dreamcaravan - Tumblr blog

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Made some portraits.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/dreamcaravan

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Inspirobot says, GO VOTE. . #inspirobot #inspirocorps #vote #primaryelection https://www.instagram.com/p/BnqxIienCFg/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mxu4gcjbt3i2

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I too have lived in Monroe NY and can confirm this is a realistic description of its winter weather

It’s thirty… foursixer and Slværtcast I guess

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Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman” as a Toddler’s Bedtime Story

Very accidentally, the main and indeed only bedtime story my toddlers want to hear at night is one about Gaiman’s Sandman.

Please believe me, I didn’t plan this deliberately. I don’t think I could have.

There’s a kind of delirium state parents enter when they reach exhaustion and will say anything to make their kids lie down quietly. You say anything, hoping it’ll have a calming effect. I’d be unsurprised to hear footage of myself reciting Chinese restaurant combo meals.

At some point, I must have started rambling about the Sandman. It’s on my mind enough; I teach it to middle schoolers. 

My kids had me in the endless loop of, “Daddy, I want a kiss. And a hug. And a high five. And a fist bump. Put my blanket on!” So I mentioned the Endless.

I rambled out something about Morpheus and kept going. It was made in an impaired state of consciousness and never intended to be repeated.

Until the next night.

Eager eyes. Blankets clutched.

“Daddy. Tell me the Sandman.”

A bedtime story is a ritual, and children will inform you when you are doing it wrong. Through a state of narrative natural selection, our family has settled on an orthodox telling of Gaiman’s Sandman for Toddlers.

To whit:

“If you close your eyes and lie still-”

This is the Very Important Part for the parent side of the equation.

“…then the Sandman, Morpheus, the Prince of Stories, the Lord Shaper, the King of Dreams will come…”

One must take care not to get the order wrong. 

“…He’ll come with his bone helmet, and black robe, and glowing red necklace, and bag of magic sand…”

Yesterday, my two-and-a-half-year-old son politely informed me that I had forgotten the necklace, but no recriminations would be made if I immediately made a correction.

“… and he’ll put his magic sand on your eyelids…”

The children have reasoned out for themselves that “magic” sand doesn’t hurt your eyes the way normal sand does. They’re familiar with the anarchy of the daycare playground.

“…and he’ll send you to the Dreaming and give you amazing dreams.”

There is wiggle room in the descriptive word. Awesome dreams. Incredible dreams. Fantastic dreams.

Never “good dreams.”

I don’t believe Morpheus would approve of that promise.

If one cares, one can mention meeting Matthew the raven, Merv Pumpkinhead the scarecrow, or Lucien the librarian of all the Books That Never Were.

This is generally just garnish.

The ritual is complete. The children are appeased.

Sometimes, I will have to do it twice.

Even if they’ve both in the same room, six feet apart.

Separate performances will be demanded.

My greatest hope in this is that one day they’ll be rebellious gothy teenagers, deep in the epoch wherein Dad Is Not Cool.

They’ll approach me with the family copy of Preludes and Nocturnes in hand and eyes overflowing with questions.

And I’ll only smile.

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On Liking Stuff (or not)

So, back when Ancillary Justice was essentially sweeping that year’s SF awards, there was some talk from certain quarters about it not really being all that, people only claimed to like it because Politics and SJWs and PC points and Affirmative Action and nobody was really reading the book and if they were they didn’t really enjoy it, they just claimed they did so they could seem cool and woke.

My feelings were so hurt that I wept bitter, miserable tears every time I drove to the bank with my royalty checks. I mean, those people must be right, it’s totally typical for non-fans who don’t actually like a book to write fanfic or draw fan art, totally boringly normal for students to choose to write papers about a book that just isn’t really very good or interesting, and for professors to use that boringly not-very-good book in their courses, and for that book to continue to sell steadily five years after it came out. I totally did not laugh out loud whenever I came across such assertions, because they were absolutely not ridiculous Sour Grape Vineyards tended by folks who, for the most part, hadn’t even read the book.

Now I am sorry–but not surprised–to see some folks making similar assertions about N.K. Jemisin’s historic (and entirely deserved) Hugo Threepeat. Most of them haven’t read the books in question.

But some of them have. Some of them have indeed read the books and not understood why so many people are so excited by them.

Now, Nora doesn’t need me to defend her, and she doesn’t need lessons from me about the best way to dry a tear-soaked award-dusting cloth, or the best brands of chocolate ice cream to fortify yourself for that arduous trip to the bank. Actually, she could probably give me some pointers.

