Monsters and More So

August 24

Saturday I woke up feeling fairly crappy, but I medicated, and felt better when it was time to go help Susan and Matt move. That was fun, actually -- lots of people helped, so it was all relatively painless, at least from my perspective. I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while, had some nice conversation, ate a cheeseburger and fries, saw Susan and Matt's new place, carried bookshelves, and so on. There's something oddly satisfying about carrying boxes to a truck, about lugging furniture, about packing a truck well, and there's something very understandably satisfying about making yourself useful to your friends -- something about community, something about knowing they'd do the same for you.

I left them around 3:00, planning to wander around Berkeley, maybe buy some music. But all that carrying had wiped me out, and I'd barely walked a block before I started wheezing and coughing. I went home and -- yes! -- took a nap. I woke around 7:00, feeling better, and decided to go out and make something of the evening. I went up to Berkeley and saw Freddy vs. Jason, which I greatly enjoyed. It wasn't particularly scary, but it was fun, and cool, and had some fabulous imagery. It got me thinking about iconic monsters, and what gives the two central figures their potency. Freddy Krueger is the more complex of the two -- his origin was as a child-killer, after all, and his victims were very young when he was alive, but in death he preyed on teenagers, mostly for reasons of cinematic convenience (I know, I know, he was killing the children of the parents who killed him or whatever, but that always seemed like a weak explanation to me -- if he enjoyed killing pre-teens in life, he should have continued doing so after death, especially since the fear of young children is probably more potent). Freddy isn't really about the horror of child-killing, after all, since that's all in his back-story -- he's about nightmares, the fundamental horror of those dreams where you don't realize you're dreaming, perhaps even about the ultimate uncertainty of the reality of human experience. Jason, on the other hand, is far simpler -- he is the implacable, near-mindless monster that cannot be stopped, that does not run to catch you, but simply approaches steadily, and cannot be deterred. (There's a great moment in the film where Jason is on fire, and doesn't even seem to notice -- he just keeps coming, swinging his machete.) Jason is also the boiled-down essence of the morality-tale monster, which the movie acknowledges explicitly in one of Jason's wish-fulfillment dream-sequences -- he kills you for drinking, having sex out of wedlock, having fun too late at night without parental authority, all the little petty transgressions that characterize a particular kind of cautionary horror story (still very prevalent in urban legends). Now, I prefer my horror to take place in a less strictly moral framework -- after all, I think it's far scarier that bad things can happen to you just because, for no particular reason, than to think that bad things will happen to you because you transgressed against X taboo. You can protect yourself from the latter, but not from the former. Even so, there's a real potency in a character who doesn't care about such moral relativity, and just hacks you up anyway for your perceived transgressions. Michael Myers from the Halloween movies is similarly implacable, but Jason always had more style. I have a certain interest in such iconic monsters, in their slightly-larger-than-life qualities... it's something I might have to explore in a horror story at some point. Not just write a story about such a character -- that's not especially interesting -- but explore the very idea of such characters, somewhat as Clive Barker did in his story "The Forbidden," which (after being altered almost beyond recognition) became Candyman. (Actually, Candyman was on TV last night, around 2 a.m., and I watched most of it before I fell asleep. It's not a very good movie, but it was one of my formative horror-movie-viewing experiences, so I have an affection for it.)

There were lots of previews for horror movies before the film; we seem to be in a cinematic horror renaissance. I hope the market doesn't get oversaturated and filled with dreck... There's some boring-looking Christian-mythos movie coming (I seldom watch those, because they tend to take themselves far too seriously and be overblown and portentous, though Christopher Walken was wonderful in the first Prophecy film, and I have a soft spot for The Exorcist), and an intriguing bad place/haunted house movie called Cold Creek Manor, and -- most interesting of all -- a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that, from the trailer, looks very creepy and stylish. I generally think remakes are a waste of time, but Massacre is a film that could benefit from higher production values, and the credits say it's based on the film by Tobe Hooper, so it may be more of a revisioning than a remake. Let's hope so. They're still trotting out that tired "based on actual events" claim, despite the fact that Leatherface and his clan have precious little in common with Ed Gein, Hooper's inspiration for the film.

After the movie I went to Au Coquelet, had some coffee, and wrote a poem called "Angel Bites." I came home, typed it up, and e-mailed it to an editor who'd asked me for a piece. Then I listened to the answering machine, and had two messages from Heather! So I played some Diablo II until she called back, and we had a nice chat. Her crits went well, she's having a great time at the workshop, and she misses me, all good news. After I finished talking to her I read for a while, played with the kittens, watched TV, and drifted off to dreamland...

Today I haven't even left the house, except for a foray to take the garbage out. I've been somewhat productive, though not much in a writerly way. I sent corrections to "Romanticore" off to Realms of Fantasy and made a few stabs at writing, but my attention kept wandering. Mostly I worked around the house, hanging pictures, unpacking, rearranging furniture, cleaning, etc., with frequent breaks to sprawl on the couch and read -- Aimee Bender stories, Paul Park stories, bits from the various "Year's Best" anthos. It's been a pleasant day, if a bit on the dull side. I miss Heather. Glad she'll be back tomorrow.

I've done a little bit of work on the Frog novel tonight, just a page or so, but I feel like I'm easing back into that world, and will soon dive back into it entirely. That's the major project for the next month or two, to hammer out another 50 or 60,000 words and finish the first draft. I'd like to get it into shape to send out by the first of the year. I've been very undisciplined this summer, just writing haphazardly, and that's not satisfying to me -- I've produced some decent stuff, done some good work on revising Rangergirl, but it's been a long time since I've really produced fiction, and I need to focus. The collection is put together, the novel revisions are done (for now, anyway), we're moved into our new place -- there are no more distractions, no more excuses. I'm down to the last quarter of the year, here, and I'd like to get as much done in the next four months as I did in the preceding eight. Which should be doable, if I just get into a routine again, working every day. Wish me well.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 84,000

Words written since last entry:
600

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