What’s interesting among other things is that the electric rifles used in Twenty Thousand Leagues… were later (1969) revisited by Thomas Cover when he invented the TASER, which is an acronym for Thomas A Swift’s Electric Rifle. Tom Swift (Swift by name and nature!)being the teenage hero of the juvenile scifi book series launched by Victor Appleton (a pseudonym) in 1910, and obviously referencing Verne.

I think, in fact, that the question is who am I now? I think that’s important. I knew who I was once but then it was like, gone. Someone dies or your family changes in some way, or you undertake a major move, or you finish or start something. It changes who you are. It really does, fundamentally. I mean I think that. I think that there is no essential you. I think you are who you are now. I need to think that because sometimes I want to be better, or different, and I like to think I can change. Having children fundamentally changed me. I was a lonely, nerdish, party girl, and having kids made me into a she-wolf. Who am I now that they are out in the world? Who am I now that I am a displaced nerdish writer? I’d like to be a she-wolf about my words, too. But I mean, that doesn’t describe me, really. My sister had therapy to deal with dying. She had cancer and took counseling to deal with it. She called me on the way home from work to see how my first session in therapy went. She said,

‘Don’t worry, if it doesn’t tell you EVERYTHING. If it only tells you one thing, or maybe two, then it’s worth it. It told me how to deal with death,’ she said.

This was the first time she’s actually expressed this. My sister is no longer dying. But for many years she held death within her as a cold kernel of possibility that set her apart from the rest of the world. It was who she was. It’s been ten years and she’s dealt with it. Now she’s a counselor in disadvantaged schools. That’s who she is now. She is the kind of person who will say on the phone to her sister, Therapy helped me deal with dying.

I read an article about a soldier from San Diego who was badly burnt in Afghanistan when his Humvee drove over a buried mine. It ignited the fuel tank and killed his team leader. Specialist Joey Paulk regained consciousness twenty feet from the vehicle engulfed in flames. On the day that he finally confronted his reflection in the mirror, he didn’t recognize himself.

‘His swollen lower lip hung below his gums. His left lower eyelid drooped hound dog-like, revealing a scarlet crescent of raw tissue. His nostrils were squeezed shut, his chin had virtually disappeared and the top half of one ear was gone. Skin grafts crisscrossed his face like lines on a map, and silver medicine coated his scars, making him look like something out of a Terminator film.’

‘This is who I am now,’ he said.

What? Who? The Terminator? ‘Like something out of a Terminator film’? What does that mean? There is no Joey Paulk that exists somewhere outside of those injuries. He’s not the same person any more. He has to learn how to be who he is now. I found his story inspiring, desperate, anguishing. All those meaningless words. I worked for a while as movie reviewer. The catch phrase among us, was, ‘What’s another word for ‘good’?’ What’s another word for ‘Terminator?’ If he can do it, I must. We think death is the ultimate journey from which there is no return, and maybe it is, maybe it’s the blockbuster. But life is the limited season miniseries. We leave bits of ourselves behind. We pick up new bits. It’s confusing. Shakespeare was right. We strut and fret. Shakespeare hid behind his work. That was probably a good call.

No. Give me Mary Tyler Moore any day. Saw the last show in the series last night on cable. Wow. I don’t think any of us realize just how radical this chick, this show was in its day. Compare Mary’s take on marriage to the reactionary right as espoused by Michele Bachmann.

And now it’s raining all the time. The air is cold but humid. I want to wash my hair every day. I felt like a slug at yoga. The animals are going nuts.

Because, you know, it’s not always easy to say which is which—the good self and the bad. Which the harbinger and which the savior?

Pulp never lies.

Anyway, the story is set just outside my home town, a place I’ve renamed Union Falls in previous work, near Moonshine Falls, NY. My friends and I used to hang out at the falls when we were kids. Ride our bikes there and splash in the gullies, wear bright clothing so the poachers’ rifles wouldn’t get us. It was remote and wild and scary as hell. Those were good summers. We’d head out after breakfast and come home for dinner, maybe. Maybe call from a friend’s place where we’d stopped for a plate of whatever their mom had going. Or maybe just grill us some cheese and take it upstairs to where someone’s big brother would be watching TV and sucking on a joint next to the open window. And always the lake.

In my dreams I’m always on Route 90 heading toward that place and the lake is to my left, so I’m heading north, and I always wake up just before I get there.

Also out and about is my poem, ‘Some Kind of Monster,’ at Go(b)et Magazine. Very cool brave new publication putting out stuff, the likes of which you won’t see anywhere else.

The novel has gone to the agent, which leaves me with a huge amount of time on my hands. Plenty to do, just not the motivation to do it.

A few things have got me excited. Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s new site, Weird Fiction Review. I read John’s Pelan’s piece on First Ladies of Fear, namely Mary Dale Bruckner and Greya La Spina, which inspired me to download Old Mr Whiley onto my kindle. Reading it now; it’s creepy. But the site is top drawer as you’d expect. Definitely a time thief, but hey, I got time.

But now this stillness
I am cleaning the fridge
(the novel is written)
I have ordered new seal for the door
of the fridge
Sticky jars from last year stuck to the door
of the fridge
ghee
I will cook with ghee
again

The iPhone chimes incoming
from the Flight Centre
I will book our trip
New Zealand or Hong Kong
We will go away
I will not write I will not teach myself
to write again
I will lie by the pool (if Hong Kong)
I will hike (Queenstown)
not miss the kids
not miss my work

not feel cleaved
from everything that makes me real.

I will cook with ghee.

read more of my post at this blog here

And a lot more happening besides. Editing the ms now, then will return to the blogosphere to reclaim my social mediocrity!

…

Whistles in the night

forebode the telling murmur, a half-sea dread

regal as the perch of bottled urgency whose

natal settings cast in a single stanza left to graze

the stagnant meat of its heart-felt emporium….

See more here.