Post 31
Happy Friday, my duckies!
It is a delightful day in the world of engineering management. Let me tell you how much I love cost-loaded schedules and contracting. Mmm. Delicious, delicious bureaucratic bullshit. Sigh. I hate it all. I shouldn’t complain…this is the first job I’ve gotten to work that’s only 8 hrs a day and doesn’t make me wade through dead bodies, toxic sludge, and toxic masculinity. But damn. It’s so boring. More time for my secret passion of romances, comic books, and long runs in the dark. Oh, yeah. I can deal with this.
This week, a bobcat ran along with me for a hundred feet along the trail—she was slim, elegant. Friendly. She didn’t seem to be hunting me, just sort of visiting. I saw great horned owls perched on the high wires over the river. Scared a coyote family so that they cried like children. Literal children. It was creepy and moderately terrifying when they started up right next to me. And the sky has been stunning. A few weeks ago, I turned around and the full moon was just hanging over the mountain like a pearl-drop. Huge and silver surrounded by that dark, deep desert blue of twilight. The one that’s so clear and so intense, it just seems to flood your eyes. And yesterday, I turned around to see the sunset over the river running. For those of you that don’t know, the river only runs a few times a year during the winter rains and the summer storms. Normally, it’s a dry wadi full of plants and critters. But last night, it was mercury-silver and the sky was lit up orange. Not with clouds, no, it was like a layer cake of intense orange, blue, and pure midnight black with the evening star just sort of perched there, all those colors reflecting on this metallic silver ribbon in the black of the new moon. Oh boy.
It was also freezing cold (for me) and intensely dark without the moon and stars. Disconcerting, to say the least, to not see the trail or your own feet. I always run with red light so that I can be more a part of the darkness and man, it was worth it. I looked up and there were just stars everywhere. BAM. Raining down on me. Three meteors in a row and the horizon just slammed into the mountains in all this darkness. Worth it.
In more mundane news, I finished Sunstone and would highly recommend it. Ending is a little weak, but the story is solid, the art is amazing, and it’s a total romance. With a little kink in there for a good time. I appreciate it.
Started Saga. Wasn’t too sure about it, first couple panels are a little rough to get into, but I like where it’s headed. It’s got a nice tech v. magic duality, some good romance, some good lines, interesting ideas, really beautifully drawn. Went ahead and got the whole series, so I’ll be finishing that up soon.
I finished Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller. Oh my. If you are a fan of wandering narcissism with a good dash of pretentiousness and white-boy entitlement in the tradition of Jack Kerouac, you are going to love this guy. I felt a strong urge to pop him in the metaphorical face a few times.
Hernan Diaz, on the other hand, put together something beautiful with his work, In the Distance. It’s an adventure story from the mid-eighteen hundreds about a Swedish boy lost in the American West. Good story, good history, compelling feel, great imagery. Really excellent read.
I was reading a lot this week. I needed to escape. Someone I loved died a while ago and I seemed to be unable to get her out of my mind this week. It’s hard to let people go, I suppose. There are reminders of her everywhere and I just kept lying to myself that she was still here with me. She’s not. Can’t hide from the hole forever. It’s probably better just to let it swallow me up. Makes me think that this emotion chip is just too much. I might as well take it out and use that energy for something more productive, since I’ll never love anything like that again. All this searching for something meaningful is like feeling something just brush the edges of your fingers on the very top shelf. I know it’s there. I can feel something, but I don’t know what it is or if I’ll even be able to use it if I could actually hold it.
Ah well. It’s all smoke in the fire anyway. I’m going to start revising my books finally and self-publish them. It’s about time, right? I know, I know, I’ve been lazy these past years. I will get them up to speed and into print, if only to give myself the pleasure of their physical company on my shelves.
Tally-ho to victory!