Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 25

September Newsletter: The Salt Bath

So there I was, in the bath. My knees didn’t fit, but the rest of me was under the water, warm and surrounded by salt. Pavlina had set a table next to me with almonds and figs. She’d also donated one of her packets of Yakusen Meguri hot spring bath powder, which had turned the water milky and medicinal. I leaned my back against the lip of the tub and held up a paperback: The No. 1 Ladies‘s Detection Agency.

“And beyond the acacia, over the dusty road, the roofs of the town under a cover of trees and scrub bush; on the horizon, in a blue shimmer of heat, the hills, like improbable, overgrown termite-mounds.”

Yes. There I was, finally.

The the tub is new. It looks like a red Dixie cup, and it sat wrapped in plastic in our living month for six months while we waited to stop being scared of the Coronavirus and call in the workers to install it. It took another month after that for me to stop being scared of baths.

Three years ago, when my younger daughter was just starting to walk, we had a really terrible summer vacation. Pavlina and I would be at the park, we’d look at each other, we’d look back to where the kid was supposed to be playing, and she wouldn’t be there. I tracked her down to a birthday party about five minutes away. Or we’d be in a street-side restaurant, we’d look away, and she’d be out the door chasing a pigeon into traffic. She picked a direction and just started running.

“I can’t do this!” I told Pavlina in a restaurant on a beach. “I feel like every time I let my guard down, the baby tries to kill herself.”

“I know it feels that way…” Pavlina didn’t finish that sentence because she realized our daughter was gone. We chased her down before she could fling herself into the sea.

That was life for a while. Every moment is either a life-or-death emergency or preparing for one. If you find yourself relaxing, snap out of it and get your eye back on ball, because that ball is hurtling at 100 miles per hour toward you and your loved ones.

Which all might have something to do with the problems I had learning how to relax last month. It worked (with the help of the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Viktor Frankl, and Saint Augustine), but it was hard to bring the lessons I learned back home with me once the vacation was over.

Like this bath, for instance. Pavlina told me to try the Japanese bath salts, and hey wait a minute, you’ve never actually taken a bath in our house, have you? I was like, yeah, sure, I guess I could take a bath, but the book I’ve been reading bit me…so I have nothing to do when I’m in there…and isn’t there a parent-teacher conference we’re supposed to virtually attend?

Pavlina promised she would log in for both of us and she’d give me a book to read. No, the girls won’t explode while you’re stuck in the bath. No, you can’t use that time to check your email instead. She basically shoved me into the bathroom and bolted the door behind me.

I stood there, wondering what I was doing. Look how long it’s taking to just fill the tub up in the first place! Surely, the girls are exploding right now, and here I am waiting for a tub to fill with water that I can make dirty. I decided I wouldn’t make the water dirty – I’d follow a friend’s advice and take a cold shower first.

Suddenly there was no room in my head for second-guessing and self-recrimination. There was only “COLD!” I fled into the hot tub, trembling with endorphins.

My soap has lemongrass in it, and my shampoo has black pepper and thistle milk. I therefore cooked fragrantly as I read my book and ate my almonds and figs. I can’t imagine stronger positive reinforcement this side of direct electrostimulation to the nucleus accumbens. Now I look forward every day to reading The Ladies’ Detective Agency because I remembered that bath.

I think I’ll take another this weekend.

And what else is going on? A Book Launch! Yeah, that’s right, peoples! Simon Roy, Artyom Trakhanov and I are going to do a book launch for First Knife on zoom this weekend! That’s Saturday the 10th at 9am PST. We’ll have Q&A, drinking games (I’ll be drinking anyway), and fabulous prizes, all hosted by the gracious Arcane Comics. Here‘s where you can sign up. 

Also, Fellow Tetrapod

Finally, finally, I’ve started writing my long-planned-for “office drama with talking animals” novel.  I mean, ahem!

Fellow Tetrapod takes place in the UN embassy to the Convention of Sophonts, where the ambassador’s chef, his admin, and a team-building consultant get up to multispecies mischief. It’ll make you take it easy on yourself and other people, because after all we’re just a bunch of foolish apes.

You can read a bit of it here, but I know that this is what you really want, you animals: the Fellow Tetrapod playlist!

Thracian:

My most recent work with Thracian has been to compare real Thracian place names with their modern equivalents (for example the ancient city of ancient Sēlymbria and modern Silivri/Silivriya/Silivría) to figure out what sound shifts Thracian might have gone through between the classical age and now. Here’s the result. You might like it, or you might think it’s to Bulgarian-y.

“Ko îs tu?” Tonian paîrmăt.

“Îzo îm gont,” praspelăt aî, “ka oynoy zî zîstmotoy u îrmate, an kotoy kafnogotetoy ikeya an namotoy an Peyso, Tursa ner-îvroto ka Kubinoto deymoto an kabăsoto.“

“Who are you?” Anthony asked.

“I am a mortal,” he answered, “and one of the dwellers in the desert, to whom the pagans once prayed by the names of Pan, Satyr the man-goat, and Incubus the demon of lust.” (translated from the story of Saint Anthony and the Centaur)

I rather like the words gont (“a mortal”) and ikeya (“they once prayed”). I’m not sure about all those “oto”s though. Hm.

Anyway, here’s what I read this month:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – trying to get a grip on the funny/omniscient POV (maybe the narrator of this book is The Guide)? It was also a fun return to middle school. As a 2020s adult reading this book: its beginning is an elegant work of genius, but its ending…isn’t there. You got to do more than point out a problem, dude. Or at least rewrite the ending as many times as you rewrote the beginning.

A New History of Life by Dr. Stuart Southerland – a “Great Courses” course, again as research for Fellow Tetrapod. I was disappointed. There’s some good geology in there, but the paleontology is superficial and out-dated (he talks about whether dinosaurs were endothermic), and I don’t care about history-of-science stories.

Wyrms by Orson Scott Card – it was free with my Audible subscription. It’s a tidy piece of writing with just a bit of tantalizing worldbuilding. All of the surfaces are there – the language, the biology, the ecology, the history and culture – but they’re begging for depth. I also would have liked a more mature discussion of willpower (as distinct from self-control). Still, a good spring-board for Fellow Tetrapod.

The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss – A lot of this book isn’t applicable to me (or anyone living in the 2020s), but the rest of it is. There’s tons of stuff about working from home and how great it is. I was already sold on that idea, but the next thing I need to do is prioritize and get out of my own way. Also that stuff on “muses.” Hmm…

Patton’s Space Ship by John Barnes – it’s some angry dude’s job to clean up the infinite timelines! There’s a lot of shooting bad guys because they’re bad. I didn’t like that so much, but on the other hand, this book didn’t bite me. The main character has just enough real humanity at the beginning to make up for all that shootin’. And Barnes took his research seriously – I enjoyed the description of life in the terrible Man-in-the-High-Castle alternate history.

White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott bakker – holy spooky mother-goddess YEAH! Honestly I was a bit disappointed in the previous book in this series, but it turns out that was all set-up for this breathtaking masterpiece. White-Luck Warrior has all the piercing description and insight of the previous books, but also shows a much defter hand with plot. I did not see those twists coming – and I was looking for them – but once we got there I was like “well of course that’s what happened!” The perfect balance of the expected surprise. So imagine me there on the beach, Man’s Search for Meaning swirling in my head, the hot sands banished beneath the chill winds of the goblin-infested northern plains, a sulfurous smell in my nose and before me an elf I can trust only to betray me…this is what epic fantasy should be!

