Tag: comic

Em oi! #454: Sad Not SAD

Here are all the books I read in 2024. I’m not going to rank them, but I’ll give brief reviews. I usually try to read the abbreviation of the year in books, so my goal for 2024 was 24 books. I read slightly more than that across many genres, although romance was the plurality.

Children’s/YA books

  1. The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper. Read aloud; I don’t think I have to convince anyone that this is an amazing book.
  2. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett. Read aloud; at times we were laughing too hard to go on, and really, what other endorsement is needed?
  3. Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle. Some excellent moments but ultimately too much Jesus for my tastes. Already lived all that shit by proxy growing up.
  4. Belle of the Ball, by Mari Costa. A pretty graphic novel with a big heart. Full disclosure: I met Mari Costa at the Lammys!
  5. The Golden Thread: A Song for Pete Seeger, by Colin Meloy. I may be biased because I’m a fan of both Colin Meloy and Pete Seeger, but this was delightful. (I never read it to the kids, though. Just saw it at back to school night.)
  6. The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos, by Deborah Heiligman. Too many words for a bedtime story, but my 3yo inexplicably loved it. The story is very cute, and Erdos was a loveable weirdo.

Romance (pairings and settings as noted)

  1. I’m So (Not) Over You, by Kosoko Jackson (M/M, contemporary). I hope Berkeley feels embarrassed by how dirty they did this poor book. Could have been good, but it was an entirely unedited mess.
  2. Take a Hint, Dani Brown, by Talia Hibbert (M/bi F, contemporary). For what it was, it was fine.
  3. Bisclavret, by KL Noone (M/M but one of them is a werewolf, middle ages?). A novella retelling the werewolf story “Bisclavret” by Marie de France. I usually think novella is not the best format for a romance, but this was charming. Full disclosure: I’ve been on panels with KL Noone a few times now at Rainbow Space Magic Con. (I don’t think she remembers me though.)
  4. A Marvellous Light, by Freya Marske (M/M, late Edwardian). Book 1 in the Last Binding series. The plot was fine and the writing was good.
  5. A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske (F/bi F, late Edwardian). Book 2 in the Last Binding series. The supporting characters were good.
  6. You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian (M/M, 1960s America just pre-Kennedy). I am not interested in baseball, but this was a delight start to finish and a standout. The second in the Mid-Century New York series (I lost the Lammy to the first one).
  7. A Minor Inconvenience, by Sarah Granger (M/M, Regency). Don’t think too hard about the plot. Or the sex scenes. The setting was nice.
  8. Letters to Half Moon Street, by Sarah Wallace (M/M, Regency). A gentle epistolary novel with almost no plot and an interesting queernorm regency setting that nevertheless left me with a lot of questions.
  9. An Appreciation of Cats, by Des DeVivo (M/M, contemporary?). Another novella that I read. I got this one as an ARC.
  10. Oak King Holly King, by Sebastian Nothwell (M/M but one of them is an elf, early Victorian). A standout–set in 1844, with strong medieval undertones and a delightful episodic plot that draws on the story of The Green Knight. Full disclosure: I was on Sebastian Nothwell’s podcast (Right Here, Write Queer) and he was recently on mine.
  11. A Power Unbound, by Freya Marske (M/M, late Edwardian). Book 3 in the Last Binding series. I didn’t hate it. Also I liked the characters from A Marvellous Light a lot better here.
  12. The Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, by KJ Charles (M/M, Regency). This was a delight. I have to go read book one now.
  13. Scandal in Spring, by Lisa Kleypas (M/F, early Victorian). This was the third book in a row that I read where one character had a BIG TERRIBLE SECRET that got revealed at or after the 50% mark in the book and turned out to be eminently overcomeable, and I am so over it.
  14. Cutting It Close by Reese Knightley (M/M, contemporary). I kind of lost track of the number of (war) crimes committed by the ostensible heroes. This book is a reminder that I need to stop picking audiobooks by just grabbing whatever is listed under “available now.”
  15. Dead Egyptians by Del Blackwater (M/M but one of them is a ghost, Edwardian). More of a character study, but a really lush and intriguing one. TW for an assault that happens around the 75% mark. Full disclosure: I have met Del Blackwater a few times (she lives in the area).
  16. My Last Duchess, by Eloisa James (M/F, Georgian). I want to say that it doesn’t make sense to try to body-shame someone when the fashion is to wear panniers, but that really diminishes the amount of fun that this book was.

Literature and Scifi/Fantasy

  1. Matrix, by Lauren Groff. If you’re the oldest daughter, and you sometimes get given distasteful tasks, and you maybe feel the need to do a really, really superior job at everything, you will see your experience reflected here. This had so many good lines–the writing was really an amazing achievement.
  2. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong. It was very good and also sad. Contained the single most stomach-turning scene I read (heard, I guess–I had this as an audiobook) this year, maybe ever.
  3. Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu. This was amazing and everyone should read it. And give Charles Yu more money to write more books. A real standout (and I got B to read it too).
  4. No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood. Part I was like having tw*tter slow-dripped into my ear. Part II made me cry.
  5. Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente. So amazing I immediately made B read it. Also a standout.
  6. Translation State, by Ann Leckie. A tricky book; not enough connection to the earlier Imperial Raadch novels and too much. Good but unsatisfying; I think it tried a lot of interesting things and I love it for that.
  7. Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree. The real magic rock was the friends we made along the way, I guess. This book managed to be very boring and also keep my interest, which feels like an achievement.

Nonfiction, Biography, and Memoir

  1. The Bomber Mafia, by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s all fun and games until Curtis LeMay firebombs Tokyo. (Of note, LeMay also introduced judo into the US and later was the VP candidate under George Wallace in 1968. Gladwell doesn’t mention either of these facts. I had to find them out by myself.)
  2. Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases, by Cory Franklin. Franklin is honest to a fault and I find I like him a lot for it.
  3. A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of a Hijacked Brain, by Sara Manning Peskin. Unfortunately this was reported stories focusing on the neurochemical underpinnings of various neurological issues rather than Oliver Sacks-esque first-hand case studies.
  4. On the Move: A Life, by Oliver Sacks. This was so delightful, and I’m glad he published it while he was still alive so no family members could stop him. (Would they? I don’t know. It was kinda scandalous. But also very good.) Key quote (not of the scandalous parts):
    As soon as I could get away from work on Friday, I saddled my horse–I sometimes thought of my bike as a horse–and would set out for the Grand Canyon, five hundred miles away but a straight ride on Route 66. I would ride through the night, lying flat on the tank; the bike had only 30 horsepower, but if I lay flat, I could get it to a little over a hundred miles per hour, and crouched like this, I would hold the bike flat out for hour after hour. Illuminated by the headlight–or, if there was one, by a full moon–the silvery road was sucked under my front wheel, and sometimes I had strange perceptual reversals and illusions. Sometimes I felt that I was inscribing a line on the surface of the earth, at other times that I was poised motionless above the ground, the whole planet rotating silently beneath me.
  5. Cultish, by Amanda Montell. I don’t know that her thesis (that cults use in-group language to promote belonging and a sense of community) is all that surprising, but I learned some interesting stuff.
  6. The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, by Dan Savage. I don’t know if I should say, “Wow, the early 2000s were genuinely as bad as I remember thinking they were at the time,” or “Dan Savage is the most Gen X writer.” Now I’ve said both.
  7. The Boys of ’67: Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam*, by Andrew Wiest. A group memoir (biography? collection of oral histories?). This made me fucking cry. While driving.
  8. Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam, by Elizabeth Partridge. (Technically maybe YA nonfiction? oral histories woven together with bits of the larger historical record of the era, from the early ’60s through to the early ’90s.) I didn’t cry but only because I was running on the dreadmill at the time.

* Note–the company that committed war crimes in the village of Son My known as the My Lai massacre was also called Charlie Company, but that’s a different company. Because Army companies are named A, B, C, etc., and then referred to using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, there’s lots of Charlie Companies.

Other Things I Read

  1. “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” by AK Ramanujan. In The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 131-160. I love this essay so much I wrote my MA thesis about it. I love this essay so much we did a podcast on it.
  2. “The Dybbuk: The Origins and History of a Concept,” by Leonard J. Greenspoon. In olam he-zeh v’olam ha-ba: The World and the World to Come in Jewish Belief and Practice, Perdue University Press, 2017, pp. 135-150. This was really informational, and well-written to boot. I learned so much.
  3. “The Etymology of Condom,” by Zacharias P. Thundy. In American Speech, vol. 60, no 2 (summer 1985): pp. 177-179. This started as a joke about the etymology of “condiment” that got way out of hand.

