The Raven's Roost

I kept seeing images of this boxed set pop up, and I felt like it was a sign. So I finally found one for sale and it arrived yesterday.



The Bhagavad Gita is a small section of the Mahabharata and probably the bit that most Westerners are familiar with. I myself bought a copy when someone approached me on the street and said I looked like I'd recently had a mystical experience. I read it but without a lot of comprehension, as I was still in school and hadn't given a lot of attention to India, Hindu thought, or anything outside of medieval Europe, which was what I was studying. A guy I was dating at the time mocked me for reading it and said I would end up shaving my head and playing drums in the airport, which ... being armpits-deep in writing my thesis that sounded like a GREAT change of pace. Don't threaten me with a good time, hoss.


By my calculations, if I read ten pages a day, every single day, I ought to be done in January of 2027.

Anyway, I've started the first volume and while I feel a little lost, I know that this is part of the "framing" of the epic, so a lot of what I'm going through is just setup. Some king is lamenting everything that's happened, so the fact that I have no idea who these people are doesn't matter right now. I do kind of wish there was a good English language reader's guide for this, but I'll muddle along without one.

Did you know this is the fortieth anniversary of Lonesome Dove's publication? I've had to buy a new copy, since my older one is long gone by now. It's already shipped but I have no idea when it will get here. Anyway, I wrote a hell of a lot about it.

( More memoir than anything ... )

It's "warmer" today, and I'm going out for a short run soon. While 45 is warmer than 33, the difference feels quantitative rather than qualitative. In other words it's still cold as ass outside. But I dreamed about running last night and I just want to go.

( I actually remembered this one. )
I'm going to take another stab at reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I am stealing an idea from decemberthirty about "Tome of the Year," wherein one reads a large, ponderous tome of a book. I'd thought about re-reading War & Peace but I feel like I'd enjoy Dumas' hulking adventure novel if I can just get far enough into it. I dropped out last year while he was still setting up characters and plot lines because I felt like I couldn't keep track of what was going on. I still could probably use a "who's who" guide to keep everyone in line.

I am also considering filling out the formal application through the State of Florida to be a state park volunteer. Volunteering is a good way to get a foot in the door to be a park ranger, which would be a pretty awesome job. Even if I didn't, it would still be great to help out. And maybe get to pet a bear. Petting a bear is completely safe and nothing bad would ever happen to me.(I should maybe delete this if I want them to actually consider my application.)

It's getting to be about as warm as it's going to get, so I need to go run.

I realize I've not posted anything here in a while, but there hasn't exactly been a lot going on. Mostly just bitching about the heat. I can go out and run in this if I get out very early, but I'm still wiped out for at least an hour when I get home. I can even manage a long run if I fill my hydration vest with an electrolyte mixture, but it's brutal out there. Too bad man-made climate change is a hoax, right? (sarcasm - there's no good way to include a sigh and an eyeroll here)

We're heading off camping this weekend because why not go camping in the middle of August. :D It's camping at Disney so it's less bad, but you still have to go outside. We're planning to do our park stuff in the early mornings and late evenings, and then just hide in the camper during the heat of the day. I should be able to manage later nights than I'm used to since I'll be able to nap. I couldn't relax enough to nap in a Disney hotel because of the "health and safety" inspections. But no one's coming into the camper so my anxiety brain feels like it can stand down.

Anyway, it'll be fun to be at Disney on my birthday. We've done this a few times for Fox, but his birthday also falls very close to Wine & Dine race weekend. In my case we've been in August, but we'll actually be on property on the day. I don't have anything super specific I want to do, but whatever I do ought to involve ice cream, so if it feels like something we could do I might ask for a trip to Beaches & Cream, unless I see something inside EPCOT that's serving ice cream, like outside the normal offerings.

In books this month or so, I read some pretty weighty tomes. I finished Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae after having it sitting on my shelves for literally decades. I bought it and read maybe the first twenty pages, but if I remember correctly I had to put it aside to write my thesis, and Paglia doesn't touch on the authors I was writing about. I do wish she'd gotten around to bringing us into the twentieth century, but I enjoyed her take on Emily Dickinson. I feel like Paglia might be one of those people who would agree that Hamlet is best read as a black comedy. I also read Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir by Bill Hayes, an engaging book on sleep and the lack of it. My insomnia problems aren't as bad any more, but it's always encouraging to hear from someone who suffered with it as a child, given how often I was told I "couldn't" have trouble sleeping. It's tempting to go down a rabbit hole with this one - Hayes has written a lot more, and has worked with Oliver Sacks, whose writing I also enjoy.

