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Many Layers of Knife Fight
Ciro got into a knife fight. With an onion. A very strong onion. His eyes were watering, so he turned his head, and then three hours later we were back at home and he had six stitches, and I cut up the rest of the onion and we had dinner. I say this means he lost the fight with the onion and I had to avenge him, given that he had to flee the field of battle, but Ciro says that since the onion was dismembered he did win and it was a Pyrrhic victory. We have agreed to disagree on this matter.
It occurs to me that when politicians talk about the wasteful use of the emergency room as a primary care facility, they are imagining an incapable underclass who don't know where to find a family doctor and/or have no money and know the emergency room has to treat them anyway and/or wait until things are terribly dangerous before they go in. Whereas I see more of a supply-side problem, because there is not an urgent care center within 20 miles of me (and I don't know how much further) that is open after 8 p.m., and good luck trying to find a G.P. after 5 p.m. or on a weekend or on a holiday. Because for whatever reason, we've made it a cultural and legislative priority that I'm on air at 2 a.m. to caption a baseball recap, but we count on injuries happening during a strict weekday 9 to 5, instead of, say, times when people might be barbecuing or playing sports.
Why, in a shared practice, the doctors don't rotate being on call in the evenings is a mystery to me, in much the way it's unclear why I pay an insurer every month instead of paying my doctor a retainer directly, but I suppose this is one of those areas where I just have to trust there are insuperable flaws in this imagined utopia, easily visible to those with a different perspective on the system.
I suppose we could have just let Ciro bleed until Tuesday, but it smelled bad. At least I like Winchester Hospital, and consider it unlikely that I'm displacing something important like a gunshot wound.
Meanwhile, the figs are finally starting to purple and ripen, either because it's finally sunny after a spring and summer of unfailingly overcast weather, or because I moved them to the other side of the balcony. And Mom improvised a fly trap using cider vinegar and rotting strawberries, so the flies have been less ubiquitous. Mom and Dad have been down in Virginia for the week, so the rhythms of the house have been different - more of some chores (thanks to fewer people to share with) and less of others (thanks to fewer people to create them).
I mentioned in passing to some of you that I've been overclocking it a bit this past month.
I've been in talks with the ICA Boston to teach some drop-in workshops or create some happenings or do some longer-term classes with families or teenagers, or some combination of all of the above, which I have been pursuing aggressively, because I miss working in a museum setting when I'm not doing it. There's not really anything I find more interesting than creating these kinds of encounters, or even just proposing these types of encounters. That sort of Duchampian, Yoko Ono, seeing oneself seeing. It's satisfying in much the same way physics and metaphysics are satisfying. If I could do it all the time, I would, but I am not a significant enough artist yet that people let me do it all the time. Just some of the time. Anyway, this has involved a goodly measure of writing and thinking and meeting, which is ongoing.
Meanwhile, I discovered that Strange Horizons was looking for a new poetry editor, so after some interviews (again with the writing and thinking and meeting) I have become one of the poetry editors of Strange Horizons. Which might actually mean I now have to go to conventions from time to time. As senior poetry editor Sonya Taaffe pointed out, we are to a large extent defining the genre of speculative poetry, which may or may not really be a genre. Delightfully, all three of us (the poetry editors) currently live within commuter rail distance of Boston, so we can delve into this sort of question over herbal tea, and can also explore essential conversational subjects like the origins of carrot cake and whether tomatoes are poisonous. I will talk more about what I am looking for poetically in a future entry, as well as plans for related experiments.
Meanwhile, Ciro and I were shooting second unit footage for Tony Ukpo's new feature, After the World Ended. My involvement has mainly involved giving a lot of script notes and then shooting footage for a montage of people reacting to a propaganda broadcast. People from several different planets. I have a cameo in this montage, and something about my facial expression makes me look like Jennifer Connelly. I accept.
Finally, I worked on getting in my submission for Steam Powered III, a lesbian steampunk anthology JoSelle Vanderhooft is putting together. I queried a story idea I had back when I had more time, and she said "yes, write it," and then I wound up having to write like crazy at deadline because my month filled up. Since that just got turned in, I don't know whether the final version was to her liking, but I like it enough that I think it will probably go somewhere if she doesn't want it. (Although I'm legendarily bad at guessing what other people will find approachable, both sides of that coin.) It's called "The Eggshell Curtain," and it's about the daughter of a man who makes sci-fi-fabulous Faberge Eggs, and what happens when she gets involved with a Communist.
It's a horror story, although this is not obvious for quite a long time; it is perhaps the most extreme example yet of my natural narrative structure when it comes to scary stories, going all the way back to ghost stories at 4th grade sleepovers. As my sister puts it (approvingly), "you start with some characters and hint that things might go badly for them in the end, and then you kind of hang out with them for a long time and there are some jokes. It seems like some things might go wrong, but everything winds up okay. And then almost at the end something unexpected and terrible happens and it's very sad because you really like the characters by then." I would add to this description that you're ideally left with a pervasive sense of alienation which blossoms into an understanding that life is absurd, leading ultimately to universal compassion. (Less ideally, it just confuses and upsets people. But it's horror, right? What were they expecting?)
