an interlude for december

The times when I've had the thought 'oh, I need to write my December prelude' did not coincide with the times when I felt like I had the time to sit down and write it, and the days seem to pass so quickly these days. Sometimes I wonder if that really is just a product of getting older. I remember, as a kid, how the time between December 1st and Christmas felt impossibly long, how having one or two weeks off for winter break felt like an age, how the duration of a summer break felt like eternity. Now? Summer feels like yesterday, Christmas seems imminent, and I'm already wondering what the plan is for New Year's.

Winter has arrived. We had a weeklong stretch where it seemed like every day was threatening snow, and where I am, at least, it mostly failed to deliver, except for one evening. I had gone out to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen since prior to the pandemic, and all the while we were hanging out I kept glancing out the window and wondering why the sky seemed so light so late at night. As it turns out, the city was coated in a thin blanket of wet snow. Everything was still and quiet and beautiful, and I knew with a certainty that it would all be gone by the morning.

Fall is the season of the ephemeral, but winter holds its fleeting moments as well; fresh-fallen snow does not remain fresh for long. And I've been thinking of those ephemeral moments a lot recently as I've been spending more time than is probably reasonable playing Splatoon 3. Unlike most online multiplayer games, the Splatoon series does not feature any form of in-game chat, so if you choose to join a team with random players, you have very limited means of communicating with them, and no way to rejoin them if you are separated. Every now and then you are paired with a team that you really enjoy, whether because you play well together or simply because you have just shared some memorable moments with them. And then they are gone.

It's sad, of course, but there's something beautiful there as well. You are joining a team with people you will likely never meet outside of this context, and working together with them, and then going your separate ways. Some you will remember, some you will forget, but a community is built of so much more than the people you will see again.

The year is winding down. I will try to post my media list at some point, and I will of course do my usual year in review and New Year's meditation, and then . . . well, we'll see. I have something resembling a plan, but I've always been hesitant to voice plans out loud.

a prelude for november

What a strange October that was. Warm and sunny and smoky; so many people said it was like summer never ended, but that's not quite right, and I can't even decide if it's fair. Is summer the season of smoke, or is that something else, something outside of our concept of the seasons? It always feels so apocalyptic every time it happens, and this year it really took it out of me. I don't want to say that's entirely why I didn't follow through on my writing plans (bad sleep schedule and being busy with other things contributed to that as well), but it certainly made it hard for me to do anything.

But it's November now, and the cold and the rain and the wind have finally come, scouring the leaves from the trees as all the colors begin to fade--and they were brilliant, a relic of our extended sunshine--and the holiday blitz draws ever nearer, which means the year, too, is drawing to an end. It's far too early for a year-end retrospective, but . . . well, time certainly is strange, isn't it?

I was thinking earlier of the time when I was young, playing tee-ball at some event or other in kindergarten. The coach suggested that we imagine the ball as the head of our teacher--obviously this was not a school event--and I was appalled--I liked my teacher and the idea of hitting someone with a baseball bat felt wrong in a way I don't think I could have articulated.

I'm not sure I could tell you what prompted this memory, but it's one of those early childhood memories that's always lingered with me, and I'm not sure I've ever talked about it. Sometimes we look back on our past selves and wonder who we even were, but sometimes the strange mirror that is our past shows us someone we recognize. Of course that kid grew up into someone who feels a lingering sense of guilt when they learn they have accidentally killed a spider.

All of which to say: November has come; the cold and the dark are settling in; and as much as I complain about the holiday blitz, I certainly understand the impulse to seek some refuge from the long grey winter.

friendship

Our friendship developed slowly over our career in the academy; I think we'd known each other for a year before we even had a conversation where it was just the two of us. (She even commented, I think, with a rare wryness to her tone, "Have we really known each other for so long and we've never been alone in the same room together?") It wasn't that we didn't like each other, but the opportunity never arose for more than an odd conversation here and there. She was comforting, a little oasis of stability amidst the mercurial moods of the rest of us, and I came to treasure those moments we spent together.

I think she's the reason I was able to start seeing the cracks between us, the way everyone leaned on her for support, the way she would always offer that warm smile, and listen, and offer advice or consolation as we needed it. And when one day we were alone--we had taken to practicing fencing together--and I finally asked if she was all right, she finally told me no.

She'd gotten too close to the chaos that was the rest of us, I think. She'd become entangled. All she could tell me is she was overwhelmed, that she felt pulled in so many different directions, that she was exhausted--I don't think she understood yet that what she needed most was to leave. So I did what any friend would do, and I planted those seeds, and tended those little shoots of doubt, so that one day she could finally be free of us.

longing

We have learned enough ways to love.

It should have been easy, walking away. We'd spent so much time so close to each other that we'd get pricked by each other's thorns, which, if we weren't careful, would catch and tear and draw blood--and that had been going on for more years than I could count. We gave each other such exquisite scars, and in our lowest moments we knew better than anyone how to comfort each other--there is no greater intimacy than seeing someone who is gravely wounded.

So, full of righteous fury, I left. And though I will tell you until my dying day that I was right to do so, I also began to feel, when the sun had set and I had no company but my thoughts and the cold and the snow, an intense emptiness. Because it wasn't all barbs and thorns, was it? Didn't we sharpen each other, make each other stronger? And I imagined just what she would say, to comfort, to injure--in the end I'm not sure either of us could have even told the difference.

I could have put so many miles between us. Instead I lingered just out of her reach--which, yes, was dwindling by the day--and reveled as rumor of each new setback reached my ears, and longed to be at her side to say the words that would heal her each time I learned that someone else had finally deserted her. And no matter what happened, whether I found solace in the company of some fellow deserter or spent my days alone, I felt just as alone as I know she must have.

It would have overwhelmed me eventually. I pictured that moment so vividly I sometimes thought it was real: the smug look on her face as she mocked me for crawling back, the exact cutting words I would say in return. And, much later, her head on my shoulder as we whispered comforting lies to each other, as though being so close could end in anything but disaster.

Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different if I'd been strong enough to leave, or strong enough to stay.

a prelude for october

I don't think I can recall an October that has started out this warm and this dry. There have been sunny Octobers, of course, but we are now in the darker half of the year, where the sun is weakening and the days getting shorter, and the idea of an October day that threatens to hit eighty degrees is almost absurd. Yet here we are. The leaves are turning and for the most part the nights are getting chilly, but there is still no rain in sight and there is still smoke and sun and warmth to be had. It's uncanny.

The leaves are starting to turn in earnest now; it was a strange summer, and I wonder how that will affect them. Warmer summers tend to lead to more vibrant colors, if memory serves; so what does an odd summer like this one, which started out cool and then just never quite ended, mean?

It's so tempting to try to read patterns and meaning into the weather. We want to be able to see the stripes on a caterpillar and know whether the winter will be mild; we want to feel in tune with the seasons, as if they are something we can ever really understand, as if we can divine some deeper truth when October is too warm or when the snow never stops falling one winter.

The past several Octobers (with the exception of October of 2020) I've tried to write something every day, or most days, based on some one-word prompts. I will endeavor to do so again this year, so, as the kids say, watch this space.

of mist and sunlight

A thought I had today.

 I keep having this dream that you find your way home. It's foolish, I know--wherever you are, it must be better than here, this mist-choked waste that was once the heartland of an empire where we all lived complacent in the pleasant delusion that this was what the world should be. And even if you wanted to return, how could you navigate this cloying veil that stretches on forever?

In the dream, your face no longer mirrors mine, as it once did. You have grown thinner, the lines of your face have become sharper and more gaunt, and the countless roads you've walked under the desert sun have darkened your skin and bleached your hair. You carry scars whose stories I do not know, and there are lines of care in your eyes I do not recognize. You stand differently, your smile is different, your clothes are unfamiliar. And I wonder, because I am so used to using you as a mirror, to seeing the world through your eyes, what I must look like. Have I grown pale in this sunless land? Have the lines of my face softened? Has the smile I once spent so long practicing changed, become something strange and haunted?

I have haunted these mists for too long, now. The city where we once lived is gone, drowned in the ocean, and a fog rolled in from that cursed place and smothered the land, and with it smothered the dreams of . . . is it everyone? I have tried to find the edges but everywhere I go the mist stretches on forever. And around us everything begins a slow slide into decay, as this strange twilight in which we all find ourselves trapped erodes our will to do anything but lie down and wait for the end. I wonder sometimes if I am alone in still having the drive to carry on, the hope that one day I will see the sun again. I wonder sometimes if I still have that drive at all.

It's the thought of finding you again that keeps that hope alive, even if I can't face you, even in dreams. I promised once that no matter what happened, I would be there to understand you, that you would never be completely alone in this world, but you stand before me in dreams, changed in a way which I may never understand. And I, coward that I am, cannot apologize, because then you would forgive me, and then my heart would finally break.

So instead I ask you about the sun. And you tell me about hot days in those desert highlands, about smoke and winds and unbearable heat, and for a moment I can close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sun and the scouring of the wind and imagine that there is still light in this world. So I continue, searching the mists, and, despite everything, allow myself to hope.

a prelude for september

A long, hot August has given way, reluctantly, to September. The endless sunlight is rapidly dwindling and even the warm days left lack the strength of high summer; there is no avoiding the twinfold threat and promise of Autumn. Oh, it's still warm, and people still dress for the summer, but now people consider bringing a jacket or an umbrella if they'll be out for a while. Now the rain won't feel unexpected when it comes.

I've been noticing more spiders out in the trees on my walk to work--there's something magical about seeing the same spiders building their webs in the same spots day after day, week after week. Fall is spider season, and it always makes me a little sad that so many people are afraid of them. They're such lovely, fascinating creatures.

I've also been imagining lately what the trees that line my street will look like when the colors change. There are so many of them, old, massive trees, making the street feel more like a park than a thoroughfare at times--and I say that as someone who lives in a city with trees everywhere. The promise of an avenue so thoroughly lined with brilliant leaves is a powerful one.

a prelude for august

August crept up on me this year, as evidenced by the fact that my legally mandated prelude for this month is almost a week late. It happens, I suppose. Increasingly as the years go by I perceive time in almosts. As in, August is almost September; in that respect, August, the month is so clearly in Summer's domain, is really just almost fall.

I used to dislike August, due mostly to a series of Augusts where bad things happened. That sentiment has long since faded. Now it's the month where I celebrate my sister's birthday, the month where the long days of summer begin to dwindle even if the heat lingers, the month which, to me, really typifies the best of summer. Which is to say: yes, the heat is unpleasant; but there is a magic to spending August nights on the porch watching the sun set.

