Update

Autumn continues, unnaturally warm. Greenhouse Effect, anyone? The trees in the park are almost leafless. There may be a few flowers hanging on. At the moment it's sunny, but rain in predicted in the afternoon. I'm a bit sad about that. Originally it looked as it we going to have an all-day rain. I would love a long, steady rain.

I am currently proofreading the manuscript for the hwarhath story collection, plus two essays. The collection is set to come out next spring. After that, most likely, I will move on to putting together a collection of Lydia Duluth stories.

I'm still trying to come to terms with Kathe's death. I wrote a fairly long post about K and old age, sickness and death today. But I decided to delete most of it.

My hwarhath collection includes three stories about the hwarhath actor Dapple, one set when she is a baby, one when she is 20 and one when she is 40. I have a fourth story set when she is 60 and beginning to worry about old age. (The hwarhath live longer than humans do at present, but Dapple's profession is highly physical. Hwarhath actors do a lot of dancing and tumbling.) The story is also about the death of the Ettin matriarch, Ettin Taiin's mother, and about Taiin growing old. I should finish it. I think I need to write about old age and mortality.

It started to rain between three and four and still coming down heavily, with flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder. Patrick has a cold and has gone to bed. I think I'll retire and read a book on paleontology. Long-extinct life forms always cheer me when I am depressed by mortality. It's way too late to worry about them. Instead, I can reflect on evolution and the splendid progression of always-changing life.

Writing

This is a facebook comment on other writers discussing how much they enjoy writing:

I am not sure I love writing. Mostly I notice how hard it is and how the end result is never what I imagined and wanted. I think I spent too much time around avant garde artists as a child. I seem to believe an artist must suffer for his or her art, which is almost certainly BS. I grant that sometimes stories flow out as if they came from somewhere else. The muse, maybe. And sometimes the ideas are so neat and funny that I hug myself. But mostly it's work. The payback is great, however: bringing a story to my workshop and having the other members like it, sending it out and having it accepted.

Baggage

I had a dream about packing. I was traveling with several people in several cars and it was time to go. We had an amazing amount of baggage. I had maybe ten bags and was trying to get everything into them. When I was almost done, and part of my baggage was already stuffed into a car, I realized some of my bags were mostly empty. I was going to have to repack. And I realized that some of the things I was going to need -- I think for a one night stay somewhere on the road --were in the bags already in the car and unreachable.

I think I was permanently scarred by traveling across Asia when I was 16. Eight countries in three months. I was always packing and unpacking and hauling baggage. It was worth it, but I don't like baggage or flying.

A Freudian would focus on the word 'baggage.' Do I feel I have too much emotional baggage? Yes. I have a lifetime's worth of memories, feelings and thoughts. That's a lot to haul around. Good material for writing, though.