A Mirror of Lies

The art of fiction is the spinning of lies into a silver thread that can be woven into a fabric and solidified into a mirror. It is both falsehoods and the truth. A strange magic juncture where belief is suspended, reality is withdrawn, and meaning dances like blue firelight flickering over the far off horizon.

What is illuminated by that clear light?

As a writer sometimes I am surprised by what comes out in my stories. Sometimes my female characters have strength, but lack an active volition. They are not the mistresses of their own destiny. They frequently are caught up in situations that they must react to and their options are limited. They make choices that are morally ambiguous.

This afternoon I started reading a collection of stories of a friend who is a fellow writer. When I read his writing there is a certain male quality about his writing. I remarked on it to him and he asked me to see if I could analyze this aspect.

I think it is good to have these tendencies brought out into the light for examination. As writers we can write anything. We choose what elements make up our art-- and we can choose anything. Becoming more conscious of any subconscious tendencies makes it possible to have much more direct control over the crafting of the writing and to more consciously choose what we want to say and to make the telling of the tale more effectively powerful.

Some fiction also captures the imagination of the time period in which it is written and reflects the important themes of that time period. Historical fiction is written about a time in the past and the details may be exhaustively researched and accurate, but the work is from our current time period. Science fiction may be written about the future and the time period may be so finely wrought that the reader can envision the nuances of that far off imagined world, but it is written by a person in this time period. Fantasy worlds that are created can be anything-- future, past, alternative reality, the realm beyond the veil, or whatever. The writing must create a shimmering portal in any of these instances that transports the reader to the reality of the fiction, but there must be some grounding in the current time period. And yet a fierce flexibility that defies being dated in the work must also be present if it is to be timeless and have continuing relevance.

This requires examination on the part of the writer. Examination outward and inward. There must be a constant flow of information to the writer to provide stimulus to fuel the subconscious and conscious mind. There must be an examination of the writing for common themes to have conscious control of them to be certain of what the writer is writing and for the writer to determine if what is being produced is what they want to write and comment upon. Are the themes a statement that the writer believes is of consequence? Does the writer believe in the entertainment value of what they are writing? Could the writing be more relevant? Could it be more universal? Could it move into the wide expanse of unexplored territory with more conscious examination? How could the art be pushed and strengthened? How could the writing even more fully come to life and give more meaning to the reader?

Utopia or Dystopia?

Back in the 1950's and 1960's the vision of the future included push button convenience, flying cars, and shiny skyscrapers that reached for the upper levels of the atmosphere. The heroes of science fiction stories were inevitably competent, white, American males who solved the dilemma, enacted the solution, and came out with the winsome silver spandex wearing girl. And there was an optimism about the future. We had gone to the moon and it seemed the stars were within our grasp. Plans were imagined for orbiting space stations with artificial gravity, a moon base, and a colony on Mars

During the 1980's things changed. A gleaming future seamed not so likely. Bladerunner showed a gritty future. Alien had a female protagonist who merely survives an encounter with a badass alien. Terminator showed a future where technology destroyed our civilization and humans struggled to survive. Cyberpunk showed a reality in which normal people struggled and only a few elite had unlimited resources. The wide eyed optimism of previous decades was gone. Normal human beings were struggling for survival in a harsh, new, dystopic world.

But neither of these views comes close to our current reality. Perhaps it is too close in time to see what the future might hold, but I don't think the denizens of that time period will view their reality as either a utopia or a dystopia. It will just be.

People from our own time would have difficulty conceiving of the mindset of people from the past. The ancient Egyptians' world view would be almost incomprehensible to us. People in the future may look back at this time period and not be able to understand things like the concept of home ownership or being from a particular geographic country or ethnic background. They may be bewildered that we sat unprotected in the sunshine, felt that water from a municipal source was our due, or that we lacked instantaneous connection to anyone anywhere on the planet and required some type of primitive electronic device to do so.