But I have some thoughts about the idea that, because you (generic you) didn’t like a work, that must mean folks who say they did like it are Lying Liars Who Lie to Look Cool.

So, in order to believe this, one has to believe that A) one’s own taste is infallible and objective and thus universally shared and B) people who openly don’t share your taste are characterless sheep who will do anything to seem cool.

But the fact is, one doesn’t like or dislike things without context. We are all of us judging things from our own point of view, not some disembodied perfectly objective nowhere. It’s really easy to assume that our context is The Context–to not even see that there’s a context at all, it’s just How Things Are. But you are always seeing things from the perspective of your experiences, your biases, your expectations of how things work. Those may not match other people’s.

Of course, if you’re in a certain category–if you’re a guy, if you’re White, if you’re straight, if you’re cis–our society is set up to make that invisible, to encourage you in the assumption that the way you see things is objective and right, and not just a product of that very society. Nearly all of the readily available entertainment is catering to you, nearly all of it accepts and reinforces the status quo. If you’ve never questioned that, it can seem utterly baffling that people can claim to enjoy things that you see no value in. You’ll maybe think it makes sense to assume that such people are only pretending to like those things, or only like them for reasons you consider unworthy. It might not ever occur to you that some folks are just reading from a different context–sometimes slightly different, sometimes radically different, but even a small difference can be enough to make a work seem strange or bafflingly flat.

Now, I’m sure that there are people somewhere at some time who have in fact claimed to like a thing they didn’t, just for cool points. People will on occasion do all kinds of ill-advised or bananapants things. But enough of them to show up on every SF award shortlist that year? Enough to vote for a historic, record-breaking three Hugos in a row? Really?

Stop and think about what you’re saying when you say this. Stop and think about who you’re not saying it about.

You might not have the context to see what a writer is doing. When you don’t have the context, so much is invisible. You can only see patterns that match what you already know.*

Of course, you’re not a helpless victim of your context–you can change it, by reading other things and listening to various conversations. Maybe you don’t want to do that work, which, ok? But maybe a lot of other folks have indeed been doing that, and their context, the position they’re reading stories from, has shifted over the last several years. It’s a thing that can happen.

Stop and think–you’ve gotten as far as “everyone must be kind of like me” and stepped over into “therefore they can’t really like what they say they like because I don’t like those things.” Try on “therefore they must really mean it when they say they like something, because I mean it when I say it.” It’s funny, isn’t it, that so many folks step into the one and not the other. Maybe ask yourself why that is.

This also applies to “pretentious” writing. “That writer is only trying to look smart! Readers who say they like it are only trying to look smarter that me, a genuine,honest person, who only likes down-to-earth plain solid storytelling.” Friend, your claims to be a better and more honest person because of your distaste for “pretentious” writing is pretension itself, and says far more about you than the work you criticize this way. You are exactly the sort of snob you decry, and you have just announced this to the world.

Like or don’t like. No worries. It’s not a contest, there’s no moral value attached to liking or not liking a thing. Hell, there are highly-regarded things I dislike, or don’t see the appeal of! There are things I love that lots of other folks don’t like at all. That’s life.

And sure, if you want to, talk about why you do or don’t like a thing. That’s super interesting, and thoughtful criticism is good for art.

But think twice before you sneer at what other folks like, think three times before you declare that no one could really like a thing so it must be political correctness, or pretension, or whatever. Consider the possibility that whatever it is is just not your thing. Consider the possibility that it might be all right if not everything is aimed at you. Consider that you might not actually be the center of the universe, and your opinions and tastes might not be the product of your utterly rational objective view of the world. Consider the possibility that a given work might not have been written just for you, but for a bunch of other people who’ve been waiting for it, maybe for a long time, and that might just possibly be okay.

____ *Kind of like the way some folks insist my Ancillary trilogy is obviously strongly influenced by Iain Banks (who I’d read very little of, and that after AJ was already under way) and very few critics bring up the influence of C.J. Cherryh (definitely there, deliberate, and there are several explicit hat tips to her work in the text). Those folks have read Banks, but they haven’t read Cherryh. They see something that isn’t there, and don’t see what is there, because they don’t have the same reading history I do. It’s interesting to me how many folks assume I must have the same reading history as they do. It’s interesting to me how sure they are of their conclusions.

