wildcat

Mostly I've been infected with an ugly little sick-maker for the past week, body-pumped-full of harsh viral monsters that clog up my nostrils. I have an elephant living in my nose right now, named Bertrand. He's loud.

The Shizen Sushi (I think) place just outside of China Town -- how's that for Cultural Encroachment -- is "nothing to write home about," in Michael's words. It was all right but failed to excite all of my nerve endings.

is characterized by the frantic strobing on-off-on-off-on which really does his head in, no doubt, while he wanders the corridors of the library, the grocery store, downtown. His head strobes on-off-on-off-on and gives homeless people seizures while he steps lightly down the grid of streets, all ways are one-ways but he's on foot and may, therefore, go against the traffic. He passes them as they spasm, grind their toes against the pavement through cardboard-soled shoes with duct tape over the heels, he walks on as the traffic lights become confused and cars shoot forward, all directioned, crash-bang-careen like bumper-cars more than real big-boy cars. Adult cars.

Unfortunately, time goes on like this, insipid emo child wandering-street-fiascos, grey sky and listless parking meters that sag at the joints and sob coins out onto the pavement. Pathetic fallacy: flaccid dicks for everyone. Eventually, bored with the relentless cycle of whining, suffering, insufferable shitty wank, Text abandons the city and this boy. Signs empty themselves at once. Serif, sans serif, boldfaced or italic. Text goes. Chalk menus listing upstart coffee prices erase themselves, backwards, leaving not even that distant smoky chalk trace. Street signs become flat expanses of green. People try to read the symbols without the words to go with them. They try to read landmarks. Pretty soon the city will unravel itself.

Text, meanwhile, holidays in Southern France, becoming the languid copy in some backpacker's beaten-up travel guide. He shoves it in his back pocket, stained as all hell and certainly Text could do without the smell, but it's not that bad besides and certainly he's a happy sort of person, smoking too much weed on occasion and prone to finding himself in awkward situations with the locals after a bottle too much wine but there's a relaxed, sexy quality to the awkwardness, like a girl's feet stuffed lustily into runners that she must keep hidden because they certainly don't go with the turquoise prom dress she's got on while she slow dances to Smells like Teens Spirit, however you slow dance to that. The sort of thing Text quite likes, as Text unwinds its vowels and lets it's y's hang down.

Mid-sneeze, crossing Broughton, shoes caked with mud from walking through the raised garden, on my lunch break, I ran into a girl at the top of the stairs at Japanese Village, having decide that was perfect for lunch, The girl turned her head just so and I turned my head just so and there she was - Keely. I went to high school with Keely. She was at UVic for part of the time that I was there, as well, although we only ran into each by accident and she was in Japan for a while and then she was going to get married and then she wasn't, and I think that time stack could be shuffled but. But there she was with her hair grown out a little bit (she used to look like Anais Nin and wore her hair like that, a frame of black that swept under). She had on a smart long grey coat, and I had one of those weird moments where it's not just that we're out of high school but we're adults occupying the same point in space-time.

She's doing Law & Public Policy at UVic at the moment. She actually quite enjoys Law but sidelines on Public Policy because you never know. We talked about me still being in Victoria and possibly going to grad school in a year and a half. We talked about Roz, who she saw a little while ago for the first time in four years. Roz was another of the high school friends, and she finished her geography degree -- remember that? I nearly got one of those, before I decided to THROW IT ALL AWAY and pursue starvation dieting burlesque dancing cannibalism a fine arts degree in creative writing. Roz is apparently at UBC right now, doing her Masters in Midwifery. Which was one of those horrible moments where you realize that something's perfect for someone.

I scored Keely's number so I can hear meaningless Prince George gossip (why do I care? Everyone I care about left because all roads lead away from Prince George) and maybe we can do something sometime.

I sometimes wonder -- well, when provoked -- what would have happened to me if I'd ended up finishing my geography degree and gone into urban planning. Probably wouldn't have moved down to Victoria, which is an irrational thought for all kinds of reasons. I would have designed Tim Burton cities. I would have specified there be shanty towns built into the downtown core, like bizarre Mad Max urban recycling programs.

Ran into Steph while Christian and I were at Dolce Vita. She's leaving for the Dominican Republic tomorrow with the girls, which means she's probably on the lam and the authorities are after her. Possible bank robbery. She looked like Doris Day, and her tweed-like coat had very large black buttons. That's what the WANTED poster will read: "Very large black buttons. Presumed dangerous."

I met Samara at the Lotus Pond for lunch earlier in the day, eating too many turnip cakes and mock chicken. She slid a book across the table promising that I'd love it for the title alone if nothing else, and then we wandered over to the mall to sit in the photo-booth taking pictures of ourselves so she'd have one for her europass I.D. when she's in Germany. After that, we parted ways so that she could pick up tickets and I could administer medication to my Ailing Accomplice, who may have picked up this terrible Consumption from me and has taken to his bed with a fit of aching bodily ennui. I'm going over there after work tomorrow night to try and make him feel better; I forced an orange on him much as Christian forced weird ginseng medicine on me tonight, medicine which supposedly will speed up my recovery. At this point, having lived with the viral monsters for a week, well, I'm about ready to try anything.

The book Samara lent me, Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma-Kola: A Manual of Etiquette for Ladies Crossing Canada by Train by Paulette Jiles, is really good so far. Kicky and jaunty and whimsical in its prose, the kind of thing Joy would write ("She has plans of running away from everything and becoming a charming drunk. But how to go about it?"). A romance, a detective story, a postmodern analysis of the hardboiled genre and the trampy women stereotypes contained therein. It's full of deliciously inviting lines ("Also getting on the trrain are a group of Americans, apparently having fallen out of the United States the way minor angels fall out of clouds every time there's unemployment in heaven.") and there's the weird, unspoken parallel between Our Heroine's railroad detective con and Miss Marple solving murders on the Orient Express. It's a good counterpoint and antidote to the peeling madness of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, which I bought for four bucks at Dark Horse Books the other day and read last night in about an hour. The horrors of a medical system that refuses to deal with women's depression, particularly post-partum depression, with anything but the sustained emptying of the woman's thoughts and creative impulses. Edgar Allan Poe as a feminist mother and doctor's wife.

