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The familiar frame of white walls, all aimed square and fair
north south east west with wilted windows eking light in dribbles and spurts
during four hours of the day.

"I'm tired of looking at the same four walls," says the face
inside the four walls, two-dimensional. What I wouldn't give to be
looking at their four walls.

Or better, let the walls fall and let us all hear the thunder rumble
up out of the west and south where the ghosts of kindnesses unchosen linger
sweeping with it cool wet air.

There the sound shakes my body, picks me up by the back of the neck
tosses me back and forth until I am shaken loose and free
the rain the rain the rain the rain the rain.

January is a weird time time to try to wake up.

I feel like I've been dormant (other possible words: depressed, inactive, asleep, emotionally comatose) for at least two years, maybe 6. In November of 2016 I started folding up the tender, creative, wondrous parts of me to put into storage or hibernation or protective custody while the world outside got progressively colder and more dangerous. Maybe it was just that I began to see the cold and the danger, and they were always there. Whatever the case, my personal world got darker and I pricked my metaphorical finger on a metaphorical spindle and went to sleep.

Around my home, January is a time of long, dark nights and short, cold days. Bears are asleep, generally. Frogs are turned off, usually, with ice crystals stiff over their tiny bodies under leaves or logs, waiting for warmer weather. Fish are deep in the warmer regions of frozen-over lakes, twitching slightly. And we chose this time as a time of renewal, for some reason. If it were me (and it is me--I must remember that I have agency over the celebrations I choose), I would choose to bring my focus to renewal when the days begin to get longer again, the day after the winter solstice, or when the first pussy willows bud and the first daffodils and crocuses appear out of the snow. When the birds sing louder and louder and the rabbits start eating my raspberry canes.

But right now, slowly, maybe with the slow change of daylight, I find myself beginning to emerge just a little from the poisoned torpor that has held me for so long. I can feel that my emotional muscles have atrophied in the interim. I don't remember how to create or be freely vulnerable. I'm unpacking these boxes to find that the tender, creative, wondrous parts have withered in the dark. I need some kind of sustenance, but it's January, and nothing is really growing yet. There's still snow on the ground, and more in the air. The days are cold and short, and the nights are long and dark, and nourishment is difficult to find.

How can I feed my starving self, my mind and heart? I need something kind, something true, something sweet with the love of the world.

Today I learned about Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) and hoo boy, what are we even doing folks. The TLDR on that link is that people more or less make bets about whether groups of student loans are going to be paid off or defaulted and then the money exchanged in those bets runs significant bits of the economy, which is why we're not getting student loans cancelled any time soon. It's also a great big set-up for the US economy to tank when no one can do anything but default because of the general everythingness of the current state of things.

In an effort to recover from the rage that created in me, I wallowed for a while in the gorgeous artwork Leia Ham is creating for a LotR-but-ancient-China series. I love this concept and I hope to see more of it.

I finished and soaked a skein of orangey-brown yarn today, so that frees the wheel up to start experimenting with dog fur. We'll see if I can spin it without mixing it with wool.

I've always been pretty fascinated by all kinds of etymology, so I've been looking at the history of English orthography lately, particularly the weird differences in spelling between British and American English, which I guess is mainly down to Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster, respectively. The Wikipedia article is pretty neat, and does a lot to explain why I have so much trouble remembering how to spell certain words (I'm looking at you, "dependent").

I continue to search for the perfect recipe that will let me not feel sort of resigned about eating cabbage. This one looks promising, but I welcome any suggestions, especially if they can be made vegetarian.

Spinning continues as there is time for it, mainly during work meetings. I can tell that I've got more progress to make on getting a consistent weight. I'm much better with a drop spindle for a consistent single than with the wheel. Need more practice!

Recently I've been trying to introduce more ritual into my rather mundane existence. The other day the kid asked what I was doing, and I said, "I'm ritualistically loading the dishwasher! It's magic!" "No it isn't," said the kid. "Yes it is. It's a kind of spell that helps me weave a protective shield around my brain to ward off messy and intrusive thoughts." The kid was unimpressed, but I'm hoping this will work at least a little.

...I don't actually have any king-related stuff to say here. I just wanted to riff on The Walrus and the Carpenter.

I've been doing these free-writes based on tarot cards. Most of them are so stream of consciousness that it doesn't make sense to post them publicly, but as it's turning over to another year, and this one seems appropriate, I thought I'd clean it up a bit and send it out there.

stairs made from 9 dark orizontal branches lead to a crescent moon under a roman numeral 9

stairs made from 9 dark orizontal branches lead to a crescent moon under a roman numeral 9

(I really like this deck's visuals for this card. ...and I've just spent 5 minutes looking it up and in a staggering turn of events, it turns out the artist is someone I knew in my youth. Huh.)