Still, it rained this week. For a brief moment there was wind and rain and I went outside and felt the promise of autumn in the air so sharply I could almost see the leaves on the trees as they would be in a few months' time, all bright and vibrant, dancing in the streets. And perhaps that's why I've come to forgive August for its slights against my younger self: what is August but the promise of autumn? We are almost there. And that first crisp autumn morning is nothing without the heat of summer before it.

a prelude for july

Traditionally July is about the time that Summer finishes her morning coffee and gets going in earnest; the clouds part and the occasional summer rains vanish and for several months she is the unquestioned queen of the region. This year . . . it's hard to say whether it will be a return to form, but the extended forecast certainly suggests it will take a bit longer than usual to get there. I can only hope that this will indeed dampen the threat of wildfires, which so often start around the fourth of July weekend.

Summer is an interesting time of year. I often wonder how much of our association of summer with vacations stems from the school year; or perhaps it's the reverse, that children get a summer break because summer is the time we go on holiday. But there's a poetry there, the endless days listing lazily in the summer sun, that period of time when doing nothing is the thing you want to be doing. Does our culture celebrate summer this way because of some intrinsic quality of the season, or do we think of the season this way because of our celebrations?

Some days I miss when I could enjoy a July 4th barbecue and fireworks show. It's hard to think of our dying empire now without regret, as its institutions bleed and die and those whose theoretical job it is to at least staunch the bleeding are too busy worrying what sort of precedent it would set to apply gauze to a gushing wound. But even before the death of our empire was so obvious, the excessive patriotism of it all, the callousness of fireworks to those who are sensitive to it (and to the environmental damage it causes) . . . it's hard to enjoy it, even if the individual trappings of a barbecue are something I will always find enjoyable.

There is an impulse, I think, to try to go back to the times when we could enjoy things without consciousness of their problems within the context of the world we live in. So much reactionary thought, especially online, is a fear that we will lose our innocence if we continue to learn. That it is better to watch the fireworks than to worry that somewhere nearby, someone with PTSD will be unable to enjoy their evening because of the sounds. That it is better to celebrate the concept of America than to contemplate what America is.

Still, here in Seattle, for many people, this is the official start of the summer, however listless she may be this year. And even if it is far from my favorite season I like to celebrate them all.

a prelude for june

Usually by the time June rolls around, Spring is clearly on its way out; the layer of clouds that creeps into Seattle and covers it until early July is seen as a lapse back into Winter's domain, and we give it epithets like "the June gloom" or "Juneuary." But this year what is more clouds other than more of the same? Winter is gone but Summer has been slow to stir.

Personally, I love these days: the clouds are not so featureless and dull as winter's clouds, but paint the sky in chaotic patterns of greys; the cool air in the morning is bracing and even the warmth of the day isn't oppressive; and the sun, though still present, is not blinding or oppressive as it so often can be. But while it's hard to deny that Spring is here, it doesn't feel like spring usually does. An odd time.

When last I wrote something here, I was still in the old apartment, dealing with the violent, abusive roommate who slashed our tires on our way out. I felt diminished in that place, not just because of the old roommate, but . . . it's hard to describe exactly what the fringes of the city feel like. Nobody is there because they want to be there. It's built into the infrastructure: the streets are too wide, designed to funnel cars . . . elsewhere. And while the posted speed limits, like most places in the city, are something like 25mph, no one drives slower than 40. There's no heart to it. Even the nice places, the little hole-in-the wall teriyaki joints and the neighborhood dives, are havens against a hostile neighborhood, oases that make this vast desert of unlivability feel tolerable. Infrastructure wonks will holler at you about how walkability and bikeability and good transit are vital to a city, and they aren't just saying that because they want to be able to walk and bike and bus everywhere. They make the neighborhoods feel alive, like neighborhoods. I feel revitalized in a way I didn't think was possible.

So, despite everything, I'm hopeful. Hope, I was reminded recently, is not simply the belief that things will work out for the best, but the belief that it's possible, if we work towards it.

an excerpt from ada palmer's "perhaps the stars"

One of my favorite recent book series from the past few years is Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, which begins with Too Like the Lightning and concludes with Perhaps the Stars. Though this excerpt is from the final novel, it contains no plot spoilers.

For context: in the imagined future world of the series, Terra the Moon Baby was the first child born on the moon, a historical figure who died from health complications due to the circumstances of her birth. Terra Ignota means "unknown lands", and was Latin text that was sometimes inscribed at the edge of maps.

The old United States of America remind me very much of Terra the Moon Baby. Both were crisis births, sudden necessities when too much damage made healing and homecoming impossible. Each era’s genius rose to the occasion, marshalling our newest guesses, how best to nurture human possibility amid such strange new problems. Old wisdom said of each that she would not live long, this birth unplanned, wracked in the womb by strange forces, so, as she survived, each month, each year became hope’s small defiance: Look, I stand on my own, and walk, and speak, and feed myself, and now the friends I leaned on in my frailty lean on me as I grow into my strength! As all Earth watched and listened, each fresh act of the toddler helped us plan our own sojourns beyond the old walls of the known and possible. And even in her later years, as one by one her organs failed her—judiciary, liver, senate, heart, all patched together in her infancy by scholar-surgeons who could only guess how this unprecedented body would develop under Earth’s long battering—as one by one these failed her, still we learned so much, so much from how they failed her as, smiling between her pains, this hope-child gifted us the infinite treasure of understanding what broke down. What killed her. That understanding which is bedrock now of how we don’t break down as we dare venture farther, out past monarchy, past Moon, these vast terrae ignotae on whose thresholds it was so hard to be firstborn.

