Basically, I'm not sleeping anymore. I don't fall asleep until well after it's light out, no matter what time I go to bed, and I can't even stay asleep that long, but I'm sleeping much later into the day than makes me comfortable. I'm losing time and I don't have any. I'm barely functional and I have so much to do. My dreams are just a lot of nightmares now. The last one that wasn't actively bad was Goya.
Last night I watched The Cat from Outer Space (1978) with Autolycus. I don't think it was a very good movie, but he seemed to enjoy it. He curled against my chest the entire time and watched the screen intently, occasionally reaching out to touch the moving figures. I kissed him between the ears and told him I loved his little batwings and his too many claws and he did not need a spaceship to be alien. I've never had a cat who liked watching movies before—I don't know what he gets out of it, but he settles down immediately as soon as he sees voices and movements on the screen.
Night before last, I was almost run over by a driver who was paying such careful attention to his GPS that he was ignoring the road. I was in the middle of the crosswalk. A car came barreling toward me. I looked out to make eye contact with the driver, as you do before advancing further into their trajectory, and his head was bent away from the road entirely; he couldn't even see me wave. I stood in the middle of the crosswalk so that he would not hit me. He didn't, but that's because I didn't move. As he swung up the cross-street, I saw the little green pointer tracking across the top-down map on the handheld screen he had stuck to his dashboard. I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and shouted to get the adrenaline out and then continued to my bus stop and hoped the driver met with some kind of non-fatal, extremely stupid road accident: some of those orange-striped sawhorses in the street marking a detour, for example, that his navigation system didn't tell him was there.
Speaking of things that GPS cannot replace: the Knowledge of London. I admit I had heard of this tradition, but assumed it had died out sometime in the twentieth century. I'm actually really happy to know it hasn't. I am not surprised that psychogeography thrives in a city where cabbies are required by their profession to master a constantly changing memory palace.
I did not know either that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has been working for years to restore the American chestnut, developing a blight-resistant strain through crossbreeding and genetic engineering. (My mother knew they were trying; she didn't know they had succeeded.) The first generation of American chestnuts with resistance equal to the Chinese chestnut is now growing. Now they have to be approved for introduction into the wild. I understand the caution: no one wants to hypercorrect a forest. But in five years, I truly hope it will be possible to plant a chestnut in our front yard or at least sponsor one in Pennsylvania somewhere.
If you have not already read and heard "Salamander Song," the poetic-musical collaboration between Rose Lemberg and Emily Jiang that went live yesterday as part of the Strange Horizons Fund Drive, take the time. It is worth it. And then, if you have not already, please donate. There's the other half of Ann Leckie's story still to go!
It's been a week.
Last night I watched The Cat from Outer Space (1978) with Autolycus. I don't think it was a very good movie, but he seemed to enjoy it. He curled against my chest the entire time and watched the screen intently, occasionally reaching out to touch the moving figures. I kissed him between the ears and told him I loved his little batwings and his too many claws and he did not need a spaceship to be alien. I've never had a cat who liked watching movies before—I don't know what he gets out of it, but he settles down immediately as soon as he sees voices and movements on the screen.
Night before last, I was almost run over by a driver who was paying such careful attention to his GPS that he was ignoring the road. I was in the middle of the crosswalk. A car came barreling toward me. I looked out to make eye contact with the driver, as you do before advancing further into their trajectory, and his head was bent away from the road entirely; he couldn't even see me wave. I stood in the middle of the crosswalk so that he would not hit me. He didn't, but that's because I didn't move. As he swung up the cross-street, I saw the little green pointer tracking across the top-down map on the handheld screen he had stuck to his dashboard. I called
derspatchel and shouted to get the adrenaline out and then continued to my bus stop and hoped the driver met with some kind of non-fatal, extremely stupid road accident: some of those orange-striped sawhorses in the street marking a detour, for example, that his navigation system didn't tell him was there.Speaking of things that GPS cannot replace: the Knowledge of London. I admit I had heard of this tradition, but assumed it had died out sometime in the twentieth century. I'm actually really happy to know it hasn't. I am not surprised that psychogeography thrives in a city where cabbies are required by their profession to master a constantly changing memory palace.
I did not know either that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has been working for years to restore the American chestnut, developing a blight-resistant strain through crossbreeding and genetic engineering. (My mother knew they were trying; she didn't know they had succeeded.) The first generation of American chestnuts with resistance equal to the Chinese chestnut is now growing. Now they have to be approved for introduction into the wild. I understand the caution: no one wants to hypercorrect a forest. But in five years, I truly hope it will be possible to plant a chestnut in our front yard or at least sponsor one in Pennsylvania somewhere.
If you have not already read and heard "Salamander Song," the poetic-musical collaboration between Rose Lemberg and Emily Jiang that went live yesterday as part of the Strange Horizons Fund Drive, take the time. It is worth it. And then, if you have not already, please donate. There's the other half of Ann Leckie's story still to go!
It's been a week.
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