“There’s always more stuff,” she assured me, gesturing around her.

So true.  As I’ve pared down over the years, I’ve often ended up looking through catalogs or visiting shops like hers and thinking, “wow, that would look great with….” But I’ve learned the hard way to appreciate but not covet. That is, I’ve learned how to admire something, acknowledge that it would look great with my decor or be fun to own, and then put it back down again. I know from experience that too many of the “objets d’cool” that I buy on the spur of the moment end up in the charity pile as soon as my minimalist, control-freak tendencies reassert themselves.

But her words serve as useful reminder that if you’re thinking about decluttering for the new year, there are very few objects that can’t be replaced.  If you don’t love it or use it, and if it’s not an emergency or survivalist necessity (which you will love on the day it’s needed), then go ahead and get rid of it.  If you regret the loss later, you can always find something else to replace it.

There’s always more stuff, after all.

(Image from Bubba’s Antiques & Mercantile)

In the meantime, I’m busy with grading finals and reading candidate files for our department’s job search, as well as working on miscellaneous other projects such as running my RPG Right of Rule, reading submissions for The Harrow Press’s Mortis Operandi, and setting up a new yaoi research blog that’ll go public soon (we’ll be looking for contributors, by the way….).  Over winter break I’ll be finishing up a steampunk research paper for Steaming into a Victorian Future, finishing the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel Imprimatur, revising the travel-study class Imagining Venice with my co-prof in order to resubmit it for Spring 2013, and doing the usual winter-break class-prep stuff for the courses I need to teach in spring. Oh, yeah, and I discovered last week that this blog is, for some reason, on a server using some kind of old mySQL that prevents me from updating to the newest versions of WordPress, so I may (shudder) try rebooting it over winter break, which means if everything here abruptly vanishes, well…. you know what happened.

Memento mori means “remember that you will die.” The phrase was traditionally used to remind the great that wealth, power, and victory are fleeting things — it was a phrase designed to encourage humility and gratitude in those who might be tempted by their success to forget that all things end.

Today, the phrase may also serve to remind us that we need to live lives worth living. There’s no do-over in life; no rewind; no reset.  This is it. Are you enjoying what you do? Are you leading a life that you’ll be able to leave without regret for things left undone or words left unsaid?

If your answer is no — why?

In the whirl of noise and activity that is so often part of the Western holiday season, it’s useful to take a quiet moment to contemplate death, at least long enough to ask yourself whether if you died now, you’d be able to die content, knowing that you had contributed something to the world. Have you been a good family member and friend? Have you made others happy? Have you contributed something of beauty to the world? Have you helped extend humanity’s knowledge of itself or the universe around it in some way?

It’s not about what you have; it’s about what you’ve done. Some of my friends’ and family’s parents are dying now, and I sincerely hope they are leaving a legacy of love that will offer some comfort to them and to their children when they pass.

Image from Thaneeya McArdle – Fine Art & Illustration.

Here’s a last little excerpt; as always, please keep in mind that it’s very rough, first-draft work:

Jay spun around and lunged forward, aiming low and holding his forearms braced over his head.

He rammed into the hips and groin of the man who’d opened the door, driving him backward and into the hallway.  Somebody swore and Jay threw himself to one side, kicking out. His heel hit something and he used it to push himself farther away, rolling over the floor and up to his feet.

Two men there, one he recognized from the autocarriage, one — the one on the ground — whom he’d never seen before.

He spun and ran off in the opposite direction.

A window, a window — he needed a window without bars, but all that lined the hallway were closed doors. The stairs he’d climbed up were behind him. He hoped this corridor wasn’t going to dead end; what kind of building would that be? There had to be another stairwell down at the other end of the wing.

He spun around a corner. Two men — he angled himself toward the wall and sprang up onto it, crouching low and running as fast as he can. Startled, both men jerked away in surprise as he ran across the wall and past them before kicking himself off and back to the floor again.

“Jay Whitsun!” one of them shouted. Jay faltered a second before catching himself.

It wasn’t Bishop’s voice or a member of his family’s, and he didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

“Stop!”

Not a chance. He careened left and spotted stairs. Perfect; the architect hadn’t let him down.

“Somebody — stop him!”

Up or down? Usually he preferred up — few men were willing to chase him onto the rooftops — but in a building with barred windows, he had no guarantee of finding easy access outside. On the other hand, down likely meant more guards and that damned glass-shard-covered wall again. But down meant doors, too.

