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What do you need? Where do you go? What is this constant whispering?
I must use this week to remind myself that it is not at all true that I write something and then it falls into the unrecoverable gulfs of history, because "Tea with the Earl of Twilight" has been beautifully reviewed by Anne M. Pillsworth and Ruthanna Emrys at Tor.com's Reading the Weird:
Because the necessity—the obligation—of painful knowledge is a theme woven through this story's core. Knowing hurts, and knowing is dangerous. But not-knowing doesn't make you safe either, and certainly doesn't make you a better person. Sid's haunted by Hilary's life and death, and by his fear of attackers who would have been equally dangerous to her and her lover. But even before Hilary, she's haunted by the shadow of climate change, of a future in which the sea will take back a city that she knows deeply and intimately. If you know that someday Cthulhu is going to rise and overturn all, what should you do? Why speak the names of the dead, the murdered, when larger horrors await? You can't make the problem never-was, can't return to a pre-anthropocene, pre-knowledge innocence—you have to work with the present you've got and the futures it leaves open. So this is a story about little fixes—or even just changes, getting things moving that were held in stasis—amid huge, terrifying realities that aren't going away . . . This story is gorgeous and painful, and achingly appreciated during a time when eldritch horrors sometimes come perilously close to being worse than fiction.
I had been having a rather discombobulated afternoon caused by sleeping much later than planned despite the sunlight flooding our street, but this review makes up for all of it. For the record, the three pieces of Elise Matthesen's jewelry that contributed to the fictional item in the story are the necklace-crown "Remember What You Say in Dreams #4" (silver wire, silverleaf jasper, driftglass and freshwater pearl) and the pendants "Was Ice, Am Ocean" (silver wire and labradorite) and "The Sea That Marks the Heart" (silver wire, abalone, nazar-blue seed beads). Have some links!
1. I had no idea the U.S. Navy maintains a grove of white oaks strictly for repairs of the USS Constitution, but I am delighted to find out. I like that it is a conservation project, too.
2. Both environmentally and aesthetically, I love the underwater museum of Paolo Fanciulli.
3. I didn't know Climate Mayors existed, either, but I am glad to hear that Boston's own Marty Walsh has just been named chair of the coalition. Because we have tides like this. And so I write the stories I do.
Because the necessity—the obligation—of painful knowledge is a theme woven through this story's core. Knowing hurts, and knowing is dangerous. But not-knowing doesn't make you safe either, and certainly doesn't make you a better person. Sid's haunted by Hilary's life and death, and by his fear of attackers who would have been equally dangerous to her and her lover. But even before Hilary, she's haunted by the shadow of climate change, of a future in which the sea will take back a city that she knows deeply and intimately. If you know that someday Cthulhu is going to rise and overturn all, what should you do? Why speak the names of the dead, the murdered, when larger horrors await? You can't make the problem never-was, can't return to a pre-anthropocene, pre-knowledge innocence—you have to work with the present you've got and the futures it leaves open. So this is a story about little fixes—or even just changes, getting things moving that were held in stasis—amid huge, terrifying realities that aren't going away . . . This story is gorgeous and painful, and achingly appreciated during a time when eldritch horrors sometimes come perilously close to being worse than fiction.
I had been having a rather discombobulated afternoon caused by sleeping much later than planned despite the sunlight flooding our street, but this review makes up for all of it. For the record, the three pieces of Elise Matthesen's jewelry that contributed to the fictional item in the story are the necklace-crown "Remember What You Say in Dreams #4" (silver wire, silverleaf jasper, driftglass and freshwater pearl) and the pendants "Was Ice, Am Ocean" (silver wire and labradorite) and "The Sea That Marks the Heart" (silver wire, abalone, nazar-blue seed beads). Have some links!
1. I had no idea the U.S. Navy maintains a grove of white oaks strictly for repairs of the USS Constitution, but I am delighted to find out. I like that it is a conservation project, too.
2. Both environmentally and aesthetically, I love the underwater museum of Paolo Fanciulli.
3. I didn't know Climate Mayors existed, either, but I am glad to hear that Boston's own Marty Walsh has just been named chair of the coalition. Because we have tides like this. And so I write the stories I do.
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Please let me know if you find out!
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