wildcat

Well, the weather's certainly gotten more Wuthering Heights on me. Damnable Brontës!

Got a reassuring amount of work done so far, and the midterm wasn't that bad - short, I was the first one done as usual and I made sure to leave without that unpleasant dead taste under my tongue, the one we like to called The Bastard Doubt. Meandered with Sara for a while, we ate chocolate and raged against the dying of the light or the writing department or that slow drizzle of emotion left in our heads. We don't have enough anymore to even panic about getting things done. I've hit this sickening zen anxiety, the gentle rhythm of my nervous stomach doing yoga.

Tonight, I'm going to go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow with Michael. I look forward to it - I've heard enough positive reviews to relax, lie back, and think of pulp novels.

Making headway with Life of Pi, I can finish it in a few days at this rate. Then I'll get started on Antonement, which I'm looking forward to. After that I'm going to read a collection of short pulp horror fiction to clean out my head a bit. Clean clean clean. But that won't be for another month or so.

Going to go read and critique David's story for workshop on Wednesday. If I get that done with enough time to spare, I think I'll work on my short story and breath for a minute. Without doing anything else.

I had caesar salad and a salmon burger at the Grad Lounge while I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. I have to give the presentation on Thursday which means I have to prepare, so I read the chapter on the semicolon - my subject - and now I'm going to do the power point slides for the speech. Am I truly of the Geek in presenting on a piece of punctuation? Probably, but we know my obsession with language. Last night, I thought about the fun fact that comic books from the thirties onto the seventies and eighties ended almost every piece of dialogue with an exclamation point ("!") because the printing process was so unreliable that if you used a period instead - it might completely disappear.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was really, really funny. Angelina Jolie was quite good in it, which probably means the end of the world, and Jude Law got to deliver some good lines. I also liked that both Sky Captain and Polly Perkins traded off on being incompetent, and that romantic relationship was actually backstory and gave the film the chance to look into the depth of it rather than a more traditional hollywood "will they/won't they" thing. It was a lot of fun. Plus, Giovanni Ribisi's character was utterly in love with Sky Captain (but who wouldn't be?).

Had lunch by myself, ran into Michael and menaced him with my awful garlic breath, stopped off to talk to Samara for a while on my way here. Samara's been working on a poem about us about guerrilla poetry. It feels me with desire. If only I had time to be more of a poet this semester. Instead, I have to encode it into my short stories.

I'm start the speech stuff in a minute. I already know what points I need to make, the joke I want to use (more like an analogy about how the semicolon works). I just need to write it up into coherent notes and make the cue cards. After that I need to be a good boy and do some other Technical Writing. Then I'll write a scene for the Tedford story. Things are going well.

Which is a bit weird because of the omnious doom south of the border. I think that's why I ended up listening to The Virgin Suicides soundtrack, that odd sensation of impending doom the works its way into the joints in your toes. I keep flexing my toes to make sure everything's operating as expected.

Operating as expected? I feel like such a robot tonight. I feel like a human brain implanted into a robot body, which probably means I'm going to have to read Doom Patrol soon to relish that postmodern conditition. I feel oddly inspired about things for Tedford to do. The kinds of games he plays with the other boys, and what June will say to him at some point. I like June, she's a tragic martyr character I'm writing, and I want to start adding depth to her - even though it's a first person story.

Oi, punks. The word is pirates, the word is little boys playing pirates in the story. I need to write the scene and think about who Alexei is as a character - child of Russian immigrant parents, fluent in English but some sort of Old World Charisma might be appropriate. How he feels about June. It can be a lot of fun to work through characters and scenes, and I think the thing with Tedford is that I need another character to bounce him off of, other than June and his mother. Or June's mother. Another male character. His father's gone off for some reason, he's not in the picture, and I think I know why but I want to keep that subtext because otherwise it'll get too much into the male/female dynamic of his parents affecting how he views June; I want it to be an independent issue.

June develops as a character. I find her fascinating because she strikes me a bit as this eight-year-old Shakespearean heroine, tragically in love. But this is a comedy, so it won't end with her death. I don't know. Maybe she and Tedford are forced into some kind of a nine-year-old pseudo-marriage, him trapped with her forever. Which makes me sad. I seem to be relating to my characters more this year and want them to achieve some kind of happiness, even as the more vicious and destructive side of my personality drives me to destroy all their peace and hope. Must my every narrative be an unstoppable engine of destruction? Don't these people have emotions I should be aware of?

Booked time off work tonight so that I could get things done. My three priorities are the third short story, preparing for the presentation tomorrow, and the group assignment for Technical Writing. Really, I want to focus on the story; I have a good beginning to a scene with Alexei, and I know how I want the story to end - which is always the best part, that moment where I figure out where the story's going.

While we argued over the timeline in a story today, seagulls screamed outside. It felt too much like that scene in Citizen Kane where Kane and Susan argue and a woman screams in the background. And then a cookbook fell out of the sky (the top of the shelf) and landed on my head (on the ground behind me) while someone's story was being introduced. The title? "Smell that Bread."

Otherwise, things seem standoffish in my head. That robotic sensation at the back of my skull clicks away. Time moves forward (or is it backwards? Or is it sideways) to my birthday party, and then my birthday, and being twenty-four. Will it be as good? Probably. I feel trapped in a perpetual Now, the scenery and happenings shift around me like bumper cars - and there I am in the middle, not moving a foot.

In other news, a whole stack of comics. I think the hot pick for the week is Rick Veitch's The Question, with art by Tommy Lee Edwards. The book is simply amazing, and is a clear example of something Christian was talking about maybe a week ago, the whole comic books as hyper-compressed poetry. This first issue makes me chomp at the bit to get into Tim Lillburn's poetry workshop next semester. Counting down the days.

How do I explain it? The art is so messy and halfway between cartoon and photo-realism or straight photograph, the words swim in oceans of white space masquerading as speech balloons (or thought balloons). There is a complicated poetry to how the Question goes about solving a mystery by listening to its heartbeat or its rhythm like other writers talk about listening to the city.

Whole pages where we see everything from Vic Sage's perspective, the secret identity, without even seeing Sage's face. Which is thematic because the Question's mask is blank and makes him look faceless. Edwards does something interesting to make you have a faint impression of Sage's face underneath. It felt - crystalline. I breathed out a lot while I read through it on the bus with Underworld beating down the doors to my eardrums. The story is cut up in time and space and we get a good idea of who Sage is and who the Question might be, a play on the reasons for the blank mask and the lure of anonymity.

Delight. I'm going to go work on the story now.

The lightbulb has burnt out, I feel terrible, I didn't sleep much at all. But I had human contact yesterday, which felt good. It felt good to give up and do something else away from the house for hours and hours. You know. Instead of all the piling up of hideous things that I need to do.

And now I go, I go, I go into Tedfordland. There's a second story lodged in my brain like a wad of crap telepathically dumped into my head, it festers and uncoils itself but it isn't nearly ready enough to be pursued. Give it some time to age like cheese or wine. Or both. Going to unzip my birthproof safetysuit and unfurl the quantum keyboard---

I've got on Dimitri from Paris and I'm trying to channel the words out of my head. Tedfordland. Tedfordland. I'm going to go eat Chinese food reheated in the microwave and try to remember what the back of my hands look like. Trauma is sexy. It feels like a Sunday.

A sketchy Sunday.

At some point, Tedford's story started to kick into gear and at another point his mother got really creepy. I like her because she has a hint of all this other stuff going on in her life that Tedford wouldn't be privy too, and the wildly neurotic flair to her behaviour makes me smile because it's so off. I like that, I think, even though the story's so imperfect that it hurts; but this is the point of mindless revisions, you squeeze the story and rework things until the shit drips out and the good stuff is left and filled out.

I like working with a retrospective narrator. I think the voice needs to be perfected more, I need to emphasize - perhaps - more of an idea about where the narrator is now, even if there's only bits and pieces to indicate it. In Short Fiction Techniques we looked at Richard Ford's "Calling," which does something similar - we get a sense that Ford's narrator is a lawyer in the present, there's a certain set to his language that implies this without it being overtly stated (from what I can recall).

So Tedford is developing and so is his mother. Alexei and June need to develop more, and I could do more with the schoolteacher (perhaps).

Make the bed, go downstairs, turn on the T.V. in time for Teen Titans to start. Clean the kitchen, scrubbing all the surfaces and the oven door's railing, underneath the toaster. Clean out the microwave, which is still gross and brown from Michelle's exploded popcorn disaster.

Then, go for a walk to the store where one size fits all for two bottles of gin, a case of fag-pop (low carb fag-pop) and maybe a bottle of wine. Not just for me, and not all for tonight. Take the bus back because it looks miserable out.

Get ready for a party. Start up the band. Throw open the doors and welcome the Empire of the Senseless!

Going to go write some of Tedford's story - which still hasn't got a reasonable working title, so it'll probably just be called "Tedford" or something. I've been to the liquor store and Thrifty's, and I want to get some words written before the festivities begin.

Except that I have the first issue of JLA: Classified which I could obsessively read, with the gleeful inclusion of Super-Gorilla Grodd and Batman! But not the regular "urban legend" / vicious vigilante with head problems Batman. No, they've delved into Batman of the Fifties with his Sci-Fi Closet and a Flying Batsaucer. It's goofy and bright and colourful! He's working alongside the Squire, who is the female British equivalent of Robin and works with the British Faux-Batman called the Knight! They're hiding out on Pluto with a bunch of Justice League Android Duplicates.

One of the upshots of last night was the informal beginning of the Typewriter Gang - a stalwart band of writerpoetpeoples who will roam the streets, or campus, or our houses with clunky typewriters in hand, or dragged behind us by tough strings that end in knots around our thumbs. This decision certainly made me feel more alive, especially when paired with a hookah (which is really a kind of typewriter, only the typed out characters are taken internally and then the paper comes out as smoke from your nose). We were given names and the whole thing felt like this subsidiary to the Green Street Movement or the Axis of Evil. I want to purchase myself a clunky typewriter post-haste, and become slovenly and prone to fits of madness.

Oh. Wait. Already am.

Party last night, one of those goofy gongshows that started out slow - which is always really funny, because everyone seems shocked that we don't start off shockingly drunk and causing scenes. Rumours were dispelled, the gin was consumed, the hookah was a source of animated discussion (movies! books! fabulous lifestyles!). I have to say it was a great time and I'm glad everybody who came, did. It gave me a chance to hang out with people like Caroline and Gloriee in a more relaxed setting, and the party itself was halfway between an intimate get-together and a big-ass drunk house party. It was comfortable.

Presents! John & Christian got me a faux-Boarding school notebook. Gloriee brought a Superman notebook (I'll be using it for class) and a bottle of this Quail's Gate white wine. A Riesling, I'm keeping it for a special occasion. Samara brought me beautiful orchids. A lot of really cool cards showed up from Joy & Matt, Brendan & Paton, and John & Christian. And Michael? He got me the wicked-ass director's cut DVDs for Hellboy, which includes this silly booklet with Lemurian text and illustrations by Mignola. I'll veg out the first chance I get with it.

So thank you everybody who showed! It was a vastly good deal. And tomorrow's my actual birthday...

I'm stuck in the middle of a scene where Tedford and June discuss their dreams. The voice started to come back stronger, but there's something tangible that's missing from the scene. I don't know, maybe it's just the result of writing short scenes after the monolithic scenes from The Mushroom Cloud Called Sadie Valentino. I think I need to find some kind of a visual to meditate on for both the kids, something to give me a better physical sense of them. I know people are going to comment - as things stand - on how little we get to "see" Tedford, but there's a certain difficulty transmitting that kind of information in a first person narrator without resorting to the mirror trick.

That said, I'm nearly at three thousand words. I quite like how the second scene with his mother turned out - I think I like that she has no name, that's she's just Tedford's mother. I want to hint at a life outside the house but merely the glimmers he would have gotten. I've also completely avoided the Italics Monster for the first time - it feels great. The emphasis of the words has to lie in the line itself rather than artificial visual clues (well, artificial FONT clues -- you can make arguments about the nature of punctuation).

Yeserday, Daniel helped Michael make a really delicious, gorgeous work of art cake. Seriously. Four kinds of chocolate. I forgot to make a point of it in my last post, but the masterpiece was spectacular, and I am again amazed and shocked by my boyfriend. He's so talented and skilled and artistic. There were these fabulous razorblade chocolate sculpture formations on top. I felt like it was a Dada cake. It reminded me of some of the glass sculptures at the Starfish Gallery on Yates Street. It was also ridiculously rich.

Let's wrap ourselves in coats stitched together out of 
poems, each one unscrupulous and compelling! Let's rush
unencumbered by Sadist Potty Mouths through collapsing 
Marxist Alleyways, our broken-down

	Studebakers left

	to dissolve

	and rot

into words
into rhythms
into forgotten
	ice cream flavours.  O, to taste a scoop:
	banana-oregano or toenail-peach!

