Happy holidays, everyone! My partner and I are practicing a delicate mix of laying low and avoiding people, and travelling to visit friends and family.
Reading
I have made some small progress in Doctor Zhivago, though I have a long way to go.
Autechre’s “Gantz Graf”. I listened to this kind of music A LOT early in my career as a developer, when cyberspace was a thing and the internet was new and cool and exciting. Now that we are living in a hellish cyberpunk dystopia built on that earlier iteration of the Online, returning to old tunes seems appropriate.
[ Interesting angles and some blue sky outside of the downtown YWCA. ]
Another chaotic week finally in my rearview mirror. And a chaotic year soon to follow, though what comes next will undoubtedly be much, much worse. So everyone in the United States should enjoy the last few days of what passes for a functioning country before it is stripped for parts by the oligarchs who were knowingly and purposefully elected by the unwashed hordes of inbred MAGA cannibals. I call them cannibals because on approximately February 1, 2025, MAGA will begin to eat itself. And nothing of value will be lost.
Reading
Slowly, so very slowly, working my way through Doctor Zhivago. At this rate I won’t be done until sometime in February.
For the first time, I am planning out my reading for the next year. I plan to read mostly long-form nonfiction and short fiction. And, of course, poetry. Not that I won’t read fiction, but given the political events of the past year, and the forty or so before that, reading up on totalitarianism, fascism, oligarchy, the police state, and late-stage capitalism seems to be especially important.
Writing
If I had time to write I would be doing more of it.
As the year winds down the panicked higher-ups at work are distributing the stress to their underlings, which includes Yours Truly. Therefore I have put in some exceptionally long hours this week which has left little time for anything else. I did manage to take my partner out for a nice dinner at MeXo. Highly recommended. Particularly the seafood.
Reading
I am still in the first hundred pages of Doctor Zhivago. I had hoped to be at least halfway through by now, but the day job has not left much time or mental energy for reading works which require focus and concentration.
[The vacant lot on the corner of 36th Street and Buchanan Avenue. ]
This was a quiet week. Some low-level work frustrations kept me distracted from the general state of the world, which was nice. But it also meant I didn’t have a lot of mental space for myself.
Reading
My long read for Dostoevsky December is Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I read a couple of chapters back during my Russian Studies days at Grand Valley State University, somewhere around…1991. And I watched the movie a year or so ago. So now I am finally reading the book.
[The last of the Thai chili peppers in my back yard, covered with the first snow of the year.]
This was a quiet week, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday. My partner and I stayed home and did quiet things like binge-watching season 2 of Physical: 100 on Netflix. If you ever want to feel inspired and humbled at the same time, this is the show for you.
Reading
I finished William Gibson’s Spook Country, which was most excellent, and now am looking at two books for December.
The first is Eva Baltasar‘s Permafrost, a short novel I received a few years ago from my subscription to And Other Stories
The other is Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, which is most assuredly not a short novel. I chose this for Dostoevsky December, because I have read all of the Dostoevsky I have in the house and don’t want to tackle his Writer’s Diary with anything less than an entire season in which to enjoy his wit.
Writing
Not much to report. No brain capacity available for writing.
[ A medallion, awarded by the Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids. ]
This past Sunday I visited the main branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library to attend Grand Rapids: A Poetry City, an event created by Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Christine Stephens-Krieger. At the end of the event Christine called up a few people from the audience and presented them with medallions. Much to my surprise, one of those people was me!
Stephens-Krieger has many plans for the three years of her term, including a couple in which I am involved. I have talked previously about the Grand River Poetry Collective and An Oral History of Poetry in Grand Rapids. The Poetry Collective has several books in progress, and another Oral History project is underway, which might even be completed by the end of 2025. So, exciting times.
Reading
I finished Somebody Loves You, and have started on William Gibson’s excellent Spook Country. Somehow the Blue Ant books seem appropriate, here in late 2024.
Writing
A pass at the first couple of paragraphs of the re-write of Cacophonous. Nothing much else.
Well my head is in a slightly better place this week than it was last week. Not that things are good. No, things are not good at all. Trump was re-elected, despite being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Or really, because he is a Friend of Epstein. After all, he is very popular with conservative Christians. Its re-election was no real surprise; this type of outcome has been inevitable since Reagan’s second term, and accelerated by Citizen’s United.
Reading
Reading went a little better this week than last week. I finished Elvira Navarro’s A Working Woman, which was beautiful and strange. Now I am reading Mona Arshi’s Somebody Loves You, which sits in the boundary between novel and prose poem.
Writing
I have put some more thought into The Book, and taken down some notes around setting and character traits, but the story itself still eludes me. I suspect that what was originally intended as a re-write will instead be a re-draft.
“Pluralistic: Boss politics antitrust” (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic) – When it comes to Trump vs. corporate corruption, the enemy of my enemy is very much my fucking enemy.
What would have been a productive week turned out not to be after I had an attack of what felt like bad allergies, after the outside temperature here hit 80 degrees earlier this week. Now that more seasonable weather is back I feel better, but have no energy or drive to do anything.
No writing this week. Barely even any journaling. Between the looming election and the illness my brain is mush.
And I find myself remarkably unmotivated for the Month of Writing. I certainly am not going to hit 50,000 words. I made a goal of a completed first draft of a book I started two years ago, but I don’t think I will even have the focus to complete the ~20,000 words necessary to do so.
I have changed the name of the MC in my WIP to Thomas, because “Cacophonous Thomas” rolls off the tongue so nicely. Bob, as a protagonist name, is just a little too generic.
