To The Leashes

Well, I’m awake. At least, some simulacrum of awake, I suppose, since my eyes are open and I seem to be enduring consciousness.

I wasn’t allowed to work once I started making dinner on Saturday, so yesterday was spent with chores and poking at things that don’t qualify as work, per se. I’m not sure if this means a return to normal productivity or I’m just using all the dread as fuel the way I used to harness deep anxiety; I suppose time will tell.

The most fun I had this weekend was dumping out a fair chunk of text loosely based on our D&D sessions. It feels like writing fanfic, and in a way I suppose it is. But it’s hilarious, it’s zany, and it’s not work, so I was allowed to spend most of yesterday rolling around in it and chortling happily to myself.

My nerves are a little steadier this week. Like grieving, adjusting to disaster requires certain stages, and while one might go through two or three of them at once, they all have to be at least touched or one won’t reach the other side.

Not sure if there’s another side to reach, but I am balanced delicately on surface tension like a water bug, and attempting to keep my step light indeed.

The heat doesn’t help, but then again, when does it ever? The dogs are at least as grateful for the air conditioning as I am, though, and spend most of their time sprawled on cool tile or hardwood. Boxnoggin is taking his mandate to keep Miss B alive very seriously; she is an old lady and really needs a companion to boss around in order to live her best life. He doesn’t mind being bossed since he just does as he pleases anyway, and the resultant spite from being balked in her quest to supervise his fuzzy ass is keeping Miss B young.

Just goes to show one always needs something to live for. Sheer stubborn spite will do.

So. It’s a Monday, I have a full day’s work before me even though it’s a holiday. But since it’s a holiday, I won’t work too hard, just hard enough to scratch the itch of writing a combat scene or two. Plus, I’ve got to get out the door before the heat builds. The fur-beasts need walking, and even though I can use the deep anxiety for fuel, I also need to work off the edge of it with running so it doesn’t wear my body and brain out like a well-loved toy.

And now, to the leashes. The dogs can’t walk themselves, and the books won’t write themselves. It is, not gonna lie, nice to be necessary for both.

Happy Labour Day, my chickadees. May we all labor only as much as we wish to today, and may those who would oppress us roast upon their own fires.

Over and out.

Bee Ware

You might not be able to see it, but the crack between the concrete and the dirt behind the sign holds the entrance to a beehive. On warm mornings they are busily flying in and out, pollinating, gathering, doing their bee business. The people who live there put the sign up a couple weeks ago, and I think they absolutely mean to leave the bees alone long-term since they’re not harming anyone. Which makes me feel good; every time I pass plenty of the little fellows come to say hello and play tag with Miss B.

When I’ve felt like humanity is a shitshow not worth saving this week, I’ve thought of this–people quietly leaving the bees alone, merely putting up a sign to protect both the hive and passers-by. And somehow, it makes the rest of us worth fighting for.

We don’t have to be awful. And really, most people aren’t.

Gods grant I remember it.

Tree, Arc, Next Life, Climb

Yesterday was gasping-hot and utterly humid, although it did cool off at night. Still, that sort of thing wears on one’s body. I have become a temperate beast, and cannot imagine how people live in tropical greenhouses. I’ll probably spend my next life as a moss-hung tree on the Olympic Peninsula, gulping at rain and communing with the mycelium at my roots.

This morning is cool but still humid, and they say it’ll reach 94F. And I was just exchanging relieved emails with my writing partner earlier this week about how it seemed to worst of the heat had passed.

Ah well. It’s always something, and at least in this house we have AC. Take the small luxuries where you find them.

This week has been all about the epic fantasy. I need to reread to catch the rhythm before jumping in again; the zero draft has to be done by November. Plus the last half of the last season of HOOD is spiking for a finish. If I drive myself to bare nerves again I think I can get both done, which just leaves the question of deciding the next serial for my very dear subscribers.

If I think only about that–the sheer amount of work ahead of me–I can almost forget the conditions we’re all laboring under. I want to retreat into my writing cave and just not watch the world burn anymore. I can’t stand it; the number of people who apparently long to risk their own lives worshipfully licking fascist boots is far more than I ever imagined.

I have spent my entire life believing humanity is worth saving, and I suppose I still do. I just… have doubts, sometimes. We could end suffering in short order, if we refused to obey greedy bastards and their hateful henchmen.

It’s the henchmen that are the largest problem, seduced by the idea that if they just hate hard enough, if they’re just cruel enough, they too can be greedy bastards at the top of the pile. If not for helping henchman hands, the one percent could very well be forced to surrender their ill-gotten gains with relative ease and the politics of hate and disaster capitalism could be left in the dustbin of history where they belong.

But the rest of us are kept scrabbling too hard for survival, not to mention turned against each other, to do it. The arc of said history may bend towards justice, but I see precious little of it lying about right now.

I know there’s hope somewhere, I’m just not seeing it today. All I want to do is tell a few stories, maybe provide a few people with a little surcease from the agony. Sometimes even that seems impossible.

Miss B is under my desk, blissfully unaware of such things. To her, the world is simple–breakfast, walkies, pets, dinner, bedtime, and in between are naps and the supervising of her poor dim non-furry humans, who may be gods of the can opener and the den where we spend out days but seem not very bright when it comes to the business of noses, fur, and herding. Lord Boxnoggin is similarly blissful, though his duties include alerting when any damn thing–dog, human, car, delivery truck, stray leaf–wanders down the road before the house.

Neither of them care about politics; their sole concern is dinner with a soupçon of gathering their pack in one place so they can be certain all are accounted for. Sometimes I wish I had so few concerns. But I worry so they don’t have to, the way I do for my children. If there is an arc towards justice, it seems to lie there.

I try. But the worry grinds past my nerves, stripping the insulation and drawing sparks. There’s only so much one lone mad writer can do. My doubts sometimes rise like ghouls from the grave, slavering and ravenous-quick; the only hope I have is to run far enough, write fast enough, love hard enough to outstrip them.

So far I’ve managed. But I’m tired, my friends. I’m so, so tired. Even my usual pick-me-up of performing an act or two of care for others isn’t renewing me as much as it might. I feel like I’m trying to put out a five-alarm fire with an eyedropper of gasoline.

I know you’re probably exhausted too. It kind of helps to know one isn’t alone, even when one feels it dreadfully and is forced to put a brave face on things. I long to stop swimming for a few moments, but I can’t risk sinking.

So it’s onward, my eyes fixed on the next few drafts to finish, the next few hugs the kids need, the next few dinners the dogs require, the next few jokes I’ll spin for online friends, the next few steps in the endurance run called life. There’s a point in any climb when all one can focus on is the next few handholds. You can’t spare the energy to think about the finish, all you can do is perform the next few moves. You can’t even hope you’ll be able to solve the problems after that; there isn’t enough fuel.

Honestly, if I’m a tree next time, it’ll be a nice change. I just hope I’m put somewhere relatively inaccessible so the chainsaws don’t happen along.

Good heavens. I’m even pessimistic about my next life. I suppose that means I should get back to work.

Catch you later, my beloveds. I’ll keep climbing if you will; if you’re tired, rest for a bit. I’ve got the rope.

Sooner or later we’ll make it.

Art, Transmute, Possibility

I have often thought–and remarked–that the creative process is one of transmuting. An original alchemy, absorbing the pain (or joy) of being alive and transforming it into a piece that not only mitigates the burden of experience but also invites others inside as well.

You are what you consume, what you transform, in creative terms as well as physical or emotional. Which is a maxim of greater or lesser degree–one’s body turns everything to energy, heat, and shit no matter the nutritive “value” of what’s consumed, and one’s emotions have deep internal as well as external wellsprings.

…I’m even qualifying my metaphors today. Let me try again.

I have to confess I have often prided myself on the amount of punishment I can take and turn into art. But even my ability to transmute pain is being severely taxed right now. The constant retraumatization is fucking awful–and I’m in a relatively privileged position so far. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for those who don’t share my immunity, and the added load of guilt for being relatively safe while others suffer is crushing.

I have no great shining theme or call to hope today. All I’m after is the ability to get through until I can retreat to bed and escape the burden of consciousness for a few hours, probably assisted by some antihistamines since alcohol gives me hives anymore.

The next stage after hives is anaphylactic shock, but even that isn’t proving the deterrent it could be.

I thought once I’d finished with the recent mini-breakdown it would be easier to get back to work; I thought it was a gauntlet I had to run through and I could skid past the finish line, bloody and battered but still whole. But the hits just keep coming, and even retracting into my shell doesn’t work the way it used to.

One of the few things stopping me from plunging over the railing into the abyss is the fact that I have three paying projects unfinished. People are depending on me, so I have to buckle down and at least turn them in. Then there are the kids, and the dogs. All these considerations are getting thinner and thinner as I stare at the catastrophe unfolding, and that worries me.

