etc.) may, in my veneration of it, assume any form. It contains all forms within it that can be realized or conceived. It hardly matters if I "worship" Brighid or Mórrígan or Aphrodite or Kali. They are all merely attempts of a conscious being to sum up an incomprehensible and nonconscious universe. They may, perhaps, each function like characters in a novel, avatars that grant access to the story of existence. It does not matter if they are not factual in their existence, as their existence is true, if they are true in our minds. If they contain within them useful truths, as is the way with all myths. It is not their objective existence which makes them useful avatars, but their subjective truth, what these deities mean to each of us. For me, this is the heart of Neopaganism. Designing ritual and godforms to function as conduits between conscious organisms and the remainder of the Cosmos, which is generally a nonconscious entity. Anyway, it went something like that, and today is Beltane.

A beautiful first day of May. The sun and all the green. It's 75F outside. The holly bush below the kitchen window has a nest of fledgling robins.

I did not leave the house yesterday, which makes five days straight, I think. I wrote the prolegomena, did everything else that needed doing to pull the digest together. We finished the chili Spooky made on Monday. I got no packing done.

Some good roleplay last night. I am shifting away from trying to functon in large roleplay communities (such as Toxia or the late, imploded Dune sim), in favour of rp with a small group of individuals with an especial talent for it (and no, I haven't forgotten the "Sirenia Players": just let me get moved to Rhode Island, and I'll get that going). This way, I avoid the idiots and all the noise and strife that idiots bring. Last night, well, we were in 1920s New Orleans, a beautiful house with a grand piano. A street car rattling past outside. There was Paganini and a game involving truths and falsehoods, and blows from a walking stick, and blood drawn with obsidian sharp nails. A game, and a dance, and a cold tile floor. Sublime. Oh, and I also began planning the pterosaur exhibit for the new and expanded Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage.

I was in bed by two ayem, so good for me, and asleep shortly after two-thirty, with is even better. Today, the moving guys are coming to look at all our furniture and junk and give us an estimate on the move. I'll slip out to Starbuck's or the park or someplace until they're done.

Another amusing Nick cave quote: "A man without a mustache is like a woman with one."

The platypus is grinding beans, so I guess that means I should wrap this up. The wheel of the year turns...

Spooky just told me that the foreclosure rate in the US has jumped 112%, on average more than doubling over the last year, with Nevada, Florida, and California being the hardest hit. Actually, the increase in California was 213%. And so it goes.

So, yesterday I was Distraction's bitch. You know Distraction, right? One of the nine of the Seven Deadly Sins of Writing. Anyway, I think I left myself wide open by getting up too late, then spending too much time on my LJ entry. After that, well, there was the lease for the new place in Providence (mailed off yesterday), and there was research I should have done days and days ago, and there was lunch, and there were questions about when the moving company is coming to give us an estimate, and there were hydrothermal vents on Mars, and there was news of the new Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album — Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! — and there was email, and there was a sudden obsession with figuring out which of my British Museum prehistoric animals had come from Philadelphia in 1986 and which from London in 1997. And so forth.

The research, for "Rappaccini's Dragon" (for Sirenia Digest #30) concerned tracking down the following quote from Robert Burton's very, very lengthy The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Historically, Opened and Cut up (1621):

“Mithridates by often use, which Pliny wonders at, was able to drink poison; and a maid, as Curtius records, sent to Alexander from King Porus, was brought up with poison from her infancy.”

Now, I knew that bit about Porus (Parvataraja) sending the tainted woman to Alexander came from Burton, but finding my way through that maze to discover that, in fact, it came from the First Partition, Section 2, Member 2, Subsection 1, that was another matter. And I start reading, and I keep reading, even when I know Distraction has intervened and I am no longer seeking the relevant passage, but just reading. Oh, and on top of Robert Burton, there was also a related bit from the Hindu Pranas I needed to find, and that led down another avenue of Distraction. In the end, I wrote a meager 268 usable words yesterday.

