Echoes in a Hollow Space

Then again, it could be this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20061203/sc_livescience/scientistfightschurchefforttohidemuseumsprehumanfossils

Courtesy kmkibble75 and other folks.


My hair doesn't really look like this anymore, but time to come out of the closet. Me and Queen Latifah are twins. I'm proud to be included in the same sentence as her.

( My Celebrity Look-alikes. )

Which subject line reminds me of the essay of the same name by Loren Eiseley from his book of essays, The Night Country (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Stewart O'Nan). Highly recommended. Eiseley was a forerunner of scientists doing popular humanist essays, like Stephen Jay Gould. Much of Eiseley's work skirts the edge of poetry, and definitely reads like fiction. Eminently approachable and very human.

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Writing business of the day:Completed the rewrite of my problematic chapter 17. It wasn't a hardcore rewrite, just the "softcore" ones I do before posting to the workshop. There's still plenty wrong and I'm not sure how I'll fix it, but that's for the rewrites. So I can officially forget about it now until the second draft. Except when it's being reviewed on OWW, that is. :-)

It's funny: I hadn't read this chapter since the end of March and thought it fairly competent. Rereading it I saw for the first time that it incorporated one of my least favorite plot devices since the history of plot devices. I couldn't believe it. Clearly, someone has snuck into my novel again and written bilge while my back was turned. I need to catch that little miscreant! So I cleaned that up some, but I'm still not happy with it.

Ouch of the day: Last night I went to a yoga class for the first time in years. I'm not saying I'm not hurting in places I didn't know I had, but overall I feel really good. I'm going back next week. I haven't been that relaxed in gobs of time and I slept straight through the night for once. That alone was worth the stretchy-stretchy, owie-owie. Besides, when I get aches and pains in conjunction with physical activity, I feel okay about it, like I earned my aches rather than just having them foisted on me.

And here's the funny part: I was absolutely terrified before I got there. Of what? I dunno. Scared they'd laugh at me or beat me with bamboo sticks or throw those star knives at me. Then I reassured myself that it probably wasn't a ninja yoga class and they don't usually beat people up. The thing is, showing up cold to a class is intimidating under the best of circumstances. Because it had been so long since I'd done anything like that and feeling like I was out of shape didn't help. But the teacher was really kind and generous and the minute I walked in and met her, I felt comfortable. I was able to keep up okay, though I had to modify my positions somewhat. But that was okay with the teacher, so it made the whole experience a very good one.

My terror at shaking myself out of my routine told me it was something I had to do or risk becoming calcified. That's always a big danger in life, refusing to ever move out of your comfort zone and turning to living stone. There's a lesson in there about art, too, but I think you can draw your own conclusions.

Vignette of the day: I'm at the car wash Sunday and a woman is complaining loudly to another woman that a cop had just stopped her on the street and implied that she was a hooker. "I guess a woman just can't wear shorts in this town!" she said in outrage.

She was wearing shorts—so short they were practically thongs, so short that both cheeks stuck out the leg holes. Accompanying these shorts, she wore high-heel, see-through slips on, the ultimate in CFM shoes; a skin tight sparkly lycra turquoise spaghetti-strap tank with a push up bra so her cheeks were not the only thing sticking out of her ensemble; her hair was streaked with every shade of blonde known to nature and unnature to go with the dark roots; and she was walking along a stretch of Lincoln Blvd. known to be a habitat for hookers.

Now, a woman has the right to dress anyway she wants and not get hassled for it. And some cops are on power trips. But. One can see how the misunderstanding might have occurred.

Unsurprise of the day: Karl Rove was the one who leaked the story about the CIA agent. Do you suppose he'll escape prosecution as Novak did? Or will there be more selective enforcement of the law?

True confession of the day: I bought the damned memory stick. Only it wasn't a memory stick (silly cupcake!), it was a flash drive. As Oscar Wilde said, "I can resist anything but temptation."

