Deeds & Words

            I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving.  Mostly about cooking, it’s true, but also about the holiday itself.  It’s a troubled holiday now, for many people, with the echoes of imperialism inherent in its history.

            I like the holiday, though.  The way I see it, every agrarian culture has a post-harvest festival.  If the harvest was great, you have a party to celebrate and to thank whatever gods you worship.  If the harvest was just okay, you have a party to thank whatever gods you worship so they won’t get mad and send you floods, blizzards, or rot during the dark months.  If the harvest was bad, then you want one final blast before you and your family figure out to avoid starvation in the winter.

            In the spirit, then, of an at-least-okay harvest, I started thinking about things to give thanks for.  Not the big obvious things.  Not health, family, friends, a job. . .well, maybe a job.  I started looking at tiny, day-to-day things I am grateful for. It’s quite a list.  I thought I would have to struggle to get ten.  I ended up having to pare it down to 15.

Things I’m Grateful For

1. I’m grateful that the Sunday before Thanksgiving it was 68 degrees, and the leaves were orange, crimson and butter-yellow against a clear blue sky.

2.I’m grateful for green tea, and for hot chocolate, whipped cream and peppermint.

3. I’m grateful that I live within walking distance of downtown, which has a cinema, a library, a live theater, a bookstore, a fair trade import store, a candy store, a music store and a goddess store (in case I decide to buy a goddess).

4.I’m grateful for dogs.  Okay, I’m grateful for cats, too.  Not as grateful, but grateful.

5.I’m grateful for Joss Whedon.  Four words:  Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  One more word:  Firefly.

6.I’m grateful for English handbell ringers.

7.I’m grateful for Andre Norton, who taught me that girls could write exciting stories.

8.I’m grateful for hybrid cars.

9.Did I say I’m grateful for chocolate?

10.I’m grateful that I got to experience the 2008 presidential election.

11.I’m grateful for avocados, salmon, halibut and artichokes. And, of course, tomatoes.

12. I’m grateful that at least twice in my life someone has told me that my encouragement and support, years earlier, helped them reach their dream.

13.I’m grateful (really!) for blogs, telephones and e-mail which keep me in touch with people who are hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.

14. I’m grateful for drivers who stop and let me pull into traffic, and I’m grateful for the drivers who wave when I stop to let them pull into traffic.

15. I’m grateful that the Internet, and Google in particular, can find me 6,000 sites that has the famous green-bean-mushroom-soup-and-French-fried-onion-casserole recipe. Can you imagine what would happen if I tried to improvise?

So that’s it.  Pass around that pottery bowl full of home-brewed beer, toss another log on the bonfire, and tell me what everyday things you’re grateful for.  I’d really like to know.

Thunderer

Felix Gilman

BantamSpectra

Terry  Weyna wrote about Thunderer on Reading the Leaves, so when I was in Copperfield’s Books a few weeks ago I picked up a copy.  We’ve become so habituated to fantasy trilogies, tetralogies and dodecologies that we now need a term to differentiate a story that finishes up in one volume.  That term is “stand-alone.”

            Thunderer, Felix Gilman’s first novel, is a stand-alone. Even though he has created an elaborate city, Ararat, as a backdrop, and given us complex characters with competing needs, he wraps up this story in one book (the nerve of him!)

            Ararat is an unmapped city filled with gods.  There is Tiber, the flame, deity of justice and punishment, and the Key and the Chain, partner-adversary gods who rule the labyrinthine prison called the Iron Rose.  Followers of the spider-god engage in a strange lottery ritual, while actors and performers worship Lavilokan, god of reflections.

            Arjun is a newcomer to the city, pursing his own people’s vanished god, the Voice.  His arrival coincides with the return of another deity, the Bird.  Magical power flows in the wake of this entity.  In another part of the city, one of the city’s aristocratic rulers, Countess Ilona, uses a ritual devised by her tame scientist-philosopher, Professor Holbach, to siphon off some of the Bird’s power to drive her magical weapon, the flying warship Thunderer.

            With her enamel-thick white make-up, her fascination with sailors, and her intricate, cruel plots, the Countess seems like a very, very very bad version of Queen Elizabeth I.  The Chairman, one of her rivals in the city, has the control and resources of a Mafioso, to the third power.  These city rulers function independently of the gods, at a higher echelon than the characters we follow.

