C.S.E. Cooney

Started day off with "Egocentricity and Creativity" panel. Particularly fun with Gene and Cat seated side by side. They all started out by making outrageous claims. Cat's, "I am the voice of my generation." Gene's, "I almost invented the Pringle."

An interesting reading tonight, with Greer Gilman. I had a headache, and people kept coming in and out of the door (I was clutching Amal's hand, and everytime that f%&%%%$#%#@ing door opened, I felt my fingers spasm. Amal patted me and Jess laid her head on my shoulder from time to time. Thank goodness, for I could feel my core temperature rising and my inner curse-spewer shucking the layers between her and me), and -- whatever else I may have thought that I will not write here -- there were some beautiful moments, some funny moments and some raunchy moments, and I liked the peacock blue she wore, and the peacock green, and the radiated shimmer of her.

My headache was/is probably from caffeine withdrawal. Gene gave me aspirin. I also had a melancholy telephone call, and soon after that was given cause to lose my temper. It was one of those quiet losses that made me stand in the corner and cry for a few minutes. Mostly out of headache weakness. The tears and the rage went away, and I found the Wolfes and brought them vegetables, and there is no way to maintain even a small temper tantrum when you are watching people eat tomatoes.

It was very late for them by the time the opening ceremonies and the "Meet the Prose" (Pros) address label exquisite corpse exchange was done. I saw them to their rooms. Tomorrow morning we have breakfast with David Hartwell and his family.

Amal introduced me to Delia Sherman. I mentioned Stephanie Shaw's name and she cried out and gave me a great big hug. Then I thanked her for her nice letter re: Braiding the Ghosts, and she cried out, and gave me a great big hug, and said, 'You're the one who wrote that ghost story? I thought about that for weeks!' which made me very happy. When I first mentioned it, I could see the fraught look busy and professional writers/editors get, when they read hundreds of manuscripts and write hundreds of letters, and I almost gave up and stopped babbling like the veriest ninnyhammer and let her escape, but the light DID click, and she DID hug me, so it WASN'T all my imagination after all, which I thought it might have been, and anyway. Hands were shaken all around.

Best of all my day today was the Goblin Delirium (or Mythic Fruit) reading, hosted by Goblin Fruit and Mythic Delirium editors Amal, Jess and Mike Allen.

I was sitting with Alex and Nicole and Caitlin all in a row, behind Sonja (Sonia?) the singer and Greer Gilman. Over in the far front corner, the editors were all a-plotting, and I kept hearing my name and they kept GRINNING at me. "Would you mind?" they asked, so prettily.

I didn't...

So I ended up opening the reading with the Coyote Poems. I messed up once, which is a pity as they were recording, but on the whole, I think I got 'em. They laughed at the right good times. I finally NAILED that line I never knew how to say -- but I could only say it the way I did BECAUSE of the audience and their reaction at that point. Which just goes to show ya.

The only thing I mind about opening a reading (because gods know I don't mind the attention or the chance to show off or the opportunity not to stew in my own nerve juices for an hour) is that invariably the second person makes some kind of self-deprecating comment. The only time this doesn't happen is when an even stronger poet follows me, or someone with a completely different timbre or tone, but with the fullness of their true confidence.

Also, when I start, it takes a while for my mental replay to cool down. My brain gets very hot, and my teeth start chattering for minutes after, and everything is bright and loud in my head, so I miss things. Which is... egocentric. But practically unavoidable.

Nevertheless. Perhaps it is all worth it, to go first, and to do it well?

Nicole and I got to CLOSE out with the Fetch and Catch poem... "Other Difficulties" I think it's now called. Just before that, Nicole had read "The Changeling Always Wins," which was Nicole's first public reading, and she did beautifully. Amal read her Damascus poem (which covered me in chills the size of sequins and made me cry, damn her Lebanese-Canadian eyes), and Jess her Rusalka poem (!!!!!!!!!!! I could watch that girl read and read and read... Or just listen to her on the phone for hours, given the opportunity), and Mike his poem of Bacchus (MAGNIFICENT), and Alex her poem of needles (creepy quiet), and JoSelle of skins, and Caitlin of gowns, and Cat of swans. There were others -- forgive me. My head.

Elsewise, a nice time in the pub tonight. I kept trying to leave and then not leaving. Which I think is a sign of time swell-spent. Tomorrow night, I think, we'll all hang out here (unless the ladies get a better offer) and read our poetry just to each other, and perhaps read through my play. And we'll see, and we'll see.

I don't feel I was particularly useful to Gene and Rosemary today and hope to do better tomorrow without making myself obnoxious. Anyway, Gene will read King Rat tomorrow, and that's something to look forward to.

'Night now.

I took notes at Gene's first panel, which was about writers and reviewers, or writers AS reviewers, and obviously I need to know more about the history of Science Fiction in general and Algis Budrys in particular. Gene says he wishes Algis were still alive, because he would introduce us.

"He was a good man. Not flawless, by any means."
"Are any of us?" I asked.
"Well, if we were, we wouldn't be hanging out with YOU."

So, yes, I have notes and quotes. But will I type them out tonight? Nope.

I just got in from the Goblin Fruit Launch Party... By the way...

http://goblinfruit.net/2009/summer/

And "DEMON LOVER'S CHILD AND OTHER DIFFICULTIES" is released -- Goblin Fruit's FIRST printed matter!!! "Fresh off the Vine," they're calling it. It's a chapbook of Nicole Kornher-Stace's Featured Poems, with (ahem) a final poem, exclusive to this chapbook, that she co-wrote with one... C.S.E. COONEY!!! (The infamous, the outrageous, the indomitable C.S.E. Cooney, even if it is ME saying so. Which it is.) Ours is an epistolary poem between a witch's Fetch and Familiar. It is also the beginning of, I hope, an EPIC friendship, shared worlds, a hundred thousand interesting conversations and perhaps future collaborations.

All of this AND she looks good in a corset!

It was very exciting to sign two random copies of OTHER DIFFICULTIES. I feel like sort of the secret cousin up in the attic of this castle Nicole owns.

Gods abound, but it was good to see the Goblin Girls; Jess, looking like a demure (ALMIGHTY VIKING SHIELD MAIDEN) peasant in her brown frock and little brown shoes; Amal, in a great deal of short black netting and suggestive stockings, pressing her knees together modestly as she played the harp...

