Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Thanks for All the Fish
Ah, there you still are, friend. Come in and settle gently on this chair. Mind the dust; I will not be cleaning here again. Specters of John and Aeryn no longer cavort here, disrupting my sleep and interrupting my thoughts. The Slimepit is now haunted by ghosts of another kind.
So let us take a last look around; moss is encroaching on rocks once carefully polished, the slime is viscous and cold. Altars crumble and decay, their deities concerned with other priorities. Gloom thickens and clings, obscuring the far edges and chilling the air. Crickets sing love songs to the night as the last light fades and diaphanous forms claim this space as their own.
There is light and warmth elsewhere. Come, friend. Let's go together.
All things evolve and so the Slime Devil has discovered a new community and a new persona. I am "Kitty" there: a long story and one not worth telling. The community is largely populated by men, and several of them have wormed their way into my heart. I thought I'd share my perceptions of them with you.
****
He is like cherries: dark, smooth and sweet. He lives between the joists and floor boards of society, his personal space a sofa bed surrounded by computers. He can’t find his passport, and should have gone back to his country over a year ago. "Polyamorous", she said, but it’s an excuse to keep him locked down while she sleeps with another man. He doesn’t love her, and craves someone who is his alone, someone who will love a man who is in love with love. He gives himself without reserve to the first woman who uses the right words and listens indulgently when I cluck about frying pans and fires. The need is too great for the stranger in a strange land to find a home.
****
He wears his pain like armor, unaware that it broadcasts his misery. He rips out chunks of his flesh and hands them to anyone who asks. Vultures circle closest to him and he welcomes them, pushing honest friends away. His cross is wheeled for easy transport and he thinks he is inconspicuous when hanging on it, bleeding copiously. He has surrendered and I’m angry because I care for him.
****
He mumbles when I first meet him, and does his best fade when I hug him. He’s flown ten thousand miles to visit text on a screen, offering himself to strangers to pry his shell open with tough love and tender compassion. All he wants from life is to fall asleep in the arms of a woman who loves him but he’s terrified that the shell protects nothing of value. I manipulate him mercilessly to make him cry, snugged tight against my shoulder, and hate myself a little as he finds hidden tears. He wants, needs and is so afraid but he tries anyway; I quote Star Wars at him and tell him to do. I fall in love with the melodic voice he finally releases and the dry wit layered just beneath his surface shyness. I can’t stop crying as I hug him goodbye at the airport. “Oh Kitty,” he murmurs in my ear and he is the strong one.
****
The sarcasm doesn’t play well on screen, but he still makes cracks long past tolerance. “J/K” he says, just kidding and I know he means it – some of what he says is actively offensive and I know he likes me. Verbal fencing is his method of showing affection, his tactic for hiding who he is. Yet he confides in me, exposing his vulnerability, weighing his desires against his insecurity. He passes up opportunities and plays elaborate games and I warn him. He thinks opportunities are like buses and ignores several; the horn-blowing-neon-sign-blazing-hand-it-to-ya-on-a-silver-platter kind. There are no more coming. He says nothing but I think he’s just now realizing what he passed up. It was a dear prize to lose to fear.
****
Warrior priest. Forgotten feelings avalanche as he struggles to sort them into recognizable categories. She is water to his desert and he is thirsty for more, the ache palpable. He tries to be measured and logical, but emotions buffet him as he loses himself in unfamiliar territory. He peppers my inbox with email as thoughts coalesce, offering affection, seeking validation with pointed intensity. He has long been without love; duty first to family, to country. She mined the goodness, the kindness, the sweetness and brought them forth for him to find. He loves her not just for her, but because she could show him himself.
Contrary to popular opinion, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I also haven't been beamed up or stolen away on Moya, as hard as I've tried. The words "Take Me With You!" outlined in white stones in the vacant lot next to my house have elicited only resounding silence from the universe at large, and fearful glances from the neighbors. Nothing so interesting has happened in my life, gentle readers (any who still visit). The big change is: I got a job.