There are days where all you want is a cocktail in your hand, something refreshing, with French house music throbbing in the background. Preferably provided by a live DJ, a good-looking one, maybe a little dance floor, but it's more about tossing your head back when you laugh because someone in the group has said something with wit. Inevitably, these days are days at work, with the cough drops running out even as you begin to feel healthier. These are days when a member of the public will say something regrettable to you and all you can do is stare, stare, stare at them for a very long time while in your head you've just slid backwards across the invisible dance floor and broken out into heavy movement to avoid answering their ridiculous question.

(Cover art for Promethea #26 by J.H. Williams III [pencils], Mick Gray [inks], and Jeromy Cox [colours]. Art inspired, I think, by Daniel Clowes of Ghost World fame)

For some reason, I picked up Promethea and started rereading it the other day. Long story short: college student Sophia Bangs researches a term paper on "Promethea," a recurring fictional character woven through several different poems, books, and comics over the decades only to find that she can, through acts of imagination, become Promethea herself. Alan Moore wrote the comic as a re-examination of the Wonder Woman archetype, the old Ditko Doctor Strange psychedelic comics, and as a dissertation of sorts on magical theory. It skirts the line between thesis paper and action comic in a lot of strange ways, and reminds me of plowing through Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World that one week I had pneumonia in high school.

But it's worth it.

The upshot is that Sophie is the latest in a long line of women (and in one notable case, a man) empowered and transformed into Promethea to usher humanity toward some kind of spiritual evolution - the apocalypse. And, following a big old quest adventure into the higher spheres, Sophie finds out that she's the one that has to make the final push. She has to end the world as we know it. And somewhere along the way the FBI finds out and brands Promethea a terrorist, makes the connection that she's Sophie, and tries to take her into custody. Doesn't help that the Promethea entity that possesses Sophie was Egyptian in origin and consequently on the ethnic profiling hit list even without the super-powers.

Having finally reconcilled with her alcoholic mother and the two of them finally making amends, her mother pushes her out into the night with some money to escape New York and avoid the Feds. Sophie leaves. She leaves for three years that pass between #25 and #26 to live in the city of Millenium (of course) where she gets a crap job in a video store to live a Ghost World life on her own with only the occasional silent payphone call to her mother. And because she doesn't want to end the world, or people aren't ready yet, or she doesn't understand what it means to actually end things...well. She doesn't become Promethea again.

Imagine knowing that you have within you the power to transform into a demi-god or demi-goddess, able to perform astonishing feats of magic (Bullets into doves? Simple! Missiles into parakeets? Like cake!), knowing that you've been given a specific mission from on high to change the world, but choosing not to. For three years. Three years of being a creative person who expresses herself through poetry and not being able to write a poem because the jig would be up, the Feds would find you and try to put a bullet through your brain and you'd have to retaliate. Imagine purposefully deadening yourself with cheap weed and a mindless job to stop yourself from accidentally composing a rhyming couplet in your head that might accidentally make you transcend yourself. Three years of having your plain old mortal body that's just average and a little scrawny when you can become a imaginary, idealized being?

Promethea doesn't just absorb the Wonder Woman "warrior queen" archetype. The Billy Batson Captain Marvel who says "Shazam" to transform is the epitome of the wish fulfillment "boy-into-man" superhero. But Sophie has to create in order to transform, she hasn't been given a magic word by someone else to do it.

So that's the set-up for #26, which remains one of my favourite issues; it's the end of the comic's hiatus period, the beginning of the final storyline where the world ends, and I love the whole premise. The comic follows Sophie through a day in her fake life as "Joey Estrada" with the majority of the art coloured in a two-tone palette that shifts colours between scenes - we start out in pale, oppressive red in the video store to blue to a darker red for two panels of "Joey" making love with her boyfriend to deep blue to green, et cetera. An anxious orange page of Sophie phoning home. And the overwhelming current running under things, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting -- while the two-tone is broken by manifestations of a past Promethea coming to tell Sophie that "it's time" in full palette figures against the two-tone. Then an horribled, disquieted panel of purple sleeplessness.

And after all that, well, Sophie ends up on a roof with a full palette on the final page, as a local hero called Tom Strong descends with a heli-pack to take her into custody because the Feds know who who she is. Tom gets big, thick lettering in his thickly inked speech balloons because he is a big man, a genius super-athlete in the style of Doc Savage. Larger than life. Even his daughter Tesla, who shows up to help him track down Sophie, is drawn as head and shoulders above everything else around. Scale and size are hinted at and emphasized. Promethea is taller, more poised woman than Sophie, she has strong and powerful body posture.

Three years of laying low, trying to act like a normal human being and have a normal, mundane life with all its quiet joys while the world gets shittier (the backdrop of much the issue is snippets of news reports about various world events including Mid-Eastern conflict) and knowing all the time that you're going to have to do something about, that you can do something about to make it better for everyone but they're all going to hate you for it, knowing you have to be a walking Christ figure (and, oddly, the Madonna - Promethea is Mama Coming Home), and absolutely dreading the whole thing.

