Archive for December, 2021

vita nostra, by marina and sergey dyachenko

…paragraphs and exercises, the familiar strain and tiny achievements, the ordinary labor of anyone who desires to learn—all this turned out to be the point of Sasha’s existence.

the valis trilogy, by philip k dick

“Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child’s is the kingdom.” As Heraclitus wrote twenty-five hundred years ago. In many ways this is a terrible thought. The most terrible of all. A child playing a game . . . with all life, everywhere.

snapshot

The rains started again in earnest yesterday. We had some good rain in November and my garden is brilliant with sprouts, both the sown and desired native wildflowers and my doughty adversaries, Bermuda buttercups, catchgrass bedstraw, white-ramping fumitory and pellitory-of-the-wall. A second soaking will set us up for a beautiful, if weedy, meadow in the spring.

After living for almost twenty years in uninsulated San Francisco Victorians, it feels like a miracle to sit in our warm house watching the raindrops run down the windows. The cats complain about missing their supervised outdoor time but I am curled up with my laptop under a wool blanket my kid crocheted, next to our fragrant Douglas fir Christmas tree. It’s a good week at work, two programs happily completed, a new one in its most exciting nascent phase, my team fresh off meeting in person, energized and seamless.