Anticipation - a reading (on YouTube)
Waiting, waiting, always waiting. 360 days of waiting and still we wait some more.
If you look for me over Labor Day, you'll find me in Atlanta. As we crawl through the unending days until Dragon*Con, we are like teenagers on the night before the first day of school, restless with thoughts of old friends, new teachers and new classes. We meet up to compare schedules and lockers, check out who's new and who's missing, who’s changed and who is just the same. We revel in that moment of endless promise and possibility before the first bell rings and notes are made on our permanent records. Excitement. Anticipation. An adventure.
Only geeks, right?
We arrive early to review our battle plan, our timetable gridded out with spreadsheet-like precision, knowing it will be shredded by the first encounter wandering down the hall. We reconnoiter the terrain, though after more than half a decade, we know it like the inside of our home at night. We note any rearrangement in the landscape, new tracks, new traps, new ambush sites.
We map out each encounter space, ruins, lairs, abandoned towers, any new source of potential treasure. Like sailors on a circumnavigation, we review our upcoming ports of call, Savannah, Cairo, Singapore, Manila. Like starship troopers, we learn the alien runes designating our assigned compartments, A703, M105, L504. For the next four days, we will be minotaurs wandering through this maze, vampires who fear the slightest kiss of sun. When Monday comes, we will be like clockwork toys whose springs are in need of winding.
Right now, our springs are fully wound, tight with anticipation. We are like children craving sugar the eve of Halloween, college students preparing for half a week of Mardi Gras rolled in with New Year's Eve. Our giddiness only intensifies as we stand in line waiting to get badged and cleared for entry. Like the alarms on our watches and cameras and cell phones, we slowly count down until D-Day, H-Hour, the second when the ball drops, the panels open and we let the games begin.
On the eve of this invasion, we roam the empty halls embracing the tingling, contented silence before they burst to overflowing. We stand watch on a balcony overlooking an impending anachronistic battle where the deaths are only temporary and the violence make-believe. We can almost hear the previous year echoing through the hotel lobbies and atriums and interconnecting hallways. Though a few old veterans are missing, we feel their presence like kindly spirits moving through the haze below, friendly ghosts drawn back to the self-described best weekend of their year.
When the gates finally creak open in the morning, we abandon all our cares in a pile by the door. Our days turn into bivouacs on a wilderness adventure. We carry rations in our backpacks, sling waterskins to be filled in this land of many springs. We become a recon team for the odd and the offbeat, slipping unnoticed into the strangest panels on the strangest tracks in the smallest, sometimes most crowded rooms. The quirky ones that surface then disappear. The ones that send archetypes and ingénues stalking through our collective subconscious, or settle in our minds like weird states of matter that shouldn't quite exist. Or dance before our eyes like symbols in the formulas defining interstellar combat. Or tickle our reasoning with the myth of photographic truth. The ones that fire our imaginations. The ones that make us think
For now, we read the intel reports to choose our encounters wisely. Occasionally, we reference the topo maps to find alternate routes around blocking actions and the inevitable pitched battle between the Miss Klingon Empire contestants and the Imperial 501st that spills into the hall. We are men and women on a mission; no one can bar our way. We fight through a phalanx of Kentucky-Fried 300, their creamy white beer-bellies blinding our eyes and sending our minds reeling with thoughts that loincloths are a privilege, not a right. Armies of angels and demons and faeries hover and flit around us, attempting to distract us with their plunging necklines before battering us with their underwired wings. We claw our way through hordes of synchronized Jacksonian undead, then dice with the blunderbuss-toting ranks of Victorian steam-punk explorers who stumbled into our melee, wagering for a map to guide them home.
We stockpile provisions in our night camp, content to live off the land and our rations until we return each day to rest. We hold vigils in the drum circle each night, dancing with the shadows in the concert halls, crawling back to our bedrolls with the False Dawn Brigade to catch enough sleep to stay on track tomorrow, whatever track that is, Art or Science, Space or Writing. In the morning we might wander the Silk Road or roam the Electronic Frontier until we are consumed by an Apocalypse Rising against the horizon.
