Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 23:44:46 EST From: "my reality check bounced..." Subject: FILLER: Stuffed with Nonsense sigh. Ah, me...the list has been at it, the grist mill grinding hard, and so much has been ground out...gods and goddesses, dust and mud, even a deoxyribonucleic acid chain or two, rubbed into fineness between the stone faces of the mill of the writers, then all but blown to the four corners of the virtual globe by a dust explosion? Okay, let's take a deep breath (not too deep, there seems to be quite a cloud of ashes and smoke hanging around, and we don't want to risk upper respiratory irritation from the second-hand fumes). Glance around at the frizzled fronds of the local greenery, scuff a toe in the slag on the road, maybe scratch our heads for a moment and stare up into the clouds lowering overhead, and... Lights! Cameras! Action! WRITERS virtual gathering, take 3.14159, mark! CRACK! The host calls out, "Alphonse! A Table for 1,000 or so?" [the air tingles, a soft mist envelops us, and there are small soft pings and rings...something pinches your calf and giggles, a high-pitched giggle like a lightbulb breaking...] the mist fades and we see an expanse of white tablecloth, set with crystal, fine silver, and plates so fine that they shine. Seated around the edges, which are as near as your heart and as far as forever, are writers. Yes, writer after writer, some in suits and ties, some in fine evening dress, some in scruffy flannel bathrobes that comfort the skin with the knubby softness, others in the finest hairshirts envy can buy, and of course those who insist on the emperor's own tailoring as the best clothes that the eye can't see...there are even corps after corpse of unseen, unknown, or temporarily absent writers...even the odd unwriter or two, all sitting at the table. (okay, a few may be under the table. a few flying somewhere over the table. maybe even a few who don't want to sit at the table, they'd rather stand. but, on the average, they are all there, in spirit if not in seat.) In front of each one, Alphonse has deposited a tall flute filled with ambrosia. Genuine ambrosia, imported from the hills of Olympus at great personal effort by your host. "Lift your glasses, then, one and all, in salute to what might be," he says. He lifts his thin bubble of sheerest glass, the sun striking strange rainbows of color from the heavenly beverage swirling inside. The light shifts through red, orange, yellow into butterscotch, dances a moment, then swerves off through green lilacs, into blue birds, indigo girls, and violents most fearful, soaring rapidly into the tartans, pagan patterns, milky ways, and other incredible transitions of light and color playing over the white tablecloth. "What? Drink to what?" a sad voice asks. "To writers. Oh, maybe not the writers that you see, who are just you and me, but to WRITERS, to that list that could be, to that shining beyond us, to that sandbox untouched by the nuclear blasts..." And a few lift their glasses, slowly. The colors glisten in the eldritch sunshine and moonshine of pixels aglow with the wild flow of the internet. They sip, just a taste, of that strange nectar of the gods. "It tastes like sloe gin, but faster!" one says. "No, what are you talking about, it's the finest mocha latte!" another murmurs. Around the edges of the scene, the grass begins to grow again. A brook puddles and muddles its way alongside the crowd. A plain, heavy with grain, unrolls into the rain. "To stories untold, and poems unfelled. To songs unsung, and hearts unwrung. To all the expressions, of your art, of your craft, of you..." the host continues. The Rabelaisian contingent, supplied with bottles after spurning those silly little glasses, roars and chugs a huge shot each. A strange forest, replete with dark crannies, waving branches, and shadows that move even in the stillness of the night, lurches up from the ground on another side. The odor of mildew and rot rolls out from its unhallowed depths, shrouded in the moan of the dying wind. "To author, journalist, reporter, magazine writer, contributor, poet, novelist, essayist, biographer, dramatist, playwright, literary critic, foreign correspondent, short story writer, novelist, feature writer, sports writer, fashion writer, anecdotist, amanuensis, ghostwriter, sonwriter, copyist, scribe, editor, war correspondent, special writer, freelance writer, scribbler, pen pusher, hack, newshound or whatever kind of writer you discover when you let yourself be the best writer you can be...and what a wonderful surprise that may be!" the host drones on... More writers glare, then tilt their head, then grab a glass and toast. A mountainside lifts its bulk, towering in the background. On one shoulder, it wears a glacier, sparkling and crackling in the sunshine. The other shoulder lifts an alpine meadow into the air, wildflowers blooming, and a rustic wooden cabin waiting for a writer to open the door and tell the tale of she who lives there... The toasts continue, as scenes and characters, plots, metaphors and similes, themes and dreams and reams take form, recede, reform even clearer than before. The taste of ambrosia... The sweat of the muse. Here's to us. Still writing. tink