Change happens. Nothing is static. Sometimes the world spins on an axis and technology jumps forward. Wars have a tendency to do this because in the act of fighting the war, new breakthroughs are made to kill more effectively. The breakthroughs lead to other applications and innovations. Things change. And even small changes can have huge impacts.

But often change just rolls into further change which rolls into further change. It is a seamless transformation and the future creeps closer and farther away.

We have gleaming skyscrapers that reach for the upper atmosphere. We have home appliances that do everything from wash clothing to make coffee to vacuum the carpeting. Flying on an airplane has become cheaper and more commonplace. Computers used to fill rooms. Now we have laptops. We carry cellular phones that can locate us anywhere in the world.

We also have locations on the planet where rape is a form of political subjugation, governments have created laws to limit population expansion, the top one half of one percent owns an unbelievable amount of the wealth of our most prosperous countries, corporations pay their CEO's many times what they pay regular workers, HIV continues to rampage and getting funding on the effects of the disease on newborns whose mothers are infected is limited, the amount of clean, fresh water is a growing concern, and the planet is heating up due to global warming.

So change happens. Are we living in an utopian time? Or in a dystopian time? Why should any vision of our future, short of extinction of our species, be either utopian or dystopian?

Lightning Strike

I have been working on this blogpost off and on all day. I started it shortly after being awoken this morning at six in the morning. A storm swept through this morning with gusts of wind and hail. The storms here in the mountains come up very quick. And you can see the lightning for miles.

A friend emailed me this morning and we talked over googletalk until her son needed help with the potty. And my freaking out cat was driving me nuts and had to be evicted from the bedroom. I need to get a kitten to keep my cat company.

I opened Blogger and started working on this post again.

Then one of my mother's attempts to call me on my cellular phone actually made it ring. My mother doesn't understand technology at all and would have been miffed if I hadn't called her back. She tried to call me 16 times and doesn't have a computer or use the internet. And it would have been because I am a horrible child if I didn't call her back. So I jumped in the car in my pajamas and drove down the mountain to get reception and call my mother back. My cel-phone is finicky at my new townhouse. Mom is good. Her dog is good. Her neighbors haven't done anything worth mentioning. My extended family is all good. And now my mom knows the address of where I am living. I hope that is good.

Then I tried to get back to writing this blogpost with not much luck. I emailed a friend to chat and had a very pleasant chat with him for a few hours. I like chatting with him because the conversation ranges and I learn things.

I sent an apology to someone who I commented on their blog and was far too harsh and just plain rude to. And I have no excuse for my behavior beyond something tweaked me and I have been so stressed that this stranger got the brunt of my pent up emotions. The experience has taught me to have empathy for others and to take into account when other people act badly that they may have things going on that I don't know about.

I made some homemade Lentil Stew. The directions to make it are in the archives on this blog under Bohemian Life Skills.

Usually when I cannot come up with anything to write despite fifty gazillion ideas running through my head, it means I am avoiding writing something that I need to write. It means my internal editor is warning an alarm. It means anything I write before I get whatever it is out of my system is probably going to be crap. So I have been sitting here trying to figure out what it is that needs to come out of me.

I think what I need to write is that today is my birthday and birthdays cause me to review the previous year. A year ago I took my daughter to a fairy tea party at one of the bookstores in Ann Arbor. We had petit fours and tea and listened to stories about fairies. I was anxiously awaiting being tested to determine if I had a cyst or breast cancer. I was writing a fantasy novel.

Things change. Change is hard but better than staying stuck. The cancer scare was a lightning strike. It made me realize I had only one life to live, that the way I was living was not as fulfilling as it could be, and I wanted more. I wanted to live this life with no regrets and on my deathbed be able to say that I had truly had a full life. Change is very hard. This realization has brought about many changes-- huge changes such as moving across the country and starting a new job, starting a writing group, and writing through times when I know what I am producing is garbage but having faith that better work will come.

Now I can go and write.