And Caitlin of the Seven Ravens? HARPING at the Goblaunch? (That doesn't sound right, does it? And yet, it is SO MUCH TROUBLE to type out Goblin Launch Party, and see, I just did, along with an INCREDIBLY long sentence that says little that is revelatory or relevant.) And Ellen Kushner, singing ballads. Sonya (Sonja?), who sang, resoundingly, in a voice that galvanized one's mitochondria, the song I have quoted as my subject line: "Midnight Feast," I think it's called, or something along those lines. Amal and Dunya - belting their Tom O'Bedlams and Great Big Seas in loud, sweet sororal harmony. Shira and Emily, well met again from WisCon! (Shira, who bubbles and brims as effervescently as ever.) And Alex, glowing golden in the rosy-dark skirt her mother bought her, having arrived successfully in the first country of her year-long international tour. And blue-haired Leah Bobit from Ideomancer, in whose slush pile I currently reside. (What did I even send them? Oh, yes. OAK PARK ERIS. Well, I wish them joy of it, and that I may learn something by its return.) Many other pleasant meetings were had.

Patrick O'Leary is here - I met his wife Sandy. And Gary Wolfe. And Peter Straub, and his pretty wife, whom I'd not met before... Susan?... Names are fading. It's past the witching hour and my doppelgänger is putting on her lipstick in anticipation of my impending unconsciousness. If you see a girl streaking through the lobby at 4 AM and she looks like me, pay her no never mind. She'll be gone with the dawn, and I'll be very embarrassed if you mention it to me in my daylight hours. Some things you just can't LEASH 24/7.

In the meantime, Cat Valente is a VERY pleasant room-companion. I borrowed her pumpkin perfume and she borrowed my mascara. We sang a few lines from Evita and salivated over Cat Stevens (Novim's Nightmare is one of our mutual favorites). It is possible she may lend me her DVD 1776, from which I have only ever heard a few tunes. Terry sang them to me while she was polishing the stairs in the old house. And perhaps, even earlier, when Kiri and I were young ragamuffin thespians playing elven queens in her backyard (the one with the pool), her tape deck was blaring a few of those songs. In any case, it is high time I saw it, I think.

It was not perhaps the smoothest of days, but it was joyful. And now I must brush my teeth and away to bed, or there will be no living with me (either of me) tomorrow.

Cat Valente will be bunking up with me -- which is great, because this is a perfectly large room and had I not a surprise roommate suggested upon me, I should have taken turns sleeping in each bed, or perhaps just bouncing to and fro, ka-DWONG, ka-DWONG! As it is, I shall behave in a far civilizeder fashion.

TODAY, AT BREAKFAST, TALKED ABOUT:

Pat of Mullingar: Song: "It's an IRA song and not PC to sing."

You may talk and sing and boast about your fellers and your clans,
And how the boys from County Cork beat up the Black and Tan.
But I know a little codger who came out without a scar.
His name is Paddy Mulligan, the man from Mullingar.

Sythians and scalping

Amazons: "They keep saying they've found no evidence of Amazons, and then digging up the graves of heavily armed women."

How the Spaniards named the Amazon river (the Incan armies, apparently, were led by women, but the cartographers, or whoever, misread, and though they were armies of women, and so named that river The Amazon).

How the Amazons occupied half of Athens before the other side drove them out again. How there are the graves of famous Amazonian (WOMEN) generals in Athens.

Henry Mayhew (the father of sociology, as Herodotus was the father of history) and his book LONDON LABOR AND THE LONDON POOR.

Gene has the 4-Volume Herodotus, the Victorian translation, illustrated.

Chinese Proverb: "Butchers talk of pigs, priests of God."

DIALOGUE (in the middle of a conversation about alcohol):

GENE: ...That's what courtesy is for.
ME: Courtesy! The Other Social Lubricant.
GENE: Yeah - it's the social lubricant the government doesn't tax.

TRIVIA: The percentage of wilderness in North America is greater than the percentage of wilderness in Africa.

Africa has the highest overall elevation of all the continents.

RESEARCH: The Mountains of the Moon

Cataprax (sp? Can't find it! SLOW -- and expensive -- hotel internet!): the first FULLY armored horsemen.

Greek Fire: secret weapon, like a Roman candle, used mostly naval warfare. Don't know what the fire was composed of, but the best guess is resins of certain trees, alcohols from distillation, and bitumen.

Three early Musketeers of WEIRD TALES:

Lovecraft from Providence, RI
Robert E. Howard from Crosstown, TX
Clark Ashton Smith, from Auburn, CA (reputedly a poet and a ladies' man.)

TOM QUICK, a man who murdered a cool TON of Native Americans (Gene says American Indians, Sherman Alexie says Indians, Aaron Golding, half-Seneca, says Indians, and smiled when I said Native Americans, and it's just so damned hard to tell these days what's the correct, right, proper LEAST HARMFUL, MOST TRUTHFUL thing to say, so for now I'll stick with Native Americans), and had a monument erected in Milford, PA, which Gene calls "The most objectionable monument ever built," and then, "Lord save us from heroes like that."

Which I found very interesting.

Also, the word Frankenfurter? Means, "The sausages from the place where the ax-men crossed the river."

So there.

Soon, I hope, I'll see two Goblins, a Fetch, a Changeling, and a handful of saucy Brits. One of which I've met once, the other of whom I've only heard tell.

THANKS, LADIES!!!

smooch!

"I wish I could remember everything."

- Gene Wolfe
The Sports Grill
Holiday Inn Express
A hill overlooking Albany, the setting sun, & a Shirley-Jacksonian fog

I quote this in particular because it struck me right to my xiphisternum! Gene is 78 and knows hordes of things. He remembers people, he says, but not always names, and I could see him kicking himself for that. For forgetting this kid from Idaho's name who worked with him at Proctor and Gamble decades ago. He did remember his supervisor's name (I've forgotten), the one who only read "after the war novels."

Me, I've forgotten people I went to high school with. Whoosh. Poof. Gone. I, too, wish I could remember everything. And everyone. And not only remember those things, but know MORE than I do, and remember that too.

Good first line for a story (IMHO): "Bill McEachern was our Post-Apocalyptic man." And go on from there.

(Huh. After writing that realized this is something Gene says a lot: "And you go on from there.")


THINGS I WANT TO BUY FOR HIM:
* A Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it. (He's been looking for one for years. I told him I was a lady of the 21st Century and could probably manage it. So... IF ANY OF YOU * KNOW WHERE TO BUY A HAWAIIAN SHIRT WITH HULA GIRLS PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!)
The complete works of Xenathon (if such a thing exists).
* That Mae West movie he likes, the famous one. You know the one. Er... MY LITTLE CHICKADEE.

THINGS DISCUSSED OR TO BE REMEMBERED

*** GENE USED TO MAKE FOG IN THE BASEMENTS OF PROCTOR AND GAMBLE.***

"Prince of Morning Bells," by Nancy Kress (I want to read it.)
The origins of the phrase "23 Skidoo." (Which phrase I was unfamiliar with anyway.)
"Top Banana" - the lead comedian in a Burlesque act (tell Gillian!)
The Harvey Girls of the Old West (made into a musical!)
The Cherokee (unusually sophisticated society, I'm told. Research?)
Moa Hunters VS Maori
Captain Cook and Doubtful Bay
Fjords (only two countries have them -- Norway and New Zealand)
Filed teeth (there was man he knew who dated a girl from Fiji who had filed teeth)
Virginia Gorda (Fat Virgin, an island)
Synthetics VS Plastics (synthetics are thermostatic: heat hardens them into shape. Plastic becomes malleable when heated.)
"Huckster Room" -- which I only ever knew as the "Dealer Room" at cons
Wimpy Jones of the Jones Boys
Bronze Age VS Iron Age (bronze is half tin, half copper: good for making "worm gears" -- but what if they were WYRM GEARS?)
Albion and the ghosts of the White Country

DIALOGUE

ROSEMARY: (rummaging through purse) How are you doing? Tired?
GENE: (driving, glancing over) No, I was just thinking about paleolithic times.
ME: (in thought bubble) Of course you were, Gene.
Gene: (continuing, out loud) I was just thinking that in paleolithic times, dinosaurs used to hide in that purse. Mastodons, too. Dire wolves. Saber tooth tigers...

***

GENE: Trivia question.
ME: Uh-oh. I'm not good at this game.
GENE: Which famous boxer advised a president and lectured on Shakespeare at Harvard?
ME: You got me.
GENE: Gene Tunney, "The Fighting Marine."

***

GENE: (re: Marilyn Monroe film) He was up to villainous skullduggery, which Senders was good at. You see it, and you know. He has fired a Sex Torpedo, and the kid doesn't have a chance.

SONGS TO PURCHASE:

Willie and Millie (for obscure 100-years war slang)

Witch of Westmoreland
by Stan Rogers

Pale was the wounded Knight
That bore the rowan shield
Loud and cruel were the ravens' cries
As they feasted on the field

Saying beck water cold and clear
Will never clean your wound
There's none but the witch of the Westmoreland
Can make thee hale and sound

So turn, turn your stallion's head
Till his red mane flies in the wind
And the rider of the moon goes by
And the bright star falls behind

And clear was the paley moon
When shadow passed him by
Below the hill were the brightest stars
When he heard the owlet cry

Saying Why do you ride this way
And wherefore came you here?
I seek the witch of the westmoreland
Who dwells by the winding mere

And it's weary by the Ullswater
And the misty brakefern way
Till through the cleft of the Kirkstane pass
The winding water lay

He said Lie down my brindled hound
And rest ye my good gray hawk
And thee my steed may graze thy fill
For I must dismount and walk

But come when you hear my horn
And answer swift the call
For I fear ere the sun will rise this morn
Ye will serve me best of all

And it's down to the water's brim
He's borne the rowan shield
And the goldenrod he has cast in
To see what the lake might yield

And wet rose she from the lake
And fast and fleet went she
One half the form of a maiden fair
With a jet-black mare's body

And loud long and shrill he blew
Till his steed was by his side
High overhead the gray hawk flew
And swiftly he did ride

Saying Course well me brindled hound
And fetch me the jet-black mare
Stoop and strike me good gray hawk
And bring me the maiden fair

She said Pray sheath thy silvery sword
Lay down thy rowan shield
For I see by the briny blood that flows
You've been wounded in the field

And she stood in a gown of a velvet blue
Bound round with a silver chain
And she's kissed his pale lips once and twice
And three times round again

And she's bound his wounds with the goldenrod
Full fast in her arms he lay
And he has risen hale and sound
With the sun high in the day

She said Ride with your brindled hound at heel
And your good gray hawk in hand
There's none can harm the knight who's lain
With the Witch of the Westmoreland

We're in Ashtabula, Ohio. ASHTABULA!

Doesn't that sound like Cthulhu's elder sister? The scary one?

Ah'Sh-TAH-Buuuuuuh-LAH!

It's actually much more innocuous-sounding when pronounced by the natives. They seem to think the "u" sound in Ashtabula is en par with the "u" in Ferris Bueler. And the "A," alas, is flat.

***

OTHER THINGS DISCUSSED TODAY AND AT DINNER

Ancient Phoenician sailors

The three roles of Pharaoh: 1.) High Priest of all the temples in Egypt, and Egypt had a LOT of gods. 2.) Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Armies, 3.) Civil administrator (lowest on the totem pole, often relegated to lesser mortals)

Roman foot soldiers and their cool shields with the hooks and eyes

Nancy Kress's first fantasy novel

Anderson's The Snow Queen and Yeats' Two Trees

Red beans and rice, cottage cheese, creamed beef chips on toast (soldier fare that nobody else in the Army liked, apparently, but Gene, and which kept him alive.)

The Goddess Hathor: of perfumes, joy and cows.

The "singing girls" of Egypt who did kick lines at the beer joints, like the Rockettes. They have ancient art depicting this.

***

DIALOGUE I SHOULD NEVER FORGET:

GENE: That's why I like the Cracker Barrel, because you can get mustard greens there. You can take the boy out of the south, but you can't take the south outta the boy.

ME: Especially if you feed him mustard greens. It just keeps going back in.

***

GENE: Last night, in bed, Rosemary started patting my face. "What are you doing?" I asked. "I'm trying to find your nose," she said.

ROSEMARY: I wanted to kiss your nose. It's so sweet!

(Long Pause.)

GENE: Lord... forgive her. But not too soon.