He made up his mind and dashed down, only two see two large men running up with leather-wrapped clubs in their hands.  He jumped up onto the wooden handrailing and leaped foward over their heads, tucking his knees to his chest and allowing himself to spin once in midair before opening his eyes. Off — he braced — and landed, hard, dropping to one knee that slammed against the floor. He winced and stood. Pain in his hand, pain in his knee, pain in his ribs.

Then somebody tackled him from behind, arms wrapping around his midsection and throwing him forward. His injured knee gave out and he landed badly, hissing as he reached out to break his fall with his wounded hand and it slapped against the floor, leaving a smear of crimson from his blood-soaked bandages.  He started to squirm, but an expert arm wrapped around his neck and began applying pressure.  He struggled as his vision began to darken.

As always, my thanks to the good folks who put on National Novel Writing Month each year; it’s always inspiring to participate!

Jay abandoned his search and walked to the end of the row, turning to look up the next. Bishop was standing there, clutching his cane in one hand and his lamp in the other, not moving.  He looked up as Jay raised his lamp. His hair was a shock of white in the dim light; his expression, impossible to read. “You can’t close your heart for the rest of your life.”

At last Bishop moved, looking away from him, staring at the shelves as he started walking again.

“I can. I have. It works.”

“You’re ‘fine’?”

“Yes.” He stopped and set the lamp on the floor. “Here it is.”

Jay pursed his lips and walked forward, setting his lamp next to Bishop’s. The inspector was right. There it was — a series of thin, cheaply printed, paper-covered rosters of the Royal Society for Scientific Inquiry’s membership.

Jay turned his back on them and laid a hand over Bishop’s metal hand, safely wrapped around the head of his cane.

“Your hand is still shaking. You’re not ‘fine.’”

“As fine as a cripple can be.” This time Bishop started to move away, pulling his hand to one side. Jay wrapped his fingers around Bishop’s metal wrist, grabbed Bishop’s coat lapel with his other hand, and leaned forward to brush his lips against the inspector’s.

Bishop’s head jerked back in surprise. Jay saw a flash of fear in the other man’s expression.

“Stop calling yourself a cripple,” Jay said, firmly. “And stop trying to push me away. It won’t work. I’ll keep coming back.”

“I don’t want you.”

“You’re lying. We both know you’re lying.”

“What the hell is this insane obsession you have with me?” Bishop burst out. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Why not? You’re ethical, brave, kind, handsome —” Jay moved his hand from Bishop’s lapel to his mouth, gently covering the sputtered protest the inspector was making. “And stubborn, but not as stubborn as I am.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bishop declared, as soon as Jay moved his hand.  “I have absolutely no intention —”  His words were broken off by the clatter of his cane against the stone floor. They both looked down to see his metal hand clutching Jay’s sleeve.

“Hell,” Bishop breathed, staring at it with a look of betrayal.

Anyway, an excerpt. You know the “it’s all raw” drill by now, right?

Jay studied Bishop’s profile, seeing the small, pale scars that criss-crossed the left side of his face, the glimmer of silver where the inspector’s eye used to be.  It wasn’t that Bishop was a handsome man.  Striking, but not handsome.  Not the kind whose face would spark romantic interest in most other men … well, or women. Jay had found himself drawn in by Bishop’s intensity, at first, and then of course he couldn’t fail to have been touched by Bishop trying to save all those innocent people in the Haulyard Riots and nearly losing his life in the effort.  The inspector had a good heart, although he tried his best to hide it, and the more Jay got to know him, the more he wanted to touch that heart.

“Here —” Bishop turned, holding a piece of paper, and then froze.

Jay’s heart thudded as he realized the inspector had caught him staring. Their eyes locked for a second that seemed to stretch on forever.

Bishop broke their gaze first, dropping his eyes to look down at the sheet of paper in his mechanical hand. The paper began to rattle as his prosthesis jittered. He’d sketched something on the sheet, but the image didn’t interest Jay. What interested Jay was the slow crawl of red moving up the inspector’s cheeks.

He’d provoked that flush twice before, once inadvertently when he’d been changing his clothes in this room and once intentionally when he’d been teasing Bishop in the coffeehouse.

But he wasn’t doing anything now that might embarrass the Stoic-minded inspector. Nothing but look at him.

