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Obligatory Post-Wiscon, Take Slightly More Coherent
Consider this sort of a Best of Wiscon selection, seeing as how it would be completely impossible for me to arrange any kind of day-by-day report. The basics: in the company of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yuki_onna, I flew out to Madison from Boston, hung out at Wiscon, and came back. The details: see below.
(Cut, on the advice offleurdelis28, for total hugeness.)
There was our Chicago encounter with Dora Goss, who had apparently taken the same flight out of Boston and neither Cat nor I had noticed this. Sitting there at the gate with chicken pesto sandwiches in our laps and some lemon and chocolate dessert bars at our feet, we conversed briefly and made plans to meet up at Wiscon: which never panned out in any formal fashion, but we did keep running into her every day of the con, which was nearly as good.
The plane from Chicago to Madison? I don't think it could have taken an MBTA bus in a fair fight. "Puddlejumper" is an accurate word. So is "there are SUVs larger than this plane." Fortunately, we were so dead exhausted from getting up for an eight o'clock flight and the incredible weird hassle of tickets that ensued, that the plane probably could have been a hang glider and I'd still have tried to nap through most of the flight.
There was the first walk up and down State Street, in search of Indian food. We were staying at the University Inn, where one may find Josh the Best Concierge in All Wisconsin, and in dire need of curry. We were later told, yes, there was an Indian restaurant, but it was not within walking distance: we'd have to take a bus. So we started to walk up State Street anyway, figuring sooner or later we'd hit something acceptable to the taste buds and give up on Indian for the day . . . Chautara, the Indian-Tibetan restaurant of my previous goat-centric post, was not even a mile away. Clearly a place where people drive far more than I'm used to. But the ramble was not wasted; we found cool used book stores, a number of restaurants that we marked down for future visits, and a bunch of Christian activists who stood outside the Lutheran chapel on the edge of campus and held up double-sided signs about Jesus and repentance and sin. And the evening and the morning were the first day. Was that Thursday? Time holds still for Wiscon. At least, time measured by sleep does.
If I had to pick two complete strangers with whom to spend a debauched weekend of books and sleep deprivation,godlyperspectiv and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
grailquestion have gone right to the top of my list. They showed up on Friday, which I mostly spent entangled in academia, and thereby doubled or tripled the technological level of our hotel room (did I mention we could pirate four or five kinds of wireless from our room? Yep. It was good), and they and Cat were very amenable about being evicted downstairs to the lobby so that I could crash Friday night. I made my first-ever book sale to them* and I will forever associate them with Home Star Runner and the phrase "Virus = Very Yes." They are among the fantastic and the storied and, damn it, they live in Cleveland. Invent me a teleportation booth, somebody. Livejournal only goes so far.
After which all semblance of coherence is broken and forgot.
Running into Kelly Link and Gavin Grant at the local pharmacy. Corneringtruepenny within five minutes in the dealer's room at the Concourse, so that I could rave about her Kyle Booth stories.** First meeting with yhlee, who was entirely unexpected and just as cool as I had hoped she would be. We found Tim Pratt in the art room, where he and Heather Shaw were setting up her incredible beaded creations; and I got to meet, among others, Greg van Eekhout, Jenn Reese, and a contributor's copy of Flytrap #4. Christopher Rowe and Gwenda Bond were in the dealer's room, with copies of the beautifully bound Say . . . have you heard this one?, and I think I forgot to tell them mazel tov on their marriage: argh. Alan DeNiro is no longer a ptarmigan. sosostris2012 and valancy were at Cat's panel at eleven forty-five at night—because isn't that always when everyone wants to survey the history of feminism in the United States?—and I cannot remember where matociquala came in, but indeed, she was there too.
The open-mike that Cat and I crashed, with Dmitri and Melissa for entourage, where she read "The Oracle at Detroit" and "The Oracle at Miami" and I read "Intercourse" and "Genesis," and I learned what Sandra Lindow looks like in her natural poetic habitat.
Talking toellen_kushner at the clothing swap, and after the panel on writing in the same world over time—where I think I fangirled P.C. Hodgell out, because her Kencyrath books are about the only open-ended fantasy series I read—and at the Strange Horizons party, and I've got a signed copy of The Golden Dreydl now.***
Brunch withjlundberg and marrael: I'm not sure I was awake enough for proper conversation, but they were awesome.
Waiting forscathedobsidian and jaded_dreamer at the terrific Greek restaurant on State Street, where we ate twice that weekend: and there were a lot of other restaurants on that street. They had a roof garden, so we hung out over its rail and scanned the street for any signs of Morpheus and a bombshell redhead, and probably did a fair if inadvertent imitation of hetairai in the process. More restaurants need roof gardens. Especially when they serve food as good as Parthenon Gyros does. (Also, their spanakopita are huge. We're talking the size of small banana republics here.) The sheer presence of scathedobsidian and jaded_dreamer was pretty cool, too.
The Ratbastards party: talking with Tim for hours about myth and poetry and formative influences, all to a backdrop of ear-shattering karaoke, and that might have been worth the whole trip alone.
