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People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith
Wednesday, July 2, 1997
I was sitting at the PC, putzing around idly because a Cacophony cohort has not yet sent me the July info, when I realized I ought to be writing a journal entry! I hope to be able to update my journal from Delaware, but if I can't, I can't.
But not getting the Cacophony info out there would bother me. That page gets about four times the traffic that any other page of mine gets. It's not always easy to tell what gets folks to actually join us in an event, but getting the word out can't hurt! I always like to ask new "members" how they heard about us, and often the answer is "on the net" or "on the web". To not have the July issue of Machination on the net until the month is half over would really bug me. I'll try to access my account from my sister's computer, but I won't know for certain if I can till I am there.
I packed up my duffel bag, and it seems to have mysteriously shrunk! Maybe I have more than one, of a similar make and model and state of deterioration, varying only in size? I know I had one at Potlatch 6, and I could have sworn it was larger than the one I packed tonight. I have various suitcases that I could also use, but a suitcase probably would need to be checked while a soft duffel may be brought on the plane.
My sister told me she was amazed by how much my nephew J--- remembered from taking this same trip two years ago, when he was four. He was asking her many details about the trip and the flight, what would be the same, what would be different. He even remembered the toys she gave him on the plane!
* * * * * * * *
Al and I are reading a lot of the same people. I am likely to write a diarist a short note when I see anything in an entry that I want to comment on or offer more information about. This is certainly a long-held custom in traditional fannish sf fandom. There is even a TLA for it: LOC, Letter of Comment. [I am unclear on whether this is pronounced "lock" or "loke" or either.] This is used as a noun or a verb; "I owe you a LOC," or "I need to do some LOC'ing," would be usual fannish locutions. This is part of what makes a zine or APA (Amateur Publishing Association) like a mailing list or newsgroup, except in slow motion. Someone writes something, someone else comments on it, then someone else comments on that! Since feedback and egoboo (ego boost) are the reasons someone creates a zine in the first place, one needs to respond or risk being dropped from the list. That's why many zines, instead of a marked subscription price, have a notation about being available for "the Usual." The Usual is a response of some kind, whether a letter or one's own zine in trade.
That ethic may have been part of my motivation for starting this journal. I get so much pleasure out of reading others, it seemed only fair to contribute something of my own.
Learning all the fannish jargon and history over the past few years has been very entertaining. It's like a shared universe; the feuds, factions and flamewars on the net have existed in fandom for the last sixty years (and probably exist in any small community). I certainly didn't realize on first meeting a lot of my Seattle friends that they were actually SMOFs (Secret Masters of Fandom). Of course, if you ask them, they deny it and point to other folks and say that they are the real SMOFs.
A big part of my fannish education was the bowling nights we had for several years. Bowling is suitable for socializing, so after we finished folding, stuffing and stamping for Apparatchik, we could read our copies and I could have all the references explained to me. The writing in APAK is/was entertaining even without knowing all the ins and outs, but having experts to explicate made it all the better.
I was reading Gus (an April entry) and he was talking about sampling other diarists and not having context to really feel the reality of the other writers' lives. This is why I enjoy finding a journal that's been going for a while; I can devour it in chunks and the accumulation of details builds a real world for me. In fact, that's what I am doing with Gus's musings. I read his daily entries, I went back and plowed through Big Fun, and I am getting caught up at the rate of about a month in a sitting. Of course, a lot of what he talks about is familiar to me already; I was born in northern Virginia, and went to college in the Shenandoah Valley. I have no urge to go back, but it's fun to hear familiar place names.
Reading in chunks also lets you see the patterns which might pass you by if you only read day by day. When I was catching up on Nigel Richardson, I could see the change when he started altering his chemistry. Gradually his fellow train-riders were just annoying and contemptible, instead of horrid, disgusting specimens out of a George Grosz caricature.
So maybe the accumulated bulk of my entries will make my journal more substantial and better somehow over time, like a snowball rolling down the mountain! It's like the Hindu legend of the bird coming over and over to the same spot and dropping a twig, till there was a mountain there. (Oh, dear, have I totally mis-remembered that legend?)
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