Personal

Miranda Dreams, I wake up

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One sunny autumn day in 1989, I was walking through the UC Berkeley campus. I was a sophomore in college, coming from a class in Dwinelle Hall, heading back to my student co-op on the south side of campus. There’s a small brick-paved bridge just before Sather Gate, with low concrete parapets. The trees growing in the stream bed by Strawberry Creek created a mass of green behind the sunlit bridge.

Standing on the bridge, bright against this backdrop, was a group of three men. Two were playing hammer dulcimers, one a guitar. They were busking, as musicians so often do on campus. Drifting across the light, warm breeze, I heard a song like sunlight transformed into music. The lead hammer dulcimer led the way through a rhythmic melody, punctuated with sycopated notes in bright counterpoint to the basic tune. The second hammer dulcimer added complexity, the guitar lent depth to the thin brightness of the tune.

I was filled with a senseless joy. I can’t explain it; it’s not a song that creates this effect for anyone else I know.

The song was called Miranda’s Dream, written by Lawrence Huntley and performed by the Whamadiddle Dingbats. It is on their instrumental album, Saturday at the Market.

I bought a couple of tapes by the group (Saturday at the Market and Lucky!), but shed them over time. Once, I wrote to Lawrence Huntley and managed to convince him to send me the sheet music for the melody. That I still have, and I used to be able to do a respectable rendition on the guitar. But the place the song has played, faultlessly, for years, is in my head. It’s stuck with me for eighteen years, vivid as the first day I heard it, delightful as sunshine.

Over the last two or three years, I’ve been putting some time and effort into getting that track again. I tried the direct approach, tracking down two different emails for Lawrence Huntley on the web and emailing him directly. All attempts either bounced or vanished. I found a more recent version with steel drums, but it loses the crispness of the original dulcimer and guitar piece.

So finally, I found it on ebay (purest luck!) and bought it. It arrived last week, and once again I can hear the bright, intricate and glorious piece, just as I heard it that warm fall day in Berkeley.

Why am I posting this? Several reasons.

  1. We have some Googlejuice. If the members of the Whamadiddle Dingbats (Lawrence Huntley, Mick Doherty and Keven Shay Johnson) Google themselves, they may find this entry. If you do, guys, thank you for making some lovely, memorable music. Leave a comment, if you like.
  2. I’m after another of their albums, Lucky!. Anyone reading this have a copy?
  3. It’s what’s batting around my head right now. This, is, after all, a blog.
Sonnets

Rejection! Oh, the tragedy!

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At the end of January, at the urging of a few friends, I sent three sonnets off to Asimov’s, the only science fiction magazine that accepts poetry. Unlike most of the sonnets I write, these were not “occasional” sonnets, written to mark a specific event or play off of a specific theme in a conversation.

I got the rejection letter this week, a good month after Asimov’s own guidelines said to “assume the submission was lost”. Poetry is a chancy thing to publish, of course, and I’m not actually disappointed or annoyed in the least that I got knocked back. I regarded the entire submission process as being like throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see if it stuck.

So, since Asimov’s doesn’t want them, I thought I’d publish the three of them here. Each is structured as a 14-line SF narrative, basically a short story in iambic pentameter. I had a lot of fun writing them – even managed to recycle a story idea that never jelled into one.

Principal Damage

The cloning table holds me half-reclined
And wraps the scanning visor round my head,
Recording me. I try to clear my mind,
But grief remains. My alter self is dead.
A roadside bomb went off; his whole squad died.
Like all the other soldiers grown before
From memories and tissue I’ve supplied,
He died. As will the next, and many more.
I knew that he was gone before the call —
I felt the bomb explode, and tasted blood.
I can’t explain, but I’ve died with them all,
Been burned and shot, been stabbed and drowned in mud.
Sometimes I wish that I were just a clone
So when I die, I die just once, alone.

