Coffee Broom
January Newsletter
I stepped out from my student’s office onto Patriarch Evtimi, where the sky was a cold, bright blue and pigeons swept up the faces of the buildings.
I’d been up for ten hours and I didn’t feel like swimming. I had to buy coffee, and I didn’t want to do that, either. I wanted to just turn left and go down the stairs into the subway. I’d read my phone on the train and go home and have a snack. I wanted someone else to buy coffee and swim for me.
But, and I know this sounds silly, I remembered a post I’d read on Substack: “Work out every day so that you can be the sort of person who works out every day.” As I walked between the cliffs of Shesti Septemvri, I repeated that to myself out loud. I hope other people thought I was on my bluetooth.
I found the coffee shop, where the bags were very small, but the grinding machine was large and impressive. The barista had an elegant little broom he used to sweep up every spilled miligram of precious grounds. That would do me for the next five days, maybe.
After that it was just one foot in front of the other all the way to the pool. Get naked, shower, swim until done, but here’s what’s strange: I wasn’t tired or hungry when I finally got home. I finished my desk work, it was now my twelfth hour awake, and I was neither stumbling nor moaning.
I was a zombie two days later, though. Thursday seemed like it lasted a week. Thank God my kids are on the spring schedule now and I don’t have to wake up every day at 6.
In other news, Upstream Reviews posted my review of the anti-litRPG Invading the System:
Another review: I wrote this one for C.M. Kosemen’s All Tomorrows, soon to be published.
…and that started a conversation that resulted in The Future of Humanity, a little essay I wrote thinking about future of human evolution.
I posted The Ritual of Undescent, my second poem in Ancient Thracian and English, from chapter 19 of Wealthgiver.
Finally, thank you to my new $10 Patron, Anthony. He and my other patrons at that tier and above can read up to chapter 28 of Wealthgiver. Every Thursday I’ll post whatever chapters I’ve finished that week, and patrons can join me right at the coal-face.
And I read some things:
Running Lean by Ash Maurya
I’ll have to read this book again. The first revolutionary thing it says is that in the same way businesses once switched from valuing products to valuing intellectual property, the era of IP is in turn giving way to the era of the business model. Can your process produce something that attracts customers? I’m working on it.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I first tried and failed to read Dostoyevski’s The Devils. Now that I’ve read Brothers Karamazov, I have a better idea of what he was driving at. These people are vicious, mean-spirited, self-defeating fools. Yes, and so are you, reader. Now watch: this is how you practice compassion.
The Pilgrim of Hate by Ellis Peters
Another book I first listened to 30 years ago. Ellis Peters has aged less well for me than John Mortimer - I guess because Brother Cadfel isn’t as funny as Rumpole. And although there were some action scenes, Peters’s story is so very girly. One man has a gleaming curtain of raven hair.
DanDaDan by Yukinobu Tatsu (Science Saru Studio)
One Thursday night in January, this anime absolutely wrecked me. I’ll give you the premise: teenage girl (who isn’t as much of a delinquent as she likes to pretend) gets into an argument with boy (who is exactly as much of a dweeb as he appears). He’s obsessed with UFOs, she’s embarrassed by her grandma the ghost-wrangler. After arguing about whether UFOs/ghosts are real, they challenge each-other to spend the night in a haunted service tunnel (him) and an abandoned hospital (her), where they are, respectively, possessed and abducted. That’s the first 15 minutes. You won’t get to the part that made me cry until episode 8.
And I read a draft of a book for a friend, but I can’t say more until it comes out. It was good, though ;)
See you next month.