To Cry About

Dickens didn't get paid by the word! He just wrote like that!

*sigh*

Poor Dickens.

From:

Really? Somebody told me he got paid by the word, so I always thought that was true. Poor Dickens indeed. The quirkiest narrative voice of them all, but do the literary critics these days appreciate him? NO.

From:

It's a widely-believed rumor. I did a poll on my livejournal for Dickens' birthday -- "was Charles Dickens paid by the word?" -- and eleven of the twelve people who voted said "yes." And I have a smart f'list.

(deleted comment)

From:

that rather charitably assumes grad school is for learning things....

I look at it as a form of stalling.

(deleted comment)

From:

Awsome! Something to which I, an undergraduate, can only look forward.

Or I could get out now, before it's too late, I guess. But in that case, I'd have to find a job.

(deleted comment)

From:

Joe's gift -- mutation, curse, talent, whatever -- reminds me a bit of a piece about a Zen koan I read in a novel -- the difference between not wanting anything, and wanting nothing. It seems like a lot of the time Joel wants nothing, but the Aphanes isn't necessarily nothing. Does that make sense?

I think it does. In the sense that it's sort of a mystical nothing, it's sprung on him before he's really spiritually mature enough to understand and appreciate it. Both in the Buddhist and in Christian traditions, that nada nada nada that John of the Cross talks about is something that you have to work up to. In Christian terms I'd refer to it as the complete poverty with which we appear before God, where all the temporal sensory stuff passes away. We saw a brief moment of Joel apprehending this at the end of The Aphanes, but that sort of 'aha' doesn't usually last. (Why yes I have been reading hella Thomas Merton lately.)

(deleted comment)

From:

Oh man, ell oh ell. I'd been thinking about it from such a Western hagiological viewpoint that I hadn't noticed the Siddhartha similarities. The unconscious, man. THE UNCONSCIOUS. It is crazy. But now I'm in danger of imagining him as Keanu Reeves.

And yeah, there's a grappling between mysticism and just misery (oh, my sides). You see a lot of that in the CanLit that deals with the Arctic-as-symbol (MacEwen's Terror and Erebus is my favourite thing to rip off, but there's reams of it in any Canadian anthology published before the 70s/80s).

Hell, even the Rheostatics have done it: "I abide here with nothing -- MYSTICAL NOTHING! The coolness of open thighs..."

(deleted comment)

From:

And he's not a fighter. And they were just pushing him, the little SHITS, to see how far they could go before he'd push back, and he didn't.

Yes, exactly! I was told years after the fact by the kids who'd bullied me that they were just waiting to see what it would take for me to fight back. And that never really happened, so they kept it up. I think that's a more common scenario than people think--I remember in (I think?) V for Vendetta(??maybe?) there was a line where someone was saying she hated the victims of the state oppression because they didn't fight back, and that made it easier to keep hurting them. But I'm still a pacifist, so go figure.

ndyeah, I know Joel has the whole father heroic complex thing, but Jesus, did El Politician ever think about ASKING his son what had happened? TALKING to him about it?

Well, I wouldn't assume that he didn't ask. I imagine that he did ask (certainly his mother would have), but Joel didn't feel like going through all the particulars with his dad and just clammed up.

JPII = the late John Paul II, and his view of homosexuality as "objectively disordered" (certainly not his view alone, but he's still the go-to guy for theology of sex in the modern world). I'm sure Hodya was confused by the Catholic Codetalking too.

(deleted comment)

From:

OK, me <--- stupid wannabeBuddhist pseudoEpiscopalian Yank, cause that means what exactly? I mean I obviously gathered the meaning from the context, but period before the vows are taken? Is that it?

Discernment is actually a bit before that, the hazy period in which you try to figure out if you have a vocation or not. You're in contact with a spiritual advisor and looking into various orders and whatnot. A vocation director wouldn't tell you "You're in discernment, break up with your girl/boyfriend immediately," but s/he would tell you, "Don't start new relationships until you know where you stand."

And that's not setting off anyone's alarm bells?

Uh, well, I'm not allowed off the premises during shifts at Tim Horton's! We live in a brutal and dehumanising world!

Hee, kisshangers abound!

From:

'Swounds!

Detailed, provocative, shit-disturbing writing. Keep it up. Forever.

I love the fact that you didn't make the coming out solve all the problems. Still, I hope that Joel has some satisfaction of some sort in his future. I believed him when he told Paul that he likes "all of this," the house, the work, the friendship but his pain is heartbreaking.

I love that you are setting up a battle between Alpha Flight and Joel's merry band of Catholic Worker mutants.

Also, Hodya's implication that mutants aren't really human was chilling and effective.

From:

Haven't decided what lies in the future yet, but I always shoot for happy endings, because they're usually harder to make believable. Sad endings are a last resort when none of the options are any good.

To be fair to my Alpha Flight, Catholic Workers square off against the law all the damn time, so that's one instance where they're not being particularly sinister. Oh Dan Berrigan, how civilly disobedient you were.

Obviously Hodya isn't anti-mutant, but I just hate those moments where you accidentally say something horrible and maybe don't even realise it until later (OMG I'm having a white privilege moment!), and then you lie awake at night wondering if deep in your heart you really meant it.

From:

I'm never terribly surprised in the middle of the night to find racism, sexism, queerphobia and other nasties lurking in my soul. Of course they are; I am a product of whatever I am a product of.

I feel guilty about most everything, but not about finding I'm not NICE inside. I care more about actions.

Here's a secret confession (in public): I don't know how my novel ends. I have about three possibilities but I am trusting the characters and the circumstances to dictate. I think it won't really be an ending; it will be an arbitrary but meaningful point in the boys' lives before the rest of their life happens.

From:

Also, if Northstar doesn't turn out to be gay, you are seriously fucking canon in ways that legions will hunt you down for.

So do whatever you want, as usual. heh.

But he would be a good consolation prize for Paul if Joel decides to righteously waffle away his whole sex life...

("Waffle away" is a strange construction. If you don't like, pretend I have a speech impediment and that I meant "raffle away"; in which case, the sentence is infinitely stranger.)

From:

Yeah, Northstar can't not be gay. I'm happy to leave behind the "elderly florist gently inducting him into the world of invert pleasures", though. I always thought he was a poor match for Piotr in Ultimate, but I'm happy that Pete gets to date someone, rather than being left to Will&Grace his entire run.

From: