Old toothbrushes and elbow grease

I have been discovering crannies and nooks unknown to me. Spring cleaning is going on, a few months late by the calendar, a few months early by the weather. In my home, things are being mended and scrutinized, discarded and displayed. I am spending time alone with my (our) things, and being the sentimental type, this means spending time with my memories and attitudes. I prefer working on the present—the past is pitfalls and prattfalls—so, ways of being are being refined and defined and this is surprisingly rewarding. And, just like the freshened result of cleaning out the dryer's internal filter, you'd never know from the outside.

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It is planting season. I am too chilled to venture on to the roof, so my little plants and unpopped seeds are having an inside day:

In addition to my Gaia-like nurturing of food and beauty, I've been bringing home shopping bags of fruit and vegetables that, with their bright colors and healthy odors, amplify both my righteousness and sexual appeal tenfold.

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Best of all, I heard that Maureen F. McHugh will be coming out with a new collection of short stories from Small Beer Press in October 2011. It is called After the Apocalypse and you will preorder it now.

I am reading Half the Day is Night by her right now and enjoying its underwater murkiness, if not the other trappings of the book's world. More on that later.

arts from mocca 2011

I am just starting to plow through my MoCCA pile. In celebration of that, here are pics of the two arty art arts that I got at the fest.

Big:

Mountains I by Mark Burrier. I will frame this as soon as I get some framin' money.

Small:

A portrait from the G train. Are you the artist of this? Please contact me!

haps

Sorry to ruin a Spring day, everybody, but I am hoping for rain. I want the grey clouds that are now bunching over Downtown Brooklyn to turn black and heavy and blow over this way. Which, of course, means that I've started my roof garden and that the hose is a situation. A frustrating, wet, non-working situation. A trip to the hardware store could probably fix that, but when will that happen?

I have fallen into a book recently sent to me by a small press. The world is recent past and I want to be there. I hope to write about it somewhere else soon. It is a love story and a sibling story--surprise!

The third thing, the third thing is that I owe you a letter. I really do. I promise to sit down this weekend and write you one.

Twitter has recently been absorbing thoughts like the above, but I wanted to pin them here this time. I am still unsure about Twitter--how it shapes my thoughts. As a delivery system, it's great, but when I post an essay like this one or this one, it is hard to say why they are important in just a few lines. However, with retweeting, the audience for such a pick is limitless--perhaps that makes up for it? I don't know.

At The Rumpus, I have a very short piece on the subject of Near and Far. Mine is on the second page, sitting right above some lovely art.

In terms of writing in general, these last few months have been different, better. I may not have the greatest ideas but the work has been coming easier and the results are more satisfying than they have been in a long time. In terms of grief writing, I have been experimenting with different forms and been surprised at what is coming out. This makes me hopeful for my upcoming zine project, which will be done, I think, by August. You seem a bit dubious; so do I.

In other writing news, it feels like the only place I can be compassionate is on the page. I hope this passes.

3 from the subway

A woman is reading a book about yoga on the subway. She looks very earnest with her Integral Yoga plastic sack, stuffed to the brim with various expensive accoutrements. She is wearing high heels and her straightened hair has the heightened shine of battle. Between stops a twitchy man hops over to her. He is eager to tell her that he does yoga too. He is eager to tell her about getting over things, so, so many wrongs—hearts and dollar signs fly out of his mouth—and then just like that, just a few stops, he is gone out the doors.

She then comes to sit next to me in a two-seat section. She smells faintly of shit.

***

Skinny arms, ill-fitting clothes, too-big hands and feet, the whole thing. This boy is perfectly poised to break my heart in a moment. He is eleven or twelve and sitting by himself by the window on a medium-crowded train. I can’t look at him without seeing him right on the edge; he’ll either pull himself into the world or get smashed by it. He is looking out into the tunnels mostly, and in his own world totally. When we pull into a station, he looks at the two daffodils in his hands, two different kinds. First he looks at one and then he looks at the other. He has nothing else with him. I almost cry my way up the stairs. This is my problem.