A conversation in comparative oral traditions withpythia_akrypta, who knows, besides Greek, two of the languages I have meant to learn since second grade and still not gotten around two: Middle Welsh and Old Irish. This is a woman who can read the Mabinogion right off the page. You have no idea how impressed I am.
drakenfly and obafugakum, who make masks. That in itself is mythic beyond compare.
The necklace that I purchased fromelisem in trade for [a certain amount of cash] and a story of the same title. It's a tangle of silver wire, driftglass, pearl and labradorite and silverleaf jasper, and a green-glazed shell, like a beachcombing jumble braided into jewelry: it's called "Remember What You Say in Dreams." The ruins of Thera at Akrotiri are in there, and sorrow that persists into the present day. And there was also the earring I got for a haiku, "Eating the Dreamflower." I'd never written to a title before. I think I like the results.****
I signed up for the signing after sign-out. Nobody came by for a signature, which did not particularly surprise me, but two girls did write down our names and favorite words.° I went with "liminal."
There was more. There must have been more. If you should be in this brief sketch of story, and you are not, yell at me! I'll remember once my memory is given a swift kick where it counts. Meanwhile, all of my photographs are still on Cat's camera, and Cat's camera is in Virginia, and Cat's computer is without internet hookup, but someday Cat will return to the blogosphere (oh, God, it's entered my vocabulary) and there will be photographs. Till then, I leave you with some footnotes and return to the Iliad.
I am definitely going back next year.
*Yes, I know people have ordered Postcards from the Province of Hyphens from amazon.com and Clarkesworld and such, but in all those cases I wasn't there to hand over the actual book myself. Here, I was. It made me very happy.
**As a classicist and used-book addict, I may be genetically fixed to imprint upon the awkward archivist types. Be that as it may, I am still waiting for a collection of Kyle Murchison Booth. I can be patient.
***Other people, I admit, might have asked for a signature on something more text-oriented, like Swordspoint or The Fall of the Kings. Other people's first introduction to Ellen Kushner probably wasn't a paperback of Swordspoint in perfect condition, signed by the author and stickered to this effect on the front cover, inexplicably abandoned to the crowded shelves of The Book Rack when it was still on Mass Ave in Arlington. Who would sell an autographed, fine book? Who would not hang on to such a thing? I don't know, but I bless them daily.
****In my well-slept genius state, of course, I did not write down my own copy of the haiku: I cannot present it here for your amusement and amazement. More to the point, I've forgotten it, except I know it contained ghosts and a blue moon's rind. I'm fairly sureelisem was collecting them, however, so I'm sure someday I'll find out what I wrote.
°Which I think may be even cooler than simply collecting autographs. It doesn't sell me any books, but I'll bet it makes for a fascinating compilation.
yuki_onna, I flew out to Madison from Boston, hung out at Wiscon, and came back. The details: see below.(Cut, on the advice of
fleurdelis28, for total hugeness.)There was our Chicago encounter with Dora Goss, who had apparently taken the same flight out of Boston and neither Cat nor I had noticed this. Sitting there at the gate with chicken pesto sandwiches in our laps and some lemon and chocolate dessert bars at our feet, we conversed briefly and made plans to meet up at Wiscon: which never panned out in any formal fashion, but we did keep running into her every day of the con, which was nearly as good.
The plane from Chicago to Madison? I don't think it could have taken an MBTA bus in a fair fight. "Puddlejumper" is an accurate word. So is "there are SUVs larger than this plane." Fortunately, we were so dead exhausted from getting up for an eight o'clock flight and the incredible weird hassle of tickets that ensued, that the plane probably could have been a hang glider and I'd still have tried to nap through most of the flight.
There was the first walk up and down State Street, in search of Indian food. We were staying at the University Inn, where one may find Josh the Best Concierge in All Wisconsin, and in dire need of curry. We were later told, yes, there was an Indian restaurant, but it was not within walking distance: we'd have to take a bus. So we started to walk up State Street anyway, figuring sooner or later we'd hit something acceptable to the taste buds and give up on Indian for the day . . . Chautara, the Indian-Tibetan restaurant of my previous goat-centric post, was not even a mile away. Clearly a place where people drive far more than I'm used to. But the ramble was not wasted; we found cool used book stores, a number of restaurants that we marked down for future visits, and a bunch of Christian activists who stood outside the Lutheran chapel on the edge of campus and held up double-sided signs about Jesus and repentance and sin. And the evening and the morning were the first day. Was that Thursday? Time holds still for Wiscon. At least, time measured by sleep does.
If I had to pick two complete strangers with whom to spend a debauched weekend of books and sleep deprivation,
godlyperspectiv and grailquestion have gone right to the top of my list. They showed up on Friday, which I mostly spent entangled in academia, and thereby doubled or tripled the technological level of our hotel room (did I mention we could pirate four or five kinds of wireless from our room? Yep. It was good), and they and Cat were very amenable about being evicted downstairs to the lobby so that I could crash Friday night. I made my first-ever book sale to them* and I will forever associate them with Home Star Runner and the phrase "Virus = Very Yes." They are among the fantastic and the storied and, damn it, they live in Cleveland. Invent me a teleportation booth, somebody. Livejournal only goes so far.After which all semblance of coherence is broken and forgot.
