You are smoke
You wind your lies
Through the crowds
Til they are choking and gasping
Then you fade away and
blame the sick
that they are ill.
.
.
.
Just in case you’re tired of my Teachers’ Strike posts, here’s one that, while I know is about the strike and the misrepresentations of government spin doctors, at least it seems as if it could be about a variety of situations. 🙂
“Why are teachers even bothering to picket,
when you aren’t getting strike pay any more?”
he asked.
I told him it was because teachers are moralists
who are defending democracy
and fair working & bargaining conditions
against a corrupt government:
A government that ignores the court rulings
spends billions of tax payers’ dollars appealing
judgments by the Supreme Court
and the United Nations saying they
are WRONG to steal from our kids.
It will pay billions for a stadium roof,
but will not pay for educating its children.
I told him that in such a war,
pay is a small thing.
We will fight, because if our government
succeeds in destroying OUR union
then every other working person in this province
is in peril.
If OUR contracts can be shredded with impunity,
so can YOURS!
We are fighting for YOUR rights
and for our students’ right to a properly funded education
against a government with an agenda
to destroy public education and the middle class.
We’re fighting for YOU! I told him.
“Oh,” he said.
(early October)
I can’t go to conference this year.
Ahhh! Please come!
I can’t think what I’d pitch this year.
Stay with me!
Oh. I have that old thing I could share.
Come!
Okay.
(Mid-October)
Here, look at this piece.
I like it! Send me more!
Here, look at this piece.
I like it! Can I see more?
(November)
Yup. I really like it. Send it to her.
Here is the rest!
(December)
I like it! Let’s work together!
Here’s a contract!
.
and so begins the next part of the journey
and thanks to Leena because I could have missed it all!
Clear out the inbox
An innocuous line
looks like the others
but wait! What’s that name?
The heart starts pounding
air around feels quite thin
A note from an agent
makes me stifle a grin
Is it good news or bad?
I click closing my eyes
Open one cautiously
and to my surprise
She writes that she loves it!
A contract’s attached
I shout to the rafters
New beginnings are hatched!
.
TRUE STORY! Happened today! About an hour ago, in fact. Now to read through the fine print of the attached literary contract. Large prestigious agency though, and an agent I was very impressed by when I watched her at a conference.
Wait. Time to celebrate with some new Fluevogs? 🙂 The fun and frolicsome Kitschy kitschy Boom Boom Vivs might be appropriate for this kind of a celebration…
The readers’ bargain June 10, 2010
Tags: bargain, contract, Daniel O'Thunder, devil, evil, Ian Weir, reading, writing
It is an interesting bargain that is struck between writer and reader. The reader agrees to suspend belief, so long as the writer crafts a believable world. The art is taking the reader on a journey of the imagination that stretches so tightly it almost snaps. When the leap is too great, the reader puts down the book in disgust and may not return to it.
Ian Weir’s Daniel O’Thunder is a lovely book. I don’t want to mislead you into thinking it is full of sweetness and light, because it is a dark book full of poverty, murder, shame and the blackness of evil, but it is beautifully crafted. There is poetry in every line. Weir took me on a journey and surprised me. His narrator, who breaks the literary equivalent of the ‘4th wall’ to address us throughout the novel, is quite an enigma. Unreliable narrators are so much more painfully realistic than reliable ones!
Weir’s narrator takes us on a journey, that amid the surprises (and a token ending in BC that seemed all about qualifying for grants or awards!) leads to contemplation of evil and spirituality. He may break the contract (see what you think!) but he’s too interesting for you to be concerned.
What literary journeys have you had to abandon? What writer broke the contract and made you so irritated that you couldn’t go on?
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