What good is a burning heart if it doesn't warm?
My day was surprisingly consumed by legal matters—not negatively, just enervatingly. We have not suddenly come into an inheritance. Also my con crud from Arisia seems to be worse. This feels unfair, especially since I didn't catch it from anyone. Have some links.
1. I will say more about my contributions when we reach the official release date of February 1st, but it is now possible to preorder the long-awaited Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin (ed. R.B. Lemberg and Lisa M. Bradley, Aqueduct Press) from Amazon and if you prefer not to go that route, I am still recommending you mark your calendars. The table of contents includes two poems from me alongside work by Jo Walton, Merlin Cunniff, Kiya Nicoll, Brandon O'Brien, Ada Hoffmann, Izzy Wasserstein, Leah Bobet, Jeannelle M. Ferreira, Gwynne Garfinkle, Shweta Narayan, Sofia Samatar, David Sklar, Nisi Shawl, and many luminaries more, plus a beautiful critical afterword by Lemberg. A nice cover, too.
2. This fakelore generator is a time sink, sometimes plausible and sometimes surreal, and probably a useful source of prompts if you like folk horror. "This story is told by the people of Saxmundham. Since 1481, the spectre of the Marquess of Needham Market has appeared every twenty-five weeks on the high street."
3. On family history and the complexity of the world: "If you look at the fight between the Brits and Nazis in microcosm, obviously the Brits are in the right, because fucking Nazis. And if you look at the fight between Brits and the people of India, obviously the Brits are the wankers, because fuck colonialism."
4. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer: "On the issue of the 'q slur'," which turns out to be the issue of who you allow to set the terms of a word that is used as both a self-identifier and an insult. The examples used are "queer" and "Jew." The conclusion makes sense to me.
5. I haven't read the poem this one's after, but I find it successsfully haunting on its own terms: Isabella Borgeson's "the ghosts of sea salt corpses."
I just finished Nicholas Monsarrat's The Ship That Died of Shame (1959) and am now re-reading Hammond Innes' The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1956). I am interested in tracking down the film of the first; I wish the film of the second had been better. I think I miss the sea.
1. I will say more about my contributions when we reach the official release date of February 1st, but it is now possible to preorder the long-awaited Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin (ed. R.B. Lemberg and Lisa M. Bradley, Aqueduct Press) from Amazon and if you prefer not to go that route, I am still recommending you mark your calendars. The table of contents includes two poems from me alongside work by Jo Walton, Merlin Cunniff, Kiya Nicoll, Brandon O'Brien, Ada Hoffmann, Izzy Wasserstein, Leah Bobet, Jeannelle M. Ferreira, Gwynne Garfinkle, Shweta Narayan, Sofia Samatar, David Sklar, Nisi Shawl, and many luminaries more, plus a beautiful critical afterword by Lemberg. A nice cover, too.
2. This fakelore generator is a time sink, sometimes plausible and sometimes surreal, and probably a useful source of prompts if you like folk horror. "This story is told by the people of Saxmundham. Since 1481, the spectre of the Marquess of Needham Market has appeared every twenty-five weeks on the high street."
3. On family history and the complexity of the world: "If you look at the fight between the Brits and Nazis in microcosm, obviously the Brits are in the right, because fucking Nazis. And if you look at the fight between Brits and the people of India, obviously the Brits are the wankers, because fuck colonialism."
4. Courtesy of
moon_custafer: "On the issue of the 'q slur'," which turns out to be the issue of who you allow to set the terms of a word that is used as both a self-identifier and an insult. The examples used are "queer" and "Jew." The conclusion makes sense to me.5. I haven't read the poem this one's after, but I find it successsfully haunting on its own terms: Isabella Borgeson's "the ghosts of sea salt corpses."
I just finished Nicholas Monsarrat's The Ship That Died of Shame (1959) and am now re-reading Hammond Innes' The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1956). I am interested in tracking down the film of the first; I wish the film of the second had been better. I think I miss the sea.
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That fakelore generator is great.
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Thank you!
That fakelore generator is great.
"There is a legend which comes from The Spirits of Shanklin by Bentley Colgate. In 1610, the shape of a little cat was seen in the butcher's shop."
What a good haunting.
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What a good haunting.
Mysteriously, when it vanished, so did a string of sausages!
XD
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They're good books! All our other Monsarrat is in storage, but I have a paperback of Alistair MacLean's HMS Ulysses (1955) in my office.