Running into Kelly Link and Gavin Grant at the local pharmacy. Cornering
truepenny within five minutes in the dealer's room at the Concourse, so that I could rave about her Kyle Booth stories.** First meeting with yhlee, who was entirely unexpected and just as cool as I had hoped she would be. We found Tim Pratt in the art room, where he and Heather Shaw were setting up her incredible beaded creations; and I got to meet, among others, Greg van Eekhout, Jenn Reese, and a contributor's copy of Flytrap #4. Christopher Rowe and Gwenda Bond were in the dealer's room, with copies of the beautifully bound Say . . . have you heard this one?, and I think I forgot to tell them mazel tov on their marriage: argh. Alan DeNiro is no longer a ptarmigan. sosostris2012 and valancy were at Cat's panel at eleven forty-five at night—because isn't that always when everyone wants to survey the history of feminism in the United States?—and I cannot remember where matociquala came in, but indeed, she was there too.The open-mike that Cat and I crashed, with Dmitri and Melissa for entourage, where she read "The Oracle at Detroit" and "The Oracle at Miami" and I read "Intercourse" and "Genesis," and I learned what Sandra Lindow looks like in her natural poetic habitat.
Talking to
ellen_kushner at the clothing swap, and after the panel on writing in the same world over time—where I think I fangirled P.C. Hodgell out, because her Kencyrath books are about the only open-ended fantasy series I read—and at the Strange Horizons party, and I've got a signed copy of The Golden Dreydl now.***Brunch with
jlundberg and marrael: I'm not sure I was awake enough for proper conversation, but they were awesome.Waiting for
scathedobsidian and jaded_dreamer at the terrific Greek restaurant on State Street, where we ate twice that weekend: and there were a lot of other restaurants on that street. They had a roof garden, so we hung out over its rail and scanned the street for any signs of Morpheus and a bombshell redhead, and probably did a fair if inadvertent imitation of hetairai in the process. More restaurants need roof gardens. Especially when they serve food as good as Parthenon Gyros does. (Also, their spanakopita are huge. We're talking the size of small banana republics here.) The sheer presence of scathedobsidian and jaded_dreamer was pretty cool, too.The Ratbastards party: talking with Tim for hours about myth and poetry and formative influences, all to a backdrop of ear-shattering karaoke, and that might have been worth the whole trip alone.
A conversation in comparative oral traditions with
pythia_akrypta, who knows, besides Greek, two of the languages I have meant to learn since second grade and still not gotten around two: Middle Welsh and Old Irish. This is a woman who can read the Mabinogion right off the page. You have no idea how impressed I am.drakenfly and obafugakum, who make masks. That in itself is mythic beyond compare.The necklace that I purchased from
elisem in trade for [a certain amount of cash] and a story of the same title. It's a tangle of silver wire, driftglass, pearl and labradorite and silverleaf jasper, and a green-glazed shell, like a beachcombing jumble braided into jewelry: it's called "Remember What You Say in Dreams." The ruins of Thera at Akrotiri are in there, and sorrow that persists into the present day. And there was also the earring I got for a haiku, "Eating the Dreamflower." I'd never written to a title before. I think I like the results.****I signed up for the signing after sign-out. Nobody came by for a signature, which did not particularly surprise me, but two girls did write down our names and favorite words.° I went with "liminal."
There was more. There must have been more. If you should be in this brief sketch of story, and you are not, yell at me! I'll remember once my memory is given a swift kick where it counts. Meanwhile, all of my photographs are still on Cat's camera, and Cat's camera is in Virginia, and Cat's computer is without internet hookup, but someday Cat will return to the blogosphere (oh, God, it's entered my vocabulary) and there will be photographs. Till then, I leave you with some footnotes and return to the Iliad.
I am definitely going back next year.
*Yes, I know people have ordered Postcards from the Province of Hyphens from amazon.com and Clarkesworld and such, but in all those cases I wasn't there to hand over the actual book myself. Here, I was. It made me very happy.
**As a classicist and used-book addict, I may be genetically fixed to imprint upon the awkward archivist types. Be that as it may, I am still waiting for a collection of Kyle Murchison Booth. I can be patient.
***Other people, I admit, might have asked for a signature on something more text-oriented, like Swordspoint or The Fall of the Kings. Other people's first introduction to Ellen Kushner probably wasn't a paperback of Swordspoint in perfect condition, signed by the author and stickered to this effect on the front cover, inexplicably abandoned to the crowded shelves of The Book Rack when it was still on Mass Ave in Arlington. Who would sell an autographed, fine book? Who would not hang on to such a thing? I don't know, but I bless them daily.
****In my well-slept genius state, of course, I did not write down my own copy of the haiku: I cannot present it here for your amusement and amazement. More to the point, I've forgotten it, except I know it contained ghosts and a blue moon's rind. I'm fairly sure
elisem was collecting them, however, so I'm sure someday I'll find out what I wrote.°Which I think may be even cooler than simply collecting autographs. It doesn't sell me any books, but I'll bet it makes for a fascinating compilation.
no subject
Listening to the Martin Carthy will probably cause me to need to reread the book. Pity.