Suddenly my time is again regulated by meetings and schedules and deliverables. The corporate politics are amazing and the artificial urgency attached to everything would be amusing if it weren't exhausting. I go to bed at a "decent" hour now because I have international team members to meet with, sometimes at 5:30 AM and yes, that's in the office. I miss getting up and spending my days at my computer writing and talking on IM with friends into the still hours of morning. I have no access to the internet at work since I'm a consultant, and have found it difficult to integrate what I did into the time I have. I've hardly written at all since Farscape was canceled, and yes Bexa I did in fact forget I had blog. All my campaign related activites are almost completely shut down and I've exited, stage left, the door smacking me lightly on the behind as I went.
I wasn't emotionally ready to go back to work, I think. I wanted The Man to go back first, let me have the run of the Slime Pit and play Wild Child a bit longer. But they called me, and it's money coming in instead of going out, so I took the position. It's hard to sit at my desk and work on boring tasks when I could be home doing other, more interesting things. I find it hard to care about the "appearance" of things, which is what much of the energy of every individual in the company is spent on. I don't have access to the internet as a consultant, or to IM so I can't check on any of the people I know during the day. Evenings have been devoted to other non-Farscapian pursuits; it became painful to think about the end of Farscape being nigh and I haven't reconnected in the way that I was before. This season . . . well, that's another post methinks.
But here I am, really fine, honest. Just a bit unsure of where I'm going next. The future is currently a rolling horizon of not more than three weeks out. It just kind of falls off the backs of the turtles there, and disappears in a limitless slide down. It's a bit scary to peer over the edge at this point; much safer to keep my attention here and now. So I focus on the job and those schedules, those deadlines and let it propel me forward. I'm not driving right now, just playing my role, and in some respects that's kind of nice. But I still miss the unbounded days filled with what I chose to fill them rather than what others pay me for my time. I need to find a way to make it all mesh together. Hopefully this is a muddled start.
Now I have to go to bed. I have a meeting in the morning. Thanks for still checking in.
It's 5:00 AM and I haven't been to bed yet. This is not really an unusual phenom in our little corner of the cyberverse. I think more people who hang out on blogs are chronic insomniacs than those who aren't. Sleep-deprived beings living their lives in twilight awareness, the better to touch the gauzy concepts oozing from their unconscious to slip quietly into awareness. Shadowed images flirting with what passes for reality.
Vampire, The Man calls me, vampyre, and teases me about the possibility of burning to ash in daylight. I know others who live at night, who wait for quiet and dark to coax forth phantasms to the page. We watch each other and scold, worrying that the others will sicken while we each push ourselves just a little further, finding comfort in dimness, homecoming in the heaviness of eyelids. The images fly, the words flow as we touch the source denied us in the day.
"Dark night of the soul" describes more than the depths of despair. It also speaks to the soul who needs the dark to open and let pale beauty fly moth-like to buffered light. The sun burns too bright, the shadows weak and shy, hanging close to objects for protection. Only at night can they flex, stretch, and feed on the substance of darkness. Darkness holds the images, waiting to reveal them. Those with mundane minds quieted by exhaustion can tease the veil aside and find image-populated realms not seen in harsh light. The essence of dreams stolen.
Translating them, that is the problem. Taking the images and feelings hiding in darkness, cutting them from the fabric of the unconscious and pasting them onto the page. Aye, there’s the rub. The interface between the flow and the page. A sleepless being who’s tired enough to move herself out of the way and freely let the images convert to words. The exchanges rate of images to words – sometimes the price is high.
But now I’ve passed exhaustion and have entered shut-down. The interface fails, the flow interrupted, the cambio is closed so there will be no more exchanges of images for words today. Sense, what little there was, fails. And soon the sun will be up. Now I must sleep and let the images romp uncaptured.
Ha. Shot it dead. Right there in the corner. The damn thing sassed me and I had to kill it. Tracked its muddy little foot prints through the house and perched on the counter in the kitchen, nibbling zwieback, flaking bits of renegade scalp and thumping its heels against the cabinet. Cheeky bastard.
