Saturday fortune (because this took me so long I missed Friday): Skill

Skill, as you can clearly see, is not something I have when it comes to photographing tarot cards, but after a search for images turned up nothing, I was forced to make the attempt. ;)

Card of the day: Three of Coins, "Skill"

Today's fortune is one I have pulled many times when asking questions about my writing career, along with the Eight of Coins, "Apprenticeship." Whenever I get these cards, I figure I'm on the right track. Maybe not there yet, but certainly on the way to one of my favorites: the Nine of Coins, "Security." I'd like to be that mature woman depicted on the Nine of Coins, confident in her achievement. (And since "mature" is becoming increasingly an adjective I get to use next to the word "woman" when I describe myself, I think it's time I started moving in the direction of the Nine.)

I like the RToSP's Three of Coins, because it shows a wealthy boyar patron beside the artist. Skill may be something a writer seems to come by naturally, or something she acquires through long practice, or a combination of the two, but it sure helps to have an interested patron to encourage and support you along the way.

What's also different about this deck's Three of Coins is that instead of the usual stonemason, it shows a man playing a balalaika. The stonemason is building his skill brick by brick, which is all well and good, but there's something more freeing and artistic about an image of a musician. A musician's skill, like a writer's, is more individual and less practical, perhaps, than someone who's handy with a trowel. Writing is work, but it is also art, and when work and art come together, it is in a sense the very definition of skill.

There are other artistic touches in this scene, typical of Russian folk art, in the painting and sculpting on the column, and the woven tapestry on the floor. It speaks of the skilled laborers behind the scenes who are also artists in their own right. Perhaps, like these artists, we have not yet reached the Nine of completion, but the Three is something to celebrate all the same. It's a recognition of one's skill, no matter how great or how small, and its contribution to the greater world, as opposed to the personal pleasure in achievement that success brings with the Nine. And that's okay. Maybe "quitting the day job" is no longer a reality in this brave new world of publishing, but being recognized and appreciated is still pretty awesome.

Jane Kindred

Friday fortune: Fantasy

Well, this is an appropriate card for a fantasy writer to pull. :)

Card of the Day: Seven of Cups, "Fantasy"

In the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg's Seven of Cups, the central figure is that of a serf observing cups overflowing with a wide array of fantastical objects: what might be imperial jewels; an unlikely dragon; the severed head of a despot, perhaps; the golden cupolas of an Orthodox cathedral; a viper ready to strike; a wreath of flowers; and a burst of fantastical stars floating off into the ether.

I think it's interesting to note (and you'll have to take my word for it, since you can only see it up close in these fabulously painted miniatures by Yuri Shakov) that his gaze is on the flowers: the essence of the Russian spirit, beauty from the land itself that a price cannot be put on, and something the poorest peasant might have for the taking. The serf seems least of all interested in the imperial jewels.

The general meaning of the Seven of Cups is about dreaming of what might be, and not focusing on what is. This isn't always a bad thing. Without our fantastical dreams, what would we writers be?

I think what the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg's Seven of Cups is saying is that the wildly out-of-reach dreams and the dark and frightening fantasies are irrelevant. Each of the other cups contain something the serf can never attain, or need never worry about. He keeps his eyes on the one thing he knows is within his grasp, a creation he can take pleasure in and one he can cultivate to bring beauty and joy to others.

When I first arrived in St. Petersburg in 2006 for my summer study abroad, this lovely sight greeted me on the balcony of my room:

Windowbox flowers in the Lesnoy flat

They were just a few simple flowers, but it was a touching gesture and made me feel instantly at home. In Russia, it's important to give a gift to someone when you visit, as well as when someone comes to visit you. The people we met there shared with us happily though they had little to give. When it was time to return to the States at the end of this enchanting trip, my roommate and I wanted to give something to our "khaziayka," Yelena Volfovna, to thank her for her hospitality. Andi and I had both given Yelena chocolates when we arrived, and she laughed and showed us the cupboard full of chocolates from other students she'd hosted; she set them out every night with tea before bed to try to get us to eat them so she wouldn't get fat.

Yelena Volfovna and Jane Kindred

We ended up buying her flowers for our thank-you gift, and we didn't have much money left by the end of the trip, so it was a very small bouquet (you can just barely see them in the bottom left in the picture, and you can also see the typical painting of flowers on the wall behind Yelena). Yet she was moved when we gave them to her, as if we'd brought her two dozen red roses.

The lesson of the Seven of Cups is something I needed a particular reminder of right now. Today I received the official ebook copy of The Devil's Garden, and while it ought to have made me jump for joy, instead I focused on the imperfections of the words that are now permanently set in type, and on the pieces of my dream that I haven't yet attained. I have to try to remember that it's just a little story I put down in words to entertain someone. It doesn't have to be perfect. It can't be perfect. I'm never going to have the imperial jewels of literary talent, nor do I need them. I just need to keep cultivating what I do have and enjoy sharing the simple pleasures of my gift.

So much more easily said than done.

Jane Kindred

Happy Birthday, Dear Blog

I just realized Tuesday was exactly one year from my first post on this blog. I was sitting down to talk about gardening today, and remembered my first post had been about gardening. And what do you know? I started gardening almost the same day last year. It was the end of a long saga of building painting and deck rebuilding on the part of my landlady, wherein I ended up with my "Solomon's step":

I also ended up with a brand new deck I was told I could not water plants on lest the wood rot. San Francisco gets enough moisture from fog and rain that I thought I'd just let things go and see what happened. They did okay for awhile. Then my autumn depression set in and I stopped going outside and everything died.

A couple of weeks ago I was surprised to see bright orange flowers peeking through my back fence and I went out to find that one of the planters I'd left out behind the fence to toss out had spontaneously sprouted a lovely crop of nasturtiums. So I brought that one back onto the deck and enjoyed the lovely color among all the dead things. Then a couple of days ago I spotted more nasturtiums growing in two additional planters that had been full of weeds. I love it when, as Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park, "life finds a way."

Today I finally got the yen to go out and deal with the weeds and see if there was anything to salvage. Most of my succulents are actually thriving. My Betty Boop roses are beyond dead. :( But my little "unintentional bonsai" fig tree is still struggling along and sweet alyssum has popped up in several of the pots. I spent an hour weeding, and pruning down the rosebush in hopes that maybe there's a tiny bit of dormant life in the roots, and then watered everything.

I'd forgotten how much I love spending time in the garden, even if it's just weeding. It's a little like editing, finding all the useless things sprouting among the good and tidying it all up so the good stuff can thrive. You're still there engaging with the creation you love even if you're not actively growing it at the moment. And sometimes you'll find unexpected surprises, things you'd forgotten or have a new appreciation for. Maybe something you thought wasn't going to work out turns out to be a lovely blossom.

This weekend I'm planning an outing to a plant nursery to get some petunias and lavender and mint, little things I can plant around in the small pots on the deck to give it some color, and then I'm going to look through their roses and flowering vines and see what strikes my fancy. I'm hoping for a nice jasmine plant, and maybe I'll give the bougainvillea another shot (haven't had much luck with them, but I love the profusion of bright pinks and purples and crimsons I see in other people's gardens and can't quite give up on them). This part will be more like the excitement of starting a new story, choosing the elements that will be in it and imagining how they're all going to fit together.

And then along with those, I'll go through my seed packets and see what I've got. Then the real fun begins: putting it all together and watching it grow. At that stage it's "first draft" and I don't have to worry yet about the weeds that will invariably crop up among the things I meant to plant or the pests I'm going to have to deal with down the line when the garden is in full bloom. It's just me and the fertile earth.

Little things

I'm insufferably pleased with myself right now. After much hair-pulling, wailing, and human sacri—er, I mean, "positive thinking," I have finally figured out how to make my blog navigation work the way I want it to. There is now a handy-dandy home page separate from the blog. (The hyperlinks are also now in a matching and visible color, the italics finally work, and I have title images on the pages I want them on. Woohoo!) I even figured out how to back up my site and database so I could finally upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. (Yesterday. Today there was a new version. LOL.)

The only thing I'm not pleased with is the slide show. It's not that I don't know how to make it work; I do. It's that I have no images to share from my Flickr account right now that don't make the site look goofier than it already does. So I'm now displaying the default photos from the theme. (Yeah, those lovely flowers are not mine. Can't take credit.)

Ah, well. I'll take what I can get. (Otherwise known as the Belphagor philosophy.)

Those lying steamboat captains! Grrr!

I adore the NY Times archives. I come across these old articles every once in a while during random research that are so entertaining it makes me wish I lived a hundred or so years ago if for no other reason than to look forward to the morning paper. Tonight I was researching steamboat speed for the Anamnesis Delta and came across this gem, which I've typed up in its entirety from the October 8, 1892 issue of the NY Times and offer it for your enjoyment. (I assume this is in the public domain, but I'm sure someone will come along soon enough to ask me to cease and desist if it isn't.) The Speed of Steamboats

The steamboat season may now be regarded as at its close. It goes out in a blaze of glory, owing to the advent of a new vessel, whose Captain has succumbed to the inevitable temptation of beating some other vessel in a race and then boasting of his steamer's remarkable speed. This seems to be a very good time to say that in the bright lexicon of the steamboat Captain there is no such word as slow. In his merry imagination miles are ticked off by the boat's clock in spaces of time which are strangely mysterious. For it should be noted that these wonderful bursts of speed never take place on regular trips of the boats; or, at any rate, no passenger has ever been found who reached his destination the sooner because of one.

The real truth of the matter is that in the waters around New-York City there is not a steamboat afloat to-day that can make the speed with which she is generally credited in the minds of steamboat travelers. It is not for us to say who is responsible for the popular misinformation on this interesting topic. No doubt the steamboat Captains can easily prove that the disseminators of the exaggerations are the newspapers. We are not prepared to deny this, but content ourselves with expressing the hope that no one will press the inquiry as to who told yarns to the reporters.

It should be added that the popular mind is led further astray by the failure to discriminate between nautical and statute miles. No steamboat Captain was ever guilty of the gross carelessness of stating the speed of his vessel in sea miles. A land mile is shorter by about one-seventh of its own measurement than a sea mile. Therefore a steamboat can log more land than sea miles to an hour, and, equally therefore, the steamboat Captain uses the former in his reckonings of speed. Hence when the ordinary wayfarer on the waters hears of a steamboat's making 20 miles an hour he thinks she is going at the habitual gait of the City of Paris; which she is not by about 2-1/2 land miles per hour.

Now, it appears that in the latest contest of speed on Long Island Sound one of the racers, according to her skipper, made 22 miles an hour--land miles, of course. The steamboat which did this plies between a point near the Brooklyn Bridge and City of New Haven. The distance from the bridge to Sands Point, where this recent race ended, is 17-3/8 nautical, or 20 land miles, and from the Point to the Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance to New-Haven Harbor it is 42-1/2 nautical and 49 land miles. Now, knocking off the exra two miles--which may have been due to forced draught, in the furnace room or the pilot house--and putting the ordinary running speed of the boat at 20 land miles an hour, she ought to make the run from her wharf here to the Southwest Ledge Light in three hours and a half. However, we must allow her an extra half hour for the delays of East River and Hell Gate navigation, and give her four hours for the run. When she makes it in that time, the passengers will no doubt be very highly delighted.

The Captain of this vessel properly referred to the Sandy Hook boats as models of speed. They are, indeed, fast, but not quite so fast as they are said to be. The time which they usually occupy in making the run from Pier 8 North River to their wharf at the Atlantic Highlands is an hour and five minutes. The distance from the Battery is 17-1/2 nautical and 20 land miles. When a boat makes 20 miles in an hour and five minutes, she is traveling at the rate of 18-1/2 miles per hour. This is excellent going; but as most of the old travelers on the Monouth and Sandy Hook are under the impression that these vessels can do 22 or 23 miles an hour, it is disappointing. No doubt they could and would do it if they should chance to meet that New-Haven boat out in the widest part of Long Island Sound on a dark October night.

This whole matter of steamboat speed is best explained by the absence of all satisfactory tests. The trial over the measured course in water unaffected by tidal currents is not given to steamboats as a rule. The trial trip of a new boat in this part of the world consists of a run down the bay or up the Hudson, in the course of which many men of maritime pursuits discover the sun over the foreyard at irregular but frequent intervals. When the boat returns the Captain announces that she attained a speed of so many miles per hour. She then goes into her regular daily business, and never attains that speed again. The result of which is that some observant persons are forced to the conclusion that a steamboat is a vessel which can go very fast--but won't.

Photostream

You might be wondering what that slide show is in the banner. Those are the last nine pictures I uploaded to Flickr. At the time I originally wrote this post, they were pictures from my trip to St. Petersburg, Russia in June/July 2006, now shown below. View the progression of sunset beginning at midnight on July 6: [gallery link="file"]

When I first arrived in St. Petersburg in early June, the sun "set" around 2:00 a.m. (more of a twilight than a setting), and was back at it by 3:00 a.m. By the beginning of July, twilight started around midnight, with some near-darkness around 2:30 in the morning that lasted a couple of hours.

The pictures were taken on my last night there. My roommate and I took the metro to Finland Station from our Lesnoy Prospekt flat to see the bridges rise on the Neva. The last bridge finished rising around 2:45 a.m. The metro had stopped running for the night, so we walked back to the flat in the grey semi-darkness. That walk continues to appear in different guises in my books. (Right now, it's doing a stint as a walk in the underworld.) So many memories from that trip I will always cherish, but that last, quiet walk, knowing I was leaving for the US in the morning and might never see the White Nights again...that will stay with me forever.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

I spent the day gardening, both inside and out. First, I finally got my new website and blog together, and up and running after sitting on my domain for two years. You're looking at it. (There are still a few things to add, like my blogroll and Twitter feed, and various other knick-knacks, but the basics are here.) Then I gardened out on the deck next to my little office. Sort of. Let me go back about six months first to give you the setting: The first week of November 2009, my landlady notified me that the building my neighbor and friends lovingly called "The Crack House" due to its aging paint job was going to be painted. How lovely, I thought. (Personally, I was kind of fond of the sad, grey Crack House, but I like shabby chic.)

Thus began a long, dark autumn and winter with the apartment shrouded in sheets of black mesh. (A darkness I didn't need with my Seasonal Affective Disorder; the usual lack of sun was good enough, thanks). Outside my bedroom window, strange men walked back and forth on scaffolding all day long shouting at each other (clearly thinking that the residents inside couldn't possibly know what puta meant), and were kind enough to start my day at 7:30 in the morning with their radio on the scaffolding set to banda music.

The shroud came off in February, but by then, the contractor had begun rebuilding my deck. (Wait, rebuilding my deck? What does this have to do with painting The Crack House? I have no idea. It was news to me.) With more strange men wandering about outside my curtainless office windows at any given moment, I was banished to the bedroom (because I work from home, and, I confess, usually in my bathrobe). It's a fine bedroom, but the light is mostly in the back of the house, which is why my office is there in what was once a sun porch.

Worse than being banished from my office, however, I was banished from my garden. I came out one morning to find all of my plants and deck furniture crammed into a pile in the center of the deck while the fence was being torn down. The rainy season hit immediately afterward and it remained in this state of disarray for several weeks. Once the fence was demolished, I found all of my belongings tossed into a pile on the roof behind the deck, plants on top of plants, and piles of work supplies on top of those. I waited (not very) patiently while the deck was torn up and a new deck was constructed, and then a new fence.

When they seemed done at last, I went outside to see how it looked and found the charming situation pictured to the left. The back door would only open halfway, thanks to the contractor's failure to measure the door when she put in a new step. I then waited while the rain returned, told that despite the fact that this step is under the roof, they could do nothing while it rained.

Finally, I heard the carpenters outside one morning and rejoiced. I would be able to use my new deck at last. I took a look when they were done to see if they had really fixed the step, and discovered that King Solomon had apparently lent his wisdom to the task. The result is on the right. Well, hell, at least it works.

You thought this story was over? So did I. The contractor told me that the crew would move my belongings back as soon as the inspector came. Two weeks passed. I spoke with the landlady, wondering when in the name of all that is holy I was going to be allowed to have my garden back. She was surprised, since the contractor had told her two weeks ago that the inspection was done and she was moving the furniture back. Then she added one little nugget that was the perfect ending: the contractor had informed her that plants could not be kept on the deck, because watering them would ruin the wood. I'm just going to end there and enjoy the sound of brains exploding on monitors.

Oh, and yes, I spent the last two days moving all of my furniture and plants back where they belong. A butterfly landed on the deck and warmed its wings. Birds sat on the fenceposts and sang. I kid you not. And wonder of wonders, my poor, bedraggled little Betty Boop rose bush that had been buried in tarps and buckets for months is sprouting two lovely buds.

Today is the first day back at my desk, sitting with the window open as I type, and seeing the green outside. And look how much I've accomplished: an entire website.

(I did, however, manage to accomplish one little thing while in the Slough of Despond of the past six months: I submitted my novella The Devil's Garden to [redacted]...it will be published in 2011. Update, July 4, 2010: See Independence Day: Stranger than fiction. [Redacted] is no longer my publisher.)