Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker loved the rain. Not being out in it, mind you, except under extraordinary circumstances; she preferred the experience, as she preferred most experiences, at one remove.

She used to love watching the rain fill up the canyons of the Hollywood Hills, from the tall windows in Momma’s mirrored living room. The mist would rise up from the 101 Freeway that ran through the bottom of the Cahuenga Pass, in glittering grey billows; the rock doves that lived wild in the trees would sweep through in lens-shaped flocks, the sharp edges of the massed wings carving channels through the clouds. Kage’s vision went a millions miles, looking out over the Pass.

She liked the rain through windows, drumming on roofs, beating the surface of the sea into a vast silver plate. She enjoyed driving through it, watching the landscape shape-shift and mutate beyond the passenger side windows. I think it was the streaming prisms of the wind-driven rain that intrigued her the most about car windows; even when I discovered that if you drive fast enough, speed alone make window wipers unnecessary … and usually, she hated it when I tried crazy tricks like that.

One of the few times she enjoyed being out in the rain was a winter storm on Catalina Island. We were there for an overnight vacation, and ended up spending most of a week instead, when the nor’easters set in and the Channel became impassable. The only way to go anywhere was walking in the rain, so we did: 2 wet miles up Avalon Canyon to the Wrigley Gardens, where the manzanita trees postured in the mists like naked dancers, and the City crews were desperately filling in the ruts where streams were breaking through. They helped us over the chasms as we went up past them, though they clearly thought we were nuts; and they helped us back over them when we came back down, pretty much proving that we were, indeed, crazy … that was an amazing walk. Wild piglets and fox cubs were playing under the almond trees, and the sky was thick with the ravens that lived in the tower of Wrigley’s empty tomb.

Once we moved to Pismo Beach, Kage developed a fondness for walking on the beach. And in Pismo, if you want to walk on the beach in the winter, you need to tolerate being rained on. You can see the squalls coming off the sea, blue as bruises and lapis lazuli, but you can never get off the wide, damp beach before they come down like huge metallic stage curtains. We got rubber boots and coats with hoods, and learned why wool is such a great fabric – it can be drenched and still keep you warm. Pocket flasks were absolutely required; many  strange stories were invented under the dubious shelter of the cypress and eucalypti, washed down with blood-warm whiskey.

After a couple of winters in Northern California, Kage never really worried about rain again. She had her boots, she had her coats, and she enjoyed the fashion accents that could be managed with umbrellas. She had a standard black Mary Poppins brolly.  She had one of ancient oiled green silk, its filigreed handle set with enormous faux emeralds. She had another painted like banana leaves, with a carved bamboo handle.

Me, I prefer hoods to umbrellas. I tend to stump around with the rain dripping off the point of my hood, pretending to be a dwarf walking through Eregion.

It’s finally raining in Los Angeles, now. El Nino has found us at last. It’s been raining all day, with various disasters happening on freeways that got too wet too fast; mudslides are galloping uncontrolled down the hills that burned over the last several winters. There are 4 or 5 storms in a row expected. The Sepulveda Basin was flooded and closed by noon.. The Los Angeles River – usually the anemic blue line on a map that so befuddled Edward in Mendoza In Hollywood – is expected to come very near to cresting by the end of the week.

The very idea of the L.A. River cresting at all would have had Kage in hysterics. It hasn’t done it in my lifetime, even in prior El Nino years. It gets wider, you see, as it runs through the flats and out to Long Beach – from narrow cement canals in the Valley to the broader, natural, mud-bottomed river bed here near Griffith Park – then on and further and wider, until you could run chariots eight abreast down the concrete river bed beyond Downtown, where giant ants were reputed to nest in drainage tunnels 8 feet high …

The rest of the country – hell, the rest of California – laughs at hot, dusty Los Angeles and its make-believe River. But every few winters, the dreams of bigger rivers drift down and infect the shallow  pools full of cat fish and willows trees: that’s how dreams  work in California, filling heads and passes and panting rivers until the waters come from everywhere to claim their road again. Then it rains forever, and the flood runs unconfined through the City to the sea. And nothing, nothing stands in its way.