I also had a story featured on the Toasted Cake podcast and submitted an incredibly short story to Esquire's 79-word-story contest. (Slipstream, of course.) And I've been gradually (and thus far unsuccessfully) researching and contacting local production houses, trying to get them to hire me on as a director, which is always a hard sell. People don't think they don't need directors, in the same way they think they don't need writers. But they do. They really do.
Aside from that, I've signed contracts for a couple of stories to be published at a future date - Stupefying Stories accepted "The Wishing Hour," which is explicitly about a genie in a lamp but subtextually (barely) about pregnancy, and King David and the Spiders From Mars, the follow-up to She Nailed A Stake Through His Head got "Three Young Men," about the firey furnace section of the Book of Daniel. Which means a return of our old friend Nebuchadnezzar, who stayed offscreen in "Judith and Holofernes," but motivated the action. If you read that and thought "why couldn't I see him in a more active role, and didn't the Bible explicitly say he was a werewolf?" you are in luck. If you have also been pining for a mashup of the Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters and historical accounts of the Irish hunger strikers, you are three for three, my friend.
I'm aiming to keep this month a little more low-key, so as to give Ciro space to finish writing "The Gifts of Aita" (because there is a sad dearth of Etruscan-set fantasy). Other than sending in a long-shot sub of the Ratcatcher script** to the Zoetrope contest, I'll probably restrain myself to a bit of work on Nneka's War, which is either a novel or novella, and which is my attempt to write Starship Troopers, except feminist. (Which leads me to wonder whether fascism is inherently patriarchal or whether the two have coincided coincidentally*.) And maybe if I'm lucky I'll work up a demo of "Silver Medalist" so it's more than just a melody line with lyrics, but this is a long shot, because unlike writing it's not something I can do in fits and starts while on the move. It takes guitars and drums and recording equipment - infrastructure.
I had similar hopes around cleaning out the fridge this weekend, and then reorganizing it so things wouldn't get lost in the back again, but this was an ambition on a Vegas-odds level with "moonshot from the backyard." I did manage to throw out some rotten veg. Imagine what I could accomplish if I had the time. If anybody wants to offer me a fellowship, I'll be here all evening. Please tip your waitron.
* Yes I do think it's funny to say "coincided coincidentally," probably more than is healthy.
** In a medieval Verona that looks a lot like modern London, a sophisticated poisoner struggles to take control of her late father's eccentric extermination business — and protect the city from the plague.
It occurs to me that when politicians talk about the wasteful use of the emergency room as a primary care facility, they are imagining an incapable underclass who don't know where to find a family doctor and/or have no money and know the emergency room has to treat them anyway and/or wait until things are terribly dangerous before they go in. Whereas I see more of a supply-side problem, because there is not an urgent care center within 20 miles of me (and I don't know how much further) that is open after 8 p.m., and good luck trying to find a G.P. after 5 p.m. or on a weekend or on a holiday. Because for whatever reason, we've made it a cultural and legislative priority that I'm on air at 2 a.m. to caption a baseball recap, but we count on injuries happening during a strict weekday 9 to 5, instead of, say, times when people might be barbecuing or playing sports.
Why, in a shared practice, the doctors don't rotate being on call in the evenings is a mystery to me, in much the way it's unclear why I pay an insurer every month instead of paying my doctor a retainer directly, but I suppose this is one of those areas where I just have to trust there are insuperable flaws in this imagined utopia, easily visible to those with a different perspective on the system.
I suppose we could have just let Ciro bleed until Tuesday, but it smelled bad. At least I like Winchester Hospital, and consider it unlikely that I'm displacing something important like a gunshot wound.
Meanwhile, the figs are finally starting to purple and ripen, either because it's finally sunny after a spring and summer of unfailingly overcast weather, or because I moved them to the other side of the balcony. And Mom improvised a fly trap using cider vinegar and rotting strawberries, so the flies have been less ubiquitous. Mom and Dad have been down in Virginia for the week, so the rhythms of the house have been different - more of some chores (thanks to fewer people to share with) and less of others (thanks to fewer people to create them).
I mentioned in passing to some of you that I've been overclocking it a bit this past month.
I've been in talks with the ICA Boston to teach some drop-in workshops or create some happenings or do some longer-term classes with families or teenagers, or some combination of all of the above, which I have been pursuing aggressively, because I miss working in a museum setting when I'm not doing it. There's not really anything I find more interesting than creating these kinds of encounters, or even just proposing these types of encounters. That sort of Duchampian, Yoko Ono, seeing oneself seeing. It's satisfying in much the same way physics and metaphysics are satisfying. If I could do it all the time, I would, but I am not a significant enough artist yet that people let me do it all the time. Just some of the time. Anyway, this has involved a goodly measure of writing and thinking and meeting, which is ongoing.