            At ground level, we see Arjun on his quest, which brings him into the range of Professor Holbach for a while.  We also share the adventures of Jack, an orphan escaped from a workhouse, who has absorbed some of the Bird’s power.  Arlandes, the embittered captain of the Thunderer, also has a part to play.  There is another character, the enigmatic Shay/Lemuel, who may travel through time and who in interested in the nature of the gods.

            The gods of Ararat are real.  One of them, damaged to the point of madness by Shay’s experiments, begins a supernatural war against the citizens of Ararat.  Arjun must work with Jack, the flying boy, to stop the god and save the city. While a humanly-engineered civil war rages around them, Arjun and Jack try to find the key to defeating the maddened god.

            Gilman describes the city in snatches, by building, by neighborhood, the way a stranger might come to know it.  Arjun is a decent man, brave but not fearless, intelligent but not brilliant, devout in a city whose believers range from fanatics to skeptics.  He is forced to violate his personal code at times, but he never does it lightly, and remains, in the end, a good man and a true spiritual seeker.

            Arjun saves the city and continues his quest for the Voice.  Because the metropolis of Ararat convolutes both space and time, I wondered whether, with the song Arjun introduced into the city early in the book, he had in fact planted the seed that would grow into his own god.

*

Thunderer is a stand-alone, but Gilman is writing another novel set in Ararat.  It look like the elusive Shay/Lemuel has inveigled another person into a strange and dangerous adventure.

            Many members of Buzz’s extended family made it to the memorial service, including his step-grandson Sam who flew out from New York.  I haven’t seen Sam in several years, although Sharon and his mother, Renee, kept us updated on things; his marriage, his career, his two kids . . .mostly stuff about the kids, of course, but a comment now and then about some award Sam had won somewhere.  You know.  Details.

            Sam is book reviewer for New York Magazine.

            I got a chance to have a conversation with him at the wake, which took place at Buzz and Sharon’s house after the service. He had pictures of Sara, his wife, and his daughter and son, including a tug-at-your-heart picture of his infant son seated on Buzz’s knee, smiling and reaching for the camera. 

            I had seen Sam off and on when he was a teenager because Renee would frequently come over when we were visiting Buzz and Sharon.  Sam’s brother Patrick is a musician, an extraordinary guitar player.  Sam, as I recall, was an athlete.  He was quiet. To be honest, I think my biases kicked in and I went, “Oh, a jock, not a deep thinker, then.”  One Thanksgiving when Buzz and Sharon were caretaking a private camp in the Sierra foothills, I went for a late afternoon walk with Sam and Patrick.  The day had been mostly clear and cool, the kind of day you see described as “crisp,” but it had rained a few days earlier and a soft mist gathered in the defiles and gullies. The house looked like a greeting-card cottage; a few battered but brave flowers out front, a tendril of blue smoke undulating from the chimney. We walked up the hills a little way, through the orange-red madrone trees, surrounded by the scent of pine, bay, and once in a while a spicy waft of wood-smoke. Brown mushrooms poked up amidst the damp leaves.  Overhead it was clear, and as we got up a bit higher, the rounded tops of the hills poked up out of a silvery disc of translucent mist.  Sam said, “I think this landscape is a metaphor for someone trying to live the Christian faith.”

            I said something elegant, like, “Hunh?”

            He waved a hand at the peaks.  “You know.  You can see where you want to get to.”

            “But you can’t see the pathway because of the fog?”

            He nodded.  “But that’s where the faith comes in.”

            Perhaps a deep thinker, after all.

            Sam grew up, went away to college, got married (a wedding in Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon) and ended up on the east coast. For a long time I only heard about him through Sharon and Renee.

            When Sam and I were talking at the wake, he said, “I remember you read a story of mine, once, a long time ago, one of my first stories.”

            I nodded.  I remember that I read the story; another Thanksgiving, at another house. I was starting to get tense.  Just what cutting, analytical, perfectionist suggestions had I made?

            He said, “I remember you told me that my prose was beautiful and that I proved I could do anything I wanted with words.  I always remembered that.  It really encouraged me.”