Books and Other Works I Published

  1. Old Time Religion. This was a scary book to write. Dionysus in Wisconsin was received well by a small but enthusiastic coterie, and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Luckily the Lammy shortlist hadn’t come out yet when I released it in January, or I would have freaked out even more than I already did. I got fewer preorders for this book than I did for DIW, which was unpleasant, and although I offered ARC copies no one wanted one. On the production side, the book was beset by some last-minute problems with the cover, which were a real learning experience and did nothing for my stress level. Fortunately, it has been well-received and sold steadily! I don’t track earnings by book, but it has earned out at this point, and slightly faster than DIW did (eleven months instead of twelve).
  2. “Dous.” This was so fun to write. I did catch myself trying to decide if I’d unfairly leveraged an argument Spivak makes about the way women are oppressed in India in a context she would object to, and then decided that I was getting a little too serious about the philosophy side of things for a lighthearted short story. As far as I can tell only a few people bothered to read it, probably because I gave it a weird title (it makes sense if you’ve read OTR, I think). But that’s fine. I know a few people really loved it, and that means a lot to me.
  3. Troth. This was a fun book to write, a hard book to revise, and now that it’s done I am extremely happy it’s out in the world. The last few chapters made me very happy to write. I got a lot more preorders for this one than I did for DIW and OTR–as many as both of them combined, actually. I didn’t bother to send out ARC copies. How do you offer ARC copies for the third book in a series without cannibalizing your audience? But despite the lack of hype, it has sold very well, including the best first month sales of any of my books.
  4. “Vivienne.” I sold this to Asimov’s Science Fiction and I have the check stubs to prove it, but although I received galleys, it was not published in 2024. I don’t know exactly what the story is; selling it was quite a coup, perhaps the most high-profile sale I’ve ever made. Maybe it will appear in 2025. Keep an eye out.
  5. Em oi! 452, 453, and 454 (above). I have another comic that I sketched and inked and then set aside because I needed to focus on something else.
  6. Lazarus, Home from the War. I have written two and a half full drafts of this novel this year, I think. I am so excited to show it to people in 2025. It’s got so much cool stuff that I love–a guy trying to put himself back together! A Jewish neurologist! A really scary snake! It will be out in May 2025, so keep an eye out!

Em oi! #452: An Honor to be Nominated

Em oi! #452: An Honor to be Nominated Em: I got the email about a month ago-- Nietzsche: Okay, ja... Em: And I've been very anxious since then... Nietzsche: Mmm...
Em: (out of frame) And it's not like it's a bad thing, so I don't know why I feel this way. Is it that I care too much about--- Mary Oliver: You can head out, Nietzsche. I've got this. Nietzsche: Danke.
Em: Mary Oliver! Mary: Dearheart, you can worry all you want. It's fine. It just inevitably comes to nothing.
Bryan: In the last panel, you should make out. Em: That feels appropriate.

(In case you haven’t read it, Mary Oliver references this poem. Nietzsche dressed as the Overman first debuted here.)

In case you missed it, Dionysus in Wisconsin got shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award in gay romance. The ceremony isn’t until June, so I get to spend the next few months either being anxious or being fêted, depending on who you ask. The other nominated works (you can check them out here) are also tremendous, which is awesome and intimidating all at once. In a very good article on being nominated for things, John Scalzi refers to all the works nominated together as a peer group. It’s hard to conceptualize myself up next to those other writers as peers, because their books are so good.

Awards are weird. On the one hand, they can draw attention to works that otherwise have been overlooked, create critical conversation, and recognize people who do work very, very hard and often receive very little. On the other hand, as an outsider, they can often seem to reinforce mainstream, middle-class values and recognize works that have already received recognition. Not for nothing, the Pulitzer board declined to award a prize for Gravity’s Rainbow the year it was released, because some of the board believed it was obscene and unreadable. (Which it is, but not in a bad way.)

That is to say, in a certain sense, it doesn’t matter if the Barbie movie gets an academy award (or even a nomination); it’s already proved its point by grossing a billion dollars worldwide. It’s already won.

For every book I’ve read that had justifiably won the award it was nominated for, I can name one that wasn’t very good and made me wonder what the judges had been thinking. And of course, there’s the terrible conundrum of the writer who wins a major award early in their career and then never quite achieves that high again. 

Anyway, as of this writing, my biggest feeling right now is just…happiness. As someone who was always kind of a weird kid, who wandered for a long time without much acknowledgement that my writing was what anyone wanted to read (remember this comic? yeah, bleak times), it’s nice to feel like, hey, actually, someone did like it after all. More than one someone.

I just want to take this moment to thank everyone who’s read the book already, or who heard the news and is reading it now. You guys are the best. If you ever get to Madison, let me know. I’ll make cookies.

Gonna file this under BF608 L86 2024 for Philosophy, Psychology, Religion–Psychology–Will. Volition. Choice. Control. (Feel a little bad for psychology, which still shares BF with parapsychology and occult sciences. That feels like a statement at this point.)

Em oi! #451: Technically

B: ...she'll become thy bed, I warrant thee, and bring thee forth brave brood. E: Wow.
B: What? E: I mean, you do the speech very well. I just don't much like Caliban.
B: Why not? E: He's, like, sexist as hell. I guess he's not portrayed as a hero, but...
B: He's literally a monster. E: Oh yeah.

Back before we had many small children, when he had time for community theater, B used to recite the speeches he was working on while we went running together. That was always fine when he was doing something fun (Twelfth Night) and always a little weird when he was doing a villain (Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus has a very good one[1]). Now we’re back to doing this because he has a show next Saturday (9/23, here in Madison)–and he’s learning a scene from The Tempest. Which is a great scene, but also interesting to be doing excerpts from in public. (Also, when we actually had this conversation, we were on dreadmills at the gym, so. But it’s a hell of a scene.)

All right, announcements.

