My vacation is almost over. Oh, how I wish it were longer! But don’t we all? It was a mellow vacation. I mostly stayed home, and there were two days of intense heat, so we were hiding inside and only ventured outside for Star to do her business. We went on a hike, which wasn’t a great one. Star is prey-driven, so she was sniffing everything, and that made hiking difficult for me as I had to stop every three steps. She needs more training and exposure to hiking. It also applies to camping. She has never been camping, and everything was new to her. She wanted to go into the forest to chase the critters, so I had to keep her on the leash at all times. That, of course, added to the logistics of her doing her business. We only lasted one night. So many firsts for her. She is definitely a city dog. But we venture on different paths and neighborhoods on our walks to give her exposure to other environments, and she is doing so good. The training to ignore other dogs continues and is going very well. She is scary smart and gets commands very fast, which is good for me and for her as well. Although there is no way I can teach her to ignore squirrels. And they are everywhere in my neighborhood. And that’s the update on Star.
I am also reading the Rampant trilogy by M.C. Carey with my dear friend. I found myself in hard waters as far as talking about literal criticism. I have not done it for years, and completely out of practice. Reading with a friend helps a lot, as I can get thoughts from her and respond to them. The trilogy is gargantuan but very good, and Carey has immense imagination. Set in post-apocalyptic England, it explores themes of power, the lethal nature that is overtaking humans, technology (especially sentient ones), and how it affects humanity, friendships, and coming of age. There are many references to other books like Phillip K Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Sheep” for example. One of the references was obscure to me, but my friend caught it and shared it with me. It was the movie “Boys from Brazil” that made me watch the movie to understand the reference. I highly recommend this trilogy to anyone who likes science fiction. Smart, engaging, and a page-turner.
The next book we will read is “The Winter Queen” by Russian writer Boris Akunin, and it is a detective story (my pick), and the one after that will be Nabokov’s lectures on Russian writers. I am really looking towards that one.
My next project will be to figure out where I take my art. I have not created for a while. Just ran out of things to say. Now it is time to get back to it. Although a blank piece of paper is scary, I just have to jump in and see where it takes me.
That’s enough updates for today and well over 20 lines. My goal is to write every day. We will see where it takes me.
