and maybe everything that dies someday comes back

[intertribal]

"Everything Dies, Baby" is up at Strange Horizons this week. 

I'm going to post the Bruce Springsteen song it's named after (that it's off the Nebraska album is coincidental).  It's one of those songs that resonated immediately with me, and has ever since. 

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That was great. As I came to the end of the story, my iTunes happened to be on this song (may not be your taste in songs at all, but the sentiment and lyrics seemed appropriate).

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Thanks - yeah, I love that song! Hah.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love it too :D

[pgtremblay.livejournal.com]

Another great story. Damn you.

A lesser writer would've turned Hamzah into a brain-eating zombie. I loved the sadness (and humor!) of this piece.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Thanks. There are times for brain-eating zombies, but this wasn't one of them.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Hey, just wanted to say I saw this, but I'm gonna wait to read the story until classes are over tomorrow.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

No problem, dude. Good luck with classes! :)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

hm, i dunno if you want my response to this one. your writing is as good as ever, but it doesn't really resonate with me. it may be partly that i'm so tired, though. i've been a bit detached from everything lately, working out the steps of what must be done, what must be bought, what must be planned while i'm doing other things. in shanghai i had all this energy, and here i'm just dead all the time b/c of the allergies.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I don't expect everything to resonate with you all the time, that would be pretty ridiculous. If you think the writing is as good as ever that's good enough for me.

Can you get somebody professional to get rid of the mold? I mean, I don't imagine that's easy, but if it's making you ill... unless of course it's more than just the allergies (i.e., you have less energy because you have to do a lot more top-down stuff than you did in Shanghai).

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Cool, I just didn't want to ramble on about why (and thus avoided doing so) if it would bug you. I think it's still hard sometimes for me to separate you from your work, though, which is really not helpful--I appreciate that now, at least.

If my "somebody professional" you mean "the handyman working down the street," then maybe. If you mean something professional by Western standards, no, it's too expensive. The thing with mold is that to really get rid of it professionally you have to use ridiculous chemicals and/or remove and replace parts of the building. I mean, you literally have to take everything molded out. They won't want to do that. They might fix whatever's causing the water damage, maybe. But they aren't going to be chopping apart my walls--they want us to move out of this building anyway, so they'll be even less keen on spending money on it, and the easy fix would be to move me to the new campus away from the entire city and all its conveniences, incl. taxis. I'm sticking it out to see if I can avoid that, basically. I don't know what to do, really.

eh, i'm pretty sure it's allergies that are keeping me so sluggish--and preventing me from getting a good night's sleep. they've been getting better, but i worry that it's just the drugs and w/o them, i'd go back to being just as miserable. my kitchen is actually even worse, i can feel it when i walk in, though i don't even know where the mold is (i think it's in all the cupboards, which for some stupid reason are all on the floor and not the ceiling). at least that's across a little walkway thing--i have a separate key for the kitchen and living room, so i hardly ever go there.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Can you stay on drugs the whole time in that case? Or is there a chance you could build up some kind of resistance to the mold?

I see how you wouldn't necessarily want to leave the city to go to the new campus, though. That sucks.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

hm, not on allergy meds necessarily, but i'm on a lot of shit that might just not be good for me, side-effect-wise, in the long run. one of the drugs (an NSAID) causes, for instance, ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding. i'd like to avoid that.

i dunno, i figure i'll try to really thoroughly clean the whole place tomorrow, see how things go over the weekend, and let them know monday or so if i want to move or really need to have something done?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

It felt like a dream, but someone else's, sort of unreal and full of meaning that wasn't meant for me.