November, 2006

I’m like a genuine Missourian now. I had chili and pasta in the fridge and I willingly combined them and ate them together. Yes, I have ingested that abomination “chili mac”. (Huh, I just tried to link to the wikipedia entry on chili mac, and there isn’t one.) Maybe that’s a midwestern thing, not strictly a Missouri thing. They serve it in all the Steak ‘n’ Shakes and I know they have those outside Missouri. All I know is when I saw it for the first time I found it quite disturbing, alien, and wrong. Chili is rightfully served with chips or cornbread. To be fair, I had a cornbread muffin too. Also to be fair, the chili mac was pretty tasty.

I told someone Sergei was five last week and then repeated my exchange to Kurt who corrected me. He’s almost seven. He’s rightfully grey now, and getting much more sedate than he used to be. He’s also quite fond of his routine, and doesn’t like it if I change things around. He’s still scared of fireworks and thunderstorms.

My little handy dandy weekly forecast widget has pictures of snowflakes for Wednesday. You think?

I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have emails about comments that are really comments to the blog and not spam. Yay Kurt Block! Yay commenters! I’m sorry that you still get an error when you comment, by the way. I’ll be fixing that sometime soonish. In fact, I’m tending toward a revamp soonish, and it’s just my terrible design skills that are holding me back. At any rate, it seems we have “to ream” and “to juice” as alternate contenders for “to express”. I don’t like juice, because it’s all about what you gain, not what is lost to the poor lemon (or whatever fruit you happen to be juicing). And ream, hmmm, scary connotations there. It would be hard to use that metaphorically and have it suggest the right thing.

So do you like every day posting, even if it’s sometimes a bit sparse and trivial, like today?

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Not last night, the night before.

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We had three days of seventy degree weather this week and it was wonderful. Fallen crunchy leaves, skies that stark blue of autumn, trees still hanging onto swaths of red and yellow and yet, instead of that crispness in the air, strange warmth. Comfortable and kind. Then Saturday we had the threat of flurries, but they didn’t come. Kurt put in the storm windows. This morning we had frost covering the roof and the yard. Last week must have been summer’s last hurrah, and now it will turn cold in earnest. Both the previous Novembers that I have lived here it has snowed before Thanksgiving. The first time it was simultaneously magical and scary. I didn’t know that we wouldn’t be snowbound after that first snowfall. It melted and went away, of course, but I didn’t know when it fell that it would do that. This year I’m kind of looking forward to that first snow, and if it doesn’t happen before Thanksgiving I may be disappointed. However, I need boots before it snows. Which means buying them. I think I’ve procrastinated on that shopping chore long enough. I better get them this week or my feet are going to be cold. Also, all my toe socks have vanished since last year. Must have warm and cozy socks.

This morning I was sharing giggle time with my daughter. This is where she climbs into my bed and we just laugh together. She will say goofy stuff, eyes bright and fixed on mine, trying to make me laugh. When I do laugh, she joins me. Sometimes there’s tickling involved, sometimes just silly words. She’s working hard on the concept of jokes. She wants to make them up instead of recite them, but she tends toward the nonsensical and hasn’t quite grasped that it needs to make some sense, but be slightly off as well, as that’s what makes a joke funny. Anyway, we always end up laughing at either her statements or my jokes. I love these moments. They’re nothing special, nothing unusual, but neither are they daily occurrences. They’re just a part of how it is. I treasure these times, but I have no idea whether Sophia will even remember them.

When I think about that, about whether she’ll remember occasionally coming to my bed in the mornings and goofing around, laughing until we can’t anymore, I try to bring similar memories up for myself and I can’t. I’m not like Sophia; she has an uncanny memory, and my memory is poor. I cannot say for sure that I never played around like that with my mom or my dad. But I have no memories to suggest I did. I remember my brother sometimes tickling me until I thought I would pop while I screamed and laughed. But I don’t have any comparable memories of silly verbal or physical play with my parents. I can’t tell you whether this means nothing like that every happened, or whether this means I just forgot about it. In some sense I can’t even imagine a circumstance under which it might have happened, so my guess is that it never did. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they were already very middle-aged when I was born, or because they are just very serious people. My dad is definitely a very serious person.

So what will she remember? Will she know that we laughed together like fools, or will she remember only that I sometimes scolded her? Will she see an older me and state that I am now and have always been a very serious person? We shall have to wait and see, won’t we?

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I know that I often complain about (bad) poetry, but sometimes – it’s true – a poem can say things that no other form quite can. If I could write a poem as beautiful as Jorge Luis Borges’ “Ausencia“, I would write such in memory of Simone. As a lesser artist, I will have to satisfy myself with the work of translation instead, and hope that I do not diminish the work with my efforts.

Absence by Jorge Luis Borges (translation mine)

I shall have to lift the vast life
that even now is your mirror:
every morning I shall have to rebuild it.
Since you have gone away,
many places have turned vain
and senseless, like
lights during the day.
Afternoons that were alcoves for your image,
songs where you waited for me,
words from yonder time,
I’ll have to break them with my hands.
In which ditch shall I hide my soul
so it will not see your absence
like a terrible sun, at constant zenith,
shining calculated and ruthless?
Your absence surrounds me
like a rope around my throat,

like the sea in which I drown.

For grins, and to show you just how limited my translation skills are, here’s Google’s run at the same text.

Absence by Jorge Luis Borges (translation Google’s)

I will have to raise the vast life
that still now is your mirror:
each morning I will have to reconstruct it.
Ever since you moved away,
how many places have become vain
and without sense, equal
to lights in the day.
Afternoons that were niche of your image,
musics in which always you waited to me,
words of that time,

I will have to break them with my hands.
In what depression I will hide my soul

so that he does not see your absence
that like a terrible sun, without decline,

shines definitive and ruthless?
Your absence surrounds me
like the cord to the throat,
the sea to which it sinks.

I read these at my writer’s group back in July. Several people mentioned that places publish translations and that I ought to submit my version. It went like this :
“You should submit that for publication.”
“I didn’t write it.”
“Places take translations. That counts.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, all sorts of places small presses, university presses…”
“Nah, really?”
“Yes. Really.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. You should submit this.”

Heh. It’s still kind of mindboggling. I can see why someone might hire someone to translate a work. But just sending out an unsolicited translation somewhere? That seems like crazy talk, to me. And you know, I didn’t write it. That’s the bottom line. But then, I was two seconds from thinking “I could translate all of Borges. I could fix the brokenness in the translations I’ve read of Ficciones. That would rock.” It has its appeal. But almost certainly in mending some words and sentences I would break others. Translations are doomed to be approximations, imperfect. As for submitting the poem, I think I succesfully undercut that by posting it here. Not to mention that you have to do your own work of securing the copyright. What a pain. So if I do end up translating all Borges’ work, you’ll never see it.

One of the myriad tiny ways Spanish is not like English : there are no separate words for “worse” and “worst” nor for “better” and “best”. Sometimes, you can say “lo peor” or “lo mejor” and convey that this is the single worst thing, but essentially, there’s not a lone superlative word like there is in English. Another way the two are not the same: I’ve spent long minutes trying to come up with the English word for when you put a half lemon on that little conical ridged thing and press down to squeeze out the juice, and I was blank. Is there not a single verb for that? Is it the generic “squeezed”? There’s no sense of wringing out in squeezed, no sense that you’ve stripped the lemon. How disappointing. I’m looking, of course, for the equivalent of “exprimir”. My handy-dandy Spanish/English translator tells me I’m looking for the word “express” but ugh, how inelegant. And were I to use “express” how many people would assume I was using it in the far more common “to convey” sense and not the “to squeeze out the juice” sense?

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Ok, here is where I try to list what I’ve read for the year, so I can go back and put in a number estimate for a stir of bones and Tehanu in the prior entry. I’m pretty sure things are missing, though maybe not more than four or so.

Read in 2006:

