the slow and unyielding march of time | episode 18
I've had a headache for, oh, about a week now. It has been ebbing and flowing, sometimes hiding deep in my sinuses until I get lulled into a sense of complacency. Yesterday, at the very end of the work day, it started pounding; usually on Thursdays I volunteer at the Bureau of Fearless Ideas, which these days is of course via Zoom. I hate to cancel, and I really could have used the endorphins boost of seeing the kids, but even after I ate some pain meds, I couldn't stand another couple of hours on the computer. I called my family to light Chanukah candles, one of my favorite traditions, and then hopped in the bath, where the pain was quelled for a few minutes, but roared to life once i stepped out.
I was in bed before 8pm, fan on. It's been so hot in my apartment, it's been windows-open, fans-on all day and night. (I learned on the internet this week that NYC-apartment heating was actually designed to be used with the windows open, a holdover from our last great pandemic of 1918.) I tried reading for a few minutes before giving up and giving in, turning off the light. Once I was in the dark, I fell into a twilight state where I could feel my body relaxing and tensing in waves. I stayed in that hazy state for a while.
It's been a truly terrible couple of weeks; work's been hard, a death in the family, some bad news from a friend, and of course, everything else. It's hard to find calm in the world right now, even when snuggled in my very soft bed, under a weighted blanket with my white noise app playing some soft rain. Losing some of this tension would surely ease my headache; I try to soften my tight jaw, loosen my tight shoulders.
It's been awhile since I've written to you all, and I've missed it. November was busy, and hard, celebratory at times and terrifying at others, and it's so, so dark out. I feel really exhausted all the time right now, but I keep remembering that the solstice is right around the corner. Soon the days will be longer; there will literally be more light in the world. I wish you all ease right now as we trudge ever onward, apart but together in spirit. (I'M SORRY I GET CHEESY WHEN I'M TIRED.)
Debris
I wrote a whole novel in November! I did it! All 50k words. They are not "good" words, but they are vaguely coherent.
Happy Chanukah, everyone, and season's greetings. I know this is a fraught time of year for many, and if you need anything, please don't hesitate to reach out.
On Logan's pushing, I'm doing Advent of Code, (I'm several days behind) and it's actually pretty fun. I usually don't think much of doing toy engineering problems outside of work, but since I haven't been doing any coding at work, it's giving me a chance to feel masterful, and apparently that is important to my well-being.
What Am I Reading??
Currently
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
This is a cool, low-key thriller about a Black woman spy during the Cold War. Marie joined the FBI because it was the dream of her sister, a dream cut short by ... some sort of tragedy that I haven't gotten to yet. Marie is great at her job, brilliant, but because she's not a White dude, her career's stalled out. But she's asked to join a task force to investigate and seduce Thomas Sankara, the charismatic president of Burkina Faso whose Communist leanings makes him a threat. She likes Sankara, though, and she likes what he's selling so ... we'll see what happens.
Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker
I'm reading this for a class, and it is absolutely wild and sort of undescribble. It's very violent and graphic, and I think it's about trauma and capitalism and families and language. While some of it is very beautiful I would not recommend reading this if you're not doing so in a class; it's wildly inaccessible.
Finished
Recursion by Blake Crouch:
I read this entire book one night when I had insomnia. I figured, as long as I can't sleep, I may as well read. I was looking for some science/speculative fiction that would break my brain a bit. A brief synopsis would take like 500 words so I'm not going to bother, but it's about memory and regrets and has time travel and some interesting structural experiments that largely work. There are some gaping plot holes, but eh, who cares? Not me at 4am.
Magic By Liars by Sarah Gailey:
I know noir books have to be gritty, but this one felt sadder than it needed to be. I guessed whodunit and why fairly early and spend the rest of the book hoping there would be another twist, not because it wasn't a good ending, but because the whole thing really bummed me out. Ivy, the private detective, is a lonely, insecure woman who is estranged from her twin sister, Tabitha, for reasons that are both their faults; there's a murder at Tabitha's school (she teaches theoretical magic, which is a bit like reaching into a black box and maybe getting bit by a cobra) that Ivy is hired to solve. In the course of her investigation, Ivy tried to imagine what her life could have been like if she had also been born with magic. Those kinds of hypotheticals rarely end well. It was a decent book, worth a read, but also only if you are highly tolerant of books with dysfunctional sister-relationships.
Cinder by Marissa Meyer:
I finally read Cinder! I enjoyed the steampunk Cinderella vibe. This was much better than the other Cinderella YA book I read. In this, Cinder is a cyborg who is I guess property(?) of her wicked stepmother. It seems really strange to me that cyborgs, which are still mostly human, should need guardians that can control all their earnings and stuff. Anyway, the stepmom and one of the stepsisters are really awful; so awful that I kept being like, "Really, can you not?"
Abandoned
Champion by Marie Lu:
I can't tell if I'm getting bored with dystopia or if this book was just boring. (Probably both.) This series didn't need to be longer than two books, and I just kind of got bored of the two protagonists. Also both of the warring factions were so annoying I just couldn't deal with it anymore. There was a cool but where one of them went to Antartica to try to secure a treaty, and it turns out Antartica has really bangin technology -- although very similar to the technology in the Warcross series, so maybe Lu is just kind of a one-trick pony. Anyway, usually I abandon books because I forget to start reading them until it's almost time for the library to gobble them back up and I run out of town; this time I did because zzzz.
I probably read more! But I'm too tired to think about it right now and this lurking headache threatens to stop lurking.
I'm still here. You're still here. We're doing great. I love you all so much. Until next time.
-davida