I blame John Scalzi for this one, since he’s the one that got me into the “civilians turn soldiers in SFnial wars” mindset, years after the imprint of Starship Troopers was finally ironed out of my skull. Though Ursula K LeGuin‘s story Nine Lives is a piece of it, too, with the notion of some mystical connection among clones that activates on death.

Some Minor Alterations

At glum fifteen, I met myself at thirty.
I was an awkward kid, and couldn’t see
A future that would suit someone like me.
I wanted to be normal, not so nerdy.
She brought me pictures: husband (somewhat bland),
Cute children, pleasant house, a life in full.
The photos made it all seem possible,
And, suddenly, too dull for me to stand.
My fears of growing into her inspire
Me through the days I spend on my research,
Inventing this machine. I plan to search
Through time for the excitement I require.
And my first trip? To tell a lie, and thus
Steer my past self toward the truth of us.

The scansion on this one is iffy, but it was fun. It’s an attempt to resolve the time-travel paradox on one of my favourite wishes (that I could go back in time to my teenaged self and tell her it would all be OK in the end).

Nothing in this poem should be an indictment of my current life, by the way.

Immigrant

The branching universes take me far
Beyond my devastated world, to one
Where Earth revolves around a living star.
I find my other self. She doesn’t run.
I do the thing, and hide the body well,
And then go home. The keys are in her coat.
The house is nicer here — mine’s just a shell —
But on the mantelpiece, I find a note.
If you are reading this, I must be dead.
But that’s OK. I hope you made it fast.
Just know you’re not the first to come instead
Of staying home. Nor will you be the last.
Enjoy this respite from whatever hell
You’ve just escaped, and in your turn, die well.

This is recycled from a story that just never worked out about fifteen years ago. It’s based a lot on Larry Niven’s All the Myriad Ways, gone a bit dark. One of my readers cited The Golden Bough in reference to it as well, though if that is an influence it’s filtered through the culture (I have never read it).

So my quest to become a published poet is thwarted, thwarted, I tell you! And I’m not really gutted. I hope the narrative sonnets are at least interesting.

Sonnets

Religion is the warp on custom’s loom

Religion is the warp on custom’s loom
(And warped it sometimes is, for we are frail.
We fumble in the dark, and often fail
To see our own faults clearly in the gloom.)
And culture, common practice, makes the weft.
Our actions and our ethics jointly weave
Like tabby, twill, jaquard. What we believe
And what we do cannot be clearly cleft.
It goes against the grain to pick a thread
And say, “This doesn’t represent the whole.”
We live with strands that we cannot control,
And cut our garb to fit our cloth instead.
And so, in peaceful spirit, can we please
Discuss dupattas and salwar kameez?

Originally posted on Making Light.

Personal

Pieces falling into place

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It’s been some time since I’ve blogged. Plans have been up in the air, and sometimes I can’t bring myself to write about things that aren’t yet complete. As Martin wrote in his Going Dutch entry, we are moving to the Netherlands this summer.

This is, naturally, terrifying. It’s been particularly scary for me to contemplate, because I had to find two very important things.

A job
Moving country meant moving work, and that’s a frightening thing. I joined the Royal Bank in 1997 – October would have marked ten years there, and I was thoroughly institutionalised after all that time. It was intimidating to even contemplate finding something else.
A house
Admittedly, unlike the job thing, househunting is for the benefit of entire family, and in theory I could fob some of the weight off on Martin. But I get emotional about my living situation, so it felt like it was really my worry.

So how has it gone, in the month and a half since I quit the Bank and started these searches?

Job

Martin pointed a job ad out to me in late March, before I was even officially out of work. It was for a small company, MediaLab, which makes search software mostly used in libraries. It’s a tiny company, and a deeply cool one, writing interesting software and having fun doing it.

At his urging, I sent them a CV. When we got back from California, I had a phone interview, and made a strong connection with the people I talked to. They invited me over for a second interview in person in their offices in Amsterdam.

