Asakiyume mita

Don't mind if I do

2026-06-13T22:34:41Z

Wakanomori and I went to the Smith College Museum of Art the other day to see a Japan-related exhibit and ended up also seeing "Don't Mind If I Do," an exhibit centering disability and accessibility. The organizer, artist Finnegan Shannon, has created a space with bunches of comfortable chairs and couches arranged around a central space, and various objects move past you instead of you standing and walking past the objects. You're invited to touch them as well (... which I didn't realize until after).

At the entrance, a sign says "PLEASE WEAR A MASK IN THIS SPACE IN SOLIDARITY W/THE ARTISTS & FELLOW VISITORS."

There's a poem-statement on the walls:

And here's the art moving by on a conveyor belt:

( some of the individual pieces )

There was also an alcove with postcards of various art pieces. You were invited to write a postcard to someone about the exhibit, address it, and they would mail it for you (!)

Finnegan writes

Over and over when conceptualizing Don't mind if I do, I used the phrase "the artwork comes to you." But it doesn't really.

I, like many disabled people, am most often at home. Even under the best of circumstances, there are huge logistical, financial, and psychological access barriers to get to an art space. Things like exhaustion, sickness, transportation issues, COVID risk, distance, life responsibilities, doctors' appointments, and more all mean I miss a lot.

Mail art, a creative movement that involves sending art through the postal system, was and continues to be a way to experience art outside of institutions, a way to participate across time and geography. As ableism continues to isolate disabled people, mail art is a tool for connection.

The message is on the wall above the postcard instructions. Finnegan signs it, "With love from my bed."

I was surprised by how moving I found the concept and execution. It's at the Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, MA) through June 28.

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Fundación Ángeles de 4 Patas

2026-06-08T19:29:51Z

One cool thing I did on my last trip to Leticia was visit a foundation that a woman (Johana) had set up, all on her own, to take care of stray dogs and cats (but especially dogs) in Leticia. Of which there are many. She has two locations where she houses the animals she takes in, and I got to visit one.

--And I want to take a moment to say, Johana not some wealthy woman doing this with her spare pesos. No: she's one of Colombia's many many internally displaced people, who, with her parents, had to flee her home due to the civil war (which was mainly, but not 100 percent entirely, brought to a close in 2016). She ended up in Leticia. What I'm saying is, she started with nothing, no anything.

She takes animals in--again, mainly dogs--and a lot of time they're in pretty rough condition, but she nurses them back to health, and then they are as healthy and happy/bouncy as any dog you could imagine. If you can tolerate looking at pictures of a very poorly-off dog if you know at the end you are going to see pictures of a happy, healthy dog, this video montage from the foundation's Instagram shows the healing.

She also arranges sterilization clinics that people can bring their pets to--and it's free. There was one going on during the time I was there, and the receptionists at the place where I was staying knew about it and knew about the foundation.

So one evening I hopped on the back of L & R's motorbike, and we visited one of those houses. The mural was painted by volunteers from a local cell phone carrier:

There were so many dogs! So many! I didn't get a picture, but here is one from the Instagram:

( three more photos under the cut )

Johana has trouble getting dogs adopted out because there are so many dogs in Leticia, and someone's dog is always having puppies. But she's committed to taking care of those she can't find homes for. Needless to say, all this takes funds, and Leticia is not Cartagena. There aren't bunches of wealthy people around. I promised a donation when I got home (she has a PayPal account for overseas donations), and I said I'd spread the word on social media.

People who donate to animal shelters are, in my experience, super generous, but also they already have many, many places they donate their funds. BUT. If you are such a person, and if maybe it would tickle your fancy to support a very underresourced animal shelter in the Amazon, here is your chance.

To pay by PayPal, go to PayPal, and type @ fundacion09 --but all closed up.
(If I type it closed up here, it will end up pointing to a nonexistent Dreamwidth account.)
[Thank you sovay for pointing out this problem!]

And this is a link to the Instagram post that gives that information.

And lastly, here's a link to the overall Instagram

PS! If you visit the Instagram, the most recent post is in Portuguese, because Leticia and the Brazilian town of Tabatinga are right next to each other, the borders are open, and people go back and forth all the time--sooo... it's good to speak to people in both Spanish and Portuguese.

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Diary of a Cranky Bookworm, by Aster Glenn Gray

2026-05-30T23:17:05Z

Diary of a Cranky Bookworm
by Aster Glenn Gray

This remarkable book not only captures EXACTLY what an adolescent diary can be like (the intensity! the self drama! the emotional whiplash!), but also tells a really honest, raw, funny, painful, joyful story about how friendships change, why and how friends can fall out of alignment, and how we make new friends.

A lot of coming-of-age stories feature socially alienated protagonists who eventually manage to find a circle of friends that accepts them, maybe in the context of breaking free of their awful communities or families. But plenty of people come of age and have to deal with a widening sense of what life is like, what friendship is, and who they themselves are who aren’t particularly socially alienated and who maybe have a fairly happy home life, thanks very much.

Sage, the titular cranky diarist, is one such. She’s got a supportive group of friends that she loves and who love her. She’s maybe not the queen bee of her high school, but she’s definitely not a bullied social outcast. She’s smart and enjoys being smart, but she’s not a revenge-of-the-nerds-style nerd. She doesn’t have any life-shaping problems. If the story’s protagonist had been her friend Arielle or her friend Georgie, there would have been life-shaping problems, but then it would have been a much more conventional story. One thing that’s special about Diary is how gripping Sage’s struggles are even though they’re maybe not NPR-worthy. Choosing colleges for example. Stressful! Drama-filled!

Here, Sage is finally admitting to Georgie that maybe she doesn’t want, after all, to go to the U, which is Georgie’s dream college. Georgie speaks first:

”Why are we visiting St. Olaf?”
“My parents want me to.”
“Haven’t you told them you’re going to the U?”
I shuffled my feet on the porch floor and looked down at my Beloit sweatshirt. “Well,” I said, “I’m not totally-for-sure going to the U, so … and they want me to visit St. Olaf, and …”
“But we’ve been planning to attend the U forever!” she cried.
“You’ve been planning that we’re going to attend the U,” I said.
“Since when?” Georgie demanded. “Since when was it only my plan?”
“Since—since, like, always, Georgie, it’s not like there’s a specific moment when I didn’t agree to it.”
“But you never said!” Georgie cried. She glared at me. “So are you planning not to go to the U?”
“Georgie! I don’t have—I haven’t made any definite decisions yet.”

Speaking of college applications, Sage’s list of potential essay topics is pretty hilarious:

College Is the Portal Fantasy I Was Looking for All Along

A Time I Experienced Hardship. Would be more compelling if I had in fact experienced hardship.

An Invented Experience of Hardship. I would never have the moxie to actually make something up for a college essay. Curious to know what Arielle wrote about, though--

The Hardship of Having to Write a College Essay When You Are Far Less Impressive Than You Ever Realized

Who Invented the College Admission Essay, Anyway? A Study in Human Depravity

It’s against the backdrop of college applications, planning birthday parties, and joining a club (Sage: ugh!) that the most high-maintenance of Sage’s friends starts becoming more and more erratic as meanwhile one of Sage’s sworn enemies (there’s no enemy like an enemy you make in second grade) might actually be turning into a friend. (Maybe even ... ) And all this is handled so real-ly and so feeling-ly, it’s just a delight to read.

I also have to mention that during the course of the story, Sage writes a novel. And … it’s got problems (Surprise! High school student does not write a flawless novel), as she comes to see from conversations with her friends. This all felt very real indeed, part of the process of growing as a writer.

So much growing in this story!

Because it’s AGG writing, there are also reflections on literature and art. I’m going to close with one of those:

For our final, Mrs. Helton had us analyze a poem, Fyodor Tytchev’s “Silentium,” as translated by Vladimir Nabokov. I don’t remember it all of course, but a line stuck in my head:
“A thought once uttered is untrue.”
It struck me to the heart, as if it is really deeply true. And yet is it?
I think it’s impossible to tell the complete truth, especially about feelings which are so complicated and often contradictory. But I don’t think a partial truth is necessarily a lie, do you?
It just seems so sad, the idea that we can never communicate the things that are deepest in our hearts. As if drawing them uppermost in our souls, so that we can show them to others, transmutes them to something irrevocably different and unreal.

Truly a great read. I’m a whole generation older than the characters, didn’t grow up in the midwest, and was much more withdrawn and outsider-ish in high school than Sage and her friends, and I still loved it.

Diary of a Cranky Bookworm

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A third Tale-of-the-Polity story

2026-05-25T13:55:22Z

I've written two stories about Sweeting, a decommissioner of deities working for the Ministry of Divinities in an authoritarian country that refers to itself as the Polity. The first was The Inconvenient God, a novelette, in which Sweeting had to decommission a god of truancy and slacking off who was causing embarrassment for a prestigious university. The job didn't go as planned. The second was Lagoonfire, a novella, in which it seemed initially like one of the retired gods whom Sweeting first decommissioned might somehow be causing problems for a resort development. Looking into the case revealed all kinds of unexpected things, including things about Sweeting's own past that she would have liked to keep securely buried.

Lagoonfire came out in 2021. In the intervening five years I've been writing a novel that follows directly on the events of Lagoonfire, and recently I finished it. In the meantime my publisher, a micropress, closed up shop, but the woman behind it kindly agreed to read the novel anyway, and even more kindly agreed to publish it! Hurray! So at sometime in the nearish future, maybe-probably within this year or early next year, we will be able to share A Flash of Scarlet with you.

