On our rambles, Miss B and I come across all sorts of things. Sometimes she wishes to investigate them. Sometimes, though, it’s large machinery, and she gives me a sidelong look that says no thanks, Mum, I know better.
Would that humans were as wise as this one shaggy, neurotic little Australian shepherd…
My personal readings tend to be bifurcated. I usually blame it on being a Gemini, or having the Chariot as a patron card. At least two great beasts drive me at any particular time, and the trick is to hold the reins correctly and get everyone moving in the same direction.
You can see that here–the Knight going one way, the Queen facing another, and the result in the final card is a bit of a mess. It’s a warning for me to shorten some reins, loosen others, and just generally attend to and be conscious of where the fuck I’m heading.
This brings up something else I used to tell students. The divinatory prop you use is a screen for the precognitive faculty to project upon. Look at the cards and tell yourself a story about the pictures. It’s really that simple. The complex part is being honest about the question you’re asking, and logging your readings so you can see patterns, develop (or excavate) your own symbol-language, and build a relationship with your chosen divinatory method.
You could also say there’s no such thing as a precognitive faculty, and that you’re basically cold-reading for yourself, or using a psychological trick in order to gain self-knowledge. It really doesn’t matter one way or the other as long as it’s useful. Treating it as a faculty and behaving as if it is such works for me. I am interested in results, my particular manner of getting them may or may not change over time, depending on efficacy.
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.
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.
Every night before I settle in bed to read, it’s time for two things: diary, and a simple three-card spread. Lately the cards have been very, very good, no matter how many times I shuffle.
I suppose I’m feeling cautiously hopeful.
I often think about doing a short, no-bullshit tarot guide, to go with the witchcraft guide people tell me I should write. Maybe someday, in all my copious spare time…
This morning, eating breakfast, I looked at the table, and had the exotic experience of three different words for such a thing–French, Latin, and Spanish–fighting briefly for primacy, while I wondered what the Korean word was and, for the life of me, could not remember the English word for this wooden thing right in front of me. (Even though the French word is spelled the same way, the pronunciation is different, so it might as well be a Whole New Word. Gah.)
I think it’s time to take a day off from language learning, don’t you? I’m slowly going through a couple “learn Hangul” apps; it seems a little easier than Cyrillic. Maybe my brain just isn’t cut out for Russian, who knows? Either way, I’m going to rest a bit, before I start trying to figure out how to say “table” in music, too.
Speaking of music…taking a rest from piano now means that my sight-reading has improved, for some reason. I made it all the way through Scarborough Fair in Dm last night, without needing to annotate. Of course, I’m sure that once I go back to Bach I’ll have to scrawl all over the page like a mofo, but it was nice to have my hands do just what they needed to while at the ivories, for once.
Periodic rest sessions are needed for mental strengthening as well as physical. You’ve got to give the poor overworked neurons time to repair themselves.
I do rather miss my morning Caesar session, though. There’s a certain grim humor to realizing people don’t change much, even over hundreds, thousands of years. I mean, we adapt, but you can still find the same follies in Sumeria, in Rome, and in New York. And, like a certain Miss Bennet, follies delight me, even my own.
So, today is for wordcount, for following up with a couple publishers, and for an easy run, probably with Miss B. She’ll be unlivable if I leave her home, after all. She doesn’t seem to understand that she’s aging, and is honestly baffled when her body won’t obey her puppylike need to jump. It’s a temporal conspiracy, she feels, and looks to me to solve it.
Gods grant me the strength to be the person my dogs think I am. Blessed be.
I used to go out at night and take pictures of gas meters. Sadly, I’m out of the habit now, but I find myself noticing fireplugs these days. Sturdy little morning papers for the dogs, waiting patiently in all weather, quietly holding a force that can save homes.
Every time I see one, I feel like the world might be an all right place after all. And of course, Miss B loves every single one she meets.