We sprinkle business cards on the tables, hoping to seed some new readers, hoping at least a few will grow. We exchange coded contacts with fellow adventurers in casual meetings over coffee or in the lull of empty rooms. When the adventure is over, we will gather virtually or face-to-face to recount our tales, exchange our lies and compare our notes and treasure as we quietly sip our coffee. Very, very quietly.
Before we break camp on Monday, we will load up with parti-colored trinkets, baubles, books and music that we haggle from dealers and artisans in the booths of the bazaar. By then, we will have become like children's tops that have wound almost completely down, wobbling before we topple over on the plane.
But now, our strings are tightly wrapped, ready for the pull that spins us into the four dizzying days we crave to create sufficient memories to see us through the remainder of the year. Until then, we wait like children impatient to open our presents on this alternative Christmas Eve, sleeplessly wondering what surprises our secret Santa has in store for us this year.
If you look for me over Labor Day, you'll find me in Atlanta. I'll be the tall, dark-haired, geeky looking guy with glasses staying in the Marriott Marquis, the one carrying the khaki shoulder pack, the one with a leather notebook always in hand. That should narrow it down to one of several thousand. If you’re truly brave or interested, find the needle in the haystack called Smoke or Nodda Imaginings. If you get close enough to read my badge, perhaps I'll see you there.
© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III
If you look for me over Labor Day, you'll find me in Atlanta. As we crawl through the unending days until Dragon*Con, we are like teenagers on the night before the first day of school, restless with thoughts of old friends, new teachers and new classes. We meet up to compare schedules and lockers, check out who's new and who's missing, who’s changed and who is just the same. We revel in that moment of endless promise and possibility before the first bell rings and notes are made on our permanent records. Excitement. Anticipation. An adventure.
Only geeks, right?
We arrive early to review our battle plan, our timetable gridded out with spreadsheet-like precision, knowing it will be shredded by the first encounter wandering down the hall. We reconnoiter the terrain, though after more than half a decade, we know it like the inside of our home at night. We note any rearrangement in the landscape, new tracks, new traps, new ambush sites.
We map out each encounter space, ruins, lairs, abandoned towers, any new source of potential treasure. Like sailors on a circumnavigation, we review our upcoming ports of call, Savannah, Cairo, Singapore, Manila. Like starship troopers, we learn the alien runes designating our assigned compartments, A703, M105, L504. For the next four days, we will be minotaurs wandering through this maze, vampires who fear the slightest kiss of sun. When Monday comes, we will be like clockwork toys whose springs are in need of winding.
Right now, our springs are fully wound, tight with anticipation. We are like children craving sugar the eve of Halloween, college students preparing for half a week of Mardi Gras rolled in with New Year's Eve. Our giddiness only intensifies as we stand in line waiting to get badged and cleared for entry. Like the alarms on our watches and cameras and cell phones, we slowly count down until D-Day, H-Hour, the second when the ball drops, the panels open and we let the games begin.
On the eve of this invasion, we roam the empty halls embracing the tingling, contented silence before they burst to overflowing. We stand watch on a balcony overlooking an impending anachronistic battle where the deaths are only temporary and the violence make-believe. We can almost hear the previous year echoing through the hotel lobbies and atriums and interconnecting hallways. Though a few old veterans are missing, we feel their presence like kindly spirits moving through the haze below, friendly ghosts drawn back to the self-described best weekend of their year.
