She came from Planet Claire
I knew she came from there
She drove a Plymouth Satellite
Faster than the speed of light
Planet Claire has pink air
All the trees are red
No one ever dies there
No one has a head
Some say she’s from Mars
Or one of the seven stars
That shine after 3:30 in the morning
WELL SHE ISN’T
I wrestled with the end of Destination Unknown and the beginning of Gray Rock for several weeks, trying to end one story definitively while beginning a very different one. Eventually I sorted out everything between the parts, but two items never in doubt were (a) my team, and the music for Gray Rock, was The B-52s and (b) Claire would be named Claire. Planet Claire is the first track on the first studio album the band released, and thereby it became the first chapter name of the new world of Gray Rock. Matching the song titles to each chapter thereafter was easy.
I mentioned in the Working is No Problem notes that I had the scripture from the Book of James printed and tacked to the wall of my workstation. Next to the scripture, I had tacked the quote that is the epigraph of Gray Rock. I often wondered if anyone noticed them and wondered why I selected those quotations. No one did. At the time, naturally, they were there to remind me to be steadfast, and to stick to my mission. The Bhajan quote was, at the time, directed at The MP, but as I pulled together the manuscript, I noticed others at the company about which the same could be said, for better or worse. One person in particular.
Best Places To Work! 