This site has returned
Here's Why
Last night I got home from work at like 10:45 PM and was exhausted and emotionally drained and overwhelmed. I was toggling between elation about possibilities which have been hinted at, and confusion and frustration at the lack of clarity involving those things, and very physically tired. So aside from saying some important stuff, I griped a little on this web site while hiding most of the content. This morning I woke up feeling much the same way. Then I had some iced coffee and came up with a new plan. The content hiding is still a good idea, but I am going to back off my plan to stop posting and share something.
Please stay away from me. Totally away. For now. Not because you do not delight me (you do do do) but because I need to post something important before we next see one another or converse in any way. Plus my mind is essentially soup at this point.
What I intend to post, if the soup clears, will be a (partial) deep dive into subtext underneath my short story "The Leap from the Bridge is Ungainly," which was published in February 2004 in the Australian speculative fiction e-zine Ideomancer. You can find that story on Vocal Media.
Here is the issue of Ideomancer it appeared in.
Incidentally -- I am sure it's a coincidence -- I like that word. "Ideomancer." :)
If you are bored in the meantime, feel free to start digging in yourself. Here are some hints.
1. The accident takes place on Route 26. There are 26 instances of something in the story. Can you find what that something is?
2. Here is a gravestone. Think about twins being born. And please look carefully at the fucking thing. Because there is a hero on it. Use a pun and math to see how this maps to number one.
3. This is "Georgie" from the opening of Stephen King's It. And an 18-wheeler from Pet Sematary. And bonus content related to a pregnancy miscarriage that occurred in my own life, connecting to a larger story.
4. Take every Julia Roberts film made through 2003. How many of them can you find references to in my story?
5. Ditto for Juliette Lewis.
6. What is the 26th element in the periodic table? What is the 18th? Smoosh them together. 1 John 4:18. Who starred in Cape Fear? I just spilled the beans on one of the answers to Item #5.
7. A hint re: item number 1. "tangles of serpentine hair wafting like seaweed", "as if she is his reflection." Consider what the reflection of a "water snake" might look like. Consider the theme of the story. Think about it.
8. How many people are referenced individually at the water altogether, counting James? How many named people on the bridge? Map that to John 6:9. Use a pun. What's the miracle being described? Here's a Joanie.
9. Use #8 to ascertain my vote for most interesting sexual position. :)
10. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo thinks Juliet is dead, Julie thinks Romeo is dead, and they both end up killing themselves as a result. Build a case using only the text of "The Leap from the Bridge is Ungainly" that the accident in question never happened. Treat the story more like a poem (a dream-like expression of emotion) than a narrative. Or like a hybrid, something unclassifiable. When people parse poems and look for wordplay it's traditionally more like being a machine processing text: you both treat the text as a single unit and also chunk it into pieces, in some ways disregarding their sequence and sentence organization. Because that is more like how dreams work: weaving, repetition, linking through patterns. This is how all text should be parsed for subtext, narratives included. Use that strategy to build your case. What did happen, if not the accident? Which parts of the story are real? Can you find the separation points?
Now.
Suck on that.
