W2 Intro
Hello friends. Friends, fiends, finders and readers, spiders and spambots, denizens of the internet, voyagers abroad, welcome again.
After the Twelve Labors and other trials of 2020, I retreated to three novels in different stages of drafting and revision, one of which has now seen over fifty agents’ inboxes and counting. For a long time, I couldn’t figure a good way to keep this website from languishing. Now I have.
For as long as feels reasonable, I’ll write a minimum of 150 words per week, to be posted monthly in groupings of four. That’s 48 weeks, leaving me some leeway for vacation. 150 words feels like a manageable aside from my primary writing. Some weeks may be a lot more. Each week will feature a different topic, although I may choose to string some together with a related theme. At times the installments will simply be serialized.
Among the types of things to expect are micro- and flash fictions, reflections from books I’m reading, short essays, factoids or bits of research, detritus I’ve culled from my writing, art and design musings?, original poetry?, puzzles?, all such things that interest me and have some tangential relation to my life or career.
There is no first week for this month, just as there is no spoon.
W3 Fiction
Reapportionment: Terms and Conditions
“We” and “Our” refers to the King and other dignitaries of the First Home-In-Star. “You” and “Your” refers to the Earthforms who receive these terms.“Services” refers to the act of reapportionment defined hereafter.
We bring the tiding of Rus Jjatwa, who is the Prime Thinker of the Universe. She-He wrinkled the faces of each planet to produce every form of life, including We and You. She-He gave authority to the Admirable Expression of Thought, who is Our Highmost Sibling. The Sibling has donated Your sun, CB-74, with all its planets, to the benevolent care of Our King. You hereby acknowledge Our supremacy and submit to Our rulership, beginning with the Services.
Our reapportionment project will skim off the natural water content of this region of the universe to make a cosmic ice sculpture in reverence to Ras Jjatwa, which will orbit CX-1, the First Home-In-Star. The structure will enrich the night skies of surrounding regions and inspire limitless generations of astronomers. Our research department believes this project will not significantly disrupt the health of Your planet.
Therefore We request that You offer no resistance to the Services. When We have finished, You may keep one thousand gallons for Your purposes, Our generous gift to You. Our agents will descend to prepare Your oceans and seas for export, and they require the use of Your resources to accomplish it. If You should refuse or make malicious delay, You shall be punished according to Your rebellion; We shall confiscate Your families and Your lives; We shall make war against You in all ways and manners that We can.
IN NO EVENT SHALL We BE LIABLE FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, GENERAL WELL-BEING, OR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES INCURRED BY You OR ANY THIRD PARTY THROUGH DEFIANCE TO THE Services. BY WORD OF THE HIGHMOST SIBLING, Our ENTIRE LIABILITY FOR WAR DAMAGES UNDER THIS AGREEMENT IS NULL AND VOID.
Please file all complaints with Our interspecies coordinator so We can ensure Your privacy is safeguarded.
W4 Reading
Since graduating from college, I’ve started choosing year-long themes to guide my reading.
I have a whole range of ideas for years to come. One inspiration: someone on Tor.com sometimes dedicates a year to reading all the work of a single author. I’d be curious to try it, although when I start thinking how many authors are worth that kind of attention, and how that’s just one type of theme, I have to remind myself of opportunity cost.
I’m young enough that one year seems like a substantial but small fraction of my future. Yet every year’s choice fills a slot in the limited year count of my life, a fact I forget. It’s not that I’m unaware of mortality. It’s just my human tendency to squander the perceived abundance. However, I have lately become willing to drop a book partway through if I realize it’s not worth my time.
Last year I explored the world through ten or so of its most mundane things. These were salt, the wheel, the chicken, money, sand, concrete, ice, (liquid) water, moss, measured time, textiles, and sugar. It’s an arbitrary yet thoughtful list of banalities which, as it happens, have fascinating stories.
Sand, for example. It behaves like a hybrid of liquid and solid. It purifies water. It shapes and smooths hard materials. It sculpts dunes that sing as they migrate. Like moss, sand hosts a miscroscopic world of fantastical spaces and creatures. It lets us peer into that world, and at worlds across the universe. On our world, sand creates roads, new land, buildings, windows, computers, and fiber-optic networks. Anywhere you find concrete or glass, sand is the essence. Salt and sugar are technically sands. Modern civilization is literally built on sand, although we rarely recognize it beyond the beach.
Sand has often been used as a symbol of infinity, and today it’s being harvested at record speeds, too fast for geologic forces to keep pace. Like time, sand is more precious than we realize.
Actually, my whole reading theme for the year began with sand. An episode of 99% Invisible led me to Vince Beiser’s book The World In a Grain, then to another pair of books, Concrete Planet by Robert Courland and (my favorite) Sand: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Welland.
