Status Quo Vadis?

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker always swore that – short of actually dying   she would rest, heal, and return to her work. Whatever she saw as her work, anyway, after any Event so large and capitalized that it had required her to stop working in the  first place.

All things taken into sober consideration, she fulfilled this oath; yea, even unto and following death. She reinvented and re-established her life several times over  its eccentric length, coming back stronger each time from the edge of dissolution. A merry and ironic jig on that crumbling edge, with a cocktail one hand and a paper parasol for balance in  the other, became her speciality.

She even succeeded, rather arguably, after her literal death: she left her work, her world(s) and her plans to me. I haven’t done all that well with this assignment. Things keep happening to me, that Kage overcame but which have nearly finished me. Also, Kage managed her several resurrections over the course of a lifetime, whereas I have not  gotten through even 1 of the 8 years since her death without some ludicrously close call, myself.

I have found this, Dear Readers, somewhat distracting.

On June 2nd, I tripped and had a bad fall. It involved Cheetos, yarn and a cat tower, though I am still undecided on how permanent the effects of the yarn, snacks and feline demesnes will prove. The main problems seem to be due to gravity and the tensile strength of bone. Also, bureaucratic inertia.

Minor damage: a broken toe, a mild concession, a hard knock to ribs broken 15 years ago, to leave me short of breath. Muscles all up and down my right side torn, leaving me weirdly stiff. Major damage: some cataclysmic but un-detailed fracture to my right shoulder. That last one has left me unable to accomplish 90% of what my right arm is accustomed to performing, as well as a recent legacy of literally mind-blowing pain … if I can frame them amusingly enough, I will list at a later time all the weird places, receptacles and conditions in which I have hallucinated myself over the last month.

A day or 2 after the fall, I went to an orthopedist, who diagnose a proximal fracture of the right humeral head: I broke the top of my humerus into 3 or 4 pieces, right where it fits into my shoulder socket. The doctor ordered a CAT scan on an urgent basis, to ascertain just how badly my arm was croggled, and to deduce what might fix it,

Due to his staff’s unique interpretation of URGENT, the scan was finally done on June 20th. Yestreday, by dint of repeated calls, nagging, and general bitchiness on my part, the orthopedist’s stellar staff managed to get me a third-hand message from the doctor: my shoulder is so croggled that only a full shoulder replacement would have any hope of restoring full function.  Which surgery cannot be done unless and until a cardiologist and an endocrinologist sign off on my ability to survive the surgery. I have heart failure, diabetes and only 1 kidney, you see, all of which apparently outrank my recent loss of the use of my arm.

I am not a good candidate for surgery. On the other hand – if I had another hand – I am also not a good candidate for being solely left-handed, in which state  circumstances have so far abandoned me.

My next doctor appointment is on Wednesday, where we will discuss what can be done about my right arm. To date, absolutely nothing has been done for the injury, and I  really, really want some sort of treatment. Can I have surgery? Then do it now. Is surgery useless, or impossible? Then tell me, so I can try something else: acupuncture, hypnosis, exercises, burying a bean in the woods … something,  so at least I can begin trying to do something more with my life than type  one-handed, and try to join the opioid epidemic.

But, I have figured out why so many people are on the evil drugs. This has apparently escaped the notice of the AMA, the insurance industry, the White House … but, you know what? PAIN HURTS.

In the meantime, I am still here. This is the first day since my fall that I have really been able to blog, and I will try to maintain the ability. In the gaps between despair, fury and simple weariness, I’ll try to write.

There are only a few creative things one can  do with only one hand. Writing is the best so far.

On we go …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Textbook Pain In The Ass

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker would shake her head whenever I hurt myself  (you know, after the screaming and cursing and bleeding and hunting for the car keys was over), and say sadly, “Only you, you little Welsh mutant.”

But really, these things happen to all sorts of people. All the time! The textbooks are full of examples that illustrate not only medical commonalities, but things I have actually done. Or survived. Or had removed

Kage would say: “That’s the point. Most people don’t match more than one. And then it’s something ordinary. Like, being born.”

