Peg Kerr's Journal

I had a much more complex vision for this collage and am frustrated by my inability to capture it. I don't have time to try to mess with it anymore, so I am finishing with something simpler. Actually, this is one of the first times that in reality, I wanted to create a collage in video.

I have been thinking about all the connections I have--to people, to businesses, to groups, to communities. This week, I have been thinking about how so many of those connections that supported me have felt as though they have been frayed, damaged, or even cut.

My vision for this collage was a woman's hands holding a bunch of ropes, which would be labeled. Some ropes would be fraying. Two of the thickest ropes would be cut: Rob. Kij. There would be shears attacking some of the ropes, also labeled (Death. Aging. Indifference. Pandemic.) I even wanted to put in a flaming torch burning some of the ropes, labeled Murder of George Floyd.

I've been thinking about this as I've been readying to go to Minicon, feeling in my gut that it's just not the same. Rob isn't there. The girls aren't coming anymore. Many friends have fallen away. It just isn't what it used to be in the glory days.

This sounds depressing, I know. But the reason I felt the impulse to create this collage in video is that I also saw new ropes coming in to add support to the dangling woman. Eric. Chris (Delia's boyfriend). Alona (Fiona's fiancé). Zoom coffee group. New rituals. New community. New adventures. New joys. The hope of grandchildren.

I think that our challenge as we age is that we grieve the connections that are naturally lost with the passage of time. Some people don't manage to move beyond this, and so their lives get smaller and smaller as they grow older. My mom and my late dad, on the other hand, have been superb role models for me because they kept reaching out for new experiences as they aged.

They showed me that we have to resist apathy and make genuine efforts to keep reaching out and making new connections. New friends. New families connections. New rituals.

I am going to Minicon this weekend. I will see old friends, even though I will miss certain faces.

Background: sky at sunset overlaid with a net. left: a cut rope tied off with a knot. Center: a woman's hands hanging onto a rope. Right: a rope nearly cut through (a pair of shears is poised at the frayed portion)

Tether



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

Here's an interesting article about the difficulties inherent in attempting to write sex scenes. Specifically, good sex scenes, the ones that don't pull the reader out of the story because he or she is too busy guffawing. Apparently, there is an annual award for the worst of the worst: the Literary Review's Bad Sex award.

While these nominations provide testimony to the creative potholes authors can slip down when they stray into the bedroom, the awards themselves prove their opposite – good sex writing - does exist. Against that the bad is selected, according to Jonathan Beckman, assistant editor of The Literary Review.

But for all the vituperation at authors who get it wrong, there appears to be little consensus on how to get it right. Some writers follow the forensic language of anatomy, others adopt metaphor and euphemism, while opponents of literary sex shun it for crass approximations with pornography.

I've actually been thinking a bit about this during the past month because for unknown reasons (in fact, I've been rather mystified about it) for the past three months I've been gorging on romance novels. It's really my first attempt for a wide-ranging exploration of the genre. Well, not so wide-ranging, as a matter of fact. I've been reading almost exclusively Regency romances, ignoring other niches such as paranormals, highlanders and westerns. What have I discovered?

First of all, that there are an awful lot of bad romances. Secondly, much of what I've read in the field is very repetitive and/or derivative.

I don't know why on earth I'm reading this stuff. Maybe I'm restlessly searching for someone who is doing it right, even as I'm wading through so many books where the author is doing it wrong. In fact, this compulsion (and it has truly seemed like a compulions; I've read possibly fifty of the damn things in the past two months) is downright baffling to me. One possibility is that I'm studying the use of the erotic in fiction. This is one area that I never felt comfortable attempting myself, and I thought it was a true deficit in my own writing. I envy writers that can manage it gracefully (Kij Johnson is certainly one whose confidence in this type of writing just always made me marvel) I just never had the courage to try it because I knew (and know) that when done clumsily, the result could be so very embarrassing. My overly developed critical review of my own work (the same thing that led to my writers block) made me so self conscious that I couldn't really even bring myself to write sex scenes, even when I wrote with the intention that I would only ever be the only reader. The bravest thing I ever attempted was chapter twelve in The Wild Swans, when Sean and Elias went to the bathhouse, but neither of my two main characters actually participated in the graphic encounters right there on the page, and I cut to black several times in that book rather than writing an encounter with the camera on, so to speak. I almost broke out in hives when my critique group went over Chapter 12, I found it so stressful.

One of the most erotic scenes I've read in my romp through the pages of a host of romance novels is particularly striking because of its restraint. It took place when a man and a woman are sitting next to each other in a theater box. The man slowly unbuttons the buttons on her glove, one by one and slowly insinuates a finger inside to stroke the palm of her hand.

