After the Rain/After the Flood

So the buzz on twitter is that the After the Floods e-Anthology has raised over $1200 for the Queensland Flood Appeal, to which I can only say you fucking rock, fans of Australian SF. The special editions title becomes even more poignant now, when the floods are over and the clean-up begins, than it was when we were watching the water rise. I spent much of my day playing courier for the Day Job, delivering orders that’d been held up by the water, and I got to see a fair chunk of Brisbane while I was driving around. Some of the city has held up remarkably well.

Some has not.

I got home from work and read that there’s a major arterial road that’s potentially ready to slide into the river, which is something that seems oddly surreal. I’ve got friends who are only just making it home after leaving their houses. My sister has absconded to the Gold Coast for the weekend because it seems like it’ll take that long for power to be returned to her home (She was gearing up for a birthday part this weekend, fifty or so people coming over for champagne. Not surprisingly, that’s been postponed and a small mountain of party food and drink has been dumped due to the lack of refrigeration). There are people only four or so blocks from me who are just getting power back this afternoon.

 All of this made sense when the floods were happening, but somehow it’s harder to process when I’m getting up and going to work and trying to get two thousand written every day. Coping with extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances is much easier than coping with extraordinary things in an ordinary setting. 

Since I’m not sure what else to do, I’m going to head off and write. Or possibly answer emails. Or deliver a baleful glare at the storm clouds rolling in, which seem to be adding insult to injury.