Here am I. Not-quite-finished tinkering with one novel, leaping off into a sequel (and not even the sequel I'd planned ages ago; this one I only thought of last week.)

Quiting the temp job I've been at for the last six months, because it's mind-numbingly boring, because I've finally realized that the conditions there have been destroying my distance vision, because I can.

Dreaming ficklely of corset boning, penny whistles, trips to far and exciting places, white eyeliner and mascara, lasagne, poofy-velvet cloche hats, gooey expensive cheese, cookie dough ice cream, a stereo that doesn't eat my tapes...

Writing for Violivia on a Saturday night, because I have nothing better to do. And because Virtue is out having dinner with some guy she vaguely knew in high school, who she doesn't really think she wants to spend much time with because she's afraid he wants to date her...

And I want to spend lots of time asleep. Only when I sleep I start to dream-- strange, disturbing things: a neurotic teacher at a young ladies seminary mixes a coctail which explodes when she throws it across the room, and she runs away into the sewers under the cellar, crawling in the darkness with hands and feet bleeding from the rough walls and floors... from a too-busy friend I pick up the assignment to ghostwrite the next Harry Potter book, only we have only the instructions of "make it good" with no plot sketch or anything, and I wonder why I'm not writing my own book... we're in a drug store looking at a rack of shiny super-streach valentine's day underwear, while Virtue is comparison-shopping for condoms... Virtue went off to grad school at Harvard and was assigned a roommate by a psychological brain scan, while I came back home and found the apartment had changed ownership and the sketchy landlady was going through all our stuff because it was on her property... I'm one of the chaperones for a first grade field trip going through dangerous underwater caves in a leaky wooden proto-submarine, and they've just learned one of their classmates died last week...

And it's not that I mind dreaming any of this, while I'm dreaming it. But I wake up, and I start to think about the dreams and turn them into narratives, because my conscious mind thinks in narrative line, and lots of them disturb me while I'm awake. I'm not used to remembering so many of my dreams. I like to think I sleep more soundly, that I shouldn't be able to remember several dreams from a single night.

I'd like to be less tired.

Instead, I'm obsessively planning mix tapes, corset designs, potential albums for the band we'll never manage to form, and my new novel. It's an exercise in literary and folkloric parody. For those few of you to whom it means anything, the set-up is that Argent dies unexpectedly, and Scheherazade puts their litter in foster-care and goes to get him back from the underworld. (All these characters are mice, by the way) Thus we have various story-lines: Sherry's journey to the underworld, and Argent's journey through it-- or rather, them: as she is a philospher and folklorist, and he's a classiscist and literary scholar, between them they've got an awful lot of afterlives to choose from-- and meanwhile their childern grow up in Grandmother Death's care, and seek their fortunes in the wide world of folklore. And anybody who has suggestions of literary or philosophical afterlives, let me know. Dante, Homer/Orpheus, Inanna, Neil Gaiman's emptied Hell from Sandman... my list is small but growing.

"When I was young, I used to have this nightmare about dying. I used to lie awake at night screaming. All my schoolfriends went to heaven or hell, and I was sent to Southend." --Arthur Dent

But the thing is, I've only written two thirds of a chapter. And I only thought of the idea last Monday, just when I had about reached the point of working on an actual re-write of my first novel. Which has now mostly been put on hold yet again. And something tells me there's a reason for this, because I'm supposed to be working on the endnotes that I've been looking forward to ever since I realized that what I was writing would one day be a novel. And the editing process, which means mostly playing with what I've written before, and trying to squeeze in those last few good ideas I thought of after I finished. And I know the part I'm trying not to think about is what in the world I'm going to do with the thing when I've finally decided it's done. I live in fear of cover letters, of finding a literary agent, of dealing with the publishing industry, of publishing a book nobody will ever notice, of being successful and developing a cult following. Most of it is stuff of the future, and once the first steps have been taken, I won't be able to stop the inevitable, whatever that may turn out to be. But finished is a scary thing, because then I'll have to move on.

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but two of this month's teen magazines, and the last issue of the Philadelphia Weekly, have cover shots of some new pop singer chic named Pink. I picked up Teen in the grocery store line this afternoon and scanned the article; aparently she's almost my age, about nine months younger. She was concieved about the time I was being born. And she's from Doylestown, twenty minutes down the road. Half her fashion sense seems to be yelling at people (hot pink ripped fishnet sleeves, obviously stained and dirty stuff) and the other half is stuff I'd wear. And the reason I mention this is I looked at her pictures and thought she was about seventeen. Am I growing old, here in my seclusion? Or is it just that everyone around me (except Virtue, of course) seems to be so much older, and I'm forgetting what my agemates look like?

I was out at Oberlin a few weekends ago, visiting for a fencing tournament. I got to meet all the underclassmen who've joined the club since I left, and learned that aparently they've all been told that I know everything. I am a legend in my own lifetime: Oh yes, Thanate was before your time; she fixed all our weapons, even when they broke in the middle of a tournament. She knows all about fencing equipment; she can do anything. I guess I'll admit to some of that; I was a pretty good armorer, especially compared to the one before me, but I'm a little uncomfortable being deified, especially as it puts me alongside people who, though my friends, were part of the mythology before I was even part of the club.

But I try not to worry about it. This is me, contemplating my banana-yellow fingernail polish, a gift from my aunt some years back that I finally decided to use because I had it. It's pretty disturbing. And this is me, at ten forty on a Saturday night, finishing the article, and trying to decide if I'm too cold to go get myself a bowl of ice cream. Maybe if I put on another sweater.

There is no trial run. This is your life. Make the most of it.

...or so says Thanate.