Lenses

Reading is one of my favourite ways to relax, and one "well-being measure" I use is to keep an eye on how much leisure reading I'm getting done. A fortnight ago, I noticed I'd spent over ten days getting through a paperback - a definite sign that life was, once again, out of balance, and some more "me time" was needed!

So over the last week or so I've re-read Patricia Brigg's Mercedes Thompson books. I love her urban fantasy, especially these novels featuring a history-graduate mechanic - who also happens to be a shape-shifting coyote, holding her own amidst werewolves, vampires and the fae. These stories resonate with my feminist beliefs and my fondness for seeing the underdog triumph. Having survived some environments charged with dominance "games" and witnessed the struggle for individuals to gain power, not lose power, and avoid subjugation, I read her close observations of dominance issues with delight.

Tonight, however, I found it difficult to take off my Patricia-Briggs-reading-lenses while my husband and I were watching TV. It seemed strange at first to be watching a contemporary Aussie drama through the "paranormal spectacles" - watching with a werewolf's keen eye for body language, eye contact and verbal tone - but thinking of that storyline in terms of dominance and submission did give me a whole new appreciation of the show.

Extrapolating out from this vignette, I'm reminded of how aspects of the interactions we have in one sphere of our life can seep into other arenas. We're all familiar with the easy trap of bringing one's work frustrations home with us, but how about the less obvious ones? A forgotten memory sparking us to anger or sadness, a sudden joy, an inexplicable change of mood ...

A similar question has been occupying my mind lately. We all know that some conversations, some interactions, have particular potency in our lives. Most of us will remember conversations which have had a very profound effect on us. If some interpersonal interactions are particularly potent, is it only these ones which have the capacity to change us ... or could it be that we altered, however lightly, by all the other lives we 'touch'? Is there a particular quality to some interactions which others lack, or do some conversations have more of that potent "something" which others also have, to a lesser degree?

I don't know. Food for thought.

In Praise of Mike Carey

You simply have to ADORE a man who can write these sentences:

I had a furry mouth and a hangover that was as much psychological as physical. Or animistic, maybe: a hangover of the spirit. How the hell do you cure that? A hair of the god that bit you?

I'd passed three other cameras on the way up, of course, so he knew damn well it was me, but Nicky likes to remind you that Big Brother is watching. It's not a matter of security - although he takes his security more seriously than Imelda Marcos takes her footwear; it's more the statement of a philosophical position.

Or, some would say, more controversially:

I don't buy the tarot for the same reason that I don't buy religion: the hopes and fears of ordinary people stick up out of the miracles like bones out of a spavined horse.

These quotes are some I picked fairly much at random, flicking through pages from "Vicious Circle", the second book in Carey's series of Felix Castor novels. The genre is urban fantasy - think spooky things (in this case, exorcists, ghosts, demons, succubi and loup-garous - were-beings) roaming more-or-less contemporary urban settings, such as London. Another favourite author of mine in the genre is Patricia Briggs: werewolves, vampires and shape-shifting coyotes running around the Tri-Cities area in the States.

Anyway, Mike Carey: you are the master of grittily realistic and pithily descriptive phrases. I'd take my hat off to you ... hmm: it may be potentially hazardous to perform any cliched act in your vicinity! What would Felix Castor do? Say something smart, and slouch away.

Ah well, I can manage the latter.