Echoes in a Hollow Space

A reminder to myself: “I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.” —Takashi Shimura, in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru
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Sometimes when I see the Trumpets waving their Trump 2020 signs I think it says Trump ZoZo. (Demon In-Joke)
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I will vote for Bernie if he's the one although very reluctantly because I think he's as much a Russian operative as Trump is. But anything blue is better than Trump.
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Sunday snoozles pic.twitter.com/Mf48xmaoso

— Mr. Meowgi (@Mr_Meowwwgi) August 11, 2019

Hey, you.
This is important.
Cheetahs don't roar, they meow like housecats. pic.twitter.com/N6F3ibUgcD

— Damnit, Justin! (@jray05) August 8, 2019

(Sorry the Twitter Embed isn't working on Dreamwidth. You can click through if you're interested.)

Yes, I’m wanting a kitty again, why do you ask? Actually, I’m in the process of making the house kitten safe before I take that action. It’s a slow process, given the arthritic knees, but I am working towards that goal.
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Weird irrelevant fact: Five of the accused Salem witches were executed on my father's birthday, July 19. Eight were executed on my birthday, September 22. The other five were executed on August 19, and Giles Corey, the other victim of the hysteria, was pressed to death on September 19. I've always wanted to go to Salem, not so much for the touristy aspects as to pay my respects, but I doubt that will happen now. I watched an episode of America's Hidden Stories on the efforts to finally locate the actual execution spot. Turns out the family who owns the property had handed down that knowledge through the generations but because no one in town wanted to talk about it, it had never made it into the history books. When the historians who were investigating it showed up on the property, the owner confirmed their suspicions. They erected a memorial there in 2017. So many secrets in Salem, so much official censorship.
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I will admit that Action Bronson watching Ancient Aliens (Viceland) is infinitely more entertaining than Ancient Aliens. With Action, I don't usually want to throw anything at the TV even once. Granted, Action Bronson is stupid in his own way, just not Ancient Aliens stupid.
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I think the people in the Swiffer commercials are way the hell too anal.
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Everyone is eager to label other people fools, but everyone has something they're foolish about. I guess it's a multiplicity of foolishness that makes a true fool—or maybe it's a blindness to our own idiocy.
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You never know what will launch someone on a screed. Sometimes it seems innocuous but echoes in the haunted chambers of their mind in ways the rest of us can't see. Which is why I try not to take screeds too seriously. But sometimes they strike one of my private nerves—and we're off!
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So strange how one's taste and appreciation changes over time, sometimes dramatically. Yet it's necessary. If you're not changing you're stagnant and dead inside. I was just reading “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, a poem that made my young undergrad heart go "blech" back in the day. It seemed so stiff and formal. But today when I read it, it flowed, it spoke to me, I really took it in. How strange and wonderful is the passage of time.
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Bridging scenes are the worst. Going from point A to C in a necessary but difficult scene makes me want to scream. Sometimes it indicates I'm going in the wrong direction, other times it just means it's boring. And will probably be edited out but I still have to write it first.
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Whenever I hear the word Apologia I think it should be the name of one of Prince's former backup musicians.
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On Carl Jung's birthday (July 26), I of course had a very interesting dream (said in a cheesy Austrian accent).

There aren't really five separate and complete coincidences here, but I've broken the existing ones up into five easily digestible bits, so that should count for something, right?

1. Last week I pulled all the story collections I have out of the TBR bookshelves and put them near my bedside because that's the place I usually read short stories (although I left the story collections by single author in the shelves). I was gob-smacked to discover how many anthologies I had, some of which I'd forgotten about. (Which tells me I need to stop buying story anthologies until I've cleared out the ones I have.) Amongst these was an anthology called Powers of Detection: Stories of Mystery and Fantasy edited by Dana Stabenow.

2. Friday I was reading Dead Man Rising by Lilith Saintcrow in which she'd named a very minor character Ms. Stabenow.

3. "Wait," says I, "didn't somebody named Stabenow edit a collection of stories I have?" I went to the now handily available pile of anthologies and looked her up. I read the author blurb about her and noticed she'd written some mysteries centering around a detective named Kate Shugak.

4. On Saturday a book I'd ordered arrived in the mail: The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals by Ricki Stefanie Tannen.* I'd realized I needed to do some depth work for one of the thematic pillars of my current WIP. I started reading the book that afternoon. Although I'm not entirely in love with every aspect of Tannen's thinking, it's going to give me what I need for understanding some of the psychological underpinnings of what has been an instinctive process in this book. On page 10 Tannen mentions her favorite female detective characters, the ones she views as aspects of female trickster energy: V. I. Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone, Blanche White . . . and Kate Shugak, written by Dana Stabenow. There are several references to Shugak/Stabenow in the index. I look forward to reading what that's all about.

5. There is no fifth thing. Yet. (I told you so.)


While reading Tannen's book I'm thinking she's completely missed the boat on a whole 'nother aspect of female trickster energy as she defines it: Xena, Buffy, the vast majority of urban fantasy, and some of the paranormal romance.

How does she define a female trickster? A woman who has (Jargon warning! Jargon warning! She's a post-Jungian!) authority, agency, and autonomy and uses humor as an important tool in combating social stereotypes.

The three A's, as she defines them: autonomy - "being able to maintain a stable identity while inhabiting outsider terrain;" agency - "used as a sense of action and being able to act on others' behalf. Those who have agency have the power and freedom of physical and psychological movement within their culture" (and, apparently, they own their own detective agencies—har! Get it?); autonomy - "feeling free to choose your intentional behavior - necessary for successful identity formation" (i.e., able to run your own show).

Sounds pretty damned xenabuffyufpr to me.

(You know, it's not that I hate jargon, I can play the game. I just think that sometimes jargon is the antithesis of communication. It's about exclusivity and being an insider that pushing the marginal types and the chirping cricketdom of the commoners out of the discussion. Which is extremely amusing when it is employed to write about the marginal types, but jargon does not especially appreciate irony, in my experience.)

I may have to email Ms. Tannen and tell her about this whole well of material she's overlooked. I'm sure she'll just love my second guessing of her grand theory, don't you? If she pays any attention at all, she'll probably (with some justification) look at these older female detectives as forerunners of the said xenabuffyufpr thing. The female detectives were quite edgy in their day, real ball busters. In more ways than one.

What I'm not one hundred percent convinced of is that these types of female detectives represent true trickster energy as I understand it. It seems to me that the essence of the Trickster has more to do with chaos theory than working for a social good. These female detectives certainly busted up some stereotypes, stretched the boundaries of the system, but ultimately they all worked within the system.

I must think more on this, and see if Ms. Tannen can convince me.

*ETA 2021: Ultimately, this book left me with a sour taste. Ms. Tannen practiced a lot of cultural appropriation and pretty much shoehorned the trickster into her preconceived notions. Not a convincing thesis at all.