2013 – Page 5 – Aphotic Ink: Words by Frances Rowat

May 24, 2013admin No Comments

Books, again.

I’ve been culling our bookshelves for a couple of weeks now. While I’ve collected a fair number to get rid of, perhaps fifty, it hasn’t made a huge difference. I have a lot of books. Most of them still aren’t in Goodreads (and I get that funny guilty twinge whenever it recommends a book I’ve already read and have on the shelves to me). And given that Goodreads lists about six hundred books on my “owned” shelf, and yes, I really did mean most of them still aren’t in the system…

…I have a lot of books.

It’s easier to cull them this time than it was in times before, and it’s nothing to do with not wanting to read. On top of the books, I have a particular attitude: I don’t want to be the kind of person who gets rid of a book. I have had this attitude for a long time.

I’ve had it since before we bought our house.
I’ve had it since before I rented my own place.
I’ve had it since before I moved out and went to university.
I’ve had it since before I went to boarding school in Switzerland[1], and that was for ninth grade.
Like some of the books I still own, I’ve had it since I lived in London as a kid.

I think it’s very easy to embrace absolutes when you’re a kid. And it’s easy not to question those absolutes, especially when they’re not overtly harmful. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets go of a book. Because books are awesome, dammit. I mean, that hasn’t changed for me–books are amazing, books make me happy, new ones can be a wonder and old ones are a comfort and I don’t see this changing. I love (the best of) my books, and I love the idea of books, and I have a respect for the physical integrity of books (even ones I don’t like) that’s… quite hard to override.

When I developed this attitude, I didn’t understand certain things that I understand now.

The fact of limited space in housing, and how sheddy long-haired cats can be, and how books can pile up and collect dust.
Shared space, really shared space, and the importance of not having someone you live with made uncomfortable by your housekeeping.
The low-level cringe that a cluttered room induces.
The embarrassment of finding you already own a book you just got[2]–fortunately I’ve never bought one and had that happen, but there’ve been friend loans and library loans and… yeah, it’s not a good feeling.

I’m still not the kind of person who gets rid of books casually. But I don’t want to look at myself and say I’m the kind of person who won’t get a book out of her house if it’s making her unhappy to have it there. There’s nothing noble or devoted about that.

That’s damaging, albeit in a low-level constant-background what-weight-do-you-mean-oh-this-weight-I’ve-been-carrying-this-weight-so-long-I-don’t-hardly-notice-it-no-more, and I am, finally, too old for that shit.
—
[1] In a former tuberculosis sanitarium.
[2] This is totally different from buying a replacement for a battered copy, or deliberately picking up a second copy for love or loaning purposes. On this note, you should all read Days by James Lovegrove, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. Seriously.

April 17, 2013admin No Comments

Keeping moving.

Today felt a lot longer than Tuesdays usually do. I didn’t sleep well, which I imagine is part of it, and it took me a while to wake up. And most of the day seemed to go on strictly Sisyphean tasks; laundry when more clothes will be worn, dishes when more meals will be cooked and eaten, cleaning the litterboxen, and on and on. It was raining this morning, which was actually kind of lovely, and I wasn’t able to make it out for that; in fact, with one thing and another, I wasn’t able to make it out until after dark, which always feels a little as if it doesn’t quite count.

Still. I did make it out, and the house is cleaner than yesterday.

I’m hoping to sleep better tonight (a goal which I am sure I will get to a lot more quickly if I stop typing, but I also want to get this finished), and for tomorrow… not sure. Thinking I may need to start blocking out specific chunks of time for specific tasks in order to keep the day from slipping away.

On the plus side, the collaborative writing project I’m in seems to have started slowly unstalling itself, which is nice. Touch wood and hope it carries on.

April 15, 2013admin No Comments

Blinking at the calendar

Wow, it’s been a long time.

Most of February was taken up with some acute household health stuff (everyone’s fine, life carries on, thank god the crying jags were mostly staggered in timing because I think that if we’d had them all happening at the same time it would have been harder to get through). March was tied up a lot with some temporary work. And I can’t believe it’s halfway through April, good grief, where does the time go?

I spent a chunk of last night trying to update my CV to reflect something that I’m good at but that I’m not usually hired to do, and it’s a little scary. Besides that, there’s not much really going on. I’m tired and I realized today that I’ve dropped the ball on something, and I’m trying to get it back together rather than bolting in the opposite direction throwing excuses behind me. Should be manageable, really.

