First Tuesday in November

[itsallovernow]

Went to my polling place, was told I wasn't voting there. Went to where they told me, waited in line (yeah voters, boo long line that proved futile). Cried. Called the registrar, drove - late - to work. Looked up my polling place online. Again. Original location. Called the 800 number, original location. Now I have to go back and get a provisional ballot. You vote because it's a right, and a privilege. Other people have braved far worse than a little inconvenience. But I was astonished by my tears, by the sense of helplessness, and the way that this many years later, three presidential elections, and numerous mid-term elections later, I still need to place my vote, make my voice heard.

1410 words on the novel. So, so much harder than fic because the ideas mush up into layers, don't flow in a steady stream and I keep filling up the spaces like cupcake filling, instead of spreading it out like chocolate souffle.

Started to talk zombies yesterday with rubberneck. The prevelance of the undead (is that vampires, or are zombies technically just the walking dead), hmm, regardless, the "Zombies are everywhere" feeling is interesting. Are we feeling like the walking dead, re-enacting the ironies from Dawn of the Dead, shopping malls and consumerism run rampant so that we can't tell the difference between the living and the merely walking?

Feldman's Zombie fic freaked me out, partially because she's just that good a writer, and partially because there are layers, LAYERS, dude, to her zombies. Rape, and hunger, need, and momentum and confusion, seeing life through the filter of dead eyes. Taking from the living, sucking out the marrow, and what do zombies represent to us? Something with will and without reason? A need for a fundamental life force, because while vampires are romantic - blood sucking, heart's blood, sexual release, Zombie's are mostly disgusting, and are far more political - communism, and bigotry, and consumerism instead of retaliation against the mainstrean, existing by passion and blood like vampires. Well, Zombies are disgusting. They eat flesh, brains, are mindless and brutal and rarely explicitly violent, just persistent.

Hmmm. Not real sure where I want to go with this, but it's interesting nevertheless.

Comments

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

wow, i'm glad you still got to vote. i think i would have cried too. sounds like something out of catch-22.

as for zombies; a metaphor for so much in our daily lives that feels out of control? i think what you say is dead on (sorry, i couldn't resist). *g*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - Zombies also inspire puns like nothing else:)

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

yup. there should be a book:"zombie puns" *g*

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

because while vampires are romantic - blood sucking, heart's blood, sexual release, Zombie's are mostly disgusting, and are far more political - communism, and bigotry, and consumerism instead of retaliation against the mainstrean, existing by passion and blood like vampires.

This sparks a thought, that perhaps zombies are also a somewhat sexual metaphor, only the question isn't repression/expression so much as biology/psychology, the body's needs and processes and all those disgusting things that the puberty fairy brings versus the loftier planes of the soul--the nightmare being that the body trumps the soul, devours the mind and shambles on, unstoppable.

And if society doesn't demand any more from us than to fill out slot and shamble on, of what use is the heart and mind? The living vs. the merely walking, as you say. What does it mean to be alive, compared to what's demanded of us? So zombies are also a way to talk about individuality vs. conformity.

Heh. I seem to be slaphappy. I shall eat dinner and become one with my Big Giant Hardcover. dad's fine, mom already ate real food, I'm spent

I'm so glad that you got to vote, and that you did so well on the novel today!

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Oooooh! Yes, yes, to all of that, because I think it hits on both the idea, and the appeal of zombies - sexuality in it's messiness, it's uneasy drive and the less than lovely realities of the actual process versus the way it feels, the way we look at it and write about it, and individuality as well, being part of a mass of people, moving without purpose, but endlessly forward to a future one's not sure one wants.

And you've managed to address many of those things in your fic (and should also go and say hi to troyswann because both of you have interesting things to say on this:)

And YEAAAHH! So glad your dad is okay, and that you can relax:) Hugs, honey:)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. I like very much this rumination on zombies. I think you are quite correct about them, insofar as they are not so much violent as needing, not frightening because of their anger as because of the inexorable progess they make, parts lopped off and still coming, unaware of their own disintegration. I always wonder if, once you'd stripped off the flesh you'd just find need at the core.

Maybe that's what's scary (the decaying is gross, but not scary in and of itself, except insofar as it is a corruption that we will all face and shouldn't have to face in the livingroom), that laid-bare articulation of unbearable, inescapable need.

Hmmm. Don't know where I was going with that, or if it should go anywhere, but you've set wheels spinning with this post. Interrrrrressstinnnnnnng.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Oooh, what a fabulous, terrifying possibility. The basic need at the core, the destructive pervasivness of it, despite the clumsy loping pawing, the decay. But oooh, I so think it should go somewhere.

This ties in beautifully with the earlier ruminations, and the fic (Feldman's Zombie fic) that inspired it. Thank you!!