Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I'd been worrying about Emma and her trip home.  Glad it's done and she's
ready for the PT.  How interesting is the hardware?
  

    
Emma got home, my parent are home from Wisconson... this is good.
I'm now Great Aunt JaNell, as my step-dad's granddaughter had an
emergency C-section a week ago Friday (just heard about it today)
because she stopped breathing, and the baby is only 4lbs. 11 oz., but
alive...
And my cousin Diane's son Joey, 18, just enlisted a few months back,
just got shipped to Tel Aviv.
Big personal news day.
  

    
I'm glad to hear about Emma, and I'm sure that someone here can pass
along well-wishes, so I extend them.
Congratulations on the Grand-niece, JaNell, and.... well, I don't know
what to say about your cousin's son.  I'll be praying for him, though.
Was invited to go see American Pie 2 today, but I think I'm going to
go to the Saint Pat's memorial service, instead.  Definitely seems more
appropriate at the moment.
It's struck me dumb to see all the vendors on the street selling
pre-attack postcards that show the WTC for a dollar each (they were ten
for a dollar, before), tee shirts that have the old NYC sky-line (wow.
 That's a wierd description) and say "I survived the attack," and
various other tchotschkes (spelling there?  I wanted to use the word,
but then realized I didn't know for sure how to spell it) like pens and
pins for inflated prices.  I really wanted to push over all the tables
and yell at them for such crassness, but it just would have started
more trouble, and more trouble is exactly what we don't need right now.
 Especially after I saw a van stopped at a traffic light near my
apartment last night with, taped to the back window, a cardboard sign
that said "NUKE 'EM ALL!"  Really scares me, and what scares me more is
that I can't figure out where I stand.  I'm against blindly attacking
innocent people, obviously, but, you know, I just can't come to terms
with the horrible stuff I've read about the Taliban (and you know, I've
not been a fan of them since they destroyed all those Buddha statues
several months back).  We can't go and nuke things, *Can't*, but, well,
I wish we didn't have to put up with the Taliban.  I mean, I'm a
tolerant and open-minded guy who's seriously considered giving up
membership in the BSA (even though I'm an Eagle Scout) because of their
discrimination against homosexuality, but I really can't find
tolerance for a belief system that won't allow women to be educated,
and bans all creative expression that is not related to religion.
  

    
The thing with the US and the Taliban that really drives me up the
wall is the information that we (or rather, our government) gave them a
lot of financial support a few months ago. Why, you ask? Because of
their strong "anti-drug" stance. So, despite innumerable human rights
violations we considered them worthy of US support because they burn
opium fields...
I swear at times it seems like we're being led by myopic turtles.

A little closer to home for me has been watching little reactions to
all this. In particular, fears and concerns about We Can Get Them For
You Wholesale... is it appropriate to have a comedic piece about mass
murder in the show? Should we cut the line "judicious bombings"? 
The fact that the show has nothing to do with terrorism per se, and
that there were no actual bombs involved in last week's attack are
elements that had escaped the notice of those concerned. Had the story
contained the words "hijacking planes" then I would have felt
differently about the suggested censorship.
Indeed, when it was pointed out that the story actually has some
crucial things to say about the ease of dehumanizing people and seeing
death tolls as nothing but numbers on a balance sheet, it was agreed
that the story was extraordinarily good for us to do at this point in
time.
While I applaud the sensitivity that people are demonstrating, it
worries me when we start flinching at art that draws our attention to
the inconveniently constant darkness of human nature.
  

    
I heard today that eBay is refusing to sell any WTC related items...
people were actually trying to auction off rubble!
  

    
Wow.  It's a sick, sick world, sometimes.
But other times, you just have to sit back and cry and applaud all
those guys down there right now, on their knees.  I'll be going to
Saint Patrick's tonight, if anyone in here from here would like to meet
up with me.
And Dan- I read this morning that the Taliban (well, Afghanistan,
really, but mainly the Taliban) is responsible for 39% of the world's
opium supply.  You know, the addictive behind heroin and suchlike.  How
strange to be anti-drug.
  

    
    Martha -- the hardware is a metal plate (Will described it as
"stainless steel," which is possible, though I'd expect a different
alloy) and a few screws holding it in place, nothing elaborate (and,
while I didn't ask for a peek inside her sling, it should all be under
the skin).  

    For what little it may be worth, there is nothing whatsoever new
about selling bits of material associated with significant moments,
however unpleasant.  Scraps of cloth dipped in Charles I's blood were
traded for generations after the execution, and of course if you have a
bit of the TITANIC, you can name your price -- letters posted from
aboard on White Star Line stationery bring thousands.
    Some people will find the "I Survived" shirts extremely offensive;
others will see them as typical NYC black humor, a way of coping, even
of retaliating without violence.  I'm not defending the people who are
simply cynically cranking the prices up, but it would seem that the
logical reply to a sale one disapproves of is to invoke the law of
supply and demand, and let it sit there until the vendor gets the
point.
  

