So, my thanks to everyone who emailed to let me know about the new study published in Nature, regarding the sequencing of the genetic code of Ornithorhynchus anatinus, otherwise known as Herr Platypus. I've not yet had time to sit down and read all the reports, but there's some weird and wonderful news coming out of this study. For one, we now have genetic evidence that monotremes originated as far back as the mid-Jurassic Period, 170 million years ago (though the actual platypus fossils date only as far back about 100,000 years). This suggests that the Order Monotremata is quite a bit older than the earliest-known member of the group, Teinolophos trusleri, discovered in the Lower Cretaceous (approx. 123 mya) strata at Flat Rocks, Victoria, Australia. But far stranger is the discovery that ye olde platypus possesses "five X and five Y chromosomes..." which in theory "...means there are 25 possible sexes, though in practice that doesn't happen." A bloody shame, says I.

All hail the noble platypus, and hisherit's formidable toxic spurs!

And though it has nothing much to do with platypuses, you really should check out the James Gang. Some things are better heard and seen than described. So, have a listen. But, in the words of the Gang:

The James Gang is an updated 1920’s Vaudevillian throwback-style group of three magical entertainers that sing songs, dance, ride unicycles, perform magic and blow fire to name just a few of the things they do in their full show. There are (3) main performers with more background performers to come as the movement grows. T J G consists of Jellyroll James, Deacon Boondini and the Great Gatsby “for short we go by Jelly, Deacon and Gatsby” This group dresses in a high fashion style that is not seen today in music. They have many looks that range from 1920’s suit jackets with knickers, bow ties and knee high argyle sox to all denim jackets and pants tucked into Equestrian knee high boots with Barret and Poorboy hats armed with wooden canes. Think Harlem when they dressed really regal. It is the mission of the group to restore real performances back into the African American community and the world community at large.

Booyah!

Seems one of the cracked teeth has refused to heal. Dr. Booth warned me this was very possible. The damage was just too great. I awoke at 5:45 ayem or so, in something at least approaching agony, and it was near 7 am before I was asleep again, and the only thanks to pain pills and Ambesol. So, in all likelihood, I'll be going to have this tooth extracted sometime in the next two weeks, right in the middle of packing and all these deadlines, and I'll be losing at least a few days to recovery when I should be packing and writing.

I've been meaning to mention that "A Season of Broken Dolls" has been selected for a forthcoming trade paperback "sampler" of stories from the online version of Subterranean Magazine.

No writing yesterday, not really. We took Hubero outside on his leash, and it was good to be out in the spring sunlight, listening to the blue jays and the robins. We had someone from United Van Lines coming to give us an estimate on the cost of the move to Providence. He needed access to all rooms, and I knew I couldn't work through that, so I took a book and went to (boo, hiss) Starbuck's (and they may not have enough sense to use the apostrophe, but I do). I don't remember how many months ago it was that I laid aside Chris Beard's The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans (University of California Press, 2004), but shame on me. It's a wonderfully written thing, and I sat there and drank a white-chocolate mocha (too sweet, but not bad), and read Chapter 6 ("The Birth of a Ghost Lineage"), which was mainly about collecting fossils of the omomyid primate Shoshonius cooperi from the late Eocene Willwood Formation of Wyoming's Wind River Basin. Meanwhile, Spooky got our estimate from a guy named Ron Goodbub, a retired Pepsico salesman from Kentucky who grew bored with retirement and went back to work (I think it's very suspicious that LJ knows how to spell Pepsico, but not Shoshonius; hell, it can't even spell "Starkbuck's" without the apostrophe). Here's a bit from Chapter 6 of Chris Beard's book I wanted to quote:

"It hardly ever makes sense to refer to a given species — whether living or fossil — as being 'more primitive' than another, for reasons that go beyond any value-laden connotations the comparison carries along with it. Tarsiers are more primitive than humans in having three premolars on either side of their lower jaws and in lacking a complete mandible formed by bony fusion at the chin. Humans are more primitive than tarsiers in retaining a separate tibia and fibula and in having much smaller eyes. The important distinction here is that, while entire species can rarely be arranged from primitive to advanced, individual features usually can be. In fact, paleontologists rely on exactly these trait-by-trait comparisons to decipher the biology of extinct organisms, as well as to reconstruct how they fit on the evolutionary tree."

