Saw things so much clearer...

This will not be one of your shinier, happier blog posts, so you might want to skip this one, six people who actually subscribe to this thing. Still, it's a weird and unique state I'm in, and insofar as this is the only form of journal I keep anymore, I believe it's important to record how I'm feeling right now.

At this very moment I should be packing. My family and I are leaving at 4 AM to catch a flight to upstate New York, where my dad is soon to die of cancer. It's weird to say that, stating it baldly as a fact like that. As though it was merely something you read in an encyclopedia, sanitized, no emotional freight attached whatsoever.

It's weird to be packing. Feels like I ought to be doing something more... spiritual. Metaphysical. But I'm putting stuff into a bag. Things I must remember, that I'm likely to forget: toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving gear, power cords for electronic widgets. (I'll be up there for some time, and will be working from there. Must bring all the parts of the laptop.) Clothes, of course, but only a week's worth. We'll do laundry and wear the same stuff each week.

I was thinking, as I laid all these items out, of my earliest memory of my father. I was perhaps five years old. We were living in our house on Spa Drive in Saratoga Springs. My dad had a bike, a big old blue Schwinn that must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds. I remember it had a horn button on the frame. We would go out riding, he and I, with me balancing on the frame, or maybe the handlebars. This one time, he took us down a slight grade -- I want to say a side road, or a logging road; my Texas brain says frontage road, but that's not possible. It had rained, and we took a spill. I bawled my head off, both of us were covered in mud. And I remember how he took his handkerchief and wiped the mud off my face.

When we found out in January that he had cancer, I knew that it was the end for him. His overall health has not been great these last few years, and I didn't think he had the fight in him to lick it. I made my peace with it then, with some difficulty. I haven't felt affected much by his recent downturn, because I believed I had come to terms with it.

I have always thought the place we crashed was over by Yaddo gardens, but I can't think of a spot that matches my (admittedly fragmented) mental image of it. It occurred to me that soon -- probably already; by all accounts my dad is not lucid -- I will no longer be able to ask him. All of a sudden, I was overcome with a profound sadness. Stupid grief. It won't fight you like a man, gotta be sneaking up when you're not looking.

Then I wrote this down, and I felt a little better about it.

I'm not the first person to say this, but if there's any good to come from a person leaving this life, it is to remind us to cherish the people we hold dear, and make sure they know how we feel about them every day. In all too short a while, one of you will be gone.

Classic Aidan

So I'm lying on the couch just now, watching a show. My son Aidan comes over and climbs under the blanket I'm using.

Me: No, go away. If I wanted a small boy I would have come and got one.
Aidan: Well, you had to help Mommy make me, so you're stuck with me.
Me: You don't even know what you're talking about.
Aidan: I really don't. I don't have a clue.

For Todd Bailey

Whose blog usually supplies me with the best Flash games, here I am returning the favor:

Effing Hail.

Also appropriate to the weather today, which has been rattling my windows and chasing the dog under my desk all morning. From Warren Ellis, of all people. (Warning: if you don't know who Warren Ellis is, beware that his blog is often not so much Not Safe For Work as it is Not Safe For Any Humans, Anywhere.)

Feed the Beast

It's late, and I'm quite tired, but I decided (in the car on the way home from gaming, if you must know) that I must blog. And then I had a thought, very clearly: "have to feed the beast."

I found that supremely interesting. I know a lot of writers have this mental image of a small voice inside them that tells them stories. Laura Mixon even talks to hers; she had a name for it at VP, but darned if I can remember what she called it.¹

Suddenly I realized, nothing small about my inner voice. My inner voice is a snarling, slavering thing that wants nothing more than to slip its chain and tear some shit up.

So I write to feed the beast. Which made me think, hmm, if writing is feeding the beast, what does it eat?

Whitespace.


¹ Just remembered: she called it "her beast." Dumbass.

Happy Valentine's Day!

If you're into that sort of thing. Likewise, if you're so inclined, happy belated Darwin Day and 1234567890 Day.

In writing news, got a really nice bit of feedback on "Road" from one of my fellow VPers who won't be participating in the Skype discussion (tomorrow! yikes!). She liked it a lot, and gave me some very specific things that tripped her up, which will go into the "fit and finish" pass I do after the Skype call. Unless my other fellow VPers find something critically amiss which necessitates taking the piece apart and then gluing it back together.

1700 words last night, late, on a new short tentatively called "Chain-driven." (Which, if you happen to live in Austin and are aware of a certain slice of society, you might recognize as a sly wink to a local landmark.) This one seems like it might end up being crazy but fun.

Oh, and "Lost Luggage?" I pulled it up after the second draft of "Road" was done and discovered I had already rewritten it. The ending isn't what I want it to be; I'll probably get it critiqued and rework it. It's not my best piece ever, but it has what I think is a truly original central conceit, and I should be able to make it sales-worthy. And hey, at something like 2500 words, it's in a rare phylum: a complete story by me under 50 pages!

Finally, I have decided to go ahead and hold onto "Nayda" until Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day (April 23), when I may be able to get some linkage via my VP instructors who participate.