Category: Home

Absurdity

Status Whatever

In a little over a week, I will be 70. The mind, as they say, boggles. How did this happen?

All in all, though, I have little to complain about. Physically, I seem to be in fairly good condition, I just got my COVID and flu shots, the minor inconveniences that dance around me like gnats are largely insignificant and can be ignored.

I have a lot on my plate, though, and I have noticed a marked decrease in…

I don’t know if it’s energy or just give-a-damns. There are things I think it would be a good idea to do and then I just sort of fade when it comes time. I have less time during the day when I feel like a ninja warrior able to defeat all enemies. (I haven’t done any martial arts exercises in I don’t remember,) Our local SF convention is this weekend and I have a full roster of panels and such. I’m looking forward to it, as much as I look forward to anything.

I’ve passed up some shows I wouldn’t mind seeing. Partly this is a money thing. I still cannot get my head around the price of tickets these days. But let’s not go down that path, which leads to a desperate nostalgia and does little good. At the end of the month we’re going to see a farewell tour (Renaissance) that I expect will be excellent though melancholy. All my musical heroes are aging out or dying. Kind of like the writers and actors I grew up with.

And now I have to acknowledge that perhaps for someone, somewhere, I count as one of those aging relics.

Trust me, I have every intention of seeing the Tricentennial. (I doubt I’ll make it, but everyone needs a goal.) It does, in a way it never did before, depend on whether civilization survives. We are on the cusp of that wonderous age we all anticipated from the pages of whatever SF magazine we were reading at the time. As William Gibson said, the future is here, it’s just unequally distributed.

But I for the first time actually have before me a handful of projects I could consider my last. Again, it’ll take time to do them, but I sort of know what I’m going to be working on for the next five or ten years.  In one way, that’s a bit unnerving, but mostly it’s reassuring that I have that much to do.

There’s a game some people (maybe most) play, if you died tomorrow would you be satisfied. I don’t quite understand satisfaction that way. It involves being “finished” in ways that I can’t figure into my own desires, but I get the gist. Maybe, I have to say. More so than not. The thing is, I still can’t quite accept that I’m no longer the new kid on the scene. I don’t know what has to happen to make that sense of myself go away. Not sure if I want it to. I suppose that means I’ll just keep working until.

Until whatever.

Anyway, the best part of the last seven decades has been the people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made. Fine folks. And they put up with me. I guess I still have them fooled.

So, unless something strikes my fancy between now and then, I’ll see you all on the other side of….damn….70.

culture

Dolls

Something non-political. Or maybe just less political. (Or possibly political in an abstracted way, or stealth political.) Whatever. We’ll see what evolves.

Way back in my youth, in a galaxy far far away.

Gender roles supposedly used to be rigid. Boys were boys, girls were girls, and the only time that got mixed up was in ways we weren’t supposed to know about until we were married (or at least of marriageable age, but that’s another matter). I grew up knowing nothing about Drag or gays or any of that, despite what we may have been exposed to in movies (Some Like It Hot, Flip Wilson, what have you). To make sure we all knew who we were supposed to be, playtime was controlled. What we played with and how was a matter of serious tradition. Little boys were cowboys or soldiers, little girls were nurses, teachers, or home makers. I think. The lines were sufficiently established that we (boys) didn’t really know, unless it became the subject of teasing and jokes.

Fairly early on, I remember being annoyed with what the girls were given to do. In movies and tv mainly, but occasionally it came up in real life. Nothing revolutionary, just…discomfort. Why couldn’t the girls be soldiers or cowboys or engineers or doctors or whatever? I didn’t push it much. I pretty much accepted what I was told. But I was never quite satisfied and I found over time that I really liked movies where the girls were put in positions where they had to be More. I think this was due to my identification with the underdog more than any kind of gender awareness.

Anyway, what happened in 4th grade became a teachable moment, even though the lesson didn’t “take” for years. It still makes me smile. It makes my mother smile.

The big toy around then was G.I. Joe. The commercials on Saturday morning were overwhelmed with him. It was so cool!

Now, I had been playing with toy soldiers for years. Mostly, these were the one-or-two inch tall green plastic figures you could get in a bag. There was the prone rifleman, the bazooka guy, the advancing infantryman, Others, I don’t specifically recall now. I must have had about three hundred of these at one time. For a couple of years you could get Germans, which were gray, and Japanese, which were light brown. I recall there were other types—other eras— as well, but I was wholly enamored of World War II, so that’s what I had. I’d lay out my lines on the living room floor, fight my battles, and nary a word was said by mom or dad. Things were as they should be.

Then I wanted a G.I. Joe. And the controversy began.

“Absolutely not,” dad said.  “It’s a doll.”

“Huh? It’s a soldier! Look, the uniform, the rifle, the utility belt!”

“It’s a doll.”

I didn’t get it. At least three of my schoolmates had them, and then there was my friend Steve who lived at the end of my block who not only had Joe but the footlocker with almost all the accessories (and there were a lot of them; in retrospect his parents must have spent a small fortune on them). It was a hardship to be without.

