Random Thoughts on Oblivion; and Other Such Cheery Topics

[Anita Blake]

i've been re-reading WoT, starting at Winter's Heart. This was prompted by buying the new book, reading the blurb, and coming to the realization that I have no idea what is going on anymore in the story. I even read a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the last book and was all "who?" "what?" "huh?!". So, re-read I must. I'm enjoying so-far. I forgot a lot. I forgot when the books started to lose all semblance of holding onto a plot, so it'll be all exciting and new when I get to that part again. I think I might be in it, but I'm not sure.

Other than that, my job is driving me insane again. I have a new boss, technically, but my supervisor is the same guy, doing more work, and freaking out. I haven't been paid in way too long. Apparently, it's not good for business when you're biggest client has a history of not paying. Oh yeah. Lovin' it.

I look around, and I think "i want to retire". I just want a nice little plot of land far from the city, somewhere where I can come grocery shopping once a month or something, get the essentials, and head back to my mountain/prairie/forest retreat. I don't care where. I want the stars at night. I want fresh wind in my hair. I want the smell of grass, and the hooting of owls, and the howling of coyotes and wolves. I want deer in my yard being a pest and eating my trees and flowers. I want trees and flowers. Heck, I'd probably settle for a yard. But no. No, stupid me, I had to pick the kind of job that requires me to be in the city.

Don't get me wrong, I like living in the city. I like my downtown neighborhood. I don't want to live in the suburbs. If I have to be urban, urban me all the way, but ... I'd love to be rural again. The grass is always greener.... in the country.

[Anita Blake]

In isolation, peace.

In loneliness, desire.

There is a sensation of craving, of wanting that which cannot ever be, that which will never be. A moment strung out to last an eternity. A taste, a scent, a sensation brushing across the lips. A picture-perfect movie moment, stolen, inserted to a dream, grasped upon by the subconscious, and thrust headlong into consciousness.

In my dream, there is a smile, a rare and beautiful smile, and I know unequivocally that I am the reason, that I am the genesis of this beauty. There is a moment, a glance, a room full of laughter and joy, and I am keenly, painfully aware, that this will be a happy moment that will never come again. This sense of kinship, of familial love with these people - I know it to be one of the happiest events of my life, and I know that it is wretchedly brief, caught in a temporal wind that will blow it steadily away from me. And as I realize this, the joy becomes a shallow thing, the laughter rings hollow in my ears as we all become aware of it's painful fragility.

And then there is the man. His love is also a fragile thing, I know in my dream-state mind. His love is dependent upon so many factors, and though I am sure of it now, I am also sure that nothing is forever, even though in my dream, it's apparent that it can be. Some lurking, dark part of my consciousness knows that it is a dream, a cruel parody of desires and a bizarre combination of mundane events, books read, and movies watched. It's that darkness, that wickedly cold knowledge that keeps the moment from being utterly, fantastically perfect.

But the darkness grows, consuming the scene before me, eating it up, swallowing it whole, so that no matter how hard the light tries to hold the moment, no matter how desperately I want it to remain a reality, how intently I want to immerse myself in that moment forever, replaying it over, and over, and over again, the darkness grows, all-consuming, it fades to the dull reddish-grey of the inside of my eyelids, and the moment is lost, no matter how I try to convince myself to fall back asleep, no matter how I try to tell myself I'm back in the dream, not just fantasizing about where it would have gone, I still know the truth.

I still remember the intensity of those eyes, the salt of his skin, the depths to which I would have gone to possess him, capturing him with my blood, capturing him with my body, as he had already captured me with his mind. Love never entered into the equation, for we were both too far gone for that, for romance in the traditional sense. No. What we would have had, what we could have had would have been something darker than love, deeper than desire, more binding than marriage.

The dream is gone now, only a fading memory of lives that never were, of desire that was never real. The dream was a wish, a wish for the impossible, a sobbing subconscious rail against reality. For though reality can be sweet, and such precious moments have existed, moments that should have been forever, times that were much too painfully brief - nothing can ever match the intensity of the dream.

[Anita Blake]

If you turn your back on something, and keep walking, you come to point where you can no longer see that which you turned away from. It passes into history, into dream, into myth; a faint memory that whispers an echoing sigh of recrimination: "Why did you leave me?"

And I'm so sorry my love, my one and only true love, because I have failed you, I have kept walking and tried to forget you and tried to ignore your insistent sigh. I ran in fear, in loathing, in a hatred borne of the deepest of loves. We fought, and I thought I could just give you the silent treatment until you gave in and did my bidding.

