sysrae

I now blog exclusively at http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com

Also, my first novel, Solace & Grief, is due for release by Ford Street Publishing in March 2010. If you like urban fantasy, check it out!

Originally posted here, learned of here, derived from here.

Nine Things About Oracles

first, there is blindness. like the white moon

in her witching sky, this oracle is prone to concealment.

lidless, pearls

 

scale on her milk-eyes, iridescent, each blink

sharp as an oyster shell.

 

secondly,

 

note her childish hands, slimwristed, fair,

ravelling the unseen silk. third is her voice,

keening like a lost hawk,

 

wild as a rose-wind. fourth, fifth, sixth:

count the nubs of her curving spine, warped

under salt. a sulphurous ocean

blooms in her, firebright anemones cling

 

to the tight-lipped carapace of her soul, waving

their soft fronds.

 

seventh is a mystery

as in the deeps of ancient caves she stares

at the blank wall, scratches darkness, weeps.

 

eighth is a syllable, sibyl-tongue

stuck

to the mouth-roof, breathing

the thick air, sighing go from here,

 

question the night sky, demand answers of the owls

and rivers, go,

 

but at the last, the ninth bell

 

wisdom is lacking. we stagger out,

clutching a small death over our hearts,

snared by a net of tears

 

but do not learn.  

For those who are interested: my only regularly-updating blog can now be found at:

http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com

Danke! :)

 

Well, being as how I've written a vampire book, and being a mad Joss Whedon geek, I'm going to go with vamps. Not that werewolves aren't similarly kickass, but on the archetypal, dervied-from-our-fears level, vamps are simply more complex, because even when a given literary canon makes them soulless or innately evil, we're still hypnotised by what human elements remain. Werewolves, on the other hand, are explicitly about dual nature: one is controllable (human) and one is not. It's about keeping the inner beast, well, inner, and while there's a lot of room to make your own lore, I don't believe they're as fun to dissect as Dracula. Mwa. Ha. Haa.

 Like a somnolent, muck-covered hippo arising from its riverbed, the 2007 election loometh large, poised (or rather, bulked) to claim more victims than one might, at first appearances, suspect. As things stand, it looks like Kevin Rudd will win, and I for one count this as a very good thing. Amidst the endless cycle of speculation as to the potential impact of a Labor leadership on our sunburn country, I would like to put up my hand, claim the podium and state, for the record: shut up. I'm a hairsbreadth from not giving a flying farnakle whether actual government spending (gasp!) on social issues that should be actual government priorities (double gasp!) leads to a recession or not. Things need to be bloody well fixed.
 
Here's the fact of the matter: Howard has spent eleven years running Australia as though every major utility and public service in the country was privately owned, when, despite his best efforts (Telstra ahoy!) most aren't. The very good reason for this is that certain vital services - such as public transport - can never be run at a profit; or rather, in order to run at a profit, the costs to the consumer would have to be so prohibitively huge as to render the intended function of that service moot. Where privatisation is possible, however, the higher prices can be dealt with where people have more money to balance out their increased cost of living; hence Mr Howard's fondness for tax cuts - which, in a more privatised state, governments can afford because they are paying for fewer services. 

However. 

Most major services in Australia aren't privatised. Utilities used by the vast majority of the population - schools, hospitals, nursing homes, childcare, infrastructure and public transport - are largely government funded. In order to run a surplus, John Howard has spent eleven years effectively not spending on anything bar the defence budget. At the same time, this lack of government spending (and, therefore, a lack of money sloshing about in the public purse) has coincided with a rise in petrol prices, Howard's GST and a housing crisis in most capital cities. In turn, these factors have led the Reserve Bank, somewhat expectedly, to keep interest rates rising, so that the whole thing becomes a viscious circle. Cost of living has gone up while government spending on services has gone down, which means more and more, people have to rely on the private companies in areas such as health and childcare simply because they have no other viable option. The tax breaks don't cover it; and now everything has been left to rack and ruin for so long that no matter who gets the next term of government, money will need to be spent before even more time passes and makes the problems increasingly more expensive to fix.

Which means that with a sudden influx of government money into the economy after eleven years of effective drought,  we will probably have some form of recession. 

But people have always cheered tax breaks, and even when you object to them in principle, it's hard to say no, because they do, in the short term, pose a benefit. Politicians offering regular tax cuts should, in this sense, be compared to parents giving their kids regularly large doses of chocolate. Sure, the kids won't complain - they like chocolate. In the short term, it's a lovely thing, and in moderation - every once in a while, under the right conditions - it's even better. But keep eating it all the time, and no matter how nice it tastes, you'll still get fat. 

