[A Green Darner dragonfly, soaking up the sunlight on our front steps.]
For this whole past week, the daytime temperatures were at or above 90°F. And at night the air seldom dropped below the mid-70s, and that usually around dawn. The humidity has been 80% or above, so even with the cooler temperatures and windows open, the air was sticky.
So I haven’t had a lot of sleep this week.
But insomnia has benefits. I have managed to read a little more, and some of the knots in my muscles have relaxed in the constant, sauna-like air.
Reading
I finished Eat Your Mind, the Kathy Acker biography, and it was most excellent. I also finished Glen Cook’s novel The White Rose, and am now reading Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography. I have put Capital Hates Everyone on hold until the air cools off and my brain can handle works of that complexity.
Writing
I’m doing some world building for my NaNoWriMo novel-in-progress Cacophonous, and have identified a place where it could be tied into the work from the previous NaNoWriMos, Up the River to the Mountain and its sequel Racing the Flood Down to the Sea. While the “vibe”, characters, and approach to storytelling are different, they could all take place in the same universe, and indeed, in the same city, and using some ideas from the earlier stories could plug up some potential logical holes in the world building for the current story. So I feel tentatively optimistic that I can knock out a new first draft by the end of the year. Or earlier, if I get laid off from my job, which is always a possibility.
Subject: Addiction, Music
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Utopian
Listening
After a week of 90°F and above, I’m happy that ’tain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
Interesting Links
- Soul Coughing is going on tour for the first time in 25 years.
- “Fungal Banking” (John Muir, Crooked Timber)