Cake

🍂 ‘When death’ll close my eyelids

And my race on earth is run,

However I do recognise that this isn’t always practical and someone isn’t always knowledgeable enough to provide an accurate explanation like this. So, in the event of not being able to do this, then a very good, to the point, simple and useful answer is: “Because you deserve care!” It’s as a low-effort as “because I said so” but isn’t harmful like that phrase.

Here’s a few examples:

“You clean up our toys/belongings because you deserve to have toys that aren’t broken or lost.” And “We clean up our rooms because we deserve a tidy and clean space that we can use without being frustrated.” And “We do laundry because we deserve clean clothes that smell nice and make us feel good.” And so on.

It makes children from a young age automatically view care tasks as act of self-kindness rather than a performance for authority, which means they’re less likely to develop a negative association with certain tasks and pathologically avoid it out of one’s brain’s needing to have autonomy.

Also changing the default reason as to why we do certain things despite them being tedious and unenjoyable will allow children to critically analyse whether or not a task or behaviour is actually beneficial for them. And if it is but it’s still boring, painful or difficult then it’s now just a matter of adapting and modifying that task to fit one’s own needs instead of forcing yourself to expend precious mental bandwidth tolerating an unnecessary amount of misery and difficulty!

Oldest human footprint discovered, made 153,000 years ago in South Africa.

Oldest human footprint in North America, made 21,000 years ago in New Mexico, USA.

And the sweet perfect mother of the story comes to the riverbank, sees that all her children drowned, and starts crying so bitterly that angels overhear her, and the angels say to each other, "she does not deserve this, this woman has never done anything wrong in her life, this should not have happened to her", and feeling great pity for her, bring her children back to life, and after that they always listened to their mother and lived happily ever after.

And the storyteller's children, who at this point are familiar with the concept that these stories are supposed to have some sort of a moral or lesson in them, interject to point out that their mother hasn't always done everything perfectly, she isn't always sweet, curses a lot, and as a matter of fact loses her shit at her kids all the time. She isn't like the mother of the story at all.

Months were devoted to what they called Pickle Ball but I’ve since learned was basically ping pong with larger than average paddles. The paddles had been through the absolute wringer, all padding had been rubbed and torn off by a relentless stream of bored adolescents like myself.

This presented me with a unique opportunity. I had a pencil, nominally used to keep score. I had a blank wooden panel. And I had large stretches of time sitting on the sidelines.

Every day I’d pick a blank paddle. I’d doodle little animals, bizarre monstrosities, and a bunch that were just a huge eye in the middle with the words “Big Brother is Watching”. What can I say; I was reading 1984 at the time.

When we finally finished with the paddles and moved on to badminton I completely forgot my dozens of illustrations.

It wasn’t until several years later that it got brought up again. I was hanging out with a friend and their younger sibling. We were listening to them lament their high school experience of the day. “But I won the Pegasus paddle, so that was cool.”

“Wait- what?”

“Yeah, most of them are just Big Brother, so they’re not exciting, but there’s only one Pegasus so we fight over it. Last week I had an elephant I really liked though.”

“You guys fight over the paddles with art on them…?”

“Yeah!”

My friend turned to me and asked, “Didn’t you make all those drawings?”

Their sibling lit up, “You made them?!”

I sat in silence as the complexity of the world and the waves we leave behind as we move through it washed over me. I contemplated how intertwined I was with the rest of existence to create such a beautiful moment.

I had made art on a whim out of boredom and it had an effect on someone else’s day, someone who through random happenstance years later was telling me about it all unknowing.

According to the legend, Loreley is a beautiful woman with long blonde hair sitting on the eponymous slate escarpment in the rhine gorge where it makes a sharp bend accompanied with rocky riffs and rapids, which endangered ships and frequently caused the loss of life of fishermen.

Loreley is a relatively recent figure. While the escarpment was associated with dwarfs, the devil, or other evil spirits in the medieval ages, prompting sailors to say prayers before attempting to tackle the rapids, the figure of Loreley first appeared in 1800 in a ballad by Clemens Brentano.

In the ballad, Lore Lay is introduced as a sorceress whose magic is based on her beauty. Every man falls for her and dies as a result. So a bishop has her summoned before a spiritual court. But he too succumbs to her magic spell and cannot break the staff over her, cannot sentence her to death, because he immediately falls in love with her.

But Lore Lay asks for her sentence to be brought. Since her lover has left her, she is tired of life, her mind is depressed. Exactly where her magic spell should have worked, on the man she really loves, it didn't work. Now Lore Lay doesn't want to love anyone anymore, her magic is useless.

Lore Lay begs the bishop, but he does not send her to her death, but to a monastery. Three knights accompany her. On the way, Lore Lay wants to see her lover's castle one more time and climbs a rock above the Rhine. Then she sees a ship, thinks her lover is on it and bends so far forward that she falls into the river. The knights who accompany her follow her to her death.

This motif was taken up and processed by many other authors in the following years, with the figure transforming into a mermaid or siren-like figure who distracted passing sailors with her singing and beauty and thus led them to their doom.

The most famous adaptation is Heinrich Heine's poem I don't know what it should mean (The Lore-Ley). By the 19th century, the story of the siren-like Loreley had become so widespread that it was considered an ancient legend and still is today.

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Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.

Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.

The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.

Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.

So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.

The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.

The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Also the most comfortable. I chose them after trying on several different brands and comparing lifespan vs usage vs comfort - I needed them for a physically demanding job, not the weekend hiking trails. I could have easily chosen cheaper boots that would have lasted long enough to be worth their low price, but I know the Sam Vimes Boot Theory and knew weaker, less comfortable boots would make my life harder in the long run.

So when the outside edge of the heel started wearing down after three years of heavy use I went to the shop I got them from and said “hey this is a common problem for me with how I walk but now it’s affecting my ankles and knees and I don’t wanna have to buy a new pair, is there a way to fix this?”

The salesman at this very fancy upscale boot store said “oh yeah, there’s a shoe repair place that can give you some heel guards - it’ll keep the rubber from wearing out.”

So at 8am this morning right after my 9hr shift ends I went to the shoe repair shop and it is the most hole-in-the-wall, is-this-a-real-business-or-a-mafia-front, am-I-gonna-get-shot tiny cinder block cube I’ve ever seen in my life. I grew up plenty poor and love me a good hole-in-the-wall business, but going from upscale store to this cash-only repair shop gave me whiplash. Wasn’t expecting this when a guy who wears three piece suits to sell boots said it’s the best place to go.

The skinny kid behind the counter looks somehow 16 and 25 at the same time, but when I tell him this place was recommended he smiles and says to hand over my boots. I hand him the vaguely warm foot-smelling boots, and stand in my socks in the 3’ square entryway surrounded by every color leather polish you could buy and watch as he turns my boots around in his hands, sizes up a crescent moon bits of plastic, and unceremoniously hammers tiny nails through them before handing them back.

The heels are perfectly level again. I can walk without almost rolling my ankles. They don’t clack loudly on the pavement or feel different. This is gonna fix my knee pain. It cost $10.

This kid had every tool he needed within arms reach, worked fast and smoothly, I was in and out the door in less than 8 minutes, and it only cost $10.

I didn’t think anything could cost only $10 anymore. I’m so used to hyperinflation prices I was spiritually thrown back to the 1400’s visiting the cobbler in town square. This kid might have been that cobbler and just decided to never die.