If You Can Control A Man's Thinking

I am organizing my new office and going through all of my papers. I just found an old water stained piece of paper that I have carried with me for years.

It has a quote attributed to Carter G. Woodson on it. He was an African- American historian, author, and journalist. The quote is as follows:

If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action.
When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do.
If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself.
If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.

Revolution Brainstorm

I woke this morning and thoughts have been pinging through my mind. Thoughts of chaos and societal expansion. Thoughts of draconian measures to contain power, to shape thought, and to maintain the old order of government. I cannot post all of what is in my head in one post. I started to and it became too much. I am kind of exploring as I am writing this and it is not in anything approaching a final form.

Let me see if I can sort out all of my thoughts. Some of this is the blending on input from many different individuals and it has been sitting in the back of my mind and fermenting.

CONTROL OF INFORMATION

If the number of bytes of data can be counted-- say for the purposes of charging for internet service-- then there is a mechanism in place to control those bytes. A filter can be programmed into the infrastructure. Information can be controlled by censoring out anything with a set of key words for instance. Initially this filter can be argued for under the auspices of protecting the public or the greater good. Protection from whatever-- pornography, terrorism, sedition. After awhile any information could potential be filtered and thus controlled.

GPS and SIM cards. SIM cards can be located. So if you are using a cellular phone to coordinate any political action, you could be located and arrested. The GPS in phones makes this possible. Also, on again, off again there has been attempts to get programs going to chip children-- for their safety as a precaution against being kidnapped. These chips could be left in place and anyone with one could be located.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Benign at the moment and observing things like the weather, traffic, merchandise in stores.

The internet offers immense possibilities. You can find information on almost anything and educate yourself. You can do this as an individual or you can enroll in online classes. There is a potential to either add on to our codified educational system and the designation of professionalism and proficiency. Or to entirely dismantle the system and move to a system where professionalism is bestowed via performance in either a job or testing situation. In that case, the education system that has been the place where research and development has traditionally happened will take a hit. But perhaps, this might open things up for private labs to think outside of the box and come up with new approaches to solving a variety of problems. Too often academia limits itself and scientists and scholars get in line with their colleagues in order to publish, in order to have a position, and to get grant monies. But perhaps this system might change with a change in what constitutes an “expert”. More on the job experts who have discovered/designed information, solutions, products, cures, whatever might come about. But where might those research labs go? Who might fund them? What research is conducted is controlled by granting funding. Who might be giving out the grant dollars?

Geography is not a limitation if you have internet service. And most countries are oriented on geographic boundaries. The internet is not entirely free. It relies on an infrastructure to be in place. The necessity for that infrastructure creates a dependence and a control. A geographic potential limitation. However, I believe social organizations could arise that are not entirely dependent on geography-- particularly if physical transportation becomes even faster than it is currently. Alliances and coalitions, governments per se could arise along information and ideological boundaries. Geography could become much more incidental.

I have to think on all of this more. Posting for now. I need to eat breakfast and think more.

What if... there was genetic manipulation that allowed the changing of any characteristic

This morning I began to think about different ideas. Ideas of a future that is not utopian or necessarily dystopian. A future world where ordinary people are carrying on the species as we have done for thousands of generations. I have occupied the afternoon while unpacking clothing just speculating and letting my thoughts and imagination meander.

I have barely scratched the surface of possibility.

For this post I am only going to isolate one idea and play with it. I am going to take the idea of medical technology making huge breakthroughs and for a price it is possible to alter one's appearance and shape to anything desirable.

Take this idea and let it sink into your brain. Imagine if you could look like anyone or anything you wanted to and the gene therapy was available to re-sequence your DNA to achieve this.

What if you could excel in any sport by simply altering your physical self through genetic manipulation?

What if you could be as strong as you wanted? Swim underwater with gills? Withstand immense gravity?

