Views from the Road
Nov. 29th, 2009 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastAs days off go, yesterday was so-so. I did manage to spend two or three hours Outside, so that part went well. But it was windy and not at all warm, and I forgot my wool toboggan cap, so my ears hurt. The day was dazzlingly bright, even though we didn't get out until well into the afternoon. We went nowhere in particular. It was too cold to go to the sea without some serious bundling, and I was in no mood to bundle.
The sun is still with us today, but there will be rain again tomorrow. Unless there isn't.
Oh, I did send "Exuvium" to Vince yesterday morning, and as soon as his illustration is ready, I'll send Sirenia Digest #48 out to subscribers. It shouldn't be any later than Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, "Sanderlings" will be going to Bill Schafer at subpress, where it will become the chapbook to accompany the numbered edition of The Ammonite Violin & Others. I still have to put together a short afterword for that.
The coming month is going to be murder, so to speak. Sadly, only so to speak. I need to get through at least one chapter of The Next Novel. I've got to stop referring to it as Blood Oranges, as too many people are in love with the title, and I am beginning to see that it can't possibly work for this book. But, yeah...The Next Novel. The one that gets written after The Red Tree. That one. If only that was all I needed to get done this month.
Last night, we watched J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (second viewing, first on DVD), and, if anything, I'm now even more in love with the film. We also played a little WoW. I do enjoy this game, obviously, but I'm wishing terribly that I could find an MMOG that wasn't afraid to take itself seriously, one almost entirely free of irony and parody. That shit wears thin. I suspect such games exist, but finding them for the Mac is an issue. And, later still, we started reading Robert Silverberg's Nightwings (1968), which I've not read since junior high. Hearing it, I wish science fiction was as free to explore as it once was, that the pretense at "science" had not, at some point, won out over the "fiction," with all that is not deemed suitably scientific consigned to various splinters of "fantasy." It's all fantasy. All literature is fantasy. Every piece of fiction ever written is someone's fantasy, something that has never occurred and never will. Hell, a good portion of the time, actual history is fantasy.
I have a few photos from yesterday. I only allowed myself to take photographs from the moving car. Originally, I'd meant only to take them on the interstate, but that's dull as hell. Most parts of America look exactly the same when viewed from a car on an interstate. Anyway...
Heading south on I-95.
Heading north, back into Providence, on I-95.
Northeast on Allens Avenue. I love this building. I would happily live in this building.
Again, north on Allens Avenue. But this could be almost anywhere.
South on Governors Street. Here, Providence looks like Providence again.
Crossing the Point Street Bridge, view to the south, towards the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier and the sound.
Point Street, view to the south, towards the Narragansett Electric Company.
All photographs Copyright © 2009 by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The sun is still with us today, but there will be rain again tomorrow. Unless there isn't.
Oh, I did send "Exuvium" to Vince yesterday morning, and as soon as his illustration is ready, I'll send Sirenia Digest #48 out to subscribers. It shouldn't be any later than Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, "Sanderlings" will be going to Bill Schafer at subpress, where it will become the chapbook to accompany the numbered edition of The Ammonite Violin & Others. I still have to put together a short afterword for that.
The coming month is going to be murder, so to speak. Sadly, only so to speak. I need to get through at least one chapter of The Next Novel. I've got to stop referring to it as Blood Oranges, as too many people are in love with the title, and I am beginning to see that it can't possibly work for this book. But, yeah...The Next Novel. The one that gets written after The Red Tree. That one. If only that was all I needed to get done this month.
Last night, we watched J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (second viewing, first on DVD), and, if anything, I'm now even more in love with the film. We also played a little WoW. I do enjoy this game, obviously, but I'm wishing terribly that I could find an MMOG that wasn't afraid to take itself seriously, one almost entirely free of irony and parody. That shit wears thin. I suspect such games exist, but finding them for the Mac is an issue. And, later still, we started reading Robert Silverberg's Nightwings (1968), which I've not read since junior high. Hearing it, I wish science fiction was as free to explore as it once was, that the pretense at "science" had not, at some point, won out over the "fiction," with all that is not deemed suitably scientific consigned to various splinters of "fantasy." It's all fantasy. All literature is fantasy. Every piece of fiction ever written is someone's fantasy, something that has never occurred and never will. Hell, a good portion of the time, actual history is fantasy.
I have a few photos from yesterday. I only allowed myself to take photographs from the moving car. Originally, I'd meant only to take them on the interstate, but that's dull as hell. Most parts of America look exactly the same when viewed from a car on an interstate. Anyway...
Heading south on I-95.
