Monday, January 17, 2005
I'm quite out of sorts this morning, even though the writing went well yesterday. I did almost 1,100 words on Chapter Two. The book inches forward. And yet, here I am, quite out of sorts.
There is some reason, I'm sure.
Isn't there some great, grim irony in the fact that the whole country gets a day off work in honour of a man who struggled against and died to end oppression, even after having re-elected one of the greatest would-be oppressors of the last century? And that the threat of freedom for a minority may have been what finally tipped the electoral scales in Dominar Bush's favour? Yes, I think that's what it is, a great, grim irony. King said, "No one is free until we are all free." Somehow, the Reverend Bernice King has missed that part, as have so many other Americans. All or nothing. Personally, I think that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should have been suspended this year in recognition of Bush's second term. A nation cannot simultaneously pat itself on the back for granting this group of people freedom and strive to deny freedom to this other group. Or, rather, it can, but it should not be permitted to do so. The vacation has not been earned because the work is not finished.
I have always liked this quote (from King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail"): So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?
But that's not the reason I feel this way. I suspect that my out-of-sortsness flows from some far less consequential spring.
Set me aflame and cast me free,
Away, you wretched world of tethers...
I also worked on editing To Charles Fort, With Love yesterday. It's going to take up much of my time for the next couple of weeks, as I need to get the final ms. to Subterranean Press so that they can get ARCs printed and out to reviewers. I have to write my preface, which I fear may be a little long. It wants to be three different prefaces, and so I have to give each thesis voice and find the common ground. And I still haven't reworked the ending of "Bradbury Weather," and I can't screw up and not leave myself time to get to that.
There should be a couple of new things going up on the eBay auctions today. Your support is appreciated. Think of it as a way of showing your support for those authors who have not (and are not likely to) win that great publishing lottery wherein mass popularity and no small degree of wealth is bestowed to an arbitraily elect few. And, hey, you even get a neat book or two in the bargain!
11:52 AM
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