I thought this was meant to be a carnival

[sovay]

The moon tonight was astonishing: so bright you could feel your pupils tighten as you looked at it. It looked brighter than the streetlights, one of those hole-punched full moons that look like somewhere else is spilling in. Its glow was visible over the edge of the roofs long after it had set behind them. You get that kind of moon in Tanith Lee.

I had a hearing with the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment this afternoon. It was conducted over the phone and took about fifteen minutes, which was much less than I had been braced for: when I was asked if I had any questions, my question was effectively was that it? I presume at some point I'll find out if it worked. It was not, of course, about the problem I have been having with them since June.

I would be reading Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia (1975) if my copy were not in storage along with Space Lords (1965) and The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (1993), which I can still remember reading in high school while waiting for the chorus to settle itself for rehearsal; I had discovered "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" in Groff Conklin's 12 Great Classics of Science Fiction (1963) and then I had scoured my parents' shelves for any stories by Smith in hitherto overlooked anthologies and then I scoured used book stores and then NESFA Press helped me out. Right now, I can find the originally published first half of The Boy Who Bought Old Earth (1964) readily enough, but the second half of The Underpeople (1968) remains out of easy reach. In the process of trying to find it, I ran across the claim that the Lord Redlady—the disgraced and tricksterish Commissioner of the Instrumentality who becomes the protagonist's first unexpected ally, "a thin man with a sharp, inquiring face" and a flamboyant style which does not contradict his occasional tendency to vaporize someone; he isn't my favorite character because the novel also contains the cat-girl C'mell—was based on the author's friend Michael Lindsay, of whom I hadn't heard. Now I want to read the memoir by his wife Hsiao Li. I have fewer expectations of finding that out of copyright on the internet.

I have decided I need to get my watch fixed. It's been 1:39 since last April. This is probably on some level accurate, but I still don't like having to pull out my phone to synch up with everyone else's broken time.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I was going to say, but then you said it: your watch is probably among the more accurate timepieces on the planet.

Your description of the moon was so beautiful. The light from somewhere else--I love when it seems that way. And I liked the notion of feeling your pupils tightening.

The business with Unemployment. Prayers for your needs and curses on the system that pulps real humans in its gears. Funny, I can offer these curses for the medical system, the unemployment system, the system to deal with homelessness, the system to deal with cross-border migration ...

This is two entries where you've mentioned Cordwainer Smith. I've heard his name before but never to really have an association... I will go look him up so I know more about who this guy is and what he wrote.

[thisbluespirit]

I have decided I need to get my watch fixed. It's been 1:39 since last April. This is probably on some level accurate

Are you trying to summon an element? XD 0_o

[selkie]

…of course your watch… okay.

[julian]

"The moon tonight was astonishing..."

Rather.

[movingfinger]

Do your cats get excited about full moons?

[davidgillon]

I'd not come across Lindsay, but he's definitely interesting, isn't he? Very much in that tradition of slightly odd Brits turning up in far-away places and just setting out to do whatever they could when war blew up. (Is there a US parallel?)

'Lord Redlady' does seem rather a giveaway, even if Hsiao Li, Lady Lindsay, was actually a critic of the communists.