Even though it's a sequel, I've written it so that you can read it without having read Lagoonfire (and Lagoonfire and The Inconvenient God are completely independent of each other). As with the earlier two stories, this one is about how the past will never, ever, stay past. It WILL come forward again. This one features incipient divinities, spirits, and ghosts, and, unfortunately for Sweeting, more dealings with Civil Order, the Polity's feared police force. But (to her own surprise) she's not without friends and resources, both divine and earthly.

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little libraries

2026-05-23T13:28:05Z

I came across this great story elsewhere on the interwebs, an 89-year-old guy in Puchong (near Kuala Lumpur), Malaysia, who's set up reading stations in a public park. He also has helped libraries in Thailand and China. (Article here.)

There's also a short video linked in the article, which is great, because you can hear Mr Lee in his own words:

"I think Malaysia should follow China, where every village has one library. That's good."**

I was thinking of Little Free Libraries in this country. I think they're a great idea in places where there's foot traffic, where many different people might stop by and look over the books. I sometimes see them, though, in places where I wonder what traffic they'll get. On winding country roads with rather large houses situated far back from the roads on ample, gracious properties. And at the roadside, a little free library. But who's going to be walking by? I guess maybe the neighbors? But there's just not the same thickness of people.

Also, this guy thinks of himself as lending the books, not giving them away. He doesn't mind if you keep the book a month, six months, a year, and in fact he probably isn't going to be upset if a book doesn't come back, but the *idea* is that it will come back--and that means that the borrower has more connection with the site, and there's a sense of mutual responsibility. Plus the story says that people like to come and chat with him.

There can be more than one pattern! Little Free Libraries have a kind of spy-drop-box vibe. Ships passing in the night, taking books, maybe leaving books. That can be fun too. But I like the actual social interaction involved in what Mr Lee is doing.

Do any of you oversee a Little Free Library or frequent one (or more than one)? What's your experience been?

**Not exactly his words, which are Malaysian-English word order and has some special words I didn't catch, but that's how they're glossed and mainly what he said.

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raincoat, my place in the world, ugly-cute, home invader

2026-05-16T14:22:41Z

One thing I did on this trip was bring along some permanent markers and ask my friends and their kids to write or draw on my raincoat. The result is a wonderful memento that I've already had occasion to use.

Here are two of L and R's kids doing some decorating.

And here's what the back of the raincoat looks like now:

And one sleeve:

The second-oldest of L and R's kids also gave me this, which I LOVE. I know my kids made things like this in school--I think it's a wonderful activity. This one isn't quite finished: it only goes down as far as the Department of Amazonas (equivalent of a US state), and interestingly, for places in Amazonas, she doesn't include her own town/city, Leticia. It does show Puerto Nariño, a town up the river a bit.

Mi lugar en el mundo/my place in the world (click through to Flickr to see it at a larger size--only possible with this photo; the others are sited here on DW and don't get any larger)

( and under this cut are three views of an ugly-cute handmade fish )

( Lai, the home-invading little goat )

I have maybe a couple more posts from my trip ... then it'll be back to your everyday Asakiyume.

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fishing, centipede perfume, roots, book recommendation

2026-05-07T14:50:24Z

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
--From "Song of Wandering Aengus," W.B. Yeats

I went out with my tutor, her dad, and her older brother through the flooded forest so they could show me fishing, and it was exactly like in "The Song of Wandering Aengus." My tutor's brother had a piece of line tied to a stick, with a little hook attached. "Over here, look at all the berries here; the fish will love this spot, they love these berries," their dad said excitedly.

And her brother put a berry on his hook, threw it in the water, and came up with a fish. One, two, three times he did it, one, two, three times he caught a little fish.

So many berries for the fish, so many fish for people fishing.

Centipede Perfume
So much everything all the time, pressing on your senses all the time--this is what I love here.

I divided my time between my tutor and her family and my friends the guide couple and their family. With them I visited a nature reserve on the island of Santa Rosa, in Peru. At one point we were walking a forest path, and the wife, L, was showing me all the centipedes on the ground, quite large. She could sex them!

"This one's a male," she said. "See? Here's its member." Sure enough, there it was!

"Do you want to hold it?" she asked.

"Sure!" So I held out my hand. It crawled near my hand ... then veered away. We tried again. It approached... then moved away, back to her hand.

Then I remembered I had bug spray on. The centipede must not have liked the bug spray. That's what you get for wandering around an environment doused in poison! Smart centipede.

Most of the centipedes we saw she determined were males, but finally she found a female one. "They have a nice smell," she said, after setting it down. She held out her hand, and sure enough, it had a beautiful citrusy smell to it!