Myself, I prefer to speak of character states being more and less derived from a given ancestral state than to ever use the word "primitive" or "advanced," as any given organism's evolutionary "status" can only be assessed or judged relative to how well it is adapted to its environment. Tarsiers have been around a lot longer than humans (by tens of millions of years), but they are no less well adapted to their environment than are humans, and therefore no more "primitive" (which, of course, is just another way of saying what Beard is saying above). Yes, that was a tangent.

Mr. Goodbub took longer with the estimate stuff than expected, and it was after 4 pm before I got back to work. I read over the pages I did on "Rappaccini's Dragon" on Monday and Tuesday, made some corrections, and then decided I'd spend the rest of the afternoon packing, give up a Friday off, and plan to finish the story today. I packed something like seven large boxes of books, hardly the tip of the fucking iceberg. Then again, Mr. Goodbub was telling Spooky about having just moved a mathematician who had 500 boxes of books, which makes me feel a little better.

How I'm going to cope with my schedule this month — especially with the bum tooth — is sort of beyond me. I have to finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30. I have to do the line edits and introduction on A is for Alien, and an introduction for an Arthur Machen collection that's being edited by S.T. Joshi. I have to get back to work on The Red Tree and make some real progress. I have to go to Birmingham and have a tooth pulled, then recover. And Spooky and i figured out yesterday that it's likely the pace of packing will have become so hectic by the 20th that I'll be forced to stop working. We will probably leave here on May 29th, a Thursday. It's insane, truly. I'd wait and have to tooth pulled after the move, but after the pain last night, that may not be an option.

I was in bed a little after one ayem, and we read more of House of Leaves, because I needed to hear the words. I was asleep by 2:30, only to be awakened a few hours later, which is where we came in...

Ah, and only a few weeks until I hit -4, on May 26th. I do have that wish list at Amazon.com, even if it does mean more packing. Distractions are always welcome, even when i have no time for them.

Coffee, platypus. Coffee, you fool!

One of the very good things about keeping journals — both the pen-and-paper sort and this other, virtual sort — is the ability to look back at a given past date in my life, whether it's one year ago or ten years ago, and measure how much I have changed from that time. Or not changed, as the case may be. It's like my personal fossil record, a reckoning of my own psychological evolution, whether gradualistic or of a more punctuated tempo. Yesterday, I came across this paragraph, from my 3/9/06 entry. It was heartening, as I can read these words now, a year later, and not be embarrassed by them, by the sentiment they express, which, if anything, I feel more strongly now than I did a year ago:

I wanted to say thanks to the people who've commented on yesterday's dream entry. Especially mockingbirdgrrl, who wrote, "Your statement, 'Magic is communication. Magic is the one-way communication between any living organism and the cosmos. We speak and the cosmos doesn't listen, but we speak because there's nothing else we can do.' resonates soundly. I kept rereading it, thinking I'd heard that somewhere before. Here it is, from Simon Black's The Book of Frank: 'Because in reality, there is no response to our howling, not here. But that fact is intolerable. The mind invents a response.'" I've never read Simon Black, but yes, exactly. Consciousness cannot help but howl. I know I've been howling my head off for my whole goddamn life. And, so far, the only response beyond wishful thinking has been the beauty and profundity of Nature and Art* that's right here for anyone who'll but open their eyes and see the small fraction that's visible. I know my howling consciousness will always long for something more, some two-way communication, but I'm beginning to accept (in the words of Elizabeth Bear) the apparent truth that "Nobody is coming for you." My dream was fascinating and helpful, but it was only me talking to me, my unconscious and perhaps a Jungian collective attempting to aid my clumsy, fretting conscious mind. Of course, it was also the voice of the "goddess," the Dark Mother and Father and Divine Androgyne, but only because I am a part of the cosmos, as are you and that lightning-struck tree and the crows and everything living and non-living, every molecule and atom and sub-atomic speck and particle and wave...and, well, I think you see where I'm headed with this. Sagan said it best. "Star stuff."