This card seems remarkably apt for the current time, somehow, even though there are 78 cards in the deck and there’s no reason to suspect that 1 out of 78 wouldn’t hit particularly hard. This is the end of the year. Today is new year’s eve, on the Gregorian calendar, and this year has been about as shit (in new and different ways) as the rest of the last 5 or 6. Everyone I know is exhausted, and unwilling or unable to keep bringing their A-game. Maybe unwilling and unable are the same thing at this point. We’re all tired. We’re all of us that weary warrior with the bandage around their head leaning on a staff as though its strength can give us the push to move another step. We have no more steps or strength, and yet there are more steps to take. But no goal, somehow.

I need a goal. I need something to work towards that isn’t just “make it to tomorrow.” After 2 years of unending pandemic and mass social mismanagement, it’s hard to think of reasons to make a goal, when the situation may change at any moment. Small goals then. One step at a time, leaning on a staff.

Black belt
Writing and finishing this group of 78 free-writes
Finishing the 100-day writing challenge
Practicing the ukulele, perhaps also the jaw harp and the auto harp. Picking up games as they come. Those last several aren’t goals really.
I want to learn to play a song on the ukulele, and play it well.
I want to finish the game I’m currently playing: Spiritfarer.
I want to have a date with my partner where we both dress up.

These are attainable, right?

I've decided to celebrate this week (12/25-1/1) as a time for unhinging my mind's jaw and letting things pass freely between the internal and the external. A time to meditate, perhaps, and be freer in writing and creative endeavors. A time for visions and wandering the paths you've made and forgotten to tend, overgrown with seeds you planted long ago, now matured into flowers that pass understanding. Probably the perfume from those flowers is hallucinogenic. That's fine. It's a week for abandoning all concept of what is real and what is not. It's not like we don't all have a bunch of practice doing that.

I've begun reading Gideon the Ninth, at last, in short bursts when I have the time to focus on it. The friend who recommended it said that it occupied a similar space as the Murderbot series or Ancillary Justice. I look forward to that part of it. It hasn't reached out and grabbed my attention quite the same way as of yet, but I have high hopes.

Another friend recommended the Inspector O books, by James Church, an appealingly mysterious figure. They're going onto my TBR list as well. I understand they're a really insightful glimpse of life under a totalitarian regime.

Merriam Webster has a fun feature called Time Traveler, where you can input a date and see a list of the words that were first recorded in that year. It's a neat way to get a sense for one piece of the culture of a time. 1919, notably, features the first use of Girl Scout, off-line, and swine flu. 2020 has COVID-19 of course, and also murder hornet.

Remember KidPix? You can do it again, here! I had forgotten about the sound effects.

You know those books you read when you were, I don't know, probably 9 or 12 or so, that you've largely forgotten about, but that apparently had an impact on your psyche? I ran into mention of one of those the other day: The Girl with the Silver Eyes. It might not hold up especially well now, and I don't remember almost anything about it, but seeing it mentioned gave me the same frisson of wistfulness that I get from the misty bluish horizon, or a door cracked open. What books are like that for you?

I'm experimenting with doing stream-of-conscious writing, in which I start typing and do not allow myself to stop, even if the words don't make sense. These were some of the more coherent bits of today's effort.

What gifts are you carrying? What gifts are you giving? What do you want to give, of the things that you've received? Are there other ways to give? "I haven't any gifts," some say, but you have. You have your uncertainty, and your shyness, your reluctance. You have your imposter syndrome. Lord, if I could give that away in a manner that would stick! Instead, it doubles, like all gifts. The memory of it remains, and sometimes firms into a clone of the first gift.

What was the first gift, do you suppose? Was it a piece of fruit, as we're sometimes lead to believe? Was it milk? Was it time? I think it was time. I think the first and last gift is always time. What else do we have to give, after all, but time?

...

My horse is not a parade horse. My horse is a broken down nag of a horse, who takes care not to step on cats or kittens and is missing most of her hair. My horse is just trying to do her best, OK? If we had one more oomph in us, we could press onward together, horse and me, into the weird canyons and twisty ravines of the pink brain caves. I'm fairly certain that we'd get stuck, the hooves squelching in the mucky bits between the hillocks.

There's a moat around the castle and it's made of soporific fumes.

