Flies in the ointment, an older generation would have said. Small things that are driving me a little crazy:
The housemate has decided that the Great Dane regards her as his Best Friend and not an Authority Figure so she has asked a dog trainer to come around and work with her and the dog. I am not invited to this training exercise. The dog listens to me (well, more often than not) so I don’t need to be involved with this dog training. Sigh. Trepidation fills me, but for now I will just sit obediently in the corner and wag my tail.
All the dog trainers I have known are control freaks and channel Cesar Milan the Dog Whisperer. Will the housemate walk around going Tsshhpt! and hissing at the dog in a calm assertive manner? Sigh.
My emails are bouncing around the cyber universe and coming back to me as unsendable.
The ancient and resurrected washing machine went kerlunk, kerlunk twice and then fell silent and immovable yet again.
On the other hand, the new dark blue slip covers for the sofas look as if the living room is respectable and almost chic. Black dog hairs just vanish into the indigo denim background.
My latest fiction is Weird in a good way (as opposed to just weird and unlikely to appeal to any serious publisher), a kind of offbeat, dark and unlikely fantasy. And I found inspiration in an article by Matthew Cheney on the kind of fiction I myself like to read and hope to write:
More and more, I find myself attracted to innovative writing that isn’t afraid to leave great gaps within itself, that doesn’t try to stick the world onto a postage stamp, but rather puts a postage stamp in the middle of the world’s unfathomable complexities.
Just looking at the word ‘postage stamp’ gives me a pang of nostalgia for the days when I could wet a stamp and stick it on an envelope and it would wing its way around the world without Yahoo kicking it back to me within two minutes.
Unfathomable complexities. The dog is off on a new learning curve. The sun is shining and the front garden has been weeded and watered. There are now more flowering bushes than weeds. The part-time gardener is cutting back the Purple Medusa of a bougainvillea in between spates of arguing with his ex-wife on his cell phone.
One small craziness after another, but on we go, pausing to sniff the flowers and brush dog hairs off the sofa, practising fictionary dialogue in the kitchen while rolling out homemade pasta. More kerlunk, kerlunk? Light and airy pasta is another miracle that doesn’t happen on demand. But it’s there waiting to happen, like so much else in our unfathomable lives…
“Unfathomable lives”…Yup!
Woof! Woof!
Funny, Steve.
I try to keep some order to things so that I am not overwhelmed by those unfathomable complexities that seem to be everywhere. If I let myself think about the complexities, I can quickly feel overwhelmed. Better to keep things as simple as possible here. I used to want to take on all the complexities. That was a useless task…
You’re thinking about complications and not complexities Syd — I was riffing on the phrase in the poem.
Thanks for this marvelous post, Louisey and especially for the link to Mathew Cheney’s writing about weird fiction. A breath of fresh air.
Elisabeth, I’ve read Matt Cheney in Rain Taxi and Strange Horizons for years, always find something worthwhile there.
Can you stick a postage stamp on some of that homemade pasta and send it to me? I used to make it regularly, but it is dangerous when living alone – I will eat the entire batch.
Homemade pasta is very more-sih, I know the dangers well!
Theo doesn’t believe in training. He pretty much does what he pleases and we need to get on board or get out of the way. He fits right in our family.
The last couple of years (he’ll be 7 in May) he has slept 20 hrs. a day.
Sweet Theo. Out here Great Danes live up to 10 years because of the mild climate but every day is precious. Satchi is a great sleeper but also smart enough to get his own way much of the time.