Well, those are under-achievers, says I. Or maybe it’s just statistics. Someone has to be on the far, exotic end of the statistical U-graph, right? Consider me infra-red, ultra-violet: where most people may span yellow, green or blue, I might be reaching for gamma radiation. Soft x-rays, at least.

It’s not that bad, though. Not this time. This injury is as common as dirt. I saw my orthopedist this afternoon, the estimable Dr. Cepkinian, and he assures that at least 80% of proximal humerus fractures (which is the kind I have)  do not have to be treated by surgery. Mind you, that’s not the kind I have, but still – that’s a good percentage.  However, what I have will require surgery. It only remains to figure what kind of surgery; what combination of pins, screws, plates and Superglue will restore to me my good right arm.

So the next stop for me will be a series of CAT scans, to determine just sort of ivory puzzle is lurking up there under the edge of my scapular. Those will done as soon as possible, and the surgery will be scheduled as soon possible after that. If it’s left too long, poor Dr. C. will need to break bones in order to heal them … orthopedists have large hands, I’ve been told, just to deal with recalcitrant bones. And I really do not want to present with such a problem …

But in the meantime, I’ll be drinking left-handed. Eating, too. And typing short blogs very, very, agonizingly slowly.

And that is where I stand now, Dear Readers. with a common sort of injury – just not common enough.

It was probably the possums that dragged that yarn bag out where I’d trip on it. Or maybe the Cheetos pushed the odds over the edge. Next time, I’ll be sure to stick to something boring, like Triscuits.

I d have a shoulder and 2 hips left, after all.

 

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We’re Having Lovely Weather

Posted on June 6, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker really did believe that the 3rd day of an injury was the worst. She believed that – as a natural follow through of this axiom – days 4 and following would therefore  be better.

I tried to tell her that better was not the same as easier, but apparently for Kage, they were. She certainly always acted as though they were; she was undeniably more cheerful after Day 3. She wasn’t faking, either: those 3 days were the worst, even in the face of fatal diseases. And after 3 days, Kage would actually, factually be happier. And she did not understand why someone else might not be.

“But it’s been three days,” she would assure me, as if I had somehow lost track of the time; as if I would feel tons better if I just applied myself. Instead, I would slink off into a corner,  growling like a wolf bitch with a tooth ache. Kage would bring me a nice glass of lemonade, eventually.

Anyway, by that miraculous 3rd day, I generally still feel like a broken egg; a faded plastic lighter with fractal traces of lighter fluid; a pile of dog side-effects.

Today, Dear Readers, is Day 4 of my shoulder fracture. And sure enough, just as per the Reformed Revealed Word of Kage, I feel like a dogshit omelette, cooked (like cheap heroin), over the guttering flame of a broken lighter.

Which is why I won’t be writing more than this little bit of tired, self-indulgent graffiti tonight. I ache, my shoulder is a mass of raw nervous tissue, two of my toes are broken and turning colours, my right biceps is swollen and turning black, I broke my glasses and got a shiner falling into the cat tower. And I don’t see the orthopedist until 3:30 tomorrow.

So I am feeling sorry for myself and will continue to be so until at least tomorrow afternoon. I hate my humerus and feel it definitely let down the side by fracturing like a cheap piece of plastic.

But than that, things are pretty good. I’ll let you all know tomorrow what my patient ortho guy has to say.

At least I got a chance to wash the Cheetos off.

 

 

 

 

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Day 2, Fracture 1,Me 0

Posted on June 4, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker believed that the 3rd day of an injury was the worst. She had some logical reason for it, but I think she just figured after 3 days, you reached the nadir of comfort. So she used that excuse to indulge herself in anything that might provide some little crumb of comfort, and thereby convinced herself that she would feel better tomorrow. Alcohol, chocolate, egg creams and war won ton soup figured largely.

I don’t have Kage’s cheerful folksy nonsense view of physiology. I know this  is going to hurt for weeks, even before I see the orthopedist. There may yet be surgery in my future, ugly pins and screws and plates and crap. But I don’t really feel too bad about it all. I have a cool sling, and good painkillers, and though I have to type one-handed, at least I can do that. My family is taking good care of me.

The recliner in the living room is comfortable, since I need to sleep sitting up for a week or two. The cats come visit me, and I can hear mockingbirds sing, and breathe the sweet night air flowing through the windows.

Also, about 3 AM this morning, I was treated to the sight of Mike coming into the living room, carrying what I thought was an Erlenmeyer flask in his gauntleted hands, (They are grand gauntlets, elbow-high and very sturdy; he looked like an apprentice alchemist venturing out of the lab.) What he had, though, was a Lego zeppelin balloon, containing Possum Number 4 in our apparently unending stream of young possums. He’d trapped it in the zeppelin, being a make-do kind of fellow – raise your kids at Faires, folks; they can make anything out of nothing, at need – and was evicting it into the dark front garden.

He gave Kimberly and I peeks into the zeppelin – it was a very young, cute little possum, who did not enjoy its novel confinement at all. We heard Mike let it loose in the camellias, muttering, “Fly! Be free!” Then we all sat around for awhile and discussed the improbable Empire of Possums we have going on this summer … Mike was super-adrenalized, as he’d been chasing marsupials through his childhood toys for a hour; and I was just unable to sleep for the amazing pain in my arm. Poor Kimberly fell asleep first, and gradually everyone slowed down and at least dozed.

Tonight, though, Mike has found what we truly hope is the last portal, and has sealed it. I will again be sitting vigil, waiting for the Vicodin to defeat the pain in my shoulder: so we ought to be fairly safe. Man, June has been a hot mess of absurdity so far. Here’s the zeppelin. Imagine it with the tail fins screwed off, the gondola removed, and a possum scrabbling inside.

It’s weird around here right now. More tomorrow, as my traumatized brain and muscles and humerus get a little better.

Sleep well, Dear Readers.

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Accident. With Cheetos.

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker despaired of my life on a regular basis throughout her life. This was because I have bizarre destructive things happen to me with ridiculous frequency.

This evening, I tripped over a bag of yarn, hit the cat tower with my head and right shoulder, and ended up on the floor. I was carrying a small bag of Cheetos, and went down in a veritable eruption of orange crunchy snacks.

Now I am sitting in the ER, waiting for a CAT scan. I’ve already been x-rayed, and so we know I have broken my humerus -split the head of it, as the doctor said lyrically, like a blow from an axe.

I am also covered with ground-in Cheeto fragments.

More later, Dear Readers. It hurts to type. But all will be well – Kimberly is here with me.

 

 

 

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Watching The Lights

Posted on June 2, 2018 by Kate

Kage  Baker was as likely as anyone else to go boneless and lazy on a suddenly-warm summer evening.

She loved sitting in the living room with no lights lit but candles and lava lamps, idly brainstorming. We would watch the restaurant lights stream across the waves a block away, or time the rotating spotlight at the Nipomo airport as it passed over and over in the dark.

Sometimes the light would dim, or miss a cycle. We always told one another it might be an alien craft; they were known to cruise around out there, mutilating strawberries or cows, knocking out the electricity when they broke the glass insulators off by skimming the power poles. There were reports of fires out there all the time, telephone poles going up like tiki torches amid shards of melted glass and charred metal.

However, there was also fog rolling in and out all the time: often no more than a story or two high. And we knew what the airport was like, we’d driven out to see. It was the approximate size of an AM/PM. When the night-shift crop dusters took off, they had to either block the light on our side, or hit the tower. So it wasn’t all that likely it was flying saucers.

Kage cherished the idea of space aliens out in the dunes, though. God knows, there was a lot of legitimately weird stuff and people out there. But even Kage admitted that not even vegetable rustlers, born-again Celtic hermits and the pot farmers of the Temple of the People guaranteed that space aliens were bopping around out there as well.

But she did love the idea, so much so that she wrote several stories about the exceedingly weird little town of Pismo Beach, and the truly odd things and folks that dwelt there. The Company ended up doing lots of work out in the dunes, with bits of real Egyptian temples buried with the old movie sets of same. Her little stupid guys flew their saucers there. Cthonic gods were worshipped by sailor-suited buskers in old cocktail bars. And she put a strange but charming Irish hermit out there to commemorate the Gaelic Renaissance of the 1930’s.

It was all enormous fun, and good memories.