The next issue is sickly amusing while Tom Strong has his big showdown with Sophie and tries to get her to come quietly, because he doesn't want to fight her, he was friends with a previous Promethea and has been strong-armed by the government agents Karen Breughal and Lucille Ball [no relation]. She can't do anything, as far as they can see, because she doesn't have a pad of paper to write a poem on. Only Sophie tells them that this is no longer the case, and simply recites a poem in loose, unrhyming lines and by the end is transfigured into a beautiful scarlet-clad (bad girl made good!) demi-goddess.

This is important; throughout the series, Sophie's change is always shown with her scribbled poem, where she clearly tries to make the lines scan and rhyme and this break into the world of free verse is significant, as is the confidence with which she delivers the lines. Previously, we get to see the words scribbled out and self-editing that goes along with her compositions. Sophie's grown up, creatively, and come into her own.

And there Promethea is, beautiful and terrible, and the shit hits. Then it's all birds-from-bullets and backwashing colours exploding.

I like her interactions with her boyfriend Carl. They're very nattery and sweet and cute, some light bickering and stupid jokes. It's highlighted when she comes to him after the end starts up, after she's Promethea again (because you know she has to be, the bell can't stay unrung) and he says "You're out of my league now, right?" That's it. They both know it and it's irrelevant at the same time. One of the recurring themes of the series is the destructive narture of loving the divine and this quiet moment is crystalline.

RULES:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question even if it doesn't make sense.
NO CHEATING!

How are you feeling today?
David Bowie -- Always Crashing in the Same Car
(disastrous repetition?)

Will you get far in life?
Cake -- Sheep go to Heaven (Goats go to Hell)
(...doesn't really answer the question directly, does it?)

Will you get married?
Petula Clark -- This is My Song
("I know why the world is smiling...")

What is your best friend(s)'s theme song?
Eartha Kitt -- I Want to be Evil
(Joy: this fits, doesn't it?)

What is the story of your life?
The New Pornographers -- Centre for Holy Wars.

What was/is/will high school like?
The Beatles -- Boys
(Are we talking daydreaming in high school or actual events?)

How can you get ahead in life?
Joni Mitchell -- Nothing Can Be Done
(oh fuck off...)

What is the best thing about your friends?
PJ Harvey -- You Said Something
(well, they are all talkers)

What is in store for this weekend?
David Bowie -- Life on Mars?
(Seems appropriate)

To describe your grandparents?
Sheryl Crow -- Leaving Las Vegas.
(??)

How is your life going?
Metric -- Monster Hospital (!!)
("I fought the war but the war won!")

How does the world see you?
Simon & Garfunkel -- A Hazy Shade of Winter.
(Examine, if you will, my cold, cold heart)

Will you have a happy life?
The Beatles -- Free as a Bird
(don't chain me up, don't chain me down, let me fly--)

What do your friends really think of you?
Esthero -- Wikked Lil' Girls
("...kiss the boys and make them cry...")

Do people secretly lust after you?
Supreme Beings of Leisure -- Last Girl on Earth
(I'll take that as a no)

How can I make myself happy?
Bran Van 3000 -- Astounded.

What should you do with your life?
Sarah Vaughan -- Peter Gunn (Max Sedgley remix)
(So, apparently, I need to be a superspy. Not surprising, actually.)

Will you ever have children?
Nina Simone -- Four Women
(If I do, they'll be angry women fighting against oppression)

Giant cat heads, typewriters, and violins fall from the sky. I managed to scribble a couple paragraphs of hard-boiled paranormal words but that's about it. Scratching my head over the whole thing. I need a story, but all I've got is fragments, badly burned from some house fire up in my brain, only I haven't been fevered in quite some time. You know: the edges curl up all blackeneed and the rest of the paper's yellow. Ink's scratchy. Someone was talking about pirates the other day.

And I keep thinking about old pulp heroes. The Shadow; Lamont Cranston, Margo Lane, his whole callous network of undercover agents working to feed him information or drag his schlumpy ass around town in gypsy taxi cabs because he's from back before masked men had things like Batmobiles or super-speed. Batman and his ridiculous working relationship with Police Commissioner Gordon. Batman's gallery of daddy-got-drunk-and-did-a-bad-thing villains.

Some days I just sit there and list off character names and stare at them until something like a cast emerges, gels, whatever. Like they start relating to each other as real people might, even though they're just collections of words and ideas and shit stuck together with spunk and wallpaper paste, synapses firing off like drunken fratboy fireworks.

What else? What else? I spent money and added to my wardrobe today. Christian made pancakes.

There's something very rumpled about Victoria today. Doesn't know what it wants, anguished rains running down, down, down from the sky to clear up like a bad rash half an hour later. But never dry. Mostly it doesn't smell today, except maybe like clean (clean, yes, not sterile -- there are still cigarette butts ground into the pavement and spittle) or fresh. There's sun in wild, weird bursts. But mostly rain. Everybody's walking with their shoulders hunched forward and that determined expression, like they're trying to ignore the rain. People cluster under bank awnings at bus stops and clutch together in throngs that disrupt foot traffic.

As poor bastard villains went, something told Chance that the Jerk wasn't worth the aggravation of a trip cross-town in the backseat of Penny Dreadful's phantom taxicab. Between the receding hairline, almost invisible chin, and predilection for letting the air out of front tires, the Jerk didn't equal world-destroying peril. His getaway car was a hatchback, for God's sake, with peeling green paint and defaced dealer's plates. Wretched fingers mid-rigor mortis on the steering wheel while traffic lights flickered behind them, Penny was too busy cackling to let street signs enter into the conversation. They say Penny died in '45 but after convincing Charon to let her steer the ferry she got kicked out of Hell for reckless endangerment. Was it any wonder she lost out on that Vault of Horrors gig? "That sorry slob stole my gas-cap just last week! Deserves the chair if you ask me."

