The reading on Saturday went really well. I got a ride with Larissa who picked me up at Pandemonium where I scored a copy of Yoon Ha Lee's Dragon Pearl (2019) for my godchild and Ian McDonald's Time Was (2018) for me; I read two unpublished poems and scenes from the story then in progress and also told the story of the naming of Vanth and talked about incantation bowls, because that is the sort of thing that happens if you put me in front of a crowd. Turnout was an impressive more than forty people, standing room only in the basement of a credit union. There were even halftime refreshments, tragically for me mostly of the chocolate variety, but the thought does count. The entire experience was a little strangely inflected by having spent the afternoon at a memorial service for the wife of one of my closest friends from college, but it was a good thing for my friend that I was there. One of the hymns was a sea-song I had not previously encountered and at the line I was born upon the fathoms, never harbor or port have I known my throat just closed up, which did not prevent a stranger at the reception from demanding to know why I wasn't in the choir with a voice like that. The conversation ended with me sputtering, "Because I don't belong to a church!" and explaining about A Besere Velt. In the stranger's defense, I gather that saying I was Jewish did not automatically clarify the question of whether I was or was not also UU.
Sunday![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I went grocery-shopping with my mother who has a car. We got human food and cat food and litter and paper products. We got flattened. We must have been demonically possessed to come home and clean the bathroom, but that also happened.
This afternoon I met Marc for ramen at Sapporo. We talked a lot about mystery novels and travel; it was nice and the second purely social thing I've done since Arisia. I have been under a rather viral rock. While I was under the rock, Kirk Douglas died.
I have just finished the story to go with the titleashlyme gave me last month. It came out intensely hauntological and angry about gentrification and climate change. I could blame the cold I got in the middle of writing and then the other cold I got on top, but I suspect it is much more directly the fault of living in Boston in 2020.
In less than five hours, I have to get up for another pair of doctor's appointments. I may crawl back under a rock on Wednesday.
Sunday
spatch and I went grocery-shopping with my mother who has a car. We got human food and cat food and litter and paper products. We got flattened. We must have been demonically possessed to come home and clean the bathroom, but that also happened. This afternoon I met Marc for ramen at Sapporo. We talked a lot about mystery novels and travel; it was nice and the second purely social thing I've done since Arisia. I have been under a rather viral rock. While I was under the rock, Kirk Douglas died.
I have just finished the story to go with the title
ashlyme gave me last month. It came out intensely hauntological and angry about gentrification and climate change. I could blame the cold I got in the middle of writing and then the other cold I got on top, but I suspect it is much more directly the fault of living in Boston in 2020.In less than five hours, I have to get up for another pair of doctor's appointments. I may crawl back under a rock on Wednesday.