I would add, now, that "Magick is the willful invocation of awe," but I sort of suspect that more recent statement is only a refinement of "Magic is communication. Magic is the one-way communication between any living organism and the cosmos." Also, while I'm on the subject, this bit from the LJ of morganxpage yesterday:

I strongly believe that the subjugation of sexuality is the root of all evil in the world. It causes every complex, it starts every war, it is the only perversion. Sex is the all-pervading force that animates the Universe, to try to bridle it is disgusting. My Gods are Orgasms, we all are orgasms. Really, think about that: you are the fruition of someone's orgasm. Your whole body, your entire personality, everything about you is someone's orgasm. The whole Universe is one big orgasm.

While I would not go so far as to state that the repression of sex is the only perversion or "evil" (personally, I continue to identify wasteful acts as the greatest crimes against Nature), I wholeheartedly agree with the general sentiment being expressed here. As a child, I was raised in some odd twilight, halfway between the Roman Catholic Chrurch and the United Methodist Church. But, either way, there was that constant message, explicit or implicit, that sex was the reason for "the fall" from some imagined grace, the route by which "sin" entered the world, that, indeed, sex was such a vile act that the Xtian saviour had to be born asexually, sort of like a bacterium or a sponge. Only by spontaneous generation could a "pure" man be born. And I say now, all these years later, that one of the lights Neopaganism could, in theory, retsore to humanity is the knowledge that sex — straight, gay, bi, poly, auto, pretty much whatever floats your boat without sinking someone else's — is part of that thing which we would call sacred, magickal, divine. Anyway, just thoughts going round in my head.

Today, I expect to finish "In View of Nothing" for Sirenia Digest #16. Today, I write the last two sections — "08. The Book (II)" and "09. Exit Music (The Gun)" and find THE END. The dream in back of this story has not recurred over the last couple of weeks, and I hope that when I am done with this story, I will be done with the dream and it will be done with me.

Not much to yesterday. A day off. Last night, we watched Paul Rachman's documentary American Hardcore (2006), which was quite fine.

The platypus says it's time the make the doughnuts, and who am I to argue?

*Truthfully, though, Art is merely a subset or expression of Nature.

An apology regarding yesterday's entry. There were many, many thoughtful comments, and usually I am very good about replying to almost all comments. I am usually very glad for comments. But something went awry yesterday. I don't quite know what. I just sort of feel like I slipped off the face of the world for a bit there. I do very much appreciate the comments, that you guys took the time to make them. I'll come back to those questions later. Meanwhile, Liz, yes I would very much like to discuss this with you further. Do you have my e-mail?

Yesterday, I did 1,511 more words on "In View of Nothing." And I do not know if this story is going to work. I cannot seem to get it right. It's like I'm writing some dim shade of the story this ought to be. Yesterday afternoon, I was ready to shelve the whole thing. But I've decided to give it one more day.

The sun is bright today, and the warmth has returned.

I read an absolutely terrifying article yesterday afternoon in the new National Geographic, about the explosive growth and Disneyfication of Orlando, Florida since the mid-1970s. My first stepfather's parents (my step grandparents, I suppose) lived there back in the '70s, and I remember Orlando as a drowzy sort of nowhere in particular place, all blue crystal springs and citrus groves. I had no idea that it had become such a wasteland of consumerism and superhighways, megachurches and exurbs and McMansions. I suppose Orlando's another place I will never revisit.

Here's a marvelous quote from Lewin's Bones of Contention (1987). It's nothing especially profound, if you spend a lot of time thinking about evolution, but it does a good job of saying what it says:

Although we usually fail to think of it in this way, the world around us today is just one of countless possible worlds. The millions of species of plants, animals, and insects we see around us are the expression of myriad interacting processes, including chance — perhaps especially including chance. At any point in its prehistory, a species might just as easily have taken a different direction, given a slightly altered confluence of events, thus leaving today's world a slightly different place. And this includes the line leading to us. If, for instance, the massive asteroid collision that appears to have spelled the end of the dinosaurs had also wiped out completely the infant primate lineage that existed 65 million years ago, then there would have been no bush babies and other prosimians, no monkeys, no apes — and no us. And if the climatic changes that so altered the African landscape between 5 and 10 million years ago had in fact not occurred, apes might have remained the highest of the primate order, as they were then. There are so many "ifs" in our history that could so easily have shifted the course of events. Despite our intense desire to believe otherwise, Homo sapiens simply cannot be seen as the inevitable product of life on earth..