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I really loved "the ghosts of sea salt corpses," so much so that I went looking for the Merlie M Alunan original. I found a long Facebook post that ended with three poems, all of which could have contributed to this one, but the first seemed especially connected:
Tricycle drivers’ tale
On nights when rain pours as if
the very gate of heaven is open,
and nothing to stop a shivering earth
from death by drowning,
people in my village tell this story—
An empty house in Delgado Street.
The tricycle stops by the locked gate.
A man alights, his wife, an infant held
close to her chest, a boy of five or six
gripping her skirt with bony fingers.
“Delgado,” that one word the man said
had brought them to this unlit house
on this lonely street in our village.
Not a sound throughout the ride.
Now the man digs for fare in his pockets
and comes up with a few clamshells,
holds them out like coins to the driver.
“I’ll get the fare,” says the man,
unlocks the gate, and enters the dark house,
everyone following him. He never returns
with the fare. Seized by suspicion,
the terrified driver flees, pursued
by the reek of fish in the wind.
This tale goes the rounds of Cardo’s motor shop,
Tentay’s caldohan, wherever it is that drivers go
to pass the slow time of day, or when rain
forces them to seek shelter. The story grows
bigger with every telling: barnacles
on the man’s neck, on his hands, his ears,
the woman’s hair stringy like seaweeds,
the infant in her arms swaddled in kelp—
and did he have fishtail instead of feet?
The boy’s fluorescent stare, as though his eyes
were wells of plankton—was that a starfish
dangling from a string on his chest, sea snakes
wriggling in and out of his pockets?
They say the house in Delgado is still waiting,
as empty and dark as on the day,
ten, eleven years ago, when the M/V Dona Paz
with two thousand on board, became grub
for the sea. Of that time, old women in my village
remember rows of coffins on the dockside,
the smell of rot in the air, wakes everywhere,
and for a month at least, funeral processions
winding down the streets of the city every day.
No driver in our village claims ownership
of this tale, yet it moves like a feckless wind
blowing breath to breath, growing hair, hand,
fist, and feet with every telling, and no doubt,
also claws to grip us cold with its horror.
We cower in the dark, thinking of it, grateful
as we seldom are, for the house steady on the earth,
the dry bed, beside us, a warm body to embrace
despite the tyranny of rain pelting our fragile shelters.
This is our habit, those of us who breathe air,
and walk on land, while in our mind, hearing
the sleepless sea grumbling, grumbling,
grumbling endlessly--
somedaywecome
somedaywecome
somedaysomedaysomeday....
I'll try to tag you on FB so you can see the whole thing.
Looking forward to reading the other links--the thing about self-identifier v. insult reminds me of a story in the debut issue of Constelación magazine, "Imilla." The word "Imilla" just means "girl" in Aymara but is used as a derogative in Bolivia for indigenous women--but at the end of the story, the deity of a mountain uses it affectionately for the protagonist, reclaiming it for her. It was beautiful. (That story was right up my alley: Gods and humans, mother tongues, and friendship via correspondence. And I read it in the original Spanish, which--maybe this was an illusion, but--felt more singing than the translation.)
The con crud seems as socially awkward as the occasional con-goer who doesn't understand hints that it's time to *leave*. Wish it would get a clue and depart!
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You did, thank you! It's wonderful. I will have to look up more of both poets.
The word "Imilla" just means "girl" in Aymara but is used as a derogative in Bolivia for indigenous women--but at the end of the story, the deity of a mountain uses it affectionately for the protagonist, reclaiming it for her. It was beautiful.
Oh, that's really neat. I'm so glad you were able to read it in the original. It does make a difference.
Wish it would get a clue and depart!
I'll tell it my friends are getting tired of it, too . . .
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Also I have printed up stickers for your dragon lover! Will send them soon!
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*and won't let us give away their own dragons
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Good for your child! I've still got mine.
(I absolutely would tell you, come on.)
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Edit: not that you wouldn't be able to hold your own with the watery ones, I just find it bad cricket of them the way they're forever drowning and eating and strangling and beguiling their partners.
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*GIGGLEES*
*Cannot Stop Giggling*
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*hugs*
Also I have printed up stickers for your dragon lover! Will send them soon!
Thank you! She certainly has not tired of dragons since last we spoke!
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Honey and lemon.
*hugs*
Nine
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Thank you! It is a project I'm honored to be part of. I'd be buying a copy if I weren't in it.
Honey and lemon.
I'm doing everything I can . . .
*hugs*
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Thank you. Today has been a poor entry on the meatsack front, but emotionally very nice!
I am so looking forward to the anthology!
Same!
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Thank you!