What if your employer could require adaptations to make you more suitable for a job? Greater synaptic responses with accompanying neurological damage? The ability to go without sleep and be more aware so you could work longer hours? A slower metabolism to conserve nutritional resources? The ability to interface telepathically with a bio-engineered computing system organized on the same model as the brain but with an accompanying loss of privacy? What would you be willing to alter about yourself to be employed? What salary would make it worthwhile?

What if you could choose your physical appearance and appearance became just another form of fashion statement? What would this do to notions of race? Notions of discrimination? On what basis would a hierarchy of social power and distribution of resources fall upon?

What if with an alterations of genetic material new limbs could be regrown? What if all disabilities could be done away with? What if diversity was solely by choice? Provided you could afford it.

What if aging was stopped and reversed? What if humans could choose to die?

Think about all of these and what they would do to society. How would society change? Would it change? Could we still maintain ourselves in some form of post-industrial revolution/semi-democratic/free trade economy when our sense of our physical selves could be so radically altered?

And what would this do to the individual psyche? What types of identity disorder may be cured by the alterations of the physical self? What new ones may arise?

New Vision

Even though I just packed up a truckload of material belongings and moved them halfway across the North American continent, I am thinking about art and writing. And expression. And our current time period.

It's an exciting period in time. We are at a type of juncture in the history of our species, the old industrial model of ever expanding gross domestic products and expanding economies cannot continue to be supported by our ever increasingly small planet. We live like kings and queens of the universe in a mind numbing type of luxury. This cannot go on. Water issues. Habitat issues. Our own burgeoning population is squeezing what we have available to us and what can be found on the planet.

And then there is the transmission of ideas. The internet has opened possibilities at a time when we need open thought, we need ready access to ideas to promote creativity, to promote solutions, and to promote finding a way into the future. The internet needs to remain as open as possible.

Science fiction offers the possibility to explore ideas and scenarios. It is the literature of thought. This morning I am thinking not on a dystopic future, but on one that offers hope. What would the future look like if not dystopic, not a utopia, but taking into account our current issues and solving them? How would society change? What would the change look like? What would be the vehicle of change?

Golden SF came out of an age when space exploration was in the news. We went to the moon. The stars seemed within our grasp.

Cyberpunk came out of a time when the information age was in its infancy and the we weren't quite so accustomed to the dominance of the corporate world. There was still energy and anger towards the assumption of power by the few elite.

We need a new vision of the future. What will it be? More thoughts to come.

Where the Corn Goddess Declines to Follow

I arrived in Denver today. I drove from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver on this leg of the journey. It was odd. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska are all very flat. There are slight undulations and everything is green. There are corn fields everywhere. And cows.

Then I crossed the state line into Colorado. It was like the gentle corn goddess refused to step over that line. Colorado has a much more rugged feel to the landscape. It is drier and somehow much more dramatic. I will be in Denver for the next couple of days and then on into the mountains.

Hot Damn!

I must confess to a guilty pleasure.

I know. I know. Petroleum is a non-renewable resource and burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming.

But I learned to drive when I was 12. And rebuilt the carburetor of my first GM tank. A gold Pontiac Catalina that had the parts to rebuild it salvaged from a junk yard.

I LOVE driving fast. I mean I really adore it. I envy Danica Patrick. Speed. No traffic. No getting lost because you are just going in circles. The thought of being an Indy driver gives me chills.

Indiana. Illinois. They are flat. I mean really flat. And boring. Take a look at the picture. It all looks like that. Flat, green with corn fields, and stretching forever. They are a mind numbing sameness of flat highways extending for hundreds of miles. Perfect for driving fast.

Another I decided I adore-- corn fed boys, driving modified American muscle cars done up gorgeous with racing stripes, Iowa plates, a U.S. Marine corps decal, and working that stretch of highway like they gotta have radar detection.

Hot Damn!

We played leap frog.

Made those boring miles fly. The deal with leap frog is that if a cop pops up, the slower car gets the ticket because they can only catch one. And when you are going the speeds we were playing with-- it means points and possibly the suspension of your driving license.

It's a gamble.

