This is late again, for which I apologize. I thought that going back to the store two days a week would once again return a sense of the passage of time to me. This has not been proved true, sadly; I still lose track of what day it is, I just do it in bigger chunks (I thought Monday was Friday because I knew it was a workday and it … didn’t feel like a Monday).
Today’s story, Turn of The Card, was written only twenty-four years ago (and published 23 years ago). I had forgotten a lot of it, and therefore found it surprising. Also: I cried. This is probably not something to admit about one’s own work — but… it almost doesn’t feel like it is mine, this far from the writing of it. As usual, the .pdf is free, and you can read it here (I think you can download by “save as”).
***
I have been attempting to write novels. Things have been more fraught as more and more of my writer-brain is swallowed by the usual stress about the future. Or rather, the unusual stress about the near future. The next Cast novel is now titled Cast in Conflict. I wish I could tell you it was finished. It’s not. I think I can finish it in two weeks. (Where finish means: get it ready to submit).
I have been attempting to write blog posts, but I can’t quite figure out how to unthread them enough that I can approach the various things I want to talk about: Power, Perception of our own power (in general, we don’t perceive that we have much of it), Guilt. Bridges. The latter is, of course, not about architectural bridges, because any bridge I could conceive of in that fashion would kill anyone who walked over it unless it was built over a tiny, shallow creek.
So, still thinking about that, which is oddly like thinking about writing, but more focused and therefore easier.
I hope everyone is staying relatively safe. In Toronto it’s masks on, although on empty or near empty streets, I … don’t wear one. I put it on if the streets are busy; I always put one on before I enter a store. I admit the heat makes them hugely unpleasant — but, well. I can’t stand needles, either, but sometimes I have to suck it up.
***
I had to explain to my mother how it was that people in the US believed covid-19 is a hoax. The first question she asked is: How do they explain all the deaths? I told her: they assume the people died of something else, and there’s a conspiracy to mislabel the deaths as covid-19 deaths. She asked me why anyone could say that this – which has affected us all – is a hoax.
I explained that the politicization of the US is so extreme that there are people who believe the “left” is creating this hoax to shut down the country and the economy so that the “right” will lose the election.
She was… somewhat skeptical about this claim. And I get that. There are people in Canada who believe this is a hoax. And oddly enough, some of those people are citing videos and information that are from the US. And I have pretty much nothing.
My mother has never considered herself “smart”, but because of that she tries to find experts, she listens to what they say. She’ll listen to us (being her children and grandchildren). But I know people in the US who have parents that won’t listen, or can’t listen, or can’t believe, and they’re super super stressed because covid is so much more active in large parts of the US, and… I’ve got nothing, but of course, I’m still thinking about ways to approach or things one could say that might, just might, gain traction.
Carrie Hamilton 
Joey 
DeDe 
Dawn 
Tchula 
Stephen Engel 
Stephen P Engel 
E.Évelyne 
RSS - Posts
A lot of Covid information is anecdotal. I met the first person I’ve actually talked to who had Covid about a week ago while I was out working. (Property Assessor — we knock on the door to let people know we’re there so if we walk past a window they don’t call the police.) Gentleman had a hard time of it, 24 weeks in hospital, 10 weeks intubated, and he was doing his daily exercise of walking 50 feet to the mail box, resting, and walking back. Prior to this I was just taking it on faith that that CDC wouldn’t lie to us about there being a pandemic because it isn’t hitting our area at all. No one knows anyone who has had it. My entire county has 30 cases in one city on the far north edge. I didn’t doubt it was real, but I also couldn’t point and say ‘it’s real because I know this person who had it’, you know? Which makes it hard to argue that it’s real when all of your anecdotes are ‘so and so said on Facebook/Twitter/the news’ instead of I MYSELF met this person. :/