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Tag: family

Is This…Cold?

2021-09-122021-09-12 John Winkelman

Books which arrived in the week of September 5, 2021

This morning (Friday, as I write the first draft of this post), for the first time since early May, I had to put on a sweater in order to practice on the porch. It didn’t last long; tai chi and chi kung, though they are slow and gentle, heat up a body almost as well as a hard kung fu workout.

In any other year I would be happily sunburned and exhausted after a summer of hitting the lake at least once a week. This year (and last year) I managed to dip my toes in Lake Michigan maybe four times. And that’s in the entire year. Disruptions in my schedule (and also my partner’s schedule) due to the ongoing COVID pandemic meant that leisure time, once available in small amounts, is now a precious commodity to be hoarded for special occasions.

But as we all need to re-learn every day, time is not fungible. A little saved here can’t therefore be used there.

But enough of this navel-gazing nonsense!

This week two books arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey.

On the left, newly published by PM Press, via their recent Kickstarter, is The Day the Klan Came to Town, written by Bill Campbell (of Rosarium Publishing fame) and illustrated by Bizhan Khodabandeh.

On the right is The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal, which I picked up after it popped up in a Metafilter thread discussing the odd circumstance that some GamerGaters have approached Brianna Wu, asking for forgiveness. The conversation therein was, as always, interesting and nuanced, and I imagine this little book will hit the top of my to-read stack well before the end of the year.

In reading news, I am still immersed in short stories. I finished Worlds of Light and Darkness and am now on Derelict, another anthology published by the talented folks at Zombies Need Brains.

In writing news, still not a lot to report. Recent family events have sapped most of my energy, and even now I have my doubts about being able to rally myself in time for NaNoWriMo. Time will tell.

Posted in Literary MattersTagged family, time, writing comment on Is This…Cold?

Funk and Fugue

2021-01-232021-01-23 John Winkelman

With the inauguration now in the past the world exists in the consensual illusion of having returned to something like normal. That is absolutely not the case of course, and it will be a long time before we even have an idea of what normal looks like. It certainly won’t be what things looked like on this date four years ago, or even one year ago.

On this weekend in any other year I would be at ConFusion right now, hanging out with old friends, meeting new friends, talking about reading and writing and past cons and publishing and not getting published, and drinking and carousing and enjoying being in the company of good, smart, talented people.

Of course ConFusion is cancelled for this year, and I think ConFusion 2020 was the last normal thing I did before lockdowns began last March. I miss the experience terribly, but it is not as bad as it would be if it were going on and I was not there.

Right now I am sitting in the waiting area of a hospital, waiting on test results for a family member who is in poor health. This is part of a process which has been ongoing for some years now, so while it is not unexpected, it is also not a thing which could be predicted in any meaningful way.

Thus even though the exceptional chaos of the past four years is over, we are still awash in the ordinary chaos of daily life here in the cyberpunk hellscape that is the mid twenty-first century.

Anyway.

It’s been a quiet week for books here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. One book arrived – War Stories, an anthology courtesy of my subscription to Apex Book Company.

I am almost done with Democracy, Incorporated, and am about 120 pages into The Brothers Karamazov. I plan to round out the month with short stories before I pick up another book to follow the Wolin.

Writing is still going nowhere, though I can feel the knots in my mind loosening up and the creative juices beginning to flow again.

In the absence of ConFusion for inspiration I will need to rely on the mundane chaos of the world.

Posted in Life, Literary MattersTagged ConFusion, family comment on Funk and Fugue

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