Immanentize the Empathy
February was a godawful month for reading, or indeed any literary activities. I don’t think I have had such a low-energy month, book-wise, since I started tracking my reading habits over a decade ago. I am optimistic that March will be better, but only cautiously so.
This past Sunday our martial arts class held its first Chinese New Year celebration since Master Lee passed away, almost six months ago. A lot of people showed up – family, friends, and old students who we had not seen in a long time. The event was beautiful and bitter-sweet.
The gradual closing of our old downtown location, and the necessary change in schedule as we settle in to our new workout space at From the Heart Yoga, means my own personal schedule is changing for the first time in about 35 years (COVID notwithstanding). I now have Tuesday and Thursday evenings free, which has not been the case since the mid-1990s.
What will I do with my new schedule? Attend some poetry readings. Read. Write. Get back in shape.
Get some sleep.
Being done with February will help. This has been the Februariest February that ever Februaried. I’m glad it’s over.
I read a few more pages of Foucault’s Pendulum. A mere fraction of my usual reading pace. I had forgotten just how funny this novel is!
Ha! As if!
Subject: Espionage, Revenge
Setting: Ship
Genre: Solarpunk
Sun Ra, “Nuclear War.” Seems appropriate, considering. [NOTE: I picked this song before Israel and the USA launched their illegal attacks on Iran. There must have been something in the air.]
This past week was less crazy than the preceding weeks of the year, but it was still hectic. It says something about my life, that a 45-hour week feels like a vacation.
In two weeks, in the beginning of March, we will be changing the schedule at Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis Kung Fu and Tai Chi Jeung. Some classes will be changed to beginner and advanced levels. Some will be moved to the morning. And for the first time in over 30 years, I will not be teaching classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Instead, Monday and Wednesdays will be class days. And the Saturday classes will move forward an hour, starting at 9:00 am instead of 10:00 am. That means we will be done at noon.
The YWCA West Central Michigan building, our class home since about 1994, is up for sale. The organization is consolidating into a new building outside of the downtown area. While the building has not yet been sold, we decided to get ahead of everything and move weekday classes to From the Heart Yoga, and keep the weekend classes at the YWCA for as long as we can.
Our students have been supportive of the move, and indeed having morning classes opens up some opportunities for some of our long-time students who work odd hours to return to class.
This move has been in the works since the beginning of the year, which coincided with the beginning of the crazy projects at work, and the ramp-up to Magical ConFusion, which took place three weeks ago. And since the new project involves significant travel, I am out in the world much more than usual, so of course I got sick when I went to Philadelphia a week ago. And I am still recovering.
The polar vortex didn’t make things easier.
One more week in February. Then the new schedule kicks in, and I will have the opportunity to develop a new daily and weekly routine.
I haven’t been able to focus enough to read more than a couple of pages of Foucault’s Pendulum. At this rate I might be done by the end of the year.
Subject: Reincarnation, Language
Setting: Academia
Genre: Procedural
The Electric Six playing their excellent cover of the Spinners‘ “Rubberband Man,” from the Electric Six album Zodiac, released in 2010.
This was another crazy week. Last week I traveled to Philadelphia for work, and came home with serious sleep deprivation and apparently a mild case of the flu, or whatever crud is floating around this month. I was sick enough that I took a day off, but work was busy enough that I still put in more than 40 hours of billable time. So now I am less sick, but more tired.
I haven’t had the time or energy to focus on reading anything new, but I did finish a re-read of William Gibson’s Spook Country, the second in his Blue Ant trilogy. It was very good, and I think I should read the final book in the trilogy, Zero History, sometime in the next month.
As with the week before, this past week was so chaotic I barely had time to put words in my journal, much less indulge in creative work.
Subject: Undead, Politics
Setting: Space
Genre: Folk Tale
Yesterday I returned home from five days in Philadelphia. My new project at work involves a lot of travel, sometimes twice a month. I told the project leads that such a schedule was excessive and disruptive, and that I would be able to travel, at most, once a month. And there would be some months where I would not be traveling at all. So with a little luck I will be home until at least April.
One upon a time, such travel would have been exciting, but now, for middle-aged me, with a partner and students and cats, it is exhausting.
I brought three books with me to Philadelphia, but due to exhaustion and fragmented attention span, touched none of them. On the plane ride home I pulled up the eBook of William Gibson’s Spook Country, which is quite good., and more suited to the corporate hellscape of 21st century America than is, for instance, Calvino’s If On a Winters Night a Traveler.
Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. I was so busy I didn’t even write in my journal.
Subject: Precursors, Spiritual Beings
Setting: Ocean
Genre: Horror
“Lockjaw” by Todd Rundgren, from Rundgren’s 1985 album A Capella. I had this album back in college. One of the first CDs I ever owned. I might even still have it in a box somewhere.
January was a low-acquisition month until the last two days, when I drove to Novi to help run Magical ConFusion, and picked up half a dozen new books from the attending authors. I also picked up a beautiful new print from the 2026 ConFusion Creative Guest of Honor Megen Leigh.
I’m at Magical ConFusion this weekend, most likely sitting at the Operations desk. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend and finding a way to stay warm.
Next week I will travel to Philadelphia for work.
This year got busy in a hurry.
Attempting another read of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, but this book requires dedicated reading time, of which I have none.
Nothing of note. I brought one of my work-in-progress manuscripts to ConFusion to work on in my spare moments, but spare moments are few and far between.
Subject: Possession, Genius Loci
Setting: Small Town
Genre: Utopian
“All You Zombies,” by Philadelphia’s own The Hooters, from their 1982 album Amore.
As I finish writing this post, late Saturday afternoon, the outside air temperature is about 6° Fahrenheit. That makes it about 20 degrees warmer than when I got out of bed this morning, a little after 5:00 am, when I stuck my head out the door just to experience probably the coldest air to ever touch my face.
I didn’t like it.
Twenty years ago I would have gone for a walk so I would know what a warm day in the Siberian gulags was like. But older me is less resilient to extreme temperatures, though the possibility of gulags gets closer every day.
In Minneapolis, ICE is ramping up its murder of American citizens in the streets, which is exactly what every Trump voter intended. ICE is Trump’s gestapo, and every single one of them needs to be prosecuted, incarcerated for life, and all of their worldly wealth and possessions confiscated, so that neither they nor their families ever have any companionship, success or comfort, ever again. Let all ICE agents be cold, lonely, desperate, immiserated, and afraid until the end of their days.
Fuck ICE.
Fuck everyone who supports ICE in any capacity.
Fuck the entire power structure which enables ICE.
There. That’s my political thought for the day.
I finished The Age of Addiction, which was informative but lighter than I had hoped. I am indebted to the author, Dan Davies, for introducing me to the concept of “limbic capitalism,” which I will most certainly explore in the days to come.
And yesterday morning I finished Devouring Time, Todd Goddard’s superb biography of Jim Harrison.
The current level of insanity has left me little time or energy to write anything creative outside of a rough draft of a poem here and there. And by “rough” I mean a line or two on which I might some day hang a stanza, which might be the seed of an actual poem one day.
Subject: Evolution, Politics
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Solarpunk
Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name Of.”
2026 really isn’t messing around.
In my very few spare moments, working toward the end of The Age of Addiction.
One of my goals for the new year is to write at least a full page in my journal every day. Preferably two. I have plenty to write about, so the entries won’t be recursively self-reflective wankery. Nope. My wankery is ORIGINAL AND UNIQUE. But this new work project is devouring large chunks of my writing time, so I may need to play catch-up once the initial insanity is behind me. So maybe sometime in June. 2030.
Subject: Spiritual Beings, Art
Setting: Space
Genre: Technothriller
Diana Ross, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?”
I traveled to Chicago for a project kickoff this week, so this will be a light update.
I have traveled a lot in the past six months. About as much as the previous five years combined. I realize here in the post-quarantine era that doesn’t mean much, but I find it to be exhausting. Travel like this would have been fun a decade or two ago and, more importantly, when I was single. Now it is tiresome and more than a little depressing, even when visiting cities like Chicago and Dallas. Most of what I see is through an office window, and at the end of the day I am too tired to go out and enjoy myself.
At least the food is good.
David T. Courtwright’s The Age of Addiction. Limbic capitalism, baby! It is interesting and well-written, and is giving me ideas for some of my own writing, both fiction and non-fiction.
And it must be said, it is a good wake-up call for how capitalism exploits human vulnerability. Then again this wake-up call has been shouted from the rooftops since the invention of advertising.
Little to no creative writing, but lots of code. Lots and lots and lots of code.
Subject: Addiction, Apocalypse
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Slipstream
Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons.” Kind of the space my head is in right now.