Women

First this (trying to grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status) and then this (de-criminalising domestic violence) on my reading list today. These things can and already are affecting women and men both; but it is women, I think, who will suffer more.

Cat Valente talks about women’s work and how it has been taken from us. We should ‘go back into the home’ – but what used to be our work has been moved into factories and controlled by men, or it has been derided as mere ‘hobbies’. And, of course, why should we sacrifice who we are and who we want to be, throwing those things aside in favour of prescribed roles that not all of us want?

Dan Campbell is compiling a list of SFF work that shows women doing ‘women’s work’ and not being vilified or derided or in any way considered inferior for doing it – women who are heroines within ‘traditional’ roles, being strong within these roles. It is only one of the many ways to be female, but it is one – of many – that is poorly treated in literature.

I recently read Ursula Le Guin’s Tehanu, which is about women who are all too aware of how much they do not fit into a men’s world, who have to put up with men’s poor opinions – weak as women’s magic, wicked as women’s magic – and suffer men’s abuse, who struggle to find the strength to stand up to this shit. It feels apt.

A while ago, Kameron Hurley linked to the story of Rukhsana Kauser, a young Indian woman who stood up to the men who intended to rape her and abuse/kill her entire family. I can’t say it any better than Kameron: “You can only read so many horror stories of how much it sucks to be a girl. It gets under your skin. You start to internalize it, and it turns into self-hate, and subconscious misogyny. Sometimes you need to be reminded that being a girl does NOT mean you’re doomed to get shit on all the time.”

Rose Lemberg has posted the TOC for The Moment of Change, the forthcoming anthology of feminist SFF poetry, which contains my poem “Beautiful Mutilated, Instantly Antiquated”.

I don’t really have any other words, except that – I remember once that I thought sexism was nearly gone. Now it seems that all the time it becomes more obvious to me how persistent and present and fucking stuck it is. I don’t know how to make it un-stuck. We’re trying; then more hurdles are thrown in our faces.

Moscow, Day 2

My second day in Moscow started at the State Historical Museum, which runs all the way from prehistoric flint tools to the 20th Century. My favourite sections were the ones showing ancient and fairly old pieces, often Central Asian – beautiful metal-workings, old coins, jewellery, funeral masks and lots of arrow/spear-heads.

I then went to Izmaylovo Market, which felt like a fairytale market: wooden buildings like slightly dilapidated palaces, a pirate ship, and the way everyone was packing up, as if about to carry the market to another place.

I bought some gifts, then returned to my hostel where I debated whether to go out wandering around another area of the city or stay inside, writing. I opted for writing: more of the Turkmen YA novel. Later I went out for dinner at a Georgian restaurant, which involved eating two different types of meat. Overall, a very chilled out day, which is half of what I want from this holiday: time to relax and write – and hang out with my brother, in Yaroslavl (which is good because here there’s not a whole lot to do).

Moscow, Day 1

I walked to the Red Square in a cold, grey drizzle, but even that couldn’t stop me from being impressed by its size and the colour of the buildings around it. The Red Square has been built with its own curvature, which makes it seem even bigger (and it really is big). In this picture, I’m some ways along it already.

After admiring the buildings, I went to the Kremlin – which has a slightly confounding ticketing system. To get into certain bits, you have to be there at specific times throughout the day. I wasn’t. I got in to see the cathedrals only, which were well worth the price of admission: a cluster of white buildings around a courtyard, each with numerous gilded domes.

My ticket got me inside all 3 pictured, which are phenomenally decorated: saints on the pillars, the Apocalypse and the Nativity and other Biblical scenes on the walls, a golden iconostasis in each, and more icons on the walls of some, and coffins of Tsars and Patriarchs. So much colour. Red and gold and blue and more.

Speaking of colours…

St Basil’s! Beautiful even in the rain. From the downstairs iconostasis, there’s a narrow staircase with huge steps that takes visitors up to a higher level, with many rooms and passageways, all decorated in the most beautiful ways.

I could have wandered through those passageways forever.

Instead I went back to my hostel, thinking that I would relax for a while before setting off to Yaroslavskiy Station to buy my train ticket to Yaroslavl – but it then occurred to me that I’d probably enjoy the metro a lot more if I went before rush hour. As it happened, my route took me through two of the most impressive stations.

Novoslobodskaya, which has these beautiful stain glass windows all along both platforms:

Komsomolskaya, which is more like a grand, luxurious ballroom than a metro station:

Ticket acquired, I returned to my hostel – and finally succumbed to travel-tiredness and napped, after which I felt even worse. But I got up, ate dinner, and afterwards read the entirety of Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, the second Earthsea book and so far my favourite of the quartet (I’m now halfway through the third book). I’ve only just started reading Le Guin’s work, and I could just roll about in bits of her worldbuilding like a cat in particularly lovely dust. Earthsea is such fun to read.

Coming up! The State Historical Museum and Izmaylovo Market (which belongs in a fairytale, surely). Today is a transit day: soon I’ll be off to the station to locate my train to Yaroslavl, where I’ll meet my brother, who’s studying there.

keep on walking and don’t look back

Moscow! I landed in the late afternoon, then made my way to my hostel – lots of queueing and public transport.