Which, really, was what Kage liked best about the rain …

Kage Baker advised that resolutions should be enacted as soon as possible following New Year’s. The idea was to get some momentum under way before your body or soul noticed the renovations in hand, and had a chance to rebel.

She also advised on only adopting reasonable resolutions. Fine, resolve to lose weight – but don’t set yourself a crazy goal, like 50 pounds in 5 weeks. You won’t learn Swahili in 6 months, but you can certainly start the primer. Can’t save much money? Give up on the folding green for a while and just put your change in a jar ever night – you’ll at least save something.

Try to write  2,000 words a day, but be happy with some lower limit as well; 1,000 words in a day is nothing to sneer at. Many writers would give generous liens on their souls to manage 500 words per day, if they could be guaranteed of that many on a regular basis.

The one resolution on which Kage never compromised was the Big One: To Survive another year. It’s the only one she ever really broke, too. But she made me promise to keep to it regardless, and not to burden myself with too many huge and impractical side issues. As she well knew, I seldom made it through a Lent without cheating on the chocolate I’d given up …

My life pretty much fell apart in 2015. All sorts of practical and sensible habits went up in flames. I spent far too much time as a sort of intellectual blanc mange, feeling sorry for myself. Days on end were spent rolled up in a ball, and I need to get moving again. Though, as Kage would advise, I’m trying for the big obvious things first. Doing the laundry. Registering the car. Washing my hair.

I’ve obediently checked on my jury duty, as a start on a good new year. They don’t want me yet, which is fine with me; but I know the Recording Angel downtown is aware of my virtuous behaviour and will keep her Furies in check another day and night. I’ll probably get called in just as the storm we are expecting any moment now settles down to drown the city …

Anyway, I’m trying to tidy up in distinct ways every day. Clear a pile of correspondence. File away a stack of paperwork. Knit while I sit  on the couch with the family of an evening. Write something every day. Keep the blog up to date.

Which is why I am sitting here writing now, one eye on the clocks. One says 11:30, once says quarter to 12, and one says 5:40 – unless I’m mis-reading it, and it’s actually telling me it’s 54 degrees outside … it’s dim here at my desk. The main thing is, if I get this posted before it’s midnight and the day becomes another one, I’ll be hitting my mark.

So it’s brief and simple tonight, Dear Readers. However, I worked up all sorts of plot ideas while I was knitting this evening, and those will get worked on later and tomorrow. I’ll have a nice shiny new target to aim at then.

We take – and give – what we can, right? It’s the best any of us can do.

Kage Baker always thought the return to the world after New Year’s was much the hardest journey of the year.

You’ve just been through a long period of happy indulgence, family time, eating and drinking too much, sleeping in: whatever mild excess makes you happy, you’ve probably been doing it for the last fortnight. No large holidays are looming on the holiday; some nice reasons to eat chocolate, but nothing that keeps you home. Presidents’  Day often yields a 3-day holiday, but the glee is somewhat undermined – Valentine’s Day is not joyous for everyone, and Presidents’ Day itself is a fake holiday made up by people who desperately wanted an extra day to sell us stuff. For those of us who just want an extra day off, that’s not too bad, really.

And as Kage said, “I may not have a Valentine every year, but I can always force myself to eat chocolate hearts – just to show willing.” And she was, as Dickens said, as good as her word.

Being, as I am, semi-retired and self-employed when I do anything at all, days on or off are largely symbolic for me. Kage reached this point in her last couple of years, and was delighted to do so. Working at her writing from her desk by the sea-gazing window in the living room was exactly the niche she wanted. But there is always the Outside World waiting to intrude upon the cloistered author; the rhythms of the rest of humanity just won’t stay put or away.

Theoretically, tomorrow I start Jury Duty. Actually checking on the Jury Site for Los Angeles Superior Court reveals that, no – I don’t have to find my way downtown to report in: but they’re tracking every time I sign in on the site (the City of Los Angeles thoughtfully assigns jurors special user names and passwords to facilitate this), and they Know Where I Am. At least, they were at pains to tell me that they know whether or not I do check in every 24 hours. And if I don’t, a bench warrant will be issued for me.