It artfully avoided the traps I'd hidden all over the house. Cruelty-free traps from Orchard Supply, three for $29.95. Sounds like it should be an infomercial: "The holidays are just around the corner! Our traps free your cruelty to use for snide whispers about Aunt Mabel's drinking problem and chortles over your balding cousin's sad little rug! But wait! Order in the next ten minutes, and we'll double your order! That's right -- six cruelty free traps for the amazing low price of only $29.95! Order now!"
So much for the traps. I could see that it was too wily for traps, that the traps might as well have been manufactured by Acme for all the good they would do me. Bold, the way it stared at me, indifferent to the bits of fuzz and dirt it showered with every movement. I could see its eyes glittering under that greasy white hair, the neat points of its teeth perforating the zwieback, then snapping the bite away. I knew what those teeth were for. Arrogant spurred heels whacking into my cabinetry; not expensive cabinetry, to be sure, but I don't want puncture marks in it either.
I grabbed the broom and feinted, only wanting to scare it into elevating its filthy rump off my counter and hauling it double-time out of my house. It sneered instead and took another large bite of zwieback, crumbs cascading down its chest fur. I hate attitude, particularly from something I could easily convert into a grease spot.
I heard a low growl behind me. Ah, reinforcements. The cat took note of the interloper, weighed the implications and decided that the Presence of This Thing in Her House was Unacceptable. Obviously That Woman was Ineffective in Dealing with It and she as Supreme Despot of the Domain must Take Action. Another growl, like the motor of a windup car whizzing across the floor: rrrrrrRRRRRRRRrrrrrr. The critter lobbed the remaining bit of zwieback in the cat’s general direction. It hit the catless floor, the cat realizing that the upstairs needed checking right now. I don’t say she was faithless or cowardly. Just late for her next appointment.
Leaving me to deal with It by myself. It grimaced at me, apparently trying to charm me with its spiky dentition. I don’t find teeth in themselves particularly charming, and so many pointed teeth designed to clamp soft, struggling things were definitely outside of the limits of appeal. Besides, I knew what those teeth were for. I was determined to avoid experiencing them again.
It gave me a cat-hiss like the one the Supreme Despot offered a moment before. It’s always smart to mimic the powerful. Sometimes lesser beings are confused enough to be unable to distinguish the difference. The thing is, I only accept hisses from the cat. I’m funny that way. I understand chain of command, and this interloper, now imposter, just wasn’t in it.
I brandished my mighty broom and gave it a stern and disapproving poke. It shrieked and dashed along the cat-path upstairs. Aww, frell. A sound like a semi jackknifing from 90 to zero in 10 seconds flat combined with laboring ice cream machine motor. The Despot was being challenged for supremacy in her domain. I grabbed out my gun and unlocked it, fished out the loaded magazine from the drawer and slid it home. The grinning beastie. I knew what those teeth were for.
Gun in one hand, broom in the other. Could have taken one of the samurai swords from the display in the hall; veeery sharp. I could shave all the greasy hair from that impertinent little head. But I couldn’t imagine one of the venerable original owners approving of the use of their noble sword to exterminate vermin. So modern gun and trusty broom. Work with what you know.
A sound like punctured tires spluttering in a puddle. Knowing the Despot, she was voicing her battle cry from under the bed. Not that she’s easily frightened, mind you. She’s just of the opinion that caution is the better part of valor.
Damned critter. Poking under the bed, it’s pudgy butt waving in the air. I gave it a forcible whack with the broom and sent it flying into the corner. Hoped it would run for the door, but it sat unfazed, showing me those teeth and the arch gleam in it’s eyes. Opened and closed jaws in a gentle parody of its attack mode.
“Why are you here?” That slight edge of desperation in my voice. I hated showing any weakness, but I wasn’t ready, not prepared, no time, never enough time, even when there is time aplenty.
“Aaaeeryn,” it wheezed and stopped. The eyes grew brighter and the grimace grew wider. Then it sniggered.
Derision. I was being mocked in my own house. I’ve put up with a lot from the muse, but I won’t take ridicule. I’ve had those teeth sunk into my neck, chewing on my insides when I can’t translate images to words. At least not good words.
