I had a conversation last night about speculative fiction with a nice young man. We talked about an author that I adore called Octavia E. Butler. She has a series called Xenogenesis. It begins with a book called Dawn. I hadn't thought of these books in a while. Dawn is the story of a woman who awakens naked and disoriented. She has been taken from earth to be inducted into an alien culture after the world has committed suicide through war and devastation by disease.
She is desperate. She begs for clothing, books as the loneliness set in. Even the food she is allowed is bland tasteless and unfamiliar. It reminds one strongly of the accounts of slavery and the middle passage. I remember reading this book and wondering why the lead character was a black woman and why the cover art for the book itself featured a dark haired white woman. As an adult I wonderd what it must have felt like for Ms. Butler to accept that. Publishers decided to use a white face to sell the book. The copy that I had featured a curly haired white woman under the title of Lilith’s brood although Lilith herself is described as a dark woman with a cloud of hair about her head. She wrote black faces into a vision of the future to speculate ton the feeling of other outside of the confines of humanity and still the inhumanity of society would plague the success of this vision.
The lead character was called Lillith. I always thought that was an appropriate name. The mother of demons and first wife of Adam and in the book the person who introduces the other remnants of the human self-immolation to the alien beings that are there caretakers. She is the one that also introduces them to the idea that these beings want to breed with the human they have saved in a sort of genetic trade which is how they have sustained themselves. She is the eternal scapegoat in this novel. The black mother that accepts the blame as the human who begin to acquiesce to the desires of the alien species cast about for some one to blame for their failure. Their failure to protect themselves, their species purity, their cultures and the life that they had before the implosion of the world that they knew. I love this book. Loved it read it and read it again. The human situation as described by Ms. Butler describes us as a species of brilliance that tries to destroy itself with it innate hierarchal nature.
My dirtiest wet dream is to shoot the big-budget big screen adaptation of this story.
I would love to be a part of envisioning this as an odyssey. The space for small intense moments of humanity among the inhuman, the gigantic spectacle of living in the Amazon basin trying to repopulate Earth as well as the physical beauty and horror of the aliens species. The possibilities of recreating the Mars Colony could be endless. I think Steven Spielberg would be a good director. I would love to be DP.

I attempted to go uptown to edit the movie that i help to shoot. This past week I was supposed to work on it but was bogged down with a myriad of obstacles. I am busy as fuck.
I got laid out sick. I am so stressed out about an up-coming show I had planned.
I work full time for a hotline as a rape crisis counselor. While the work can be so fucking inspiring it can also be crazy. I love the power and resiliency of women but I hate that time and time again we are caught between circumstance and society.

I am also dealing with the loss of a good friend. Although to review in hindsight it was a longtime coming. I realized when she wanted me to be her lover last year I recoiled not out of disgust but because I recognized that I am the kind of woman people cling to for stability in a shaky world. I have rebelled against maternal type casting since I was a big boned child. I couldn't be her lover. I realized unconciously that she sought a place in my womb not in my bed. I saw our relationship change as this year progressed. I felt at time an edge to her I thought was anger or competitiveness or even possibly jealousy. There was a moment where we she called me thief of something I could not have stolen. Something she freely gave.. she wanted me to give it back with pieces of myself or at least to feel some of her pain. So she attacked me out of shame. I saw that as the time to break our friendship but I didn't based on memories of who she was.. not the reality of what she was becoming.
Then the swing of our friendship ebbed in intensity as we found our own distractions. I still saw her sharp edges occassionally but it never cut as deep as the last. I learned to avoid her anger. Maybe as a learned behavior left over from an youth of indulging maniacal tyrants.
I thought the tide was changing when we worked together. I thought the times were changing and she was in a transformative state. This was not the case. The onset seemed to happen in a few days. She was scared and felt like she was at the brink of a precipice. I told her fear is normal. We all feel like being an adult is scary. We all feel overwhelmed. You can keep going. I thought that was all she needed. a kind word. I left and I thought she was okay. Until she called me two days later to asked if I went through her garbage because she just knew some one had. She was sure that my roommate and I had placed bags to represent us, one white and one black, to taunt her disorganized thoughts. She screamed when she saw my name on a bag in her home she thought my name was haunting her it seemed. She screamed saying there are all these things left in my house that "I didn't steal" she said. She called me again. She asked me how was I trying to help her without her consent. Accusing ever, accusing of wrongdoing, of evil magic, of conspiracies to take away her gift that god gave her.
I tried to get some one to go there. To her home where I could just imagine her spinning around looking for something she could understand. They told me on the mental health line if they sent some one she probably would open the door if she were as delusional as she said. They said it would play into her delusions of persecution if she were to see strangers at her door. I worried but i went home instead of over there.
The next day she seemed fine. She left a message saying she would love to hang out and expected to see me at 9pm. I told her I had to work till midnight when I called her back and she said she thought I didn't have to work. Strange, but she sounded okay otherwise. She asked me if I had trees. I told her I didn't but she said she wanted me to come over anyway when I offered. I went there after work. I went there to see her busy. She kept going back and forh to order her thing in this brand new and far too expensive apartment. "Do you have anything to make me happy?" She asked brightly. No I didn't I answered. Her demeanor changes, she is angry and slamming things instead of moving them. I told her I was worried about her. She ignores me. I told her I wanted to see how she was doing. I offered to help she says "WhatI needed you didn't have so I guess I can do everything else myself" I told her that she was acting like she was mad at me. I told her I didn't have what she wanted and could offer nothing but company asnd if that wasd the only reason I was there I could leave as easily as I came. She said nothing as I left.

I decided she was mean and terrible as a way to quiet my worry. I saw her losing her self-hood and I chalk it up to her being a user and left it at that. When her father called looking for her frantically. I called him back reluctantly because I knew I would have to tell him what I feared and why we hadn't spokem in a week or so. I told him. i think something is wrong with your daughter. He agreed with me. He said she was angry and thought that everyone was out to discredit her. Her father also said that she called the family to bring up demons ten years buried and he wondered if she were having flashbacks. Her father wondered if he would have to retrieve his daughter. I told him I would see her that coming Sunday night. But I didn't I was tired, I didn't stop by like I said I would. That monday evening I found out that she had a violent episode at school. In front of the children she loved, collegues and the ems worker who eventually dragged her kicking and screaming into the ambulance.

I rushed to the hospital as soon as I could to hear her tell me about her being chosen and her visions of mary with flowers so red and so yellow.
I knew she was gone the woman I knew changed forever into what I could only guess at.