Cool books

Just wanted to point to today's blog entry by Neil Gaiman in which he, in his very understated way, recommends one of my all-time favorite books, Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. I think there are about 10 people on the planet who liked this book, one of whom I friended on LJ(*) just because he used the phrase "Dirac Angestun".

It's a cool book about a (human) terrorist inserted onto an alien planet in a one-man effort to disrupt the aliens' war-making capability. The book is both eerily prescient and amusingly dated (in that way so much SF of past decades becomes).

I'm disappointed that Neil let the film option expire because, frankly, I think this film needs to be made. I hold out tenuous hope for the upcoming V for Vendetta movie because the message of that movie is extremely important. Likewise, a Wasp movie would have the potential to be absolutely rocking and unnerving to the current national zeitgeist. I hope someone picks this one up, but I doubt it.

(*) Am I the only one who consistently typos it as "liverjournal"? My fingers just want to put that extra 'r' in there.

Cool books

Just wanted to point to today's blog entry by Neil Gaiman in which he, in his very understated way, recommends one of my all-time favorite books, Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. I think there are about 10 people on the planet who liked this book, one of whom I friended on LJ(*) just because he used the phrase "Dirac Angestun".

It's a cool book about a (human) terrorist inserted onto an alien planet in a one-man effort to disrupt the aliens' war-making capability. The book is both eerily prescient and amusingly dated (in that way so much SF of past decades becomes).

I'm disappointed that Neil let the film option expire because, frankly, I think this film needs to be made. I hold out tenuous hope for the upcoming V for Vendetta movie because the message of that movie is extremely important. Likewise, a Wasp movie would have the potential to be absolutely rocking and unnerving to the current national zeitgeist. I hope someone picks this one up, but I doubt it.

(*) Am I the only one who consistently typos it as "liverjournal"? My fingers just want to put that extra 'r' in there.

In memoriam

I originally wrote this in response to a friend's grief posting. I'm pulling it up here so it'll remain in my sight for a bit and so others can see it.

A number of people around me seem to be grieving, or dealing with loss. I want to share this view on the topic. Take from it what works for you; leave the rest.

A former lover of mine described the experience of loss this way: when someone leaves your life, they leave a hole. It's the precise size and shape of that person. When that person has been in your life a long time their shape is large, and complex. It has a lot of facets - it has depth and breadth that can surprise you. Sometimes, the hole also has facets you didn't expect, even for something that has only been with you a short time. Your mind creates the future shape of the person, as well as its current shape. Losing that future can sometimes be as shocking as losing the present. When a former partner left me I found myself mourning the children-we-never-had as part of my grief at the end of that relationship. Our discussions and plans around these future children had been part of our interaction and that vast range of possibility was now closed off. That became part of the hole.

When the other is newly gone, she said, and when the hole is new, the edges are very very sharp. It's easy to cut yourself on them - you turn around and expect them to be there but they're not. Or there's a certain thing they've always done and suddenly one day they're not doing it. Or you're used to waking up next to them and there's a palpably empty place where they no longer are.

For me, the encounters with these edges are timeless. I don't grieve anniversaries - specific dates don't mean as much to me as to some. I grieve when I come across one of these edges, whatever the time and place, and I am hurt again. Sometimes a specific time or place will remind me, and that reminder is an edge. But for me a date in and of itself doesn't hold such power. I know it does for others.

It's a hole, she said, and the hole honestly never fills. Time does not heal all wounds - that's a lie. Even if time did, you wouldn't want it to. What happens is that the edges of the hole stop being so sharp, and sometimes they fill in a bit. You bump them and they don't cut so sharply or so deeply. Sometimes a person comes along who helps you fill in some of that space. But the empty space never goes away - if it did you wouldn't be the you that you are. And you still stumble into it, or snag on an edge you hadn't known was there, unexpectedly. If you feel it that way you may be moved to tears, or maybe you just get that tightening in your chest and breathing gets a little difficult for a moment.

She said it was OK, even good, to feel those feelings. Those feelings are part of the reminder that you are here and still alive. To stop feeling them entirely is to die, a little bit. She said there's never a "time to stop crying," but you have to realize that the edges of the hole aren't your life, either. Sometimes you have to move or change your routine or something so you don't keep cutting yourself on them, and that's OK, too.

Then she went away (death from breast cancer) and now there's a Marti-shaped hole in my life. Ten years plus gone by and the hole is still there. Dammit.

I've never been any good about people going away, for whatever reasons. I honor her this way, by sharing her perspective.

In memoriam

I originally wrote this in response to a friend's grief posting. I'm pulling it up here so it'll remain in my sight for a bit and so others can see it.

A number of people around me seem to be grieving, or dealing with loss. I want to share this view on the topic. Take from it what works for you; leave the rest.

A former lover of mine described the experience of loss this way: when someone leaves your life, they leave a hole. It's the precise size and shape of that person. When that person has been in your life a long time their shape is large, and complex. It has a lot of facets - it has depth and breadth that can surprise you. Sometimes, the hole also has facets you didn't expect, even for something that has only been with you a short time. Your mind creates the future shape of the person, as well as its current shape. Losing that future can sometimes be as shocking as losing the present. When a former partner left me I found myself mourning the children-we-never-had as part of my grief at the end of that relationship. Our discussions and plans around these future children had been part of our interaction and that vast range of possibility was now closed off. That became part of the hole.

When the other is newly gone, she said, and when the hole is new, the edges are very very sharp. It's easy to cut yourself on them - you turn around and expect them to be there but they're not. Or there's a certain thing they've always done and suddenly one day they're not doing it. Or you're used to waking up next to them and there's a palpably empty place where they no longer are.

For me, the encounters with these edges are timeless. I don't grieve anniversaries - specific dates don't mean as much to me as to some. I grieve when I come across one of these edges, whatever the time and place, and I am hurt again. Sometimes a specific time or place will remind me, and that reminder is an edge. But for me a date in and of itself doesn't hold such power. I know it does for others.

It's a hole, she said, and the hole honestly never fills. Time does not heal all wounds - that's a lie. Even if time did, you wouldn't want it to. What happens is that the edges of the hole stop being so sharp, and sometimes they fill in a bit. You bump them and they don't cut so sharply or so deeply. Sometimes a person comes along who helps you fill in some of that space. But the empty space never goes away - if it did you wouldn't be the you that you are. And you still stumble into it, or snag on an edge you hadn't known was there, unexpectedly. If you feel it that way you may be moved to tears, or maybe you just get that tightening in your chest and breathing gets a little difficult for a moment.

She said it was OK, even good, to feel those feelings. Those feelings are part of the reminder that you are here and still alive. To stop feeling them entirely is to die, a little bit. She said there's never a "time to stop crying," but you have to realize that the edges of the hole aren't your life, either. Sometimes you have to move or change your routine or something so you don't keep cutting yourself on them, and that's OK, too.

Then she went away (death from breast cancer) and now there's a Marti-shaped hole in my life. Ten years plus gone by and the hole is still there. Dammit.

I've never been any good about people going away, for whatever reasons. I honor her this way, by sharing her perspective.