(Crossposted from https://www.annleckie.com/2018/08/27/on-liking-stuff-or-not/)

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Hey can we get a little more of this? More #mermaidpower. Let your hair tangle in salt and sand. Drown your oppressors. Sing, scream, sparkle, and refuse to back down. #amandafuckingpalmer #coneyislandmermaidparade #mermaidparade2018 #latergram #resistance #wearethemedia @amandapalmer

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All women are forced to live under an arbitrary and unfair system which sorts us into the categories of “Fuckable” and “Worthless.” The solution to this is NOT to expand the definition of “Fuckable.”

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it’s a cold and it’s a broken hollaback girl 

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me: okay i’ve complained enough about this it’s time to put it to rest

me five minutes later: actually you know what-

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I took a million pictures of them but this may be the cutest one. #coneyislandmermaidparade #mermaidparade2018 #mermaidpower @amandapalmer @neilhimself

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Why am I making that face? What is going on with my hands? Why didn’t it occur to me to turn around while the bookstore girl took 22 photos (no seriously, I counted them) of me at the signing table? I dunno, you guys. I met @tamorapierce and she signed things and I gave her a wire lily I made and I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING, don’t ask me these questions

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Yesterday I spent several hours sitting on my stoop combing out the hair of a faceless Japanese ghost doll, and it occurs to me that maybe this is not unrelated to my general difficulty with making friends

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Confession: I have never quite understood what @amandapalmer ’s hair is doing. It’s magic, probably. . Anyway I made this. It’s based on a photo I took last July in Woodstock, cut from a single sheet of black paper. Further experiments to come, sooner or later. . . . dreamcaravan.etsy.com

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Hello I just sent what I hope was a Very Professional Email to the business address of possibly the single most influential author of my childhood and now I am having palpitations.

So.

When I was in...oh, second grade? I attended a Scholastic book fair. These were a regular occurrence at my school - every couple of months, display shelves of bright red cardboard invaded the front hall, and we paraded down one class at a time, each to choose a new book to take home forever.

For me, this was better than Christmas. I was a shy child - more than shy, actually; I was extremely anxious and had severe selective mutism, which resulted in other children pointedly avoiding me. Lucky for me, though, I was also more than smart - adult-level reading comprehension and vocabulary at age eight; never met a spelling test I couldn't ace, you know the type - and I hardly noticed those children anyway. Who needed friends? I had books.

Anyway. At this particular Scholastic fair (which, by the way, was better than Christmas not for the books - my mother knew well enough to get me those! - but because no one watched you for a reaction), my choice was a small purple paperback, its cover featuring a girl and a boy sprawled on a thatched roof with intense expressions on their faces, with a simple title in a pleasantly curling font: Sandry's Book.

It was below my "reading level" - I admit I was kind of an intellectual snob, even as a seven-year-old - but then so was everything else on offer, and this, well, it looked good.

It was.

It was perfect. This was the world I wanted to live in; these were the people I wanted to know. Why didn't someone come to take me to Winding Circle??

I don't actually remember when or how I got my hands on the rest of the series, the Circle of Magic quartet - it must have been fast; I own the same copies to this day and the editions and wear all match - and I don't remember when or in what order I read the quartet that came after, or the author's others. I inhaled all of it, so completely that it became part of my basic programming, like The Princess Bride and Doctor Seuss and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The world of Circle of Magic is under my skin, part of the lens through which I experience the entire world. My copies, now almost twenty years old, are on the top shelf of my bookcase at my mom's house - since I travel for a living my cat and my treasures stay with her - the DO NOT TOUCH shelf, reserved for my (extensive-but-tragically-no-longer-complete-because-I-can't-afford-the-new-ones-yet) Tamora Pierce collection.

And now, well.

A lucky overlap of timing and location has made it possible for me to invite Tamora Pierce herself to my own place of business.

Maybe it'll go over, maybe it won't. I desperately hope it does. Either way, I'll go to the signing in town and probably cry. Either way, I meet - even if only for a moment - one of the people who defined my childhood.

It's kind of a big deal.

My lifestyle allows me to live in more of a fantasy world than most. The current view out my rear window is, I shit you not, a castle turret. And when I go to work, I get to immerse myself in a fictional culture that my younger self pined for. I can be a Trader on the weekends. That's a piece of my real fantasy, come to life.

So, dear @tamorapierce: you probably get this a lot, but, you gave a wildly important gift to a lonely little girl. Thank you.

And see you soon.

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Sportscaster Dale Hansen defends student wrestler Mack Beggs and takes a stand against transphobia

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