Jeremy Greer
Jul. 1st, 2025 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureOf all the things to be grieving right now, this is a weird personal parasocial one. You have been warned.
( Jeremy Greer )
§rf§
( Jeremy Greer )
§rf§
radiantfractureSunshine Revival Challenge #1
Jul. 1st, 2025 09:04 pmsoricelSome goals for July:
I want to keep up with doing things that help me feel connected to my body. Meditating, stretching, dancing, etc. I know these things are really important for me but also really easy to skip, especially during summer vacation time when my routines are all screwy.
I want to keep my rhythm of posting in my RPs at least once a week, but also maybe do some fun creative RP-related thing too…maybe art, maybe a playlist, maybe a mood board, something like that.
I want to keep up with doing things that help me feel connected to my body. Meditating, stretching, dancing, etc. I know these things are really important for me but also really easy to skip, especially during summer vacation time when my routines are all screwy.
I want to keep my rhythm of posting in my RPs at least once a week, but also maybe do some fun creative RP-related thing too…maybe art, maybe a playlist, maybe a mood board, something like that.
I want to try to get my little collection of poetry published, despite my deep ambivalence and insecurity about doing so.
I want to be as present as possible for my partner, my family, and my friends. Times are tough, even if (so far) they’re not super tough for any of us personally. The ambient dread and sense that the future is fucked is pretty heavy though.
Kind of abstract and hard to measure, but I’d like to share more. Here, IRL, wherever.
Really, brain? REALLY?
Jun. 30th, 2025 04:58 pmcupcake_gothLast night my brain decided to give me a new stress nightmare, oh yay. In it I had taken all my bedtime meds on the drive to Seattle for next week's (!!!) MCR concert. I met up with minim_calibre , we found our seats, and during the opening act I fell asleep, missing the entire MCR show.
WHAT THE HELL, BRAIN?!
This obviously won't happen in real life. But in that brief instant between sleep and waking out of the dream, I was SO UPSET.
Twelve days until the concert! The Seattle show is the first one of the tour, which means the band should be all riled up. And that I'll have no idea what the tour merch is, so I'll have to make my purchasing decisions in real time. Yes, there's a part of my brain that says buy it allllllll, but I'm trying not to listen to it. No really, I'm trying to, because I know I don't need all the Long Live: The Black Parade merch. Probably.
(buy it allllll)
minim_calibre , we found our seats, and during the opening act I fell asleep, missing the entire MCR show. WHAT THE HELL, BRAIN?!
This obviously won't happen in real life. But in that brief instant between sleep and waking out of the dream, I was SO UPSET.
Twelve days until the concert! The Seattle show is the first one of the tour, which means the band should be all riled up. And that I'll have no idea what the tour merch is, so I'll have to make my purchasing decisions in real time. Yes, there's a part of my brain that says buy it allllllll, but I'm trying not to listen to it. No really, I'm trying to, because I know I don't need all the Long Live: The Black Parade merch. Probably.
(buy it allllll)
Rebuilding journal search again
Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pmalierak posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceWe're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.
Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
Week notes: June 23-29 2005
Jun. 29th, 2025 09:21 amsoricelTeaching:
Nothing! School's out, and my creative writing workshop series is done. Yay!
Learning:
Didn't do any DuoLingo this week, and didn't attend any workshops or anything either.
Listening:
Nothing really.
Reading:
After a brief pause, I'm back to The Raven Cycle. Book 3! I really love these books. Honestly, I'm kind of whatever about the actual plot, and I'm not even head over heels about the characters, but I really enjoy the world and atmosphere Stiefvater has created here. Plus, I think her writing is just really good "at the sentence level," and I feel like at this point in the series she's having more and more fun with turns of phrase and little stylistic choices. Yeah, this series has been such a pleasure to read.
Watching:
More BBT. We've made it to the Mayim Bialik era.
Writing/other:
We've been in Paris this week! T. had a conference, and I tagged along for a vacation. I find that traveling is always really overwhelming and overstimulating at first, and this trip was no different, but eventually I got my bearings. We didn't do much touristy sightseeing stuff--T. lived here for a while, so she's seen/done all that stuff, and I can't stand crowds and whatnot, especially in the heat--but we ate a lot of vegan food (some really good, some mediocre) and did some nice bebopping around. The conference organizers also planned an outing to this little playing card museum, which turned out to be really cool--especially the tarot exhibits. It's been a pleasant experience overall, but we're ready to go home.
One thing that made me really excited though: so a while ago I discovered this RP board set in Paris in the late 1800s. It's the typical supernatural stuff, but I liked the idea of writing in that setting, so I dove in, adapting a couple characters of mine for that world. Unfortunately, the site was pretty inactive, so I sort of faded out after completing one thread and having another two left hanging. But then, after *months* of sitting there unresponded-to, an open thread I started got a reply! Right before we left for Paris! It felt serendipitous, and more than that, it made me really excited to retrace my characters' footsteps around the city. That was really fun, and it also helped me feel kind of grounded in Paris when we arrived. I shared some pics on the Discord server, and got excited to dive back into that world. Unfortunately, I quickly remembered why I kinda quiet quit in the first place. It's still pretty much just two people threading with each other, and very minimal OOC chatter. Just kinda...dead. It's a shame!
