Epoxy Squirtgun Showdown

June 18

First, thanks to those of you who wrote following my Lonesome entry. Don’t worry about it; things’re okay. I was just exploring a facet of the human condition that I often leave unconsidered...

This may be my last truly relaxing weekend for a while. Next Friday (at 7 a.m.!) I’ll be on a plane bound for Arkansas. (The airport is two hours away. Plus, I’ve never been inside this airport, so I’ll need to allow myself time to wander around and be confused. This will lead to me getting up at... well, so early that I may as well not go to bed). I’m visiting my friend who works for the Heiffer Project, a ranch down in Perryville. She trains mules and water buffaloes, slaughters chickens, shaves llamas, leads tours of schoolchildren and environmentalists, stuff like that. Should be interesting. I’ll return midnightish on Monday, and on Tuesday hurtle right into my workweek... The following weekend *may* be mellow enough, but I’m not sure. My mom wants to visit sometime in July... and my girlfriend wants to go camping one weekend in July... and I should go back to my hometown to bid everyone farewell sometime before I leave for California... and my housemates want to have one last pre-scattering blowout... and of course I have to pack my things... After what seemed a very long period in which the California Move existed in some distant future time, it’s now hurtling right up on me.

And on top of all that, I have a manuscript to send to the Warner novel contest sometime soon... and my synopsis isn’t quite done.

Pressure makes diamonds, as the casual metaphor-makers like to remind us. Pressure also implodes things. I don’t expect to develop a complex crystalline physical structure, and I don’t expect to be crushed. I’ll just be really busy for a bit. I’ll try to keep y’all posted.

I’ve gotten the chance to see some friends recently. My friend Mary, who makes beautiful jewelry and knows more about the far east than any American should be expected to, gave me a pendant of Dancing Ganesha (Nritya-Ganapathi, whose dance reveals the underlying rhythm of the universe). It’s a lovely figure, very small but very intricate, and I shall keep it always, or as close to always as I can manage.

I also had a perfect dinner with my old friend Sharon, who has been living across the state for a couple of years, and has now returned. We talked about poetry, and books, and wealth, and art, and many other things. The day was gray, but the sun shone between us.

I’m writing another story, a short but very tightly-packed one about reverence and individuality, about the sacred and the sentimentally-valued-- it’s got angry young men, and the shaggy-haired god I dreamed of, and journeys, and secrets revealed in the mottled patterns of a snakeskin, and other wondrous things. It’s supposed to be lyrical, and for the several hundred words I have done so far, I think it is.

I’m reading King’s Rose Madder, which I’ve read before... it’s got its high points, but it’s definitely rough in places. Still, I have positive associations with it. I’m also re-reading Last Call by Tim Powers, because it’s wonderful, and I haven’t read it for a year, and I miss Clarion...

Well, and I don’t have anything new to read just now at the moment.

When I got bored of writing and reading this afternoon, I dug out my Clarion water guns and aquified some walls and bushes in the yard. One of the guns has sprung a leak, however, so I pulled out my epoxy tube, mixed the two separately-inert substances, created a puddle of powerful adhesive, and patched the gun. Then I got to thinking how neat it would be to have two water guns (which I do), one with the first epoxy-agent in it, and the other filled with the second. I could use my mighty guns to capture bad-guys with streams of sticky mucilage.

It was a short daydream, but odd enough to share, I thought (and I had to call this entry something)