WE SHALL SEE, WE SHALL SEE, BILLY BISHOP

Managed to acquire the video shown here recently. WWI fascinates me, the air war included, so I could not turn this down. But I fear it shall be but an exercise in military hagiography. Stay posted. We shall see, Billy Bishop, we shall see . . .

FROM ROXY'S ZONTAR FILES . . .

Yes, I have a thing for women in distress--especially proud, powerful, confident women (or phallogynes) who find themselves unexpectedly in a vulnerable and embarrassing position. So from time to time I draw cartoons along those lines even though I am much better at writing than I am at drawing.

You will excuse, I hope, the crudity of my efforts. How I would love to find more graphic artists who share my kinks! I did once or twice have the pleasure of working with a graphic artist in the production of a graphic story and would love to do so again some time.

Meanwhile, our two tinplated lovelies from planet Zontar are in a dreadful predicament. Whose fault is it, I wonder, that the special wrench was lost? How will they endure the humiliation of having to be rescued with a common CAN OPENER, of all things?

A POEM BY THOMAS MERTON

THE WOODCARVER

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:
"What is your secret?"

Khing replied: "I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
On trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting,
I had forgotten gain and success.
After five days
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

"By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell stand.

"Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
And begin.

"If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

"What happened?
My own collected thought
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits."

Thomas Merton (from The Way of Chuang Tzu)

CHRIS HEDGES ON FUNDAMENTALISTS' APPROACH TO CONVERSION

"Conversion is supposed to banish the deepest dreads, fears and anxieties of human existence, including the fear of death. This is the central message we are told to impart to potential believers. But along with this message comes a disorienting mixture of love and fear, of promises of a warm embrace by a kind and gentle God that yearns to direct and guide the life of the convert toward success, wealth and happiness, and also of an angry, wrathful God who must punish nonbelievers, those who are not saved, tossing them into outer darkness and eternal suffering. The message swings the faces of this Janus-like God back and forth, one terrifying and one loving, in dizzying confusion. The emotions of love and fear pulsate through the message. God will love and protect those who come to Him. God will torment and reject those who do not come to Him. It becomes a bewildering mantra."

(from pages 52-53 of American Fascists)

Hedges has it right on. Good God/Bad God. A familiar tactic practised by propagandistic versions of Christianity, whose purpose ultimately is to alienate us from God. The very suggestion that God might love us now and forever, unconditionally, is rejected with contempt, that unmistakable curl of the lip that proudly cannot endure salvation if everyone is going to receive it. Surely somebody must be damned in the cosmological economy of spiritual Darwinism, or how can salvation be worth anything?!

BEST LESBIAN EROTICA 2008 READING IN NEW YORK

Okay, I told you I was bad at publicity. This should have been posted ages ago! But anyway, here it is:

Excerpts were read recently (March) from the BEST LESBIAN EROTICA 2008 anthology at Bluestockings Books in NYC. My story, "The Ant Queen," is in that anthology, but I was unable to attend to read with some of the other authors in the book. However, editor Tristan Taormino did read my story and I have heard it went over very well.

Thank you, Tristan!

OH FUCK! I HAVEN'T BEEN POSTING

I know you're supposed to keep a blog up (they say) by posting fairly frequently, and it has been some time since my last post. To tell you the truth, I just get distracted and busy and don't always have something to say. Or I do have something to say and the computer isn't handy.

One of the things I really hate about the writing world in general: a merely competent writer (of fiction, what have you) who is very good at networking will go further than a much better writer who simply doesn't have the time to be jabbering to the world about her latest publication.

I have a talent for writing, but not much talent or patience with publicity and self-promotion.
So. Fuck me.