is a blog by Brendan
So I’m back online. If I haven’t gotten to your email, I will soon.
Running is the art of deliberately hurting yourself a little more than you really want to be hurt. I went for a run today, a physical self-flagellation in lieu of a mental one. It started raining about half a mile in, big thick drops. It still wasn’t enough.
Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!
In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”
A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.
So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.
Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!
The first time I kissed her it was magic, real honest to God magic: starlight, and streetlight, and trees shaking their leftover rain down on us. Everyone on campus disappeared, and every car in the city stopped, and there wasn’t a sound except a little wind and the silver of her laugh.
There’s a wonderful little book I have called Rats Saw God. Everyone who was ever in high school should read it. It’s about relationships, and people, and love and being kids; one of the most resonant lines in it, for me, was “why ruin something so perfect by trying to make it last forever?”
The first time that question appears, it’s being asked of the protagonist; the second time, he’s asking it himself. I always thought I’d understand it if I had the chance. I think tonight I did.
Magic doesn’t last forever; it doesn’t last, period. I get that now. I’m glad I do. I’m glad I just had the only good breakup I’ve ever had, and that it wasn’t really a breakup at all, just an understanding.
I’m going to miss Emily a lot this summer, but that just means it’ll be even better when I see her again in the fall. And after all, why ruin something so perfect by trying to make it last forever?
Yesterday morning, my uncle John got up at some ridiculous hour and ran fifty kilometers. Fifty kilometers. Then he kept walking until he had done fifty miles. Then he went home, had something to eat and went to an unusual retrospective of his work.
Uncle John makes custom birthday cards, and has done so since he was a teenager. A few weeks ago, my aunt Dana started sending letters to friends and family asking to borrow any cards we might have saved. Of course, everybody had saved everything–you don’t get a personal work of art in the mail and throw it away when you’re done.
They got enough cards to fill four rooms full of shelves (and they had leftovers). During the day it was an exhibition for clients; that night, when I got there, it was food and a jazz band and my uncle’s fiftieth birthday party.
It was one of the best gallery shows I’ve ever seen. The sheer volume of work and creativity and originality was humbling and inspiring and it still stuns me a little to think that I own at least a dozen of those original pieces myself.
I think it was my tenth birthday when I got the foldout card. It was a huge battle scene my uncle had drawn and then left half-empty, inviting me to fill in the rest. It was perfect. It was one of the best presents I’ve ever received, and I could probably redraw it from memory.
I was a weird little kid, and if I’d been born to different parents I probably would have been a Ritalin poster child.The only things that could get me to sit still for ten minutes were a big fat fantasy book or a chance to draw with my uncle. I didn’t quite get all the genes that give him his talent, or maybe his dedication–he did better stuff at fifteen than I can hope for now–but everything I love about sequential art comes from trading panels with him on “Captain Zero” and “The Adventures of Petey.” That this site exists as more than a blog is due to him.
A dozen cards, a million comic strips. Happy birthday, Uncle John, and thanks for all my presents.
So I’m going to Alabama from the 6th to the 10th for my first ever SETC. This is normally where drama majors go to audition for summer stock or apply for tech jobs and stuff; I thought about it, but since I wasn’t ready for the qualifier auditions back in fall I didn’t try out. I wouldn’t be going at all, actually, except I signed up for this new thing and somehow got in. I’m going to be an overnight ten-minute playwright.
I would be nervous about that, but when I think about it, I actually wrote all my scripts for playwriting class the night before they were due anyway. This will probably be the same thing, only with snacks.
Standard update for the dozen or so people who ask me every day if anything new has happened with a certain someone: no. But it is terribly thoughtful of you to ask!
now if there’s a cure for this
we don’t want it; we run from it