| |
|
Thursday 27 December 2001
Thinking about death, as the year winds down. (Whoa, now there's an enticing cheery lead-in, eh?) More specifically, I've been reading a thread on MetaFilter about a young man, Paul Battaglia, who was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks but whose weblog has been left up (and if you want to get your heart broken today, read the guestbook, which is still active as a kind of memorial page -- his parents posted a Christmas message there). The MeFi thread (and in particular this linked article) raises a question I've pondered at times: What will happen to these virtual artifacts -- the weblog, the fiction, the on-line persona -- that I, and that all of us, will leave behind when we die? This is a somewhat more, uh, live question for me than for lots of fandom folks, because I'm older than many. But even though there's no compelling reason to think I won't be around on the planet for another forty years or so--still, I could get hit by the proverbial bus while walking to campus today. I could fall in the bathtub, or take a heart attack in my sleep. In a sense, I'm luckier than some slash folks; I have friends locally who know both my on-line and RL personae, and whom I could trust to get the word out to relevant lists, so that people would at least know what happened. I worry sometimes, though, when people abruptly disappear from on-line life, as, for example, Hth did this past summer. I've been assured that she's fine and plans to put her fiction back up at some point. But what about people more isolated than I, or those who've had to keep their various identities more rigorously segregated? How would we ever know--would we ever know--if something happened to them? And what about the websites, anyway? Would I want all my stuff taken down, after a period of time? Would I want it to just sit there, until the tides of change on the Internet wash it away? Thinking about all this, I paused in writing this entry, and typed up a little Word document, addressed to my brother and stashed on my computer's desktop, the "In Case of Emergency" doc I should have done a while ago. ("Cremation, not burial; let P. choose the music for the service, if there is one; send an e-mail notification to these addresses and ask them to spread the word; write to X, at address Y, and tell her to leave the site up for six months and then pull it down; and -- uh, in my closet you'll find a box with all these comb-bound books with pictures of guys on the covers; ask C. to come pick them up, and for godsake do not read them. Oh, and ditto with that folder on my hard drive labelled 'WIP.' Just drag that one into the trash and flush it.") You know, what's hardest to think about is the last one, tossing out the unfinished stuff. Damn it, there's good stuff in there! Stuff I want people to read! That just needs a little more work! Don't take me yet, lord, I am not finished with the connecty bits! Heh, I crack myself up. But that's actually not a bad thing to think about, from time to time--what it would really piss you off to leave hanging, if death took you at this moment. Work yet to be done, things you still need to say to people. The turning of the year's a fine time to contemplate all this, and then act accordingly.
Tuesday 25 December 2001
3:30, and I think I've got everything ready. P. is coming over tonight at 7:30, and I've got all his presents wrapped. (I underwent my usual "oh god I didn't get him enough stuff" panic, and reasoned myself out of it.) I've got the house as clean as it's going to get. Dinner will be simple--tenderloins with cognac sauce, wild rice with toasted pistachios and dried cranberries, green beans almondine, salad--and I've got all ingredients in place. The tree has not fallen over. The cat seems to have returned to her usual state of querulous semi-health. I have Anonymous 4 on the stereo, "On Yoolis Night," and I bought some new candles. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. I make some effort to make Christmas good for P. Partly because I still recall with shame the year that I got absorbed in writing something Christmas Day, lost track of time, forgot to put the duck in the oven when I should have, and when he got here it was only half-cooked and the house was a mess and I was frantically wrapping stuff. But also because Christmas is not a good time for him; his mother died, very unexpectedly, on Christmas Eve, about six years ago. It was horrible -- he arrived at the door, arms full of gifts, to be greeted by his sobbing family. He's not a guy to Talk About Feelings, but I know it matters to him to try to keep some positive rituals of the season in place. E.g., last year, for the first time in my life, I didn't put up a Christmas tree (I was frazzled, it was hellishly cold, etc. etc.), and he didn't say anything at the time, but this year soon after Thanksgiving I started getting elliptical little e-mails about various tree lots he'd seen that had really nice-looking specimens, and how he was ready to lend a hand with hauling/putting up, etc. (That was sweet of him, but unnecessary -- I am She-Ra, Woman Who Hauls Her Own Trees.) Anyway, I took the hint, and I think he was delighted by the tree, and I'm glad I made the effort. P. is, on the whole, very low-maintenance, but he cares a lot about those things he does care about. Apart from cleaning and wrapping, I've spent the day hacking at the long story, which, after a dormant period, has come roaring back to life, much to my relief. I read over the whole thing last night, for the first time in a long time, and am surprised by how much I like most of it. Surprised, because I seldom am pleased by my own writing, certainly not while it's in progress. I don't think I'll make my goal of completion by Escapade, but at least it's out of the mire and inching forward.
