Tag: Poe

The Last Week of Autumn

John Winkelman

Pepper giving Poe a bath.

The last week of Autumn has brought with it a case of the creeping crud, which fortunately is not COVID, but is also not much fun. I don’t feel overly terrible; just exhaustion, some sinus issues, and a scratchy throat. So of the many viruses colonizing the population right now, I have one of them.

No new books arrived this week, so here is a photo of some domestic tranquility.

After three weeks of intense concentration, I have finished Crime and Punishment, which I really should have read about 30 years ago. Better late than never, I suppose.

And in writing news, there is nothing to report. My brain is sprained.

September Morn

John Winkelman

Poe, and E.D.E Bell's book Night Ivy

Woke up a couple of days ago and BAM! It was September. Downtown is full of students, and for the first time in over two years, Grand Rapids feels like a city. At least, as much as it ever did.

Only one new book arrived in the past week, the limited-edition hardcover Kickstarter version of E.D.E. Bell‘s Night Ivy.

In reading news, I am almost through 2019 in my back issues of The Paris Review, which means I am still on track to finish the lot of them by the end of November.

In writing news, the August Poetry and Pie event this past Tuesday provided a big boost of inspiration and I feel like I might be ready to tackle some writing projects again. This was the largest gathering we have had since I started attending back in March. And the sound system was not available, so we gathered in the back room of The Sparrows around a large table and just read poetry at each other. It was great, though brief. I could have happily stayed for another couple of hours.

December 2021 Reading List

John Winkelman

Books read in December 2021

Reading-wise, this month started out slowly. Between the mental fatigue of finishing NaNoWriMo and the emotional fatigue of GODDAMN EVERYTHING, I didn’t have much brain power left to work my way through the two books I started reading back in October (Graeber) and December (Dostoevsky). Dostoevsky and Graeber are brilliant and rewarding writers, but wow, do they require a lot of focus and mental energy to read attentively.

As a counterbalance, as soon as I finished the Graeber I picked up a few books from my embarrassingly large pile of unread genre fiction. These books were much easier to read. This is not to say that genre fiction is on its face light or inconsequential. The Scalzi, Hines, and El-Mohtar/Gladstone volumes were much easier to read simply because they were (a) not Dostoevsky, and (b) not an economic treatise which covers the previous five millennia of world history.

Jim Harrison’s book sneaked in at the top of the list because I picked it up after the arrival of his Collected Poems at the beginning of the month, and essays about food make for comforting reading.

All of the short prose I read this month was contained in the Dostoevsky. Six birds with one stone. Or maybe one bird with five pebbles, depending on how one splits that particular hair.

Books

  1. Harrison, Jim, The Raw and the Cooked (reread, 2021.12.14)
  2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor (Volokhonsky, Larissa, and Pevear, Richard, translators), The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)
  3. Graeber, David, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2021.12.28)
  4. Scalzi, John, The Collapsing Empire (2021.12.29)
  5. Hines, Jim C, Terminal Uprising (2021.12.30)
  6. El-Mohtar, Amal and Gladstone, Max – This Is How You Lose the Time War (2021.12.31)

Short Prose

  1. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “A Nasty Anecdote”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.05)
  2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “The Eternal Husband”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.26)
  3. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “Bobok”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)
  4. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “The Meek One”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)
  5. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)

2021 In Review

John Winkelman

Poe and Pepper, asleep on my lap

Oh, 2021 was a hell of a year. I don’t think there’s any argument there. It was certainly one of the most stressful and uncertain years in my life. The successive waves of COVID variants spreading through the world, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of deaths in the USA, and millions more in the rest of the world, made it difficult to concentrate on anything beyond getting from one day to the next. It wasn’t just that the news (as well as the “news”) was distracting; it was that in the context of a global pandemic, everything else seemed a little (or a lot) less important.

Relationship

The high point of 2021, no doubt about it, was my relationship with my partner Zyra, who I have been with for a little over four years, and with whom I have been cohabiting for a little over two. We continue to find comfort and joy in each others’ presence, and are good at working through moments of stress and friction and coming out the other side, closer and stronger.

In April, Zyra officially started her business Gallafe (pronounced “GALA-fey”), making Filipino food and selling it at the Fulton Street and Holland Farmer’s Markets. She also began holding popup dinner specials on alternating Fridays, as well as the occasional Sunday brunch offering and a regular delivery to the South East Market. She has made amazing progress in a short amount of time, and this in the second year of an ongoing pandemic. I have been assisting her where I can, primarily with massages and running errands. And as of the last day of the year, she can be found on DoorDash, if you are in Grand Rapids and search for Asian food or simply “Gallafe.”

Last Christmas we picked up a new cat, Pepper, from the same Upper Peninsula farm where we adopted Poe the year before. Being from the same colony as Poe, they are related in at least one way. They are certainly cousins, though Poe might also be Pepper’s aunt, at no more that two steps removed.