***

It must be daddy’s day to watch her and behind his sunglasses and be-spangled outfit he is very uncomfortable with the task. Even with so many muscles, it is hard to look tough with a baby. It is hard to bend, over and over to pick up a toy that is not casually dropped. It is hard to be something that you are not. She is so cute, and he, well. I don’t think he has realized the reservoir of goodwill he could garner if he just removed his sunglasses.

LOC PPOC: Item url

MoCCA 2011

I spent the first day of MoCCA 2011 far away from the Armory, hanging with Philly friends of various ages and descriptions. On Sunday, I arrived with A and P and we hit the floor. B showed up later and we ended up having a good MoCCA:

I find the armory to be a rather glum space, but it does have a few things going for it:
--a tantalizing mezzanine
--a very Age-of-Aquarius 69 motif throughout, engaging the military use of the building in a sexy swirl of counterpoint
--wooden phone booths, as modeled here by A.:


There were far fewer minis and prints than I hoped for. As stated by everyone else in the world, the price of tables is forcing many minimakers out of the fest. Since I am mainly interested in comics and art with that handmade touch this is very disappointing, but unsurprising. I noticed a ton of slicker, stupider-looking, and/or child-oriented stuff, as well as the arrival of iPads for displaying art. None of this stuff really made me want to look further; I wish I had been able to spend more time on the floor, asking around about hot books. Last year newspaper anthologies were all the rage. I didn't see as many this time around, but that could be my own blindspot. Ugly ass neon melty faces still sadly dominate the print subject matter, but I did manage to find one silkscreen that was large and lovely, by Mark Burrier (see below), that didn't look like a poorly-raised Ft. Thunder/Basil Wolverton love child. As usual, I missed a few books I was looking forward to including CCS anthologies and Finders Keepers #3.

And, now, some of the many people and things I saw and bought, spottily and unskillfully photographed by myself:

Ah MAh GAh Breathers, one of our fave minis, is a book now, Justin Madsen does not say to me


Charles Forsman and Melissa Mendes make me happy


Anna Raffi is a master saleswoman


Alexandra Beguez belies her student status


Alabaster's website is broken!


Morgan Pielli is the only person is a Robin shirt that I would happily talk to


M. Jacob Alvarez means serious business


Mark Burrier and friend were wisely camera-shy


L. Nichols and Darryl Ayo are shining stars of joy

As are these portraits of B and I by L.

The requisite floor shots:



And a note about dissonance: Perhaps exhibitors would be less touchy about higher prices if the fundraising aspect of the MoCCA fest, that is supporting the museum, directly benefited the community. The museum's programming generally feels stuck in the past--perhaps a few more exhibits and events showcasing students, local, national and international self-publishers and small presses, or an artist-in-residence program, could create more goodwill in the community and at the same time increase awareness and support of the museum. As an attendee, I don't really feel like paying such a high door price to support a museum I have no interest in going to, ya dig? Next year it is quite possible that I won't. What do you think?

Check out my review of Tessa Brunton's In the tall grass, issues 2-4 over at inkstuds.

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

The Hearing Trumpet was ohmygod 100% fucking amazing. I've been in this mode of reading about repressed and oppressed British ladies in surreal circumstances, and that describes this book, but only superficially. The main character, Marian Leatherby, is really old, living in a Mexico-type land, hanging with her outrageous and wonderful friend Carmella and essentially enjoying herself despite deafness and neglect. "Every week brings a certain amount of mild enjoyment; every night, in fine weather, the sky, the stars, and of course the moon in her season. On Mondays, in clement weather, I walk two blocks down the road and visit my friend Carmella." Marian's useless son ends this quiet life and puts her in a home at the urging of his terrible, also British, wife. How terrible to be in such a lush land and surrounded by prune-faced Brits! In the home, run by unsurprisingly avaricious and suspectly religious twits, Marian meets up with several other old ladies, all of whom are interesting, if not all benign. Conditions at the home degrade until Christian mysticism, murder and good, old-fashioned collective action shake things up, then down, down, down.

Besides just stewing in the wonderfulness of Carrington's sentences and delighting in her weird, but not one-dimensional characters, what I liked most about this book were its portrayal of old age as a high-stakes adventure where one's past is more than dead weight and friendship as not only a superficial past time, but a lifesaving relationship. I would trade all the snow in Lapland for a friend like Carmella...

