Monday musings

Summer comes suddenly in these parts, often turning up (as it did this year) after a relentlessly cold, wet spring. I once heard an explanation about it — something to do with a high-pressure ridge offshore that has to build up a certain amount of … oh, something or another. But once it does … whatever it has to do … man, it’s glorious.

It might only be glorious for a week, but it’s a brilliant week.

That’s this week. So along with everyone else in the neighborhood, I’ve been outside hammering and painting. When I’m not out “working” on my tan I’m meeting a couple of more-leisurely-than-usual deadlines.

I’ve felt far from the world of politics and Attitude and doom, gloom, news, blues, and all the usual what-have-you.

That may not be good for blogitude, but damn, it’s good for body and soul.

—–

Has anybody here read the novel Alif the Unseen?

Is it as good as this description makes it sound?

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the State’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the head of State security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground.

When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen. With shades of Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and The Thousand and One Nights, Alif the Unseen is a tour de force debut—a sophisticated melting pot of ideas, philosophy, religion, technology and spirituality smuggled inside an irresistible page-turner.

I hope so. It’s the next book in the great heap beside my bed and I’m almost wishing it would start raining again so I’d have an excuse to stay indoors and dive in.

—–

Something to think about: “The Busy Trap” (h/t Jim Bovard).

You probably know the busy trap well. I sure do. Or did. I started my career in Silicon Valley, the avant garde of The Busy. At the time, it was the “in” thing to work 70-hour weeks, fueled by cocaine. Then you’d go to parties, do more cocaine, and spend the entire evening trying to one-up everybody else with being more-busy-than-thou. (“I haven’t had a day off since the Johnson administration.” “That’s nothing; I once went to work after being stabbed in the heart with an icepick.”)

Now, I suppose, they do it without the cocaine but with potential bazillions of dollars for motivation. Wouldn’t know and don’t care. Got out of there ages ago and have been downwardly mobile ever since. Still, it took me years to shake the crazy-busy. This says it all:

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion.