"I've always been the coward."

[greygirlbeast]

I awoke about nine p.m., hot and sweaty and sick from having taken a Valium and two Sonata, but then only slept five hours. I awoke to relive, it seems, an especially grotesque day from October 1990.

It's just me, or it's everyone, or it's only some people, but even after forty-seven years, I've no idea whatsoever.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,236 words on a new vignette, "The Granting Cabinet."

I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to keep up these journal entries during Readercon. Back in March, I promised myself I'd make an entry every day for six months. But I'm not about to pay the hotel's exorbitant charge for internet access, so I really have no idea how I'm going to make it happen. Not that anyone much still reads LJ – they're all too busy with the easy, instant gratification and minimal compositional prerequisites of Twitter and Facebook – but it's important to me, if only because it's a promise I made to me.

Maybe I'll spend the day lying on the kitchen floor. The view from there isn't so bad.

Here are the photos from Saturday that I'd wanted to post yesterday.





View to the north from Beavertail. A couple of the aforementioned students on the right.



A dog belonging to the students.



The sea churning below where we'd stretched our blanket.



A shot Sonya took while wading. View to the southwest, towards Narragansett.



Spooky and I, in the sun. View to the northwest.



Sonya and fishermen (who caught nothing but seaweed). View to the southwest.



A very wonderful beetle that we found crawling on Spooky's foot.



As we left, Sonya spotted this very cool book on the dashboard of the car parked next to ours.

All photographs Copyright © 2011 by Caitlín R. Kiernan, Kathryn A. Pollnac, and Sonya Taaffe.

Comments

[jenjen4280.livejournal.com]

I don't comment on every post, but I do read your journal every day. I also don't care about the instant gratification of FB. And really, is it all that gratifying? I don't think so.

It's amazing to me that you do blog every day. Whether you're doing it for yourself, your fans, or just for kicks, it's pretty amazing that each day you make the time to record observations about your life and your work and throw them out to the internet for all to see, while still protecting the privacy of your partner.

Keep writing. I'll keep reading: sometimes in silence and sometimes not.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

And really, is it all that gratifying?

It's the only reasonably explanation I have on hand to explain the mass exodus.

Keep writing. I'll keep reading: sometimes in silence and sometimes not.

Thanks.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent beetle.

There is some lamentable chain coffee place near the hotel that I used for internet access during last year's readercon (left out of the entrance to the hotel, on the right, about a third of a mile. Starbucks?).

It is a miserable non-solution, but, should you have need, and barring the vicissitudes of schedule, I, my vehicle, laptop and questionable navigational skills are at your service.

Otherwise, I send mojo to help you find a better solution than that.

[ardentdelirium.livejournal.com]

I have been on LJ since 1999, and though I post less frequently on LJ than I once did, I read every day.

[humglum.livejournal.com]

That was a very itchy beetle. But it was sort of slow, for a bug, so made a very good subject. Most insects zip around too fast to get anything resembling more than a blur.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Living with a photographer who works macro, I know how absolutely maddening most insects are as subjects. Dragonflies in particular.

[humglum.livejournal.com]

I think I have only ever gotten one good dragonfly shot. Usually, I don't even get the chance to try. There were a number of rust-colored dragonflies at Beavertail, but they seemed to only want to be in the air.

[mizliz13.livejournal.com]

"It's just me, or it's everyone, or it's only some people, but even after forty-seven years, I've no idea whatsoever."

I feel exactly the same way and have for years. So that makes two of us.

Lovely, wonderful, gorgeous photographs. I want Sonya's hair.

Off work tomorrow and will finally get to read the Blood Oranges sneak peek in Sirenia. Yes!

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

(left out of the entrance to the hotel, on the right, about a third of a mile. Starbucks?).

Oh, gods. Starbucks. I think I was banned from there for telling them their coffee and diarrhea were pretty much the same thing. Except diarrhea's free.

It is a miserable non-solution, but, should you have need, and barring the vicissitudes of schedule, I, my vehicle, laptop and questionable navigational skills are at your service.