I was going to post a little excuse for not writing an actual Kage and writing blog tonight, but then I was distracted by the memories of strange lights out our living room window, and the glowing waves on Pismo Beach … and, BTW, the Temple of the People (which is quite real) still stands in vaguely saucer-shaped splendour on a dirt road amid the broccoli fields in the tiny town of Halcyon.  The Post Office across the street sells wonderful incense and diverse crystals, and imported chocolate bars …

Here’s a picture of it for you, Dear Readers. Have fun watching your own lights tonight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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June’s Bugs

Posted on June 1, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker waited frantically for June each year. She lived for its arrival for lots of reasons.

School was out – an event that carried such spiritual weight for her that she still honoured it no matter how many years had passed since it had made any difference to her life. “Of course it matters!” she told me when I observed that, at 50,  it was no longer the big deal it had been when she was 14. “I still notice, don’t I? Summer vacation is one of the big borders of life! There’s something fundamentally wrong with the Universe that makes it stop just as life gets interesting.”

And I guess there is. Kage was certainly not the only person I have known who still depended on the idea of summer holidays to give shape to life. She just really, really worked at it: to the point where being free all summer was a major goal of her life. It was one of the biggest reasons she worked so hard: just so she could stay at home . Self-employment meant not getting up early for work, not knowing or caring what day of the week it was, spending the whole summer in tee shirts and jeans. Kage’s goal was to spend the last 18 years of her life the same way she had spent the first 18.  Being a writer was how she accomplished it. And every year when June leaped above the burning horizon of the world, Kage celebrated the return of summer vacation.

Writing was what she did on her summer vacation. It was what she did the rest of the time too, but she said it was more fun to define it that way. She was getting away with being on permanent holiday. She loved getting away with things.

Of course, June had other charms. Summer does begin during this month. Things got hot, and Kage could actually be warm for a few weeks. (Though on foggy summer nights, there were still some epic battles over the thermostat.) And of course, Kage’s birthday was in June. Sometimes the celebration for that was all of June.

But (other than being as unconstrained by routines and schedules as she could manage) what summer brought was the Silly Season. In the hot depths of summer, people get … peculiar. Monsters go wandering, UFOs buzz everywhere, men bite dogs in droves. It used to be when news agencies had so little real news that two-headed cows and the Ascended Masters of Mount Shasta appeared and made headlines. Even now, the Internet carries some crazy news every day – radioactive catfish in the cooling ponds of Chernobyl, the (mythical) carburetor that lets your car run on water, virgin births and honest politicians. But in summer … ah, in summer, even in these modern and over-informed times, it all gets even stranger.

Kage waited eagerly for this time of year, specifically to replenish her files of Weird Stuff, Uncanny Science, and General Craziness. It was one of her major sources of Story Ideas. She liked archeological finds that turned out to be customized dog skulls, or spark plugs. Living (briefly) frogs in geodes. Some English village deciding to reinforce the ancient law that said you have to wear a white wool cap on Sunday. Bugs – embarrassing  bugs in computer networks, hungry bugs in Biblical hordes, mystery “space” bugs in local tomato patches. And, or course, all the bugs in people’s heads. Those were the best of all.

For instance, she always wanted to witness a UFO flap, but somehow never managed to be in the right place at the right time. Despite living in the Hollywood Hills and in Central California for most of her life, she was never resident precisely where there were Gulf Breeze-levels of flying saucers. UFOs were locally believed to be all over the Nipomo Mesa near Pismo Beach, but Kage never saw one. Though when the power went out on hot summer nights, killing our vital fans, she’d shake her fist at the sky and curse the aliens. (It was probably the extra 25,000 people in town for the summer. Though you never know. Aliens are apparently dreadfully inept pilots …)

I am still reading new books on UFOs, partly to honour the Silly Season coming in. When it gets a little warmer at nights, I’m going to sit out on the front porch and look for anomalous lights. I’m also waiting eagerly for the DNA analysis of Loch Ness to come out, so we can see if there are plesiosaurs in there. There is always the chance that Betelgeuse will go nova, which is expected to happen in the astronomical equivalent of any minute now, and would be an amazing sight. Statues may start drinking milk or weeping blood. There may be another plague of carnivorous frogs on Florida golf courses. Someone may decipher the Voynich Manuscript. Again.