            I recovered and said something like, “And look, I was right.”         

            I asked him what the last book was he had reviewed.  It was 2666 by Roberto Balanos, a Chilean poet turned novelist.  Balanos worked on the book for ten years and died shortly before it came out.  “It’s nearly a thousand pages,” Sam said.  I mentioned that I probably wouldn’t be able to hold it.  He assured me that in addition to the hard-cover, there was a special edition, boxed with the book in five separate volumes, which is how Balanos has always envisioned it.        Since “writer” to me almost always means “novelist” I asked Sam if he was working on a book.  Not fiction, he said.  “I tried to write fiction, but it ended up being the same self-consciously literary nineteenth-century novel.  Or, well, the first chapter of the same self-consciously literary nineteenth-century novel. Then I picked up a book of essays and realized that was what I wanted to do.” He was thinking of a book of travel essays, not your standard travel book, though.  For example, when he was in England he visited “Dickens World,” a theme park based on the work of Dickens, then under construction.  He rattled off a few things from the park– the Fagin’s Den children’s area, the Great Expectations dark ride, and I said, “I wonder what they did for Bleak House.”

            Sam said, “That’s the one book that’s not represented in the park.”

            He pointed out that the park was near Chatham, where Dickens spent part of his childhood.  “It’s funny,” he said.  “Chatham was quite economically depressed, so you could pay to see quaint Victorian poverty—“

            “Or you could have real poverty for free.”

            “Yes, but real poverty is scary.”

            I didn’t waste too much more of Sam’s time.  His sister Regan was there, and he hadn’t seen her in quite a while, and other family members needed time with him.  When we got home, I did go read his review of 2666.  Hey, you know what?  The guy can write. If he ever writes a book of travel essays, I will buy it.  I will be buying 2666 (although I may “train up” to it by reading a shorter work, Savage Detectives, first). And I may subscribe to New York Magazine, just to keep up with Sam’s reviews.

We went to Buzz Fleming’s memorial service last Saturday.  Of course his name isn’t Buzz.  It’s Basil Aubrey Fleming. Buzz was born in Palmrya, New York, on Halloween in 1924.  He joked about Palmrya, which was the home of the American Spiritualism movement.  He loved New York state, loved the woods, loved hiking, fishing, camping and the Boy Scouts.  We met him through Boy Scouts, when he and his wife Sharon came to Camp Masonite Navarro as camp director and cook.  Their son Matt was a shy 13 year old.  Now Matt is a school administrator, a chaplain and has three kids of his own.

One thing memorial services do for you is help you remember the whole person, just as they remind you that the person has gone away. For about the past ten years, Buzz’s health wasn’t great.  The Sig-O and I would compare notes after every visit:  “How did Buzz seem to you?”  “He seemed weak.”  “He seemed stronger this visit.”  “He seemed vague.”  “He seemed like his old self, but not as strong.”

Saturday, watching the slide show about his life, I started remembering the Buzz from the old days.

Patrick, Buzz’s oldest child from his first marriage, said, “From the time I was fifteen, you couldn’t lose me in the woods.  I thank my father for that.” Buzz loved nature, and he loved science.  In the late 80s-early 90s, when Buzz taught and Sharon was principal of a Christian school in Calaveras County, Buzz always had a row of strange-looking rocks on the window ledge in his classroom—ammonites and other fossils.  Subversive!  One October weekend during this time, Buzz and Sharon were visiting at our house.  Buzz and I were in the kitchen talking.  The phone rang.  It was people from the school, calling to ask Sharon, who was in the shower, a question.  I listened to Buzz’s end of the conversation, which seemed to be about paper streamers, pumpkins, and bowls of candy. After he hung up he stood for a moment shaking his head slightly.  He looked at me and said, “Every August when we go to Board to get our curriculum approved, I have to fight to teach evolution as a theory.  And every October I help them plan the Halloween party.  And no one sees anything odd there.”  Another time, after he had left that school and gone back to the public education system, and Sharon was fighting some battles with the private school, Buzz commented, “You know, for a Christian operation, they sure do love their Old Testament.”