Mom apparently talked to dad and he caved. But he had rules. Just the action figure, no accessories, ever, especially no other uniforms. I don’t know if this is still a thing, but G.I. Joe could become a sailor, a marine, an air force pilot, all the varieties of those, by a mere change of uniform. There were field packs, a field radio, a variety of weapons. A whole buffet of soldierly add-ons. For a kid at that time who was into this kind of thing, it was the grail of military toys. (I know, I know, but that was the culture then. The horror of Vietnam was just beginning and we were enamored of John Wayne and the marines and all that storming the beach stuff.) I was bereft. I must tell you, that I was not That Kid who pined away for the latest whatever. I generally just accepted what I got and managed to be content. This was one of the very few times I lobbied for a toy. And I had to be careful, because dad could decide I was being too excited and contrarily refuse because he hated me following trends. (Had I liked the Beatles when they were fresh on the scene, I don’t know what he would have done. But I didn’t, so it was never an issue.)

I didn’t realize how hard the restriction would be. Joe came with a basic fatigue uniform and a campaign hat, not even a helmet, and an M-I Garrand rifle and a plain utility belt with a canteen attached. That was it. My friend Steve eventually gave me a field radio, but all the possibilities available were denied me.

At some point I lost patience. What I began to do….

Mom had taught me how to sew when I joined the Boy Scouts. I wasn’t particularly good at it but good enough. I started raiding her samples box for material and began making clothes for my G.I. Joe.

I recall one evening dad walked into my room and saw me doing that. The look on his face was unreadable. He stared. I waited. The tension in the room was electric.

He said nothing. He left my room and never brought it up. After that he never said a thing about G.I. Joe and dolls or anything related to that. He left it alone. I have no idea what went through his mind, but he realized that anything he might say or do was fraught with the possibility of disaster. He also never denied me accessories for G.I. Joe.

I never acquired a lot of them. They were expensive. And after a couple of years puberty began to set in and Joe was abandoned. I’m not sure how that affected me going forward, but I lost any kind of gender rigidity. Playing with a doll apparently had no real impact on my basic personality. It wouldn’t have been the doll but a poor reaction from my parents that would have had a bad result. But I did abandon any notion that girls should be kept out of any game they wanted to play.

So maybe this story does have some politics in it. Going forward from then I never understood the rigidity certain people insist on in defining boys and girls. And today, with all the debate and discourse going on around “roles” I find myself lacking any patience with those who can’t accept  the dissolution of arbitrary boundaries. Especially boundaries that seem “natural” but keep being revealed as arbitrary and remain in play only because we haven’t yet done away with them.

Today, it wouldn’t be the idea of me playing with a doll that would bother me as much as all the war toys that wall-papered my life at the time.

I doubt Mattel intended it as such, but I think G.I. Joe was a subversive toy, one that attacked the rigidity of the boundaries. Despite my protestations at the time, it was a doll, and I could easily see him and Barbie getting together.

Oh my. What’s the world coming to!

Community

Root Division

In all the debate and analysis and angst over what those behind Project 2025 are doing and why, it is easy to get lost in the bog of details and motivations. A better question is why do so many people who would suffer under these proposals support them. When you look at the list of things they want to end, it boggles the mind that anyone who has to work for a living, who is dependent on a weekly paycheck, many whose expenses outstrip their income, and those who otherwise would wish to give their children an edge for the future would want any of this.

Let me step back from the details and indulge a little speculation about the deep motivations behind this otherwise bizarre conflation of working class reality and the dreams of oligarchs. What underlies the desire to do this much to destroy entire sets of dreams and undermine the ability of so many people to have something even close to a stable life?

Go back several decades. Look at the 1950s and 1960s, at the almost complete overhaul of social relations. Everything, from the civil rights movement to the counterculture to the sexual revolution to all the spin-off movements all demanding a seat at the table, all shared one basic interest in common. One could reasonably show that all of those movements—those revolutions—were about one thing: freedom of association.

Class boundaries, ethnic boundaries, gender boundaries, educational boundaries—the order of the established norms were all challenged and largely overturned. The common thread was people refusing to be kept in “their place” anymore. All the equal access challenges, the educational reforms, the equal employment opportunities, all of them—freedom of association. For a time, the assumed walls keeping groups of people apart became porous to a degree they had never been before.

Freedom of association. When you think about it, the lack of such freedom underpins the basis of all segregation sentiment. People refusing to have anything to do with people they consider “not my tribe.” People, frankly, frightened of having to interact with strangers.

The entire conservative movement since the Sixties has been a desire to put those barriers back in place, to keep all the disparate groups separated, to somehow prevent the possibility of their children being exposed to those they consider undesirables or bad influences or simply foreign. All the programs that are targeted in Project 2025 are designed to bridge those barriers. Programs that provide a basis and, in some cases, the means to enable people to cross boundaries.

All this upheaval over immigration is nothing more than the same fear of mingling that kept people segregated before the civil rights reforms. People in one corner looking with fear at people in the other and saying “We don’t want to have anything to do with them!” Panicked at the thought of their kids attending school with kids from the “wrong side of town.” The advent of private schools to make sure no mixing happened.

The thing is, such group isolation results in a loss of resources for many groups. It has a physical cost. But it starts there, with an unadmitted (or not) desperation to Keep Them Out.

This is neurotic. 

