This past week some things have moved forward which please me. The Missouri Center for the Book is about it have a new Facebook page. I made the decision to put it up now, in advance of the total website make-over, because I think it will be necessary to get the upcoming Celebration promoted more efficiently. That event will be October 23rd, again in Columbia. Barring other avenues of advertising, I think this one will be essential.
It’s happening. Also, the new website design is coming along quickly and when that is up there will be regular blog posts, and a special section from the state poet laureate. When that happens, obviously, I’ll post about it here.
On a personal front, I’ve gotten the preliminary schedule from Context in Columbus OH and they’ve put me on at least three panels and given me a kaffeeklatsch. The latter will be interesting. I’ve done a couple of these, but with less than amazing results. One of these days I hope to have a dozen people show up and make me feel like a real honest-to-goodness writer type person. But the panels look interesting.
More short fiction. I am forcing the hindbrain to put out. I will do more short stories. I’m coming to grips with an old one that almost didn’t work but now seems to be moving along nicely.
I went to the gym Friday and had a decent work-out (650 lbs on the leg press, not too shabby for an old man) but I’m feeling a bit drained today, so I’m putting off going back till tomorrow or Tuesday.
Although many things are still in limbo, curiously I’ve been feeling good about things this past week, like everything will work out fine. I am not given to groundless optimism or airy prognostications. “Oh, it will all come out fine, you’ll see,” is not a working philosophy for me. But you can only control so much on your own. You can do the best you can with what you have in hand and if the next step depends on Other People, well, you can’t let their lethargy, inertia, or recalcitrance depress you. It does depress you, because, well, if they don’t do X, Y, or Z then what you want to do doesn’t move forward, but there’s not much you can do about that short of going to them personally and being persuasive. Like that would work.
So you shift gears and work on something else. You enjoy a good meal. Watch a movie, read a book, contemplate the heavens…
In my case, the physical heavens, as the supernatural variety holds no charm for me.
Having said that, I note that Christopher Hitchens, earnest, sharp, intellectually stimulating transplanted Brit who lectures and debates on atheism among other things, is in dire straits. He was diagnosed recently with esophageal cancer, a nasty form that has a low survival rate. His father apparently died of it. I saw him recently on an interview with Anderson Cooper and most of his hair is already gone from the chemo, but he was quite stoic and lucid. He was asked about the possibility of a death-bed conversion and he said emphatically that as long as he was himself, no, but there’s no guarantee that he won’t be someone else if he’s too far gone in pain and medication.
Life is what it is. I know intellectually that it isn’t fair. It isn’t anything pro or con in terms of justice or equality or anything else. It is what it is. Fairness is a concept of our invention that we bring to the enterprise. But because it’s ours, we tend to invest it with merit and get angry when things don’t go according to an expectation we impose.
Still, I wish him well and will regret his death. He fearlessly pokes into the dark corners and writes about what he finds and people like that are worth more than can be assessed.
Another mixed bag of a week, then. Can’t wait to see what next week has in store.