Oh, and Spooky found my glasses, so I can see again.

Also, a link for those who have not yet heard of the discovery of Albertaceratops nesmoi from the Upper Cretaceous of Alberta.

Proceeding as it did from the dreams, yesterday was a Very Bad Day during which nothing was written or edited or even planned. Virtually nothing of note was accomplished. Yesterday got an L in my day planner, whether it earned one or not. The dreams this morning were almost as bad, or as good, depending upon one's frame of reference and desires. Safer to say, the dreams this morning were as segregated from this waking life and as possessed of their own integrity. I need to have the Ambien refilled. At least the Ambien makes it hard for me to remember the dreams.

I cannot afford to lose even one more day over the next two and a half months.

Push it away. Push it all away.

I did get this comment, from shadowmeursault, in response to yesterday's entry, which I thought contained some good questions, so I'm quoting it here:

do you know the "answers" to your own mysteries? do you ever feel the need to justify a suspension of disbelief, even to yourself? or are you content to leave your mysteries as mysteries, even to your own mind? an example being the hemispherical world in Murder of Angels. do you, as its creator, know all of its nuances, or are you content with the little mysteries it gives you?

I cannot think of a single example of me knowing anything much more than what has been revealed in the stories themselves. Which is to say, I'm not holding out. Sometimes, I've sort of felt like reviewers and readers suspected that I was...holding out. But I'm not. If it's not there on the page, I likely am as much in the dark as you. I only find the answers I find as I write. There are very few exceptions. For example, I only learned about the connection between Dancy Flammarion and Spyder Baxter, and the connection between the Weaver and Dancy's "angel," as I was writing "Bainbridge" last December and January. Of course, I still don't know if Spyder's father was "only" schizophrenic, or if Dancy's mother was only "schizophrenic." When these questions are left unanswered, I'm not being dishonest with the reader. I simply never found the answers myself. Usually, that's because I preferred to leave the questions unanswered in my own mind. Maybe someday I'll draw a map of the hemispherical world, but I have not yet. Mostly, it's a big blank for me. The mysteries mean more to me than the possible solutions. I'll take a really good question, filled with endless possibility, over a sterile concrete answer any day of the week.

On that note, while the mini-series was mediocre overall, I was impressed and pleased that so much ambiguity was allowed to persist at the conclusion of The Lost Room. I kept expecting some hackneyed explanation: the Occupant must have had dealings with the Roswell aliens; or Room 10 was the result of a Cold war experiment; or the Objects were the components of a time machine which had crashed in Gallup, New Mexico on May 4th, 1961. But no. We were allowed to keep the mystery. For that alone, The Lost Room is to be commended. I kept wishing that it could have been just a little smarter, just a little less TV, but at least it was halfway decent TV. Which is fortunate, as I gave it six hours and suffered through the same insufferable commercials for three nights running.

Merrilee, my NYC agent, sent me a box of cookies and brownies from Solomon's Gourmet Cookies in Chicago (since 1943). The jelly cookies were especially good.

I'll be adding more items to the eBay auctions today or tonight. Please have a look. Lately, I really haven't felt like dealing with the tedium and frustration that is eBay, but a check is long overdue. A rather large check from a publisher, which was due two months ago. And the guilty party is neither Subterranean Press nor is it Penguin. It's someone else. At this point, I do not expect to be paid until at least January. My need to be paid cannot be allowed to interfere with the vacations and religious holidays of others. So, it's back to eBay. I may even list a second Daughter of Hounds ARC, though I said I wouldn't. Of course, when I said that, I thought surely I'd be paid by Thanksgiving, at the latest. Silly nixar.

In response to one my comments yetserday about NeoPaganism, morganxpage wrote:

I think that this is caused by the same thing a lot of other problems within the NeoPagan (and particularly, the Wiccan) communities: non-conversion. Most NeoPagans never truly convert to their NeoPagan religions, instead holding on to their previously Western Judeo-Christian beliefs, often without realizing that that is what they're doing. NeoPaganism becomes a new surface mask for the previous belief system. So instead of truly appreciating and serving Nature, they hold on to the belief that Nature is meant to serve them, which stems from Biblical teachings.