Monday 24 December 2001
Christmas Eve, and I'm sitting at home alone. In my head, Fraser is huddled in a tent on the ice fields, in the darkness, telling Ray the grievous story of the fate of the Franklin expedition. I'm listening, typing slowly and intently, eating apple cobbler and sipping brandy. My cat is snoring in her bed; across the room, my Christmas tree is aglow. When I step outside for a smoke, the world is very cold, and very still. It's a good and peaceful night. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and for everyone reading this, may all your explorations in the coming year bring you somewhere wonderful, and safely home again.
Earlier on Monday Ahem. Well, after a hiatus due to various uninteresting circumstances, I'm back. Had about a dozen entries written in my head over the past few weeks, but the effort of heaving things out of my head and into actual typed words has been daunting lately. Anyway. OK, so one of the great joys of living in God's Own Bracing Tundra is the sudden weather swerve, when it starts raining heavily, then the rain changes to snow, then the temperature drops like a rock, and you go out on Christmas Eve to race around like a rabid gerbil and do all the frenzied shopping you should have done in a leisurely manner back when it was warm and uncrowded, but no, that would be too easy, and you find your car has frozen shut. Solid as a block of ice. Fortunately, I was able to get the trunk open, so I clambered in, pushed the back seat down, wormed my way into the front seat (in my big bulky winter coat), and managed to kick the driver's side door open from the inside. Then I came indoors and spent some time sobbing with pain as my fingers thawed out, the ones that got frostbitten years ago. I don't know. I love it here in many ways, but I'm starting to have these vague treacherous thoughts about how much easier life would be in a milder climate. Thinking about checking the Chronicle of Higher Ed for job openings in, say, Portland, or Seattle. I used to be terribly snotty about people who fled the Upper Midwest in their old age and retired to Florida. Wussies, I'd snort, with the self-righteousness of the young. Warning: be careful what you scorn, for it shall indeeed come back to bite you in the butt. The sobbing fit was partly about finger-pain, and partly because the cat's slow kidney crap-out seems to be accelerating a bit. (I sat her down and told her sternly that if she timed this so that I had to have her put down right at Christmas, I'd be very pissed off, and today she seems to be a bit better. I hope she can hold out in decent health a little longer; she truly hates going to the vet even in the best of circumstances, and being hauled around in 5-above-zero weather does not constitute the best of circumstances.) And partly it was my usual I-am-not-doing-Christmas-right meltdown. I did at least manage to get the grocery-shopping done before Lund's turned into the traditional Christmas-Eve madhouse. Still must buy one pair men's black suede gloves; coffee beans; box set of season 2 Sopranos; wrapping paper; cards; bottle of Grand Marnier; gift book for boss. Aaaiieee. At least I can get into my car now, though the passenger-side door still refuses to budge, and at least it starts. Small blessings. Coping, coping. (p.s. to Anna--love the new design!)(Also dig the Spike-fantasy. Heh.) |
 |
 Contact me the usual suspects
Anna
other sites I read
a fire inside Photo Sites
common threads 
 |