You say it's elemental, I say it's alchemy

[sovay]

In traditional fashion, I believe I mistook this morning's earthquake for trucks out on the street. I feel a little as though I should visit the Bloody Bluff Fault and a little as though I should just leave the crumple zone of our bedrock alone.

I have been in a kind of free-fall of sleepless pain, but Uncanny Magazine is running its 2024 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll in which each reader can vote for their top three favorites of the magazine's year of fiction and since I had a story in Uncanny last year, I am self-interestedly boosting. It's a magnificent roster of fiction to choose from all round.

I hate finding out about local art through the news that it was mysteriously and aggressively stolen. I still dream of discovering the one sculpture of my grandmother's that is unaccounted for in a private collection or a museum with no idea of its provenance. It went missing when the temple that had commissioned it was vandalized: I have only ever seen my grandfather's photographs of it, the stark-lined armature of a hand in her characteristically half-fleshed style, the lava-black beading of its solder ominous in light of its title, Auschwitz. I do not like to imagine it was destroyed when it was made to hold memory in its empty, upwrenched palm.

History is a yahrzeit candle.
One terrible wind could blow it out.
—Jane Yolen, "Tombs" (1996)

Comments

[imagine_that]

I've got the flu, so I was sleeping when the earthquake hit. It have no conscious awareness of it, but I woke up suddenly and it was when it would have hit. Dan said he heard a big grinding noise.

[asakiyume]

Wow, how terrible about the art theft! It's confusing/bewildering to me too. I understand a mercenary motive in stealing super high value artwork (don't condone it at all! But understand it) But with art at this level, you'd think the people who enjoyed it as art would want to support the artist! And you wouldn't think thieves would think they could make enough money off the art to make it worth their while.

It kind of feels like a sort of terrorism--just out to destroy people's pleasure. Like with your grandmother's art. So your grandmother was a sculptor? How cool!

Good luck in the reader poll!

Theoretically the earthquake was feelable out here, but I didn't feel it ...

[selkie]

Voted, obviously!

I guess it's your local faultline and I know you know it best, but be careful out there!

[gwynnega]

I am sorry to hear about the art theft.

How wonderful that your grandmother was a sculptor.

[thisbluespirit]

I hate finding out about local art through the news that it was mysteriously and aggressively stolen. I still dream of discovering the one sculpture of my grandmother's that is unaccounted for in a private collection or a museum

Oh, gosh. How weird, on the first count! And I do hope you do track down the sculpture. How awful to just have it lurking unseen and lost instead. (This is why we have librarians! Things need cataloguing!! It's how people access stuff. *ahem*)

*hugs for the rest* (I don't think, at this point, that I dare even ask if the sleepless pain part is a little better by the time of this late comment, but I will HOPE so anyway. ♥)