If you're interested in more writing from me, I've got another book serialising, starting June 21. Trailer parks, magic, it's absolutely not a romance, learn more here.

I'm currently reading (hopefully done by the time this goes out) Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis and in it I learned the opossum was introduced to Southern California in 1910. Well, obviously on reading that I had to go find out more. This has been my problem with non-fiction in general. I go seek out supplementary information because small lines catch my curiosity. It's been particularly notable for this book—which was written in 1998 about the area I live in now—and so much has changed and so much has not in the time since.

Anyway, about opossums: thankfully the wonderful KCET, through PBS SoCal, has a fun list of 5 Species You Might Have Mistakenly Thought Were California Natives that gives the dates of opossum arrivals. That 1910 date was the second population imported—for nostalgic food for recent transplants specifically, which makes sense in context. It's not that I thought opossums were a native creature to this particularly wild and weird ecology, I was mostly startled by the so-recent date. Luckily, my beloved scraggly little guys have found a way to fit into the habitat without displacing native animals.

Where we live I see opossums often, which I've noted before. I have a kind of running count of the smallest ones on Tumblr. It feels like a gift to see these near-sighted critters going about their daily errands. They're my good luck charm.

I forget that crickets are supposed to be good luck too—and have been pets historically, they're not a pest here but they're persistent, their song a constant when it's warm (or when they're in a spot that's warm).

Image description: Bluesky post from bzedan, "Shout out to the cricket who lives in the doorframe doing a solo because the world is actually 48f, but his goddamn loud hidey hole is nice and toasty." End ID

Often they're more noticeable in their absence. In the suburbs it’s louder at night than during the day, with the crickets and night birds and the highway a distant rush that laps its waves further in the sunless air.

I feel like I talk about the same things a lot, how we need to learn to notice small things, remember good things, how we touch and shape the world around is in small ways but in my defence it IS something I am thinking about always. If you've ever done physical therapy, often you are given your little sheet of home exercises and also are taught how to be thoughtful of how you're moving¹. I'm thinking always, on some level, of where is my body, ah am I doing that thing again, should I put on the brace, let's do a reset and then come back with more mindful movement. If you've had an injury you're always going to hold that joint a little different, be aware of it in a specific way because it's failed you before.

And, of course, our brains are just wetter, squishier bits of the body with problems that can sometimes be as elusive as the injury that put me in PT.

I've been angry and sad for a long time for reasons that I have very few chances to materially change, but at some point realised that I didn't want that to be the leitmotif that plays in my head.

Image description: A screencap of a tumblr post. From antlerpunk: my leitmotif is about to fucking reprise. technoturian reblogs with a screencap of a reply by kindagaybutnotgayenough: In its original major key right...? ITS IN ITS ORIGINAL MAJOR KEY RIGHT????????????!!!! End ID.

I can't change some things but I can change the key, maybe (to major, haha, I promise).

Many people have said it many better ways but it's worth finding a way to be in love with some part of the world you must inhabit. I am lucky, every day almost I see a lizard, or a butterfly and without fail I hear and see birds almost from wake to sleep². I’ve been seeing dragonflies sometimes and that always feels like a gift. It's work though.

My partner and I, we struggled very much to get here and are almost furiously determined to never take the beauty of where we live for granted. I keep weird lists and stops and starts for newsletters and copy them along into each month's template and one that keeps getting pushed along just says "look at that view." It's the ""all we have are dolphins" conundrum³.

There are stuff we do the work to make sure we never want to take for granted-boring (the good things). And there are the things that we strive to ensure are never accepted as normal-okay (the bad things). There are places I've lived that I never loved and that's fine, I can't even summon nostalgia for them. They helped me learn what I should never accept as normal.

But you know, in one of the most stressful living situations I've ever been in, where I was so anxious I couldn't eat solids, I did see this one opossum regularly. I saw coyotes, a skunk and her babies once (I levitated to the raised parking area as she sauntered up). There were birds and fruit and flowers and shitty little plants flourishing in areas with broken sidewalks. A squirrel who took one small bite from every ripe avocado on the tree in the lot before discarding them.

