Stepping back...

[greygirlbeast]

Last night is the first night since at least December 2007 that I've managed to sleep without Ambien. I've been cutting the dosage back for weeks now, and last night, I just said fuck it, and didn't take any. And I slept.

We take our victories where we can find them, no matter how small.

There was no writing again yesterday, so I think I can officially say that I am now in a crisis state. We'll say Code Yellow. Tomorrow, if I've still not written, we go to Orange.

I did read Holly Phillips' "Cold Water Survival" in Lovecraft Unbound, and I liked it quite a lot. It's very rare for me to actually read an anthology in which I have a story, but I'm reading this one. At least for now.

In the midst of all the Not Writing that was going on yesterday, I also resolved to begin withdrawing from Facebook and Twitter, and stop using them as anything but a mirror for this journal by the end of October. Well, truthfully, I made my last post to Facebook yesterday evening, after being prodded with one pointy stick too many, and discovering I couldn't turn off comments. That is, discovering I could not disallow comments. As I said yesterday, what kind of fucked-up forced-socialization fascism is that? So, no more Facebook (except that the LJ entries will continue to show up there). I think the thing I will most miss about it is the fact that people seemed almost always to use their real names. I won't miss having people I've not spoken to in ten or fifteen or twenty years suddenly thrusting themselves back into my life uninvited. So, yes, I'll try to stick with Twitter until the end of the month. But a lot of things are wrong in my life at the moment, and one of them is having allowed myself to wander off into all this "social networking" brouhaha. I do not think in sound bytes of 140 characters (or whatever Facebook allows, for that matter). I don't write in them. It was a mistake for me to try and force it.

Of course, this leaves me here in the wasteland of LiveJournal, which seems to be losing writers and readers like a sinking ship purportedly loses rats. But, at least I can finish a thought here without being told I'm over my character limit. And if I don't want to interact, or hear someone else's thoughts, it's easy enough to turn off comments.

If you've not yet, please take a moment to order a copy of The Red Tree. It's the reason I'm still bothering to communicate with the public at all. Which means, if you're reading this, you probably would benefit by reading that.

A cloudy day here in Providence. The sun's never around when I actually want to see it.

Comments

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

P.S. Making sure you see this: a wonderful interview with Terry Gilliam.

Thank you. A fine link, indeed.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I figured you may have seen it (Neil Gaiman linked to it), but I wanted to be sure.

All said, including my having a BIG issue/beef with him right now, I'm glad Terry Gilliam exists and is still working. He's one of my biggest non-family-or-friends influences of my life.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I figured you may have seen it (Neil Gaiman linked to it), but I wanted to be sure.

As it happens, I had not.

including my having a BIG issue/beef with him right now, I'm glad Terry Gilliam exists

What problem do you have with Terry Gilliam?

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

What problem do you have with Terry Gilliam?

Longish answer; you're warned.

I can't yet fathom his support (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/29/roman-polanski-petition) of one of the Roman Polanski petitions (http://www.sacd.fr/Le-cinema-soutient-Roman-Polanski-Petition-for-Roman-Polanski.1340.0.html) (that link has the petition in French and English). It seems to me to miss the point massively. The petition, as I understand it, focuses on the legalities of how Polanski was arrested in Switzerland (I heard an explanation later that many of the signers worry that this could lead to arrests of other artists for less justifiable reasons), but seems to greatly -- no, hugely -- minimize that this whole sad, complicated case started because Polanski raped a child. (As I wrote here (http://chris-walsh.livejournal.com/1032750.html), "The news is making me think for probably the first time in my life just how truly, deeply skeevy and messed-up this case was from the start. Probably thinking about it, really thinking about it, should hurt. (And that may be partly why, when I heard one case of out-and-out schaudenfreude over Polanski's arrest, I got angry. NOTHING ABOUT THIS SHOULD FEEL GOOD.) It all stems from a man using a position of privilege to force himself on a girl. And it was force. And she did resist, through the impairment of champagne and half a Quaalude. And he didn't stop.")

My cognitive dissonance of admiring Gilliam and his work and being flabbergasted by his signing the petition has been personally a little tough. Some friends of mine are mad to the point of not wanting to watch anything by him or the other signers of those petitions unless they apologize and retract. Gilliam has shown understanding in his work of how tough life can be for young people (I still haven't seen Tideland, but it sounds like that work comes from that understanding), and I can't believe that he really believes rape is okay -- he's the father of three kids -- but I still don't know his reasons for supporting that petition.

So talking and thinking about Gilliam right now is, um, a little maddening.

Probably not the answer you were expecting. It's a load to dump, to be honest, and I struggled between saying it and not saying it. Ultimately, I felt like I'd be ignoring or hiding it by not mentioning it, and that, I felt, was the worse option.

(I never feel I do cognitive dissonance well.)

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Ah. Then I think I think the less I say about this issue, the better.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

And I won't press the issue here.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

And I won't press the issue here.

Thank you.