FX had Buffy episode “The Body” on tonight. I need to remember not to watch that episode. It may well be the best work of drama I have seen, ever, any genre.

I got 15 minutes in, three choked sobs, and realized that I was, if I watched another 15 minutes, going to be crying in that way that is very similar to bellowing, very similar to vomiting. I don’t think that would be good right now.

If nothing else, it would scare the hell out of my roommate, Kurt. I’m going to bed.

Thanksgiving was ordinary, at the Clan’s house, some bait offered, none accepted, exhaustion is a good defense against boredom out there, and everyone had a nice time. And I am not going to go watch the rest of The Body.

Good Night.

–With appropriate thanks to Aberdeen for, I assume, giving me a boost into the Allegorically Heavy Dreamer category.

The weekend, followed by a day of driving and watching Harry Potter with Nanook and some friends, followed by a night of work, has all joined to exhaust me. I just took lunch and slept, and sleeping, I dreamt.

I was in an immense multiplexed auditoria, steep rows of seats cascading down from a central landing where I was, standing in the pool of dark at the center of the landing, choosing which to attend; I imagined lectures, plays, all sorts of presentations, although I had no evidence to support any entertainment at all. I walked to the first one on my right and joined it without leaving the observatory-like landing. It was closest, and I had no reason to believe anything else was different. People were sitting quietly, some sitting adjoining one another but not really together, and people would get up and leave randomly. They were all sitting in the dark as if watching a movie, but there wasn’t anything to watch. I waited for a time and decided that, whatever was going on had already finished, and moved to the next auditorium.

The next held a concert, was well lit, the stage almost white with color. The Bangles, or the Go-gos were playing. People were dancing and I joined them, pogoing constantly out of synch with the music and crowd. I watched carefully and found that I was doing all of the right things at the right times, but I was falling so very slowly that it threw the period of my dancing off. I was considering that perhaps pogoing very low would increase my frequency or just lower my airspeed and keep my hang time constant when the lead ran off the stage into the crowd, running up the aisle on the far side of the auditorium into the back. Seeing what she was doing was more important than dancing well, so I moved along the back of the landing to where I thought I could see better.

I must have moved to a different auditorium; the landing ended in a sheer drop, and, looking below, I could see that I was no longer attached to any other architecture through the floor. We — there was someone there with me, now, I don’t know who — were not flying per se, but were suspended, floor and all, in a constant relative position to a large dual-fuselage airplane flying below us and to the front. I understood without thinking about it that I was in a somehow dangerous position. I didn’t know why, exactly, but that wasn’t important. I thought, “Hm. Better get out of here.” I began to consider the many ways I could do that, thinking each one through and weighing the positive and negative aspects of each. I must have been speaking my thoughts, because my unseen companion pointed at the plane and said, “Just go.”

“What?” I said, “Just step out, into the air?”

And there must have been some confirmation or demonstration, for it suddenly was obvious that that was just the thing to do, and I did just that. I could see my companion now, shorter than me, epicene, facing away from me, and we spread our limbs like starfish and were falling below the plane. I received a message from the pilot, crackling on a wave of radio static: “Do you need help?”

“No,” I told him. “We’ll fall from above and land okay.” Remembering my trick with the dancing I saw that it seemed to apply in other ways, because the plane was upside down and we were going to fall up and land on the top of the plane. I imagined there would be a way in, when we needed it. I knew that we were falling oddly — upwards — because of me, and that, while it wasn’t natural at all, there was nothing to be surprised over. It was just how things worked when I wanted them to.

I remember thinking it was actually good that it was taking so long to fall up, as it would make for a soft landing. I don’t know if I was causing that aspect, or if we just happened to be falling gently.

I awoke feeling that I had done something important. And I had ten minutes left to read, which was nice, as well.

Orycon experiences tend to be too densely packed to journal well; one ends up writing thousands of words and still feeling that important things were left out. Or, at least, this one feels that way each year. But:

[Pardon me, while I dither.]

Hrm. After some before-I-write editing, I find I have much less to say. Most of the fun stuff I did with friends had to do with chatting with them about personal stuff and watching some of their personal stuff (pause, here, for a dreamy expression) and discussions of flirtation that left me, frankly, speechless for a moment, as amazing as that sounds. Mmmmmm.