Chance didn't, and ignored her as much as one could when breaking seventy in the middle of downtown. The concept of speeding tickets was quite beyond Penny Dreadful, which made her ideal for one's rampant car chases with tommyguns firing. Chance shuffled his lucky deck of cards to keep his mind off all those innocent bystanders maybe possibly stuck to the front fender by the end of the evening. Penny could be trusted upon to ride the ass of any car she was chasing. There was no losing her. He gathered she was something of an urban legend among the junior traffic cops, whistles stuck in their mouthes and a brisk sense of street-level, cussing semaphore.in their arms. Children. Years of riding with Penny meant he could even sleep back there without too much trouble, a state of being preferrable to the absolute awareness of every nasty thing she was signalling to other drivers with those fat pinky lips which had once been quite fetching, he gathered, before she was claimed by the cab and the spirits in the engine, the gastank, the trunk. She was possessed by ghosts of dashboard and headlight. The clutch was her guardian.

Nothing to do but ride on. Chance stared at the nine of clubs for a while before shoving it back in the deck. The Jerk wouldn't get away with it, certainly, and after tonight there'd be more sleepless meter maids with insomniac tales to tell...

Nights at home with his feet up and an asparagus parmesan in the oven, smelling up the joint and encouraging a shot of cognac to pave the way. Listening to the radio, watching some poorly researched cop show on the tube, maybe thinking about lying in the bathtub until the water's browned by the muck of the city all over him. Nights waiting for the Big Man to call Chance up on the telephone with his ratchety voice reminding him of the debt Chance owes, for that time back in Istanbul, and mentioning that yes, the Big Man has an assignment for him. Legwork. Dealing with an informant or encouraging a two-bit mugger to turn himself in. Put out the word that the Big Man's looking for somebody, or maybe adding a story to the rep going 'round down -- the Big Man eating crime-babies for breakfast or something. Getting the Big Man a set of secret keys to some "abandoned" warehouse. Nights of waiting for the damned phone to ring so he can hoof it out onto the street for an Inner Sanctum evening where everybody ends up dead, often by their own hands. The usual croon of, "I'll be sending Penny around with the car."

No, it was better out here with the story already in progress rather than the interminable, ticking wait. Standing on One Hundred & Eightieth Street with Penny Dreadful in a car round the corner, revving the engine and raspberrying stories under her breath at passersby. The lucky deck in his coat pocket and a clear bead on the Jerk, dribbling pale blue wallpaper paste onto the pavement in greasy blobs. Should he, you know, need to make the shot. The Jerk looked like an accountant left in the sun for too long, rotting unevenly inside. "Well," said the Jerk. "Chance Boulevard. You look fat, Boulevard. You've got too much rouge on." It was hard to apply disguise kit makeup in the dim, with no mirrors. It was always a trip to Mother's house, jawing with the Jerk.

Chance could almost taste the asparagus parmesan's little meteors of gristled cheese. "Can't believe you're wasting my Tuesday night with this petty vandalism, but the Big Man's word is law, so I have to bring you in. He wants to see you brought in."

The Jerk smirked, dumping a pack of tacks into the loose and dreamy puddle of paste. "Still playing the Big Man game, Boulevard?" Ha. Like the healthy paycheques came from the air. "You was thrown off the force for a reason, Boulevard, and making up stories about the Big Man's doing you no good."

Chance thumbed at his lapels and tugged at his pimento-red tie. "Penny Dreadful's around the corner, brother. I happen to know she doesn't like you very much." Neither did the pistol in his pocket, full of bullet-hot irritation.

"Penny's here?" The Jerk began to wilt.

"Yes, she is." The Big Man was a myth, maybe, or invisible, or prone to walking among men with a mask on his face but Penny Dreadful was very much present, if not alive. There was a certain currency in the undead. They had presence.

Christian asked me to read Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve, for insights, as he teaches it to one of his classes. Imagine Burroughs's Cities of the Red Night as written by a woman, maybe. That doesn't quite...

I'm about a third of the way through.

The heat-death approaches, the world's ending, the apocalypse's slow gears grind on, and New York has begun to ebb -- its meaning is lost, its significance is lost, and only the worst of qualities remain. Violence. Monstrosity. Monstro-City, maybe, "The City of the Dreadful Night." Into the city comes an Englishman, Evelyn, come to make something of himself. He's effete, fascinated by the aging film starlet Tristessa long since absorbed spiritually into the cultural idiom, she's the kind of woman drag queens pattern themselves after. New York destroys Evelyn, tears him down and rips the meaning from him. He meets an exotic dancer named Leilah and they're relationship charts his fall. BDSM, certainly, but gone horribly wrong and destructive more than sexy. The word "Asshole" isn't quite large enough. He is debased, made awful by his own childish impulses and the city's poisoned breath. There are rats, everywhere, violent hordes that consume whole dogs in seconds while they're owners look on. Dead rat corpses rot everywhere. Evelyn abuses Leilah, can't deal with who she is, what she does. He's selfish, insolent, fickle, and cowardly.

The city brings him down. Alchemy and its symbols recur through the text, starting with Evelyn's introduction to a mad old alchemist who lives in the apartment downstairs. The book's about Evelyn's transformation into Woman, into a new Eve; consequently, to become gold Evelyn must start out as the basest of matter. Consequently, the City of the Dreadful Night puts him in that state of being. The environment nurtures all the horrible, meaningless, stupefied elements of Evelyn's personality. He's cruel. He's cruel and treated as the monster he is and consequently he doesn't do the noble thing. He runs away into the desert to explore America.

It's in the desert that he is knocked out and kidnapped by a mystery woman in leathers, who drags him to the subterranean city of Beulah, which is referred to in the text as a "crucible" - the pot of alchemic reactions. Evelyn's there now, with no idea about the transformation he's going to be subjected to...