In the meantime, I need to put up the mini flamingo lights at my desk. And then I think an ice cream bar is  in order.

It’s summer time.

 

 

PSA: there were no possums in my house last night. I traumatized the cats, charging into the kitchen with a flashlight every time I heard crunching in the dark, but no possums. It’s what the cats get for falling down on the job, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Up All Night. And All Day (So Far, Anyway)

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker rarely wrote in the middle of the night.

She was a daylight person. She stayed up late to work, most nights: but her idea of late was any hour past midnight. By that time, she was visibly flagging. Her eyes would develop the fixed, glassy stare of someone who has been driving for 12 hours, and is still 2 states away from their exit. Ultimately, she would drive off the information highway and fall  asleep in a ditch by the road.

I can count the number of times Kage had actual insomnia on the fingers of one hand. And two of those occasions she was sleepless due to worry over a family member. On any normal night, and some pretty abnormal ones, she was essentially sleep walking by 2 AM and could  be put to bed with no more resistance than a toddler.  She learned to stop writing by then, because she’d get up the next day and find it was gibberish and all to be done again.

“I can’t write if I’ve turned into a pumpkin,” she fretted. Then she’d go to bed and plot whole stories in her dreams. Nice work, if you can get it …

I have insomnia. I have insomnia the way I have brown eyes, or the knack of twisting my tongue into a tube, or congestive heart failure. It’s not an occasional condition; I am habitually awake more nights than I am asleep. It’s worse in the Spring and Fall, like allergies, though one memorable year I failed to fall asleep after a Halloween party, and was more or less awake until May Day. I am accustomed to seeing dawns and sunsets and then new dawns in matching sets. I recently calculated that my accumulated sleep debt is  now longer than my actuarial lifespan.

It’s an acknowledged fact that loss of sleep will fry your brain and most of your autonomic metabolism. Torturers use it for that reason, and it’s reputed to be more effective than pain. (I believe that, because with enough pain you can eventually pass out.) Scientific American has a tidy littlel article online, that says the world record is 264 hours: about 11 days, set by some teen-aged kid back in 1965. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-can-humans-stay/) I am willing to bet that some other miserable teenager has since met or bettered this record. Adolescence is like that.

I have been slow-dancing with insomnia all May. It’s much easier now that I am retired, I must admit; I can stay awake until the sun rises, then sleep for 6 hours with an utterly clear conscience. If I am really awake – like, manic with it, which happens – I can write until late into the night, and it’ll still make sense 12 hours later when I am pouring coffee down my throat and my pants in an effort to wake up. But when I am too tired; when I have been awake for a day or 3 and my only real claim to wakefulness is that my eyes are still open: then I read. I crave the printed word with an addict’s ardour. I NEED to read. I used to have panic attacks when I thought I didn’t have enough fresh books to hand to last me through the night.

My Kindle has saved me from that terror, at least. I have over a thousand books safely in my Cloud, and new ones are an instant gratification as long I have a wifi signal. And I always have a wifi signal. This is an addiction of long standing, and I have moved with the times to accommodate that erudite monkey on my back. It means I can write all night, too, if I want to do that: witness my tendency to write blog entries between 9 PM and midnight. Then I can spend the wee small hours in the arms of Thoth, Seshat, Nabu and Cadmus. Or any other deities of the written word who might be awake for a foursome of spades, or a little four-in-hand dancing.

The last few nights, I have been reading up on UFOs. This is almost total junk food;  sometimes you get a nugget of information, like some real cheese on a greasy burger of dubious meat; but mostly, it’s comfortable junk food. It’s a nostalgic topic, too, as Kage and Kimberly and I spent many, many nights watching the stars and hoping for sightseeing aliens. I can’t state for sure we ever saw any, though we did see UFOs aplenty: if you can’t tell what it was you saw, it’s a UFO, right? My favourite left Kage with an inexplicable sunburn in the middle of the night (probably ball lightning) while Kimberly and her husband were wandering helplessly in an old quarry in the dark – Kage had the flashlight, of course. My second favourite turned out out to be a goose flying overhead, with the moon reflecting silver off its breast.

UFOs are cool.