But this is what has to be recognized and addressed if there is to be any hope of this ever being healed. So many people feel threatened by having to be in the same room as people they don’t know, don’t like, don’t trust, in fact hate because they’re different.

That’s the basis of the economic divide. It drives the cost of higher education, I have no doubt. It informs the absurdities of policy positions which admit to no solution because any solution will not give them what they want, which is to shut those people (whoever they are) out.

Fear.

If civilization is to be saved, if we are to go into a brighter future, we have to end the arbitrary assignation of people into enclaves designed to keep them apart. This is not airy idealism, this is survival. We’re going to destroy ourselves to enable a small group of people to keep themselves apart from those they see as inferior. 

Look at this time and these issues. That is the basis for so much insoluble polarization. But we don’t talk about it, not that way, not so nakedly. Every divisive issue we have, I believe, has its roots in that marrow-deep fear of having to cross the boundary and know about people we think will harm us.

One party right now is doing everything it can to establish the old ghettoes. The other needs to work to end them, but it seems not to be able to articulate it clearly enough. Well, for what it’s worth, there it is.

Keep this is mind when you listen to the rhetoric and good luck.

blog

Unwritten Novels

Over the last several months, things have moved, publishing-wise, that have given me some optimism about the future.  I can’t talk about them yet, since I do not yet know how it will all come out, but I am not sanguine. I’ve stumbled over too many obstacles over the last 35 years to start celebrating before the check has cleared, so to speak.

This morning, as I write this, I am about as unmotivated as I’ve ever been. It will pass, I’ve been here before: a combination of disappointment, weariness, and frankly disinterest. I have projects, certainly, but I just can’t muster the energy to give a damn.

There are novels sitting here, in my files, waiting for an opportunity to be published. Let me see….seven, I believe, all complete and ready to go. From time to time I have to deal with the possibility that they will never see the light of day. But what I want to talk about here, now, are the novels that might have been, ought to have been, written had The Career gone in a better direction.

When the first publisher of my Secantis Sequence went under back in 2005 or so, we had been discussing the next book after Peace & Memory. I was enthused, I felt flush with ideas, and I wanted to do a direct sequel to that one, called Motion & Silence. I had ambitions.  There was also talk of doing a short story collection of tales set in the Secant, the anchor of which was a novella I had been working on which later I developed into a complete novel (one of those now sitting in a file). At that time I expected to continue writing in that universe for at least half-a-dozen or ten novels. Then the bottom fell out. I won’t go into details, those involved know the story, but it pretty much, as it turns out, buried my chances of having any kind of major breakout.

I had a few notes for Motion & Silence, but I got pulled away from the Secant by other projects, most of which never materialized. There was an element of desperation attendant upon all this which muddied my thinking. I was casting about for some way to salvage something from the wreckage. I made a few poor choices. One of the goals at the time was to reach a point where my writing could support my working from home. Alas, I couldn’t manage it and had to continue working a day-job to pay the bills. Now, as you may know, this was not all bad, as I landed at Left Bank Books and spent a decade at one of the best jobs I ever had.

But it cuts into your time, day-jobs. Anyway, I had projects and made the time to write them. As well, I continued trying to find an agent.

But it is those unwritten projects that sometimes haunt me. I had a large-scale one way back, a historical thriller, jut barely SF, set during the Reconstruction Era. As originally conceived it would have been huge, six or seven hundred pages, and I duly set myself to acquiring the knowledge base to write it. Unfortunately, I burned out on the research before chapter one was done, but that novel continues to haunt me. I will write it.

I’d still like to write Motion & Silence, but as time passes and the Secantis Sequence recedes into the fog of  might-have-beens, the devil of “what would be the point?” natters at me.

There is a historical quasi-fantasy I wanted to do, set in ten or twelve thousand B.C.E. That one is still just a vague set of ideas.

I have, somewhere, about eight-thousand words of a dark contemporary mystery about the occult I wanted to do. Also, a contemporary love story built around music.

I also have an idea for the next novel following the alternate history trilogy that is sitting in the files.

And now, possibly, I’m looking at having to write the sequel to one of ones that has been waiting in those files.

For the first time in my life I am troubled by the idea of having too little time. No, there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m in ridiculously good health for my age—hell, for any age—but that’s just it. My age. I’m 69. Realistically, I might manage ten more really good years. I’m looking at the list of unwritten novels and starting to do a kind of calculus.

I published my first historical novel last year, a bit more than 12 months ago,  Granger’s Crossing. When I wrote that—more than a decade ago—I conceived a series of perhaps ten novels, covering a specific historical period.  Then it seemed very doable. Now? Do I have time to write nearly a million words, along with all the rest? Frankly, whether I even try or not hinges on how well the first one does. Assuming it does well enough for my publisher to ask for the next one, what about the others?

And then there’s the short fiction. I’m just shy of 80 published stories. I decided a few years ago to stop working on novels and concentrate on short fiction, and that has worked well. I declared my desire to publish 100 short stories before I can’t write anymore. So, 20 or so to go. It’s doable.

But is it doable along with the novels?

I have no idea. I decided to lay this all out so I can look at it in one piece and try to assess. With a little encouragement, I think I can manage it, but lately I seem to be struggling uphill against…myself.

And those unwritten novels tease me. I think about them and how cool they could be.

