Tuesday, March 18, 2003
It's been a long time since I made an entry this late. I don't think I've even made a nighttime entry in ages.
Anyway, today Spooky and I had business in Birmingham that had to be attended to before ICFA this weekend. So, most of the day was spent on I-20. I tried to salvage some of it by reading William Gibson stories ("The Winter Market," "Hinterlands" (which I adore), and "New Rose Hotel").
Yesterday was much more productive. I polished up the afterword for the Subterranean Press edition of Low Red Moon, and added another short section to it. Then I did something I've never done before. I conceived of and finished a short story on the same day. I'd never even begun and finished a short story on the same day before. It's a very short piece, only about 1,000 wds., for the Camelot chapette book, titled "Alabaster." A brief glimpse at Dancy Flammarion on her way to Waycross, set before that story, Threshold, and In the Garden of Posionous Flowers. It was nice to be writing fiction again. As soon as ICFA is done, it's back to work on Murder of Angels. My plan is to write three chapters in April (though I also do have to do Phantasm and the Alabama Book Fair that same month).
I've been trying to resolve to speak no more of Bush or his war with Iraq in this blogger. It's done. Soon, perhaps within hours, our bombs, paid for in part with our taxes, may begin to fall on Iraqi citizens. People will die so that people will not die. A country will be laid to ruins (again) that we might make it free. We are told there's no alternative. This has to happen now if we're to avoid further terrorist attacks in this country. Some of us believe that. Some of us don't. The oil fields will burn, unleashing a new ecologic disaster. Billions will be spent, billions we don't have to spend. We'll win, of course. And really, what more is there left to say about this sickening bloody business? I received an e-mail from one Ryan Engel today, regarding what I've been writing about the war, urging me to "Dissent! Dissent! And keep on writing." But I'm just not sure there's anything left for me to say. Others have e-mailed to question my loyalty to my country. They've gotten it wrong. It's not America that's the target of my loathing. It's the whole goddamned human race, the entire suicidal, homicidal species. We could live in a world of wonders, and we continue to choose one fresh hell after another. Individually, some of us may well be worth saving, but considered as the product of hundreds of millions of years of mammalian evolution, we're a sad bit of shit at the end of the world.
If I prayed, I would pray tonight, for all of us. Someone else will have to do the honors.
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