So after two weeks or so of work, I'm *finally* out of this one page of "Falling." Ack! I don't know why certain sections of stories cause me so much trouble, whether it's a mood thing that won't let me be happy with any alternative until the feeling passes or whether I really just stumble in the original writing sometimes and end up with something fundamentally broken, or, worse yet, just uninspired and blah. I'd say it was mood, except that it's usually the bits of incidental character business that give me the worst trouble, and the more sweeping, dramatic bits that I whoosh right through during the editing, which would seem to argue for the latter. I'm fairly confident, for instance, that as soon as I get to the telepathic interlude in this chapter my pace will vastly improve. Of course, now I've probably just jinxed myself.

Aside from that creeping literary progress, today has in general been smoking the unuseful sort of crack. I thought work was going to be full of productive busyness; instead it was full of candycorn-inspired dementia and waiting around for everyone to be in the same place at the same time. I suspect that this is my brain (and everybody else's) already looking forward to Thanksgiving and the accompanying long weekend. Yay, long weekend! Herewith, my list of things I hope to get done during my four days off:

• Install OS X 10.1 on all my computers. (I had an earlier version on a side partition of my G4, which I intended to use to play with and get used to the new system, but I pretty much never bothered to boot into that partition, so that wasn't very educational. Since I've got the time over this weekend, I'm gonna take the full plunge and try making OS X my primary system. Wish me luck. ^^;;;)
• Start transfering my old records and tapes to CD with my new CD burner. (Assuming I can get OS X to work with it. If not, hey, that's what dual boot is for. [I said primary system, not only system. <:g>])
• Finish the "Falling" side story. (Hah! Well, I can dream.)
• The ubiquitous email, of course.
• C&Cs on various things that have been awaiting them.
• See Harry Potter (again) with a different friend.
• Actually watch some freakin' anime.

Bets will now be taken as to just how much of this I'll actually get done....

And in the really bad typo department:

"Swishirou"

*falls over and dies*

Dude, I'm weblogging! And eating fudge. At work. Don't you wish you were me? -_^ Well, actually, you don't, because I just got back from a lovely press inspection trip to find all sorts of hose-ups on the book that I thought had gone down to press just fine last week. Bleah. But since right now I'm waiting on the printer to call me with the specs we need, and I can't really make any progress until then, I feel fairly justified in taking a brief mental health break.

Posted some new X fic to my site last night and got a whole lot of bounces on the update mailing. I think at least in part it's because the old Dreamhost system used to just send bounced messages off into some null directory so I could remain blissfully ignorant, and the new one forwards them to me. So this is probably a year or two worth of people who've changed addresses, rather than fifty-some people vanishing between June and now. A lot of them seem to be Chinese addresses, too, especially 163.com and 263.com, which I've been having trouble sending mail to for a while. So if you're reading this and you've subscribed to my update ML and didn't get the October 25 update mailing, you've got address issues. ^^

But anyway, the X fics are up. One's kind of heavy, and one's not, but they're both influenced and inspired by the September 11 attacks. Basically I felt a need to grapple with various images and issues, and I also felt that it might be worthwhile to write something dealing with the human cost in X to people aside from the main characters. Because while lots of people die and are injured, and we hear about it from time to time, and Yuzuriha cries about it and all, somehow it seems that we never really *feel* that devastation--or at least, I never felt it that intensely. Besides, which--penguins, man. Penguins. ^_^

The two stories also broke all speed records for me--I wrote the long one in a single nine-hour session. I sat down to clear about a month's worth of the CFFML, thinking that I'd see if anyone else had written something along these lines, and if not, I'd give it a try, because I'd been turning the idea over for a couple of weeks at that point. I think I got about three posts into the backlog when some switch flipped over in my brain, I opened up the word processor, and just started to write. By midnight of that day, it was done, in essentially the form it exists in now. The shorter one only took me a couple of hours--the second time. The first time I wrote it, I had a brain fart while trying to save it and lost the whole thing when my laptop battery ran out. So I had to rewrite it from scratch. Oh, well. At least it was short. And in case anyone's wondering, the speed of both these stories is highly anomalous for me. So don't expect the next chapter of "Sakura" in a day, all right? ^^

