miscellany

[asakiyume]

If I wait to have a chance to write about any of these properly, I'm likely to write about none of them, but if I list them here, then maybe I'll come back and do it?

• Nando has responded to the questions I sent him, questions that were gleaned from people's responses to his latest story. I will definitely be sharing his answers at some point, but I can't do it right now.


• I might write a cordyceps story. There is an awful lot of cordyceps fiction out there recently. But I might add to it. In honor of that possibility, I doodled some cordyceps critters. (Try to ignore the improbably long body of the dog in that doodle. Also: my story would not feature cordyceps critters. It would be All Humans.)


• Partly I want to write a cordyceps story because I feel like I have something in me--much less sinister, I'd like to reassure you (but of course that's what the fungus would get me to say, right???)--that is compelling me to go back to the Amazon. Or that's just me pulling a Digory-at-the-bell-of-Charn** move to forgive my own supremely selfish desires. Whatever, I AM going back. Solo, because Wakanomori does not have the flexible work schedule that I do. In 14 days. A 10-day trip, seven full days down there. I will shove my face in all the flowers, taste all the fruits, listen to all the birds, process some cassava and hopefully make some chambira twine, and ... uhhh, come back to infect everyone with a desire to go down there?

So yes. My news.

**
This is the moment in The Magician's Nephew where Digory and Polly come across a bell in a hall in a building on the dead world of Charn. The bell has an inscription underneath it that says


Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.


Sensibly, Polly is ready to walk on, but Digory says no, they're doomed now--they have to strike it now or they'll go mad:


"I expect anyone who's come as far as this is bound to go on wondering till it sends him dotty. That's the Magic of it, you see. I can feel it beginning to work on me already."

"Well I don't," said Polly crossly. "And I don't believe you do either. You're just putting it on."


And then Digory pulls out some sexist nonsense, manhandles Polly, and strikes the bell.
... The point is, he uses the inscription as an excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.