• Location: Alba Patera
• Mood: angry
• Music: U2, "Ultra-violet"

Distanced from one, blind to the other...

Yesterday, I wrote 1,048 words on the sf story/dream cycle that is still, for the time being, called "In View of Nothing." At this point, I'm so far into the thing, having already spent three days on it, that I may as well see it through to The End. Spooky likes it. To me, it just seems like I'm working extra-extra hard and coming nowhere close to what I'm trying to say. I will be amused, in a sad, sick sort of way, if I finish this literal "telling" of the dream, only to discover that the metaphorical approach of "A Season of Broken Dolls" worked better. Imagine that you have met someone who has been blind since birth, and they were also born without the ability to taste or smell, and yet you must explain to them all the subtle colours and flavours and aromas of a lime. That's what this feels like, exactly. Also, I have done something which I never do — I have gone so far as to produce an outline for this short story. It will be divided into nine sections. Anyway, it will appear in Sirenia Digest #16.

I should have had a walk yesterday, but I didn't. The weather is beautiful. All the way up to 70F today, and it's all I can do to make myself sit at this frelling chair and frelling type when I could be out there.

But I will at least have a walk.

Not much else to yesterday. Spooky and I played Scrabble. We watched Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946), which I love despite the almost unfathomable convolutions of the plot. Then bed and reading until about 3 a.m., when I finally laid the book down and faced the ugly necessity of sleep. Oh, TCM is airing four of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films tonight, beginning, I think, at 9 PM (Eastern). If you're into that sort of thing. I used to carry such a torch for Basil Rathbone.

Meanwhile, More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach
President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. While it seems extraordinarily unlikely this will ever have much effect on President Asshole, it's still some shade of heartening. Then again, Sauron never worried himself too much about the Shire...

Also, because I apparently needed something else to piss me off today, we have further proof here that the editorial standards at WitchVox remain as low as ever, and that witches and pagans can be just as hateful and prejudicial and wrongheaded as Xtians. My thanks to morganxpage for the link. Frankly, I stopped reading WitchVox many months ago, as, more often than not, I find the "articles" are barely literate, rarely thoughtful or well researched, and frequently serve only to illustrate the many ills of Neopaganism. I think I'm actually less annoyed by this idiot's crypto-heterosexism, transphobia, and fear of androgyny than by his insistence that some murky idea of "spirit" must be the focus of paganism, his belief that he is anything more than carnal, anything grander than a meatbag held back by too much wishful thinking. Mind and body are one; "mind" is a function of brain. I see no evidence that there exists anywhere a "spirit" or "soul" or "lifeforce" divided from the flesh. And if the Divine Androgyne exists, then I say it exists most genuinely in temporary corporeal incarnations, not some sterile, intangible abstraction. Okay. Enough ranting for now. Time to stroke the platypus, that fine old androgynous whore.