And thus, Evelyn enters into the underground city of Beulah.

Beulah reminds me of the much brighter/campier female separatist cell living underground in Suffragette City (after the Bowie song) also called Electric Ladyland (After the Jimi Hendrix Experience's album) in Alan Moore's Tom Strong comics. The city was also mentioned in Promethea, briefly, as "The Suffragette City episode back in '94," wherein Roger of the Five Swell Guys unwittingly became a woman. Seems signficantly linked to Carter's book, especially given her references to superior technologies which Evelyn admits in the narration that he may be misremembering or outright inventing.

The entrance to Beulah is marked with a shattered phallus-monolith and a sign reading ENTER, FOR HERE THE GODS BE. Makes me think of the Oracle at Delphi and whatever's apparently scribbled on the gates of Hell ("Here there be Monsters," maybe? "Helter-Skelter" in at least one version, but that's neither here nor there). The signs in Latin, it's a good thing Evelyn is a classically taught English boy.

The vulture perched atop the giant stone's broken head? Foreshadowing.

And Evelyn goes down into the underworld to Beulah. Really, the symbolism in the book is by-the-numbers at this point and it's really more of an affair of Carter's prose and language choices, which are quite beautiful and skirting the line between restraint and excess.

Evelyn perpetually others women. His "captress" in the desert is all in leather with a shining helmet that displays only his own reflection when he looks into it. Leilah is perplexing to him back in the city, he can't seem to fathom her motivations or even her actions and so he treats her either as a sex toy or an annoyance. I don't think I'd describe Carter's writing of Evelyn as misandrist in any way, though, as we see other men actly more humanely even if only in passing and even when that's equally fucked up by the context. More the effect of the city on this particular man, and he's moved into symbolic terrain right from the get-go to prepare him for his transformation. He has to be completely alienated from women before he can become one, the transition can in no ways be an easy one.

The Women (capital-w is important) interest me as they seem to be Carter absorbing and reusing "feminazi" stereotypes of militant man-hating feminism. Given the apocalypse rushing in uneven waves across the world the Women make sense, with their "gnashing teeth within a female symbol" emblem worn on armbands. They sit on rooftops and hit men in front of porn theatres with sniper fire. The striving for gender equality is poisoned as much as anything else in the City of the Dreadful Night.

The Women of Beulah (or Woman Town a la Boys Town) have removed a breast each in emulation of the ancient Amazon warriors. At first I didn't like this on the grounds that it seemed a little too forced and self-conscious; on second thought, however, it makes perfect sense. It isn't Carter trying to make them symbolically into Amazons, it's the women purposefully trying to duplicate the Amazons' symbolism themselves (yes, even though Carter's the author). The single masectomies also indicate how deeply body modification and surgical transformation figure into the culture of Beulah, prefiguring what happens to Evelyn.

The preponderance of womb imagery gets to be a bit oppressive after a while. We get it. All the rooms are spherical, they subject Evelyn to pinkish lighting and muted sounds as though penetrating the membranes...

And we're introduced to Mother, self-made goddess of four breasts. A super-scientist who has purposefully transformed herself into a mythical creature. I love the opening description of her, emphasizing Hindu Goddess traits which (1) serve to break up the overwhelming dependence on Western and European mythologies and (2) recalls the man whose apartment Evelyn sublets in New York; the man is a student who runs off to India to escape the apocalypse and find some greater spiritual meaning. This reinforces the possibility that Mother is a positive bringer of change...

Only of course she isn't, not really. Mother is an example of Carter suggesting that gender equality is the only true path and that a Matriarchy is as bad as a Patriarchy. Beulah is clean, efficient, balanced, et cetera, but there's also a coldness (interesting, given traditional views of women as overemotional) and a failure to pay attention to Evelyn's rights of self-determination (especially biological). Mother's actions and decisions on behalf of Evelyn, always condescending to the stupid little man, play well into and parallel his own behaviour toward Leilah earlier in the book and every time a man (or a another woman, as part of the greater social structure) tells a woman she has to keep the baby, or she has to get an abortion, or she's going to be circumcized, and on and on and on. As much as Evelyn's transformation into the new Eve is potentially quite positive, the only excuse for Mother's actions is that she is a goddess, and that there are special dispensations for the divine. Conventional morality does not play into it and mortals must simply submit to the wild desires of the Gods.

Christian's students rebelled against the book at around this point, in particular because of the castration scene. Frankly, as castration scenes go this one was quite tame. Cock and balls off in one sentence, and a particularly flat one at that. The whole sequence -- Mother's rape of Evelyn and the castration itself are actually a low point in Carter's prose work in the novel, but I suppose that can be justified by Evelyn being in a drugged up state and rather removed from the whole process. Not sure what you could find fuss about because it wasn't presented in a visceral fashion.

I question the validity of Mother's plans; they store Evelyn's seed so that it can be used to impregnate Eve, but wouldn't that cause weird genetic disorders and be not unlike inbreeding? On the other hand, if they can completely remodel a body and make a working woman's body out of a man's, with all the appropriate chromosomes, well, they can probably get around it. Eve is to be the new Madonna and deliver parthenogenetically.

Other examples of modern parthenogenesis - James Morrow's Only Begotten Daughter with Christ's Half-sister (another messiah figure) being produced by a father and God-as-Female. Alan Moore's Cobweb character, a pulp heroine who made love with her female companion through each generation to set up the next pairing.

Evelyn becomes the new Eve, beautiful and idealized because all women in Beulah consulted on what would make the perfect Woman, and s/he mirrors the hermaphrodite statue in the beginning of the book, at the alchemist's apartment. Female on the outside, sure, but there's still a "cock in [his] head" when he looks at herself and becomes aroused. The delight of touching a clitoris is enhanced by it being his own clit. Evelyn and Eve coexist at this point, and continue to, although Eve is rather amnesiac and disconnected from Evelyn's narration.

