When I'm reaching deep down into my senses

Bad: This is the third night in a row I have not slept. I am beginning to feel very frayed around the edges and I hurt all the time.

Good: I am reading tonight at Pandemonium Books & Games! Come hear me read different stories and answer different questions than at my previous appearances. I don't think it should be a selling point that I might be tired enough to speak in tongues.

On the strength of their "Save the People," spatch and I really feel the Mountain Goats should just do a full-album cover of Godspell or a concert revival or something.

On the strength of "Soft Stud," I am having trouble waiting for the rest of Black Belt Eagle Scout's Mother of My Children (2017/2018). Queer Native feminist alternative rock? Do you want to take my money now or yesterday?

Talking about Neue Sachlichkeit with moon_custafer reminded me of Max Beckmann's Double Portrait (1946). I visit it whenever I am at the MFA; it's one of my favorite pieces of the museum, along with the stamp seal with a suḫurmāšu or Ellen Day Hale's Self Portrait (1885). I like Beckmann's portrait of Perry T. Rathbone (1948), but the other one keeps coming back to me.

In my lungs and through my chest, I know you're listening

I did not speak in tongues. I did sing one of my own songs at the end of "Chez Vous Soon," even though I am not a three-person alternative band circa 2005. I opened with "And Black Unfathomable Lakes" and added "Last Drink Bird Head" partway through the Q&A because three more people had just arrived and it seemed unfair for them not to hear any fiction. Salimata Kamara hosted and asked really good questions, as did the audience which included kenjari, skygiants, my parents, and other people who are not on Dreamwidth. I got asked about mythology, music, how my stories come together, whether I have ever been surprised by a character. spatch took a picture. I appear to have Fred the white hole in my hair.



I was not quite running on no sleep since Monday, having managed to pass out for an hour around noon, but I don't think my body believed it. I had a storm-coming headache while reading about a character with one. I had a wonderful time all the same. We had dun dun noodles with my father at Mary Chung's beforehand and ice cream with my mother at Toscanini's afterward and none of us made it out of the bookstore without taking a few new books with us. The temperature appears to be slowly contracting to something that isn't like living inside a bath towel. It is my fervent hope that once the performance adrenaline finishes burning itself out of my system, I will actually collapse.

I think I really like doing readings.