Our typewriters still clack!

Our carcasses still move, as if to say,
"We are bastards, too."

Our beat generations still generate, long-dead and
slump-cunted; limp-cocked but still with sparks;
hidden away under our coats like androgynous friends.

Who can say what we must do now?
Adopt imported tongues that gash our throats with song?
Does anybody know Polish? Does anybody know Urdu,
Underfoot Children?

Jitter, stomp, careen, and laugh:

Up with the Axis of Evil!
Up with the Mad Typewriter Gang!
Up with People!
Up with our brains as we wheeze
		and nerves fire-fire-fire!

		Pop!

(c) 2004 Ben Rawluk all rights reserved.

You know, considering how many people complain about the rudeness of young people, you'd think someone would at least make note of the abiding rudeness of middle-aged people. Yes, fine, you've made it into your Forties and Fifties and you feel secure in your lifestyle. Yes, you have problems too. And yes, maybe you make more money than the guy working at the fish counter in Thrifty's, which you no doubt take secret pleasure in. You've worked hard, I'm sure, to get where you are. But there is no excuse to be rude and condescending to someone just because they work at a supermarket (or anywhere). Pay attention when they ask questions of you about what you'd like. Don't sit there and complain about how none of the salmon fillets are thin enough and blatantly ignore the man while he shows you options. Don't sit there and lord yourself over him because you have some gaudy, "designer" coat that probably cost too much money. He's probably been on his feet all day and has a lot of people lining up behind you (because you think you're the only one in the world). He has problems of his own. Age does not bring with it an excuse to ignore social expectations. Be polite.

Michelle gave me a copy of Beyond the Limits by Ranulph Fiennes, which details his life as an explorer and examines the adventures that he's been on. With colour photographs. I'm looking forward to reading it. Ian McEwan's Atonement is going well, it's done something the other books this semester haven't - consistently held my interest. Strong narrative voice and an interesting style hold me to it.

Last night: dinner at Hime Sushi with Michelle, Christian, Michael, and Michael's Uncle Ron; afterward, we went for drinks at Syn. The commentary was fast and vicious as we tore apart Syn's lackluster offerings. Michelle ordered a cranbery long island ice tea - which sounds like a great idea - but it ended up tasting like Clamato because the idiot bartender decided to use the same shaker twice without washing it. Mine tasted like Kool-Aid rather than Raspberry Stoli. Doesn't make sense. The waitress was good, though, very attentive and replaced Michelle's drink with a fresh one very fast, so it wasn't hideous. They've only been open for a few weeks, so we'll give them some time. Afterward I went home with Michael and he took care of me and my sore throat. He listened to me have a meltdown about all the issues and madnesses going on in my life right now. I feel better for having expressed my frustrations and hearing him talk about his. I remarked to Christian today that everybody's going crazy right now and something needs to change for everyone. I suggest massive electromagnetic changes to tweak our temporal lobes, but as if that's going to happen anytime soon--

Tonight's agenda: finish up the last two Elitia segments as best I can and send them off. See if maybe they can't be bothered to give me some feedback so that I can make any changes and revisions that they need. I'm also going to finish the Tedford story's first draft so that it can be photocopied and distributed to the workshop next week.

It's past midnight and I'm going to bed. I haven't gotten enough done tonight but that's no surprise, I've hit that point in the semester where all I want to do is everything else; even the short story that I am enjoying while I write it - well. You feel like stalling. You feel like pushing against the inevitable grain, the current, the unbearable stalking horse sensation of time ticking down. Oh, I'm sorry, I seem to have unexpectedly switched into second person from first person. I'm sure people are getting antsy.

That said, it's all right. I'm not sure how much of Tedford I'm going to get done tomorrow, because sure I don't have class but I have work tomorrow night and I have to pack for Seattle. But the story's at the point where I could just go right in and finish it if I could get that final brainwave that tells me what to write, what the characters want to say in the end. But it's hard to know what the last sentence is until you get there.

I posted a poem the other day and felt better for the process of writing it and rewriting it. It felt good - felt sexy - to play with the lines and push them around on the page until the white space and the text - the negative and positive spaces - worked together to make something hot. I walked away capable of writing a couple scenes for the story because I felt energized for a change instead of the slow burn out I've been harbouring in my gut lately. I noticed that the trend - the rant poetry that feels good when it comes out, even when it comes out badly or it trickles out like piss from a burning dick (what?). I don't know. This feels like one of those self-indulgent entries and maybe you best all ignore it, you know? But I've got to do something and this feels like a good thing and then who knows. Maybe I'll sack out and maybe catch some zeds and maybe just stare at the darkened ceiling until I want to pull my teeth out with my toes. Or maybe there's enough heat in my fingers to get the story going, pull something out of there and put it down in the story and make Tedford and June talk to me. Something.

I have a lot to do tomorrow. Hope I can get it up.

I've taken Tylenol, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, and Echinacea. I'm drinking water. I was something not unlike a mess today with the weak social skills and the inability not to breed anxiety out of everything. But I got to see Michael and we figured out what's involved in taking the Clipper and bitched at length about the fucked-up nature of people hiring us to write copy or do web design without specifying key elements. And we ate sushi and Michael had ice cream, and he bought some socks. I suppose I was sour, but that's mostly just the emotional wasteland in my head. He asked if I was depressed and I suppose I am, which isn't a big surprise, but it isn't life-changing depression. It's just the mid-November blahs, and can be cured by saying shut the fuck up to other responsibilities and getting some quality time with my boyfriend, yo, and some focus on my actual writing - rather than technical bull, or copy.

So tomorrow is our trip to Seattle. I'm excited, now that my head clears up a bit and I can think straight. I know what clothes I want to take with. I'm going to take Atonement and a draft copy of "Orange Ballerina Socks" with me - I figure I can do some work on the draft on the boat, because that's not really work if I'm not worrying about everything else while I do it. That's just writing, and even at my most compulsive, even at my weirdest, that's just part of who I am and doing it doesn't kill me that much. It feels closer to living. We talked about where we're going to go and what we're going to look at; there's a giant bookstore Michael spoke of, he couldn't remember the name. I wonder if I can find cool books in it, like more Kathy Acker or Jeanette Winterson's Boating for Beginners. Or poetry. Or, you know, books in general. I can't go buying more of them. Maybe a graphic novel will say something to me other than "Hi."

I'm more excited about this big market we're going to, or the University of Washington campus. Big things with people in them for us to look at. I want us to try a different kind of cuisine - as long as it isn't fusion, because fusion is for rich people and is therefore never in any large amount that might satisfy - because I always enjoy the chance to broaden my culinary range. And I'm going to bring the digital camera to play with because there's this whole new urban environment to wander around in. Cities and the slow destruction of nature, just waiting to be caught in pixels. Whee!

I just had two bagels with lox cream cheese, the last piece of the Dada Cake, and watched the Hellboy Director's Cut. There were some deleted scenes, but I'll save those for later. I'm smack dab in the middle of lin edits and some tweaking to my short story, so that I can submit it for workshop on Wednesday. I'm trying to something with the retrospective narrator to imply his current life and physical position, but I'm not sure how well it's working. I'm going through and adding things while I fix up mistakes and reword things.

Seattle was a scene. It felt really good to get away from the responsibilities of Victoria and my life here, and to have some quality time with Michael. I'm afraid I drowned him in my neuroses, though. We had a variety of cuisine - Indian (at this place called "the Jewel of India," on 45th Street), Thai-Moroccan (which doesn't make sense, odd combination, at the Pike Place Market), and Japanese (again, odd, on Broadway, with mayonnaise in the sushi and fortune cookies at the end). I forget how much I love sashimi; it's a gorgeous way to break the monotony of rolls and nigiri. At the market I had a Vegetable Panang which was excellent, by that point I was in the mood for mild because the spicy Indian food the night before left both of us with the essence du methane.

It was in a lot of ways a culture shock. Seattle feels like some kind of other world - but rather than a completely alien planet, it was more like a parallel universe where everything is backwards or evil. Pagliacci's was a pizza joint. I kept expecting to see Spock walk in with a beard. The atmosphere felt tense and dark and different, there was a definite lack of public displays of affection - we were just never comfortable - and there were people in our hotel with confederate flags on their hats and plans to go hunting. What? The social climate and ambiance of the place felt invasive and while I was interesting to explore I definitely didn't feel comfortable there.

But we did some other cool things: at the market, there's a wicked Bohemian bookstore called Left Hand Books which was like a pocket of normal space inside the parallel universe, a narrow three-storey bookstore that extended up like a column, every wall made out of books. It had sections on Gender Politics, Animal Politics, and Dada & Surrealism. There was another bookstore with cats. A trip to a very busy comic book store and another one that was very, very confined. A wind-up toy store. I walked away with too much money spent: books by Gertrude Stein, André Breton, Martin Amis, and Kathy Acker. A pair of graphic novels. Too many toys, including an Edgar Allan Poe action figure. I bought my mum a carved wooden box from a Moroccon store, where Michael studiously avoiding asking about the hookah in the window.

There was a typewriter. It was glorious, but it had no case. It was at Twice Told Tales and there was no price either, and we couldn't lug that thing around. But the Typewriter Spirit in my head longed to get out and relax in its keys.

Interesting. I've always disliked my middle name because it wasn't spelled "Alan," and it wasn't "Allen" (like Woody). But it's the same as Edgar's. Cool. New spin.

Went to the Art Museum, looked at a big exhibit on Spain between 1492 and 1718, including a painting by Tiepolo. I had to do a paper on him for art history in first year. There were other floors, and I got to see several Andy Warhol silkscreens up close, a Roy Lichtenstein, amongst others. I was exhausted, but my spirit gobbled things up. Michael limped around with a bad knee after a fall on the boat, but it was looking better this morning before we left the hotel to come home. I'm amazed he put up with some of my more anxious moments, but somehow he walked away with more books than me (including a Dali retrospective, a consolation prize after I snatched up the Gertrude Stein How to Write book).

The trip back took to long and we had to get up too early, but I got home by noon and then went over to Joy and Matt's house to watch Kids in the Hall and drink cocktails. After that, a session at Second Storey where that same strange guy working on a novel was, peering at us at usual. I always feel like he's watching me out of the corner of his eye (or outright staring). But you know me - desperate to feel important.

Boxing is referred to as the "sweet science."

I want to write a story about a glass-eyed man.

Henry Ford purchased the chair that Abe Lincoln was killed in.

There hasn't been a new Friday Physique this week.

Gertrude Stein: "A sentence is made by coupling meanwhile ride around to be a couple there makes grateful dubeity named atlas coin in a loan." (From How to Write) What does that mean? I guess that the sentence is the currency of writing, and also its atlas (map of the world) and Atlas (holding the writing up and in one piece). Prose is built out of sentences and each one should carry the whole thing. I think that needs to be what I focus on in "Orange Ballerina Socks." What's each sentence doing for the overall piece? And the sentence is made up of coupled meanwhiles - simultaneous events or ideas that you need to hold together in your head to create meaning. Does that mean that every sentence is a paradox? Probably not, but it's an interesting idea and I'm completely off-base pulling it out of there, no?

Don't know what "dubeity" is, actually. Hold on. It looks like she sidewayspelled "dubiety," which means doubt. "Grateful" doubt? Aha, we're getting somewhere. A sentence is made by joining (note "coupling" - reminds me of the semicolon as sex metaphor) conflicting, simultaneous events or ideas that create some kind of happy doubt (or perhaps any emotional response) which furthers the goal of the entire piece. Yes? Every fragment is important.

How does one present "pillow talk" tone in a narrative voice?

Stein, How to Write: "Successions of words are so agreeable." Lifted from her section on grammar. I agree. I find it interesting that she has a section on grammar when Stein pretty much ignored the comma altogether - worse than the dash, worse than the semicolon, her thoughts are a single ultra-thought, broken up only be sentence breaks. Every sentence is a complete unit, even more so than "ordinary" sentences with pauses inside. Thoughts are not leapt upon like rabid dogs or Robert Bly's "leaping metaphors" - just strung together like pearls or kegel beads.

Why is it that I always miss proofreading mistakes? Even on "final" (ha) drafts. Something Lorna said about the miles to go before you sleep with your line
edits. Wait, that came out wrong.

Pilfered from Joy for the glass-eyed man story: balancing your glass eye on your tongue to incite the shrieks of small children. Grimms' tales. The Man & His Magic Eye. Odin sacrificed one eye for wisdom.

Sad that I didn't ever do anything with my weird sense of smell story, with the Unscented Man as an assassin visible on the particulate landscape only by his lack of divested particles. No dead skin for him. Somebody else wrote a novel ("Perfume" -- ?) with something similar, right down to the murderous main character with no personal smell of his own.

