Wednesday, October 20, 2004
A few days back, maybe a week or so ago, I was watching Jimmy Durante in Music for Millions (1944) and someone says to him, "Money is not everything, you know," and he frowns and nods his head and replies, "Maybe not, but I'd like to have it around until I can choose the type of misery that is most agreeable to me." Damn straight.
Some mornings, it seems that I finally pull free of the dreams as if through some great unconscious force of will, some force of which I'm never actually, directly, aware, but can only postulate upon waking. It's very much like rising from deep, cold water, if you've ever done that, certain that I'm running out of air, that burning ache in my lungs, the feeling that it would be so much easier to blackout than go on, the surface so near but not ever near enough. And then I'm awake, nauseous, dizzy, disoriented, exhausted, and I stumble about for hours, "wet" with the thoughts that have followed me back, the clinging memories of that dreamspace. This is one of those mornings.
What the hell was I going to say?
Well, yesterday I wrote 1,134 words on the prologue of Daughter of Hounds. If only I could write that much every day. If only I could write that much five days a week.
Here's an update on my various Subterranean Press projects: It's looking now as if the long-delayed hardback edition of Low Red Moon will be released in November, hopefully on the same day as The Dry Salvages and the "Mercury" chapbook (if you ordered Low Red Moon directly from subpress, you'll get "Mercury" free). The next Dancy chapbook, "Alabaster," will probably be out early in 2005, with illustrations by Ted Naifeh. To Charles Fort, With Love, my third short fiction collection, with illustrations by Richard Kirk (Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores) and a preface by Ramsey Campbell, should be along in late summer or autumn of 2005. Also, Subterranean Press has made a deal with Derek c. f. Pegritz and Nyarlathotep to release a second "soundtrack" CD to accompany my work, this time an accompaniment to The Dry Salvages, which will come free with the limited edition. My thanks to everyone who offerred an opinion on the release of the prologue of Daughter of Hounds prior to the novel's publication. Right now, the plan is that the prologue will be included in a future issue of Subterranean Magazine, sometime in 2005. I think that's just about it for now.
I'd hoped that would help center me, ticking off mundane things. I don't think it has.
As Darren McKeeman has already announced, I will not be attending SpookyCon on Halloween weekend. My apologies to anyone who was hoping to see me there. Perhaps I can get to San Francisco sometime next year. Perhaps.
This entry isn't nearly so ramblesome as you might think. But you do need to squinch up your eyes just the right way and then look at it in a mirror to see the symmetry. It's an anamorphic procession.
Spooky and I spent a few more hours with Phil Hine's Chaos Condensed last night. This book was recommended to me by a number of people who's opinion on such things I respect, but I have to confess that I'm finding it extremely frustrating. Hine's logic often comes across as slipshod and circular, filled with ad hoc reasoning, and much of the book seems even more ramblesome and unfocused than this blog entry. I'm coming to chaos magic with a need for intellectual rigor that I've inherited from my background as a natural scientist and from my studies in philosophy and psychology over the last decade and a half. I'd hoped that, drawing as it does upon quantum physics and chaos theory, chaos magic would offer a more reasoned and "scientific" approach to magic than other schools. Indeed, Hine begins by claiming that this is, in fact, the case. But I've not seen much actual evidence of it so far. However, I will say that things did seem to be getting a little better round about pages 100-115 or so, with the discussion of servitors. We'll see how this thing goes. I feel like an interloper. It's a strange, strange land, and I'm a stranger here. Spooky seems to have much more patience in these matters than I do.
I think I've dripped a whole puddle of dream onto the floor at my feet. It will surely freeze in the cryosphere.
I spent about an hour yesterday evening, after I'd finished up with Daughter of Hounds, putting together my comments on Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, but they are still unfinished. Hopefully, I'll have them up this evening.
Enough for now. I must pretend to move ahead.
11:21 AM
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