I Make a Very Good Cup of Tea, but Nothing Else

I've come to realize, on the late end of forty, that I don't do anything remarkably well. There are many things I enjoy doing, and some I do with some amount of competency, and many more I do like a five year old in kindergarten. The trouble is, I want to be extraordinary at something.

We all want to think we're remarkable in some way; I once thought I was a very lucky person. What great luck I had. Looking back, I was deluded, completely wrong, or perfectly right. I'm not sure I know the difference anymore. And if I was lucky, what sort of skill is that?

At any rate, time goes by quicker and quicker each year, as many of you know. How did it get to be the end of July? How is it that 41 will soon be upon me and I am not extraordinary? I find my greatest joy in actually doing those things that I am less than competent at, but when I am finished with my self-imposed joyous tasks, I frown at the results. It was as if I took great pleasure in building the world's flattest, lumpiest mud pie. And worse, while I was making it, I thought it was a raspberry-lemon creme cake with coconut icing.

It is not entirely true that I'm terrible at everything. I can make a cup of tea that is perfect for me. I cannot buy this cup anywhere, and even my beloved, observant B cannot make me a cup of tea that is just right. (I don't complain, because while I'm often impatient and critical, I do have some grace and thankfulness in me) But if I am tomorrow--or tonight, or in an hour--lying on my bed or on the floor or in the bloody wreckage of a terrible accident, what will I have to think about? "At least I made a good cup of tea for myself."

This comes around, you see, to the fact that I'm not even good at thankfulness, as we all know that in our final moments, we are wracked with guilt or remorse or, for many, consumed with love. And it's that love that is what life means. I should know this. And yet I wave away that love, take it for granted. "Yes, yes, I know, they love me; Yes, I love them too! Of course!" But god damn it, I cannot write a wonderful novel. I cannot, it seems, write a passably tolerable novel. If you asked me right now, I could barely write you a beautiful sentence. Scratch that. All I can think about is unicorns and glitter, and that would be a horrible sentence.

There is a moment each day, after I've been hanging upside down for twenty minutes listening to guided meditation (this is no joke here!), that I do feel the infinite power within me, and within you all. And that power is love. Everything is right there, everything is tangible, reachable, and then it is gone. Brushed away by dogs with their heads in the litter box or mailman at my door with something to sign. But I swear to you, today, again, I will try. Regardless of what I've said before, however anxiety continues to toil within me (it is a jewel-green snake), I will try again.

Here I go.

Free Reads: Everything Scary is Underground

I've been in the midst of writing and reading again, which is a nice change of pace from staring out the window with wibbling chin. Let me say that the sudden resurgence in these two activities stems directly from cutting one day of work per week. I realize not everyone can do this. All I can say is that I went from five days to four, and while I still spend two of my days off doing errands, yard and house work, I have one complete day to myself, in addition to a couple of mornings where I go in late (and work late). I'm glad I did it, and I wonder what might help you free up some time for yourself, time to read, write, draw, arrange stones in lewd patterns on neighbors' lawns while they are otherwise engaged. Build fairy ladders in the trees. That end at fairy porn shops. Whatever your little heart needs, pervert.

I recently got an iPad, and downloaded the Kindle app for it, so I've been finding out what everyone else already knows: e-readers are actually not the devil's work. Oh, you want that book? Click. But what I like best are things I want to read that are FREE.

So here's a couple of recommendations that are free to read if you've got an e-reader:

1. Grim Corps, a literary magazine with a heavily specfic, leaning towards horror, bent. Published biannually, their Feb. 2013 issue is chock full of good stories. "When Momma Comes to Visit" is particularly horrifying. Although I guessed Barker's intent at the beginning, that didn't stop the story from building to a perfectly scary climax.

