Oh my god, the tomb is empty. The holiday.

Gorge on it.  That's holy business.

In general, I'm a big fan of holidays.  I don't usually care much about their underlying purpose, I'll admit, but I'm totally down with the sanctioned rest.  Honestly, I don't know why humans are so utterly incompetent when it comes to providing these little respites for themselves, but I'm game for following the calendar to secure a little downtime.  At a minimum, it provides justification for the rest that is imperative to keeping a soul in working order.  Even if you don't believe in souls.

So here's the thing.  The sticking point, if you will, since this is one of those perverse holidays that uses sugar-coatings to mask the absolute horror of the events leading up to the death of Jesus.  If you know me, you know I'm no Christer.  I like the guy.  He seems like a great community activist and I have always enjoyed listening to Jesus-quality spiels at never-ending town hall meetings.  But Easter?  Come on now people.  Let's use some common sense on this one.

I opened facebook this morning to find a truckload of Easter greetings from people who I know don't know the religious history or even religious dogma that set the foundation for the holiday.  It's supposed to be holiest of holy days, you know?  It's supposed to commemorate the mystery of Jesus's disappearance from his tomb, where he was interred days earlier after perishing on the cross.  Bummer, right?  Personally, I love the plot twist even if I can't quite see beyond its implausibility.  And it makes me think that the writers of the story really didn't think through their tale, or respect their readers enough, to prop up the twist with the rebar of believability.

First.  I mean, come on, you leave a dead guy in a tomb and return three days later to find it empty.  Does that really support a leap to resurrection?  How many zombie books did these guys read?  If I found a tomb empty, I think I'd report a crime.  And I'd probably want to have a good long chat with the medical examiner to see whether death had really claimed the missing body before burial.

Second.  The church continues to call it Easter.  Despite long written history that this refers to an Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre in charge of dawn, or maybe sunrise, possibly light and bits of fertility, (all good things), the church kind of jumped on the name and ran with it.  That's cool, I guess, but let's give some honor to that stuff too, if we're going to use it so freely.  Fair use is fair use.

Third.  Seriously, painted eggs and chocolate?  Okay, I know that wasn't what the original writers probably had in mind, but still.  I remember egg hunts in front of St. Therese when I was little.  Whether or not church elders are as adept at egg-dying as they are at covering up pedophiliac exploits, I don't know.  But they certainly exploit the strange pagan ritual to keep us coming back for more.  Unless you're like me and you find the thought of searching for cooked and colorful eggs in the non-refrigerated lawn where the dog poops pretty repulsive.

Okay, so here it is, my wish for you: have a really wonderful, quiet or otherwise, restful or otherwise, chocolate-filled or otherwise, day off and maybe give a thought to the light, your fertility, the sunrise and the reaction you would have if you discovered a dead and buried loved one removed from their resting spot.  Yeah, that's right.  A stern talk with the gravedigger would be in order.

Time for Pie

It's friggin' cold outside.  A mild Sunday offering occasional hints of sunshine proved to be a giant red herring because here I am, it's Monday, and the southerlies are howling at my idiotic hope for a mild fall.  They are a sardonic wind.

I am almost a quarter through with my rewrites and if I can maintain my pace, I'll be done by June 5th.  Here's what I've learned: there is no shortcut.  Every word deserves some kind of scrutiny even if it's the foulest set of letters ever assembled.  And if it is so foul, it better persuade me of its function among others less homely.  Here's another lesson: I shouldn't hate myself for using foul words in the first place.  There is a time and a place for them, I suppose, even if I decide to swear off some of them for the remainder of my days.

I'm supposed to go outside soon but I would turn away from a dinner party if I heard a screamer on the other side of the door.  The wind is a maniac and I'm not sure I want to interact with it.  I'll keep my head down, avoid eye contact and count time until I shut the door safely behind me with the wind on the other side.

It's a cold, cold day.

And I could go on and on about how repulsive I find the lasting trend of American politicians playing dumb but I'd rather not.  Because, I've decided, it doesn't really matter.  Playing dumb is like a national past time.  Americans are good at it.  So, elevate it and love it.  I'm not there.  I'm here, watching the grey water spill excited white waves onto a deserted shore.

And this is what I'm listening to:

I like those dance moves.  I gotta get me some of those.

Out and About Somewhere Else

Here's the things that I've done in the last week:

Surrogate friends. As good as real ones.

1. Hosted surrogate friends, who are now new friends.  Living on the roundest bit of the earth's butt cheek, we've had trouble inducing friends who are closer to the world's... what?... sternum, I guess, to come visit.  Price, distance, time, blah blah blah.  I get it.  It's far and money is a finite resource for those of us who don't own major multinational corporations.  Really, it's stupid that we don't own something bigger than ourselves as it would provide us with many, many more rights than we currently have as mere people, but I digress.  Our friends.  They're not visiting.  So, we've put the call out to accept friends of friends.  Friends of friends of friends.  Distant relatives on tour?  Send them my way.  Goddaughter on a round-the-world ticket?  Yes.  I will meet her for coffee and if she's house-trained, she can stay with us.

Last week, two friends of a dear friend hopped into town for a couple days and I caught myself pretending that my dear friend was smuggled somewhere in the confines of these friendly men's skin.  Something like an alien in sheep's clothing, except neither my friend nor my new friends require disguise.  Anyhoo, that was last week, and that's over.  The house is empty again and we await the next random stranger to be sent our way.

Bats under a blue sky.

2. We went to Sydney.  You may be thinking, a lady of leisure requires no vacation.  Well.  That's probably true.  But I didn't mind the respite from long afternoons inspecting longer chapters for some sort of treasure worthy of salvage.  (Hint: my chest does not runneth over.)  Sydney is a magic city that deserves the dreams of all those forlorn itinerants looking for the greenest grass.  Everyone should want to live in Sydney.  I kind of want to live in Sydney.  Although, like New York, I would prefer to do it with the infinite resources that would come if only I recognized the importance of profit-taking.  As it is, I'm now blogging for two Wellington sites for free.  I have a non-profit heart.  (It does not come with a tax exemption.)

Here's a little tidbit you may not know about Sydney: in its Botanical Garden, there is a colony of bats that defies all nocturnal apocrypha.  Under a brilliant sun, the furry beasts hung upside down bleating at the injustice of it all.  Or maybe it was a song.  They were loud and they occasionally dive-bombed us, which is what led me to think they may have some unjust score to settle.  I promise you, I did nothing to set them off.

3. Having returned home, I can happily report that this home, where I sit and stare over waves gently toppling over each other and I smell the pungent brine of sun-soaked seaweed, is the best home.  For now.  Yay home!

That's all.  Please enjoy.

Elves or Journals?

A few weeks past, I went to the Elven casting call for The Hobbit.  I fit the height requirements so what choice did I really have?  Tall people should never back away from a request made solely based on their altitude.  I consider it a civic duty.  You want me to open a cabinet for you?

Funny thing now is that I'm more interested in hearing the results of the lanky, lithe cattle call than learning whether my most recent story submission is going to get published.  Have I failed to arrange my priorities correctly?  Or maybe I'm just a realist?  Not really.  Maybe it's because I'm not stacking my deck the right way.  I should be sending stories to as many journals as I can but instead I'm auditioning for elven extras and doing random google searches for journal deadlines.  I only have one story out now, and that's probably not going to give me the same odds as becoming one in 500 elves, standing anonymously in a cape in some woodland crowd scene.  Alright, I can own it.  It is a matter of priorities.

And so, I will commit to finding some damn journals and sending some damn stories to them.  Really, I hate this part.  I don't care about rejection; I care about the process.  It's a distracting drain on time.  Like trying out to be an elf, I guess, but that, at least, let me look at the other tall, skinny elven wannabes so I could assess the likelihood of my own potential for elfdom.  My assessment?  There are many, many better elves in this world, and it seems a lot of them happen to live in Wellington.  But I can promise that I know how to rock a cape.  I did that for years in high school and I'm looking for some pay-off.