June 2023 - getting my hands dirty
Hi Everyone,
In my part of the world, gardening season is upon us. As I’m one of ‘those’ people who has turned my lawns into vegetable gardens, planting has taken up most of my spare time. Even though it’s a lot of work, I enjoy getting my hands dirty. Plus working in the garden always gives me space to think—and that space to think is always hard to find in my busy world.
I deep into the first rounds of edits on a book tangent my Encoded Orbits series. I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo 2022 then put it away. Now that I’m finally looking at it again, I’m really enjoying how quirky the story is.
The collage up top is from my own altered book that I’m slowly creating. I’ve been completing a page most mornings and it’s a nice way to start my day.
In the vein of altered books, I love these mini-paintings in a vintage colour swatch book by Rachel Spelling:
There is something about her work that instills the right kind of nostalgia for me.
I just finished reading Machine by Elizabeth Bear. It’s a delightfully complicated mystery set on a hospital space station fully of sentient beings of all sorts (I particularly enjoyed thinking about how super cold methane beings might be). I highly recommend the book.
There was one minor detail that has really got me thinking. The characters in this world have a chip in their brains that can help them regulate themselves, and having it is cast in a positive way.
I find it really easy to see how an implanted chip with the ability to control someone could become nightmare fodder—and if any current tech billionaire suggests I try out his chip, I’d say no way. I just don’t trust that our current late-capitalistic society would create a chip that wouldn’t generate them income off of me.
However… what if in the far future there was an implantable chip that only I would have control over? One that I could use to be more myself? Sometimes on nights when I can’t sleep the monkeys in my mind bring up that dispute I had with my landlord in 1998 (or something else equally irrelevant)—there is no value in me mulling that over and being able to turn those thoughts off would make my life better. Or what about that five minute task I put off for months? Stopping inventing ‘reasons’ not to do something and just doing it would make my life better.
It’s an interesting idea. Would you agree to having a chip in your head?
Cheers,
Jeannette
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