Today's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #62, containing my poem "Maudit." If I want to be pretentious about it, I could say it is an address to the muse in the tradition of Catullus 63, which famously ends with the poet refusing the inspiration of the goddess: alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos, go make others driven, go make others mad. Actually it was February and I was on a train and coughing badly and I have been cranky about the suffering genius myth for years. Sneakers and eyes are the theme of the issue and the contributors include Alexandra Seidel, Sandi Leibowitz, Egg Johnson, Neil Wilgus, Mike Allen, S. Brackett Robertson, and Jennifer Crow. I grabbed it on my way out the door to my doctor's appointment and it gave me reading material while my bus did not actually arrive. I made it to my doctor's appointment by other routes and then to dinner with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch, with a pleasant chance meeting with Matthew Timmins in between. The MBTA is a shonde far di commuters and at least I always carry too many books.
And then I came home with my groceries and promptly called the City of Somerville because our street smelled like a sewer had blown up on it. In the middle of a barnyard. On the planet Tersurus. It was eye-watering. Half an hour, two 311 calls, and four transfers later, a young lieutenant of the Somerville Fire Department stepped out of his fire truck and said immediately, "What is that?" in the tone usually reserved for performances of Sweeney Todd when he sees one of Mrs. Lovett's pies for the first time. "That's what I called about!" is all I had to explain. He and the other firefighters went up and down the street with flashlights and occasional gagging noises while neighbors emerged to the flashing red lights and said things like "Oh, thank God, you can smell it, too!" and the rest of us replied, "Who can't?" From looking at the path of crud dried in the gutters, mapping the extent of the reek, and comparing notes from residents who arrived home before I did, it was the best guess of the fire lieutenant that someone from a carpet or similar cleaning business dumped a tank of almost certainly fecal wastewater on our street—where they are not supposed to dispose of it—and unfortunately the only thing for it is street cleaning tomorrow morning, until which time we all have waterfront property on the Bog of Eternal Stench. He gave us formal permission from the City of Somerville to throw bottles and other deterrents at anyone we see performing a similar act of pollution in future: "It's just so selfish! Just dump your crap wherever and let someone else deal with it. It's a symbol of the age." I thanked him and went upstairs to take a shower because what with one thing and another I had been standing outside for too long trying to breathe through my ears and my hair now smelled like the outhouse of the damned. Hestia has just snuggled against my shoulder and verified that now I smell like her, but, jeez. Some representatives from the Somerville Department of Public Works also came by and inhaled the damage, but fortunately I did not need to go out to speak with them.
In the meantime, the windows are closed.
spatch, with a pleasant chance meeting with Matthew Timmins in between. The MBTA is a shonde far di commuters and at least I always carry too many books.And then I came home with my groceries and promptly called the City of Somerville because our street smelled like a sewer had blown up on it. In the middle of a barnyard. On the planet Tersurus. It was eye-watering. Half an hour, two 311 calls, and four transfers later, a young lieutenant of the Somerville Fire Department stepped out of his fire truck and said immediately, "What is that?" in the tone usually reserved for performances of Sweeney Todd when he sees one of Mrs. Lovett's pies for the first time. "That's what I called about!" is all I had to explain. He and the other firefighters went up and down the street with flashlights and occasional gagging noises while neighbors emerged to the flashing red lights and said things like "Oh, thank God, you can smell it, too!" and the rest of us replied, "Who can't?" From looking at the path of crud dried in the gutters, mapping the extent of the reek, and comparing notes from residents who arrived home before I did, it was the best guess of the fire lieutenant that someone from a carpet or similar cleaning business dumped a tank of almost certainly fecal wastewater on our street—where they are not supposed to dispose of it—and unfortunately the only thing for it is street cleaning tomorrow morning, until which time we all have waterfront property on the Bog of Eternal Stench. He gave us formal permission from the City of Somerville to throw bottles and other deterrents at anyone we see performing a similar act of pollution in future: "It's just so selfish! Just dump your crap wherever and let someone else deal with it. It's a symbol of the age." I thanked him and went upstairs to take a shower because what with one thing and another I had been standing outside for too long trying to breathe through my ears and my hair now smelled like the outhouse of the damned. Hestia has just snuggled against my shoulder and verified that now I smell like her, but, jeez. Some representatives from the Somerville Department of Public Works also came by and inhaled the damage, but fortunately I did not need to go out to speak with them.
In the meantime, the windows are closed.
