I almost peed my pants...

So in an effort to lift my gloomy countenance, Taz sent me the funniest thing I have seen all week. I haven't laughed so hard in DAYS. Clarionites are looking at me very strangely right now.
I suppose you might be wondering if I'm still holding it together. Or maybe you'd like to see me go totally off the deep end, if only for entertainment value. Having just finished my draft of "Matter FOR Life and Death" (very important swap there) I am at an opportune time to play catchup.

Yesterday was a bad day. They are bound to happen. Even the wonderful experience that is Clarion can't keep them at bay entirely. But its just one day, and I promise everything's gonna be alright :0)

Today we had sun for the first time in a couple of days, it was warm too! Whoopie. Crits sailed by -- only three -- in spite of the fact that we had a few sticky subjects that came up. It always amazes me how the group really comes together to work things out, even if we don't agree. That part in the Clarion booklet about respecting your classmates is really, really important. So far, so good.

I spent a long time at lunch, just talking to people. Then a group of us headed into town to get started on Andy's assignment. I've had something similar before, but it was nice to return to. I'd forgotten how well I liked this exercise -- even if I have to work really hard to hear people talking -- and not get caught. It does add an edge of danger though... hehehe...I wandered up and down university, scouting for a likely location. Being the slow post lunch hour nothing looked like it would be an easy mark, so I found a little indy coffee house (across the street from Starbucks) and hunkered down.

Americans have this weird personal space thing. That is, we require a lot of it. I got too close to the first group and they wierded out a bit. So I read a few of my stories for tomorrow crit and made out some postcards. When they left about an hour or so later, giving me nothing substantial, I moved to the couch area, ordered a second iced tea and made camp.

Bingo.

Next thing I know I'm in the middle of two conversations and I can hardly keep them straight. Hilarious. I stayed there far too long, but it was so great I couldn't help myself. I can't wait till the reading tomorrow (ah, later tonight)

then I stopped at Bulldog and went crazy in the magazine section (which is pretty much the whole store). I picked up all the necessary Sci-fi/fantasy mags for review, Locus and then two mags just to tickle my fancy: an outdoor lifestyle magazine and the latest issue of Canoe and Kayak -- which happened to be a special whitewater edition -- featuring profiles of seven top female kayakers and boat reviews. Yipee.

I'll try to get in a review of C&K on the Diary of a River Rat but suffice it to say the only thing that really bugs me about the mag (and lots of paddling reads actually) is how blatantly sexist they can come off (Comparing creekboats to spouses and playboats to mistresses, oh come on!), in spite of saying they want to promote women in the sport ("7 'girls' who rip harder than you") Its just such a huge double standard (what ever happened to practice what you preach?) Am I surprised? Not really. It is a pretty male dominated crowd. One thing I can say, is that on an individual level, every male paddler I have met has largely been chill and welcoming. So take that C&K.

I digress. I have to say today was one of those interesting conversation days. I really made an effort to get out and talk to other Clarionites, feeling that some of my bad day was really just a feeling of isolation. Just talking to them reminds me what smart, amazing, funny and interesting people I'm living with -- and not to take that for granted.

Subjects discussed, in no particular order:
MFA programs
race and sci-fi
female orgasms
evolution
black tea
kayaking and rivers
arachnids, snakes and other creepy crawlies
predatory birds
animae
pornography and sexual fetishes
mandatory sexual offender reporting systems
the writer and the romantic relationship
having children
raising children alone
class and awareness of class issues
slang and language variations

Incredible. My mind has switched gears so many times I feel like an 18wheeler. And this was just this afternoon. One more thing, future clarionites. Be prepared to talk, share and think with your classmates. Don't miss the opportunity to pick the brains of some very wonderful intelligent people with thoughts both alike and different from yours by being ignorant of the world around your or closed minded. These conversations will inform my writing just as much as anything that goes on in morning crits.

Since then I've been hammering out "Life and Death." I have to say, with first draft complete its definitely not what I expected, even though I knew the beginning, middle and end when I started out. I meant this as a sort of pessimistic meditation on the futlilty of existence. HA!

I may actually have to tone down some of the sentimentality in my crash edit/revise. What happened? Life. Which is exactly the point. Between here and there life happened to the writer and I happened to the story. I also got a real strong sense of my narrator and she was not who I thought she was, starting out. I kept trying to push her and she just pushed back until I let her be who she was.

We'll see how it goes over, but I'm pretty interested in this piece now. It feels good. I wanna hear what people think about it.

Tomorrow night after we take turns reading our overheard conversations I'm gonna head over to UW for a slide show of Josh's kayaking trip to BC. "Life and Death" will be in the hopper for Crit Friday and I hate roaming around the house knowing people are reading my stuff. Its a good time for me to be out. Plus I get to feed some of my paddling jonesin even if vicariously.

No, all of relationship issues have not been neatly wrapped up(but we did have a nice conversation this morning) and I am still down on sleep and feeling a bit nervous (as always) about submitting my story to the group. But that's not all that I am, and today definitely reinforced that. It's all good.

And I've got 10 bucks that says William Gibson takes all in a Stephenson/Sterling/Gibson duke it fest. (See Question 4 for Stephenson's prediction) any takers?