Traitor

Cal leaned casually against the rail, one hand absently tracing the cold curls that twined down to the ground.

Through the haze of the room, he watched the crowd watch the lights and flowing scraps of cloth.

Cal realized that the fog machine had died a while ago, but the flashing lights hardly cut through the cloudy air, filtering through instead, struggling rays flickering once, twice, right in the eyes, before disappearing forever, rippling like ocean glare.

Cal bobbed his head along with the others, the bitter taste in his mouth matched by the pain in his stomach. His jeans rippled with the pulse of each beat, a heartbeat that rattled in his chest, kept him breathing. His ears had stopped ringing a while ago. They too, like the crowd, were hazy and muffled.

Cal swirled the half-melted ice around in his little plastic cup of whiskey and ginger. Or was it ginger whiskey? Whiskey and gin? Gin and whiskey? Cal glared at the little black straw and frowned, breath traitorously rich and hot in his mouth. He took another drink, and the crowd grew hazier.

Someone on the floor blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and it floated, suspended, like a thought cloud over his head before the fog machine kicked in again and swallowed him whole.

Cal hated whiskey. He took another gulp, ice pressing up against his lips, big fish in a little pond. Someone else on the floor saluted the lights with a fairly large plastic cup that was also fairly empty.

Another thought cloud went up, was swallowed.

Cal traced the twisted rail again, tucking his head farther back into his hood, taking comfort in the weight of his leather jacket. He was tired of holding the whiskey. Or gin. So he took another drink.

He was only doing this to make her happy. Why did it always end up like this? They hardly ever talked and met up even less, but every time they did, Cal would leave smelling of thought clouds and whiskey.

Cal shifted against the rail. His foot had fallen asleep.

The lights flashed red and orange.

All the trumpets and the marching bands,

And the thunderclaps and trembling hands,

And the people stood up in the stands,

And I just felt so alone.

‘Cause the halos, the black rusted chains,

In the light

As we screamed

In the dark

“I just wanted to find a way home.”

Asimov

This past week, I've been slowly reading through Gold, Isaac Asimov's last anthology (and the first I've read). This man is hilarious.

Yesterday was also his birthday (or at least the day on which he chose to celebrate his birthday), so I thought I'd type up a few passages I found particularly entertaining.

On the Art of Writing

But what if you write and write and write and you don't seem to be getting any better and all you collect are printed rejection slips? Once again, it may be that you are not a writer and will have to settle for a lesser post such as that of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

On Ideas

Someone once asked Isaac Newton how he managed to reach solutions to problems that others found impenetrable. He answered, "By thinking and thinking about it."

I don't know what other answer people can possibly expect. There is the romantic notion that there is such a thing as "inspiration," that a heavenly Muse comes down and plunks her harp over your head and, presto, the job is done. Like all romantic notions, however, this is just a romantic notion.

On Women and Science Fiction

Prior to public recognition in the United States that babies are not brought by the stork, there was simply no sex in science fiction magazines [...] But if there's no sex, what do you do with female characters? They can't have passions and feelings. They can't participate on equal terms with male characters because that would introduce too many complications where some sort of sex might creep in. The best thing to do was to keep them around in the background, allowing them to scream in terror, to be caught and then rescued, and, at the end, to smile prettily at the hero. (It can be done safely then because THE END is the universal rescue.)

On Book Reviews

From my close observation of writers (almost all my friends are writers) they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. 

I'm class one. Most of my friends aim at class two and don't quite make it and aren't quite aware that they don't make it.  

Unfortunately, there's no way in which one can get back at a reviewer. I have sometimes had the urge to do some fancy horse-whipping in the form of a mordant letter designed to flay the reptilian hide off the sub-moron involved; but, except in my very early days, I have always resisted. [...]  

Instead, then, I take to muttering derogatory comments about reviewing and reviewers in general. 

On The Struggle

Well, what goes for chemistry, goes for writing. I know all the miseries, but somewhere among them is happiness. I can't easily explain where it is or what it consists of, but it is there, I know the happiness and I experience it, and I will not stop writing while I live--and may I die if I would change places with the President of the United States. 

On Irony

Naturally, Socrates was not ignorant and the questions were not naive, and his method of procedure is known as "Socratic irony." You may well believe that those who suffered under his bland lash did not grow to love him, and I suspect he fully earned his final draught of hemlock.

On Prediction

There is a general myth among laymen that, somehow, the chief function of a science fiction writer is to make predictions that eventually come true. [...] I am asked with utter confidence, "Can you give us a few of your predictions that have come true?" 

I would love to be able to say, "Well, to name just a few: airplanes, radios, television, skyscrapers, and, in my early days, the wheel and fire." 

But I can't bring myself to do that. The interviewers might actually print it, and they might try to give me a medal for predicting fire.

On Continuing (a possibly Terrible) Series

In that case, anyone who says to him [the author], "You're turning out endless reams of this junk just to con the reader into buying your books," is likely to get a punch in the mouth if the writer is of the violent persuasion, or a sad look if the writer is as gentle and lovable as I am.

On Being a Best-Seller

Actually, I have no room for any feeling but that of astonishment. After publishing two hundred and sixty-one books without any hint of best-sellerdom, no matter how many of them might have been praised, I came to think of that as a law of nature. As for Foundation's Edge in particular, it has no sex in it, no violence, no sensationalism of any kind, and I had come to suppose that this was the perfect recipe for respectable non-best-sellerdom.

On Post-Best-Sellerdom

Well, Doubleday [his publisher] has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I am condemned to write one novel after another for life, and that I am not permitted to consider dying. 

So I am working on another novel. [...] 

I'd complain, except that I love it.

Dream

Cal was exhausted.

He'd gone to bed with a headache and managed, somehow, to drop off quickly. Sometime in the night, he awoke, head pounding. He stared vaguely at the shadows on the wall until sleep came again.

He was on a suburban street, the sky blue, the sun bright, the grass green. He was walking, shouting hellos to any friend that populated every doorstep.

"Hey," he said, walking up to a new, old friend, "What's up?"

"Nothing much," she replied, "You?"

Cal looked up, catchphrase on the tip of his tongue.

The sky. The sky was up. Why didn't he just say it?

Instead, he frowned, pointing just above the infinite rooftop horizon.

"What's that?"

There were two rings, two pink-shaded wisps of clouds joined together, two looking-glasses, side-by-side. Through one, the sky brightened. Through the other, twilight deepened.

She frowned.

"It's probably nothing, just--"

A drone split the air, a heavy groan that rolled back the clouds into smoke, spilling the twilight across the sky. The blue rippled into black, and twilight swallowed the sun.

"Oh, my God--"

"--we should get inside--"

But they stood rooted the ground. Cal wondered if this was a dream.

A terrible roar split the air, and the twilight became darkness itself, empty and hungry. The tiles flew off the roofs, drawn straight up into the heavens.

Cal felt it clawing at him, tearing at his feet, thrumming through his heart. Cars flew by overhead, and she screamed. Cal was blown off his feet, and with terror, he realized that he was going to die.

Strong arms seized him around the shoulders, warm and solid. The roaring intensified, and he began to slip. Up, up up.

"Let me go!" he shouted.

Her feet remained firmly on the ground as the sidewalk flew past him, as earth and everything else rushed up to oblivion.

Cal screamed at her, struggling wildly in that grip which was slowly, slowly slipping away.

"Let me go! Let me go! I want to go--"

Cal broke away, flew up, up, up

and fell awake.

He remained frozen, tangled in his stale blanket, for hours.

He wanted to die.

Running Rememory

I went running this morning to break in my new running shoes. It was so ridiculously painful. I don't remember ever having this much trouble breaking a pair of shoes before, but I guess it'll just take a while. And I'm out of shape. 

Anyways, I ended up running by my middle school, and though it was way early in the morning, I saw my old band director's car in the lot and decided to stop by. I got some weird looks as I burst onto campus, sweating from nearly every bodily orifice, but I made my way to the band room, knocked my shave-and-a-haircut on the familiar door, and waited. 

Of course he was there, and we talked for a while about everything that was going on. Nothing had changed between us, even though it's been six years since I graduated, a fact I pointed out to him when he mentioned his age.