I don’t mind performing my jury duty. I do rather mind being threatened as a matter of course; no carrot at all, just the assumption that I’m an irresponsible scofflaw and the Law is ready to deal sternly with me. It’s annoying.

Also annoying is that knitting needles are prohibited from being brought to the Courthouse. That does mean, of course, that the Court system has taken a good look at knitting needles, and realized that a lot of people are running around with matched stilettos in their bags – something the airline industry has not noticed, thank all the spindle-bearing goddesses. I suppose I should be glad that my city’s government has shown a modicum of common sense in outlawing dangerous textile instruments – the amount of harm that spinning, weaving and knitting have brought to the Halls of Power is documented in many folk stories, from Penelope to Sleeping Beauty.

It pisses me off, though. My knitting has been dreadfully neglected this last year, and I am scrupulously trying to get back in gear on it. I shall have to content myself with knitting in the evenings as I sit on the couch, I guess, since I can’t knit and do my civic duty at the same time … at least they don’t forbid Kindles, or paper and pen.

If they ever actually call me in, I can at least read and write. Therein lies salvation.  It still pisses me off, though. It’s all part of having to admit that I do still live in the world, and I have to make plans and allowances for it. I’ve been spoiled.

But on the theory that I should at least turn some of this responsible energy to home use, I’ve tidied up the computer desktop; all the recipes, patterns and story notes I’ve accumulated are now vetted and stored in appropriate folders, so I can find them and work on them. It’s inconvenient to be searching for my notes on khipus and somehow keep finding a pattern for a knitted bowl in which to keep a cat …

Next step will be my literal desktop – time to sort out the toys, old envelopes, the last 4 year’s worth of calendars (in their boxes), scrunchies, candies, pipe cleaners, jewellery and amusing junk mail and actually locate the top of the desk.

Thus does the world sweep us back into the tidal race of the days. A simple desire to avoid a bench warrant has seduced me into cleaning up my work space. As Sweet William says, “Thus does conscience make cowards of us all.”

Mars is glaring at me; so is Australia, a tally of Incan beans and a chorus of blue squirrels … my snow cave has melted, and it’s time to do some real work.

Kage Baker cherished New Year’s Day, as a place to rest before one starts with a new year.

I’d like to think I’m honouring that tradition. Actually, what I’ve done today is sleep. I’ve given much affectionate thought to how we spent our New Year’s Days when Kage and I were young – but what I’ve actually been honouring is my bed.

What Kage was actually honouring, most of the New Year’s, was food. It’s a day for food. We often had picnic lunches, somewhere relatively level in the Hollywood Hills – in a pinch, at the Hollywood Bowl. In a wet pinch, in the car at the Bowl. When we lived in Pismo Beach, we’d drive North a ways until we found a nice turnout with a view of the Pacific, and have our picnic there. Harry liked those; he got to yell at the sea gulls while helping us eat lunch.

(What, you don’t take your pets driving with you?)

Then there’s the festive food of the day: ham, potato salad, yams, Hoppin’ John and collard greens and coleslaw with pineapples in. We used to start the day with home-made Egg McMuffins – I had a fried egg mold – because in the long ago and far away, McDonald’s occasionally closed and they were a rare treat. This year, as we usually do in Kimberly’s household, the day began with bagels and lox and cream cheese: a much better choice! The food itself hardly matters; the point is that you eat it with a purpose. It’s New Year’s Day food.

Thus far, my traditional resolution of survival is holding firm and doing well. I’m hoping to focus it a little more , though.  I think I need to pay a little more attention to this resolution in the coming year – winging  it was not a notable success in 2015.  Toward this end, I’m going to try to pay a little less attention to on-line nonsense: just make sure my friends are still alive, and restrict my aetheric cruising to actual news and research sites. Information, not gossip! You have to be careful. Even though I already peruse very few social media, many of the people I love best in the world are already posturing, politicizing and quarreling. But hey, my heart lives in a small fractious village.