Time to get out the tinfoil hats?

Stein, How to Write, still in the "Arthur A Grammar" chapter: "They must like it in order to be pleased." Two ways of reading that sentence, depending where you put the invisible comma in your head. After "like it," and it's a koan-like statement about the pleasures of a sentence's rhythm. After "order," and it's got to be in order, i.e. following a grammatical structure of some kind (even Stein's brain strain). I feel like I'm communicating with the dead when I read Stein, and everything is loose portents and dream-logic-riddled (bullet holes and puzzles).

Margaret Atwood may be required by Canadian law to keep putting out books about why and how we write, because apparently there's another one out.

Following my completion of the draft for "Orange Ballerina Socks," I have to pump out ten to fifteen pages of first chapter for Meringue's novel. While the sections which are Meringue's private memoirs are definitely excerpted from If Life Gives you Lemons, Make a Meringue!, I don't know what the book itself will be called.

Meringue as a child, the boy-beauty Renaldo. As an infant, almost devoid of face, personality, and essence. Drives his uncle Luis mad. The importance of make-up is highlighted. Brothel scene important? I need a prostitute's name. Found of Selene, Greek or French. In Barcelona.

They have outlawed bullfighting in Barcelona.

"I'll turn into a hydrogen bomb and atomize the air." - Magnetic Fields. The idea of my molecules being deconstructed on the pico-scale doesn't terrify me nearly as much as biological weaponry. I think I like Twelve Monkeys in part because it genuinely fucked my head up with fear. And the faint references to Slaughterhouse Five.

At the Seattle Art Museum, I got to see one of the tamer images made by Gilbert & George. They're an odd pair, the homosexual as performance artist. Was first exposed to them through Grant Morrison's The Filth, where their images were used as Man Green/Man Yellow -- interrogators or something for the Hand.

Homework accomplished so far this morning: I folded my brochure on the semicolon.

Homework left for the rest of the day: Gathering and re-reading the section in the course pack on the informal report. Writing the recommendations section of my group's formal report. Maybe working on Meringue's first chapter, or critiquing one of the short stories for Wednesday. Atonement.

Brunch.

I need to put socks on, but occasionally I dislike that sensation of having something rough like sock-cotton against my soles, against my toes. Toes feel stuck together and then you have to pull them apart as if to stretch them out to their entire length (which is considerable) but you can't do that with socks on. Socks are like gelatin or a membrane that stretches over your toes and makes them become a singular entity. Knee socks are the worst, always scumbling their way down to your ankles. Like panties when you're on the run.

Everybody do something unreal today. Run somewhere on your head. Use a gas-powered radio to talk to the deceased. Visit a graveyard and read the headstones like a novel.

Grant Morrison, JLA: Classified #1. Batman, regarding the Justice League's whereabouts: "They got lost saving somebody else's universe. Typical. Did my flying saucer arrive from the factory?"

I think this Technical Writing group assignment is just there to hammer appropriate, "couth" design and readibility sense into us.

Stein, How to Write: "What is a verb a conjunction a preposition and a dependent clause and a place for an adverb and adverb is one word but an adjective is not for it is an interjection which they count." Actually, most of the time it feels like Gertrude just takes the piss withe everything, and this is one case. It's a question that ends in a period, and "adverb" is one word, while "an adjective" is two words. In some ways, though, you could also take the idea that an adjective is an interjection to actually mean that it's an interjecting detail - you could perform the sentence without it, but the adjective fleshes something (a noun) out. Stein is comedy writing, "This is a sentence." "How do you do is a sentence." The circular logic frustrates me at times but at other moments you just let yourself go to the Dada. Sound is key, and I don't think How to write is Dada so much as surrealism, because the sentences all have meaning (higher meaning) if you shut off your logical bits and listen to the sound. Associations flourish. If you go in for the Dadaist explanation - well - there is none. There's no point to the book then, because Dada is about Nihilism and the meaninglessness of art. While I think she played with that in other works-- Shit. I suppose this is a Dada book because it annihilates the whole point of having a book about how to write.

Proximity to Meringue has a child (at least) brings nothing but death and madness to those around her. Renaldo's mother dies in childbirth, and her cousin delivers the baby and then goes mad - he loses his literacy for good. Renaldo's uncle Luis saves him from death and is turned out of the La Mancha family as a result, left to beg on the streets until forced to give the baby up before he gives into the animalistic urges of cannibalism and self-mutilation. I'd forgotten how, for all the comedy inherent in Esque, there's that sharp edge of gallows humour and debased humanity at the core of it, especially in the case of Meringue and Mineauge.

Renaldo hasn't reached the whorehouse yet, but I can't wait to see what happens.

Matthew and I once discussed a scenario where Mineauge won an award: she massacres everyone in the audience and runs outside with the award under her Gucci dress, where Meringue is waiting in the getaway car. Mineauge only seems like the more composed of the two.

Did you hear about Dorothy and Sullivan at the Holsteins' last party? The comment wasn't even rude - it was something like, "Hello, Dorothy," nothing to do with that fire in the apartment or what happened to his array of ornamental Asian ash trays. Well, I'll tell you, her fist drove itself right into his nose and left gashes from her six gold rings (two on the middle finger) - gifts from rejected suitors. Sullivan folded right up and dropped like a bomb. His dry martini released from his fingers; it hit the ground with the booze flying. The glass didn't break so the whole scene was just pathetic: Sullivan on the floor, yellow tie spooned by his warping stomach and crotch, his drink everywhere, and her. Dorothy, typical, she had that one hand on that one hip and that cigarette in her other and she just said, "You're shit, baby, and I'm champagne!" Can you believe it? Their rows must've been bizarre when they were together! She was in that obscene green cocktail dress with the fringes around the collar and the tassels at the bottom? You remember - she wore it for that luncheon. With that hat. Then she just about-faced and marched off. She grabbed her purse off the piano and said goodbye to no one - not even Charles Holstein, at the door in a tuxedo greeting people with the bubbly. She took a glass and drained it all in one long sip, handed it back, and walked out. All she left behind was the clacking of her tap shoes.

(c) 2004 Ben Rawluk all rights reserved

I trashed the opening to Meringue's novel that I had and started over from scratch, changing over to a direct first person voice and making it - again - retrospective. I decided to go into it with a clear idea of where Meringue is now, physically, as she tells the story. And to whom. I tried to do that with "Orange Ballerina Socks," but that revelation doesn't work its way in until halfway through my drafting process.

