KBCO

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Birthday

Kage Baker enjoyed celebrating birthdays – other people’s birthdays, especially. She said it gave her an excuse to holiday extravagantly, without being selfish. And she felt that all and any birthday ought to be celebrated over several days.

Years when we were especially flush, the entire 3 weeks between her birthday and mine was one long party: trips and fancy meals and copious cocktails. Kage…

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Just A Wee Note On Sunday Night

Just A Wee Note On Sunday Night

Kage Baker used to say that the cessation of pain is, in itself, a positive pleasure. She said she read it somewhere: maybe Kraft Ebbing, maybe Hints from Heloise. She said it was the justification behind hitting yourself with a hammer because it felt so good to stop. She said it was the best argument for masochism, and the worst for sadism. Or was it Democrats and Republicans?

Mostly she rolled…

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Status Quo Vadis?

Kage Baker always swore that – short of actually dying   she would rest, heal, and return to her work. Whatever she saw as her work, anyway, after any Event so large and capitalized that it had required her to stop working in the  first place.

All things taken into sober consideration, she fulfilled this oath; yea, even unto and following death. She reinvented and re-established her life several…

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A Textbook Pain In The Ass

A Textbook Pain In The Ass

Kage Baker would shake her head whenever I hurt myself  (you know, after the screaming and cursing and bleeding and hunting for the car keys was over), and say sadly, “Only you, you little Welsh mutant.”

But really, these things happen to all sorts of people. All the time! The textbooks are full of examples that illustrate not only medical commonalities, but things I have actually done. Or…

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We're Having Lovely Weather

We’re Having Lovely Weather

Kage Baker really did believe that the 3rd day of an injury was the worst. She believed that – as a natural follow through of this axiom – days 4 and following would therefore  be better.

I tried to tell her that better was not the same as easier, but apparently for Kage, they were. She certainly always acted as though they were; she was undeniably more cheerful after Day 3. She wasn’t faking,…

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Day 2, Fracture 1,Me 0

Day 2, Fracture 1,Me 0

Kage Bakerbelieved that the 3rd day of an injury was the worst. She had some logical reason for it, but I think she just figured after 3 days, you reached the nadir of comfort. So she used that excuse to indulge herself in anything that might provide some little crumb of comfort, and thereby convinced herself that she would feel better tomorrow. Alcohol, chocolate, egg creams and war won ton soup…

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Accident. With Cheetos.

Kage Baker despaired of my life on a regular basis throughout her life. This was because I have bizarre destructive things happen to me with ridiculous frequency.

This evening, I tripped over a bag of yarn, hit the cat tower with my head and right shoulder, and ended up on the floor. I was carrying a small bag of Cheetos, and went down in a veritable eruption of orange crunchy snacks.

Now I am…

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Watching The Lights

Kage  Baker was as likely as anyone else to go boneless and lazy on a suddenly-warm summer evening.

She loved sitting in the living room with no lights lit but candles and lava lamps, idly brainstorming. We would watch the restaurant lights stream across the waves a block away, or time the rotating spotlight at the Nipomo airport as it passed over and over in the dark.

Sometimes the light would…

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June's Bugs

June’s Bugs

Kage Baker waited frantically for June each year. She lived for its arrival for lots of reasons.

School was out – an event that carried such spiritual weight for her that she still honoured it no matter how many years had passed since it had made any difference to her life. “Of course it matters!” she told me when I observed that, at 50,  it was no longer the big deal it had been when she was 14.…

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Up All Night. And All Day (So Far, Anyway)

Up All Night. And All Day (So Far, Anyway)

Kage Baker rarely wrote in the middle of the night.

She was a daylight person. She stayed up late to work, most nights: but her idea of latewas any hour past midnight. By that time, she was visibly flagging. Her eyes would develop the fixed, glassy stare of someone who has been driving for 12 hours, and is still 2 states away from their exit. Ultimately, she would drive off the information…

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May Grey, June Gloom

May Grey, June Gloom

Kage Baker loved this time of year. At least, she loved the classical weather of our childhoods, when sometimes May and always June were dim and quiet under a grey sky … this is no longer a sure thing, as climate change is underscoring the desert part of sub-desert in Los Angeles; but this year, at least, it still pertains.

It’s actually rained a little, three or four times this May;  an even…

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Memories In May

Kage Baker never (as far as I could tell) forgot anything. Things she did not wish to recall were somehow shunted away –  probably into her tertiary consciousness; I knowshe had one – until and unless some reflex forced her to remember them. Her idea of important did not include things like “Where did you leave the car keys?” or “Did this recipe call for teaspoons of mustard, or tablespoons?”,…

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Daily Weirdness, With Possums

Daily Weirdness, With Possums

Kage Baker firmly believed that the basis of the world as we know it is weirdness. Most human endeavour, she felt, was an attempt to explain, ignore, or encompass weirdness. People don’t usually like it, you see, and they structure their lives – their habits, their families and civilizations – to normalize the surrounding sea of weird that is actually the normal state of the Universe.

Artists,…

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An Unexpected Glitch

Kage Baker. There, that’s my traditional beginning. I have now planted my banner on another dark Friday.

I am temporarily out of order, with something vile of a gastrointestinal order. I’ve probably been poisoned by the forces of darkness. However, I have in my possession a ruby, a very bad emerald, some pearls, some agates and some turquoise:  all of which are reputed to aid against poison.…

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Opening Credits

Kage Baker leaned delicately on most of her friends. A few were designated pillars of the sky; she was more apt to lean on those, though even there she was always loathe to become too needy or dependent. Most people who knew her would have offered rather more of their shoulders than she ever asked  (a truly bizarre visual, now that I think of it. But very Kage.) but she didn’t like to be a burden.

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And Back Again

Kage Bakerblessedly lacked a few of the classic problems of the writer. She seldom got writer’s block, and never for very long. She was seldom depressed. She dodged, resisted and/or ignored comments from her audience, and thus was untroubled by them. She never read her reviews unless they were vetted by another person, and so was untroubled by most of them, too. She didn’t smoke or do drugs, and…

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This Time, I'll Yell Out

This Time, I’ll Yell Out

Kage Baker had one dependable solution for those moments when the world became to much for her. That was to write.

Because really, kids, let’s be honest. Unless you are Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (or on serious drugs. Or maybe both … ) something will get to you. It may be be the sudden stroke of black lightning; or, as some depressed folks call it, the bite of the black dog. It may come gradually…

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