And in return, seemingly inevitably, he turned the conversation to my dating life (or lack thereof) and said I would one day marry some nice Chinese boy and have lots of babies.

I looked around for something to throw at him, but his office, as always, was spotless.

So I laughed instead and said I'd sooner bring home some white guy from the Midwest.

It was his turn to look for something to throw at me.

Yeah. Nothing's changed.

Out of all the teachers I've ever had, I owe him the most. If I hadn't had him as a band director, I would never have picked up the bassoon or the bari sax or the French horn or the clarinet. I wouldn't have survived my last two years of horrid CM testing. Worse still, I probably would have hated music for the rest of my life. I wouldn't still be running through my classical pieces to keep in shape musically. I wouldn't be piecing songs together by ear. I probably wouldn't ever have touched the piano again, much less hankered after a guitar, gotten one, and sung on stage.

He made music real, something more than triads and intervals and arpeggiated seventh chords squiggling about on staff paper. I don't know how he did it, but through those two strange, most painful middle school years, I grew up a lot, and he made sure that with music, I would never be alone.

I still enjoy the silence, the peace from time to time. Silence is good when the thoughts that fill it are warm, fuzzy things full of inconsequential thoughts and questions. I turn the music on when I start drowning. 

And when I just want someone to shut up. There's that too.

So here's to cats in a blender.

May they and all the horn sections in the world live long and prosperous lives.

Writing... Again

This is what my desk looks like right now:

Have I mentioned that I've been working on a monster of a story? This thing has nearly consumed my life. I wrote about fifty pages during this last summer session, and I wrote myself into such a tight corner (surprise, surprise!) that I decided enough was enough.

And so over the past two days, I've constructed a complete timeline. Though I should probably say timelines. This is the dangerous part of writing for me. Once I plan everything out, I usually lose interest in actually writing the darn thing because - hey, I actually know what's going to happen so why bother?

But. I'm really hoping I didn't kill all these trees for nothing. 

Besides, even with the timelines, I'm a little foggy on some bits, so I'll just write myself into and out of those messes when I get to them. But now... Now, i'm taking a break. My brain has been broiled from the inside out.

Wheels

I don't remember the last time I got so attached to a fictional character.

I was rather fond of Bartimaeus in that Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus (+1) Trilogy. Bartimaeus was funny. And I did enjoy being insulted by footnotes. I don't believe i would have known what footnotes were otherwise.

Aragorn, son of Arathorn, was pretty cool, too. But, boy, was that a long time ago.

I only have four Asimov books left, and I'm midway through Robots and Empire (so maybe that should be three-and-a-half books). For some reason, it absolutely gutted me that Elijah Baley wasn't at the center of this mess. I'd kind of started taking him and his Holmesian deductive powers for granted over the course of the last three books. 

Too bad that two hundred Galactic Standard Years have passed since the last one.

And yet Asimov keeps bringing him up, throwing in little flashbacks that hint at the greater half of Baley's life that was left untold, each one ending with a heavy finality that is thwarted by the next flashback, killing and reviving in one breath. It's like Baley's ghost haunts these stories. Elijah Baley was mentioned in the last book of the Foundation series, thousands and thousands of Galactic Standard Years in the fictional future of the galaxy, and yet Foundation was started several real Earth-years before Elijah Baley was ever written to life.

So, in a way, Lije Baley never really dies, just as Daneel Olivaw never really lives.

I guess there's comfort in knowing that. Always the wheels of time spin forward, yet to the eye, they backwards sometimes turn. 

Writing...

I had an almost solid three-hour block of writing time today.

Writing time? You ask.

Yes. Writing time, I reply.

Amongst my strange, widely varying dreams of last night (one of which involved physics homework), I dreamed of a brightly lit room filled with colorful, floating plastic balls.

I've got eight scrawling handwritten pages on it, and it feels like a slow burn. Whether or not this thing goes anywhere is again another fairly large question mark, though I have wrangled the first coherent piece of exposition from my writing brain in a while.

I'm inordinately proud of writing coherent things.

I already call this a win.