We're building towns out of ink
Today's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #62, containing my poem "Maudit." If I want to be pretentious about it, I could say it is an address to the muse in the tradition of Catullus 63, which famously ends with the poet refusing the inspiration of the goddess: alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos, go make others driven, go make others mad. Actually it was February and I was on a train and coughing badly and I have been cranky about the suffering genius myth for years. Sneakers and eyes are the theme of the issue and the contributors include Alexandra Seidel, Sandi Leibowitz, Egg Johnson, Neil Wilgus, Mike Allen, S. Brackett Robertson, and Jennifer Crow. I grabbed it on my way out the door to my doctor's appointment and it gave me reading material while my bus did not actually arrive. I made it to my doctor's appointment by other routes and then to dinner with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch, with a pleasant chance meeting with Matthew Timmins in between. The MBTA is a shonde far di commuters and at least I always carry too many books.
And then I came home with my groceries and promptly called the City of Somerville because our street smelled like a sewer had blown up on it. In the middle of a barnyard. On the planet Tersurus. It was eye-watering. Half an hour, two 311 calls, and four transfers later, a young lieutenant of the Somerville Fire Department stepped out of his fire truck and said immediately, "What is that?" in the tone usually reserved for performances of Sweeney Todd when he sees one of Mrs. Lovett's pies for the first time. "That's what I called about!" is all I had to explain. He and the other firefighters went up and down the street with flashlights and occasional gagging noises while neighbors emerged to the flashing red lights and said things like "Oh, thank God, you can smell it, too!" and the rest of us replied, "Who can't?" From looking at the path of crud dried in the gutters, mapping the extent of the reek, and comparing notes from residents who arrived home before I did, it was the best guess of the fire lieutenant that someone from a carpet or similar cleaning business dumped a tank of almost certainly fecal wastewater on our street—where they are not supposed to dispose of it—and unfortunately the only thing for it is street cleaning tomorrow morning, until which time we all have waterfront property on the Bog of Eternal Stench. He gave us formal permission from the City of Somerville to throw bottles and other deterrents at anyone we see performing a similar act of pollution in future: "It's just so selfish! Just dump your crap wherever and let someone else deal with it. It's a symbol of the age." I thanked him and went upstairs to take a shower because what with one thing and another I had been standing outside for too long trying to breathe through my ears and my hair now smelled like the outhouse of the damned. Hestia has just snuggled against my shoulder and verified that now I smell like her, but, jeez. Some representatives from the Somerville Department of Public Works also came by and inhaled the damage, but fortunately I did not need to go out to speak with them.
In the meantime, the windows are closed.
spatch, with a pleasant chance meeting with Matthew Timmins in between. The MBTA is a shonde far di commuters and at least I always carry too many books.And then I came home with my groceries and promptly called the City of Somerville because our street smelled like a sewer had blown up on it. In the middle of a barnyard. On the planet Tersurus. It was eye-watering. Half an hour, two 311 calls, and four transfers later, a young lieutenant of the Somerville Fire Department stepped out of his fire truck and said immediately, "What is that?" in the tone usually reserved for performances of Sweeney Todd when he sees one of Mrs. Lovett's pies for the first time. "That's what I called about!" is all I had to explain. He and the other firefighters went up and down the street with flashlights and occasional gagging noises while neighbors emerged to the flashing red lights and said things like "Oh, thank God, you can smell it, too!" and the rest of us replied, "Who can't?" From looking at the path of crud dried in the gutters, mapping the extent of the reek, and comparing notes from residents who arrived home before I did, it was the best guess of the fire lieutenant that someone from a carpet or similar cleaning business dumped a tank of almost certainly fecal wastewater on our street—where they are not supposed to dispose of it—and unfortunately the only thing for it is street cleaning tomorrow morning, until which time we all have waterfront property on the Bog of Eternal Stench. He gave us formal permission from the City of Somerville to throw bottles and other deterrents at anyone we see performing a similar act of pollution in future: "It's just so selfish! Just dump your crap wherever and let someone else deal with it. It's a symbol of the age." I thanked him and went upstairs to take a shower because what with one thing and another I had been standing outside for too long trying to breathe through my ears and my hair now smelled like the outhouse of the damned. Hestia has just snuggled against my shoulder and verified that now I smell like her, but, jeez. Some representatives from the Somerville Department of Public Works also came by and inhaled the damage, but fortunately I did not need to go out to speak with them.
In the meantime, the windows are closed.
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In more pleasant news, Not One of Us showed up in my mailbox yesterday, and it looks great.
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It was nuts! Everyone kept cracking up because it was so awful and yet so completely stupid and petty.
In more pleasant news, Not One of Us showed up in my mailbox yesterday, and it looks great.
Yay!
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Your icon says it all.
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P.
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Thank you! (I think we trauma-bonded with the firefighters.)
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Thank you!
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I had been doing just fine in a culture that did not throw its nightsoil into the streets, thank you!
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And holy shit, batman, someone is literally dumping shit.
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Here, have Ben Jonson "On the Famous Journey" down the Fleet Ditch:
But hold my torch, while I describe the entry
To this dire passage. Say, thou stop thy nose:
'Tis but light pains: indeed this dock's no rose.
In the first jaws appeared that ugly monster,
Ycleped Mud, which, when their oars did once stir,
Belched forth an air, as hot, as at the muster
Of all your night-tubs, when the carts do cluster,
Who shall discharge first his merd-urinous load:
Thorough her womb they make their famous road,
Between two walls; where, on one side, to scar men,
Were seen your ugly centaurs, ye call car-men,
Gorgonian scolds, and harpies; on the other
Hung stench, diseases, and old filth, their mother,
With famine, wants, and sorrows many a dozen,
The least of which was to the plague a cousin.
But they unfrighted pass, though many a privy
Spake to them louder, than the ox in Livy;
And many a sink poured out her rage anenst 'hem;
But still their valour, and their virtue fenced 'hem,
And, on they went, like Castor brave, and Pollux:
Ploughing the main...
Nine
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Even the occasional muck spreading here is nothing to it (nothing ever is once you've lived with a tannery).
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I meant more that the firefighters were also appalled. They kept saying things like, "Jeez, it's up here, too . . ."
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Anyway, I hope that it has been cleaned up by the time you read this!
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Thank you! I think the literality is the reason everyone kept breaking out in laughter at the same time as we were furiously grossed out.
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Thank you! I will find out in about half an hour when I leave the house.
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Hooray!
And holy shit, batman, someone is literally dumping shit.
It wasn't even a metaphor!
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Like the fire lieutenant said, it's a symbol of the age.
though many a privy
Spake to them louder, than the ox in Livy
That smells about right.
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It really was not!
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This was definitely not gardening manure!
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Nine
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Indeed!
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I love that book.
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Nine
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Yes! I pounced on the second two as soon as they came out. So far I have not liked anything of Gardam's as well as those three novels, except for her short story "The Green Man."
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Nine
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It was very much like the universe just gave up on allegory.
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I hope the day with your niece had the additional feature of less methane.
...Also, I checked, and we are still not heiresses. This is about to call for something drastic.
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Yes, that!
I hope the day with your niece had the additional feature of less methane.
Thank God, it did, because I was not on my street during it.
...Also, I checked, and we are still not heiresses. This is about to call for something drastic.
Assassination, face-eating, porqué no los dos?