Become Something Else

Hey, everyone. It’s been quiet over here for a little while. I sometimes forget that I haven’t posted any blogs because I am forever putting things up on antenna.works thanks to the new job. Now I’m going to say a little about what I’ve got going on.

Poetry continues to move me, and I’m writing more than ever. Now I just need to make sure I’m regularly producing fiction, as well. No worries, though: I have two new stories coming out next month. One is Noir, and the other is an Urban Fantasy piece. Both of those stories are dear to my heart, but the birthing of the Fantasy piece was a long, hard process. It was one of those stories that you edit over and over knowing that while it has good bones, it’s just not quite able to stand up and walk. I showed the piece to the great Jon Padgett at a workshop a LONG time ago when I was already frustrated with it, and his response spurred me to keep tinkering. Finally, I reached the end of my rope and decided that I was going to submit my new version one last time, to Strange Horizons—a publication I’d been trying to crack off and on for, oh… fifteen years or more? It sold early this year, and not even Covid can stop it coming out.

The Noir piece is a little different. I never came close to losing faith in it, and the writing went fairly smoothly. The only thing that tripped it up was how few markets there are these days for short crime fiction. By the time I wrote it, The Big Click was sadly already gone, but it finally found a home in The Peauxdunque Review, and I’m excited to see it in Issue #3 when it comes out. If you don’t know Peauxdunque, do yourself a favor and check it out. The material they publish is top notch, but every issue of the journal is a beautiful slim hardcover volume that is worth every penny. Check them out here.

Awhile back, when I was still quarantining on my own, a friend dropped me off a baggy of yeast in a furtive little transaction reminiscent of a drug deal. At the time, yeast was even harder to find than it is now—although my sister in Maryland tells me she and my parents are still having a terribly time finding it. I thought I’d start baking right away, but then I realized I didn’t want to be at home alone with a belly or a freezer full of homemade bread. I figured I’d get to baking once my roommate returned home from Detroit, but by then I had the new editing job at Rm. 220, and combined with my teaching duties, it was all I could do to stay almost-sane, feed myself, and keep up with my work—even when news of the outside world wasn’t making me want to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me.

Speaking of the news: George Floyd’s death was truly dispiriting, but the reaction to it gives me a bit of hope for us since the first time since the Covid Crisis began. The outrage of seeing yet another person who didn’t deserve it brutally snuffed by police who could reasonably expect they were acting with impunity mixed with unprecedented unemployment, the knowledge that our government would do absolutely nothing to make things right, and the knowledge that more than a hundred thousand deaths in this public health crisis to set off a wave of mass protests and uprisings around the world. Seeing the massive protest in Berlin reminded me that people really can care about matters that don’t directly involve them. Seeing the Minneapolis City Council pledge to disband the city police made me think something might actually get done. Hearing that protesters in Seattle established an autonomous zone and took City Hall, demanding their mayor resign—well, the disillusioned old Greener in me was both surprised and pleased.

I never lost hope for my own life or the people inside my circle. I’ve been fantastically fortunate through all this. To have a job, let alone two jobs I love, to be writing and sharing any work—let alone poetry, which I had abandoned for so long—even the Covid Crisis didn’t seem to be slowing things down for me—but I don’t live in a vacuum, even if it did feel otherwise sometimes as I hunkered in my two-bedroom apartment hoping the turmoil wouldn’t break down my walls to sweep me away.

I’m still worried. There’s darkness all around. In many ways, it still feels like the world is trying to shake itself apart. Those 100,000+ deaths are at best half of what we’re going to see in America before this crisis is over. We’re still in pain, and this country, maybe the world, will be changed forever in the wake of all this. For the first time since the quarantine began, though, I’m beginning to think that humanity might actually be able to pull together just enough to change things for the better. We’ll see.

I’m too old and too physically vulnerable to fight in the streets. My rage has cooled without abating and now it feels stony, implacable, and ancient. I see things like the current administration’s assaults on queer and trans rights, the president threatening to use the military against the American people, claims that Floyd’s death, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and so many others are the costs of prosperity, and I worry that humanity will just stumble off a cliff because its head is on backwards…

…But—BUT—! Then I think of people like my sister, Lisa, whose birthday is today. I think of the role she has played in my life, and in the lives of countless students. I look at a darkness lit by flashes, and I imagine the flashes settling into pinprick embers, like starlight, and those lights growing in fits and starts, and I wonder if maybe this darkness will become something else.