• The Dark Horse Book of the Dead Edited by Scott Allie. (1) [graphic novel, anthology]. I borrowed (well, Kurt borrowed) this book from David. A couple of the stories were great, but most were ehhh. Now that I’ve noted it down, I should probably return it. Let that be a lesson to all you would-be loaners of books to me : it can take me eleven months to return them!
• Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett. (2) [specfic]. I borrowed this book from Sarah. I finished it during 01/06. I enjoyed it, but feel like I don’t have to read it again, nor own it.
• A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1) by Ursula K. Le Guin. (3) [YA, re-read]. I borrowed this from Chris the last time I was in Jackson. I finished it during 03/06.
• The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Ursula K. LeGuin. (4) [YA, re-read]. Borrowed this one from Chris too. I finished it during 04/06.
• The Farthest Shore (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 3) by Ursula K. Le Guin. (5) [YA, re-read]. Yes, from Chris. I finished it during 04/06.
• The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Eighteenth Annual Collection edited by Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, and Ellen Datlow. (6) [specfic, anthology]. I checked this one out of the library. I finished it during 04/06. You can read my review.
• Worldwired by Elizabeth Bear. (7) [specfic]. I own this baby. Bought it with cash. I finished it during 05/06. You can read my review.
• Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. (8) [specfic]. I borrowed this from Sarah. I finished (and returned!) it during 05/06. I really liked it a lot, much much better than I liked American Gods and I liked that. It may well be my favorite Gaiman work. I’ll probably re-read it sometime, so I probably need to buy a copy when it comes out in paperback.
• Feather Your Nest : The Complete Guide to Outfitting, Cleaning, Organizing and Caring for Your Home by Cerentha Harris. (unfinished) [non-fiction]. I read about 100 pages of this during 06/06. I checked this out of the library. At first the woman sounded really practical, talking about the wisdom of not overcleaning but then she took a left turn into crazyland and was urging the reader to disinfect every square inch of their home every twelve hours and I had to put the thing down and back away.
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, Shelley Jackson. (9) [specfic]. I borrowed this from the library. I read it during 06/06. Thankfully, I was given it for my birthday, so I don’t have to cry about not owning it. It’s a wonderful book. Every story in it is amazing, though some are stratospherically amazing while others are just whoa amazing. I heart Kelly Link. I want to marry her and have like ten thousand of her babies. I’m as infatuated with her work as I was with Jeff Vandermeer’s work last year. She’s just incredibly talented and wonderful to read. Do I have to tell you – again – to go read The Faery Handbag?
• The Field Guide (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1) by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. (10) [YA]. I checked this out of the library and read it to Sophia. It was a great find, which I looked for because Naomi Kritzer mentioned it positively on her blog. We read a chapter nightly, and finished it during 06/06. It maybe shouldn’t count as a book read for me, but I want to note what year I read it to Sophia, because I’m sure to wonder later. Also, I would have read it even without Sophia, it’s really good, but it probably would not have taken me as long.
• Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones. (11) [YA]. I got this as a birthday present last year. I finished it on 07/06. There’s a really cool perspective trick in this book. Also, it’s fun to read. Does Diana Wynne Jones get the most underrated YA author award? She’s awesome and yet hardly anyone seems to know her.
• The Seeing Stone (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 2) by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (12) [YA]. Library, finished 07/06, Sophia.
• Lucinda’s Secret (Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 3) by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (13) [YA]. Library, finished 07/06, Sophia.
• The Essential Ellison: A 35 Year Retrospective by Harlan Ellison. (14) [specfic, non-fiction, anthology]. I checked this book out of the library. I finished it during 08/06. I read every word of this thousand page volume. Every word. Some words weren’t worth reading, but the ones that were…oh my.
• Greenwitch by Susan Cooper. (15) [YA]. I own this. I read it aloud to Kurt while he drove. We finished it during 08/06. We’ve been reading this whole series aloud. It’s taking us years (like four so far, I think) to get through them that way, but it’s a nice way to read them.
• Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold. (16) [specfic]. I own this. I finished it during 08/06. What a fun read.
• The Ironwood Tree (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 4) by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (17) [YA]. Library, finished 08/06, Sophia.
• The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe. (18) [specfic, anthology]. I own this (well, it was a gift to Kurt). I’m so glad I got around to reading this. I need to go back and re-read a number of the stories in here.
• The Wrath of Mulgarath (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 5) by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (19) [YA]. Yes, library. Yes, Sophia. Finished early in 09/06. When we got to the last word on the last page, Sophia said, “Can we read these again sometime?” That’s a pretty good endorsement.
• Low Red Moon by Caitlin R. Kiernan. (20) [specfic]. I checked this out of the library. I finished it during 09/06. It was good, better than Threshold You can read my review.
• Sister Light, Sister Dark by Jane Yolen. (21) [YA]. I checked this out of the library. I finished it during 09/06. It was pretty good.
• Tales of the Quintana Roo by James Tiptree Jr., Glennray Tutor. (22) [specfic, anthology]. I checked this out of the library. I finished it during 09/06. It was not at all what I expected from reading other Tiptree stories. I liked it anyway.
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty Second Annual Collection (Year’s Best Science Fiction) by Gardner R. Dozois. (unfinished) [specfic]. I checked this out of the library during October, got bogged down in one of the stories, ran out of renewal time and had to return it. I’m determined to check it out again and finish it before the end of the year. The stories I had read in it were wonderful, and I want to compare it to the Fantasy/Horror collection.