***

UPON LEAVING:

ME: (I'd been teased at lunch to keep track of this sort of thing) So? You have everything? You have your handkerchief?

GENE: My what?

ME: Handkerchief.

GENE: Pegasus? My Pegasus? What's she talking about?

ME: HANDKERCHIEF!!!

GENE: Oh. I thought, have I been wiping my nose on a winged horse all this time?

THINGS DISCUSSED AMONG OTHER THINGS FORGOTTEN ALREADY

The Defenestration of Prague
Pope-saints
The etymology of Nevada (snow-clad)
The War of 1918 and the invasion of New Orleans
Vroom and Humm (espoused twin troll-gods, founders of certain villages in Ohio)
How Vermilion got its name
Harlan Ellison, Jerry Pournelle, Michael Swanwick, Damon Knight, Catherine Asaro (who used to be a ballet dancer)
Vietnam and Korea
Jumping (or not) out of airplanes and helicopters
Near-death experiences at sea
Rosemary's old piano teacher, who lived with her grandparents
Kiss Me, Kate
Cons of ages past
Palmetto Beetles in Houston (AKA really BIG cockroaches)
Medieval China
The Viking invasion of Greenland
The Raggedy Man and Little Orphan Annie* (RE: asterisk, ATTN: goblins, see below)
What rabbit tastes like (more like lamb or pork than chicken; it's a red meat)
Job satisfaction of truck drivers (second highest next to airplane pilots)
Sorcerer's House (Gene's new novel)
The two kinds of Peoria
Bull elk and cow elk near the redwoods of Northern California
"Strawberry Roan" bad horse song VS Xenophon's description of perfect horse**
(A man knows his horses when he starts with the feet...)
Lil Abner



* "Once there was a little girl who always laughed and grinned
and made fun of everyone, of all her blood and kin,
and once when there was company and old folks was there,
she mocked them and she shocked them and said, she didn't care.
And just as she turned on her heels and to go and run and hide,
there was two great big black things a standing by her side.
They snatched her through the ceiling 'fore she knew what she's about,
and the goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!"

- James Whitcomb Riley, Little Orphan Annie


** "Down in the horse corral standin' alone
Is an old Caballo, a Strawberry Roan
His legs are all spavined, he's got pigeon toes
Little pig eyes and a big Roman nose
Little pin ears that touched at the tip
A big 44 brand was on his left hip
U-necked and old, with a long, lower jaw
I could see with one eye, he's a regular outlaw."
- Marty Robbins, Strawberry Roan

Went to Mrs. Q's today, and oy, didn't we write?

Well, we did. Not as much as we WANTED to, because we had to take the twins to gymnastics and the girl to ballet (Mondays, see), and then we had to pick up popcorn, yogurt, coffee and Goose Island Summertime beer, and then we had to make tuna melts SICILIAN STYLE, and then we had to chat a bit and read the new stuff from her Guignol novel and my Porcelain... And then we got down to it. And actually wrote. For about an hour and half.

We didn't get much done, but we got SOMETHING done, each to each, and you know what? That bloody counts in a busy household. She said it's more than she's done in a month. She makes fun of doing her "research' because "research" means she's not writing. I mentioned Lois McMaster Bujold's catch phrase -- or at least what I THINK I've heard her say, and read about her saying -- which is, "Cultural assimilation." Sometimes you're NOT writing. Sometimes you're reading. And Mrs. Q -- boy, is she ever reading. About Paris, 1915, and the Bohemians on Montemarte, and the Ballet Russe and who the hell might have been at the riot for the Rites of Spring, and what the hell did the theatre look like other than being, "Art Deco."

Me, I had to give my "boys" some grounding. Stephanie calls them Kendle's Ferry-Men. Every time she said that, I heard "Faerie Men," but I knew what she was saying. Little by little. I won't be able to send it out before leaving tomorrow, like I'd hoped. But I WILL have some nights in motels coming up, and I'll have time then. "And indeed there will be time."

In the meanwhile...

HECK! GOTTA PACK!!!

BYE!!!

"Why don't you come in from the cold
to make an unlikely alliance with me?"

"Retinue of Moons" - Rasputina

oberon_the_fool gave me a bunch of new music. Of everything I have not heard before, I like Rasputina the best. Of Rasputina, so far, I like "Retinue of Moons" the best.

(I REALLY like the Decemberists, especially the Mariner song and the "We Both Go Down Together" song... I was familiar with them from my pal Odo.)

Also. Who knew that month-old nail polish would take such LABOR to remove.

Doing LAUNDRY today! And writing with Patty! Theatre of the Underground, NEW DRAFT, here we go! (After which, I will email it to concerned parties, who will perhaps sit around my hotel room and read it with me at Reader Con. Perhaps to harp music.)

My hair is tangled.

I will pack tonight. Tomorrow I'm writing with the Shaw Witch.

I didn't go to my da's to see the fireworks. Desi the Rajah texted me an ominous emoticon, expressing his displeasure. But it was raining -- at least at the time I'd have been walking 1.3 miles to the station -- and I was feeling drearily slow. Heck, though. The fireworks were nonstop in this area. Like gunshot and cannon everywhere. To the south. To the east. Somewhere a few doors down. Chicago was under a siege of celebration.

So I stayed home, and wrote a fat letter by candlelight. And read a short story about a revolution. And about Scheherazade, with Scheherazade's picture glowing down at me from above my desk...

http://www.artsycraftsy.com/nielsen/kn_arabian_nights.html

And I drank a LOT of tea. And I was happy.

"My stockings prove my virtue" -- Emilie Autumn, Opheliac

So, last night. After midnight. After talking to Nicole on phone for FIRST TIME. I'm sitting there, watching the first episode of BTVS Season 7, and I'm interrupted by this little face looking at me.

Now. I'm HIGH UP. Okay? I'm in the HIGHEST HOUSE on the block. I look down on other people's roofs. I'm not in an apartment building, but I'm in the attic of an old, tall SHIP of a house. And there's a raccoon on my balcony. Nose pressed to the glass.

So, at first I rush it and clap at it. It disappears. It reappears, nose to glass. Rush. Clap. Vanish. Peep. Rush. Clap. Vanish. Peep.

And then it just got funny, so I settled in to start watching again.

PEEP!