Writing Meringue is very much a process of waking up the beast in my ribcage. No. Lower. The beast in my groin. Talked to Joy for a while about how I want to combine and mediate between the traditional masculine narrative structure and the traditional feminine narrative - supposedly female and male writers plot things out in different ways, and I want to use both styles interchangeably. I worry that it's too much like Kathy Acker, but there's also some Winterson. Actually, I'd describe the voice and structure so far as Kathy Acker having sex with Gabriel Garcia Marquez over the corpse of Grant Morrison. The first chapter details one of the births of Meringue, her second one (the second chapter probably details her first birth), and the beginning of what will become the Flamenco School of Assassins. With every word I want to write this novel more.

I have to give a group presentation next week on our stupid formal report project. On Thursday of next week I have to sit in front of my Novel Techniques class and talk for ten minutes about McEwan's set-up techniques in Atonement, because some girl asked for "The play within the play, the fiction within the fiction" right before I could. Typical.

Phil Jiminez falls from grace by towing the party line - superheroes and sex can't mix. Superheroes have to remain permanently stagnant and pre-adolescent. And every woman loves the fucking fascist. Which is really tragic, because Jiminez does some absolutely beautiful artwork, on things ranging from Justice League all the way over to the Invisibles. His take on Wonder Woman's sexuality is interesting, but the fact that it isn't actually dealt with in the comics riles me up; especially when he was writing the book for a while.

There's a new Friday Physique up; Not sure that I like the photograph, although for some reason the bamboo background intrigues me. It's fascinating to look at Fifties photography and look at how it progresses.

First chapter of Meringue. I don't know. Possibly working title for the chapter: "Darling." I fleshed out what I had so far when I typed it up, added in more of a scene between Meringue and the madam that runs the whorehouse. I need to add some more scenery and concrete details about the house. Everything in Meringue's world needs to be mythic and mired at the same time. It also threatens to be unclear and be too supercompressed without things to slow it down. I wish Meringue would stop snorting coke while she tells stories, because that's how this feels. My head is full of steel wool.

Having dinner with the extendeds tonight. Hope the grandparents aren't there.

Caroline bemoaned the fact that we didn't think to go together on the Atonement presentations and do the gender topic. We would have done it in drag; I could have worn one of her hats. Instead, I'm doing McEwan's set-up techniques. Ten minutes by myself up there. Of course, Meringue's in here right now so I won't be alone.

Gertrude later. Food soon. Meringue, Meringue, Meringue. I remember when I could think about other things.

In a fit of madness, having taken off my glasses, turned off my light, and swept myself into bed like dust into a bin, I wrenched myself up -- golem-like, driven -- and yawningly flounced back in front of the computer, turned it on, and swept everything away again -- started a new file -- and began to work. With bits snatched from the Esque Rantbook, a bare plot in my head which is not yet the story of Meringue La Mancha's birth in Venice or Barcelona or some whorehouse in France. I'm going to hand something in where lobsters rain from above. Where Meringue drinks a bottle of wine for breakfast. Where she sobs uncontrollably and writes sonnets to her lost sister-brother, writes sonnets to Mineauge du Montparnasse. "Come home," she screams! "Come home."

The first chapter is called "Swoon." Now I have to go to bed or write more.

Finished Ian McEwan's Atonement last night. I've noticed that Bill Gaston seems to teach novels that are, you know, really good up until you hit the end and then the author makes some critical mistake. With Bel Canto it was that awful epilogue with the ridiculous "let's marry off the surviving characters" bullshit. With The Shipping News, it was the sudden two-paragraph transition where suddenly Agnis gets over horrible abuse. Life of Pi worked in the end, as much as the middle bored me.

But Atonement? The ending works fine and certainly adds something to the story but it felt tacked on, it felt like the author thought we needed an explanation of what happened after the end of Briony's section. I thought the third section ended perfectly - melancholy, ambiguious, unresolved, with the little two line initials and date to add a last "pop" to the whole thing. You get the point of the very last section if you read those two little lines. And I do like the end section, it was well-written, but I'm just not sure it really added anything. I think the ambiguity at the end of the third section did its job well. It felt like McEwan didn't trust his own narrative enough.

This morning, I sat downstairs and ate pancakes while I watched Wonder Boys, which is my "I'm a horrible writer" movie, the one I consult when things just aren't working. Going out this afternoon to sit in Second Story and drink tea to make my body feel better and work on something completely unrelated to anything I have due. Then I'm going to buy wine, mull it when I get home, and get very drunk.

So I got drunk. So I got drunk on mulled wine, a full-bodied Mission Hill Merlot mixed with orange juice and brought to a simmer, I got drunk on a magnum of wine. What the fuck? I nearly went to Monty's last night during a psychotic episode at Midnight, which suggests there's a streak of the unstable in me (no surprise). It's getting very hard to spell right now.

But I have to write something now. I have to go write about Jacob and his boyfriend Max, who sometimes dresses up as a girl named Betty because of a psychotic break he had after his dad died. I haven't written about them since last year; them, Kennedy, and Weird Harold. Next stop the township of Lenore. It's just outside of Scranton.

(the idea of being a novelist frightens the shit out of me, have I mentioned that)

I just got home from work. I just walked halfway up Hillside Avenue from Quadra with my eyes closed, past intersections and traffic. I just walked halfway up Hillside in the rain, with Underworld playing over my earphones. At that very same moment, I was in a field at midnight wearing only a pair of shorts and some beat-up runners, my T-shirt stuffed into my back pocket with a bottle of water. The rain came down while I danced, drum and bass slopping over the brim of speakers, Cleveland Lounge's "I'm Drowning," Trish on the decks, spinning even though I can't remember her DJ name. I couldn't see through my glasses because there was water running over the lenses, it was even in my ears. My brain was this distant thing, there, in my body, but completely in my body - every muscle was aware. And at the same time, all I could feel was rain rushing over my chest.

It's funny, when you remember what it's like to be human.

Little has been accomplished today. Went to Technical Writing this morning to peer edit the rough - very rough - draft of the group report. I'm going to have to spend all of Sunday with my group so we can clean up the report and prepare the oral presentation. We have to give this on Thursday.

Went to Novel Techniques only to be reminded that yes, I have an oral presentation - ten minutes long - on Ian McEwan's use of set-up techniques in Atonement. That pretty much sums up the entire class, which was virtually useless except I sat around and wrote part of a section for the novel.

