Arcane Zoning Laws
Jul. 15th, 2025 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI'm bored with grieving.
Brian would have thoroughly sympathized.
Brian was one of the least sentimental humans I've ever met.
###
Daria & I are sentimental enough to want to do a memorial. Flavia is not interested at all in doing a memorial, says Brian wouldn't have cared one way or another, which may or may not be true, but anyway, even if it is true, is entirely irrelevant: Memorials are for the survivors.
Flavia's reluctance does raise some issues, though. Like is she reluctant because she is too prostrate with grief to participate in anything? As the kinda/sorta Official Grieving Widow, will she resent it—consciously or unconsciously—if two survivors lower down on the Grief Ladder seize the initiative here?
No real plans have been made other than a vague commitment to the third or fourth week in September, a date far enough ahead in an indeterminate future to seem doable.
But if we really want to do it, we're gonna have to begin to make some concrete plans sooner rather than later. Pin down an actual date; pin down a venue. New Paltz is the obvious venue, but I've also been wondering about Norma's, BB's & my favorite cafe in Wappingers Falls, or Tranquili-Tea, that adorable little rabbit hole in (of all bizarre places) Middletown that we stumbled across that day:
I had a busy weekend: Democratic Committee meeting, D&D with the Boneyard BoyZ, & a tea party that doubled as a Democratic fundraiser. Also I baked a sour cherry pie:
The aesthetics are off. As I say, I am just terrible with crusts! But the pie tastes great.
I hadn't exercised in 10 days, but yesterday I trotted off to the gym and today I plan to tromp before it gets too hot.
###
I've been trying to think of a plot to graft on to the Neversink backstory.
Of course, it should focus on the animosity between the folks who've been farming in these parts for three or four generations and the recent emigrants from the Big City, 'cause that's a very real dynamic in these parts plus the whole water theft—They drowned our homes so their city could have water!—demands it.
Possibly a young, idealistic Brooklyn immigrant runs for the village planning board? Maybe there's still some arcane zoning law that she opposes that allows stores to be built in the middle of the reservoir? (But why would she oppose it? There are tons of arcane laws dating back centuries in every town in these parts! People just ignore them.) And, of course, on the actual night of the election, the reservoir recedes so you can see the chimneys & spires & mercantile towers of the drowned town.
Writing style I'm aiming for is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Susanna Clark does a most excellent job of integrating fantasma into everyday.
I will mull it over some more.
But not too much. Some things just naturally work themselves out while you're writing.
Brian would have thoroughly sympathized.
Brian was one of the least sentimental humans I've ever met.
###
Daria & I are sentimental enough to want to do a memorial. Flavia is not interested at all in doing a memorial, says Brian wouldn't have cared one way or another, which may or may not be true, but anyway, even if it is true, is entirely irrelevant: Memorials are for the survivors.
Flavia's reluctance does raise some issues, though. Like is she reluctant because she is too prostrate with grief to participate in anything? As the kinda/sorta Official Grieving Widow, will she resent it—consciously or unconsciously—if two survivors lower down on the Grief Ladder seize the initiative here?
No real plans have been made other than a vague commitment to the third or fourth week in September, a date far enough ahead in an indeterminate future to seem doable.
But if we really want to do it, we're gonna have to begin to make some concrete plans sooner rather than later. Pin down an actual date; pin down a venue. New Paltz is the obvious venue, but I've also been wondering about Norma's, BB's & my favorite cafe in Wappingers Falls, or Tranquili-Tea, that adorable little rabbit hole in (of all bizarre places) Middletown that we stumbled across that day:
I had a busy weekend: Democratic Committee meeting, D&D with the Boneyard BoyZ, & a tea party that doubled as a Democratic fundraiser. Also I baked a sour cherry pie:
The aesthetics are off. As I say, I am just terrible with crusts! But the pie tastes great.
I hadn't exercised in 10 days, but yesterday I trotted off to the gym and today I plan to tromp before it gets too hot.
###
I've been trying to think of a plot to graft on to the Neversink backstory.
Of course, it should focus on the animosity between the folks who've been farming in these parts for three or four generations and the recent emigrants from the Big City, 'cause that's a very real dynamic in these parts plus the whole water theft—They drowned our homes so their city could have water!—demands it.
Possibly a young, idealistic Brooklyn immigrant runs for the village planning board? Maybe there's still some arcane zoning law that she opposes that allows stores to be built in the middle of the reservoir? (But why would she oppose it? There are tons of arcane laws dating back centuries in every town in these parts! People just ignore them.) And, of course, on the actual night of the election, the reservoir recedes so you can see the chimneys & spires & mercantile towers of the drowned town.
Writing style I'm aiming for is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Susanna Clark does a most excellent job of integrating fantasma into everyday.
I will mull it over some more.
But not too much. Some things just naturally work themselves out while you're writing.