I tried to find what species of centipede this was, afterward, but there are something like 700 species of centipede in the area, and the internet is eager to recommend to me the giant Amazonian centipede, but these guys were big but not THAT big, and the color wasn't quite right. And then I looked for fragrant centipedes, and instead found some American millipedes who have a scent like almonds because they're poisonous. So... similar but not the same.

Roots
There were some beautiful, largish, red-brown seeds on the ground. I picked one up, and underneath it had split and a root was pushing out. I picked up another: same. And another: same. These seeds were wasting no time getting started.

Where I live in western Massachusetts, in fall, you get acorns and hickory nuts. But they don't put out roots until the following spring ... Things that move slow in my cool zone move fast in the Amazon.

I only have a drawing, no photo

This reminds me of a story I heard the other day about soil forming high in the canopy in temperate rainforests in the Pacific Northwest. Up to a foot of soil, from mosses and things growing on the branches, decaying, new stuff growing, decaying, building up. A soil scientist was looking at what was growing up in that aerial soil, and found some roots that... connected back to the hosting tree. It turns out that that new soil is very rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, and especially in spring, when all the terrestrial plants are competing for the nutrients in the ground, this extra soil, high up in the canopy, is a good vitamin boost for the tree. Marvelous. (Link to the transcript.)

Book Recommendation
( Usurpation, by Sue Burke )

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making asaí (açai) juice

2026-05-03T23:05:06Z

One thing I'd wanted to do on this trip is make asaí (or in English we write it açai, from the Portuguese, because Brazil is the major exporter) juice. It's a good physical effort, but the whole thing went faster than I thought it would. It was me, my tutor's older brother, and her mom doing it, with her doing the videography and photos :-)

The first step is to soak the asaí berries. Here they are with hot water poured over them.

Then you pound them! The pounder was made by my tutor's mother from palo de sangre, bloodwood, which really does bleed red sap when you cut it (and is a lovely deep red color when carved). You pound until the pounder makes a sound like a boot pulling out of the mud when you lift it. At that point it's pounded enough. My tutor's brother and I took turns with this ;-)

Then you pass that mash through this sieve, which is called cuechinu in Tikuna, and was also made by my tutor's mom.

And then you further strain it through a very fine strainer. The hands belong to my tutor's mom:

And then ... you can drink it :-) I had mine with sugar. Looking very pleased with myself BECAUSE I WAS.

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Wednesday Reading: Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2026-04-29T21:08:59Z

I've adored the two volumes in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series (and fully intend to read the other two), but I've been daunted in trying to branch out because the guy is SO prolific. But thanks to the recommendation of someone on here, I landed on Elder Race. It's a novella--handy! I read it in airports on my way to and from Leticia, and it was absolutely right for me, because putting aside the plot, what it's about is communication across a chasm of cultural difference, when you're not sure how what you're saying is being received, and you're also not sure if what you're understanding of what you hear is what the speaker intends. And on top of that, you're dealing with vast differentials in resources and--so you arrogantly assume (you're right in some respects, but very wrong in others)--knowledge.

It's also about what's wrong with the Prime Directive, namely, that once you're watching a thing, observing a thing, you're party to it, part of it. Your act of watching changes reality. Like with photons, or whatever. Schrödinger Heisenberg etc. If you weren't there, then yes, things would just unfold however they were going to unfold, but you are there, and so if you decide not to get involved, then it means you're permitting whatever bad things might happen that you might be capable of stopping.

Don't get me wrong: messing around and getting involved can be equally bad. All I'm saying is that once you're there, you ARE involved, and doing nothing is as much of a game changer as doing something.

Nyr is the resource-having character, assailed by depression because he's realized, upon being wakened from his most recent cryo-sleep, that his society back on Earth has likely died off, that he is the last of his people. He's woken by Lynesse Fourth Daughter, to whose lineage he made a promise some great grandmothers ago, when he last woke up and broke the Prime Directive by helping out said great-great (etc.) grandmother. This time, there's a demon to fight...

And the story unfolds. It was very fun to see Nyr from Lynesse (and her ally Esha)'s point of view, and to see them from his. The demon (it can't be a demon, Nyr thinks to himself, but in fact for all intents and purposes it IS a demon, very Stranger Things-ish) is suitably awful and scary.

There were two ways (to my mind) that the story could have ended for Nyr, and I definitely preferred the ending that Tchaikovsky chose, which goes along with his general outlook as I know it from the Children of Time books. About the only niggle I have with the story is that I'm not very satisfied with the finality of the demon vanquishing. I was kind of expecting more exploration/explanation of what it was, which would then let me believe in the permanence of its defeat, but as it's an eldritch horror from the Upside Down, pretty much, ehhhhnnnn, I feel like it might find its way back? But it's gone for now, and that'll have to do.

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Back from the Amazon!

