Category: Personal
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Zürich in winter: 2025
Monday The first night in Zürich. The flight wasn’t bad; was thinking about small things going wrong while traveling, after reading someone who claims that such things are ruinous but one forgets them. I don’t really agree: for some people, at some times, yes, but… And, finally in my hotel room, I break a glass…
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Year
A strange year. Or, an expectable year. A year that was opaque for much of its length, but which now seems transparent as glass…. A sense that thoughts and emotions, and in fact much of what I call myself, has settled into something more… well, integrated, simpler. The awfulnesses on the horizon – two wars,…
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A letter to a younger self
A few days ago, I was reading The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves. It's a collection of, well, exactly what it says – which suggests 'it gets better' messages, and many of them are. But it was interesting that they also do different things, take different tones… I thought I should…
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A bit vague, not lost
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Anniversary of this blog… sixteen years. A few days ago, really, on Saturday, but this is close enough. No, the blog doesn't feel dead to me, I'm still here for it, and it for me. I retired from the university in February; moved the books of my office to storage; and now keep talking about…
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Last day of….
It is, approximately, the last warm day (or, the "last," "warm" day). Which means that today was in the low 70s – warm for the North Sea – and tomorrow is a fading version of the same, without sun. Then we drop to fall temperatures. Sometimes we have a burst of late summer at the…
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Familiar
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in Academia, AIDS/HIV, Death, Illness, Imagined, Memory, Music, On writing, Personal, Psychology, TelevisionThe image seems clear, even obvious, to me – it could be from one of the better-written fantasies, or from a film about some medieval saga… an old man living alone in the woods; there is a shift in the wind, or the light – he looks up, creases his forehead slightly, sniffs the air…
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Writing a Story for You
[A 1991 story written in Terry Wolverton's writing group; about Reid Beitrusten, who died 2 December 1983.] You’re dead, but you wanted to write stories. You were just about to get published, just about to start making it. So I’m writing a story for you, I started it in the laundromat, I went next door…
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Ancient history
I'm in a casual, student-y restaurant in August: which means it's fairly empty. The big, friendly black cook looks at me inquiringly – I'll stick with this cider (yes, it's fruit-flavored, shut up you) and won't have dinner for another half hour or so. I'm finally working on that proposal for the shorter of the…
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Anniversary
Well… not quite the anniversary. It was thirteen years since this blog was begun… as of yesterday. A day late, that's appropriate for a thirteenth anniversary, yes? ••• No posts since the new year; which doesn't mean I'm giving up on this. I do like the blog, I like writing it…. I want to transfer it…
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Finishing the year
When you read older fiction and someone refers to dragging a steel bath into the kitchen and filling it with kettles of boiling water, do you wonder… what would that be like? I don't think I could stand it. ••• I didn't quite have a Christmas to speak of this year – it was interrupted…
Paul Attinello 