And as for the December Asuka (what *is* it with December Asukas?), I haven't seen the scans or the manga yet, but hearing about it I have one thing to say: dammit, I wish I'd already finished my eye story, because then, you know, I could've seemed really clever. Not that I have Subaru drinking eyeballs or anything, but it's thematically somewhat related. (Actually, I have two things to say. The first is "Ewww." ^^) As Shanti just put it, with the Dragons of Heaven, Subaru's given a bunny. With the Dragons of Earth, he's given, well, something nasty. His choice should be clear, even leaving the whole Kamui issue out of it.

See, Kristin? You go away for a week and look what Subaru gets into. ^^

This is the sound of N-chan not being dead. It's all because of the penguins, darn it. But I promise to update Real Soon Now.

In case anyone's been wondering, I was very thud last week, and I'll be completely insane next week because the magazine is going to press. (And we have no cover yet. Augh!) So weblogging and email have fallen a bit by the wayside, as I'm sure you can imagine, and will continue to do so at least until next weekend.

A rainbow followed me home yesterday.

I was riding the train home from work, and somewhere just before Newark I looked up and saw a patch of rainbow floating on a cloud just to the left of the sun. It was an extraordinarily vivid rainbow, not just the usual red-yellow-blue, but the full seven colors. At first I thought it had to be some flaw in the window that was refracting the sun's light, but as the train went around the track's curves the rainbow moved to different places on the window, and I realized that it was real--that it really was out there in the sky. I kept expecting it to fade, but it stayed all the way to Orange, and then I caught another glimpse of it at Millburn. From there, I couldn't see it anymore--the train's direction changed, and we passed to the other side of the cloud. But I was listening to the radio, and a man called in to the station shortly after that to say that he was driving down some highway, and he had to tell someone about this: there were two rainbows, one on either side of the sun. (I hadn't been able to see the one on the right because of the angle of my window.) *Two* of them. And I really hoped that many people had been able to see that, because it was just such a beautiful symbol of hope and the promise of renewal. It might just have been from all the dust and smoke thrown up into the air, but even so...even so....

I must be feeling insanely optimistic at the moment, because while I was watching the rainbow I was also looking at all the clouds--you know, looking for pictures in them, the way children do--and all I could see was angels, sweeping low over the cities and towns, long draperies swirling around them and their hair and wings blowing out behind them as they reached trailing fingers down. And there was one immense phoenix: bill and curving neck and the swell of the breast, and then the great wings arching up on either side.

And while I'm sharing all these pieces of mad hope: there's a man who rides the same train as I do in the morning. Everyday for the past nine years I've sat in the seat behind him; he reads the newspaper, and I surreptitiously read the headlines over his shoulder, which is how I keep up with world events. On Monday, he wasn't on the train, and I had a really bad feeling--he looks like a business sort of guy, the kind who might work in the financial area. We've never exchanged a word, I don't even know what his name is, but the thought that he might have been one of those thousands who are among the missing, this ordinary man who sits in front of me, somehow brought the tragedy home once again, in a very personal way.

He was on the train this morning. I don't think I've ever been so glad to see somebody that I don't know.

On a final note (ha), I've had the following song stuck in my head for the last day or two. It's a traditional Northumbrian song, "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna"; my copy is on a tape by MotherTongue, part of the EarthSpirit Community in Massachusetts. I don't know the Gaelic, sorry, but this is the part that they sing in English:

Feel no rain--shelter each other.
Feel no cold--warm each other.
Now there is no more loneliness;
there is but one path before you.

Feel no need--nurture each other.
Feel no pain--heal each other.
Now there is no more loneliness;
there is but one path before you.

There is but one path before you.