Who are authors you admire who do sex scenes well? Have you attempted to write them yourself? Do you find it easy or difficult? Do you balk at showing your work to other people? Does practice make perfect? Do you that a wide-ranging sexual experience is necessary to write sexually explicit prose with ease and confidence? Other thoughts?

Happy birthday to my best friend, kijjohnson. And look! I got you the BEST PRESENT EVAH! A shiny new President!

arian1 updates here that it turns out it's the tibia, and not the fibula as Kij said when we spoke previously. This is good news, as apparently it means a smaller cast, but she still has a long recovery ahead of her. She's heading home (after groceries), so watch for updates on her own journal.

Edited to add: Nope, Kij says it's the fibula. She's home now.

See what I received in the mail yesterday!

(For those not familiar with this custom between kijjohnson and me, read the entries tagged "Friendship Ball.")

Usually, we just send things back and forth in the ball itself, but knowing that I've been feeling kinda low lately, Kij included other little gifties in the box itself, turning my surprise package into a lovely early Easter basket.

Friendship Ball April 2007 Kij sent me a mini Easter basket when she sent back the Friendship ball! In the foreground, a silly refrigerator magnet (is your best friend a psycho?) Second row, a chocolate bunny, jelly beans, "bunny candy corn" and a tissue paper flower. In the back, three wee pamphlet/books, one called "These Blooming Herbs: A Book of Aromatic Gossip" and one called "On Gardens and Gardening" and one a handmade book that Kij has filled with affirmations.

The Friendship Ball, opened Opened, the Friendship ball reveals a wee lamb and two Pascal coins.

(Do I not have a cool best friend or what?)

Edited to add: Since people have asked: I got our friendship ball at a gift shop which has since gone out of business, but you can find them easily on the Internet. Here's one, and here's another. This second one looks like the one Kij and I have. Here's a heart-shaped one. Here's another, and another.

Here is her account of our day together. I am particularly smug about the coat we found for her, reversable acid green/forest green double-breasted, pea jacket style. It looks stunning on her.

Damn, she looks stunning, period. Besides the fact that I was just delighted to see her, she is, no lie, just drop dead gorgeous. Eight months of serious climbing has wrought an amazing change, and she is in serious kick-butt shape, with great legs and really cut muscles, particularly in her upper body.

Lordy, I thought I was looking pretty good these days, but wow . . .

It inspires me want to hit the weights HARD myself. And get back into karate again, dammit. So I can look that kick-butt, too.

Hey, we need to get a newer picture of the two of us.

Have been thinking about kijjohnson's journal bio: My goal is to be the bravest person I know.

Is that a goal of mine, too? Should it be?

How would that work for me?

I asked kijjohnson what I should read for a good introduction to Heian Japan (she's the go-to girl for answering questions like these) and she answered The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. AND sent me a copy (it's thoughtfulness like this that makes me love her so). How did I get through forty-five years without reading The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon? I am immediately seized by a compulsion to make lists:

Hateful Things
Badly trained dogs which jump up at one when one comes for a visit. How inconsiderate their owners are, who have inflicted such ill-trained rudeness on a guest!
Very hateful is a mouse that scurries all over the place [on this one agrees with Sei Shonagon]
Bats flying around one's room at night when when is trying to sleep--how hateful!
Discarded cigarette butts in dirty snowbanks
Persons who leave wet towels on the floor
Persons who cough continually during a music concert, who do not leave or attempt to stop themselves by sucking on a cough drop, very inconsiderate

Adorable Things
Young children sleeping
Pansies
A boy tossing sticks for a dog to fetch
A baby eating a first birthday cake, smearing frosting on its face

Things That Give A Clean Feeling
Lavender
Bars of new soap, wrapped in paper
New shelf paper
Pine needles
Cedar balls tucked into a drawer

Edited to add: Kij, take note: Here's The Pillow Book written in blogspeak! Thanks, whumpdotcom for the link!

Went to the Irish Fair, where I met minnehaha B and K, buttonlass, lollardfish, and 90_percent_sure. (And thanks to minnehaha B. for helping me get parking.) Flogging Molly was playing, and the crowd was in a definite party mood. It was packed. The show was great, but I started being bugged by ( TMI ), so I headed out again at about 10:00.

Came home and had a long phone call with kijjohnson. I am pleased that she likes the collage I got for her at the Powderhorn Art Fair.

The girls weren't down until after 11:00--we have GOT to get them back on something resembling a normal schedule.

Am heading off to bed.

You can buy it, too, here. This, I think, is the one that Kij and I have:



Here is another lovely one:



My quick research on the Internet mentions that it's a custom that dates back to Victorian times.