Getting from the airport to the city was easy – a nice, simple train – but then I needed to navigate the Moscow Metro, which is intense. Paveletskaya is a busy stration: the entrance hall was just a solid mass of people, most pushing through to the barriers, some queueing. I wedged myself in a queue and shuffled slowly forward, while various people queue-jumped nearer the front. The machines were troublesome – although it seems part of the problem was people feeding them 500 ruble notes when they quite clearly (says the person who can’t even read Russian) took up to 100 ruble notes only. No really, guys, turning it the other way up won’t make the machine magically take 500s. But they also spat out plenty of 50s and 100s, which caused plenty of vexation. One woman had a long rant at the machine before storming off – after the length of the queue (she queue-jumped quite far back), I can sympathise. Fortunately the machine liked one of my lower denomination notes.

Ticket acquired, I descended.

I’m pretty sure Moscow’s subways are halfway to the centre of the earth. They’re also incredibly majestic, like buried palaces. I’m planning to spend some time exploring the Metro another day – without my suitcase, which even though it’s quite a small one (could have been carried into the plane cabin) was difficult to carry in the crush of people.

I quickly realised there’s no English underground. Fortunately I can read a reasonable number of Cyrillic letters, and I matched the transliterations of the stations I needed to various signs. If I didn’t find what I needed immediately, I kept walking, and suddenly the brown line platform turned into the green line platform! I’m still not sure how that worked. At the interchange station, later on, I went even further underground to the grey line. Coming out of the grey line at my hostel’s stop was one big escalator, on which I held tightly to the hand-grip. Vertigo, how you doin’.

Finding my hostel was easy, about which my only complaint is the over-softness of the mattress (sitting in bed now, with the excellent wifi). I actually like them hard. Where is my wood-hard one from Dunhuang? :<

After setting down my bags, I may have gone out and eaten Pizza Hut for dinner. >.> It was right there, and Russian Pizza Hut is about 10x nicer than British Pizza Hut, which is to say I actually enjoyed the pizza and haven’t added a new coating of grease to my heart. (I say that as someone who rarely enjoys pizza; yet, as with crisps, I seem to periodically go back to it, certain that this time I will love it.)

Tomorrow! Red Sqaure! Kremlin! St Basil’s Cathedral! Better food, I promise! More Metro! Walking! My feet and knee will hate me, but I will be happy.

well this is one place where your gods can’t dwell

• I’m off to Russia on monday! Earlier in the morning than I thought it was, which has one distinct advantage: I will be wearing winter clothes in distinctly non-wintery England, on the tube, so at least the day will still be cool at 6am when I set off. Arriving at Heathrow without a secondary skin made of sweat would be very lovely.

• I handed in my notice last week. I’ve got a 2 month notice period at this job, so there’s some time to go, but in November I will be moving on to a place with better hours and other advantages and maybe then I will write more things! And be less tired! :3 It is continuing my apparent trend of only working in hideously boring parts of London, haha.

• I’m starting Akkadian evening classes soon. Emails have been arriving. I need to read them. Akkadian! Cuneiform! Old things!

• Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories is out on 26 October! Jaymee Goh is posting Q&As with all the authors over at her blog, Silver Goggles, with an author going up every few days.

• Back to work! Making sure things are not left hanging in my absence; working a full day tomorrow as well; very tired.

Visa gets!

I have a visa! In 3 weeks’ time, I will be in Moscow, where I will be staying for a few days before journeying over to Yaroslavl.

So excited!

I had to visit the visa application centre several times. The first time, I found that I hadn’t included all the required information on my form. Some of it was my fault. Some of it, on the online form, was marked as non-mandatory. SECRETLY MANDATORY. Then when I filled in the form again online, the format had totally changed, which was a bit alarming; fortunately I got it all right and the visa people let me apply on my second visit. And then I went again today, a week later, to collect my visa!

Now I have to wait until closer to the time to figure out how cold it will be. The average temperatures for October are still above freezing, so I shouldn’t have to hurriedly buy clothes for real winter. =D (I am considering visiting St Petersburg in real winter next year, though.)

My brother, meanwhile, has apparently prepared for the Russian winter by buying a winter cologne. Dead by November, imo.

Ancient City in Translation

My poem “Ancient City in Translation” has been published today at inkscrawl, a relatively new magazine of minimalist fantastical poetry.

I wrote it several years ago, inspired by Amal and her poem “Song for an Ancient City”, which had recently been translated into Arabic by her father. I don’t know if I have done her – or the poem, or the city – justice, but I like “Ancient City in Translation” a lot and I hope others will too.

I haven’t written poetry in a long time. It’s not how my brain is working at the moment. I would like to change that, soon.

take what the water gave me

When I studied the Odyssey at school, I learnt about static or stock phrases: ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ is the one that’s stuck in my memory the strongest; I seem to remember things like ‘wily Odysseus’ cropping up a lot. These phrases are part of the vocabulary of the epic tale, and can be used every time a thing (like dawn) is referred to. I was told that this aids in memorising the tale.

This weekend, at the British Library, I was reading a book about Central Asian oral epics, and they have static phrases too, things like ‘Bokhara with six gates’.

And then there are the ones about other groups of people. ‘The Russians with hairy mouths’ refers to the Russians’ beards. There’s one about the Chinese having an incomprehensible language. But some of them are not just minor barbs; they are involved, impressive insults. ‘The stinking Kalmucks with round tasselled caps, who cut up pork and tie it to their saddles’, for instance. Or ‘The Sarts who love their asses as if they were horses, and who carry their bread in their bosoms’.

I also learnt some relevant-to-my-novel things at the BL, specifically concerning how the Russian presence in Central Asia expanded and affected specific regions of what is now Turkmenistan. It’s really complicated, as all political history is, and not wholly interesting (there’s a reason I never specialised in the political side of history, or even the ‘and some dudes were here, and then some other dudes were over here’ aspect of military history), but it’s very useful in giving me a context for my story’s plot.

It’s also reminded me that I need to be thinking about stakes. While the novel is domestic and quiet in a lot of ways, I think it will be even better – tighter, better paced, less prone to meandering every which way as it’s currently doing – with a greater raising of the stakes; and there are ways in which it is not domestic, and these need to integrate better throughout the novel instead of suddenly appearing towards the end. Meandering is good and serves the nature of the novel, as long as it is not left to grow by itself like those ridiculous weeds in the garden that are now as tall as me. Triffids.

There was an interesting throwaway remark, in one book, about the trade-based economy of the Central Asians at that time and how it fundamentally differed to our money-based economy, and it made the part of me that gets excited about economics sit up and go Oooh. Basically, it was an economy that placed little value on cash – why have a bunch of metal coins that you have to safeguard in a box, when you can have a herd, an obvious sign of your wealth that’s also a little bit harder for a bunch of dudes to run off with in its entirey? And you wouldn’t necessarily push for a fair trade, as we see it – you would also consider factors like building up credit and a good relationship with someone, making a loss (as we see it) on one transaction because later down the line it will benefit you. It’s such a different way of thinking about economics to the way I usually do, and I know my way of thinking has coloured how I’ve written the trade relationships in the book so far. So that needs some re-thinking.

And then I did no more work for the rest of the weekend! It was quite glorious, really. Sleeping and reading and gaming and shopping, even, wherein I found that Clarks biggest women’s trainers are now too small for me ARGH (size changes on their end, not my feet growing) and their men’s trainers are silly money for non-athletic shoes. To a sports shop, I guess. Egh. Fugly and expensive. I want smaller feet. (Eur 42, UK 8/9, US 10/11 = VERY VEXING in a country where women’s shoes often stop at Eur 41 and men’s shoes look like arse for twice the price. Help me, M&S, you are my only hope.)

Russian Embassy tomorrow. Wish me luuck!

Russian Tourist Visa

Highlights from filling in the Russian Tourist Visa form, as remarked upon in Gchat.

me: a question on the Russian visa form: “Other surnames used (maiden name, pen-name, holy orders, etc.)”
HOLY ORDERS
Amal: Hee!
FATHER ALEX

me: “List all countries you have visited in the last ten years and indicate the years of visit:*”
nooooooooooooo
Amal: AHAHAHAHAHA
me: oh my god where have I even been in TEN YEARS

me: “Please Enter Valid Education Name” for the institution I went to
I put King’s College London
this is not valid
V: Oo
me: seeing if it’s the ‘
yes it was!
the form doesn’t like punctuation
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

The form is now full of information and not very much punctuation. Now to take it to the embassy in the imminent future, so that I can find out if I got it all correct. =s

if you’re brave enough you’ll just let it happen

I’ve input 5,500 words of Turkmen novel from my handwritten notebook into the trial/beta version of MS Scrivener that I downloaded last week. (Apparently the real thing is coming soon? OH PLEASE.) There are still a bunch of pages in my notebook that need to be typed, probably accounting for a couple more thousand words, plus several thousand more from the short story that are yet to be incorporated. Huh; that puts me at 10,000 words. Nice!

I’ve been writing during lunch and/or in the evenings lately. I like writing it by hand – probably because I spend so much time at the computer. When I write at lunch, I go into one of the nearby cafés and try to make my hour last as long as possible. Also my notebook is pretty. (This one.) Of course, I then have to type it on the computer, but so far this seems to be working well for me.

Ordered some books for my BL research session this coming Saturday. The main focus is on imperialism and how it played out in what-is-now-Turkmenistan, as this will inform later events in the book.

I need to pause writing for a day or two to start seriously organising my short trip to Russia in October. I kind of… forgot… and now it’s late August. I’m going ostensibly to visit my brother in Yaroslavl, where he’ll be studying for one semester (second semester in St Petersburg, yesss), but as I’m flying into Moscow I’ll spend a few days there too. I need to book my guesthouses/hostels/whatever before I can apply for my visa, and I am reliably informed that the Russian visa application process is a bastard, even for the tourist visas. (My brother is having trouble with his student one. =s ) So I need to finalise my itinerary and get this application in motion, to avoid the hideous priority-processing fees and general stress. Russiaaaa! It’s getting marvellously close.