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5 min read summer

Left August with None Beef

A hedge mixture of cottoneaster and ripening bramblefruit against a background of cloudy evening sky.

I wrote the below intermittently in the latter half of August, which is now firmly in the past as I got overtaken with, well, much of the work described below. Rather than chuck it, though, I'm just sending it the way one would a half-written letter by hand, underscored with a dividing line beneath which the present catches up to the past.

Dear Friends,

We are more than halfway through August, and I'm struck by feeling something opposite to what I felt this time last year, when I was wrestling with a sense of the summer evaporating faster than I could drink it in, and trying to think of ways to articulate and pin to the wall the inchoate mess of loss that accompanied that vanishing.

But after a spring and summer thick and relentless with travel, obligations, and adventure – in contrast to last year's summer of being immured by wildfire smoke and back pain – I feel like I perhaps acquitted myself all right? Kissed the joy as it flew? Between the beginning of April and the end of August I travelled to the UK for research and family, Italy for a writing conference and retreat, the US for Readercon and writing with Max, then moved house, and three days after moving house, flew back to the UK for book events and Worldcon and find myself only barely returned.

I feel so much more alive when I'm in motion, so much more in life. I'm discovering my feelings' emphasis is less on remembering, against anxiety, that "no semester is coming to eat you," as my beloved CSE Cooney once put it; instead I'm thinking about how to build a home to support my work, and what I want the next three years to look like.

On the one hand, this entails thinking about the structures and rhythms of the day when I'm not travelling: when to wake, when to write, when to work out, when to visit friends and when to receive them. But because we're still unpacking – having only just gotten back to our box-ridden home a week ago – I find myself thinking of all the small firm things that undergird those aspirations. I'm thinking of cupboards, and how to organize them so that I don't lose track of what's in them; I'm thinking of fridges, and meal plans, and closets, and how to store exercise clothes so that I'm excited to pick some out instead of panicked at the prospect of not finding them minutes before I need to leave the house. I'm thinking of the deep, beautiful garden that I've received as a tender responsibility and that I want to learn to care for and dwell in and invite people into.

a handful of cherry tomatoes held up against a background of coarse-leafed thyme and flowering tomato plants.

I'm also thinking of projects: all the unannounced work to catch up on, the work that needs revision, the work that's complete and needs me to shift towards the ancillary tasks of support and promotion, the work that needs to be conceived, the work that needs to be structured and written. The work shapes a path through the end of this year that winds into the next, and what's left of the month feels like the breath you take while gazing at a road before beginning to walk it.

In other news, my sister brought me a garlic wreath from her garden and, inspired by Caitlyn Paxson, I put it on my head.

Selfie in which I'm wearing a garlic wreath on my head like a crown while smiling close-lipped and serene at the camera. There are circular suction marks on my arms and chest from therapeutic cupping.

All right, that was August! Today's September 9th – I expect to have a bunch more news to share in the next couple of weeks. Til then, here are some:

Postscripts

  • I had a new column go up in August, titled "New Speculative Fiction About the Villainous Power of Universities." It was pleasantly cathartic to write, and covers new books by Sofia Samatar, Vajra Chandrasekera, and Emet North.
  • Tansy Gardem has a podcast called Going Rogue, and it's fantastic. It started as a deep dive into "why Rogue One is... The way that it is," and it's tremendously well-researched analysis delivered with a wry, charming thoughtfulness. She's since expanded into a bunch of other stuff; the description is "a podcast about the film industry that looks at both the films, and the industry." If you find you like her work, I urge you to support her recently launched Patreon! I hope she gets to do this for a good long time.
  • I was recently devastated by Mattie Lubchansky's Boys Weekend, a darkly funny graphic novel that made me dissolve into tears in a coffee shop. It's that rare blend of tender and sharp that's like combining a warm hug with dry-needling, and I'm so glad it exists.
  • In further being-damaged-by-books news, Sarah Rees Brennan's Long Live Evil heisted hours of sleep from me before punching me in the face with the revelation that it's Book 1 of a series. I can't recommend it enough. I want to write something more in-depth about how smart it is in addition to being a wildly entertaining romp, once I've recovered from how furious I am at being conned (the UK edition, which I read, doesn't indicate it's the start of a series, and I frankly think Orbit owes me a personalized apology in addition to a bound galley of the next book). If you read Brennan's 2017 book In Other Lands, you'll enjoy this fully as much, I think – and if you haven't, well, I recommend that as full-throatedly (and it IS actually a standalone, so!).
  • The latest issue of Sarah Gailey's Stone Soup newsletter is about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, an activity that began with 21 participants in 1999 and spawned a global community) and the organization's decision to dive face-first into the acid vat of AI bullshit.

Post-postscripts: Palestine Solidarity

If you're in Canada, this informational google doc is updated almost daily with information, scripts, and direct actions you can take to pressure our government into ceasing its support for Palestinian genocide and stand in solidarity with people enduring relentless and unspeakable horror.

If you're in the US, Jewish Voice for Peace has many tools for coordinating action, and links to repositories of information for comprehending this situation.

This Linktree has a rotating list of six fundraisers started by Palestinians in Gaza and their family members abroad. When the goals are met, the fundraisers get rotated off and replaced with new ones. This is triage and absolutely not a substitute for an arms embargo, immediate ceasefire, and the lifting of obstructions to aid which the US and Israel could make happen instantly. But every life saved is a universe, and I think this is a helpful coordination.

Similarly, Operation Olive Branch is coordinating efforts that cast a wider net, tabulating different categories of need and requests for help.

Additionally, from Gailey's newsletter:

I hope that wherever you are in the world you're finding ways to work for the liberation of all people.

Sunny garden selfie in which I have my long dark wavy hair pinned up in a loose messy way that makes it look a bit like I have a pixie cut. My eyes are looking off to the side behind black-rimmed cat’s eye glasses and I’m smiling close-mouthed while wearing a loose-fitting Hadestown t-shirt, tiny garnet earrings, and a parrish relics necklace depicting a tiny painting of a hummingbird under glass with a pearl drop beneath.

Published by:

Amal El-Mohtar

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