When the gates finally creak open in the morning, we abandon all our cares in a pile by the door. Our days turn into bivouacs on a wilderness adventure. We carry rations in our backpacks, sling waterskins to be filled in this land of many springs. We become a recon team for the odd and the offbeat, slipping unnoticed into the strangest panels on the strangest tracks in the smallest, sometimes most crowded rooms. The quirky ones that surface then disappear. The ones that send archetypes and ingénues stalking through our collective subconscious, or settle in our minds like weird states of matter that shouldn't quite exist. Or dance before our eyes like symbols in the formulas defining interstellar combat. Or tickle our reasoning with the myth of photographic truth. The ones that fire our imaginations. The ones that make us think
For now, we read the intel reports to choose our encounters wisely. Occasionally, we reference the topo maps to find alternate routes around blocking actions and the inevitable pitched battle between the Miss Klingon Empire contestants and the Imperial 501st that spills into the hall. We are men and women on a mission; no one can bar our way. We fight through a phalanx of Kentucky-Fried 300, their creamy white beer-bellies blinding our eyes and sending our minds reeling with thoughts that loincloths are a privilege, not a right. Armies of angels and demons and faeries hover and flit around us, attempting to distract us with their plunging necklines before battering us with their underwired wings. We claw our way through hordes of synchronized Jacksonian undead, then dice with the blunderbuss-toting ranks of Victorian steam-punk explorers who stumbled into our melee, wagering for a map to guide them home.
We stockpile provisions in our night camp, content to live off the land and our rations until we return each day to rest. We hold vigils in the drum circle each night, dancing with the shadows in the concert halls, crawling back to our bedrolls with the False Dawn Brigade to catch enough sleep to stay on track tomorrow, whatever track that is, Art or Science, Space or Writing. In the morning we might wander the Silk Road or roam the Electronic Frontier until we are consumed by an Apocalypse Rising against the horizon.
We sprinkle business cards on the tables, hoping to seed some new readers, hoping at least a few will grow. We exchange coded contacts with fellow adventurers in casual meetings over coffee or in the lull of empty rooms. When the adventure is over, we will gather virtually or face-to-face to recount our tales, exchange our lies and compare our notes and treasure as we quietly sip our coffee. Very, very quietly.
Before we break camp on Monday, we will load up with parti-colored trinkets, baubles, books and music that we haggle from dealers and artisans in the booths of the bazaar. By then, we will have become like children's tops that have wound almost completely down, wobbling before we topple over on the plane.
But now, our strings are tightly wrapped, ready for the pull that spins us into the four dizzying days we crave to create sufficient memories to see us through the remainder of the year. Until then, we wait like children impatient to open our presents on this alternative Christmas Eve, sleeplessly wondering what surprises our secret Santa has in store for us this year.
If you look for me over Labor Day, you'll find me in Atlanta. I'll be the tall, dark-haired, geeky looking guy with glasses staying in the Marriott Marquis, the one carrying the khaki shoulder pack, the one with a leather notebook always in hand. That should narrow it down to one of several thousand. If you’re truly brave or interested, find the needle in the haystack called Smoke or Nodda Imaginings. If you get close enough to read my badge, perhaps I'll see you there.
© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
What about now? Or now? Or now?
We leave Thursday for our 7th outing to Dragon*Con. Our schedules are already packed with possibilities, even more than last year. Each year is different. There are several panels I'd spotted last year hoping to catch this year that are gone. But there are some interesting replacements. Our friends tend to wonder about us. We don't usually do the celebrity panels like they do. We find more enjoyment in the weird ones that when we recount them, people say, I didn't know that was there.
We'll see which name goes on the badge this year. The past two, it's been Smoke to honor him letting us go after Karen's treatment. I may change it to Noddfa Imaginings to synch it up with the business cards.
We have 300 business cards ready, some on card stock, others on transparencies that we'll leave out to direct people to the websites. Hopefully, Twitter will have its act back together before we go. I'm not quite sure what the goal is with those other than to gain exposure. I mean I'm giving away fiction, essays and lines and asking nothing in return, except maybe a few more readers or followers or comments. Not exactly a great business model, is it?
But the point is that we have fun, meet new people, embrace interesting ideas, maybe find a few books and perhaps learn something in the process. Worth the price of admission, at least for us. One day, I'll convince a few more people to give it a try.