Thank you for indulging me. I needed to get some of this out of my head so I could clear the air and maybe see where and how to go next.

Meantime, the battlecry of all writers bids you assist: BUY MY BOOKS!

Be well, everyone. I’ll let you know what happens.

blog

Chicago

The first week of April, we boarded a train and headed to Chicago. The train ended up behind a freight train, which slowed us down a bit, so we arrived later than intended. Still, after navigating the construction blocks around Union Station, we summoned a cab and got to our hotel. Famished, we asked what was open this late and were directed to an Italian place three blocks away, which served good pizza.

It was raining when we arrived and continued most of the week to be one degree of wet or another, but it did not deter us.

We met up with friends, ate great good, wandered around the central district around Michigan Avenue, toured some smaller museums, and had a great time.

Chicago is a bit of a joke for us. Not the city but the fact that in 44 years together we have only managed to get there twice. The last time was 24 years ago, for a Worldcon. That one happened 20 years after we met and talked about running up to Chicago. After all, it’s not that far away…

Well, what can I say? Other places, other people got in the way, and we just lacked either the time or the money. Hopefully, that will not be a problem going forward. I’d like to visit once a year at least.

We stayed at a 21C Museum hotel, which was hosting an exhibit which proved to be excellent. Some fine pieces of work, thematically to do with family relations,  both parent-child and siblings.

The restaurant in the hotel, Lure Fishbar, was a marvel. It was the main reason we picked that hotel, as the son of a good friend works there. As one might guess, it specializes in seafood, especially sushi. I’m not myself a big seafood fan, but this was all wonderful. (If you go, ask for Andrew.) And then, the special deal, Donna was able to indulge her love of smoked salmon for breakfast.

The only odd thing was, this is the first hotel room we’ve had since the 1980s that lacked a coffeemaker in the room. Otherwise, comfortable.

And it was almost ideally located for easy access to a lot more of downtown Chicago than we indulged. Did I mention it was wet? One morning is even snowed, but none of it stuck. We went forth, braving the blech weather, and walked quite bit. The highlights include the Museum of Medieval Torture, the American Writers Museum, the Chicago Architecture Center, and the Driehaus mansion, one of those Gilded Age monstrosities that have since been turned into a museum and, in this case, a venue for new art.

And I got to indulge one of my favorite things, which is photography. I count a trip at least partially a success if I get some good images. For instance:

 

 

Chicago is a very photogenic town.

We returned on the train Friday. Neither of us are used to just walking around like that, so we both felt it, but in a good way. Next time we will visit during a bit more temperate weather, something with more sunshine?

Chicago feels like someplace in our backyard, which may be one of the unconscious reasons we haven’t been there more. That has to change. (We did zero shopping, and we were two blocks from Michigan Avenue!) We have friends there, we have no real excuse.

But for now, we had a very good time. Just sharing.

Art

Projecting

I went out yesterday and indulged myself. New clothes. I needed a new belt. Pants. Socks. I haven’t been to a mall in over a year. I used to enjoy them quite a bit. They sprouted like mushrooms for a time, though, and like the gas station wars (which, yes, I remember) they undercut each other until there was an inevitable collapse. The few that have survived, well.

I was amused a couple weeks ago when I had occasion to drive past one of the first in the greater St. Louis area, Crestwood Plaza. In my childhood, we used to run out there. I don’t think they called them strip malls then, but that’s what it was. Then, beginning in the early 70s, it grew and was covered over. The outdoor strip was joined to a roofed-over extension and then later the original strip was enclosed until the whole vast thing was a small town with lots of cool stuff. It was one of the first ones to fall on hard times. Efforts were made to preserve it and for a short while it became an enclave of independent artists. Alas, it wasn’t really close to the wealthier parts of the area to sustain that and it was shut down. Then torn down. Plans for redevelopment followed, many quite grandiose. I hadn’t seen it in a long while. As I drove by I saw that there was a new line of stores…a strip mall. What goes around…

Anyway, I spent too much money on too few things but for a brief moment I felt good. Last week I stopped by an art supply store and bought pencils, pens, and a small sketch pad. I keep intending to start drawing again, maybe even get back into painting (though I was never huge into that). All that stuff is sitting there, waiting. Between my music, photography, and writing, along with the other things I try to keep up on, I honestly don’t know where I’m going fit one more project.

See, it took years to acquire all the skills I have, such as they are. I don’t want to walk away from any of them. But the fact is, I was never really good at most of them, just good enough to show off, as it were, but not good enough to satisfy my own estimates of what that means. And that was fine since for many of those years I hadn’t settled on what I wanted to do. When the writing turned out to be the primary project, all the rest receded and time was reallocated.

You don’t realize how you lose things when you don’t pay due attention to them. It may be that I’m inwardly dreading trying to draw anything anymore, because it’s been so long that I’m sure I’ll suck at it.

And I really can’t stand being bad at the things I like to do.