So, it looks like my year was mostly YA, and mostly drawn from library books. No wonder my to-be-read shelf never has any fewer books on it. It also looks like it’s good I didn’t take up the 52 book challenge, because I’m only about halfway there. Maybe next year.

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I have this book database that my husband built for me, more or less to my exact specs. It’s supposed to help me track what I’m reading. And it doesn’t work for me. I never get around to entering the books. I thought it would be so cool to be able to query the database : books read in 2005, or YA Novels read, or books with review URLS, or books by author x. And it would be cool, but it doesn’t work unless I enter the data, and I’ve proved unwilling to go to the trouble. For a time I thought LibraryThing might help me with this (I tag books with the year I read them if it’s this year or last) but considering the huge numbers of things I borrow from friends and the library, and how little progress I’ve made entering my books on LibraryThing, that’s just not accurate enough.

Sooooo, I’ve been trying to come up with an alternate mechanism for recording what I read year to year. I have noticed on several blogs I read that people often enter this information right in their blog, and some have separate blogs for handling their reading material. I think I’m going to start noting my reads here. It’s searchable, after all, and although I can’t query it the way I could a database (how many x in y), I may be more likely to note it here, which is the bigger problem at the moment. I can keep a running tab year to year pretty easily by placing a bracketed number next to the title. I can even dump the database info for 2004, 2005 and 2006 (such as it is) into a few posts and have the complete record here (don’t hold your breath for that, though). The only problem I can see is procrastinating on entering the book because I plan to review it. I’m simply not going to review everything I read. To ensure there’s minimal correlation between noting what I’ve read and what I intend to review, I’ve created a separate category, called Book List, for the notation of books I’ve read, and a template to use in those entries. It should be short and sweet, just an overview with the pertinent facts and whatever interesting notes I feel like jotting down. Reviews will still come under the Entertainment category, as usual. I also hope I can use this method to keep better track of the fiction I read online, which is proving an increasing portion of my reading material, though since most of that is individual short stories, I’m not sure how I’m going to count that yet. There may be stuff that is less sensical or less for public consumption than usual in these entries, not because any of my thoughts are so private, but because a lot of my thoughts about things I read are so mundane and so scattered, but if you put up with the dream entries, surely, you can put up with my semi-coherent ramblings about stuff I read. Also, like the dream entries, they will be category noted, and you can just skip stuff in that category as it arrives.

As the first entry in the Book List category, I feel I should note what I’ve read, and I’m not going to start at the beginning of 2006, I’m going to start at the beginning of the week. Such is life.

A stir of bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. (best guess 23) [YA]. I checked this book out of the library. I finished it on 11/04/06. I really liked this book a lot, and plan to read the others of the series (this one’s a prequel, written after the others). This is a book that Marlee should read, if I can remember to recommend it to her when I see her. I very much enjoyed Hoffman’s story in Flights, which to the best of my knowledge is the only other thing I’ve read by her. I was immersed for about nineteen pages before the editor in my head dropped by and said “Whoa, that was an ugly sentence.” This usually happens way sooner, and that thought was immediately followed by, “But every one that came before this one was gorgeous, so let’s give a little slack, shall we?” She really does write beautifully. Something about the story felt quite familiar, and I checked the copyright date more than once to be sure I hadn’t read it before, and I can’t have.

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin. (best guess 24) [YA]. I checked this book out of the library. I finished it on 11/08/06. I never read this book when it first came out, so I only had memories of the first three books of the series. This is a wonderful book, but brutal too. I had moments where I thought it was not really YA. Also, I think Le Guin is just about the only author I can tolerate preachiness from. I’m sure I will read this again so maybe I should buy it (along with the other Earthsea books!).

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Dear consumerist American culture of the 21st century and megamedia emporium:

I appear to be drifting away from you a little each day. We were much closer once. I know that you spent a lot of time enchanting me and trying to make me interested in the things and experiences you proffer. I can even remember when I was a target demographic! I know that there could be more between us, but it seems like you aren’t even trying anymore. I know I’m no longer as young as I once was, nor as sexy, nor as overflowing with expendable wealth but you too, my dear, offer me less and less that I desire.

