Mucking about.

Swamps have always creeped me out. Been living in Louisiana my whole life and still haven’t gotten used to them. The complicated ecosystem, the deceptive stillness, the sketchy smell that you can’t quite identify- somewhere between fresh earth and a pile of dead bodies. But for those same reasons (minus the smell maybe), I am pretty fascinated by them. So swamps and swampy life play a huge part in the novel I’m writing**. Plus it’s a southern fantasy novel and you can’t have southern fantasy without at least a creepy moss-covered cypress stump or something.

Here’s some of the pictures I took at the beginning of the year while on a local swamp trail.

** “Writing.”

It’s the little things that kill?

Earlier today I caught myself thinking about something that happened when I was younger. Oh, I “caught myself” is a phrase I use when I’m thinking about something I know I shouldn’t, and I startle a bit, and desperately scoot on over to the next thought in line.

I was about 13 years old. I was at my friend’s house- she lived waaaay out in the country. They had a million kittens/cats around the place because, like most people in and around town, they were too poor to get them all spayed/neutered, and honestly trying to find every feline on the premises would have been impossible. But I always enjoyed watching them play and frolic about and felt accomplished when one of the young, wilder kittens would bravely come up and sniff my hand.

One day, my friend went out to toss some kibble in the giant ant-riddled bowl on the porch, and the cats swarmed as they always did. But there was this one cat- he was runty and grouchy, a little pale grey bruiser, and he was not my favorite of the bunch. He never got in on the bowl action it seemed. Well on this day in particular, he didn’t even bother. He was all tucked away in a corner intently playing with something. I went over to say hi and realized the cat had just pounced a tiny baby mouse that was still squirming a little. I mean– dead mice were just a thing that happened out there, along with dead bugs of all shapes and sizes, lizards, small birds, rabbits, and snakes- especially if one had dared come in contact with nearby humans.

But I had not ever seen a tiny baby mouse being eaten alive before. To this day, mostly on very stress-filled days at work, when I shut my eyes, it sneaks up on me. Just a quick flash of the images that day in my head, like with one of those old school View-Master toys, but an Internal View-Master for my memories. I can see its tiny mouse head easily tearing away from its tiny mouse body, a little shredded tendril hanging out. I don’t know what was inside, but it was all wet and bright pink and I couldn’t look away. I remember the grey cat had enormous fangs for being such a small thing… but probably out of dismay my tender young brain has exaggerated the memory. I was tempted to call out to my friend or her parents and I have no idea why. But the urge was there. Why? It was a perfectly natural thing that was happening, and the poor cat was hungry anyway.

But I was disturbed and angry and went around thinking cats were evil all the rest of the day, until one of them sat on my leg and purred.

I don’t know why after months of writing nothing whatsoever I felt like blogging about that in particular, but there it is.

I don’t really have an update otherwise. Things are what they are. Any plans for the future have yet again been waylaid and I have decided to simply stop making any said plans to avoid further disappointment.

That is my version of progress.

I mustache you a question: What’s it gonna be?

This won’t be one of those entries, but it will be one of Those entries.

All in all, it was not an overly awesome year. Some damn awesome things happened this year, can’t deny that. I am surrounded by people who make my life amazing.

But this year also kind of sucked in ways. It took something shitty happening to make me realize all The Plans I didn’t know I had. After all, when you can’t do something is when you want to do it the most. I’m storing my energy for something better, and I’m taking all those amazing things and people and generating some much-needed fuel.
And I mean that in a non-poo joke way.

Anyway, I end the last entry of the year with a Neil Gaiman quote because it is Neil Gaiman’s voice I hear in my head when I’m trying to be confident at times, especially about my writing, but also because a pleasant British accent sounds nicer than the off-key whine that is my own voice.

So I hope you all have a good year and, more importantly, that you let yourselves have a good year.
There is no point in worrying about things over which you have no control. I began this year feeling purposeful and agitated, and intend to end it a good bit less serious.

“Sometimes big things happen, and they echo. Those echoes crash across worlds. They are the ripples in the fabric of things. Often they manifest as storms. Reality is a fragile thing, after all.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 8: Worlds’ End

More power to you.

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― Oscar Wilde.

Hide your face so the world will never find you.

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

She dreams in color.

“My life might be little and boring, but at least it’s mine – not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant

Here’s to the new noises.

“We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Let’s go on a holiday, far away, to stay.

I’m about five posts behind on finishing this here Project 52, so I’ll do a post a day until THE END.

OF THE YEAR, THAT IS.

“I set a personal record on Christmas. I got my shopping done three weeks ahead of time. I had all the presents back at my apartment, I was halfway through wrapping them, and I realized, ‘Damn, I used the wrong wrapping paper.’ The paper I used said, ‘Happy Birthday.’ I didn’t want to waste it, so I just wrote ‘Jesus’ on it.”
– Demetri Martin.

Peruvian Eyes

A while back my friend Christine brought over these purple potatoes to use in a roast I was to cook that night. They tasted mostly the same as red potatoes, a tad nuttier, and certainly caught the eye. I’d never seen such a thing in my life- there was even one shaped like a heart. When I sliced the first one in half, I gasped and sent a flurry of texts that must have gone something like this:

“WHAT IS THIS” “I DON’T EVEN” “IS THIS SAFE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION?”

Her: “I don’t know. They were purple.”

Uncle Google said it was safe, and so it was. Bless all those friends who are as easily amused by the little things as we are.

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”
― Orson Welles.