Neuial a ran dre ar ruzenn

May. 20th, 2026 09:36 pm
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
[personal profile] sovay
The green salt smell of the sea and the tidal marshes flooded in as soon as I rolled down the windows on Route 133. On impulse and antidote to my surfeit of doctors' appointments this week, [personal profile] spatch drove me out to Gloucester this afternoon. The clouds were stacked over the water like cyanotypes. We looped the dunes of the Boston Sand and Gravel Company and clattered through the industrial green trusses of the Tobin which currently seem to have been mummy-swaddled in tarps and chopsticks and filled out our summer's alphabet of states during slow traffic on Route 1. The Causeway discovered it had run out of fried smelts right after it had rung me up for an order and offered me fried cod cheeks instead, sweet solid dollops of whitefish which I ate across the picnic table from Rob and his steak-sized baked haddock at Stage Fort Park where local teenagers were sunbathing to music atop Tablet Rock. From the Avalonian granite of Half Moon Beach, we watched a duffel-green trawler chug in past the automated blinks of Eastern Point and Ten Pound Lights, one tower as red-and-white as a buoy, the other black-and-white as the common eiders bobbing across the glaze-blue bands of the waves. We saw cormorants in flight and fishing. We saw gulls balanced like balsa wood on the summering air. I tore my hand on some barnacles and the wind snarled my hair from all directions. When the light started to drain off toward sunset, we left by Route 127 just to see what its coastal views looked like when not obliterated by thunder-sheet rain and meandered somewhat after Manchester-by-the-Sea such that I remember admiring the whale-blue mural of a wave Hokusai-bubbling across the side of the Swampscott Department of Public Works and hoping that Prides Crossing is besieged in June. The neat white crescent of the moon came out in the ink-washed after-sunset and presently we collected ice cream from a slammed CB Scoops. I am not yet done with doctors for the week and this was an even more restoring break than walking by the Charles or North Point Park. My CD of Quinquis' eor (2025) arrived in the mail.

sovay: (Haruspex: Autumn War)
[personal profile] sovay
My day was overwhelmingly composed of phone calls and the rest of my week is doctor-intensive, but the mail brought me the original felt-tip-and-acrylic painting which [personal profile] moon_custafer had done earlier this month of the Morris dancers at their local May Day. It arrived safely from Canada. Friends who make art are the best.

Thousands of ghosts in the daylight

May. 17th, 2026 11:39 pm
sovay: (Viktor & Mordecai)
[personal profile] sovay
Hestia sniffed my hands all over, but after some proprietary headbutting allowed herself to be petted with insistent slinks of her back and escalating purr. I had met two strange cats this evening at [personal profile] skygiants and [personal profile] genarti's.

We did not actually watch one of the several productions of As You Like It in [personal profile] skygiants' possession, the notional goal of the hangout. We ate a bounty of deli from Mamaleh's—the bagel with chopped liver was successfully foraged despite the ravages of commencement weekend—and got as far as watching a 26-minute stop-motion Twelfth Night with a voice cast to die for, which turned out to be one of the Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (1992–94) adapted by Leon Garfield which I had been recommended last month. Then we were diverted by talking about books mostly of our childhoods and in the process I learned that prior to launching his nowadays much more famous career as a Nesbit-inspired children's fantasist, Edward Eager was a dramatist and lyricist responsible among other musical comedies for the Offenbach-in-English To Hell with Orpheus. It never seems to have made it to Broadway, but was one-shot premiered in 1953 by the irresistibly named St. John Terrell's Music Circus of Lambertville, NJ. I am captivated by this fact. I was also captivated by the strange cats, although Mina jinked out of any room I entered until very near the end of the evening, when she permitted me to stroke her very soft tuxedo-black head for about ten seconds before she headed for the refuge of the bedroom closet. So long as I didn't tower over him, Mr. Dash was more than content for me to attend to the covert white splash of his belly and his plush void back, although he seemed disappointed that leading me through the kitchen with a succession of soulful looks did not produce my feeding him. I had an out-of-season latke. It was an incredibly nice time.

[personal profile] genarti had made me a cup with the Uffington White Horse.

And I live by the river

May. 17th, 2026 02:36 am
sovay: (Renfield)
[personal profile] sovay
The trees were ghost-green in the water with the hard white shine of the LEDs, but [personal profile] spatch photographed me in the stoplight.



WERS came out with the menacingly catchy drive of the Clash's "London Calling" (1979) while I was running an errand and it felt just a little unnecessarily Ballardian. Nothing else has happened to me particularly, but reading any kind of news feels like choking on the future. I can remember not being this sick, this poor, this pressed, which differentiates me not at all from most of the people I know. The exhaustion feels unreal and the last ten years like a sociological demonstration in the capacity of things always to be worse.