Buzz’s brain—and his imagination—was big enough to encompass a loving creator God and evolution, with room to spare for Boy Scouts, the American Civil War, his own war stories, jokes, poetry, wooden boats, tall ships, books, the Sierras, the Adirondacks, John Wayne and the Mike Meyers movie So I Married an Axe Murderer.  (Buzz loved to imitate Meyers in the wedding reception scene, saying, “We have a piper dooon.”) Like many people who try to actually live their beliefs, he often sparred with conventional congregations, impatient with hypocrisy and intolerance.  His son Matt put it more tactfully when he said, “Dad had a little trouble with some of the rules.”

Buzz and Sharon introduced us to the concept of the Burns Night, a dinner held in January celebrating the life of the Scots poet.  Over the years, Buzz and Sharon belonged to two different Scottish heritage groups who put on Burns Dinners.  Buzz would get decked out in his authentic kilt and all the accessories.  They would salute the haggis, read Burns poems, and toast the poet with  a few ”wee drams” of Scotch.  Robbie Burns had it all; patriotism, insight, humor, sentimentalism, bawdy stories and a bawdy reputation to match.  There was always quite a bit of “wee dramming” going on, and there would would  be bag-pipers, Highland dances, and Patrick would bring his guitar and play bawdy Scottish songs, and yes, you do see a theme emerging.

In 2000, Buzz and Sharon got to go to Scotland and Buzz met the laird of the Fleming clan.  Buzz was thrilled.  He mentioned that trip every time we visited.

He loved kids.  Being with his grandkids and his great-grandkids flooded him with joy. 

He had these quaint, old-fashioned ideas about life.  He thought that people should be true to their word.  He thought that teaching was a sacred trust and that the minds, hearts and imaginations of children were literally the future of our country and our world.  He thought that love should be shared and that you should respond to the best in people, not the worst.  This last choice, a commitment to giving people chances, meant that once in a while he blundered.  It wasn’t very often. Usually, the person who didn’t step up to Buzz’s trust and expectations as a youngster has succeeded as an adult. Those folks remember Buzz’s faith as one of the reasons they overcame the obstacles in their lives.  Buzz loved people, and as his daughter Kim said, “Everyone loved my dad as soon as they met him; or, if it wasn’t as soon as they met him, it was twenty minutes later when they go to know him.”

He left not a materially rich legacy but a story-teller’s treasure-trove.  He was a man who managed to live the life that fulfilled his passion and gave him bliss, and he didn’t stop there.  He shared the wonders of the world with his own family, honorary kinfolk like us, and with two generations of children. Buzz’s children, biological or spiritual, won’t get lost in the woods.  They will find their way, no matter how dark it is, or how hard the wind blows, because they will have his words whispering in their hearts, and the memory of how he looked at them; with love, pride and trust.

Sunset and evening star

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that that dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho’ form out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Open mic night Wednesday,” reads the ad.  It stops me.  Back when I was a kid, and the dinosaurs roamed, we pronounced the second word in that clause to rhyme with “bike.” We also spelled it like the diminutive for Michael.  Now it looks like it should rhyme with trick.

“Open mick night?”  That can’t be what they’re going for.

It’s those kids.  They’re changing the language.  Drop letters so it’s easier to text or keyboard and 2 bad 4 me if I can’t keep up. OMG, I feel so old.

I want to go into full curmudgeon-mode on this, but I really can’t.  It’s lively.  It’s innovative; just like back in the 1600s when people like Shakespeare were writing and they wouldn’t spell a word the same way twice.

Did I write Shakespeare? I’m sorry.  I meant Shakspere.  Or Shakespear.  Or Shaxpere, which everyone knows means “father of Shax.”  Okay, I made that part up, but not the Shaxpere spelling.  People wonder why it’s hard to find documentation about Will—isn’t it obvious?

The printing press had made words accessible to more people and it was less important to replicate something perfectly than it was to make yourself understood.  With texting, e-mail, blogging, is it any different?  We think we own the language.  We engage with it in a different way than we did when I was in school.

So I can deal with an open mic, I guess, as long as I don’t have to ride my bic to get there, and I’m not expected to meet anyone F2F.

