Watching. An episode of Farscape: S02E04 Crackers Don't Matter, which I note with mild alarm (given how "..." we were at it) is considered to merit its very own Wikipedia page?!
The Old Guard 2. I... might yet get around to writing up thoughts.
Cooking. An Salad. An improvised but definitely acceptable for its purposes (i.e. providing nutrition for someone who currently has some decidedly inconvenient dietary restrictions) chickpea curry.
Eating. BLACKBERRIES. Still. Also plums. Really enjoying the plums. So many tomatoes.
Also a box of Many Salads from Mel Tropical Kitchen, some mildly disappointing cookies and a Good raspberry pastel de nata, and another cardamom bun from buns from home. Hurrah for spending a day at the BL?
Exploring. Poking around the grounds of a new-to-me hospital, where I came across an Exciting Apple Tree that I totally failed to actually inspect more closely, and about which I am excited primarily because of just having read a book a solid, like, half of which was Reviews Of Heritage Apple Varieties. (I was a little sad that James Grieve got only a very passing mention.)
The BL! And Beckenham, a bit, while picking up a watering can.
Growing. LEMONGRASS HAS A ROOTLET. Having another go at rooting a bunch of supermarket tarragon.
Observing. We found BABY COOTS. At least five of them, possibly six, plus one egg. They are juuust at the stage where they are practising GOING INTO THE WATER and then rapidly deciding Don't Like That and retreating to the Warm.
As is traditional when trying to recover from a drought of writing,
I’m going to write about not writing.
Specifically, my current difficulty with writing seems to be
primarily… what to write about.
Some context: Part of why I’ve been having “difficulty writing” is
that over the last couple of months I’ve been very into mathematics. The
difficult thing hasn’t actually been writing. I’ve had very little
difficulty writing about mathematics, or figuring out new and
interesting bits of mathematics. Much of this hasn’t happened in
particularly public places, but it has happened.
I think there are at least two reasons for this, but they happened at
the same time. One of them is that I’ve started a new job which very
much needs me to be good at maths, so I’ve been dusting off a lot of old
mathematical skills and applying them. This has been great,
honestly.
The other reason is that at more or less the same time I started on
Wellbutrin. My initial experience of it was also pretty great, my
ongoing experience is… more mixed, but I think still positive.
Whatever the reason, the last couple of months have seen me with a
very strong preference for crunchy work
over squishy work.
Something I noticed almost immediately on starting it is that I lost
a skill, which is the ability to tell myself stories in my head. I
tend(ed) to do this a lot, especially when trying to fall asleep, and
within a few days of starting Wellbutrin it seemed nearly impossible to
do. I could start just fine - coming up with a premise for a story and
starting to tell it isn’t any more difficult, but the problem is that I
would lose the train of thought. I’d tell myself a story for a minute or
two, and then I’d start thinking about something else.
Unfortunately being able to do something for only short snatches at a
time before losing the thread is pretty indistinguishable from not being
able to do the thing<input ... >Especially when holding attention is the main point of
the activity, as it is when trying to use this to fall asleep.
Ironically I got distracted from writing this right after writing
that sentence. I’m trying to use a secondary anchor to keep focus, and
it is helping, but not perhaps as much as I’d like.
I originally titled this post “Holding interest as a prerequisite for
skill”, but actually that’s not right. What’s needed is
attention. Holding interest is one way to maintain attention,
but it’s not the only way. You should, ideally, be able to hold
attention on something regardless of whether you find it
interesting.
And when you can’t, the skill usually falls apart. I think this is
the mechanism behind the “I can only do things I find interesting”
problem a lot of us with or vaguely in the direction of ADHD have, but I
think it’s a general phenomenon: If you want to be good at something,
you first need to be able to hold your attention on doing the thing.
Some skills eventually you grow out of needing attention on them and
can do by rote, but most things will go better if you can pay attention
to them.