Now, you might think, reading that, that I had gotten very good at those things at one time. And as far as it goes, I think I was. Drawing and painting, back in my youth, yeah, if I took my time, I was fairly good. But it came “naturally” so I didn’t consider how practice might be necessary. The music? That was….different. And I have over the last several years developed an improvisational method which serves to impress even as it isn’t exactly “good.” I’ve recently set myself to learning actual pieces, but the discipline of practice is a hard one to recover once abandoned. Photography I did for so long that it just seems innate now, and I don’t walk away from it for very long, so while I could certainly be better, I’m not bad,

Writing is the only thing I do with serious intent, and it seems to take up the largest chunk of time.

I don’t seem to be organizing my time very well, especially if I want to start up a new project. I don’t know where I’m going to fit all the things I want to do. That did not used to be an issue. I just did whatever appealed to me that day. It was all so organic.

Subsequently, questions of goals emerge. And I am brought up against a fact about myself that has always been an issue. I do very little just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Almost nothing. All that I do I have certain intentions, even if only wishes. I started drawing again many years ago when it was pointed out to me that I needed an outlet that had nothing to do with career paths. I pursued it for a while until I found myself looking at the work and thinking, I could sell some of this… At which point it ceased being an outlet and became one more thing with a goal.

I suppose I write these blog posts as outlets. I don’t sell them.  They’re like a shopping trip. Wander through the mall, see what’s new, maybe buy something just for the hell of it.

Anyway, these are some of things occupying my thoughts of late.

Art

Going Forward

I started this post last night and it turned into something rather unpleasant. So I trashed that one, went to bed, and here I am. I am on the same page with the late Stephen Jay Gould with regards to calendrical silliness. It is simultaneously one of the most useful and absurd things humans ever invented. Imposing order on the seasons, allowing for cooperation across distances, the timing of events so chaos is kept at bay—wonderful. But the idea that certain dates mean something in cosmic terms? The whole industry of horoscopy, while mildly entertaining, is a window into human gullibility.

But heck, if you enjoy it and no harm is done, go for it. I use meta-dating myself, but mainly for personal matters, like anniversaries or knowing when to cook certain things or go certain places, or, most importantly, knowing when the people around me are going to start acting oddly, usually in extra-cheerful ways. Oh, yeah, it’s that time of year again.

I both get it and don’t get it. My family long ago stopped paying serious attention to holidays. Partly, this was economic—one doesn’t always have the money to do the holidays the way everyone likes—but partly this was a mild refusal to follow the herd.

But I get the utility of making plans and setting goals and calendars can be very important for that. (Besides, I’m a writer—deadlines are real.) Guttenberg, he of the movable type revolution, prior to superstardom as a printer, had been something of get-rich-quick opportunist and had tried to mount of big festival. Word went out, artisans and vendors were to show up, and everybody could make a lot of money—except he got the date wrong and it was all a fiasco. He moved on to the next thing, probably because he really owed some people money. If he’d had a better calendar, we might not have gotten mass printing when we did. (That story may be apocryphal, but many such things happened for less famous people, and it took a revolution in time-tracking to sort it finally into what we have today.)

One thing I intended to write about last night was all the things my fellow humans dote on that I simply don’t get. The list was not long, but the complaining was turning nasty. Not what I wanted to leave out there for the start of the coming year. I wanted to be more upbeat, which can sometimes be difficult for me. One on one, here and there, I’m not a dour fellow, but anyone who has read my posts here should be aware, when my gaze turns global, I can be a buzzkill. There are things people embrace that I don’t get, but usually I don’t care. I only react when the evangelizing starts and my ambivalence is called out by those who think I’m missing something or simply wrong or even stupid. I don’t have to like what you like for you to continue to like it. But if you’re going to call me on it, then I will explain, sometimes at length, why I think you may be, well, off-base.

The other day we listened to a report on art fraud. Some of the prices mentioned were jaw-dropping. I’m sorry, but $50,000,000.00 for a painting? I think it fair to say that this has nothing to do with how beautiful the painting is. There are painters who will never sell a piece for four figures and may be wondering where their next month’s rent is coming from who are likely just as good as (and sometimes better) than that long dead “master” some people with too much money bid on. But beyond that, I had to wonder—why is the provenance so damned important if you enjoy the work at hand? I mean, if you bought it because you like it…

I feel that way about many things. But I realize that other factors get piled on top of such a simple idea and people will find ways to make money on everything.

I believe in my heart that there should be some things kept outside the precincts of profit-making.  Food, healthcare, housing. Beauty. Nature. Education.

We, as I’m sure anyone who actually owns a house has experienced, have been getting cold calls from these “I want to buy your house!” enterprises. I resent them. How dare they. If I want to sell my house, that should be entirely my decision from the get-go. I will reach out, I will call the brokers, I will initiate the transaction. But what we have now is a high-pressure environment driven by people who need your property to generate their bottomline and it is a given that everyone wants to sell what they have. They are making money on the churn, the turnover. A piece of property sitting there comfortably off the market is an offense to their notion that everything has to be constantly in motion, monetarily speaking. But they lose the simple idea that for many people these are not houses but homes and they should be kept apart from all that until the owner is ready. By acting as they do, they “adrenalize” people into making decisions that in the long run hurt us all, because it erodes the idea of constancy and security. It’s only a few steps removed, actually, from abusive eminent domain, which I believe is a corrupt and twisted system that has drifted a long way from its original intention.

