The clam before the storm

[pameladean]

Lots of people I know are rereading various of Mike Ford's works. I haven't been able to bring myself to do that. I did avail myself of the heroic efforts of Jim Macdonald over at Making Light. He has assembled Mike's comments there into four posts, the Occasional Works in four parts:

1 -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008034.html#008034
2 -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008050.html#008050
3 -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008060.html#008060
4 -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008071.html#008071

That didn't work so well either in the long run, since I kept composing email in my head to him about the ones I'd missed. Sometimes he'd email me one if he thought it was up my alley, and I always scanned the list of recent comments to see if he'd made any, but I still missed a lot. Raphael used to call them to my attention. The one I most regret not praising to him was "Tom Corbett's in Heaven," an amazing filk of Richard Thompson that, like so much of Mike's airy, goofy, erudite humor, had a core of extremely sober emotion difficult to convey by any method other than humor.

The memorial is tomorrow. I have a green dress for it, because of "Green is the Color," a Liavek story in which Mike took a religion that I had invented at the behest of Emma Bull, shored it up, turned it inside-out, and presented a dozen ramifications I had but dimly foreseen, while doing about twenty other things as well.

David is scanning and printing photographs of Mike and making a display of them for the memorial. There are some wonderful ones, including some from the late 1970's contributed by gypsy1969 with the same body language and expressions that those of us who met him later are so familiar with.

It's been a chilly autumn week with bursts of sunshine. The Norway maples are not going to manage to turn gold this year; their still-green leaves are already showering down. A few here and there have managed a rusty yellow. Yesterday I walked over to elisem's house, admiring the last of the chrysanthemums and snapdragons in people's gardens. Elise had asked me to be there to let papersky in, since E had several errands and wasn't sure she'd be back in time. I went early intended to do some cleaning, but I couldn't find the vacuum cleaner (it was lurking behind the sofa) and am well aware from past experience that my cleaning methods are very different from Elise's. I got rid of some dust and used a broom to good effect on the hardwood. When papersky arrived, we fell at once into a delightful conversation, as if we saw each other every week. Elise got home with her elegant new haircut just as I was leaving. As I stood at the bus stop, a flock of crows flew across the southwestern sky, and as I looked at them I saw that they were moving across the new moon, a crescent so pale as to seem illusory in the absence of crows. I thought of Albin Ronay and the problem of water, of dragons and beta cloth, and of Matt holding together a tricky alliance of teenagers by a shifting balance of logic and instinct. Mike knew all about how to do that.

We'll have to hold ourselves together tomorrow. I think we'll manage better than a rusty yellow.

P.

Comments

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting the links.

I hope tomorrow goes as well as possible.

You're in my thoughts.

[redbird]

Yes, you'll manage better than a rusty yellow.

I am pleased and unsurprised that you and papersky fell into conversation that way.

[lcohen]

i need to follow the links later, but the *hugs*
are for now.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I'll be holding you all in my heart.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I wish I could be there; I have sent emissaries, quotations, and good thoughts. But I would like to hug you personally.

Do what feels right for you; holding together is not always the best goal.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

When papersky arrived, we fell at once into a delightful conversation, as if we saw each other every week.

*smile*.

as to tomorrow, my thoughts are with you all. i wish you ... i don't know. strength? whatever it is you need most.

[laurel]

I haven't been able to read anything. At Convivial, when Elise handed me something he wrote I started to read and then got teary-eyed and discovered what a "lump in the throat" is and had to go back to racing about being a host type person.

I am relieved that I have useful things to do tomorrow to occupy myself at the service, reception, and wake.

I suspect we'll all manage somehow in whatever way works. And folks will understand.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

I'll be thinkng of you tomorrow.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Me, too . . . will be praying for you all to receive peace and assurance that Mike is OK where he is now on the Other Side, and to feel that he'd be pleased with the memorial. We're thinking of you.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. I'll be wearing green, too. For different reasons, but when I was packing, it seemed like the thing to do.

Must sleep now, or there will be no holding together at all for me tomorrow. Jane sends her love from the wilds of western Massachusetts.

[beadslut.livejournal.com]

Hee. Clam. Hee. One moment of giggling.

[pameladean]

Oh, good. It seemed Mikeish.

It's a line from Dudley Fitt's translation of Aristophanes's "The Birds." I think the original line has something like a stoat in it, punning on the Greek word for "calm," but Fitts wanted the pun to go through, so he did "clam." Mike and I talked about it once.

P.

[pameladean]

Thank you so much to all of you for the kind words. They mean a great deal.

P.