This is true even for things that you can do without paying
attention to. I’ve noticed, for example, that Pilates goes much
better for me if I’m paying attention to the actual physical act I’m
performing and how it feels than it does if I’m designing algorithms in
my head. I’m often designing algorithms in my head anyway, so I’m not
all that good at Pilates. I can still do the exercises, but not
necessarily well. I do it anyway because doing Pilates badly is better
than not doing Pilates, but the difference is noticeable.
I think part of the problem with the storytelling, and the writing,
is that as my brain went maths brained, there was no longer a thread of
interest holding my attention on the task, and as a result my mind
wanders off the idea whenever I try.
I think there’s a motivation component to it too. Certainly part of
the problem is that I’m choosing not to write rather than just not
writing. But, at least in theory, I can
solve that problem.
I don’t have to want to write in order to write, but also it’s more
complicated than that. I do want to write, I just don’t find
any particular thing I want to write appealling, but that doesn’t mean I
won’t appreciate the result in the end. I could choose to write, I just
need to be able to maintain the thread while doing so.
I don’t quite know how one cultivates this skill of holding attention
without interest. Maybe it’s something meditation should help with (it
certainly sounds like it should be), but I suspect also it’s just a case
of doing the thing until it feels natural, so let’s see if some more
daily writing fixes it.
Koalas have fingerprints; hairy-nose wombats do not.
Skin on fingers and toes wrinkle in water not because cells get saturated but as an autonomic nervous system function, which we have apparently known since at least 1935. An initial 2013 study found that people with wrinkled fingertips could pick up and move more wet marbles in a set time frame than people with dry skin; a 2014 study failed to replicate this, but there's more at the BBC including a 2020 replication. (The 2013 reference at least is buried in the BBC article.)
Holding a hot drink inclines us to view people as "emotionally warmer"; a heavier clipboard inclines us to believe the person whose CV it's displaying takes their work more seriously. Many other related fun facts over here.
One advantage of my unexpected free month was that I started reading books again. Not a lot but 6 complete novels and a longfic in 6 weeks, which is more than I have for years. Let me catch up with some brief reviews:
Since term properly, properly finished on 6 July, I have read:
Circe by Madeline Miller 2018, Pub 2018 Bloomsbury, ISBN 9781526612519
Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla (c) Nikesh Shukla 2010, Pub 2010 Quartet, ISBN 978-0-7043-7204-7
Will Super Villains be on the final? by Naomi Novik, illustrated by Yishan Li (c) Temeraire LLC 2011, Pub 2011 Del Rey, ISBN 978-0-345-51656-5
Some desperate glory by Emily Tesh (c) Emily Tesh 2023, Pub 2023 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-51718-6
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (c) Ann Leckie 2015, Pub 2015 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-50242-7
A free man of color by Barbara Hambly (c) Barbara Hambly 1997, Pub 1998 Bantam, ISBN 0-553-57526-0
Last night I successfully got the jersey I wanted for my team, and many of the people I wanted to draft to my team, and here we are:
(except one guy who'd wandered off, I'll try to get another group photo with him in at some point, but that one is beautiful; look at those gorgeous jerseys and that sunset sky)
I am so happy with this team. I put in some time and effort to read through the draft grid and make my first-and-second choice selections, and I switched things up as I spoke to people before and during the draft, and in response to how our draft order went on each round. I know I have a bunch of good people, both on and off the ice. In particular I got my captain from last year Sean, who is also the only person here this year who has been on my team in both the previous years. I instantly made him my A, and he's been a delight in the role already.
Three (short) games today and three tomorrow, to see whether I'm as good at picking and running a team as I think I am ...
The nature of veg box is that Vegetables for which I have no Plan... accumulate. Today's dinner took a bunch of said accumulated veg and made them salad-shaped, and it worked out well enough that I want a record as a reminder for future self that one can just Do This.