I'm currently reading Chuck Tingle's horror novel, Camp Damascus about a gay conversion camp in the wilds of Montana. I preordered, but have been saving it for the trip, so I just started reading. I also received a gift for preordering, a spiffy yellow bandanna that says BURN IT DOWN, which nicely sums up my feelings about any and all conversion therapy. In addition I've got a copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock which should be fun. I have not seen the movie, but I'm familiar enough with the book's reputation to know some people think it's a true story.

In gaming, I hit the halfway point in Okami, which I'm still enjoying greatly. I also picked up Rain World again and started a new campaign as the Survivor, and I'm finding it actually a bit easier than the "easy mode" Monk slugcat. Monk does less damage with his attacks, and is slower and less agile. For me, the Survivor's more robust movement makes some of the platforming sections a bit easier. Not that anything is actually easy in this game. I hit on the idea of "activating" echoes as I go around the map, and then backtracking with my earned passages to actually meet those echoes, and that's worked out well for me. I'm about to head into the game's last major area, and the home stretch for getting my slugcat back to her family.

Fox is considering getting me a new bike, because we just discovered my old one is a steel frame. He thinks I might have an easier time riding an aluminum frame, and maybe save The Tank for later. Or donate it, IDK. His parents know a lady in Orlando who refurbishes bikes, so I might be able to buy a pretty good bike through her for cheaper. I'm still not really looking at riding competitively, running is going well and I'm far less likely to crash into things.

1. I've read a few excerpts from a book I'm probably going to wind up buying, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. As you may well know, 28 men wound up stranded in Antarctica for something like 20 months until they were finally rescued. Among the many awful things they endured was using packed snow as toilet paper. Another was wind madness. See, winds in Antarctica can reach 100+ mph and be absolutely unrelenting.

I have never endured anything like a fraction of that but wind madness is entirely real. Back in my LiveJournal days, I wrote a post complaining about winds that were battering Louisiana - not a hurricane, just this constant high wind one summer. It finally got so that I didn't want to go outside for any reason because this devilish wind was ready to smack you around, whistle in your ears, blow dust into your eyes, it was awful. A friend who lived in Los Angeles commented that the Santa Annas there sometimes got so bad that the crime rate would shoot up because people just totally lost their shit with the wind.

2.

Huzzah, notebooks! Leuchtturm1917 released a set of new colors just last week - fox red, light grey, mint green, and forest green. I was down to my last two blanks - the horror! So I ordered all four of the new colors. I don't often like every new color they come out with, but this set just looks so good together!

3. Went out for a short run today and it went well. I had a few minor pains warming up, but I felt good. Got home and did some yoga to stretch out - I also need to get back to doing a strength routine. I didn't do badly in the strength department on this last run. Yeah, my shoulders got tired, but my back and core muscles seemed more than up to the task. I need to work on ankle strength and stability, and probably more upper body strength.

4.

I just realized I don't really have "writing," "drawing," or "fountain pen" icons.

This weekend I found myself down a rabbit hole - small independent fountain pen makers. I almost sent a lot of money to a fellow in Arkansas. (If you like that sort of thing, look up Troy Breeding of Country Made Pens.) Then I had a few realizations while I was on my morning run.

Most handmade pens use some sort of ink converter. That means you get a bottle of ink, stick the nib in, and fill the pen that way. I have only ever used fountain pens that take cartridges. So I have no way of knowing if I'll find this burdensome or not, and could potentially get stuck with an expensive, beautiful, useless pen.

On the other hand, I had a set of Rapidograph pens that required cleaning between refills. Heaven help you if you skipped the cleaning. So while that was annoying, it wasn't that bad, though I sometimes did let several run dry before having a cleaning day. The larger nibs often had to have a soak in a jar of cleaning solution, no matter how quickly you got to them.

Bearing all that in mind I bought a converter for my Lamy Safari and a bottle of ink. But I can also see where the real financial danger is for me, now. Inks. Dozens and dozens of glittering glass bottles of different colors, shimmering, translucent colors. I NEED THEM ALL GIVE THEM TO MEEEEEE

*ahem* Sorry. Since I'm a fan of off-blacks I picked Noodler's "El Lawrence" as my first bottle, a deep green-black that is also warm-looking, named after a certain British war hero of the Arabian Campaign. Not that that influenced my decision, either. A lot of folks on Reddit are smitten with that company's "Bay State Blue," which is an excellent royal blue. I also looked at Diamine inks, and I'm tempted to get some shimmering ones, though for the everyday writing I do, it seems a little over the top. Although I could see using them for a dip pen. I used to like drawing with dip pens.

On an unrelated topic, I'm reading a biography of Henry Thoreau and I didn't know he had narcolepsy. It ran on his mother's side of the family. He apparently had numerous health problems throughout his life, and a lot of his writing about strength, health, and robustness is a way of dealing with how annoyed he was at his own poor health.

Remember, it only takes a little thought and preparation on your part to turn any fall hayride into a haunted hayride! Let's get out those axes and chainsaws and create some (traumatic) memories!

I'm more than ready for another cold front to come through. It'll be in the 80s daytime, 60s night when we're running at Disney but that's similar to the weather we've been training in here. Plus, it's only the two races so I'm trying not to overthink things. But I'm very prone to overthinking everything, so that's not going very well.

Once we get home, it'll be time to start an accelerated marathon training program so I can be up to the Dopey distance by January. As usual, I'm not trying to set any personal records there, just cross the finish line under my own power. There's talk of the Spring Surprise series having a full marathon, so Fox and I are probably going to sign on for that. It would be cool to get to be one of those "perfect runners" we see sometimes. For example, this will be the tenth Dopey (my fifth) and there will be a few folks who have run all ten of those. Aside from a special color of bib I'm not sure what being "perfect" gets you aside from bragging rights, but I like bragging rights.

The crows are starting to visit my feeder again! I think they're in a small winter roost just to the west of my yard - where the road curves around in an S shape, there's several acres of pine forest. I just wish my neighbor's pit bulls would quit coming over here. I chase them off every time I see them, but so far all they've learned is to run when they hear a door open. Right now it's a squirrel party - Tank seems to have died, but there's another large gray squirrel who's bossing everyone else around. Not as big as Tank was, so maybe we should just call him HumVee.

I started reading Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things since it's almost Halloween and I like a good ghost story. The edition I have is one I bought in Tokyo, and its listing specifies that it's not to be sold outside Japan. I have no clue if there's a text difference in the editions, and some info I found suggests that the reason for that is copyright and who owns Hearn's papers. But I tracked it down in a book shop in Roppongi, and the guy wrapped it up all neatly, which was nice to watch, but then I felt bad about wanting to open it and read on the train, so I ended up waiting until I was back at the hotel. I really need to go back to practicing my Japanese. Lazy Raven.

Anyway, I'm doing my last yard mowing of the season today. I plan to drop the cutting deck as low as I dare, cut the whole thing, do the trimming, then put all of that away until spring.

So I'm still rolling along with War & Peace, and I'm certainly far enough into it that I can absolutely relate to this meme.


Leo, please stop. I cannot keep track of all the Annas, even with their patronyms. Even the family trees and list of important characters in the back isn't helping in some cases, though I guess as I re-read it will get clearer. My most recent head-scratcher was, "Boris is related to Natasha? HOW. Did he ever mention this ... *scans the first few chapters again* ugh, I guess he is, whatever. Natasha shouldn't marry Boris anyway, he's a jackass."

Anyway, I'm on volume two, part three.

I'm also curious as to why this isn't published in multiple physical volumes. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was a series of long, thick books, and the third one, which was close to 1,400 pages in paperback, was published in a split edition. It doesn't seem like it would be a bad thing to do the same with W&P, though I'm pretty sure what I've just said is somehow literary heresy.

On an unrelated note, it's supposed to cool off more this weekend! Can't wait! :D

It's weird seeing the photos and video coming in from south Louisiana - I lived in some of those places and they're just ... gone. I worried about that sort of thing happening, obviously, but for it to really happen and just obliterate entire communities is kind of mind blowing. There's nothing, no infrastructure, no homes, no power, no (drinkable) water, no roads. I'm tempted to start searching for news and stuff myself, but I also irrationally feel like it's not really any of my business any more.

The weather is sending lines of thunderstorms across Florida though, and keeping the temps down somewhat. Last night the lightning was messing with the internet radios - it didn't strike a tower or really take anything out but the electromagnetic interference made the net spotty. This was after Fox was telling me about some uptick in solar activity that might make the internet spotty at best, or at worst destroy all technology and life as we know it.