There. That’s the kind of thing I was doing on multiple fronts in that discarded essay. I had several things (sports, beer, country-and-western music, junk-throat singers, and on and on etc etc) on the dissecting table and it got…bitter.

I’ve had enough bitter. The last decade has been more than filled with disappointments and let-downs and delays and baffling absurdities and death. For a while, in my younger days, I thought we were getting better at this living thing, but it’s easy to feel we ran off the rails. In so many ways we haven’t. There are so many truly wonderful things happening, all over, and it saddens me that all the ugly hides it and steals our hope.

So going forward, I want to privilege the wonder over the horror, and find ways to damp the horror. Constant bad news is depressing and being depressed, among other things, leeches energy, and we end up too tired. As I said, on a one-to-one level, I’m not an unhappy guy.

But 2023 handed out some difficult to manage stuff. My dad died, being the chief one. We all knew it was coming, and in many ways it was a relief, but months later I find myself from time to time wishing I could have one more argument, share one more cool thing, talk to him one more time.

Going forward, then. I wish everyone to have a clearer road and to find something new and achieve something desired and to have more days of optimism than pessimism. We should expect better, not just hope for it. Make it better where possible. We’ve got a year ahead of us in which changes can be made and hope recharged. Most importantly,  we have each other. Be generous with hugs and smiles and willing ears. Many of us have more than we think. Share.

And don’t let the bitter boil your brain.

 

 

Art

Considerations Going Into 24

It has been a year of highs and lows, as are most years, but generally we pick one by which to characterize the whole. I can’t do that this time, because it is all of a piece.

The highs? A new novel appeared in April, Granger’s Crossing, the first in what may turn out to be a series. I have ideas anyway. I could stand a bit more love for it, not to mention reviews, both at the link and on Goodreads. But after a seven year gap, to have a new book out is amazing.  Likewise, my Secantis Sequence is about to be reissued in ebook format (paper copies will be available, I’m told) and that is something I never expected to see. When I have a proper release date I will post it here and elsewhere. And I was approached by the State Historical Society of Missouri, who contacted me about hosting my papers. This removed a nagging weight from my shoulders. The other day I handed over two more bins to them. I’m still assessing how this makes me feel, but it’s all positive.

What else…I found a new gym, where I’ve been experiencing better workouts than in the past several years. We made a couple of major improvements to the house. No major trips, but we did get to see some very good friends in Kansas City we hadn’t seen in several years. And I’ve been connecting with my mother. Not that we were out of touch, but the months since dad passed have been rocky. She seems to be handling it better than one might expect, but I’ve been getting together with her once a week for a couple of years now and she’s been telling me stories I’d never heard before. I’m happy to report she has more friends in her neighborhood than she knew and while perhaps not thriving, she’s doing quite well. She just turned 89.

We’re approaching the final year of Donna’s fulltime employment (fingers crossed) and that will take some planning. We intend traveling a damn sight more than we have been.

Our friends are all doing well, some in much better places than they had been.

Retirement has been a cliché-ridden experience—not knowing how I ever had time for a job kind of revelation—but I have been accomplishing more.

Lows? Well, expectations on certain fronts are still not being met, and I am getting….tired. I no longer jump out of bed of a morning ready to take on the world. And when I do settle down to work, there’s a bit of a drag in the back of my brain, like “why are you still bothering?” Goals have not been reached, a couple of them now bordering on the never-to-be-achieved. It would be so helpful to have a good agent—or just now any agent. After 35 years as a professional writer, I find myself still in the position of a beginner when trying to get representation—only, a beginner with baggage. A paradox, I know, but there it is. There are projects I have on hold that quite possibly I’ll never get to at this point.

But the big low was dad passing. I’ve written about that, so no need to go over it again, but from time to time I find I still have a conversation or two I’d like to have with him. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing with dire psychological consequences, we made our peace with each other, said our says, and we were good. Just…I think he’d be really pleased with the new novel and it would have been nice to talk about it with him.

I will be 70 next year. As they say, more of my life is behind me now than before me, barring some revolutionary medical breakthrough that might give us another 50 plus years. (Even if such a thing is developed, I’m cynical enough to know it won’t be available for people in my income bracket.) I’m supposed to be wiser now than ten, twenty, fifty years ago, but I’m not at all sure how to gauge that. The shock of living to now is realizing how unwise too many of my fellow humans are, and how their unwisdom affects those around them, even tangentially. That could very well be hubristic on my part, which is why I distrust claims of wisdom. My dad, who was one of the sharpest people I ever knew, used to say that he wasn’t very smart. A completely baffling assertion, I always thought, but I can understand now why he might say that. He and I, we may well be smart, but we’re not smart enough.

One of the reasons I write—or, more accurately, one of the reasons I write what I do—is to understand. In my youth, I read science fiction because it presented a clarity about the world I did not find in literary fiction. It offered possibilities, likely answers, or at least asked the right questions, and I could put a novel down and feel like I understood something better than I had before.  An illusion, of course, a byproduct of the inherent didacticism in the genre, but it would be nice to have that feeling again, just once in a while. I think fostering that feeling has a benefit, in that for a short while it enables the chance to act positively in a world seemingly determined to negate every good thing we attempt. It offers the possibility of right action, and for the duration of that feeling we might do some good, at least more effectively than from a vantage of gloomy surrender to the morass of the world’s contradictions. I write to find that clarity and maybe offer it to others. It is not an answer—there are no solutions in such a space—but a clearing of fogs so we see better what might be done.  I write what I do to find that for myself. I’m trying to explain the world to me.

An endless task, but after all this time still the only worthwhile path I know.

2024 will bring challenges and more muddle and into that path if someone shines a light or offers a hand or shows you a possibility, then be cheered that you are not the only one walking it and searching.

Meanwhile, be well, be safe, and love each other. Above all, love each other.

blog

The Meander

I’m a bit tipsy as I write this. A nice bourbon, at an inappropriate time of the day. But my mind is bouncing from topic to topic, so I thought I’d let folks know what’s going on.

Is the next Granger novel going well? Well. Depends. I have a bit over forty thousand words done on the first draft. I ran into a wall, called the Osage, and have been semi-diligently researching this rather impressive tribe of Native Americans in order to say things about them that will not make me look stupid. They had an intricate if inconsistent relationship with first the French and then the Spanish, at at least two geographical points—the Arkansas River and St. Louis—that made things complicated for the Europeans at the time. While researching, I’m writing nothing. I stopped at the pivotal scene where some negotiation is required, and later in the story they will again be pivotal. So.

We’re planning a road trip down to Kaskaskia, just to get a feel for the place. Virtually nothing remains today of what was there at the time (1785) but it would still be useful to walk the ground. And then there is Fort de Chartres, which is pretty much on the same spot, but completely rebuilt.

Consequently, I have been brought face to face with one of my internal contradictions, which is bound up in the rush of writing new material but having to stop till I know more. I do not do the degree of research some writers do. I do enough to write semi-confidently. Others will learn a period or place down to its DNA. I do not, though I generally end up knowing more than I realize. Then someone asks a question and voila! there’s this font of data I didn’t even know I had. But really, I meander through the material, picking up bits here and there, searching for the threads that bind the times together. In time, I meander over quite a lot, just not in a rigidly organized way.

Since turning 69, I’ve been doing these periodic reassessments. Another meander. How much of what do I have the stuff to do? I have no concrete answer. I get tired more easily, but that may just be that I haven’t yet slowed down or taken on less.

I’m in a bit of a slump. I’ve been trying to push the book more, and I’ve tried a couple of new things, but I have no way of gaging what is or is not working. It would be nice to see a few more reviews in the various places where such things appear (and appear to matter). There is about a year and a half till my better half retires and we have some negotiations to do for the after time. It’s easy to fall into habits that may not work well when the situation changes. I’ve been fortunate in that I have a wonderful partner who has allowed me to pursue dreams that have not exactly produced the desired results. We’re still indulging our read-alouds and right now we’re reading Nicola Griffith’s Hild, which is superb, to be followed by her new one, Menewood.

Speaking of whom, last month we attended the World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City. Mainly because friends said they’d be there and it would be great to see us. It was good to be there, with them, but it led me to the conclusion that except for connecting with good friends, there really seems to be no reason to continue attending conventions. I’m not a Name. Again, I don’t know how to gage this, but in a 35 year career I’ve been a GoH only once.  Hmm.

But these people, these connections, these friends…how did this happen? I have been so lucky to have met and connected with such marvelous people from so many places! That is its own kind of success and I feel I’ve been gifted with a dream-come-true aspect to life I never thought to have,

Now, then, where was I? Oh. All future things depend on all present things. For those of you interested in the Granger story, I have ideas for several novels. (More meandering, from one book to next, with other things in between.) It could well be a long series. I’m finding considerable pleasure just now revisiting the territory, so to speak. As to whether those future stories appear, that is, of course, dependent on market forces over which I have little say. Christmas is coming up, If you know readers, then Granger’s Crossing would be a great gift. I have no budget, word of mouth is the best I can manage, so brag about me. Get those numbers up., Make my publisher happy and then the next one may appear. (I think you’ll like the next one, I really do; at least I’m having a good time writing it.)

As for the science fiction, well, soon I’ll have an announcement concerning my Secantis Sequence. I’m pretty excited about it. Stay tuned. There are more short stories in the works.

It would be helpful to have an agent, but after my last one dropped out of the field, I’ve been just a bit despairing of that. Too many places are unwilling to look at unagented work, and I can understand that, I can, but it makes it more difficult to shop work around. (Several years ago, in my new position as consignment book buyer, I had a conversation with a young writer whose novel I had rejected. He was trying to convince me to change my mind and then said the wrong, or possibly the right, thing: “You have no idea how hard it is breaking in.” In one of my rare moments of “I don’t give a shit candor” in that job, I explained who I was, what I had done, how many years I had been doing it, and what my track record was to date, ending with “So, yes, I do know how hard it is and I’m telling you, your book is not ready for prime time. Go somewhere and learn how to write.” Which to my pleasant surprise did not get an angry hang-up, but a long pause and a heartfelt, “What would you suggest?” We then had a long conversation about workshops and how long and why and so forth and I hung up feeling that he just might pursue my advice to good result. No, I do not remember his name, nor would I tell you if I did. Point being, this is not an endeavor for those unwilling to stay the course and put up with a lot of obstruction.)