Because collective nouns are totally awesome, here are some I think should enter the common parlance:

A sulk of emos
A velvet of goths
A drunk of collegians
A sloth of students
A dreadlock of punks
A waft of hippies
A smug of lawyers
A gloat of ministers
A manhandle of bouncers
An angst of poets
A gossip of secretaries
A tweed of professors
A bluster of speeches
A sleuth of detectives
An exploitation of fools
A junket of kickbacks
A coin of bookies
A bungle of excuses
A bubble of airheads
A brittle of diets
A gloss of magazines
A sleek of cats
A clout of businesses
A martyr of zealots
A consequence of choices
A plunder of executives
A chalk of teachers
A pinch of misters
A squander of expenses
A stubborn of toddlers
A glory of daughters
A wrestle of sons
A rum of bogans
A rhubarb of colleagues
A leech of debts
A gadget of geeks
A lust of nerds
A pity of dorks
A gawk of bystanders
A quip of writers
A cluck of mothers
A bounty of rebates
A rhythm of dancers

...and so on. :)
 

Let me see. As of 27 September, I will be out of a job. Which sucks, but there's life for you. Also, I have done just about everything on my previous list - the hotel should be taken care of soon, and we still have to pay the final amount for the bike tour and buy headlamps to go on our helmets (and send in our heights), but that's a big improvement.

I know this is meant to be a journal of writing progress, but lately, I've been so busy that the only writing I've done has been the bare minimum reviews for wordwench, copy for work and my FozWeekly Bulletins. I haven't had time to get into The Key to Starveldt, although I did squeeze in a couple of pages on a new, unrelated idea which sprang to mind after watching Cowboy Bebop. And with my two main essays still due, I guess they'll be my next major writing projects.

So to anyone who actually reads this in general (a presumably small number) and specifically to those who read it to see what I'm writing (presumably an even smaller number, so small as to be graphically depicted by a symbol akin to a certain vowel) I apologise. Literary-oriented content is likely to go dark, and remain dark, at least until mid-October, by which time I shall have returned from my honeymoon to a life without income, and therefore to the optimal (or rather, most common) state for any unpublished writer. 

Until then, I guess I'll keep up with this Real World business - at least I have my wedding to look forward to! :)

Things To Do Before 27 September:

- Vote early in local by-election this Thursday to avoid fine (I'll be in Sydney on the actual day)

- Get Toby to sign and return the credit-card increase form by Thursday (so we get it in time for New Zealand)

- Book our accommodation in Sydney for after the wedding (29 - 1)

- Book our flights to Sydney for the wedding

- Clean the house, including kitchen cupboards, laundry and bathroom, for when my parents arrive to house-sit

- Confirm our booking with the cat minder

- Write out the list of appliance instructions/directions for mum and dad

- Research and write my 2 major essays for submission before we leave (both are due when we're in New Zealand)

- Look for and buy a new mattress before we go (wedding present from mum and dad; also, our current one is pretty bad, and they don't want to sleep on it when they stay)

- Get up-to-date on all my Alexander lectures before Saturday

- Choose the music for the ceremony, and figure out how it will be played

- Pay gas bill

- Remember the Alamo

"Vizinczey will be no more in a very short while. And all the good I have done will be the last good I do...But for a very long time I have been your guardian angel. I have done you innumerable good turns. Yes, even you reading these words: I did you a good turn just last week. Think back and you will remember a random small miracle that made your existence prettier. That was I."

- Harlan Ellison, Eidolons

I stopped in JB Hi-Fi at lunch today, wandering through the aisles as one always does there, waiting for the one especial bargain that tempts your wallet to leap out at you. It found me in the form of Hayao Miyazaki - the Studio Ghibli films were on sale, where I had never before seen them discounted. Cautious of my budget, I only took two (Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke) rather than the four I wanted (although I resolved to ring Toby and point him in their direction).

Lining up to pay, I noticed that the man in front of me - suited, middle-aged - had a large clutch of DVDs in hand, and that all of them bore the distinctive white cover of Studio Ghibli. He caught me peeking, and peeked back unashamedly, taking note of my own choices. He grinned.

'Of course,' he said, and I nodded. He gestured happily to his soon-to-be-purchases: Princess Mononoke, Whisper of the Heart, Pom Poko and My Neighbour Tortoro.

