07/21/00 -- It's all over, there isn't any more

It's all over, but what's it over for?

(With apologies to the Squirrel Nut Zippers)

Well, that's it.  It's over.  I'm still in shock, I think.  Everything felt so anticlimactic.  We had our critique session: five stories on our last day.  Then, Maureen lead us in a little Clarion pledge to give us a sense of closure once we were all done.  It was a good thing.  I think that if she hadn't done that, we'd've been expecting to come in Monday for the same thing ... again and again and again until we died.  Clarion Zombies.

Lunch happened in Owen, then I started packing my room.   Weird feeling.  Really weird feeling.  I'm writing this on my laptop right now (and that's why this is going to get up late!) because I packed up my desktop.   I probably won't get online again until either Sunday night latelatelate or Monday whenever I wake up -- depends on when I actually manage to get home.

The original plan for leaving was to pack up the car tomorrow night, leave everything loaded, and drive off bright and (way too) early Sunday morning.   But Linda's car got broken into last night (which totally sucks!  I've been there, done that and it isn't fun to deal with.) and so I decided that wasn't an option.

So like I said, I started packing.  Jennifer and Mark hung out with me while I ripped my manuscript pile apart: took out the pages with comments, dumped the rest into the recycling pile.  We decided around 3:45 to go see if Maureen wanted to wander over to Curious Books (I desperately wanted to get pulp-cover-postcards to decorate my cube with when I get back).  She was cooking bread pudding again (yum!!!), so we all chatted for a little while and then Jennifer, Mark and I wandered down Grand River toward Curious Books.

What we saw on the way frightened us ... a lot.  At the chocolate place I've loved for six weeks, we saw some guy dressed in an inflatable moose costume.  I'm guessing he was a chocolate mousse.  I was afraid.  So was Mark.  We avoided him on the way back (after I spent $10 on postcards!).

Quick trip to Meijer.  Probably my last trip to Meijer.   I needed packing tape and a box for the manuscripts.  Mark needed to UPS some boxes home so we did that, too.  Bought beer for tonight's bbq then came back to campus.

Dinner... It was fun.  Mostly mellow.  The cake was abso-frigging-lutely rad.  Lister took the t-shirt design and had whomever made the cake put it on the cake.  Way cool. :)  Greg made more curry and, er, well, those little fried bread things that I can't quite remember the name of (they're one thing if they fluff, they're another thing if they don't).

After dinner, we actually had enough folks together for Mafia!   I was afraid we wouldn't.  And we almost didn't, but then we did.  And we played!  *boing!!!*

Greg narrated the first game ... no idea what voice he was using.   Maybe the voice he used for the Porky joke he told me earlier after dinner (don't ask, I probably won't remember once I sober up).  I was three hard lemonades in and giggling.  I laughed at everything and then some.  It got to the point where people wanted to kill me because they thought it might make me stop laughing.  Didn't help.  Every time Greg made a sheep (goat?) noise, I laughed hysterically.  I was the village giggling idiot.  And then I was the laughing dead.

Last game, Greg was Yoda.  And Mark died.  And I wound up bouncing over to the seat of death because it was the goth thing to do (I was the valley goth candle maker mall rat of the village).  Greg got killed.  I didn't last after that.  Not that I've figured out the connection.  (I was four hard lemonades into things at this point -- color me irrational and brain-dead at this point.)

I think I had to laugh.  I probably would've laughed just as hard and just as much if I hadn't been drunk.  If I hadn't laughed, I would have cried.  I almost cried during the pledge this morning.  I almost cried half a dozen times during dinner (and as many times between pledge and dinner).  I've almost cried a whole bunch between dinner and now, too.

It's over.  Somehow, I didn't expect it to end.  And I don't feel like I've been here six weeks.  I feel I've somehow cheated myself out of something, but I'm not sure what.  Time has cheated me, too.  I want to go back to week 2.  Then fast forward to week five, have that and week six, then go back to week two.  Start inf-loop.  I feel like I've learned a lot, or at least changed a lot, but I'm not sure I can point to something and say, there, that's what I've learned -- that's what's going to make me a better writer, what's going to make me publishable.  I can look at "Sisters and Sirens" and know that I did something with that, but I don't know what.  I really don't.  I don't know how I did it, either.  I only know that I did it.

So I'll finish packing tomorrow (clothes are still everywhere but everything else is almost completely packed).  I'm going to have breakfast with Mark and Jennifer in the cafeteria (I've still got money on my card -- I ate out way too much) instead of going with folks to IHOP.  I'll say good bye to Greg and Maureen.  I guess Paula and I will pack up the car and we'll go.  We'll drive until we drop, grab a hotel (if we aren't in Des Moines by that point), sleep, and keep going again in the morning.  If I get to Des Moines before noon, I think I'll probably push on and keep driving until I get home.  That'll put me home by midnight and I'll have two full days at home to decompress.  I'll probably go stir-crazy.  I won't be able to poke my head out the door and find another Clarionette.  I won't be able to walk down the stairs and find Jennifer and/or Mark.  Everything's going to be different.

I've been gone for six weeks... but like Greg said, it's like six weeks in a black hole.  Six weeks in a black hole.  I wonder what the world's done without me.  I wonder what work's done without me.  I don't want to think about it right now, though.  I just want to hold onto the feeling of Clarion as long as I can before I have to get back to the real world.

I probably won't read anything for a while after I get home.  And I think I'm going to lay off the keyboard (as far as fiction and rewriting are concerned) for a while.  My brain needs a break.  So do my hands.  I'm not sure how I'm going to handle talking to my coworkers on Wednesday.  It'll be weird.  At least I'm going back, though... so whoever decided to bet that I wouldn't is gonna lose.  I'll be there... sometime between 9am and 10am.  Delusional.  Confused.  And feeling incomplete without my fellow Clarionettes.  Without stories to critique.  Without the rush of going on three to five hours of sleep a night for days on end.

Just when I think I've got it started, it's over.

And it is.

I just don't want to admit it.