Despite all I've said, subtlety reigns in this book. Marian is a mild and mostly passive observer and she tells this story with a sweetness that may distract from the author's absolute dissection of ideas of propriety, femininity, the body, human worth and the past. Her reality is not questioned by the book, though throughout the story several people deem her "senile" or vice-ridden or mad. If you read the intro to the book, or any other biographics on Carrington, it becomes clear why this theme is so important, but I urge you to wait until you've read the book and not let the facts fuck up the fictional truth.

I wish I could show you more of Carrington's writing, but the book has gone back to the library and Google-Booking around for quotes is agitating. Perhaps if everybody who reads this buys a copy from Exact Change we can pressure them into reprinting more of her work.

What do you do when everything is wrong?

Today would have been my brother's 27th birthday. I can't believe it; I can't believe that I am this old, that he's been gone so long, that he'll be gone for so much longer.

If you or someone you know is struggling with comforting a grieving person, check out this Dear Sugar column from The Rumpus. I think it is perfect.

Overqualified by Joey Comeau

My rides to work and school on the subway now seem to comprise all of my current reading time. I prefer something absorbing and a little escapist for these rides, as the train is sometimes crowded, loud and/or smelly and I need something that pulls me in.

So, the other day I pulled Overqualified, by one of my favorite comics writers and birthday twin, off of the unread shelf and ran to the train. When I finally settled into my molded plastic seat, I expected to get a little jolt of work-sucks catharsis before I hit the office.

Instead I got hit with a dead-brother story—a grief story—told in increasingly desperate and bizarre cover letters to companies. Despite the profusion of profanity so loved by my generation, including this bookending gem: "'Live for today, you retarded little shit. The end is near,'" I found the story touching, if a little slight. The main character, Joey Comeau, yes, Joey Comeau, goes through many of the stages of grief I remember: self-destruction; the desire to experience everything; the desire to experience nothing; anger; mythologizing; flailing regret; etc..

His degeneration is somewhat comic, which is where the book trips a little, but the book also contains lines that mirror the kind of thoughts that both anchor us to the past and give us some path for the future. "I love the feeling of running down stairs. It's an activity the body was made for, something that feels perfect and correct." The letter to Absolut Vodka is probably my favorite. It ends like this:" I am applying for a job, because I don't think you understand what to means to be cool or strong or invincible. You of all people should know. That is what alcohol does. It makes you strong. You can fight anyone. You can seduce anyone. You can drive faster than death." I don't think this is by accident, so I wish Comeau had whittled away at some of the bombast and deepened his main character a little.

ECW Press's treatment of the book is lovely. The paper is thick and the cover art by Comeau is striking. And the letter on the cover is dated with my brother's birthday.

Bonus: A shout out to a web comic-er Ryan North and his penis are included in a letter to Yahoo.

dribs

Hi to new followers and twitter folk. Please comment when it moves you; like a network TV comedy and rigidly-defined gender roles, bloggers need comments to live.
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Speaking of twitter, through the feed of M K Reed, I found out about Tessa Brunton's comics. They looked familiar and it turns out a read a piece by her a few years ago. Good story, no? Anyway, I am loving these comics, especially Brunton's attention to the small pattern--polka dots, leave and wiggly lines are everywhere in her work and they add a sweetness to the work that I love. Plus, she has a favorite podcasts section on her site.

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Better than cut any day.

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My subway rides have been filled with The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. It took me about a third of the way in to get into it, but now I am enjoying the swirl of spices, plant names, opium smoke and righteousness that blows through the book.

I've been lucky with my reading recently. More reviews soon.

Still loving The Hearing Trumpet. I will be finished soon and was ruffled by the fact that unless I want to spend tens of dollars to buy a copy of her older work, my only other options for reading more Leonora Carrington is one copy of one book of hers in the BPL. Will somebody please, please reprint her other works?

While researching my reading options for Carrington, I looked more into the catalog of Exact Change, the publisher of the copy of The Hearing Trumpet that I am reading. They publish a ton of stuff that I am interested in, including the recent indie craze, Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. I am thinking of picking up that and The Death & Letters of Alice James: Selected Correspondence by Alice James and The Heresiarch & Co. by Guillaume Apollinaire. If anybody has any suggestions, let me know.

***

A few nights ago, B came home very late. He went to his computer and, through my sleepy haze, I heard the sound of files being transferred at a rapid pace. What could he possibly be doing after a long night of sport and jazz?

Turns out, he was blogging.

***
Oberlin College has a 97-item online mail art collection. I was very excited about this until I actually looked at the collection. What is really available on the internet is basically a catalog record, with uninteresting and barely helpful object metadata exposed and only a thumbnail image available. Some entries have links to biographies of the artists and postal data, but the tiny representations of the pieces make it useless for anyone not able to make it to Oberlin to check out the physical collection. (But do check out the very good collection overview to learn about and see more mail art).

I am spending a lot of time thinking about digital collections right now for school. Mostly I've been thinking about what putting a collection on the open web means. How much do we need to take into account the needs of the remote, and possibly casual, use when thinking about displaying metadata, offering quality representations of works and driving users to physical locations? This is a frustrating question for me. I believe that researchers should be doing the research, but I also think access is vastly improved the more data about an object is attached and available. And if your objects are visual, you've gotta have good representations--otherwise I really don't see the point of putting more than an excellent finding aid on the open web.

What do you think?
(via Letter Writers' Alliance)

Brothers, lovers & British women

Abandonware by An Owomoyela on PodCastle is an excellent SF story about grief, siblings and powerful love. Owomoyela captures so much about the experience of a "shrinking family," the strange, painful tension between the roles of child, adult and sibling and the strange rituals required for "moving on." I don't believe in moving on exactly, more like moving through, but this story was a nicely wrought piece of sibling fiction.

Here's an interesting interview with Owomoyela at Fantasy Magazine.

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The other blogger in my house finally posted something! If you like music and blurry pictures, you will love this mega post.

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Because I lost two awesome books in a row, my subway reading dwindled to reading those eerie "Does NYC need church?" ads and NY Post headlines. This was not sustainable, so after a very long class I went to the library on campus and checked over their paltry fiction section for something to distract on the ride home. At first nothing seemed to grab me from the college-bookshelf collection, but then I saw Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet. It was a nice edition and looked intriguing. I'm loving it so far with its wise and anarchic old ladies and precise, pulsing language. I can't wait to dive back in. That's one of her amazing paintings on the cover. After I finish the book I want to find out more about her art.

Recently lost, in transit, in limbo:

1) my glasses
2) my keys and various other things in an excellent, and also lost, tote bag
3) a half-read copy of You Were Wrong
4) a just started copy of Lucius Shepard's short stories
5) the only cord that works for my computer
6) time to write
7) my attention span
9) healthy wrist movement

I have a little something over at The Rumpus, third item down.

I don't know what the selection process was like, but I'd like to imagine that there was one. I'm glad it was chosen, as I am trying to work out some things for my zine. I was so excited that I told some people at work, who, of course, wanted to read it. Then the shame of having written something sad and true, a shame I am trying to get over, reared its ugly head and I wished I hadn't said anything at all.

Exactly.

Mixt

Comics and librarianship comes together in this excellent post about CCS's Schulz Library by Caitlin McGurk. She talks about the history of their catalog and her newest project, using Koha to revamp the catalog and make it "more robust and 21st-Century." Besides all the details she provides about the project, a great help to me as a library student, this article shows what a dedicated community can do. The Schulz Library is for the students and it is the students that have largely created it. Fascinating!

Plus, check out the photos and illustrations in the post. So good!

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This Dear Sugar column is about dating and love, but it also brings together two of my passions--smart pretending and the future. As someone who deals with, let's call them unhelpful, messages from my body all the time, I sometimes have to pretend that the day's challenges are worth it. I do this for my loved ones and friends and plants and home, but also for my future self--she needs smart decisions and good days to be the happiest and best version of me. I pull her together from everywhere--books, films, women I respect, dreams and good conversations--and make her real every day. If you tweak that scheme a little bit, you also basically get the blueprint for how I write. Shh, don't tell anyone my secret process!

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Today I got a letter from an old friend with several small children. I could read the distraction in her lines--dropped words, glossed descriptions. I am so happy that took the time to write to me about her day to day. We don't live all that far apart from each other but our lives have diverged to the point that it is very difficult to get together or even talk on the phone for more than a few minutes. I miss her and must send off something exciting soon.

*Top photo by by Rudolf Eickemeyer from the NYPL Digital Gallery,Image ID: 92135; bottom photo by me

My Top 15 in 2010

2010 was a pretty good reading year. Strangely, I didn’t seem to review many of the books that delighted me most. I read a ton of books about British women in various types of confinement. Maybe that certain type of dry escapism is what I needed to carry me through my semesters and various infirmities. Two of my favorites were published in 2010: Meeks and Love in Infant Monkeys. Eleven were by ladies. Three were comics. And, with that riveting introduction, here is the list:

Meeks by Julia Holmes
This first novel was a weird surprise. At first I wasn’t sure that I was into it, this book about men with extremely limited options in life, for whom marriage is the ultimate goal, but then I got completely sucked in. Something about Holmes’ details, and the way that the broader story emerges from three characters’ points of view, makes reading this like unfolding a secret message prepared by an origami master—getting to the answer is half the fun.

The book’s design, with its French flaps and lovely cover art by Robyn O’Neil, should also get a shout out. It looks so unusual and compelling that even though I’ve already read it, I keep wanting to pick it up again for the first time.

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
This is a re-re-read. It’s a lovely meditation on old age and death done by a master.

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey


Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
How, why, did I not write about this British gem when it was fresh in my mind? This was a nasty little book about the horribleness of family and the loneliness that withheld wealth can bring. A huge flood in a small village is central to the plot and Comyns writes beautiful, gory details of rotting, waterlogged nature like no other. Calm yet precise, I loved this book!

Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
I will admit it here—I have never read any Moomin books. However, Tove Jansson wasn’t a one-comic pony, she wrote in many forms, including novels. This book is a quiet, hypnotic book about time, family and small worlds. I loved it.

China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh

The City and the City by China Mieville
A mystery in a divided city, this book was a total treat. Mieville’s usually florid writing is reined in here and it really works. Though the setting, two distinct cities existing in the same geographical area, with the possibility of a third emerging, seems like it could have turned into a blow-me-down political allegory or an exposition nightmare, the author’s character work holds its own. Check it out!

This year I also read Looking for Jake, an uneven collection of Mieville’s short stories. It was interesting to see how The City and the City could have developed from ideas he explored much earlier in a story about feral streets called "Reports of Certain Events in London." In The Scar, which I also read this year, the idea of a living, moving city was taken to extremes. The story was quite different from TCATC, and those with no patience for Mieville’s wordy style would not enjoy it. I read it at the perfect time however—in a sickbed—and was transported.

Norwood by Charles Portis & Amulet by Robert Bolano
Both of these books were gifts from The Prog Lady. I was concerned that her love of old man stories would have clouded her judgment, but both short books were excellent in different ways. Norwood was funny and deceptively simple. Amulet had an amazing main character, a jailed woman who considered herself the “Mother of Mexican Poetry” and a looping pace that challenges ideas of memory and truth.

Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Davis
This book of short stories totally rocked. They each have a central animal presence, but are fully about human inadequacies and excess. And the book was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction runner up if that means anything to you.

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Being middle-aged and female sucketh, as this book of malignant benignity shows. So, sometimes you need to become a witch.
The usually excellent introductory essays furnished by the New York Review of Books were not represented here. Alison Lurie’s intro was superficial, boring and gives away the entire plot of the story. Read it after you’ve finished the novel, if you must.

Monsters by Ken Dahl
A curious mix of sex ed and autobio, Dahl’s big book on herpes illuminates life with an unpopular disease. The self-loathing infused self-portraits fill the pages alongside facts about herpes and several painful anecdotes about self treatment and relationships after the herp. His hideous visualizations of his body were my favorite part. If only I could express my internal hatred so beautifully! Of course, things straighten out for him in the end, but it is an interesting path to what feels more like a compromise than peace.

Cross Country by MK Reed
I initially picked up the single issues of Cross Country and was super bummed when I found out that there wasn’t going to be a final chapter released. So it took me awhile to pick up the trade but I am really happy I did. Reed’s writing shines here and though the art looks a bit labored, the story of a work-related road trip works really well.

