RWLKP
I’m going to try hitting all five of my acronym letters today. I’m also going to see what interesting things I can do in a blog post. I’m still getting to know Squarespace. For example: I don’t know if I can add photos to a blog post, other than as a header image for the main blog page. Ir there is a way, I don’t see it, but I haven’t tried very hard.
Here we go:
Reading: I’m reading a few things, actually. I’m continuing to make my way through China Mieville’s Embassytown. One thing I really like about the novel is that it dropped me right into its world with very little explanation. No maps for these territories, if you’ll pardon a William Gibson reference (see the 2000 film of the same name). Instead, I’ve been learning about the world as I go. These are my favorite things so far - and I’m just going to list them for now: the immer and the manchmal; related to those, the Immersers; the relationship between the humans and the Hosts on the planet Ariekei - specifically how they can and cannot communicate with each other; and finally (for now) the fact that the novel revolves - playfully - around language and communication.
I want to elaborate on those words, immer and manchmal for a bit. These are the German terms for the concepts of “always” and “sometimes,” respectively. I love the resonance this sets up with the English “immersion,” which is the word for when you jump into a lake, or are thrown in, I guess. You become immersed in the water. In the novel, Immersers are humans who can go into the immer without losing their minds. The word immer carries its German meaning; but with the definite article…”the immer” means “the always.” Immersers have the talent of being able to exist in the always without losing their hold on themselves as selves. Humans who can’t immerse - I said above that they lose their minds, but that’s not quite right. Their selves get lost in the immer, and they can’t find their way back out again. I find this a lovely exploration of the self and its relationship to time - because that’s essential, right? Our selfhood is bound in time, to a large extent. I don’t know yet if the novel will also explore the relationship between the self and embodiment. Knowing Mieville, I expect that it will. And if you know anything about my dissertation research, you will understand why I love this.
I’ve also been reading Peter Elbow’s Writing With Power (the textbook from my very first college English course!) and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I just want to review the basics of freewriting.
Watching: Drew and I have been watching Slow Horses on Apple TV. It’s really good. I have a lot to say about it, but not today.
Listening: Right now I’m listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Best of Everything. It’s a greatest hits album, which I don’t usually like. Today, though, what I want is just the hits. It’s funny, I don’t think of Tom Petty as an album kind of musician, you know? Not like Pink Floyd, Radiohead, or Fleetwood Mac. That, too, is the subject for another day.
Knitting: I’m not knitting right now, unfortunately. As I said in my previous post, I gave myself texter’s thumb by poking at my phone too much, and knitting makes it worse. I’m doing the usual rehab stuff, but part of the regimen is not knitting. It’s taking longer to heal than I would like, but it is getting better.
Planning: I’m excited that Maureen and I are launching an ongoing series of generative writing workshops over on our business website, Writing Fulcrum. These sessions will be held 4 times per month. In each 60-minute session we’ll do guided freewriting exercises using themed prompts that Maureen and I are creating. There will be a different prompt for each meeting. The pricing structure is flexible. You can buy blocks of sessions, but you can use them at your own pace. For example, if you purchase 8 sessions ($40) and you only want to attend 2 sessions per month, it’ll take you 4 months to use them up.
That’s it for today, folks!
(I just tried to drag and drop a photo into this post and it didn’t work. I used it as the header for this blog post - it’s an Osage orange, which is one of the weirdest fruits I’ve ever found on a sidewalk.)
