Lonely...and adrift

Okay finally started work on that article about fighting anti-immigration sentiment in the US, which I've been procrastinating. Week has been a difficult one. Feeling a bit at odds, always do this time of year. It's near my birthday, and I always get sort of anxious and depressed around my birthday. Once the damn thing is over - I'm actually pretty cheerful and relieved. May be the time of year? Don't know.

The down-side of living alone is...when you want a hug, there are none to be found except your own. My last one was CW around President's Day Weekend. Could use a hug tonight. Feel lonelier than usual. Don't know why exactly.

The work week felt too long - I thought everday was Friday. That could be the reason? Or maybe it's just this feeling of general inertia, as if I'm climbing up this really steep hill and there's no end in sight?

This is embarrassing. But Am resisting the urge to re-read all of Kim Harrison's novels or write a post on her blog (because I've learned discussing books with authors doesn't quite work for me - I don't want her to know what I think, dissolving the fourth wall and all that) - her last book was a very odd read. Reminded me a little of the feeling I had when I completed Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince or Jim Butcher's Changes or Dunnett's Checkmate (which I promptly re-read). Or for that matter watched Chosen in Buffy S7 or Grave in Buffy S6...or the episode Intervention or Beneath Me or The Hunger Games. It's the gaps in the tale that haunt you. The places in between. The tiny details not followed up on. The pov's not explored. The questions left unanswered. It's like eating a tasty thin piece of pie or cake, yet not full, and there's something in it, some taste that turns you on, but it is so slight and so fleeting that you want to eat the whole cake just to locate it. I can't explain it. But I feel overwhelmed with a cultural craving - that I did not have before I read latest book (last time was when I finished The Hunger Games, it finally abated, this will too, eventually). But I'm not sure what it's for or why. I think I have a certain kink or button that if a book, tv show, character inadvertently hits it - I go nuts. Call it a cultural erogenous zone or hot spot. You hit it? I'm obsessing and in lovvve. But hard to hit. And rarely is.


Off to bed I think. Where...I'll hug myself to sleep.

(no subject)

I failed. Started re-reading the Kim Harrison books and posted to her blog. (embarrassingly enough).
I hate doing that - because normally if you get a response, the writer can be a bit - patronizing.
But I had to ask if she was a Buffy fan, because she does something in Pale Demon that I haven't seen done since well Buffy with a character arc. In that series it was with Spike - where you think the character and his relationships mean one thing, then the writer reveals something we didn't know and suddenly you realize it's something completely different. So you go back and re-watch the series and think, damn! I totally see that now. The whole series changes and becomes something new. I'm not saying I couldn't predict bits of Harrison's story, some plot points I did. But what surprised me where small details, much like in Buffy - little things. Such as the fact that Spike would allow someone to torture him. Or how he chooses to use the Buffy bot (not how I expected at all - was expecting something more twisted and horrifying). I saw the character one way. The writers pulled back a layer, set me in his pov, and I realized wait - the main characters pov's are unreliable.

When a writer does this - I cheer. It's hard to do and even harder to pull off well. But realistic.
Because this happens in life too - we muck along thinking Jane Doe is our best bud and Mary Sue is a bitch from hell, then one day we find out that Mary Sue is actually a great gal, and would be there if we fell on our butt, while Janey would totally blow us off. People aren't predictable at all. There's so much we don't know about each other. And most of our assumptions are incredibly wrong. The unreliable narrator is my favorite technique. It's why I loved the flick Black Swan - because you think one thing is going on, and then you realize no - it's something else. Or Sixth Sense or The Others.