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl – another summer book because it needs there to be nothing going on in your life when you read it. For me, this book forms a trio with Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Art of Living and The Confessions of Saint Augustine (which I’ll hopefully be able to tell you about next month). I’ve been fumbling around for faith, and these are the books I’ve picked up so far. Frankl describes a life in a Concentration Camp and after, and what differed between those who gave up and those who went on. I got a lot of use out of it.

Unnatural Habits by Kerry Greenwood – a bit of a thought experiment on women-only communities run well and badly. The mystery was fractured, and I didn’t like the jokes about murdering people. But aside from that, it was fun.

PBS Spacetime by Dr. Matt O’Dowd – good good good astrophysics on youtube! O’Dowd just dips his toe into the math, which is right where I am, astrophysically. I’ve been especially watching the “other universes” videos. I bet you know why.

And for those of you who didn’t check out the new Fellow Tetrapod playlist, here are the highlights:

“Black and gold” by Sam Sparro – yeah, that’s where I’m at.

“Delicious” by Kang Nam – for the many food scenes that are going to be in this book

“Youngblood” from the Jem and the Holograms movie – for this book’s many questionable decisions.

First Knife Launch Party

Here’s the link!

August Newsletter: The Value of Practice

So there I was, neck deep in the Aegean, watching the hills turn black and the sky gold. I slowly beat with my hands and feet, trying to stay still. Trying to relax.

I’ve had a hard time with vacations for a while now. Most days I get out of bed thinking “I have things I’m excited about doing” and I go to bed thinking “I accomplished something today.” That’s – well – it’s healthier than whipping myself into a frenzy of anxiety the way I used to, but let’s say there’s room for improvement. I manage well enough when I have projects to escape into, but on vacation, I tend to spend my time at the beach waiting for the chance to go back to my computer.

“How productive was I today? What did I accomplish?” I ask myself, while the time between accomplishments blurs into meaninglessness. Surely there are tasks, such as raising children, that shouldn’t be thought of as tasks. But what should they be instead?

That was the homework I gave myself on this vacation in Greece: find value in something other than productivity. I had just finished a draft of the particularly hairy Centuries Unlimited and I didn’t have any approaching deadlines, so why not experiment? I downloaded some fun books as well as books on religion, philosophy, and spirituality. I went to the beach with my family in the morning instead of using that time to write. I tried to draw,  read, take it easy. And I felt the hunger building like the lack of some vital nutrient.

What had I accomplished, floating in the sea? What could I feel proud of? How could I get that rush of happiness that comes from praise?

Last year I wrote about my addiction to praise. I thought I’d broken it, but really what I did was learn how to praise myself. Fine. A good stop-gap solution, but I knew as I floated in the sea, day after day, that I needed something more substantial.

A seed in the air

It passes into shade and

Vanishes completely

I’ve been reconnecting with an old friend of mine, someone who’s also had a near-death experience in the last few years. We decided to read through The Confessions of Saint Augustine together, and one of the things that emerged from our discussion was what I’ll call “the value of practice.”

The biggest step forward I’ve made as an author was when I let go of the product of my work and focused on the practice of the work itself. Sitting down, opening my laptop, putting fingers to keys, and juggling words and images in my head. Yes, do that long enough, and a book will pop out, but the book isn’t the point. The practice of writing is valuable by itself. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.

My friend related his own memories of taking his daughter to the park. It was the same trip and the same park over and over day after day. But because of that sameness, events stood out. One time, they found a turtle. Without the practice of going to the park every day, my friend wouldn’t have had the frame to appreciate that turtle. Now that his daughter is in college, he looks back at that whole going-to-the-playground repetition as one of the greatest accomplishments of that part of his life.

A practice can be anything. Writing, going to the beach, doing your homework, cleaning your house. Take boredom as a sign that you’re open for inspiration. The practice itself has value. That’s what I’m reaching for.

Except for today. Today I stayed home and wrote this newsletter

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A seed in the Air

A seed in the air

It passes into shade and

Vanishes completely

The Centuries Unlimited Delta is done!

The Centuries Unlimited

Un-hairy version (delta draft) finished at 92,000 words.

Begun (revising) at 8:40am on Monday, June 8th 2020 in the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy.

First line: “The utility fog hung thick over Black Chicago.”

Finished at 10pm on Thursday, August 6th 2020, still in that old tower.

Last line: “Her laughter flew up to careening traffic and the blue sky above.”

Now I’m going to email this hairy baby to my agent and eat some ice cream. After that, I think I’ll finally start with Fellow Tetrapod. Good night, everyone.

Logarithm 2

(see Logarithm 1)

August-2030

The sun is hot on my back, and my thighs burn with the effort of holding this position. My back doesn’t hurt, though. Those stretches work.

My face is full of leaves. They come in triplets, saw-edged, each the size of the space between my thumb and forefinger. Hard, unripe berries tap against my glasses. Somewhere too close, a yellow-jacket buzzes.

I put one hand down and reach with the other into the shadows, scattering leaf-hoppers. The sweat sticks to the inside of the glove as I squeeze the handles of the garden sheers. A growing resistance, then a dull snap, and a brown, prickly cane shudders behind the leaves.

The dead cane tears away from the bush like velcro, exposing a patch of soil, the wall of my parents’ house, and a small volume of empty space, dangling with raspberries.

I grab one and put it in my mouth. It tastes like the dirt and leather on my glove, and decades of piled summers.

Raspberry canes take a year to grow up from the root, another to produce fruit, and then they die in the third. My job is to clear out the dead canes of last year to make room for next year’s shoots. I’m also exposing more of this year’s berries to my daughters and their cousins.

I wanted to do this in my garden, which is just old enough to have its own raspberries. They’re planted in rows away from the house, just the way my grandpa had them. And I have already done the chore of cutting out that patch’s first crop of dead canes. But my kids were firm: if we were going relive someone’s childhood today, it would be theirs.

I decide that my back is hurting after all and slowly stand.

My parents’ garden hasn’t changed much since Julia was a nine months old and pooping in the wading pool. The lilacs have grown thicker, the apple tree has died. The bird bath is now at our summer house three valleys south of here. Julia manipulated my parents into giving it to her.

But there’s still the enormous rhubarb plant next to the compost. To the east, beyond the rhubarb, the hill slopes down to the Interstate, the web of aerial traffic, and the houses, condos, restaurants, business incubators, network hubs, and micro-factories of Lolo, Montana.

Julia and Mikhaela move through the garden like a hummingbird and a lawnmower, respectively, with the other teenagers strung between them. Some are talking or doing incomprehensible things with their key-rings and charm-bracelets, but an impressive amount of berry-picking is still getting done. Mikhaela said she wanted to make a pie for the party, and they already have enough for two.

I glance to my right, where my younger daughter is methodically mowing her way down the raspberries. I can’t tell whether she’s listening to an audiobook or sharing her POV with some other kid in Saudi Arabia or just thinking her thoughts.

I remember my grandpa when he drove me home from the airport one summer. I had wanted to read a fantasy book, but he wouldn’t let me. He kept me talking that whole drive.

“What did you learn in drama camp today?” I ask her.

“Diegesis,” she says.

There’s a conversation starter! But my attempt at a follow-up question is interrupted by a delivery drone descending onto our lawn. Its brown plastic carapace is emblazoned with the logo of the nearest hub, which means only that this isn’t a delivery from a Lolo caterer or micro-factory. The kids could have ordered something from Seattle or New Zealand, and it would still get routed through the local hub. My guess, though, is that it comes from Sofia, Bulgaria.

“What did you forget to pack, Yooli?” I shout at my older daughter, Julia, as she runs toward the drone, waving her wallet-key.

Last summer, Julia packed almost nothing for our trip to the US. She told us she thought it would be easier to just mail herself stuff when she remembered she needed it. When we saw the international shipping bill, we got her her own bank account and wallet-key, which might have been the whole point of the exercise.

