• Location: the swamps of Nindalf
• Mood: hot and unawake
• Music: Ladytron, "Everything You Touch"

Howard Hughes can't wake up.

Though I'd only slept about five and a half hours, I should have gotten out of bed when I woke at eight-thirty a.m. Instead, I let myself fall back to sleep, and all the worst nightmares (or at least the worst I can recall) found me in the proceeding hour and a half. I'm still not clear of them, still not awake enough that this world seems more real than those worlds. The illusion is incomplete, as it were, and I'm neither quite here nor there. But still I type. Amazing.

And today is Solstice.

No Stonehenge for me. Frell, these sorry-ass Atlanta pagans can't even scare up a decent bonfire. I made the mistake, yesterday, using Witchvox, of comparing the pagan events scheduled for June in Atlanta (0) to those scheduled in Salem and Madison (significantly more than 0). Ironically, this solitary thing wears on me.

Anyway...

Not much to say about yesterday. I took advantage of the delay with Sirenia Digest #7 to get in some more editing on "The Black Alphabet" (pt. two) and "Giants in the Earth." The latter I'd not read since at least 2001, and possibly not since 1996. I think it holds up better than a lot of my older stuff, and that in some ways it's nearer to what I'm writing now, even though it's set in Michael Moorcock's universe and not one of my own devising. I also tweaked the layout for the issue, which needs a little more tweaking today. I have Vince's illustration here on my hd, and just as soon as Rick's arrives, I'll be e-mailing it all away to Gordon for the PDF. Late tonight or tomorrow, you'll have the new issue. Unless that big space rock is ahead of schedule, which seems unlikely. Oh, and a big thank-you to our new subscribers.

The weather geeks are saying the high in Atlanta will be 97F today. Which means we'll easily exceed 100F. Let's not even talk about the heat index. I have an urge to walk out into it and lie down somewhere unshaded and let it burn me away to nothing. Just like poor Evangeline in The Five of Cups.

I'm really not ready to begin Joey LaFaye. During our walk yesterday, I was explaining to Spooky, because she'd asked, how Snapdragon had to leave the carnival because of the unwanted advances of the Barker, and because her mother, the "Feylien," had promised her to the Barker. Iggy and Sweet William were both in love with her and helped her escape, but now no one can ever mutter the word "snapdragon." It sounds pretty enough, but it's only some tiny fraction of a story I cannot yet begin to grasp.

Last night, because I was in the mood for a movie binge, we watched Robert Aldrich's The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and then Anthony Mann's Cimarron (1960). The former is based upon a novel by Trevor Dudley-Smith (Elleston Trevor) and is surely one of my all-time favourite films. The latter is based on a novel by Edna Ferber, and while it has its moments, here and there, and there's certainly something about Glenn Ford's performance that keeps my attention, the film is poorly focused and burdened with a soppy sort of sentimentality. Still, a nice enough way to pass 147 minutes in the wee hours of the morning. And you get Harry Morgan and a little Vic Morrow.

The Candles for Elizabeth auction will be ending in just a few hours, and I do hope it goes for just a little more than the current bid. I might well never auction another. Ever. Really. I can't very well sell what I don't have. Here's the link to the rest of the auctions. Please have a look.

I'll close with a couple of random photos from yesterday (behind the cut):



Editing in bed. My skanky, worn-out Eeyore slippers. Frell you, Glamour.

Just a friendly, somewhat spastic feline, on our walk yesterday.