"Climb the boxcars to the engine, through the smoke and to the sky."
It's halfway to a summer day here in Providence green autumn. I had a psychiatrist appointment today. Those are always fun, boy howdy. Today I told her, forthrightly, that my seeing her was utterly pointless. As are most things in my life. She just stared at me. It's not that she's a bad woman, but I've dealt with psychiatry and psychology now since 1987, and in all that time neither has come much nearer to being genuine, hard, bio-medical sciences, and they've done me precious little good. They give me pills. They've given me a couple of unpleasant hospital stays. They've given me twenty or so diagnoses. They produce meaningless statistics, placing, for example, 1 in 68 (1.47% of 68) American children somewhere on the "autism spectrum."* This isn't science. This is something just shy of quackery, relying on poor methodology and waste-basket taxonomy based on anything but rigorous observation and experimentation. Anyway, to hell with them. I get my pills. Tiddley-pom.
This morning I learned that just about the only building that has ever come close to feeling like home to me - Liberty House, on 1st Avenue North, in Birmingham - suffered a fire on the afternoon of May 22nd. It began on the roof, and spread into the elevator shaft. It's unclear how much damage was done, and it seems like not all the residents were displaced by the fire, but there was fire, smoke, and water damage. I can only hope that the rebuilding will be swift and won't alter the structure too much. Hearing the news was a fucking gut punch. Liberty House, built in 1909, was constructed by Frank White for $43,500 as a warehouse. It soon became the home of Collins & Co. Wholesale Grocers; the building later served as a Packard automobile dealership before becoming the factory and store for the Liberty Overall Company. The building was purchased by developer Adam Cohen in the 1990s and converted into 16 residential lofts with secured parking below. I lived there from August 1997 until December 2002, and I was an idiot ever to have left.
Yesterday, the "final" draft of the manuscript for Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two) finally away went to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. Now I'm finishing up proofreading False/Starts II, the chapbook that will accompany the illustrated limited of the collection. I don't yet have a release date.
That's all for now.
Come on Sorrow,
Aunt Beast
* According to Scientific American, quoting highly suspect numbers recently released by the CDC.
This morning I learned that just about the only building that has ever come close to feeling like home to me - Liberty House, on 1st Avenue North, in Birmingham - suffered a fire on the afternoon of May 22nd. It began on the roof, and spread into the elevator shaft. It's unclear how much damage was done, and it seems like not all the residents were displaced by the fire, but there was fire, smoke, and water damage. I can only hope that the rebuilding will be swift and won't alter the structure too much. Hearing the news was a fucking gut punch. Liberty House, built in 1909, was constructed by Frank White for $43,500 as a warehouse. It soon became the home of Collins & Co. Wholesale Grocers; the building later served as a Packard automobile dealership before becoming the factory and store for the Liberty Overall Company. The building was purchased by developer Adam Cohen in the 1990s and converted into 16 residential lofts with secured parking below. I lived there from August 1997 until December 2002, and I was an idiot ever to have left.
Yesterday, the "final" draft of the manuscript for Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two) finally away went to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. Now I'm finishing up proofreading False/Starts II, the chapbook that will accompany the illustrated limited of the collection. I don't yet have a release date.
That's all for now.
Come on Sorrow,
Aunt Beast
* According to Scientific American, quoting highly suspect numbers recently released by the CDC.