BooksIWouldHaveToldMySisterAbout

This week is like observing a bruise on your leg. Sometimes you press down deliberately, waiting to see how the colors change, whether it still hurts. Sometimes you just watch it go from red to purple, green to yellow upon your skin. It still hurts, but it’s softer there now.

I finished reading a book I enjoyed, and then in the acknowledgements the author gave this gushing thank you to Jesus Christ, and it nearly ruined the whole thing. It’s definitely put me off reading her other two books, for not at least. Sure you’re allowed to thank you whoever the hell you want, but Jesus didn’t do any of this. The author did. The editor did. Heck, the reader has done more than Jesus.

Anyway, I think about the books I would dedicate to you, and maybe I still will. Maybe I’ll write a touching paragraph about how none of this would have happened without you. At least on my part it would be true. Unsurprisingly, you have also done more than Jesus.

This post doesn’t have a direction. I’m counting down the days to the day, and then it will happen, and then it will pass, and maybe I’ll breathe a little easier as we go into autumn. Right now the hot sunshine, the sticky sweaty days and muggy nights, none of it helps. I see the sun rise every day and all I can think about was how obscenely bright that morning was, when I woke up and before I knew.

I never liked the sun much anyways.

I've spent my life traveling, spent my life free I could not repay all you've done for me

Discuss...

I still want to tell you everything. Does that surprise you? All the little nonsense things of the day. There have been so many days, you know.

The weather cooled off magnificently because I caved and got a bus pass, knowing how much more of a person I am in the summer when I don’t have to deal with the heat as much. So now it’s in the 70’s and all the windows are open and the cats are perching in the sills, staring avidly at the birds.

The books are piling up haphazardly at work because we’re still backed up. We’ve started sorting things by branch, which makes it feel more purposeful at least, even if it does nothing in the long run. I’m on the last day of an eight day work stretch and while, yes, that is terrible, it is so much better here than when I had that sort of thing in the suburbs.

How even the straightest looking dudes seem nicer when they’re wearing allyish shirts during June. All are welcome here. Such a simple sentence, and yet.

Jenny comes over and bumps her head against me, my arm, my leg, etc, to tell me it is Now Time for skritches. How she likes, even though she wouldn’t admit it under torture, being seized and given butt skritches and neck ones at the same time. How she comes over and settles down near Stretch and I, clearly Joining In. You would be so proud of her, our little void.

Lestat is back and this season is magnificent. There was a quote in this Roman romance novel I was reading (and I will finish, even though the introduction of Christianity bummed me out) about how living for lust was as good a reason as any. I don’t think I will ever fall in love, but I am capable of great lust, and hopefully through that, great art one day. I want the Lestat album on vinyl.

How much I desperately longed to go to the Lestat concert in New York, even though after submitting my name for the ticket request, I had a full blown wave of anxiety, trying to think about how I would even manage getting there if I DID get a ticket, and what I would wear. How discontent I am with my body right now and how I would want to look so much better before I got anywhere near Sam Reid. Vain, yes, I know, but I can’t help it. I’m nearing forty, you know and I want my body to be better for the future even if this is all the future there is. And even though the anxiety was deeply unpleasant, it was almost reassuring to realize I cared that much about the concert.

Of course, making myself exercise consistently is still hard. I do have my treadmill set up in my nook though now, and I bought lube (haha) for it over the weekend because I’ve now used it enough that it needs that. That’s something at least.

How all the themes repeat in my head, and eventually I will run out of them.

How am I approaching forty and you’re not here….

And the books of course.

Netgalley – I’m currently reading He Always Comes Back by Elle Engel- which isn’t out till January 2027.

Physical books – I checked in three books this morning that looked good, Maine – J. Courtney Sullivan, The Queen’s Governess – Karen Harper, and The Last Room on the Left – Leah Konen, which I’ve been meaning to read forever. They are all now safely stored in my drawer at work… Tune in next time to see if I’ve actually read any of them.

Discuss...

Every time I place an interlibrary loan it feels like I’m admitting to believing in the future. The library will still exist and will put in a request for this fantasy paperback from 85. That the university the request gets sent to will approve it. That’ll even arrive. That the world will still be here as it is, more or less, and society will keep functioning and I will check out the book and read it.

I’m making myself request this one because I tend to just buy the old fantasy & scifi novels I want to read instead of requesting them. (6.99! On thriftbooks! why not!) but i have no money this month and the university of Indiana has the book right there. Also a Mennonite college which fascinates me. The book in question, The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane (whose name I recognized from Star Trek novels) is supposedly queer and poly, and maybe the Mennonites are more chill with that than I would guess.

It’s good that I’m requesting it instead of just buying it, I tell myself. I have other novels like this that I’ve discovered over the years. Maybe I told you about some of them before, maybe you’re just hearing about them now. Maybe both. I don’t know how the universe works in death. There’s Point of Honor, The Interior Life by Katherine Blake, The Silent City – Elizabeth Vonarburg, The Sixth Seal – Mary Wesley… Have I read them? No, not yet. Actually I think you might have bought the Sixth Seal.

At any rate I started this entry at least two weeks ago, and it was going to go in a twisty medieval way because I was listening to the new Tori album, In Times of Dragons. And I thought that Tori would make a good Nimue, but then I thought she’d make a great Morgain too. And Guinevere. And Igraine. And obviously she would make a fantastic Lady of the Lake. And I wanted to find different pictures and make something, and I thought about Swamp Arthur and how I’ve been thinking about going over what we had written so far. And then I think I stopped thinking about it because it hurt and I missed you.

Anyway, maybe this will be the year I finally read The Once and Future King. Maybe I will reread Swamp Arthur. Maybe.

Oh, and the library website blipped before I got my ILL request in and honestly I haven’t tried again yet because. *stares into the void* But I will.

Discuss...

The book I finished earlier jumped straight from Sad Murder to Depressing As Fuck Murder. The main character has very very quietly snapped. She goes to work, she buys groceries, she cooks for herself and her younger sister who’s an heroin addict. And she’s been lowkey, systemically killing men who resemble the man who fucked up their lives as a kid.

I don’t know wheter it was the first time she pops over to her sister’s house (they live across the street from each other, the younger sister lives in the house they grew up in, which is full of awful traumatic memories, naturally) but somewhere early on, I knew the younger sister was dead, and the older one was clearly just denying it as hard as she could.

It would have been nice to have houses opposite each other. That, or the apartments in the same building or sharing a house, all the plans we made.

I didn’t keep you after your death. I suppose I could have tried, but that works better with a house you own, or at least an attic, and we didn’t have those. So when I found you, and you were so still, and still warm, and I hated that, I called E. I called Dad, I ran down and got B and her parents. I functioned.

After I had moved you, in the hopes that you were just fucking out of it, like I could wake you back up.

it didn’t work.

I am functional, for the most part. I go to work, I keep my job and I got another lovely review from my manager a few weeks ago.

I don’t know what to do with the fact that I can walk around like this and say things to people and act nice, and sound okay. I should have laid down on the floor and held you and wasted away from grief. Because what is this? Every day, day after day, nonfuckingstop. It was light outside when I got off work this evening, and still light as I walked home. It’s so nice, and I enjoy that even if I’m not okay with the weather getting warmer. Apart from the physical discomfort, the warmth means spring, and spring fades all too soon into summer. And then we’re back to August again.

And now I am changing, becoming something else A creature of longing, tending only to myself Licking my wounds Burrowing down in a house in the woods on the edge of town Well healing is slow It comes and it goes A glimpse of the sun then a flurry of snow The first green shoots and a sudden frost Oh something is gained when something is lost

The rot and the ruin The earth and the worms The seasons change The world turns The world turns

• Florence & the Marchine

I miss you, Eames.

Discuss...

we slipped into August like it was just another week beginning. July could have gone on longer. It was a short, busy filled month of hot days and nights, and all the days I spent reading with the cats or staring into nothingness. Okay, usually I am staring out the window and there’s the sky, the sky is not nothing, we all know that. and when I’m just staring endlessly inwards, it’s usually towards a bookcase, and obviously that is also very much something.

So many phrases, where do they all come from. How many times do you have use something before i