As Zyra recently pointed out, Pepper is Poe’s emotional support animal. The cats have been an absolute joy, providing Zyra and I with endless entertainment and affection, and offering a release valve of sorts for our relationship, giving us other living creatures to focus our attentions on, which was vital for the long days of us having no other human interaction than with each other. Having lived with cats for two years now, I can’t imagine ever going back to a pet-free household.

Martial Arts

Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis Kung Fu and Tai Chi Jeung continued to meet throughout this past year, online from January through the middle of March, and outside at Wilcox Park in the Eastown neighborhood of Grand Rapids through the end of October. We are now holding hybrid classes, in person at From the Heart Yoga and Tai Chi Center, the studio senior instructor Rick Powell runs with his wife Behnje Masson. We have a camera set up so students who are not comfortable practicing in person can participate remotely.

I and our other assistant instructor Tracy also hold informal “office hours” over Zoom to assist students in the time between classes, which has been a big help for the remote-only students, as well as a morale booster for me, because it provides a little more human interaction, which has been sorely restricted for the past two years.

We are able to practice about 75% of our pre-COVID curriculum. Out of an abundance of caution we are forgoing most drills and exercises which involve more than incidental personal contact. We hope that this will change as we move into the new year, but with new COVID variants spreading through the country we are trying to be patient. Better to have to re-learn a few skills in a year than to be the vector for one of our students becoming seriously ill.

Reading

2021 was a good year for reading. I started the year with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which I have tried but failed to complete several times of the past three decades, but this time I made it through to the end. And I ended the year with Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband and Other Stories, as it seemed appropriate to book-end the year with classic Russian literature. In between I was all over the place, reading genre and literary fiction, a wide variety of nonfiction, and many books of poetry. The grand total for the year was 57 books and over 120 short stories read.

Writing

Much to my surprise, considering how 2020 sputtered and ground to a halt at the beginning of November, 2021 was an excellent year for writing. I completed drafts of two short stories and over 30 poems, and am over halfway done with the pre-first draft of my NaNoWriMo book Racing the Flood Down to the Sea.

Friends and Family

This is where 2021 was the worst. I lost four friends this year, and in early September my mother, Sharon Prine, passed away just after her 84th birthday. Surprisingly, none of them died of COVID, which shows that even in the middle of this pandemic, the mundane world is still taking its toll.

So I will go into 2022 with holes in my life in the shape of Simon, Bill, Caroline, Beth, and Mom.

Work

I am still employed at the same company, and plan to remain here until I either retire or am made redundant. For most of the year I have been on one project, which in other years would become boring and unsatisfying, but for this year, predictability and stability are very much a good thing. And I am learning many new skills.

To Sum Up

I am glad that 2021 is over. Though I had some small personal triumphs and accomplishments, overall it was a year full of hellish stress, and though I am resigned to the fact that whatever is going on now is likely the New Normal, I am tired of reacting to the slings and arrows, or waiting for them to find another target. If I have a  goal or resolution for the new year it is to begin digging myself out of the deep funky hole I have been in for most of the past two years.

One More Week

John Winkelman

Poe and Pepper, asleep in bed

One more week to go in 2021, and though I don’t expect 2022 to start out any differently than 2021 ended, it will be good, in terms of the zeitgeist, to put this year behind me.

Christmas was quiet this year. I avoided all of the extended-family gatherings and only went to a Christmas Eve dinner with my partner, my brother and his wife and daughters, and our recently-widowed stepfather. It went well, quiet and full of good food and good company.

No new books arrived in the Christmas week, so here is a photo of our little orange maniacs, taking a break from being maniacs (but not from being orange).

In reading news, I expect to finish both Debt and The Eternal Husband this week, and maybe start one of the books I hope to get signed at ConFusion next month, assuming the Omicron variant doesn’t cause it to be cancelled at the last minute.

In writing news, there is, at the moment, no writing news. Maybe next week. Rinse, repeat.

Breaking Cat News!

John Winkelman

We have achieved cuddling! I repeat – we have achieved cuddling!

Poe and Pepper are getting along famously. Zyra and I started letting them interact under strict supervision about a week ago. Two days ago, after the usual running and tussling and what-not, they fell asleep near each other on the floor. Then last night while Z and I watched a movie, the Orange Ones climbed onto the sofa with us, piled up, and fell asleep. Then this morning, with the whole house and its innumerable nooks and crannies available, The two of them chose the same shelf and fell asleep.

Summer Done Gone

John Winkelman

This is a photo of Poe sunning herself in a west-facing window, atop a pile of curtains which coincidentally are the same color she is. Maybe she thinks I can’t see her. That would explain why she attacked my hand when I reached down to scritch her.

We had our first truly cold nights this week, with lows in the upper 30s, Fahrenheit. We have managed to not yet turn on the furnace, but those days are coming to an end. Fortunately the rest of the month looks to be bright and sunny during the days which means my big old house will store enough heat to last us through the longer nights.