So, of course, in the current of the now I keep reminding myself and reminding others: what do you see, what do you love, did you know people see and love you.

I turned to my bookshelves for this one, rather than my Storygraph stats, and picked two books I've made more notes in or about than any others. Links go to the Storygraph entries for each title, a great place to check out content warnings and find ways to read them.

• The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, this one with Margarita Guerrero (Contributor), Norman Thomas di Giovanni (Translator), though there are a handful of translations and editions out there (some with illustrations!), which are probably all great. I don't know when I first encountered this, but I know my copy quickly became filled with slips of paper marking spots. There's established beasts as well as creatures fully from Borges' imagination, or chimera of "real" and "pretend." It's just a delightful bestiary with lots to chew on, ponder over and play with. If you draw (at all, and honestly even if you don't) it's a fun source to pull doodle and sketch ideas from.
• Glory Lane by Alan Dean Foster is a book I snagged from my parent's shelves as a teen and never returned. My copy has dog ears and pencil marks, however you feel about Foster, he can build a world (his eternally wet, aggressive plant filled Drowning World is still one I think about) and this book has a wealth of weirdo creatures that looks at the mish-mash of species in something like Star Wars and says "hold my beer." It's a basic quest with classic '80s trope characters as the mains who charmingly (and tbf, kind of expectedly) not so much subvert their archetypes but make them work for them. It's silly and has fun, building castles in the sandbox of standard storytelling tropes.

While finishing a big film scanning project, Chase encountered a roll from me. Those aren't these, but they did remind me to look at my "scanned from film" tag on Flickr, which netted some good early summer shots.

Image description: A over-exposed, summer sun-bright photo of a tire track in the sand. On the right of the image is the out-of-focus body of a rusting old white pickup, as though the photographer were leaning against it. End ID.

Image description: A photograph of a giant inflatable slide that is shaped like a shark riding a wave, so one exits via the shark's mouth. People with out of focus faces wander past, and the bunting and pop-up canopies around indicate it is a fair environment. Lens distortion around the edges forces the eye to focus near the centre, where the shark's confused eye is. End ID.

Image description: A photograph of a beachgrass-strewn expanse of sand. In the near background is a thick stand of evergreens, which roll away into the distant hills, under a netted cirrocumulus cloudy sky. End ID.

Some links about people, but also some animals.

• Over at Michigan Abolition and Prisoner Solidarity, a really good piece Street Intellectuals against Conspiracy Theories: An Interview with Chino on Illuminati Theory and the Hood. I didn't have any background on Illuminati Theory as a "mode of explanation" precisely, though I knew the basic shape of it—the context here is really important and interesting, looking at the ways folks have snagged onto conspiracy flotsam in an attempt to keep afloat in a sea of inequality and worry.
• A mutual's recent reblog introduced me to Jennifer Mills News on Tumblr. It's a one page weekly newspaper that is sort of a diary? But also very much a newsletter/newspaper reporting on recent events. There's a whole Wikipedia article on it and everything. It's a delight and her recent poem on cheese puffs got read out loud.
• Project Rattlecam has live streams of rookeries of snakes and what looks like a wildly active chat over on YouTube. As is my history with animal cams (except once for the platypus cam over at San Diego Zoo), I haven't ever caught much interesting but it's still fun.
• There's something sweet and hopeful about The Long Mural by James Van Pelt over at Clarkesworld. A lot to like about it but of course I'm soft for the idea of a community mural painted on the wall of an ark ship, contributed to over the years.

If you've thought of donating eSims, this guide was very helpful, and Crips for eSims for Gaza is a good option if you can't easily manage topping them up. There are also more traditional donation targets like the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, UNRWA, and Doctors Without Borders. If you prefer giving directly to families, Gaza Funds is a nice resource that facilitates finding campaigns.