Anyway, this small experience made me realize a few things:
I've been *really* in my head about my "creative output" lately. Really feeling like I should be "putting myself out there" more, or at least trying to. I've got all these spoken word poems I've written--maybe I should try to turn them into a little book and get it published. Maybe I should build a website. Maybe I should make a zine. Maybe I should try to make another webcomic, or pick up the one I dropped. Maybe maybe maybe. But I recognize that all of these impulses are based less in a need to create and share something I feel is "valuable," and more in a deep feeling of inadequacy, a need for perceived legitimacy, external validation, whatever. And I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with wanting those things, and I think everyone who "puts their work out there" has a variety of motivations for doing so...but I don't feel great about the "neediness" of these impulses, and the shame-filled sense that I "should have something to show for myself" as a "creative" person nearing my mid-40s. I don't want to be driven by these impulses, and besides, when I actually think about doing any of the things I mentioned above, I feel kind of...heavy, resistant, gross. I'd like to explore those feelings more, but for now, I'm just noticing them.
On the other hand, when I got that reply to my months-old open thread, and when I got the idea to trace my character's walking routes around Paris, I got *so excited!* It made me think about the kind of creative work, and the kind of creative community, I enjoy and crave. I really like RPing, and I really like the idea/experience of creating something for--but also *with*--a small group of people. There are lots of other things I like about RPing, which I've already written about, but I guess for now I'm just noting the differences in my experiences/perceptions of "sharing my work" in these different ways. It's weird how the idea of publishing something--in a book, on a website, whatever--feels like both a way of gaining some kind of broader external validation and, at the same time, a kind of obscurity (i.e. a dusty book crammed on the bottom shelf of the poetry section in the local bookstore, along with countless others), while RPing, or writing fic in a niche fandom, feels both more obscure (at most, only a handful of people will read what I write) but also more nourishing and fulfilling (having fun, meaningful engagement with that handful of people).
More to think about here--and I sense I'm falling into some reductive black-and-white thinking (obviously trying to publish a book of poetry and RPing aren't mutually exclusive), or else missing/misunderstanding something basic and significant about the idea of making and sharing stuff, but for now, this is where my head is.
Nothing! School's out, and my creative writing workshop series is done. Yay!
Learning:
Didn't do any DuoLingo this week, and didn't attend any workshops or anything either.
Listening:
Nothing really.
Reading:
After a brief pause, I'm back to The Raven Cycle. Book 3! I really love these books. Honestly, I'm kind of whatever about the actual plot, and I'm not even head over heels about the characters, but I really enjoy the world and atmosphere Stiefvater has created here. Plus, I think her writing is just really good "at the sentence level," and I feel like at this point in the series she's having more and more fun with turns of phrase and little stylistic choices. Yeah, this series has been such a pleasure to read.
Watching:
More BBT. We've made it to the Mayim Bialik era.
Writing/other:
We've been in Paris this week! T. had a conference, and I tagged along for a vacation. I find that traveling is always really overwhelming and overstimulating at first, and this trip was no different, but eventually I got my bearings. We didn't do much touristy sightseeing stuff--T. lived here for a while, so she's seen/done all that stuff, and I can't stand crowds and whatnot, especially in the heat--but we ate a lot of vegan food (some really good, some mediocre) and did some nice bebopping around. The conference organizers also planned an outing to this little playing card museum, which turned out to be really cool--especially the tarot exhibits. It's been a pleasant experience overall, but we're ready to go home.
One thing that made me really excited though: so a while ago I discovered this RP board set in Paris in the late 1800s. It's the typical supernatural stuff, but I liked the idea of writing in that setting, so I dove in, adapting a couple characters of mine for that world. Unfortunately, the site was pretty inactive, so I sort of faded out after completing one thread and having another two left hanging. But then, after *months* of sitting there unresponded-to, an open thread I started got a reply! Right before we left for Paris! It felt serendipitous, and more than that, it made me really excited to retrace my characters' footsteps around the city. That was really fun, and it also helped me feel kind of grounded in Paris when we arrived. I shared some pics on the Discord server, and got excited to dive back into that world. Unfortunately, I quickly remembered why I kinda quiet quit in the first place. It's still pretty much just two people threading with each other, and very minimal OOC chatter. Just kinda...dead. It's a shame!
Anyway, this small experience made me realize a few things:
I've been *really* in my head about my "creative output" lately. Really feeling like I should be "putting myself out there" more, or at least trying to. I've got all these spoken word poems I've written--maybe I should try to turn them into a little book and get it published. Maybe I should build a website. Maybe I should make a zine. Maybe I should try to make another webcomic, or pick up the one I dropped. Maybe maybe maybe. But I recognize that all of these impulses are based less in a need to create and share something I feel is "valuable," and more in a deep feeling of inadequacy, a need for perceived legitimacy, external validation, whatever. And I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with wanting those things, and I think everyone who "puts their work out there" has a variety of motivations for doing so...but I don't feel great about the "neediness" of these impulses, and the shame-filled sense that I "should have something to show for myself" as a "creative" person nearing my mid-40s. I don't want to be driven by these impulses, and besides, when I actually think about doing any of the things I mentioned above, I feel kind of...heavy, resistant, gross. I'd like to explore those feelings more, but for now, I'm just noticing them.
On the other hand, when I got that reply to my months-old open thread, and when I got the idea to trace my character's walking routes around Paris, I got *so excited!* It made me think about the kind of creative work, and the kind of creative community, I enjoy and crave. I really like RPing, and I really like the idea/experience of creating something for--but also *with*--a small group of people. There are lots of other things I like about RPing, which I've already written about, but I guess for now I'm just noting the differences in my experiences/perceptions of "sharing my work" in these different ways. It's weird how the idea of publishing something--in a book, on a website, whatever--feels like both a way of gaining some kind of broader external validation and, at the same time, a kind of obscurity (i.e. a dusty book crammed on the bottom shelf of the poetry section in the local bookstore, along with countless others), while RPing, or writing fic in a niche fandom, feels both more obscure (at most, only a handful of people will read what I write) but also more nourishing and fulfilling (having fun, meaningful engagement with that handful of people).