    
Actually, I have a piece of the scaffolding that the Titanic was on
before it sailed...
Jameson gave it to me...
Jameson is also the proud keeper of the Gnome that Charles Vess felt
up at ConCat, and that a girl in the front row at ConCat's open
ceremonies the year Neil was there heard referred to when Neil said
"...fuck..." and Lisa Snellings said, "You can't say that word, there's
a gnome right there."
  

    
I feel like I have nothing smart to add here.  I just wanted to talk
for a moment.  I'm having a hard time getting back into everyday life. 
Sleep is still elusive.  I try to embrace peace, compassion, and love
at all times, but I find my body quaking in fear.  

I listened to a song I wrote just a month ago and finally understand
what it's about.  I had written these lyrics, 
"Now I am harder than I ever thought I could/ 
and if you are a soothing balm I wish you would/ 
I wish you would." 
I get it now.  I didn't want this, but this is where life has brought
us.  I wish I could be as soft as I was just a week ago.  

My grandmother, who is 92 and has seen it all, is dying.  Her heart is
finally giving out.  I don't want her to see the planet this way, not
after all she's been through.  

It sounds like you all are having a bit of Hope.  I want to hear about
it, and what is getting you though the day.  I need to hear why you
have Hope.   

Thanks.
Adriana
  

    
My mother just got back from a trip, and said she was going on a
cruise in October...
I said, "But MOM..."
and she said, "If we let the terrorists keep us from enjoying life
while we have it, we're giving in to them."
  

    
Just a fair warning, Neil;
I've quoted you on my blogger.
Twice.
  

    
Er, make that three times, I forgot the shiny tights thing.
  

    
Ah.  I thought Emma might have one of those external halo fixators.  Saw
someone walking down my street with one supporting his ankle last week.
  

    
Emma doesn't need an external fixator to hold her halo in place. ^_^

And I, Adriana, am hopeful because I see people banding together for
the common good and taking joy from that newfound unity (despite what
seems to me to be much of the media's attempts to crush any unity and
undermine any confidence in the government by painting America as a
terrible country that bombs other countries all the time and blows up
innocents and funds dangerous extremists and so should have expected
such a tragic "backlash").
  

    
Here here, Dan.  I've seen a couple instances, here in New York, of
"We're not strangers anymore."
Maybe we're not innocent anymore, but, you know, we're actually
looking at each other, *seeing* each other.  We don't do that so much
in the Big City.  It can be so anonymous, so impersonal, here.
Yeah, we lost *a lot* of people we loved.  It's a horrible, horrible
thing.
And we're here for each other, now more than ever, because we *need*
each other.
That's hopeful, to me.
  

    
Just want to wish all who celebrate or sympathize-- or just feel the
need for one-- a happy new year. Shana Tovah.
  

    
Will... I'm trying to let go about the Buddha statues. I am. Honest.
Because *deep breath* it's what Buddha would want me to do. It's really
annoying to agree with and try to adhere to principles of someone so,
so, serene!  :-)  But I try, and most of the time I do okay, and
sometimes I fail miserably. Right now, I'm doing okay. At least about
the statues.

People, tho, are sickening. We asked to get out of a cab before we got
to our destination on Friday night. Why? Because the cab driver was
laughing hysterically, pounding on the steering wheel, he was so
happy... about the cardboard sign on the back of a truck that said
"fuck the camel jockies."   :-(

Adriana... hope? What's that. (It's been a bad, bad day. The
significant other doesn't want to divorce because he doesn't want to
send that message to me, what divorce means, but he doesn't want to
send the message that marries means, either. It's been a long day, and
just looking to get longer.)

-Kelly
  

    
I did have a little hope, 2 nights ago.  I actually got a little bit
hungry, for the first time in at least 6 months, and I'm sure actually
longer than that, because I can't remember the last time.  It made me
feel human, and quickened, and vital.  It felt like such a luxury. It
was better than food.   
And it didn't last, but that's OK, too.   
  

    
Most of the hope I've had is because a lot of people are reacting to
things with compassion, thoughtfulness, reflection, and open
heartedness. People seem willing to look at themselves as members of a
global community as much as, or more, than adopting an "us against
them" stance. For every Jerry Falwell quote I've heard, I've heard two 
 or three stories of highly conservative religious leaders talking
about compassion and understanding that extends across national,
social, economic, and religious lines.

Kelly - I'm not entirely sure what's going on with you... but it
sounds really bad. My thoughts are with you.
  

    
Rush Limbaugh of all people took Falwell and Robertson sharply to task in
opening his show today, I've heard.
  

    
Just put this up on my blogger:

So. I'm going to Trieste, for the Fantasy Festival (you'll find
something about it here at http://www.corriere.fantascienza.com/ and
the official site here at http://www.sfx.it/.) 

I'm leaving this coming Wednesday. 

Pretty much everyone I talk to seems to think this is a very bad idea,
and I think I've rather managed to upset several people I care about
by deciding to go. 