I suppose I underestimated you. I suppose I thought this was a war I could win by denying you.

And gods, how I was wrong.

I miss you more than anything. I lie awake, wishing you were there, filling me with your fantasies, shaping me, and making me see the hidden truths. I want you to fill me up, so that I can spit you out, birth you and make you real, and give you to the world.

So my sweet words, my darling imagination, I am turning around, coming back to see if you are still there. Do you live yet, or did you sit down and die without me? Can we end this long feud? I used you poorly, and blamed you for my own inadequacies. I thought it was your nature, your fault that I could not express my thoughts properly. I blamed you, words, for my inability to concisely get across my point. We are both flawed creatures, I a human, you a tool of communication. But yes, you are a tool, and even an occasionally lousy tool can bne used to good effect. It's a lousy carpenter who blames his tools, as they say.

Of course, that was always my problem with you. So easy to jump to the cliched sayings, and re-use phrases that other, wiser people have made before me. You're a whore, my sweet words, I know that now. You'll let anyone have a go with you. You never loved me, but I loved you, I still do. I was afraid of your inconstancy, afraid of your dallying ways. How could I love such a common whore as you? It shamed me, and I grieved over our parting many times, but could not reconcile the simple fact that I need you. I love you and I need you. You were the best part of my life, and my life has been hollow and empty without you.

So go, my love, be a whore. Let others use you as I would use you. Let others love you as I have loved you, but please, please come back to me, stay with me a while. I will grovel before you if that's what you want. I will give you the key to my heart, the key to my soul, if only you'll promise to use it to spend the night now and then.

Help me to be a writer again.

[Anita Blake]

Ah, despair. The time is there, seems like there's nothing but time. The will is there - I want to write this tale of woe, but sadly, the words have all flown out of my head. I don't know who he is, and that's a bit of a problem since there are few other characters in this sorry excuse for a story. I think of his nemesis, and I can't even get a real grasp on who he is, either. Perhaps I know who they are, the problem is just that I don't like them very much. I think the main character is a selfish, foolish idiot, really, too blind to see the things around him. I know the story of his life, I know the choices he makes and even a little of why, but at the end of the day, I just don't really like him. As for his nemesis, well, him I understand better. I get where he's coming from, and he's not so short-sighted as his poor friend. He sees the world around him, he understands how things work, but in his case, he just doesn't really care so much.

So these two very apathetic characters, genius, motivated, hard-working, utterly devoted to their chosen tasks - they lack a soul, they lack a flame of life and they lack heart. There is something so very fundamental missing about them that I can't go one writing their tale, even though I know what has to happen, and I know that it needs to happen soon. I know everything about the events in their lives, but nothing of who they really are. And I feel that this lack shows. I feel that my loathing of their basic selves begins to show. In some ways, I want to punish them, well, the hero, anyway, I want to punish him so much for the things that I will make him do, the things he has little choice in. I want to create for him a deep suffering, a soul-crushing annihilation, and then I think, well, that's not really fair, he's never really done anything. He's not even real, in fact, you made him up, you silly girl.


And if I think about it too much, I begin to wonder if this is what God does, sit around, drinking, pondering, finding new ways to punish the people he created that he never even took the time to know, let alone understand. Ways to exalt others for reasons even he doesn't totally understand. Not the first time I've thought as an author as God, sitting back and deciding the fates of worlds only freshly brought into existence. Killing with impunity, fixing and breaking lives with equal ease and lack of distress. And so we are all Gods, if we take the time to try to be, reigning over an unruly imagination with a fickle fist, changing the rules as we go along, never letting our tiny subjects in on the new gameplan.

Oh, sure, I can wax eloquent (or not) about such lofty abstracts as Gods and Writers, but when it comes down to sitting down to consciously write something, to finish what I've started, then a dastardly case of writer's block settles in for the long haul. Decisions like how any adjectives to use, and how clearly to physically describe characters and locations - should it all be spelled out? Or left to people's imaginations? Does it even really matter? These are the killers. If I think myself too clever, I start thinking that these are the important factors in my tale, and overthink things to death. My best work was never so planned, so concise. But then, my best work was never really much better than alright, so perhaps I should keep that in mind.

This is not a fight I can let the words win. I must rule them, control them, and let them live here. I can't just get frustrated with them again and walk away for another 7 years.