More to think about here--and I sense I'm falling into some reductive black-and-white thinking (obviously trying to publish a book of poetry and RPing aren't mutually exclusive), or else missing/misunderstanding something basic and significant about the idea of making and sharing stuff, but for now, this is where my head is.
(no subject)
Jun. 25th, 2025 08:25 pmskygiantsI was traveling again for much of last week which meant, again, it was time to work through an emergency paperback to see if it was discardable. And, indeed, it was! And you would think that reading and discarding one bad book on my travels, dayenu, would have been enough -- but then my friend brought me to books4free, where I could not resist the temptation to pick up another emergency gothic. And, lo and behold, this book turned out to be even worse, and was discarded before the trip was out!
The two books were not even much alike, but I'm going to write them up together anyway because a.) I read them in such proximity and b.) though I did not like either of them, neither quite reached the over-the-top delights of joyous badness that would demand a solo post.
The first -- and this one I'd been hanging onto for some years after finding it in a used bookstore in San Francisco -- was Esbae: A Winter's Tale (published 1981), a college-campus urban fantasy in which (as the Wikipedia summary succinctly says) a college student named Chuck summons Asmodeus to help him pass his exams. However, Chuck is an Asshole Popular Boy who Hates Books and is Afraid of the Library, so he enlists a Clumsy, Intellectual, Unconventional Classmate with Unfashionable Long Red Locks named Sophie to help him with his project. Sophie is, of course, the heroine of the book, and Moreover!! she is chosen by the titular Esbae, a shapechanging magical creature who's been kicked out into the human realm to act as a magical servant until and unless he helps with the performance of a Great and Heroic Deed, to be his potentially heroic master.
Unfortunately after this happens Sophie doesn't actually do very much. The rest of the plot involves Chuck incompetently stalking Sophie to attempt to sacrifice her to Asmodeus, which Sophie barely notices because she's busy cheerfully entering into an affair with the history professor who taught them about Asmodeus to begin with.
In fact only thing of note that nerdy, clumsy Sophie really accomplishes during this section is to fly into a rage with Esbae when she finds out that Esbae has been secretly following her to protect her from Chuck and beat her unprotesting magical creature of pure goodness up?? to which is layered on the extra unfortunate layer that Esbae often takes the form of a small brown-skinned child that Sophie saw playing the Heroine's Clever Moorish Servant in an opera one time??? Sophie, who is justifiably horrified with herself about this, talks it over with her history professor and they decide that with great mastery comes great responsibility and that Sophie has to be a Good Master. Obviously this does not mean not having a magical servant who is completely within your power and obeys your every command, but probably does mean not taking advantage of the situation to beat the servant up even if you're really mad. And we all move on! Much to unpack there, none of which ever will be.
Anyway. Occult shenanigans happen at a big campus party, Esbae Accomplishes A Heroic Deed, Sophie and her history professor live happily ever after. It's 1981. This book was nominated for a Locus Award, which certainly does put things in perspective.
The second book, the free bookstore pickup, was Ronald Scott Thorn's The Twin Serpents (1965) which begins with a brilliant plastic surgeon! tragically dead! with a tragically dead wife!! FOLLOWED BY: the discovery of a mysterious stranger on a Greek island who claims to know nothing about the brilliant plastic surgeon ....
stop! rewind! You might be wondering how we got here! Well, the brilliant plastic surgeon (mid-forties) had a Cold and Shallow but Terribly Beautiful twenty-three-year-old aristocratic wife, and she had a twin brother who was not only a corrupt and debauched and spendthrift aristocrat AND not only psychologically twisted as a result of his physical disability (leg problems) BUT of course mildly incestuous with his twin sister as well and PROBABLY the cause of her inexplicable, unnatural distaste for the idea of having children. I trust this gives you a sense of the vibe.
However, honestly the biggest disappointment is that for a book that contains incestuous twins, face-changing surgery [self-performed!!], secret identities, secret abortions, a secret disease of the hands, last-minute live-saving operations and semi-accidental murder, it's ... kind of boring ..... a solid 60% of the book is the brilliant plastic surgeon and his wife having the same unpleasant marital disputes in which the book clearly wants me to be on his side and I am really emphatically absolutely not. ( spoilers )
Both these books have now been released back into the wild; I hope they find their way to someone who appreciates them. I did also read a couple of good books on my trip but those will, eventually, get their own post.
The two books were not even much alike, but I'm going to write them up together anyway because a.) I read them in such proximity and b.) though I did not like either of them, neither quite reached the over-the-top delights of joyous badness that would demand a solo post.
The first -- and this one I'd been hanging onto for some years after finding it in a used bookstore in San Francisco -- was Esbae: A Winter's Tale (published 1981), a college-campus urban fantasy in which (as the Wikipedia summary succinctly says) a college student named Chuck summons Asmodeus to help him pass his exams. However, Chuck is an Asshole Popular Boy who Hates Books and is Afraid of the Library, so he enlists a Clumsy, Intellectual, Unconventional Classmate with Unfashionable Long Red Locks named Sophie to help him with his project. Sophie is, of course, the heroine of the book, and Moreover!! she is chosen by the titular Esbae, a shapechanging magical creature who's been kicked out into the human realm to act as a magical servant until and unless he helps with the performance of a Great and Heroic Deed, to be his potentially heroic master.
