Brekke

Thought I'd post some flowers to break up the politics! Here's me, who used to get all my news from destiel memes on tumblr, now following three substack blogs. But I figure when you're living through History, best to pay at least some attention. And even here in NZ we have right wing bastards in government trying to fuck things up. Wrote my first email to my MP, Health Minister, Labour & the Greens protesting a recent directive ordering our Health Service to refer to all pregnant people as "pregnant women". Tossers. Hope you're all looking after yourselves out there.

As predicted, the weather finally ended our almost-drought with a LOT of rain. And thunder and lightning, and some floods and slips but not where I live now (whew). At my old place in the bush we'd definitely have had power cuts but these days I can just listen to the pounding rain and crackling thunder and relax.

The autumn garden's losing many of its flowers and going a bit wild, but I've planted a bunch of seeds which might grow and eventually flower, what with Auckland having weird subtropical weather. We'll see. Also, it's time for violas again! I love violas and pansies with their many colours and little faces.

The tithonia (Mexican sunflower) beside my dalek compost bin is literally taller than the house. Possibly a world record! People keep offering to cut it back for me (neighbour, and the heat pump maintenance guy although it's not menacing the outside unit) but last year it produced huge plate-sized yellow daisies in May so I'm hanging in there for those to reappear (1 so far, hopefully many more). Makes it a little tricky to park my car but I can sort of nudge it in underneath the triffid. Here's the evidence!

Red chard - I cut it off at ground level so the roots could rot into the soil but, no, it's the second coming. Appropriate timing anyway!	Impatiens still cheerful by my door.
Leopard spotted liguria in rampant flower for the first time.	a super-late daylily being lovely.
Cayenne peppers in profusion - nearly too hot for me (well, a quarter of one in a stir fry is ok).	Mystery sweet pepper - a Yugoslavia with a dark stripe or a Sweet Chocolate with a red stripe?

I Just Got a Kitten. What Do I Do?: How to Buy, Train, Understand, and Enjoy Your Kitten, by Mordecai Siegal:

Why do all these books with titles like What The Heck Do I Do With This Kitten??? insist on starting with a lengthy explanation of what cats are, how they work, and where to find them? I already have a kitten or I wouldn't have picked up this book which seemed to understand that I Just Got A Kitten.

It's a good resource if you're going to get a kitten and want advice on how to pick one and what to do once you've brought the guy home, but if you already have a kitten in hand, the last two chapters are the most relevant.

Fun Fact: The kitten on the cover of this book looks almost exactly like my kitten, though this kitten is fuzzier, and mine started out that small but has since tripled in size.

This, from vysila's journal.

 

 

One of my older and longer poems this time. I'm a hard core agnostic tilting towards atheism, so this is as spiritual as I ever get. It's one of my semi-structured poems with tight metre and loose rhyme.

---

Faith's a brain virus, so I've heard it said,
harder than smallpox to eliminate.
Leading to genocide, to bombs and blood,
spawning fanaticism, war and hate.

Yet we need something as a plan for life.
A simple plan, not hard to grasp for we
are not great scientists and we cannot see
God in the details of the universe.

Some, not caught up with surfaces, do see.
Raising themselves above the froth of thought,
the fuss of living, the white noise of work,
of hunger, debt, appointments, illness, doubt,

they glimpse the underlying shape of life
and wonder at its intricacy, as do
the scientists, the great thinkers, who explain
carefully to the rest of us how fine

and perfectly constructed it all is;
atoms hum in their courses and the great
expiring breath of matter races out,
pouring its wave into infinity.

But this is not what most of us perceive;
we see duality, not the world complete.
Born raw, our senses register extremes,
happy or wailing, hungry or replete.

Mastering these inner selves in time we learn
some integration, but the ancient split
remains within, looming at times of fear
and pain, to colour all things black or white.

Are we hardwired for two-ness from the egg?
DNA spiralling double in all cells,
from the brain's hemispheres to our arms and legs,
mirrored, divided, coiled upon ourselves.

Is this why we so often lean towards
faiths patterned on our infant, binary self?
Faiths which have good and evil, us and them,
saviours and demons, heaven and the flames of hell.

Unreasonable faiths, illogical.
Impervious to experiment, closed to science.
Smugly triumphant over rational proofs,
wielding their lack of reason like a prize.

Set against this crusade of blinkered faith
the few who see beyond simplistic lies
try to convince us of a greater truth
lodged in a grain of sand, a drift of stars.

Kepler defined the solar system's gears
trying to bend geometry to make clear
the music of the spheres, the planets' dance.
I wish that I, like physicists, could hear

the resonance of numbers, the great song
of mathematics' elegant discourse
distilling crystalline proofs which demonstrate
God in the details of the universe.

But I have problems adding up my tax.
Stumbling on long division, I am deaf
to physics. Still I try to find that core
reality beyond the dust my life

kicks up, looking beyond the wood into
the trees, intricate, fractal, various,
infinitely different, yet their whole may show
God in the details of the universe.

---

"Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you, 1 book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews: just covers."

"Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you, 1 book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews: just covers."

"Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you, 1 book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews: just covers."

"Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you, 1 book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews: just covers."

Looking good!

A global catastrophe, a people who can control rock and lava and must hide who they are or be enslaved—or killed—and a story that starts out like fantasy, turns into the kind of science fiction where advanced technology left behind by earlier civilizations might as well be magic, and then circles back around to magic. Just as this is both science fiction and fantasy at once, the tenor of the second person POV similarly slides back and forth over the course of the series, telling two stories with a single voice.

It's brutal and incredibly engrossing, with detailed worldbuilding, interesting voices, and complex characters. The ways these people love each other is bananas.

Don't read the blurbs because they have spoilers, but do read these books one after another for maximum effect, and know that there's a glossary in the back that I only found once I was finished with the first book. It would have been helpful while I was still reading, but thanks to the excellent and immersive writing, I sussed out all the meanings on my own.

Highly recommended, though the content will be a dealbreaker for some. A child dies violently at the hands of his father on the first page, and it haunts the rest of the book, though that's only the beginning of the tragedy.

Contains: climate apocalypse; violence; child harm—including sexual abuse—and death; a literal caste system with institutionalized slavery, forced breeding, eugenics; a world where brown skin is the default; generational trauma; polyamory; transgender supporting characters; second person POV; animal harm; amputation; references to cannibalism.

( Status Updates from Goodreads )