I think it loses something without the tune, but even so maybe somebody else will find it helpful. Take care. ^_^

I'm home. I left Naina's early, wandered around the city trying to give blood but couldn't find any place that wasn't too overwhelmed to take me, and then caught a NJ Transit train out of Penn Station. I figure they'll be needing blood even more in the next few days, so I'll try again once the first rush has died down. I really appreciate the thoughts and concerns of everybody who's written to me. I think I've written back to most of you. It makes a huge difference to feel other people's good wishes and support.

I spent much of today doing laundry. Warm socks--very comforting. The city's still supposed to be in lock-down below 14th Street tomorrow, so I may not be in to work until Friday or the beginning of next week. I'm still a bit scattered, as anyone who's spoken to me can attest, but overall I'm doing pretty well. Thanks once again, and everyone, please take care of yourselves.

As I said, I was crossing 7th Avenue. I heard the sound of a plane, flying low, and I looked up and saw the first jet go by above and a little in front of me. I remember noticing the American Airlines logo on the tail and thinking, wow, that's really low to be going over the city. And I was watching it, and it curved in this long, smooth bank, coming around toward the tower, and I was just starting to think, wait a minute, that's not really going to--

And then it went straight into the building, precisely centered on its target. I saw the fireball go outward, the debris falling. And I was just standing in the middle of the crosswalk, saying out loud, did I just see that? Did that really just happen? I honestly thought I was imagining it. Or that it was, as so many other people have said, a movie. The sun was so bright, and the dive was so perfectly choreographed: no wavering at all, just striking dead on. I didn't know what else to do, so I just kept going toward my office. I couldn't stand to walk, so I'd run the length of a block, stop at the next street and stare down toward the WTC to make sure that the giant gaping black hole was really still there, and listen to the people standing on every corner to confirm that it was all real, that it wasn't just me. Even from Greenwich Village, you could see the glitter of what I assume were huge panes of glass falling from the building. I met Shanti around LaGuardia and Bleecker, and we went on to the office together. We heard the boom of the second plane hitting, but we didn't have a view of downtown at that point. We went on up to the office and spent the entire day listening to the radio. It was all just so unreal.

I'm at Naina's now. My email access is still sporadic, so if you've written to me and I haven't responded, I will as soon as possible. The PATH trains are supposedly running again, so tomorrow I'll try to go into the office briefly, then see if I can find somewhere to make a blood donation, and then go home. I really, really want to go home. My whole body aches, not from any physical injury, but purely from the day's stress. They're saying there's only four stories left to the towers, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to deal with looking at the skyline again, the next time I come in to work. The last time the WTC was bombed, I remember getting off the PATH at 9th Street, and when I got to 5th Avenue and could see the towers, I just started shaking. And that was...there's no comparision. They're gone. They're just gone. The wind occasionally brings the scent of smoke even up this far, and every time I hear what sounds like a plane going by overhead--military overflights, I assume--I duck and cower. I can only imagine what it must have been like for people who were actually down there, and I'm sure my imagining is a pale shadow of the truth. My prayers go out to all of them.

The one blessing for me is that my only friend who works downtown, Chris, played D&D late on Monday night, slept over at his friends' place, and got a late start. The police had already closed off the city below Canal Street before he got anywhere near the area. He turned up at our office around lunch time, part of the mass exodus walking up along Broadway--much to Shanti's and my relief, since we didn't have his phone number with us and didn't have any idea where he was.

My dread now is that we'll enter into an "eye-for-an-eye" situation--that we'll concentrate on retaliation to the exclusion of learning anything from this horror. The wisest thing I heard on the radio all day was one man who said that we should consider that there are reasons why parts of the rest of the world hates us enough to do this, and that we should look at ourselves as much as we look at them. Not to diminish the inhumanity of what they've done, of course, the barbarism and atrocious loss of life, but to find some middle way, in which we can counter their actions without becoming just like them. Or worse.

But then, I'm excessively idealistic. And very tired. And not most coherent. I think I'm going to go to bed.

Oh my god. Oh my god. I was crossing 7th Avenue, up around Bleecker Street, and I saw the first plane go right into the World Trade Center. I'm okay, though, other than a bit of post-traumatic shock.

I don't think I'll be able to get out of the city tonight (a co-worker has offered to let me stay with her), and I can't get onto my usual account from here, because the editorial modem line is down, so I can't check email for the forseeable future. (Just in case anyone is trying to reach me.)

Everybody who's in the affected areas, if you can read this, please take care of yourselves. <hugs>

So we've decided to call in an exterminator, because we flea-bombed the whole house and we've still got the little buggers. He won't be coming till next Friday, though. Until then, we'll have to make do with bug-spray and my patented hand-pick method:

1. Walk behind the couch in shorts.
2. Pick fleas off my bare legs.
3. Throw in toilet. (The fleas, not my legs.)
4. Repeat.

I swear, we're going to get rid of these fleas if I have to do it *One* *Flea* at a *Time.* :P

On less disgusting fronts, the writing's been going rather well. I finally got out of the page in "Falling" where I'd been bogged down for several days. (Taking a break to work on some fluff instead helped a lot. *meow* -_^) I'm still a long way from releasing anything, but behind the scenes progress *is* being made--slowly.

As for the issue of "soul bonds," I certainly have the voices in my head. (For me, one of the greatest pleasures of fanfic fandom is being able to talk to other people who understand exactly what that's like, rather than seeing it as something purely disturbing or bizarre. ^^) I've occasionally had a piece of chocolate or a slice of cake because "Seishirou wanted it" and it amused me to "give in" to him. (Besides, who turns down chocolate? -_^) I've let Hokuto "badger" me into wearing purple. But you won't see me attempting to building-hop any time soon, nor taking on the characteristics of a particular character. I have a hard enough time just "being" a character in cosplay situations. ^^ My mind and body belong to *me,* not to the voices, however noisy they may be. Characters belong on the character side of the reality spectrum, thank you very much, and I'll be over here writing fanfic. (As to whether the characters have their own reality on some archetypal, metaphysical level that we all tap into or are just various authors' brain-wiring talking to itself, I won't speculate.)

I think that what I object to, though, is the use of "soul bond" to refer to this phenomenon. To me, a soul bond implies something that's deeply life-affecting and permanent. One does not set a soul bond aside lightly and go on to something new. To do so would be to cheapen the concept. And as passionately as one might feel about a character or a fandom--passion does fade. A new obsession comes along, and we all fall in love with a new set of characters, shifting to them the attention and energy that used to go to the other ones. And even though the earlier characters may still be important, may still speak to us at times, that first brilliant clarity of perfect fusion and "knowing" will never return in quite the same way. And you know, that's all right. Life's like that. Relationships change, some growing deeper, others fading away. A soul bond, though, is something on a completely different level. I'm not sure that such a thing really exists--or that I'd want one. But I don't like flinging the phrase around at slight provocation.

Anyway, to me mere obsession or identification isn't a true bond--love is, and love takes time and a *lot* of work to develop. (Hatred is another kind of bond, being an obverse of love, but that's another subject.) If you can measure your fervent participation in a fandom in decades, I might possibly allow you a soul bond. ^^ But soul bonds are not something you collect, show off, and add to each time you see a new series with some cool evil magician or fragile bishounen that you especially like. And they're not the way to stake some kind of claim on a character, either. *That,* I think is the thing that bugs me the most about the whole DF crowd--the need for absolute ownership, for possession, and the feral savagery that often results when that ownership is crossed. I'm sorry, but you can't just pee on Duo and make him exclusively your property. (Nor would he want you to--ick.) He belongs first of all to the people that created him, and after that to everyone who finds him intriguing, insufferable, haunting, or just plain sexy. And if it hurts that he's not yours, only and forever yours, then perhaps you need to consider the difference between desire and love. Because if he was truly part of you, in the way that some people like to claim, it wouldn't matter how many other mikos or keepers he had. Pain is obsession clinging to its attachments; love knows to let go.