2. Wool by Hugh Howey: The first novella in a series, it's free to read. How smart of Mr. Howey. Read it, and you'll inevitably end up buying the Omnibus (the collected five novellas), as I did. Wool is set in a near-distant future in which the worst has happened: the world has been destroyed, and the remaining humans live in the Silo. The only home they've ever known, for generations upon generations, the Silo is about 150 levels deep into the ground, with cameras at the surface and screens in the cafe so the Silo's residents can see the wasteland outside--and remain grateful for what they've got inside. It's a boring, mechanical Utopia, with marriages by committee and children by lottery, food and clothing for chits, and everyone in their place. Boring except for the uprisings that occur every so often. No one really understands what might have caused the uprisings in the past, but in the first part of Wool, the secrets of the Silo start to unravel, and as bits and pieces of the puzzle come together across the other novellas, the mystery turns out to be far more than encompassing, more shocking and dangerous, than anyone expected.

Nothing in Wool is black and white; expect to waver as the story grows more and more intense. Solid writing, great world-building; the apocalypse done with fresh creativity.





All right then. Enjoy your day, and if you know of something free to read that I might enjoy, let me know.

xx
RS

the shadow in the mirror says:

Blame

Cal blamed me for everything: for her, for the car, the road, even the rain. As if I was some god of misadventure, of sorrow-in-waiting. As if I wanted this to happen.

In the end, she would not let me console her, which left me alone, to console myself, and who can do that? Without the best of bards at my side, I was bereft, and that is a singular thing, so far from consoled.


*

I am, at best, a rare blogger (unless you include the running blog in my head, which I suppose you won't). I am, however, a seldom One Word-er. :-) The above came from there. I like it; you should give it a go if you think you might like it.

Last week, I submitted a short story and a novelette, plus a reprint of a short story. This week I am editing a short story and a novella, one of which has a terrible ending and the other which has a good start and not much else. Good luck to me.

Here, have some turtle anatomy:

A SF Short Story Rec and Possible New Blog Titles for the Not-Yet-Thoroughly Disinterested

I cannot rec this any more highly: Professor Incognito Apologizes by Austin Grossman. Advice on apologizing to an SO who found your death ray.

Seriously. Grab a muffin, power spinach-kelp-treebark smoothie or whatever you crazy kids prefer, and read this. Better than hot yoga or that workout that's supposedly used by Israeli soldiers to teach you to kill someone with your feet. I read it last night before bed and it kept me up giggling. And possibly with thoughts of world domination.

Who am I kidding. World domination's been on my mind since I was seven and told my sister to eat the poison berries by the old shed*. Hey, if I'm going to be ruler of the world, it's total loyalty or nothing.

*

Think I'm going to change this blog title to "R.S. Bohn -- Starer into Space." Or, "R.S. Bohn -- I Can't Find Anything Good to Read and I'm Getting Whiny." Hopefully, the second one will be null and void after I take on Icelander by Dustin Long. And there's the Clarke Award winner, announced last night: Dark Eden. I'm normally put off by incest (I know; weird, right?), but this sounds properly balls-to-the-wall and post-apocalyptic. Unless it's Deliverance set underground. Which would be scary. So we'll see.

I'm going to write something today. Even if it's just twenty words like yesterday. No! I'm going to write twenty-nine, at least.

Enjoy your smoothies.




*She lived. Apparently, poison berries burn your mouth, and demanding total loyalty gets one's butt whupped and grounded for a week.

Parcae and Lost Canyons

We are back from Connecticut. Whenever I'm in Norwich, I think of my grandma's description of the place when she was growing up: pastures, walking barefoot along cow paths between farms, ponds and little lakes where boys impressed girls by jumping off (sort of) high rocks. It's not the Norwich I knew growing up, but was super-imposed over it, a sunny day with green fields shimmering over a translucent present. Somehow, even that past now seems closed to me. The proverbial chapter is closed--though I have mementos, which made it difficult to fit my luggage back in the car when I was finished. Not enough, of course. But my home in Michigan seems warmer, somehow, with old pictures on the wall, and, among other things, a ceramic terrier dog with broken paw (think I did that when I was nine) keeping the ashes of our old Jo company.

Blogger is so silly with all that captcha nonsense. I'm never sure what it's trying to do--it must be more than just a way to verify I'm an authentic human being. The options have all got such a science fiction bent to them. In the tiny notebook I carry everywhere, I write down things: seeds of story ideas, titles, character names. And certain captchas that, *cough*, captured my attention. For example, Upple and Randaleen. Don't those sound like the names of cities on alien planets? 76 Arjart is the address where Parcae, dress laden with spool-filled pockets, walked to find a room for the night. How tiring it is on earth, all those mortals behaving as if they possessed the tiny golden scissors that cut the thread of their own lives. Parcae in her heavy gown has escaped, for a while, to Venus, to the dusty, winding narrow streets of Upple, for one night. She is meeting Temerin, her half-mortal lover, who knows which pocket the spool of his own life is in, but whose fingers never go searching for it. Instead, he cuts the ribbon at her neck, allowing the gown to fall to the floor, while shadows course the city, galactic dogs whipping between stars on the scent of poor Parcae.

A rented room for the night, paid for with the promise of an inch of extra thread. An innkeeper who bars the door to the hounds when they come sniffing, laying out pomegranate in smashed fistfuls to divert them. And Temerin, who doesn't want the spool in her pocket that is attached to his soul -- no, Temerin wants another spool. The thread belonging to his son, his only son and his only secret from Parcae.

Somewhere, in the Lost Canyons outside the city, a woman whose voice is like broken wind chimes strings an arrow. She is not the only one hunting tonight; she says a prayer to her own gods that the hounds don't find Temerin's lover before she does.

Captcha! Did you give me all that? Now I want pictures of languid goddesses, gowns beside the bed in heaps of white fabric, and night skies flecked with diamond stars.

Today is a good day. It is mine. It was a tomorrow that came true, however awful and brilliant that may be. I have such trouble with the present. But today, it is mine.

"Renaissance" now up at 101 Fiction

Mr. Xero hosts a teacup-sized Renaissance over at 101 Fiction. Thank you, John, for allowing my wisp of a... story to parade about on your stage.

It's strange how things work. I had forgotten the date for Renaissance was to appear, and on the day it does, we are waiting for my grandfather to die. I am waiting for a phone call this morning, as I have the last several.

Real life intrudes in its graceless way upon our fiction. It's almost rude, in the way it reminds us that the words we write are nothing compared to the truth of the moments at our heels, a present that never stops being -- except in those moments when we write. When we escape into the vortex, there is no sound but our own voices. How I love that. I write things that sweeten and smooth out life for me. It's a comfort. Is there a theatre when we die? Are we the only one in line for the show, will we be shown in by a barker in a striped suit, arm on our shoulder, welcoming us warmly? Will we find our seat and then see ourselves on the stage, in the rafters, behind the lights?

No. It's a nice little story I told myself there, some months ago. Before my grandfather, my favorite person in the world, fell and broke his collarbone and then there was this downward spiral of health which had already started outperforming itself in terms of sheer dignity-stripping velocity. Not before, mind you, my mother had died -- that when I was twelve, so you would think I would write about death with a bit more... knowledge? Clarity?

All I know is that today, I couldn't write Renaissance if I tried. There would be more heartbreak. More gross, appalling hurt. No theatre, not even a small film. If this is a lesson, then universe, I am listening, but perhaps you won't mind if, just for a little while, I tune you out while I sip my tea and write something else this morning, because I am goddamned sick of death.

CARGO: short film

One of the most compelling films in a while, CARGO was a finalist in an Australian film festival and does what I think the best zombie tales do: present a small slice, one of the billions of stories that might occur in the wake of disaster, steeped in humanity. Clever, with a growing sense of urgency and anxiety. Tissue alert for those of delicate emotional constitution. ;)

CARGO: Stranded in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, a man puts into motion an unlikely plan to protect the precious cargo he carries--his infant daughter.