'They've never discounted,' I said. He agreed. We chatted; I've never seen Pom Poko (neither had he) or My Neighbour Tortoro (one of his favourites), and as we waited in the always-long line, we discussed the films and their merits. He loved that he could watch them with his eight-year-old daughter, enjoying them on a different level to her; she was a particular fan of Spirited Away, while I confessed my all-time favourite was always Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds.

'We have all the others,' he said, a little wistfully. 'Although since my wife and I divorced, not all of them are at my house.'

'Ah,' I said, knowingly. 'I understand. When my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, we had a fight over who got the Miyazakis. I ended up with Nausicaa, but he got to keep Mononoke.'

The man winced. 'Ooh. Tough choice!'

'Yes,' I said, 'it was. But Nausicaa will always have a special place in my heart. You can see the echoes of it in all the others - it was his first one, after all, and I think the best of his original stories. He adapted Howl's Moving Castle from a book.'

The man nodded agreement. 'Howl was a bit sprawling.'

'Yes - but there's always those moments in them which make the whole film worthwhile.'

The line crawled on, and we talked about the Mandatory Random Cute things of Miyazaki films (with which My Neighbour Tortoro is densely populated); how the one advantage he'd found in moving out and starting again at 40 was that all his friends were throwing away furniture, and so he'd been able to furnish a house with their leavings; how his absolute vice was CDs, which overflowed from their racks, and how books were the same at my house, with simply too few shelves ('Nice to know that other people live the same way, he said); and how I would ring Toby to come and buy Kiki's Dlivery Service and Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

After a parting joke about my Schrodinger shirt, we reached the counter, paid separate clerks; and he waited for me, just before the escalators.

'It's funny,' he said. 'I started as a mathematician, worked in government writing environmental policy; now I'm a consultant.'

I laughed. 'Joy among insurmountable joys! I'm an advertising copywriter; would-be novelist.' We ascended the moving stairs. 'I've got an agent trying to get me published.'

'Really? What kind of books?'

'Fantasy,' I said. He grinned again - we'd already established that he read sci-fi and fantasy; I'd commented that in our house, what with a philosopher and a fantasist, we were much the same.

We neared the top of the escalators. Belatedly, he held out his hand.

'I'm Ian,' he said.

'Philippa,' I said. We shook. 'My nephew's name is Ian.'

'It's a good name.'

'It is.'

We reached street level. Ian turned left and I turned right. People coming back up from JB went straight out between us; and at the last, we both turned round and waved, mouthing 'goodbye' over the shoulders of other people.

And then I caught the tram back to work, smiling my silent thanks to Vizinczey for one more random small miracle.

Another weird dream last night, this time from my brain's 'boy's-own-adventure-and-history-fragment' library. I was part of an Aztec army traveling to fight under Montezuma against the Spanish; we fought a battle on a plain by a river, at the foot of a steppe pyramid. I switched personas throughout the dream; at one point, I was a princess of the Azetc royal house, looking down on the start of the battle and lamenting that I didn't have a sword; then there was a sort of hostage-bargaining interchange I didn't really understand, where one side tried to avert the battle by threatening to kill a male hostage, except the other side's leader laughed and set a dog on the captives (of whom I was one), and in the ensuing struggle, the dog's jaw was broken. Then I switched again, and the fighting started - the Azetcs had vastly fewer men, but more archers, and from above, I watched as they fired arrows into the opposing army, waiting to mob them. A small band broke away and started to run forwards, and the man I stood with lamented this as folly - they would be cut off and surrounded as the opposing line broke (and this happened). Later, I was part of an Aztec charge, running by a man with a silver-bright, scimitar-like weapon whose job was to rush towards the enemy archers, killing them while they reloaded. And then I was a girl called Anya, stabbing Montezuma repeatedly in the back and throat with a long pike. Switch again: a Spaniard, rejoicing that we'd won, hearing myself or someone else say that Anya had killed Montezuma himself. Then an Aztec again; the remaining warriors had been rounded up in a kind of amphitheater near the steppe, and we started fighting among ourselves over whose companies should sit or stand where, further decimating our numbers. I sat down, defeated, and watched a small black rat come running up to me. It spoke to me, and told me to take its eyes and ears - which I did, plucking them painlessly from its head as though they'd only been glued on. The rat continued to live, calm, in my hand, but I was suddenly afraid, and returned the ears and eyes before I could use them.

Then I woke up.