holidays

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Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night and, for the day, confin’d to blog in fires

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and so I am writing my traditional Thursday morning blog post.  This is my first post this week—which feels odd, I have to admit—and should also be my last post for the week, barring (as I always say) the unforeseen.

It’s the Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere (the Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere), and so it is the “longest” (“shortest”) day of the year.  It’s also the official beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere (winter in the south), though nature doesn’t give a flying f*ck at a tiny little rat’s ass about how humans label the days.

Speaking of labeling the days, the Tri-rail system is making a repeated, official announcement that on July 4th it will be operating on a weekend/holiday schedule, which is not a surprise.  What is irritating—to me, though probably not to anyone else—is the fact that they have set it up to say that this schedule will occur on “the 4th of July, July 4th”, which they repeat in Spanish and Creole.

It’s irritating because, if they’re going to name the holiday and then give the date, why don’t they refer to it as “Independence Day”, which is after all the original name and point of the holiday?  I mean, it’s worth recalling the ideas included in the Declaration of Independence, aspirational though many have always been and not yet quite fully instantiated.  You know, the whole right to life, “liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, the fact that all (people)* are created equal, and the fact that governments only legitimately exist in order to secure the rights of the people, “deriving their just power from the consent of the governed”, and that when government fails to perform its fundamental duty, it is the right of the people to change it, with the caveat that one should not change governments lightly or frivolously.

It’s absurd to say that the 4th of July is on July 4th, because it’s redundant, quite apart from failing to acknowledge the point of the holiday.  It’s a bit like making an announcement, “El tren funcionará según el horario de los domingos el Cinco de Mayo, el quinto día de mayo.”  The fact that the announcement is in the form it takes is further evidence that humans don’t think either about the significance of the day nor the logic and concision of the language they use to convey information.

It sometimes gets to the point where one doesn’t bother trying to determine why a particular person is a misanthrope but rather one wonders why anyone is not a misanthrope.  I’m not a bigot, though; I don’t just hate humans.  I don’t think the other animals are any better that humans are (and I’m no great admirer of fungi, plants, protozoa, and prokaryotes).  They’re just less competent (in the broad sense of the word), and so their blind self-interest and response to entirely “local”** influences tends to cause less damage and create fewer absurdities and stupidities.

That’s enough of me griping about train announcements.  In other news, I have been writing this week (though I did not work on Saturday after all, because the office was closed, so I didn’t write any on that day).  Since last post, I’ve written a total of 3,731 words on Extra Body.  It would have been more—it probably should have been more—but I’ve really been writing only a page a day, and I’ve had to force myself to do that.

I’m incredibly exhausted.  My sleep has been consistently poor, even for me, and if anything it seems to be deteriorating steadily.  I can’t even rest when I have down time; I’m extremely tired but I don’t feel sleepy.

To quote John at the bar in the song Piano Man, “I believe this is killing me”.  I’m not speaking metaphorically.  Every day I feel vague and separate, like a very faintly received and poorly rendered analog television signal, dominated by static.  My dysthymia/depression is very bad, my tinnitus is just awful, making my sensory sensitivity to sound (or “SSS” for short) all the worse.  I can’t even tell if I’m writing coherently, or if I’m speaking coherently at any given day or time.  Thankfully—I guess—I speak to nearly no one, other than a few people at work, and that’s pretty limited, because I feel like I have nothing to say that isn’t inane or repetitive.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Sunday was Father’s Day, which is at best a bittersweet holiday for me; I haven’t physically been in the presence of my children since about 2013, and though I’ve exchanged emails, texts, and a few phone calls with my daughter (and she sent me a cool gift for Father’s Day), I’ve had all of one e-mail exchange with my son since 2013 (unless I’m forgetting something).  Clearly, I’m unsatisfactory and/or unpleasant even to the people I love most in the world.  You can just imagine how irritating I am to people who hate me (of which group I am the chief member).

And, of course, two Saturdays from now, June 29th would have been my 33rd wedding anniversary.  Thirty-three is, of course, the age at which hobbits “come of age”, and was Frodo’s age at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, though it was seventeen years later that he left the Shire to begin his great journey.

Okay, well, I’m rambling now.  I’ve probably been rambling all along, but it’s becoming impossible not to see it at this point, even for me.  I’ll try to get a little more done on Extra Body this week if I can.  It really is almost finished, but that’s a rather nebulous status.  I could conceivably finish the first draft by next Thursday, but I would not recommend placing any bets on it.  I also wouldn’t recommend placing any bets on me living to see it published, let alone to writing and finishing HELIOS, or anything else, for that matter.

I’m just too damn tired and discouraged, and whatever my species actually is, they seem to have forgotten about me, if they ever realized that they left me here***.  I’ve been investigating high, open parking garages in the area—they’re not as common as I would wish in this part of Florida—and experimenting with replacing the psyllium with other substances in these generic Metamucil capsules I have, just to try to figure out promising techniques or ideas.  I don’t know what’s going to happen, of course.  But I’m damn near sure that there will be no epiphany or miraculous rescue.  As far as I can tell, that’s just not how my life works.

Anyway, I hope you all have a good week, and a good beginning of summer, though of course the heat in the American east and northeast is supposedly pretty bad.  It’s rough down here, too, but that’s not anything new.

TTFN

destroyer

*Even Star Trek only fixed their androcentric version of things with the start of The Next Generation in the eighties, so we shouldn’t be too hard on Jefferson et al for unthinking sexism (they had other moral errors that were at least as egregious).  Even in Greece, the birthplace of democracy, women only got the right to vote in 1952, so the US had them beat by over 30 years.  And, of course, there are plenty of countries throughout the world where women still do not have equal rights…or often any rights.

**I’m using “local” in a relatively technical sense, here.  Obviously in these days of global communication networks of various kinds, one can be influenced by ideas and forces not merely from across the planet but also—given the information from history—from the past.  However, all these influences only come to bear upon individuals when they actually receive the information that influences them, when any incoming influence actually impinges on their nervous systems.  And, of course, no organism can help but respond to the forces that operate directly upon and within it, anymore than one can choose to waive one’s compliance with the laws of physics.  So, local, national, and international news are in this sense nevertheless all local forces.  Even gravity is really a local force in this sense—each portion of the gravitational field responds not literally to distant objects, but rather to the state of the field right next to it.  This is especially obvious in the phenomenon of gravitational waves, but is true of all gravitational effects.  And, of course, like all influences in this, our universe, the transmission of those influences cannot go faster than the fundamental speed of causality, which is the speed of light.  There is some possibility that, at least in some sense, quantum mechanics is a non-local process (or set of processes) but I have my doubts about even that.

***This is metaphorical—well, usually—and I am not literally delusional.  It merely captures how I feel about myself in relation to all the other people in the world.

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…and he must needs blog that the devil drives.

Good morning and welcome to another Thursday.  There’s no longer anything very interesting or specific to say about the date.  It’s not the week before Christmas, or the week between Christmas and New Year’s, nor is it even the week immediately after.  It is, instead, yet another featureless span of time, trapped in the wasteland of days that marks the first part of every year.  The next truly celebrated holiday—in America, at least—is Valentine’s Day, and that’s a highly artificial, commercial holiday, mainly celebrated by people in romantic relationships (known to the rest of us by various uncomplimentary epithets).  After that comes St. Patrick’s Day, which is a little better, and then the Easter/Passover time, which has much to do with the arrival of Spring.  Once Spring is here, certainly for those who live up north, one hardly needs a holiday in order to feel like celebrating.

Of course, here in South Florida, at the same latitude as Upper Egypt*, Spring arrives a bit earlier.

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I’ve gone back and forth a bit on the topic of how many projects to work on at once.  Well, I’m thinking of going back (or forth) yet again.  As you may recall, I decided to write Penal Colony and to publish Solitaire because Unanimity was taking so long, and I needed to give myself some variety so that I could maintain my pseudo-sanity.  But all along I’ve dabbled in other matters, such as my experimentation with audio versions of my stories and trying to put out a weekly posting on “Iterations of Zero.”

I can’t help but think, though, that if I hadn’t allowed myself to be distracted, that Unanimity might well be done by now.  Of course, that would mean that it would probably be slightly different than it’s going to be in this universe, but it would be done, and that’s the point.

So…I may go back to the purist’s recommendation and stick to one story at a time (except during the cooling off period between the first draft of a novel and the rewriting/editing process, which is a very good time for a short story).  Of course, there’s little doubt that, someday down the road, when I feel bored or impatient, I’ll switch it up again.  I’ll keep you posted on how that all goes.  I’m sure you can hardly wait.

One reason I’m thinking about this is that I’m frustrated that editing Penal Colony is going so slowly…or feels like it is.  By my usual standards, it’s not that long of a short story; it’s only about twenty-five thousand words.  But of course, for the moment, most of my writing time is dominated by Unanimity, as I come ever closer to its end…it’s hard to walk away from it when my schedule calls for me to do some work on Penal Colony.

This would all be easier, of course, if I were able to write full time, but alas, I must needs make my living in other ways for the time being.  Perhaps in days or years to come this will change.  Hopefully at least some of my Everettian branches have a full-time-writing future…which would mean that I will have such a future, even if I also have other futures, in which no such thing happens.  Each of those futures will be just as contiguous with—just as identical with—the current person writing this blog as any of the others.  All of which speculation assumes that Everett’s “Many Worlds” interpretation is right, of course, which is my personal suspicion.

Isn’t quantum mechanics fun?

I hope all of you who live in climates north of me are staying safely warm to as great a degree as possible.  It feels cold down here when it goes into the low fifties overnight (as it did last night), but I know that’s just because we’re all soft and weak.**  On the other hand, I have mangoes and papayas and avocados and bananas and coconuts all growing in my yard, so there are compensations to such softness and weakness.  I know that you’re all enduring much greater privation.  You may console yourselves with the knowledge that, before long, my home may be (literally) underwater.  A little schadenfreude helps keep the blood warm in winter; indulge yourself.

And what the hell, a belated Happy New Year to you all.

TTFN

*The “Upper” part, by the way, apparently refers to the course of the Nile, so Upper Egypt is actually farther south than Lower Egypt.

**I grew up in Michigan, did my undergraduate degree in upstate New York, then lived in Chicago for two years before med school…so I’ve known what it’s like to be through real, relatively severe cold.  Of course, people from North Dakota, from Minnesota, and from Canada may laugh at my presumption.  I accept such laughter as a just rebuke, even as I stand outside in the sunshine without a jacket in mid-January, wondering why creatures such as we—with almost no fur, and with the highest concentration of sweat glands of any living organism—ever left the rift valley of Africa.