Stay where people sing. Bad people don't usually sing.

It's a rickety translation; somewhere along the way, the rythm shifted from wind blowing in the sand to stumbling on rocky ground. Still, translating poetry in your head when you can't sleep is a better way to ward off stressful thoughts than counting sheep.

The hunting horn

Tragic and grand was our story
Like the mask of a tyrant king
By no spell or chance happening
By no pathetic mystery
Was our love thrown from its glory

And as Thomas de Quincy drank
Opium, poison sweet and chaste
He thought of Anne and his heart sank
--Walk on, walk on, our time is waste
But if I walk I will not haste

Memories are hunting horns ablaze
Dying in the wind as soon as they rang.

(mangled from Guilaume Apollinaire's Cor de chasse, one of the most gorgeous poems around in the French language)

The swifts are back to their nests above our windows. The last few days have been alternately rainy, windy and somewhat normal, which means that I've only been able to watch them dance in the airs at intervals. Also, I'm still chained to my computer, and haven't got around to indulging in ten minutes of doing nothing except watch the swifts fly. It's annoying, but it will be over soon.

I don't know if there are swifts where you're from. If you've never noticed them, they're a pure joy to watch. They look like large swallows, with long wings shaped like a crossbow. And they're incredibly lithe. They fly haphazardly, like insects, only much faster, and much higher up in the sky, hundreds of metres above the roofs. When they zoom back down to their nests, faster than cars on a motorway, they soar past our windows, so close you can see every little feather on their tail, though only for a fraction of a second. They never seem to miss their aim. They use their tail to navigate, stretching it or bracing it to turn and brake, or so I'm told. How they can dance so beautifully and with such control, using only a few tail feathers, is beyond my imagination.

In France, the cries of the swifts mean summer, although few people realise it anymore. But if you took them away, I'm sure the whole country would find the summer drab and sad. I hope it doesn't happen. Sadly, new buildings are hardly a good ground for swifts to build their nests. There are no holes under the tiles or in the concrete, and architects don't bother to add artificial cavities. It's a real shame--swifts are among the cleanest birds around. They wouldn't be a nuisance, only add a little bit of happiness.

First-world cities were born from an unfortunate combination, I suppose: old rural mentalities still make it common to consider wild living things as a nuisance, and new urban environments often harm them, even when we're not trying to. Wouldn't it be time to start realising that other species are not threatening us anymore, and to give them a little space when we appropriate the ground?

A week ago, I came back from a trip to Eastercon and the Popular Culture Association conference in Boston, which left me with a few days to explore New England. Having seen most of Boston in details, I followed a friend's advice and set to spend a day in Providence, Rhode Island.

Lovecraft readers have probably guessed why I was excited to see Providence: you don't always get an oportunity to see the place where your favourite writer spent most of their life, so I decided that Lovecraft would rise to the top of the large pile of My Favourite Writers for a day, climbed in the train, asked for some information at the tourist office (turned out they had a few hand-printed leaflets about landmarks related to Lovecraft, including two houses where he lived, his memorial and the library where a large collection of his manuscripts can still be found), and set out to discover the no doubt grim and forbidding place that had inspired such terrified writing.

Now this April was, I gather, exceptionnally warm in New England. As it happens, the day Iof my trip was as sunny and hot as any summer day. I couldn't have picked a more lovely time for my visit, which was quite extensive--when it comes to evaluate walking distances on a map, I'm incompetent and very optimistic. But the visit was worth the sunburn, dehydration and exertion. I made it to the memorial, an inconspicuous granite slab in a small garden, framed by yellow wooden houses and trees in bloom, saw the two places where Lovecraft had lived, gorgeous little wooden houses both, with flowers and large windows, and the white building of the library where he spent his research time, on top of a hill overlooking the rest of the city, and the countryside.

As I walked there on this beautiful, fragrant, warm spring day, I suddenly felt very sorry for him. It is enough to read his stories to realise that the horror wasn't a mere device--you can feel the anxiety behind the grotesque and stylistically outdated monsters, until it reaches you and turns into horrid nightmares if you're not careful. I had always supposed that Providence must be a very grim and scary place, to inspire that kind of writing. It's not. Sometimes it even looks like paradise. As I walked on Angell Street, I looked down and saw a large rainbow-coloured halo arond my shadow's head, moving with me for a while; I'm not making that up. Then I thought of the marvellous lost city of childhood in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", and realised that it probably had never been lost. It had been there all along, but somewhere along the way, he had been unable to see it anymore. Then the Old Ones came, and the Deep Ones, and the Fungi from Yuggoth, and the paradise that was right here at hand was lost forever.

The memorial looks like a tombstone in a very small, private graveyard, as peaceful as you can imagine, blooming with violets and trees I couldn't name. I didn't think I would ever feel sad for Lovecraft, who wasn't the most attractive character around, for all his wonderful writing. For a little while, though, I did.

My monthly-or-so update...

First: I'm pleased to announce that I have defeated the second part of my dissertation, and I'm now well into the third. Which is why I've earned the right to use the Icon of Victory Over Malicious Foes (I know it's silly, but it's motivating). Third part should be over by the end of the month, and then I'll have three months left for a vicious round of edits. I'll be back for good sometime this summer. Hopefully.

Secondly, and more importantly: it's probably a bit late for this, but since I'll definitely be able to attend Eastercon this year and haven't found a roommate yet, I need to ask if anyone knows of someone who's also attending, and would like to share a room? Non-smokers are preferred... Alternatively, if you're acquainted with couchsurfers in the Heathrow area, I'm interested too!