This paragraph hit hard the first time I read it, and hits harder today, as the organs of the United States continue their path towards failure. There's a hopefulness there, that the world can learn something from the fall of the American empire, that, for all its failings, there is still some beauty to be found, if not in America itself, than in what it tried to be.

I've discussed here how I have been reading about the Enlightenment recently, in part because I was trying to understand better where America came from. And while I think it was flawed from its inception, I am coming to better appreciate that when America was founded, there was cause for the European intellectuals who dreamed of Enlightenment--of freedom from the church, from censorship, from a world governed by arbitrary whim rather than by scientific study and reason--to be hopeful when America won its independence. And I have to hope that we can learn, as we see this country falter, how to do better in the future.

None of which is to say that this is good. Fundamentalist Christians seizing power and launching their blitz on the rights of everyone who is not them, starting with criminalizing trans people and banning abortion but by no means stopping there, is a terrifying reality and showcases the depths to which humanity can sink when it allows itself to be governed by hate and fear. I hope for a better world; that does not mean I think this one is good, nor that I think a better world is inevitable. But I do think that a better world is possible if we work for it, and that when America falls, it will be possible to learn.

a prelude for may

I've always liked May. In years like this one, when the Spring is cold and Winter's tyranny is slow to fade, it is the month when we stagger blinking into the light, some part of us not quite willing to believe that it's really over, that Winter's grasp has really fallen slack. And then, when we finally realize that it's real, that it's here, we can finally celebrate. Such celebrations are always short-lived, of course: Summer is just around the corner, and she comes with the threat of heat and smoke, but for now, at least, the air is warm and vibrant and everything is flowers.

It's appropriate that May is the month when I am leaving this dreary apartment in the northern outskirts of the city and moving into a more vibrant neighborhood with people I like a whole lot better, and even more appropriate that our search for new housing seemed like it might be fruitless prior to this latest windfall. Sometimes the whims of the weather and seasons form an appropriate macrocosm to the microcosms of our lives; sometimes we can pretend there is some order to the universe.

I've been taking the train to and from work for almost two years now; yesterday I instead rode my bike home, to see what the new commute would be like. It was the perfect day, not too warm, not too bright, but warm enough and bright enough, with a sky full of shifting spring clouds, and afterwards I felt so much better than I had in a long time. Sometimes something as small as taking a bike ride for a few miles can make the whole world seem different.

And that, I think, is why I like Spring and her cousin Autumn so much: they are fleeting and ephemeral and still leave the whole world transformed.

a prelude for april

Spring has arrived limping into the month of April; there is still a chill in the air but it is definitely a spring chill, and if the days are often grey and blustery, it is spring rain and spring wind that makes them so. There are blossoms on the trees, and with the wind the streets and sidewalks are lined with a carpet of fallen petals.

I've been thinking a lot recently about Seattle's relationship with nature. This is a city of trees: even far from the heart of the city, places which in most urban areas would be an endless blight of concrete, there are trees, older and wilder than the ones downtown. And even downtown, where constant foot traffic requires some thought to be given to walkability, the trees and their roots tear up sidewalks, a constant reminder that we exist at the sufferance of Nature and that she could destroy us at her whim. That urban trees are often scarred creatures only makes that reminder all the more stark: these trees have endured the worst that we can throw at them and they will continue to endure. Oh, we can destroy them with axes--so many trees have fallen to sate capitalism's endless need for growth--but they outnumber us. They will outlast us. And can you imagine how beautiful this city will be when humans have gone?

The fantasy series I've been working on, some of the stories of which have appeared on here over the past few years, takes place in a city that I've always imagined as something like Seattle. It is a city on a coast, a trade hub, a city that imagines itself to be at the heart of its own particular idea of progress; it is a city which is glorious and filled with nature and a city which is being consumed by roots and vines. It is spectacular, it is a tragedy waiting to happen. I also realized recently that there is an old story that mine parallels: that of the tower of Babel. It was never a conscious parallel, but it was always a story about a tower that pierces the heavens; it is a tower that granted mankind unprecedented mastery over their world, and a tower that was always destined to fall.

Sometimes I worry that I'm too close to the events I am trying to portray. I stopped with my science fiction stories because the future always seems like it will be even worse than I imagine; and my fantasy story is a chronicle about the end of empires, and some days it seems likely that our own empire will fall before I finish that one.

But the weather is changing. The days are getting longer. And for now, at least, we can be glad to count Spring among our allies.

a prelude for march

I remember as a child at school, the calendar for March was decorated with a lion on one day, a lamb on the next, a cute and literal reference to the old saying that it comes in like one creature and out like another. March is the month when the promise of spring is fulfilled, and when we find out whether the bargain we struck with nature this year was Faustian or not--the saying is not strictly accurate, but it gets at the deeper truth that spring is chaos. Spring is the time when old man Winter's endless battle with Summer resumes: she is still weak and sluggish from her long imprisonment but his strength is waning. And what a terrible thing it can be when powers at their lowest lash out at one another.

This month was a month of bad news and near misses, and I've been mostly avoiding delving into it in an effort to spare my mental health, but if this is to be a faithful chronicle I would be negligent if I didn't at least mention the anti-vax rioters in Canada who have been laying siege to the country, shutting down the borders and occupying the capital; Texas's all-out assault on the lives of LGBT people, specifically trans people; Russia's invasion of Ukraine, giving the sabers of Western politicians some opportunities to be rattled and breeding new life into fearmongering, disinformation, and grifts; and American politicians' decision to lift protections such as mask and vaccine mandates despite every non-compromised health organization in the world begging them not to. But I'm too tired to follow these things as closely as once I would have.

I almost wrote "as closely as I should" there, and I had to stop myself. It is important to take care of yourself; it's been, what, six or seven years of nonstop bad news? We are not built for this much stress. I've known multiple people who have had to take time off work because the stress was so bad it began to affect their physical health. And we hear empty platitudes from our leaders about "these trying times" and we have to watch humans at their worst. It's hard.

I like to think of spring as a month of respite, a reprieve from the cold of winter before we are subjected once again to the heat of summer. Soon the flowers will be in bloom and the city will come alive, and even with everything will still be beautiful. No lingering chill nor gathering storm can ever take that beauty away from us.

a prelude for february

Janus, the god of gateways and transitions, has yielded his grip on the new year, leaving us once again in February, winter's last, best hope. This year, the start of our second month coincides with the start of the Lunar New Year, whose celebrations will usher us into the year of the Tiger. It's my hope that this will offer us a better part than did the god of beginnings and endings; his month was a rough one, by all accounts, but the thing I love about humans is there is always something to celebrate, some reason to wake up and decide that this is a strong day, a hopeful day.

Old man Winter's grip seems, tentatively, to be loosening, but even the last of his strength can be potent enough to bring a city low. I'm never prepared to declare budding Spring the victor in their yearly battle until tempestuous March rolls around, bringing with it its strange storms and sudden surges of vivid life. And so we wait.

Having an end in sight, of course, is dangerous. I remember my father, by nature a teacher and a storyteller if never quite a wordsmith, would caution against what he called "get home-itis" on long journeys. Those last few miles, or minutes, or hours, when the end of the road was finally in sight, are some of the most dangerous, as we let our caution lapse and allow the hope of rest to deceive us into thinking that we are safe now. So it is with February, I think. A warm sunny day, a refreshing breeze, a glimpse of flowers, and maybe we let our guards down, and then that cool breeze becomes a bitter wind, the brightness of the sun becomes a mockery of warmth. And, once again, we are reminded why it is that time is measured in winters.

But our hopes need not be heedless; we can instead allow those last miles before home steel our resolve to return home safely. The end is near, so let us raise our guard one last time--soon we will be able to lay down our burdens and rest. Let us not push on heedless of the danger, or overtax ourselves with eagerness, but march onwards with care and with purpose. The end is near--let's make sure we get there in one piece.

I think a lot, these days, about the twin tyrants Time and Distance, how, when I was young, I would happily drive hundreds of miles on a whim, no planning, no foresight. Those hours and miles meant so little to me then. I am beginning to see now just how precious time is. That's why I honor Janus every month with these little meditations on time and transitions. I have to believe that words can preserve this most sacred of treasures.

a prelude for 2022

So, here we are, not quite a week into the new year. The snow is gone, the rain is back, and by now I think everyone has settled back into their routine after the holidays, more or less. It is time at last for some concrete hopes for this year. (I will here refrain from writing about the continued onslaught of bad news, just for today. I'm so tired.)

I want to write more. That's always a given. And I still want to create a place where I can put all of my writing, to finally retire this old place, to let Dreamers Often lie, as it were. Or at least to return it to its old purpose, of housing the little fractured vignettes and melodramatic microfictions of old. I talked about this last year and didn't get around to it.

Over the years I've had . . . several places for my writing. I had this place, which I've described; I had a domain name which I've since let lapse, which was for nonfiction and sometimes poetry; I had a tumblr, which I mostly used for poetry and other miscellaneous things; I had a Medium account, for nonfiction essays; I even used to post short fiction at fictionpress.com or .net or whatever it was, before I used to just shove them in Google docs and throw links around. (I think I still had the publication mindset: maybe I'll want to sell this, maybe some magazine will accept it. And having been on the "accepting stories" side of things, I really never ever want to put up with that.) All disparate places, for disparate fragments of my works and my self. All of that makes updating anything regularly difficult, and presumably makes it hard for anyone who wishes to to follow it.

So this place has been limping along, my oldest extant blog, doing the work of all those places, but still trying to hold onto that old identity. I want to put it all under the name of Vaudeville Ghosts, which . . . I don't know, it fits, I like the name, and those old stories deserve a place to live, too. (Like many early works, they're probably a bit problematic in retrospect, but I'd be lying if I said I don't still think they are some of my finest works.)

But mostly, even if I don't get around to that, I want to put out another short story or two. And finish working on some of the various other projects I have going on, or at least get enough of them together that I feel okay sharing it publicly. Maybe that sort of notetaking/worldbuilding scratchpad will be interesting to someone? Who knows.

I hope 2022 is treating you all well.

seas between us

There's been snow on the ground for just shy of a week now, and they tell me there may be more when Monday rolls around. This city isn't equipped for it, its department of transportation doesn't know how to handle it, and the forecasts are always so marginal that it's hard to ever really get it right, and so no matter how much there is it always seems the answer is the same: the city just sort of shuts down. So we will have a white New Year, I guess.

Even in the deepest, coldest parts of winter, when just stepping outside for a few minutes feels treacherous (all that snow becomes ice after a while, especially once the temperature has gotten above freezing for a day or two), though, some part of me always hopes it just lasts forever. The stark beauty of a world covered in snow contrasted with the ugliness of slush, the exhaustion, the dry skin, a city brought to its knees by the power of nature: how can you not, in that deep part of yourself, love it? Huddling under blankets with hot tea, manufacturing our own warmth since the sun has abandoned us: is that not beautiful?

It feels right, somehow, to have a wintry New Year's celebration. It should be cold: it is a celebration of the fact that spring is coming, a promise that from this point on everything gets brighter. We've left the religious festivals behind, now, and from now for the rest of winter we're on our own, with only our promises and our friends and our loved ones to keep us company.

It's been a long year; at this point they all are. It's been bitter and lonely for a lot of us, exhausting for all of us; as our institutions fail us one by one (or make their failures more manifest than ever), it's important to remember that the point of the New Year, of hoping that this year will be better than the last, has never been about hoping that the hand of providence or chance or cruel fortune deals us a better hand, but about cultivating our garden: I promise you, there is something beautiful near you that is worth celebrating and nurturing and holding onto.

And while the seas between us seem vaster than they ever have been, and while the internet seems most days to be best at destroying and obfuscating, remember that it has on some level helped us conquer the tyranny of distance. You have the power to reach across continents and speak to someone who is important to you or who has touched you in some way, right now.

So happy 2022, friends. I hope we all do what we can to make this one amazing.

2021 media list

Greetings, friends and enemies! 2021 is drawing to a close and this year I forced myself to attempt brevity here. This is everything I watched, read, or played this year (except for the things I forgot about, and board games, which I didn't start documenting until late in the year and incomplete lists annoy me; it also does not include things which I started and didn't finish, which in retrospect feels like an oversight). Asterisks indicate something that I am revisiting; bold/italics indicate a stand-out entry/something I would actively recommend.

FILMS, TV SHOWS, AND OTHER MOVING IMAGES

I liked most of the things I watched this year. Even the things I didn't put in bold were usually at least enjoyable; but a full list of bold text wouldn't be very helpful to anyone. I have a lot of thoughts about most of these; feel free to ask if you'd like me to delve.

RAN (1985)* - Kurosawa in color! A very bleak adaptation of King Lear; dark but beautiful.

WOLFWALKERS - Another beautiful animation from the studio that brought us The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea; very worth watching even though it's only available on Apple TV, which is a deeply unpleasant service to use.

SKELETONS* - A British dark comedy and one of my favorite films; hard to describe briefly but so worth picking up.

ENOLA HOLMES - A Netflix adaptation of a YA series, this movie tries a bit too hard; it's a solid effort but a lot of its aspects fell flat.

HILDA - A fantasy animated series about a young girl with a knack for finding trouble and magical creatures; strong themes of accepting and celebrating differences with light anticolonial undertones, but overall the tone is quite light.

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? - Technically brilliant for its time but almost none of this movie held up; it wasn't bad but I kept feeling like I was missing something.

PRINCESS MONONOKE* - A beautiful and dark animated film about nature and industry; it's iconic for a reason.

THE GOOD PLACE - A sitcom about ethics and moral philosophy that somehow became popular, this show does a lot of things well; it has a good heart and a strong cast of characters and it works well as an introductory survey course on ethics and moral philosophy.

STEVEN UNIVERSE* - A Cartoon Network show about love, friendship, and redemption which started as your garden variety monster of the week story; this show goes places and has a lot to say. One of my favorites.

STEVEN UNIVERSE: THE MOVIE* - Mostly self-contained but you'll need to watch the show to make any sense of it; it kind of occupies its own space but it's quite good in its own right.

STEVEN UNIVERSE FUTURE* - The epilogue to Steven Universe goes hard into trauma; it's hard to watch but such an important sendoff to the series.

HAMILTON - A bit too neoliberal to my tastes but it's well-crafted and well-structured and it's a more human and less propagandistic take on the Founding Fathers (tm) than you'll get in most American high school history classes.

PERFECT BLUE - (Very big content warning for violence and sexual assault) Satoshi Kon's debut film, this is a story about fame and identity and loss of self; some beautiful scenes and edits which really capture dissociation. Disturbing and thought provoking.

SEVEN SAMURAI* - One of Kurosawa's classics, a story about seven samurai defending a village of farmers from a bandit invasion. A very human story, it's a long one and probably a bit slow for modern tastes but it's so beautifully done.

BO BURNHAM'S INSIDE - A cultural artifact portraying one man's mental state during the extended lockdown of COVID-19, this comedy special is fascinating but definitely at its worst when it's trying to be a comedy special. 

MONSTER HUNTER: LEGENDS OF THE GUILD - Too short to be well-paced, this is still a fun animation for fans of the Monster Hunter series; I would absolutely keep watching these if they made more movies like this.

POKEMON ORIGINS, GENERATIONS, TWILIGHT WINGS, AND EVOLUTIONS - Animated shorts based on the games rather than the anime, these are interesting if you're into Pokemon; Twilight Wings is the best of these as it's doing something new rather than just revisiting moments from the games but given that they are all extremely short and free, they're worth the price of admission.

THE WITCHER: NIGHTMARE OF THE WOLF - An animated story about Gerald Witchman's mentor, it's a solid dark fantasy film; it's a little obvious in points but the fight scenes really showcase why animation is a great medium for fantasy action, and it has the right amount of gravity for a dark fantasy story. Solid.

MOANA* - It's a Disney movie; there are big heroic songs that get stuck in your head. I don't think I need to pitch this to you.

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS - Another Satoshi Kon film, this one is about the interplay of story and memory. It's sweet and well-paced and hard to describe in a way which does it justice, but this is probably the standout of the films I've watched this year.

THE OWL HOUSE - Portal fantasy done right, this series couples fascinating worldbuilding with fun characters and fantasy hijinx; really looking forward to more of this one.

STAR WARS VISIONS - If you ever asked yourself "What if Star Wars was an anime?", have I got the series for you.

POKEMON BLACK AND WHITE - I enjoyed this more than I thought I would; the formula still works. I think you probably already know if watching the Pokemon anime is for you.

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS - A very fun movie, very different from the original Matrix trilogy; very meta and also I think specifically designed to annoy the angry twitter randos who are currently very mad at it.

READING MATERIAL (IT WAS JUST BOOKS LAST YEAR BUT ALSO THERE ARE COMICS HERE NOW)

I mostly read while commuting to work, so I go through books more slowly than I'd like. There's less bold here because my threshold for recommending books is a lot higher than it is for films and games, because of the time investment; maybe that's not fair, but then, what is?

BAD MACHINERY*, GIANT DAYS*, WICKED THINGS*, SCARY-GO-ROUND* - John Allison's . . . do we call it the Bobbinsverse? I love his work and it's been influential on my style as a writer. Character-driven comedy.

SILK & STEEL - A short fiction anthology about princesses and sword lesbians; if that sounds like it would appeal to you, you should probably pick it up.

WE ARE BECOME PALS - A Joey Comeau book about two best friends getting into trouble. Fun and whimsical.

SEVEN DEVILS - A sci-fi adventure, the first half of a duology the second half of which is due out soon; has a cliffhanger ending which left me feeling a bit left in the lurch but it's a solid read.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR ROSEWATER* - One of Vonnegut's books that stuck with me from forever ago, about a billionaire heir who tries to use his fortune to help people. Didn't stick with me on the reread as much as it did the first time but still worth a read.

MONSTROUS REGIMENT* - A Discworld story about how blind tradition holds us back, featuring some great characters.

GOING POSTAL* - The start of one of my favorite Discworld series about a con man forced to turn straight by running, in this instance, the post office. 

THE TIFFANY ACHING SERIES* - Discworld's YA series; I like the main series better but this does solid work.

LAFAYETTE IN THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES* - Pop history about American Revolutionary hero Lafayette, this is a fun look at a character we don't hear much about these days

REAPER MAN* - One of the earliest of Discworld's Death novels and the one where he learns the most about being human; still enjoyable but Pratchett's later work is stronger. I think this is the one that introduces the Auditors.

THIEF OF TIME* - One of the first Discworld books I read, this one will always have a special place in my heart; Susan is always a fun character.

THE INSPECTION HOUSE: AN IMPERTINENT FIELD GUIDE TO MODERN SURVEILLANCE* - A short read looking at surveillance through the lens of the philosophy of Michel Foucault and Enlightenment writer Jeremy Bentham, this is educational, quick, and very readable. Highly recommend.

THE TERRA IGNOTA SERIES - This is unquestionably my standout read of the year; science fiction with a philosophical and historical bent, raising a lot of interesting questions and imagining a future society which feels both novel and believable, neither a utopia nor a dystopia. Also features a narrator who is both very unreliable and extremely present, which I love.

VIDEOED GAMES

Not nearly as many indie games on here as I'd have liked; hopefully next year will be different.

POKEMON: LET'S GO EEVEE - Aimed at people who haven't played Pokemon since Gen 1 but maybe did play Pokemon Go, these games are an interesting entry in the series; they remove some depth that I like but they are still pretty fun, especially if you're in the audience I described.

POKEMON SWORD* - Despite being flawed in many ways and clearly a bit rushed, I really like Sword; it has a lot of things to like about it and brought some innovations that I hope stick around.

SPLATOON 2* - I love this game; the single-player campaign is a solid 3D action platformer, and the multiplayer modes are a lot of fun. It's a tactical team-based shooter in a really fun new(ish) IP from Nintendo.

SPLATOON 2's OCTO EXPANSION* - If you liked the single-player campaign of Splatoon, may I suggest a longer, harder, more innovative version of that?

PERSONA 5 STRIKERS - I was expecting this to be your usual "disengage brain, stab hoards of monsters" Dynasty Warriors adaptation; instead it was a worthy sequel to Persona 5, with some surprising depth to the combat (but more grinding than I would have liked). A surprise hit for me.

THE ACE ATTORNEY TRILOGY - Puzzle/mystery games with a fun cast of larger-than-life characters, the mysteries are compelling enough to make solving them feel worthwhile and the clues are placed and paced well enough that getting stuck isn't a problem. A few problematic characters but overall a really fun experience.

MONSTER HUNTER RISE - The best feeling entry in the Monster Hunter series, with smooth combat and great movement; it's telling that the most common fan complaint is that there isn't more of this one. Highly recommend.

APOLLO JUSTICE: ACE ATTORNEY - An attempt to reboot slash continue the Ace Attorney series with a new, more boring protagonist. This has some unique ideas and the non-Apollo characters are still pretty fun.

ACE ATTORNEY: DUAL DESTINIES - A refinement of the Ace Attorney formula, with more focus on the trials and less on the investigations, which both helps and hinders this one. If you've enjoyed the previous Aces Attorney you'll probably enjoy this one, but you probably knew that already.