I’ve managed to write the date 3 times so far, and I’ve gotten it right every time! My blood sugar is low and I haven’t gained weight. I’ll have written a little on 3 stories by the time I go to bed tonight. Not too bad a start.

Begin as you mean to go on: that was one of Kage’s favourite philosophies, too. I mean to honour that one as well. As Kage always added, it lessens the confusion as the time goes on.

It’s so much easier to remember what you were doing then,  when things get noisy and the shrapnel starts flying. Excelsior!

Kage Baker is my role model for dealing with this winter. Hibernate! That’s the ticket.

I have a migraine today – or possibly a zombat is eating my brain. It’s hard to tell; maybe I need to adjust my CPAP machine. Maybe fill it with brandy; that’s bound to have some fascinating effect.  However, spending my time wrapped in blankets and dozing seems to be the answer to all problems thus far. I have a wonderful bolster, given  to me to keep me laying still while my side healed, and now it’s exactly what I need for a cuddle. God, I love pillows!

Anyway, my brain is short circuiting in various interesting and distracting ways. It took me over an hour with my head under the covers to compose this brief apology. Now I’m going back to bed.

More (and clearer) thoughts tomorrow. The year is almost over! And, really, 2015 has been a right stinker. The New Year is bound to be better.

Everybody fort up in the blankets tonight!

 Kage Baker:  you may imagine her cursing her lunhs out if you like, Dear Readers. She would be, if this were happening to her. My computer just ate my entire blog entry.

I must post before midnights, so explanations must wait until tomorrow. But I’ve been working on “A Zombie Story” and I needed the ecology of moomies and zombats for that. I include it here as a little giggle (I hope) for those who don’t recall them.

More later!

Moomies are a kind of land mollusk. They have internalized their shell, rather like an octopus, but it’s not a beak. It’s a crispy layer around their innards, a burrito full of goo. Surrounding the shell  is not tasty cephalopod but yet more goo – a slimy layer that turns their exoskeleton into a kind of endoskeleton: so when you step on them they squish, then crunch, then squish again. Like a multi-stage snail, but worse. The shell is fragile and the internal slime is caustic, so if you pick one up you are risking a goo hand grenade explosion.

They are about a foot long; scavengers and ambush hunters. They smell overpoweringly of stale pineapple. They have bulging pale green eyeballs on stalks, which they can partially withdraw into their shells – only the stalks, though, so the bulging pale green eyeballs stay on the surface, staring at you, daring you to squash them. While you dither, they creep up and dissolve your feet with acid spit-slime and dozens of rubbery teeth, eating you very slowly once your feet fall off …

Zombats, now: they do not fly, nor burrow. Bats fly, and wombats will undermine your house without a moment’s thought (assuming they are capable of any thought) but zombats are climbers only. Tree-dwelling insects, in fact. They hum soothingly  and are furry, probably a form of wingless apoid. They form brightly coloured globes about 2 inches in diameter, from a waxy natural substance.  They use these as hunting blinds; seen in tree branches, they can easily be mistaken for berries and consumed by the unwary.

Zombats are active predators and specialize in victims with hands and poor impulse control. Most animals are too instinctively clever to eat them, but they prey heavily on primates; they are also one of the main predators of Procyon lotor: the raccoon. While a swift and experienced raccoon or human can get the zombat-fruit in their mouth and crunch it up immediately (this can be a nice source of protein), the hidden predator usually emerges as it enters the mouth – where it immediately burrows through the soft palette and the sinuses and so into the brain. It eats only  small portions of the frontal lobes, so the victim may survive indefinitely – they are notable, however, by steadily decreasing intelligence and initiative, and are characterized by a nasal tone of voice caused by having a zombat up their nose.

Many zombat victims get into politics. Or your garbage.

Some natural history: Moomies pollinate molds, and zombats keep down the raccoon population. Moomies are hermaphrodites, while zombats form seasonal pair bonds. Most moomies are an off-white colour, but the Pacific Northwest variant comes in a tabby morph. Zombats are translucent greyish-pink, which assists in camouflage while they are eating your brain.