It worries me a lot.

Like I said, I have no ringing call to hope today. All I have is brute endurance, which I happen to be kind of good at but which does have its limits. This morass was completely avoidable, but nobody cared enough to listen to the people shouting caution while the ship headed for the rocks.

Be gentle with yourselves today, dear Reader. We might get through this. I don’t see how, but I admit the possibility–which is another function of art. To be able to admit possibilities one doesn’t believe in is a form of alchemy all its own. It’s not quite a superpower, but every time I sit down to write, it lingers behind every word.

The possibility is slim, fragile, and ghostly, but it will have to be enough.

Tea, Falafel, Strategy

Made chana masala last night, so that’s what we’ll be eating for a few days. And yet, my hunger for chickpeas has not abated, and I want falafel. I want falafel with the burning desire of a thousand suns, probably because I’m super hungry after the morning’s run and I haven’t had a chance to get anything but toast down, helped along with a prodigious amount of tea.

There is even more tea cooling next to the keyboard as I type this. I thought the run would sand off my smooth edges, but I am sharp in every direction today. My temper is so jagged I have retreated (of course with a tankard of English Breakfast) to the office, and I’m casting around for a scene to write that won’t suffer from my mood.

Fortunately, there’s more than one combat scene upcoming, so I can focus on those today. Despite getting up early I’ve been grousing about and now I feel like there’s not enough time left in the day. (And it’s barely bloody noon, fa cry-eye.)

The thing about operating under these conditions is that when a good day comes along hope starts to bloom again, but then a bad one arrives and since all your resilience has gone towards the cognitive load of dealing with ongoing disaster, there’s nothing left to dull the edges or insulate the nerves.

So it’s muttering into my tea and writing nasty things happening to characters I rather like. At least I can still work–creating, despite its cost, is the only thing that gives me any sense of agency anymore.

And humans do very poorly when robbed of a sense of agency.

What’s keeping you going, dearly beloveds? I confess I am asking on the off chance that someone might have a tactic I haven’t tried yet, but I figure the more we share of our various ideas and strategies, the better off we all are. So… is there anything giving you a sense of power or agency lately? What’s holding you afloat?

Hope, Dry Land

It’s been a dreadful week. Monday was bad, Tuesday worse, Wednesday a gulp of air but not nearly enough, Thursday below the surface again. Now it’s Friday, so we all deserve a treat.

This is the dog who wriggled out of his harness last week and gave me a damn heart attack, my gods. He has since been very quiet and thoughtful, probably since I only caught him because he treed a cat. (Don’t worry, I made sure the cat could get down before I left the area to drag Boxnoggin’s silly ass home. Nobody was hurt, though I was terribly frightened for about ten minutes.) Also, I got a new harness for him, one billed as escape-proof.

We shall see. But anyway, here’s Boxnoggin after his adventures, worn out and collapsed on his fancy memory foam bed, reproachfully staring at me because I didn’t let him keep the cat.

We’ve all got problems, haven’t we.

Be kind to yourselves this weekend, my beloveds. If you’ve reached the end of your ability to cope, you’re not alone. I’m hoping that a little rest and a little scratching the itch of a book I’ll never sell will give me enough strength to break the surface, gasp, and maybe find some way to climb out of the sea.

At least I can’t sink entirely. I mean, just look at that face. The dog needs me to remind him how to get up the stairs in the morning, for godsake; Miss B has her own list of requirements. For them–and for the kids–I’m still struggling for the surface.

May we all reach dry land soon. Over and out.

Blurry Snail

It was a Morning–Boxnoggin shimmied out of his harness and went walkabout, and that was just the FIRST thing to go pear-shaped–so the Friday photo is a little late this week, but better that than never, right?

We had beautiful, glorious, life-giving rain yesterday, and I got this (blurry, for which I apologize) snap of a snail on the deck steps. People who move to the PNW are Not Prepared for the damp, the moss getting everywhere–and I do mean everywhere–or the slugs. We didn’t have snails at the old place, but we had plenty of the houseless gastropods. Still not sure whether I like the change, despite the rich associations riding the spiral shells.

I meant to get some writing in today, but all my energy’s gone towards staying upright and not going back to bed. Time to shut everything off and just sit quietly for a few minutes, until the energy–and the will to go on–pools back in my palms and starts spinning out my fingers again.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, dear Reader.