In any case, while I certainly wouldn't say that I'm soul-bonded, I'm not sure I'd call myself a soul-puppeteer either. ^^ I harbor the delusion that I work in something like partnership with the character-constructs in my head, as far as the fact that I generally try to write what feels right and true for them, and not just what I want to see happen. I don't think I could bring myself to make one character bash another in the head for my own entertainment, for instance. (Sticking them in corsets and feather boas, on the other hand, is something entirely different. Of course. ^^;;;) And the characters respond to being written about in various ways. The Please Save My Earth kids make fun of me whenever I make typos or poor word choices. Tamura-san, on the other hand, will bemusedly but very gently point out to me that although the simile I've had him use is interesting, it's not something he would ever have thought of. Seishirou likes to ramble on at great length, then sulks when I go back and edit him. Of all my characters, though, I think that Aya is the most in love with the actual process of being written--the layering and shaping of sentences, the sculptural quality of his thoughts put down on paper. (It has the unfortunate side effect of making "his" prose tend toward the same color as his eyes, but that's what revision is for. ^^) I don't know if my writing would be poorer without the "participation" of the characters--but I know I'd have a lot less fun doing it. And in the end, isn't that what it's all about?

Weiss smut. Good for what ails you. (Not that I've actually gotten to the smut yet, but hey. ^^)

My cat has fleas. Or rather, she *had* fleas, and then the vet put Frontline on her, which made all the fleas jump off her with gratifying speed, but it appears that we had more fleas in the house itself than we first realized, so now they're all back on her. And on us. I was hunting fleas in my sheets at midnight last night, which, let me tell you, is guaranteed to give you the psychosomatic creepy-crawlies. So I have to call the vet first thing tomorrow morning to find out if we can put more Frontline on her or if we should fleadip her, and whether he has any recommendations for a fleabomb or, since things are pretty bad, an exterminator. *Eugh.* We've never had an infestation like this before, and it's the worst feeling. (Our house is in general fanatically clean.) So Dad and I have been out of sorts all day today. (The moral of this story being, the family that itches together, bitches together. Or something like that. ^^)

At least I got a bit of writing done, even if it is pure fluff. And now I'm going to eat chocolate, write smut--or at least try to--and do my best to ignore the little invaders. <glares>

Wow--who knew it was so easy to get married these days!

Thea: Ooh, my first marriage proposal. I'll treasure it always. (I was sort of looking for something in "mystical bishounen" but hey! I'll definitely keep you in mind. ^^)

Kristin: And here I was afraid you'd be in traction after the last session. <eg>

Ahem....

So I got my class photo back from our reunion this spring...and they spelled our school's name wrong on the picture. No, I did *not* graduate from "Mount Holypoke College"--though considering my twin predilections for yaoi and religion, maybe I should have. ^^ (They got the date wrong, too, unless I'm going around under some delusion that this is really the year 2001. MHC should get their money back. Heck, *I* should get my money back. I paid for this thing. :P)

In other news, the editing of "Falling" has bogged down badly, to the point where this afternoon I just had to get out and fiddle with something else. So I tweaked bits of various things and sort of half-heartedly added a few sentences to one of my "probably never going to see the light of day" long Weiss stories. (If I was going to do Weiss, I most likely should've made an attempt at the latest OmixAya thing, but oh well. I didn't feel up to it. Too hot. No brain cell. ^^) And the current Weiss storyline that's playing out in my head has arrived at the second generation, and so is on serious crack, as usual. Things can get weird enough when I'm just dealing with the guys themselves, but as soon as their progeny enter the picture, look out. (And before you PH34R, no, there is no male pregnancy in this. The only one who gets pregnant is Aya-chan, who does so as nature intended, thank you very much. ^^) And while I would like to do something someday with Youji developing out-of-control psychic powers, it's *not* going to happen like this.

And I would add my two cents to the whole voices discussion, but it's late, I'm hot, and I need to take a bath and go to bed. Bleargh.