Yes!  Brock, of Black Sheep Farms, was at the Sebastopol Farmers’ Market yesterday and for the first time since mid-August he had bacon!

            You’re thinking, “It’s bacon, Marion.  How exciting can that be?”  Pretty gosh-darn exciting, that’s how.  I can’t say Black Sheep Farms has the best bacon in the world for the obvious reasons, but I can say that it is the best bacon I’ve ever had.  It’s lean, it has great flavor, and when combined with farmers’ market heirloom tomatoes and fresh lettuce between two toasted pieces of good bread (with a little bit of mayo) it is the first ingredient of an awesome BLT.

            I’m not much of a bacon eater except in BLTs and once in a while in spinach salads, although now that Brock’s bacon is back I may put some in my winter brussel-sprouts recipes.

            The mood of the market was happy.  It was sunny, there was a really tight band named Old Jawbone playing, but mostly people were happy about the presidential election.  This is western Sonoma County, California, so it would seem strange if we were consoling a lot of disappointed McCain/Palin fans.  In fact, the people at the market who were unhappy about national results mostly complained that Obama is too moderate.  Some people are just never satisfied.  The Humane Society people had been there last week leafleting us nearly to death with Yes on 2 fliers, so they were happy campers.

            Me?  I got tomatoes from Nancy, along with some of her nectar-sweet comice pears, lettuce from an organic farm in Bloomfield, Black Sheep Farms bacon, listened to Old Jawbone and got a mocha from Neil at Run-Around Brew.  I was a happy camper indeed.

            Can you write a 175-page novel in 30 days?  NaNoWriMo thinks you can.  You, and about 100,000 other people.

            NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, 11/1 through 11/30, each year.  The website is nanowrimo.org. This is one of the best experiments on the internet. NaNoWriMo wants to you write 50,000 words in one month.  They believe you can do it; they know you can do it, and they will help you, with regional support groups, communal coffee-house writing dates, friendly competition between regions, and pep-talk e-mails from famous and not so famous writers.  They will also allow you to upload your words, and see for yourself how well you are doing at reaching that 50,000 word goal. (Don’t worry, the upload is encrypted.  No one will hijack your deathless prose).

            To meet this challenge, you have to write the daily equivalent of 1667 words. If you know you won’t write on Thanksgiving, you could write 3334 words the Wednesday before, because the NaNoWriMo clock keeps ticking.

            Why this frantic pace?  As many of us know from bitter experience, writing is about momentum.  Too many gifted writers get trapped in perfection paralysis.  Here’s how it goes. You have an awesome idea for a novel.  It’s in your head, fully mapped out, with rich, complex characters, sparkling prose, a plot trickier and cooler than The Da Vinci Code.  You plunge in, high on that white-hot flush of creativity.  If you’re lucky, this phase lasts until about chapter three, when you start realizing that you haven’t properly anchored your backstory. . .or, it’s page 50 and you’ve already used the word “irridescent” six times. . . or, there’s no reason your main character, who was raised by wolves, would know American Sign Language. . .or, like exercising, it’s not fun anymore and you aren’t seeing the results you wanted.  At this point, one of two things happens:  1) You go back to the beginning. Again.  And again.  And again. . . or, 2) The whole work slowly falls inward on itself like one of those imploded buildings they show on the Discovery Channel. 

            NaNoWriMo doesn’t want your work to be perfect.  It wants you to write. It isn’t about perfection, it’s about committing to the process and finishing.  As one of the pep-talk e-mails said last year, “It isn’t about rewrites.  December is for rewrites.” If you actually sign up to participate and log your word count, or upload your prose, you get a counter that shows you how you are doing.  Accountability, right there on your screen.

            I participated in NaNoWriMo last year.  I knew two other writers, Laura and Robin, and I checked in with them, wrote e-mails of encouragement, etc.  They did the same. I wrote more than 50,000 words.  That’s the good news.  The not-so-good news; in the intervening 11 months I still have not completed the remaining 50,000 words of my proposed 100,000 word action novel.  I’m three chapters from the end, stalled.

I was tempted to do NaNoWriMo again this year, and start a new project, but I know myself well enough to see that idea for the desperate ploy it was. I would love to join in again and feel the rush and the camaraderie, but I owe it the project I’m working on to finish it.