That went even better. I enjoyed the conversations and liked the people, and it was mutual. More importantly, from a business perspective, it was clear that my area of expertise and my approach to work will fill a need in their company.

So I got the job.

I start at the beginning of July, which sometimes seems a long way off. I find myself thinking about the work, and about sitting in that bright and friendly office while I do it. It’s been a long time since I looked forward to work.

House

We wanted to rent a house for a year, to give us a chance to try out the Dutch lifestyle before committing a lot of capital to it. But there aren’t a lot of spacious, affordable houses in commute radius of Amsterdam.

It’s also difficult to search for houses at a remove. (My friend who just moved to New Zealand can testify to this.) After poring over hundreds of advertisements on the internet, we finally identified one that looked nice, in a promising town. So Martin and I went across one rainy Monday to look at it.

It was awful. Cramped, grimy and grim, in the shabbiest neighbourhood. It was also not available for a year’s rental; the owners wanted to keep the option open to sell it (an endeavour in which I wish them luck). We straggled home after a discouraging day, ready to abandon the whole damned effort.

I tried to take a fresh tack on the matter the next few days, looking again at places we had eliminated, sending out emails to emails to estate agents. Then the phone rang.

It was an estate agent, calling based on a profile Martin logged on their website. He had a four-bedroom property, he said, just coming on the market for a year’s rental. In Wormerveer, a town in commute distance from my office. Large workroom as well, was I interested? I made interested noises, and he sent me pictures.

Then I was really interested. It’s a light, spacious place, converted from a schoolhouse. The owner, a painter, is taking his family to the Canary Islands for a year. I flew over on Tuesday to view it and the neighbourhood.

It was fantastic. The town charmed me, and the location of the house was particularly good (it’s right near the market plaza, two schools, shops, and some pleasant areas to walk through.) And the house itself was better than the photos conveyed, with an essential unity of light and design.

It didn’t hurt that I got on very well with the owner, the painter, who showed me round. We talked about aesthetics and the philosophy of art, bookbinding and lithography, history and philosophy (boring the estate agent senseless until he recalled another appointment). Practical matters will go easier with this channel of communication, but more importantly, I’m looking forward to future conversations.

So now I have a job and a house, and frankly, they’re both fantastic. What a good set of prospects to take into a challenging year!

Sonnets

Moderation sonnetry

We value moderation in all things.
The edges may define the battleground
But on their own, unbalanced and unsound,
They cannot make the peace consensus brings.
And sometimes in the drive to win a fight
Participants forget that victory
Is counted in the people who now see
The world anew, not in who’s proven right.
A careful gardener of good debate
Can prune the branches, leave the essence whole,
Protect the fragile, dsmvwl th trll,
And understanding on all sides create.
Because we need what conversation brings
We value moderation in all things.

Originally posted on Making Light.

Sonnets

301

Three hundred tasty Spartan men in line:
A hopeless stand against the Persian might.
And in among them, ready too to fight,
Is Mary Sue, her armour polished to a shine.
Like Éowyn, with Aragorns to spare
(And yes, they’re straight, or straight enough to suit,
With just that taste of half-forbidden fruit!)
They’re doomed to die, but too in love to care.
The hour comes, the brotherhood contracts
Around the precious flower at its heart.
She will not leave; she wants to play her part!
She takes the lead in their heroic acts.
(But in this version, Sparta’s heroes won
And Persia lost to the three hundred one.)

Originally posted on Making Light, this is about what the film 300 would have been like with a classic fanfic self-insertion character caught up in the middle of it.

Personal, Sonnets

True journey as return

Across the Bay from storied Babylon
Surrounded, but apart from, London’s town
I know before the airplane touches down
It sits unchanged, though I am decades gone.
Oh Highland Avenue, they still parade
Each Independence day, the men in close
Formation mower drill, lest grass that grows
Too high permit that England re-invade.
When I describe it, I say, Sunnydale,
Without the vampires. They’d have long since fled
To Berkeley, where it’s cool to be undead.
(Among the ski-tanned, only geeks are pale.)
So I’ve returned to where I had begun
My grand adventure. 94611.