Then I took a damn bath. I did not leave the house yesterday. Spooky made a pot of chili for dinner, and we watched the eleventh episode of Millennium. And then, despite AADD-afflicted Leetspeaking dumbasses who choose names like Ferretfart Frog (I'm not making that one up), I spent a few hours on Second Life, rping with Pontifex and Ardere. Imagine a film co-directed by Alex Proyas, David Lynch, and Joss Whedon, in which demons congregate in a deserted nightclub in 22nd Century Tokyo, throw in lots of blood and a trippy cyberlounge soundtrack, and there's the rp we did last night. I think the MMPA would have rated it Z. But, I was a good nixar and made it to bed by 2 ayem. I think I was asleep well before three. Go me.

One of the very few good things about packing is finding things you'd thought you'd lost. A few days ago, it was my copy of Animal Ghosts, a book I ordered from one of those Scholastic Books fliers back in 1973 or '74, when I was in fourth grade. The book was actually published in 1971 by Xerox Education Publications, and produced by Walt Disney. Its an odd mix of actual and fanciful paleontology and neobiology, with a smattering of cryptozoology thrown in. I think what made it one of my favourite books for several years were the better than average black-and-white illustrations — lots of old-school dinosaurs and such, often portrayed in rather dynamic (if sometimes absurd) situations. Anyway, yeah, book not lost. There are a couple of scans behind the cut (but, again, I warn you that they are LARGE):

( Animal Ghosts )

Also, Spooky just (humglum) posted her photos of the dinosaur-washing ordeal of Sunday, which you can see here. And yes, that is the magical Liopleurodon that can show us all the way to Candy Mountain (hiding behind the Brachiosaurus).

Sunday morning. I know it's Sunday morning because the Xtians one block over are wailing like the rapture came yesterday and none of them were taken. I have music (PJ Harvey) playing on the iMac as loud as is reasonable, trying to block out the PentecostalBaptistwhatever whooping and caterwauling. I am fairly certain there are no churches so near the new place in Providence, and if there are, they almost certainly won't be of the yodeling variety. Some nice, quiet Catholics, please, or Episcopalians or something of that ilk. Maybe a synagogue or mosque.

Asleep about 3 ayem last night, but then awake at a little before 9 ayem, after a long and unnerving series of dreams. Mild dreamsickness now, almost three hours since I awoke. I don't recall much of the bloody thing (thank you, Ambien). Even less I'm willing to put down here. But there was some bit where I was sitting on the kitchen floor with a carving knife, and all the lights were out. All the lights, as though from a power outage. It was so dark, and I sat there with the knife, gouging at the wall, listening to something moving about outside, just beneath the kitchen window, rustling through the holly bush. And another fragment, still with the knife, but I was sitting in a very brightly lit room at a sink, scrubbing at the blade. It was clean, but I kept scrubbing at it. The water from the tap was icy cold. I had nothing to scrub at the knife with but water and my bare fingers, and always there was the sensation of being watched.

---

Yesterday, I wrote 1,030 words on a new story/vignette for Sirenia Digest #30 (May; the issue after #29, the forthcoming April issue). For several years now, I've been trying to find a story to accompany the title "Rappaccini's Dragon." Sitting here yesterday, paging through Laurence Gadd's Deadly Beautiful, the story found me. It's a fairy tale, sort of, about revenge, and toxicity, and the limits of the human body as a weapon.

A rather nice little review of Threshold at Rambles.net. I figured I'd mention it, since I made such a fuss about that silly Amazon.com "review" of Low Red Moon a few days back. The comment, "It's hard to believe Threshold is only Kiernan's second book," made me smile, because, in truth it was my fourth novel. The first was The Five of Cups (though it wasn't published until 2003) and then there was the ghostwritten novel I did after finishing and selling Silk (and no, I can't tell, so don't ask). I do wish reviewers would resist this urge to summarize, and remember that book reviews are not book reports. But yes, a nice review.

Otherwise, not much to yesterday. I didn't leave the house. I packed exactly one box (books). Spooky went out and got BBQ from Dusty's for dinner (truly, I will miss Dusty's). There were splendid thunderstorms all night, it seemed. In Second Life, Spooky and I worked a bit on the new wing of the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, then attended a Very Special Event in Toxia. And that was yesterday.