I think you're right, only I'd not confine the source of the failed conversion problem to "Biblical teachings." This is a problem with humanity as a whole, not soley with those humans with a JudeoXtian background. Humans have always had a tendency to imagine the world as this thing which revolves around humans. I see it in all the world's religions, to one degree or another. The inability to grasp that the nonconscious universe is wholly indifferent to the needs and desires of humanity or of any other species, for that matter. The refusal to view Nature as Nature instead of anthropomorphizing it as Mother Nature or the Goddess or Gaia or what have you. There are no gods and there are no goddesses, excepting our concepts of them. There is only the universe, and humanity is only a component of that system. No one and nothing "out there" is watching out for us. And, looking at Pleistocene and Holocene extinction patterns on Earth, it's clear that most PaleoPagans were ultimately no less anthropocentric and short-sighted, in terms of viewing Nature as something to be exploited. It is a myth that all indigenous peoples the world over held Nature in higher regard than their own immediate well-being. The present extinction event began long before the arrival of Xtianity and the fires of industry, even before the development of agriculture. Ultimately, I am asking that humans stop behaving like humans, not that NeoPagans stop behaving like Xtains (though that would be nice, too). I'm asking people to hack millions of years of genetic hardwiring and reboot (I mean these things figuratively, not in the transhumanist, singularitarian sense). I'm expecting people to let go of the comforting lies. While I'm at it, I'll take the goddamn moon, as well.

Okay. I need to be working on something for the December Sirenia Digest. I need to get moving.

Postscript (2:15 p.m. CaST; 1:15 p.m. EST): Upon reflection, it seems as though, increasingly, this journal has become less about my writing and more about things I'm probably better off not discussing at all publicly. If nothing else, it's hard to imagine that I'm not boring the crap out of some people, while leading others to conclude I am a complete lunatic and alienating still others. So, from here on, I believe I will be confining myself primarily to that subject for which this journal was created — my writing and the promotion of my writing. The rest is likely only white noise, anyway.

Syd Barrett is dead. Personally, I've always much preferred the post-Barret phase of Pink Floyd and never had much interest in psychedelia. But still. Syd Barrett's dead. I don't know. It's just frelling weird.

Today was a bit of a trainwreck, and yet I still managed to finish "The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)." I did 1,679 words between 12:30 and 4 o'clock this afternoon and finally reached THE END. I can only hope that Sirenia Digest readers like it half as much as I do. At 7,080 words, I think we can safely call this one a full-fledged short story. It's certainly not a vignette. It's stuck somewhere between being a fairy tale and a ghost story and something else entirely. But yes, I'm pleased with it. Afterwards, I had to go over all the Alabaster pages one last time before it goes to the printer, and decide on the cloth and foil colours for the book's cover. The cloth will be the same "oatmeal" that was used for the trade of Frog Toes and Tentacles, and the foil ink will be some shade of pink. Yes, pink. If it doesn't work the way I hope it will, I have only myself to blame.

Meanwhile, Spooky was stuck at a garage on Moreland, having about a thousand things done to the car before we head for Rhode Island. She was there five and a half hours, during which time she endured a television that blared talk shows and Judge Judy, and she read four issues of Time and an undetermined number of People, but all she seems to recall is that Jessie "Monster Garage" James and Sandra Bullock are married. Which is to say, she had a very crappy day.

Last night after the movie, we stopped at one of our favourite Thai places, and Gray Gunter very politely introduced himself and told me that he'd e-mailed me that very afternoon. Home again, I discovered that Gray is a man of his word. He writes:

As a paleontologist I was wondering if you'd seen this article on Ann Coulter's "facts" about evolution in Godless. And if possibly reading them has given you a small stroke.

Here's the link to the Media Matters article.

