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badgerbagWell, some people over in spock_uhura are having a teachable moment about the racial politics of hair. Not enough headdesk in the world.
This morning I read Lisa Tuttle's novella My Death & started crying, it was so amazing and great. It was just seeping into my soul and cuddling up in there. It's exactly perfect, how I feel when doing research and finding out about all my modernista poets!! It hit me with a hammer and tore me up & at the end did a little bit of "fly and be free, feminist researcher!" sf-fish healing. I felt almost embarrassed at how exactly it all fit my feelings. And how the merging and the close relationships fit my (un-examined) wishes. And how hard and frightening (when it should be joyous) it might be to face the "subject" of research...
If you've ever felt the obsessive feeling of reading about another woman's life and trying to fill in and imagine all the elisions of history & patriarchal biographies & criticisms and un-mentionings or suppressings of her art and writing & life, and wished so badly you could meet her (or in my case, them) then please READ THIS BOOK. It's number 21 in the Conversation Pieces series from Aqueduct Press.
On the plane on the way home from WisCon I read De Secretis Mulierum which i also loved very much. As usual Timmi Duchamp lays on a universe of mindfuck in the details of relationships. It becomes painfully delicious to be aware of all the subtleties of interactions of the characters. I particularly remember the way that the Advisor went on talking while the protagonist prepared dinner (with very evocative sharp physical details of all the things done to cook, and washing the dishes afterwards, and how he kept bumping into her or crowding her and just not noticing anything or ever helping - the lack of sensitivity.) Then, the intense sadness at how she realized that it was wrong that she wasn't connected intimately with Marissa the inventor of the holoscan device and with the other woman Judith who was a scholar of gender and history. The misconnect or disconnect of all the women and the potential there that's missed is just horrifying and will be, I think, familiar... It was a hard book to read as I *flew away from WisCon* and all the women here and I thought "What can I do to make my life more the way it should be, to have these connections that are lasting and intimate and not sporadic? Where is the understanding of these things in my life - did I have it and then lost it? Who'll understand this feeling? " All the missed connections in my life hit me over the head. Despite my life being extremely happy, surrounded by partners and friends and good work, I felt echoingly lonely. Part of this is I think I need to join or start a writers' group in the Bay Area. There are certainly plenty of people I should be friends with and want to be friends with yet I never see them, or only in the in between moments kind of at random and not as a planned part of life and a priority.
The whole idea of girlycon is making me super happy! I am hosting a meetup for work (Bl0gH3r) at my house on the 13th but after that I think declaring a girls' book reading day - a day long and maybe a sleepover GirlyCon - would be a total blast. But I also feel like I want to dip back into expanding my anthology of women poets in translation - To add to it -- Okay, maybe just a listing of projects
PROJECTS
-----------
- The anthology. Publish it somehow as it is? Because it's huge and done.
- The expanded anthology. There are so many more. Will this be my project when I'm 50, or 60? Must go to Cuba, and Uruguay, and Argentina, for it. (At least.) Oh, god, for the library in Havana. It makes me cry again just to think of the time I'd like to spend there. Am definitely PMSing. I think this expansion's time is not now. I need 6 months to a year of travel to all these libraries and a fuckload of xeroxing/scanning and then another year or so of translating. Please let me not die before I get to do this.
- My own poetry and some other odd sff-ish and fantasy-ish translations. I think of doing a little conversation piece style collection. (Like those translations of the poems about Laika in space, and some of the early modernista vampire/greek myth stuff, plus my information manifesto poems. Not sure if that would all work together.)
- Project that T. wants me to do with the "reading paths" or experiences (I want to do it as an anthology, with people writing about what particular works meant/mean to them) (With geography and a map of ideas) (Need a name for this project)
- Russ wrote me back! Can I say that louder... Joanna Russ wrote back to me sweetly... basically to say, sounds nice but i have no idea of the economics of it, talk to my agent. I will write her today! basically, i want to creative commons How to Suppress Women's Writing and put it up on the net in several formats.
- Illic1t P4ssage project. In collaboration with owlqueue! this should roll forward soon. I want to lock it into place in June asap. A.N. agreed to it but i want a contract and to figure out what kind of rewriting she wants to do. There are already enough people who want to write about it for the accompanying essays.
- Index the existing 3 WisCon Chron books and put index up on wiki. get pdfs from Kath and just wade into it.
- Organizing my own papers. Office and shelves are a nightmare.
- Zines and zine papers/letters. still not in order, still not donated to archive, etc. etc.
I am leaving some projects out because already this is unrealistic.
This morning I read Lisa Tuttle's novella My Death & started crying, it was so amazing and great. It was just seeping into my soul and cuddling up in there. It's exactly perfect, how I feel when doing research and finding out about all my modernista poets!! It hit me with a hammer and tore me up & at the end did a little bit of "fly and be free, feminist researcher!" sf-fish healing. I felt almost embarrassed at how exactly it all fit my feelings. And how the merging and the close relationships fit my (un-examined) wishes. And how hard and frightening (when it should be joyous) it might be to face the "subject" of research...
If you've ever felt the obsessive feeling of reading about another woman's life and trying to fill in and imagine all the elisions of history & patriarchal biographies & criticisms and un-mentionings or suppressings of her art and writing & life, and wished so badly you could meet her (or in my case, them) then please READ THIS BOOK. It's number 21 in the Conversation Pieces series from Aqueduct Press.
On the plane on the way home from WisCon I read De Secretis Mulierum which i also loved very much. As usual Timmi Duchamp lays on a universe of mindfuck in the details of relationships. It becomes painfully delicious to be aware of all the subtleties of interactions of the characters. I particularly remember the way that the Advisor went on talking while the protagonist prepared dinner (with very evocative sharp physical details of all the things done to cook, and washing the dishes afterwards, and how he kept bumping into her or crowding her and just not noticing anything or ever helping - the lack of sensitivity.) Then, the intense sadness at how she realized that it was wrong that she wasn't connected intimately with Marissa the inventor of the holoscan device and with the other woman Judith who was a scholar of gender and history. The misconnect or disconnect of all the women and the potential there that's missed is just horrifying and will be, I think, familiar... It was a hard book to read as I *flew away from WisCon* and all the women here and I thought "What can I do to make my life more the way it should be, to have these connections that are lasting and intimate and not sporadic? Where is the understanding of these things in my life - did I have it and then lost it? Who'll understand this feeling? " All the missed connections in my life hit me over the head. Despite my life being extremely happy, surrounded by partners and friends and good work, I felt echoingly lonely. Part of this is I think I need to join or start a writers' group in the Bay Area. There are certainly plenty of people I should be friends with and want to be friends with yet I never see them, or only in the in between moments kind of at random and not as a planned part of life and a priority.
The whole idea of girlycon is making me super happy! I am hosting a meetup for work (Bl0gH3r) at my house on the 13th but after that I think declaring a girls' book reading day - a day long and maybe a sleepover GirlyCon - would be a total blast. But I also feel like I want to dip back into expanding my anthology of women poets in translation - To add to it -- Okay, maybe just a listing of projects
PROJECTS
-----------
- The anthology. Publish it somehow as it is? Because it's huge and done.
- The expanded anthology. There are so many more. Will this be my project when I'm 50, or 60? Must go to Cuba, and Uruguay, and Argentina, for it. (At least.) Oh, god, for the library in Havana. It makes me cry again just to think of the time I'd like to spend there. Am definitely PMSing. I think this expansion's time is not now. I need 6 months to a year of travel to all these libraries and a fuckload of xeroxing/scanning and then another year or so of translating. Please let me not die before I get to do this.
- My own poetry and some other odd sff-ish and fantasy-ish translations. I think of doing a little conversation piece style collection. (Like those translations of the poems about Laika in space, and some of the early modernista vampire/greek myth stuff, plus my information manifesto poems. Not sure if that would all work together.)
- Project that T. wants me to do with the "reading paths" or experiences (I want to do it as an anthology, with people writing about what particular works meant/mean to them) (With geography and a map of ideas) (Need a name for this project)
- Russ wrote me back! Can I say that louder... Joanna Russ wrote back to me sweetly... basically to say, sounds nice but i have no idea of the economics of it, talk to my agent. I will write her today! basically, i want to creative commons How to Suppress Women's Writing and put it up on the net in several formats.
- Illic1t P4ssage project. In collaboration with owlqueue! this should roll forward soon. I want to lock it into place in June asap. A.N. agreed to it but i want a contract and to figure out what kind of rewriting she wants to do. There are already enough people who want to write about it for the accompanying essays.
- Index the existing 3 WisCon Chron books and put index up on wiki. get pdfs from Kath and just wade into it.
- Organizing my own papers. Office and shelves are a nightmare.
- Zines and zine papers/letters. still not in order, still not donated to archive, etc. etc.
I am leaving some projects out because already this is unrealistic.
I've worked in most of them at one time or another, if you need advice -- which you very likely do not!
I miss them, and everything about Cuba so much.
Love, C.
Cuba's unity library is in Havana.
BTW, a great deal of Cuban historical informaton materials are digitized and accessible from your desk now.
Love, C.
Let me know if I can help out with any of these...
-- Therem
and the indexing which is grungier but which will be interesting in the end!
and if you could just fly out here and hang out with me that woudl be extra ideal 8-)