Not So Snipe Hunting
Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 20:38 on 13 September 2017"No, I don't want to do it. Take Kitt, she'll enjoy it."
Mom said this, and I was puzzled. I mean, what does she want me to do, something super seekrit? One way to find out! I followed Eric outside the back door, and he handed me a small flashlight. He started in.
"Your mom likes to shine the light right at her feet..."
He turned on the flashlight.
"... but that doesn't work so well. We want to see where we are going, not where we are standing."
The flashlight was a black light. A few moments later, I realized what we were doing.
We were snipe hunting!
I mean, scorpion hunting!
Scorpions!
Using a tactic similar to the one I used for reducing snail populations, Eric was going out nightly, finding scorpions, and spraying them with bug spray. They die, and, hopefully, reproduce less. The hope is with a smaller outdoor population, there will be a smaller indoor population, a goal I wholeheartedly support.
The process took longer than I was expecting it to take. Eric was thorough. We walked all around the pool, checked all the trees, checked the forest, checked the orchard, checked the canal, checked the palm trees, checked the Hula haunts, checked the pool pump house, checked the fences, checked the bushes, checked the work bench, checked the house corners, checked the hens' nests. We checked the property pretty thoroughly.
We managed to find a large number of brightly glowing spots. A large number of them were dead from last night, and a large number were very much alive. Eric sprayed the latter.
The technique with the light, though. I could totally understand why Mom was focusing the light close in. It's hard not to look close where you're walking. The scorpions glow well enough that the small black light ("I'm glad I bought the $12 version, it shines twenty feet out, unlike the $8 version which doesn't throw very far," as Eric said) was good at highlighting them well.
What I also found interesting, fascinating, was the number of other things besides scorpions that glowed brightly in the black light. The scorpions glowed the brightest, but even eggshells glowed. A few times we paused at the glow, was that a scorpion, how about that, but really, only the scorpions glowed brightly.
Mom was right about my enjoying it. The whole adventure was entertaining.
Was I?
Blog Posted by kitt at 15:34 on 12 September 2017"Why the anger?" he asked me in not those words.
"Eh? I'm not angry," I responded.
"Your words were." Again, in not those words.
"..." I responded, then pondered.
Yes, they sounded angry.
Was I?
I didn't think so.
But was I?
In those words, no.
I thanked him for his feedback on my word choices and style. I edited what I had posted to a softer tone. I expressed my appreciation, I hope he knew it was for his gentle response to what appeared to be my anger at the topic at hand.
Was I angry?
Yes.
Yes, and not at what we were talking about.
I'm angry that I had to quit my job to be able to share my knowledge on a stage, in the public.
I'm angry that I worked for a company I swore I would never work for, and enjoyed it.
I'm angry that I put my life on hold, that I continue to do so, instead of living the life I want.
I'm angry that my heart keeps breaking over and over and over again.
I'm angry for the poor choices past me made out of fear, and the continued echoes of those choices.
I'm angry for the friends who left me, and the trust that I watched be thrown back in my face.
I am not, however, angry about the lack of an app on an iwatch that tells me to turn around and paddle back to shore, that I have gone too far from land, and that I am on my own beyond the limits of my own strength to return.
The Darkest Road
Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 10:08 on 11 September 2017, kitt created this:This is book three of the Fionavar Tapestry. You really need to read the first two books in the series for this book to make any sense. That said, the three books are, even two decades after I read them the first time, still amazing.
I lost all my notes I had taken with this reading when my phone died. This loss saddens me a bit, but I'm sure I'll be able to rewrite this review within the next couple years, as I'll read the series again.
That said, this book is about trust. Except, you don't know it's about trust until you sit with the memory of the book, after you're done reading it. Kay's work does that: he doesn't tell you, he shows you. This style is why I love his writing so much.
I strongly recommend this series. I'll buy you a copy if you'd like.
[H]e was acutely aware that she was right—aware of how much his difficulties were caused by his own overdeveloped need for controlling things. Particularly himself.
Location 4910
“Would it have been so terrible,” Kim asked, not wisely, but she couldn’t hold the question back, “if you had just told him you loved him?”
Jennifer didn’t flinch, nor did she flare into anger again. “I did,” she said mildly, a hint of surprise in her voice. “I did let him know. Surely you can see that. I left him free to make his choice. I ... trusted him.”
Location 4979
The Wandering Fire
Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 21:06 on 10 September 2017, kitt created this:This is book two of the FIonavar Tapestry.
