Space Onion (with all apologies to J.)
October 11
At work, we inevitably get multiple copies of books, and so every month there's a great culling, and the redundant volumes are gathered to be sold. But, before we take them off to Dark Carnival, we employees get our pick, at half price. I bought three books today (put on a credit card, which is how I could afford it at all; we're cash poor of late): The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker (both books I would have bought in hardcover anyway) and Angry Young Spaceman by Jim Munroe, who also wrote Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gas Mask. The cover of Coldheart Canyon in the US is pretty awful... it's got Clive Barker on the cover. He's all suaved out, tux and smooth, and sure he looks good... but he's the author. Maybe his picture should be on the back of the book, sure, but the cover? It bothers me. It makes me embarrassed for him. It's silly. The UK cover is better, a mansion (I think) and some ghostly eyes... much more appropriate to the book. But whatever. Onion Girl is really good so far. I love me some good Charles de Lint. And the first chapter of Spaceman is promising...
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Got a bounce from Ellen Datlow at Sci Fiction, but she said she looks forward to my next story, which I don't think she's said before. So. Tra and la.
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I've been thinking a lot about uncarved blocks, and Zen time, and living for the moment, and following the flow, and stuff like that lately. Comes from reading de Lint and finishing Lathe of Heaven last night, I imagine. I don't know... sometimes I have moments of serenity... looking at purple flowers, clay pots with things growing in them, looking at bonsai and having that delicious confusion of scale... but most often my happiness is active, because I'm doing something, or am about to do something, or have just accomplished something. The problem with that is that, when you stop doing something, you stop being so happy. I just felt sapped last night (and yes, I mean sapped in the sense of "hit in the base of the skull with a blackjack"), sprawled on the couch and couldn't build up enthusiasm to do anything... and I was miserable. I felt worthless. I felt like I was wasting my time. Pretty sucky. Maybe there's something to living in Zen time after all...
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Yet again, I'm reminded of why I like Jonathan Carroll. It's the way he writes lovers. I love his lovers. They make me appreciate my own love, the grace which brought me Heather. I read some of Bones of the Earth on my lunch break, and the afternoon went so slowly, because all I wanted was to come home to my love, and tell her what she means to me.
What she means to me is everything. Already, it's everything.
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Last night we went to the tea bar on Piedmont. We'd seen it many times, always thought it looked cozy and inviting, but somehow we never went in. Last night we were headed for Gaylord's, but it was crowded to overflowing; the Starbucks on the other corner was inexplicably dark, with a crowd of cops out front, and I guess all the spillover went to Gaylord's. Never have I so acutely missed Pergolesi! Even when Pergo was crowded, there was a seat somewhere; if nothing else, there was the steps, or a clear space at the base of a palm tree. At Gaylord's.... no such luck. So we went to the tea bar, and it's lovely and inviting and incredibly pretentious in décor... you can't get lattés, but you can get chai, which is second-best. I still like the drinks at Gaylord's best (and they're better than the drinks at Pergolesi, let me say in the interests of full disclosure), but the tea bar is the place to go for sitting-and-working-and-reading-and-thinking.
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Enough for now. Back to The Onion Girl.
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Oh. The title. At Clarion, J. Simon originated this... sort of running joke, sort of... about a space onion... Well. Never mind. You really, truly did have to be there. I could describe it, and it would make no sense. So I shan't.