But it was worth it. Watching the miles fly by with the music pounding. Better than sex.

Alexandre Farto aka Vhils

This morning on the artist a day site Alexandre Farto is the feature artist. He is a Portugese born artist. Currently he is working with materials and spaces that he finds in situ. By vandalizing buildings he is carving out art-- transforming everyday decay into works of beauty. The artist a day website says that he is currently working with a mix of Quink ink and bleach and describes his work as: "Vhils art is poetic, complex, and ambitious, often focusing on the needs we have abandoned in favour of our wants, and the realisation that trading pleasure back in for happiness will be a less than straightforward exchange."

Please visit Alexandre Farto's website at www.alexandrefarto.com

More Things That I Adore

This is a continuation from the previous post.

10. Blueberries, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, and salad greens with a vinaigrette made from cherry flavored balsamic vinegar and olive olive. Yum!
11. The smell after a rain shower.
12. Watching a thunderhead roll in over Lake Michigan.
13. The transformed and pristine view of the landscape after the first snow of winter.
14. The pale green of new shoots sprouting on plants in the spring.
15. The smell of fresh tomatoes from the garden.
16. The smell of basil.
17. The taste and smell of lapsang souchong.
18. Losing myself while working on a drawing.
19. The feel of paint on my fingers.
20. The feel of heavy silk and the surprise at the richness of the color after dyeing the material.
21. Curling up on my futon after a long day of work and nesting into my quilts.

I will stop there for now. I like odd numbers

Small List of Things I Adore

I am starting a small list of things that I adore. I plan to add to this list until it is GARGANTUAN.

1. Getting some of my assigned writing done and knowing how to proceed with the rest. WOOHOO!
2. Yogurt with strawberries and granola. YUM!
3. Moist dried apricots handed to me by adorable four year old boys. Yeh!
4. Friends who keep me sane. You know who you are!
5. Happy babies who play my silly baby games and gurgle, squeal, and giggle joyously with me. YIPPEE!
6. Cats who know when I am stressed and purr in my ear. And who come home after escaping into the jungle of Michigan.
7. Bright flowers on tall stems that wave in a gentle breeze. Daisies and lilies. WOOT!
8. Children who read stories to me because I need to be read to.
9. Music that makes my feet want to dance and my body want to move. Yeh!

I like odd numbers so I think I will stop there.

Check out Stone Kettle Station

This morning started like any morning. Stumble towards the coffee. Start reading my morning blogs. Ho hum.

And then I encountered the latest post from Jim Wright's Stone Kettle Station. I spewed coffee laughing. Luckily none of it went up my nose. His latest post is called Making the Day a Little More Surreal

Door to door Christians, Underground Bomb Shelters, and Zombies.

Oh my!

Please check it out.

Spider Crystal Ascension

I have been completing a research assignment to find academic journal articles on various poems. This morning I have been researching Pulitzer prize winning poet, Charles Wright. Please seek out this poet's work.

Spider Crystal Ascension

BY CHARLES WRIGHT

The spider, juiced crystal and Milky Way, drifts on his web through the night sky
And looks down, waiting for us to ascend ...

At dawn he is still there, invisible, short of breath, mending his net.

All morning we look for the white face to rise from the lake like a tiny star.
And when it does, we lie back in our watery hair and rock.

Scent of Anxiety and the Arousal of Empathy

I was reading New Scientist earlier today and two different articles caught my attention. The first was an article about the development of gadgets that could read human emotions either by interpreting facial cues, monitoring the quality and speed of voices, or by interpreting things like heart and breathing rate. The article is called Emotional robots: Will we love them or hate them? The article goes on to talk about car alarms that jolt sleepy drivers, monitors that diagnose depression, and a computerized tutor that could monitor student frustration and slow down instruction.

