This morning, I posted this photo on my personal Facebook page:
And if you think it's hard to look at, imagine how it felt. The left side of my body has been screaming at me all day. The important bit is somewhat obscured by all the blood, however: to wit, I started running last week. And while from the looks of it things health-related haven't improved much, I'm hopeful. Currently I'm using a variant on the Couch to 5k program, which increases your endurance by tiny intervals. That's a good thing, because for the most part exercise makes me feel like I'm dying. However, even with the fall, this morning I felt just a wee bit less like dying. So...progress?
I often joke around with the LOML that should the zombie apocalypse ever occur, it would be nice to, you know, actually be able to outrun the zombies. Sometimes I picture myself in one of those movies, sneaking around a grocery store sifting through hearing aid batteries and old boxes of Count Chocula. I'm with a few other survivors when the horde comes crashing through the plate glass windows. Everybody scatters and runs like hell and...it doesn't end well for me. As I go down feeling the scrape of zombie teeth on my skull I start to wonder if those guys just let me hang out with them because they knew I'd make good bait should they ever need to jet. Like the old saying goes, I don't have to be the fastest, I just need to be faster than *you*.
Not that I actually believe the zombie apocalypse is imminent, but hey, it helps to be prepared for any eventuality these days. You spend your days writing about this stuff and it starts weighing on you. I do have an active imagination after all.
Or maybe I've just played too much Left for Dead and Resident Evil. At any rate, if no deadly contagion is released by a nefarious corporation in the near future, I should be good to go.
Speaking of apocalypses, I'm happy to announce that my story, "A Gardener's Guide to the Apocalypse," has been picked up for publication in a new anthology by Parvus Press entitled If This Goes On. Here's what the editor, Cat Rambo, has to say about the project:
This project is born of rage and sorrow and hope. Rage at the way America has been stolen and how those thieves have been eating away at its infrastructure. Sorrow at the lives being destroyed in the sorrow as well as for the earth as its protections are stripped away by a kleptocratic and corrupt regime. Sorrow for the way words themselves have been distorted and twisted away from truth.
And hope. Because humans continue to progress and evolve, even though that climb is a rocky one and we slide back sometimes. We seem to have done so recently. And so this anthology, an attempt to rally, to inspire, and to awaken. Some stories will despair, but others will have the light we seek, lamps to light the path and show the pitfalls as we continue upwards.
This anthology is part of my resistance. I hope it will be part of yours as well.
My story is about coping with loss, and (hopefully) learning to find ways to start anew. Though I'm a notorious cynic, deep down I have an abiding hope that the Earth will ultimately survive all the horrible things we've done to it, and that maybe someday someone will come alone who'll treat her better than we have.
Now I'm off to seek medical attention.