A symbiotic relationship of pain and need balanced by what ever it got from the transaction. I’ve never known. It had been ignoring me for a while, so I’d put out traps and tried to lure it to me. I’m not sure why. It just makes a mess, screws up my sleep and interferes with my general comfort level. When it’s not around, I don’t agonize over the composition of sentences. I don’t have to let characters clog dance through my frontal lobe, screaming for attention. My life is a whole lot easier when it’s gone. I was getting used to the silence in my head.
Then it showed up out of nowhere, and disturbed my wa. Add insult to injury: it disrespected me. Right in my own bedroom. I told myself I didn’t miss the nights of two and three and four, staring at recalcitrant words and begging the beast jaw-locked to my neck to give me some sort of inspiration, et spiritu sanctum, breathe into me so I don’t expire. Take what you need and leave the rest better than you found it. I always thought it valued whatever I gave it. Now come to find out it was laughing.
So I shot it. Dropped it like a dog. It died without a sound, a pile of filthy hair and patchy skin, its slightly putrid aroma pushing off the walls. The cat howled for it; triumph, but something else too. Animals are so much more sensitive. They see things we don’t.
"Aeryn," it said. Aeryn’s been curled up in my mind for a while. Post – WISC; a story that’s been flogging me since April. I’ve been trying to coax her to speak with me, but she’s using everything she has to cope. Maybe now that it’s just me -- no smelly muse to get in the way -- she’ll relent. Forget what I said about characters in my head and silence and wa. I miss them. And teeth grinding into the soft part of my stomach, points shredding and masticating. Masochist. I think I miss that too.
I stand on the beach and watch the water nibble away at my toes, the warm/cool liquid swirling around to taste the arch of bone and skin pressed into the shifting surface. Sand polishes away the bloodless edges, the flow washes the brown grains and bits of shell layer by layer over foreign flesh until I stand footless, swallowed by the beach. Packed tight in sand for safekeeping; so tight I can feel my pulse beat in counterpoint to the surf. I'm a graceless land beast on blunt stumps, incorporated into the beach by the inclusive sea.
There is brightness, even behind glasses, brightness in sky and water that parts the heavy air and glances off too-white skin. Victorian, I always say, and slather on the highest number of liquid protection I can find. Spray dries on my lips and tastes of ocean and fish, saltwater dries in my hair to make stiff cords.
A bride and groom in Hawaiian dress come to the edge of the ocean for pictures after their ceremony in the heiau, holy place. I stand sentinal for them, a strange footless creature holding back the sea until they choose to baptize their marriage. They leave their wedding leis on the rocks for the ocean to play with, then carry away. All things go back to the sea.
"I'm going to the pool for a while. Do you want to come?" The Man is an outline in the brightness, dark and solid against the background of restive water.
"I don't think I can. I have no feet." He smiles at this; I've made a joke. I don't make too many with him these days. "I could find a way to go if you'd float me."
He smiles again. He finds it easy to smile at me and I don't know why. I'm a trial and a terror, unavailable most of the time. Except here. "I'll float you, baby." He takes my hand and pulls; chunks of compacted sand melt back into the water as the beach releases me. "Look, I made you feet."
"Pretty good feet, too." I flex and wiggle, let the pulse subside back into the interior of my body. "They appear to function according to spec."
"Only quality for you, honey." He leads me to the pool, an imitation, waveless ocean contained in a cement beach. Unwelcoming and too hot to flesh so recently part of sand. We rinse before jumping in, no bits of real ocean in the artificial one. Take the water in a single leap, the sound of impact fading as we rapidly sink to the bottom, chlorine instead of bouyant salt. We swim to the shallow end and I lay my arms around his neck and hug him.
"You were going to float me, right?" I look out at the curling surf over his shoulder, the wet gleam of silica in the brightness. The ocean is too unpredictable today to float someone, but the pool is sterile and crowded with water toys and children performing for languid parents draped over lounges.
"If you want." He questions with a quick glance. The kids are loud, squeaking and splashing, water beings come home. It's been awhile since we've been in a pool together, and I'm not prepared to cede the territory, even artificial territory. "Yeah, I want."