Sometimes I think you don’t even know me. Do you realize I drink no soft drinks, no coffee, no beer? That I don’t consume fast food? I don’t purchase jewelry, wear makeup only six or eight times a year, and don’t follow fashion. I see fewer than a dozen movies in the theater annually. So far this year, I have been to two, so you’re doing even worse than usual. Last year I rousted myself enough to go to a concert, which I enjoyed, but this year the time and expense did not seem worth it. I don’t want to travel in your airplanes and wrestle with the security theater at your airports, and decided against at least one trip because of that. When I bothered to become interested in something on television, Deadwood, you cancelled it. Your other television offerings seem insipid and pointless – to be generous – and not worth my time. People think I hate tv, but I don’t, I just don’t care for most of what’s on it. Remember when you had shows like Buffy? I watched that all the time. I even thought about it when it wasn’t on, and it made me smile, and my enjoyment far exceeded the minutes I spent watching it. The only sport I’m interested in is hockey, which you barely deign to acknowledge as a sport being played in this country. I don’t want to watch the superbowl, nay, not even for the commercials or for the chance of seeing some pop star’s nipple. Really, are we that far out of sync? Has it been so long since you understood me? I rarely buy clothes, and the main thing I want to know when I do buy clothes – whether they were produced for fair pay in safe working conditions – you won’t even bother to tell me. You ask me if I want more credit cards, but I don’t. You recommend I get another vehicle, but I have no interest in doing so, and I’m surprised you think I’d want to. I have been known to be interested in gadgets from time to time, but I think you sharply overestimate the number of electronic knickknacks I’m willing to carry around, learn to cope with and use. The last video game console I bought was in 2001, and though I love it and use it, you haven’t convinced me I need anything else. I can’t even be bothered with any new games for it! I just play the ones I already have. My ipod is almost three years old and my digital camera almost five. Even your Lego sets seem subpar, failing to provoke interest from me this year. Have you nothing to offer me?

On the rare occasions when I view or hear commercials, those little love notes you send me, I feel like a third wheel. None of that stuff is for me. None of those people are talking to me. Who is it you are selling that multitude of things to? It must be someone, because I see more and more stores everywhere I look. You seem to stay in business, and even do well enough to expand, but I don’t see how if you treat everyone as poorly as you do me. Sometimes I sigh when the new buildings go up. Do we really need another Target? Another Bed, Bath and Beyond? Another Wal-greens? Another big box anything? I’d rather have the patch of green and the trees than the cancerous infestation of yet another shrine to consumption.

When I think about the number of people you hired to craft those missives you broadcast, how much you paid them, how hard they worked to make their appeal perfect…well, it makes me a little sad. All that energy spent, and it’s leaving me cold. Unhappy. Unwilling to open my wallet or my heart.

Why is that? It’s not like there aren’t things I like: books, music, chocolate, tea, boxes, paper, pens, organizing stuff. I could go on. It’s not like I’m a fringe luddite deliberately striking a blow against materialism. I’m just a regular Jane. So why is that you keep missing the mark with me? How come everything you’re pushing looks like it’s for people dumber than I am or richer than I am or who have way more free time than I do? How many others are you leaving stranded, just like me?

I don’t believe we have to be strangers. Do you? And secretly, honey, I think that you need me more than I need you. No, I’m not claiming that you really need me, the individual, but I think your engine doesn’t go without me, the consumer. It’s not a threat; it’s reality. I’m checking your stores, even your online ones, less frequently. Shopping is a chore, a drudgery, which I avoid at all costs. I hang out in parks and libraries when I could be consuming and buying. I go for walks. Whenever anyone asks me if I’ve seen that funny commerical, my answer is always no. I’m not feeling your absence from my life. I keep thinking of the beauty of less clutter in my life : visual, mental, auditory. If you want me to stay in touch, you’re going to have to try harder to provide meaningful things and experiences. Things and experiences as meaningful as the wind in the trees and the sun on my face. And you know what? You don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. I’m not going to spend the money to evaluate whether what you’re selling is worthwhile. I have to know beforehand that it’s going to be worth it, or I won’t participate.

I’m sorry that it’s come to this. I hate ultimatums. Still, you haven’t really been listening to anything else I’ve said, have you?

With a hopeful and idealistic heart,
Anarkey

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I voted today (yesterday, actually, but I didn’t hit post). Did you? Here’s something cool about Missouri elections that I did not know before today, even though I’ve voted in like four of them. Judges are not appointed for life. There were around a dozen judges on our ballot and we could vote whether to retain them or not. Cool, huh? Unfortunately, I was not able to find information that I wanted for the vast majority of the judges, so I had to abstain. For next time I need to find a good source of information on judges and their voting records. Suggestions?

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