Good news on my friend's birthday of the day: My friend who shares a birthday with Dubya and Nancy Reagan found out she also shares a birthday with the Dalai Lama. She was so relieved.

Things I thought of blogging about today: About the book I'm reading now—Pendragon: The Definitive Account of the Origins of Arthur by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd—and Arthurian research in general.

Why I didn't blog it: I haven't read enough of it yet to give a definitive review. So far, so good—but I do tend to distrust books that call themselves definitive. They will have to prove themselves.

As to Arthurian research in general, I'm trying to base my Arthur on the historical person of the Dark Ages, not the legendary figure of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Malory, T. E. White. Which doesn't mean there isn't magic in my story, but I'm trying to make the historical context as real as possible. The thing is, the known history is so scant and scholars have argued so heatedly for so long over what evidence exists, that at some point I just had to decide to do the best I could and write the story. Somebody is sure to be offended by something—that's the nature of the Arthur Game.

And another aspect of the Arthur Game: people want their legend. So in The Novel, Night Warrior, I've made some concessions to legend and included some characters and situations that are part of the later medieval romantic add-ons. And the magic thing. But in a Dark Ages, post-Roman context rather than a knights in shining armor context.

Picture of the day: Tea for three

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It was sitting on a stool in a sleazy bar near Skid Row, smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey, with a smart-assed grin on its face.

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(Researchers pinpoint brains sarcasm sensor)

So I went to the Santa Monica Festival on Saturday. Festivals were blooming all over Southern California this weekend, as the weather was splendid and it's post-Aprill with his shoures soote, the time when longen folk to goon on pilgrimages and all. I'm not much of a festival kind of gal, but a couple of my friends had a booth there. They do lovely letterpress printing and design—cards, plus the usual run of printed items. As this card attests:



Tell 'em Pam sent ya.

It was a lovely day—and I think I got another picture of a ghost. I can't think of what else it would be. Notice that the only ones paying much attention to it are children, and they do say kids are more sensitive to psychic emanations:

What is that thing?

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It sure ain't Barney. I guess they're thinking since Santa Monica is by the ocean a nautical theme was appropriate, but this park is about 28 blocks from the beach.

Here's the festival grounds, or some of them anyway:

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Here's Carl looking kind of grim—but at least it's a decent enough shot of the product:

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Here's Lynn looking cute as a button:

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This trio looks like someone just told them their cats had died—but again, you can see the product line okay:

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And that is all. We ate delicious homemade tamales and listened to an inane MC on the performance stage really humping the diversity theme. After some Korean drummers finished their set, she got on the mike and said, "Wow! Wasn't that fantastic?!? I'm not even Korean and I'm proud!"

That's very multicultural of you, dear. We're proud of you, too.

(Sometimes it's difficult trying to be a reformed cynic.)

And it's a Friday night debauchery followed by Monday morning guilt kind of morning. I can't believe I bought that camera. It's impulse buying like that which is responsible for me being trapped in an apartment with exploding plumbing. What a schmendrick I am. I thought my apartment was $250 under market value, but I saw a housing report a couple of weeks ago that let me know it's closer to $450. I'm paying Inland Empire prices for an apartment on the Westside of L.A.

All right. Enough chest-beating. I'm a fool—but I'm going to enjoy the hell out of that camera. I already have.

Thanks to Jodi for pointing me to Photobucket. You can't blame her for the misuse I've made of her advice, though.

ETA: Happy birthday, Jodi!!

Some completely stupid pictures here.

These are completely stupid, but they're the only pix that are okay enough to post at this point.

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This is my living room. Nobody wants to see my living room, but hey...it was there, so I photographed it. And carefully cropped out the clutter in front of the bookshelf in the foreground. All except the handle of the carpet cleaner which I forgot to move before madly snapping pix.

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This is my lace fan from the Jane Austen Museum in Bath and a portrait of me done by my friend Francesca when I had a wild and luxuriant perm. God, can you stand the excitement?

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

—Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address



For a graphic version, go here:

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