Just Like the Phoenix…

The day before Lifehacker featured the discussion “How do you start exercising when you’re older and out of shape?” I’d signed up for a yoga class at a new studio that opened up an 8 minute walk from my place.  Probably one of the few times in my life that I started out a little ahead of the game.

In keeping with that, I’m scheduling this post to be pushed out after the class, just in case it kills me.  This actually isn’t  (unless I’m deluding myself, which I suppose is possible) an attempt to fulfill a freshly minted New Year’s resolution.  Getting back into shape has been on my mind since I turned 40 last July.  I’ve known for awhile that it’s past time I put some consistent effort into maintaining this meat-sack of mine.

I set the bar low: to just not be a mass of blubber with no muscle tone.  I’m not trying to recapture what I had in my late 20s/early 30s when I was training different martial arts and feeding an endorphin addiction by working out 3-4 times a week.  Though I admit, I looked good those years.  I’d lost two pants sizes, and wore jeans from high school.  Now I’m back to where I was before I worked out, and then some.  I was flexible back then.  I’d just like some of that back.  It’s still kind of there I think; I’ve always had slightly above-average flexibility.  But it doesn’t take much to push it too far these days.

It still feels like a lot of my moves are still in me, though.  But I’d be stupid to try them now, without a slow return via something like yoga.  I’d end up looking just like this…

So, assuming this isn’t my last entry, I’ll be back with tales of how this over-40 meat-sack rises from the ashes…

My Everyday Horror Story

From “An Everyday Horror Story”
by Harvey Pekar.
Art by Gerry Shamray.

Whatever lung pox I had that led to two weeks of paroxysms of coughing has messed up my voice.  To clarify, it’s messed it up for an additional week after the coughing is now more or less under control.  I’m starting to wonder if it’s one of the two(!) inhalers I’m on.  I’m this close to having to having to use one of my Field Notes notebooks to write things out instead of speaking them.

Anyway, it reminded me of a story in Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor (issue 5), “An Everyday Horror Story,” in which our man has a long bout with laryngitis and it starts to do things to his head.

I’ll tell you, I’m starting to relate.  It’s not just the voice loss, but these weird muscle spasms I’ve been getting lately.

I try to avoid soliciting curbside consultations from the medical professionals I work with, but a lot of them are just generally helpful by nature.  So the other day, some of them dropped some knowledge on me.  Now, I knew the muscles that were spasming (my intercostals) are the ones I use to cough but what I didn’t realize is that the reason they can take a long time to heal is because they can never truly rest, seeing as they’re the same muscles I use to breathe.

That’s what’s messing with my head.  My voice I can rest, but I can’t stop breathing.  Talk about feeling like a supernatural force is messing with you.  It’s bad enough fighting my own procrastination, which I do every day.  It’s even harder when you can’t talk and have trouble moving, or even sitting.  But I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, really.  Harvey got his voice back.  I’ll likely get my voice back (gonna call the doctor again, though).  My intercostal muscles will get better.  Maybe I’ll get my groove back, too.

Maybe.

Quickie Review: JAGANNATH

JagannathJagannath by Karin Tidbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is technically incomplete. I finished this book back in September (’13) but didn’t write about it until now (January of ’14). I felt I couldn’t write about it because I didn’t (and still haven’t) rated the story “Some Letters for Ove Lindström.” (I’m still too close to the subject matter of that story.)

I know almost nothing about the Swedish/Scandinavian myths and didn’t think I necessarily had to in order to see the heart of these stories. Nor could I tell which stories were translated and which were written in English. It’s testament to Tidbeck’s writing, I think.

The collection started strongly and ended with a bang. The stories that didn’t move me were generally the ones where Tidbeck revisits certain themes without, at least as far as I could tell, adding anything new. Those aside, the ones that did move me are positively gut-wrenching.

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Coca-Cola Comic Book Orgy, or Quickie Review: HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

Horse of a Different Color: StoriesHorse of a Different Color: Stories by Howard Waldrop
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

5 out of 5, with the caveat that I cannot be objective about this collection. Howard Waldrop is one of the few writers whose work I’ll buy the day it comes out, unseen and unreviewed.

If all Waldrop does is cleverly hide all sorts of historic/pop culture Easter eggs into most of his stories with barely any telegraphing, it would be a feat. Indeed, it’s a point of pride for me when I catch them. I immediately recognized bits of the Bird Man of Alcatraz in the story of the “Wolf-Man” of the same. But, here’s Waldrop’s trick: as always, there are moments I fail to spot the references, and it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the stories one bit!

More importantly (to me at least), Waldrop’s characters almost always convey some sort of bittersweet piece of truth or wisdom that can only be gained from going around the proverbial block a time or two.

I did let a sliver of objectivity creep into my reading, but I won’t mention it here (you can find it in my story-by-story comments on the actual goodreads review page). It’s more of a technical quibble, anyway. Whatever.

Also, “Coca Cola comic book orgy” is now my favorite Waldrop line. If I had a band, I’d ask his permission to use it as a name.

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Quickie Review: North American Lake Monsters

North American Lake Monsters: StoriesNorth American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Plain and simple, if this collection doesn’t win the Shirley Jackson Award or the World Fantasy Award for 2013, there really is no f**ing justice in the world.

I hung on every word in this collection. I was enthralled by every story, something I haven’t felt since reading M. Rickert’s Map of Dreams. Ballingrud takes some rather standard horror tropes and gives the readers more palpable and disturbing reasons to fear them. In a lot of stories, the horror/speculative element serves as a possible pathway that can be chosen by a given character. What’s disturbing is that often times that pathway represents a viable, sometimes even a preferred, life option.

I found myself giving each story a 5* rating. But that isn’t to say the collection didn’t have it its… well, I’m so reluctant to say “flaws.” That’s much too strong a word, in my opinion. Let’s say, “Things that took me out of the story for a micro-second, of which I took note before re-submerging myself back into it.” There were two.

In the cover blurb, Maureen McHugh calls the collection “Raymond Carver territory.” There’s definitely a “K-Mart Magical Realism” thing going on here. The opening scene in “The Good Husband” would’ve made me think of “So Much Water So Close to Home” even if Carver wasn’t referenced in the blurb. One of the tiny, tiny problems I had, though, was being so effectively grounded in each main character’s POV–very Carver-esque characters–that I couldn’t help but notice when these characters, as they’re written, would think in un-Carver-esque terms. A construction worker seeing something “in a rictus of pain.” An ex-con encountering something “soporific.” A homeless man smelling “the ripe, deliquescent odor of river water.” (Maybe it’s more accurate to substitute “Raymond Carver” for “Gordon Lish,” but that’s another debate altogether.)

The other matter depends on how cynical a reader one is. What I might, and in fact DO, interpret as this collection being an examination of a singular theme from multiple angles might be interpreted by another reader as “the same story over and over again.”

I feel like I’ve given too much time to these issues relative to the actual impact on my reading experience. But it’s important to note that even despite them, the quality of the stories is such that I unreservedly give this collection a 5* rating.

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Bibliotheca Fantastica Is Out!

I’ve been remiss in announcing that at long last, the anthology Bibliotheca Fantastica, is finally out from Dagan Books!  Here’s my introduction to the book.  Trust me, this one is worth the wait!  (Not that I’m biased or anything…)

You can pick it up through Amazon for your Kindle, or in a DRM-free format–the epub file epub, mobi, (which also works on your Kindle), or PDF either individually or as a bundle!

“On the deck of a starship / With her head hooked into Andromeda…”

I’m so not used to having a Monday off after a con that I forgot that I’d put in to have today off. That’s okay, because it affords me some much-needed extra sleep and the chance to do my Readercon write-up in what is, for me, record time!

That doesn’t mean I have the brainspace for anything coherent.  I’m doing this while I’m awake, typing up little bits here and there, and then I’ll set it to post after I get to bed.  Then once I’ve had more sleep and time to reflect, I might talk about some panels later.


1
I think I’ve lost my con “honeymoon period.” But that’s a good thing in that I don’t waste too much time and energy anymore feeling like I’m taking up valuable oxygen better spent on Chiang, Datlow, Edelman, Di Filippo, Van Gelder, Hand, McHugh, Link, Kessel, Clute, &c.  Hence, I didn’t take as many pictures of panels and readings this time around, though I have a few.  I have yet to really look at which are worth posting.
2
Every year, I feel conflicted about buying books at Readercon (and other cons, for that matter). I don’t have unlimited space for physical books and I damn sure don’t have unlimited funds. Most Readercons though, I tell myself, “Screw it,” and buy large quantities anyway. This year though, the internal conflict came to a head to the point where it actually killed my buzz walking into the Bookshop. Still, I didn’t come away empty-handed. I just bought more strategically…

3
I’ve reached the point where going to cons is (slightly) less about the programming and more about connecting or re-connecting with people. And I got to do that with 99% of the people I wanted to see. But on the other hand, I felt that having precious little public space to sit and congregate (due to hotel construction) led to four days of “catch-as-catch-can,” with a number of folks (i.e. others who told me they’d felt this way, too) trying to catch-as-catch-can everyone else they wanted to talk to.
4
All that to say that when I had time with people, I didn’t always have the space and vice versa. But it wasn’t impossible, obviously. When I could have space and time at the same time, it was AWESOME.

5
Having said all that though, I felt the love!
6
I could shout-out/link everyone I talked to, old and new, but there were just too many!  Some folks have already found me on Twitter!
7
Cards Against Humanity is my new favorite game.

8
Panel note-taking with Evernote on mobile devices + swipe typing = WIN!
9
Most valuable panel to me, “The Work/Work Balance.”  There might’ve been very little that I hadn’t heard before, but hearing from seasoned–and I mean seasoned–professionals that the solutions are as old as the problems was exactly what I needed at this point in my life.
10
Money quote:

“No future I ever envisioned had Republicans in it.”
– Howard Waldrop, during “The Real Utopia” panel before going on to talk briefly about all the goings-on in his state of Texas.

    #

    I WILL give a shout-out to the ConCom and everyone who volunteered.  Thanks for the memories and hopefully I’ll see y’all at Readercon 25!

    Chapter LX

    From Heavy Metal

    We’re still 18 years away from 2031 when, if I’m still around, I’ll be 58 but still look the way I do now depending on what sort of genetic and/or cybernetic modifications I’ll be able to afford.  But that doesn’t stop me from feeling like an ancient relic now.

    But believe it or not, I’m in a better space than I was this time last year. Just.

    Let’s just say that I’ve now lived long enough to get to the point where I can completely relate to what the late, great fellow-Clevelander Harvey Pekar says…

    Don’t fret.  Our man isn’t that hopeless.  Granted, I’ve never been one of those people who fully appreciated the whole “adversity makes you tougher” idea.  But I’ll tell you this–adversity has sure made me shrewder.  It’s made me smarter.  It’s made me hungry for the things I want in life.  And it’s damn sure taken my patience away from the things that would stand in my way.

    So, I take the ups and downs.  Because as Robert Lamm sings…

    We’ve all had our highs
    The lows we can’t command
    Sleeping through insomnia
    It is more than you can stand

    Boy, is that right.

    I have a day off tomorrow.  But not the day after.  In the meantime, I’ll not be taking comments from the peanut gallery just now.  In fact, I’m likely fast asleep.  I love time-shifting this stuff.

    See what I mean?  Shrewder!