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Getting Ready for 2014: One Method of Decluttering

Picture of a teapot shaped like a dead clown.
I have a photo of this fabulous object, a clown teapot with cups shaped like clown heads, each with xes for eyes, as though the principal clown had slain all his enemies and taken their severed heads in the process. Therefore it's okay I didn't buy it. Someone else gets all the joy.
We’ve (as in two humans, two cats, a briefly lived betta, and assorted temporary insects) lived in this space since 2001. While I’ve decluttered and cleaned before, cruft inevitably creeps in. An odd little ball colored red, white, and blue. Countless keys. Sharpies in a rainbow of colors. Twists and ties and clips. Twenty years after my D&D days, there’s still a few polyhedrals rolling around.

Many things have memories attached, and discarding the object sometimes feels like discarding the memory. The paperweight I bought in Prague while traveling to train Eastern Europeans about network security software. A tin butterfly from our time in Mexico when I was a child. The sequinned baby shoes I use as a prop in the flash class. I feel as though if I put them aside I may lose the thing that triggers the memory.

While I’m not ditching everything, a lot of these are getting digitized. I take a few pictures with my camera and stick it aside. Here’s an example of a book I’ve been carrying around since high days. My paternal grandmother got it for me when I expressed an interest in folk tales and folk songs. I drew on it heavily when writing songs for Armageddon, sometimes adapting songs outright, otherwise creating ones patterned after the originals.

It’s a hefty doorstop of a book. I suspect I’ll be able to find this knowledge, or comparable stuff, on the net whenever I need to. But at the same time, the object holds memories: sitting in my room in high school, reading through it, while the rain drummed on the roof and the locust tree outside my window tapped its long fingers on the glass, for one. Performing songs based on it as my bard on Armageddon, purple-haired, seemingly bemused but secretly sharp, Karaluvian Fale. I take more than just a photo of the dustjacket: one of the inside so I can see the font, another of an illustration, one of an enigmatic and very scrawly note. Enough that I’ll be able to evoke it, access those memories again if I want to.

What’s the best way to preserve these images? I haven’t gotten that far yet. For now I’m saving and tagging, and trying to shrink down the mass of physical stuff attached to my life.

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2 Responses

  1. That clown teapot is the most distressing thing I’ve ever seen 🙂
    I totally know what you mean about the memory triggers. I no longer put photos in photo albums because I need them out, in front of me, where I can see them, in order to remember. So I collage everything and hang them on the walls. Photo collages of trips, family members, etc. are what I hang on my walls instead of art work. It’s like an external memory drive for my life, I guess 🙂

  2. Oh, I understand, at least a bit. We’re decluttering here – it’s a relatively low-key slow process, but I think we’ve thrown out or donated 25 bags of STUFF and ten feet of shelf space. And I don’t know what we’ll do about paring down stuff that matters.

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Reflecting on the Past Year

Overall, 2010’s been a much better year than 2009, although it’s had its less pleasant moments, such as special assessment convulsions in my condo complex, my Grandmother’s death in November, and the usual array of rejections implicit in being a writer and sending stuff out. 🙂

On the bright side, my collection was a 2010 Endeavour Award finalist and I had fourteen stories published in 2010. Here’s the list, with a notable reprint and two podcasts to boot:

  1. 2020 VISIONS, edited by Rick Novy. Therapy Buddha.
  2. A dark story of data herds and contraband foods, edited by a fellow Codex writer.

  3. CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3, 2010, edited by Mike Allen. Surrogates.
  4. An R-rated absurdist story telling of Belinda and Bingo’s love.

  5. TRIANGULATION: END OF THE RAINBOW, 2010, edited by Bill Moran. In Order to Conserve.
  6. A reprint from the collection, which also appeared as a podcast on Podcastle. A slim little political fable.

  7. M-BRANE, January, 2010. Fire on the Water’s Heart.
  8. Far flung tragedy of alien species interacting and sparking a doomed romance.

  9. MOOT MAGAZINE, April 2010. Biosapiens.
  10. Who is V-man, what does he want, and why does he glow under certain conditions?

  11. MOOT MAGAZINE, April, 2010. The Strange Case of Maya Andaluz.
  12. Graduate student and artist Maya is abducted by a strange alien light, leaving behind a fishbowl filled with desiccated fish and half-melted glass pebbles.

  13. EXPANDED HORIZONS, June, 2010. Coyote Barbie.
  14. Contains a favorite line of mine, “Barbies who run with the wolves”.

  15. EXPANDED HORIZONS, July, 2010. Swamp Gas.
  16. This was originally written for the Apex magazine contest asking writers to combine urban legends with UFOs – it’s my version of the vanishing hitchhiker.

  17. EVERY DAY FICTION, August, 2010. The Investigation.
  18. Flash fiction detailing events in a mythical location that I think of as vaguely French.

  19. PODCASTLE, August, 2010. Sugar.
  20. A Tabat story that originally appeared in the first Fantasy Magazine sampler and was later reprinted in my collection.

  21. LIGHTSPEED, September, 2010. Amid the Words of War. (Kindle version)
  22. One of my Clarion West stories, the first set at the brothel The Little Teacup of the Soul.

  23. DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, September, 2010. Seeking Nothing.
  24. 2010 was a year for dark SF, and here’s another example of that.

  25. CROSSED GENRES, September, 2010. Centzon Totochin.
  26. Horror set in a small Mexican town.

  27. EVERY DAY FICTION, September, 2010. Love Affair.
  28. Written during my grad student days at Indiana University.

  29. TOR.COM, October, 2010. Clockwork Fairies
  30. Perhaps my favorite of the 2010 publications, this is my attempt to talk about some of the problems implicit in the steampunk genre. I -love- the accompanying artwork by Gregory Manchess.

  31. REDSTONE SCIENCE FICTION, November, 2010. Not Waving, Drowning
  32. A final dark story of a marriage between telepath and non-telepath to finish out the year.

In 2011, I have stories coming out from ABYSS & APEX (Bots d’Amor), BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (Love, Resurrected), BULL SPEC (The Coffeemaker’s Passion), GIGANOTOSAURUS (Karaluvian Fale, which Armageddon players should note is set in Allanak), DAILY SCIENCE FICTION (Pippa’s Smiles), LIGHTSPEED (Long Enough And Just So Long), SHADOWS AND LIGHT II (Aquila’s Ring, another story that Armageddon players will be interested in, since it takes place in Allanak and Tuluk). Podcastle will be doing an audio version of my collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale.

I got a Kindle and discovered the joys of e-readers, and even converted my collection, EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT, into a Kindle version, as well as one for other e-readers.

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