Heading north, back into Providence, on I-95.
Northeast on Allens Avenue. I love this building. I would happily live in this building.
Again, north on Allens Avenue. But this could be almost anywhere.
South on Governors Street. Here, Providence looks like Providence again.
Crossing the Point Street Bridge, view to the south, towards the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier and the sound.
Point Street, view to the south, towards the Narragansett Electric Company.
All photographs Copyright © 2009 by Caitlín R. Kiernan
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 04:35 pm (UTC)So very true. Everything humans see and experience is by default seen through the prism of individual consciousness. Skew ensues.
The brick building -- beautiful, I'm surprised they haven't turned it into condos already! Those old factory buildings usually make great apartment complexes, and they were built like fortresses.
Example: that Electric Co. building--> Castle.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 04:38 pm (UTC)The brick building -- beautiful, I'm surprised they haven't turned it into condos already! Those old factory buildings usually make great apartment complexes, and they were built like fortresses.
Yeah, in Birmingham I lived in one, a building that used to be an overall's factory, for five years. 18-foot ceilings. It was marvelous.
Example: that Electric Co. building--> Castle.
Fortunately, it's still being used as the electric company.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 05:51 pm (UTC)Did you elect, in this SIRENIA, to do something with those "interview" questions provided by myself and Robyn?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 06:03 pm (UTC)Did you elect, in this SIRENIA, to do something with those "interview" questions provided by myself and Robyn?
No. I forgot them until you mentioned them just now. Next issue...
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 07:06 pm (UTC)No prob, Caitlin. Just wanted to know for updating my bibliography page ...
Agreed about TREK by the way. I just watched it for the first time last week and was fairly blown away. It's one of the most fast-paced films I think I've ever seen. (Only complaint: too much of Winona Ryder ended up on the cutting room floor. Would like to have seen more of what she did with a complex and intriguing character like Spock's mum.)
Best of luck on the new novel.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 07:11 pm (UTC)Only complaint: too much of Winona Ryder ended up on the cutting room floor.
Agreed, in theory. Was there footage that was cut? I haven't looked at the deleted scenes or screenplay yet.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 07:15 pm (UTC)Saw photos of a scene they filmed: time-shoobying around brings Kirk &co to an alternate When involving Amanda's death-bed ... Classic "last words" scene, Spock being the dutiful son, panoramic Vulcan landscape in background, and like that ...
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 07:59 pm (UTC)That would have been incredible.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 06:23 pm (UTC)Thanks for talking about this because now I have a new argument with my history loving father that there is a point to reading fantasy and other such books because he's already reading it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 06:35 pm (UTC)I've always thought that History always had a bit of fiction to it because we can never know every thing, but I've never gone so far as to say it is fantasy.
The degree to which history might be considered fantasy may be dependent upon who's recording it and what their agenda might be. Consider "Holocaust deniers," for example. Or young-earth creationists. They both construct history which is plainly fantasy. And there are far more subtle ways that history may take on elements of fantasy.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 06:36 pm (UTC)Have you ever read Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun books?
I haven't yet, no.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 07:30 pm (UTC)First Photo
Date: 2009-11-29 10:47 pm (UTC)Re: First Photo
Date: 2009-11-29 11:12 pm (UTC)then puzzled over what looked like a ping-pong paddle.
In which photo?
Re: First Photo
Date: 2009-11-29 11:34 pm (UTC)Duh. The answer to my question is, of course, in your subject line. That's an air-conditioning vent.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 03:20 am (UTC)What is it now?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 06:43 am (UTC)What is it now?
Abandoned.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 06:52 am (UTC)I suppose you could always count on no one noticing if you moved in . . .
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 06:46 am (UTC)~Jacob
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 06:52 am (UTC)I have a question: why not go a little further distance, and use those automatically-generated Paypal buttons in a simple table layout, and allow people to purchase PDF versions (they're all PDF, yah?) of past issues from the Sirenia website? Do you need help with this? Or is it too much bother for too little return?
Let me think about it.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-01 03:16 am (UTC)~Jacob
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 10:52 pm (UTC)Once a “scientific” premise is no longer believable, it is as if stories based on that premise break down for modern adult readers, become quaint, if not ridiculous. “Like Martian spaceships could simply be shot at the Earth out of a gun. Hahaha. I am far too wise to be duped by something silly like that.”
I’d actually argue that the same is true of science itself. We refine now. We don’t invent. Modern scientists presume that they are not ignorant. Talking with one is like talking with a backwoods redneck. Everything proves what they already suppose to be true.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 12:12 am (UTC)