Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I'm just back from Farthing Party, papersky's small science fiction convention/large party in Montreal. cattitude and I had a wonderful time, and I think julian_tiger is in the process of forgiving us.

( long con/travel write-up, in no particular order )

I am back from Montreal, after a few very good days. Thursday afternoon cattitude and I went to a couple of used book stores, and as we were walking from the metro station, I realized that it had a "showing someone my neighborhood" feeling. Not something I was expecting: I've lived with Cattitude since 1985. But the places we went are places in walking distance of papersky and rysmiel's home, a bit of Montreal that feels familiar and comfortable. We got some used books (mostly by Avram Davidson), cups of tea, chocolate truffles, and then an assortment of food—deli meat, cheese, more chocolate, tea, bread, and fruit—from several shops in Marche Atwater, since we had a kitchenette in our hotel room. One treat was a really good melon: when the fruit seller saw me sniffing the canteloupe, she asked if I wanted a ripe melon, I said yes, and she asked when I planned to use it. So she found me a melon optimized to be cut for breakfast Friday morning.

We got the room with the kitchenette because I hoped I'd sleep better than I had in the regular hotel rooms in previous years. I slept decently, making the extra expense well worth it. The teakettle and fridge were also pleasant, for things including breakfast; the ability to get a cup of tea in mid-afternoon and not miss an entire panel; and a very pleasant conversation with mrissa this morning over a light breakfast in our room.

After going book and grocery shopping Thurday afternoon, Cattitude and I had a nice dinner with Mrissa and timprov, hung out with other early arrivals in the hotel lobby for a bit, and went to bed. I didn't stay up incredibly late any night: 12:30 or so Saturday and Sunday. The endpoint to Saturday's party was when Papersky gathered her household, the people staying with them, and a few other people who weren't staying at the hotel, so they could be sure to catch the last metro home.

I overextended myself a little bit Thursday and Friday, but not badly: when asked I told Papersky that I didn't have the energy to lead a group to the Jardin Botanique, and it turned out zorinth liked that idea better than taking a Biodome group, so I took a few people to look at animals and walk some, and Z took people to look at plants and walk lots. (rysmiel took a bookstore group, and Papersky got to sit down for a bit.) The lynxes were extremely active, as were the rodents of moderately unusual size. The trumpeter (a mostly black tropical bird) continues to boldly walk all over the rain forest area. We didn't see the sloth, and the otters were napping in their little transparent-walled den, looking very cozy and cute.

Friday night Cattitude and I had dinner with three people we don't see anywhere near as often as we'd like: wild_irises, kateyule, and davidlevine. We wound up at a randomly selected quasi-tapas place on Mont Royal called Nuevo, good food and good service in their back garden. We went to the designated Friday evening rendezvous, where I played a quick game of Zombie Fluxx (not, based on the one game, as good as the original game), and then I chatted with rysmiel and stakebait for a while, and then a bit with other people, and then went to bed.

With any luck, other people will say interesting things about most of the programming. I'll just note that Sunday mornings "Joy of Reading" panel was excellent, as in previous years, and that the * panel went quite well, though more linearly than the Minicon original.

Saturday tanac showed up with an example of some fruit she'd hoped jonsinger could identify. From her description, se'd at first thought mangosteen, but these were something different, with an odd citrus-and-pear smell. She also brought some mangosteens, and handed one around, priority to people who'd never tasted it, but enough sections that I got a bit. I also got to try the mystery fruit, but it didn't impress me the way the mangosteens a previous year did. At the Sunday afternoon "Solid Poetry" panel, a continuation of last year's "Making Real Things and Making Things Real" discussion of things like how to make the physical things in books feel solid, and the ways writing connects to pottery, painting, jewelry, and other crafts, everyone had visual aids. tnh's included a small glass of some kind of rather bitter citrusy liqueur she'd made; we never did find out what was in it, in part because she'd started with wanting to stump Singer and then the conversation wandered, but grapefruit seems pretty definite. Jon, Tanac, if you find out what that fruit is, I'd love to know.

I would have liked to have more and possibly quieter time to talk to Papersky, but as she noted last night, she keeps thinking that it's a small enough con that she'll have time to talk to all her friends, and not thinking about the extent to which almost everyone there are already her friends. We'll catch up later.

As usual at such events, I found myself talking to people about wanting to see them more—in this case including people who live in New York. But the energy constraints that are why I don't socialize as much as I wish I could haven't changed. The conversations with Stakebait were fun, and there's more short-term temptation and/or regret there, because she lives in New York City, than with Mris or elisem (who I also only talked to for a few minutes) or wild_irises or…

I have no idea of whether I'll go to the Montreal Worldcon next summer; I prefer smaller cons, most of the time, but there's some temptation there, for reasons including a chance to see some of my British friends, and my fondness for the city.

[this is incomplete, but I want to get it posted before I forget all about it]

Expect me to be offline from tomorrow through late Monday or Tuesday. I might check email at some point (or not, given that cattitude new, small computer is not behaving), but almost certainly won't be looking at LJ or other web sites. Mom, roadnotes, adrian_turtle, if you urgently need us, Cattitude will be taking his cell phone with him. [I won't be taking mine, as the network it's on is US-only.]

cattitude and I have our plans for the Farthing Party. We fly up Thursday 28 August and back to New York Monday 1 September (Labo(u)r Day). We're staying in the La Presidence/suites part of the building, where we hope we will both sleep better than we did in the con hotel last year.