The drone sees her key, releases the box it was clutching, and buzzes back up to join the sky-traffic.

“I didn’t forget anything.” Julia shakes her hair out of her face and lets go of her key-ring, which zips back to her belt on its recoil line. The belt is bright pink, with green and blue Kazakh embroidery patterns. Each key on the ring is a different color and pattern, for a different digital purpose. “This is for our party.”

She pulls open the self-storage box, revealing an irregularly-shaped pink crystal the size of a melon. It’s a salt-lamp.

Generational cycles are funny things. Growing up means doing whatever your parents didn’t do, but we all have a soft spot for our grandparents. I want to be firm and practical like my grandpa, Mikhaela wants to be strong-minded like my mom. My older daughter Julia, for her part, cultivates a free romantic spirit like my mother-in-law. This, for me, is an endless opportunity for spiritual growth.

“Your salt-lamp.” I repeat. “Why do you need a salt-lamp for a party? Why do you need your salt lamp? You could have ordered a brand new one and it would have been a lot cheaper.”

I know what she’ll say next: “it’s my money. You‘re the one who told me to get a job and now I have eighty.” I open my mouth to tell her that she still ought to save her money for something important. And what is it exactly that she’s doing in these eighty jobs anyway?

But Julia hoists the salt-lamp and says, “it has to be this one. My friends and I licked it into just the right shape.”

I have no idea how to respond to that. I close my mouth and process data while my daughter skips away, tongue-sculpted lamp cradled in her arms. I’ve been out-maneuvered again.

I strip off my gloves and hat and go to find my wife.

Pavlina is on the balcony, sipping chilled white wine with her brother and sister-in-law. They’ve lived in California since the early 2010s, and in some ways they’re more American than me.

“I need to go to the teenager party,” I tell Pavlina.

“Zashto? Ti li si tineidjar?” Why? Are you a teenager?

Pavlina’s brother lifts a bottle of beer in my direction. “Ne trevozhi, bre. Veche si imam pushkata.” This is an in-joke.

According to Bulgarian tradition, Julia’s and Mikhaela’s first teenager party means we adults are all exiled here, to my parents’ house. We’re supposed to have a party, too, but I suspect it will be more like a military command center. Lots of tense pacing while we try to imagine what chaos is unfolding on the front lines.

“What are you talking about?” My dad appears from the kitchen with a tray of cheese and the tactical situation becomes more complicated. Neither of my parents approve of the teenager party, and we’ve been tip-toeing around the topic all week.

“We could be in the attic,” I tell Pavlina. “Or the basement.”

“That is where I’ll lock you when you go insane, yes,” she says.

Pavlina’s brother cackles and my dad says “What?” in a tone that means “I am playing the doddering cyborg grandpa, but I really am angry that you’re talking over my head.”

“It’s the teenager party.” I look out over the balcony, where our kids are doing incomprehensible and scary things in the yard below us. “I mean, what if something happens?”

My dad doesn’t say, “exactly! We have to cancel this whole barbaric ritual.” He says, “I’m worried too.”

“Yooli and Mishi will take care of it,” Pavlina says. “That’s what they’re learning to do.”

“What if someone brings dope?”

“They’ll tell him to smoke it outside.”

I check to make sure my mom isn’t in earshot. “What if things get…physical?”

“Zdravko and Boris are big. They’ll beat him up.” These are Julia and Mikhaela’s cousins, who seem to be engaged in some a virtual sword-fight right now. Mikahela is directing it.

“Now you say, ‘there can be only one sun, one moon, and one great khan!'”

I look around for support, but even my dad is nodding. “You don’t need to worry about boys,” he says.

I pick up a piece of cheese. “Well, at least I got them to pick raspberries with me. Mishi’ll make a pie.”

Pavlina looks serenely out at the Sapphire Mountains. “Sore wa kokuteiru no tame da to itta yo.”