Eve escapes into the desert, feeling like "a hero, more like Evelyn" again because - well, shit! What does Evelyn do every time? He runs away, and now s/he does. And running away from a "perfect" female society, Eve stumbles onto an imperfect one when s/he is taken and raped by the mad poet Zero, the Nihilist Nothing-Man who hates Tristessa, the actress who crops up throughout the book as Evelyn's patron goddess and Eve's template. Zero's got a harem, poor girls who engage in forbidden lesbian sex at night when Zero can't see them. Pregnancy is not a concern because he's sterile, something Zero blames on Tristessa's all-consuming feminine wiles. She's a succubus, having stolen his virility. He wants to track down the aging, reclusive actress to rape and kill her, in hopes that this will restore his powers and repopulate the Earth. He's a bit like a really awful version of Bacchus.

More later...

The violent indoctrination of Eve(lyn) into the Wives of Zero recalls us to the City of the Dreadful Night, but from a different angle, and Eve sees Zero's behaviour from a perspective she may share with Leilah's perceptions of Evelyn. Zero reminds me of Mother, actually - the acts of domination and removal of self-determination always accented with the idea that it's for your own good, or the world's good, or both. Mother and Zero may be the divided concepts of Feminine and Masculine

The division of the two suggests the merging of the two is necessary, and it's implied by that hermaphrodite image at the beginning of the book - alchemy's marriage of opposites - and with Eve(lyn). As it stands, round about Chapter Nine, Evelyn still consider himself as wearing Eve like a glove and the two aren't yet integrated into one.

Zero boards his helicopter with Eve and the other wives, in search of the reclusive Tristessa. He has found the loctaion of her secret Shangri-La in the desert.

The Women of Beulah are the Amazons, with Mother as Hippolyta or Antiope. The Wives of Zero are the Amazons once dominated by Hercules, and consequently still share Amazon qualities (as exemplified by the late-night lesbianism).

Evelyn's description of entering the house and meeting Tristessa is interesting in light of his encounter with Mother. Mother is violently physical, fleshly, whereas Tristessa is ghostly, illusory, and fleeting:

I went toward you, as towards my own face in a magnetic mirror, but when, in accordance with all the laws of physics, you came towards me, I did not feel a sense of homecoming, only the forlorn premonition of loss.

I exhibited all the symptoms of panic when I met you-- pallor, shallow breathing, a prickle of cold sweat. It was like finding myself on the brink of an abyss but the giddiness that seized me and shook me and would not let me go sprang from a cause I did not understand, then-- that abyss on which you opened was that of my self, Tristessa.

The ego-death's happened to him before, obviously, which is why we have Eve. Zero never breaks Eve in the way he thinks he does, nor does he truly break the rest of his wives -- they believe in him only out of neccessity. Mother breaking Evelyn is violent and the choice has been taken from him; when he enters Tristessa's house the process is a natural one that makes him realize the emptiness within (the womb -- Eve's blank persona -- etc).

Evelyn's telling the story of New Eve to Tristessa, even when he talks about Tristessa in the third person; he's relating to her "Tristessa the Idea." Match that with Norma Jean "becoming" Marilyn Monroe in front of her friend, on the Avenue.

On Tristessa, again: "This world had never been sufficient for you; to go beyond the boundaries of flesh had been your occupation and so you had become nothing, a wraith that left only traces of a silver powder on the hands that clutched helplessly at your perpetual vanishings." Tristessa doesn't need to be bodily, that's what Mother's there for. Carter strikes me as oddly gnostic in this novel, or Evelyn does at any rate -- physical concerns are all slightly grotesque. On the other hand, Beulah proves flesh to be as infinitely flexible as spirit, so it's more of a two sides/same coin deal than a gnostic (matter is dirty) thing.

Tristessa's house matches her essence -- mostly-invisible pieces of glasswork everywhere.

I could listen to Carter's descriptions of Tristessa for days:

When I heard the faint music made by the house itself, I felt myself already in the presence of Tristessa, as i she were one of those super-sensitive ghosts who manifest their presence by only a sound, an oudour, or an impression of themselves that they leave on the air behind them-- a sense, a feeling that, for no definable reason, penetrates us with a pure anguish, as if they were telling us, in the only way left to them, that is, by a direct intervention on our sensibilities, how much, how very much they want to be alive and how impossible it is for them to be so.

Tristessa's house is a house of glass, filled with dust and ephemeral fan-magazines from her acting days. The passages are mostly silent, even Zero holding his tongue in this Hallowed Place. Christian made some reference to Tristessa being Marilyn Monroe (which I agree with, as above) but I still picture her as Marlene Dietrich in Blue Angel, with the overhead lighting. Dietrich got to walk around with her own lighting directors.

Because, as Mother is the violent wrenching birth-queen goddess of life, Tristessa's the death-goddess and Eve is Inanna walking down into the Underworld. So, you know, that's why there are the waxworks of dead blonde bombshell actresses like Monroe and Sharon Tate, in coffins and cast as they were upon their death-discoveries.

Finished The Passion of New Eve sometime 'round midnight last night and old thoughts are burned away by revelation. The ending is quiet, elegant, and introspective -- by the time you get there you've had to re-evaluate how you feel about Mother, about Tristessa, and ultimately about Leilah. Old goddesses are renewed by death, which means the planet has a chance after the end of the book. I wouldn't say that Eve and Evelyn are integrated, per se, by the end of the book, but they're living in an changing state of harmony. Maybe. I'm interested by the notion of opting out of the apocalypse, whether that's simply sticking one's head in the sand or something more meaningful.