My nights have been further enriched lately by the apparently endless stream of baby opossums who have been toddling indoors through every loose window screen or chewed-open vent in the house. How the hell do we suddenly have so many possums? Last night was Opossum #3, announced with a sort of of resigned bewilderment by Michael about 4 AM. We had a brief bug hunt through the bedrooms, then gave it up till morning – the little bugger left on its own sometime during it all, leaving just me to watch and listen till dawn. The cats were no use at all: the black cat never woke up, and the red cat just sat  in her cat tower crying piteously. Possums are scary, I guess.

I chased aliens through to the ere-dawn, and then fell over for a couple of hours. After which I was again wide freaking awake, and so was able to advise Michael (who did not need it) on how to possum-proof all the windows.

The good part – and yes, there is a good part, Dear Readers! – was that there is a story in this. I am going to work on it a little as soon as I post this … because if infinite possums can come through the walls at night, who knows what else might be out there?

I’ll leave a light on.

 

 

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May Grey, June Gloom

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker loved this time of year. At least, she loved the classical weather of our childhoods, when sometimes May and always June were dim and quiet under a grey sky … this is no longer a sure thing, as climate change is underscoring the desert part of sub-desert in Los Angeles; but this year, at least, it still pertains.

It’s actually rained a little, three or four times this May;  an even rarer occurrence in the LA Basin. Or maybe it’s really heavy dew. The temperature this morning was only 59, and the dew point was 57 degrees. The marine layer was breaking over the domes of the Griffith Park Observatory like ghostly waves. The front garden is wet and aromatic with it, and everything with leaves is still a fresh and vital green; the streets are slick and shining. It’s  paradisial.

There are camellias and  geraniums and roses blooming in our front yard, and the rosemary is covered in blue flowers and bees. The mulberry tree has leafed out, and and borne fat sticky black fruits as well; the birds and squirrels eat some of them, but never enough:  they’re full of seeds and peanuts instead, the little ingrates, and the porch has big purple polka dots all over it where the berries have splattered.

My xeriscaping efforts, alas, have not thrived. We planted all sorts of drought resistant plants, and they all died. The little rain we had this winter has apparently dissolved the redwood bark we laid down, and instead brought up a fine virile crop of dandelions, milkweed, wild oats, cranes bill, and a few varieties of bunch grass that are not worth the powder to blow them to Hell. They are certainly verdant, though. Tomorrow, I’m going to take Mike out and buy us a nice cordless electric lawn mower, and at least reduce it all to something that looks like a lawn. It’ll be flat and short and green, at least.

We’ll leave the roses, and spread some new bark. For all I know, the skunks are eating it and we are supplying a native animal population. Maybe we can add a few matiljja poppies, and some grama grass, or bluestem or some purple needle grass. Those are all native, and tend to be sold as larger plants. Hopefully they’ll survive. And in the meantime, we at least are not wasting precious water on a self-indulgent Beverly Hills lawn.

It looks like it will stay seasonally cool for a while, too. This was weather Kage adored. It’s been a little chillier than she liked – Salamander-woman disliked anything below 75 degrees or so. But  she loved the mild air and pearl skies, and the deep, rich perfumes that rose up everywhere as all the gardens and wild empty lots began to bloom.

We used to leave school at the end of the day, when she was a senior and I was a junior, and walk along Franklin Boulevard to Highland Avenue. Lots of magnolias along that route, smelling of lemons for blocks around; then you get into jacaranda trees blooming like psychedelic purple clouds. At Highland we’d walk North to the Hollywood Bowl, where grow things I think might be enormous, ancient ficus trees.  I don’t know. But they have silver bark and spreading green boughs, and we called them mallorns in our Tolkien-saturated teens. We’d hike up into the Bowl itself,  and watch the fog drift in curtains across the empty, echoing shell, sitting huddled on the silvered wooden benches; we’d eat Violet Crunch candy bars, and Kage would plot out the stories she would someday write.

I lost 3 shoes doing that. If I’d kept my damn shoes on instead of playing at being a barefoot elf-maid, or if I’d remembered to put them all in my book bag, I’d have had an extra pair and a half of cheap sandals by Senior year. I never remembered I’d worn shoes until one of our mothers had come at our pleading phone call to pick us up and take us home. But I’d get enthralled by the stories Kage was telling; it was pure luck I didn’t forget my school books, or my head.