So I just looked at it for a few minutes. It started playing peek-a-boo with me. This went ON and ON. Then it disappeared for a while. It must have climbed the roof and descended the other side, because soon it's peeping out from the OTHER side of the balcony, without descending. Then he (or she) descended and pressed its nose to the glass again.

I think it must have been young. It's very sleek still. But then, my last experience with raccoons was at the LaMonier's, who feed their local deer and raccoon population until they're waddling beasts. This masked crusader was dainty and cat-like, although somehow... brighter. Very curious -- and wild.

One hardly gets so close to wild mammals. In this city? Wow. I mean, I'm not cool enough to... open my balcony door to it and say, "Welcome in, stick your nose in my trash, pee everywhere." I closed the glass sliding doors, even, because I have a feeling an enterprising raccoon could scratch its way through a screen.

I should ask Auntie M in Colorado for advise.

Off to research RACCOONS!

I think I like them. At least, as much as I like any animal. Warily, with a great deal of reserve and admiration.

Must do lots of chores now. And then go to Barrington, and thence to family-friends party. Mmmmn. Maybe they'll FEED ME! Maybe there'll be fireworks. If not -- cool! They still have A POOL!!!

I am glad for independence.

I am also reminded of a line from L.M. Montgomery's Emily books. "No man is free who has a thousand ancestors."

Or tens of thousands in college debts.

And yet -- I like to live alone, and work barefoot in a bookstore, and make my own way. I love having gone to school. I love being able to write what I want to write, and read what I want to read, and befriend anyone I want who wants me back. I love access to information. I love the arts.

Now "Great Big Sea" is playing. "Consequence Free."

Courtesy of Mlle. El-Mohtar, may she live a hundred years and grow every day more beautiful, clever and kind. Not that she NEEDS to, mind.

Oooh. Lydia's birthday is coming up and I've STARTED something rhyme-y.

Dear Mme. wirewalking,


Your kind letter, written on my behalf to the formidable editors of goblinfruit, moved me. I will even go so far as to say that it moved me SPLANCHICALLY (if I may be permitted to invent adverbs where never an adverb walked before), and I must take this opportunity to kiss your partisan hem where it falls over your partisan foot, right next to an overlooked partisan popcorn kernel lying on the floor in a writhing puddle of giant millipedes.

When I intimated in my previous missive that, having snored diligently through my Doppelgänger's internet high jinks, I could perhaps use a good word dropped from the pen of a great writer, in order to raise my esteem in the eyes of Her Dark Majesties, mer_moon and tithenai, I nevertheless had no idea such a word ACTUALLY existed. The word, to me, was yet a white hart, a glass mountain, a holy grail, or one of tim_pratt's wood-whimsies: elusive, unhoped for, a dream.

Yet there it was, awaiting me, this shining Logos...

SESQUIPEDALIAN!!!

What have I done to deserve this? Such coy championship! Such amicable (or even amiable) selflessness! So many SYLLABLES!

Allow me, my dear and chary Madame, to express a dizzy gratitude, for I would not have any champion of MINE be thankless.

Yours (it is, I swear on my iron nipple, really I -- and not my Dark Other -- for it is still forty minutes to the witching hour...),

C.S.E. Cooney

P.S. Re: my Doppelgänger -- do not waste your pity on her. She is soulless, and never caps the toothpaste. It will have to be the pitchforks after all.

Dear Ms. El-Mohtar & Ms. J.P. Wick,

Am APPALLED! Not at your response to the outrageous claims of nodcocks and zealots, but that said nodcocks and zealots infiltrated MY LJ to make them!

Forgive me, girls. Am having some trouble with my Doppelgänger. She's learned all my passwords and comes out after midnight to make mischief when I'm sleeping. (Peeved that I won't leave out the half-and-half and a little saucer for her to suck from. I've tried to tell her, I will NOT have FLIES in my house!)

So glad to note you took her spell of "acting out" with grace and wit, as usual. Hope you won't indulge in any -- heh-heh -- dark and vengeful charms against my person, especially as re: my poems in your magazine.

As for wirewalking, I couldn't be more pleased that you're featuring her this summer. After all, we're probably related -- either through an indiscretion of her mother's or mine. Or both. Saucy wenches. If SHE puts in a good word for me with all y'all GREAT AND TERRIBLE Goblin Queens, I know you'll let this whole incident slide. Her words are worth their weight in pomegranates.

So, yeah, thanks, ladies. Please disregard any further communication from the evil genius of my household, who happens to look EXACTLY like me.

C.S.E. Cooney

P.S. It IS odd, however, that I never had any trouble with doppelgängers (never even knew I HAD a Doppelgänger) until the Winter of Ought Eight, which -- O THE HILARITY -- was the first time you published a poem of mine! The good ol' days.

But, relevant? Hardly! Won't refine too much on the matter. Makes me feel all bewitched, bothered and bewildered-like. SMOOCHES! csec

Dear Mademoiselles,

The recent launching of your Spring 2009 issue (http://goblinfruit.net/2009/spring/) called my attention anew to several anomalies surrounding your magazine. My purpose thus in writing is twofold. First, to illuminate for an innocent and unwitting public what your editorial wiles sought to obscure in simile and metaphor. Second, to adjure you, by all that is wholesome and clean, not to release the Summer 2009 issue before seriously considering the cataclysmic repercussions.

Have you failed to notice that since goblinfruit began publishing poetic treatments of subjects best left alone, i.e., "mythology" and -- worse -- "folklore," the number of maidens who leave the sanctity of home in black chariots drawn by six black horses has skyrocketed from 3% to 67%? Has it escaped your awareness that 4 out of 7 lads, encouraged by the ardor of their female peers, grow up to be those self-same black horses instead of the proper young men their mothers bore them to be?

On the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, the number of deaths caused by tourists accidentally slipping on empty seal skins has quadrupled. Once again sirens sing from any exposed bit of rock-slime, luring everyone from SCUBA divers to parasailors to inappropriate, untimely and ostentatious demises. The suddenly brisk trade of spindles, honey and forests retreats (towers being most popular with huts a close runner up) has broken more than a few high-traffic sites of our finest on-line vendors.

In just this last year, solely due to your efforts to increase the presence of "fantastical" poetry in 21st century publishing, wolves and coyotes have returned to every major city in the states. (We will not speak of their lascivious behavior, their alarming tendency to take the shape of our deepest desires, their vulgar attire of blue jeans and T-shirts with rude slogans, their jeering grins and wagging tails, as they strut around our dance clubs and sports bars, seducing the best of our young men and women. Of these matters it is best to remain reticent.)

Mademoiselles, if you have done all this in three years, what might the next three bring? The monstrosity -- the perversion -- that is Goblin Fruit Magazine must CEASE.

tithenai, mer_moon, ladies of goblinfruit, I know what you are. Even knowing this, I abase myself to beg you: Burn the manuscripts set to be published in Summer 2009. Delete the files. Wipe your hard drives.

Above all, you must not feature the eldritch and perilous Mme. wirewalking as your Summer Poetess; she has powers undreamed of by the greatest minds of Man. Risk her writing, risk upheaval to natural order.

One of the great benefits of our age is life free of magic, a world rid of demons and the pale ghosts of drowned brides. There is no place for the likes of you and your magazine in modernity.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

From my da, regarding earlier "Hamartia" post... (I REALLY should have paid more attention to the pronunciation guide on Dictionary.com, but in truth I just glanced at the definition, "tragic flaw," so that I could get back to my gmail chattage and understand what the lady was talking about.)


>"There once was a man named *Hamartia*

We always said, "ham-ar-TEE-a" - in Greek, it means "off the mark." I don't know if that's the word you're talking about. It's a New Testament word for "sin." Now, if i were going to write a limerick with that as a name, i'd have to play it off the name "Mark." n'est-ce pas?

Two men, Hamartia and Mark,
Walked northward past Touhy on Clark.
When they reached Wrigley Field,
Hamartia appealed,
"I believe we have missed Lincoln Park."

The geography notwithstanding... da"

Nicole taught me a new word. And of course I had to use it right away, or else it would fade out of my vocabulary banks. So...

"There once was a man named *Hamartia*
Who dated a woman named Marsha
Whose one tragic flaw
Was the size of her craw
When she stood to declaim from Siddhartha"


... Yes. I know. I will quote something better than my own work for you to express my feelings on the matter:

BENEDICK:
"Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find out
no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent
rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for,
'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous
endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming planet..."

Monday I spent with Mrs. Q, with her twin gymnast boys and her violin-wielding ballerina girl. When the children were off at lessons, we put on bathing suits and slipped into the hot tub. The jets made me laugh and laugh. I MISS being in a bathing suit. I hadn't worn one for a year. A year! Chicago. Time was, in Phoenix, I'd spend three months in a bathing suit. Practically.

Her new house is kind of a ramble. She doesn't know where to put her papier-mâché rhino head. They have painted the living room walls celery green. ("We needed to make it ours," she said. "It's a psychological thing.") Tom Waites was playing in her bedroom, where the broken wood-burning stove was filled with fat candles. Her Guignol novel is giving her trouble.

"But you always get like this in the summer," I tell her, presumptuously. We will have a writing day next Monday, and I shall submit something -- PORCELAIN -- and then I will head off to the Wolfes with a feeling of accomplishment, and then we three will head off to Massachusetts for READERCON!

Bek and Nin picked me up at Mrs. Q's around five. We stood around a while talking about cats and then we were off to Woodstock for the Bollywood Party.

Bek and Nin had never seen Karin's house, and exclaimed happily over its high ceilings. I had brought Aloo Mutter, another mutter, some kind of paneer, and naan. Karin had made basmati rice and had bought baklava. Nin and Bek had purchased Doritos, brownies and ice cream. A feast set before us.

We watched BRIDE AND PREJUDICE. So many MUSICAL NUMBERS! And dancing! DANCING! And BRIGHT COLORS! And for an homage to Jane Austen, it did none so bad. Of course, between the two romantic leads, Will Darcy and Lalita (Elizabeth), there were enough still shots to make up the covers of at LEAST 2 dozen romance novels. Martin Henderson is, yes, a bit of a poseur. But very pretty! I thought it was just him being an American that irked me, then I realized, on one of his lines, when his voice slipped, that American wasn't his native dialect. This knowledge eased me, because I could pinpoint my discomfort. I began to enjoy his dimples with an untoward amount of bouncing. At one point I had to jump up and start SPINNING round and round during one of the musical outbreaks (sounds like a sickness, don't it?), because the Olympic Smoldering between our two love interests reached EPIC and put me in a dither.

(A similar ecstasy overtook me at the last S.J. Tucker concert, as I recall. Only in far more public a venue. And involving crinoline. Egad!)

On the note of voices: I never understood why Nicole Kidman's performances would always leave me cold -- because she's a FINE actress -- and then I saw The Others and Mrs. Dalloway and realized I wasn't at all bothered. It's when she plays AMERICANS that my shoulders start creeping and I'm left indifferent. I didn't even know she was Australian for the first few years I was watching her movies (I didn't track such things in high school, really). And it's not just her... Hugh Jackman does this too, sometimes. Others - but not Russell Crowe, oddly enough.

Probably Brits respond to Renee Zellwegger's Bridget Jones so? The something that is not QUITE right and why didn't they just CAST a British actress to begin with?

Anyway, sometimes my snobbery is so pointless and appalling I have to laugh. It's not dire -- I like both Kidman and Jackman better than once I did, and Russell Crowe as much as ever.

So, yeah. Bollywood. Dancing. We put on Hemalaaya's Bollywood Burn Workout, and Karin and Bek and I tried the moves. EXHAUSTING. And hilarious. Nin watched us from her vantage point on the couch. She was shiny with migraine. Blasted migraine!!!

I stayed the night and took the train to work in the morning. Due to the vagaries of trains, I arrived an hour and a half early.

THIS MORNING:

Thomas approached. Quiet exchange of greetings. He stooped to look at my book.

"What are you reading today?"
"Cold Comfort Farm. It's a British parody from the 1930's. It makes fun of all those English countryside novels where everything's rife with metaphor, and all the dialogue heavy with innuendo, and every hill is a woman's breast."

We talked of other things for a few moments, and then he paused and repeated, "Every hill is a woman's breast?" and started laughing.

"I met a revolutionary in a pink skirt who reminded me of you," I told him.
"Really?"
"She works for Revolutionary Books."
"Oh, yes. On Ashland."
"Yes. Have you been?"
"No. What's her name?"
"Annie. She has a nose piercing right here." I indicated. "She was very pretty."
He paused. "... Except," he said, "I don't wear pink skirts."
"No," I assured him. "I have never yet seen you in a pink skirt."

It's one of those days where we communicate as though long-distance, our sentences reaching each other with a bit of a lag. Katie and I do this sometimes. We're always asking each other, "Wait, what?"

I did not choose to sit with him today. COLD COMFORT FARM is too engrossing. Stella Gibbons makes fun of EVERYONE, and of course, sooner or later, I had to run into myself. I'm on page 136. Showing here:

***

"I thought poetry was enough," said Elfine, wistfully. "I mean, I thought poetry was so beautiful that if you met someone you loved, and you told them you wrote poetry, that would be enough to make them love you too."

"On the contrary," said Flora, firmly, "most young men are alarmed on hearing that a young woman writes poetry. Combined with an ill-groomed head of hair and an eccentric style of dress, such an admission is almost fatal."

***

There, you see? Netted, pinned and displayed on a wall! Sharp lady! Stella Gibbons probably would NOT have liked me in real life, but I would have liked her, and would have invited her over to dinner, despite my ragged hair and strange attire. Let her make fun of me later -- the conversation would have been worth it!

Flora, Flora. I shake my head in wonder. And then I wonder if Ysabeau Wilce's Flora Segunda was at all influenced by Flora Poste?

You know, Ysabeau Wilce was my first fan letter since... Second grade and writing to Andrew Lloyd Webber about Phantom of the Opera?

No, wait. I may have written to Charles de Lint once, as a teenager. But I read an Ysabeau Wilce story in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction some years ago and was moved to contact her via her website. Yes. I did.

I don't know if I've written a fan letter since, precisely. Lots of LETTERS, though. Impassioned or otherwise.

Balls. This entry grows long. Again. I shall cut it short.

Read COLD COMFORT FARM!!! (And thank you, Karin, lending it to me. We shall watch the movie together, along with "Room with a View," and be perfectly happy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK64sTi4mKc

There. Go and watch the girl dance herself to death. White-faced maiden sacrifice.

That one repeating movement she makes, that is half swoon, half supplication? Hurts to watch.

"Look at that," Mrs. Q told me in a hushed voice. "No one had seen anything like that. Ballet isn't supposed to have any angles. Nijinsky's choreography and Stravinsky's dissonance? There was a riot in the streets."

"Up" is at Steppenwolf. It's not the movie, but it's based on the same story of Larry Walters who inspired the Pixar film. The story of Larry Walters is both very sad and exhilarating. Or perhaps I should say, first exhilarating, and then very sad. I don't know. The play was both these things and more.

http://www.steppenwolf.org/boxoffice/productions/index.aspx?id=459

Revised excerpt from letter I wrote tonight to a friend:

"...Saw the new play at Steppenwolf, went to the cast party, chatted for a few hours with the peripheral friends I was with, walked back to the Blue Line and fell in step with a revolutionary in a long pink skirt with a handkerchief hem. I mention this because I complimented her skirt, and that's how we started talking.

"She's from Brooklyn. Her name is Annie. She told me about Gary Webb in the 80's and the Rockefeller Drug Laws, and about the current food riots in thirty cities around the world and the global food surplus. She was very young (older than I, but looked younger), beautiful, and very intelligent. She told me that in socialist China, Mao had a slogan supporting a street-safe, no-rape environment, and it was, "Women hold up half the sky."

!!!***WOMEN HOLD UP HALF THE SKY***!!!

(Of the play "Up," Revolutionary Annie said, "I don't know if it was cynical about Family or if it romanticizes it.")

"...I will not say I was miserable. The play was lovely, although it sat like an anchor (or perhaps a toggeli) upon my chest. If I were the slashing sort, I might have slashed myself at several points -- but not after the final scene. Which is something. There was nothing surprising about the human behavior in the play -- each character had behaved by the end just exactly as I thought he or she would in the beginning... Although the actors occasionally did something so astonishingly good, so splendid, that I barked out in laughter... Not, usually, when other people were laughing. Which can get lonely. I liked when other people laughed, too.

"Mostly, it was the party after... How I parked myself with the people I knew, while they themselves were up and about in ones and twos drifting through the restaurant and "schmoozing." Maybe it's the word "schmooze" that irritates me. Or the fact that I can't do it... Unless it's MY space. Unless I'm in control of my environment, or have enough friends around me to claim some stake in it. I don't know how to talk to strangers... not when I don't know what I want from them. I am not curious enough to talk to them for curiosity's sake. I wish I were.

(The food was great and free. Guacamole and excellent appetizers. I tried a few sips of a Margarita, but I'm still not the hugest fan ever.)

"So I was not precisely happy, although even that frustration is interesting. And it made me think of the times I have been madly happy in the company of friends (it happens more often than otherwise, so I think I'm pretty damned lucky), and how -- at that Burlesque? Back in May? How, if I'd been by myself, or with a group of peripheral friends (like tonight), I'd have been mildly uncomfortable at the proceedings, mildly amused, I would have enjoyed myself but from a distance... And how, with you -- I could have been anywhere. The moon, prison camp, the cafeteria at Sylvester S. Herrera Magnet School (dismal place), and it would have still been a completely glad experience.

(...section cut...)

"And I, apparently, still can't talk to strangers. Unless I am surrounded by friends.

"Lame. I should grow up.

"I'm not ready yet.

Claire"

***

Now, speaking of "Up" - on the UPSIDE of this evening, on my way out to SEE the play, much much earlier, back on the Montrose Platform, there was this small herd of Gazelle Girls.

I'm talking slim as sedges, I'm talking tall as spears, I'm talking dressed in blazing white bikini tops and little shorts like white linen loincloths, I'm talking high-glossed skin of bay and burnt umber, and black hair in mad braids falling everywhere, and golden sandals on their feet. Golden sandals, with straps that criss-crossed up their legs. Golden chains around their necks.

They passed me, all of them laughing and slender, and I sort of loved them all, helplessly, knowing I'd never cross paths with them again.

GOLDEN SANDALS!

And one of them looked at me, grinned, then looked at her friends, and told them, "You know I want her hat. I saw it. I want it. You know it."

I was wearing my red-sequined "hob-hat" (Nin calls it that), or what I call my "Oz Cap," since a pair of ruby slippers would not go amiss in the completion of an ensemble.

