I didn't draw a card today.

Boy, today was educational, to put it mildly. I learned that a whole lot of people who work in my office are very unhappy.There's a lot of frustration going around, much more than I had thought, and I am not the only one feeling it. We had an interesting chat this morning and compared notes for about two hours.

Additionally, Andy has been having a tough time of it. A long-time family friend died last week after a long illness, and his grandfather died yesterday morning after a surgery. Neither were in good health, but it doesn't make it any easier. Also, his mom is taking this very hard, which in turn makes it very hard for him. It's not that she means to put more stress on him, just that he feels powerless to help ease her pain.I didn't either of them well, but they were always very kind to me, especially Martin (his grandfather). Martin used to send us a newsletter every month or so and wrote about health issues, about the need to be active and exercise, and about being mindful of others. His last newsletter was about the need to make peace with one's family, to not let arguments and grudges linger. I used to put his newsletters on our refridgerator and I realized today that there wouldn't be any more newsletters and I suddenly felt very, very sad.

Coincidentally, I was reading an interview today on Strange Horizons with a science fiction author, M. John Harrison. I haven't read any of his work, but the interview made me want to find some of his books. Anyway, one of the thing he said struck a chord in me:

My feeling about escapist fiction has softened a little down the years but it has never really changed. I think it's undignified to read for the purposes of escape. After you grow up, you should start reading for other purposes. You should have a more complicated relationship with fiction than simple entrancement. If you read for escape you will never try to change your life, or anyone else's. It's a politically barren act, if nothing else. The overuse of imaginative fiction enables people to avoid the knowledge that they are actually alive...once you have understood escapist fiction and the culture of escape you begin to go further back and ask what it is they're based on. What they're based on is desire. I'm as much a fantast as anyone else in our community. Despite rumors to the contrary, I'm a romantic and an idealist. What I write seems bleak, but it stems from my understanding of what people are: this raw, raging, aching bundle of desire. Of course we have to learn to handle that, both as writers and people...the hidden political assumption in my work from "Settling the World" on is that if you want things to be better than they are then you have to go out and build a better world. It's no good yearning; you have to take charge.

Then, I was reading in a book (Mad Ship, by Robin Hobb) today, and one of the characters has an insight into his life. He is a boy who spent most of his childhood training to be a priest. After his grandfather dies, his father forces him to be ship's boy onboard his family's ship. He doesn't this life and conflicts with his father continually. Eventually pirates take over the vessel and he is put in the position of caring for the pirate captain, who has lost a leg. The boy traies to befriend the pirate's woman, but she doesn't trust him. In order to win her trust and understanding, he tries to explain that he is really a priest, that he did not choose to be a sailor. She tells him:

You can't go back. That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something finished. Complete or no, it is done with you...accept your life and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting that this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

Oh, jeeze, they might as well have been speaking/writing directly to me. I spend so much of my life in fantasy that I am scarcely here. It is very hard for me not to daydream about other people I wish I was or lives I wish I was living. Sometimes I feel like this isn't really my life. But here I am, suddenly 32 years old, and as afraid of my life as I was when I was 12. Andy's grandfather loved his life. Up until the end he walking and exercising and writing. His life was a verb. All of these things together, Martin's death, this interview, the book, aren't a coincidence. It isn't often that the universe gives you a personal message, and so I had better listen.