Meanwhile, I discovered that Strange Horizons was looking for a new poetry editor, so after some interviews (again with the writing and thinking and meeting) I have become one of the poetry editors of Strange Horizons. Which might actually mean I now have to go to conventions from time to time. As senior poetry editor Sonya Taaffe pointed out, we are to a large extent defining the genre of speculative poetry, which may or may not really be a genre. Delightfully, all three of us (the poetry editors) currently live within commuter rail distance of Boston, so we can delve into this sort of question over herbal tea, and can also explore essential conversational subjects like the origins of carrot cake and whether tomatoes are poisonous. I will talk more about what I am looking for poetically in a future entry, as well as plans for related experiments.
Meanwhile, Ciro and I were shooting second unit footage for Tony Ukpo's new feature, After the World Ended. My involvement has mainly involved giving a lot of script notes and then shooting footage for a montage of people reacting to a propaganda broadcast. People from several different planets. I have a cameo in this montage, and something about my facial expression makes me look like Jennifer Connelly. I accept.
Finally, I worked on getting in my submission for Steam Powered III, a lesbian steampunk anthology JoSelle Vanderhooft is putting together. I queried a story idea I had back when I had more time, and she said "yes, write it," and then I wound up having to write like crazy at deadline because my month filled up. Since that just got turned in, I don't know whether the final version was to her liking, but I like it enough that I think it will probably go somewhere if she doesn't want it. (Although I'm legendarily bad at guessing what other people will find approachable, both sides of that coin.) It's called "The Eggshell Curtain," and it's about the daughter of a man who makes sci-fi-fabulous Faberge Eggs, and what happens when she gets involved with a Communist.
It's a horror story, although this is not obvious for quite a long time; it is perhaps the most extreme example yet of my natural narrative structure when it comes to scary stories, going all the way back to ghost stories at 4th grade sleepovers. As my sister puts it (approvingly), "you start with some characters and hint that things might go badly for them in the end, and then you kind of hang out with them for a long time and there are some jokes. It seems like some things might go wrong, but everything winds up okay. And then almost at the end something unexpected and terrible happens and it's very sad because you really like the characters by then." I would add to this description that you're ideally left with a pervasive sense of alienation which blossoms into an understanding that life is absurd, leading ultimately to universal compassion. (Less ideally, it just confuses and upsets people. But it's horror, right? What were they expecting?)
I also had a story featured on the Toasted Cake podcast and submitted an incredibly short story to Esquire's 79-word-story contest. (Slipstream, of course.) And I've been gradually (and thus far unsuccessfully) researching and contacting local production houses, trying to get them to hire me on as a director, which is always a hard sell. People don't think they don't need directors, in the same way they think they don't need writers. But they do. They really do.
Aside from that, I've signed contracts for a couple of stories to be published at a future date - Stupefying Stories accepted "The Wishing Hour," which is explicitly about a genie in a lamp but subtextually (barely) about pregnancy, and King David and the Spiders From Mars, the follow-up to She Nailed A Stake Through His Head got "Three Young Men," about the firey furnace section of the Book of Daniel. Which means a return of our old friend Nebuchadnezzar, who stayed offscreen in "Judith and Holofernes," but motivated the action. If you read that and thought "why couldn't I see him in a more active role, and didn't the Bible explicitly say he was a werewolf?" you are in luck. If you have also been pining for a mashup of the Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters and historical accounts of the Irish hunger strikers, you are three for three, my friend.
I'm aiming to keep this month a little more low-key, so as to give Ciro space to finish writing "The Gifts of Aita" (because there is a sad dearth of Etruscan-set fantasy). Other than sending in a long-shot sub of the Ratcatcher script** to the Zoetrope contest, I'll probably restrain myself to a bit of work on Nneka's War, which is either a novel or novella, and which is my attempt to write Starship Troopers, except feminist. (Which leads me to wonder whether fascism is inherently patriarchal or whether the two have coincided coincidentally*.) And maybe if I'm lucky I'll work up a demo of "Silver Medalist" so it's more than just a melody line with lyrics, but this is a long shot, because unlike writing it's not something I can do in fits and starts while on the move. It takes guitars and drums and recording equipment - infrastructure.
I had similar hopes around cleaning out the fridge this weekend, and then reorganizing it so things wouldn't get lost in the back again, but this was an ambition on a Vegas-odds level with "moonshot from the backyard." I did manage to throw out some rotten veg. Imagine what I could accomplish if I had the time. If anybody wants to offer me a fellowship, I'll be here all evening. Please tip your waitron.
* Yes I do think it's funny to say "coincided coincidentally," probably more than is healthy.
** In a medieval Verona that looks a lot like modern London, a sophisticated poisoner struggles to take control of her late father's eccentric extermination business — and protect the city from the plague.
no subject
It is a great pleasure to read of your successes with stories!
no subject
Good tip on the Japanese mandoline; many thanks. The French ones have indeed struck me as terrifying and/or faffy.
no subject
Put your figs in the hottest, sunniest spot you have! Hope they respond.
no subject