Resolutions
I spent New Year's Eve in a hospital room at Tacoma General. The sound from the TV is shunted into a tiny speaker in the callbox attached to the bed, and the noises it produces are poor accompaniement to the explosions of light and color about the Seattle Space Needle. The window of the hospital room faces north, looking out over the top floor of a parking garage, and the lead-colored sky doesn't reflect any of the Tacoma-based pyrotechnics. I can feel them -- thump thump thump -- against the cold glass. "This is how 2003 ends," I tell my son.
He doesn't say much. He's barely twenty-four hours old. '03 -- as he'll write it innumerable times over the course of his life -- has a fading, tenuous grasp on his life.
The Space Needle explodes with a Shakespearean sound and fury, and I tell my new son the first words of 2004. "I'm sorry," I say to him. I'm sorry that I'm going to have to explain anthrax to him. I'm going to have to tell him to be cautious of the mail, to be alert to what comes out of envelopes and packages. He's going to have to be careful how he breathes and to be aware of how others breathe near him. He'll need to know other words like penicillin, doxycycline, and ciprofloxacin. I don't want to tell him about the others, but I have to be thorough: botulimum toxin, aflatoxin, ricin, VX gas.
I'm sorry that acronyms like WMD exist; we use the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" so frequently that we've shorthanded it. There are other phrases to explain as well: "collateral damage," "ethnic clensing," "racial profiling." I'll have to explain to him the concept of doublespeak, and I will have to tell him that Orwell's 1984 was once considered fiction.
I'm sorry that I will have to define "pedophilia" to him. I would rather the day never comes when I have to tell him to be wary of strangers, to be cautious of accepting gifts from person who pretend to know him. I don't want to tell him that if he is frightened, he should run home. Run, my son, run as fast as you can and don't stop until you are in my arms. It's an impractical suggestion, but I don't know what else to tell him. I don't know what other assurance I can give him that he'll be okay.
Some day he's going to ask me why; he's going to ask why I brought him into a world like this.
I will do two things. I will take him to the Point Defiance Zoo, and I will show him a polar bear named Boris. It was snowing on the night you were born, I will tell him. This white bear, whose natural habitat is colder climates, has been, for many years, in a place where there snow never falls. On the night you came into the world, he experienced winter for the very first time. I'll also take him out into a wide field where there are no lights and point out a tiny red dot in the sky. That's Mars, I will tell him, and on the night you were born, a small spacecraft that we built was sending back pictures from the surface of that planet. We named the tiny craft "Spirit" and we sent it those millions of miles to Mars.
We make resolutions at the beginning of a new year, you see, we make promises that we try to keep, and every year we get another chance to make those promises again. For every awful and terrible thing that I have to prepare him for, I have to show him something amazing and wonderful in turn. I have to show him that we can excel just as grandly as we fail. I have to. Otherwise I will have no answer for him when he asks why; the only words which will be there for him will be "I'm sorry."
I said them once. I don't want to say them again.
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.