"She's got sway," said the girl. By this time, she had passed me. She'd been in the lead.

As the last girl flashed on by in her white clothes and golden chains and golden sandals, she turned her head, made eye contact, and threw back over her shoulder, "We like your sway."

They LIKE my SWAY.

Well... Hey!

I have been pondering since last night what any of a number of the ladies at WisCon (in particular, those makers and shakers of the "Taking Back the Sci-Fi" panel) would have done yesterday on the train. Those crazy-smart, tough, scarred, beautiful women -- in the face of a pack of twenty drunken 20-somethings out for a good time. Fireworks would have ensued.

No, not even fireworks. Thermopylae.

I feel - in the wake of it all - quite stupid, really. And cowardly. At one point do you stop holding your tongue? For whatever reason you're holding it. Such squeamish behavior can be extrapolated to explain all sorts of circumstances. Nazi Germany, for example...

Ugh.

Satyrs on the train. A pack of them, at least 20, heading off to a bachelor party. The incumbent groom (the loudest of the lot, with almost visible horns) sat in the seat in front of me, crowding a small group of girls who were mostly bare to the season. Lots of giggling and rhyming ensued.

The air changed with their advent, charged, my temperature fluctuated and it became increasingly difficult to concentrate. My shoulders felt like steel traps; I smiled at so much of their nonsense, although it gave me a feeling of dread in my stomach. "Memoirs of Hadrian" fell flat, flat, flat. All the funereal pomp of Antinous' apotheosis could not hold my attention - though I desired nothing more than to read my book and for the interminable train ride to be OVER.

But, no.

Those bawdy satyrs kept howling away, usually in time to a jingle that went something like this:

"We like BOO-bies" *CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*
"We like TIH-ties" *CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*
"We like Fel-LAY-tio" *CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*

The worst - the horridest - was when the groom satyr leered at one of the girls (I think of them as LITTLE girls - the braces and freckles made them seem vulnerable - but the flaunting of bosoms in fashionably thin T-shirts, the long bare legs, the perfect burnished tan, and the gigglish talk of going for drinks in celebration of a friend's birthday, proclaimed them of some milestone age or another) and shrieked:

"We're gonna VIOLATE you!" *CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*
"We're gonna VIOLATE you!" *CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*

Pause. Applause. Pause.

"We're not gonna REALLY violate you," the groom satyr reassured them.

The conversation moved on to talk of phallic size and of "pulling out."

GROOM SATYR'S CALL: "I don't PULL out!"
*CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*

BUDDY SATYRS' RESPONSE: "That's-why-the-shotgun WEH-dding!"
*CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*

GROOM SATRY'S CALL: "I'm having a BABY!'
*CLAP-CLAP-clapclapclap*

Applause, applause.

How sad - how funny!
As if we're living in the old west.
As if this is all there is.

My favorite of the satyrs was one with curly dark hair cropped too close to his head and gelled like a consummate clubber. Truly, a magnificent head of hair shorn too early, too soon. I mourned for the hair that might have been...

When he smiled, his teeth were too small for the amount of gum showing, but his cheekbones were excellent, his nose a noble slope, his mouth made for biting into, and his eyes a lazy and gentle hazel.

"He's JEWISH," whispered the groom satyr to one of the girls. "Watch out for him, he's JEWISH!"

All the satyrs loved to slap each other's hands. Apparently the Sox won - cause for much whooping. The conductor had to warn them to quiet down three times, with two security guards at his back.

"But the Sox won!"
"I can hear you through the closed doors."
"But it's a Bachelor party!"
"You need to be quiet."
"Come on, have fun with us!"
"Do I look like I'm having fun with you?"

The problem with this conductor (one of my favorites, a regular), is that he ALWAYS looks like he's having fun - at YOUR expense. He has a sardonic mouth, and is practically hairless all over. Everything is a cause for bitter humor to him. He's been working the rails for 35 years.

At one point, I made the mistake of glancing up too blatantly from my book. The groom satyr caught sight of me. For half an hour I had been in plain sight, but invisible. After all, I am dressed frumpily, with my hair knotted up and my expression closed. I do not have perfectly tanned thighs, nor am so lean and golden I look ready to be braised in honey wine and set on a platter. I am, in a word, unappealing. And really, in this situation, it is far less nerve-wracking to be so.

But the groom satyr saw me.

"This lady's going, 'Whoa,'" he said. "This lady's going, 'What's going on?'"

I kept staring at him. Blood rose high to my face, but my expression was still closed, perhaps contemplative. Perhaps I cocked my head a bit.

"You want some of this?" the groom satyr asked. "You won't find nipples like these! You won't find nipples like these anywhere!"

I kept staring. Perhaps I smiled a little. Perhaps I mocked him with my smile.

"All right," he admitted, "you probably CAN find nipples like these."

"Black market," I said. Then I cut myself off before I made a fool of myself.

"Black market!" his buddy satyrs crowed.

The beautiful one with the large gums and scythed-down curls and gorgeous nose looked over his shoulder me. Lazy hazy eyes, gentle. False sense of sobriety. Or security.

"You okay back there?" he asked.

I nodded.

"It's a bachelor party," he explained. Offered his hand for me to slap.

Appealing as he was, I did not want to touch him. I am grubby today, and very tense and cranky, and ought not to have to engage with satyrs. I slapped his hand anyway.

I think the groom satyr actually ended up inviting me out with them.

"You wanna make three new friends?" he asked.

He was inviting everyone. Such nondiscrimination was actually comforting. As much as I despised the satyrs - even feared them, in a way, that way you fear mobs of people who are stronger than you and in the mood for meat and merriment - I also liked them, wished them well, was happy to be seen by them... Even if it would have been safer to disappear into 128 AD.

I'm a woman. I function.

I got up a full stop away from from my stop, went to stand in the waiting car. I'd had enough. I was full.

"Those guys bother you?" my conductor asked.
"Nah. They're just a bunch of crazy loud boys."
"It's a bachelor party," he said. As if I had not fathomed that for myself.
I nodded. "Allowances must be made for a bacchanal."

I have been reading too much Marguerite Yourcenar. It was a ridiculous thing to say, and deservedly garnered no reply.

Home now. Home, and feeling calmer. Storm's comin'.