On to things I can say.

I spent a large portion of the weekend in a priest’s cassock, made elegantly by Pat and put to good use by me. I have discovered something that I simply do not understand; priest’s vestments are sex magnets. Why would this be? I went to room parties for the first time this year, had a lovely time, and found ample opportunity to remove attractive strangers from my lap. In some cases, removing attractive strangers and their attractive mates from my lap.

Wow. Makes me wish I’d known about the vestments/party mixture years ago. I haven’t decided whether I should tell Othello, my 14 year old son, about this phenomenon. The results might be too potent to trust in the hands of a mere lad.

In spite of opportunity, I was the very personification of circumspect behavior, virtuous in thought, word, and deed. In a very pleasant instance I explained that I am in the process of acquiring an ex-wife, that she was present, and she is sometimes intemperate; it didn’t seem considerate to permit people to put themselves in the line of fire just to feed my libido.

*sigh* Norwescon is coming. And I have the cassock reserved.

Othello had a lovely time at con, strolling about with a young lady of his aquaintance, eventually reaching a peak on Sunday when he discoverd that he could not decide whether to go eat with us or stay and commune further with her. He appeared so strained by the decision that we offered to bring him food while he communed, and the stress visibly rolled from him. The choice between eating fast food and snuggling with a girl may be the definition of dilemma to a 14 year old.

Hm. Zelda.

Zelda had her first meltdown early. We were at con five hours Friday, I had agreed to meet her at Riverview and was following normal con navigation procedures, following normal con punctuality protocols. That is, if one says, “I shall be at point B in ten minutes” … well, one doesn’t say that, if one is wise. Because, in travelling from A to B, one travels in a straight line that ricochets off of friends found on the way, interesting things to do or see, something one forgot in a different place altogether, and often ends up in points C, D, E, and F before getting to A. If ever. And the “ten minutes” portion … Well. I just should never have laid a time on it.

I richocheted off of diony and yessod, then Pat, which led to bouncing off of beer in horse brutality. The beer, along with the company, which grew to include a satyr and his lady, absorbed all remaining momentum and the chain of vectors reached entropy. Which left Zelda waiting. Now, I will grant this was reprehensible behavior; I said I would do something, didn’t, and someone was left hanging. Not good. Zelda’s response was to buttonhole one of our friends and inform him that I was probably with Nanook. And to inform him, in detail, of transgressions I have made in the past. He volunteered to seek me out, she moved in pursuit.

I had just realized my error and had actually — now, this is a mark of dedication to correct behavior — put down my beer to go and retrieve Zelda, when Zelda entered horse brutality and dressed me down. I agreed that I was poorly behaved, apologized, and told her that my error lay in making promises that cannot, reasonably, be held up at con; I would prevent further incident by not citing times to be places without utter dedication to arriving at those times. Eventually she and I disengaged.

I have no problem with the dressing down; I was in the wrong. I was concerned with the assumption that Nanook was at the heart of my misbehavior, instead of the much more reasonable assumption that, at con, I am an airhead. And, the early revisiting of my sins with unsuspecting bystanders. I determined that spending much time with Nanook this weekend would be ill advised. It would not cause a fight; I was prepared for fights. It would cause a scene like last year’s.

So I looked forward to seeing Nanook in small bursts and then a larger burst after con. Good idea. No fights, no scenes.

Hah!

I will not itemize. Briefly overviewed, the only two fights … tiffs … emotional encounter sessions with raised voices, hurtful things said … fights. The only two fights I was unable to avoid started, in one case, with me sleeping — a favorite ploy of Zelda’s, to catch me unconscious and get me going before I can think better of it — and half an hour from the hotel, so I had to remain in company of a fighting woman for that half hour.

Zelda’s favorite questions were

• What room is Nanook in?
• Are you going to see Nanook now?
• What is Nanook doing?
• …and some others, less, ah, delicate.

Sunday, when Zelda asked if I had had a good time with Nanook, I told her, “I didn’t spend any time with Nanook. I got a sense, Friday, that you were having some issues, and chose not to make things more complicated than they had to be.”

Her response, minus the emotional drapings, “I am disappointed that you didn’t trust me to not blow a gasket at Orycon.” She went on to say that she was quite pissy about that, and took offense when I equated pissy with angry, telling me not to read things in to what she says.

Merriam-Webster says:

Entry Word: ||pissed
Function: adjective
Synonyms: ANGRY, choleric, heated, irate, ireful, mad, shirty, waxy, wrathful, wroth

I probably shouldn’t bring factual content to any of these discussions.

The con ended with a trip to Powell’s, ferrying diony and yessod along, seeing jimweasel there, and just having a lovely time until Othello and I were falling asleep in the coffee shop and had to leave. Nice con. Not a spectacular con, but a nice con.

And I learned some things, absolutely. I learned that Zelda, no matter what she says, either will not or can not prevent her emotions from dictating her actions. I learned that I can, even while sharing a room with her, remain unengaged even when I can feel that she is hurt, angry, lonely, or afraid, and is acting out because of that. I learned that I can go about my business and have a fairly good time when she is acting out, as long as I stay unengaged and ignore her behaviors.

Which implies that I am an idiot to do anything else. I have plans to initiate resolution no later than 6 December.

I feel…very sad. Not by the decision, but by the field-proven things I learned, that I don’t have to participate in her emotional issues. I feel as if that is actually too bad, in some way, even though I know that it is more healthy than I have ever been.

I guess it is a good thing I went to con, just for that: I have proven to me that I never, ever have to participate in destructive acting-out again.

And, hey, the priest’s cassock, too. Good stuff.

My inventive force is like a river, seeming to flow unending whither I will it or no. “Ah!” cries out the Gentle Reader, “Here is the opening statement of a man who has written, a man who has written at length and well, a man, in short, who is setting goals and achieving them, creating words linked by insight and breath taking beauty.”

Well, no. That was the opening statement, rather, of a man who has discovered yet another facet of Passive Aggression. Pox on all dysfunction!

The key to note, in PA behaviors, is that the passive aggressor will always be the Victim, an honest man and true in a world of knaves, put upon by stress and circumstance and always called to pay for the sins and omissions of others. Clever PAs will have wonderous rationale to show that there was no viable choice but to be so put upon, but still they sing the song of Innocent Victim.

Mostly I am removed from this behavior, by clarity of vision, iron strength of will, and godlike focus. But.

Workdays, I work 12 hours graveyard, 3 days I add in two hours to move my son around and take him to school. Friday I sleep, then rise and socialize for a few hours, meet with my family, and rest so that Saturday I can be a day person, that day being given entirely over to being with the children. Sunday, then, becomes my catch-up day for housekeeping, sometimes something fun, plus whatever little things pop up when one is involved in a horde of social interactions, family and otherwise.

I have not described much time spent, idle hands twiddling thumbs wistfully, wishing for something to do. This is because that sort of time doesn’t happen much.

Then I have my list of things I Want to do, but may or may not get to. Work on the motorcycle. Exercise a few hours a week. Sleep in. Take in the occasional movie. Read, ferchrissake, a book. Usually I omit some of those that I may do the others. Fine, that’s life; we make choices and balance needs.

And then, a week late, I registered in NaNoWriMo. I registered the same day Zelda went in for surgery, the week I omitted most of my sleep so that I could be supportive for kids and Zelda and so forth. And this week I have Orycon. And, in between, has been about 7 hours per week of fighting — no, not fighting(1), intense discussion that is characterized by opposed viewpoints and negative emotions — with Zelda(2).

I seem to have undertaken a task, NaNoWriMo, which it simply isn’t likely I can succeed at. Do I have time to write? Surely. Write 50,000 words in four weeks, weeks without time for even a day sleeping in? Perhaps not. Perhaps, in fact, the goal was a bit lofty. In fact. I am considering the possibility that the goal was undertaken specifically because it was enormous, I was late, there were things that would interfere with achieving it … the goal may have been undertaken because I would try, and try nobly, and, through no fault of my own, fail. Zelda’s fault, fate’s fault, duty’s fault, not MY fault, my inabilty to write this novel would have had nothing to do with me, I would have been

a victim.

Balls.

New goal: finish the novel I have started. Write 5k words per week on it. And stop setting myself up to fail like this. It’s embarassing to manifest such low levels of sapience.

---

>(1)A fight is not what I thought it was. I thought a fight was an argument with emotions attached. No, not at all. What I described is merely an intense discussion, or perhaps an emotionally charged encounter. When I insisted on calling emotionally charged encounters wherein both participants were exchanging their view through the medium of yelling, slamming doors, and stomping about the house, Zelda demonstrated that I was in error, nomenclaturally. She began to spout some of the most hurtful statements she could think of, manufacturing some out of whole cloth. She waxed lyrical over my shortcomings as a father, not stating these as her opinion but quoting both children to support her view. Later, she admitted that some of what she said was spurious and intended specifically to hurt me as much as she could. That, she said, was a fight. A fight is an emotionally charged argment in which one or more of the participants do their level best to hurt one another.

And why did Zelda choose to fight in the case cited above? Because I made her mad by saying something was a fight, when it wasn’t, so she decided to SHOW me what a fight was. Well.

She did, in fact, demonstrate something to me very clearly. I suppose thanks are in order.

>(2)Why do I continue to have encounters with Zelda? My policy line has been that she has the kids. We are not divorced, and I may be able to divorce amicably (hah! We can’t be married amicably!) and divide custody, given that I make it feasable for Zelda to be pleasant. That is, I may not fight, but she must be permitted to do so. For how long? Until about $2k has been saved, so that I can move into another apartment with bedrooms for kids, and pay for divorce proceedings.

The policy line is flawed. Deeply. A bad divorce will leave me just as I am, without children living with me and putting forth several hundred dollars a month for the kids. I will be discussing this analysis with a couple people to check my work, but I suspect that the policy line was manufactured so that I could continue to be a victim.

I’ll post my findings when I have them.

I returned from work this morning, fell into bed after arranging things I would need in the afternoon so as to avoid any avoidance behaviors, and slept. So far, so good, my intentions and actions were of the purest, and 20k words seemed an attainable goal for the weekend. I woke, I rose, I woke the computer and checked my email just prior to unplugging from the internet and moving away from the jack — no temptation, that way.

Top of my inbox, a rejection letter.

Now, I know some things. I know that RL’s are part of the Writing Life, and have received them before without trauma. I know that the story I submitted was shallow and painfully obvious; it was written with an artificially short timeline and an artificially small word count permitted. I knew these things. I also know that there are other professional markets, there are semi-pro markets, hell, there are amateur markets that will get me a writing credit.

I kept telling me these things.

And I could feel the air escaping from my spine, could sense my skin growing slack, sagging and folding, and beginning to pool at my feet.

Grief, the editor, bless ‘er heart, even added a couple of lines to the rejection, telling specifically what she felt was wrong with it — and, it matched what I knew up front, that the story was predictable.

Ssssssss….

And the evening slipped away with the air from my punctured hopes, hopes that I wasn’t aware I was carrying around. Maybe that’s why this blind-sided me; I hadn’t looked in my pockets, noticed that I had some specific hope on me, and that I had invested it with need.

Balls. I’m going to bed, and will be a new person in the morning.

Five days of interpersonal game playing with Zelda, culminating in almost no writing getting done. Better, now, but it leaves me with a need for about 20k words written this weekend. Ugly.

In other news, Orycon happens in a week. One week and an hour from now, I will load son and Zelda into the car and drive to the airport, where we three will greet Nanook, whose name is anathema to Zelda. There will follow a joyous reunion in restrained format, then a 40 minute drive across Portland with the two of them in the car together. Why do I keep thinking of the phrase, “cage match?”

And I keep reminding myself that I am stronger and more assertive than I have ever been, and am readily able to look Zelda in the eye and say, “That (whatever that might be) is your problem, not mine,” and then disengaging. Now it’s just a matter of biting the metaphoric projectile and doing what I am readily able to do.

I imagine it will mean the difference between a moderately pleasant weekend and the beginning of another year of passive-aggressive codependancy. That seems to be a fairly evident choice to make. I wish I knew why PA and Co-D are so attractive that they become difficult to break as a habit, but I think, at this stage in my life, it is more important to DO something than to UNDERSTAND everything that led to the need to do something.

So. Wish me strength, kids.

1003 words written tonight at work.