Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The dazzle of glory

... has blinded me. :-P The people from Periplous have finally published the collection of short stories in which I have participated. The book is out. I don't have it in my hands yet. Eventually I will. Like I care...

It is strange, in a sense. I have been waiting for this book for so long (it was supposed to be out in Christmas) that now that it is finally out, I don't really care. The enthusiasm is gone. And why not? Yeah, one of the stories in there is mine and hopefully it will be the weirdest of all. It will be the only English one too. I have often wondered about a lot of things: whether they butchered it or not, what people will think about this little monstrosity of mine (heh heh heh) and whether it would have been better if I had smoothed it out a bit, turned the boy protagonist into a girl, etc. I mean, gay romance between a serial killer and a teenager? For the love of god/dess, this is Greece! But I smoothed out nothing, did not alter a word to make it more accessible, morally inclined or less annoying (and hopefully they haven't either) and out it is. Maybe they chose it because it was so weird. "The bearded lady among the ordinary gals", as I had written to a pen pal. Maybe they picked it cause it was the only English one worth publishing and they needed at least one English since the competition was organised by the British Council. I'll be damned if I know. I'll be damned anyway for harassing little boys, but as I read in that T-shirt, "we are all going to hell anyway, I'm just struggling for a good seat." Meh.

You know what? It is just like that Chaos Magick theory I had read. You can cease any of your habits and this will not change who you are. You can abandon your beliefs, alter your ideas, change your sexual orientation and still not change who you are. You are not your habits, your beliefs, your ideas. You are not your routine. You are something entirely different than all these things. They are just a mask over your true self and people sometimes forget that this mask can be removed at will, so they let it stick on their faces. And then the mask becomes you.

For all I know, in ten years' time I might be in Hawaii, fishing. So- it is not really important, it is just a thing. Now- let's do something else.