Today, Gary Oldman is 50 years old. That's why you get the Vlad and Mina icon, because one of my Hollywood fixations is now half a century old.

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And now it is spring. And, here in Atlanta, a bright, sunny spring day it is. I pulled back the curtain in my office to let in the sun. I have survived another winter. And if you are someone who observes the Wiccan sabbats, I wish you a fine Ostara (though, of course, the actual equinox was yesterday). For me, spring is hope, the nearest I come to hope, hope and a balm against the hardness of winter, a season that more closely approximates my usual mental state — and it is a promise of the coming of summer.

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Spooky (humglum) is feeling pretty miserable, and she still has six days left on her antibiotics. We've been trying to work around her being so under the weather. But it's all editing, proofreading, etc. Wednesday, we read through "The Ape's Wife," because I wanted to go over it again before sending a "fresh" e-copy to Steve Jones for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (#19). Also, I started printing the manuscript of A is for Alien, though I didn't finish printing it until yesterday. On Thursday, we started proofing that, and made it through "Riding the White Bull" and "Zero Summer," a little better than the first 100 pp. Reading "Riding the White Bull" was rather annoying, as I'd somehow managed to print out a version that was neither the draft that sold to Argosy nor the reprint draft, and whole passages where missing. Anyway, I hope to have finished this read through by tomorrow evening, at which point I'll send the manuscript away to Sonya (sovay) for a proper proofreading.

Not much to report, aside from work. In a fit of annoyed depression over not being able to make the appearance at the O'Neil Literary House, I think I tried to do myself in with Second Life on Wednesday evening/Thursday morning, at least twelve hours, and I didn't get into bed until about 5:30 ayem. Insanity. We've finished Season Four of Angel, and last night began Season Five with "Conviction" and "Just Rewards." And I'm having to be annoyed all over again that such a rare bit of wonderful television fantasy was canceled in its prime (despite good ratings and rave reviews). The suits rule the world; we just dance here.

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We've taken a short break from eBay, but expect to get it going again in the next few days, because the medical bills are still here, and I'm no closer to having any sort of health care than I was a month ago (and the blasted taxes are looming just ahead). In the meanwhile, if you have not already subscribed to Sirenia Digest, the first day of spring, says Herr Platypus, is just about the best time to do so. This month, you'll get "Pickman's Other Model," and, well, something else, most likely.

I might have gotten four and a half hours sleep last night. Possibly. Possibly less. Maybe I'm fighting some unnatural bit of personal evolution. Maybe Nebari sleep a whole lot less than humans. Maybe it's an elvish thing. Maybe I've entirely lost my silly, sleep-deprived mind.

All yesterday was spent preparing for our Ostara ritual, which I thought came off wonderfully. I'm not sure what if anything I should say about it here. I sincerely don't want to become one of those tiresome gits who drones on and on and on about spirituality in her journal. But it was beautiful. We'd decorated our altar with acorns and dogwood and all sorts of wildflowers. Spooky baked honey cakes with flax and molasses, and I dyed brown eggs red. We bathed in hyssop and jasmine. A thunderstorm hit just before we began. During the ritual, after the invocation of the goddess, we planted basil seeds in soil into which I'd used my athame to stir the ashes of resolutions we'd each written down and then burned. Before we dismissed the Watchtowers and before the taking up of the circle, we ate the honey cakes with fresh strawberries and ale. I think next year I'll fix a proper feast for the occasion. Later today, we're taking one of the cakes and a strawberry, the eggs and and some ale out to the two oaks in Freedom Park (see my dream of 3/08/06); it seems right. Oh, while gathering acorns and flowers yesterday, we spotted a Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Dendroica coronata), which was a new bird for both of us. And now it's spring, and I've survived another winter.

It doesn't look or feel much like spring out there today, not if you're going by the temp or the cast of the sky, which are both leaning back towards February, but the trees are all going green. That grand pale green of early spring. Warmer weather's on its way.

I'm listening to Moby's "When It's Cold I'd Like To Die," which has been stuck in my head since Sunday night, and the lyrics are making me think of Deacon in the epilogue of Low Red Moon.

I've heard more reports that the hardbacks of The Merewife and False Starts are nice. I haven't seen them yet, but Bill at subpress says there are copies on their way to me now. Today, I shall read "pas-en-arrière, " aloud to Spooky and make any corrections/changes that seem necessary. Then I may begin a new vignette (or that may not happen until tomorrow). There's reading I need to do. There's always reading I need to do. Also, "Night," which had been planned as a subpress chapbook will now be appearing instead in a forthcoming issue of Subterranean magazine. I don't know which one yet, but yes, the art I'm doing for the story will still appear with it. I much prefer this to the chapbook plan, as the magazine will get a larger readership for the story than the chapbook would have gotten.

setsuled, the way things have been going on Wikipedia, I think you're going to have to do a new pin-up: Nar'eth, Barbarian Queen of the Ankylosaurs.

Please note that only 22 hours and 41 minutes remain on the "choose your own letter" Frog Toes and Tentacles auction. You snooze, you lose. Also, please have a look at the other auctions. The platypus will be grateful, as will I. And there's a bunch of stuff about gender polarity and Wicca (morganxpage, I'm looking at you) that I want to put down, that I need to write out here, but it's going to have to wait until a later entry. The day's not getting any younger.