Now I am going to have some herb tea, and then sleep.

Yes, we can afford this. Spending chunks of money still stresses me out sometimes, but Cattitude has been helpful in a variety of ways, verbal and otherwise.

dd_b posted a batch of his photos from the Farthing Party to his website. I found some of myself that I like. This icon is made from one of them; the photo is from the Survivors' Tea Party, and was taken in front of papersky's refrigerator, though the teacup is gerisullivan's.

This isn't the only icon I made from those photos, so you may see more GIP posts soon.

cattitude and I spent a week in Montreal, ending with the Farthing Party; adrian_turtle joined us Wednesday evening. ( touristy stuff here )

The three of us had dinner Thursday night with mrissa (who I've been getting to know mostly via email, though Adrian and I met her briefly in May) and her partner timprov. We went to an all-you-can-eat "Asian fusion" place, which was decent east Asian food (it mostly felt Chinese, but there were Vietnamese-style summer rolls and Thai noodles). That was where I discovered that there is cooked spinach I'm willing, even happy, to eat, because it doesn't have the slimy texture spinach usually gets when cooked. They called it crispy spinach. It's light, a bit sweet, looks like bright green folded paper, and has a texture somewhat akin to nori. We talked at length there, and then a while at Suite 88, after which we all decided it was time to go back to our rooms, maybe read a bit, and fall over.

Before the con, I'd been looking forward to spending more time with mrissa, and had no idea what I'd think of Timprov. I knew he was a decent person, but that didn't guarantee we'd connect. I had a very good time talking with both of them, that evening and later in the con, about all sorts of stuff: it's good to deepen a friendship, and it's good to make a new friend.

Bees are soft. I learned that Friday afternoon, from jonsinger, who explained how to stroke one gently while it's on a flower.

papersky's pre-con post on Friday afternoon activities included "Or, well, other options." At brunch, I was waxing enthusiastic about my, Cattitude, and Adrian's outing to the Jardin Botanique the day before. gerisullivan and Davey expressed interest, so I offered to take a group. (The groups she and rysmiel were leading were to Ile Ste Helene and the Musee des Beaux Arts, which I've also been to a few times, so it wasn't a sacrifice: nor a financial one, as I'd bought a yearly membership this spring.) It wound up being us, Jon Singer, Cally, and zorinth as my co-guide. (I was more or less in charge, but he knows his way around the garden better than I do.) We spent more time in the Alpine Garden, which I'd truncated on Thursday because we were tired by then. I'm getting fonder and fonder of the Alpine Garden, at every season. We sniffed lots of roses, of course, and other flowers; wandered through the First Nations Garden (I think that was Davey's suggestion); and looked at the lanterns in the Chinese Garden. The lanterns are a special exhibit for autumn. The exhibit officially began that evening, though some of it was there the day before: lots of paper lanterns in different colors and illustrations, some lit even in the day, plus a paper model of a dragon boat and similar follies floating on the pond. We liked it. On the way out of the Jardin Botanique, we stopped in the Aquatic Garden, where a lotus that had been almost open the day before was open enough to smell clearly when we edged onto the barrier between two pools and leaned over. I'm not good at describing smells, and lotus doesn't remind me of another flower: sweet, and deep, but not especially strong, nor cloying. There were many good things about that visit, but it might have been worth it just for that. Taking my beloveds there on Thursday, and time with just them, had been delightful; this was again delightful, in a slightly different key.

My favorite panel was--again--the Sunday morning "joy of reading" one, eight or ten people each reading short pieces they liked, or excerpts from longer works. Rysmiel did a piece of Peter Fleming that I'd heard them read before; pnh gave us the bit about "The Tragedy of Leonid Brezhnev, Prince of Muscovy" from Ken Macleod's Newton's Wake; rushthatspeaks did two of Italo Calvino's invisible cities; I think it was TNH did a piece of Mike Ford's The Last Hot Time; and James Macdonald read a short story about a writer whose characters demand better stories to be in. I don't recall the rest offhand, but it was all good.

Conversely, I don't think "A Good Read" came together as well as the version last year had; the panelists said they had been rushed in their preparations, and it showed in that I don't think anyone had had time to read, let alone read and digest, all four books. Weirdly, the asterisk panel at the other end of the con also didn't work as well as usual. Cattitude suggested later that the problem may have been too much familiarity with each other: that panel works in part by having an audience prepared to say "what's that?" a lot. [It's worked very well at Minicon, where it started, as well as at last year's Farthing Party.] Mostly what we got was some cool stuff about book restoration and preservation, from Rush, and more than I expected about comics.