As with the first book, I bought and read the book for the first time in high school. Each time I read this book, this series, I pull a different lesson and a different focus from the book. I do not love these books any less each reading.
I had a number of notes with this latest reading, but I lost them when my phone locked and I couldn't recover the data. I recall this book has a lot more adventure in it than the previous book, more hand-wringing, and more difficult to read parts. I still love and appreciate how Kay doesn't hit the reader over the head with explanations and elaborations. He leaves parts unsaid, he lets the reader feel the losses, he gives us space to grieve, to be surprised, to puzzle, and to accept. It's this style of writing that draws me to Kay's writing again and again.
When I started reading this series again, I was worried that the magic of the books was worn with time. I was wrong. They are still incredible. I strongly recommend this series.
The Summer Tree
Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 18:06 on 9 September 2017I bought and read this book the first time when I was still in high school. I was working at the bookstore (gosh, that was the perfect job for me), when a woman came in and ordered the three books in this series in hardback form. Who buys books in hardback when they are available in paperback? The woman was, in retrospect, the epitome of a middle-aged science fiction fantasy reader, including the round and smiling parts.
When I placed her order, I ordered a second set of hardbound books for myself. I would argue one of my best book buying decisions ever.
This early Kay work has the perfect writing style, where he shows the reader instead of telling the reader. Some of his later works have lost this magic, though his last book recaptures some of that magic.
The last time I started to reread this book was on the road trip with Chris, so it's been a while. Reading it this time, however, was like slipping into a warm bath of comfort, like the act of coming home. I had not realized how much this book, and the series, shaped aspects of my life, always in subtle ways.
I strongly recommend this book and this series. I've loaned my copies out, always making sure to get them back. This series in one of my top three books of all time.
“No, he’s not all right. But I seem to be the only one who questions it. I think I’m becoming a pain in the ass to him. I hate it.”
“Sometimes,” his father said, filling the glass cups in their Russian - style metal holders, “a friend has to be that.”
Page 27
“Kevin,” he said, “you will have to learn — and for you it will be hard — that sometimes you can’t do anything. Sometimes you simply can’t.”
Page 28
And Paul Schafer, who believed one should be able to endure anything, and who believed this of himself most of all, listened as long as he could, and failed again.
Page 29
It seemed that there were still things one could not do. So one did everything else as well as one possibly could and found new things to try, to will oneself to master, and always one realized, at the kernel and heart of things, that the ends of the earth would not be far enough away.
Page 30
“No, I play carefully. All the beauty was on your side, but sometimes plodding caution will wear down brilliance."
Page 70
“It is power that teaches patience; holding power, I mean. And you learn the price it exacts — which is something I never knew when I was your age and thought a sword and quick wits could deal with anything. I never knew the price you pay for power.”
Page 70
“I don’t think that wanting to live can be a failing.” The words rasped from too long a silence; a difficult emotion was waking within him.
Page 79
After a moment, Kevin Laine, who was neither a petty man nor a stupid one, smiled to himself.
Page 89
Kevin had seen, and caught his breath to see, the look in her dark eyes when Paul would enter a room, and he had watched, too, the hesitant unfolding of trust and need in his proud friend.
Page 91
Watching him, Kevin felt it then, the intoxicating lure of this man who was leading them.
Page 94
We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.
Page 169
The knowledge of approaching death can come in many shapes, descending as a blessing or rearing up as an apparition of terror. It may sever like the sweep of a blade, or call as a perfect lover calls.
Page 178
There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.
Page 203
She thought of Raederth then, and wondered if it was folly to sorrow for a man so long dead. But it wasn’t, she knew, she now knew; for the dead are still in time, they are travelling, they are not lost. Ysanne was lost.
Page 217
To see him with a sword in his hand was almost heartbreaking. It was a dance. It was more. Some men, it seemed, were born to do a thing; it was true.
Page 219
But Dana was with him now, the Goddess, taking him there to truth. And in a crescendo, a heart - searing blaze of final dispensation, he saw that he had missed the gap, and only just, oh, only just, not because of any hesitation shaped by lack of desire, by death or murder wish, but because, in the end, he was human.
Oh, lady, he was. Only, only human, and he missed because of hurt, grief, shock, and rain. Because of these, which could be forgiven.
And were, he understood. Truly, truly were. Deny not your own mortality. The voice was within him like a wind, one of her voices, only one, he knew, and in the sound was love, he was loved. You failed because humans fail. It is a gift as much as anything else.
Page 231
He would have comforted his younger son, but knew it was wiser to leave the boy alone. It was not a bad thing to learn what hurt meant, and mastering it alone helped engender self-respect.