Since then I've been home. Not getting enough done. I'm going to go do novel stuff now and then Michael's picking me up for Hime Sushi, a little pick us up since we haven't seen each other in a week.

I'm tired of the student thing, I want to be a real grown-up now.

(Is it sad that I can't remember who wrote the play, Chamber Music from which the title was taken?)

But all is not miserable tragedy! Things can still surprise. Like somebody ringing the doorbell and telling you to pick a hand, and then another hand. Flowers and Toblerone bar. Even having a miserable week (by upper middle class North American white boy standards, whatever) has its unexpecteds. Like sushi for dinner, with squid nigiri and miso soup. Green Tea helped with the shards of illness hanging out in my throat. Then I watched The O.C. with Michelle, to laugh at the ridiculous problems of rich people in Orange County who are hot. I don't understand how a high school can have a hip non-Starbucks coffee shop attached to it, but Michelle pointed out that all the kids have trust funds.

Didn't get much of anything done today, despite my original intent. There's always Saturday; Sunday is group project day.

Debated ideas for New Years. A nice little plan has developed itself, one that doesn't involved public displays of drunken arguing or people poking their heads outside to see if, you know, Ben's scoring in the hot tub.

The whore house in Barcelona is now a House of Burlesque in Venice, somewhere on the canals. Some research might be in order, but later. One of the belladonnas of the stage, one of Meringue's great temptress-teachers, is now to be named after somebody I know who is going through hard times. Guilt over the pillaging of real life for fiction has risen up and I hope to work a little sympathetic magic.

The process of memory and dream, the slippery slope of consciousness; Meringue's novel has to, by definition, be a dream dialogue that maneuvers through memories. Well, a monologue -- although Mineauge's words are implied. Tragic to consider that I might have been inspired by the a Lynchian Twin-Peaks-inspired episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I don't think Michael liked Solondz's Storytelling at all. He's never had an actual workshop experience, though, so the impact of the first sequence might have been lessened. It made me suitably uncomfortable and I think that's why I liked it. The second section - "Nonfiction" - was much weaker, I think Michael's assessment that we didn't like any of the characters or care about them might have something to do with it; I found it lacked the heated visceral impact of Welcome to the Dollhouse, where Dawn is equally likeable and unlikeable (kind of like in Ghost World with Enid). Solondz does tend toward the "shock" concept of uncovering cultural neuroses (Selma Blair chanting "Don't be racist," or the whole molestation thing in Happiness), but I can't decide if it works because it's more than shock value and into making us uncomfortable and questioning ourselves, or if he just has this weird desire to corrupt suburbia over and over again. I think part of the reason I found the beginning section, "Fiction," so compelling wasn't just that it was about a writing workshop and ha-ha-ha haven't we been there before, but that it didn't take place in upper middle class suburbia.

Borrowing The Sexual Revolution from the library, a giant book of essays on Modern Society's evolution in our approach to sex, sexuality, and gender. Norman Mailer's essay on "The Homosexual Villain" is included. I'm going to delve into it to help the novel. In the middle of "The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula," by Acker at the moment. That's also research.

Norman Mailer's "The Homosexual Villain," first published in One Magazine, and then reprinted in Jeffery Escoffier's The Sexual Revolution: "So, as I read Mr. Cory's book, I found myself thinking in effect, My God, homosexuals are people too. Undoubtedly, this is incredibly naïve to the homosexual readers of One who have been all too painfully aware that they are indeed people, but prejudice is wed to naïveté, and even the sloughing of prejudice, particularly when it is adrupt, partakes of the naïve. I have not tried to conceal that note. As I reread this article I find its tone ingenuous, but there is no point in trying to alter it. One does not become sophisticated overnight about a subject one has closed from oneself."
(p. 482)

Wicked. I gained a lot of respect for Mister Mailer in that paragraph. It's fascinating to read about someone trying to improve themselves and escape ignorance. Biases are very bizarre when you first realize you have them. And even with the erudite tone I find him very funny--

Chapter 6 is all about murder. I think Meringue is eight-years-old by this point. Supercompression is occurring, but this is because I've never written a novel and don't know how to pace yet. I imagine this will come with time. I need to write more scenes with physical interactions between people. Chapter 6 is all about murder. Who does the deed? Will they remain in Venice, or move to Paris? Why do Venice and Paris almost rhyme?

I want to buy a Tricky album.

It's one-thirty in the morning and I have to go meet with the group at 10:30. If I went to bed now I'd get 9 hours of sleep. I'm not ready for that yet, though, not nearly far enough to call it a night. I'd forgotten the red-hot burn of a writer in the wee hours. Banging out text. Making words sit up and listen, and beg to be used, as you'd use a dog or a vibrator. Things are dynamic. I can't decide what music to listen to.

Hung out with Joy and Steph last night at Joy's house, watching Muriel's Wedding; a welcome bit of rebirth after six and a half hours of group work at school. Joy went through the novel opening and gave me some really useful feedback, there's going to be a whole new section devoted to a character who really needs to be developed more.

While we watched the movie, Sambuca sat on my lap and demanded that I masturbate her tail in time to the Abba. I did so, and then felt dirty. She seemed rather enthralled with me for some reason. I suspect she's been unfaithful.

Worked out my novel presentation in class today.

And now I'm home, home, home to write critiques on short stories and hopefully get some work done on the first section of Meringue's novel; the feedback was excellent and included some useful line edits to keep in mind. The annoying thing about it being a first section is that there is no room to demonstrate overarching concepts - I need to include in the outline I hand in that the images of women in the first section (often being teared down or destroyed) are meant to parallel the really strong, powerful goddess figures in the coming second section, which relates to the first section's women being destroyed so that the second section women can create Meringue out of them, in Renaldo's body. Luckily the tense and point of view shifts mostly work, which I was worried about.

Include perverted scenes of meat-eating with horrific vocabulary to emphasize the destructive tearing down of the characters throughout the first section. Try to do this without the weak-kneed "vegetarian forced to eat meat" mentality of Martel's Life of Pi.

The spiritual transmission of dead women into Meringue. The transition to the second section, the transformation of shit into champagne and eviserated bodies into gold.

Pantomime connections - Pierrot and Columbine, the sexual proclivities of drag queens, the mask as a sex farce item, how many faces does each character have?

A chapter devoted to the old washerwoman. What are her unknown depths? What can we guess? What does Renaldo see her do, what does she do that might hint at the other faces she might have? Supercompressed version of the "classical realism" of Atonement's first section, all the details. Possible location of the meat? Give us a better sense of Renaldo as a child.