2026-04-28T23:49:48Z

In spite of near crippling pre-trip nerves, my visit in Leticia was wonderful!
--I was a passenger on a motorbike multiple times!
--I swam in a river! (Not The river, but a river)
-- I saw a pink river dolphin and many gray ones!
--I made asaí juice!
--I did a craft project with the kids of one of my friends and played chase games with them!
--I made the acquaintance of a truly grandísima ceiba!
--I visited a shelter for stray dogs run by a friend of one of my friends!
--I saw a parade for the 159th anniversary of Leticia's founding!

But probably the thing that people would most enjoy seeing at this point in time is... an encounter with a pet capybara. He was a sweetie ^_^

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Eritrea, Amazonia

2026-04-13T18:27:50Z

Things have been stressful around here--there was a health scare for a family member, but they're quite fine now, happy to say.

But there are a number of nice things, too. Last week I took R to a doctor's appointment, and afterward, we had a meal together, including some siwa (also romanized suwa), a Eritrean homemade fermented drink. I think I've posted about it before, but I can't find the post, so maybe not? Maybe I just talked to some of you about it. R has brewed it in a blue Lego container, one that once upon a time held those bigger-style Lego bricks. Now it contains a modestly alcoholic drink! And she has a gorgeous handmade strainer for it. If you click through to a larger size of the photo, you can see the mesh.

And I'm going back to Leticia, Amazonas, Colombia! By myself, leaving this coming weekend and coming back the following weekend. I'm terrible at preparing appropriate presents and gifts and things, but I have some stuff like maple syrup, locally made earrings, and picture books, and I'm happy with these clothespins, that I decorated myself. I hang out laundry, and they hang out laundry, and I like decorated, useful things, so maybe they will too. I have three households I'm bringing stuff to, so these will be divided into three sets. (This photo is click-through-able too, if you want to see it larger.)

Truth is, at this state of pre-trip, I'm in the dying-of-anxiety phase, but it'll be fine once I get there. I hope!

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Jack of Hearts song by smokingboot

2026-04-08T21:13:54Z

Last entry I mused on the mystique surrounding the Jack of Hearts. Is it just me? I asked. sartorias and pamaladean referred me to the Bob Dylan song "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," which absolutely is right on target with what I was feeling, and Wakanomori pointed out to me that the Jacks are also known as Knaves, which also goes to the mystique. But best of all was when smokingboot shared this song she'd written about each of the jacks. Truly marvelous! And she said I could feature it here, so, without further ado ...

The Jack-of-Hearts song, or maybe better called, the Jacks song, since it's about all of them, by smokingboot!

Jack o'Hearts oh, Jack o'Hearts oh,
Each maiden you charm
My hopes you have broken
And my heart you disarm
If you swear you love me
I'll count that no harm
Jack o'Hearts oh, Jack o' Hearts oh,
Each maiden you charm!

Jack o'Diamonds, Jack o'Diamonds
You bagman you thief
You promise such plenty
It beggars belief
Then you wink at a penny
And bring all to grief
Jack o' Diamonds, Jack o' Diamonds
You bagman you thief!

Jack o'Clubs oh Jack o'Clubs oh
Work hard and you'll gain,
The world gladly gives you
much gold and more fame
If you risk it on a ticket
For sure you'll know shame
Jack o' Clubs oh, Jack o' Clubs oh
Work hard and you'll gain!

Jack o' Spades oh, Jack o Spades oh,
You cutthroat you knave!
More blood on your hands
than a barber's worst shave,
and if you ain't at the funeral
You're right by the grave.
Jack o' Spades oh, Jack o spades oh
You cutthroat you knave!

Four Jacks oh Four Jacks oh
Most sly in the land,
Whatever's to come oh
It won't be as planned.
Box clever my darlin'
And keep close your hand,
Four Jack oh Four Jacks oh
Most sly in the land!

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Jack of Hearts and Captain Morgan

2026-04-07T20:40:10Z

I was taking a shortcut from one strip of depressing stores to another, and it had me scrabbling down a slope, covered in these landscaping rocks, when I spotted this playing card and nips bottle:

Like out of a story.

The Jack of Hearts strikes me as a trickster character. Is that an established thing, or just something I'm imagining? I mean, the jack isn't as powerful as the king, he's the interloping male who can enchant the women, steal them away from the king. And hearts! Hearts is hearts.

(Side Quest: You are in charge of creating four new suits of cards. What are they?)

And then the nips bottle. Cards and drink are stereotypical downfalls, but there's something extra mean and tragic about a nips bottle, fortunes fallen so low that that's all you can afford. Maybe the Jack of Hearts was your lucky card... now it's lying in a wasteland between strips of stores, beside a state highway, next to the nips bottle.

(Side Note: Actually now it is lying in the pocket of my coat. I am not sure what quest I've accepted by picking it up.)

The real-life Captain Morgan raided Spanish galleons hither and yon, plundered cities, engaged in torture now and then, and owned several slave-run plantations. He also drank a lot. I wonder what he'd think about his image decorating nips bottles?