“Dammit,” Bishop breathed, grabbing the paper out of his shaking metal hand. He thrust the sheet forward, still avoiding Jay’s eyes. “Look at this. Do you recognize it?”

Oh. He was embarrassed by his malfunctioning hand. Well, that wasn’t quite what Jay was hoping for, but it was a problem easily solved.

“Just a minute.” Jay leaned forward and grabbed Bishop’s hand, wrapping his fingers around the cold metal.  “All right. Take a deep breath and relax.”

“It’s not —” The inspector broke off whatever he was about to say with a frustrated hiss.

“I think it’s caused by the temperature change.  Your hands seems to twitch more whenever you move indoors or outdoors.”  Jay wrapped both of his hands around Bishop’s prosthesis to warm it.  “I noticed it back in the autocab the other day, and in the coffeehouse earlier, and now.”

“It’s not the temperature,” Bishop said, his voice tight. “The damn thing’s just broken.”

“Well, warming it up seems to help,” Jay said, feeling the metal shudder one last time before it stopped moving between his palms. “See?”

“Whitsun….”

“It’s all right.” Jay leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees while he clasped Bishop’s hand. “I don’t mind. The metal should be room temperature in another minute or two.”

Bishop fell silent. Jay didn’t want to look at him, afraid that doing so would trigger the older man’s defenses again.

Besides, it was nice just to sit here in the lamplight, their knees nearly touching, and hold his hand.

He heard the inspector sigh. Then the sheet of paper was placed on the bed next to him. The inspector tapped it with the hand that wasn’t being held.

“The design. Have you ever seen it before?”

He didn’t think Whitsun would lie to him [...]; not with the bruises from Harold’s fingers still dark around his neck.  Every once in a while, when the textjacker turned just right, Bishop glimpsed a flash of bruised flesh beneath the starched white collar of Whitsun’s shirt. He wondered how bad it was.

His hand twitched again.

“What do you do when you’re not working?” Whitsun asked. Bishop dragged his thoughts away from the suspect places they’d started to wander.

“I’m never not working,” he said, reaching for his coffee cup again. Almost gone.  The thought of getting up and leaving this bright, warm spot to go back out into the cold and dark was almost too much to bear. He wondered if he could order a second cup without Whitsun misunderstanding.

“Oh, come on.” Whitsun played with his fork, gazing up at Bishop from under lowered eyelashes. Bishop averted his gaze. Did the man have no shame? “Do you go to concerts? Ride? Belong to a club?”

What did he do when he wasn’t working? Before the riots, he used to enjoy  his days off. He’d never been a very social man, but at least he’d been able to go out with colleagues for a drink without feeling like a freak. In the last two years, though…

“I read,” he said at last, knowing that it was the wrong answer to give to a man who worked in illegal publishing.

“What?”

“Licensed works.”

“All right, all right.” Whitsun smiled. “What kind of licensed works?”

“Cla —” Hell, no, that was not the right thing to say, not to this man.  But Whitsun was already grinning, his brown eyes dancing as though Bishop had made a joke.

“Not your kind of classics!” he sputtered. “Respectable classics, dammit. Wars. Philosophy. Rhetoric.”

“Not romance? Pathos, logos, and ethos, but never any eros?”

Bishop flushed, surprised the textjacker knew his Greek.  No, on second thought, maybe he wasn’t.  Dammit!  That bloody book of poetry. He needed to stand up and leave before Whitsun twisted him into knots.

“Let me guess; you like the Stoics,” Whitsun continued.  Bishop drew in a deep breath.

“Yes,” he bit off. “I do.”

“Got any idea how many there were?” Bishop asked, prodding with his walking stick at a lump of something jammed between the sewer wall and the access ladder. It fell with a wet splat onto the walkway.

“It would be easier if we could find some heads,” Officer Cross said, holding the lantern a little higher.  Bishop used the metal tip of the stick to dissect the mud. Grass, leaves — no flesh. He grunted and stepped over it, moving to the next ladder.

“Estimate?”

“At least two. We found what look like three forearms.”

“Bite marks?”

“Yes, but they might just be rat bites. They’re too small to be human.”

“Let’s hope.” He spotted a lump pressed against the base of the next ladder and poked at it. The last storm had flooded the sewerage system and swept out several of the body parts that had apparently been dumped down the pipes into the river itself, through the spillage grates.  A mudlark looking for valuables had found a dismembered leg and told her friends. None of them had thought to go to the police, but a passer-by, curious to know what the children were doing, had seen the body part and alerted the nearest constable.

When the first forearm had been found, not far away, Bishop had been notified.  The Werewolf Murders were his other impossible-to-solve case.

He assumed that he was given all the strangest cases because his prostheses made him the strangest-looking man in the office. Maybe his superiors thought that their own officially constructed monster would have some kind of special insight into the minds of all of the unofficial monsters who were running around the city.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have any special insight at all. Just a general sense of weariness and disgust at the extremes to which human behavior could reach.

At any rate, I needed to hit the ground running, because November is going to be a busy month, and I’m quite sure I’m going to fall behind later.

I posted this, written yesterday, as my novel excerpt on NaNoWriMo. Remember, it’s all raw, first-draft stuff; don’t be too critical….

“This is it,” Whitsun said with a shiver. He reached out toward the door handle and faltered, pulling his hand back again. “Do you want — do you want to go in first?”

Exasperated, Bishop jammed the handkerchief into his coat pocket and held out the umbrella.

“You’re soaking,” he said, as Whitsun’s fingers closed over the ivory handle. “Should have stood closer.” He forced himself to wait until the textjacker stepped to one side before reaching out and opening the door.

Not so bad, he thought, taking in the scene. The smell of vomit, blood, and excrement was pungent in the small room, but after an initial twitch of distaste, he ignored it. An oil lamp burned on a table, casting its unsteady yellow light over an older man’s sprawled corpse. Blood covered the man’s head and eyeless face and was smeared over the wooden floor, but it was the bizarre set of metal plates screwed into his skull that drew Bishop’s eyes.

He walked into the room and crouched by the body, reaching out with his flesh hand to touch the blood-speckled metal. Cold. He examined the arrangements of plates, noting the scar tissue around them. Not a new job, this one. Work over the ear — that was one of the dangerous spots, Bishop knew from his studies. Secrecy, greed, and destruction, if he remembered correctly. And a plate he’d come to recognize now, clamped down tightly to deform the top of the head, where benevolence was controlled. Whoever the phrengineer was, he didn’t want his victims feeling compassion and altruism.

Bishop expected that the phrengineer’s own head must be as deformed by nature as his victims’ were by mechanical means.

Whitsun had been lucky. If he’d hit his attacker over one of those plates, he’d never have won the fight.

“Who was he?” Bishop asked, standing and looking around the rest of the room.

“Harold. I don’t know what his last name was.” Whitsun’s voice was faint. Bishop turned and saw him standing in the doorway, knuckles white around the umbrella’s handle. Rain blew in around his legs. “He was a carter. I’ve known him for years.”

“He delivered Imprimatur’s books?” Bishop picked up several of the cheaply printed books around them and flipped through the pages. Pornographic texts, mostly, a number of them illustrated. Standard fare, he was secretly relieved to see. He set the books back down and prowled through the room. Harold hadn’t been a wealthy man, although he’d accumulated more books than most poor people were wont to do. A perk of working for an underground publisher, Bishop assumed. The collection was limited to smut, though. The cheapest and most useless of all ‘jacked texts.

“Do you make money on this?” he asked, gesturing to the books as he opened a battered metal trunk. Old clothes. He moved them around with his metal hand to make sure nothing was hidden beneath. “I assume you don’t give it all away.”

“No. We have expenses, and donations don’t cover them all.” Whitsun finally took a step inside, lowering the umbrella and closing the door against the storm. “Pornography always sells well.”

“And it doesn’t bother you, printing trash like this?”

“You sound like — like someone else I know.” Whitsun stared resolutely down at his feet. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s boring and repetitive, most of it, and not very well-written, but it doesn’t do any harm.”

“It’s sick and cultivates a disrespectful attitude toward women.”

“I don’t know,” the ‘jack countered. “I like reading pornography about men, and I don’t think it’s made me less respectful.”

Bishop gave a disbelieving laugh, closing the trunk’s lid.

“You don’t have an ounce of respect in your body, Whitsun. All I’ve ever seen out of you has been pranks and mockery. You seem to think life’s a joke.”

“I don’t think this is a joke,” the textjacker said, quietly.

Because it beats grading….