I had a poem in the August/September issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. The poem is called “Anxiety #243,” and you can buy a copy of the issue here. If you just want to read the poem, you should sign up for my newsletter and then check out the most recent back issue. I have another poem coming out in the next couple of weeks, and you should definitely sign up for my newsletter if you want to be notified!

I will be reading at Rainbow Space Magic Con at the end of September. I will also be appearing on a panel about writing fantasy and historical accuracy w/r/t the middle ages, a topic about which I have many possibly controversial opinions. Registration is free, so go sign up. I’ll send out a newsletter with the actual schedule once I know it.

I also recently came out with a new T-shirt. It looks like this:

Em wearing a turquoise shirt with a black, red, and white design that says DO NOT SUMMON DEMONS IN THE LIBRARY with a little flame-headed demon.

Click here if you want one. There are a few color and size options (also children’s sizes, because my 6yo wanted one), and also stickers and metal signs, in case you want it in your own library.

Finally, for fans of Dionysus in Wisconsin, book two will be available for preorder in October and out in January.

We’ll file this under PR2833.W5 L86 2023, for English literature–English renaissance (1500-1640)–The Tempest–Criticism. (I’m not 100% sure about that W5–I don’t have access to that table anymore, but I used it last time I did a comic about Shakespeare, so I am guessing it means “Criticism.”)

Footnotes:

[1] From act 5, scene 1:

Lucius:
Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

Aaron:
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
 Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
 Few come within the compass of my curse—
 Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death;
 Ravish a maid or plot the way to do it;
 Accuse some innocent and forswear myself;
 Set deadly enmity between two friends;
 Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and haystalks in the night,
 And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
 Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves
 And set them upright at their dear friends’ door,
Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
 Have with my knife carvèd in Roman letters
 “Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.”
 But I have done a thousand dreadful things
 As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
 But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

It’s an amazing speech! Who doesn’t want to twirl their moustache so heartily? But you can see why we used to quiet down when we passed one of the neighbors…

Em oi! #450: Oversize Shirt Season

Em oi! #450: Oversize shirt season Drawing of a red plaid shirt Text: It's oversize shirt season, the best time of the year.
Text above panel: Copyright E.H. Lupton 2023 July 31 Panel text: cool mornings? Going to the grocery store? Hate your body? Oversize shirt! Drawing of Em wearing the red plaid shirt and giving a thumbs up.
Drawing: Em holding an axe, the sleeves ripped off the shirt. Text: It works for camping... Drawing: A sailboat with the sail made of red plaid cloth. Text: Sailing...
Text: Perfect for hiding in a cave from the sun. Drawing: Em crouched, holding the shirt above her head. Dialog balloon says "Hiss." Oversize shirts forever!

To be honest, I have only been camping once. It might not involve axes.

Lots going on around here! Not just related to the wearing of plaid shirts, either. I’m very gradually rewriting book 2 in preparation for a January 2024 release. (If you haven’t read book 1 yet, why not?) I have some poetry coming out in upcoming journals that I’m excited to tell you all about when it arrives. New merch dropping soon. My 6yo (WHAT) is starting first grade in three weeks? Maybe more comics if I can figure out where I put the scripts and also if my hand cooperates. I don’t know, just a ton of stuff. If you want to make sure you see it, sign up for the newsletter.

I have lost my access to the main LOC website, but someone has recreated the classification on Wikipedia. So this will be classified as NK8800 L86 2023, for Decorative Arts–Other arts and art industries–Textiles.

Em oi! #449: Cranespotting

A drawing of a bald eagle.
Two birdwatchers. One is pointing at something, the other is smiling. Text: "Normal birdwatchers."
A drawing of Em looking at a great blue heron.
Em raising a hand. Text: "Me." Em says: "HI, BIRD!"

First of all, hat tip to B for the title.

It took me a while to admit to myself that I really like birdwatching. In the beginning, I just told myself that I was out for a run and looking around, and there was something funny about shouting, “Hi, bird!” as I went past. I could only really identify large birds–hawks, vultures, wild turkeys, cranes, that kind of thing. Then I started taking photos of birds to ask my mom (who genuinely is a birdwatcher) what they were. Then I started taking photos of birds I saw just to show off to my mom.

Then one day, I realized I had two birding-related apps on my phone.

Then I found myself excitedly emailing my mom that I’d seen a GREEN HERON when I took the boys over to a local pond for a walk.

So yeah.

Not long ago, I was out for a run and a guy heard me saying, “Hello, hawk!” to the hawk I stopped to photograph.

That’s all for today. If you see any birds, tell them I say hi.

Em #436: The Cat Furniture That Therefore I Am

True story. Hal sleeps relatively well, but often wakes up between 5-5:30, or about an hour before I’d like him to be up. Most of the time when this happens, I put him back down in the guest room downstairs after a bottle, just so any comments he has on his situation won’t disturb B. Then I lie down on the sofa. And the cat…goes a little nuts. For some reason, he really likes to sit on people’s chests. Preferably with at least one foot on their windpipes. And he weighs fourteen pounds.