The panel on "A Different Magic" was partly from the writer's point of view: ways to make magic new and interesting rather than just another technology or "be careful what you asked for" story. The panelists also talked about writing magicians/wizards/what-have-you who weren't from the very familiar mold of either trained-as-such or specific creative professions. Fantasy is full of magically talented people whose other jobs or previous life is as musicians and writers; there aren't a pot of painters or actors, and where are the magically-talented architects, choreographers, and jewelers? Where is the really creative bureaucrat or taxi driver? (That last was my contribution, with notes on the potential magical or practical value of always knowing the landscape around you, and how to get places in the fastest possible way. james_nicoll came up with an example of one in a story he'd read.)

"Writing for All Ages" and "Making Real Things and Making Things Real" were also largely from the writer's viewpoint (rather than primarily from the reader's, though of course all the panelists do read the stuff). "Fantasy of Manners" mostly left me with the feeling that there is no agreement on what the term includes, or the characteristics of the subgenre; pameladean mouthed an eloquently silent "What?!" when someone suggested her novel Tam Lin as an example.

I found Sunday's programming more appealing than Saturday's (from descriptions ahead of time), but a person still needs to eat. It turned out that james_nicoll felt similarly, so we carried him off to a nearby cafe; all I really remember of the conversation was the US-Canadian bit of the Napoleonic wars, and James noting that yes, the Americans had burned York (Ontario, now Toronto) in that war, but so had the Canadians.

"Kings, Seventh Sons, and the Lamentable Absence of Millers' Daughters" was about the politics of fantasy--specifically, the long-standing question of whether,and in what ways, all those fantasy monarchies and lords are inherently undemocratic. I don't have notes, unfortunately, so can't really say much beyond that it went well, and that I was reminded of, but didn't try to interject, Le Guin's idea that the kings in fairy tales are genuinely good and, in those stories, fit for rule in ways that real kings are not. (Her specific example was Gwydion son of Don. Le Guin is also the woman who described a character as "one born, for once, king of the right country.")

Saturday night I mostly spent in outside-the-party room conversation: more good time with Mrissa and Timprov. Adrian and M'ris were both having problems with the lighting and other physical atmosphere in the party room, so we, and a changing group of other people, talked in the hall outside and listened to the music from a distance. There was a good discussion of relationships of various sorts. Adrian noted that the things that are needed to maintain and nurture a long-distance relationship are somewhat different from those needed for a live-together or other local relationship. gerisullivan said that she hadn't really thought of that, and it made sense and would probably be useful to her. At the same time, some of what's less obvious, or less necessary, can still be useful: I'm not going to shop with Adrian, or Q, as often as with Cattitude, of course, but I'm glad to have done things like buy groceries together, and to know where their grocery stores are. That conversation also included Davey and Pamela, and I think dd_b for a bit. I did go into the party room long enough to see James get the Singer bowl, and look at it under UV light.

I got to taste both mangosteens and green Darjeeling at the Sunday night "Survivors' Tea Party." I ate probably about 3/4 of a mangosteen in the course of a couple of hours; I'd happily have had more, but it seemed unkind, since there were fewer mangosteens than people, and I wasn't the only person who liked them. I had stopped after two sections, but it eventually became clear that they weren't being gobbled up, so I took more, as well as doing the peeling so others could try them. As Singer had mentioned earlier in the weekend, green Darjeelings taste quite different from the black Darjeeling I'm used to. I like them, and should find one I like to keep here. (For the most part, I strongly prefer black tea, but it will keep me up at night.) Also some good chocolate, because chocolate is good, but it was a kind I already knew and liked, the Cote d'Or Noir de Noir that Singer introduced me to four years ago in Montreal.

I got a very nice email from papersky a few days ago, inviting me to be on a panel at the Farthing Party. I thought about it for a few days--the topic looked plausible, and the other panelists she'd invited all seemed like good people to be on a panel with--before deciding that what I concluded after Wiscon still holds. I need a break from being on convention panels: I've gotten into a state, or mindset, where the nervousness beforehand outweighs the pleasure and satisfaction of being on a good panel.

That's when it does go well: when the topic is reasonable (including reasonably well-defined, and of a size suited to the available time), and I and the other panelists are prepared, and we don't walk into the room with badly conflicting agendas. Those characteristics define most of the programming I've been on, I'm happy to say. But the last few cons, I'm not getting out enough to be worth what it takes out of me, even with something like the Bechdel panel this past Wiscon.

Having thought about this, and concluded that I didn't feel significantly different now than I had in late May, I wrote back declining the invitation, and explaining. I mostly wanted to note the difference between "not that panel" and "not this year."

I almost certainly won't fill out a program participant questionnaire for the upcoming Wiscon, for the same reasons (only moreso, because there are likely to be an order of magnitude more people at Wiscon).

This is an instance of the general thought that this is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun, and if it's not, it's probably time to stop doing it. (In this case, I haven't taken on organizational responsibilities, which simplifies things: there are better and worse ways to unravel oneself from those.)

The Farthing Party was a small convention (four dozen people), connected to the publication of papersky's most recent novel: people talked about books, and about the rest of the world, and ate lots of good food (she lives in Montreal, which helps). The people who were there were friends who she invited specifically; people who read her LJ; and I think a few people who came with people in one of those groups.

( socializing, in various shapes )

( programming, pottery, and languages )

( pottery, languages, hearing )

( food )