Caitlín R. Kiernan

This will probably come out all higgledy-piggeldy. this journal entry. But I will persevere, nonetheless. Any day that begins by reading a report of new fossils of the Early Miocene-aged bird Pelagornis chilensis, confirming that it had a wingspan of 5.2 meters (about 17 feet), can't be all bad. That's a wingspan roughly double that of an albatross.

And yesterday was a good writing day, thanks to having slept. I hear people who seem to boast about their insomnia. "Oh, hell. I haven't slept since 1979!" You know, like it's a point of pride. Maybe they're just scrabbling for a silver lining, but it never feels that way to me. Anyway, I did 1,319 words on my piece for The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. I should finish it today. It doesn't really have a title yet, but concerns a very grim artifact known to some as the "Castleblakeney Key," and it's written entirely in excerpts from letters, scientific and other academic journals, books, and the like. I think I like it a great deal. It's just been a bitch to write. Not sleeping hasn't helped.

I've decided that the trip to Manhattan needs to be postponed until after the HPLFF. So, early or mid October. I spoke with my agent yesterday. Now I need to get in touch with Peter, and with my editor at Penguin.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, if you've not already. Some of the auctions end tomorrow. Also, Spooky has begun making Halloween decorations, so you may want to have a look at her Dreaming Squid Dollworks & Sundries shop at Etsy.

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When I was in my late twenties and still living in Birmingham, I ran in certain circles. Circles within circles, for that matter. High society for Southern drag queen débutantes and grande dames, a coterie of queer druggies and hustlers and bartenders. Lesbian bouncers and pool sharks. The day began at sunset and ended at dawn (so winters were preferred). It was another time and another place. It was vile, and it was degrading, and it was beautiful. I find I am capable of being both nostalgic for those circles, and grateful I lived through it all. Many of my friends didn't. They died of one or another of the inevitable hazards of being part of those circles. We all thought we would live forever, and we thought that world would last forever.

There was a man who went by the name of Rocky. I have no idea what his real name was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Rocky. I thought he was handsome as hell, and I had a crush on him. He wore leather bomber jackets and styled his hair in a pompadour. He drove these antique Mercedes-Benzes, so I imagined he was wealthy. Turns out he wasn't. He was a chauffeur and a heroin dealer. But I still had a crush on him.

Our paths finally crossed one night, because someone told someone who ran with Rocky that I had a crush on him, and I suppose it amused him. I won't be so arrogant as to imagine it flattered him. So, that night, he drove me around the Southside of Birmingham in one of those beautiful old cars. I was wearing this ridiculous, tattered wedding dress I'd found in a thrift store called Memory Lane. After the drive, we went back to his apartment, and I shot heroin for the first time. It was also the last time, because it was so good, so utterly better-than-sex good, that I knew if I ever did it again, I'd wind up addicted. And I was already on pills and booze. Anyway, I threw up, which wasn't very ladylike, but Rocky was cool about the whole thing. I sat in the same chair for hours, numb and thrumming and staring at the city lights, flying on that dose of smack. Rocky was a gentleman. I can't remember a single goddamn thing we talked about.

I have all these memories in my head, and I think I want to start writing them down. All these people and places that I've hinted at in my books, that I've fictionalized, But at forty-six, I begin to feel the tug of mortality, and I think of those memories being lost forever. I think of what Roy says at the end of Blade Runner, just before he releases the dove: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain.

Yeah, sounds pretty sappy. But still. I think I'm going to start writing those things down here, from time to time. I hope I don't embarrass my mother too much. Though, it's hard to imagine that's even still possible these days.

Up too late, too little sleep, same old story. But I did write 1,326 words yesterday, finishing up Part One of "The Crimson Alaphabet" for Sirenia Digest #25. That was J though M (Jack-in-the-Box, kelpie, leopard, and masochism). Now, I need to write a vignette for #25, and then put this puppy to bed.

You know, any day that starts with apple pie for breakfast ought to have some sort of potential.*

Nothing else to yesterday. The writing. Maybe thirty minutes of television, the random middle of something. Then the rest of the night went to one of my several second lives, the one where I'm a junkheap of a cyborg that everyone thinks is an angel, because of a cloaking programme that jammed and won't unjam. A really amazing bit of rp last night, sort of like Joss Whedon on crack, even though it did keep me awake until after four ayem, and I think the NEMO unit's He3 fusion reactor might have finally blown its cooling system, which doesn't bode well for her future. Never mind. It made a lot more sense to me at three-thirty this morning.

Today ought to be a day off, but it won't be.

You know, it occurred to me yesterday that all the people who can't accept the fact that Dekard is a replicant, and in the mind of Ridley Scott was always a replicant, if they want something to pick on about the "director's cut" and "final cut" of Blade Runner, then they bloody well should be asking about the sixth replicant.** What sixth replicant? Well, I'm glad you asked. Remember when Bryant is briefing Dekard on the escapees, and he says, "Six replicants, three male, three female." Then he says, "One of them got fried running through an electrical field. We lost the others." That would leave a total of five replicants on the lose, but Bryant only shows the profiles for four: Roy, Leon, Zhora, and Pris. Later in the film, after Dekard kills Zhora, Bryant says "Four more to go." He means, of course, Roy, Leon, Pris, and Rachel (since she's r-u-n-n-o-f-t from her nice cushy cage at the Tyrrell Corporation). So...where's android #6, the one who escaped from the offworld colonies, but didn't get fried by an electrical field during the attempted break-in Bryant refers to early in the film.

If you look back at early drafts of the film, the answer is plain to see. Her name was Mary, and she was designed to be a domestic servant. Hampton Fancher describes her thusly: "The woman is pretty, a touch of gray in her hair, kind and blue-eyed. MARY looks like an American dream mom, right out of 'Father Knows Best.'" Originally, she makes it to Sebastian's apartment with Roy and Pris, where Dekard kills her as she hides in a closet.

My beef here is that on two occasions, the 1994 re-release and the "final cut," Scott has had an opportunity to deal with a line of dialogue that refers to a character who was never filmed. M. Emmet Walsh is still alive. If Joanna Cassidy can come back to shoot new footage of Zhora after twenty-five years, they surely could have gotten a line of dialogue out of Walsh. Just a simple, "Five replicants, three male, two female," would have sufficed. Problem solved. Hell, that's only six words; Walsh probably would have done it for a bottle of whiskey. And with a skillful audio patch, it could have been fixed with two words. And this is an actual, real problem, not one of interpretation. But I'm probably beginning to sound like the people sclerotic_rings refers to as "Cat-Piss Men," so I'll shut up now.

Wake up, bitch. Time to write.

* Wrong.

** Okay. Turns out the sixth replicant problem was fixed in "the final cut," or so says chris_walsh. Somehow, I heard the old line. So...never mind. Disregard those three paragraphs. I'm going the hell back to fucking bed.

I understand Warner's yanking this left and right, so see it now while you have the chance. I've only been waiting since 1982...

Does anyone know how to actually download a copy of that? If so, please e-mail it to me at the gmail addy. Thanks.

And yeah, I'm still on the Placebo kick...

Bitter dreams, kiddos.