Dyna oedd ddoe a dyma yw heddiw

May. 15th, 2026 11:11 pm
sovay: (Silver: against blue)
[personal profile] sovay
The sun came out just in time to set and I caught a handful of pictures in its gold flare of light, mostly lilacs and shadows.

Dyna oedd yr awel, hwn yw y corwynt. )

I baked cornbread tonight with dinner, which I may not have done for a year. I had wanted some for weeks. Any time things could get easier, just for the hell of it.

Blood for the Blood God!

May. 15th, 2026 11:26 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
Anyways, I'm having a splendid day!

I managed to get through work mostly well, and then it was off to Science Park to meet up with Alexander and drag them around to the blood donation center at MGH. I enjoy having friends who are similar enough brained to me to totally get me saying "yeah, there's definitely a more efficient path to the blood donation center, but we are going to go the very long way around because that's the way I _know_".

I'm always happy to drag more new people to give BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. They went through the system much faster than I did, which is unsurprising --I basically always get to have bonus conversation with the investigative nurses who are Very Concerned that I checked the "heart problems" box. I've gotten pretty fucking irreverent about the whole thing, but I think mostly in a charming way. "Oh, you have to get down the binder! Yes, I believe it says patent ductus arteriosis is like the only heart thing that *doesn't* make one ineligible". It's amazing they don't kick me out for being insufferable, but it turns out they do really want my blood.

Anyways, we gave blood mostly asynchronously, but they very kindly hung around and waited until I had eaten enough snax for us to go home and Hang Out. Playing "I dunno, what do YOU want to do?" resulted in rifling through my stack of DVDs and then an extremely excitable moment of OH, how do you feel about horror movies? What about musicals? What about Christmas movies?

It's been a goodly chunk of time since I've watched Anna and the Apocalypse, is what I'm saying, and I'm pleased to have managed to do so with someone who could enjoy it in all its ridiculous genre-defying glory.

The rest of my weekend also seems like it is going to go Very Well. Tomorrow I am going to the MFA with my friend Apollo. I was sad because my dance-brother emailed to be all "I'm hosting a board game day very close to your house" with a start time pretty much exactly when Apollo and I are supposed to get to the museum. When I expressed the sad at Stephen, he pointed out that board games are gonna keep going until like one AM, so yeah, I will be going directly from one to the other.

And then Sunday you would expect me to try and get some grading done, and I probably will try? But there's secret English Dance calling practice in the morning (er, not practice for me, although I am reminded of the secret plan I was joking about in which I learn how to call other things so they invite me back to call ESCape sooner) and BIDA in the evening. Hm. HM.

The grades are due on Monday, and unfortunately this is not the end of the year, just last progress reports, so I do need to catch up and I also won't get an amnesty after. Ah well.

I hope your life is treating you kindly.

~Sor
MOOP!
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
Because I had to give blood at a frankly stupid hour of the morning, afterward I took [personal profile] spatch to Mike & Patty's. He likes breakfast sandwiches and my mother had heard a rave of theirs on the radio. I do not like breakfast sandwiches. It's mostly because I don't like fried eggs, or even scrambled eggs unless I make them myself. Mei Mei got around my aversion by wrapping their oozily fried eggs in scallion pancakes and pesto, but for years the Double Awesome was alone of its kind and I tended to order its ham-based cousin, the Porco Rosso, when I could. I am still not designed for the majority of American breakfast foods, but it turns out that if the egg is fried hard enough and layered into a Reuben-adjacent mound of pastrami, cheddar, and a slightly mustardier relative of fry sauce on a griddled English muffin, it does count as real food by me. Rob reports favorably on the slyly named McLustin', which did not obliterate its traditional stack of fried egg, bacon, American cheese, and hash brown with its tongue-nipping sriracha ketchup. We ate while watching a swan chase a Canada goose across a reservoir like a majestically petty pocket battleship. The latest episode of Widow's Bay (2026–) scored its local points with a background issue of Agni such as fetch up secondhand anywhere within reading distance of Boston University. I picked up several issues that way myself.

Ne 'z in ket da gorolliñ

May. 12th, 2026 11:38 pm
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
[personal profile] sovay
After more than seven months out of work, the degree to which I can afford anything above the bottom rung of Maslow has become truly minimal, but as soon as I discovered Quinquis' eor (2025), a shape-shiftingly electronic, primarily Breton-language album of mermaids and the sea, I leapt for it like it was mackerel. I heard first the all-night love-churn of "Morwreg" (2024), but the irresistible drag sirens of "Dec'h" (2025) sealed the deal.