Page 246
What Dave felt then was so rare and unexpected, it took him a moment to recognize it.
Page 253
The Sight comes when the light goes, the Dalrei said. It was not Law, but had the same force, it seemed to Ivor at times.
Page 256
Which led to another thought: did all fathers feel this way when their sons became men? Men of achievement, of names that eclipsed the father’s? Was there always the sting of envy to temper the burst of pride?
Page 268
Through it all, drinking round for round with them, Levon seemed almost unaffected by what he had done. Looking for it, Dave could find no arrogance, no hidden sense of superiority in Ivor’s older son. It had to be there, he thought, suspicious, as he always was. But looking one more time at Levon as he walked between him and Ivor to the feast — he was guest of honor, it seemed — Dave found himself reluctantly changing his mind. Is a horse arrogant or superior? He didn’t think so. Proud, yes; there was great pride in the bay stallion that had stood so still with Levon that morning, but it wasn’t a pride that diminished anything or anyone else. It was simply part of what the stallion was.
Page 269
How could he be angry, though, after this? It was always so hard, Ivor found, to stay angry with Liane. Leith was better at it. Mothers and daughters; there was less indulgence there.
Page 276
Overtired, he soon amended, for once inside the blanket he found that sleep eluded him. Instead he lay awake under the wide sky, his mind circling restlessly back over the day.
Page 290
I so understand this.
“Pendaran is deadly to those who enter it. No one does. But the Wood is angry, not evil, and unless we trespass, the powers within it will not be stirred by our riding here."
Page 294
There was no expression on Levon’s face, his profile seemed chiseled from stone as he gazed at the towering fire above Rangat. But in that very calm, that impassive acceptance, Dave found a steadfastness of his own. Without moving a muscle, Levon seemed to be growing, to be willing himself to grow large enough to match, to overmatch the terror in the sky and on the wind.
Page 300
Your hour knows your name, Dave Martyniuk thought, and then, in that moment of apocalypse, had another thought: I love these people. The realization hit him, for Dave was what he was, almost as hard as the Mountain had.
Page 301
No one spoke. Levon’s face, Dave saw, was like stone again, but not as before. This he recognized: not the steadfastness of resolution, but a rigid control locking the muscles, the heart, against the pain inside. You held it in, Dave thought, had always thought. It didn’t belong to anyone else.
Page 305
"Levon, you said before, this place isn’t evil.”
“It doesn’t have to be, to kill us,” said Torc.
Page 306
“And Davor,” Levon went on, in a different voice, “you wove something very bright back there. I don’t think any man in the tribe could have forced that opening. Whatever happens after, you saved our lives then.”
“I just swung the thing,” Dave muttered.
At which Torc, astonishingly, laughed aloud. For a moment the listening trees were stilled. No mortal had laughed in Pendaran for a millennium. “You are,” said Torc dan Sorcha, “as bad as me, as bad as him. Not one of us can deal with praise. Is your face red right now, my friend?”
Of course it was, for God’s sake. “What do you think?” he mumbled. Then, feeling the ridiculousness of it, hearing Levon’s snort of amusement, Dave felt something let go inside, tension, fear, grief, all of them, and he laughed with his friends in the Wood where no man went.
Page 306
He nodded, seeing once more, discovering it anew, how beautiful she was. “Why did you marry me?” he asked impulsively.
She shrugged. “You asked.”
...
“I lied,” Leith said quietly. “I married you because no other man I know or can imagine could have made my heart leap so when he asked.”
He turned from the moon to her. “The sun rises in your eyes,” he said. The formal proposal. “It always, always has, my love.”
Page 318
There was no peace, no serenity anywhere. She carried none, had none to grant, she wore the Warstone on her hand. She would drag the dead from their rest, and the undead to their doom. What was she that this should be so?
Page 341
“No,” said Diarmuid. And it appeared that there was nothing inevitable after all.
Page 359
What did it matter why? It didn’t, clearly, except that at the end we only have ourselves anyway, wherever it comes down. So Jennifer rose from the mattress on the floor, her hair tangled, filthy, the odor of Avaia on her torn clothes, her face stained, body bruised and cut, and she mastered the tremor in her voice and said to him, “You will have nothing of me that you do not take.”
Page 368
You send your mind away, she remembered reading once; when you’re tortured, when you’re raped, you send your mind after a while into another place, far from where pain is. You send it as far as you can. To love, the memory of it, a spar for clinging to.
Page 369