Message, Dream, Philosophy

The other night: The Lovers, Nine of Cups, the Devil. All in a row. It’s been a while since I got such a mirrorlike reading, and such clear message.

Of course, this morning, in the long dark shoals before I had to get up, I was jolted out of a dream of Donnie Yen as my werewolf boyfriend during a zombie apocalypse, but I’m not considering that a message. Especially since the heavy breathing I kept hearing in the dream, which I thought was the zombies, was actually Odd Trundles, who point-blank refused to go back in his crate after a 3am “MOTHER I GOTTA PEE, RIGHT NOW, I KNOW I WENT BEFORE BEDTIME BUT I GOTTA, I GOTTA.” He ended up with his giant face in my neck, and my hair on that side is still damp from his jowls.

He still thinks he’s the puppy who slept on my pillow because I was terrified he’d stop breathing altogether. They never really grow up, our furry friends. I’m on the fence about whether we ourselves do.

I’m still making my way through Facing the Extreme. I am having trouble with a few of Todorov’s base assumptions–like the one that human judges can be impartial or objective. I mean, certainly, a good judge aims for that, but is it really possible? It’s more of a goal to strive for than an actual can-be-done-completely-achieved. On the other hand, the book was published a decade ago, and there have been some advances in understanding bias since then. Another set of Todorov’s base assumptions, his habit of gendering responses to totalitarianism, grates on me with increasing regularity. I rather suspect him of cherry-picking survivor narratives to suit his gender-assumption hobby-horses. Unconsciously, of course, but he seems really invested in women being passive, forgiving creatures even when shoveled into death camps.

You can tell what I think of that.

Anyway, we’re near the end of the book, so Todorov’s making assertions that the front half of the text is meant to have set up and provided proof of varying kinds for, and I just don’t see that the narratives (survivor or otherwise) or logic he’s provided bear out said assertions. Still, it’s not a bad thing to have to stop while reading and think hard about just why one disagrees with a philosopher.

The Sekrit Projekt continues apace. Yesterday was a measly 3.5K words, but I got two crucial scenes done and dragged the man with the gun in, kicking and screaming. (He didn’t want to show up just yet, but it wasn’t his call.) By the end of it, I was exhausted, so his appearance needs some polish in order to make it properly eerie. (And he doesn’t have a gun, but a claymore, I think. Or maybe an axe.) But it’s there, that part of the corpse is on the table, and I only have 20K left to write.

*looks at last sentence*

*weeps a bit*

I suppose it’s time for yoga now, and there’s a run to fit in today, too. Going back to bed, while certainly the most appealing option, isn’t even remotely possible.

Ah well. Over and out.

An Unserious Post

Coming Home
© Kwest19 | Dreamstime Stock Photos
One of the things I always loved doing was walking at night. Especially with a camera that functioned well in low light settings. I am, by nature, a night person. (Which surprises nobody.) Having diurnal children means I’ve been fighting my body for years now. The entire world is set up for the daytime people.

I always told myself that when the kids were older I’d allow myself back on my preferred schedule. But then…dogs. Especially Miss B, who is a BRIGHT SHINY HAPPY MORNING DOGE. Of course, as she grows older, she’s more inclined to have a bit of a lie-in, but her idea of one is a full fifteen minutes of hard snoring before nosing me hopefully or sticking her paw in my armpit to make sure I’m still alive.

She does so love to be helpful. It absolutely torments her if I shut her out of the bedroom while I do twenty minutes of yoga. Apparently that is an eternity of cold loneliness, so bleak and terrifying she has to howl at the door. It’s kind of hard to relax, even in Corpse Pose, with a dog wailing that she MISSES, and LOVES, and CANNOT BREATHE without, YOOOOOOOOU. Then, of course, Odd Trundles, who doesn’t understand quite what’s going on, thinks that because the smarter dog is wailing something must be wrong, gets in on the act.

It’s either deal with that noise outside the door or let them in, where they decide to helpfully nose or hip-check me in every pose. Downward dog? They have to be underneath me! Plank? Try to knock Mum over or take out her arms! Reclined side twist or Figure-4? Sit on Mum’s hair! Reclined Goddess? Crawl over Mum’s knees to give her a Van Damme groin stretch! Tree Pose? HIT HER ANKLES! AGILITY TRAINING!

…yeah, so either way, those twenty minutes of yoga are probably far more…active…than any swami or guru ever intended. At least the last time they decided to cavort under me while I was trying to stay upright in Tree Pose, I fell onto my bed instead of Odd’s crate. Small mercies.

I did have a Serious Post planned for today, but apparently I’ve become distracted. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Wandering around at night to take pictures.

Maybe there will come a time in my life when I can do that again. Sadly, it’s not yet, so I have to do other things I love. The bright side is, I have so many things to love and be interested in. Even if I have to drag my protesting body out of bed and subject it to wakefulness when it’s genetically designed for sleep.

*shuffles off to find more caffeine*

*also, dodging dogs*

Lili Reads, Part Whatever

I’ve been making a dent in my TBR lately.

I finished Kenneth Stampp’s And the War Came, which details the secession crisis of 1860-61. In parts, I almost suspected Stampp of being a magnolia-eater on the scale of (the admittedly really great) Shelby Foote, and when I shifted to Stampp’s The Era of Reconstruction I thought maybe the latter had been written before And the War Came. However, it wasn’t–Reconstruction was published in 1967, and the book on the secession crisis in 1970. Maybe it was my own bias, since the secession crisis book seemed far, far too generous to the Southern states and their maneuverings.

It was also interesting to come across comments in the text that remind me of how far civil rights have come since 1970, and just what is at stake in the current political clime.

Other interesting things were Stampp’s very definite tracing of Lincoln’s politicking, and the fact that sainted Abraham was really no abolitionist per se. He was a Whig, and a Unionist, so when the Republicans gathered up the remnants of the Whigs and the Southern Democrats began making their secession noises, he became Republican by default, and his Emancipation Proclamation was somewhat unwilling and did not admit of equal rights, merely manumission in the war zones to make the Southern economy incapable of funding further warfare. The radical wing of the Republican party fell into line behind him not because they thought him a fire-eating abolitionist, but because the Unionist cause was the abolition cause for a variety of reasons. Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy, had he lived, would have borne this out in chunks.

I planned to move right into Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution yesterday after finishing the Reconstruction book, but I fell into Tzvetan Todorov’s Facing the Extreme instead, which has been on my TBR for a long while, mostly because I didn’t feel emotionally ready to read it.

To my relief, it is a philosophy book, and while I take issue with Todorov’s sexism in several places, there’s a lot of good food for thought. One of his most interesting points is about caring versus heroics, how caring is personal and “heroics” as we generally think of them are just another form of death-worship. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but the book articulates a lot of things I had only dimly held in the back of my head while reading other philosophy.

I should probably get some Kant and study, but I’d have to work through more of the TBR first.

In the process of trying to find the last Stampp book (I figured, why not keep going, since I’d read two in close succession) I ended up shelving a lot of “already-read” and organizing the TBR pile into fiction, nonfiction, fairytales/litcrit/poetry. (LOOK, THESE DIVISIONS DON’T MAKE SENSE BUT THEY’RE MINE.) After the Todorov and the last Stampp I might clean my palate with Osinga’s book on John Boyd’s strategic theory, which I have been meaning to get to for AGES. I may have to take a small break with Marina Warner, or there’s that lovely big chunky history of the American Whig party I might want to get into while the 1800s are still fresh in my head.

In short, I have an embarrassment of choices. That’s the state of the Reading Lili, and of course all of this is going into the bubbling cauldron that is my emotional well, from whence I draw bits of half-composted things for stories. Working at a white-heat requires plenty of fuel and right now that fuel is textual.

*stuffs pages in mouth, grins*

What are you reading?

Knight, Lady, Fairy, Survivalist

One of the parks I go through on long rambles/runs/sometimes bike rides recently sported this fellow. It’s a bower, or a shelter. Each time I pass it as the branches brown, I imagine a knight’s lady nestled in it, and what she might be thinking. I tell myself little stories a la Malory, or imagine that the fairies came through one night and this was a place for Titania to rest.

It was probably kids messing around with camp shelters, or one of the area homeless with a survivalist bent. Or maybe there was a rip in dimensional fabrics, and whoever curled up to sleep here awoke in a different place, a different time.

The world is full of stories. You can’t get away from them.

Play, Mask, Cane

I spend a good bit of time thinking about the little old lady I want to be. From growing my hair out now (I will never, ever have short hair again, I swear unto my patron goddess) to checking my smile to make sure the lines I want will etch themselves on my face, to pricing swordcanes (look, just because I’m old shouldn’t mean I’m helpless) to working on brain flexibility–you get the idea.

I have a horror of losing mental acuity. For a long time I thought a lovely, agile brain was the only thing I had to recommend me. Nowadays I value myself slightly more, but the habit of regarding my own prospective mental loss with intense horror has remained. That’s why I keep going back to the piano, and playing around with languages. I’ve shifted to Korean and (my first love) Latin, since I’ll need to spend serious time on them both–French and Spanish are lovely, but it feels like cheating to practice them at the same time I’m studying Latin, you know? Also, Duolingo has just released their Japanese pack. That seems like a good way to spend multiple hours.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying something I’ve been mulling over for a while. It’s never too late, and you are never too old, to find something that delights you. Getting in the habit of looking for delightful things and playing with new stuff is an investment in your future self. If what makes you happy is problematic or nerdy or strange, don’t let that stop you from gaining what enjoyment you can from it. We’re here for such a brief period, might as well find neat things to play with in the meantime.

People tend to calcify as they get older, and it seems such a shame. Practicing juicy flexibility now, in order to retain it as long as possible, looks a much better way to be. Besides, if one approaches things like, say, new technology, in the spirit of play, being okay with making mistakes and poking until you find out new ways of using it, learning is ever so much easier. When you’re “just playing,” a lot of mistakes are recoverable.

It helps to be in the habit of going, “Huh, I’m wrong, let’s find out some cool stuff together!” or “I don’t know, let’s look it up.” Parenting taught me that it’s okay to admit being wrong and trying again. It is, in fact, not just okay but preferable. Kids tend to respect an adult who admits, “Hey, I fucked up, let’s revisit that.” It cuts out so much bullshit.

We could all do with a little less bullshit.

So, my advice for today: spend some time thinking about the old person you want to be, or even just planning for your future self. The mask you wear will become your real face, if you do it long enough. It’s far better to consciously choose than to let it be thrust upon you, or being blindly reactive.

Also, if you see me with a cane…beware.

Full Range

So Cormorant is out, and I can talk about something I’ve wanted to for a while.

Some readers are upset because Svin isn’t Jill or Dante. She’s more like the name-shifting narrator of She Wolf–dedicated, and all right with murder if it gets the job done. One isn’t meant to get inside Svin’s head very far, and if she was a male protagonist, she probably would be called an antihero.

Since she’s most definitely not male, she’s called cold and distant.

This is very much like the reader fury over Jill and Saul’s relationship. Much of that fury dissipated when I noted publicly that if their genders were reversed, nobody would blink. It would, in fact, slot that romance neatly into the gumshoe/classy dame noir space. Funny, right?

I laugh, until I don’t.

Even Cormorant’s editors had difficulty with Svin. She isn’t likable, or approachable. She has her own agenda, and the reader isn’t allowed to take over her body. Nobody is allowed to do that, which is not normal for female characters in our culture. There’s also deliberate craft decisions I made, like no self-talk in italics–a hallmark of my style, one could say. It forced me to write differently, especially when Svin’s interacting with Barko or Vetch.

I knew readers would be expecting Svin to be more like Jill, or Dante, or even Selene or Emma Bannon or or or. But femininity is not a one-stop “strong woman” shop. Svin is just as feminine as any of them; she is part of the full range of female expression. It irks me that if I’d written her as a man (and/or under a male nom de guerre et plume) there probably would have been an avalanche of “ooooh, smexy brooding antihero!” Or, in the latter case, cookies and head-pats.

We have a long way to go. Sometimes the way gets goddamn rocky, and I get tired. Since I’ve written (and continue to write) chicks-in-leather and romance, I’m clearly not a Serious Writer of Science Fiction, right? I should have made my female protagonist in my love letter to Soviet sci-fi more “likable”, catered to different expectations, right?

Fuck that noise. Always and ever, fuck that goddamn noise.

I like writing romance. I like writing urban fantasy. I like writing fantasy. I like writing sci-fi. I like writing steampunk alt-history. Ad infinitum. I like telling a variety of stories, and that’s not going to change. I do not write by committee, I write what the story wants, and I’m pretty sure that’s what readers keep coming around for.

There’s always the chance that I just didn’t pull off my vision clearly enough, of course. (No doubt plenty of “objective” assholes will chalk it up that way.) But I did what I set out to do, and I didn’t truckle. I’m a hack, sure, but a prideful one.

And Svin is an unabashedly female character. If she doesn’t fit someone’s idea of what a woman should be, that’s not her problem.

Or mine.