(ETA Side Note 2: Wow, "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" is a great story-song! Thanks sartorias and pameladean for recommending it!)

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division

2026-04-03T03:27:56Z

If I need a friend I just give a wriggle,
Split right down the middle.
And when I look there's two of me,
Both as handsome as can be.
--from "A Very Cellular Song," by the Incredible String Band

Division takes a whole and splits it into parts, and those parts are necessarily smaller than the whole, increasingly smaller the larger the number of divisions ... unless, as with cellular mitosis, the divided parts grow, so that the two halves each become as big as the original whole was. If those two both divide and give us four that grow as big as the original, and then if the same happens at eight and sixteen and on and on, then pretty soon we've got a lot, maybe too much, a big mass, a big mess. We could end up like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, flooded out by too many animated broomsticks lugging too many buckets of water, a cancer of servant broomsticks.

...These thoughts brought to you courtesy of glancing down at a newspaper and seeing this headline:

(In this case it's a transitive "divide" that's meant, not an intransitive one, but I was taken with the notion of a budget just mitosising away, burgeoning out of committee, expanding beyond the district--who knows what happens next.)

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Reading Wednesday: What a Fish Looks Like

2026-03-25T13:38:02Z

What a Fish Looks Like
by Syr Hayati Beker

Read this thanks to skygiants' excellent review (here).

I loved the style of storytelling--love the way the author's mind works--and enjoyed aspects of the story a lot, but overall, I wasn't the right audience for the book. The right audience would be someone who is as interested in all the ideas as I am, but who is also very invested in portraits of people experiencing all the emotions associated with a breakup. The various narrators are really feeling their feelings about one another, and to enjoy the book fully, you need to be there for that.

It's the climate apocalypse, and some people are fleeing earth and others are staying, and there's conversation about what those decisions mean and what goes into them, but with a very loud undertone about what commitment to a lover means and what abandonment is, and bravery, etc. I was interested in the conversations about commitment to Earth more than the associated subtext (sometimes supertext) about commitment to one another.

So I read about halfway through with deep absorption, then skimmed the rest.

But the language and ideas are great. This quote, about hosting extinct animals' DNA, shows how marvelously the author explores the idea (and also how they nudge you about human relationships).

It's not like sharing a bed, struggling at first and then finding a rhythm. It's not like grafting an apricot branch to a plum tree. It is: your DNA turned into a factory for the DNA of extinct species until the day the world is safe enough that we can let the ghosts out, resurrected. Until then, it's a shorter life, but maybe less lonely. Maybe that's all there ever was.

There's also a great part where a character may or may not be talking to a collective mer-consciousness. The author plays with "A Lone" (a single, noncollective being, alone) and "Re-member" (come back into collectivity, remember). I loved the mer-collective's voice:

We remember what we eat
One Song:
One time a sailor fell off his ship. "Can you swim?" we said
No
So we ate him. Drank his tears
Now he is not
A Lone

And there's also a part about putting on a play (Antigone) that keeps doing "X, but Y" in very funny ways, e.g.,

The Sphinx, but with affirmations instead of riddles. It says, "what you are is fabulous, and that's what you are." It says, "the thing that walks on any number of legs belongs."
...
Your life, but in Thebes. Thebes is nice. It has no laundry, only sand.
...
A break up, but so well lit, you overcome your differences and fall back in love.
...
Romeo and Juliet, but with cell phones. Their elopement succeeds. Nobody dies. They move to a small apartment in Milan. They love and hate one another their whole lives, sheltered from the cold, touching all the old familiar walls.

Those are just some; there were more. The last of those X, but Y examples grated on me a little. I know "they love and hate one another their whole lives" is a thing that really does happen, but it feels very overrepresented in theater and literary fiction, and "touching all the old familiar walls" feels like every single young rebel's blithe certainty that they're going to live life differently.

But maybe they will! And people get to declare what they want for audiences that are thirsting to hear it.

So: good book, great ideas, me: not the target audience, but very glad to have read it.

ETA: I've gone this whole review without acknowledging that this book is queer centered. This book is queer centered! The lovers are nonbinary or trans, most of them. This was neither a plus nor a minus for me, but if you're yearning to spend time in a fully realized queer space, this story provides that--so that would be an added mark in its favor.

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Questions: Dyslexia

2026-03-20T13:05:50Z

If you have dyslexia, what strategies helped you master writing? Was there anything that helped when you were of school age? If you weren't able to deal with it during school, how have you dealt with it since then?

If you have kids with dyslexia, how have you helped them with the task of writing?

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quick hello-I'm-alive post

2026-03-18T02:51:49Z

It's been more than a week since I posted! Part of that's just life being busy; part is that osprey_archer is here!