‘She told me they were for cocktails,’ in Japanese, a language which nobody within earshot speaks but me and my wife.

I try to slow my breathing.

It isn’t just the underage drinking. It’s the social situation. My kids keeping secrets from me. Me keeping secrets from my dad. I reach down inside of myself for that still, small, voice. It says “be honest.”

“Mikhaela is making cocktails?” I say.

Everyone stiffens.

The US and Bulgaria have very different ideas about what constitutes proper behavior for teenagers and police officers. My dad, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law now all agree that the teenager party is a terrible idea.

Pavlina, meanwhile, looks steadily at me, letting me know that I have now become her opportunity for spiritual growth.

I put my cheese down on the balcony railing. “I’m just worried. Our kids are going to be alone in the summer house, which we just finished. They’re going to be drinking and smoking and licking salt-lamps.”

“Huh?” says my brother in law.

“What’s going to happen? What are we going to do when something does happen?”

“You’ll deal with it.” Pavlina declares, standing. “Nali si moyat mesten vodach?” Aren’t you my native guide? Another in-joke.

She pats me on the shoulder. “In the mean time, meditate on trusting your children, or at least trusting God to watch over them.”

“The God of fools and children,” I mutter. But that still, small voice speaks to me. “Go pick some more raspberries,” it says.

July Newsletter: Aspirational Fiction

So there I was, doing jumping jacks, jumping – literally! – for joy in Pavlina’s grandparents’ garret in the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy. My toes sank into and lifted off from their plush,  gray carpet square. Pigeons cuddled on the air conditioning unit under the window. If I turned just right and didn’t clap my hands over my head, I didn’t smack into anything.

I’m usually drained after a bout of writing. On good days, it’s like after working out. My mental muscles ache because I stretched them. On bad days, it’s like I’ve been wrapped in spider silk and spent the last ninety minutes trying to tear my way free.  Sometimes I’ve just been cored, and just need to lie quietly for a while until my organs grow back. But this time, for the first time as far as I remember, I came out of writing with more energy than I had going in. Here’s what I wrote.

I’m calling it “aspirational fiction.” It’s heart-felt, it’s grounded, it shines a light on the future and shows us a way out of the present.  And I’m so excited! Other people are writing it too!

So there I was again! Yeah! This time I was in the village, on the balcony of Pavlina’s grandparents’ house. Grape leaves reaching up from their trellis. Pears growing on the tree. Goats going home. Kids stewing in the Jacuzzi. I was talking to my agent and some of her other authors, and Joanne Rixon told me about this op-ed she wrote last year for the Tacoma News Tribune.

The op-ed is 600 words about the world 30 years in the future. It shows how the people and places of Joanne’s home town have grown and succeeded. Specifically, they’ve beaten climate change, and she shows us one way to get there. Aspirational fiction.

I don’t mean escapism. Escapism takes you out of your life, but then it puts you back. What I need is something that opens a door and leads me through it. I’ve written about it before. Call it “uplifting” or “transformational” or “hope-punk.” I want more.

So, here’s my challenge to you: The 600/30 op-ed! Write 600 words about your home town 30 years in the future. Talk about how we’ve solved some problems. Give the reader reason for optimism. And I want technical details, people! This is science fiction after all.

Submit your 600/30 story to your local newspaper. And whether or not it gets published, sent it to me. I’ll keep a collection of these things (I already have two). Maybe we can have an anthology.

Whew! Okay. In other news…

I finished The Centuries Unlimited delta. That’s right, four complete rewrites. That’s an average of one a year. God, what a hairy project it turned out to be. If you usually build a house from the foundation up, I tried to build this one from the paint in. I nearly lost faith in this book, and the way I found it again was by dedicating it to someone. Finding the person (well, people) who needed to read Centuries gave me the motivation I needed to fix it.