I think all Monday's should begin with e-mail from Leticia Aguilar and Kra Krarosaline. It's a good way for the day to begin. It makes it easier to believe I'm part of some vast conspiracy of pirates, smugglers, chorus girls, alien bounty hunters, and Dutch diamond merchants. Of course, the illusion would be easier to maintain if said e-mails were not spam trying to sell me script-free Vicodin and black-market Viagara, and if the names had not been randomly generated by some spambot somewhere. Still, I take my illusions where I can find them.

Yesterday went well. Busy, but well. We found all the Ostara-related things we needed at the Phoenix and Dragon. There's was an amusing moment when the young man at the register (it makes me feel like an age'd spinster, writing "the young man at the register," and presently that amuses me) who was new was examining the bits of stone we'd selected and couldn't identify the bloodstone (green jasper with bits of iron oxide). When another employee finally told him what it was, he said, indignantly, "But it's green." I almost laughed. "Yes," he was told by the other employee, "but see all these tiny flecks of red?" To which he replied, "That's kind of creepy." Which seemed to confirm my earlier suspicions that he was one of those very sensitive New-Age, indie-rock Buddhist boys (and there's nothing wrong with that, mind you). I went the whole day without eating, just one of those days when I forgot to frelling eat, and my protein- and carb-deprived body passed out about six and slept until seven. Spooky cooked a pizza for dinner, which made the hunger go away. We watched the new ep of The Sopranos, which was superb, and we both loved that it closed with Moby's "When It's Cold I'd Like To Die." The consecration ceremony went well. I'm always the nervous one. Afterwards, I carried a violet candle into each room, and Spooky recited a farewell to winter which I'd written. I think I got to bed about two and lay there listening to "When It's Cold I'd Like To Die" on repeat while Spooky puttered about online. Later, she came in and read me Robert McClusky's One Morning in Maine. I fell asleep about halfway through, but, annoyingly, awoke as soon as she was done and was awake until well after three. Then I awoke from troublesome dreams at eight and thought that was all the sleep I'd get, but dozed off again until ten.

Spooky was reading me a bit of Amanda Palmer's blog yesterday, and it touched on something important that I'm not sure I've ever talked about here. Amanda writes (behind the cut):

( in her e. e. cummings way )

And, yes, that was a very long quote, and I hope that Amanda won't mind, but it was easier than restating it all. This is the first time I've ever heard another artist admit this. That their passion for the art form which they create/perform has been tainted by the fact that they've become a professional practitioner of it. I'd long ago assumed it was just me. I used to love to read. I read voraciously. Up until about 1994 or so, about the time my fiction started selling. By 1998, I'd pretty much stopped reading novels. And this is why. Reading had become work. Somehow, the old passion for reading had been undone by the fact that it was now my job to write. I come to fiction these days and only rarely can I enjoy it. My mind is too clouded with thoughts I never thought in the old days. How did that get past the copyeditor? How did that get past the editor? And if I believe the writer's not as talented as me, and they happen to be more successful, all I can think is why? And if the author's more talented than me, but nowhere near as successful, all I can think is why? Jealousy and matters of inequity arise. The fickle nature of audience. I waste energy envying X's ability or their readership, or I get entirely distracted and angry that so few people are reading Z. It goes on and on like this. And I read less and less fiction. And even if I can avoid all these things, I can never escape the fact that reading is now work. No longer can I read for the sake of reading. When I read, it's no longer to satiate the part of my mind that craves story. I get that from movies now. When I read, I can only analyze and quantify and pick apart and critique and think about the marketplace and what I'll write next and why I'm not this good or how I'm so much better. Being a writer has ruined reading for me. I still read short stories sometimes. Spooky reads me novels, which usually works, though she often gets interrupted by me ranting about something or another. I can't even go near a comic book. Poetry is still safe, which is one reason I don't write more of it. At least I still have poetry. And non-fiction. I read a lot of non-fiction.

I should also mention that dead writers are usually safe, as I can neither envy them nor be angry they aren't being treated better. Okay, that last part isn't true. I often get angry about dead writers who aren't treated better. A handful of living writers are safe: Harlan, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey, Peter...a few others. The reasons why these writers are safe vary a bit, but it's usually because they're simply, objectively, and vastly more talented than I am, and I know it, and, besides, I've worshiped them since childhood.

Amanda writes:

listening to music has become WORK.
i don't want it to be. i listened to music for years because i loved it, not because i wanted anything for or from it, not because i wanted to DO something with it.
though that's not really true....even in high school i was making music videos in my head to every song on my walkman. but that was outside reality, it doesn't count.

The "outside reality" bit is an important point. I was writing poetry and short stories twenty years before my first fiction sale, but I never believed, not really, that any of it would be published. That it would become about making art and making money and sales reports and return rates and critics and readers and agents. Anyway, I'm sorry to see someone else struggling with this, but I'm also comforted that I'm not the only one. I would ask the other professional writers reading this, because I've never had the nerve to do so, has something like this happened to you? I know that many of you are heavy readers.

Argh. This has gone on far too long, and there are things I need to get done. Wind her up and watch her go. Damn straight. Please have a look at the eBay auctions. Thanks. "See" you later.

Postscript: Good luck today, Sonya.