Originally posted on Making Light.

Sonnets, Testing

OAT Completion Report: Secret Sonnet

A lesson to be learned from OAT
is that the planning which assumes a test
will only run just once requires the best
environmental outcome, that there’ll be
no faults to find, and that the personnel
will be available to run as planned.
This doesn’t happen – often tests are canned,
the system breaks, or scripts aren’t running well.
Each test should be assumed to run at least
two times, with some days left aside to do
investigations, and to test the new
code fixes some before they are released.
It’s no good planning that we’ll hit a date
if known retesting means that we’ll be late.

Originally written for work, in a continuous paragraph rather than broken into lines.

Sonnets

TNH birthday sonnet

We stand between the darkness and the light:
The balance-point, when coming day reveals
Details that the darker time conceals,
And watch the sunlight overtake the night.
This equinox marks more than balance struck
Between the darkness, velvet cloak swept back,
And gold-robed daytime, mirroring the black.
This is the coming of the light. What luck
This luminiferous date also brought
Our hostess forth, whose writing more than glows:
Her fractal grasp of language yields prose
That’s filigreed with sunlight, finely wrought.
So happy birthday. May your day be bright.
From me, and all of us on Making Light.

Written in honor of Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s birthday, and originally posted on Making Light.

Personal

RBSG: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

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After nine and a half years, it’s nearly over. One more week together, and that’s it. It’s an emotional moment.

I remember how it was in the beginning. After a whirlwind courtship (that aptitude test, the first interview, an overnight at the Apex Hotel in the Grassmarket, so little time to get to know one another!) there I was with pen in hand, signing myself into the relationship. I didn’t know how long it would last, but I went into it thinking of permanence.

I, Abi Sutherland, take thee, The Royal Bank of Scotland…

We’ve been through a lot since then. Better and worse, of course, as always in a job. I’ve wept with the stress of it, thrown a phone headset at the wall, but the Bank also allowed me to do things I did not believe I could.

Sickness and health…we’ve done that too. The Bank put up with me through the worst days of undiagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder, but also benefitted from my manic hyper-efficient summertimes. Supported me during maternity leave, yet took my sleepless nights on projects for granted.

And richer or poorer? Well, it is a bank. We’ve had record profits, and I’ve benefitted from profit share, membership in the pension plan, and fairly good salaries. I can’t really complain.

The Bank’s gained a few pounds since we got together – bought NatWest, growing fivefold in one transaction. But it stayed attractive to me. There are benefits to a big partner. Lately, though, the strains have started to show, in ways I won’t discuss here. Still, something in me keeps thinking if I stuck it out things would get better. It’s what I do.

You see, I’m a permie girl. My contractor friends, who sign up for six-month knee-tremblers or year-long commitments, extol the virtues of their brief liaisons. But I like the stability, the deep familiarity, that comes of long association. That’s great, but now comes the cost: breaking up is so much harder to do.

And we’re almost to it now, to the division of property into mine and thine, to taking off the security pass like a ring no longer needed, to saying goodbye to a building that once was a home. We’re starting to be careful around each other, aware that things started now can’t necessarily be finished.

And I look at the meat market, look at putting myself back out there to see if someone else will want me the way the Bank wanted me, and it’s frightening. I primp and poke at my covering letters and wonder if this CV makes me look unattractive.

If Martin and I weren’t moving to the Netherlands, if this partnership were not about to be geographically impossible, would I be able to break it off? And yet, moving aside, I think that now is a good time to make the move. We were getting stale, and I don’t see things changing.

So goodbye, Royal Bank. I will miss you when I leave, and I hope we can still be friends, but it’s time for me to go.

I think I’m going to need some chocolate.

a blog by Abi Sutherland