A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Finally back to work. I took a week off, more or less, fleeing to Maine over the Labor Day weekend. I almost didn't go but last-minute consultation with a dear advisor over IM convinced me I could use a vacation.

I spent a lot of time with friends whom, in some cases, I haven't seen much of lately, and this was very nice. (I owe a post, sometime soon, to the topic of my current friend-network; it's developed in surprising directions over the last six months or so.) On my return I geared up to speed without hurry, and today made a plan of attack regarding the payment system. I thought I already had one, two weeks ago, but it turned out that my head wasn't all the way around it and I had to start over.

Now I know I'm really on the right track because as I look over the plans I get that feeling of mortal dread that presses down on me whenever I sense that I have once again found the path, and feel overwhelmed with thoughts of how very long it is and how very little time I have.

The card that has always affected me the most deeply in the Robin Wood Tarot is the Five of Cups. What particularly affects me in her version is the background, with a wide, overcast sky reflected in gray-green hills and gray-blue water. By the castle and standing stones in the far distance it's clearly meant to be some sort of Europe, but as a native New Englander I know exactly the sort of chill, damp day that's being depicted, and my bones almost ache to think of it. But what really puts a shudder into my heart is how the cloaked figure watches as the only color in the world, the bright red wine, spills away from him; in moments it will be gone.

I have chronic low-level fear of plenty of things, but Lost Opportunity is special among them in that it also acts as a motivator. The near-somatic feeling I get when I look at this card is the same as the dreadful weight I feel when I know that I'm on the right path. It is a hand that at once presses me down towards the earth even as it shoves me forward. What a strange mix!

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In other news, I can't stop reading the latest Tim Powers novel, Three Days to Never. (Wow, what a cheesy title, though; I had already forgotten it.) I am halfway through and anything could happen, but unless it pulls a Miéville on me (and I don't think it will) I think it will turn out to do for Tim Powers what The Saddest Music in the World did for Guy Maddin: it's the work first work by an artist I admire that I actually like. Well, that's not entirely fair; I liked The Drawing of the Dark a lot, but it's by a much younger author and it's very fluffy. This book is a feast. I'll have more to say when I'm done with it.

It's funny that it comes on the heels of my reading PKD's Clans of the Alphane Moon, which I really enjoyed for all its utter incomprehensibility. More than any other Dick I've read, it felt the most like magical realism, with characters who could fly or reverse time or were slime molds from Ganymede, all taken for granted by the protagonist (a hapless PKD stand-in, as always). I am seeing some underlying similarities between the two books, even though they're so different in execution. I don't think this is entirely a product of the recency illusion; Powers is a student of Dick. But, again: I'll save a longer analysis for later.