"We'll find a corner," he says and scoops me up like he always does so that feet are no longer needed, just the water and the support of his arms. He is careful when he floats me, holding me close so that I don't slip under. It's good; the water warm, tame but pleasant. I sneak one last peek at the beach and the waves slipping in and out, flirting with the land. I tighten my arms around his neck. I'll stay with him today. He deserves at least that. I'll go back to the sea tomorrow.
. . . but I'm not ready to go. It's hard to think about being away for two whole weeks. I'm already going through withdrawal. Compulsively checking everything, making contact with all my contacts. "Any last questions? Are you sure you're okay?" Of course they are. It's me who's not okay.
I don't suffer from the illusion that I am in anyway necessary to The Campaign. It's grown legs and claws and heavy plating. It is doing just fine; with so many Scapers running along side in attendance. It's losing it's milk teeth now, and developing some heavy-duty choppers. Look out, oh ye who cancelled Farscape. The Terrible Campaign is coming. Woe unto those who falter in it's path.
The problem is me. I became involved when The Campaign was just a small wild thing, needing to be nurtured. And nurture I did, me and many, many others. Those 2:00 AM feedings. Oy. I never wanted to be a mother. Slime devils are hatched and left to fend for themselves, not born. The mother instinct is unnatural to me. But now I have to leave my rambunctious youngling for the very first time, and I find that I'm anxious; compulsively checking the board and dropping little notes to everyone to make sure they know I'll be gone. Like it's a big deal. And it helps not one bit that there are mothers and fathers aplenty, aunts and uncles and friendly neighbors to continue doing what they're already doing.
I feel like the mom who has to work while her son makes his debut as the mushroom in the first grade play. The play goes just fine without her, and the child is still young enough that he is excited just to be there on stage with his friends. It's the mom who must deal with the loss of seeing her little one trudge flat-footed across the stage crowned by a badly painted foam rubber mushroom cap and utter inane fungi words. In some ways it's the same with the campaign. I'm not going to be around for airing of the commercial, and I'm miserable, even though it will probably be on when I would never see it. But the play goes on without me and it is fine. The Campaign doesn't need me.
The Man is leaving me alone tonight with my computer. He's brought me yet another plate of food, letting me have time to say goodbye. He's excited about the trip, and keeps trying to engage me in conversation about what we'll do and see while we're gone. I am frustrated because he keeps breaking my concentration, causing me to go back to do things again. What little there is left for me to do before I leave. All I can think of is the number of days until the Burbank con and what still needs to be done. Things that will be done by others.
So I've made arrangements with the neighbor boy to strain the slime and make the sacrifices while we're gone. Just because I'm not here doesn't mean that all of the duties of an acolyte will not be performed. The neighbor boy gave me attitude when I told him the importance of the rituals and getting the sacrifices right, rolling his eyes and sighing, making rude gestures when he thought I didn't see. I'm worried he'll get DK's hot fudge on Ricky's BBQ, or confuse Max's altar with Maayan's. He lost all fear of me years ago, and I didn't have the heart to chomp off an arm or an ear to improve his manners. It's too late now to try to change him.
The little snot. I coulda raised him better. I know I could. Look at how lovely *sniff* The Campaign is turning out.
There are people living in my computer. There are some who just pass through. They stop into the Slime Pit for a quick nibble, a passing peek, drop off some words and they're gone. There are others who are residents, living in tiny little rooms lined up along the bottom of my screen fronted by yellow smilie faces or genderless torsos with tiny heads. They flash and play little songs to get my attention when they want to talk.
I wonder about them, but they seem to be quite happy for the most part. There is an entire world in there. It's all very surreal. People are raising families. They have jobs, PTA meetings, doctors appointments and theater dates. They see movies. They dream of possibilities and discuss their hopes and fears. They experience love, fear, aggravation and jubilation. They walk their dogs and visit meadows. There are oceans and stars and mountains, vast distances that require transportation to take them from one place to another. It sounds disturbingly familiar.
It's strange, because I've seen the inside of my computer, and it's not very inviting. Hard boards with lumpy transistors, bumpy resistors, pin blocks and sharp solder points. Drives strung together on ribbon cables and power connections. Hot chips and noisy fans. Lots of empty space. I look for the world with the mountains and oceans and find only the dust drawn in through the gaps in the case morphing into bunnies and other fluffy dust creatures. No people to be found.