This is going to be a collection of tabs I've had open, mainly so I can close them without feeling like maybe I won't ever find them again. Maybe someone else will find something interesting here, though?
The Literature Clock. This is a neat time-keeping doodad. It tracks down paragraphs of literature that contain the current time and displays them as a kind of quote-of-the-minute clock. I've had it open for weeks.

The WisCon Home Page. I don't know if I'll be able to make it this year, but it's a thing I really, really don't want to see die. It's wonderful to be around people who try and keep trying to do better, every time.

Worldbuilding Questions. This is an enormous list of questions to ask when beginning to build an environment for a fantasy or science fiction narrative. Seriously, it is so long. But it's also really good. Contains questions like: Can a government office be a career choice? and What shape are tables and eating areas?

History of the Milkshake. Includes a recipe!

Three different seed companies: One specializing in Asian vegetables, one offering rare heirloom seeds and indigenous collaboration, and one that has art packs.

Hyde Nikolaev's website. Full of magnificent art (some NSFW because of nudity or gore).

There's this goat in Sweden. It's made of straw. It's enormous. It's annual. And it's annually destroyed, usually, but not always, by fire.

The history of the Gävle Goat (yeah-vluh, not gavel) starts, in 1966, when a giant version of the smaller yard decoration was erected in the middle of Gävle's Castle Square as a bid to get customers to the stores and services in that part of town. It has since been in the same place every year. It's more than 40 feet tall. It has a Twitter account.

(Why a goat? Possibly due to Thor's chariot goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr, who die nightly to be eaten and are resurrected by the god again the next day. Yule used to feature someone dressing up as a goat and pretending to be killed and returned to life, but Christianity objected and the goat became a demon. In Sweden, the goat was taken back into the fold of the season later as Santa's helper, assisting with the carrying of gifts as they were transported around to various households. As a delightful side-note: apparently the goat tosses gifts into a room, sometimes including one that is wrapped and addressed many times, so that it gets tossed around the room during the unwrapping process.)

I was, at first, tempted to believe that the fire and destruction was part of the tradition, but this is not so. Not by tradition, just by happenstance and dedicated drunk people, mostly. Sometimes Americans. It didn't survive once in the 70s, and only caught fire four times. In '71 it was smashed. 1972 and 1975, collapsed. 1973, stolen (the man in question put it in his backyard and served 2 years in jail for the theft). 1976, hit by a car. 1978, kicked to pieces. 1979, burned, a second goat built, and then that second goat broken.

Once in 2005, a few people dressed as Santa Claus and the gingerbread man shot a fire arrow at the goat, successfully burning it down.

I spent a little time looking it up, and found this interview with Eje Berglund from 2012 (destroyed, fire). He sounds sad, but stoic. "Most people are very sad about it. I think I have spoken to several hundred today, and everyone is sad about it. They can't understand why the goat can't be left alone."

For the past 4 years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), the Gävle Goat has survived, with a double fence, cameras, guards, sometimes a dog. Four years is a record. The goat has never survived so long.This year it burned.

It burned, and many people celebrated, and it got me thinking about the nature of humanity and sacrifice and stories. It's been an awful last few years for almost everyone I know. Arguably for almost everyone in the world who isn't worth more than a billion dollars. Lots of people are flailing around to find something, anything, to blame or to help or to make sense of the world. Perhaps the goat was not meant to survive. Tannsgrisnir and Tanngnjostr were meant to die to live again. But people work hard at building the Gävle Goat, and it's sad that they are sad. But sacrifice requires sacrifice, doesn't it? But it feels a little odd to be celebrating a sacrifice that I had no part in creating, or giving up.

Maybe this year I should make my own yule goat. Just a little one. Pour my heart into it. Make it as lovingly as I can, and then set it ablaze. We could use a little resurrection.

Current Mood: pensive

I have been lobotomized, my soul replaced by a lizard playing keytar remixes of the worst of my favorite songs. There's a puddle with gasoline rainbows at my feet, a waving flag advertising vaccines at my brow, and a three-course meal of live snakes in my belly.

Current Mood: sick

Got my COVID booster today. The person administering it was Aja, from Gambia. We chatted briefly about West African food, and she repeated again and again how healthy it was. My memory is of a lot of palm oil, but it made me think about what people consider healthy. Here in the United States, or maybe just in my state, there's a tendency to think of vegetables and (recently) low-carb and high protein as healthy. Aja was emphasizing freshness.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I just found it interesting I guess, and related to the way the United States has a tendency to think of its judgements as universally applicable. Healthy is healthy is healthy, right?

I'm still leaning on Michael Pollan's "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables."