I am obliged to say that if you'd like to read a serialised book about trailer parks and magic that is absolutely not a romance, then step right this way, please, there's a talking rabbit hare.

It's been hot as all get-out, but this weekend I hope to go to the central library in the city¹. I'll be taking the train, although it's not really a train, it's a light rail. It is, in fact, the longest light rail line in the world and I've seen people bag on that, saying something so long should be a heavy rail (think subways). Maybe they're right, like in the most technical manner, but light rail offers a lot more stops than heavy rail can and is easier to sell to people who hate when transit makes their neighbourhood accessible than all the digging that must be done for heavy rail.

Considering my favourite heavy rail line only finally completed it's extension into an area that went kicking and screaming about it, dragging the timeline out embarrassingly, I'll take the light rail. And, in fact, I do.

If I still commuted into the office it would be train-to-train now, which is thrilling. But, what really magical about this epically long light rail is that I can get on it from a nearby station and then go all the way to Long Beach. It's two hours, but it would be as long or longer in a car--with the negative bonus of being road-stressful as well--and as I used to have to commute that long for work (with transfers to boot) it's kind of nothing. Station-to-station and I'm in a new city, a pleasant walk away from an aquarium that my best friend got me a year's membership to, so I can visit at will.

Image description: A saturated blue photo of a cluster of rocks, possibly some urchins, a shrimp in its red stripes clinging delicately to their surface, antennae questing out. End ID.

As I can't drive, I've spent a lot of time on transit, because I've almost always lived in a town that is described as "no not that one, the town past that one." Then jobs would be in the city centres of the rambling counties (or neighbouring counties), so: the bus and the light rail, and sometimes a good bit of walking. For a chunk of time, when I had a job that stacked onto another full-time job, I calculated that one entire 24-hour day of my week was spent just travelling to and from work².

"Spent" is a funny word for it, an accurate one. Time is a currency, I think we all know--theoretically everyone has banked the same quantity but that's not true actually, as with other currencies one can buy a bit more (or a lot more). Spending time on a long commute is thanks to not spending (or not being able to spend) more on rent closer-in, or a car, or whatever other investment. I'll note it also cost a notable amount for an all-zones pass for Portland Metro, as I had to cross nearly every zone to go from home to work and back again. Still a better commute, I think, than the comparative drive, which my partner had to undertake backwards once we moved from suburb to city, trading the burden of distance.

The nice thing about transit is, you can buy back some of that time spent by what you do on the train. I could always get a seat on the train out, so I also embroidered and wrote most of a book. A commuter I saw often had a portable DVD player and watched movies, headphones on (this is before earbuds made it "headphones in"). I am so blessed as to not get motion sick, so I also read quite a bit--did you know Gutenberg has a shelf of Precursors of Science Fiction? Floating around our apartment there's an old Nokia mobile device (wi-fi only!) with a card in it filled with a library of public domain books I gobbled up over the years.

After we moved to California I finally got on the library e-book train (ha) and first read Greg van Eekhout's California Bones while my bus (the final bus in the chain of my daily trip) rumbled past locations from the book, cementing my love of the La Brea Tar Pits and locking them in my heart in a way that only that perfect matrix of place, time, and experience can form like a geode inside of you, shining and wonderful even if it is never split open and seen by others.

I could go train-to-train now, from my home to the Tar Pits, an easy and breezy ride. Or I could, if they weren't closed for a couple of years while the campus undergoes a bittersweet but needed update. You know what is wonderful though, some of the grounds themselves are still open and I do think it's one of my favourite parks in Los Angeles, stinky patches of tar softening the ground and all.

Image description: A neon yellow cone with the word "GOOEY" stencilled on it rests on a matted patch of grass in a park, a flared beam of sunshine lighting it up from a corner of the image. End ID.