I know they're there. Maybe like fairies and pixies are there. 'Little people' for the new millennium; instead of Oberon and Titania there are Max, sunshiner, ScapeArtist, orchidcactus, JMax, feldman, Fialka, Red and Jul. cofax and ||Scorpius||. All my girls and a couple of guys. They give me treasures; stories, pictures and music. Commiseration and advice. Virtual hugs and electronic kisses.
They shut their doors sometimes, and their names go dark. Sleeping, I suppose, or wandering around in that electronic world. Are their oceans waves of electricity lapping on a silicon shore? Are their cities ordered by combinations of 1's and 0's defining the addresses? Do they realize that what they see when they look out of my monitor is just an infintesimal part of the world I inhabit?
All of their little windows are closed now and their names are dark. I'm getting ready to go to bed, but I'll leave my computer on. I worry what will happen to them if I shut my system down. The little people have always been more vulnerable than we think they are. What if I accidentally destroyed their world?
Sixty-one days since the beginning of the Save Farscape campaign, and no throats have been ripped out. Not even cyber throats. It’s a personal best, I think.
I am not a good typist. Never have been. Mr. Lamb was my junior high school typing teacher. He insisted that the best way to learn to type was to have his students stare with ardent fervor at their sample text, strain it through eager young optic nerves, route it through puerile little brains and squeeze it out through frantic fingers as the timer tick-snickered on his desk. Do not look at the keyboard, or he would bark your name, and you would be expected to rise with enflamed cheeks from the safely of the anonymous pack to stand at your desk like a target until the timer mercifully chimed.
He hovered at the front of class, crisp blue eyes enfolded in flushed fat cheeks, grey hair at brush-cut attention, a long pointer held in sausage fingers. He scanned the class, waiting for one of the weak to falter so he could cut them from the herd with a stroke of his fell stick. Occasionally he would crack the stick on the unfortunate’s desk, making them jump just for fun before they were forced to rise sweating and swaying to wait out the interminable remainder of the timer’s reign.
I lived in terror of typing class and muttered mindless prayers under my breath to be spared, oh god please, the public humiliation of looking up. I typed desperately, fingers tripping over unidentified keys, the relentless tick of the timer urging faster, faster until it exploded in cacophony and the results were examined for errors.
The word count and the time minus the errors times the rate of radioactive decay equals typing speed. And there were so many errors. I think I finally attained an average speed of 22 words per minute. Blinding speed back in the days of the first typewriters, but beneath the contempt of Mr. Lamb in the late 20th century.
I’m wired wrong or my fingers are dyslexic. I’ve never quite figured out which. I get the right letters but in the wrong order. Or maybe endow a word with an extra letter or two. You never know when the word ‘shell’ might need that third ‘l’ on the end. Mr. Lamb saw this as an excuse. Willful disobedience. Flagrant non-conformism. And cussed stubborn to boot.
Mr. Lamb did not like stubbornness. He wanted a quiet class, clicking out neat, ordered text in unison, all eyes staring forty-five degrees to the right of their keyboards like mindless little androids. The students did not fit that model; they were imperfect individuals incapable of following his vision. He took it as a personal affront. And I was one who offended him most of all because I refused to type fast and accurately.
Now I’m involved in the Save Farscape campaign, and my life is nibbled away by meetings. Yahoo!, AIM and IRC; meetings in text. Hours and hours every day, typing and backspacing, fingers tripping over keys in an effort to communicate ideas that could be expressed so easily in just a few spoken words. Sometimes the text scrolls by and my heart sinks; people asking so many questions, needing so much explanation. Communication isn’t clear, and people misunderstand and further explanation is needed. More hours pass as we explore ideas and share information in text, often until the single digits of morning.
The slime devil who offended Mr. Lamb so deeply spends most of her time typing. I've gotten faster, but my fingers still tangle on the keys and I back-space to correct my errors about a quarter of the time. I still am not a good typist. But it's been sixty-one days with no torn throats. I think I want an A.