Today we went to Bright Water Bog, swung on a swing, ate some cranberries, and saw ice forming. It was sunny, but a cold wind was blowing, and a few flurries of snow came down.

(We also went to the Smith College Botanical Gardens, but this is a drive-by post! So there's only the one photo.)

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Goya rice bag bag

2026-03-06T20:13:01Z

We eat rice almost every night, so I buy it in 20-pound bags--Goya medium-grain rice. For us, it's pretty much as good as Japanese short-grain rice and less expensive. (Sometimes we have different rice--basmati or jasmine or wild rice, or any style of brown rice, but generally it's white Goya medium-grain rice.)

I like the look of the bags, and I thought it would be fun to use an empty bag as a bag ... and finally I got round to making one:

Here's the front, with a fold-over flap

And here's the back

Might take it grocery shopping with me next time I go!

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miss you

2026-03-04T00:36:08Z

I was so shocked to hear you have left us, minoanmiss. You are a fountain of art and fic and joy at making babies smile. You've sent me poems, you've sent me stickers that have decorated letters I've sent people. When the pandemic hit and I posted about the Japanese amabie, you made a fridge magnet of one. She's on my fridge above your Minoan dancers.

Do you remember when you sent me a postcard for a pine tree, and I took it there?

You made magic happen.

I will think of you every time I see someone making a baby smile. I will talk to that pine tree about you. Maybe it has your forwarding address, and I can send you a postcard.

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live to fight another day...

2026-03-03T00:34:15Z

In 2018, Wakanomori and I went for the first time to Colombia. We went just as an election was happening. We were in Bogotá, and we ended up walking through rallies for both candidates--the progressive ex-guerrilla and the conservative son of privilege. We ended up with some of the flyers for the progressive guy--they were bright and optimistic, and I made them into postcards:

We didn't know much about Colombian politics at the time, but we hoped he'd win:

But he lost. The conservative candidate, Iván Duque, won.

But then in 2022, the progressive ex-guerrilla won. And that's Gustavo Petro, who's in office now. So you know ... change does happen.

( My microfiction for today was partially inspired by the memory of picking up those flyers. )

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microfiction

2026-02-26T00:16:12Z

Today's prompt word was "cascade" but what I ended up thinking about was apocalypse-revelation.

Have something portentous!

( what level of apocalypse are you on? )

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cumbia, krucial, snowy owl, sturgeon

2026-02-20T17:52:51Z

Cumbia
Sometimes I have perfectly wonderful dreams--this morning, for example. I dreamed I was invited onto the dance floor to dance cumbia. I've had exactly one cumbia lesson in my life--not even a whole lesson; it was tacked onto a salsa lesson. But in the dream, I put aside all timidity, joined my partner, and it was perfect. We were so in sync; we improvised--I can catch the feeling just writing these words. This had the same joy as dreams of flying: incredible, freeing movement.

Krucial
The cashier was a young guy with fluffy hair pulled back in a pony tail. His name tag said "Krucial."
"That's an awesome name," I said.
"My mom gave it to me. It was on a wrapper," he said. [Maybe related to this: Krucial Rapid Response]
"That's great," I said. "You're crucial for your mom!"
"Awww, thank you!" he said, and and we high-fived.

Snowy Owl
A snowy owl has been hanging out near where I live. All the birders in the area are going there and taking pictures of it, and some of these have filtered into my social media, and they're magnificent, like this one, by someone named Dale Woods:

Sturgeon
Elsewhere on social media someone recommended the story "The Man Who Lost the Sea" (1959), by Theodore Sturgeon. I've never actually read anything by him, and the person linked to a 2009 reprint in Strange Horizons, so I gave it a read. The poster said it involved a surprising twist. Well not really: I understood the situation halfway through. But I liked the story all the same: the writing was lovely, and I wanted to see how the main character would realize the truth. This, very near the end, struck me especially:

For no farmer who fingers the soil with love and knowledge, no poet who sings of it, artist, contractor, engineer, even child bursting into tears at the inexpressible beauty of a field of daffodils—none of these is as intimate with Earth as those who live on, live with, breathe and drift in its seas.

If you want to read it, here's the link: "The Man Who Lost the Sea."

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"Do You Love the Color of the Sky?"

2026-02-19T04:59:04Z

It's extremely excellent to come across a short story completely at random, from someone I don't know at all, and then fall in love with it. (I love reading stories from people I know, too, of course! But in those cases, I already know I'm likely to love the story, whereas when it's by someone I don't know, it's an unexpected surprise.)

"Do You Love the Color of the Sky?" by Rachel Rosen was just such a story. In it, the curator of a museum that collects art and artifacts from the multiverse's doomed timelines (and who has a pet dodo from a timeline where dodos weren't hunted to extinction) is confronted by a thief from one of those doomed timelines who wants to take back what's either a plundered item or a rescued item, depending on what side of museum discourse you fall on. The multiverse is a great place for museum discourse, it turns out!