MONSTER HUNTER STORIES 2: WINGS OF RUIN - Monster Hunter's entry into the critter collector JRPG genre, this game is a hidden gem, with a lot of fresh ideas, some fun characters, and some great refinements of the first game. Plus you don't need to play the first game to appreciate this one. Everyone wins!

POKEMON UNITE - A surprisingly fun MOBA with a deeply predatory freemium interface that ultimately turned me off it; I consider picking it up again every now and then but that interface was extremely hostile.

THE GREAT ACE ATTORNEY 1 - Kind of a prequel to Ace Attorney, this one is more grounded in history and darker in tone; it has some great moments and some really badly paced cases, but it's a worthy entry to the series.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SKYWARD SWORD HD - Some of the best dungeon design in the Zelda series meets a shockingly linear overworld; the HD remake removes many of the common complaints about the original game but, while it does improve the controls, doesn't manage to make them feel actually good. A flawed masterpiece and one of the strongest narrative entries in the series.

METROID DREAD - A great action-platformer disguised as a Metroidvania, movement in this feels amazing and the combat is tough but fair. The game often feels like it's on rails, but there's good reason this game won awards.

POKEMON SHINING PEARL - Solid remakes of the gen 4 Pokemon games, which I haven't played; it does some things I don't like and some things I really appreciate. I think it may stick to close to the originals rather than modernizing the old formulas, but I still had fun with these.

POKEMON Y* - I've probably replayed X and Y more than any other Pokemon games; invariably if I get on a big Pokemon kick I end up running through them again. They are easily my favorites in the series and I think they are vastly underappreciated.

INERTIAL DRIFT* - A cool retro-futuristic arcade racer with a unique two-stick drift mechanic (one stick controls the front, the other controls the back), this one is a constant go-to, and grinding out better times is extremely satisfying. Some of the cars have a bit of a learning curve. The Switch version is extremely crashy but other versions, I am told, run fine.

a prelude for december

I've always wondered how common unusual weather is. Apparently the warm weather we're experiencing to welcome in December is approximately as unusual as the nightmare heat storm that afflicted our region this summer, and that certainly seems like a lot, but it's so hard to be able to tell if this particular historic event is historic because something unusual is happening or historic because if you roll the dice long enough you're bound to roll snake eyes.

All of which to say, it was warm today. Almost sixty degrees in December in Seattle, which . . . is pretty warm. It was a strange way to start the "winter", especially since we'd already had a fairly cool October and November; but we've also had a lot of strange winters lately, from last year's record-breaking snowstorm that lasted a single day, to the endless snow of a few years ago . . . it's just that this time it's nice. Somehow that's more unnerving for me.

The plague continues apace; winter means more cases, which is bad, and there's a new variant which seems to be evading the vaccine, which is bad, and also for some reason we're still holding Emerald City Comic-Con this weekend, which is buck wild, but they seldom consult me for these things, for some reason.

I suppose I should make a note of some more personal news, not really related to our ongoing boring apocalypse: my father is doing quite poorly. He was diagnosed with some form of dementia sometime around 2015 or 2016; it was a slow decline for a while, but in the past year or so he has both mentally and physically declined quite rapidly. Some part of me wonders if our boring apocalypse has played some role here, that a year or two of isolation and decreased activity has contributed to this acceleration, but there's no real way to tell.

It's hard to watch someone who used to be so sharp and so active lose so much.

a prelude for november

And so we bid a fond farewell to October, and welcome in November, ever the herald of winter and darkness--here in Seattle, it's a month of bleak rain, a month of storms, a month where all of autumn's bright colors begin to fade and we are left with the endless grey. It's hard to be fond of November, but winter has its place, I suppose.

I think I've mentioned that I've been more interested in reading history recently; this interest started with reading Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, which draws a lot of very deliberate inspiration from the Enlightenment, and my realization that I knew almost nothing about the Enlightenment, despite the fact that so many of America's foundational ideals come from there. And with everything that's happened over the past five or six years, I found myself drawn to that. We can learn a lot about who we are by studying where we came from.

Of course, if you study the Enlightenment, you quickly learn that they built on the works of authors like Locke and Hobbes who came before as well as on the works of the Renaissance and, of course, the classics; and then reading about the Renaissance is fascinating in its own right (starting with what is a revelation to many people who haven't studied it that it was actually kind of a shitty time to be alive, even slash especially in Italy, the place where it all happened), and . . . I have a lot I want to read.

I mention this because the story slash world I'm working on (and have been for years, yes) feels like it should take some notes from all of this history, all of these ideas that change society. Because what interests me most about history, apart from the wacky stories and things that sound straight up made up (Venice and Florence both have some really buck wild aspects about them that I really want to delve into), is how ideas shift and change.

Part of it is that I've been trying to build up this world's history, at least partly so I can have some wanderers from its future walk through its ruins and try to piece it together. I know those two characters well, even if I don't yet know what their story looks like. (That wasn't quite the original story; there was always a Princess who, in her hubris, drowns a city with a Spire, and the world falls apart with it. Exploring the ruins, though, has always fascinated me.)

There's still not much to be said about the ongoing pandemic, our boring apocalypse. There's a new vaccine mandate locally; and maybe the vaccine numbers will go up as a result; the daily cases have been very, very slowly trickling downwards. Downtown feels more or less back to normal now. I doubt that there will be anything interesting to report on this front for some time, though I suspect I'll get a cold at some point, which has transformed from an unfortunate occurrence to an exciting development.

So, time to pull our coats tight and march onward into winter. Winter seldom gives us much choice.