Tried to write last night, wrote pages and pages and deleted them all, got frustrated, tried to write some more, got frustrated, et cetera. Nothing's sticking right now. The Fear's on me, though, tapping me lightly on the shoulder. I dreamed about a drunk municipal worker and garbage collection payment, whiskey dumped on the floor like piss, Steph being my sister. There was a lot of churning in the dream.

Ah, hell, screw that. Vintage flight attendant glamour.

Ah! Just in from dinner at ReBar with Samara, with that warm, fired-up feeling in my belly like there's a star in there and I feel inspired! I might even take a crack at that thing I was writing yesterday, only taking a completely different point of view and focusing on a completely different character. Yam fries and a falafel burger with avocado on it. Merridale cider. This miso soup which was okay but ultimately just generic hearty West Coast vegan soup, which is okay but not my thing.

Music's on shuffle and I'm away, away, away I say to do the literary thing with every intention of productivity rather than annoying self-censoring mental editor bollocks. Who cares if it's shit? I'll turn it into champagne later!

Ganked from Joy from sometime earlier in the month, but I was suddenly hungry for online quizologies to tell me who I am. Who am I? Who am I? The cherry blossoms begin their annual tawdry unfolding and I am occasionally birds.

1. The phone rings. Who do you want it to be?
I have a love/hate relationship with my phone, and it entirely depends upon my mood if I even want to talk to people on the stupid thing or what. Text messaging is more removed and consequently easier. But: Joy, because regardless of how much I might hate the phone, we can talk for hours with seemingly no agenda between us. The Accomplice, as well, especially if I've been out drinking with people and I'm waltzing home in the dark.

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart?
I generally avoid the shopping cart, as it is too large and I don't want to buy more than I can carry home. There's something luxurious about them, though, and I find grocery shoppers with carts languidly strut down the aisles, taking up as much room as possible, their asses turned ever so slightly up at the air. And an abandoned shopping cart has romance about it, desolate romance like some empty-eyed fifties romance comic. Typically, I use a basket, but will occasionally forgo this to walk those aisles with a heap of food in my hands like a crazy person with too many cats. Often I drop things and I pile things on the ground while I take advantage of the bulk food bins in a most unseemly fashion.

3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener?
I'm quite shy or socially incapable if I don't really know the people around me, and consequently a listener by nature but if you get me talking I can go and go. I stutter, though, and suffer frequently from a dry throat or inarticulate thoughts and I have trouble maintaining appropriate eye contact, either breaking it off or staring outright, as if people's eyes were transparent and I'm trying to figure out which neurons they're using.

4. Do you take compliments well?
I blush, usually, or feel awkward because there's too much attention being paid to me (or not enough, oddly).

5. Do you play Sudoku?
I look at them periodically and get a headache.

6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive?
I know we like to talk about how prissy I am but I actually think I'd do a pretty decent job. I probably wouldn't eat anything because if I don't know what it is I'm not putting it in my mouth, but I'm the stubborn sort that'll walk in a given direction for hours at a time on the off-change that it might lead me to civilization. I wouldn't even go insane from loneliness, either, I'd just monologue to someone in my head.

8. Did you ever go to camp as a kid?
No.

9. What was your favorite game as a kid?
Probably Four Squares or Superheroes. I could never decide which superhero to be. Also, walking in circles around those four trees in the front yard with the stone circle around them, telling myself stories in my head while the neighbours started to assume my parents had a weird child.

10. If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was married, would you?
No.

12. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you?
They'd have to be able to argue about it with a sense of humour, because I love arguing about belief systems or philosophy. And he does, even when I exasperate him.

13. Do you like to pursue or be pursued?
I tend to pursue badly but better than how I am when pursued. I often find that when things start with someone, there's usually some debate over who made the first move as a result.

14. Use three words to describe yourself?
Moody, neurotic artist.

15. Do any songs make you cry?
No. Movies occasionally make me cry and some comics have been known to do it, some books, but I don't think I've ever cried to a song.

16. Are you continuing your education?
I'm going to do a Master's Degree in Creative Writing in a year and a half if everything goes well. Otherwise I'm just reading and writing every day.

17. Do you know how to shoot a gun?
God, no! It's going to be blunt force trauma or nothing else.

18. If your house was on fire, what would be the first thing you grabbed?
Well, assuming my apartment wasn't instantaneously disintegrated from sheer volume of paper products going WHOOMP, well, priobably the 1931 Remington typewriter Michael gave me one year.

19. How often do you read books?
Every day, although the speed varies. I usually to be able to eat an entire book in one day but these days there's too much going on.

20. Do you think more about the past, present or future?
Stuck in all three at once. I should be three people. I am three people, maybe more. I obsess over mistakes and quiver neurotically over future events. Actually, now that I think about it, I have a real problem with not being in the moment.

21. What is your favorite children's book?
Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurie Sendak. If there ever was a children's book that so perfectly reflected my inner life.

22.What color are your eyes?
Blue, officially, although I think they're more a grey-blue.

23. How tall are you?
Five-nine, or five-ten. Haven't measured myself lately.

24. Where is your dream house located?
Lush apartment in Paris, yes, with a room for Michael to do his computering and photographying stuff in, a room for me to do my writering in at my little writing table. A kitchen with enough counter space and a little, creaking bathroom with cracks in the linoleum (peeling at the edges) and a naked bulb hanging over top, with a very large bathtub and a shower spout coming out of the ceiling.

27. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth?
I took some with Samara a couple of weeks ago, bottom of Bay Centre, although I was terribly impatient on the wait afterward. They were adorable.

28. When was the last time you were at Olive Garden?
Uh. I think there's one in Vancouver, on Robson? I think the last time I was there, Matthew freaked out at the three of us there and went off to take a shower. I'm not terribly interested in going back.