Unfortunately after this happens Sophie doesn't actually do very much. The rest of the plot involves Chuck incompetently stalking Sophie to attempt to sacrifice her to Asmodeus, which Sophie barely notices because she's busy cheerfully entering into an affair with the history professor who taught them about Asmodeus to begin with.
In fact only thing of note that nerdy, clumsy Sophie really accomplishes during this section is to fly into a rage with Esbae when she finds out that Esbae has been secretly following her to protect her from Chuck and beat her unprotesting magical creature of pure goodness up?? to which is layered on the extra unfortunate layer that Esbae often takes the form of a small brown-skinned child that Sophie saw playing the Heroine's Clever Moorish Servant in an opera one time??? Sophie, who is justifiably horrified with herself about this, talks it over with her history professor and they decide that with great mastery comes great responsibility and that Sophie has to be a Good Master. Obviously this does not mean not having a magical servant who is completely within your power and obeys your every command, but probably does mean not taking advantage of the situation to beat the servant up even if you're really mad. And we all move on! Much to unpack there, none of which ever will be.
Anyway. Occult shenanigans happen at a big campus party, Esbae Accomplishes A Heroic Deed, Sophie and her history professor live happily ever after. It's 1981. This book was nominated for a Locus Award, which certainly does put things in perspective.
The second book, the free bookstore pickup, was Ronald Scott Thorn's The Twin Serpents (1965) which begins with a brilliant plastic surgeon! tragically dead! with a tragically dead wife!! FOLLOWED BY: the discovery of a mysterious stranger on a Greek island who claims to know nothing about the brilliant plastic surgeon ....
stop! rewind! You might be wondering how we got here! Well, the brilliant plastic surgeon (mid-forties) had a Cold and Shallow but Terribly Beautiful twenty-three-year-old aristocratic wife, and she had a twin brother who was not only a corrupt and debauched and spendthrift aristocrat AND not only psychologically twisted as a result of his physical disability (leg problems) BUT of course mildly incestuous with his twin sister as well and PROBABLY the cause of her inexplicable, unnatural distaste for the idea of having children. I trust this gives you a sense of the vibe.
However, honestly the biggest disappointment is that for a book that contains incestuous twins, face-changing surgery [self-performed!!], secret identities, secret abortions, a secret disease of the hands, last-minute live-saving operations and semi-accidental murder, it's ... kind of boring ..... a solid 60% of the book is the brilliant plastic surgeon and his wife having the same unpleasant marital disputes in which the book clearly wants me to be on his side and I am really emphatically absolutely not. ( spoilers )
Both these books have now been released back into the wild; I hope they find their way to someone who appreciates them. I did also read a couple of good books on my trip but those will, eventually, get their own post.
(no subject)
Jun. 24th, 2025 11:39 amcupcake_gothdanabren left a comment on my post about Catholic aesthetics/music/Gregorian chants that unlocked a core 90s scene memory for many of us: constantly hearing Enigma at every damn kink or kink-adjacent play party. This led me to see what songs turn up on "Enigma Radio" on Spotify. Guess what the first song was? Go on, guess.
Ah, good 'ol "Caribbean
There are days when I think about trying to explain to Kids Today what sort of music was played for the first 30-60 minutes at Ye Olde Spooky Clubs because I'm pretty sure they'd never believe me.
(no subject)
Jun. 23rd, 2025 01:09 pmcupcake_gothOver the past week we watched both Conclave and Immaculate. Both were fun, even if I don't understand the section of fandom that looked at Conclave and said "YES, let's write smut". Not my beautiful cake, but rock on you crazy diamonds.
Immaculate wasn't groundbreaking, and actually kind of predictable, but it was still enjoyable. And yet another entry in the "Yep, I like Catholic-themed horror" category; look I really like the aesthetics and music of the Church. As an institution, fuck no. All the art it's created? Yes. What this means is I bought the soundtrack on bandcamp, and need to look up the soundtrack for Conclave to see if I want it. (I probably don't, as I prefer my Latin liturgical music sung by female voices. As evidence, I listen to this Gregorian chants female voices playlist on Spotify fairly often.) Which leads me to one of my favorite set of tweets:
Immaculate wasn't groundbreaking, and actually kind of predictable, but it was still enjoyable. And yet another entry in the "Yep, I like Catholic-themed horror" category; look I really like the aesthetics and music of the Church. As an institution, fuck no. All the art it's created? Yes. What this means is I bought the soundtrack on bandcamp, and need to look up the soundtrack for Conclave to see if I want it. (I probably don't, as I prefer my Latin liturgical music sung by female voices. As evidence, I listen to this Gregorian chants female voices playlist on Spotify fairly often.) Which leads me to one of my favorite set of tweets:
(no subject)
Jun. 22nd, 2025 08:02 pmskygiantsWhen I'm reading nonfiction, there's often a fine line for me between 'you, the author, are getting yourself all up in this narrative and I wish you'd get out of the way' and 'you, the author, have a clearly presented point of view and it makes it easy and fun to fight with you about your topic; pray continue.' Happily, Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages falls squarely in the latter category for me. She's telling me a bunch of fascinating gossip and I do often disagree with her about what it all means but we're having such a good time arguing about it!
Rose starts out her book by explaining that she's interested in the idea of 'marriage' both as a narrative construct developed by the partners within it -- "a subjectivist fiction with two points of view often deeply in conflict, sometimes fortuitously congruent" -- and a negotiation of power, vulnerable to exploitation. She also says that she wanted to find a good balance of happy and unhappy Victorian marriages as case studies to explore, but then she got so fascinated by several of the unhappy ones that things got a little out of balance .... and she is right! Her case studies are fascinating, and at least one of them (the one she clearly sees as the happiest) is not technically a marriage at all (which, of course, is part of her point.)