Down the Street by Lynda Barry
Before Marlys and her pals, there was Down the Street, where puffy-haired ancestors of the alternative press darlings played in sadder stories. It’s not quite as smooth and universal as Barry’s later work but it’s a great, instructive read nonetheless.

all those todays

Today I forgot to do every little thing on the list, crying and dreaming in equal parts. Nothing important got done, I think, but I’d like to believe that this neck-up action will lead to something akin to what Renee French talked about on her recent Inkstuds interview. She discussed how when she has migraines she can’t do anything but sleep and imagine lightly around a blocky world. Those flights from physical reality ultimately inform her work. It’s nasty and tiresome and painful, but she makes something out of it.

I just keep reaching in and rooting around in my guts and heart looking for a hold on any one irritant, something I can pluck out and expose on the page, pin down and examine until it dies and disappears. I want to reach out instead, and perhaps I should, but right now I am out of step with my people. Friends, near and far, are often mired in pits of things done and left undone and likely don’t have time for search parties and good cop, bad cop.

It takes me forever to lurch around my own mental landscape and find words. To find out if the way I’ve arranged stuff is worth keeping in any way and then move on. I’m working on something depressing but very important—a difficult position for someone like me, someone who flees from pinpricks but often ends up trotting straight into the woodchipper. Even though I hate them, I need the failures almost as much as comments and kudos and victories. Without them I can’t get to the good stuff and I’ve been avoiding failure for more years than I care to mention and, of course, only failing to do anything at all.

Shining a light on a wheel as it spins in place doesn’t tell you much, does it? So, how about I turn off the light and just listen for awhile?

Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery, Image ID: 1157702

Books of 2010

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
Meeks by Julia Holmes
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
Horse, Flower, Bird by Kate Bernheimer
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
Zero History by William Gibson
Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel
Bookhunter by Jason Shiga
Hound by Vincent McCaffery
Amulet by Roberto Bolano
The Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss
The Scar by China Mieville
Momento Mori by Muriel Spark
Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey
Monsters by Ken Dahl
Rainforest by Jenny Diski
Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Absence Makes the Heart by Lynne Tillman
The Salon by Nick Bertozzi
Looking for Jake by China Mielville
Cross Country by MK Reed
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
King Rat by China Mieville
Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin
Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso
Summer Will Show by by Syliva Townsend Warner
A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross
Whirlwind Wonderland by Rina Ayuyang
Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
Exit Wounds by Rutu Mondan
Cast in Doubt by Lynne Tillman
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. Mc Hugh
Paper Cities, An Anthology of Urban Fantasy Edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Cecil and Jordan in New York: Stories by Gabrielle Bell
Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, eds.
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
The City and the City by China Mieville
The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
Sweet Tomb by Trinie Dalton
Norwood by Charles Portis
Down the Street by Lynda Barry
Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Davis
Lolly Willowes by Syliva Townsend Warner

3 for you and me

Yesterday B went shopping for his family for Christmas. I was along to advise, but in a bookstore it is difficult to simply observe and comment. We were in Williamsburg so we went to Spoonbill & Sugartown and Book Thug Nation. While S&S carries the nonfiction and eye candy that would fill my shelves if book money grew in shower mildew, BTN is a used bookstore after my own heart.

But, I sure do miss Clovis. It was somehow less serious than BTN and had more comics and zines than Unnameable. I would always forget about it, but then there it would be, holding down that corner spot on Bedford quietly being the one place I really liked to go in the neighborhood. Until the day it wasn't, of course.

***

I did buy myself a book last night from the book thugs--Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century. I heard about it on Amy H. Sturgis's superb column A Look Back at Genre History on Starship Sofa 164.

I love these segments for Sturgis's taste in history lessons and her hypnotic voice. She injects new life into tired genres (vampires for instance) by focusing on examples that I might actually be into. She certainly sold me on the unfortunately-named Varney the Vampire or the Feast of Blood, a penny dreadful available on all the best out-of-copyright sites on the web. Turns out I had an excerpt of it in an old Penguin anthology at my parents house.

Oh, old-timey horror, you're the best for hiding in the bathroom with!

***

I just ate several carrots, rinsed and skinned and cool to the tongue. The crunch was a sweet bit of escape from my nasty cold. I doubt I'll be doing any reading today but at least the food will be good.