"I am carrying this scrap of paper that can crack the darkest sky wide open."
And, on the thirteenth of March, I awake to snow and a wind-chill of -2˚F. I am utterly exhausted by this goddamn winter. It was 17˚F when I got out of bed about 10:30 a.m. Now it's 18˚F, and the windchill has risen to -3˚F.
Better there never had been a warm day.
Then I spent five minutes trying to decipher what some fucknut on Facebook meant by the acronym "ikr."
Anyway...yesterday's stale Hell, which is looking pretty damn good right about now:
No writing yesterday. Instead, I put together the sixth draft for a table of contents to the second "best of" volume, which meant reading through several stories from 2009 and 2010 that I haven't read since they were written. The book still has no title. There was email, because always is there email. I also spoke with a representative from the second university to request my papers for their archives. It's more than a little strange, such interest, but it's also comforting. There's much I wouldn't want to see lost. Around five p.m., I began signing signature sheets for Centipede Press' forthcoming A Mountain Walked anthology, edited by S.T. Joshi, which includes my story "John Four," as well as fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, Gemma Files, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, Wilum Pugmire, and quite a few others. I've never before signed signature sheets that Lovecraft "signed" before me. I made it through about half of the five hundred pages. Anyway, yesterday was a long and very tedious day. Today will likely be more so.
Think of every town you've lived in,
Every room you lay your head.
And what is it that you remember?
Do you carry every sadness with you?
Every hour your heart was broken?
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you? ~ Hem
Last night, we finished Season Two of House of Cards. I cannot praise this series highly enough. Certainly, it's the best television since the untimely demise of Deadwood in in August 2006. Frank Underwood is one of the most unqualifiedly brilliant characters TV ever has spawned. As I watched the two series, it felt less and less life Capitol Hill politico-drama and more like Rome as scripted by a collaboration of Shakespeare and Camus. David Fincher has crafted a marvel, and Kevin Spacey has turned in what may be the performance of his career (which is saying quite a lot). Highly recommended.
I have more pictures from Mackerel Cove on Tuesday, and I'm only putting them up because I've gone to the trouble to sort, resize, and upload them. Just now, the warmth of Tuesday feels like a sick goddamn joke. These include the second, third, and fourth underwater photos by Nemo. The first was taken, you will recall, at Beavertail on February 22nd. That one was taken in a calm (freezing) tidal pool, these three in sandy surf.
One of the shoals of shell hash, a great heap of bivalve and gastropod shells and metamorphic pebbles. Oh, and peach pits. We kept finding those. I joked they'd been carried northwards on the Gulf Stream, from the Carolinas and Georgia. View to the southeast.
Trying hard to pretend this is a bed of Late Cretaceous chalk and marl, instead of Holocene beach sand. View to the east.
Mostly slipper shells (Crepidula fornicata), with a few jingle shells (Anomia simplex), and razor clams (Ensis directus).
I just liked this shot. The holes in that hunk of clam shell where made my the radulae of hungry predatory snails.
The weathered shell of a whelk.
Spooky found the battered columella of a very large channeled or knobbed whelk (Busycon sp.), then stuck it into the sand, like a spiraling tower. The preserved portion of the columella was ~7".
Also, we found this Elder Sign cast up on the beach. We left it where it lay.
And now, Nemo tries underwater again....
A failed shot, taken just before the camera entered the surf. 4:21 p.m. EDT.
Shot 2. Bubbles and sediment. 5:15 p.m.
Shot 3. 5:17 p.m.
Shot 4. 5:17 p.m.
All photographs Copyright © 2014 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
A man is walking on the highway.
A woman stares out at the sea.
And light is only now just breaking. ~ Hem
And I should consider trying to get to work. There's proofreading and correction on two short stories to be done today.
Lazy Eyed,
Aunt Beast
Better there never had been a warm day.
Then I spent five minutes trying to decipher what some fucknut on Facebook meant by the acronym "ikr."
Anyway...yesterday's stale Hell, which is looking pretty damn good right about now:
No writing yesterday. Instead, I put together the sixth draft for a table of contents to the second "best of" volume, which meant reading through several stories from 2009 and 2010 that I haven't read since they were written. The book still has no title. There was email, because always is there email. I also spoke with a representative from the second university to request my papers for their archives. It's more than a little strange, such interest, but it's also comforting. There's much I wouldn't want to see lost. Around five p.m., I began signing signature sheets for Centipede Press' forthcoming A Mountain Walked anthology, edited by S.T. Joshi, which includes my story "John Four," as well as fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, Gemma Files, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, Wilum Pugmire, and quite a few others. I've never before signed signature sheets that Lovecraft "signed" before me. I made it through about half of the five hundred pages. Anyway, yesterday was a long and very tedious day. Today will likely be more so.
Think of every town you've lived in,
Every room you lay your head.
And what is it that you remember?
Do you carry every sadness with you?
Every hour your heart was broken?
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you? ~ Hem
Last night, we finished Season Two of House of Cards. I cannot praise this series highly enough. Certainly, it's the best television since the untimely demise of Deadwood in in August 2006. Frank Underwood is one of the most unqualifiedly brilliant characters TV ever has spawned. As I watched the two series, it felt less and less life Capitol Hill politico-drama and more like Rome as scripted by a collaboration of Shakespeare and Camus. David Fincher has crafted a marvel, and Kevin Spacey has turned in what may be the performance of his career (which is saying quite a lot). Highly recommended.
I have more pictures from Mackerel Cove on Tuesday, and I'm only putting them up because I've gone to the trouble to sort, resize, and upload them. Just now, the warmth of Tuesday feels like a sick goddamn joke. These include the second, third, and fourth underwater photos by Nemo. The first was taken, you will recall, at Beavertail on February 22nd. That one was taken in a calm (freezing) tidal pool, these three in sandy surf.
One of the shoals of shell hash, a great heap of bivalve and gastropod shells and metamorphic pebbles. Oh, and peach pits. We kept finding those. I joked they'd been carried northwards on the Gulf Stream, from the Carolinas and Georgia. View to the southeast.
Trying hard to pretend this is a bed of Late Cretaceous chalk and marl, instead of Holocene beach sand. View to the east.
Mostly slipper shells (Crepidula fornicata), with a few jingle shells (Anomia simplex), and razor clams (Ensis directus).
I just liked this shot. The holes in that hunk of clam shell where made my the radulae of hungry predatory snails.
The weathered shell of a whelk.
Spooky found the battered columella of a very large channeled or knobbed whelk (Busycon sp.), then stuck it into the sand, like a spiraling tower. The preserved portion of the columella was ~7".
Also, we found this Elder Sign cast up on the beach. We left it where it lay.
And now, Nemo tries underwater again....
A failed shot, taken just before the camera entered the surf. 4:21 p.m. EDT.
Shot 2. Bubbles and sediment. 5:15 p.m.
Shot 3. 5:17 p.m.
Shot 4. 5:17 p.m.
All photographs Copyright © 2014 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
A man is walking on the highway.
A woman stares out at the sea.
And light is only now just breaking. ~ Hem
And I should consider trying to get to work. There's proofreading and correction on two short stories to be done today.
Lazy Eyed,
Aunt Beast