Piper’s having trouble walking, so I’m sitting with her in the living room and going to get through as much as I can today without leaving her alone for too long. I foresee a lot of laundry in my future today. It won’t be so bad, if I can get to the doing rather than the talking about.

April 14, 2013admin 1 Comment

In which I am pleasantly surprised

Back in December, I mentioned that I’d picked up a collection of eight horror movies for five bucks. The recognizable one[1] is the original Night of the Living Dead, so I’m not going to be putting that on. However! There is also Colour from the Dark, a movie which instantly raises the burning question “Did the writers read “Colour out of Space”, or is this a direct rip-off tribute derivative of the very-understandably-forgotten The Curse[2]?”

A family accidentally frees something from the Earth’s womb while drawing water from their well and now a sinister glow is seeping into their lives.

Really, it could be either.

March 6, 2013admin No Comments

PC Gamer, Richard Cobbett and the Open Beta

http://www.belowgame.com/pc-gamer-richard-cobbett-and-the-open-beta/

February 2, 2013admin No Comments

Quite tired.

The job hunt continues, and I think that’s enough said about that.

I’ve been tidying the house a fair bit, and while it was never horrible, it looks a lot less cluttered now. (I got rid of fifteen litres of yarn on Thursday, actually, and am rather ridiculously happy about that. Am currently trying to figure out how best to rehome comics and graphic novels.)

I lost two hours in the middle of the day, today, and while I don’t think it was a bad loss I wish I’d been a bit more productive.

And I’ve joined A Month of Letters because really, I have all these bits of stationery around and after a while an unused stack of paper can start to seem as sad as an unread book.

(I’m still working on books, too.)

One of our pets probably needs elbow surgery, and we’re still waiting to hear back from the surgeon (we, at this point, means both us and the vet we took her to see). I am trying very hard not to get frustrated at the delay, I understand that there are probably not a lot of veterinary surgeons in town, but I really want to know what can be done for her. She’s not okay, right now.

I’m trying not to get ground down. It’s mostly working.

January 14, 2013admin No Comments

Like pulling teeth. With marshmallow pliers.

I have been picking away at a story. It is currently at four thousand words and change.

I would guess about thirty-eight hundred of them need to be rewritten, and of those, right now, I feel like it would be optimistic to say that only two thousand need to be burnt outright. Burnt. And there’s a subplot or merging course of events or what-have-you that I know how I want to involve but haven’t actually done anything with, and a creeping embarrassment at the prose and the setup, and…

I am torn right now between calling it off, hammering out a final scene so that there’s something to tear apart later, or sketching out a point form list of what I need to have happen next. (I am bravely putting off sinking into a funk of “oh my god I can’t do this”, since it always knocks my schedule for a loop, really.)

Have you been here? What do you do?

January 4, 2013admin No Comments

Alphas.

Since we’ve finished watching Leverage, I’m looking for a new TV show. A friend recommended Alphas, which I’d heard nothing about. Looked up a very quick summary–it appears to be people with low-level superpowers who are working to stop other people with low-level superpowers from being bad guys.

Having seen the first episode, I have to say I like it. Five of the six Alphas are very well-drawn; a little simple so far (which is fine for the first episode), but distinctive. The sixth is a deliberate cipher, so that’s fine. The moral ambiguity with Red Flag and Rosen’s superiors is the kind of thing I’d expect to come up with this setup, and I’m glad it’s being established so early.

Small spoiler and additional note after the cut:

A bit of a dull day.

It feels a little like I’ve been wading through molasses. There are things I would like to have done that I am not ready to do, and other ones that I got distracted from and did not get done.

On the other hand, I did get the screens for the living room windows washed. And sorted out the natural gas leak from the meter without freaking out. And I updated someone’s website for them. Finished Black Wings, although I didn’t write a review for it yet. Got up at a reasonable hour. Dressed and left the house. Took out the garbage.

(It’s an “accentuate the positive” kind of day; or at least I am making it be one because I am trying to avoid the doldrums.)

(In relation to this: I will note that a Google image search on kittens noses flowers is occasionally a helpful stopgap. Some of them are so cute.)

Also wrote 500+ words, even if they are in serious need of revision. And I think I just got a twist in a short story, and I don’t know if it’s a good one or a bad one to use.