The saddest car in Seattle

The saddest car in Seattle
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

I pass by this car two or three times a week on my way to work. It's always been somewhere near the office. In December it used be parked in one of the six free spots right in front, which are always taken by someone, although recently it was parked a block and a half away, between the meat curing wearhouse and the animal testing lab. It's so distinctive that my blurring the license plate was probably pointless.

What you can't see is the slow disintegration of the car. Or its inhabitants. Six months ago, all of its windows were intact; now the passenger-side window is shattered, replaced with multiple layers of plastic. The insulation around the edge of the door on the driver's side now dangles in the road. The interior of the car, what can be seen of it, is packed floor to ceiling with layers of junk. The windows are often covered with layers of blankets to provide insulation like medieval tapestries.

Two people, both significantly overweight, live in that car. They emerge with the sun and the business day to begin panhandling all over again. Both wear Real Change badges (Real Change is "the newspaper of homelessness in Seattle": purchase of the newspaper helps "create opportunity and a voice for low-income people while taking action to end homelessness and poverty") and hawk Real Change newsletters on the streets. It doesn't seem to be doing them any good. They sleep in the car, leaving the powered scooter and the old lady wheelbasket outside. They must not sleep easily.

Friday, as I passed by this spot in the morning, the car was gone. So was the wheelbasket. The powered scooter was still there but the basket that hangs up front off the handlebars had been smashed and dangled from one strap. By the time I left in the afternoon, even the scooter was gone.

Is it burnout? Is it that I'm 40? Is it that I'm a dad?

I've been writing a lot but I haven't been releasing as much as I'd want to. I mean, I have Sterlings, which if I ever finished fiddling I'd be able to post and at the rate of one every two weeks I'd have an entire year's worth of material. And I've been having fun writing in my own private universes, but still...

It's not enough to just show people having sex. I've been looking at the shards of stories that I have lying around and decided that the ones that lack verve for me lack theme and adventure. They're not boldly going anywhere I haven't gone before. In many cases, I look at the story and can't decide "What am I trying to say with this story?" I don't have themes for them and that's the weak point. There's no moral to the story.

The recent observation someone made about my "melancholy phase" has struck a chord. My characters have hit a wall in their existences, living with a universe that's widing down and nothing more to their lives than what they've got before their eyes. The promise of something "more" is a very powerful incentive for human beings. Even if there's no real evidence for whatever that "more" is, it's still powerful.

The best-selling books that never appear on the NYT Bestseller lists are the Left Behind series. I mean, if it weren't for the NYT's lefty biases those books would never leave the top ten: more volumes in the LB series have sold than all of Harry Potter! That's a hell of an audience for any author to reach. And unlike erotica fans, these people are already primed to make donations.

This morning I started out on a new arc in the Journal Entries, one in which Shardik and Aaden decide that they've both found Jesus and although they're good friends, they can't do those abominable acts anymore. A long multi-episode subarc where Ken and P'nyssa debate whether or not their relationship consists of bestiality (if David Weber can do it and keep his fanbase, so can I), and finally a big finale thirty episodes or so down the line when the Rapture comes along and only the AIs notice because large chunks of shared substrate where "The weird AIs" used to hang out are suddenly left vacant and hollow.