But beyond that, the story's just got a great narrative voice and some killer lines, such as...

Hadn't this always been the pattern of civilization? Tea and bullets were undeniably intertwined.

and

"But your world is dying."
I hadn't expected her smile. The bullet had been gentler.
"Every world dies," the thief said. "Even yours."

Here's how the thief is described on first appearance:

You can sometimes tell where [a multiverse traveler is] from at a glance. A gleaming bull’s horn on a chain around the throat, or a shangrak tattoo. A Hapsburg jaw or a colony of melanomas, if it’s one of the worse timelines. Not this woman. She had burst from the fire fully formed and innocent of all history.

And the various artifacts themselves, and the possibilities (or tragedies) of the various timelines are great.

Free to read here: "Do You Love the Color of the Sky?"

Rachel Rosen has also apparently written a short story titled, "What if we kissed while sinking a billionaire's yacht?" which short story lends its title to Issue One of Antifa Journal, with this great cover. To read the story requires purchasing the journal, but as an ebook it's only $4.99, so I'm sore tempted.

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landline, Reporting for Duty, Diamond and Misty

2026-02-12T19:18:32Z

Landline

From the age of three until I went to college, I lived in the same town. We moved house once, but our telephone number stayed the same. When technology moved from rotary dial to push-button, I came to know the sound of that phone number by heart. I could "sing" it.

Even after I and my siblings left home, my parents stayed in that house and kept that number. My mother died, but my dad stayed in the house--with that number. He got a cell phone, but kept the landline too.

Now he lives elsewhere, closer to me and one of my siblings. That house has been sold, and the landline disconnected. But I still call it from my own landline from time to time just to hear the push-button tune. So far, the number hasn't been reassigned.

Reporting for Duty

Reporting for Duty is the English-language title of a Brazilian comedy cop show on Netflix, in which a gentle, laid-back guy from a sleepy district gets reassigned to be police chief in a mafia-plagued central Rio precinct. It's pretty hilarious so far. The second episode, "Good Cop, Better Cop," sees the new police chief, Suzano, and the precinct's second-in-command, Mantovani, interrogating a suspect. "Let's do good cop, bad cop," Mantovani suggests. Suzano agrees, and they go in. Mantovani offers the suspect water. Suzano follows with "Some lemonade? A soda? A cold beer?"

Mantovani is getting more and more flabbergasted. When Suzano offers a charcuterie board, Mantovani asks if she can have a word with him. Turns out he didn't recognize her good cop as good cop. "If you're more comfortable being the good cop," she begins, but he says no no no, he can do bad cop. He storms back in. "You think you're getting coffee? Well no! No coffee because the coffee machine is broken!" [established earlier in the episode]. "And no massages, either, except for maybe shiatsu for your health." --And he proceeds to massage out the guy's tensed muscles.

It's a very cute show, and the guy who plays Suzano's sidekick who's come with him from his old precinct has a style of Brazilian accent I really like and have only heard from a guy who teaches ancient Tupi on Instagram.

Diamond and Misty

One of Wakanomori's former students is married and keeps chickens now. He gave W a quartet of eggs, and the carton comes with this cute label that lets you write in what chickens laid the eggs. Ours were laid by Diamond and Misty.

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Reading Wednesday

2026-02-04T15:30:44Z

I'll post about things other than reading one day, but [movie!Aragorn voice] today is not that day.

I finished Elizabeth Acevedo's Family Lore, which I continued to love right to the end. The characters were so complete and multifaceted, and I liked them all. The places--rural Dominican Republic, capital of Dominican Republic, New York City, felt real and three dimensional. And Acevedo's way of observing things, whether it's the way two birds leave a tree branch or a person rubbing the indentations glasses make on each side of their nose--wonderful. And there are moments like this:

"I know it's too soon, but I love you. I have for a long time." And the silence in her body that followed was the most peace she'd ever known. There was no disclaimer on his declaration. And in the years since, she might have heard a fib or two in his voice about nonsense, but the truth of his love always cut through with clarity.

And I just started Gary Paulsen's The Cookcamp, drawn by osprey_archer's write-up. During World War II, a five-year-old boy goes to live with his grandmother, who's a cook for a workcamp of men building a road from Minnesota to Canada. Truly beautiful writing here, too:

[The men] sat roughly to the tables, all of them big as houses, the boy thought. They sat to the tables and his grandmother brought heaping platters of pancakes and motioned to the boy to bring the big bowls of biscuits, which he did. Then she brought the huge enamel pot of coffee from the stove and sure enough each man turned his cup over--his hands so big the cup looked like a baby cup--and blew in it and held it up for coffee ... They made [the boy] think of big, polite bears.

Really nice, and as Osprey Archer promised, it's going to be a very quick read.

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