Year: 2012

As you have probably heard, we lost speculative fiction giant Ray Bradbury last week. You can read tons of very nice, touching thoughts on what he did for science fiction around the internet. Of all the giants, he was the one who I felt I knew the best. Not because I read more of his stuff than anyone else. Not because a story of his touched me deeper than anyone else’s (though All Summer in a Day tends to make me cry). You see, I am Ray Bradbury’s bastard child. And so are you.  

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Last weekend, a man walked into a crowded food court here in Toronto and pulled out a gun. He had a target, who was killed. Six others were hurt, many others traumatized. Here’s the part that makes it really scary for me. I go to that mall, Eaton Centre, at least once a month. I’ve eaten in that very food court many times. It’s not going to look the same to me anymore. I don’t know about you, but when I hear about violence in my city, I rationalize.  That was a gang killing, or a bad area of town, or an argument at 3 AM outside a club. I know better than that. It wouldn’t happen to me. Except…it could.

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I had a friend who used to insist that she didn’t write her stories–they came to her from somewhere else, and she just wrote them down. She had to figure out the best way, of course, and sometimes she couldn’t catch what she was told (or worse, the stories maybe weren’t trying to get to her) but she didn’t believe she wrote her stories. I…could go both ways on that, pretty much at the same time. I write my books. I work hard at them. My characters, though–often they do seem to come from somewhere else. It’s always been that way, even when I’ve been scolded for being “fanciful” (and once lectured for not “taking responsibility” for the quality of my story!) Eighteen years ago I finished my first novel’s first draft. My character Ben was pretty much set from then on–but it’s only in the last few years, in my attempts to deepen the backgrounds of everyone, that I’ve realized Ben is Hindu. I’m researching that now, and it’s amazing how well this ancient religion explains the way Ben has always been. A friend told me I just knew subconsciously back then that he was Hindu and deliberately wrote him that way, but how could that be when I knew NOTHING of Hindu religion then?

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I’m a bit late with this blog, and I have a really good reason: my beloved younger sister, who I’ll call J, nearly died in a car accident this past Tuesday. It was not her fault.  In fact, it was a freak thing.  But if you’d seen her car, you’d wonder how she made it out alive.  The entire driver’s side was crushed.  It had flipped over.  She’d been trapped inside and had to be cut out. All that’s wrong with her is some cuts and bruises.  No broken bones, no serious injuries. Honestly?  It was a friggin miracle and I am so, so happy.

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Sunday, I hosted a barbeque at my house. We had probably forty or so people wander through at various points in the day, and, as far as I know, a good time was had by all. Fast forward to Monday morning. I go into the office to start my work for the week, and discover a tiny wizard on my desk. I have no idea where he came from.

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There’s an advertisement on the subway that I’ve been half-noticing for years. It’s a woman in a backyard holding a piñata. In front of her is a blindfolded little girl taking a swing with a baseball bat as the woman cringes away. The caption? “You really need a tree in your backyard.” For years I’ve been staring at it and thinking, “That’s a dumb ad.” Okay, I thought it was clever at first, but it’s been around for quite some time now, and I’m tired of looking at it. Fast-forward to now. I’m buying a house – a house with no trees on the property. Suddenly the advertisement comes into focus again. I remember the web address for long enough to look it up. It doesn’t seem so dumb anymore.  

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Back when I was in college studying fine art photography, my teacher, Linda, impressed upon me some important concepts.  As the art scene was new to me, I was eager to learn anything and everything I could.  I loved that class.  To this day, I still use what I learned there in my photography…and in life. Linda used to tell us to find a concept and “push it.”  That is, push it to the limits of what’s expected, what’s comfortable.  Go further.  And keep on going. This stuck with me, and I was intrigued by the idea of self-portraiture.  Not because I was vain, but because with each new shoot, I learned something new about myself, about art, about the world around me.  I was pretty well-known for my self-portraits by the time I’d finished college and regretfully had to get out into the world again.

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So, a few months ago I gave in and let my husband get a dog. I am not a dog person, but Riley’s not too bad. He’s friendly, incredibly cute, and when he’s not eating the cat’s food or questionable things in the backyard, he’s decent company. All that has changed recently. You see, he has discovered the joys of squeaky toys.

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This weekend I had a glimpse into a different world: the Old Book & Paper Show. Imagine an indoor market, four long rows of tables laden with vintage paper products of all kinds. Advertisements, magazines, maps, trading cards, postcards, comic books, WWII propaganda posters, concert programs – ephemera, they’re called, the sort of thing that most people would throw away, that might gain value after years. (The nightmare of a person already prone to keeping clutter, or perhaps more accurately the nightmare of the person who shares a home with her…)  

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I’ve used the webmail of a certain very large website as my primary email for years. Recently I lost patience at last with my glitchy inbox, and switched to another email address as my primary. Let me tell you, it’s been rough. How was I to know I had so many things linked to that one address? I’d done the linking one thing at a time, over the last eight years or so. My social networking sites, my forums, my send-me-a-recipe-a-day-that-I’ll-never-make memberships. Even my 750words.com account–and I can’t change that. I’d have to make a new account, and lose my Albatross badge earned by writing 750 words every single day for going on a hundred days in a row. (Soon I’ll have the phoenix again!) It has been rough, but it’s also been a good thing. I can’t believe how much garbage I was signed up for.

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