In brief: book is the least I've been annoyed by any such book I have yet read, which is fairly impressive going, especially since the copy in the BL's collection is the first edition originally published in 2003 rather than the second edition updated in 2013; more notes possibly to follow (subject to reaching a decision about whether I want to hold out for getting my hands on a copy of the second edition before talking about it in public).
Entertainment: shortly after I finally settled myself down in my nice corner desk against a window with my back to the wall and a whole enclosed-in-glass booth between me and Any Other Readers... my watch buzzed to let me know that I'd just finished a Period Of High Stress. The high stress was, obviously, sitting quietly wedged into a corner on public transport while reading a relaxing book. I did know public transport was exhausting! I have been saying! I'm still kind of impressed at the watch Earnestly Informing Me, In Case I Didn't? Know? and mildly regretting that I'm planning to do the same-ish again tomorrow, and also also I am reassessing A Lot of my wheelchair use in light of this...
Related entertainment: how much my hypervigilance kicked up when I returned from lunch to discover that neatly leaving my notebook and reading-book in a stack on my desk had not had sufficient inhibitory effect, and a Noisy Person had decided to sit diagonally across from me, in my Space, being Noisy. The amount I relaxed when they (temporarily) fucked off is another one for the "yep I can see how not leaving the house for over a year and then staying Hyper Local has added up to me looking much more functional" files...
Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (azurelunatic) wrote2025-08-2108:28 am
Visiting the out-laws with Belovedest. Last night we had dinner out at the Dirty Bird (chicken bar & grill) so this morning's breakfast is leftovers. Which I had in bed, due to the scarcity of tables in the hotel room, and my general unwillingness to get out of bed before nine.
Unfortunately, breakfast was crispy chicken Caesar salad, with buffalo sauce on the side. And after I finished that, I was dipping baby carrots in the sauce. And there was a spill.
I can't seem to face up to the facts I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax I can't sleep, 'cause my bed's on fire Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire Spicy pillow, qu'est-ce que c'est? Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa, far better Run-run, run-run-run away Oh-oh-oh
The thing about buying new glasses, right, is that I've been feeling avoidant about it in part because I think I was slightly migrainey the day I had the most recent test done and I was already pretty sure that my vision goes... wrong... when migrainey -- most noticeable when moving, but always... there.
Slightly more specifically: it's neither scintillating scotoma nor loss-of-whole-field-of-vision nor any of the other very classic visual auras; instead it's a sense that I'm not managing to track movement properly along the lower edge and especially the lower corners of my field of vision.
... which matches up really well, actually, with the peripheral vision deficiencies that, er, showed up during my last eye test.
I've been noticing the Weirdness on-and-off for quite some time now, and was dithering back and forth about whether it was just confirmation bias in that I was only noticing it when otherwise migrainey -- but then on Monday, while on my way to my GP surgery to pick up some paperwork, it resulted in the railings I was going past (and that I go past regularly!) causing an extremely pronounced and unmistakeable strobing effect. I am very confident that that is not something I would somehow manage to confirmation bias myself out of noticing most of the time, so, hurrah, Definitely A Migraine Symptom (for lo, on Monday I was migrainey) it is.
The thing that is mildly baffling me is that I can't actually find (admittedly on a fairly cursory search) any description of specifically peripheral vision fuckery as a migraine thing! Lots of mentions of tunnel vision, lots of mentions of classic aura, and one case study in which "peripheral vision" is used metaphorically. So, you know, let the record show, &c.
The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Penric & Desdemona) by Lois McMaster Bujold
This is something like 14th in the ongoing Penric+Desdemona books. You don't want to start here, it's a satisfying enough instalment in the series if you are already invested in the characters and the family. If I have a criticism I think that like the last two books I found the progress of the book a bit predictable and not very surprising. But I still read it in two solid bites (only separated by the tedious matter of needing to sleep).
The Arctic Curry Club by Dani Redd
This was on the "free paperbacks" shelf at Cambridge North and I picked it up on a whim, and used some of my free time to give it a try. A bit like the previous book, I didn't find it especially surprising but I did find it very engaging, and some very mouthwatering descriptions of food. Our protagonist Maya moves to Svalbard with her partner, who is taking up a research post there, and who turns out to not actually be as supportive and perfect in the arctic night as he seemed in London. When Maya makes a flying trip to Bangalore for her father's remarriage, she reconnects with a childhood friend and starts to dig up old family history. On her return to Svalbard she makes new friends and new culinary adventures.
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
A retiring police inspector in Mumbai inherits a baby elephant on his last day in the job, and finds himself investigating one last murder case in his retirement, with occasional assistance from the elephant Ganesha. This was both charming and surprising and I enjoyed it very much.
At the airport security check, putting my hand luggage in the trays for xray. The guy staffing the preparation area tells me if I have any electronics in my bag, I need to pull them out. I pull out my laptop and kindle. He asks me if I have anything else, such as a hairdryer.
My tournament buddy Lisa is in fits of giggles. Of all people, do I look like I need a hairdryer?
I joined the university open practice last night, after encouragement from my friend who is actually part of CUIHC (I was in the club, I dropped out two years ago, I plan to rejoin again this October but right now I'm in a weird limbo - eligible to play, lots of friends among the players, but not on any of the membership mailing lists or groupchats). 15 minutes or so warmup and then a scrimmage, with a spanking pace set by the Men's Blues players. It was enormous fun and a reminder of why I do these mad late nights etc. And I got a goal! Put myself by the back door and picked up a rebound, absolutely textbook stuff, very happy with it.
So my count is now:
2 goals in scrimmage
1 goal (actually an own goal by the opposition) and 3 assists in formal games
I'd love to reach the point where a goal in scrimmage is just another Tuesday, but maybe it's time to start a spreadsheet while I still remember each one individually.
(Other good things that happened yesterday: a coffee with lnr, lunch at the Dishoom Permit Room with Mick and Joye, book shopping with Charles, having the time to just sit and read a couple of books, skating lesson and seeing my friend E briefly afterward. Basically, it was a really lovely day of leave.)
This weekend one of my oldest friends got married, and my partners celebrated their 20th anniversary with a Jewish blessing and wedding canopy. So I had a lovely lovely time, and also I'm very much reminded that there's a crowd of (mostly somewhat connected) people I've been friends with for most of 30 years and I should make more active effort to actually spend time with them because they are awesome.
I sort of want to see if I can make it to my brother's charity's ceilidh next week. But Friday evening events in Brighton when I have a bar mitzvah in Cambridge on Saturday are a bit unworkable. And although I enjoyed the dancing, what I want more of isn't mainly dancing, it's spending time with people. And waiting for my friends to have reunions in the form of weddings isn't very efficient! I'm amazed that there were even two weddings this year, with most of my circle being in our 40s. jack has planned a bank holiday picnic next Monday; it will be fully outdoors, which is good for infection risk but possibly bad for enduring summer weather. But if you happen to be in Cambridge you're most welcome.
Cooking. One more thing from East (kimchi pancakes, mildly disappointing) plus a gooseberry oat crisp I have been meaning to get to since I started picking the pink gooseberries [mumble] ago.
Eating. Ruby Violet (hazelnut + hazelnut brittle, blueberry + lemon curd). buns from home (cardamom, cinnamon, garlic + rosemary focaccia).
My first granadilla, courtesy of a whim in a supermarket!
Allotment apples and tomatoes.
Exploring. Spent a chunk of Monday afternoon poking around the Camley Street Natural Park!
Growing. There are TOMATOES. There are BEANS. I harvested some PEPPERS. I'm still not doing great at, like, efficiency or yield, but hey, I'm eating some things from the plot, which is better than none.
So, the tenth anniversary of my diagnosis with leukaemia happened earlier this week. I usually celebrate my survival on 1 October each year, but I'd wondered a few months ago about having a party in actual summer.
In the end I didn't organise anything for this weekend because I had a hockey game with Warbirds yesterday. This morning I took Nico to Clip n Climb, and this afternoon I met Rosie for a public skate and then we had ice creams in the sunshine. On my way back to my bike (locked by the rink) I ran into a couple of people and sorted out a few things relating to Kodiaks and next weekend's Draft Tournament in Biarritz.
Felt I was primed to respond to this one: overtly literary (published in America by New Directions) with significant speculative elements, strong sense of place in the university city of Göttingen, themes of memory and haunting, even a touch of climate (geology?) fiction through its focus on the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Not to mention the Planetenweg. I mean, have a look at these blurbs:
"An exquisite, mysterious novel of mourning on a planetary scale." — Booklist
"A work of great delicacy and seriousness. Ishizawa anchors the temporal and the ghostly with a transfixing pragmatism, and the result is a shifting, tessellated kaleidoscope of memory, architecture, history and grief." — Jessica Au
"The Place of Shells is a meditation on art, death, and belonging. It reads like an eerie, shimmering fever dream where the boundaries between past and present, reality and fantasy, life and death often shatter. A strange and beautiful memento mori of a novel." — Jenny Mustard
The premise: "In the summer of 2020, a young Japanese academic based in the German city of Göttingen waits at the train station to meet her old friend Nomiya, who died nine years earlier in Japan's devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami but has now inexplicably returned from the dead." She takes this very much in stride – or at least finds herself unable to speak about it or directly acknowledge its strangeness – but then more intrusions from the past begin to appear across the city...
What's interesting is how my genre expectations led me astray, because ultimately in its resolution I felt that Place of Shells was much more in the tradition of Japanese "healing fiction," along the lines of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library. In a way it's a social-harmony-restored novel. For me that didn't work, but I often feel that I'm reading Japanese literature in slightly the wrong key, or at least without sufficient genre context.
Although the novel addresses the Holocaust, and in a way uses mentions of the Holocaust to strengthen its themes around memory, loss and haunting, it is definitely not about the Holocaust. It would be a bit churlish to object to that: this is a Japanese novel set abroad, rather than one about Germany's past. But having been reminded by the Wikipedia article about the city that Leó Szilárd and Edward Teller were on the faculty at the university before the Nazis came to power, it strikes me that this could have been a bigger book (it's very slight), perhaps in conversation with When We Cease to Understand the World, or at least with the metaphorical tsunami of the atomic bomb and its impact on Japan. Author missed a trick, perhaps?
In summary: I've never read a book that was so strongly in the tradition of WG Sebald while at the same time being so completely unlike WG Sebald. Which fascinates me.
Just, you know, For My Own Reference: a list of the exercises included in Hypermobility Without Tears. I am going to come back through and add links to Pilates and physio explainers for all of these.
Thursday's appointment was one that I knew was going to stir up trauma. The doctor ended up listing that aspect of it as PTSD, which I guess is fair. I always have thought of it as "trauma" rather than PTSD, which is kind of odd in retrospect.
I wound up taking a small dose of my "street cred" when I realized I was starting to have a trauma response. That turned out to be a good idea. There's a follow up in a few months, and I should pre-medicate for it.
Afterwards I got the 32 oz reverse mocha from a local coffee shack. (Not one of the bikini coffee shacks.) With chocolate whipped cream, thank you very much. My first time encountering white coffee espresso in a drink. Interesting and almost floral. I had Belovedest (a bitter supertaster) try it. Still coffee tasting, but not as strongly.
Although that's also possibly due to me only having 3 shots of espresso in the drink instead of the usual 6.
I would much rather discuss the coffee than the source of the trauma and the appointment, in any event.
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kaberett) wrote2025-08-24 11:02 pm
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