wildcat

Well, the good news is that "My Father is an Invisible Voter" is right there in the middle of the acceptable word count for the CBC's literary contest, so I don't need to go through and prune it to get the length right; all editing will be done purely for the art of the thing. I'm a little uncomfortable with the delineation between "fiction" and "creative non-fiction" with this one, though, which is the bad news, because I need to put that anxiety to bed before I can submit the thing. And: the use of racist terminology, while important to the text, makes me a little uncomfortable with it. Which is a good thing - there's got to be a discomfort attached to that - and a frustrating one. The story takes place during a specific time period where attitudes were different and it's setting. But maybe I'm just being lily-livered about submitting something to the CBC with the cussing and the words.

I should get some iron inserted into my spine and just do it already. This is about the story, and not about the politics, although there's always politics, and the story has politics in it, and the story has politics around it, and I have politics, and that guy over there has politics, and Joy has politics, and Samara has politics and possibly this wall, which has never spoken out for anything, really, has politics. Well, the wall may be an oppressed mass, I really can't be sure because this wall has been silenced by its oppression.

I'm more concerned about whether or not I should keep the epigraph in at the beginning. It's the opening to a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem. Are epigaphs still cool? Are they done? Again, it's supposed to add a layer of meaning to the story in terms of structure but I can not be sure that it is successful. But whether or not I win some prize should reveal that. I believe one of the judges this year is Eden Robinson. In fact, I should win this award just so that Christian has a mild heart attack about Eden Robinson reading one of my stories. Well, I'll be having a heart attack because Eden Robinson read one of my stories

You know, if anyone was to have a problem with my use of racist terminology in the story it might very well be Eden Robinson, but of course there's a context and she's a very intelligent woman. I think my existential crisis over this has a few miles to go before it rests.

Meanwhile, outside the Margaret Atwood Boarding House, two men are screaming at each other somewhere nearby, probably the front yard next door, somewhere else, about money. Actually, it sounds like a deleted scene from The Big Leibowski, it sounds like it belongs in a scene with "Where the fucking money, Leibowski?" And a gun held tilted. It's peculiar to be sitting there, doing one's business in the water closet with hollering and screaming going on outside, drifting in through the open window. It's a peculiar day, or week, and people I care about are unhappy and other people I need to phone because I haven't spoken to them lately and I wish I had some ice cream but I don't.