Then the article talks about how computers can be programmed to read facial expressions accurately enough to recognize six basic emotions nine times out of ten. The computers can recognize disgust, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and surprise. To read emotions even more accurately computers will need extra cues such as head motion and upper body position. Already facial tracking technology as it is called has analyzed the differences between real smiles and fake smiles and facial expression software is more accurate than actual humans at determining if someone is in pain. The computer software could detect if someone was really in pain or not 88 percent of the time. The untrained volunteers asked to participate in the study were right only 49 percent of the time.

Another article that I read was about how the scent of anxiety has an effect on the human brain and lights up areas that process social and emotional signals and are thought to be involved with empathy. The study was done on students taking exams.

As I was reading these two articles I began to think. Emotion sensing software has the possibility of frightening applications and the computers will not have the benefit of empathy. What if the reason that the untrained volunteers who were wrong about guessing if someone was in pain or not chose to assume that the person was in pain so that they could procure treatment for them? What if they were attempting to alleviate suffering by going with the safer bet and saying the person was in pain so they could get help? The study doesn't give the details of how this was posed.

Further, the computer will be able to report to whoever wants the information a person's emotional state. What if this technology were used in airports under the guise of stopping terrorism? What if this technology were installed in classrooms to ensure that another Columbine or Virginia Tech type of massacre did not happen? Would having this technology in place be beneficial? Or would it violate the idea of someone being innocent until proven guilty? Do we want not only to be spied upon but to have our emotions read without the benefit of empathy or context? What use for this technology could not be justified? Stores could have it installed to prevent shoplifting. Workplaces to ensure productivity. Homes under the guise of protecting our health and mental well being. And as that information would be collected-- where would it go?

Our ability to smell another person's anxiety makes us empathetic to their situation and possibly evolved as a way for one person to subtly cue others to the possibility of danger. It was a type of complex mechanism that very well might have come about to bring humans closer together and ensure our survival. How will we ensure that the application and the development of computers that can read our emotions and relay this information will have similar benefits?

Pink Tits

Breasts. Tits. Boobs. Highbeams. Knockers. Melons. Whatever you want to call them. I have heard so many different names for the lovely mounds of flesh that adorn women. It gives me faith in the creative ability of mankind. Well, for things that capture interest anyway.

Recently, I read an article about Domenica Niehoff who was a former prostitute turned social worker who advocated for the rights of sex workers before she began working to get women off the street. Her life was filled with abhorrent disadvantages and this remarkable woman rose above. Niehoff survived an early life in an orphanage, child prostitution, and drug addiction. She survived the suicide of her husband who owned a brothel. She was a prostitute and owned her own brothel before she began advocating for the legalization of prostitution in Germany. She went from victim to mistress of her own destiny in what was from my perspective as a woman reading about her life a courageous act of sheer will and intelligent determination. Further, from her enlightened self interest, she helped others in very meaningful ways. She was a goddess who rose above circumstance.

The article that I read was about the Garden of Women cemetery where she is buried turning down Tomi Ungerer's design for her gravestone. Ungerer is said to have reacted "bitterly" to the decision. He is quoted as saying, "Domenica would have liked my design. She was not ashamed of herself."

I should probably describe at this point the design for the gravestone. It was to be two ample pink marble boulders. An homage to her breasts.

That Herr Ungerer thought that Domenica Niehoff would have liked his design speaks to me of her self acceptance and sense of humor. That other friends debated his choice speaks to me of her life-- and her pain.

I have had nothing like the disadvantages that Domenica Niehoff overcame. I have been very fortunate. I am also not as well endowed as she was. I am my own version of ample, a healthy 36C. I have over heard myself described as "the one with the tits". I have had men stare at my boobs and entirely miss what I was saying to them. I am glad that the Garden of Women turned down Herr Ungerer's design because it would have reduced Domenica Niehoff to nothing more than her breasts. People would have sought out her grave not because of any desire to remember her but for the brief moment of titillation at seeing the pink knocker tombstone.