Possible connection to Contessa?

Clarify that she's speaking to Mineauge, telling her the story, and that we'll find out more about this later on.

After a succulent dinner at La Petite Saigon with Michael and a half-hour phone conversation with Matthew, I delved into revisions on the first section of Meringue's novel. The working title was briefly "My Mascara is running," but the conversation suggested something more -- evocative.

With Tits This Big, Who Needs a Rocketship?

I adore long titles.

So the first section -- seven mini-chapters, twelve pages -- is completed. I added the chapter about Fortuna. I still want to work in the meat scene somewhere but it didn't occur to where to put it, so I'll just prep it and maybe use it later. As it stands I'm done the fiction for the night but going to spend the next hour writing the plot outline and the evaluation - would I continue or would I abandon this project? What the fuck do you think? Is there anyway to abandon something wrapped around my testicles? No, but I'm going to include a list of pros and cons with regard to the project rather than taking the wussy route of choosing one and discussing the why.

Is everyone in my household insane? My obsessive watching of Buffy lately has spread to Christian and Michelle, both of whom have spent nights up until four in the morning watching. It's strange when my peculiar passions become viral. Christian's sick and I've become oddly absent-minded. Maybe it's the lack of sleep.

Leaving for the dentist in a few minutes. So not looking forward to that.

What I am looking forward to is the end of the technical writing class, when I can throw out a lot of crap that I don't need - pages of useless handouts to be recycled - and delete a few folders of meaningless information off my computer. It's offensive that it takes up that much space in my life.

Well, it wasn't the worst dental appointment I've ever had, but my mouth is sore now. At least I got one of the quiet dental hygenists who don't chatter away at you and expect conversation while they have unholy implements shoved into your oral cavity. Stopped off at Thrifty's on the way home and bought a shitload of groceries to last me a few days. I've been oscillating wildly toward bad nutrition and generally not taking care of my body this month, and I really need to cut that out. Peter Pan Complex aside, I am an adult now and I can't collapse into eat nothing but sugar all day as soon as I'm overworked or depressed. Stress does the vicious cycle thing and I'm tired of always letting it smack me on the ass in a wholly unsexual fashion.

An old friend of Michelle's showed up today, who knows a whack of people that I know back in Prince George. She knows Mikulasik and various and sundry people, which is eerie. Prince George is so bloody small. I can't believe I'm going back there for the holidays, even for three days. I mean, I'll probably enjoy my time there despite having the mindfuck of Christmas with my Divorced Parents and being in the shitty weather. I'll see Eric and possibly Naomi, whoever else we can dredge up.

Actually, while I'm there I'd like to see Christina and Richard. I haven't heard anything about them breaking up so that probably means they're still living together in sinful pre-marital bliss. I don't think I've seen them in - oh - three years? Which is ridiculous, because I'm pretty sure we'd still have things to talk about.

I seem to have been overcome with nostalgia. Or I'm procrastinating from scouring the first section of Atonement for examples of McEwan's set-up of the story.

I just spent an hour downstairs in the reading room, writing up my cue cards for my speech on Atonement and practicing it. I go over the ten minute mark, which means I have to be quicker on the uptake and know exactly how to phrase things when I'm up there. I'll fiddle with the passages to shrink them down and conserve time that way. It was nice to avoid the computer for a while, because now I can hang out in here for pleasure rather than homework.

Michael has apparently decided he needs to narrate every twist and turn in Forrest Gump for me via text message. He's so cute when he's being excitable.

Got a favourable review of my Tedford story, which needs a new title. While they liked the majority of the story, they gave me some really good suggestions and ideas on how to develop it and make it better - I have a goal with this story, I have a focus to work with on the rewrite. I also got the rewrite back on the Sadie Valentino story and some really helpful comments. The line edits are still an issue, I apparently peppered the work with the word "out." Need to correct that. Need to work on taking it the extra few steps necessary. I plan to send out my stories from this semester by the new year, which should be an interesting goal. Wonder where to send them.

Lorna also brought a book on Fabulist fiction and experimental fiction - told me to borrow it, read it, and bring it back to her in a month. Good, the book looks really interesting and helpful, I started reading through it before I went to do my group work for Technical Writing and was so impressed by some of the texts inside that I felt jipped in having to go work on the accursed website presentation. This looks helpful. It also includes a Flann O'Brien story, which reminds me that I have to read The Third Policeman.

Otherwise: ate chocolate-covered ginger and drank pear juice in little bottles while I watched Buffy take on Dracula with Christian, walked around the SUB too many times and bothered Joy and Steff. We'll be doing fancy drinks on Saturday night with dressing up and general sexiness. I look forward to it - a break from the tradition of staying home and doing homework. And after tomorrow I can focus on my rewrite of Tedford and general merriment - who cares about the Technical Writing bullshit? Not I!

I spent lunch at the grad lounge, eating a smoked salmon salad and drinking a glass of Merlot by myself about half an hour before I'd be meeting my group to go over the website presentation. I buzzed in the rain.

Virtually nothing accomplished today; I pulled Czeslaw Milosz's collected poems off the shelf and opened it up, to consult one of the voices raging in my poetic bones. What? What? Nothing has been accomplished today, although I definitely don't like it when people come into my room when the door is closed and I have not answered them - especially if the light is on. I might be sitting around with my pants about my ankles or something. I just didn't want to speak and was inside a video at that point.

Important matters: five stories to critique and one to revise. I suspect the majority will be tomorrow, when I have neither work nor school to deal with. This is acceptable.

Saw the boyfriend for five minutes this morning and walked him to class. We ranted about various things and then kissed goodbye over near the fountain, with autumn coming down around us as wet leaves, soggy and mulching before they hit the cement ground. Oh, for five minutes with barefeet and some grass. I'd rather like to have a picnic with him.

But, going to ride the wave of inconsequential antipathy towards everyone in the universe, particularly certain localized irritants and that peculiar way that faces are constructed. I don't feel like looking in any mirrors right now.

Boxed in, I commit the act of story reading and critiquing, every passage consumed like orchid seeds meant to flower in my belly. Two more to do, I say, before I begin the other delicate operation, rewriting Tedford's story and giving his lover - the audience - some added dimension. I have the Decemberists playing because tomorrow is December.

This semester will be completed by next Monday. I'd like to have my rewrite done for that day so I can hand it in early instead of going right to next Wednesday, but we'll see how it goes. I'd actually be surprised because for the most part the rewrite is going well.