30. Where was the furthest place you traveled today?
Samara and I walked down Government to the Empress and wandered through the Rose Garden while digesting the food from dinner. Because whenever I hang out with girls it always looks like a date.

32. Do you like mustard?
Yes! When I ate meat I loved leftover roast pork with mustard all over it.I still really love mustard on veggie burgers and such.

33. Do you prefer to sleep or eat?
Sleep's always been inconvenient. I'd much rather eat something flavourful and textured.

34. Do you look like your mom or dad?
I gather I look like my dad but I've got my mum's colouring.

35. How long does it take you in the shower?
I used to take these luxurious, thirty minute showers by myself but that's not terribly practical, so I've cut it down to about ten minutes or five if I really push it. Shortest shower I've ever taken was about thirty seconds, and that was because my bus to work ten minutes before I woke up. If it's with the Accomplice, well, probably about half an hour including teeth-and-moisturizer time.

36. Can you do the splits?
No. What a horrifying thought.

37. What movie do you want to see right now?
Nothing's really grabbing my attention lately although Pan's Labyrinth looks tasty.

39. What did you do for New Year's?
Japanese Village for dinner, then Vicki's cousin's apartment for too many drinks, then a leisurely walk over to the Bent Mast for Midnight followed by a ride on the bus that involved some drunk girl vomiting. Home and in bed by quarter to one.

40. Do you think The Grudge was scary?
Didn't see it.

42. Do you own a camera phone?
Yes, I make people sit still so I can take a picture and have it pop up with their name when they call me. Most of the time they look unimpressed.

44. Was your mom a cheerleader?
My mum was a smoker and I think one of the bad girls.

45. What's the last letter of your middle name?
N. I have a very conflicted relationship with this letter.

47. How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
Six, give or take.

48. Do you like care bears?
I liked them when I was little but resisted admitting it, which my dad loved to tease me about. Apparently I absorbed gender norms osmotically as a child, although I'd swear I had the most bisexual taste in cartoons there ever was -- Care Bears and Transformers and My Little Pony and MASK and GI Joe and Muppet Babies and Superfriends.

49. What do you buy at the movies?
Cocolate things, if anything. Junior Mints.

50. Do you know how to play poker?
Better at rummoli. I think the problem with me and poker is the same as me with most other games -- I lose interest very easily and choose to play as a Avatar of Chaos Theory. I'd much rather gossip.

51. Do you wear your seatbelt?
Yes.

52. What do you wear to sleep?
Pajama bottoms, usually plaid, with whatever little T-shirt is conveniently at hand.

53. Anything big ever happen in your hometown?
Sorry, nothing puts me to sleep like local history. They pumped a lot of pollution into the air.

54. How many meals do you eat a day?
Some days one, usually two, or three, or about a billion little snacks throughout.

55. Is your tongue pierced?
No. I get paranoid about infection with that whole region.

56. Do you always read MySpace bulletins?
No.

58. Do you like funny or serious people better?
Mostly funny people, although I like serious people too. Passionate people. I like passionate people.

59. Ever been to L.A.?
No.

60. Did you eat a cookie today?
No, but I drank a shocking amount of hot chocolate.

61. Do you use cuss words in other languages?
Schiesse, mostly. Blame Run Lola Run. I used to use stupid made up cusses from sci-fi comic books, like nass and grife.

62. Do you steal or pay for your music downloads?
Pay.

63. Do you hate chocolate?
No. And Chocolate loves me, too.

64. What do you and your parents fight about the most?
My awkward relationship with the extended family. My lack of medical access and tendency to forget to do things like call. Actually, mostly, my relationship with the parents has mellowed considerably in the intervening years.

65. Are you a gullible person?
No. I wouldn't say "gullible," although you can sometimes put one over on me so probably yes, I am. I'd prefer to say "dense," I am often dense. I'd actually have to say that I'm a bit dumb, if you pressed me on it.

66. Do you need a boyfriend/girlfriend to be happy?
I don't think so. He's really nice to have around and certainly makes me happier. I'd be very mopey if he went away, I think, but I can manage to make myself miserable with or without a boyfriend.

67. If you could have any job (assuming you have the skills) what would it be?
Professor of Creative Writing with an emphasis on Short Fiction at a Great Metropolitan University.

68. Are you easy to get along with?
I think the Accomplice finds me a little perplexing/frustrating at times but that's what keeps the relationship alive. Other people seem to think me rather amiable and easy to get along with, but this suggests that I'm very good at disguising my misanthropy. It depends on how people feel about cussing or crude sexual references, because I tend to be full of both. I'm not easy to get along with if I don't like someone although I can play the politics game if I have to.

69. What is your favorite time of day?
Early in the morning and very, very late at night. I am a creature of extremes.

1. The laundromat was empty but for a couple of lugs working on renovations. The machines were all cold water. I left every at home but my notebook and my pen so I could get some work done while I waited. I had exact change, although I could have probably done with another quarter's worth of dryer time with some of the clothes.

2. I'm having some trouble getting at this one character. I pictured her one way when I initially imagined her into the scene, but now I'm rethinking. I have a better image of what I want the character to be and how he relates to and parallels another. I can work that out in prose tonight while I'm at the coffee shop with Christian. I'm still very much in the first draft at this point and so it's more about getting the story out and then worrying about the specifics. I know what the ending is going to be (in this version).

3. There wasn't really much of anything at Value Village, just dust in the air. All three pairs of pants that I tried on were abominations to be smote from the surface of the planet. The Patch was better, and I walked away with a track jacket and a blue t-shirt, even after standing in the change room with the lighting that makes me look fat and washed out.

4. At around three o'clock this afternoon, I sat on a bench on Dallas Road and stared at the water and the sunlight slooshing over it.