I'm very lucky to have so many places I can go by train, by bus, by transit. My idea of walkable is formed by spending the first chunk of my life in a place miles out from anywhere, taking shoulderless highways and old logging roads by bicycle. The ability to go anywhere that isn't limited by my leg power feels like a gift. It's not always possible to scheme transit-only travel (that spend can add up, in hours and dollars), but it's fun to try, or to imagine trying. I've taken a bus that was a glorified van through the Cascades to the coast, schemed ways to use the free casino shuttles, tried to plot out itineraries around the odd-houred commuter trains that go nowhere in particular.

Transit can be a lot of negative things too--before I was someone who masked regularly I often succumbed to the daycare-level petri dish of so many people passing around colds in a packed bus, I've fallen asleep standing up³, I was stranded for hours once when dispatchers decided to just not send busses to a snowed-in stop. After all the hours I've logged, though, I think the good times and the mind-numbingly neutral times outweigh the stresses. And the freedom of it still! It's not romanticising it, for me it's stating facts. It's the beauty of freer movement, the direct exchange of money for a ticket rather than the calculation of fuel to vehicle, a wild magic table of possibility that yes, you'll sometimes roll a one on.

It's just nice to have the choice, sometimes. Any choice at all, honestly, but especially an option that opens up the possibility for more and other.

Some dreamy tales and fairy tales for you, links go to the Storygraph entries for each title, a great place to check out content warnings and find ways to read them.

• Letters from an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss, is a dreamy, fierce collection of monsters and women and tales told from another perspective. It's a bit Borges, but maybe that's more due to the application of a couple of specific themes and a willful construction of worlds.
• Misery's Wife by Joan Tierney is an unrepentant fairy tale in style--which is frankly rather refreshing, with it's repetition of phrases (from the oral tradition, to keep metre and memory!) and classic motifs. I'd not read the Portuguese fairytale that inspired it, "What Comes from Picking Flowers" but when you've read enough fairytales the shape of a story is a delightful thing to slip into, like a favourite piece of clothing you'd put on but forgotten about. That is not to say "oh, I can guess what happens, oh, this is too familiar" but that, like Grimaldi's clown⁴ saying "Here we are again," as a preface to a new delight.

Have some kind of epic-vibed photos. I will let you know the sign in the second image says "Don't Feed The Seagulls."

Image description: A photo of a concrete-brick building with faded dairy signage, firefighters on ladders about the roof, another cherry-picker type ladder extended to the side. The front of the building and front of the image is blocked off by a large sign that says "MOVING" painted on a closer building, the sky is blue washed grey. End ID.

Image description: A photo of a reflective sign at night on a stout pole. It is unclear what the sign says, but there is a red diamond perched on a white square. The camera flash or nearby light is enough to overexpose the sign and pick out the shape of the pole in the dark but that is all. End ID.

Image description: A photo taken from a car at speed so the closer shrubbery is slightly blurred and there is a sense of movement, passing an enormous satellite dish and small house both deeply surrounded and half-hidden by trees and bushes on all sides. End ID.

A couple of useful links and two stories this time!

• Some cool links and sites have been around forever, and This To That is one of them. Top-tier glue advice!! If you don't think you need to know how to glue disparate types of material to each other, you just haven't unlocked that life quest yet.
• As you may well know, I love birds! I also love their names and how they got them and the difference of the US to UK robin is a fun one. Robins: they're just some guy, and US Bird History has a nice little article on how they got their name.
• Want to know how to disable or avoid intrusive AI on your devices and browsing? Jessamyn West has dedicated a section of her site to the handy No To AI guide.
• A strange, soft and sad story but The Earth Inside Us by by Abigail Kemske ends with a kind of wishful thinking grown from regret that flowers into self-forgiveness.
• Here, have two little soft and sad stories, I'll add Glass Flies by Gwen C. Katz over at Cast of Wonders (you can listen or read!).

The Sameer Project continues to do amazing mutual aid work in Palestine and they particularly have been in need lately.

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.