Ever seen a platypus brew a cup of coffee? Someday, I shall have to take photos.

As predicted, no writing yesterday, but plenty else. And, best of all, Spooky's mom (whose name is Carol) emailed her to report of her field trip, on my behalf, to the Moosup Valley area of western Rhode Island. Here's a quote from the email:

Actually, I've been working on the "journey" all day--gathering old plat maps, topos, putting photos in contact sheet format, etc.

The trip itself was fine. It's very rural and wooded out there. About the only outstanding features along Moosup Valley road were in Moosup Valley, which consisted of a large graveyard, library, church and grange. All of which I photographed. The whole area is an historic preservation district, so there are old places around. Just not too many out by the road. I did photograph the Mount Vernon Tavern ca 1760 along Rte 14, and then all the buildings in "town." There was a house opposite the end of Barbs Hill Road, which I photographed. It was probably 1800's. No date visible. Barbs hill road itself is a narrow gravel road which I decided not to go down. Heavily wooded on both sides and I know that some people out there are really touchy about people using their private roads as a "cut through". I'm a coward.

If you go to Terraserver (put in Moosup Valley road as the location) and look at ariel photos of the area you will see that the whole area is heavily forested, so you don't see a whole lot from the road. The photos were taken when the leaves were off of the trees so it's possible to see the distribution of white pines among the predominantly oak trees. There are also hickory and red maple and cherry. The latter two are probably more prevalent in the swampy areas. There are alot of swampy areas at the bases of the large hills. I am going to send you some topo maps that show the size of the hills. Just like what you encounter out along 102 as you go west past 95 and into CT. The hills are totally boulder strewn down their sides with the trees growing up amongst them. The higher places, along the tops of the ridges, or hills, have more soil and seem to be good farmland. Every low spot seems to have a swamp filled with skunk cabbage.

So, I'll write one more piece for the May issue of Sirenia Digest (#30), then get the last bit of work done on the A is for Alien ms., and then it's back to work on The Red Tree. Maybe in as little as a week. Of course, the pace of packing is picking up, and sooner, rather than later, that's gonna start seriously messing with my ability to writing (and never mind the thousand other moving-related things that have to be done by the end of May). Ah, and Spooky's dad (Richard) has returned from Thailand.

Yesterday, we read all the way through the new piece, the one for Sirenia Digest (#30). It works much, much better than I thought. And Spooky likes it a lot. But it is brutal, even by the standards of the digest. I sent it to sovay, and she helpfully read it and wrote back (and I hope she doesn't mind this quote), "I don't know all the reasons it worries you, but if one of them is because the piece might not work as a story, that at least is unjustified. It's probably the most brutal of any of the pieces I've read for Sirenia and it works very well: 'We need not note the screams.' I actually really like it...If you are more comfortable locking it away in a drawer, I cannot argue with that. But as a piece of story, it is certainly worth the reading." In response to my trying to second guess my readership, the digest's readership, and my fears that the piece is too dark, Sonya replied, "However the audience reacts is its own responsibility. Yours is to the story." Which is a) true, and b) not especially comforting. It still needs a title.

Also, I packed four more boxes, mostly old issues of National Geographic, because I never throw anything away.

After the work, there was dinner at the Vortex (@ L5P) with Byron, and, then, back home, we watched the (for us) new episode of Doctor Who. And I just gotta say, of the companions we could presently have — Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Sally Sparrow, and Astrid Peth — we get, instead, Donna Noble. Who just annoys me. Hopefully, she will annoy me less, as time goes by. Byron left, and we watched the new Battlestar Galactica, which was good, but somehow felt like it should have been better. I think commercials simply ruin the flow of this show. I finished reading "New bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the late Eocene and early Oligocene, Fayum Depression, Egypt" in the new JVP, and we read more of House of Leaves, Navidson's attempt to rescue Holloway's doomed expedition. Later, there was some work on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage (Second Life). My interest in the Museum project has been reawakened, now that some of the sculpty software (namely, Archipelis) has caught up with my needs, as regards creating /recreating SL facsimiles of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' Crystal Palace/Palaeozoic Museum dinosaurs. There was a brief "absence" seizure last night.