*off to resume boss fight. Bye folks!*

I thought he'd vanished from the city years ago. In fact, when I was close enough to the door, I noticed a tiny yellow label, with the name of the shop. He'd simply relocated on the first floor of a barely visible building. But then I never got the impression he was particularly interested in attracting clients.

All the houses look the same in the city centre, with lovely old façades, but it's only when you open the door that you figure out what they are really like: some have grand staircases with marble tiles and stucco and gentle light falling from a window in the roof, some are rickety affairs with narrow, slanted steps, walls that haven't been painted in ages and magical permanent dust. This house was the shabby kind--of course it would be. As for the shop, it was situated in an attic-like den on the first floor, encumbered with more computers parts than you'd think is possible, and yes, I know you've seen lots of computer spare parts. Just take my word for it.

"So what's the problem?" he asked. Three words into my explanation about the error message that had been popping on my screen, he cut me short, opened my computer and puffed his cheeks. "Couldn't you get more dust in there?"

As I carried on explaining that I really couldn't afford to lose that computer to a short-circuit and could he tell me for sure whether it was a serious problem or not and yes, I did clean the dust from time to time, he tossed the charger around a bit, unplugged it, plugged it again, turned on my computer and let me watch as no error message appeared and everything looked just fine. I was starting to feel foolish, but he just smiled and shrugged, and told me to come back should anything weird appear. I asked one last time what he thought that was all about. He had no idea.

"But then I'll tell you something," he said. "When people bring computers here, they start working again. I don't know why."

I thought he was joking and it was time to laugh politely, but he went on:

"It's true. Computers that won't work anywhere else--I turn them on, and they just seem to be fixed. Last time, there was a guy who had seen six or seven technicians about his laptop. Everybody told him it was a desperate case. He brought it to me, I pressed the button, and everything worked just fine. He never had a problem again."

I wanted to pay him, but he refused. He didn't charge for thaumaturgy, he said.

"And do something about that dust", he said as I walked out again.

I'm currently going through the edits for Part 2, and realise I need you again... So this time, it's just one question, concerning appendices, maps, and the like, in SF and fantasy novels. As for last time, I'll be extremely grateful for any signal boosting!

So here goes:

Poll #1810942
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

When reading a fantasy/SF novel, what kinds of "extras" do you like to find?

Thanks for your help!


( Oh, and if you're wondering what became of my last poll... )

...who are still fighting like crazy, by the way, but I think I'm getting the upper hand. If you hear the bottom of the ocean furiously blooping, it's the dissertation thinking it can hide where I won't find it. But I'll get you, Monster. Even if you team up with Cthulhu.

In the meanwhile, I wish you a wonderful new year full of healthy cats, fragrant cookies, yummy soups, dreamy pictures, good cons, cooperative computers, sound progress in Vietnamese, Japanese or any other language you're learning, and of course for everyone, good writing, happiness and tranquility.

Meilleurs voeux à tous !

If you haven't heard of it yet, there's an auction open to raise funds to support editor Terri Windling, who's crossing a difficult time. The items on offer are worth having a look, and you're probably sure to find something that will suit your taste--there are about as many different items as in the Istanbul Bazaar. Go see for yourself!

Psst--my poll on SFF readership is still up! If you haven't taken it and have three minutes on your hands (tops), my dissertation and I would be grateful if you had a look... and signal-boosting earns you my everlasting gratitude!

Tomorrow, I will take a day off!!

A whole day! No work, no research, no dissertation writing, no spending half the day in trains for a job onterview on the other side of the country, nothing! Just having fun playing AD&D (the wonderful Planescape setting, which you should try if you haven't--but keep to the second edition, or at least avoid the fourth at all costs), drinking tea and fidgeting to stay comfortable on the floor cushions. Okay, my article still isn't finished and I'm getting very late with the dissertation, but I don't care, I don't want to go panda all over again anyway. Gaming! Whohoo!

Also, to put a decent end to a rather rough week, I'm happy to announce that I've finally found a new job, starting September 2012. It's in Nice, right in the middle of the Riviera, on the side of a hill, surrounded by trees and palms and with a lovely view on the sea. Commuting from Aix should be manageable, provided I can arrange to have all my classes grouped on three days and I find a cheap place to stay two nights a week. I'll even be able to start writing again...

Internet is creepy. What it shows about people, I mean.

You've all played with the Google search bar just to see which suggestions would come up when you typed a certain word, I'm sure. Well, I tried doing that with names of prominent political figures in France. The results varied widely, but they had one thing in common: in the first suggestions for most names, there was the word "Jew". "Most names", as in, nine out of ten.

Antisemitism is reviled in France, and in some cases, it can be a crime. No one will admit out loud that they dislike Jews, or that they believe that Jews have all the money, all the power and that they're secretly trying to take over the world. Still, when they're alone with their computer and no one is looking, people will want to ake sure that their politicians aren't, in fact, Jews, every damn one of them. You know, with Jews making up around one percent of the French population and all.

It's not like I wasn't aware of antisemitism in my country, nor was I comfortable with it before (oh, the sheer joy of being unable to explain to those kids at school that no, actually, you're not going to laugh at their jokes about Jews dying in concentrations camps even if they're OMGSOFUNNYHAHAHA because it might well have been your own grandmother in those camps, and so that doesn't make it even remotely amusing at all). It's just that I didn't realised that so many  people were still obsessed with those fantasies about Jews secretly striving to dominate the world, and that they would run searches on every single powerful figure in the country to check whether they are or not a part of the conspiracy of the Elders of Zion. That's not a pleasant thing to know.

Not sixty years after that part of my family were among the lucky ones.