I'm going because I got up this morning, fully prepared to cancel --
I'd already cancelled the flight to the UK last Saturday, to go to
Douglas Adams's memorial today -- and then I thought, "You know, if I
don't go, if I just sit here for the next week, I'll feel like those
twerps have won. And to the extent that people stop travelling and stop
doing things, to the extent that we withdraw from the world, then
that's the extent that whoever did these appalling things wins and the
rest of us lose." 

Which may not be particularly profound, but I phoned the travel agent
and established that, yes, I could fly out on Wednesday, and I
established that, yes, the festival did still want me. And so I'm
going. 

I'm not sure that it's particularly brave of me -- in all honesty I
doubt that I'm likely to incur much personal risk (it's probably safer
to fly right now, when security is at its tightest, than it will be in
a couple of years, when everyone's relaxed). I don't think that Trieste
or Venice (where I fly into) are likely to be major terrorist targets.
If things internationally go severely wobbly while I'm away, I might
be stuck on the other side of the Atlantic for a while. I don't
actually expect it will come to that. If it does, I'll go to England
and hole up in Dave Mckean's spare room, or see if I can ride home on
the QE2 or something like that. (I could hitch a ride on a tramp
steamer, like people do in books, if I knew how to recognise a tramp
steamer.) 

I'll take the Libretto. I'll post from the road. I'll be fine. 


......

jaNell -- happy birthday to Rowan. (Not to worry about  the McFarlane
thing; while he may never win the World's Most Ethical Businessman
Award, and while he makes the people who screwed Siegel and Shuster
look good, he makes decent toys and I'd never want a kid who wants a
toy to be denied it.)

Adriana -- why have hope? Because we're human, and tomorrow the sun
comes up, and babies need to be fed, and cat-boxes need to be emptied,
and there's still art, and love, and wisdom. There's a lot of good
things in the world, and they most of them take a long time to build. 

People can do bad things.  I  remember, as a boy in the 1960s, seeing
bombsites from the second world war in London and Portsmouth
(unimaginably far in the past, I thought at the time -- but nearer to
me then than the Falklands Conflict is to now). Trying to imagine what
it must have been like to have nightly bombing raids over your city:
sleeping in underground stations for shelters, your house there when
you went to sleep and rubble when you awoke. I remember as a ten year
old doing the school assignment to write my family tree, and talking to
relatives, and learning just how many branches of my own family tree
ended in Auschwitz, or in Daschau.

Things that take a long time to make -- decades, for people, hundreds
of years sometimes, for cities -- can be destroyed in moments.

Hope is what makes us continue to create, to build, to breathe. Just
because a bully can kick over a sandcastle doesn't mean you don't build
sandcastles.

Dan -- I'm pleased for WHOLESALE. And yes, that was kind of the point.

Kelly -- i  send the sort of awkward hugs you send people with
grumbling ribs.
  

    
Forgot to say that this morning's post brought four pages from Gene
Wolfe of our short story (if that is what it is). I read them with awe,
delight and wonder, and then sat down and wrote my next thousand
words. We're up to page 11.  Much too much like fun to be real work...
  

    
I find hope here.  Most of you folk go a lot farther toward the "Love
thy enemy" thing than "Christians" seem able to these days.  It's a
relief to come here after going back to work today, where people who
are lifelong liberals tried to tell me that the ACLU should not protect
the rights of Arab Americans, that we should hunt the perpetrators
down & kill them, and that they hated Arabs.  I was appalled. 
"Civilized".  Oh, yeah, that's us.  We can preach to the Irish, the
Palestinians, the Israelis, that they should not retaliate, that they
should negotiate for peace, but the minute it's an American that's
killed, all bets are off.  We turn into a nation of ravening wolves. 
Disgusting.  And pathetic.

Ooops.  Sorry.  Rant mode off.  Bad day.

Not, however, as bad as yours sounded, Kelly.  You deserve someone to
love you unreservedly.  I hope you find that.  I'm praying for you.

Len--Shana Tova!  May your New Year be blessed!

Rebecca--Yay!  Congratulations!  That must have been wonderful.  Next
time it will last longer, and pretty soon, we'll all be tired of you
munching chips in the background  :-)

Will-hope you enjoyed St. Pat's.  It sure is beautiful.  I try to
visit whenever I'm in NYC. (Even though the homilies are frequently of
the "you're a horrible sinner & it's a wonder God puts up with you"
variety).  It's easier to tolerate in those environs ;-)

Ooooo, Neil just slipped.  Talk about something that will cheer you
right up!  What's the story about, Seanachie?

Mary (reading Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, doux-doux)
  

    
The post that slipped was the one about the Gene Wolfe story.  I am
not cheered up by your going to Italy.  I agree completely that you
should not let the twerps win.  But forgive an old woman a twinge of
apprehension.  I shall be sending good vibes along with you
a'Wednesday.  (Too much Shakespeare last week.  Must....st...stop).

And have a blast!   M.
  

    
I'm not more worried about you in Italy than in mumble-mumble.  You should
go, you should see friends from Europe, you should give them all hugs.  The
only reason to stay would have been if your family all wanted to stay
together for a while, but you have strong family members.  Have a good
flight and get to the airport _early_.