To which I can only reply that, as a paleontologist, I have just about as much interest in Ann Coulter's views on evolutionary biology as a brain surgeon should have in, oh, let's say Oprah Winfrey's views on neurophysiology or as an astrophysicist might have in Paris Hilton's thoughts on cosmology. Which is to say, I could not possibly care less, as Ann Coulter's thoughts on the subject are, at best, entirely irrelevant to the science in question. Well, other than fanning the flames of the so-called "intelligent design" silliness and instilling doubt in scientifically illiterate people. She's done nothing more than trot out the same old creationist boondoggles, and anyone who takes her seriously deserves to be boondoggled or were boondoggled to start with. I have several very choice adjectives which fit Ms. Coulter quite well, but shall refrain this night from using them. Still...it was nice to meet Gray in person and hope perhaps to do so again.

Meanwhile, I must face the busy days ahead. On that foul note — Poppy, it's still there:

Paleontologists who don't specialize in dinosaurs or hominins have long since learned that, so far as the popular press is concerned, new discoveries rarely get much, if anything, in the way of media coverage. It isn't surprising, therefore, that the lay impression of prehistoric life and evolution generally involves that which is either titanic and scaly or somewhat furry and humanoid. Witness, for example, the recent attention received by new dinosaurs such as Erketu, Mapusaurus, Guanlong, and Juravenator. Likewise, the new hominins Homo floresiensis and Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Exceptions generally involve taxa which can be touted as dramatic "missing links" or examples of macroevolution and be used as fodder in the supposed evolution/creation "controversy."

And since such creatures make up only a tiny fraction of new fossil taxa described, most everything gets overlooked. For example, the truly wonderful lizard Bahndwivici ammoskius from the Eocene Green River Formation of Wyoming. The cover of the new issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology went to the baby Triceratops, which truly is a wonderful thing, but no less wondrous is this 20-25 cm. lizard:


FMNH PR 2260, the holotype of Bahndwivici ammoskius. I accidentally cropped the end of the tail when I scanned the image.

One of the most exciting things about this remarkable fossil is that it's almost indistinguishable from the semi-aquatic present-day Chinese crocodile lizard, Shinisaurus crocodilurus. Jack Conrad, who describes Bahndwivici in the new JVP, writes that "Bahndwivici and Shinisaurus share morphological details in nearly every aspect of their known osteologies, despite being separated by more than 48 million years of time and living on separate continents. This is a remarkable degree of stasis within a clade." Indeed.

Conrad also states, in a particularly cogent and honest bit of scientific writing:

Generic separation of any two morphologically similar taxa is a sticky undertaking and the current case is no exception. Taxonomy is a tool for discussing clades of organisms, a tool that will be used differently by different systematists. Shinisaurus and FMNH PR 2260 are similar in all known aspects of their osteology [skeletons]. The differences...are morphological features that may be used to identify and distinguish the two taxa. Geographic and temporal distance further help to separate these species and to justify their separation at the generic level. In the end, however, some researchers are likely to refer to both these shinisaurids as Shinisaurus and others will adopt the recommendation of generic distinctiveness given here.

Oh, here's a shot of a modern-day Chinese crocodile lizard:



By the way, the genus name of this new fossil lizard comes from Latinization of the Shoshoni Bah-n-dooi-vee-chee, or "handsome in the water." The species name is derived from two Greek words, Ammos ("sandy") and skia ("shade"). Hopefully, I have bored none of you to excess. It's just that sometimes I get very, very excited about these things. These stones and bones, this grand continuity of life, are my most reliable medicine against the black-and-white monotony of words...

Well, the good news is that cigarette sales have fallen to a 55-year low. On the other hand (there always has to be that damned other hand), a recent Gallup Poll indicates that 50% of Americans "reject an evolutionary explanation for the origin of humans and believe that God created humans at one time 'as is.'" What's interesting about the latter, though, is that the poll also found that "Those with lower levels of education, those who attend church regularly, those who are 65 and older, and those who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to believe in the biblical view of the origin of humans than are those who do not share these characteristics." This should only come as a surprise to those who haven't been paying attention, but additional confirmation of the obvious is always comforting.