The copy of Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld's Duck! Rabbit! (2009) which I sent my godchild for his first solstice was familially referred to for years as Baby's First Wittgenstein. I have no idea what Wittgenstein would have made of this cartoon, but I'm impressed.

I am not sure that I am much more than physically extant at the minute. I am clearing the refrigerator and the countertops. I am absorbing as much sunlight as I sleeplessly can. Yesterday kicked off with a doctor's appointment that was too early in the morning to be as unhelpful as it was and only dropped the bar from there, so this afternoon I made sure to secure a half-dozen donuts from the reliable Lyndell's and eat a jam-filled one as soon as I had finished walking home. The neighborhood smelled like alternating drifts of lilac and mulch. I have had the same headache since the weekend and am hoping it is related to the sexing of the trees. The nine o'clock advent of leafblowers to our block was inhumane.

Modern Western

May. 13th, 2026 12:03 am
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
So, I don't think I have a time note for the last time I was at Tech Squares. I know it was pre-2020, I think Austin and I went to two Easthills together, which probably would've been 2018 and 2019. I don't think we were regularly going to class when we did the latter of those. So yeah, it's been about eight years since I've been going remotely regularly, but Eric saw me at NEFFA and was all "so I'm running the class this semester and we haven't had a grand march in ages, I'd love to have them again".

It was a nice evening and I'm glad I went! I also think I'm gonna be pretty happy to go to tech squares twice a year for graduation and not any more often than that.

I'm thrilled that this random first-time-in-nearly-a-decade for me happened to coincide with Tenest's first-time-in-over-a-decade. Both of us have the calls still there, but it was fun to support each other through the squares, and do a little necessary flailing.

It was _really_ interesting to see what I did and didn't remember. I had dug out ~my~ graduation folder, with each week's call lists still dutifully tucked in order in there. (Somewhere I still have a little sticky note reading "you are perfect* *in attendance and other ways", from my own class folder). I didn't like. Fully read and internalize every single call, but I skimmed the names of all of them and tried to see what that triggered.

One of the things I really like about Squares is the patter of callbacks and call-actions, back and forth with Ted. "Spin the Top?!" we say, in increasingly histrionic tones, and he blithely replies "yeah, that's what I said, right?". Snap on trade by, toot-toot for track two, zoom is 02134, and it's oppa dixie style. I was _thrilled_ to hear someone say "like bunnies!" for a couples circulate, but I think I'm the only one who still has deeply locked-in spoonerisms for all the other circulations. JB gave me a hug after one of the tips, and said thank you for being someone else to chant "reduce, reuse" after a recycle.

(and I got exactly once where I was courtesy turning with a person I actually knew well enough to finish the callback for Chain Down the Line. Everyone present knew "catch me, turn me!" but only once could I actually add out loud "chain me down". That turns out to be a fun one!)

I like it so much because it helps ground the calls real well, keeps them in my memory. The fact that I was running at probably 80% accurate after eight years of not dancing is pretty damn good! And it's worth noting that my 80% at dance continues to be a lot stronger than average.

But I don't love that squares still doesn't feel like _dancing_ to me. I'm charmed by a new-to-me callback for one of the weird swoopy calls - "it flows!". Because that call does flow! All the calls flow! Ted especially makes the movements all flow into each other because he's very good at what he does! Now why doesn't the dance floor feel like they're doing that?

Some of it is the need of the floor to compound the challenges. Do the calls faster, weirder, harder. I would love Weave the Ring as a figure, if it weren't inevitably limping sideways to the beat. I don't mind making things more complicated, until they inevitably seem to remove some of the _dance_ from the dance form. Successfully snapswitching can be great fun, but what if it is interrupting your flow, or making you forget where you're going and who you've become?

I understand what I'm getting into when I go to the MIT activity, it's very smart hotshot college students who have always been The Best at everything they've ever done. I am extremely familiar with this batch of people, and am sometimes one myself.

But gosh, that's not exactly what social dancing is _for_. If you are so into the mega-complex puzzle versions of the thing that you can't find pleasure or joy in the simple version instead, that's...a way to do things. But it's not the way _I_ want to do things.

Give me hexes and snap switching, but also give me a solid singing tip and the space to move in. Do hard things badly, but also _do simple things well_.

See you in the fall for the next graduation, maybe!

~Sor
MOOP!

To quote the Morris Dancers...

May. 12th, 2026 06:52 am
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
But the critical thing is that _I like SCD again._

This has been happening ever since I started my class, but this was maybe the first time since 2020 that I was _looking forward_ to attending Cambridge Class.