I'm still putting out hummingbird feeders for now, though I think by October they should be gone. We have migratory birds from north of here that pass through, so I leave mine up a bit longer than I probably should. They got sort of gross while I was gone, and one had ants. I replaced the nectar yesterday and we have visitors this morning, but that one feeder may stay down for the season, since the ants will be persistent in trying to get in it. By next spring I should be able to put it back up. I'm also hearing the Red-shouldered Hawks calling a lot in the morning. Yesterday while I was running I heard them shrieking about something both on my way out and the way back, so maybe they were upset about me. Or maybe they just like screaming. AND I have also seen a lot of bear tracks since we got home. The security cameras don't show anything, but I see a lot of prints in the road. Maybe they don't really bother with our house any more since we lock our trash up.

And I finally got my ears stretched up to the sizes I want. I can't go as large with the upper holes as I wanted originally, since when they were pierced in the first place, they kind of placed the piercings too close. But they look pretty cool now that they're all stretched enough to look stretched, and I have a matched set of glass plugs.

War & Peace arrived at a USPS facility in Jax early this morning, so it might be here tomorrow, but more likely next week. I thought about waiting for the beginning of the year to read along with the people doing A Year of W&P but I have never done great in group settings in the past, so I'm going to strike out on my own as soon as it arrives. I got my tape flags and my notebook, I got this. I should get a little trolley for it like Charlie Brown in Happy New Year, Charlie Brown but there aren't that many people who would think that's funny. I haven't seen that cartoon in so long now I can't remember if he was just reading it because he procrastinated the whole time, or if he was doing it voluntarily. A major part of the humor in Peanuts was children doing adult things as if they were adults - remember the parents and teachers are just empty air in the comics, and a muted trumpet on TV, so you could argue that there aren't any adults in Peanuts. But anyway, like I said I can't remember if Charlie Brown was assigned W&P for a class (which is funny because it's WAY beyond a kid his age) or if he picked it up for some other reason.

Why I Am Deleting GoodReads, and Maybe You Should, Too.

I've had several "social reading" accounts over the decades, including LibraryThing, which I still have but don't use anymore. I ditched GoodReads over the winter, and picked up The Storygraph while it was in beta, but I signed out of it recently with no intention of using it anymore.

LibraryThing is great for simply cataloging my books, and I have significantly fewer than I used to, so even that's no as much of an issue now. But the element of social media and sharing has really had an effect on my reading, and not necessarily for the better.

Right now, it feels nice to just be reading stuff and not worrying if people will think I'm slow because of how long I spent reading a 300-page book. Not worrying about making my $number-books-this-year challenge. Not wondering if people are going to think less of me for reading something controversial, or something frivolous. I'm back to just reading books for the fuck of it and I like it.

Right now I'm still reading A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, and To Green Angel Tower Part 1. This Tad Williams series is really engrossing and I'm definitely going to seek out the other volumes he's written for this world. I also picked up Beastars volume 6 (and I used to worry about logging manga, as people might think I was cheating on my 'read so many books a year' goal,) Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, because nothing seems to get a certain sector of the population all worked up like a discussion of nutrition, and Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga, by Sylavain Tesson, which is about the joys of not being around other people. And I don't mind sharing that with anyone here, because we have good interactions about reading. Some of you are writers, some poets, or other creative types, and we like a well-written book.

I'm still keeping my physical reading journal, though. I've kept it since 1993 - not in the same notebook, of course. The actual book itself was acquired in around 2002, and I copied all the old info out of a battered spiral-bound I'd been using through high school and college.

I think it's somewhat like my recent purge of the shelves I did in 2019. Why keep a book around if I'm not going to read it? Books are meant to be read, so if I'm not going to read or refer to it, I should get it back out into the world so someone else can. I realized I was just keeping certain volumes because if someone came over, they might think a certain way about me when they see that particular book, and who the hell am I trying to impress? Since then I've gotten into a habit of boxing books I finish to either donate to the Friends of the Library for their book sale, or to go to Chamblin Book Mine to (hopefully) be converted into store credit so I can acquire different books. I only keep ones I feel that I'm likely to read again, or that make good reference works. I have a lot shelved in my studio that I may not read cover to cover again, but are good for world-building. I have a lot of nature and animal books shelved in the living room - bird guides, books on gardening, and things like mammals of Florida and "know your trees." (The Larch.) And of course I have my small collection of vintage cookbooks.

Plus I feel like it was becoming more of a chore to log books, make sure the edition is right, did I really start on the 12th, or should I put the 11th because I read some in the car... blah blah blah.