Insatiable Transcendent Aspirations and Sulforous Desires

I am excerpting a scholarly essay on John Donne's love poetry and I just have to share a bit of the essay. It is entitled "Love, poetry, and John Donne in the love poetry of John Donne". It was written by R. V. Young and first appeared in Renascence volume 52, number 4 from the summer of 2000.

"The interpretation of Donne's love poetry offered here depends upon a vision of human love as an experience fraught with tension. D'Arcy refers to 'the twofold character of love, in which respect it is compared to the struggle of opposites in nature'. At the heart of this 'struggle' is the tension between Eros and Agape-- in the simplest terms, possessive and self-sacrificing love, desire and charity. The great value of D'Arcy's work lies in his insistence that simply to favor agape over eros will not suffice: perfect agape is possible only for God whose fund of benevolence is infinite and inexhaustible. A man or a woman cannot give absolutely because we are finite creatures: a measure of self-assertive egotism, of possessive eros, is (literally) essential for us in order to retain an identity to be sacrificed or surrendered. Herein the paradox of the human situation: our most transcendent aspirations are as limitless and insatiable as our most sulfurous desires, while our capacity for each alternative is strictly limited. What is more, our divergent longings often seem not merely simultaneous, but even indistinguishable. The swoon of ecstatic self-immolation is whirled about in the slaver of predatory anticipation. The resolution of this dilemma by means of supernatural grace is matter for another essay. My topic here is just the enigma of earthly, profane love, which embodies so much of what is both admirable and delightful, reprehensible and mortifying, in human nature and conduct."

And you thought that scholarly essays in academic journals were boring.

Examining the Ruins

Ruins. This morning I am having a hard time organizing myself and getting to work. I have been sitting and thinking about ruins. How ruins can give insight into the lives of those who once inhabited them.

Sometimes ruins are as a result of natural disaster-- deaths brought about by things like earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Times when the sensibility of the planet made a decision that it could tolerate no more and had an itch to relieve. The ruins of Pompeii are telling. People laid down in the ash and died. Became stone and the earth made them her own. And their way of life was preserved in excruciating detail.

Sometimes ruins are as a result of the evolution of time. The climate changed. A new trade route was found. The people of the ruins mysteriously vanished in the mists of time. I saw a picture recently from the UK of what looked like crop circles, but the circles weren't crop circles. They were an ancient gravesite older than Stonehenge. While the circles did not rise above the earth, from the sky they proclaimed that the dead within had once walked the earth.

Layers. How many layers of civilization lie beneath great cities such as Constantinople? Or Rome? How many generations of ghosts haunt the ruins? Do they converse in wind whispered murmurs reminiscing about ancient times that prick at modern ears who cannot make sense of what they hear?

And then there are the ragged bombed half-structures that stand as testament to human wrought devastation. In the eyes of the people who pass these painful monuments of what once was, there is the pain of loss and the hope that something can arise from tumbled bricks and twisted steel. That the debris skittering down the sidewalk will be blown away on a street sweeping wind. There is the longing that the panes of window glass will be repaired and look out onto a rejuvenated world.

The contemplation of ruins can give pause to anyone who looks beyond the empty shells of architecture and over the chasm of years. Moral lessons can be discovered on the subjects of the vanity of human endeavor, the pursuit of selfish desire, the quest for permanence where none is possible.

I found a picture once upon a time. In the woods there was an old foundation with a cracked cement slab floor. One back wall still stood but the green moss coated roof had fallen in. The other walls were collapsed. Beneath broken glass, the smiling faces of a once happy family stared up at me in shades of grey. The mother's face was erased by water damage. What destroyed this house? Did the family move on to happier times? What small dramas and petty tragedies occurred within what had once been four solid walls?

Why Write?

I woke up this morning and in my inbox was a link to a site that reviews science fiction and fantasy books and magazines called the Internet Review of Science Fiction. The reviewer, when you scrolled to the bottom of the page, listed her pedigree as having been nominated for several different awards. In the first paragraph of her introduction she talked about how two minor magazines were no longer to be available-- Lone Star Stories and Talebones. She then went on to talk about how this was being lamented not because readers would have less material available to them but because it meant that there were two fewer markets for writers to submit to. She went on to discuss how if the science fiction short story market is dying it is because the entire venue has become a group of writers feeding on itself. (BTW the url is http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10566)

This morning on John Scalzi's blog, whatever, he talks about how the magazine F&SF is offering an online writing workshop with Gardner Dozois. Further, Gardner Dozois can pick works out of the workshop and have them published in the magazine. There is no mention of if the magazine will pay the newbie author for this work, the same newbie author who has paid to participate in the workshop.

This left me thinking. Of course I do a great deal of that anyway. Probably far more than is healthy and not necessarily on the right subjects

Recently I was doing research on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Galway Kinnell who expressed in one interview "a certain scorn that there could be a course in writing poetry." He later received his Master's degree from the University of Rochester. And he taught creative writing at New York University. While I was doing research on him I came across an article about the expanding number of masters of fine arts programs in creative writing. The article talked about how all the would be writers in these programs have little hope to be published and only the very best few end up with teaching positions to teach writing to yet another hopeful batch of would be writers. The article also talked about how historically writers were not writers by profession. Writing has always paid very little and writers were employed in other professions. William Carlos Williams was a physician. T. S. Eliot was a clerk. This being on the outside of the literary world meant that the writers had to think and conceptualize their own poetics, find their own voice, and write about what was meaningful to them. The article discussed how masters of fine arts programs taught a form of thought or a school of poetics and so experimentation became rare as good students tried to emulate their instructors and earn the A. This has narrowed the world of poetry and literary fiction.

Science fiction and literary fiction both seem to be narrowing in on themselves. Further, the publishing industry in a time of big advances and promotions of blockbusters, wants to maximize profits and minimize loss. The midlist is shrinking and increasingly there are fewer and fewer voices being published.

It has occurred to me that if one wants to write as a profession, the most likely way to accomplish this is to do copywriting-- writing brochures, advertisements, etc. If the goal is simply to be a writer than this is probably the most likely route to success.

Which brings me to the question of why write. A friend of mine wanted to be a writer to escape from his job, get the yacht, the bikini babes, et al. Maybe he still wants this. It is a nice fantasy. I think he had/has visions of being the next J.K. Rowling. Frankly, I think most people who try to write have similar fantasies in idle moments as they stare at the blank screen of their laptops. But so few writers win the publishing lottery.

I myself have different fantasies. Fantasies of writing something truly original and being a voice for our time, but if I ever achieve this I may not know it. This kind of recognition comes often after the fact. How many writers and poets ever thought their writing would be studied by a multitude of students a hundred years after they were dead?

So, if writing is becoming a dead, derivative art form with little left to say and writing for money is unlikely to succeed and writing for posterity is like shooting into the dark, why write?

If you leave this blogpost with a sinking sense in the pit of your stomach, go find your joy.

If you feel a sense of righteous indignation and a defiant roar rises up from deep within you, keep writing. Let your voice add to the cacophony. You are a wizard of words and imagination. Let ideas and images flow like magic through you and speak what truth you would offer the world.

Under One Small Star

I am researching this poet and I am in awe of her. I put up Possibilities a couple weeks ago. Here is another of her poems. Please search her out.

Under One Small Star

By Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

If you could travel anywhere in time would you travel to the past or gamble on the future?

Quick question. Something I was thinking about this morning.

If you could travel anywhere in time and go to any culture in history, where would you travel to? I ask this keeping in mind all the provisos of history. Culture, famine, war, plague. The Middle Ages were not simply a pleasant time of chivalrous lords, lute playing troubadours, and ladies in trailing gowns. I cannot even imagine what life in ancient Egypt or Sumeria might have been like for the average person.

Or would you prefer to go to some unknown time in the future?

Which would you gamble on? The semi-known past and its glories and troubles? Or the hope of a magnificent future?

And why?