Academia

Okay, it feels like I love academia DESPITE academia. There is always one class that is a let down, sometimes all of them. The reading is often pointless and the professors are ridiculous. I walk the halls of Wiekamp Hall and see so many hot looking people. I mean, tasty! Tasty and clueless and a little frightened. But these hot peopel are never English majors and whenever I step into class I am greeted by the biggest assortment of fat, pimply, wanna by Ernest Hemingway sideshows you have ever seen! Not a looker among them!

Communication is off. Everyone seems vaguely afraid of everyone else. It can all be a little less than perfect and yet... and yet... and... yes, I know that it's good to be here.

Witch's Blood

Witch's Blood

I'm beginning to love proofreading so much that I have to remember to do actual writing. Now I'm proofing a new story, and I've been longing to do this for a while.

I never proof until the story has sat cold for at least half a year. This usually translates to more than a year, and then it takes a while to write the initial draft. I am always writing from the place I am in at the time. So reading a rough manuscript is more accurate (for me) than reading my own journals. I say things better when I am saying them fictionally.

And I learn things.

What have I learned?

That I am not sure if I have faith anymore. Faith as defined by a church. There are things more important, and more sustaining that faith. And they are all around me. Blessing me.

sweetness

For the night she is--
and who can blame you?
an icon
and she is also candy
there is so much sweetness in her
past that wrapper
and you wish to God you could
be part of that sweetness
as you push her up against the washer
after all
you must be sweet
if such a sweet thing likes you--
loves you?
no, not quite
but this is enough
for tonight.
Bigger and bigger inside her small tightness
the whiteness and brightness
of a big bang
if you... if you...
push just a little
push just a little harder
harder now
you'll break through into that sweetness
oh, my God!
that deepness
you have felt before
that puts you on the balls of your feet
then brings you to the floor
and then stuffing the weapon back into your
pants
it has done its damage
once again
and still you did not
quite get the wrapper off
all that sweetness

I have in the mail a little slip with frequent flier miles
i never fly on airplanes
i never really fly anywhere at all
nothing is holding me here
not that i feel felt here
no, i feel rooted here,
deep in this earth
but that doesn't mean
that i don't feel the wings
growing out of my back
just at the thought of--
the knowledge that i can fly

life is so uncertain
beautiful, uncertain
deep like the edge of a cliff
one could fly
life is lovely and terrible
there is no security
until we die

The First Prophecy

I am either the bad English major, or the bad American citizen. I only buy books when I have to. I only buy things when I really, really want to. I've had this talk with several book lovers. When I talk about checking a book out from the public library, they look at me strangely because I don't buy it. When a new book comes out and I say I can't wait to take it from the library, they think it's odd that I don't rush out to spend thirty dollars on a hardback. Or it's just odd that I am not willing to put down money on a book I don't even know if I'll like. Everything I own I love. None of it is frivolous. They say, "But I have to buy it, or else I just don't feel like I own it." But you don't own it. How can you own another person's words? Americans, how can you own much of anything. Nowadays people even pay money to have stars named after them thinking they can own that to. Everyone wants to buy up this and that so that they can buy up a little security.

My problem is laziness. I am far too lazy to work eight hours a day behind a desk and exhaust myself getting all this money. And I have noted that there is a link between all of this money spend in all of these places, and all of the time spent behind a desk or in an office.

So I have made my choice.

Writing.... Again

The rough draft of The Fish Hook's Daughter ended with, amongst other things, two of the main characters being carried off into the mountains by giant crows. Such is the power of fantasy. That rough draft will sit on it's... wherever rough drafts sit, until I'm ready to look at it. For now I am still amazed by the details that go into printing one's first novel. It seems like everyone has a book out, but if the truth must be known, out of all those everyones there's only one that I know, and I don't know her very well, and her publisher stiffed her. I know me, and for me this is long, difficult work. Here Jamnia sits, still not in book form, still not out for the world to see and I count that it's nearly a year since I first set out trying to publish it. This is standard time for all books, at least, but that doesn't make this one seem any shorter.

And this doesn't mean that I stop writing, or thinking. I began gazing over this next project. Imagine, actually trying to finish what I started. I did finish it, once. I even named it. The title was the The Low Countries and, as one might expect with such a ghastly double entente, the book was so bitter and sad that my computer rebelled and destroyed half of it. So I've been sitting around with half a good novel saying, "Finish me, finish me. And add a little sugar while you're at it."

I begin to peruse this tonight, and am surprised when I find myself grinning.