Good times, man, under the ageless mist in the gleaming shell of the Bowl. Why we never kidnapped by white slavers, I will never know. Maybe the white slavers were too smart to be out in the cold in the empty Hollywood Bowl.

I must try to get back up there though, before June Gloom burns away entirely and leaves us to broil under the summer sun of July. Dreams and memories wander there, and some of them are mine. I could use a visit with some of those …

 

 

 

 

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Memories In May

Posted on May 28, 2018 by Kate

Kage Baker never (as far as I could tell) forgot anything. Things she did not wish to recall were somehow shunted away –  probably into her tertiary consciousness; I know she had one – until and unless some reflex forced her to remember them. Her idea of important did not include things like “Where did you leave the car keys?” or “Did this recipe call for teaspoons of mustard, or tablespoons?”, which added enormously to the everyday excitement of life.

It did prioritize things like “What was that book I liked? You know, it had a green cover and had a jam stain shaped  like a paisley on the dedication page. I got it out of the Library once …” That kind of thing could rule our lives for weeks at a time as she searched all our books (in case we had forgotten to return it to the Library), went through increasingly convoluted search protocols on line, and racked our combined brains. I was usually reduced to insane screaming eventually. The really annoying thing was that this routine usually worked, and she would find the damned book.

I gradually came to the conclusion that she was actually forcing the multiverse to create these things, and then cough them up for her. And I most sincerely wish I could do that, too. Determination and skill at search engines has made me better than anyone else in the family at finding the dimly remembered and poorly described, but I am not in Kage’s league. She could locate extinct paper popup bat decorations, and the last known bottles of outre liqueurs not distilled since WWI. And these are RL examples, folks. My best score to date has been finding Knorr Hunter’s Sauce Mix, though only in German packaging. Luckily, Kimberly reads German.

And now, some fun with past, future and current events. Which are inextricably tangled.

In France, enormous blue worms have been found. They resemble planaria, which every biology student will recall as being those clever little buggers you can split like a twig to produce worms with Cerberus heads: but these French worms are up to 3 feet long. And blue, although I bet that is not a pertinent fact; just interesting. The really interesting facts are that 1) they are being found not only in France, but in French territories (there still are French territories; I had no idea) which would indicate that there is something special being shared amid places as disparate as Paris and Polynesia, some distinct worm  terroire. And 2), while the worms are new to the world in general, French gardeners have known about them for 20 years.

Oh, and they are carnivorous. What a blast from the past!

The world is predicted to end on June 24th this year. They mean it, now! It’s been  calculated by adding the Number of the Beast to numbers of local UK crop circles, along with the current crop prices. This makes slightly more sense than most Apocalypse predictions, since it would effect beer:  but I still wouldn’t count too much on it. On the other hand, Kage always said that every such prediction was true and actually happened, only no one noticed.

On the further subject of Time … today is the anniversary of the Spanish Armada beginning to leave for England (it took 2 more days to clear the Port of Lisbon); it didn’t turn out well. Louis Agassiz and  Ian Fleming were born; so was Stephen Gillan. All those turned out very well indeed.

Today is a day for remembering. The late sunlight is shining through the lace curtains in my bedroom, and the shadows on the walls recall the oak trees casting acres of deep, fractal shade at ancient Renaissance Faires. I found an old Hawaiian shirt in a drawer, and am remembering the crazed book signing to which I originally wore it. Tom Barclay sent me a necklace of red beads and brass clock faces with no hands: which recalls all the unquiet, unregulated, strangely constructed Time in Kage’s vicinity … and lets me wade a little in that stream, and search the bottom for interestingly coloured glass fragments.

Kage said Time is not a river; or if it is, it’s all oxbows and meanders. You can reenter wherever you like, if you are intent enough.

I have no screed or sermon to add to this day’s memories – only the general idea that we should remember as much as we possibly can, because everything is worth it eventually. And, as Kage firmly believed, not only does nothing ever end, it’s all happening at the same time. Which  is Now.

There is an old British folk custom of telling your daily events to the bees. Perhaps memories should be told to the poppies.

 

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