Yesterday, Spooky scored a sampler previewing the new Dresden Dolls album, Yes, Virginia, due in stores on April 25th. Thank you, Criminal Records. Me, I spent most of the day attending to writerly loose ends. A bunch of stuff I need to send off to Steve Jones in England, e-mails that needed writing and answering, editing "Untitled 20," writing a rough draft of the prologue for Sirenia Digest #4. It was a details sort of day. We did have a nice walk. The tulip trees are all in bloom. On the way back from the p.o., I saw Robert, who did my labret, in the parking lot at Sevananda (our local organic foods co-op). He's the latest thing to make me wish I'd commit to putting my hair in dreads. The day was warm and bright and good. Spooky made cheese ravioli and broiled asparagus for dinner.

And yeah, Santino didn't win. But I honestly think he deserved to win. I'm not just sayin' that because he rocks my socks. He had the best line. Yes, it was more refined than many of his earlier pieces, but how many times have the judges and Tim Gunn told him to listen to what they're saying? And the clothes were absolutely frelling gorgeous. Going into the final three, with Nick inexplicably out of the running, I figured Daniel was a sure bet. And, given his performance all season, I figured he deserved it. However, his line wasn't up to his own standards. Still, it was better than almost everything Chloe did. Chloe's victory is yet another triumph of mediocrity and blandness over vision and individuality. This is the way the world works, and me, I'm still Santino's tralk and Michael Kors can bite my skinny grey ass.

Wait. Ewww. No, he can't. But Santino can. Anytime.

The insomnia is back. I'm not having trouble getting to sleep. Spooky was trying to read Dracula to me last night, and I couldn't stay awake for more than a few pages. But I'm waking up too early for the time I'm going to sleep. This morning I was awake at 8 a.m. (that's 7 a.m. EST to anyone not on Caitlín Standard Time). I blinked at the iBook for a while and then rewrote the Wikipedia entry on the basal nodosaurid Cedarpelta bilbeyhallorum. I've got to watch this not sleeping or I'll wind up back in the state, mentally and physically, I was in towards the end of all the Daughter of Hounds editing. At least I've had to avoid the embrace of the Green Fairy since Saturday, while the labret's been healing (no alcohol). I am taking today "off," as I've been working eight days straight and beginning to feel it.

I wanted to say thanks to the people who've commented on yesterday's dream entry. Especially mockingbirdgrrl, who wrote, Your statement, "Magic is communication. Magic is the one-way communication between any living organism and the cosmos. We speak and the cosmos doesn't listen, but we speak because there's nothing else we can do." resonates soundly. I kept rereading it, thinking I'd heard that somewhere before. Here it is, from Simon Black's The Book of Frank: "Because in reality, there is no response to our howling, not here. But that fact is intolerable. The mind invents a response." I've never read Simon Black, but yes, exactly. Consciousness cannot help but howl. I know I've been howling my head off for my whole goddamn life. And, so far, the only response beyond wishful thinking has been the beauty and profundity of Nature and Art* that's right here for anyone who'll but open their eyes and see the small fraction that's visible. I know my howling consciousness will always long for something more, some two-way communication, but I'm beginning to accept (in the words of Elizabeth Bear) the apparent truth that "Nobody is coming for you." My dream was fascinating and helpful, but it was only me talking to me, my unconscious and perhaps a Jungian collective attempting to aid my clumsy, fretting conscious mind. Of course, it was also the voice of the "goddess," the Dark Mother and Father and Divine Androgyne (thank you, morganxpage), but only because I am a part of the cosmos, as are you and that lightning-struck tree and the crows and everything living and non-living, every molecule and atom and sub-atomic speck and particle and wave...and, well, I think you see where I'm headed with this. Sagan said it best. "Star stuff."

Postscript: Thanks to everyone who's sent me a chat invite on gmail, but I honestly don't have time for any additional internet activity. Really. Already, I'm allowing LJ/Blogger to eat great mouthfuls of it.

*Truthfully, though, Art is merely a subset of Nature.

The secrets of evolution are death and time — the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the enviroment; and time for a long succession of small mutations that were by accident adaptive, time for the slow accumulation of patterns of favorable mutations. Part of the resistance to Darwin and Wallace derives from our difficulty in imagining the passage of the millennia, much less the aeons. What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it forever. — Carl Sagan


Charles Darwin (1809-1882)