Now Centuries is with my agent. She’ll read it and determine whether it needs another re-write. I’ll do that rewrite if I need to. I’ll do a hundred rewrites because now I know why this book is important. (Uh, but fingers crossed I don’t need to).

Protector #5 is out! In fact, my copies were delivered as I was writing this newsletter. 

Proof!

This is the last issue. The end of Arc I. As for Arc II, well, we’re working on it.

Logarithm 1

July-2021

I am sitting on a bed in a house in a village 15 kilometers from Serbia and 20 from North Macedonia. My back is propped up against the wall, my laptop is balanced on my stretched-out legs, and I’m breathing deeply.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s a habit old enough that I no longer need the Headspace app to support it. I’m reading books on different branches of meditation now, improving my practice. Am I entirely happy with the novel I’m reading, though? Am I entirely happy with any fiction that’s being written these days? Has Anglosphere culture simply shattered into the depressed and the psychotic?

I imagine the frustration at the entertainment industry as a clockwork robot the size of a football. I don’t need to hold onto that robot. I set it on the ground, and it trundles happily away.

A squirrel scrabbles down one branch and up another. Chickens fuss and grumble in the neighbor’s yard. My daughters are arguing about something. At least they aren’t playing video-games, their brains hooked on an endless loop of super-normal stimulation.

I shine a light on the fear: I am afraid that the girls will miss out on life. That’s either a real problem or it isn’t. If it is, I can solve it. After I’m done writing, I’ll spend some time with the older one on our “balcony zoo.” I’ll read another chapter of the Roald Dahl book with the younger one. Just this week, didn’t we finally get a kite up into the air?

Breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. I visualize my head as a bathysphere, its windows papered over and covered in dust. I clean the windows, exposing ever large vistas of calm black, winking with living stars. An association sparks between that image and the science fiction book I’m writing. It’s the third of a trilogy which has garnered very little popular interest, but which the publisher keeps paying me to write. And, although the reviews are few in quantity, some of them really got what I was trying to say. What about the fantasy book that the big name publisher picked up? What will be the reaction when that hits people’s shelves and phones? Given its content, some percentage of people will be enraged. Let’s hope the number of readers stays small…

I recognize my self-sabotage and name it. The lie that I’m telling myself is that strangers on the internet can hurt me if I anger them. No, those strangers on the internet are safely far away. My experiments online have built a network that is small, but deep. I’m increasingly able to enforce the rule: tell each other only uplifting things. And I stay away from science fiction conventions.

I count my breaths. In is 1, out is 2. Surface anxieties peel away to expose deeper, thicker fears. How can we move this summer and go to a Lisa Nichols conference in the Bahamas with our friends? Do Pavlina and I deserve personal development? Fun away from our children? How can we say “all right, grandmas, take care of our girls until we can come back and move out of the house you let us stay in?”

But that’s the problem. We can’t live somewhere were somebody lets us do anything. Pavlina needs to be able to close a door that nobody will bang on. I need a garden that nobody will uproot. Our kids need a house that’s stable and emotionally safe. And the grandmas need Pavlina and me to not resent them. We can still visit them, which is more than I can say more my parents.

21, 22. Damn, I was supposed to stop counting breaths at 10 and go back. I go through two repetitions and my mind clears enough for me to see – I’m feeling guilty that we’re not planning to visit my parents this summer. I didn’t fly out when they were sick, either, did I? Coronavirus might have killed them, and I wasn’t there to take care of them.

1, 2, 3, 4. I made my decision. I prioritized my kids and wife. We’ll all stay on our bi-monthly viral protein boosters, and by Christmas we’ll be able to fly my parents to Sofia. They can enjoy our new house and some decent medicine. If their stupid American medical system won’t give them the DNA-based permanent vaccination, we have enough pull with the Bulgarian one to get them immunized while they’re here.

I bring my mind back the center of its black-glass sphere and start counting again at 1. I turn over the soil, uncovering layers below layers. For a while, my mind actually stops spinning.