We’ll file the comic under SF446.5 L86 2018, for Animal culture–Pets–Cats–Behavior.

I ran my first marathon ten years ago this fall. (Fun fact: my first date with B was the evening of the day I did my last 20 miler for that race.) That year, I finished the Twin Cities marathon in 4:41:10. It rained for 90% of the race and I think I swore I’d never do another one. (Since then, I have run at least fourteen other races of 26.2 miles or longer; actually, I think there might be others? This number was reconstructed using various results websites.) My road marathon PR is 3:59:59 (set at Lakefront in 2012) and my road 50k PR is 4:57:58 (set at the MadCity 50k in 2011); it’s difficult to give a number as a trail event PR because trails have really different conditions that make them hard to compare. This past weekend, at the Endurance Challenge WI, I ran my first marathon in almost two years—I had run a trail ultra of about 29 miles in November 2016, and then spent the rest of 2017 pregnant and recovering from pregnancy. This means that a lot of my life over the last decade has been spent preparing for marathons, planning my various events in order to get ready for a marathon, and recovering from marathons. (Or sometimes getting injured two weeks before my marathon and not running it. Boo, 2010.)

And I just want to say: while I have gone into events with some half-assed training, I have never signed up for a race knowing that I was going to half-ass my training as much as I did this time (and knew that I was likely to do).

Rather than recounting the race in blow-by-blow detail, which I think would be boring, let’s try an exciting Q-and-A format.

Q. I understand you have a one-year old. How does that effect your training?
A. He effects it both more and less than I expected pre-baby. On a day-to-day basis, I often run him to daycare (about 8 miles round-trip), plus a lunch or post-work run with B (anywhere from 3–7 miles), giving me midweek totals of 8–15 miles per day, and anywhere from 50–60 miles per week. This is on par with or a bit more than what I was running before I got pregnant. On the flip side, my long runs on Saturdays have suffered from a lack of sleep and drive. Rather than training to 18–20, which is normal for a marathon, my longest single run was 16.4 miles. In my defense, I planned to do a 23-miler, but there was some major flooding in Dane County that led to its cancellation. But I didn’t make too much of an effort to replace it. I also didn’t do much trail running since June, because of a bad poison ivy experience and mosquitoes and the flooding and, you know, going to brunch instead.

Prior to the race, still optimistic.

Q. Given that, how happy are you with your results?
A. I am. All things considered, I think I was in shape for about a 4:10ish road marathon. Maybe 4 hours if the weather was good and I found someone to pace off. Instead, I ran a 5:07 trail marathon, about 37 minutes slower than the last time I ran this course (2014). But that said, my goal pace (4:30) was picked because I wanted to place in the top five in my age group, and I placed third (ninth woman overall!), so I’m actually pretty pleased with that (although if I’d run a 4:30 again, I would have won outright as first overall woman). There are also the conditions to consider: the race had somewhere between 1,300–1,800 feet of climbing (my Garmin gave the first number, Strava the second); many of the ascents (and descents) were covered with a scree that made climbing them at a run quite difficult; the weather topped out at about 82 degrees and humid AF, following directly on about a two-week stretch of cooler weather during which I rather lost my heat acclimation.

Trails.

Q. Did you learn any important lessons?
A. Yes. It’s important to plan for both the race and the ride home. I had to drive myself home, and my blood sugar started to crash around the time I got back to the car. I stopped at a gas station to pick up a coffee and a chocolate milk, and wound up sitting on the floor waiting for the people buying a million lottery tickets in line ahead of me to get done so I could check out. In a more ideal world, I would have ridden home with someone who had their shit a bit more together.

Pursuant to that, I think my nutrition strategy was generally pretty good (it was: grab something to eat at each aid station plus bring a gel to eat about two miles before the next one, and salt tabs at 1.5 hours, 2.5 hrs, and 3.5 hrs), but I waited until mile 6 to eat anything for the first time, and I think I should have had a gel a bit earlier. Also, it’s better to grab something with a bit of protein/fat (peanut butter) than just to stuff a bunch of M&Ms in your mouth. Also, I ran out of water at mile 16 with the next aid station at mile 18. That was gnarly. Wish I’d planned better for that.

Also, finally, I learned (again) that time on your feet does more than just prepare your muscles for the race–it prepares you for the pain. Like just the feeling of your socks on your feet can hurt after thirteen or fourteen miles of rough terrain.

Q. Any final thoughts about racing? 
A. I’ve had a tough time getting my racing mojo back since Hal’s birth. Primarily because if he’s going to have a bad night, it will usually be a Friday night (it’s like he KNOWS), and I often have wound up on the starting line wishing I had more flexibility to shorten my run or move the time up. Recently I’ve realized that just running races to run them (or to get a t-shirt I guess) is not exciting to me. This marathon, with the competition aspect, was exciting. So next season, I think I may try to structure my season more like a pro might, with an A race, a couple of B/C races as prep, and then most of my time spent doing my own thing. (Full disclosure, smart people have been telling me to do this for a long time. I just learn slowly.) Going into the marathon, I had some plans to use it as a springboard for something bigger in the spring, but I’m not sure I’m really feeling that now. Twenty-six miles is a lot when it’s hot and you’re undertrained. Maybe I shouldn’t push my luck. (I’m sure I will though. I seem to crave challenges. We’ll see.)

Em oi! #432: You’re going to be Mister Finn again

During a rather wide-ranging talk with a friend, it was suggested to me that I should try reading Finnegans Wake aloud to young Hal. Of course I tried it the next night. Much of Ulysses reads aloud very well, and I have gained a new appreciation for the Telemachiad that way. And I have heard it said that reading the Wake aloud is also a great way to catch the double meanings. But. Um.

Honestly, reading FW aloud feels a little like developing some type of aphasia. And the double meanings (I hesitate to call them puns) are, well–

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war…

The word I’ve bolded here is extremely typical of the type of reference that’s supposed to become obvious when the text is read aloud. “Passencore” = “pas encore” = French for “not yet.” Sir Tristram had not yet returned from North Armorica. (Armorica is one of those words that makes you feel like you’re having a stroke–it’s really an ancient term for part of northern France, but I think it is used intentionally to also seem to reference North America, since later in the paragraph there are references to the city of Dublin, Georgia, USA.) Anyway. If you read the text aloud with the proper Dublin accent (not a secondhand attempt to mimic some great aunt’s County Down accent), and possibly also you knew what you were looking for, you might make sense of passencore. Or, as mentioned in the comic, “ostrygods gaggin fishygods” = Ostrogoths gagging (fighting with) Visigoths. But you’d probably have to figure that out from context as much as anything else.

I have started slowly picking my way through a few good books on the subject (A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Campbell because I recall my dad having a copy…and A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake by Tindall, because it was recommended by one of the websites that came up while I was researching this). They are helpful and put things in some context–more so than, for example, this site, which aside from having been designed in approximately 2003 contains more information than can ever possibly be useful. Anyway, the short answer to the question you’re all probably asking (“What on Earth…?”) is that the book depicts a man (probably HCE? although I don’t know if there’s a good reason to assume the character inside the dream is the same as the one outside) who falls asleep and dreams the history of the Earth and its repetitions as described by Giambattista Vico in The New Science.[1] The fall of Tim Finnegan and his revival, as depicted in a Dublin street ballad (“Finnegan’s Wake“[2]), becomes the prototype of every fall (the fall of man, e.g.). HCE becomes the Duke of Wellington, Adam, Osiris… (Yeah, another significant influence was the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which leads to my new PhD thesis, Colonialism, Orientalism, and Intercultural Mimesis in the Works of James Joyce.[3]) Other characters (HCE’s wife and sons) are similarly used symbolically to represent recurring figures throughout history. If you’re confused, you might want to check out The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder, which does basically the same thing except not in dream language.

One other fact I recall: Joyce spent a good portion of his life on this book. So while he was working on it, his daughter Lucia (who was fairly ill-used in many respects) was going mad. Carl Jung, who treated her, apparently observed that while both Joyce and his daughter were “submerged in the same water,” “…where [he] swims, she drowns.” So there’s that.

We’ll file this under PR6019.O9Z5 L86 2018, for English literature–1900-1960–Individual authors–J–Joyce, James, 1882-1941–Biography and criticism–General works. Also please note that this is one place where the classification falls a bit flat–this is the English literature category; there’s also an American literature category, as well as Canadian literature. During Joyce’s lifetime, Ireland went from being a colony of England to an independent country. But there’s no Irish literature category. And yet Joyce is inevitably defined as an Irish writer. (Also/however, c.f. the following quote from Ulysses.)

–I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.

–Italian? Haines said.

A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.

–And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.

–Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?

–The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.

–I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.

Notes:

[1] I used to reject the idea that history was at all cyclical. Then we elected Nixon II as president. (I am sure this has something to do with Nixon becoming a somewhat funny pop-culture figure rather than an evil motherfucker in the meantime, but–first as tragedy, then as farce, right?)

[2] The Gaelic word they mention, “uisca beatha,” comes from the Latin word “aqua vitae” translated into Gaelic in the Middle Ages.

[3] The extremely genius part of this is that most people haven’t read the Wake and aren’t going to, so you can make almost any claim you want about it and people will believe it. C.F. this blog post.

Em oi! #430: The Ravell’d Sleeve

The kid started daycare this morning. So there’s that. The upshot is that I have a few minutes to think about comics. Apparently I finished inking this one on October 10th, which means it took me nearly a month to erase the pencil lines and scan it. Oops.

