{"id":2002,"date":"2010-02-19T01:59:03","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T09:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=2002"},"modified":"2010-02-19T02:12:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T10:12:37","slug":"at-the-core-of-the-world-for-2nd-to-last-chap-of-jim-and-the-flims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/19\/at-the-core-of-the-world-for-2nd-to-last-chap-of-jim-and-the-flims\/","title":{"rendered":"“At the Core of the World” Near End of JIM AND THE FLIMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feb 16, 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

I got the first thousand words or so written on my chapter \u201cThe Goddess\u201d\u009d today, the second-to-last chapter of my novel, Jim and the Flims<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The last couple of weeks, I\u2019ve been working on a painting of the scene in this chapter, showing Jim and Val in the sea at Flimsy\u2019s core. I thought I finished the painting yesterday morning, but today in the afternoon, I revised it a little bit more after writing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the Core of the World\u201d\u009d. Acrylic, 24\u201d\u009d x 18\u201d\u009d. February, 2010.<\/em> Click here <\/a>for larger image.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure what to call the painting. I considered calling it Unknown Legend<\/em>, because it\u2019s so clearly an illustration depicting some specific chain of events\u2014but nobody (not even me, at least not fully) knows what the events are.<\/p>\n

That must be Val who\u2019s helping Jim cut off a piece of that big jiva\u2019s tendril. I figure Jim has his young friend Durkle\u2019s sword.<\/p>\n

(I might mention here that (a) I derive my images of the jivas from the cartoonist and artist Jim Woodring\u2019s work <\/a>and that (b) it\u2019s really only a coincidence that the main character in my novel is called Jim\u2014the book was well underway before I met Woodring or started using jivas.)<\/p>\n

Initially I\u2019d imagined that my Jim would be fighting his way past the jiva, but maybe we\u2019ve seen enough jiva-fighting by now. This picture suggests that the jiva is dead or maybe just acquiescent\u2014given that she\u2019s somewhat passively allowing Jim and Val handle her tail.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the goddess of Flimsy in the background. Maybe the goddess killed the jiva and told Jim and Val to cut off a piece of it for her to eat? Or maybe they\u2019re supposed to get something special from inside the jiva? A huge gem for the goddess.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I like the concept of a huge gem, that has a good fairy-tale quality, finding a treasure inside the body of the slain monster. But maybe I don\u2019t want to bring the gem thing in. I don\u2019t absolutely have to make my story match the picture that I happened to paint. But I do, at least in principle, like the notion of letting my subconscious painterly process provide some input into the plot.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to overly slow things up. At this point the author, the narrator and the readers are on the luge of dramatic exigency, racketing down the slope, longing for the climax.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Feb 17, 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m still wondering what Jim\u2019s going to do with that piece of jiva tail he\u2019s slicing off. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a different slant on that gem-in-jiva idea that I wrote about yesterday.<\/p>\n

Souls are more valuable then gems. In Jim and the Flims<\/em>, souls take the forms of sparkling little \u201csprinkles.\u201d\u009d So it\u2019s better if Jim is getting sprinkles from the jiva, and planning to give them to the goddess.<\/p>\n

When I was talking to the cartoonist and artist Jim Woodring at the Clarion West party in Seattle this summer, I casually said something like, \u201cIt\u2019s no big deal to have a soul, anything can have a soul, it\u2019s just existence, or maybe a little bit of computational capacity.\u201d\u009d I was on my hylozoic kick. And Woodring draws himself up, acting flabbergasted. \u201cA soul\u2014a soul is by no means easily made.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Suppose that I go with Woodring\u2019s view of things. So the sprinkles\/souls are rare and precious. And the goddess of Flimsy is more or less continually sending sprinkles down to the septillion inhabited worlds of our universe so that new beings can keep being born. So it make sense that she\u2019d be recycling sprinkles.<\/p>\n

But we might also suppose that Flimsy is, with some difficulty, producing new sprinkles as well. Perhaps they\u2019re growing in the flowers of the water lilies of the Paradise Sea.<\/p>\n

And, now, getting back to my painting, At the Core of the World<\/em>, what if that jiva Jim is carving on is the Memsahib High Jiva, the fattest of them all, the Empress of all jivas who hooks into all the bobbling bulbs down in the Dark Gulf. And suppose also that this Core Jiva accumulates all the souls that her subordinates catch. And there\u2019s a huge stash of sprinkles tucked into her body, maybe into the tip of her tail, and Jim\u2019s carrying it up to the goddess of Flimsy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Feb 18, 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had a good day. I wrote about 1,600 words and now the first draft of the \u201cThe Goddess\u201d\u009d chapter is done. It helped to have the painting to think about. I\u2019ll revise the chapter once or twice and move into the final chapter soon.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to stay at it, but, on the other hand, I don\u2019t want to stop. At this point it\u2019s almost like an athletic thing, like finishing a hike. I\u2019m driving myself, but in a fairly pleasant way.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking now about my next revision—which I hope to do tomorrow or this weekend or Monday. I have to put in the sprinkles drifting out of the water-lily blossoms.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m thinking it\u2019s better if the jiva tail-tip is like the cap on a plastic squeeze bottle of mustard, and that the whole jiva is full of sprinkles. So instead of the sprinkles (= souls) being in the tip of the tail they\u2019re in the main body fo the jiva. And the goddess sticks that main tendril of the jiva into herself, like she\u2019s filling up a car with gas. Vrooom<\/em>! She\u2019s loading up with new souls to spew out into the septillion worlds.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t quite decide whether the tendril\u2014and then Jim and Val on their way back to Earth\u2014go through the goddess\u2019s navel or through her vagina. Maybe I just go with the navel, which probably makes the scene easier for the average reader to think about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feb 16, 2010. I got the first thousand words or so written on my chapter \u201cThe Goddess\u201d\u009d today, the second-to-last chapter of my novel, Jim and the Flims. The last couple of weeks, I\u2019ve been working on a painting of the scene in this chapter, showing Jim and Val in the sea at Flimsy\u2019s core. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2012,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions\/2012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}