Habit tells me when my ten minutes are up. I inhale and blink, looking down at my laptop. Today is Friday, which is my day to experiment. I’m cheating a little by experimenting with an ongoing project: a “technical comic” that’s a collaboration between me, an aerospace engineer, and three artists. Although I’m officially the writer, we all talk to each other about the script, which has gone through three major overhauls. We’ve deleted about 90% of our original concept for the project, but that’s a feature, not a bug. When you eliminate the mediocre, whatever is left, however improbable, must be truth. Or was that beauty?

June Newsletter: Waving Back

I’m waving through a window, oh

Can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me?

-Ben Platt, “Waving Through a Window” from “Dear Evan Hansen”

So there I was, like, five minutes ago, curled up in the chair I’m still sitting in now, crying. It was a good kind of crying. Like the air coming in through the window I’ve just opened. It smells like rain on the spruce tree behind our house. A hundred million tiny pores, exchanging gasses.

Whew. I don’t usually write quite so much in the moment. Half an hour ago, I was wondering how to ground the abstract and cerebral topic I was planning to write about today. “So there I was, talking on Zoom”? “So there I was, thinking how this friend had a solution to this other friend’s problem”?

“So, there was a social network diagram”? Shudder.

But then I put on some music and spotify played the song I’ve most recently favorited: Ben Platt’s “Waving Through a Window.” I suppose I was procrastinating – I listened to the words, thinking about the fear of failure and how although the song is about someone on the outside looking in, now we’re all trapped inside looking out.

Then he’s like, “When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around

Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?” That’s what started me crying.

It is terrifying to let other people see you. It’s tempting to wall yourself off. But a failure in front of everyone is better than a success alone. Like the tree in that koan, we need observers. But I’m getting too abstract again.

Let me talk about my friends. I talked to two people last night who I hadn’t seen since January, and of course we were comparing Lockdown stories. I told them I’m actually more social now than I was before the Lockdown, and they were like, “what?”

But it’s true. I’ve reconnected with friends from college who I haven’t talked to in over a decade, and I’m making new connections with colleagues and mentors who are coaching me in writing and teaching. These are kind of the same conversations I was having last year, but last year those conversations usually happened in a white-walled office or a noisy restaurant. There was a certain distance between me and the other person, even though we were breathing the same air.

Now, I’m giving my classes in a T-shirt, sitting on a bed as my mullet evolves ever greater.* I’m talking to my writing mentor in and Pavlina comes in, telling her friend about this new menstruation-based productivity schedule she’s using.  We’re comforting a friend in Hong Kong when our daughter comes in and demands to show off the princess picture she’s just drawn.

Pavlina and I talk with our students, employees, clients, and family, our life coaches and business gurus and fellow writers, and we notice the same themes coming up. I have nothing to do all day – why aren’t I more productive? How can I keep my job? How can I pay my employees? How can I find something more worthwhile to do with my life? I’m so angry over what I saw on Facebook! I’m having trouble sleeping. Is it safe to go to the beach?

Those are human moments, and they open the door for real help. I don’t lose respect for someone who lets me see their problems – I show them my own. And solutions have begun to appear. “Get up and take a break from your task before you’re done with it.” “I know someone who needs what you have to give.” “Experiment every day.” “Enforce your boundaries.” “You’re not alone.”

That’s why, although I’m trapped in my apartment, I feel more connected to other people now than I have for a long time. We’re all in this together. We always have been.

So I’m going to try something new. I signed up for calendly, which lets people schedule meetings without a lot of email back-and-forth. If you want to talk with me for half an hour, click here.

A Balkan morning

A breeze and distant goat bells

Swallows kiss the pool

Guh, what else is going on? Interchange is still with my editor, Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen is live on webnovel.com, and you can read it there in tiny chunks if you’re so inclined. Protector #4 is out, and getting some very nice reviews. What I did in June was work on the sequel