Miscellany
Rainbows and dish soap and books and theoretical rest
It often works out this way, doesn’t it: you tell yourself, now that the major project is complete, I can relax. I will take days off! Multiple, and in a row!
Only for the ten thousand things that have been accumulating in your closet to burst out all at once and tumble all over the floor.
Nonetheless, between day care closures and last minute thisses and emergency thats, some rest has been rested—enough to feel how much remains to be rested. Here are a few things that have brought me joy in the last couple weeks.
Mini-retreat: I believe I mentioned this in my last letter. The day after I handed in the manuscript, I took the advice of this Tricycle article and held a low-stress home meditation retreat, which began with lying on the floor for a couple hours, “until you feel an aliveness in the joints”, followed by seated meditation until my shoulder decided to remind me that I haven’t been keeping up with my old physical therapy exercises. I found it to be a helpful practice—rising, I felt refreshed, washed clean. If it sounds at all like something that you need, read the article for context, and give it a try.
I finished and loved The Spellcoats, the third book in Diana Wynne Jones’ Dalemark Quartet. I wonder why I don’t see DWJ mentioned in conversation with Gene Wolfe, or vice versa. Maybe I don’t hang out in the right bars. But DWJ plays many of the same games Wolfe does, especially in the Dalemark Quartet, and especially in The Spellcoats, which unlike most other DWJ I’ve read is an in-universe text and compares more directly to unreliable-narrator Wolfe texts like The Wizard Knight or Book of the New Sun. The books have different target audiences, but not so different, I think: people of all ages who can orient themselves without a fully shown hand—at most, a gentle tip of the cards. There are also fewer torture-maimings and murders in DWJ novels on average, I suppose. Though not so many fewer as one might think.
Speaking of torture-maimings: I’ve been aware of Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover for a while, but I finally found a copy. It’s an excellent book from the golden age of the late 90s, and weirdly prescient in that way SFF has, where the most accurate predictions are not at all the point of the story, but rather things the writer came up with to make the story possible. In the class-stratified cyberpunk not-so-distant future, the most popular form of entertainment in the world is: Actual Play D&D podcasting! With the twist that, rather than enter a GM’s world, our players (and the studio system that runs them) have found a way to travel to an actual alternate dimension that just so happens to be a fantasy universe with orcs and wizards stuff—so they zap themselves to this dimension and go on badass fantasy adventures there. Of course, fantasy adventures being what they are, even the “good guys” leave a mile-wide swath of corpses in their wake… It works both on the level of adventure novel and on the level of ‘what does it say about us that we dig this kind of story’? It’s more successful in asking that second question than a lot of ‘grimdark’ fiction I’ve read, to be honest, due to the doubled narrative. Also, inspirational in a way: there’s a great bit about finding your way through the dark one baby step at a time, about the victory inherent in your own determination to do, that I’ve held close this last week and will keep by my side for a while.
I finally saw Everything Everywhere All At Once. Yes, I know, film industry, I’m Part of the Problem(tm)—as a parent with an unvaccinated kid (though not for much longer!) movie theaters just have not been a thing for me for a while now. Wow. I can’t believe they did that, and pulled it off, and pulled it off so well, so assuredly. In its collapse of alternate mutually-informing realities and imaginations, it reminds me a bit of the end of The Fountain, and at times (on a technical level) of Neon Genesis Evangelion, of which it’s also a sort of soft rebuke, and at times of Satoshi Kon (specifically use of human gesture to support and connect rapid frame and context shifts), but it’s wholly its own thing, and what a thing. It was a movie that left me feeling angry, almost, as I tried to talk about it, because so many of the things that were easiest to say felt like they were specks of seasoning on the bagel.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: if you’re not a parent you may not have seen the Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, the Mr Rogers Neighborhood, um, expanded-universe sequel series? A few episodes so far have featured trips to the neighborhood enchanted fruit garden, which you enter by touching a combination of three red carved roses out of an arrangement of roses on the grand front gate. Every time this comes up, I experience a Pavlovian expectation that we’re going to cut to the duel theme from Utena. “Zettai—unmei—mokuuuushiroku!” I don’t know why I felt compelled to share that, except to let you know how broken is this weird piece of equipment I sometimes call my mind. “Won’t you duel along with me?”
These rune poems from Bergen, translated by Eirill Falck, in the most recent issue of Poetry Magazine:
I’d like to take a moment to talk about public life, too. If you’re limiting consumption of this sort of thing, I get it, just skip the next two paragraphs.
I’ve spent the last week with my family, parenting, and resting when I can, and seeking joy. I’ve also spent a decent chunk of it angry. About fifteen years ago I attended that rare thing, a lecture that opened up whole new galleries for my point of view on a subject. I’ve forgotten the lecturer’s name, unfortunately—a Stanford Law guy—but the topic was, how one shouldn’t think of the Supreme Court as a vector for progressive policy. The Supreme Court is the most minoritarian body of the federal government, the most insulated from public opinion, and for most of its history has focused on the protection of property rights. (Including those sections of its history where “property” often meant “people.”) Civil rights victories under the Warren court were a true historical anomaly, made possible in part by “sure thing” appointees having changes of heart on the bench—one reason modern Federalist Society jurists are such bonsai kittens. But cases we hail as landmark victories for justice and for civil rights, like Brown v Board, followed broad public movements, rather than breaking ground themselves. The court lacks an enforcement branch, beyond public perception of its legitimacy—a perception carefully cultivated by successful jurists. It cannot change the country, and it will lose if it tries.
I am angry, and I am going to keep working.
On Monday, while I was cooking, my wife called me out to the front yard, and pointed up. In the sky was the most perfect rainbow I have ever seen: the arc you can’t but believe has a pot of gold at the end, the bridge of gods, each color clear, and each clearly part of all the rest. My eye was drawn to the hungry in-betweens, neither orange nor red, blue nor violet: the spaces which make it clear that colors are a thing of ours, and light is something stranger.
Breathe when you can. Take rest and take strength and seek beauty.
Also: did you know that dish soap can lift an ink stain? Magical stuff.
Take care, y’all. Stay safe, and work for the liberation of all sentient beings.
Huzzah for rest! Sorry for the belated reply, as we were getting some much needed rest ourselves! Just back from vacation and loved seeing this post from you :) Very happy to hear about the mini-retreat and the Everything Everywhere All At Once mini-review, I have to see that soon.