If you are going to ask me, “Hey Em, why have you been so obsessed with Heidegger lately?” The answer is I’m not sure. I watched a couple of entertaining videos about him last month (example 1; example 2). (I spent a lot of the last twelve weeks sitting on the sofa with a fussy/hungry/just cuddly baby, watching videos about philosophers.) Heidegger’s ideas about learning to live authentically through being aware of our temporary, fleeting lives are interesting in the same way that Buddhism’s ideas about samsara are interesting. And in fact a long time ago I edited a book of essays about Asian philosophy that discussed the similarities between Heidegger and Zen Buddhism. But at the same time, as I’ve been spending time watching our dogs and the kidlet, I’ve become somewhat convinced that the way to live authentically isn’t to live with an awareness of one’s own mortality, as Heidegger would have it, but more to live in the present. Of course, the rejection of “noise” (das Gerede) is probably a good idea to help us learn about the value and connectedness of life (das Sein).

There’s also the problem that Heidegger was kind of a Nazi. A lot of sites that talk about his philosophy gloss over this or sort of apologize for it, but he never really did so. I should note that I have mixed feelings about that article’s seeming removal of culpability from Arendt by saying she was “in thrall” to him. Dude wasn’t a vampire; she made a choice to defend him. But that also raises the question of why, which is not satisfactorily answered.

Simone de Beauvoir’s remarks are influenced mostly by my understanding of her quote about “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Her meaning is about socialization, I believe–being a woman is essentially a social construction. Times of upset in one’s life that require a reorganization, like marriage and births, are times when one can feel one’s socially assigned role shifting significantly, sometimes whether one wants it to or not. There are certainly a lot of people who have told me sort of soppy, annoying things about motherhood (e.g. don’t come up and tell me I’m the most important person in my son’s life, I am not his only parent and I don’t want that kind of pressure), but the “mom shaming” one hears so much about has not really been a problem.

I have been approached by a lot of old people who want to look at the baby though. What’s up with old people?

For more on Donald Winnicott’s ideas about motherhood (or parenthood, if he were writing today), you can see the book Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. She goes into it much better than I could. Or Wikipedia has a summary here. Basically, “meet the child’s needs, and it’s okay to fail a little bit.”

All right, I am going to spend the last twenty minutes of my lunch break with my head down, since I slept 4.75 hours last night. Whee.

We’ll file this under RC547 L86 2017, for Internal medicine–Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry–Psychiatry–Neuroses–Sleep disorders–General works. Because there doesn’t seem to be a call number for “sleep deprivation torture caused by having a newborn around.” Also, why is psychiatry cataloged under “internal medicine”? If internal medicine just means “stuff inside the body,” it arguably contains (as a category) all branches of medicine except maybe parts of dermatology. Weird.

Em oi! #429: The Weight

Hey guys, I remembered how to draw. Sort of.

For those who are totally confused by the set up described here, basically the jogging stroller has an attachment that holds the car seat, and the baby rides in that. I didn’t give this much thought before he was born, but the whole thing adds up to quite a bit of weight. I have found I’m getting faster going up hills when I’m not pushing H though. This past Saturday at the Indian Lake trail run, I got up the Hill (you know which one if you’ve been out there) faster than ever before. Of course I ran the rest of the course at a fairly slow pace overall, but I was proud of how many people I passed scrambling up that hill.

Also, babies are hard to draw. I just want to say that. And by the time I master what he looks like now, he’ll look different.

Bonus panel:

This one is going to have a shorter chat than usual because, well, someone just woke up from his nap I think. In the meantime, we’ll file it under RG801 L86 2017, for Gynecology and obstetrics–Obstetrics–Puerperal state–General works. I admit that this feels like a bit of a cop-out, but while there’s a subject heading that seems relevant (postnatal exercise), there doesn’t seem to be an obvious call number associated with it. There is an obvious call number for prenatal exercise though, which reinforces the idea that once you give birth, you’re not that interesting anymore (medically or otherwise). Seriously, we got sent home from the hospital with only a few lame self-care instructions given that I’d just had what I’m told was major surgery (like “don’t drive for a while.” I asked, “How long is a while?” Nurse: “I don’t know, you need to ask your doctor.” What, really, you don’t know how long after a c-section I should avoid driving? Don’t you do this ALL THE TIME?).

I could rant about that all day, but I won’t. People are idiots, we already knew that. Anyway. Hope you’re all enjoying the nice fall weather. I am. Talk to you all later.

Em oi! #428: Male Bonding

This is based on actual conversations I had back when I was still going to aikido (something I did up to about 20 weeks). It surprised me when I was talking to guys about pregnancy–and I mean guys who have kids–the two things they know about pregnancy are 1) there is a lot of puking, and 2) get an epidural.[1] Actually, after making this observation, a friend pointed out that most people don’t spend as much time with their spouses/significant others as I do on a day-to-day basis, so the vomiting and labor may be the biggest parts of what most men remember about pregnancy. That and cravings, I guess. But just like I didn’t actually throw up until I got the stomach flu in March, I didn’t really have any exciting cravings beyond granny smith apples with peanut butter.

So when I originally drew this comic, I messed something up–I drew and inked another comic on the other side of the page, and the ink bled through. Fortunately, B was able to save the art with Photoshop. He also produced this version, which I actually think is in many ways much better than the original, betraying a good sense of comic timing as well as an acute awareness of, well, Em (Em qua character and Em qua me):

I’m filing the first comic under HM1161 L86 2017, for Sociology–Social psychology–Interpersonal relations. Social behavior–Interpersonal attraction–Friendship. The second comic will be filed under BJ1491 M48 2017, for Ethics–Special topics–Hedonism and asceticism. Renunciation.

I wanted to add a few notes about running during pregnancy, since I have pretty much finished running[2] (though not working out) at this point, and since I anticipate that in a few weeks, the topic won’t be of too much concern for me anymore but that I may want to retain the information for posterity.

I have run seven races while pregnant[3]:

Race / Distance Date Time Place
New Year’s Day Dash (5 mi) 1-1-17 45:09 54th of 144 in age group
Freeze for Food 5k 3-4-17 29:15 5th in AG
Freeze for Food 10k 3-4-17 (directly after the 5k) 59:21 15th in AG
44-Furlong World Championship (about 5.5 mi) 3-18-17 54:15 11th overall (of 18 women)
Donald Dash (12k-ish trail race) 5-6-17 1:36:18 25th in AG
Ice Age Trail Half Marathon 5-13-17 DNF DNF
Blue Mound Trail Race (10k) 6-3-17 1:32:30 20th in AG (of 20)

I think this kind of paints a picture. The weather is always a major factor for any runner, but it’s especially a big deal during pregnancy. For example, the Ice Age Trail race was extremely humid–in another year, I would have finished, although slowly (I was on pace for a three-hour half–significantly slower than I’ve ever done on that course–but of course in another year I would have probably been a little faster too). But this year, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and ended the race after the first 6.5-mi loop.[4] In fact, “more” is basically the watchword for running during pregnancy–you need more water, more calories for a given distance, more bathrooms,[5] and eventually, more time.

The situation is not quite as 100% clear-cut as I’m making it sound here, though. Here’s a chart of my pace from November until July (click to embiggen):

As you can see, I have gotten slower, but things are uneven. On the other hand, this is skewed by the fact that I moved my training inside as of May and took to the elliptical only as of mid-June. The moving average is set to a period of five because typically I run five days per week, although since I switched to elliptical only it has been 4 days / week elliptical, 3 days / week swimming.

So here, briefly, is a list of my advice for running during pregnancy. Standard disclaimers apply–this is basically what worked for me, but it may not work for you, or even be feasible.

  1. Read Exercising Through Your Pregnancy by James Clapp.
  2. During the first two trimesters, running was a lot easier when I was running with others. The further along I got, the more true this became. Getting up in the morning in time to meet my running groups got harder and harder though.
  3. Bring water. Also, bring more snacks than you would normally.
  4. You can get a support belt that will help prevent your uterus from bullying your bladder. This belt was most helpful between about 13-20 weeks.
  5. Eventually, moving the workouts inside, where there is climate control and easy access to bathrooms, is a good idea.
  6. Expect recovery to take longer than usual.
  7. Don’t run down a mountain–you will eventually have to run back up. This might be good advice for any time, honestly. I did this around twelve weeks, at altitude (in Colorado), and nearly passed out later that evening because I didn’t refuel well–just downed a coffee and a bagel and took a nap. So if you do decide to do something stupid like this, eat two bagels.
  8. Just because people often compare going through labor and running a marathon doesn’t mean that you have to show up for labor ready to run 26.2 miles. Similarly, it’s okay to switch to elliptical when your joints/organs can’t take the impact anymore. Just keep moving.

Photo courtesy of Blue Mounds Trail Race.

The funny thing about this photo is I remember feeling so victorious as I crossed the finish line. But in reality, I look incredibly toasted (and covered with mud). And eight months pregnant. Some things are unavoidable.
—
[1] It is perhaps unsurprising that men who have watched their partners go through labor both with and without an epidural will say, “Get the epidural.”

[2] My current workout regime is ~25 mi/week on the elliptical, 3,000-5,000 yards of swimming, and 3-4 days of lifting weights. I can still deadlift 115 lbs at this point, but I’m getting some funny looks from various gym bros (suck it, gym bros).

[3] Technically I was pregnant during the 2016 Burbee Derby, but I didn’t know it yet, so I’m omitting that here.

[4] I’m still kind of disappointed in myself about this. I’d never DNF’d a race before. (For those who aren’t runners, DNF = Did Not Finish.)

[5] One highlight of the IAT race was stepping off the course to pee in the bushes and discovering I’d chosen a thorn bush to crawl into. Good job, me.