Cosmogenesis

So I had ten minutes before my Diana Wynne Jones panel at Arisia, I'd gotten my mocha latte, and on some salmonid whim, I crossed back to the dealers' room, turned down an alley that I hadn't seen before, and saw Cloud being born, caught in glass. Fire and air! And I stood and I gazed. The last thing I need is more stuff. But I couldn't walk on. Out from a curtain popped a child apprentice and with perfect composure and courtesy proceeded to sell me his father's bowl by showing me everything else in the shop. It's by Josh Simpson and it's breathtakingly gorgeous.



Otherwise, it was being a lovely con already, though it took me until then to shake off the louring tooth-and-clawishness of life. By that panel and the next ("Setting as Character" on Monday morning), I felt I had my wits back and could give my colleagues and the audience a lively conversation. Not that the other panels were at all dull, thanks to my brilliant company: sovay and cucumberseed and Bob Kuhn and JoSelle Vanderhooft and teenybuffalo and Merav Hoffman, and the whole Legion of Light and Shadow. Thank you all.



After all my fret, exactly two people came to my reading, one half-asleep, plus a very late other reader with the galaxy's worst headcold. So I can't tell you how it went over. I got through it.



What went over blissfully (it was after I acquired the bowl) was the Readercon tea. A roomful of eager young persons talked with me about carrying on the great tradition and keeping it new: a Renaissance. There was tea. There were madeleines to dip in it, and five or six kinds of homebaked cookies. And only one guy in the room had ever heard me, so I got to do a set of Cloudish classics with an enraptured roomful at my feet. It doesn't get much better than that.



I loved the Post-Meriden Radio Players' witty presentation of "Red Shift: Beyond the Edge of Beyond!" I loved the Sassafrass concert with Stranger Ways: layers of Norse polyphony and folk rock. A blazing quarrel between Loki and Odin, followed by an excellent performance of "Tom o' Bedlam," with a woodblock drum: O joy!



Nine