It is a kind offer. Let's not hope it comes to that.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

So that makes two of us.

Okay. I'll start keeping score.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I learned to drink coffee on boiled-down dregs at my first office job, which has made my palate pretty much indifferent to coffee, good or bad (though I did get a sip of the coffee that civet cats shit, and they shit coffee good enough that I could notice), but yeah, Starbucks' various practices rankle my principles and their everything else rankles my ... everything else.

Let's not hope it comes to that.

I hope this as well, but the offer stands, if it is needed.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Starbucks' various practices rankle my principles and their everything else rankles my ... everything else.

Yerp. Then there are the prices.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

This fact reminds me that a often overlooked benefit of the day job is that they just give me coffee, any time I want, as much as I need. This does not make up for the ever-increasing relative inequality of value in my employment contract, but it is something.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

It's hot water filtered through pulverized people. The way people behave, you'd think the stuff were gold (coffee, in general, not just the swill at Starbucks).

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

True. And administered as a stimulant to the pulverizers. Very easy to ignore, very difficult to escape. Which excuses nothing, but there it is.

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

The beetle could seriously be a Pixar creature. Cute, expressive little face.

I'll admit Twitter has become like snacking while working for me, but I am never touching Facebook. They keep rolling out reasons for me not to, from enabling asshole exes to find me more easily, to data-mining and lack of privacy being the default setting, helping blacklist peaceful protest, offensive 'targeted' ads, and general douchebaggery.

If there's a Panera near to the con, they have open wifi, good food and coffee (their black bean and French onion soups are fantastic and pretty cheap), and as far as I know, not as questionable practices as Starbucks.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

If there's a Panera near to the con, they have open wifi, good food and coffee

We'll see. I'm not taking a laptop with me. And I have no other portable means of posting.

[kurtmulgrew.livejournal.com]

I've been reading your journal everyday since I found out about you. Half a year or more? I don't know. I'm fairly sure I haven't missed an entry yet.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but it's not the people who are loyal readers.

It's the many people who I know have stopped reading.

And the many people on my FL who have stopped posting, or even cancelled their accounts and erased their journals. Many of them retreated to FB or Twitter (or both).

LJ is in it's death throes.

[lois2037.livejournal.com]

Wonderful, amazing beetle! What an excellent photo.

I was up all night getting work done, since sleep was not my friend. Just as I was drifting off at 8something am, Stompy McBigboots bounded onto our porch and thumped down a grinning package. My annoyance faded at once when I opened it and found Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children inside.

I hope you're wrong about LJ being in its death throes. Dreamwidth is basically the same, but really, not many folks are on there. I understand that many are now leaving Facebook for Google+, which offers and demands even LESS privacy, but it's the new flavor and there are invitations, so it just must be cool. I'll stay with LJ, even if I end up being the only one left.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Dreamwidth is basically the same, but really, not many folks are on there.

I should also note it's run by censorious assholes and hackers.

and there are invitations, so it just must be cool.

Just like the beginning of LJ. Humanity, as a whole is both shallow and fickle.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I never cared for Gulf Shores

When I was young, the Gulf was beautiful, more beautiful than any shore I've ever swum from. It was clear and warm, and the beaches were the whitest sand.

[homewardangel.livejournal.com]

I read your journal daily. I'm not a heavy commenter but I'm grateful for your insights. I hope you keep writing on here.

Also, I went to Rockstar yesterday and they did just as good a job as you mentioned. I was really impressed - so thank you for the indirect recommendation from a while back.

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

I stopped posting because the journal became entirely about my mom dying, which I figured would bum people out. I've been meaning to start up again, though, and I check my friends list daily. Sometimes I even comment.

Also, did Sonya not get the message that she needs to stop being prettier and younger with my hair? I might as well shave mine off now.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I distinctly remember it being that way when we first moved South, when I was 9 or 10; but when I was 23 and living with my mother in Birmingham again after the attempt at heteronormativity and graduate school, well-meaning friends spirited me away a couple of times to throw me in the water before my metaphorical flippers parched, and it had become very broke-down and sad.