            Instead I’m going to do MiniWriMo.  I’m going to give myself a baby-step word count of 500 words a day from 11/6 until the end of the month. (Blog postings do not count.) That should more than finish the book.  If I get to the end of the book, then I can stop. I’ll miss the fun of the website, but maybe I’ll log one once in a while and at least listen to NaNoWriMo radio.  I can pretend I’m part of the group. 

            Can I do it?  Can I write 12,500 words, or finish the book, before December 1?  I guess we’ll see.

            I got this fiery, geometric woven wall-hanging at the Sebastopol farmers’ market Sunday.  The  booth is called “Sacred Land.”  I hadn’t seen Sacred Land before; maybe I just missed it since I have such a predictable routine at the market.  The woman who was managing the booth said she was doing it for her daughter, who runs the business from Ecuador.  It’s a fair-trade operation; they interact with the weavers and give back most of the profit.  In addition to hangings like this, which is about the size of a placemat, they have larger swathes of fabric, both woven wool and ikat cloth, shawl or table-cloth sized, some nice over-the-shoulder bags, jewelry and paintings done by her daughter’s partner.  They also have pieces the size of the standing figure (below).  I wanted to capture the way the sun shone through it, but didn’t quite get it.  Anyway, the stuff is beautiful and not badly priced. Apparently they don’t have a website, but Mom gave me her daughter’s e-mail because I wanted to ask her the name of the weaver of the piece I bought.  (The e-mail is sacredland.arte@gmail.com)

            I also had a nice talk with the guy who runs Sonoma Chocolatiers, which I hope will fill the gaping void left in my life when La Dolce V closed (please, a moment of silence).  He now owns Infusions Tea Shop in Sebastopol, and a lot of his truffles have tea-flavored fillings, but he also does chipotle chili filling and a couple other pepper fillings.  I found the smokiness of the chipotle to be a poor combination with the chocolate; the aji chili and cinnamon was a better match in my opinion.

            Two weeks ago I made a family-traditional winter meal, pot roast, completely from farmers’ market purchases.  The meal wasn’t perfect because I forgot to get salad stuff, but it wasn’t bad.  I bought a 1.5 pound chuck roast from Black Sheep Farms (even though Brock is on my black sheep list at the moment because, despite all his promises, he hasn’t had bacon at the market since August.  Tomatoes won’t be here forever, Brock!)  I got garlic and onions from Nancy at Middleton Farms.  Nancy has the best onions and garlic in the market.  She usually has the best strawberries too.  The organic carrots came from Laguna Farms.  I went to booth for Nelson Farm from Tomales, who have many varieties of potato, and asked which would be the best in pot roast.  The vendor recommended two; yellow Finns and German Butterball potatoes.  I put two of each in with the roast.  They were great, sopping up the juice but still retaining potato flavor, tender while keeping their shape.  Oh, I also grabbed a couple of bunches of herbs from Middleton Farms as well.

            Two of my favorite vendors were not represented in this meal. One was Javier of Bodega Goat Farms, who sells goat cheese.  If you don’t already like goat cheese I’m not going to say, “Oh, try his and you’ll change your mind.”  You won’t.  His cheese tastes like goat cheese.  If you like goat cheese, I recommend the flavored spreads.  Our favorite is the basil; second favorite is the Serrano chili.  Hector’s Honey has the best honey in the county and I’m not the only one who thinks so.  He won first place at the Harvest Fair this year.  Hector has a farm in the Fulton area and sells beeswax candles, peppers, tomatoes and tomatillos as well as honey.  If you get to the market really early, and are lucky, you may be able to score a dozen organic, actual free-range chicken eggs from him. He doesn’t always have eggs, though, and they go quickly.  In fact, I think some people call ahead and reserve them.

            You can’t get chicken at the market, but some Sundays you can get fish.  You can get coffee beans, artisan breads, gourmet chocolate, handspun wool yarn and decadent baked goods.  Often there is live music.  The booths around the gazebo tend to be the arts and crafts; hemp clothing, pottery, hand-woven baskets, and Christmas presents from fair-trade operations based in Ecuador, with a booth run by Mom.