The couples in question are:
Thomas Carlyle and Jane Baillie Carlyle -- the framing device for the whole book, because even though this marriage is not her favorite marriage Jane Carlyle is her favorite character. Notable for the fact that Jane Carlyle wrote a secret diary through her years of marriage detailing how unhappy she was, which was given to Carlyle after her death, making him feel incredibly guilty, and then published after his death, making everyone else feel like he ought to have been feeling incredibly guilty. Rose considers the secret postmortem diary gift a brilliant stroke of Jane's in Triumphantly Taking Control Of The Narrative Of Their Marriage.
John Ruskin and Effie Gray -- like every possible Victorian drama happened to this marriage. non-consummation! parent drama! art drama! accusations that Ruskin was trying to manipulate Effie Gray into a ruinous affair so that he could divorce her! Effie Gray's family coming down secretly to sneak her away so she could launch a big divorce case instead! my favorite element of this whole story is that the third man in the Art Love Triangle, John Millais, was painting Ruskin's portrait when he and Gray fell in love instead, and Ruskin insisted on making Millais keep painting his portrait for numerous awkward sittings while the divorce proceedings played themselves out and [according to Rose] was genuinely startled that Millais was not interested in subsequently continuing their pleasant correspondence.
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor -- this was my favorite section; I had never heard of these guys but I loved their energy. Harriet Taylor was married to John Taylor but was not enjoying the experience, began a passionate intellectual correspondence with John Stuart Mill who believed as strongly as she did in women's rights etc., they seriously considered the ethics around running off together but decided that while all three of them (Harriet Taylor, John Taylor, and John Mill) were made moderately unhappy by the current situation of "John Mill comes over three nights a week for passionate intellectual discussions with Harriet Taylor while John Taylor considerately goes Out for Several Hours", nobody was made as miserable by it as John Taylor would be if Harriet left John Taylor and therefore ethics demanded that the situation remain as it was. (Meanwhile the Carlyles, who were friends of John Mill, nicknamed Harriet 'Platonica,' which I have to admit is a very funny move if you are a bitchy 19th century intellectual and you hate the married woman your friend is having a passionate but celibate philosophical romance of the soul with.) Eventually John Taylor did die and Harriet Taylor and John Mill did get married -- platonically or otherwise is unknown but regardless they seem to have been blissfully happy. Rose thinks that Harriet Taylor was probably not as brilliant as John Mill thought and John Mill was henpecked, but happily so, because letting his wife tell him what to do soothed his patriarchal guilt. I think that Rose is a killjoy. Let a genius think his partner of the soul is also a genius if he wants to! I'm not going to tell him that he's wrong!
Charles Dickens and Catherine Dickens -- oh this was a Bad Marriage and everyone knows it. Unlike all the other women in this book, Catherine Dickens did not really command a narrative space of her own except Cast Aside Wife which -- although that's probably part of Rose's point -- makes this section IMO weaker and a bit less fun than the others.
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes -- Rose's favorite! She thinks these guys are very romantic and who can blame her, though she does want to take time to argue with people who think that George Eliot's genius relied more on George Henry Lewes kindling the flame than it did on George Eliot herself. It not being 1983 anymore, it did not occur to me that 'George Eliot was not primarily responsible for George Eliot' was an argument that needed to be made. "Maybe marriage is better when it doesn't have to actually be marriage" is clearly a point she's excited to make, given which one does wonder why she doesn't pull any Victorian long-term same-sex partnerships into her thematic examination. And the answer, probably, is 'I'm interested in specifically in the narrative of heterosexual marriage and heterosexual power dynamics and the ways they still leave an imprint on our contemporary moment,' which is fair, but if you're already exploring a thing by looking outside it .... well, anyway. I just looked up her bibliography out of curiosity to see if she ever did write about gay people and the answer is "well, she's got a book about Josephine Baker" so I may well be looking that up in future so I can have fun arguing with Rose some more!
Rose starts out her book by explaining that she's interested in the idea of 'marriage' both as a narrative construct developed by the partners within it -- "a subjectivist fiction with two points of view often deeply in conflict, sometimes fortuitously congruent" -- and a negotiation of power, vulnerable to exploitation. She also says that she wanted to find a good balance of happy and unhappy Victorian marriages as case studies to explore, but then she got so fascinated by several of the unhappy ones that things got a little out of balance .... and she is right! Her case studies are fascinating, and at least one of them (the one she clearly sees as the happiest) is not technically a marriage at all (which, of course, is part of her point.)
The couples in question are:
Thomas Carlyle and Jane Baillie Carlyle -- the framing device for the whole book, because even though this marriage is not her favorite marriage Jane Carlyle is her favorite character. Notable for the fact that Jane Carlyle wrote a secret diary through her years of marriage detailing how unhappy she was, which was given to Carlyle after her death, making him feel incredibly guilty, and then published after his death, making everyone else feel like he ought to have been feeling incredibly guilty. Rose considers the secret postmortem diary gift a brilliant stroke of Jane's in Triumphantly Taking Control Of The Narrative Of Their Marriage.
John Ruskin and Effie Gray -- like every possible Victorian drama happened to this marriage. non-consummation! parent drama! art drama! accusations that Ruskin was trying to manipulate Effie Gray into a ruinous affair so that he could divorce her! Effie Gray's family coming down secretly to sneak her away so she could launch a big divorce case instead! my favorite element of this whole story is that the third man in the Art Love Triangle, John Millais, was painting Ruskin's portrait when he and Gray fell in love instead, and Ruskin insisted on making Millais keep painting his portrait for numerous awkward sittings while the divorce proceedings played themselves out and [according to Rose] was genuinely startled that Millais was not interested in subsequently continuing their pleasant correspondence.
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor -- this was my favorite section; I had never heard of these guys but I loved their energy. Harriet Taylor was married to John Taylor but was not enjoying the experience, began a passionate intellectual correspondence with John Stuart Mill who believed as strongly as she did in women's rights etc., they seriously considered the ethics around running off together but decided that while all three of them (Harriet Taylor, John Taylor, and John Mill) were made moderately unhappy by the current situation of "John Mill comes over three nights a week for passionate intellectual discussions with Harriet Taylor while John Taylor considerately goes Out for Several Hours", nobody was made as miserable by it as John Taylor would be if Harriet left John Taylor and therefore ethics demanded that the situation remain as it was. (Meanwhile the Carlyles, who were friends of John Mill, nicknamed Harriet 'Platonica,' which I have to admit is a very funny move if you are a bitchy 19th century intellectual and you hate the married woman your friend is having a passionate but celibate philosophical romance of the soul with.) Eventually John Taylor did die and Harriet Taylor and John Mill did get married -- platonically or otherwise is unknown but regardless they seem to have been blissfully happy. Rose thinks that Harriet Taylor was probably not as brilliant as John Mill thought and John Mill was henpecked, but happily so, because letting his wife tell him what to do soothed his patriarchal guilt. I think that Rose is a killjoy. Let a genius think his partner of the soul is also a genius if he wants to! I'm not going to tell him that he's wrong!
Charles Dickens and Catherine Dickens -- oh this was a Bad Marriage and everyone knows it. Unlike all the other women in this book, Catherine Dickens did not really command a narrative space of her own except Cast Aside Wife which -- although that's probably part of Rose's point -- makes this section IMO weaker and a bit less fun than the others.
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes -- Rose's favorite! She thinks these guys are very romantic and who can blame her, though she does want to take time to argue with people who think that George Eliot's genius relied more on George Henry Lewes kindling the flame than it did on George Eliot herself. It not being 1983 anymore, it did not occur to me that 'George Eliot was not primarily responsible for George Eliot' was an argument that needed to be made. "Maybe marriage is better when it doesn't have to actually be marriage" is clearly a point she's excited to make, given which one does wonder why she doesn't pull any Victorian long-term same-sex partnerships into her thematic examination. And the answer, probably, is 'I'm interested in specifically in the narrative of heterosexual marriage and heterosexual power dynamics and the ways they still leave an imprint on our contemporary moment,' which is fair, but if you're already exploring a thing by looking outside it .... well, anyway. I just looked up her bibliography out of curiosity to see if she ever did write about gay people and the answer is "well, she's got a book about Josephine Baker" so I may well be looking that up in future so I can have fun arguing with Rose some more!
Week notes: June 16-June 22 2025
Jun. 22nd, 2025 12:12 pmsoricelTeaching:
Nothing really. Last week of classes, so just babysitting and festivities. I really dislike any part of teaching that doesn't involve just being in a classroom with kids and, y'know, teaching, so weeks like this are always rough. But it's done, yay!
Also played the last session of the year with the little D&D group. I've been stringing together a kinda chaotic little homebrew thing since this handful of kids expressed interest in playing back in 7th grade...I keep expecting they'll lose interest, but they haven't yet, and they just finished 9th grade. Some players have disappeared, but the core group remains, and they remain fairly invested. It's kind of poignant too because I get the sense that they may not actually hang out too much together at this point, and yet they keep coming together for these games. Anyway, right now we're doing an abridged/modified Dungeon of the Mad Mage thing that I've tacked onto the campaign; it's been a bit boring so far, and I find that in the more dungeon crawly adventures the kids kinda default to video game mindset, just wanting to speed-run and clear rooms, but that's to be expected. I also feel like I haven't been doing a great job as a DM in giving them many opportunities for character development and relationship-building...that's something I want to prioritize next year.
Outside of school, did another creative writing workshop at the Artsy Personal Development NGO this weekend. I was sort of dreading it, but I felt good and satisfied afterwards.
Learning:
Slacked off on my DuoLingo Romanian this week, and didn't really read or listen to anything in Romanian either. Did go to another session in the somatic movement workshop series, though, and those are all in Romanian, so I guess that counts. The workshop was fun, and again, brought up some little insights here and there. At one point we got sent into breakout rooms with partners and we were invited to dance, on camera, to a song of our choice. I thought I'd feel much more nervous and uncomfortable with that than I actually did; I enjoyed it, actually. I chose this song. Again, I feel like some Gender Stuff is coming up for me in these sessions, and I'd like to sit down and try to process that a bit more, or, ideally, talk about it with the instructor, but that feels a little dicey--you never know how people feel about that kind of stuff here.
Listening:
Didn't really listen to much music this week, though did put on a Stars of the Lid album as I was reading on the balcony a couple times.
Listened to a bunch of episodes of this podcast Botanical Studies of Internet Magic. As the name suggests, it's a bit twee and woo-y, and it doesn't 100% resonate with me, but it's given me some things to think about in terms of my relationship to my creativity--specifically in terms of how and why I share my creative work, or don't. Maybe I'll write a longer post about it when I get caught up.
Reading:
Finished Doxology. It felt like a *very* cynical book overall, and I was pretty uninterested in the plot that developed in the last quarter or so, but I still enjoyed reading it overall. Like I said last time, I feel like it explores the cultural/ideological differences between Generations X and Z in a pretty thoughtful way. I also really appreciated the dialogue, and the fact that most of the characters seemed to speak in a similar way, with this strange mix of irony and earnestness and referentiality (and often, unfortunately, crass misogyny or ableism) that I found most touching when it seemed like some kind of coping mechanism. It sort of reminded me of this line from Chris Kraus' I Love Dick: "The Ramones give 'Needles and Pins' the possibility of irony, but the irony doesn't undercut the song's emotion, it makes it stronger and more true." And yeah, that all feels very Gen X.
Just about done with Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Kairos. The plot itself is kinda unremarkable: Hans, an older guy with a wife and kid starts an affair with a 19 year old girl, Katharina; they're both infatuated with each other, etc., but then she hooks up with a guy her age and Hans goes berserk with jealousy etc. Except it's set in East Germany in the late 80s, so like T. keeps saying, it feels like there's a metaphor in here somewhere. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the history of post-War Germany to really get it. I do see that the way Hans starts interrogating and surveilling and abusing Katharina, and his obsession with her deceit/betrayal/impurity/selfishness/etc. feels very...Nazi/Stasi-like, and I guess maybe there's something here about all of that cultural conditioning poisoning people's minds and their relationships etc...plus, Katharina's performance of submission and obeisance and contrition, plus her apparently genuine love for Hans, plus her secrecy, etc., feels somehow reminiscent of, I guess, the behavior/mentality of the mostly powerless individual in a totalitarian system etc...but I don't know, I feel like I'm missing something.
Watching:
More Big Bang Theory. The sexism is still pretty hard to get past, but even so, I find myself developing a kind of fondness for this show, and I've actually started looking forward to watching it with T. at dinnertime and bedtime...
It was film festival week here, and I marked a whole bunch of movies I wanted to see, but only saw one: Embrace of the Serpent.
I probably wouldn't have seen it on my own, but my Poetry Buddy invited me, so yeah. I had a bit of a better feeling about it after listening to the director speak during the Q&A afterwards; he said some things about the importance of listening to indigenous voices, and the relevance of the story to contexts like Palestine and Tibet, and so on. I guess the main question the movie asks is how/to what extent can/should indigenous peoples/cultures "heal" the white supremacist imperialist capitalist nightmare system. But yeah, bleak.
Writing:
Wrote a few RP posts, that's it. I also wrote a post on here venting about some family drama, but quickly deleted it. I just don't feel right sharing that kind of stuff here, for a number of reasons. To be honest, I don't even feel totally right sharing *this* kind of stuff (what I'm reading etc.) here, and I constantly question my motivations for doing so. I feel like I keep coming across stuff online (such as in the abovementioned podcast) that celebrates sharing art and ideas, and almost presents doing so as some sort of imperative...especially in the age of A.I. and platforms, the argument seems to go, sharing messy/imperfect/"human" art and ideas, especially on one's own website, or in oldschool paper zines or something, is super important etc. And the impulse to withdraw, to hide, to be quiet, to not share--or to only share in this very closed way, as in a 1x1 RP--seems almost pathological. But this impulse is very strong in me--and I don't think it's *just* because of some neurotic fear of being "seen" or "known." Anyway, more to reflect on as I continue listening to that podcast, I think.
Other stuff:
As I alluded to above, I actually did some social stuff this week! I was really grateful that my Poetry Buddy invited me to the movie; we got ice cream and chatted for a while afterwards too, so that was nice. But related to what I wrote above about sharing things online, I'm feeling a really strong pull right now toward withdrawal from a lot of different areas of my life.
Nothing really. Last week of classes, so just babysitting and festivities. I really dislike any part of teaching that doesn't involve just being in a classroom with kids and, y'know, teaching, so weeks like this are always rough. But it's done, yay!
Also played the last session of the year with the little D&D group. I've been stringing together a kinda chaotic little homebrew thing since this handful of kids expressed interest in playing back in 7th grade...I keep expecting they'll lose interest, but they haven't yet, and they just finished 9th grade. Some players have disappeared, but the core group remains, and they remain fairly invested. It's kind of poignant too because I get the sense that they may not actually hang out too much together at this point, and yet they keep coming together for these games. Anyway, right now we're doing an abridged/modified Dungeon of the Mad Mage thing that I've tacked onto the campaign; it's been a bit boring so far, and I find that in the more dungeon crawly adventures the kids kinda default to video game mindset, just wanting to speed-run and clear rooms, but that's to be expected. I also feel like I haven't been doing a great job as a DM in giving them many opportunities for character development and relationship-building...that's something I want to prioritize next year.
Outside of school, did another creative writing workshop at the Artsy Personal Development NGO this weekend. I was sort of dreading it, but I felt good and satisfied afterwards.
Learning:
Slacked off on my DuoLingo Romanian this week, and didn't really read or listen to anything in Romanian either. Did go to another session in the somatic movement workshop series, though, and those are all in Romanian, so I guess that counts. The workshop was fun, and again, brought up some little insights here and there. At one point we got sent into breakout rooms with partners and we were invited to dance, on camera, to a song of our choice. I thought I'd feel much more nervous and uncomfortable with that than I actually did; I enjoyed it, actually. I chose this song. Again, I feel like some Gender Stuff is coming up for me in these sessions, and I'd like to sit down and try to process that a bit more, or, ideally, talk about it with the instructor, but that feels a little dicey--you never know how people feel about that kind of stuff here.
Listening:
Didn't really listen to much music this week, though did put on a Stars of the Lid album as I was reading on the balcony a couple times.
Listened to a bunch of episodes of this podcast Botanical Studies of Internet Magic. As the name suggests, it's a bit twee and woo-y, and it doesn't 100% resonate with me, but it's given me some things to think about in terms of my relationship to my creativity--specifically in terms of how and why I share my creative work, or don't. Maybe I'll write a longer post about it when I get caught up.
Reading:
Finished Doxology. It felt like a *very* cynical book overall, and I was pretty uninterested in the plot that developed in the last quarter or so, but I still enjoyed reading it overall. Like I said last time, I feel like it explores the cultural/ideological differences between Generations X and Z in a pretty thoughtful way. I also really appreciated the dialogue, and the fact that most of the characters seemed to speak in a similar way, with this strange mix of irony and earnestness and referentiality (and often, unfortunately, crass misogyny or ableism) that I found most touching when it seemed like some kind of coping mechanism. It sort of reminded me of this line from Chris Kraus' I Love Dick: "The Ramones give 'Needles and Pins' the possibility of irony, but the irony doesn't undercut the song's emotion, it makes it stronger and more true." And yeah, that all feels very Gen X.
Just about done with Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Kairos. The plot itself is kinda unremarkable: Hans, an older guy with a wife and kid starts an affair with a 19 year old girl, Katharina; they're both infatuated with each other, etc., but then she hooks up with a guy her age and Hans goes berserk with jealousy etc. Except it's set in East Germany in the late 80s, so like T. keeps saying, it feels like there's a metaphor in here somewhere. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the history of post-War Germany to really get it. I do see that the way Hans starts interrogating and surveilling and abusing Katharina, and his obsession with her deceit/betrayal/impurity/selfishness/etc. feels very...Nazi/Stasi-like, and I guess maybe there's something here about all of that cultural conditioning poisoning people's minds and their relationships etc...plus, Katharina's performance of submission and obeisance and contrition, plus her apparently genuine love for Hans, plus her secrecy, etc., feels somehow reminiscent of, I guess, the behavior/mentality of the mostly powerless individual in a totalitarian system etc...but I don't know, I feel like I'm missing something.
Watching:
More Big Bang Theory. The sexism is still pretty hard to get past, but even so, I find myself developing a kind of fondness for this show, and I've actually started looking forward to watching it with T. at dinnertime and bedtime...
It was film festival week here, and I marked a whole bunch of movies I wanted to see, but only saw one: Embrace of the Serpent.
I probably wouldn't have seen it on my own, but my Poetry Buddy invited me, so yeah. I had a bit of a better feeling about it after listening to the director speak during the Q&A afterwards; he said some things about the importance of listening to indigenous voices, and the relevance of the story to contexts like Palestine and Tibet, and so on. I guess the main question the movie asks is how/to what extent can/should indigenous peoples/cultures "heal" the white supremacist imperialist capitalist nightmare system. But yeah, bleak.
Writing:
Wrote a few RP posts, that's it. I also wrote a post on here venting about some family drama, but quickly deleted it. I just don't feel right sharing that kind of stuff here, for a number of reasons. To be honest, I don't even feel totally right sharing *this* kind of stuff (what I'm reading etc.) here, and I constantly question my motivations for doing so. I feel like I keep coming across stuff online (such as in the abovementioned podcast) that celebrates sharing art and ideas, and almost presents doing so as some sort of imperative...especially in the age of A.I. and platforms, the argument seems to go, sharing messy/imperfect/"human" art and ideas, especially on one's own website, or in oldschool paper zines or something, is super important etc. And the impulse to withdraw, to hide, to be quiet, to not share--or to only share in this very closed way, as in a 1x1 RP--seems almost pathological. But this impulse is very strong in me--and I don't think it's *just* because of some neurotic fear of being "seen" or "known." Anyway, more to reflect on as I continue listening to that podcast, I think.
Other stuff:
As I alluded to above, I actually did some social stuff this week! I was really grateful that my Poetry Buddy invited me to the movie; we got ice cream and chatted for a while afterwards too, so that was nice. But related to what I wrote above about sharing things online, I'm feeling a really strong pull right now toward withdrawal from a lot of different areas of my life.
Circus!
Jun. 21st, 2025 10:56 amcathrowanI'm covid-cautious, and for last five years I've been staying out of theatres. But there is a circus arts festival taking place this weekend and it's an artform I adore watching. I decided to mask up and roll the dice.
On Thursday I went to see a performance by House of Dust called HAUS of YOLO. It's bawdy and messy and the audience was there for it. I had such a good time - I had not realized how much I'd missed seeing this kind of show.
Here's a review of their Vancouver performance earlier this month
Tonight I have a ticket for Flo, by a Quebec troupe, where the stage set is a life-sized ship built inside the theatre. I'm looking forward to it a lot.
On Thursday I went to see a performance by House of Dust called HAUS of YOLO. It's bawdy and messy and the audience was there for it. I had such a good time - I had not realized how much I'd missed seeing this kind of show.
Here's a review of their Vancouver performance earlier this month
Tonight I have a ticket for Flo, by a Quebec troupe, where the stage set is a life-sized ship built inside the theatre. I'm looking forward to it a lot.
Productive and pleasurable
Jun. 21st, 2025 10:36 amcathrowanIt's been a good, and busy, month.
I think the hypomania is starting to wear off, so I'd better find those overdue lab requisitions and book appointments, so future me can get her thyroid meds renewed.
- For the first time in four years, bought new glasses
- Attended Scintillation, bluejo's book gathering in Montreal
- Went to my first SCA event since last winter, to see a friend made a premier member of the new Order of the Mark
I think the hypomania is starting to wear off, so I'd better find those overdue lab requisitions and book appointments, so future me can get her thyroid meds renewed.