Coffee. Red Bull. Speed. Cocaine. Whatever you got, platypus, throw it my way.

Yesterday, I did a very respectable 1,472 words and finished the new and still untitled vignette, the one for Sirenia Digest #30, not #29. Truthfully, I'm not sure what to make of this piece (it comes in at a total of 3,950 words). It's stranger than usual, and darker. I think unrelentingly brutal would be the most precise description, and all I can figure is that it came from the "place" where I am at the moment. It makes me think of early Dunsany, if Dunsany had written odes to sadism. Spooky likes it a lot, but I just don't know. I half suspect I should lock it in a drawer somewhere and never take it out again. Instead, though, I'm sending it to sovay today to see what she thinks of it.

April has been a productive month, in spite of itself. First, I wrote "Flotsam" for #29 (April 4-6), then I began Chapter One of The Red Tree (April 14) and did 28 pp. before realizing my problem with the "Editor's Note" (April 19). And then I wrote this latest piece over the past three days. Now, I'll either begin the second piece for May's issue of the digest, or go back to The Red Tree far sooner than I'd hoped possible. Likely, I'll get the May digest out of the way first. And the introduction to A is for Alien.

I packed four more boxes yesterday, the rest of the VHS tapes and more books. I'm packing in a way I've never done before, a little at a time, as I'm just not up to the Big Push I usually do two weeks before a move. I've told Spooky that if I like this place in Providence as much as we expect to, I'm not leaving for thirty years, at least. I did get Outside yesterday, once the writing and packing were done. We took the picnic blanket blu_muse gave us and spread it out at the top of the hill in Freedom Park near Moreland, beneath the oaks. I dozed a little and undoubtedly got bugs in my hair. And took some photos, mostly from the lying down position. The time Outside did me good. There was a hawk, and we heard woodpeckers, though we never spotted one (wait, Spooky says she saw one). Anyway, they're behind the cut (the photos, not the woodpeckers):

( Yesterday )

Two more episodes of Millennium last night. And my thanks to Merma, Omega, and Pontifex for some exquisite rp last night. Fire and blood — what more do I ever need? Tonight, of course, we get Byron and Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica. I think the day will be consumed by the busyness of writing, rather than by actual writing, and by packing.

I did not write yesterday. Instead, I stepped back and tried to see the source of my doubt regarding what I have written thus far on The Red Tree. In part, it's the absence of the prologue/ forward/ introduction/ editor's note thing I'd planned to write after we get to Rhode Island. That seems clear now, as that part of the book is the part that sets the stage for the reader, and, it would appear, the writer. So, I need to backtrack and try to write it now, though it may be tomorrow before I get that far, far enough to begin it.

Instead of writing, yesterday was almost all reading. Many more chapters of House of Leaves, plus a bit of Stephen King's Carrie (1974). Because I wanted to see how King handled the "book about the book embedded within the book" problem with his The Shadow Exploded: Documented Cases and Specific Conclusions Derived from the Case of Carietta White by David R. Congress. Spooky read aloud to me, as is usually the case, what with my left eye being blind and the right eye tiring so quickly. And I packed a few boxes of books. I stayed off Second Life until after midnight. I fear I am at long, long last losing patience with SL, but that's an entry unto itself.

We made a trip out to Videodrome, because I wanted to see Stephen Soderbergh's superb adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (2002) again, mainly to try and pick up a little of the mood. It's such a perfect film. I need to add it to my Amazon.com wishlist, and seeing it again also reminded me I've been meaning to put together a list of my "Favourite SF Films Since 1980."

Yesterday felt like a "seizure day," and I kept waiting, but it never came. I do not know how to explain those rare instances when I feel as if they're coming. But I'm usually right. Maybe I ought to call it "seizure weather." Anyway, I'm very glad that I was wrong yesterday.