I still think there are large swaths of my hobby that don't love me back, but gee golly, the more my cohort grows, the more likely I'll be facing a partner who I can make eyes at across the set when the MC says "we're going to be using the role terms 'tartans' and 'rainbows'" and then eight bars in tells us to dance a ladies' chain. Callahan was right, shared pain *is* halved, and more importantly, pain *can* be transumuted into joy, if you have the right batch of people to share the schadenfreude with.

(Is it still schadenfreude if it's your own pain? I guess?)

It's also really nice that the dances that have been coming to class recently have had excellent flow and been beautiful to dance. It's making me think a lot about my own teaching, and what and how to emphasize things to get that as well. How do I make people shut up and focus on the flow, which would cut the number of unnecessary questions down _significantly_.

I'm excited for upcoming Mondays, and I'm excited to put together a program for my class party and keep running that, and I'm excited for Pinewoods (both work weekend in a couple weeks and ESCape, but I'm also _excited for Scottish Sessions_! I have been quietly tolerant of Scots for a couple years now (ever since the ill-fated applause year), but I am so excited to be _excited_ for camp!

I've had a zine series idea for a while: queers are stealing your hobby. Do an issue on bellringing, on ham radio, on morris, on pub sings. And absolutely this. On Scottish Country Dance. Because we are and it's great! And I think it's entirely plausible that some of the less conservative old guard will start to realize that the tradeoff for them dancing with us weirdos who are on the "wrong" side of the set all the time is getting to dance with people who are pretty practiced at being quick-thinking from anywhere in the set and able to keep the dance flowing a lot better.

It turns out that when you don't have to actually worry about adhering to an extremely strict enforced binary, there's a lot more space to just do interesting things! (this is not a metaphor.) ((this is _definitely_ a metaphor))

~Sor
MOOP!

(no subject)

May. 11th, 2026 07:34 am
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
It feels quite beautiful to me that I have a notes file labeled "burn book" which is for jotting down things I want to remember about people to remind myself why they might rub me the wrong way (to remind myself that I have reasons sometimes and not just vibes1

1: As a contextual note, it might be worth remembering that I lost the entire last three months of my diary of dating my abusive ex, and have had to piece together some of the "was it really that bad?" since then from trauma-touched memories and chatlogs. It was, I know it was, I remember it was, I wish I had more contemporary sources to draw from sometimes. Anyways.

The beautiful part is seeing the sorts of notes I've written most recently. My work bestie's favourite candy. The name of the girl my online friend's been gushing about. One of my DnD friend's favourite animals. The kinds of cliff bar my new friend with the allergies can actually eat.

I like that my burn book, my place to collect small little notes of things I get told or observe and want to remember, is mostly just so kind.

~Sor
sovay: (Haruspex: Autumn War)
[personal profile] sovay
And today my physical health went through the floor and my mood with it, but I hadn't known that boglands were permeating pop culture to the point of salt marsh gastronomy, biofictional art, and peat-distressed fashion. What a great time it would be for a proper home release of Michael Almereyda's The Eternal (1998). Have some further Rabbitology.
sovay: (Haruspex: Autumn War)
[personal profile] sovay
I had a rough night and ran around less during the day than previously, but I did take a couple of pictures in the cold late afternoon.

We hoped for something more. )

Not having dreamed memorably for months, I was amused that last night I was apparently trying to compose a journal post describing a pre-dawn view of the river which presented itself as the Charles, although in waking life it is not crossed with any rope bridges that I know about, nor have I ever seen a market running down its banks to the water. Then I was distracted by discovering the existence of living root bridges. I had never seen anything like them in a non-secondary world. I love that they are not a historical technology.

Out in space, coast to coast

May. 7th, 2026 11:41 pm
sovay: (I Claudius)
[personal profile] sovay
Leaving the jewelry store this afternoon with a couple of options for repairing the clasp on my necklace which has finally broken down beyond my abilities with needle-nose pliers, I got back into the car just in time to catch an interview with a geophysicist that not only tipped me off to the 1859 Carrington Event which sounds like the science fiction of its day with its spark-throwing wireless sets and tropically lapped auroras and telegraphers communicating through atmospheric influence alone, it introduced me to the Pangaean block of the Piedmont Resistor which seems to lie beneath most of the Eastern Seaboard, just one more piece of deep—two hundred million years down to the mantle—strangeness underfoot. I may never have heard of the United States Magnetotelluric Array and I understand its utility to the fragile electrical grids we have made to stand between the crochets of solar flares and the conductivity of the earth, but in a country that preserved any care for knowledge its map of melted, sutured, fractured time would be its own payoff. I love how much is banked and shifting beneath the surfaces we interact with, from earth and sea to the structures of the universe. I have missed so many meteor showers this year.

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