No new books arrived this week, which is happening more regularly as I regulate my book-buying habits, what with a global pandemic and employment uncertainty bringing to the forefront of my attention the necessity of frugal behavior.

In reading news I finished Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow which left me feeling rage, sadness, depression, despair, and a sullen bitterness about the entrenched sadism which is one of the keystones of the American psyche. TNJC, along with Jackie Wang’s Carceral Capitalism, and the first few essays from Captivating Technology, have me further convinced that complete prison abolition is the only equitable response to the overwhelmingly racist (by deliberate intent and design) carceral state which is one of the central, defining characteristic of American society here in the post-Civil War USA.

Anyway.

To cool my brain, I am reading Dyrk Ashton‘s magnificent Paternus: War of Gods, which brings to a close the Paternus trilogy which Ashton began with Paternus: Rise of Gods. I am a little over a third of the way through, an I am getting to the point where I may need to take half a day from work in order to get through the rest of the book, because I seriously don’t want to put it down. Ashton’s work is just that good!

On a related note, Dyrk has a Kickstarter running right now to print the second book of the series, Paternus: Wrath of Gods, in hardcover. In addition to being excellent reads, the artwork for the books is gorgeous and the books as physical artifacts are well worth owning.

In writing news, I ended the week just shy of 25,000 words in my work in progress. I have the current scene all sketched out and the first few hundred words written, but I hit a minor bout of writer’s block which, rather than trying to muscle through, I sat back and let it run its course and accepted that it might leave me a little shy of my goal for the month of 40,000. Better a blown deadline than burning myself out doing something I love. I can always make up the word count, and the schedule and deadline are mostly arbitrary, beyond that I would like to complete the first draft before November 1.

If you are curious, here are some of the things I am researching as I write my book:

labyrinths, memory palaces, traditional martial arts training techniques, phytoremediation, river ecologies, genetic engineering, mantras, mudras, mysticism, resonant frequencies, resource depletion, peak minerals, repressed memory, symbiosis, salvage, biomaterials, ceramics

With a little luck, when strung together by a narrative framework, it will make a good story.

The Long Tail of August

John Winkelman

No new books arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey this week, so here is a photo of Poe, sunning herself on the porch in the early morning of August 12.

Now that I am on a normal work schedule for the first time since late March, I have fully re-immersed myself in my morning routine, which looks something like this:

  • get out of bed when Poe wants food and attention, but in any event no earlier than 5:00 and no later than 5:30
  • feed the ricochet kitten
  • meditate, chi kung exercises, stretch, calisthenics, tai chi practice,etc
  • play with Poe
  • write until approximately 8:15
  • eat breakfast
  • if my partner is still in bed, go up and cuddle until around 8:45
  • log in for work at 9:00

If I stay focused, this gives me a solid 90 – 120 minutes of writing time, five days a week. I can’t say I necessarily spend all of my dedicated writing time actually writing, though I do try to stay focused. The current state of the world makes for a very fragmented and short attention span.

I finished this week with approximately 8,300 words written in my book. I had hoped to hit 10,000 total yesterday, but let myself get caught up in the shitshow of the world as represented in social media. It was like the opposite of writing – not only did I not write, the experience prevented me from writing after I had put my phone down. What I really wanted to do was walk around the block or neighborhood or city for a few weeks, but it was just too hot.

A comment on a post on Instagram turned me on to a series of videos which Brandon Sanderson has posted to YouTube – his 2020 Creative Writing lectures at Brigham Young University. These lectures are a gold mine! Sanderson is a brilliant writer with many years of experience, and his advice and lessons are spot-on. The advice has been a big help, and one lecture in particular, where Sanderson brought in guest speaker Mary Robinette Kowal to talk about short stories, has some of the best advice for writers I have found anywhere. Now I want to go back through all of my short story rough drafts and re-write them all with reference to these videos. It would certainly be worth the time.

Now the weather has turned and last night was the first comfortably night for sleeping in many days. So even though I only got about four hours of sleep (though given the realities of this year I should be celebrating the fact that I got four hours of sleep), I woke up refreshed and energized for excellent outdoor classes in tai chi and kung fu.

In reading, I finished one more of R.A. Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms book, The Ghost King, and can now put all of that behind me for the next few months and focus on nonfiction, poetry, and genre fiction books which feature characters not named Drizzt. I am still working my way through Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and as night-time reading I recently started Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, which is lush and beautiful and heartbreaking and disturbing and I am only two chapters in so far. For interstitial reading I pulled from the shelf San Francisco Beat: Talking to the Poets, a collection of interviews with beat poets edited by David Meltzer. As I said to my partner, the interviews make me want to go back to San Francisco, but to go back to San Francisco circa 1968, if such a thing were ever possible. I suspect that if I do return to San Francisco, it will be closer to 2022 than 1968.

If we still live in a world where such travel is possible.