Changing the subject, I am still working out, trying to stave off the erosion of age as best I can, and fortunately the only negative effect has been a need for more sleep. But I am trying to assemble a regular discussion group again. We had belonged to one that last many years, sometimes based on a pure philosophical discussion, then at others times around a book (Dante, Joyce, Melville), but always in as deep a dive as possible, with sharp people among whom I always felt like the dullard. Some died, some moved away. I’d like to start that again, but there’s an organic aspect to that which cannot be planned for. I do feel a bit slower, mentally. Until I get involved in a deep conversation and then al the cylinders seem still to fire as they should.

2024 is coming up. I’m more than a little concerned for next November. I’m actually a bit anxious about my fellow citizens. It is difficult to feel confident in a community that once sent a berserker into office and may have the potential to do so again. I fear for my friends, some of whom would be sorely put upon under more of that kind of dysfunction. For the first time in my life, I really do not know what will happen.

But I’ll comment on that in more detail later.

In my own little pocket of life, things are not bad. I have great friends, a wonderful partner, health, a bit of optimism, and the ability to appreciate it all. So, onward.

This update has been brought to you by my optimism. I’m going to meander off now.

Community

Reunions and Sentiment

I have a strained relationship with the idea of reunions. History (personal) has a lot to do with it, but also aspects of my sensibilities. There are people very dear to me and getting together with them is always desirable, even if opportunity is a target difficult to hit. Others…I don’t mind, but I don’t actively seek or even anticipate seeing them. And then there are groups of people with whom I share so little that I wonder at the very idea of getting together. Why?

Recently my high school reunion happened. Fifty years. I saw the notices, sure, and after a while I realized I had no moment of connection that suggested this was something worth doing. There are a few people I knew in high school and I still associate with them (my best friend, for instance). I kept in touch. The others? Now, I don’t mind owning the fact that this is as much my fault as anyone else’s, but I was never much part of the scene, any scene, back then, and wandered through 4 years of high school all-too-often scratching my head in wonder at just what was going on. I learned to go through certain motions as if I understood, but I felt through most of it like a visiting alien from Alpha Centauri trying to figure out the local customs and rituals. As to personal connections, I don’t know what others felt about me, but I never sensed much interest on their part. Getting out was my primary interest in the whole experience, so why would I go somewhere to celebrate something which clearly meant something to a lot of them that I never quite got?

I saw a photograph of the attendees posted after the event and I recognized not one face among all the aged and wizened people. They got old. I have, too, but somehow I don’t feel old, not like that. I honestly don’t know what I would have to say to any of them.

On a more personal level, we attended my partner’s family reunion over the weekend. A modest gathering, just her siblings and their partners. I like them. I would never in a million years (as they say) attend a reunion of my family. Even as a kid, hanging around with many of my cousins, aunts and uncles, and so forth, I felt virtually no connection. Nothing toxic, but nothing that made me want to remain in contact the way some families do. Again, this is more me than them. I don’t do that kind of association. Since my teen years I picked my family from among those who became close, closer to me than I ever felt by way of blood. And over the years, some of them have fallen away, new members have joined, and we go on, knowing that any “reunion” would be superfluous because we are not structured that way.

I suppose there are expressions of sentiment I have never embraced, or been embraced by.

I think too often these things like high school reunions, while well-intended and for some quite wonderful, come across to some of us—me, for instance—like afterthoughts. One becomes an accoutrement in the bric-a-brac of other people’s lives and as time passes, the attempt to cling to what was requires reaching out to whatever remains of those times. And then, of course, there’s a certain revisionism that happens, memory plays tricks, or we would rather not recall what really happened. I recall being an object of puzzlement to most of the people I knew back then, ignored for the most part, occasionally resented, but I never felt seen much less understood.

And that’s okay. For me, anyway. The best part of my life happened after leaving high school. What went on there is of some historical or topical interest, but almost no sentiment is attached. I too often ran afoul of all the social things going on then primarily because I didn’t know the rules, but then no one explained them, so I came to believe no one cared one way or the other that I had even been there.

And, I repeat, that’s okay. Who I am is not defined by that time.

But I should explain that I would have no problem (and may even welcome) sitting down with one or two at a time, here and there, and kicking the memory ball around. That is where I find the preferred connections. Not in big group things. We are individuals, first and foremost, and as such I have remained pretty aloof from most of the “important” social identity collations. (There is one group I would welcome such a get-together with and I trust they know who they are, but those connections are still personal and individual. Any reunion would simply be the means to have those one on one encounters, because they would be based on genuine one on one connections.)

This is me being that kid of Alpha Centauri still who watches all this with bemusement and a certain anthropological interest. I am not a joiner and I have learned over time that I distrust very large gatherings. And, sure, I’m getting older, too, so I find it difficult to hear conversations in large groups. It’s a thing.

I did have a good time at the family gathering. It may not be my natural milieu but if there are people who have always mattered showing up, I welcome it. I do not write this to judge or offend but to sort my reactions and my thoughts and try to understand. But also to remind myself (and others) that I am not a reflexive part of anything. I do very little “just because it’s a thing everybody does.” I know this bothers some people, and I’m sorry for that, but there it is.

Thank you for your time while I indulge some musings.