C.S.E. Cooney

First of all, for those of you that don't know:

http://www.wiscon.info/

A Science Fiction Feminist Convention.

Extremely well-run. Shiny oiled cogs. Smooth machine. With, I tell you, 15 minute breaks between everything!!! AND significant pauses for feasting.

A bit of a difference from, say, World Fantasy, where one scrambles from event to event with a deliciously febrile intensity, gasping poetry into the ears of lovely editresses so that they will love you forever and sink their goblin claws into various bunches of your peculiar fruit.

My, what a lengthy sentence.

Food I ate at WisCon: Nepalese, Ethiopian (Chicago's is, perhaps, better. And served more quickly too, come to it. But the company in Madison made up the difference), and Greek. I'd never had a Gyro, for example. Though the Spanakopita and I have more than a nodding acquaintance, beginning from that summer at Cambridge University, where punting, Brie and tomato baguettes, and spinach pie all introduced themselves to me, bowing deep and low. Fool I was, to fall for their devious platitudes. Lost forever. A slave, me, to my appetites.

Food I Also Ate: They had hot dogs in the Whatchamacallit Room. ConSuite? Something. And donuts. And teas. People who serve food at conventions are generally the nicest people there. And that's saying something. It's, I suppose, what Robin McKinley called, in SUNSHINE, "the dominant feed-people gene."

Katie and I left her house at 20 til 8 on Saturday morning. It took just under two hours to drive there, and a very pleasant drive, too. I read her the first chapter of "Flora Segunda" by Ysabeau Wilce, and we discussed, what, I forget, it was early. And I'd just spent the last two days deep in wedding rehearsals and weddings and, you know, schmoozing with strangers, changing my mind about the aesthetic appeal of mustaches and mohawks (who'd have thought the combination at all meritorious? But then, I have a thing for ushers. Ask my youngest brother, the Rajah Des), and, in general, behaving myself and trying - very, very hard - to exist for a little while without ego.

We arrived in Madison, found parking, talked excitedly about visiting the Farmer's Market, didn't, locked our stuff in the car and wended our way to the Concourse Hotel.

Katie spotted Catherynne Valente yuki_onna, but I missed her that time. I'd met her briefly at World Fantasy last year. This meeting necessitated a severe case of swollen salivary glands over her poetry. I later made Katie order her Orphan books for our stores. I remembered her as a raven-tressed splendor, with sea eyes and a husky voice, her mouth full of Aphrodite's bitterness, and have since enjoyed her journal entries. I would have been more than capable of telling Katie that Merry-Cat Valente owns a leopard-print dress, has a mutual magnetic pull with small children, and will soon be married, but Katie's the one who could pick her off a crowded street. Ah, details.

Later, with the Goblin Fruit Girlstithenai, mer_moonand Alex of the Ultimate Showdown alankria, we were re-introduced. That was over Nepalese food. And I met Theodora Goss, whom we had just heard read at the coffee house. She wrote, "Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner," which also contains some of HER poetry. I'd already formed the opinion that she was elegant and intelligent, and probably would never have approached her of my own quavering will, but she was seated at OUR end of the table, and in such social situations, the paralyzing shyness of making that first superhuman effort just... evaporates. It DID take a while to break into the conversation, but I used George R.R. Martin for my battering ram, and I can only hope Alex and D, justbeast, will forgive me that, in years to come.

Jess, bless her golden heart, made several treks to our end of the table to say hello and bring us tidings from "the other side." She was dressed like a vampire's bar wench, her hair like a loose fall of sunshine, and she made me laugh.

Later that night, or earlier that day (it happened several times, as if we could not believe what we were seeing and had to experience it again), we were introduced to "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" on YouTube. And its Not Safe for the Work Place counterpart. This was in our hotel room, which Katie and I shared with Amal and Jess. (Or, as I took to calling them, "Damascus and Valkyrie.") Alex was there, and Cat and D, briefly before disappearing to more exotic fêtes, and in the middle of me reading "The Glass Men" (it was suitable to the subject matter, believe me), Reina came crawling in on her hands and knees.

I know Reina from Kate the Great's, but had no idea she was there in Madison, much less crawling around other people's hotel rooms (we kept our door thrown open in invitation), but she was a welcome addition. We were all drinking mead and quite merry. The night turned into a slumber party. We told ghost stories and recited poems and drifted off to sleep... eventually...

Then the SUPERFLU struck. What Stephen King called "Captain Tripp's" in The Stand. Talk about the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. I'd guess about a quarter of the population of Wiscon was decimated in the night. Much pukage occurred. I was spared the hand of the Angel of Intestinal Chagrin, but not all of our party was. Katie thought it was me in the bathroom and spent a good hour in the wee sma's being concerned over my being, until she realized I was sweetly asleep underneath the writing desk.

Sunday, then, was spent gently. I did not attend any panels, but we went to look at the artwork in the gallery. And Catherine Crowe talked about her enamels, and told us the story of the Old Crow of Achill... This was my favorite piece, and it goes with the story:

http://www.imagocorvi.com/animal04.htm

We also wandered around the Dealer's Room. I wanted a garnet ring and a shawl that looked like the cosmos, but mostly I wanted LeGuin's "Voices," but of course they only had "Gifts" and "Powers," which I'd read. AGGRAVATING to read the first and third of a trilogy!

I read JoSelle Vanderhooft's, upstart_crow, GODFATHER DEATH, which Amal had bought. Completely drool-worthy. As one says, at one's humblest, "It made me salivate from every orifice." Katie remembers hearing her read at World Fantasy, and I thought she looked familiar, but there I go again. Unless I meet someone, shake her hand, read her work, chat a while, she fades from my poor brain. But now I know her. I associate her with the Duchess of Malfi. She was one of my three favorite poets at the Goblin Fruit reading, and she is going to write a story-poem for me PARTICULARLY to read.

Perhaps I performed particularly well that day, with Love Song to Beowulf, because Cat Valente had made me weep with her Grandmother Spider poem, and I was all dazed-like and raw and brimming with unusual solemnity.

That was the crown of my weekend. The Goblin Fruit Reading, at Avol's Books. I loved every single dinner, lunch and tea, but you know -- during such events, I am the insignificant one. At least at a reading, I can feel myself equal to my company. You know? Like I finally have something to add to the conversation and am not an obnoxious hanger-on. "Stand in your own light," my mother says. "You are the light of the world," says my father. And never more so when standing in front of people, with poetry in my mouth. There you have it. Vanity of Vanities? Or that good old German Funktionslust?

(Favorite Quote on Subject: "The old German term 'Funktionslust' refers to the pleasure taken in what one can do best - the pleasure a cat takes in climbing trees, or monkeys take in swinging from branch to branch. This pleasure, this happiness, may increase an animal's tendency to do these things, and will also increase the likelihood of its survival." Masson and McCarthy, WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP)

After that, everything was Greek Food and Gossip. Most pleasant. Then a drive back to Chicago. A storm was building; Katie had pressure behind her eye. I slept for 12 hours on her couch, and poor Glen felt he couldn't make macaroni. Katie tried to tell him, "She has five brothers! Noise won't disturb her."

Obviously. I slept through a thunderstorm that night that, as Katie later told me, rattled the windows. The last time I was there, I slept through an earthquake. A minor one, mind. I'd sleep through my own death, if allowed.

There, my report.

My third journal entry shall be on "Writing," and that shall complete my Trilogy of W's. Yesterday I finished my new story, the Resurrectionist one, with the Great September Gale of 1815, and an Island made of corpses, and a protagonist named Aquilla Vickery Makepeace, for his sins.

Farewell.